Lord Hartington, in the same speech, answered a personal charge
from Mr. Labouchere. The Member for Northampton on Wednesday week declared it indecent that the Unionist leader should support the Ashbourne Act, and with his usual recklessness as to facts, alleged that the Duke of Devonshire drew 290,000 a year from Ireland, and accepted a statement, interjected by another Member, that the Duke never spent a penny in the country. Lord Hartington at Haslingden showed that his father's gross rental in Ireland was only £40,000; that voluntary remissions had reduced rents from 20 to 27 per cent. ; and that improvements in drainage, &c., and subscriptions to schools and charities, cost him £10,000 a year. Moreover, the Duke of Devonshire, who manages his estate upon the English theory that the land- lord should supply buildings as well as land, has advanced for the improvement and development of Irish railways, the great sum of £320,000, for which he receives, on an average, 2 per cent. His only reward has been the death of his second son under the knives of the Imincibles. There is absolutely no justification for this special attack on the great landlords, who almost alone in Ireland do their duty; unless, indeed, Mr. Labonchere is prepared to propose that every man in the Three Kingdoms with more than 210,000 a year shall be placed outside the protection of the law.
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