Sitting of 17 February 1882

QUESTIONS.

  THE PARKS (METROPOLIS)—BICYCLES.
  MR. BUTTasked the First Commissioner of Works, By what authority the

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  public is prohibited from using the broad road round the inside of the Regent's Park for bicycles; whether there is any, and if any, what reason for the prohibition; and, whether it would not be practicable to re-open that road to the large number of young men of the working class who were formerly in the habit of using it for bicycle exercise?
  MR. SHAW LEFEVRE, in reply, said, that the bicycles were prohibited tinder the Regulations of 1872, by virtue of the Parks Regulations Act. After consideration, he was inclined to think that, with a view to the protection of the public, it was not desirable that bicycles should be used in the parks.

  PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION—THE BOROUGH OF NORTHAMPTON.
  MR. LABOUCHEREasked Mr. Attorney General, Whether, having regard to No. 72 of the Rules and Orders, declaring that every Member is bound to attend the service of the House, and to the Resolution of this House of the 7th February, whereby Mr. Bradlaugh is prevented from fulfilling all the duties imposed upon Members, a vacancy has not occurred in the representation of the borough of Northampton?
  MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, that before the hon. and learned Attorney General answered the Question of the hon. Member for Northampton, he (Mr. Newdegate) wished, with the permission of the House, to say that out of the Question of the hon. Member there appeared to him to arise another Question—namely, Whether, after the decisions of the Court and the decisions of the House on his case, Mr. Bradlaugh was not disqualified?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): Sir, in answering the Question of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), I purposely wish to avoid entering into matters which may hereafter arise, if any Resolution is submitted to the House. Therefore, I confine myself to stating that I know of no ground upon which it can now be alleged that a vacancy has occurred in the representation of the borough of Northampton. As to the Question of the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Newdegate), I think the reply I have already given affords an answer to it. Certainly, as matters stand, the seat has not become vacant.

  PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881—CHARLES O'BEIRNE.
  MR. BIGGARasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, On what grounds is Mr. Charles O'Beirne still retained in Galway Prison, he having been committed on 3rd June last, with a number of others, some of them being charged with more serious offences than he was, and while others have been discharged, Mr. O'Beirne has not?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, the reason why Mr. O'Beirne had not been released was that he refused to sign a promise to be of good behaviour. That was why he was retained when others were set free. He should add that Mr. O'Beirne had never made any application to be released.

  THE LAND COMMISSION (IRELAND)—MR. BOMFORD.
  MR. BIGGARasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether Mr. Bomford has been allowed to exchange from the Cavan district to some other; and, if not, if he could state to the House the reason?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, the Land Commissioners informed him that no application had been received from Mr. Bomford to exchange from the Cavan district.

  YOUNG IRELAND LITERARY SOCIETY, DUBLIN—ALLEGED INTRUSION OF THE POLICE.
  MR. REDMONDasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If his attention has been called to the report in the "Irish Times" of February 13th, of a meeting held in Dublin of the Young Ireland Literary Society; if it is true, as reported, that during a discussion on the life and writings of Thomas Davis two police constables entered the room and demanded the names of the persons present, and the objects of the meeting; and, if the police were acting in accordance with instructions from the Government?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, it was the fact that on the 10th instant a police-sergeant and a constable entered the room in which the meeting referred

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  to by the hon. Member was held. On entering, they were groaned and hissed at. When order was partially restored, the sergeant asked the name of the chairman and the object of the meeting. A person, who refused to give his name, said he was chairman, and that it was a meeting of the Young Ireland Literary Society. The officers then withdrew. The house in question was one in which a branch of the Land League had held meetings, and in which other meetings of a political character had been held. It was impossible for the police to distinguish between the meetings unless they entered the room and made inquiry. In doing that, they acted in accordance with instructions from the Government.

  UNREFORMED CORPORATIONS— LEGISLATION.
  MR. SEVERNEasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If it is the intention of the Government to introduce this Session a Bill dealing with Unreformed Corporations?
  MR. HIBBERT (for Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT), in reply, said, that the Government had prepared a Bill upon this subject, and intended to introduce it at the first opportunity either into this or into the other House of Parliament.

  COAL MINES—THE TRIMDON GRANGE EXPLOSION.
  MR. BROADHURST (for Mr. BURT)asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether any information has been received as to the recent colliery explosion at Trimdon Grange; and, whether it is the intention of the Government to hold any special inquiry as to the cause of the disaster?
  MR. HIBBERT (for Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT), in reply, said, that his right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department had received a telegram from Mr. Bell, Inspector of Mines, who was at present engaged at the mine where the explosion took place. It was as follows:—
  "I have to inform you that an explosion of gas took place in the Grange Colliery yesterday afternoon, causing the loss of nearly 60 lives; 16 bodies have been recovered, and the remainder will be brought up during the day. We have plenty of assistance. Mr. Wallis is
  982
  with me. The explorations are going on satisfactorily. I trust I have your authorization for asking my colleague to assist me."
  He might say that his right hon. and learned Friend had given that authorization. As to the second part of the hon. Member's inquiry, he was not in a position to answer it.

  PARLIAMENT—RULES OF DEBATE—PRACTICE OF DEBATE—THE DINNER HOUR.
  LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILLsaid, he wished to ask a Question of the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for India, in the absence of the Prime Minister, which he thought that the noble Marquess's experience would enable him to answer. The Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had stated that it was not the custom or the practice for Ministers to take part in the debates of the House during the dinner hour. He wished to know whether that statement was, in the noble Marquess's opinion, in accordance with experience or authority? If it were, he would like to be informed to what Ministers or occupants of the Treasury Bench such a custom or practice applied; and, whether it applied to the occupants of the Front Opposition Bench; and, if so, to which of them; and, whether the obligation of sustaining the debates between the hours of half-past 7 and half-past 9 fell entirely upon private Members?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: Sir, I hope that my experience in this House, long or short, will enable me to give the noble Lord a satisfactory answer to this Question. The reply of my right hon. Friend is reported in The Times to the following effect:—
  "Mr. Forster said that the only reply he could make to the hon. and learned Member was that, in important debates, it was not usual for a Member of the Government, in the position of the Attorney General for Ireland, to address the House during the dinner hour."
  My right hon. Friend informs me, and I think my recollection bears it out, that the report is not a completely full one—that what he did say was that it was not usual for a Member of the Government, holding a very important position in relation to the debate, and having a very important speech to answer, and an important statement to make, to address the House at the dinner hour. Sir, I

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  do not conceive that there is any difference whatever in this respect between the Members of the Government and the right hon. Gentlemen who sit on the Front Opposition Bench and any other Member of the House. The noble Lord's experience of the House must, I think, have enabled him to perceive that any hon. Member who has to make an important speech, or what he considers an important speech, cannot, with satisfaction, address the House at a time when experience has shown him it will be extremely empty.
  MR. GORSTasked the noble Marquess, whether, if the debate was to be continued during the dinner hour by hon. Members whose speeches were, in their opinion, unimportant, the Government would consider favourably a new Rule reserving to such hon. Members the privilege of tedious and persistent reiteration enjoyed and sometimes abused by Ministers of the Crown?
  [No reply.]

  IRELAND—PROPERTY DEFENCE ASSOCIATION —POLICE PROTECTION.
  MR. CHAPLINsaid, he wished to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland a Question of which he had not given him Notice, but of which he would, if he preferred, give him Notice. The Question was, Whether the statement which appeared in The Times that morning, that the Government intended to withdraw, or had withdrawn, the protection of the police from the caretakers placed in vacant farms in Ireland by the Property Defence Association is correct?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER: Sir, this is a Question of which I would rather have had Notice; but as I have been asked it, perhaps I had better endeavour to answer it at once. It is our determination, which we are carrying into practice, to give every protection it is possible to give; but we must be allowed to judge of the most effectual manner of doing it. Application was made to us to send one or two or more policemen to put them by the side of every caretaker. That, the hon. Member will see, would be impossible. It would require a force of 50,000 or 100,000 police. We do not believe that it is necessary. We believe it will be more effectual for the whole purpose in view of maintaining
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  law and order to have a good system of patrolling, and to have arrangements with the police whereby they may be called at any moment. We must also to some extent—and every Government is in the same position—rely upon the persons who are threatened doing something for their own protection. There is a notion abroad that they are not quite justified in resisting any attack made on them; but they are perfectly justified in doing so, and I am glad to have this opportunity of making that remark. That does not relieve the Government of their duty to give protection to the utmost of their ability. We are determined to do so; but, in the exercise of our discretion, we do not think it would be the best plan to place policemen by the side of every caretaker.
  MR. CHAPLINasked, if it was true that notice of the withdrawal of the police in certain cases had, as was stated, teen sent to the Property Defence Association?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER: Sir, I suppose that rumour arose out of the course taken in a particular case. Every case will be judged on its merits.

  PARLIAMENTARY OATH—MR. BRADLAUGH.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Sir, with your permission, I will ask a Question which I have already stated to you, Whether the Resolution of February 7 in regard to Mr. Bradlaugh is regular, it being an absolute contradiction of the Standing Order of April 30, 1866, although that Standing Order has been neither suspended nor amended?
  MR. SPEAKER: The Standing Order to which the hon. Member refers relates to the time when Members may take and subscribe the Oath required by law. It is in these terms—
  "That Members may take and subscribe the Oath required by law at any time during the Sittings of the House before the Orders of the Day and Notices of Motions have been entered upon or after they have been disposed of; but no debate or business shall be interrupted for that purpose."
  I am bound to say that I find no inconsistency between the Resolution of the 7th of February and the Standing Order I have now read. The Resolution of the 7th of February is quite regular.

ORDER OF THE DAY.
  THE ADDRESS IN ANSWER TO THE QUEEN'S SPEECH.—REPORT.

    ADJOURNED DEBATE. [THIRD NIGHT.]
    Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [15th February], "That the said Address be read a second time."
    Question again proposed.
    Debate resumed.
    SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOT, in rising, according to Notice, "to call attention to the present serious state of the agricultural interest," said, that he was sure he need not apologize for bringing to the notice of the House so serious and important a question as that of the agricultural distress in this country. He would venture to say that at no time during the present century had there been in this country that amount of distress which, unhappily, existed at the present moment in the agricultural districts. This question should be discussed calmly and temperately, because it was in no sense a Party question: and he had the authority of the Prime Minister, as well as that of the Speaker, for saying it was one deserving the most serious consideration on the part of the House. The noble Marquess the Secretary of State for India (the Marquess of Hartington) had made a speech at Yeovil, and he had read that speech with the greatest interest and attention. It was a most moderate speech, and with the greater portion of which he and, he thought he might say, they would all agree. He said that he thought great commiseration was due to that class which was now suffering under the greatest deprivation and distress. He (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) claimed great credit for that class for the fortitude it had shown, and would venture to say that never had that deprivation been borne with a greater determination on the part of all classes interested in agriculture to maintain, so far as they were able, the position in which they now found themselves. Great credit was also due to them for having, notwithstanding their great distress, endeavoured to discharge their duties faithfully and honestly. This was also the proper time to say that, in his opinion, great consideration
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    had been shown by one class to another. He happened to be in a position to know what had been going on during the last few years; and he would venture to say that never had the landlords of this country done so much to mitigate the distress of the tenant farmers as during the last few years and at the present time. He did not think anyone would say that the tenant farmers had not tried to do their duty. Upon this point, if they looked at lists of bankrupts in The Gazette, he thought the farming business would be found to contrast favourably with any other business in the country. Great leniency had been shown by the landlords towards their tenants, and they all had endeavoured to do their best to weather the storm that had come upon them, though never had they been less able to bear the pressure on them than on the present occasion. Without singling out one class more than another, he would say that all classes had been spending more than they were warranted in spending. Formerly people lived more within their means than they had done of late years. That was a serious point; for if all classes would only return to the prudent courses of former days, they would be better able to cope with the difficulties that lay before them in the future. Never had they had such a succession of bad weather as during the last five or six years. Taking the five years from 1877 to 1881, there had not been one really good harvest in this country. Sometimes they had had a good springtime, leading them to hope there would be a prosperous harvest; but their hopes had again and again been disappointed. Never had the agricultural interest been in such a depressed condition; and he was confirmed in that statement by a passage he recollected reading from a speech delivered a short time ago by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, at Birmingham, he believed. The right hon. Gentleman there estimated the loss to the agricultural interest during the last four years at £150,000,000. But they had another high authority upon the point—namely, the Prime Minister. He stated in his speech at Leeds that the loss had amounted to £130,000,000, but that £20,000,000 or £30,000,000 must be de-ducted from that because, on account of the badness of the harvest, very few labourers

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    were employed. Anyone who knew what it was to have a bad hay harvest or corn harvest would understand that the greatest expenditure then took place, because it was necessary to have the men ready at hand, although the weather was such that they could not work; so that they were paid for doing absolutely nothing at all. But the estimates he (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) had referred to fell far short of the reality, for, in his opinion, £175,000,000 would not be one farthing too much to name as the sum that the agricultural interest had lost. But then they must look at the deterioration of the farms throughout the country. All those fructifying influences, without which no good crops could be secured, had failed, not only from want of sun, but because the tenants had not had the means of purchasing those artificial manures and lime so absolutely necessary for the cultivation of the soil. He would now make another statement which he felt perfectly justified in making—namely, that out of the 580,000 tenant farmers in this country, 250,000 of them, if called upon immediately to pay their just debts, would not have a single farthing left. Fortunately, they had not been called on to do so, and they would not be called upon. All were looking forward to better times; but of this he was absolutely certain—that unless there was a good harvest next year utter ruin would befall the agricultural interest, as regarded many of its members. That was a serious statement, and he would ask hon. Gentlemen to think over it for themselves. He was able to speak from personal knowledge of the loss that had been sustained, and from his own experience in the ease of a farm of 460 acres that belonged to himself, and which he also farmed. Looking at the present prices of cattle and sheep, it was impossible for these farmers, impoverished as they had become, to buy stock for their farms; so that they were in a most serious position. This was one of those pressing questions which would have to be dealt with by whatever Government happened to be in power. The parties to give relief were those who had laid the burdens on the land. Let the House look back for a moment. How had the question of rents been affected? Looking back to the time of the Crimean War, the House would remember that
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    immediately after the termination of the War there came a time of great prosperity, when a large class of persons, such as shopkeepers and others, who had laid by money, considered it would be a profitable business to invest their savings in agriculture. They accordingly proceeded to buy land; and, by the active competition that prevailed among them, they raised the price of land considerably. Then came a large demand for land to be held on tenancies; and no landlord, when he found tenants ready and willing to take his land, could be blamed for letting it at such a rent as they were willing to give. The rents might be too high; if so, they would have to come down; but they were the rents which the tenants were able to pay at that particular time. Then, after the Crimean War, came the Indian Mutiny; then successive European wars, as well as the great American War, terminating, in 1870, with the Franco-German War. Free Trade never fairly came into play, so far as the agricultural interest was concerned, on account of those great wars which had been waged. They had had, to a certain extent, a monopoly; they got good prices, and, though rents were fairly high, those rents could be maintained, because there was a free and ready sale for every article they produced. But within the last five disastrous years, since the cessation of the wars on the Continent and in the United States, more produce had been raised in these countries; and this came into competition with British produce, depressed prices, and caused much suffering to our farmers. Rents, of course, were obliged to come down, just as they had formerly gone up, for with the burdens now on the land, and with the present conditions of the labour market, those rents could not be maintained; and he must say that the landlords of England had almost universally met the tenants in a fair and liberal spirit, to enable them to cope with the difficult times, while the tenant farmers, in their turn, had, in most trying circumstances, endeavoured honestly to do their duty to the landlords. When, however, men were nearly ruined, they were much more willing to listen to advice which, in prosperous times, evil counsellors would not venture to offer them, agitators went among them, because where the carcase was there the eagles would be gathered together. He warned

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    the farmers to beware of those agitators. Now, he wished the Government to consider whether some remedial measures might not be granted to the agricultural interest. A poor man, a shopkeeper, who also did some business in buying and selling faggots, had come to him wanting a farm. He strongly advised the man to remain where he was, and said everything he could to induce him not to take a farm. The man's answer was—"You wish to keep me back from getting into a better position." The man said he had nearly £1,000, and he let to him a small farm of very good land; but that man had lost the whole of his capital through the last five bad years. He was farming to the best of his ability; and it was to be hoped that he would be able to weather the storm. The President of the Board of Trade was one of those who had acquired a fortune by manufactures. In whatever way that fortune had been made—and he had no doubt it had been made honestly; whether it had been made by the general reduction of prices was a question that he would leave the right hon. Gentleman to consider—he maintained that there was no reason why men who had been so fortunate as the right hon. Gentleman had been should not contribute something towards those burdens which real property was alone called on to bear. There was a farm of 265 acres of heavy land in a certain county, which was let at between £200 and £250 a-year; the present rent was £160; the land tax was £14 10 s.; the tithe last year was £70, and something like £67 this year; and the rates and taxes were £40. Why should that farm be so heavily taxed, while men enjoying large fortunes, like those of the right hon. Gentleman, paid nothing but Income Tax? The rents of farms had been very greatly reduced, and, of course, the produce had also been very much less; but notwithstanding this the local taxes were the same as they had been heretofore. Everyone knew what these burdens were. There was the poor rate, the education rate, the highway rate, the sewers rate, and the rates for the administration of law and justice, as well as the tithes. With regard to poor relief, he thought that could be best managed by local authorities; but they might receive something towards defraying its cost. Then there was the education rate. Why
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    were they called on to pay an education rate, when those persons who had money invested in anything else but land, and who derived equal advantages from the education rate, paid nothing? Again, since the abolition of turnpike tolls, those who formerly contributed largely to the highway rate—the brewers, the manufacturers, and others—paid nothing except on their mills or other buildings which were rated, while the poor agriculturist had to bear the burden of all those rates, and to maintain the roads which other people used. The charges for law and justice, and also for lunatics, ought to be borne by the Government only. He would not now enter into the question of the police, except to say that it was one of serious national interest, because the police protected all classes, whether in town or country. In the Prime Minister's otherwise admirable speech to his tenants at Hawarden there was one remark which he (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) was sorry to read. He always read what Members of the Government said, in the hope that he might find some crumb of comfort in their speeches. The right hon. Gentleman did admit that their burdens were excessive, and that they ought to have some relief; but he went on to say that while the present occupiers of farms would get the benefit of any remission of local taxation, the future occupiers would not get that benefit, which would go into the pocket of the landlord. ["Hear, hear!"] Why should not the landlord get some little benefit as well as other people? There was not, he believed, at present a landlord who, if the tenant were relieved of rates, would wish to raise his rent because a certain amount of the local taxation was borne by the Government. The one thing which a landlord disliked, and even abhorred, was changing his tenant. A change of tenant meant an expenditure which the landlord did not calculate on having to incur. Moreover, there was a feeling—though some wished to do away with it—there was an honourable feeling between landlords and tenants that they both rowed in the same boat, that they should live and let live, that they both had duties to perform; and the last duty which the landlords of England would wish to have imposed on them would be that of raising their rents. That was his view of the landlords' in-

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    clinations. They had been suffering from the losses caused by five bad seasons, and he would put that at 70 per cent of their whole losses; they were also suffering most severely from American competition, affecting them in a way never before experienced. In days gone by, whenever there was a bad harvest, there was always a sale for the produce of the farm, whatever it might be; even if the wheat or barley were stained, it always commanded a certain price. But the corn supplies from America knocked inferior or second-class produce out of the market altogether; it became perfectly unsaleable, and could only be used to feed cattle with. The tithes charged also fell heavily upon the agriculturist, and all the more so because in the years of the greatest adversity they had to pay the most, for the amount of it was calculated upon the prices of the previous good years, and regulated by the quantity of American corn imported, which, as he had stated, prevented the sale of inferior corn, and not by the price of English corn alone. The lighter corn, which used to fetch a fair price, did not now command any price at all. Then there was the labour question, one of the difficult questions of the present day. The labourers, no doubt, had suffered and had borne their sufferings well; but he should be surprised if he heard any denial of this statement—that the fathers of these men did nearly half as much again as these men did now; and, more than that, they received higher wages for less work, and you could not trust them to do the work which their fathers did. Roughly speaking, it took three men now to do what two men did formerly. Not only was the farmer at this disadvantage with his labourers, but he had also great local burdens to sustain. The Prime Minister, he was sorry to say, in his speech to his tenants at Hawarden, had asserted that the landlords would obtain the benefit of any remission of local taxation. He was quoting from memory; but he thought the Premier also said that the fair course would be to raise the succession duty—not the probate duty, but the succession duty. A more unwise or unfair suggestion could not possibly be made. Land was unlike other realized property; and when a young man succeeded to his property in land he had, perhaps, to
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    pay sums of money to the widow, to brothers and sisters, and so forth. It was not like succeeding to realized property, and he had much difficulty in raising money with all these calls upon him. In fact, they could not call upon him to pay a heavy succession duty at a worse time. He hoped, therefore, they would do nothing of the kind, and trusted the Premier would reconsider a proposal so unjust, and would listen to the counsel of the noble Marquess near him, whose opinions and feelings, gathered from his speeches, he knew and earnestly hoped would prevail. He appealed to the right hon. Gentleman to make provision in the coming Budget, so as to afford some relief to the burdens of the farmers, and would conclude by thanking the House for the attention which they had given to his observations.
    MR. W. FOWLERsaid, he wished to say a few words as to the remarks of the hon. and gallant Baronet opposite (Sir Walter B. Barttelot). He had listened carefully to find what remedy he proposed for the evils he had described, and, so far as he could gather, the only relief he pressed for was a reduction of local taxation. He had spoken of losses of £3 or £4 an acre in cases he had mentioned; and he (Mr. W. Fowler) could not see how the remedy he proposed could be regarded as adequate, when, so far as he could discover, if all that was asked by him were granted, it would only make a difference to the farmer of about 1s. 6d. an acre. He agreed with the hon. and gallant Baronet as to the extent of the loss incurred by the farmers in recent years. He did not think they could take the loss in a bad year, as compared with a good year, at less than £1 an acre, taking all sorts of land together, and that would make a total loss of nearly £50,000,000 in a year over the whole country. The hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell) said that was not an unfair calculation. Now, in the last seven years, they had had hardly one good harvest. Happily, in Ireland, they had two good harvests in 1880 and 1881; but they had not had one in England. Let them hope that they were now to have better seasons, and then, if seven years hence the hon. and gallant Baronet made a speech, he thought he would be much more cheerful in his tone. The ques-

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    tion for them to consider was how far those losses sprang from want of sun, which they could not remedy, and how far from bad laws, which they could deal with. They could not affect the sun, or the spots on the sun, by Act of Parliament; but if their farmers were hindered by an uncertain climate, they could see to it that they should not be further injured by bad laws. He thought they ought to go rather more deeply into the question than the hon. and gallant Baronet had done if they would understand the present situation thoroughly. The hon. and gallant Baronet had complained of the want of produce; but he had not said a word as to the prices at different periods, and that point was one of great importance. Now, he (Mr. W. Fowler) had taken from a paper recently written by Mr. Caird some remarkable figures, showing the amounts and prices of different articles imported in periods of five years, that was, 1860–4 (inclusive) and 1875–9 (inclusive). They were as follows—
    "Imports of food in 1860–4, as compared with 1875–9: Live cattle, increase in quantity 90 per cent, increase in price 16 per cent; sheep, increase in quantity 150 per cent, increase in price 15 per cent; fresh meat, increase in quantity 220 per cent, increase in price 13 per cent; butter, increase in quantity 75 per cent, increase in price 16 per cent; cheese, increase in quantity 135 per cent, increase in price 8 per cent; salted provisions, increase in quantity 250 per cent, decrease in price 7 per cent; barley, increase in quantity 90 per cent, increase in price 10 per cent; oats, increase in quantity 122 per cent, increase in price 14 per cent; wheat, increase in quantity 75 per cent, decrease in price 4 per cent; Indian corn, increase in quantity 225 per cent, decrease in price 14 per cent; potatoes, increase in quantity 750 per cent, increase in price 10 per cent."
    It was quite clear, therefore, that prices were higher than they were. The farmer got much more all round than he used to do for his produce. The trouble had been that recently he had had so little to sell. There were three sets of laws which materially affected the farmer—the laws as to taxation, the laws as to occupation, and the laws as to ownership. The hon. and gallant Baronet had referred only to the first of those. He (Mr. W. Fowler) believed that the state of the laws as to the other matters was one great cause of their present depression by hindering the free application of capital to cultivation. Those two great branches of the law must be
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    dealt with sooner or later. There was no dispute as to the necessity of an amendment of the law as to the occupation of land; for, if he remembered right, the Bill on that subject of the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin) passed last Session its second reading without a division. The simple fact was that the English farmer had not proper security for his capital under the existing law. He knew very well that no ordinary amount of capital would have enabled some farmers to stand up against their losses in recent years; but he thought it would be found that the farmers with large capital had not suffered as severely as the small farmers. [Mr. CHAPLIN: More.] It was true that individuals amongst the larger farmers had suffered severely; but he was assured by hon. Members opposite, and especially by the hon. Baronet the Member for Chippenham (Sir Gabriel Goldney), that the chief cause of their having suffered was the fact that too often the habits of the large farmer were not so careful and economical as were those of the smaller man. Another hindrance to the farmers existed in those rules and agreements which prevented a man from cultivating his land as he thought fit. Too often he had to ask for leave before he could make any change of his cultivation, however necessary. No doubt, changes had taken place; but on too many estates there were still old-fashioned and foolish rules which hindered the farmer in his work. But the House would have to deal also with the far wider question of the ownership of the soil. Mr. Caird, in his recent paper, had stated that only a fee-simple owner could really do justice to the soil in difficult times. In that he (Mr. W. Fowler) heartily concurred. They could cultivate to best advantage only when the land was altogether free, and that could not be unless the owner was a holder in fee simple. He did not see how a man who was only a life owner could do justice to his land. He could not borrow freely, he could not sell freely; and he believed they would always have these difficulties in cultivation until they freed the land from these trammels. The hon. and gallant Baronet had referred to American competition. If the information he (Mr. W. Fowler) obtained on the other side of the Atlantic were correct, he believed that competition would

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    be far more severe in the future than it had been. Already the acreage under wheat had fallen from 3,600,000 to about 2,800,000 acres. That was another argument in favour of freedom, so that their farmers might not suffer from bad laws as well as from severe competition. He should like to tell the House something as to the amounts of articles grown at home which were now imports, for he thought their farmers might do far more than they did as to some of these. They imported in 1880 as follows:—Live cattle and sheep,£10,000,000; meat, including bacon and hams, £16,429,000; eggs, £2,235,000; butter, £12,141,000; cheese, £5,091,000; wheatandflour,£39,327,000; barley and oats, £10,000,000; peas and beans, £2,000,000; potatoes,£2,800,000; total, £100,023,000. Take butter alone. Theypaidtheforeignfarmers£l2,000,000 for butter in 1880, and yet they could not get good butter at home. In his own county he could not buy good butter. He was compelled to keep his own farm and make it for himself; in fact, they could not get a decent bit of butter inside that House, and yet there was a great market for good butter in their cities. In New York people paid 3s. and even 4s. per lb. for butter; and he was sure that hon. Gentlemen here in London would gladly pay 2s. per lb. for the genuine article. He wished to inquire why the English farmer was content to lose so good markets and to sit down in a sort of apathy and despair? He was much struck by a remark made the other day by Mr. F. B. Lawes, a name well known in that House. He said, writing to The Agricultural Gazette, that he had ceased to write for the English farmers—they did not care to read—he was now writing for the American farmers, who were anxious to read the reports of his experiments. In America the agricultural journals circulated widely, whereas Mr. Morton, the editor of The Agricultural Gazette, announced that his circulation was so poor that he feared sometimes he might have to give up his paper. For his own part, he (Mr. W. Fowler) thought they wanted more freedom for both owner and occupier, and that in that they would find the best remedy for their present troubles. He wished to see each generation of owners truly free—able to do what they liked with their own. He would take nothing from any man. He would hurt
    996
    no man. He wished merely to free the land from the trammels of a worn-out and obsolete system. Hon. Members opposite were afraid that a spendthrift, if owner of an estate in fee, might ruin a family. For his part, he thought families must take care of themselves. That House had to regard the nation before the family. Spite of all possible precautions they constantly saw families decay, and no laws could prevent the fall of families when caused by the follies and vices of their members. He believed that many a man was injured by these settlements, because the knowledge of his prospects being certain, whatever his conduct might be, prevented him from using that caution and prudence in his conduct which he might otherwise exercise. And such a man damaged his family, whereas, if he knew that the family inheritance might pass from him, he might be saved in his youth, and thus assist in preserving the dignity of his house. He asked for freedom—for the removal of all absurd and worn-out restrictions, so that they might have such a holding of their land as should be worthy of a great and free people.
    SIR BALDWYN LEIGHTONsaid, it was very desirable that agricultural depression should be referred to, and, perhaps, hardly enough allusion had as yet been made to so important a subject. It was true they were looking to remedial legislation by way of re-adjustment of unjust taxation as mentioned in the Queen's Speech, and not to any proposals embracing Protection. But he must entirely differ from the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. W. Fowler), who said any relief in that direction must be small. What did he call small? The average rate in agricultural parishes was now 3s. in the pound. That came to an income tax of 6s. in the pound on a farmer's assessed income, or, if they put it under Schedule A, to 3s. in the pound on the landlord; or, if they divided it between them, to 4s. 6d. in the pound. All that was for public purposes, and imposed contrary to the intention of the statute on land only. But that was not all. They were told land was so lightly taxed that it ought to bear more; and that if it bore local burdens, it escaped Imperial taxation, and the probate duty was given as an instance. Whenever that question was

    997
    raised, they would have a good deal to say about that. He would only remind the House now that two days ago he put a Question to the Prime Minister as to the injustice of the income tax levied on land under Schedule A. The right hon. Gentleman admitted the injustice. Sir Robert Peel went further—he said when the Income Tax was 7d., that under Schedule A was 9d. He (Sir Baldwyn Leighton) put it a little lower himself; but that must be set right if they were to go into the burdens on land. Then, why was the land tax, which was originally assessed on personalty as "moveables" as well as land, now only charged on land? Those were questions that would have to be settled, if the probate duty was touched, besides the question of rates. But they would have other opportunities of going into questions of local taxation; and he desired, with the permission of the House, to say a word about Ireland, on which, no doubt, attention was chiefly fixed. The House might be congratulated, he thought, on the moderate tone of the debate so far, when they considered the interests involved and the disorder and misery of that distracted Island. He would desire to avoid, as far as possible, all contentious matter, and rather to look at the economic view of the subject. It must be premised, however, that the inaction and utterances during the past months had, in a great extent, consciously or unconsciously encouraged the agitation. When they should have a debate on the question of confiscation and compensation, which he would not anticipate, except to say that it seemed to him that as the Government were so greatly mistaken in their calculation of the effect of this Bill, it would be a fair thing to consider whether the tithes should not be restored to the landlords. As to the administration of the Act, they would have discussions on that, and he thought there was a Motion in "another place" for a Committee to go into the subject. But to his hon. Friends on that side he would say, if mistakes had been made, they would not have been made with impunity; and 500 men in prison, with 500 men, women, and children maimed or murdered; an army of 50,000 men keeping order; and last, but not least, departing capital and departing industries, made up a fearful sum in the debit account of a Province or a Government
    998
    unless it could be liquidated. It was to that liquidation or remedy that he desired to speak. They could not now alter the past; but they need not despair of the future. What he wanted to convey to the House was that the Land Act, even if as successful as might reasonably be expected by its authors, would not entirely solve the problem. They had too much overlooked the element of race in dealing with Ireland. Now, what they must do for Ireland was somehow to develop her industries and absorb her population—a population that possessed many virtues, but which did not shine in those qualities of thrift and self-reliance which made the wealth of nations. Those industries might be summed up in "three F's." They heard a good deal of the "three F's" last Session. Here were three more F's—Flax, Fisheries, and Fineries. Those were the.staples and resources of Ireland. Her linen trade, the only important manufacture that had not been destroyed; her boundless coast and inexhaustible fishing grounds; and her manufactures of poplin, lace, and other light fineries. Without the development of those collateral resources, he maintained that the Land Act would not be sufficient; nay, more, it might aggravate in some cases the agrarian difficulty. Ownership and 15 years of fixed tenure might tend to sub-division, and make the last state worse than the first. Then, if the hovel population of the South and West did not buy each other out by a system of natural eviction, their state, stereotyped on the soil in an impossible economic condition, would become truly pitiable, unless some staple industry could be developed by which they might live. Let them look at an agricultural parish in England, and imagine to what the more thrifty and capable labourers there would be reduced if they were compelled to remain and live on the soil. In England they had natural outlets; but in Ireland those natural outlets had been deliberately destroyed. This country, many years ago. deliberately destroyed Ireland's factories and industries; and the ruined chimnies and factories that were yet to be seen in parts of Ireland were monuments of a policy for which they were now paying the penalty. The condition of Ireland was abnormal, and the remedies would have to be abnormal too. Now there was one manufacture,

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    to which he had already referred, which alone, almost of her industries, had flourished in Ireland, owing to soil and climate probably, but which had in addition the peculiar advantage that the raw material was an agricultural production of the country where it was manufactured. He referred to flax. He believed the attention of the Government should be seriously given to the development of that cultivation by small model farms, or factories of the raw material, or by other means. And he even thought the Government might consider the propriety of going a step further, though he feared the right hon. Members for Birmingham would fall upon him and discharge vials of wrath on his head, if he ventured to suggest, as a policy worthy consideration, the fostering that industry by a protective duty; but he thought such a course was worth examination. As he had said, the conditions were abnormal, and the remedies would have to be abnormal too, Now what did the political economists say about such a policy? Allow him to premise that, though he held greatly to all sound political economy, he thought those writers sometimes got run away with by their abstractions, and perhaps by not fully appreciating human nature. Adam Smith could not define rent, and Mr. Stuart Mill tried to prove to an astonished House of Commons that the cattle plague was no serious loss to the agricultural interest, because the value of the cows that survived would be increased by the loss of those that died. Then what political economist had assessed what the Prime Minister described as pretium amoris in an Irish tenant, who gave twice the value of the fee simple for a bit of land, besides the rent? And how those writers had gone astray with regard to their Colonial relations in not understanding the natural love of the emigrant for the Mother Country. But, after all, what did the political economists say? They told them that there were two conditions under which a Protective Tariff was admissible. In a young Colony or nascent State, and by way of reciprocity or bargain with a Protective State. Ireland at present fulfilled one, if not both these conditions. But all he had to say to-day was that he thought if the flax cultivation could not be elevated into a staple industry by any other means, such
    1000
    a policy was at least worthy consideration. He found by the Returns that the acreage under flax had decreased lately by 10,000 acres, and was now chiefly confined to the Northern Province. Why was that? He held in this hand a paper purporting to show an improved mode of manufacture which would enable even the unskilled to prepare the yarn. An acre of land properly cultivated would, it is said, produce £200. Suppose it only gave £50, that would maintain a man's family. Then it was home industry; and he need not remind hon. Members from Ireland that that was a supreme advantage for such a country. But there were these other considerations. Ireland now was costing them, it was said, in peaceful times £3,000,000 a-year, instead of bringing in money to the Treasury. How much under present conditions she was costing they would know presently; perhaps double that. Then the present land settlement was peculiarly favourable for the production of what it was well known was an exhaustive crop. Again, they have heard much of Home Rule and Separation. Supposing such a policy were adopted, it would bring the two countries nearer in friendly relation. He had trespassed too long on the patience of the House, he feared; but what he desired specially to convey was that, standing alone without some better mode of industrializing the people, that Land Act would not solve the problem of distracted Ireland.
    MR. ARTHUR ARNOLDsaid, that the hon. and gallant Baronet the Member for West Sussex (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) did not seem to exaggerate in any way the difficulties under which the agricultural interest was labouring, nor, as far as he (Mr. Arnold) had been able to inquire, had he overstated the generosity which the landlords of this country had displayed in their efforts to preserve a good feeling between their tenants and themselves. But it appeared that there was great unwillingness on their part to put their shoulders to the wheel in the right direction. The hon. and gallant Baronet seemed to be a very fit Representative of the county of Sussex. Agriculture in that county was certainly somewhat unprogressive compared with other counties of England. The Assistant Commissioner, who had lately investigated this matter, men-

    1001
    tioned only one considerable landlord in that county as having adopted the conditions of the Agricultural Holdings Act. In Sussex small farms were very rare. He was not surprised to find that the Assistant Commissioner concluded his Report with a strong recommendation to the landlords of Sussex to adopt his view—that the farms in Sussex were too large, and that it was desirable to encourage small farms. That recommendation was applicable to other counties. He also wondered that the hon. Baronet, in speaking of the difficulties he experienced in farming, made no allusion to a very important measure which the Government introduced last year—namely, the Bill for the Prevention of Floods, which would certainly have operated very usefully and beneficially in the county in question. That Bill, however, was hindered in its passage; and when hon. Gentlemen came to the House to plead the cause of agriculture, he thought they ought to take some shame to themselves on that account. Agriculture, however, had difficulties to contend with not peculiar to Sussex. He (Mr. Arnold) would read to the House a clause in a lease of land belonging to a Nobleman resident in that county. A tenant held the farm, on which the game was strictly preserved, with the following stipulation:—
    "No allowance shall be made for damage done, or said or supposed to be done; but the landlord promises to take a liberal view of special damage upon proper representation."
    Under such a condition of things the tenant had not a fair opportunity of improving his land. In 1878 the average production of wheat in Sussex was 24 bushels per acre. A farmer of three acres in another county had told the Assistant Commissioner that two of the acres were his own, and that he paid a rent of £2 for the other acre. In 1878 he produced 45 bushels per acre upon that little spot of land. How did he do this? By putting capital into it, and by farming it in an intelligent and progressive manner. In 1870 he produced 57½ bushels upon one acre and a quarter. That was a return which could not be shown from the large farms of this country. To match it one must go to the Island of Jersey, where the average was about 45 bushels per acre. In reference to the local burdens on land to which the hon. and gallant Baronet referred, he (Mr. Arnold)
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    would say that the question deserved the serious consideration of the House and of the Government; but on turning to the Blue Book he found men whose opinions would generally be most readily accepted expressing very positive views in opposition to those of the hon. and gallant Baronet. Mr. Dent Dent, the present or late President of the Royal Agricultural Society, while stating that small farms had diminished of late years, thought a great mistake had been made in throwing small farms together. "I find," he said, "that small farms are more easy to let than large ones, and in consequence command higher rent." He also said that local rates had not increased much. What other facts came from the great landed estates? In some cases landlords imposed the most extraordinary conditions on their tenants. On the estate of Mr. Lane Fox the Assistant Commissioner reported that every tenant farmer contracted to walk a foxhound puppy. One of those tenants gave a curious opinion on the subject of Protection—namely, that ships ought to be rated because worn-out sailors had to be maintained. He (Mr. Arnold) wondered whether the tenant farmer remembered that if ships were rated the cost of his artificial manures would be increased. The hon. and gallant Baronet, in speaking of highways, said that the large employers of labour paid nothing towards their support; but hon. Gentlemen opposite appeared to be in the habit of forgetting the enormous benefit which they, as landowners, derived from the capital and industry of large employers of labour. The value of agricultural land depended very largely upon such employment of capital. According to Mr. Caird, the agricultural land of this country had, between 1850 and 1875, increased in value by as much as £275,000,000. It had never been stated that local burdens had increased to anything like a similar degree. It was, however, unquestionably the fact that rents in Sussex and other counties had increased immensely. He (Mr. Arnold) did not think that rents were too high; but he held that agriculture in this country was being pursued on lines which were radically wrong, and required fundamental alteration. The hon. Baronet who had been speaking about Ireland (Sir Baldwyn

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    Leighton) enunciated what was really the Conservative policy for the settlement of this agricultural question. It was all out now, and it was emigration and large farms. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Lincolnshire (Mr. J. Lowther), who spoke the previous night, was once waited upon in Dublin with reference to the relief of distress in Ireland, and on that occasion he used words which had not only made him offensive to the Irish people, but which were an offence against their interests that would never be forgiven. What he said was that Ireland needed "grass seed" more than anything else. A grosser insult never fell from the lips of a Minister. It meant that the people should be cleared off and the land bestowed on miserable pasture. Emigration and grass seed was the Conservative policy. Professor Baldwin had said that in Ireland 4,000,000 acres of land which had been turned into pasture were only producing one-fifth part of the food which they would have produced as arable land. The effect of the grass seed remedy was that the production of food had declined by as much as would provide for 2,000,000 of persons. In conclusion, he asked the hon. and gallant Baronet and his Friends to remember that the Government had offered them the largest and most beneficial measure that could possibly be suggested in promises for the reform of the laws relating to the entail and settlement of land. He (Mr. Arnold) wished himself for free land, and he said that hon. Gentlemen who were really sincere in their desire to promote reform in agriculture could do so by joining hands with the Prime Minister and supporting him in the measures of Land Law reform which he had promised to bring before the country. The most effectual measure for the promotion of the agricultural interest would be to relieve the soil from the Laws of Entail and Settlement.
    MR. PELLsaid, that the remarks of the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Arnold) indicated the spirit which was too much abroad of dictating to landowners and tenants the way in which they were to cultivate their land. He would venture to say that the right hon. Gentleman the late Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. J. Lowther), in recommending that
    1004
    land in Ireland should be put into grass, instead of being continued under tillage, was only giving advice which many in England had already begun to act upon. Although the times had been as bad as they could be for the tillers of the soil, and ultimately for the landlords—for the blow had now reached them—he could not join with those who thought the condition of agriculture so bad that rents must continue to fall, and that the occupation of land must be abandoned. Yet, he believed that a great number of agricultural tenants had been absolutely and entirely ruined and their capital lost. Those who, like himself, were small owners, as well as tenants had suffered severely, for small landowners had been doing no better than those who hired land. The most serious thing they had to encounter was the succession of bad seasons they had experienced of late years. Last year their expectations of a good harvest were disappointed at the last moment by the weather. Many remarks had been made with respect to another cause of depression, the competition from America. He could inform the hon. and gallant Baronet (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) that, according to recent accounts, America had suffered as severely as they had; the proof of that was that the imports were very much less than they had been. Large farmers in America had found large farms as disadvantageous as they were found to be in England. The distinction in the matter was that the American difficulty arose from the scarcity and dearness of labour. He believed that the difficulty was even much greater in America than in England. A friend who was in America 10 months ago assured him that there were thousands of acres of wheat uncut for the want of hands to drive the machinery. He would like to call attention to the importation of wheat to show how it had fallen off during the past three years. The quantity of wheat imported from the United States in 1879 was 3,621,000 cwts.; in 1880, 3,645,000 cwts.; and in 1881, 2,365,000 cwts. But there was something more remarkable still. In the month of January, 1880, the United States sent us 2,319,000 cwts. of wheat, which was more than two-thirds of the quantity of wheat imported from all parts of the world; in 1881 the quantity was increased; but this year the quantity sent us from the United

    1005
    States was only 1,880,000 cwts. There was also a remarkable change in the places from which grain was imported into this country. Wheat production in America had become more the result of cultivation and less of crop. The Americans had found out that reckless cropping would have to give place to cultivation. Cultivation had been carried to a very high degree on the Pacific Coast; and the Pacific States, which sent us in 1879 only 382,000 cwts. of wheat, sent us in 1881, 1,094,000 cwts., equaling, within a few cwts., the whole of the exports from the Eastern States, and from the prairie lands to the east of the Rocky Mountains. India, too, as had been long expected, was beginning to take the first place among the countries that grew wheat. She was rivalling the Pacific States. In fact, he thought she had a little exceeded them in her powers of production and export this last year, and up to the end of the first month of the present year, British India had sent out 1,376,000 cwts. He therefore thought they must not charge their American cousins altogether with being the cause of the depression in Great Britain. He believed that within the last four or five months wheat had been as dear at Chicago as it had been at Liverpool, and in New York the price of good meat was within a penny per lb. of what it was in England. They should bear in mind the enormous increase of population in America, which created a belt of hungry mouths between ourselves and the centres of population in that country. He only wished to put these matters forward as an object of encouragement. Then, by way of contrast, he must say a word upon the value of land. The value of land had suffered very serious diminution, and he believed that the value of English freehold land for farming purposes had come down from 30 or 33 years' purchase to 25 years' purchase. The fall in rents, he felt sure, had not yet ceased, and numerous applications had been made for reassessment on that ground. What, then, was to be done? Any remission of taxation would be acceptable, and the landlord and the tenant would be glad to share it between them, however small it might be, for "little fishes were sweet." A good many landlords and a good many tenants felt that if the chain was not heavy, at all events, the galling was
    1006
    very irksome—a remark which had been made with great aptness a short time ago by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. They must be assisted in reforming themselves. Those who desired reform in administration could get but little assistance from the Local Government Board, who were already too much occupied with Poor Law questions and other matters, such as the Conservancy of Rivers. He agreed with his hon. and gallant Friend in the belief that the circumstances of the case were such as to justify them in asking from the Government some assistance and consideration as would make the burdens under which they laboured easier and more tolerable. That question ought not to be made a political one. If anything could justify the appeal made to the Government by his hon. and gallant Friend, it was the attitude which the farmers had maintained throughout their difficulties. They, and especially the small freeholders, had exhibited the best qualities of the English people.
    MR. J. W. BARCLAYsaid, he thought that, considering the urgency of the subject of the present state of agriculture, and the hopes which had been raised by the Prime Minister during the Recess, farmers had some reason to expect greater notice of this subject in the Address from the Throne than it had received. He entirely agreed with the hon. and gallant Baronet opposite (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) in regard to losses which farmers had sustained during the last few years. He did not, however, go entirely with him in believing that depression was so much due to the absence of sunshine and to the state of the weather as he seemed to think; and he would quote, in support of his view, the very important Paper recently published by the statistician of the Board of Trade, which showed that from one-third to one-fourth of the annual losses during the last few years had been due to deficient quantity in the crops, and that from two-thirds to three-fourths was due to various other causes—difference in prices, and increase in rent and wages. In connection with the question of labour, he must say that, so far as his own experience went, he did not consider that the agricultural labourer had in anywise deteriorated. The labouring man in Scotland was doing as much work

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    as he had ever done; in fact, he was doing a great deal more, because implements had improved very much indeed. "With regard to the agriculture of Sussex, he was glad to learn that a good many landlords there were directing more attention to the subject than heretofore, and that they had instituted a system of agricultural experiments, from which he had no doubt they would derive great benefit. From recent observations, he thought the agriculture of Sussex was as far back as any part of the United Kingdom. Last year he had observed a system of ploughing carried on there which had been abandoned in Scotland in the end of last century. With farming in such a style, it was impossible for the farmers to meet the competition from abroad. No doubt, the seasons had been bad during the last four or five years; but he observed that in the case of those farms which had been judiciously cultivated for a generation or two, the losses had been smaller than on others; and he wished there to state his emphatic contradiction, so far as his experience and observation went, of the statement that high farming had been most unprofitable. He was perfectly satisfied it was no such thing, and it would he a very unfortunate thing for farming if it were so. But he would say that injudicious manuring had been attended with very bad results during the last four or five years. If farmers generally were better informed on the scientific side of their business, they would be able to raise far greater crops than they did at present, and that with greater economy. He had been surprised to hear the hon. and gallant Baronet refer to the well-worn saying which they were accustomed to hear at agricultural dinners, that landlord and tenant rowed in the same boat, giving the House a case in illustration, the result of which was that the tenant lost his capital of £1,000 in some four years, while it was to be presumed that the hon. and gallant Baronet got his rent during the same period. For himself, he was in favour of the relations between landlords and tenants being based on the strictest commercial principles. The practice of giving casual abatements of rent sapped the enterprize, self-reliance, and independence of the tenant; and he was very sure that as long as that system continued they could have very little
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    hope for the prosperity of the agriculture of the country. While agreeing with the hon. and gallant Gentleman with regard to the losses the farmer had sustained, he was very disappointed to see the remedy he had suggested. He quite agreed with him in thinking the taxation of the country was a great deal too much; but he should expect the greatest relief to come from the economical administration of the funds, and this was to be expected from County Boards. In Scotland, under representative County Boards, the roads were kept in better condition than they had been before, and without any greater expenditure. As to the police, it occurred to him that they were occupied to a considerable extent in game preserving and game watching, and that their numbers might be very greatly reduced. There was no doubt, if they had local representative Boards, they might expect a considerable reduction in the number of police. As to improvement, there seemed to him to be two fundamental remedies. In the first place, he thought there must be a very considerable reduction of rent. No doubt, that had been going on very considerably of late years; and he thought that, on the whole, the landlords of England had made voluntarily as great a reduction of rent as had been made compulsorily by the Assistant Commissioners in Ireland. He thought, also, that the Government should intimate their intention with regard to the abolition of the Law of Distraint. It would be in the recollection of the House that last Session a Resolution which affirmed that it was expedient to abolish the Law of Distraint was brought forward by an hon. Member, and, after discussion, the House agreed, without division, to the Resolution. Her Majesty's Government had supported the Resolution warmly, and it seemed to him to give effect to their convictions then expressed; and also, in deference to the Resolution of the House, they ought now to bring forward a Bill for the abolition of the Law of Distraint, or, at least, take up the Bill which had been introduced by his hon. Friend, and make it a Government measure. He thought the farmers of England and Ireland were entitled to that, at least, at the hands of the Government during the present Session. The other funda-

    1009
    mental reform which was necessary was one which would give the tenant farmer security for his capital. The hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell) had endeavoured to extract some comfort from the diminution of the imports from America. He (Mr. J. W. Barclay) could not discover what comfort was to be derived from that, because the explanation of the whole matter was this—that last year they had a poor crop in America, and, consequently, they had much less wheat to send. But the area devoted to wheat in 1881 and this year was not any less than in former years. What seemed to him by no means comforting was this—that, notwithstanding the great falling-off in the supplies from America, there had been no increase in the price of wheat in this country. Competition from abroad, however, was not confined to America, but had also extended to India; and he believed New Zealand and the Australian Colonies would, within a few years, contribute largely to the supply. Whoever knew the circumstances and the conditions under which the British farmer carried on his business, as compared with the foreigner with whom he had to compete, must come to the conclusion that it would be as impossible for the British farmer to carry on his business against the foreigner as it had been for the handloom weaver to carryon his business after the power-loom was introduced. It was true that in America difficulty was sometimes experienced in getting labour, and that labour was expensive; but, as a general rule, the price paid for labour on a quarter of wheat was not greater in America than in this country. There was, of course, the freight to be added to the price, but that did not exceed 7s. 6d. per quarter, and, in view of the great competition, was likely to diminish. He had himself known contracts entered into last year at a lower rate than that he had named, and their tendency was to fall still more. In this way the Western States were being brought, in a sense, nearer to our doors, and it became necessary for the British farmer to rely on something more powerful than mere relief from local taxation. When the American farmer came to be pressed to make a living at lower prices for wheat, he would be able to do it, and they might expect that from year to year the
    1010
    pressure of competition would be greater and greater. It seemed to him that the only hope of the British farmer was in endeavouring to increase the quantity he produced per acre on his farm. That was the great point in which the British farmer had an advantage over the American. He had not the slightest doubt, speaking from his own experience, that if the British farmer had security for his capital and freedom of cultivation, he would be able to increase the produce of his land by 50 per cent, and he had good authority for placing the increase much higher. This was speaking of wheat alone; but then, again, cereals were the simplest class of agricultural produce, and if the British farmer worked under a different system of tenure, and had security for his improvements, he would grow higher class produce, such as vegetables, and make more butter and cheese. It was only by this higher class of produce that the farmer could hope to be able to pay his present rent. But it was not so much a matter of rent as of the conditions under which the farmer carried on his business. How would the cotton-spinner fare if surrounded by the restrictions which fettered the farmer? He could not possibly survive foreign competition, and it was as impossible for the farmer as it was for the cotton-spinner. In former times the farmers enjoyed a natural protection. The cost of transit was very much greater than at present. Large portions of the world were involved in destructive wars, and the farmer in those days was able to get a much larger price for his produce. But year by year the full force of competition had been brought to bear on the British farmer, and under this fierce competition the system of tenure by the cultivator had broken down. It would be utterly impossible to continue it, whatever the seasons might be, on the present conditions. The farmer must have his hands as free to deal with the land as the cotton manufacturer to deal with his cotton. Under the present system there was what might be called a creeping paralysis setting in over the country. In the first place, the lower classes of land, which did little more than pay the cost of labour, were going out of cultivation. But this paralysis would extend, and it would be only the more select portions of laud that would be maintained

    1011
    in cultivation and pay a fair rent. If that were so, it was surely urgent upon the Government and Parliament to take some measure which would insure that those who cultivated the land would be allowed to do so under conditions which were fair and just. The landlords had confiscated the improvements of their tenants, and had exercised their great powers in such a way that they had tilled the goose that laid the golden eggs; and it was only in the finer parts of the country where fair rents were still obtained. But he was assured that, on estates where the management was liberal, and the quality of the land satisfactory, there were still no vacant farms. In these circumstances, it was surely for the advantage of the landlords, no less than of the tenants, if they would face the difficulties of the position now; they should not trust merely to a return of sunshine to bring prosperity to agriculture, for a return of sunshine would mean lower prices. In conclusion, he urged the Government to take the first step by abolishing the Law of Distraint; the farmers and the House were entitled to no less from the Government, interfering, as it did, with their progress in the country.
    MR. STORERsaid, he agreed that there could be but one opinion as to the way in which the agricultural interest had been treated in Her Majesty's Speech. Let them compare the way tenant farmers in England had been treated with what had happened in Ireland. He did not, however, approve the manner in which the Government had dealt with the tenant farmers in Ireland; it taught them to rely upon legislation instead of upon their own efforts, and was opposed in principle to any legislation previously introduced into this country. But although the Government had offered the Irish tenants 30 per cent reduction, they had been outbid by Mr. Parnell, who had offered 75 or 100 per cent, and the consequence was that the agitation continued very much as before. The people of England would certainly not continue long to look upon such a state of things with equanimity. Meanwhile the condition of the agricultural interests in England claimed attention. The farmers, from a succession of unfortunate circumstances over which they had no control, saw their capital gradually melting away from them, until
    1012
    they had many of them been ruined. The unjust burdens which were thrown upon the land had helped to bring about that state of things. What other section of industry, for instance, was burdened with what was virtually an income tax of 3s. in the pound? There was but small hope, however, that the Government would listen to any proposal for alleviating the burdens of the lands, though agriculturists, like drowning men, would be glad to catch at any straw. With regard to the question of local taxation, even if the relief only amounted to 1s. 6d. per acre, it would be very welcome to the tenant. They did not, he believed, want the Law of Distress abolished. Something could, no doubt, be said against that law, but much could also be said in its favour. The landlord, knowing that his rent was secure, could often extend a helping hand to the tenant, whom, in other circumstances, he would leave to fight his own battle. In addition to the financial burden of land, bad seasons, and, above all, foreign competition contributed to impoverish the farmer. There was no doubt that foreign competition was the great factor in the existing agricultural depression, and—he would not say if it were allowed to go on unchecked, for no one proposed to check it—but if relief in some shape was not given to the farmer the agriculture of this country was doomed. Circumstances had altered very much since Free Trade was first adopted, and the time had arrived when an inquiry into the whole working of our so-called "Free Trade," but which was not Free Trade in reality, was necessary. Something should be done for the agriculture of this country if we were not to sink as a nation. He did not ask, however, that the same treatment should be extended to the farmers of England that had been applied to the Irish farmers, because, although the farmers might "live and thrive" under that system, the landlords certainly would not do so. The whole question was one that deserved to be made the subject of the most searching inquiry, and not to be treated in the way in which it had been dealt with in the Speech from the Throne, in which Her Most Gracious Majesty was made to say to the English agriculturists—"Gentlemen, I wish you good morning; the weather has been remarkably mild."
    MR. M'LAGANsaid, that the discussion which had been introduced would be of advantage not only to the Government but to the country generally. With regard to the speech of the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell), who was an authority on the subject of American competition, he was convinced it would be of benefit and advantage because of the encouraging views he held out to the farmers. He agreed that so long as Protection prevailed in America we had no reason to dread competition from farmers in America. They could not raise their agricultural produce at so low a rate as if they had Free Trade; and he would say to those hon. Members who desired a return to Protection, that they ought to be on their guard, as the farmers of this country were, as a body, thoroughly of opinion that they would not be able to thrive except under Free Trade. The farmers of America, who had already suffered far more than the farmers here, would be obliged, in order to enable them to cultivate to advantage, to spend far more on labour and manure than they had hitherto done, and the result would be that, instead of being producers and exporters of grain, they would become the consumers of that immense quantity of grain which was being used on the Pacific Coast; and for these two reasons, added to what the hon. Member for South Leicestershire said, he thought the farmers in this country had no reason to be dismayed by the spectre of American competition so often held up to them. On the other hand, they had the pessimist view from the hon. Member for Forfarshire (Mr. J. W. Barclay); but certainly his speech did not at all convince him (Mr. M'Lagan) as to the difficulties which they laboured under from that depression. That there had been great agricultural depression there could be no doubt. Now, what were the causes? That bad seasons were in great part one cause he could adduce many proofs. Farmers themselves had come to him and said that the prices were not bad; that if they had only the produce to sell they would be as well off as ever they were. During the Recess he had the opportunity of studying this aspect of the question, and he had come to the conclusion that so far from agricultural produce having fallen in value, the greater produce on which we were de-
    1014
    pendent in this country had risen very much in value. For instance, beef, mutton, butter, cheese, milk, oats, had all risen. Wheat, again, this year had fallen very much, and those lots of land which had fallen out of cultivation had been those devoted chiefly to the cultivation of wheat. There could be no doubt, as the hon. Member for Forfarshire had said, that a great deal of land had gone out of cultivation; but what was the quality of these lands? They were clay lands. The hon. Member for Forfarshire thought he was entitled to blame the bad laws and the conduct of proprietors; but, in his opinion, the true occasion of it was that we had had a succession of very wet, cold seasons, and it was quite impossible that anything could grow on those cold clay lands, and that was the reason why they had gone out of cultivation. Whatever might be in the future, he had perfect hope that even those lands would, if they were farmed with better seasons, be again cultivated and produce the crops which they had hitherto been doing. He agreed, however, with the remark of the hon. Member for Forfarshire, that the farmers of this country had still some hope of redress from great loss, by applying themselves to the cultivation of a different produce from what they had hitherto been doing. When they found, for instance, that the prices of beef, mutton, and butter and dairy produce were increasing, surely the wise farmer would at once try to cultivate that produce and abandon the growing of wheat, when it could not pay at the present prices. While it was quite true that returns had risen during the last 20 years from about 25 to 30 per cent, they must not suppose that there had not been a, quid pro quo. During that time the proprietors had laid out large sums of that money in draining lands, and in buildings, and if they only reckoned 5 per cent upon that, they would soon come out with the increase of 25 per cent; if the rents were reduced 25 per cent, it just meant that it was so much lost to the proprietor of the money which he had so laid out. But a more serious tiling than even the reduction of rent was to be found in the deterioration of the soil, and he was surprised some of the practical Members who had spoken had not taken notice of it. The soil at the present time had not the same fer-

    1015
    tility about it that it had 10 or 12 years ago, owing, first, to the succession of wet seasons having washed the elements of fertility out of it, and, in the next place, to the fact that the farmers had lost so much of their capital that they had not been able to restore those elements. In that way the soils were in a very deteriorated way indeed, and it would require a large sum of money to bring them back into their former condition. That was not only an individual loss, but was a national loss. The depression in agriculture was not like the depression in trade, or bad times on the Stock Exchange. If stocks or shares fell it was generally a fictitious price that fell, and the intrinsic value those shares represented was still the same. Now, with depression in agriculture it was different; the intrinsic value of the land by the causes he had mentioned was very much reduced indeed, and therefore it was a very great loss to the nation. He recollected several instances in which farmers had suffered from bad seasons and nothing else, but he would only mention one. There was the case of a farmer in East Lothian, who in 1879 lost about £2,400 upon his farm with the bad seasons. The year 1880 was a good year in that county, and the result was that this farmer not only made up his losses of the previous year, but some profit besides. He adduced that case to show that really what they had to complain of as the principal cause of the depression was bad seasons, over which they had no control. But were there no remedies for the depression? Some had been mentioned in the debate on the other side of the House. They were told they should have a reduction of local taxation. He was quite willing to take any gift that might be given to him, but this local taxation was a very small loaf indeed. As a rule, however, he objected to the giving of local taxation from Imperial funds for two reasons—because it encouraged centralization; and because, in the next place, it caused a great carelessness in the management of funds amongst the local authorities; and he would much rather if some plan were devised such as had been indicated by the Premier, by which they could have the local taxation reduced as far as possible. The farmers of this country wanted something far greater than that; they wanted immediate relief in the
    1016
    reduction of rent. How was that to be given? To their credit, many landlords had reduced their rents 25, 30, and even 50 per cent without any legislation whatever; but they must not forget that there were just as many proprietors who were quite willing to reduce their rents, and who could not do so on account of the Law of Settlement and Entail. He knew one case of a landlord who was willing to give a reduction of his rents, but this landlord said that if he gave relief to the extent of 10 per cent he would have no income whatever. They should thus take care that if they were generous to the farmer they should not be unjust to the proprietor. But how could they afford relief? He saw the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Bright) and the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain) in their places, and he hoped that these right hon. Gentlemen would be able even yet to recommend that some decisive measure be introduced this year. He would go so far as this, that if there was not time to deal with the Law of Entail and Settlement, a short Bill might be brought in by which proprietors bound up by entail might have it in their power to borrow money at the same rate as if they held their land at fee simple, and that that should be put upon the land. This would enable many proprietors to give a reduction of rent to the tenants, which otherwise they would find it quite impossible to do. Another cause of difficulty was the high cost of labour; but whatever they did in trying to find a remedy for the depression, they must not look to reducing the wages of the labourer. The labourer had had his wages increased only to bring him up in the social scale to the position he ought to occupy, and were they to reduce a labourer's wages they should just be reducing him in the social scale. There was, however, another subject which they had to do with, and that was railway rates for agricultural products. He trusted the Committee on this subject would be able soon to come to the House with their Report, so that some steps might be taken, even this Session. It was absolutely necessary they should have some alteration in the rates. It was preposterous that wheat in America had been carried at a cheaper rate than the railways of this country would, and

    1017
    the difference in these railway rates was all the difference as to whether the farm could be profitably cultivated or not. As Legislators, what they must specially see to was the amendment of those Land Laws, which at the present time he thought nothing else but a curse to the country, and the sooner they removed those shackles from the land the better. As regarded the farmer, it was quite in their power to pass some legislation so that the farmer might have his capital well secured, and he trusted the Government would this year support the Bill of the hon. Member for Mid Lincoln (Mr. Chaplin), which went in that direction, and which, if passed in the state it now was, would be productive of much good to the agricultural interest. In the Speech from the Throne it was stated that a Bill was to be introduced for the abolition of the Law of Entail in Scotland. That Bill would give great satisfaction throughout Scotland, and no opposition would be given to it by Scotch Members. He would, however, suggest to the Lord Advocate that in abolishing entail he would take care that a worse custom be not introduced, and that was, that proprietors would not have it in their power to put their properties into trust, and really produce worse effects than the Law of Entail actually produced. He knew at present in Scotland where there were some estates that were in trust—not from debt being upon them, because they were perfectly free; but the heir in possession was in a far worse position at the present time than the heirs of other estates in Scotland. Now, if entail were abolished, he wished the Lord Advocate would take care that the Act would not be evaded by proprietors having it in their power to put estates in trust. That would be a most grievous wrong, most prejudical to proprietors themselves, and most detrimental to the interests of the country generally.
    MR. GREGORYobserved, that the county of Sussex, one division of which he had the honour to represent, had been accused of being in a backward state of agriculture. As regarded the adoption of the Agricultural Holdings Act, the reason it had not been adopted was that the custom of the country was more beneficial to the tenant than anything that could be found in the Act. The tenant had actual security for his manure, his drainage, and his cultivation; and
    1018
    the landlords had never been backward in meeting the tenants in the matter of permanent improvements. Moreover, a tenant practically had all his repairs done by his landlord. In respect of cultivation Sussex was really in the position of two counties. One part consisted of clay, loam, and sand; while the other district lay upon the chalk, and was adapted for entirely different purposes. In the chalk districts there was good pasturage for sheep, and on the sides of the hills wheat and barley were cultivated with great success. On the clay and sand hops were grown, and dairy farming went on. To endeavour, therefore, to obtain an average of the amount of wheat grown throughout Sussex would be an entirely fallacious calculation. It would be not a true calculation as regarded the wheat really produced in the districts of Sussex adapted for it. He now proposed to make a few observations on the general subject. The question that had been principally debated that evening was as to what could be done, independently of the seasons, to benefit the agricultural interest. That resolved itself into the two subjects of local taxation and the relations of landlord and tenants. As regarded local taxation, the recommendations of a Committee which sat some years ago on the subject had never been carried out. The mode of collecting the rates, as formed by that Committee, was burdensome and vexatious to the taxpayer and unduly extravagant. But the tenant farmer also felt the injustice of the tax itself. He could not help seeing that a great amount of property in the country escaped from taxation altogether. He saw people use the roads who contributed nothing to their maintenance; and he had to bear other really Imperial burdens, towards which the fund holder, the mortgagee, or the debenture holder, paid not a shilling. The tenant farmer did not ask for the increase of taxation in bulk, but for its equalization. He would wish to see Imperial and local taxation so amalgamated that the burdens would be borne equally by all persons and all descriptions of property. It had been suggested that the Law of Settlement should be abolished as regarded land. He did not think that a distinction could fairly be made in that respect between real and personal property. At present, settlements of per-

    1019
    sonal property were encouraged; and it would be hard to deprive a man whose property happened to consist of realty of that mode of providing for the future and for his children which the owner of pure personalty enjoyed. But something might be done with matters as they now stood, by giving relief as between those who were owners of limited estates in land and the occupiers. He considered that there should be a solvent landlord as well as a solvent tenant; that was to say, a landlord with capital to enable him to meet the just requirements of the tenant and to improve the property. There should be an unqualified power of sale, and the land should be readily convertible and easily transferable. A limited owner of land should have power to apply his own capital in the improvement of the land and to charge it upon the land, and he should have the power of borrowing money upon it. That was a question which had been discussed years ago by the Incorporated Law Society, of which he was a member; they considered that the owner of land should have further powers of clearing his property from liabilities and of raising money for the improvement of his estates, such as in building, draining, roads, dykes, and so forth. He would suggest to the Government that they should give facilities for passing a measure of that kind. If they could not do it themselves, let them give some hon. Member such facilities as lay in their power. The thing was perfectly feasible. It could be carried out with common concurrence. Such a measure would greatly improve the position of an owner as well as an occupier of land. A limited owner should, in reference to the cultivation of his property, be brought into the same position as an absolute owner. The owner of landed property should be induced to realize his position and his obligations; but there was a difficulty in this inherent in human nature, and not confined to owners of land only. A person having possession of anything he valued had a great desire to hold it, and a great reluctance to relinquish it; and the consequence was that, in many instances, where an estate had become incumbered, the owner would not recognize his position, and, by realizing his property, relieve himself from the incumbrances. This, of course, could not be had by
    1020
    legislation, but facilities might be afforded to those who were willing to avail themselves of them; and he hoped the Government would consider the suggestions he had made, and endeavour in some way to deal with the question.
    MR. WILLIAMSONsaid, he had no wish to prolong the debate on the Address, although he thought Members on that side of the House ought to be satisfied with the complete justification it had afforded of the conduct of the Government. With reference to the question of agricultural distress, the House and the country had no reason to regret that a little time had been devoted to a subject of so much importance. Undoubtedly, the country had suffered very much from the distressed condition of the agricultural interest. With every word that fell from the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. W. Fowler) he entirely concurred. He believed deliverance was not to be found for agricultural distress except by putting into force those principles and views of legislation which the hon. Member for Cambridge indicated, and which would be of so much advantage to the country if taken in hand and acted upon by the Government. The hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell) spoke of the diminished imports of wheat from the Eastern States of America as if they were connected with the labour difficulty. That, he was quite sure, was a mistake. The diminished imports had arisen from bad weather, and nothing else. In regard to the Pacific slope, the hon. Member spoke of it furnishing increased quantities of wheat owing to most careful irrigation. The fact was, there was not a 20th part of the wheat which came from that quarter grown by irrigation, and the only improved agriculture about which he spoke was simply letting the land lie fallow once in six or seven years. He, along with the hon. Member, noted with satisfaction the increased exports from India. In October, November, and December they amounted to 1,250,000 quarters; and these Indian exports, amounting in the cereal year to 3,500,000—probably 4,000,000—of quarters, had made all the difference between scarcity and abundance, and had certainly kept down the price of bread. Workingmen had cheaper loaves, not from American wheat, but in consequence of the large shipments from. India. Undoubtedly, the

    1021
    farmers had got smaller prices owing to this supply; but, on the other hand, with a population of 8,000,000 or 10,000,000 more than the land could sustain, it was of the highest importance that we should have an abundant and cheap food supply, and, consequently, these imports from India ought to be a source of great congratulation and satisfaction to all.
    MR. O'SULLIVANsaid, he did not rise to continue the debate about Ireland, because he could not hope to add anything new to the speech of the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton). He wished to direct attention to some remarks made a few nights ago by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the senior Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket). That right hon. and learned Gentleman said that when the Sub - Commissioners visited Kilmallock, which was in a state of excitement, an additional constabulary force was required, and an agent giving evidence before the Sub-Commissioners had to be protected by the police. It was quite true that there was a large police force in Kilmallock; but it was there before the passing of the Land Act. No additional police were brought into the town while the Sub-Commissioners' Court was sitting. He was present during the two days the Sub-Commissioners sat, and there was no excitement whatever. The agent referred to was, no doubt, Mr. Townsend, whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman the senior Member for the University of Dublin defended in that House last year. This agent had been under police protection for the past 12 months, owing to his tyrannical conduct towards the tenants who had refused to pay their rents to him. The only excitement in the district of Kilmallock was caused by the landlord, Mr. Coote, forcing that agent on the tenants against their wish. They willingly bore the costs of execution rather than pay their rents to this agent. Whenever a tenant died or whenever a tenant's son or daughter got married the first act of this agent was to put on an increase of rent. On the occasion alluded to by the right hon. Gentleman this agent went to Kilmallock to give evidence in the celebrated case of Clery, in which the rental was reduced by the Sub-Commission only £180 per annum, although the agent increased the rent over £300 per annum on two occasions
    1022
    within the last 15 years. He denied that Mr. Townsend was accompanied by police through the town of Kilmallock on the occasion, and though that agent was standing amongst the people in a crowded Court without police protection no person offered him the slightest insult. He thought the right hon. and learned Gentleman the senior Member for the University of Dublin ought to have made some inquiries before he allowed himself to be the medium for misleading the House in this matter.
    MR. HENEAGEsaid, he regretted that on such an occasion as the present the Conservative Benches should be almost deserted, and especially that the right hon. Member for North Lincolnshire (Mr. J. Lowther) was absent, because they had not heard in that debate a word about that wonderful specific for British agriculture—Protection. It showed, however, that the demand for Protection was really only an Election cry, and was not believed in by those who raised it. He was also sorry that the hon. Member for Forfarshire (Mr. J.W. Barclay) should have said that the tenant farmers of England had been left unable to carry on their occupations, because the landlords had, as it were, sucked the last drop of blood out of them. There was, he believed, hardly a single instance in which rents had been raised, except where the landlords had laid out much money on permanent improvements, and where they had put on a very small percentage on the sums laid out with the full consent of the tenant. There was a great difference between Irish and English landlords. In England, whilst the landlords, as a rule, had reduced rents 12 and 15 per cent, it must be remarked that they had laid out large sums of money for permanent improvements; whereas in Ireland landlords had increased rents without adding any improvements of their own. The landlords of England, he thought, were not guilty of the accusations made against them by the hon. Member for Forfarshire, as they had practically and voluntarily reduced their rents 15, 20, and 25 per cent, having regard to the interest lost on the money spent for improvements. The question of rates was a very serious one, not only to the agriculturists, but also to the other inhabitants, the small occupiers and tradesmen of the rural districts.

    1023
    With reference to the Agricultural Holdings Bill, he must say it was not the principle of the Bill which was objected to by landlords and tenants, but the expensive machinery by which it was intended to carry it out. The Bill ought to have been called not an Agricultural Holdings Bill, but a "Lawyers' and Land Valuers' Promotion of Business Bill." He should be glad to see a good Bill brought in, giving compensation to tenants for their unexhausted improvements. He agreed with the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. W. Fowler) that if limited owners had more freedom given to them, it would be far better both for them and for their tenants. Large estates that were heavily mortgaged were a nuisance to all around. Estates held by non-resident proprietors were, for all practical purposes, entirely worthless to those who lived in the county; and he did not exclude from that observation estates known under the title of Crown Lands. In North and Mid Lincolnshire two-thirds of the rents were collected and taken away, hardly a farthing being spent in the county. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners were another example of absentee landlords. They had none of the outgoings of ordinary landlords; they spent no money in the county, and had no succession duty to pay; and it was a shame that public servants should be permitted to extract from tenant farmers rents which they could not afford. He would conclude by advocating more freedom for the tenant as well as for the landlord in this matter.
    MR. CHAPLINsaid, he thought that a debt of gratitude was due to his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for West Sussex (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) for having rescued from oblivion the important subject of the agricultural interests of England. He was sure that the House would remember that they were engaged during the whole of last Session in discussing the Irish Question. This was the peculiar—he did not desire to be uncourteous, but he had almost said the insane—policy of Her Majesty's Government last Session; and, as far as he could see, they would be engaged for a considerable period during the present Session in an exactly similar discussion. But, notwithstanding the deplorable condition to which that country had been reduced during the two
    1024
    short years of Liberal Administration, they must not, and could not, afford to neglect English interests and English questions. Everybody knew that the condition of the agricultural interest in England was a matter of the highest and deepest national concern. All were agreed that it was by far the largest and most important interest in the country; and it was equally notorious that it was still suffering from a most severe, prolonged, and aggravated depression, which, if it continued long to prevail, could not fail to re-act with the most injurious consequences upon every class and interest in the country. Under those circumstances, he could not fail to be surprised at the bare and meagre notice it had received in the Gracious Speech from the Throne; and he thought it would have been better to have passed it by altogether than to have given it such a notice as it had received. Agriculture, it had been pointed out that night, was in an almost desperate condition. Whether that was so or not, he was quite certain that the farmers in every part of the country, anxious, disquieted, and alarmed, were looking with the greatest interest to some hope of relief which might be held out to them by the Government. What, however, under the circumstances, did the Government tell them? That "a mild winter was eminently suited for farming operations;" an obvious truism which every farmer knew from the day when he began to farm. Except a few unimportant words, that was the sole allusion to the subject in the Speech from the Throne. Her Majesty's Ministers had held out hopes of conferring local government upon them, but that was not what the formers wanted; what they wanted was relief from local taxation. They did not even know what the Government did propose to do; they had never heard a word from them; and if his hon and gallant Friend had not risen he did not think they would have had from the Government a single word upon the subject. They, however, expected to hear what Her Majesty's Government intended to do for them in that direction. Of course, the Government might say—"But a Royal Commission is sitting at this moment to inquire into the whole of the question, and you can hardly expect us to enter into the question until that Commission has re-

    1025
    ported." If that was to be the answer to be made, he, for one, would be inclined to admit that there was a great deal of force in it; but he wanted to point out that there were a variety of subjects, quite independent of the Report of the Royal Commission, upon which great interest was manifested by the farmers. A Question had been put the other day to the Vice President of the Council on the subject of the foot-and-mouth disease, and they heard that that disease still prevailed in some parts of the country. From information which had reached him, he was not surprised to hear that that was the case. They had a debate on that question last Session; and it had been demonstrated in the course of that debate that, though during the last nine months in which the late Administration was in Office this country had been perfectly free from that disease in consequence of their having stamped it out completely, very shortly after their Successors came in cargoes of diseased animals had been landed in Deptford. He did not think they were ever likely to be free from the disease as long as the present Government continued in Office. He would like to tell the House why that was his opinion. The debate to which he referred occurred in March; and, in spite of the remonstrances they had made at that time, it was the fact that cargoes of diseased animals had been regularly and systematically admitted into tills country every month from that time till now. He would read to the House a list of the cargoes which had landed during the past year. In April, 6 cargoes; in May, 5; in June, 6; in July, 2; in August, 16, of animals absolutely suffering from disease; in September, 15; in October, 13; in November, 6; in December, 9; making in all 78 cargoes of animals suffering from foot-and-mouth disease which had been admitted into England since the middle of last Session, and they were not confined to one port. They had landed at London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Hull, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Southampton, and Falmouth; and, under the circumstances, he could not be surprised that in Lincolnshire the disease prevailed to a serious extent, and he thought it would be admitted that, until the Government changed its policy, he thought it was likely to prevail. He ventured to hope
    1026
    that even yet the farmers of England would hear from the Government that night that they would pursue a different policy. One of the first performances of the Government when they came into Office was to effect a reformation which was intended to confer a great boon on the farmers—he referred to the repeal of the Malt Tax. He gave them full credit for that measure at the time; but the opinion had begun to be entertained by a great many farmers—and he was rather coming round to the opinion himself—that, instead of conferring a boon, it had inflicted a great injury upon them, inasmuch as it had tended very largely to reduce the price of barley in this country. If that was the ease, he hoped it was not too much to expect that the Government would take the subject into consideration, with the view of seeing whether, by some re-adjustment of the taxation by which the present revenue was raised, they could not devise some means to convert that, which was said to be an injury to the farmers, into the boon and the benefit which they originally intended it to be. The hon. Member for Salford (Mr. Arnold) had contrasted unfavourably the produce of large farms with that of certain small farms, on which he said 45 bushels of wheat per acre had been raised. But 45 bushels of wheat per acre was no very remarkable performance. He should be disappointed, indeed, if on any farm in the world for which he paid £2 an acre he could not raise that quantity of wheat. Such a comparison as the hon. Member had drawn was not likely to carry conviction to the minds of gentlemen accustomed to grow grain themselves. The hon. Member also said the Agricultural Holdings Act had been adopted on only one estate in the whole county of Sussex. There, again, the hon. Member was in error, for certainly that Act was enforced also on the Sussex estate of the Duke of Richmond. He was also entirely mistaken in supposing that Mr. George Lane Fox was an unpopular man in Yorkshire on account of his foxhunting, as the hon. Member would see at any assembly of Yorkshire farmers where that gentleman's name happened to be mentioned. Indeed, he did not know a single tenant who had any objection to foxhounds. The hon. Member, again, had referred to Ireland, and

    1027
    had condemned in the most violent terms the conduct of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Lincolnshire (Mr. Lowther) for what he had termed his "grass seed" policy, and he had cited Professor Baldwin in support of his argument; but nothing was clearer in Professor Baldwin's evidence than his conviction that but small benefits could ever be conferred upon the peasantry of Ireland until the people were moved from their small holdings. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. W. Fowler) seemed to think that the laws of the ownership and occupation of land were the main cause of the present agricultural distress, and that the employment of more capital was the remedy upon which we ought, for the most part, to rely. As regarded the laws relating to the ownership of land, they on the Opposition side of the House were in no degree bigoted about them. So far from being opposed to any change in those laws, they were prepared—and he believed he might speak for a considerable number of his fellow-Members—to give the most candid and liberal consideration to any suggestion which in their opinion was likely to tend to the improvement of agriculture. He could not altogether agree with the hon. Member that the employment of more capital upon land would by itself be any remedy whatever for agricultural depression. He rather inclined to the opinion expressed by Mr. Clare Sewell Read and others, that it was precisely the persons who had embarked the largest capital in land who were the greatest losers. Perhaps he might except the small peasant proprietors, who had no landlords to fall back upon—no remissions of rent to assist them, and every farthing of whose mortgages was ruthlessly exacted. But next to them certainly as the greatest losers he would put the large tenants. The smallest sufferers of all, he believed, were the small tenants That was, however, only the expression of his own opinion. The subject was one upon which every hon. Member would shortly be able to form an opinion for himself. He would give an instance which he thought warranted him in concluding that the employment of large capital was no remedy for agricultural depression. At the beginning of last harvest he was travelling by rail through
    1028
    a small estate adjoining his own, on which there was a field containing no less than 300 acres of barley of the finest quality. It was a beautiful sight. But what happened? The following day it began to rain, and it continued raining in that district for a whole month without ceasing. Now 300 acres of barley would cost, at £8 per acre, £2,400 to produce, and those 300 acres producing each five quarters at £2 per quarter would realize £3,000. The farmer would consequently have been justified in counting upon a profit of £600. But, in the unfortunate circumstances which occurred, he would be a lucky man if he got £1 a quarter for his barley, so that he would realize only £1,500, and have a loss on one field alone of £900. He quite agreed with the hon. Member for Cambridge that there ought to be some relief from local taxation, and agriculturists meant to get it; but relief from local taxation alone would not relieve the depression. He agreed also that there ought to be a law by which every tenant should have secured to him compensation for unexhausted improvements. But he differed altogether from the hon. Member in his assertion that the existing laws had been by any means the cause of the depression. There were many parts of England where ample security was enjoyed by the tenant and where, nevertheless, the loss had been greatest. Moreover, if the laws relating to the ownership and occupation of land were the cause of the present depression, how could the hon. Member explain the fact that under those same laws we had in past years attained a degree of agricultural prosperity such as had never before been seen among the nations of the world? It was idle to talk of these laws being the cause of, or their removal the remedy for, the existing depression. He complained that the Agricultural Holdings Bill, which he had introduced last year, and which had received the sanction of the House, had at the last moment been defeated by the action of Her Majesty's Government. He could not agree with the strong opinions that had been expressed with respect to foreign competition. At one time he was much alarmed at the prospect of foreign competition; but he believed that America had within the last two years reached her highest pitch of agricultural pros-

    1029
    perity, and that this country had seen the worst of the competition from that quarter. He therefore indulged the hope that, with the return of favourable seasons, and if Her Majesty's Government would support his proposal with reference to the Malt Tax, we should be able to hold our own against foreign competition. He would take the present opportunity of making some remarks on the Irish Question. They were told in Her Majesty's Speech that the condition of Ireland had been improved. He should like to know since when? Would anyone venture to say that the condition of affairs was improved since Her Majesty's Government came into Office? Was it not immeasurably worse than when they succeeded the late Administration? The Chief Secretary for Ireland said that a few weeks ago he did not think he should be able to meet Parliament without asking for further powers. It was clear, therefore, that a short time ago the Government thought further powers were necessary to enable them to deal successfully with the state of affairs in Ireland. No one could take up the public papers and read of the maimings and burnings, and outrages, without feeling that the state of things in Ireland to-day was a dishonour to the country, a disgrace to our Government, and that its state was one which would warrant and justify the condemnation of any other civilized nation in the world. Under these circumstances, the Government had, he would not say permitted this state of things, but they had failed to cope with it, and, having refrained from asking for those powers which they themselves considered necessary to deal with the condition of affairs in that country, they deserved the condemnation of the people of England; and if he were right in that view it was not long before some Member on the Opposition side would feel it his duty to propose a Motion censuring their policy. The policy of the Government had been a ghastly failure, and had led to the demoralization of the people. The Government had failed, and they knew it. They had failed in their opportunity, and they had failed deliberately, but not without warning from the Opposition side of the House. For very shame's sake the Government could not, they would not dare to, propose any further confiscation just at present. Three points
    1030
    were advanced last Session in opposition to their policy. They were told, in the first instance, that their Land Bill must unquestionably come to a dead-lock on account of the clumsiness of their machinery; and that prophecy had been literally fulfilled. Then they were told that before the ink was dry which made judicial rent the law an agitation would arise against paying any rent at all. Had not the "no rent" manifesto been a complete justification of that prediction? The third point was that as the plan of concession and confiscation of 1870 had only led to more concession and confiscation in 1881, the same result would follow their new attempt at legislation. The only concession now left to them was the concession of Home Rule, the indication of which by the Prime Minister had so startled and amazed the country. The Prime Minister had made an explanation last night; but he could not say the right hon. Gentleman had much bettered his position by his explanation. It would have been eminently satisfactory if anyone had understood him. So far as he (Mr. Chaplin) was concerned, he found the explanation even more vague than the original speech. He wished to ask the Government what was to happen when those provisions for the supremacy of Parliament that the right hon. Gentleman spoke of had been made? The right hon. Gentleman said that he was not prepared to give to Ireland that which in point of principle it would be wrong to give to Scotland, if Scotland demanded it. This reference to Scotland only complicated the matter more, for what the Prime Minister might be prepared on some future day to do for Scotland Heaven only knew. Were they or were they not prepared to entertain the establishment of an Irish Parliament as an open question? If they were able to say "No," well and good; if not, then the House of Commons and the people of this country would have every reason to believe that the Prime Minister was prepared, although he dared not at present openly avow it, to make this new and fresh concession to Irish outrage and Irish agitation which might probably end, for aught he knew and it seemed probable for anything he cared, in the ruin and disintegration of the Empire.
    MR. GOSCHENsaid, the hon. Member who had just sat down had brought

    1031
    an indictment against Her Majesty's Government and against the House in general that they had not shown sufficient interest in matters connected with agriculture, and had contrasted the large space of time devoted to Irish questions compared with English questions; but keen agriculturist as that hon. Member was, he himself was diverted from English agricultural questions by his splendid oratory on the subject of Ireland. The hon. and gallant Member for Sussex (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) also complained of the little attention given to agricultural subjects from the Government Bench; but the Government had been mainly engaged in defending themselves against attacks from the other side of the House, and up to that time the Front Opposition Bench themselves had scarcely referred to the great agricultural interests. The tenant farmers, however, would have reason to be satisfied with the tone that had been taken in the discussion. They would see that sympathy had been felt with the enormous losses that they had undoubtedly suffered, and that that sympathy had been confined to no one side of the House. What were the remedies which it was possible for this House to afford the subject of agriculture? With the exception of the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin), every Member who had spoken from the Conservative Benches had pointed out as the only remedy practicable for the moment some relief of local taxation. There was one remedy which he rejoiced to think had not been alluded to that night, although it was alluded to successfully at two great Elections which had recently occurred. They had heard nothing of the 5s. duty on corn. What had become of it? Had it been discarded by the Conservative Party so soon as they met in Parliament? Was it a pious opinion which might be held during the Recess and which was abandoned in the more serious Business of Parliament? Neither the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lincolnshire, nor the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Lincolnshire (Mr. J. Lowther) referred throughout the course of the long debate to the subject of the 5s. duty. [Mr. J. LOWTHER: I asked for a day to discuss the question.] The House would look forward to the day and the division when the question of the 5s. duty would be proposed by either
    1032
    responsible or irresponsible Members of the Conservative Party; and meanwhile the farmers would understand that their chosen Representatives had, when the occasion offered, ignored the subject altogether. They had, on the contrary, devoted themselves to the single question of the lightening of local burdens, a subject with which the Government had already promised to deal. There was another point which the hon. Gentleman opposite had carefully avoided, but which was not without interest to farmers—namely, the question of the division of the rates between owners and occupiers. It was not, however, by a simple relief given to ratepayers that the agricultural necessity could be materially helped. They all fully recognized the disastrous consequences of four wet seasons; but the point to which many of them attached great importance was that the farmers should be in a position to be able to resist the effects of such depression. They believed that the farmers would be better able to resist the effects of this depression if they were not handicapped by laws which tied their hands. It would be to the advantage of both the owner and occupier to have greater freedom as regarded capital and farming and dealing with the land in every possible respect. He imagined that they might even say that some good would result from the disastrous conditions of the late bad seasons if the nation awoke to the necessity of dealing boldly, yet prudently, with the Land Laws; and especially if it was able to discover the means by which the greatest possible yield might be derived from the land. He had heard with the greatest satisfaction that the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire had said that any proposals that were made with regard to the laws relating to the ownership of land and their reform would meet with the impartial consideration of himself and his Friends. That was already a great advance in public opinion, because only a short time ago any statement to the effect that the Law of Entail, Settlement, or Primogenature was to be interfered with would have been treated almost as revolutionary. The question was not simply one of high-farming, or how much capital could be employed on the land; but the question was whether capital could be attracted to the land by better legislation, giving compensation

    1033
    for improvements, and also giving liberty in every possible respect as regarded farming. Competition from America and India could not be met by Protection, but by better legislation, giving compensation for improvements, and securing liberty as to farming. The fear of hon. Gentlemen opposite as to the competition of the United States was beginning to calm, and the simple question as to how the English owner, the farmer, and the labourer—for their interests were one—could best withstand any such competition was evolving itself from the mass of opinion on the subject. The bulk of evidence up to this time before the Royal Commission went to show that the yield from the soil could be increased by judicious legislation, which would set free capital, and thus stimulate agricultural energy. He did not think the country would ever hope that the agricultural interest would be saved by the greater dearness of food for the people. They could not hope that relief would be brought to the agricultural interest by such a cessation of the supplies of food from abroad as would raise the price of the great articles of food to the consumers of this country. But if by acting upon the yield they enabled the farmers better to compete with the foreigner, then it would be a benefit to agriculture and to the nation at large. He trusted that when the subject of local taxation arose in a practical form, hon. Members opposite would meet with much support and sympathy on the Ministerial side of the House; and he trusted in the same manner those remedies which they on the Liberal side believed to be essential to the position would receive support from the Opposition side, for the question was not one of Party, but of national importance.
    MR. GORSTsaid, he hoped the House would pardon him if, before the debate concluded, he called attention to the affairs of South Africa, and to the grave apprehensions which prevailed as to the working of the Convention signed with the Boers. Was it the case that the Boers had only been induced to sign the Treaty of Peace by being promised that an opportunity should be given for the revision of the Treaty? He challenged the Government to point to a stipulation in the Treaty made last year between Sir Evelyn Wood and the Boer Leaders which had been fulfilled, with the single
    1034
    exception of the article which provided that they should separate and fight no more. How could the Government, because the Volksraad ratified the Convention under protest, say that they did not see any reason to qualify their anticipation as to the working of the Convention? He should like to know whether the British rifles taken at the Majuba engagement, and which for a considerable time the Boers carried about as trophies of their success over British authority, had been given up? Perhaps the Under Secretary for the Colonies would have no objection to furnish a Return upon the subject? He also wished to ask what had been done to bring to justice the murderers of Captain Elliot and Dr. Barber? A few days ago he had asked a Question about a Native Chief named Montsioa. The case of this Chief was one in which the honour of this country was very seriously at stake. He had been loyal to British interests, and he wished to know whether any instructions had been sent to the Commissioner to protect that Chief, because it would be a great national disgrace if, after the services he had rendered to us during the war, he was left exposed to Boer vengeance? He wanted to know also what was to be done with Cetewayo? The whole conduct of the Government with reference to that unhappy captive had been extremely puzzling. When in Opposition they denounced the war that had been made against him, yet when they got into Office they kept him in captivity. As, two years ago, he had voted with the Government and against his own Friends on a question affecting Cetewayo, he had a personal right to ask why the Government did not give expression to the opinions which they held so strongly when in Opposition? He could not understand how Ministers could sit quietly enjoying the pleasures and honours of Office and leave a man who, as they said, had been unjustly treated, to languish in captivity. The only reason he could see was that Cetewayo had a rival named John Dunn, who had been placed in a position of Sovereignty, and who had made a very good thing out of the Government. He had a suspicion that there were some strong interests in Natal of which John Dunn was the foundation. A rumour also prevailed that Cetewayo was to be brought to England. What

    1035
    were they going to do with Cetewayo? Were they going to send him back as a captive, or to let him go free? There were no Peace Preservation Acts in England, and if Cetewayo chose to refuse to return to captivity what would the Government do with him? Would they take him to Dublin, where Kilmainham might be handy? Habeas Corpus was not yet suspended in London.
    MR. R. N. FOWLERsaid, that having lately visited South Africa, he wished to say a few words. It was very painful to hear it said, as he often did when travelling in the Orange Free State, that the English Government gave way, not from any love of justice, but because they were beaten by the Boers. That was the view entertained by the Boers, whatever might be said by hon. Gentlemen opposite. If ever there was a righteous war, it was the war in the Transvaal. It was directed against a people whose whole existence had been a course of rapine, cruelty, and murder. It might have entailed a loss of 5,000 lives to have put down the insurrection in the Transvaal; but the result would be that 50,000 lives would be sacrificed by the raids which the Boers would make among the Natives. Therefore, he thought, on the ground of humanity the war should have been prosecuted. The British Government had abandoned the Natives whom it had urged to be loyal, and he could not but feel that this was a most mournful passage in the history of the British Empire. Then the unfortunate Natives were handed over to their relentless enemies, and would see their children carried off into slavery, and have to submit to other dreadful outrages. He supported the appeal which had been made to the Government for the restoration of Cetewayo. He had the pleasure of having an interview with the Zulu King, and he had arrived at the conclusion that he was most anxious to cultivate friendly relations with Her Majesty's Government. It appeared to him that the only alternative open to the Government was either to let Cetewayo go back to Zululand or to put John Dunn in his place. Was Dunn a man we ought to support? He admitted his courage; but he knew of no other virtue he possessed Under these circumstances, he earnestly hoped that Cetewayo might be restored, because his only faults were
    1036
    the faults of his country, while John Dunn was at best a renegade Englishman.
    MR. COURTNEYsaid, he regretted that the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) had not waited until the two Blue Books which had been laid on the Table of the House were in his hands before disseminating unfounded statements and false views throughout the country. He could understand, however, that such reasonable delay might have taken away from the hon. and learned Member the opportunity he had of making his speech. The main point in the remarks of the hon. and learned Gentleman was as to how far the stipulations contained in the Convention with the Boers would be observed. All he could say in answer to that was, that if any inconvenient results followed from that Convention they must be proved to exist, and the Convention be shown to be unworkable before any steps could be taken to make it workable. The Government, had, however, no reason to believe that the Convention would not work, and they had refused to enter into the question of the future review of the terms agreed upon by the Triumvirate. The Volksraad adopted a resolution, not affirming any promise on the part of the British Government to review the Convention, but expressing a hope that if the conditions were found impracticable they would review them in a friendly and conciliatory spirit, a thing any Government would be glad to do. With respect to the murder of Captain Elliot and Captain Barber, the complaints as to the unfairness of the trial of the supposed murderers were completely answered by the Blue Books, and the same source contained satisfactory information as to the property to be given up. Again, the Boer Government had nothing to do with the attack made by Montsioa, but they did their very best to prevent such an attack being made. The hon. and learned Gentleman had asked what was going to be done with Cetewayo? Well, it was a very great difficulty to know what was to be done with him. The present Government did not settle the late war. It was settled while the previous Government was in power, He did not hesitate to repeat what he had said before, that the war was totally indefensible; but as Cete-

    1037
    wayo had been removed from Zululand, and Zululand divided among 13 kinglets, was it possible to remove these kinglets and let him go back? In regard to the treatment accorded to Cetewayo, every privilege short of freedom had been accorded to him. [Mr. E. N. FOWLER: Quite recently.] It was many months ago—soon after he (Mr. Courtney) came into Office. It was in contemplation to bring Cetewayo to England in the course of the approaching summer; but at present nothing had been decided as to his ultimate destiny. He (Mr. Courtney) could answer for it, however, that everything would be done to redress the injustice which Cetewayo had undoubtedly suffered. The question was one of difficulty, but whatever reparation was possible would be made.
    SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: Sir, I think that this is the ninth night of the debate upon the Address in reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech, and I undoubtedly feel that the subjects which might be fairly raised on the Address are far from being exhausted. At the same time, we must come to an end of this kind of preliminary discussion, for many of the matters which have been touched upon will undoubtedly come before us in the course of the Session, and I suppose we are now approaching the last stage of the debate. I wish to offer a very few observations upon certain matters which have been under discussion in the course of the last few weeks, but I shall not attempt to go at any length into the greater number of them. What have been the subjects of our discussion? There have been speeches delivered to-night on two matters, both of very great interest, and both of which must come under the consideration of the House before very long. With regard to the subject with which we have been last engaged—the question of our South African possessions—we have, of course, only just touched upon it. My hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Gorst) has very fairly and distinctly raised a number of questions of very great importance, and the hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Courtney) has replied that the answers to most of those questions are to be found in the Papers now upon the Table. Under these circumstances, I should be very wrong to enter into any minute consideration of the
    1038
    subjects brought before us by my hon. and learned Friend. At the same time, I cannot avoid saying that there was one point mentioned by the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Courtney) which seemed to me to indicate the danger to which we are exposed under the arrangements which have been made by Her Majesty's Government. I refer to the account which he gave us of the manner in which hostilities have been carried on beyond the borders of the Transvaal among the Natives, and the manner in which some of the Boers have been led to take part in those hostilities. It is precisely over and over again an illustration of the kind of difficulty which led to our troubles in South Africa, and which we had hoped was provided against by the settlement we had made, and which set aside the difficulty which all Europeans are under in that country of being placed in the midst of a large semi-civilized or altogether uncivilized population. There is a constant attempt on the part of a European to mix himself up in the quarrels of the Native States or Native people; thereby bringing danger and difficulty not only upon his own Colony, but upon all Europeans in South Africa, which can hardly be met with without serious consequences. I will not go further into that matter now, nor into the question of South Africa generally; but I hope that whenever it does come up for discussion we will discuss it with efficiency and due attention to the cardinal point in English policy, whether as conducted by the late Government or the present—namely, the necessity of providing against the danger of these irregular collisions between the Europeans and Natives, and the consequences which may follow from them. We have also had an interesting discussion this evening upon a matter of the very highest importance—namely, the condition of the agricultural interest of this country. That is a matter which it would have been impossible, under existing circumstances, that we should altogether pass over in the preliminary discussion of the Session, and I feel convinced it is one which must be brought before the House in a more regular manner, and that the excellent service which my hon. and gallant Friend (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) and others have done by the speeches

    1039
    they have made to-night will be but a prelude to a more practical and a more serious effort to call attention to the subject. Of course, we cannot but feel the very great importance to the national interests of the country at large of the severity of the suffering which has been, unfortunately, the lot of our agricultural fellow-countrymen for the last two or three years. I hope they may be met with more cheerful views than some hon. Members have expressed to-night; but I hope the House will not be led away from the consideration of more practical grievances or practical remedies by what are mere optimist views. I hope that matters will improve; I hope that there is some improvement already; and I believe that, by abstaining from false remedies and by concentrating our attention upon true ones, we shall be enabled to promote the recovery of that interest which is so essential to the welfare of the country. I was not present in the House at the time the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ripon (Mr. Goschen) taunted us with some inattention to this matter, and made use of old and favourite epithets which hon. Members opposite are so fond of. I do not know that there are any other matters in the Gracious Speech upon which it is necessary that I should say more than I have done, with the exception of one subject. With regard to foreign affairs, I merely wish to take notice of an observation which was made by the Prime Minister the other night, which he seemed to think was a very strong answer to some remarks I made, and which was applauded by his Friends as an extremely clever answer. I expressed an apprehension with regard to affairs in Egypt that the Government appeared to be allowing itself to drift, and that I very much feared what the effect of that drifting might be. My right hon. Friend thought it was sufficient to say that he observed, on the other hand, that Lord Salisbury, in "another place," had expressed a fear lest the Government were going to war in Egypt, and he thought we might set the two statements one against the other—the one disposing entirely of the other. Now, my opinion is that exactly the contrary is the case—that, instead of one disposing of the other, the two entirely harmonize. My fear is that if we allow matters to drift we are not
    1040
    very unlikely to drift into war. At present, however, we do not appear to have sufficient information before us to enable us to discuss the subject. Then I come to the one subject which has occupied by far the larger part of the discussion of the last fortnight—I mean the question of Ireland. Upon the first night of the Session, after the Mover and Seconder of the Address had spoken, I invited the Government to tell us what their views were of the real state of the country, and the prospect we had of seeing an end to the troubles with which she has unfortunately been visited. We have had most interesting speeches from various Members of the Government and other hon. Gentlemen who are well acquainted with the condition of Ireland, and we have had a great deal of light thrown on many points of the highest importance. But I must confess that, after all we have heard from different Members of the Government on the subject, I am not even now satisfied that there is anything to justify the somewhat rose-coloured picture which the Government have given us of the state of things in Ireland. I must say, in the first place, as regards one portion of Her Majesty's Speech, Her Majesty's Government are entirely justified—perhaps even more than justified—in what they state, and that is as regards the necessity they have found at the last for exercising the powers intrusted to them for dealing vigorously with the Land League Organization. The case which they have submitted to the House, supported by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, the Attorney General for Ireland, and the Prime Minister, seems to be overwhelming. The only question is, whether the steps which they have taken and justified ought not to have been taken a great deal sooner, and whether the justification and demand for them did not much precede the time at which they were taken? In the course of this discussion it has been a little remarkable to observe that the Government, after having had complete command of the time of Parliament last Session, and after having been able to submit their plans for giving greater power to the Executive, and also their plans for what they call remedial legislation, are obliged to meet us in the year following with what, in a large measure, is something in the nature of a defence.

    1041
    They are obliged to come with apologies and defence as to the result of the great powers intrusted to them. That is in itself somewhat remarkable; but what I think is still more remarkable is the nature and the character of the defence which they set up. It seems to me for the most part to turn upon some mere points of detail, or to resolve itself into an attack upon their Predecessors. No one complains in Party warfare of one Government attacking its Predecessor; but I hope the House and the country will bear in mind that an attack upon your Predecessors is not always a justification for yourselves. We have something more important to consider than the relations between the two Parties; what we actually want to know is, what the Government are doing, what they propose to do, and how far what they are doing and propose to do is really likely to be of benefit or the reverse? In the course of this debate it has seemed to me that even yet the Government have hardly realized the great gravity and seriousness of the position in which they stand, and that they are like those who cannot see the wood because of the position of the trees. They have been so engaged in the daily details of repressing outrage and the arrest of those who are engaged in criminal practices, that they hardly take a full view of the position of the country. Yet, that is really what is so serious. There is no doubt that a most serious change is going on in the political condition of Ireland; and we want to know whether they have brought themselves to see what the effect of crushing out the landlords of Ireland to a great extent will be upon the whole social system? Hon. Gentlemen who speak about landlords are apt to say that we are of a similar class to the landlords, and sympathize with their views, and are anxious to make good their case, without regard to the general interest of the community. In our view, it is precisely the opposite. While we feel that, under the injustice and the hardship which have fallen upon them, the landlords deserve our sympathy and attention, we take a wider view. We feel that the landlord class is an important component part of your own political system. We feel—though it is a trite observation—that they are your garrison in Ireland. It seems to me there never was a time
    1042
    when you were more likely to have need of your garrison than the time in which we now live, and that seems to be coming upon us, because we have to contend against an organization and an agitation which is not only socially, but also politically, most dangerous to the country. Yesterday the Prime Minister referred to a quotation from a letter by Lord Beaconsfield, and said that Lord Beaconsfield spoke of a state of things, and prophesied something quite different from that which has actually arisen. The right hon. Gentleman said there was no great prescience on the part of Lord Beaconsfield, because Lord Beaconsfield spoke of a political revolution and a political agitation, and the Government had had to deal with a social revolution, of which Lord Beaconsfield said nothing. He went on to say that you might have social agitation without a political revolution, and a political revolution without a social agitation. That may be true; but the fact is that on the present occasion you have the two together. It is not what you might have, but what you actually have. What is so serious here is that you have a political agitation working through a social revolution. That is what makes it doubly and trebly dangerous, and makes it demand more serious attention than it seems to receive on the part of Her Majesty's Government, I wish, therefore, to ask what you are to expect if the present landlord class is pushed out of Ireland? In many places at the present moment the movement is in the direction of making the country intolerable to them and pushing them out. If they are not maintained in the country, I wish to know what it is you propose to put in their place? [An hon. MEMBER: The tenants.] "The tenants." That is one solution; but I do not think it is the solution offered by Her Majesty's Government. The observation made, I think, by Queen Catherine de Medicis to her son, when he informed her of the assassination of the Due de Guise, "Vous savez tailler; il faut savoir coudre"—which we may translate freely, "You must not only cut down, but you must be able to build up"—seems to me to be very applicable to the present state of things. There is the difficulty. We do not see any very great evidence of that constructive ability on the part of Her Majesty's

    1043
    Government which will be necessary to secure peace and order in the future. They only tell us—"Give us your moral support. We believe we are now in a fair way to grapple with this great difficulty, and order will be restored, and matters will go on satisfactorily." I hope that is so. I hope that the accounts which we have—even in spite of the formidable appearance which Ireland presents, and the Reports mentioned by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, which have been carefully and, in the best spirit, accepted by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dublin University (Mr. Gibson)—are true, and that we may see order gradually restored. Well, you may restore order; but how long will it be before you restore confidence? It is a comparatively easy thing to stop outrage and obtain payment of rent; it is a different thing to be able to restore that feeling of confidence and goodwill which is so essential to the real maintenance of the peace of the country. I am tempted to ask whether there is any promise in the action of the Government to lead us to hope for the restoration of peace? And I must say—although I should greatly regret to have to say one word which would be held to weaken the Government of the time—but I must say their conduct during last year was not of a character to inspire us with any confidence that they know what is to be done, and that they are determined to do it. When their action has been taken, it has frequently been taken too late; but that is by no means the worst. It has been taken in a manner which leads us to doubt whether they had the courage necessary, the knowledge necessary, or whether they were agreed among themselves as to what was to be done. There are several instances; but I am not going back to the old question of the non-renewal of the Peace Preservation Act when they came into Office further than to say that I think it adds to the strength of the case made against them, that they make such excuses for not having renewed it as that which the Prime Minister condescended to make—namely, that they had only 10 days in which to renew the Act. A more damning kind of excuse than that I can scarcely imagine. If the Government thought that the Peace Preservation Act ought to have been renewed, and if they had then found that they were unable to complete the renewal
    1044
    of it within the 10 days which elapsed between the time of the House getting to work last year and when the Act expired, they ought to have told us then. They might then have thrown the blame for it on their Predecessors. If they had done so, they would have been able to come forward with their great majority, and with the offers and promises of remedial legislation which they were able to make to Ireland; and, I will say, they ought to have come forward and asked for a renewal of the Act. If they could not have it renewed, at all events they ought to have had it revived. But what is the distinction between renewal and revival? It is just about as great as the Attorney General draws between standing "down" and standing "by," but it is a distinction which suits their purpose as a matter of fence between themselves and their opponents. It is a question whether they were aware of the state of Ireland, and whether, being aware of it, they deliberately declared in the words of Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech, that the state of things had improved, in order to show why they declined to call forth their powers. We are told that perhaps they did not know what was the condition of affairs in Ireland, and reference is made to the language of the Prime Minister upon the subject; but even that ground, is cut away, because the Prime Minister tells us that in the winter before the present Government came into Office, the late Government, although they saw the danger approaching on account of the proceedings of the Land League, which the right hon. Gentleman was evidently watching with great interest, took no measures against the Land League. The right hon. Gentleman then says that because their Predecessors only gave them 10 days for the renewal of the Peace Preservation Act, that if they had attempted to revive it there must have been an interval of two months between the expiring of the old Act and the coming into operation of the new one, during which time all the mischief might have been done. But, Sir, all the mischief could not have been done in the time; and, what is more, I will venture to say that it would not have been done, because the proposal to renew the Act would have been a manifestation on the part of the Government, with its powerful majority, of its intention to deal with

    1045
    the state of Ireland, and would have had a considerable effect in tending to repress the acts of lawlessness that have been committed. Therefore, we have reason to say that there was a want of vigour and apprehension on the part of Her Majesty's Government in regard to the condition of the country, which is discouraging when we look forward and consider how they intend to deal with it. Then, again, there is the question as to how Her Majesty's Government ought to have acted after the failure of the State Trials. At those Trials evidence was given, and the strongest language was used by the Law Officers, to the effect that the Land League was an illegal organization, and that its objects were altogether illegitimate. The language used, the revelations that were then made, and the doctrines which had been laid down, were all before us, and upon that, we think, the Government might and ought at the time to have made a proclamation declaring the Land League illegal. They could have done that then, without waiting for the legislation of Parliament, and even if they did not act then, they might have acted later, when the Act was passed. But they did not then act with such vigour and determination as showed that they were willing to use the powers at their disposal. When we on this side of the House make these charges, the reply of some Member of the Government is that the Tories have but one idea of dealing with the condition of affairs in Ireland, and that is by coercion; and the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, referring to a speech of mine, says that I complained that the Government had not used the Act with sufficient severity. At the time the right hon. and learned Gentleman made that remark I challenged it, and stated that I had said nothing about severity. What I did say was that the Act had not been used with efficiency; and my opinion is that if you had put its powers into execution at first you would have had to exercise less severity than you have since been obliged to do upon those who have fallen under your lash, and, as I need scarcely say, what is still more important, you would have saved an immense amount of bloodshed and misery to the innocent people of Ireland who have been suffering from your misjudged leniency. There seems to be something
    1046
    very like a divergence of opinion between the Irish Government as represented by the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, and a certain portion of the Cabinet as represented by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, because two totally different lines are taken j by those right hon. Gentlemen with regard to the condition of Ireland. The right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland speaks in the strongest manner of the state of the country, as well as of the Land League and its organization, from the very commencement of his connection with the Government of Ireland. He speaks of that publication The United Irishman, as having been established for the purpose of encouraging murder and treason; he alluded to the members of the Land League as steeped to their eyes in treason; and he said that this state of things had been in existence for months before the time at which the present Government came into power. There is no doubt that, according to the Law Officers of the Irish Government, a case for action was plainly made out. Why that action was delayed the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland did not seem to me to give us any very clear idea. But when we come to the speech delivered by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, we find that his view is something of a very different character from that of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland. He (Mr. Chamberlain) maintained that the organization was a great deal bettor than, and apparently a very different thing from, that which the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland described it to be. With the right hon. Gentleman the organization of the Land League was chiefly remarkable as being of the greatest value in supplying pressure for the purpose of obtaining reforms. We have heard enough, no doubt, of comments upon that part of his speech; but there is another part of it that has not been commented upon, and which struck me when I read it as being of a very remarkable character. The right hon. Gentleman was addressing an audience at Liverpool, to whom he was endeavouring to explain how it was that having waited so long the Government at last found it necessary to move and take very strong measures,

    1047
    and he gave this as the reason—namely, that between the time when the Tories said they ought to have interfered and the time when the Government actually did interfere, two things had happened—one of them being the passing of the Land Act, while the other was that the Land League had changed its objects. Now, I maintain that to be distinctly an error, and, in fact, the reverse of truth. I do not, of course, mean to charge the President of the Board of Trade with stating what he did not believe to be true; but that statement is distinctly contrary to all the evidence which we have, because from the time when the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) said that he would not have taken off his coat for the Land League, if it had not been that it was a step towards other objects, and from the time when the State Trials took place the character of the Land League was clearly made manifest. From that time the Land League has not changed its object. It might have been at one time more conciliatory in its policy, or at another more defiant and ready to declare open war; but its object has not changed. But if the right hon. Gentleman thought the Land League was, up to the time the Act was passed, a beneficial and innocent association, and if he represented the opinion which was prevalent in the Cabinet, this would, at all events, account for the want of vigour and firmness which seems to have had a great deal to do with the growth of this miserable state of things. I daresay we shall have opportunities for the further discussion of these matters, and at present I will do no more than express a hope that the Government and all of us will be very careful not to do anything to increase the evil which already exists. It is quite bad enough, and it is hard to deal with it. I have no doubt the Government are now doing everything in their power—exercising all their vigour in order to put down agitation and lawlessness and to restore order amongst the people of Ireland; and, if this be so, I trust they will have the full support of all good citizens in the country. But I must impress upon them that they should be very careful of the language they make use of, because by imprudent and injudicious language they might very easily defeat the object which all of us have in view. And while upon this
    1048
    point, it is impossible not to refer with great anxiety to that which is a subject of interest in this House—I mean the language used by the Prime Minister a night or two ago. I believe from what he has stated that its import is not quite so serious as some consider it to be, because as far as I can make out from the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman last night it was something between a dream and an electioneering move. At all events, the right hon. Gentleman carefully impressed upon us that he was expressing opinions of his own and which he believed were shared by very few Members of this House. Let us hope that they are not shared by those immediately around him. I trust that the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Hartington) will be able to assure us on the part of his Colleagues and himself, that they as a united Cabinet are determined to maintain the integrity of the Empire, because we can but feel that language such as that used by the Premier, however it can be explained away, remains, and because we are acquainted with the manner in which the right hon. Gentleman can quote speeches made by him in this House years and years ago, and comment upon them as prophetic of what has since come to pass. Hon. Members will call to mind how he quoted the Irish Church Act, and how, to the surprise of everybody, he, who was formerly the great supporter of the Irish Church and afterwards the foremost in disestablishing it, was able to refer to observations made in former years that contained the seeds and germs of that which afterwards developed. It is the same in the present case. There is even a similarity in the expressions employed. He does not expect those things will come in his time; it is most unlikely he will live to see them; it is not within the range of practical politics, and so forth. Such things may be all very well in quiet times; but the difficulty now is that we are not in quiet times. They are not quite harmless even as they proceed from the mouth of the right hon. Gentleman here; but what must be their effect when they are received, as a large proportion of the Irish peasantry receive them, from the reports of Irish newspapers, very likely incorrect in themselves, and, perhaps, furnished with all sorts of additions,

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    comments, and paraphrases which are likely to convey false impressions to their minds? I venture to think that the subject is one which demands more consideration on the part of Her Majesty's Government than they have been able to give to it; because, hard as is their task, difficult as is the position of the Chief Secretary for Ireland and that of the Government generally with regard to Ireland, you make it infinitely harder if you lead the people to suppose that there is something in store for them beyond that which they have already—something of an entirely different character; something to satisfy the aspirations of, at any rate, the more moderate section of the Home Rule Party. By these means, you will only keep up the fever of excitement, which is the very thing you have to guard against. If it were not so late, I should refer at a greater length than I intend to do to some remarks of Lord Derby upon this subject. In an article written by him some months ago on the state of Ireland, there are some excellent observations which deserve attention, as showing how impossible it is to satisfy the demand for local independence and legislation in Ireland without falling at once into the danger of raising further hopes. The noble Lord pointed out that if a Parliament existed in Dublin, all the limitations placed upon its authority would be swept away one by one. In conclusion, I would appeal to Her Majesty's Government to deal with this question as absolutely and frankly as it is possible for them to do, and, if there is a general sense throughout the Kingdom that they are upholding the integrity of the Grown and its Dominions, they will be supported; if the contrary, then I fear that evil will come both to the Government and the country.
    THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: Sir, I hope the right hon. Gentleman was right in the opinion expressed in the early part of his speech—that, as we are now approaching the end of the ninth night's discussion on the Address and the Report, hon. Members who have further observations to make will undergo the inconvenience of doing so even at this late hour, in order that on Monday the House may enter upon the consideration of Business of a more practical character. If I may for a moment
    1050
    invest myself with the powers with which, I trust, you will shortly be invested, having been present during the greater part of the evening, I should be inclined to say that the House, as a whole, is fully of opinion that this debate has been sufficiently prolonged. Before I make any observations upon the remarks of the right hon. Baronet who has just spoken, I should like to say a word or two with reference to the subject on which the discussion of this evening has turned. The hon. and gallant Baronet opposite (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) described in very forcible and, generally speaking, accurate language, the extreme depression under which the agricultural interest, or, at all events, some part of it, is now and has long been labouring. I think there is no subject more interesting to the House generally, and especially to the Members of it who represent agricultural constituencies, while none is more important to the country at large than that which has been brought this evening under our consideration; and I am not in the least surprised that hon. Members should desire not to allow this debate to close without showing that they, at all events, sympathize with the distress and difficulties which the agricultural interest has so long suffered. Sir, in that sympathy Her Majesty's Government most heartily concur—the subject has been referred to in Her Most Gracious Majesty's Speech—and I think the agricultural interest may be satisfied that this sympathy with them will be forthcoming from all parts of the country. But it is not the province of this House to devote a considerable portion of its time to expressions of sympathy. What we desire here is to discover something that will remove these difficulties, and raise the depressed interest from the condition in which it is now placed; but in that respect I may be allowed to say that the discussion of this evening has not been of so practical a character as might be desired. We have not heard from the other side of the House any suggestion of a remedy of which we heard something before the meeting of Parliament—a remedy that won two electoral triumphs in the counties, and which was to relieve the pressure of American competition. We have heard from hon. Gentlemen opposite no practical suggestion, except in the way

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    of some scraps of relief, or aid, to the agricultural interest, in the shape of remissions or re-adjustment of local taxation; and no reference has been made to the question which excited so much interest in the English counties at recent Elections, except by the hon. Member for South Shropshire (Sir Baldwyn Leighton), who disclaimed any desire to return to the policy of Protection, while one hon. Gentleman sitting behind him uttered a solitary "No." It seems to me that it will carry small consolation to those tenant farmers who believe in the possibility of a re-imposition of Protection, that, on an evening devoted almost entirely to the discussion of agricultural interests, not one hon. Gentleman has spoken in defence of that idea. I do not deny that the question of local taxation is one which it is necessary that the House of Commons should discuss on the grounds both of justice and fairness with a view to affording relief, however slight that relief may be, if it can be proved that the agricultural interest is burdened with more than a fair share of taxation. The question has been referred to in Her Majesty's Speech; and in connection with the subject of local self-government, the House will be invited by the Government to consider what may be the proper extent and the most equitable and provident form of contribution from Imperial taxes in relief of local charges. But, Sir, it would be idle to pretend, it would be a delusion to the tenant farmers of England to imply, that by any re-adjustment of local charges an adequate relief can be afforded against calamities so great as those under which they have been suffering for the past seven years. It has been admitted that the chief causes of those sufferings have been a succession of almost unprecedented bad harvests, accompanied by an intensity of foreign competition never before experienced; and therefore, when we see how small a portion of the tenant farmer's outlay is applied to the payment of rates, it would be a mockery and a delusion to hold out to him the hope that any re-adjustment of taxation could seriously aid him in his contest with forces of such magnitude. I am inclined to agree much with a portion of the speech of the hon. Member for Forfarshire (Mr. J. W. Barclay), who has, I think, shown that agriculture is carried on under excep-
    1052
    tional and difficult conditions—conditions under which, he says, it would be extremely improbable that any manufacturing industry could be conducted; and I am inclined to his opinion that, if Parliament can do anything for the relief of the agricultural interest, it will be in the direction of restoring freedom to those engaged in it, so that they may be able to manage their business upon the most favourable basis. The Government desire by legislation to remove every legal impediment to the exercise of agricultural industry under the most perfect conditions of freedom, and we desire to do anything which can be done to give tenant farmers full compensation for unexhausted improvements. Sir, I look with distrust upon any proposal which appears to me to go in the direction of not giving additional freedom to those engaged in agriculture; but, on the contrary, in the direction of imposing further restrictions upon them. I desire that the owners and occupiers of land should be left free to settle their own affairs and make their own contracts. The freedom of which the hon. Member for Forfarshire spoke, as enjoyed by those who are engaged in every other industry, is not a freedom which they owe to any legislative enactment. It is a freedom which they have achieved for themselves; and I say that all that the Legislature can do for the agricultural interest is to remove the unwise fetters which have been placed upon it by previous legislation. I should certainly hesitate before I proposed new ones, or laid down a hard-and-fast line of contract between landlord and tenant, which could not be carried out successfully under varying conditions. Sir, I will now refer to one or two observations only made by the right hon. Baronet who has just sat down (Sir Stafford Northcote), and who complains that, after all the explanations which he has listened to, he is still of opinion that in Her Majesty's Speech the Government have taken too rose-coloured a view of the signs of improvement in Ireland. But it appears to me that the part of the Royal Message of which the right hon. Baronet complains is expressed in terms of the most guarded character. It admits the extreme gravity of the circumstances still prevailing in Ireland, while, as I have pointed out, in the most guarded terms

    1053
    it points to hopeful symptoms of improvement. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the junior Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) indulged in some speculations as to the views of Her Majesty's Government for Ireland in the future which I find some difficulty in following. He asks whether we were really acquainted with the actual condition of affairs in Ireland, and whether, after the process which he described as "crushing out the landlords," we were aware of what the outcome would be? I do not know whether it is possible to convince the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his Friends that we are fully aware of what is the present condition of affairs in Ireland; but I do know that we have been endeavouring during the whole of last Session, and in the interval which has since elapsed—in the first place, by effecting what we considered to be an improvement in the law, to reform the relations which were certainly not satisfactory between the landlords and tenants of Ireland; and, secondly, by the exercise of the ordinary and extraordinary powers of the law conferred upon us, to restore law and order in that country. That is the view which Her Majesty's Government take of their duty, and I do not know that we should be much assisted in the discharge of it were I to follow the right hon. and learned Gentleman into speculations with reference to any state of things which might exist in Ireland after the landlords have been crushed out. Our sincere hope is that the landlords will not be crushed out, but that their relations with their tenants will be placed upon a better footing; that there will be a better feeling between the two classes, and greater mutual prosperity; and that, instead of being crushed out, the landlords of Ireland will become more permanent and more secure in their position than they have been for a long period. The right hon. and learned Gentleman referred also to a topic which has been discussed over and over again, not only in the present nine-nights' debate, but throughout the whole of the Recess, and during a great part of last Session. He is not even now satisfied whether we ought in the year 1880 to have renewed the Peace Preservation Act. Sir, if after two years' continual discussion the right hon. and learned Gentleman is in doubt as to that subject, I despair of arriving at finality on
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    any question relating to the conduct of the Government in discharging its duties. The right hon. Baronet has charged us, in a speech of great force, with acting neither sufficiently soon nor with sufficient vigour; but he will forgive me for saying that this charge has already been made against Her Majesty's Government. Upon this point I will only say that I entirely repudiate the allegation that we have ever given countenance to the Land League as an engine of political or social agitation. It is of no use disputing about what has been said by this or that Member of the Government. I point to what we have done; we prosecuted members of the Land League a year ago, under the ordinary law. How, then, is it possible to contend that the Government were favouring an association which they thought it necessary to prosecute as illegal? Since the failure of that prosecution we have contended against the organization by every means in our power. My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland has employed the forces of the police and the forces of the Crown for the protection of those who are engaged in opposing the edicts of the Land League, and giving protection to those who dare to disobey them. In every way in our power we have been working in the defence of the law against the efforts of this association. It is asked—"Why did you not suppress the Land League by proclamation?" It was not suppressed by proclamation, because the proclamation would have been ineffective until there were means of giving effect to it. It was not until after extraordinary powers had been conferred on the Government that we were in possession of the necessary power. Then it is said—"Why was the Land League not suppressed immediately after the passing of the Protection of Life and Property Act? "The answer has been given over and over again. The Government had undertaken not to make use of those powers except for the purpose for which they were conferred—namely, for preventing intimidation and violence. The Government were not convinced until the moment at which they acted—though they all along believed that the Land League was mischievous, and led to violence, disorder, and intimidation—it was not until they were absolutely convinced,

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    in the course of the autumn, that the leaders of the Land League and the organization were directly connected with a system which led to intimidation and violence, that they thought themselves justified in acting under the Peace Preservation Act. The right hon. Gentleman finally referred to the speech, which was delivered more than a week ago, by my right hon. Friend at the head of the Government, and which has been so much commented upon. The right hon. Gentleman seems to have derived some satisfaction from my right hon. Friend's defence of the speech of the First Lord of the Treasury last night. I will not call it an explanation—I will not admit that it required explanation. The right hon. Gentleman says it now appears to him to be something between—he is not quite sure whether it was a dream or an electioneering speech. Is the right hon. Gentleman quite sure that it was not a "pious opinion?" No one has held stronger opinions, nor has endeavoured to express them in stronger and more decided terms than I have, as to the views we have always held with regard to the system called Home Rule. I did not hear the speech of my right hon. Friend; but, when I heard and read comments upon it, I was seriously alarmed, and thought my right hon. Friend had said something very terrible. I have read the speech carefully several times since; and I have been unable to ascertain what were the passages in that speech that caused the alarm. I observed, in almost all the criticisms, that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen have carefully refrained from quoting the passages upon which they rested their alarm, but rested it upon what they call the general character and tenour and spirit of the speech. In my opinion, a great deal of the importance given to the speech has been derived from glosses placed upon it by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, and by hon. Gentlemen from Ireland. I read that speech with some anxiety; but when I read it what did I find? Three things. In the first place, a re-assertion of those principles which my right hon. Friend has, on various occasions, proclaimed—principles which we have always been aware he held very strongly—namely, that it is extremely desirable, and almost absolutely essential, that some means should be found whereby this overburdened
    1056
    Parliament may be relieved of some of the work of detail with which it is loaded, and which might equally well be discharged by some local bodies. The second thing I found was a re-assertion, in the strongest terms of the principle, that in any such devolution of the duties of Parliament it is essential that means should be taken for the maintenance of the political unity of the Empire and the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. And the third thing I found was the utter failure of any scheme which has hitherto been put forward under the name of Home Rule to provide for any satisfaction for this desire. The ground we have always taken has been the utter absence of any provision in any Home Rule scheme of those conditions insisted upon by my right hon. Friend for the maintenance of political unity and the maintenance for such purpose of the Imperial Parliament. It appears to me that everything in this question depends upon the side from which it is approached and the spirit in which it is entertained. If we approach it from the point of view of the necessity of relieving Parliament of some of its labours, if we approach it from the point of view of securing for every part of the United Kingdom—for every community capable of self-government—as much self-control and management of their own affairs as can be conferred upon them, then it appears to me to be a subject which may be safely, and not only safely but usefully entertained; but, in my opinion, if we are to approach it, as hon. Members from Ireland seem inclined to do, from the point of view of a desire for the restoration of the independence which Ireland lost at the beginning of the present century—the re-establishment of a Parliament sitting in Dublin and independent of the Imperial Parliament—the re-establishment of a system of government in which the only link would be the Crown, then I feel that an irreconcilable difference is between us which it will be impossible to bridge over.
    MR. O'DONNELLsaid, that when the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington) commenced his very interesting and instructive observations he stated his conviction that it was against the sense of the House that the debate should continue longer. He (Mr.

    1057
    O'Donnell) was happy that the noble Marquess had made an exception in his own case; otherwise the House would have been deprived of the statement of the Ministerial position to which it had just listened. It was just possible, however, that similar Ministerial inconsistencies of a more serious character were expected to occur when the Government obtained, as they hoped to obtain, their means of manipulating the evident sense of the House. Another slight inconsistency in the speech of the noble Marquess was his protest against the action of the Conservative Opposition in reading between the lines of a previous recent speech on local government in Ireland, and seeing between those lines what the Premier had by no means expressed in the lines. He was happy to hear that protest from the noble Marquess, because he had observed, during the whole of the speeches on the Ministerial side directed against his hon. Friend (Mr. Parnell) and the other imprisoned Laud Leaguers, their strong point was that they were able to read between the lines of the Land Leaguers' speeches, and to see there what was not contained anywhere in the text of the speeches. When his hon. Friend the Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) declared to the people of Dublin that all the lessons of Irish history taught the people to fight out their struggle within the lines of the Constitution, the Chief Secretary for Ireland said—"This is the text; this is Constitutional; but if you read between the lines it is the blackest treason." He (Mr. O'Donnell) had followed with attention the observations of the Leader of the Conservative Opposition; but he must confess that he was a good deal disappointed with the tenour of those remarks. He observed, for instance, that the right hon. Gentleman complained that the Liberal Party devoted themselves to criticizing points of detail, and to attacks on their Predecessors. Listening somewhat attentively to the criticisms of the Conservative Party, it had struck him that they had limited their statements on Ireland to points of detail, and to attacks on their Successors. He entirely agreed with the Leader of the Conservative Opposition that the Government had not taken action sufficiently soon in Ireland, for that had been his conviction all along. During all the un-
    1058
    troubled years in which the Conservatives held sway over Ireland, why did they take no action to deal with the evils in that country? At that time the Home Rule Party in that House was headed not only by an honoured Liberal, but by an ingrained Conservative, Mr. Isaac Butt. If ever there was an opportunity of dealing fairly and frankly with Ireland, that opportunity was then presented to the Conservative Government, and no man could have been hectored into terms more than Mr. Isaac Butt, the Leader of the Home Rule Party. He did not, however, feel disposed to deal at lengh, or to presume to deal with severity, with the speech off he right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Conservative Opposition. Severity, he thought, was generally out of place in dealing with the speeches of the right hon. Baronet, whose paths over the House left something almost of the nature of a maternal caress. He must express his regret that the debate had been so discursive; but that, at any rate, had not been the fault of the Irish Party. They brought forward the Irish case fairly upon an Amendment, and they had prepared consecutive speeches for the discussion of the administration of the Government, and even the speeches of the Conservative Opposition. The hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) had delivered a speech which had received, as it deserved, the highest encomia from both sides of the House; and in that speech he had dealt with the Ministerial case. That speech required an answer; but the Ministers ran away. If that was a manœuvre, it was not a very dignified manœuvre; and, to the astonishment of the Irish Members, the Government were not prepared to meet the consequences they had incurred. They, however, took an opportunity of reviving the Irish Question when they thought they had the Irish Members at a disadvantage; and the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, who could not drop the pearls of his eloquence on the floor of the House during the dinner hour, first talked out the debate on the Report of the Address on Wednesday, and then continued his oration on the next day in full proportion to his own estimate of his own merits. Practically, that way of dealing with the Irish case did place Irish Members at a disadvantage. They were the great bogie or

    1059
    hobgoblin that was frightening English constituencies into cheating the English nation out of the liberties of Parliament. If they were that hot-headed and thoughtless faction, the Government might certainly have found due cause for irritation, and been led to adopt the destructive policy which might suit such men as Boss Kelly. He did not think they had observed the little peculiarities of Government so long without having acquired some useful information with regard to the habits and tendencies of Her Majesty's Administration. But while they complained of the manner in which the debate on this subject had been most unfairly prolonged, and prolonged in a manner most calculated to do as much harm as possible to the high reputation of the Irish Party—though he was not going to be provoked into a retaliatory policy, which Government would like to see them adopt—he thought that before the closing of the debate he might be allowed to adduce, very briefly, some of the leading features of the case from the Irish side of the question. He believed it was admitted on both sides of the House that not only the Coercion Act, but the Land Act of last year, was a deplorable error and blunder, to speak mildly. If it turned out, after all, that the great Land Act was a great failure, the only justification for coercion was agrarian reform, and the only justification for such agrarian reform was that it should be successful. It so happened that they were now in full possession of all the necessary information with regard to the success or failure of the Land Act. With regard to the success of the Land Act in inducing tenants to apply to the Courts, they found there were now some 66,000 applications to have fair rents fixed, and that in only 1,300 cases had fair rents been fixed; of course, in all the cases the decisions were subject to appeal. Let them take the great county of Antrim, where 3,019 originating notices had been lodged before the Irish Land Commission. How many of those cases had as yet come to a hearing? In Antrim 50 cases had been heard by the Sub-Commissioners. In the great county of Galway 5,575 tenants were induced by the copious promises of hon. Gentlemen like Her Majesty's Solicitor General for Ireland—the hero of the vote for Porter and "fair rent" placards, as he had seen him recently described—5,575 ten-
    1060
    ants had lodged originating notices, and he found that in the great county of Galway not a single case had yet been heard. In the great county of Mayo, represented by an hon. Member (Mr. O'Connor Power) who was not backward in his recognition of the merits of Her Majesty's Government, he found that 8,004 tenants had been induced, possibly on the flattering recommendation of their Representative, to have recourse to the Land Courts; and he found that out of that large number of cases the magnificent total of 113 had received a first hearing before the Land Courts and 69 before the ordinary Civil Bill Courts, making the stupendous total of 182 cases heard out of 8,004 applications lodged. The same story was to be told in regard to every other county in Ireland. He had referred to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland and Member for County Derry (Mr. Porter). It might be useful to note that 2,741 farmers in Derry had lodged originating notices in the Land Courts, being, he believed, exactly the same number of votes recorded for the hon. and learned Gentleman at the recent election. But out of the 2,741 who had lodged applications to have a "fair rent" fixed only three had succeeded in obtaining a first hearing for their case. He did not know whether the hon. and learned Solicitor General, in his heart of hearts, had such a bad opinion of the Land Court as to think that he might maintain the allegiance of his supporters best by giving them as little legislation of the Land Court as possible. There, however, was the fact that, on the whole, 66,845 originating notices had been lodged, and only 1,313 cases had been heard. It must be remembered, too, that the 66,845 tenants who had applied to the Land Court only represented a mere fraction of the total tenantry of Ireland; in fact, but for the "no rent" manifesto, and the action of the Land League in keeping the tenants out of the Land Courts, the burlesque—the fiasco of the Land Courts—would have been 10 times worse. Now with regard to another important point of the Land Act. The great clause for the settlement of arrears was the chef-d'œuvre; the culminating point of the Chief Secretary for Ireland's ingenuity in the construction of the Land Bill. The total amount of the arrears that had

    1061
    come into the Land Court was £1,500, and the benevolent action and the philanthropy of the Chief Secretary for Ireland was represented by the magnificent advance of £500. That was a sum that he (Mr. O'Donnell) might have felt disposed to advance towards relieving the misery brought about by the Government's administration in Ireland. Then with regard to the clauses adopted at the suggestion of another philanthropist, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster—he referred to the so-called "Bright" Clauses, which had the object of creating present proprietors. He believed that about three dozen serfs had been changed, transformed, regenerated into peasant proprietors, under the healing influences of the land legislation of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In a word, from whatever point they looked at the Land Act, it was a failure. They had heard, in the course of the debate, from a Gentleman who was well qualified to speak on the subject—the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. Dickson), that Liberal who defeated both the Parnellite and Conservative candidates, and whose success had been trumpeted from one end of the country to the other—they had heard from that hon. Gentleman that even the first batch of applicants would not have the first hearing of their cases for several years.
    MR. T. A. DICKSONsaid, he did not say the first batch; but he stated that the entire cases in Tyrone would not be heard for two or three years. Already there were many cases settled.
    MR. 'O'DONNELLsaid, that, according to the report of the hon. Member's speech in The Times, he had said three or four years. Another hon. Member from Ulster, and a distinguished Liberal (Mr. Givan), who, he was happy to say, was on the very point of becoming a Home Ruler, speaking at Liverpool recently, said the Land Act was not for the requirements of Ireland, and that, owing to the numerous applications to the Court, matters were proceeding so slowly that it would be impossible to adjudicate upon all the cases for seven or eight years. The problem before the House and before all reasonable citizens of the country was—What was to be-come of Ireland during those seven or eight years? If the Land Act was not working under the kindly auspices of
    1062
    the Chief Secretary for Ireland, evictions were going on at a rapid rate. The right hon. Gentleman had succeeded in obtaining the eviction of upwards of 17,000 men, women, and children during the last few months. On the evidence of the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners themselves, in the pitiful handful of 1,300 eases out of 66,000, it must be presumed the tenants of Ireland were suffering under excessive, exorbitant, cruel, and unjust rents, and that even the first batch of cases would not have their cases disposed of for many years, and evictions were to go on, according to the policy of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, for three, four, five, six, and seven years—evictions for unjust arrears, for exorbitant rents, and there was not even a line in the Land Act to stop the hand of the plundering landlord and the crowbar brigade. There was no wonder that the Conservatives, whatever their deficiencies in the past, would hesitate before succeeding to the responsibilities of such a fearful position as that. They had a system of coercion which had been used to effect what was never in the mind of Parliament; they had a Land Act which did not work, and which was not likely to work, and now they were about to have the gagging of Parliament, and the voice of the Irish Representatives would be silenced. He claimed certain independence upon various questions. He did not hesitate, in the palmiest days of the Land League, to state his objections to some points of its programme; and he would not hesitate to do the same thing to-day if he believed that the Land Act had a chance of assuaging the miseries of Ireland. But the Land Act was still-born, and the Land League, which the Premier admitted the previous day had not superseded, was the only hope of the Irish people, and not only so, but it was the only hope of the English people. The policy of the Land League in establishing the so-called "no rent" programme was a policy entirely dependent upon the action of Her Majesty's Government. Let Her Majesty's Government restore the Constitution, and the Land League would at once recognize that it had no longer any right to use the weapon of "no rent." Hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House ought to see that it was not at all clear, even from their point of view, that it was an act wholly and morally wrong to

    1063
    suspend the payment of rent. Did the rents belong to the landlords legally? Did not the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners plainly prove that a large portion of rents belonged to the tenants? Therefore, when they were forcing them to pay rents, a portion of which belonged to themselves, they were simply upholding a system of plundering the tenants. The tenants considered that in suspending the payment of rent they were suspending the payment of that part of which, under the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners, belonged to themselves. The hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. Dickson), had given Notice of a Bill, which had been duly blocked by a select number of Irish Conservative Members. The hon. Member, who was an Ulster Liberal, had given Notice of a Bill for the purpose of enabling the tenants of Ireland to pay rents at Griffith's valuation, pending the settlement of fair rents by the Land Courts. Was that a monstrous and villainous suggestion? It was the suggestion of the Land League. The hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) said again and again—"The rents in Ireland are too high; the people are oppressed by the landlords; they cannot pay the present rents; let the landlords, pending a fair settlement, accept Griffith's valuation." A leading supporter of the Government in Ulster had stated that nine-tenths of the landlords would be willing to accept Griffith's valuation, pending a final settlement, if they were not urged on by coercion. Let that final settlement be what it might, he was of opinion that there was room for a certain amount of lease holding still in Ireland. He would not compel people willing to remain in the position of landlord and tenant—the landlord to be expropriated compulsorily, and the tenant to be turned into a peasant proprietor compulsorily; but he maintained that a solution of the Irish Question could only be found in allowing a fair proportion of the Irish peasantry to become proprietors of their holdings. He said this in the name of men in gaol, who could not be present to speak for themselves. If the Government brought in a fair measure to enable tenants to become peasant proprietors, he could promise them that they would find Parnell and Dillon and O'Kelly voting for it. With regard to the "no rent" manifesto, that was a measure of war declared against those who had declared a measure of
    1064
    war against the Land League; and as to the Premier's remarkable announcement, the right hon. Gentleman might, or might not, mean Home Rule in Ireland. There was nothing in that statement which should alarm the most reactionary Conservative. The right hon. Gentleman had told the House that he was now saying in Parliament what he said in Mid Lothian, and what he said in 1872 to Mr. Butt. The right hon. Gentleman said he had not advanced a step further—that he was to-day where he was in 1872; and in 1892 he might not have progressed an inch further in his Home Rule ideas. He (Mr. O'Donnell) could not but think that there was a very great similitude between the relations of the Premier and the Home Rule Party, and Mr. Digby Grant and Mrs. Cripps, in a remarkable scene, admirably played by our leading player. When Mrs. Cripps presented her little Home Rule accounts, Mr. Digby Grant, with that suavity which was not confined to Mid Lothian, hastened to acknowledge "her little account." "A gentleman cannot do less" he says, and he adds, "a gentleman cannot do more." It seemed to him (Mr. O'Donnell) that that was exactly the attitude of the Prime Minister towards the Home Rule Party. He acknowledged their Home Rule scheme, and a gentleman—a statesman "could not do less, a statesman could not do more." Mr. Digby Grant continued—"Present your account, my dear Mrs. Cripps, next year I shall continue to acknowledge it." Next year the Premier would, no doubt, continue to acknowledge the Home Rule scheme. The right hon. Baronet the Leader of the Opposition was afraid that these vague utterances of the Premier might stir up agitation in Irish breasts—that a race which had kept true to its nationality for a number of centuries; a race the eldest born of Europe's peoples, were suddenly stirred to what they were going to forget by the copious words in which the Prime Minister wrapped up his thoughts. He (Mr. O'Donnell) could assure the right hon. Baronet the Leader of the Conservative Opposition that Irish nationality did not depend even on much more expressive statements than anything that could be extracted from the Liberal Premier. Irish nationality was like the Rock of Peter, a great many barks would go to pieces against it—the barks of many great

    1065
    States even; but Irish nationality would remain. If the Conservative Party were really anxious to see institutions built on a firm foundation, they might search the whole world over and they would not find a firmer foundation for an edifice to be raised than that which existed in Irish nationality. One of the reasons why he bitterly complained of the manœuvre in relation to the dinner-hour-not-spoken speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland—one of the reasons why he bitterly regretted that the inner susceptibilities of the right hon. Gentleman were not more carefully considered by his Colleagues was that he had hoped to have been able to make use of this occasion to lay before the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India (the Marquess of Hartington) some statements with regard to most important questions in India. Now, notwithstanding the Irish Members were so vowed to Separation, so indifferent to the interests of this Empire, it so happened that most of the great questions touching the welfare of the vast masses of the peoples of this Empire had been introduced by Members of the Irish Party. From the Transvaal to the Indian Vernacular Press Act and flogging in the Army—on which subject the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) had the distinguished honour of being followed by the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India, and in which something was made known about the floggings in the Indian gaols—in fact, in a multitude of such matters attention had been called to what was going on by the Irish Members. He would only, as a mere specimen of what he wished to lay before the Secretary of State for India, describe a resolution passed at a Conference of Baptist Missionaries recently held at Calcutta with regard to the effects of the Government traffic in opium and intoxicating drugs and drinks for revenue purposes. The resolution stated that the missionaries of the English Baptist Missionary Society in India in Conference assembled, having had under their consideration the close connection of the Government of India with the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drugs and drinks as a means of revenue, were constrained to protest against the official tendency to increase the facilities
    1066
    for the consumption of these articles as a most serious hindrance to the spread of Christianity, injurious to the public health and morals, and degrading to Christianity. The whole voice of the Native Press of India denounced the frightful crime of the multiplication of the facilities for intoxication amongst the sober peoples of Hindostan. He trusted the Secretary of State for India, whose deep interest in the well-being of the people of India he readily recognized, would give the House an opportunity of having this important question fully and fairly considered. He hoped also that the members of the United Kingdom Alliance, so deeply interested in the promotion of temperance at home, would not, without lifting a hand, stand by and hear the complaints of 250,000,000 of our dusky fellow-subjects begging to be saved, as they had begged for generations, from demoralization, the effects of which we could see at home at St. Giles's and Wapping. He could assure Her Majesty's Government that, far from having any objects detrimental to the welfare of this great Empire, there were none more earnestly in favour of all that ought to be supported in it, and Her Majesty's Government and the Opposition could count on no more devoted allies than the Irish Party, the natural Representatives and spokesmen of the unrepresented Nationalities of the Empire. He thanked the House for listening to him at this advanced hour; but he thought that, under all the circumstances, some protest such as he had ventured to make was required against the manner in which the Government had acted.
    MR. CALLANsaid, that, at that early hour of the morning, he should not think of detaining the House for any length of time upon the subject of which he was about to treat. He should not have risen at all had he not been successful in the ballot both on Tuesday and to-day, but without a chance of being able to bring the subject he had in his mind before the notice of the House. What he wished to refer to was one of the most scandalous incidents in the scandalous history of the Irish Administration—namely, the appointment of Major Bond to the Magisterial Bench in Ireland. The importance of the subject would be his excuse for calling attention to the subject at that early hour

    1067
    of the morning. Having heard something about Major Bond, he had read up the question, and had been astonished to see the indifference to public opinion and the indifference to common justice exhibited by the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant (Mr. W. E. Forster) in making the appointment. Notice of a Question on the subject had been given to the Chief Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman had four days in which to make inquiries and ascertain the real facts of the case before giving his reply. The Question itself, moreover, was so put as to make the right hon. Gentleman acquainted with the important facts, therefore ignorance could not be pleaded. The right hon. Gentleman's reply was a justification of the conduct of Major Bond. The Question was—
    "Whether or no the Major Bond described in the 'Daily News' as one of the specially appointed resident magistrates presiding for the first time at Clonbur Sessions, is the same officer who up to December last was the Chief Superintendent of Police in the borough of Birmingham; and, if so, whether or no his attention has been called to the following Resolution passed by the Birmingham magistrates, and dated November 22nd 1881:—'and that the Watch Committee be informed that in consequence of the Chief of Police having given elaborate detailed evidence of what took place upon an occasion at which he was not even present, and such evidence being wholly erroneous, the magistrates cannot continue to regard him with confidence;' whether or no his attention has been called to the following Resolution passed by the Watch Committee:—'That this Committee having carefully considered the Report of the magistrates, and the conduct of Major Bond, in giving evidence as to proceedings which took place when he was not present, and also the importance of any evidence given by a Chief of Police being fully reliable, feel that they cannot but concur in the Resolution of the Justices in ceasing to regard Major Bond with confidence;' and, whether or no he is aware that Major Bond was allowed to resign his office after a Resolution for his dismissal had been adopted by the Watch Committee, and approved by the Town Council?"
    The right hon. Gentleman made an amusing reply, and seemed to pay a great deal more attention to turning the laugh on his Questioner than to coming to the real merits of the case. The right hon. Gentleman made two most extraordinary statements. First, he said—"He hoped his hon. Friend would think that Her Majesty's Government had ground for their appointment of Major Bond;" and then, with full knowledge of all the circumstances, he said this—and it appeared to him (Mr. Callan)
    1068
    the most extraordinary statement of the most extraordinary Chief Secretary he had ever heard—"He did not think it was his duty to enter into an investigation of any charge like that to which his hon. Friend referred"—that was a charge of perjury. What were the facts? On November 29 of last year, Major Bond came before the Watch Committee, to whom had been referred the Report of the Borough Justices. The Committee ordered that a copy of that Report should be furnished to Major Bond, and then adjourned the consideration of the case for a fortnight, awaiting Major Bond's explanation. At the adjourned meeting Major Bond's letter of explanation was read, and Major Bond gave a personal explanation. Another adjournment took place, and finally the matter came before the Town Council of Birmingham, when it was resolved, by a vote of 48 to, he thought, 10, that if Major Bond did not resign he should be dismissed, and amongst those who voted for that resolution was to be noticed the name of Alderman Chamberlain, a name with which the Chief Secretary was probably familiar. There were four numbers of The Birmingham Daily Post containing reports and articles of the case—sixteen and a-half columns in all—and to these numbers the right hon. Gentleman could refer if he chose. From one of the leading articles the following was an extract:—
    "We cannot put the matter more clearly than it was put by Mr. Hart, the Chairman of the Watch Committee. The real point is that he gave evidence on oath at the Warwick Sessions of proceedings as having occurred in his presence, when, as he now admits, he was not present, and, consequently, did not witness proceedings such as he describes. This is the real point, and no special pleading, however ingenious, and no denial, however vehement, can explain it away, or can avert the only possible conclusion that must be drawn by every candid mind."
    He (Mr. Callan) was curious to know whether this Major Bond or Mr. Clifford Lloyd occupied the higher position in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman. The Birmingham Daily Post said further—
    "To speak from hearsay in such a case, or to blunder in giving evidence upon oath, necessarily destroys confidence in the person who falls into an error of such extreme gravity. And when that person is the chief officer of a police force, upon whose faithfulness of statement the liberties and even the lives of those who are brought before the magistrates may

    1069
    depend, how is it possible the trust so grievously broken can ever be restored? It is a matter of sincere regret for us to be obliged to say so; but we cannot do otherwise than concur with the resolutions of the Justices and the Watch Committee that their confidence can no longer be continued to the Chief Superintendent of Police. And we cannot but feel, as the necessary conclusion from such an expression of opinion, that the public interests call for the retirement of Major Bond from the position he holds."
    The question was, did Major Bond give evidence as within his own knowledge of occurrences which took place when he was absent? On December 27 he resigned, and, on his resignation, he issued a Napoleonic "General Order" that he (Mr. Callan) at first thought must have emanated from Kilmallock. This "General Order" was issued to the corps he had commanded; and in it, referring to Birmingham, Major Bond said—
    "This once turbulent town, over which he had been placed as guardian of life, property, and public morality, had settled down to a most satisfactory state of quiet and good order and as a peace-loving community."
    ["Hear, hear!"] Well, if that expression of opinion was, on behalf of the Radicals of the House, an endorsement of the perjury on the part of Major Bond, he would accept it and would treat it as it deserved. What did The Liverpool Daily Post, of this very week, say? He would quote what it said as an endorsement of his own opinion. It said—
    "It is easy to understand why a strong feeling of indignation should exist against the appointment. Major Bond was dismissed at Birmingham as unfit to be a Chief Constable, because he acted on hearsay evidence, and swore to facts of which he was not cognizant, and yet he is considered quite good enough to fill the post of stipendiary magistrate in Ireland at a time when these functionaries are armed with powers of a most extraordinary and exceptional character. The Birmingham magistrates found that Major Bond had given elaborate evidence of what took place on an occasion at which he was not even present, and that such evidence was wholly erroneous. It was only a publican's licence that was here concerned; but Major Bond is now promoted to a position in which it it is no longer publicans' licences, but the lives and liberties of Her Majesty's subjects, that are at his disposal. In Ireland, as Mr. Collings points out, the ordinary safeguards for personal liberty are suspended, and everything depends on the accuracy of evidence, the care and discretion of the magistrate. It is not likelyt hat we have heard the last of Major Bond's appointment."
    1070
    No, he (Mr. Callan) could promise that they had not heard the last of it. But he gave the Chief Secretary for Ireland this last opportunity, at 2 o'clock in the morning, before the Address was finished, and he asked him to avail himself of this opportunity to explain. Though it was too late for the Press to quote his answer, yet there would be an official record at least, and propriety and sense of justice called for a sufficient answer. All were equal in the eyes of the law. [A voice: "No!"] Well, they ought to be. Could the right hon. Gentleman give any justification for stating in the House that when these allegations were brought forward he did not condescend even to make an inquiry into them? He (Mr. Callan) intended to take steps in the matter that that opportunity for inquiry might be had in the House; and he hoped the Chief Secretary for Ireland would relieve the Irish Members of the necessity of bringing the matter forward again by making the only satisfactory declaration he could—namely, that Major Bond would no longer have the lives and liberties of the Irish people at his mercy.
    MR. W. E. FORSTER: Sir, I make no allusion to the manner in which the hon. Member (Mr. Callan) has made his statement; and, indeed, I am glad that, even at this late hour, I can make a remark or two on the matter. Allow me, as shortly as possible, to refer to the history of the appointment. Major Bond was appointed one of the temporary stipendiary magistrates for three months. When he made application for the appointment, he brought testimonials which were very strong; and it appeared he had been a very successful police officer at Cardiff; and he had also strong testimonials from Birmingham. Of this particular charge which has been brought against him I was not aware. I appointed him, without that knowledge, upon the strength of the high testimonials he received from Birmingham. On hearing this charge, I sent for Major Bond, and certainly, if the charge had been such as the hon. Member speaks of—but I do not know that it really was made by anybody in that form—and if I had reason to believe that Major Bond really had "perjured himself," then, though I had made the appointment, I should at once have

    1071
    cancelled it. But, on seeing him and on hearing his statement, I felt that it would be a great injustice to him, and a thing of which nobody could approve, if I cancelled the appointment. Will the hon. Member just hear what the stipendiary magistrate of Birmingham has written of what happened?
    "I will state the facts briefly without comment. At the Licensing Sessions of the borough magistrates, mainly on the testimony of Major Bond, the magistrates refused to renew the licence of a most objectionable publican in that town. Appeal was made to Quarter Sessions at Warwick, and Major Bond attended there as a witness to prove some formal matter—a service of notice or something of that kind. When in the witness-box, he was asked several questions as to what had taken place at the meeting of magistrates at which the application was made. Taken by surprise, he answered to the best of his recollection, and unwittingly confused two different meetings, at one of which he was not present and knew of only by hearsay."
    I have also a copy of the resolution at which the magistrates arrived; it is as follows:—
    "They inform Major Bond, in answer to his letter, that the magistrates have no intention of imputing to him, nor did they impute to him in their Report, a wilful falsification of facts in his evidence given at Warwick."
    The charge is not, therefore, in the slightest degree brought home to him. [An hon. MEMBER: Then why was he dismissed?] Having heard his statements, and having also the strong testimonial from the Recorder of Birmingham, not only before the occurrence, but after it, I did not feel justified in cancelling the appointment.
    MR. LEAMYreally thought that, considering that on Monday an attempt would be made to curtail the liberty of speech of the minority, in the last few days, the English Radicals might show Irish Members some consideration. If this debate had been prolonged, it was not due to any attempt on the part of the Irish Members to delay the House, but simply because a great number of topics were introduced by English Members. The whole of the evening, when there was an important speech of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland to reply to, was taken up by English Members; and if Irish Members were now constrained to call attention to the appointment of a resident magistrate at a time when the liberties of the Irish people were suspended on the word of a magistrate, and any man
    1072
    was liable to be sent to gaol, then he asked that there should be a full explanation of this particular appointment, and he thought they might claim to be listened to. Let the Chief Secretary for Ireland say why was Major Bond dismissed from Birmingham? How could the Executive expect the people to have confidence in the administration of the law if they sent to Ireland, at a time like this, a man who was considered unworthy to carry out the law in an English town? What was the use of saying that Major Bond did not tell the Chief Secretary that he had been dismissed from the Birmingham Police Force? The fact was he was dismissed; and was it to be understood that dismissed police officers were to administer the law in Ireland? He did not know what opportunity there might be of bringing this before the House again. They had already found the Chief Secretary for Ireland most anxious to pay the highest possible compliments to Mr. Clifford Lloyd, a man not only detested by numbers of people in the South of Ireland, but spoken of in the strongest terms by the hon. Member for Drogheda (Mr. Whitworth), whose sympathies were not with the Home Rule Members, who was a supporter of the Government, and ought to support the friend of the Chief Secretary for Ireland; and, therefore, Irish Members were not unnaturally suspicious. Another astonishing fact was that this man, Major Bond, was dismissed, and the Chief Secretary for Ireland appointed him without knowing the grounds of his dismissal. Surely there were enough of Irish gentlemen whose characters were beyond reproach, and against whom no accusation could be levelled, willing to accept the pay and discharge the duties of a resident magistrate. But instead of one of these, the Chief Secretary for Ireland went to a dismissed police constable. Of course, he (Mr. Leamy) knew very well that the right hon. Gentleman was resolved to persist in the course he, up to then, had adopted; and he (Mr. Leamy) would say in the House, as he would say in Ireland—he did not regret it, he was glad to see it—that an English Minister who came to Ireland with a good reputation had undermined that in Ireland, and he had convinced the Irish people that it was no use trusting any longer to any English Minister. Two years ago

    1073
    Irishmen did regard with gratitude the services of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; but in two years that gratitude had been completely killed by intimidation of the people, maladministration of the law, and by the appointment of creatures like Major Bond to administer the law. It had taught the people to detest the Government—he would not say to hate it—as, for the first time in the history of the connection between the two countries, the Irish people had for the English Administration nothing but the utmost, the most sovereign contempt.
    MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYsaid, he had two questions that admitted of easy answer. They had heard a good deal about the suppression of facts by a certain official in Ireland, when he was about to receive his appointment; and he would ask, did Major Bond, when receiving his, give the least idea that any such transaction as his dismissal from Birmingham had taken place? Did he give the faintest suggestion that so important an event had occurred as his dismissal from the force at Birmingham? If he did not give any suggestion of the kind, did the Chief Secretary for Ireland think he was a man of a character such as ought to be presented to an important office in Ireland? Another question was, would the Chief Secretary for Ireland lay before the House the Report of the Borough Justices?
    MR. STOREYsaid, he was very glad the hon. Member who spoke last (Mr. Justin McCarthy) had asked those questions in such a moderate and respectful tone. He, also, would like to put a question to the right hon. Gentleman. He did not think this was a matter that should load to an argument of length, or give rise to passion; but let them accept the statement of the Minister, that Major Bond had not been proved guilty of perjury. Still, what was it that Major Bond did, put it with the utmost fairness for him? He went before the magistrates, he got into the witness-box, he took an oath, and, as the Chief Secretary for Ireland said, he so mixed up matters in his mind that he confused one meeting with another, and swore to occurrences at a meeting where he was not present. Now, as an English Radical, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman, when the liberties of the Irish people were suspended, was that the sort of man to send
    1074
    to Ireland as a magistate? Did he not suppose that he might again mistake one meeting for another, or one man for another, and through the confusion of this dismissed Chief Constable some men might be unjustly put in prison? The right hon. Gentleman had expressed a wish to act kindly towards Ireland, and he (Mr. Storey) believed that; but would the right hon. Gentleman say that he would feel as confident in the administration of the law as he ought to be, and that justice was being done, when Major Bond was the man administering the law?
    MR. W. E. FORSTER: Sir, with the indulgence of the House, I will reply to these questions. Major Bond was not dismissed; he resigned; that is the fact. [An hon. MEMBER: He was compelled.] He told me he had resigned, and he told me of his difference with the Watch Committee. I may have been to blame for not then writing to Birmingham, and inquiring what was that difference. I grant thus much; but I was very busy at the time, and then I had before me very strong testimonials. With regard to what has been said by the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Storey), if I had the slightest belief that Major Bond had been in what he had done, if not perjuring himself, but in any way paltering with his oath, then I would not have agreed to the appointment. But it appears, from the best information, that he merely made this mistake. Having given evidence, he was then allowed to make a statement on oath about some other matter not concerning the question really before the Court, and which I do not believe had any real bearing on that before the Court; and in making this statement he made the mistake of not first stating that his evidence was concluded. I may add, I said to Major Bond—"You are appointed for three months. Remember, sharp eyes will be watching you very closely; and if you do not use great discretion, you certainly will not be continued in the appointment."
    MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORasked the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, if he would lay on the Table the Reports of the Borough Justices and of the Watch Committee? The Irish Members had just reason to complain of the appointment of Major Bond, who, unquestionably, was a per-

    1075
    son about whom "reasonable suspicion" might be entertained. There should be some careful inquiry made into the conduct of this man.
    MR. W. E. FORSTER: If the hon. Member will give Notice to move for a Return, I have no doubt it can be laid on the Table. It is not that I wish anything to be concealed. [Mr. BIGGAR: Oh, oh!] Well, hon. Members can themselves get at the Report; and they can very quickly find out whether there is any concealment. It would not, however, be fair to Major Bond to give one side of the question without giving the other. If anything is laid on the Table, it ought to be both sides of the story.
    Question put.
    The House divided:—Ayes 129; Noes 14: Majority 115.—(Div. List, No. 11.)
    Address agreed to:—To be presented by Privy Councillors.

  SUPPLY.
  Resolved, That this House will, upon Monday next, resolve itself into a Committee to consider of the Supply to be granted to Her Majesty.

  WAYS AND MEANS.
  Resolved, That this House will, upon Monday next, resolve itself into a Committee to consider of the Ways and Means for raising the Supply to be granted to Her Majesty.
  House adjourned at half after Two o'clock till Monday next.

ROLL OF THE LORDS.
The Lord Chancellor acquainted the House that the Clerk of the Parliaments had prepared and laid it on the Table: The same was ordered to be printed. (No. 15.)

PRIVATE BILLS.
Ordered, That this House will not receive any petition for a Private Bill after Friday the 10 th day of March next, unless such Private Bill shall have been approved by the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice; nor am petition for a Private Bill approved by the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice after Tuesday the 9th day of May next:
That this House will not receive any report from the Judges upon petitions presented to this House for Private Bills after Tuesday the 9th day of May next:
Ordered, That the said Orders be printed and published, and affixed to the doors of this House and Westminster Hall. (No. 16.)

LAND LAW (IRELAND).

  MOTION FOE A SELECT COMMITTEE.
  THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE: My Lords, in laying before your Lordships the reasons which have actuated me in presenting the Motion which is now before the House, I shall endeavour to trespass upon your time for as brief a space as the magnitude of the subject will allow. At the same time, I feel that my task will be materially shortened if your Lordships will carry your recollections back to the debate which took place in this House on the first night of the Session, because in that debate one or two of the main points at issue were clearly stated and argued from both sides of the House.
  890
  And, before I go further, let me remind your Lordships of something which occurred last Tuesday week. My noble Friend the Lord Privy Seal, in stating his case broadly and generally as against the view held by my noble Friend beside me (the Marquess of Waterford), asserted that—
  "He did not believe for a moment that the cases which had been dealt with by the Land Court were fair samples of the mass of Irish holdings. On the contrary, he believed they represented holdings which had been exorbitantly rented, and that the general body of Irish landowners need have no fear of the operation of the Land Act."
  Now, here is a perfectly clear and intelligible issue raised, and one upon which we can argue. But see how complicated it has become! I want to know whether this is the opinion of the Government generally, or merely the view of the noble Lord, who adheres to his last year's statement that only cases of exorbitant renting would be affected. The noble Earl the Leader of this House told us, on the other hand, that we ought not to grumble at a 25 per cent reduction, because English landlords had to reduce rents to the same amount.
  EARL GRANVILLE: The noble Earl is attributing an argument to me which I never used.
  THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE: Well, all I can say is, that I am quoting from The Times newspaper of the following day; and my recollection is that when the noble Earl stated that reductions of 25 per cent made by English landlords were a ground for similar abatements in Ireland, I asked from this side of the House whether those reductions were being made in England "for 15 years?" That is my recollection of the matter. Well, here is another arguable point, involving, besides Mr. Parnell's American-competition theory put forward by the noble Earl, many other questions, such as climatic conditions, and the difference of seasons in England and Ireland during the last few years. But if it is of any use as an argument at all, it points to a universal reduction; and yet the noble Earl tells us in the same breath that—
  "It is exactly the worst cases of high renting which crowded first into these Courts, because good landlords came to terms with their tenants.
  To this last sentence I must distinctly

  891
  take exception. If the noble Earl had said "starved-out landlords" he might have been right; but I cannot admit that it is a necessary qualification of a good landlord to reduce rents voluntarily which have been unaltered and cheerfully paid for years upon years, and which have been admitted by all the most competent authorities to be below the fair letting value of the land. My Lords, it would be perfectly endless, and in no way useful, if I were to enter at length into all the arguments which were brought forward as necessitating the Land Act of last Session. Great as the differences of opinion were, and, for the matter of that, still are, as to its efficacy, and as to the real objects of the agitation which gave it birth, we have to deal with it as it is, the law of the land; and I am perfectly certain that, whatever may be said "elsewhere," no noble Lord, however eager he may be to make a case for the Act, will attribute its failure, if it has failed, to any want of public duty on the part of the Irish landlords. It was loyally accepted by them under pledges and assurances as to its operation which we now learn for the first time are not to be taken as such; and if any proof of this were wanted, it is to be found in a letter addressed by my noble Friend beside me (the Marquess of Waterford) to his tenants, which appeared some months ago in the English public Press. But the fact that it is the law of the land does not in any way, as I conceive, annul the necessity of subjecting it to criticism by your Lordships' House if its operation can be proved to differ materially from the alleged intention of its promoters and the faith in which it was passed by Parliament. What was the Act supposed to accomplish? It was to redress grievances, to remedy evils, to restore peace. Turbulence and outrage and murder were rampant in Ireland to an almost unprecedented degree, owing, it was said, to certain possibilities of hardship—possibilities only, it was acknowledged, in the vast majority of cases—which the occupiers of land might have to undergo. These hardships were exorbitant renting, in certain cases confiscation of tenants' improvements, and some vague general feeling of uncertainty which appears to be peculiar to the Irish tenant, and which seems to be justified by the fact that large num-
  892
  bers of them have remained in occupation of their farms for periods varying from 50 years to over a century. It was by dealing with the isolated cases which were supposed to have created these possibilities, and with this supposititious general feeling that peace was to be restored to Ireland; and the practical remedies proposed were the fixing of a fair rent by a judicial tribunal, stability of tenure, free sale, emigration, and the establishment of a peasant proprietary. The last four we may put out of our argument for the present—Aaron's Rod has swallowed them all up—and we are face to face now with the fair rent alone, its corollary, the question of improvements, and the turbulence in Ireland. But we will suppose for a moment that this universal feeling of insecurity really existed or was really justifiable. I presume—and I am strengthened in the assumption by the opinion expressed by the Lord Privy Seal the other night—that it was the intention of the Government, in passing their Bill, to remove every element of uncertainty in the relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland. The noble Lord tells us landlords that we need not be anxious; and one of the Prime Minister's arguments was that the Reports of the two Commissioners pointed to rack-renting in a few cases, and from them was produced the feeling of insecurity which he pronounced to be general. But has that feeling of uncertainty been done away with? Not at all. You have only transferred it from one class to another. The landlord is the one who is uneasy now, and with excellent reason, too, as I shall endeavour to show the House. So far, at all events, your legislation has failed; the uncertainty has become dismay among Irish proprietors, and this dismay is justified as much by the manner in which the Act has been received by those whom it was intended to benefit as by the way in which those appointed to do so carry it out; and it has a further justification as well. I believe it to be quite impossible that any body of men, no matter how fairly they may desire to exercise their functions, can be entirely free from the influences occasioned by such a state of things as was allowed to exist in Ireland up to the opening of the Land Courts, and with which it is only now attempted to deal. It is the natural and

  893
  unavoidable result of yielding to the pretext for rebellion before rebellion is suppressed; and even a judicial tribunal of the highest character can hardly be expected to be entirely free from the effects of what is going on around it. These effects need not be created directly; they can arise indirectly in many ways—as, for instance, because of extraneous influences brought to bear upon suitors or witnesses by evilly-disposed or interested parties. Take valuators, for instance. I should be very sorry, if I was a valuator, to be called upon at the present time, and in many parts of Ireland, to value land in the landlord's interest. Apart from unpopularity and the consequent effect upon subsequent practice, it is, in many cases, absolutely dangerous; and you have had instances already of landlords' valuators threatened and warned off farms. Valuators and agents, after all, are only mortal men like the rest of us; and I look upon it not only as unfair to them, but most unjust to their clients and employers, that they should be called upon to give evidence under a state of things where calm and impartial judgment is almost impossible. But the real question at issue is, are these Sub-Commissioners' Courts really judicial tribunals or not? We know they were to be composed of people in sympathy with the Act; but that does not, of necessity, mean sympathy with the tenant alone; that would have been a very dangerous proposition to make to Parliament, and one which, I believe, would have been fatal to the Bill; and yet I defy anyone to show that there are more than half-a-dozen out of the 39 gentlemen who are carrying out the Act who are not distinctly tenants' men. This assertion has been made before, and it has passed unchallenged. And how about Mr. Morrison and Mr. Weir, the former of whom stood beside the Solicitor General for Ireland at Coleraine, when he appealed to the self-interest of the people in the matter of the Land Act? The Solicitor General for Ireland says he spoke for himself, and not for the Government; but the fact remains that Mr. Morrison was appointed immediately after the election. I should like to know why he was appointed. There is a rumour afloat that he had been long anxious for employment—that he had been refused once, if not oftener. Whence came this sud-
  894
  den zeal for his services? Then there is Mr. M'Devitt, with his extraordinary ideas of co-proprietorship; Mr. Garland, the ex-publican; and Professor Baldwin, with his, up to the beginning of the Session, at all events, invisible contradictions, and his extraordinary interpretation of some of the most important provisions in the Act. A question was asked the other night whether it was right that a Sub-Commissioner should be employed in his own district. The appointment in question was that of a certain Mr. Bomford; and Mr. Forster said, very properly, that he did not approve of such an arrangement, and would communicate with the Land Commissioners. But the case then referred to is not the only one. A Mr. Rice has been appointed, and as, some of these days, Mr. Rice may have to take a practical interest in me, I made some inquiries about him. What do I find? Mr. Rice adjudicates in the County of Cork. My informant tells me that his father kept a shop at Kilworth, Co. Cork. He has four brothers—one, an attorney at Fermoy; another, an attorney at Tipperary; a third, parish priest at Charliville, Co. Cork, and not, as I understand, unconnected with the Land League; a fourth, a farmer at Conna, Co. Cork. He has three cousins—one, parish priest of Fermoy; another, an attorney in the same place; and another, Land League Treasurer at Kilworth; while, my informant goes on to say—
  "He has more cousins in Glanworth, close to Lord Donoughmore's property, all Land Leaguers, and active ones against Fleming, his bailiff, as he will probably have heard through his agent."
  I know very well that it is Government, and not Parliament, who are responsible for these appointments, and we are told they were made after careful examination by the Chief Secretary; but I maintain that both the class of appointments made and the result of them as shown by the decisions given constitute a distinct case for inquiry. The Solicitor General for Ireland justified his language at Londonderry by saying he thought there was no harm in showing people what the Act was doing, and that is precisely what I want your Lordships to do. Among other things, we shall be able to judge whether it is possible to secure the services of what the First Minister calls "the most

  895
  competent, the most experienced, and the most impartial men" for a tenure of one year on a salary of £1,000 or less, and to consider the point which has arisen on my noble Friend's (the Marquess of Waterford's) question the other night, which certainly took me by surprise, and which I believe to have been the result of an oversight, whether the important interests at stake are to be decided upon by sworn Judges, or merely by officials of a very inferior calibre, but still analogous to the Wreck or Railway Commissioners in this country. One more point arises for your Lordships' consideration, which has not, so far as I am aware, been alluded to before, at least in this House. How long is this investigation going to last? You have now some 70,000 originating notices served; some weeks ago 600 cases had been settled by the Sub-Commissioners, out of which there were 400 appeals; now some 1,300 are dealt with, and, no doubt, the appeals are in like proportion, and only 40 appeals have been decided. And now, my Lords, may I just allude, in passing, to the latter part of my Notice, where your Lordships are asked to grant a Committee to inquire into the effect of recent legislation in reference to land upon the condition of the country. Well, nobody denies, I suppose, that from the time the Act became law down to the end of last year, there was a steady increase of crime and outrage in Ireland. The outrages were 367 in August, and 574 in December, and elaborate arguments were used to show us that things were not so bad after all, as they compared favourably with 12 months before, when there was no Coercion Act. "The Land Act has effected something," says the Prime Minister, "the case presents encouraging features." Noble Lords in this House discern signs of improvement, and, two days afterwards, out comes the official Return of outrages for January, showing a greater monthly increase than ever was known before—from 574 to 811. I really think noble Lords opposite may reasonably feel annoyed that the Irish Office did not save them from the responsibility of those statements by the exercise of a little more despatch in getting out their Return. And now, my Lords, I come to what is the most important portion of the case which I desire to establish—the analysis of the
  896
  cases which have already been decided. My Lords, if the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal and the noble Earl (Earl Granville) are correct in their assumption that they are only such as were contemplated by the Act, these cases can only have come before the Courts in two ways, either by selection from the lists by the Court itself, or by the natural tendency—and I believe this is really the contention of noble Lords opposite—of rack-rented tenants to be the first to come before the public. As regards the first, I do not believe, as at present advised, that it has existed to any great extent. It would constitute a novel mode of procedure; and a denial to any inquiries on the point has been repeatedly given at the Offices in Dublin. As regards the second, however, it is a different matter. Your Lordships will remember the Land League test cases. Well, it was perfectly well known in Ireland that these were selected by the Land League, not because of rack-renting, but because they were moderate rents. What the object of this selection was, was differently interpreted; it was made with consummate skill, either for the purpose of securing a reduction in these moderate rents, or in the hope that they might be materially increased, and so bring discredit upon the operation of the Act in the eye of the Irish tenant farmers, and afford a further argument to the extreme party, who would thus be able to show what the result of Liberal legislation was. But what happened? On the very day the Land Court was opened, the campaign began against Mr. Parnell and his associates. The Land League has been suppressed, as we all very well know; but its effects are still there, and are still working, and many of this class of cases have been pushed forward, and brought into Court, and decided upon; and, what is more, one of the desires, at least, of the Land League has been accomplished—these moderate rents have been reduced! And the noble Lord told us the other night that "not any of the estates of the Peers or of the other great Irish landowners had been touched." Well, I must plead guilty to considerable astonishment, to very great astonishment, when I heard that statement; but the noble Lord is in an official position, and has opportunities at his command which I have not, and

  897
  I felt naturally chary, without further particulars, of venturing to differ with him at the time. My Lords, I hold in ray hand a list of something between 40 and 50 proprietors from every part of Ireland, upon whose properties over 200 cases have been dealt with. Let me read a few names on the list, so that your Lordships may judge whether it contains Peers and great landowners or not. Here I find Lady Margaret Charteris, Lord Enniskillen, Lord Antrim, Knight of Glin, Lord Clarina, Lord Egmont, Lord Kilmaine, Sir Roger Palmer, Lord Lucan, Lord Claud Hamilton, Lord Bantry, Lord Mountgarret, Lord Waterford, Count Edmund de la Poor, Lord Crofton, Lord Digby, Lord Clonmell, Colonel Alcock, Colonel Clements, Mrs. Deane Morgan, Sir. E. Burrowes. I think there are a few Peers and great landowners even in that selection of a selection; and what do we find?—that the percentage of reduction upon these cases amounts to 23·2, within one decimal of the general reduction over the four Provinces of Ireland taken altogether. My Lords, is this not in itself enough to justify inquiry? Is it true that the same ignorance as to the actual facts, which it was supposed last year drew the admission from the Prime Minister that, besides himself, there were only three people in Parliament who understood the Act, still to prevail in the support of the manner in which the Act has been carried out. But I protested the other night, and I protest again, against the argument, even if it were correct, of the noble Lord. Are small landlords not to be considered at all? Are they to be entirely sacrificed? They have suffered more than any by the lapse of law and the cessation of order, and are they now to be utterly swept away? Here is a case which illustrates many. It struck me as so monstrous, that I asked to have it put in writing, and I will give your Lordships the proprietor's own words—
  "All the lands held by the tenants have always been looked upon as town parks, and as such not within the Act. The Sub-Commissioners, however, decided otherwise, and immediately reduced them 25 per cent. This reduction is utterly ruinous to me, as my property is heavily charged, and I have no other source of income to support myself and my family except what I derive from land. I was so much behindhand in the payment of family charges
  898
  owing to my tenants not paying their usual rents, and their also 'Boycotting' some meadows of mine last August, that the mortgagees, taking alarm at the action of the Sub-Commissioners, have placed a reserve on the estate. I may mention, in conclusion, that the tenants have not had their rents raised for over 40 years, nor was any of them ever ejected. They have now lodged an appeal against the decision of the Sub-Commissioners, not being satisfied with this sweeping reduction."
  I should like to know whether this or similar cases were contemplated by the Act—whether it was ever intended by noble Lords and the right hon. Gentlemen who declared their convictions over and over again that rents would in many cases rise; that rents would not be generally altered or reduced; that the value of property to the landlord would be enhanced and not diminished; that some large proportion of the Irish landlords should be inevitably ruined by the foreclosure of mortgages for the payment of charges which they had not created themselves? But it is not only every class of property, but every class of rent, that is touched. I could show your Lordships, if time would permit, cases where rents fixed prior to 1840 have been reduced by 22 per cent; rents fixed between 1840 and 1850 reduced 19 odd per cent; between 1850 and 1860, 25per cent; rents fixed subsequently to 1870 reduced 23 per cent. The same with rents voluntarily reduced by landlords and subsequently reduced by the Court. And every day reductions at the same ratio are reported. The universal principle of 23 per cent or thereabouts is being applied everywhere, and our experience leads us to believe it will be sustained by the Chief Commissioners on appeal, if ever in the course of the next two or three lustres the cases come before them. But, to give your Lordships a practical exemplification of the application of this universal principle, let me take one case of a property in the County Mayo—the Thompson estate. I choose it because it is in the same district as Miss Knox's estate, which the President of the Board of Trade made so much of the other day, and where the rent was reduced, but still left considerably over the Government valuation. Here is an estate where the old rental is practically the same as it was in 1842—£679, as against £675, only £4 difference. In 1868 a re-valuation was made by which the rental would have been raised some

  899
  £200 or £300; but this was never acted upon by the landlord, who, at the same time, is proved to have spent considerable sums of money in making roads, building, and otherwise improving the estate. Seven holdings upon this property came before the Sub-Commissioners at Ballina; the statute measure was 157 acres, the rent in round numbers £39, valuation £33, judicial rent fixed by the Sub-Commissioners £30; so that in one case—Miss Knox's, where the rent was very high—you have a reduction to something considerably over the Government valuation. Here, where the rent was never more than 18 per cent above the valuation, it is reduced from that to 10 per cent under it—a reduction of 28 per cent altogether on precisely the same class of land. And I have here a whole sheaf of cases, over 100, of the same nature, showing similar and greater reductions upon every class of rent; but there is one extraordinary judgment which I must bring to your Lordships' notice, as it appears to me to demonstrate the fixed intention of the Sub-Commissioners to reduce rents generally. It was given by Mr. Commissioner Reardon, at Urlingford, on the 21st of December. He begins by giving some reasons why the rents should be considered fair, which may be classed as follows:—1. The lands were only a mile from Castlecomer. 2. The rents had not been altered during this century. 3. They were always paid with regularity. 4. The soil was of excellent quality. 5. The holdings were bounded on two sides by the river. 6. The tenants and landlords were on the best of terms. 7. There was evidence that a vacant holding had been purchased in 1880 for a considerable sum at the old rental. "All these facts," says Mr. Reardon, "appear to point to one conclusion, and that is that the rents of this estate are fair." But here comes the extraordinary part, and we begin at once to see the effect of Mr. Justice O'Hagan's "live and thrive "principle, whatever he may have meant by it, and how Griffith's Valuation is to be taken as a standard of rent after all.
  "I am satisfied that the present rents are not fair rents according to my interpretation of the term. There is evidence that the landlords gave the tenants a substantial reduction in a bad year. This is sure evidence that the present rents are too high to be paid by the tenants through bad years and good. It appears
  900
  to me, from evidence and personal inspection, that though the tenants have paid their rents they have not thriven."
  Then he goes on to talk about
  "These circumstances, with the fact that the Government valuation, made by sworn and skilled valuers, is little more than half the rent,"
  And says that landlords and tenants have
  " Supplied a kind of measure by which a fair rent could be fixed by what the landlord offered to take and the tenants were able to pay after the bad season."
  Can there be a greater absurdity than this? Landlords gave an abatement of 15 per cent in the bad years, and, therefore, the Commissioners proceeded to reduce at the rate of 16·8 per cent. I really do not think I need trouble your Lordships with any more cases. I could occupy your time, if you would permit me, with many more. I have them here by me; but I really think I have said enough to establish this part of my case. There are many other arguments which might be brought forward as a further inducement to your Lordships to accept my Motion—for instance, there is the whole question of procedure, the rules promulgated by the Commissioners, the extraordinary pamphleteering propensities of the Central Office in Dublin, the question of the interests of mortgagees and encumbrancers, which, owing to the unforeseen consequences of the Act, is becoming one of the highest importance, and which seems, for all we hear, to have been treated in the most cavalier manner by the Commissioners, and there is the question of costs. I do not mean the cost of the establishment, so to speak, which is, I suppose, a matter not entirely within the cognizance of your Lordships' House, but one about which the British taxpayer will, no doubt, make inquiries later on, but costs in Court and expenses incurred out of Court and imposed upon suitors mainly by the rather erratic wanderings of the Sub-Commissioners. And there also arises, with regard to improvements, the question of the operation of Healy's Clause, to which, as the matter is still sub lite, I will only make a passing allusion—and that is that, whichever way the decision of the Court of Appeal goes, there is ample matter for investigation on your Lordships' part. Either you are establishing a new principle that lapse of time

  901
  and enjoyment of a low rent cannot compensate a tenant, or the old principle still exists. In the former case compensation arises at once on the retrospective action of the clause; in the other, the whole question of valuation comes in—whether the 15 years' period is to be taken as analogous to the whole period under a lease seldom less than 21 years and the variety of contingent circumstances. But, if your Lordships will bear with me for a few minutes longer, I should like to say a word about an argument which has already been, and no doubt will again be, made use of by noble Lords opposite, and that is what I may call a voluntary reduction theory. The noble Earl opposite (Earl Granville) contends that it is the good landlords who are making this arrangement out of Court, and that, thereby, the action of the Sub-Commissioners—that I understand to be the noble Earl's contention, and I have no doubt he will correct me if I am wrong—is more or less justified. As far as I know, there are no official data to tell us what is the sum total of these arrangements; and even if we had them, unless there is the express statement in the Returns to that effect, it would be impossible to discern which were meant by good landlords and which by others; and I have no doubt some good landlords have made some extra judicial statements, and with very good grounds for doing so. The noble Earl seems to forget altogether what the state of the country has been for the last 18 months and more, and its disturbing effects. Landlords will make an arrangement in such times as these for many reasons—to avoid litigation, for instance, or costs, or the creation of further bad feeling, or because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that a voluntary arrangement, even at a loss, will insure a better and more punctual payment of rent in the future—for the Act does not give any greater facility for the recovery of rent—than if the judicial rent were fixed by the Court, in which, to begin with, they have no confidence, and against whose authority both the Land League and the Tenant Eight Associations of the North of Ireland have protested, as not going far enough in its reductions. And surely we may include a few rack-renters in this class as well, men whose cases were really contemplated by the Legislature, and who have
  902
  screened their affairs from the public view by arranging matters with their tenants out of Court; and, lastly, there are those men whom circumstances have driven to make what arrangements they could to save themselves and their families from utter destruction—men who could not afford to wait any longer, whose credit was exhausted, who could not have found the £20 needed to employ a defending counsel before the Sub-Commissioners—these are the vast majority. I know there is an opinion in the minds of Englishmen—I do not say in your Lordships' House—that this struggle in Ireland is brought about by the efforts of great and wealthy territorialists to regain some small portion of their incomes of which they have been deprived for State reasons; but it is nothing of the sort. It is men fighting for their lives, for very existence, for subsistence for themselves and their families. And when the noble Earl talks of landlords settling out of Court, it is those men, who are the chief victims of the iniquities which some of his Colleagues justify, and which have remained so long unchecked, that he cites in support of his case. My Lords, in the present state of affairs, this voluntary settlement argument is perfectly worthless. I do not say that it might not have been otherwise; it might have been different had the Land Act been given a fair chance in normal times, and in that case it may be I should not have been presenting this Motion for your Lordships' consideration to-night. And now, my Lords, I leave the matter in your Lordships' hands. I have endeavoured to compress into as brief a space as possible the more salient points of the enormous mass of evidence by which my case is supported. I have endeavoured to justify my appeal to your Lordships on the grounds I have stated, which, broadly summarized, amount to this—that the Land Act as now administered is not the Land Act as originally intended by Government or Parliament. That this is so arises from one or all of three causes—either the maladministration of those appointed to carry it out, or from some inadvertent wording of the Act itself, or by the operation of circumstances which renders its just administration impossible. It may be objected that investigation now would be premature. I am not of that

  903
  opinion; on the contrary, I firmly believe that if something is not done at once, more general and widespread wrong must ensue. I therefore sincerely hope that your Lordships will not refuse to grant a Committee of Inquiry, which I seek, and will so take some steps to check, before it is quite too late, that "heavy loss" and "ruin" which the Prime Minister himself repudiated and disavowed, but which is being inflicted day by day upon an admittedly guiltless class, the landlords in Ireland. The noble Earl concluded by moving for the Select Committee of which he had given Notice.
  Moved, "That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the working of recent legislation in reference to land in Ireland, and its effect upon the condition of the country."—(The Earl of Donoughmore.)
  LORD CARLINGFORD: My Lords, I do not propose to follow my noble Friend in all the parts of the speech he has just made, and certainly not as to the policy of the Act of last year. My noble Friend was very much inclined, at the beginning of his speech, to get upon that ground; and he even told us that there was no evidence whatever furnished to Parliament that the Irish tenants laboured under any rational feeling of insecurity. Into that matter I will certainly not now go. That question has been decided once and for ever by overwhelming evidence and by an Act of Parliament. And, my Lords, I do not propose to go into the question of Irish crime since the passing of the Land Act, or the connection of that crime with the Act. I do not quite know what my noble Friend meant by the allusions which he made to that subject. My noble Friend appears to be of opinion that if there had been no Land Act the cry of the orphan and widow would not have existed. If he thinks that, the state of his mind must be really extraordinary. The fact is, as everyone knows, that the passage of the Land Act was the signal for the renewal and exasperation of the action of the Land League, and of all the disturbing elements throughout the country. Why that was so is perfectly evident. It was simply this—that the passing of the Land Act was the signal for a new departure on the part of the agitators in Ireland. They felt the enormous danger to their own system and to their
  904
  own agitation that was caused by the passage of the Act, and they set themselves at once, with renewed ardour and virulence, to defeat it. Whatever increase of crime there may have been since the end of last Session has, I venture to say, not been produced by the Land Act, except in the sense in which I have described the matter, as the last and violent effort made by the revolutionary and anti-landlord propaganda in Ireland to defeat the effects of a remedial measure. Now I come to a point on which my noble Friend has scarcely said anything at all—namely, the appointment, at the present time, of a Committee of this House to inquire into the working of the Land Act. I was curious to see whether my noble Friend would advert at all to the fact that he was asking us to inquire into the working of an Act which has not been four months in operation. It did not occur to him to advert to that circumstance until he had got to the very last sentence of his speech. It is an extraordinary proposal that we are asked to sanction. I shall be sceptical as to its being supported by the Leaders of the Party opposite until I see it happen. A more unreasonable proposal, it appears to me, was never made to this House, and it can only be explained as due to panic and passion on the part of those who make it. What kind of inquiry are we to make into the working of this Act which has just begun its operations? My noble Friend did not attempt to tell us anything at all about this, nor did he give us the slightest inkling as to the kind of inquiry he intended to institute, or as to the kind of evidence which was to be adduced. Are the Land Commissioners and the Assistant Commissioners to be summoned here to answer as to their own conduct and operations? I cannot imagine how such an inquiry can be conducted without bringing them before the Committee. Does my noble Friend intend to re-open and re-near the cases which have been heard, and which, in fact, are only half heard, as they have not yet come before the Court of Appeal? My noble Friend, I presume, would put the Commissioners themselves upon their trial as to the decisions they have given. None of these points has my noble Friend condescended to explain. Nor has he

  905
  stated whether these Courts, which we are told ought, in the interests of Ireland, to press forward their business as actively as possible, are to be closed while their labours are being inquired into by a Committee of this House. That is a matter which does not seem to have occurred to the mind of my noble Friend. The extreme inconvenience, the violence, and the unprecedented character of such a course are such that no Government could consent to it unless the most overwhelming evidence were given as to its dire necessity. The only ground that can be given by my noble Friend for his Motion is, that the Commissioners are violating the Act of Parliament which they have to administer. They must be doing so in the opinion of those who propose to support the Motion for this unprecedented inquiry. It must be that the Commissioners are violating either the letter or the spirit of the Act. That is to say, they are not fixing fair rents. [Opposition cheers.] That is a very fair issue, though I believe it was not raised by my noble Friend. But are we to assume that the mere fact that a certain small number of rents have within the last four months been reduced in Ireland is a reason for us to conclude that the Commissioners have been violating their duty and the spirit of the Act? That appears to be the view of my noble Friend and of those who have published their opinions. We are told that Parliament never intended that so many rents should be reduced in Ireland as appear now to have been reduced. But what is the meaning of that assertion? Parliament intended that fair rents should be fixed in Ireland, and that unfair rents should be converted into fair rents. Supposing, however, it were to turn out—I do not say that it will or will not—that unfair and excessive rents in Ireland are more numerous than any of us suspected, would that be any reproach to Parliament or to the Commissioners? Would that be any proof that Parliament had made a mistake in adopting this remedial measure, or that the Commissioners had violated their duty? I will assume that such a state of facts would be no reproach to them and no reproach to us. In my opinion, it is too soon for any of us to decide. We may possibly have underrated the extent of rack-renting
  906
  in Ireland. Two of the causes which have led to this are well known to all who know Ireland well—namely, the wonderful submissiveness hitherto of the Irish tenant in occupation, who was ready to accept or endure any rent rather than leave his holding. On the other hand, there was the intense desire of land which led the Irish tenant not in occupation to offer almost any rent. But, my Lords, leaving that question and its decision for the future, which appears to me quite as premature as the Motion of my noble Friend, I confidently say this—that so far, in my opinion, these Land Courts have not seriously affected the good estates, and that there is still less reason for thinking that the Assistant Commissioners have been recklessly and indiscriminately cutting down rents in Ireland without regard to the circumstances of each particular case. What are the proofs that these gentlemen have been so acting? First of all, we are told that the appointments were bad. Well, my Lords, that part of the matter has been much more largely and hotly dwelt upon than the far more important question of the conduct and decisions of these gentlemen. It is far easier to make personal charges against the antecedents and status of these Commissioners than fairly to criticize their decisions, and prove these decisions to be harsh or partial. With respect to these appointments, the Irish Government have, no doubt, had no little difficulty. The Irish Government had to find a certain number of gentlemen for the position of Assistant Commissioners, either legal or lay; and the great burden of that responsibility fell upon my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who had to inform himself of the qualifications of the candidates, and who asked advice at every point and consulted the Law Officers of the Crown, especially with regard to the legal Sub-Commissioners, who are the most important members of these bodies, under whose presidency the others act. With respect to the other Commissioners—the lay Commissioners—he consulted the members of the Land Commission themselves. The responsibility for these appointments, of course, rests with the Irish Government, and especially with my right hon. Friend; and that responsibility he fully assumes. But in the discharge of that responsi-

  907
  bility he has made the most ample use of the assistance and advice of every member of the Land Commission. His task was to pick out a small number of competent men, well acquainted with the value and management of land, and with the relations between landlord and tenant, out of a mass of candidates exceeding 800 in number; and at every point, over and over again, he availed himself of the advice and the assistance of the Land Commission. My right hon. Friend believed, and still believes, that he did succeed in securing the services of fully competent and upright men, thoroughly understanding the matter with which they had to deal, and fully capable of doing impartial justice as between landlord and tenant. My Lords, I have heard that the appointments of the legal Sub-Commissioners have given very general satisfaction; at least, I have heard very little complaint on the subject. The lay Commissioners, acting under their guidance, of course take the law from them and render the assistance of their practical experience in testing the evidence and visiting farms, and so on. Most of these lay Commissioners are both farmers and owners of land in their own persons. Several of them are land agents. I think only one of them, who was mentioned just now, is a tenant farmer and nothing else, and only one of them is a landlord and nothing else. But all were chosen as men of practical experience of the value and management of land. With respect to one of these lay Commissioners, who, as I said, is the only tenant farmer pure and simple, and was alluded to by my noble Friend, and who happens to be known to me because I served some months on the Royal Agricultural Commission, I can say that he is in an excellent position in his own county, holding a long leasehold interest in land, and quite capable of taking independent views on the subject of land; and I may add that, so far from being a Poor Law Guardian, he lost his seat as Poor Law Guardian simply because he refused to join the Land League in that part of the county. But, my Lords, the real question in respect of these Commissioners is, How have they done their work? That is the question we have to consider. My Lords, I believe—I thoroughly believe, after endeavouring to satisfy myself by inquiry, both public and private, by watch-
  908
  ing constantly, with a care which many noble Lords even from Ireland do not seem to have exercised, the decisions and utterances of the Land Courts from day to day since the time when they started—that, upon the whole, these Assistant Commissioners have done their duty laboriously, conscientiously, and impartially. My Lords, this is the testimony which has constantly been afforded by the representatives both of landlords and tenants who appear before these Commissioners, and who are better capable of judging their conduct than any of us in this House. It is to be remembered that these Commissioners are constantly acting with the sense that their decisions are liable to be re-heard. They know perfectly well that their conduct, if it is partial or incapable, is liable to be exposed to public opinion in Ireland before the Land Commission, and they act under that responsibility. But, my Lords, we are told that these Commissioners have made such indiscriminate reduction of rents that, apparently, in the minds of some gentlemen in Ireland it can only be accounted for by that gross fiction of an instruction given by the Chief Secretary. But what is the meaning of this indiscriminate reduction of rent? The only truth in the statement is that some reduction, large or small, has been generally made in the trifling number of cases—some 1,400 in all—which have been brought before the Sub-Commissioners. Well, but that state of things appears to me to be easily accounted for by the natural supposition that, for the most part, cases in which excessive rents were paid were those that first came before the Land Court. My Lords, we have often heard lately of an "average reduction of rent," and we have heard of it again to-night; we have been told that the Commissioners have made up their minds to make an ''average reduction" of rent. But what is the meaning of this average reduction? What light does that throw upon the matter? The fact is the reductions have been most various—varying from nothing at all up to something like 100 per cent in some cases.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Are there any cases of 100 per cent?
  LORD CARLINGFORD: No, not that; but I have noticed a considerable number of cases in which the amount was 70 or 80 or 90 per cent.

  909
  These extreme cases, I find, are precisely those about which there is the least question. The reductions appear to have been expected, and the cases seem to have been exceptional cases of exorbitant rents, in which the Land Courts have done their duty. These extreme cases considerably raise the average of the whole. There is a very large number of cases in which there has been a very moderate reduction. I have carefully gone through all these judicial decisions, and I am sorry that the Return is not in your Lordships' hands before to-day. There has been a large number in which small reductions have been made; a considerable number in which there was no reduction; and there have been a few cases in which the rent has been raised, since the case, of which we have heard so much, of Sir Oriel Foster. It appears to me that the number of cases in which rent has not been reduced is quite as large as we had any reason to expect. Those who know the Irish tenant know that he is not likely to go into Court if there is any risk of having his rent raised. I will illustrate what I mean by the decisions of the North-Eastern Sub-Commissioners, where I find the reductions average 23 per cent. How much information does that give you? When you come to go into particulars, these are the facts—rents have been reduced from 27 per cent to 40 per cent in many cases, while, of course, in many others they have only been reduced 5 per cent, or even less. This shows that the Sub-Commissioners are not adhering to an absurd rule, as has been suggested; but have considered all the facts and circumstances of every particular case. I find that in Queen's County, in a number of cases, rents have been reduced by an average of 30 per cent; but in some of these there has been no reduction at all, and in some others there has been a reduction of as much as 64 per cent. This shows that here, also, the Sub-Commissioners considered carefully all the varying circumstances of each particular case. We are told, also, that the Sub-Commissioners had cut down rents to Griffith's valuation, or something near it. [Opposition cheers.] That is an absolute misconception. It is not the fact. When we look at the Returns in Ulster we find, no doubt, that that is the case. I believe that it is just and right
  910
  that that should be so, and everyone knows that the case of Ulster is different from that of the rest of Ireland. The valuation of that Province is more recent and much higher than that of any other, and the value of the tenant's interest is greater there than elsewhere. There, it is true, judicial rents are, upon the whole, as closely as possible down to Griffith's valuation, a reduction with which the Ulster tenants are not satisfied. In the other Provinces judicial rents are considerably above the valuation. In 258 cases in which the rent has been fixed in Leinster the valuation amounted to £6,600, while the judicial rent was £7,500. Again, in Munster, 300 cases were heard to the end of January. The valuation was £7,500, and the judicial rent was fixed at £9,200; so that the statement that there is a general reduction to Griffith's valuation is totally inaccurate. I was much struck with a report I saw lately in The Northern Whig. Fifteen cases were decided at one sitting the other day by the Sub-Commissioners at Ballymena. It is well known that rents in that part of Ireland are, as a rule, very little indeed above Griffith's valuation; but what were the rents in these cases? They amounted to an average of 77 per cent, and there was one case of even 92 per cent, above that valuation. My Lords, there are several tests by which we may fairly try the action of the Sub-Commissioners. One of these is the settlement of rents between the landlord and the tenant out of Court. It appears to me it is vain to say these settlements, which have gone on largely, and, I am happy to say, are increasing, have been resorted to under duress, as has been said, and because the landlord could not afford to fight his own case before the Court. Anyone who will observe the circumstances will find ample evidence of voluntary settlements, brought about by the good sense and good feeling of both parties; and there is this remarkable fact—that in many cases the settlement has resulted in exceptionally large reductions of rent. Many of the largest reductions have taken place in this way. For instance, I take the Return of judicial rents for the county of Cavan. On one page I find the rents of half-a-dozen holdings moderately reduced by the Sub-Commission from a total of £120 to £108.

  911
  I look to the next page, and I find a like number of "rents fixed by consent," where the reduction is from a total of £64 to £25, or more than 50 per cent. I must give your Lordships one other case which occurred in Wexford. It was settled by consent, and these are the extraordinary figures. The rent was £80, the Poor Law valuation was £19, and the judicial rent, which was fixed by the parties and sanctioned by the Court, was £22 10 s. It is vain, therefore, to say that the cases settled out of Court are not matters of great significance. The second and stronger test of the action of the Sub-Commissioners is the landlords' valuation. This is of the greatest possible interest and importance. The landlords' valuators and agents, and the landlords themselves, have constantly admitted, in the cases which have come before the Courts, that the rents were too high, very often that they were much too high. When you add to that the fact that the valuations made on the part of the landlords generally included everything upon the holding, including the tenant's improvements, it is most remarkable, in a great number of cases, how nearly the valuation made on the part of the landlord approximates to the judicial rent. I have been told within the last few days that the valuations of landlords and tenants approach one another much more closely since the Courts have come into full operation. A third test of the Sub-Commissioners is the action of the County Courts. Your Lordships are aware that the County Courts exercise a concurrent jurisdiction with the new Courts created by the Act of last Session. The result of the cases brought before those Courts is worthy of remark. I have watched them carefully, and there seems no distinction to be drawn between the reductions there made and those of the Sub-Commissions. Quite lately, in two counties—Mayo and Wexford—a number of rents have been reduced by the County Courts, and the reductions have averaged 30 per cent. Another decision is worthy the attention of the House. The Judge was the Recorder of Cork, who could not be suspected of dealing unfairly towards the landlord. The estate belonged to a Member of your Lordships' House, and for some time past a high rent had been paid by the tenant. In that case a very large reduc-
  912
  tion of rent took place—from £79 to £56, the judicial rent fixed by the Recorder. All this, I contend, shows conclusively that there is no cause for panic or alarm. My Lords, there are a few matters connected with the action of the Sub-Commissioners which have given rise to a great deal of reproach and suspicion; and I should like to deal with them for a moment. One of these matters is what is called the valuation of holdings carried out by the Sub-Commissioners, who go out and visit the farms. We have heard these visits spoken of as "bird's-eye valuation," and so on, and a great deal of reproach and ridicule has been poured upon them. But these visits to the farms, under a rule of the Irish Land Commission, do not necessarily imply any regular valuation of the farm. The directions which the Sub-Commissioners have received from the Land Commission are that they shall visit the farms and satisfy themselves by their own inspection, where there is a doubt in the matter. That is a very different matter from a valuation made by some gentleman who has never heard of the farm before he visits it. These Sub-Commissioners have been listening beforehand to the evidence of the parties and the valuer on both sides. They have their attention pointed to every circumstance of the holding, and, where there is a doubt, they go out on the land in order to see it for themselves. This is the reasonable and natural explanation given by the Assistant Commissioners themselves. Here is what Mr. Wylie, a legal Assistant Commissioner, says—
  "We visit the land in compliance with a rule laid down for our guidance; and, further, our object in visiting the land is not to form our own opinion as to its value, but to enable us better to estimate and weigh the evidence of the different witnesses, "whose opinions vary as to the value, and as to other matters of fact material to the case."
  And I shall venture to give your Lordships a specimen of how this work is done by the Assistant Commissioners. Here is a case in Newtownards, on the estate of Colonel Forde. Mr. Greer, the legal Commissioner, says—
  "The tenant had given us details of improvements in draining and otherwise. One Commissioner had visited the farm; but the evidence was so conflicting that the three Commissioners thought it their duty to visit it. We therefore

  913
  drove 26 miles and inspected it this morning, and we have failed to discover any existing drains or improvements which add to the letting value of the holding. The present rent is, in our opinion, a fair rent."
  That was the way in which this case was decided, and I have no doubt on that largo estate it would put an end to applications on the part of the tenants. The existing rent was fixed as the judicial rent. Such a case shows very clearly the great advantage of these inspections of farms which stand on quite a different footing from ordinary valuation. Then we are told that the Sub-Commissioners have recklessly reduced old rents which have been paid for many years; and that, I believe, is one of the things which has created the greatest amount of prejudice and reproach against them. I need not remind your Lordships that no limitation based upon the duration of rent is to be found in the Land Act. But, my Lords, no doubt the fact of a rent having long existed unchanged is a matter of great weight, and so the Courts have treated it. I find, over and over again, that these Courts have stated in the strongest terms that the fact of the rent having remained for a long time unchanged is, in their minds, a very important consideration, and they throw the onus of proof in such a case upon the tenant; yet, in a considerable number of cases, they have been driven to the conclusion that such a rent may be and is an excessive rent; and in many such cases this view has been admitted and supported by the landlords themselves. I should like to give your Lordships a few examples of the action of the Sub-Commissions in this matter of old rents long paid without change. Mr. Commissioner Roche says—
  "It is admitted that the rent has not been raised within living memory. On the other hand, the tenant has made very substantial improvements. He has vastly improved a farm naturally poor and sterile. The very intelligent agent of the landlord frankly admits this. We were greatly impressed with his evidence. We have tested it in various ways, including a personal examination of the holding. We consider him a trustworthy witness, and we fix the fair rent very slightly below his estimate."
  Here, again, is a decision by Mr. Commissioner Kane—
  "No doubt the rent being paid regularly and without demur for a long period constitutes a primâ facie case that the rent is a fair rent; but we do not consider that it can be treated as conclusive evidence. We know there has been a great competition, which has existed for a
  914
  long time in this country, which caused people not only to submit to increases of rent, but to continue paying a rent which might be considered a high rent."
  And again, Mr. Gerald Fitzgerald, legal Commissioner, says—
  "The fact of an existing rent being an old rent is a consideration to which we attach great weight. But yet, after examining the holdings, we have come to the conclusion that the existing rents are excessive."
  Now, in this particular case, the conduct of the landlord confirmed the decision, because he had had a valuation made by a well-known and experienced valuator, who was sitting in Court; but yet he declined to produce him. I refer to these cases to show that the Sub-Commissions have not acted in the reckless and indiscriminate way supposed. In these cases they gave full weight to the circumstances of the case, and endeavoured to do their duty; and only arrived at a conclusion after the fullest and fairest inquiry. I cannot help wishing that noble Lords would give their attention rather more to the conduct and decisions of the Commissioners instead of fixing their minds upon two or three phrases used by two or three of these gentlemen some months ago, and over and over again denied. I saw to-day in the newspapers a report of a case in a Northern Commission, of which Professor Baldwin is a member, where an eminent valuator, employed on the part of the landlords, said he had understood from the first and was satisfied with the doctrines laid down by Professor Baldwin. Surely, my Lords, under these circumstances, there is no justification for the proposal of my noble Friend, the effect of which must be to interrupt the proceedings of the Commissioners, to close their Courts, and bring them over here to be overhauled by a Committee of this House. It appears to me that noble Lords who are attacking these Courts are blind to the real nature of the case. They are fixing their minds upon the percentage of these reductions of rent. But Irish landlords have something more and something else to think of. They are mistaking their enemy. Their enemy, they think, is the Land Act of 1881. Their real enemy is the Land League, which they seem to forget. This is not a time for Irish landlords and those who support them in this country to throw all their energies

  915
  into the work of casting contempt and disparagement on the Land Act of 1881, an Act which, in my conviction, is the best safeguard of the essential rights of property in Ireland in the state of tremendous peril to which landed property in that country is exposed. My Lords, no one believes that more firmly than the Leaders of the Land League themselves. I remember an expression used by a Land League orator—I believe at the National Convention in Dublin. When denouncing the Land Act and exhorting the tenants to have nothing to do with it, he said—"Fixity of tenure is fixity of landlordism." That means that in the present unexampled danger to landed property in Ireland, a strong, stringent, nay, even a violent and radical reform of the Land Laws is the only safety for that property. And another orator said that revolution—meaning, of course, the revolution at which he aimed, the abolition of landed property—is not to be made with rose-water. I say the remedies against revolution are not to be made with rose-water. If noble Lords think the Land Act of Last Session, administered, as I believe it is, conscientiously, and in accordance with its original intention, is violent, it is violent only in the sense of a violent cure for a still more violent disorder. But, however that may be, Her Majesty's Government have a duty to perform, and that is firmly to oppose the Motion for this premature, hasty, passionate, and unprecedented inquiry. Whether we succeed or not, it is our duty to resist it, and I certainly shall resist the proposal made by my noble Friend.
  THE MARQUESS OF WATERFORDsaid, he hoped his noble Friend would persevere with his Motion, as he had stated many facts which proved how necessary it was to consider the working of the Land Act. The Lord Privy Seal had asked whether they meant to infer that the Courts had violated justice in fixing what was called fair rents? They decidedly did mean to infer that to be the case. In the case of ordinary Acts of Parliament it might be necessary to wait longer before an inquiry was made; but this was an exceptional Act; there never was such an Act before; and it had been administered in a different manner from what had been promised; and, therefore, they maintained that it was necessary to have
  916
  an inquiry into the acts of the Sub-Commissioners, and also into the way in which many of them had been appointed. He maintained that they were most biasse dappointments; and he was surprised that noble Lords opposite should make any difficulty about granting the fullest and fairest inquiry into the administration of an Act passed by them with such fair promises, and into the nomination of its administrators, over which they had had the most entire and unfettered control. Surely there must be something which the Government wished to hide, or else they would not object to this inquiry. If the pamphlet which he had the honour to bring under the notice of their Lordships was to be taken as a sample of the way the Act was being administered, that alone would be sufficient to entitle them to have a Select Committee. Mr. Fottrell, the Solicitor to the Land Commission, had now stated not only that he was responsible for the pamphlet, but that he wrote it himself; and he seemed to say that the only blunder he made was in allowing the name of the "Queen's Stationery Office" to be printed on it. He did not appear to think there was anything wrong in a person in his position writing a seditious pamphlet. It had been reported in Ireland that another official in high position, and having enormous power over the landlords' property, revised and corrected the pamphlet before it was sent to the Press. He wished to ask this direct question, Whether that was the case, and, if so, whether Her Majesty's Government would give the gentleman's name?
  LORD CARLINGFORDdissented.
  THE MARQUESS OF WATERFORDsaid, his noble Friend opposite shook his head; but the report that this was the case prevailed largely in Ireland. He had listened with great attention to the arguments of his noble Friend (Lord Carlingford), who, as far as he could gather, seemed to say that rents in Ireland had not been reduced much up to the present time, and would not be reduced to anything like the same extent in the future. His noble Friend stated that rents on the large estates had not been reduced. What his noble Friend beside him (the Earl of Donoughmore) mentioned with regard to his estate would show that that was not

  917
  the ease. He could himself bring forward many instances in which rents had been reduced on large estates. His noble Friend (Lord Carlingford) stated that the 1,300 cases tried were no sample of the rest, and that the highest rack-rent cases would come into Court first. But the Courts were open to the whole of Ireland, and the tenants of all Ireland were invited to come in. Besides, the Land League had selected a large number of cases of low-rented tenants, in the hope, too soon to be realized, that they would have their rents reduced, and that that would form a precedent for the general reduction of all rents in Ireland. Did his noble Friend wish to lead their Lordships to believe that rents in the greater part of Ireland would not be reduced in the future to a large extent? because his arguments meant that or they meant nothing at all. He was satisfied that their Lordships would not be deluded by any such statements. His noble Friend had said that the landlords' valuators had reduced the rents in some cases. No doubt that was true; but it was most difficult for the valuators to value at all. They had to be brought from a distance, and he had been told by some of them that there was no use in putting on a fair value, because, if they did so, the Sub-Commissioners would not listen to them at all, but would decide the case on the tenant's valuation, saying the landlord's valuator's valuation was ridiculous. Again, it must be remembered that the valuators had to value for 15 years in the most depressed times they had ever seen, not caused by the severity of the seasons, but by the diabolical agitation going on in Ireland. His noble Friend said that the rents had not been reduced to Griffith's valuation. In Ulster they had been reduced below it; on the average, however, they might be a little above it. But they repudiated Griffith's valuation altogether; it did not represent the fair letting value of the land at all. It was made over 30 years ago, and if they went upon that valuation, 33 per cent ought to be added to it. The noble Earl opposite had said the other day that it was necessary to take into account the fact that large reductions of rent had been made in England; but those reductions had been made only for a time, and the value of land would improve, and the rents be again increased,
  918
  when better times came; whereas in Ireland the judicial rents were fixed for 15 years, and would, in all probability, never be raised again. It was argued by the Lord Privy Seal that, as many landlords had made agreements out of Court giving large reductions, that was a proof the decisions of the Courts were fair. He considered it proved exactly the reverse. Why had the landlords agreed to these large reductions? Because of their intense fear of the unfairness of the Courts; that, and that alone, has made them agree to reductions not by any means justified by the value of the holdings. A curious case had come to his knowledge—a case in which their old friend Professor Bald win re-appeared. It was reported in The Down Recorder of the 24th instant. A Mrs. Allen had a case before the Court, and her counsel had made out a very strong case for her. The House might judge his astonishment at finding, when the case came on for decision, that a settlement had been arrived at out of Court and behind his back; and that the two Sub-Commissioners, of whom Professor Baldwin was one, had been present on the land with the tenant's solicitor when the agreement was signed. The presence of the Professor had apparently been enough to terrify the lady out of her senses, and she had signed an agreement conceding a large reduction. Her counsel, to use his own words, "thought the whole proceeding so monstrous that he retired from the case." That was the way in which landlords were terrorized into settlements out of Court. He himself had made such agreements, though his estates had always been looked upon as rather low-rented than otherwise; but he had done so to avoid the enormous expense, to say nothing of the ill-will, that would have been incurred by litigation. He put the expense of a moderate ease in the Court at about £10, and it might easily cost £20 or £30; it was clear, therefore, that a landlord who had received no rent for many months would be most unwilling to contest 50 or 100 such cases. Again, it was expensive for the landlords to have to produce the evidence of valuators. Many of the cases went by default, and the Sub-Commissioners had declared that if the landlord did not bring forward proper proof of the value of his property they would take the valuation of the

  919
  tenant; besides, the expense was enormously increased by the fact that the claims of the tenant were never stated before the case came into Court, so that the landlord did not know what the tenant's claims were, and, of course, did not know what evidence to produce. As for the County Court Judges, it was certainly not the case that their decisions were always similar to those of the Sub-Commissioners. The Lord Privy Seal read some remarks of Mr. Wylie's, a Sub-Commissioner, just now; it was a pity he did not read what went before in the same newspaper report. If he had done so, he would have shown their Lordships what an unbiassed County Court Judge like Dr. Darley had said on the subject of the proceedings of these Courts of the Sub-Commissioners. He said that he could not follow their course of procedure, and could not expect a hasty visit to a farm to result in a true idea of its letting value. He believed this same Mr. Wylie had stated that the valuators were to go to the land, not to value it, but to see whether the witnesses had spoken the truth, so that the Sub-Commissioners made themselves into Judge, jury, witnesses, and all. In so doing he said he was acting under an imperative rule; and if that was so he (the Marquess of Waterford) would like to know who laid down the rule? He understood from what had been said by noble Lords opposite that no such directions whatever had been given. Then who laid down this imperative rule? He heard with astonishment that the Sub - Commissioners took no oaths, and he could not understand why oaths should be dispensed with in the case of men exercising such important functions. A County Court Judge took a most stringent oath, and he should like to know why the Sub-Commissioners did not? As an instance of how the oath was looked upon with regard to the evidence given before these Courts, he had been told of a valuator who fixed the rent of a farm at 17 s. 6d. per acre, but who changed his views on being told that he would be sworn, remarking that that altered the case, and he would put the rent at £1. Part of the duty of the Committee, if it were granted by their Lordships' House, would be to inquire into the state of Ireland and the effect of the Land Act on the condition of the
  920
  country. He had never said that the Act had produced crime; but they were told it would do away with crime; and the result had not been satisfactory. He did not think it had produced the slightest improvement in the state of Ireland; and he did not see how it was to be expected that it should, when they remembered that the dying embers of the Home Rule agitation had been kindled into a blaze by the words of the Prime Minister the other night. The Home Rule agitation was superseded by the Land League, because that went a great deal further, and for an entire separation of Ireland from England. What was to be hoped for the unfortunate country, when on one side there was Mr. Parnell keeping up the Land League agitation, and, on the other hand, there was the Prime Minister toying with the spectre of Home Rule? The strongest case had been made out for inquiry, and he hoped their Lordships would grant it. The landlords demanded full, fair, and impartial inquiry. They had lost much already, and they did not wish to lose more. They had lost the pride and pleasure they used to feel in their happy homes, and the estates and tenantry handed down to them by their ancestors. All this had passed away from them for ever. They had no hope, no belief in the future of their country. The day might not be far distant when they might be swept away from the land of their birth, and their homes left ruined and desolate. But as long as they did exist they would make their demand, their cry heard for justice, and that this Act should be administered in accordance with the promises of the Government, and in accordance with the intentions of Parliament.
  THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, the Motion of my noble Friend (the Earl of Donoughmore) appears to involve two distinct propositions—first, the proposition that the facts which have come to our knowledge, and which he has laid before the House, require investigation; and, secondly, the proposition that a Committee of the House of Lords is a body to which such an investigation may properly be confided. I look upon these two propositions with widely different feelings, and I wish to say a few words in regard to each of them.
  As to the first, I cannot conceive that

  921
  there should be much difference of opinion; the two noble Lords who have addressed you from the opposite side of the House have upon this point, I think, fully made out their case. And I do entreat Her Majesty's Ministers not to suppose that we view the administration of the Act of 1881 with distrust, merely, as the Lord Privy Seal put it, because there have in consequence of it been large reductions of rent. We all knew that there were eases of rack-renting in Ireland, and we all expected to see rents largely reduced in some cases. The matter, however, goes a great deal further than that. We have, in the first place, to consider the character and constitution of the Courts which are carrying out this work. I do not mean to inquire too minutely into the personal history and conduct of these Sub-Commissioners, although the theme is tempting enough. We have heard enough of Professor Baldwin and his remarkable utterances: my own feeling for the Professor is one of sympathy rather than anything else. Ill-luck has dogged his footsteps from the first. At the very outset of his philanthropic errand he had the misfortune—somewhere in the neighbourhood of Clones—to fall into a bog-hole. After his extrication he was obliged to borrow a suit of clothes from the tenant on whose land the accident happened; and from the time that he assumed this disguise he has never been quite recognizable by his friends.
  The indiscreet utterances of individual Sub-Commissioners are, after all, comparatively immaterial. The question which we have a right to ask is this. Is the Court the sort of Court we were led to expect when the Land Act was hurried through this House? Is it the sort of Court which, upon principle, ought to be intrusted with the immense responsibility of revising the rental of Ireland?
  I may very likely be met by the rejoinder that the Sub-Commissioners are only a Court of First Instance, and that the ultimate responsibility rests, not with them, but with the Chief Commissioners in Dublin. This is, no doubt, perfectly true in theory; but the practice is different. Consider the position. You have 70,000 originating notices to be dealt with by 12 Sub-Commissions. I have never heard it anticipated that these will get through the work except upon
  922
  the assumption that 19–20ths of the cases will be settled out of Court upon the basis of the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners. If they are to be settled out of Court, what becomes of your appeals? The appeal is a reality so far as it is open to decisions involving points of law, or affected by any exceptional circumstances; but for the ordinary run of cases it is physically impossible that the Appeal Court should really be open to all. And I believe that it is not only physically impossible for the Chief Commissioners to revise these decisions, it is politically impossible also. Consider the effect of anything like a general reversal of these decisions in the landlord's favour. Do you seriously believe that a whole country side is to have its rents lowered amid the applause of the delighted population, and that five years later you will be able to take back from the recipients the boon you have presented to them. This conclusion was one which had forced itself upon my mind at an early stage of the proceedings, but I was very much strengthened in it by the perusal of the remarkable judgment recently delivered by Mr. Justice O'Hagan in an appeal case. I will not detain the House by quotations from that judgment; but I will say that it is difficult to read it without the impression that the learned Justice intended to give a very broad hint to the suitors not to come to him merely for a re-hearing of their cases.
  It is, therefore, these Sub-Commissioners who are re-casting the rental of Ireland; and, that being so, we have a right to ask whether they are competent for the duty that has been committed to them.
  Consider the nature of that duty; consider its extent: it is co-extensive with the area of the country; consider its importance: it affects pecuniary interests valued by the million, and it involves the very existence of the class which has hitherto depended upon income derived from the ownership of land; can we, as loyal subjects of the Crown, view without some anxiety the progress of a measure which is tending towards the extirpation of the only class which has till now throughout continued loyal to the British connection? Consider, again, the enormous difficulty of this process of valuation. If you tell me that such and such a farm is worth 20 s. an acre because 10 individuals are ready to give that sum, and no one will give much more,

  923
  you have proved your case; but if you start by excluding the market value of a commodity and then attempt to determine its price, you at once embark upon a sea of difficulties without a compass to guide you or a beacon to direct your course. You fall back upon the merest guess work. You depend entirely upon the opinion of the individual whom you call in, upon his experience, upon the amount of confidence with which he inspires those for whom he has to decide. Mr. Commissioner Litton says with truth that—
  "The estimate of a fair rent is, within certain limits, as uncertain as the character of the man to whose judgment the question is submitted."
  And, if this be so, is it not fair to require that in this case those individuals to whom you intrust these plenary powers should be tried men, men possessing the general confidence of the public—experts? Should not the remuneration be such as to attract men of this kind? Is it not, above all, necessary that their tenure of office and their professional status should be such as to raise them beyond the suspicion of partizanship, or dependence on the favour of political patrons?
  Such is the kind of Court to whom the duty of revising rents ought to have been committed; and such is the kind of Court which we were beyond question promised—if not, why did Parliament insist that the names of the Commissioners were to be printed in the Bill? They were printed in the Bill, and we believed that, in determining fair rents, the new Court would have the advantage of Mr. O'Hagan's knowledge of law, Mr. Litton's sound judgment, and Mr. Vernon's wide experience of all matters connected with land. Something was, indeed, said about assistants; but did anyone anticipate the creation of this judicial octopus, with arms and legs covering every Province of Ireland, which we have had called into existence? What is the tenure and what the remuneration of these gentlemen? Their tenure—that, at any rate, of 24 of them—is yearly; less secure than that of the tenants upon whose claims they are to adjudicate. Their remuneration is less than that of many clerks in the Public Offices. What man of any standing in his profession would interrupt his career and undertake arduous work for such a
  924
  salary as was received by these gentlemen, and such prospects as theirs? And what has been the consequence? You have obtained very much what you had a right to expect, considering the inducements offered. I wish to speak with all respect of the members of these Sub-Commissions. Among them are several lawyers of fair position, and several laymen with a sound knowledge of agriculture. By the way, I think the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal is in error when he says that the legal member usually "guides" the Court in its decision. I read the other day a report of a decision given by Mr. Reeves, at Limerick, in which he stated that, in his opinion, the tenant had no claim, but that his Colleagues thought differently, and, accordingly, the tenant's rent was reduced. Be this, however, as it may, it is said, and, I think, with good reason, that these Sub-Commissioners are not, as a general rule, persons commanding public confidence. I wish the Lord Privy Seal had endeavoured to dispose of the charge, which has been again and again repeated, to the effect that several of them were open to a strong suspicion of political partizanship. There is another matter as to which I should like information. I hear it said that these Sub-Commissioners are not to be allowed to travel the same Circuit twice—I presume for fear of their decisions being called in question. That is a sorry compliment to pay the Sub-Commissioners. The effect of the arrangement will be this—that just as they are beginning to acquire a little acquaintance with a particular part of the country, its system of agriculture, and the character and credibility of the people, they will be spirited away to a different district, in which their former experience will count for absolutely nothing. I should like to know, again, what guarantee we have that these gentlemen know anything about the science of land valuation? We are assured that they were examined by the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant. I have a great respect for the Chief Secretary, and I am sorry for the rough experience through which he has lately passed. I am still more sorry for him when I am told that, at a time when his hands must have been full of work, he was required to conduct a sort of Civil Service Examination, in order to select from the numerous candidates

  925
  who offered themselves the persons best qualified for these Sub-Commissioner-ships. At the time almost every man in Ireland who could spell, and a good many who could not, were candidates for these appointments; and I suppose Mr. Forster had to select from amongst these, or, at any rate, from the 700 or 800 who have been referred to to-night, the elect who are now at work upon our estates.
  Having said something of the construction of the machine, I want to know from Her Majesty's Government how it is going to get through its work. If there is a failure in this respect, it will not be due to want of industry on the part of the Sub-Commissioners. Whatever their imperfections, these gentlemen are no idlers. They work early and late—too early and too late, unless public opinion is misinformed; and, with all this haste, what impression have they made upon the great mass of work which remains to be disposed of somehow or other? There are 70,000 originating notices already. When the pressure of the Land League is diminished, as we must all hope that it will be diminished, the number will be enormously increased, for, in many parts of Ireland, the tenants are keeping out of Court in consequence of the action of the League. For all we know, we may have 140,000 notices instead of 70,000. What will you do then? Will you appoint more Sub-Commissioners? Will you go out into the highways and by-ways, and press into the service everyone who has been chairman of an election committee, or who is a member of a "chemical society?" And, in the meantime, what will the position be? Are we going to prolong indefinitely the suspense of the tenants, with all its exciting hopes, and the suspense of the landlords, with all its fears and forebodings? Is that your settlement of the Irish difficulty? It is not a settlement, but an unsettlement. Will the tenants settle down peaceably to their avocations; will they commence that course of industry and thrift, which their insecurity is supposed to have checked, while they are in ignorance of their future? Will they pay their rents until they have been told what those rents are to be? One of the Sub-Commissioners has given us some important information on this point. Here is an extract from a judg-
  926
  ment delivered by Mr. Sub-Commissioner MacCarthy, at Ballina—
  "Every day's delay in disposing of a case is an injury to all concerned. It is an injury to the tenants, because it keeps them hanging about the Court-house, and defers their obtaining the benefits which the Legislature had intended to confer on them, and which we, for our part, desire, in all suitable cases, promptly and unstintingly to give them. It is an injury to the landlord, because, when once an originating notice has been served, the recovery of rent becomes practically impossible until a fair rent has been fixed and a statutory term created."
  A pretty plain intimation to the landlords that they cannot expect to receive, and to the tenants that they are not expected to pay rent, until the Courts have disposed of the cases before them. I wish the Lord Privy Seal had shown a little more appreciation of the gravity of this block in the business of the Land Court.
  I pass from this point, which has reference to the quantity of the work before the Court, to the quality of that work, so far as we are able to judge of it. I am well aware that as to this great caution is necessary in forming one's opinion. It is not easy to judge of the merits of a particular case without knowledge, acquired on the spot, of the whole of the circumstances under which it was decided. Some general conclusions, however, we are perfectly able to form. To begin with, we have the fact that many of these valuations have been made in a very hurried manner, and under conditions which rendered impossible an accurate estimate of the capabilities of the soil. Sir Richard Griffith lays it down as an axiom that mountain pasture can only be valued in the spring or early summer, when the grass is growing and the valuer can judge of the number of head of cattle which the land will carry. The Sub-Commissioners have been valuing such pasture at a season when the grass is not to be seen, and when, therefore, no opinion can be formed of its quality.
  Again, we have, I think, reason for complaint, because the Sub-Commissioners, in their decisions, leave us absolutely in the dark as to the principles upon which their awards are based. The Chief Commissioners in Dublin, no doubt, lay down such principles; but we want to know how the Courts below apply them. Can we detect those prin-

  927
  ciples from their awards? We are urged to settle with our tenants out of Court; but how can we do so in ignorance of the basis upon which those awards are founded?
  Then there is the question of reduction. We find ourselves face to face, not with the reduction of a few exceptionally high rents, but with a universal reduction; and this in spite of the fact that all those who had the best opportunities of judging told us that the bulk of the rents in Ireland were low. We were told so again and again by Ministers, whose speeches have been quoted to-night. I know very well that those speeches were not intended as pledges that there should not be more than a slight reduction, and that, even if those who delivered them had been desirous of giving such pledges, they would not have been binding on the Courts. Statements of this sort, however, when made by Ministers of the Crown, should be made with a sense of the responsibility which they involve. They are not to be regarded as on the same footing with a statement made by a noble Lord moving or seconding the Address; and we have certainly the right to believe that they would not have been made unless those who made them had good reason to know that they were well founded. The Bessborough Commissioners expressed the same opinion, and so did every other competent student of the question; and yet we find that in every county, on all estates, large or small, the process of reduction is going forward. It was conceded on all sides that the Poor Law valuation was, as a rule, below the fair letting value. The relation of the two differed, no doubt, in different districts; but even the Bessborough Commissioners admitted that the valuation was a "general and uniform under-estimate." And yet we find the Courts again and again reducing rents below the level of that valuation.
  I have seen, with great surprise, that in many cases the Commissioners have made reductions in rents which have, beyond question, been regularly paid for long periods of years. Now, I can conceive that there may be some cases where old rents have been exorbitant and exacted by great pressure, and where it has, therefore, been necessary to reduce them. But where a rent which, judging from the award of the Sub-Commissioners themselves, cannot have
  928
  been exorbitant, has been paid for a generation of men, then, I say, it is mere wantonness to reduce that rent by a few pounds. If land valuation were an exact science, and you could demonstrate that £40 was the fair rent of a given holding, and that £42 was an iniquitous demand, then, I would say, by all means reduce it to £40. But land valuation is not an exact science, and the Sub-Commissioners awards are, after all, no more than the expression of opinion arrived at on imperfect data by erring human beings. If this be conceded, it appears to me to be a gratuitous unsettlement of the existing order of things to alter rents in favour of tenants whom the landlord has never disturbed, and who, by paying them for many consecutive years, have proved that those rents cannot have been excessive.
  I will pass from these matters to a different count in the indictment. My noble Friend opposite says that the Act has had consequences which we none of us foresaw at the time when it passed through this House, and I agree with him. Some of its consequences we were able clearly to foresee. We were able to foresee that it would deprive the ownership of land of some of the incidents which rendered such ownership most valuable, by taking away from the owner the right of determining whether he will let his land or not, and the right of selecting the person to whom he lets it. We were able to foresee that it would compel us to admit upon our estates customs which we had made large sacrifices to exclude, and which we believed to be incompatible with their proper administration. We were able to foresee, too, that it would make land absolutely unsaleable, except to the person who happened to be the occupying tenant of it. Upon that point there will, I think, be no controversy. It has been disposed of by the famous pamphlet to which reference has been so often made. Its author had such exceptional opportunities of studying the dynamics of the Land League on the one hand, and the Land Court on the other, that his opinion upon a point of this sort must be taken as conclusive.
  All these consequences we expected; but the Act has had others which we did not expect. Not only do you force the nominal owner of land to let it against his own wishes, and to a person whom

  929
  he would rather not have as his tenant, but you force him to let it upon terms unrecognized in any other civilization—terms which, undoubtedly, involve the confiscation of valuable interests never seriously threatened until six months before the Government committed themselves to this new departure in Irish policy.
  What are those terms? Land has been bought, or inherited, in every part of the United Kingdom, subject to the condition that its value was to depend, like that of other commodities, upon the price which it would command in the open market. We discover that, owing to excessive competition, the price charged in Ireland has occasionally been exorbitant, and has encroached upon the interest of the tenant. In order to protect the latter, we determine to put an end to exorbitant rents by regulating them through the means of public tribunals. And how is this end to be achieved? In order to avoid the abuse of unhealthy competition, we suppress all competition, healthy and unhealthy, and we substitute for the test of demand and supply a purely arbitrary criterion, depending on no known principles, and determinable according to the variable estimate of these Sub-Commissioners whose fitness for their work we have been discussing.
  Now, observe that this complete repudiation of the competitive value formed no part of the original scheme of the Government. When the Bill was first printed the test of the fair rent was the price which a solvent tenant would pay for the farm. The Bill encountered foul weather in ''another place;" a good deal of deck cargo was thrown overboard, and the solvent tenant went with the rest. Observe, also, that although competition disappears as far as the landlord's interest is concerned, it is to be studiously kept alive when the tenant's interest is dealt with. Here are Mr. Litton's words—
  "While, then, we should endeavour to ascertain the commercial or market value of the holding as it stands, we should exclude the competition value."
  I wish Mr. Litton would tell us how he arrives at the commercial value of a commodity without reference to the competition value. He proceeds—
  "The owner of land about to let a holding in his own occupation may demand whatever rent
  930
  he pleases, and take whatever rent he can procure …. He has a perfect right to the competition rent. But in estimating the rent between the landlord and the present tenant—that is, the tenant in occupation—whatever might be procured from the motives I have referred to beyond the commercial rent belongs to the tenant who holds the possession, just as it would belong to the landlord if about to let his land for the first time."
  In other words, Mr. Litton says to the landlord—"You may obtain for your share in the enterprize a price which I shall determine, and no more;" but to the tenant—"You may go into the open market and sell your share for the highest figure which competition, no matter how exaggerated, will obtain for you."
  But, my Lords, not only is competition to be thus excluded for the landlord, but another restriction, undreamed of as yet in our agricultural economy, is to be imposed upon his already restricted rights.
  Until now every acre of land in this Kingdom has been let upon this assumption—that the latent capabilities of the soil were the property of the landlord; that he had a right to let that soil to a tenant, upon the condition that the tenant should develop those latent capabilities by the expenditure of his own capital and labour; and that when he had enjoyed his improvements for a time sufficient to recoup him for his outlay, those improvements were to pass back to the landlord and become his property. That has been the well-understood principle, and it has been again and again affirmed. It was affirmed when we passed the Irish Land Act of 1870. What else was the meaning of the enactment that a 31 years' lease was to bar the claim of the tenant? What else was the meaning of the enactment that in dealing with the tenant's claim for compensation for improvements the Court was to have regard to the time during which he had enjoyed them? It was affirmed again when the English Agricultural Holdings Act was passed by the late Government. That Act was based upon the idea of what are known as compensatory periods. It was criticized from this side of the House, but not, so far as I am aware, on account of its admission of the principle that the tenant's interest in his own improvements was exhaustible by effluxion of time. I was in Scotland

  931
  last autumn. The Scotch newspapers were full of a lease which had just been granted by a noble Friend of mine, a Member of this House (the Earl of Dalhousie), a strong Liberal, and an excellent landlord. The lease was accepted as a most equitable and generous adjustment of the respective claims of the landlord and the tenant. Its clauses, however, contained the most stringent covenants upon this point. Here is the clause applicable to buildings—
  "The tenant is to receive for all buildings of brick or stone and roofed with slates, erected at the entire cost of the tenant on sites and after plans approved in writing by the proprietor or his factor, the amount of the cost of such buildings (including therein the carriage of material performed by the tenant, which must not exceed 10 per cent of the gross amount expended) after deducting there from one-thirtieth part thereof in respect of each year that shall have expired since such buildings were completed."
  There is a like clause in respect to drainage executed by the tenant. Perhaps I shall be told that these principles are admirable for England, Scotland, and Wales, but that they are poison for Ireland, and that we must adopt Irish ideas for that country. Unfortunately for this theory, the idea in question is an Irish idea, and eminently congenial to the Irish mind. Anyone familiar with that country will tell you that nothing is more usual than for a farmer to sublet a portion of his holding upon the condition that the sub-tenant reclaims, tills, and manures it, and then, after taking three or four crops off the land, which repay him for his outlay, he hands it back in its improved condition to the original occupier, against whom he is not considered to have any surviving claim. I suppose no authority upon a question of this sort is much higher than that of the late Mr. Butt. Here is a passage from his work on the Act of 1870; it was quoted a few days ago in The Dublin Express—
  "The additional value is not the creation solely of the tenant; it is the creation partly of the expenditure and skill of the tenant, and partly of the inherent capabilities of the soil. It so happens that these inherent capabilities, when undeveloped, do not always enter into the calculation of the letting value of the land, as will at once be understood from the fact that it has frequently happened that land valued at 2s. an acre has been, by a trifling expenditure, made worth as many pounds. There are instances, not uncommon, in which the reclamation of a bog, or land on the edge of a river or lake, has repaid the expense of the process in
  932
  the crops which were raised in the course of it. In instances like these the property is not created by the expenditure of the tenant, but by the latent powers of the soil. These powers are the property of the landlord, who has a right to have them returned to him when the tenant's interest expires."
  Such was the universally-admitted principle on which we have proceeded till now—a principle which was heedlessly sacrificed at the eleventh hour when the Land Bill was sent back from this House to the other. The facts are within your Lordships' recollection. The measure came up to us containing the well-known Healy Clause. Lord Monck put upon the Paper an Amendment which virtually transformed that clause by limiting its operation to a particular class of case which might arise hereafter. Lord Monck is a trusted supporter of the Government, but, for some unexplained reason, he was not in his place when we came to the clause. His Amendment was, however, moved for him by the noble Marquess opposite. What happened? Did the Lord Privy Seal protest or object? He sat silent, and the clause was amended. But when the Bill went back to the other House, words restoring to the clause its original sense were once more inserted, upon the ground, as explained by the Prime Minister, that he had declined to accept—
  "The doctrine accepted at the time of the Land Act of 1870, … …. the tenant's improvements were the tenant's own property, and he would not admit the principle that the time during which he had enjoyed those improvements was any reason for their passing away from him."—[3 Hansard, cclxv. 1490.]
  I have now endeavoured to make good these three propositions—that the Courts which are re-casting the rental of Ireland are not so constituted as to be fit for that duty; that the manner in which they have administered the Act is open to suspicion; and that, apart from this, the Act has produced consequences which were not foreseen at the time of its passing. If there is any foundation for these statements the case in favour of an inquiry is conclusive. It appears to me that those to whom it is committed ought to keep before their mind a twofold object—on the one side, the extrication of the parties from the position in which, owing to the block of business in the Land Court, they find themselves involved; on the other, the redress of the undoubted injury which one of those parties has sustained.

  933
  And here the question arises whether that redress ought to take the form of pecuniary compensation granted to the landlords for the loss which they have sustained. I own that I see enormous difficulties in the way of any such step as a measure of general relief.
  If you are to endeavour to give to A. B. and C. a solatium proportionate to the loss of each, endless complications meet you at every step. Although, in some cases, the rents cut down have been paid without a murmur for more than a generation of men, in others they have, beyond all question, been cruelly extortionate. How much of the confiscated rental has been based on extortion? How much has not? Where are you to draw the line? Where does competition end and exaction begin? Again, how much of the rental was actually received, and how much only nominal? How, again, are you to deal with eases where the rents might have been, but have not been, raised; and where the landlord will now certainly be unable to raise them?
  I own that I see difficulties, which appear to me to be almost insuperable, in the way of compensation bestowed upon the landlords generally in the shape of a grant out of public funds. There is, however, one case in which such a payment might, I think, fairly be demanded.
  I am speaking of the case in which estates have been purchased under the Encumbered Estates Act, and in which the rental at which they were purchased has been recently reduced by the action of the Courts. In these cases the purchaser acquired, under an absolute conveyance from the Court, a statutory title to the land and everything upon it—every interest, latent or apparent, was transferred to him. What right has the State, which was the vendor, to turn round and retract from the bargain to which it was a party? I know it has been said by the Prime Minister that these sales, including, as they did, a part of what might be held to be equitably the tenant's property, involved a confiscation of that property. I will not inquire into that, for one thing is clear—that if there was confiscation it was not perpetrated by the purchaser, but by the vendor. It appears to me that unless some direct relief is given to those who acquired land relying upon
  934
  the good faith of the Government and the stability of a Parliamentary guarantee, a very great wrong will be done.
  In all other cases the relief should, I am disposed to think, be indirect in character. Such relief might easily be given. I would place in the forefront of the measure a modification of the Purchase Clauses of the Act—such a modification as would, on the one hand, enable those landlords who believe that you have rendered the situation unendurable for them to emancipate themselves from their estates, and would, on the other, give the Purchase Clauses some chance of coming into general operation.
  What chance have they of coming into general operation as matters stand now? Why should the tenant desire to become a purchaser? His position as a tenant is unassailable; he has all the pleasures of proprietorship, without the pains and the responsibilities. Government, I have no doubt, were sincere in their desire to increase the number of proprietors; but, in their enthusiasm, they behaved like a man who loses his head in an auction room and bids against himself, and they outbid themselves. They offered the tenant great temptations to convert himself into an owner, and then they offered him still greater temptations to remain a tenant.
  But that is not all. Supposing the tenant wishes to purchase, upon what sort of terms is he likely to be willing to acquire his holding? Remember the lesson of the pamphlet. The tenant has been taught that he is the only customer in the market, and he will shape that market to suit his own convenience. What is to prevent him from depreciating his holding by mismanagement and agitation, and then endeavouring to force it upon his landlord at a few years' purchase of the depreciated rental?
  And that brings us to another question. Supposing the tenant to be willing to buy, can the landlord afford to sell? His income has, in all probability, been from the first not more than sufficient for his support; the Sub-Commissioners reduce his nominal income by a quarter; the diminution probably reduces his net income by one-half. Can he afford to reduce that reduced income still further by selling at 16 years' purchase, and investing the proceeds in Government Securities, or by paying off debt at 5 per cent?

  935
  To some landlords, no doubt, such a transaction would be possible enough. Men with large incomes, who have been in the habit of spending liberally in the improvement of their estates, but who will now readily relieve themselves of such obligations, will gladly avail themselves of the chance, and will, perhaps, be content with 16 years' purchase of their rentals, gaining in so far as they will henceforth cease to spend any part of their income in improving their property. But the needy, the embarrassed landlord, the man who has done nothing for his tenants, and for whom his tenants have no sympathy, will be forced to cling to the relics of his property, of which he will not be able to divest himself, except at a ruinous loss. And thus your Act will, by a process of natural selection, remove from the land the very landlords whom we should be most anxious to retain, and anchor upon it those whom we could best afford to spare.
  My Lords, it is, I think, the duty of the Government to do something towards the improvement of this state of things; and I will venture to make a suggestion with this object. Let the period over which the repayment of principal and interest which the tenant is to make be extended from 35 years to 50, or even to a longer term. I will explain to the House the results which would follow. Under the existing rules, which require the repayments to be completed within 35 years, a tenant whose rent is £10, if he buys his farm for 20 years' purchase, or £200, will have, for 35 years from the date of the purchase, to pay annually to the State £7 10 s. on account of the £150 which the State will advance him. He will also, if he borrows the remaining £50 at 5 per cent, have to pay £2 10 s. annually as interest to the lender. In all, he will have to pay £10, or a sum exactly equal to his old rent. But, in addition to this, he will be responsible for the payment of all rates and taxes which the landlord has hitherto been in the habit of paying. The bargain will, therefore, at the outset, not be a very tempting one for him; and I question whether many of the tenants will be found ready to buy on such terms for the sake of securing to their successors the reversion of the fee. Suppose, however, that the period becomes extended to 50 years; during those years the
  936
  same tenant, buying, as before, at 20 years' purchase of the rent, will pay to the State £6 7s. 10 d. annually, and he will pay to his creditor, as before, £2 10 s.; or, if the landlord chooses to leave the money on mortgage at 4 per cent, £2 annually. His annual liability will, under this arrangement, not exceed £8 7s. 10 d., a sum considerably below his rent, and leaving a margin for rates and taxes. Upon such terms as these the tenants would, I believe, be very ready to buy their holdings, and we should have a fair prospect of seeing the structural weakness of Irish society removed, and a large increase effected in the number of the proprietary.
  I see no solution other than this, and I earnestly hope Her Majesty's Government will consider it. If it were thought fit to make such a change, I would suggest that every owner of a farm upon which a judicial rent has been fixed should be allowed to require his tenant to purchase the holding from him upon some such terms as those which I have sketched. If the tenant declined, then I would give the landlord permission to buy out the tenant, paying him the specified value of his tenancy, as fixed by the Court.
  These are subjects which require investigation; there remains the question whether they should, as my noble Friend proposes, be investigated at once, and by a Committee of your Lordships' House. I did not agree with a great deal of what was said by the Lord Privy Seal; but I share his opinion that there is a great deal to be said against the immediate appointment of such a Committee. I foresee great difficulties in the way of instituting what will virtually amount to a re-trial of these land cases in a room upstairs. Are we to send over for the Commissioners, the Sub-Commissioners, the valuators, the witnesses, and the parties to these suits? Where will this end if we once embark on such a course?
  Besides this, I see considerable objection to committing the investigation of these matters to what will be regarded as a Committee of landlords, a Committee which, however honest its action, will inevitably be suspected of approaching the inquiry with biassed minds.
  For these reasons I should much prefer some other form of inquiry, when the time comes for instituting one. When

  937
  purchase was abolished in the Army, a Royal Commission was appointed to report upon the extent to which the officers' pecuniary interests had been affected. The Commission was a strong one, consisting of only three Members, of whom Lord Penzance and Lord Justice James were two. I should like to see such a Commission, one upon which the legal element would be well represented, appointed to investigate the claims of the landlords; and I should be well content if Ministers could hold out to us a hope that such a Commission would be hereafter set in motion. I will go even further—I will be content if Her Majesty's Government will undertake themselves to take into consideration some such scheme for the amendment of the Purchase Clauses as that which I have suggested. I implore them not to turn a deaf ear to our entreaties, or to think that it is derogatory to their own dignity to review, in some particulars, the settlement of last year. Let them remember that they had to deal with one of the most intricate problems which has ever been submitted to English statesmanship, and their judgment is, after all, the judgment of fallible mortals. Let them remember, above all, that that justice to which they are so fond of appealing in the perorations of their speeches knows no difference of station or profession, or race or creed, and that they are profaning her name, when, professing to be guided by her, they seek to redress the wrongs of one class of the community by inflicting a not less cruel wrong upon another class.
  THE EARL OF KILMOREYsaid, the noble Marquess had stated that he was impressed by the words which fell from the Lord Privy Seal to the effect that this Motion was premature. No doubt, in an ordinary case it would be unusual to apply for a Select Committee to inquire into an Act which only came into operation last October; but this was one of the most extraordinary and unusual cases that had ever been presented to their Lordships' House. As one of those interested in landed property in Ireland, he had strong feelings on this question, and to his mind the point was whether they should have an inquiry now or wait until such time as the Government thought it convenient to amend the Act. He was strongly of opinion that that opportunity should not be lost. He
  938
  hoped a division would be taken, and the Government obliged to afford them what they asked—an inquiry into the working of the Act. What they considered the grievance was not so much that the Act was a bad Act as the working of the Act. The Land Act as administered in 1882 was not the Land Act of 1881. The change was very extraordinary and unexpected. A great change had also come over the utterances of Her Majesty's Ministers. When the Prime Minister introduced the Bill he exonerated the large landed proprietors; he declared that they had been found not guilty; and that they left the Court without a stain upon their character. It was not, the Prime Minister said, the administration of the estates of large landowners which brought all the distress on Ireland; it was not the great landowners who had rack-rented their tenants. And the right hon. Gentleman then travelled to Jamaica to find a parallel, not, indeed, for the purpose of proving that the Irish landlords should be compensated. The Bill was, however, carried into law. It was accepted by their Lordships—reluctantly, no doubt, but still it was accepted. He had discovered the reason why it was accepted by their Lordships. It was accepted because of the speeches of the Lord Privy Seal, of the noble and learned Lord, and of the President of the Council. The Lord Privy Seal distinctly stated that the property of the landlords would not be injured, and that he believed the Bill would not inflict any loss of income, except in a certain number of cases in which landlords had imposed excessive rents upon their tenants. When their Lordships received those assurances, and were told that their fears were entirely unfounded, they allowed the Bill to pass, to the great surprise and great regret of many. It would be an unheard of thing for him to doubt the sincerity of the Lord Privy Seal and other noble Lords who had supported the Bill. On the contrary, he believed that they were perfectly sincere in what they said. But that only showed that everyone was disappointed by the results of the Act, and that was why they asked for a Select Committee. The noble and learned Lord said that if the Act were administered conscientiously and honestly, little injury would be done. He cordially agreed with that remark; and

  939
  what they wanted now was entirely to revolutionize the working of the Act, and to secure that steps might be taken to insure honest and fair rents. He maintained that the administration of the Act was not conscientious or honest, and he could adduce hundreds of instances in proof of that, only he did not wish to weary the House. It was said that the Assistant Commissioners were not valuators; but, if not, what were they? They went through the process of valuing. It could not be considered just on the part of the Assistant Commissioners to do a thing in a tenth of the time that professional men of the highest reputation would take to do it. But if they were not valuators, why did they not act up to that section which said that they "may" or "shall"—he did not know which word was used—have qualified valuators to assist them? Except in very few cases the services of valuators had been dispensed with; and the Assistant Commissioners visited the farms and examined into the nature of the soil, the draining, fencing, and so on. If that was not a valuation, he would like to know what was. He had derived some consolation, in the terrible prospects before him, in having secured the services of a very eminent valuator, Mr. Edward Murphy. That gentleman assured him—and not one in the House would question his veracity—that no valuator would risk his reputation by valuing more than 300 acres in a day; but he was told that the Assistant Commissioners had valued as many as 700, 800, and even 1,100 acres. The Chairmen of the Sub-Commissioners were generally briefless barristers, while the Sub-Commissioners themselves were taken from all classes, the one qualification they seemed to have being the wish to reduce the rents of the landlords in Ireland. From all quarters had been heard the most extraordinary assertions and contradictions with respect to the Assistant Commissioners. It had been distinctly stated that they had no special instructions; but, on the other hand, Professor Baldwin had alleged his adherence to the principles laid down as the determining consideration in a decision given by him at Downpatrick. Now, it would be the main object of the Select Committee to get a satisfactory answer to that and similar questions, especially as there was a singular differ-
  940
  ence of opinion on this point between high officials and the under-strappers, who defended their conduct on the ground that they had followed the principles laid down for their guidance. He was sorry to mention again the name of Professor Baldwin in connection with cases in which, as it appeared to him, the Act was not administered in the best and most conscientious manner; but the facts of the case obliged him to do so. That gentleman had hardly held a single Court in which he had not made himself conspicuous for some act or dictum. In the beginning of November last the very important case of Major Hall had come before him. The landlord had a good case and a good solicitor, and it was, undoubtedly, the opinion of all his tenantry and his neighbours that the tenant in question had the land on very easy terms. However, the tenant brought the case into Court and made out his claim. During the trial of the case Professor Baldwin, in the most unnecessary manner, interlarded his examination of the witnesses by such remarks as, "This is a meritorious man;" "This is a tenant any landlord would be proud to have." Now, was not that an attempt on the part of the Judge to prejudice his Colleagues? The result, of course, was that such observations were vociferously applauded by the peasantry by whom the Court was thronged. The Lord Privy Seal had complained that the noble Earl who had opened the debate had not made out his case, and had omitted all reference to the object of his Motion. The House, however, was perfectly aware of the reasons for that Motion. It was made because they were of opinion that the great remedial measure, not of the Session, but of the century, had failed. It had promised the complete pacification of a distracted country, and a settlement of the Land Question for ever and ever. The Lord Privy Seal had exhorted the House to accept a measure that would produce peace and loyalty in Ireland; and the House had not resisted that appeal, which was strengthened by the assurance of the noble Earl opposite that the Court would be a Court of Conciliation for landlord and tenant. He held that the House had acted wisely in accepting that statement, and in passing the Bill with the promise of unusually good results. But, as it happened, Ire-

  941
  land had not been rendered peaceful or loyal. On the contrary, they had had a most extraordinary exhibition in "another place." A man who had been arrested as a "suspect" and put into gaol, but who was liberated because of a supposed affection of the heart, was able to take part in the proceedings of the House of Commons, and to make a speech which lasted over two hours. He presumed that there were good reasons for arresting that man. Consequently, if illness was a good excuse for letting him out, the moment he gave evidence of the fallacy of that excuse he ought to be relegated to prison. There were a great many more people in gaol now than there were last year; there were a great many more outrages; and far fewer rents were paid. How could peace exist in a country where there was a continual war between two parties, one of which owed the money, and the other could not get it? There was no doubt that, in many cases, the tenants of rack-renters had been relieved, and no one regretted that result; but the good done in this way had been swamped by the concurrent injury done to the property of other classes of landlords. There had been only three cases—one of them his own—in which rents had been raised. Such a very small percentage was, however, obviously insufficient to inspire the landlords with confidence. He had come to the conclusion that the Motion for the appointment of a Select Committee was not unreasonable, for his opinion was that the Land Act was not carried out to-day in the same spirit in which it had been passed through their Lordships' House.
  LORD EMLYsaid, how anyone could imagine that a country in a state approaching revolution could, by passing any measure, be at once brought to a condition of peace passed his comprehension. But the question before the House was the Motion of the noble Earl opposite. He certainly was quite as anxious as his noble Friend could be that, at the proper time, the fullest investigation should take place into the working of the Act; but he ventured to say that his noble Friend, by precipitating this inquiry, was really defeating the object he had in view. There could be no complete or satisfactory inquiry into the working of an Act which had only just commenced its
  942
  operation. Only a very few appeals had at present been heard, and the most important question as to the interpretation of Healy's Clause had not yet been settled by the Supreme Court. As to there having been such great reductions of rent, he joined issue on that point with his noble Friend. The last Return brought the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners down to the 28th of January; and it showed that the cases adjudicated upon had been, on the average, somewhere between 42 and 43 per cent over Griffith's valuation. In well-managed properties in Ireland, where the land was chiefly grass, the amount to which the rent exceeded Griffith's valuation was rarely more than 20 to 25 per cent. [Cries of "No!"] Well, he knew that the property of a noble Earl in the county of Wicklow was somewhere about 10 per cent over Griffith's valuation; and he could mention another property in the county of Limerick where the amount over Griffith's valuation was about 15 per cent. It might naturally be anticipated that the persons who were suffering most would be the first to avail themselves of the remedy provided. And that they had done so was shown by dividing the Returns so as to separate the cases before Christmas from the cases after Christmas. Before Christmas the aggregate of the former rents was £14,063; the valuation was £9,311; and the rents were reduced to £10,592. To the end of January the aggregates were—former rent, £37,441; valuation, £25,849; reduced rentals, £28,586. It thus appeared that the cases dealt with before Christmas were 51 per cent above Griffith's valuation. These figures showed that those who suffered most went first for the remedy. As regarded an estate to which the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Waterford) had referred, and the particular farms that were brought into Court and adjudicated upon, there were 12 cases in which the rent was 36 per cent above Griffith's valuation. It was probable that on every well-managed estate in Ireland there would be found exceptional cases of high rents. If large numbers of tenants on these estates had appealed to the Courts the average reduction would not be so large; and the explanation entirely demolished the whole case for inquiry on this account.

  943
  As to the way in which the Sub-Commissioners had discharged their duties, he would quote the statement of Mr. Hamilton, one of the Sub-Commissioners. He said that in one county 24 cases were decided by adjudication. In three cases a fair rent was fixed by consent, and in these cases a far larger reduction was made than in any decided by the Sub-Commissioners. In the Queen's County, in 14 cases out of 21, the average reduction decided upon by the Sub-Commissioners, on the evidence of the landlords' valuers, was 25 per cent on the old rent, these reductions varying from 8 to 55 per cent. In Carlow many eases were settled out of Court at reductions varying from 25 to 40 per cent. Mr. Hamilton said—
  "In the county of Carlow the rents adjudicated upon were, on an average, 33 per cent over Griffith's valuation. We examine in each case field by field, checking the most trustworthy valuation produced before us as we go along. When we have ascertained the present value of the holding as it stands, we go through the evidence of the tenant's improvements, and put a value on them. According to Judge O'Hagan's interpretation of Healy's Clause, we deduct the tenant's improvements—those which add to the letting value of the farm—from the valuation, and thus arrive at the judicial rent. Of course, in arriving at this we take into account all the circumstances of the case—proximity to markets, &c. In cases of small tillage farms, we find it often necessary to make a substantial reduction of from 25 to 33 per cent. Many cases are settled out of Court, and come before us for ratification only. The reduction in these cases varied from 20 to 45 per cent. In many cases which do come before us for adjudication the representatives of the landlords admit the existing rents to be too high."
  Everybody would admit that Griffith's valuation was a measure by which the rentals of different estates could be judged. ["No, no!"] That it was not was an entirely new doctrine. He believed they under-estimated the extent to which excessive rents had been reduced, and the fact that most of the cases adjudicated upon had been exceptional. To produce a contrary impression was to do as much injury to the interests of the landlords as could be done by any of the imprisoned "suspects." He hoped the House would delay inquiry until circumstances were ripe for it, and would not take a step calculated to impair the usefulness of the Commission.
  THE EARL OF DUNRAVENsaid, he had no special information on the sub-
  944
  ject; but it appeared to him that a clear and conclusive case had been made out for inquiry. If the Government had promised to grant it at a later period he would have supported them now; but, as they had not done so, he would support the Motion, on the principle that it was better to have an inquiry too soon than not at all. It was not objected that rents had been reduced; but many had been reduced in a most extraordinary way. As to Griffith's valuation, it was a fact that that had to be stated in the application. The Lord Privy Seal had mentioned cases in which rents had been reduced very slightly, and others in which the reduction had ranged from 80 to 90 per cent. If such high rents had been paid, the presumption was that the Sub-Commissioners had overlooked some element of value. The Lord Privy Seal spoke as if he would not have been surprised if a rent had been reduced to less than nothing, and the landlord ordered to pay an annuity to the tenant. There were many reasons why an inquiry was necessary. It was not astonishing that rents had been reduced. It was very probable that the worst cases came first into Court. But there could be no doubt that rents would very generally be reduced all over Ireland. That was a great reason for the inquiry, as one of two things, he believed, were inevitable. Either rents would be reduced, or there would be serious danger of a civil war. The inquiry would enable them to see clearly upon what principles the Commissioners had acted. The Lord Privy Seal had told their Lordships that the reductions were greater than had been expected. The matter was important; and it was not only necessary to do justice to the landlords, but to find out the real cause of the recent agitation in Ireland. The Lord Privy Seal had commented strongly upon the fact that the agitation was against landlordism. He entirely differed from that view. The object of the agitation was separation from Great Britain—some form of Home Rule—Nationalism in some form or other. It would have been simply impossible to get up this agitation against landlords, who had been pronounced acquitted as a body. The landlords had suffered much for loyalty's sake—in a pecuniary sense, and otherwise. He did not know whether they would be inclined

  945
  to do so much longer. They had been too long placed between the nether millstone of the people and the upper millstone of the Government. They had been attacked by the Government to appease the people, and attacked by the people to annoy the Government. If the Government had announced their intention of appointing a Committee later in the Session he should not vote for the Motion; but as they had not done so, and it appeared they would not do so, he should support the Motion.
  EARL SPENCER: I certainly cannot hold out any hope to the noble Earl that the Government will make any compromise upon this important matter. He tells us that if we hold out any hope that later in the Session we should appoint a Committee of Inquiry he would vote against the present Motion. But, as he at once supposes, we cannot accede to it. Well, now, my Lords, I feel that this question is one in which it is very difficult for those who defend to meet every point. We have to defend a very extensive position; it extends over a very large space; our front is very great. We have to consider that between 1,300 and 1,500 cases have been brought before the Land Courts in Ireland. It is therefore very easy for those who live in Ireland, and have such ample means of obtaining information, to make attacks upon numerous points which we cannot foresee. I think, therefore, from the nature of the discussion, that the attacking party is in an advantageous position. We have had from this side of the House some very able and practical speeches in defence of the Commission. My noble Friend the Lord Lieutenant of the County of Limerick (Lord Emly) made a speech which I think ought to convince all dispassionate hearers by arguments of a practical kind. But, my Lords, I must attempt to follow the arguments made during this discussion before going into the general arguments. I should like to take one or two matters of discussion not necessarily connected with the main argument for the Motion, which, I think, it is necessary for me to answer. The noble Marquess (the Marquess of Waterford), who spoke early, and who always speaks with much force, and with all the advantage which his influence carries with it in Ireland, referred, I regret to say, to the pamphlet which has been
  946
  more than once the topic of conversation. I really regret that I am obliged again to refer to this subject. The noble Marquess has said that the facts which came out from that unfortunate pamphlet and its discovery have thrown grave doubt upon the impartiality of the Land Commission. I read the cheers with which that statement was received as the opinion of the majority. I cannot understand how the impartiality of the Commission can be touched, when it has been stated repeatedly that these Commissioners had no knowledge whatever of what had taken place, and that the mistake, however grave a mistake, was committed by the Solicitor to the Commission. Noble Lords opposite seem to think that the Commissioners are still in some way inculpated by the grave error committed. But I repeat again—and I am sure noble Lords will not wish to impute to Ministers a desire to mislead on this matter—the Commissioners entirely repudiate all knowledge of this business. They have withdrawn the pamphlet, and expressed their grave displeasure at what had occurred.
  LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNE: In Lord O'Hagan's letter it is stated that Mr. Litton knew of the pamphlet some days before it was published.
  EARL SPENCER: The pamphlet was new to him. Perhaps the noble Lord is referring to another matter. He referred to the revision of the pamphlet. I know that none of the three Commissioners knew anything whatever of the facts.
  THE MARQUESS OF WATERFORD: I did not say it was a Commissioner. I say it was reported to be a high official who corrected the proofs before this pamphlet went to the press, and I asked noble Lords opposite for his name.
  EARL SPENCER: I can only assure the noble Marquess that we know nothing of the matter. I really think I have a right to ask the noble Marquess who the high official is? I must say another word with regard to this unfortunate affair. I am sorry to detain the House; but I have been driven to this position by what has been said on the other side. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland took a great interest in the appointment of Mr. Fottrell; and he was, no doubt, responsible for the appointment. The right hon. Gentleman was totally unaware

  947
  that Mr. Fottrell had had any connection with the Land League. He only-looked at the recommendation he had received in the gentleman's favour. If your Lordships were to see the names of those who had recommended that gentleman to this position, I think you would admit that the Chief Secretary had some ground for the appointment. I do not quite like referring to these matters of private reference as to qualifications; but an attempt has been so often made to drive us into a corner that I am obliged to go further than I should do on ordinary occasions. Would the noble Marquess think the late Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Gibson) a judge of those matters? Would he think the late Lord Chancellor of Ireland (Dr. Ball) a good judge? Perhaps the noble Marquess is not aware that both these distinguished Gentlemen recommended Mr. Fottrell. I will now turn to another matter. My noble Friend who spoke last but two made some very severe strictures on Professor Baldwin. In my opinion, it is not very wise for lay Members to attempt to lay down the law. I do not know what is the practice of the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Salisbury) at Quarter Sessions; but my experience has taught me, in giving judgment, that the less you say the better. I am not speaking of lawyers of known ability, but of those who are not members of that Profession. With regard to Professor Baldwin, I believe that on several occasions he has disclaimed the interpretation placed on his words in the most distinct and pronounced manner. I will read an extract from a speech of that gentleman which occurs in a Belfast paper of the 11th of February on this subject. He there says—
  "My own name has been frequently used during the last week."
  He was referring, I suppose, to the debate in Parliament.
  "In no spirit of controversy or contention I take this opportunity of making a few remarks. One of the charges made against me is that I said somewhere that in estimating the rent of land we must not take into consideration its proximity to towns or cities. If that were so, an acre of land in Dublin would not be at a higher rent than that in any other district. No one who knows me would be likely to think me capable of uttering such a sentiment. I can only say hero, in the presence of my Colleagues, that I have never uttered a sentence that could be so construed. The second charge
  948
  was that in estimating land we must take into consideration, not the capacity of the land, but of the farmer. According to this doctrine, farms in the hands of an idiot ought to be at no rent. This doctrine has been repudiated by me several times."
  So that Professor Baldwin has given the most unqualified denial to the statements that had been made. I was surprised at one of the statements made by my noble Friend (the Earl of Kilmorey), in which he said that Professor Baldwin had stated that he would only act according to the principles laid down. Professor Baldwin had also repudiated that statement. The noble Earl has also complained that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary had given instructions to the Commissioners or Sub-Commissioners. My right hon. Friend has repudiated in toto any such thing. In my opinion, a Minister making an appointment, especially a judicial or semi-judicial one, and directing the person as to how to fulfil his duties, would be guilty of the grossest crime against the country; and, as was said by an hon. Member in "another place," he would be liable to impeachment. The noble Earl appears to imply that the instructions referred to by Professor Baldwin had been received from the Chief Secretary. I must protest against such an assertion as that.
  THE EARL OF KILMOREY: I do not wish to impute to the Chief Secretary that he gave the instructions. I simply quoted Professor Baldwin's words, and left the noble Earl to explain what he meant.
  EARL SPENCER: I am not here to answer for Professor Baldwin, and I have had no opportunity of referring to him; but, if I were to interpret his words, I should say that ''the principles laid down "were those either of the Act itself or the general regulations issued by the Land Commission. I must now pass to another personal matter. My noble Friend referred to one of the Sub-Commissioners (Mr. Reardon), and quoted words from him, which certainly seemed to want explanation. I am unable to answer this without referring to him. But I can only say—and I challenge noble Lords to contradict me—that although a few unfortunate utterances may have been made by the Commissioners, they will find a great many more utterances made by them of the greatest possible good, which would be approved by the other side of this House

  949
  as much as they are on this side. I happen to have by me an extract from a paper dated the 17th of February, which contains a statement just the opposite to that to which the noble Earl has referred. I had no idea that Mr. Reardon was going to be attacked here to-night; but, as he has been, I ask leave to read the following extract to the House. Mr. Reardon said—
  "The impression seems to have got abroad that our duty was in every case to reduce the rent to a lower figure than it now was. That was not their duty nor jurisdiction. Their business was to declare a fair rent, and if they found the present rent a fair rent they would so fix it. If it was a rack rent they would reduce it; if too low, they would increase it."
  This shows that he approached the subject in a spirit of which your Lordships will approve, and I do not know anybody in this House who could more simply state the duty of the Assistant Commissioners. I will now come to the exact question before the House. This is not the first time that a Motion of this kind has been made. In 1872 the noble Viscount (Viscount Lifford) moved for an inquiry into the administration of the Act of 1870, and that Committee was carried against the opinion of the Government of the day. I looked, as your Lordships may suppose, to, amongst other speeches, the speech of the noble and learned Earl (Earl Cairns), who always speaks with such authority in this House. The noble and learned Earl supported the Motion, but supported it in a very qualified manner. He said that, unless the question were urgent, the Act ought to be allowed to go on working a little longer before any definite conclusions were drawn with respect to its operation. I adopt the views then expressed by the noble and learned Earl. I think this Act ought to be allowed to go on some time longer before anything of this sort is done. The Committee with regard to which the noble and learned Earl spoke was appointed two years after the passing of the Act. Contrast that with the present occasion. Instead of two years the Land Act has been in operation only four months. I therefore think that the case is very much stronger now against proceeding hastily by the appointment of a Committee. In 1872, if I read the debate correctly, the complaint was that there was a want of uniformity in the decisions of the Court. It is said now that there is too great uni-
  950
  formity in the decisions of the Court. Therefore, it is an entirely different issue. I do not know whether we are to be asked to alter an Act passed after great consideration. The Land Act occupied nearly the whole time of Parliament last year. Your Lordships most carefully considered that measure, and I hold your Lordships just as much responsible for the Land Act as the other House. [A laugh.] Yes; I hold that opinion. Are we, then, within four months of the Act coming into operation, at once to say that the Act requires revision? The only possible excuse for this would be that the Judges who administer it found some clauses in it perfectly inconsistent and unworkable. Is there anything of the sort now? Nothing of the kind. The only reason advanced is that many of your Lordships are not satisfied with the decisions given by the Assistant Commissioners. I believe you would be aiming a blow at the impartial and high position which all Courts of Justice in this country have hitherto held if you carried out this idea. You are not only throwing a stigma—making an attack—on the Assistant Commissioners; you are also making an attack on the Judges who are hearing appeals. These three Chief Commissioners were appointed not only by the Government, but their appointments were ratified by Parliament itself. Their names were given to Parliament before the Bill was passed, and their suitability for the position was canvassed in this House. But I will go a step further. You are throwing a stigma on the Commissioners who are hearing appeals. There is now an appeal before the High Court in Dublin. It seems to me a most extraordinary proceeding that before these matters are decided in Dublin your Lordships should say that a Committee shall be appointed to revise the whole administration of the Act. It would be a reflection on the Judges; it would amount to a declaration that you either have no confidence in these Judges, or that you do not care the least what opinion they may come to, and that you wish to go quite irrespective of that. One of the noble Lords who addressed your Lordships spoke about small estates, and he said—"Are the small landlords in Ireland to be ruined by this Act?" This is not the view of Her Majesty's Government. They wish that the Act should be fairly administered, whether

  951
  with regard to large or small proprietors. One of the noble Lords spoke of the large landlords—that they were going to have their rents reduced just like all other landlords in Ireland. I will not prophesy. I admit there are a few more cases of high rent brought forward than I expected; but I think it is natural that at the outset the highest rented tenant should come first. I cannot understand why the inference is drawn, because in a certain number of cases the rents were reduced, that, therefore, all the rentals of these estates are immediately going to be reduced by the operation of the Court. I certainly was not prepared for that argument; but I happen to have the Return here, and I ran my eyes down the names of some of the large owners quoted by the noble Earl. He quoted Lord Enniskillen, the Knight of Glin, Lady Margaret Charteris, Lord Digby, and Lord Antrim. I find on the estates of these large landowners there are very few cases. I find 6 cases under Lord Enniskillen, 4 under the Knight of Glin, 3 under Lady Margaret Charteris, 1 under Lord Digby, and 11 under Lord Antrim; and it cannot be urged that these cases will govern, even in the case of Lord Antrim, the rental of the whole estate. I agree with the noble Lord behind me that on nearly every estate, when you are obliged to look into the rental, you will find some instances where the rents are too high. Cases of great hardship may occur without the tenant having the courage to come forward and bring his case before the landlord. I know an estate in County Kildare. It is most liberally managed. A case there was recently brought under notice. A tenant owed four years' arrears of rent. Nine years ago his rent was £36, and he complained of this as being exceedingly high. When the agent—not the present one—was told that it was a high rent, he retorted that he would secure the tenant a spirit licence, and, the place being near to the Curragh, he would reap a great advantage, and that then his rent would not be too high. From that day to this no spirit or other licence was ever given, and the present agent reported to the landlord that he had investigated the case, and found the true rent to be £16 a-year. That was a case of extreme hardship, which no English tenant would have endured quietly. It merely shows
  952
  that on different estates in Ireland the tenants, rather than create any disturbance, or get into difficulties with the agents, will suffer hardships of this sort in preference to coming forward and submitting their cases to the agent. I come now to the question of the appointment of the Assistant Commissioners. My right hon. Friend (Mr. W. E. Forster) took the greatest possible care in inquiring into the eligibility of these gentlemen. The noble Marquess behind me said that when it was known that these appointments were to be made there was hardly a man in Ireland that could read and write who did not think himself qualified. That, no doubt, is an exaggeration; but it is perfectly true that my right hon. Friend had the greatest possible difficulty in sifting the applications. There were 700 or 800 applications to my right hon. Friend, he went through them, and when he had reduced them to a small number he consulted persons who knew these gentlemen, and I deny entirety that he appointed anyone because he was a political partizan. He appointed those who he considered would administer the Act impartially between landlord and tenant. It was impossible to say that some mistakes had not been made in this large number of appointments, but no case of incompetency had been proved; and those who would throw a slur on the Commissioners by voting for this Committee ought to be able to establish some direct charges against them. It was said that the Assistant Commissioners were valuators, and acted as such. On that point your Lordships cannot have a better authority than the Chief Commissioner. Lord Justice O'Hagan says—
  "The Agricultural Commissioners are not valuers, but Judges, appointed either as being members of the Profession of the Law, or from their acquaintance with the value of land in Ireland. They decide, like other tribunals, on sworn evidence. It is true that by one of our rules they ought personally to visit the lands in every case in which they deem such visit will conduce to a just decision, and that duty they have, I believe, in every case discharged. By the 'so-called valuations' I can understand nothing but their judicial decisions, based not alone on their own inspection, which would of itself be an insufficient guide, but assisted in such inspection in discovering the whole case upon the evidence."
  I can conceive nothing more likely to conduce to a sensible and sound decision than that those who have to give it

  953
  should personally visit the farm the rent of which is to be determined. Your Lordships, as landlords, though you do not undertake to value the land yourselves, go to see what your tenant wants, and in what position his farm is; and that is a wise and judicious practice. One of my noble Friends brought a most serious charge against Professor Baldwin, who, he said, went to intimidate a lady against whom there was an appeal, and forced her to come to an agreement. That is a most serious charge; and I think it is only fair to Professor Baldwin that your Lordships should not condemn him without hearing what he has to say on the matter. The noble Marquess behind me said that it was impossible there should be any actual revision of the value of rent on appeal. I wish to deny that altogether. The Commissioners have appointed two most experienced valuators to be their assessors and valuators, and the decisions of the Commissioners have been founded upon their Report.
  EARL CAIRNSdissented.
  EARL SPENCER: The noble and learned Earl opposite shakes his head; but I am prepared to maintain it. Now I come to the question of Griffith's valuation. I have heard it said, in "another place," that the only rule which the Land Commissioners appeared to have was to get as near Griffith's valuation as possible. In "another place" this was said to be like a Will-o'-the-Wisp hovering over an Irish bog. I entirely deny that the Commissioners have adopted Griffith's valuation as the rule in every case. But though Griffith's might not be the proper valuation throughout Ireland, in some localities it might be a suitable measure of rent. There was a Commission, of which Mr. Kane was the legal Chairman, and which sat in Fermanagh and Monaghan, and also in Tipperary. In the former counties the judicial rent was nearly the same as Griffith's valuation, which was 19 per cent less than the old rent; while in Tipperary the judicial rent was fixed 9 per cent above the valuation. One of my noble Friends opposite has twitted me with having made the remark, during the passing of the Land Act, that the Land Courts would be Courts of Conciliation. It is true I did make that remark. I did so on this ground—that it was clear that great differences existed between landlords and tenants on this
  954
  subject, and that some intervening Court was needed where they might settle their differences. I do not even now withdraw the words; because, although there is every impediment at present thrown in the way of a Court acting in a conciliatory way, I believe the Land Court will eventually be a Court of Conciliation in the country. During the course of the debate it has been said the Act has not stopped agitation and outrage. That I do not deny. I, for one, never expected that agitation and disaffection, which has so long existed in the country, would have disappeared, as it were, by the stroke of a magic wand, on the passing of the Act. We have great difficulties to contend with at the present moment, and whoever happens to be in Office will have immense difficulties to contend with in the future. The administration of Ireland will require a firm hand; but, at the same time, it will require perfect justice. We fully admit our responsibility; but I still hope and believe that, if justice is administered with firmness, with fairness, and with impartiality, the day will come when we may call these Courts in Ireland Courts of Conciliation between the landlords and the tenants of that country.
  EARL CAIRNS: My Lords, my noble Friend just behind me (the Earl of Donoughmore) moves for a Committee to inquire into the working of the Land Act of 1881, and but for one circumstance, which I will shortly refer to, it appears to me that that would be simply a Motion of course. The Land Act of 1881 I certainly am not going now to argue about. Many of your Lordships approve it; a greater number, I think, disapprove it; but I do not want to enter into that question at all. All, whether they approve the Act or not, agree that it was an Act of unexampled severity. It has been described by some noble Lords sitting opposite me as a most grasping Statute; and I believe, for my part, that there is not to be found in Europe a parallel for any legislation of the kind. It was expected to have, and it has had, a very great effect in Ireland; and, as I said just now, but for one circumstance, I should have thought that the feeling of either House would be in favour of an inquiry. But in the present case there is one circumstance that is unusual about this demand for in-

  955
  quiry, and I do not want to disguise it: this inquiry is moved for very soon after the Act has come into operation—three or four months; and that is much sooner than inquiries of this sort are generally moved for; but then, on the other hand, in that respect, the Act itself is entirely without precedent. It is doing what I never knew any Act of Parliament to do before; it is setting to work machinery sub-divided into a great number of separate machines, 12 or 14 of them, working every day of the week; and these various machines are at this moment doing, what? They are alienating—for that is the proper expression—a portion varying from one-quarter to one-third of the ownership of land in Ireland from those who have hitherto held it to those who have never held it at all. ["Hear, hear!"] Why, if a tribunal lops off 25 per cent of the landlord's income for 15 years, and hands it over to the tenant, that is an alienation for 15 years of the corpus or fee-simple of the property. And every day the sun rises these 12 or 14 bodies are doing their work; it may be necessary, but that is what they are doing. Now, has that any bearing upon, or any reference to, the Act of 1870, to which the noble Earl the President of the Council (Earl Spencer) has alluded? I pointed out with respect to the Act of 1870 that it was an unfortunate thing to have a premature inquiry; but that Act had this peculiarity—that no person could suffer from its operation unless he liked, no owner of land could come under the Act unless he evicted a tenant, and therefore nothing was going on which demanded an early or rapid inquiry. If there are things to be inquired into in the present case, I want to ask those who object to an inquiry now, how do the Government propose, when it suits them hereafter to hold an inquiry, to undo the evil, if it be evil, which is being done by these bodies? The noble Lord opposite said we might have an inquiry in the month of May, and so, for the matter of that, you may next year; but what we want to know is, how the evil once done is to be undone. That is the first reason why I say that this is an exceptional case; but there is also another reason. There are many Acts of Parliament which, in their infancy, are very weakly, though they gather strength as they
  956
  grow older; but this Act is again exceptional in this respect. The Prime Minister, with his great knowledge of classical learning, has been unable to find any similitude for the Act, but one; he says it is like the infant Hercules: it is in its cradle; it is like a giant, and that it has already taken to the process of strangulation. It has done so, undoubtedly; but the question is, whom has it been strangling? The Prime Minister says it has completely strangled the Land League. Well, I hope that is true; I do not know whether your Lordships think so or not; but I do not think that anyone in Ireland thinks it has been so successful, and I have heard that the once trusted official of the Landed Estates Court, the confidential adviser of the Government, is not of that opinion, for he says that the Land League is the greatest, the most beneficent, and the most enduring institution the world has seen. I am afraid, therefore, that the infant Hercules has been strangling the wrong object. It has strangled the landowners rather than the Land League; and I fear that when we deal with a giant of this kind it may exert its strength against the wrong party. I think here we have an exceptional case, and that it would be well to lose no time about it. But there are other reasons which I think call for inquiry in this House. The Act may be working well or ill; but one thing is perfectly clear, that it is not working in the way intended by Parliament. I say this because there are two respects in which I am satisfied that nobody last year thought it would work as, in point of fact, it has worked. It was a very strong piece of legislation. It was intended to have a very great effect on the land of Ireland; but there was in particular one complaint which it was designed to cure—it was to settle the question of rents in that country. This one matter was all-important, and Parliament had been persuaded to pass the Act on the assurance that the rents to be settled were to be fair rents, and that, if only the proper persons could be found to undertake the duty, the settlement of a fair rent was easy enough. That was the inducement offered to Parliament by the Government. They said—"We will name three persons in whom Parliament can have confidence, and they shall be

  957
  the persons to settle the rents." These three eminent persons being appointed the Chief Commissioners, what would have been the natural thing for them to have done in settling the rents of Ireland as they would have to do? They might well say—"We cannot go to every part of Ireland." I should then have said—"There is one thing Parliament might fairly expect you should do; if you are not able to do the whole work yourselves, if deputies must be appointed, at all events Parliament may expect you to set an example and make a beginning. Why should you not go down, you three Commissioners, to each Province in Ireland, and sit in each Province for two or three weeks, try a certain number of cases, and lay down, as far as possible, the principles upon which you would proceed. Set the example how the Courts should be conducted, and in that way you will at once establish uniformity all over the country with regard to the decisions; you will give the best form of instructions to those who are to succeed you as your deputies; and you will not leave persons who have never had work of this kind to do to find out the principles upon which they are to decide." Parliament might fairly have expected they would have taken these steps in order to give confidence in the work done. But the remarkable thing is, that from the day this Act received the Royal Assent till now, these trusted Commissioners have no more settled the rent of any single estate in Ireland—I am not now referring to the appeals—than I or any one of your Lordships have. We are told that there are the appeals. With regard to them, I must say that I agree with the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Lansdowne) that if you were to send Sub-Commissioners through the length and breadth of Ireland to reduce rents as they have been reduced, and leave the tenants for three or four months under the impression that their rents were to be reduced, it would be impossible for you, politically or mechanically, I may say, to undo what the Commissioners had done. There could not be a greater danger than to attempt anything of the kind; and the Commissioners would be more than flesh and blood if they could attempt it. The noble Marquess referred to the judgment of Mr. Justice O'Hagan,
  958
  and the conclusion I draw from it is that he meant to say—"You may appeal to us if there is a doubt upon a question of law or fact; but, if it is only a question of opinion as to value, there is not much chance of our doing anything." And that is so; it is so in this country, and must be so everywhere; there is not much use in taking a question of value to a Court of Appeal. But Mr. Justice O'Hagan made a speech, as to which I have been embarrassed. He was reported to have said that the Act was to be of great benefit to the tenants, and that the value of a holding should be ascertained by finding out what the rent should be, so that the tenant might live and thrive on the land. I was very much surprised when I read those words, and I wondered what rent Mr. Justice O'Hagan would put upon a holding of three or four acres, so as to allow the tenant to live and thrive on it. But my embarrassment is made still greater by what has occurred since, for, when reference was made to these words in this House, it was, as I understood it, entirely denied that Mr. Justice O'Hagan had used the words, or if he had, it was said that he had repudiated them. My embarrassment was still greater when the Chief Secretary for Ireland, in the other House, adopted and defended them, affirming that they were the proper words to use, and that they expressed what was said by everyone in Parliament, and it was still greater when I turned to the authentic version of the speech in the official report, which has been published, and found—will your Lordships believe it?—that the words which have so pleased the right hon. Gentleman are entirely omitted. Mr. Justice O'Hagan, on second thoughts, leaves out the sentence altogether. I hope that, before the discussion closes, the Government will throw some light even yet upon the question, and tell us what Mr. Justice O'Hagan did say, or whether he said anything at all. I am quite sure that Parliament never expected what has happened about the Sub-Commissioners. It is true that the Act mentions something about Sub-Commissioners; if it did not, they could not have been appointed; but little was said in Parliament on the subject, and nobody suggested that the question of rents in Ireland was to be settled by the Sub-Commissioners, and not by the

  959
  Chief Commissioners. Well, 36 Sub-Commissioners have been appointed, and they are virtually doing the whole of the work, which was the only important work under the Bill—namely, the settling of fair rents in Ireland. They have been actively engaged in reducing the rents. That is to say, they have the power of alienating property in Ireland; and, with regard to it, I do not think that in our Civil Courts at Westminster there is a greater or a higher duty to which a Judge can address himself. Well, what are the qualifications of the Sub-Commissioners for this high function which they have to discharge? Have they had a test or examination of any kind? None, so far as I know. Have they had any experience? Judicial experience they certainly have not had. Even the legal members of the Sub-Commission have had no judicial experience in this matter, much less have the others who are not members of the Legal Profession. Upon what principle, then, were they appointed? I am told they are described as impartial, and as men who would inspire confidence. In whom would they inspire confidence? In the tenants of Ireland, or in the landlords of Ireland, or in both? I should have liked to see people appointed who would inspire confidence in both; but I do not find it is so. I understand, however, that the right hon. Gentleman and the Solicitor General for Ireland made it a point in their speeches that these Sub-Commissioners should inspire confidence in the tenants of Ireland. But who are these Sub-Commissioners? I wish to speak with all respect for them, for, personally, no doubt, they are very upright men. Some are shopkeepers, and others are tenant farmers. With reference to Mr. Weir, it was said "he was an active agent on the side of the Attorney General." It is said that the Chief Secretary for Ireland consulted the Commissioners and the Solicitor General as to these appointments. No doubt one of the Commissioners and the Solicitor General gave a very good report of Mr. Weir. I must say that I think it extraordinary that in the place where these men are exercising their jurisdiction two of the three Sub-Commissioners, as described by a gentleman residing in the locality, whom we all know, were tenant farmers in the very district where they were settling the
  960
  rents. That statement is made by a gentleman who gives his name, and who has never been contradicted. What would have been thought if two landlords in that district had been appointed? One of your Lordships has said that Mr. Rice was a member of the Commission. No doubt he is, and that is the place where he ought to be. The object of that Commission was to embrace men of every possible view. That Commission had no judicial function to perform, but the object was to get the views of extreme men. It does not at all follow that Mr. Rice is a proper person to settle the rents of a district of which he is a tenant farmer. Therefore, I say, in my opinion, some of these gentlemen, who are described as being impartial men, are, if the statements made about them be true, much more deserving the character of stout partizans. I do not think that the mere fact of Judges entertaining strong opinions on political matters is of any importance. My experience is that, on the whole, men who are appointed to high judicial office, when they come to deal with law or facts, may be trusted to act fairly; they do not allow their private opinions to bias them in one way or another. But it makes all the difference when you have persons to judge who are not judges either of fact or law, but have merely to decide, without rhyme or reason, what they may think right from time to time, and to lay down without reason their own opinion; and you need not be surprised, under the circumstances, if they give scope to their partizanship. It is from that point of view that I look with considerable suspicion upon some of the appointments which have been made. Mr. Fottrell, for instance, who, I daresay, is a very good man in his way, was obviously a most distinct partizan, and those who appointed him must have known it very well. It was perfectly clear that he had been connected with the Land League, and consequently a thorough partizan.
  EARL GRANVILLE: Why, then, was he recommended by persons in such high authority?
  EARL CAIRNS: I am coming to that. My noble Friend said that he was recommended by my right hon. and learned Friend the late Attorney General for Ireland and by Dr. Ball, late Lord Chancellor of Ireland. But I am sorry to tell the noble Earl that that statement is

  961
  certainly untrue. I hope the noble Earl is satisfied with the answer to the question. Well, let us pass on from Mr. Fottrell. I want to ask this question, if I may be allowed to do so. Suppose last year there had been a clause in the Bill putting in the names of the 36 Sub-Commissioners; do you think that the Bill would have ever received the Royal Assent? I do not; nor do I think the Government did. They knew that if they had put in the Bill the names of these persons, the Bill would have had no more chance of passing than some other Bill not yet in existence, and about which I will say nothing. I want your Lordships to consider the state of things under which some of these Sub-Commissioners have been proceeding. The tenant goes into Court, and wants a fair rent fixed. I am the last person to propose that technical pleadings should be required from the tenants. But common justice does require, even in dealing with a landlord, that the tenant should intimate in some way or other what it is that he is going to prove. But he is allowed to come before the Sub-Commissioners, keeping the whole of his case to himself, without disclosing anything to the landlord, who has not the slightest idea what he has to meet. The question of improvements makes all the difference to the present owner; the present owner was not owner when the improvements were effected, and knows nothing about them. I will give an instance of the way in which proceedings take place. It refers to a case that occurred in the South of Ireland. From the report which appeared in The Times, the Sub-Commissioners, by their Chairman, said the evidence of the tenant was marvellous, and perfectly ridiculous. The landlord said he had applied to several valuators; but they had all refused to value the land. A Sub-Commissioner then said—"You object to give evidence as to value yourself?" The answer was—"I do;" whereupon the Commissioner said—
  "It is a lamentable state of things. A tenant comes in with a certain valuation, and then we find that no gentleman in the country is ready to value the land. It is a strange thing;"
  and in that state of things the Commissioners proceeded to deal with the case. I do not remember what was the result of the case; but it shows what the Sub-Commissioners have to struggle against
  962
  in the way of getting evidence. Now, references have been made to the Encumbered Estates Court. I do not want to go into that general question; but I will notice one point which is very germane to the matter—the position of the purchaser in that Court. On the completion of the purchase the purchaser is presented with a small piece of paper, which is his title to the land. He does not hold the deeds, and he has not had the slightest evidence or knowledge of the previous dealings with the title. He knows nothing in the world of what happened before he became owner. But now he may be summoned by the tenant to the Court, and asked to give a history of the land for the last 40 or 50 years. Of course, he cannot have any knowledge of such a thing; and the result is that the tenants are masters of the situation, and the landlords are powerless. I think that is a special reason why some inquiry should be instituted. There is another point which I am sure will strike your Lordships with surprise, and that is with regard to the question of the valuation of the land by the Commissioners. With regard to it, the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal began by saying that these persons were not valuers at all; and he quoted a judgment in support of his statement, and then he went on to say that when one side was of one opinion and the other of another the Judge must go and see what was the real value of the property; so that the Lord Privy Seal began by a violent denial of the statement that the Judges were valuers, and ended by approving that statement.
  LORD EMLY: They went to the land for the purpose of checking the valuation.
  EARL CAIRNS: Exactly so. The noble Lord opposite says it is merely checking the valuation—they go in order to see whether the rent is fair or not; but that is not the case of the Lord Privy Seal; and in either case, what is it but putting their own value upon the farm? How do they make these valuations? Here is a statement by a Member of your Lordships' House—
  "I am aware of a case where the Sub-Commissioners went to value a farm of about 1,100 acres. They went in the short days of December 30 statute miles out, and the same distance back. They arrived at the farm at a quarter-past 2 o'clock, and left the ground at a quarter-

  963
  past 4. Upon this cursory and haphazard examination they reduced the rent 20 per cent below the Government valuation, which was nearly the same as the original rent."
  That is called checking the valuation. In another case a Sub-Commission is described as valuing a farm in this way. He goes on to the farm in one of these hurried visits about a quarter-past 4 on a December evening. When called upon to express an opinion as to the value, he thrusts his stick into the ground, after the manner of a cheese-taster, and said "15 s. an acre." Another matter to which I would refer is that of costs. Speaking from my own judicial experience, my opinion is that there is nothing in law in which greater injustice may be done than by a heedless disposal of the question of costs. If you decide a case wrong, probably you will hear further about it, for somebody or other will, perhaps, pick a hole in the judgment; but, practically, you can do what you like with costs and hear nothing about it, because public opinion is not easily attracted to the subject. Yet a good deal of mischief and suffering may result in this way. Now, what do these Sub-Commissioners do? I find from the Reports that even when a tenant fails to prove his case the landlord is ordered to pay both his own and the tenant's costs. That appears to me to be a most monstrous thing to do, and yet it seems to have been done by the Sub-Commissioners in hundreds of cases. I am told that this is now modified, and that, the attention of the Chief Commissioners having been called to the matter, they have ordered a change to be made. But the change is most extraordinary. The Chief Commissioners say that the landlord is not to be ordered to pay costs unless in extreme cases, or when the tenant applies for a fair rent, but does not succeed in having an alteration effected. That also appears to be a most monstrous rule. I do not know what extreme cases may mean; but it seems to me a monstrous injustice that where a tenant comes into Court to obtain a fair rent and fails he is to put the landlord to the expense of coming into Court; and also that the landlord is to have no costs. There is another way in which great injustice may be done in this matter of costs, inasmuch as there is a body in the country called solicitors, who have a great deal to say
  964
  with regard to these proceedings; and if there is one thing more than another which would make the solicitors put the tenants into motion it is this—by establishing a rule that the tenant is to come into Court without any risk as to paying costs; and not only that, but with the certainty, almost, of having his costs provided. If that is the rule, you will find plenty of persons to induce the tenants to go into Court, even if the tenants are not the least anxious to do so. I appeal to your Lordships—I do not appeal to one side more than the other—I appeal to the judgment of both sides on this question; are these matters in which it can be said that the working of the Act is satisfactory, and that they stand in no need of inquiry? Are your Lordships prepared to say that you are satisfied that this should go on; that no notice should be taken of it; that whereas now 1,400 cases have been decided, in the course of a few months 14,000, or in the course of the year 140,000, should be decided, and then, when the evil has been done and is irremediable, we should have an inquiry which will not produce anything at all? With regard to the reductions, I maintain that they have been made, not on the principle which Parliament intended—the principle that a fair rent should be fixed for the land. What I mean is this. The noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal rather ridiculed this matter, and he said—
  "If you take the decisions you will find that some rents were raised, some reduced a little, and some reduced considerably, and that thus the average was made up."
  I have not seen the printed Returns, but I have the Returns down to 1,300 cases; and, I ask, where does he find those cases where the rents have been raised?
  LORD CARLINGFORD: It occurred in two cases.
  EARL CAIRNS: We may put that aside. I do not want to come down to the half-crown case. Practically, there has been no raising of rent. Now, as to the small reductions, they are comparatively few; but, speaking from an examination of the Paper, I should say that in the vast body of the cases the reduction is not less than 20, and not more than 30, per cent. The reductions range between 20 and 30, and they gravitate to a central point. That is the great peculiarity. Another pecu-

  965
  liarity is this—that where the rents exceeded the Poor Law valuation there they are pulled down; but where the rents are the same as the Poor Law valuation they are reduced just as much. The Assistant Commissioners seem to set out with this idea—there must be a reduction if the rent is over the Poor Law valuation; if the rent is under, or at the Poor Law valuation, we must have a reduction all the same. I, for one, look with alarm on the reductions, not because they are reductions simply, but because I find here that the reductions are made upon the rule of thumb principle. Then, again, I find some of these cases very old; some of the tenants very new. In the first, the landlord has, after some years, raised the rent from time to time. I find, in other cases, he has lowered it at different times; but whether it is an old letting or a new one, whether the rent has been raised or lowered, I find the reduction goes on just the same. I should like to say a word about the Encumbered Estates Court cases. I will confine myself to cases where the rents have been unaltered or reduced since the purchase, and what do I find? There are 10 cases, the aggregate rent of which was £793 at the time of the purchase. The purchasers lowered it to £763; and the Sub-Commissioners lowered it from £763 to £575, thereby mulcting the purchasers in the Landed Estates Court to the extent of about 24 per cent of the rental. I may refer to another instance. There was a case heard at Newry on the 3rd of December, 1881; the farm was one of 68 acres; the old rental was £68; it had been paid since 1838, upwards of 40 years; the Poor Law valuation was £67; Mr. Quin, the agent of the property, who had never increased the rent, and two valuators, swore that the rent was fair; and yet the Sub-Commissioners reduced it to £55 10 s. In another case, trustees invested trust money in the purchase of land in the Encumbered Estates Court; the Poor Law valuation was £49 10 s.; and the Commissioners reduced the rent to £44. There was a case heard at Swineford; there were four holdings; and the aggregate rental was reduced from £19 10 s. to £8 15 s. The owner said that on the 2nd of December the case came on late in the evening; the Commissioners took a cart and rode to the place; they stood on the land
  966
  while a man dug a small hole; and they fixed a rent less than the turbary was worth, and one-third of what the holdings would bring if they could be let now. He added, that on account of the state of the country he could not get a surveyor to value the land, and on that account he applied for an adjournment, which was refused. Another case, a most remarkable one, was on the property of the noble Marquess behind me (the Marquess of Waterford). There were four holdings, comprising 436 acres; the old rent was £148; the Poor Law valuation was £136; the rent had been reduced in 1837, and it had been punctually paid ever since; there had been outlay on each holding by the landlord; and the rent was reduced to £130, which was considerably below the Poor Law valuation. The idea that the Commissioners had kept above it is, therefore, an erroneous one, although, in the aggregate, they may have done so. What are the excuse and the answer? It is said that these are exceptionally bad cases. It has been shown they were not. They are cases where the rent has been paid for 30, 40, or 60 years with perfect punctuality. What better test could there be of a rent which a solvent tenant would pay one year with another? It is also said that in some cases landlords have made valuations which agree with those of the Commissioners. Where the landlord really has agreed nothing more can be said. But when it is said that landlords out of Court have come to agreements by which they have made the same reductions, that is like adding insult to injury. Do you suppose they do it voluntarily and freely, with delight as it were? I do not think so. I will toll you why they do it. What is the position of the smaller landlord? He has to face 20 or 50 notices from tenants, paying, perhaps, £5 to £10 a-year. He has got to meet each case, one by one. From what has been done in the case of his neighbours, he knows that the rents will be reduced, and that he will have to pay costs. Those amount altogether to £500, taking each case, at the lowest calculation, at £10. With that prospect before him, it is much the best thing for him to sacrifice one quarter on the small holdings, instead of sacrificing five years' rental; and yet he is said to make these agreements voluntarily. It is said some

  967
  of the decisions have been confirmed on appeal; but how? Tour Lordships will remember that the Act says the cases shall come before the Chief Commissioners for re-hearing—that is, as I understand it, that the Commissioners shall hear them as if they heard them for the first time. We find they did not re-hear the cases. The Sub-Commissioners went on the land, but the Chief Commissioners did not; it was not a re-hearing, but an appeal on the materials provided by the Sub-Commissioners. The Prime Minister, in his speech last night, referred to the question of tithes. He said that no one complained when 25 per cent was knocked off the amount of the tithes; but I wonder whether the Prime Minister had leisure to give a thought to the question of whether that analogy was any analogy at all. What happened in the case of the tithes was this—that in the 100 per cent was never calculated the cost of getting the amount, or the trouble; and the fact is that Parliament presented the clergymen with a bargain which was an extremely good one. The whole burden of the tithe was taken from the tenant and placed upon the landlord, where it was as safe as if it had been placed on the Consolidated Fund. They said to the Irish clergy—"You shall have 75 per cent well secured and regularly paid, in place of 100 per cent which you cannot recover." Now, if the Act provided a new way of recovering rents, then I could have understood the argument that there is some analogy between the Act and the case of tithes. But the Chief Secretary for Ireland put it that the reduction only showed that the land in Ireland was highly rented and ought to be reduced; and that is clearly begging the question, as it assumes precisely that with respect to which we wish to ask whether the decisions of the Courts are on a right principle. The statement of the Chief Secretary for Ireland filled me with surprise, considering the Report of the Bessborough Commission, and the words in which the Prime Minister acquitted the landlords of Ireland. Parliament was assured that the general rental of Ireland was in a satisfactory condition, and the Bessborough Commission said that with rare exception the landlords in Ireland had fixed at, or even lower, than what could be considered a fair rent; and the Prime Minister himself said the
  968
  landlords were acquitted as a body. Then, as to Griffith's valuation, if there was one thing more than another proved to the Bessborough Commission, it was that Griffith's valuation was no standard whatever of valuation except for purposes of taxation. We have also the opinion of Members of the Government as to what, in their opinion, would be the effect of the Act. With respect to the clause dealing with fair rents, Mr. Bright said—
  "My view of the operation of that particular clause is that, in reality, the rents in Ireland will, for the most part, in nine cases out of ten, be fixed very much as they are now."—[3 Hansard, cclxi. 103.]
  The noble and learned Lord' on the Woolsack said—
  "If you compare the state of things under this Bill with that which would exist if nothing of the kind were done, the Bill may he expected to restore and increase, not diminish, the value of the landlord's property."—[Ibid. cclxiv. 534.]
  And the noble Lord opposite the Lord Privy Seal, in introducing the Bill, said—
  "I maintain that the provisions of this Bill will cause the landlords no money loss whatever. I believe that it will inflict upon them no loss of income, except in those cases in which a certain number of landlords may have imposed upon their tenants excessive and inequitable rents, which they are probably vainly trying to recover."—[Ibid. 252.]
  Those were very remarkable statements—I do not call them assurances, for I know that no Minister can give an assurance as to the working of an Act of Parliament—but they are not more remarkable than the disclosure made by the Chief Secretary for Ireland of his own private opinion while he was persuading Parliament and his Colleagues to pass the Bill. In a recent speech the right hon. Gentleman said—
  "It will, as I believe, turn out that the rents were higher in Ireland than many in the House expected. They are not higher than I expected. The information I got many years ago during the Famine, and which I have tried since to check, made me believe that the rents in Ireland were high. Things had got to that state that to check it the House find it necessary to break through the general rules of political economy; and in order that you should have, as a general rule, tenants who live and thrive, it was requisite to declare what was a fair rent; and in declaring what was a fair rent there was a larger reduction than was generally anticipated. But what does that mean? It means, after all, that there was greater ground for the

  969
  Land Act than we who brought it forward—some of us, and of those who accepted it more or less reluctantly, were aware of."
  Thus we find that while his Colleagues were making the remarkable statements I have given, the right hon. Gentleman knew that the land of Ireland was highly rented, and knew, at the same time, of the arguments used by his Colleagues to induce Parliament, and especially this House, to pass the Bill. If anyone but the right hon. Gentleman himself had said it, I could not have believed it; but it is his own statement. The noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Lansdowne) objected to the appointment of the Committee, because he said that there was danger that it might hamper the action of the Courts if the Judges were to be examined as witnesses; and, further, that there was danger that the Committee of this House might appear to be sitting as a Court of Appeal upon the merits of some individual cases. I must point out that that is not an argument against an earlier appointment of a Committee, but against the appointment of any Committee. You might just say the same thing in the month of May as in the month of February. But I think your Lordships may trust a Committee of your House that they will not do either of those two things. If it should be desirable to call any of the Judges before them they will take care that they do not interfere with the judicial business of the Court. And in like manner I deprecate the opinion of a Committee of this House sitting on appeal from a particular decision, although it may be very necessary to look at the general character of the decisions in order to see how the Judges work. Then the noble Marquess said he preferred a Royal Commission. If we were offered a Royal Commission the same end might be attained. But we were told by the noble Earl the Lord President of the Council that there would be no Royal Commission. I believe that the facts I have laid before your Lordships are quite sufficient to justify inquiry, that the case is exceptional as regards the time the inquiry is moved for, because there is no time to put the inquiry off. I believe it will be found, on inquiry, either that the accusations are groundless, and then a confidence will be engendered in
  970
  the Act which does not exist; or, if it be found that the charges are well founded, then I have no doubt that steps will be taken to correct in time the evils complained of. Therefore, I hope your Lordships will agree to the inquiry.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, if there was one part of the speech of my noble and learned Friend (Earl Cairns) more than another unlike what I should expect from him, it was the last part, in which he dealt with the practical objections to the appointment of this Committee. To those objections my noble and learned Friend gave one of the most feeble answers I ever remember to have heard from a man of so great ability. The appointment of a Committee is admitted by my noble and learned Friend to be asked for at an exceptional time—a time which ordinarily would be much too soon for entering upon such an inquiry. The case which justifies the asking of a Committee is one, we are told, depending upon a variety of exceptional circumstances, which, in an ascending scale, my noble and learned Friend enumerated, beginning with a number of small points, which I will not occupy time by entering into, and gradually rising to every objection which has been taken to the appointment of the Commissioners, to their qualifications, their rules, their mode of procedure, the way in which appeals are heard, and the general results of the operations of the Commission; my noble and learned Friend bringing forward a number of particular instances of alleged wrong procedure, or erroneous judgment, and then making deductions to show a general miscarriage of justice. These were my noble and learned Friend's grounds for holding this to be an exceptional case, justifying that operation said to be performed sometimes by children who plant flowers and who take them up a day or two afterwards in order to see whether they are growing. He justifies the appointment of a Committee of Inquiry before the proceedings of the Commissioners have got beyond their very earliest stage; and, having stated all these exceptional grounds, when he comes, in the last sentence of his speech, to address himself to the question how this Committee is to proceed, and what this Committee is to do, "Oh,"

  971
  he says, "it is a mistake to suppose that we need send for the Commissioners, or for the Sub-Commissioners, or interrupt at all their proceedings. It is a mistake to suppose that we need review and sit in appeal upon their decisions, and that we need inquire whether they were right or wrong. It will be enough for us to take a general view of the matter, and we shall know how to manage the inquiry when we get it." Now, my Lords, if anything in the world could be calculated to unsettle and disturb the proceedings of the Commissioners, and dissatisfy everybody, it would be that sort of half inquiry—nay, less than half inquiry—the infinitesimally small inquiry—which my noble and learned Friend suggested would be enough, and which would avoid the necessity of calling those witnesses. I say, with the utmost confidence, that if you are going to impeach the justice, the fairness, the impartiality of the Commissioners, and to accuse them of not acting according to the intentions of Parliament, you must bring the Commissioners here, and they will be upon their trial as Judges or judicial officers accused of miscarriage of justice. And if you institute an inquiry it will be very nearly an inquiry of a criminal nature—an inquiry demanding the most thorough investigation and the most absolute justice to everybody; and after what has been said, I do not see how you can conduct it properly without taking upon yourselves to review all those decisions which this man or the other man complains of and says were unjust. Then my noble and learned Friend himself admits, in the outset of his speech, that he has to justify this proceeding at this time. Nobody denies that the course of events may make inquiry in such a case justifiable or necessary. Nobody denies that after the proceedings of the Commissioners have reached that stage in which you are really in a situation to judge of them and to ascertain their results, there might be inquiry. The only part of the speech of my noble Friend (Lord Emly) which I did not hear with satisfaction, and with which I did not agree, was the suggestion that, though a Committee would be premature now, it might, possibly, not be premature before the end of this Session; and the noble Marquess
  972
  (the Marquess of Lansdowne) suggested that a Royal Commission would be better than a Committee. To me it seems that a Royal Commission or a Committee a few months hence, if it is premature now, would also be necessarily exposed to substantially the same objections. Now, my Lords, there is one thing which I have to acknowledge with thanks in the observations of all who have referred to myself or my Colleagues. You have given us credit for sincerity in what we have said now, and in what we have said in the last Session of Parliament. Therefore, I do not doubt that you will believe me when I say that not only I personally, but all my Colleagues, are as desirous that justice should be done to the landlords in Ireland, as that it should be done to the tenants. For my own part, I think that any really partial or one-sided administration of this law might go far to frustrate and destroy its good effects; and I share in any anxiety which may be felt by your Lordships, whether you are interested in property in Ireland or not, that the administration of this law should be unimpeachable, and should do full justice to the tenants and also to the landlords. But I cannot see anything that would be less in the interest of the landlord than a disturbance, by the intervention of this House, in which the landlords are strong, of the working of this Act, before it has been four months in operation, and when only about 1,300 out of 600,000 tenancies have been brought into the Courts. Language has been quoted which was used by one of Her Majesty's Ministers (Mr. Bright), when the Bill was passing through the other House, implying a belief that in nine out of ten cases rents would not be reduced. Well, we have not approached the nine out of ten cases. From the small number of cases decided any inference of a general character is, as yet, absolutely impossible. The most that can be said is that, inasmuch as in some cases there has been considerable reduction, and in most cases some reduction, if all other cases were decided in the same manner, then certain consequences would follow. But for that hypothesis there is no ground whatever. Those who look at the cases will see that the decisions vary enormously. I have observed the differences in the different Provinces, as compared with Griffith's valuation. In Ulster the rents

  973
  fixed are upon the average on the line of the valuation, in Leinster 7 per cent, in Connaught 9 per cent, and in Munster 20 per cent above it. Taking the decisions for the whole of Ireland, so far as they have gone, they give about 10 per cent above Griffith's valuation. I will not go into detail, but I will refer to some of the decisions given by two Sub-Commissioners, Messrs. Bomford and Weir, whose fitness for their appointments has been criticized, and not very generously criticized, in this House. They fixed the judicial rent in several of these cases at 25 and 33 per cent, and in some even more, above Griffith's valuation. But the rent before had been 100 per cent above that standard: so that there was, at the same time, a considerable reduction on the existing rents. I think that after the very small number of cases which have been decided, if your Lordships endeavour to go back upon what you have done, and disturb what you last year agreed to before anyone can estimate fully, or fairly, or sufficiently, what the general result will be, you will be taking a most unwise and a most perilous step, which will tend to compromise and imperil the interests of those on whose behalf you are acting. It is too much to suppose that the carrying out of the Act is to be suddenly stopped, simply because a majority of this House does not approve of some of the decisions that may have been given by the Sub-Commissioners. You cannot safely reason from the fact that rents have been reduced in some cases where reduction might not have been expected; for in particular instances, even on the best managed estates, there may be, and there undoubtedly are, some cases in which the rents are larger than they ought to be, and much larger than it could ever have been the intention of the landlord that they should be, if he had been aware of the facts; and, if that be so, there is no reason why those rents should not be reduced. If it were really the fact that the majority of the landlords of Ireland had let their land at rack-rents, I think the argument for the Bill would have been increased. Does the noble Marquess seriously mean to say that because Mr. Gladstone or some other Minister stated that he did not think the reduction of rent would, on the whole, be large, the majority of this House, in re-
  974
  liance on that expression of opinion, determined that the Bill should become law? Noble Lords will have great difficulty in persuading us that they were so soft, or so easily to be persuaded by any such opinions expressed, with however perfect good faith, by any Members of Her Majesty's Government. In this House, at all events, they had decided upon the course which they would take before a single speech was made. I cannot help referring to what my noble and learned Friend said concerning Mr. Forster. Mr. Forster lately stated in the House of Commons that he had received an impression, at the time he visited Ireland during the Famine, that rents were higher in that country than people here generally imagined, and that this impression had never been removed. My noble and learned Friend considers that he was guilty of some want of candour because, having formed that opinion, he did not last year state that he differed from the opinions expressed by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright. But my noble and learned Friend should remember that the statements of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright were based upon the evidence which came before the Earl of Bessborough's and the Duke of Richmond's Commissions, of the effect of which all men were equally competent to judge; while Mr. Forster's opinion was founded on personal observation. I have very great respect for Mr. Forster and for his opinions; but they do not convince me, even now, that the greater part of the land in Ireland has been over-rented. A complaint has been made that the landlord's rent has been reduced, on the average, from 23 to 25 per cent; but how does my noble and learned Friend propose, by the action of his Committee, to undo that evil? I wish my noble and learned Friend would answer that question for us. How is it to be done by this Committee? I am at a loss to understand how the appointment of a Committee can be of any advantage, or how it could undo any evil, if evil has been done. Is it proposed by this Committee to repeal the Act, or is a new Act to be passed? If not, its effect will be nothing, while it will have a great deal of work to do, because I cannot see what will be the result of it, unless it really assumes the functions of these valuators, Commissioners, and Sub-Commissioners, and

  975
  attempts to do what those officers are appointed to do. I cannot see what that is likely to lead to. As to the rest, the effect upon the Commissioners and upon the country will, I think, be disturbing and unsatisfactory. But it is said by my noble and learned Friend that the Commissioners have not done the work which Parliament intended they should do, because they sent the Sub-Commissioners to different places to operate in the first instance. The facts, however, on that point, are perfectly well known to your Lordships; and if any conclusions are to be founded upon them, you will be able to arrive at them without the Committee. We know that the Commissioners did remain in Dublin until they had appeals to hear. We know that the work in detail was done by the Sub-Commissioners. We cannot get further information on that point. The mere quantity of the work rendered it impossible that the Commissioners could have done it all. It is suggested by my noble and learned Friend that the Commissioners should have started the work by visiting the different Provinces, and by establishing some sort of principles. Perhaps that might have been a good plan; but it is too late now. Neither can you undo it by any resolution of your Committee. It was said the Sub-Commissioners did not properly perform the office of valuators; but the criticism is founded upon a mistake as to the purpose of the personal visits which they paid to particular farms. They visited the farms where there was conflicting evidence before them, to see, by personal observation, whether the allegations as to improvements and the state of the land were correct. It is suggested that they did so in too hurried and cursory a way. Well, the instances brought forward do not seem to be strong. Two hours' visit to a farm may be quite sufficient in a case where it was only necessary to decide which set of witnesses spoke the truth. To appoint a Select Committee to inquire into this—to ascertain how many hours were spent on a farm by this or that Sub-Commissioner—is, I think, not a thing that any of your Lordships would seriously entertain. I cannot understand what new light your Committee will throw on that question. But the Committee is also to go into the general condition of the country. What
  976
  the effect of such an inquiry upon the general condition of the country, under present circumstances, may be, it is for your Lordships to judge. I cannot myself anticipate good from it. It is said that the good effects which some of us, and myself among others, held out to your Lordships as likely to follow from the passing of the Land Act have not been realized; but I am not aware that anybody held out the prospect of their immediate realization. I certainly did not. What I said, when I ventured to recommend the Bill to your Lordships, was, that there existed a state of things dangerous to Ireland and to the position of the landlords, and that I believed the passing of the Act would lessen that danger and strengthen their position. I did not say that these consequences would be realized the moment the Act came into operation. I knew that time would be required. I said I did not care to prophesy; but if I must, I hoped that a happier prospect was before us. I said, as beyond all doubt is the fact, that the Bill would improve the moral position of the Government in the administration of the law in Ireland; and the Government are confident that there is a real, substantial, and progressive improvement in the state of that country. I was astonished to hear from a noble Lord that there was no increase in the payment of rent; the information of the Government is to the contrary. I believe that both in that respect, and in regard to the greater power of the Government to carry on the administration of justice by the ordinary law, and by the extraordinary means obtained from Parliament, there has been a steady advance towards that state of things which all of us desire. I said the measure would, at all events, secure the loyalty of Ulster, and prevent it being drawn into the vortex of turbulence; and I said I believed it would have a beneficial effect in all parts of Ireland. My expectations are still the same. No one would be more disappointed than myself if that should not be the case; but nothing has occurred to justify any one of your Lordships in despairing of that effect. I heard some expressions from the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Waterford) which I was surprised to hear from a man of his high spirit; but I venture to hope that the time will come, and is not far off,

  977
  when the noble Marquess will himself admit that the case is better than he now supposes.
  On question? Their Lordships divided:—Contents 96; Not-Contents 53: Majority 43.

  CONTENTS.

  Beaufort, D.

  Clanbrassill, L. (E. Roden.)

  Leeds, D.

  Norfolk, D.

  Clements, L. (E. Leitrim.)

  Richmond, D.

  Abercorn, M. (D.Abercorn.)

  Clifton, L (E. Darnley.)

  Clinton, L.

  Exeter M.

  Cloncurry, L.

  Hertford, M.

  Colville of Culross, L.

  Salisbury, M.

  Cottesloe, L

  Winchester, M.

  De Freyne, L.

  De L'Isle and Dudley, L.

  Bathurst, E.

  Beauchamp, E.

  Digby, L.

  Cairns, E.

  Donington, L.

  Caledon, E.

  Douglas, L. (E. Home.)

  Clarendon, E.

  Dunsany, L.

  Dartrey, E.

  Ellenborough, L.

  Ellesmere, E.

  Forester, L.

  Kilmorey, E.

  Gormanston, L. (V. Gormanston.)

  Lanesborough, E.

  Lathom, E.

  Grey de Radcliffe, L. (V. Grey de Wilton.)

  Leven and Melville, E.

  Lytton, E.

  Harlech, L.

  Redesdale, E.

  Keane, L.

  Rosse, E.

  Kenry, L. (E. Dunraven and Mount-Earl.)

  Rosslyn, E.

  Sandwich, E.

  Ker, L. (M. Lothian.)

  Selkirk, E.

  Leconfield, L.

  Stanhope, E.

  Londesborough, L.

  Vane, E. (M. Londonderry.)

  Lovel and Holland, L. (E. Egmont.)

  Waldegrave, E.

  Oranmore and Browne, L.

  Cranbrook, V.

  Hawarden V. [Teller.]

  Oriel, L. (V. Massereene.)

  Hood, V.

  Hutchinson, V. (E. Donoughmore.) [Teller.]

  Ormathwaite, L.

  Poltimore, L.

  Polwarth, L.

  Melville, V.

  Raglan, L.

  Templetown, V.

  Ranfurly. L. (E. Ranfurly.)

  Bangor, L. Bp.

  Rossmore, L.

  Gloucester and Bristol, L. Bp.

  Saltersford, L. (E. Courtown..)

  Peterborough, L. Bp.

  Saltoun, L.

  Shute, L. (V. Barrington.)

  Amherst, L.(V. Holmesdale.)

  Somerhill, L. (M. Clanricarde.)

  Ashford, L. (V. Bury.)

  Balfour of Burleigh, L.

  Stanley of Alderley, L.

  Bateman, L.

  Stewart of Garlies, L. (E. Galloway.)

  Borthwick, L.

  Botreaux, L. (E. Loudoun.)

  Strathnairn, L.

  Templemore, L.

  Brabourne, L.

  Tollemache, L.

  Braybrooke, L.

  Tyrone, L. (M. Waterford.)

  Brodrick, L. (V. Midleton.)

  Ventry, L.

  Carleton, L. (E. Shannon.)

  Vernon, L.

  Wentworth, L.

  Carysfort, L. (E. Carysfort.)

  Windsor, L.

  Wynford, L.

  978

  NOT-CONTENTS.

  Selborne, L. (L. Chancellor.)

  Crewe, L.

  De Mauley, L.

  De Tabley, L.

  Bedford, D.

  Dormer, L.

  Westminster, D.

  Emly, L.

  Ettrick, L. (L. Napier.)

  Northampton, M.

  Hammond, L.

  Hatherton, L.

  Camperdown, E.

  Hothfield, L.

  Fortescue, E.

  Kenmare, L. (E. Kenmare.)

  Granville, E.

  Kimberley, E.

  Leigh, L.

  Morley, E.

  Lyttelton, L.

  Northbrook, E.

  Methuen, L.

  Spencer, E.

  Monson, L. [Teller.]

  Sydney, E.

  Mount Temple, L.

  O'Hagan, L.

  Gordon, V. (E. Aberdeen.)

  Ramsay, L. (E. Dalhousie.)

  Sherbrooke, V.

  Ribblesdale, L.

  Romilly, L.

  Aberdare, L.

  Rosebery, L. (E. Rosebery.)

  Auckland, L.

  Blachford, L.

  Sandhurst, L.

  Boyle, L. (E. Cork and Orrery.) [Teller.]

  Strafford, L. (V. Enfield.)

  Braye, L.

  Sudeley, L.

  Breadalbane, L,. (E. Breadalbane.)

  Suffield, L.

  Thurlow, L.

  Carlingford, L.

  Tweeddale, L. (M. Tweeddale.)

  Carrington, L.

  Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

  Tweedmouth, L.

  Wolverton, L.

  Coleridge, L.

  Wrottesley, L.

  Resolved, That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the working of recent legislation in reference to land in Ireland, and its effect upon the condition of the country.
  And, on February 24, the Lords following were named of the Committee:—

  D. Norfolk.

  E. Clarendon.

  D. Somerset.

  E. Cairns.

  D. Marlborough.

  V. Hutchinson.

  M. Salisbury.

  L. Tyrone.

  M. Abercorn.

  L. Carysfort.

  E. Pembroke and Montgomery.

  L. Kenry.

  L. Penzance.

  E. Stanhope.

  L. Brabourne.

  House adjourned at One o'clock, to Monday next, Eleven o'clock.