The Sun.
London, England, 1870-02-16 00:00:00

DISEASED CATTLE.

Mr. C. READ asked the Vice-President of the Council if
ho was aware that such doubts exist as to the power of sum-
mary jurisdiction of justices nnder the Contagious Diseases
(Animals) Act, that the Norwich and other magistrates had
declined to hear any summonses under the Act; and if ho
would take steps to remove the uncertainty which now
exists; tt»d if, when the local authorities naked information
from the Veterinary Department of the Privy Council, an
answer, stating " that it was not within the province of
that &par tment to interpret an Act of Parliament," was all
the aid local authorities were to receive from the Privy
Ccuucil in carrying out the Act and orders fur suppressing
contagious diseases among cattle?
Mr. FORSTER said the Government were aware that
some do übt existed in the matter, but having taken legal
opinic.n, they believed that such seminary jurisdiction did
exist. The judgment in the case tied in the Court of
Queen's Bench had been decisive, and no other steps were
considered necessary.
IRISH LAND TENURE.

Mr. GLADSTONE, on rising to address the House
on this important subject, and to make the
motion of which be had given notice, was re-
ceived with loud cheers front the Ministerial
ben, :hen. Twelve months were not yet fully passed, he said,
since it was his duty to submit to the House a measure with
reference to the Church in Ireland. At the time that mea-
sure was introduced its promoters were cold that it was not
the subject which involved the Lappioess of the Irish people
or which went to the root of the Irish difficulty. The
Government at no time denied the justice of that
representation. They were sensible that, heavy as the labour
was of carrying that great measure, a labour still heavier re
mained.to be performed. He trusted the House would approach
the consideration of Irish land tenure in the same spirit to
which the success of the Irish Church Bill was due. If the
measure did not directly affect the majority of the people
of Ireland, it did indirectly affect the whole population,
and through the population had a direct and vital connec-
tion with the happiness and stability of this great empire.
The Matsu must not disguise horn themselves the fact that
the difficulties of the question had been gteatly aggravated
by delay. (Hear, hear.) These who reflected upon the
nature and character cf the constitution of the British Par-
liament would understand how it sometimes fell grievously
short of a perfect performance of the duties belonging
to it.. The operations of Parliament since the Reform Act
of 1832 had been in themselves so remarkable, so
st arching, so comprehensive, and so beneficial that he
should not be deemed to cast a reflection upon it if,
he submitted that neglect was chargeable upon the House
for not before now dealing in the same comprehensive
spirit with the question of the Irish Land Tenure. (Hear.)
Ile would now for a moment glance at the recommendations
of a Royal Commission which reported in the year 1845 on
the subject. The right hon. gentleman proceeded to exa-
mine these recommendations, saying that although they
might not, if fully carried out, have accomplished
all that was now hoped to be accomplished, yet
possibly there would have been at this moment no such
question as the Irish land question. The House, he hoped,
would now, seeing that it had determined to grapple with
the question, firmly resolve the difficulties that had hitherto
stood in the way of a conciliatory policy towards Ireland,
and by a manful and resolute effort endeavour at once to open
and seal up this great question of the happiness and welfare
of the Irish pe' ple. (Loud cheers.) He hoped, in discuss-
ing the question, there would be au avoidance of all angry
feeling, and that every member would forbear
to revive painful recollections by reference to in-
vidieus topics. That the subject was one of vast
Red surpassing interest was proved by the attention
vouchsafed to the question by the press and people of
other countries. No better illustration of this could be
afforded than that of the Emperor of the French,
who had himself engaged in a great and arduous task for
the restoration of constitutional liberty in the country over
which he ruled, had in the kindliest phrase, and in the most
solemn manner, noticed the efforts this nation and Parlia-
ment were making with a view to healing the wounds of
Ireland. (Loud cheers). And he was sure, on the
part of the House, he might reciprocate the feeling which
his Imperial Majesty had manifested, and wish him success
iu his attempts to extend constitutional liberty. (Cheers.)
Writers of exalted position in the world of philanthropy
had endeavoured to elucidate the difficulties of the question.
Members of the Bar, members of this House, engaged in the
pursuit of agriculture, persons of every rank and station had
lint their efforts in the work. Some thought the Irish pea-
sant was prone to disorder; some did not understand why
landlords in Ireland couid not go on in the saute steady
and easy manner as in England; while others
thought that the Irish having been in a state of constant
progressive improvement for 20 years could have no occa-
sion for still exhibiting sentiments of discontent or uneasi-
ut es. Lord Russell, in that House, Lad laid it down that
evictions were the cause of agrarian crime. The right
hon. gentleman then proceeded to examine what was the
real cause of Irish discontentment, and in doing this he con-
trasted the nature of land tenure, as it was looked
upon by the occupiers, with that in England,
and likewise with the contract system prevailing in Scot-
land. In Ireland, he showed the people had not embraced
as yet the idc a of occupation of land by contract. They
conceived they had some right or interest in the soil as
tenants thereof, and that notion was, whether wrong or
right, deeply-rooted in the mind of the Irish nation. Then
the right hon. gentleman quoted figures with a view of
showing the increase of pauperism in Ireland, and this dis-
tress he traced in a great measure to the increased cost of
subsistence. Free trade, which had done so much to lessen the
price of wheat—which was a great boon to England—had
had a contrary effect with regard to oats and the products of
pasture lands in Ireland. It bad been said that they had
been legislating for Ireland for the last century, and yet the
country was not content, but they had endea-
voured to do all that was possible for the benefit of the
country. (Hear, hear.) In 1793 Parliament sanctioned an
Act, the object of which was to enfranchise the Roman
Catholic with respect to Parliament; but that had been en-
tirely frustrated by the acts of the landlords, with
respect to the forty shilling freeholds, which ushered in
the dreadful famine of '47 and '4B. Then again another re-
medial measure, as it was thought, was passed—viz., the
Encumbered Estates Act; but unfortunately the Act con-
tained one oversight, which he believed made it a
question whether that Act was a benefit or not.
When the provisions of the Act were put into operation it
was found that when the land was sold the person who
ought to have received an allowance• for the improve-
ments he bad made in the soil was not the
person who received it, which would not have
been the case had the legislation proposed in 1845
been successful. (Hear, hear.) All these circumstances
having arisen, it then became a question whether
the remedies Parliament had proposed had been
successful. Then came the question of emigration.
But emigration, in his opinion, was but another name for
banishment, and the country whose remedial measure
for evils that existed was banishment did not deserve the
respect of any body of men ; therefore, he could not
say that he could look to emigration to do that good
which some persons thought it was so calculated to
produce. They had in the measures brought forward
to benefit Ireland abolished the Church cess and built
workhouses, but the good anticipated by those and other
laws had, he thought, been overbalanced by other laws,
and thus that which was thought by Parliament likely
to prove highly beneficial for Ireland in the
end, resulted in a state of affairs quite the re-
verse. In this state of matters it became the duty of
Parliament to take the matter in hand, and the Government
now proposed to the House a measure forregulating the holding
and ownership of land ; and in doing that the great difficulty
they had to encounter was the various modes that had one
ny one been advocated as the great panacea for the ills of
Ireland. The great difficulty and the cause of the greatest
discontent in Ireland he thought was insecurity of tenure, and
that ho looked upon as the mischief they had to face. Ito
thought he might say that the sun of hope bad recently
dawned on Ireland, and it was, he was sure, the desire of
all that the landowners of that country might assume
a position like those of England —(Hear, hear)—
and by residence, by sympathy, and the discharge of their
duty in the administration of justice, do their utmost lc.
eradicate that bitter feeling which the reverse of all
this had produced. There were some who looked upon
perpetuity of tenure as a means of producing good
but the Government had decided not to deal with the evil in
that manner ; and then the next question that arose
was insecurity of tenure, and how to deal with it.
The evil that had to ho contended with was the insecurity
of land tenure, and that insecurity of land tenure was duo
to four causes-Ist, the withdrawal by the landlords o
privileges customarily enjoyed by the tenantry, of which
we had had some very painful instances at no distant day.
The withdrawal of privileges, especially of pasturage, gave
rise to Whiteboyism. Secondly, there was a lavish and
pitiless use of notices. (Hear, hear.) Thirdly, direct evic-
tions; and fourthly, increased demands in the shape of

rent founded solely upon the improved quality of the
soil, resulting from the expenditure of the tenant's labour
and capital. The right honourable gentleman then

inquired where the tenure of land was more satisfactory than
that prevailing in Ireland. First, ho referred to Ulster,

whore ho showed that land tenure was infi:

nitely more secure than in the rest of Ireland. Theft
he glanced at the Scotch tenure of land, and
that, he said, was much more secure than
was land tenure in England. Reverting to the
Ulster form of lease, he endeavoured to prove by statistics
how, under its operation and influence, the' province had
prospered, and its agricultural capacity been greatly enlarged•
The natural producing power of the ordinary soil of Ulster
was not one half that of Munster and Connaught combined,
and yet, under the state of things that existed, the actual
produce of the soil was greater in 'Ulster than the
rest of the three provinces. (Hear, hoar.) 131"
ster, therefore, showed that it was possible
to find a remedy for the insecurity of tenure, and at the same
time, as was his contention, not shake the stability of pro-
perty. (Hear.) Now, coming to the bill itself, he begged to
say that, with regard to a variety of minor points, he and his
colleagues, conscious that a variety of opinion was enter-
tained, wished to be guided solely by the experience of tae
House. The bill was to be a bill to amend the law relating to
the occepation and acquisition of land in Ireland.
First, ho should dispose of so much of the bill
as related to the acquisition of land in Ireland ; but before
doing co he wished to say how much, in such a juncture, be
regretted the absence, and the cause of the absence, of both
the right hon. member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli)
and of his (Mr. Gladstone's) colleague, the right hon.
the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Bright).
In the measures that they proposed with respect to land, the
efforts of the Government were, in the present case, not
dire,ted entirely to Ireland; they proposed to deal with
it in such a manner as would affect the three
kingdoms. One of the bills they proposed to
introduce would give increased facility to the transfer of
land in England ; another would deal with the
cases of succession in intestacy; but everything else that
he might mention in the course of his remarks weal
relate to Ireland. In the bill that he was about
to introduce, tbo first provision would be to enlarge
the powers at present possessed by limited owners.
(Hear.) The next proposition was to give assistance by way
of loan to tenants to purchase from their landlords the
land they now occupied—(hear, hear)—by giving to co'
piers willing to buy where landlords were willing to sell.
With respect to waste lands the bill further proposed to
give further facilities to landlords by way °f
loan, to prepare and reclaim waste land fur

cultivation, and making roads, and to secure t°
them a property over that which their industry and ill'
telligonce had made valuable. (Hear, hear.) When the
landlord of his reclaimed laud was desirous of
selling it, the provisions of the bill would give
Lim assistance, and the whole of this part Of the
matter would be confided to the management of the Boyd
of Works of Dublin. The mode of repayment of the leant;
so advanced would bo precisely the same as that novr
pursued where loans had been advanced for the
purposes of drainage. These were all the pro-
positions of the bill with respect to ownershiP
It was proposed to supply a distinct judicial machinery for
the administration of the provisions of the Act. That ma"
chinery would be twofold—either the Court of Arbitration,
as it was called is the bill, or the Civil Bill Court. The
right hon. gentleman here explained the constitution and
modus operandi of the two several courts. Then there would
be a court for land causes established in Dublin, for the put-
pse of disposing, by equity and common lay(
judges, of references from the other two courts.
The decision of these judges would, therefore,
be final. They would have large powers of
discretion. The general aim of the bill was to lay down
clear and distinct rules for the guidance of the Court, and
to allow the Cerra to take into their consideration the con"
duct and circumstances of the parties to the suit. TO
right hon. gentleman then passed in review the different
descriptions of holdings in Ireland. There were, he observed,
four descriptions of holdings. First, the Ulster custom ;
sec.incl, those that existed under other customs, analogous
more or less to the Ulster custom ; third, yearly
tenancies ; and fourth, those voluntary leases which
certain landlords, already sensible of the mischief
arising from the present state of things, had provided for their
tenants. All these several holdings the billwould keen in vie'',
Finally, Mr. Gladstone explained several miscellaneous
subordinate but important provisions. Eviction for noir
payment of rent as a general rule would not be deemed
disturbance by the landlord; but where it followed an inabi-
lity to pay an excessive and flagrantly unjust rent the colt
would bo allowed to take that circumstance into considera-
tion. Notices to quit hereafter must be for twelve months
dating from the last gale day in the current year, and, to
make them a more expensive amusement, they must all bear
a half-crown stamp. In every new tenancy over £.l the
county cess would bo divided between owner and occupier,
the oNupier below that amount being relieved altogether'
With the full knowledge that the measure was for
from perfect, he invited suggestions for its amendment from
all sides, and, after summarising the benefits which it would
confer on owners, occupiers, and labourers, and the reason
why he expected it to be accepted byall three classes, he con'
eluded a speech of three hours in a powerful and loudly"
applauded peroration by expressing a fervent conviction
that carried, not as a p arty or class triumph, but as a com-
mon act of justice and patriotism, the measure would spread
throughout Ireland the blessings of peace, order, and settled
and cheerful industry.

31r. HARDY (in the absence of Mr. Disraeli) gave el:
pression to the wish of the Opposition to deal with the bil
in a candid and conciliatory spirit, and with an intense
desire to realize all those blessings which Mr. Gladstone
had anticipated from it. Ho deprecated a desultory seci
imperfect discussion of its provisions at the present Me-
ment ; and, anticipating that the material discussion would
be in Committee, be asked when the second reading would
be taken.

On tho motion of Sir J. PAAINGTON, the papers relating
to the dismissal of Colonel Boxer were ordered, and, after
the Dissolved Districts and Union Bills had been read
second time,
The House adjourned at ten minutes to ten o'clock.