Sitting of 2 August 1881

MINUTES.
SELECT COMMITTEE—Report—Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement [No. 358].
SUPPLY—considered in Committee—CIVIL SERVICE ESTIMATES, Class II.—SALARIES AND EXPENSES OF CIVIL DEPARTMENTS.
PUBLIC BILLS—Resolutions [August 1] reported—Ordered—First Reading—National Debt [236]; Indian Loan of 1879 [237].
Ordered—First Reading—Corrupt Practices (Suspension of Elections) * [238].
Committee—Report—Petroleum (Hawking) [222].
Considered as amended—Third Reading—Wild Birds Protection Act (1880) Amendment [226]; Superannuation (Post Office and Works)* [228], and passed.

QUESTIONS.

  MERCANTILE MARINE—LIGHTSHIPS AND LIGHTHOUSES—TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION.
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLASasked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether his attention has been called to the present want of telegraphic communication between lightships and lighthouses
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  and the shore; and, whether he will consider the desirability of establishing such telegraphic communication if possible before another winter?
  MR. CHAMBERLAIN MR. CHAMBERLAIN, in reply, said, his attention had been directed to the subject referred to by the hon. Member, and as to which communications had for some time been going on between the Board of Trade and the Trinity House. He was informed that the Trinity House hoped to be able to make a satisfactory Report on the subject in a short time.

  ARMY ORGANIZATION—THE NEW ROYAL WARRANT—MAJORS.
  MAJOR-GENERAL BURNABYasked the Secretary of State for War, If existing Colonels who were Majors before the 1st of October 1877, and who were eligible for promotion to Major General until the age of fifty-eight, but who under paragraph 77 (2) of the New Royal Warrant, are rendered ineligible for such promotion, and who furthermore thereby will be compulsorily retired at the age of fifty-five will be allowed "to serve and be eligible for promotion until the 1st of July 1885, up to the age of fifty-nine years, and afterwards up to the age of fifty-eight years," as in the case of Colonels who were Lieutenant Colonels before the 1st of October 1877; and, if this relaxation is not granted to all such Majors, whether it will be granted to Colonel Marter of the First or King's Dragoon Guards, who, being a Major, captured King Cetshwayo, and to any other Officers, who, being Majors before the 1st of October 1877, were also promoted for distinguished service in the field?
  MR. CHILDERS: No, Sir; I have no intention to relax the rule under which Colonels who were Majors only before October, 1877, will retire at the fixed age of Colonels' retirement—that is to say, at 55. Nor can I see any grounds for a special exception in Colonel Marter's favour. He is apparently only 48 years of age.

  ARMY REGULATION ACT, 1871—PURCHASE OFFICERS.
  MAJOR-GENERAL BURNABYasked the Secretary of State for War, If "purchase" officers who wish to retire from the Army and realize that value of their Commissions guaranteed by the State,

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  are (although the purchase system is abolished whereby promotion to a death vacancy has ceased to be a financial benefit to those in whose favour it existed) required to furnish a medical certificate of good health; failing which they are required to pass a quarantine of six weeks, in order that the State may benefit by not having to pay them should they die within that period; and, if such is the case, whether this procedure may at once cease, and all moneys derived thereby since the abolition of purchase may be paid to the executors of any officer who, having made application to retire, may not have survived the six weeks' quarantine in question?
  MR. CHILDERS: This is a matter entirely beyond my control. It is governed by the 3rd section of the Army Regulation Act, 1871, and no change in the rule could be made without an Amendment to the Act, which I see no reason to propose.

  CHINA—THE OPIUM TRAFFIC.
  SIR WILFRID LAWSONasked the Secretary of State for India, Whether his attention has been called to a letter from the Chinese Grand Secretary Li, in the "Times" of July 29th, stating—
  "That the single aim of his Government in taxing opium is to repress the traffic. Never the desire to gain revenue from such a source;"
  and, whether the Indian Government is taking any steps thoroughly to review our position with regard to the opium revenue, according to the promise of the Noble Lord the Secretary of State for India?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: I have seen the letter referred to from the Chinese Grand Secretary Li in the papers, and I must say that a great many statements and arguments contained in that letter appear to me to be open to very great question. It is impossible for me to reply to those statements in the course of an answer to a Question, and I am sure that my hon. Friend would not wish me to do so. In reply to the latter part of the Question, I have to state that a despatch has been sent to the Government of India on the subject of the opium revenue, which I think contains all the instructions necessary in support of the statement which I made during the course of a debate here two months ago.

  IRELAND—THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY—ALLEGED BREACH OF THE PEACE BY A SUB-INSPECTOR.
  MR. FINIGANasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is a fact that Mr. Young, Sub-Inspector of Constabulary, Raphoe, County Donegal, who has recently been placed in charge of an extra Constabulary force in Gweedore, in the same county, on 28th June, when driving through the townland of Meenanilla, in company with Mr. Ramsay, Solicitor, Letterkenny, and Mr. Robinson, Head Bailiff to Captain Hill, provoked a breach of the peace by calling on Mrs. Gallagher to come out of her house and stab him with a grape; and, if so, whether he approves of such conduct by an officer of the Constabulary?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER,in reply, said, he understood Mr. Young and some men were passing the house of Mr. Gallagher with a prisoner. A crowd collected on the road to the barracks, and Mrs. Gallagher shouted some words in Irish, and took up a grape, an instrument used in potato digging. Her husband disarmed her. On a subsequent occasion the Sub-Inspector, with some men, passed the cottage, but neither saw nor heard anything of the woman.

  LAW AND POLICE (IRELAND)— POISONED EGGS.
  MR. FINIGANasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether his attention has been directed to the fact that eggs poisoned with strychnine have been placed, for the preservation of game, in a wood, the property of Mr. Richard Longfield, Boherbee, County Cork, within three hundred yards of the houses of some of his tenants; whether the wood, containing a well from which these people are supplied with water, may be entered by several open gaps; whether four children belonging to one of Mr. Long field's tenants, a widow, on finding one of those poisoned eggs, ate it, and were instantly seized by an attack of cramps and vomiting; whether three of them were dangerously ill for many days, and the fourth for many weeks; whether the police authorities, as well as the dispensary doctor of the district, are not acquainted with this case; and, whether

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  the statutable notice required was given in this case?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER,in reply, said, that he found, on inquiry, that the statements contained in the Question of the hon. Member were true. Poisoned eggs for the preservation of game were placed within 300 yards of the houses of some of the tenants of the estate; and four children who, on finding one of the eggs, ate it, were seized with cramp and vomiting. He was glad to say, however, they had recovered. Mr. Longfield had caused every attention to be paid to the children, had paid the doctor's fees, and sent money to the parents. It appeared that notices of the eggs were posted in the wood, but were not sent to the Constabulary until after the accident. He had no doubt that what had occurred would be a great lesson to Mr. Long-field and to other persons; and he hoped and believed that such a thing would not occur again.

  ARMY (AUXILIARY FORCES)—MILITIA ADJUTANTS.
  MR. ROUNDasked the Secretary of State for "War, Whether he proposes that Adjutants of Militia who attain the rank of Major should have precedence over Majors of Militia Regiments?
  MR. CHILDERS: NO, Sir; not for regimental purposes.

  ARMY ORGANIZATION—THE NEW ROYAL WARRANT—PURCHASE CAPTAINS.
  MR. MOLLOYasked the Secretary of State for War, If it is obligatory upon the Purchase Captains to accept promotion to the newly-created majorities under the provisions of the recent Royal Warrant; or, can they elect to serve on until compelled to retire, under the Age Clause, at forty-two?
  MR. CHILDERS: In reply to the hon. Member, I have to state that, in making the promotions on the 1st of July last, when the Warrant of the 25th of June came into operation, we gave captains who had reached the reduced age at which retirement was compulsory, and who were also eligible and recommended for promotion, the choice between promotion and compulsory retirement. But I see no reason for extending that option to officers who have not reached the age for compulsory retirement.

  PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS—SUSPENSION OF CORRUPT BOROUGHS.
  MR. T. COLLINSasked Mr. Attorney General, Whether it is his intention to bring in a Bill to suspend until the next Session of Parliament Writs for the cities of Canterbury, Chester, Gloucester, and Oxford, and for the boroughs of Boston, Macclesfield, and Sandwich?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES),in reply, said, it was his intention to ask leave to bring in a Bill such as that referred to in the Question of the hon. Member that evening.

ORDERS OF THE BAY.

  SUPPLY.—COMMITTEE.
  Order for Committee read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."

  KNARESBOROUGH COMMISSION.

    RESOLUTION.
    MR. T. COLLINSrose to call attention to the following statements in the Report of the Royal Commissioners appointed to inquire into alleged Corrupt Practices in the Borough of Knares-borough:—
    "We find that corrupt practices did not extensively prevail at the election of 1874. We find that corrupt practices did not extensively prevail at the election of 1880. We cannot close our Report, having regard to the conclusions we have arrived at, without expressing our regret that the expense of this inquiry should, under the 31st and 32nd Vic. c. 125, s. 15, fall on the ratepayers of the borough of Knaresborough;"
    and to move—
    "That, in the opinion of this House, having regard to statements of the Royal Commissioners, it is not in accordance with justice nor with the policy of the Act of 31 and 32 Vic. c. 125, that the cost of this inquiry should he borne by the ratepayers of the borough of Knaresborough."
    The hon. Gentleman said, he had no desire to delay the taking of Supply, and would not have brought the subject forward on the Motion for going into Supply if it were open to him to do so on another occasion. What the ratepayers of Knaresborough complained of was that their borough being pure—as boroughs went—had been saddled with a rate of some 4s. in the pound. He

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    thought this was a case in which the old maxim, De minimis non curat lex, would have applied; and if the rate had been not more than 6d. in the pound he should not have brought forward his complaint, although the principle was the same. Election Commissions dated back as far as 1850, when, under the Premiership of Lord John Russell, a Commission was appointed by Act of Parliament to inquire as to the proceedings at an election for St. Alban's. Two years later another Act was passed which practically perpetuated and made general the St. Alban's Act, and by that Act the cost of Commissions was defrayed from the taxes of the country. This state of things went on until 1867, when a Committee, comprising many of the experts in matters of electoral law, then sitting in Parliament, sat; and, on the Motion of Mr. Whitbread in that Committee, it was determined that in cases where corrupt practices had extensively prevailed the expenses incurred in holding the inquiries should be paid out of the county or borough rates of the localities. This seemed to him to be a very fair proposal; but he would remind the House that in the following year the scope of the Motion of Mr. Whitbread was enlarged, and provision was made that payment of the cost of inquiries should be laid upon the rates in all cases where the Judges reported that, in their opinion, this should be done. He could not but think that, in comparison with the other places in which Commissions had sat, Knaresborough was very badly treated. The object of the Legislature had been the prevention of corrupt practices, and they had refused to allow a Commission to be issued, where the Judge had reported that corrupt practices had not extensively prevailed, merely because a Member had been unseated. It was quite true that in this instance the Judge had reported that he believed that corrupt practices had extensively prevailed; but the inquiry had shown that that belief was not well founded. In such circumstances, it was contrary to the spirit, if not to the letter, of the Act that the borough should be called upon to pay a rate of 4s. in the pound in establishing its virtue. He might quote many cases in which the Government had awarded compensation where they were satisfied a mis-
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    carriage of justice had taken place. The case of Habron might be mentioned, as well as that of Barber. The issuing of the Commission was an act of inadvertence. The intention of the Act was never to fine the electors for merely isolated cases of corruption, such as was the case at Knaresborough, and therefore it no more fell within the spirit of the Act than the cases of Gravesend or Evesham, where the Members were unseated. He knew that at this period of the Session he was quite in the hands of the Government. It was impossible, without their assistance, to make any headway. He regretted, however, that the Prime Minister was not in his place, that he might make his appeal to him on the subject. He knew that, technically, he had no defence on the question of statutory liability; but he must say that the constituency had suffered from an accident, and this being a wrong created by an Act of Parliament, it was the business of Parliament to find a remedy.
    Amendment proposed,
    To leave out from the the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, having regard to statements of the Royal Commissioners, it is not in accordance with justice nor with the policy of the Act of 31 and 32 Vic. c. 125, that the cost of this inquiry should he home hy the ratepayers of the borough of Knaresborough,"—(Mr. Thomas Collins,)
    —instead thereof.
    Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)said, he was sure the House must feel that the hon. and learned Member had very fairly stated the case to the House, and that he was fully entitled to bring the exceptional circumstances under the consideration of the House. He also felt that there was a substantial grievance to bring forward; but, at the same time, it was impossible to give way to his Motion. The substantial Motion of the hon. and learned Member was that the expenses of this Commission should be borne out of the Imperial taxation of the country. He did not suggest any other means by which it could be met. In the first place, that could not be done without an Act of Parliament. Therefore, he asked the House to agree to a declaration, which must, of necessity, be fol-

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    lowed by an Act of Parliament, to relieve the ratepayers of Knaresborough from the cost of this inquiry. He was unable to see that either the letter or the spirit of the Act had been defeated. It must have been anticipated by those who framed the Act that Judges not being infallible might make Reports either upon evidence which, upon further inquiry, proved not to be well founded, or upon error. The hon. and learned Gentleman did not himself blame the Judges, and he might mention that this was the first case in which the result had been contrary to their Report. The case had often occurred of prisoners found guilty 'of crime, and afterwards proved to be innocent, but except in very rare cases the Crown did not compensate them, or even repay the expenses to which they might have been put in their defence; and in those exceptional cases in which compensation had been awarded it had been the subject of severe criticism. If the position of the hon. and learned Gentleman was correct, it would be necessary for the State to pay the expenses of any person who, on appeal to a higher Court, succeeded in having the judgment of the lower Court reversed. He quite agreed that the evidence did not support the Report of the Judges; but while he regretted that Knaresborough should have to bear this expense, he could not see how, so long as the law was as it was, any compensation could be made. The only satisfaction to the people was that they had got one compensation—they had proved their right to elect a Member, and they had secured the able services of his hon. and learned Friend.
    MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, it was admitted that the Judges were mistaken, and he felt the force of the Attorney General's argument that it was not competent for the Government to accede to the Motion in face of the Act of Parliament; but it was manifest that the law required improvement. He did not expect the law to be infallible; but in adopting a system of secret voting they had raised a great obstacle to inquiries into electoral corruption, and to judge from what he had read they would convert that which in most cases was corruption by a few into a wholesale system of corruption. It was clearly the duty of the Attorney General to bring this question forward again; and he could
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    only add that his hon. and learned Friend had clearly done his duty in bringing the facts connected with the constituency he represented before the attention of the House.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

  POOR LAW (IRELAND)—LIMERICK AND BELFAST WORKHOUSES.

    OBSERVATIONS.
    MR. A. MOORErose to call attention to the administration of the Irish Poor Law, more particularly in connection with Belfast workhouse. He reminded the House that he had called attention to the same subject last year, and had given considerable time to the matter; and as the result of his Motion an inquiry had been ordered, but that inquiry had been perfectly useless owing to the manner in which it was conducted. Several independent witnesses were silenced, and one, a Roman Catholic chaplain, who was dismissed for saying that the house was a nest of drunkenness, immorality, and vice was never called at all. He should have thought the proper way to conduct an investigation of that sort would have been to send down to the spot a perfectly independent person to act as Commissioner; but instead of that two Poor Law Inspectors were appointed, who had only recently been on the spot making inquiries, and these persons had exonerated the house from the charges made against it. He had not a word to say against Dr. Mackay, one of the Inspectors referred to, and he must say when the Chief Secretary's attention was called to the matter he at once did his best; but what he did complain of was that the Local Government Board had endeavoured, by every means in its power, to thwart and crush and defeat the inquiry. When he made the original statement he made a number of assertions, giving figures and facts, and no attempt was made by the officials to find out if those figures were correct or not. His statement was reported in The Freeman's Journal; but some of his facts and figures were not given, although he was bound to say that the reports in The Freeman were wonderfully full and accurate considering that they had all to be telegraphed. He had since been supported in his complaint by several of the Guardians of the Union, and had received the warm thanks of a

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    number of the ratepayers. It appeared to be generally admitted that the state of this workhouse was extremely unsatisfactory, and yet the inquiry was allowed to prove abortive. In reference to the specific charges which he had made, the charge of immorality was fully borne out by the facts which had been placed in his hands. There were cases of women who had been in and out of the house 60 or 70 times, and who were simply living upon the ratepayers, whilst they led abandoned lives. In other cases women who remained in the house became mothers under circumstances which showed that immorality prevailed in the workhouse. Touching those serious charges hardly a question was asked at the inquiry except one or two questions put to the officials, who could not be expected to give disinterested evidence. On the 14th of April, 1879, the matron complained that paupers were going about the house in possession of pass keys, and doing what they pleased; but not the slightest heed was paid to that charge at the inquiry. The matron was examined, but the question was not even put to her. Then it was alleged that there was a great deal of drunkenness in the house, and the way in which that was accomplished was that, by a combination, property of the Union was sold and disposed of in various ways—in this case surreptitiously introduced into the house. One of the magistrates at Belfast stated that in 1878 no less than 99 cases of drunkenness were brought before him from the workhouse. Yet there was not the slightest cross-examination on this point at the inquiry, nor any attempt made to account for and explain how that drunkenness took place. Another charge was that the old men in the house were put in the same rooms with young, idle, and evil-disposed vagabonds, who treated them with violence, and robbed them of the few coins that they brought into the house. On many occasions these old men had been subjected to the greatest insolence; but no such case was even alluded to at the inquiry. Of course, he knew that anyone would be resisted by the officials who tried to reform any department, and that was what had been done on the present occasion. The officials had endeavoured to cloak over the misdeeds at the workhouse and the remissness of the chief authorities
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    in Dublin. He hoped that public opinion would rise to the occasion, and that the Chief Secretary would give him some hope that sooner or later, when weightier matters had been disposed of, he would try to reform Irish Poor Law administration. It was quite hopeless to expect any improvement as long as all investigation was to be hushed up and to be set aside. As his Motion was generally directed against the Irish Local Government Board and the administration of workhouses, he would just give another instance of the policy of the Board. Owing, perhaps, to the attention which he had had the honour of exciting with regard to workhouse management, the Limerick Guardians took the matter up very warmly and determined to improve the condition of the children in their workhouse, and they spent a large sum of money in building a new school and decided to place the religious instruction of the children under the supervision of a number of ladies. The Local Government Board were perfectly aware of what was intended from the outset, and gave no sign of interfering with the plans of the Guardians. They waited, in fact, until great expense had been incurred, and then they came down with their obstructive policy and put their foot upon the introduction of these ladies to take care of the school. They put forward the reason that the proposed arrangement would interfere with the religious liberty of the Protestant children in the school. As a matter of fact during three years there was only one Protestant child in the whole school; and, therefore, that objection of the Board was simply frivolous. What would have been said if the managers of a Protestant school had been deprived of these advantages simply because one Catholic child might be affected? The fact was that it was not an honest excuse, but mere hypocrisy on the part of the Local Government Board, who professed to be so anxious with regard to the religious sentiments of a solitary infant in a Roman Catholic school, whilst in other parts of the country where Catholic children were in the majority Protestant teachers were imposed upon them without compunction. He had only to say that there was no Minister before whom he would sooner have the question brought than the Chief

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    Secretary, for he believed that Gentleman was one of the few men who would give his time and attention to so small a matter which was consistent with his humane and kindly career. He trusted before the right hon. Gentleman left his present post, and accepted some other Department, that he would take some decided steps with regard to the subject at issue, and would endeavour to remedy the evils complained of.
    MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he thought the hon. Member had rather under-estimated the difficulties which the Local Government Board had to deal with in making the inquiry referred to. He did not understand that the line taken by the Local Government Board was that they would not allow the children in Limerick Institution to be taught by Sisters of Mercy. What was objected to, as he understood it, was that the Sisters of Mercy should be appointed by an extraneous authority, and the matter had since been settled on the basis that the Sisters of Mercy should be appointed by the Board of Guardians, subject to the veto of the Local Government Board. That was acknowledged by almost everybody to be fair; and, therefore, he did not think the hon. Member was justified in blaming the Local Government Board. With regard to the workhouses, if the hon. Member meant to have brought the subject forward he ought to have put the matter on the Notice Paper, and then he (Mr. W. E. Forster) would have been aware of the intention, and would have been able to look into the subject. Instead of that what appeared on the Notice Paper was simply that the hon. Member intended to call attention to the administration of the Irish Poor Law. With regard to the inquiry referred to, he must say that he had read the Report which was drawn up on the subject, and he must say he thought it was drawn up very fairly, and that the inquiry appeared to have been conducted in a proper manner. The Local Government Board sent down two most able men—Mr. Robinson and Dr. Mackay—and full notice was given of the inquiry. Therefore, those who sympathized with the hon. Member ought surely to have come before the Commission, and given evidence in support of his case. All he could say with regard to the statements made by the hon. Gentleman was that he hoped they would be
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    fully reported somewhere, as some of them were much stronger than he had seen elsewhere, and he thought having been made in that public way they did require to be again considered. But when the hon. Member said that the Local Government Board ought to have sent down perfectly independent persons to make inquiry, he forgot that the case was one in which the action of the persons connected with the Local Government Board was complained of; and if the Board was worth anything at all it should be able to inquire into the fitness of the persons connected with it. He did not find that in Belfast there was any strong opinion in regard to the officials referred to, nor did he find that the hon. Member's opinions were strongly sympathized with in Belfast itself. With regard to sending down Inspectors to make the inquiry, it must not be forgotten that those persons under the statute had power to take evidence on oath, which other persons had not; and he must say, in justice to Mr. Robinson, that it would be impossible to find a gentleman more thoroughly impartial than he was, for he had no bias one way or other. On looking at the evidence he found Mr. Smith, the chaplain, stated that he was in and out of the workhouse daily, and he observed no improper conduct, or immoral or irregular association. It appeared that the evidence quite justified the finding of the Inspectors, who by no means wished to whitewash the Guardians, or anything like it. They also expressed their dissatisfaction with the relieving officer. After all it was a sort of trial, and it often occurred that when there had been a trial one side was not satisfied with the verdict.
    MR. BIGGARsaid, he thought in such a case it would be very difficult for a Commission to get at the facts of the case, as they would not know what question to ask, and how they were to find out what it was desirable to know. Knowing something of these matters, he was clearly of opinion that a great deal of mischief arose in such cases from the action of the ex officio Guardians. He contended that the ratepayers should select persons to represent them, while ex officio Guardians should not be allowed on any Board. In his own county (Cavan) he remembered a case where a coal contractor was convicted of a gross fraud in connection with his dealings with the

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    workhouse. An inquiry was ordered; but the ex officio Guardians taking his part prevented his punishment. He thought such proceedings ought to be put a stop to.
    Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," put, and agreed to.

  SUPPLY—CIVIL SERVICE ESTIMATES.
  SUPPLY—considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)

  CLASS II.—SALARIES AND EXPENSES OF CIVIL DEPARTMENTS.
  (1.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £330,173, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1882, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Local Government Board, including various Grants in Aid of Local Taxation."
  MR. COCHRAN-PATRICKsaid, he rose to move the reduction of this Vote by £20,000, part of the sum of £139,500 which was allowed for medical relief grants in England. He was sensible that the course he was taking might, at that period of the Session, be regarded as very inconvenient and unsatisfactory; but, at the same time, it was the only way in which he could give public expression to the very widespread feeling in Scotland that in this matter of grants in aid of medical relief, England and Scotland were placed in an unfair and unequal position. That matter had been so often under the consideration of Parliament that it would not be necessary for him to enter into details; but he asked the attention of the Committee for a few minutes while he recalled the leading circumstances of the case, and the principles on which he ventured to think these grants ought to be regulated. The facts of the case were few, and the principles were simple. When in, or immediately preceding, the year 1845 the attention of Parliament and the country was directed to the question of the Poor Law, nothing attracted so much public sympathy as the question of medical relief. The state of matters then brought to light—the deplorable condition of the poor with regard to medical relief—was almost inconceivable at the present day,
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  and constituted a disgrace alike to civilization and humanity. Without entering into particulars with regard to that point, which would be found in the Report of the Commission that sat at the time he had referred to, it would be enough for him to say that in 1848 the sum of £85,000 appeared for the first time in the Estimates as a grant in aid of medical relief to the poor. Of that sum, £75,000 was allocated to England and Wales, and £10,000 to Scotland; and at the time the grant was made it was understood that the latter represented one-fourth part of the total sum necessary to put the grant in a satisfactory position. But during the 33 years which had elapsed, although the amount allocated to England and Wales had risen to the alarming sum indicated in the Vote before the Committee, the amount allocated to Scotland remained the same—namely, £10,000. Now, he pointed out that if the principle of a fixed sum being given to Scotland was a right one, the same principle ought to be applied to England and Wales. On the other hand, if the principle applied to the latter of increasing the grants in accordance with local circumstances and taxation were a right one, then he failed to see any reason why it should not be applied to Scotland. He did not ask that the amount granted to England and Wales should be the same as that granted to Scotland, but that these grants should stand in reasonable and proper proportion to each other. There were several bases which might be taken with a view to adjusting that proportion. First, there was the basis of population. And it would be seen by a comparison of the population of England and Wales with that of Scotland, either that the grant to the former ought to be reduced by a sum larger than that by which he was now moving the reduction of the Vote, or that the grant to Scotland ought to be materially increased. Secondly, there was the basis of property and profits. But with regard to that he would remind the Committee that a large portion of the profits returned under the head of England and Wales really belonged to Scotland, because it was a fact that much of these profits belonged to businesses founded and managed with Scotch capital, the proprietors of which preferred to make their returns in London, Manchester, and other large cities.

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  However, it would be seen that, taking profits as a basis for the proportion, the same result came out. Either the grant to England and Wales ought to be reduced, or that to Scotland increased. Again, the sum paid by the two countries respectively into the Imperial Exchequer might be taken as a basis of proportion; and that view had been forcibly urged on the Committee already upon a former occasion by the late Member for the City of Edinburgh (Mr. D. M'Laren), who, for his services in this and other matters, deserved the thanks of all interested in the subject. Mr. D. M'Laren laid down that, according to the Returns of 1877, the amounts actually paid into the Imperial Exchequer for England and Scotland respectively were to each other somewhere in the proportion of £51,000,000 to £7,750,000; and although since the year 1877 there may have been some changes, the proportion remained substantially unaltered. In the last place it was possible to fix the proportion of the grants on the basis of the amounts locally raised for medical relief; and here the result came out even better than in the other cases, because in Scotland the total amount raised by local grants for medical relief was four times as much as was received from the Imperial Exchequer. Therefore, he submitted that whichever of these bases was taken, a sum would be brought out which ought to be deducted from the grant to England and Wales, or paid in the case of Scotland, considerably greater than that by which he was moving the reduction of this Vote. The House had had this claim for equalization so frequently before it that he and his hon. Friends were prepared for the arguments that would probably be urged against it. One of these had commonly been, that, admitting that this medical relief grant to Scotland was unfair and unjust, other grants in aid of local matters were in excess of what they ought to be. In respect of lunatics, for instance, Scotland received a larger sum than was strictly proportionate; but to this he demurred.
  THE CHAIRMANsaid, he must point out to the hon. Member that this was purely an English Vote, and that only by way of illustration could the hon. Member refer to the Scotch question.
  MR. COCHRAN-PATRICKsubmitted, of course, to the ruling of the
  572
  Chairman. He was merely about to urge that the argument he had referred to might be an excellent one for some purposes, but that it was by no means applicable to the case of medical relief. Then another argument was that the circumstances and conditions which existed in England were different from those in other parts of the Empire. But he was bound to point out that, with respect to the proportion of the English grant, it was regulated by the proportion paid by the locality. That sum in England was indicated by the Vote; but in Scotland it was four times in excess of it, and Scotland, therefore, stood in that respect in a better position. Now, while he was not prepared to say of the system of grants in aid that it was the best or most satisfactory that could be devised, still it was the system that was in operation at the present moment, and until the House and the country had before them the details of any future measure that might be brought forward, he thought he was entitled to ask that the same principle should be applied to both England and Scotland. He hoped that the reply of the Prime Minister would not be put into the ordinary official and stereotyped phrases which for the last 12 years had been so often heard in connection with this subject.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £310,173, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1882, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Local Government Board, including various Grants in Aid of Local Taxation."—(Mr. Cochran-Patrick.)
  MR. GLADSTONEsaid, the hon. Member in his concluding remarks had referred specially to himself, and had made an appeal which he was perfectly justified in making. For these reasons it might be convenient that he should at once give the explanation which the hon. Member had solicited. He must accompany that explanation, in some degree, with an apology to the Representatives of Scotch constituencies for his having been unable, owing to what he would call the abnormal circumstances of the Session, to take any steps in the direction indicated. Had the circumstances of the Session been of a normal character, the Government would have had more to say, and more to propose, in this

  573
  matter than he could now suggest, as he had nothing to propose except the Votes as they stood before the Committee. It must be remembered that those Votes were prepared and agreed to by the Treasury at least seven months ago, when it was impossible for them to anticipate the state of things experienced during the Session. He did not wish to enter upon that subject, but was describing why they had been able to take no steps for the rectification of this particular anomaly. He would not follow the hon. Member through the details of his speech; but he might say that the subject was not new to the Government. A great number of Gentlemen representing Scotch counties and burghs took great interest in this matter, and had on former occasions raised and gone through the whole of the points connected with it. The Government certainly quite agreed that one of two things must be done. Either there must be some comprehensive measure which, while introducing a change in the method of granting subventions for local purposes, would absorb that and other questions in an extended plan; or, if that should not be the case, they must look to a plan of equalization, such as that suggested by the hon. Member. Of those two plans he would greatly prefer the former, because his impression was that it would be accompanied by very great public advantages, and by something of a decentralizing process, which would tend to an enlargement of local powers that would be exceedingly useful in all the Three Kingdoms, but in regard to which the people of Scotland, he might fairly say, were not, at any rate, behind those of any other portion of the United Kingdom in their capacity for administration. Any plan of that kind would probably be not only a fiscal plan, but it would have to be associated with measures for the complete establishment of representative local government throughout the country. However, he entirely agreed—and he came now to the more definite portion of the plan—that if they could not have the more general plans there must be equalization adaptable to this and some other particular Votes, but that adoption must be immediate. He meant that they must not again present the Votes in the shape in which they now were. To that proposition he quite agreed. He accepted much of what had
  574
  fallen from the hon. Member on this subject, that the anomalies were too considerable, and that public opinion had been too much drawn to them not to allow of their removing of a great deal of the substantial dissatisfaction which justifiably existed upon this subject. He did not venture to look with any confidence to the course of Business, or to the proposals which it might be the duty of the Government to make in the next Session of Parliament. That would be premature, and he did not think it would be wise for him to indulge in prophecies of a definite character; but, with the feelings the Government entertained, he would not abandon the hope that they would be able to approach this subject with the more comprehensive views to which he had referred; but should they not be able to approach it with those more comprehensive views it would be their duty no longer to postpone particular equalizations, but to make careful examination of these Votes, and to establish real and substantial equality in the treatment of the two countries North and South of the Border. That, he believed, was what the hon. Member expected of him; and it was with a certain amount of satisfaction to himself that the hon. Member and his Colleagues had, in his position as a Member representing a Scotch constituency, an additional pledge, if such were requisite, that he was in earnest in the engagement which he now made.
  MR. COCHRAN-PATRICKsaid, after the very satisfactory statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, he would ask leave to withdraw his Motion.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Original Question again proposed.
  MR. RYLANDSsaid, he thought the Committee must have listened with the greatest satisfaction to the remarks which had fallen from the Prime Minister, because while the hon. Gentleman opposite might have just and reasonable ground for complaint with regard to the grant in aid of medical relief for Scotland, English Members had also ground for complaint that the Vote before the Committee had increased enormously year by year. He hoped, after the statement of the Prime Minister, that hon. Members might, upon the lines

  575
  indicated by the right hon. Gentleman, look forward to the whole question of local subventions being dealt with.
  SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTsaid, he had for the last two years called the attention of the President of the Local Government Board to the subject of workhouse schools. There was no doubt that pauper children were not receiving the education which they ought to have under the present system, and he had always urged that they should be allowed to go to the schools in the district, instead of remaining in the workhouse schools. He was glad to hear that this would be done wherever it was practicable. Hon. Members knew very well that the present system tended to keep children as paupers, and to make them feel that they were paupers, while the true object was to encourage feelings of an opposite kind, and to teach them that they must hereafter support themselves. This matter was one which undoubtedly ought to engage the attention of the President of the Local Government Board; and he would take the opportunity afforded by the present Vote of asking the right hon. Gentleman whether any steps had been taken to secure accommodation for children outside the workhouse schools, and what arrangements had been made to enable them to attend the schools in their various districts and localities?
  MR. DILLWYNpointed out that there was a great increase in this Vote for the present year. The Committee were asked to vote £2,949 more than in the previous Estimates for salaries and wages, £100 more for a number of smaller items, £650 additional for a national vaccine establishment, £550 extra for incidental expenses, besides £2,300 additional for teachers in the Poor Law schools, and £4,300 for Poor Law medical officers. These items made up a total increase amounting to the very large sum of £10,556, concerning which he hoped that some explanations would be forthcoming. For his own part, he quite agreed with the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) in saying that he would rather see the people themselves manage their affairs than that they should be managed for them by central offices; and he would like to see the central departments act as courts of appeal, instead of, as was too often the case, courts of interference. For these
  576
  reasons he regarded the increased expenditure of this Department with jealousy, and trusted the right hon. Gentleman would be able to state the reason for the large addition to the Vote of last year.
  MR. J. G. TALBOTsaid, he should like to supplement the remarks of the hon. and gallant Baronet the Member for West Sussex (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) with reference to workhouse schools. He thought his hon. and gallant Friend was justified in saying that this was a matter which ought to engage the attention of the Committee and the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board. But he wished also to say a word or two upon a matter cognate with that to which the hon. and gallant Baronet had referred. Something had been done in recent years in the way of boarding out pauper children. That was undoubtedly a most interesting experiment; but it was also one which required to be worked with great care and supervision. The large pauper establishments for the education of children in London, and which, he supposed, also existed in the large Provincial towns, were, he thought, necessary evils. They were certainly a step in advance of the workhouse schools referred to by the hon. and gallant Baronet; but, at the same time, he did not think they were as entirely free from the pauper taint as they ought to be. In his view, the better system would be to bring up the children entirely out of the atmosphere of pauperism. The boarding-out system he had alluded to was one that ought to be closely watched, in order that it might not degenerate into a system of farming out, which, as the Committee were well aware, was open to great abuses. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would state how far that system had been applied, and whether he could see his way to extend it in the urban and rural districts of the country?
  MR. RAMSAYsaid, he had on several occasions drawn attention in Committee of Supply to the subject adverted to by his hon. and gallant Friend opposite (Sir Walter B. Barttelot). He had no wish to detain the Committee by discussing the merits of the case, but would remark that the grounds on which the hon. and gallant Gentleman had founded his reasons for placing pauper children

  577
  in other than workhouse schools were sufficient to satisfy the Committee that the present system ought to be brought to an end. He trusted that an effort would be made to bring about a proper system of education for pauper children, and that the right hon. Gentleman would explain whether any progress had been made in that direction or not. This subject had been talked about for many years past; but nothing had been done in the way of carrying out the views of those who felt that the education of pauper children should not be conducted in establishments specially provided for them, where they became a sort of caste, but in the ordinary elementary schools, where they would learn to depend upon their own exertions for support, and not look to the workhouse as their home.
  MR. T. COLLINSsaid, it was only to be expected that there should be an increase in these grants, seeing that, during the last decade, the population of the country had increased by 4,000,000. He believed everyone would agree that, if possible, the children of paupers should be educated in the nearest elementary schools.
  MR. DODSONsaid, in reply to the hon. and gallant Baronet opposite (Sir Walter B. Barttelot), that it was the policy of the Local Government Board to encourage the transfer of pauper children from workhouse schools to ordinary elementary schools. The number of those transferred in this way was steadily increasing, and he might add that the standards were now assimilated in workhouse schools to those of the schools under the Privy Council; while the number of children boarded out under the system referred to by the hon. Member for Oxford University (Mr. J. G. Talbot) was between 700 and 800. He quite agreed with the hon. Member, and the authorities were quite alive to the fact, that the system of boarding out required that great care should be exercised to prevent its degenerating into one of farming. His hon. Friend the Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn) had drawn attention to the increase of the Vote; and with regard to that, he was afraid he must say that, unless and until the grant in aid was taken in hand, when possibly some reduction might be effected, the increase would continue. The principal heads of increase were those of wages and salaries
  578
  in connection with Poor Law schools and infirmaries. The former would be accounted for by the fact that the teachers were of a higher class than formerly, with higher certificates, and were entitled to higher pay in consequence. Precisely the same reasons operated in the case of the Vote for Medical Officers, who were, year by year, becoming men of a higher class, and, therefore, entitled to increased pay. To a certain extent, the growth of the Vote was owing, as the hon. Member for Knaresborough (Mr. T. Collins) had observed, to the growth of the population.
  MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYsaid, the Vote included a sum of £350 for analysis of water. He thought that was one of the most important subjects that could come before the Local Government Board. It was notorious that the water supply in many parts of London was extremely bad, and only recently there was an apprehension that the gravest consequences would result from its actually "giving out," to adopt an American phrase. There was a very good letter in the newspapers the other day upon that very point, in which it was suggested that the only remedy was to provide a continuous supply. Where there was a large, overcrowded population, there was always a chance of neglect, and the present system of providing only an intermittent supply worked very badly, and might, in cases of extreme drought, produce highly injurious consequences. The want in London of a continuous supply was a very serious one. Such a supply was given in a good many Northern towns of the Kingdom, and was found to work with great satisfaction; and he certainly failed to see why a supply of the same kind should not be provided in London. Of course, it would involve additional expense; but in a city like London that ought not to be a matter of consideration. He believed that the Water Scheme of the late Government included a provision for a continuous supply; and he hoped, now that they were under a Liberal Government, that there would be no occasion to regret that the policy of the late Government had not been carried out. He trusted to hear from the President of the Local Government Board that the question was seriously under the consideration of the Government, and that they were endeavouring

  579
  to provide some means for securing a better, a more regular, and in every way a more satisfactory, supply of water for the inhabitants of London.
  MR. DODSON: The hon. Gentleman has called attention to this item, which has reference solely to the supply of water for the Metropolis. The Vote is for a monthly analysis of the water supplied by various Companies in different districts of the Metropolis. These analyses are published monthly, and are very valuable, affording, not only information to the householders who consume the water, but also to the different Companies which supply it. It is highly desirable that both should be regularly informed of the nature and condition of the water supply. With regard to the intentions of Her Majesty's Government as to legislation on the subject, I would remind the hon. Gentleman of what I said the other night in answer to a question that was put to me. A Bill on this subject was introduced by the late Government, and it was only interrupted by the Dissolution of Parliament. That Bill was in the hands of the Home Office of the late Government; and my right hon. Friend the present Home Secretary, when he took Office, found the subject was being dealt with there. Accordingly, it was taken up by him last Session, and he had a Committee to inquire into the subject. The necessary Notices were given in the Autumn for the introduction of a Bill dealing with the establishment of a Water Trust for the Metropolis in the present Session; but a Bill of that kind necessarily touches very large pecuniary interests, and the Government felt that it was undesirable to introduce the Bill unless they saw a reasonable certainty of being able to carry it through. The prospect of Business this Session, I regret to say, has been such that they have not felt themselves justified in the circumstances in presenting that Bill to the House; but I can assure the hon. Member that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has not lost sight of the subject.
  MR. DUCKHAMsaid, he rose to submit the Motion which stood in his name in regard to Vote 16—namely, to move that the Inspector's salary, and the travelling, personal, and incidental expenses connected with highways in South Wales, amounting to £844, should be disallowed. The Committee would re-
  580
  member that last year he took exception to this Vote. He felt that it was unjust to the taxpayers of England that they should have to pay for the inspection of roads in South Wales, whilst the ratepayers throughout the Kingdom in every other part had to pay for the inspection themselves. There might be some explanation required to show why this anomalous state of things existed. It would be in the recollection of all the old Members of the House that some 40 years ago there was a very great disturbance in South Wales in consequence of the closeness of the different toll-gates on the turnpike roads. That dissatisfaction resulted in the destruction of the gates in different parts of the Principality. The Government then appointed a Commission to inquire into the whole circumstances of the case. That Commission reported in favour of many of the gates being removed, also in favour of no gates being allowed within less than seven miles of each other, and recommended that a Superintendent of Roads should be appointed by the Government, and that the sum of £225,000 be advanced from the National Exchequer to pay off the mortgages upon these turnpike trusts. That sum of £225,000 was to be repaid at the rate of £5 5s. per cent, the repayment to extend over a period of 30 years. Sir James Graham, who was then Secretary of State for the Home Department, recommended the adoption of the Report of the Commission, and the result was that an Act of Parliament was passed appointing a Superintendent of Roads. The money was advanced, and, to secure its repayment and the proper maintenance of the roads, the Exchequer had to pay the annual expenses of their inspection. But the money had now been paid off for upwards of five years. On the 9th of March, 1876, the final balance of the debt due to the Public Works Loan Commissioners was reported to be paid at once. Therefore, it appeared to him that, the money having been refunded, there was no necessity for the continuance of an Inspector at the expense of the National Exchequer. If such an Inspector was to be continued in South Wales, he thought the ratepayers of England and of North Wales had a right to complain, or to require that the Inspectors of their roads should be appointed by the Go-

  581
  vernment and paid for by the National Exchequer. Either one course or the other should be taken; and, therefore, he begged to move that the allowance of £844 for the inspection of the South Wales roads be discontinued, and that the Vote be reduced by the sum of £844, that being the amount at present paid to the Inspector of Roads.
  THE CHAIRMAN: I must point out to the hon. Member that the Question having been put from the Chair to reduce the whole Vote by a certain sum, it is not competent now to move the reduction of the Vote by any particular item.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORasked if it was not competent to move that the Vote be reduced by the sum of £844?
  THE CHAIRMAN: It is perfectly competent for any hon. Member to make a Motion to that effect, but not to move that the Vote be reduced by a specific item.
  MR. DUCKHAMsaid, that, under these circumstances, he would move the reduction of the Vote by that particular sum.
  THE CHAIRMAN: By what amount?
  MR. DUCKHAM: By the sum of £844.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £329,329, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1882, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Local Government Board, including various Grants in aid of Local Taxation."—(Mr. Duckham.)
  MR. PUGHsaid, the South Wales Turnpike Act provided that the Superintendent should be appointed and paid by the Secretary of State, with power to remove him and appoint another in his stead, if necessary. The further provision that the Act should expire at the time the money was paid off was not made. He thought that his hon. Friend the Member for Herefordshire (Mr. Duckham) was in error as to the date on which the money was paid off. The whole, he thought, had not been paid off as long as five years ago; but he believed it was paid off now. Perhaps the grant might be wholly indefensible in principle; but, looking at the circumstances as they stood, he thought he should be able to show the Committee that there were good reasons for not
  582
  withdrawing the grant at the present moment, even if they had power to do so under the terms of the Act of Parliament, which he doubted. He understood that the Government were coming forward next Session with a Bill which was to make a substantial contribution, in one way or another, towards the expenses of main roads. Whether that contribution would be made in the shape of giving up a certain portion of the assessed taxes, or in what other way, he was not able to say; but he gathered from what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, and also from the Prime Minister, that there were good grounds for expecting a measure of that kind next Session. If that were so, it was not improbable that Superintendents or Inspectors employed by the Government would be required in order to see that the roads were kept in proper order. What had occurred in regard to the county which the hon. Member (Mr. Duckham) represented (Herefordshire) would prove his case. The roads there, formerly maintained as turnpike roads, had been made over to the different local authorities, and the various districts were now required to support their own roads; and in consequence of that they found it necessary to employ someone to superintend and inspect the main roads, in a similar manner to the officer who, in this case, was paid by the Government. The only difference was that in the case of South Wales the inspection of the roads was paid for by the Government, whilst in Herefordshire it was paid for by the local authorities themselves. No doubt, that appeared a hard case; but, looking at the fact that the whole question must necessarily form the subject of legislation next year, he thought the best course would be to leave the matter alone at present. He might remind the Committee that in the early part of the Session he had a Motion on the Paper, asking for an inquiry into the management of all the roads in South Wales—highways as well as turnpike roads. He had no doubt that inquiry was urgently needed. He believed every hon. Member would agree with him that the Highway Act at present in force in England was most unsatisfactory. There was a great deal to be said both for the South Wales Turnpike Act and also for

  583
  the South Wales Highway Act; and if an inquiry were made into the working of these Acts it would be of assistance to the Local Government Board with a view to legislation next Session in regard to England. Such an inquiry should be not only undertaken, but should be complete; and he believed it would be found that a great deal of injustice was produced in consequence of the existence, at the present moment, of a kind of dual management. For instance, they had a turnpike road running one way, and a highway road running alongside of it, or branching off from it. The turnpike road had one set of clerks and trustees, and the highway road had another set of officers altogether. In the interest of South Wales and the country at large he hoped the President of the Local Government Board would be able to say that the Government proposed to initiate an inquiry into the working of these Acts during the coming Recess.
  SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTsaid, he thought that the hon. Member for Herefordshire (Mr. Duckham) had done good service in bringing this question before the Committee, because there could be no doubt that it was one of those matters which showed the unsatisfactory working of the Highway Act as it at present stood. They had been long promised that that Act should be amended; and he ventured to hope that his right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board would be able to do something in that direction in another year. But, assuming that nothing was done, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Herefordshire would then be able to come with far greater force and ask that the people of England should have the same advantages extended to them as were now given to South Wales, and that their Surveyors should be paid in the same way as the Surveyors in South Wales were now paid. The right hon. Gentleman would then be on the horns of a dilemma. It would either be right that South Wales should have this privilege, in which case it would be right also that it should be extended all over England, or it ought to be discontinued in South Wales. The question was one which deserved the consideration of the right hon. Gentleman. Many promises had been made that assistance should be
  584
  given to the county rates in the direction of highway expenses.
  MR. DODSON: I hope that it will not be necessary to enter into a discussion of the Highway Acts, or generally as to the mode of maintaining the highways. The hon. and gallant Member for West Sussex (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) says that I may be placed on the horns of a dilemma, and that we should either provide Inspectors for all the different counties in England, or withdraw the Inspector for South Wales. The hon. Member for Herefordshire (Mr. Duck-ham) has moved a reduction of the Vote; and, on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, I must say that we cannot assent to it. In the first place, the Vote is for the salary and expenses of a gentleman who holds the post of Inspector during the present year, and who has been hard at work up to the present time in the discharge of his duties; and, moreover, if we were suddenly, and without notice, to get rid of his services, the county authorities have no power to appoint an Inspector in his place. Therefore, it is obvious that, for the present year, this Vote must be allowed to stand. My attention was called to the matter last year, I think by the hon. Member for Herefordshire. [Mr. DUCKHAM: Yes.] I should have dealt with the matter this year, but for the circumstance that a Committee of the House of Lords had been appointed to inquire into the whole subject of highways, and that I understood they would extend their inquiry to the South Wales district. Under those circumstances, I abstained from making any proposal to the House this year. I understand that the Lords have taken evidence with regard to South Wales, and I think that next year one of three things will happen. Either the House of Lords will have presented to us some recommendation on the subject, which we may think so valuable that we may adopt it, or the subject of highways in England may be legislated for generally, in which case this South Wales district would be included in the measure, or the House of Lords will not offer us any suggestion which we think ought to be adopted, or we may find ourselves, from the circumstances of the Session, unable to legislate for the highways of England and Wales generally. In that case it would become the duty of the

  585
  Government to deal with South Wales by itself, and it will be necessary to amend the South Wales Act so as to enable the County Boards in South Wales to provide for the payment of their own expenses.
  MR. DUCKHAMaccepted the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, and, at the same time, confessed that he was disappointed that no steps had been taken in the matter. He had hoped that, having brought the question clearly before the Committee last year, something might have been done this year to alter the position of affairs. The hon. Member for Cardiganshire (Mr. Pugh) said that he was wrong in his dates. He believed his hon. Friend was mistaken, and that, on inquiry, he would find that his dates were perfectly correct.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Original Question again proposed.
  MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he rose to call the attention of the President of the Local Government Board and the Committee to a serious grievance arising under the present administration of the Poor Law Department of the Local Government Board. He had intended to move the omission of the item for the inspection of Workhouse Schools; but as he was now too late to do that, he would move the reduction of the Vote by the sum of £500. The grievance he had to lay before the Committee arose out of the manner in which the Act for the transfer of pauper Catholic children in the workhouse to certified Catholic schools, fitted for the reception of such children, was carried out. Down to the year 1862 the Catholic pauper children, the miseries of whose parents had forced them to go into the workhouse, were brought up absolutely as Protestants. There was no provision made whatever for their transfer to any schools in which they could be brought up in the Catholic religion. However, in the year 1862, an Act was passed enabling Boards of Guardians to transfer to certified Catholic schools Catholic pauper children; but as the onus of doing a duty of that kind was thrown on the Boards of Guardians, the Boards of Guardians throughout England were rendered arbitrary in the matter, and, with a few honourable exceptions, they had declined to avail
  586
  themselves of the powers of the Act, the result being that nearly all the Catholic children were still kept in the workhouse schools, which were, to all intents and purposes, Protestant schools. Upon complaints being made, a further Act was passed some years later, by which the Local Government Board was empowered, if it thought fit, to transfer Catholic children to Catholic schools. There had been placed in his hands proofs of the manner in which the Local Government Board was discharging the duty laid upon it by the Legislature. He had a statement made by the Rev. B. Wrigley, of Stratford, respecting the religious education of Catholic children at the West Ham Union Schools from 1874 to 1881. These children were, to a very large extent, of Irish extraction, and the Reports showed how they were treated in the West Ham Union Schools. He found, in regard to the opportunities of instruction afforded there, that children were permitted to attend Mass on Sundays, except in wet weather, or from any cause such as the prevalence of small-pox, or any other epidemic in consequence of which it was considered necessary to prevent them from attending. Such a cause was considered quite sufficient to prevent Catholic children from going out of the workhouse and attending any course of Catholic religious instruction. The result was that sometimes for a period of two months Catholic children in the West Ham Workhouse had been unable to attend Catholic worship. If they had been in the Catholic certified schools, means would have been provided for them to allow them to attend the worship precribed by their own religion. The only opportunity of instruction given to the Catholic school children was on Wednesday, from half-past 10 until 12 o'clock in the morning—only an hour and a half a week. No Prayer Books were provided by the Guardians for the use of the children on week days; but on Sundays those who were allowed to go to church were supplied by the Board with Prayer Books for their use during Divine Service. No Catechisms were provided by the Guardians, nor was the Catholic priest allowed to provide them himself. The Catholic priest made an application to the Board on November 29, 1879, to be permitted to provide Catechisms for the use of the Roman

  587
  Catholic children while the Protestant children were receiving religious instruction; but the application was refused. All Catholic children were required to be present at prayers daily. The priest objected to this; and, for a time, his remonstrance prevailed; but now they were all obliged to assist in these prayers. The children had thus only an hour and a-half during the entire week for religious instruction, and they were deprived of every opportunity of studying their own religion during the rest of the week; and, the priest being forbidden to provide books for religious instruction at his own expense, the result was that when the priest met his flock on the Wednesday for an hour and a-half, he found the children thoroughly imbued with those anti-Catholic prejudices which little children, mixing all the rest of the week with Protestants, were certain to imbibe. The most obsolete trash of bye-gone times, so far as religious prejudices were concerned, and which now only survived in the lowest classes of society, were instilled into the minds of these poor children. He might add that, for two years from 1874, the Guardians of the West Ham Union invented the most peculiarly ingenious system of religious persecution against these poor Catholic children that it was possible to devise; and he was sure that every Member of the House would be ashamed to think that any body of Englishmen could be guilty of such petty and wretched intolerance. From May, 1875, down to the year 1877, an alteration was made by the Guardians in their regulations, by which the Roman Catholic priest was only allowed one hour weekly—namely, from 8 to 9 in the morning, for the instruction of Catholic children, and as that was the time set apart in the school for recreation, these poor little children had the alternative given to them either of giving up their recreation or their religious instruction. The consequence was that, knowing they were shut out from the playground when their Protestant companions were enjoying recreation, they bitterly resented the regulation, and if they came in at all, they came in as mutineers, full of the worst feelings towards the priest, whom they regarded as solely to blame. That miserable persecution was kept up for the space of two years, and even now only an hour and a-half was given in the
  588
  whole week for instructing Catholic children in their religious duties. The result was that these children, though still on the books as Catholics, were, without exception, anti-Catholic. They refused to say their prayers when they came in for instruction, or to answer any questions with regard to their Catechism. They were deliberately deprived by the Guardians of the Poor of every opportunity of being brought up in the religion of their parents; and they were exposed during the whole week to the anti-Catholic influences which were brought to bear against them. The consequence was that although they were nominally Catholics until they reached 14 years of age, when they attained that age they preferred to rank themselves as Protestants. Every effort had been tried to remedy this grievance. Deputations of Catholic ratepayers had waited on the Board of Guardians; but all to no effect. But the Local Government Board had it in its power to provide a remedy. It was empowered by the Act of Parliament, wherever it thought fit, to remove Catholic pauper children to certified Catholic schools, and there were abundant schools of that character provided by the Catholics all over the Kingdom—infant schools, schools for children of more matured years, and schools in which, in addition to religious instruction, they were taught carpentry and many other useful professions. But because they were Catholics their rights were destroyed, and their parents' rights were destroyed in their persons, all because the Local Government Board refused to exercise the powers conferred upon them under the Act. Of course, the words of the Act said that the Local Government Board were only to exercise this power "if they thought fit," and this latitude had been exercised in a way which was highly detrimental to the interests of the Catholic children. The same complaint might be made with regard to the district school of Forest Gate, in Essex. There the children were allowed to go to Mass on Sundays according to a general rule; but, for religious instruction, the priest was only allowed to visit them one day in the week—on Monday, from 2 to 4 P.M.—and as he had to visit first the boys over seven years of age, and then the girls over seven years of age, there was only one hour for religious instruc-

  589
  tion to any single Catholic child. No Prayer Books or Catechisms were furnished, and those which were furnished by the Catholic clergy were soon destroyed or lost. The children themselves said that they were torn up by their Protestant playmates. In November, 1876, an application was made that Catechisms should be supplied by the Roman Catholic priests for the use of the children, to be distributed by the schoolmaster and mistress to the children at stated times, when Protestant children were receiving their religious instruction; but the application was refused by the Board. With regard to receiving the Sacrament and the administration of the Eucharist, it was the law of the Catholic Church that the Eucharist should be received fasting. That ordinance differed from that of the Protestant Communion. An application was made that at Easter time, when all Catholics were bound to receive Communion, a certain number of the children should be permitted to fulfil their Easter duty. It was necessary that in order to fulfil that duty they should go to Communion fasting on Easter Sunday morning; but the Board refused to allow the privilege, and one poor little girl who tried to refrain from taking breakfast, so that she might fulfil her duty, was forbidden by the schoolmistress, and even beaten with a cane until she did eat her breakfast. It was humiliating to have to relate to the House these miserable little stories; but the result in the Forest Gate School was just the same as in the West Ham Union School. The promise made to the Roman Catholics of the country was being kept to the ear, and broken in every other sense. There were not sufficient opportunities for bringing up Catholic children in the religion of their parents; and, of course, being continually in contact with Protestantism of the most coercive and ignorant kind, and being constantly bullied by Protestant children—for in Forest Gate the Catholic community only numbered 90 out of 650 children—and being subjected to raillery and abuse of every description, both boys and girls, long before they came to the age when they could decide for themselves what religion they would adopt, got ashamed and discontented with their own religion, and represented themselves to be Protestants. Even those who
  590
  attended the religious instruction provided for them maintained a hostile attitude during the religious service, and treated it with contemptuous derision. He would mention only one case, that of a girl 12 years of age, who was sent to the school by the Guardians of White chapel. She had been well instructed in the Catholic school in Spitalfields; but after a very short experience of her new abode, she found that she did not dare make the sign of the Cross, even when the nuns were present. She found, further, that the other children ridiculed her in the dormitory when she attempted to say her Catholic prayers at night, and that she was so laughed at and derided that she very soon abandoned all religious ideas. The general result was that these children soon picked up all the stupid stories about Catholicity which were in stilled into their ears, and when brought up for Catholic instruction they turned round and positively insulted the priest, saying that the Catholics worshipped images, that they adored the Virgin, and making use of all the other rubbish which in bye-gone days had been applied to the Roman Catholic religion. With regard to Forest Gate, he had with him a list of the Catholic children who were brought up under these anti-Catholic influences, and he found they included the names of Barrys, Sullivans, O'Connors, and others. That showed their Irish extraction. They were evidently the desolate offspring of poor Irish Catholic parents who came over here under the ægis of British toleration, and this was the manner in which they were brought to deny the faith of their forefathers. It was very pitiful and very wretched, and if the Boards of Guardians had any idea or knowledge of what was going on, the fact that they took no course to stop such a system of persecution was most astounding. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that the Local Government Board had the power to transfer these children to certified Catholic schools; and, therefore, the whole responsibility rested upon the Local Government Board. Thousands of applications had been made to the Local Government Board for the admission of pauper Catholic children into certified Catholic schools; but they had been left entirely without answer. It could only be said of the Local Government Board that the steps they had

  591
  taken certainly tended to nullify the benefits which were proposed to be conferred upon the Catholics by the Act of the Legislature. When an application was made to them for the removal of a Catholic child to a Catholic certified school, they required not only that the child should have been entered upon the books of the workhouse as a Catholic, but that the parents should also be so entered upon the workhouse books. Further, they insisted upon a certificate of the child's baptism; and in some cases a certificate of the marriage of its parents. If the parent was dead then they required a certificate of his burial, and so forth. These regulations involved an enormous amount of trouble and expense, and the trouble and expense were thrown upon the Catholic body in order to satisfy the requirements of the Local Government Board. It was the only case in which he believed such excessive precautions were taken. On all ordinary occasions the Register of the workhouse was allowed to be proof, and it certainly ought to be allowed as primâ facie proof, pending the bringing forward of some strong case to show that the child was not a Catholic. In this case these requirements were enforced when there was really no denial whatever of the Catholic religion of the child. The religion was admitted for all ordinary purposes; but whenever it was proposed to transfer a Roman Catholic child to a Catholic certified school then all the ingenuity of red tape was brought into requisition, and certificate upon certificate was required to be piled up before the Local Government Board would consent to look at the application. For years and years past, to all intents and purposes, the Local Government Board had declined to carry out the will of the Legislature, and in the hands of the Local Government Board the Act of Parliament remained a dead letter. Hundreds and thousands of applications had been left altogether unattended to. The list of Catholic children, who between 1871 and 1880 had attained the age of 14, and had received nothing but Protestant education, was very large. They had been induced to give up the religion of their parents rather than struggle with the school authorities. He had given an idea of the manner in which the Local Government Board construed their duties. What was going on
  592
  in the West Ham and the Forest Gate schools was going on in scores and scores of other schools; indeed, he was afraid that the same thing was practised in hundreds of Unions throughout the country. Every year applications were made to the Local Government Board for the removal of these onerous restrictions and precautions with regard to the multiplication of certificates; but the Local Government Board, relying upon their own interpretation of the words of the Act, which allowed the Local Government Board, "if they thought fit," to transfer the children, had simply not thought fit, and had left the Catholic children without Catholic instruction of an adequate kind, keeping them in a flagrantly aggressive anti-Catholic atmosphere under the influence of the worst kind of proselytism. By this means the faith of these poor little children had been stolen from them simply because they were the children of poor paupers whose circumstances had placed them under the Poor Law system of tolerant England. In formulating this grievance he was only able to lay the broad facts before the Committee. He had confined himself to as few points as he thought would be sufficient to establish the case. If the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Local Government Board desired more proof he would undertake to occupy a number of continuous Sittings of that House with the enumeration of cases of hardship of this kind which had taken place all over England. In conclusion, he would say to the Members of the House that it was not merely the grievance and the injustice that these children were deprived of the Catholic instruction to which they had a right, but they were not even brought up as Christians, because while they were nominally on the rolls of the workhouse as Catholics they were really receiving no Catholic instruction whatever, and not being Protestants they received no Protestant instruction, although when they reached the age of 14 years they generally declared themselves to be members of the Church of England. That was merely the formula adopted for showing that they had ceased to be Catholics. The fact of the matter was that these children were without even Protestant Christian education, and they were turned out upon society without having received any re-

  593
  ligious instruction at all. The result was that they were constantly found in the police courts, and it would be seen from the cases that occurred there that the major part of them were of Irish extraction. The result of this was that the Irish nationality suffered the blame for the misconduct of these children, who, really out of hatred of Catholicity, had not been allowed to receive a Catholic education, and, at the same time, had received no moral or religious instruction whatever. The list he held in his hand contained the names of hundreds who had been deprived of every kind of religious instruction and turned into the gutter of sin and vice because the Local Government Board, in 99 cases out of 100, declined to carry out the munificent intentions of the Legislature, and to place these children in a position in which they could receive religious and moral education. It had been suggested that one of the reasons why the Local Government Board no longer attended to the applications for the transfer of Catholic children was, in fact, that some of the officials of the Local Government Board had grown weary of the multiplication of applications. These applications were originally enforced in order to prove that it was a Catholic child who was being transferred; but the multiplicity of certificates now required to be produced was most obstructive to the interest of the Catholic claimants, and it turned out to be extremely worrying and unpleasant to the Local Government Board officials, who, in the first place, had insisted upon them. In point of fact, the very multiplicity of the restrictions and precautions required to be observed by the Catholic body had grown distasteful to the Local Government Board, and in order to get rid of the burden they refused to pay any attention to the applications. He could give instances in connection with schools in the Metropolis to justify this assertion. He hoped the present head of the Local Government Board would give the Committee some assurance that he would take immediate steps for the transfer, from one end of England to another, of every Catholic child in regard to whom due application was made for such transfer so as to insure that he should be brought up in the religion to which he belonged. No claim was made which would involve any increase of
  594
  money or increase of charge; in fact, he believed there would be a saving; but, at any, rate nothing more was demanded in any case than that the child should receive as much as a scholar would cost in a Protestant workhouse school. The Catholics were willing to take the children upon any terms if the Guardians would name their own figure. They were anxious to stand by these poor little ones and obtain for them a moral and religious training, and that freedom and liberty of conscience which ought to be respected in such poor helpless human beings.
  THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member has not concluded with a Motion.
  MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he had intended to move the reduction of the Vote by £500.
  MR. MACFARLANEsaid, he had no desire to prolong the discussion; but the subject was one of great interest, and he had been for some years a Guardian in the parish of Marylebone. Some time ago he moved for a Return for the purpose of showing the cost of maintaining these children in the workhouse and in the certified Catholic schools. He believed when that Return was laid on the Table—and he was surprised that it had not yet been produced, as it was many weeks since he moved for it—that it would astonish some hon. Members of that House. As far as he remembered, there was one workhouse in London in which the average cost of each child maintained in the workhouse was very nearly £60 a-year; and yet the same workhouse authorities would only allow a starvation price to a certified Catholic school. There was a school in the East End of London where a large number of children were received. It received at this moment a very large number of very young children, and the sum paid by the Guardians was not sufficient to give them bread and water. The consequence was that the persons in charge of these children were continually begging in order to obtain sufficient means to feed the children without coming upon the rates of the Metropolis. As the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) had pointed out, the Catholic authorities were willing to take the children for nothing sooner than their faith should be perverted in the workhouse in the manner which had been described; but he was sure it was not the intention of the Legislature, or the wish of the Pre-

  595
  sident of the Local Government Board, that the expense should be entirely thrown upon the Roman Catholic population in order to save the Metropolitan rates. When the Return he had moved for was produced, he meant to ask the right hon. Gentleman to use the legal powers of the Board as far as possible in requiring Boards of Guardians to pay the whole expense which was legitimately chargeable upon them, and to compel the Boards of Guardians to pay for each child what the cost of its maintenance would be in the workhouse. The hon. Member for Dungarvan complained that the children were not transferred, and he thought the hon. Member had made out a strong case against the authorities. He did not see why the Local Government Board should allow any Catholic child to remain in a workhouse school at all. The Board had absolute power to command the Guardians to transfer such children; but nothing except the exercise of the arbitrary powers possessed by the Board would induce the authorities to put in force the powers they possessed. It had been a great scandal and a shame for many years. He knew a workhouse school where the Catholic chaplain had to trudge two or three miles two or three days a-week in order to teach the children who were in the school, and who the Guardians refused to transfer. The Guardians thought that they were doing the chaplain a great favour when they allowed him to go in and give the children two or three hours' instruction a week for nothing. Such was the extraordinarily perverted view they took of their duty in the matter. They seemed to have no religious ideas in the matter at all, nor to desire to do unto these children as they would be done unto themselves. Men who were perfectly fair on every other subject were blinded by prejudice and ignorance when this question of religion came up. He had no doubt, as the hon. Member for Dungarvan had pointed out, that the result was most injurious to the State, because the effect was to turn out a large number of children who were neither Catholics nor Protestants, but who were simply nothing more than half-educated heathens.
  MR. HIBBERTsaid, he thought the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Macfarlane) was in error in supposing that the Local Government Board had power to
  596
  transfer all Roman Catholic children to Roman Catholic schools. They had, however, the power of transferring Roman Catholic children on the application of certain persons; but it was impossible for them to override the wishes and decisions of the Guardians in respect to Roman Catholic children. He did not deny that there existed among many Guardians in this country a great amount of prejudice, and even intolerance, with respect to this question; but the Local Government Board would be glad to see all these cases treated in a broad spirit, and, as far as possible, in the spirit of the Act, which was framed so as to do justice to the Roman Catholic sentiments of the people. He denied the statement of the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) that there was a great number of applications for the transfer of Roman Catholic children. If the hon. Member could substantiate what he had said he would have made out a strong case not only against the Boards of Guardians, but also against the Local Government Board; but he thought there was great exaggeration in the hon. Member's remarks. He had stated that from 1871 to September, 1880, there had been hundreds, and almost thousands, of cases in which application had been made for sending Roman Catholic children to Roman Catholic schools. He could not say what took place between 1871 to the time when the present Government took Office; but he did know that in the last 16 months there had not been before the Local Government Board more than 12 or 14 such applications. He quite admitted that there had been a great amount of dissatisfaction on the part of the dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church as to the way in which Roman Catholic children were treated at Forest Gate School and at some schools in the Metropolis. [Mr. CALLAN: Every school.] He could not admit that, because, in a recent conversation with a very high dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church, that gentleman said that with respect to several schools there was no complaint at all. [Mr. CALLAN: Name, name!] The conversation was a private one, and therefore he did not think it right to give the name.
  MR. CALLANrose to Order, and protested that if a Roman Catholic dignitary was to be referred to in that way his name ought to be given.
  THE CHAIRMAN: That is not a question of Order.
  MR. HIBBERTsaid, he should be glad to give the name outside.
  MR. CALLAN: It should be given here.
  MR. HIBBERT MR. HIBBERT, resuming, said, that with respect to some of the cases that had been brought before them, the Local Government Board had so far overridden the wishes and decisions of the Guardians as to recommend that children should be sent to Roman Catholic schools; and in other cases they had recommended the transfer of Roman Catholic schools. In some cases the Guardians had shown that every arrangement was made for the religious instruction of the Roman Catholic children, that they were visited by Roman Catholic priests, and were able to attend services in their own churches; and, in such cases, if the Guardians had expressed a decided objection to those children being transferred, the Local Government Board had not overridden their wishes and decisions. For himself, if he found in any case that the children were being treated as the hon. Member for Dungarvan had stated, he should consider that the Local Government Board would be justified in overriding the decision of the Guardians and transferring the children to Roman Catholic schools. The hon. Member for Carlow said that in many cases the amount paid for Roman Catholic children was very low; but he (Mr. Hibbert) believed that in every case in which an order had been issued by the Local Government Board for the transfer of children they had required payment to be made equal to the cost of the education and maintenance of the children in the workhouse. An inadequate amount might have been paid where the Board had no control; and they had no control when the Guardians had themselves agreed to transfer children. In such cases they paid what they liked; but he thought the spirit of the Act was that an equal amount should be paid. Then, again, the policy of the Local Government Board, at all events since he had been there, had not been antagonistic to the Roman Catholic children or to the wishes of the Roman Catholics who desired to protect those children. They had desired, while, of course, taking notice of the wishes of the Guardians, to make every allowance for the strong
  598
  feeling of the Roman Catholics themselves. They wished to do fair justice between both parties; and, if they had any leaning at all, it was rather to carry out the desires and wishes of the Roman Catholics.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid, he could scarcely think the answer of the hon. Gentleman quite satisfactory. With regard to the powers of the Guardians, the Act declared that any Board of Guardians might send any poor children to any school properly certified and supported wholly or in part by voluntary subscriptions, and the managers of which were willing to receive them, and might pay for the maintenance of such children a sum not exceeding the total sum which would have been charged for their maintenance in the workhouse. And the 2nd section of the Act provided that, on the application of the parents or other persons specified, the Guardians might send the children to some school. There had been several discussions in the House as to the difference between "may" and "shall" in Acts of Parliament, and all the lawyers had agreed that "may" was practically "shall;" and he, therefore, thought the Local Government Board should regard the word "may" in this case as "shall." He thought, further, that the Guardians ought to be compelled to do these things, because they were recruited from the ranks of the shopkeepers who were remarkable for bigotry. They were of all classes of society the least capable of appreciating the fact that, as a governing body, they had nothing to do with forcing their religion on anyone else. The Local Government Board represented a higher class of society and of feeling on religious questions than the shopkeepers, and they should encourage religious toleration. He did not think they would have any difficulty, if they took strong action in the matter, with the conviction that they had the moral authority of Parliament with them; and he hoped they would, in all cases which came before them, interpret the clause to mean "shall." The next question was as to expenses. He might be inclined to agree that the Guardians could not be asked to send these children to Roman Catholic schools if they caused greater expense than they would at the ordinary Board schools; but there was in England and Scotland a Roman Ca-

  599
  tholic population, which, though for the most part poor, had been generous enough to endow a certain number of Roman Catholic schools. That was a thing which, as a matter of interest and of duty, the Government ought to encourage. Then, as to the question of facts, as between the hon. Member for Dungarvan and the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hibbert), the hon. Gentleman said there had been only a few applications to the Local Government Board during his presence there. Of course, that statement would go forth to the proper authorities; the authorities of the Catholic Church would be able to see whether there had been sins of omission in this matter, and if they found there had been, their efforts would compensate for lost time. He wished the Local Government Board also to consider another point. The hon. Gentleman was perfectly correct in saying that applications should precede directions by the Board. That was evidently the intention of the Act. But he found in the Act the words "God-parent of such child;" and as a large number of these children were orphans, he thought it would be well if the Government would accept applications for the transfer of children from the pastors of the districts.
  MR. HIBBERT: They do that.
  MR. BIGGARurged that the Local Government Board should apply a little more pressure to Boards of Guardians, in order to turn the balance in favour of Roman Catholic children. He did not desire to see them act unfairly towards the Guardians; but when it was found that the Guardians were disposed to favour Protestant children, he thought the Board would be justified in acting determinately against the Guardians. With regard to the religion of the pauper children, he knew that in Belfast, which was a very non-Catholic place, and where there had never been more than one Catholic Guardian on the Board at any time, a child was assumed to belong to the religion in which it was entered on the books until the contrary was proved, and the result was that in some cases, where there was room for controversy, fights of words took place. The Guardians in those cases gave a decision according to the evidence; but, as a rule, they threw no obstacle in the way of children being educated in the religion entered in the books. He thought that in England the statement of the
  600
  person who brought a child to the workhouse as to the religion should be accepted as sufficient, without the registration of birth or of baptism being required.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he was not at all surprised at this question having been raised, for there was a large amount of needless suffering endured by poor people in London, because they dreaded the danger of having their children proselytized if sent to the workhouse. He knew of numbers of children in London who ought, owing to the condition of their parents, to be in some institution for the relief of the poor, but who, because of that dread, were dragging out a miserable existence in the slums and purlieus, aided by such charity as the poor Roman Catholics could afford. He thought the words of the clause should be mandatory on the Guardians, and that was the interpretation put upon them by the right hon. Member for Ripon (Mr. Goschen) when he was President of the Local Government Board, and by Lord Devon. The right hon. Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld), when he was at that Department, said he did not think he ought to interfere with the Guardians on that matter, and the consequence was that the numerous applications made to the Guardians and to the Local Government Board were found to be a waste of time, and the great body of poorer Catholics became despondent and ceased to make applications. Of late the applications sent to the Board had, in a large number of cases, been treated with a fairness which could not be denied, and he wished to thank the President of the Board for that; but he hoped that an assurance would be given that in future every such application would be treated with the same amount of fairness. If that assurance could be given this discussion would not have been thrown away, and would be agreeably looked back to by the great body of Catholics throughout the country. He did not blame the Guardians or the Government, but he thought the Catholic bodies were to blame. The English Catholics were, in matters of this kind, more apathetic than any other body in the country, and they saw injustice inflicted on the poorer classes of their co-religionists in England without any reasonable effort to put an end to it. If they had taken the

  601
  trouble which other religious bodies had taken to secure representation on Boards of Guardians, he was satisfied that one-half the complaints that were being continually dinned into the ears of the Catholic Irish Members would never be heard at all. When he first became a Guardian of the poor in London he found that the Catholics in the workhouse of the Union to which he belonged had not been allowed to go to Mass for five months; and the admission of a priest was so arranged, once a week, that it was a perfect farce for him to pretend to administer to the religious requirements of the inmates. There were no Catholic Prayer Books issued to the Catholic paupers, although Prayer Books were supplied to the Protestants, and many Catholic children were being sent to Catholic schools. Well, he had not been on the Board a week before the Catholics were allowed to go to Mass, and he had not been there very long before Prayer Books were issued to them, and before the priest was permitted to attend the paupers at reasonable times. Every reasonable facility for continuing the observances of their religion which he could possibly have desired was granted to the poor Catholics, notwithstanding that he was but one Catholic against 19 Protestants on the Board. He was bound to say this—that in this Union, which, before, had been noted for its bigoted treatment of the Catholic children, directly there was a Catholic on the Board all the difficulties disappeared. The Catholics, he thought, were themselves to blame for what occurred in connection with Boards of Guardians. They did not attempt to obtain representation on them as they might and ought to do. He was very well satisfied with the declarations of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Dodson); and he sincerely trusted that after to-night the grievances under which Catholics had suffered in this respect would gradually disappear. But there were certain other points connected with the administration of the Poor Law which he would venture to submit to the right hon. Gentleman, and they were points which came under the item referred to by the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell). As to the old people in the workhouses, they had a right, if they were over 60 years of age and married, to have separate quarters; but he was perfectly certain that there
  602
  was not a single workhouse in which the poor people were even acquainted with that right. He remembered when he, very rashly, as it was supposed, asked the poor people in a workhouse he was visiting if they knew of the existence of this right, the master and matron and one or two Guardians with him expostulated, and said this was a thing which ought to be kept from the knowledge of the poor people, because it would be such a terrible nuisance to have them in the married quarters. Then, as to the little children in the workhouses—children who were too young to be sent to school—their condition in some cases was most pitiable. He could take the right hon. Gentleman to a workhouse in London in which there were a considerable number—some 13 or 14—little children, too young to be sent to school, who never left the yard in which they were cooped up. The yard was not more than twice the size of the House Table, there was nothing to break the monotony of the children's lives, the toys which had been given to amuse them being carefully packed up and put away on the top of a cupboard. The children were not looked after as they should be, and the consequence was that they grew up delicate and unhealthy and utterly unfit to bear the rough life that was inevitably their lot. Then there was another thing that the Inspectors of these schools would do well to inquire into. There was a practice amongst bandmasters of regiments to go round to the different workhouse schools belonging to the Metropolitan district for the purpose of selecting there from for enlistment into the Army for their bands the most promising boys. Some of these boys were induced or allowed to join the band when they were very young—eight or nine or ten years of age—at a time when they had no idea what enlistment into the Army meant. They were taken into the band on condition that they would afterwards go into the Army, and this was done without any real opportunity being afforded to the relatives of the boys of expressing their wishes on the subject. The relatives—and on this matter he was speaking from experience—were not given to understand that the law required that they should have the power of going before the Boards of Guardians and expressing their desires and wishes as to the employments to

  603
  which the children should be put. The Inspectors of the Department, he thought, would do well to look into this matter. He wished now to refer for a moment to an observation which fell from the Prime Minister, in reply to an hon. Member sitting near him, when this Vote first came on. The Prime Minister had said that he proposed next year to bring on this Vote in a different shape. He had gathered from the right hon. Gentleman that it was his intention to recast it. He would point out to the right hon. Gentleman that it was desirable that it should be considerably modified. As would be apparent to everyone who had listened to the debate that evening, the Vote was of a very heterogeneous character. The discussion commenced with some observations about medical relief in Scotland, then it went off upon the analysis of water, then they heard about roads in Scotland, and so on. Each of these subjects was sufficiently important to occupy a separate Vote; and he would venture to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Vote that it would be desirable, if it could be done, to split it up into two or three different sub-Votes, in order that, in future, there might be something more like logical sequence and consistency in it. This would help to give hon. Members a clearer understanding of these matters, and, probably, to economize time.
  MR. BIGGARsaid, he should like to ask a question in regard to this Vote with reference to the payment of the analyst of water. He should like to ask to what extent analysts were employed by the Department? Personally, he thought it would be very desirable to extend the system of analyzing. Many articles besides water should be analyzed by some analyst who should be more or less responsible. The matter, he (Mr. Biggar) understood, was very much, if not entirely, in the hands of the local authorities at present; and he had reason to believe—in fact, he knew—that the local authorities neglected their duty in the most flagrant manner. He wished to know if it was not in the power of the Local Government Board to see that the local authorities employed analysts, and to see that the local authorities made the analysts do their duty, with the aid either of the police or the officers of health in certain districts?
  MR. DODSON: We have no power either to employ analysts or to compel others to employ them.
  MR. HEALYsaid, there was a certain amount put down for auditors' clerks. How was it that the auditors in England were allowed clerks, when—according to the Votes—none were allowed to auditors in Ireland? Everybody knew that the work auditors had to do was to tot up accounts and check them, and unless they performed the work for which they were appointed it was no use having them. If an auditor threw the work upon another person—upon his clerk—he was not an auditor at all, but the clerk was the auditor. The auditors who were appointed were, no doubt, very experienced men; but if they were unable to do the work, other auditors should be employed to assist them. Two clerks were put down at salaries of £30 a-year. Was it a fact that this small amount was paid to men whose duty it was to check thousands and thousands of pounds? If so, it was a most unsatisfactory state of things. He could speak from experience of the auditors in Ireland. They got through their work in a most conscientious manner, and spent days in checking the accounts of each particular Union. Did the English auditors do the same?
  MR. DODSON: The reason the auditors are allowed clerks to assist them, or work under them, is that the work has, of late years, been very largely increased. The auditors had, originally, only to audit the Poor Law Accounts; but now they have the School Board, Highway and Local Board Accounts to go through. Instead of employing more auditors, it has been found cheaper—and, at the same time, to work well—to appoint these clerks.
  MR. HEALYsaid, that surely the right hon. Gentleman did not mean to say that a clerk at £30 a-year should have imposed on him the responsibility of checking accounts amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds? The thing was preposterous. An auditor who went into a town might be very tired, or unwell, and the whole duty might be thrown upon an unfortunate clerk. The result might be that the ratepayers were not protected; and to tell the Committee that it was better to have these clerks than proper, expe-

  605
  rienced auditors, was a statement to which he could not subscribe. If the auditors in England required clerks, so did the auditors in Ireland, owing to their duty in connection with the Poor Law having been merged into that in connection with the Local Government Board. They had the Town Clerks' Accounts as well as the Poor Law Accounts to audit. What he wanted was a satisfactory assurance that these clerks were not persons on whom a great share of the work of auditing was thrown—that they had not cast upon them the responsibility of asserting that the accounts of the Unions and Local Boards were correct.
  MR. DODSON: The whole responsibility of the work rests upon the auditor. I have never heard of responsibility having been imposed upon the clerks.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, that in the matter of workhouse administration there was another point to which he wished to draw attention—one which, he thought, the Inspectors would do well to take in hand—namely, the treatment in the workhouse of the insane and imbecile. The comments of the Inspectors on this subject, even in the past, had been repeated and emphatic. In their Reports 3 and 4 they said they had frequently found it necessary to order the removal of decidedly insane patients, who ought, in the first instance, to have had the benefit of the silent treatment. They said, also, that in some of the larger workhouses they frequently met with patients suffering from long-standing melancholia, when they had reason to believe that if they had been subjected to proper treatment at first it would have resulted in their being cured. It was to be regretted, they said, that false ideas of economy should be allowed to have weight, and that a course should be pursued which could not fail to be prejudicial to the patients, and ultimately lead to the increase of the number of insane dependent on the rates. It did seem to be a terrible thing to think—what, unquestionably, was the case—that there were in the workhouses of this country a number of cases which, if they had been only taken in hand properly, and removed to places where they could receive suitable treatment in time, would have been, at any rate, if not cured, at least greatly relieved, and brought back to such a state that they
  606
  could have been left in the hands of their relatives during the latter days of their lives. These people, being placed in the workhouses—which were, probably, the very worst places for persons mentally afflicted—were rendered hopelessly insane, and when they were taken to asylums it was found too late to do anything with them. The Inspectors said that it was customary to send to the asylums old, chronic cases, because they were troublesome, and that this often occurred where there were no special attendants for these cases in the workhouses. He would ask the Government to see that the Inspectors further inquired into this matter of the treatment of the insane. They would be astonished to find out how inadequate were the present arrangements. It was principally to country workhouses that objection was made. The Inspectors went on to say that, as to the management of workhouses, although the standard was higher than it was some years ago, yet, in many of the establishments, the treatment provided for imbecile paupers was open to grave objection. They found a want of supervision for epileptic cases, especially when the number of those cases was large.
  Original Question put, and agreed to.
  (2.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £8,195, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1882, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Commissioners in Lunacy in England."
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he wished to draw the attention of the Committee to one or two very simple facts in connection with this Vote, and the first was as to the population and the number of lunatics. In the year 1859, when the population was 19,500,000, the number of private lunatics was 4,900, and the number of pauper lunatics 31,000. In the year 1880, when the population had risen from 19,500,000 to 25,500,000, the private lunatics had risen from 4,900 to 7,600, and the paupers had increased from 31,000 to 63,000, so that where the population had increased 30 per cent and the private lunatics had increased considerably the number of pauper lunatics had more than doubled. That

  607
  was one fact which he wished to draw the attention of the Committee to. The other fact was this. He knew a case where a man, through reverses of fortune, distress, and poverty, was, for a time, out of his mind. He was treated as a pauper lunatic. He was a man of considerable intelligence, and well educated and quite able to take stock, from time to time, of his own condition, and to appreciate his own advance towards recovery, and also to appreciate the things he saw in the workhouse. This man, whilst he was there, found that the alleged pauper lunatics were remarkable for two things, and two things only—namely, they were incorrigibly idle, and they all had good appetites. When this man was within a week or two of his discharge, the inmates learnt that the Inspectors were coming round. Some 48 hours before the advent of the Inspectors, a number of patients, who, up to that time, had appeared remarkably well, evinced signs of unrest, which went on increasing as the hours advanced. The evening before the Inspectors came they would insist on dressing themselves up in feathers and cutting all sorts of antics. On the morning of the Inspectors' visit they all refused to eat their breakfast, and made use of every sign that their ingenuity could devise to induce every casual onlooker to believe that they were seriously affected mentally. The Inspectors came, the visit passed over, the feathers were dropped, and the appetites revived. The man had not spoken of all, but of a very large proportion of the cases. Well, this little story, he thought, would account, to a great extent, for the enormous increase in the number of pauper lunatics. There were a large number of people in the pauper lunatic asylum who ought not to be there, and who knew perfectly well that they ought not to be there; but the Government gave 4s. a-week for every pauper in the Asylums, and it answered the purposes of the Guardians to transfer people who were a little troublesome in the workhouses to those places. It would be well if the Government would carefully consider what steps should be taken to meet this action on the part of the Boards of Guardians. He must say he was not prepared to suggest any; but it was not his business to do so. But probably the Government might be able to find time
  608
  to bring about a thorough overhauling of the pauper lunatic asylums, and an investigation into the majority of doubtful cases—cases which were just sufficiently demonstrative to secure the keeping up of a staff which would not otherwise be required, and which gave that staff very little work to do. There was another question, as to the classification of lunatics in the workhouses; but that was a point on which he had already ventured to offer some remarks on a previous Vote, and he would not detain the Committee on it. However, there was one thing he had noticed on visiting more than one pauper lunatic asylum, and it must have struck everybody, no matter how casual their visit, and that was the utter want of occupation for the great majority of inmates. If there was one thing more than another calculated to help the restoration to a proper state of mind of a patient who had been suffering under mental aberration or melancholia, it was occupation. But the great majority of persons in pauper lunatic asylums were absolutely without anything but the merest show of occupation; and he was convinced that the life they led in these Asylums helped to confirm and render incurable any mental affliction from which they suffered. He was speaking only of the slighter cases. Then, as to the treatment of persons who were really fit subjects for treatment at the hands of medical men who dealt with cases of insanity. With respect to Colney Hatch Asylum, the District Visitors reported that the complaints of unnecessary detention were unusually numerous, and there were also very many complaints from both male and female patients that access to the medical staff was practically denied. Some of the patients knew the Chairman of the Visiting Committee by sight, and also the medical staff; but the patients were counted in wards periodically, but had no opportunity of making complaints. Then, again, the Visitors called attention to the method of keeping the case-book in this Asylum, which was certainly open to grave objections. The Act—16 & 17 Vict.—required that the case-book should be regularly laid before the Visitors for inspection; but the Visitors found that the entries as to the admission of patients were made on loose slips of paper, to be copied into the book when time would permit, perhaps after

  609
  the discharge or death of the patient. The Visitors reported that in regard to the case-book the Act was not complied with, and he would like to know what the Home Secretary thought of Directors who permitted such a system as that. But it was not so much a question of correct record in each case, or of the numbers of patients who were unable to make complaints, but as to the treatment of the patients.
  THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member cannot discuss pauper lunatics generally under this Vote. The proper time will be on Vote 4, Class VI., where there is a special Vote for pauper lunatics.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he was showing why the Committee should not vote this money for the Lunacy Commissioners, who, he thought, had not done their duty, for if they had, the Visitors would not have had to report these shortcomings. They further reported that, being present in the women's dining-room during dinner, they were somewhat surprised at seeing many rats sporting about in the hall.
  THE CHAIRMAN: That subject does not properly come under the Vote for the Lunacy Commissioners. The subject the hon. Member is referring to will properly come under Vote 4 of Class VI.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORremarked that the first item in this Vote was the salary of the Lunacy Commissioners; and, with all deference to the Chair, he thought he was entitled to question the right of the Commissioners to have this £1,500.
  THE CHAIRMAN: I have already informed the hon. Gentleman that the discussion as to particular asylums comes on on another Vote, and cannot be taken now.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he should not discuss particular asylums; but he was endeavouring to show why the Commissioners, for whom pay was here charged, ought not to have their pay voted without, at any rate, some explanation of their apparent shortcomings. That was his idea in bringing before the Committee what he believed to be blemishes in the work of the Commissioners. It seemed to him that the Commissioners ought to insist, for instance, on reasonable occupation being given to persons committed to their care. It was their business to see that the inmates of the asylums had every reason-
  610
  able facility at their disposal for the recovery of their proper mental condition; but that was not done. In one asylum he found that five men out of seven had reasonable and healthy occupation; in another, only one in four. In one asylum six in ten were healthily occupied; but in another, only a short way off, only one in three. But as he failed to convince the Chairman of the propriety of the grounds upon which he made these remarks, he would quit that subject altogether, and say a few words upon the personal duties of the Commissioners. There were two or three things upon which they would do well to furnish information in their next Report. It was impossible, on an examination of the tables and statements given, to arrive at any reliable conclusion as to the rate of mortality in the asylums, although that was a very important matter. The Metropolitan Asylums Board furnished complete details as to the rate of mortality in the asylums under their control, and he would suggest that the Home Secretary should require the Commissioners in Lunacy to furnish similar information. He thought he had shown very good ground for the conclusion that the Commissioners had not justified the remuneration charged in this Vote, and he should therefore move to reduce the amount by £500 each, or £3,000. But as half the year had elapsed, there remained only half the financial year, he would now move to reduce the salaries by £250 each, or £1,500 altogether.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £6,695, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1882, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Commissioners in Lunacy in England."—(Mr. Arthur O'Connor.)
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The course taken by the hon. Member is a somewhat singular one. The Lunacy Commissioners have hitherto been trusted largely by the country, and, as far as I know, they have had general confidence. But now the hon. Member comes forward with a series of charges against them of which no Notice is given, and to which, therefore, it is difficult for anyone on their behalf to make any response. Every one of the matters

  611
  touched upon by the hon. Member is a subject which might occupy the attention of a Select Committee; and it seems to me that the view now taken of the manner of dealing with the Estimates is upon every Vote to enter upon matters with which it is impossible to deal in Committee of Supply. The hon. Member has challenged the whole treatment of the lunatics of England; but is it common sense or reasonable that such a matter should be gone into upon this Vote, when the matter is one which could not be dealt with except by hearing witnesses? This matter has been dealt with in a proper manner by a Committee of this House so lately as 1878. "Within three years the whole of this matter has been investigated in the only possible way—by a Committee which went carefully into it day after day, and took evidence; and which, while suggesting that certain minor matters should be attended to, pronounced strongly in favour of the manner in which the Lunacy Laws had been administered. I venture to say that is the only complete answer to the charges made by the hon. Member. This House in Committee of Supply is wholly incapable of discussing this question. It has not the material, and it would be a waste of time to try to arrive at any conclusion. How are you to ascertain what is the cause of the increased number of lunatics? It is suggested that there are persons in these asylums who ought not to be there; but the Committee repudiated such a suggestion. It is also suggested that local authorities desire to fill the asylums with people who ought not to be there; but their object is to decrease the number of inmates. With regard to the Visitors having seen rats at Colney Hatch, I have read that in the houses of some of us—who are not lunatics, nor Lunatic Commissioners—there are rats; and that is hardly to be the foundation of a charge that these Commissioners are not competent for their duties. The hon. Member proposes to diminish the Vote which has for many years been given for these men, who have rendered public service; but to do that without any foundation for the charges made against them seems to me most unreasonable, and I must protest against the raising of questions, of which I do not dispute the importance, but with which it is utterly
  612
  impossible for the Committee of Supply to deal. If the hon. Member is dissatisfied, let him ask for a Select Committee; and if it appeared that since the last Committee sat any material circumstances had arisen to lead to the conclusion that the lunatics had not been properly treated, I would do anything I could to assist him. But it is unreasonable on the 2nd of August to raise a question with which this House cannot deal in Committee of Supply.
  MR. RYLANDSsaid, he rose immediately after the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, because he wished to say that he was not surprised the right hon. Gentleman should have expressed the opinion he had done as to the irrelevant nature of the criticisms upon the Vote to which they had just been listening. As an independent Member, acting with other independent Members, he felt very strongly indeed that the action of the Committee of Supply was, to a great extent, nullified by the course taken by the hon. Member for Queen's County (Mr. Arthur O'Connor). He (Mr. Rylands) would certainly not assist in delaying the Vote further.
  MR. J. COWENsaid, he thought it was only fair in extenuation of the course pursued by the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Arthur O'Connor) to say that hon. Members were placed at great disadvantage in criticizing the Estimates, owing to the inconvenient time and manner in which they were brought forward. At the same time, he thought there was much force in what had been said by the Home Secretary, and he was of opinion that the accusations made against the Inspectors of Lunatic Asylums were not at all borne out by the facts. Still, the subject was one well worthy of consideration.
  Question put, and negatived.
  Original Question put, and agreed to.
  (3.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £22,640, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1882, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Mint, including the Expenses of the Coinage."
  MR. RYLANDSsaid, he rose for the purpose of calling attention to an item

  613
  to which he had directed attention last year—namely, the Charge proposed for supplying silver to the Colonies. The Charge was for package, freight, and carriage of silver for the Colonies. While he did not object, in any way, to the practice of providing coinage for the Colonies, he did object to any charge being made under a Treasury Warrant, which had the effect of imposing the cost of providing the coinage upon the Exchequer of this country. The Treasury, under a Warrant dated June 14, 1871, declared that all the expenses should be paid by the Colonies; but that arrangement was altered in 1878, and since that year there had been a Vote for the freight and package of bronze and silver coin. He wished to point out to the Committee that there was no justification for giving that advantage to the Colonies, because we were allowing a very large amount of coin to be held by the Melbourne and Sydney Mints. He believed that the amount in 1879 reached £187,000, and, in addition, this country took back worn coin to a very large amount. He found that in 1880 the amount of worn silver coin received from the Sydney and Melbourne Mints reached no less than £87,614, and upon it there was a loss of from 12 to 14 per cent. So that in addition to this heavy loss upon worn silver, they were paying all the expenses of freight and packing. And while they were giving these advantages to the Colonies, advantages which, he thought, they had no right to receive, it appeared from last year's balance sheet, that there had been no less than £7,600 loss upon the transactions of the Mint during the last year. He would move the reduction of the Vote by the sum of £2,000, which was the cost of packing and freight, for the supply of silver and bronze coin to the Colonies.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £20,640, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1882, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Mint, including the Expenses of Coinage."—(Mr. Rylands.)
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, the charge for the freight of silver against the Colonies was only made in the case of Imperial coin sent there. In the case of Colonial coin taken by the Mint, the freight was included in the
  614
  charge; but it must be borne in mind that there was a considerable profit realized from the Imperial silver coin sent to the Colonies. It was true that they had, by the arrangements now in force, undertaken to recall their old and damaged coin, and pay all expenses; but under ordinary circumstances, even when silver was at its normal value, there was a substantial profit upon the coinage. He did not think that they could insist upon the Colony using our silver coinage and, at the same time, charge them with the expense of exporting it. Silver was now very much cheaper than it used to be, and the profit accordingly was much larger.
  MR. RYLANDSsaid, that what the noble Lord was stating was entirely contradicted by the balance sheet of the Mint. If he would look at the Report of the Mint, the noble Lord would find that there was an absolute balance of loss, without any charge upon the fixed amount of capital employed, of £7,658 upon the year.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, that that loss was incurred in connection with the gold coinage, in regard to which no charge was made. It was somewhat curious, but it was nevertheless the fact, that the amount of coin called in bore inversely to the prosperity of the country. At times of prosperity, there was a greater demand for coin, and it was not paid into the Bank, and did not go to the Mint to be re-coined. The charge for re-coining old silver was heaviest at a time when there was not so much coin required for the use of the country. The result was, that in the year 1872, when the country was at the height of its prosperity, the profit to the Mint was £98,000; and at that time the Mint was sending out large quantities of new silver upon which it obtained a profit, while, at the same time, there was a very small amount of old silver paid in. The profit continued for two or three years, and it was not until 1876 that it became materially reduced. In 1877 the profit was only £22,000, and last year £12,858. But in the silver coinage sent out to the Colonies there was still a profit, and a substantial one. He did not think that they should insist upon the Colonies using our silver coinage, and then place them at the disadvantage of making them pay for the carriage of it.
  MR. HEALYcomplained that the Vote included a sum of £5 for an Easter offering to the Vicar of St. Botolph's Without, Aldgate, and another to the Sexton of the Tower. He wished to know what these charges meant?
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, the Mint was an old establishment, and these were old charges which had always been paid by the Mint.
  Question put, and negatived.
  Original Question again proposed.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he was sorry that he did not see in his place the President of the Board of Trade, because he would have suggested to the right hon. Gentleman that he should move again what he had once moved before, and what he (Mr. O'Connor), in the absence of the right hon. Gentleman, would venture to move now—namely, the reduction of the Vote by the sum of £2,000, being the amount charged for freight and packing the supplies of silver and bronze coin to the Colonies.
  MR. RYLANDSsaid, he had already moved the Amendment, and it had been negatived.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he had not understood the hon. Member for Burnley to move the omission of this particular item.
  MR. HEALYsaid, he should certainly feel inclined, unless the noble Lord the Financial Secretary to the Treasury informed the Committee that he would look into the items he had called attention to and give an explanation of them next year, to move the omission of the sum charged for an Easter offering to the Vicar of St. Botolph. They might as well be asked to vote an Easter offering to the Archbishop of Canterbury or Cardinal Manning.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, he would give an explanation of that item upon the Report.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he did not understand the course taken by Her Majesty's Government. Only the other night they voted in favour of a proposal which they had strenuously opposed when in Opposition; and now there was another instance of a similar character. The President of the Board of Trade in former years had taken exception to this very item, and the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands),
  616
  having put down a Motion for the reduction of the Vote, certainly had moved it, but immediately afterwards withdrew it.
  MR. RYLANDS: That is altogether a false statement.
  THE CHAIRMANsaid, he hoped the hon. Member would withdraw the expression which he had used, and which was quite irregular.
  MR. RYLANDS: I will withdraw it at once, and substitute "inaccurate statement." I did not withdraw the Motion for a reduction of the Vote, and if the hon. Member had been in his place at the time, he might have voted for it.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORobjected to the tone which the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) chose to adopt, and which was hardly Parliamentary. It was quite certain that the hon. Member was disinclined now to do that which he and those who acted with him always did when in Opposition—namely, carry their Motion to a division. It was a perfect farce to allow a charge of this kind to be passed quietly over when the Liberals were in power, and to be vehemently opposed when they happened to be out of Office. He would, therefore, move the reduction of the Vote by the sum of £1,000.
  THE CHAIRMAN: For what purpose does the hon. Member propose to reduce the Vote by £1,000?
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR: For the expense of freight and packing.
  THE CHAIRMAN: That has been done already, and cannot be repeated.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he did not repeat the Amendment which had been moved by the hon. Member for Burnley, but he asked for a smaller reduction than that which had already been proposed and negatived. He thought he was fully in Order in making that proposition.
  THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Gentleman is not in Order in moving the reduction of the Vote upon an item which has already been disposed of.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he wanted clearly to understand that ruling. A Motion having been made for the reduction of the Vote by a certain sum, and that Motion having been negatived, was it not competent for him to move the reduction of the Vote by a smaller sum?
  THE CHAIRMAN: I decline to be questioned by the hon. Member as to my ruling. I have ruled on this occasion that a Motion having been made on this particular subject, and having been negatived, the Motion just proposed by the hon. Member for Queen's County cannot be moved.
  MR ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he merely asked for information. [Cries of "Order!"]
  Original Question put, and agreed to.
  (4.) £10,142, to complete the sum for the National Debt Office.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he wished to ask the noble Lord the Financial Secretary to the Treasury a question with regard to this Vote. It contained an item for the Pensions Commutation Board. He wished to know whether all the expenses connected with the Commutation Board were stated on page 123, or whether there were any other expenses connected with the Board? He would also be glad to elicit from the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) whether he intended to proceed with the Notice he had given to move the reduction of the Vote by the sum of £1,000?
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHstated that all the expenses connected with the Commutation Board were included in the Vote.
  Vote agreed to.
  (5.) £17,438, to complete the sum for the Patent Office.
  MR. HINDE PALMERsaid, he had on several occasions when this Vote had been before the Committee called attention to the present state of the Patent Museum at South Kensington. At present the condition of that Museum was disgraceful, and the arrangements and dimensions of the Museum for containing the collection of Patents for objects which had made the country eminent, was altogether unworthy of the Nation. The condition of the Patent Museum had become a bye-word to every foreigner who visited this country. There was scarcely any arrangement for enabling visitors to inspect the Museum and see the models contained in it. The Museum should be of a most instructive character, for the purpose of inculcating technical education; but Reports had been made year after year
  618
  condemning the arrangements. He held in his hands a Report presented 10 years ago, and almost every year since a similar Report had been made by the Patent Office Commissioners. The Report 10 years ago was to this effect, that it was intended to make the Patent Office Museum an historical and educational institution for the benefit and instruction of skilled workmen employed in the manufactories of the country—a class who largely contributed to the surplus funds of the Patent Office. The Report went on to say that the Commissioners were in the possession of a large number of valuable models which were retained in packing cases for the reason that no room could be found for them in the Museum at South Kensington. This statement had been repeated year after year, and, notwithstanding, the Museum still remained in its present disgraceful position. He had on former occasions, and in former Parliaments, obtained from the Chief Commissioner of Works a promise that this Museum should be really made an efficient one. But from that time to this nothing had been done to improve the condition of the Museum, and it was made a bye-word and a reproach by every foreign visitor to the country. In America the Patent Museum was one of the best institutions of the country, and one of which America was naturally proud. And in Paris there was a most beautiful Museum of Patent Inventions—the Musee des Arts et Métiers—where all the inventions were arranged in a manner that enabled every visitor to see at once whether any invention he was contemplating had been anticipated, and he was thus saved the unnecessary expense of taking out a patent, which was very important and material to him. Both in America and in Paris the Patent Museums were kept up in a manner which did credit to those countries. The difficulty in this country, he was told, was this, that there were not sufficient funds to enable the Government to proceed to the construction of a Patent Museum. That, however, could hardly be correct, and to show that there was no foundation for such a statement he would call attention to the amount of the fees paid upon Patents. There was a surplus fund derivable from fees paid for Patents for inventions every year of nearly £150,000. That, as they all knew, was carried to the Consoli-

  619
  dated Fund, and the surplus fees paid in this way had accumulated year after year until they now amounted to nearly £2,000,000. Therefore, he did not see why they should be told that an Institution in which, as the Report of the Commissioners of Patents informed them, the working men of the country were so greatly interested, on the ground of the encouragement it would afford to inventions—that such an Institution could not be provided because there were no funds that could be utilized in constructing it. He would not take up the time of the Committee further than by saying this, as he now saw the President of the Board of Trade in his place, and as he knew the right hon. Gentleman took great interest in the question of Patents for inventions, he hoped to hear from the right hon. Gentleman that he was fully impressed with the necessity of not allowing the question to remain in abeyance year after year, but that something would at once be done to put the Museum upon a proper footing. He might add that, in the Report he had quoted, a very eligible site was recommended by the Commission—namely, the site of Fife House, at the back of the present Board of Trade Offices, in Whitehall Gardens. He believed that this site was very much in the same condition that it was a year ago when this Report was made, and he should have been glad to have put a question to the Chief Commissioner of Works upon the subject, if the right hon. Gentleman had been in his place. He agreed with the Patent Commissioners that the site of Fife House might be rendered available; but under no circumstances should the Patent Museum be allowed to remain in the condition in which it now was any longer. Seeing the large amount of the funds contributed for the Patent Office from the fees paid by inventors, it was, he thought, the duty of the Government to provide, as in the case of America and France, an Institution which should not only be useful, but should reflect credit upon the country.
  SIR HENRY HOLLANDsaid, that before the President of the Board of Trade answered the question put to him, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would be able to give an assurance that the whole question of the Patent Office would be considered during the Recess. He knew that a debate had
  620
  already taken place upon the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson), and he was sorry the hon. Member was unable to press forward that Bill to its final stage. It had been impossible for any private Member to obtain this Session the necessary opportunities for pressing forward a measure of that kind; but the debate which had already taken place must have shown the President of the Board of Trade how much importance was attached to the question, and the great amount of interest that was felt in it in the country. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would be able to give the Committee an assurance that the whole question would receive careful consideration during the Recess.
  MR. WARTONsaid, he had nothing to state in reference to the Patent Office; but he wished to call attention to the peculiar way in which the accounts included in the present Vote were made out. He thought that, considering the very great importance of knowing what the salaries, wages, and allowances were, they should have some further information than was contained in a total lump sum. He thought it would be better to give the items connected with each respective department. There were three departments included in this Vote—the Patent Museum, the Designs Registry, and the Trade Mark Registry, all of them important departments. He had no desire to carp at the expenditure, or to criticize it at all; but it would seem that there had been a very considerable increase in the amount of charge. He wanted to know whether there had been an increase or not, and it had taken a long time to find where the increase was; ultimately, it turned out that it was in the cost of the special Indexing staff. There had been a total increase of about £2,600,and out of that sum no less than £1,760 was due to this one item. But in consequence of the way in which the accounts were tabulated there was nothing to catch the eye in any particular item. He thought that all important branches of expenditure should be distinctly stated and added up; and he would suggest that, in future, this account should be broken up into the expenditure of the various departments, and that proper totals should be given.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, it seemed to him a very great pity that all the expenditure in connection with the Patent Office should go to one central establishment in London. When they considered the difficulties which had to be surmounted in introducing any practical improvements in Patent machinery, it was quite plain that no mere casual observer in visiting the South Kensington Museum would be likely to gather ideas that would be useful to him in the development and improvement of any existing machinery or appliances that were used for superseding labour and simplifying mechanical power. Such appliances required a considerable amount of technical knowledge in order to enable a man to understand them and to appreciate the machinery, which was now turned to so many useful purposes. There were dotted over the face of England—he was sorry he could not say the same of Ireland—a number of centres of industry which made use in their peculiar occupations of different kinds of appliances. It therefore seemed to him that it would be a public benefit if the Institution at South Kensington were either duplicated or broken up. If it could be duplicated, one model might be kept at head-quarters, and another kept at those different centres of industry which possessed a technical school, to render such appliances of general advantage. For instance, the machinery used in the cotton trade might be sent to Manchester; at Sheffield there might be a Museum giving models of appliances connected with the trade in steel; and so on throughout the country. He believed that at Portsmouth there already existed a School of Naval Architecture, or something of that kind, which was of great use to those who were learning that branch of industry. He should like to obtain from the Government some expression of their views as to the establishment of local Museums of a special character in connection with the principal industries in England, and whether they proposed to continue the Patent Museum at South Kensington as the only place where the Patents of the country could be inspected. Certainly, in its present position it was almost wholly useless, and those who were interested in Patents for inventions seldom had access to it. There was one other point upon which
  622
  he wished to ask a question—namely, in regard to the police. He was glad to see that the President of the Board of Trade was now in his place. The right hon. Gentleman would recollect that there was a time when he had questioned the late Government as to whether the police employed at the South Kensington Museum also received police pay, together with the allowance they drew from the Patent Office. The right hon. Gentleman would recollect that, on a former occasion, he opposed the Vote; and he would ask the right hon. Gentleman if he would go with him into the Lobby against it on the present occasion?
  MR. CHAMBERLAINsaid, he did not think that the hon. Member for Queen's County had properly represented the course he (Mr. Chamberlain) had taken on the occasion referred to. [Mr. ARTHUR O'CONNOR said it was reported in Hansard.] He thought not, as the hon. Member had represented the matter. He had certainly misunderstood the question which he (Mr. Chamberlain) had raised. What he was anxious to ascertain was whether the police, while being paid out of the National funds, were simply performing Metropolitan duties. He was answered at the time that the services paid for in the Vote were services wholly performed in connection with the National Museum, and as such were properly chargeable upon the Estimates. The hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton) had raised a question which was worth considering, and the noble Lord the Secretary to the Treasury would endeavour in the future preparation of the Estimates to give the total amount under different heads, as the hon. and learned Member suggested. The hon. and learned Member was perfectly correct in saying that the main increase in the Vote was owing to the addition made in the Indexing staff. On former occasions great importance had been attached to the rapid preparation of Indexes, and, at the suggestion of the Master of the Rolls, the work was being rapidly proceeded with. That, he thought, would account for the increase in the present year. In answer to his hon. Friend the Member for Midhurst (Sir Henry Holland), he might say that the whole question of the Patent Law would undoubtedly receive the careful

  623
  consideration of the Government during the Recess, and he hoped that it would be his duty next Session to bring in a Bill dealing with the subject in the spirit of the remarks which he had made on a recent occasion. He now came to the important question raised by the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. Hinde Palmer)—namely, the question of Patent Museums. There was no doubt that the Museum at South Kensington was not altogether in a satisfactory condition. It was so small that the inventions at present sent there could not be properly exhibited, and there was no room for any further extension. He did not think, however, that the reason why better provision had not been made was that which his hon. and learned Friend had supposed. At all events, he (Mr. Chamberlain) did not pretend to say that it was to be excused on the ground of lack of funds, although he might say that the question of funds was one of very considerable importance. He had no doubt that if they were to establish a Museum on an efficient scale, so as to give anything like a complete representation of English inventions, it would involve the expenditure of a very large sum indeed, probably something like £500,000. It was no answer to say that the money could be provided out of the fees paid upon patents. Of course, that was one source of income; but it went to the reduction of taxation generally. If the fees paid to the Patent Office were devoted for the building of a Museum, it would be necessary to increase taxation in some other direction. He (Mr. Chamberlain) was personally much interested in the matter, and he spoke with some practical experience, both of patents and inventions. At the same time, he must confess that if he had a sum of £500,000 to deal with, he would be able to use it with greater advantage generally than in the establishment of a Patent Museum. The Committee must consider, in the first place, what the object of the Patent Museum was to be. Was it to be merely a Museum of archaeological and historical curiosities? He did not depreciate the importance of such a collection; but they had the nucleus of one in the present Museum. For instance, it contained an illustration of the invention of the steam-engine; and specimens were given from the time of the "Rocket"
  624
  down to the present time. No doubt such a Museum was amusing, and, to a certain extent, highly instructive; but he did not think that such a Museum would justify the enormous expenditure to which he had referred, nor did he think that that was in the mind of his hon. and learned Friend, because his hon. and learned Friend said something about the advantage the Museum would be to inventors. It would be of no advantage to see such inventions as the "Rocket" steam-engine, which had been long superseded by other inventions. In order that an inventor should derive real advantage, he must have every important step in every important invention fully represented, and that, he believed, would be found to be a difficulty of first-class magnitude. His hon. and learned Friend spoke as if the problem had been settled in the United States. He could assure his hon. and learned Friend that that was not the case. A few years ago, when a great part of the Patent Museum of Washington was burned down, and a large collection of inventions was burned with the building, there was a general sense of relief and satisfaction, because the collection had already outgrown any possibility of useful reference. It had been laid down previously in America that a model of every invention should be deposited; and, consequently, the Museum was, theoretically, at all events, a Museum which contained every invention upon every subject. But he had seen a Report from the curator of a Museum in Washington to the effect that if the rate of increase continued there was no building in the United States, and no town in the United States, in point of fact, whose area would be sufficient to contain the models deposited. It was found, therefore, that if a Museum was to be of any value at all there must be a careful selection; and, latterly, in the United States the authorities had attempted to make such a selection. He was told only the other day by a gentleman who had recently returned from the United States, that the collection there was so large that there was no possibility of adequate exhibition, and if anyone wanted to see a particular model, it had to be hunted up by communication with the Curators at a considerable loss of time, because the person who desired to see it found it im-

  625
  possible to discover it for himself, owing to the want of room now existing for exhibition. He did not say that that difficulty was absolutely insurmountable; but it showed the necessity of confining themselves to a satisfactory and useful selection. But then arose the difficulty—who could tell what were useful inventions and what were not? Who could tell which of the present inventions would be most useful in assisting further inventions? Yet this was what they wanted in a Patent Museum—namely, that an inventor should he able to go there and gather useful hints and suggestions. It was absolutely impossible for the best expert to decide beforehand what invention should come under the head of the best inventions. He was not now discussing the question thoroughly, but he was only dealing with such points as had been suggested by the remarks of his hon. and learned Friend. He placed these observations before the Committee in order to show the difficulties which surrounded the question. At the same time, he would assure his hon. and learned Friend that during the Recess, when the other questions connected with the Patent Office were considered, the question of a public Patent Museum and a public selection of useful inventions would also receive careful consideration.
  MR. DILLWYNsaid, he was glad to have heard the remarks of his right hon. Friend. He agreed with every word his right hon. Friend had said. He thought it would be absurd to provide an Institution that should contain all the inventions of the country. It was a kind of myth which was never likely to be fulfilled. All that was necessary for any useful purpose was to give a good collection of drawings and specifications. They would be far more useful to inventors than any Museum of the kind suggested. His right hon. Friend said the probable expense of a Patent Museum would be £500,000. Now, he (Mr. Dillwyn) did not believe they would get a site for such a sum, and the total cost would be infinitely more. The expense of an adequate site would be enormous. They all knew what the cost of land in London was, and he was convinced that the mere purchase of the site for such a purpose would cover the whole sum mentioned by his right hon.
  626
  Friend. He had been very glad to hear the remarks made by his right hon. Friend, and he hoped they would tend to dissipate the expectations entertained by some persons, that the Government contemplated entering upon this gigantic and useless expenditure.
  MR. E. COLLINSsaid, he did not think that the remarks of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. Hinde Palmer) had been altogether fairly treated. His hon. and learned Friend had directed attention specially to the Museum at South Kensington, and the tendency of his remarks was to show that that Museum was by no means sufficient for the requirements of the country. His hon. and learned Friend had not attempted to shadow forth the extensive scheme alluded to by the President of the Board of Trade and the hon. Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn). The views of the hon. and learned Member for Lincoln were moderate, and his hon. and learned Friend only wished to direct the attention of the Government to the insufficiency of the existing Museum, with the view of endeavouring to induce them to give the subject more consideration than it had yet received. His hon. and learned Friend had pointed out to the Committee that the sum derived from Patent Fees now amounted to £150,000 a-year. The exact sum was £144,000. That was a very large sum; and when it was borne in mind that the accumulation of the surplus fees amounted to £2,000,000, it might naturally be thought that a revenue so large and constantly accumulating would be sufficient to make provision for the proper collection and exhibition of models.
  MR. CRAIGsaid, he had no doubt that an exhibition of drawings and specifications would be useful, but they would not supersede the exhibition of models. A Model Museum must be of great utility. Let the Committee consider for a moment what the effect would have been upon a mind such as that of George Stephenson, if he could have been brought in contact with a Model Museum. The exhibition of models enabled a man with an inventive genius to mature his own inventions, and thus confer great benefit upon the general public, and every man who was acquainted with the subject must at once see that it was most desirable to have a better building than that which now

  627
  existed at South Kensington. If the arrangements were more complete many persons would come up from the country for the purpose of visiting the Museum—persons who were accustomed in their daily occupation to see machinery at work, and persons whose ideas would be sharpened by an inspection of the inventions of others. He thought it was incumbent upon the Government of the country, which depended so much upon manufacturing and mining industries, to improve, as far as possible, the tools with which the people worked, so that in the end they might cheapen the cost of production. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade had referred to the Patent Museum in America. There was no doubt that that was a very clumsy and heterogeneous collection, which there was no necessity for imitating. What he would advise was that the classifications pursued in the present building should be continued, but that the evils into which the Americans had fallen should be avoided, and we should soon possess a collection of models worthy of the greatest manufacturing country in the world. At the same time, while keeping up the intelligence of our inventors, and assisting the commercial well-being of the country, such a Museum would afford the greatest assistance to inventors in seeing whether the invention that was engaging their attention was already in existence or not. He believed that the idea of establishing a Patent Museum would be most popular, and that if it were carried out it would in many respects be a most instructive Institution for giving expression to the inventive genius of the country. He trusted, therefore, that the question would receive the attention which the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade had promised to devote to it.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade was probably right as to the effect of his previous speech. The question then asked by the right hon. Gentleman was whether the police who were paid out of the Vote performed duties exclusively for the Museum, and were paid for the duties so performed, or whether they received their police pay in addition? That was a question which he (Mr. O'Connor) would like to have answered. The right hon. Gentle-
  628
  man seemed to be satisfied upon the point now; and he hoped, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman would inform the Committee whether the policemen on duty at South Kensington were paid as members of the Police Force over and above the money they drew from the Vote.
  MR. CHAMBERLAINsaid, he spoke from recollection. The hon. Member seemed to be speaking from a book; but he (Mr. Chamberlain) was quite certain that his recollection was accurate. He had been anxious to know whether the policemen who were paid out of the National funds were doing Metropolitan work, in which case he thought they ought to be paid out of the Metropolitan funds, and not out of the National Exchequer. He was answered at the time, and he believed that it was the fact that they were doing National work. Therefore, he had no objection to the Vote.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORasked if they also received pay as policemen?
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH: They are amply paid by the Treasury, and they receive no pay from the Police.
  Vote agreed to.
  (6.) £14,277, to complete the sum for the Paymaster General's Office.
  MR. S. LEIGHTONsaid, he had a Resolution on the Paper in regard to this Vote, which he regretted to have to bring forward as it might have the appearance of wasting the time of the Committee. This, however, was not his fault, but was the fault of the noble Lord the Financial Secretary to the Treasury; and when he stated the precise position of the matter he believed that the Committee would see that there was a good deal to be said upon it. The Vote about to be taken was for the Paymaster General's Office. The Paymaster General was the banker to the Suitors in Chancery, and as their banker he had something like a sum of £60,000,000 in his possession. A portion of that money consisted of unclaimed funds, or dormant funds. Several Acts had been passed directing that proper particulars should be given to Suitors in respect of this unclaimed money, in order that they might claim their own. These Acts of Parliament had been violated, and on account of the violation of them, he intended to move the reduction of the

  629
  Vote by the sum of £500. One Act of Parliament directed that every information should be given to the Suitors in regard to this unclaimed money, and that every three years there should be a list of names published. Now, in the first place, a list had not been published every three years. A list ought to have been published in 1876, 1879, and another would be due in 1882; but, as a matter of fact, only one had been published in 1877, and another a few months ago. In the next place, the Act of Parliament laid down that the list should be alphabetical, and it was not alphabetical. He would take, for instance, the letter "A," and he found an entry to this effect—
  "Ex parte Commission for executing the office of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The account of Mansfield, Harper, &c, infants."
  It was impossible for Suitors to find out their claims under such conditions. It might naturally be supposed that the fault was with the Paymaster General and with his officials; but the fault did not rest with him. It rested with the noble Lord the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and the Commissioners of the Treasury. He found that the Paymaster General had written a letter to the Treasury upon the subject only last year, in which he said—
  "I regret that the representations I have repeatedly addressed to the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury upon the incompleteness of the audit, and the inadequacy of my staff even for the work now undertaken, and constantly falling more and more into arrear, have not received any response, and I have accordingly addressed a further letter to the Commissioners."
  But there was another letter even stronger—
  "I will not be held responsible for the possible consequences which may result from the insufficient supervision of pecuniary transactions of such magnitude unless I have further help."
  Last year the noble Lord the Financial Secretary to the Treasury said he would give additional clerks; but he now proposed actually to reduce the Vote by £400. The noble Lord had said on one occasion that if he (Mr. S. Leighton) would show him reasons for the publication of clearer lists, he would accede to his proposal. He thought it was very hard that the noble Lord should
  630
  require a reason for doing what common honesty would suggest. He might almost tell the Government to remember the Commandment—"Thou shalt not steal." He would point out that the other Public Offices, when they had money belonging to the public in their hands, had always given the information for which he asked. The India Office, the War Office, the Courts of Law, all published details of money in their possession, which belonged to others.
  THE CHAIRMAN: I trusted to the hon. Member being correct in stating that the Vote he refers to came under the head of the Paymaster General; but I find that the Vote comes under the Chancery Pay Office, Class III, Vote 4; therefore, the hon. Member is clearly out of Order.
  MR. S. LEIGHTONsaid, if the Chairman had made that observation earlier he would have been saved some trouble. He would renew his Motion at the proper time.
  Vote agreed to.
  (7.) £6,243, to complete the sum for the Public Works Loan Commission.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, on this Vote he wished to call attention to the West India Islands Relief Commission. He was under the impression that that Commission did not exist, and the noble Lord the Financial Secretary to the Treasury would be able to tell him whether his impression was correct or not. He (Mr. Arthur O'Connor) believed that the Commission was put an end to before the commencement of the period for which this Vote was taken; therefore, it seemed to him to be asking for a Vote which did not exist, and which had not existed during the proper financial period. This Relief Commission was to the West India Islands very much what the Public Works Loan Commission was to the United Kingdom, and its history it would be very useful to remember when they came to consider the value of the Public Works Loan Commission in this country. There was always this great danger, of the money advanced by the Loan Commissioners not being very well looked after—that was to say, the appropriation of it. He found in the Report of the Public Accounts Commissioner on this Vote questions and answers to the following effect. It was asked whether it was intended

  631
  that the necessary statements should be furnished with reference to the West India Islands Belief Commission Account? And the reply was—
  "Certainly; and it might be mentioned to the Committee that the work that the country had undertaken as to these loans involved a very considerable amount of labour. The accounts of the loans in arrear had not been examined for a long period, and to clear up doubtful cases extending over many years would entail a largo amount of correspondence and trouble. Two Acts had been passed which had cleared off considerable items of these arrears; but, of course, the Treasury had felt bound in no case to suggest a remission or composition of the loan until they were thoroughly satisfied that there was no possible means of recovering the amount due. The Treasury had now the West India Islands Relief Commission under their consideration, and had been in communication with the Commissioners on the subject of their loans. The Treasury had been instructed to offer certain terms to certain creditors, and had further given instructions that proceedings should be taken against them where the debts were not cleared up. The difficulty which arose as to these loans was that they were advanced, in most instances, to individuals. As soon as each of the branches of the Commission had finished its labours, the consent of Parliament would be asked to such remissions of loans as might be considered necessary,"
  That was the effect of the answer given before the Public Accounts Commissioner. As he had said, the West India Islands Relief Commission had ceased to exist; but the Public Works Loan Commission still continued, and the way it did its work was very much the same as the way in which the West India Islands Belief Commission had done theirs. The Board was simply a lending Board, and the duty of looking after the appropriation of the money fell upon the Local Government Board, which body had only a limited power of following the expenditure. An Act was passed two years ago enabling them to do what ought to have been done from the beginning, and the consequence of the delay had been that a large amount of money had been misspent, and a great deal lost beyond recovery, especially in connection with the different harbours of the country. He would not go into details with regard to the harbours, which were referred to at length in the Report of the Loans Board for 1879–80. Reference was there made to harbours both in Ireland and in England. In the case of one harbour in Wexford, the whole amount of money voted had never been issued to the Harbour Commissioners; yet, in the Report of the Public Loans
  632
  Board, he found the harbour people put down as debtors for a certain amount of money. It struck him as a strange thing, if these Commissioners were to receive a certain amount of money on account of harbour works, that they should be put down as being in arrear with their repayment of principal and interest when the total amount of principal had not yet been advanced. Perhaps the noble Lord would give him some explanation upon this point? Another thing he wished to ask was what was proposed to be done with reference to the loans to Harwich Harbour—whether the Government proposed to bring in a Bill to wipe off the loans, as loans in the case of the West India Islands Relief Commission had been cleared away?
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, with regard to the last question, it would more properly rise on Class I. in connection with the Harbour Votes. The Treasury hoped to receive back a portion of their money, and, therefore, they did not expect to have to wipe off the debt. As to the other harbour referred to by the hon. Member, the transaction occurred before his (Lord Frederick Cavendish's) time at the Treasury. It had never been brought before him; but if the hon. Member desired it he would make inquiries and give him an answer upon Report. With regard to the Report of the Controller and Auditor General with reference to the audit of these accounts, he was happy to be able to inform the hon. Member that the audit was now more complete and fuller than it used to be, and they might expect satisfactory results from the alteration. With regard to the West India Islands Relief Commission, the Treasury had deemed it advisable, in the public interest, to bring it to a termination some time ago.
  Vote agreed to.
  (8.) £11,567, to complete the sum for the Record Office.
  MR. J. COWENsaid, he did not wish to delay the Committee by any lengthened observations; but he wished to call the noble Lord's attention to the question of the publication of the documents issued by this Office, which documents were of great value. He desired to ask if some better facilities could not be given to the public for obtaining possession of the very valuable books which were issued here from time to time?
  SIR R. ASSHETON CROSS: I am afraid the Financial Secretary will think this matter is a hobby of mine, because I have so often brought it before the House. Hitherto I have been satisfied with the answer he has been able to give me with regard to the course he has taken; but I cannot too strongly press upon the Government, now they have accumulated this great mass of public information in the Record Office, that every precaution should be taken to preserve the documents from fire. One point I am particularly anxious to put before the noble Lord on this question, and it is this, that I am afraid the relations between the Record Office and the gentleman who has control over the Metropolitan Fire Brigade under the super intendance of the Metropolitan Board of Works, are not as satisfactory as they should be. I think in a matter of this kind, he who is looked to for keeping all the fires in the Metropolis down should be one of the parties consulted in the matter of the safe-keeping of the documents in the Public Record Office. As I am informed, the gentleman in charge of the Fire Office has never been consulted in any shape with regard to the records. The Record Office is entirely in different hands, and this gentleman knows nothing about the means to be taken should a fire break out there. He and his men would have everything to learn; and I really would impress upon the Government how desirable it is that Captain Shaw, one of the most valuable officers we have in this particular department, should be placed in the closest connection with the Record Office, and should be consulted about protecting it from fire.
  MR. HEALYsaid, that before the noble Lord rose, he wished to draw his attention to another point, and, perhaps, if he was not able to give an answer offhand, he would make a point of inquiring into the matter, and giving full information on Report. What he (Mr. Healy) wished to know was what the Government intended to do in the case of the old Irish manuscripts in Italy and Switzerland, which the Italian and Swiss authorities had very liberally offered to give up, on being assured that they would be placed in safe-keeping, either in this country or Ireland? He did not know whether the question
  634
  properly arose under this Vote; but it was a fact that very valuable Irish manuscripts were in the Library at Rome and in the Libraries of some of the Swiss towns; and they were considered of comparatively little value in these foreign countries. The foreign Governments would be willing to give them up to the custody of such a body as the Royal Hibernian Academy. What he wished to know was whether the keepers of the Italian and Swiss Libraries had put themselves into communication with the Government on this matter? The subject was one of national interest in Ireland, and he trusted the Government would give it the consideration it deserved.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, it had not been brought to his knowledge that any offer of manuscripts had been made to any Department of the State by any Italian or Swiss officials; but he would make inquiries into the subject without delay.
  MR. HEALYsaid, he did not mean to say that communications had passed; it was more in the shape of an understanding between the officials of the two countries.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, he would inquire whether the matter had ever been under consideration; if it had, at any rate it had not come under his notice. As to the important question raised concerning fires, he fully concurred with the right hon. Gentleman (Sir R. Assheton Cross) as to the extreme importance, not only of the Public Record Office, but of every Office of the State, taking the best precautions against the outbreak of fire. Whether or not the best arrangement would be to make the Chief Officer of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade responsible for the documents in the different Departments of the Government, he was not at present prepared to state; but he could promise the right hon. Gentleman that the matter would be considered. With regard to the question put to him by the hon. Member on that (the Ministerial) side of the House (Mr. J. Cowen) as to the facilities to the public for obtaining copies of historical documents, he would inquire whether these facilities could be extended, and whether a list could be prepared of all the publications which could be procured in the Office. The sale price of these documents was always

  635
  limited to the cost of printing and paper, no charge being made in respect of editing or preparing, or what he might call the mental work in connection with the records. He did not know whether further facilities could be given; but, if they could, he agreed with the hon. Member as to the importance of rendering these documents as accessible as possible to the public.
  MR. RYLANDSsaid, he would like to suggest that copies of the records should be sent to the Libraries of the various Provincial towns in the country where Libraries had been established by Act of Parliament, and were, therefore, of a permanent character. It was a very small thing to ask, and this was not the first time he had ventured to make the request. Considering the large Votes of money that Public Institutions obtained in London, it was a very small thing to ask that the local Libraries should have copies of the Record publications presented to them. Perhaps the noble Lord would undertake that the matter should be considered by the Government?
  MR. TORRENSconsidered the observations of the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) were very important, and deserved the careful consideration of the Government. He (Mr. Torrens) had not been aware of the possibility of their being able to obtain these documents from foreign Governments; but he might mention to the Committee a matter which was within his own knowledge. A valuable document connected with Irish history had been allowed to pass out of this country merely owing to the parsimony of those entrusted with the purchase of such things. The document in question had been offered over and over again to public bodies in Great Britain, including the British Museum and the Record Office. Terms had not been come to, and at last it had gone to Washington, and was now in the Museum of the American Capital. The suggestion which had been thrown out was very well worth the consideration of the Government; and he hoped such instances as that to which he referred might not occur again. He would suggest to the authorities of the Record Office, as well as to those of the British Museum, that it would be desirable in the existing advanced state of science that they should altogether dispense with the dangerous system of artificial lighting
  636
  which was now adopted. He had been struck, both at the Record Office and the British Museum, with the danger arising from the use of gas, and it appeared to him strongly desirable that this mode of lighting should not be applied to either of these places. There were no buildings in which a safe light was more essential than these repositories of ancient records and public documents. Therefore, he hoped before the Vote came on next year that something would be done in the direction of adopting a new method of lighting.
  MR. FINIGANsaid, he wished to make an observation on a matter which he considered deserved the serious attention of the noble Lord. He wished to ask whether the work of investigating documents in the archives of Venice was commenced in 1862; and whether when it was entered into it was not declared that it would last 13 years, and that the total cost would not exceed £5,000? Was it not a fact that this sum had been exceeded by £1,699? He should like to know how this expenditure was going on, and whether the Government proposed keeping to their original intention or varying from that? If it intended departing from its original intention, he should like to know whether it was intended to ask for further powers?
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, he thought that the further powers necessary were taken when the Estimates were passed. He believed the result of the investigations in the Venetian archives had been of almost unrivalled interest. The documents obtained had been of enormous value, and he believed that already, in all, 115 volumes of transcripts had been received in the Public Record Office in this way. He did not know whether the hon. Member or the Committee desired that this work should cease.
  MR. J. COWENwished to point out that the documents which had been obtained in Venice had a special reference to the matter the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) had mentioned. These documents distinctly referred to Irish history.
  Vote agreed to.
  (9.) £22,943, to complete the sum for the Registrar General's Office, England.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, with regard to the Report of the Registrar

  637
  General for England, he would ask whether it would not be possible to make it a little more complete on a very interesting point? He noticed on page 146 of the last Report that the record of violent deaths showed that there were of homicide cases 206 males and 168 females in the year, making a total of 374, or more than one a-day. Of suicides there were—males 1,299, females 465, giving a total of 1,764; that was to say, 33 suicides every week in England. That was a very interesting statement, but it did not include executions, which were over and above these figures. These figures included 91 murders of males and 110 of females, 115 cases of manslaughter of males and 58 of females. The figures were simply appalling; and to those hon. Members who came from a nation not given to habits of this kind it was enough to make them feel nervous to know that this was the state of things in the country in which they were obliged to live, at any rate, six months in the year. He had endeavoured to ascertain from the Registrar General how many cases had been brought to justice; but he did not find that the necessary materials were supplied. He believed, however, that 60 per cent of the cases of murder and manslaughter were not brought to justice. But the Registrar General, as he had said, did not appear to give information on that subject. He did not know whether it was in his province to do so; but if he could furnish the details, it would make his Report more complete and interesting.
  Vote agreed to.
  (10.) £295,000, to complete the sum for Stationery and Printing.
  SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTremarked, that this was always a heavy Vote and badly arranged; but he was bound to say that it was this year very much better framed than formerly. There were, however, many items with respect to which the Committee still stood in need of more particular information. For instance, there was a charge of £60,755 for the War Office, of which no particulars were given, the amount being simply put down as a lump sum. Hon. Members would see that this was a very large item, and he thought the Committee might very properly ask that some further information should be given
  638
  with respect to it than appeared on the face of the Estimate. The want of particulars was not only apparent in the case of the War Office, but there were several Departments for which a charge was made in the same way, and about which much more detailed information was desirable. He had no wish to delay the Vote, but simply rose to ask the noble Lord the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to give instructions that in future further information should be furnished with respect to the charges for the various Departments.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, he should be happy to see further information given upon the subject referred to by the hon. and gallant Baronet opposite, if it could be done without overloading the Estimates. He was sure that hon. Members would agree that while every possible information should be given, it was by no means desirable that the volume of the Estimates should be made more bulky than at present.
  An hon. MEMBER said, he thought there ought to be no difficulty in arranging for more information of a necessary kind, seeing that so much was given that was quite useless.
  MR. J. COWENsaid, that this Vote was one of the heaviest in the Estimates, and required careful consideration. He believed the hon. Baronet the Member for Midhurst (Sir Henry Holland) had on a previous occasion suggested that a Committee should be appointed for the purpose of investigating the whole of this question; and he thought, if that were done, it would have the effect both of simplifying the form and reducing the amount of the Vote. It was difficult for anyone at that time to enter into an elaborate examination of these charges, and he certainly had no wish to do so; but anyone practically acquainted with the matter would perceive at once that on several items a considerable amount could be saved. A good deal of the paper used in the Department was of a kind that in the course of a few years would be found to be useless, while the printing would be unreadable, because the ink on the paper would disappear. The question, therefore, was one which required consideration. To spend money on paper that would not be permanent involved a distinct loss to the nation, and he thought these considerations were such, as amongst others

  639
  might fairly justify the Government in acting upon the suggestion of the hon. Member for Midhurst for the appointment of a Committee. With regard to the Foreign Office papers, it must be remembered that the better class of printing in connection with them meant higher wages, and this would account for the increase under that head. And not only was the printing costly, but it was badly done. As a practical printer, he was prepared to say that some of the Government work was printed upon paper and with ink that, in the course of time, would fade, and the reports become wholly illegible.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, that this subject had been under most careful consideration for several years. With respect to the appointment of a Committee, he would remind his hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle that a Joint Committee of the two Houses had been recently sitting to inquire into the question of Parliamentary printing. The investigation of that Committee would undoubtedly embrace the points raised by his hon. Friend, and in the meantime he could assure him that every effort had been made to keep the expenditure under this Vote within proper bounds.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he wished to ask the noble Lord for some information with regard to the charge upon page 146 for the Gazettes of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. He would like to know what became of the £32,000 profit arising from these publications? Because, if it went to the printer, he was at a loss to understand why the money paid to the printer for the publication of the Gazettes was included in the account which resulted in this profit being shown. On the other hand, he did not see why it should be credited to the printer, because the estimated extra receipts amounted to only £4,690. Under the circumstances, it was difficult to see what became of this large sum of £32,000. There was another point to which he wished to call the attention of the noble Lord. Of late years the Stationery Office had obtained power to extend its operations to India; and he understood that the Calcutta tradesmen had made representations to the Government upon this subject. They protested against the recent Order of the Secretary of State directing the Sta-
  640
  tionery Department to obtain its supplies in England instead of in India as heretofore, and they described it as unjust towards India, and inconsistent with the late resolution of the Government, to encourage private trade by purchasing its stores as far as possible in the Indian market. The Order of the Secretary of State had been made apparently in ignorance of the fact that the system of buying Government stationery in India had for some time worked well, and effected a large saving. He must say that, on the face of it, the representation of the Calcutta Trades Association was a reasonable one, and if it was a fact that the system of supplying the stationery from the Indian market had resulted in a saving, as compared with the system of supply from this country, it would be very difficult to justify the alteration made by the Secretary of State for transferring the business to England. There was another point arising on this Vote to which the noble Lord some months ago promised his attention—namely, the amount of money paid for printing in the Foreign Office, the authorities at which Department had a special printing office under their control. He had pointed out on a previous occasion that the rates of payment for work done in that Department were various, and in many cases above the rates at which the work could be done by the Stationery' Office. He was certain that the Controller of the Stationery Department had made representations as to the waste of money which took place in the Foreign Office in connection with printing; and he believed the noble Lord had stated that the matter should be inquired into, and the resolution arrived at stated to the Committee.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, that the explanation of the point of the hon. Member for Queen's County with regard to the publication of the Gazettes was that the money was paid in stamps and not in cash, and did not, therefore, appear in the actual receipts paid into the Exchequer. With regard to the Foreign Office printing, his hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had stated that the question was under the careful consideration of the Foreign Office; but it must be borne in mind that, although the printing done at the Office related to matters that were confidential, there were some

  641
  classes of work of a more strictly confidential character than others; and it would, he thought, be very questionable economy to risk publicity by an attempt to get the printing executed at a smaller cost. Nevertheless, every endeavour would be made to see if anything could be saved in the Department in question.
  MR. ARTHUR ARNOLDasked for an explanation with respect to the increase of £10,000 for printing, binding, &c, for the two Houses of Parliament.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, he hoped that before long the Re-port of the Joint Committee of the two Houses upon the subject of Parliamentary printing would be in the hands of hon. Members. Although the arrangements with regard to stationery were not under his direction, the whole question was receiving the attention of the Government.
  MR. HEALYwished to ask the noble Lord a question with regard to the increase of £1,000 upon the amount paid last year to Mr. Hansard in respect of Parliamentary Reporting—an increase which he was glad to see, and about which he would simply inquire whether it was to become a permanent charge in the Estimates? He observed, also, a charge for a number of copies of the Debates purchased from Mr. Hansard, and presumed that these were distributed amongst the various Public Offices. Perhaps the noble Lord would afford some explanation upon these points? The noble Lord would be aware of the great interest taken by the public in the Irish Land Question, and that a large demand had been created for copies of the Irish Land Bill; and he wished to call the attention of the noble Lord to the fact that what he might call fancy prices were being charged for them. He would therefore suggest that, as in the case of other Parliamentary Papers, the price should be stated on the face of the Bills before Parliament, so that no extra might be exacted from the public. Then with regard to the charge for The Dublin Gazette. It was well known that this was published on Saturdays, and that it had been enacted by statute that proclamations of Irish towns and districts should appear in that Gazette. But, upon a recent occasion, when the City of Dublin was proclaimed—an event fol-
  642
  lowed by the arrest of the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon)—The Dublin, Gazette was not obtainable on the Saturday, but was kept back from the public until midnight on Sunday. Now it was something in the nature of a public scandal, and one which called for the notice of the Committee, that The Gazette office, which had only to do the cut-and-dried work of publication, should play into the hands of the authorities of Dublin Castle, by delaying the publication of this official record, in order to prevent the citizens of Dublin being made aware of the fact that their city was proclaimed. That act might be held to be illegal; and it might even follow that because The Gazette was issued on Sunday the proclamation was illegal also, and that the hon. Member for Tipperary was now lying in Kilmainham under illegal duresse. He trusted the noble Lord would make a statement on this subject on Report.
  MR. LABOUCHEREpointed out that the printing of the House of Commons cost more than that of the House of Lords. Confidential printing, conducted at the Foreign Office, was charged 26 per cent more for than when it was done elsewhere. He also wished to point out that every Member of that House received a ton weight of Blue Books every year. Within the last six years £55,000 had been saved in the expenditure on the Stationery Office, and he believed that a further sum of £10,000 per annum might be saved in that Department.
  MR. J. COWENsaid, he thought the increased expenditure with regard to Mr. Hansard's reports was fully accounted for by the increased amount of work done, and that the additional sum paid to that gentleman only compensated, and no more than compensated, for the additional labour thrown upon him. He thought that the House would be compelled very shortly to face the fact that either it must abandon Mr. Hansard's reports or pay him a larger sum of money, or that it must adopt some system of official reporting. Mr. Hansard's reports were admirably done, and the books were exceedingly well printed, and he believed their value was in no way repaid by the amount of this grant. There was no doubt that the late Chancellor of the Exchequer made an excellent bargain with Mr. Hansard, inas-

  643
  much as the payment did not at all come up to the expenditure incurred by that gentleman.
  LORD FREDERICK CAYENDISHsaid, his hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen) had explained the real reason of the increased payment to Mr. Hansard, to which the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) had referred. Representations had been made to him (Lord Frederick Cavendish), at the time the Estimates were being framed, that, owing to the increased length of the Session, the arrangements which were made by the right hon. Baronet opposite (Sir Stafford Northcote) with Mr. Hansard had not been at all profitable to that gentleman—in fact, that the arrangement caused Mr. Hansard extreme anxiety. Mr. Hansard had told him—and he had proved himself a true prophet—that, long as previous Sessions had been, he expected that this Session would be longer, and he had urged that he could not undertake the reporting of this Session unless an addition were made to his usual remuneration. It was in consequence of those representations that he (Lord Frederick Cavendish) had agreed to place in the Estimates of the present year an additional sum of £1,000. With respect to the suggestion that the cost of Bills introduced into that House should be printed on the face of the Bills, he regarded it as a very good one, and would inquire whether there was any good reason why it should not be adopted. Then, with regard to the publication of The Dublin Gazette on Sunday—
  MR. HEALY: It was delivered on Sunday. There is no evidence as to when it was published.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHthought it was quite conceivable that circumstances might arise which would delay the publication of The Gazette, and render it necessary even to infringe upon the sanctity of the Sunday by the delivery of the paper on that day. The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) had asked him whether any further reform could be effected in this Department. But he would remind the hon. Member that the Treasury had a most limited control over Parliamentary printing, which rested with Mr. Speaker.
  MR. HEALYwished to give Notice that he should again call attention to
  644
  the subject of The Dublin Gazette. He regarded the circumstance to which he had referred as raising a very important political question. With regard to the item for reporting, he wished to know whether it was intended that the extra grant of £1,000 would become a permanent charge? In asking that, he did not wish to detract from the value of Mr. Hansard's reports.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHthought this would depend upon whether they were always to have such long Sessions. He believed the original proposal would have been sufficient for an ordinary Session; but if they were always going to have Sessions of seven or eight months' duration, although he was not able to say exactly what would be done, the arrangement would require to be reconsidered.
  Vote agreed to.
  (11.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £13,196, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1882, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of Her Majesty's Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues, and of the Office of Land Revenue Records and Inrolments."
  MR. PUGHsaid, in rising to move the reduction of this Vote by the sum of £2,000, he should confine himself to matters that were of general interest alike to the people of England and Wales. He had endeavoured to get an opportunity to bring this question of Crown Lands before the House in another form, but had failed in his endeavour, although he could assure the Committee that this was owing to no fault of his own. He was extremely sorry that he had not been successful, because there were many things that he desired to lay before the House which he did not think it would be right for him to bring at length under the notice of the Committee upon the Estimates. For the latter reason he should be very brief in his observations. A Return had been issued in the beginning of the year on the Motion of the hon. Baronet the Member for Radnorshire (Sir Richard Green Price), which showed the area of the unsold Crown Lands in Wales to be 85,000 acres, and the profit derived from them, in the way of rent, to be nil. The Return went on to say

  645
  that although no profit was received from this source, there were profits received from other sources—namely, the profits of mines, rents for sporting, estrays, &c. Now, with regard to the mines he contended that they should be managed in the way that would develop them most for the good of the country; but his charge against the Department with reference to the management of mines was that their policy tended to retard the development of the mines, and so do a very serious injury to the people and to the country. The terms demanded by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests were such as the Committee would see at once no private individual would insert in his lease. It was required that on every transfer of any mine there should be payable to the Commissioners of Woods and Forests not only a quarter of the profits, but one-fourth of the nominal profit on the sale of the mine. The only reason given for that provision was that it put a stop to speculation in mines. But a moment's consideration of this matter would show that the effect was in the contrary direction, because it was no hardship to speculators who received cash for their shares to pay over one-fourth of the money to the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. The effect, however, would be very different in the case of a man who had discovered a good mine, and who agreed to take no cash at all, but only paid-up shares. Supposing he was willing to sell for £1,000 over and above his expenses, the transaction could not be carried out unless he could and would find £250 in cash to pay to the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. He maintained that a provision of that sort was calculated to retard the development of the mining resources of the country. Moreover, he had known instances in which he believed that simply in consequence of the outrageous provisions made by the Commissioners, mines had been stopped, and a large number of miners had been thrown out of work, and anyone living in the neighbourhood of mines would understand the full significance of that fact. Not only were there lead mines in Cardiganshire, which, to a large extent, for this cause remained undeveloped, but there were also gold mines in Merionethshire, from which it was a fact that the Commissioners of Woods and Forests had in one year received
  646
  no less a sum than £2,000. Here, again, great complaint was made of the conduct of the Commissioners; but he should not trouble the Committee with the details, further than by pointing out that the practice appeared to be to deal with gold and lead mines in the same arbitrary and inconsiderate manner. Now, his proposal was to relieve the Department of all trouble and responsibility with regard to the soil and surface of these 85,000 acres of land, an arrangement that would allow for the reduction of the establishment to about the extent represented by the sum by which he moved the reduction of this Vote. He contended that the present system of control could not be maintained with advantage to the country; and he believed that if the full Return asked for, showing the receipts and expenditure, had been granted, it would have appeared that a large sum of money was being paid for no useful purpose whatever. He challenged the noble Lord in charge of the Estimates to say what the rents for sporting amounted to. As far as his own experience went the Commissioners of Woods and Forests occasionally got an English gentleman to take a lease, and to pay rent for a certain number of years; but although he was aware that such instances had occurred, he had never known or heard of any such lease being renewed. It sometimes happened, also, that a neighbouring landowner took one of these leases for the purpose of better preserving his own adjoining shooting; and they were, perhaps, renewed in cases of that kind. However that might be, he felt certain that the amount of revenue derived from the letting of sporting rights was exceedingly small. Next came the revenue from estrays, the meaning of which was the profit derived from the catching of stray sheep. Upon this subject he would remark that, having gone carefully into the question, he believed that the opinion in the country was that a great deal of wrong went on under the name of taking estrays. He had never been able to ascertain in what way the revenue under this head was made up or collected; but perhaps the noble Lord would be able to say something in explanation of this matter. He believed, however, that the Committee would agree that unless the revenue derived from this source was large and import-

  647
  ant, the sooner such a system was done away with the better. Now, with regard to the policy of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. He contended that it was, as far as possible, to keep these lands in their present position, to prevent any inclosure or improvement; and he would go to the extent of saying that the Department of Woods and Forests, in preventing improvement, went a great deal further than any private landowner would dream of going. What had been the policy of the Commissioners with regard to the question of inclosure? He could trace it down from the year 1845, and even further back. He would point out to the Committee that several Inclosure Acts had been passed previous to that time, and that the share obtained by the Crown under those Acts was l–20th. In 1844 a Return was made to the House of the transactions which had taken place between the Duke of Newcastle and the Department of Woods and Forests; and by a reference to the Papers it would be found that they obtained a 20th share in respect of some of the land bought by his Grace, and 1–16th share in respect of other portions. But, coming down to later times, he would mention the case of Borth, a village in Cardiganshire, on the sea, the higher portion of which was much resorted to by tourists and strangers. The lower part was in the occupation of persons of whom he should not be wrong in saying that they were all, or nearly all, the owners of the freehold of their houses, but the possessors of no other property. The village was built on the shingle thrown up by the sea, and behind it was a morass many miles in extent. Now, it was said to be merely a question of time when this village would be washed away, unless something effectual was done to protect it—and something which the owners of the houses were not in a position to do unaided. At the back of the village there was an extent of Crown land; and, a few years ago, a movement was set on foot to get this land enclosed, part of it being set aside and sold for the purpose of raising money to protect the village from the sea. The whole of the facts were put before the Department; but, so far from doing what any private individual would have felt bound to do under the circumstances, the Commissioners simply ignored the
  648
  danger to the village, and refused to render any assistance, or to permit the inclosure, except upon the most inequitable and unjust terms. Since the time he referred to—1877—things had gone from bad to worse; and, as far as he knew, the Crown, or rather the country, had received no revenue whatever from this land. Then there was another case, in connection with about 2,000 acres of land in Carmarthenshire, called Llanllwin Mountain, which belonged to the Crown, and from which, he believed, no revenue was derived. There had been much correspondence on the subject between the people of the district and the Office of Woods and Forests. This was land much of it suitable for building purposes, and all for cultivation, and which, if so used, he had no doubt, would greatly benefit that part of the country. After the refusal of the Commissioners to accept the proportion of 1–12th, or any fixed proportion at all, they proposed that the people should appoint as arbitrator to decide the proper proportion one of several persoms whom the Woods and Forests Department were in the habit of employing. The people selected one accordingly; but that did not suit the Department, who clearly intended that the terms should not be carried out; and they, accordingly, insisted upon giving their own instructions to that gentleman, and refused to allow him otherwise to proceed. Those instructions were most unfair, and conceived entirely in the interests of the Department. It would, he believed, be absolutely impossible to carry out any inclosure upon such terms. The Crown retained the management of the land, and that, he thought, was to be deplored in the interests of the whole country. If the whole of these 85,000 acres were in closed, the portion allotted to the Crown could be sold in whatever manner the Crown thought proper, and it would be readily bought up by the miners in Wales, for the purpose of building cottages and making gardens, and inclosures for pasturage. The Department, by retaining the whole of this land, could derive no profit—but the result was that no tree could be planted, no fence could be made, and no drain or ditch could be dug. With reference to improvements, if a man wished to put up a fence, the Department acted in a way which no private

  649
  individual would adopt. The hon. Baronet the Member for Denbighshire (Sir Watkin Wynn) was the lord of many manors in North Wales, and whenever any of his tenants wished to make any improvement upon the land he was prepared to allow them to do so, upon their acknowledging his right and paying a reasonable sum by way of acknowledgment. That was how a landlord should act; but that was not the way in which the Woods and Forests Department acted. What they did in such a case was this. After a long correspondence they would allow two neighbouring owners to put up a fence between them at a nominal rent; and after the fence had been completed they would refuse any longer to receive the nominal rent agreed upon, and insist upon the payment of a rent calculated according to the improved value of the sheepwalks. In a case of which he knew, the rent charged was 2s. 6d. a-year; but before two years expired, after the fence was completed, upon which the owners had expended not less than £100, the Department, in the interests of the country, as they said, refused any longer to accept 2s. 6d. a-year, but demanded £7 or £8 a-year. There was another case where two tenants of one landlord, who had sheep-walks extending over a large tract of country, put up a fence as between themselves, without any help from the landlord. An offer was made to acknowledge the rights of the Crown, and to pay a reasonable sum in acknowledgment; but no acknowledgment was accepted, and the fence, he believed, had to be, and was actually, taken up. Were the Committee inclined to vote for the continuance of that sort of thing? It was a disgrace to any Public Department that such things were allowed to go on. He would not mention names in the matter; but he had a letter from the agent of one of the largest landowners in Cardiganshire—the agent himself also being in an independent position—stating that he had consulted with his employer, and they both felt bound to decline to furnish him with information, lest the estate should fall under the lash of the Department. He hoped some assurance would be given that this matter would be inquired into in some proper manner; and unless such an assurance could be given
  650
  he should ask the Committee to divide upon his Motion.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £11,196, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1882, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of Her Majesty's Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues, and of the Office of Land Revenue Records and Inrolments."—(Mr. Pugh.)
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHremarked, that the hon. Member had brought a series of very grave charges against the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. The hon. Member argued, in the first place, that £2,000 might easily be saved in connection with that Department. He had no doubt the hon. Member might be an economical administrator; but he had considerable doubt whether the hon. Member would be able to save £2,000 out of £1,600, which was all that was expended in Wales. In 1852 the receipts of the Department amounted to about £6,000; in 1881 they amounted to £13,770; and, in addition to that increase of Revenue, they had derived, from the sale of a large number of quit rents and other fixed rents, to the extent of £135,000, what would, amount to over £4,000 in interest. As to the charge of the hon. Member that the Department acted harshly and unjustly towards individuals brought in contact with them, and that the regulations respecting mining leases were such as to entirely check the development of mines, he found that the income had increased from £7,127 in 1868 to over £9,000 in 1881. That did not appear as if the provision with regard to mine leases had entirely checked the development of mines in Wales. With respect to that provision, he was not prepared to say whether it was wise or not; but it was introduced to check speculation in mines. He could not exactly understand the object of the hon. Member's remarks with respect to the sporting rights of the Crown. Did he wish the Crown to give those rights to certain persons free of any charge, or did he think they should obtain, as they now did, the best price they could on behalf of the public? As to sheep straying, the hon. Member seemed to suggest that the Crown appointed men for stealing sheep; but the

  651
  Crown did not appoint the men referred to. They were appointed by the Commoners, in order to prevent sheep getting on to the commons; and if those men did not rightly perform their duties, the people who should complain and deal with the matter would be the Commoners who appointed them. Then, with respect to the question of inclosures, the hon. Member said the Crown asked for too large a proportion of the value. There had been considerable difficulty in ascertaining what proportion the Crown should demand, and it was found that the amount had varied very considerably. The Woods and Forests Department had, therefore, recently adopted a rule that before they agreed to any inclosures there should be an arbitration between the Commoners and the Crown, in order to ascertain the fair proportion due to the Crown. In all such cases the Department offered to pay one-half of the cost of the inquiry, and it was found that the proportion received by the Crown in such cases had varied from one-tenth to one-half. The hon. Member had referred to one or two particular cases of hardship, and he should be extremely obliged if the hon. Member would give him the particulars of those cases, in order that he might investigate them. With regard to the lash of the Woods and Forests Department which had been alluded to, he did not believe that any such act of tyranny as that suggested would be exercised; and, at any rate, if the hon. Member would give him such information as he wanted upon this question, he would undertake that no one should suffer. Then, with regard to the final charge respecting fences, the hon. Member stated that the Crown had agreed to allow tenants to erect a fence at 2s. 6d. a-year, and had suddenly broken the bargain, and raised the rent to £7 or £8. He was bound to say that that charge was a great surprise to him, and if the hon. Member were to give him the particulars of the case he would have that also carefully investigated. The hon. Gentleman had recently changed the wording of his Amendment, which, as it stood for many weeks, proposed simply to strike off the salary of Mr. Howard, one of the Commissioners; but within the last day or two the form had been altered to a reduction of £2,000. Mr. Howard, even if all that had been
  652
  said by the hon. Member respecting him was correct, had done a large amount of work outside Wales, and it would not be fair to deprive him of all his salary. He had been suffering from a severe illness, and after he had discharged his duties for many years in the way in which he had discharged them, he (Lord Frederick Cavendish) was bound to say that he believed the charge of the hon. Member would be found impossible of proof.
  MR. PUGHsaid, he wished to make some observations upon one or two points in the speech of the noble Lord. A reflection of a very serious nature had been cast upon him with regard to the change in the form of his Motion. The Motion was originally in the form described by the noble Lord; but he was not then aware of Mr. Howard's state of health, of which he was extremely sorry to hear. He assured the Committee that nothing was further from his intention than to cast any personal reflection upon Mr. Howard. He simply put Mr. Howard's name in the Motion as being the gentleman in charge of this particular matter. He had always thought, and still believed, that had Mr. Howard been in proper health and strength these things of which he complained would not have occurred. He had not intended to refer to Mr. Howard's name at all in this debate; but as it had been brought forward by the noble Lord, he thought it right to explain why he had originally mentioned his name in connection with this matter. The noble Lord said that he (Mr. Pugh) had charged the Crown with asking for too large a share of the inclosures. He carefully guarded himself from saying that they asked for too large or too small a share, or from expressing an opinion at all upon the point, because he did not know what the proper share of the Crown was. He had no objection to the Crown having a proper share; but he thought the inclosures should be encouraged rather than discouraged. He did not know why the noble Lord should have put the particular question as to sporting rights; but what he wished was that whatever was done should be done for the benefit of the nation. His own opinion was that if these inclosures were made, and portions were sold, the Crown should not retain the sporting rights in order to harass the people with-

  653
  out receiving any substantial and adequate revenue there from. With regard to the question of sheep straying, he was at a loss to know how the Crown derived its revenue in this respect. If the noble Lord was right in saying that these men were appointed by the Commoners, he did not know how or when they were appointed; but he would make inquiries into the matter in order to understand how the revenue from this source was collected. He did not think there was anything he had said which constituted a charge against the Commissioners of having decreased the revenues of the Crown; but he did think the Crown were getting a certain sum of money which it was not for the advantage of the State to insist upon, and it would be much better for them to increase the sum which the noble Lord pointed out as the money they obtained from the sale of property, and to cease to get money by the harassing method of catching these stray sheep, and by the other methods he had referred to. As the noble Lord appeared to doubt whether such a reign of terror had been established, he would say that the letter to which he had referred contained this passage—which he would read to the Committee—
  "I am afraid any information I might give you on the above subject might bring me under the lash of the Office of Woods and Forests. Therefore, I think it better not to mention cases. I mentioned the subject to his employer, and he agrees with me."
  MR. CAINEsaid, he hoped the Government would pay no attention to the arguments advanced respecting the ground leases of mines. He had had great experience in these matters, and he knew that the conditions in the leases had had a wholesome effect in checking unwholesome speculation.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORobserved, that there was in this Vote an item of an exceptional character. At page 141, under the heading "Legal Branch," there appeared £1,200 a-year for the solicitor, and £250 for the clerk, and a further allowance of £1,080 paid by the solicitor as salaries for clerks. It appeared to him to be rather strange, and an unusual system in the Service, to farm out this clerical work, and he wished to ask what was the particular object of introducing or allowing this system in this Department, when, it had been
  654
  swept away in almost every other Department? The clerical work of the legal branch of this Department was farmed out to a solicitor, who employed such clerks as he thought fit, or put the money into his own pocket. Then there was another point to which he wished to draw attention. At the bottom of page 143 there was a note as to the Keeper of Records. He had £550 a-year, and he had also emoluments derived from fees; and there was an arrangement made with him whereby, if such fees fell short of £150, that sum was made good to him from a public fund. It was not made clear from what public fund this balance was paid, and he should like to ask the noble Lord if he could give him information on that point. He (Mr. A. O'Connor) noticed that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster groaned, as only the right hon. Gentleman could groan, when he (Mr. A. O'Connor) had risen. He would, therefore, ask the right hon. Gentleman a question as to another point.
  MR. JOHN BRIGHT: The hon. Member says I groaned. I beg to say that I did nothing of the kind.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he might have been mistaken; but if the right hon. Gentleman would remain in the House a little longer, he wished to put a question to him with regard to the property of the Duchy of Lancaster. He found in the Estimates an item showing that the Duchy of Lancaster had property in the Savoy, and that the Office of Woods was in some manner interested in the re-letting of a portion of the estates. He would ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he could inform the Committee if the arrangements had been completed, and, if so, what they were—whether the right hon. Gentleman knew anything at all about the property of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Savoy, its present condition, and whether there was or was not a rent paid to the Office of Woods? He would not ask more than two questions at once, lest they should be overlooked.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, it was found to answer well to make the solicitor responsible for the work which had been referred to earlier on, and to give him power to employ a clerk, making an allowance for such a purpose. As to the other question put

  655
  to him by the hon. Member, it was arranged some years ago that if the fees of the Keeper of Records did not reach the sum of £150 the balance would be made good. These fees and this arrangement were looked upon as a part of the salary of this official.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he was sorry he had not elicited from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster any information as to the property over which he was supposed to preside, and for which his Department sometimes paid rent to the Office of Woods, and sometimes did not, because the item this year was "nil."
  MR. JOHN BRIGHT: The matter to which the hon. Member endeavoured to call my attention does not appear to me to arise out of this Vote. The Duchy of Lancaster has property in, I suppose, 12 or 13 counties; and it is not likely that, on a summons like this, without Notice, I should be able, or even willing, to go into details with regard to that property. It may be sufficient to say that the income in respect of the property has greatly increased of late years. I do not attribute that in the least degree to anything that I myself have done; but some of my Predecessors have understood the affairs of the Duchy of Lancaster extremely well, and the property has greatly prospered. Hon. Members know that the income the Crown derives from the property is very much larger than it was a few years ago. At the same time, I must say that no one makes any complaint of the management of the affairs of the Duchy of Lancaster. Its tenants all over the country are uncomplaining and satisfied.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he had not touched upon this question.
  MR. JOHN BRIGHT: I am asked a general question as to the management of the property, and as to something which is said to be owing to the Office of Woods. I know nothing of that question; but if the matter is one that the Committee thinks it worth while to go into, and upon which the Committee desires information, if sufficient Notice is given I shall endeavour to furnish it. Upon a matter which does not come regularly under a Vote, it is customary for an hon. Member to give Notice of a question, so that a Minister may be prepared to give a satisfactory answer. As the Committee knows per-
  656
  fectly well, the expenses of the Duchy of Lancaster are not voted by Parliament, and do not come under the cognizance of Parliament.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he did not wish to make an attack on the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, but merely wished to know why a certain source of income connected with the Vote had been cut off, that source of income being the payment of rental by the Duchy of Lancaster to the Office of Woods on account of property in the Savoy. The interruption, he believed, was only temporary, depending upon the settlement or an arrangement of the details of the administration of the particular property. He had been anxious to elicit from the right hon. Gentleman who was connected with the property whether the arrangements which were in hand some time ago had been completed, and if so what they were; and also if he could tell them what the property was in the Savoy, and why the Duchy had to pay over in normal years any rent whatsoever. The thing was quite pertinent to this Vote, as the question was one of income. [Lord FREDERICK CAVENDISH dissented.] The noble Lord opposite shook his head; but it must be income as it was an extra receipt. ["No, no!"] When money was paid over by the Duchy to the Office of Woods the Office of Woods must be a gainer, and when they were going over this Vote it was perfectly fair for him to ask why a sum which generally came under it did not come under it this year.
  Question put, and negatived.
  Original Question put, and agreed to.
  (12.) £25,765, to complete the sum for the Works and Public Buildings Office.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he was sorry that he should have to rise so often on these Votes; but he should not do so if other Members would take the same trouble in going over these questions that he did. There was something so patent on the face of this Vote that he could not pass over it. It set forth a comparison between the number of officials in the Office of Works at present and those who had been employed in former years. Although this year there was a Surveyor of Inland Revenue Buildings at a salary of £650, there was

  657
  last year no officer at that salary; in fact, on looking at last year's Estimates, they found there was no Surveyor of Inland Revenue Buildings, and no charge made for him. There were 10 first class surveyors shown this year against eight last year, and £ 2,143 charge as against £ 1,734 last year. But, as a matter of fact, there were not eight last year; there were only seven, and the amount charged was not £1,734, but £1,034. Then, again, lower down, there was one temporary clerk of works shown this year as against seven last year. But there were not seven last year; as a matter of fact, there were only three. Again, for temporary assistance in the Office in China in this year's Estimate £ 350 was put down as against £ 330 last year; but there was no such item as £ 330 charged last year. In the same way the figure put down for travelling expenses for last year was inaccurate, and throughout the Vote all the figures appeared to be wrong and misleading. There was another point upon which he should like some explanation. Under this Vote the Appropriation Account showed that £45,000 was received by the Office of Works for Southwark Prison; but the Finance Account showed the item to be £45,100. It was very unfortunate that such discrepancies as this should occur.
  MR. SHAW LEFEVREsaid, the discrepancies in question were easily explained. There had been a transfer from the Inland Revenue Department to the Office of Works of certain officials. Therefore, whilst there had been no increase in the numbers, the charges were put under different heads, and the account was rendered somewhat complicated.
  Vote agreed to.
  (13.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £10,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1882, for Her Majesty's Foreign and other Secret Services."
  MR. GORSTsaid, that if he could get any support at all from any part of the Committee he intended to divide against this Vote. He did not think they could discuss it at any great length at this period of the Session; but they had discussed it some time ago in Committee under a Foreign Office Vote. It seemed
  658
  to him that the existence of such a Vote as this in their accounts was not at all creditable to the Administration, and it was a remarkable thing to him that the whole of the money granted for Secret Service appeared to be spent every year. He found it very difficult to believe that it could be necessary to spend the whole of this money; but, at any rate, if such a charge was to be made for the Public Service of the country, the Ministers of the various Departments which were concerned in the expenditure ought, at least, to certify that the money had been spent, and that it had been spent on the Public Service. He believed they were told, when the matter was last under discussion, that the money was only accounted for by the Treasury, and that the Ministers of the other Departments were not called upon to certify as to payments made, and that it would be inconsistent with the character of the Service if that was done which the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir William Harcourt) seemed to think was done.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The Ministers of the various Departments do certify.
  MR. GORSTsaid, he did not believe it. The Vote, as it stood, was objectionable; and if it were to be allowed at all, Ministers should be required to certify that the money had been spent in the Public Service. He did not believe the Secret Service money was at all necessary; and if any hon. Members would support him he would take a vote upon the subject.
  MR. BROADHURSTsaid, he wished this Vote could be got rid of altogether. It was a source of great uneasiness and regret to many people that it should exist at all. Many working men believed that a large portion of this money was spent amongst very violent agitators, who were sent to take part in working men's political and other movements for the purpose of leading working men to extremes. ["No, no!"] Well, he was only saying that which he knew to be a very general opinion amongst working men, and he was not stating whether or not that opinion was correct. It was very generally believed that the late Administration was seriously misled as to the state of public opinion by the expenditure of a part of this Secret Service money. This was a very gene-

  659
  ral opinion; and he was bound to say that he, at that time, had himself shared in it. There were men in London who, it was perfectly well known, forced their company upon workmen and pushed themselves into every movement that was started. These people were always making the most extreme and the most ridiculous proposals in order to lead practical men astray, and the opinion was that these persons were very frequently fed out of the Secret Service money. Well, then there was another very general impression abroad amongst a large number of the electors, and it was this—that Members of Parliament received pay for attending and sitting on Committees and Royal Commissions—[Laughter]—and this, he could assure the Committee, was really a serious matter, and he, unfortunately, had been a victim to the ridiculous belief. The opinion outside was that Members of Parliament got five or six guineas a-day for sitting upon Committees, and that those who had been unfortunate in not having been placed on a sufficient number of Committees during a year had the deficiency made up to them out of the Secret Service money. [Laughter.] This, no doubt, appeared to be very ridiculous; but he was perfectly sincere in assuring the Committee that this opinion prevailed. Many electors, to his knowledge, had said—"If this man was not going to Parliament to make something out of it, would he come amongst us to spend so much money for the purpose of getting returned?" This was a very general impression, and a very distressing case was brought under his notice less than 14 days back—in fact, it came into his office in the Strand. A friend of his came to him and congratulated him that, since he had been in Parliament, from the various secret modes of paying Members of Parliament, he had received sufficient money to enable him to set up a carriage and pair and four servants. Well, this statement had caused him a considerable amount of regret—in the first place, because of the terrible state of ignorance it displayed amongst a large number of people; but he was bound to admit that by far the greater cause of regret was the fact that it was not true. For these reasons, and many other reasons which he did not consider it necessary to detail to the Committee at this time
  660
  of night, he would suggest that this very extraordinary and suspicious item in our National Expenditure should be got rid of. If it were absolutely necessary that secret information should be obtained, he would pay for it by some other means than by putting down the lump sum of £30,000 a-year. He hoped the noble Lord would be in a position to tell them next year that he was able to abolish the Vote altogether, so that this great cause of suspicion might be removed from the minds of the electors.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) said that, in his opinion, the Ministers who expended this money ought to be personally responsible, and ought to certify that it was spent in the Public Service. I stated across the House that they do so at present; whereupon the hon. and learned Member, with that courtesy and good taste he always exhibits, replied—"I don't believe it." I should have imagined that any man who has sat in this House for any length of time could not have been ignorant of one of the most elementary points of detail in connection with the discharge of Ministerial functions here. I should have thought that everyone knew that the Minister who is responsible for the expenditure of any portion of the Secret Service money makes a declaration in writing, stating that he hereby certifies that the actual amount which has been expended by himself for Secret Service is so many pounds; and on the strength of that certificate the Comptroller and Auditor General certifies to the correctness of the account.
  MR. GORSTasked what the right hon. Gentleman was quoting from?
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I am quoting from the certificate that every Minister signs, and that which I should have thought would have been a matter of the commonest knowledge in the House of Commons. The Heads of Departments are personally responsible for the appropriation of the Secret Service money. With regard to what my hon. Friend behind me (Mr. Broadhurst), who spoke in a very different tone on this matter, said, I am glad that we should have had the opportunity of revealing some popular mistakes with regard to this Secret Service money; and I can only avail myself of this opportunity of explaining to the country,

  661
  through him, that the method he has described is not exactly the way in which the Secret Service money is employed. I am not here to answer for what the late Government did; and for ourselves I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman what is done with the Secret Service money, because if I did I should destroy the goose that lays the golden egg. The very object of having Secret Service money is that it shall be spent without anybody knowing what is done with it. All Governments have a fund at their disposal for Secret Services, and they spend it, as we do, on the public good and the public safety. The House of Commons places this limited sum at the disposal of the Executive Government, on the responsibility of the Ministers who spend it. All I can say is, and it is all I ought to say under the circumstances, that I believe this is a fund which is necessary for every Government to have at its disposal, and that the public would suffer very severely, and probably very dangerously, if there were no such fund capable of being spent upon the protection of life and property in the country.
  MR. DILLWYNsaid, he regretted as much as anyone the necessity for such a fund as this. He had, it was true, always voted for it, but he had always thought that it should in some way be qualified; and he hoped that in addition to the assurance which had been given by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary it would be stated that no part of the fund was expended in raising the salaries of officials as was formerly the case. He thought it most desirable that the Committee should have an assurance that the Secret Service money was expended for purposes altogether outside the Public Service; and if that were added to the declaration which had been made, it would be very satisfactory to himself and many hon. Members.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHreminded the hon. Member for Swansea that the Resolution of the House upon the Motion made by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) on a former occasion had been virtually adopted by Her Majesty's Government some years ago, when it was decided that none of the Secret Service Fund should be paid in salaries. Since that time assurances had been frequently given that no official salaries were paid out of the Vote.
  MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, he had no particular objection to the Vote, nor did he think that the sum of £ 33,000 was too large to be intrusted to the Government in the shape of Secret Service money. But he would like the noble Lord to say, in addition to his statement that the system of raising salaries had been stopped, that the system of giving pensions from this fund had also been discontinued. He was glad to hear the noble Lord say it had, and he now asked whether the whole of this £ 33,000 was spent, or whether it did not often occur that a portion of it was returned? It was improbable that the whole of the money was spent, and if it were not so, he thought the Estimates ought to show the amount actually expended.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he believed it was necessary for the Government to have this money, because he thought that the present Government would not have been able to do what had been done in Ireland without it. Of this amount of £ 33,000, the greater portion was paid over to the Foreign Office, the Secretaries of State for the other Departments receiving portions of it, for which they gave their receipts and certificates. He believed there were instances in which the Foreign Office drew the whole of the money. The year before last there was a sum of more than £5,000 left in their hands which was returned to the Exchequer, and last year there was an amount of between £1,000 and £2,000 left undrawn. But it did not follow that because a Secretary of State drew a certain sum of money in any particular year and certified for it that he expended the whole of it in the course of that year; and certainly in the Foreign Office it was the practice, as disclosed before the Committee of Public Accounts, for the Foreign Secretary to draw what money he thought fit year by year, and to have a constantly increasing balance in his hands, so that at the time he left Office he had. invariably a considerable sum to hand back to the Treasury; and it was found useful for that Department to have this money available, because it was always liable to be drawn upon by the other Secretaries of State, as banker for the Secret Service money. He was quite at a loss to understand what was the use made of the Secret Service money abroad, unless it was applied to

  663
  the manufacture of infernal machines in America. But the Prime Minister had admitted last year that a sum of money was spent in Ireland, although he added that he did not think it was a very large one. Now, he objected entirely to the expenditure of the Secret Service money in Ireland. It was very well perhaps to spend it in America; but to spend it in Ireland was something against which Irish Members might be reasonably expected to protest, because they knew that out of this fund had come, over and over again in past years, the wages of blood, which had kept the regular Corydons and others in the pay of the Government. Of course, the Government would not be likely to allow an investigation to take place as to the amount expended in Ireland; but hon. Members might be permitted to ask them to state, in addition to what appeared on the Estimates as the amount of Secret Service money actually drawn under this Vote and from the Consolidated Fund, what was the distribution of it as between the different Departments. Surely the right hon. Gentleman would not object to tell the Committee what amount was allocated to the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office, and what was the amount which he himself drew for the purposes for which he required it. If this information were given, hon. Members could, by taking into account the money paid back into the Exchequer, ascertain the amount spent for various purposes in Ireland. He had made this appeal last year, and he now made it again, because he did not see that there was any reasonable ground for refusing the information asked for. It was also desirable to know what was the amount of the Secret Service money spent out of the Kingdom as well as within it. The Prime Minister had stated last year that £ 5,000 of the money had been left untouched, and that the expenditure under the head of Secret Service money was a constantly decreasing item, and he added that he hoped in a short time not only to reduce the amount of the Vote, but to get rid of it altogether, because there would always remain the £10,000 out of the Consolidated Fund. In consequence of that statement, he felt there would be a considerable reduction in the Vote of this year; and he must express his surprise at seeing the same amount asked for now
  664
  as was the case 12 months ago, when the Prime Minister made the declaration.
  MR. GORSTsaid, it was not an uncommon thing for the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, when he got up to lecture hon. Members, entirely to misunderstand their point. His complaint was not that Ministers did not make a declaration, but that Parliament was not asked to vote the amount required by the various Departments upon the statement of the Minister of each Department that so much was required for the service of the country. The Committee were asked to vote a sum of money en bloc which was not accounted for, the Treasury being in ignorance of the way the money was used by the Ministers of the various Departments.
  MR. HEALYasked whether it was out of this Vote or the Metropolitan Police Vote that the money came which the right hon. Gentleman found it necessary to expend in watching the houses of Irish Members?
  MR. BIGGARsaid, that, speaking as a Representative of the taxpayers of the Three Kingdoms, he was opposed to voting money for Secret Service purposes, because he believed the Government got no corresponding value in return. It was true there were the infernal machines; but these caused only a temporary excitement. The police in Ireland and in this country knew very well that information that was of substantial value could be obtained in the ordinary way; but if special means were taken the information was always of a thoroughly unreliable nature. Therefore, speaking from the ratepayers' point of view, he would say that no fault could be found with the expenditure of this money if true information were thereby obtained; but, unfortunately, the general experience was that the value of information was not in direct ratio to the amount paid for it—the greater the bribe, the greater the inducement to give erroneous information. On the question as to how this money was distributed amongst the various Departments, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would accede to the wish expressed by his hon. Friend the Member for Queen's County (Mr. A. O'Connor), because if the information were given Irish Members would be able to make some guess as to the man-

  665
  ner in which it was expended, and what was the value or the pretence of value received in return. On the whole, he did not think the Committee would be justified in expending the taxpayers' money upon such a fund.
  MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he thought the Government were bound to give the Committee some explanation with regard to the allocation of the Secret Service Fund. It was all very well to say that Ministers certified in a certain solemn way the amounts drawn by their respective Departments; but that hardly made the Committee wiser as to the objects on which it was expended. The hon. Member for Queen's County (Mr. A. O'Connor) had pointed out that the Foreign Office drew by far the largest amount; but he had also added that the Foreign Office in respect of the Secret Service money was a sort of bank on which the other Departments drew. He certainly thought the Government might inform the Committee what the Foreign Office really spent in obtaining information. But, looking to the notorious fact that this Department had had no information on any subject of importance for a long time back, it could not be by the Foreign Office that the Secret Service money was spent. He quite agreed that the Army and Navy were not fitting spheres for the expenditure of the fund; and, therefore, he must come down by a process of natural selection to the Home Office and the Office of the Chief Secretary for Ireland. With regard to the Home Office, did the promotion of bye-elections enter into the question of the allocation of Secret Service money? No doubt, from the point of view of the Government of the day the gaining of a bye-election was a matter of interest, and in the absence of information he certainly did not see why the Home Office should not be suspected of such an application of the fund. Then there was no doubt that a considerable portion of the fund went into the Irish Department; and when they looked on the number of arrests, and the probability that those arrests were purchased for money down, Irish Members had an additional reason for demanding additional information. It was of no use that the Secretary to the Treasury got up in a state of virtuous excitement when he heard these accusations charged against the Irish Department, because that Department had used
  666
  the money unworthily, and would continue to do so until the connection between the two countries was severed. Under Ministers quite as Constitutional and quite as virtuous as the present Administration Secret Service money had been spent in Ireland in debauching public and private opinion, in the suborning of evidence, and in the entrapping of men by false charges. It did not follow that Gentlemen sitting in that House had any direct hand in transactions of this kind; but as long as every detail was kept back from public men, and as long as every clue was refused to the Representatives of the people, the Chiefs of Departments were exposed to the misuse of this fund by subordinates to which it was now necessary to refer more particularly. They had heard in previous Sessions of Parliament of Sergeant Talbot, the informer, probably rewarded out of the Secret Service Fund, who entrapped Irishmen by scores for the purpose of denouncing them and bringing them to judgment, even adding to the glee of the Chief Secretary of the day, who was regarded as a defender of the Constitution on the strength of the arrests made by Sergeant Talbot and his allies. Again, Mr. Porter, after his 10 years' service as magistrate in Dublin, stated in his reminiscences that one of the stock institutions of the Dublin Castle Administration in Ireland was the maintenance of a mock Court House, in which, before mock juries, the Constabulary witnesses were trained in giving the evidence which they would have to repeat when the real trial came on. In the house near Ship Street Barracks, there were juries, consisting of constables, barristers, informers, and a paid cross-examiner to examine the latter, so that they might have their catechism by heart when they came forward to swear away the lives of Irishmen afterwards. Now, all that must have cost something. The house near Ship Street Barracks was not obtained for nothing. Money must have been spent on the rent of it, and something more in the maintenance of the room which was the scene of that mock tribunal, as well as upon the mock jury and all engaged in the work of priming witnesses. By whom was that money paid? It could not have come out of the pockets of private individuals, because, not-

  667
  withstanding the affectation of self-sacrifice which persons of that sort were wont to display, no one had ever suspected that class of being profuse of their money in Ireland. The money must therefore have come from another source, and it was inevitable to conclude that it was from the Secret Service Fund, at the disposal of the Castle, that the mock trial, and all those scandalous proceedings, were paid for, which Mr. Porter had described in his reminiscences. There was the notorious fact that the Secret Service money, in the management of the Castle, had been spent for the most abominable objects—the forging of testimony, the maintenance of a system of terrorism by accusations and charges of every kind, and the swearing away of the lives and liberties of Irishmen, for the general purpose of keeping up a rotten system of government in Ireland. It did not occur to any Irish Member to accuse the right hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) of any participation in such proceedings—his innocence of Irish affairs being sufficient to exculpate him from that charge. But the work had gone on generation after generation, and he was certain it was going on at that moment. The compilation of the famous Circular reminded the Committee of the sort of work that was being done in Ireland. The Chief Secretary felt bound to defend that Circular; but he knew that in his heart of hearts he disapproved it.
  THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member cannot discuss Circulars addressed to constables in Ireland upon the Vote for the Secret Service money.
  MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he was alluding to the Circular in question as illustrative of the kind of objects on which Secret Service money in Ireland was expended; but if the Chairman thought this reference was out of Order, he would proceed no further with his observations upon that subject. He felt he had more than made out his case for an explanation on the part of the Government as to the allocation of the majority of the Secret Service money, which, he believed, was spent in Ireland. The demands made upon the Chief Secretary had been granted by him in the firm belief that they were required. Sub-inspectors, magistrates, informers, &c, had been paid; and he
  668
  should like a detailed statement of the amounts expended in maintaining the authority of the Crown in Ireland, an authority which was maintained by such detestable means as those employed.
  MR. HEALYcondemned the course adopted by the Government with respect to the Secret Service Funds, and asked, on behalf of himself and his Colleagues, not as pryers or busy bodies, but as the Representatives of a large section of the public, for some satisfactory information on the subject. He did not ask for details, but wished to know how much was spent in England and Ireland and abroad, so that they might be able to judge whether the application of the money was proportionate to the amount asked for. He did not think this was asking too much. He was glad to see the Home Secretary in his place when this important matter was before the Committee, for he felt sure the right hon. Gentleman knew a great deal about the allocation of this fund. They were accustomed to see the virtuous indignation of the Home Secretary; but that was surpassed by his placidity, when he calmly said he could give no information about this matter. He would ask the noble Lord to state whether the Foreign Office did draw upon this fund.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, that the precise object of the House in granting Secret Service money was that the manner in which it was employed should be kept secret. It was intended that there should be no clue whatever to its application; but the House intrusted the Government with this money, believing that they would not improperly employ it. To give the information asked for would be the first step towards destroying the secrecy of the fund. The Head of the Department was responsible for the proper disposal of this fund, and the Head of the Department expended the money secretly under a high sense of the responsibility vested in him by the House when it voted the money for this fund.
  MR. R. POWERregretted the absence of the support formerly accorded to the protest against this Vote by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) and other hon. Members, who, by a curious accident, had been transferred to the other side of the House. The Home Secretary had misunderstood the

  669
  opposition on this occasion. What they wanted to know was, how much of this money was spent in England, how much in Scotland, and how much in Ireland? He admitted that it was perfectly right for the Government, by a system of spies and informers, to demoralize other countries for the purpose of obtaining information; but he strongly objected to that system being carried on in Ireland, and to the people of his country being demoralized by the amount of Secret Service money which was spent there, when it was only granted for the purpose of obtaining information about foreign countries. They had reason to know what Secret Service money had done for Ireland. They knew the number of men whom it had made dishonest. They knew how it was worked. They had only to look back on the history of agitations in that country to see the way in which every public movement had been destroyed. He need only allude to a man who was referred to by the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell)—that was Talbot. By professing his anxiety to sever the connection between England and Ireland, he had gained the confidence of the people in Ireland, and by taking the Sacrament of the Roman Catholic Church, and by tearing out of his Prayer Book the prayer for the Queen, he had convinced the people of his earnestness; and yet all the while he was receiving Secret Service money from the English Government. He (Mr. Power) challenged the Government to deny these things. He got the Secret Service money for doing these things; and, if anything were necessary to prove how badly this Secret Service system acted in Ireland, he had only to point to the speech made by the hon. Member for Carlow, who said that in 1847 his father, Sir John Gray, who was intimate with the Young Ireland Party, became acquainted with Barney Malone, who was sanguine as to a rising being effected. He sought to induce Sir John Gray and others to join him; but, on looking through some papers, Sir John Gray found that Malone had been in the receipt of a pension since 1838, and that in 1848 he was doing some work which, but for the accidental discovery of these papers, might have entangled Sir John Gray and others. That was the state of things in 1848. Talbot's evidence had proved the way in which this money was
  670
  spent in 1867; and, for his own part, he believed that it was spent very much in the same way to-day. He believed there were informers all over Ireland. The Government knew reasonably suspected persons. They thought they had reasonable suspicion, and that they knew more about the movement in Ireland than the Irish people themselves knew; but he challenged the Chief Secretary to get up and say why he had proclaimed Waterford County and Waterford City, when they were declared by the Chairman of the county to be in a quiet condition.
  THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member is going beyond the Question of the Secret Service Vote.
  MR. R. POWERsaid, he did not think he was going beyond that question, because Secret Service money had a great deal to do with the proclamation of Waterford. But his principal objection to this Vote was that it created distrust in every official of the Government. The Government seemed to have no confidence in any portion of the people of Ireland, except the miserable wretches who crept into the Castle in Dublin and whispered into the ears of the Government information and statements which they dared not make in public—information and statements which the Chief Secretary would not dare to get up and make, because he knew that abundant proof could be brought that they were false. The Committee was asked to consent to vote this money; but for what? For men who made it their business—and a very good business it was from their point of view—to undermine the nationality of Ireland, and to send up false Reports to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and who, in many instances, sent hundreds of men to prison, and sometimes even to the gallows. If the Chief Secretary could get up that night and state that he had taken the arbitrary course he had pursued—if he could get up and say that it was not from secret information that he proclaimed certain cities, or towns, or counties in Ireland, if he could get up and say that that was not the result of the Secret Service money, he would give the right hon. Gentleman credit for more courage than he had displayed on former occasions.
  SIR R. ASSHETON CROSS: It seems to me that a great number of hon. Mem-

  671
  bers from Ireland object to Secret Service money being given at all, and on this ground—that they think part of this money is spent in Ireland, and that it is improperly spent. They have asked a great many questions of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State and of the Chief Secretary. Those are questions which it would be impossible for any Government to answer. If you object to any Secret Service money being given, vote against it; but if the money is voted as Secret Service money, it is absolutely impossible for the Government to answer any questions upon it. And it is not whether it has been spent in this way or in that; but you cannot come to a general category as to whether it is spent and in what way, and thus nibble at the questions which Parliament says cannot be answered. If you cannot trust the Government, vote against the money; but it is absolutely impossible for the Government to give the slightest clue so long as it is voted as Secret Service money.
  MR. ANDERSONobjected to the Home Secretary's statement that Members voted for this money because they trusted the Government. He took exception to that description of hon. Members' motives for voting upon the question. He had always voted against it, and a great many other Members had voted against it, simply because they considered it a discreditable item in the finances of the country, and wished to see it disappear altogether from the Estimates. He believed he could name five or six Gentlemen who were now on the Treasury Bench who used to entertain that identical opinion, and voted against the money on former occasions. He agreed entirely with the intention of the Irish Members to vote against it, although he did not agree in their reasons for doing so.
  MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYsaid, he was not surprised that no information was obtained from the Government, for, of course, the very nature of Secret Service money was that it should be expended in secret; and he should like to know how the Government could carry on their present system in Ireland if the House knew how the money was spent? He did not think there was a statesman on the Treasury Bench with sufficient courage to defend the expenditure of some of this money. Probably the Mi-
  672
  nisters themselves did not know, and did not care to know, how it was expended. It was spent by the understrappers, and only on rare occasions was the expenditure made known to the chief authorities. In 1848, it was proved in a Court of Law, on the trial of Smith O'Brien, that Secret Service money was deliberately given to men to induce them to become members of Smith O'Brien's organization, to represent themselves as ardent sympathizers, and to attend the meetings; and part of their plan was to urged the Young Ireland Confederation to change itself from an open Association to a secret Society for the promotion of revolution. One of the leading men in that shameful service had stated upon oath in Court that he rose to great favour with some of the younger men, and endeavoured to induce them to change their organization into a secret Association the better to prepare for armed rebellion, and that it was only through the advice of the leaders that his most odious purpose was not carried out. He stated that he did all he could to urge on rebellion, and mentioned the names of some young men whom he had gained over. He was paid for that out of the Secret Service money by the Government. Then there was the case in which the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland employed one of the most infamous papers to write down the Irish patriots and to write up the cause of law and order in Ireland, and that was a paper which lived by levying black mail on private individuals, and making abominable charges against them if they did not pay. A leading Irish lawyer—afterwards, he believed, Lord Chancellor—was accused of most odious and infamous crimes because he refused to pay. When the Rebellion of 1848 came to an end, a man who professed to be a patriot went round among the young men who were known to have been sympathizers in the movement, in order to get up a sworn secret association for the purpose of rebellion. He succeeded in organizing a very considerable secret association, the members of which he swore in to join him at a given day in rebellion. He was a police spy paid from the Secret Service money; and he (Mr. M'Carthy) thought he could hardly give stronger instances than that of the odious perversion of the funds by the Government to get up a rebellion

  673
  amongst young and inexperienced men for the purpose of crushing it. No doubt, very much the same thing had been going on ever since. Many other informers were known who, on many occasions, had not only watched what was taking place, but had taken part in the movement and fomented it. Such men were paid out of the Secret Service money. If these were not reasons enough to discredit the whole system in the eyes of the world, he knew of no reasons that could be brought to bear on the minds of human beings. They could not expect the Government to say what they gave these men to get up agitations, or to teach the police how to suspect their neighbours; but if they would state generally how much of this money was appropriated for the benefit of Ireland, even that information would make it more difficult to maintain that system by a Parliament which still claimed to be free.
  MR. LEAMYsaid, this Secret Service money was the only means by which the Government could maintain its supremacy over Ireland. The present Liberal Government placed more faith in the spy than in honest men; but he could not understand what objection there was to stating how much of the money was spent in Ireland. The Home Secretary said he could not give a clue; but suppose it were stated that £ 34,000 were spent in Ireland, how would that give any clue to the people who received it, or to its purpose? They who were acquainted with the whole history of the country knew very well how the money was spent. The informers were subsidized, and were living on blood-money, as they always had been, and they were the trusted servants of the Government. Malony, to whom allusion had been made, had, in 1848, been living on blood-money for 50 years, and leading men to the gallows. He did not care to know how this money was spent abroad. The present Government probably required to spend money in foreign countries, in order to overthrow a Power they could not meet in the field. But, surely, there could not be any objection to stating what was now asked. As long as the British Government ruled over Ireland there would, he supposed, be this Secret Service money on the Estimates; but the Irish Members would oppose it, and much
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  more strongly than hon. Members opposite seemed to think.
  MR. CALLANsaid, it would be advisable for the Chief Secretary or the Home Secretary to make some statement as to the amount of money spent on these purposes in Ireland. He was one of those who were horrified the other day to read the statement which appeared in the London papers with regard to the bogus explosion business—he said "the bogus explosion business," in the presence of the Home Secretary, advisedly. The affair seemed to have frightened the right hon. Gentleman (Sir William Harcourt), whose courage evidently was not to be measured by his inches. No doubt, the right hon. Gentleman considered himself the most courageous person in the House of Commons; but he (Mr. Callan) did not believe he would be impenetrable if wrapped up in cotton wool, or even in cement. In Ireland they were persuaded that the outrage was altogether a manufactured affair, for the purpose of creating a prejudice against the people of that country in the minds of the English people. But a great deal of the objectionable surroundings would be removed if they had an assurance from the right hon. Gentleman that none of the Secret Service money had been spent in America for the purpose of bringing about this mysterious business. The Irish people firmly believed that these outrages were paid for. It was believed that these attempts were a safe investment, and that the money came from England, and was not subscribed by the poor labourers and dairymaids of America. The English Secret Service money was a much safer nest to get the egg from than the pocket of the poor labourer or dairymaid. It would be satisfactory to hear that nothing had been paid for purposes of this kind out of the Secret Service money; and he should think it would be to the interest of the Home Secretary himself to deny that he had ever sanctioned the expenditure of money in Ireland or America for the purpose of getting up bogus outrages. He could not forget the case of the infamous informer Talbot, who went to a Catholic church and absolutely received the Sacrament in order to spy upon the people, and who was paid for so doing by the Chief Secretary. Why should it be thought that it was the

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  landed proprietors who had done that? There was nothing superior, as far as he could see, in a wool-stapler over a landlord—there was no superiority in the decaying trade of a wool-stapler over the decaying trade, in Ireland, of a landed proprietor. They had the case estalbished of a constable receiving the Sacrament as a spy, and there was no reason why he should not have been employed by the Chief Secretary, and not the landed proprietors.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid, this was not the first time the matter had been before the House. In 1879 there had been a Motion to reduce the Vote by £5,000, and in the division which took place there voted for the reduction—"Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, Mr. Leonard Henry Courtney, Sir Arthur Divett Hayter, Mr. John Holms, Mr. Osborne Morgan, Mr. Anthony John Mundella, Mr. George OttoTrelveyan," and the Tellers for the Ayes were "Mr. Rylands and Sir Charles W. Dilke." And in the interesting document in which he found these names so placed he failed to find amongst the Noes the name of the Home Secretary (Sir William Harcourt). [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: I was out of the House at the time.] One would have thought that a pillar of the Constitution like the right hon. Gentleman would have made it his duty to support the right hon. Gentleman who preceded him in Office in a matter of this kind. But he wished to know whether the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain), or the Secretary to the Admiralty (Mr. Trevelyan), or the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Courtney), would go with some hon. Members in opposing the Vote? With regard to the last mentioned hon. Member (Mr. Courtney), he did not know whether his convictions on this matter, as in regard to the Transvaal, were of an equally mutable character; but hon. Members had a right to ask whether he and his Colleagues who had gone into the Lobby against the Vote in 1879 were ready to swallow it now. He had listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman (Sir William Harcourt), and it appeared to him that the right hon. Gentleman had altogether wandered away from the question at issue. What he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) wished to ask more particularly was this—whether any of this Secret Service money was spent on
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  elections in England? He did not state that such was the case on his own authority; but he heard it said, on very good authority, that Secret Service money, which was voted in the interest of the State and for the protection of the State, was actually spent at elections. He did not know whether it was spent by both Parties alike. ["No, no!"] Well, if it was not, or if his information upon the subject generally was erroneous, no doubt it would be denied by the Treasury. At any rate, he wished to be satisfied on the point. The noble Lord (Lord Frederick Cavendish) said he should not be appealed to for any information on this subject, as it had nothing to do with him; but, as a matter of fact, the Treasury had to give the money to the Heads of the Departments. The Treasury knew how much money it gave to the Heads of the Departments—the noble Lord knew very well how much the Home Secretary, for instance, had asked for. The noble Lord was one of the purse-bearers of the nation, and when the Home Secretary wanted money the noble Lord did not give him a blank cheque. He would give the right hon. Gentleman a certain sum of money, for which the right hon. Gentleman would certify; therefore, the noble Lord could tell them the exact amount which each Department received, if he thought proper. He saw the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) was not in his place, and some hon. Members were inclined to regret that circumstance; but, as far as he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) was concerned, he did not regret it, as he believed the hon. Member, if he had been present, would have opposed the Vote on grounds utterly fallacious. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) did not oppose it on the grounds stated by the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson); he believed that some of that Secret Service money was absolutely necessary. [An hon. MEMBER: There is none spent in America.] Well, he did not know whether or not there was any spent in America, but perhaps America might be able to do without it, as the form of government in America was infinitely better than that in this country. In England, however, they could not do altogether without Secret Service money, as it was part of the paraphernalia of Monarchal government. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) could not support the abolition of

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  the Vote, as he did not believe in the visionary schemes which had been referred to by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen. He had a right to ask whether any of that money was spent in Ireland, especially as they knew perfectly well that there was no necessity for the expenditure of a penny of it in that country. Every penny of it spent in Ireland was used dishonestly. No doubt, it was a ridiculous thing to ask the Home Secretary how the money was spent; the right hon. Gentleman was at the head of a Department that had a most serious and perilous responsibility attaching to it, and it would be preposterous for them to demand that he should open to the public eye the secrets—the necessary secrets—of his Office. But he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) defied any Minister to get up and say that he could spend a penny of Secret Service money in Ireland for an honest and legitimate purpose. If they could not establish the fact that Secret Service money was necessary in that country, then they had a right to affirm the alternative proposition—namely, that none of the money should be spent there. Would the Chief Secretary get up and tell them that he did not spend a penny of Secret Service money in Ireland? He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) should not go into the Lobby against the Vote for Secret Service money on general principles. Though he could not support the Vote, he, at any rate, would not go into the Lobby against it.
  MR. LEAMYsaid, that as they had not received the assurance they demanded from the right hon. Gentleman, and also considering the lateness of the hour, he should move that the Chairman report Progress.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Mr. Leamy.)
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The hon. Member opposite (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) has put a question to me which ought to be answered—he has asked whether any of the Secret Service money is spent upon elections. I answer that query in the negative. I quite understand the objection some people may have, on general principles, to the voting of Secret Service money. The hon. Gentleman who spoke last but one said that he objected to Secret Service money being
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  spent in Ireland; but that matter has already been discussed in this House, and, therefore, I hope that we shall now be allowed to go to a division. The hon. Member who next spoke moved to report Progress, because no answer had been given to the question; but he must remember that, earlier in the debate, I gave my reasons why I could not answer such a question. The Secret Service money is a Vote on which, from its very nature, no explanation can be given; therefore, no amount of reporting Progress or obstructive divisions will have the effect desired by hon. Members. Either this Secret Service Vote is right or it is wrong. If it is wrong, then vote against it; but if it is right, it is impossible for the Government to give any explanation as to the amount spent by each Department, or as to the places or the. manner in which it is spent. I hope, under the circumstances, hon. Members having fully stated their grievances, we may now be allowed to go to a division.
  MR. GORSTsaid, that after what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman he had no doubt that no part of the Secret Service money which was spent in connection with his Department was spent upon elections; but did the right hon. Gentleman know how that portion of the Secret Service money which was not spent in the Department over which he presided was allocated? If the right hon. Gentleman did, then he (Mr. Gorst) was perfectly satisfied; but if he did not know how much was spent in other Departments, perhaps the Secretary to the Treasury would get up and give them an assurance, as the right hon. Gentleman had done, that no part of the Secret Service money was devoted to election expenses?
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, that the whole of the allotment was under the direction of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I am very much surprised that the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Gorst), whom I should have thought knows as much about elections as anyone, should have asked this question. I should have thought that he would have been able to speak of the practice of the late Government on this matter. For the present Government, however, I will take upon myself the responsibility of saying that in none of the Departments is any

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  Secret Service money spent upon elections. I will go further than that, and say that for many years in this country no Administration has ever spent a single farthing of this money on elections.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORappealed to his hon. Friend (Mr. Leamy) to withdraw his Motion for reporting Progress. They had elicited this fact from the Government, that not only was some of the Secret Service money spent abroad, but some of it was spent at home. That, in fact, appeared from the very words of the Vote itself—"foreign and other Secret Service money." On former occasions they had heard that a portion of the money was spent in Ireland. The Government was able to deny that any of it was spent on electioneering; but if that were so, they had all the more money to spend on purposes, perhaps, even worse than electioneering. The right hon. Gentleman said the Treasury knew nothing about the way in which the money was allocated; but, from the document he had in his hand, it seemed that the head under which these payments would be accounted for was the Treasury. Hon. Members had, therefore, naturally addressed queries to the Treasury; but having made the protest which they had made, he thought it was hardly necessary to delay going to the division which must be taken on the Vote. In the division they would be able to judge of the sincerity of certain Members of the Government who, while out of Office, went into the Lobby against the Vote, but who, now that their Party were in Office, would vote in favour of it. The division would be an interesting one, and he could only regret that the Chief Secretary, after sitting in his place and hearing, over and over again, as he had done, most distinct and pointed charges against the Department over which he presided, thought it consistent with his self-respect, and with a proper discharge of the duties of his Office, to sit in silence, and to admit, by his tacit and silent demeanour, that there was really no answer to be made.
  MR. W. E. FORSTER: I hope the Committee will not suppose for a moment that I admit any one of these charges.
  MR. R. POWERsaid, the hon. Member (Mr. Leamy) ought to withdraw his proposal on one condition—namely, that
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  the Chief Secretary for Ireland would state how much of this Secret Service money was spent in Ireland. As Irish. Representatives, they had a distinct right to know that; and unless they obtained the necessary information, they were quite justified in opposing the Vote by every means in their power.
  MR. O'CONNOR POWERsaid, that during the various discussions that had taken place on this Vote he had been glad to notice that a large number of English Members had alternated with Irish Members in protesting against it. He did not know whether the Home Secretary would appeal to them to have confidence in the Government, seeing that there were so many distinguished Members of the House who opposed the expenditure of this money by the late Government in the present Administration. He supposed it would be argued that now the Government were strengthened by having these Gentlemen in it, there was every guarantee that the Secret Service money would not be expended upon any of the odious purposes upon which it used to be spent. He had been puzzling his brains to find out on what ground right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite would defend their change of front. Although there was some ground for confidence in having these Gentlemen in the Government, those who were still independent Members of the House were not exempted from the duty of protesting against this Vote on certain grounds. It had always seemed to him that a Minister rising to address the Committee on this Vote would do some public service by giving some assurance that the money would not be applied to any of the purposes which had been named from time to time by hon. Gentlemen who had complained of the use of the Secret Service money. The hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy), he thought, was strictly accurate in every one of the statements he had made to-night in reference to the action of those charged with the government of Ireland in past times in reference to the employment of a Vote of this kind. But the question immediately before them was the question of reporting Progress. He thought if they took a division on this Motion, the strength of the opposition to this Vote would not sufficiently appear. He was not sure whether the hon. Member

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  for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson), and the other Scotch and English Members who agreed with the Irish Members, would be disposed to vote with them on the question of reporting Progress; and, as the issue was a very fair and straightforward one, he should be inclined to say that, as a matter of policy, it would be better to withdraw the Motion for reporting Progress, and take a division on the Main Question.
  MR. HEALYtrusted his hon. Friend would not proceed with his Motion to report Progress, as the Committee was now perfectly prepared to take a division on the Vote. He could not join with his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) in rejoicing over the fact that none of this money, if spent at all, was spent upon elections. If it was not spent upon elections, they might rest assured that it was spent for much more discreditable purposes.
  Question put, and negatived.
  Original Question put.
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 88; Noes 17: Majority 66.—(Div. List, No. 348.)
  Resolutions to be reported To-morrow.
  Committee to sit again To-morrow.

  PETROLEUM (HAWKING) BILL— [Lords.]
  (Mr. Courtney.)
  PETROLEUM (HAWKING) BILL— [Lords.]

    [BILL 222.] COMMITTEE.
    [Progress 29th July.]
    Bill considered in Committee.
    (In the Committee.)
    Clause 2 (Regulations for hawking petroleum).
    Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."
    MR. WHITLEYsaid, that the question of allowing pedlars to carry petroleum about in carts had become a very large cry in all the large towns. They were able to carry petroleum about in carts, and to carry on their business opposite the shops of trades people dealing in the same article; and so great had the outcry against this become that he had been asked to introduce a Bill compelling those people to desist from that practice. It was very injurious to trades-
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    people who had to pay heavy rates and taxes; but this Bill proposed to legalize what these pedlars could not now do. These people could only be dealt with by prosecutions for obstruction in the streets; but trades people knew that that was an impracticable way of dealing with them. This Bill proposed to extend the provisions of the Hawker's Bill, and allow the hawkers to carry a dangerous commodity through the streets of towns and villages; but he should like to know in whose interest the Bill was promoted? He understood the hon. Gentleman to say that it was in the interest of the poor; but he could assure the hon. Gentleman that nothing could be more detrimental to the interests of that class who had suffered from depression of trade, and who were trades people, and he thought those were the people to whom sympathy was due. He could not conceive any class of poor people who were benefited. No one could have greater sympathy with the poor than he had, but he could not see for whose interest this Bill was promoted. He hoped some information would be given as to who the promoters were, and that hon. Members who represented large boroughs would look closely into the provisions of the Bill, which was calculated to do a great deal of harm.
    THE CHAIRMAN: I must point out that this is not the second reading of the Bill.
    MR. COURTNEYsaid, the hon. Member had strangely misconceived the purport of the Bill. He seemed to oppose it as though it were a question between hawkers and non-hawkers, and as if it would increase hawking; but it had nothing at all of that character. It did not in any way interfere with the issue of licences or the restrictions applying to hawking. It simply dealt with the hawking of petroleum and not with the licences. No one not otherwise licensed to hawk would be able to hawk under this Bill. It did no more than allow a licensed hawker, having a licence to keep petroleum, to hawk it. The hawking of petroleum went on now; and if the hon. Gentleman had any acquaintance with the rural life of England, and the convenience of hawking petroleum from door to door, he would see that the Bill dealt with the convenience of the poor in the country. By this Bill it was proposed that any person who was licenced

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    to deal in petroleum might, under certain prescribed conditions, hawk it.
    MR. WARTONurged that it was not safe to allow people to hawk petroleum, and he would ask hon. Members to consider what would be the result of any damage to a vessel containing 10 gallons of petroleum. He would remind the Committee of the terrible accident which had occurred in Wales some years ago, when a Peer of the Realm and other persons of less consequence were burnt to death; and if such an accident could occur on a railway with all the care taken by railway officials, how could it be said that such an accident would not occur to petroleum hawked about the streets? He begged to move that Progress be reported.
    Motion made, and Question put, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Mr. Warton.)
    The Committee divided:—Ayes 3; Noes 70: Majority 67.—(Div. List, No. 349.)
    Clause agreed to.
    Clause 3 (Modification of regulations by Secretary of State).
    MR. COURTNEYexplained that this clause proposed to empower the Secretary of State to alter, repeal, or vary regulations laid down by the Act; but he proposed to move an Amendment by which such alterations should be laid before Parliament before becoming law. The desirability must be recognized of relieving the House of the necessity for entering into matters of detail; and he thought the objections which had been raised to this clause would be removed by his Amendment.
    Amendment proposed, in page 3, line 8, at end, insert as a separate paragraph,—
    "Every such regulation shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament forthwith after it is made if Parliament be then sitting, and, if not, within seven days after the then next Session of Parliament.
    "If within forty days after any such regulation has been laid before Parliament either House of Parliament resolves that such regulation should be annulled, the same shall thenceforth become void without prejudice to anything done in the meanwhile in pursuance thereof."—[Mr. Courtney.)
    Question proposed, "That those words be there added."
    MR. HOPWOODsaid, he thought the proposed Amendment itself required amending. It proposed that the regulations should be laid before Parliament forthwith, if Parliament was sitting, and, if not, within seven days after the then next Session of Parliament. That would mean in the Recess. The words should read—"after the commencement of." He was still resolute against the clause, and exceedingly sorry that at that hour in the morning they should have to consider what he regarded as a matter of great significance with regard to legislation. He did not at all agree that the House should abdicate its functions and allow a Secretary of State to exercise them. It was a dangerous doctrine to propound; and dangerous to pass this clause suggested by the growing tendency on the part of Departments to gain extraordinary powers, and so avoid the vigilance of Parliament. This affected a large class of very useful men; they were, in fact, costermongers of petroleum, carrying the article about the country. These men carried petroleum in the country from cottage to cottage, nearly all of which were lighted by it. The hawkers carried on the business with benefit to the community, and were, he thought, in every way to be encouraged rather than suppressed. A case had been made out for supervising the hawking by these men of this rather dangerous material, and the Bill which had been prepared set forth the different regulations which were to be observed. The provisions were drawn with some care, but had been rendered wide and vague in order that there might be no case which would escape the general power of the magistrates to say whether or not a person against whom a charge might be brought was guilty of negligence in the conveyance of this material. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Courtney) advocated in Committee the retention of a clause of this sort—a clause which would enable one of Her Majesty's Secretaries of State, from time to time, to make, or, when made, to alter, repeal, or add to regulations for the purpose of rescinding, altering, or adding to regulations contained in the Bill with respect to hawking petroleum. The regulations contained in the Act would be part of the law of the land, and the penalty for

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    breaking them would be a maximum of £20. By this clause it was proposed to intrust the Secretary of State with authority to repeal, or abolish, or alter part of an Act of Parliament. What was the use, then, of specifying any of those things which he was to be empowered to do? Why should they not say simply—"Be it enacted that the Secretary of State shall declare what the law shall be with regard to the hawking of petroleum? "The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Courtney), who was repentant rather late, seemed to see that this was objectionable, and endeavoured to disarm criticism by saying that when the Secretary of State had passed new regulations they should be laid on the Table of the House, and not come into force until the expiration of 40 days. After they had been on the Table for 40 days, and no objection was taken to them, they would become law; be that an Act of Parliament might be by them repealed, unless there was a protest made within 40 days. The Secretary of State would be empowered to continue the Act up to, say, next February, and he might then choose to abolish or repeal the main part of it and substitute something else. It might then wait for some time until it should receive the tacit sanction of Parliament; but the moment that he made the regulations the hawker of petroleum might be prosecuted for any breach of them without knowing of the change. Of course, it would be said that, under such circumstances, magistrates would not convict; but magistrates were sometimes led away by evidence that was not quite reliable, and they sometimes were of opinion that a defendant was not telling the truth, and this especially when he said he did not know the state of the law. It would be best to have the law contained in a Statute Book, so that the hawker might have resort to it, or his legal adviser might know where to find it. He (Mr. Hopwood) objected to giving a Secretary of State, however eminent he might be, power to alter or rescind a law. These things always resolved themselves into this. Some official suggested a certain course to the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State, who was, perhaps, overworked, would only run his eye over the proposal to see if he could agree to it. If there was nothing very objectionable to his mind in it, it received his sanction.
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    That was not the way in which they should proceed. If the Act, after it was passed, required amendment, an Amending Bill should be brought in and passed.
    MR. BROADHURSTsaid, he hoped the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Courtney) would see fit to withdraw this clause. The power given to the Secretary of State to make rules and regulations was a very serious matter, especially on a question of this kind. Under the powers of this clause, the hawking trade of these poor people might be absolutely ruined at the will of the Home Office. Let them, for instance, suppose that a change of Government took place, and the hon. Member for Liverpool (Mr. Whitley) was appointed to the Office held by the hon. Member (Mr. Courtney.) He, in the interest of his friends, the aristocratic shopkeepers, would propose at once to annihilate the hawking trade. He (Mr. Broadhurst) was, therefore, considerably alarmed at the proposal of the Government, after the speech of the hon. Member for Liverpool. The fact was, that London would be absolutely starved within a single week if they put a stop to street-hawking. He had in his pocket a letter on this subject from a man at Greenwich, and he regretted very much that neither of this person's Representatives were in their place to look after his interests. The writer said that he had been in the oil trade for eight years, and mainly looked upon that for providing a living for his family, and paying the rent and rates of his shop. He declared that if these extraordinary powers were given to the Department to interfere with his trade it might ruin him. He (Mr. Broadhurst) hoped the Committee would take particular notice of the appeal that had been made on behalf of the large shopkeepers. These people were constantly harassing the costermongers in all their large towns, although the costermongers were a class who made food possible to the poor by bringing it to their doors. The costermongers were constantly being persecuted by these large and, very often, uncivil and high-priced shopkeepers. Whatever the Committee did he appealed to it to protect, as far as possible, not only the immediate but the future interests of these hard-working and deserving hawkers of food and other necessaries of life in their large towns.
    MR. DILLWYNsaid, he looked with great jealousy upon the proposal now made by the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, who told them it was desirable to place this large power of making regulations in the hands of the Executive. No doubt, the hon. Member would say there was a precedent for giving that power to the Government. He might say that the Executive had power to regulate the sale of gunpowder; but the two cases were not parallel, inasmuch as gunpowder was in the hands of a very few persons, and was not hawked about the streets, whilst petroleum was used by very nearly everyone, and was taken from door to door for the convenience of the public. He thought the dispensing power which the hon. Member sought to obtain was objectionable, and ought not to be sanctioned by the Committee. In his Amendment the hon. Gentleman proposed that the rules should be laid on the Table of Parliament, and unless objected to within 40 days, should become law; but they all knew, in a Session such as the present, for instance, what difficulties a private Member experienced in bringing forward a Motion, and in getting a question decided. It might be impossible for any step to be taken within 40 days. As the Government would be in favour of the rules they proposed, it could not be expected, if any Member took exception to them, that they would put themselves out of the way to give him an opportunity of making his objection, so that, as he had said, a private Member would have very little chance of bringing forward his case within 40 days. There was a very strong objection to this proposal on the part of many hon. Members, and he earnestly hoped that the hon. Member (Mr. Courtney), who had already objected to certain modifications suggested in the 2nd clause, would make a concession in the present case. He (Mr. Dillwyn) had accepted the hon. Member's verdict with regard to the 2nd clause; but he trusted the hon. Member would himself give way on the point under discussion, yielding to the very strong feeling expressed on every side of the House.
    SIR HENRY HOLLANDsaid, he agreed in the hope that the hon. Member would withdraw the proposal. The result of adopting it might lead to hardships amongst a poor and useful class.
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    They were dealing with men of a very different class to those affected by the Explosives Act. The proposal affected poor men in a small way of business, who were very useful to a large portion of the community, especially in country districts If it were accepted, the Secretary of State might make some new regulation; a hawker, without knowing it, might infringe that regulation, and his trade might be immediately stopped. It might be stopped until Parliament met again, and probably for 40 days after Parliament had met, and possibly much longer, because, as had been pointed out, a private Member would experience considerable difficulty in bringing on the question within the specified 40 days. The poor man might, in the meantime, be absolutely ruined, because they would take away from him the power of dealing in petroleum and carrying it about from house to house. He trusted the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department would see his way to withdrawing the proposition.
    MR. COURTNEYsaid, that whilst he must confess he did not agree with many Members of the Committee upon these matters, he could not disguise from himself the fact that the clause was very powerfully opposed. The hon. Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn) seemed to object to the Executive Government having power to administer the details of a measure, and the Committee evidently was insufficiently advanced to accept that doctrine. He would withdraw the Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Clause negatived.
    Clauses 4 and 5 agreed to.
    Clause 6 (Definitions).
    MR. WHITLEYsaid, there was a reference made here to the Hawkers' and Pedlars' Act, and he wished to know why only persons hawking petroleum should be allowed to use carriages in their trade? He believed he was correct in saying that in the town of Brighton there were no hawkers at all. The hawking nuisance had risen to such a pitch that the Town Council took means to put a stop to all hawking in the streets. The rich shopkeepers—in spite of what an hon. Member had said—cared nothing at all about it. It was now proposed by a side-wind to give

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    petroleum hawkers a power which no other class of hawkers possessed. If it was desirable to let hawkers generally use carriages, well and good; but it seemed to him highly objectionable that petroleum hawkers alone should be allowed to have this power. He had occasion, very often indeed, as a magis-strate, to hear cases against hawkers, and he knew fines to have been over and over again levied upon them for carrying on their trade contrary to the Acts of Parliament. It seemed to him that it would be unwise to allow the clause to pass.
    MR. C. H. JAMESsaid, the Bill seemed to him to be a most reasonable one in every respect, except Clause 3, which they had just struck out. If Clause 6 were struck out half the utility of the measure would be done away with. He had seen petroleum hawked about the streets, and he could assure the Committee it was not carried about in great carts, but in cans fixed upon wheels, just as milk was carried from door to door. If they didsnot allow it to be taken about in that way it would be necessary for parents to send out children, perhaps 10 or 12 years of age, or even younger, with bottles or small tin cans for this dangerous material; and certainly that would be much more objectionable than the course proposed by this clause.
    Clause agreed to.
    Clause 7 agreed, to.
    Bill reported; as amended, to be considered To-morrow.

  WILD BIRDS PROTECTION ACT (1880) AMENDMENT BILL— [Lords.]
  [Mr. Courtney.]
  WILD BIRDS PROTECTION ACT (1880) AMENDMENT BILL— [Lords.]

    [BILL 226.] CONSIDERATION.
    Bill, as amended,considered.
    SIR DAVID WEDDERBURNsaid, he had a new clause to propose for the protection of bonâ fide naturalists and collectors of birds. He thought it only proper that some distinction should be drawn between these persons and the people who destroyed birds illegally out of season when they were helpless and easily destroyed. That part of the year in which birds were most worth preserving was the spring, and that was the
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    period of the year when they were not allowed to be taken or killed. According to the existing law, a collector of birds, private amateur, or a representative of a museum, could not take birds as specimens without incurring serious penalties. What he proposed was that the Court, before whom a person was brought up and charged with destroying birds out of season, should have a discretionary power in a matter of conviction. If it could be shown that the birds had been taken for preservation in an ornithological collection or museum, the Court should be able to excuse them. In other countries where wild birds were protected the Minister of the Interior himself had power to exempt from the operation of the law persons taking birds for scientific purposes; but after what had just taken place in regard to the Petroleum (Hawking) Bill, he would not propose that method of dealing with the subject in this country.
    New Clause to follow Clause 1—
    (Reservation in case of birds killed for scientific purposes.)
    "A person shall not be liable to be convicted under 'The Wild Birds Protection Act, 1880,' if he satisfies the Court before whom he is charged that any wild birds which he has killed and offered for sale are intended bonâ fide for preservation in an ornithological collection or museum."—(Sir David Wedderburn)
    Clause brought up, and read the first time.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause be read a second time."
    MR. COURTNEYsaid, that he had had every desire to meet the hon. Member for Haddington (Sir David Wedderburn), but he found it quite impossible to do so. If the clause were accepted, the whole Bill would be shattered, because it would be impossible to prove what the intention of a person was when he took birds when brought up before the magistrates. Nor was the clause necessary. A bonâ fide ornithologist, when taken before the magistrates, would be able to say that he was in pursuit of scientific knowledge, and, under the power of the Summary Jurisdiction Act, the magistrates would be able to dismiss the case if they believed him.
    MR. THOMASSONtrusted that the Amendment would not be accepted.
    Question put, and negatived
    MR. ROUNDsaid, he rose to move the omission of Clause 2 from the Bill, and what he had to say on the matter he should say as shortly as possible. The clause proposed the insertion of the lark in the Schedule of the "Wild Birds Act, 1880," and he submitted that it was quite unnecessary to include that bird in the special protection provided by the Schedule. He was as much a friend of the lark as any Member of that House; but he thought it quite unnecessary to provide this special protection for it—a penalty of 5s. being, in his opinion, sufficient for the purpose. Everyone knew that it was difficult to find larks' nests in the spring of the year, the nature of the ground at that time providing ample cover; and if there was any diminution in the number of larks, he thought it was owing to the severe winters they had had during the last three years. They ought to endeavour to carry public opinion with them in this sort of legislation; and as it was a fact that at certain seasons of the year larks pulled up sprouting corn, if this bird were included in the Schedule, it would make the Bill more unpopular than it was now in the eyes of those people it would mostly concern. This was not the time to introduce new matter into the Schedule. As had been pointed out, the Act of last year gave protection to nearly all wild birds, including the lark, and the present was merely a Declaratory Bill, explaining the construction of a particular clause in the Act of last year which appeared to be of doubtful character; but this new matter, he submitted, ought not to be brought before the House. For those reasons he moved the omission of the clause.
    Amendment proposed, in page 2, to leave out Clause 2.—(Mr. Round.)
    Question proposed, "That Clause 2 stand part of the Bill."
    MR. DILLWYNsaid, he was as fond of larks as the hon. Member who had just spoken; but he had long felt that severe penalties were not the best way of preserving birds. He regretted that in "another place" several small birds had been added to the Schedule. Penalties should be imposed for valuable birds, and not for small birds, and he thought larks were far more likely to be protected under the Bill as it previously
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    stood than by severe penalties. For that reason he hoped the alterations made in "another place" would be omitted.
    MR. BROADHURSTsaid, he hoped the lark would not be omitted, for he had an affection for that bird, and he would not bow to the opinion of the hon. Member who made the Motion. With regard to larks' nests, in his opinion the lark's nest was very easy to find, and he had never failed to discover a lark's nest whenever he wanted one. It was only necessary to watch where the lark rose and to see where he settled, for the lark always settled within 20 yards of its nest. The lark was one of the most beautiful wild birds, and was becoming scarcer every year, and he hoped that the House would protect it.
    MR. COURTNEYconfessed that he had no feeling one way or the other as to the lark, and whether it was included in the Schedule or omitted appeared to him a perfectly open question. But what he had heard privately or in the other House inclined him to adhere to the Act of last Session; and, although he would wish to be respectful to the other House, on the whole he thought it would be better to keep to the original form of this clause.
    Question put.
    The House divided:—Ayes 29; Noes 25: Majority 4.—(Div. List, No. 350.)
    Bill read the third time, and passed.

  SAVINGS BANKS AND POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANKS, AND SECURITIES IN CHANCERY DIVISION.—REPORT. —NATIONAL DEBT BILL.

    FIRST READING.
    Resolutions [August 1] reported.
    MR. ANDERSONobserved, that on the previous night the noble Lord C Lord Frederick Cavendish) had said that the House was not taken by surprise in regard to this matter, because the Prime Minister had announced the measure in his Budget speech. That was perfectly accurate as regarded the matter of the Prime Minister's speech, but not as regarded the spirit of that speech. The Prime Minister, no doubt, did sketch his scheme in his Budget speech; but he promised not to place it before the House for its practical judgment until after the Budget; and on the 29th of

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    April, in reply to the right hon. and gallant Member for Wigtown Burghs (Sir John Hay), he said he did not intend to bring this scheme in until the Budget was out of the way, and that the necessary information would be in the hands of Members before that time. The Budget Bill was out of the way by the 31st of May, and when the Prime Minister said he would not introduce this scheme until after the Budget Bill was out of the way, that was equivalent to saying that he would bring it in then, or soon after; but it never could be held that the Prime Minister meant not only that the House should wait till the Budget Bill was out of the way, but that they should also wait till the last days of the Session, when half the Members were away, before having the scheme before them. He, therefore, thought the House had been more or less taken by surprise, and the country had had no opportunity of considering the measure in any way. The Prime Minister held out the hope that it would be brought forward and the necessary information given in time for it to be considered, but it was not known that the proposal was to impose £2,000,000 of taxation on the country for 21 years. He believed the country would wish to oppose the scheme; but it was no use opposing it now; and if the Government were determined to carry it through, he could only enter his protest against it.
    Resolutions agreed to:—Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER and Lord FREDERICK CAVENDISH.
    Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill236.]

    EAST INDIAN LOANS, ANNUITIES, &c.— INDIAN LOAN OF 1879 BILL.
    Resolutions [August 1] reported, and agreed to:—Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER and Lord FREDERICK CAVENDISH.
    Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill237.]

    CORRUPT PRACTICES (SUSPENSION OF ELECTIONS) BILL.
    On Motion of Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Bill to suspend for a limited period, on account of Corrupt Practices, the holding of an Election of a Member or Members to serve in Parliament for certain Cities and Boroughs, ordered to be brought in by Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Secretary Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT, and Mr. SOLICITOR GENERAL.
    Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill1238.]
    House adjourned at a quarter after Three o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Royal University of Ireland* (194); Public Works Loans* (196).
Second Reading—Land Law (Ireland) (187).
Committee—Report—Presumption of Life (Scotland) * (142–197).
Third Reading—Metropolitan Open Spaces Act (1877) Amendment* (164); Public Loans (Ireland) Remission* (176), and passed.

LAND LAW (IRELAND) BILL.—(No. 187.)
(The Lord Privy Seal.)
LAND LAW (IRELAND) BILL.—(No. 187.)

  SECOND READING. [SECOND NIGHT.]
  Order of the Day for resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for the Second Reading, read.
  Debate resumed accordingly.
  THE DUKE OF ARGYLL: My Lords, in rising to resume the debate on the second reading of the Irish Land Bill, I am very anxious not to detain the House upon any details, or upon any of those subsidiary parts of the measure, which the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Salisbury) last evening designated "as ornamental." I am not quite sure that I agree with the statement that those parts of the Bill are purely ornamental. I hope, though they are more limited than I could have desired, that, however ornamental they may be, they will be of some substantial value. But,

  453
  at all events, my Lords, they are not those parts of the Bill to which our attention ought to be directed on the second reading, and my desire now is to concentrate the attention of the House upon the general scope and bearing of this Bill as concerns the relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland. My Lords, this measure, like every other measure affecting the interests of large numbers of people, must always be viewed in two different aspects. The first is its own intrinsic value; and the second is its relations to those circumstances which constitute political necessity in this country. My Lords, it is a happy state of things when those two aspects are combined; and almost as happy a circumstance when those two aspects, which appear different at the time, coincide, and are proved by history to be really the same. There have been occasions in this House, and in the other House of Parliament, when measures have been carried by pressure from without, and purely under circumstances of political necessity, which have afterwards recommended themselves to the consciences and convictions of men as measures of justice as well as of necessity. Such, my Lords, was the Roman Catholic Relief Bill. When the Duke of Wellington introduced that measure into this House, he made no secret that he pressed it on the adoption of the House as a matter of pure political necessity. Its object was to repeal one of the great curses of the country—the last of those penal laws which had been in force against the Roman Catholics; and although this House at that time passed that measure merely from political necessity, I imagine there are not three men in this House now who would not admit that it was a right and a just measure to admit a large majority of the people of Ireland to a share in the government of their country. But he would be a bold man who would assert that every measure which is pressed upon Parliament as a measure of political necessity is, therefore, a just and a wise measure. My own impression is there never has been a wider gap than that which exists in regard to this measure between its own intrinsic merit and the recommendations which arise from external circumstances. My Lords, I thought I could trace in the debate last night some feeling of bitterness and
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  almost of humiliation that we felt ourselves obliged to accept a measure to which many of us have such strong and fundamental objections. Depend upon it, my Lords, this House does not stand alone in that respect. That feeling, I suspect, is as great in "another place." It has been carried by authority alone, and let me remind the House, because it is important that not only this House but also the country should be aware, of the circumstances which constitute the political necessity for this measure. In the first place, it has been brought forward by a Government which has been lately installed in power after one of the greatest and most violent revulsions of public feeling which has ever taken place in the political history of this country. In the second place, it has been made a test question with that Government, and the whole weight has been cast into the scale of the personal authority of the Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend, whose high character, whose unquestionable genius, whose extraordinary powers, and whose splendid services have not unnaturally led thousands of his countrymen to place in his hands almost their reason and their conscience. In the third and next place, my Lords, there is that natural fear of the consequences of the defeat of this Government; the dread of the consequences of a Dissolution of Parliament at this time, in Ireland, and even in the United Kingdom, and that is a contingency which none of us can contemplate without serious anxiety. Last of all, my Lords, there has been the spectacle of the dreadful anarchy in Ireland, an anarchy during which great parts of the population have appeared—I hope it has been only in appearance—to have had sympathy with crimes which are not only dreadful, but many of them loathsome in their character, and which would have been a disgrace to the barbarians of Fiji. Then, my Lords, comes that weariness of Parliamentary Obstruction, that sense of the whole Business of England and of Scotland and of the United Kingdom being prevented from being conducted with any success or even decency by the urgency of this Irish anarchy breeding a spirit in this country of almost complete indifference to what is done, and a desire of granting anything rather than that there should be a continuance of these scan-

  455
  dals. These form a combination of circumstances, my Lords, which tell not only in this House, but, I am sure, tell much more powerfully in the other House of Parliament; and, therefore, I beg this House not to suppose that if we are, to a certain extent, placed in circumstances of humiliation, that those circumstances are peculiar to the House of Lords. They are by no means so. My Lords, when I hear the language which is uttered out-of-doors by Friends of my own, and belonging to my own political Party with regard to this measure, and with regard to the necessity of passing it, I am a little reminded of that description given in that well-known work by Miss Edgeworth, to which I referred the other day, in which a retainer of Castle Rackrent narrates to a companion how his master, having stood for the county and obtained his seat, went off to Dublin and joined that company of persons who knew how to support the Government most honourably against his Party. Now, I feel the necessity of the circumstances in which we are placed; but, submitting to these necessities, I think it is most important we should form a clear estimate of that which we are sacrificing. What, then, is the general object of this measure? My Lords, this measure has these two main objects. First of all, it is to empower three very respectable gentlemen to dictate the price of the hiring of land all over a great country inhabited by 5,000,000 of men. In the second place, it is to enable every tenant in Ireland to sell that which may not be his own by law, by custom, or by equity. Now, these two sentences contain a literally true and exact description of the great aims and objects of this measure. Now, I will take these in their order, but in an order the reverse of that in which they are mentioned in the Bill; for, strange to say, this Bill deals first with the question of sale, and, second, with the question of the valuation of rents. But in the statement of the Government, and especially in the statement of my right hon. Friend at the head of the Government, the question of the valuation of rents was put first, and that of sale second. Mr. Gladstone's speech in the House of Commons has now been published in the form of a pamphlet, and as it may be considered to be the manifesto of the Government on the
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  subject, it is remarkable to notice the description my right hon. Friend gives of the object of the measure with regard to the valuation of land. He says—
  "I come to the great question which, I think, must constitute the salient point and cardinal principle of the Bill, the institution of a Court which is to take cognizance of rent, and which, in taking cognizance of rent, will also, according to the provisions of the Bill, not be debarred from taking cognizance of tenure and assignment."
  And he also speaks of the Court as "an optional Court for regulating rent." Now, in the first place, I must demur to the accuracy of the description. It is not, strictly speaking, an optional Court at all—that is to say, it is not a mere Court of Arbitration to which both parties may go and have access, but it is a Court to which everybody may be driven by somebody else. Now, that is a very different thing from an optional Court; and I must say, in passing, I am not at all sure that an optional Court, in the shape of a Court of Arbitration, would not have been almost necessary in the present circumstances of Ireland. Indeed, I believe, in the circumstances of anarchy in which the country is, the landlords would almost unanimously have been delighted to appeal to such a Court in regard to the fairness of their rents; and this I can say, that a very great number of my own Friends, who are strongly against the Bill as a whole, have not been against this part of it, considered as establishing an optional Court. Now, this is the principle of the Bill—that three private gentlemen, I believe of the highest character and attainments, are enabled, compulsorily, at the instance of any one of the two parties, to compel everybody in Ireland to submit to them the hiring and price of land, in order that it may be settled at their discretion. I must say, apart from the political circumstances called the peculiar relations of Ireland, of these two provisions, one of them is eminently ridiculous, and the other is eminently unjust. A universal power of valuing rent by three men all over Ireland is eminently ridiculous, and the giving of an absolute right of sale to everybody, whether they have acquired it or not, is, to my mind, eminently unjust. It does not require to be an inhabitant of Jupiter or Saturn to perceive the absur-

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  dity in the one case, and the injustice in the other. And here I may remark that I was much struck by the quotation of the noble Marquess from a French journal, which shows very fairly the opinion of foreigners as to this proposal. The next thing I wish to point out is this—that this principle of valuing rents for the future was denounced by my right hon. Friend in 1870 in the strongest language. Now, I do not quote these things for the purpose of fixing a charge of inconsistency on my right hon. Friend. I quote them as expressing my own opinions at the present moment. I happened to be a Member of the Government at that time, and consented to the Bill of 1870, on the understanding that these were the views of the Government, and that these were the principles of the Bill. Now, just listen to the language in which my right hon. Friend refers to the question of the power of valuing the rents of land in Ireland—
  "Shall I really be told that it is for the interest of the Irish tenant bidding for a farm that the law should say to him—' Cast aside all providence and forethought; go into the market and bid what you like; drive out of the field the prudent man who means to fulfil his engagement; bid right above him, and induce the landlord to give you the farm, and the moment you have got it come forward, go to the public authority, show that the rent is excessive, and that you cannot pay it, and get it reduced.' If I could conceive a plan more calculated than anything else, first of all, for throwing into confusion the whole economical arrangements of the country; secondly, for driving out of the field all solvent and honest men who might be bidders for farms, and might desire to carry on the honourable business of agriculture; thirdly, for carrying widespread demoralization throughout the whole mass of the Irish people, I must say, as at present advised—to confine myself to the present, and until otherwise convinced—it is this plan and this demand, that we should embody in our Bill, as a part of permanent legislation, a provision by which men shall be told that there shall be an authority always existing, ready to release them from the contracts they have deliberately entered into."—[3 Hansard, cxcix. 1845.]
  I beg the House to observe that this is not an argument of mere expediency. It is not a temporary argument referring to any particular state of things. It is an argument founded on morality, and it points out that to give this terrible power of re-valuing rents to the Irish tenants will be a demoralizing influence in this country. Now, I say, what has happened since 1870 to
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  alter the bearing of that argument? Nothing whatever, as regards the merits of the question. There is but one answer, and one only; and I wish the Government had the courage to state it frankly, and not go beating about the bush, fishing for means of reconciling things that cannot be reconciled, and proving language to be consistent with their present conduct which is utterly inconsistent with it—there is but one answer, and that is that the people of Ireland are now so thoroughly demoralized that even this cannot demoralize them more. Now, if this measure were confined to the poorest class of tenants, I must say that, even as regards its own intrinsic claims, there might be a good deal to say for it. There is no doubt whatever that the poorest class of tenants in Ireland are comparatively weak and helpless; and I believe, notwithstanding the abstract doctrines of political economy, that most Members of this House would be willing to entertain exceptional measures as regards those exceptionally poor and weak tenants. Certainly, indeed, this House, in the Act of 1870, did pass a measure which was especially directed to giving compensation on an increasing scale in proportion to poverty and the size of the holding. But this is to apply to all tenants in Ireland, and to include men quite as competent to make a bargain as any one Member of this House. My Lords, I heard with surprise my noble Friend the Lord Privy Seal (Lord Carlingford) last night arguing that there should be no exemption in regard to the large tenant, because he says they have a larger stake in the country. What has that to do with it? If they have a larger stake in the country they are perfectly competent to take care of their own stake, and do not need the protection of this Bill; and I must say that in this argument there could be no difference between tenants of different sized holdings. My noble Friend is not consistent with his own Bill, because, after all, even in this Bill it is provided that, above a certain stage, free contract is to be allowed. Now, with regard to this Court for the valuation of rent, I have come to the conclusion, I must frankly say, that such a measure is necessary in Ireland; and it shows an extraordinary ignorance and thoughtlessness of men upon this subject that it

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  has been held that the observations which I ventured to address to your Lordships some weeks ago indicated that I was adverse to such a proposition. Most people have thought so; but the argument tells the other way. My object was to prove that the accusations brought against the landlords of Ireland before the Bessborough Commission were, almost in every case, false. That was my argument, and that the Bess-borough Commission took no pains to test these falsehoods. Very well; I want the Court to do that. I want the Court to do what the Bessborough Commission did not do. This is perfectly consistent with my argument, for I never saw or read a document which was so painfully full of error as the Report of the Evidence of that Commission. It is redolent of the atmosphere of falsehood and imposture, and that is my reason, and no other, for wishing a valuation of rent by a competent tribunal in Ireland. And now I must say that the speech of my noble Friend the Lord Privy Seal last night gave me an additional reason for wishing that the Court should investigate facts. I proved to your Lordships the other day that subordinate Members of the Administration had been repeating stories against the landlords which, on investigation, proved to be groundless, and one of which an investigation of no more than 10 minutes would have shown to be false. Well, my noble Friend last evening made no accusation of that kind; but he did make another statement, without one syllable of explanation as to the evidence on which he founds one of the most wild and violent propositions in the measure. I am not, however, now saying it may not be necessary, in the present state of Ireland, as a measure for giving to this Court an absolute power of dissolving leases. When I left the Government there was no question of touching leases, and the Bill as it was introduced into the House of Commons did not touch them, and the provision I speak of was added at a later stage. My noble Friend last night admitted that it was a violent course; but what did he say? He spoke to this effect—"You will think it a very strange proposition; but the more I investigate the subject the more convinced I am of the necessity of revising the conditions under which iniquitous leases have been given, in order to bring them to an
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  end." Now, I never heard a Minister make such a demand upon Parliament without supporting it by evidence. A measure which leads to the breaking of all contracts my noble Friend asks you to assent to, because, as he says, without evidence, the most iniquitous leases have been given. He does not even give a hint to the House what the nature of those leases was. I do not want him to give names, because that is dangerous in Ireland. I want him simply to describe what is the nature of the leases he describes as iniquitous, and we shall be entitled to hear as to the particular terms of those leases. In regard to the point, I would remind your Lordships that the Act of 1870 deliberately adopted the principle that an agricultural lease of 30 years would exhaust the tenant's interest in all agricultural improvements except buildings. I will now direct your Lordships' attention to another important point. It is one of the fundamental points connected with this Bill. When I was a Member of the Government there was a guiding principle laid down for this Court; the absolute power was not given without an indication on the part of Parliament to a general principle on which the Court was to proceed. Not only was this so, but my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, in his speech on the Second Reading, used these words—
  "We have thought it our duty to endeavour to grapple with the very difficult task—where none of the Commission show any particular readiness to deal with it—of giving to the Court some guidance in its efforts to arrive at a fair rent."—[3 Hansard, cclx. 909.]
  Observe, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister speaks of it as a "duty" on the part of the Government to give some guidance to the Court. Well, my Lords, that duty has been abandoned. The Bill gives up to the Court that attempt to fulfil that task which the Prime Minister spoke of as a duty, and which the Government, when I left it, had taken some pains to discharge. Now, where is the reason why this duty has been abandoned? I know very well it is an extremely inconvenient duty to define what a fair rent is; but if you are to have any accurate notion of what is to take place—which Irishmen do not want—you are bound to give some general indication of the principle on which the Court is to pro-

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  ceed. Look what the Bill says. As originally introduced it said—
  "A fair rent means such a rent as, in the opinion of the Court, after hearing the parties and considering all the circumstances of the case, holding, and district, a solvent tenant would undertake to pay one year with another."
  Now, that is the fundamental basis of rent. It points to the market value. This basis of market value is, I may say, the basis of State valuation of land in India. In that country it is the rule to find out what the market value is, and from it to make whatever deductions that may be fair. Then the second direction is—
  "Provided that the Court in fixing such rent shall have regard to the tenant's interest in the holding;"
  and then the Bill proceeded to attempt to define what the interest of a tenant was, and in that attempt it broke down. Observe how it broke down. The tenants did not want their interests defined. They wanted the Bill to be perfectly vague and indefinite. This was their object, and this duty of the Government was given up because the tenants did not like it. In the first place, the very sound of market value—and, in the second place, the sound of defining their interests—frightened the tenants. Mr. Gladstone says that the Commissioners have shown no particular willingness to enter upon this task which the Government undertook. Well, I am not a great supporter of the Commissioners, or of any of their Reports. I rather agree with Mr. Gladstone when he said these Reports constituted a litter. But the Bessborough Commission makes some reference to what a fair rent is. The Bessborough Report defines a fair rent to be the commercial value determined by professional valuators, subject to the deduction of the tenant's interest, less any sum paid by the incoming tenant as the ordinary price of the goodwill. That is a perfectly fair definition. You start from market value, and you deduct from the market value that which is due to a particular tenant in the particular circumstances of the holding. That is a very fair indication of the general principle. Now, I say it was the duty of the Government to maintain and to discharge this obligation of giving an indication to the Court, and I cannot help thinking that the total de-
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  parture from any attempt to give an indication simply shows an evasion of the difficulty, and I wish to smooth over difficulties by placing everything in the absolute power of this triumvirate of men. Now, I pass to another, or rather the same consideration from another point of view. Parliament gives no indication to this Court how these rents are to be valued. I should like to ask if my noble Friends on the Treasury Bench have themselves considered what this Court will have to deal with in finding out the principle or basis for the valuation of rent? They give no guidance to the Court, and not only that, but they deliberately withdraw from the attempt to give that guidance. Now, I will direct the attention of the House to cases which we know are common in Ireland. I will first take the case of what are called labour rents. That is to say, rents which are really not paid out of the produce of the holding, but paid out of the labour of the tenant. Now, some of your Lordships who have not attended very closely to the matter may suppose that this is a very small item in the rent-roll of Ireland. It may be a very small item in the rent-roll, but it is a very large item in population. There are several hundreds of thousands of farmers in Ireland who pay their rents, not out of the farms, but out of their labour. Well, I ask the Government have they formed any conception of the principle on which this Court is to proceed in valuing the rent of a labour tenant? It is not the market value that a solvent tenant would pay out of the land. It is a rent paid out of the labour of the tenants; and as, in many instances, the whole produce of these wretched holdings will not support the tenants and their families, is the Court to say that they are to pay no rent at all? The Court is perfectly free to do so; but if that rule is to be adopted, there are some large proprietors in Ireland who would lose almost the whole of their property—at all events, a very large proportion of their rental. I say sincerely that I have no conception of the principle upon which the Court will value these rents. It is perfectly easy to value ordinary farms, where you have local valuators who know all the circumstances of the case; but how the Court are to value the interest of these cottier tenantry in Ireland, who are

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  labourers, in fact, with large allotments, I cannot understand. In this case, it is quite different with the three gentlemen who constitute this Court, and I doubt whether the Government has any conception of the principle on which they will proceed. Well, then, I take another case, as I want to show that in Ireland the first principles upon which rent is regulated are disputed. It is not a question of ordinary valuation, but a question as to what are the fundamental principles in respect to property. I take the case of long leases, and it happens that I am supplied with a very remarkable example. Perhaps the Members of this House may recollect that, in the observations I addressed to your Lordships on the 1st of July, I had occasion to refer to the evidence of a certain Mr. M'Elroy, who is a well-known leading man in one of the largest tenant right associations in the North of Ireland. I found fault with his evidence, and I pointed out that he himself had been obliged to confess that, instead of the landlord eating up the tenant right, the tenant right had not declined at all in value during the last 10 years. A few days afterwards I had a letter from Mr. M'Elroy finding fault with my speech, and pointing out that I had omitted to notice certain cases in his evidence, particularly mentioning the case of a farm at Ballywilliam, near Portrush. I immediately investigated the case, and I found some very curious facts indicative of what are Irish ideas in Ulster at present with regard to the rights of entering into long leases. In this case the lease was entered into in 1791, and did not expire until 1874. In all, the tenants under the lease had held the farm 83 years. What happened? The tenant wished to prove, when the lease was beginning to come to an end, that he had tenant right, and he appealed to the County Court on this point. The County Court Judge, after hearing all the circumstances of the case, decided that tenant right had never existed in regard to this farm. The tenant had paid nothing for it in 1791, and there was no right, therefore, to it in 1874, when the lease expired. Upon that finding, the tenant applied to the landlord for a renewal of the lease, and the landlord naturally said—"Yes; I will give you a renewal, if you will give a better rent," and the two parties agreed
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  as to what a fair rent was. Now, that is the case that Mr. M'Elroy quotes to me as proving to me that the tenant right is being eaten up—a case in which there was no tenant right, and in which the two parties agreed upon a fair rent. Well, but the circumstances of this case are still more curious. The farm is situated on some of the finest land in the county. It is close to a very important seaport, which is becoming a very important watering place. Dairy produce is very valuable in that quarter, and the landlord says in his rebutting evidence before the Commission that he was offered between £4 and £5 per acre for it, and that he gave it to this tenant for something like £30. Now, I want to know on what principle the Court will deal with cases of that kind? It is good evidence that the whole of the Ulster tenantry would think the landlord was very wrong in wishing to increase any rent. Mr. M'Elroy complains bitterly of the decision of the Judge. He complains of the Court, and says that the Judge does not hold the same opinion about land as that which some of the tenants hold. Well, that is very likely. He complains, also, that the rent was so high that the tenants could not pay, if it had not been for the exceptional value of milk and butter at Portrush. That is to say, the rent would have been too high, if the produce of the farm had been left out of consideration. Now, there is a truly Irish idea. I want to know how my noble Friend and his Court are to deal with these Irish ideas? In the first place, is he quite sure that Mr. M'Elroy will be more content with these three private gentlemen set over the whole of Ireland than with the Court now established? In the next place, when these three gentlemen are put on the Bench, on what principle are they to decide? In Ireland there are two principles diametrically opposed one to the other. The first is the principle of the tenant, who says—"The longer I have held your land, the longer I am entitled to continue to hold it; "and the second is that of the landlord, who says—" The longer you have held my land at an enormous profit to yourself, the more am I entitled to resume it when the period of your tenancy comes to an end." Now, those are fundamentally opposite propositions, and there is no going between them;

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  or, if there is, it is purely arbitrary in the mind of the Court; and I want, therefore, to know what is the principle the Government will lay down in such cases? I have put two cases; I will put another. My noble Friend says there is no freedom of contract in Ireland for the larger tenants; but I will give him a case. It is not the case of the individual only; it is the case of a great Body, such as the College of Maynooth, which received a large annual revenue from Parliament, and which Government determined to buy up, because it was provided with a very large fund. It was a rich Body, and I suppose my noble Friend will admit that they are as free to contract as other people. A valuator came to the conclusion that the land round the College belonging to the Duke of Leinster was let at a sum considerably below its real value, and accordingly the proprietor asked the College to pay a higher rent. This, after giving a great deal of trouble, the Institution refused to do; and in the evidence given before the Commission the representative of the College says that there is no freedom of contract in such cases as that; that they had no resource but to pay the rent or give up the farm; and that they considered a terrible grievance. What is this Court to do with Maynooth College, representing the whole interest of the Irish priesthood? On what principles is the Court to regulate rents in that case? What is the end with which they are to exercise their powers? I go back to the labour-rent holdings, with regard to which I want to ask another question. Is it the object of the Government that these people should be kept on the land whether they can pay rent or not? If that is the object of the Government, and if this is to be the effect of their measure, instead of being a remedial measure for Ireland, it will be a perpetuation of the very worst difficulties which beset that country. Take the evidence of Professor Baldwin. He tells you that there will be no remedy to the evils of Ireland until these people are removed. You talk of political economy as if it were fit only for Jupiter or Saturn. How are you to get rid of this population? Is it not better to say to these people, as frankly as that gentleman does—"You live a miserable life, in miserable cabins, exposed to perpetually recurring famines, unable to
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  pay your rent; is not it better that you should go elsewhere, where you can have ample labour and better wages? "In those words are indicated the remedy which the landlord has in his power to give at present, and there are very few landlords who are not willing and do not assist such emigration. But what is this Court to do? Is it to take upon itself to say—"This holding is so small, and you are so poor, as not to be able to pay rent, and, therefore, you must give it up"? As far as I can see, this Bill leaves everything in confusion, unless you leave it to the absolute jurisdiction of these three private gentlemen. It seems to me that there is one explanation of all this obscurity, and this reluctance to deal with principles, and that is the explanation given by Baron Dowse. He says—
  "Our object is to deal with the existing tenants of Ireland, and to satisfy them, and never to mind the future."
  It is an answer that should be printed in letters of gold as embodying the directing principle of a great deal of this legislation. It is a mere postponing and bottling up of the difficulty, and is not facing it in a manly manner. I come now to the question of free sale. I know that my noble Friend the Lord Privy Seal is a most straightforward and a most candid man; but I was surprised to hear him last night quote one of his speeches in 1870 in regard to the extension of the tenant right custom in Ireland, as if this Bill was in fulfilment of the principle of the Act of 1870. In my view—and I was responsible for that Act along with my noble Friend—the principle of this Bill and the principle of the Act of 1870 in respect of tenant right is absolutely divergent and contradictory. The great principle of the Bill of 1870 was to ascertain the facts in each particular holding, and to regulate the tenant's rights by his equitable acquirements. My noble Friend said, perfectly truly, last night that when you legalize a custom, you would most necessarily alter its character. That is perfectly true; but, as far as we could, we endeavoured in that Act to legalize what existed. It was not the legalization of one custom over the whole of Ireland, it was the legalization of the custom of each holding—each tenant was required to prove what his equitable rights were with regard to his

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  holding. If that could be properly done it was an equitable principle. It is perfectly just to legalize and enforce custom properly ascertained—that is to say, custom so universal that you may presume it presented itself to the minds of the contracting parties. Such was the principle of the Act of 1870; but the principle of this Bill is wholly different, for it does not require each tenant to prove what are his individual rights, and gives to every tenant in Ireland something which he may never have acquired and never paid for. The distinction is, therefore, broad and fundamental. There is no getting over it by explanations of particular words and speeches. Not only was the doctrine of legalizing in each particular holding that which each man equitably acquired embodied in that Act, but it was prominent in the speech of the Prime Minister, and over and over again Mr. Gladstone said, during the debates in 1870—"We are giving these tenants that which they have paid for; "and he entered into an estimate of what they had paid for the Ulster tenant right, amounting to something like £20,000,000; but the principle now is to give him something he may not have equitably acquired, and whether he has paid for it or not. I am not going to dispute for a moment that tenant right has done a great deal of good in Ulster. I may have my own opinion as to its advantages, and whether they are an accidental or necessary incident of that kind of tenure, or whether it is connected with the manufacturing history of Ulster. I accept the evidence of my noble Friend that the custom has worked admirably. All that I say is, that in Ulster it was equitably acquired by the payment of money, and by a long course of proceeding to which the landlords had been parties. Now, with regard to the effect of this tenant right, I am bound to say that I should be adverse to the introduction of it where it has not grown up, not only on grounds of equity, but on grounds of policy also. I must say that I find great discrepancy between the language of different Members of the Government on this point. Last night my noble Friend (Lord Carlingford) used these words—
  "We are often told confidently that if a tenant holding at a reasonable rent makes this tenant right payment when entering on his
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  holding, he converts himself into a rack-rented farmer. My Lords, that may be the theory of the matter, but it is not the fact."
  But the opinion of Mr. Gladstone is quite the reverse. He says—
  "It may be very fairly said that in vain do you cut down the landlord's judicial rent … and take care that the landlord's receipts shall be limited if, with the land-hunger and scarcity which prevail in Ireland, you still leave it open to anyone to pay an extravagant sum for tenant right, and thereby to take holdings on the same virtually rack-rented condition."—[3 Hansard, cclx. 904.]
  Now, I want to know which of these opinions is the true one.
  LORD CAELINGFORD: Mine.
  THE DUKE OF ARGYLL: My noble Friend cannot get off so easily. What does Mr. Gladstone say? "I am not going to propose unrestricted tenant right. I am afraid of these rack-renting prices. What, then, is the remedy? That the power of the Courts to increase rent is the proper limitation of extravagant tenant right." That runs counter to another doctrine of my noble Friend that tenant right and rent grow up side by side, but have nothing to do with each other. But how can one fail to be a subtraction from the other? That is the difficulty. There is no doubt whatever that rent and tenant right are two antagonistic powers. You may balance them as you like, artificially or naturally; but one must give way to the other. ["No, no!"] My noble Friend says "No;" but what I say is this—that the doctrine of the Bill that the power to raise rents will limit the tenant right is not a true statement of the case. The converse must be equally true, and no ingenuity can disprove it—that the tenant right must prevent the payment of a reasonable rent. If one is true, the other is no less true. My noble Friends are ingenious arguers. Will they explain how the one will always limit the other? I proceed to ask another question. My right hon. Friend at the head of the Government says that he admits the danger of extravagant tenant right. He admits that it is an evil; unlike my noble Friend, he admits that it may reduce the tenant to a rack-renting condition; but then he says that the power of increasing the rent will prevent those extravagant prices for tenant right. That is not my belief. I believe that after this Bill becomes law, the power of increasing rent will not long remain a

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  practical power at all. Look at the terms of the Bill. Ostentatiously, and, as it would appear, for the very purpose of ostentation, you put it on the very front of your Bill that the tenant may sell for the best price that can be got. It has been said, and I think truly said, that that points to a sale by auction, and a good number of tenants in Ulster have been alarmed at that prospect. They do not like sales by auction. There is a process which is called "sweetening," where people are employed to run up prices to an extravagant figure. All these practices are well known to the tenants, and they are beginning to be afraid that the best prices which can be got will be very extravagant prices. The Bill, however, puts it ostentatiously in the front that tenants may get the best price obtainable; and if prosperity returns, we shall find tenants buying the tenant right at 30, 40, or even 50 or 60 years' purchase. What is the Court to do when the landlord comes to ask for an increase of rent? The tenant will be able to prove that, under the express indication of an Act of Parliament, he has bought his holding for 40 or 50 years' purchase. But how will it be possible for the Court to say that these extravagant prices are not to be given? Then you have the power of combination among the tenants. On many estates with 3,000 or 4,000 tenants, applications may have been made to the Court to have rents raised. At the end of 15 years the landlord says—"Since I let this farm a railway has been made through this country; there has been a great improvement in prices, and I ought to have a rise of rent." The tenants, on the other hand, will be able to show that three or four times over they have paid these extravagant prices, and to combine against such an increase of rent. I hold, therefore, that the doctrine of the Prime Minister, that, in the circumstances of this Bill, the possible and periodical increment of rent will be a practical abatement of tenant right, is a pure delusion. Now, my Lords, with regard to the principle on which this new universal right of sale is to be given to all the tenants of Ireland, I wish to enter my protest against some of the principal arguments which are advanced by the Government. The Prime Minister has said that the law of assignment is a law
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  which is rooted in the law of Europe, and that, therefore, we ought to give universal right of sale. It may be perfectly true that the right of assignment is so rooted in the law; but there is another right equally rooted in all systems of European law, and that is the right of the landlord not to accept the assignee. Is it not obvious that one right is as well established as the other? My Lords, neither my conscience nor my reason will allow me to accept that statement of the Prime Minister as conclusive of the matter. With regard to the general effect of this power in Ireland, I am bound to say that I entertain very serious apprehension. I think, now that it has been proposed by a powerful Government to put this morsel into the mouths of the tenantry, it will be almost impossible to get it out again. I am firmly of the conviction that it will lead to the entire ceasing of landlords' improvements in Ireland. My Lords, I am bound to say it is frankly admitted by the Bessborough Commission. They say that the universal right of sale interferes with the sentiment of ownership; and upon the sentiment of ownership depends the inclination of the landlords to improve their land. I have no doubt, therefore, that after the passing of this Bill, unless great modifications be made in it, there will be a complete and absolute cessation of all landlords' improvements, and a more mischievous effect it would be difficult to conceive. You are depriving all the landlords of Ireland of their privileges, and you are releasing them from their duties. Now, my Lords, such is my opinion of the general character of this Bill on its own merits, apart from its political significance; let me say a few words as to the omissions of this Bill. This Bill does not deal, or attempt to deal, with one of the greatest evils of Ireland. I have shown that it will very materially interfere with the only remedies going on with regard to the cottier population of the West of Ireland; but it does not attempt to deal with the small tenantry and the greatest evil under which they suffer, and that is the enormous interest which they pay for money. That is the evidence of Professor Baldwin, who says that a large part of the small tenantry—I think he says 100,000 out of the total of 500,000—are so deeply in debt that they owe to the usurious money-lenders

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  sums amounting in the several cases from three to 10 years' rent. The interest paid on these loans is a burden infinitely heavier than the rent paid to the landlords. It would be a task worthy of the genius of my right hon. Friend at the head of the Government if he had attempted to deal with this great evil. In the Land Reforms effected in Prussia and Germany and other Continental States questions of this kind were dealt with. But nothing of the kind is attempted in this Bill. We have nothing but the rude and coarse expedient of reducing rents, however moderate those rents may be—moderate, I mean, except in the opinion of the tenant class. Now, my Lords, with reference to emigration, I am not going to say much. I hope, and I think the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Salisbury) was mistaken in saying that the Emigration Clause had been intentionally reduced to narrow proportions. No doubt the sum of money is small, but we may hope that it is only a beginning. But what I fear is that you are putting into the minds of these poor tenants that by some means or other you will enable them to continue on the land, and to live happily and prosperously when they cannot possibly do so, and that not until they have discovered that they have been unintentionally deceived will they avail themselves of the opportunity of emigration. The fear is that by emigration you may lose the best part of the population, and may not get rid of the class which most needs emigration. I have detained the House for a long time on this question. I only wish to add this—that when I look back to the general character of the Bill, although it is most ingeniously and elaborately framed, and I think with a sincere and honest desire to check the different evils which prevail in Ireland, by means of compensatory provisions, I cannot help smiling at the adulation which has been lavished upon it by a large portion of the supporters of the Government as a great act of constructive policy by a Liberal Government; and this of a Bill which places absolutely in the hands of a triumvirate the destinies of the whole of Ireland. My Lords, is this the acme of the wisdom of the Liberal Government? I cannot doubt, for a moment, that the Government has been driven to this Bill, as we are driven
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  to it, by circumstances of external pressure. It is the Government that has been driven to have recourse to this somewhat rude and coarse expedient—worthy of a despotic Government, wondered at by every civilized nation in Europe. My Lords, when I look at my noble Friends below me on the Treasury Bench, I cannot help regarding them as something very like what I have seen on the shore of the Western Islands of Scotland—a row of jelly-fishes, [Great laughter.] My noble Friends need not be affronted by the comparison. Jelly-fishes are the most beautiful creatures in the world. They have been studied by eminent biologists now for many years. It has been discovered that they are endowed with a most elaborate and delicate nervous system; but I am sorry to say they have been hitherto found destitute of a skeleton and a backbone. But there is one peculiarity about these jelly-fishes, they make the most beautiful convulsive movements in the water, and you see that the poor creatures think they are swimming; but when you take the bearings of the land you find that they are simply floating with the currents and the tides. That is the position of my noble Friends with regard to this Irish Land Bill. I really hope that success may be possible with the Bill; but it can only be on one condition, that I hope you will observe—namely, that you develop your jelly-fish qualities into something like a skeleton. Let the Irish people understand, at least, that you mean to support the decisions of this Court. I understand that the men who have been selected by right hon. Friend are men of the highest eminence, and that they have the respect, at least, of many noble Lords on the opposite side of the House. Some of them have, indeed, expressed to me their perfect willingness to accept their arbitration in such matters. I have shown your Lordships some of the difficulties they will have to deal with, that it is a question not merely of the valuation of rent under ordinary conditions, such as it would be in England and Scotland, but that the Court will have to deal with fundamental differences of opinion on abstract questions of property. I say that it will require all the powers of the law to support their decisions; but let it be understood by the Government that there is an end to these apparently endless con-

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  cessions, and that they intend to support the decisions of the tribunal that will be appointed, and that it will be useless for the advocates of tenant right to come and say that they do not submit to their decision, because they find that the opinion of the Court does not coincide with the opinion of the Irish tenant. If it were otherwise, and unless some strong ground of this nature is taken, neither this message of peace nor any future message of peace you send to Ireland will be a message of peace. Now, I wish, in conclusion, before I sit down, to say a word as to the Irish population. I hope that nothing I have said will induce any feeling on the part of any portion of the population of that country that I feel, or anyone in this House feels, harshly towards them. I have myself Irish blood in my veins, not merely that we came from Ireland some 1,000 years ago; but recently I have made a personal and near connection with Ireland; and I admire their many great qualities, and it is impossible not to admire and respect their domestic virtue. Many of the evils of their lot and faults of their character have been the developments of an unfortunate political history; but I say this—it is high time to tell the people of Ireland that no people can prosper who, like many of the tenants in that country—I am afraid thousands of them—have been lately pleading poverty as an excuse for crime and fraud.
  VISCOUNT MONCKsaid, he would not refer at any length to what had been called by the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Salisbury) the "ornamental" part of the Bill; but he regretted that the emigration portion of the Government scheme had been dwarfed to its present limits, for he believed that portion of the scheme was the only one which would meet the case of a large portion of the population in the West and South-West of Ireland. But he would suggest that another portion of the Bill might serve as a great means of promoting emigration indirectly—namely, the right of sale, which had been found in all parts of Ireland as the one means for the consolidation of farms. It had been found to combine the least amount of inconvenience to the tenant with the greatest advantage to the estate. The noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Waterford) treated
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  the Bill as if it were a Bill of Pains and Penalties against the whole body of the Irish landlords; and he evoked a loud cheer from the Benches opposite when he asked was that the way to treat men who had been tried and acquitted. But the question their Lordships had to consider was not whether a large majority of the Irish landlords had misconducted themselves—which he (Viscount Monck) did not believe—but whether the law was in such a state as to enable a minority of the landlords of Ireland so to exercise their legal rights as to create alarm amongst the tenants, and so to imperil the public peace. He was of opinion that the law was in such a state, and the object of the present Bill was to remedy that evil. What was the evil in the present case? He thought it was that, although the conditions of tenure in England and Ireland were entirely different and distinct the one from the other, the rule of law which regulated the relative rights and obligations of both landlords and tenants was the same in both countries—namely, the English system. That, he thought, was a fair statement of the state of things which subsisted up to 1870. What were the differences? It was notorious that in England when the landowner lets a farm he lets it in the form of a highly-equipped machine. The machinery was provided by the landlord, and kept up by him. The tenant merely provided the capital necessary for the annual outlay. What was the state of things in Ireland? He (Viscount Monck) spoke generally, not universally. Everything that was necessary to be done on the land, the building, the draining, was done by the tenant. To anyone who knew Ireland, the extent to which improvements had been made by the tenants did not require proof; but a singular piece of evidence was furnished in a statement which was published the other day by what was called the Landlords' Committee in Dublin, a statement which they had obtained by issuing questions to landlords all over Ireland, as to the amount of money spent by landlords. The number of acres included was 4,216,619 spread pretty evenly over the four Provinces of Ireland; and the returns showed that within 40 years on those 4,200,000 acres there had been spent £3,544,547, or an annual expenditure of some 5d. per acre per annum.

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  He assumed, therefore, that, generally speaking, it was the tenant who had to expend the capital and the labour necessary to bring the soil up to a productive state. In England, if a landowner desired to resume possession of his land, he had no pecuniary liability or obligation to the tenant, except such as were of a temporary character, for tillage and unexhausted manure; and these being allowed for, if he could not come to terms with the tenant, the landlord resumed possession of the land, and neither had any just ground of complaint. But how stood, the case in Ireland? In that country, the tenant having expended his capital or labour, the landlord had the power to move him out of his holding, that tenant, perhaps, having expended on that holding, in increasing its value, the whole of his life-long savings. Was that right or fair, or was it a system upon which the prosperity of a country ought or could depend? Where land was in a productive state, rent consisted of two elements—one remuneration for the use of the natural qualities of the soil, and the other the interest payable on the capital expended in making those qualities productive. In England, on every principle of justice and equity, both belonged to the landlord; but in Ireland the landlord was only entitled to payment for the natural qualities of the soil, the assumption being that the capital and labour required to bring it into a productive state had been expended and applied by the tenant. Down to 1870 the landlord had the power of raising the rent, with the alternative of evicting the tenant and appropriating the full amount of these two elements, to only one of which, in equity, he had any right whatever. By the Act of 1870 the grievance was considerably modified as regarded the tenure, and the landlord was deprived of the unlimited power of evicting the tenant; but the blot on the measure was that it did not affect the question of rent at all. These were matters which affected the view the noble Duke (the Duke of Argyll) had taken of the intrinsic merits of the Bill; and he (Viscount Monck) hoped their Lordships would give them consideration, for they might modify what the noble Duke had said. It might not be a popular doctrine in that House, but it was not one of yesterday with him (Viscount Monck), that the course of events in Ireland had
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  amounted to the gradual creation by the tenantry of a property in the land, which had become so thoroughly incorporated with the property of the landlord that the only way of meeting the equity of the case was to give a joint interest to the landlord and the tenant. He might also say that he was not ashamed of the "three F's." Whether in capitals or small letters, they were large enough to confer a considerable benefit on the tenants of Ireland, and it was one to which they were entitled by every principle of justice and equity. It was argued that the Bill could not confer great advantages on the tenants without taking something from the landlords; but the possibility of the argument was principally due to a non-definition of terms. Unquestionably, great advantages were given by the Bill to the tenants, and the landlords did lose something. His noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor of Ireland (Lord O'Hagan) said they lost their amenities; but the only definition he seemed to give of amenities was the right of evicting tenants. Undoubtedly, the landlords would lose that, and the tenants would gain security of tenure; but the landlord would not lose in a pecuniary sense, except where the tenants were too highly rented. But when they talked of losing and gaining, the advantage which the tenants would gain by the Bill was this—that it would give them security both for their tenure and for their rent, and the landlord would not lose in a pecuniary sense, were his land only fairly let. He would get the same monetary return as he had hitherto obtained. A good deal had been said about the Court which was to be established, and which was to consist of three Commissioners; but he (Viscount Monck) had the highest confidence in that tribunal. He could tell the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Salisbury) that he happened to know Mr. Serjeant O'Hagan, and believed the only fear was that the constitution of his mind was such that, from conscientious fear of giving effect to his inclination rather than his judgment, his decisions would be likely to incline in the direction opposite to his opinions. He could not help thinking that the duties of the Commissioners would be very analogous to those discharged by Courts in several cases. They would, in fact, constitute a Court

  477
  of Arbitration, which the noble Duke admitted to be an excellent institution. And now one word about tenure. The system of tenure proposed in the Bill had been denounced as unsatisfactory and barbarous, and a step of a retrograde character. He should like, however, to see how its provisions worked before he assented to such a sweeping opinion as that. His thorough belief was that the Bill was the only way they could fairly deal with the question, although it might be a clumsy sort of mode of doing it. As to the arguments based on the expediency of an exactly similar system of Land Laws for the United Kingdom, he would say that they must not sacrifice the peace of the country and the probability of reconciling interests which clashed in Ireland to the symmetry of a system of Land Laws or land tenure. In the present circumstances of Ireland, freedom of contract, he maintained, could not subsist. If his contention was correct, the tenant had created a property in the land, and the real confiscation and invasion of the rights of property was that which deprived him of what he had created by his industry and capital. As to the question of political economy, he was puzzled to know how it had arisen. He always thought that political economy dealt with the production of wealth, and that anything which tended to the production of wealth could not be opposed to political economy. So far was this Bill from being an invasion of the principles of political economy, that he maintained it was in harmony with them, and carried at least one of its leading principles. As to free sale, he did not apprehend it would eat up the landlord's interest. Hitherto, in the North of Ireland, the free sale of tenant right had been notoriously restricted by office rules. There were very few large estates in that part of Ireland on which free sale prevailed, and the natural tendency of such a state of things was to enhance the value of the tenant right on those estates where it existed. His opinion was that the extension of tenant right to the whole of Ireland would lead to a reduction of its price. But after all was said, the great question was—What would be the effect of this Bill? He was old enough to have been able to follow the course of Irish politics for nearly half-a-century; and al-
  478
  though it might seem strange in the present condition of things to say so, he held that an enormous improvement, both in feeling and in material prosperity, had taken place under his eyes in that part of the Kingdom. He thought he could trace that improvement almost directly to the conciliatory change of policy adopted towards Ireland, as regarded remedial measures, by all Parties during the period he had mentioned. Of course, it would be rash to prophecy; but he had great confidence in the continuance of that conciliatory policy as evinced in the form of the present Bill, founded as it was upon the principles of equity, guided by sagacity and courage. He had endeavoured to lay before their Lordships the reasons why he thought this Bill founded on principles of justice. He believed its construction exhibited also the qualities of sagacity and courage. He could not help hoping and expecting that that great and statesmanlike measure would be passed by their Lordships, and that would have the effect of restoring quiet and contentment in Ireland, and of weaning the minds of the mass of the people from those recurrent political agitations which had unquestionably retarded the material and moral progress of the country, and which never could have attained the height they had reached if they had not been founded on a well-grounded sense of injustice.
  THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH: It was with very considerable gratification, my Lords, that I heard the noble Duke (the Duke of Argyll) attempt to trace the political causes to which this Bill is due. In the few observations I shall venture to offer I shall endeavour to draw your Lordships' attention to one source of political pressure in connection with the measure which has not hitherto been referred to by any of the noble Lords who have addressed the House. My noble Friend (the Marquess of Salisbury), who followed the noble Lord who moved the second reading of the Bill, drew attention in a marked manner to some speeches made by the noble Lord, then Mr. Chichester Fortescue, and by the noble and learned Lord now sitting on the Woolsack, which are entirely inconsistent with their action in regard to this measure. It would not be difficult to produce a whole array of speeches of the same character. It is

  479
  not, however, my intention to occupy your Lordships' time by lengthy quotations in proof of inconsistency. But if I wanted an ample refutation of the principles of this Bill it would be found in this fatal volume of Hansard, which records the opinions of public men, and which is full of retractations and recantations and disavowals of previous opinions. Their name is legion, and if I were to attempt to draw forth a refutation of the principles of the Bill I could quote as witnesses Sir Robert Collier, Baron Dowse, Mr. Chichester Fortescue, Mr. Gladstone, Lords Granville and Hartington, Mr. Hugh Law, and Sir Roundell Palmer. The opinions of those Gentlemen have furnished the most complete answer to the principles of the measure now before your Lordships, which those who put them forth now advocate with an ardour only equalled by the success with which they previously condemned them. With this host of witnesses who some time ago condemned the principles which they now approve and advocate, it is natural to ask, What has been the cause of this very remarkable change of opinion; but that would lead me to trespass too much on your Lordships' time. But the point to which I would draw your Lordships' attention is one not hitherto noticed—that the present Bill is the result of a successful and most dangerous agitation, and one to which I venture to allude because the events connected with it passed under my own observation during the time I had the honour to occupy a high post in Ireland. Your Lordships are aware of the failure of the Fenian movement in 1866 and 1867. The result was that the Fenian organization in Ireland was utterly broken up, discouraged, and powerless for action. The Fenians were broken into parties in which every section of opinion was represented. In 1878, there appeared a very remarkable letter from a very remarkable man named John Devoy, who took refuge in America after the Fenian troubles, and who, finding the state of affairs as regarded any insurrectionary movement was hopeless, penned these remarkable words—
  "I am also convinced that one section of the people alone can never win independence, and no political Party, however devoted or determined, can ever win the support of the whole people if they never come before the public and
  480
  take no part in the every-day life of the country. I have often said it before, and I repeat it now again, that a mere conspiracy will never free Ireland."
  In addition to that, the writer goes on to say that the particular point on which attention should be concentrated was the reform of the Irish land system. Now, that letter was written in 1878, and in 1879 the first of its results appeared in the formation of what was called the Tenant Defence Association in Dublin. The first meeting of any importance in connection with that Association was in the Spring of 1879, in the Autumn of which year was formed the Land League, of which we have heard so much. Your Lordships are aware of the course of events in 1879, and of the opportunities afforded by the distress for the agitation against rent. In 1880 the Land League was in full swing, and we had these remarkable words of Mr. Parnell, which indicated the coming policy that was to predominate in Ireland—
  "What can we do to induce the landlords to see the position? You must show them that you intend to hold a firm grip of your land; you must not allow yourselves to be dispossessed."
  And on another occasion he used words which have a still more remarkable bearing; he said last Autumn—
  "Depend upon it, the measure of the Land Bill next Session will be the measure of your activity next winter. …. It will be the measure of your determination not to take farms from which others have been evicted, and to use the strong force of public opinion to deter unjust men from bidding for such farms."
  These words sufficiently indicated the intention of the Leaders of the movement, who advised the formation of a common platform and the taking of a new departure, from which their agitation might be successful, and they were followed by the formation of the Land League, when Mr. Parnell, in his speeches, laid most stress on this, that the Land Question would unite them all, and that the determination to pay no rent would bring about a satisfactory measure of reform. I may be asked what connection there is between all this and the measure before us, and I believe I have shown that that connection is not far distant. We were told by the noble Duke opposite (the Duke of Argyll), in a previous speech in this House, that when the present

  481
  Government came into power, there was no intention of altering the Land Act of 1870 by the introduction of another Land Bill; and it is simply and solely to the success which that agitation was allowed to achieve that we are indebted for the introduction of the Bill. Disorder, confusion, and outrages took place during the Winter and Autumn of 1880, and I believe those outrages so acted upon the sympathetic mind of the Prime Minister that they induced him to consider it necessary to overthrow those principles which he and many of his supporters enunciated in 1870 as sound principles of Constitutional Law, and to bring in a measure which has no parallel even among the revolutionary measures the Premier has ever introduced to Parliament. The noble and learned Lord who spoke last night (Lord O'Hagan) laid great stress on the fact that the measure was necessary to produce peace in Ireland. If it were so, I should not object to it; but, judging from the past, and from the advice which has been, and is still being, given to the people, I think we have only to consider what are the particular objects of contention in Ireland at the present time to form a very accurate conjecture as to whether the measure will be productive of peace. We know the advice tendered to the Irish tenants, and the suggestion that they should pay nothing but a fair rent for their holdings. What is the explanation of the term ''fair rent?" The fair rent, as explained by those who exercise the greatest influence among the Irish tenantry, is that after they have suited their own requirements, paid their just debts, and laid by a provision for their families, they may then pay what remains to the landlord. That is the rent that the tenants have been advised to pay. The other precept of the Land League is that no tenant shall take any land from which another has been evicted. Now, will the Bill remove any of these grievances and difficulties? The rent under the Bill will be a judicial rent. It may give satisfaction; but it may not. If it does give satisfaction all will be well; but if rents are not fixed on just, fair, and equitable principles it will not be satisfactory. But if it be not, the agitation will not come to an end. Do you think this Bill will necessarily stop evictions? No; evictions will continue, but this great ad-
  482
  vantage, I presume, will remain to the landlord, that when nearly all control of his estate is taken from him he will have to carry out evictions in his own name. But if the Bill does not stop evictions, can we hold that the injunctions laid down by the Land League will be deviated from, or that there will be greater peace and order in Ireland? I heard, with particular interest, the noble Duke speak of this measure as involving transactions of an improvident and almost immoral character. It appears to me to be like a great gambling transaction, in which payment of a bill is postponed to a distant date, while a certain sum is given to the immediate drawer. This Bill, by one stroke, deals simply with the tenants of the present in Ireland, and puts an enormous sum of money into their pockets. The rateable value of Ireland, exclusive of Ulster, amounts to £11,393,000; and if we add to that 25 per cent, the probable excess of the rental over the the rateable value, we find that the rental of Ireland, exclusive of Ulster, comes to £14,242,000. Now, as we have the remarkable provision standing in the forefront of the Bill that every tenant shall be allowed to sell his tenancy for the best price he can get, assuming three years' purchase a moderate sum for the tenancy, the Bill will put the sum of £42,000,000 into the pockets of the ten-ante existing at present; and at seven years' purchase it will be £100,000,000 into their pockets. I think that justifies the statement of Mr. Baron Dowse, that the Bill simply deals with existing tenants, and that it is not necessary for it to provide for the future. Now, where does that sum of money come from? It comes from the pockets either of the tenants for the future or of the landlords. In the latter case, it is so far a loss of interest on the money they pay for the redemption of their estates, or it is a loss of rent that can never be replaced; in the former, it becomes an increase of rent paid by the tenants, but not received by the landlords. The great difference between this Bill and the Act of 1870 is that that Act offered an inducement—a strong one—to tenants to remain in the quiet possession of their holdings. Under that Act they were to have compensation for disturbance of tenure; and therefore, under the shelter of that provision, they might

  483
  profitably and safely farm their lands. But this Bill will invite tenants to quit their holdings, and, treating as it does all tenants alike, will offer a premium on idleness and unproductiveness on the part of the tenant. A system like the Irish land system is one of extraordinary complexity and diversity, yet the Government have proceeded in a rough-and-ready way to deal with the multitude of different circumstances which must necessarily arise in practice. I can conceive nothing more calculated to encourage the spirit of gambling and speculation that exists among the Irish tenants than the facilities given by this Bill to enable them, both provident and improvident—those who have effected some improvements and those who have not—to obtain from the Court a statutory term of 15 years, and then to go into the market and sell their interests for the highest price they can get. What can be more unreasonable, for example, than that a tenant who has only been in his holding for six months should stand in as favourable a position as another who, together with his family, have held the farm for six generations? To both, however, it offers the same facilities. We have heard a good deal about the village tyrant; but there is another person who is well known to Irish landlords, and who is a still more objectionable character—namely, the village "gombeen." During the great distress in 1880 many loans were made, and the calling in of these loans was one of the principal sources of the poverty and distress which now pervaded Ireland. Among the many disadvantages which encumber the system of free sale is this—that, as the noble Duke has said, it precludes every man from obtaining a holding except by the payment of a considerable sum of money. That system may work very well in Ulster, for in that Province there is an industrious and a frugal population, and a system which works well there may be detrimental in other parts of the country. This Bill reminds me of the story of Samson in the arms of Delilah. All the power of the landlords is gone, all their strength expended, and the cry is raised—"Up, for the Philistines are upon you." The Winter of 1879–80 was a most instructive one. I know nothing more commendable than the self-denying character of the Irish landlords
  484
  during that trying time. But will that feeling remain after the passing of this Bill, when we have abstracted from the landlords every interest in their property, all their proprietary rights, and have fixed their rent by a judicial decree of the Land Court?—when we have, in fact, reduced them to the position of mere rent-chargers upon their estates. I do not think that they will submit to the same deprivations and show the same kindly spirit and feelings towards their tenants. On the contrary, they will stand upon the letter of the law. The effect of the Bill will be to impose a fine of enormous magnitude upon the landlords of Ireland. It is said that the landlords will be able to enforce the payment of their rents by civil process; but I fear that after the passing of the Bill the dangers attending the collection of rent will be the same as now. We are also told that they may redeem their farms; but some landlords possess thousands of them, and they will not be able to exercise that right. I contend that during the first period of 15 years for which the Court can fix a tenancy, we shall see a change in the relations between landlord and tenant which will make the latter the virtual possessor of his farm. In 1870, Mr. Gladstone said—
  "As I understand it, the scheme itself amounts to this—that each and every occupier, as long as he pays the rent that he is now paying, or else some rent to be fixed by a public tribunal charged with the duty of valuation, is to be secured for himself, and his heirs, in the occupation of the land that he holds, without limit of time. He will be subject only to this condition—somewhat in the nature of the Commutation of Tithe Act—that with a variation in the value of produce the rent may vary, but it will be slightly, and at somewhat distant periods. The effect of that provision will be that the landlord will become a pensioner and rent-charger upon what is now his own estate. The Legislature has, no doubt, the perfect right to reduce him to that condition, giving him proper compensation for any loss he may sustain in money; the State has a perfect right to deal with his social status, and to reduce him to that condition if it thinks fit. But then it is bound not so to think fit unless it is shown that this is for the public good. Now is it for the public good that the landlords of Ireland, in a body, should be reduced by an Act of Parliament to the condition practically of fund-holders, entitled to apply on a certain day from year to year for a certain sum of money, but entitled to nothing more? Are you prepared to denude them of their interest in the land; and, what is more, are you prepared to absolve them from their duties with regard to the land? I, for one,

  485
  confess that I am not; nor is that the sentiment of my Colleagues. We think, on the contrary, that we ought to look forward with hope and expectation to bringing about a state of things in which the landlords of Ireland may assume, or may more generally assume, the position which is happily held, as a class, by landlords in this country—a position marked by residence, by personal familiarity and by sympathy with the people among whom they live, by long traditional connection handed on from generation to generation and marked by a constant discharge of duty in every form that can be suggested—be it as to the administration of justice, be it as to the defence of the country, be it as to the supply of social, or spiritual, or moral, or educational wants—be it for any purpose whatever that is recognized as good and beneficial in a civilized society. Although, as I have said, nothing would induce me voluntarily to acquiesce in a continuance of such a state of things as has prevailed, and still, to a great extent, prevails in Ireland—it would, I own, be a most melancholy conclusion were we to find that we could not rectify that which is now wrong in the land tenures of that country without undertaking a social revolution, a social revolution in which the main characteristics would be the absolution of wealth and property from the performance of duty, and an addition to that lounging class—unfortunately too abundant in this country—who are possessed of money and of nothing else, and who seem to have no object in life but to teach us how to multiply our wants and to raise the standard of our luxuries, even when we have not yet solved the problem, or got to the heart of the secret, how we are to relieve the destitution which is pining at our doors."—[3 Hansard, cxcix. 351–2.]
  Now, the provisions of this Bill will have the effect which the Prime Minister contemplates in these words. I very much doubt whether the land hunger of which we hear so much will be assuaged by the means provided by this measure.
  "Crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops,
  Nec sitim pellit, nisi causa morbi
  Fugerit venis, et aquosus albo
  Corpore languor."
  I hold that in time the tenant's interest must completely absorb the interest of the landlord, and we shall some day see an agitation in Ireland productive of still more revolutionary demands, and directed, not against unjust rents, but against rent of any kind. I believe that the Irish people will soon perceive that by a judicious exercise of the powers conferred upon them by this Bill, that by enlarging their own interests and contracting those of the landlords, the whole interest in estates will pass into their hands, and that it will require but a slight shock to overthrow the remaining structure of the landlord's property in Ireland. I wish to say one or two
  486
  words about the constitution of the Land Court. I have nothing to say against the gentlemen who will compose it, no doubt they are men of the highest honour and probity; but the Court, nevertheless, does not commend itself to me as a Court of the highest impartial judicial characteristics. It seems to me to partake of the nature of a Court whose members have been selected from the partizans of one political Party in order to give effect to preconceived ideas. In Serjeant O'Hagan we have the learned gentleman who assisted the Catholic Bishops of Ireland in the preparation of their criticisms upon the Bill, many of which were listened to. There is one of the recommendations which I rather think was made to find out which way the wind blows. It is a kind of explanation why the Prime Minister refused to sanction any re-arrangement for the re-appointment of the two lay Commissioners after seven years have expired. This last recommendation is that two Assessors should be associated with the County Court Judges, and have co-ordinate jurisdiction. These Assessors would be chosen by popular election. One of the features of the case which strikes me with the greatest alarm is the reception which the Bill will meet with in Ireland. It will be a very dangerous thing if, by a revolutionary measure, we hand over the whole of the property of Ireland to a system of hotch-potch, placing the working of the measure in the hands of those who will only work it in a manner which is conducive to their own ends. Yet there is another Court in Ireland to which I have already referred—a Court not nominated by the Queen—whose decisions are secret, which now claims to regulate, and does regulate, the affairs of the whole country. That is the Court which the Government has obeyed, which will administer this law and promulgate it throughout Ireland. The existence of this Court is one of the most dangerous elements in the question. I admit that it is not possible to reject this Bill in face of the powerful Land League which has been raised in England and Ireland; but I cannot for one moment join in the hopefulness as to the future of Ireland which, in consequence of this Bill, is entertained by the supporters of the Government. The picture which I draw is certainly not a very cheering one, because I believe that when the Bill is sent

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  to Ireland it will be the signal for further disorders in that country. It will be seen that agitation has produced successful results; that concessions have been made to disloyal people; and the advent of this measure in Ireland will be the signal of the departure, before any great number of years have elapsed, of what has been termed the "English garrison." The destruction of the National Church in Ireland was one, and this will be another, among the many monuments to the transcendent ability, but, at the same time, ill-regulated optimism, of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister.
  VISCOUNT POWERSCOURTsaid, as a Member of the Irish Land Tenure Committee, he felt he could not give a silent vote on that most important question. That Committee was appointed last winter, as their Lordships knew, for the purpose of sketching out the general lines on which it was desirable to legislate with reference to land in Ireland; and, feeling as he did very earnestly upon the question, he should like to lay his views before their Lordships with regard to some of the broad principles of the Bill. He maintained that, whether tenant right had been given by the Bill or not, it existed, as was proved both by the Richmond and Bossborough Commissions, in consequence of the labour of the tenants' hands, the reclamation of land, the erection of buildings, and the long occupation of holdings. Therefore, the difference between the practice of England and Ireland as regarded improvements was essential to the proper conditions of the Bill. It was the custom in England for landlords to erect, and also to maintain, all the buildings necessary for the occupation of the farms, and to drain the lands at their own expense. This, however, had never been the custom in Ireland, and could not be, with its system of small farms. When an Irish tenant applied to his landlord for improvements on his holding, the landlord said he could not do the whole of them. The tenant thereupon would ask whether if he did a part he would be given a security. The landlord consented, and the principle of tenant right was thereby established; for, of course, the improvements made by the tenant were his property, and no landlord would charge rent upon such improvements. But sometimes the
  488
  tenants wanted improvements of a more important character, and the landlord agreed to borrow money from the Board of Works, or became security for the money, to effect them, and an agreement was made that the tenant should pay interest on the loan in the shape of an increased rent. This increase became a permanent increase; and though the money was repaid in 35 years the charge continued. That, he thought, was perfectly fair, as the land was permanently benefited. Of course, if the Bill was passed, and tenant right became universal, landlords would probably only erect buildings strictly on these terms. Many landlords, in fact, had erected buildings before this, and never charged anything to the tenants at all. He had adopted that plan himself. He strongly supported the recognition of the tenant's interest, which was established in the Bill, and by no means agreed with the noble Duke (the Duke of Argyll) on the question of tenants' improvements, which were a real item in the question. He hoped their Lordships would not agree to any limiting Amendments of the Bill of the nature proposed by Mr. Heneage and Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice in the other House of Parliament. He did not believe there existed one estate in Ireland which was really managed on the English principle, and on which all the improvements had been the work of the landlord. He thought, too, it was most undesirable to create two different classes of tenants in the country. He considered that the object of this measure was to put all the tenants of Ireland upon an equal footing, and he thought that such an object could not prejudice the landlords in any way. He deprecated the creating of jealousies and distinctions, and let them not enable a tenant to complain that he did not possess tenant right while his next-door neighbour did. It was also noticeable that the Amendments proceeded from English and not Irish Members of Parliament. He regretted very much to say that he was afraid there would be great efforts to emasculate the Bill. He thought that would be a narrow, selfish, and short-sighted policy; and what they ought to do in the present state of Ireland was to give full tenant right, with free sale. He did not think that when the Irish tenant got tenant right such as the Bill would give

  489
  him he would be so very anxious to acquire the fee simple. Nevertheless, every facility ought to be put in the way of the tenants becoming the owners of their farms where the landlord was willing to sell. The great point with the Irish tenant was security in his holding and a fair rent. He would also object to any limitation of the principle of free sale as laid down in the Bill. They ought not to attempt to limit the price for which tenant right was to be sold. He was of opinion that the purchase and sale of the tenant right ought to be guided by the market price; and he did not think it would ever be worth the landlord's while to purchase the tenant right; he might just as well throw his money into the sea, except in cases of fraudulent tenants, when he could protect himself by the power of pre-emption provided in the Bill. He did not look upon the Bill as one for the confiscation of the landlords' property, but rather as a recognition of tenant right, believing, as he did, that if they granted security to the tenant they would also secure the landlord, for they must stand or fall together. He asked the House to remember the state of Ulster, where tenant right existed, and to compare it with the rest of Ireland, and say whether the landlords' property was not more secure in Ulster than in other parts of Ireland. He hoped their Lordships would recognize that principle, and that both landlords and tenants would enter into their new relations with mutual respect and cordial co-operation.
  EARL FOBTESCUE: My Lords, I entreat your kind indulgence for a few remarks which I desire to make upon this Bill as an Irish landowner directly interested in its immediate operation, and as an English landowner prospectively interested, with most of your Lordships, in the formidable precedent which it establishes. It is painful to me to be compelled to speak as I shall have to do of this Bill, brought in by a Government comprising many with whom I have long, as a Liberal, been in the habit of acting in politics. But it is more painful to think that a Liberal Government could thus repudiate wholesale their recent professions and promises. It is they, not I, that have changed opinions since I supported their Land Act of 1870. The view I take of this Bill and its antecedents is only consistent with
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  that deep conviction of the paramount" importance of law and order, and that attachment to the principles of Free Trade, including freedom of contract for adults, which I have always felt and maintained from my youth upwards. But freedom of contract for adults only, for I well remember repeatedly voting in favour of protection to really helpless factory children from overwork against Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright. Before, however, considering this Bill and its probable effects, I would ask leave to glance for a moment at its causes and antecedents. We hear, on the unimpeachable authority of the noble Duke who addressed us so powerfully to-day, that an Irish Land Bill formed no part of the original programme of the present Government; nor, indeed, we learn from competent authority, of the Liberal Party either; for 300 addresses of Liberal candidates at the last General Election contained, we are told, no allusion to it. So we have to seek aliunde the reason for the introduction of a measure so conflicting with the positive assurances given, and principles emphatically laid down, by the authors of the Act of 1870. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor of Ireland spoke, indeed, of resolutions passed at small meetings in the North of Ireland on the subject, and, like one or two other noble Lords, built up an enormous superstructure on some expression in the Report of the Duke of Richmond's Commission. So we have heard, also, of the necessary, though unsuspected, development of the Act of 1870. But we find the real reason, as virtually admitted by my noble Friend the Lord Privy Seal, in the lawless condition into which Ireland has been brought since this Government's accession to Office. They cannot deny that Ireland was handed over to them tranquil and orderly—not, indeed, in a state of comfort and satisfaction—owing to the operation of the Land Act—previously almost unknown, as was erroneously stated by Mr. Gladstone just before the General Election; but tranquil and orderly, though disaffected, as was clearly discerned by the calmer judgment and deeper insight of his illustrious Predecessor, and was publicly proclaimed by him in his memorable letter to the Duke of Marlborough. In the Queen's Speech, in speeches in Parliament, and in speeches elsewhere, the present Government re-

  491
  peatedly announced their determination to govern Ireland on different principles and by different methods from those of their Predecessors; and this they certainly have done, as far as they can be said to have governed Ireland at all. In spite of the public remonstrances of those Predecessors, and of the confidential warnings of the stipendiary magistrates of Ireland, they, with marked self-complacency, refused to renew the Act prohibiting the importation of arms; and tens of thousands of firearms have been, in consequence, introduced into Ireland since their accession to Office. I impute no motives—I state facts. I am not going back to the Prime Minister's unfortunate Clerkenwell speech before the Dissolution. But later during the Recess last Autumn, after the outrages had commenced in Ireland, Mr. Bright—perhaps the first orator in England—went down and addressed his constituents. I remember his speech occupied more than a column in the newspapers. It was full of the injustice of Irish, landlords and of the wrongs of Ireland; but there were not more than a few lines of decorous deprecation of violence in it altogether. Nor did any language of his right hon. Colleague tend at all to diminish the mischievous influence of that speech. Now, it is obvious that a systematic refusal to pay rent, accompanied by intimidation and even a certain amount of outrage towards those who paid it, or were engaged in obtaining its payment, would facilitate the object of those who desired a stringent and confiscatory Land Bill to be passed. The persistence in such lawless refusal and outrage would dispose needy and timid Irish landlords to accept almost any terms enabling them promptly to recover part of the money due to them, and would incline the people of Great Britain to acquiesce in legislation inconsistent with their habitual respect for the rights of property for the sake of obtaining a peaceful solution of the ever-recurring troublesome problem of Irish disaffection. The lawlessness spread and increased, till the law of the land was superseded, as the Government had to admit, by the law of the Land League, through county after county in Ireland. For months this dangerous and discreditable state of things was helplessly acquiesced in by the Government, till at last, in January, they felt compelled to
  492
  propose a Bill to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act there. Somewhat later, even the Members for Birmingham, conspicuous by their absence from some of the earlier divisions on that Bill, were roused by the Land League's insolent defiance into speaking out. How useful these speeches would have been if made last Autumn! I will not yield to any one of the Government, or their supporters, my claims to be considered a friend to humanity. In the cause of suffering humanity, if I have effected little, I have worked hard and suffered somewhat. In that cause I have stood by the bedsides of the dead and dying of cholera and fever; I have visited the most infectious wards of workhouses and of hospitals, incurring some risk, unfortunately not always with complete impunity, by doing, rarely and at intervals, what thousands of brave medical men and ministers of religion do daily as a matter of course. But I feel no respect for the humanitarianism which has more regard for the lives and limbs of the law-breaking and law-defying than those of the law-abiding and law-enforcing; which calmly exposed brave soldiers and policemen—armed, indeed, but rendered practically defenceless by the authorities—to insults, wounds, and even death, from seditious mobs or cowardly assassins; which made the magistrate to bear the sword in vain; and which, consequently, left a certain number of loyal subjects for many months to suffer depredation, outrage, and even murder, and thousands more to remain helpless under the daily apprehension of similar treatment to themselves or their families. Conscious of the discredit attaching to them in consequence, the Prime Minister, followed by many of his Colleagues and of his supporters, began last Autumn, and has continued intermittently ever since, attributing the lawless state of Ireland to your Lordships' refusal to pass his Compensation for Disturbance Bill last Session. Now, as I took great pains to persuade several Friends of mine to come up and swell the majority of Liberal Peers, which would, of itself, have sufficed, without other aid, to throw out that Bill, I must be allowed to say of that discreditable abortive attempt at Ministerial legislation that it was the fitting precursor of this measure. For, in all its Protean

  493
  variety of phases, from its first sudden introduction, contrary to all precedent, as a supplementary clause to a Belief of Distress Bill down to its final rejection by an almost unexampled majority of this House, its principle was confiscation with repudiation of contract. And both these measures have been alike misdescribed by the Government. As that Bill was founded on the anticipation of general cruel exaction—unjust, though legal—on the part of the Irish landlords, who have been since, as a body, triumphantly acquitted of this charge by the Prime Minister, so this Bill was avowedly based on the Report and Evidence presented by a one-sided Commission, of which I need now only say that they could find time to admit an anonymous letter as testimony against a landlord, but could not find time to give the hearing which they had promised to the landlords to rebut the charges made against them individually. That Bill professed to be local. It should rather have been called general with local exceptions; for it applied to more than half the acreage of Ireland, and to more than two-thirds of the acreage not already otherwise provided for by legislation. It professed to be temporary; yet it dealt inter alia with changes of tenancy—that is, with arrangements of ex hypothesi more than 18 months' duration. It professed to apply to distressed districts only; yet its Schedules comprised numerous large tracts where the good crops contrasted markedly with those in many large really distressed districts in England and Wales. So this Bill, we are assured with corresponding intrepidity by the Government, is not to confiscate, but to raise in value landed property in Ireland; to benefit not the tenant only, but the landlord also, and especially the labourers. That our rejection of that Bill, notwithstanding the large majority by which it passed the other House, was readily acquiesced in, if not approved, by British public opinion, we learn, not only from the reasoning and testimony of the always honest and fearless Postmaster General, but still more conclusively from the conspicuous failure of the Government to get up successful indignation meetings on the subject anywhere out of Ireland. I agree with that able and courageous Minister that we may find in that fact a strong argument in favour of your Lord-
  494
  ships passing a Land Bill, which I feel satisfied is now demanded by the public opinion of Great Britain as well as Ireland. But I go further, and find in that fact also an encouragement for this House fearlessly to modify those confiscatory clauses which in this Bill, as I read it, deal hardly with the Irish landlords in proportion to the good which they and their predecessors have done, and the forbearance which they have shown, to their tenants. The noble Marquess who spoke with such remarkable ability from these Benches yesterday exposed the Ministerial misrepresentation that this Bill had been rendered necessary by the extensive mutilation of the Land Bill of 1870 in this House; the chief mutilations having been made by the present Lord Chancellor, the present Irish Chancellor, and the present Foreign Secretary. So much has been already said so ably about this Bill that I will only now repeat that it establishes free sale everywhere in Ireland, whether previously prevailing or not on an estate—nay, more, none the less, where the landlord has made large and long-continued sacrifices to exclude it. This Bill not only presents the tenant with what he has never bought, but what the landlord has paid heavily to prevent his buying. Why should he be empowered to sell at a high price for his own benefit alone, to whoever he pleases, the enjoyment of a holding rendered all the more valuable by the improvements to which the landlord has contributed without raising his rent, sacrificing for years that contribution with compound interest? This is what my predecessors and I have done for more than half-a-century, and this is what most other improving Irish landlords have done also. Moreover, thinking it undesirable for a new tenant to enter upon a new holding, or an old tenant on an enlarged holding, not only exhausted of capital, but probably also encumbered with debt, we have not allowed the incoming tenant to discharge the arrears of his predecessor in the holding; these arrears being sacrificed in my case generally to the amount of at least two years' rent during more than half-a-century for the sake of the well-being of the tenants and the better cultivation of the estate. But why should all this be presented to the tenants, who have already themselves for years enjoyed the benefit of these sacrifices of

  495
  their landlords? And how much harder are the cases of estates managed on the English system, where the landlord has made the improvements of all kinds, instead of only helping the tenants to make them, like myself and most Irish landlords! Still worse, however, if possible, as a matter of principle than this, the Bill, as it stands, enacts that written contracts shall be void, and leases not made under duresse, but willingly taken by tenants cognizant of their provisions and voluntarily agreeing to them, shall be arbitrarily invalidated; on account, I suppose, of the helplessness of the leaseholder, even if he is occupying land on lease worth £1,000 a-year. Can there be a case to which Mr. Gladstone's forcible words of 1870 more strongly apply?—those words, I mean, so often quoted, as to the demoralizing influence that legislation must have which facilitates and encourages repudiation of contract. And I, as an Irish landowner, frequently visiting that country, and, in earlier years, sometimes resident there for weeks and months at a time, venture to say, from my own experience, that any such influence is particularly undesirable in Ireland, where all classes have too much indulged in what one of the Alabama Commissioners is reported to have professed—namely, "a preference for less accurate modes of expression." How far and when contracts are to be repudiated, what is a fair rent, and various other questions, are, by the Bill, left absolutely to the discretion of the new Court to be created. Upon the composition of that Court I shall say nothing. I never heard even the names of two of its members before, nor that of the third except in connection with the House of Commons. But, however able and impartial they may be, I think it a dangerous thing to place the interests of the Irish landlords and tenants completely at the mercy of a Court without appeal, and with so little in this Bill of direction on some very important points. All the other Judges in the land, however eminent, act under the control of statute and precedent. Some of the language in the Bill is very vague; and this new Court, obviously, can have no precedents for its guidance. But, further, this Bill is distinctly retrograde in its conception. It encourages and multiplies those divided ownerships in land, which for many years
  496
  the public opinion and legislation alike of this and other countries in Europe have discouraged and superseded. You must go to India to find precedents for such a measure. In England, successive statutes have long been facilitating the conversion of copyholds into freeholds and the extinguishing of manorial and other dues upon fair terms. The noble Marquess told your Lordships how, in other European countries—in France, in Italy, in Spain and Portugal, and in Germany—land tenure had been more and more simplified, and mediæval dues more and more superseded by money payments. The metayer system, once very prevalent in Europe, is being gradually replaced by money rents, especially where improvement is greatest. In Belgium, of which, but for Mr. Jenkins's instructive Report, we should probably have heard more said by the Government, metayage, once rife, now survives only in a few polders near the German Ocean. The noble Marquess told your Lordships how the great Land Reform in Prussia, begun by Stein in 1807 or 1811, but not completed till 1850, did not consist, as Mr. Bright erroneously stated some time ago, in taking one-third or one-half of the land from the landlord, and giving it to the tenant; but consisted in taking some such amount from the tenant and giving it to the landlord in lieu of the labour and other dues, which, under the previous system, he could claim from the tenant; and, at the same time, exonerating the landlord from claims for assistance of various kinds from the tenant; thus rendering each class very nearly independent holders of their respective lands. I might cite the land legislation of Hesse, begun in 1811, but not quite completed till 1849, which is fully described by Mr. Morier in a very able Report, because, though the territory is small, its condition was typical of much elsewhere in Germany, and the success attending that legislation rendered its example very influential. But I will not trouble your Lordships with it. I will only add Mr. Morier's summing up—
  "The one ruling idea of the agrarian legislation of Hesse, and, indeed, every part of Germany, during the present century has been to extirpate double ownership, and substitute in lieu of it full, unhampered rights of allodial" (or, as we should say, freehold) "possession."

  497
  But all this has been done with scrupulous regard to the just rights of both parties. It was everywhere in Germany an equitable adjustment of the fair claims of each—not a confiscation of the property of either for the benefit of the other class. Far the greater part of this Bill is devoted, not to equitably extirpating, but to confirming and perpetuating divided ownership where it already exists, encouraging—nay, compelling—its creation where it does not; and doing this, not with fair compensation, but by scarcely disguised confiscation. We must consider this Bill, however, not merely as regards its injustice or its retrograde character in relation to the more recent legislation and public opinion of the most civilized countries of the world; we must look also at its probable results by the light of political economy, which was described by Mr. Lowe some years ago in the House of Commons as the one safe oasis wherein to rest in the dreary desert of politics. I know that political economy has been, by one leading member of the Cobden Club, amidst the applause of many other of its influential members, relegated to some distant planet. But political economy has an inconvenient habit of, sooner or later, vindicating its truths and the predictions of its disciples by results. Within the present century a powerful Finance Minister in his day, Mr. Vansittart, on behalf of a strong Government, carried by a large majority through the House of Commons a Resolution affirming that a guinea was worth only a pound note and a shilling, and yet guineas continued to be none the less sold next day for 27 s. in London for exportation. The highly protective Corn Laws of 1815, 1822, and 1828, with elaborate sliding scales, avowedly intended to secure a steady remunerative price to the British farmer, though triumphantly carried, did not prevent agricultural distress from twice, at an interval of about 10 years, reaching such a point as to engage the serious attention of the Legislature, and on each occasion to cause the appointment of Parliamentary Committees to inquire into the cause and, if possible, suggest remedies for the distress. The later Protectionist Corn Law of 1842, to which Mr. Gladstone was a party, and of which I was, unworthily, selected to move the rejection of the second reading—that law, specially intended to insure steadiness
  498
  and moderation of price under a sliding scale of duties doubling the profit and loss on each transaction, though not less triumphantly carried, also conspicuously failed of both objects, and was repealed by its authors four years afterwards. So we need not shrink from considering this Bill in its economical aspect. There can be no doubt that, whatever be the case elsewhere, in Ireland, the capital employed in farming is generally too small for the land to be farmed to the best advantage. Can it be economically desirable that under the influence of earth-hunger a tenant, before entering upon a new farm or upon an enlargement of his former holding, should be encouraged to spend all his capital, if not to borrow more, in order to buy the tenant right? Can it be doubted that the Ulster Custom was far more the consequence than the cause of prosperity in Ulster? Has not much of that prosperity resulted from the rural domestic manufactures long successfully carried on there, but unknown in the other parts of Ireland—all inferior in thrift, industry, education, and civilization, to Ulster? And now that these additional sources of profit beyond the farm have been largely superseded by chemical works and steam factories in towns, are there not indications that the burden of that custom is often found too heavy? Can it be desirable to give to thousands additional fixity of tenure in holdings each too small, even if rent free, to provide food for a family, and abounding by far the most where both soil and climate are unfavourable to tillage? Is not this to encourage a permanent local congestion of the population on spots where every bad season must bring them to the brink of starvation? Can it be desirable, for the real interests of the Irish farmer, to drive away the landlords; or, when they remain, so to diminish their influence, as to render them powerless to restrain the indefinite subdivision of holdings and multiplication of their inhabitants? The litigation under this measure will certainly be immense. Whether tenants, landlords, or labourers will be benefited by it or not, no one can doubt that the Irish lawyers will be so enormously. Can it be desirable that a large amount of capital should be spent on unproductive litigation, which, moreover, we know from experience is sure to generate and

  499
  foster ill-will between the litigant parties? Then, can it be desirable, in the interest of the Irish labourers, still more numerous than the farmers, to drive away and dishearten the landlords, who employ so much more labour on their demesnes than do the farmers in proportion on their holdings? Will not the sudden withdrawal of the landlords' demand for labour, in consequence of this measure, tend to throw many men out of work, and to lower still more the already lowering, though till quite lately much improved, rate of wages in Ireland? And this brings me to the neglect shown by the Government, notwithstanding their professions of interest in it, to that, the largest class in Ireland, both in their Act of 1870, and in this Bill as originally introduced. In the Act of 1870, Clause 9, authorizing the landlord to take land for cottage building, I happen to know, had to be pressed upon them before it was inserted in the House of Commons; and sub-section 5 of Clause 12, giving similar power to take small allotments for the labourers' use, was introduced in this House. I have heard it said that there is no instance of these compulsory powers being used. But I, who have built a certain number of labourers' cottages in Ireland, despairing of the farmers ever doing so, should be very sorry to be without them. The Royal veto has not been found wholly inoperative by our Monarchs, though William III. was the last who actually exercised it. In like manner, there was not originally a single clause in the present Bill for the labourer's benefit. But then the labourers, though in general badly treated by the farmers, had not yet had recourse to intimidation or violence. Unfortunately, the discouragingly small amount of the fund provided for assisting emigration, through which alone relief can be obtained for the local congestions of superfluous population in the poorest districts, and, above all, the absence of almost all mention of field-draining in the Bill, and certainly of any provision for its extensive execution, together with the prominence given to reclamation in its provisions, afford sad evidence how little the Government have understood the real requirements of Ireland, and how much they have been influenced by clamour in the deviations which they have made in this measure from the strict principles of
  500
  political economy. The large present and prospective withdrawal of employment by landlords renders it urgently desirable to bring some productive work within easy reach of the labourers pretty nearly all over Ireland without long delay, and without necessitating their removal from their homes. Some field drainage, as distinguished from arterial drainage, is required, I am assured, in every neighbourhood in Ireland—almost in every parish in Ireland. In England, it is stated that about two-thirds of the cost of such draining has been in labour. In Ireland, where the draining would be more largely done with stone, the proportion would be probably greater, and the work would naturally be chiefly piece—not day-work—thus stimulating industry by enabling the industrious to earn good wages. The generally remunerative character of field, or, as it is sometimes called, thorough drainage, is well known. In some cases, its whole cost has been repaid by the increased crops in four years. But it may be reckoned, generally, to do so in 10 years, except in the case of very poor, stiff soils, in a wet climate; so that, with a moderate annual charge for interest, and the gradual repayment of the principal, not only would no loss, except in very rare instances, have been sustained by the landlords, even if the work had been done compulsorily on their lands, planned and superintended by Government officers; but considerable gain would have been realized in most cases by them, which would have been at least fully shared in by the labourers. Field drainage, and not the reclamation of waste lands on a large scale, is what a number of the best authorities, political economists, practical engineers, improving landlords, and land agents, recommend for Ireland at present on all grounds. Unhappily, it is too late now, consistently with Constitutional principles and Parliamentary usage, to remedy the neglect of the Government on this point in this Bill. But while field-draining has been virtually ignored by the Government in this measure, they have introduced clauses about the reclamation of waste land, happily still guarded by some precautionary words, likely, I hope, to render them a dead letter. For from what I have seen in Dartmoor, in Lewis, and in a land-locked bay adjoining my Irish property, and from what I have

  501
  heard of in Whittlesea Mere and Sutherlandshire, and of the promised but never realized rescue of a whole county from the sea near Boston, I am very sceptical about the profitable reclamation of waste lands on a large scale, even by Companies or individuals, and much more by the Government. Under the most favourable circumstances much time would necessarily be consumed in making the requisite surveys and plans, in bringing the requisite machinery, and preparing the requisite accommodation for the large body of labourers required on these waste tracts. The need of increased employment for the labourers over the greater part of Ireland is urgent, and no provisions have been made for doing this in the Bill. But it is too late to repair this sad omission. We can only lament that the Government in this measure do so much that, in my opinion, they ought not to do, and are leaving undone so much that they might and ought rather to have done. The Government, I know, will triumphantly point to the Bright Clauses in the Act of 1870, and the large extension of the same principle in the present Act. The Bright Clauses failed to be extensively acted upon, as I well remember predicting they would, not so much because of their principle as of their infelicitous details: for transcendant eloquence does not always imply statesmanship, much less legislative capacity or administrative efficiency. Every thoughtful man must have desired to see the undivided ownership of land much more widely distributed in Ireland, not so much for economical, as for social and political, reasons, in order to interest larger numbers in the maintenance of the rights of landowners. Many, like myself, entertained sanguine hopes that the Encumbered Estates Act would have done much in that direction long ago. But, from various causes, it did very little; and among those causes was not only a lack at that time of any great amount of available capital in Ireland, but also, in the middle and lower class, a lack of that particular form of earth-hunger which craves for freehold possession. But though I think the extensive purchase of moderate freeholds by Irishmen with the proceeds of their own industry and thrift, even if aided somewhat by Government advances, would socially, economically, and politically be of the greatest advan-
  502
  tage, I believe that in all these three respects Government advances of three-fourths of the price to land purchasers will have a very injurious effect; probably sometimes opening the door to collusion between buyer and seller for sham sales at extortionate prices to cheat the Government, certainly leading to a constant pressure on the Government, as chief creditor and practical landlord in Ireland, for remissions of j debt, such as have been conceded from j time to time by different Governments ever since I came into Parliament, and further furnishing a strong additional motive to the indebted masses for desiring national separation from England. With many thanks to your Lordships for your kind indulgence, I will now sum up my observations by saying that, on the whole, I consider much of the Bill bad in principle and dangerous as a precedent, as sanctioning repudiation of contract and ill-disguised confiscation; that I find when the Bill, in violation of the strict rules of political economy, makes advances of public money, it makes them, not to assist emigration on a scale sufficiently appreciable to relieve the local congestions of population in the poorest districts in excess of the means of subsistence; nor to provide generally remunerative employment in widely diffused field drainage for a large part of the most numerous class in Ireland now in danger of having to look to the poor rates for support; but it makes advances only for artificially raising a forced crop of freeholders, and for the speculation, if Government can get any Company to undertake it, of reclaiming waste land. Still, though I fear this Bill, extorted by intimidation, unsound in principle, and ill adapted to its object, is little likely to conduce to the increased productiveness of the land, to the permanent prosperity of the country, or to the general contentment of the people with the Queen's rule and the supremacy of Parliament, I am glad to learn that there is no serious intention to throw it out; for public opinion demands that a Land Bill shall be passed. At the same time, I trust the House will not shrink from the duty of altering the clauses most inconsistent with justice or policy which formed part of the Bill as introduced by the Government after full consideration; and I hope still more that the House will not hesitate summarily to reject objectionable provisions hastily put in during the

  503
  discussion of the Bill, apparently in the vain endeavour to conciliate the irreconcilable Representatives of the Land League—a futile attempt at an impossible task. For the Land League have throughout announced that they will not be satisfied with any measure compatible with British ideas of justice and British supremacy. They really aim at nothing less than having Ireland for the Irish—by ejecting the landlords and confiscating their property—at nothing short of the Repeal of the Act of Union and complete national independence.
  VISCOUNT MIDLETON VISCOUNT MIDLETON, premising that in his remarks he should confine himself to the four corners of the Bill, said, he yielded to no one in his desire to see this unhappy question set at rest for ever, and a better state of feeling promoted between landlord and tenant in Ireland. No sacrifice could be too great, either for an individual or for a class, if they could restore to those portions of Ireland in which distrust had always unhappily existed between landlord and tenant a better feeling; and also if they could produce a good feeling in those districts where no such distrust ever prevailed, before it had been fostered within the last few months by the action of the Land League. He could not, however, but remark the want of appreciation apparent in several of the speeches delivered from the Ministerial side of the House of the haste with which the Bill had been initiated, and the extraordinary complexity of its details. The measure was distinctly and avowedly based on the Report of the Commission presided over by the noble Earl who sat on the opposite Benches (the Earl of Bessborough). That Commission collected a vast mass of evidence, which was not taken on oath, and which was full of misstatements and contradictions; but the Bill had been read a second time in the House of Commons before the rebutting testimony saw the light. His fear was that under the present Bill arrangements which were far more for the good of the tenants themselves than for the landlord would be utterly impracticable. For instance, with regard to free sale, there were two questions he should like to ask. The first was this—"Is it the case that since this custom of Ulster was legalized by the Act of 1870 a large number of tenants in that Province have sold their occupations, have
  504
  left the country, and have given room to a class of tenants who are less provided with capital, are less able to farm, and are altogether on a lower footing as regards intelligence, capacity, and capital than the men whom they have replaced?" He had it on very high authority, from the manager of one of the largest estates in Ulster, that that was the case on the property with which he was immediately connected, and that he believed it to be the case on many other estates. The second question was—"How will it be possible, if this Bill becomes law in its present shape, for a landlord in the South or West of Ireland to make any improvement, by concentrating around the homestead the scattered fragments of land where the town-lands have been let in rundale, or where they have been scattered by some other agency? "Previous to 1870, this object was always obtained by giving notice to quit, and thus inducing the tenants to come to an agreement as to the arrangement of their farms. Under the Act of 1870 such arrangements, which were more for the good of the tenant than that of the landlord, had been rendered difficult; and his fear was that, under the present Bill, they would be utterly impracticable. As regarded the Arbitration Clause of the Bill, it practically abolished freedom of contract altogether, whatever might be said of free sale. How would it be possible to carry out the provisions of the clause without a substantial revaluation of the soil of Ireland, and, if so, what means were provided for doing that; and how, in the numerous appeals to the Court which there would most assuredly be under it, would the machinery be provided which would en- able the work in hand to be grappled with? Passing to what had been termed the ornamental clauses of the Bill, he would observe, with reference to the Purchase Clause, that while, politically speaking, there could be no doubt, if it could be properly worked, that it would be of the greatest possible benefit, for there could be no question of the great benefit that would accrue to Ireland by having a large number of owners of the soil; yet that doctrine, when they had to do with anything like peasant proprietorship in a congested district, would prove to be a failure. He believed it would be as impossible to preserve a race of peasant proprietors in

  505
  Ireland as it had been found impossible to preserve the old race of yeomen in England, unless they could rescue them from the ever-increasing exigencies of modern competition. He did not expect that the Reclamation Clauses would work; the only possible way of reclaiming land in a remunerative way being by the application to waste lands of the spare time of occupiers, who could not get any money value for their spare hours. With regard to the Emigration Clause, whatever might have been the case as regards that clause as it was introduced into the Lower House, as it had emerged from it the clause was a simple farce. Its provisions reminded him of the attempt of Mrs. Partington to oppose the Atlantic with a mop. It had the expense limited to £200,000. That would emigrate about 700 families, or 5,000 souls, at the utmost, while the unaided emigration from Ireland last year was upwards of 96,000. He objected also to the provisions introduced into the Bill with regard to leases as being unjust, and must also be allowed to express his unqualified disapproval of the clause dealing with labourers. He should have preferred that the maxim, De minimis non curat lex, had been applied to the latter. What was to be done in the case of estates managed on the English principle? No proposal was contained in the Bill to meet such cases. He regretted the animus which had been shown towards the Irish landlords, and denied that a case had been made out which could in any way justify the hard things which had been said of them, although he admitted that among landlords, as among every other class, unjust men were to be found. He had always tried to assimilate the management of his Irish estates to that prevailing on his English estates. He thought that the Bill would operate hardly upon the purchasers of property in the Landed Estates Court in Ireland, and this class of proprietors numbered one-sixth of the whole. Many of these purchasers were commercial men, who were invited to make their purchases by way of investment under the inducements held out to them by the Legislature, and they were in this position, that they were disliked by the people, who preferred the former proprietors to them, and now found themselves abandoned by Parliament. The same thing would happen also to those who had become proprietors since
  506
  1870. This, however, was but one instance in which the Bill meted out injustice to the unoffending. He thought that it was a dangerous proposal to revise the terms of leases granted on the faith of the Act of 1870, and would not tend to encourage the granting of leases. By the provisions relating to labourers' cottages, the successors of present owners might find themselves charged with large sums for the repayment of advances made for the purpose of erecting cottages which might no longer be required. In other respects, too, the Bill showed an utter disregard for the interests of posterity. Everything was to be done here on behalf of the holder of the present tenancy, who was to be invested with privileges which formed no part of the bargain between himself and his landlord. With regard to the clause for staying proceedings, that clause was introduced at the last moment, and was dishonest on the part of those who introduced it, and on the part of those who accepted it. That clause merely introduced by a side wind the principle which their Lordships refused to recognize in the Compensation for Disturbance Bill of last year. If the clause were passed, it would authorize the Court to decree that just debts should not be satisfied which had been allowed to remain unenforced by the indulgence of the landlord. He was puzzled to understand the principles on which the Bill was framed. He gave the Government credit for a sincere desire to benefit Ireland; but how did they carry out their intention? The subject of Irish land required to be treated like any other subject, on scientific principles. So far as political economy was concerned, those principles had been thrown to the winds at the outset. They would, however, re-assert themselves. Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret. They were told that this was to be a message of peace to Ireland. It probably was so intended; but, judging from the reception which the measure had received from the Land League, there was little reason to hope that it would prove to be a message of peace to Ireland. It had already been formally repudiated under the influence which at present dominated Ireland, and was not that of our Sovereign lady the Queen. He could not help thinking that this Bill would open the door to unlimited litigation, a circumstance which was to

  507
  be regretted, especially in a country like Ireland, where such a love of litigation prevailed. In every clause the interests of the landlords were deliberately set aside in order to gratify the political exigencies of a Government, or the demands of an outrageous agitation. One thing, however, would have even reconciled him to this Bill, in spite of all its objectionable features, and that was if it had been a final measure. But most important questions had been intentionally left open for future consideration, among them being absenteeism, the constitution of the Land Court, and the subject of town parks. If it was to the advantage of the State that any person or class should cease to exercise the rights they had exercised, he had no doubt that the State could remove them; but they had no right to keep them in a position which was intolerable to them. In his opinion, simple expropriation of landlords upon an equitable footing would have been a more statesmanlike proceeding, for the landlords would in the future be of no use to their country, and would not be able so efficiently as they had been to discharge their allegiance to the Queen. The Bill took away from them—and especially from absentee landlords, of whom he was one—every inducement to do their duty to their tenantry; and he felt convinced that, if it passed in its present shape, the landlord's power of improving his own property, or the condition of those who lived upon it, would be nil. Having pointed out what were considered to be the defects of the measure, the responsibility of it must be left in other hands. Should he prove a false prophet no one would be more heartily glad than himself, and no one would be more eager and ready to acknowledge it. But he could not help saying he expected serious consequences, which he did not think the Government had adequately estimated, would result from it in the immediate present, and still more so in the future, and only hoped that the worst results of it would not be realized by generations still unborn.
  LORD WAVENEYsaid, that the noble Viscount who had just sat down (Viscount Midleton) had expressed his ideas so clearly and explicitly, that, were it not that all faith in modern prophecy had been lost, he (Lord Waveney) should regard with considerable misgivings the future position of Irish land-
  508
  lords under the Bill. Sharing, however, in that want of faith, he was disposed to think the result would be the direct reverse of the anticipation. He desired, at the outset, to enter a strong protest against the principles which some noble Lords had maintained during the discussion, one of which in effect was that landlords ought to be compensated, not merely for loss of wealth and substance, but for deterioration to their social position and power. But landlords possessed all the social and political rights of other members of the community; and, therefore, they had no just ground of complaint on that score. In the next place, it was contended that expropriation would have been a far fairer solution of the admitted evils of the Irish land system than the remedies contained in the proposed measure, and that it would be satisfactory to the landlords, and not in any way dishonourable to them. That was a principle which he indignantly rejected. Their duty was to maintain and make good their position, and to display in that position those qualities which, in the eyes of the world, would warrant and entitle them to fill those stations of exceptional prominence and advantage which they at present possessed. If the Nobles of France—a body much inferior to the Nobles of Ireland—had only recognized that truth, they might have guided the elements which exploded in the frenzy of the French Revolution into a very different channel. He thought, therefore, their Lordships should act in a manner worthy of the best traditions of the landed class, and not imitate that example so disastrous in its results to those concerned. With regard to tenant right, and its existence in Ulster, surely the improving tenant on the small holding on the mountain side had earned something in the nature of that right by his labour, especially in the reclamation of waste land, and the Bill was framed in a spirit of equity with reference to that class of men. What was wanted, in addition, was some help for those who could not by industry take care of themselves. For them the Bill would provide, by the Emigration Clauses, as to which he did not believe it possible that remedial legislation on the subject could be effective without some provision for a well-regulated system of emigration. A map in the Library of the House was shaded so as to show what land in Ireland remained to be reclaimed; but it

  509
  was hopeless to talk of reclamation of waste lands upon a large scale. The subject was fully discussed in 1847 and 1848, and the schemes then proposed were found to be impracticable. The landlords, no doubt, did make some improvements; but it was the tenants who carried out reclamations, who prepared the soil for the plough, who cleared away the moss and the heather, to enable the land to be tilled by labour, so as to produce the potato crop. He remembered but one period of absolute peace in Ireland; and that was the peace of exhaustion that followed the Famine, when there was a cessation of political and of religious strife. He did not despair of a different peace, for the people of Ireland could not fail to be touched by the patience of this Empire. He had lived long enough in Ireland to know the value of the Ulster tenant right. The noble Lord then traced the origin of the custom, and, continuing, said that the first blow was struck at it when land in Ulster was sold by the Court with those rights which belonged to the tenants. The Ulster tenant right was not understood in England, or in that House as it ought to be, and the more legislation was based on the ideas underlying that custom, the more lasting benefit would it confer on Ireland, and the better it would be for the tenant and the landlord. It was very easy to find fault, but not so easy to suggest a remedy; but, at the same time, he could not conceive any cases in which a remedy could not be supplied by the action of an honest and learned tribunal; and, in his opinion, there was but one cause of regret with respect to the tribunal, and that was that it would probably be insufficient to deal with the infinite number of cases that would be likely to be brought before it, and he should therefore suggest that there should be a larger number of Judges, sufficient for the formation of two Courts, for he believed the questions to be dealt with were too much for the intellect of three men. The Court would, in the first place, have to consider the custom of Ulster, and afterwards the various modifications of that principle that would have to be made in applying it to all parts of the Island; and he trusted that one of the results would be that they would hear less in future of disputes between landlords and tenants. When the occasion arose, however, the people of
  510
  Ireland had always exhibited great energy, great ability, and great intelligence; and that this Bill would pave the way for national greatness he was firmly convinced. In conclusion, he thanked the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Salisbury) for not dividing against the Bill, and thus disappointing those who were expecting that the House Would be led into committing a mistake at this crisis. They were indebted to the noble Marquess for relieving them from the task of dividing on a measure which ought to be considered independently of Party politics.
  THE EARL OF BELMOREsaid, he was glad that no Amendment had been moved to the second reading, because, having taken some part in the discussion of the subject in Ireland, he had promised to give a fair consideration to any measure which might be proposed. That promise he would not depart from; but, at the same time, it was with very great reluctance that he could express any approval of a Bill that was such a wide departure from the principle of freedom of contract. There was no doubt, however, that something was required to be done in Ireland at that moment. The question of legislation had been alluded to over and over again; and it would be perfectly futile now to indulge in any speculation whether, if a stimulus had not been given two or three years ago to agitation on the question of Irish land, some smaller measure might not have met the difficulty. There were very important social questions in Ireland which required that some measures should be adopted by Parliament to settle the Land Question on a secure basis. It was unnecessary to mention the case of many of the landlords. The agitation which had gone on for some time in Ireland had done much harm to trade in Dublin, and had caused a great falling off in the profits of the railways; and the only institutions which had profited from the present state of things were the banks. Having recently come from Ireland to attend these debates, he happened on his journey to meet a professional gentleman of great knowledge and experience in his locality. This gentleman remarked there could be no doubt that there was a great scarcity of money in the country. He (the Earl of Belmore) asked what had become of it. "Oh," was the reply, "it is said that in one of the banks in the town in which I live

  511
  there is from £200,000 to £300,000 placed to deposit accounts. The farmers will only get 1 per cent interest for this money." This was so much capital withdrawn from the land from a fear that if they invested it in the land it was in danger of being lost in consequence of their not having any security for the retention of their holdings under the present system. The Bill dealt with several matters, and, avoiding details as much as possible, he would make a few remarks on them in the order in which they came in the Bill. The first question was as to the sale of the tenant's interest, or what was called free sale. He was one of those landlords who, to a considerable extent, had not objected to the sale of the tenant's interest. At one time, many years ago, he had attempted to control it. But, finding the responsibility for the acts of his agents too great, and that it was impossible to prevent a larger sum being paid sub rosa, he abandoned all attempt at direct control, only reserving to himself either the indirect control of saying what he would give to the tenant for the power of exercising a veto upon the persons coming into the farm. So long as free sale was not abused, the principle might be defended. There was no doubt that the rent was made more secure by it. But, on the other hand, unlimited free sale was open to much abuse and might prove a great injury to the country. The man giving up his farm was glad to get as much as he could, and the creditors, as well as the landlord, had a better chance of being paid. But the person coming in was placed in a very much better position by restricting free sale. Probably he had borrowed some of the money, and that circumstance would prevent him from stocking his farm. Therefore, the right of the landlord to limit the amount given for the interest in a farm was a salutary one. That right was now practically taken away, and so far the provision dealing with the subject was objectionable. He would admit, however, that according to the definition of the extreme supporters of tenant right in Ireland this Bill did not confer absolutely free sale. The next question was the tenure of the land, and the greatest objection that the tenants had to the present system was that the rent, even under the Bill, might be constantly increased. But, on the other hand, the noble Marquess (the
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  Marquess of Salisbury) had described it as a system which would prevent an increase of rent. That was not altogether so; but, practically, the rent could not be increased, except by converting leases for ever into perpetuities, when a small addition to it might be made, or as the value of money fell there might as time went on be some increase. He had lately looked very closely into the system of tenure on his own property from the time of the Plantation, and he found that at one time every holding was let for a longer or shorter term of years. Down to the present century, it was always usual, on granting a lease, to have a small increase of rent. The noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal (Lord Carlingford) had said that the great rise which had taken place in the value of land during the last 100 years, or less, was due partly to tenant right and partly to the tenants' improvements. That, he (the Earl of Belmore) believed, was certainly not the case. In his opinion, while admitting that the rise in the value of land in Ulster had been considerable, he thought it was attributable to the increased value of money compared with the increased value of land, and not to the tenant's improvements or to the tenant right system which prevailed there. He had no faith in the existence of tenants' improvements before the beginning of the present century, and could not, therefore, think that they had been a factor in the increase of the value of land. With regard to tenant right, he found no trace of it until within the last 100 years. Now and then, it was true, he had heard of cases in which sums of money had been given by way of compensation, and those cases, perhaps, contained the germ of tenant right; but the right in its modern form was not known till a more recent period. Of all the questions dealt with by the Bill, the question of rent was the most important to the tenant. That, at least, was his experience, which was fully confirmed by what he had heard at a land meeting at which he had been asked to preside. Comparisons were sometimes made between the rents on English and Irish estates, and a letter on the subject had appeared in an Irish paper by a tenant farmer from Ireland who had visited Gloucestershire. The writer of that letter pointed out that he paid no more than £1 an acre, and the landlord paid

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  the tithe rent-charge; while in Gloucestershire the average rent was £2 an acre, with tithe and taxes that made the rent practically £3. With respect to the Bill before the House, he would say little as to the proposed Court, lest he should travel over a well-beaten path; but, on the whole, he felt confidence in the Commissioners who would be appointed. One of them he scarcely knew at all, but of the others, one was a trained man of business; while the position and ability of the Judicial Commissioner were guarantees that he would be an impartial Judge. Some people thought that there should be five Commissioners; but he thought that three was a better number. He had always been favourable to some form of arbitration, but could not approve of the establishment of arbitrators in the shape of the Land Court, and he was in hopes that in Committee their Lordships would so amend the Bill as to make it less objectionable than it was at present. The clauses of the Bill that most excited his sympathy were those by which it was intended to make tenants landed proprietors, and he should even have preferred to trust solely to them as a remedy for the present grievances, and to have altogether omitted the other parts of the Bill. No doubt, a great difference of opinion existed on the subject, some maintaining that the sales made under the Church Temporalities Commissioners had resulted in a complete success, while the Returns issued for the county of Armagh favoured the contrary view. Failures there certainly had been in some instances; but the glebe lands were just those where the most unsuitable tenants for the experiment would be found: for the clergyman of former days had not even a life interest, and was not generally an improving landlord; so long as he could get a moderate profit, and live in peace with his tenants, he was satisfied. But, in spite of that fact, he was very glad that the Peasant Proprietary Clauses found a place in the Bill, and he looked to them to counteract the ill-effects of some of its other provisions. It had been contended that the Emigration Clauses would probably be useless and inoperative, and perhaps the experiment might have been tried on a larger scale; but a very considerable emigration would always be going on whenever there was a time of agri-
  514
  cultural depression. A Northern public officer—whose office caused him to be a good authority—was of opinion that when this Bill came into operation and creditors had something tangible to sell, so many tenants were weighed down with debt, that it was probable that emigration would be more considerable than ever. In the way of enabling those who were so situated to sell out and emigrate, he thought those clauses would do some good. Amendments to the Bill would, of course, be proposed in Committee; but there was only one point to which he wished to call attention—namely, with regard to those landlords in Ulster who had bought up the tenant right on their estates. The Prime Minister had denied that there were any such cases; but when he moved his Amendment, having for its object the protection of those landlords who had so acted, he should be able to prove their existence, and would support his views by evidence of their actual number. In conclusion, he must say that his own idea with regard to Ireland was that matters would never prosper there until all parties agreed to leave agitation alone. And he said this with the more confidence, because it was true.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I have two reasons for asking your Lordships' indulgence on this occasion. One will be obvious to your Lordships. It is that it is necessary for me to explain the causes which have led me, from a sense of duty, to accept my share of the responsibility for the introduction of this measure. The other is because, in the course of this debate, frequent reference has been made to speeches delivered by me, when I was under no official responsibility, in the year 1870. Some explanation is due to your Lordships, after what has been said with reference to those speeches, of the view which I take of the present position of affairs in Ireland, as compared with that of the year 1870. My Lords, I should like, at the outset, to say a few words as to the principles which I conceive to be fundamental, with respect to any such legislation as this. I feel as strongly as any of your Lordships can, that the laws of any country which govern the tenure of property ought not to be lightly altered. In the early stages of society, it is a Comparatively easy thing, when the rules and the administration

  515
  of law have not become well fixed, for adjustments of laws of property to the habits and customs of men to take place; and there is, perhaps, no better example of that than the transition, in this country—to which reference has been made in the course of this debate—of estates at will into those estates, under fixed conditions of tenure, which we now call copyhold. The process in those early times was very different from positive legislation like this; but the principles which then made such a transition natural, and just, and right, will, under different forms, at all times and in all countries, have permanent application. Whenever you find that the customs, the habits, the life of men have become divergent from the letter and strict terms of the law, whenever you find that the interests of large and important classes have grown intermixed and entangled with each other in a way which makes some re-adjustment necessary for the convenience and for the safety of society—whenever that happens, however fixed the law may be, still the same social and moral necessity arises for the exercise of legislative power to make the adjustments, whether they be large or small, whether they may seem violent or easy, which that state of circumstances renders necessary. My Lords, all such laws of property and laws of tenure are made for men and not men for them; and they must, from time to time, everywhere and always, be reviewed and changed and re-adjusted when the pressure of social forces requires it, and the safety of the State makes it necessary, and when we all feel it to be inevitable. There are examples well known to your Lordships of great changes of tenure, which, no doubt, stirred at the time the feelings of men as deeply as this can stir the feelings of any of your Lordships—changes which have taken place on the Continent of Europe, changes in their kind very different from what we propose, and made under different conditions, but examples, prominent and recent examples, of the right and duty of the State to make these adjustments when they become necessary, and of the general approval and acquiescence of mankind in such adjustments when they are wisely and reasonably made. And, my Lords, I say that such adjustments—however apt men may be to denounce them as unjust, as revolutionary, and
  516
  with the rest of the vocabulary of vituperation—are both just and beneficial, not to one class only, but to all the classes concerned in them, when they are made so as to maintain the substantial rights of property, while altering their conditions and their form, and still more when they are made so as to place the enjoyment of those rights on a more secure basis and footing than that upon which they stood before the change. We have ourselves recently and largely acted upon these principles. Measures to adjust the relations between landlord and tenant by new legislation, involving the settlement of rent and durability of tenure, have marked our legislation in India; and between those measures and this there is not only a rather near parallel on those two points, but there is this further parallel—that our Indian Legislature, in so dealing with the properties of the great proprietors and the innumerable cultivators of India, did not consider that by doing justice to the one class it was doing injustice to the other, and did not recognize any necessity for treating those changes as matter for compensation. And your Lordships and the Legislature of this country acted in the same manner and upon the same principle in regard to Ireland when you passed the measure of 1870, which was really a much greater step in the direction of change of law, so as to accommodate it to the habits and customs, and, therefore, moral rights of the people, than that which you are now asked to make, because it was a change in that direction made for the first time. I refer to these instances for the purpose of explaining how my mind is affected by the view of the position which the State assumes when it deals with a great measure of adjustment of the tenure of land such as that which is now before us. It is neither a new thing nor a strange thing, although it is most undesirable that it should be a common or a frequent thing. Nothing but grave necessity can make it wise; but where there is that necessity, and when an anxious endeavour is made to reconcile the rights of all the classes concerned, I say that, under these circumstances, the State does but discharge one of its greatest duties, the neglect of which might lead to injustice, and might, under some circumstances,

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  lead to revolution. The present Bill is framed upon those principles, and under a sense of the existence of that kind of necessity. It is said that it interferes with economical principles, and with freedom of contract. But it is a mockery to talk of those things, when the moral and social forces with which you have to deal are antagonistic to them and inconsistent with them. Under any circumstances, freedom of contract can only be exercised within lines prescribed by law; and when you find that, within those lines, it is not in fact exercised, and that you have to encounter moral and social conditions at variance with it; when you have not got an open market, nor freedom to hire or to let; when the habits and relations of the classes concerned show that you cannot apply those principles without modification and regulation, then it is necessary to adapt your laws to the circumstances with which you have to deal, and to the state of society which exists in the country for which you legislate; and it is pedantic to rest upon theoretical and abstract ideas, instead of endeavouring to do the best you can under circumstances of practical difficulty. As I said, I have been reminded of some opinions which I expressed—and I hope you will believe that I then spoke in all sincerity, and as honestly as I now address your Lordships—in 1870, when I was free from the responsibility of any official position, but not free from the responsibilities attaching to every man who desires to do his duty. Some things which I then said have been quoted as if I had denounced as unjust, and as taking away one man's property to give it to another, a proposal substantially the same with the scheme, or part of the scheme, of the present Bill, in favour of which I am speaking to you at the present time. My Lords, I deny it utterly. Whether I was right or wrong in my conception at that time of the effect of a universal extension, pure and simple, of the Ulster Custom to the rest of Ireland—for that is the subject upon which my words were quoted by the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Lansdowne)—that which is done by this Bill, in my view, at all events, wholly differs from such an extension of the Ulster Custom; and it is proposed—so far as anything analogous to the Ulster Custom is proposed in this Bill—under conditions and limitations carefully conceived, which have
  518
  been essential to my acceptance of the measure. The noble Marquess also referred to other words which I then used on the subject of compensation for disturbance, in which I said that unless great care were taken as to the limits and the checks under which compensation for disturbance was given there might be danger of its encroaching upon rights of property which ought not to be so encroached upon. I thought so then, and I think so still; and, in dealing with those provisions of this Bill which, in the opinion of some, may be attended with a similar danger, I have at least succeeded in convincing myself that the necessary limits and the necessary checks are here. I do not like to speak of myself; but, when challenged, I must at least endeavour to justify my view. Although your Lordships who differ from me may value these checks and safeguards as little as I do much, I think you will not disbelieve me when I assure you that I regard them as checks and limitations sufficient to prevent any such unjust consequences. There are other matters as to which I stand upon the same platform with many of my Colleagues, which I may dismiss more easily. They were shadowed out in 1870 vaguely, indistinctly, and in general terms, and were proposals which I do not at all mean to deny had a good deal in common with the more definite and guarded proposals of the present Bill. When the Bill of 1870 was introduced, I, like most of those who are now my Colleagues, expressed myself averse to changes so extensive, and agreed with those who thought them open to serious economical objections. Well, I do not hesitate to say that if I were not convinced of the necessity for the large proposals made by this Bill, I should still object to them on similar grounds. It is because circumstances have changed, and we are in a state of things now which, at that time, did not exist, that I agree to things which I would not willingly have agreed to then. But still I do so unwillingly, because I regret that the state of circumstances should be such as to convince me of the necessity. I agree to them, because I think there is a necessity for which I see no other remedy—at least, none so likely to be effectual as a Bill of this kind. Now, my Lords, I have done with my own speeches, and I ask you to consider what are the

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  real conditions of this question. Before endeavouring to state them, I will allude, for a moment, to the strange alarms which have been introduced in the course of this debate about the possible consequences of this measure in England. Now, I am quite content to look that suggestion in the face, and to say openly and distinctly that, if there were like circumstances in England, I should loyally agree to similar measures. So far from thinking that any wrong or injustice would be caused, I, as a landlord, although not a large one, should think such legislation under such circumstances altogether to my interest, as well as to the interest of the tenant. I think this is a case in which one cannot do wrong in trying to imagine oneself in the position of an Irish landlord. Remember the circumstances under which the legislation takes place, and say in your conscience whether you would think yourself wronged by such a Bill. I can say with a clear conscience that I should not think myself wronged. On the contrary, I should think the Bill at least as beneficial to myself and to my own class as to the class of tenants. But the real truth is, that the same circumstances do not exist in England, and the tenants desire similar measures at least as little as the landlords. Speaking for myself, in the last few years I should have been very far indeed from alarmed if a fair rent had been fixed upon my land by an independent and competent tribunal, and if the tenantry had been fastened to the land on those terms, at all events for 15 years. But now, my Lords, what are the leading facts which we must keep in mind when approaching this question in connection with Ireland? In England the persons engaged in agriculture as occupying tenants are 1 in 59; in Ireland they are 1 in 9. The difference between those figures shows the dependence of the people of Ireland upon agriculture as, practically, their sole means of living, in contrast to those other means of living and sources of prosperity which the people of England possess. With regard to the holdings, the contrast, at first sight, does not seem equally great, because in England 59 acres, on an average, go to a holding; while in Ireland, if you include all the great grazing farms, 27 acres form the average, a disparity, however, still very great, even if no deduction
  520
  were made for those great grazing farms. In Ireland nearly half of the whole number of holdings throughout the country are under 15 acres, and nearly two-thirds are not above £10 valuation. Even in the most prosperous part of the country—Ulster—the proportion is practically the same. I do not want to dwell upon some other factors in the question; but they are not without importance in considering the difference between England and Ireland. In England, the great proprietors commonly reside upon their estates; in Ireland they commonly do not. Do not let it be supposed that I wish to do injustice to that class of Irish proprietors. For the most part they have been very liberal to their tenants, although I know that there are some resident proprietors who are equally so. But the fact that so very great a proportion of the land of Ireland is in the hands of large proprietors who do not reside upon their estates, and that those estates are, and must be, managed by agents who can never be to the tenants what resident proprietors might, necessarily introduces a different system of treatment, and produces very different relations between the owners of property in Ireland from those which are prevalent in this country, where large proprietors do, as a rule, reside on their estates. Then, my Lords, there is another circumstance never to be forgotten in estimating the social conditions under which we have to legislate for land in Ireland, and that is, that while from the causes which I have mentioned there is a considerable loss of useful moral and social influence on the part of the landlords, on the other hand, those same landlords are, for the most part, of a religion different from that of their tenants, and thus there is an unfortunate absence of the sympathies which arise from community of religious belief; and the people are, for the most part, under the influence of a clergy who are not directly connected with or interested in the land. I refer to these matters because they appear to me to show the peculiar conditions under which we have to legislate on this question. I would ask your Lordships, can you separate the interest of the landlord from that of the tenant? Can anyone in this House maintain that it is for the interest of the landlord more than for that of the tenant that there

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  should be chronic antagonism between them, mutual opposition, and if not mutual suspicion, yet at least suspicion and distrust on the part of the more numerous and less educated—when taken individually the weaker class, but when taken together, under the influence of combination, by no means the weaker? My Lords, I wish to look at this question, in the first place, from what I will call the landlord's point of view, as I understand it. I say, then, that the value of the landlord's interest depends upon the tenantry at least as much as upon the title which the law gives him to the land. Without an occupying tenantry his land would be valueless to him, and any policy which did not regard as common the interest and prosperity of both, and aim at such an adjustment of their relations as may give them some chance of living on good and cordial terms together, must be at least as ruinous to the landlord as to the tenant. I own I was surprised at something which fell from the noble Marquess on my left (the Marquess of Salisbury) last night, and which, in my judgment, was as great a fallacy and as great an error as could possibly be put into words. The sentence, which I took down, was this—"Whenever large advantages are given to the tenant they must be taken from the landlord." That I utterly and positively deny. An opinion more unfounded and more contrary to a true conception of the interests of both landlord and tenant cannot, I think, be imagined. The more prosperous a tenant is the better will be his relations with his landlord, and the better is the value of the landlord's interest secured; and unless you show that you directly take from the landlord something which is his and give it to the tenant, then I say the more advantages you can confer upon the tenant, the more benefits you also confer upon the landlord. What, my Lords, under the present state of things is the value of the landlord's interest? What are those rights we are supposed to deprive him of over his tenants? We are supposed to be depriving him of his right of eviction, and to be destroying the freedom of contract. But do these things exist at the present moment? What is the benefit of the power of eviction if, when you have evicted the tenant, you can get nobody to take the
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  land, no one daring to do so? What is the benefit of taking land into your own hands, without the means of hiring labour for its cultivation in a free market? If a moral force comes between the landlord and the class on which he depends for his prosperity, puts them at arm's length, and takes away the possibility of the land being let or profitably cultivated, of what good is your cherished right and power? What is the meaning of power, if you have to face combinations and the result of combinations such as that produced by the present agitation? There is not an Irish landlord in this House who will not say—"If this state of state of things is to continue, the value of our property is gone." Well, our object is, as far as possible, to put an end to that state of things, and by devising the best means—those most likely, as we think, to work permanently and justly—to secure and maintain the value of the landlord's interest as much as that of the tenant. If there is any other way to bring about that result, it has not yet been stated. It may be asked—indeed, it is often said—"Why do you not enforce the law?" No one is more sensible than I am that it is our duty to do the utmost in our power to maintain and enforce the law. But your Lordships know the old maxim—Quid leges sine moribus? You know very well the state of things which exists when it is necessary to put all the powers of the law, and even exceptional laws, in force—when the moral bonds of society are strained to the utmost. I should like to know, if the law were enforced to the uttermost, as I should desire it to be, what the value of the landlord's property would be, if the masses remain, reasonably or unreasonably, in a chronic state of alienation towards the landlords, of hostility against the law, of virtual partnership in things which the law ought to put down? If that is the state of feeling which is engendered among the tenantry, do you think that by evicting every tenant and putting the landlord in possession of the land, and by the strong arm of soldiery or police everywhere putting down disturbance, you could maintain or restore the value of the landlord's property? Do you think that the mere exertion of overwhelming force could restore the relations which ought to exist between landlord and tenant? Do you think you can

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  thus overcome the rooted opposition of these large classes, if you do nothing to conciliate that opposition? Can you make them take the land? Can you even make them labour on it if you take it into your own hands? In whatever degree you may be able to work against those difficulties, and encounter them, and partially counteract them, is there really any Irish landlord in this House who will seriously say that, on the hypothesis of a chronic abnormal straining of the law, the pecuniary and moral value of the landlord's property will be greater, or that his position will be better than it will be under the provisions of the Bill, provided the Bill comes into operation and works? I believe your Lordships have recognized the truth upon this subject, for that is the reason why, although this measure is denounced as revolutionary and Communistic, and as an act of confiscation and injustice to the landlord, not one of your Lordships proposes that it should be thrown out. Apart from any question of the effect of a Dissolution of Parliament, or other political complications, those who so speak do not desire that the state of things which I have described should subsist, and they know that it would subsist if the Bill were thrown out. I will ask your Lordships to permit me to read a significant question and answer with which I was a good deal struck in the evidence before the Bessborough Commission. The evidence is that of a Galway landowner, Mr. O'Flaherty, who seemed to have a great dislike to any legislation of this kind. He was asked this question—"Is not the tenant of a farm more or less at the mercy of the landlord?" I suppose the question had reference to one of the points that are often made about the absence of freedom of contract, when the power of the landlord is too much for the tenant. Mr. O'Flaherty's answer was this, and to my mind it is very true and significant—
  "Upon my word, I think that the balance is very little in favour of the landlord, supposing that a crisis like this comes, which every man of ordinary sagacity might foresee. I think the landlord is in the worst position of the two."
  My Lords, I am afraid that our experience of this crisis justifies that opinion; and what I ask your Lordships to believe, and what I think I can clearly establish, is that this crisis is not of a factitious kind, got up by a mere un-
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  scrupulous agitation like that of the Irish Land League, but is a crisis which—as Mr. O'Flaherty said—"every man of ordinary sagacity might foresee." What, my Lords, is the history of this crisis, of which we have heard something from the noble Duke (the Duke of Marl-borough)? I must carry the answer a little further back than the occurrences of the last two or three years which were adverted to by the noble Duke. There has been in Ireland a long-standing conflict between legal theory and practical status, just one of those conflicts between facts and law which, whenever they occur, lead to inconvenient political consequences, and require adjustments which, in ordinary circumstances, might not be justifiable. I am not going further back in illustration of this than the year 1860, when that remarkable Act of Parliament was passed which enacted that from that time contract, and not tenure, should be the basis of landed property in Ireland. My Lords, it was something like what I remember at the time of the Crimean War. There was a squib published in, the shape of an Act of Parliament supposed to have been passed, which declared that a certain newspaper should have authority to take the city of Sebastopol, and that from the time when that newspaper should announce the capture of Sebastopol, it should be and be deemed to have been captured to all intents and purposes whatsoever. The Act of 1860, declaring that land should be held by contract and not by tenure, when, in fact, it was held by tenure and not by contract, attempted an impossibility. Only 10 years passed, and in 1870 the tenour, though not the letter, of that legislation was reversed. The Act of 1870 established the Ulster Custom, which is surely tenure and not contract. It was, however, so established as to leave it vague and indefinite. I do not know of any inadvertence, nor do I know that the Act of 1870 did not accomplish the purposes intended to be carried out by it. But it had undoubtedly some effects which were not foreseen, as it was a measure which did not work out its own principles to such a point as distinctly to separate the interests which it recognized from those which previously existed independently of law. It has, in consequence, been productive of much friction, much irritation, much unsettle-

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  ment, and a sense of insecurity. I was struck with two things which were said yesterday—the first by the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition, who said that, in the case of the Ulster Custom, there was always the absolute power of the landlord in the background to raise the rent. But that is the very thing which has created nine-tenths of the irritation—I am now speaking of Ulster. The people have felt that by the legislation of 1870 you recognized rights, not defining them, but leaving them liable to be indefinitely taken away, whether by intentional encroachment or otherwise, to what extent is not material. They felt that they were liable to have their rights diminished and encroached upon by the exercise, unlimited and uncontrolled, of the landlord's power to raise the rent, which, consistently with the custom, he was entitled to do. As a matter of fact there has been, and is now, in the Province of Ulster, whether or not the landlords have used that power unjustly, a great amount of uneasiness, dissatisfaction, and sense of insecurity. The other remark with which I was struck was made by the noble Earl who was lately Governor General of India (the Earl of Lytton). The noble Duke (the Duke of Argyll) also referred to it in his speech. The remark was, that when you turn customs not recognized by law into legal rights, you infallibly change their nature, and immediately give them a character, in relation to all other pre-existing rights, which they did not possess before. My Lords, that was the inevitable effect of the operation, which, nevertheless, may have been just and necessary. We know that eminent Conservatives, like the late Lord Mayo and others, pressed for a recognition by law of the Ulster Custom long before it was established by law in 1870; and the moment it was so established, the relative position of the parties was changed, and tenant right, which had been tolerated and endured when the custom was not legal, and which then depended only on the good feeling and sense of justice of the landlords, acquired a different position when it became a legal right as much as the rights of the landlord. But what actually occurred? It was in Ulster, if anywhere, that this land movement began. It is the greatest error in the world to say that the state of things with which we have
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  now to deal is due to the Land League. The Land League was its effect, not its cause. The Land League would never have had the power which it has acquired if it had not found, as materials to work upon, the previous state of feeling and opinion, the previous demand for legislative change, which existed before the Land League, and nowhere more prominently than in Ulster. The significance and importance of this fact are, that if any part of Ireland can be called prosperous it is Ulster; if any part is loyal it is Ulster; if any part is more difficult than another to draw into the vortex of disaffection, it is Ulster. Yet in Ulster this desire for change was originally strongest, because of the feeling, or fear, that the landlord's power to raise the rent might be exercised so as to transfer to the landlord the rights of the tenant; and in that province there grew up a series of Tenant Right Associations for the very purpose of obtaining a better and stricter definition of the rights which, in 1870, had been conceded to the tenants, and which Associations were founded upon the notion that this power of the landlord was one which might be exercised at any time and by anybody. I have never resided much in Ireland, but I can speak upon one point with some slight degree of personal experience. I am not an Irish landlord; but, in the year 1875, I was invited to accept the office of Master of one of the great City Companies, which has a large estate in the county of Londonderry. It had been the practice on that estate, from the time when it came into the Company's own hands, that there should be a re-valuation and a reasonable increase of rent every 20 years. It so happened that one of those terms of 20 years expired while I was Master of the Company. I need hardly say, that the Company desired to behave justly, and not to raise the rent any more than they thought was right. Well, the tenants combined together and resisted. They obtained the services of a Belfast lawyer, who harangued the tenants in the square. We did all we could to consider what was represented to us, and we made a considerable reduction from the original proposal. What did the tenants do then? They still declined to agree to it. Then, other deductions were made, and at last they agreed, with difficulty, to an extremely moderate increase of rent—

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  I think not as much as one-third of what was originally proposed. All this process was attended with constant anxiety, if not danger, and I had that experience long before this Bill was thought of. I came, in my own mind, to the conclusion expressed by a gentleman who acted on that occasion as the Company's solicitor, in the evidence which I see he gave before the Bessborough Commission, that it would be a most happy thing for all parties if there could be a Court to settle such land disputes, and so provide the means of diminishing friction between landlord and tenant. I have hitherto been speaking of the North. As to the South and West, I should like to refer to a passage, not in the evidence of the Bessborough Commission, but in the preliminary Report of Professor Baldwin and Mr. C. Robertson, the Assistant Commissioners appointed by the Commission presided over by the noble Duke (the Duke of Richmond and Gordon) dated on the 1st of January, 1880. I beg your Lordships to observe the date. It was before the change of Government; it was before the Land League had attained to any very formidable dimensions. No persons could be more competent than those two Assistant Commissioners. Professor Baldwin had; filled positions, both in England and in Ireland, of the highest public importance in connection both with practical and with scientific agriculture. He told the Bessborough Commission that for the last 16 years he had annually visited every county in Ireland, and that he had personally examined and inspected every holding of which he spoke. This is what he and Mr. Robertson said in their preliminary Report—
  "Finding so many of the small farmers of the South and West steeped in debt, misery, and poverty, while their lands are undrained and neglected, we asked why they did not adopt better systems of farming? Thousands upon thousands of them could easily double their incomes by the exercise of skill. We have travelled through entire districts without seeing any men at work in the digging of the ground before the winter's frost, or in preparing the land as it ought to be prepared at this season for the coming crops. But the answer to our appeals on both matters was the same; it affords evidence of a conviction which is deeply on-graved on the minds of this class—namely, that if they made improvements the rents would be immediately raised in consequence of those improvements. Now, whatever view be taken of this subject, the feeling remains all the same in the minds of these small farmers, and it is strongest in the most backward and most
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  densely populated districts, and on the estates of land jobbers, and on those of a few absentees and other landlords who do not take the necessary personal interest in the management of their properties. This feeling would appear to have crushed all spirit of progress and improvement out of the minds of these poor people. In the whole range of the heads of our inquiry this is the most delicate and difficult subject. It is as significant as it is suggestive, that several largo landed proprietors in different parts of the country have drawn our attention to the existence of this feeling, and made to us statements which, if true, would fully justify it."
  I must say that I cannot concur in the sweeping denunciations made by my noble Friend the noble Duke (the Duke of Argyll) of the evidence before the Bessborough Commission. I think his criticism missed its mark. It might have been to the purpose if it had been the main question whether, in particular cases where accusations were made against particular landlords, the facts might not have been misrepresented or misunderstood. I have no doubt they often were; and that in other cases there may have been something to be considered on both sides. But it is impossible to evade the force of this fact, that the Commissioners received an enormous mass of evidence, not only from small farmers, but from large tenants and land agents, and also from landlords, which if it did not prove many actual instances of oppression and unreasonable increase of rent, at least all tended in one direction—that there is a feeling of distrust, anxiety, and agitation among the tenants on this question. All these witnesses proved, beyond a doubt, that widespread feeling of distrust and uneasiness, the effect of which is to make this large and indispensable class of people, the small farmers—the real cultivators of the land—ready to be the victims of agitation, and to be drawn into combinations dangerous to themselves, to the landlords, and to the State. I think, therefore, I am perfectly right in stating that the Land League is the effect of this state of things, and not the cause; and if you want to get rid of such effects you must address yourselves to the cause, and you must endeavour to place the system of land tenure in Ireland on such a basis as will, so far as the law can, meet these causes, and provide, at least, for a better definition of the mutual rights of the different classes. With all the facts, the Evidence, and the Reports that were before us, with the admission, on the

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  cardinal point as to rent, by the majority as well as the minority of the Commission presided over by the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, that a case was made out for some kind of public arbitration, and that there was reason to believe that the intervention of a Court for that purpose would be acceptable to a large proportion of the land owners in Ireland—I ask what were we to do? Nobody ventures to say we were to do nothing. We anxiously considered what we ought to do, and we endeavoured to get all the help we could from others. There has been a series of philippics composed by an eloquent writer for the Landlord's Committee in Dublin, the echoes of which have been frequently heard in the course of this debate. I rather think I saw one of them, which contains citations from various speeches by myself and my Colleagues, in the hands of the noble Duke who spoke lately (the Duke of Marl-borough). I have read those philippics with some degree of admiration for the literary power exhibited in them; but I have failed to find anything practical in them beyond the assumption that this Bill is utterly wrong. There is nothing in them suggesting what ought to be done. If the Landlords' Committee really meant anything by this flood of eloquence, what was it? Do they truly think that nothing ought to be done? That does not seem to me to be the opinion which has been expressed in this debate even by those who have found most fault with the Bill. But if the Government have taken the wrong way, what is the right way? We did not make the state of things which we find. ["Oh!"] Well, let it be supposed, for the sake of argument, that, at one time or another, we did not do something that we might have done, and that we are to that extent to blame—what I say is that we are not responsible for the state of things I have described, which has been going on almost ever since the Land Act of 1870 was passed. We are not responsible for the Ulster Tenant-right Associations, nor for the origin of the Land League, which was in existence in the time of the late Government. The state of things to which this Bill is addressed existed independently of us, and we had the duty of dealing with it. A more difficult and anxious duty we could not have had; but we could not avoid that duty. The Bill shows our
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  idea of the right way of dealing with it. I own I heard with regret some of the things that were said by way of criticism by the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Lansdowne). The noble Marquess always speaks well, and perhaps he never spoke better, as far as oratorical or logical power is concerned, than he did last night; but there were some things he said in criticizing the measure which I think were scarcely worthy of him. The noble Marquess possesses all the qualities of a statesman; but I must own that he said some things in that criticism which might have been more worthy of a spoilt child. I refer, among other things, to what he said as to its being a mere play on words to talk of distinctions, between "perpetuity," "durability," and "security" of tenure. I think these distinctions are of exceeding great importance. Neither can I think it was altogether fair and reasonable to represent the difference between the proposals of this Bill and the common conception of the "three F's" as one which did not deceive anybody. Those remarks did not appear to me to be worthy of the ability of my noble Friend. I think the differences are exceedingly great. And now I proceed to give my idea of the proposals of this Bill and their justification. I agree with those who put the question of the adjustment of rent by the Court first; everything else depends upon that. If anything is to be done, that must be done. But I do not think it can be said that a fair rent is unfair merely because it happens to come under the head of one of the three "F's." This "F," if you succeed in fixing it, is just to the landlord as well as to the tenant. It will be arrived at after due consideration of all the circumstances of the case. In reference to this point my Friend the noble Duke who spoke first this evening said something which, I confess, struck me with surprise. He found fault with the Government for having omitted in the House of Commons, as if it were to the detriment of the landlord to do so, all attempt to define a fair rent or to indicate certain considerations which were to be elements in that definition. But I really thought that the change which omitted those attempts at definition or those indications had been made at least as much at the instance of the Conservatives as of any others. I believe that those

  531
  critics who objected to the original provision were right. If you have a tribunal capable of acting as a judicial board of arbitrators, it is much better that the clause should stand as at present—that regard should be had to the interest of the landlord and the tenant, and to all the circumstances of the case the holding, and the district, for the very reason which the noble Duke urged in favour of the Act of 1870—that it adapted itself to all the varieties of circumstances. A fair rent fixed under these conditions by a competent tribunal will take into account all the varieties of circumstances affecting either party upon which the rent ought to depend. For instance, if the landlord has made the improvements, or has bought up the Ulster Custom, or has managed his estate upon the English system, the rent will be settled according to those circumstances. And so, whatever circumstances exist which may tend to vary the fair rent in the particular case, under the clause as it stands all those circumstances will be taken into account; and the only question material to the point is this—can you trust your public arbitrators? I think you can. To me it does not appear that the settlement of the rent in that way by capable persons, with proper assistance, is very difficult. We know very well that, in all arbitrations, each party states his claim; and the practical result is that something is arrived at which may be more or less favourable to the one or the other, but which fits the circumstances of the case better than if it were left to either of the parties to dictate his own terms. I believe the thing is done constantly in Ireland and elsewhere, and done properly. Certainly, upon the evidence both of the Duke of Richmond's and of Lord Bessborough's Commission, many persons of all classes in Ireland, landlords, land-agents, large as well as small farmers, and many who unite in themselves more than one of those characters, and who are not the partizans of the tenant only, are of that opinion. I come next to the statutory conditions, which seem to me to be at least as beneficial to both parties as any other kind of lease can be, and to provide for the renewal of the term, not with the same rent, but with a re-adjustment of the rent, so that it may be increased from time to time if it ought to be increased, and diminished if it ought to be
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  diminished. Those conditions do not disregard the position of the landlord; they do not seem to me to reduce him, more than a lease does, to a mere rent-charger; they leave him very substantial rights and the power of periodical revaluation of rent. But if you are to adjust the rent at all by a judicial tribunal or arbitration, you must secure the right to hold the land at the rent which you so adjust. That is an absolutely necessary consequence of any such adjustment. You may secure it for 15 years or some other period, but some recognized term you must have. How does this injure the landlord, unless eviction for its own sake, and not security for his interest upon proper terms, were his object? Witness after witness, of the landlord class, from all parts of Ireland, told the Bessborough Commission that on his own estates, and on others generally which he knew, there was practically fixity of tenure; that the same tenants and the same families go on holding the land without disturbance, from generation to generation, as long as they pay their rent. So far, therefore, as fixity of tenure is concerned, this Bill does but give definition and security to what is already the general custom and practice. And now I pass to the subject of free sale. With regard to it I deny that under the provisions of this Bill there is any ground whatever for saying that the tenant is enabled to sell, either in Ulster, or in places where no Ulster Custom prevails, what is the landlord's or is taken from the landlord. I deny that it will diminish in any degree whatever the rights of the landlord or the value of the interest he possesses. I should never agree to such a proposal. I adhere to what I said in 1870, that to extend the Ulster Custom, or to do anything else in such a way as to take the landlord's interest from him, and give it to the tenant, would, in my opinion, require compensation. But nothing of the kind appears to me to be either contemplated or done by the permission to sell in this Bill. And if the rights of the landlord are not really diminished by this permission of free sale, I do not see how it can be a subject for compensation. What does the tenant sell? He sells his own interest in his own improvements, those which were not made by the landlord, and over and above that he sells the goodwill of his tenancy as a

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  going agricultural concern. That good-will, in the actual circumstances of Ireland, is a most real element in the value of the interest which the tenant sells, for if a new tenant entered without the goodwill, in the literal sense, of the old, there is no question that his holding might be most insecure and even dangerous. There is also another sense of the word goodwill, in which it also represents that which belongs to the tenant, but which the landlord would never, in any way, realize—I mean that fluctuating difference of value between the rent for the time being and what a person would give to succeed to the position of tenant, under all its actual conditions, a person desirous of land as a means of living in Ireland. Now, both these—the goodwill of the holding and the value of the improvements—are things which in no sense belong to the landlord, in a country where it has never been the practice to put an end to tenancies for the purpose of re-letting farms by auction. This which the tenant has to sell—unless you insist on keeping it unsaleable in his hands—is a thing which the landlord never had and never could have. It is only valuable at all as being valuable to the tenant. If the landlord wants to resume, when he may resume, or to exercise the right of preemption, which he is in all cases to have, the Court is to determine, not what the tenant could possibly get in the market, but what is the fair value of the holding as between the landlord and the tenant; and another provision of the Bill is that if the Court is resorted to to fix the rent, it may also fix, as between landlord and tenant, the selling value of the tenancy. The fear that a power of alienation, guarded by these conditions, and by the other conditions of the 1st clause, will diminish the value of the landlord's property, appears to me to be entirely groundless. With regard to the economical objection, the experience of the Ulster Custom furnishes a practical answer. It is said that the clause will take away or encroach upon the power of the landlord to raise his rent; but the power of sale is in all cases subject to the landlord's right to a fair rent, which cannot properly be increased or diminished by the value either of the tenant's improvements, or of his goodwill. On many of the best managed estates in the South and West of Ireland, and else-
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  where out of Ulster, the practice of permitting sale does already exist; and as long as that is the state of things, how can you expect to settle the question, if, on one of two adjoining estates, the right of sale belongs to the tenant, and on the other does not belong to him? To give the tenant terms of tenure which are of a substantial marketable value, and yet to lock up that value from him by prohibiting him from carrying it to a market sufficiently free to ascertain and realize that value, would leave the whole settlement which we are attempting to make unsatisfactory and incomplete. Then you also have these incidental advantages, which seem to me very considerable. You have a security for his rent to the landlord, and also security that when there is a change of tenant the new tenant comes in without the risk of disturbance. You have security against that great danger to the State and to society in Ireland, and to both landlord and tenant, which drives the landlord to the necessity of eviction, instead of allowing this natural and easy safety-valve of sale. Taking the view I do of the intention, the nature, and the probable effect of the provisions of this Bill, I hold that there is no case for compensation. What is the loss to be compensated? If you compare the state of things under this Bill with that which would exist if nothing of the kind were done, the Bill may be expected to restore and increase, not diminish, the value of the landlord's property. And if the work of the Bill is frustrated by combination or otherwise, at least things will not be worse than they are now. I have now explained the view I take of the principles of the Bill, in common with the other Members of Her Majesty's Government, whose intentions I am sure I have correctly stated, and I reserve the details for another stage of your Lordships' deliberations. I confess that though our position has been both difficult and anxious, and though it is not without extreme reluctance that I, for one,' recognize the necessity for any measure of this kind, yet, in some respects, I prefer our position to that of the Opposition. There are some privileges of Opposition which I admire more than I envy. To denounce and at the same time support a measure—to recognize the necessity for a thing which must be done, and yet to empty all the vials

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  of vituperation upon the responsible Government for recognizing the same necessity—to prophecy every possible failure and evil, while you admit that there is no escape from the necessity before you—these are privileges which I admire rather than envy. I am glad, however, that the conclusion of the Opposition has been what it is, because I think no one would like to be responsible for the government of Ireland, if the present state of things were to continue. It is admitted that a serious attempt must be made to supply a permanent remedy to this state of things, and no one has suggested any other remedy that can be applied if the present measure is rejected. I do not rely much on prophecy; but I prefer, if I must prophecy, to be a prophet of good. Bishop Butler said that nations, as well as individuals, are sometimes liable to paroxysms of insanity. I am afraid that saying is true, and that Ireland has lately been passing through such a paroxysm. But national insanity is, happily, not permanent. The real interests of men are not promoted by it; all classes suffer from it; and, therefore, if a measure of this kind is passed, with the generous, though it may be reluctant, concurrence of those whose power and sentiment it in some degree affects, I cannot but think that happier prospects are before us. Beyond all question, it must improve the moral position of the Government for the necessary enforcement of law. Beyond all question, it will secure the loyalty of Ulster, that great and most important part of Ireland, and prevent it from being drawn into the vortex of turbulence and outrage. And I cannot but hope that, recognizing, as this Bill does, the real value of the rights of the tenant without taking the substance of any right from the landlord, recognizing the principle that the interests of both classes are inseparable from each other, and that the common prosperity of both is necessary for the prosperity of either—it will be accepted and operate as a measure destined to have a healing and beneficial effect in all parts of Ireland.
  EARL CAIRNS: My Lords, I do not, I think, misinterpret your Lordships' desire when I say that it is your wish that the discussion on this stage of the Bill should shortly come to a close.
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  Therefore, so far as I am concerned, I shall not stand long in the way of that conclusion, and I am the more easily able to do that from the state of the debate up to the present time. We have had a number of speeches, and we have had criticisms of very great weight upon this Bill. I will not speak of the speeches delivered on this side of the House; but I must be permitted to say that we have heard two speeches on the other side of the House—one from the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Lansdowne) yesterday, and which I think my noble and learned Friend who has just sat down hardly spoke of in the way that I should have expected, and another from the noble Duke (the Duke of Argyll) at the beginning of the discussion to-night. I venture to say that two speeches more remarkable, more interesting, more distinguished for the accuracy of their facts, and for the cogency of their arguments, never were delivered in this House. When I look for the argument on the other side, I feel great difficulty as to where I can find it. I certainly have been able to find very few arguments in the speech of my noble and learned Friend, and from him, if arguments were to be produced, I should expect them to come. My noble and learned Friend began by saying that instances of the most violent interference with property and tenure could easily be pointed out analogous to or even stronger than this Bill. But the only instance he gave us was the case of the zemindars of India. I was astonished at his speaking of the tax-gatherers of India, who had not been owners of property, and whose acts on property had to be restrained, as if their case was to be adduced as analogous to that of the owners of property in Ireland. I agree with my noble and learned Friend that there are great emergencies when State interference, even of a violent kind, may take place with private property; no one doubted that. But upon what terms? I will refer to what my noble and learned Friend said in 1870. He said—
  "I shall not go into the argument of that subject, because that point was exhausted by the head of the Government when he spoke of fixity of tenure, which, in plain English, means taking away the property of one man and giving it to another. My right hon. Friend said that, according to the principles of justice, if we transferred property in that way, we must pay for it."—[3 Hansard, cxcix. 1666.]

  537
  My noble and learned Friend further made use of an argument at which I was much surprised, as I thought it a dangerous argument to use. He said—"You talk of the rights of which this Bill deprives the landlords, their rights of eviction, and other rights of that kind. But what is the use," he asked, "of those powers now? Can the landlords evict tenants from their property, and if they can, do they get anyone to take possession of the property?" My Lords, what does that mean? It appears to me to mean this. That the Government, who exist for the purpose of protecting and enforcing rights of property, may act in a manner which is virtually an abnegation of that duty; may tolerate and support, if they do not encourage, agitation; and may then come to Parliament and say—"The rights of property, which we were appointed to maintain, we have not maintained. They have disappeared, and because through our action they have disappeared, we now ask Parliament to complete that which has been commenced, and solemnly to declare that those rights no longer exist." But I think, instead of following my noble and learned Friend into the long history of the causes which, in his opinion, justified the introduction of this Bill, it would be better that I should for a short time refer to what this Bill actually proposes to do. There are two parts of the measure which I look upon with great satisfaction, though I regret that they do not go far enough. The first of these relates to emigration. With regard to this, I have to say that I am not an advocate for indiscriminate emigration from Ireland, for there is the better class of tenants, the more thrifty and industrious, whom I should be very sorry to see emigrating from the country. But there is the poorer class, especially in the South and West, with regard to whom it is quite true to say that if the State were to-morrow to make them a present of their holdings, that act of generosity would not do them the least good. With regard to that part of the tenantry of Ireland, it would be a very good thing for themselves and for the country if they could emigrate to lands where they would be much happier, where their holdings would be much larger, and where they could exist in comfort, and perhaps in plenty. But when I look upon what this Bill pro-
  538
  poses I am greatly disappointed. The Bill was introduced, in the first instance, without any limit whatever; and now I find a provision in it limiting the whole expenditure on emigration to £200,000, to be spread over three years, and enacting that only one-third of that sum shall be spent in any one year. Anyone who knows what is the normal emigration from Ireland—which is something like 100,000 a-year—will see that that sum will not do more than add 3 per cent to the present normal number of emigrants. The truth is, that this scheme of emigration will be of little practical use beyond this—that it testifies that it is right and proper, in the opinion of Parliament, that assistance should be given for the purpose of promoting emigration. Now I come to the other of the two proposals to which I have referred. It is the proposal with regard to purchase. I have always been a very strong advocate of the purchase of holdings by tenants in Ireland, and I supported a proposal to that effect in 1870; but I am greatly disappointed when I see the very persons who formerly were the greatest advocates of proposals of this kind now holding back from supporting the proposal and attempting to limit it. The "Purchase Clauses" of the Act of 1870 were very properly called "The Bright Clauses;" and, if I do not mistake, some few years ago Mr. Bright made a speech in which he said that he had a scheme by which he would turn every occupier of land in Ireland at once into an owner, making him pay his purchase money by the payment of an annual instalment, which would be something more than the rent which he would have been in the habit of paying. But, if I understand the views of Mr. Bright now, he thinks it would be a very bad thing that a very rapid or large transmutation of the tenants of Ireland into holders of land should take place, and, in accordance with that view, the present Bill is limited in a very remarkable manner. How are the Purchase Clauses of this measure to operate? There is a power given to the Land Commission to purchase estates for the purpose of re-selling them to the tenants, and there is no limit to the amount of money with which they may be supplied. So far, all is well. Then the direction to the Land Commission is this—that they may buy an estate where

  539
  they find a competent number of tenants willing to become purchasers of their holdings. If you stopped there, I think it would be a very wholesome power to give to the Land Commission. But super added to that there is a clause of a most extraordinary kind. The 23rd clause says—
  "A competent number of tenants means a body of tenants, who are not less in numbers than three-fourths of the whole number of tenants on the estate, and who pay in rent not less than two-thirds of the whole rent of the estate."
  Now, what chance is there of a scheme of that kind working? How can you expect to find so large a number of tenants as three-fourths of the whole number ready and willing beforehand to purchase their holdings without even knowing what the purchase money will be? There are many estates in Ireland with 100 or 150 agricultural tenants, on which there is a hamlet with about as many tenants with small houses and small patches of land. These latter tenants will not want to purchase; and, if they did, they are not the class you want to purchase. Yet they will swell the number of tenants, and perhaps render it impossible that the necessary majority willing to purchase can be made up. I mention this to the Government, therefore, and earnestly entreat them, if they do not wish these clauses to fail, to adopt one of two courses—to consider whether they would not be content to leave it to the Land Commission to decide what, in each case, should constitute a competent number, or, if not, to say that if one-half of the tenants display a willingness to purchase, that shall justify the purchase. But I pass from that to make a few observations on that great division of the Bill which has been most subjected to criticism. My noble and learned Friend who spoke last was not at all pleased with the language which has been used with regard to this Bill. He says that the vocabulary of vituperation has been poured out upon it, that it has been spoken of as confiscation, and other things, which, to his ears, are vexing. Well, my Lords, I am not going to use any language which would deserve the character or have the appearance of that vituperation which my noble and learned Friend so much deprecates; but I wish to quote some language in
  540
  which I must express my concurrence, and which comes from a quarter which my noble and learned Friend will see has no prejudice against himself or any Member of the Government—I mean the very eminent person who lately represented Her Majesty as Special Ambassador at Constantinople, and who was lately a Colleague of noble Lords opposite, and of my noble and learned Friend himself. That right hon. Gentleman is in their confidence, and they possess, to a very great extent, his confidence, and I am not sure that he does not use language with regard to this Bill which he would willingly soften if he could honestly do so. What does Mr. Goschen say? He says—
  "The Bill imports experimental principles foreign to all precedents of previous Liberal legislation, and is itself a kind of Coercion Bill—a Bill for the coercing of landlords to fix a fair rent."
  Then he goes on—
  "These are new ideas which would sap the prosperity of this country if they were transferred to English legislation."
  Well, how ideas which would sap the prosperity of England can be sound in principle for Ireland I do not at this moment understand. Then he says—
  "I cannot forget, and statesmen must not forget, that the Land Bill has been in a measure due to successful agitation. It is a dangerous thing in the history of a country when agitation is successful."
  Those are the words of a right hon. Gentleman who is as friendly as anyone can be to the Government. I will not use any vituperation; but I adhere to that description of Mr. Goschen. It is a perfectly true description of the Bill, and I hope my noble and learned Friend will not think that I have called a witness against him who represents the views of that side of the House on which I sit. Well, now, I am anxious not to delay your Lordships by any words of mine in description of the Bill. But I do hope your Lordships will distinctly understand that whatever course we take with regard to this Bill, we shall be quite clear in our own minds upon what the Bill really turns. Do not let us deal in generalities such as we have heard from my noble and learned Friend. Let us see exactly what the provisions of the Bill and the circumstances of the case really require; whether we ought to

  541
  allow the Bill to pass into law, or reject it, or modify it. What the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal (Lord Carlingford) said simplifies the case very much. He said he was not ashamed of the "three F's," and did not desire to shrink from them. Now, my Lords, it does not require any very elaborate examination of the Bill to discover them, for the Bill itself is purely and simply the "three F's." The matter lies in two or three sentences. Now, of the "three F's" two are free sale and fair rents. Free sale, in so many words, is given on the face of the Bill; so are fair rents. But the question is—Does the Bill grant fixity of tenure or not? In order to answer that question, let me ask your Lordships to consider what is the position of what are called "present tenants" under this Bill. As I understand it, the present tenant has the right to become, at his own option, a tenant in perpetuity for 1,000 years, or longer, if the world lasts so long. That is to say, he comes to the Court, gets his rent fixed, and thereupon holds it at that rent for 15 years; at the end of the last year of the first term he repeats the operation. He lives 15 years more, and he repeats the operation as often as he pleases at the end of every like term. Therefore, I say, he is a tenant in perpetuity. What is the explanation of those—the Prime Minister in particular—who wish to deny that this is fixity of tenure? It is said that it is not fixity of tenure, because the holding may be forfeited on nonpayment of rent by the tenant and other counts. But, my Lords, the fact that a holding may be exposed to forfeiture does not interfere with its being a perpetuity. Copyholds are subject to forfeiture, and are they not perpetuities? Leases for lives renewable for ever, which in Ireland are usually known by the name of perpetuities, are forfeitable. Then, again, it is said that the landlord may buy the holding; he has a right of pre-emption, and my noble and learned Friend referred to that as a great benefit bestowed upon the landlord. But what is this right of pre-emption which is said to be a benefit to the landlord? Is it the right to buy something at something less than its full value? No; the landlord, no doubt, has the right of buying the holding, if he pleases, on a change of tenants; but he must do it at the value to be ascertained by the Court.
  542
  And how is the Court to ascertain the value? The value can only be ascertained in the same way as the value of any other article is ascertained, by what it will fetch in the market—that is, by auction. Therefore, the landlord can only have a right to purchase the holding at the market value. That is the right which is conferred on the landlord. There are in this Bill, my Lords, the ''three F's"—fixity of tenure, fair rents, and free sale. The next point which your Lordships will have to consider is, What does this Bill propose to confer on the present tenants now in possession, and also on the other persons in the country who wish to acquire holdings? The Bill gives them the same right in their holdings which the Ulster tenants have in their holdings. Well, but what does it give? How does this Bill shower down benefits upon that large class of persons—the hungry persons in Ireland, the people who have an earth hunger, who want to become possessors of farms? I doubt, when they have got to understand this Bill, that they will find that it confers much benefit upon them. They may expect some of them, when there is a change of tenancy, to become possessors without paying for it. The landlord has now the right to put in a candidate for a tenancy. But under this Bill that large class of persons, who are to be called "future tenants" of the country, will have to pay a very considerable price in place of coming in, as they are now entitled to do, without paying anything at all. I will illustrate this in this way. We have an Army without the right of purchase. Suppose that suddenly we were to pass a law that the present officers were to have a property in their commissions, no doubt you would confer a very great been on that class of officers; but what sort of a been would you confer on those who expect to become officers? And that is what you are going to do in Ireland. You are going to confer a property which I admit will be of very considerable value to the tenants, wherever that value may come from, but which others will have to pay for before they become possessors. Now, I want your Lordships distinctly to understand how far it is the case, as we have been told more than once, that something was done in 1870 which, by inadvertence, embarked us in a course of legislation under which we created

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  for the first time a right of property in holdings out of Ulster, and that we have no choice but to follow up that course. I wish to protest against this doctrine in the strongest terms. It is not the fact that anything was done in the way of legislation in 1870 which created any property in the tenantry of Ireland outside Ulster and the Custom of Ulster. It is said that payment by way of compensation was created by the Act of 1870; but the mode in which compensation was given was a sufficient answer, and it negatived altogether the right of property. It was compensation not given to holdings according to their value, but given arbitrarily—given to some and refused to others—or a certain percentage given to one class and a different percentage given to another class. It was utterly impossible if that payment proceeded on the footing of property that it could have been made in the way it was. What was the declaration of the Prime Minister on this question? Nothing could be more unqualified than the way in which Mr. Gladstone spoke on the Bill of 1870, in asking Parliament to consent to it. Mr. Gladstone then said—
  "The aim of this Bill is to secure him in that position—to secure him, not by giving him a property in the soil."
  He said, further, that the object of the Bill was to shelter the tenant from eviction, "but not upon the footing of a joint property in the soil." Here we have the clearest intimation of the intention of the Government. It was not an inadvertence. The Government had considered the matter, and the result was that they determined that legislation should not proceed upon the footing of giving the tenant a property in the soil. Why do I refer to it now? I think your Lordships will see that I do so for an important reason. I protest against the idea that the Act of 1870 had the effect attributed to it. It is said that in that year we proceeded by way of inadvertence. Well, if that is thought to be the case, it is a warning to us not to proceed by way of inadvertence a second time. I find that the clause which repeals the scale of compensation which was provided by the Act of 1870 substitutes a new and larger scale. If it is the case that in providing the scale in 1870 Parliament inadvertently created a right of property in the soil, I hope now that the
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  question is re-opened Parliament will take care not to create a further right of property in the soil by inadvertently passing another and larger scale of compensation. We have had fair notice, and it will be our own fault if there is any inadvertence on this occasion. But with the changed provisions of the Bill what is the purport and meaning now of a new scale of compensation at all? I can understand that when the Act of 1870 was passed, it was necessary to have a scale of some kind or other. I can understand adhering to it when it is once adopted; but what I cannot understand is upon what principle it is to be argued that the scale of 1870 was wrong, and that the scale in the present Bill is right. The argument adduced by the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal was that some of the County Court Judges had stated in evidence that notwithstanding the scale of compensation in the Act of 1870, there had been cases in which the landlord had found it worth his while to evict a tenant and pay the compensation, as he found he could get a new tenant to take the holding, and reimburse him the compensation thus paid. The suggestion is that if you make the payment larger that could not take place. Assume that such cases have occurred, they have no bearing when you introduce free sale. If the holding is worth so much, and a new tenant can be got to pay compensation to the old, of course he will pay the same sum now that the old tenant is armed with the right of free sale. Therefore, the necessity for the clause giving the altered compensation entirely disappears. I understood the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal was of that opinion. He said he believed this compensation for disturbance would sink very much into the background. I agree with the view of the noble Lord; but the legitimate conclusion is that this clause ought not to be in the Bill. There is no necessity to re-open the question of compensation; it is merged, it is absorbed by the higher question of the right of free sale, and having fallen into a trap on the former occasion by inadvertence, I hope Parliament will take care to avoid it now. I now come to the most important question in the Bill—to the effect of free sale on tenancies in Ireland taken in relation to the valuation of rents, or rather, to the valuation of rents taken

  545
  in connection with free sale. I understand that the ground on which you interfere in the valuation of rents is this. You want to protect the tenant against extortionate payment, due to the competition arising out of the great land hunger existing in Ireland, and which destroys freedom of contract. What is the position of the tenant now that a custom like the Ulster Custom will be extended to the rest of Ireland? There are two elements in what the tenant pays for the land, one the element of rent, the other the gross sum which he pays for the goodwill of the holding. If he pays for the goodwill out of money he has saved, he loses the interest which he might otherwise have. If he borrows the money from a money-lender or a bank, he pays a high interest for it. Therefore, in estimating what the tenant has to pay, you must put together the rent and the proper interest of the sum he pays for possession of the holding. So that what he pays for the land is not the rent alone, and not the interest alone, but it is the aggregate of the two sums. These things are spoken of sometimes as if there were a juggle in the figures, and as if you could get rid of the rules of arithmetic by saying that these two payments have no connection whatever. What does this Bill propose to do? Founded on the theory that the tenant must be protected against extortion arising from severe competition, the Bill proceeds to curb, fetter, and confine one payment—namely, the payment which he makes to the landlord—but you leave perfectly free and uncurbed the other payment, which he makes for getting possession of the holding. The noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal says that this is a pure evasion, and that if you go to an Ulster tenant and tell him that he pays a sum for rental and another sum for interest of the money he has paid for the tenant right, and that he is consequently rack-rented, he will laugh in your face. But, my Lords, that is not so. The Ulster tenant perfectly well understands that the land costs him the aggregate of the two payments, and that if you protect him in the payment of his rent, you leave him unprotected as far as the other payment goes. I am not going to argue the point whether the payment for goodwill has or has not a connection with the payment which the landlord receives by
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  way of rent. I am not going to argue whether the payment for goodwill comes out of the interest of the landlord; but what I am going to ask your Lordships is this—that you ought to be very careful that whatever theory is to be held on this point should be very clearly expressed on the face of the Bill; because the fear is, that by reason of any ambiguity on the face of the Bill, and notwithstanding the declarations on the part of the Government, it should come to pass—say, by inadvertence, that when the rent of some of these holdings comes to be valued, notwithstanding the declarations of my noble Friend the Lord Privy Seal and the Lord Chancellor, this triumvirate of respectable gentlemen may take up the idea that there is some connection after all between the payment for rent and the payment for interest, and may make the landlord suffer for the payment for tenant right. Suppose there is a holding in Ulster for which the tenant pays £50 rent, while he has paid £500 for the goodwill, and that he comes to the triumvirate, and they say—"We are to fix a fair rent and nothing more. We are to have regard to the interest of both the landlord and the tenant." Then suppose the triumvirate say—"What is the interest of the tenant? He has paid £500, and invested that capital. That is his interest, and we are to have regard to it." But suppose by mistake the triumvirate reason thus—"The meaning of our considering the tenant's interest is this—we are to see whether the rent of £50, which, looking to the absolute value of the holding, is a fair rent; but having regard to the fact that the tenant has paid £500 on coming in, we do not think it is. The rent is £10 too high, and, therefore, we reduce it to £40." ["Hear, hear!"] Well, they may be right; but suppose they are wrong, what then? Why the consequence will be this—that during the 15 years when the rent is £40, the tenant will say—"I have paid £500; but I have now got the rent reduced to £40, and my tenant right is, therefore, now worth £600." And if he wished to, he would sell it in the open market for that sum. Then comes the end of that period, and these respectable gentlemen say—''Well, we must go over this process again; we must have regard to the interest of the tenant; but as the tenant's interest has now risen to £600, and as we reduced

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  the rent to £40, when the interest was £500, we must now further reduce the rent to £30. And so the tenant will start again with a £30 rent, and will ask £700 for his interest; and so it will go on, and the rent will be reduced each time, having regard to the increasing interest of the tenant." Now, is that a mere supposition of mine? Is that the idea of a person wholly unacquainted with land in Ireland? These are the words of the Devon Commission on this point, of persons who certainly take a most favourable view of the question of free sale—
  "It is difficult to deny that the effect of this system is the assumption by the tenant of a joint proprietorship in the land, and that the tendency is to convert the proprietor into a rent-charger having an indefinite and declining annuity."
  Now, I am not concerned to argue whether the triumvirate would be right or wrong in doing what I said; but I do maintain that the most honest men in the world may do this under the Bill as it stands, and that, with the most perfect desire to do justice, the result would be such as I have described, and I must say that it would not be surprising if they did. What I want to know is, are you going to leave this matter in doubt; are you going to content yourselves with the declaration made in this House that the tenant right and the rent have no connection, that nothing is taken out of the property of the landlord; or are you going to put something into the Bill which will remove all possibility of its being done in the future? I do not say this merely in the interests of the landlord, but in the interests of the tenant also. Remember, you are creating a property which is to come into the market. You are dealing, not merely with educated landlords, but also with a tenantry of whom many are uneducated. Let it, then, be known what is the thing to be bought and sold, and do not let there be any ambiguities, doubts, and uncertainties which would lead to renewed agitation, heart-burning, and new legislation hereafter. The noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal said that it was not intended by this right of free sale to diminish the fair rent of the landlord, and I ask him if he will put words to make that perfectly clear in the Bill; and, if he will, every criticism I have to offer on this point is at once answered, and is at an end. I should be sorry
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  to believe that the Government would use in this House any word that they did not mean sincerely; but if so, what is their objection to put those words on the face of the Bill? There were words left out in the other House as to the valuation of rent, words to the effect that the Judges were to consider the element of the tenant right in fixing the amount of rent, and only those who apprehended their effect advocated their omission; but that is not enough when there is a possibility of doubt, and I ask you by all means to put in words to say what is the real principle of the Bill? Now, what does the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal say?—
  "As to the other portion of the tenant right, is it true that the occupation element, the goodwill element, must he taken out of the landlord's fair rent? I utterly deny that. We do not admit it for a moment. We believe that the goodwill element of tenant right grows up inevitably, side by side, in conjunction with, and outside of, the landlord's rent; that it is not carved out of the landlord's rent; and that it does not cut down the landlord's rent."
  Now, I wish to know whether the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal adheres to that view of the case. My noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor said he would rather have the responsibility of this measure than be in the position of the Opposition to criticize a measure which they do not reject. The Opposition are quite able to judge for themselves of the course it is their duty to take without my noble and learned Friend's advice, and without his sympathy. Therefore, we are quite satisfied with his view of the matter, and perhaps I may be allowed to return his compliment, and say I prefer the position of the Opposition to the position of those who have the responsibility of this measure. I am not going to prophecy, but I know what are the natural results of a measure of this kind. Human nature will be changed in its course if it does not stop all improvements made by landlords in Ireland. Human nature will alter if this measure does not build up a wall of separation between the landlord and the tenant. I do not know whether it will turn landlords into rent-chargers; but it will at once put an end to every motive which has hitherto existed for a kindly interchange of kindly feeling, good-will, friendship, and fellowship as between landlord and tenant. Another result of the measure does not

  549
  require prophecy; for we have had so much proof of what has happened since 1870 that we know the same thing must go on. Up to 1870 tenants had no legal property in their holdings that creditors could touch; but after the passing of the Land Act in that year, the tenants found that they could give security for money, and the result was that many of them got over head and ears in debt. Still larger numbers will get into debt when this Bill is passed. In Ulster, where this custom has grown up, and where they have had to pay for it, the tenants know the value of money and of their holdings; they are careful and thrifty men, and they do not get into debt; but when you suddenly throw this valuable property at the head of all the tenants in Ireland, they will be intoxicated with the possession of that security, which they never had before, and they will fall still more into the hands of the money-lender and the usurer. You know also that those who emigrate now are the best men. What are you going to do? You are going to give them a property which they can at once convert into money for the purpose of taking them away. I say that the effect of this Bill will be to make changes which will take some of the best men out of Ireland. Errors and mistakes are made frequently which cannot be remedied. We, however, are not the Executive Government. The Executive Government have the confidence of the House of Commons, and, having that confidence, they have partly encouraged and partly supported the system of agitation which has prevailed, and they have failed to suppress that agitation by the means which they could command. In fact, they have brought about a state of things which we all deplore, and they have thought it right to attempt to satisfy agitators by presenting them with this Bill. That is a heavy responsibility. But once this has been done by the Executive Government, possessing as they do the confidence of the House of Commons, the case becomes one in which, if this House were to take upon itself to reject the measure, it would, in its turn, assume the responsibility which at present rests with the Government, and which is a responsibility which I do not envy. It is for these reasons that I am glad your Lordships are not going to come to an
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  issue upon the second reading of this Bill. I have no wish to see the Bill amended in any way which would alter its main lines and features; but it now contains excrescences and inconsistencies which mar the regularity of those features. In these respects, then, there are important Amendments which. I would be glad to see introduced into the Bill; and when that has been done I believe that this House will have taken a course which is consistent with the dignity of the House, with our duty as public men, and with the best traditions of the Constitution of this country.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: My Lords, it is not necessary that I should detain your Lordships at this late hour (1 o'clock) for any long period, as my noble Friend the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has so fully stated the case of the Government in connection with this Bill. On reviewing the whole of the debate, I think we have no reason to be dissatisfied; but, at the same time, some things have been uttered by the noble and learned Earl who has just sat down (Earl Cairns) which it is my duty on behalf of the Government to notice. It seems, judging by the tone of this debate, that it is admitted on all sides that there is a very grave emergency in Ireland, and that it is absolutely necessary that some measure of this kind should be introduced and passed, and I think that the Bill is founded upon the only lines which the circumstances of the case justify. The noble and learned Earl opposite, who made a very moderate and wise speech, indulged at the end of it, as was natural, in some slight Party recrimination. The noble and learned Earl said, in effect—"Here is a Bill the necessity of which is admitted; but whence arises the necessity?" And the noble Earl answers—"From the conduct of the Government." I undertake, however, to demonstrate to your Lordships that to say that this measure has been rendered necessary by what has taken place in Ireland during the last few months is perfectly preposterous. What did the noble and learned Earl himself say in this House on the 3rd of August last year? He said that any statesmanlike measure introduced for the benefit of the people of Ireland would receive his respectful consideration. [Earl CAIRNS: Hear, hear!] The noble and learned Earl added that he thought a measure

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  for the encouragement of emigration was very desirable, that a measure for the establishment of a peasant proprietary would deserve consideration, and also one for the extension of the Ulster Custom to the other Provinces of Ireland; and he added that "all these, whatever view we may take of them, are projects worthy of a statesman."
  EARL CAIRNS: But I did not express any opinion as to their merits.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: I have not said that the noble and learned Earl expressed any approval of any particular scheme. All I can say is that we who sat on this Bench, when that speech was delivered during the discussion on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, said—"Earl Cairns perceives that there must be a large land measure for Ireland, and knows that it must be based upon an extension of the Ulster Custom"—the principle of the present Bill, for from it flows the greater part of its provisions. The noble and learned Earl now says that "After all, this Bill is an embodiment of the three F's;" and as regards two of the "F's" I quite agree that it is. But fixity of tenure is not in this Bill. The noble and learned Earl compared what is in this Bill with copyhold tenure; and, if I did not misunderstand him, he said that in copyhold tenure there is forfeiture. Now, of course, the noble and learned Earl knows well what copyhold tenure is. But my understanding of it was this—that the landlord may recover his just dues from the copyholder; but so long as there is an heir, there can be no forfeiture, as a copyhold is an estate of inheritance. In the absence of an heir to take, the copyhold escheats to the lord. I always supposed that what constituted the fixity of tenure in copyholds was that the heir has an absolute right to be admitted on the Court rolls. But under this Bill there are distinct cases in which the landlord will recover possession of the land—e.g., upon a breach of a covenant, and the landlord recovers absolute possession without any power in the tenant to regain possession. Then the whole class of future tenants will be in a different condition from the present tenants. When we come to discuss the Bill in Committee I think we shall find that the Bill does not contain fixity of tenure. I must say I was somewhat surprised at the attitude now assumed towards the
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  Bill by my noble Friend (the Duke of Argyll); and I must, therefore, take occasion to refer to what was said by my noble Friend in the year 1870. The noble Duke had not then the same objection to the extension of the Ulster Custom which he has since so strongly expressed. The noble Duke, in a speech on the Bill of 1870, used these words—
  "The noble and learned Lord (referring to Lord Cairns), who assents to the Ulster Custom, protests violently against the 3rd clause of the Bill, which gives a position to tenants outside Ulster precisely the same in character as that of tenants in Ulster."
  Now, it is curious that upon this subject there is a great deal of discontent in Ulster, and exactly in proportion as the landlords have been able by rules to curtail the Ulster Custom is there dissatisfaction among the Ulster tenants. So much discontent, indeed, prevails that towards the close of the last Parliament a measure was brought forward by Mr. Macartney, which contained three remarkable clauses. The Bill proposed to abolish office rules altogether, and it actually provided that leases should be dealt with. My noble Friend (the Duke of Argyll) is not present, or, no doubt, he would be surprised to make that discovery. My noble Friend said that no attempt had been made to interfere with leases until it was attempted in that Bill. He evidently never heard of this Bill. It is rather remarkable that an Ulster Member should bring in this Bill. The Bill was read the second time in the House of Commons just a month before the Dissolution, and with the concurrence of the Government; and so important did they think it that, at the time of the General Election, a letter was addressed by Sir Stafford Northcote to Viscount Castlereagh on the subject. In that letter, the then Leader of the House of Commons said it had been reported to him that the Government was hostile to Ulster tenant right, and that they were not wholly disinclined to support it, but, if possible, disposed to reverse that policy. A direct contradiction was given to this, and it was stated that the Land Act had been accepted, as they were bound to accept it, honestly. We imagine that we have sufficiently guarded in this Bill the fair and just privileges of the landlord quite as much as they would have been by the Bill which was approved by the late Govern-

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  ment. It has been suggested by the noble and learned Earl opposite (Earl Cairns) that the Bill can be so administered that the landlord's interest may gradually disappear; but that could not be unless the Court utterly disregarded the interest of the landlord, and the Bill says that the Court shall have regard to the interest of the landlord as well as that of the tenant. It may be possible to make the duty of the Court more easy by instruction, if words can be found; but if the Court were to act in such a manner as has been suggested, it would be guilty of a gross dereliction of duty. Tenant right in this case is no landlord's wrong. I would ask those noble Lords who have property in Ireland, and who have spoken in such strong terms of this Bill, whether it is not obvious, when you have found a principle which, whatever may be said against it theoretically, has worked for a long time with, I will not say perfect, but with considerable success in a particular part of Ireland, that we should extend that principle to the rest of the country? If we had a tolerable state of things in the rest of Ireland, I should not say—"Let us extend the principle;" but the state of things in the rest of Ireland is perfectly intolerable. The relations between landlord and tenant, who are the principal classes constituting the great mass of the population, are such that no Government which had any regard to its duty could shrink from bringing in and asking Parliament to pass any measure likely to create a better state of things. A noble Marquess, not now in the House (the Marquess of Salisbury), said that this was a measure of pure and simple confiscation. But when they knew that what the majority of the House chose to call confiscation was inevitable, what was the use of calling it by such a name? The noble Earl the late Governor General of India (the Earl of Lytton), in the long essay he delivered last night—and it was the only portion of that essay which was remarkable—said—
  "This may be largely beneficial. I do not regard it with misgiving, because it is confiscation, because confiscation may be necessary."
  Now, I think if this measure could be proved to be confiscation all the hard words applied to it would be justified. But the fact is that "confiscation," as used in debate, is a Parliamentary term, and
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  does not mean what it professes. There are many other matters which have been referred to, but on which I need not touch; but I must allude to the speech of the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Lansdowne), who took so completely a landlord's view of the situation. I suppose many of us were astonished that anyone, much more a great Irish landlord, should say that the question of improvements was a vexed question, except, of course, in the sense that it is vexatious to hear it so often argued; for the fact is beyond all dispute that by far the most of the improvements in Ireland have been made by the tenants. It is astonishing to me that the Bill should have been branded as a monstrous attempt to confiscate the property of the landlord, when the fact is, as has been shown by my noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor, that the very essence of the measure is an attempt to save the landlord's property, by rescuing it from the peril with which it is threatened. I heard my noble Friend the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Lansdowne) say—"You think, by a measure of this kind, to quell agrarian rebellion." Well, we do. You may either quell it by the bayonet and grape-shot or by remedial measures. I have said so much about the noble Marquess's speech, because I regard him as one who has great knowledge of the subject and great ability, which I much regretted to see applied as he has applied it to this subject. He throws great light upon it; but he does not bring that fair consideration of the matter on both sides which is more necessary in Ireland than anywhere else, if you are to have good relations between the two classes. Criticisms on a measure of this kind we must expect, and hard words will be lavished on those who have this most responsible and, in some respects, most ungrateful task imposed upon them. The Government, however, have no reason to complain of the general tone of the criticisms to which the Bill has been subject, and we only ask the House to admit that there is a necessity for passing the second reading of a measure based on these principles, and I hope the House will also be guided by the wise advice of the noble and learned Earl who has just sat down, not to interfere in Committee with the main lines of the measure.
  LORD DENMAN LORD DENMAN, amid considerable interruption, said, that if he did not speak against the second reading, he would be under the imputation of agreeing to that stage of the Bill. He would give Notice that, on the Motion for going into Committee, he would move that the House should resolve itself into the said Committee on that day three months.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Thursday next.

  ROYAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill for providing funds to defray certain of the expenses of the Royal University of Ireland—Was presented by The LORD PRIVY SEAL; read 1a (No. 194.)
  House adjourned at half past One o'clock, A M. till Eleven o'clock.