last five or six years, and in the present discussion not a new fact or new argument had been adduced. The Bill was divided into three parts. The first part was put in, he would not say deliberately to mislead; but it would certainly have the effect of leading a Member who did not read the whole measure to believe that it was a moderate and harmless measure. There was in this part many clauses of a moderate character, and which were well worthy of consideration. If they stood alone many of these clauses might be discussed. The second part of the Bill proposed some amendments in detail, and there might be amongst the clauses of which it consisted some few grains of wheat amongst a mass of chaff; but, although some of these provisions might be worthy of acceptance, he would point out that some of the clauses might be capable of considerable extension. The clauses contained an effort to introduce what was vigorously resisted when the Land Act was passed that was, the introduction of the jury element into the administration of the land laws before the County Court Judges. When that attempt was first made a very full discussion ensued, and it was pointed out that it would simply hold up the landlords to confiscation to allow County Court Judges to submit disputed questions as to the compensation to be paid by landlords to juries of tenant farmers; and with such obvious good sense was that advanced that the House of Commons at once acceded to that view, and it was decided that the provisions of the Land Act should be judicially administered by the County Court Judge, and the jury element should be carefully excluded. Well, one of the sections of the second part of the Bill now before the House provided that a Chairman should, if he thought fit, refer the question to a jury, who he should call in to assist him in his decision if a single question arose, not only under the Land Act, but under any of the provisions of the Bill. That was about as grave and serious an innovation as could possibly be imagined. It was no use to point out that it was permissive, and that the Judge was not compelled to call in a jury. The minute a popular question arose he would be pressed all round to allow his judgment to be assisted by the jury; and if he was not extremely firm,

The Attorney General for Ireland

and if it was a case about which there was any great popular excitement, he might be very glad to get rid of the responsibility of deciding such disputant questions, and refer it to a jury. The only other remark he had to make as to the second part of the Bill was that the effect of its provisions (in seeking to repeal the 12th section of the. Land Act) was such as to amount to a legislative enactment that any tenant, no matter what his education or ability or wealth-even if he held thousands of acres of the best land in Meath, and was richer than his landlord-should not have the power to enter into any valid contract with his landlord with respect to altering the compensation under the Land Act. Was not that really rank nonsense? And yet that House was quietly asked to pass a measure which was susceptibleand was intended to be susceptible-of such a monstrous construction as that. But the second part of the Bill was nothing compared to what the third part was, and which contained what he supposed he must call the principle of the Bill. That was a very remarkable portion of the Bill, and required a little attention to find out exactly what the principle was, because it was disguised in 20 or 30 sections, and required to be put into plain English. Without going through the details of the sections, the part was this-that by an Act which was retrospective, and did not look simply to the future, it proposed to enable every tenant in Ireland, no matter under what circumstances he got his farm, or what his position might beno matter what his wealth, his education, or his intellectual attainments, or the extent of his holding--if he pleased, against the wish of his landlord, by giving a simple notice, to turn his tenure into a perpetuity. But the hon. Member for Cork did not put his proposition in such a naked form as that wasthough that was the real principle of the measure, and it was necessary that the House should have the simple plain English words to deal with in deciding such a question. It proposed to enable a tenant, no matter how he got his position, by the service of a notice, to turn his tenure into a perpetuity, and that without giving one farthing of compensation to the landlord-and whether he pleased or not. All he could say was,

to use a common expression, that that was rather a strong order-that principle was diluted into 10 or 11 sections, and so its meaning might not be at once perceived by a casual reader; but what it really said was that every person, except the landlord, should have power to regulate and fix the rent. The County Court Judge, in the second part of the Bill, was invited and persuaded to rid himself of his responsibility by handing the disputed question over to a jury; but in all cases of dispute the County Court Judge had absolutely no discretion whatever as to the fixing of the rent. The Judge might arrive at a conclusion that the rent suggested was wrong; and yet he must register the figures handed over to him by two gentlemen, who were obliged to swear a very attractive oath as to the proper rent to be paid in future. He asked was that a reasonable kind of Bill to ask the House to read a second time? He ventured to say that it was not; that the few observations he had made would show that it was a very stringent and strong measure; and if he did not use the word "confiscation" in regard to it, it was because that word had been used so often that he should like to find a new word to mean about the same thing. With regard to the machinery for fixing the rent-each party, the landlord, who was unwilling to be dragged into the matter at all, he was told he must fix an arbitrator; and the tenant, who was the real master of the situation, and who could do what he pleased, and by serving a notice transfer his tenure into a perpetuity, he was to appoint another arbitrator, and then two gentlemen were to proceed to fix the rent. If those men honestly discharged their duty, and rigidly proceeded in the way fixed by the Bill, there would be a substantial rising of rents from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear; but he ventured to say that that was not the object of the Bill, and if any Member made such a suggestion as that, he ventured to say he would meet with a somewhat warm reception when he returned to Ireland; and, therefore, he contended that it was intended that the arbitration clause should only work in another way, and that the only variation of the landlords' rents was to be downwards-that the arbitrator might lower the rent, but was not expected to raise them. If that was not intended, why was

the County Court Judge given absolutely no discretion to decide in any single particular as to the amount of the rent? The Preamble of the Bill was a masterpiece of apparently studied frankness; and in his original Bill the late Mr. Butt acted on the principle that it was absurd to include in its provisions a number of rich graziers, who, in nine cases out of ten, were better off than their landlords; but the farmers' clubs in Ireland, which were very powerful, were not satisfied with the exclusion; the Bill was altered to suit their views, and now applied to every farm in Ireland, no matter what its extent. Was it not absurd to say that all that could be changed in Committee, when the principle had been deliberately introduced into the Bill? He addressed the same criticism to the Bill before, and yet it was introduced again; and, therefore, it must be taken that it was deliberately intended to make the Bill apply to all farms in Ireland. He also could not help referring to what had been said as to the extension of such a principle to English farms; and it was impossible not to see that if the principle he had referred to was applied in the way proposed in Ireland, it could not possibly rest there, but some attempt would be made to extend it to England. How were arrears of rent dealt with in the Bill? If a man was four or five years in arrears, one would have thought that, as a matter of common sense, if a tenant had the power given him to turn his tenure into perpetuity by serving notice, that at least a landlord would have power to recover his arrears of rent. But one must change all one's preconceived notions in dealing with the Bill before the House; for he found that when a tenant was five years in arrears in his rent and was under notice of ejectment, that notice of ejectment was paralyzed by the tenant being able to serve a notice on his landlord stating his desire to turn his tenancy, for which he was five years' rent in arrear, and for which he was being sought to be ejected, into a perpetuity. What was the discretion of the Judge in such a case? He might, if he pleased, award to the landlord, before the tenant was turned into a perpetuity, a sum which should in no case exceed one year's arrear of rent. One would have thought that the unfortunate landlord, who had only got one year's rent

when five were owing, at all events would be able to recover all his costs in such a matter; but, again, the Judge, who had no discretion as to the raising of the rent, and who could only award one year's rent instead of five, had discretion given him not to give the whole costs, but so much of the costs as, under the circumstances, he might think requisite. Was that a fair way to deal with the arrears of rent in Ireland? It might be said that the balance was not confiscated; and certainly the landlord might go into the High Court of Justice, and seek in some of its divisions the balance of the four years' rent, and the costs, if he was fool enough to resort to litigation. Once, in the County Kilkenny, two gentlemen were competing for the suffrages of the tenant farmers, and one of them announced that if returned he would introduce a measure to reduce the rents one-half. He was cheered to the echo, and the friends of the other candidate thought their man was nowhere; but he was equal to the occasion, for, addressing the tenant farmers, he said-"Does the villain expect that you will pay the other half?" The result was that the candidate who moderately proposed only to cut down the rents by half was glad to get out of the place with his life. The way in which the clause about sub-letting and assignment was arranged was very ingenious, for Clause 35 was about as nice and moderate as anyone would well wish for; but it was nibbled away by subsequent clauses until nothing had been left of it. Clause 38 took away a little of it, Clause 39 a great deal of it, and Clause 40 enabled a coach and nine or ten horses to be driven through it.

The speeches in support of the measure had been extremely interesting, and some of them had been characterized by a great amount of research, and, as might have been expected for the nation which supplied the bulk of the speakers, by much ability and eloquence. The hon. and learned Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) made a speech which was of considerable ingenuity and ability; but he could not help thinking it was delivered largely in reference to some elections which were pending. He would not, however, attempt to follow him through the details of his argument; but would confine himself to the subject-matter of

The Attorney General for Ireland

the Bill before the consideration of the House. The hon. Member for Cork went on to describe the course he had taken on his own ably-managed property and on the property of others in Ireland. They all knew, taking it on a broad rule, that Irish landlords were very good landlords, and he had no doubt that many in the House who had property in Ireland were good landlords. But the matter became quite different when it was proposed to take the land arrangements out of the scope of the landlords of Ireland. The hon. Member had said that nothing had come of the Land Act. [Mr. SHAW: That it did not carry out all its principles.] That might be so; "all" was a big word; but it had, at any rate, transferred £20,000,000 of the property of the landlords to the tenants. At present, there was really as little of practical hardship or friction in the relations between landlords and tenants in Ireland as was to be found at any time in the history of the country. In former debates there were only three or four specific cases of hardship inflicted by the landlord which used to be alleged. The Bridge evictions were a godsend on two or three occasions. But he had not heard any allegation of that kind in the course of this debate, and not one single case had been quoted which would justify such an extreme measure as the one before the House. It must be borne in mind that no measure—and, even assuming that the present Bill became law to-morrow— could do more than benefit the existing race of tenants. That was a matter which could not be denied by argument. Property would be given without compensation to the existing race of tenants, and they would be enabled to sell to others who had no land that property which they held at as high a price as they pleased. The result would be that future occupiers would stand in the same position as the tenants were at present, and, no doubt, would apply to their Representatives to pass for them a new land law. On the whole, the relations between landlords and tenants in Ireland were satisfactory. As a rule, the tenants in Ireland paid their rents promptly and fairly, and he hoped they would enjoy a very fair measure of prosperity, though they might not have done so of late. He did not think it was the interests of either

MR. PATRICK MARTIN remarked, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman in his speech had not entered upon the principle of the Bill. He had not even attempted to show the House any reasons why the substantial benefits which the Ulster custom, really observed, gave to the Northern tenant should not be secured to all Ireland by law. To confer these benefits on the entire tenantry of Ireland was the substance and essence of the present measure. Instead of argument, Her Majesty's Attorney General minutely and unfairly, in many instances, criticized the clauses of the Bill. He condemned the arbitration clauses in the Bill. But those clauses were in substance copied from an Act obtained by Trinity College, which had passed this House. Indeed, if his right hon. and learned Friend had given the matter the benefit of his consideration, even for a short time, he would have seen that these clauses were more clear and distinct than the Trinity College clauses. THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. GIBSON) said, that in the case of the Trinity College Act the sales were regulated by an average price of products for years.

MR. PATRICK MARTIN said, that the clauses in the Bill were more simple and clearer than the Trinity College clauses, and enabled a more accurate conclusion to be arrived at between the arbitrator and the Judge. No doubt, it had been said it was a monstrous novelty that the Judge should, by this measure, have the power of obtaining the assistance of a jury in land cases; but in railway arbitrations, in all other cases of dispute, except between landlord and tenant, it had been already decided by this House a jury was the proper ultimate tribunal. In those cases, either party had the absolute right to demand a jury. In the case of landlord and tenant, under the present Bill, a discretion was left to the Judge. The ob

was an example of the unfair way in which the second reading of this Bill was opposed. In 1877, when the Bill was first introduced by the late Mr. Butt, the then Chief Secretary for Ireland (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) said he saw no reason why grazing farms, as well as others, should not be subject to its provisions. Did not the Ulster tenant right apply to grazing as well as to tillage farms? It was then objected that all or none should have the privileges of the extension of the principles and incidents of the custom. The Bill had been met in a way which he trusted would not commend itself to the House. Let him again remind the House the promoters of the Bill sought only to give practical effect to principles recognized and admitted in the Land Act of 1870. He was glad to hear the hon. and gallant Member for New Ross (Colonel Tottenham) give his testimony in regard to the 1st and 2nd clauses of the Bill, and also to hear him express himself in favour of the Ulster tenant right. If the Ulster tenant right had worked so well in Ulster, why, he wished to know, should it not be applied to the whole of Ireland? Upon that point, he thought the right hon. and learned Gentleman might have given some more fitting comments on the arguments that had been advanced in favour of the Bill than that of saying there was nothing in them. On the second reading of the Land Act of 1870, the then Chief Secretary for Ireland stated the Government intended to extend the incidents of the Ulster tenant right custom over the entire of Ireland. It was, therefore, rather unreasonable to call this a measure of confiscation, which simply gave effect to the professed intentions of the framers of the Land Act of 1870. If the voice of the hon. and learned Member, so often listened to with pleasure in that House, but now, alas! stilled for ever, could be once more heard, he would have stated—as he had, indeed, left on record his conviction that the measure involved no interference with any just right of property, that it was justified by the circumstances of Ireland, the general principle of jurisprudence, the purposes for which, of old, Irish estates had been granted, and the conditions under which they were of right held. "But," said the Attorney General, no instances of hardship have