§ MR. ARTHUR ARNOLDasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether his Excellency has considered a Memorial on behalf of Michael Larkin, of Salford, 1143 signed by sixty inhabitants of that borough, praying for restitution property alleged to have been taken from him on sentence to penal servitude for life for passing a bad half-crown, which sentence was annulled, and a free pardon granted in 1879; and, whether, if that pardon was an acknowledgment of Larkin's innocence of the offence for which he was convicted, on the evidence of a woman of notoriously bad character, his claim for compensation for unjust imprisonment during fifteen years will be regarded by the Irish Government?
§ MR. TREVELYANSir, I find that the Memorial in the case of Michael Larkin, referred to by the hon. Member, was carefully considered by the late Lord Lieutenant, who decided that Larkin had no claim upon the Government. The facts of the case are shortly as follows:—Larkin was convicted before the Chairman of the County Limerick in 1862, on a charge of uttering base coin. It was his second conviction for this offence, and he had been previously tried on a similar charge in 1856, when he was acquitted. The County Court Judge sentenced him to penal servitude for life, being under the erroneous impression that the sentence meant in reality only confinement for 12 years. Larkin appears to have memorialized the Government in 1862, 1863, 1865, 1867, and 1873, and on each occasion the Lord Lieutenant at the time decided that the law should take its course, the Chairman having reported that there was no question as to his guilt. Larkin was released on licence in 1877, having served 15 years; and in 1879 the remainder of his sentence was remitted on the recommendation of Lord Chancellor Ball, who made the recommendation on the ground that the County Court Judge was under the impression that the sentence he imposed, meant 12 years of actual confinement.