The right honorable gentleman found himself, and the Queen has been instructed to found herself in her speech, and the organs of the Government have based themselves in their articles, upon the assertion that liberty, as they phrase it, is returning to the people of Ireland. If that liberty were returning, it would be exhibited in a proportionate diminution of derelect farms. (_"Hear, hear," from Mr. Balfour._) Then why have you not shown it? (_Opposition cheers._) There is one part of the statistics that we have read with increased satisfacfaction, that is the diminution in the amount of crime, limited as that diminution is. I thought when the right honorable gentleman constructed his artificial return, he had some very special purpose in view. It is the first time that I have known the month of January do such good service, and when I look into the return, I find out the cause: The return of offences reported to the constabulary are reported under three major heads,--offences against the person, offences against property, and offences against the public peace. With regard to the offences against the person and property, I find that if I take the five months only of last year, after the passing of the Coercion Act, and compare them with the corresponding five months of the year before, there is no diminution whatever. ("_Hear, hear._") But in the month of January there was in offences against the person a sudden, a most well-timed, and fortunate, and rapid decline, for they fell from ten to three. The right honorable gentleman drew January into his service; by means of that declension, he was able to show a diminution of six per cent of offences against person and property. I am extremely glad of it, and wish there had been a great deal more. The offences which have sensibly and really diminished are those against the public peace, and I rejoice that they have diminished. But why? The right honorable gentleman stands up and says that the cause of the diminution is the Coercion Act, but I think I have shown that whereas the diminution of crime proper, as directed against person and property, is an exceedingly small diminution, the diminution of offences against the public peace is much larger. I make it out to be that that they fell in these six months from three hundred and twenty-four to two hundred and thirty-eight, or a diminution of about twenty-five per cent. These are exactly the offences that would diminish under the operation of a conciliatory Land Act. (_Opposition cheers._)