Sitting of 14 February 1882

QUESTI0NS.

  PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881—MR. R. HODNETT.
  MR. DALYasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is true that, whilst Mr. E. Hodnett, of county of Cork, and Chairman of the Board of Guardians of Schull Union, a prisoner under the Protection of Person and Property (Ireland) Act since 5th April, 1881, was, on the 4th February, 1882, being conveyed from Cork Prison to Naas Prison in custody of Constable Whelan and two sub-constables, and escorted by Mr. Purcell and about twenty Lancers, he was by Mr. Purcell ordered to be handcuffed at
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  New Bridge, county Kildare; whether it is true that this command was executed with such violence as to cause a scar on Mr. Hodnett's left wrist; whether it is true that Mr. Hodnett was ordered to be handcuffed for having raised his hat in acknowledgment of the salutes of some lady friends; and, whether the Protection of Person and Property (Ireland) Act contains any provisions debarring persons arrested under it from acknowledging the salutes of their friends?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, that, while the prisoner was being conveyed to gaol, the escort was surrounded by a mob, and it was supposed that an attempt would be made to rescue the prisoner. Mr. Purcell was in command, and he gave orders to the police to handcuff the prisoner. But that was not done, as the prisoner's hands were too small for the handcuffs. Therefore, the statement that the prisoner was handcuffed with violence was quite unfounded.
  MR. DALYasked, whether Mr. Purcell was warranted in ordering Mr. Hodnett to be handcuffed?
  MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, that was rather a question for the Law Officers than for himself; but he thought that the person in command of the escort might take such steps as would prevent an escape of the prisoner.

CONTAGIOUS DISEASES (ANIMALS) ACTS—FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.
MR. BIRKBECKasked the Vice President of the Council, Whether, in the event of foot and mouth disease being known to exist in a foreign country, as in the case of Portugal in October last, he will in future take the necessary steps to prevent a three months' delay taking place before any restrictions are placed on the importation of cattle from infected foreign countries?
COLONEL DAWNAYasked the Vice President of the Council, Whether, in view of the outbreak of the disease in the county of Yorkshire through the importation of foreign cattle, and the loss to our home trade from the importation of foreign infected cattle, he will take into consideration the necessity of slaughtering foreign cattle at the port of debarcation?
MR. MUNDELLA: The Question of the hon. Member for North Norfolk is evi-

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dently framed under an entire misconception of the principle of the Act of 1878 and of what we have done in the case of Portugal. The Act does not provide that the importation of animals from countries affected with disease shall be prohibited, but that all foreign animals shall be slaughtered at the port of landing unless specially excepted by the Privy Council. Up to May, 1881, Spain and Portugal were among the excepted countries; but foot-and-mouth disease having broke out in the Peninsular the exception was immediately withdrawn, and animals from thence were subjected to compulsory slaughter. In fact, at this moment all foreign animals arriving in this country are slaughtered at the port of landing, with the exception of those coming from Canada and the Scandinavian Kingdoms, which are entirely free from disease. The Privy Council do not admit that they have neglected any precaution in the case referred to, and they cannot undertake to adopt any other course under similar circumstances. With reference to the Question of the hon. and gallant Member, I have only just opened his note to me containing the Question. We have no evidence at the Privy Council that an outbreak of the disease has been caused in the county of Yorkshire from the landing of cattle at Hull. He asked whether I will take into consideration the necessity of slaughtering cattle at the port of debarcation. All foreign cattle are slaughtered at the port of debarcation except those coming from Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, and those coming from Canada, in all of which countries there is no disease.

PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881—MR. HUGH MAHON.
MR. REDMONDasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is a fact that Mr. Hugh Mahon, released unconditionally from Kilmainham Prison on 7th of January last, in consequence of ill health, has been informed by Sub-Inspector Wilson, on behalf of the Government, that unless he at once left the Country he would be re-arrested; whether Mr. Mahon since his release has not been in continued ill health; whether it is true that he has been continually followed by policemen, and hampered thereby in the discharge
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of his duties as reporter to the "People" newspaper; and, if so, whether these proceedings have his sanction?
MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, that on leaving Kilmainham Prison Mr. Mahon gave an undertaking to the Governor, in the presence of a witness, that he would leave the country at an early date. He was sorry to say that since his release Mr. Mahon's conduct had been such as to leave no alternative to the Government but to re-arrest him, and he need scarcely say that he had not carried out his undertaking. In regard to his present condition, he (Mr. W. E. Forster) understood that he now showed little sign of ill-health—at any rate, he was able to walk seven or eight miles into the country and back again on business connected with the Land League agitation.
MR. REDMONDsaid, he was informed that Mr. Mahon gave no promise as to when he would leave the country. He believed, however, that he intended going in a few days. It seemed to him that he was suffering great persecution at the hands of the Government.

PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881— EDWARD WYER.
MR. REDMONDasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is a fact that, on the 25th January last, two policemen arrested a farmer named Edward Wyer at his house at Killowen, in King's County, without producing a warrant, and that when asked for their authority or warrant they refused to produce any, and threatened to handcuff him unless he went quietly with them?
MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, that the policeman who effected this arrest ought to have presented his warrant at the time, and he had been warned to be more careful in future. Shortly after the arrest, however, Mr. Wyer was shown a copy of the warrant. It was not true that the police either handcuffed him or threatened to do so.

POST OFFICE—LETTER CARRIERS' MEMORIALS.
MR. SCHREIBERasked the Postmaster General, with reference to the Memorials of the London letter-carriers,

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forwarded to him on the 26th April last year, and alleging sundry grievances, which he had already taken into his consideration before the end of the ensuing month, on what ground his answer has been so long delayed; and, whether the Memorialists may now expect to receive it in the course of the present financial year? He should feel obliged if the right hon. Gentleman would also include in his reply the case of the auxiliary letter-carriers.
MR. FAWCETT: In reply to the hon. Member, I have to state that since Memorials from the London letter-carriers were received, Memorials to the same, or nearly the same, effect have reached me from all parts of the country, and that into them it has been necessary to make a thorough examination. A Departmental Committee was appointed in the autumn to investigate all matters complained of in these Memorials. The result of their inquiry, which necessarily occupied a considerable time, was laid before me about a fortnight ago, and since that time I have done what I could to arrive at a conclusion on the subject. I cannot fix the precise date on which I shall be in a position to give an answer to the Memorialists; but I can assure the hon. Member that there shall be no unnecessary delay.

METROPOLIS—THEATRES AND MUSIC HALLS—FROTECTION FROM FIRE.
MR. DIXON-HARTLANDasked the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works, What powers that body holds to insist upon adequate means of exit and proper precautions against fire in the various theatres (new and old) of the Metropolis, and what steps that body has taken with a view to that object since it received the letter referred to by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and with what result; and, whether theatres still exist in London which are unsafe, and where further steps should be taken to insure the safety of the public against fire?
SIR JAMES M'GAREL-HOGG: In answer to the Question of the hon. Member, I have to state that the powers possessed by the Metropolitan Board of Works with regard to old theatres are confined to requiring structural defects to be remedied, provided that the work can be done at a moderate expense, and subject to the liberty of appeal given to
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the owner. As regards new theatres, the powers of the Board are more extensive, and regulations have been made for protection from fire which, I think, are satisfactory. With regard to the steps taken by the Board since the date of the letter from the Secretary of State, to which the hon. Member refers—namely, December 24, 1881—a sufficient time has not elapsed to enable me to show any large results. But the Fire Brigade Committee was instructed on the 13th of January last to report as to the actual condition of the London theatres in respect of security from fire; and the Buildings Act Committee, on the same day, was instructed to report as to the additional statutory powers required to enable the Board to deal more efficiently with the whole question. The necessary orders have been given to the superintending architect and the chief officer of the Fire Brigade; but the hon. Member must be aware that, owing to the number of theatres, the inspection will take some time. With the information at present in my possession, I should hesitate very much to declare any theatre unsafe, although I have no doubt that in many cases improvements and alterations may and will be effected. I can assure the hon. Member that the best exertions of the Board and its officers are being directed to this important question.
MR. DIXON-HARTLAND: In consequence of the answer I have received from the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works, clearly showing the great risk that exists to the theatre-going public in the Metropolis, since a fire may break out any day whilst the Committee is sitting, I shall on Friday next repeat my Question of last Thursday to the Home Secretary.

STATE OF IRELAND—AFFRAY AT BELMULLET.
MR. O'CONNOR POWERasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, What course the Irish Executive intend to take in reference to the conduct of the Sub-Inspector of Police against whom a verdict of wilful murder was returned by a coroner's jury at Belmullet; and, whether it is a tact that the affray which took place there between the people and the police occurred while the latter were engaged in assisting the service of processes which were

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served for the recovery of a rate illegally levied upon the occupiers of land?
MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, that this Question ought to have been put to the Attorney General for Ireland rather than to himself. He was informed by the Attorney General that he had obtained a provisional order quashing the coroner's inquisition, and that the police were at the time engaged in protecting process-servers. To the best of his belief, the processes were not for the recovery of a rate illegally imposed.
MR. O'CONNOR POWERobserved that the right hon. Gentleman had not quite answered the point of his Question, which was whether the Irish Executive, quite independently of the Law Officers of the Crown, intended to take any action in consequence of the verdict of the coroner's jury?
MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, that they must wait until the close of all legal proceedings before they could take any steps.

RUSSIA AND PERSIA—THE NEW FRONTIER.
MR. E. STANHOPEasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether, before the conclusion of the treaty between Russia and Persia, any proposal was made by Her Majesty's Government as to a representative of this Country being present at the proceedings which were taken for the delimitation of the new Russian Frontier?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: No, Sir. No such proposal was made as that mentioned in the Question by Her Majesty's Government with regard to that portion of the territory which is the subject of the arrangement between Russia and Persia; but with regard to another portion of the Southern Russian territory in that neighbourhood, communications are passing. I may take this opportunity of saying that we have been informed by Her Majesty's Minister in Persia that the proposed Russian Frontier-line terminates at a point distant 150 miles—and not, as stated in various papers, only 11 miles—from Sarakhs.

JAMAICA—SEIZURE OF THE "FLORENCE."
MR. SERJEANT SIMONasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether instructions have been
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sent to the Governor of Jamaica authorising the payment out of the Colonial Treasury of £10,000 damages and costs in an action brought against him for the wrongful seizure and detention of a foreign vessel, called the "Florence," and her cargo; and, whether, seeing that the action arose out of a breach of International Law, the sum in question ought to be paid out of the Imperial Treasury, and not out of the local taxation, which already presses heavily on the people, who, moreover, have no voice in raising them?
MR. COURTNEY: NO instructions were sent to the Governor of Jamaica to pay out of the Treasury the damages and costs—something under £9,000—referred to in the Question. The Governor was instructed to submit a Vote for this sum to the Council; but the Council had already passed an adverse Resolution on the subject, and the sum has not been voted. The Governor, however, to save interest, has provisionally paid the amount out of Colonial funds. I am not sure whether I ought to answer the second Question. It raises an argument and invites an argument, and is so far irregular. The liability arises out of a local miscarriage of a local Foreign Enlistment Act. The duties of neutrality prevail throughout the Empire; and it seems a sound principle, in the absence of special circumstances, that each part of the Empire should observe these obligations within its own limits. The alternative, which the hon. and learned Member seems to favour, is that the Treasury at home should pay the cost of upholding the Neutrality Laws in every Possession of Her Majesty. I cannot assent to that proposition; but the action to be taken in this case is under consideration.

FRANCE AND ENGLAND—THE NEW-FOUNDLAND FISHERIES.
CAPTAIN AYLMERasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If any definite arrangement has been arrived at with the French Government regarding the disputed rights on the west shore of Newfoundland?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: No definite arrangement has as yet been come to with the French Government; but Her Majesty's Government are still in communication with them on the subject.

AFFAIRS OF EGYPT—SUZERAINTY OF THE SULTAN.
MR. ARTHUR ARNOLDasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether Her Majesty's Government concur with the definition, by Lord Salisbury, in his Despatch of August 13th 1879, of the Sultan of Turkey as "Suzerain" of Egypt?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: According to the Firmans, the Sultan is, undoubtedly, Sovereign of Egypt, and he acted as such at the time of the deposition of the late Khedive. The word "Suzerain" is, however, often loosely used.

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT—THE WELLS SCHOOL ATTENDANCE COMMITTEE.
MR. R. PAGETasked the Vice President of the Council, If he will be good enough to lay upon the Table of the House the Report recently made by Mr. Barry respecting certain charges preferred against the School Attendance Committee of the Wells Board of Guardians?
MR. MUNDELLA: I regret that I am unable to give the Report of Her Majesty's Inspector, Mr. Barry. Such Reports are of a confidential nature, and could not be produced without prejudice to the Public Service. I have already informed my hon. Friend that if he will call on me I will afford him such explanations as he may require.

ENGLAND AND FRANCE— THE CHANNEL TUNNEL SCHEME.
MR. BROMLEY DAVENPORTasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether, considering the great interest excited by the Channel Tunnel scheme, and the immense importance of the question, the Government will take steps to ascertain the feeling of Parliament upon it by moving the appointment of a joint Committee of both Houses to consider the expediency of executing such a work as a matter of public policy; and, whether, pending the result of such inquiry, the Government will take steps to stop the progress of any works and the expenditure of money in connection with the proposed tunnel now proceeding on the coast?
MR. GLADSTONE: In answer to this Question, I ought to observe that it appears to imply what I think will mislead the public—namely, that this is a new matter not heretofore opened. The truth is, as was indicated by my right hon. Friend (Mr. Childers) near me the other day, that it has been very considerably opened on the part of Parliament and on the part of the preceding Government. Papers have been presented to Parliament more than once, I think, and Bills have passed through Parliament, and have become law, I believe, at least on two occasions. The late Government made an examination of the subject, and I believe after the examination proceeded to appoint a Commission in concert with the Government of France. That Commission examined the whole matter very thoroughly, and arrived at a joint Report, the purport of which was to recommend that a Treaty should be framed between the two Governments upon certain bases, which were set out in great detail and appended to the Report. That Treaty never was concluded, as I am informed, for no other reason than that the parties were not prepared with their financial arrangements to go forward with what remained unsanctioned of the scheme. The House will not be surprised, after all these proceedings, that when Her Majesty's Government came into Office, and, indeed, until lately, this question appeared to present the aspect of a settled matter. Of late the Government have become aware that various authorities, particularly the military authorities, have conceived that there were strong reasons why it should be re- opened. That being the case, Her Majesty's Government have thought it right to direct that the recent information should be brought together, in order that they might give it immediate and complete consideration. That, therefore, they will proceed to do, and they will think it their duty to communicate their opinion upon it to the House—that is the pith of the Question of the hon. Member—before proceedings are taken upon the two Private Bills now before Parliament. A great variety of questions may arise for consideration in connection with the arrangement of this subject, and that consideration the Government will not fail to give.

INLAND REVENUE—THE INCOME TAX—SCHEDULE A.
SIR BALDWYN LEIGHTONasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether, under the present circumstances of agricultural depression, he will favourably consider the inequalities with which the income tax is levied under Schedule A, namely, first, upon the gross instead of the net income, thereby making no allowance for agency, repair, or bad debts, as in other schedules; and secondly, upon arrears of income which have not been received, but which the Commissioners of Income Tax are instructed to demand; and, whether, in the financial arrangements of the year, or by a Treasury Minute, as last year in the case of unoccupied farms, he will remove the inequality?
MR. GLADSTONE: My hon. Friend asks me whether, under the present circumstances of agricultural depression, I will favourably consider the inequalities with which the Income Tax is levied under Schedule A. Upon reference to the proceedings that were taken last year, and in former years before the accession of the present Government to Office, for granting certain remissions of Income Tax, I may say that those arrangements—within the last two or three years—were within the competence of the Government. The Question of my hon. Friend is, I am sorry to say, quite of a different order. It descends deep into the arcana of the Income Tax; and if he makes the interior of the structure a subject of study he will find it, not only one of the most puzzling questions, but one of the most difficult to approach of all the economic questions which can present itself to the mind of a Member of Parliament. I do not hesitate to say that to open up the inequalities of the tax levied under Schedule A—which I do not at all dispute; on the contrary, I have stated them in this House, and endeavoured to draw the attention of the House to them as closely as I could—would require us to open up inquiry into the manner in which the Income Tax is levied under the whole Schedule, and it would at once raise questions of the most difficult character in respect to the Schedule. I hope, therefore, my hon. Friend will not expect me to be able to answer the Question as a mere matter of Executive discretion.

THE VATICAN—DIPLOMATIC INTERCOURSE—MR. ERRINGTON.
SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in the autumn of last year, addressed a letter to Mr. Errington, intended to be shown to Cardinal Jacobini, and designating Mr. Errington as a gentleman through whom confidential communications could be made on public affairs to Her Majesty's Secretary of State, or containing words to that effect; whether, in acknowledging this letter in a reply intended to be shown to Lord Granville, Cardinal Jacobini declared himself ready to confer with Mr. Errington as the recommended agent (agente raccomandato) of the British Government; whether, since then, Mr. Errington has been the channel of communication between Lord Granville and Cardinal Jacobini; and, whether, if so, Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will, according to constitutional practice, place on record in the Foreign Office his letter to Mr. Errington, and any other correspondence with that gentleman on the subject of his communications with the Vatican, and lay them upon the Table? The hon. Member said, that since his Question had been put on the Paper, he found that the letter of Cardinal Jacobini was written before the letter of Lord Granville to Mr. Errington.
MR. GLADSTONE: The House is aware that it is contrary to the usage of Parliament—there may be exceptions, but they are exceedingly rare—to produce or lay upon the Table Correspondence or a single letter which are not of an official or diplomatic character. That being so, the question is open to another Parliamentary objection upon the details of such Correspondence, because it is well known that the House takes objection—it is an established rule to take objection—to accounts given by Ministers of public documents, which they were not prepared to produce. I am afraid, therefore, I have no course but to decline to go further than the statement already made by my hon. Friend near me (Sir Charles W. Dilke) on this subject; but I will endeavour to convey to the mind of the hon. Member, with perfect clearness, the nature and the aim of such communications as have taken place between

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Lord Granville and Mr. Errington. I will not enter into the subject as to whether this question is accurate or inaccurate in all its statements—because there are both. It has been said by my hon. Friend near me, as I shall state in the most distinct terms, not only that there has been no appointing of Mr. Erring-ton, and, of course, no remuneration, but that there have been no negotiations with Mr. Errington, no proposal made to him, and no request tendered to Mr. Errington. The purport of any intercourse with Lord Granville by Mr. Errington has been exclusively with reference to his being a channel or medium of information. Mr. Errington is not exclusively the medium of information, because on any occasion of any other gentleman as well qualified as Mr. Errington by character and intelligence to convey just and accurate information to Rome, Lord Granville might, in the same manner, have been induced to think it well to supply him. or permit him to be supplied, with information of that character. The purpose has been entirely to convey information, and information upon matters interesting to the Roman Catholic subjects of Her Majesty and naturally, as connected with them, to the public at large. That is the purpose, aim, and limit of these communications; and I may say that the journey of Lord O'Hagan to Rome, which was, like Mr. Errington's, a private journey, taken entirely on his own motion, might as well have been made the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry as that' of Mr. Errington. It was a journey for private objects, with which we had nothing to do; but, with respect to the journey, we did think it useful—and we do think it useful—that many matters of great interest with respect to the question of the Roman Catholic subjects of Her Majesty should be made known at Rome in conjunction with the very best information that is to be had on the subject.

PARLIAMENT—BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE—THE NEW RULES OF PROCEDURE.
MR. ANDERSONasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether the Resolutions as to Procedure which he has put on the Paper are intended as Sessional or as Standing Orders?
MR. GLADSTONE: Sir, this is a question which has had the consideration of Her Majesty's Government, and I will only now point out with reference to two of the Resolutions, that they are actually Amendments of the Standing Orders, and consequently, if carried by the House, would become part and parcel of the Standing Orders. With regard to the other Resolutions, I will content myself with giving my hon. Friend the assurance that the matter is being considered; but I think I had better reserve mentioning the course which the Government propose with respect to them until I am able to make the statement which I trust I may be able to make on Thursday.

MOTION.

  PARLIAMENT—PUBLIC BUSINESS—NOTICES OF MOTIONS.
  MR. GLADSTONE MR. GLADSTONE moved—
  "That the Notices of Motions be postponed until after the Order of the Day for resuming the Adjourned Debate on the Motion for an Address to Her Majesty."
  BARON HENRY DE WORMSsaid, he ventured to renew the appeal which he had already made to the Prime Minister to grant him an opportunity of bringing forward the question of the persecution of the Jews before that House. The Prime Minister had stated yesterday that there were many grave matters of the deepest importance to be considered. He was sure that he was expressing the opinion of the House when he said that there could be no matter of graver importance than the life and the honour of thousands of human beings; and he confidently appealed to the Prime Minister to carry out those principles of giving help to oppressed Nationalities which he had always advocated during his distinguished career, and to give the House of Commons an opportunity of confirming the verdict of the country in favour of the oppressed, and in reprobation of the oppressor. He would venture to press the matter upon the right hon. Gentleman on another ground. It had been falsely stated in the Russian papers that this movement was a Party movement. He denied that in the strongest possible terms. [Mr. GLADSTONE: Hear, hear!] The Russian Press also said that the Prime Minister believed it to be a Party movement, and that for that reason it

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  had not Ms full sympathy. He was sure that was false. [Mr. GLADSTONE: Hear, hear!] If the Prime Minister refused the opportunity of bringing forward the question which he now asked, it would only confirm the Russian Press in their belief. It was not from Party motives that he brought the matter before the House, but in the interests of suffering humanity.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFsaid, he should like to ask a few questions with regard to the course of Public Business. They had had several nights' debate, not so much upon the Address as on the Amendments; and although he acknowledged the paramount importance of the Irish Question, there were several other subjects of importance mentioned in the Gracious Speech from the Throne which had been passed over without any comment of any kind. He should not wish to interfere with the course of Business, or to delay those important Motions which the right hon. Gentleman intended to bring forward; but as the result of these Motions might be to prevent them speaking during the course of the Session altogether, he should like, during the few moments of Parliamentary life that were left to them, to be allowed to ask a few questions on the Address with regard to the state of Turkey, and also with respect to the question of the proceedings at Rome, on which the right hon. Gentleman had just made a somewhat cloudy statement. He, therefore, would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether there was any truth in the statement which he had seen that day in the organs which usually represented the opinions of the Government to the effect that the Whips of the Government, in conjunction with the Whips of the Irish Party, had determined to close the debate on the Address that night? The Whips of the Irish Party had a perfect right to make a compact with regard to their own Amendment; but he scarcely thought they were competent to make arrangements binding the whole House, especially as the only compensation which he saw in the paragraph to which he had alluded was that they were to be addressed by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds (Mr. Herbert Gladstone), the Junior Lord of the Treasury. He would therefore ask the right hon. Gentleman whether hon. Members were to be allowed to make any
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  remarks after the conclusion of the Irish portion of the debate on the other important matters that were contained in the Queen's Speech; or, if not, whether he would undertake that the Report on the Address would be brought up at such a time as would enable him to make some remarks on that occasion?
  MR. R. POWERbegged distinctly to say that no compact had been made between the Whips of the Irish Party and the Whips of Her Majesty's Government. He wished to ask the Prime Minister whether, if the debate on the Address were not concluded to-night, he proposed to continue it to-morrow?
  MR. GORSTsaid, there were some very important portions of the Speech from the Throne which referred to the Transvaal, to which he was extremely anxious to call the attention of the House. He also wished to make some inquiries with reference to certain statements in connection with the Transvaal, to the Chief Montsioa, to whom he saw some allusions in the morning papers, and to the question of bringing to justice those who had been guilty of murder during the war.
  SIR, WALTER B. BARTTELOTsaid, the great question of agricultural depression, which was very slightly mentioned in the Queen's Speech, was a question which, at this particular time, deserved from the Prime Minister and from the Government far greater consideration than had yet been shown to it. He hoped that hon. Members would have an opportunity to-night, or upon the Report, to make some remarks on that most important question.
  MR. GLADSTONE: With reference to the inquiries of the four hon. Gentlemen who have last spoken, I have to point out that these are inquiries that they are as able to answer as I am; but I will frankly and clearly give them all the information I can, so far as concerns the view and the intentions of the Government, of course premising that I must not be understood to assent in any degree, in whole or in part, to allegations such as those of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst). Probably the course most convenient to the House, as far as I can judge, would be this. If the debate upon the Amendment of the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy), with which we are

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  now engaged, should close to-night, probably the most convenient course for the House, as far as I can judge, would be that we should take the Address to-night, and take the Report the first thing to-morrow, and then an opportunity would be given to those Gentlemen—to which they are perfectly entitled—of addressing the House, if they think fit, on the several subjects in which they are interested. If the debate on the Irish portion of the subject should not close to-night, I hope that it will proceed to-morrow; but I still hold that probably it would not be very convenient then to raise the questions which have been named after the Irish debate, and if that be so we propose to take the Report on the following day, and then to give the best opportunity in our power to hon. Gentlemen for offering any remarks. Now I come, with every feeling of respect and sympathy, to the appeal made to me by the hon. Member for Greenwich (Baron Henry de Worms); and I assure him that I assent, in the freest and largest manner, to his proposition, that the question with regard to the sufferings of the Jews in certain portions of Russia is in no sense a Party question. As far as I know, no element of Party motive has yet been allowed to mix with it; and I trust sincerely that no such element will be introduced into it. I therefore beg the hon. Member to take in good part the observations that I shall make, and that are sustained, I am glad to think, by the very wise words of a Nobleman, who is either the very highest, or an extremely high authority in the Party to which the hon. Member belongs, who has calmly and deliberately expressed his opinion that the objects of humanity are not likely to be forwarded by debates on this matter in the Houses of Parliament. Of course, I do not wish to interfere with the discretion of the hon. Member, I do not feel that I have any right to make any appeal to him; but on this occasion he has made an appeal to me. Now, he makes an appeal to one who believes that it would be a mistake on our part, in the interest of those whom he wishes to serve, were the Government, by any act of theirs, by setting aside other Business, to create an opening for a discussion of that kind, I own that I have the greatest doubt whether any debate of the sort that could take place within
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  these walls may not have the effect of rousing among a portion of the population of another country a further feeling of exasperation that might possibly lead to a revival of these horrible atrocities. With that feeling I think that the hon. Member will see that, although I do not presume to interefere with his discretion, I really am not in a position to give him assistance towards the attainment of an object which, in my heart and soul, as far as I am able to judge, I believe would be injurious to the cause which I know, with the purest principles of sympathy and humanity, which we all respect and which we all share, he is so desirous to serve.
  MR. DAWSONpointed out that the Borough Franchise (Ireland) Bill stood first on the Paper for the next day; and asked the Prime Minister whether it was meant, by taking the Report on the Address then, that the Irish Members were to lose their opportunity of discussing the franchise?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I should be extremely sorry that the debate on the second reading of the Borough Franchise (Ireland) Bill should be set aside; but I do not suppose, from the remarks shadowed forth by several hon. Members, that the second reading will occupy any considerable time.
  MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYappealed to the Prime Minister not to continue the debate on Wednesday, as that would take away from the Irish Members the opportunity of discussing the Irish Borough Franchise Question. He asked that the Report should be taken on Thursday instead of Wednesday.
  MR. GRAYsuggested that, as the arguments of Irish Members on the subject had been frequently put forward and were consequently well known, the hon. Member (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) might give an assurance that an endeavour would be made by his followers so to restrict the discussion on the Borough Franchise (Ireland) Bill as to bring it to a close within a couple of hours, after which the further debate on the Address might be taken.
  MR. MACARTNEYsaid, he hoped the Government would not think all Irish Members were bound by any understanding to close the debate on the Bill prematurely.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I am afraid I am not in a position to accede to the

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  proposal that has been made, not on the ground of my own inclination, but on the ground of the regularity of the proceedings of this House. I believe I am strictly within the limits of accuracy in saying that the custom of this House is to prosecute the debate on the Address to its conclusion; and if the debate on the Address be unusually prolonged, as it has been—I do not say improperly at all—unhappily, some Members and some subjects must suffer more or less; but it would not be within our power to take one particular Order to-morrow, and to say that that Order should take precedence, but that the debate on the Address should come before the other Orders. I am afraid, therefore, that regularity binds me to adhere to the order I have already mentioned.
  Motion agreed to.
  Resolved, That the Notices of Motions he postponed until after the Order of the Day for resuming the Adjourned Debate on the Motion for an Address to Her Majesty.

ORDER OF THE DAY.

  ADDRESS IN ANSWER TO HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH.
  ADJOURNED DEBATE. [SIXTH NIGHT.]
  Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment proposed to Question [7th February]—[See page 133.]
  And which Amendment was,
  At the end thereof, to add the words:—"Humbly to assure Your Majesty that this House regards with grave concern the action of the Executive in Ireland, whereby the liberties of Members of this House have been outraged, and the performance of their constitutional duties rendered impossible; whereby hundreds of Your Majesty's subjects in Ireland are detained in prison without trial or the right of Habeas Corpus, many of them on the alleged suspicion of offences for which, even if duly tried and found guilty, they could not have been subjected to punishment as severe as that which they have already undergone; whereby the lawful organisation of the Irish tenantry has been arbitrarily suppressed at a most critical moment, when its maintenance was essential to the due protection of their legal rights, while the organisation of the Irish landlords against those rights has been encouraged and supported; whereby ladies engaged in the work of public charity have been threatened, harassed, and imprisoned under obsolete statutes and on nominal pretexts; whereby the liberty of the Press has been illegally interfered with, the right of free speech, of public meeting, and of lawful consti-
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  tutional agitation has been abrogated; whereby innocent persons have been killed and wounded by the armed forces of the Crown; whereby the verdicts of coroners' juries, incriminating the agents of the Executive, have been disregarded; whereby large districts of the Country have been placed under a system of quasi-martial Law; whereby rewards have been offered by the Government for secret information as to crimes to be committed, tending to the demoralisation of the people and the creation of perjured evidence against innocent persons; which action generally has caused in the minds of the people of Ireland a profound distrust of the execution of the Law; and humbly to assure Your Majesty that an immediate abandonment of all coercive measures, and the establishment of constitutional government in Ireland, with full recognition of the rights and liberties of the Irish people, are essentially necessary for the peace and prosperity of that realm and of the United Kingdom."—(Mr. Justin M'Carthy.)
  Question again proposed, "That those words be there added."
  Debate resumed.
  MR. SEXTONsaid, he rose to support the Amendment which his hon. Friend the Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) had brought before the House. That Amendment had been described as a long indictment against the Government; it was a long indictment, but it did not contain a single superfluous word. Every clause in it expressed a crime against public right, and every crime stood verified, not by reasonable suspicion, but by absolute and widespread public knowledge. That debate, while it was ostensibly occupied with large questions of public policy, had resolved itself into a deliberate, sustained, and venomous attack on his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork—an absent man. They had heard a pathetic account of the struggle between the infant Hercules and the serpent; but, so far, the conflict of that debate had lain between the Treasury Bench and the Member for the City of Cork; it had lain between a dozen free men and one man, whom, before the conflict began, they had carefully manacled and gagged. There had been two classes of speeches in that debate to which he would invite brief attention. In one of those classes those who were concerned with the Land League were accused of complicity in and moral responsibility for the most serious and the most odious crimes. He had experienced on this occasion what he had before observed, that the most solemn and the most exalted references to public morality came from those Gen-

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  tlemen who were reading out of their briefs. The hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland, fresh from the breezy and moral atmosphere of the Four Courts and fresh from the elevating experience of the Deny Election, had taken upon himself to lecture the House upon public morality. He spoke of the height of soul and the elevation of idea; but he (Mr. Sexton) would not delay the House to inquire how far height of soul and elevation of idea were evidenced at the Derry Election, nor would he delay to inquire how far they ought to be lectured upon the ethics of rent by a Gentleman who, if he might borrow a metaphor from an humble but a useful class of trade, had consented to appear at the Derry Election as the Cheap Jack of the Liberal Party. He would turn to another class—to the speeches of those who were the advocates and spokesmen of the landlord party in that House. The position of the landlord party upon this discussion was one extremely simple. They resented any attempts, the slightest, the most partial interference with their historic right and privilege of arbitrarily plundering their tenants. That was precisely the state of the case. Their class found an adequate spokesman in the person of the hon. and gallant Member for Leitrim County (Mr. Tottenham). That hon. and gallant Member proceeded to interest the House in the beautiful spectacle afforded by 3,000 landlords in Dublin who were quite unanimous in the question to dip their hands into somebody else's pockets. [Cries of "No!"] Well, yes, either the pockets of the tenants or of the State. It mattered nothing to landlords so long as it was a pocket and so long as it had something in it. The hon. and gallant Gentleman was horrified by the theory that a "live and thrive" policy was to prevail in reference to the Irish tenants. They could well understand the opposition of the hon. and gallant Gentleman to such a Motion, because they had good reason to believe that upon his property in the County Leitrim every form of ingenious despotism and every kind of mean exaction prevailed. He happened to know that the charitably disposed in other parts of Ireland were sending clothes to cover the naked bodies of his evicted tenants. The present debate, instead of dealing with grave matters of policy, had re-
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  solved itself into an attack upon his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork, and he might say that attacks upon that hon. Gentleman were synonymous with attacks upon the Land League. They had been told that the objects of the Land League were plunder and confiscation, and its instruments outrage and intimidation, and some right hon. and hon. Gentlemen had even said murder. It was difficult for a man of any sensibility, or of any moral sense, to rise in that House and undertake the task of defending an organization on behalf of which the fiercest prejudices of a people ignorant of Ireland had been excited by the most ingenious statesmen and the greatest masters of oratorical art. He undertook to say he could speedily prove to the House that their description of the Land League had been violently and wantonly removed from truth. What, as a general rule, was the description of the class of Irish landlords? It was a familiar fact that they were planted upon the soil of Ireland by confiscation; and it was a fact equally familiar that in the centuries which had since elapsed they had never in any sense allied themselves to the people; that they had never ceased to be an alien class, never interested themselves in the welfare of their tenants, and had merely performed the functions of rent-warners, and stood today as a class as alien to the interests of Ireland as they were the first day that confiscation planted them there. They were as a body an embarrassed, a deeply-involved body of men; and even in the ease of some of them who might have been unwilling to act harshly, they had been, by a compulsion derived from the evil days of their forefathers, forced to be so. He had recently become acquainted with some facts that would explain his meaning to the House. For the eight years succeeding the passing of the Encumbered Estates Court Act, the area of Irish land sold in the Courts was 3,500,000 acres, the rental of these lands was £1,250,000, while the scheduled encumbrances upon them amounted to £36,000,000. Thus it would be seen that the landlords of these estates, with a rental of £1,250,000, were liable for the interest on encumbrances which amounted to £2,000,000 per annum. Any thoughtful man would see that the existence of the tenants of these men must have been a life-long

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  agony. One of the advantages which was expected from the Landed Estates Court was that it would do away with the rollicking spendthrift landlord, and replace him by a man of more commercial principles; but, instead of that, it had added a new curse, for he was succeeded by the Ebenezer Scrooge, who had made his money over the counter, and who went into the business of landlord with a gaming spirit as a commercial speculation, and determined to extort the last penny the soil could afford. Now, how did the Land League take its rise? The House was aware that in the three years previous to the year 1879 the harvest had been bad beyond the memory of man. The bulk of the tenants were driven to the village moneylender—to the gombeen man; they were unable to pay their rents, or any debts; they were unable to procure the barest necessaries of life, and were forced to pawn even their clothes and the poor and miserable furniture of their families in order to live. In this extreme crisis the landlords showed no disposition to give mercy to the people. He challenged contradiction of this statement. Evictions and notices to quit flew about like snowflakes, and tenants were cast out in such numbers that nothing could be expected or looked for but national revolution. The landlords not only abstained from any work of mercy, but scorned to take advantage of the loans offered by the State; and those who did get loans in many instances had the cynicism and heartlessness to spend those loans for purposes other than those for which they were borrowed. It was then that the Land League came into existence, and but for the Land League there would have been something like guerilla war in the country. What were the objects of that League, for, although proclaimed as an illegal assembly, it had not morally ceased to exist, and had not practically ceased to exist, and would one day resume its active existence? Its objects were two, and were plainly stated upon its card of membership. Its first object was to put an end to rack-renting and eviction and landlord oppression. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister professed to have attained that object by his Land Act; but he was one of those who thought he had not been successful. The second object of the League was to enable the
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  tenants to become, on fair terms, the owners of the soil. This had been called rapine, plunder, revolution; but he must confess that he was not only amused but bewildered when he heard statesmen of experience, who must be aware of the exact causes and progress of agrarian reform in every country, express themselves in these terms concerning propositions which were not only feasible, but had recently actually been carried out in practice in that country in Europe—Prussia—which was the most peaceful, the most successful, and the most powerful on the Continent. He had said that the right hon. Gentleman had succeeded in carrying out the first object of the Land League; and he could tell the right hon. Gentleman that the time would come, and it was not far distant, when he or some other statesman in his place would recognize the necessity for carrying out the second object of the Land League. If a statesman could not be found to do so on the Government side of the House, one would be found on the Conservative side to do so; because the landlords of Ireland, who were not as dull as they were obstinate, had discovered that the "no rent" manifesto meant a great deal—namely, that the principle that it embodied rested not in the fixing or the reduction of rents as much as on the severing the landlords from the soil by fair and equitable terms of purchase. In the document which was originally put forth by the Land League in 1879 this latter object was clearly stated, it being announced that the purchasing out of the landlords should be effected on the basis of a 20 years' valuation. He was not so certain that that offer would be repeated now; but at that time, at all events, it formed one of the planks of the platform of the Land League. He must, therefore, confess that there was some reason in the arguments put forward by hon. Members on his side of the House to show that the right hon. Gentleman, if he moved in the matter at all, should have taken action against the Land League much sooner than he did. On the part of Her Majesty's Government spasmodic and hysterical efforts had been made to prove that the Land League was now something very different from what it had been when it was first originated. He, however, denied that any change whatever had taken place in either the policy,

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  the principles, or the mode of action of the Land League. An attempt had been made to identify the Land League with the outrages that had occurred in certain parts of Ireland; but it did not require much knowledge of history to know that whenever any men in any country became troublesome to a strong Government, whenever they set themselves to abolish abuses in which vested interests were concerned, they must expect to be calumniated, traduced, and to have their every action misconstrued. When the Government attributed to the Land League complicity with outrages, let them remember of whom that body consisted. It consisted of a number of the Members of that House, of the principal agriculturists, and of the professional men in Ireland. Anybody looking over the roll of members of the Land League must recognize at once that the accusation which coupled these names with outrage and crime was farcical and wanton in the extreme. How were the local branches constituted generally? At the head of these branches would be found the parish priest, supported by the assistant clergy; while the managing committees consisted in the towns of the most successful merchants, and in the rural parishes of the most respectable farmers. He had personal knowledge of the members of the Land League in nearly every town in Ireland, and he assured the House, upon his honour, that what he stated was the exact truth. How could it be conceived that such men would identify themselves with outrages? And yet these were the men whom the Government, acting under the powers of an Act directed against miscreants and midnight assassins, had thrown into prison. A good deal had been said about "Boycotting." The system of "Boycotting" had not been the invention of the Land League; on the contrary, it had existed in Ireland long before the Land League was established, as it had existed in other countries. It was not confined to any social grade. They understood it in Pall Mall quite as well as in Mayo. There was an irresistible instinct in the human mind which drove men suffering under a sense of wrong to resort to that method of expressing their feelings. Among the rules of the Land League were two, upon which it mainly depended for its success. One was that no tenant should act singly on the question of rent; but that as the
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  despotic power of the landlord had always sprung out of the fact that he took the tenants one by one and isolated them, the tenants, to paralyze this power, should band themselves together, and offer him what the needy times in which they lived enabled them to afford; and the other rule was that no tenant should take a farm from which another tenant had been evicted. The pivot upon which the old system of tyranny turned, and on which the landlord power in Ireland rested, arose from the fierce and hungry competition for land which existed in the country. Whenever a farm fell vacant, no matter through what injustice, no matter what was the rent asked for it, some miserable creature, driven to his wits' ends for the moans of living, was willing to come forward, and, in competition with others of his class, to offer, or least to promise, whatever rent the landlord asked. So long as that system was allowed to continue, the landlords had the matter entirely in their own hands; while upon the other side of the question there was a body of tenants hard-worked, without requital for their labour, miserable, oppressed, anxious, and discontented. The Land League established a rule based upon voluntary action. The tenants should not isolate themselves on the question of rent, but should act together, and that no tenant should take a farm from which another had been unjustly evicted. It was in reference to the last part of the rule that the device of "Boycotting" came into force, because there were still men who could persist in acting against the interests of the tenants, and the tenants concurred in using it, and he conceived, and should always assert it, that they were perfectly justified. ["No, no!"] When any man acted against their interest, and preferred his own selfish ends to the public good, they were, he repeated, justified in socially discountenancing such a man; they were justified in refusing to hold intercourse with him, and, he would add, they were justified in refusing to work for him, because, in obedience to his own selfish interest, he had proclaimed himself a public enemy. If the people of Ireland had any rational method of expressing their wishes and preserving and guarding their interests by laws made by themselves, he should be very slow to say that any individual man in such a community should be sub-

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  jected to anything which might be called persecution; but when the Irish people had no such right, when they were represented simply by a few men in that House who could be voted down at any moment; that when they had practically no effective existence within the bounds of the Constitution, what were they to do? Were they to suffer sneaks and traitors of that kind to do what they pleased, and to perpetuate a bad and tyrannical system, which made every tenant the slave and serf of the landlord? No; the "Boycotting" system, so long as it was confined to social discountenancing and to negative action, was a rule not only necessary for the success of the movement, but thoroughly justified on grounds of expediency and even morals. He claimed that on the authority of the Land League, and by the sanction of its prominent members, "Boycotting" could never be advanced an inch beyond the sphere of negative action; and the Land League had as little to do with "Boycotting" which included outrage and crime as it had to do with the transit of Venus. The Land League never required for the success of its movement the universal obedience of Ireland. There was plenty of room for dissensions. They desired that there should be complete liberty of action; and if the hon. Member for Galway looked through his speeches—[Mr. MITCHELL HENRY: I have done so.] The hon. Member knew the truth of what he (Mr. Sexton) said. If he looked through his speeches, he would find strewn through them broadcast adjurations to the people to confine themselves to the wise and sufficient rules of the Land League. He did that because he desired to keep the movement within the recognized bounds of morals. They had been told by the right hon. Gentleman, who was a great interpreter of hidden meanings, which nobody but himself could discover, that the Land League had desired that these outrages should take place in order to enforce their decrees. That was far from being the fact, because these outrages had endangered their whole movement, and had given the Government an excuse for coercion. He asked hon. Members to consider what would have happened in Ireland if there had been no Land League. Evidently, if there had been no Land League there would have been
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  no Land Act. Could anyone doubt that fact? [Mr. MITCHELL HENRY: I do.] The hon. Member for Galway seemed to be alone in his opinion; but the truth of the matter was that when the Prime Minister, two years ago, outlined a great number of subjects of legislation, the Irish Land Question was certainly not included in the list. In the first Session of the present Parliament the Irish Members had introduced a small Bill, a Bill of respite, intended to save certain Irish. tenants from the ruin of eviction. The right hon. Gentleman had passed it through the House, so to speak, at the point of the bayonet; but neither he nor the other Members of the Government had shown any desire to deal with the question when the Bill was summarily thrown out by the House of Lords. On the contrary, they contemplated the situation with the utmost meekness, and, but for the Land League, would not have moved further in the matter. The position now was this—that, whereas up to October last the Government had. looked on with complacency, if not with pleasure, at the agitation sustained by the Land League—an agitation necessary for the furtherance and completion of their legislative designs—the moment their infant Hercules found his way into the world the natural parental fondness asserted itself, and the League, which had hitherto been regarded as a useful ally, was treated as an enemy. Why? They had been told that it sometimes happened that the leading advocates of reform became the enemies of reform when it was granted. They were not the enemies of reform. They were willing and anxious to take out of the Land Act whatever benefit it contained; but their crime, in the eyes of the Government, was that they did not choose to bend the knee before Cæsar. They did not accept the fruit of the Prime Minister's intellect as a final settlement of the Irish Land Question; they rather strove for that second object declared in 1879—the abolition of landlordism in Ireland. It was for that object they had been proclaimed, denounced, imprisoned, and maligned in that House and in every part of the country. One entertaining feature in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland was his references to America. America was a very favourite topic with the right hon. Gentlemen on

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  the front of the Treasury Benches when speaking about the Land League. They seemed to think it a strange and melancholy dispensation of fate that there should be another Ireland in America. Why was there another Ireland in America? Because the Governments which in succession had sat upon the Treasury Benches had been participators in the criminal and wicked course by which the Irish landlords denied the Irish people a home in their own land. For many a year and many a generation the Irish people had seen the rooftree overturned by the crowbar; had been driven out on the roadside and away in the emigrant ship; had been driven penniless, wretched, and desperate, to find a living at the end of the earth. They had gone forth with two feelings strong in their hearts—despairing love of their country that they never again would see, and fierce eternal hate of the Government of England. And the right hon. Gentleman wondered that these men should have gone forth cursing the Irish landlords and the English Government, and that they, when a movement was on foot in Ireland to emancipate those whom they left behind to suffer from the system which exiled them, should now send their contributions to Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman said he must count upon the contributions of those exiles as a factor in the Irish movement. "He must digest the venom of this gall, though it should split him." The right hon. Gentleman held them responsible for the writings of The Irish World. Well, The Irish World had undoubtedly sent some portions of the funds which had maintained the Irish Land League; but The Irish World was not the sole contributor to the funds. Contributions had poured in from various parts of America, and through various channels; and if the right hon. Gentleman took sufficient interest in the Land League to observe the subscriptions for the past month, he might have seen that they amounted to over £20,000, the largest amount ever yet subscribed in a single month, and he would have seen that by far the largest portion of that amount came from other sources than The Irish World. He was not responsible, neither was the hon. Member for Cork City, nor even the Land League responsible, for anything written by The Irish World, or by
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  any other American newspaper. They were responsible for the written and avowed principles of the Land League, and for nothing else. The right hon. Gentleman said that Government was driven into the course which they had adopted against the Land League. They believed that otherwise the law would have become powerless, that industry would be impossible in Ireland, and that liberty could not have existed. But, in a later part of his speech, the right hon. Gentleman answered himself, because he said that the state of the relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland and the system of land tenure was such that quiet was impossible, that industry could not thrive, and that reform could not be attained. It was rather too soon for the right hon. Gentleman to presume upon the adequacy of the infant Hercules to cope with the evils of such a system, especially as there was every reason to believe that this infant was in a galloping consumption. Some hon. Members and the House were, perhaps, aware that on the arrest of his hon. Friend, Mr. Dillon, in the month of April, he assumed the direction of the Land League; and as he was one of those who had been charged by the right hon. Gentleman with moral responsibility for crime of various degrees of enormity, up even to the highest crime, he thought it might be well if he asked the House to attend for a few moments while he exhibited a few brief extracts from his published speeches to show the spirit in which the Land League was conducted during the final months of its career. Addressing the meeting of the League on the 17th of May—and he desired to remark that he was at the time responsible to the Executive of the Land League for the direction of its public policy—he said—
  "Our marvellous success is strong from the fact that our principles have been sound, our statements accurate, our objects laudable and necessary for the public good, and that the means which we have put forward for the attainment of those objects were such as neither in morality nor in justice can be questioned."
  Again, on the the 31st May, addressing the League, he said—
  "The Government know that this organization sprang into existence because of an imperative necessity. They know it asks nothing but what public necessity demands, and they know it proposes no means for the furtherance of its objects but the means that religion and conscience and morality approve of."

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  Then, referring to the arrest of his friend, John O'Connor, he said—
  "I will say there was no man in the community who by nature and by training, by conviction and by the habit of his life, was so truly the friend of public peace, or a more sincere champion of public order."
  And then he went on to urge the people to be prudent, and to express his confident reliance on the constitutional character of the League, which they were determined to maintain to the end. On the 7th June, the Rev. Mortimer O'Connor, parish priest of Ballybunion, in the County Kerry, occupied the chair at the meeting of the League, and said—
  "I established a branch of the Land League in my parish and became its president. Every householder in the parish, farmer, labourer, and tradesman, joined it, with the result that the most perfect tranquillity prevails and serious crime is altogether unknown. The restraining influence of the League was clearly visible. The same is the tone of the surrounding parishes. It also applies in a greater or less extent to Munster. Should the Government suppress this organization, which walks openly in the light of day, and hides nothing, the population will be brought face to face with the armed forces of the realm."
  Perhaps that was what the right hon. Gentleman desired.
  "Without restraining or controlling influences in their struggle for existence our suffering fellow-countrymen will be driven into a course which reason and religion alike condemns."
  On the same day he (Mr. Sexton), addressing the Land League, said—
  "There was a duty now upon every man who had any influence with the people to advise them to self-control, and that every man should feel it his sacred duty to act as if the safety and welfare of the people depended upon his labour."
  And yet he was told that the League was an organization which depended upon intimidation and outrage. On the 14th June, Mr. John Ferguson, of Glasgow, occupied the chair at the meeting of the League, and he said—
  "They intended to work this movement out on the lines of constitutional agitation—by brain and tongue, and, what had never been tried in Ireland before, the powers which the trades union organization gave them."
  It might be interesting to the House to know that at the end of July the League, on his motion, so strongly did he feel an interest in the preservation of social order in Ireland, passed a resolution adjuring the Catholics of Ulster not to interfere with the Orangemen on the
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  occasion of the Orange anniversary, the result being that the celebration passed off as quietly as possible. The Catholics of Ulster obeyed that request, and, for the first time for many years, there was no breach of the peace in the province of Ulster at that Orange anniversary. He had not heard that the economy of public finance thus procured by the Land League had been acknowledged by the Government. On the 28th of June he said at a meeting of the League—
  "We will use every power within the boundary of admitted right, and we will use it firmly in the assertion of our rights to live in our own native land."
  On the 5th July he said—
  "I am proud to be able to claim for the Land League that, for the first time in the history of Ireland, it has effectually interfered between those two sections of the people in the North of Ireland who had been kept apart by class prejudice and hate."
  On the same day he further said, alluding to an arrest that had been made—
  "He was not only a leader of the people in the South, but applies a thoughtful nature and powerful intellect to the repression of the passions of the people, which might lead to violence and crime. The Government knew this well, and knew also that in his speeches he conveyed that the peaceful objects of the League were sufficient. The Government, feeling it was not within the scope of possibility to accuse my friend of inciting to violence, availed themselves of a clause, the cowardly purpose of which was apparent to the Irish Members while the Bill was passing through the House, and arrested him for treasonable practices."
  The Government, he would now add, exercised that clause in a far more conspicuous cause. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department had, immediately before this date, made a speech in which he had endeavoured, as he endeavoured now by hints and shrugs and anonymous placards and bits cut out of newspapers, to associate the Land League with outrage; and this was his (Mr. Sexton's) reply—
  "Sir William Harcourt has condemned the Land League. He has endeavoured to give it a character which might prove most suitable for any purpose of repression which might be entertained by the Government. But how had he arrived at this conclusion? Had he judged the Land League by its articles and associations, or by its published rules? Had he judged it by the modes of action it had urged upon the people? Had he judged it by the speeches of its responsible members, or by the course of the movement, carried on as it had been in the

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  face of heaven and the world? No. But he had gone about—as the right hon. and learned Gentleman had since gone about—like a political scavenger, even to the ends of the earth, sweeping up here a sentence from some speech, and there a sentence from some newspaper. The most inconsiderable trifle was welcome if it could only contribute to increase the heap of rubbish."
  At the last meeting of the League which he attended, immediately before his illness, he defined, in a few words, what he conceived to be the foundation of those test cases, which had come into violent denunciation so much of late. He said—
  "The object of the League was to select those test cases which, upon a view of the condition of the country and the state of the various classes of tenants, will put the question before the Court in the form best calculated to serve the country, and to make known the real point and meaning of the Act."
  At the last meeting of the League ever held—the meeting at which the manifesto was read—that was the 19th of October—the chair was taken by an ecclesiastic as eminent, as able, and as virtuous as any of whom Ireland could boast—the Rev. James Cantwell, the administrator of the archdiocese of Cashel; and here they had the last words ever spoken on the platform of the League. He said—
  "I appeal and exhort each one of you, in conclusion, that you yourselves, and, so far as your influence goes over others, will abstain from using violence of any sort in the country. Our position is passive resistance. We are an unarmed people, and every man of sense who loves his country, who wishes to do nothing to bring disgrace and injury upon it, will do all he can to prevent violent action."
  With these words the legal existence of the League terminated; and these words were spoken by an eminent and virtuous clergymen from the chair of the association, who had been denounced as the aider and abettor of outrages and intimidation. These words, he said, the last ever spoken in connection with the League, would remain upon its records to the latest day in defiance of calumny and in repulse of falsehood. The right hon. Gentleman told them that he should not have arrested the hon. Member for the City of Cork and the other Members of Parliament if they had confined themselves to giving advice; but in the face of all that had been said, in the face of the published proceedings of the League, in the face of its known, uncontradicted,
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  and uncontradictable, peaceful, passive policy, he had discovered in some mysterious manner that the hon. Member for the City of Cork and the other Members were responsible not only for advice, but for threats—not merely for threats, but for outrages. He confessed he was utterly unable to follow the course of reasoning by which the right hon. Gentleman arrived at his conclusion. He arrived at it, as he had just said, by the method of the political scavenger. Mr. Parnell said at the Tyrone Election, and the right hon. Gentleman thought he had made a great discovery, that the end and object of the Land League was the abolition of all rent, and the making of the people the owners of the land. He asked what was there novel in that? He might have found precisely the same thing in any speech of Mr. Parnell's delivered three years ago—and what was the impropriety of such a statement, provided it was accompanied, as it was on the Land League platform, with the statement that the landlords should be severed from the soil by purchase on fair and equitable terms? Mr. Parnell said in order to carry out the policy of the League it would be necessary to keep evicted farms vacant. The right hon. Gentleman professed to believe that this involved some violence, some threats, illegal and secret action. Certainly not. The League from the beginning relied, and had reason to rely, upon the sufficiency of social opinion, and the negative system of "Boycotting," to keep those farms vacant. The right hon. Gentleman contested indignantly the notion that Mr. Parnell was arrested because of his reply to the Prime Minister. He (Mr. Sexton) could assure him that a widespread suspicion to that effect existed amongst the Irish people. Mr. Parnell replied to the Premier upon the 9th of October, and upon the 13th of October Mr. Parnell was arrested. There was just sufficient time for communication between the two right hon. Gentlemen who sat side by side upon the Treasury Bench; and the prevailing opinion was that if Mr. Parnell had not denounced the Prime Minister as a coercionist and a slanderer of the Irish people, he might have enjoyed a somewhat longer term of liberty. If Mr. Parnell was not arrested upon the ground of his reply to the Prime Minister, why was it that

  663
  they had no explanation of the arrest of Mr. Dillon? It was a curious coincidence that only four days elapsed between Mr. Parnell's reply and the Prime Minister's Leeds speech and his arrest, and four days between Mr. Dillon's speech spurning the praises of the Prime Minister and his arrest. He would now say a few words about the warrants for treasonable practices. Treasonable practice was an exceedingly useful bogey. If the average British mind was not sufficiently frightened by the state of affairs in Ireland to swallow anything the Government might propose, the issue of two or three warrants for treasonable practice made everything easy and plain. The warrant was not served upon Mr. Parnell until he had been three days in gaol. There were 17 days between the 26th of September, when the alleged treasonable speech was delivered, and the 13th of October, when Mr. Parnell was arrested, and he maintained that the idea of serving a warrant for treasonable practice was an afterthought. When it became necessary to persuade the British mind of the terrible condition of affairs in Ireland the idea of making the charge of treasonable practice occurred to the Government. Upon what was that charge founded? Upon two or three lines in a speech delivered in a moment of great excitement at a torchlight meeting in the City of Dublin. The hon. Member for the City of Cork said—"The spirit which had been raised in Ireland could never die." For his own part he hoped and believed that it never would die. He was glad to say that in the House of Commons, and he should be ready to say it as soon as he returned to Ireland. The spirit which had been raised in Ireland was a spirit which for the full development and furtherance of the object it sought needed no concern with treason or treasonable practices. For the satisfaction of that spirit there was ample scope within the bounds of our Constitution. Mr. Parnell urged his hearers not to cease in their agitation till the detestable alien rule of the "buckshot" Government, which had kept the country impoverished, had been got rid of. Well, he most earnestly shared that hope. He trusted the speech of the Prime Minister a few days ago foreshadowed the time when all politicians in this country and the bulk of the
  664
  British people would perceive that, for the harmony of public life and the safety of their interests, it was desirable and necessary that what the hon. Member for the City of Cork denounced as alien rule should be got rid of in Ireland, and that the affairs of Ireland should be managed and directed by native rule alone. Mr. Parnell concluded his speech in these terms—
  "We shall not permit ourselves to be tempted for one instant beyond our strength. We are warned by the history of the past that we must fight within the lines of the Constitution."
  Was it ever heard of before that a warrant for treasonable practice should be served on a man for a speech in which he openly declared that he intended to fight the movement by means recognized by law and within the bounds of the Constitution? Out of the mouth of the hon. Member for the City of Cork he convicted the Chief Secretary of a false and malicious arrest. He himself enjoyed the honour of a brace of warrants. The first proclaimed that he had incited some people to intimidate some other people not to do something which the other people had a right to do. The second said that he had been guilty of treasonable practices. He awaited the opening of the Session with considerable curiosity, expecting to be favoured with some intelligible account of the reason for so formidable a charge. The right hon. Gentleman, of course, endeavoured to eke out a miserable ease by saying it was a treasonable practice to make an organized attempt to replace the Queen's Courts by other Courts. Such an idea never for a moment entered into the conception of the Land League. Indeed, he should show that the Land League and the hon. Member for the City of Cork actually intended to use the Queen's Courts in the most judicious, the most rapid, and the most inexpensive manner. They wished to know as soon as possible how much the Land Act meant as a measure of reform and relief for the different classes of tenants in Ireland. He now came to the charge of treasonable practices against himself. Between May and October he delivered about 100 speeches in Dublin and other parts of Ireland; but he was arrested because of one line in a speech delivered in the open air at a moment of great excitement to an immense torchlight meeting. What he said was that Dublin

  665
  had broken loose from the lion and the unicorn, and had arrayed itself that evening under the banner of the sham-rook and the harp. He did not suppose at the time that those animals, the lion and the unicorn, were so sacred in the theory of the British Constitution. He might say with perfect accuracy that at the moment of making that allusion he was not thinking of the Parliamentary or other relations between Great Britain and Ireland. Indeed, he was not thinking of Ireland at all. He was thinking of certain social aspects of life in the City of Dublin, where the lion and the unicorn were seen over the shops of the Castle tradesmen, and thus appeared to be the types of a certain slavishness and toadyism; for the Castle balls, where all the slavish elements of the community congregated, were held out as inducements to those who could be tempted from the popular side. He jocularly described the torchlight meeting as a happy departure from the old meetings in Dublin and as a great and patriotic gathering of the people. If it were a jocular remark it was rather a serious joke for him, because the right hon. Gentleman smelt treason in it. He was consequently taken out of bed, taken to Kilmainham, put into bed there, and kept there for 18 days in bed, so that he had ample opportunity of experiencing that philanthropy which, they were told, so distinguished the character of the Chief Secretary, which had been celebrated by the Leader of the Government in language which was likely to earn for the right hon. Gentleman an enduring fame. The right hon. Gentleman would have a more enduring monument than brass or marble, and not only his name but his memory would hereafter be held in unchangeable execration. He would add one sentence. Although the condition of his health when he was taken to Kilmainham might have earned the consideration of even a sterner gaoler, the right hon. Gentleman took advantage of it to deny him the ordinary privilege of visits from his friends. They came and were allowed to stand from 11 to 5 waiting, and because he could not go into the visiting cell they were not allowed to see him. He was, he was proud to say, one of those who signed the "no rent" manifesto, and in consequence the right hon. Gentleman imposed another penalty, and condemned him to seven days' solitary
  666
  confinement, by not allowing any fellow-prisoners to visit him. Thus, under the régime of the right hon. Gentleman—the Philanthropist who spent his youth in the hovels and the cabins, but whose age was spent in reversing the conduct of his youth—he suffered seven days' solitary imprisonment, and suffered indignities and pains which he should hesitate to describe to the House. He would mention, however, that on one occasion the hon. Member for the City of Cork was obliged to leave his cell because the hon. Member for Roscommon had left immediately before, and for nameless reasons it was against the rule to allow his friend to remain. Those were the rules which, under the Philanthropist's régime, were applied to prisoners who had been arrested on false and fraudulent pretences. He thought the right hon. Gentleman, who so signalized and so unhappily distinguished himself, would hereafter be remembered by the Irish peasantry and people as a sort of clumsy Cromwell—a sort of commonplace Cromwell—a man who had all the spirit and all the will to tyrannize without Cromwell's capacity or genius. He would next refer to the charges against the hon. Member for the City of Cork. The main charge was his policy in respect of the Land Act, and he (Mr. Sexton) proposed to make it clear to the House what the hon. Gentleman's policy really was, and how little it deserved the denunciations that had been levelled against it. Mr. Parnell explained his policy in a speech delivered on the 15th of September, at the Convention in Dublin, not only with regard to the Land Act, but also to the National Question. When ulterior objects were imputed to Mr. Parnell, he would say that every Irishman worthy of the name had "ulterior objects" in view. Mr. Parnell himself and other associates of the Land League regarded the land movement as only a stepping-stone to that union of classes which would lead to the restoration of the rights of Ireland; but they denied that those ulterior objects involved any reproach. They consisted in the performance and consummation of a patriotic duty, and within the lines which had been laid down for them by the most eminent authorities they would fight for these ulterior objects to the end. Mr. Parnell expressed his belief that as long as the question of how much rent

  667
  the tenant should pay remained in dispute, it would prove a source of discontent and enmity between the classes of the country. Michael Davitt, he further declared, truly saw that the first step to be taken towards the recovery of their legislative independence was the abolition of landlordism. It was not, said Mr. Parnell, a question of novel or condemnable revolution; it was a question of regaining the rights of the Irish people, and recovering their legislative independence. Mr. Parnell had been subject to fierce attacks, because it was said that he proposed to reduce the rental of Ireland from £17,000,000 to £2,000,000 or £3,000,000. But he only used the figures £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 to point out what the tenant had done, and he intimated that some intermediate point between £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 and £17,000,000 might be fixed upon by way of compromise, and as "a just and fitting medium." Then he went on to speak of the necessity of securing to the tenant all his improvements, even beyond 30 years' past, and of presuming that unless the landlord could prove that he had executed them they were the tenant's. He proceeded to quote the language of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, used during the passage of the recent Act through Parliament, to the effect that nine-tenths of the land of Ireland would be as bare of houses and gardens and cultivation, but for the labour of the tenants, as an American prairie; that nine-tenths of the houses, land, gardens, fences, whatever was called cultivation, was put there by the labours and at the expense of the tenants, and not at the expense of the landlords. Then Mr. Parnell, after thus quoting the right hon. Gentleman, went on to say that the Land Act just passed gave one-tenth of his improvements to the tenant, and it would be their duty to struggle to obtain from the Legislature of Great Britain the remaining nine-tenths, to which, according to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, they were entitled. The estimate of £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 might be considered extravagant, but unquestionably the extravagance and the responsibility of the statement lay with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. If the declaration of that right hon. Gentleman was carried into effect
  668
  the result would be something like a reduction of the rent roll of Ireland from £17,000,000 to £2,000,000 or £3,000,000. To illustrate the manner in which rents had been raised upon the tenants' improvements, he would give the evidence as to the history of one estate of a well-known land agent, Mr. Townshend Trench. Mr. Trench represented the case as a typical and by no means unusual one. In 1606 the estate in question was leased by the Earl of Essex at a rent of £250. In 1692 it was divided into moieties, each producing £ 1,300 a year. In 1769 the rental had risen to £8,000, and in 1843, 74 years later, to £40,000. What made that five-fold increase in value during those years? It was the labour of the tenant, and nothing that the landlord had done. Taking the Healy Clause in conjunction with the declaration of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, he confessed he was amazed and bewildered to account not merely for the imprisonment of the hon. Member for the City of Cork, but for the charges of public immorality which had been made against him. The Healy Clause, which received the assent of both Houses of Parliament, declared that no rent should be made payable for improvements executed by the tenant or his predecessors in title unless they had been compensated for them by the landlord. According to the reading of the lawyers, who were guided by the Act of 1870, that should not extend farther back than 30 years. Why should it not? Why should it not apply to improvements made 100 years ago, as well as improvements made yesterday? But the hon. Member for the City of Cork did not see in the reduction of the rental of Ireland to £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 the final solution of the Land Question. The final solution, he believed, would be the abolition of landlordism by purchase; and he mentioned £2,000,000 or £3,000,000, as the sum to which the rental might be reduced, for the purpose of making more clear the untenable position of the landlords of Ireland. If the rights of the landlords of Ireland were represented by such a small figure, it was to the interest of every one of them to put an end to the landlords' interest in the soil of Ireland. With reference to the test cases, Mr. Parnell, in one of his speeches, said that they were necessary in order

  669
  to show the landlords and the farmers what scale would be fixed if any application were made to the Court. He also had said that now the Act had become law it must be dealt with to the best advantage. Notwithstanding that statement, the hon. Member for the City of Cork had been thrown into prison for endeavouring to thwart the operation of the Act. Mr. Parnell had also said that his object in bringing these test cases was in order to get the Court to fix the rent as low as possible. A further object that the hon. Member for the City of Cork had in view was, by selecting average cases, to ascertain at the earliest moment what would be the amount of benefit afforded by the Act to the general body of the tenantry of Ireland. They had felt that if cases of rack-renting were first introduced to the Court, and first dealt with, such large reductions would be made that the Court would acquire a false reputation, the effect of which would be to induce the tenants in large numbers to rush into the Court and be miserably deceived. That had, in fact, happened, and 70,000 suitors had already appeared because the Government, instead of listening to the wisely and carefully considered policy of the hon. Member for the City of Cork, and permitting the Court first to deal with the average rental of the country, silenced Mr. Parnell, extinguished the Land League, and left the Court to deal with cases of rack-rent, and had thus generated false hopes among the general body of the tenants. The tenants were thus induced to rush in tens of thousands into Court and to involve themselves in legal costs which already had terribly aggravated their position. It had been said that the issue of the manifesto was due to the arrest of the hon. Member for the City of Cork. That was a complete fabrication. It was due to the practical suppression of the Land League. He had been amused to hear the controversy the other night between the two front Benches upon the question whether the Land League was suppressed when the Land Act came into operation. The Land League was not suppressed by Lord Cowper's proclamation. That proclamation added nothing in effect to the arrests that had already taken place. Those arrests drove the Land League practically out of effective existence.
  670
  Not only were the Members for the City of Cork, Tipperary, and Roscommon, and himself, put under restraint, but the junior Member for Queen's County became the subject of a warrant, which, however, was not executed. Warrants were also issued for the Members for Wexford and Cavan. The Member for the borough of Wexford (Mr. Healy) was then engaged in selecting those very cases which the Land League had proposed to put before the Court. Not only were the political Members of the League arrested, but the secretary and the clerks in the office, and the secretary's agents and managers who had been sent over all parts of the country for the purpose of selecting cases, were arrested and dragged into various prisons. The Government, with all the truculence of the Russian system of police, but without any of the Russian frankness, deprived the League of the means for carrying out the ordinary routine transactions. It therefore became plain to the Leaders of the League, before the issue of the manifesto, that the directing of a letter or an envelope or the sending of a telegram would lead to the arrest of any man. At the moment when they had prepared hundreds of test cases, and using the legal skill at the service of the League to put those cases before the Court in the most effective form—at that moment the Government, by a hypocritical and fatally effective policy, arrested the political, clerical, and business staff of the League; and it was a miserable fiction to say that the suppression of the League was re-reserved for the proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant. The Leaders of the League wanted in the first place to get the rents adjudicated upon, and secondly to secure the tenants against the expenditure of money in legal costs. The plan now in force was that every case in the Land Courts spoke for itself, and for nothing else. The plan of the hon. Member for the City of Cork, infinitely more economical and statesmanlike, was this—that test cases should be selected in every district, sometimes it might be the case of an estate on which the rents had been raised to confiscation of improvements, sometimes of a mountainous region on which the improvements were slight—at all events, their determination was to include examples of various descriptions of tenants in

  671
  every part of Ireland. Their conviction was that when the test eases had been adjudicated upon, say to the number of 1,000 or 2,000, there would then be on record decisions of the Court which would enable the other landlords and tenants to see what would be the result of their own cases when they went into Court. In that way it was hoped that 2,000 or 3,000 cases would do the work of 200,000 or.300,000. Upon the day succeeding his arrest Mr. Parnell was interviewed by a reporter of The Freeman's Journal, who asked the hon. Member if his arrest would not have an effect on the policy which the League would then pursue. Let the House hearken to Mr. Parnell's answer, which was that he should expect the League to make no change in the policy which had been declared at the Convention, and that if the country would faithfully carry out that policy the whole of their requirements would be fulfilled. But when in the course of the succeeding days Mr. Parnell saw the deliberate character of the policy of the right hon. Gentleman, and his unmistakable determination to strike the League out of effective existence, and that the Leaders of the League could no longer raise hand or foot to help the tenants to bring their cases into Court, then, and only then, did the hon. Member for the City of Cork perceive the necessity for the manifesto described as "no rent." He (Mr. Sexton) was free to confess that he was one of those who had frequently urged the issue of that manifesto, and who must take the credit or blame, or responsibility, as the case might be, of having offered to the hon. Member some of those arguments which induced him to perceive the necessity of that manifesto. Now, he would charge the Chief Secretary with having taken from that manifesto and using them against Mr. Parnell words which it did not contain. It would be worth while for the House to listen to what the manifesto really said. The manifesto declared that this course—no rent—had been deliberately forced on the country while the Land Act was as yet untested, in order to strike down the only power which had extracted any solid benefit for the tenant farmers of Ireland from the Land Act. It also said that cases of an essential character which had been prepared with great labour—which he (Mr. Sexton) could
  672
  well confirm—had been put down for adjudication in the Land Courts. He was aware that for many days preceding his arrest, Mr. Parnell sat far into the night elaborating the details of these cases, selecting with all the force of his intellect those which might most fairly and fully raise the cases of the tenants generally before Court. The manifesto continued in some such words as the following:—" We are obliged to announce to our countrymen that we no longer possess the machinery necessary for the adequate presentation of the test cases to the Court." The fact was that the Government had stopped the machinery, so that nothing was left to those who issued the document but to continue the war in the spirit in which it had been begun, and to strike their hardest blow in answer to the blow that had been struck by Her Majesty's Ministers. The manifesto went on to say that the Executive of the National Land League, being forced to abandon the policy of testing the Land Act, felt bound to advise the tenant-farmers of Ireland to pay no rent until the Government should relinquish a system of terrorism, and restore the constitutional rights of the people. At that moment the Prime Minister was petting the landlords, and aiding an association which had been established to defeat the claims of the tenants. The Lord Mayor of London, with a degree of enterprize not often noticeable among civic dignitaries, was establishing an association to help the Irish landlords to fight against and plunder their tenants. Every influence of the Government and of society was being brought in favour of the landlord, yet at that moment the League was suppressed, and insult was added to injury by the cowardly action taken towards it. What were the Leaders of the League to do? Were the tenants to submit to eviction or to rush into the Land Courts? No. They—the Leaders—perceived that the only hope of encountering that action among the landlords so graphically described last night was to cut off their supplies. Bitter experience had taught the people that the payment of rent to the landlords in any degree was in effect the formation and establishment of a fund for the eviction and extinction of the tenants. He hoped he had now made it plain that the "no rent" manifesto strictly

  673
  limited the advice which it gave to the people, and that the period during which the advice was to be followed was a period limited by the discretion of the Government. Those who issued it placed themselves entirely in the hand of the Government, saying in effect,—"You have taken away from the unlettered ignorant peasantry the only defensive organization which they possessed. Force is all on your side, and you have thrown us into prison. All that we ask is that the contest may be equalized. Let your opponents take part in the struggle. Whenever you do this the manifesto will become a dead letter." Since the 20th of October last, it was within the power of the Government to have trusted to the merits of the Act in which they had believed so much, and the "no rent" policy—which was not intended to last until the last trumpet should sound—would have disappeared. The necessity for the issue of the manifesto had been abundantly proved by what had since occurred. Already, in the fourth month of its operation, the Land Act had proved a dismal failure. Even in the North of Ireland, in the Province of Ulster, where the farmers had never been affected by the Land League, great meetings had been held, uninfluenced by any revolutionary spirit, and guided only by a calm consideration of their interests; and declarations had been made that the Sub-Commissioners, in fixing and reducing rents, had not paid sufficient attention to the proper value of land in the different districts, or to the improvements of the tenants. The Land Act, he repeated, was a failure. It had failed having regard to the interests of the State, and it had also failed having regard to its effect upon the tenants. Up to last Christmas the cost of its operation was £90,000, and yet the Land Commission only dealt with £1,800 worth of rent in that time. How would the House receive the almost incredible fact that for every pound dealt with by the Land Commission before Christmas an expense of £50 was incurred by the State? If he were one of the economists on the Ministerialist side of the House he should shudder to think that there had been a reduction of only £400 in rents at a cost of £90,000 to the State. The game, then, was hardly worth the candle. Already only a few hundred cases had been dealt with by the Sub-Com-
  674
  missioners, and nearly one-half of their decisions had been appealed against in the Superior Courts; and the miserable tenants who were not in a position to pay arrears of rent, how were they to pass from the lower to the higher Courts? If the Government had but been willing to tolerate a statesman outside the Cabinet, and if the plan of the hon. Member for Cork had been allowed to come into operation, all this would have been rendered unnecessary. One case only under the Land Act had reached the final Court of Appeal; and he believed that the landlords would be encouraged by the Lord Mayor of London, the Prime Minister, and the First Commissioner of Works, to pursue every decision to the final Court of Appeal before the practical effects of the Act would be allowed to be felt at all. In the vast majority of cases that would be the result. There was already in the Land Courts a glut of 70,000 or 80,000 cases, and there were fully 100,000 tenants who were in arrears of rent; and the First Commissioner of Works on the previous night thought that the landlords had the right to evict those tenants, although the Land Courts of the Government had decided that the rents being paid in Ireland were unjust and oppressive, and yet the Government provided no remedy for this state of things. What was now happening? The landlords were at that moment—[Sir HERVEY BRUCE: Instigated by the Government.]—yes; and supported by the First Commissioner of Works, and the infant Hercules, with its body guard of 60,000 troops, determined to evict those 100,000 poor tenants now in arrear. A more shameful thing never took place under any Government in Ireland. What, however, was happening? The landlords were evading the Land Act in this way:—Against a tenant who owed arrears the landlord had the right to issue a writ from one of the Superior Courts for the recovery of the arrears, the new Land Court not affording the tenant any redress. Well, the landlords were going to the tenants and threatening them by saying that if they should dare to apply to the Land Court they would surely be evicted from their holdings for the non-payment of their arrears. As for the clause relating to arrears in the Act, it was nothing more than a dead letter; for instead of being compulsory it was only optional, and the landlord

  675
  might accept or refuse its provisions just as he pleased. He believed that not one single landlord had elected to be bound by it. In consequence of this choice being permitted, 100,000 tenants were left naked and defenceless in the hands of the landlords. The landlords were threatening that those poor tenants would be evicted for the old arrears, and the effect of this was that the tenants were obliged to accept whatever terms were offered to them by the landlords. He assured the Head of the Government that the Land Act was being evaded by the landlords all over the country; and because the Government had refused to provide in the Act protection for the tenants in arrear, the landlords were placing their arrears as an insurmountable barrier between their tenants and the Land Courts. Hon. Members might imagine that the Land Act applied to the whole of Ireland. It applied only to about half of Ireland. About 4,000,000 acres of superior land was held by leaseholders, who did not come at all within the Act; 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 acres of land were held by landlords who let it to graziers by agreement, for terms of 6 or 12 years. Therefore, between 7,000,000 and 8,000,000 acres of land in Ireland did not come under the operation of the Act at all. The Act was applicable to only about 7,000,000 acres of inferior land, which was held by the poorer classes of tenants. The value of this land was about £7,000,000 sterling, and no more; and if the Land Act could be applied to these 7,000,000 acres, based upon the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners—and their decisions had not been based upon any principle that he could discover—the result would be far from satisfactory. The decisions of the Commissioners, by some strange fortuitous circumstance, had come to what he might call a fluctuating level, like a Will-o'-the-Wisp over a bog, never on the surface exactly, but still visible at a certain line, and they appeared to have accepted Griffith's valuation as their basis—that which had been recommended by the Land League. But that was a decision which might have been acceptable some years ago, but which would not be acceptable now. What, for instance, would be the effect of a reduction on that basis on the 7,000,000 acres of land? Why, a gross reduction of about £1,500,000 sterling on the whole
  676
  rent of Ireland. Did the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister believe that the great agrarian movement in Ireland could be satisfied with a reduction of £1,500,000 sterling in the rents of the country, or a reduction of 2s in the pound in the rental of Ireland? The idea would be absurd. Even if this reduction came into operation tomorrow, it could not satisfy and could not abate the agrarian demands of the people. But, far from this being possible, it was now stated on authority that the reductions to be made in rent would henceforth be at a lower figure than 25 per cent. Then another point to be considered was this—that, no matter how closely the Land Commissioners applied themselves to their duties, between 20 and 30 years must elapse before the cases in the Land Court could be dealt with. But the Irish people were not prepared to wait until the 20th century, nor even until next year, to have the agrarian question settled. Seeing that the tenants of Ireland were unprotected, seeing that they had no organization to counsel them, seeing that they were liable to eviction and ruin, their friends recommended the only remedy—that there should be "no rent" paid until their defensive organization was restored to them. Considering how the landlords were evading the Land Act, considering how they were threatening to increase the costs of those who went into those Courts to have removed a rent that was unjust and tyrannical, he expressed the sincere and fervent hope that the tenants of Ireland would have the courage as well as the wisdom to stand upon the lines of the "no rent'' manifesto. He should not delay the House by proceeding to examine, as he had intended to examine, the grounds for considering the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary's claim to be called a philanthropist. Those claims were written broadly on the history of Ireland for the last few months. He had imprisoned and subjected to indignity and needless pain some of his fellow-Members of that House. He had arrested hundreds of the most respectable men in Ireland; and, while he spoke of the Land League as practising terrorism and intimidation on the people, he could not have failed to observe that anyone who was honoured by the right hon. Gentleman's warrant became immediately the object of vene-

  677
  ration and love to the Irish people. A man was arrested, and instantly a whole countryside assembled and reaped his crops, or ploughed his land, or cut and supplied his family with sufficient turf for the winter. A man was sent to Kilmainham, and he became a Poor Law Guardian before his release, or found himself elected as Chairman of the Board. A common burgess was imprisoned, and he was released to find himself a Mayor, or rather he did not come out, because the right hon. Gentleman kept him imprisoned, and only by a stretch of his philanthropy allowed the right worshipful "suspect" to sign the official declaration. All this showed that the Land League meant the Irish people, and that it was only nonsense and malignity to speak of it as terrorism. The proceeding of the right hon. Gentleman's Irish policy reached its climax of absurdity with regard to United Ireland, the Ladies' Land League, and the Political Prisoners' Aid Society. The hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) on one occasion amused the House by describing the right hon. Gentleman as "a lady-killer." He thought the description scarcely applied now, for the present situation in Ireland was this—the right hon. Gentleman had not succeeded in beating the men, and the women had beaten the right hon. Gentleman. Despite all his endeavours to suppress the Ladies' Land League by means of a Police Circular and by throwing the responsibility upon the magistrates he had failed in this purpose, and the ladies of Ireland had proved that they possessed spirit and patriotism, and ingenuity in conducting their organization, notwithstanding all the acts of the right hon. Gentleman and all the devices of his agents. The meanest act of his policy was this—that not being satisfied with having arrested a number of gentlemen, and with having weighed, measured, and searched them, not satisfied with having first arrested licensed vintners, and then broken their licences on the ground that they were bad characters, not satisfied with having tortured men's minds, and deprived them of their means of living, he instructed the police to suppress the organization whose object was the collection of funds to save the "suspects" from living on prison fare. With regard to United Ireland, it was no uncommon sight in the streets of Dublin
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  to find a burly detective rushing about in pursuit of a barefooted little boy, with a group of awe-stricken citizens surveying the chase, and the big policeman marching off in triumph with one copy of United Ireland, which he had discovered beneath the boy's ragged shirt. Such was the liberality and the decency of this Liberal Government that the detective invariably refused to give the little beggar a penny for the paper. There wore several other points to which the Amendment referred; but the Government and the managers of that paper had for some time past been playing "hide and seek" throughout the United Kingdom, eyeing every suspicious parcel, and running away with some of them before they could be aware of the nature of the contents. Everybody was at a loss to understand the legal justification of this conduct. A parcel, because labelled United Ireland, was seized by the police before they could ascertain its contents. They had no legal power to seize unless they were aware the papers contained seditious matter. It had all been so ably dealt with the previous night by his hon. Friend the Member for County Carlow, the High Sheriff of Dublin (Mr. Gray), that he would not further delay the House, inasmuch as it would be like flogging a dead horse. He believed that in the coming March fewer rents would be paid than at the last gale; that next September fewer rents would be paid than in March; and that in the following March fewer still would be paid. He believed that that process would be continued by tenants courageously, and in open defiance of the plan suggested by Members of the Government to landlords to be evictors. He believed that the logical effect of that process would be to prove that there was no means of settling this Land Question except by adopting the policy of the Land League—by extinguishing the interest of the landlords in the soil of Ireland, by following the example of Russia, and, by a purchase of the landlords' interest, putting an end to the contest between the two classes in Ireland. Unless the interest of one of those classes were terminated the contest would go on for ever. Hon. Members on those Benches and the Government looked at the condition of Ireland from different points of view. The right hon. Gentleman said that murders and out-

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  rages were fewer; but his method of dealing with outrages was very zigzag. Last Session, wishing to pass the Coercion Act, he enumerated threatening letters with outrages, because he said they always led to them. But now, desiring to make the condition of the country appear better, he did not include threatening letters among outrages. The Land League was nominally suppressed; but the rules of the Land League were in the memory of the people, and its doctrine in their hearts. The moral force of that organization continued for two years extended all over Ireland, and it was to the completion of that moral force that he looked for the emancipation of the Irish people. The imprisonment of Irish Members was not a new thing in connection with the memory of this House, and that imprisonment in past times had seemed to be followed by the decay of the cause for which it was suffered. In the last generation Daniel O'Connell was imprisoned, but he was not arrested till his influence had declined and old age was heavy upon him; death soon removed him from the scene. To-day, in the height of his popularity, in the height of his influence, and in the vigour of his manhood, the Government had arrested the hon. Member for the City of Cork. The effect of his imprisonment would be that he would come forth one day or another with his patriotism deepened, his influence strengthened, and, having suffered the penalty which every Irishman must suffer who conspicuously and courageously defended the cause of the Irish people, he would come forth a stronger man than ever to advocate the cause not only of the Irish tenants, but of the Irish people. For his part, he fondly cherished the hope that the political force and the moral force of that illustrious prisoner might be successfully used to lead to victory a people who had been taught by bitter adversity to suffer and to struggle in dark, evil days, without ever losing hope. He confessed he could not resume his seat without referring to the eloquent and touching words addressed to the House last night at the close of his speech by the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket). One of the saddest circumstances of an Irishman holding a seat in that House was the necessity he was under of constantly
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  listening to some of the ablest, the most intellectual, and best known of their countrymen leading the cause of the alien, and attacking the people from whom he had sprung. Last night, when he listened to the senior Member for the University of Dublin, in those able words of which he was master, declaring himself a lover of his country, and avowing himself an Irishman to the backbone, he was pained, and the thought occurred to him that it might not surpass the genius of the right hon. Gentleman now at the head of affairs, in the possibilities of future years, to devise and execute some method which might save Irishmen from the shame and the agony of being divided into hostile camps in that House, and might enable them at last to find common ground for patriotic effort and honourable emulation on the soil of their native country.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 30; Noes 98: Majority 68.—(Div. List, No. 8.)
  Main Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 87; Noes 22: Majority 65.—(Div. List, No. 9.)
  Committee appointed, to draw up an Address to be presented to Her Majesty upon the said Resolution:—Mr. MARJORIBANKS, Mr. FIRTH, Mr. GLADSTONE, The Marquess of HARTINGTON, Mr. Secretary CHILDERS, Mr. BRIGHT, Mr. WILLIAM EDWARD FORSTER, Mr. DODSON, Mr. MUNDELLA, Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Mr. SOLICITOR GENERAL, Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL for IRELAND, Mr. SOLICITOR GENERAL for IRELAND, Mr. SHAW LEFEVRE, Lord FREDERICK CAVENDISH, and Lord RICHARD GROSVENOR, or any Three of them:—To withdraw immediately:—Queen's Speech referred,

MOTION.
  NAVY (CAPTAIN BROWNRIGG, R.N.)

    MOTION FOR PAPERS.
    SIR JOHN HAY, in rising to call attention to the murder of Captain Charles James Brownrigg, R.N., and to the unsatisfactory state of our relations with France in our operations for the suppression of the Slave Trade on the East Coast of Africa, and to move for Papers, said, he was anxious to address the House for a short period on a subject which he was sure would interest all those who heard him. He referred to the loss of Captain

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    Brownrigg, who was engaged on service on the South-East Coast of Africa in the suppression of the Slave Trade when he met his death; and he thought it would be unfortunate that so gallant and distinguished an officer should pass away without notice being taken of it, and of the causes which had led to the unfortunate disaster. Perhaps, as the senior naval officer in the House, hon. Members would forgive him if he called attention to the circumstances attending the death, and also to the career of that distinguished naval officer. Charles James Brownrigg was born on the 19th of November, 1836, and entered the Service as a naval cadet in 1849. He passed as a mate in 1855, served in Algiers, in the Baltic, and in the Black Sea, from May, 1854, to February, 1856, during the Russian War, and subsequently in the Pioneer upon the North American and West Indian Stations, and in the Chesapeake, China Station. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant on the 17th December, 1857, and in that rank served in the Calcutta, the flagship of Sir Michael Seymour, and in the Inflexible, on the China Station, from 1858 to 1861. He qualified as a gunnery lieutenant during 1861, obtaining a first-class certificate. He then joined the Galatea, North American Station, commanded by Captain Maguire, serving in her from May, 1862, to March, 1864, and was highly commended by that officer for his intelligence and attainments as a gunnery officer. He then served as flag-lieutenant to Sir Charles Talbot, Commander-in-Chief at the Nore, and was promoted to the rank of commander on the 9th of April, 1866. On the 11th of April, 1866, he was appointed as commander to the Challenger, Commodore Maguire and Commodore Lambert, captains, Australia Station, and remained in that ship until paid off in March, 1871, receiving the Thanks of that House for his services upon the Australian Station. In August, 1868, he conducted a boat expedition against Natives of the Fiji Islands, and in July, 1871, was appointed to the charge of the naval barracks, and remained there until promoted to the rank of captain in September, 1873. He subsequently served as captain in the Jumna and the Euphrates from October, 1877, to the 8th of June, 1880, during which period he was employed in the Zulu War, and was
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    subsequently transferred to the London, as senior officer at Zanzibar. At so recent a date as October, 1881, the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies, highly commended him for his zeal and attention in the performance of his duties, so that, at least, his reputation was one which was a great credit to the Service. The information he (Sir John Hay) had about this sad occurrence was information that was open to everyone, and from it it appeared that on the 10th of December Captain Brownrigg left his ship to inspect some boats which were cruising off Pemba. He left the London, in a steam pinnace, with a small crew, and, after cruising about, observed a dhow, of which he had received information, flying French colours. He ran alongside of her, as was his duty to do, to obtain information about her flying those colours, when the Arab crew suddenly fired, killing and wounding some of his crew and driving the rest overboard. Several of the Arabs then closed with Captain Brownrigg, and after a gallant resistance he fell, having received 21 wounds, shot through the heart, and dying as a naval officer would desire to die. Captain Brownrigg did not board the dhow, and her nationality was not proved; but she was full of slaves. Some short time afterwards General Matthews, who commanded the Native Force of the Sultan at Zanzibar, reported having captured a dhow; and from the information given by the master, who was lying mortally wounded, there was reason to believe that it was the vessel in question. With regard to Captain Brownrigg's death, he was quite sure the House would sympathize with his friends and the Navy in the great loss the country had sustained; but a more heroic death could not have been suffered by any gallant officer, and he trusted that those who were dependent upon him—a widow and seven children—and who were not in affluent circumstances, would not be forgotten when the Estimates were introduced to the House. It was not for him to do more, however, than to say that consideration had always been shown to those who were dependent upon officers of the Army or Navy who had fallen; and although this might appear as an obscure skirmish, there was not a single officer whose tomb might be seen in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's who was more fully entitled to honour for

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    zealous and active performance of his duties than Captain Brownrigg, whoso case he was endeavouring, however imperfectly, to bring before the House. Having said so much, and trusting that his hon. Friend the Secretary to the Admiralty (Mr. Trevelyan) would be able to state, not what the Government intended to do, but that the matter should have most careful consideration, he would proceed to point out what the service was in which Captain Brownrigg was engaged, and why he had thought it right to call attention to the unsatisfactory state of our relations with France for the suppression of the Slave Trade on the East Coast of Africa. He had also intended to move for Papers on the subject; but he understood from the hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Sir Charles W. Dilke) that Papers would be laid on the Table in accordance with the terms of his Notice; therefore, he was satisfied with that statement.
    MR. SPEAKER: I wish to point out to the right hon. and gallant Member that, to put himself in Order, he must conclude with a Motion; otherwise he will not be in Order.
    SIR JOHN HAYreplied, that, under those circumstances, he would move for the Papers. The House, perhaps, would remember that in addition to being a naval officer, and consequently taking great interest in all naval matters, he had taken a great interest in the suppression of the African Slave Trade, and had had the honour to be upon a Committee which was appointed in 1871, which fully inquired into the peculiar relations of naval officers employed in suppressing the Slave Trade in consequence of the action of France; and he hoped the hon. Baronet would be able to inform them that communications with France had been made which would place those relations on a more satisfactory footing than they were at present. He was sorry to say that during the last 10 years the same unsatisfactory relations had continued. In June, 1869, Sir Leopold Heath, the Commander-in-Chief of those seas, in a communication addressed to the Secretary to the Admiralty, said—
    "The boarding of vessels under French colours is forbidden, except for the purpose (where fraud is suspected) of verifying the right to fly these colours. Sultan Masjid states that in order to avoid being searched by English cruisers his vessels are all rapidly leaving their
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    proper national colours and placing themselves under the flag of France. I venture to suggest, as the simplest remedy for the evil, that the French Government should be moved to take steps for stopping the indiscriminate issue of Lettres de Franciscation at Nossi Beh, confining their issue to vessels bonâ fide the property of French subjects."
    In consequence of that a Committee of the Foreign Office was appointed, who reported to Lord Clarendon, and their Report was to be found in Parliamentary Paper No. 69, of 1870. It was—
    "One point remains to be noticed in connection with this part of the subject—namely, the practice recently adopted by Arab slave-traders of sheltering themselves under the French flag. We observe that your Lordship has already called the attention of the French Government to the subject: but it might be well to inform the French Government of the nature of the instructions recently issued by the Admiralty regarding the seizure of vessels on suspicion of being slavers, which will, it is hoped, entirely protect the legitimate trader from detention or annoyance, and to urge this point upon the French Government as a reason for instructing the authorities at Mayotta and Nossi Beh to use the strictest precautions against any abuse of the protection of their flag in issuing French papers to Arab vessels, whose claims to be owned by French subjects are probably in most cases fictitious."
    In all the Correspondence upon the question he could find nothing but complaints of the unfortunate protection which was afforded by the French Government to slavers on the South-East Coast of Africa, and that was all the more unfortunate, because by the Treaties which had been entered into between this country and Germany, Holland, Sweden, Portugal, Italy, Turkey, Brazil, Spain, and the United States, a limited right of search of vessels flying flags of those countries was conceded to us—in consequence of which no slaver attempted to avail himself of the protection afforded by the flags of those countries—to enable us to act as the efficient police of those seas, which was rendered useless by the licences which the French Government allowed the Arabs to purchase at the rate of about $40 each. If France would concede that right the French flag would be no longer prostituted to the base use to which it was now frequently applied. General Matthews, writing in December, 1881, reported his capture of the captain of the dhow, who was mortally wounded, and who stated that he was in possession of a French flag and papers, which he had obtained for $49, for a dhow which he sold, and

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    that he had then transferred the papers and the flag to a new dhow, the one in overhauling which Captain Brownrigg was killed. It appeared to him that a gallant and friendly nation like France should not object to grant us the same powers for the purposes of police that were conceded to us by all the other civilized Powers, and, above all, by America, which was exceedingly jealous of her naval rights and privileges. At all events, we might hope that, if European vessels were excluded, the French Government would give us the right to search vessels which were notoriously not French, not being commanded by men who spoke French, and having no right whatever to French papers, but which merely used the French flag for doubtful purposes, in order that our officers might be able to ascertain whether they were really engaged in a bonâ fide traffic or not. Until that was done, all our efforts there to suppress the Slave Trade would be frustrated by the prostitution and abuse of the French flag and papers. It was very unfortunate that French officers should, for a paltry sum of £10, give to all and sundry the right to carry the French flag, and call themselves French vessels. He was quite sure, if it was properly put to the distinguished officer now at the head of the French Navy by any English naval officer about to go out to take command of the Squadron on the South-East Coast of Africa, he would agree that the existing state of matters was no credit, either to the French Government or nation, that they should permit their flag to be prostituted for the purpose of enabling slavery to be carried on; and he was certain that neither the French Government nor the French people would desire that the Slave Trade should be protected by their flag. If the death of Captain Brownrigg conduced to measures being taken which would put a final stop to the Slave Trade, that gallant officer would not have died in vain. He believed that the Sultan of Zanzibar was sincerely anxious to put down slavery; but as long as the French flag was disgraced by sheltering those who carried on this detestable traffic it was impossible for him to put a stop to it. He trusted the House would hear from the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Admiralty that he had the case of Captain Brownrigg's family
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    under consideration, because a braver, a more determined, and a more gallant officer never met a death more creditable to himself and to his country. He also trusted that the hon. Baronet who represented the Foreign Office would be able to state that steps had been taken to convince the French Government that it was from no desire to lower the dignity of the French flag, or to affect the influence of that country in those seas, that we asked them to concede to us for a limited time, and under limited conditions, a right of search which would for ever put an end to the Slave Trade on the South-East Coast of Africa. He begged, in conclusion, to move for Papers relating to the case.
    Motion made, and Question proposed,
    "That there he laid before the House, Copies of Papers relating to the murder of Captain C. Brownrigg, R.N., and to the relation between England and France in our operations for the suppression of the Slave Trade."—(Admiral Sir John Hay.)
    SIR CHARLES W. DILKEsaid, he was afraid that there was only too much truth in what had fallen from the right hon. and gallant Gentleman (Sir John Hay) as to the state of things that existed on the East Coast of Africa. He said too much truth, because they must all regret that the flag of a great Power like France should be used for the purposes the right hon. and gallant Gentleman had described. Successive French Governments had certainly shown a great reluctance to submit to any restriction dealing with the subject under consideration. As long ago as the last century, and again at the Congress of Vienna, a marked reluctance was shown by France to submit to this regulation, to which most other countries had shown themselves willing to submit. The flag of France, in later times, had been very much used to cover the Slave Trade, as on the Brazilian Coast, as well as both on the West and East Coasts of Africa. It had, however, ceased to be so employed in 1849–50, and in the latter year a communication was made to M. Drouyn de Lhuys that there was no record of any vessel improperly hoisting the French colours since the Convention of 1845. In 1857, however, in consequence of the renewal of the practice formerly existing, remonstrances which Her Majesty's Government addressed to that of France were founded on the proceed-

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    ings of French subjects both on the East and West Coasts of Africa. On the East Coast vessels were fitted out at Reunion for the purpose, ostensibly, of securing free labourers for that Colony, but, in reality, to obtain slaves from the African Coast; on the West Coast the proceedings of the agents of a Company of Marseilles, who held a contract to supply the French West Indies with negro labour, resulted in very questionable proceedings as regarded Kroomen, Dahomeans, and others engaged; the action of French agents was held to be not only against the Treaty of Vienna, but also against the Slave Trade Convention with England of 1845, by which the contracting Powers engaged to continue the prohibition for ever of all Slave Trade in the Colonies they possessed, and to prevent their subjects from being engaged, directly or indirectly, in the traffic. In 1863 a new feature arose—namely, the employment by Soori Arabs, of the East Coast, of the French flag, to cover Slave Trade enterprizes, and to escape the search of our cruisers. Representations were made to the French Government in respect of the facilities with which these Arabs obtained French registry. In 1870 the flag of France became so much used in the Slave Trade on the East Coast that in 1871 the French Government, in reply to further representations from Her Majesty's Government, instructed their naval authorities to exercise the most active surveillance over dhows arriving at and leaving Nossi Beh and Mayotta, and to proceed against those transgressing, and fresh steps were taken with regard to the issue of registry. In 1872 a request was made to France for the periodical communication of lists of all such dhows as had been furnished with the above-mentioned registry. In 1872, also, a further Correspondence took place with the French Government as to the extinction of the Slave Trade on the East Coast, and the French Government promised co-operation and assistance to effect the object aimed at. As a matter of fact, we seemed to have no regular Slave Trade Convention with France. The Joint Treaty of 1841 between Great Britain, Austria, France, Prussia, and Russia was signed by the French Plenipotentiary, but never ratified by his Government, and the Convention of 1845 came to an end in 1875, and hitherto had
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    not been renewed. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman had stated the facts of the case with substantial accuracy; and he (Sir Charles W. Dilke) could only hope that the representations that had been addressed to the Government of France would have the effect desired. No hon. Member could read the Papers which would be presented to the House without seeing that the officer, whose assassination they all deplored, was in every way worthy of the praise that had been bestowed upon him. Captain Brownrigg had done all in his power to put down the Slave Trade. The Papers asked for by the right hon. and gallant Admiral would immediately be furnished; they would be included in the other Papers relating to the Slave Trade.
    MR. BENTINCKsaid, he had listened with pleasure to the eloquent tribute the hon. Baronet (Sir Charles W. Dilke) had paid to the memory of Captain Brownrigg. That gallant officer had met with his death while exhibiting exceptional personal bravery, and in circumstances which had been described as an act of assassination—an expression which was, in his opinion, by no means too strong, and which he was glad to hear used by the hon. Baronet, because it stated the true character of the transaction. But he could not help thinking that the Motion of his right hon. and gallant Friend (Sir John Hay) raised a much wider question than would at first sight appear from the terms of it. The House had heard it stated that the gallant officer in question, a post-captain of the British Navy, had been assassinated by the crew of a vessel sailing under the French flag. He could not help thinking that in former days such an event would not have been passed over so lightly as it had been at present.
    SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: The murder of Captain Brownrigg has been followed by the arrest of all the persons concerned.
    MR. BENTINCK, continuing, said, that might be so; but he could not help thinking that in former days such an event as they now deplored would not have been passed over by the Government of this country in the manner in which the hon. Baronet had dealt with it. The question involved more than the murder of Captain Brownrigg; it involved a gross insult to the British flag. The whole country would hear with deep

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    disgust the fact that a post-captain of the British Navy had been murdered in the execution of his duty by a crew sailing under the French flag, and yet that no remonstrance had been addressed to the French Government upon the subject. It was impossible to imagine a more outrageous insult. The old feeling was that the flag of England was respected wherever it flew. What was the fact now? As gross an insult as had ever been recorded in the annals of history had been offered to the British flag—an insult upon which in old times a strong expression of feeling would have been elicited from the English people—and yet no assurance had been given to the House by the hon. Baronet that an endeavour would be made to obtain some expression of regret from the French Government. He could not expect at that hour of the night, and in the present condition of the House, to elicit a very strong expression of opinion; but he would state his own strong conviction that, unless steps were taken to obtain some expression of regret from the French Government, this insult would remain a serious blot upon the honour of the British flag.
    MR. TREVELYANsaid, that he had not come down to the House provided with any documents, for he thought that there would have been no more than a general discussion upon the subject, and he was content to leave the question to be dealt with by his hon. Friend (Sir Charles W. Dilke); but anyone who had the honour of representing the Admiralty required no preparation in order to speak on the merits of Captain Brownrigg. The operations on the Zanzibar Coast consisted in the capture of dhows which were employed for carrying slaves, and in the re-capture and liberation of the slaves, who were afterwards conveyed to our missions and schools to be made fit to occupy the position of freemen. The capture of these dhows, with their crews and cargoes, required a great deal of skill and smartness; but it frequently happened that when they were taken they were found empty. When hotly pursued they were run ashore, the captains thus securing their slaves, and, at the same time, destroying the evidence of their trade. To follow these captives into a country swarming with slaveholders required more than smartness and skill; it required great courage,
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    perseverance, and resolution. On looking at the Returns on the subject of the Slave Trade, he found that in 1876 about 60 slaves had been captured; in 1877 about 100; and in 1878 from 120 to 160; and that about 30 dhows a-year had been taken. But when Captain Brownrigg came into the service he threw new life into it, and made his men feel that their duty was not to capture prizes, but to rescue their fellow-creatures; and the result was that instead of capturing 80 or 90 slaves a-year he captured in the years 1880 and 1881 no less than 50 or 60 dhows, and from 500 to 600 slaves. This was the more to Captain Brownrigg's credit, because the Treasury paid much more sparingly for the re-capture of slaves than the taking of dhows. Therefore, instead of seeking his own advantage, Captain Brownrigg preferred that which brought him little gain, but which was a greater service to humanity, and gave the nation a greater return for what it spent on the most honourable of all its military enterprizes. Captain Brownrigg also showed considerable diplomatic power, and very great power in dealing with men. He won the confidence and affection of the French Consul, and the confidence, also, of General Matthews, the Commander of the Forces of the Sultan, who had done so much to bring the murderers to justice, and who was an ex-member of the glorious Service to which Captain Brownrigg belonged. The feeling thus inspired in these officers was communicated to the French Government. Whatever might be said as to the attitude of the French Government as regarded the search of vessels, it could not be asserted that they had shown any backwardness with respect to the assassination. Then, as regarded what had been termed by the hon. Member for West Norfolk (Mr. Bentinck) an insult to the British flag, that was a very serious charge to make without waiting for the Papers which had been promised to the House. So far from insulting the British flag, the first thing the French Government did was to declare that the vessel had no right to carry that flag. They made, not an apology, but that which preceded an apology—namely, a statement of facts that the vessel in question was in no sense a French vessel. But although the vessel had no right to carry the French flag, the French Government

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    did everything in their power to evince their sense of the enormous crime which had been committed. They at once sent to the coast a cruiser, which was now assisting our vessels in putting down this nefarious traffic. Here, as he had said, was a dhow sailing under false French colours which had assassinated a British officer, and the French Consul at once communicated to the surviving officers that the dhow was not a French vessel, and threw himself most actively into the pursuit of the murderers. From that time forward we had nothing to do with France; what we had to do with was the murderers. He could not imagine what the hon. Gentleman wanted to have done, as every one of the people who were guilty of the crime had, as far as was known, been arrested, with the exception of the principal, who was dying at the time of arrest, and those killed by Captain Brownrigg himself, tried, and sentenced to the very highest punishment the Sultan of Zanzibar, as a Mohammedan, could give—namely, imprisonment for life. He could not imagine either what sort of reparation could be exacted more than had been done, for there was no one living from whom to exact it. Everyone who was concerned in. the outrage was either in prison or in his grave. He put aside the question of the "old feeling" to which the hon. Gentleman had referred. The feeling of the Navy was their hearty feeling for comrades in other Services, and that old feeling had been shown to the fullest extent by every French naval official, and also shown by every French civil official who had anything to do with this lamentable matter. Captain Brownrigg appeared from all accounts to have been a British naval officer of the highest character, and, what he valued no less, in his death that gallant officer showed how English seamen ought to die. He had been true to the traditions of that-glorious Service of which, if he had lived, he must have been one of the brightest ornaments, and in the annals of which his memory must be a proud possession. He (Mr. Trevelyan) assured the hon. Gentleman opposite that those to whose hands the direction of that Service was for the time intrusted would not be ungrateful to the memory of Captain Brownrigg.
    [The subject then dropped.]
    Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members not being present,
    House adjourned at half after Nine o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILL—First Reading—Married Women's Property (13).
MARRIED WOMEN'S PROPERTY BILL.

  BILL PRESENTED. FIRST READING.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved the first reading of a Bill to consolidate and amend the Acts relating to the Property of Married Women. The noble and learned Lord said, the subject had been carefully considered by a Select Committee of the other House of Parliament, which had sat on the subject last Session; and this Bill, with some modifications, was the result of their deliberations.
  Bill presented (The LORD CHANCELLOR); read1 a (No. 13.)

AFFAIRS OF EGYPT—PAPERS AND CORRESPONDENCE.

  QUESTION. OBSERVATIONS.
  EARL DE LA WARR, in asking the noble Earl the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the Question of which he had given Notice—namely, When it will be convenient to lay upon the Table of the House the papers and correspondence relating to Egypt; also, if any information can be given with regard to the present relations between this country and the Regency of Tunis?—said, the noble Earl the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had informed their Lordships of the contents or substance of certain documents relative to the affairs of Egypt, two of which had since been laid upon the Table of the House. He trusted, however, that the noble Earl would not consider that sufficient information had been given to allay the anxiety existing in the public mind with regard to important events which had taken place in Egypt, and which were still plainly pointing to changes which might materially affect the interests of this country. On referring to what the noble Earl had stated, he could not but think that, instead of quieting public anxiety, it tended, in a great measure, to increase it. The noble Earl said, in a despatch, dated in November last—

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  "It is our conviction that the tie uniting Egypt to the Porte was the best safeguard against foreign intervention."
  Now, it seemed to him (Earl De La Warr) that if there ever was a country
  which ought to complain of foreign intervention it was Egypt. Was it not foreign intervention which had caused, and was now causing, the uneasiness, if it did not amount to actual anarchy? Was not the Khedive, Ismail Pasha, deposed at the instigation of France and England; and was there ever greater foreign intervention in the internal affairs of a country than the appointment of the Anglo-French Control? It was hardly to be supposed that the country would continue in what the noble Earl described as "the path of tranquil and legitimate progress" while compelled by a foreign control to contribute the present large amount annually from the taxes to European speculators and bondholders in payment of a high rate of interest; and, further, the Control was not only of a financial character, but it exercised also a political influence, and had done so, more or less, since 1878, when Mr. Rivers Wilson was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Egyptian Ministry, and M. de Blig-niéres Minister of Finance as representing France. It was insisted upon by England and France that their Representatives should have a right of veto upon any measures which they disapproved, and the Khedive was not permitted to be present at the Councils. He merely mentioned these facts to show their Lordships that already a very large amount of intervention had been going on in Egypt, and that it was, in a great measure, owing to this intervention that there existed the very great uneasiness at present existing in the country. Though considerable modification had been made in regard to the control that had been exercised since the present Khedive came to the Throne, yet there still existed a very considerable amount; and the noble Earl opposite informed their Lordships not very long ago, in this House, that the employment of force might ultimately be necessary. Such statements—were other proofs wanting—would alone suffice to show that the condition of affairs in Egypt was a critical one, and would, he trusted, be considered as justifying the request which he had made for such information as it
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  might be possible to give at the present time. Then, with regard to the Regency of Tunis, he wished only to ask the noble Earl to explain what the existing diplomatic relations were between this country and the Regency of Tunis. Was it with the Boy, or was it with the Government of the French Republic that diplomatic relations were carried on? Was it with the Bey, or was it with M. Roustan, the French Minister, that the British Consul and Political Agent transacted the diplomatic and Consular affairs of this country? He asked these questions because of the statement made by the Prime Minister of the late French Government as to the Bardo Treaty—namely, that England had recognized it. He much regretted the unhappy results which had been brought about by French aggression in Tunis; and he thought that this country had sacrificed very greatly her own interests, and she had also sacrificed the friendship of an old ally for the sake of conciliating France and obtaining from her a Commercial Treaty which would be of a very doubtful advantage to this country. He had only one word more to add. He was happy to learn, from what had been stated by the noble Earl and confirmed by the Prime Minister in "another place," that Her Majesty's Government desired to maintain, at least in Egypt, the Sovereign authority of the Sultan which had been guaranteed by the Great Powers of Europe.
  EARL GRANVILLE: My Lords, in answer to the comprehensive Questions of the noble Earl, I should say, in regard to Egypt, that a week ago the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury) expressed a wish that no Papers should be laid on the Table the production of which might not be to the public advantage, and I intimated that at that particular moment none could properly be presented; and I was glad to recognize that there was a very general feeling on the part of the House that, there being a very considerable amount of anxiety upon the subject, it was desirable to avoid, premature discussion. As to the presentation of Papers, I quite share the desire of the noble Earl that they should be laid upon the Table at the earliest possible moment that I can do so; and I may say that I have a great wish to present them, so that the whole case of the Government may

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  be considered. I cannot say that anything has occurred during the last week to change the opinion which the Government entertained, that it would not be desirable to present the Papers at present. As to Tunis, I am not aware that there has been any change in the relations between the Bey of Tunis and ourselves. It is only six months since I made a statement in this House, in answer to the very numerous Questions put by the noble Earl. As to the Treaty of Bardo, we have not been asked to make any formal recognition of that Treaty, and we have not done so. Nor have we thought it our duty, in all the circumstances, to show any hostility to what is the undoubted interest of France in that district. On the other hand, we have firmly asserted our right to retain any privileges that have been reserved to us under the Treaty; and I think it will not be disputed that what we had obtained has not been in the slightest degree affected.
  House adjourned at half past Five o'clock, to Thursday next, half past Ten o'clock.