§ MR. VINCENT SCULLY,in pursuance of Notice, rose to move that an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty representing—
That Mr. John George Adair, one of the Justices of the Peace for the County of Donegal, had recently ejected all the inhabitants from a tract of land in that county under circumstances which appear to this House to affect seriously the general peace and well being of the district; and praying that She may be graciously pleased to direct an Inquiry, with a view to consider whether it was fitting that Mr. Adair should continue to hold Her Majesty's Commission.The hon. Member said, that on the last occasion when he ventured to call the attention to this subject he was met by the suggestion of the Chief Secretary for Ireland that the House of Commons had no power to address Her Majesty upon the subject of removing one of her officers from the commission of the peace, or of inquiring into his fitness to hold that office. He (Mr. Scully) hoped his Motion would not be decided upon any such narrow ground, and he could not conceive any other answer 1488 of a plausible kind which could be made to it. The House was in fact the proper tribunal to address Her Majesty in case of a neglect or abuse of duty by one of the superior Judges, praying Her to remove him: he did not, therefore, think that the Government should set up that answer. He was not going to contend that a landlord might not do as he liked with his own, nor was he going to originate a personal charge against Mr. Adair. He was there to give Mr. Adair an opportunity of justifying the charges he had put forward as the grounds for acting as he had done, and because he believed those charges to be a libel on the country if they were not true. He had not taken up the case lightly, but had done all he could to ascertain the facts, and he had taken care that Mr. Adair should know the information which he had obtained, so that it might be corrected if incorrect. The House was already aware that on the 8th, 9th and 10th of April these evictions, by order of Mr. Adair, took place. The official Returns showed that "28 houses were unroofed or levelled; 46 houses evicted; 47 families, comprising 37 husbands, 35 wives, 159 children, 13 other inmates; making a total of 244 persons." On the day after the evictions Sub-Inspector Henry wrote to the County Inspector as follows:—I proceeded on 8th, 9th, and 10th inst., in command of a force of one Sub-inspector and 200 men, accompanied J. A. Dillon, Esq., R.M., to protect the Sub-sheriff while executing a writ of habere on the property of Mr. Adair. There were forty-seven families, comprising 244 persons, evicted. Many of their houses were levelled, There was no breach of the peace.Now these were the occurrences which took place on Mr. Adair's property; but it was not to those acts, or to their terrible consequences, that he intended to allude. It was true fifty persons were driven into the poor-house, one old man died within a few days from the hardships he had Buffered, and two other men had become lunatics. It was not, however, on account of these things that he brought forward the Motion which he had to make, but because Mr. Adair had put forward, as grounds for the evictions, that those people had been participators in the most serious crimes, including murder. Now, he challenged Mr. Adair to give the slightest proof of such charges, and he would not only say that full inquiry had satisfied him that such statements could not be established, but that he (Mr. Scully) could prove them to be incor- 1489 rect; and, further than that, he would show that the means of knowing them to be incorrect were all in Mr. Adair's own immediate possession. Perhaps Mr. Adair, if he were listening to what were said, after he found that there was not the slightest ground for imputing any of these crimes to any of the unfortunate persons charged, would set himself to right the wrong which he had done, and withdraw the allegations which he had thrown out. In order that the House might understand the case, it was necessary that he should read the exact words of Mr. Adair in mating the accusations. They were contained in two letters written to the Under Secretary for Ireland on the 8th and 16th February, and were more tersely given in a letter which Mr. Adair afterwards wrote on the 6th April to two clergymen of the parish—the Rev. Mr. Kane, and the Rev. Mr. Maturin. These were the statements, every one of which he (Mr. Scully) alleged to be utterly unfounded as connected with the inhabitants of Derryveagh. He said first of all—"A previous proprietor of my estate, Mr. Marshall, was murdered." And he made the same charge in his letter of the 16th Feb. Again, he says:—"On these lauds I was myself attacked by a large armed party, most of whom I recognized as inhabitants." Again—"About the same spot my manager, Mr. Murray, was murdered." A fourth charge was—"While I was at the House of one of you (Mr. Maturin), investigating this murder, the offices were maliciously burned down." A fifth charge was—"Two or more of the coroner's jury, in Murray's case, who found a verdict of wilful murder, were attacked." Again—"Large numbers of my sheep have been from time to time made away with," And "My dogs have been, on two occasions, poisoned." A further charge was, that a system of intimidation, with threats of murder, had been carried on towards Mr. Adair and his servants, although in his management of the property there had not been a single eviction among a numerous class of tenantry, nor even an acre of commonage taken from the people; that almost all the crimes of which he complained were in some way connected with Derryveagh, and that the perpetrators of many of them must have been known to the people of the district. Mr. Adair further stated that he had purchased the property, enchanted by the beauty of the scenery, and that he could not suffer himself to be diverted from his design of im- 1490 proving the condition of the people by the infernal combinations of the Ribbon Society. Now, he (Mr. Scully) was prepared to disprove every one of the charges contained in that letter. He defied Mr. Adair to prove that any one of the crimes alleged could be brought home to any of the people living on the Derryveagh property; and further, he (Mr. Scully) had not been able to trace the slightest semblance of Ribbonism among the inhabitants of that property, though Mr. Adair spoke of it as having "fatally spread itself over the whole country." On the other hand, the statements of Mr. Adair were wanting in candour, as the House would see on a careful comparison of dates. The hon. Member for Donegal (Mr. Conolly) had moved for a return of the number of outrages for each of the ten years commencing the 1st of January, 1851, but he (Mr. Scully) did not see how that return bore upon this case. Derryveagh was a district containing about 12,000 or 13,000 acres in the parish of Gartan, which contained about 44,000 acres, with the greater part of which Mr. Adair was connected, either as landlord, or occupier, or as head landlord with the right of sporting and shooting. There were four estates in the parish. The first property, called Glenveagh, was occupied by Mr. Adair, and the unfortunate Mr. Murray was murdered upon it. But the Derryveagh people had nothing to do with that property; or, indeed, with either of the other three estates which composed the parish of Gartan. Mr. John Marshall was a former owner of the Gartan estate. He was fired at in 1840, upwards of twenty years ago, not "a few years" as Mr. Adair stated, nor by people in connection with Derryveagh. He died in October 1840, partly from his wounds, and partly in consequence of a full habit. Mr. W. Marshall, who succeeded him, died on the 2nd of February, 1849, leaving the present Samuel Marshall his heir. On December 31, 1855, Samuel Marshall conveyed the Gartan estate to W. C. Cornwall for £5,900. On August 22, 1857, Mr. Adair for the first time made his appearance in the county, and bought a portion of the Glenveagh estate from Pitt Skipton, and on the 31st of December he purchased the remainder of the estate. He then purchased in the Incumbered Estates Court a fee farm rent of £25 Irish out of Glendoan; also a fee farm rent of £60 Irish out of Derryveagh, with the right of sporting, in both cases, reserved to 1491 the grantor and to his heirs—not his "assigns"—and Mr. Adair's exercise of this right led to disputes, and was indeed the root and origin of these evictions. On the 30th of April he purchased the Gartan estate of W. C. Cornwall for £8,000. Mr. Adair had no sooner purchased this property than he applied to the Government to erect a police barrack upon it, professedly for the purpose of putting down illicit distillation. That was done, and then close to it he put up a pound, and made it a source of terrific annoyance to his tenants and the adjoining estates by putting into it all goats, sheep, horses, and cattle trespassing on his mountains. And yet he had declared that he had never deprived his tenants of any privileges of pasturage. In September of the same year, 1858, Mr. Adair was appointed a magistrate of the county of Donegal. On August 21st and 22nd Mr. Adair set up a claim to sport over Derryveagh which belonged in chief to Mr. James Johnston, and was occupied by James Corrin and others. As soon as the shooting season commenced, he went to shoot over the property in order to assert his rights, which had not been exercised for 150 years, and which Mr. Johnston disputed. One of Mr. Adair's gravest charges was that he was attacked on these lands by a "large armed party, most of whom I recognized (he said) as inhabitants." The fact was that in August, 1858, Mr. Adair's claim to sport over Derryveagh was resisted by James Corrin and other tenants of James Johnston, These parties were indicted by the grand jury, and Corrin then brought an action against Mr. Adair for assault and battery and malicious prosecution. The jury found that there was an assault by the defendant, Mr. Adair, but that it was in the exercise of a lawful right of sporting. A verdict, therefore, passed for Mr. Adair, but notice of motion for a now trial was given. Mr. Adair's imputation of crime against the inhabitants, and his complaint that he was attacked by a large armed party on these lands, wore a very different aspect when it was known that he claimed to sport on these lands under a fee-farm rent which was not one-fourth of the value of Johnston's interest. These parties were armed with sticks and other weapons, but it was not alleged that they had any firearms. They were defending the supposed rights of their landlord, and there was nothing in the proceeding calculated to put any man 1492 in bodily fear. Notice of motion was given for a new trial, but before the new trial came on, Mr. James Johnston and Mr. Adair came to an agreement, in accordance with which Mr. Johnston gave a fee-farm grant of Derryveagh (11956 acres) to Mr. Thomas Cooke Trench, in trust for Mr. Adair, at £225 a-year, being about £40 above the existing rents of the occupying tenants. Mr. Johnston placed these parties in the hands of Mr. Adair, not conceiving that the latter would revenge himself on them for defending their landlord's rights. This agreement was carried out on the 10th of October, 1859, Mr. Johnston having on the 7th of October taken his tenants' notes or I 0 U's for their Derryveagh rents up to the 1st of May, 1859, which were all paid in full on the 25th of November. On the 29th of December, Mr. Adair received his Derryveagh half-year's rents to the 1st of November, 1859; and on the 20th of January, 1860, he served notices to quit on his Derryveagh tenants, with the avowed intention of rearranging the holdings and putting them in a more covenient form. On the 1st of November, 1860, the notices to quit were supposed to expire, and the tenants gave up formal possession. Afterwards, for the first time, in order to clear the land, Mr. Adair turned round and made these charges of murder and of other crimes. If the tenants had chosen to take defence, Mr. Adair could not eject any of them until the spring assizes, but they gave up possession on the 2nd of November, under the impression that he was to make a new arrangement with them. On the 13th of November, 1860, James Murray, his steward, left Glenveagh Cottage at ten o'clock in the morning, and on the 15th was found murdered on the Glenveagh estate, two or three miles from the Derryveagh property. Yet it was insinuated that some of the persons who had voluntarily given up possession of their Derryveagh holdings, had been guilty of the murder, though there did not exist the slightest support for such a suggestion, and though the Rev. II. Maturin stated that there were more grounds for suspecting other parties. More had been done to annoy the tenants of Gartan, Mr. Adair having lent his boat to pursue some of those tenants to an island where they were suspected of smuggling. He did not, however, think that the charges against them were worth attending to. Mr. Maturin gave the Derryveagh tenants the highest character, and more than insinuat- 1493 ed mysterious motives for the commission of the murder. He (Mr. Scully) would not go further into that subject, but the Chief Secretary for Ireland knew to what he alluded. It was the common talk of the district; and it was communicated to him (Mr. Scully) over and over again, and he was at perfect liberty to state it as a fact, but he should prefer to abstain from doing so. Mr. Adair said be had ejected these people on public grounds, and that he expected to lose £200 a-year for some years, by the lands being in a state of waste. He (Mr. Scully) was not going to assent that that was not Mr. Adair's belief, but it was not his (Mr. Scully's) belief. The way to make the land more profitable was to clear out the tenants, put sheep upon it, and make it another Sutherlandshire. Whatever might be Mr. Adair's motive, or Ills fear or apprehension, it was the way to make money of his property. Mr. Adair had employed forty-two policemen to serve his ejectments, at an expense of probably £100 to the public, and, at an expense of not less than £1,000, he moved 200 policemen on the day of the census, for the purpose of executing the haberes on the 8th, 9th and 10th of April. He (Mr. Scully) asked if the public money should be misapplied for such a mischievous purpose? Were the Irish police to be the instruments for effecting those clearances? Were the poorhouses to be erected for the reception of those outcasts, whom the landlord would not venture to cast out if there were not those receptacles for them? It behoved them, on every ground of public policy, to see that the public money was not wasted in this manner. He had read the report of the inquest on the body of Mr. Murray in a newspaper that had hitherto advocated Mr. Adair—the Dublin Evening Mail—and, on considering the nature of the ground, it seemed most probable that a person who knew of Murray's coming in and going out, and could walk behind him without suspicion, was the most probable person to commit the murder. The place where the murder was committed was upon the side of a bare, open hill, at an angle of forty-five degrees; and armed as Mr. Murray was, with a revolver, it was absurd to suppose that any one could have sprung upon him unawares. If, therefore, suspicion was to attach at all, it must attach more to a person who had an opportunity of committing the murder than to one who had not. With regard to the burning of the outhouse, which was an- 1494 other of Mr, Adair's charges, Mr. Maturin, the clergyman to whom it belonged, did not allege that it was burned maliciously, and the constable in charge of the police force in the neighourhood, who was the first person at the fire, stated that it was accidental. Then it was also said by Mr. Adair, that two or more persons who were on Mr. Murray's jury were attacked; but the facts were, that the attacks alluded to were mere trifling and foolish affairs, arising from a drunken quarrel, and having nothing to do with the matter in question at all. Then Mr. Adair said that two of his dogs had been poisoned; but there was every reason to believe that they were poisoned by Mr. Adair himself, who was in the habit of setting poison in his grounds with a view to the preservation of his game. Mr. Adair stated that there were 100 sheep of his maliciously destroyed, and in a subsequent letter that 600 sheep had been destroyed. It appeared, from a memorial which had been addressed to the Lord Lieutenant, that one William Doherty, being in gaol, accused of destroying and stealing sheep, Mr. Adair went to the gaol and there took the information of Doherty against four persons, two of whom were tenants of Colonel Humfrey. Upon a written order of Mr. Adair the police arrested those men, but after being imprisoned for five days, and marched sixty miles to and from gaol they were liberated when the case came before the bench of magistrates. The men brought an action against the police for the arrest; the case was tried before Mr. Henn, Q.C. It was proved that the men were arrested by the written order of Mr. Adair, and a verdict was found against the plaintiffs. Then Colonel Humfrey made a representation to the Lord Lieutenant, and the answer he received was, that there appeared to have been some misunderstanding, and his Excellency felt that any further inquiry could not be prosecuted with advantage. He (Mr. Scully) had received a letter that morning from Colonel Humfrey, stating his readiness to produce all the written documents and to go before a Committee of the House. That very matter, if nothing else, was a reason for the appointment of the Committee which he asked for. With respect to the case of the 85 sheep which Mr. Adair stated had been maliciously destroyed, an inquiry took place and the whole matter was investigated. The bench on that occasion came to the unanimous and almost indignant resolution that they were 1495 of opinion no sheep of Mr. Adair's were maliciously injured or made away with, and that it appeared from the evidence of the constabulary that 66 sheep were found dead from the inclemency of the weather, and with no mark of injury upon them. Mr. Adair had put forward that charge again; but his own opinion of that charge was shown by a letter he wrote to the Londonderry Journal, on the 29th of February, 1860, in which Mr. Adair stated that the case was put forward by his steward, without his sanction. He added that he did not believe any ill-feeling existed against him among the people of the county of Donegal. The fact was Mr. Adair had stood for the county of Limerick as an extreme tenant-righter. The people would not have him there, and then he sprang up in Donegal, not to assert landlord right but landlord wrong. If a landlord would assert his rights he must not shelter himself under false excuses; and if he became a disturber of the public peace it became a fit subject for inquiry whether his name should be retained in the commission of the peace. Mr. Adair had no right ns a landlord to confound the innocent with the guilty—he had visited the alleged sins of the father upon their children; for among those whom he evicted were 159 children. He thought he had entirely disproved the various charges brought against these unfortunate persons. The clergy of all denominations in the district were all of opinion that if a stop were not put to such proceedings Mr. Adair would excite the people to madness. Indeed, two fathers of poor families had already been driven into insanity, and were cow inmates of the lunatic asylum. In conclusion, he was not wedded to the particular terms of his Motion. If it was thought that, instead of an inquiry under the authority of the Crown, it would be better to have an investigation before a Committee of that House, or in any other form, he had no objection to modify his Motion accordingly. The Government had frequently instituted inquiries into the conduct of magistrates where the circumstances were far less grave than the present. He was anxious for no arbitrary or unfair proceeding. He had known strong steps to be taken to put down political agitation—the Repeal movement for example; and several highly honourable gentlemen and deputy lieutenants of counties, one or more of whom, indeed, he now saw in that House, were summarily deprived of there commissions of the peace without there being any slur whatever on 1496 their character. The power which his Motion contemplated, therefore, existed, and he proposed that it should be exercised in the mildest possible shape. He did not bring this matter forward in any way as a public prosecutor, but he felt it his duty to afford Mr. Adair an opportunity of having his conduct fully inquired into. If the case were his own he should be glad to have such an opportunity, and, as one of the landlord class, he could sincerely say that no man would more rejoice than he should do if Mr. Adair was able satisfactorily to vindicate himself, and to show that he was worthy to retain his Commission as a magistrate. He trusted that Mr. Adair, when he came to take a cooler review of all the circumstances, would perceive that his only escape from the position into which he had brought himself was to admit that he had been wrong, to retrace his steps, and restore these unfortunate persons to their holdings. The hon. Member concluded by moving his Resolution.
§
Amendment proposed, to leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words—
An humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, representing that Mr. John George Adair, one of the Justices of the Peace for the county of Donegal, has recently ejected all the inhabitants from a tract of land in that county under circumstances which appear to this House to affect seriously the general peace and well-being of the district; and praying that She may be graciously pleased to direct an Inquiry, with a view to consider whether it is fitting that Mr. Adair shall continue to hold Her Majesty's Commission.
—instead thereof.
§ MR. HENNESSYbegged to second the Motion of his hon. Friend on the broad ground that an Irish landlord and magistrate had done an act which his brother magistrates and the clergy of his parish, as well as those in Ireland who had investigated the case, all condemned, and which the accused had himself attempted to justify in a singular letter that he sent to Dublin Castle. That letter contained a passage in which the writer said the law recognized the principle that in cases of malicious injury to property, the district should be made responsible, and asked whether the addition of murder did away with that responsibility? The letter proceeded to request that his Excellency should be informed that the writer would with pleasure abandon his intention to evict these people if the Government would suggest to him any other means of safety 1497 for himself or his servants, or would give him that protection which it was its first duty to afford, but which it had hitherto so entirely failed in affording. In the absence of that, however, Mr. Adair added that he could not hesitate to do, at any cost, what he felt the state of the country made it his duty to himself and to society to do. The plain meaning of that was that Mr. Adair set himself above the law, and usurped the position, not of the Executive merely, but of Parliament itself. He accused the Executive of neglect; and such an accusation ought to be met by inquiry. Without entering into details, a great act of inhumanity had primâ facie been committed. 244 persons, of whom 159 were children, had been driven from their homes and turned out upon a bleak mountain side. The people were tenants whose fathers had held the property long before Mr. Adair became a landlord in Ireland. That gentleman had been proprietor of the estate for three years, but many of the tenants had lived upon it from their infancy. One old man of eighty, who had been born on the property, was transferred to the workhouse. When such acts were perpetrated and defended on the plea that the law was defective, and that the Government had not done its duty, the matter imperatively demanded inquiry. He thought that the Executive had done all in its power, and that Mr. Adair had acted in a manner disgraceful to the class to which he belonged. Therefore, while he was the last person to countenance undeserved attacks upon Irish landlords, he cordially seconded the present Motion.
§ MR. CONOLLYsaid, that nothing could be more painful to him than to take part in this discussion; but as a representative of the county in which the occurrence called in question by the hon. Member had taken place, he felt it his duty to give a statement of facts. In the first place he must ask the House to distinguish between the county of Donegal at large and that portion of it where the crimes which had excited Mr. Adair's indignation had been committed. The particular district on which that gentleman's property was situate was so tainted with crime that for the last ten years it had been regarded as the most criminal district in all Ireland. The hon. and learned Gentleman opposite had moved for an inquiry into Mr. Adair's conduct, and had made a statement with apparent candour; but he had given the go-by to the most important feature of the 1498 case—he had omitted to notice the serious matter which had led to all the evictions complained of—namely, the existence of the fearful Ribbon Society. That society was at the bottom of all the outrages which had disgraced the county; and he was convinced that it was at the bottom of Mr. Murray's murder, which was the chief cause of the occurrences concerning which an investigation was now asked for. That being so it was not fair to Mr. Adair, or to the House, that the question of these evictions should be submitted to the House without any reference to crimes which were the direct fruits of the Ribbon Society in that county. He was certain that the Irish Government were fully aware of the widespread organization that prevailed in that district of Donegal, which, it was but justice to say, was but one sixth part of the whole county, the remaining five-sixths of which were in a perfectly orderly and peaceful condition. Some hon. Members might not remember former descriptions of the Ribbon Society, and, therefore, he might state for their information that it was a combination of a most fearful character to carry out an agrarian law, enforcing its views by murder and most dreadful alternatives—beatings, way layings, and burnings. English and Scotch Members could hardly believe that so awful an engine of terrorism could exist in these days; but, having attended the grand jury of the county for the last ten years, he could state that upon every occasion there was some fearful crime which could not be brought home to the perpetrators, as convictions could not be obtained owing to the terrorism of the Ribbon Society, which prevented persons from giving evidence of facts within their knowledge. The unfortunate farmers where the combination existed, even if they were not members of the society, could take no steps to clear the county of the stain because of the threats held out by the secret committees. Even where persons had been waylaid and beaten they had refused to give evidence against their assailants, so great was the terror caused by the warnings of the society. The great number of crimes that had disgraced that part of the county were all attributable to that horrible conspiracy. About a month ago he (Mr. Conolly) moved for a return of all the crimes reported by the police in that county during the last ten years; but the return which had been furnished was very meagre, and the amended return had not yet been presented; and he must, 1499 therefore, read to the House from a private report that had been furnished to him by a magistrate of Donegal, the facts of which could be compared with those of the amended return when produced. This gentleman stated that it had been his duty to take part in several fruitless investigations into serious outrages committed in the district of which the townland in question was the centre, and that it had been found impossible to vindicate the law or obtain convictions, though some of these outrages were committed in the presence of numerous witnesses. The hon. Member for Cork took exception to Mr. Adair's bearing in mind the murder of Mr. Marshall in connection with the more recent murder of Mr. Murray. It was no falsehood in Mr. Adair to say that his predecessor in the estate was murdered. Mr. Marshall was shot down in broad daylight, on his way from church; and from that time to the present there had been a succession of similar crimes. A preceding proprietor of one of the estates now held by Mr. Adair—a Mr. Chambers—left the country on account of his life having been frequently threatened. But before stating the fearful atrocities that had been committed in Donegal under the Ribbon system, he would quote the opinion of one of the greatest ornaments of the Irish Bench—Chief Justice Burton. He said—
If a crime so awful as murder is capable of yet further aggravation, it is when committed by previous conspiracy. To my imagination nothing can be more shocking than that persons should commit this crime by premeditation, and if any addition can be supplied beyond this horror, it is only to be found in the disposition of a considerable part of society to screen the criminals from justice; it is a mental, if not an actual, participation in the crime.If he could show that in this district there had been several consecutive outrages, no doubt in connection with Ribbonism, all escaping detection, though witnessed by numbers of the population; if he could show that Mr. Adair had reason to believe that many of these people were accomplices after the fact in the murder of his steward—these would be grounds on which Mr. Adair was morally, if not legally, justified for resorting to this severe mode of punishing them. The magistrate of Donegal he had alluded to went on to say that Mr. Marshall was murdered on a Sunday in the presence of 200 witnesses. Though numbers of them saw the shot fired, they let the murderer walk quietly away. A 1500 Mr. Moore was cut to death with reap-hooks, close to his own house. A man named Johnston had his horse shot, and his own life was placed in great danger for many days. A Mr. Nixon was attacked when returning from church, with the female members of his family, by three men" disguised as women. A bailiff of Mr. Adair's predecessor was shot on his return from market. Then came the murder of Mr. Murray. There had been numerous other outrages, attended by less fatal consequences, that could all be traced to the Ribbon organization. The terror of it was complete, and, as a necessary consequence of impunity, this fearful system was extending. In many cases farmers had applied to the authorities to have it put down; but all the exertions of the magistrates and police during five years had failed to do so. The sons of the farmers were drawn into the society, or forced to join it, for their own protection. Jurors and witnesses were threatened; and assaults and attacks were concealed, rather than run the risk of prosecuting. [Mr. BUTT: What is the name of the magistrate?] He was ready to give his name to the hon. and learned Member in private; but, considering what was the system of the Ribbon conspiracy, and that Mr. Murray's life was threatened several times before he was murdered, he objected to give the name publicly. A more desperate state of things than that in which these murders could occur could not be imagined; and if anything could justify the extreme steps taken by Mr. Adair, it was these assassinations. The system had grown to a fearful extent; the well-being of all classes in the district was affected by it; and it had compelled Mr. Adair to resort to the only plan open to him to show the Ribbon conspirators that they should not tyrannize over the country. When his steward had been murdered, and his own life threatened more than once, Mr. Adair had to consider what steps he ought to pursue. After the murder of Mr. Murray, Mr. Adair caused strict inquiry to be made as to all the inhabitants of Derryveagh who were out from their houses on that day, and it was found that every individual who had been absent returned to a particular house in the village. This was the identical house in which Mr. Murray himself found a gathering of people two days before the murder took place, on which occasion he stated to Mr. Adair that he was certain bad work was going on by reason of the congregation of people there. Mr. 1501 Adair's own life had been threatened by Derryveagh men, and though the evidence which he had been able to collect was not sufficient to insure a legal conviction, it produced a moral certainty in his mind that every individual who had arrived at man's estate in Derryveagh was more or less in complicity with regard to this murder. The hon. Member (Mr. Scully) had made no allusion to the fearful Ribbonism which prevailed there, and to the outrages which had paralyzed all law and defied almost all detection; and, instead of their being nothing to connect Derryveagh with the murder of Mr. Murray, there was a distinct combination in the village for the purpose of murdering that gentleman. Sir James Stewart, a gentleman of high character and position in the county, writing on this case, said that the line of conduct pursued by Mr. Adair in consequence of the murder of Mr. Murray, though very severe, was absolutely necessary, and was not the least more severe than was required by the magnitude of the offence committed. If Mr. Adair (added Sir James) had never evicted a single tenant, neither his life nor his property would afterwards have been safe; the same system of violence would have been carried into adjoining parishes, and would eventually have pervaded the entire mountain district of this county. The evictions here, although severe and perhaps extreme, were necessary under the circumstances, for Mr. Adair was so hemmed in by the Ribbon conspiracy that if he had not taken some such step he must either have given up his estate entirely or have held it subject to the control of these assassins. Similar cases had occurred. Lord Lorton found upon a portion of his property a state of crime analogous to that which prevailed in Derryveagh, and, the law having completely failed to bring the culprits to justice, he was obliged, after the commission of a number of crimes in Ballinamuck, to evict the whole of the inhabitants of the village, 162 in number. This step had been attended with the best results, for from that day to the present not a single murder had disgraced this particular district, the people finding that when the criminal law failed the law of property came in for the vindication of justice. Lord Templetown adopted the same measure after the murder of Mr. Bateson. By his orders the whole of the townland in which the murder took place was cleared of its inhabitants, and from that day the district had been peaceable 1502 and orderly. Nothing could be more painful than the idea of turning out a multitude of poor people into the road; but there was another idea quite as painful—the existence of such a state of terrorism as prevailed in that part of Donegal. Landlords were bound to exert themselves to the utmost to put an end to such a dreadful state of things; and, much as Mr. Adair's conduct had been decried, he believed he had acted the part of a courageous and independent man. It was not Mr. Adair who drove the people to desperation, but it was the people who drove him to extreme measures. This was a plain statement of the case, and he would not flinch from it.
§ MR. BUTTsaid, that if the speech of the hon. Member who had just sat down meant anything it was a charge to every landlord in that part of the country, in the event of any disturbance arising upon his estate, to carry on a war of extermination and death against the inhabitants. ["No, no!"] He was glad to hear that sentiment disowned, but how would the speech of the hon. Member be read in Ireland? Mr. Adair had turned every human being in one particular district out of home upon the mountain-side, and he was not surprised to hear hon. Gentlemen shrink from the inferences which must be drawn from such conduct. He questioned the statement of the hon. Member that the murder of Mr. Murray was committed in the presence of hundreds of persons.
§ MR. CONOLLYWhat I stated had reference to the murder of Mr. Marshall.
§ MR. BUTTsaid, that he had misunderstood the hon. Gentleman. But at any rate the hon. Member had stated that Mr. Adair's life had been repeatedly threatened. He challenged that statement. Had Mr. Adair ever made such an allegation? Was it true that the people of Derryveagh were steeped in crime? He had the testimony of impartial witnesses that that was not so; Colonel Humfrey, the owner of a neighbouring property, and as high a Conservative as any Gentleman in that House, sent to the clergyman of the parish a contribution of £5 towards the relief of the sufferers, and bore testimony to the "inoffensive and excellent" character of the inhabitants of the district. Then, again, the Protestant rector of the parish and the parish priest joined in urging Mr. Adair to reconsider the matter, on the ground, as they alleged, that there was no such thing as combination in Derry- 1503 veagh. He (Mr. Butt) denounced as utterly false the allegation that any terrorism had been resorted to to coerce Mr. Adair, and he trusted full inquiry would be made into the state of the district, in order that the truth of the matter might be elicited. He trusted his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Vincent Scully) would withdraw his Motion, in order that such inquiry might be made. What was Mr. Adair's testimony with regard to the inhabitants of the district? He stated that he had been attacked in Derryveagh by a body of armed men, some of whom he recognized. Now, what was the fact? Mr. Adair had a dispute with Mr. Johnston, the occupier, about certain sporting rights; and Mr. Johnston, who was the deputy lieutenant of the county, told his tenants that they should prevent Mr. Adair from shooting on the property. The tenants did so, and the matter ended in a civil trial, which terminated upon some technical point in favour of Mr. Adair. Could there be a more atrocious lie and scandal than to say that that was an armed attack upon Mr. Adair? Then there was the statement that his sheep were killed; but that statement had been declared by the magistrates of the district to be without foundation. The circumstance that some of his dogs were poisoned might be accounted for by his having set poisoned baits for poachers' dogs, and to his own dogs having eaten them. As this Motion was one of importance to Ireland, he would ask the House to recollect how a great deal of the land in that country was circumstanced? A great many tenants held their land subject only to a short notice to quit. What did Mr. Adair do after the murder had been committed? Why he went to Derryveagh and received every penny of his rent from the tenants, and then turned them out on to the bare mountain-side, to the number of 244—the old and infirm, and the children altogether—punishing the innocent with the guilty. It had been said by the hon. Member opposite that these tenants of Mr. Adair belonged to a Ribbon Society; but he defied him to give any proof of this, while, on the other hand, there was abundant testimony to their being a most inoffensive people. He maintained that Mr. Adair's conduct could not be justified on any ground, and called upon the House to let the people of Ireland see that it had no sympathy with such revengeful proceedings. He (Mr. Butt) remembered a passage in the writings of a clergy- 1504 man whose name was still held in honour—the Rev. Cæsar Otway. Mr. Otway visited the Rev. Mr. Maturin in this very village of Derryveagh. He described the magnificence of the scenery, the repose of the charming groves, the primitive innocence and simplicity of the poor people, who, and their fathers before them, had lived secluded from the world in these remote and secluded valleys. If it was desired to teach the Irish respect for law, and to break down the Ribbon conspiracy, it would certainly not be by excusing much less by sanctioning, wholesale exterminations. Mr. Burke once said that he must refuse to draw an indictment against a nation; but Mr. Adair had executed judgment against all his tenants. And what lesson did he thereby teach the people of Ireland? Was not the natural result this, that Ribbon conspirators would prevail upon many of them to enter into their ranks for the avowed purpose of protecting themselves against the landlords? Or if they were forced to emigrate to America, they carried with them sentiments of hatred towards the British Government, which might operate some day greatly to our disadvantage. There never, perhaps, was a case of this kind which came more distinctly before Parliament; and what he asked the House to do was to institute a searching inquiry into the whole matter. When the Motion then before the House had been disposed of, he should move for the appointment of a Select Committee for that purpose, to which, if the House agreed, he believed it would do much towards promoting justice and the peace of the country.
§ MR. LONGFIELDsaid, hon Gentlemen on his side of the House, in listening to the very eloquent and somewhat irrelevant speech of the hon. Member for Youghal (Mr. Butt), from whose lips the words had fallen
Strong, thick, and heavy, like a thunder shower.were affected by feelings of a painful character, first at the fact that any landlord should feel it necessary to turn loose upon society so many individuals, and next on account of the circumstances which had led to those evictions, and which almost deprived Irish Members of the power of discussing the question calmly. He certainly was surprised at the quarter in which this Motion had originated, and he thought the attack on Mr. Adair might with more decency and decorum have proceeded from 1505 some other Member. A heap of documents had been furnished to him by Mr. Adair, showing how competent the hon. Member was to speak from experience of the profits to be acquired from clearing an estate, which, if he wanted to sell, would certainly be more valuable than if encumbered with tenants.
§ MR. VINCENT SCULLYI must beg the hon. Member either to use papers or to refrain from doing so.
§ MR. SPEAKER"Order, order."
§ MR. LONGFIELDsaid, he would pass I from the quarter in which the Motion had originated to the Motion itself. If Mr. Adair had committed a crime, it would be punished first by the decision of the Lord Chancellor and by that of the Lord Lieutenant, as well as by the silent condemnation of his own acquaintances. But the proper tribunal had decided that there was nothing in his conduct calling for punishment, and the House, therefore, was now invited to pass unmitigated censure on his proceedings towards a population described as "mild and inoffensive." The sympathy in this case seemed rather misplaced. Not a word of rebuke or indignation was directed by hon. Gentlemen at the other side against that series of murders, which, on the contrary, were spoken of almost in the language of vindication by the hon. Member for Cork. The murder of Mr. Marshall, who was shot in noonday, and in the presence of hundreds, was made light of; he had only three or four small shot in him, it was stated; he was not killed dead, for he lingered till October. Such was the way in which an atrocious crime was spoken of. Not a word had been uttered about that inhuman murder of Murray, which in its every feature resembled the murder of Kennedy described by Scott in Guy Mannering. That the foul deed had been committed by several persons was proved by the marks of the struggle; the victim was hurled over a precipice, and a large stone thrown down upon him, and he was sorry to say that the persons engaged in the struggle were but too well known to everybody in the district. Other persons had been shot at or cut down. The first duty of an owner of property was to provide for those who had been entrusted to his care; but was it to be supposed that the contract was never to be put an end to, but that the parties, however evil their conduct, were to cling to the landlord for life? Perhaps this unfortunate district was the only one in which such 1506 extreme measures would be necessary to meet extreme and painful crimes. In Ireland, generally, crime was diminishing; and from north to south a better feeling was existing between landlord and tenant. He admitted that, owing to what was a natural mistake, Mr. Adair had perhaps coloured rather highly what he described as an armed attack. But, as he was in the exercise of a right when he met those armed men, and under the circumstances he thought that their object was that which he had stated it to be. There could be no doubt that the district in which these evictions took place was teeming with murders; and was a man to retain tenants where such murders had been committed, where such outrages had been perpetrated, and where illegal combinations existed? He thought that Mr. Adair was almost more to be pitied than censured. He thought that there never was so much done to excuse a fit of anger. The occurrence truly was one to be deplored; but it had received the consideration of Her Majesty's Government, and it must be left to public opinion to correct such acts, which were exceedingly rare, and which he hoped would become more so in consequence of the causes that led to them becoming rarer still.
§ MR. M'MAHONsaid, that if hon. Gentlemen wished to maintain the rights of property they ought to keep a broad and clear distinction between the acts of humane, gentlemanly landlords, and those of mere land jobbers, who, with the rank and station of gentlemen, combined the feelings of bum-bailiffs. Mr. Adair, having acted in so inhuman and cruel a manner as to punish hundreds for the crime of one or two, was not a person to whom the Queen's commission as a magistrate ought to be intrusted.
CAPTAIN JERVISsaid, he would not say a word in favour of Mr. Adair. The matter had been referred to the Lord Chancellor, who had decided that the case was not one in which further inquiry was necessary; and he thought it very extraordinary that the House should form itself into a court of justice to review what the Lord Chancellor had decided. But, in contradiction to the happy and blessed state of things which was represented as existing in this part of Donegal, he wished to call the attention of the House to the Report of a Committee which sat three or four years ago, giving the names of the owners of between 600 and 700 sheep, destroyed in the course of a few months 1507 within four miles of this very place. The Roman Catholic Bishop was not likely to exaggerate the misconduct of the people, and in an address to them, alluding to the destruction of the sheep, he said—
You have not discontinued your murderous conduct, but I understand you have continued it ever since I was here last. If any one has told you that the priest can absolve you from this great sin, he has grossly deceived you. The Almighty has never delegated such a power to man, and unless you make restitution you can never get absolution. England has sent an army to the Crimea and conquered Russia. She has sent an army to China and conquered the Chinese; and do you think that the small corner of a parish in the county of Donegal can stand up and oppose the law of England?The New Zealanders might be spoken to in the same language as was addressed to these highly civilized and peaceable inhabitants of a small corner of Donegal. There was a great difference between bringing forward this Motion and opposing it. An Irish Member who brought forward such a Motion gained popularity with the lower class of the £10 voters, but one who opposed it lost their support. The greatest credit, therefore, ought to be given to the hon. Member for Donegal (Mr. Conolly) for the manly manner in which he had spoken out to-night upon this subject.
§ MR. MAGUIREsaid, the hon. and gallant Member had read a long list of the sheep killed, but he did not say that Mr. Adair had, through his steward, applied for compensation for them, or that on the first inquiry before the magistrates it was distinctly proved that the sheep were not murdered by the people, but starved on the mountains. Mr. Adair was represented as a benefactor to these wild Ashantees; but what was the fact? The sheep on the mountains cost 6s. each, and the magistrates of the county of Donegal awarded him for each the sum of 30s.; so that this was an admirable speculation, and one provocative of perjury. No doubt Bishop M'Geltigan made the speech alluded to; but he was almost in his dotage, and in the following year, upon the very same platform, he retracted what he had before said, and expressed his belief that the people were not guilty of these outrages. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman quoted from this old Bishop again, he would refer him to his second speech, and tell him the date of the Dublin Evening Post in which it was published. Was there, then, any justification for the belief that the people murdered Mr. Murray? He abhorred outrage 1508 and loathed murder, and would do everything to crush those crimes; but it was quite a different thing to encourage a system which was a challenge to the ignorant and passionate. It was a matter of notoriety—and the hon. Member for Cork had alluded to the circumstance—that there was one man in Donegal who was openly suspected of the crime. Whether he was guilty or not was a matter between God and himself, but it was a curious fact that this man wore the dead man's clothes at his funeral, that he was extremely intimate with the dead man's wife, and that the wife was very much interested in getting him out of gaol. If it transpired that the struggle originated in jealousy, that a shot was fired in self defence, and that the man's death was the result of the deadly struggle—if that should turn out to be the case, either by a death-bed confession or in some other way, what would Mr. Adair think of himself for having sacrificed 244 people on the suspicion of being parties to the murder? The statement of the hon. Member for Cork had been in no way disproved. A more fearful doctrine could not be laid down than that because a crime had been committed on an estate, and the perpetrator not found out, every human being on that estate should be sent adrift. Mr. Adair, by throwing 244 people helpless upon the world, had been guilty before God and man of a great outrage and a great wrong. Did Lord Derby carry out his threat to evict a portion of his territory in Ireland? No. The representative of an ancient aristocracy, with naturally strong views of the rights of landlords, held his hand, and did not carry out his threat; but this Mr. Adair—a mere interloper in the country—a mere land-jobber who ought to sympathize, with the tenant class, because he had sprung from them, ruthlessly turned 244 persons on the world because he chose to suspect that one of them had committed a murder. This gentleman had stood as a candidate upon the hustings in favour of tenant right and as a friend of the poor, but he (Mr. Maguire) thanked God they had not a practical exhibition of his detestable hypocrisy in that House.
§ MR. CARDWELLsaid, that though the case which had been brought under the consideration of the House was a most painful one, and involved some of the gravest questions which could interest a country circumstanced like Ireland, yet the point which the House had to decide 1509 was very narrow, namely, whether the Crown had neglected its duty in not superseding Mr. Adair from his position in the commission of the peace. He could assure the hon. and learned Member for Cork that it was far from his intention to meet him with a technical plea that the matter was beyond the province of the House. If the servants of the Crown had neglected their duty it never could be pleaded that it was not the business of the House of Commons to take the matter into their consideration. On a former occasion he stated that Her Majesty's Government had come to the conclusion that this was not a case in which they would be justified in removing Mr. Adair from the commission of the peace, and he remained of the same opinion. The hon. Member for Donegal (Mr. Conolly) had given the House a narrative of painful interest—a recital of crimes showing a strong conspiracy in a particular district of Donegal, and had quoted a judgment delivered by Baron Pennefather in 1857. There could be nothing more dreadful than the existence of a secret, organized conspiracy, or the terror that such a conspiracy must excite among the persons within its influence—interfering with the law and preventing the due administration of justice. He was happy to say that, owing to the combined efforts of the authorities and of the clergy of all Churches, a great improvement had been effected since the address of Baron Penne-father. A check had been given to Ribbonism; yet it could not be said that Ribbonism was extinct. During the last few years there had occurred the firing at Mr. Dickson and the murder of Murray; in both which cases no conviction had taken place. Such was the state of things when Mr. Adair came into possession of his Donegal property. The state of the case, so far as Mr. Adair was concerned, was that he had bought four several and coterminous properties. Since that time he had found himself, more or less, in conflict with his neighbours and those who occupied under him. In the first case Mr. Adair represented himself to have come in contact with an armed party on the hill side. He could not agree that this was a correct description by Mr. Adair of the occurrence, because the bills preferred by him were ignored, and it appeared afterwards upon a trial that it was a contest as to the right of sporting, which was ultimately settled by agreement between the parties, and by Mr. Adair purchasing the 1510 claims and standing in the position of Mr. Johnston. Mr. Adair subsequently gave notice of ejectments against 244 persons in Derryveagh, and still more numerous notices at Garvan. The reason alleged was that the ground was about to be cleared, for the purpose of arranging a new mode of cultivation, which would be for the benefit both of the landlord and the occupier. Matters thus remained until November in last year, the period of the murder of Murray. He regretted that the hon. Member for Cork, whose labour in getting up this case, and whose candour in making him acquainted with the facts he felt bound to acknowledge—had felt himself at liberty to point a suspicion of the crime of murder in the House of Commons against any individual in regard to whom the authorities, after full consideration, had not felt it their duty to prefer a criminal charge, and whose innocence was quite unimpeached. The murder of Murray, so far as he could learn, was the act of two, and only of two, persons. The proof was that when the police went to view the body they discovered traces both of Murray's footsteps and the footsteps of two other men—one wearing shoes and the other barefooted. A struggle had taken place between Murray and these two men, who killed him with a stone that was found there. The hon. Member for Cork commenced his speech by changing the issue from that which he offered to the House on a former occasion. [Mr. SCULLY: No!] He understood the hon. Member to say that he did not state that the Executive Government would have been justified in removing that gentleman from the commission of the peace for acts that the Executive Government might not approve, but which were strictly legal in the exercise of his private property. The hon. Member, however, now put forward as the ground for removing Mr. Adair from the commission, that he had charged the inhabitants of the district with a participation in serious crimes, including murder, which he could not sustain against them. It was unnecessay for him to enter into the charges relative to the poisoning of the dogs, to the fire at Mr. Mathurin's, to the case of the jurymen, and other particulars. They were introduced into the discussion, if he understood right, in order to show that Mr. Adair had brought several charges of crime against his neighbours, including that of murder, which were not substantiated. He had no hesitation in saying that he did not agree 1511 in the opinion expressed by Mr. Adair; that these were plain and manifest proofs of a malicious determination on the part of the people against him. He supposed they had been introduced into the discussion for the purpose of showing that Mr. Adair's general conduct was such as to have warranted the Government in superseding him in his office of magistrate. This, however, was not the question. So far as he knew, there was no proof that the murderer of Murray was within the general cognizance of a large community. In the early part of this year Mr. Adair attended at Dublin Castle and furnished to the Government the notification usual in cases of eviction. He stated that he was about to remove 47 families, numbering altogether 244 persons, in consequence of the murder of Murray more particularly. He also adduced the other circumstances to which allusion had been made in his justification. The Government of his noble Friend (the Earl of Carlisle) deeply regretted to hear that information, and communicated their opinion to Mr. Adair in a letter, which had been laid upon the table. He fully concurred in regretting Mr. Adair's determination, for he could not but think the removal of 47 families and 244 persons involved in one common calamity the aged and the young, the female and the male, those who had no participation in such a crime with those who might or might not have been guilty. The question was not, however, whether the Government regretted Mr. Adair's determination or gave him a warning against it, but whether or not the act was such as to justify the Government in removing Mr. Adair from the commission of the peace? That was one of the most important questions that could be considered, either by the Government or the House. What was the position of a justice of the peace? Had they all been wrong hitherto in maintaining that it was of the utmost importance that the magistracy should be independent of the Government, and not, as Black-stone had expressed it, the "mere tools of office?" But how could the independence of the magistracy be maintained if they were liable to be removed, not on account of the illegality of their acts in any exercise of the law which their commission empowered them to enforce, but because, acting within the limits of their own private rights, they did not act entirely to the satisfaction of the Government? The question was not whether a magistrate 1512 satisfied the Government in the exercise of his private rights, but whether he was acting within the limits of those private rights. It would be most dangerous if such a principle were laid down; and he said now, as on a former occasion, that when it appeared that Mr. Adair was not charged with any violation of the law, but that in what he had done he had acted within the limits of his legal rights, the Government would not have been justified in superseding him from the commission of the peace. His hon. Friend (Mr. Vincent Scully) seemed to have felt the cogency of this argument, and, therefore, proposed to shift the issue at the beginning of his speech, and asked for Mr. Adair's removal on the ground that he had made statements which could not be sustained. His hon. Friend said that Mr. Adair had represented that a previous proprietor of his estate was murdered. Well, a previous proprietor of Garton was murdered. Again, Mr. Adair stated that he was attacked by an armed party on the hills. Well, Mr. Adair was attacked; and, though he (Mr. Cardwell) did not approve the version given of the case, yet he put it to the House whether it was possible to remove a gentleman from the commission of the peace because, in describing a transaction, he arrived at conclusions which did not appear to be justified by all the circumstances of the case. Let the House reverse the proposition, and suppose that the Irish Government had removed this gentleman from the commission of the peace, and that when challenged for the reason they had no better answer to give than that, though the gentleman had acted legally in the discharge of his private rights, yet he had acted in a manner which, in their judgment, was not to be approved, and in giving a description of a past transaction had drawn conclusions which were, perhaps, different from those warranted by the circumstances. It would have been impossible to vindicate the removal of Mr. Adair on either of these grounds. He had shown, then, that the hon. Member for Cork had changed the issue; but he feared the hon. Gentleman did not feel quite safe with that concession, for the hon. and learned Member for Youghal went still further, and expressed a hope that a Motion for a general inquiry would be carried in preference to the proposition now before the House—thus again changing the issue. He (Mr. Cardwell) must, however, say that after a Motion of 1513 this kind had been so long before the House, it was right that it should be disposed of by the House. If the House thought that the Government had neglected their duty in not removing Mr. Adair from the commission of the peace, it would affirm the Amendment of the hon. Member for Cork; and if, on the contrary, it thought that it would be better to go on with the Motion for Supply, it would then negative the Amendment. He could not consent, after this question had been given notice of, and had been fully discussed, that the House should do otherwise than pronounce an opinion upon it. Feeling as he did with regard to the removal of 47 families and 244 persons from their homes, for a crime in which it was not proved that any one of them had taken part, and in which it was improbable that the whole could have been concerned as conspirators, he said that the warning given to Mr. Adair by the Irish Government was a right and proper warning, and he regretted that it had not been acted on by Mr. Adair; but that circumstance formed no ground on which the Government could have defended themselves in that House if they had been charged with the unconstitutional removal of a justice from the commission of the peace. Under these circumstances he felt satisfied that the House would negative the Amendment.
§ LORD CLAUD HAMILTONthought it was the wish of the House that this question should come to a conclusion; but he could not allow an observation made use of by the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. Maguire) to pass unnoticed. The hon. Member had expressed deep sympathy for the bereaved family of Mr. Murray, but had at the same time accused Mrs. Murray of adultery with her husband's murderer.
§ MR. MAGUIREI merely stated that there was a strong suspicion in the county to that effect.
§ LORD CLAUD HAMILTONthought that, however excited his hon. Friend's feelings might have been as to Mr. Adair's conduct as a landlord, he should not have been led to repeat such an appalling, degrading, and frightful charge, however humble the circumstances of the person so charged might be. That charge had been investigated several times, and not by resident magistrates—not by the landlords who might be thought by some to be joined together in a conspiracy upon the subject—but it had been fully investigated, and Mrs. Murray's innocence had been 1514 established by conclusive evidence. The humbler classes in Ireland dwelt, in many cases, in but one cabin, and that was the whole origin of the appalling story which, he regretted to say, would now be spread throughout the land, in consequence of the unfortunate allusion of his hon. Friend. The origin of the story was this—that inasmuch as this poor woman's health was upset by the shock occasioned by her bus-band's murder, she did invite her Bister, her own brother, and the shepherd, against whom the charge was made, to go to her, and remain with her all night, and those who knew the district would not be surprised that in its then excited state she should have taken these measures for her protection. He apologized to the House for having taken up their time; but trusted they would agree with him that the low social position of this poor woman was no reason why her character should be assailed and her misery added to by this awful allegation.
§ Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question," put, and agreed to.
§ MR. SPEAKERhaving put the Question, declared the Amendment negatived.
§ MR. SPEAKERobserved that, as no hon. Member had given his voice in the negative when the Question was put, there could not exist any doubt as to the decision of the House, and there was nothing to divide upon.
§ MR. BUTTbelieved that the Question proposed by the hon. Member for Cork vitally affected the interest and peace of Ireland, and he therefore begged leave to give notice—[Cries of "Order!"]
§ MR. SPEAKERinformed the hon. Member that the present was not the time to give a Notice. The business-paper contained the names of several Gentlemen who proposed to bring different matters under the consideration of the House, and the hon. Member could not now interrupt the course of proceedings by giving a Notice.