Sitting of 7 March 1881

MINUTES.
NEW—WRIT ISSUED—For Coventry, v. Sir Henry Mather Jackson, baronet, one of the Justices of Her Majesty's High Court of Justice.
SELECT COMMITTEE—Herring Brand (Scotland), appointed.
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—First Reading—TramWays (Ireland) Acts Amendment* [102].
First Reading—Conveyancing and Law of Property* [101].
Second Reading—Bills of Sale Act (1878) Amendment [16].
Committee—Peace Preservation (Ireland) [98]—First Night—R.P.
Select Committee—Married Women's Property* [50], Mr. Shaw Lefevre added.

NOTICES.

  AFGHANISTAN—CANDAHAR (WITHDRAWAL).
  MR. E. STANHOPE: Some time ago I gave Notice that I would take an early
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  opportunity of calling the attention of the House to the Afghan policy of Her Majesty's Government. I will now state the terms of my proposed Resolution—
  "That, in the opinion of this House, the withdrawal of the British troops from Southern Afghanistan in the present critical state of affairs in that country will not be conducive to the true and permanent interests of India."
  MR. ONSLOWgave Notice that he would, on Thursday, ask the Secretary of State for India, When he expects to receive the Report called for in the following words from his Despatch to His Excellency the Viceroy of India, dated May 8th 1880, three weeks after the assumption of office of Her Majesty's present Ministers:—
  "The desire of Her Majesty's Government is that Afghan territory should be evacuated whenever it appears possible to entertain the hope that a stable Government has been secured. Your Excellency will report as to the manner in which this object may be best attained;"
  if he can state to the House, without detriment to the public service, what has been done during the past ten months for the attainment of this object; and, how it is that no Minutes from His Excellency the Viceroy or any Member of the Supreme Council has been included in the Blue Book recently issued regarding the abandonment or retention of Candahar?
  SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: I beg to give Notice that I will, to-morrow, ask the Government whether they can name any day on which it will be convenient to discuss the Motion of which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lincolnshire has just given Notice?
  MR. ARTHUR ARNOLDgave Notice that when the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire brought forward his Motion he would move—
  "That this House, having heard with satisfaction the announcement conveyed in Her Majesty's gracious Speech, that it is not Her Majesty's intention that the occupation of Candahar shall be permanently maintained, and that Her Majesty's Forces will be withdrawn from that position, relies with confidence upon Her Majesty's Ministers for the adoption of suitable measures in regard to time carrying out of this policy."
  SIR ALEXANDER GORDONalso gave Notice that he would move, as an Amendment to Mr. Stanhope's Motion—
  "That, in the opinion of this House, the obligation of the British Government to the

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  people of Afghanistan, incurred under the Proclamation of the 21st November, 1878, when war was declared against the late Ameer Shere Ali, should be given effect to, by the return of the British troops within the limits of British India."

QUESTIONS.

  THE NEW COURTS OF JUSTICE.
  MR. H. H. FOWLERasked the First Commissioner of Works, with respect to the New Courts of Justice, If he could state what number of courts will be provided for the Court of Appeal, and what number of courts will be provided for the Judges of the Common Law Division?
  MR. SHAW LEFEVRE, in reply, said, that the New Courts of Justice would provide accommodation for 21 separate and distinct Courts. It was, as yet, too early to state what the appropriation of these Courts would be; but he presumed there would be two Courts of Appeal, five Courts for the Chancery Division, two for the Probate and Divorce Division, and 12 for the Common Law Division. No distinct appropriation had yet been made, and what he had stated was what might be apparent to any hon. Member.

  INLAND REVENUE ACT, 1880—LICENSING—CHARTER OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY.
  LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILLasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether he is aware that, prior to the Inland Revenue Act of 1880, the licensed victuallers of Oxford took out their licences from the University, and paid that body a tax on each licence, and were not charged for their wine licences by the Inland Revenue; and since the Act of 1880 they have been compelled to pay for their licences taxes to the Inland Revenue and to the University; whether the licensed victuallers of Oxford have addressed a memorial to him on the subject; whether a letter received by them, dated December 16, 1880, signed by J. A. Godley, was a reply to that memorial, written under the authority of the First Lord of the Treasury; and, if so, if he would explain how the opinion then expressed in that letter—
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  "That the charter rights of the Universities were reserved by the Inland Revenue Act 1880, upon full and careful consideration by Parliament,"
  can be sustained, seeing that the Clause in question (No. 48) passed through Committee without any expression of opinion by the Government or by any other Member; and, whether, taking into consideration the serious grievances under which the licensed victuallers of Oxford suffer in having to pay heavy licences to the Inland Revenue and the University, he would endeavour, in the financial arrangement for the coming year, to relieve the licensed victuallers of Oxford from the double impost to which they are subject since the Act of 1880, but to which they were not subject prior to that Act?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I am not surprised at the length of the Question the noble Lord asks, because, although it refers to a very small matter, it is a very complex one, and one which is not easy to explain. The recital in the first part of the Question is not absolutely accurate. It never was the practice of the licensed victuallers of Oxford to take out their licences from the University and to pay that body a tax on each licence. [Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL: Wine licence.] Not on licences generally. The University of Oxford has by charter the right to regulate the wine trade in the city of Oxford, which appears to be a very proper and judicious provision, all circumstances considered. At Cambridge there is a similar provision, I think, and that University uses it simply for police and disciplinary purposes, which were evidently the purposes that were originally had in view. But the University of Oxford levies a tax on the sellers of wine to the amount of £2 10 s. This, although it is a source of income, must be a very trifling source of income to the University. It is not true that the wine sellers of Oxford are placed under any necessity of paying the Inland Revenue a tax in order to enable them to exercise the trade of selling wine. What is true is this—If they choose also to sell spirits and malt liquors they must then make a payment to the Inland Revenue, which authorizes those who have made it to sell wine as well as spirits and malt liquors. I do not see that there is any reason for the State to interfere in this matter. I own that if I were a licensed victualler

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  in Oxford I should be inclined to endeavour to induce the University to relinquish this very insignificant source of Revenue. It appears to me to be a question rather between them and the University than between the winesellers and the State. With regard to the letter signed by J. A. Godley, I have never seen that letter; but, referring to the Minutes, I find the matter was carefully considered in Committee, and I have no power to deal with it. On the whole, I think the best course for the winesellers at Oxford to adopt is to deal with the University authorities.

  PARLIAMENT—BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
  MR. CHARLES RUSSELLasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether the Government propose to move for the appointment of a Select Committee, with a view to consider the best means of promoting the proper despatch of business in this House; and, if not, whether the Government will give a day as soon as they conveniently can for the discussion of a Motion with that object, of which notice has been given?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I am afraid I cannot give my hon. and learned Friend any answer to this Question at all proportionate to the importance of the Question itself—at least in its ulterior aspects. He asks me—
  "Whether the Government propose to move for the appointment of a Select Committee, with a view to consider the best means of promoting the proper despatch of business in this House; and, if not, whether the Government will give a day as soon as they conveniently can for the discussion of a Motion with that object?"
  The Government have not arrived at any decision adverse to the appointment of a Select Committee; neither, I am bound to say, have they any intention of making that proposal on their own responsibility. Upon the whole, I think it is our view that the results of the numerous Select Committees which have already sat on the subject have not been such as to make us very sanguine of the utility of such a proposition on our part. It has been intimated in various forms and at various times that the present state of the House in reference to the effective despatch of Business is an extremely serious subject; and, therefore, whether by discussion in a Select Committee or
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  by Resolution of the House itself, we should think it an object of public value and importance that there should be a means of its fuller elucidation in order to impress on the minds of the House and of the country the extreme difficulty in which we are placed. I do not believe that any repressive measure, however judicious, will ever attain the whole of the object that is in view. I am afraid I cannot hope to go beyond that general encouragement to my hon. and learned Friend. He is too well acquainted with the actual state of Business to suppose that I should give him any further particulars.

  STATE OF IRELAND—OUTRAGES AT CLIFDEN, CO. GALWAY.
  VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGHasked Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, Whether, on Thursday night, February 24th, a party of men armed and disguised visited four dwellings of inoffensive and defenceless people, in the parish of Clifden, county Galway's whether two of the houses were broken into and the inmates maltreated, one old man having received a gunshot wound and many violent kicks, from the effects of which he still lies in a precarious state; whether shots were fired either into or within three of the houses so visited; and, whether great terror prevails in the neighbourhood in consequence of these outrages; and, whether any persons have been made amenable therefor?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. LAW): It is a fact that a party of men, some of whom were armed and disguised, visited the dwellings of four persons on the night of the 24th ultimo, in the Clifden district. Two of the houses were broken into and the inmates maltreated. One old man was wounded by one grain of shot from a pistol, which lodged in his arm; he received three kicks, which did him greater injury, but from the effects of which he is now recovering. Shots were fired both inside and outside the houses visited. The Sub-Inspector of Constabulary at Clifden reports that no terror prevails in the neighbourhood where these outrages were committed, and that no person has been made amenable, as the injured persons cannot identify any of the offenders. I under-

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  stand that a police-station is now established in the neighbourhood, and it is hoped that a careful system of patrolling will prevent the recurrence of further outrages of this kind.
  Afterwards,
  CAPTAIN AYLMERasked Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, Whether any of the persons who recently committed outrages on defenceless Protestant inhabitants of Clifden, county Galway, have been brought to justice; and if he can inform the House whether any other cause than that of religion has been suggested for the outrages there committed?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. LAW): I regret to say that none of the persons who committed these outrages have been brought to justice, as the injured persons cannot identify any of the offenders. The motive assigned for these outrages is sectarian feeling, the injured persons being all converts to Protestantism.

  SOUTH AFRICA—THE ZULU WAR.
  MR. R. N. FOWLERasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether Her Majesty's Government will reconsider the cases of Beje and other Zulus who, although residing in Zululand at the time of the outbreak of the late war, and therefore subject to the authority of the Zulu king, were tried and convicted in Natal on a charge of high treason, and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment?
  MR. GRANT DUFF: Yes, Sir, the case will be re-considered, and carefully re-considered. Much correspondence has taken place about it, and it would have been settled before this if the state of things in South Africa had not made it undesirable to take final action at present. I may venture to correct a slight error in my hon. Friend's Question. These men were not residents in Zululand, but natives of Natal, who deliberately went over to the enemy after the war began.

  ARMY—LONGFORD BARRACKS.
  MR. ERRINGTONasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether there is any prospect of the long promised improvements in Longford Barracks being carried out?
  MR. CHILDERS: In reply to my hon. Friend, I have to state that I cannot hold out to him any prospect of additional quarters for married soldiers being at present erected at Longford. There is already, and there will be in future, a large diminution in the number of married soldiers; and until the full effect of short service in this respect is known, it would be imprudent to add to the present accommodation for families beyond what is now in hand. I can find no record of any promise as to married quarters at Longford.

  BRITISH GUIANA.
  MR. ERRINGTONasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether he has received information of the recent suspension from office of the Administrator General of British Guiana, in regard to whose accounts it was publicly stated in the Colony that a deficit exceeding £20,000 had been discovered by the Auditor General; whether, as stated in the Colonial press, the Administrator General justified himself for the irregularies which had led to the deficiencies in question, by declaring that his course of action in his office had been pursued with the sanction of the executive Government of the Colony for several years past; and, whether, under these circumstances, he will institute an independent inquiry to ascertain on whom the blame and liability for this serious loss to the Colony should rest?
  MR. GRANT DUFF: This official has been interdicted from the discharge of his duties pending an inquiry into his alleged misappropriations, and he has made some such statement as that to which my hon. Friend alludes; but as most of the members of the present Executive Council which is inquiring into the matter are in no way inculpated by his statement, and as the Auditor General, who called attention to the alleged irregularities, is supported by the Governor in making the inquiry thorough and complete, there is not in the present stage of the affair any cause for further interference on the part of the authorities at home.

  SOUTH AFRICA—THE TRANSVAAL—ROMAN CATHOLIC ARMY CHAPLAINS.
  MR. A. MOOREasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether any Roman

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  Catholic Chaplains have been attached to the forces now operating in the Transvaal?
  MR. CHILDERS: Yes, Sir; one Roman Catholic chaplain was sent out in January, and another has been placed under orders to proceed at once. In addition to this there are local Roman Catholic clergymen whose services are made available for the troops.

  NAVY—DOCKYARD RIGGERS.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked the Secretary to the Admiralty, If Her Majesty's Government will consider the case of the riggers in Her Majesty's Dockyards, which has more than once been brought before the knowledge of the Admiralty by petition?
  MR. TREVELYAN: The case of the riggers in Her Majesty's Dockyards was laid before the late Board in November, 1879, and before the present Board in November, 1880, and in both cases the same Minute is on the Papers that there is no alteration in the circumstances which would call for a change in the pay of the riggers.

  ARMY MEDICAL DEPARTMENT—SUPPLY OF MEDICINES.
  MR. GABBETTasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether medicines are provided for the Army in England by inviting tenders from the drug trade; and, if not thus, in what manner; whether the practice that exists in England is applied in Ireland; and, whether the Irish drug trade receive invitations to tender for supplies?
  MR. CHILDERS: In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Limerick, I have to state that the present system under which drugs are obtained for the Army in England is that quarterly requisitions are received and settled for the stations, exceeding in number 100, and the drugs are supplied direct to those stations by either the Apothecaries' Company or Messrs. Savory and Moore, according to the price tendered. In Ireland they are supplied by the Apothecaries' Company of Dublin. The prices are checked by those paid by the Admiralty Contract Department, who purchase from the drug trade.

  EDUCATION (WALES)—REPORT OF THE DEPARTMENTAL COMMISSION.
  SIR ROBERT CUNLIFFEasked the Vice President of the Council, If he is able to state when the Report of the Departmental Commission upon Higher and Intermediate Education in Wales, presided over by Lord Aberdare, will be laid upon the Table; and if he can hold out any hope that the Government will be able to deal with the subject in the course of this Session?
  MR. MUNDELLA: I understand that this Commission has completed its inquiry, having examined nearly 300 witnesses, and is now considering its Report. As, however, the Report cannot be presented to the Education Department for several weeks to come, I can hold out no prospect that it can be considered by us in time to found legislation upon it during the present Session.

  EDUCATION DEPARTMENT—NOTTINGHAM HIGH SCHOOL.
  MR. ARNOLD MORLEYasked the Vice President of the Council, Whether it is the fact that it is now more than nine years since the governing body of the Nottingham High School applied to the Charity Commissioners to appoint new trustees to fill places which had become vacant in their body; whether the Charity Commissioners declined to appoint such trustees on the ground that they intended to propose a scheme for the High School; whether it is the fact that, although frequent application has been made to the Commissioners, no trustees have as yet been appointed, and no scheme has been published; and, whether there is any hope that the scheme may, within a reasonable time, be brought into operation?
  MR. MUNDELLA: I am informed that the Nottingham Charity Trustees, who are the governing body of the High School, asked the Commissioners to advise them what course they should adopt in view of the reduced number of their body; but they have never made application for an appointment of new Trustees, and without such an application the Commissioners have no power to make an appointment. The Town Council of Nottingham has several times urged that an appointment should be made; but a request from the

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  Town Council does not give the Commissioners power to act. This was explained to the Town Council in February, 1875. In April, 1880, the Commissioners stated their opinion that an appointment of new Trustees would be inconvenient, inasmuch as a scheme under the Endowed Schools Act for the High School had been published in the previous month. The scheme so published has since been frequently under the consideration of the Commissioners, and on Tuesday last was finally settled. In a few days it will be submitted to the Education Department.

  LAND COURT (IRELAND)—REDEMPTION OF QUIT-RENTS.
  MR. LITTONasked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether the Commissioners of Quit-Rents in Ireland, contrary to their practice heretofore, have recently refused to allow quit-rent, for years payable out of estates about to be sold in the Court of the Land Judges, to be redeemed, where such rents are in fact only portions of larger rents payable out of the lands to be sold, in conjunction with other lands, unless the entire rent issuing out of the lands to be sold, and other lands not the subject of sale, be redeemed; or the rent be in the first instance legally apportioned; or a declaration be inserted in the conveyance from the Land Court that the lands sold shall remain liable to the unredeemed portions of quit-rent; whether such refusal is made, irrespective of the value of the security afforded by the lands remaining unsold for the unredeemed portion of quit-rent; whether such refusal has materially retarded the efficiency of the Land Court in effecting sales to tenants; and, whether the Quit-Rent Commissioners will be directed to recur to their former practice?
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH: Perhaps my hon. Friend will excuse me from going into the details of his Question, as I think it is clear that the Commissioners of Woods have acted in accordance with the law which regulates the apportionment of quit-rent among different parcels of land liable to it. As, however, the application of the law appears to raise some difficulties, I propose to see whether any amendment can be effected which would enable a portion of an estate to be sold discharged from
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  quit-rent, leaving the rest, which may not be before the Landed Estates Court, liable to pay an apportioned share of the quit-rent judicially ascertained.

  SOUTH AFRICA—THE BOERS.
  MR. CARTWRIGHTasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether he would lay upon the Table of the House, the Reports made by Major Butler and Colonel Colley on the state of feeling prevalent in the Boer populations of Transvaal and the Orange Free State?
  MR. GRANT DUFF: I regret that I cannot do what my hon. Friend wishes. These Reports were altogether confidential, and contain matter which it would not be for the advantage of the Public Service to publish at present.

  ARMY RE-ORGANIZATION.
  GENERAL SIR GEORGE BALFOURasked the Secretary of State for War, If he will furnish Returns to show the Establishments of the several regimental branches, Artillery, Cavalry, Foot Guards, Infantry, according to the new organization, distinguishing men for Home, Colonies, and India; also the rates of pay and allowances, and totals of the cost of the several ranks and of the several regiments; also of the total of the whole of the respective arms?
  SIR ALEXANDER GORDONasked the Secretary of State for War, If he will lay upon the Table of the House an amended Estimate, showing the expense of the proposed new organisation of the Infantry of the Army, in lieu of pages 146 to 149 of the Army Estimates, laid upon the Table on the 16th of February last?
  MR. CHILDERS: In reply to my hon. and gallant Friends the Members for Kincardineshire and Aberdeenshire, I have to state that it is my intention to lay on the Table of the House without delay Papers explaining in detail the alterations contemplated in the organization and establishments of the Army.
  SIR ALEXANDER GORDON: Will the right hon. Gentleman lay the revised Estimates on the Table?
  MR. CHILDERS: Practically that will be the case. There is no increase of charges.

  ARMY (AUXILIARY FORCES)—ALLOWANCES TO VOLUNTEER CORPS.
  SIR JOHN KENNAWAYasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether it is intended to make any reduction in the allowances to Volunteer Corps for attendance at regimental camps for Military instruction; and, if so, on what grounds?
  MR. CHILDERS: In reply to the hon. Baronet, I have to state that there is no real reduction in the allowances he alludes to, as, although there is a reduction in the camp allowance, there is a proportional increase in the travelling allowances, the total remaining the same.

  INDIA—THE MILITARY FRONTIER.
  SIR WILLIAM PALLISERasked the Secretary of State for India, Whether Colonel Browne was correct in stating in his lecture that the revenues of Peshawur district are entirely inadequate in times of peace to pay for its garrison; whether Peshawar is a very unhealthy station both for Indian and European troops; whether, although a force of somewhat greater strength than that of the frontier stations in the Derajat may be required at Peshawur for the purpose of watching the hill tribes, the garrison could be reduced if Candahar were held by a British force which could operate on the flank of any army attempting to advance on India by way of Cabul and the Khyber Pass; if so, whether the cost of the occupation of Candahar should not be credited with the saving in men and money effected at Peshawar and the stations in its neighbourhood in any Estimate of Military Expenditure; and, whether he will lay upon the Table of the House, a Return showing the number of troops, both British and Native, stationed at Peshawur during each of the ten years preceding the late war, the annual deaths, and the number of admissions to hospital of both officers and men?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: I am unable to accept responsibility for statements made by officers or others in lectures, speeches, or essays, nor can I accept the duty of confirming or refuting such irresponsible statements. In the present instance, it may be accepted as a matter of fact that the district of Pesha-
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  wur does not produce a sufficient revenue to pay for the garrison maintained in it, as well as for its civil and political administration and its public works. Peshawur is a comparatively unhealthy station, both for Indian and European troops; and accordingly from time to time the permanent garrison has been reduced during the unhealthy season by a removal of a portion of the troops to healthier stations—Cherat, Nowshera, the Gullies—in the neighbourhood. The peace garrison of Peshawar and the district is mainly maintained for the protection of the Hazara and Peshawur district Frontier, and the support of the fort garrisons posted along this Frontier. The Frontier posts of the Derajat are supported by the garrisons of Rawul Pindi, Lahore, and Mooltan. There is no reason to suppose that the existence of a force at Candahar could affect the strength of the reserve required even in peace time for the Hazara and Peshawar Frontier, or that it would at all affect the movements of the tribes on that border. There would, therefore, be no saving in either men or money to be credited to the cost of the occupation of Candahar in any Estimate of military expenditure. A statement giving the strength of the troops maintained at Peshawur during the 10 years preceding the late war, with the average death-rates and admission to hospital at per 1,000 strength, could be prepared if necessary; but I scarcely think that it would throw much light on the subject. The question of the Army advancing on India by Cabul and the Khyber appears to be entirely outside the question of the ordinary garrison maintained at Peshawur for the support of the troops on the Frontier.

  ARMY ENLISTMENT ACTS.
  MR. GREERasked the Secretary of State for War, with reference to Article 663, Royal Warrant, 1st May 1878, by which it is provided that—
  "Boys of 14 years and upwards, specially enlisted under the Army Enlistment Acts of 1887 and 1870, shall reckon only on such portion of their services towards pension as they may render after they shall have attained the age of 17 years;"
  and to Article 81, "Army Discipline and Regulation Act, 1879," by which it is provided that a soldier of the Regular Forces may—

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  "Be re-engaged for such further period of Army service as will make up a total continuous period of 21 years of Army service, reckoned from the date of his attestation, and inclusive of any period previously served in the Reserve"—
  whether it is possible, under these Articles, for boys between 14 and 17 years of ago, specially enlisted under the Army Enlistment Acts of 1867 and 1870, to obtain a pension; and, if "The Army Discipline and Regulation Act, 1879," requires alteration, so that boys enlisting under 17 years of age may re-engage, in order to enable them to complete 21 years' service from date of their attaining 17 years of age; and, if so, whether he will take into consideration the necessity of having such alteration made?
  MR. CHILDERS: The question raised by the hon. Member is already under my consideration; but I could not easily point out the difficulties surrounding the case in reply to a Question. I shall probably have an opportunity of explaining my decision during the discussion of the Estimates.

  PRIVATE BILL LEGISLATION—LOCAL INQUIRIES.
  MR. MONKasked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether he can hold out any hope that the Government will introduce a measure for facilitating and diminishing the cost of Private Bill Legislation, by means of local inquiries to be held in the country, and, as far as possible, in the locality where the subject of inquiry arises?
  MR. J. G. TALBOTasked, Whether Her Majesty's Government have it in contemplation to extend further the system of Provisional Orders, whereby so much local legislation has been carried out under the supervision of the Board of Trade and the Local Government Board, with great saving of expense as compared with the ordinary procedure by Private Bills?
  MR. CHAMBERLAIN: I agree with the statement contained in the Question of the hon. Member for Oxford University, both as to the extent of the local legislation to which he refers and as to the great saving of expense that has resulted from its general adoption. It certainly relieves Parliament of a great deal of unnecessary legislation, and helps to reduce the amount of the
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  cost of litigation. By holding local inquiries, by seeing the parties together, by suggesting amendments, it is very often within the power of the Department to make arrangements satisfactory to all the persons concerned. I have no means of exactly comparing the cost of Private Bills and Provisional Orders; but my own experience leads me to believe that the cost of Provisional Orders is not more than one-tenth, and certainly not more than one-fifth, of the average cost of Private Bills. In the 10 years ending 1880 the Board of Trade issued 460 such Orders; and so satisfactory were they, that, although in every case the parties might appeal to a Select Committee, 433 were confirmed—only 27 being rejected or withdrawn. The Local Government Board issue a still larger number of Provisional Orders. Last year they issued 100, of which five only were contested before Select Committees, two of these being withdrawn. Under those circumstances, the Government will take every possible opportunity of extending a system which has proved so satisfactory; and of that intention you have an illustration in the case of the Rivers Conservancy Bill, in which provision is made for dealing with these matters by means of Boards elected under Provisional Orders. At present there are 210 rivers which will be affected by that Bill, and these are governed by no less than 2,000 local Acts. In that way, I hope we may carry out the wishes of the two hon. Members who have put Questions on the subject.

  SOUTH AFRICA—THE TRANSVAAL—REPORTED ARMISTICE WITH THE BOERS.
  SIR WILFRID LAWSONasked the First Lord of the Treasury, with reference to the negotiations for peace with the Boers, Whether the Government forbade any fresh attack to be made on the Boers until the answer which it has been stated "was then expected from them" had been received?
  MR. GLADSTONE: Though we are not in a perfect condition to give full and complete information to the House—and, indeed, we have not perfectly clear information on all points ourselves—yet it is known that, in answer

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  to a communication from Mr. Kruger, as the civil head of the Boers in their present position, there was a communication made to the Boers through the late Sir George Colley, and it is in reference to that, I think, that my hon. Friend asks the Question. His Question is, whether, during the interval while that communication was on its way—while an answer was being prepared with respect to the communication—we had given military instructions to the General forbidding any fresh attack being made. I think the best answer I can give is to state strictly the substance of the telegram sent on the 16th of February to the General Officer Commanding in Natal. It is as follows:—
  (Telegram from Sir E. Wood to Lord Kimberley, received March 6, 10 20 p.m.)
  "With reference to Lord Kimberley's telegram as respects the interval that must elapse before the reply can in due course be received from the Boers, we do not bind your discretion, but we are anxious for your making arrangements to avoid the effusion of blood."
  I may, perhaps, mention, as a matter of interest to the House, that this day a telegram has been received from Sir Evelyn Wood, dated yesterday, the 6th of March—
  "Have signed agreement with Joubert for suspension of hostilities until midnight of the 14th of March, for the purpose of receiving Kruger's reply"—
  perhaps I ought to say, parenthetically, that we are given to understand that Mr. Kruger has gone further up country than had been expected, and hence there will be some difficulty in transmitting his reply—
  "and any further communications. We have power to send eight days' supply to our garrisons, and Joubert has undertaken to pass them through the Boer lines, and on arrival of provisions at such garrisons the blockading and besieged parties will cease hostilities for eight days. I hope you will approve."
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War has received a telegram to-day, stating the conditions of the armistice, which he will be prepared to read to the House.
  MR. RITCHIE: Was the armistice agreed to at the request of Sir Evelyn Wood, or at the request of the Boers by Joubert?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I do not think it would be possible to give a perfectly clear
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  answer to the Question until we lay the whole of the telegrams upon the Table of the House, and I doubt whether it would be desirable to do so until we have received further communication from the Boers, which we are expecting, and with regard to which we have no means of saying, at the present moment, that it has been actually sent off. At what precise moment we can produce these communications I am unable to say until we receive the further communication referred to.
  COLONEL STANLEY: I wish to ask the Secretary of State for War a Question, of which I have given him private Notice—If he is able, without detriment to the Public Service, to state generally what are the conditions under which the armistice has been agreed to, and what terms have been made?
  MR. CHILDERS: I shall read the telegram from Sir Evelyn Wood as to the terms of the armistice. It is in these words—
  "The following are the conditions of the armistice agreed to this day between Joubert and myself. Object of the armistice to allow time for Kruger to reply to communication from late Sir George Colley and subsequent communications with a view to a peaceable settlement. We mutually agreed to a cessation of hostilities from noon on the 6th till midnight on the 14th March. Conditions:—
  "I. In that period both provide" [we read, however, this word as 'promise'] "not to make forward movement from present positions, but each to retain the liberty of movement within our lines.
  "II. Sir E. Wood is allowed to send eight days' provisions, but no munitions of war, to all the Transvaal garrisons, the Boer officers undertaking to pass on these provisions to the garrisons.
  "III. Joubert undertakes to send notice of the armistice conditions to the respective garrisons and to the Boer commanders, and will use his influence to induce the Boer commanders to allow the withdrawal of British wounded from these garrisons into Natal."
  MR. R. N. FOWLERasked, Whether the Secretary of State for War had received any information as to a report of the death of Sir Evelyn Wood which appeared in the evening papers?
  MR. CHILDERS: All I can say, in reply, is that no such intelligence has reached us; and I think, if there had been any foundation for the rumour, it is certain that before this hour we should have received it.
  LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILLgave Notice that he would, to-morrow,

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  ask, Whether, in the event of Kruger's reply proving acceptable to the Government, they intended to conclude terms of peace with the Boers before communicating those terms to the House of Commons in such a way that the House might express an opinion?

  DOMINION OF CANADA—AIDED IRISH EMIGRATION.
  MR. W. M. TORRENSasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, If he will lay upon the Table the Despatch from the Governor General of Canada of the 9th November 1880, forwarding Minutes of Council of the 5th November, offering terms of contribution by the Dominion Government in aid of extensive immigration of families from Ireland to Manitobagh and other fertile districts, upon condition of adequate aid being afforded by the Imperial Treasury?
  MR. GRANT DUFF: Yes, Sir; I shall be happy to do so.

  LAW AND JUSTICE (IRELAND)—COUNTY COURTS IN LEITRIM AND CAVAN.
  MR. TOTTENHAM: I wish to put a Question to the Attorney General for Ireland of which I have given him private Notice. It is, Whether it is true that The Dublin Gazette of Friday contains a Proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant and Privy Council, purporting to alter the days for holding Quarter Sessions, Civil Bill, and Land Courts in the counties of Cavan and Leitrim for the remainder of the year 1881; whether under this Proclamation some of these Courts will not now be held within 10 days, thereby excluding adjucation in all cases requiring a longer previous service of process or notice; whether the counties of Cavan and Leitrim were not united into one County Court Judgeship over three years ago, and what is the reason for the recent change, and under what section of what Act of Parliament were the Privy Council advised to act?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. LAW): In answer to the Question of the hon. Gentleman, I may say I believe it is true that The Gazette of Friday contains the Proclama-
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  tion to which he refers. The hon. Gentleman asks me as to the circumstances under which the Proclamation to which he refers has been made; and I beg to inform him that the necessity for it has arisen in consequence of the Judge of Waterford County Court being also County Court Judge of Cavan and Leitrim. The object of the alteration is to enable the same County Court Judge to dispose of the business in these counties. I have not heard of any such difficulty as the hon. Member refers to; but I shall at once have inquiry made into the matter. The hon. Member asks me for the Act and section under which the Order in Council was made. It is the 90th section of the County Courts Act of 1877.
  MR. TOTTENHAM: In consequence of the importance of the subject, I beg to give Notice that I shall repeat the Question to-morrow in greater detail.

  PUBLIC HEALTH—SMALL-POX HOSPITALS.
  MR. FIRTHcalled the attention of the President of the Local Government Board to the decision in the case of "Hills v. The Metropolitan Asylum Boards," given that day in the House of Lords, and asked whether it would have any effect on his decision with reference to the extension of the Fulham Small-Pox Hospital?
  MR. DODSON: In face of the epidemic prevailing in the Metropolis, the Question is clearly one not to be hastily answered. I know nothing of the nature of the judgment referred to, except from general report; and I must have an opportunity of seeing and considering that judgment before coming to any conclusion as to what steps, if any, I ought to take.

  SUPPLY—THE NAVY ESTIMATES.
  SIR DRUMMOND WOLFFasked the Secretary to the Admiralty if he could say when the Navy Estimates were to be brought on?
  MR. TREYELYAN: I am afraid I cannot say yet.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFF: On Thursday?
  MR. TREVELYAN: I really cannot say, Sir.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  PEACE PRESERVATION (IRELAND) BILL.— [BILL 98.]
  (Secretary Sir Harcourt Mr. Gladstone, Mr. William Edward Forster.)
  PEACE PRESERVATION (IRELAND) BILL.— [BILL 98.]

    COMMITTEE. [FIRST NIGHT.]
    Bill considered in Committee.
    (In the Committee.)
    Clause 1 (Prohibition on having or carrying arms in proclaimed district and search).
    MAJOR NOLANsaid, he had an Amendment to move, in page 1, line 5, to leave out "a person," and insert—
    "Any person, except he be a justice of the peace, a person in Her Majesty's Naval or Military Services, or in the Coast Guard Service, or in the service of the Revenue, or in the Police, or Royal Irish Constabulary, or a special constable, or juror, or clergyman."
    He had slightly altered the Amendment from the form in which it appeared on the Paper, but the change was merely a verbal one. The object of the Amendment was to restore the exceptions which were contained in former Coercion Acts. In the last Coercion Act, magistrates, Military and Naval officers, constables, and officers of the Revenue Department were expressly exempted from the operation of the Act; and the Amendment was taken out of former Coercion Acts, with the addition of words also exempting jurors and clergymen. He thought the most important exemption contained in the Amendment was that which applied to jurors; and, personally, he did not think, if the Amendment were conceded, with the omission of the word "juror," that he should feel inclined to accept it, because it would certainly do quite as much harm as good. It was unnecessary to point out to the Government that it was impossible to make a provision of this nature, prohibiting the carrying of arms, applicable to all classes of Her Majesty's subjects. It was necessary to exempt certain classes, and his proposal only amounted to an extension of the area of exemption. It was not necessary to argue in favour of magistrates and Military and Naval officers being allowed to carry arms. That privilege, under every Coercion Act, had always been conceded; but he thought that a Liberal Govern-
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    ment might go a step further and include in the list of exemptions a large portion of the farmers of the country together with the respectable shopkeepers and commercial men of the towns. He believed that by inserting the word "juror," they would be able to exempt more of the most respectable people of any particular county or borough than by adopting any other designation. He had raised this question on a former stage of the Bill, but he fully admitted that his suggestion had not met with a very hearty approval. He now proposed, in the form of a distinct Amendment in the 1st clause, to allow every juror to carry arms. Jurors were most respectable men, and certainly it was most unlikely that either a murder or an attempt to murder had been committed by any man belonging to that class for a long series of years. The safety of the country, therefore, was not likely to be imperilled by allowing jurors to carry arms, and he had no objection to the Government adding some additional words to the clause restricting the persons included in his Amendment to the carrying of a gun. For instance, Her Majesty's Government might permit them to carry a gun, but prohibit them from carrying rifles. He knew that there was an overwhelming majority in the House in favour of the Bill, and his object was that the measure should be made to press as lightly as possible upon his constituents, and particularly upon the more respectable portion of them. He hoped the Government would accept the Amendment, and consent to relieve the larger and richer farmers of Ireland from the operation of the most stringent and galling provisions of the Bill. The farmers were at the present moment allowed by their landlords to shoot birds upon their holdings, and an Act passed last year gave them the right to kill hares and rabbits. All he asked now was that in Ireland they should have liberty to carry a gun. He had no objection to add to the Amendment a Proviso that the Lord Lieutenant should have power to prevent any particular magistrate or any particular juror or clergyman from carrying a gun.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 1, line 5, to leave out the words "a person," and insert the words "any person, except he be a justice of the peace, a person in

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    Her Majesty's Naval or Military Services, or in the Coast Guard Service or in the service of the Revenue, or in the Police, or Royal Irish Constabulary, or a special constable, or a juror, or clergyman."—(Major Nolan.)
    Question proposed, "That the words 'a person' stand part of the Clause."
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Perhaps the Committee will allow me to state upon this Amendment what the object of the Government is in inserting the particular form which appears in the Bill. The plan of the Bill is really to leave to the Lord Lieutenant, in proclaiming a district, the responsibility of fixing the conditions on which licences to carry arms are to be added. It is quite true, as the hon. and gallant Member has stated, that in former Acts all these details were given—as, for instance, in the Act of 1847, which was continued down to 1870, then continued and modified in 1870, and again continued and modified in 1875. But, instead of attempting to make the present Bill a very long, voluminous, and complicated measure, it has been thought better to leave to the Lord Lieutenant, in proclaiming a district, a discretion in the matter of licences. What the hon. and gallant Member said was quite true—namely, that in all previous Acts, Justices of the Peace, persons in Her Majesty's Naval or Military Services, or in the Coast Guard Service, or in the service of the Revenue, or in the Police, or Royal Irish Constabulary, were exempted; and, of course, in this case, persons occupying similar positions will be so treated in the Lord Lieutenant's proclamations. Nobody can doubt that an exemption in such cases will be set forth in the proclamation, and that the exemptions contained in former Acts will be practically continued. The hon. and gallant Member, however, introduces into his Amendment two new classes—jurors and clergymen, who are now for the first time proposed to be exempted. I do not know what his object is in including jurors. Whether it is for the purpose of enabling them to challenge one another, I am unable to say. I certainly cannot understand upon what foundation jurors, simply as jurors, should be exempted. I could understand a proposal to exempt all people having the qualification of jurors, or persons having a certain specified qualification; but the hon. and gallant Member will
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    see that, in some cases, a person having the qualification of a juror, and actually being a juror, may be precisely the person you may not wish to be armed. I have no doubt that there may be many individuals in this class of persons who might be fairly permitted to carry arms; but there may also be individuals among them whom it is most desirable to disarm. The object the Government have in framing the Bill as it now stands is to render the proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant perfectly flexible and plastic, and to enable the Lord Lieutenant himself to adopt it to the condition of things existing in the locality proclaimed. For instance, there may be a state of things existing in one locality which may render it desirable that the restrictions imposed in one locality should be much more stringent than those imposed in another. Then, again, in certain localities, the Lord Lieutenant, in the course of three months, six months, or eight months, may be able to relax the restrictions materially; and it would be most undesirable to have in every district the same stereotyped provisions, which would prevent the Lord Lieutenant from modifying the stringency of the Act in the event of a return being brought about to a better state of matters. If the Lord Lieutenant thinks that persons having the qualification of a juror may safely have licences to carry arms, no doubt he will include them in the proclamation, so that they might be exempted from the general regulations prohibiting the carrying of arms; but there ought to be a reservation which would enable the Lord Lieutenant to refuse licences to particular individuals. There is another class which the hon. and gallant Member proposes to arm, but about which he said nothing—the clergy. I do not know why he desires that the clergy should be armed. I should have thought that their experience in the use of these weapons would have made it a very dangerous provision, and I really do not know that it should be granted. But the main reason why I cannot agree to this Amendment is that it is really incompatible with the principles of the Bill, which is to leave the whole of the arrangements in regard to the proclamation and licences to the Lord Lieutenant. The Lord Lieutenant will have ample power to alter the conditions of the proclamation from time to time, as the exigencies of the public

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    safety in any particular part of Ireland may from time to time demand. Under these circumstances, I think it is not necessary that I should enter into further details in regard to the Amendment moved by the hon. and gallant Member.
    MR. DAWSONwas of opinion that the provisions of the Bill should strike every man within the proclaimed district with the same severity. He, therefore, felt the difficulty of supporting the Amendment of his hon. and gallant Friend. If the use of arms was to be prevented, let it be prevented to all alike; and, if the Lord Lieutenant was to have the power of making exceptions, the exceptions should be in favour of one person as well as of another. The only thing that would reconcile him to the Amendment was the point which had been urged by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary as a reason why it should not be accepted. He was of opinion that if jurors, as a class, were excluded from the operation of the provisions of the Bill, the edge would be taken off the severity and unfairness of the measure; but if that class were not included in the exemptions, he should certainly feel inclined to accept any exemptions whatever. His own impression was, that in carrying out the law there should be no distinction of persons, and that every man in Ireland should be made to suffer under the unwise provisions of the Act in the same proportion and in the same manner. He was, therefore, entirely opposed to the principle of exceptions unless the class of jurors was included.
    MR. CALLANremarked, that if he had not been prevented by the Urgency Regulations, he had intended to move on the Motion that the Speaker leave the Chair, that it be an Instruction to the Committee that they should have power to extend the operation of the Act to England; and he was not without hopes that on the third reading the House might see the propriety, in fairness and in common justice, of extending it to England. With this view, not that he was specially in favour of exceptions, but in view of the possibility of extending the Act to the whole of the Three Kingdoms, he thought that the classes who were authorized to carry arms ex officio should be specified, because he knew the natural objection that would be entertained by English Members to
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    leave these classes to the discretion of Ministers in the same position as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He certainly failed to see that any satisfactory reason had been assigned for departing from the precedent established by former Acts. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary seemed to be of opinion that until he became Home Secretary all Parliaments were unwise; that they knew not how to deal gently as well as firmly with the people, and particularly with the people of Ireland. In fact, the right lion. Gentleman looked upon himself as more Irish than the Irish Members, and much better qualified to judge of Irish matters than any Irishman. He yielded at once to the superior intelligence of the right hon. Gentleman; but, at the same time, he objected to have such an Act as this passed in a different form from that of every Act passed before, and he protested against the attempt which was made to introduce and pass a measure limiting and fettering the discretion of that House. He thought the House was fully as capable as the Lord Lieutenant of declaring what classes of persons should be exempted from the operation of the Act. The House know quite as much about Ireland as the Home Secretary or the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and he failed to see what superior wisdom constituted the Home Secretary sole arbiter in these matters, or why the right hon. Gentleman and Her Majesty's Government were better judges of what was necessary than any of the previous Governments which had sat on the Treasury Bench, whether Liberal, Whig, or Conservative. Now, if the classes included in the Amendment were to be exempted from the operation of the Bill, it would be easy to extend its application to England; and, in view of a proposition of that nature, he intended to support the Amendment. At the same time, he felt bound to enter a protest against the dictatorial tone assumed by the Home Secretary in dealing with the House. A dictatorial tone was assumed by the right hon. Gentleman in regard to the whole of the House. "Oh, its not for you to consider at all," said the Home Secretary; "it is a matter that will he much better vested in the discretion of the Lord Lieutenant than in the Members of this House." Now, who was the Lord Lieutenant? Far be it

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    from him (Mr. Callan) to say a word against the Lord Lieutenant. He believed him to be honest and well-intentioned. He wished to God that the occupants of the Treasury Bench were as well-intentioned. No doubt, they were equally honest; but he wished they were as well-intentioned. It was not, however, the Lord Lieutenant who would be the authority in the matter. But the persons who would exercise the discretion would be neither the Lord Lieutenant, nor the Chief Secretary, nor the Under Secretary—not even the resident magistrates; but every Tom, Jack, and Harry, in the Royal Irish-Constabulary. Those were the men by whom the discretionary powers would be exercised; and if the Bill was allowed to stand as it now did, the dissatisfaction of the Irish people would be much increased. The Home Secretary objected to the Amendment of the hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Major Nolan) that it would fetter the discretion of the Lord Lieutenant, and that was the justification of the right hon. Gentleman for declining any longer to follow the precedents set by former Acts. This was a most dangerous doctrine, and he hoped it would not be accepted by the Committee. If he followed the precedents set by former Acts they could not go far wrong, and, in addition, he thought they would be really facilitating the progress of Public Business. A long Bill, following the precedents furnished by the Act of 1875, would be likely to pass much more rapidly through the House than a short measure framed in this spirit of domineering tyranny, and so insufferably unjust towards the Irish people. He would certainly support the Amendment proposed by the hon. and gallant Member, and he was sorry that the First Lord of the Treasury was not at that moment upon the Treasury Bench, because he believed the Amendment would stand a better chance of being accepted if some leading Minister, not so easily pushed aside as the Legal Advisers of the Government, were in his place. As he saw the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright) in his place, he would ask him if he was prepared to be set aside by the domineering spirit of the Home Secretary?—["Question!"] It was the Question, and a very important Question too. He would ask
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    the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he had read the Act of 1875, and also the Bill now before the House, and, if so, whether, with his own natural sense of justice and with his kindly disposition, he would not at once say that the Irish Members, who were not wanting in spirit, were much more likely to resist a Bill drawn on the lines of the present measure than they would be if the Government would withdraw it and substitute the wiser provisions of the Act passed some years ago under the auspices of the more liberal Administration of a Conservative Government?
    SIR JOSEPH M'KENNAsaid, he was sorry that Her Majesty's Government, in drawing up the present Bill, had disregarded all former precedents. The excesses they professed themselves anxious to remedy were committed by classes of disorderly persons. Yet, what did they do? They brought in a penal measure, and made it apply to all classes—orderly and disorderly alike. Those who had hitherto been perfectly qualified to carry arms, and against whose conduct no objection was raised, were to be disarmed and left at the mercy of the Lord Lieutenant, equally with the turbulent and disorderly classes. The Home Secretary said the Bill only differed from previous measures in point of form. He (Sir Joseph M'Kenna) thought the difference was a very important one, and he did not see how the Government could expect an Irish Member to vote for the punishment of one class of person for offences committed by another. He certainly did not see that any reason had been shown for taking a different course in regard to the present Bill from that which had been taken in former instances. It had been the custom to exempt particular classes. If precedent supported the proposal contained in the Bill he would have submitted to it, as doubtless other hon. Members would, on the ground that the persons who were subjected to the operation of the Act would only be passing through the ordinary ordeal assumed to be requisite in such cases. But precedents were not in favour of the proposal, and the complaint now made was that they were not only legislating for the present occasion, but that they were forming a precedent for the future, which he believed to be dangerous, and

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    which would tend to centralize the power in Dublin Castle. He gave every credit to the right hon. and learned Gentleman who brought in the Bill that he was animated by the best intentions. ["Oh!"] His hon. Friends must allow him to give the right hon. and learned Gentleman credit for his good intentions. Remembering what was said to befall those who were animated by good intentions only, he thought his hon. Friends would not take exception to this expression. At the same time, while giving the right hon. and learned Gentleman full credit for his good intentions, he thought it was contrary to the spirit and to true policy for even the present Administration to subject the entire people of a country to harsh and stringent restrictions, and to impose penalties upon them which it had never been deemed necessary to include under similar circumstances in any previous legislation. He had no doubt that when the proclamations were issued they would supply the deficiencies of the Bill, and would exempt all the classes for whom exemption was now claimed, with the exception, probably, of the last two specified in the Amendment of his hon. and gallant Friend. But, at the same time, he thought it unwise to pass a law which should confer upon the Lord Lieutenant more power and authority in these matters than he had exercised under former Acts of Parliament. He could not see why the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary should refuse to make the measure similar in the stringency of its provisions to former measures. What was asked for by the Amendment was only a fair and proper concession to those classes who had always been orderly and well-conducted. It was only asked to exempt now those who had always been exempted before, with the addition of jurors and clergymen. He quite agreed that jurors constituted a large and wide class; but there was nothing in their condition or conduct in the past which could possibly disqualify them for carrying arms. By accepting the Amendment, they would establish the principle that the rateable value of a man's property should be some test of his respectability; and, in the second place, they would lay down the rule that it was injudicious to propose what must be at best a harsh and restrictive law with more stringent
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    and oppressive conditions than had been in previous instances found sufficient.
    MR. LEAMYcordially supported the principle laid down in the Amendment, that jurors should be exempted from the operation of the Act, and he trusted that Her Majesty's Government would arrive at the conclusion that there was good ground for exempting them. The House had been told over and over again in the course of the discussions upon these Bills that jurors in Ireland, owing to the intimidation which existed in the country, were afraid to bring in verdicts according to the evidence before them. They had been constantly told by the Government that if juries did convict it was at their own personal risk; and, that being so, although he, for one, would not say that it was—if that were the fact, and the Government said it was—it was a most unreasonable thing to deprive the jurors of the means of protecting themselves. The House had further been told by the Government that the object of these Bills was to enable them to deal with midnight marauders and assassins. If that were the real object of the measure, they ought not to take away the means of protection from the very class who were likely to be attacked by these midnight marauders. He believed it would be found that men who possessed the qualification of jurors were those who were generally the victims of the outrages which had been so much complained of. It was necessary for a juror in Ireland to have a property qualification, and it was generally admitted that a property qualification, however small, made a man anxious to maintain law and order. Under these circumstances, he hoped the Committee would accept the Amendment proposed by the hon. and gallant Member for Galway.
    SIR JOHN HAYwas certainly not inclined to support the Amendment of the hon. and gallant Member opposite. Later on he intended to propose a clause, which he hoped the Government would accept, entitling any person who, within a month after the passing of the Act, lodged any arms or ammunition now in his possession at the nearest police station, to payment for the same. The reason why he alluded to that proposal now was this—the object of the Bill seemed to be to obtain a registration of arms. He would venture to point out

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    to the Committee that at the present moment the sale of revolvers, both in this country and in Scotland, was most alarming. It was not confined to London and the large English towns; but he would give an instance of what had occurred in his own county in Scotland. He was sorry that none of the Law Officers of the Crown were present. If the Lord Advocate had been in his place, he would be able to confirm what he (Sir John Hay) was about to say; but he dare say that the facts were known to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary—namely, that in one Scotch landward parish there had been two murders, and one person left for dead, in 1880. In neither case had the offender been discovered. He happened to be a member of the sub-police committee, and, acting in conjunction with the Lord Lieutenant of the county and an hon. Gentleman, lately a Member of that House, he had made an inquiry into the matter. They were astonished at the large number of persons who were in the possession of revolvers, mostly peaceable citizens, who had no intention of breaking the law, but who had provided themselves with these implements owing to the alarm that prevailed, and with the idea of preserving their own lives. Some people had iron bars placed before their windows.
    THE CHAIRMAN: I must call the attention of the right hon. and gallant Member to the fact that he is not speaking to the words of the Amendment.
    SIR JOHN HAYsaid, he was merely mentioning the fact that a large number of revolvers had been purchased by persons who were usually regarded as quiet and peaceable inhabitants, and he thought that some record should be kept of the possession of such implements. He did not object to the possession of revolvers under such circumstances, but he certainly thought that some record of the fact should be kept. Perhaps he might also be allowed to mention another fact. A friend of his in London had an establishment, which was not a very large one, in the neighbourhood of the recent burglaries in the Cromwell Road. His friend had only one man-servant, but he had provided himself with four revolvers. Indeed, the possession of a revolver was becoming to be regarded as a necessary and
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    ordinary weapon for a man's protection. He had already intimated that he intended to oppose the Amendment of the hon. and gallant Member. He should do so for this reason, that, in his opinion, what was really required was a record of the number of offensive weapons in the possession of the people. There ought to be a list of firearms as well as a tax upon firearms. The tax should be levied on every person who possessed a weapon of this kind, and every weapon itself should be duly recorded. It would not then be so necessary to grant licences to persons to carry offensive weapons under the exceptional circumstances of the present Bill.
    MAJOR NOLANsaid, he had no objection to add at the end of the Amendment a Proviso requiring the person carrying arms to register them. He quite concurred in the propriety of the suggestion in that respect made by the right hon. and gallant Admiral (Sir John Hay).
    THE CHAIRMAN: The words proposed to be added by the hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Major Nolan) cannot be added now, as the Question has already been put from the Chair.
    MAJOR NOLANsaid, that, under those circumstances, he would simply explain that if the Amendment were agreed to, he would be willing to add the words he had suggested. He had no objection whatever to a registration of arms.
    MR. BIGGAR, in supporting the Amendment, remarked that the reasons adduced by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary against it were really reasons why it should be accepted. The principle suggested by the right hon. Gentleman, that the House of Commons should delegate its powers and authority to the Irish Executive, was a most pernicious one. He had always opposed it whenever it had been proposed. The House was fully competent to form its own opinions upon these matters, and it would be exceedingly improper to delegate their authority to any individuals, who, by possibility, might neglect their duty or misconduct themselves—whether it was the Lord Lieutenant, the Chief Secretary, or any subordinate official. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary said he wished to place discretionary powers in the hands of the Irish Executive as to whether particular districts should be

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    more or less exempted. He hardly understood what the right hon. Gentleman meant; but he could easily see how the Act might be made use of as a Party and political engine, in restraining some persons who were looked upon as objectionable, and in giving full liberty to others. By this means, the scandal might be exhibited of exempting the supporters of a particular political Party from the operation of the Act; while persons belonging to another Party, who were equally respectable and well-conducted, but who professed different political and religious views, would be brought under it. These, he thought, were considerations which ought to weigh with Her Majesty's Government and the House. The Act ought to be administered with thorough impartiality, and no favouritism should be shown towards anyone. He hardly imagined that there was any occasion for the Bill at all; but if it became law, it was desirable that it should be carried out with some appearance of impartiality. He should like to say a word as to the exemption of clergymen. As far as he knew, the Roman Catholic clergy did not use firearms, and did not care to use them. What, however, was very odd, the only persons in Ireland who had recommended assassination were Protestant clergymen. One clergyman in the North of Ireland openly, on many platforms, recommended the assassination of Members of Parliament and Roman Catholic priests; and another strongly advocated the arming of persons of his own religious belief and political views. Now, he did not think it was at all desirable, if such an Act as this was to be enforced, that these gentlemen should be exempted from the operation of it. Whatever might be the fate of the Amendment, he thought any magistrate living in the neighbourhood of the reverend gentlemen he had referred to, would be justified in refusing them a licence to carry arms, if it was once decided that no improper person should be allowed to carry them. The arguments employed by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary in opposing the Amendment really went the other way; and as the right hon. Gentleman proposed to reserve to the Executive the power of acting partially and unfairly in the matter, he (Mr. Biggar) thought the House should take upon
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    itself the right of deciding what persons should be exempted from the operation of the Act.
    MR. FINIGANwished to make a few remarks before the Amendment was disposed of. In the first place, he entirely objected to the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, that the Irish Members should entrust themselves and their liberties to the absolute and arbitrary power of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Although they had latterly been subjected to measures of severe tyranny in that House, the Irish Members were not prepared to accept, unless it was forced upon them, the arbitrary power of the Lord Lieutenant and the arbitrary ruling of the Home Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman told them that the use of arms would be permitted to persons employed in the different Naval, Military, and other Services mentioned in the Amendment; but he (Mr. Finigan) took it that officers of the Army and Navy, of the Revenue, Police, and Royal Irish Constabulary, were only entitled to be armed when performing their proper duties. In moving from one part of Ireland to another, or, when off duty, roaming about the coasts or country, or in any of the prescribed districts, they were not entitled either to have or to carry arms about them. If they allowed the ruling of the Home Secretary to be law—and he (Mr. Finigan), for one, certainly did not hold that it was—they would be simply licensing a lot of men to carry arms who were directly interested in the affairs of the landlords. These men would go about the country fully armed, while the unfortunate tenants and the unfortunate citizens would be left without any means of defence whatever. The whole tendency of this Bill was to confer arbitrary powers upon the Executive; but nothing was so arbitrary, nothing so tyrannous as the doctrine laid down by the Home Secretary. If the House consented to allow it, they might as well give up at once any idea of liberty in Ireland. As the hon. and gallant Gentleman who moved the Amendment agreed that every man should be compelled to register the possession of arms, and as he also included jurors among the exempted classes, the Committee might fairly accept the proposal on that understanding. Her Majesty's Government expressed their desire to obtain the ob-

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    servance of law in Ireland; and as their chief complainant was that as matters now stood juries were prevented from giving a just or legitimate verdict, he could not see what objection the Government could have to the exclusion of jurors from the operation of the Bill. Most strange modes of procedure had been adopted by the Government. In one Bill the House were told that they must follow precedent; and now, in another, they were told they must abolish precedent. There was neither logic, reason, nor justice, in a single argument adduced by the Government. The object of the Bill was to place in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant complete power over the liberties of the Irish people. All he could say was that he hoped the Irish people would be preserved from another Liberal Administration. The only thing they could do now was to attempt to make the procedure under the Bill as reasonable as possible, and, as a step in that direction, he hoped the Committee would accept the Amendment of his hon. and gallant Friend, which included jurors and clergymen. As many clergymen, both Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian, had mixed themselves up in the Land agitation in Ireland, he hoped they would be allowed to take measures of self defence against the ruffians who might be only too likely to go about Ireland creating disturbance and disorder.
    MR. SEXTONhad expected that the Government would give something like a reply to the clear and forcible arguments which had been laid before the Committee. Special reference had been made to the class of jurors. The Committee were quite familiar with the arguments which had already been used in reference to jurors—namely, the difficulty of obtaining a verdict in consequence of the intimidation exercised against juries. If it were true that Irish jurors, in the performance of their duties, incurred serious danger, why did the Government refuse to allow them the opportunity of protecting themselves? It might be said that jurors would be less required now than they had been in the past; and, no doubt, many persons would be arrested under the Lord Lieutenant's warrant who would otherwise be brought before a jury. Put it would still be necessary to carry out the ordinary law to a certain extent, and it must be carried
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    out by jurors; and if they were exposed to danger while engaged in the discharge of their public duties, the Government were bound to provide them with the means of self-protection. He thought that the Amendment of his hon. and gallant Friend proceeded upon a just and salutary principle; but it scarcely went far enough in the assertion and vindication of that principle. He (Mr. Sexton) supported it solely in consequence of the presence in it of the word "jurors;" but he complained that out of the ten classes enumerated by his hon. and gallant Friend, certainly the first eight would, under any circumstances, be well taken care of by the Government—namely, Justices of the Peace, persons in Her Majesty's Naval or Military Services, or in the Coastguard Service, or in the Service of the Revenue, or in the Police, or Royal Irish Constabulary, or special constables. It was abundantly apparent that all these eight classes would be allowed in Ireland to carry as many arms as they pleased. He objected to the Bill, because it contemplated the repulsive and detestable principle that the Lord Lieutenant, or even a clerk of the Lord Lieutenant, should supersede the function of the House of Commons. This, he contended, was a detestable principle, and the Irish Members were entitled to resist it with the utmost of their force. The principle propounded, on the other hand, by his hon. and gallant Friend was that certain classes of persons, who could not be held in any degree accountable for the state of affairs which rendered this legislation necessary, should be exempted from the operation of the Act. He thought there ought also to be included in the classes enumerated Parliamentary electors, Poor Law Guardians, members of Town Boards, and all persons holding public positions. These wore all of them respectable persons, whose course of life would protect them from any suspicion of complicity with outrage or connivance with disorder, and they ought to be exempted. If the principle of the Home Secretary were to be adopted, the condition of Ireland would be no better than that of a Turkish Pashalate. He hoped that his hon. and gallant Friend would enlarge his Amendment; but whether or not, he (Mr. Sexton) should cer-

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    tainly support it for the sake of the jurors.
    Question put.
    The Committee divided:—Ayes 293; Noes 28: Majority 265.—(Div. List, No. 110.)
    MR. LALOR MR. LALOR moved, in page 1, line 5, after "carry," leave out "or have any." The hon. Gentleman said, although it might be desirable that men should not carry arms outside their own lands, they ought, at least, to be allowed to keep them in their houses, if it were only for defence against bad characters in the night-time. It had been complained by the Government, he knew not with what truth, that Ireland was infested by men going about at night for the purpose of marauding; and if that were the case, it could not be right that honest men should be exposed to their midnight visits without the means of defending themselves. The Amendment he was about to propose was, therefore, very necessary. Under the provisions of the Bill, every policeman in the country would have power to enter the houses of the people in proclaimed districts during the day-time and ransack them in search of arms; and if, perhaps, they found even the lock or stock of a gun, the person in whose house they were found would be exposed to imprisonment for three months, or a fine of £20. He could only describe such a condition of affairs as monstrous, and, therefore, begged leave to move his Amendment.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: This Amendment is really opposed to the principle of the Bill. The words proposed to be left out of the clause have been in every Arms Act from 1847 to the present time, and it will be, I think, obvious to everyone that if a man not allowed to carry arms is permitted to have them in his house, he might select his own time to carry them out of his house. We had an explanation on a former occasion of the possible effect of this, when it was suggested that every man should have a rifle over his mantelpiece. The very object of the Bill is to prevent that state of things. It has been necessary, in former times, to forbid the possession of arms; and the words which it is proposed to leave out are just as necessary now as they were before. For these reasons, we cannot accede to the Amendment of the hon. Member for
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    Queen's County, which would practically defeat the object of the Bill.
    MR. MARUMsuggested, in view of the refusal of the Home Secretary to accede to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Queen's County, that the addition of the word "wilfully" would meet the case. The Bill seemed to him to delegate the functions of Parliament to another body, for although the 1st section declared that no one should have arms, the 2nd section provided that the right of carrying arms should be conferred by a certain body. That, he thought, was a singular mode of proceeding; and in voting on the division which had just taken place, he had done so with the object of protesting against the invasion of the legislative functions of Parliament. It was quite likely that a person might have arms in his possession without the slightest intention of using them improperly, and yet, as the Bill stood, he would be convicted. For that reason, he thought the addition of the word "wilfully" should be made.
    MR. DAWSONthought that persons having arms in their houses would be the least likely to use them in the way suggested by the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who, in referring to the remarks of an hon. Member, had certainly not represented what he had intended to convey as his meaning. Supposing the circumstances referred to by his hon. Friend should occur, the arms that would be used in such a case would not be those hanging over the mantelpiece, but arms obtained elsewhere. The arms over the mantel-piece would, in his opinion, be used only in legitimate self-defence. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had alluded to marauding parties going about the country and terrorizing the inhabitants. But the prohibition of carrying arms was sufficient to put an end to the terrorism alleged to exist, without preventing persons having in their possession arms for their legitimate use and enjoyment. Although the Amendment would not assist in checking imaginary dangers, it would not interfere with the prevention of the real dangers which the Bill was intended to deal with.
    COLONEL COLTHURSTcould not support the Amendment in the form proposed; but thought that there would be a great advantage in adding the word "wilfully," as suggested by the

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    hon. Member for Kilkenny County, because the intention of the Bill was not to prevent the keeping of arms in houses, but to prevent persons carrying and concealing arms. His own view was that there should be a general registration of arms under a heavy penalty. But, taking the Bill as it stood, he certainly thought that the words "or wilfully," or some words analogous thereto, should be agreed to. He would not vote for any Amendment to except any class of the community from the operation of the Bill; but the words suggested by the hon. Member for Kilkenny County seemed to him to be very useful.
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)said, the words "or wilfully" were unnecessary in point of law, for nobody could be convicted under the Statute without the mens rea. If arms were put into a man's Louse without his knowledge, he would not, under this Act, be held to possess them.
    MR. GREGORYpointed out that it was assumed that the clause was to prevent the carrying and possession of arms under all circumstances, whereas its object was that they should only be possessed upon certain conditions. For his own part, he should not be sorry to see some of the provisions of the Bill extended to England, so far as the carrying of arms was concerned.
    DR. COMMINSsaid, that unless the Statute prescribed "knowingly having arms contrary to the Statute," it would be the duty of the magistrate to find a person having them in his possession guilty. The Solicitor General for Ireland must be aware that there were many dozens of Acts of Parliament in which words similar to those in the clause were every day held to imply guilt on the part of the person coming within the purview of those Acts, without there being any guilty intention at all. For instance, there was a provision in the Licensing Act, under which a person might be convicted for permitting drunkenness upon his premises, although at the time the drunkenness took place he might have been 50 miles away. Again, there were the Acts relating to the adulteration of food, and the exposure of bad meat for sale, under which a person, although acting without any guilty intention, had no power of rebutting the charge that he was acting contrary to
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    the law. Therefore, in view of the experience they had already gained in Ireland with regard to the application of such measures as this—where men made a trade of earning information money, and got a living by procuring the commission of criminal acts, or the semblance of their commission, he thought it would be wise to introduce some words which would have the effect of putting a check upon the manufacture of crime. The Amendment proposed would have but very little effect; but, small as it would be, he trusted the Government would agree to it.
    MR. LEAMYreminded the Home Secretary that an Act had already been passed which enabled the Lord Lieutenant to put the midnight marauders in gaol, and that this would probably be effected in the course of a fortnight from that time. Under the circumstances, he thought the people ought to be allowed to keep arms in their own houses. He considered, however, that his hon. Friend would act reasonably in consenting to add the words "and that the same should be registered" to his Amendment. He reminded the Committee that it was proposed to deprive the Irish people of the right to have arms for a period of five years, and urged that, if it was intended to establish the same laws for England and Scotland, the time to make a commencement had arrived. For his own part, he considered one Coercion Bill sufficient for one Session.
    MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYpointed out that even if some marauder did succeed in keeping one weapon in his house, he could not do it without its being known to the police. It was, he thought, rather hard upon the well-intentioned man, that he should not be allowed to have a gun, because marauders might make a bad use of them; and considering the extreme stringency of the law, and the fact that the magistrates might arrest almost anyone, even upon suspicion, of using weapons for wrong purposes, he thought that persons might safely be allowed to keep arms in their own possession. He supported the Amendment, and trusted the Government would allow it to pass.
    Amendment negatived.
    MR. LALORsaid, the Amendment he was now about to propose had for its

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    object to give to any farmer for agricultural purposes the power of carrying a gun, at least on his own land, and having it on his own premises. It was scarcely necessary to state the obvious reasons in support of that demand. In England, Scotland, or any other country, it was impossible for a farmer to get on without a gun for the purpose of frightening birds, which in the summer season did an immense amount of injury to the crops. He, therefore, begged to move the Amendment standing in his name.
    Amendment proposed, in page 1, line 6, after the words "arms or ammunition," to insert the words "outside of his own land."—(Mr. Lalor.)
    Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The hon. Member for Queen's County must have misunderstood the object of the Bill, if he supposes that it is intended to prevent farmers having guns for agricultural purposes. It is only the proclaimed districts, such as are considered unsafe, that will come under the operation of the Act at all. Everywhere else things will remain as before. Those persons whom the authorities may allow to have arms will be in no difficulty whatever. But if this Amendment were passed, a man known to the magistrates as a notoriously dangerous character would be allowed to carry a rifle on his own land. That is really incompatible with the object of the Bill. Several hon. Members have spoken of the discretion allowed to the Lord Lieutenant in this matter as an extreme delegation of the authority of Parliament. But it is one which has been over and over again granted to the Executive, and the best illustration of this is, perhaps, the Foreign Jurisdiction Act, which in the case of countries like China and Japan delegated powers to the Executive by Order in Council. On the assumption that men who might be dangerous would be allowed to possess and carry arms upon their land, I am unable to agree to the Amendment of the hon. Member.
    MR. DAWSONsaid, if the Act were carried out in the spirit indicated by the right hon. Gentleman, no hardship would probably follow the rejection of the Amendment. But the magistrates in Ireland were entirely out of harmony with the bulk of the people, and would certainly
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    not be inclined to grant any concession to them. On the contrary, he thought they would be glad to take advantage of any circumstance that would make the Act press upon the people more harshly. Without wishing to detain the Committee at length, he would merely point out to the right hon. Gentleman the desirability of not leaving solely to the magistrates, who were so antagonistic to the people, the power of recommending persons for licences to have arms. If the right hon. Gentleman would not agree to that suggestion, he hoped his hon. Friend would press his Amendment to a division.
    DR. COMMINSpointed out that the present Amendment, and several others to the same point, would have been quite unnecessary had the Home Secretary condescended to give the Committee a copy of the proclamation which it was proposed to use. The clause, as it stood, gave arbitrary power—limited only by his discretion, and by his desire so to limit it—to the Lord Lieutenant for the purposes of the Act. He could not recall any Act of Parliament which gave such unlimited discretion as that given by the present Bill. The Foreign Jurisdiction Act, cited by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, had not a single feature in common with it. That Act gave neither unlimited jurisdiction nor arbitrary power; it simply prescribed the manner in which certain provisions of the existing law should be carried out. It created no new offence. He took upon himself to deny that it did so. If, however, the Home Secretary would produce such an Order in Council as created a new offence, he should be convinced, but not before. The present Act proposed to give not only administrative powers to the Lord Lieutenant, but to furnish him with the power of creating a new offence. It was, of course, well known that the offence only existed where the proclamation existed, and that it was, in fact, the proclamation which made the offence. Therefore, it was clear that the power of creating a new offence was vested in the Lord Lieutenant by this Bill. To that power he (Dr. Commins) entirely objected. If a new offence were to be created, let it be created by that House, and let the House also settle the limit of the discretionary power of the Lord Lieutenant. As the Bill stood, it gave power to create a new offence by procla-

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    mation, rendered persons liable to imprisonment for three months for its commission, without the House having the slightest idea of its nature. If the Solicitor General for Ireland, who would, no doubt, have to draw up the proclamation, would give some idea of what it would be, the necsesity for other questions on the subject would cease. The Amendment appeared to him to be a very reasonable one, and he trusted the Government would make some concession in the direction indicated.
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. H. JOHNSON)said, there appeared to be some misapprehension as to the duty which would devolve on the Lord Lieutenant. The Bill provided that in a proclaimed district arms or ammunition should not be carried save as authorized by the conditions set forth in the proclamation thereinafter mentioned. The carrying of arms or ammunition was, therefore, the offence, and was created by the Statute. The relief to this would be created by the proclamation, which would set forth the conditions and regulations under which the carrying of arms or ammunition was to be authorized. With regard to the licences, the persons who would be appointed to grant them—usually in all probability the resident magistrates—would be utterly unconnected with the district, and would have but one duty to perform—namely, to act impartially in granting them to persons who were entitled to possess them, and to refuse them to those to whom they thought they should not be given. If unfettered power were given to the Lord Lieutenant, he would be responsible for its proper exercise in relaxing the stringency of the Bill; but if the Committee undertook to point out the way in which this should be done, it was clear that the Lord Lieutenant would be largely relieved from that responsibility, as well as from the trouble of carefully considering the cases in which the powers of the Bill might and ought to be relaxed. That being the duty of the Lord Lieutenant, he regarded it as an additional guarantee for the proper application of the Act, over and above those laid on the Table of the House, and could not but think the insertion of these and similar matters Would be imprudent.
    COLONEL COLTHURSTsaid, that his objection to the Act would be very much
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    diminished if the power of granting licences were reserved exclusively to the resident magistrates.
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. H. JOHNSON): The hon. and gallant Member for Cork County seems to be under a misapprehension—
    MR. CALLAN: I rise to Order. I think the Solicitor General for Ireland has already spoken on this subject; and I simply ask you, Mr. Chairman, to put the ordinary Rules in force as against the hon. and learned Gentleman.
    THE CHAIRMAN: Until the Solicitor General for Ireland is ruled out of Order, he is in possession of the House. I understood the hon. and learned Gentleman to rise for the purpose of making an explanation, in which case he would have been in Order.
    SIR JOSEPH M'KENNAhad listened with some surprise to the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland. The arguments used by him in defending the power given to the Lord Lieutenant on the present occasion could be used in supporting any despotism in the world. The Solicitor General for Ireland argued that the full power ought to be retained in the Bill, because it placed on the Lord Lieutenant the responsibility of relaxing those extraordinary powers. Could more than this have been said by those who defended the mode of government applied by Russia or any other of the despotic Powers in Europe? He could understand that a great deal might be said in favour of limiting the power of any person to carry arms; but he objected that the innocent possession of arms should be constituted a crime by the Lord Lieutenant's omission to relax certain conditions.
    MR. CALLANargued that if the Bill was passed, the Lord Lieutenant, when once a district had been proclaimed, would have no power to make exceptions in certain cases in favour of anyone carrying arms on his own land. The Solicitor General for Ireland said the Lord Lieutenant would have such power; but that was not so. If a district was once proclaimed, no person whatever could carry arms without having a licence. He was surprised that the junior Member for Cork County (Colonel Colthurst) had objected to the Bill because it did not vest the power of

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    granting licenses exclusively with the resident magistrates, for he supposed the hon. and gallant Member had some knowledge of the magistrates of Ireland. He (Mr. Callan) knew a great deal of them, and, although he had no high opinion of the resident magistrates, he had a better opinion of them than of the stipendiary magistrates. He believed that the proper people to grant licences were the local magistrates, who knew the people, and not strangers from other places, knowing nothing of the people or their habits, and dependent upon the information of policemen or of spies and informers. It would be much better that the ordinary magistrates should have some voice in the matter, and he should have much more confidence in the Act if the local magistrates were associated on the Bench with the licensing authorities, for they would act as a check upon each other. He knew of a case in his own county in which the resident magistrate, Captain Keogh, had refused to grant a licence on the written request of two Roman Catholics magistrates—the only two Roman Catholic magistrates in the Petty Sessions district—although he would give a licence on the mere recommendation of any one of the Protestant magistrates. The resident magistrate was not a resident, for he resided 20 miles away. If he were confronted on the Bench with the local magistrates, more satisfaction would be obtained. He contended that a man should be enabled to carry arms—in the words of the Amendment—"on his own land." If a man preserving game was not allowed to carry arms on his own land, what became of the Game Bill of last year? It was merely giving with one hand and taking away with the other.
    THE CHAIRMAN: I must point out to the Committee, that a good deal of discussion has arisen upon a question incidentally raised as to the authority to give the licence. The Amendment is strictly confined to the words "outside his own land."
    MR. BIGGARthought the Amendment of the hon. Member for Queen's County (Mr. Lalor) made the Bill beneficial from the point of view of the Government, for it proposed to give protection to a person on his own land, but did not prevent a man from using his gun for violence or intimidation
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    against people outside his land. The position of the Government was illogical, and if they really wished people to be able to defend themselves they should accept the Amendment. The contention of the hon. and learned Gentleman (the Solicitor General for Ireland) was that it was undesirable to fetter the discretion of the Lord Lieutenant; but he did not see why that discretion should not be restrained as much as possible, for if every tenant farmer in Ireland who had a gun, and against whom no reasonable complaint could be made, had to apply to a resident magistrate, there would be an inducement to appoint a large number of resident magistrates. As to whether magistrates would act impartially in granting licences—he once applied to a magistrate for leave to carry a revolver, but leave was refused. The magistrate did not give any reason for the refusal; but after he became a Member of Parliament, the magistrate sent him a licence. He had not, however, bought a revolver, and he had never had one in his hand. That instance showed the uncertainty of the system. He thought it would be well to allow a large number of exemptions, for it would be impossible to settle all the cases separately, and the working of the Act would be greatly facilitated.
    MAJOR NOLANdissented from the contention of the Home Secretary, for the administration of the Lord Lieutenant ought to be, and was fettered, and the Crown was also to a certain extent fettered. Therefore, the argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman ought not to be allowed to weigh; but even if this unfettered Dower was to be given, at least the Committee ought to endeavour to impress their views upon the Lord Lieutenant, and he did not see how they could do that so well as by expressing their opinions in the House. That was reducing the functions of the House to a low level; but that seemed to be the only method of enlightening the Lord Lieutenant, and the discussion ought, therefore, to be continued. If they were to follow the argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, they would have to abandon all their Amendments. He would remind the Government and hon. Members that this Bill would tell greatly at the future elections during the next five years. In his own county,

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    at least 2,000 electors would feel the weight of the Bill.
    MR. HERMONexpressed himself in favour of all the Amendments being gone on with, without the discussion being arbitrarily terminated; but he could not support this Amendment.
    Question put.
    The Committee divided:—Ayes 29; Noes 217: Majority 188.—(Div. List, No. 111.)
    MR. M'COAN MR. M'COAN moved, in page 1, line 6, after "authorized," to insert "by the magisterial certificates or." To explain the relevance of these words, he must allude to the sub-section which he would move later on. That sub-section would show the sense of these words, if it were accepted. The latter Amendment read thus—
    "Certificates authorizing the having and carrying of arms and ammunition in proclaimed districts may be issued by a resident magistrate, or by two or more justices of the peace within such districts."
    His intention in moving this clause was that there might be an alternate means by which the right to carry arms could be obtained. Either permission could be had by magisterial certificates, or by the proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant. As the object of the Bill was not to impose obnoxious conditions upon respectable persons, but simply to ensure peace, order, and good conduct on the part of the population in proclaimed districts, he ventured to hope that there would be no difficulty in allowing such an alternative as he begged to propose. It could hardly be contended that justices of the peace or resident magistrates would not be trustworthy persons to have the granting of licences; therefore, he ventured to hope that the Home Secretary would see his way to increasing the facilities to that extent. The effect would not be to increase the carrying of arms at all. It might be that the Lord Lieutenant, in his proclamation, might give all the necessary facilities, but the reverse might also be the case; and he thought that law and order would be equally kept up by empowering the magistrates to make individual selections of persons who should be allowed to carry arms. Unless there were some such verbal interpollation, the clause, as it stood, might appear to negative the
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    sub-section which he would propose further on. He, therefore, expressed a strong hope that the right hon. Gentleman would make a concession on a simple point like that, since it could not affect the working of the Bill in the least. He must in candour say that there was no justification for the argument used by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Roscommon (Dr. Commins), in replying to the right hon. Gentleman, to the effect that Orders in Council did not create offences. He had seen the working of Orders in Council in the Levant, in China, and in Japan, and they had not only created but formulated whole codes of Criminal Law. There was no occasion to strain the facts beyond what they would fairly bear. He strongly hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would see no difficulty in admitting the Amendment which he then begged to propose.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Sir, I do not at all desire to exclude from the authorities who may grant licences the magistrates of Ireland; but I would remind hon. Members that the framework of these Acts from the year 1847 is so arranged as primarily to give to the Lord Lieutenant the power to appoint licensing officers. Of course, this Act will be worked in that manner. The Lord Lieutenant will appoint certain persons whose business it will be to grant these licences. He may appoint magistrates, or other officers, if he thinks those other officers would be more fitting. In considering the question of licences, there is always some little difficulty in making the local magistrates the licensing authorities, on account of the jealousy which sometimes exists. I do not think that it would be best for the authorities to choose for licensing purposes any particular set of persons. What the Bill proposes is to leave this Act as the Acts were before the one of 1875. Before that time the Lord Lieutenant had absolute discretion in selecting the licensing officers in the particular districts. This Bill proposes to give the Lord Lieutenant the same power; and, under the circumstances, I do not think it would be wise to alter it in any way. Therefore, I cannot see my way to accept the Amendment.
    MR. LEAMYsaid, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had just stated that prior to that Act—namely, the one

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    of 1875, the power given to the Lord Lieutenant was the same as that now proposed; but there were no words that he saw in the present Bill which would confer any such power. The words would probably be included in the terms of the proclamation.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The words of the Bill are sufficient to allow of a power to the Lord Lieutenant for that purpose.
    MR. LEAMYsaid, that the first point to which he would allude was that there seemed to be no obligation upon the Lord Lieutenant to issue any particular regulations. He might issue a proclamation which contained no conditions at As to a proscribed district, it was not obligatory on him to set forth any conditions; and, consequently, he need not appoint any person to carry out conditions which would not be inserted. That being so, he submitted that they had a right to expect that in this Act there would be the same wording as in the former Act. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had told them the other night that the Act was based on that of 1875. He firmly believed that everything that was good in the Act was obtained in the one of 1875; but there were many other things in it that certainly were not so, and one of the good things which it did not contain, and the former Act did contain, was that power of conferring on justices the right to grant licences. The Home Secretary had said that those magistrates were, perhaps, not the best men to grant licences.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I said that there might be some jealousy if the power were given to the local magistrates.
    MR. LEAMYsaid, that, after all, if they wished to have inserted in the Act a similar power to that of 1875, he did not see any reason why the Home Secretary should refuse to grant their request. If the magistrates were slow in granting licences, that was all the more reason why they should have the power to grant them. He objected also to the Lord Lieutenant having the power of framing regulations. He might make one set of regulations for one district, and another for another. Under those circumstances, he hoped that the Amendment which had been suggested by his hon. Friend would be accepted by the Committee.
    MR. SEXTONsaid, there was not a material difference between the argument of the hon. Member for Cork County (Colonel Colthurst) and the Members sitting upon those Benches. With regard to the fitness of the resident magistrates to have the power under that Act of granting licences, the magistrates of Ireland were utterly unfit persons to exercise a jurisdiction of that character. At the same time, he felt disposed to point out to the Committee that, as they proceeded in Radicalism, they appeared to retrograde in regard to the Bills that were brought in that had reference to Ireland. In 1875, persons were appointed to grant licences to carry arms. That Act said—
    "That such persons shall be bound to grant such licences provided that the person who seeks the licence shall produce a certificate that he is a fit and proper person to have such licence."
    It was evident that that Act gave power to grant licences under certain restriction, and that was, that any two magistrates might have the power to grant licences generally. He did not think that the magistrates would be likely to exercise any power under that Act in fervour of the people or in a popular spirit. In regard to the resident magistrates particularly he might say that. The Solicitor General had said that those resident magistrates were socially disconnected from the districts in which they had jurisdiction. It was well known that the magistrates, on the contrary, were intimately connected with the landlord classes of those districts in which they discharged their functions. He had strongly objected to the Lord Lieutenant having absolute power in regard to that matter. It was most revolting that a General Officer commanding the forces, and a couple of Judges sitting in the name of a Privy Council in Dublin, should have any such power, and he protested against it. Little confidence as he had in the magistrates of Ireland, he thought that the powers argued for by his hon. Friend (Mr. M'Coan) should be granted, because it was better that there should be no delusion with regard to absolutism, and that anything was better than sheer, absolute, and despotic power.
    MR. BIGGARsaid, with regard to that particular Amendment he had not much to say; but as to the magistrates,

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    there was a great difference between the resident and the unpaid magistracy. That difference between those two classes, in his opinion, was this. The resident magistrates were men who were amenable to public opinion—and when he said public opinion, he meant the opinion of that House—because when the Vote for Salary came on, it was within the power of Members from Ireland to criticize the conduct of those men. But with regard to the unpaid magistracy, they were entirely irresponsible. He thought that, under any circumstances, they should not be allowed to have the power that was proposed. He was entirely opposed to the present system of magistracy in Ireland, and if he could he would destroy that system at once. He was strongly of opinion that his Colleagues were wrong on that particular occasion; but, at the same time, he was disposed to vote with them, because he had sufficient veneration for Party government, and he thought that on such an occasion as the present they should suppress division of opinion.
    MR. GIBSON: As well as I can understand the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman, he desires, as far as he can, to introduce one of the provisions contained in the Act of 1875 into the present Bill. In my opinion, he will not, by his present Amendment, accomplish that. I have been looking closely at it, and am pretty conversant with the Act of 1875, and I would suggest that this Amendment should not be introduced here at all. It is desirable, I think, to leave the whole matter to the draftsman who will draw up the proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant. I was much struck with a remark which fell from an hon. Member, that the power of the Lord Lieutenant to exempt might not be exercised. However, when I consider the provisions of other Acts of Parliament, I come to this extraordinary conclusion, that unless the proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant does, on its face, contain exemptions, and very wide ones, the police, soldiers, and others would not be able to bear arms at all. Therefore, when a district is proclaimed there must be exemptions in the proclamation of very numerous classes; and one thing is evident, that it will be impossible for the Executive to allege that they have not had the opportunity of considering the licensing
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    authority. I have no doubt that when the Lord Lieutenant proceeds to consider the exemptions, he will also call into existence those licensing authorities that existed under the Act of 1875. Under the Act of 1875 there was no power given to any magistrate to grant licences. All that could be done was for two magistrates of a district to certify that an agricultural tenant appeared to be a fit and proper person to have arms, and then that the tenant, armed with the certificate, might compel the licensing authority to act. We cannot expect the Home Secretary to state at the present moment what the exact scope of the proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant will be. I think that, under the present circumstances, it would not be wise to press the Amendment.
    MR. M'COANsaid, that, in deference to the general feeling of the Committee, he would withdraw his Amendment in order to substitute another which would carry into effect the provision of the Act of 1875.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    MR. DAMSONsaid, that if the provisions of the Act of 1875 were not to be inserted, the Amendment that he proposed would certainly commend itself to the Committee. It was this. That the licensing authority should be obliged to hold an open investigation. The refusals should not be done by hole-and-corner work. It frequently was the case that licences were refused under those Acts. He thought that the Government ought to provide that any licensing authority, to which the proclamation gave force, to hear applications for licences should hold their sittings in public, so that if they refused the refusal might be in public, and everyone might know the reason why the refusal was made. If that were so, no arbitrary power of the magistrate could well take place, and no man who knew that a charge could be brought against him would be likely to make application in a public assembly for the licence. He would remind the Committee that the refusal often implied a serious charge on character, and for that reason he hoped that a public investigation would be allowed.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 1, line 6, after the word "by," to insert the words "licence granted in open court,

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    held for that purpose according to."—(Mr. Dawson.)
    Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The hon. Member who has moved this Amendment seems hardly to contemplate the full operation of such Acts as these in Ireland. Hon. Members must remember that we are dealing with a system which has obtained in Ireland for 35 years, and I would appeal to them whether this system, which has been in existence during times of oppression, could be well carried out by an official investigation of particular instances? If the Amendment were agreed to it would introduce a state of things never before known, and would lead to a condition of affairs totally unmanageable. Unless there were some strong reason to the contrary, the licence would be granted in quiet districts and in tranquil times. An investigation would be utterly unnecessary. Under the circumstances, I certainly cannot see my way to accept the Amendment.
    MR. SEXTONsaid, that the mere fact of the system having been in force since 1847, was saying very little indeed in its favour. Many things had been in force besides that, which were not defensible in reason or justice. He did not think that his hon. Friend intended to include every case in his Amendment. The Amendment was inserted rather for the sake of a protection. In 99 cases out of 100 they would be satisfied to go to the magistrate in private, and leave the granting of the licence to his discretion; but in the 100th case it would be necessary, in the public interest, that the refusal to give the licence should be announced in open Court, in order that the reason of the refusal might be known, and the man's character cleared, if possible. The Amendment was only an exceptional measure of protection, and on that account he thought it might well be acceded to. He must add, that it was a well-known fact that the manner in which applicants for licences were treated by the magistrates was most brusque. They simply dismissed the case in a summary manner, and refused to give any reason why the licence had not been granted. In public, however, there would be the chance of putting the man's character on trial, and the magistrate
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    could be called upon to give a reason for his refusal. Bills like those not only attacked public liberty, but private character. The bashaw whom the Government placed over a district might refuse a licence without giving any reason for it, and thus deprive a man of his character. He thought that the request of his hon. Friend was a most reasonable one, and he trusted that if the Government did not give way he would proceed to a division upon it.
    Question put.
    The Committee divided:—Ayes 27; Noes 122: Majority 95.—(Div. List, No. 112.)
    THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member (Mr. Sexton) has an Amendment to leave out "Proclamation hereinafter mentioned," and to insert "Schedule appended to this Act;" but I would point out that there is no Schedule to the Bill, and no hon. Member has given Notice of his intention to move that one be added to the measure. The Amendment cannot be put unless such Notice is given.
    MR. SEXTON: Can I give Notice now?
    THE CHAIRMAN: If you place the Schedule before the Committee.
    MR. SEXTON: Instantly?
    THE CHAIRMAN: It is necessary to do so before the Committee can consider the Amendment.
    MR. CALLANsaid, the hon. Member would, for the present, be perfectly in Order in moving to leave out "Proclamation hereinafter mentioned," and he could then state his intention to make the substitution referred to in his Notice. He would put it to the Chairman that the hon. Member would be in Order in following this course.
    THE CHAIRMAN: If the hon. Member moves the omission of these words for the purpose of inserting others relating to a Schedule, that Schedule must be before the Committee. It is impossible to consider an Amendment referring to a Schedule of which the Committee know nothing.
    MR. SEXTONsaid, he would confine himself to moving the exclusion of the words "Proclamation hereinafter mentioned."
    THE CHAIRMAN: That, as the hon. Member sees, would leave the clause in-complete. The clause would have no

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    meaning if that were carried; therefore, the Amendment cannot be put.
    MR. CALLANsaid, that before any other hon. Member rose, he himself would move to leave out the words "Proclamation hereinafter mentioned," and would bring up to the Chairman a Schedule to be appended to the Bill. He would leave it to the Committee to decide what modifications should be made in the Schedule when the Amendments came to be considered at a future stage. He would not be in Order in bringing up a form of a Schedule, leaving it to the Committee subsequently to specify the different classes to be put in it; but he would remind the Chairman that if he had given Notice of a Schedule, he would not be at liberty to discuss its details until the Committee had arrived at the consideration of his proposal. To his mind, it would be far better to state the "conditions" in a Schedule than to leave them to be announced in a proclamation, because in the former case they would be brought under the observation of the House. This would, in some degree, limit the extreme authority of the Lord Lieutenant, and the Irish Members were anxious to have that authority fettered as much as possible.
    THE CHAIRMAN: It is impossible, as I have already stated, for the Committee to pass an Amendment making reference to a Schedule the precise conditions of which they are unacquainted with. The Schedule must be in the hands of the Committee before an Amendment can be moved making reference to it.
    MR. W. J. CORBETsaid, the clause stated that—
    "Any person carrying or having any arms or ammunition, in contravention of this Act, may be arrested without warrant by any constable or peace officer, in order to his being dealt with according to law."
    In an Act they had already passed, they had given the Lord Lieutenant power to issue his warrant for the arrest of any person who might be suspected of treasonable intentions; but here, in this Bill, they absolutely proposed to give any constable of police authority to arrest any person with or without a warrant. He did not expect the Government would make any concession at all; but it certainly appeared to him a monstrous thing to empower a mere constable to arrest anyone he liked without a war-
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    rant. He would propose that the words "without warrant" be left out.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: If the hon. Member carried his Amendment, he would not the least in the world advance the object he has in view, because the clause would be exactly the same without these words as with them; and I hope he will allow me, as a lawyer, to make that assertion—an assertion which, I venture to say, every lawyer in the House will confirm. Why the draftsman put in the words I do not know, because they do not make the slightest difference. If the hon. Member will look at the paragraph, he will see that there are two sections in it—the first giving power of arrest to any constable or peace officer, and the second giving any justice of the peace, constable, or peace officer power of search. Under the 2nd section a police constable could arrest without warrant, and no such alteration as that proposed, and no such words as those in the clause, are really necessary. Under the 10th section of the Act of 1847, it was enacted that it should be lawful for
    "Any person or persons whomsoever to seize and apprehend any person who should be found carrying any gun;"
    and so on. That was a much more extensive power than is contained in the present Bill, because it authorized "any person or persons whomsoever" to arrest, and did not confine the power to a constable or peace officer, as does this measure. The present Bill is much more restrictive than the Act of 1847, which, if I am not mistaken, was in operation down to 1875.
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON): Yes, that is so.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: At any rate, the power now given is less extensive than that formerly granted. An arrest without any specification that a warrant is necessary, means practically an arrest without warrant; and you find when you come to a case where you do require a warrant, that it is provided that the arrest shall be made under warrant. I therefore hope the hon. Member will not insist on his Amendment, which, after all, would only make a verbal alteration, and would not affect the substance of the measure at all.
    MR. LEAMYsaid, if the right hon. Gentleman was correct in his law—and,

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    no doubt, he was—why did he object to strike out the words? If the constable had power, by a subsequent part of the Bill, to arrest without warrant, why should the Home Secretary hesitate to accept the Amendment proposed?
    MR. T. C. THOMPSONsaid, he understood from the right hon. Gentleman that the words were to be struck out, as it was of no advantage to retain them. In all Acts of Parliament it was desirable to strike out all words which were superfluous.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: At some future stage I dare say I shall strike them out.
    MR. BIGGARsuggested that his hon. Friend should withdraw the Amendment, and substitute the word "with" for the word "without." If he understood the matter rightly, the object of the hon. Member was to prevent an arrest being made without some sort of written authority—to prevent a police constable from arresting a person simply on his own responsibility. As the Home Secretary had very properly pointed out, the Amendment would leave things very much where they were at present; but it would suit his hon. Friend's purpose to amend the Bill so as to provide that—
    "Any person carrying or having any arms or ammunition in contravention of this Act may be arrested with warrant by any constable or police officer."
    MR. W. J. CORBETsaid, he would adopt the suggestion of his hon. Friend, and would ask leave to move to strike out the word "without," in order—
    THE CHAIRMAN: Order! There is an Amendment before the Committee, and that must be decided upon unless it is by leave withdrawn.
    MR. W. J. CORBET: I ask leave to withdraw it.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    MR. W. J. CORBETsaid, he would now move an Amendment to make the clause run as his hon. Friend (Mr. Biggar) had described.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 1, line 9, to leave out the word "without," in order to insert the words "with a,"—(Mr. W. J. Corbet,)
    —instead thereof.
    Question proposed, "That the word 'without' stand part of the Clause."
    MR. BIGGARsaid, the Amendment had now been formally moved by his hon. Friend, and he would really press upon the Government the desirability of acceding to it. It would be an improper thing to give a police constable power to arrest a person without a warrant. If the Bill passed in its present form, and a person was unfortunate enough to do some little thing that was an infringement of the Act, he might be subjected to all the annoyances and indignities of being made a prisoner by a police officer in a most summary manner, and it might be found afterwards that he had subjected himself only to the very smallest amount of punishment. He would point out that the provisions of the Bill were of the very widest nature. A person would be guilty of an infringement of the Act if he had the smallest amount of powder or explosive substance about him, and if he had not only a firearm, but even the smallest part of a firearm, in his possession without a licence. It would be very hard and unreasonable for a man who had a few grains of powder in his pocket, or a piece of a weapon, to be arrested without warrant by a police constable, kept in confinement all night, and brought up before a magistrate in the morning to have his slight irregularity adjudicated upon. It seemed to him that in a matter of this kind, where the total amount of punishment that could be inflicted was not very heavy—for, after all, three months was not very much imprisonment—it was unreasonable to give a police constable power of summary arrest.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: This is a matter in which it would be impossible to do away with arrest without warrant. Take such a case as the horrible murder which occurred near Mullingar two or three days ago. Several men were walking along the road with revolvers. Suppose the police had seen them with these weapons in their hands, would it not have been necessary, in order to prevent mischief, for them to have arrested the men at once? How could they have waited to make the arrests until they had obtained warrants? If the police observe anything wrong, or have reason to suspect that the Act is being infringed, the proper course is for them to stop that infringement at once. The object of the Bill will be defeated if we require the police

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    to delay making the arrest until they have procured a warrant. I conceive that the object of a power of this kind is that the police may interfere in a case where they see two or three or half-a-dozen men walking along the road with arms in their hands. I have often heard hon. Members below the Gangway opposite say that such a thing could be prevented by the present law; but if hon. Members know that that is the case, they know more than I do. I do not think it can be prevented unless you can prove that they mean to perpetrate some overt act with these arms. Under this Act the police will be able to go up to these men and say to them—"We should like to know whether you have got licences to carry these arms," and if they find that they have not, they can arrest them. As I have said, the whole object of the Bill would be defeated if they had to wait for warrants before making the arrests. Men may be found at night with arms in their possession, and surely it will be admitted that it must be impossible to obtain warrants in such cases.
    MR. DAWSONpointed out that under the Coercion Act if the police suspected that people had arms and were abroad on doubtful business, they had power to arrest them. The police were the judges as to whether people were suspiciously going about with arms or not—they were the masters of the situation. He thought that in the present case it would be a wholesome check upon the police to insert the word "with" in place of "without," so that a warrant might be required.
    MR. LEAMYsaid, the right hon. and learned Gentleman had spoken only of persons carrying arms; but the Act would give the police power to arrest without warrant persons having arms in their houses. He submitted there could not be the same reason for going into a man's house and taking him away to gaol as there might be for arresting a body of men found in a road with arms in their hands.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The police could not go into a man's house without a warrant.
    MR. LEAMYsaid, that, no doubt, a warrant was necessary for the purpose of making a search in a person's house, but he did not know that such warrant gave the constable power of arrest. If
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    the Bill were to pass in its present shape, however, the police constable would obtain a warrant to search, and the moment he found arms in the house he would be able to arrest their owner. If the constable found arms in the house he would know who to suspect of their possession, and it would therefore not be necessary to arrest him at once; he could summon him in the ordinary way for an offence against the Act. It was too hard that a peace officer should have power to go into a man's house and, if he found a little powder or the lock of a gun, to take the man into custody without more ado. If there was a provision in the Act requiring that such a person should be summoned before a justice of the peace to have his case tried, the objection would not be so great; but it certainly would be hard to lock a man up for perhaps a week—["No, no!"] Well, the Bill said, in Clause 5, that for the purposes of the Act, the Court of Jurisdiction elsewhere than in Dublin should be constituted of two or more Justices of the Peace sitting in Petty Sessions.
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)The offenders will be "dealt with according to law."
    MR. LEAMYapprehended that "according to law" was according to this Bill. The offenders would be brought up at the petty sessions, and, to his knowledge, there wore districts in Ireland where the petty sessions were only held every fortnight. That being so, he thought it only fair and reasonable that there should be some check on the power of making arrests—that men who might happen to contravene the Act by having arms in their houses should not be arrested without warrant.
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)said, there must be some mistake in the hon. Member's mind. The Bill provided that the person found contravening the Act should be arrested by a constable or police officer "in order to his being dealt with according to law." The Petty Sessions Act would require that these persons should be brought before a magistrate, and the magistrate would direct that they should be summoned to the petty sessions or be required to give bail for their appearance at the petty sessions to answer the charge preferred against them.
    MR. BRADLAUGHcould not understand the point raised by the hon. Member opposite, as to the searching of a house and the finding of arms there giving a police constable authority to arrest a person elsewhere without warrant, because that person happened to be the occupier of such house. The Bill only said that persons should be arrested without warrant who were found with arms or ammunition upon them.
    Question put.
    The Committee divided:—Ayes 116; Noes 32: Majority 84.—(Div. List, No. 113.)
    MAJOR NOLAN MAJOR NOLAN moved, in page 1, line 11, after "Law," to insert—
    "Unless such person can be identified, and unless there is no reasonable apprehension of such person making immediate and violent use of the arms carried."
    The Bill provided that any person carrying or having any arms or ammunition in his possession might be arrested without warrant by any constable or peace officer in order to his being dealt with according to law. The Amendment he had now to propose was really a very mild one. It simply gave a qualification to guard against the arrest of a man who was obviously doing no harm and who was well known to the Constabulary.
    Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; Committee counted, and 40 Members being found present,
    MAJOR NOLANresumed. The words of the clause as they stood were very strong, and gave power to any constable to arrest anyone carrying arms or ammunition without a warrant. His object in proposing the Amendment was to prevent the constable from making bad use of the powers placed in his hands through excess of zeal. He might think that in arresting some respectable inhabitant he was showing himself very zealous and ensuring promotion, and when he came to deal with the small farmer or the small tradesman he would be anxious, in order to get promotion, to distinguish himself by indulging in bullying. The Amendment would not interfere in any way with the carrying out of a warrant. It simply declared that where the constable had no reasonable apprehension that a man was likely to make immediate and violent use of
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    the arms he carried, that he should not arrest him without a warrant. Of course, if he thought that the man was going to make immediate use of them he would arrest him. That point was put by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary when he said that if the constable saw a man with a revolver he ought to arrest him. That he (Major Nolan) fully allowed. But suppose a man well-known to the constable, and not a dangerous character, was seen carrying a blunderbuss, was he to be arrested by a constable without a warrant? He remembered the late Member for the county of Cork mentioning several instances in which respectable persons had been put to a great amount of trouble in consequence of the officiousness of over-zealous constables. He did not think that the constable, under the circumstances, should have power to arrest without a warrant. The Amendment only went to this extent—that if the constable did not know the man, and thought there was any danger, he could arrest him without a warrant, or if he could not identify him; but if he both knew the man and know there was no reasonable probability that he would make a bad use of arms—if, for instance, he saw a servant he knew personally carrying a gun through the street—it would not be his duty to arrest him. He thought that the insertion of some such Proviso would prevent the constable from unduly exercising his authority.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I do not think that the first part of this Amendment can be defended, even upon the hon. and gallant Member's own showing, as he might know and be able to identify a man who is known to be a very dangerous character. The Amendment would not, therefore, meet the case at all. Then the hon. and gallant Member says—
    "Unless there is no reasonable apprehension of such person making immediate and violent use of the arms carried."
    The hon. and gallant Member puts the case of an over-zealous constable. Now, an over-zealous constable would always entertain that apprehension, or otherwise he would not act. These would, therefore, be extremely dangerous words to introduce. By this Bill it is intended to give the police, if in the night-time they see persons going about armed

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    with guns and revolvers, the power of stopping them and taking them before a justice of the peace, whether they are able to identify them or not, and whether they think the fire arms are going at once to be used for an illegal purpose, or at a more remote time. The object of the clause is to provide that if persons indulge in the habit of carrying fire-arms, they shall come within the operation of the Act. I cannot consent to except the case of a person who may be known and readily identified, and in regard to whom the police constable may speculate whether or not he is going to make a bad use of the arms he carries.
    THE O'DONOGHUEsaid, it appeared to him that the clause, as it stood, circumscribed the operation of the Act. It was not necessary that the police constable should have power only to arrest a man whom he perceived to be carrying arms. People might be going to a meeting without carrying arms in their hands; but as he understood the clause, it gave the constable power to make an arrest whether he saw arms in a man's hands, or whether his pockets happened to bulge out, and he was suspected of carrying them. In that case he might go to the man and insist on seeing what he was carrying. And thus every man attending a fair, a race, or a market, would be liable to be stopped and arrested. He looked upon this as the most oppressive section of this most oppressive Bill, and the most dangerous part of it, as it would inevitably give rise to a great deal of disturbance, seeing that the people were likely to resist the interference of the police in this way. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary pointed out that if the police saw a man going about at night armed, they would arrest him. No one would object to that; but the clause, as it stood, gave the constable power to make arrests at any moment and under any circumstance.
    MR. FINIGANsaid, the Home Secretary had just told them that he objected to the Amendment of his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Galway (Major Nolan) being accepted by the Committee, because in the case of a man of dangerous character going about armed, and being a person whom it would be desirable to arrest, he would escape arrest on the ground that he was
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    well known, and could be easily identified. But if such a man were known to be a dangerous subject, he ought to be arrested under the Coercion Act, because, as a dangerous character, he must either be reasonably suspected of some crime or incitement to crime or outrage. A person in that position would be arrested at once, and not allowed to go round the country flourishing fire-arms, because the mere fact of his carrying arms would afford reasonable suspicion that he was guilty of treasonable practices. The Bill provided that any person carrying or having arms or ammunition in contravention of the Act might be arrested without a warrant. That was a very great power to begin with. But the clause did not say that he was to be arrested without a warrant and dealt with in some way that was not according to law; but it actually said "in order to his being dealt with according to law." Would it not be much more logical and much more reasonable that this man, who was not a well-known ruffian, and was not reasonably suspected of committing crime or inciting to crime, or on whose premises arms had been found—would it not be much more logical that as long as he was well-known, and could be easily identified, and unless there was a reasonable apprehension that he intended to make immediate and violent use of the arms he carried, he should have the full benefit of the spirit of the law—namely, that he should be found guilty before he was sent to a common prison? In this, which was the true spirit of the law, he hoped the Amendment would be accepted.
    MR. HEALYsaid, the wording of the Bill had been copied from the Act of 1875, at which time there was no Coercion Act in force, and the Home Secretary, in servilely adhering to the former wording, appeared to have forgotten that, at the time in question, there was no power of arresting persons on suspicion. The Government having just passed a Coercion Act for Ireland, under which they could arrest persons on suspicion, the words sought to be excluded from the present Bill were unnecessary. The Amendment before the Committee, therefore, appeared to him to be perfectly reasonable. But there was one point to which he desired to call particular attention. It was well known

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    that the police in Ireland had the character of desiring to give everybody as much annoyance as possible. If a policeman had a grudge against any man in Ireland, he had a hundred ways, even under the ordinary law, of causing him annoyance; but under this Act his means of doing so would be multiplied a hundred-fold. As an instance of this, a man having a licence for arms might have left it at home, and one of these vigilant and intelligent officers might find this out, arrest the man, and subject him to fine and imprisonment. He might even imprison him while sending home for the licence. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary would, therefore, do well to consider this Amendment, and endeavour to bring up on Report some compromise which would remove the difficulties complained of.
    MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he thought the Home Secretary had himself suggested the way in which the Bill ought to be amended. It would, however, be necessary that the Amendment should be introduced in a different place. He would therefore move an Amendment to an earlier line of the clause.
    THE CHAIRMAN: The Amendment of the hon. and gallant Member for Galway is now before the Committee.
    MAJOR NOLAN: I am willing to withdraw, to allow the hon. Member for Dungarvan to move his Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    MR. O'DONNELLsuggested that a man might be arrested without warrant by any constable or peace officer in the night time. This was the limitation suggested by the Home Secretary.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: As a matter of Order, the hon. Member cannot propose any Amendment except after the word "Law," in line 11.
    MR. O'DONNELLsaid, the Amendment he was about to move would allow a constable or peace officer to arrest without warrant any person, who for some inscrutable reason, might be wandering at night-time about the country. It was absolutely intolerable that in the day-time a police constable should have the power of arresting respectable persons, whether belonging to the class of landlords, or traders and shopkeepers in towns. But if the power to arrest without warrant were confined to the nighttime, the complaint that at present
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    armed men could go about the country at night would be entirely removed, and, in fact, something would be done to take away that aspect of the Bill to which reference had been made at an earlier stage—namely, that it seemed more calculated for worrying and annoying respectable people during the daytime, than for dealing with malefactors at night. Without referring to the details in subsequent clauses, he observed that the powers of search under the Bill were only to be exercised during the day-time and, therefore, it would seem some provision should be made against marauders and dangerous persons during the night. He regretted not having called attention to this defect in the Bill before the hon. and gallant Member for Galway had moved his Amendment, which he had since withdrawn by leave of the Committee. However, he hoped the Home Secretary, having himself pointed out the defect, would now admit the remedy which it was sought to apply in conformity with his own suggestions. It was not in the-day time that dangerous persons went about the country with arms; those who did so would almost certainly be men for whose character some persons of fair respectability would be able to answer. In asking for this alteration, therefore, they were not applying to the Government for any illegitimate safeguard. The proposal he had to make would bring the Bill still more closely in keeping with the original intentions of Her Majesty's Government, and, therefore, he suggested the words "between sunset and sunrise." Of course, if the right hon. Gentleman preferred the words "in the night-time," he should be happy to accept that emendation.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 1, line 9, after the word "warrant," to insert the words "between sunset and sunrise."—(Mr. O'Donnell.)
    Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, the clause provided that—
    "Any person carrying or having arms or ammunition in contravention of this Act may be arrested without warrant by any constable or peace officer, in order to his being dealt with according to law."
    He could not understand why that should not be done in the day-time as

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    well as at night. To say that outrages and murders were not committed in the day-time was, as everybody knew, contrary to the circumstances reported from day to day, which showed that dangerous men were going about in Ireland with arms quite as much by day as by night. The object of the clause was to enable the police, when they saw persons carrying rifles and revolvers, to interfere, take their arms away, or arrest them. The Government could not, therefore, accede to the Amendment, which it was difficult to believe had been proposed seriously, for it must be obvious to everybody that it was impossible to identify and confuse two such different acts as entering a house in search of arms at night, and arresting a person for having them in his possession.
    DR. COMMINSsaid, the only way in which the people of Ireland could be protected from improper and mischievous interference on the part of the police was by preventing their arrest in the day-time. Under the present law, any persons carrying arms in the day-time to the terror of Her Majesty's subjects could be arrested. It was, therefore, the fault of the framers of the Bill that the words "any person openly carrying arms" had not been employed. Not having used them, they had thought it necessary to add to the powers of the existing law. If the peace of the country was to be preserved, and if this Act was not to be made an engine of oppression, he thought its operation ought to be restricted to the night-time, so far as the arrest of persons having arms or ammunition was concerned. In the first place, it was not likely that any person intending to commit an offence with arms, contrary to the peace or to the danger of another person, would carry them openly; nor was it likely that the police would have any means of ascertaining who it was that carried arms, and who did not. The arms would, of course, be carried secretly, and it was only by personal violation of the liberty of everyone on the highway that they could be discovered. But it was clear that the framers of the Act wished to subject the people of Ireland to as much indignity and outrage as they could. For it would be an indignity that policemen should stand upon the highway, and at the entrance to market towns, for the purpose of seizing by the throat every-
    480
    one who had a weapon with him. The clause would be utterly futile for the prevention of crime in the day-time, although it might be of some use for the purpose at night. He thought that if the Government wished to have the means of reaching offenders, without in flitting injustice upon innocent persons and converting them into offenders, they should consent to the slight alteration proposed, which had for its object simply the prevention of abuse.
    MR. HEALYremarked, that the ignorance of the Home Secretary with regard to Irish affairs was, no doubt, the reason why he had so stubbornly resisted all Amendments. Were he (Mr. Healy) to hunt up the files of Irish newspapers which appeared during the operation of a former Act, he could produce many cases of men in the possession of licences for arms being stopped in the streets by policemen and put into gaol because they were simply possessed of arms. Within his own knowledge, men had been arrested on their way to a county town merely for the purpose of getting their arms cleaned. Moreover, a former Member of that House had his servant arrested, whom he had sent into Cork for the same purpose, without his licence. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, of course, knew nothing about these matters, and, therefore, maintained a dogged resistance to the proposed Amendment; but on the supposition that there were some Members of the Government who had a care for Ireland, he submitted to them that Amendments of this character, which did not contravene the spirit of the Bill, should be accepted, especially when they were designed to effect what was neither injurious or hurtful to any body of Her Majesty's subjects in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman had shown nothing to the contrary of this, and, therefore, the Amendment, which was a very reasonable one, should, in his opinion, be accepted. In view of the large majority ready to pass any Amendment which might be proposed by the right hon. Gentleman, and of the small numbers of Gentlemen who supported the views of the Irish Members under like circumstances, he urged upon the Government to consider the matter entirely upon its merits.
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)said,

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    that if the constable had to go four or five miles to obtain a warrant for the arrest of a person as to whom certain information had been received, the contemplated crime, which was the subject of the information, might be committed before the warrant could be obtained. With reference to the point of the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy), where a man might omit to put his licence in his pocket, or send his servant without it, he would observe that those were difficulties of every day occurrence in shooting and salmon fishing, and a person who had not his licence with him would have to take the consequences. In the case of salmon fishing, a man was liable to have his rod taken away by the bailiff. He did not think it was enacting too much to provide that the person who had a licence should carry it with him, or take care that his servant had it in his keeping.
    THE O'DONOGHUEcould not conceive that statements should be reiterated, which would lead the Committee to suppose that a licence would be any protection to persons carrying arms, when the fact was they could be interfered with at any moment. A person who had a bottle or a large pipe about him that caused an unusual development might attract the attention of the police, who could proceed to search him. He thought the clause must lead to collisions between the police and the people.
    MR. DAWSON, supporting the Amendment, objected to the presumption that every human being passing along a road should be liable to be stopped and searched for arms.
    MR. T. P. O'CONNORthought the Solicitor General for Ireland had put a case which was a reductio ad absurdam. He seemed to think that if a man going along a road was suspected of carrying a revolver, and the policeman had to go and get a warrant before he could search him, when the policeman came back a murder might have been committed. It was, however, out of reason that a man having been seen with a revolver would within five minutes of that go and commit a murder. It was obvious that any person so seen, even if he contemplated a murder, would go home about his business, and abstain from his fell purpose. Under the Coercion Act, he understood there was power to arrest a man who was armed with a revolver
    482
    obviously with a criminal purpose; and he would point out to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland that although it might not be the object of those who introduced the Bill, yet the necessary consequence of the clause under consideration would be that in several towns in Ireland life would be made intolerable by the swagger and impudence of the police. Already life bad become almost intolerable in his own constituency through those privileged breakers of the law, the magistrates and the sub-inspectors of police. The Home Secretary probably did not care how much discomfort the Act would cause in Ireland; but he appealed to the Solicitor General for Ireland whether it was his desire that the swaggering magistrates and impudent policemen should be able to make the daily life of the people intolerable owing to their interference. If any persons wished to commit murder in Ireland, in 9 cases out of 10, or in 999 out of 1,000, they would not select the day for the commission of the crime; and any person going about with a revolver in the daytime it might be assumed was a person who intended to commit no crime, or who, if he did intend to commit a crime, would abstain from doing so if he met a policeman. Therefore, unless the Government wished to increase the authority of the magistrates and policemen more than was necessary they might very well accept the Amendment.
    MR. SEXTONobserved, that the Home Secretary seemed to be greatly pleased to learn that life was being made intolerable in Ireland; and he complimented the right hon. and learned Gentleman upon the spirit with which he was dealing with the Irish people. The right hon. and learned Gentleman argued that crimes were committed and people intimidated by day, and that the power of arresting any person in the daytime without a warrant ought to be given to the police; but the police had never at any time encountered the people committing crimes before the crimes were committed. In other words, people who committed crimes by day committed them so carefully and prudently that they never came within sight of the police. Therefore, no matter how well it might seem in theory to give this power of arresting

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    by day to prevent crime, it would not have any practical effect, because if people had concealed themselves so successfully in the past they would be able to do so in the future, and this power would not affect the commission of crime. People who went about by day with visible weapons, or with some weapons concealed about them, would not be people who carried such weapons for the purpose of crime, but people who carried them for some lawful purpose, and who, if called to account, would be perfectly well able to answer for their conduct. Therefore, he contended, there was no necessity for giving the proposed power, first, because the people who committed crimes were not likely in the future to be seen before the commission of the crimes any more than they had been in the past; and, secondly, because persons carrying arms by day had no intention to commit crime, and would be willing to submit themselves to ordinary inquiry. He thought the Home Secretary might be satisfied that the power to arrest without warrant should be restricted to the night time. He had been surprised at the remarks of the Home Secretary as to the people being allowed to walk about carrying arms; but he admitted that if a body of men were met going about at night time carrying arms it would be the duty of the police to stop them. There was no occasion whatever for this power being exercised by day; and if it was limited to the night it would amply meet all the proper and legitimate purposes of the Bill.
    MR. O'DONNELLwished to say a few words in explanation, because the Home Secretary evidently quite misunderstood his observations. He wanted to prevent the danger of having any number of innocent and respectable people arrested—
    THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member can only speak strictly in explanation, and not in argument.
    MR. O'DONNELLwas under the impression that Mr. Speaker had ruled that both in the House and in Committee, under the Rules of Urgency, the Member who moved a Motion had a right to reply.
    THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member is mistaken. An hon. Member who has moved an Amendment can speak in explanation of any errors that have been
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    made with respect to his Amendment, but with no right of reply.
    MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he was not going beyond that. His Amendment was intended to prevent persons having arms from being wantonly arrested by any constables who might happen to meet them.
    MR. BIGGARsaid, that if the Amendment was carried, a person who was seen carrying arms could be summoned in the usual way by the police; but if the Amendment was not carried, any person perfectly well known to the police, and not likely to abscond from the district, could be taken into custody and subjected to all the annoyance of personal arrest; and it seemed to him that unless the Government wished to make the Bill more troublesome to the people than it otherwise would be they should accept the proposal. The Solicitor General's case seemed to be that for dealing with cases of intimidation and with actual violence the Bill ought to stand as it was; but he had not understood the hon. and learned Gentleman to say that arms could be carried in Ireland for the purpose of intimidation in the daytime. They might be used for intimidation after dark; but it was unreasonable to suppose that men would go about with blackened faces and carrying arms in the light of day when everybody could see them. He thought the Amendment would make the Bill more consistent with itself than it was in its original form, and would not only do no harm, but would lessen the evils of the measure.
    Question put.
    The Committee divided:—Ayes 35; Noes 161: Majority 126.—(Div. List, No. 114.)
    MR. HEALYproposed an Amendment, the object of which was to prevent the unnecessary detention of people arrested. He explained that his Amendment was intended to provide that any person who was arrested, and yet had a licence at home, should be at once taken before a magistrate, and not be detained for 24 hours; and also that if a servant had been sent into a town with his master's gun to have it cleaned, it should be sufficient answer that his master had a licence. A Bill of that kind, it seemed to him, always proceeded on the presumption that it did not matter how

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    much inconvenience it caused Her Majesty's subjects; but he maintained that Her Majesty's subjects had as much right to be preserved from inconvenience as Her Majesty's Government. They who represented the people had a right to maintain that loyal and peaceable subjects should be preserved as far as possible by Act of Parliament from inconvenience; and although it might be said that inconvenience would be caused to the Executive, that was of no consequence—in fact, the more inconvenience they threw on the Executive the better they liked it, for what they wanted to do was to cause the Executive so much inconvenience that innocent persons should not be punished.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The object which the Amendment of the hon. Member contemplates is already secured by the words in the Bill—"in order to his being dealt with according to law." It is the duty of every constable, on arresting a man, immediately to take him before a magistrate for having arms without a licence. He will have an opportunity of proving that he has or is entitled to a licence. Therefore, in point of fact, these words are unnecessary.
    SIR JOSEPH M'KENNAsaid, the observations of the Home Secretary convinced him that there could be no possible objection to introducing the words of the Amendment, or some words to the same effect. The right hon. Gentleman, no doubt, intended that a man arrested under the Act should be instantly taken before a magistrate and dealt with according to law. It was not perfectly clear on the face of the Bill what "according to law" meant. On a cursory reading of the Bill, it apparently meant that the person arrested according to that particular law should be dealt with at once, with a view to his being punished for the illegal possession of arms; and that, at any rate, he should be detained for any time that was convenient to the authorities, in order that, under no circumstances, should a man who was possibly guilty escape. All that the Amendment of the hon. Member would effect was to put on the face of the Bill an instruction to those who would have the administration of the law that the rights of the individual subject should not be altogether left out of consideration. He did not in the slightest degree
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    question what the Home Secretary had said, that what he meant by the words, "in order to his being dealt with according to law," was that every facility of proving that his arrest was needless should be left open to a man arrested; but he ventured to say that the constables and the magistrates would be much more inclined to give such a construction so favourable to the liberties of the subject if the proposed Amendment was inserted.
    MR. SEXTONconsidered the Amendment very reasonable, and was unable to feel satisfaction with the reply of the Home Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to assume that the words, "in order to his being dealt with according to law," amounted to the same thing as the Amendment, but he was not able to come to that conclusion; and he contended that if it was desirable that the Bill should be carried out in a considerate manner that should be provided for by explicit words. If the right hon. Gentleman had no objection to what the hon. Member proposed to insure, why should he object to the Amendment? Suppose a man was arrested, and he informed the police that he had a licence at home. His house might be a considerable distance away, and all that the hon. Member wished was that it should be incumbent on the police to take such a person before a magistrate at once in order to give him facilities for proving his innocence. His own experience of life in Ireland did not lead him to believe that in many cases the police were at all anxious to afford facilities to a man to prove his innocence. If the Bill was allowed to stand as at present, if a man were arrested at 4 o'clock in the evening, as it was extremely unlikely that they would proceed with the matter that same evening, he would be locked up in a strong room in, perhaps, the most remote police barrack in Ireland, subjected to the pain and indignity of suffering imprisonment for a whole night, and then, probably, be brought at the convenience of the police before the magistrate the next day. He saw nothing in the Bill which compelled the police to do anything with a man who was arrested for being in possession of arms other than that they had merely taken him before the petty sessions; and they had simply to place him in custody, and at their convenience proceed with the

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    case. The Amendment of his hon. Friend was one which was founded in justice; and he thought it was the duty of the Government to accept the Amendment in order to prevent any person being treated in the manner which he had described.
    DR. COMMINSwas not satisfied with the answer the Home Secretary had made to the Amendment proposed by his hon. Friend. The answer of the right hon. Gentleman argued a good deal of ignorance of how what was called "Petty Sessional practice" proceeded in this country still more in Ireland. In the majority of cases under this Act arrests took place under what were called "Petty Session Cases," and were cases of summary procedure. Now, they had many hundreds of Acts in England and Ireland which provided for the arrests of persons who were to be dealt with summarily. He doubted whether in a single one of those many hundred Acts—and if anyone doubted the existence of the number, they could easily find out that his statement was correct by reference to Stone's Manual—there was not a common form given under it to arrest, and the words of the Amendment followed those common forms. It was that the man should be forthwith taken before a magistrate to be dealt with according to law. But where was the word "forthwith?" It seemed to be left out from that Bill. What almost universal form was necessary in order to protect persons who might be liable to summary procedure and over-officiousness; and the omission of the word "forthwith" seemed to be a mistake altogether. He differed entirely from the Home Secretary in part of the speech which he had made; but he agreed with him in this—that notwithstanding the high authority against him it was highly necessary to prevent any obnoxious action under that Bill. How would the thing work? A charge under that Act was a bailable offence; the punishment was three months' imprisonment, or something of that kind. In every single case the man had a right to be brought forthwith to justice. There were a number of cases of a similar nature where a man was allowed to give bail, when arrested, if he could obtain it. The offender then came up at the next petty sessions to answer the charge. The reason of that was that there should
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    be no unnecessary imprisonment before the man was found guilty; but in Ireland, and to some extent in England, such charges were heard at petty sessions only once a fortnight. A person might be arrested a day after the holding of the petty sessions, or even on the afternoon of the same day; and unless there was a special direction, such as was proposed by the Amendment, for the police officer to bring the man forthwith before the magistrate he might be detained during the whole of that period unnecessarily. The magistrate, on hearing the case, might be satisfied with the explanation offered. He might be assured that the case was a weak one; and yet, even in all those circumstances, the man might, as the Act stood, be detained in prison for an entire fortnight if the policeman was not under an obligation to bring him before the magistrate at once. He was quite sure the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary did not wish to subject a large number of persons to such hard treatment. He certainly thought it could not be out of the way to insert what was a common form in the statutes to which he had referred in that Act. No harm could come of it. The man would be dealt with according to law. Let them take the case of a man who was in a highly respectable position, against whom there was really no charge whatever. The magistrate, on being satisfied that that was the case, might instantly release him. The Amendment was in the spirit of all the summary legislation in England and Ireland, and they were perfectly justified in asking the right hon. Gentleman to accept it.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I think there is something in what has fallen from the hon. Member who has just spoken that the words of the Act do not sufficiently carry out the object which is intended, and it appears that the word "forthwith" should be inserted. I will take care that some such provision shall be made. I do not think that the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) has used the best form of words; but hon. Members may take my assurance that, if necessary, words which would meet the case shall be included in the Act.
    MR. HEALYsaid, that after the recent remarks of the right hon. Gentle-

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    man the Home Secretary he begged to withdraw his Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    MAJOR NOLANsaid, that, in moving the Amendment which stood in his name, he would say that the remarks which had fallen from the Home Secretary to a certain extent met the object which he had in view.
    THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. and gallant Member is now speaking on the Amendment to leave out the words "constable and peace officer."
    MAJOR NOLANsaid, that that was not the case, that he was speaking on the prior Amendment.
    THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. and gallant Member asked leave to be allowed to withdraw the Amendment, and it was withdrawn. The hon. and gallant Member must now be speaking on the Amendment which refers to constables and peace officers.
    MAJOR NOLANsubmitted to the Chair, as a point of Order, that, if he withdrew an Amendment in order to allow of a prior one being brought on, he did not thereby waive his right to move his Amendment thereafter. He had a right to do so, and he trusted that the Chairman would allow him to proceed.
    THE CHAIRMAN: I understood that the hon. and gallant Member wished to withdraw his Amendment altogether. If he merely withdrew it in order to allow the prior Amendment to come on, he could, of course, move it now.
    MAJOR NOLANthen begged to withdraw the first Amendment which stood in his name. He would proceed to the following Amendment. An unusual power was given by that Act to search people. He would point out to the Committee that there was a similar power under the old Act of 1847. He maintained, however, that there was an essential difference between them. The way in which the Act of 1875 worked was as follows:—The constable looked at the Act of 1875, and in it he found a reference to previous Acts, and in previous Acts he found other references, and eventually got back to the Act of 1847. In that Act he found the power; but the Act of 1875 gave no power to search, except by previous Acts. The effect of that was that the power given under this Act was practically a new
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    power. The Solicitor General for Ireland, in the remarks he had made, had referred to the previous statutes; and, no doubt, as regarded the law of the point, he was better up than he (Major Nolan) could pretend to be. But in a matter of practice, he contended, he was not better informed. A sub-constable did not know much about the provisions of Acts; and when he found that there was no actual power contained in the statute he would not proceed to refer to previous statutes to find such a power But if, in the Act which he had before him, an express power was contained to search a man or woman, he would have no hesitation in so doing. He strongly objected to any such power as that being given to an ordinary constable. The fault of the constables was that they were over-zealous; and sometimes, he was afraid, they were inclined to bully. Although, in some cases, the constables wore very estimable men, in other cases they were sometimes liable to abuse their power. Now they were going to put before them prominently, for the first time, this power; and in that respect the present Act was a worse one than that of 1875. He thought the power should be confined to superior officers. The hon. and gallant Gentleman concluded by moving, in page 1, line 11, to leave out "constable or peace officer," and insert "sub-inspector or other superior officer of constabulary."
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The charge which the hon. and gallant Member brings against the clause is that it is too intelligible. According to the former Act, the clause was drawn in such a way that nobody could understand it. That seems to have been the merit of the Acts of 1875 and 1870. Legislation by reference to previous Acts always makes them unintelligible. In the original Act of 1847 there was a searching clause, and from that time the law has remained the same. The hon. and gallant Member said that previously to this Act the law had not been clear; but the object of this Bill was to make the law as intelligible as possible. We are merely stating the law as it was from 1847 to 1875. The hon. and gallant Member also says that this power should not be placed in the hands of an ordinary police officer; but, supposing a man should be suspected of having

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    arms in his possession, he might, as the hon. and gallant Member says, be met with his pockets bulky, and the constable might assume that those pockets were filled with revolvers. But if the Amendment of the hon. and gallant Member were accepted, it would be necessary to go to the sub-inspector—who might be miles off—in order to obtain the power to search him. We must allow the ordinary constable to search, otherwise the law would not work. I see that the Amendment leaves out all personages other than Justices of the Peace. I do not think that that is desirable either. I have followed the ancient form of the Statute of 1847. I am quite sure that the form is the necessary one, and I am sorry I cannot accept the Amendment of the hon. and gallant Member.
    MR. PARNELLthought the Committee should understand that his hon. and gallant Friend, and, in fact, all the Irish Members, objected to that provision of the Bill. The reason why they objected was that the Bill proposed to give a power which was entirely a new one in the Criminal Judicature of the country. They had not, so far as he could learn anywhere, in any Act of Parliament the right given to a policeman or a magistrate to search a person. He understood that if a policeman reasonably suspected a person of having committed a felony, he could, under certain Statutes, arrest that person and take him to the police-station and search him, and then bring him before a magistrate, in order that the case might be heard; but, under the present Bill, they were going to give a policeman a power which no policeman had ever before possessed. That crime of carrying arms was, of course, a manufactured one. It was exceedingly probable that many persons in remote parts of Ireland, who had obtained weapons since the last Peace Preservation Act was allowed to elapse, would not be aware of the provisions of the Act; and they were going to give a power under that Bill to any policeman who met anyone, man or woman, whom he suspected of being in possession of arms, to expose that person to the indignity of a personal search on the spot. He should much have preferred it if they had adhered to the old lines of criminal jurisprudence. A power should be given to a policeman to
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    arrest simply and to take to the station, in order that the searching might take place there, where they had facilities for so doing. Just let them consider what might happen. Supposing that there was a fair, and a policeman stationed himself at the entrance of a village or town and searched everybody that came along the road. He doubted really whether the Government desired to expose the people of Ireland to such ignominy as that. It was degrading enough to be deprived of arms, still more so to be exposed to search by any policeman on the spot. He did not suppose any magistrate could be found who would be mean enough to exercise that power; but they were going to give the power to any policeman to stop anybody in the road and see whether he was in possession of arms. He really thought that the effect of that Bill had not been sufficiently apprehended. The Government had a desire to make the Bill effective, and they had inserted that provision into it without due consideration. He would ask whether they could not reconsider the matter and rely upon the old methods? They had already a Peace Preservation Act in force in the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. Certainly they did not require the additional power to be given to search any person who might be suspected of carrying arms. It would be impossible to control, within proper limits, such a provision as that; and he trusted, therefore, that it would not remain in the Bill. It would inevitably lead to hostility between the police and the people, and it would be regretted that it had ever been inserted. He could not understand how it was that provision had ever crept into the Bill; and he thought that if the right hon. Gentleman in charge of it only gave the matter a little consideration, he must accede to the Amendment of his hon. and gallant Friend. The offence of carrying arms was a moral one only; and, under those circumstances, he considered that provision too stringent for the measure then before the Committee.
    COLONEL MAKINSsaid, that the hon. Member who had just sat down had stated that there was no law which gave a right to search; but under the Poaching Acts it was in the power of any policeman to stop anyone on the highway outside a town who was suspected of having game on him, or instruments of

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    poaching, and to take them from him, if found in his possession, and this practice applied to women also. It was not, therefore, extaordinary that a similar power should be introduced into the present Bill.
    MR. O'DONNELLcertainly hoped that the Committee was not going to be guided by a species of precedents drawn from the Poaching Acts. He was not going into a digression upon that matter; but the Poaching Acts of this country were a disgrace to civilization, and had stained the soil of England with blood in a hundred places. One of the reasons why they asked the Government to surround that right of search with some reasonable guarantees was in order to prevent crimes occurring all over the country. They had to deal with a people who were quick-spirited and soldierly; and now they were proposing to give to any constable, however rash, a right to stop any peasant or poor person on the roadside, and not merely to arrest him and bring him to the station, but there and then to subject him to the degradation and indignity of a personal search. That degradation in hundreds of cases would be too strong, and too great an insult not to be met with resistance. If the Government did not take the necessary precaution and submit the right of search to limitation, very heavy responsibility would rest upon them. Under the ordinary rules of the law in such cases, by a provision conformable thereto, their objection would be met, and the public peace sufficiently safeguarded. But to thrust such a power as was proposed into the hands of any constable who suspected any man, woman, or child, would be simply a provocation, and would inevitably lead to bloodshed. He was sure that no Irishman—and no Englishman—would submit tamely to such an insult, however legal it might be. The right to search poachers had been resisted to the death in scores and scores of cases; and the success of the poaching legislation had not been sufficiently great for its terms to be extended to other legislation either in this country or in Ireland. It must be remembered that the personal dignity of the meanest Englishman was surrounded in that House by a kind of respect. There was a certain amount of regard for the protest of the English Representatives, and the Irish
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    Members could not close their eyes to the fact that the Representatives of public opinion in Ireland did not obtain the same respect as those English Representatives. If Her Majesty's Government wished to widen the gulf between the Irish people and the Representatives of law and order in Ireland, let them insist on granting this unlimited right of search—this provoking, and indecent, and insulting right contained in the Bill.
    MR. MACDONALDwould press this on the attention of Her Majesty's Government—it was a well-known fact that the police were not immaculate; they were not all thoroughly honest men; and it would be well that the persons to be searched should be taken to the barracks before other people before that search was made. Take the case which had been adverted to by an hon. Member opposite—the case of a man coming from a fair. The man returning from a fair was slightly inebriated—[Laughter.]—Hon. Members laughed at the term he used; perhaps it would be more in keeping with their style if he used another term, which, however, he should refuse to do. The man coming home from a fair was in the condition of being unable properly to take care of himself. Any policeman who found him in that condition had power to put his hand in his pocket; and the officer, if he were dishonestly inclined, might rob the man of a considerable sum. ["Oh!"] An hon. Member called out "Oh!" but did not the records of the police courts from day to day in this, so-called, free and crimeless England, point to this sort of thing having occurred? Had they not heard of the punishment of English policemen for robbing the prisoners they had taken into custody? Was it not a fact that frequently they found in the general Press of the day accounts of inspectors of police, and even the chiefs, committing very serious crimes? How long was it since all London was in commotion in respect to the actions of Clarke, Meiklejohn, and Druscovitch? Under the circumstances, he considered that this was a terrible weapon against the people that the Government sought to put into the hands of the Irish police. What he had spoken chiefly about was of men. What if a single policeman had the power of stopping a woman on the street, on a lonely road, would it not be an out

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    rage on the feelings of the woman? but what are the results it might lead to?—blackmailing, to an absolute certainy. Would they submit their own wives, their own daughters, to be so treated? If not, would they degrade the Irish people by such a power being in the hands of the police. Moreover, in the interest of the policemen themselves, this power should not be given, as it would prove a source of temptation to them, and might lead them into crime. If the examination and search took place before witnesses in the ordinary way there would not be this objection. He would put it, therefore, to Her Majesty's Government, both in the interest of the public and the police themselves, that the Bill should be amended so as to provide that a person should be taken to the police office before being searched.
    MR. GIBSONwished to make two or three very short observations on the Amendment now before the Committee. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary had correctly stated, this provision had been in practical operation for a very considerable number of years; and though it might is a very few instances have been abused, everybody connected with the country knew that, on the whole, it had been carried out without undue harshness or abuse. ["No, no!"] Well, he had had, at least, as good an opportunity of knowing how it had worked as any other hon. Member. Supposing that a police officer met a person whose appearance suggested that he might have some weapon concealed about him, the officer would search that person—no doubt it was an unpleasant necessity connected with this legislation that the police should have this power—but if it was found that suspicion was well founded, then the police officer had to arrest the person and bring him before a magistrate to be dealt with according to law. Of course, where it was found that the suspicion was unfounded it was to be regretted that the person had been searched, and he was at once released. What was the alternative suggested by the Amendment? He regretted that there was obliged to be such a clause in the Bill; but was now contrasting it with the Amendment before the Committee. The alternative would be vastly worse than the clause, because the hon. Member for the City of
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    Cork (Mr. Parnell) suggested—and was supported by several other hon. Members—that it would be better not to give this power of immediate search, by which suspicion could be tested at once; and. that the person suspected of having arms should be taken from his home—it might be some considerable distance—before a magistrate or officer of constabulary, and searched to see if suspicion was well or ill-founded. Really, if they went to everyone in Ireland likely to be affected by this Bill, and asked them whether in the event of their being searched they would like to be searched according to the existing provisions of the measure, or would prefer to be subjected to the inconvenience of being taken before a magistrate or to the police office for search—which might in some country districts of Ireland involve a journey of 15 or 20 miles—he would venture to say the general reply would be—"I don't want to be searched at all; but if I am to be, do it now, so that I can go about my business." It might be well to give an alternative—that any person who objected to being searched by a police constable could have the privilege of being taken into custody, and waiting until all the machinery of the police office could be employed in searching him. He certainly thought that, even if the Amendment were agreed to, and were put upon the Statute Book, the provision would be one which would be very little put into operation.
    MR. HEALYsaid, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin had made a very plausible statement about a man who had to be searched, and had the choice given him of the mode of search, choosing immediate search, and saying, "For God's sake! search me at once, and let me go about my business—don't take me before the magistrates;" but it should be pointed out to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that if a police constable had to take a man before a magistrate there would be less likelihood of people being searched unnecessarily. Policemen would not be inclined to interfere with a person where there was no case of reasonable suspicion; for if they did, they might get a severe dressing from the magistrate, not, perhaps, on account of the inconvenience occasioned to the unfortunate prisoner, but on account of the unnecessary bother

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    and trouble given to the magistrate himself. The right hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to have forgotten this. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for South Essex (Colonel Makins) made what, no doubt, he considered a good point when he said the clause only contained a provision which was to be found in the Poaching Act. Surely that reason was not sufficient to recommend the clause to the intelligence of Radical Members opposite. The provision, by the way, was in the Night Poaching Act, and not in the Day Poaching Act; but even if it were in both it would be no argument in these times, for if the Poaching Acts were to be passed now, he ventured to think that they would be very different enactments to those on the Statute Book. What was done in a Poaching Bill 20 years ago was no argument for what should be done in a Peace Preservation Bill in 1881. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, in proposing the Bill, said that this provision was most reasonable; but to his (Mr. Healy's) mind this was the most odious proposal in the entire measure—this right of personal search. Let him remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman that it did not only apply to men, but to women also; for, according to the Government proposal, women were not excluded from the operation of the measure. It was in human nature to err, and he did not suppose the policeman would be immaculate or would properly appreciate the objects of the Act. Whether or not, this House had always legislated on the assumption that they should not give a power which was likely to be abused; and it had been shown that the police in Ireland were driven—by the system which insisted on promotion being only given on account of the number of offences detected, and by a lot of unjustifiable provisions of that nature—into a position of antagonism with the people, and that they consequently abused their powers. Therefore, he declared that this odious provision, which enabled every one of the 10,000 police of Ireland to stand in the cross-roads and personally search every man, woman, and child who came in his way, was a provision which should not remain in the Bill. What would be said if the Corporation of London declared that policemen should stand on the bridges and collect a toll from every passer by, possessing power of personal
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    search to levy a certain octroi? Would it not be objected to, notwithstanding that everyone in England was, in a certain sense, in sympathy with the police looking on them as protectors? In Ireland the state of things was very different. The police there were not looked on as the protectors of the people, but as the protectors of the landlords and the Government. The people repudiated them in every sense. There was another point—the provision in the Bill actually placed the policeman in the position, for the time being, of the magistrate, and permitted him to be the judge both of the law and the fact. Would the Government permit the police of Ireland, not only to prove the crime, but to try the man and dismiss him or not as they thought fit? The police might take it into their heads not to discharge a man they searched; they might take him to prison. Was it wise to put the police into this position? With regard to the right of search, it was well known that there had been cases before the Dublin magistrates in which the police had first "set" a crime—to use a phrase thoroughly understood in Ireland—that was to say, had first placed the materials of the crime on the person or in the house of the man he was at enmity with, and had then "discovered" the crime. What was to prevent a policeman who had a grudge against a person putting his hand into that person's pocket—his hand being full, say, of percussion caps, or gunpowder, or bullets—and then drawing it out and saying to a brother officer, "Oh! he has caps upon him?" And he declared that a single percussion cap being found in a man's possession had been sufficient, before now, to procure an arrest. The Irish Members in fighting this Bill were in a much worse position than formerly, because they could not, when they came to an odious provision of this sort, do as at one time they were able to do—namely, move to report Progress, and compel delay, in order to enable the Government to think about the matter. Instead of that, they were in the position of having Members coming in from the smoking-room—not that hon. Gentlemen had not a right to go there if they chose—and from the library when the bell rang, and, without having heard the arguments, blindly voting for the Government. In former times, by moving

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    Motions for reporting Progress and for adjournment, they could cause delay, so as to give hon. Members an opportunity of informing their minds upon the question at issue. ["Question!"] He was speaking precisely to the Question. The more some of them spoke to the Question, the less it seemed to suit hon. Members opposite. What he was insisting on was that if the Irish Members had this power of insisting on divisions, hon. Members would have time to consider whether the Government ought to give this power of personal search to Irish policemen; but, as he had said, in matters of this sort hon. Members were in a worse position than formerly. Hon. Members seemed to think that the Bill before the Committee was only a renewal or a reproduction of former Acts; but if anyone would take the trouble to look at the Act of 1875, and would read through it, he would see that the provisions under the present Bill were much more stringent and severe than anything in the previous measure. Under the Act of 1875 he understood there was no right of search given, and yet the Government told them they only proposed to renew a power contained in that measure. Much as they hated the Tories in Ireland, he must confess they had always acted like gentlemen. They had never proposed needless provisions of a harassing character such as the Government were now insisting upon. The Tories were harsh at all times; but they had never proposed enactments of this character. The provision of which he complained was not an old one, but one evolved from the inner consciousness of right hon. Gentlemen opposite, and he, for one, should give it his most strenuous opposition.
    CAPTAIN O'SHEAappealed to the Government to accept a compromise, for unless they did so, the power which would be given to policemen in the case of women would be very much too great. They should give a woman the option of saying whether she would submit to immediate search, or whether she would be taken to the police-station, where she would have protection against any abuse of power. The roads in the West of Ireland were very lonely. Considering that the proposal for a compromise had come from such an influential quarter as his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dublin University (Mr. Gibson),
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    he really thought the Government ought to accept it.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The case of women will come under a later Amendment.
    MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYremarked upon the extraordinary opportunity the clause offered for the exercise of officiousness or the indulgence of private malice. It said—
    "A constable or peace officer may search any person whom he may reasonably suspect to be carrying or having arms or ammunition in contravention of this Act."
    And then a further clause defined what arms and ammunition were. It said—
    "The expression 'arms' includes any cannon, gun, revolver, pistol, and any description of firearms, also any sword, cutlass, pike, and bayonet, also any part of any arms as so defined."
    With regard to ammunition, it said—
    "The expression 'ammunition' includes bullets, gunpowder, nitro-glycerine, dynamite, gun-cotton, and every other explosive substance, whether fitted for use with any arms or otherwise."
    If it was only cannon that were to be searched for, the clause would not be very objectionable; but the clause included revolvers and "any part of any arms," and the carrying of such was an offence which, if suspected, would lay a person open to search. If a person had a percussion cap or a bullet in his or her pocket, or was suspected of having it, he or she—for women came under the provision—could be stopped and searched by a policeman. Well, any police officer might stop any man or woman if he were maliciously inclined, and subject him or her to a most thorough and indelicate examination to see if there was any bullet or portion of a pistol about his or her clothes. That was a power that ought not to be given to a policeman. The Home Secretary knew nothing about Ireland—probably was never in the country in his life. If the right hon. Gentleman knew anything of Ireland, he would be aware that police constables were not people who had such a very intelligent and delicate perception and appreciation of their duties that they could with impunity be intrusted with such powers as these. He had no doubt that the exercise of these powers would be the means of causing quarrels. The right hon. Gentleman knew how the Sicilian Vespers began; but without prophesying any event so terrible

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    in Ireland, he would warn him that this clause, unless amended, was likely to give rise to considerable bitterness of feeling and serious village quarrels.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I am desirous of meeting the wishes of the hon. Members as far as I can. I feel that there is a great objection to search by the police, and quite appreciate the strength of the objections of hon. Members opposite. At the same time it is quite evident that we must deal, not only with cases where arms are carried, but also with cases where there is a reasonable suspicion of carrying arms. I gather from what has fallen from hon. Members, and I confess it strikes me as desirable, that it would be far better to arrest in both cases and get rid of the search altogether. In a case where a man is suspected of carrying arms, or who is discovered carrying arms, if the Committee accept my proposal and insist that he shall be forthwith taken before a magistrate, you have the security of an investigation by a magistrate, and you get rid of an objectionable provision. I would propose to strike out the latter part of the paragraph which has reference to the search, and remodel the first part with reference to arrest in the spirit of the statement I have made.
    MAJOR NOLAN: On that understanding I would beg to withdraw the Amendment.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I would propose to leave out the words from the word "and" to the word "Act" at the end of the paragraph, it being understood that at a future stage shall remodel the clause.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Amendment proposed, in page 1, line 11, to strike out from the word "and" down to the word "Act" in line 13.
    Amendment agreed to.
    THE CHAIRMAN: The next Amendment is in the name of the hon. and learned Member for Meath (Mr. A. M. Sullivan); but I think the Committee will agree with me that it does not come within the provisions of this Bill. The effect of it is that where the people do not possess guns the police shall shoot down the small birds on their farms. The Amendment is not one that I can put in the form of an Amendment.
    MR. A. M. SULLIVANsaid, if the Chairman would allow him to read the
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    proposed Amendment to the Committee he should be content.
    THE CHAIRMAN: I have stated that, in my opinion, it cannot be put as an Amendment. No doubt the hon. and learned Member can give Notice of it as a new clause.
    MR. W. CORBETsaid, he had next an Amendment to provide that arrests should only be made by stipendiary magistrates or members of the Royal Irish Constabulary Force.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 1, line 14, after the word. "person," to insert the words "being a stipendiary magisstrate or a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary force."—(Mr. W. Corbet.)
    Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)said, that the circumstances provided for by the clause could only take place under the power of a warrant; and it was desirable that that warrant should contain the name of the person by whom it was to be executed. It was desirable to have the clause in general terms, for the reason that if the Amendment were accepted, and only a stipendiary magistrate or member of the Royal Irish Constabulary Force could act, that would prevent the powers of the clause being carried out in Dublin or in Limerick, or any other large Provincial town where the Metropolitan Police or local peace officers or watchmen, not being members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, had authority.
    SIR JOSEPH M'KENNAhoped the hon. Member would not insist on the Amendment, though, no doubt, his object in bringing it forward was to improve the Bill. There were many places where the proper persons to put the warrant in force would not be the stipendiary magistrate or a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary. He would rather intrust the liberties of the Irish people to the Lord Lieutenant than to the officials by whom he might be surrounded, or to the persons who, under the Bill, if so amended, might be empowered to carry out the Act—such, for instance, as a sub-inspector of constabulary, or even a member of the Constabulary Force. In his opinion, it was certainly too wide a provision, and he would rather leave the matter in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant than place it in the hands of

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    miscellaneous members of the Constabulary.
    MR. HEALYthought the words "any person named in such warrant" should be struck out of the clause, and the matter left in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant, who, if he thought fit, might by warrant direct a search for arms to be made. At all events, he was of opinion that the Amendment was an improvement upon the clause as it stood, and he would therefore support it, although he confessed that he did not see much in the matter, either one way or the other.
    MR. DAWSONbelieved that his Amendment, which would come next, would throw some light upon the matter. He intended to propose that the search should only take place in the presence of a magistrate. No search ought to be made unless there were circumstances of strong suspicion. Any honest and reputable person possessing a gun and displaying it openly would not be a person likely to be proceeded against under the Bill; but its provisions were directed against evil-minded persons who were suspected of concealing arms. The search might be made at any time between sunrise and sunset. This would include very unseasonable hours and times; and therefore he thought it would be necessary that the persons making the search should be accompanied by a magistrate, so that any improper invasion of a man's rights and liberties might be prevented. Under the Bill premises might be broken open and beds and bedding searched. It was, therefore, absolutely necessary that there should be some really responsible person, such as a magistrate, present, in order to see that the rules of propriety and decency were duly observed. The search, consistently with the proper enforcement of the law, should be carried out in a manner that would not hurt the feelings of delicacy of any person concerned. He would therefore suggest the omission of the words "any person," and the substitution of the words "any responsible magistrate." There would be no difficulty, in the isolated cases that would occur, in securing the attendance of a magistrate at any contemplated invasion under the Act of the rights of domestic privacy, or the inviolability of the homes and hearths of Her Majesty's subjects. He was satisfied that the Government would not wish that any dwelling-house should be searched unless there were
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    strong suspicions that arms were concealed in it. If the Government would consent to allow the search to be made only in the presence of a magistrate, he thought the chief difficulty would be removed.
    Question put, and negatived.
    MR. SEXTONbegged to move the Amendment which stood in his name to the 3rd paragraph of Clause 1. That section of the clause directed that—
    "The Lord Lieutenant may by warrant direct any person named in such warrant to search in houses, buildings, and places situated in a proclaimed district and specified in the warrant, for any arms or ammunition suspected to be therein in contravention of this Act."
    He proposed to add, after the word "places," in line 15, the words—"Not being places of religious worship, nor houses occupied by religious communities." He did not think the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary would say that there was, in the remotest degree, any possibility that arms would be concealed in places of worship, or in any of the houses occupied by religious communities. He asserted, without fear of contradiction, that the influence of the Irish clergy, and of all persons connected with religious orders in Ireland, had always been exercised on the side of public peace and order, and in favour of the due observance of the law, even when the law was most oppressive. He was the more encouraged to proceed with this Amendment by the fact that the right hon. Gentleman had shown a disposition to meet, to some extent, the views of the Irish Members, and to prevent the operation of the Act from unduly exasperating the public feeling. There could be no doubt that, however discreetly this Act was enforced, it would, to some extent, exasperate public feeling; but it was not necessary that there should be any needless exasperation. Under these circumstances, and with some confidence, he submitted this Amendment. He believed that the propriety of it was self-evident; and he would not, therefore, enter into any further argument in support of it.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 1, line 15, after "places," insert "not being places of religious worship nor houses occupied by religious communities."—(Mr. Sexton.)
    Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I quite agree with the hon. Member that this Act should be worked with as little exasperation as possible, and I also agree entirely with all he has said about the ministers of religion and members of religious communities in Ireland. I believe that, to whatever denomination they belong, they do exercise their influence on the side of peace, law, and order. But, at the same time, I think that no exceptions of this kind ought to be made. There are no exceptions in England; but the Queen's writ or order to search affects a church just as much as it would affect a house or a barn. And, although I do not believe that it is within the range of probability that this power will be exercised at all in the case of buildings for religious worship or houses occupied by religious communities, I can see great objection to making any exception from the operation of the Act. The power now asked for in this clause has already existed for 23 years; and the Members who come from Ireland, and who know the districts of country which have been affected better than I do, will be able to say whether the Act has ever been used for the purposes contemplated in this clause in connection with places for religious worship or houses occupied by religious communities. I certainly conceive that it has not been so used. I do not think that any case of the kind has occurred. The only conceivable circumstances under which the provisions of the Act could be put in force would be where persons, unknown to those who had the charge of a religious building, had temporarily made it a place for the deposit of arms. In such a case I do not think the law ought to be deprived of the right of search which it would have in this country in the case of a Protestant church. I certainly see great objections against the laying down of exceptions which do not exist in regard to the law in England, and I know of no evil that can arise from allowing the clause to remain as it is.
    MR. O'DONNELLquite concurred in the spirit of the observations of the right Gentleman. He thought that the Bill was altogether unnecessary in Ireland, and he had opposed its introduction to the utmost of his ability. But, whatever injustice might be committed by the Act, he hoped that the religious com-
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    munities of Ireland would be quite as open to learn the sweets and bitters provided for them by Her Majesty's Administration as any other class of persons. He was sure they would be acting contrary to the wishes of the clergy of Ireland, he hoped of all denominations, if they were prepared in any way to separate their lot from the lot of the Irish people at large. Let every insult and every outrage that could be perpetrated under the Bill be perpetrated just as freely within the houses of religious communities as in the houses of the humblest laymen. On principle he was totally opposed to laws which contained exceptions of this character; and, therefore, he hoped that his hon. Friend would not persist in his Amendment. If any excesses were committed in the exercise of the right of search in connection with the churches and religious communities of Ireland the Irish people, who were awaiting their own good time to pay off one score against Her Majesty's Liberal Administration, would doubtless find an opportunity of paying off this score also.
    SIR JOSEPH M'KENNAhoped the Irish people would have no score to pay off in respect to the search of places of worship and the houses of the religious communities; and he thought his hon. Friend the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) would act wisely if he refrained from pressing the Amendment. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary had pointed out that these places of worship might be abused, not by those who were properly in charge of them, but by lawless individuals who might obtain access to them on the pretext of prayer and devotion, but who might make use of them for improper objects.
    MR. SEXTONthanked the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department for the tone of his remarks, and accepted the general assurance given by the right hon. and learned Gentleman that the places mentioned in the Amendment would not be unnecessarily subjected to the right of search.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    MR. SEXTON MR. SEXTON moved in page 1, line 16, to leave out "and," and insert "each such house, building, or place being." The clause said that—

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    "The Lord Lieutenant may by warrant direct any person named in such warrant to search in houses, buildings, and places situate in a proclaimed district, and specified in the warrant, for any arms or ammunition suspected to be therein in contravention of this Act."
    He proposed after "a proclaimed district" the words "and each such house, building, or place being specified in the warrant." If these words were not inserted in the clause it would be competent for the Lord Lieutenant to issue a warrant enabling persons to search a whole town, or a whole barony, or a whole county. The Act consequently might be used as an instrument of extreme annoyance and terror to the inhabitants of a district, and would not afford any additional security for the preservation of peace. The class of persons intrusted with the execution of the warrant might be common policemen, or men of no education or social position, He did not think it would be right to confide to such persons the right of searching the whole of a town. Such a proceeding would excite a great deal of animosity among every class of people, and would probably lead to hostile conflicts between the people and the police. He thought the right hon. and learned Gentleman would see that it would be most unwise to place in the hands of the police powers which might be used for the purpose of creating terror or annoyance. If the Lord Lieutenant or anybody in Dublin Castle had reason to suspect that arms were concealed in any particular house or building it would be easy to issue a warrant in reference to that house or building; and he hoped the right hon. and learned Gentleman would not deem it necessary or proper, in order to search any particular building or place, to issue a warrant which would involve the search of every house throughout the whole of a town.
    Amendment proposed in page 1, line 16, to leave out "and," and insert "each such house, building, or place being."—(Mr. Sexton.)
    Question proposed, "That the word 'and' stand part of the Clause."
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: My reason for objecting to this Amendment is that the clause as it stands really does carry out what the hon. Member desires, because it says that the Lord Lieutenant may direct the search of such houses,
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    buildings, and places situate in a proclaimed district as may be "specified in the warrant." I understand from that that it would be necessary to specify the houses that are to be searched, although there is no limitation as to the number of houses to be specified. For instance, the warrant might specify certain houses—Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, in a particular street. The same thing might be done under the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman. The says that each house, building, or place, should be specified, and there would be no limitation unless the clause were to declare that only one house or building should be specified as liable to be searched. Therefore, I think the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman is already provided for in the Bill. We could not say that each building or place should be specified. For instance, in the case of a farm-house it would not be necessary to say "the cow-house, the pigstye, and the stable;" but it would be sufficient to say "such farm-house and places belonging to the farm-house." That would carry with it all the buildings appertaining to the farm-house. Therefore, there is no necessity for the Amendment of the hon. Member, which is already provided for in the Bill.
    MR. PARNELLsaid, it seemed to him that the desire of his hon. Friend the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) in this case was that the ordinary law with regard to the granting of search warrants should be observed in this case. He (Mr. Parnell) spoke, of course, subject to the correction of the right hon. and learned Gentleman; but, as far as he knew, the practice in the ordinary law in cases where it was desirable to institute a search of any premises in order to obtain evidence in regard to the commission of crime was that the premises it was considered desirable to search should be named in the search warrant. Why should that not be done under the provisions of this Bill? [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: It is done.] He thought not; but, of course, he said this subject to the better knowledge of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. It appeared to him that the warrant in this case should specify all the houses in a particular town it was proposed to search. It would be quite sufficient if the warrant gave a power to search all the houses or buildings in a particular

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    town or district, to enable the officers named in the warrant legally to search all such houses and buildings, under the Bill. Of course, if they were told on the authority of the Irish Law Officers of the Crown that this was not so, they would be perfectly satisfied; but they did think that when they had constituted what was not previously an offence to be an offence that they ought to rely on the ordinary provisions of the law with regard to search warrants, for the purpose of obtaining evidence in regard to the commission of an offence. Surely if it was sufficient where a burglary or a felony had been committed to issue a search warrant, authorizing a particular house or particular premises to be searched—surely, in the present instance, it would be sufficient to take the same course. The police would have abundant evidence as to the houses in which arms were likely to be concealed; and in every case where they thought it necessary to obtain a search warrant, they would have no difficulty in obtaining one specifying the houses they considered it necessary to search, in order to detect the offence which they suspected to have been committed.
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)said, the provision made in the Bill specified exactly what a search warrant should contain. The premises to be searched would be specified as they should be specified in every search warrant.
    MR. PARNELL: Will the names of the owners be given?
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON): The search warrant requires that in every case the premises must be specified; but the owner's name may not be known.
    MR. PARNELL: And the district?
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON): The district must be proclaimed before any action can take place under this Bill. When a district has been proclaimed a search warrant may be issued, and such search warrant must specify the premises that are to be subjected to search, and the persons must be named in it by whom the search is to be conducted.
    MR. PARNELL: The premises will be identified in the warrant?
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON): Yes.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    MR. DAWSON MR. DAWSON moved, in page 1, line 18, after the words "with such constables," to insert "with a magistrate and such other persons as he shall call to his assistance." The object of this Amendment was to secure that the person directed to make the search should always be accompanied by a magistrate. He presumed that a search would only be made in cases of aggravated suspicion; but as it might be conducted between sunrise and sunset, it might be carried out at unseasonable times and hours. It was, therefore, desirable that a magistrate should be present. There were 40 or 50 magistrates in every Irish county, and as it was not at all preposterous to presume that steps involving so great an infraction of public liberty would be taken on light or trivial grounds, it should not be left open to any person or policeman to knock up people at unseasonable hours, and insist upon searching their houses, unless a magistrate was present to see that the search was properly conducted. In some cases information might have been lodged and the search directed from motives of mean personal revenge; and, therefore, where in any case of suspicion a search was ordered, it should be conducted, not by a common constable, but on the responsibility and in the presence of a magistrate. These gentlemen were very numerous, and very readily at hand in Ireland. They might be suspected of acting from partizan motives, and of being influenced by personal bias in some matters; but as regarded anything that might be construed into an outrage upon decency, he was perfectly sure that the magistrates of Ireland would make such an occurrence quite impossible. If, therefore, it was found necessary to inflict this Act upon the Irish people, they ought to give them the protection which the presence of a gentleman in the position of a magistrate would afford, against any outrage upon decency and propriety. He was satisfied that the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary would see nothing preposterous in the Amendment, and that it would not interfere with the object which the Government had in view.
    Amendment proposed, after the word "with," in page 1, line 18, to insert "a magistrate and."—(Mr. Dawson.)
    Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I really thought that we had decided this point upon the previous Amendment in another paragraph which proposed that the warrant should only be directed to a magistrate or to a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary Force. I thought the Committee had disposed of the present Amendment in the discussion which took place then. If you allow the Lord Lieutenant to give this warrant to "any person," surely he will decide that the person to whom the warrant is given is a fitting person to execute it. The hon. Member suggests that motives of private spite or malice may induce a constable to go and search a house improperly. But we have taken precautions against that, because he cannot go unless the Lord Lieutenant gives him a warrant. Unless the Lord Lieutenant thinks there is sufficient grounds for the issue of a search warrant, he would not be influenced by the private malice of any member of the Constabulary Force. It seems to me that the proper person to execute the warrant is the person to whom the Lord Lieutenant gives it; and the whole question has, in reality, been disposed of in a previous part of the clause.
    MR. HEALYthought there was a good deal in what the right hon. and learned Gentleman had stated; but the contention of his hon. Friend the Member for Carlow (Mr. Dawson) was, that the person to whom the warrant was directed might bring with him a score of other persons to assist him in executing the warrant. He might be induced to bring half of the village to see the fun. He (Mr. Healy) did not suppose that such a thing was likely, and he was not arguing in favour of the Amendment, but in favour of the position taken up by his hon. Friend in that sense. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman would tell the Committee that the warrant would only be executed by the person named in it and a force sufficient to meet any resistance to the execution of the warrant, he would be quite satisfied.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: That really would be so. The person to execute the warrant would be the person to whom it was directed; and as to the persons by whom he might be accompanied, I may, perhaps, be allowed to add one word in order to dispose of the point mentioned by the hon. Member. It is the general law that a constable
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    engaged in the execution of a warrant should have the right of calling upon all the Queen's subjects to assist him if he is resisted. There is nothing more in this particular warrant than the ordinary law sanctions. The ordinary law calls on everybody to assist Her Majesty's officers, and there is nothing more in these words than the carrying out of the regular law. What I understand the hon. Member is now proposing is, that the person named in the warrant should not be the only person to execute the warrant, but that in every case he should be accompanied by a magistrate. I think that without such a provision ample care is taken that the warrant shall be properly executed.
    MR. DAWSONhad no objection to withdraw his Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    MR. SEXTONsaid, the Bill had caused a great deal of animosity between classes in Ireland; and he feared that the local police, in conformity with the clause under discussion, might allow the bailiff or other retainer of the landlord to accompany them into the houses of tenants in their search for arms. If that were permitted, be believed the power would be used for purposes other than those contemplated by the Act. Again, a magistrate might accompany the police in order to pry into the domestic affairs of the tenant, for the purpose, perhaps, of ascertaining how far his furniture would satisfy a distraint for rent, or the power might be used by a landlord to get together evidence as to how far this Act might be made useful for getting in arrears. For these reasons, it was, in his opinion, not advisable to allow bailiffs to accompany the police into the houses of tenants in their search for arms, for it was well known how a vulgar man might move the feelings of the people on an occasion of that kind. He trusted the right hon. and learned Gentleman would give some general assurance that instructions would be given to those who executed warrants under the Act that they should be accompanied only by those persons strictly necessary for the purpose. Having explained the object of his proposal, he would now formally move the Amendment standing in his name—namely, in page 1, lines 18 and 19, to leave out "and other persons."
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I have no objection to give the assurance asked for by the hon. Member for Sligo. These words are not intended to be applied except in cases where the assistance of persons is necessary to execute the law.
    MR. HEALYexpressed his satisfaction at the excellent spirit shown by the right hon. and learned Gentleman in accepting this and other Amendments.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    MR. SEXTONtrusted, the Home Secretary would also extend his favourable consideration to the Amendment he was about to propose. The clause ran thus—
    "The person named in such warrant, with such constables and other persons as he calls to his assistance, may, within twenty-one days next after the date of the warrant,! execute the warrant."
    Now, a warrant issued from Dublin Castle would reach any part of Ireland in a day or a day and a-half. Why, then, should the person charged with the execution of a warrant keep it in his pocket for 21 days? The effect of this would be most prejudicial, for the fact that the warrant had been received would soon become known to the towns people. The warrant might relate to a considerable number of houses, and influence a large number of persons in the locality, and therefore he thought the Government should allow as much time as would be reasonable for its execution, and no more. He could not understand why the sub-inspector should hold this instrument of terror over persons for three weeks, and keep a whole town, perhaps, in a state of excitement and suspense while he made up his mind as to when he should execute his warrant. In the hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would make a little further concession, he begged to move the Amendment standing in his name—namely, in page 1, line 19, to leave out "twenty-one," and insert "seven."
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I have received so much encouragement from the hon. Members for Wexford and Sligo, that I am tempted to split the difference between us, and agree to 10 days instead of 21, as the time within which the warrant is to be executed.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Amendment proposed, in page 1, line 19, to leave out the words "twenty-one," and insert the word "ten."—(Sir William Harcourt.)
    Amendment agreed to.
    MR. SEXTONdrew attention to the consequences of a person proceeding to execute a warrant immediately after the proclamation of a district. The proclamation might be posted on a certain day in any district in Ireland, and the person authorized to execute a warrant might do so on the following day. It would follow from this that the person affected would receive no warning whatever, and could not possibly know, especially at night, by what right it was sought to execute the warrant. In sustaining the Amendment he was about to propose, he would refer to the Peace Preservation Act of 1875, which provided that persons in search of arms should state their business, and then wait a reasonable time before entering a house. Had he seen the clause in this Act before he placed his Amendment on the Paper, he would have adopted the language therein employed; but, practically, the wording he had used would secure the same result, and he had simply to ask the Home Secretary to allow the person executing a warrant under the Act—first, to state his authority; secondly, the nature of his business; and, thirdly, after entering a house, whether by force or otherwise, to exhibit his warrant before making his search.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 1, line 23, after the word "warrant," to add "Provided that, previous to forcing an entry, the person engaged upon the execution of the warrant shall, if required to do so by any person in occupation or care of the house, building, or place which he seeks to enter, proclaim his authority and the nature of his business, and shall, if so desired to do, exhibit his warrant before proceeding to make the search."—(Mr. Sexton.)
    Question proposed, "That those words be there added."
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The wording of the Act of 1875, to which the hon. Member has just referred, has been supplied in this clause by the words "if need be, by force." Her Majesty's Government have endeavoured to make the present Act as short as possible. The objection I have to the

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    Amendment of the hon. Member for Sligo is that it would give to persons likely to resist, possibly by armed force, time to prepare for such resistance—in point of fact, time to load their rifles or revolvers and fire a volley. That, I think, would not be desirable. I believe the hon. Member will find, on consideration, that everything he can desire, so far as this matter is concerned, is contained in the words "if need be."
    MR. DAWSONsuggested that some person should be present at the execution of a warrant who was a competent judge of the need to enter by force. If the right hon. Gentleman did not agree to that, he thought the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Sligo should be accepted. Certainly, if the interpretation of the words "if need be" were left to the judgment and responsibility of indiscreet people, serious consequences would very frequently follow, and, therefore, there was great reason in asking that the person executing the warrant should state his authority and exhibit his warrant after entering the house.
    MR. MOLLOYpointed out that if the clause remained as it was, any person could enter a house without exhibiting a warrant at all, and proceed to search it, merely stating that he came under the authority of the Lord Lieutenant.
    MR. BIGGARsaid the right hon. Gentleman had advanced a case as an argument against the Amendment of the hon. Member for Sligo which had never occurred, and which, in all probability, never would occur—namely, that of persons in a house attempting by force of arms to set the authority of the law and the police at defiance. The right hon. Gentleman, in rejecting the Amendment, had refused the very reasonable request that parties asked to admit the police should be told what their object was. As the Bill stood, the police must have a warrant, and the only difficulty appeared to be as to whether they should exhibit it to the people of the house. Of course, the parties concerned would be justified in keeping their doors closed unless they were told that the police had authority to force their way in. But if they were told that the police had a warrant, they would be bound to open the door, or else it would be broken open; and, therefore, it appeared to him that the right hon. Gentleman was encouraging illegal proceedings in allow-
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    ing the door to be forced without giving the inmates any reason to suppose that the police had any authority to enter. Again, the warrant might be in the hands of policemen in uniform or in plain clothes, or it might also be in the hands of persons who were not police at all. How, then, were the parties in the house to know what to do without the exhibition of the warrant? Under the circumstances, it was clear to him that the Government had taken up a thoroughly unreasonable and untenable position with regard to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Sligo, which he thought they ought to agree to.
    MR. SERJEANT SIMONthought that the Amendment of the hon. Member was reasonable. The Bill provided that the search should be made in pursuance of a warrant issued by the Lord Lieutenant. What then was the good of that warrant if it were to be kept in the pocket of the person making the search? In the so-called Coercion Bill which had lately passed that House, it was stated that the grounds on which any person might be arrested should be stated in the warrant of arrest, and a copy of it given to the person arrested. The present Bill proposed that there should be a search under a warrant. But he maintained that the warrant in this case would be a dead letter, unless it were shown to the person whose premises were to be searched. If houses were to be entered, the person entering might make a false representation; he might go there for a criminal purpose, ascertaining the condition of the house, while the inmates would have no means of preventing him, for they would not know whether he had authority to search. Therefore, it appeared to him that in granting such extraordinary powers, Parliament ought to accompany them, as far as possible, with such safeguards as would protect innocent and respectable persons against abuse. He thought it was but an act of justice and reason, that when a man entered the house of another in pursuance of an Act of this character, he should be able to show the authority under which he entered, and that the people of the house should have the right to demand his warrant. Under those circumstances, he hoped his right hon. Friend would re-consider the position, and not make a stand against what appeared to him to be a reasonable and necessary proposal.
    MR. R. T. REIDsaid, he understood the objection of the right hon. and learned Gentleman to the Amendment to be that if the officer proclaimed his authority and exhibited his warrant, time would be given in case resistance should be intended to load rifles and revolvers and fire a volley. But if the right hon. and learned Gentleman would look at the words of the Amendment, he would find that nothing more was proposed before entering the premises than that the officer should proclaim his authority and state his business. Whether the warrant was exhibited or not, the whole proceeding would not occupy more than about three seconds of time.
    MR. GIBSONthought it would be well if the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary would say that before Report he would consider whether there was any objection to introduce the words of the Act of 1875 into the present Bill, because, as the clause stood, a house might be broken into without warning or summons. For that reason, he thought that notice should be given before a house was broken into in pursuance of the Act, and that the case would be met by adopting the words of the Act of 1875.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I shall be happy to adopt the words of the Act of 1875.
    MR. LEAMYpointed out that the Act in question did not provide for the exhibition of the warrant. He would ask the Home Secretary what harm there could be in accepting the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Sligo, which simply bound the police officer to state who he was, and with what object he came, and required him to produce his warrant before proceeding to search the house? He said that before a policeman proceeded to upset any house, the least he should do would be to exhibit his warrant, which was of no use whatever unless it was shown. He was surprised the right hon. Gentleman hesitated for a single moment in assenting to the Amendment before the Committee.
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)said, that his right hon. Friend would do anything for a quiet life in this matter. The warrant would be executed in just the same way as any search-warrant, and the law in England and Ireland was
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    that the owner of a house had a right to keep a constable out until he produced his warrant to enter. That was the case when the door was open; much more was it the case when the door was closed. The officer, therefore, would be bound to produce his warrant and notify his business before the door was opened. His right hon. Friend the Home Secretary was willing to introduce into the clause the terms of the Act of 1875; and in order to satisfy the hon. Member for Waterford, he would add to them that the constable should, if required, produce his warrant.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    MR. HEALY MR. HEALY moved an Amendment to the effect that all arms and ammunition voluntarily delivered up to the authorities should, after the lapse of six months, be valued by some competent person, and the value thereof paid by the Grand Jury of the county to the owners of the same. The wording had been taken from the South African Act, without alteration, except that in order to place the cost upon the local rates, he had used the words "shall be paid by the Grand Jury," although he felt sure that if the Government accepted the Amendment, this would be made an Imperial charge. It was well known that a police-station was not the best place in which to store arms, which, if a little wet got into them, would be very seriously damaged. It was reasonable to suppose that in the course of five years some deterioration would take place in the arms, and he thought the Government should deal with the Irish people as they had dealt with the Blacks in Africa, and give compensation for the arms. An appraisement of the arms should be made at the time of the delivery. With regard to ammunition, that was not so necessary; but some person who was not open to suspicion ought to be appointed to value the guns. Owing to the Coercion Act, Ireland would, no doubt, become a land flowing with milk and honey, and then there would be no necessity for renewing this Act. The people would then be entitled to receive their arms back, and it would not be fair that, having been deprived of their guns for five years, they should have them back in bad condition. The Bill proposed confiscation for a limited period. What would the publicans say if it was proposed to shut up

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    their houses for some days a-week? They would ask for compensation. And he maintained that people would be much more likely to give up their arms if they got reasonable value for them. He, therefore, urged the right hon. Gentleman to give the Amendment his attention.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I desire, as soon as possible and as short as possible, to state what the Government are prepared to do in this matter. As the Bill stands, arms improperly held are declared to be forfeited. As the hon. Member said, it is quite true that that would not be a great encouragement to people to voluntarily surrender their arms, and I think there ought to be a special provision made for cases where voluntary surrender is made. Of course, the provision will still remain for arms carried or found, and not voluntarily surrendered, and they will be forfeited; but in reference to arms voluntarily surrendered, what I propose to do and to secure by provision in the Bill is that which has practically been done under all preceding Arms Acts down to the beginning of last year. That is, that all arms voluntarily surrendered are deposited with the Government, and the Government are supposed to be in charge of them and to return them to the people to whom they belong. I am informed by those who are conversant with the manner in which this has been practically worked, that there has been a great deal of confusion about these arms, and that when a man came to recover his arms he could not get them. Under those circumstances money was paid for the arms, and I think that was fair and proper. I do not propose to go into anything like the details of the Amendment as to the deposit of the arms, and as to how they are to be taken care of, and what is to be done with them. That, I desire, like all other details, to leave to the Lord Lieutenant—to state where the arms are to be deposited, where they are to be registered, and what is to be done in the way of taking charge of them. What I should propose at the end of this clause is to put in a Proviso—
    "That when any arms or ammunition are voluntarily surrendered in accordance with the provisions of the proclamation, such arms or ammunition, or the value thereof at the time of the surrender, shall be returned to the owner
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    when the proclamation relating thereto shall cease to be in force."
    That will give to the authorities the right to have their arms returned, or to have the value of such arms at the time of surrender. The other proposal of buying the arms outright, the Government think cannot be acceded to; but this Proviso will give parties who voluntarily surrender their arms a right to have them properly taken care of and restored, or to have the value of them. I hope that that may be considered a satisfactory manner of meeting the requirements of the case, and that will dispose, I think, of a good many of the Amendments on the subject on the Paper.
    MR. SEXTONregarded the proposal of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, so far as it went, as fair and reasonable. There had been a great deal of confusion, and the general impression in Ireland was that they might as well throw their arms into the sea as give them up to the Government. He had no doubt the Act would be very energetically administered for two or three weeks, or for a month, after it became law; and he wished to point out that there were a good many people who would be subject to the operation of the Act who were illiterate, and would not be able to read the proclamation. Policemen would visit many houses, the occupants of which had had no opportunity of seeing the proclamation, and in that way there would be many cases in which owners of arms who had no intention of wilfully contravening the Act would be arrested. He, therefore, submitted that the right hon. and learned Gentleman might, from the point of view of good feeling, usefully supplement his already large concession by providing that in certain cases, where it might appear to the magistrate or local authorities that the occupant of a house was not holding arms in wilful contravention of the Act, he might receive compensation. Such a man might be ignorant of the Act, and would have just as much claim to compensation as people who understood the proclamation.
    MR. MACFARLANEdid not quite understand the period when the right hon. and learned Gentleman proposed to pay the value of arms. He had an Amendment on the Paper which proposed that payment should be made at

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    the time the arms were received; but if the right hon. and learned Gentleman proposed to postpone payment until the end of the period during which the man might be deprived of his arms, that would be hard treatment. If a person had paid £5 or £10 for a gun before the introduction of the Bill, it would be hard that he should be deprived of that money until the expiry of the Act. He, therefore, urged that the payment should be made at once, on the delivery of arms, leaving the Government then to deal with the arms as they chose. That would make the Act very much less obnoxious than it promised to be.
    MR. DAWSONsaid, the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman had suggested to him an important point. There was a large number of people in Ireland who were Irish-speaking people; there were 800,000 who spoke only Irish. They were mostly located in Connaught, and that part of the country, and it would be a humane provision that those people should be informed through the only avenue that would approach their intelligence—through an Irish proclamation—that the Act was in force; otherwise, it would be found that many people did not understand the proclamation. He urged the Home Secretary, who had shown a disposition which the Irish Members were so happy to appreciate, to see that care was taken in Galway, in Connaught, and in Kerry, that the proclamation was communicated in Irish. He thought he had only to throw out the suggestion to the Home Secretary to ensure its being adopted.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Clearly the greatest possible encouragement ought to be given to people to bring in arms voluntarily; and, therefore, the Government would desire that the Lord Lieutenant should take every means of informing the people. With reference to the point raised by the hon. Member who moved the Amendment (Mr. Healy), that the Proviso should apply not only to persons voluntarily surrendering their arms, but to persons who can show that they have not withheld them, I think there is force in that, and if hon. Members desire that, I will keep back the Proviso I have suggested, instead of moving it now, in order to consider whether that might also be included in the Bill; or I will move the Proviso as
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    it stands at present, if the other Amendments are withdrawn. I beg now to move this Proviso as I read it to the Committee. I am asked whether the term is to be five years. That is not so. The proclamation of a district might be only for six months, or for a year; then would arrive the time for the return of the arms, or the payment of their value. Whenever a district should be considered to be in such a condition as no longer to require the exigencies of the law, then the tune would arrive for the return of the arms to the people of that district. If the arms were not forthcoming, the people would get compensation.
    MR. BIGGARsaid, the case put by the right hon. and learned Gentleman seemed at first sight very favourable; but in the event of a proclamation not terminating in a year, the settlement of claims would be postponed, and the owners of the arms would get neither their arms nor the value of them. He thought the fairest plan would be to pay the value of the arms to their owner when he gave them up, and let the arms then be the property of the Government. Then there was another point. As he understood the right hon and learned Gentleman, if the particular arms required could be found, even if they were damaged by having been kept by the Government, the owners would have no remedy, but would be bound to take them without the option of money. He would suggest that payment should be made at the time when the arms were given up; or, that at the end of the term, the owners of the arms should have the option of being paid in cash, or of taking the arms back again. That would be only fair, and he urged the Government to accept one or the other of those suggestions.
    MR. GIBSONwas very glad that the Home Secretary had seen his way to making the concession he had announced, and to deal in some way with the question of payment. It should be remembered, he observed, that since the expiry of the Peace Preservation Act in June last, there had been nothing to tell the people—who had in the meantime purchased arms—that they were doing anything illegal, or that their possession of arms would be afterwards interfered with. The Act having expired they were free to buy arms, and to avoid the danger of their position being abused,

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    he had, by a question some days since, suggested the insertion of a clause in the Bill providing that all arms surrendered would be paid for. Care must be taken that the provision of the Home Secretary was one which would really be a working provision. It seemed to him that the concession was reasonable and very valuable, and that the right hon. Gentleman had met the Amendments in a very fair spirit; but he would suggest that before the Report he might deal further with the matter. It was true the proclamation might only last for a year, or for a few months; but it might last for five years, and if the Act was renewed the proclamation might last for 10 years. Therefore, he thought a reasonable alteration would be, that if the proclamation lasted for more than 12 months after the passing of the Bill, persons depositing arms should have the option of receiving their arms back, or the payment of reasonable value for them.
    SIR JOHN HAYsaid, that to a certain extent he agreed with the Home Secretary, and, therefore, would not propose the Amendment standing in his name in the same sense and for the same object. But he was not quite certain that the Amendment suggested by the right hon. and learned Gentleman would fully carry out what he thought desirable. There were three classes of persons who would be likely to have arms. Those—the smallest number—having arms for illegal purposes; a certain number having arms for protection against those having arms for illegal purposes; and others who legitimately had arms for sporting and other purposes. His Amendment proposed that persons improperly holding arms should have certain compensation if they gave up their arms immediately. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman's Amendment would carry out that object he should be entirely satisfied, and would not press his Amendment.
    MR. LALORsaid, it was well known to any man who had any dealings with fire-arms that if they were kept in a damp place, in 12 months they became perfectly useless, and would not be worth anything. It was not unlikely that many guns worth £5 or £10 would be seized, and if a man was deprived of such a gun for five years, or even one year, what would be the value of it at the end
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    of that time? The value might not be more than £1, or, perhaps, 10 s.; and it would be a downright injustice to treat any man in that way. He pressed the Home Secretary for an assurance that a person giving up his arms should have a receipt at the time stating the value of the gun or guns, and that when the proclamation terminated he should have the choice of taking either the guns or the value of them when surrendered.
    MR. HEALY, in asking leave to withdraw the Amendment, said, he thought it might be better to propose such an Amendment on Report. With regard to the point of voluntary surrender in the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment, he observed that that might mean a surrender while the Bill was going through the House, and that a surrender the day after the passing of the Act would not be regarded as a voluntary surrender. He would suggest that the period for voluntary surrender should be one month from the date of the Lord Lieutenant's proclamation.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I think, that on the whole, the suggestion of the hon. Member is the best, and that this Proviso, instead of being now put on the Paper, should be moved in another form on Report.
    THE CHAIRMAN: I understand that the hon. Member does not propose the Amendment?
    MR. O'DONNELL: We are also to understand that it is not the Chief Secretary for Ireland who will continue the conduct of this Bill on Report?
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Clause 1, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
    Question put.
    The Committee divided:—Ayes 172; Noes 28: Majority 144.—(Div. List, No. 115.)
    Clause 2 (Power as to proclamation in respect to arms and ammunition).
    MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY: I beg to move, Mr. Chairman, that you report Progress, and ask leave to sit again.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I suppose the Committee will be somewhat tired. I am sure I am; and, therefore, I do not oppose the Motion.
    Motion agreed to.
    Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.

  BILLS OF SALE ACT (1878) AMENDMENT BILL.— [BILL 16.]
  (Mr. Monk, Mr. Serjeant Simon, Mr. Fry, Mr. Barran.)
  BILLS OF SALE ACT (1878) AMENDMENT BILL.— [BILL 16.]

    SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Reading read.
    MR. MONK, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, he wished to explain that in 1878 an Act was passed to regulate bills of sale—
    MR. WARTON: I rise to Order. I object to the second reading.
    MR. SPEAKER: There is no Notice of objection to the second reading on the Paper; therefore, the objection cannot be taken.
    MR. MONKsaid, the Act of 1878 came into operation on the 1st of January, 1879, and the result of the passing of that measure had been that the number of bills of sale given bad enormously increased; he found, indeed, that the number had increased until there were something like 1,000 issued per week, many of them being for an extremely small sum—for sums of £20, £10, and even £5—and those bills of sale for the most part got into the hands of a low class of money-lenders, whereby the public had been very much injured. It was principally the poorer classes who gave these bills of sale. Well, then, the object of the Bill was to amend that Act of 1878, and to require that every bill of sale should have a schedule attached to it containing an inventory of all the goods which passed under it. If the measure was favourably received and read a second time, when it got into Committee it was his intention to move an Amendment which had been placed on the Paper by the hon. and learned Member for Dewsbury (Mr. Serjeant Simon), requiring that the absence of such schedule should make the bill of sale absolutely void. There were other provisions in the measure, which was a very short one. The measure was simply an amending Bill, and he was happy to find that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain) was favourably disposed towards it, and intended to support the second reading. After the Bill had been read a second time, he should be anxious to have it committed pro formâ, in order to admit
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    of the insertion of certain Amendments, which, he believed, would make it more useful and more acceptable to the Government; and he would meet any objections which might be raised by other parties. Especially he was ready to accept the Amendment proposed by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dewsbury. He saw that his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Carmarthen (Mr. B. T. Williams) had placed a Notice on the Paper of his intention to move, after the second reading, that the Bill should be referred to a Select Committee. As far as he (Mr. Monk) was personally concerned, he should be glad to see this Bill, and the measure promoted by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dewsbury, referred to a Select Committee; but that was a matter which he would rather leave to the decision of the Government. He hoped to be allowed to proceed with the Bill, giving a a sufficient time for the consideration of the Amendments which he proposed to have inserted.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Monk.)
    MR. WARTONquite appreciated the motive of hon. Members who had put their names on the back of this Bill, and had brought it in. No doubt, the motive was a good one; but the goodness of the motive would not make up for the badness of the Bill. No doubt, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Monk) had heard of cases where certain evils occurred under bills of sale. No doubt, certain transactions had taken place which were anything but honest or proper, and he had no doubt that this Bill would prevent all such transactions; but, while it would do that, it would practically have the effect of destroying bills of sale altogether. He was perfectly certain that if hon. Members looked at the 8th clause, they would agree with him that no man in his senses would ever lend money on a bill of sale after the passing of that provision. The 8th clause was the essence of the Bill; and though there might be a great deal of talk about amending in Committee, he would point out that no amount of alteration in the Committee stage could make a measure acceptable when it was radi-

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    tally wrong. If any hon. Member—he did not say any hon. and learned Mem- ber, because this was a matter which any layman was quite as well able to understand as a lawyer—would only look at the 8th section of the Bill, he would see that the provision it contained was such as to effectually put a stop to bills of sale. Of course, the borrowers who wished to raise money on bills of sale were persons in needy circumstances—no man who was not in needy circumstances would think of raising money in such a way—but if the lender was liable to this danger, that if, within three months after advancement upon a bill of sale the borrower became bankrupt, he would not be able to recover, no man would be found foolish enough to lend on such doubtful security. Why did not the hon. Member for Gloucester at once say that he intended to abolish bills of sale altogether? Such a statement from him would have been intelligible and reasonable. As far as he (Mr. Warton) was concerned, he should call this measure, not an Act to amend bills of sale, but an Act to abolish bills of sale altogether. According to the Bill, a man who lent money on a bill of sale, instead of getting the full return, might only obtain a half-penny in the pound after the attorneys and others had melted away the bulk of the borrower's assets.
    MR. SERJEANT SIMONsaid, the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just spoken, was a man of such supreme power that one was almost afraid to approach him. He had told them three times over that no man in his senses would lend money on a bill of sale if this measure passed, and that its effect would be to abolish bills of sale altogether. Well, under the present conditions on which bills of sale were given, it seemed to him that it would be a great improvement and a great benefit to many persons if bills of sale were abolished. The persons who for the most part advanced on bills of sale were money-lenders, men who preyed upon the poverty and helplessness of persons in embarrassed circumstances. These people took enormous interest, while they had as well the best possible security—namely, the property of the debtor, which, in most cases, was the property of his creditors. That property was often seized in a very short time after the
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    granting of the bill of sale, the lender having made himself secure of his interest—for that he generally kept in hand. In place of the hundreds of pounds to be advanced, he gave, perhaps, only 60 or 80 per cent, taking enormous interest, ranging from 20 to 40 per cent, and even more. The moneylender pounced upon the property of the trader, and took everything that he had, which properly ought to go to the creditors; therefore, it seemed to him that bills of sale, under such circumstances, had better be abolished altogether. If the effect of the Bill was to put a stop to the issue of those bills of sale, it would be a great boon to the insolvent and embarrassed trader, and certainly a great benefit to the injured creditor. The only person who would deplore the abolition of that form of security would be the money-lender. He (Mr. Serjeant Simon) had another Bill upon the Paper upon the subject; but it had been blocked—he did not know why, because the Gentleman in whose name stood the Notice of opposition, as far as he could see, had no interest whatever in the matter. The Bill now under discussion was the Bill of the Chamber of Commerce, which was introduced last Session by the late Mr. Whitwell. His (Mr. Serjeant Simon's) Bill was the same Bill as that of Mr. Whitwell's, and the one before the House, with certain additions, which he had proposed last Session and the year before in the form of Amendments, which Mr. Whitwell had accepted. He should be quite content if the present Bill went into Committee. His hon. Friend had agreed to accept most of his Amendments; therefore, he should be satisfied. The only Amendment, as far as he knew, to which the hon. Gentleman objected was with regard to a matter which he thought they would be able satisfactorily to arrange. Whether the Bill went into Committee in the ordinary course, or was referred to a Select Committee, he should be prepared to support the second reading. If it were referred to a Select Committee, he would ask that the Bill he had introduced should be also referred to the Select Committee. The subject was one of great importance to the commercial world. For a long time these bills of sale had been a crying evil to business men, who found themselves suddenly deprived of property which ought to be a security to

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    them in the course of honest trade. That property, as had already been pointed out, was swept away by money-lenders, who preyed upon embarrassed people, and brought about their ruin. He was glad to hear that his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade agreed to the second reading of the Bill; and whether it went into Committee in the ordinary course or not, he should be happy to give it all the support in his power.
    MR. EVELYN ASHLEYsaid, the Board of Trade accepted the second reading of the Bill on the conditions stated by the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Monk)—namely, that it should be committed pro formâ, in order that certain Amendments should be introduced; but the Government would not hold themselves bound to accept any further stage until they had considered the effect of those Amendments. With reference to the Amendment on the Paper, that the Bill should be referred to a Select Committee, the President of the Board of Trade did not think it desirable to agree to such reference, as he did not think the measure contained materials of sufficient importance to warrant its being considered by a Select Committee. The Board of Trade itself had a Bill on this subject "on the stocks," and it would be as well that it should be before the House before the question was remitted to a Committee.
    MR. R. N. FOWLERsaid, that after the announcement of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, that the Board of Trade had a Bill "on the stocks," it certainly seemed to him unwise to proceed further with the present measure. He (Mr. Fowler) had one complaint to make in regard to this Bill, as he had with regard to some other measures delivered. There were the names of five eminent Members of this House on the back of it; but those five names were the names of Gentlemen who all belonged to the Party opposite. If this were a non-Party Bill, and to be considered aside from Party politics, it would only have been courteous on the part of the hon. Member in charge of it to have got some hon. Member on that (the Conservative) side to have put his name on the back of it. As the Government were dealing with the matter, he thought it desirable to move the adjournment of the debate.
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    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. R. N. Fowler.)
    MR. B. T. WILLIAMSsaid, that, no doubt, great frauds were perpetrated throughout the country by means of bills of sale, and at the present moment the subject was one of great importance. ["Question!"] He did not wish to speak on the subject of adjournment, but on the subject-matter of the Bill—in fact, on the second reading—
    MR. SPEAKER: The Question is that the Debate be now adjourned.
    Question put.
    The House divided:—Ayes 19, Noes 93: Majority 74.—(Div. List, No. 116.)
    MR. CHARLES LEWISwished to call the attention of the House to the very peculiar position in which it stood in reference to this Bill. The Government had announced, through their Representative the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Ashley), that they had a Bill of their own on the subject which they were prepared to present to the House. ["No!"] At any rate, it was "on the stocks;" and yet they proposed to accept the second reading of the present Bill. There was, however, a foreshadowing that if the Bill of the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Monk) was read a second time, it would be referred to a Select Committee. He (Mr. Lewis) believed it would be found that Her Majesty's Government were a Government of Select Committees. Two Bills on Friday, on very small matters, were referred to Select Committees, and he had no doubt that the present Bill would meet the same fate. His own opinion was that when the Government measure was submitted, it would be time enough to deal with the matter; and until that time arrived he should oppose the second reading of the present Bill.
    MR. ONSLOWwas unwilling to stop the Bill of a private Member, knowing the enormous difficulties which private Members had experienced this Session in bringing anything before the House. But after the announcement of the Government that they looked upon the present Bill as a crude measure, and that they were themselves going to introduce another Bill on the same subject, he thought it was playing with legislation to ask the House to read the

    531
    Bill a second time. He would, therefore, appeal to his hon. Friend opposite (Mr.Monk), who had had much experience in these matters, whether he considered that it would further his interests to take the second reading. He might tell his hon. Friend honestly that the progress of the Bill would be stopped on any further stage, and that he would not be allowed to proceed further than the second reading. Indeed, he believed that the Government themselves would oppose every further stage in every way they possibly could. [Laughter.] Hon. Members might laugh; but he gathered that from what had been said by the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight, who spoke on behalf of the Government, and who said that the Government themselves intended to bring in a Bill on the same subject, and that they regarded the present measure as crude and imperfect.
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)thought there was a little misunderstanding on the subject. Considering the few opportunities which private Members had of proceeding with a Bill, the Government did not wish to throw any obstacle in the way of the second reading of the present measure. But the object of reading the Bill a second time, had already been stated by his hon. Friend the Under Secretary to the Board of Trade—namely, that it was intended to introduce Amendments into the Bill; and, in order to do this, it was proposed that the Bill should be read a second time and then committed pro formâ, in order that the Amendments might be inserted. When these Amendments were introduced, the Government would be prepared to give their best consideration to the Bill. He thought the Bill was one which the House might consent to read a second time. It would be highly objectionable for the House to oppose the second reading simply because the Bill was introduced by a private Member. If the Bill were not satisfactory the objections to it would be pointed out, and the measure would be stopped. But to stop it now at the present stage, would be to interfere with the opportunities private Members had of proceeding with Bills, and he, therefore, hoped that the House would agree to the second reading. He believed that if the names of some hon. Members on the opposite side of the House were
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    placed on the back of the Bill when it was re-committed, that all objection to it would be removed. The omission to do this was, however, an offence which he trusted might be easily forgiven, if his hon. Friend would promise that it should not occur again.
    CAPTAIN AYLMERhoped that the second reading of the Bill would be deferred.
    MR. SPEAKERpointed out that the House had already negatived a proposal to adjourn the debate upon the second reading.
    MR. WHITLEYremarked, that a Bill of this kind was one that was very much wanted and very much needed. He thought there ought to be a register or schedule of all articles included in a bill of sale. That would be a very important step. He hoped the House would accept the second reading of the Bill; and he was quite satisfied that if they did so, clauses might be inserted which would make it a very serviceable measure.
    Original Question put, and agreed to.
    Bill read a second time, and committed for To-morrow.

MOTIONS.
  HERRING BRAND (SCOTLAND).

    MOTION FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE.
    MR. R. DUFF MR. R. DUFF moved that a Select Committee be appointed—
    "To inquire into the expediency of continuing the present system of branding herrings, and into the appropriation of the revenue raised from the brand fee."
    The hon. Gentleman said, that he did not propose that night to nominate the Committee; but if the House would consent to the appointment of the Committee, he would postpone the nomination of it until a future day. He believed that his hon. Friend opposite (Mr. A. J. Balfour) had given Notice of opposition to the names of the Committee, and it was for that reason he would not proceed with the nomination now.
    MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, he had given Notice early in the evening that he would oppose the nomination of this Committee, not because he objected to the Select Committee itself, or because he thought the names put down for

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    the constitution of the Committee were those of hon. Members who were not qualified to sit upon it; his objection had a different origin. He found on looking over the names that eight of them were Liberals, six Conservatives, and that one belonged to the Third Party. Some attempt was made last Session to alter the old proportions in which the different Parties were placed on Committees; and it seemed to him, on looking over this list, that that attempt had been renewed. He believed that some communications had passed between those who managed these matters on the other side of the House and the leading Whip of the Conservative Party, and that an agreement had been come to of which he was ignorant. Now, he thought that whatever agreement was arrived at should be made public, and that there should be no chance of a precedent being established for the future which would be made to apply to Committees in which political considerations might possibly enter. He felt satisfied that the minority of the House, of whichever Party it happened to be composed, must be careful not to allow any alteration of the traditional proportions of Committees. He would not oppose the appointment of the Committee, because the discussion he was anxious to raise would more properly come on when the names were put to the House.
    MAJOR NOLANwould like to say a word as to to the composition of this Committee. It was a question that was of some importance to Ireland, and it was only right that there should be an Irish Member upon it. He was reminded of the picture in Punch last week depicting a young lady trespassing upon a farmer's land. The farmer asked why she was trespassing over his ground, and the young lady's answer was—"I have no ground of my own, and I must be on somebody's ground." It was quite impossible that the old proportions of Committees could be observed if the Irish Members were to serve upon them as representatives of the Third Party.
    MR. R. N. FOWLERwished to ask the hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Major Nolan), who always sat on the Liberal side of the House and persistently supported Her Majesty's Government, if he considered that he was to be placed on a Committee as a Liberal or as a Conservative?
    MR. SPEAKER: The House is now considering the Question of the appointment of a Select Committee. This discussion is quite irregular now, but might, with propriety, be brought on later, when the nomination of the Committee is under the consideration of the House. The Question now is simply whether a Select Committee should be appointed.
    Motion agreed to.
    Select Committee appointed, "to inquire into the expediency of continuing the present system of branding herrings, and into the appropriation of the revenue raised from the brand fee."—(Mr. Robert Duff)

    TRAMWAYS (IRELAND) ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
    On Motion of Major NOLAN, Bill to amend the Tramways (Ireland) Acts, 1860, 1861, and 1871, ordered to be brought in by Major NOLAN,
    Mr. CORRY, Mr. ARTHUR O'CONNOR, Mr. GRAY, Mr. TOTTENHAM, Mr. O'SHEA, Mr. COLLINS, and Mr. LITTON.
    Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 102.]

    PEACE PRESERVATION (IRELAND) [COMPENSATION].
    Committee to consider of authorising the payment, out of moneys to be provided by Parliament, of compensation for arms and ammunition voluntarily surrendered in pursuance of the provisions of any Act of the present Session for the Preservation of the Peace in Ireland (Queen's Recommendation signified), To-morrow.
    House adjourned at half after One o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILL—Second Reading—Court of Session (Scotland) * (42).
SOUTH AFRICA—THE TRANSVAAL—RUMOURED ARMISTICE.

  QUESTION. OBSERVATIONS.
  EARL CADOGAN: My Lords, I regret I must rely upon the plea of urgency for the Question which I rise to put to the noble Earl the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and of which there was no time to give him private Notice. I wish to know whether the Government can give us authentic information in reference to the rumour—the improbable, I might almost say the incredible rumour—which is contained in the evening papers—namely, that an Armistice has been concluded with the Boers in the Transvaal. I may remind your Lordships that, so far as we are aware, the military position at the seat of war has remained unchanged since the late disaster, and that we have heard nothing except the information which from time to time reached us that negotiations were still in progress between Sir Evelyn Wood and the Boer leaders. I should also wish to ask, if it is true that an Armistice has been agreed to for eight days, whether any provision has been made for the relief of the beleagured garrisons in the Transvaal, and for any further information which the noble Earl can give?
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: My Lords, the statement that an Armistice has been concluded is correct. I will read to your Lordships two telegrams which I have received on the subject. The one is a telegram from Sir Evelyn Wood to the Secretary of State for War, dated Mount Prospect, 6th March, 3.30 p.m., which says:—
  "Have signed agreement with Joubert for suspension of hostilities till midnight, 14th March, for purpose of receiving Kruger's reply and any further communications. We have power of sending eight days' supplies to our garrisons, and Joubert has undertaken to pass them through Boer lines, and, on arrival of provisions at such garrisons, the blockading and besieged parties will cease hostilities for eight days. I hope you approve."
  I will read a second telegram dated later on the same day—
  "Telegram from Sir Evelyn Wood to Lord Kimberley, dated Fort Amid, 6 p.m., 6th March, 1881:—
  "The following are the conditions of an Armistice agreed to this day between Joubert and myself. Object of Armistice to allow time for Kruger to reply to communications from late Sir George Colley and subsequent communication with view to peaceable settlement of question. We mutually agree to cessation of hostilities from noon on 6th till midnight 14th March. Conditions:—(1) In that period both promise not to make forward movement from present positions, but each retains liberty of movement within own lines; (2) Sir Evelyn Wood is free to send eight days' provisions, but no ammunition, for all Transvaal garrisons, the Boer officers undertaking to pass it to such garrisons; (3) Joubert undertakes to send notice of the Armistice conditions to respective garrisons and to Boer commanders, and will use his influence to induce these commanders to allow withdrawal of British (the wounded) from these garrisons into Natal."
  My Lords, I may add that Her Majesty's Government have approved Sir Evelyn Wood's proceedings in connection with this Armistice. With reference to the allusion made to Mr. Kruger in this telegram, I may state, in order to make it intelligible to your Lordships, that some time ago a letter was received front him by Sir George Colley, and to that letter Sir George Colley was directed to give an answer. We do not know precisely all the circumstances connected with the time when the communications with Kruger took place. We have made inquiries on the subject; but I am not in a position to state precisely what took place. In answer to a communication from Kruger to Sir George Colley, a communication was
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  made through him to the Boers. I may observe, so that there may be no misconception, that Sir George Colley was instructed to allow a reasonable time for the answer to be sent by the Boers. We are, however, imperfectly informed as to Sir George Colley's proceedings in connection with this communication. The following telegram was sent to him by the Secretary of State for War with reference to his conduct during the interval:—
  "With reference to Lord Kimberley's telegram as respects the interval before reply from Boers is received, we do not bind your discretion; but we are anxious for your making arrangements to avoid effusion of blood."

THE ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS.

  MOTION FOR A ROYAL COMMISSION.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, I must crave your indulgence and attention to a somewhat intricate subject of considerable historic interest with reference to the relations between Church and State. It is a subject which certainly has excited a great deal of interest in a large section of Her Majesty's subjects at the present time. I am about to move, my Lords, that your Lordships should humbly address Her Majesty, with a view to asking Her Majesty to issue a Royal Commission to consider the constitution and present working of the Ecclesiastical Courts, as created or modified under the great Reformation statutes of King Henry VIII. and subsequent Acts of Parliament. My Lords, I speak, in the present instance, in the name of the united Bishops of both Provinces, who have requested me, on a Motion brought before them by my right rev. Brother (the Bishop of Peterborough), to ask your Lordships thus to address Her Majesty. I believe that the opinion of the Bishops is shared by most members of the Lower House of Convocation for the Province of Canterbury, and a great number of persons who are interested in recent disputes are anxious that, if possible, an end should be put to those disputes; and, as a preliminary step towards this happy object, they desire that full information should be acquired on the somewhat intricate subject that fills the public mind, and on which there exists at present a great deal of anxiety, as well as a good deal of ignorance, prejudice, and

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  misconception. The noble Lord (Lord Oranmore and Browne), who is about to move that there is no necessity for issuing such a Commission, says that 50 years ago a Royal Commission sat on this subject, of which very eminent men were Members, and which laid a very able Report before Parliament. Fifty years, my Lords, is both a short and a long time. It is a long time, certainly, if we look back to what has taken place during the last 50 years; and the noble Lord will hardly wish to stereotype the position of affairs exactly as it was 50 years ago. Since that time—the time when the Reform Bill was passed—every institution in the country, except, perhaps, your Lordships' House, has undergone very great changes; and, in particular, the whole Judicature of the country has been materially altered. At that time there were no County Courts to relieve the great Courts of the Realm, and the Judicature Acts referring to secular cases have entirely changed the ordinary judicial procedure of the country. There are at the present time three sets of Courts which have directly to do with ecclesiastical matters. I might, indeed, say four, because there is the Primary Commission, under the Church Discipline Act, still in existence, dealing with many cases which arise. Now, my Lords, there certainly is a strong feeling abroad as to these Courts. Some object to their constitution, some object to their working; but I believe that if the matter were to be thoroughly examined, many of the objections at present felt would be found to disappear. Still, it is only fair, when such strong feelings are called forth on a matter of so great importance, that every legitimate mode should be adopted of giving as much information respecting the subject of discontent as possible, replying to all unreasonable objections, and, where well-founded objections exist, showing a willingness to reform. With this view, my Lords, I know no better course than that a Royal Commission should, if Her Majesty so pleases, be issued for the purpose of going thoroughly into this subject. If it is 50 years since it was examined, and if it be a matter of fact that changes have occurred since that time, it may surely be well that the matter should be re-examined by those who are thoroughly competent to examine it, and that the real facts respecting these intricate questions should be laid before
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  this House and the country. My Lords, there is one reason for such an examination to which I wish to call your Lordships' attention. At the time when the Royal Commission of 1830–2 sat there was a Corporation of Doctors' Commons. That Corporation embraced all the advocates entitled to practise in what were then called the Ecclesiastical Courts; they were all selected and nominated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and they had to do with all matters concerning matrimony and probate, as well as with those matters which now come before Ecclesiastical Courts. Now the whole of that machinery, except one small portion, is swept away. The Corporation is gone, and the practitioners who used to practise in Doctors' Commons have ceased to confine their attention to those Courts. All the Courts except that which has to do with the discipline of the clergy, and such matters as arise in connection with church-wardens, are now entirely in the hands of other Judges, and the advocates who practised in these Courts are now of the ordinary character, and practise in the ordinary Courts. And yet there remain attaching to the strictly ecclesiastical part of this subject old traditions which are very difficult to apply, because they have reference to a state of things which is past and gone. I will take, my Lords, an example. The Judge of the Court of Arches was originally required by statute to be—if I rightly understand the matter—one of those doctors practising in Doctors' Commons. Doctors' Commons is swept away; and therefore he cannot have that qualification. He is required to be a Doctor of Civil Law, licensed, as was formerly the case, by the Archbishop; the words remain when the substance is gone, and it is not extraordinary to me that there should be, in many instances, considerable misapprehension, and that attempts should be made to find fault with that which is the inevitable result of the changes which have taken place within the last 50 years, and which have resulted in the continuance of a number of old rules quite inapplicable to the existing state of things. My Lords, it is quite possible that we might have taken in hand to remedy this evil without applying for a Royal Commission. A promise was virtually made in the year 1874 that, as soon as might be, the Bishops would

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  take upon themselves the duty of reconstructing the process by which breaches of morality, or any other offence on the part of clergy against the laws ecclesiastical, were to be punished. The Bishops excused themselves, by the pressure which the circumstances of the time imposed upon them, from dealing with more than one subject in 1874, when they proposed and carried the Public Worship Regulation Act. Many have asked why we have not dealt with these further matters before now. Well, we found, of course, that many difficulties would stand in the way of thoroughly reconstituting the Courts; and we thought that it was, perhaps, desirable to wait and see whether the new system which had been introduced would work well before we applied it further. No doubt, we should have been able to produce some measure before now, had it not been for certain events which happened in the country, and especially amongst the clergy—but by no means amongst the clergy alone—events which occurred, and which showed us that it would not be right to take this particular matter in hand before the whole question had been more thoroughly investigated; before certain wide-spread statements were dissipated—statements which were made with great vehemence by one side or the other, but not proved so clearly as they were asserted. There can be no doubt that the imprisonment of three clergymen had caused a great sensation by the end of last year and the beginning of the present. These three clergymen were, in the popular imagination, regarded as being imprisoned for a violation of the Public Worship Regulation Act, and it was not unnaturally said—"Surely it is a strange thing in the Church of England that an offence which is, at most, but a matter of ritual should be punished with such extreme severity, when other offences of a far more serious character are not visited with a similar punishment." I can quite understand, my Lords, that this state of things excited indignation among a great number of members of the Church. Not that I think it was justified, for, of course, these clergymen were not imprisoned for a violation of the Public Worship Regulation Act, but they were imprisoned because they resisted the authorities constituted by the law. Although it is perfectly true that
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  imprisonment for such offences is a severe punishment, yet I am not perfectly certain that it is an easy thing to keep a man out of prison when he desires to get into it. I rather concur with the feeling of King William III., who, in a somewhat similar case, said—"That gentleman has made up his mind to be a martyr, and I have made up my mind to disappoint him." I think, if it had been possible to have prevented those persons being imprisoned, it would have been infinitely better for the Church of England, better for the clergymen who are the offenders, and better, on the whole, for the administration of the law. Not that I am casting the slightest aspersion on the noble and learned Lord who administered the law. He was there as a Judge, and he could only perform his duty as a Judge; but I am finding fault with the discretion of those who thought it necessary to push matters to that issue; who were not contented with allowing the ordinary processes of the law to take effect, but were determined that they would at least bring the matter to an issue by calling the statute of George III. into operation—a statute which no one at the passing of the Public Worship Regulation Act ever remembered had any reference to the cases of those who would be likely to be brought under that Act. But I think these martyrs have, like most other martyrs, to a certain extent gained their end; they have enlisted a great deal of sympathy on their side, and their so called martyrdom has had this perhaps very good result—that they have convinced all of us that there are some very difficult and delicate questions to be settled in regard to these matters; in short, they and the action they took are a justification for the Motion which I am now asking your Lordships to accept. It does not seem that there was in earlier times the same feeling about clergymen going to prison that there is now-a-days. In George III.'s time, it was, it seems, not thought much of, and earlier in The Reformatio Legum, to which attention has lately been drawn, I find it was actually laid down that every Bishop was to have one or two prisons in his disease, and three or more if necessary, in order that those persons who speak lightly or contemptuously of the authority of the Judge might find their way to them. I am not one of those who

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  have such vehement love or affection for everything that is old and venerable as to desire that we should follow the example set us in these respects; and I should therefore be very glad if, in the course of the deliberations of such a Commission as I am now asking your Lordships to petition Her Majesty to issue, time should be found for considering this question. I am afraid I must now trespass upon your Lordships' attention for a short time respecting the condition of the Courts about which this Commission will have to make investigation. Let us begin with the Supreme Court of Appeal. I am convinced that there is an immense amount of misinformation and prejudice on the subject of this Court at the present time. Like every other Court there are objections which can be made to it, and the sooner those objections are investigated and met the better. Your Lordships are aware that it is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council which at present administers the supreme appeal in ecclesiastical matters; and, to our astonishment, we hear of people crying for that old Court of Delegates, with respect to which great lawyers have spoken—and certainly not very respectfully—and which went to its grave, with the consent of all men, very soon after the Report of the Commission to which the noble Lord (Lord Oranmore and Browne) alludes in his Amendment. It is commonly said—"We do not wish to decide whether the Court of Delegates was or was not better than the Court of Appeal in the present day. But it was a Court which was sanctioned by the Act of Convocation." Well, my Lords, it may be so; but I can find no record whatever of it. Convocation certainly had sanctioned the supremacy of the Crown and the Act of Submission; but, so far as I can discover, it distinctly left to the Crown the mode in which this supremacy was to be exercised in regard to the establishment of the Courts. I shall be only too happy if the consideration which your Lordships will give to it will bring the real truth of the matter forward. No mention is made, as far as I can see, of the appointment of this Court of Delegates in the Resolutions of Convocation dealing with the submission of the clergy; the Court of Delegates was left to be fashioned by the authority of the State. I remember the discussion on the Public
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  Worship Regulation Bill, when the noble and learned Lord who now occupies the Woolsack maintained—and it appears that his authority was good—that it had always been customary for the State to arrange the exact mode in which the Royal Supremacy was to be applied, as, for example, by arranging the mode in which these Courts were to act; and therefore there was no necessity to apply to Convocation first in order to settle the details of the formation of the Court. It is upon this point that there is a great misunderstanding throughout the country—especially amongst the clergy—at the present time; and I am very anxious that this matter should be thoroughly gone into, that we should understand whether, in its origin, the original Court of Appeal—the Court of Delegates—had or had not any authority given to it by the Church, except that general authority which the Church willingly conceded to the Crown at the Reformation by acknowledging its supremacy. In the Preamble of the Act for the Restraint of Appeals to Rome there is a passage, often quoted, which sets forth that—
  "The realm of England is a power governed by one supreme head and King.… unto whom a body politic. … divided. … by names of spiritualty and temporalty. …. The body spiritual whereof having power when any cause of the law divine happened to come in question, or of spiritual learning, then it was declared, interpreted, and showed by that part of the body called the spiritualty, now usually called the English Church."
  This passage suggests one of the questions which might with great propriety be referred for consideration to a number of experts well versed in the matter. With regard to the Court of Delegates, which has had such a happy resurrection in the admiration of many persons of late years, whereas formerly it was condemned by everybody, it has been asserted—and this is a matter which requires looking into—that it was always presided over by spiritual persons. The term is a rather ambiguous one; for at that time there were various sorts of spiritual persons, besides clerics. There were the practitioners in the Ecclesiastical Courts, who were a sort of personœ moxtœ, and who may be included under the term spiritually. But it may very fairly be argued that even if you are to intrust judgment in the highest Court of Appeal to spiritual persons

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  in this sense, you may get into the same disagreeable messes which I believe the Court of Delegates got into. What was the state of the case then? There was one able man always, who was the Judge of the Arches Court, and the persons who were advocates in the Courts below came and argued before him; but when you got beyond that ancient Judge, and got to the Delegates, if you were restricted to the advocates of Doctors' Commons, you were obliged to fall back for Judges either upon the junior and unemployed members of the Profession, or upon advocates who had already been engaged in the case, a process by which men who had argued the case in the Courts below would have been constituted Judges in the higher Courts. It is ridiculous to say that that is a satisfactory method of procedure. There was, indeed, a mode by which it was prevented from doing as much mischief as might have been supposed—namely, by putting a number of Common Law Judges into the Commission to act with the other persons. Now, my Lords, taking it for granted that no one seriously wishes to re-establish the Court of Delegates, let me say a few words as to the objections which are made to the existing Court. It is said that the Court is packed for each occasion: that is an invidious way of putting it; but it is certain that the Court is not a fixed Court, before which cases may be brought but one set of Judges may sit on one case and another on another. This is a grievance which, whether it can be avoided or not, is common to the present Supreme Court of Appeal and to the old Court of Delegates. It is a fair question whether it would be better to fix very definitely who are to try those cases, or to leave it to he arranged as at present. Then objection is made to this Court, because the Judges do not deliver their opinions separately, as they do in the ordinary Courts. Whether that be a good objection or not is a matter which lawyers are better able to decide than I am. At all events, it is one of those matters that are very much dwelt upon, and which may well come before the consideration of any Commission. My Lords, I may be excused for dwelling any longer on the highest Court of Appeal. We now come to the Provincial Courts; and the question regarding them, which will naturally come before any Commission,
  386
  will be whether it is desirable to adopt any new method of administering them. One great objection that is made to the present Court is that it unites the two Provinces of Canterbury and York. I confess I never could see the force of that objection. It would be a great inconvenience if the writs of the Court of one Province could not run in the other Province, as was the case when there were two Judges. According to the late system as it existed, you were to have two Provincial Judges, one at Canterbury and the other at York, as you had 31 Diocesan Judges in the different dioceses. It is absurd to talk of keeping up the old, useless, and unnecessary Judges, when, as is far better, by condensing the offices, you are enabled to have able men to preside over the Courts of the two Provinces and the inferior Courts from which they entertain appeals. In old times there was very little difficulty in finding an able Judge to preside over the Arches Court; but when circumstances changed, and the testamentary, matrimonial, and Admiralty cases were removed, it became extremely difficult to find adequate Judges. One word more as to the Diocesan Courts. They are Courts presided over by the Bishops and their Chancellors, and are not so much in use now as they were in old times. During the many years that the Clergy Discipline Act has been in force there have hardly been any instances of the Bishop availing himself of his power to sit in his Court—a power conferred by that statute. He has almost invariably sent the case to the Provincial Judges, as he was entitled to do, and therefore these Courts have pretty nearly ceased to exist. Now, my Lords, I think that as these Diocesan Courts do still exist, though not in a very active condition, it would be well that they should be thoroughly examined. This, as well as the reasons I have given in regard to the High Court of Appeal and the Provincial Courts, seem to me to justify the request which I make to your Lordships to present to Her Majesty this Address. I beg to say that we have no intention whatsoever of going back beyond the Reformation. We have a very distinct and strong opinion that any interference with that form of religion which was accepted in this country at the Reformation would be as dangerous to the country

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  as it would be certainly distasteful to the great majority of its inhabitants. And, my Lords, while we have no sympathy with the new theories about the Reformation which have been propounded of late years—while we desire to maintain things as they have been handed down to us from the Reformation, and shall certainly do our best to resist any attempt to introduce the Roman Mass, or any of those things which are characteristic of Rome, and for which so much blood was shed, and so many trials endured in this country and in other countries at the time of the Reformation; while this is the case we are still anxious that there shall be no undue want of toleration as to things that are in themselves perfectly innocent, but which the folly of certain persons regards as a return to things as they were before the Reformation. We desire that there shall be a full understanding of the position of the Church of England; we desire that there shall be ample toleration within its pale for all good men who are loyal to this Reformed Church; but beyond this we have no desire to go. We know very well, my Lords, that the Church of England has before it at the present moment duties greater, perhaps, than any other society in the world; we know that both from its influence over our Colonial possessions, and from the sympathy which it excites even in countries that are separated from it by another form of religion, it is very powerful beyond the limits of these Islands; but we believe also that this Church must live in the hearts of the people of England. We are sure that if it departed from its principles it would cease to command their willing allegiance. We know that in these days infidelity is rampant on one side and godlessness on the other, and that the enemies of the Church of England are anxious to avail themselves of every flaw that may be found in its constitution, and to foster every possible quarrel that may arise among good men who have all the same object in view. It is more necessary for us, then, to be on our guard, more necessary for us to have sympathy one for another, to tolerate everything that is entitled to toleration, but not to go beyond the just limits of toleration. My Lords, I do believe it is true, as has often been said, that there is no danger for the Church of England if it does not come from our internal
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  dissensions, and I do hope and trust that if you agree to my request and Her Majesty be pleased to grant it, that this may be the means of dispelling misunderstandings which at present exist, and do away with jealousies which separate good men, and that thus, by coming to a fuller and clearer understanding of the greatness of our position, we may enable the Church of England to do well the great work which God has committed to it. I therefore request your Lordships to give your consent to this Motion.
  Moved, That an humble Address he presented to Her Majesty, praying that Her Majesty will he pleased to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the constitution and working of the Ecclesiastical Courts, as created or modified under the Reformation Statutes of the 24th and 25th years of King Henry the Eighth and any subsequent Acts.—(The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.)
  LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNEsaid, it was some years since he troubled their Lordships on Church questions, for he always felt that it was more appropriate that some abler and more specially qualified Member of the House should address them on questions touching the Established Church of England; and, therefore, before putting his Notice on the Books, he endeavoured to ascertain whether any other Peer was likely to move in the matter; but not ascertaining that anyone would, he felt called on to put on record his dissent from the proposal of the most rev. Prelate (the Archbishop of Canterbury). He had additional hesitation in doing so, because he was fully impressed with the respect that was due, not only to the high position of the most rev. Prelate, but also for the dignity, moderation, and genial kindness with which he filled it; but, believing that the present Motion would only encourage the unfortunate divisions and disorder that existed in the Church, he felt it his duty to put in his protest against it. The most rev. Prelate had put his case before the House with his usual force and clearness. Before hearing his statement, the more he (Lord Oranmore and Browne) considered the matter the more he saw the great difficulty of putting his views clearly before them. For that purpose it was absolutely necessary that he should make a concise statement, not only of the present state of the Church, but also of some preceding matters. He must first recall to their Lordships' attention an

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  Address presented to the Archbishops in 1873 from above 400 of the Clergy, and the reply of the Bishops. The Address asked the acceptance of the principle of "development," instead of that of "omission," meaning "prohibition." They evidenced the sanction of the Bishops in many cases to the former practice, and also assert a legal sanction to certain doctrines and practices—the Real Presence of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Holy Communion, "under the form of Bread and Wine;" the Adoration due to Him there Present; the sacrifice which He there offers by the hands of His Priest to the Divine Majesty; a change in Service of the Holy Communion; Services for the Feast of the Virgin; Communion for the Burial of the Dead; Reservation of the Sacrament; Sacramental Confession, &c.; Licensed Confessors. He had not at hand the reply of the Archbishops to the clergy; but he would read to the House a sentence from their reply to an Address presented by the Church Association on the same subject, signed by 60,000 members of the Church of England—
  "There can be no doubt that the danger you apprehend of a considerable minority both of clergy and laity amongst us desiring to subvert the principles of the Reformation is real; and it is not unnatural that you should appeal to us for counsel and support. Since we had the honour of receiving your deputation, our attention has been directed to a petition presented by upwards of 400 clergymen to the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury in favour of what they designate as Sacramental Confession. We believe that through the system of the Confessional great evil has been wrought in the Church of Rome, and that our reformers acted wisely in allowing it no place in our Reformed Church; and we take this opportunity of expressing our entire disapproval of any such innovation, and our firm determination to do all in our power to discourage it. We feel justified in appealing to all reasonable men to consider whether the very existence of our National Institutions for the maintenance of religion is not imperilled by the evils of which you complain."
  Encouraged by this reply, on July 14, 1873, he moved in that House for a Committee to inquire by what means the impending danger could be averted. The most rev. Prelate and the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury), in most emphatic terms, condemned the lawlessness of the clergy and the introduction of Confession into our Church; but said it would be accepted by few, and that it was too late in the Session to appoint a Committee. However, in the
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  ensuing Session, the evils he had complained of had so much increased, that the most rev. Primate introduced the Public Worship Regulation Bill. In introducing it, his principal reasons were to the following effect:—That greater facilities were required for enforcing the law; that Confession Boxes were being introduced into churches; that altar cards containing prayers to the Virgin were introduced; that, though the clergy were bound, by their Ordination vows, to obey the monitions of their Bishop, they refused to do so; that the Canons gave special power to the Bishop to regulate Vestments, but the clergy were disobedient. He referred to part of the Report of the Ritualistic Commission, recommending
  "That the Bishops should, with regard to Lights, Vestments, and Incense, enforce the usage of the last 300 years."
  He said that the Courts should be differently constituted, so as to obtain a less expensive and more speedy enforcement of the law; that all the time of the Bishops was taken up with Memorials against these practices; that he believed the number of the clergy and laity who carried them on was small; but the fact of even a small body of clergy acting contrary to the law would shake the confidence of the people of England in the Established Church; that in the diocese of Durham these practices had been suppressed with a strong hand—some people thought too summarily; but the great body of the laity came forward to show they approved of what had been done; therefore he asked for a new law, &c., of which he went on to state the provisions. He concluded—
  "If your Lordships are of opinion that the Church of England, while recognizing, as she always has the independence of the Incumbent as Pastor of the Parish, lays down that he should be subject to these laws and regulations of which the Bishop is the exponent, then I ask you to vote for this Bill, … for this is the principle affirmed in its various clauses."
  The real question was, were the Archbishops and Bishops or the Incumbent to decide in controverted cases? Lord Selborne said there appeared to him to be no doubt that this was still the real issue, and he wondered—
  "How advocates of Church authority, who are supposed to be actuated by High Church principles, can imagine that the cause they profess to have at heart is advanced by the setting aside of all authority—whether the au-

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  thority of the Crown or the episcopal authority—it is a problem which I cannot undertake to solve; it is one I have always contemplated with astonishment. But of one thing I am satisfied—that no institution can stand which, in matters of form and ceremony, has not within itself sufficient power to procure obedience to laws necessary to retain the confidence of the people, and to prevent innovations dangerous in their tendencies, if not dangerous in themselves."—[3 Hansard, ccxviii. 799.]
  Lord Hatherley said—
  "There were some of the clergy who openly stated that they would obey their Bishops just as far as the solicitor, or as the Privy Council said they must, and no further. Indeed, many would not go so far, but insisted, each, on being his own Pope."—[Ibid., ccxix. 1141–2.]
  Lord Bath and the Bishop of Winchester said "that as soon as the clergy knew the law they would obey it." Their Lordships were aware that the necessity for this Bill was acknowledged by the large majorities by which it was carried through both Houses—a few of the lawbreakers dissenting. It was, he thought, above seven years since it had been in force. The former expense and delay had not decreased in consequence of this Bill, for it was only now, after seven years, that different cases had been fought and defended (and too often defeated), on every legal technicality that could be raised, that, at last, precedents had been established which would enable the law to be enforced with less delay and at somewhat less expense. Exception had been taken to the fact that these cases had been fought, not by the Bishops alone, but by two societies—The Church Association and the Church Union. As an original member of the Council of the former, he was quite satisfied to bear the responsibility of its action. Its end and object was—
  "To uphold the doctrines, principles, and order of the United Church of England and Ireland, and to counteract the efforts now being made to pervert her teaching on essential points of the Christian faith, or assimilate her services to those of the Church of Rome, and further to encourage concerted action for the advancement and progress of Spiritual Religion."
  Many of their Lordships, and more of the public, would agree with him that in the abstract it was desirable these ends should be arrived at; but they might agree with the somewhat acrid eloquence of the right rev. Prelate who presided over the diocese of Peterborough, who stated it to be an act of odious and fatuous folly to prosecute to imprisonment a clergyman for breaking a Rubric.
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  In venturing to comment on any remarks of that right rev. Prelate, he felt like those whom the noble Duke (the Duke of Argyll) described the other day as being very shaky about their knees. His hope was that the right rev. Prelate will not condescend to notice the remarks of so humble a Member of that House as himself; but, should he do so, he would appeal to him in the words of the old play—"Oh! Biddly, please to moderate the rancour of your tongue." So what the Church Association did was to prosecute clergymen for the breach of the law. The Church Union defended the law-breakers—so it had again and again been decided that any clergyman had broken the law by the Judges appointed under the law. The Judge pronounced such sentence as he deemed right never of imprisonment; it might be suspension, it might be deprivation; and imprisonment only resulted from the clergyman treating the law of the land with contempt. If any subject of the Queen, from the Lord Chancellor downwards, if he treated a decree of any Court in the same way, would he not also be put in prison till he purged himself? Was a clergyman above the law, and not bound by the legal contract he had made? No; he was acting on the unwritten law of his conscience. It seemed to him that if his conscience did not allow him to abide by the legal interpretation of the contract he had entered into, he had only to resign the position and the property he enjoyed under that contract, and then he would be free to be guided by his conscience only. Other men besides clergymen had consciences; but, so far as their dealings with property were concerned, if law and order were to prevail, clergy and laity alike must be subject to the law of the land, such as it was, till changed by Act of Parliament. Then, what was the raison d'être of the Church Association? It had been properly called by its friends "The Bishops' Aid Society;" and so it certainly was, for the costs of the suits were very large. It would be impossible for the Episcopal Bench to bear them; and it could never commence an action without the sanction of the Bishop. This sanction would not be given if there was any reasonable doubt that the clergy were acting illegally. If Church Association did not exist, the Public Worship Act would have been

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  a dead letter; and there could be no doubt this was never the intention of Parliament. They asked the Judge to enforce it according to his discretion. If the law was wrong let Parliament change it. He had before called their Lordships' attention to the fact that the friends of the High Church Party, in debate on the Public Worship Regulation Bill, stated that as soon as the law was declared they would obey it. So said the President of the Churen Union; but now the decision was adverse, they pleaded that the Courts were not constituted as they deemed desirable. If such a plea was entertained, was it not a direct encouragement of the lawlessness to repress which the Public Worship Regulation Act was passed? And the Motion now before the House gave direct sanction to it. And let him now refer to some of the recent transactions in the Church. A Petition had been addressed by between 3,000 and 4,000 out of the clergy, sympathizing with those who suffered 'from their lawlessness—the same body as in the previous year were condemned by the Archbishops—praying that the Bishops would not allow them to be prosecuted for it, but would tolerate their lawlessness. Now, 4,000 was but one-fifth of the clergy. These claims were sent by the Upper House of Convocation to the Lower House. That House recommends that the prayer of the Petitioners be agreed to—namely, that the law of the Church should be ignored. This Motion was but a weak yielding to an obstructive and lawless minority. Not having the Report of Convocation, he was not sure that he followed it quite correctly; but it seemed to him the debate in the Upper House took place on certain Resolutions to the following effect, which had lain dormant on the Table of that House since 1879. The Report of a Committee of the Lower House of Convocation, and the Resolutions framed by that Committee, and accepted by that House, on the relations of Church and State, were too long to quote in extenso; but he might say that they claimed that, according to the Constitution, all proposed legislation in any way affecting the Church should be laid before Convocation, and no action taken by Parliament till Convocation had considered and reported on it, for that action taken otherwise would be unconstitu-
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  tional. Another Resolution condemned all Courts that at present existed for deciding ecclesiastical cases, and recommended that others should be constituted according to Canon Law. Another Resolution advised a new way of appointing Bishops; and the Lower House concluded by asking the Upper House to consider and take action in these matters. Those Resolutions were very fully discussed; and it appeared to him that though some of the Bishops sympathized with, none supported them. He regretted occupying so much time, but felt bound to the large body in the Church who agreed with him, and whose voice was little heard in their Lordships' House, to do his best to support their views. They all agreed that it was desirable that each Bishop in his own diocese should regulate Ritual according, not to any system agreed on by the Episcopal Bench, but according to his own discretion or indiscretion, to his own capacity or incapacity. He believed such was the law at present, and he conceived that prosecutions arose simply because the clergy refused obedience. The Archbishops and Bishops supported the Public Worship Regulation Bill principally for this reason. When one considered that there might be 39 manners of putting the law in force, it was hardly surprising that it was not obeyed. It seemed to him that this could never have been contemplated by the law, which must have supposed something of the kind. Another incident that seemed curious in this debate was that the Bishop of Rochester stated that when first he went into his diocese there were six churches within five miles of London Bridge in which an extreme Ritual had been practised for some years, with a very complete system of confession. So contrary to the teaching and doctrine of the Church did the right rev. Prelate deem this, that he said he never went inside these churches, nor could he work with the clergy. This seemed to him fair toleration of lawlessness, a full acception of congregationalism, but not, even in a town, a just or fair treatment of the law-abiding members of the National Church, supported by national funds; and if these Churches were in country parishes, how shameful would be the wrong done to the parishioners? He had heard of many such. These churches resulted from the different societies of

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  the Ritualistic Party, some dozen in number, many of them having secret rules. Of one, the Society of the Holy Cross, the literature was brought before their Lordships' House, first by himself, and afterwards by the noble Earl the Chairman of Committees. As President of Convocation, the Archbishop of Canterbury thus designated this Society—"A conspiracy against the doctrine, the discipline, and the practice of our Reformed Church." Again, asking their Lordships' attention to the debate in the House of Convocation, the Bishop of Winchester proposed the following Resolution:—
  "Having regard to the Report from the Lower House on the relations between Church and State, and also to the Report on Clergy Discipline, this House is of opinion that it is desirable that a general Clergy Discipline Bill be brought into Parliament, dealing with morals, doctrine, ritual, and neglect of duty, and also with Courts of First Instance and Appeal in matters ecclesiastical."
  An Amendment to this was proposed by the Bishop of Peterborough, and, after considerable discussion, the following Resolution was unanimously adopted:—
  "Whereas this House has received a Report from the Lower House on the relations between Church and State, and also a Report on Clergy Discipline; and whereas many members of the Church have from time to time expressed their strong dissatisfaction with the present constitution of the Courts Ecclesiastical; and whereas the laws relating to Clergy Discipline are in many respects in need of amendment, this House requests his Grace the President to pray Her Majesty to issue a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the said laws and the constitution of the said Courts, with a view to the full statement and consideration of all objections, and to the reform of whatever may be shown to be amiss."
  It would be very evident to the House that this Resolution, which would be carried out if the House adopted the Motion of the most rev. Prelate, was very different from the recommendations of the Lower House, and to the Resolution proposed by the Bishop of Winchester. It seemed to him, at the same time, easy to see why it was accepted—not, perhaps, by the most rev. Prelate, but by the Upper House of Convocation—simply because it was improbable that their Lordships' House would adopt a Petition to the effect of the Bishop of Winchester's Resolution, owing to the High Church sympathies of some of their Lordships, and the Broad Church and sentimental sympathies of others. Now, as to the
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  necessity of the inquiry asked for by the most rev. Primate, he submitted that up to 1830 all the statutes had been fully inquired into and reported on by a Royal Commission. If desirable, the evidence and Report could be reprinted. Since that time there had been, so far as he could learn, only four Acts passed of any importance—the Acts of 2 & 3 Will. IV., c. 92, and of 3 & 4 Will. IV., c. 41, abolishing Court of Delegates and transferring its power to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; the Church Discipline Act, 1840; the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 1876; the Public Worship Regulation Act. From the litigation of the last 20 years these Acts were perfectly familiar. What inquiry there was required as to these he could in no wise understand. The constitution of the Arches Court had been brought before the High Court of Judicature, and the three Judges sitting in the case declared that it was the same Court as had existed for many years, and not a new Court. Whatever the constitution of a Court, legal pleas might he put in as to its merits; but there was no other means of arriving at a legal conclusion, save by the same course of procedure. In fact, no law or no Court could be made or changed to please everybody. In this country the majority in the two Houses of Parliament made the law, and the minority must obey it. Now, he must trouble the House with the opinion, as to the present Courts, of one whose opinion, though it could not carry more weight, would be accepted as quite of equal value on this matter as even that of the most rev. Prelate. It ran thus—
  "Lambeth Palace, July, 1877.
  "Fully concurring with you as to the great importance of the legal decisions which, during the last 10 years, have been pronounced by the Court of Arches and the Supreme Court of Appeal, and considering it the duty of all sound Churchmen and good citizens to maintain and promote a loyal obedience to decisions thus pronounced, I feel assured that in every legitimate way the Bishops of the Church of England will show their determination to discountenance lawlessness, and that each step which they are called upon to take, according to the constitution of the Church, will be guided by a solemn sense of the responsibility which rests upon them to maintain the pure and simple truths, which the leaders of our Church, protesting against mediæval error, vindicated at the Reformation. The details of our mode of action must, of course, depend upon the individual circumstances of each case which comes before us: but the general principle which I

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  have indicated above, fairly applied, will, I trust, be found adequate to meet all the difficulties which you anticipate, and I am strengthened by an assured conviction that the determination here expressed meets with the entire approval of an overwhelming majority, both of the Clergy and Laity of our Church.
  "I remain, my dear Sir,
  "Yours faithfully,
  "(Signed) A. C. CANTUAR.
  "Thomas R. Andrews, Esq."
  He was not aware that any change had taken place in these Courts since that time. He was not aware that Ritualistic practices had decreased with impunity. That this proposed inquiry would strengthen and encourage them was the opinion of the Ritualistic Party. It was thus conveyed in an organ of that Party. The Church Review, writing of the proposed Commission, said—
  "One of its great advantages is time for consideration, and the certain postponement of any fresh prosecutions for at least two or three years. Time is on our side, and there is no rough and ready scheme which will bring immediate peace. We need to persuade men to listen to counsels of toleration, and to build up our outposts, consolidate our defences, and supply the weak places in our parochial organization. Again, there is breathing time after threats of annihilation, and, just as the Royal Commission on Ritual stopped the Earl of Shaftesbury's Bill for the abolition of vestments, so a new Commission will practically supersede Lord Penzance and the apology for a Court over which he presides."
  He could not believe that the Archbishop contemplated results so contrary to all his previous actions in life; but he would ask the right rev. Bench a plain question. If this Commission were granted, did not they intend to refuse to take action pending the inquiry? If so, it would be the severest blow the Church of England ever received. He had troubled their Lordships with all these details to show that no new facts could be elicited by the proposed Commission, and that, if confined to the mere question of constitution of the Courts, it would in no wise satisfy the views of the 3,000 and odd lawless clergy, to relieve whose consciences it was proposed. That was clearly shown by the Resolutions of the Lower House of Convocation, and the Resolution proposed by the Bishop of Winchester. If their Lordships granted a Royal Commission at all, let it be to inquire into all the questions involved in these Resolutions; and in his mind this inquiry should be headed,
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  "On what conditions is the Church of England to be disestablished?"
  Amendment moved,
  To leave out all the words after ("That") for the purpose of adding ("whereas a Royal Commission in the year 1831, consisting of the then Archbishop of Canterbury and four other bishops, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and Chief Justice of Common Pleas, besides several other learned judges, was appointed to inquire into the practice and jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts in England and Wales, which Commission, after mature deliberation, presented a report in 1832: And whereas in the late matter of the Rev. P. T. Dale and the Rev. R. W. Enraght before the High Court of Judicature, the judges, after giving careful consideration, unanimously declared that the 'Court under the Public Worship Act was the same which had existed from the time of Lord Coke downwards, and was neither a new court nor had any new jurisdiction,' it is the opinion of this House that it is not desirable that an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as proposed.")—(The Lord Oranmore and Browne.)
  THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH: My Lords, I have listened with great interest and keen curiosity to the speech of the noble Lord who has just sat down. I was extremely curious to know in what way and by what arguments he would support his Amendment. It appeared to me that that Amendment divided itself into two parts, and that those two parts were mutually contradictory, and that one distinctly refuted the other. The two reasons which the noble Lord submits for your rejection of the Motion of the most rev. Prelate are these—first of all, that a Royal Commission sat upon the Ecclesiastical Courts some 50 years ago; and, secondly, that a particular Court now existing has existed since the days of Lord Coke. That, I presume, is the Court of Arches as it has since been modified; and, therefore, it would appear that not oven the venerable age of that Court at the time the noble Lord spoke of prevented Parliament from asking for, and the Crown from granting, a Commission to inquire into that, as well as other Courts Ecclesiastical. So that the noble Lord's argument is that there is a Court so ancient and venerable that it becomes a sort of sacrilege to interfere with it, and that the idea of a Commission meddling with it is not to be tolerated, and yet that your Lordships are to remember that 50 years ago a Commission was appointed to examine into this very Court. The noble Lord having placed this argument before

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  us, the very next thing that I heard was that he had himself been prepared to take the very course, or almost the very course, he condemns on the part of the most rev. Primate. He says that, moved by the presence of serious evils in the Church, he did propose to your Lordships the appointment of a Committee to inquire into the best way to prevent these evils. The difference between this and a Royal Commission could hardly be so great that it could be the height of wisdom on his part some years ago to move for a Committee, and that it should now be the opposite for the whole Episcopal Bench to move for a Commission to inquire into the same matters. But I am still more surprised to find that the noble Lord has referred to the action of the Church Defence Association in the manner that he did. I am a diligent reader of the publications of the Church Defence Association. I read them carefully—though the noble Lord may think with less profit than I ought to derive from them—and I find that upon more than one occasion proposals have been made by that body for amending the Public Worship Regulation Act, because it does not go far enough in repressing the lawlessness which is complained of as existing within the Church. It seems, then, that this venerable and sacred Court, as modified by that Act, is not so sacred in the eyes of the Church Defence Association, of which the noble Lord is a member, that they should not endeavour to amend it. The difference therefore, between the noble Lord and the Prelates of the Church is only this—that we are desirous of well-considered, mature, and thoughtful legislation; but the noble Lord and the Church Defence Association are all in favour of legislation of a hasty and immature character. We think it better that we should be informed by Royal Commission before we proceed to amend the Act which the Association thinks needs to be amended. I think that, upon the whole, the course proposed by the most rev. Primate is the wiser one. But the noble Lord has been good enough to honour me by special notice in connection with the Church Defence Association; and amongst the wide range of subjects he has touched upon, he has alluded to my "acrid eloquence," and to the necessity of my moderating the rancour of my tongue. I
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  ventured, I confess, to speak of the folly of the Church Defence Association in imprisoning certain of the clergy; and I now repeat what I then said—that when the Public Worship Regulation Act was passed it provided a very different way of dealing with Ritual offences. It gave to the offending clergy no less than three years' probation before they were required absolutely to submit themselves to the decisions of the Court, or resign; and the Act seems, in this respect, at least, specially framed with care and tenderness for the clergy in the matter of Ritualistic offences. But the Church Defence Association, who have administered this Act, instead of isolating these few clergy and putting them in that position in which they should appear before the public as law-breakers deserving reprobation, have put them into gaol, have made them martyrs, and have put at their backs 3,000 or 4,000 of some of the most loyal, eminent, and attached clergymen of the Church of England. All I can say is that this appears to me the most odious, the most spiteful and fatuous folly. If the Church Association had been paid a handsome subsidy by the English Church Union, it could not have helped the Church Union and the extreme party of the Church more effectually and successfully than it has done by the imprisonment of these fortunate clergymen. So much for the Public Worship Regulation Act, and for its administration. If I were President of the Church Defence Association it would seem to me the wisest thing I could do to urge on this Commission for the examination, and, if necessary, the re-construction, of existing Courts, for the simple reason that all these prosecutions, all these conflicts about jurisdiction, and all these violent proceedings have simply ended in greatly increasing the number and the success of the party they were designed to defeat; and I would venture to recommend to the noble Lord that the next time he visits the Committee of the Church Defence Association he should propose a resolution in favour of this Royal Commission. I hope sincerely it may be adopted. I hope the noble Lord himself may be a witness before the Commission, and enlighten it as he has enlightened your Lordships this evening; and I hope, when it has fully investigated all these

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  matters, we shall have wise and well-considered Courts. It appears to me, my Lords, as I ventured to say in another place, that if you want peace in the Church of England, or, indeed, in any other institution, you can only have it in one of two ways. You may obtain it by having such rules and laws as shall be perfectly clear and well-defined—and in that case it would matter very little what Courts you had; or you may obtain it by having Courts so generally acceptable, and of such absolute authority, that no one will dispute their ruling. In one or other of these two ways—clear laws or generally accepted Courts—you may have peace in the Church. The misfortune is that at this moment the Church of England has neither perfectly defined rules nor Courts of undisputed authority. The present Courts are Courts the authority of which is, with some degree of plausibility, at all events, questioned and disputed. It appears to me, therefore, speaking from a commonsense point of view, that if you have an institution governed by laws and rules which have been for 20 years a subject of embittered strife and litigation, which is hindering the entire working and usefulness of the institution, that the only wise and natural course would be to come together, and say—This law is very ambiguous, it is disputed very much; let us agree upon a new law, let the law be broad and tolerant, let it embrace, if necessary, everything which can be fairly embraced within the limits of the institution, but let it be clear and indisputable. If in the Army there had been a dispute about uniforms which had lasted for 20 years, the public generally would think there was something exceedingly wrong at the Horse Guards, when they failed to ascertain the reason of that dispute or to bring it to a determination. But we have to remember that the garments the clergy have to wear now are garments that were ordered by the authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI. Imagine the condition of the Army if the soldiers of Her Majesty had no clearer description of their uniforms than this—that they were to be such as were ordered by authority of Parliament in the reign of Edward VI.; and if, further, a colonel could not send a mutinous soldier to the guardroom, or cashier an offending officer, without its costing him
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  from £4,000 to £10,000. That is exactly the condition of the Church of England at this moment. It seems to me, therefore, that it would have been wise and prudent for the Church of England to have agreed upon some definite rule, widely tolerant as to these matters. Parliament, it is true, however, when it passed the Public Worship Regulation Act some years ago, gave the power of revision in this respect to Convocation, but unhappily that revision did not take place. Your Lordships may ask me why? Because there were two parties in the Church who, however widely different in other respects, agreed in opposing revision of the Ornaments Rubric. One dreaded that the new Rubric would give its opponents too much, and the other dreaded it would give them too little. Between these two extremes it was found impossible to devise a Rubric which I venture to say any dozen men of common sense and charity could have settled on that occasion in an hour. Such an opportunity has passed, and it will never return. I deeply deplore that this ambiguous Rubric still remains. You may devise Courts of a most unexceptionable character; but, nevertheless, it has to be remembered that the judgment of a Court, however authoritative, does not remove ambiguity from the Rubric. You may get a judgment which people will submit to; but, still, there will always remain hanging about such a judgment the doubt and ambiguity which hangs about the Rubric itself. I deeply regret, therefore, that some settlement of our contentions, upon the basis I have suggested, has not been arrived at. But as it has not, one course only now remains—namely, the institution of Courts which shall be so universally acceptable as that their judgments shall be rarely called in question, and, if possible, not resisted at all. If you have the choice of two Courts equally legal, both having an equal right to the submission of those for whom they adjudicate, it is obviously wise to choose that Court which shall carry with it the moral assent of those whom it rules, and not merely to force a hard, dry law, of whatever authority, down their throats. The action of a Court in the matter of Rubrics is not, be it remembered, like the action of a Court in the matter of criminal or pecuniary transactions. If a Court decides that

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  A loses property and that it goes to B, A sees that he has lost it, and the matter is at an end; but it is a very different matter when a Court decides against a clergyman in a matter that Sunday after Sunday touches his conscience, however ill-informed and unwise that conscience may be. It is surely wise in such a case to relieve men from occasions and temptations to disobedience which must otherwise daily beset them, and to procure for them such alterations, if not in the constitution, at least in the working of the Courts as shall make it easier for them to abide by their judgments. I am altogether in favour of such a course, if it be a possible one; and I would approve of this Royal Commission if it gives those aggrieved and distressed clergymen of the Church of England, whose loyalty and attachment are, at least, as unimpeachable as the noble Lord's, an opportunity of pointing out and explaining what they object to in the existing state of things. It is most desirable that you should allow these clergymen to go before the Royal Commission and state what their grievance is. We, the Bishops who have worked with, and who know the worth and the loyalty of many of those clergy—we who have to go forth at the head of these clergy and wage war against the evils and sins of our day and generation—we feel that it is no use attempting merely to rule men whom you have also to lead; we would be glad to speak to them in the name of the law uttered by Courts to which they themselves would be more ready than they now are to yield implicit obedience. We want, not merely the submission, but the willing and loyal obedience, of the clergy. I entirely agree with the wise utterance of the most rev. Primate in which he said he did not desire to upset or abolish the Royal Supremacy. There are very few indeed of the most recalcitrant clergy who wish to upset the Royal Supremacy. Such a desire is certainly not shared in by the Episcopacy; but, granting to the full, as I do, that the Crown is supreme in all cases ecclesiastical, I think it is to be borne in mind, and it lies at the bottom of much of the dissatisfaction that exists with the present state of things, that the Crown in the 19th century means something very different from the Crown in the days of the Tudors and the Stuarts. We
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  hear persons now talking of the Crown as a secular authority. Why, the clergy of the time of Henry VIII. would have stared in wonder at the person who said the Crown was a secular authority. The Crown was then regarded as a quasi- sacred authority. It may, thereore, be a matter for the consideration and wisdom of Parliament to advise the Crown in what manner now to exercise the Royal Supremacy now in reference to those Courts over which the Crown, of course, is supreme; and that is a matter which may fairly come within the purview of the Commission. As regards the objection that the existing Court of Appeal is a secular one, I have never been able to understand that objection. It seems to me that those who make it are confused in their own minds as to the real difference between secular and spiritual, and as to what constitutes a secular Court. A Court is, or is not, a secular Court, not according to the persons who constitute it, but according to the authority from which the Court is derived. The Court of Arches was a spiritual Court, and was admitted to be so, and yet it was presided over by a layman; and if a Court of Bishops were appointed to-morrow by the Crown on its sole authority it would not be a spiritual, but a secular Court; so that when men object to secular Courts of Final Appeal they really forget the importance of this distinction. Under the 25th Statute of Henry VIII. it is impossible for the Crown to create any Court, even though that Court consist entirely of clergymen, which would not be a secular and State-made Court. As to this distinction between secular and spiritual, whatever value it has—and this is not the time or place to discuss it—it is, at least, an interesting fact to know that this distinction did not exist in the earlier days of the English Church. During the whole existence of the Anglo-Saxon Church there was no such distinction. The Bishop and the Earl sat in the same Court dispensing the same laws alike to Church and State. Doubtless this and other highly interesting facts will come out before the Commission that will, I trust, be appointed; and I cannot but earnestly hope that the discussion of these and like facts will bring about a clear and complete opening up of all the questions at issue, which lie not behind the Acts of

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  Reformation Settlement, but between these and the present day. All these difficulties as to modes of procedure, as to the Clergy Discipline Act, which is a most defective Act, and in some respects entirely unworkable, it is to be hoped may receive a solution by virtue of the patient and careful investigation of this Committee. If the result of the Commission were nothing else but the publishing of a Blue Book, with a statement of the various theories held on these questions, and examination of those theories, with the evidence in support of them that will be brought out by various persons, I will venture to say that the Commission will have conferred great benefit; and there is, moreover, the hope that it will tend to larger knowledge and fuller information; and larger knowledge and fuller information will certainly help us towards a peaceful solution of our difficulties. We Bishops have no arrière pensée in moving for this Commission. We are honestly and sincerely desirous of the good of the Church; and we are honestly and sincerely desirous of maintaining in their fulness, and, so far as we may or can, of insuring obedience to the laws of the Church. But we desire, first, that these laws should be clear and definite, and next that the authority which enforces them shall be generally, if not universally, accepted. I do not believe in the government of the Church by Episcopal connivance. I do not believe in the government of the Church by the caprice of congregations. I do not believe in ingenious devices for the clergy giving legal services in the morning and illegal services in the afternoon, or legal services in the afternoon and illegal in the morning. I do not believe in providing chapels of retreat for dissatisfied members of congregations. I do not believe in any one of these contrivances for securing peace in the Church. They are feeble devices, and, like all feeble devices, only recoil on those who invent them. What we desire is, first of all, clear Rubrics; secondly, accepted and acceptable Courts. We may not be able to get clear and definite Rubrics; but I hope that one result of the Commission will be to give us Courts the working of which will be so improved if necessary, and the constitution so understood and recognized, as that men will be content to accept their
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  decisions even upon ambiguous Rubrics—peace-making and healing decisions as, I trust, they will yet prove to be.
  THE EARL OF REDESDALE (CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEESreminded their Lordships that the Church, in the 37th Article, declared that—
  "The prerogative given to Godly Princes by God Himself was that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal, and restrain with the Civil Sword the stubborn and evil doers;"
  and he maintained that the parties who complained of being restrained at the present time by the Civil Sword were the stubborn persons referred to in the Article.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: My Lords, I am sorry to detain your Lordships at this hour. I happened to be away from the scene during the time of the trials which have been referred to, and, not knowing the state of opinion in England, I gave my view on the question; but I afterwards found that a very great change had taken place in public opinion. The action of the Church Association had, no doubt, created a complete revulsion of feeling to that which existed so strongly in 1874, and which had been created by the extremely unwise policy of throwing these clergymen into prison. The Act of 1874 contemplated nothing of that kind; because it is a necessary consequence that if people are so misguided as to refuse to obey the law, there is in existence power for their coercion. I, however, deeply regret that it has been applied in the present instance. The result has been exactly opposite to what was intended by the Act of 1874; and I therefore give my support to this Motion for investigating the whole question by Royal Commission. I do not think it necessary, after the exhaustive speech of my most rev. Brother the Mover, that I should go into much detail; but I will just mention one thing. The Court of highest Appeal was at one time constituted of certain Lords summoned by the President of the Council, and one or more Prelates who were Members of the Privy Council. In consequence of general altering of the Judicature system the Bishops were struck out. I do not say that that was right or wrong; but it took place; the Judicature of the country was then under consideration.

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  Some of your Lordships thought the proposal too strong, and the alteration was proposed to a system of Episcopal Assessors, so advised. These Assessors were to assist the Law Lords by sending in their opinions for consideration before the decision was arrived at. I am glad to say that it has not been my duty to sit as an Assessor, and I hope I may escape that duty for the rest of my life, for I should be surprised to learn that a single sentence that had ever been advised by the Assessors was to be found in the judgments of the Court as finally delivered. I am not at all complaining; but we have now arrived at a stage when we ask whether that state of things may not fairly be re-considered. Another point is, that the Final Court of Appeal sometimes consists of four, sometimes of 10, 12, and so on. Now, I remember that a clergyman of some standing and position, some years ago, said in a pamphlet that the Court of Final Appeal was packed for every occasion. These, and other points, will be brought out in the Royal Commission, and a remedy will, perhaps, be found. People will learn how the list of Lords who actually sit is finally determined on, and what is the precise position of Episcopal Assessors. Are we aright in having all this complicated machinery of criminal legislation to deal with cases of this class? Is it not possible to revert to what I maintain is the ancient law of the Church? The Bishop was bound to appear and meet his clergy in synod. There he propounded to them the things that he intended to make orders. He heard and discussed, and when everybody had had a fair opportunity of making objections, he gave his orders, and it was binding upon them, unless and until it was appealed from to the Archbishop. That mode of dealing with the matter was sought to be revived in 1874 by the noble and learned Lord who now sits on the Woolsack in what, I venture to think, was a wiser proposal than that contained in the Act we are now considering. It was that the Bishop should have the power to make an order as to things relating to public worship and matters in his diocese; that there should be one appeal, but that that should be upon legal questions only, and not upon expediency; and if any such appeal took place, then a certain time was to be allowed, and the said
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  order should then be binding on the clergy in that diocese. I do not pronounce upon that now; but it is highly important. Having seen this complicated machinery, in the manufacture of which I had myself a hand—having seen it come to grief from too great friction or too great cumbersomeness, may we not, by this Royal Commission, light upon something more simple and easy to work? For these reasons I have come round to the conclusion which I did not at first hold, and I think there is no other coarse before us than to take counsel about the whole subject, and I know of no better way of doing that than by means of a Royal Commission. We should by that means get every shade of opinion, and every grade in the Church can be represented in the Commission; and though we cannot pretend that the conclusions at which that Commission will arrive will be universal, we may be sure, at all events, that they are the conclusions of those representing the universal Church, and that they are more likely to commend themselves to the whole of the clergy. For these reasons I give my support to the Motion.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, it is my duty to state to your Lordships the view of the Government with regard to this proposal for the appointment of a Royal Commission. When such a proposal comes before this House, recommended not only by the high authority of the most rev. Prelate, bat, as I collect from what has passed, by the general authority of the Episcopal Bench, it would require, I think, very considerable reasons to justify its rejection. But I do not think that this proposal depends upon their authority only. The real question, apart from the authority of the right rev. Bench, is whether the inquiry which is asked for is reasonable in itself, and whether it is expedient under the actual circumstances of this time. With regard to its reasonableness in itself, it appears to me that, so far as the Courts of First Instance are concerned, and the law which applies to their procedure, it is impossible that they can be considered by any person to be satisfactory. The principal measure by which their procedure is now regulated is the Clergy Discipline Act, which, I venture to say, increases very

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  largely the cost of proceedings against clerks accused of ecclesiastical offences, by requiring a double procedure where a single procedure would be sufficient. If that were all, it would be a sufficient reason, after the lapse of so many years as have passed since the Act came into operation, for an inquiry into its provisions and its operation. Then, with regard to the other Act, passed in 1871, unfortunately miscalled the Public Worship Regulation Act, it is not, and never was meant to be, a Public Worship Regulation Act at all. It is an instance which ought to make us more careful than we sometimes are as to the titles which we give our Bills, as well as the clauses we put into them; for a false title has, in this case, misled many people, and caused much needless irritation. The object of the Act was not in any way to "regulate" public worship, but to supply, what some supposed would be a more summary, easy, and expeditious manner of applying the existing law to the correction of a certain class of ecclesiastical offences. I never could see in that Act the partiality which some saw, because its provisions were equally and impartially applicable all round. The results, however, were not successful, even if the Act itself was not a mistake. I ventured, at that time, to propose a totally different and a less litigious system, more depending upon the corrective authority of the Bishop; and I was glad to hear to-night some remarks made by the most rev. Prelate the Archbishop of York in reference to that proposal, because I do think that the principle on which my suggestions were founded was one which may deserve the consideration of the Commission which is to be appointed. However, that proposal met, at the time, with very little countenance. The right rev. Bench seemed afraid of the responsibility it would cast upon them; it did not receive the support of the Government; and it fell to the ground. The actual form in which the Act passed was neither that proposed by the most rev. Prelate, nor that which I had ventured to recommend it was adopted, perhaps rather too hastily, upon the advice of a noble Earl (the Earl of Shaftesbury) whom we all greatly respect. Everyone lost sight of one defect in the Act which turned out to be alsolutely fatal, and which did not occur to anyone, because we did not realize the possibility
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  of clergymen, when once the law was decided against them, setting it at defiance. The Act, instead of giving a short and reasonable time for obedience, gave three years. The result of that was that if any clergyman succeeded in persuading himself that his duty was to resist the law, the Act assisted him in setting it at defiance for three years, and, instead of checking the evil, really increased it. This has actually been done; the law has been set at defiance; and under the Act a clergyman who so acted was not only not effectually checked, but he was allowed to go on doing all the mischief he could in the Church. It is quite clear, on principle, that obedience ought to be a condition on which clergymen can alone hold their preferments. In my opinion, three weeks would have been a better period than three years; but certainly three months would be ample. Then there is a third Act of Parliament, passed in the 53rd year of George III., by which imprisonment, instead of excommunication, was made the ordinary means of enforcing the orders of the Ecclesiastical Courts. Before that time, contumacy after excommunication, but not without it, might be followed by imprisonment. The proceedings which have taken place under that Act have given great offence, not only to large numbers of the clergy, but to many laymen also, who have no sympathy with contumacious clergymen, but who do not like to see them sent to prison for doing what they have persuaded themselves is right. I am afraid we shall never be able entirely to get rid of the necessity for imprisonment, if a deprived clergyman should insist on keeping possession, even if the Church were disestablished; but in cases of this kind deprivation would certainly be a more suitable punishment. With regard to the Judicial Committee, while I have heard many things said against it—though only as a Court of Ecclesiastical Appeal, I have never heard anyone yet state an any definite, reasonable, or practical way in which a better Court of Appeal in ecclesiastical cases could be substituted for it. When I really see such a scheme, I shall not be unwilling to consider it; but I am not sanguine as to it being one of the results of the proposed Commission. The objections which have been made to the Judicial Committee would be better worth consider-

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  ing, if it were not too often manifest that they are advanced in a spirit which can hardly be described as that of good faith. It has been represented as a packed tribunal, on no other ground than that in that Court, as in this House and in the other Courts of Appeal, it is sometimes necessary to arrange among the members of the Court who shall undertake the duty of attendance on particular occasions. Ever since this unreasonable suspicion has been entertained of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, it has been the practice to summon, in ecclesiastical cases, all the members of that tribunal, so that if any of them have not attended to hear those cases, it is entirely of their own accord that they have not done so; and it so happens that, on the last occasion when a large number of the clergy were discontented with the decision arrived at, there was an unusually large attendance of Judges. Another objection made is that only one judgment is given there, and no dissents are stated. This practice adds greatly to the authority of the judgments of the Queen in Council in Indian and Colonial appeals; and, before the Committee of this House which inquired into the Supreme Appellate Jurisdiction in 1856, it was approved, not by myself only, but by Sir Richard Bethell, Lord Romilly, and Lord Moncreiff, as the best for a Court of Final Appeal. Other opinions, of considerable weight, were, no doubt, expressed to the contrary. The Court of Delegates, to which the most rev. Prelate said some clergymen were beginning to turn regretful eyes, never gave reasons for its judgments. It is said that people do not know whether it is the Queen in Council or the Judicial Committee which is the Court. Constitutionally it is the Queen in Council, giving as high dignity and importance to the tribunal as any form can give—a dignity and importance which, although in this country it may signify but little, in the Colonies and in India signifies a good deal. The Queen in Council is advised by the Judicial Committee; the law is laid down by the Judicial Committee; and for all practical purposes they have an authority similar to that of your Lordships' House when acting as an Appellate Court. I was glad to hear the most rev. Prelate say that he was not disposed either to countenance any encroachment on the
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  judicial supremacy of the Crown, or to give any encouragement to the idea that the judicial supremacy is exercised at the present time on different principles from those on which it has been exercised in former times. The most rev. Prelate has told your Lordships that he has been unable, with all his researches, to find that Convocation was either directly or indirectly called into council when the Statute under which the Court of Delegates was established was passed. I can confirm that observation as far as my own researches go. I am not aware that on any single occasion on which any Statute of the Realm has been passed concerning the Ecclesiastical Courts, or their procedure, there has been any concurrent action whatever on the part of Convocation. The pretension that such action ought to exist is a novel one. With reference to what fell from the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Peterborough), I do not understand that it is proposed to extend the inquiry to the Rubrics. The right rev. Prelate said that it was necessary to the peace of the Church that the clergy should be able to read the law clearly in the Rubrics; that there should be a clear Ecclesiastical Law, and Courts universally accepted and acceptable. I should despair indeed of the peace of the Church if the realization of so Utopian a dream were really necessary. I do not assent to the Commission with any such sanguine expectation. What I have said shows that there is sufficient reason for the appointment of the Commission in the unsatisfactory—not to say the unworkable—and defective state of the law which determines the action of the present Ecclesiastical Judicatures. The present time for the Church of England is very critical. None of your Lordships, I should think, can help feeling that there do exist discontents which, unless they can be in some way allayed, have a dangerous tendency; that there exist pretensions and opinions from which, being impracticable, serious mischief may arise, unless they either give way to views more consistent with the principle of the relations of Church and State established since the Reformation, or are discouraged by so great a majority amongst the clergy and the laity of the Church as to make them comparatively harmless. I think your Lordships must agree with the right rev. Prelate, that

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  if it were possible to build a bridge of gold in order to reconcile the parties in the Church which are now in such violent conflict, it might be very wise policy to do so. I do not pretend to see my way clearly on that point. I do not pretend to prophesy, or to say that the result of the appointment of the Commission will be so advantageous as some may possibly suppose; but, at all events, I think the Government would be wrong if they did not show their willingness and their desire to contribute to the peace of the Church by any reasonable result which the appointment of this Commission may obtain.
  On question, that the words proposed to be left out stand part of the motion, resolved in the affirmative.
  Then the original motion agreed to.
  The said Address to be presented to Her Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.
  House adjourned at a quarter past Eight o'clock, till To-morrow, half past Ten o'clock.