leaves me unexhausted improvements, of the existence of which I am not even conscious. The value of my estate is only twenty years' purchase; he has, consequently, as much interest in the estate as myself. Why, then, should I suffer inconvenience and loss, or forbear from vindicating my rights?' I say that this appeal of a tenant, under circumstances such as I have described, would be one of the very last which was calculated to touch the heart of a proprietor. But this is the position in which you propose to place landlord and tenant for the future, terminating all those moral relations which have prevailed, and, even in the most unhappy times, have been extensively exercised."

He further objected to the proposal to make advances of public money, except "on good security, and for a beneficial object," in which light he could not regard advances to the tenant in order that he should purchase the freehold, the tendency of which, he said, was "to make at the same time of one man an inefficient tenant and a poor proprietor."

After criticizing the course proposed to be taken with reference to purchasers under the Landed and Encumbered Estates Act, he said of the Bill," without giving any final or general opinion as to its merits, that a more complicated, a more clumsy, or a more heterogeneous measure was never yet brought before the consideration of Parliament," and proceeded to give his model of a Bill with the recommendation, he said, "of simplicity and brevity." He was for leaving all the customs of Ireland alone. "They are very effective," he observed, "at the present moment. If you legalize the custom, the chance is that you diminish the moral incidents of the arrangement without practically increasing the legal power. It is better to leave those incidents to work their way, as they have hitherto done, with very general satisfaction. But if a man without a lease, and who had paid his rent, is evicted, why, let his case go before the tribunal you shall appoint; let the Judge investigate all the elements of the equity of the case; and let him come to a decision which on one side shall guard the tenant from coercion, and, on the other, preserve the landlord from fraud. Why cannot you do this? You are going to create a tribunal. Then create at once an efficient tribunal, and delegate to it the authority I have mentioned. It would not be so great a violation of the principle of property as these complicated provisions before us."

Laughing at the tribunals proposed by the Bill, at the assistantbarrister, "always careful to be non-resident," and the Judges of Assize to whom appeals were to be made, "whose every hour and half-hour is mapped out before they embark on their great enterprise, followed by an excited and ambitious Bar, with their carriages and the railways full of briefs," he suggested that Judges specially 'sent down, as in England, under the last Election Act, would perform the necessary duties satisfactorily.

In conclusion he protested strongly against all interference with freedom of contract in Ireland, regarding freedom of contract as

"one of the greatest securities for the progress of civilization." "I know well," he said, "that the condition of Ireland may act upon the decision of this House in the conduct of this Bill. I who am offering to this Bill no factious opposition, who have given to it, as I promised, a candid consideration, and who, I trust, with the modifications which argument and reason may bring about, will yet be able to give it a cordial support, am most anxious that honourable gentlemen, on whatever side they sit, will not decide upon the fate of Ireland in these most interesting and important relations of its most important classes in a spirit of panic. Do not let us vote upon this subject as if we had received threatening letters-as if we expected to meet Rory of the Hills when we go into the lobby. No: let us decide upon all these great subjects which will be brought under our consideration in Committee as becomes members of the House of Commons; for, depend upon it, if we are induced in a hurry and with precipitation to agree to such monstrous enactments as that the Irish people should not have the power, for instance, of entering into contracts with each other, the time will come-a more tranquil and a more genial hour as regards Ireland than the present-when the reproach we shall receive upon the subject will be made from Ireland itself; and they will say of the English people, They treated us in our hour of difficulty as men who neither comprehended justice nor deserved freedom.'

Mr. Gladstone, in replying, met the plan of Mr. Disraeli with a question: "Suppose," he said, "the landlord contracts with his tenant that he shall not upon eviction go before a Judge, I want to know what, in that case, and subject to that single test, will become of the measure of the right hon. gentleman." Thanking the Opposition and the Irish members for their readiness to aid in smoothing the difficulties intercepting the adjustment of the question, he promised to give fair consideration to amendments in Committee, and specified one or two points on which he had been convinced in the course of argument that some modification would be necessary. He admitted that a more distinct severance might be made between payment for improvements and compensation for eviction; and that it might be right to consider the provisions of the present law of distress in Ireland in their bearing on some of the clauses of the Bill. On the question of the Ulster custom he was firm; and owned that the debate "had not inspired him with the slightest desire or disposition to depart from the substance of the clause relating to it." Approaching what he described as "the broadest of all the questions connected with the character of the Bill"- the question of eviction-he declared that its great aim was to give "stability of tenure and security of mind to the occupier of the soil." The difficulties in the way of the Bill he divided into two classes: the objections made in the House (which he had already noticed) and those not much, if at all heard in the House, " far more formidable, not in their power of reason, but in their power of acting upon the popular mind;" such as the doc

trine of "fixity of tenure," of which he recorded it as "a great and an important fact," that throughout the debate it had been "wholly unsustained by the slightest attempt at reasoning "—and the doctrine sometimes called "fair rents," and sometimes "valuation of rents," of which also he said that little had been heard during the debate, but which had been defined to him by an important deputation, which had desired that any Bill to be passed by Parliament should recognize for the tenants these things:-'A right to continued occupation, subject to the payment of the rent to which he is liable, or to such charge of rent as shall be afterwards settled from time to time by fair valuation as hereinafter provided, and the right to sell his interest to any solvent tenant to whom the landlord cannot make reasonable objection.' This demand, and the demand for a power to reduce excessive rents, he described and objected to as the claims made on behalf of what he might call "the popular party in Ireland ;" and after pointing out their fallacy, he concluded his speech with an appeal to those members who were preparing to oppose the second reading of the Bill. "Will the Irish people," he said, "follow such a disastrous leadership? I believe not. I hold that each successive act of justice developes feelings of content and loyalty, and narrows the circle of disaffection. I know your difficulties may be great, but they are not yours alone, they are the difficulties of other Irish members. There is in Ireland-do not let us conceal it from ourselves not only a reckless, a lawless, but a demoralized and demoralizing agency, which is now at work for the two-fold purpose of disturbing the country through agrarian crimes, and of making, through unreasonable demands, peaceful legislation impossible for Ireland. But you have before you noble examples. Are there not numerous Irish members, your brethren in many an ancient contest for the rights of your fellow-countrymen, who, nevertheless, in this debate, have manfully declared their resolution not upon this great and solemn occasion to reject the opportunity of making a new treaty of peace with this United Kingdom? And if, which I am most reluctant to believe-which I cannot believe, a portion of the Irish people could be induced to embark in this enterprize, is it likely they will succeed? Is the conflict one of such a character that you ought to encourage them to engage in it-to reject upon the second reading a Bill-I repeat the sentence because I wish every syllable of it to be scrutinized-to reject upon the second reading a Bill which offers to the farmers and the cottiers of Ireland privileges of occupation such as have never yet been enjoyed in two countries that are admitted to be, as respects the condition of the cultivators of the soil, at the very least among the foremost in the world? No, sir, let us look back, in one sentence, over the career of Irish patriotism. For a hundred years Ireland has been engaged in almost a continuous conflict with the governing power-I will not say of the nation, but with the governing power of this island. She has engaged in that conflict

with all the disadvantages of a limited population, of inferior resources, of backward political development, and yet she has been uniformly successful. Strength and weakness have grappled together in almost incessant conflict; and on every occasion, in a succession of falls, strength has been laid prostrate on the ground, and weakness has waved the banner of victory over it. ... The career of Ireland has ever been onward. Her cry has ever been, Excelsior! but, because she has had justice for her cause, and has been sustained in it by that which is the highest earthly organ of justice, the favouring opinion of the civilized and Christian world. We, sir, have accepted the challenge. We seek in friendly contest to deprive Ireland of that alliance. There is but one way in which it can be done, and that is by offering her justice. Will you take it upon you to ask for more? Victors you have been in many battles; but what will be the issue of the strife when already-as we know from the utterances of high and low in other lands-the world has begun to recognize the efforts this great country is making for peace and union-what will be the issue of that strife -what will be the weight of responsibility, if, intoxicated by success, and believing that that which has been must ever be, you venture to make, on the part of Ireland, or on the part of a portion of the people of Ireland, demands that justice cannot sanction or concede? Sir, we have been invoked to-night, in solemn terms, from both sides of the House, to be just and fear not. It is our desire to be just, but to be just we must be just to all. The oppression of a majority is detestable and odious-the oppression of a minority is only by one degree less detestable and less odious. The face of justice is like the face of the god Janus. It is like the face of those lions, the work of Landseer, which keep watch and ward round the record of our country's greatness. She presents one tranquil and majestic countenance towards every point of the compass and every quarter of the globe. That rare, that noble, that imperial virtue has this above all other qualities, that she is no respecter of persons, and she will not take advantage of a favourable moment to oppress the wealthy, for the sake of flattering the poor, any more than she will condescend to oppress the poor for the sake of pampering the luxuries of the rich. I beseech my hon. friends to pause before they call on the House to do an act which, however decisive its utterance, will break the concord and unanimity of the House. We have been met, and handsomely met, from the other side of the House; we have been met, and gallantly met, by many of those who have been foremost in fighting the battles of the people of Ireland. Hesitate, then, I beseech you, for a moment, before you run the risk of lighting a flame which you will in vain labour to extinguish, lest it should be the unhappy fate of your country that after she has surmounted every difficulty, borne every calamity, and conquered every enemy, she should at length miss the prize of national peace, happiness, and contentment through the agency of those whom she believed to be her friends."

Upon the division which followed, 442 members voted in favour of the second reading, and 11 in the minority.

Between the vote on the second reading and the carrying of the Bill into Committee, the growth of a new form of terrorism in Ireland served to exasperate greatly the temper of the House and of the country. This was the visits of armed men to farmers in County Mayo, to coerce them into taking an oath to break up their pasturelands. Under these conditions it was not likely that the promised Bill for the repression of agrarian crime, which was introduced by Mr. Chichester Fortescue, on the 17th March, would meet with any but the weakest opposition, or with any serious criticism except that it did not go far enough. Its principal provisions were simple and effective. It was proposed to suppress the use of fire-arms in proclaimed districts. Their possession without licence was entirely forbidden under penalties of exceptional severity, the Court being authorized to inflict sentences of two years penal servitude, The right of constables to search for arms was made complete, their warrants running three months and their powers extending to domiciliary search, which might be instituted by a patrol to be established in disturbed districts. Threatening letters were also to be met by domiciliary searches for evidence of handwriting and motive, and "visits" by arrests through patrols, who were empowered to seize any person wandering about at night in a suspicious manner. power of inflicting summary punishment was given to the magistrates, and change of venue authorized when needful. It was further proposed to authorize the Grand Jury, with the consent of the Judge, to levy damages on the districts for compensation to the families of any person murdered from agrarian motives-and Government was to have the power to seize upon any newspaper, owners receiving in the Bill power to institute an action against the Crown-thus securing the limitation of this clause to its special purpose, the prevention of newspaper-terrorism. The Bill passed rapidly, and received the Royal consent on the 4th of April. The Press clauses met with some opposition in the Lower House, but the division on the second reading showed a minority of only 15 members, and when the discussion was renewed in committee an amendment confining the right of seizure to newspapers advising agrarian outrage was negatived by 330 to 15. An amendment was, however, accepted that allowed of one warning before seizure. The Lords received the Bill with general approbation, with exultation even, and made no substantial change in it. "You must teach the Irish people to fear the law," said Lord Salisbury, "before you can induce them to like it."

The

the

The Irish Land Bill in Committee was threatened with no less than three hundred amendments; and the discussion on the first clause, legalizing the Ulster custom, occupied as much as twelve hours. The first important debate took place in committee upon the third clause (providing for compensation in absence of custom), when Mr. Disraeli moved that the compensation for eviction should