the great boon which is being held up |ing than any other Member. I now ask to the Irish people as the reward for all the hon. Member for the County of Cork their miseries during the last two years, (Mr. Shaw), who is doing so much to and for all the sacrifices they have made. lubricate the larynx of the Irish people It simply means that an additional value in order to induce them to swallow this to the amount of £27 is to be handed Bill, amended or unamended, as best over to these unfortunate tenants, and they can, I ask him whether he conthis is only to be had at the cost of a siders anything but a very large and lawsuit. The tenant is not afforded the general reduction of rent in Ireland will simple means of even knowing what his be or ought to be satisfactory to the right is, except by tedious and expensive Irish tenants? The House will be good litigation. Every step in this litigation enough to recollect what the situation is. may be contested by the rich, powerful, There have been three years of unand educated landlord opposed to him exampled agricultural depression-an for the time. We have then, on the one almost total failure of crops, when side, the poor Irish tenant, without foreign competition has come into play education, without means, and, until in a most unusual and unheard of very recently, without the power of fashion. We have compelled the Irish landorganization and combination, pitted lords to reduce their rents during the last against a class of men who have con- two years; the English landlords have stantly shown themselves to be the most reduced their rents of their own accord, able defenders of their rights that because they were wise in their generahave existed in almost any country. tion; but the Irish landlords allowed the But we have also the authority of the question of the reduction of rent to be authors of the Bill as to the extent of made a casus belli between themselves this benefit to the Irish tenants. We and their tenants, and have produced an have, in addition, the declaration of the agitation of which, I believe, none of principal Ministers of the Crown. We us have yet seen the end. Well, the have first of all the declaration of the right hon. Gentleman comes forward Prime Minister, in introducing the Bill, with his voice and says that as regards that the landlords, as a rule, have stood the bulk of the Irish landlords their their trial well, and he said he did not rents will not be in any way reduced. propose to interfere with them as a body, I ask the hon. Member for the County of and that this Bill would not interfere Cork how he can conscientiously recomwith the rents of the landlords as a body. mend a measure of this kind to the [Mr. GLADSTONE: Except in the case of Irish people as a satisfactory settlement the payment of excessive rent.] Just of this great question while he hears so; in other words, that he did not be- these statements from three right hon. lieve that the rents of the majority of Gentlemen of such authority? We have Irish landlords would be in any way re- been accused of being desirous of keepduced. We have also the statement ing up the agitation. For my part, I of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief think the accusation would fit very much Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant to the better upon Her Majesty's Government. same effect. He stated that he believed I know of no better way for keeping that a very small minority of Irish alive the agitation than by supplying landlords would be affected in any way half remedies for admitted grievances. by the measure. We have also the We desire this question to be settled statement of the right hon. Gentle- now once for all, and it is because we man the Chancellor of the Duchy of have every reason to believe that this Lancaster the other night, when he measure will fail in affording the satissaid that the Bill would not reduce factory and final settlement that we rethe rents of more than one-tenth fuse to allow ourselves to be comout of the whole body of Irish land- promised, and allow the claims of the lords; and certainly if I am entitled to Irish tenants to be compromised, by the assume and anybody can predict what flat and full acceptance of the Bill which would be the result of the work of this the Prime Minister so much desires. complicated measure-I am entitled to Let it not be supposed that because we assume that the three right hon. Gentle- live in Ireland we desire to keep our men who are responsible for this mea- country in a state of agitation. Can it sure know more about its probable work- be supposed that we, who have some [Eighth Night.] and the Irish landlords only pretended to have spent £3,500,000. They have had the land of their country absolutely under their control. No foreign despot ever wielded more power over the good of the people and over the resources of the country than the Irish landlords, and they have left us in an appalling and miserable state. Ireland is the worst cultivated and worst formed and the most miserable country on the face of the earth. Evidence of this is to be seen on every hand; yet because we have asked that the land, which has been the absolute property of this privileged class for so many centuries, and which they so shamefully neglected, should be transferred to the only people that have ever done anything to improve it, we are to be charged with being revolu tionists,. and with a desire to confiscate. We do not desire to confiscate anything. The Land League doctrine is that any attempt to reconcile the respective interests of the landlord and tenant is im possible. It is time, after the Prime Minister has made an ineffectual at tempt to deal with the question, and when he is entering upon another attempt which we fear will also prove ineffectual, it is time that the doctrine we preach should be thoroughly examined, and that it should be entertained with a little more tenderness and regard for the just claims of the Irish people. How has the Land League proposed that the existing system in Ireland should be put an end to? We have never asked for the expropriation of the landlords. ["Oh, oh!" And the hon. Member for the County of Galway, who is the chief propagator of that delusion, is taking upon himself a grave responsibility when he holds out such an agreeable prospect to the Irish landlords. The members of the Land League do not think the property of the landlords has yet touched bottom, and are of opinion that they should not be caught out until more is known of the change which American im portations are likely to produce. But the League has undoubtedly recommended compulsory expropriation, though not for all landlords. We have recommended that power should be given to a Commis sion to expropriate compulsorily those landlords who may be acting as centres of disturbance, to use the expression of the First Lord of the Treasury. That is all that the League has recommended cause for desiring the interests of our country to prosper and that it should return to quietness, should gain more by the continuance of Irish grievancesgrievances to be redressed by Liberal Ministries-grievances out of which they may gain Party victories on election hustings, without which it is much to be feared that Liberal Ministries would sometimes find their occupation entirely gone. I know of no period within a great many years when the Irish Question has not been adopted by the Liberal Ministry when this question has not been carefully fostered and cherished, and a sufficient instalment of justice given for the purpose of keeping it alive; and I, as an Irishman, protest against the present Government losing this opportunity, an opportunity which they may never have again, of closing this question, and certainly it will not be my fault, so far as anything I can say or do, if they lose it. Now, Sir, the attempt to establish a partnership between the landlord and tenant, between idleness and industry, is to be renewed by the Government, after they have failed in their attempt of 1870 to establish it; and the miserable restitution of £27, upon the average, is to be offered to each Irish tenant as his share in the soil of his native land. This miserable dole is to be again foisted off upon him by a Liberal Government as his reward, and as his share in the exertions which he has made, and which his predecessors have made for many generations in improvement and reclaiming the soil of Ireland. Recollect that the tenants have done everything, and that the landlord has hardly done anything. We were told the other day of the magnificent sum of £3,500,000 sterling which the Irish landlords had spent upon improvements since 1841. But it was out of the tenant's pocket. It ought to be remembered that all that money has been borrowed from the Board of Works, and that both principal and interest have been repaid by the tenants in the shape of added rent. But that £3,500,000 very accurately represents the so-called exertions of the landlords, and it came out of the pockets of the tenants. It has been exceedingly easy for landlords to borrow money; they can do so much more easily than landlords in England. Now, the annual income from land in Ireland was £17,000,000 or £18,000,000, Mr. Parnell up to the present time in the shape of compulsory expropriation. We have asked that the price to be paid to those landlords who have broken the trust reposed in them by the State should be fixed at 20 years' purchase at the Poor Law valuation, and we believe that the mere threat of expropriating them at such a price would do more to reduce rack-rents than all the legal paraphernalia of the right hon. Gentleman and his draftsmen. We have also asked Parliament to restore to the tenant his old Common Law right, which was taken away, as the right hon. Gentleman has told us, by the Act of 1816, before which date ejectment was a difficult matter. The League last year had recommended that ejectment should be suspended for two years; and it appears to me that the essential way in which to effect their suspension would be by re-tenant to hope that this Bill will really pealing the enactments passed by landlord Parliaments in favour of landlords in the years 1816, 1850, and 1861. Another restitution which Ireland may fairly claim from England has been already alluded to by the First Lord of the Treasury, who has told the House that the £52,000,000 worth of property sold in the Encumbered Estates Court has been sold without any regard to the interest of the tenants. But did it not occur to the right hon. Gentleman that if this great wrong had been done it would be fair to undo it, and that there would be no hardship upon a landlord who had purchased in the Encumbered Estates Court if he were asked to give up his purchase upon receiving what he had paid for it? If the land were to revert to the State at the price paid for it in the Encumbered Estates Court, the tenants would have their property in the soil protected, and they could remain as State tenants under the Government, or could become landowners by the process indicated the other night by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Is £52,000,000 too large a sum of money for this country to spend upon this Irish question? The money, I feel sure, can be got by a loan at 4 per cent in the open market. [Several Irish MEMBERS: Three per cent.] If Parliament can but summon up courage to undo the mischief that has been done, a great deal of good may be effected without any necessity for such complicated legal machinery as is now proposed. Among the landlords who have purchased the large amount give him even the small amount of pro- [Eighth Night.] the idea of the County Court as the tribunal | more under that Bill in the shape of of first instance under the Bill. It is compensation for disturbance. You do true that the right hon. Gentleman has not give him the opportunity of remainrather shabbily covered his retreat by ing in his holding, and of enjoying the throwing the blame upon the draftsmen. reduced rent which you hope the Court I desire, however, some statement in may in some cases fix. You simply give reference to this question of the Court, him the right of selling his interest in for we are still ignorant of what the order to discharge the arrears of rackcomposition of the tribunal will be. rent which have accumulated during the From the statement of the Prime Mi- past three bad seasons to the landlords. nister with regard to the draftsman of Considering, as I have said, that these the Bill, it appears that he was prepared small tenants in arrear constitute the to allow tenants the option of going majority of the Irish tenants, I think past the County Court and applying we are entitled to make a strong stati directly to the Commission. I presume, in behalf of the interests of those unfor then, that he would have to substitute tunate people. The Government evia great number of sub-Commissioners. dently see that their Bill affords no pr This announcement must have whetted tection to the small tenants, for they the appetite of the multitude of office- have made a very strong point of the seekers who are hanging around this emigration clauses as the real remedy Bill, and who are looking forward to its for their case. The Prime Minister and results with far more hope than the un- his Colleagues have said that they dɔ fortunate tenants. I presume he would not hope to remove the congestion in appoint a large number of sub-Commis- the West of Ireland by any other sioners to fix what the fair rents should means than by emigrating the people be, and for the purpose of deciding all in families. It is admitted on all hands the other points which are left to the that the congestion which has existed in Court to decide. Now, that is one of many parts of the West of Ireland must the chief defects of the Bill incident to be got rid of somehow or other. The the principle as well as to its detail. It tenants are crowded upon poor and is practically impossible, in an agricul- small holdings, where it would be dif tural country like Ireland, where there cult for them to exist in decent comfort is no other resource than agriculture, to if they had no rent to pay at all. I find a tribunal which will not be preju- would ask the Government to take these diced either in favour of one side or the small tenants under their protection, to other. For the purpose of deciding those place them under the protection of the questions, all the educated classes from Commission, and not to doom them to whom you would most likely draw your banishment. It is impossible for these sub-Commissioners will be either land- poor people to be happy in America. I lords themselves or their relations, or in have seen many of them in America. I some way under their influence, and in have seen them on the land; I have seen favour of the maintenance of the land- them in the cities, and they are not lord system in its full integrity. I pass happy, and they are not contented. on now to the question of arrears of Passing their lives in the West of Irerent, and I would say that it was worthy land, and many of them having arrived of more than the passing notice which at an advanced age, they are not fitted to the Prime Minister gave it. There is an undertake the troubles and the struggles overwhelming accumulation of evidence of a new world such as America is. in the Reports of both Royal Commis- Young people, when they go out there, sions as to the indebtedness of the ten- thrive well and can assimilate themselves ants, both with regard to arrears of to the new phase of existence which they rent to their landlords and debts to the have to commence; but to carry out these shopkeepers. You offer nothing in this poor old men and women, and to set Bill that you did not offer the tenant in them down upon the prairies of Minnethe small Bill called the Compensation sota or Iowa, is indeed a very poor for Disturbance Bill last year. You do mockery of English justice to Ireland. not, in fact, offer him so much, because The example of what was done by Father you only give him the right of selling Nugent, of Liverpool, and by Bishop his interest; and you gave him the Ireland, of St. Paul, was quoted during prospect, at all events, of something some of the discussions upon this Bill. Mr. Parnell the people on to these grazing tracts which are not fitted for grass, and ought not to be left one instant longer in grass-I am not speaking of the rich grazing lands, which it would be a mistake to break up, but land capable of improvement and in want of labour As showing the advantages of emigration, Father Nugent emigrated some 20 selected families from the West of Ireland, sent them over, and placed them under the care of Bishop Ireland. Father Nugent is a remarkable judge of character; and I will only say of Bishop Ireland that, if he could not make emi--I believe we could give these poor gration succeed, no other man is likely people some chance of making them to do so. But, with the exception of productive. I ventured the other night two or three families, all those 20 families to make a suggestion in that direction have proved failures as emigrants, and to the Government. I suggested the the colony which Bishop Ireland estab- Commission should have the power of lished last year had to be broken up buying land for the purpose of building and the people scattered in different decent labourers' houses and allotting directions. I would ask the Government half an acre or so to labourers, wherto look into this matter. Emigration is ever it was found they were not already simply a short cut for them. It is simply provided for. However, I was at once an evasion of the responsibility which pounced upon by the Chancellor of the rests on their shoulders. They desire to Duchy of Lancaster, and a lecture in shift the duties which belong to them, political economy was read to me which as the responsible Government of the I shall not soon forget. We were told country, upon some emigration agency, that that was the sure way to bring and at the expense of the British tax- about a return to the condition of the payer. We require the labour of every-old 408. freeholder; that if you gave the body in Ireland for the purpose of de- Irish labourer land he would try to live veloping the resources of our country. upon it, and would refuse to work for We have plenty of land. I have been the farmers in his district. The right accused of wanting to migrate them from hon. Gentleman, I think, answered his the plains of Mayo to the fertile fields of own speech in another speech he subMeath. I believe once in the United sequently delivered on the Land Bill, States I was guilty of an oratorical flight far more effectually than I could have of that nature; but it was only an ora- answered it. The right hon. Gentleman torical flight. There is no practical had shown that the small cottier tenants necessity for bringing the people from in the West of Ireland-tenants holding Mayo to Meath. There is plenty of not more than from half an acre to five improvable land in Mayo for everybody or six acres-are migratory labourers, there. The Gardeners' Chronicle says there in the habit of migrating every year to are 4,000,000 acres of land laid down in England, or wherever they can get empasture in Ireland which are not fit for ployment. They took their labour to pasture, and which is every year dete- the best market, and worked very hard riorating and becoming less capable of in their employment. The right hon. producing food. I should like to give Gentleman had eulogized, with all his the Commissioners power, by way of well-known eloquence, the industry and experiment, to buy land in the neigh-energy of these poor people-people bourhood of these congested districts under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts, and to transplant the best of those tenants if they desired it-and I am sure they would-upon those lands, and give them a chance of cultivating some of this improvable land, and making it produce what it is capable of producing. The adoption of this course with regard to some 50,000 tenants would remove the crowded condition of things in Mayo, Donegal, and one or two other Western counties; and we should produce a great deal more food for the English market. I believe if you get 50,000 or 60,000 of who come to England and Scotland every year, and live on 6d. a-day, working, very often, 12 or 14 hours a-day, for the purpose of paying the rack-rent exacted from them for their little holdings at home by the landlords. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman, then, if the migratory labourers of the West of Ireland, holding their five or six acres of land, or more than the half acre which has been spoken of, are not prevented from working, and working very hard, to better their position, why should he suppose that labourers in other parts of Ireland, with much less land given them, would 1 [Eighth Night.] |