No. 20. 
 
 THE CASE AGAINST COERCION, 
 
 BEING 
 
 M Compilation of Arguments from tfaijliamentanj debates 
 and $peeche$ of $tembeti$ of all political parties. 
 
 I. S. LEAD AM, M.A. 
 
 Late Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford; Author of " Coercive Measures 
 in Ireland, 1830-1880 ; " Substitutes for Trial by Jury in 
 Ireland'' {Foi-t. Rev. May, 1882) ; etc. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 THE IRISH PRESS AGENCY, 25 PARLIAMENT-STREET. 
 
 Price One Penny. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/caseagainstcoercOOIead 
 
THE CASE AGAINST COERCION. 
 
 The Causes of Irish Discontent. 
 
 "Sir R. Buller says : 1 You have got a very ignorant and poor 
 people and the law should look to them, instead of which it has 
 only looked to the rich. That at least appears to me to be the 
 case.' "—(Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, 24th March.) 
 
 " By the Union the British Parliament placed in the hands of 
 the Irish landlords weapons of oppression which they never 
 possessed before the Union. I have here Mr. O'Connell, in 1846, 
 quoting a series of statutes which very shortly after the Union 
 were passed in favour of the landlords of Ireland and against the 
 tenants."— (Right Hon. Sir W. V. Harcourt, 25th March.) 
 
 The Tory Complaint of Ireland's Attachment to America. 
 
 " It has always been the trick of bigots to make their subjects 
 miserable at home and then to complain that they look for relief 
 abroad." — (Lord Macaulay, quoted by Sir W. V. Harcourt, 
 15th April.) 
 
 Landlord and Tenant in Ireland. — Continued Oppression 
 of the Tenants. — Excessive Rents. 
 
 " Mr. Knipe (Member of the Cowper Commission on Irish 
 land), says : — ' The landlords with a few honourable exceptions 
 have failed to meet by prompt reductions of rent the serious fall 
 in prices, or to recognise the serious losses to their tenants, and 
 to this may be attributed the combination, and the resistance to 
 eviction, which has taken place, and is likely to happen.' " — (Sir 
 W. V. Harcourt, 25th March.) 
 
4 
 
 The Irish Question : 
 
 " Sir R. Buller is asked, ' What is the cause of the mischief 
 that prevails ? ' and he answers without hesitation, ' The rents 
 are too high.' He explains his meaning in this way : — ' 1 think 
 it was the pressure of a high rent which produced the agitation 
 and consequent intimidation as to the payment of rent.'" — (Mr. 
 Gladstone, 24th March.) 
 
 "The stringency of the Coercion Bill was due to representations 
 made to Lord Salisbury in private by a deputation embracing two 
 members of that house. Their names appear in a return of rents 
 judicially reduced. On the estate of Colonel Tottenham there 
 were reductions from .£8 to £3 15s., from £7 8s. 6d. to .£3 15s., 
 from £6 12s. to £3, from .£17 17s. 6d. to £6 10s., and from 
 £47 10s. to £20. . . . Another of the names in the returns 
 was that of Colonel King-Harman. . . . He would give the 
 house some further reductions which had been made : old rent 
 £13, judicial rent £7 5s. ; old rent £7 10s., judicial rent £4 4s.; 
 old rent £18 9s., judicial rent £10 ; old rent £30, judicial rent 
 £16 10s., and so on ad infinitum" — (Mr.T.M. Healy, 24th March.) 
 
 " The average reduction on the new Under-Secretary's estates 
 was something like 38 per cent. . . . Whereas this gentleman 
 was entitled to only 62s. on the average, he had, under the ter- 
 ror of eviction, got 100s. from his unfortunate tenantry. — (Mr. 
 M. J. Kenny, 27th April.) 
 
 " Mr. M'Murrough Kavanagh declared he should give no re- 
 ductions because they were not needed. That was his evidence 
 before the Cowper Commission. But what happened? A Land 
 Commission came along the other day, and in the first case 
 Mr. Kavanagh 's rent was reduced from £17 17s. to £8. . . . 
 In the case of Michael Murphy, £14 to £7 15s., and so on. On 
 the small holdings the reductions were worse, a rent of £2 being- 
 reduced to 12s. 6d. . . . Lord Courtown's rents were dealt 
 with by the same Commission, and here were some of the reduc- 
 tions made in the rents :— £52 to £38 ; £19 to £11 ; £67 to £31 ; 
 £28 to £14 15s. ; etc. Some of the reductions of rents among 
 Lord Castletown's tenants :— old rent £15, new rent £5; . . . 
 
The Case against Coercion. 
 
 5 
 
 old rent £41, new rent £29 ; . . . old rent £18, new rent 
 £12. Was that creditable to the head of the Irish Loyal and 
 Patriotic Union ? "—(Mr. Dillon, 28tli March.) 
 
 " The Commissioners (of the Cowper Commission) say that to 
 force the tenants to sell their working stock in order to pay full 
 rents would be fatal to their future prosperity . . . The im- 
 poverishment and ruin of Ireland by forcing the tenants to sell 
 their stock are at this moment going on at a rapid rate." — (Right 
 Hon. J. Morley, 22nd March.) 
 
 u The present rent payable by law by the tenants of Ireland is 
 not a fair rent, it is an unfair rent. Every eviction in Ireland is 
 therefore prima facie unjust. It is an eviction for an unfair rent. 
 Your first object ought not to be to make it easier for the land- 
 lords to exact those rents ; the first object ought to be to make 
 those rents fair. " — (Sir W. V. Harcourt, 25th March.) 
 
 Wholesale Evictions for Excessive Rents. 
 " Evictions are going on at the present time at the rate of 
 more than 400 a week, or 20,000 per annum." — (Mr. J. E. Ellis, 
 26th April.) 
 
 " During the last quarter, 1,042 families, containing 5,190 
 persons, had been evicted." — (Mr. A. Pease, 27th April.) 
 
 "Dealing with evictions in Kerry, he showed that in the 
 quarter ending 30th June, 1886, 187 families, numbering 1,206 
 persons, were evicted ; in the succeeding quarter, 207 families, 
 embracing 1,274 persons, were evicted; while in the last quarter, 
 306 families, numbering 1,706 persons, were evicted. Since the 
 beginning of the agitation, or rather, of the depression in agri- 
 culture which had given rise to the agitation, there had been 
 evicted in Kerry 14,000 persons. This meant that one out of 
 every eight or nine persons in the agricultural population of the 
 county had been evicted." — (Mr. E. Harrington, 26th April.) 
 
 Consequent Alarming Growth of Pauperism. 
 "The Poor-law statistics of Ireland were most appalling. 
 There were 24,000 people more in the workhouses of Ireland last 
 
 B 
 
6 
 
 The Irish Question : 
 
 year than there were the year before, and the state of pauperism 
 worse now than at any time during the last twenty-six years, 
 with the exception of 1878-81, when special measures were 
 taken. At the same time there was a vast increase in the 
 number of persons receiving parish relief." — (Mr. flown tree, 
 22nd March.) 
 
 Why the Land Act is Inoperative to stay Evictions. 
 
 "The Chief Secretary (Mr. A. J. Balfour), displaying an 
 ignorance which absolutely unfitted him for the post he held, 
 asked why the tenants did not go into the Land Courts. The 
 obvious reason was that if they did they would be turned out of 
 their holdings on all sides." — (Mr. M. J. Kenny, 27th April.) 
 
 " It had been repeatedly asked, why do not tenants who are 
 placed in such circumstances of stress go into court and get 
 relief under the Land Act ? Why, the tenants have arrears 
 hanging round their necks, which in an enormous number of 
 cases prevent them going into court and getting relief." — (Mr. 
 J. Morley, 28th April.) 
 
 Readiness of the Tenants to pay Fair Eents. 
 
 " Sir R. Buller says : — 'My view of the country is this — that 
 the majority of the tenants meant to pay their rents, and where 
 they could pay them did pay them, but the rents have been too 
 high. Nobody did anything for the people till the League was 
 established. ... I think it was the pressure of high rents 
 which produced the agitation.' " — (Mr. J. Morley, 22nd March.) 
 
 " Twice within the last twelve months the Irish tenants, 
 through their representatives in that House, had offered to place 
 the fixing of fair rents in the hands of the constituted courts 
 of that country. They offered on the Land Purchase Bill of the 
 late Prime Minister to allow the courts of law to decide what 
 should be the fair rent for the basis of purchase, and when the 
 Tenants' Relief Bill was introduced by his hon. friend the mem- 
 ber for Cork, the tenants of Ireland expressed through their 
 
The Case against Coercion. 
 
 7 
 
 representatives their willingness to consent to the proposal, that 
 any effort necessary to meet the crisis which had occurred should 
 be confided to the constituted courts of thecountry." — (Mr. Sexton, 
 11th February.) 
 
 The Tenants driven to Defensive Combination. The Plan 
 of Campaign. The Plan of Campaign checks Evictions. 
 " He had a list of all the estates on which the Plan of Cam- 
 paign had been adopted. The number was 75, on which there 
 were perhaps 30,000 or 40,000 families, and on these estates no 
 evictions had taken place, except on the estate of Lord Lansdowne, 
 so that there were hundreds of families who were still living in 
 their homes who would have been evicted but for the wholesome 
 coercion effected by the combinations of the tenants. The county 
 Kerry was one of the places in which he had not operated and 
 in which the Plan of Campaign had in no case been adopted. 
 Yet during the last three months 300 families had been 
 evicted."— (Mr. Dillon, 26th April.) 
 
 The Plan of Campaign, by Checking Evictions, Checks 
 Outrages. 
 
 " The number of outrages in the quarter ending 30th Septem- 
 ber last, before the adoption of the Plan of Campaign, was 306 ; 
 while in the quarter ending 31st December last, after the adop- 
 tion of the Plan of Campaign, that number fell to 166." — 
 (Mr. Tuite, 9th February.) 
 
 Justification of the Plan of Campaign. 
 " The right analogy to apply to the relative positions of land- 
 lord and tenant was the analogy derived from the relations of 
 partners in a common business. Would it be thought fair in 
 business that one partner should have all the profits and the 
 other should bear all the losses ? The Plan of Campaign had 
 been adopted for the purpose of effecting an equitable division 
 between the partners interested in Irish soil. He did not deny 
 that it was a rough and ready measure ; but it was not quite so 
 
 p* 
 
8 
 
 The Irish Question : 
 
 rough and ready as the plan of Judge Curran, or that of Capt. 
 Plunkett, who actually made a division of profits upon a farm 
 which he had never seen. If there was illegality in the Plan of 
 Campaign there was equal illegality in the plan of the Chief 
 Secretary."— (Mr. T. P. O'Connor, 8th February.) 
 
 "A paper (was) sent to Lord Cowper by the Bishop of 
 Elphin, and . . . was acquiesced in by four of his colleagues 
 in the Irish hierarchy — men more able, respected, and moder- 
 ate, than whom do not exist in Ireland. The Bishop says : — 
 'There is no combination, public or private, against paying 
 equitable rents. . . . The present public combined action of 
 tenants has no other object but the obtaining of equitable reduc- 
 tions of rent.' The Bishop then says. . . . 'In their minds 
 at least the exaction of such rents is a violation of God's law, 
 which a just government should condemn and prevent, and the 
 English law that enforces it is, in their eyes, utterly unjust, and 
 to be submitted to only from sheer necessity. Therefore, were 
 they even able to pay these excessive rents, which they are not, 
 they will not pay them. The baton, even the bayonet, has but 
 little terror for creatures so familiarized with sickness and 
 death.' " — (Et. Hon. H. Campbell-Bannerman, 31st March.) 
 
 Moderation of the Conduct or the Plan of Campaign. 
 
 "The abatements asked for upon judicial rents varied from a 
 minimum of 15 per cent, to a maximum of 30 per cent., and 
 upon non-judicial rents from a minimum of 25 to a maximum of 
 40 per cent." — (Mr. Sexton, 11th February.) 
 
 "The Clanrikarde estate, where 30 per cent, was all the 
 reduction the tenants asked for. But yesterday on that estate 
 the reductions made by the sub-commissioners amounted on an 
 average to 35 per cent." — (Mr. T. Harrington, 29th April.) 
 
 Is the Coercion Bill Justified by the State of Crime \ 
 
 " Ireland is practically free from crime." — (Lord B. Churchill, 
 31st January.) 
 
The Case against Coercion. 
 
 9 
 
 " There has not been the development of crime and outrage 
 with which we were threatened : that fact in itself ought to be 
 gratifying to us all." — (Attorney-General for Ireland, 7th Feb.) 
 
 "The Attorney-General for Ireland. . . . made special 
 reference to Kerry as showing the necessity for this bill. But 
 the outrages in Kerry during the last half of 1885, when Lord 
 Salisbury considered that there was no justification for the 
 continuance of coercion, numbered 120, which was double the 
 number in the corresponding period of 1886." — (Sir L. Playfair, 
 14th April.) 
 
 "The noble Lord(R. Churchill) says: — 'The published returns 
 presented to Parliament show no abnormal amount of crime.' 
 It is said there is an increase of crime now, but the rise in the 
 barometer of crime compared with what it was in the previous 
 year was much greater in 1885 as compared with 1884, than it 
 was in 1886 compared with 1885."— (Sir W. V. Harcourt, 15th 
 April.) 
 
 " Let them look at some returns of agrarian outrages which 
 the Chief Secretary had not touched. In the last six months of 
 1885 there were 543 cases, of which 232 were threatening letters, 
 and four were murders: in the last six months of 1886 the 
 number of cases was 472, of which 179 were threatening letters 
 and three were murders ; and since 1886 there had been a further 
 decrease of offences against life."— (Sir J. Pease, 5th April.) 
 
 " Although unfortunately crime had increased, it had not in- 
 creased to such an alarming extent as would, to his mind, have 
 justified Her Majesty's Government in introducing so stringent a 
 measure." — (Col. Saunderson, 15th April.) 
 
 " On page 15 of the report of the last Judicial Statistics of 
 Ireland, there was this pregnant passage referring to the state 
 of crime during the last five years : — ' The improvement as 
 regards the most serious offences (those not determined sum- 
 marily) noted in the reports of the last five years, has been more 
 than maintained, the number of offences coming under this 
 category not amounting to 60 per cent, of the corresponding 
 
10 
 
 The Irish Question : 
 
 numbers for the year ending 1881, since which year there has 
 been an uninterrupted decline." — (Sir L. Playfair, 14th April.) 
 
 "Taking the last thirty years, from 1855 to 1885, the reduc- 
 tion of crime in Ireland had been so great that the convicts in 
 the prisons had decreased by 80 per cent." — (Sir L. Playfair, 
 14th April.) 
 
 Trial by Jury in Ireland. 
 
 " Ireland had 38 per cent, less criminal convictions than 
 England, and 47 per cent, less than law-abiding Scotland. It 
 might be said that the reason of that was because the juries of 
 Ireland would not convict. ... In Great Britain the per- 
 centage of convictions to indictments was 77, in Ireland it was 
 73, and not many years ago the proportion in England was only 
 G8 per cent,"— (Sir L. Playfair, 13th April.) 
 
 Is Boycotting Increasing? 
 
 "In October, 1885, there were partially boycotted 714, and 
 totally boycotted 165 ; total 879. Now there are 836 cases, and 
 they form a conclusive case for the Government to apply a 
 change in the law. But in 1885, when there were 879 cases, 
 they formed no ground at such a date, a month before the 
 general election. And not only so ; Lord Salisbury grappled 
 with the fact, and boldly propounded the view that that formed 
 no ground for legislation, and that it could not be dealt with 
 by legislation." — (Mr. Gladstone, 29th March.) 
 
 Will Coercion Suppress Boycotting ? 
 
 Lord Salisbury, speaking of boycotting, at Newport, on the 
 7th October, 1885, said : — " It grew up constantly, in spite of the 
 action of the Crimes Act, and it grew up for this reason— that it 
 is a crime of that character which legislation has very great 
 difficulty in reaching. I have seen it said that the Crimes Act 
 diminished outrages, that boycottiug operated through outrage, 
 and therefore that the Crimes Act diminished boycotting. In 
 the first place, the fact is not true. The Crimes Act did not 
 
The Case against Coercion. 
 
 11 
 
 diminish outrages, . . . and it certainly was not any restraint 
 on boycotting. Boycotting does not operate through outrage. 
 Boycotting is the act of a large majority of a community resolv- 
 ing to do a number of things which are themselves legal, and 
 which are only illegal by the intention with which they are 
 done. ... I believe the truth about boycotting is this, that 
 it depends upon the passing humour of the majority of the popu- 
 lation. I do not believe that in any community it is enduring. 
 I doubt whether in any community the law has been able to 
 offer a complete, perfect, and satisfactory cure ; but I believe it 
 contains its own nemesis within itself." 
 
 "I have seen it stated that the Crimes Act diminished boy- 
 cotting. It is not true. I have had a return of all the outrages 
 in September, during which the Act was not in existence, and 
 outrages were considerably fewer than in August when the Act 
 was in existence." — (Lord Salisbury, at Newport, 7th October, 
 1885.) 
 
 Under what Circumstances is Coercion Justifiable ? 
 " We, as Englishmen, must remember, for the sake of our 
 own liberties, and for the sake of the liberties of our sons and 
 those who come after us, that the Constitution of England 
 absolutely prohibits the imposition of exceptional restraints on 
 liberty except in times of great disorder." — (Lord R. Churchill, 
 at Edinburgh, 1883.) 
 
 Lord E. Churchill on Coercion. 
 " It comes to this, that the policy of the government in 
 Ireland is to declare, on the one hand, by the passing of the 
 Reform Bill, that the Irish people are perfectly capable of exer- 
 cising the highest rights and privileges of citizenship, and by the 
 proposal to renew the Crimes Act they simultaneously declare, 
 on the other hand, that the Irish people are perfectly incapable 
 of performing for the advantage of society the lowest and most 
 ordinary duties of citizenship. . . . All I can say is, that if 
 such an incoherent, such a ridiculous combination of Acts can 
 
12 
 
 The Irish Question : 
 
 be called a policy, then, thank God, the Conservatives have no 
 policy." — (Lord R. Churchill, at Paddington, 3rd January, 1885.) 
 
 What are likely to be the Effects of Coercion ? 
 
 " You have passed an Act of Parliament giving 
 supreme power to the great mass of the Irish people. To my 
 mind the renewal of exceptional legislation against a population 
 whom you had treated legislatively with this marked confidence 
 would be a gross inconsistency. The only result would be to 
 produce so intense an exasperation among the Irish people as 
 would have caused ten times more evil, ten times more resistance 
 to the law than your Crimes Act could possibly have availed to 
 check."— (Lord Salisbury, at Newport, 7th October, 1885.) 
 
 " The folly of imposing coercion," says the Bishop of Ardagh 
 and Clonmacnoise, "on a people among whom public crime of 
 any magnitude is comparatively rare, is only equalled by its 
 wickedness. It offers excuses to designing men to lead our 
 youths into secret societies, and such societies, under the pre- 
 text of resisting the unjust oppression of coercion, will soon 
 produce a deadly harvest of crime. Therefore, in the interests 
 of social order, as well as because eternal interests will be 
 jeopardized, we raise our warning voices, declaring before God 
 and man that the authors and projectors of the proposed legis- 
 lation will be responsible for the evils which will follow if they 
 [sic !] are carried into effect." — (Quoted by Mr. Gladstone, 
 18th April.) 
 
 Coercion Multiplies Evictions and Increases Crime. 
 " In the fourth quarter of 1880 the number of evicted persons 
 was 954. In the first quarter of 1881, when coercion was on 
 the stocks, they increased to 1,732 ; and in the second quarter, 
 when the Coercion Bill had passed, they rose to 5,500. . . . 
 And not only did evictions go up ; . . . but outrages, which 
 in February, 1881, the month when the Coercion Bill was before 
 the House, were 170, by January, 1882, when these exceptional 
 measures were in full force, had risen to 479, and by March, to 
 
The Case against Coercion. 
 
 13 
 
 531. Now what did that come from? It came from striking 
 at the tenants' organization before you struck at the land system 
 which that organization was directed against." — (Mr. Morley, 
 22nd March.) 
 
 " They were as anxious as any other section of the House that 
 crime and outrage should be put down in Ireland ; but their 
 experience of every coercive measure which had been passed for 
 that purpose showed that these measures were invariably directed 
 against political offenders, while in many instances criminals 
 were either allowed to go scot-free, or such unfair means were 
 taken to obtain their conviction that, when convicted, they 
 were made objects of popular sympathy." — (Mr. E. Harrington, 
 26th April.) 
 
 " We do not believe that the Irish tenants are burning to 
 throw off the yoke of the hon. member for Cork and the 
 National League ; but you do. If I held your opinion, the very 
 thing I would have done would have been to press on agrarian 
 remedies and to abstain from coercion, which will have the 
 inevitable effect — and I believe you know it in your heart of 
 hearts — by reason of the traditions of the strongest passion in 
 Ireland, of throwing the whole sentiment of the country against 
 your remedial legislation, and giving new strength to what you 
 are pleased to consider a lawless organisation." — (Mr. J. Morley, 
 28th April.) 
 
 " What could be more fatal than the alienation of a whole 
 people from the law ? The failure of the jury system pointed 
 out the dangerous fact of that alienation, and the only remedy 
 of the government was the abolition of that system. That was 
 about as wise as if a man were to hide from view the index of a 
 boiler pointing to danger and sit upon the safety-valve." — (Right 
 Hon. James Stansfeld, 12th April.) 
 
 Alleged Objects of the Bill. 
 
 " I stated before and I state again, that we do not rest our case 
 upon statistics of agrarian crime in Ireland." — (Mr. Balfour, 28th 
 March.) 
 
14 
 
 The Irish Question : 
 
 " It was not combinations they desired to crush, it was crime." 
 —(Mr. Balfour, 26th April.) 
 
 " We have offered to the other House of Parliament a measure, 
 not without hesitation, in order to put a stop to certain combina- 
 tions." — (Lord Salisbury, 22nd April.) . 
 
 " Just as the figures have shifted, so has the account of the 
 objects of the bill shifted.— (Mr. J. Morley, 28th April.) 
 
 " We shall venture to test by the reception the government 
 will give to the amendments, whether they really mean to confine 
 the operation of the bill to crime or mean to extend it to combina- 
 tion. If they mean to confine it to crime why incorporate the 
 Whiteboy Acts 1 "— (Mr. J. Morley, 28th April.) 
 
 " Of all the shams which have been put forward in this debate, 
 the greatest is the sham that in Ireland the people are groaning 
 under a terrorism exercised in spite of them, and that the ma- 
 jority are only anxious to be relieved from it." — (Sir C. Eussell, 
 5th April.) 
 
 The Eeal Objects of the Bill— 1. The Suppression of Poli- 
 tical Opposition. — What is the " Conspiracy" aimed at 
 in the Bill ? 
 
 " There is now an association called the National League. It 
 is a conspiracy." — (Bight Hon. W. H. Smith, 22nd March.) 
 
 " The provisions of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act are 
 child's-play in contrast with the provisions of this Bill. . . . 
 Your prisoners under the Habeas Corpus Act were not tortured 
 as they will be under this. Your political prisoners were not 
 put upon a plank bed and fed upon sixteen ounces of bread and 
 water per day, and compelled to do hard labour, as they will be 
 under this bill. The bill will be a means by which you will be 
 enabled to subject your political prisoners to treatment which 
 you reserve in England for the worst criminals, and it is idle to 
 talk about a comparison of the two measures." — (Mr. Parnell, 
 18th April.) 
 
The Case against Coercion. 15 
 
 2. The Maintenance of High Rents. 
 
 "The Cowper Commission (on Land in Ireland) had found, 
 not only the fall in prices and the deterioration of the soil 
 proved, but it had also found that the average fall in the last 
 two years, as compared with the average of the four preceding 
 years, in the value of the agricultural capital of Ireland amounted 
 to 18£ per cent. And what was the conclusion of the Commis- 
 sion, gathered from these facts ? It was the ' necessity of a fur- 
 ther reduction in the judicial rents, and the absolute impossibility 
 for the tenants to pay the present rents. What the Government 
 was asking the House to do was to deprive Ireland of her con- 
 stitutional rights in order to enable the landlords to appropriate 
 their tenants' property.' " — (Right Hon. H. Fowler, 22nd March.; 
 
 " If two or more tenants combined to resist an unjust rent, and 
 invited others to join them, they would become criminal conspira- 
 tors. . . . As clause 5 made it illegal for any person to speak 
 or write in favour of any such proceeding or offence, any platform 
 speaker or newspaper writer would be at the absolute mercy 
 of the Lord Lieutenant and of his executive instruments, the 
 magistrates. . . . Two other clauses were the 6th and 7th, 
 which had been termed the ' National League clauses.' It was 
 laid down that the Lord Lieutenant might proclaim any danger- 
 ousassociation ; he might proclaim it in any district, and might 
 suppress it as an association interfering with the administration 
 of the law, and thereupon any person who was in any way 
 connected with it became an offender, and was liable to the 
 punishment stated. Now this would apply to the bulk of the 
 population of Ireland." — (Right Hon. J. Stansfeld, 12th April.) 
 
 " This is an extension of the category of crime. This makes 
 the bill, a bill not against crime but against combination. What 
 is combination? Combination in Ireland is now detached from 
 crime. It is because it is detached generally from crime that 
 you are going to strike at it as combination. Combination is the 
 weapon by means of which — and by means of which alone —the 
 
16 
 
 The Irish Question : 
 
 Irish people in their weakness and in their poverty have been 
 able to make head against the wealthy and the strong. . . . 
 This is a bill evidently aimed against the people of Ireland." — 
 (Mr. Gladstone, 18th April.) 
 
 Why the Government wants to keep up Eents. 
 
 " A witness before the Cowper Commission (on Land in Ire- 
 land) was asked whether the judicial rents were not too high. 
 He said they were. He was then asked why they were not 
 lowered, and he replied, ' Because there is a Land Purchase Bill 
 coming.' That, then, is the secret of this Bill."— (Sir W. V. 
 Harcourt, 15th April.) 
 
 " When this (the Coercion) Act has been passed, there will be 
 nothing to prevent the Irish landlords from exercising intimida- 
 tion upon the tenants, who will be compelled to buy their farms 
 upon any terms the landlords may choose to force upon them. 
 The inevitable result must be loss to the British taxpayer. . . . 
 The result must surely be a wholesale repudiation of their 
 obligations, when this coercion shall have been removed, by the 
 tenants whom the landlords will have compelled to purchase on 
 extravagant terms." — (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, 31st March.) 
 
 "The Land Purchase Act will work mischievously if the 
 question is left open between landlord and tenant. Being asked 
 why, Mr. F. O'Sullivan answered, ' I know cases of tenants who 
 are in such dread of writs, by being actually evicted, that they 
 accepted conditions of purchase which on their own admission 
 they believed they were unable to comply with.' " — (Mr. C. 
 Bannerman, 31st March.) 
 
 " One subject referred to the Cowper Commissioners (on Land 
 in Ireland) was whether combinations prevented the operation 
 of the purchase clauses of the Act of 1881, or Lord Ashbourne's 
 Purchase Act of 1885. What does Mr. J. G. MacCarthy say? . 
 
 . . It means that a tenant under the threat of being turned 
 out, whatever for, agrees to purchase on terms practically fixed 
 by the coercive agent of landlords ; and the commissioners, when 
 
The Case against Coercion. 
 
 17 
 
 they inquired into these cases, have constantly found that the 
 price so fixed was a most monstrous price, which would have left the 
 British taxpayer completely in the lurch. . . . The landlords' 
 plan of campaign is to force the tenant to pay an unreasonable 
 rent, with a delightful alternative of forcing him to purchase at 
 an unreasonable price, thus exposing the British tax-payer to an 
 unreasonable risk. You are asking for urgency to make Parlia- 
 ment an accomplice in that benevolent design." — (Mr. J. Morley, 
 8th February.) 
 
 " If it should turn out that the courts have made blunders, 
 and that there is that impossibility in any case of paying rents, 
 I think it is not the landlords who should bear the loss. I think 
 this would be one of the cases for the application of the principle 
 of purchase by the state ; and that the state and not the landlords 
 must suffer for the errors that have been made." — (Lord Salisbury, 
 19th August, 1886.) 
 
 How the Coercion Act will Work. 
 
 " We propose, in the first place, to abolish the jury system 
 altogether, for certain classes of crimes punishable by a certain 
 length of imprisonment. We provide that two magistrates shall 
 have summary jurisdiction, and a maximum power of inflicting 
 six months' imprisonment with hard labour for the following 
 offences : — criminal conspiracy, boycotting, rioting, offences under 
 the Whiteboy Acts, assaulting officers of the law, taking forcible 
 and unlawful possession, and inciting to the above offences. We 
 do not propose to interfere with the liberty of the press. We 
 entertain the hope that by giving the magistrates summary 
 jurisdiction for inciting to these offences we may be able to pre- 
 vent the press from being sharers in these crimes. . . . We 
 propose that the Attorney-General for England and the Attorney- 
 General for Ireland together may certify that a fairer trial may 
 be had in England, and the trial will accordingly be held in 
 England. . . . The Lord Lieutenant in Council will have power, 
 under certain limitations, to make it an offence against this Act 
 
18 
 
 The Irish Question: 
 
 to have anything to do with an association formed for the com- 
 mission of crime, for carrying on operations for or by the com- 
 mission of crime, for encouraging or inciting persons to commit 
 crime ; for promoting or inciting to acts of violence or intimida- 
 tion ; or for interfering with the administration of the law, or 
 disturbing the maintenance of law and order. . . . We do 
 not propose that the measure shall be limited in point of time." 
 —(Mr. Balfour, 28th March.) 
 
 " And now we come to the most serious clause of all —one for 
 which I know no parallel — I mean the power which is given to 
 the Lord Lieutenant to create a new class of crime. For, as I 
 read the bill, it gives to the Lord Lieutenant power to deal with 
 the case of dangerous associations. . . . But where do you 
 find a constitutional precedent of justification for giving to the 
 Lord Lieutenant the power to determine whether an association 
 is or is not a dangerous association." — (Sir C. Russell, 5th 
 April.) 
 
 " You may leave out of the bill everything relating to crimes 
 that are known ; and yet it will continue to retain the bulk and 
 pith and heart which makes us most oppose it — that is, the 
 creation of new crimes." — (Mr. Gladstone, 18th April.) 
 
 " The 5th sub-section of clause 1 mentioned the offences to 
 which the clause applied : — ' Any felony and misdemeanour, and 
 any offence punishable under this Act.' This language was clear 
 in favour of the conclusion which had been maintained, that this 
 Act created a new category of crimes. This clause applied to 
 new offences created for the first time, and made punishable for 
 the first time."— (Mr. Asquith, 29th April.) 
 
 " I say with deliberation, that this bill interferes to a larger 
 extent than any bill that ever preceded it with the constitutional 
 rights and liberty of the Irish people." — (Sir C. Russell, 
 25th April.) 
 
 " This measure consigns the popular leader who advises the 
 tenant who asks for a reduction of rent, as well as the tenant who 
 asks for a reduction, to the tender mercies of one of those stipen- 
 
The Case against Coercion. 19 
 
 (iiary magistrates. . . . They are magistrates who are 
 inexperienced in law, without legal education, many of them 
 retired officers in the army. . . . The journalist who criticises 
 the action of the government, or protests against landlord 
 oppression will meet the same fate. In fact, there is no loop-hole 
 of escape for any political movement in Ireland if this bill passes. 
 Ireland will have no place for speaking in if this bill passes. . 
 
 . . It would be preposterous folly for any politician to cope 
 with the powers which the bill gives to the government. . . . 
 They will have to leave the field to others.— (Mr. Parnell, 1st 
 April.) 
 
 " What are we to say with regard to the proposal to place 
 under the jurisdiction of two resident magistrates the power of 
 imposing six months' hard labour for posting, circulating, or 
 forwarding in any way any document which directs or requires 
 any person to do or refrain from doing any act ? That is one 
 of the provisions under which two resident magistrates are to be 
 empowered to inflict six months' hard labour. . . As to 
 the right of public meeting, I believe it is to be virtually sup- 
 pressed by the bill. It is to be an offence to meet in any way 
 to the terror of Her Majesty's subjects. And who is to judge of 
 the terror ? Two resident magistrates." — (Mr. Gladstone, 18th 
 April.) 
 
 " The press would be at the mercy of the government. Even 
 in Russia a newspaper would have three warnings before it was 
 suppressed." — (Mr. Labouchere, 31st March.) 
 
 " The bill also provided that minor offences were to be tried 
 by two resident magistrates, the punishment accorded being six 
 months' hard labour. What were those minor offences ? They 
 were specified in the Whiteboy Acts, and included among them 
 assemblies carrying unusual badges." — (Mr. Labouchere, 31st 
 March.) 
 
 " The Acts also dealt with such an offence as persons by drums 
 and music promoting an unlawful meeting." — (Mr. Labouchere, 
 31st March.) 
 
20 
 
 The Irish Question : 
 
 The Government's Remedial Measure. — 1. Promise. 
 
 " Our Irish policy is not confined to the alteration in criminal 
 proceedings. We expect every day the report on Lord Cowper's 
 Commission on Land Tenure and Land Purchase in Ireland. 
 . . . As soon as ever we receive that report we shall not lose 
 a day in considering it, and in submitting to the House any 
 recommendations which the Commissioners may make, or any 
 other proposals which we may think it right that the House 
 should adopt. . . . We believe that there are matters in the 
 Irish land laws which require amendment, . . . and those, 
 no doubt, will be dealt with in the report of the Commission, and 
 in the bill we propose to introduce." — (Sir M. Hicks-Beach, 11th 
 February.) 
 
 2. Performance. 
 
 " On that Commission were appointed one English landlord, 
 who was connected with the coercive administration of the 
 country ; two Irish landlords ; one English statistician, who 
 might be supposed to be impartial ; and one Irish farmer, who it 
 had been carefully ascertained before he was appointed, had 
 voted Tory at the last election against a Nationalist. Not a 
 single representative of the mass of the people was placed on the 
 Commission."— (Mr. Dillon, 28th March.) 
 
 " The Commission has been invested by you with express 
 authority, and it has made one recommendation which over- 
 shadows and absorbs all the rest — the necessity, owing to the 
 change of circumstances which has occurred, of reopening the 
 judicial rent fixed under the fifteen years' contract. That is 
 their chief recommendation." — (Mr. Gladstone, 24th March.) 
 
 " Are you going to revise the rents as the Royal Commission 
 has recommended you to do? Not at all. You are going to 
 keep up the rents and make the tenant insolvent. But what the 
 Irish people want is to have reasonable rents and to be solvent." 
 —(Sir W. Y. Harcourt, 15th April.) 
 
The Case against Coercion. 
 
 21 
 
 The Cowper Commission have recommended that rents 
 should be reduced. But the government are not going to reduce 
 those rents. They are going to continue them, and they are 
 going to better the position of the unhappy tenants by means of 
 a Bankruptcy Bill. ... In the opinion of the right hon. 
 gentleman (Mr. Chamberlain) the best cure for all the ills of 
 Ireland is to enable the oppressed tenant, who is unable to pay 
 his exorbitant rent, to become a bankrupt." — (Sir W. V. Har- 
 court, 25th March.) 
 
 " By giving County Court Judges jurisdiction (in bankruptcy) 
 in every county we have . . . brought the Court of Bank- 
 ruptcy within the reach of tenants all over Ireland." — (Earl of 
 Cadogan, 31st March.) 
 
 " The tenant before he got his rent reduced, should be com- 
 pelled to submit to the penalty of being made a bankrupt. 
 (Hear, hear)." — (Earl of Dunraven, in House of Lords, 21st 
 April.) 
 
 "I do not contend that the bankruptcy clauses will be received 
 with widespread enthusiasm." — (Lord Ashbourne, 21st April.) 
 
 "■ He maintained that some relief ought really to be given to 
 the tenants. . . . The tenants whom they were most anxious 
 to help, the tenants who had done their best to meet their obli- 
 gations, . . . would have no help at all, although they were 
 the men they wanted to help." — (Earl Cowper, 31st March.) 
 
 "The honest and thrifty tenant can only get relief by refusing 
 to pay his rent for a year, and then going through the process of 
 bankruptcy." — (Earl Spencer, 21st April.) 
 
 " He was commissioned to say that the Presbyterian farmers 
 of the North of Ireland entirely objected to, and repudiated the 
 bill." — (Duke of Abercorn, 22nd April.) 
 
 The Sort of Coercion Wanted. 
 
 " What does Sir B.. Buller say ? 1 What we want is a court 
 that would have a certain amount of coercive power over a bad 
 tenant, and a very strong coercive power over a bad landlord.' 
 
22 
 
 The Irish Question : 
 
 . . . But what are you doing ? Od your own showing you 
 are proposing to introduce a bill for exercising a certain power 
 against bad tenants, but a strong coercive power against the bad 
 landlords does not enter into your views." — (Mr. Gladstone, 
 24th March.) 
 
 " Lord Dufferin, speaking of the landlords of Ireland in the 
 House of Lords, 'There are those possessing property in Ireland, 
 in whose honour, sense of justice, and patriotism I have no con- 
 fidence whatever.' "—(Mr. J. E. Ellis, 26th April.) 
 
 Right of Combination Conceded in England, and 
 Suppressed in Ireland. 
 
 " I will illustrate my meaning by an instance from my own 
 experience in early life. At that time Trades' Unions were 
 practically illegal ; the law r of conspiracy had been so strained 
 by judges, that almost every combination of the labouring class 
 was criminal, and very cruel and unjust sentences were passed. 
 I was associated with my right hon. and learned friend in 
 obtaining an alteration of that law. But what would have been 
 the attitude of my hon. friend if any government had introduced 
 a bill more effectually to suppress trades' unionism ? We took 
 a contrary course : we first addressed ourselves to altering the 
 unjust law."— (Sir W. V. Harcourt, 25th March.) 
 
 {i Speaking in the year 1867, in the very height of the Fenian 
 insurrection, . . . the senior member for Birmingham (Mr. 
 John Bright) said this : — ' I entirely disagree with those who, 
 when any crisis or trouble arise in Ireland, say you must first of 
 all preserve order, you must put down all disloyalty and dis- 
 obedience to law, and assert the supremacy of government, and 
 then consider the grievances complained of. This has been the 
 case in Ireland for a number of years, and the great preserver 
 has been the gallows and the gibbet.' That was Birmingham 
 doctrine in those days." — (Sir W. V. Harcourt, 25th March.) 
 
 One Law for England another for Ireland. 
 "If the bill would do no harm to law-abiding persons, why 
 
The Case against Coercion. 
 
 23 
 
 was it not made applicable to the whole of the United King- 
 dom?"— (Mr. Redmond, 12th April.) 
 
 " The Unionist platform which Unionists went in for was 
 equal laws and liberties for the United Kingdom. But now the 
 first thing they were asked to do was to make the laws unequal, 
 and to abridge the liberties of Irishmen. He, at all events, 
 would not be false to what was said in the Unionist campaign." — 
 (Mr. Winterbotham, 29th March.) 
 
 " You have to force this question, whether it is your intention 
 to unite Parliament deliberately and systematically under a 
 representative system and in a free country, to govern Ireland in 
 defiance of the sentiments of the vast majority of those whom 
 she sends to represent her." — (Mr. Gladstone, 24th March.) 
 
 Who have asked for the Coercion Bill ? 
 
 " For whom, and at whose instigations has this bill been intro- 
 duced? — the very last body of men whose views ought to be 
 favourably considered by any government which desired to do 
 justice, who have been responsible for the unjust and cruel 
 evictions during the last fifty years, of more than four millions of 
 the Irish people, whose inhuman deeds have produced terrible 
 crimes, who have broken countless hearts, who have filled many 
 a street in English and American cities with the once virtuous 
 daughters of Irish peasants." — (Mr. Clancy, 14th April.) 
 
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