Sitting of 24 May 1882

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—First Reading—Local Government Provisional Order (No. 10)* [181]; Sale of Intoxicating Liquors on Sunday* [182].
Committee—Prevention of Crime (Ireland) [157], debate adjourned; Supreme Court of Judicature Acts Amendment [154]—R.P.
Third Reading—Local Government Provisional Orders* [131]; Local Government Provisional Orders (Poor Law)* [130], and passed.
Withdrawn—Industrial and Reformatory Schools (Loans) (Ireland)* [69].

IRELAND—RESIGNATION OF THE LORD LIEUTENANT AND CHIEF SECRETARY.

  PERSONAL EXPLANATION.
  MR. W. E. FORSTER: Sir, I beg to ask the House for its attention and indulgence for a few moments while I make a short statement on a personal matter. It arises out of an incident which happened yesterday, at the close of the debate on the second reading of the Arrears Bill. I was not in the body of the House at the time. Had I been, I should have

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  said what I have to say then, and I should have saved the House the trouble of attending to me now. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister called the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Lincolnshire (Mr. J. Lowther), who, I am sorry to see, is not in the House. I sent him private Notice, but possibly he may not have received it. My right hon. Friend called his attention to a statement which he was reported to have made in Yorkshire. It was, I think, to the effect that "Mr. Forster's Colleagues were conducting clandestine negotiations, to a great extent, wholly unknown to him." I must admit that I did not read that speech with attention. It was made after I left Yorkshire, when there was no possibility of my replying to it there, and I did not scan every word as I might otherwise have done. But now that the statement has been alluded to in the House, and as I see by the papers this morning that the right hon. Gentleman seems still to adhere to the statement, I think it due, both to my late Colleagues and myself, to say that the right hon. Gentleman has been absolutely misinformed. The fact is, as I have already stated in the House, I was cognizant of the negotiation to which he doubtless alluded, although the time came when I felt I could no longer share any responsibility connected with it. I repeat what I said before as regards this negotiation, that I would not have referred to it if it had not been referred to by others; but, as it was referred to, I felt it my duty to state exactly what I believed to have occurred so far as I was connected with it. If the right hon. Gentleman were in his place, I should ask him to accept my assurance—and I ask the House to accept it—that it is entirely contrary to my belief that there was anything clandestine in the conduct of the Government.
  MR. GLADSTONE: Sir, I did not think that I had what may be called any legitimate locus standi yesterday when this matter arose; and, therefore, I remained silent after the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman. I now only rise for the purpose of saying, as my right hon. Friend was not in the House, that what happened was this. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Lincolnshire, in reference to something that had fallen from me in a
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  former speech, expressed his desire to explain something or anything he had said, or to justify anything he might have said, in the course of the Yorkshire election. He produced a considerable number of speeches, apparently cut from newspapers; and he was not aware exactly of what passage he was called upon to sustain and justify. It was under these circumstances, I said, if it was convenient to the right hon. Gentleman—as I had the passage here to which reference had been made—that I would read it. He desired that I should do so, and it was upon that I rose and read the passage brought particularly to my attention. I am much obliged to my right hon. Friend (Mr. W. E. Forster). I regret very much that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. J. Lowther) is not here; and, as the matter may be referred to hereafter, I shall not allude to it at greater length now. But, as I have been obliged to say this word, I will merely mention that there is a difference between my right hon. Friend the Member for Bradford and myself. He used the word "negotiation" in connection with certain transactions—a very important word. Of course, there is this great difference between us and him—that we should be compelled to deny, and deny entirely, that the word which my right hon. Friend has used is applicable to what took place.
  MR. CHAPLIN: Sir, I have just this moment received a communication from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Lincolnshire, and perhaps the House will allow me to remind them of the cause of his absence on this occasion. In the first place, I assume that he has not received the Notice in time from the right hon. Gentleman. In the second place, I may mention he is steward of the Jockey Club, and therefore steward of Epsom, where, upon the Derby Day, I presume, he is attending to his duties. The House will remember that my right hon. Friend said last night that if the Prime Minister was able to show him that the communications in question, both upon paper or oral, did not bear the interpretation placed on them he should be ready to withdraw them. After the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the late Chief Secretary for Ireland, I am quite unable to say what interpretation my right hon. Friend would place upon them; but as

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  to the word "negotiations," I think—[Cries of "Order, order!"] If I have the permission of the House, I would like to say, in regard to the word "negotiations"—["Order, order!"]—
  MR. SPEAKER: I think that the hon. Member must feel himself that, in the absence of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Lincolnshire, it is not desirable to pursue this matter further.
  MR. CHAPLIN: I will not refer to the matter further, Sir.

QUESTIONS.

  CRIME (IRELAND)—RETURN OF TRIALS FOR TREASON AND TREASON-FELONY.
  MR. BIGGAR (for Mr. HEALY)asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, How many trials there have been for treason and treason felony in the last ten years in Ireland; how many convictions, disagreements, and acquittals; and, if he will give the same information for the last twelve months as to the other classes of crime which it is proposed to make triable by judges under the new Coercion Act?
  MR. TREVELYAN: Sir, Returns have been called for from all the Crown Solicitors in Ireland, and yesterday nine of these Returns were wanting. Today, however, only one was wanting. If the hon. Member will repeat the Question to-morrow, I expect to be able to give him the information he asks for; and, in case that Return has not come in, I will tell him so then.

  PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881—MR. WILLIAM FENIX AND MR. THOMAS BRENNAN.
  MR. BIGGAR (for Mr. HEALY)asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether Mr. William Fenix has been confined in Clonmel Gaol since the 28th November last; whether the district where he comes from, Causeway, county Kerry, is now peaceable; and, if he can see his way to recommend his discharge?
  MR. TREVELYAN: Sir, Mr. William Fenix has been discharged.
  MR. BIGGAR (for Mr. HEALY)asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, What decision has
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  been come to as to the detention of Mr. Thomas Brennan, secretary to the Land League, now twelve months in gaol?
  MR. TREVELYAN: Sir, within the past week His Excellency has inquired into Mr. Brennan's case, and decided that he could not at present order his release.

  PARLIAMENT—PUBLIC BUSINESS— THE WHITSUNTIDE RECESS.
  SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister can now state what are the prospects with reference to the Whitsuntide Holidays?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I do not wonder, Sir, at the Question of the right hon. Gentleman; but I would ask the indulgence of the House a little longer. I will endeavour to form the best judgment I can, and make a statement on the subject to-morrow.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  PREVENTION OF CRIME (IRELAND) BILL.— [BILL 157.]
  (Secretary Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Attorney General, Mr. Solicitor General, Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, Mr. Solicitor General for Ireland.)
  PREVENTION OF CRIME (IRELAND) BILL.— [BILL 157.]

    COMMITTEE. ADJOURNED DEBATE.
    [SECOND NIGHT.]
    Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment proposed to Question [23rd May], "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."
    And which Amendment was,
    To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "while this House is desirous of aiding Her Majesty's Government in any measures which they can show to be necessary to adopt for preventing, detecting, and punishing crime, it disapproves of restrictions being imposed on the free expression of public opinion in Ireland,"—(Mr. Joseph Cowen,)
    —instead thereof.
    Question again proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
    Debate resumed.
    MR. DILLONsaid, he had placed upon the Notice Paper the following Amendment, which the Forms of the House did not permit him to move:—
    "That the provisions of this Bill are mainly aimed, not at crime, but at political agitation,

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    and if passed into law will render impossible any public combination for protecting the rights of labour in Ireland, and are consequently calculated to drive the oppressed poor in Ireland into secret combination and into crime."
    Although unable to move this Amendment, he had read it to place on record his view of the probable effect of this measure if it should become law. Approaching the subject from that point of view, he would feel bound to refer at some length to the view which the House supposed was held by hon. Members connected with the Land League as to the probable effect of the Arrears Bill on the condition of Ireland. The statements which he had made in private conversations, and which were acquiesced in by his friends, as to the circumstances under which they had reason to hope outrages could be stopped in Ireland, had not been placed before the House clearly. The view which he had stated was briefly this—that if the Government should announce in the House their intention to have done with coercion, and, at the same time, to pass a measure similar in character to the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for New Ross (Mr. Redmond), he believed such a condition of things would then be brought about in Ireland as would give them every reason to hope that they could conduct the agrarian movement within the law to a satisfactory conclusion, without violence, without discord of any kind. He never for one moment, either in private or in public, and, as far as he was aware, none of his Friends, had ever represented that the passing of an Arrears Bill would be a settlement of the Land Question. What he did say was, that the Bill introduced by the Irish Members, prominent in which was a clause dealing with arrears, together with a binding announcement on the part of the Government—and this was essential—that they would definitely abandon the policy of coercion, would place them in a position in which they could confidently say that in a few months their country would return to peace, and that outrage would entirely disappear. He looked forward, as every man of common sense looked, to a settlement of this question, which would be gradual, extending over three, four, or five years; and he told the House once for all that any man who stated to the House or to the English people that
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    the Irish Land Question was going to be settled short of several years was either speaking in ignorance of the situation or was wilfully deceiving the House. A social question of this kind, if settled in five years, would have been settled rapidly. If the two things he had named were done by the Government, he anticipated this revolution, or evolution, in Irish politics would go forward peaceably, and without further demand on the time of that House, because under the Arrears of Rent Bill, and the withdrawal of all coercion, they would be able to tell the Irish peasant that he was safe from eviction; and he thought he saw in the proposed Motion of the right hon. Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) a path along which the Irish peasantry and people might travel peaceably, because protected from eviction, free from outrage, because permitted to remain in their houses, and having the prospect that they would obtain a just and reasonable settlement from the landlords, who might then be expected to be in a reasonable state of mind when they had heard definitely from the Government that no more coercion would be passed to assist them. That was all he said in those private conversations. It was well known that all the members of the Land League were anxious, and had given proof of their anxiety, to conduct the land movement without outrage. That statement he was prepared, if necessary, to substantiate. But he never consented, and he never would consent, to state in that House that he or any other man, be he one of Her Majesty's Ministers, or be he even Mr. Michael Davitt, who had the hearts of the Irish people on his side, could put down outrage in Ireland as long as evictions prevailed. He had always endeavoured to be honest with the House. He had told them that as long as they maintained a law which placed the lives of the peasants at the mercy of the landlords, and left the tenants no tenure except the landlords' forbearance, he could not tell them outrage would cease in Ireland; and, under the circumstances, he had refused to go to Ireland and place himself on the side of the landlords by denouncing outrages. But he had done what he believed to be much more effective for the prevention of outrage—he had from numberless platforms endeavoured to wean

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    the people from outrage. He had never denounced outrage, and never would, until Parliament denounced evictions. But he had endeavoured to point out to the people that their own interests, both as regarded their good name before the world, which had now been sadly blotted by their enemies, and the protection of their rights and the future welfare of their country, distinctly lay in putting a stop to outrage; and he had endeavoured to point out to them that a weapon lay near their hands which could take the place of outrage. That was a point which raised a question of considerable interest. One means which he relied on to prevent murder in Ireland and to alter the character of agrarian agitation was this—that he thought he saw in open public combination acting by somewhat rough methods, but not by such methods as shooting men in the legs, nor by maiming animals, nor by violent outrages, nor by night attacks on dwellings, but by that practice which had been called "Boycotting"—a practice which the Government had denounced as intimidation, but which, he was not ashamed to say, he had openly advocated in Ireland. In this he thought he saw a means by which he could convince the people that they could protect their rights more effectually than by murder and incendiarism, and other processes familiar in the history of Ireland. In any country when injustice was sought to be enforced, be it among the peasantry of Russia or of America, they would have outrage unless they could say to the people—"Here are other means by which you can protect your just rights." Some people appeared to suppose that agrarian crimes were peculiar and exclusive to Ireland; but he wished to direct the attention of the House to the fact that the same system of agrarian crime burst out in any other country where the same oppression was practised upon the people. In an interesting work on the peasantry of Russia, he read, a short time ago, a description of the means by which that peasantry sought to protect themselves against the tyranny of their masters, and they were the means with which the people in Ireland were so familiar. Turning to free America, he remembered the notable occasion, 30 years ago, when within 100 miles of the City of New York an attempt was made to enforce the Land Law in a form repugnant to the people. The rents were exceedingly
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    moderate, but the farmers got it into their heads that they should not pay any rents. What means did they adopt in their defence? They, in a free country, where there were no foreign troops to support a law not made by themselves, entered into a combination. They shot bailiffs; they murdered, in full daylight, the Sheriffs of the United States. That war went on for three years, and it was only ended by the Legislature of that State interfering and purchasing out the landlords. He did not say the peasantry in that State were justified in the means they employed—they had not anything like the justification of the Irish tenants. Those men disguised themselves as Red Indians, as Mohawks, and others, and roamed about the country committing outrages, and created a state of things over which the law could not prevail. He mentioned this to show that where-ever the population of a country was convinced that the law was doing injustice there would be a combination to defeat the law, a combination to protect what the people believed to be their rights, a combination which, if they would not allow it to work by open means, would inevitably work by secret means. The choice they had was solely between secret combination, which was carried on by murder, by house-burning, and by maiming, in Ireland, and open agitation, which they had prevented the Land League from adopting, with what results they had observed during the last 12 months. He recollected having been greatly laughed at in that House when he stated on one occasion that agrarian outrage was an unfortunate legacy in the history of Ireland; and it was said that it was the strange offspring of the Land League. But the truth was, as anybody who had read Irish history knew, that agrarian outrage had never been absent from the country. For the last 150 years agrarian outrage had continued, but varying in intensity and ferocity, exactly as the times were prosperous or bad. It had no reference whatever to the passage of coercion, although they had plenty of that; but it had a striking reference to the rise of agricultural prices, or their depression. He did not want to go fully into this question. To do so would occupy the remainder of this Sitting, and leave him in possession of the House when it next met. He only wished to point out the absurdity of any man talking as if

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    agrarian crime were now a novelty in Ireland. It was well known that in the county which he had the honour of being called on to represent, the Whiteboy Associations, for three years, settled what should be the rent of each, farm, and no landlord could let a farm without the assent of the Whiteboys. That combination broke down, not in the face of coercion, for it had defied for three years the most brutal measures of coercion. It broke down in the face of returning and increasing agricultural prosperity. Then they had the case of the famous Galway cattle houghers. For a long time the people of Galway and Clare had been driven out of their holdings, which were turned into grazing tracts. A savage spirit had been smouldering in the minds of the people; and Mr. Froude, in his English in Ireland during the Eighteenth Century, stated that in one night the population rose, and 10,000 or 20,000 head of cattle were left lying dead on the plains of Galway. The result, he said, was that the cattle graziers retired beyond the Shannon, and soon left the people in peace. He mentioned these cases to point out that if any statesman wished to deal with the evils of a country, to remedy disaffection, and to remove disorder, his first duty was to understand the causes of that disorder. There were men in that House who believed that the disorder, the mutilations, the outrages, the atrocious outrages of recent months, which were far worse than any that occurred before the suppression of the Land League, because no man was then shot in the legs, and none of the beastly outrages of recent months were committed then, that all these things were done by the Irish from badness of nature. That condition of mind utterly unfitted its possessor for approaching this question. The Irish people had been in a certain sense—he hoped he would not offend the Irish people by saying it—demoralized by the lesson taught them from the days of Berkeley and Swift, and the Rapparees; taught invariably by the English Government, that no right would be given them, that no protection existed for the poor man, except the protection of the Rapparee and the Rockite and the Whiteboy. On one occasion when they submitted peaceably and lay down to starve, the English Government taught them they could quietly look on while
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    2,000,000 people were swept away. If the Irish people had been under the banner of "Captain Moonlight" in 1847 there would have been a different story to tell. When that lesson had entered into the midst of a people coercion was as ineffectual against them as buckshot pellets would be against a fortress. This lesson had been taught during the tithe war, when the Lord Chancellor said he would make the blood of the Irish people flow rather than permit them not to pay the tithes. The people resisted and won their point. The latest illustration of that lesson was when the late Chief Secretary for Ireland, after the Compensation for Disturbance Bill was thrown out, stated that if the Government found the landlords were to any extent making use of their powers so as to force the Government to support them in the exercise of injustice in Ireland, the Government should accompany any request they might be obliged to make to Parliament for further powers with a Bill to relieve them from the necessity of supporting injustice. In that sentence was contained the fatal admission that the Irish landlord, without going outside the law, could commit injustice. The Chief Secretary also intimated substantially that unless there was disorder in Ireland during the autumn Parliament would not be called together, and nothing would be done. To that statement he attributed a vast deal of the disorder which had since taken place. Crime and evictions had a relation with each other—outrages were committed by the people as a means of protection against eviction. Where the people were in dread of eviction these outrages were committed, and the murder of a man who was negotiating for a farm about to be vacant was often the means of putting a stop to evictions. But for the outrages evictions would have been ten times more numerous in Connaught and Munster. If the Government could succeed—which they would not—in putting down outrages tomorrow by that horrible Coercion Bill, and in reducing the people to a condition of absolute quiet, evictions would be multiplied to such an extent, even in spite of the Arrears Bill, that the House would be called upon, from mere shame, to interfere. The Arrears Bill was nothing more nor less than a gift to the Irish landlords, and a way for the Government to escape from the horrible

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    imbroglio into which they had got themselves by neglecting the advice of the men who, by their own admission, represented the feelings of the mass of the Irish people. The English Government had supported the Irish landlords in the oppression and extortion they practised on the people; and now their friends—their somewhat expensive friends, he might call them—insisted that they must reward their fidelity to the English interest in Ireland by paying off some of the debts which, but for them, they could never recover. It was all owing to the interference of England that they had to pay that money to the Irish landlords, Let the experiment be tried of leaving the landlords face to face with the people, and of allowing Irishmen to settle matters for themselves just for one year, and they would come back and show them that the Arrears Question had been settled without a penny expense to the English Exchequer. The landlords in Ireland, according to their lights—he did not now stop to inquire whether they were true or false lights—had served English interests; and if Englishmen, in their generosity, were determined to stand by those men he had no objection to their relieving their necessities. Those necessities were, no doubt, in many cases, great, often affecting innocent women and children. But he protested against the arrears proposal of the Government being described, in any sense, as a gift to the Irish tenant. It was a gift to the Irish landlord; it was a penalty brought upon England because she had supported a system of iniquity, carried out at an enormous cost; and now that the instruments of that iniquity had got to the bottom of their resources, they were to have a gift. In the interest of peace, and in the hope of getting rid of those abominable outrages, as Englishmen had insisted on employing armed police and troops to enforce the unjust rights of the Irish landlords, he did not object to their paying a portion of the cost themselves. The hon. and learned Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power), the previous evening, denounced the doctrine of "Boycotting" as brutal and immoral. It ill became the hon. and learned Member for Mayo to denounce as brutal and abominable a doctrine which had kept the roof-tree over the heads of hundreds of poor families in the county he represented. He (Mr. Dillon) was
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    prepared to resign his seat to-morrow, and he challenged the hon. and learned Member for Mayo to do the same, and he would go before the electors of Mayo with the hon. and learned Member, making their appeal on the question whether "Boycotting" was brutal and immoral, or not. He offered that challenge in all honesty and fairness, and he was perfectly ready to abide by the decision of the Mayo electors. He had always told the people of Ireland that the doctrine of "Boycotting" was the lesser of two evils. Were he an Englishman, living in a free country, there was no man who would denounce "Boycotting" more earnestly than he would; but the doctrine of "Boycotting" was an evil forced upon an unwilling people by the refusal of the Government to give them protection. He told the Irish people that, as the Government had refused to protect them, they had nothing left but to protect themselves. He did not recommend them to use violence. He only said there was no method of protection open to them but that of "Boycotting." Had they ever heard of Lynch Law? He supposed, from its name, that it was started by an Irishman. If they had lived in mining camps in California or Australia they would have been glad of the protection of Lynch Law rather than to be at the mercy of every ruffian. As he said, "Boycotting" was the lesser of two evils; and if he saw the people of his country driven out upon the highway to starve, he preferred to advocate the system of "Boycotting" as a means of protecting them, than to see introduced the methods of "Captain Moonlight" or "Captain Rock." He had had the pleasure of hearing for the first time in that House a speech from the Solicitor General for Ireland last night, and he regretted that he could not congratulate the Government on either of their Law Officers. The speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman, though marked by considerable eloquence and force, reminded him strongly of the jury-box. It was characterized by excessive enthusiasm and excessive zeal; but he would submit to the House that the Bill they were now discussing was not one on which any Irishman ought to exhibit enthusiasm, no matter what his views might be. If any Irishman believed honestly that the Bill was necessary, he should be ashamed of the position

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    which his country held as requiring it, rather than anxious to display his enthusiasm and zeal. But the hon. and learned Gentleman's zeal was so great, and his enthusiasm so tremendous, that they had carried him away into demonstrating, to his own satisfaction, no doubt, that that Bill would be equally good for England, Scotland, France, or any other country under the sun as for Ireland. In the beginning of his speech a sentence occurred which he had often heard before, and notably as having been used in the Guildhall of London on an occasion which was a disgrace to Englishmen living in that City. "In the present circumstances," said the Solicitor General for Ireland, "it was obvious that the law must assert itself, or disorder must prevail;" but within the past 18 months the law had upon eight or ten different occasions ferociously and furiously asserted itself in Ireland; and the result had always been that things were much worse after than before. It first asserted itself when he was arrested—when outrages increased tremendously in Ireland—and it next asserted itself brutally and furiously in Dublin, in the month of October, when the streets of the city were like a battlefield, and when, in the opinion of moderate men unconnected with politics, an attempt was made to provoke an insurrection on the peaceable citizens. But that did not matter much, because, like the eel which was said to be accustomed to skinning, the people of Ireland had become hardened to those declarations that the law must assert itself. They all knew the sad experience of the past eight months; and he ventured to say that the cause was very far absent from the tremendous denunciations of the Solicitor General for Ireland. The next part of the speech which attracted his attention was that which announced that the Government thought the Bill was not strong enough, and that they were to have an unlimited system of packing juries and a change of venue. He wished to state distinctly for himself that he should prefer, if he had to of venue and a trial by three Judges, he would infinitely prefer the latter tribunal, because out of three Judges there would be a chance of getting one fair, and that one would save him from condemnation. He should like to know what chance he would have before a
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    Belfast jury, or before any other jury packed in the North of Ireland? Why, they would dispense with the evidence altogether, as the Attorney General for Ireland well knew, and convict him at once. In the City of Dublin a large class of persons had frequently expressed a desire that he and seven or eight other Irish Members should be summarily hung. He had heard it from friends who were at the table when the proposal was made. The Solicitor General for Ireland next proceeded to make an extraordinary attack on the Press of Ireland; but, when questioned, he was obliged to admit that the organ he was quoting from was one of an extraordinary character belonging to O'Donovan Rossa. He begged to assure the House that Mr. O'Donovan Rossa had no influence in Ireland. He had the best of influence amongst a very narrow class; but they were utterly insignificant, except in their desperation. He knew Mr. O'Donovan Rossa and his friends, and if the British Government had nothing else to contend against in Ireland they would find their task very easy. Of course, O'Donovan Rossa endeavoured to increase his income by making furious attacks in the United Irishman, which, by the way, was always in a state of bankruptcy, and was only kept alive by denunciations in that House; but what responsibility could the people of Ireland have for O'Donovan Rossa's organ? The Solicitor General for Ireland, while indulging in vague generalities about the Irish papers, did not quote one single sentence from an Irish newspaper to justify his denunciation. One of the accusations he made against the organ which was connected with the Land League in Ireland was that it re-published a certain statement from O'Donovan Rossa's newspaper. He (Mr. Dillon) never saw O'Donovan Rossa's newspaper, and his information about that organ was taken almost exclusively from The Daily Express, of Dublin, which reproduced its most spicy articles every week for the benefit of the Tories of Ireland. What would the people of England say to the Solicitor General's dictum that "the liberties of the Press were best secured by the discretion of the responsible Executive?" From the Press of London he could make extracts which would justify the most stringent Coercion Act ever invented—extracts justifying assassination, and referring in the

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    most insulting terms to the Royal Family in connection with Prince Leopold's marriage. The truth was that the Press of Ireland was so much subdued already by the fear of prosecution that it dared not assert itself like some sections of the English Press of which the law took no notice. Then, with respect to public meetings, as with respect to the Press, the hon. and learned Gentleman said the vital necessities of society required that they should be held in check. Those were words which, he believed, the Radicals of England had often heard before the Reform Bill. The "vital interests of society," interpreted into plain English, only meant that the privileges of the landed aristocracy absolutely required the extinction of the Press, and the suppression of public meetings, in order to secure them undisturbed and unimpaired. Another extraordinary statement of the Solicitor General for Ireland was that American agents were engaged in every town in Ireland organizing mischief. If that were true, the best thing Englishmen could do would be to take the advice the Prime Minister once gave to the Turks in Bulgaria, and clear out of Ireland "bag and baggage." The Solicitor General for Ireland further deplored the scandal to their jurisprudence of having no power to compel persons who witnessed murders to come forward and give evidence. It was easy to imagine a power to compel persons to come forward; but how could they make them give evidence? Was the hon. and learned Gentleman to go back to the rack and pitch cap, which were in use in Ireland formerly, in order to force people to disclose what they knew? He rarely heard such an extraordinary piece of ignorance of the Irish character, or such an attempt to hood-wink the House. The hon. and learned Gentleman launched into a tremendous burst of enthusiasm over the subject of the blood tax. They were perfectly familiar with the blood tax in Ireland. It had been tried in that country as well as in many others, and anyone who read the history of its operation could not convince himself that it stopped a single murder. The men who would have to pay the blood tax were not the men who would commit the murder. If it were true that there was an extensive system of terrorism, as the Government believed, did it not occur to them that the Irish peasant would prefer to pay the blood tax than to risk his
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    life? The blood tax might make the Irish peasant sorry for the murder, unless he obtained some advantage from it; but he failed to see how it would induce him to risk his own life in order to avoid the payment of a small sum. The only effect of the blood-tax would be to further impoverish the country, and to plant more deeply in the minds of the people the belief that they were to get no justice at all. Taking the case of the recent Phœnix Park murders, for instance, upon whom would the blood tax fall? Upon the very people who were most anxious to assist the police in discovering the assassins; and the probable effect would be to engender resentment in their minds, and make them hold aloof from the search. They had been told, over and over again, by the Government that the persons who committed these outrages were strangers in the district. By this Bill they proposed to impose an enormous tax on the people for crimes which, according to themselves, had been committed by hired assassins. The proposal was so unreasonable that he felt it difficult to understand why it was advocated by Irish landlords, except they wished to break down the spirit of the people. The Solicitor General for Ireland mentioned that the infamous Major Sirr preserved his life by putting his name into the leases of all the tenants of Tipperary. That was, undoubtedly, a very ingenious method, and he hoped the Solicitor General for Ireland would recommend it to all the Irish landlords. He believed the effect of this Bill would be to make the people more opposed to the law, and to promote secret combinations to defeat its provisions. But it would also have an effect upon the landlords of Ireland. The only policy which gave any promise of peace in Ireland was the abandonment of coercion. The landlords of Ireland had reached that stage that they were anxious to part with their land on reasonable terms to the tenants. He had always said that until that moment arrived there was no hope of a settlement. But the new Coercion Act instantly changed the minds of the Irish landlords. They no longer intended to part with their land on reasonable terms, and had abandoned the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. H. Smith), which was brought forward with that intention. They did not intend to part with their land now; and if they did, they intended to use the Coercion

    1547
    Act in order to compel the tenants to pay four or five years' purchase more for it. If the Government abandoned coercion they would have taken 20 or 22 years' purchase; but now they would ask 26 or 27. They knew perfectly well that if they could, by means of the Coercion Act, break up the combination of the tenants, and deal with them individually, they would bully them into paying far more than the value for the land. What was to be the result of all this? He did not suppose the House would take the slightest notice of what he said; but that would come to pass, nevertheless. The tenantry would not buy, because the proposals which would be made to them would be of such a character that the Land League could not advise them to buy. The land war would therefore go on smouldering, with occasional horrible outrages and secret combinations, until this Bill expired; then the Land League would spring up again, and the Government would be face to face with an Irish land movement greater than they had to deal with two years ago. If, on the other hand, the Government had abandoned coercion, he was convinced that the Irish Land Question would have been settled—not this year, and not next year—but within the next five years in a peaceable way, and Englishmen would no longer be troubled with it in that House. The Irish landlords had begun to realize the situation. They would have seen what they were now beginning to forget, that when the next land movement came they would be glad to take 10 years' purchase instead of 20. He was aware that in Ireland he was denounced by men as a heretic, because he said any number of years' purchase at all; and he warned the House that these were becoming the men of the future. If the Irish landlords brought back upon the necks of the people another and infamous Coercion Act; if they had to pass through a horrible period of outrage in Ireland, when "Captain Moonlight" would take the place of the Land League in spite of their Coercion Acts; if the loyalty of the people was entirely turned to him and away from the Land League, then the moment the right of public meeting was given back to the people the Government would have to face a much more advanced platform than the platform of the Land League, and the Irish landlords would awaken to a real sense of their position. The
    1548
    House might depend upon it that the Irish peasantry would make their voices heard in the Legislature, and the English Government would become convinced of the folly of ranging their power on the side of a small and insignificant knot of aristocracy, while they left the Representatives of Ireland, who were independent Nationalists, to stand with the masses of their people, who must in the end prevail.
    MR. GLADSTONE: Sir, I think the House will feel—at least, that portion of the House who listened to the early part of the speech we have just heard—that it ought not to be allowed to pass without some immediate notice from the Government. I do not intend to reply to that speech in the spirit of anger. Anger it might excite in some minds—other and stronger and more durable emotions must be excited in the minds of those who are responsible for the peace of this country, and whose dearest desire it is to establish harmony between England and Ireland. Still, I will use the severest epithet that I mean to employ; and I tell the hon. Gentleman that to every man—with the exception of the group to which he belongs—to every man who desires to see harmony between England and Ireland, the speech he has just delivered is a heartbreaking speech. I do not expect that that representation will have the slightest effect upon the steeled feelings of the hon. Member; but I think it may have an effect upon some minds. There are those in this House who may have sympathized to a great extent with the hon. Gentleman, but who are not prepared to go the fearful lengths he has this day described. In one respect I thank the hon. Member for that portion of his speech. It tends, at least, to the attainment of one great public object—that is to say, to clearing the issue which is raised between the Government and between all law-abiding men on one side, and the hon. Member on the other. What has been told us—deliberately and even coldly told us by the hon. Gentleman, with perfect self-possession, not in the heat of debate, having well prepared the sentiments he was about to deliver—what are the propositions which, with, almost mathematical rigour, he has laid down to-day? He begins by saying that he will refuse to denounce outrage as long as we refuse to denounce eviction. [Mr. BIGGAR: Hear, hear?] Now, let us see what is the mean-

    1549
    ing of that proposition. I do not wish to speak in heat. I will not be driven to the expression of passionate or extreme opinion.
    MR. DILLON: It is only just to me that the right hon. Gentleman should give the context of my observations. I said I had endeavoured to wean the people from outrage.
    MR. GLADSTONE: I am very glad the hon. Member should give whatever explanation he thinks fit. I should have referred, without his interposition, in a few moments to what he has just said. I stand, however, upon my declaration—it is a correct declaration. Now, what does it mean? I am not here to express extreme opinions against the hon. Member, though, perhaps, he may have done something to provoke them. Eviction is the exercise of an undoubted legal right, which may be to the prejudice of your neighbour, which may involve the very highest moral responsibility—nay, even deep moral guilt upon the person exercising it. There may be outrages, all things considered—the persons and the facts—that may be less guilty in the sight of God than evictions. That I do not deny; but there may be evictions which are the last, the extreme, the inevitable remedy for the establishment of those legal rights on which the existence of society depends—against the man who deliberately and insolently and wilfully denies them, the man who audaciously refuses to fulfil his contract—the most equitable contract in the world—a contract under the judicial rents recently established, with money in his pocket, perhaps loaded with benefits from the man whom he defies. And in the case where the possessor of property, after exhausting every means of conciliation, is driven to make use of the powers of the law for the establishment of legal right, and perhaps to support himself and family, that man is placed, by the deliberate declaration of the hon. Gentleman, upon the footing of a perpetrator of outrage; and we are called upon to denounce evictions with the same sense, and even with the same unlimited scope, as we are allowed to denounce outrage. Upon these conditions it is that the hon. Gentleman will proceed to Ireland to denounce outrages. I have not exaggerated a word. I would not for a world exaggerate a word. The fact is that what has been said by the hon. Member does not require exaggeration.
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    I will almost say it does not admit of exaggeration. But that these declarations should be made on behalf of the people of Ireland—that they should be made in the name of liberty in this great temple of liberty—[Mr. BIGGAR: Oh, oh!]—and the scoffing of the hon. Member for Cavan consummates a state of affairs which is among the gravest and the most grievous facts which can carry sorrow to the depth of my heart, or rejoicing and mockery to the heart of the hon. Member for Cavan. The hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) says he has endeavoured to wean the people from outrage, and he goes on to tell us from what it is that he endeavours to wean the people. He endeavours to wean the people from what he terms outrages; but he takes care that we shall not misunderstand him. The hon. Gentleman is perfectly ingenuous. He does not mean by outrage the perpetration of illegal acts. He conceives that the safe and the wise course which he, as a friend of liberty, recommends is, to draw a deliberate and advised distinction, and to found the policy upon a distinction between one kind of illegality and another. There is one kind of illegality which, though he will not denounce it except on the condition I have described, yet he will try to wean the people from, and that is what he terms violent outrage—murder, for example. That, evidently, the hon. Gentleman will not denounce—oh, no; he will not denounce it. The view he takes of murder may be judged of, perhaps, from another passage of his speech which I noticed incidentally, and took down when the hon. Gentleman was speaking on what he called the blood tax, and showing how useful the blood tax would be. With great naïveté he let fall a sentence which opened to us the interior of his heart; and the sentence was this. He said—
    "What will a mere Wood tax do? It is quite useless. It may make the Irish peasant sorry for the murder unless he obtains the advantage of it."
    That sentence I quote faithfully from his speech; and it really wants nothing to complete the scene and the testimony except the usual mocking cheer of the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar). Well, as to the distinction between one kind of outrage and another, murder is not to be denounced unless eviction—including such eviction as I have described—is to be denounced

    1551
    also. And the people are to be weaned from murder by such, a process! But what does the hon. Member consider the kind of outrage which is not to be denounced, and from which the people are not to be weaned; but upon which, on the contrary, the policy towards Ireland is to be founded? The process called "Boycotting" is, according to the hon. Member, a legitimate and proper process. What is meant by "Boycotting?" In the first place, it is combined intimidation. In the second place, it is combined intimidation made use of for the purpose of destroying the private liberty of choice by fear of ruin and starvation. In the third place, that being what "Boycotting" is in itself, we must look to this—that the creed of "Boycotting," like every other creed, requires a sanction; and the sanction of "Boycotting"—that which stands in the rear of "Boycotting, and by which alone "Boycotting" can in the long run be made thoroughly effective—is the murder which is not to be denounced. ["No!"]
    MR. DILLON: I have over and over again, as I stated to the House, defined what I meant by "Boycotting;" and if the right hon. Gentleman challenges me to the proof, I can bring passage after passage of my speeches in which I denounced outrage.
    MR. GLADSTONE: I have not in the least misrepresented the hon. Gentleman. What I have stated is in precise accordance with what he has said. By "Boycotting," he means nothing but merely ruining men who claim to exercise their private judgment in a direction opposite to his. That is all he means. What I say is this—that men who resort to illegality as a policy, a system, within certain limits, have no right to expect the observance of those limits by others. Others will not observe your very arbitrary limits; they do not rest on the sanction of law or on the traditions of society, but on the private judgment of the hon. Member; and the hon. Member, and everyone who is not a child, ought to know that those who advisedly recommend that absurdity and sanction that illegality are responsible for other illegalities.
    MR. DILLON: I have quoted the words of the right hon. Gentleman himself to the people of Ireland that "Boycotting" was not illegal; it was on that ground I went.
    MR. GLADSTONE: I am not aware how I ever could, and, as a matter of fact, I never did, make such a declaration—never.
    MR. DILLON: Yes; and in this House.
    MR. GLADSTONE: I have stated that there might be exclusive dealing between men. But that is a totally different thing; and, unless I am much mistaken, that declaration was made before "Boycotting" was heard of. [Cries of "No!"] At any rate, before that which is known as "Boycotting" was established in the way that has made it illegal. I may have said, and I say now, that I have a perfect right to deal with one man rather than another, and even to tell people that I am doing so; but that has nothing to do with combined intimidation exercised for the purpose of inflicting ruin and driving men to do what they do not want to do, and preventing them from doing what they have a right to do. That is illegal, and that is the illegality recommended by the hon. Gentleman; and it is plain that those who recommend and sanction such illegality are responsible for other illegalities, even though they do not directly sanction them. But the hon. Gentleman goes further, and shows very clearly what his meaning is, because he selects for denunciation even one upon his own Benches—the hon. and learned Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power). That hon. Member has committed himself to a most grievous and dangerous proposition—that is to say, he has stated that he will not stand outrage upon any terms; and he condemns and denounces the system of intimidation known as "Boycotting," which interferes with private liberty and threatens the infliction of ruin upon the exercise of private rights. Upon this declaration of the hon. and learned Member for Mayo, he is denounced by the hon. Member for Tipperary; he is threatened with the vengeance of his constituents; a sentence of political "Boycotting" is pronounced upon him. The hon. and learned Member for Mayo is a man who has gone great lengths in the assertion of Nationalism. I have heard him in many able and striking speches enforce the doctrine of Irish independence to a degree and with a scope in which few would be prepared to follow him. But the hon. Member, so far as I know

    1553
    from his Parliamentary career, has been distinguished for that which I now want to bring out into the face of day, and to impress upon the minds of men so that it cannot be mistaken. The hon. and learned Member for Mayo, while recommending Irish independence, has invariably confined himself within the limits of legality. And that is the difference between the hon. Gentleman opposite and ourselves. Our contention is this. Whatever the Irish people may have to desire—whatever they may rightly seek, or whatever they may erroneously seek—it is the bounden, the solemn, and the sacred duty of every man who belongs to them, of every man who represents them, to seek these objects by legal means. Now, let me be understood. What is, and what is not, the difference between us and the hon. Gentleman? He seemed to think that there had been some attempt to filch from him, on the part of the Government, or myself, the title which he thinks he possesses to pursue great further changes in the Land Laws of Ireland. I believe that great further changes in the Land Law of Ireland are unnecessary, and, therefore, would be unjust; but I do not deny the title of the hon. Gentleman, whether rightly or wrongly, to pursue what further changes he likes in the Land Law of Ireland, or in the political law of Ireland, or in the relations of Ireland to England. I am afraid of none of these questions, if you will keep them within the bounds of legality—if you will make your appeal to reason, if you will respect private judgment, if you will grant to every subject of the Queen the liberty that you claim for yourself, and exercise as well as claim. There is the secret of safety. There is the dividing line. I am never afraid of violent or extreme opinions, because I know that, if brought to the test of argument and reason, they will be reduced within the limits of justice and of safety, and that they will issue in some good result. But the hon. Gentleman comes here as the apostle of a different creed. He comes here as the apostle of a creed which is a creed of force, which is a creed of oppression, which is a creed of the destruction of all liberty, and of the erection of a despotism against it, and on its ruins, different from every other despotism only in this—that it is more absolutely detached from all law,
    1554
    from all tradition, and from all restraint. The hon. Gentleman says that if Her Majesty's Government will abandon coercion, and if they will re-cast the Land Act, then the Land Question may be settled on the basis of legal agitation. There is the groundwork of the new treaty offered by the hon. Gentleman. What is the meaning of abandonment of coercion? It means no Bill of restraint of any kind, except what is now contained in the ordinary law, is to be introduced against any evil doers whatever in regard to Ireland. That is the first condition, and besides that, there is the complete re-casting, a fundamental re-casting as I understand it, of the Land Act of last year; and what is the reward? It is that the Land Question may be fought out on the basis of legal agitation now. I tell the hon. Gentleman that he has no right to pursue the land campaign upon any other basis than that of legal agitation, whether we conform to these conditions, or whether we do not.
    MR. DILLON: The right hon. Gentleman must have misunderstood me. I said that we could then be in a position to assure the Government that murder, and all acts of violence and outrage, and all breaches of the law, would cease.
    MR. GLADSTONE: I am glad to accept that explanation. I am bound to say that I think that is a change from what was proposed by the hon. Gentleman; but it does not qualify anything I have previously had occasion to say. And now I turn to a very different matter—I turn for a few moments to the speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell). Although that speech was a severe and trenchant criticism of the Bill for which I am responsible, yet I need not say that I recognize, in the first place, the great ability of my hon. and learned Friend; and, in the second place, the Parliamentary and Constitutional spirit in which, while claiming full liberty of speech, he submits everything to the general judgment of the House, and only aims at attaining a common result by the best means we can contrive. In reference to that speech, I will say very little as to the details; but I will observe that my hon. and learned Friend, with great satisfaction, admitted that there are important clauses in this Bill with regard to strangers,

    1555
    with regard to search, and some other very important clauses, which my hon. and learned Friend expressed his distinct readiness, in principle, to entertain; but my hon. and learned Friend stated that he was not prepared, if I understood him rightly, to accede to the establishment of a special tribunal; and he gave, as a reason for that, that this special tribunal was condemned to inefficiency beforehand by the declaration of the Judges of Ireland. Sir, I join with him in all the expressions of respect for the Irish Judges which he used; but the resolution of the Judges of Ireland was a resolution as to the effect that, in their opinion, would be produced upon the feeling of the people of Ireland towards public justice should this special tribunal be instituted. But, Sir, that is not a matter on which the Judges of Ireland can speak judicially. That is really a political and not a judicial matter, and it is one upon which Parliament must exercise a supreme judgment; and the position of Parliament would be a ludicrous position, and it would be an unmanly abandonment of duty, provided we believe the institution of this tribunal to be necessary, and provided we see no other or better means of accomplishment, were we to recede from that intention because of the opinion which the Judges of Ireland may have, or a large portion of them might entertain, as to the social, moral, and political effects it might produce. It is not the business of Judges to measure or to be responsible for the social and moral effects of legislation. It is the business of the Legislature, and we must take upon ourselves that responsibility. That being so, what is the position of my hon. and learned Friend? He admitted that there were cases, and he did not say that they were few, in which the verdict of juries, in regard particularly to agrarian matters in Ireland, had been against the evidence. Our contention is this—we can make it in cold blood, and what I desire is that the House shall consider and dispose of it in cold blood—that that is an evil for which we ought to adopt a remedy if we can, and that a special tribunal, if it will do no more—we believe it will do much more—but if it will do no more than secure that in that number of cases, not apparently inconsiderable, verdicts shall be had, crime shall be punished, right
    1556
    shall be done where hitherto verdicts have not been had, where crime has hitherto not been punished, and where justice has not been done—that is an object which we may legitimately pursue, and let it be considered in Committee on the Bill whether it ought not to be pursued. My hon. and learned Friend has spoken on a variety of subjects, with regard to which I am not inclined to follow him in detail. Respecting the appeal from Resident Magistrates, that is a question which is still open; but the Government themselves, with the full concurrence of the Viceroy, are prepared to propose what they think a safe, but, at the same time, an important change. With respect to intimidation, that is a point which has been touched on by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power). I listened with perfect and entire respect to the remarks which he made upon it. The question of the definition of intimidation is, of course, a fair question for the Committee on the Bill; but this I am bound to say—that it would be inconsistent in us to provide that while the Bill should continue to strike at intimidation, it should not strike at incitement to intimidation. To this demand it is quite impossible to accede. In our opinion, not only is incitement to intimidation, especially if addressed to large masses, and with influence at its back, not only is it a thing to be included as well as intimidation, but it is a thing of far greater responsibility, and far greater legal and moral guilt than the mere execution of intimidation which has been inspired and suggested from higher quarters. As I have said, I do not think it is necessary for me to dwell further on the particulars of the Bill. What I do wish to accomplish is to make some kind of appeal to all such Members of the House, and especially to all persons inclined to object to this Bill—to make an appeal to such persons as may be inclined to listen. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle (Mr. Joseph Cowen) introduced his Motion last night in a very interesting—I own I think in a highly and perhaps unnecessarily rhetorical, but a very interesting and eloquent speech—and many more interesting and eloquent speeches of the same kind, I have no doubt, probably may be made upon the subject. But last week, when we were

    1557
    upon the second reading of the Bill, I with pleasure acknowledged the reasonableness of the disposition that had been shown on the part of the opponents of the Bill. I can perfectly understand their objections to the Bill from their point of view. I can understand their feeling the necessity, from their point of view, which is the opposite of ours, the necessity of delivering a most deliberate and determined protest against the Bill. Above all, I can understand their pursuing fair and detailed arguments, so far as they may find it necessary, against the several provisions of the Bill when we get into Committee. But, Sir, if I may judge from the speech I have just heard, and from the introductory speech in the debate from the hon. Member for Newcastle, it seems as if some Gentlemen were inclined—I do not know from deliberate purpose or not—were inclined to enter upon a great prolongation of this, and possibly of some other similar debates; and the question I put to them is this—Is there any conceivable good to be derived from such prolongation? Certainly, there is no such good to be derived from prolonged debates upon the general subjects of what I may call historical subjects of Irish policy. There is no good to be derived from them in the case of the great mass of Members in this House representing Ireland and representing Scotland, desirous, if they can, to do something on behalf of those two nations. There is no desire for prolongation on behalf of those Irish Members who think it necessary that a Bill of this kind should be passed; but ought there to be such a desire on the part of those Irish Members who object to the Bill? I do not suspect the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, I assure you, of harbouring in his heart anything further than what he has disclosed to us to-day. But I must say, unless there be here persons whose deliberate desire it is to exasperate animosity between England and Ireland, I hold that they ought to concur with the Government in wishing to restrain these discussions within moderate limits. They can do nothing. Sir, but raise excited passion. Appeals were made to the Government to recede from this Bill; but those who make those appeals must know quite as well as the Government that an answer—an affirmative answer—to such
    1558
    appeals is totally impossible—impossible in principle, impossible in duty, impossible in conscience, impossible in fact, because a Government capable of introducing such a Bill, and of abandoning it, must, ought, and would, in a few days cease to be. Sir, I must humbly submit that we have very important Irish Business to transact outside the limits of this Bill. I must now ask for the abbreviation of its discussion in detail. Take, for example, the argument just delivered by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Tipperary on the Press of Ireland—a most legitimate argument, in my opinion, for him to make upon the question of the Press Clause; but he makes it now naturally without result, without attaining any practical purpose. I am not asking for the cutting short of the discussion on the clauses of this Bill; but I am beseeching and entreating hon. Members to consider for a moment whether any good is to be gained by the prolongation of debates on the historical aspects of Irish policy, and of the relations between the two countries. Surely, Sir, the fact of the dependence of the Arrears Bill, with which it is impossible for us to make further progress until we have despatched the stage we are now approaching in Committee on the Prevention of Crime Bill, ought to weigh on the minds of those who are opposed to the present Bill. Every one of them, I believe, without exception, wishes for the Arrears Bill—most of them wish very fervently for the Arrears Bill. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has said to us that if we would only leave it to him and those who are with him they would settle the Arrears Question. But then, Sir, he has indicated, in some faint degree, the manner in which it would be settled. The hon. Gentleman quotes the authority of Lynch Law, and he has some respect for Lynch Law. [Mr. DILLON: In California.] I entirely agree with him. I have a very considerable respect for Lynch Law. But I have always understood Lynch Law is the law which is allowed to prevail in a country where there is no other law whatever. There is this difference between the case of Lynch Law and no law; but I am averse to quote Lynch Law as an apology for introducing something very like Lynch Law into what, after all, is a civilized country with a legal system in part, and,

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    I believe, in the main good, but, at any rate, capable of being directed to the best interests of society. Therefore, we cannot proceed in that way; and we must proceed with the measures before Parliament. It is admitted that thousands and tens of thousands of the very poorest and most destitute of the people of Ireland are dependent on the passing of that Arrears Bill for obtaining a hope of comfort and settled peace and tranquillity. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) reminded us, with great appropriateness, I think yesterday, that every day the six months' equity of redemption is expiring for some of those persons. Now, I appeal to hon. Gentlemen who sit in that part of the House—I do not seek to limit the vehemence of their protests—I do not say a word against their discussing the Bill in detail in Committee; but, under these circumstances, is it right for them, or right for any of us, that we should needlessly prolong, by discussions essentially retrospective and historical, the stages of this Bill? I say, protest as you like. I say, condemn the Government as you please. Put no limits upon the undoubted political title you enjoy to canvass freely their conduct, and to pronounce upon it what sentence you wish; but do not, I beseech you, obstruct the passage of this Bill, or give a title to any other person to obstruct the passage of any other Bill which you yourselves regard as of vital importance to the country.
    MR. DAWSONsaid, he felt it necessary, on account of his connection with the City of Dublin, to say a few words on the part of his fellow-citizens with respect to the recent awful crime which had been perpetrated in the Phœnix Park. The universal spontaneous feeling was throughout Ireland one of horror and indignation; but it was especially so in the Metropolis of the country. He had had the privilege of knowing the late Lord Frederick Cavendish, and he had always been struck with the care and untiring energy with which he discharged his public duties, and the unvarying good temper and good humour which he displayed. The only thing that clouded the universal indignation felt for that terrible occurrence was the popular surprise and disappointment occasioned by the fruitless efforts of the expensive and useless executive in discovering the criminals. So ominous were
    1560
    the prophetic threatenings before the terrible tragedy occurred that the air of Dublin was tilled with them. People seemed to know that something was going to happen. Within the precincts of the Castle itself it was said—"Wait a while; there is worse to come." These gloomy anticipations were very general, and mixed with fears for the public security. When the crime was perpetrated the people who had been disappointed at the course the Government were taking—people who had been disappointed, discredited, if not disgraced, and who had been cast down up to that moment—became after it jocular in their demeanour, if not triumphant in their conversation. It reminded him of the English Monarch who would not order the assassination of Thomas a 'Beckett, but said—"Who will rid me of this terrible priest?" In the same way there were men in Ireland who would not counsel revenge, but said—"Oh, the shadow is coming." He would now just say a word in defence of his hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon). He did not think that the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister was fair to his hon. Friend. His hon. Friend had said that it was acknowledged by the right hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Foster) that the existing law worked injustice, and his hon. Friend had said no more than that such injustice was an outrage, and that evictions for unfair rents were outrages. The right hon. Gentleman was scarcely ingenuous in his criticism of his hon. Friend's speech. The arguments of the Solicitor General for Ireland in favour of the Bill were flimsy and illusory. He (Mr. Dawson) asked the House to remember that the terms "law and order" had a widely different meaning in Ireland from what they had in England—law emanated from the Government, but order must come from the people; and if there were no connection between Government and people law and order could not be expected to flourish in a country. In England there was, but in Ireland there was not such a connection. He was connected not with agrarian interests, but with towns and municipalities; and he could tell the House that even if the agrarian question were settled, there would remain seeds of discontent in the towns owing to that divorce between the Government and the

    1561
    people of which he had spoken. When the recent terrible tragedy occurred, the very last person to be informed of it was the Chief Magistrate of the chief city in the country. Even the common constable received a notification of the occurrence before the Lord Mayor. That was the respect shown by the Castle authorities for the citizens and their representatives. The argument of the Solicitor General for Ireland on the new powers to be given to the Irish Judges derived from the trial of Election Petitions was baseless, because the change in that case was only from trial by one tribunal without a jury to another also without a jury, and bore no analogy to the subversion of the Constitution which was involved in the abolition of trial by jury in criminal cases. If the argument of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland was a good one in favour of the abolition of the jury system, juries should also be done away with in this country. The hon. and learned Gentleman had also made a suggestion which really meant that juries should be packed.
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PORTER)said, he did not propose a plan of selection, but a higher rating qualification for jurors.
    MR. DAWSONsaid, that amounted to precisely the same thing. He had himself seen in the Court in Dublin the official produce a roll with the jurors marked "good" and "bad," and proceed to call them according to his discretion, the good juror being the man of property, and the bad the poor man. But all this was no reason for dealing with the jury system in the sweeping manner proposed by the Act. Was it the hon. and learned Gentleman's intention to go back and sow the seeds of renewed distrust in the Government? He was astonished that the hon. and learned Gentleman, who was the pillar of the law in Ireland, should lay down such propositions. As regarded the Resident Magistrates, it seemed to him that the bureaucracy of the Castle were, if not ignorant of, at any rate ignoring the law. For what purpose were Resident Magistrates created in Ireland? That purpose seemed to have been forgotten, for a satrap under the Persian dominion could not be more powerful than were those magistrates now in Ireland. The Act of William IV. said that, owing to
    1562
    the disturbances which had taken place from the non-residence of magistrates, it was legal from time to time to appoint Resident Magistrates, and to dismiss or remove them. They were to be ordinary Justices of the Peace, whose duty it was only to sit on the Bench and adjudicate on the cases brought before them. It had never been intended that they should contract a close connection with the police, assume the duties of Crown prosecutor, or act under the domination of the paid officers of the Crown. But their functions now seemed to include police duties as well as those of Justices. The people of Ireland absolutely refused to have their liberties handed over to the mercy of those Resident Magistrates, who were, as a rule, men possessing no qualifications, but were of good position, and appointed simply on that account. Instead of being men of pronounced ability and highly qualified, they were men who had been unsuccessful in other professions, men of mean intellect, and so ignorant in many cases that they would not be able, under the system of competitive examinations, to fill the meanest office in the Civil Service. The Law Officers of the Crown, and, indeed, the whole Executive, had basely betrayed not only the interests of Ireland, but the interests of the Imperial Government. The people thoroughly distrusted these Resident Magistrates, and, indeed, the whole administration of justice. How could it be wondered that in such a condition of public feeling, individuals from the dregs of the population should find opportunity for forwarding their criminal projects? Men talked of assassins from America, but there were people in Ireland low and bad enough for any deed. The Bill contained three main proposals, all of which were calculated to create distrust. It proposed to hand over certain powers to the Judges. That was met with distrust on the part of the Judges. Then it proposed to give certain powers to Resident Magistrates. That created distrust on the part of the Irish people; and, thirdly, it proposed to refuse to allow trial by jury, and that showed the distrust that existed in the mind of the country as regarded the people of that country. Unless they were going to govern the country according to principles of justice, the sooner they gave

    1563
    up Ireland the better. The course which had been adopted with regard to the Irish Press had been one-sided in the extreme. If the Executive was going to put down newspapers for violence of language, why did they not prosecute The Daily Express? A member of the Dublin Corporation, a Conservative, ventured recently to express some sympathy with the tenants, and to condemn the landlords for absenteeism, while draining the country of its heart's blood. The Daily Express, under the nose of the Castle and the champion of the late Chief Secretary for Ireland, in referring to this speech, said—"Will a landlord deal with him?" and went on to recommend that he should be avoided, starved, and ruined. It was said that the system of "Boycotting" ought to be put down with a strong hand in Ireland; but when so much condemnation was lavished upon "Boycotting" it ought to be remembered that it was the Prime Minister himself who sowed the seeds of this system by his reference, long before the term "Boycotting" had been heard of, to the probability of exclusive dealing being resorted to. In his (Mr. Dawson's) opinion, that system was one of the most harmless and peaceable and legal that could be devised for counteracting the fierce land hunger that prevailed in that country? Those who adopted that system did not shoot men or mutilate beasts; but they let the offenders go their way, and would have nothing to do with them. It came ill from England to cry out against "Boycotting," because its whole social system, with its exclusiveness and its trades' unions, was founded upon it; it had been resorted to by the Anti-Corn Law League. [Mr. JOHN BRIGHT: No!] He (Mr. Dawson) would refer the right hon. Gentleman to the verses of Ebenezer Elliot, printed under its auspices, for proof of his assertion. The Land League had discouraged intimidation; it had confined its advice with regard to the treatment of land-grabbers to "have nothing to do with them." The same thing was done in the clubs of London. They "Boycotted" a man whom they did not like. The recent blackballing of candidates at the Reform Club was only a form of "Boycotting." He, however, had never been an advocate of "Boycotting;" all he had asked the House to do was to give a vote to the Irish
    1564
    people. By giving the artizans of England a vote, Parliament had provided a safety-valve for the feelings of the English people; but they sternly refused to provide it for Ireland. If it were possible for Parliament to deprive the lower classes in England of their vote we should soon have carbonari of our own in this country. In his opinion, the clauses of the Bill which gave the police power to arrest strangers would be useless and dangerous. Assassins could keep out of sight until their opportunity arrived, and then spring from the ground with the terrible instruments of diabolical crime. The only effects of the clause would be to bring this country into collision with the great Republic across the Atlantic, and to counteract all that he and others had done towards bringing about an industrial exhibition in Dublin. It would be a terrible degradation for this great Empire if it was forced to descend, to the wretched Continental system of passports to enable strangers to visit a peaceful exhibition in the City of Dublin. This Bill would not restore peace. Only would they have peace in Ireland when the laws made by the people were observed by the people, because they were enforced with their consent; and until this occurred they would not have, and could not expect, law, order, and contentment in the land. On the whole, therefore, he must offer his strenuous opposition to the Bill.
    MR. EDWARD CLARKEsaid, that no man could have listened to the speech of the Prime Minister that morning without understanding in some degree its deep passion and feeling. The speech of the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), on the contrary, was pre-eminently sad, and one that must have been listened to with great sorrow. No wonder that it had inflicted great grief upon the Prime Minister, and that he had described it as heartbreaking. It was a strange and dire result of the incidents of the last fortnight. It threw a strange light upon what had taken place with regard to the arrangements as respected the liberations from Kilmainham, that directly that Bill was before the House the ill-omened alliance was absolutely broken up, and that the Government had only succeeded in deposing the late Leader of the Land League Party and placing in his stead a new Leader more resolute

    1565
    and more powerful than his Predecessor. It was not for the first time that the words, ill-considered as they were, of the Prime Minister came back to him, with an interpretation which was their legitimate and right interpretation—an interpretation which had been full of peril to Ireland. The Prime Minister, in his speech, denied that he had ever vindicated "Boycotting;" but the right hon. Gentleman admitted that he vindicated "exclusive dealing." "Exclusive dealing" were the words used by the Prime Minister; but what was exclusive dealing? It was "Boycotting." "Boycotting" was exclusive dealing organized. Just as the Prime Minister had spoken of evictions being so many sentences of death, and just as that had done great mischief all over Ireland, so he (Mr. Edward Clarke) believed that the phrase "exclusive dealing" had been translated in the strongest language, and followed by the darkest deeds that ever disgraced the cause of the Land League. He differed from those among whom he sat in the view he took of the Coercion Bill of last year and of the present Bill. If the Amendment stood alone as a proposition, every Member of the House would readily support it; but he could not vote for it, because it was not an Amendment containing instructions to the Committee, but would defeat the Bill altogether. The Bill was a Ministerial Bill, and upon the Government must rest the responsibility, and it ought to be left with them. They were told by the Prime Minister the Bill was not prepared in a hurry owing to a recent event; on the contrary, they were told the Bill was deliberately considered before that event, and the Government demanded this Bill to strengthen their hands. The responsibility for the Bill rested with the Government, who stated that the powers asked for were necessary, and he was not prepared to vote against their request. But while he would not take the responsibility of voting against the Government, nothing should induce him to vote in favour of the Bill, which involved a far greater infraction of public liberty than its predecessor of last year, for which, he voted with reluctance, and to his great regret ever since. The Government, however, told them they could not carry on the Government at all, unless they were intrusted with the powers asked for, which
    1566
    they deemed to be necessary. They had carefully prepared the Bill, and, from what fell from the lips of the Prime Minister, they attached great importance to it, and they intended to stand by its proposals. Apart from the details of the Bill, he, as a Constitutional lawyer, desired to see liberty preserved, as far as possible, from the arbitrary interference of the Government; and there were one or two matters to which he wished to allude. It was not that he believed no Bill to be necessary that he objected to it. On the contrary, he believed a Bill of some such sort was necessary months ago. Six months ago something very far short of the proposals contained in this Bill might have secured the reign of law and order in Ireland. He said to his constituents four and a-half months ago that there were two matters which ought to have been dealt with by the Government long ago. Trial by jury had become a mere form. In some form or another a substitute ought to have been found for trial by jury in Ireland. He thought the proper substitute was, not the changing of the venue and so forth, but the substitution of persons of responsibility and judicial experience to deal with the cases brought before them. He, therefore, approved of the provision affecting the Judges. There was another matter to which he had referred over and over again. The great cause of the paralysis of the law in Ireland came from this—that they had not immediate powers of dealing with the smaller crimes which go to support this practice of "Boycotting." In the matter of "Boycotting" it was well known that people agreed together to prevent others doing lawful acts; but it was no use to attempt to deal with such cases, because of the want of a summary process. Conspiracy was a Common Law offence, not a statutable offence. There must be some extension of summary jurisdiction, although he could not help saying that he hoped the House would never be persuaded to accept the clumsily-drawn provision of Section 4 of that remarkable Bill. Why was it that he objected to the Bill? The main ground was this. It was, from beginning to end, the creation practically of a despotism—the placing of despotic power in the hands of a single person. The Lord Lieutenant, by this Bill, could proclaim a district; the Lord Lieutenant

    1567
    might issue warrants; and the Lord Lieutenant could do this and that; in fact, there was scarcely a clause in the Bill which did not turn upon the name of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and which did not invest him with absolute despotic power. It might be necessary that Ireland should be submitted to this despotic power by the absolute suspension of the safeguards of the law, and he was not quite sure that he should object to it if they had an administrative despotism. But his greatest objection to the Bill was that it established a political, a Party despotism, and he thought that the gravest danger of the Bill was that it put arbitrary power in the hands of a single individual who was a Member of the Cabinet and of the Party now in power, but who could not, oddly enough, be brought into direct responsibility to that House. Now, he would say of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. Trevelyan), who had courageously undertaken his post, that he had never seen on the Treasury Bench one more amply qualified to represent a public office than he was; but, at the same time, he was not a Member of the Cabinet, and he was not responsible for the policy of the Cabinet. He could not, therefore, consent to give his vote for a Bill which created despotic power, and gave Ireland into the hands of a single Minister of the Crown who was a Member of the Cabinet. Such a power would be dangerous in the hands of any Government; but it was more than dangerous in the hands of the present Government. The House had already intrusted great powers to the Government. Last Session they gave the Government power to imprison without trial upon suspicion; they were practically asking for the same power now, and more; for, whereas under the Act of last Session a person reasonably suspected of crime might be imprisoned, under the 14th and 15th sections of this Bill persons reasonably suspected of knowing someone else who had committed a criminal or illegal act might be sent to gaol and kept there to give evidence until the criminal was caught. How was the Bill of last year used? It was not used frankly and fairly. It was plainly avowed in October by the President of the Board of Trade that the Land League was not suppressed at a
    1568
    certain time, because it would have prevented a measure of Land Reform being carried out; it was desirable it should be continued until the Land Act was passed. Had the Act for the Protection of Person and Property been put into force without delay, it would, he believed, have crippled the efforts of the Land League, the Leaders of which were actually not afraid to stand up in that House and almost pledge themselves that, if their terms were met, outrages and disorder would cease in Ireland; but a different policy was pursued, and, consequently, month after month passed and the tale of outrages grew greater. It was not until after the passing of the Land Act that the Protection of Person and Property Act was vigorously administered, though it had been asked for on the ground that its immediate operation was necessary for the support of law and order; and why was it then so administered? Because thereby the Government hoped to secure success for their latest legislative achievement—namely, the Land Act. He did not think that a Government who were capable of such conduct, and who had so dealt with that House and the country, deserved to be intrusted with further coercive powers. [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: Hear, hear!] The right hon. and learned Gentleman said "Hear, hear!" and he (Mr. Edward Clarke) was glad to learn that he agreed with him, and presumed he would vote against the Bill. They had been told that that Bill and the measure dealing with arrears were two branches of a living whole. It was true that such an interpretation had been repudiated by the Irish Members; but, surely, the Government was here trying to do that in which it had failed over and over again, and which was destined once more to fail. The one Bill was extravagant in concession and the other extravagant in coercion, a measure which was not strong, but simply one of extravagant violence. While, on the one hand, their concessions blunted the edge of the weapon which they were asking the House to give them, on the other, the very demand for that weapon took away from their concession all character of grace. The Arrears of Rent Bill was an injustice to the taxpayers, being intended to subsidize the Land League by paying the debts of

    1569
    people who had allowed themselves to be terrorized over by that organization. The honest tenant who had paid his rent would now regret the money, for the dishonest tenant was to have his debts paid for him out of the taxes of this country. The result of that would he that Irish tenants would feel and say that the Land League had been successful in obtaining for them a grant of money from the Government. It was because the Government were extravagant in their concessions that all their pretence of coercion must fail. The Government had stated that they would stand by their Bill, and with their strong Parliamentary majority the Government could, no doubt, get any power they chose to demand; but he should refuse the responsibility of giving his vote in favour of a measure which involved a serious and unnecessary interference with public liberty, and which he was satisfied would be wholly ineffective in the hands of the present Government.
    MR. ANDERSONsaid, he had never heard in that House a speech more calculated to drive away any sympathy for the cause advocated than the speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon). He (Mr. Anderson) would confess that he was one who had considerable sympathy with the cause of those who sought to refuse coercive powers; yet if he thought that the sentiment and the spirit of that speech represented the spirit in which the Irish people intended to receive all attempts at conciliation from the people of Great Britain, he would be, unfortunately, forced to the conclusion that there was very little left for the Irish people but martial law. But he did not believe that the spirit of the hon. Gentleman's speech really was the spirit of the Irish people. It might be that of a very few; but he would far rather take the spirit of the speech of the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell), or that of the hon. and learned Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power), which they heard yesterday, to be the real expression of Irish feeling, than the speech they had heard to-day. He had heard with very great satisfaction, from the Prime Minister, a few days ago, the statement that this Bill did not owe its origin to the foul crimes in the Phœnix Park the other day. That statement was made in the most unqualified manner; and he
    1570
    hoped it would set aside for ever any possible allegation that, prior to the Phœnix Park murder, there was any apathy or indifference on the part of Her Majesty's Government to all the former murders of ordinary people, such as the murder of persons like Mr. Herbert and Mrs. Smythe, and that it had only been when one of their own Members on the Front Bench was aimed at that they had ventured to bring in a Bill of this kind. The Prime Minister's assurance ended that, and he was very glad of it; but he must yet confess he did not greatly like this Coercion Bill. There were many things in it which were very far wrong. Indeed, he was afraid it would tend to drive back the tide of popular feeling in Ireland, which was decidedly setting in our favour, and which the great crime in the Phœnix Park only made stronger than before. He believed that if they had persevered in the policy of conciliation, and had not attempted a coercive policy, the tide of friendship would have set more strongly still towards us. Even if the Government thought it necessary to strengthen the powers of the Executive Government in some way or other, they might have done it by a milder measure than this, which he regarded as nearly the most stringent Coercion Bill the Government could pass. He hailed the measures of conciliation that were announced by the Prime Minister. He hailed as a new hope for Ireland the change that was made, even while followed by the retirement of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster), and he only regretted that the conciliation had been so long in coming. In his opinion, it should have come long ago. There was a time when it might have come as an act of grace, and might have been received as an act of grace, and without any suspicion of weakness or defeat. That time was when the Land Act was passed. At that time, on the 17th of August last, he (Mr. Anderson) stood up alone among the English Members in that House, and implored the Government to send a message of mercy to Ireland along with their message of peace. He implored them to give Ireland a large-hearted order of release for those who were in prison under suspicion. That advice was not taken; it was rejected with scorn. If the advice had been

    1571
    taken, the hon. Member for the City of Cork would not have been put in prison; the "no rent" manifesto would not have been issued; and the Fenian element in the agitation, which grew to so great power during the imprisonment of the milder agitators, would not have gone on triumphant, and they would not have seen the great crisis that they had recently passed through. There was a golden opportunity then; but it was thrown away. Even now it was better to give it than not give it at all. Though it was tardy, he would be pleased if it should come. In regard to the Bill, he admitted some measure against crime might be necessary. He had voted for the second reading; and he would not oppose going into Committee, in the hope that some Amendments might yet be granted; but if no Amendments were granted, if there was no concession made, as to the very strong inroads on Constitutional right which were at present exhibited in the Bill, he should certainly feel bound, reluctantly, to oppose the Bill on its subsequent stage. The proposed suspension of trial by jury he could not think necessary; it was really so great an inroad on Constitutional right that he felt very great difficulty in agreeing to that part of the measure. Before attempting it, they should have been content to try some reform in the jury system of Ireland. He himself had once had the opinion—and a great many people were of opinion still—that the Irish people were hardly ripe for trial by jury; but there had lately been issued a Report by the House of Lords' Committee on the jury system of Ireland, and after reading that Report, which he had done carefully, his opinion was rather, not that it was wonderful that so many failures of the jury system in Ireland should have occurred, but that there should be any convictions got at all. The system was altogether defective and wrong, and that Report showed the defects of the system. There was first of all the panel to be selected, and the selection of that panel was most absurd, the exemptions being most ill-judged and extensive. Even a civil engineer was not liable to serve on a jury; and why a civil engineer should be exempted from service on a jury he could not understand. There were other exemptions which tended to aggravate the
    1572
    evil. Then there was a very slight fine that could be imposed for non-attendance; and in Ireland anyone who could afford it at all would much rather risk the payment of the small fine than serve on a jury, which in Ireland was regarded as invidious and even dangerous. Worse than that, not only was the fine very small; but it was never exacted in those cases where they were able to find a juror for an absentee. These were circumstances which tended to reduce the jury to one level—the level of the lowest and poorest class of those who were entitled to serve on a jury at all. Then, when they had got the list made up, there were a certain number selected to serve upon Grand Juries, and others to serve on special juries, and these were all exempt from serving on a common jury; so that there were all sorts of aggravated means of reducing the intelligence of the common jury. Then there was an extensive right of challenge. An accused person had the right, in a case of felony, of no less than 20 challenges. The result was that a man about to be tried had very nearly the selection of his own jury. Mr. Justice Barry had represented this system as weeding out the intelligence of the jury, and Lord O'Hagan had called it emasculating the panel. In fact, it reduced the common jury to such a measure of want of intelligence that the wonder was that trial by jury should succeed at all. He thought it was only the duty of the Government, as soon as this Report of the Lords' Committee came out, to have legislated on the recommendations it contained. While that Committee recommended a great many alterations, such as he had described, an alteration of the qualification and of the exemptions, insistence upon a smart fine for non-attendance, and the endeavouring in every way to bring greater variety of occupation and employment to be represented upon the jury, the Lords' Committee carefully abstained from recommending the suspension of trial by jury. The Government, however, instead of following the recommendations of the Lords' Committee, had set them aside, and had taken a line which the Committee did not recommend—suspension of trial by jury altogether. The Committee reported—
    "Only as the last resort, and in the view of a national emergency, could we bring our-

    1573
    selves to contemplate so serious an innovation."
    The Government, however, had not only brought themselves to contemplate it, but they had set themselves to the purpose of carrying it out. There was another reform not advocated by the Lords' Committee, which he (Mr. Anderson) thought might be tried in Ireland with very great advantage. He did not understand why they had such reverence for a unanimous verdict—for a unanimous jury. They allowed the opinion of one man to override the opinion of 11 men. That, he thought, was not a sensible course to take, and it was peculiarly unworkable in such a country as Ireland. They had in Scotland a wholly different system. He did not, however, intend to advocate that, because it went to another and the opposite extreme. In place of requiring a unanimous verdict from a jury of 12, they had a jury of 15, and they allowed a majority of 8 to convict. They had heard a good deal of late in the House of the mighty issues that might be decided by a simple majority of 1; but he did not think any hon. Member ever quoted the instance of the Scottish jury in support of that position. That, however, was the other extreme. But there was another plan, which he thought they might try—that of a three-fourths or a two-thirds majority, which he thought might work very well in jury trials in Ireland. By effecting these various amendments on the jury system, he thought it would have been far better for the Government to endeavour to carry out an improved system of trial in Ireland, in place of making so great an inroad on Constitutional right as suspending jury trial altogether. There were one or two other points in the Bill he did not greatly like—such as the suppression of public meeting and the suppression of the Press. These were measures that he did not believe were calculated to pacify Ireland. They were calculated to drive under the surface things it was better they should have on the surface; and he hoped some change would be made in these respects before they came to the final passing of the Bill. He intended not to vote against the Bill going into Committee; but it was in the hope that the Government would allow very considerable Amendments to be made.
    MR. H. S. NORTHCOTEsaid, that in the small hours of yesterday morning there were great cheers from below the Gangway when the Prime Minister announced that the Arrears of Rent Bill would be taken at 2 o'clock yesterday; but he should like to ask hon. Gentlemen upon what principle they thought this Bill was introduced? Did they believe it was introduced by the Prime Minister in consequence of a pressing necessity, or did they believe it was introduced as a sop to the Conservative Opposition?—because, if it was introduced in consequence of a pressing necessity, any postponement of it from one day to another could only be regarded as a victory of the Government over themselves. If, on the other hand, the Bill was introduced merely as a sop to the Conservative Opposition, then the position of the Government was not a very creditable one, because they had declared that the Bill was introduced in consequence of a pressing necessity, the truth, however, being that it was introduced to satisfy their political opponents. He believed, however, there was a disagreeable and painful necessity—a case which they all felt to be a painful necessity—and, therefore, because he had that belief, he would support the Government. He made a special appeal to hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway on the Ministerial side of the House, if they made up their minds to support the Bill at all, to support it cordially, and his reason for doing so was this—it was perfectly notorious that the whole origin of the present troublous state of Ireland was the support which the insurrectionary movement derived from American sources. As to hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway on the Opposition side of the House, he did not think that they knew any more than other hon. Members in the House what was the real feeling of the Government in America or of non-Irish Americans. He (Mr. Northcote) had passed some years of his life in the United States, and had spent the last Parliamentary Recess there; and he had endeavoured, as far as he could, to make himself acquainted with the general state of public feeling there. Our relations with the United States were at the present moment most cordial, and we could not expect any more substantial aid from them than they had already given us;

    1575
    for the Government of the United States had done, and he believed was doing, all that lay in its power to facilitate the work of Her Majesty's Government in maintaining law and order in Ireland. But it was obvious that the United States Government could not prevent the sending of money from America over to Ireland to support the Land League. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power) yesterday referred to the public feeling in America with regard to Ireland. He stated that a large public meeting was held in New York, which was attended by Democrats, Republicans, and men of leading influence in the United States, at which an unanimous demand was made for an entire change of conduct on the part of Her Majesty's Government towards Ireland. He (Mr. Northcote) respectfully differed from the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Mayo with regard to the position of the persons who attended such meetings. They were either Democrats out of office or discontented Republicans seeking to obtain office; and their names had now ceased to have any real political signification or influence in America. ["Oh, oh!"] He maintained that. He was perfectly certain of it. Since the time when General Grant ceased to be President, he had practically become an extinct volcano. He had become connected with commercial companies; but he was no longer a political power in the United States. The language which had been held to him (Mr. Northcote) by American gentlemen was that, as far as they could judge, the opinion amongst Irishmen in America was that if in Ireland they could for a short time longer defy the mild terrors of the existing Coercion Act, the Radical Party would put such pressure upon the Prime Minister as would induce him to allow that Act to lapse. Events had somewhat justified that opinion. Therefore, though it was open to hon. Gentlemen sitting below the Gangway opposite to vote for such Amendments as they thought desirable, he hoped that when the Bill was passed they would give the Government a genuine, loyal, and substantial support in putting its provisions effectively in force.
    MR. COHENsaid, that, as the Representative of a constituency (South-
    1576
    wark) which contained a large number of Irishmen, while objecting to many of the provisions of the Bill, he intended to support its principle. At the same time, he would take that opportunity of stating his views of the general principle which he held to be applicable to legislation of a permanent character for Ireland. He believed that in local and non-Imperial matters the Irish should be allowed to govern themselves. But this was a measure of a different kind. The brilliant rhetoric in many of the speeches they had heard against the Bill only served to cover, while it adorned many political platitudes which had no logical bearing on the question under consideration. It would be necessary to settle the Land Question at once, by applying the Land Act to all small tenancies, and to assist every tenant who could not pay to clear off his arrears. When tranquillity was restored to Ireland, the Legislature ought to accord to her a large and liberal measure of self-government. He was extremely surprised that a Constitutional lawyer like the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth (Mr. Edward Clarke) should have objected to the Bill, on the ground that it withdrew trial by jury; while, at the same time, he could give his assent to the proclamation of martial law. With regard to the subject of the present Bill, the only question which presented itself was one of degree—Was there such a mass of undetected and unpunished crime and outrage as to demand the adoption of these extraordinary measures? His belief was that there was a necessity for the measure, as during the last year and a-half there had arisen a system of intimidation which had deprived the great mass of the Irish people of any real feeling of security. He thought that system of intimidation had tended to disorganize the whole system of administration, and to demoralize the whole of the Irish people, and would do so further if it continued; and it was especially because he believed intimidation required to be put down that he supported the Bill. With respect to the clause bearing on that subject, he thought the definition of "intimidation" would have to be altered in Committee. The same words found in the Law of Conspiracy might be inserted—namely, "acts of violence and intimidation"—

    1577
    without any attempt being made to define intimidation. With regard to newspapers and public meetings, unless the clauses relating to their suppression were considerably modified, he feared it would be dangerous to express any political opinion in Ireland. He supported the Bill, because he thought that intimidation, being a peculiar offence, required a peculiar remedy.
    MR. RITCHIEsaid, he wished to be allowed to say a few words, because he was unable to agree with the great majority of his hon. Friends sitting on that (the Opposition) side of the House as to that Bill. He concurred in much that had been said by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Plymouth (Mr. Edward Clarke); and he did not propose to do as the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) had done that day—namely, to speak against the Bill and promise to vote for it—a course that had more than once been followed by hon. Members on the other side of the House, both in reference to that Bill and to some other matters. He could not support the Bill, because he believed it would not be effective for the purpose for which it was intended, and because he had no confidence whatever in the manner in which it would be administered by the Government if they obtained it. When the Coercion Act of last Session was brought in, he stated that he would support it, simply because it was brought in by the responsible Government, who declared it to be necessary for preserving the peace of Ireland. But he had voted with considerable reluctance for it; and he did not propose any longer to be dragged at the chariot wheels of the Government in their policy of alternate coercion and concession. The Government obtained the powers they sought last year, and what had been the result? Both in reference to the bitter and the sweet which they then presented to the House in either hand, as they did again now, their policy had been a lamentable and conspicuous failure. Neither had the one Bill which they introduced, nor the other, been followed by the results which they promised. On the contrary, Ireland was now in a greater state of rebellion and disorder than it was at the time when the Government asked for those powers last year. Again they came forward with this Coercion Bill, which was the bitter,
    1578
    as their Arrears of Rent Bill was the sweet. Along with his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Plymouth, he held that those two measures must be regarded as a whole, and as parts of a definite policy; and he, for one, declined to give his assent to such a policy, fraught, as he believed it to be, with the gravest dangers. The Arrears of Rent Bill, introduced on lines totally unfamiliar to the English people, was a measure which, so far from producing peace and satisfaction in Ireland, was only likely to increase the agitation in that country, and he thought justly to increase that agitation. The proper lines, in his view, on which to legislate were those sketched out by the Report of the Committee of the House of Lords, and by the Amendment of his right hon. Friend the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith), who proposed to afford facilities to the Irish tenant to become the owner of his holding; and until the Government grappled with that great question somewhat upon those lines there was no hope of a permanent settlement. Measures such as that introduced the other day would not serve to allay the dissatisfaction which existed, but to foster and increase it. Neither, as he had said, could he support the present Coercion Bill. To his mind, the great evil that existed with reference to crime in Ireland was the want of vigour which was displayed by the Irish Administration in putting the ordinary law into force. They had not sufficiently protected those who had been disposed, to render assistance to good government in Ireland. He agreed with the hon. and learned Member for Southwark (Mr. Cohen) that the great mischief to be combated was not so much that crime was unpunished, as that it was undetected; and he failed to see that the provisions of this Bill would enable crime to be detected, or enable Judges or juries to obtain that amount of evidence without which no tribunal whatever could find an accused person guilty. He looked upon the policy of the Government, in regard to Ireland, as a policy of unrest, not of peace. He could conceive nothing more mischievous thad this alternate concession and coercion; and he declined any longer to be a party to it. Their policy had miserably failed, and he would recommend them to hand over the government of Ireland to someone

    1579
    who would be better able to administer it. [Laughter.] He knew perfectly well it was useless to expect that that sentiment should meet with support from the present House of Commons. It was the custom of right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench to say—"If you do not have any confidence in us, why do you not move a Vote of Censure upon us and our policy?" But those right hon. Gentlemen had behind them a large and subservient majority, among whom were hon. Members who were not ashamed to speak one way and to vote another. While the Parliament was young, hon. Members, rather than risk an appeal to the country, were prepared to support the Government in any proposition they made, however unpalatable it was to them; but as Parliament grew older, they would, perhaps, become more independent. Were hon. Members opposite free to vote as they pleased, without fear of a Dissolution, even the present strong Administration would by this time have ceased to exist. There was, in his opinion, no hope of peace in Ireland while they remained in Office, whatever powers Parliament conferred upon them; and, believing that, he declined to support the Bill now before the House.
    SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: Sir, I regret exceedingly that I have not been able, through another appointment, which I was not able to alter, to be in the House during the greater part of this discussion, and I regret it all the more when I find, on coming down to the House, that the first speech I have listened to is that which has been delivered by my hon. Friend who has just sat down (Mr. Ritchie). I share to a very great extent the sentiments of my hon. Friend when he says we have much to be dissatisfied with in the Irish policy and the administration of the Government; and, on the proper occasion, I shall be quite ready to express my grounds of dissatisfaction at some parts, and important parts, of their policy; but I think it would be a great misfortune if, at the present moment, there should seem to be an uncertain sound from the Conservative side of the House, when the Government are engaged in a task which is more than enough to try the strength of the strongest Government and the most united Parliament England has ever seen. I cannot ex-
    1580
    aggerate the importance or the difficulty of the position of the English Government—I do not speak of the present Administration only in relation to the affairs of Ireland; and, though I do not profess either to stand up as an apologist or an admirer of many things the Government have done, or as being one who would apologize for many of what I deem their omissions, yet I think the time is one when we must speak plainly. We must show that the feeling of this country is prepared to support the Administration, as long as they are in power, in any measures which it thinks necessary to take for the maintenance and restoration of order in Ireland. My hon. Friend said—and there may be some amount of truth in it—he felt the difficulty of those who have actually to discharge the duty of keeping peace and order in Ireland greatly enhanced by the want of support and the apparent vacillation on the part of the Government under whom they serve. At all events, do not let us fall into the same mistake. Do not let it be said that the difficulties of the Government are difficulties which are caused by a want of certainty of the moral support of Parliament as a whole. We are to aid them in the exertions which they are making; and although we must feel that the measure which they propose is one of an exceptional character, and one which necessarily contains provisions that in themselves we regret to see produced and enforced upon any part of the Empire, yet we cannot but feel that nothing but a sense of the most absolute necessity has led the Government to propose them. I do not feel it is at all necessary to enter into any discussion; I merely rose in order that there might be no misunderstanding on the subject. I do not, however, at the same time, think it is at all the duty of those who are in Opposition to the Government, and who are prepared to support them, to refrain from criticizing what the Government do. On the contrary, I think it is absolutely their duty to criticize the proceedings of the Government. A Government has no greater enemies than those who are always ready to flatter them and say they are right, and I think it is a mistake we sometimes have to complain of in some of the supporters of the present Government. They are far too ready to get up and say that

    1581
    what the Government say they must do must be done. I do not think we ought to say that; for my part, I always intend to undertake freely the post of critic. But I do say in the maintenance of the authority of the Government, especially in the face of such language as I understand has been used in this House today, and in the face of such acts as we see in the Sister Island, I say it is our duty to stand up manfully for the Government, and to support them as far as we are able in the legislation which they now propose.
    MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he was not surprised that the Leaders of the Conservative Party again came forward, at the first available opportunity, with their united force of Conservatism in support of more despotism for Ireland. For that reason he greatly regretted that the only upholder of Constitutional government upon the Front Opposition Bench had been removed by the hand of death. The late Sir John Holker was the only Member of the Conservative Party who raised his voice last year in behalf of freedom; and he was the only person to be found on the Front Opposition Bench, when the Coercion Bill was introduced last year, to stand up and remind the House that coercion had always been a miserable failure, and that there was still such a thing as a British Constitution. Now that he had departed, there was no friend of Constitutional freedom remaining on the Front Opposition Bench, for no one could be found now to supply his place. But he (Mr. O'Donnell) did not regard the present as a Liberal or a Conservative measure; it was an essentially English measure, and as such afforded fresh proof, if proof were wanted, of the deliberate incapacity of the English to govern Ireland. It would meet with the condemnation of every Irishman throughout the world. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket) complained of the old grievances of Ireland being dragged into the discussion. He (Mr. O'Donnell) denied that they were old grievances, or that the situation in Ireland was different now from what it was in the days of the Tudors or of Cromwell. The right hon. and learned Gentleman seemed much displeased that the condition of Ireland had elicited the sympathy of the Irish-
    1582
    Americans, and had drawn contributions from them to the national cause. But the House should bear in mind that these protests against the interference of Irish-Americans, and these denunciations of Irish-American contributions, were only of very recent date. Year after year, and decade after decade, Irish-American money flowed into Ireland, and no voice was raised in the landlord ranks, so long as that Irish-American money went into the pockets of Irish landlordism. For every dollar of Irish-American money that was poured into the treasury of the Land League the Irish in America poured 50 dollars into the pockets of the Irish landlords, through long and miserable years, in order to keep the roof over the aged father and mother, threatened with eviction by remorseless Irish landlordism. He was heartily glad that the Irish in America had drawn the only lesson which could be drawn from that fact. The Irish-American contributions were no longer directed to the maintenance of that power which destroyed their kith and kin, but were now devoted to the speedy destruction of that evicting and relentless power. Reference had been continually made to O'Donovan Rossa, the favourite bogey, who was usually and alternately trotted out on these occasions by both sides of the House for Parliamentary purposes; and, whatever he might be—degraded, revengeful, desperate, and criminal in the highest degree—and he (Mr. O'Donnell) would admit that he might be all those, with a hatred of everything English as well—yet it was to be remembered that it was the English Government who had made him so. He was only one of the inferior agents of the Fenian organization; and among all the prisoners tried for treasonable offences during the Fenian troubles in Ireland there was not one bore a higher character for frankness and open-hearted manliness than O'Donovan Rossa. The Fenian insurrection could be put down by the forces of the law; but, while it existed, it was sustained and pure in a degree, which characterized no such movement in any other country in the world. For days large districts in Ireland, deserted by a pusillanimous gentry, were at the mercy of the Fenian insurgents, and in no single place was there an outrage upon person or property. England had a right to punish these enemies of English rule; but

    1583
    England had no right to degrade them to the brutal level of beasts. O'Donovan Rossa, frank and manly as he was then, was sent to herd with the vilest wretches that English civilization could produce. The Government, instead of treating him as a political prisoner, compelled him to undergo the degradation of penal servitude, and forced him to associate with men in comparison with whom the burglar was one of Nature's gentlemen. The result was that his hot temper and his fierce spirit rose against these degrading tortures, and he came out of prison a different and an altered man, with a ferocity inculcated upon him by his prison torture; and now, forsooth, the complaint was that he spoke and wrote words of murder, and was the companion of assassins. It was England that had made him, a frank and open rebel, a companion of murderers and law-breakers. If he was treated as a beast of prey it was this country that had made him so. It was not to be wondered at that when O'Donovan Rossa came out of prison he came out with a deadly hatred in his heart towards the English nation. ["Question!"]
    MR. SPEAKERcalled the hon. Gentleman to Order, and requested him to address himself to the Question before the House.
    MR. O'DONNELL, continuing, said, he thought that he had done so, or, at least, had endeavoured to do so. This Bill was the application to Ireland of the same principle which under laid and which governed the penal treatment awarded to Irish rebels years ago, and was necessitated by a state of affairs entirely caused by the provocation to outrage given by the wholesale evictions that had taken place throughout Ireland. Instead of this Bill, let the Government press on a Bill removing the grievances of the Irish tenantry, and there would then be no necessity for such a measure as this. The Government alleged that the number of outrages were an excuse and a justification for this Bill; but he found from a Report placed in the hands of hon. Members that morning that the law as administered in Ireland continued to apply the strongest stimulus to desperation; for the evidence in that Report showed that obedience to the law was the surest road to ruin in Ireland. From the Returns it appeared that in the county of Clare, where outrage was rampant,
    1584
    only nine families, consisting of 48 men, women, and children, were evicted during the month of April. On the other hand, in the great and peaceful county of Tyrone, where there were no outrages, and where the people were not bound together in combinations for self-defence, 153 men, women, and children were evicted during the same month. What a terrible lesson was thus taught by the administration of the law in Ireland, when the law-abiding counties were punished, but the law-resisting counties escaped with comparative impunity! Then, in Donegal, where respect was shown to the law, 196 men, women, and children had been evicted during the same period. Again, no county was more ready to conform to law and order than the county of Mayo, yet what was the consequence? Mayo stood preeminent for her terrible total of evictions, for the number of persons evicted in that county during April amounted to no less than 434. The fact was that the present administration of the law in Ireland, just the same as the past, encouraged the people of Ireland to commit outrage and intimidation, because outside outrage and intimidation there was no protection for the tenants. They found that was the best mode of resisting the Crowbar Brigade. Then, as to the change in the Lord Lieutenancy, in what respect was Lord Spencer preferable to Lord Cowper? Had he a patent of infallibility? He (Mr. O'Donnell) protested against setting up a gilded puppet as the Representative of law and order in Ireland. Again, there was the self-discredited tribunal of Irish Judges, who had declared themselves unfit for these new duties; and that, if they undertook them, the result would only be to lower the respect of the people for the law and for the Judicial Bench in Ireland. It was actually proposed that a sum of money should be paid out of the Public Treasury sufficient to overcome the objections of Irish Judges to being made the instruments of English coercion. Then, beneath the Irish Judges, thus sought to be bribed out of their conscientious objections to being made ministers of coercion, they had the magistrates, who would rule the country much as Haynau or Mouravieff ruled Hungary or Poland. Then there were the police stained with the blood of their fellow-citizens in Ireland. Then it was said that the object

    1585
    of this Bill was to further the better detection and punishment of crime in Ireland. How could such a Bill as this effect that object, if the feeling of hatred to obey the law had, down to the present, been so strong and universal among the Irish people as to band them together, according to the statement of the Government, against the existing law? What inducement did it offer to the people to alter their hostility to the law, and to give their help to an infinitely worse and more degraded judicial system than ever, when they would not even help the comparatively honest and honourable judicial system that already existed? He did not deny the competence of Parliament to pass this Bill. If a Bill were brought in on the authority of Government to repeat the miracle of the sun standing still, he was not aware that it would be less valid in the eyes of a lawyer than any other. So this Bill, when it passed through Parliament and received the sanction of the Sovereign, misled by her Advisers, would also be a valid law. But in another, and a higher, sense Parliament was incompetent to abolish the Constitutional liberties of a civilized nation. They might make this law and exact obedience to it by their Ministers; but for such a law there could be no respect in the heart and the conscience of mankind. The Stuart whom they drove from England never affected to rule by such a detestable instrument. It out-Bombaed Bomba; let them pass it, and it would be a dead letter in the eyes of the world. Again, they proposed, to abolish trial by jury. He admitted their legal, but he denied their moral competence. When once the Constitutional principle was established that a man, no matter what crime he might have committed, was to receive trial by his peers, they might pass what law to the contrary they pleased, and it would be morally of no worth. What honest man would hand over Judas Iscariot to the law, when he was not to be tried by his peers, but by three Irish Judges? Though an offender had struck down his nearest of kin, never would he by act or word make himself an accomplice in a moral assassination of that kind. He wished to say nothing harsh of the Premier in the embarrassing position in which he found himself, where he had less to dread from open enemies than from treacherous allies.
    1586
    He was sure that not only the Premier, but many a Member of the Liberal Party would be glad to dispense with, this Bill. But he was not treating it as a Liberal or a Conservative Bill, but as an English Bill, and the introduction of such a measure was another inducement to the Irish people never to rest until they had got rid of English interference in the internal affairs of Ireland. As an Irish Representative, he said that they had only to remove grievances in Ireland, and there would be no excuse for coercion. Let them root the Irish tenantry in the Irish soil and every outrage would cease; for the miserable object of those who committed outrage was to protect themselves by terrorism against the awful terrorism of the evicting law. In Italy and in every country in the world it was in vain they sought to put down popular crime until they eradicated the causes of provocation. Abolish the evicting law, and the terrorism of the Crowbar Brigade and the Emergency men, and, at the same stroke, they would abolish the terrorism of "Captain Moonlight." What was going on in Ireland was legally crime, and morally sin; but woe to those who had driven law-abiding citizens into the ranks of outrage. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin reminded Irishmen last night of the great advantages they received under British connection. But he was not aware that any Irishman got anything more than his hard-earned money's worth. He might appeal to the two distinguished Irishmen who sat upon the Front Opposition Bench, the right hon. and learned Members for the University of Dublin, who, on so many occasions, were the brain-carriers of the Conservative Party, condemned to subordinate positions, while men, infinitely their inferiors, lorded it over them, as a proof that the most distinguished Irish talent would never gain here a tithe of the honour and respect given to Irishmen who devoted themselves to Ireland. By the memory of the enormous obligations which England was under to Ireland, he called upon the House to pause before taking this irrecoverable, this irremediable step. It was but half a century ago that the Iron Duke, with Irish blood in his veins, reminded the House of Lords, in support of Catholic Emancipation, that

    1587
    during the deadly struggle, the gigantic war, which England waged with the greatest military genius of modern times, the enormous majority of the soldiers opposed to Bonaparte were Irish Catholic soldiers, and the Duke said that without them the victory would not have been on the side of England. Well, the reward of England was to persecute to misery and degradation and destruction the Irish race. When the Irish people were twitted with reluctance to pay their just debts to their landlords, it must be remembered that during the last 80 years the latter had received from a poor and impoverished tenantry £400,000,000 or £500,000,000 sterling, which had been mainly expended in this country by absentee proprietors. Was there ever such a tribute paid by a poor country to a rich one? When he heard the landlord class crying for coercion and more coercion, he was obliged to remember that the luxury, the pomp, the silks and the satins, the carriages, and the wines enjoyed by the Irish landlords had been paid for out of the starvation of Irish men, women, and children. There was no allegiance due to despotism; therefore, let them pass this Coercion Bill, and the respect paid to the law would be the respect which was really paid to English bayonets and English force.
    MR. BORLASEsaid, that next in danger to speeches like that just delivered he placed the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth (Mr. Edward Clarke), because its tendency was to weaken the hands of the Irish Executive, at the time it had most need of being strengthened, by insinuating that the Lord Lieutenant was a Party man. He (Mr. Borlase) was delighted when he saw that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition rose in his place, and, on behalf of his Party, repudiated the sentiments of that speech. The speech of the Prime Minister ought to find an echo from the Benches behind him. The hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) had attempted to draw a distinction between "Boycotting" and outrages, and had put before the House the proposition that it was not murder to ostracize anyone from society, to turn them out into the world unclothed and unfed, while it was murder to stab them. The hon. Member had carried the House back to the primitive state of society in the East, when there were two sorts of
    1588
    wilful murder—namely, murder which involved blood-guiltiness and murder which did not; but which, nevertheless, turned out people into the wilderness to starve. Although the hon. Member for Tipperary would discourage outrage, he could not control the Land League and the inner "circle of friends" of whom he had spoken who were its supporters. Although the Land League influenced the provisions of the Land Act, and tended to make them as complete as they were, it was part of a movement which produced the Phœnix Park murders. Had it not been for the system of which the Land League was an undoubted part, Lord Frederick Cavendish would have been alive this day. No one destested more than he did some of the provisions of the Bill, and he had been engaged, with other hon. Gentlemen, in preparing a memorial to the Prime Minister upon it, with a view to its modification; but since he had heard the speech of the hon. Member for Tipperary he would be no party to such a document. Repugnant as the Bill was to his principles as a Liberal, he felt the Bill was a necessity, and that they were bound to vote for it. He should, therefore, as he was sure other hon. Members would, support through thick and thin Her Majesty's Government in passing this measure; and he felt sure that, in spite of the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth, the great body of the Tory Party also would do the same. He believed those hon. Members below the Gangway on his own side would think twice before they rejected the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister and resisted the passing of the Bill in its integrity.
    DR. COMMINSsaid, there was clearly a compact between the two Front Benches, and such a compact was always dangerous to the liberties of Ireland. He gave the Government credit for acting according to the best of their lights; but still he must assert that the Bill must fail, because it did go to the root of the evil, although it might, like a quack medicine, produce a temporary lull. As long as grievances were unredressed, and one portion of the people of Ireland were manacled at the feet of another class to be trampled upon, so long would the resistance to unjust laws continue and show itself in outrage and even in murder,

    1589
    There was not a people in the world more averse from crime than the Irish; but when the law was an outrage itself, they would range themselves against it, although there might be beside them men whose acts they condemned and deplored. If a union with Ireland was desired by this country, it must not be as a union of beasts tied by the tail, but a union of interest, and hearts, and sympathies, tending to the peace and prosperity of both countries. He had to complain of the attitude of the Government towards those Irish Members who expressed their apprehensions of the passing of the Bill. Those hon. Members were entirely in sympathy with the Prime Minister in his desire to heal a long-standing ill-feeling that existed between Ireland and England, and he (Dr. Commins) had always endeavoured to quell that feeling both in speech and writing. Yet the Government persisted in their coercive measures with the pertinacity of the vendors of Morrison's pills—urging Parliament, when one did not suffice, to take another. This was the 51st Irish Coercion Bill, and he was convinced that, like its predecessors, it would aggravate rather than cure the evil. It might cause a temporary lull in Ireland, and send discontent below the surface; but it would be attended with no permanent beneficial effect. While he believed that no amount of amendment would substantially improve the measure, he should endeavour to secure some modification in Committee.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. Parnell.)
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Sir, I do not intend to offer any opposition to the Motion; but I hope all sides of the House will see the advantage of not unnecessarily prolonging debate upon a matter which, at this stage, requires but little more discussion, the main principle of the Bill being in the clauses. I hope, for that reason, all parts of the House will agree to bring the debate to a close, and go into Committee tomorrow.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    Debate adjourned till To-morrow.

  SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
  (Sir Hardinge Giffard, Mr. Butt, Mr. M'Intyre, Mr. Charles Russell, Mr. Inderwick, Mr. Webster, Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Gregory.)
  SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.

    [BILL 154.] COMMITTEE.
    Bill considered in Committee.
    (In the Committee.)
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir FARRER HERSCHELL)said, he was sorry to interpose between the Committee and his hon. and learned Friend (Sir Hardinge Giffard); but the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General, who was unavoidably absent, was very anxious to make some observations on the Bill, and, therefore, he (the Solicitor General) felt bound to move to report Progress.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Mr. Solicitor General.)
    SIR HARDINGE GIFFARDsaid, he would point out that the Bill was very short, and the third reading would afford the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General ample opportunity of offering any observations he might think necessary.
    MR. PUGHsaid, that he had to object to the Committee being proceeded with.
    MR. BUTTsaid, he was anxious to know whether the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General meant to insist upon his opposition to the Bill at that stage? There was only one clause, and any opposition might very well be taken on the third reading.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.

MOTIONS.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (NO. 10) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. HIBBERT, Bill to confirm a Provisional Order of the Local Government Board relating to the Borough of Ryde, ordered to be brought in by Mr. HIBBERT and Mr. DODSON.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 181.]

  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS ON SUNDAY BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. STEVENSON, Bill to prohibit the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors on Sunday, ordered to be brought in by Mr. STEVENSON, Mr. BIRLEY, Mr. WILLIAM M'ARTHUR, Mr. CHARLES WILSON, Mr. WALTER JAMES, and Mr. CHARLES ROSS.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 182.]
  House adjourned at ten minutes before Six o'clock.