we shall have a very great increase in the matter of the Irish Agricultural Labourers Acts; in connection also with the administration of lunatic asylums; and a large increase in other ways, and under the circumstances I am afraid that the provivery much

large sums of money given to Ireland out | posed by this Measure. Under this Bill of the pockets of the generous English taxpayer he could never have read or must have utterly forgotten the Report of the Financial Relations Committee. When that Report comes to be dealt with by this House, and the generous English taxpayer comes to a knowledge of his real relations with the Irish taxpayer, it will be quite time enough to talk of the generosity of England towards Ireland. The honourable and learned Gentleman who has just sat down spoke of this House being the trustee of the finances of the British Treasury, but those of us who represent Irish constituencies in this House might very fairly say that we ought to be the trustees of an Irish Treasury, and that we are largely of opinion that the Irish Treasury has been greatly depleted by the superior cleverness of the English Treasury, and that, therefore, we are fairly entitled to try by every means in our power to do something to restore the equilibrium. What I wish to impress upon the House is the point made by the honourable Member for East Mayo, who, I regret, is not now in his place, that this grant does not raise the question of the financial relations of England and Ireland. It simply amounts to giving to Ireland the same advantages as are enjoyed by England, and treating the Irish ratepayers in the same way as the English ratepayers have already been treated. Now, this part of the Bill is incontestably a most important point, and therefore, under the circumstances, I trust the House will not think ill of us if we debate this question at some length. I am perfectly certain that I shall be followed by honourable Members representing Irish constituencies on the other side of the House, who in return will be supported by honourable Members sitting behind me. I speak as an Irish ratepayer, and it certainly seems to me that the provision which the Government make in regard to the contributions towards the Irish rates will not prove to be adequate. The right honourable Gentleman the Chief Secretary has made some elaborate calculations in regard to this matter, but in all his calculations he has, I am rather afraid, not taken into consideration the large increase of expenditure which must necessarily occur under Irish local government, as pro

sion made in the Bill will prove far from adequate in future. I can speak in this matter for two counties with which I am connected; in the case of county Kerry this year the local expenditure will be something like £5,000 more than it was last. I say that from a report sent to me by the Kerry Grand Jury. In Wexford we shall have an increase of expenditure to the extent of some £2,000 or £3,000 over that of last year; and, therefore, I think that the Government would do well to consider whether it would not be desirable on their part, in making their calculations, to take the average of a series of years, instead of taking the year 1897 as a standard upon which to base the rates in future. I quite accept the statement of the right honourable Gentleman that 1897 was taken because of the elaborate calculations which had already been made with regard to the year, but I do not think, in an important question of this charac ter, that Her Majesty's Government ought to bind us down to a hard and fast line. I think they ought to leave it open, so that the matter might be reconsidered as to whether it would not be better to base the calculations as to what the contribution towards the Irish rates should be on an average of two or three years. I give my reasons for that suggestion. Taking the two counties with which I am familiar, if you take 1897 for the standard year, I think you will find that the expenditure of that year will be exceeded in the future. Let me go a little into the details. I have here the accounts from two Irish boards of guardians in Kerry and Wexford, the unions of Killarney and Gorey, and in those various items of accounts expenditure in the various localities for last year and for this year, and I say, an increased they show, In the expenditure. I may here be permitted to quote some of the figures. Union of Killarney I find in one of the electoral divisions, Aghadoe, that the expenditure of last year necessitated a

are

as

the

rate of 2s. in the pound; this year it is 4s. 4d. In the division of Aglish last year the rate was 1s., and this year it is 2s. 7d. in the pound. In the division of Caragh last year the rate was 3s.; and this year it is 5s. 9d. in the pound; in the division of Curraghmore last year 1s. 6d., and this year 4s. 3d. in the pound; in the division of Doocarrig last year 1s. 6d., this year 2s. 4d.; in the division of Dunloe last year 2s. 2d., this year 3s. 2d.; in the division of Headfort last year 2s. 2d., this year 3s. 1d.; in the division of Kilbonane last year 1s. 8d., this year 2s. 8d.; in the division of Killentierna last year 1s. 2d., this year 2s. 3d.; in the division of Killorglin last year 3s. 9d., this year 5s. 10d.; in the division of Milltown last year 1s. 11d., this year 4s. 2d. ; in the division of Molahiffe last year 1s. 10d., this year 3s. 5d.; in the division of Rathmore last year 2s., this year 2s. 11d., and so on. Then in the division of Killarney, urban, it was 2s. 11d. last year, and 3s. 6d. this year, whilst the rural district also shows an increase. So much for the Union of Killarney. Now we pass to the figures of the Union of Gorey, Wexford. I take these figures as being typical of the country. In the division of Ardamine last year we had a rate of 1s., and this year 1s. 4d.; in Ballygarratt 8d. last year, 11d. this year, and in Ballynastragh last year they were 10d., and this year 1s., and in the division of Wells it was 7d. last year, and 1s. 1d. this. In the division of Balloughter, the poor rate last year was 8d., this year 10d; in the division of Coolgreaney last year it was 9d., this year it is 1s. 4d.; in the division of Kilgorman last year 1s. 1d., this year 1s. 6d. ; in the division of Killincooly last year 8d., this year 1s. 2d.; in the division of Limerick last year 9d., this year 11d.; and so on. The total expenses of this union last half-year were £5,732, whilst for the corresponding period this year they are £5,901; and the total debts of this union last year were £8,945, while for the corresponding period of this year they are £9,191. So, Sir, this year generally is more expensive than last year.

able Friend the Member for East Mayo. I hope no idea of niggardliness will be entertained, and that these new Irish. local authorities--these new centres of local government in Ireland-will be in a position to carry out their work effectively and well, and will be financially qualified for the proper and efficient work of local government in Ireland; and that they will be enabled to meet the future with confidence, knowing that whatever may come upon them, they will have secure and efficient assistance from the agricultural grant to meet the situation.

Amendment proposed

"In sub-head (a), line 2, to leave out the words 'poor rate and.'"Mr. Lambert.)

*MR. LAMBERT (Devon, South Molton) said he quite appreciated what the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said in regard to bringing the discussion to a close, and he formally moved the Amendment which stood in his name.

MR. G. WHITELEY (Stockport): It was not my intention to speak, but rather to give a silent vote on this question. You are asked at once to exclude the landlords as ratepayers in Ireland. You are relieving them of the burdens they now have on their shoulders; and how are you to relieve them—where are the funds coming from by which you relieve them? These funds are practically paid by the taxpayers in this kingdom. We have had the views of county Members, the views of the Irish Members, but we have not heard the views of any single town representative who may live at these places, and who might say that he sees that it is just or expedient that the great towns should have the burden of of Ireland. I have always raised my the payment of the rates of the landlords voice in this House against what I look upon as injustice. In the towns we have industries equally important to the land industries, and we have our rates to pay.

The THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS: The honourable Gentleman is discussing what he cannot do. If he speaks for the Amendment he will be in order.

small towns in Ireland think they ought to be considered in this question. I trust the Government will consider whether such a concession can be made on this point. I join with my honourSir T. G. Esmonde.

MR. G. WHITELEY: I say we have as much right to have our poor law expenses paid as the landlords in Ireland. I have no objection to these doles; but as you treat those landlords so I say you ought to treat us millowners, shopkeepers, and working classes. Unless you do that you will create an injustice.

*MR. CHANNING (Northants, E.): I should like to support the Amendment of my honourable Friend. I think we are indebted to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for having reminded us of what is the corner-stone and the hinge on which the whole of these proposals hang. He said, if I remember rightly, in reply to the honourable Member for the Hawick Burghs, that unless this proposalthe grant to the landlords-were carried the Government would have to abandon the Bill. I listened to the speech of the honourable and learned Member for Derry City. He repudiated in the frankest way all sympathy with anything like Radical or scientific proposals with regard to the taxation of land-such proposals as were embodied in the great Budget of 1894. That Budget seemed to me to impose a very just burden upon the owners of land in this country. But now we have this extraordinary position, that while we in this country are agitating, and shall continue to agitate, to impose equitable taxation on the owners of ground values in our great towns, we are threatened with the absolute secession of our Irish friends from any support to such legislation. The real principle of this Bill is indicated in the speech of the Leader of the House in foreshadowing this Bill last year. He said

was agricultural land or land in the towns of all local taxation such as the Bil! proposes to attempt in Ireland. I have been perfectly astounded at the speech. of the honourable and learned Member for Londonderry; and I wonder how he can, consistently, with the course repeatedly pursued by the Irish Members on these questions, argue in favour of these proposals with regard to the landlords of Ireland. I am afraid the Irish party are frittering away their strength, and that their great purposes are being paralysed and ruined by dissension and faction. I am not sure to what particular section of the Irish Party the honourable and learned Member belongs, or whether he follows as his leader the honourable Member for East Mayo, who spoke of this proposal as blackmail.

MR. DILLON: I adhere to that.

It.

is only because it is blackmail that I support this resolution.

*MR. CHANNING: We have got, then, to this condition of things. From the speech of the honourable Member for Derry, and from the extraordinary arguments advanced a few days ago on clause12 by the honourable Member for Longford, it is now plain that practically the Irish Party claim to draw upon the Imperial Treasury, to meet local expenditure to any extent up to the full amount of the calculations they have formed of the indebtedness of this country to Ireland under their view of the financial relations of the two countries. The ques-tion of what may or may not be due to Ireland under an equitable settlement. of the financial relations I should be out of order in discussing now. It will have to be threshed out in other discus-sions on other occasions. We have now to consider simply the question of giving to Ireland an amount which is fairly equivalent to the grant in respect of English and Scottish agricultural land a year or two ago. tinct and perfectly definite question. It That is a perfectly disis important to examine the inception of this policy. We know exactly how this proposal was brought about. The Agricultural Industries Bill of last year, It will be simply monstrous to sup- which, at least, would have created a Fose that here in England any Govern- machinery through which grants to Irement, on whatever side of the House it land might have been applied to useful sits, would venture to come and propos: purposes, such as those suggested by the to relieve the owners of land-whether it right honourable Member for South

"The poor law and county administration of Ireland can only be put on a broad and popular basis if at the same time the owners of agricultural land can be relieved of the apprehension which, rightly or wrongly, they entertain with regard to the possible extravagance, perhaps unintentional and perhaps intentional, of the new bodies which are to

be called into existence. I hold, Sir, that to attain that object the landlords must be relieved from all rural rates in the future. I make no secret about it. That is a wide departure from the course we have pursued in England and in Scotland."

Dublin, was withdrawn on the under- no man can visit these districts without "taking that this proposal of local feeling the warmest sympathy with the government should be introduced, and miserable inhabitants of these districts. the First Lord of the Treasury stated I have been in one district on the coast that this proposal could only be intro- of Galway where the population have duced on the distinct understanding that literally created their holdings out of seathe landlords should be guaranteed be- weed and sand and manure worked forehand against any unjust taxation together by the labour of generations which perhaps might be imposed upon upon the bare rocks. Generation them. I am astonished that the friends after generation the landlords have of Home Rule should be so anxious to extorted rent from them; and those acquiesce in this insult from the Govern- men, who have contributed to the ment-this reflection on the baseness and poverty of these people by taking cupidity of the county councils, and that their slender resources in unjust and unthey have been willing, apparently, to fair rents, are to be exempted from pav adopt the principle which Her Majesty's ing any contribution whatever for the Government have laid down, that it was relief of the poverty of those districts. absolutely necessary to hand over this I wish honourable Members before they £300,000 to the Irish landowners because vote had read what the late Sir James the Irish county and district councils Caird, a man of the greatest experience could not be trusted to tax Irishmen, in agricultural land, stated as to the conwhether landlords or farmers. If I were dition of the peasantry of the West of an Irishman, I would resent such a pro- Ireland, and the causes of the poverty posal with all my heart, because it is a there. He pointed out that it was the gross reflection on the justice and fair- deliberate policy of the landlords to cause ness of the bodies to be elected in Ireland, a sub-division of land and to make the and on the spirit of fair play with which Irish population dependent on potatoes, they should carry out local administra- in order to increase the number of their tion fairly or justly. We have not had tenants and exact a still greater imposifrom the other side of the House a tion of rents from these poor, unhappy shadow of justification for this proposal people. It is familiar to everyone who to compensate the landlords beforehand has studied this question that political for the injustice which the Irish county motives also led the landlords in the past councils are expected to inflict upon to encourage the sub-division of these them. My honourable and learned holdings in the West of Ireland, where the Friend the Member for the Hawick most acute poverty prevails. The landBurghs argued unanswerably, and I challenge any honourable Gentleman from the opposite side of the House to answer his speech line by line and argument by argument. It proved that you are deliberately handing out the money of the British people to the Irish landlords in order to make up for the diminution of the rents in Ireland. It is part of the compensation policy which had been pursued by the Party opposite ever since the Act of 1881, and which consisted in ladling out the money of the taxpayers into the pockets of Irish landlords to make up for the just reductions of rent which the Land Commission had been compelled by the facts to go carrying out steadily year after year. This is mainly a question of poor rate. Look at the congested districts, where this question of the poor rate is of most vital importance. I have visited some of the most congested of them in the west, and Mr. Channing.

lords deliberately brought about the existence of these congested districts and the acute distress of these districts. And yet my Irish Friends are condescending to take this mess of pottage from the Government and consenting to a policy of compensation to the landlords, of totally exempting from contribution to the poor rate these very men who have unjustly imposed burdens on the people, and whose selfish policy has largely created the misery which has to be relieved.

*THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: My honourable Friend objects to exempting landlords from the rates. This Bill proposes to place Irish landlords with regard to the rates precisely in the same position as the English landlords. That is all. No English landlord pays as a landlord. He only pays rates as an occupier. Irish landlords will in future pay rates as occu

piers. Whether this view is right or of the British taxpayer, I could underwrong, I will again remind the Com- stand their position and their right to mittee that it ought to be discussed on interfere in order to tell us how to distrithe clause of the Bill. Supposing, how-bute it. But then the honourable ever, the honourable Member were to Member has just told us, in answer to succeed in eliminating the poor rate from a question from myself, that this money this resolution, what would be the result? it not the money of the British taxpayer. Would he make the landlords liable to the rate! Not in the least. That clause would still remain in the Bill, and might be carried against him in this House. What he would do would be this: he would impose the rate hitherto paid by the landlord upon the occupier without any relief from the Exchequer.

*MR. CHANNING: I hope the honourable Member for North Dublin will excuse me if I interrupt him. What I meant to intimate was that I did not believe Ireland was entitled to an equivalent fairly estimated for the agricultural grant given to England. That was all I meant.

MR. CLANCY: That is exactly what
That is what I understood as

DR. CLARK (Caithness): Not Scotchmen.

MR. CLANCY: If Scotchmen have not got their half, probably they have got more. At all events, they are not likely to be cheated by Englishmen or by Irishmen. But two years ago Parliament voted to pay out of the Imperial Exchequer half the agricultural rates for England and for Scotland.

MR. CLANCY: The attitude of the Liberal Members surprises me. Although they recognise theoretically I meant. our right to govern ourselves and admitting that the money is ours. Two manage our own affairs, it somehow years ago the honourable Gentleman, or, always turns out that they won't allow at any rate, this Parliament, agreed to pay us to do it. We now desire a say out of the Imperial Exchequer half the in the agricultural rates of every Englishman distribution of this money under the and Scotchman. Bill, and they want to dictate to the representatives of Ireland how that money is to be spent. I don't really know whether all of them take the view of the honourable and learned Member for the Border Burghs. It is admitted that the money is Ireland's, and by what right do they interfere? By what right do these English Home Rulers try to prevent Irish Home Rulers doing what they like with their own? I have been trying to analyse the motives of these honourable Gentlemen, and trying to reconcile their professions with their practice. I utterly fail. The only thing I see is that in some way or other they admit that these MR. CLANCY: What is the use of affairs are ours, and that we can manage contradicting me? The point is plain to them as we like, and yet they are per- everybody except the right honourable petually poking their noses and fingers Gentleman below me. Two years ago, into business which does not concern by Act of Parliament-oh, I see the them at all. I could understand the atti-point of the honourable Gentleman; it tude of the right honourable Gentleman was the year after with regard to Scotwho has just sat down if he denied that land. I apologise to him. At all events, the money was ours. Indeed, some of they have got it now. the expressions which he used in the course of the discussion would rather throw doubt upon the point, because he spoke of the British Treasury as something entirely confined to England and Scotland. If von contribute for Irish purposes out of the British Treasury, all I can say is we contribute far more than our proper share of the expenses. If this was their own money, the money

DR. CLARK: No, not for Scotland.

DR. CLARK: I really do not want to interfere, but as a matter of fact there were five-eighths of one-half, and not onehalf, paid to Scotland.

MR. CLANCY: I will not enter into those minute calculations. I say, and I repeat, that, as everybody knows, half