CLASS II.—SALARIES AND EXPENSES OF CIVIL DEPARTMENTS.

HC Deb 03 December 1888 vol 331 cc858-975

(1.) £2,478 to complete the sum for the Lord Lieutenant's Household, Ireland.

MR. CLANCY (Dublin Co., N.)

said that on this Vote he should like to call attention to one or two of the items contained in it, and especially to the expenses of the Lord Lieutenant. He believed that the theory was that the Lord Lieutenant should act in Ireland as the Representative of the Queen; that he should constantly show himself in Public State, and be altogether independent of both political Parties. That had been the course, at all events, which had been pursued by most of the Lord Lieutenants who had occupied that position in Ireland in very heated times—in times of very great excitement. He could not recall the case of a single nobleman who had filled the Office of Lord Lieutenant who had not taken a partizan view of his public duties. On every occasion when he had been called upon to take part in affairs of public interest he had expressed the views of the Party which appointed him to the Office. He (Mr. Clancy) held that the Lord Lieutenant ought to be independent of Party altogether.

THE CHAIRMAN

The hon. Gentleman must be aware that the salary of the Lord Lieutenant is not included in this Vote. It is, in fact, placed upon the Consolidated Fund for the express purpose of taking away from the Committee of Supply the power of reviewing any of his official acts.

MR. CLANCY

asked, if it would be competent to discuss the matter on the Vote for the salary of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, seeing that the Chief Secretary performed his functions under the Lord Lieutenant?

THE CHAIRMAN

said, that could only be done on the ground that the Chief Secretary had not given the Lord Lieutenant proper advice. In that case it would be competent to examine the conduct of the Chief Secretary for not having given better advice to the Lord Lieutenant.

MR. EDWARD HARRINGTON (Kerry, W.)

said, there was an item in the Vote for Queen's Plates. It would be remembered that some time ago he asked the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary what the position of those Queen's Plates was. His complaint was that the money was not spread evenly over all the counties in Ireland. His hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Galway (Colonel Nolan) had raised this matter from time to time, and had succeeded, he believed, in getting a small extension of the money for Galway. He (Mr. Edward Harrington) wished to have it extended to the South of Ireland, especially to Kerry, which was a great horse-rearing county, besides being a sporting county. It must not be forgotten that they were constantly hearing pathetic stories about the destruction of sport from hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House. Therefore to encourage sport it would be only wise to give one or two of the Queen's Plates to the county of Kerry. He believed that, as a matter of fact, they were all of them at present given within a short radius of Dublin, and that they did not travel outside that county, at any rate only to those racecourses which were convenient for the Lord Lieutenant to attend. He thought that other people in Ireland would like to amuse themselves with horse-racing as well as his Excellency, who seemed to have very little else to do. He had been asked to take this matter up, and he certainly believed that the giving of those Plates to some of the outlying districts would not only encourage the breeding of horses, but agriculture generally, and the rearing of stock. The Irish farmer had long been famed for superiority in the rearing and breeding of horses, and if some of those prizes were awarded in other districts he would receive a great stimulus in that direction. He was anxious to learn from the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary what the position of the Government was on the matter, and if they could count on the fulfilment of the promise which was given some time ago that the claims of certain counties would be taken into consideration. Of course, in the remarks he had made he spoke specially of the claim of the county of Kerry.

THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR) (Manchester, E.)

said, that his own desire would be to abolish the Queen's Plates altogether; but he did not think there was much to be gained by attempting to carry out that policy, because he feared it would receive considerable opposition. The hon. Member wished to have those Plates distributed more evenly over the whole of Ireland, and was of opinion that some additional prizes should be given. He did not think it was a judicious way of spending money, and although he expressed sympathy with the hon. Member in regard to the claim he had put forward on behalf of his constituents, he was of opinion that if the money was to be spent at all they could not spend it all over Ireland. At present there were two Queen's Plates run for in the county of Cork, and others in the North of Ireland. He also believed there were two plates run for at the Curragh.

COLONEL NOLAN (Galway, N.)

No; only one.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, he certainly could not see his way to comply with the request of the hon. Member.

COLONEL NOLAN

said, that if it were desired to abolish Queen's Plates the best way would be to concentrate them in one place, such as the Curragh, or near Dublin. The men who took part in races did not always understand politics, and if the Queen's Plates were concentrated at the Curragh there would be no popular enthusiasm in their favour. Personally, he regarded this expenditure as one of the most useful ways in which they could spend money in Ireland. [Cries of "Oh! "] No doubt there were many hon. Members who did not look at the matter in that light, but he certainly regarded it as a very good thing. It amused the people, and it did not cause any considerable amount of expenditure; for his own part, he thought that a few hundred pounds spent in amusing the people was money well spent. The question, however, had a far more important aspect. If they took away from Ireland those Queen's Plates they would destroy the good breeding of horses in that country for some years. He was afraid there was a tendency in that direction, because there had already been a portion of the sum that used to be granted for Queen's plates taken away from Ireland. The condition of things in Ireland was not what it was in England, where the money awards as Queen's Plates was largely diminished. Queen's Plates had been in existence in England for more than 200 years, and the result was that it had given an impetus to horse breeding, which had led to the breeding of the best horses in the whole world. Exactly the same condition of things applied to Ireland, and it must be remembered that in addition to the small sums awarded in the shape of Queen's Plates there was a very large amount of added money. In England, he believed, the added money was a good deal over £500,000, amounting to as much as £600,000, so that the actual money given for Queen's Plates was a mere fleabite. The added money in England was so great that the stewards of races did not care whether the Plates were interfered with or not. That was not, however, the case in Ireland. The history of this country was associated with horse-racing, but it was not so in Ireland. In Ireland the soil and climate of the country were favourable, but there was very little money in the country, and the tendency of the people was to run over to England for their amusements. He thought that a certain amount of racing ought to be kept up in Ireland, if only to attract and amuse the people. In addition to that, the breeding of horses depended materially upon having a good strain of blood, which good strain invariably came from the racecourse. By taking away this money they might easily destroy all racing in Ireland. It was a very small sum, only £1,690 altogether, but if it were taken away he had very little doubt that racing, as an institution in the country, would lapse. The result would be that horses would be imported from England, the sires would be of a very small class, and progeny would be of the same description. It was very well known that that consequence had happened in regard to Irish cattle, which, within the last 10 years, had, from a similar cause, been very much deteriorated. If the Queen's Plates were withdrawn, racing in Ireland would be injured, and there would be a considerable deterioration in the quality of the Irish horses. He would ask if it was worth while that, for the sake of £1,600, this result should be brought about? He could understand the Government and the Chief Secretary objecting to those grants, but he could not at all understand why the Vote should be opposed by Irish Members. He could quite understand that his hon. Friend the Member for West Kerry (Mr. Edward Harrington) should desire to have a portion of the money spent in the county he represented. Personally, he hoped that the money would be better distributed over Ireland, and that it would be allotted to races over a greater distance than a few furlongs; if they wanted horses for military and other purposes they should be horses that were capable of running long distances, with plenty of breeding and stamina. It had been said that Queen's Plates ought to be given for steeplechase horses, but steeplechase horses were generally bred upon flat-race-courses, and if they destroyed the flat-race horses they would destroy the steeplechase horses with them. He trusted that the money would be a little better distributed in future than it had been hitherto. There was only one place in which the Queen's Plate was given in the Province of Con-naught, and only one in the Province of Ulster. He thought the Lord Lieutenant would be very badly advised if he were to interfere with the Plates now run for.

MR. WADDY (Lincolnshire, Brigg)

said, the objection he had to this Vote was a great deal wider and deeper than that for the item relating to the giving of Queen's Plates. He thought they ought to have full information as to the services rendered by certain persons whose offices were the relics of a past age. He had in vain endeavoured to find out what was the work done by the great majority of the persons mentioned in the Vote for the salaries they received. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary told them he did not know, but he said, with all good humour and respect to the right hon. Gentleman, that he ought to know. What was the meaning of those apparently meaningless sums that were given in the Vote one after another? What did the State Steward do? What on earth was the use of a Controller? What object was answered by a Gentleman Usher; who did he usher, and when did he perform the work of ushering? He was told that it had something to do with a gaol, but that he did not believe. Then there was a Chamberlain, a Gentleman in Waiting, a State Porter, a Sergeant, of the Riding House, an Organist, the Ulster King-at-Arms, and clerks. He wanted to know whether any Member of the Government could really justify any of these payments, or could state any real good that was done by any one of these persons, which, if paid at all, ought to be paid out of the salary of the Lord Lieutenant? They had been told that they could not discuss the duties or emoluments of the Lord Lieutenant; but he apprehended he was strictly in order in taking it for granted that as the salary of the Lord Lieutenant was £20,000 a-year he ought to pay somebody out of it. If those people were of the slightest use to His Excellency—for certainly they were of no use to any body else—the Committee ought to be put on a track on which some information was to be got. He had no wish to be unreasonable, and he should be perfectly satisfied with an undertaking on the part of the Government to inquire into the matter, so that better information might be in the hands of the Committee when they came to discuss the Estimates next year. In one of the pages of this Vote he found there was a sum charged for a Chaplain to the Castle at Dublin. He could not understand why the people living in Dublin Castle should want a special Chaplain, unless they committed more sins than other people. Then, again, there were a Riding Master, a Reading Clerk, and an Organist. He could not understand what necessity there was for a special staff of this kind, or why the public should be called upon to pay for such services. The charges had now been continued from year to year. He had been trying to find out what benefit resulted to society from the services of the Ulster King-at-Arms, and whether they obtained any advantage from the Athlone Pursuivant-at-Arms and the clerk. No doubt, there were people who, in the course of the year, tried to find out what their coats of arms were; but he thought they might be satisfied with less than three men to assist them in their investigations. The entire work might be adequately done by one man. The next item on the Vote was an allowance for clothing given to one kettle-drummer. He might be told that those items had appeared on these Estimates for years; but he wanted to know what good object was answered by any one of those payments, and he thought it was imperative on the part of the Government to give a reason. He asked for this information in perfect good faith, and in perfect sincerity. He had no wish to divide the Committee, but he thought they ought to have some information as to what object was served by those payments.

MR. T. M. HEALY (Longford, N.)

said, he was not surprised that the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Waddy) should desire to have information in reference to these items of expenditure. The answer, however, was obvious, and personally he found it so. What was the use of clothing a kettle-drummer or paying persons to hunt up heraldic bearings and coats of arms? His object, however, in rising was to draw attention to another matter—namely, to ask who was the owner of all the cattle and sheep who caused such a great and abominable nuisance to the thousands in Dublin in the Phoenix Park? In London cows and sheep were not allowed in the public parks. If they were the property of the Lord Lieutenant, as he gathered they were, he would recommend His Excellency to get rid of them, He was not certain that they belonged to the Lord Lieu- tenant, they might belong to the Chief Secretary, because he saw that the right hon. Gentleman was entitled to the skins of the cattle in the park. Wag it desirable, for the sake of saving a few pounds per annum, that they should have this abominable nuisance going on from year to year. The deer of the park were an ornament and nobody objected to them; but as far as the cows and sheep were concerned they ought to be removed; and if it was considered desirable to put them in Regent's Park and associate them with the enjoyments of the people of London he should have no objection, although he had very little doubt as to what the people of London would say. He did not suppose that £100 a-year was made out of them, and certainly they were a very great nuisance. The introduction of sheep was, he thought, quite a recent innovation. He did not know why anybody should have a right to put deer in a public park, although they were undoubtedly an ornament, but why they should put in cows and sheep to destroy the enjoyment of the public he could not understand.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, he thought that this matter would come more appropriately under the Board of Works Vote. He might say, however, that the cattle were allowed to be in Phoenix Park under contract. Both sheep and cattle were extremely beneficial, from an agricultural point of view, to the Park, and he believed that he was right in saying that it would be quite impossible to keep down the grass if deer only were allowed there.

COLONEL NOLAN

said, that some 20 years ago an attempt was made to introduce cattle into the Metropolitan parks, but the people of the Metropolis would not assent and the attempt failed.

THE LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN (Mr. SEXTON) (Belfast, W.)

said, he entertained a strong objection to the sum set down for the Lord Lieutenant's household being paid out of the public funds, for various reasons. His first and great reason, however, was that the Lord Lieutenant received from the Consolidated Fund a salary of £20,000 a-year for the performance of certain functions which, in a social sense, were extremely light, and which the people of Ireland conceived to be of no public use. Surely, when they gave the Lord Lieutenant £20,000 a-year, he ought to pay the expenses of his household out of it. There were a great many persons in this country who were much more useful than the Lord Lieutenant, and who received a much less salary, but they had to pay for their households out of their own pockets. He thought the same system should be applied to the household of the Lord Lieutenant. In social matters the Lord Lieutenant had no relations with the general communities in Ireland. His only social relations were with a small class of persons who were mostly obnoxious to the general public in Ireland, persons with whose amusements the public had no sympathy. As one of the Representatives of the people of Dublin, he objected to pay out of the public purse one penny for the amusement of one section only of the public in Ireland. It must not be forgotten that the general public provided the taxes out of which this money was paid. That was his second reason for objecting to this Vote. A third reason was that the Lord Lieutenant showed his contempt for Ireland by staying out of it as much as he could. Indeed, he was almost as much out of the country as the Chief Secretary. However much those two high officials had otherwise distinguished themselves, they had certainly distinguished themselves by remaining out of Ireland. The Lord Lieutenant was seldom seen in Ireland except at a race-course, and he failed to see why an official who spent as many months in England as he did days in Ireland should keep up a large amount of State and require so much money to be spent upon it. No one would object to these charges if the Lord Lieutenant did his duty and remained in Ireland from the beginning of the year to the end of it. He further objected to the maintenance of the office of the Ulster King-at-Arms. It was kept up for the gratification of individual vanity to constitute a kind of social luxury, and he thought that the people who availed themselves of the functions of the Ulster King-at-Arms ought to pay for them. The salary of the Ulster King-at-Arms was £920 a-year, and there were other expenses attached to that office, while the fees last year only amounted to £800. He thought Parliament ought to refuse to retain the Office unless the fees were sufficient to pay the annual cost of keeping it up. He had no desire to express any strong objection to the clothing of that ancient relic the Kettle-drummer. He found that he was described, in a foot-note to the Vote, as the only remnant of the State Band that formerly existed. Of course it was too much to suppose that this last survivor performed by himself. Then, again, there was an item in connection with the Order of St. Patrick which he regarded as a kind of public nuisance. He had no power to interfere with the conferring of the name of a Saint upon this Order, but he objected to the creation of Knights of St. Patrick on the ground that the institution was obnoxious to the public opinion of the country. He did not see, therefore, why the Irish people should consent to a charge of £40 a-year for providing insignia as the investiture of a new Knight.

An hon. MEMBER

Who are the new Knights?

MR. SEXTON

said, he should certainly like to know from the Government who the last gentleman was who had made himself disagreeable to the public opinion in Ireland. He might possibly get no answer to that question. The cost of providing the insignia was £40, and he would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to inform them when this new Knight of the Order of St. Patrick was to be invested, whether he had been invested, and who he was? He would also ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he would not accept the principle that every new Knight ought to pay for his investiture.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, that with regard to the last part of the right hon. Gentleman's observations, he believed it was right to say that the average receipts of the Ulster King-at-Arms exceeded the expenditure by about £9. The fees paid in to the Exchequer in connection with the Order of St. Patrick amounted to about £300 a-year. He apprehended that the Government took over those fees. The hon. Gentleman had attacked the Ulster King-at-Arms.

MR. SEXTON

No.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Well, if the right hon. Gentleman had not attacked the individual, he had attacked the Office.

MR. SEXTON

I said it ought to pay for itself.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, the average receipts for 10 years paid into the Treasury was £929, and the cost each year had been under £921, so that there was a small balance. The right hon. Gentleman had made a general attack upon the Office of Lord Lieutenant. Perhaps a more proper course would be to discuss the question as to the propriety of having a Lord Lieutenant at all. The whole question of the Office of Lord Lieutenant, if it was to be discussed at all, ought to be discussed under that head. It was useless, and worse than useless, to endeavour to destroy the Office of Lord Lieutenant piecemeal, by voting against this or that particular expenditure, in the endeavour to rob it of all the state and dignity which had been associated with it from time immemorial. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that the Office of Lord Lieutenant was one which conferred no benefit upon the people of Ireland. He would not discuss that large question now, but he would say that there was one part of Ireland which received great advantage from the Office, and that was the City of Dublin, of which the right hon. Gentleman opposite was at this moment the highest Municipal representative. There could be no doubt that the Office of Lord Lieutenant brought into Dublin some £200,000 or £300,000 a-year, a great deal of which would be spent in England if the Viceregal Court were abolished. An hon. Member who spoke earlier said that the people of Ireland were in the habit of spending money in England for their amusements instead of in Ireland. He was sure that if there was any tendency of that kind it would receive an enormous stimulus by the abolition of the Office of Lord Lieutenant. The hon. Member said that as they gave £20,000 a-year to the Lord Lieutenant his Excellency ought to pay his household. Now they could not expect any official to spend more than a certain excess over his salary in connection with any Office he held. There had never been yet in the history of Ireland a Lord Lieutenant who had got through his term of Office for the salary paid to him during his year of Office. In many cases he had heard of Lord Lieutenants spending as much as £20,000 a-year in excess of their salaries. He know that in many cases such an excess of expenditure bad been incurred by a Lord Lieutenant for the first four or five years of his Office, and, taking an average, he should say that Lord Lieutenants spent at least £10,000 a-year in excess of their salaries. Under these circumstances he thought it would be better if those who wished to see the Office of Lord Lieutenant abolished would make that proposal in a direct and straightforward manner, instead of attacking the adjuncts of the system and seeking to cut down its estate.

MR. SEXTON

said, he thought the right hon. Gentleman was labouring under a misapprehension, for, although he had spoken at considerable length, he had not directed himself to the observations he had made. He had never attacked the Office of Lord Lieutenant at all. What he did attack was the manner in which the holder of the present Office discharged its duties. The right hon. Gentleman had referred to the fact that he held a high Municipal office in Dublin. He would inform the right hon. Gentleman that, although the duties the Lord Mayor of Dublin had to discharge were 10 times as onerous as those of the Lord Lieutenant, yet the salary of the Lord Mayor was about one-seventh of that of the Lord Lieutenant, and he discharged every penny of expenditure of his household. It was upon that ground that he had been induced principally to object to the sum which was to be voted in reference to the Lord Lieutenant. He thought the most straightforward manner in dealing with the matter would be to allow a salary sufficient for the discharge of the expenses, and not adopt this beggarly and humiliating method of paying the servants of the Lord Lieutenant, from the Private Secretary down to the State Porter, out of an annual Vote. He maintained that such a mode of providing for the expenditure was humiliating to the Office. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary said that the holding of the Court in Dublin was the means of spending money in Ireland. He admitted that it was, and he believed that it might be of eminent service to Dublin and the country at large if it were made the centre of social movement, and if the confidence of the people were centred in the Office and in the system it represented; but under present circumstances what kind of social State did the Lord Lieutenant represent? He gave a few shadowy levees and dances in the course of the year to a small knot of persons, but the social expenditure attached to the Office had been brought to the lowest possible limit in Dublin in consequence of the detestable system which the right hon. Gentleman now administered in Ireland. Obnoxious proclamations were being issued in the names of a German soldier and an Irish lawyer—

THE CHAIRMAN

The right hon. Gentleman must confine himself to the Vote. This is not a legitimate occasion upon which to enter upon that line of remark.

MR. SEXTON

said, his argument was that the Lord Lieutenant was not entitled to a suite so large as that with which he was supplied. His Excellency remained for nine months out of Ireland, and his household ought not to be maintained in the meantime at the public expense.

THE CHAIRMAN

said, that was an argument which he had already intimated to be an illegitimate one.

MR. SEXTON

asked, if he was to understand that the absence of the Lord Lieutenant from the country had no bearing upon the cost of his household?

THE CHAIRMAN

said, he thought that, inasmuch, as the observations of the right hon. Gentleman affected the conduct and character of the Lord Lieutenant, he was pursuing a line of argument which was irregular, seeing that the conduct and character of the Lord Lieutenant was removed from the province of Committee of Supply. The discussion of the Lord Lieutenant's Household must be conducted quite apart from the acts of the Lord Lieutenant himself.

MR. SEXTON

said, that under those circumstances he would say no more upon the subject.

MR. JOHN O'CONNOR (Tipperary, S.)

said that he, like his right hon. Friend the Member for West Belfast(Mr.Sexton), had no desire to attack the Lord Lieutenant or the Office of Lord Lieutenant in Ireland. He was quite sure that there was no desire on the part of any Member on that side of the House to abolish the office, but they did entertain a hope that the time might not be long distant when the position of Lord Lieutenant would be filled by a man who would be in sympathy with the Irish people in all their desires. He entertained a hope that before long those who occupied the position would be animated by better feelings and would adopt a better policy than that which was at present carried out in Ireland. He had not had the privilege of hearing what the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had to say on most of the matters which had been touched upon; but he was quite willing to allow the fees to stand which were given to the "Ulster King-at-Arms, the Kettle-drummer, and others. It was only a very small amount, and as the Irish people were somewhat partial to State and legal forms they did not object to the Ulster King-at-Arms and the Kettle-drummer and the whole lot of those persons. There was, however, a matter of more serious importance included in the Vote—namely, the money that was set apart for Queen's Plates in Ireland. He regretted to find that a sum had been again sot down in the Estimates under that head this year, and he trusted that in the future Estimates that would be laid before the Committee the item would disappear altogether, because he thought that the money could be applied to a better purpose. He believed that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was of the same opinion, and there had already been a Royal Commission to inquire into the whole question of the breeding of horses. What applied to England should apply to Ireland also; and he maintained that the voting of money to this purpose entirely frustrated the object and intention of those who advised Her Majesty to grant this Bounty. The Royal Commission had reported that there could be little doubt that for a considerable period the Royal Bounty had failed to fulfil the original purpose for which it was intended. The purpose for which it was originally intended was to improve the breeding of horses in the country, and the Royal Commission, who consisted of men who had devoted attention to the matter both in the racing field and in other departments, having inquired into it, came to the conclusion that the object was not served by the manner in which the Bounty of Her Majesty had been dispensed.

COLONEL NOLAN

In England.

MR. JOHN O'CONNOR

said, his hon. and gallant Friend said in England, but the same thing applied to Ireland. If it did answer its purpose how was it that the Royal Dublin Society last year granted 16 awards of £200 each in connection with the breeding of horses and stock for other purposes than those of Queen's Plates. There were horses of a different character from race-horses which might be more useful to the community at large. If the hon. and gallant Member for North Galway would read the evidence before the Royal Commission he would find that the system at present adopted was strongly condemned, and that the Commissioners arrived at the unanimous conclusion that the bounty of Her Majesty must be voted in another manner if they wished to produce the result which they all wished to bring about. What was the use of getting a Royal Commission to hold an inquiry and make a Report if their recommendations were not carried out? The right hon. gentleman the Chief Secretary had expressed an opinion altogether contrary to that which had been expressed by the hon. and gallant Member for North Galway, and in that case he would ask why the right hon. Gentleman did not propose some plan by which this sum of £1,600 would be voted for the purpose suggested by the Royal Commission. He had himself attended many race meetings in Ireland at which Queens Plates were run for, and he knew from experience, and from conversation with others, that those Queen's Plates were absolutely worthless for the purpose intended. For that reason he hoped that when next year the Estimates were brought up for the sanction of the Committee of Supply they would find that the sum now run for in the shape of Queen's Plates would have been got rid of, and that it would be applied in future under proper management for the encouragement of a breed of horses that would be useful, not for purposes of racing alone, but for the agricultural and commercial purposes the country was engaged in. He would only point out the fact that instead of the application of the money having been beneficial in improving the breed of horses, the Governments of other countries had entered into competition with this country in this respect, and were far outdoing the breeders of English horses. He sincerely hoped that this item would not find a place in the Estimates this year.

MR. EDWARDHARRINGTON

said, he wished to repeat, that if the object for which Queen's Elates were provided was the encouragement of a breed of horses, it ought to be spread more evenly over the whole of Ireland. If it were desirable to abolish the grant altogther, let it be done, but he claimed that the money, so long as it was granted, should not be given to races within a short distance of Dublin Castle. If granted at all it should go to the whole country.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL (Tyrone, S.)

said, he did not think that the encouragement of racing in Ireland would naturally tend to encourage the breeding of horses. He would, therefore, ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to consider the desirability of abolishing the Queen's Elates, with a view of giving the money to the Royal Dublin Society.

COLONEL NOLAN

said, that all of them desired to encourage the breeding of horses in Ireland, and he thought that this was effected by the giving of Queen's Elates, seeing that the money was given for smartness combined with speed. The result had been to produce a very big breed of horses, but he was afraid that it could not be continued without the assistance of the Government. He had been told by people interested in racing that there was a unanimous feeling that if those Queen's Elates were withdrawn, Irish racing would be killed. In that event they would destroy the best breed of cavalry horses, most of which came from Ireland.

MR. BURDETT-COUTTS (Westminster)

said, he did not agree with the hon. and gallant Member for North Galway who had just spoken, that racing was in danger of being abolished in Ireland if this money were taken away from the Queen's Elates. He thought that racing would always produce horses characterized by speed, but it would not be the means of raising good stock in the country. Horses characterized by speed were unfortunately not always characterized by those attributes which rendered them useful for the improvement of country stock. The premiums given by the Royal Dublin Society were directed to the encouragement of good and useful agricultural horses. The Reports of the Royal Dublin Society showed that the premiums awarded by the Society had been eminently successful in Ireland in the production of useful and strong stock, and in that way that they had done a great deal of good. He would, therefore, support in future any change in the direction of giving the money in aid of the system to improve the general stock of horses in the country.

MR. WADDY

said, it was an entire mistake to imagine that hon. Members on that side of the House sought to destroy the Office of the Lord Lieutenant by cutting off its adjuncts simply because they were paid for by the State. The objection was that they were altogether unnecessary adjuncts. Certainly, if they were called upon to devote money year after year for those purposes in Committee of Supply they ought to be told what those persons were doing, or be set upon some track where they could find it out for themselves. At present no indication had been given as to the nature of the offices or the work done by the people included in the Vote.

Vote agreed to.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £12,707, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1889, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Offices of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in Dublin and London, and Subordinate Departments.

MR. J. E. ELLIS (Nottingham, Rushcliffe)

said, he rose for the purpose of moving the reduction of this Vote by £425. The first ground upon which he ventured to ask the Committee to agree to that Motion was the extraordinary cost the House was asked to provide for the Office of Chief Secretary for Ireland. This had been a constantly increasing sum, whereas the population of the country where the holder of the Office exercised the functions of Government had been constantly decreasing. In 1871 there were 5,386,708 persons in Ireland, and the Vote asked for from the House of Commons only amounted to the sum of £16,605. At the present moment there were 4,790,614 persons in Ireland, and the sum they were asked to Vote had increased from £16,500 to no less than £20,692. It was as well to admit that he had put the sum to which he asked the Committee to reduce the Vote to a figure of £425 for a special reason. He found that up to the year 1886 the sum they were now asked to vote for the salary of the Chief Secretary was divided in this way. The salary was placed at £4,000 per annum, and there was an allowance for fuel of £425. In that year the £425 was added to the £4,000, with an explanation in a foot note; but this year, for the first time, even the foot note had vanished altogether. The Committee would see that the effect of that operation was that on page 192 of the Estimates the sum of £4,425 appeared opposite the words "Salary of the Chief Secretary," whereas the £425 had come down from times gone by as an allowance for fuel. Now, no Chief Secretary of recent times had used his official residence in Ireland less. Although in the last Vote the presence or absence of the Lord Lieutenant had been ruled irrelevant, certainly the presence or the absence of the Chief Secretary from Ireland was perfectly germane to this Vote. He thought the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would allow that no right hon. Gentleman who had occupied that position in recent times had had less occasion for fuel during his residence in Dublin than he had. In asking the Committee to strike off the cost of fuel, he did not base the Motion upon such a mere narrow issue as that, but upon a far broader ground. The Vote raised the whole policy of the way in which the Office was administered by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. He proposed to compress his remarks into the briefest possible space, having regard to the number of Members who would naturally desire to take part in the important discussion that was likely to follow. The results of the policy of the right hon. Gentleman were comprised in a single sentence. Some 1,400 or 1,500 persons had been placed in prison under the operation of the Coercion Act which received the Royal Assent in the month of July last year, so that in little more than 15 months there had been about 100 persons per month placed in prison under the pro- visions of that Act. He said that they had been placed in prison for offences which the people of this country at large did not regard as crimes at all. As he had said last week, in referring to the policy of Her Majesty's Government in Ireland, he had no wish to make a personal attack upon the right hon. Gentleman, who was merely the mouthpiece of the policy of the Government, for which policy Her Majesty's Government and some hon. Gentlemen who sat on that (the Opposition) side of the House, and who, in his opinion, ought to cross the House, were responsible. The right hon. Gentleman once let fall a very significant phrase—he said that the Irish tenant was the spoilt child of the English Legislature. That was diametrically opposed to the opinion he entertained. He believed that the Legislature had recognized the property created by the toil of the Irish tenant; but he considered that the Government were doing their best by their policy to reverse the policy of the Land Act of 1881. He charged upon the right hon. Gentleman that he had, so far as possible, concealed the manner in which the government of Ireland had been carried out from the people of this country, that he had adopted in the House of Commons a policy of concealment, of evasion, and of inaccuracy. They had been recently discussing measures brought forward by the Government in respect of Ireland with the most total and unheard of want of information. They had been compelled to enter into the consideration of the Coercion Act last year, and the Land Purchase Act this year, in the absence of the Papers that were necessary to enable them to form a proper judgment. It was true that Papers had been furnished to some extent; but they had come too late, and had been given in such conditions as almost to render them worthless. At Belfast lately the Lord Lieutenant quoted some figures with respect to Boycotting; but never to this day had the House been furnished with the figures in such a way as to make them of the slightest use for the purpose of controversy. They had a greater reason than this to be suspicious in regard to Returns dealing with affairs in Ireland, because it had recently been admitted in open Court by a sergeant of the Royal Irish Constabu- lary, that in reference to the outrage Returns there was no place in the form for any accident that might have occurred. The accidental burning of a barn actually had been entered as an outrage. Again, a most significant change was made in the Eviction Returns in March last. The noble Lord the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington), when he quoted the figures in reference to evictions, did not mention the change which had taken place. The right hon. Gentleman, by the change, had endeavoured to conceal from the House and the country the effect of the operation of the 7th clause of the Act of last year. As had been pointed out by the hon. Member for North-East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien) the operation of that clause had been precisely the same, so far as the tenants were concerned, as if evictions had been actually carried out personally. From the Returns it appeared that although only 263 tenants had been actually evicted up to the 30th September, no less than 3,694 tenancies had been determined at the suit of the landlord—or, in other words, that their property had been confiscated by the operation of eviction notices. Therefore, the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale, if he wished to quote accurately the number of evictions, should not have put the figure at 263, but at 3,957. The Return of sentences increased presented at the instance of the hon. Baronet the Member for the Cockermouth Division of Cumberland (Sir Wilfrid Lawson), which was quoted by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary on the 16th of May, at Battersea, with great triumph, showed that the number was 13 altogether. But as appeared when "further particulars" were supplied at the end of June, not one of the increased sentences arose under the Coercion Act of 1882. [Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: Hear, hear!] The right hon. Gentleman said "Hear, hear," but he did not make that statement to his audience at Battersea. On the 21st of February the hon. Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn), soon after the meeting of the House, moved for a Return with respect to the operation of the Crimes Act of last year, but the request of the hon. Gentleman was absolutely refused, and it was not until the right hon. Member for Newcastle-upon Tyne asked before Whitsuntide that the House might have some facts and figures on the matter, that any information was given by Her Majesty's Government, and even then it was given most reluctantly. Having been applied for before Whitsuntide, it was asked for again in June, and when the debate on coercion took place on the 25th of June there were only 24 copies of unrevised proofs, which were scattered about among the Front Benches. A question had been asked that night as to the number of persons sent to prison under the Coercion Act since the date of that Return, and the reply of the Government was that if the Return were moved for the information should be given. Of course such a Return could not be given for a few weeks, and would therefore be quite useless for the discussion on the Estimates. The question had been down on the Paper for days, and surely it would have been easy to have obtained from the officials in Dublin the figures giving the number of persons who had been sentenced under the Act. He could, however, well understand the inconveniences of the question. It was remarkable that so much of the information that had been asked, especially that which was asked for by the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) should have been refused, especially in face of the fact that the Estimates were going to be discussed in the present week. On the 4th of May an order was made by the House for Returns in reference to land purchase, but as far as he was aware no information was laid before the House until the 16th of July. With regard to the Killeagh Case, they were still waiting for the judgment in the case. Again, with respect to Mitchelstown the copy of the depositions had never been laid on the table, although the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary stated on the 8th of June that it was under consideration whether the information could be given. It was true that there had been something in the shape of a Report, but it was not worth the paper on which it was printed. The instances he had cited were only a small fraction of those which had occurred, but they were all with which he would venture to detain the Committee, and which he would be able, if it were necessary, to give from his place that night. They were simply a sample. He would turn now from the instances of concealment which had been uniformly practised to the evasions of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary. On the 7th of June the right hon. Gentleman told the House as an excuse for not laying information upon the Table, that he had only made it the basis of his speech, and that he had not quoted from it. He contended that that was a course of proceeding which it was unworthy of a Minister to follow.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

What Return does the hon. Member allude to?

MR. J. E. ELLIS

said, he was afraid that he could not answer that question, but if the right hon. Gentleman would refer to Hansard he would find that on the 7th of June he used these words: "I made it the basis but I did not quote from it." The right hon. Gentleman stated in the House on the 18th of June, referring to his speech at Battersea, that no lad or poor man had been put in prison for selling newspapers in the street, of the contents of which he was ignorant. By skilfully putting three things together, "streets," "ignorance of the contents," and "lad or poor man," the right hon. Gentleman managed to evade the charge made against him of having in the City of Cork interfered with the sale of newspapers. He (Mr. J. E. Ellis) maintained that this sort of thing was unworthy quibbling, and not the straightforward kind of reply the House had a right to expect from any man sitting on the Treasury Bench. And now he would turn to a more serious matter—the inaccuracies of which the right hon. Gentleman had been guilty in his replies to the House. The first instance related to the celebrated case of the affair at Mitchelstown. The right hon. Gentleman stated on the 16th of May at Battersea that— One of them at least, unquestionably, was killed by a ricochet shot. I believe that was true of other unfortunate victims in this calamitous struggle. But the right hon. Gentleman omitted to inform his audience that it was sworn in Court by one of the witnesses that he fired with definite aim, and with intent to kill. As to the ricochet shot, he (Mr. J. E. Ellis) would leave that matter to others to deal with who had been there. On the 7th of June, the right hon. Gentleman admitted the truth of two out of three points with respect to the interference of the police at Newtownards, which he had absolutely denied on the 31st of May. On the 22nd of June the right hon. Gentleman committed a further inaccuracy in regard to Messrs. Redmond and Gardner, who, he said, were certified under the Crimes Act, whereas it was under the Act of 1882, under which they had no such jurisdiction as that given by the Act of 1887. On the 3rd of August the right hon. Gentle, man made a serious statement, that outrages had steadily diminished. He (Mr. J, E. Ellis) interjected the remark, "not excluding threatening letters," threatening letters having always been excluded at the time Mr. Forster was Chief Secretary, During the three months ending 30th September, outrages, excluding threatening letters, stood at 108, whereas they stood at 91 at the time the right hon. Gentleman came down to the House with the Coercion Act. He would not go into the cases of Patrick Barrett, or the celebrated Galway midwife, but in both of those cases the right hon. Gentleman had made statements which were subsequently admitted to be inaccuracies. On the 19th of June the right hon. Gentleman said the reports of evictions were invariably inaccurate. A few days afterwards he was obliged to admit that the reports were perfectly accurate, and the right hon. Gentleman would remember that he was absolutely contradicted in another matter at Ennis by Colonel Turner and Sergeant Cronin. On the 24th of March, at Staleybridge, the right hon. Gentleman said— No man has been attacked in Ireland, through my administration, for the expression of any opinion whatever in any newspaper whatever, from one end of Ireland to the other. He was curious to know how the right hon. Gentleman reconciled that statement with his admission the other day in reference to the imprisonment of the Mayor of Sligo. The right hon. Gentleman on that occasion denied that he had ever made such an assertion, and interpolated the words "legitimate opinion." It would be found, if hon. Members would turn to the Staleybridge speech, that the word "legitimate" was not in it at all. He would not pursue these matters further, and he had only given a number of illustrations in support of the charge he had made against the right hon. Gentleman. He was within the mark in saying that if any hon. Member would take the trouble to wade through the volumes of Hansard, since the right hon. Gentleman had been Chief Secretary, he would find at least 200 cases of the grossest inaccuracy in the replies which had been given by him to questions addressed to him in the House. He thought there must be a reason for this, and the reason he assigned was, that the right hon. Gentleman, on the part of the Government, was afraid of the English people knowing the truth. But it also sprang from a want of knowledge, which was not creditable to a right hon. Gentleman who filled the position of Chief Secretary for Ireland. In his judgment, and he had watched him carefully, the right hon. Gentleman took no pains to arrive at the truth with respect to the answers he gave in the House. He did not see the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) in his place, but he should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman if he still adhered to the opinion expressed by him before his return to Office, when he said to his Constituents— Those Irish matters which it is necessary to retain under the control of the Central Government ought, in my mind, to be administered by political officials directly and personally responsible to Parliament, instead of permanent officials only nominally controlled by a single Minister who cannot possibly find time for all the details of the administration of the country. How often had the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. Madden), who sometimes answered questions for the right hon. Gentleman, to say, "I am not aware of the particulars." At times one might fancy that Ireland was at the other side of the globe. There were hon. Members seated on those Benches below the Gangway by the score who possessed the fullest information of what occurred in Ireland, and who could obtain by telegraph ample information of every circumstance, while hon. Members had to wait by the day, and sometimes by the week or month, for information that was grudgingly doled out to them by the Chief Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman was an absentee Chief Secretary, and that fact lay at the root of the ignorance he displayed. No Gentleman occupying that position ought to be absent so frequently and continuously from Ireland. It had not been the practice of previous Chief Secretaries to be away from Ireland to the same extent as the right hon. Gentleman. He need only refer to the case of Mr. Forster during the terrible and trying occurrences of the year 1882. Even in that year Mr. Forster was there by the week and the month at the time, but the right hon. Gentleman was seldom or never in the Chief Secretary's Lodge, He would not dwell on the darker features of the mode of government for which Ministers were responsible. He had only ventured to submit some illustrations of what the settled policy of the Government was—namely, an attempt to conceal from the country and the Representatives of the people the truth of what was occurring in Ireland. But, in spite of this attempt, the truth was dawning upon the people of the country; the national conscience was being shocked at the "petty malignity and calculated brutality" with which the administration of Ireland reeks. He begged to move the reduction of the Vote by the sum of £425, part of the salary of the Chief Secretary.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Item A, Salaries, Household, part of the Salary of the Chief Secretary, be reduced by the sum of £425."—(Mr. John Ellis.)

THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A J. BALFOUR) (Manchester, E.)

The hon. Gentleman has informed the Committee in the course of his speech that he has had his eye upon me, and that for months. Indeed, ever since I took on myself the heavy responsibility of the Office I now hold, the hon. Member has been carefully watching my proceedings, and has come to some very dark conclusions as to my moral condition. The hon. Gentleman has accused me of concealment, of evasion, and of inaccuracy, and also with "petty malignity and calculated brutality."

THE CHAIRMAN

If the hon. Member had used those expressions with respect to the right hon. Gentleman I should have called him to order. The hon. Member was referring to the administration of Ireland.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. Member spoke principally of the things I had done, and he characterized them as "petty malignity and calculated brutality."

MR. J. E. ELLIS

The right hon. Gentleman must not misrepresent me. What I said was that the administration of the policy of the right hon. Gentleman was characterized by "petty malignity and calculated brutality."

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I thought that I had most accurately described what the hon. Member said. I have now heard his explanation, and I am unable to see any distinction whatever between the statement I gave to the House of what the hon. Member said and the statement he has now made himself. I do not pretend to be able to deal with the various points raised by the hon. Member, even if I had been able to take notes of them. They evidence great industry on his part, and a more careful study of the pages of Hansard than I should like to impose upon my worst enemy. But he gave them in such brief language that I cannot deal with the passages referred to by the hon. Member without their contexts; but I shall be able to give information with regard to the more important points. The hon. Member began by violently attacking the Government for the paucity and imperfection of the information which they have furnished to the House in the shape of Returns. As regards the imperfection of the Returns, that is frequently due to the carelessness of the Member himself who moves for the Return. There was one special Return—of the dealings under the Purchase Act—the delay in the production of which was entirely due to the fact that the hon. Member had not taken the trouble to put it in tabular form. My hon. and learned Friend near me (Mr. Madden), who is more familiar with the subject than I am, informs me that the delay arose entirely from the Return not having been put in a proper form.

MR. J. E. ELLIS

The right hon. Gentleman is entirely mistaken. On the 14th of May an Order of the House was made for a certain Return. I asked the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite (Mr. Madden), on the 16th of July, whether the Return was ready. The hon. and learned Gentleman then said that the Government would grant the Return in another form, though the Order of the House had been made for it in a particular form.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The Return could not be given in the original form.

MR. J. E. ELLIS

That was not explained until after a Question had been asked on the 16th of July as to why the Return was not ready.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

That is a Question which I must leave my hon. and learned Friend to answer. The delay appears to have arisen from two causes—one that the Return was impossible, and the other that the hon. Member did not put it in a form in which it could be given. Then there was another Return moved for, I believe by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Mr. John Morley), connected with the increase of sentences on appeal.

MR. J. E. ELLIS

No; the right hon. Gentleman does not understand the matter. It was the Return of the hon. Baronet the Member for Cocker-mouth.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Then it was a Return moved for by an hon. Member below the Gangway; and because the Return moved for by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cockermouth (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) did not happen to suit the argument of the hon. Member, therefore the Government are to be accused of inaccuracy and laxity in the preparation of Returns and in the amount of information they give to the House. If hon. Members opposite do not understand their own arguments, I cannot be expected to understand them. If they are incapable of putting into a tabular form the information they desire to have given to them, it is rather hard to blame the Government if the result is not altogether in accord with their own expectations. Then the hon. Member took the official statistics of crime, and quoted—a not very decorous proceeding, or, rather, I believe he misquoted—certain evidence recently given before the Royal Commission now sitting, by a policeman.

MR. J. E. ELLIS

Not at all. The case occurred early in the spring, and the facts I referred to were admitted by the right hon. gentleman in reply to a question from me. They had nothing whatever to do with the Commission.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. Member said he referred to evidence given on oath.

MR. J. E. ELLIS

Yes; in a Court in Ireland.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

That being so, I know nothing about the evidence. Even the most industrious Chief Secretary, who spent all this £425 a-year for coals, can hardly be expected to bear every detail in his mind, and to remember all the evidence given by every policeman in Ireland. But although I do not recollect the particular evidence of this policeman, I can remove a misapprehension from the hon. Member's mind. The hon. Member appears to think that accidents are returned with outrages.

MR. J. E. ELLIS

It was so in that case.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Accidents are never returned as outrages. If an accident turns out afterwards to be an outrage, the Return is corrected. Every pains are taken to produce correct Returns. There are no Returns about which more care is taken. Difficulties often arise as to whether an outrage is agrarian or not; but the greatest pains are taken to distinguish them. But even an Irish policeman may make a mistake. [An hon. MEMBER: Oh, no!] While, however, I make that admission, I do not think that Returns were ever made by any Department whatever with greater care than those which relate to agrarian crimes. The hon. Member referred to the statistics of evictions, and to some observations made by the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington) on this subject. It is quite true that the form of the Returns has been changed; but this was absolutely necessary, owing to the fact that the law on the subject of eviction has itself been changed by the 7th section of the Act of last Session. I have never concealed my opinion that, even though the law had not been altered, a change in the form of the Returns was most desirable. The old form had long been a perfect scandal. I do not blame the Department in Dublin. Ever since 1848 certain Returns of a very rough character have been given. If anyone was to blame, it was the late Mr. Forster, who, under Parliamentary pressure, assented to the publication of the form which hitherto had been used. I have more than once, both in this House and out of it, explained the extraordinary mistakes which the Returns contained. The form would lead the most careful examiner of statistics to wholly erroneous views; and this, possibly, is the explanation of the absurdly exaggerated figures as to evictions that were given on a recent occasion by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, who rashly put his faith in them. These exaggerated statements have been made over and over again on half the Radical and Gladstonian platforms throughout the country, and they have, to a certain extent, been repeated by the hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division (Mr. J. E. Ellis) to-night. This was the sort of rhetoric indulged in—"Here you have 3,000, or whatever the number may be, families under eviction, and you are turning them on the roadside to starve or to find their way into the workhouse. As each of these 3,000 families probably consists of five persons, you are consequently turning out on the roadside or into the workhouse no less than 15,000 innocent persons, because the landlords choose to be brutal and harsh." This high-flown rhetoric about people being turned out on the roadside can no longer be excused. I observe how the hon. Member has shifted his ground. Formerly it was said that these people were turned out on the roadside. It is now said that they are deprived of their property. That is an important fact, and should be known when the hon. Member and his Friends again pour forth their rhetoric from every platform in England in order to arouse the sympathy of the people of England for the hard lot of the Irish tenants. Every man who henceforth makes statements of this kind will be deliberately sinning against light and against truth. But even the modified statement with which the hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division now contents himself is not accurate. Does he really mean to say that the serving of an eviction notice upon a tenant de- prives that tenant of his property in the holding?

MR. J. E. ELLIS

It determines his tenancy.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Did the hon. Gentleman say, or did he not say, that the notice deprives him of his property?

MR. T. M. HEALY (Longford, N.)

Yes, it does.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I did not ask the hon. and learned Member for North Longford, but the hon. Member who spoke last.

MR. J. E. ELLIS

Then I say yes; for it puts an end to his title.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

That is not the point. The old allegation used to be that the eviction notice was equivalent to turning the tenant out on the roadside. I have said, and I say again, that any person who repeats that statement will be deliberately sinning against light and truth. Now that it is modified, it is said that the notice determines the tenancy, and is equivalent to depriving the tenant of his property.

MR. T. M. HEALY

So it is.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I absolutely deny this, though it is ratified by the hon. and learned Member for North Longford. In the first place, the tenant has six months for redemption, and it constantly happens that in the interval the tenant comes to some arrangement with his landlord. Even if the tenant does not arrange with his landlord, he still has it in his power to get the value of his property in his holding, for under the Act of 1881, and even under the Act of 1870, the Irish tenant had the right of free sale.

MR. T. M. HEALY

What does he sell?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

He can sell the value of his interest in his holding and of the improvements he has made, and can obtain the full market value of the property he has in it. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] If it is not so, what is the use of free sale of which the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) boasts, and rightly boasts, that the Act of 1881 gave to the Irish tenant? If I am correct in my statement, what becomes of the statement that the tenant is turned out on the roadside to starve, and the modified statement of the hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division that the tenant loses all his property? Neither state- ment is true. The hon. Member appears to think that to destroy this iniquitous Government it is only necessary that the truth should be known, and this is the hon. Member's own humble contribution to the truth. The hon. Gentleman also denounced the concealment he says I practised in the statement I made at Battersea, or some other place, with regard to the increase of sentences on appeal by County Court Judges last summer. The hon. Gentleman complains that I did not mention that the previous instances in which sentences were increased on appeal were cases under the ordinary law, and not under the Crimes Act. It is true that I did not state it. But does not the hon. Member see that my omission to do so told against myself? I never stated the opposite; but because I did not make that statement I am accused of concealment. But this fact tells immensely in favour of the argument of Her Majesty's Government and of the Judges. My point was that the Crimes Act created no new offence, and that appeals in cases under the Crimes Act wore in all respects similar to appeals under the Act of 1882, and under the ordinary appeals from Petty Sessions to Quarter Sessions. In certain cases under the Crimes Act the sentences were increased, and for this the Government and the Judges are held up as objects for the reprobation of the country. But it was shown that in previous cases sentences have been increased on appeal. The hon. Member complained that the fact was not stated that these previous cases were under the ordinary law. That is a species of concealment that I certainly will not be guilty of again if I can help it, for the statement of this fact would have immensely strengthened my argument. Having dealt with the case of concealment, I now come to the charge of evasion. The hon. Gentleman charges me with evasion in denying that I had sent little boys and poor men to prison for selling newspapers in Cork. That is a definite and specific charge. It is true or it is not. Well, it is not true. No little boy was put in prison.

MR. J. O'CONNOR (Tipperary, S.)

He went anyhow.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

My time is sufficiently occupied with denying definite charges without replying to other charges which ingenious opponents may have in their minds when they make their accusations. With regard to the ricochet shot at Mitchelstown, I have stated more than once that, after examining such evidence as was before me, I believe that one of the men shot at Mitchelstown was killed by a ricochet shot. The hon. Member thinks he has rebutting evidence on that point. What is it? It amounts to this—that a policeman stated in evidence that he had not fired at random, but had fired with intent to kill. I do not know whether the policeman used those words; but, at all events, he would not have been guilty of a grave dereliction of duty if he had fired to hit. It is contrary to every received regulation that an armed force dealing with a crowd should fire deliberately over their heads. It is perfectly well known to everyone conversant with the subject that a more cruel kindness could not be committed; and I am glad to think it was not committed by the Irish police on this occasion. If the police were justified in firing at all—which is not the question I am now discussing, but one which I have discussed before, and which, weary as we all may be of it, I am ready to discuss again—it was their duty to fire at the crowd. There is no doubt about that. What I assert is that almost certainly one person was killed by a ricochet shot and probably another. It is a matter which cannot now be conclusively proved, and it is of very little importance one way or the other. If the police were not justified in firing at all, then the whole business was unjustifiable. If the police fired, it was their business to fire at the crowd, and whether they took good aim or not is a matter of subsidiary importance. Then the hon. Gentleman went on to raise the case of the Galway midwife and Patrick Barrett, and he declared that I retracted what I had said in The Times the next morning, and also withdrew, by implication, what I had said of the Galway midwife. It is perfectly true that I did make an error of statement about Patrick Barrett; but I corrected it the very night it was made, a practice not always followed by hon. Gentlemen opposite. It is also true that the mistake was of the most trifling and immaterial character. I believe that I stated that Patrick Barrett had been properly con- victed, when I should have said that Patrick Barrett ought to have been convicted but he got off—which is strictly the fact—on a small technical point. It will be observed that, though all inaccuracy is to be deprecated, it cannot be said that Barrett suffered much by the substitution of the incorrect for the correct version. As for the midwife, the statement I made originally was perfectly correct, and nothing has since transpired which has cast the least shadow of doubt upon the authenticity of my statement. Then the hon. Gentleman states that in my speech at Staly-bridge I declared that no newspapers were prosecuted in Ireland. I have not got that speech by me, and I cannot say how far any qualifying phrases I may have introduced would have modified the impression which the hon. Gentleman has received from the particular passage quoted. But I can state with the most absolute confidence that I have always in the House of Commons, and out of it, affirmed my conviction that the proper policy to be pursued in Ireland was to attack whomsoever it might be—newspaper, Member of Parliament, or member of the Land League—who was guilty of serious intimidation. This was the greatest curse of the many under which Ireland was suffering. It is the curse which I believe the Government have done much to migitate, and it is on the mitigation of that curse that I would principally base any claim I may have to the gratitude of Irishmen. I have at the same time always stated that it would only be justifiable in the rarest cases to attack any newspaper for that which is either legitimate expression of opinion, or even illegitimate expression of opinion, or simply mere hostility to the Government or advocacy of any policy with regard to Ireland. I do not absolutely assert that circumstances may not arise in which such a prosecution might not only be justifiable, but absolutely the duty of the Government to undertake. But I say that such prosecutions should be undertaken with the greatest reluctance, and I have never yet undertaken one. It is in that meaning of the expression, and that only, that I have over attempted to lead my countrymen to believe that I have not interfered with the liberty of the Press. [Laughter.] Never. I have interfered, and I shall continue to interfere, to the best of my ability, with that abuse of the Press which does not consist in ventilating opinions or in advocating a policy, but in that meanest of all political weapons, personal intimidation. The hon. Gentleman concluded his speech by desiring that the English people should know the truth. The more the English people know the truth the better I shall be pleased. The more they understand the criminal methods by which political ideas are advocated in Ireland, the more they understand the character of the alliance which binds the opposite Party together, the more certain I am that their verdict will not be for the hon. Gentleman or the class he represents, but for the cause which the Government have endeavoured, amid all calumnies and misrepresentations, to press forward to the best of their power.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE (Edinburgh, Mid Lothian)

Sir, I can quite understand the virtuous indignation of the right hon. Gentleman at what he calls the alliance subsisting on this side of the House between the English Liberal Party and the Nationalist Members from Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman is entitled to speak upon that subject because he had experience of it. He entered, and very closely, with all those who sit around him, into that alliance. But they entered into it at a very peculiar period—namely, the period when a General Election was imminent. And having drawn from it all the utility that it was capable of yielding, and the Election having been concluded, that alliance vanished into thin air, and the right hon. Gentleman became free to express his displeasure in a case where we have no General Election impending, where we have no Party advantage to expect, but where, happening to concur in all the great lines and features of the policy to be pursued towards Ireland, we, on that account, vote together. That is especially the kind of charge which the right hon. Gentleman, hard driven as he is, is obliged to bring against us. I intend to deal in this debate with a department which is, in some degree, my own. The Committee will feel that it is not, and cannot be, satisfactory that persons who either are responsible for the Government of the country, or who have at other times been so responsible, should come into conflict at public meetings of their respective partizans, and that the assertions there made and there controverted should never be brought to an issue on the Floor of this House, I want to do something towards bringing to an issue some of the assertions of the right hon. Gentleman. But I am bound to say that I witness with great satisfaction the arrival within the last few minutes of three Cabinet Ministers. For a long time—during the whole of the able speech of my hon. Friend behind me (Mr. J. E. Ellis), and during a part of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland—itwould have appeared to anyone entering the House and not aware of the whole of the facts of the case, that we were dealing with some purely Departmental question. What I wish to have clearly understood is this—that although it is the salary of the Chief Secretary for Ireland which constitutes the Parliamentary justification of this debate, and although it must turn largely upon his own personal acts and words, yet, as far as I am concerned, I deal with him simply as the organ and the Represencative of the Government, and hold every man who sits upon that Bench, and who is, with him, a Member of the Cabinet, to be just as responsible as he is. If I am obliged to refer to him in a degree that is to me far from agreeable, as being the organ of the Government, it is as the person who does the acts and speaks the words of the Government. I can draw no distinction in responsibility—now that he has held Office for a period of nearly two years—between him and them. The responsibility passes onwards in a widening circle from him to his Colleagues, from his Colleagues to the Tory Party that sits behind them and from the Tory Party in a still higher degree to those so-called Liberals sitting on this side of the House, who are unquestionably the most determined and the most effective among the supporters of the Government. From them it will go finally to the majority of the electors of the country, and they have not yet had an opportunity of meeting it. The right hon. Gentleman has been pleased, in various orations, to make me the subject of his discussions and expositions before audiences in the country. He has done that in a style of language and invective which I be- lieve to be entirely without parallel. I do not personally resent that invective; I consider that he has a far deeper interest in the matter than I have, and I can assure him that in what I shall say I shall endeavour to keep myself at the remotest point possible from any competition with his language or any competition with his invective. I will confine myself at this moment to expressing my anxiety that his Colleagues will feel that this is their question as well as his, and that they should have witnessed the picture we have seen to-night, when the right hon. Gentleman has taken on himself the concentrative responsibility of this department. The points I intend to mention to the House are every one of them connected with the method of the Government of Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman perhaps imagines that he has made an answer to the careful statements of my hon. Friend behind me, with respect to which reply I believe he will find, as the debate goes forward, that he is reckoning without his host. My own specific duty I think to be to bring to issue, on the Floor of this House, the matters with regard to which the right hon. Gentleman has thought it his duty to enter into personal conflict with me and to make me the subject of his unmeasured invective. The first which I shall name is that which is connected with the treatment of what we have called political prisoners, and particularly the treatment of the hon. and learned Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin (Mr. T. C. Harrington), who was put in prison under the Lord Lieutenancy of Lord Spencer. The right hon. Gentleman not very long ago, by way of answer to charges we made, rose to the very highest point of argument and eloquence when he reached his favourite expedient of the tu quoque. He said, In vain you make these charges about the treatment of Members of Parliament; you did the same yourselves.

[Mr. A. J. BALFOUR "Hear, hear!"] He cheers, I hope the issue will not be evaded. That is my whole point.

MR. FLYNN (Cork, N.)

made a remark which did not reach the Gallery.

THE CHAIRMAN

Will the hon. Member for North-East Cork not interrupt in the way he does.

MR. W. O'BRIEN (Cork Co., N.E.)

I am the Member for North-East Cork, and I have said nothing.

MR W. E. GLADSTONE

The right hon. Gentleman enumerated the plank-bed, the society of convicts, and the prison dress, and he stated, without the slightest qualification, that this punishment was inflicted by Lord Spencer upon the hon. and learned Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin during his period of imprisonment. What are the facts? When the hon. and learned Member was in prison he had, I am sorry to say, to undergo those sufferings and those indignities; but the moment they came to the knowledge of Lord Spencer he at once put a stop to them, and removed the hon. and learned Member to another prison where the mode of treatment was totally different, and none of those indignities were inflicted. It is marvellous to conceive the state of mind of a man who, having made that charge against Lord Spencer, should not feel satisfaction and joy in offering Lord Spencer the largest apology, I have grave doubts whether that apology will be forthcoming, and I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to give it. The right hon. Gentleman has offered Lord Spencer no apology whatever; but, flying from the point, he produced new charges of illegality and ignorance to cover his own defeat in the untrue imputation which he had made. As to those charges of illegality and ignorance, Lord Spencer is able to deal with them and has dealt with them—they are not material to the present point. But what I wish to show is how this warfare is conducted by the Representative of the Government, who, having been discovered in an error of fact, most grave in its character, as destroying the entire substance of the charge made against his opponent, rides off on a different issue and evades the apology due. Again, I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to give that apology. The right hon. Gentleman does not deny that he made the statement; he cannot deny that it is injurious, and I wait to see what reparation he has to offer to the excellent and able nobleman upon whom he inflicted that injury. And now, Sir, I come to the case—a very sad case it is—upon which I was made the subject of the right hon. Gentleman's censure—I mean the case of Kinsella. I hold in my hand a tract entitled, "The Murder of John Kinsella." It is published by a gentleman of position and responsibility, the Rev. Dr. Dillon, a priest or curate of a parish in Ireland. Of course I could not make myself responsible on the instant for the accuracy of all his statements, but they are based upon citations carefully made from authentic documents; and, having read that pamphlet carefully, and no answer having been made to it, I went so far as to say that, in my opinion, that pamphlet could not be perused, unanswered as it is, by any man of humanity or candour without having the impression painfully forced upon him that in the eyes of many who administer the law in Ireland the life of a Nationalist is not of equal value with the life of a Loyalist, and does not require and is not entitled to be surrounded with the same guarantees. That statement was a grave one; but, in my opinion, it is within the necessity of the case. The right hon. Gentleman had his opportunity of confuting the statements of this pamphlet. He has not confuted them; he has not attempted to shake them. What did he do? He said there was a trial by jury, and that while I charged him with speaking of a jury with contempt, I had myself spoken of a jury with contempt. The right hon. Gentleman must have been most careless—I will avoid all serious epithets—in the perusal of my speech. But allow me to say, Mr. Courtney, that, while I intend to avoid all serious epithets, it is not upon the ground of your possible intervention. I hope on the Floor of this House the right to speak in broad and strong terms of the conduct of this Government, or any Government, will be preserved as among its most valued Prerogatives. I know no limit except that of personal baseness—which should never be imputed—to the right and title of this House; and if, after a half a century or more, I give advice to the House, I may say, in God's name, be ready at all times to maintain and jealously guard it, for without it you cannot discharge your duty to the people of these Kingdoms. Now, Sir, I censure no one in particular. Not that I had not an opinion—a provisional opinion—as to the verdict of the jury, and especially as to the conduct of the Grand Jury, in the case of Kinsella; but I feel my knowledge of the facts imperfect, and I cannot, even now, venture to give a final judgment. I may also point out that if I had imitated the unfortunate example of the right hon. Gentleman in speaking of the jury, it would not prove his case; it would not have affected him; but there would have been two of us instead of one open to censure. But, as the right hon. Gentleman appears now, by the conduct he pursues and by the speech he made, to have adopted and vindicated the proceedings in the case of Kinsella, I will tell the House that upon this pamphlet as it stands, and upon all the information that has reached me, I am compelled to say that there is not the slightest appearance of bona fides in the prosecution against the murderers of Kinsella. Now, I shall be told, perhaps, that I am speaking from unauthorized documents and information. Why have we not got authorized documents? I have in my hand the Report of the inquest in the case of Mr. Mandeville. Why in the world does the right hon. Gentleman gives us that report and refuse to give us all other proceedings? I am very thankful for that single Report; but I hold we ought to have all the proceedings that could be presented to this House. In the case of Mr. Mandeville, in the case of Kinsella, in the case of Mitchelstown, and in the case of Kelly, the whole of the documents ought to have been laid before the House. The right hon. Gentleman says that is unusual. I grant it is; but is the method now pursued by the Government usual when the administration of what you call the Crimes Act is taken out of the hands of Judges and Juries and given into the hands of Resident Magistrates, some of whom you defend and uphold, but who are grossly incompetent for the discharge of their duties? You have deprived the subject of his regular Constitutional bulwark and defence; and, under these circumstances, I say it is just and equitable that this House should step in to be the guardian of persons whose rights have been thus compromised; and, in order that we may be able to judge, it is right and needful that these proceedings should be laid before us. It is not our fault if the evidence on which we proceed is imperfect. What was the case of Kinsella? In the first place, unless I am altogether misinformed, the whole proceedings against Kinsella's cattle were illegal. The seizure was illegal from beginning to end. [Mr. T. M. HEALY: They have paid damages for trespass since.] And all the persons concerned in that seizure were, when the homicide occurred, liable to the penalties which the law inflicts in case of homicide done in the prosecution of an illegal act. The illegality of the seizure has, I believe, been established by an action, and by the recovery of full damages. Nay, more; there was a surfeit and surplus of illegality, for even if the seizure had been legal, yet the Act of Parliament required that particulars should be furnished to the parties concerned, and those particulars were deliberately withheld. So it is, Sir, in Ireland. The Ministers of law and order trample law and order under foot; and the Government, sitting in this House with their supporters on that side and their supporters on this side, never flinch for a moment from the duty—difficult as it has sometimes appeared—of sustaining and vindicating these proceedings. The man was shot; there is no doubt about that. He was shot in open day, when he had a pitchfork in his hand, and when with his pitchfork he had struck a gate, but when no attempt had been made to strike any of the Emergency gang—I call them a gang—it is the only suitable name for men engaged in such a business and performing it in such a manner. It is not pretended that any act of offence—I mean of violence—had been perpetrated by Kinsella or the people around him. There were crowds of people present; it was in open day the man was shot; and yet no person has brought home the guilt of that act to any human being, and no one has undergone any punishment for it. My statement was within the case. There was no appearance of bona fides in the prosecution. A verdict of wilful murder was found against Freeman, with respect to whom five witnesses swore that they saw him fire the shot which killed Kinsella. But this defence was set up on behalf of Freeman—that the bullet which was taken out of Kinsella's body did not fit the revolver which was in the hands of Freeman. It was denied that plenty of time was given to Freeman to change his revolver. But further, and still more suspicious—I beg the Solicitor General for Ireland to take down these facts, because they are too serious to be trifled with—no attempt was made to discover whose revolver the bullet did fit; no attempt was made by the Crown conducting this prosecution, and bound to conduct it in good faith, to discover from whose revolver the bullet had been shot. Well, Sir, that is a sad and shameful thing. The right hon. Gentleman, I do not think, has bestowed, as far as I remember, upon the agents in the case of Kinsella, the eulogies he has lavished upon the agents in the case of Mitchelstown; but he has contented himself with saying that I threw contempt upon a jury, whom I believed I never mentioned, and he has treated as if thoroughly beyond the scope of answer the proceedings connected with the death of this unfortunate man. Upon that subject I think the time has come when we are entitled to know from the Government under whose instructions the prosecution was conducted? In my opinion, it is their duty to furnish specific answers to the grave charges and accusations with which the statement of the Rev. Mr. Dillon is full from one end to the other. With respect to the case of Kinsella, I have not simply adhered to the statement I made at Birmingham, but I have enlarged it, and make a specific charge against the Government, of which charge possibly they may hear more. With respect to the case of Mandeville, the right hon. Gentleman appeared to me entirely to mistake, and consequently to misstate, the allegations that I have made. My allegations are these, and I will endeavour to state them simply, briefly, and in a manner that it will be very difficult to escape. Here is a man suffering very severely under the complaint of diarrhœa, and by the administration of the prison in which he was confined, while he was so suffering, he was placed and continued upon a diet of bread and water. I say that treatment is shocking and brutal. Of course, I do not hold the right hon. Gentleman responsible for that treatment except in so far as he defends it. But he has not censured it. He censures those who have censured it. He impugns their accuracy, or rather he says they do not know what accuracy is, and never touch it. Here is the statement, and let him prove it inaccurate if he can. My next statement is that the conduct of Dr. Barr was conduct which has been adopted, supported, and approved by the Government in the person of the right hon. Gentleman; that the conduct of Dr. Barr, who told this unfortunate man Mandeville that he ought to have more punishment and not less—that the brutal conduct of Dr. Barr has been accepted and adopted by the right hon. Gentleman, who pronounces a panegyric upon him, and thanks him, if I remember rightly, for his services. [Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: Hear, hear!] I am very glad that we have got that home. And Dr. Barr also thinks fit to charge perjury upon a body of medical men who had given evidence that he disapproved, and several of whom are, undoubtedly, of higher standing and higher practice than himself, and upon the widow of Mandeville. All these he thinks fit to charge with perjury, and in that charge he is sustained by the right hon. Gentleman; and this, forsooth, is the administration of law and order! This is what is to cut the people of Ireland away from their National aspirations, and to make them recognize the claims to Irish gratitude which he is entitled to, as he professes, in more than one respect. He makes them the gift of Dr. Barr, and Dr. Barr ranks high in the list of the right hon. Gentleman's claims to the gratitude of the Irish people. So much for the case of Mr. Mandeville, into which I will not more widely enter, not because I think the right hon. Gentleman has done with it, but because I think it will be more advantageously pursued by those who have studied it carefully as a whole. Now I come to the case of Mitchelstown, with regard to which the right hon. Gentleman always makes an apology when he refers to it. He says—"It is so stale you must be weary of it; you ought to feel a scruple about intruding it." Oh, no; it is not stale, and it will be heard of again and again. I have done my best—and I will continue to do my best—to make it heard of; and there are others—and scores and hundreds of others—who will labour in the same cause until one of two things happens—until either the right hon. Gentleman and the Government come frankly forward in this House to con- demn the transactions and the conduct which heretofore they have praised, or, if we cannot hope for that alternative, until the time comes when the proceedings at Mitchelstown shall be solemnly and fully submitted for the adjudication of the constituencies of this country at large. It is for them to consider whether they will make their own these shameful proceedings, or whether they will inflict what we, at least, think to be the just sentence of condemnation upon those who have applauded and sustained them as Ministers of the Grown in every act. What is the case of Mitchelstown? A legal meeting is being held. No doubt about that. No one can impeach the legality of the meeting. If it were impeached, why did the Government not prohibit it? A legal meeting is being held and an illegal assault is made upon the meeting by a body of Constabulary, under the miserable pretext of bringing in a shorthand reporter, whom they could have easily taken up to the platform even if they had been so stupid—I moan their officers—as not to make a previous arrangement. They assault a body of 3,000 or 4,000 men by an endeavour to drive a force of constables through the middle of it, and for that illegal assault every man of this force ought to have been put in prison. There was a Mitchelstown riot; but the riot was the riot of the Constabulary, not of the people. On the contrary, the people acted throughout on the defensive. The effort to drive a shorthand-writer through this dense crowd having entirely failed, then what happened? The assault was repeated by a larger force of constabulary, and this time the shorthand-writer, as we are informed, was altogether forgotten, and again a wilful, wanton assault was committed. Then, no doubt, fighting began. The Constabulary were defeated. I must say, in passing, that I cast no censure at this moment on individual constables; they were under the command of men absolutely and utterly incompetent. It was the Executive Government who allowed such men to go for the purpose of transacting such business who are seriously to blame. The Constabulary, being defeated, ran to their barracks. The right hon. Gentleman had said it was their duty to fire upon the crowd, and upon what I think he called "the mob." That is the phrase that a Minister of the Crown has for a body of people assembled together in the prosecution of a legal purpose. There was no crowd or mob before them to fire at, but only a sprinkling of men. They fired, and there ensued a wanton slaughter of three perfectly innocent men—a wanton slaughter, never inquired into, never punished, never compensated, never heeded by the Government, of whom I say in this case, as in the case of Kinsella, that goes far to support the doctrine—the dreadful doctrine to believe in, almost as dreadful to act upon—that the life of a Nationalist is a matter of small account, and ought not to be protected, or need not be protected like the life of one who calls himself in Ireland a Loyalist. Three men were slaughtered. The right hon. Gentleman said the Constabulary had done their duty, and no less than their duty, in slaughtering these three men, and we never heard then about ricochet. That took place in September, 1887, and it was not till nine months after the catastrophe that the expedient of ricochet was invented. Is it not extraordinary that with your Resident Magistrate on the spot, and your Inspector of Constabulary on the spot, and all the agents at your command, this doctrine of ricochet was never heard of for nine months? What sort of a doctrine is it? The right hon. Gentleman, I must say, has the courage of his opinions and of his place. [Cheers] I am delighted to find that attention is following me, because attention to these things will be required both to-night and on future occasions within and without these walls. I am endeavouring to examine this interesting question of ricochet. What was the foundation of the doctrine of ricochet. Was it purely gratuitous? If the police fired into a crowd, how can you have ricochet, unless there could be ricochet from the body of one man to another? The doctrine was that it must have been ricochet because from the window of the Constabulary barracks you cannot see the spot where Lonergan fell. I admit that was a presumptive case in favour of ricochet had it happened to be true. But it is not true at all. It is totally untrue. You do see, and see plainly, with a space to spare, from the barrack window the place where Lonergan fell, and from the place where Lonergan fell you see the barrack window. Then another doctrine was set up by gentlemen who said it could be done if they stretched their necks like cranes out of the window, but without those violent measures they never could have observed it. Another equally smashing and destructive answer was provided by photographs produced, taken from the Constabulary window, exhibiting the spot where Lonergan was slaughtered, and from the spot where Lonergan was slaughtered exhibiting clearly the Constabulary window. Were the photographs taken by ricochet? [Laughter.] I propose that theory for the favourable consideration of the right hon. Gentleman. It appears to me to be quite as good and tenable as most of those which he has adopted to cover the misdeeds that have been perpetrated upon the people of Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman has another force in reserve which he did not bring into action tonight. He says he has got the bullet by which Lonergan was killed, and this bullet bears evidence of ricochet and not of direct shot. This is most extraordinary. It is strange enough that when the right hon. Gentleman had been destitute of argument for nine months the doctrine of ricochet should have been invented. It is stranger still that now, after, not nine, but 15 months, when the whole supposition of ricochet has been blown to atoms, we have got the shape of the bullet to come to the defence of the right hon. Gentleman. Where is this bullet? Where was it found? Why did not you refer to it at the time of the death—when those deaths were treated as if they had been the deaths of dogs? The bullet was flattened. Why did we not hear of the flattening of the bullet? Why did you not send an agent efficient for your purpose to make a report and show us how this bullet was flattened? No; I am getting a little sceptical. At first I thought the ricochet plausible, but after the downfall and destruction of that set of excuses I am disposed to look rather jealously at new inventions 15 months after the event. This was the case of Mitchelstown as it appears to the Irish people. But what was the crowning act? The crowning act was this—that one of the Constabulary engaged, no doubt loyally and honourably, in executing the illegal orders he received, and, therefore, involved in illegal conduct by the mistakes, misapprehensions, and incapacity of his superiors—this man was grievously injured in his illegal act. He was to be compensated. But who were to compensate him? The people of the district were to compensate him in the sum of £1,000—the man who was doing against the people of the district an act the illegality of which it was impossible to defend. Where was the compensation fo the friends and relatives of the three slaughtered men? It is upon this aggregate of circumstances which I have rapidly passed through that you have to stand in considering the declaration of the right hon. Gentleman which of course is the declaration of the entire Government, that the Constabulary did nothing but their duty, and that if they had done less they would have been to blame. I have avoided, in this case, all minute detail. My business is to repeat in this House every material statement I have made elsewhere, and to challenge contradiction in decent terms, or in indecent terms—I have very little care in challenging contradiction of any one among those statements, as upon the Floor of this House I will defend their truth and accuracy. I come to the case of two Resident Magistrates, whose names now I will not mention. I have never mentioned them, but they are two men who ought not to be upon the Bench. They are totally incompetent for the performance of their duties. I remember a striking passage in the works of Manzoni, where describing the great plague in Milan in the 17th century, when such was the intense excitement of the people, that they were ready to believe the most extraordinary tales and stories, and to perpetrate the most horrible cruelties—he said, "that there arose a race of vile informers," and, speaking of them as a class, he said—"They became infamous, but they remained obscure." The word "infamous" is not one which I apply to these gentlemen on account of their incompetency, but what I desire is that they should remain obscure, consequently I have never named them, and never will name them, but they are two responsible Magistrates, and what is my charge against them? The two gentlemen sentenced to terms of imprisonment five men—[An hon. MEMBER: Four men]—four men, and the sentence was reversed on appeal. The right hon. Gentleman says that it is no grievance to the party affected, if a sentence upon him is reversed on appeal.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Oh, no! I never said that.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Will the right hon. Gentleman kindly tell us what he did say?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The right hon. Gentleman expects me to remember with accuracy every word of what I did say. I certainly never stated that it was no grievance to a man to be convicted and then have the sentence reversed on appeal.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Oh, no; I said the contrary, and, moreover, I am prepared to express complete concurrence with him, that it does not at all follow that there is a grievance because a man who has been sentenced to punishment in a Court below should have the conviction reversed upon appeal. What I do say is that the right hon. Gentleman ought to have known, and I will say more, I do not know how he contrived not to know that that is not the question at all. The question was, that these two Resident Magistrates convicted the men without any evidence whatever, on the charge for which they convicted them, and that this was reversed on appeal. Is that a case of a common reversal upon appeal? Does the right hon. Gentleman now understand what the charge is? The Magistrates took evidence upon a charge it is quite true; but the charge upon which they took evidence was not before them, and was one which they were totally incompetent to try. They had no jurisdiction. They had no more right than I had to try it. The men were convicted and sentenced upon another charge—a charge which they were competent to try, but a charge to which not one shred, not one line, not one syllable of the evidence referred. Does the right hon. Gentleman understand what it is that we mean when we say that the magistrates convicted the men upon a matter on which they had jurisdiction, but upon which they had not taken a single word of evidence? Is that a state of things which is compatible with duty, dignity, and decency? Is that a state of things in which you can come forward and find fault with the people of Ireland, because they do not recognize in you the ministers of law and order, which I have not a doubt that the people of Ireland, if only they had fair play, would be the very first to acknowledge? I have endeavoured to state to the House the distinction in the case. I hope this is not a refined distinction which the right hon. Gentleman says I am very fond of drawing, because it was drawn by the Judges in appeal, who, in terms more plain than complimentary, indicated what they thought of the conduct of the Resident Magistrates, I admit they have an apology, and that is the total incompetence of the magistrates to distinguish between one offence and another. It is undoubtedly an apology for this famous couple of Resident Magistrates; but then, unfortunately, the force of this apology is destroyed by the fact that these four persons were defended by a solicitor of considerable ability, and this solicitor pointed out, in terms clear enough for a child in a National school to comprehend, the distinction between the charge on which they had taken evidence, but which they had no power to try, and the charge which they had power to try, but on which they had taken no evidence whatever. What was the answer given by one of these gentlemen, who always comes prominently forward, I presume, on account of his vast superiority to the other? "It is clear to us," he said— That there was a conspiracy, and if there was a conspiracy, then the men must have conspired with one another. I am unable to accompany this illustrious magistrate through the mental process by which he administers justice to the people of Ireland. A book of great interest has just been published—"The Correspondence of Mr. O'Council." An anecdote is told of Mr. O'Connell in the course of his legal experience. It was a case which happened at Clonmel, and Mr. O'Connell was concerned in it as counsel. An unfortunate man was charged with the murder of his neighbour. The circumstantial evidence against him appeared to be exceedingly strong, and he was given up for lost. The trial proceeded, and he was called upon to say whether he had anything to allege in his own behalf. The man said he had something to say, and the step he took was to produce a witness in his favour, and the witness that he produced was the murdered man, who gave evidence in his favour. Thereupon, the tables were suddenly and entirely turned. The Judge said to the jury that it would be idle for him to go through the evidence in detail, and that all they had to do was at once to return a verdict of "not guilty." The jury retired, and having remained absent for some time—for two hours—they returned, and the foreman handed in a verdict of "guilty." The Judge was betrayed into an unseemly expression; but still, the fidelity of history requires me to quote it. "Of what is he guilty," said the Judge; "not of murder, surely"? "No, my Lord," said the foreman, "but if he did not murder the man, sure he stole my grey mare." Take out the word "foreman," and insert "two Resident Magistrates," and the story is a precise and accurate rendering, as well as a vivid illustration, of what was done by these two gentlemen in the case before us. How comes it we know all about the case? By the merest chance. Not through the Government—not through its agents or organs. The agents of the Government who, in Ireland, are irreverently called removables, refused to state a case for consideration. The ingenuity and patriotism combined, and the legal know-lodge of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy), enabled him to take a course something like what Mr. O'Connell had often described as his capacity to do, when he said he would drive a coach and six, or, as he put it at another time, a troop of horse, through an Act of Parliament; that is to say, that he would correct the error of the Legislature by his own ingenuity and skill. The hon. and learned Gentleman saw, in spite of the right hon. Gentleman and the Government, that there were the means of bringing the facts to light. He brought them to light, not with the aid of the Government, but in opposition to their every effort, and but for the hon. and learned Gentleman we should have known nothing of them, and these Resident Magistrates would have remained untouched and unharmed even by criticism, and able to repeat their pranks from day to day and week to week throughout the year, while the will of the present Government continues in force. For, be it remembered, that in discussing this proceeding—this gross defiance and contempt of justice—while we seem to be discussing the acts of two insignificant persons, holding secondary offices that invest thorn with power over the liberty of their fellow-citizens—we are really discussing the acts of the Government, for this act of the Resident Magistrates has been adopted on that Bench, vindicated and justified; and when we have humbly asked—are these gentlemen to be permitted to repeat these performances from time to time in the future? the right hon. Gentleman said, "Yes, they are." We, at all events, can bring facts to the knowledge of the Government, and, still more important, we can bring them then to the knowledge of Liberals on this side of the House, who hitherto have been totally impervious and inaccessible to the consideration of anything we can urge, and we can bring them to the knowledge of the people of England, and so from time to time deepen and broaden their impression as to the insidious and tyrannical system under which Ireland groans. I have re-stated many of my assertions made in the country, and extended some of them, but I am willing to be called to account for them, and I will publicly, frankly apologize for them if they are wrong, or I will sustain, as I have sustained to-night, the grave allegations I have made. Now I shall look for the answer of the Government. I do not say it will be the answer of the right hon. Gentleman. It is not fair that too much should be heaped upon him. He is only one of a Body, and every one of that Body should share and share alike the responsibility which attaches to these transactions. But those who have examined the facts of these cases—those who have followed these events, even from the imperfect means allowed to them of investigating what has taken place in Ireland—those at any rate know, as I know, that of all the delusions attempted to be practised in the country, the grossest and the least warrantable is this, that the administration of the law which now prevails in Ireland is an honourable, or a pure, or a just administration, or that the Government who support it and defend it are the champions of law and order.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Sir, the right hon. Gentleman has expressed his readiness to apologize to the House and to the country for any misstatements he may have made in the numerous speeches he has delivered on Irish affairs; but he well knows that it is not in my power to call him to account across the Table, as it is in his power to call me to account. [An hon. MEMBER: Why not?] Because he is not a Minister of the Crown. We are not discussing his salary, and the right hon. Gentleman must know that it is absolutely out of my power to go through his speeches as I should like to do; to take them one by one as he has taken mine, and to pin him down, time after time, to say "Aye" or "No" to the various statements in which he has impugned the policy of the Government of Ireland. In his closing words the right hon. Gentleman describes the system of Government which it is my business to administer as insidious and tyrannical; but at the commencement of his speech he deprecated the use of strong language.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

I will never deprecate the use of strong language upon facts that justify it. What I deprecated and denounced was personal abuse of a Minister.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

That is one of those distinctions the right hon. Gentleman is fond of drawing, but in which my slower mind has difficulty in following him. When he describes the system I am administering as insidious and tyrannical, he in effect describes me as an insidious tyrant, and there is no epithet, in order or out of order, that I could regard as being stronger than that. The right hon. Gentleman appeared to suggest that while I was criticizing his utterances in the country I was indulging in strong language which he was too virtuous to repeat. As a matter of fact, whenever I have wanted strong epithets I have invariably looked for them in the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman which I have had to answer. It will be found that the most vigorous adjectives in my speeches have been taken with scrupulous accuracy from the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman. So much for this present matter; but allow me to say that the right hon. Gentleman was ill advised in calling attention to the fact that I was left alone on this Bench. Of course, it was impossible that my Colleagues should assist me in this matter; the weight of the contest must fall upon me, as I am necessarily acquainted with the details better than my Colleagues. But my re- collection goes back to the time when Mr. Forster was left alone on this Bench to fight hon. Members opposite who were then hostile to him, and the right hon. Gentleman's criticism will fall with more weight on himself and his Colleagues than it does on me and my Colleagues, to whom I am indebted for uniform support in this House and out of this House, and who, in every particular, by counsel and by speech, have loyally and laboriously aided me. I now pass from that point to the charges which the right hon. Gentleman has made this evening, and the first of these charges refers to the case of the hon. and learned Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin (Mr. T. C. Harrington), imprisoned by Lord Spencer for a period under the ordinary prison discipline, and who, when the case had been referred to in this House, had his prison changed and certain privileges accorded to him. When I made the speech at Glasgow I was ignorant of this, and I have apologized to Lord Spencer for that ignorance, explaining, at the same time, that it was absolutely impossible for me to have known what the facts of the case were. There was no guilt in my ignorance; the guilt lay elsewhere, and I may tell the right hon. Gentleman why it was impossible for me to know these facts. The only possible sources of information were official records in Dublin or answers to Questions in this House. There is no official record at Dublin, for this reason—that Lord Spencer acted illegally and irregularly. Instead of going to the Prisons Board, who were responsible, he went behind their backs, and conveyed by some act of which no record exists, orders that the hon. Member should be removed to another prison and that his treatment should be changed. Does the right hon. Gentleman wish me to apologize for a fault of which I am not guilty?

MR. T. C. HARRINGTON (Dublin, Harbour)

The change in my treatment was made by the Vice Chairman of the Prisons Board, who came to me at Lord Spencer's instance.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

But my statement is that the Prisons Board never were consulted on the point; that they never had official cognizance of it; that they would have refused their assent had it been officially asked, and that these terms were conveyd by Lord Spencer not through the proper channel to the Governor of Galway gaol. So much for the source of information from official records. The only other source of information was an answer given in this House by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow (Sir George Trevelyan), and the answer of the right hon. Gentleman was that the hon. Member "would receive such relaxation in his prison treatment as the law allowed." Would it be possible for any ingenuity to infer that by "such relaxation as the law allowed," Lord Spencer meant such relaxation as the law did not allow? I think not. That being so, I maintain that my ignorance was absolutely innocent, and that being absolutely innocent no apology was needed for it.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Why did you not say you were ignorant?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I did say I was ignorant, in my speech at Leeds. It will be recollected that this controversy was provoked originally by my speech at Glasgow, and that I mentioned another case, that of Macnamara, but we have heard nothing from Lord Spencer or the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton Division about that. [An hon. MEMBER: Who was he?] Macnamara was imprisoned with hard labour and certainly treated like an ordinary criminal for belonging to the National League.

SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN (Glasgow, Bridgeton)

I wish to correct a statement of the right hon. Gentleman. In my speech, reported, I believe, in all the newspapers, I put two cases which the right hon. Gentleman has brought forward—namely, that of the hon. and learned Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin, and that of Macnamara. With regard to Macnamara, the right hon. Gentleman charged me with having put the man in prison, and he made very severe charges against me in consequence. But this man was put in prison three weeks before I became Irish Secretary.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

That is a most effective answer so far as the right hon. Gentleman is concerned, but it is not an effective answer so far as the Government of which he was a Member is concerned.

SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN

The charge was a personal one against me. The right hon. Gentleman stated that I, as Irish Secretary, put Macnamara in prison, and I answer that he was put in prison before I was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Does not the right hon. Gentleman see that my point was the conduct of right hon. Gentlemen opposite when they had charge of Irish affairs with regard to so-called political prisoners? The right hon. Gentleman never thinks of anything but himself. I will apologize fully for anything I may have said which would lead anyone to suppose that he had been mixed up in this transaction; but can he not, for a moment, see that his individuality is the most insignificant part of this subject? It matters not a whit whether he was concerned or whether his Predecessor was concerned in this transaction. The point is that the Government of the Member for Mid Lothian was concerned. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) wont on to talk about the case of Kinsella, and said it was monstrous that the Government did not give full information about these trials, considering that Ireland was under exceptional legislation, and that the Government had handed over the liberties of the country to the tender mercies of Resident Magistrates. But the Kinsella trial, as it was called, was not a trial under the Crimes Act before a Resident Magistrate, but under the ordinary law of the land before a Judge and jury. Then the right hon. Gentleman violently attacked the conduct of the Crown in this case, but I have in vain tried to make out precisely what the right hon. Gentleman's charge is. It appears that a man, named Freeman, was supposed at one time to have fired the fatal shot. The Grand Jury ignored the bill, and I gather that the right hon. Gentleman thought that they travelled beyond their duty in doing so. But the evidence which came out at the trial appears clearly to have supported the Grand Jury's action, and the Judge himself, in his charge, said—"It has been generally admitted that the shot which killed Kinsolla was not fired by Freeman." This was said by a Judge of the High Court, one of the most able and upright of that able and upright Body of men. Now what is the charge? Here is an ordinary trial, conducted in the ordinary way, before an ordinary tribunal. If there has been an error, the error is indorsed by the Judge himself. I cannot understand what it is the right hon. Gentleman thinks I am to answer for. He seems to think that the case was not properly conducted by the Crown. I can assure him there is no foundation for that charge. The case was conducted by the Crown as every case is, with the single desire to bring out the real facts. I certainly listened with surprise to the attack of the right hon. Gentleman upon this trial, which, in contradistinction to the trials he usually attacks, is really an example of the operation of the ordinary law. The right hon. Gentleman next went into the case of Mr. Mandeville, but with regard to that the things he omitted to talk about were oven more remarkable than those on which he spoke; and the one topic upon which he dwelt was the diarrhæa from which he alleged Mandeville suffered. That I venture to say is the most insignificant side issue ever taken by a responsible statesman in making a charge against a Government. The old accusation was that Mr. Mandeville had been tortured to death in prison. [An hon. MEMBER: So he was.] "We proved absolutely beyond question that the death of John Mandeville had no more to do with his treatment in prison than it had with any of the infant ailments from which no doubt he at one time suffered. The right hon. Gentleman leaves the great issue entirely on one side, and he discusses the slight attacks of diarrhœa that Mr. Mandeville had in prison, which had no reference to his future health, which did not affect his health in prison or when he came out, and which had absolutely no connection whatever with the disease of which he died. The evidence brought out will I think bear conviction to any impartial mind, that these attacks had nothing to do with the ultimate cause of death. If my recollection serves me right, Mr. Mandeville absolutely refused treatment on one occasion for this ailment; and there can be no doubt, as Dr. Barr says, that to a man of his habit of body such slight attacks were absolutely without serious consequence, even if they were not absolutely beneficial. But what is perfectly certain is this—that it was entirely in the power of Dr. Ridley to treat Mr. Mandeville, if he complained, for these ailments. Has it been alleged by any single man that Dr. Ridley was other than a humane man? There is evidence to show that if he erred at all it was on the side of laxity, and there is no evidence to show that he erred on the side of severity. Is it credible that Dr. Ridley, if he supposed that Mr. Mandeville was suffering from any malady which he could cure, would not have given him every treatment necessary under the circumstances? The right hon. Gentleman proceeded to attack Dr. Barr. It has been more than once my lot to defend Dr. Barr in this House from this species of attack. The right hon. Gentleman says truly that we adopted, supported, and approved him. I do adopt, support, and approve Dr. Barr. He is a man of distinguished medical reputation. He was, as I have stated before, not selected by me, but by the Prisons Board of England—a Board to whoso virtues the right hon. Gentleman himself has borne testimony. They selected him because they believed him to be one of the fittest men to carry out a difficult and delicate task. The accusation against him is that he accused some of his medical confrères of having stated at the inquest that which was not the fact. Is there any doubt in the mind of any human being who has read the evidence that one of the doctors who constantly visited the prison sent mendacious reports to the newspapers? Is there any confidence to be placed in that other doctor who wrote his report before he saw his patient and allowed it to appear in The Freeman's Journal. Are these the witnesses which the right hon. Gentleman is going to put up against the testimony of Dr. Barr? The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that Dr. Barr attacked Mr. Mandeville's widow. The Committee will understand that is not my business, and it would be utterly repugnant to me to make any charge against Mrs. Mandeville. But I think that everybody who reads the evidence must admit that she spoke under the influence of strong excitement, and that she made statements which perhaps in calmer moments she would not have made. One reason why I make that allegation is this. She certainly appeared to think, at the inquest, that her husband's health, had suffered severely during his imprisonment, and yet it is in evidence that never during the whole period which elapsed between Mr. Mandeville's imprisonment and a time nearly approaching his death did she recommend him to seek medical advice. I am sure that the Committee will not misunderstand the motives with which I have mentioned this fact, and that hon. Members will not think that I have attacked a lady for whose trials all have the profoundest sympathy. Then the right hon. Gentleman went on to Mitchelstown, and he told us that we should hear of Mitchelstown over and over again for some indefinite period, which he did not himself fix. Well, as I have said, the right hon. Gentleman loves repetition much more than I do; and almost the whole of his speech as to Mitchelstown was a repetition, not of one or two, but of three or four speeches which he has made in the country, and which I have endeavoured, to the best of my ability, to answer from time to time. Therefore, if I am driven to repeat what I have said before, either in or out of this House, I hope it will be felt that I do so, not from any love of my own oratory, but from the absolute necessity imposed upon me of going back to that somewhat ancient history. The right hon. Gentleman says that the meeting at Mitchelstown was legal, and that the action of the police was illegal. I traverse both of these statements. I say that there is the greatest possible doubt whether the meeting was a legal one, and that there is no doubt whatever that the action of the police was perfectly legal. The right hon. Gentleman asked, "If the meeting was illegal, why did you not disperse it?" He must be perfectly aware that there are circumstances in which it is advisable, in the interests of humanity and of the public peace, not to disperse a meeting although it is illegal, but rather to take evidence hat would enable the Crown, should it be necessary afterwards, to prosecute he offenders. Of that, no doubt, this meeting at Mitchelstown was a case in point. Then the right hon. Gentleman went on to give us his version of the later incidents of that unhappy affair. But I always observe that he makes extraordinary omissions. I wish he would refresh his recollection by reading the report in The Freeman's Journal, which came out the day afterwards. There he would see an account, I will not say of a riot, but of a fight and a battle. [Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE: I mentioned it.] Yes, the right hon. Gentleman may have mentioned the fight, but he did not mention the incidents that accompanied it. He did not talk of the rout of the police. [Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE: Yes; I said they ran away.] I beg pardon. They were defeated and they ran away, as the right hon. Gentleman very truly said, pursued by a mob who apparently had the intention of slaughtering as many of the police as they could. You have only to read, not the Government report, or the report of "the man Colomb," as the right hon. Gentleman called a distinguished police officer, but The Freeman's Journal itself, and you will see that a more disgraceful scene was never enacted, even in Ireland, than the attack made by this mob on the forces of the Crown. Then, the right hon. Gentleman having dealt with what I admit was a large question—namely, the action of the police at Mitchelstown—in, I thought, a very inadequate manner, proceeded to deal with a very trifling subject at much greater length than it deserved. I do not know where he got his extraordinary notion of the importance of the question whether Lonergan was shot by a ricochet bullet or not? I have already explained to the Committee that this is a very irrelevant issue in forming any judgment upon the broad features of the case. As the right hon. Gentleman, in a speech which he made in the summer, appeared to attach importance to that question, I have dealt with it more than once in public, and I have not seen any reason to withdraw the original allegation I made on the strength of the police report, that it was a ricochet shot. But do not let the right hon. Gentleman run away with the idea that this allegation was ever devised, as he seems to think, to excuse the conduct of the police. The conduct of the police, whether it was right or wrong, is not to be judged by the question whether the shot was a ricochet shot or not. If the police were justified in firing, it matters not whether it was a ricochet shot or a direct shot. If they were not justified in firing, it is no justification to say that they fired but the shot glanced. I never started this controversy. [Cries of "Yes!"] The controversy was started by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. ["No, no!"] The first mention I made of it was in a speech at Battersea, in which I was replying to the right hon. Gentleman. [Mr. W. O'BRIEN: What was the object in publishing the Report?] I will tell you what was the object if you will kindly listen. The right hon. Gentleman having made an assertion as to a ricochet shot, and I having contradicted him in my speech at Battersea, on the authority of a Report, I asked the right hon. Gentleman, through the late Chief Secretary, whether he would or would not like to see that part of the confidential Report which dealt with that subject. The Commission of Inquiry was never intended to go into the question of the justification of the firing. I never asked for a confidential inquiry into that fact. The subject they had to inquire into was how it came about that the police were so handled by their superior officers that a force so large as that present at Mitchelstown was put to flight by a disorderly mob. I thought that a disgraceful thing, looked at from the point of view of the discipline of the police, and it was from that point of view, and that alone, that I had a Departmental Inquiry made into the affair at Mitchelstown, and in no sense was it made to cook up some justification for actions which, in my opinion, required no justification. Having supplied the right hon. Gentleman with that portion of the Report, the matter was further investigated, and it was proved, I think, conclusively, that in making that particular inquiry, the Commission were in error with regard to one point. It was proved clearly that it was possible to fire a shot to the spot—I don't say where Lonergan fell—but to the place where a stone was placed to the memory of Lonergan, out of the window of the Barracks. I am informed by those who have been there that it would be a most awkward and difficult operation, but that it would be possible. The right hon. Gentleman talked as if the burden of proof rested on me. Nothing of the kind. It rests with him; and although he spoke of the death of Lonergan, and about a ricochet shot, he never brought forward a single tittle of evidence which would give any a priori probability to the assertion that the police directly fired at the spot where Lonergan fell. There being, therefore, no evidence that the police did fire at the spot, the right hon. Gentleman may have it in his pocket, but he did not produce it—there is evidence on the other side of extraordinary weight—namely, that the bullet was in a shape which indicated that it had struck some harder object before it unfortunately struck Lonergan.

MR. T. C. HARRINGTON (Dublin Harbour)

Look at the evidence.

THE CHAIRMAN

Order! Hon. Members will have an opportunity of speaking in reply.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Probably what the Hon. Member refers to is to some evidence given at Mitchelstown, to the effect that a policeman said he fired directly at the people.

MR. T. C. HARRINGTON

A man who was there—

THE CHAIRMAN

Order!

MR. T. C. HARRINGTON

He said he saw the man fall. That is his evidence.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

There is another point in regard to Mitchelstown—and it is the last upon which I shall dwell—it is this. Let the Committee bear in mind, whenever we are discussing the question of the guilt or innocence of those who ordered the firing, that there is no manner of doubt that the first shot saved the life of the unhappy policeman who was nearly killed. And, with regard to the last shot, which was the least defensible shot, if any was indefensible, we have it in evidence that it was ordered by District Inspector Irwin, and District Inspector Irwin was complimented by a learned Gentleman opposite for his evidence, and was acquitted even by the Coroner's jury. I have laid before the Committee the broad incidents of the Mitchelstown affair; and I think they will feel that among the many painful occasions on which life has been put an end to by the police, many of which have occurred under the auspices of the right hon. Gentleman himself, there never was a case in which the police were less to blame than they wore at Mitchelstown.

MR. W. E. GLADSONE

Will you give any case which occurred under my auspices?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I will, before the end of the debate.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Produce them all, if you please.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The right hon. Gentleman now appears to take a great interest in the tu quoque argument which he so denounced a few minutes ago. The last subject he dealt with was the Killeagh case. The facts of that case were these. Four persons were brought up on a charge of conspiracy under the Crimes Act. The conspiracy they were charged with was that of inducing, or compelling, persons not to deal. The offence of which they were actually guilty was conspiracy. ["Oh!] Well, the offence of which I have no doubt they were actually guilty was conspiracy. The right hon. Gentleman gave us a very long and amusing anecdote of a trial in which a juryman appeared to think that there was some connection between murdering a man and stealing a grey mare. The story was amusing, but it was hardly applicable. The two conspiracies to which I have alluded were, from the necessities of the case, closely allied. The Court of Exchequer decided that the men were not guilty of conspiracy under the Crimes Act. They seemed to indicate that there was evidence of conspiracy at Common Law. Supposing those men had been guilty of conspiracy, or had engaged in a conspiracy to compel or induce, there is no doubt that they were also guilty at the same time of the other conspiracy, which, from the character of the offence, must be bound up with a conspiracy to compel or induce. It is impossible to conceive that the two matters could be easily dissociated, and I do not believe that those magistrates were guilty either of grave incompetence or carelessness or stupidity because they did not carry out that process of disentanglement to which I have referred. The right hon. Gentleman speaks as if it were obvious and plain on the face of the facts that there was no conspiracy to compel or induce. The case, which seems so plain to the enlightened intellect of the right hon. Gentleman, was argued for two days before the Court of Exchequer.

MR. T. M. HEALY (Longford, N.)

Not on that point, only on the point of jurisdiction.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I believe no one who is cognizant with what took place at that trial will deny that there were circumstances of difficulty in the case; and it is absurd to allege that because the inferior Court may be mistaken it is utterly unworthy of all confidence. These being the circumstances of the case, what is the language in which the right hon. Gentleman alludes to these magistrates? He said that he would not name them, that he would not say they were infamous, but he spoke of their incompetence, their utter inadequacy of legal knowledge. Again, I have to point out that if these men are incompetent, and if they lack legal knowledge, surely the Lord Lieutenant, who is always held up to us as a model of what an Irish administrator should be, must receive the blame, because he is the man who certified to their being competent. [Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE: Uunder your Act.] No, under the far worse Act of the right hon. Gentleman. Because these men have been over-ruled in one case, am I to turn them out of office and cast them forth on the world as ruined and stigmatized men? Am I to indorse the verdict given by their bitterest political opponents; am I to use my official position in order to back up attacks which are the offspring of political partizanship? I do not know whether that line of conduct would have been assumed by the right hon. Gentleman had he been responsible for the government of Ireland; but if Lord Spencer had pursued any policy of that kind in Ireland he would have been less successful in dealing with those forces of disorder with which he did deal so courageously and successfully. I hope the right hon. Gentleman is satisfied with my answer. I cannot plead guilty of having evaded the difficulties or of shirking the severer points. But I ask the Committee whether there could be more conclusive proof that the government of Ireland, as we have administered it, has not been subjected to more than the ordinary infirmities, to more than the ordinary errors, and to more than the ordinary mistakes which must beset all Governments so long as they are conducted by human beings, when hon. Gentlemen opposite find themselves reduced for their strongest arguments to these three or four points. They are their standing dishes, brought up in every speech made outside and inside the House. They cannot travel beyond the narrow limits of these three or four points, and often as they may be refuted and corrected in matters of fact, they still depend on these old dishes, cooked, re cooked, served up time after time, until I should have thought even Members opposite must have sickened and nauseated by the recurrence of this cloying fare.

Notice taken, that 40 members were not present, Committee counted; and 40 members being found present,

MR. FLYNN (Cork, N.)

said, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had concluded his speech by stating that the House and the country wore thoroughly sick of these subjects. Yet, if the country were sick of this business it was because they were sick of the manner in which the right hon. Gentleman treated them; for whether the right hon. gentleman was right or wrong in his contention the subjects were of the greatest possible importance. He should hope that in connection with the Irish Prison's Vote they would be able to go more closely into the treatment of the late Mr. Mandeville than could be done on a Vote of this character; and when they came to some other Votes in connection with the Police they would be able to go more thoroughly into the Mitchelstown inquiry than it was possible that evening. These matters, however, had been very properly raised on the Vote for the right hon. Gentleman's salary, because not only did he condone those violations of legality and breaches of order which had been committed by the Constabulary Force in Ireland, but he applauded and approved of every act that had been done by the officials during the right hon. Gentleman's administration. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to be annoyed that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) had referred to this Mitchelstown business. The right hon. Gentleman accused the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian of having raised the question as to the ricochet shot and other such issues a long while ago. But such was not the case. This far-fetched theory of the ricochet shot was never thought of or spoken of or hinted at during the inquest, or for many months afterwards, and it was not until the extraordinary report of Mr. Wellington Colomb was circulated among Members of this House, that the question of the ricochet shot was raised and the attention of the House and the country was directed to the theory. Well, it was an idle jest for the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, or any one else, to suggest that policemen in Ireland are able to fire round a corner so as to substantiate the ricochet shot theory, and make it go down with the most gullible of listeners. The right hon. Gentleman showed that he felt his case to be weak and unworthy the acceptance of sensible men; and surely, if he had any doubts himself as to the real facts of the case, those doubts ought to have been dissipated by the plan brought forward by one of the Members for Yorkshire, when he took a photographic camera down to Mitchelstown and established the contention that the place where this unfortunate man was killed was in a direct line from the window from which the deadly shot was fired. But it was not necessary that the right hon. Gentleman should have sent Mr. Wellington Colomb down to Mitchelstown to formulate this theory, for out of the mouths of the police themselves they had a case made out. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, not long ago, rather twitted the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, saying that because he had not been down to Mitchelstown he could not vouch for these things of his own knowledge. Well, neither could the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had referred the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian to The Freeman's Journal report, and he (Mr. Flynn) had those reports in his hand at that moment. He had also the reports which appeared in the Court newspapers, the reports of the proceedings at the inquest, which was a most labourious investigation. He found, according to these reports, that Sergeant Brennan deposed to firing a certain number of shots. He was asked by the cross-examining counsel— On your oath, did you fire in the direction where you found the marks on the wall? and the answer was— Where I fired would be in a line with the place where the laurels were, and on the Square. The place referred to by the witness was a spot of considerable distance from the Police barracks, and the place where the unfortunate man was killed was very much nearer the barracks. The cross examining counsel further said, "Did you fire to kill?" to which the reply was given, "I fired to wound some person." He was then asked, "Did you aim to kill or only to wound?" When he answered, "I aimed to kill." The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary disproved his own ricochet theory by acknowledging that if the police were justified in the firing they were justified in killing. Well, the Irish Members granted that theory, their whole contention being that the police were not justified in firing. The evidence brought before the Coroner's Jury, when the unfortunate occurrences were fresh in the minds of every one, proved beyond a doubt that the police were not justified in firing. Surely one would have thought that, at all events—the facts being before the world—it would require the greatest hardihood of assertion to indulge—as the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary did—in this statement of the ricochet shot. If the crowd on the day of the Mitchelstown meeting came within stone-throwing distance of the police barracks, as was alleged by the right hon. Gentleman, there would have been some evidence of it; and yet, though the Police barracks contained a large number of windows, only six pains of glass were broken, and out of those six the police acknowledged that they themselves broke three to enable them to tire upon the people. In a conversation he had had with a Cork newspaper reporter—who was not examined as a witness because he was attending to his professional duties—this gentleman had assured him that he was coming up from the Square and passing the police barracks at the same time that the firing occurred, and though there was not a single individual within 20 or 30 yards of him, the policeman's rifle was levelled at him, and but for the interposition of the District Inspector, who came up at the time and knocked the policeman's rifle up, the probability was that there would have been a fourth death. How did the Mitchelstown affair commence? The official in charge of the police was Captain Seagrave; and attention should be drawn to the important point that the person entrusted with the care of the forces of order on an occasion of popular excitement was a young man, only recently appointed to the Resident Magistracy, and, as he acknowledged himself, ignorant as to the proper time to read the Riot Act, and even of the meaning of the Riot Act. He was a man utterly untutored in his duties, and absolutely unqualified to take charge of the police. But what did this young man say? Why, speaking with regard to what happened a few minutes before the meeting was assembled in the Square, and while the meeting was assembling, he said— I should like to say that the demonstration had taken place, that the procession had passed with perfect quiet. No hands were playing except two or three, which started opposite the Court, and which I myself stopped. I remained in the barracks about three-quarters of an hour. It was, therefore, plain from this gentleman's testimony that everything was going on peaceably. Now, if it had been necessary to get a Government notetaker at the meeting, there were three alternative routes by which they could have got to the platform, without disturbing the crowd of people. They had the evidence of the District Inspector and three or four constables at the inquest to the effect that the crowd was perfectly peaceable up to the moment when attacked, and that it was an utter impossibility for the police to pass the Government notetaker through the immense crowd without breaking up the meeting. The witnesses described how the people were tightly wedged together, with their faces towards the platform, listening to the speakers, and acknowledged that the vast bulk of the gathering were utterly unaware that the Police Force was trying to force their way to the platform. The witnesses said that as they saw the police forcing their way to the front, they noticed the men striking the horses with their batons, that one horse reared up, and that several horses were turned about whilst others were backed. The riders of the horses, or some of them, raised their ashplants and struck the police. They had this statement clearly and succinctly from the Inspector himself. The disturbance was precipitated by the police attempting to perform an impossibility, and committing a gross assault upon what was acknowledged to be a perfectly legal meeting. It was futile to try and argue the point as to whether the meeting was a legal one or not. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, in reply to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, had declared that it was not a legal meeting; but everybody knew how difficult a thing it was to prove that a meeting was illegal until they had had a reporter present, and had had the advantage of reading his notes. The police ran down the Square towards their barracks, and undoubtedly one of the constables was injured in the collision which occurred; but there had not been any evidence, from first to last, or any serious attempt to show, that there was any determined attack made on the police barracks by the crowd. No one would deny, not even hon. Members on that (the Opposition) side of the House, that they were all interested in preserving the police from being assaulted and injured. No one would deny that the Constabulary or any other body of men were justified in firing, and in taking every possible means of defending themselves when their lives were in danger, but, surely, not even the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would contend that they were justified in firing except in case of the greatest necessity. Such necessity, however, had not been made out in this instance. There was no serious attack. Dozens of people had come forward to prove that there was only a scattered, sparse number of men between the Square and the police barracks when the unfortunate incident occurred. There was no serious attempt to show that at any time the police barracks were in danger, much less the constables inside it. The house was a strong one, well guarded and barricaded. Well, did not all this go to show that there was no necessity for any firing? The Coroner's Jury, summoned by the police themselves, found a verdict of wilful murder against certain parties, and one would have expected that in view of the debates that were likely to arise out of this melancholy transaction, the right hon. Gen- tleman the Chief Secretary would not have broken through every precedent which had been held by former Chief Secretaries as binding upon them, and would not have refused this inquiry. What had been the entire effort made by the police to meet the case on behalf of the murdered man? Why, a Departmental Inquiry by an officer of police into the conduct of the police themselves. The right hon. Gentleman courted inquiry; he was anxious for the truth. In this case three men had been shot down; their relatives and friends contended that they had been murdered; the Coroner's Jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder, and yet no stops were taken to vindicate the law or to inquire into the gravity of this serious case. Months rolled by, and a considerable time afterwards a gentleman was sent down to invent a theory which might tend to dissipate the bad impression which the Mitchelstown tragedy was making in the minds of the people of England. He (Mr. Flynn) contended that the conduct of the right hon. Gentleman all throughout this business had not been compatible with the traditions of a responsible Minister. The right hon. Gentleman had then dealt with the Killeagh conspiracy case in that peculiar, ingenious, and clever manner for which he, no doubt, deserved great credit and which enabled him to put considerable gloss on circumstances which were patent to everybody else. He (Mr. Flynn) admired the right hon. Gentleman's ingenuity, but did not think it should be exercised as it was in that House. In reference to the Killeagh case the right hon. Gentleman not only traversed what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian had said, but the statements of the two Judges—Baron Dowse and Chief Baron Pallas. The right hon. Gentleman said the real offence was conspiracy not to deal, and that the men ought to have been found guilty of conspiracy to compel or to induce. Well, but both these Judges held, in the clearest and most unambiguous manner possible, that there was no evidence whatever of any conspiracy to induce or of intimidation, and that the only evidence was of a refusal to deal. No matter what the right hon. Gentleman said, he (Mr. Flynn) contended there existed to-day, or ought to exist, in Ireland, as in every other country, a perfect right on the part of any other trader than a licensed trader to refuse to supply goods to any person. If a customer could exercise his right not to deal with a shopkeeper, a trader had an equal right to refuse to supply goods to anyone who might come upon his premises. There was no proof whatever of conspiracy in the case. All that could be proved was, that on a certain day these men in differents parts of the town, at their own initiative and in their own shops, refused to supply goods to certain parties. It should not be forgotten that these prosecutions were got up by the police themselves, and that if there was any conspiracy it was a conspiracy on the part of the police to entangle these men in the meshes of the Coercion Act. The right hon. Gentleman had drawn the attention of the Committee to these two licensed Magistrates who had been associated with this case. One of them was a very feeble and old man—a very respectable old man, no doubt, but anyone who knew him must be aware that there was no importance whatever to be attached to his opinion. The important person on this occasion was undoubtedly Mr. Gardener. Well, Mr. Gardener's name had been before the House, not alone in conspiracy cases, but in half-a-dozen other cases. It had been proved over and over again that he had strained this Coercion Act up to the very point of breaking. In his (Mr. Flynn's) own hearing, Mr. Gardener had refused to state a case on the application of The Cork Examiner, because, as he said, the case was not frivolous.

An hon. MEMBER

You mean the case was frivolous.

MR. FLYNN

No; because the case was not frivolous. In his (Mr. Flynn's) presence, and in the hearing of Mr. Adams, Q.C. Mr. Gardener's ignorance of the law he was called upon to administer was such that he said that his ground for refusing to state a case to the Superior Court was that he considered the application not frivolous. Evidently up to that moment his idea had been that if an application was frivolous he ought to grant it. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had spoken at considerable length about the Kinsella case, and had attached considerable importance to the fact that the trial of these Emergency men did not take place under the Coercion Act, but took place under the ordinary law. But the charge of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian was that on the part of the prosecution there had been an utter want of bona fides, and that had been borne out in the pamphlet written by the Rev. Dr. Dillon. The facts of the case were known in the locality and spoke for themselves. In the first place the jury was packed. The County Grand Jury threw out the Bill against the man Freeman, whom six people swore fired the fatal shot. The mode of procedure was this. A certain number of Emergency men were found guilty of manslaughter by the Coroner's Jury, and the agent, Freeman, was found guilty of wilful murder. The Grand Jury found no true bill in the case of the charge of wilful murder, but found true bills of manslaughter against the other Emergency men, but when the case against these Emergency men came before the ordinary jury, there was no evidence to find a verdict of manslaughter, because in the case of the man charged with firing the fatal shot the Grand Jury had thrown out the bill. This case did not occur under the Coercion Act, but under the ordinary law, and the charge was that the Executive acted in such a suspicious manner that there was considerable doubt as to the bona fides of the prosecution. It was evident that the anxiety of the Government was to screen the Emergency men from the penalties attaching to their action. There were 18 of these Emergency men, one of whom was in possession of a Winchester rifle and revolver, and it was proved that more than eight minutes elapsed after the firing of the fatal shot before there was any inspection of the revolvers, and in that time this man Freeman would have had ample time to change half-a-dozen revolvers. It was perfectly easy for him to get rid of his own and obtain another, and so destroy the evidence against himself. More than that, the man was taken before Lord Courtown, a magistrate, and the Sergeant who took him was not even sworn. Freeman was allowed to go away and was never charged until after the Coroner's inquest. All these circumstances went to show that the Executive, under the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, in this case as in scores of others, had strained the law to its fullest possible extent in order to punish their political opponents, or those they believed to be opposed to them in politics, and at the same time to shield those who had been guilty of the atrocious crimes at Mitchelstown and Coolgreaney. With reference to this unfortunate man Kinsella, Members of that (the Opposition) side of the House would be able to put the right hon. Gentleman in possession of facts, which, even if he knew them, the right hon. Gentleman at any rate had not given them to the Committee, or to any of the auidiences he had been in the habit of inflicting his speeches upon and of which he declared he was so very tired. There were other reasons why they should ask the right hon. Gentleman for some explanation of his official conduct in connection with this Vote. When last they were passing a Vote on Account, he (Mr. Flynn) had called attention to the way in which the right hon. Gentleman had treated the representations which had come to him from various Public Bodies in Ireland. He (Mr. Flynn) had protested against the system of passing Votes on Account, and he thought that the Members of the Committee should, at the commencement of every vote, protest in the strongest possible manner against the inconvenient and unconstitutional course of taking Votes at the fag end of the Session for Services the money for which had been already spent. What satisfaction would it be to the House if they were enabled to prove to the Committee at large the strength of their position and induced them to reduce the Vote by one-half? He presumed the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had the greater portion of his salary in his pocket. The great inconvenience of this mode of conducting business was that they were removed to a considerable distance from many of the facts which had taken place during the right hon. Gentleman's administration, and had not the means of imposing a check upon his responsibility. They were now approaching Christmas, and a great deal of valuable Business had had to be abandoned because of the manner in which the right hon. Gentleman's Government had come down two or three times asking for Votes on Account, postponing the real Vote until the end of the Session. When the last Vote on Account was before them he had referred to the contemptuous and discourteous manner in which the right hon. Gentleman treated representations coming from Public Bodies in Ireland on various subjects of general and political importance. Representations from Liberal Unionists, however small might be the number of such persons who addressed him, were always acknowledged in the most effusive manner by the right hon. Gentleman; but when protests were received by him from Public Bodies as to certain occurrences, not alone did the right hon. Gentleman neglect to inquire into the allegations made, but he did not extend the common courtesy of an answer. On the occasion of the arrest of the Mayor of Cork, who got a fortnight's imprisonment for what, at most, was a technical assault—an assault which ought probably to have been tried under the ordinary law, and for which probably a fine of 6d. and costs would have been imposed—the Corporation of Cork and several other Public Bodies had communicated with the right hon. Gentleman on the subject, making protests. The right hon. Gentleman had made no reply, but had simply thrown this communication into the waste-paper basket. Was this the way, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman, in which he proposed to bring the Public Bodies and the people of Ireland into accord and sympathy with his policy? There were to be two elections in Ireland shortly, and if the right hon. Gentleman thought he was winning his way to the esteem of the Irish people by these measures, let him put the thing to the test and send down his nominees as candidates for the vacant seats. He (Mr. Flynn) should say that the word "discourtesy" was an extremely mild one to apply to the attitude of the right hon. Gentleman. The Town Council, the Board of Guardians, and the Harbour Commissioners of the town of Tralee, all sent formal resolutions to the right hon. Getleman protesting against the conduct of Mr. Cecil Roche. They did not go into the conduct of this gentleman in the administration of justice, but protested against his vile and offensive conduct towards the people of Tralee in the public streets on many occa- sions; and these Public Bodies had a right to take that course, seeing that they were to some extent responsible for obstructions of thoroughfares and the good conduct of the town. They protested against the conduct of this magisterial bully, and forwarded their representations to the right hon. Gentleman; but, so far as he knew, the right hon. Gentleman had made no answer to those representations. He had treated the whole thing in a most cavalier fashion. No doubt it was an ungracious thing to raise a question of this kind on a personal Vote for the salary of the right hon. Gentleman. He (Mr. Flynn) should much prefer to do it in connection with other Votes; but there was no other opportunity open to the Committee, because the difference between the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary and Chief Secretaries who had preceded him was this—hon. Members had had to find fault and to cross swords with Chief Secretaries who now sat on the Opposition side of the House, and with Mr. Forster, and although they had bitterly to protest against the administrative acts of those right hon. Gentlemen, at any rate it could not be said that they had not taken steps to inquire into representations made to them by Public Bodies and by the Irish Members. The policy of the right hon. Gentleman the present Chief Secretary, however, was to ignore every expression of public opinion in Ireland, whether it came from the Irish Representatives or from Public Bodies. If the right hon. Gentleman thought that that policy was likely to be of advantage to the country, and was likely to check the National aspirations of the Irish people, he was welcome to continue it, so far as he (Mr. Flynn) was concerned, until the tenure of the right hon. Gentleman's Office was run out; but he (Mr. Flynn) maintained that it was incompatible with the traditions of statesmen, and incompatible with the duties of a responsible Minister, that the right hon. Gentleman should take up the attitude which distinguished him on these matters. It was resented by the Irish people themselves, and redounded more to the discredit and disgrace of the right hon. Gentleman's own administration than to any other institutions or set of officials, who, though they might carry out the Acts of Parliament, could not be accredited with re- sponsibility for what had taken place in Ireland during the past two years.

MR. A. E. PEASE (York)

said, that on several occasions that night allusion had been made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) and others to the murder of John Kinsella. In the reference the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian made in regard to that case, he had rather understated the circumstances which surrounded it. He (Mr. A. E. Pease) believed that the result of that case had done a good deal to foment that feeling of distrust which existed in Ireland as to the impartiality of the administration of Criminal Law in that country. He (Mr. A. E. Pease) had happened to be in the county of Wicklow shortly after the murder of John Kinsella, and he had taken particular pains to inquire into all the circumstances of the estate upon which the murdered man had been a tenant, and from which he had been evicted. He (Mr. A. E. Pease) had done his best to arrive at the correct facts with regard to the whole case. He was present at the Wicklow Assizes, not on the day when George Freeman was tried for the murder, but on the Saturday previous, and he thought he might be able, from independent testimony, to support in some manner the statement which had been put forward by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, and also by other hon. Members who had alluded to that subject. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had said, in his defence of the manner in which this case was dealt with, that it was a case which was very properly conducted by the Crown, and he was surprised that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian should have indorsed the view of many Irish Members that a miscarriage of justice had taken place in this instance. Well, he (Mr. A. E. Pease) had never had more vividly brought to his mind the feelings which inspired many Nationalists in Ireland with regard to the question of the administration of law and order than was the case in connection with this instance of miscarriage of justice under the ordinary law in Ireland. It was true that this case had nothing to do with the Crimes Act of last year, for the murderer of John Kinsella was not put on his trial before a Coercion Court, or before a jury empanelled under any section of the Crimes Act. If the Committee would allow him, he would give his impression of the whole case as he had gathered the facts bearing upon it, and he thought he might be able to illustrate, in some way, how it was that he regarded this case as a gross miscarriage of justice. He supposed every man in the House had heard of the Coolgreaney evictions. There were 70 tenants evicted on the Coolgreaney estate, and amongst them was the man, John Kinsella. Kinsella, with a number of other evicted tenants, had taken refuge on the farm of a man named Kavanagh, who lived upon the slopes of Mount Coolgreaney. On a certain day 18 Emergency men, headed by a man named M'Cabe, and joined by Freeman, the estate bailiff, made a raid for cattle on the farm of Kavanagh. That raid, as had been pointed out, was perfectly illegal. The men, on going towards the farm, were warned by the police on the road that they had better take care what they were doing, as it was expected there would be resistance offered by the tenants. A number of police, he might also state, lived in the mansion house on the property with the Emergency men. These Emergency men went up the hill side to the house where Kavanagh lived. Behind a gate there were massed a number of the evicted tenantry, with members of their families, girls and children. The only act that could be interpreted as an act of active resistance was John Kinsella striking on the top bar of a gate as one of the Emergency men attempted to get over. As the Emergency men tried to mount the gate, Kinsella struck the bar with his pitchfork—a broken pitchfork. The Emergency man who was getting over at the time did not make any remark whatever to John Kinsella, but five or six witnesses swore to the fact that immediately Kinsella struck the top bar of the gate Freeman stepped forward and said, with an oath—"Get down from that, John Kinsella;" and then, using another oath, said—"I will shoot you!" With that he levelled his revolver across his hand and shot John Kinsella at the distance of about a yard. Now, he took that statement of the case from the evidence of five witnesses who were produced at the Coroner's inquest, and to that evidence he should allude very shortly. First, however, he would describe what took place after the death of John Kinsella. Two volleys were fired by the Emergency men into the crowd. The crowd ran away, and the Emergency men, heedless of the death of Kinsella, went into the fold-yard and drove out the cattle. John Kinsella having been killed, it became the duty of the police to bring the attention of the authorities to the murder. A policeman, who was sworn, went before Lord Courtown, a magistrate, who refused to give a warrant for the arrest of any of the men concerned in this murder. Subsequently, a Coroner's inquest took place, and on that occasion the following evidence was taken, according to The Irish Times—a Conservative newspaper. Michael Kavanagh, the tenant of the farm at which Kinsella was killed, said— I heard George Freeman say to Kingella, 'Go back, Kinsella, or by G—d I will shoot you!' He then took his revolver from his pocket, and Kinsella fell. Elizabeth Kinsella, the daughter of the murdered man, said— I remember the 28th. On that day I saw my father shot. The man who shot him was George Freeman, the same I now identify. I also saw John Harris fire with a gun at Maggie Darcey, and she escaped. Other witnesses gave evidence to a similar effect. He had visited the place and pointed out to the people the frightful responsibility they were under in making statements of which they were not absolutely sure, but there was not the slightest wavering on the part of any witness who happened to be in the yard at the time. There seemed to be enough evidence before the Coroner to induce the police to endeavour to arrest Freeman, and he believed M'Cabe, on the charge of murder; they tried to get a warrant against them from the magistrate, but failed in the application, and they went back to the Coroner, who, late at night, very reluctantly issued his warrant against Freeman and M'Cabe. The Coroner's jury, after the evidence of the police and persons present who swore that they had seen no blow struck or stone thrown, returned a verdict of wilful murder. There seemed, to be to any ordinary and partial mind, an overwhelming primâ facie case against Freeman and the Emergency men. It was sworn that the shot was a dull shot, and he (Mr. A. E. Pease) appealed to any Gentleman who had any knowledge of fire-arms to remember that a shot that strikes an animal was a dull shot. The police would not swear to any belief as to who fired the shot; but after the verdict the solicitor for the Crown spoke of the impartial manner in which the Coroner had conducted the inquiry. The men were committed for trial at Wicklow Assizes; the jury consisted of 24 gentlemen, of whom 22 were landlords and land agents; and, having served on Grand Juries, he could say that no impartial man would maintain that there was not a primâ facie case against Freeman. Although the jury was packed—it was exclusively Protestant, 23 Catholics having been ordered to stand aside—he could find no fault with their verdict. But the scandal of this case was brought into prominence by the manner in which a case, at which he was present, had been dealt with immediately before this at the Assizes. It was the trial of Waters in connection with the death of Constable Williams, and in that case a Protestant jury opposed to the prisoners was empanelled under the Crimes Act; the chief witness was an agent of the Executive in Ireland, and who confessed to having been sentenced over and over again for crimes, some of them almost too horrible to be mentioned in that House. When he contrasted the procedure in the case referred to with that in the case of Freeman he was bound to say there was a scandalous disparity in the method of meting out justice to Protestants on the one hand, who called themselves Loyalists, and to Catholics on the other. He had spoken plainly with regard to what he believed to be strong evidence against Freeman; on platforms in the country he had on one or two occasions alluded to the death of Kinsella, and to the manner in which the Grand Jury of landlords and agents had refused to put him on tria before a packed Petty Jury. And on one occasion, when he had confined himself to questions of evidence adduced at the Coroner's inquest, he received a letter from a firm of solicitors in Dublin threatening him with a prosecution for criminal libel for alluding to the case. He had, however, not been deterred from alluding to it, because he thought it was a good illus- tration of the manner in which law and justice was meted out to the Irish political opponents of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. From personal inquiry he could substantiate the case to the details of which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian had that evening alluded, and he hoped that the public would study it if they could get a correct report of the proceedings, because they would find in it one example among many that had occurred in Ireland of the unfair administration of justice in that country, which had done so much to bring English administration there into disrepute and the name of justice into contempt.

MR. WADDY (Lincolnshire, Brigg)

said, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had made merry at the end of his speech with Members on that side of the House, who, he said, had three or four matters which they were never weary of mentioning, and to which they practically confined themselves. They did not, at any rate, confine themselves to three or four subjects, however, with the same pleasing iteration with which the Government confined themselves to the case of the Curtins and Norah Fitzrnaurice at every election since the General Election. He complained of the conduct of the Government in reference to the Mitchelstown riots, not because he thought they were to be blamed for policemen having gone wrong. He did not mean to say one word which would have the slightest personal application to the right hon. Gentleman; he recognized the distinguished ability with which he filled the Office to which he was appointed and his admirable fitness for it. If there had to be coercion, and the right hon. Gentleman had to be seated on the Treasury Bench for the purpose of carrying it out, he ventured to say that he was, perhaps, the model Member of the House to do the work. When they complained then of Mitchelstown they did not do so because they thought the Government should be blamed for the folly or rashness of policemen. What this Government did another Government might have the misfortune to do; and he thought that when there was a riot, and some reckless man had done what might cause bloodshed and death, to say that the Government was to be blamed for that would be what he, at all events, did not approve. But they complained that a murder having been committed, and he said deliberately, after reading with the greatest care the evidence at the inquest, that murder was committed by some one of the police on the occasion as clearly and certainly as ever was the case in the history of the world since Cain slew Abel. He believed that no man of intelligence or candour could read the evidence given at the inquest, and then examine the spot in question for himself, without coming to the conclusion that murder had been committed by the police. The allegation having been made in that House, and elsewhere, that a crime had been committed by the police, the Government, instead of leaving no stone unturned to have the matter investigated coram populo for their satisfaction, had thrown the broad shield of their protection over the men who committed it. That was their charge against the Government, and the result of their conduct was that the people of Ireland did not believe that they received at their hands the same justice and fair play—he would say the same favour—as was shown to the police. It was important that the Committee should consider the line which the Government had taken up with regard to this matter. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland said his first defence was that the police had fired at people who were apparently about to engage the police, who were kicking at the door, throwing stones at the windows, and that they did so in order to protect themselves. He was confident that the right hon. Gentleman had defended the police on the information which he had, and that the opinion in his own mind was, that there was an infuriated mob before the barracks which they had converted into a small bastile. He (Mr. Waddy) was quite prepared to take the evidence of the police alone, not forgetting that it came out in the evidence that they had been taken in hand by the District Inspector in order that they might have their evidence put right by him, and not forgetting that they were sent to Dublin and had their minds properly and adequately turned to the testimony it was right that they should give. Remembering all those things, he was prepared to say upon the evidence the police gave that there was a purposed slaying of these particular men. The view lately set up by the Government was interesting and ingenious. It was now as certain as the day that there was no crowd but an open space in front of the barracks, and that at the time no attack was made upon them. As no one was in front to shoot the police did not shoot anyone in front, and anyone who was wounded must have been hit at a considerable angle. The defence was therefore set up that it was not intended to shoot down Lonergan, but that he was struck by a ricochet shot. He believed that account came out first at Battersea on the 16th of May, and he was determined to destroy the ricochet notion once for all that evening. He thought it a little too bad that a man in the position of the right hon. Gentleman, with the weight of his name and Office, should speak of the Coroner's jury in such terms as these— Even a corrupt Coroner's jury admitted that the man who gave the order to fire was right in giving the order. But then came the first suggestion of ricochet. The right hon. Gentleman said— And from all I can learn about the situation of those killed, I believe they could not have been killed by direct fire from the barrack window. One of them at least, unquestionably, was killed by a ricochet shot which glanced from some obstacle or stone building in the way, although the evidence was not quite so certain in the other cases. The words of the right hon. Gentleman were "from some obstacle or stone building," and he asked him which he proposed to maintain—he did not suppose that he meant the ground.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I meant exactly what I said. I meant an obstacle. That is an absolute interpretation of the word, and to that I adhere.

MR. WADDY

said, he was glad to have that explanation, although it was no explanation. Until the last two or three days the theory had always been that this was a ricochet shot bounding off from some building at the side of the street. On the 28th of June Mr. Colomb made a report, valuable because it emphasized in the clearest way the interpretation which he (Mr. Waddy) had put upon the words of the right hon. Gentleman, and which everyone else would apply to them; and in the report he said— Lonergan must have been struck by a ricochet shot, because I found, when I visited Michelstown, that it is impassible to discharge a rifle from any of the Mitchelstown barrack windows in a direction to strike without ricochet any part of the square. It was interesting to observe that there could be no doubt with regard to the spot, which was at once identified at the inquest, almost before the blood was dry, and at night it was left marked with the laurels referred to again and again in the evidence. It was known to the police and to the townspeople, and it was given in evidence, that "the stone crosses which are placed there accurately marked the spot." His hon. Friend the Member for Holmfirth (Mr. H. J. Wilson) had effectually disposed of the proposition made on behalf of the police that it was impossible to kill a man from the windows of the barracks by a direct shot; and he (Mr. Waddy) said it was absolutely impossible that the man could have been killed by a ricochet, unless it was said that the bullet cannoned from one side of the road to the other. The poor man who was slain stood seven yards at least behind the line of houses, and therefore, if it was a ricochet, the bullet must have ricochetted from one wall and then through the wall of a house. Anyone who would look at the map prepared by Mr. Colomb would see that this was absolutely and entirely impossible. A man was killed by a direct shot; if that was intended, he said, deliberately, it was a case of murder, and ought, at all events, to be investigated. He would tell the Committee why he ventured to say that the police themselves were sufficient for his purpose. He had in his hand a verbatim newspaper report, by which it appeared that the first policeman called said that he fired in the direction of the crowd; at the crowd at the corner, in the direction of two people who were throwing stones; that he believed the shot took effect; that he saw a man fall in the Square. Now there was only one man who fell in the Square, and that man was Lonergan. Brennan said further that he fired a second shot at the crowd. The next policeman called was Ryder, who said that he had tried to kill when he fired. There was no attack then being made, and he challenged any lawyer to say, under the circumstances, there could be any justification for this. This policeman said, further, that he had singled out a person; that he had aimed to kill; that he did not know whether the bullet hit him or not, but his opinion was that it ought to have hit some person. Brennan, who was also called, said that he fired in the direction of the Square; that he fired to wound; and he was forced to say afterwards, "Well, I fired to kill." If there were any doubt with regard to this, the other facts of the case dispelled it entirely. A man and a boy had been shot, and no justification had been alleged in that case; further to the right Lonergan was shot, and died on the spot. He was doing no harm; he was not attacking the barracks. Still, no attempt was made to justify the act. But that was not all. Just opposite, in another direction, there was the house of Mr. O'Brien, who, as he stood at his own door, looked up, mechanically, and saw a rifle poked through a window in his direction; he turned round the corner, but he was only just in time, for directly he had gone away the bullet came true to its mark. He, too, was doing no harm. Again, there had been no explanation. Then there was Mr. Costello's shop, where there was a fan-light looking down a passage and another fanlight at the end; and when the firing began—two or three young women standing near—Costello shut the door; and he had no sooner done it than a girl, a milliner's assistant, came hammering at the door to be admitted. At that time the people were beginning to fall. Costello opened the door and let the girl in directly. She, and other poor girls who were already in, were frightened out of their lives lest the police should come in, and they went into the passage. What took place? The girl who last came in was so terrified and shocked that it was too much for her, and she was dead of the fright in 36 hours. Although there were 70 feet between them and the police, the girls got in such a position that they could be seen by the men at the police barracks who were kneeling down. Directly the young women inside the house, flying for protection, got within the line of fire four bullets came right through the fan-light upon them. There were the holes made by the bullets to be seen to this day; he had seen them. Do not tell the country that there was not an intention to fire. It was a panic, if they liked; it was a thoughtless, wicked act, if they liked; and he did not blame the Government because it happened, but he did blame the Government for not knowing what he had stated when they might have known it. If they did not know it, but would make any decent inquiry in regard to the matter, they would discover the absolute accuracy of every word he had said. He had been on the spot; he went there with the Government plan in his hand; he went there with a still larger and better plan which he had had prepared by a civil engineer. With the greatest care he endeavoured to ascertain the real truth, because he thought the matter ought to be investigated. Do not let anyone tell him that there was any necessity for the police on that day to force their way through the crowd. It was known from the policemen's own evidence that they used their batons in order to got in among the horses. They began the affray; there was no necessity for it, but they had persuaded the Chief Secretary that there was no possibility of getting to the speakers without the use of force. It was a falsity; there was nothing to prevent them getting round; the square was a large one, and only one-fourth of it was filled by the crowd. There was a street nearly exactly opposite the police barracks, and the police had nothing to do but to go up that, turn along another street, and then they would have been at the very place they wanted to be at. There was not the slightest reason or justification for what they did. In the face of these facts he asked the Government whether they were prepared to give some definite answer? It was no use to talk about ancient history—it was a continuing evil, it was a daily denial of justice, it was a fresh wrong done every year—until there was an investigation into this matter. What he and his hon. Friends complained of was not the original mischief, but it was that the power and the authority of the Government of this Empire was used to uphold what the Irish people firmly believed, and what others with them believed, to be a gross denial of justice, and a gross public wrong. The question was whether that was to be allowed or not? They could not forget that this exceeding mildness to one class of the people was not indicative with regard to others. He attended at the Court at Arthurstown when Mr. William Redmond was tried for the part he had taken at the Coolroe evictions. He (Mr. Waddy) was interested to see the way in which Ireland was being governed, and he went to Arthurstown. He had with him two gentlemen who were very well known to many Members of the House, Mr. Byles, of Bradford, and Mr. Ponsonby. The police were quite adequate to preserve order, except that he knew perfectly well by experience that instead of preserving order they were far more likely to make a row. He and his friends took the trouble to count the people at Arthurstown. Arthurstown was a small place—indeed it was a mere village. They counted all the men as they went down the street, and they found that the entire number of civilians there was about 58, including the people who were on their trial. They also counted the police who were present to take charge of the people. They did not count them all, because some of them were just outside the town, but they did find that there were inside the town 68 police to take charge of 58 men. What was the result? There were some men who had come from New Boss, about eight or nine miles away; they were going back in a wagonette drawn by a pair of horses, and they had brass musical instruments with them. They got to the extreme limit of the little village, just outside the police station, when they found that the police, who were drawn up across the road, positively refused to allow the wagonette to pass. Just think of the folly of such a proceeding! If these men had been the wickedest people in the world he should suppose that the best thing to do was to get rid of them. They were not allowed to go the particular way they wanted. What was the reason no one could tell. They could not do any harm, and surely the best thing that could happen was to lot thorn go. But, rather than let them go, an attack must be made on the wagonette, and the brass musical instruments broken. The scrimmage took place in pure savagery; and in order that nothing should be left to tell the tale the drum itself was carefully stabbed by a bayonet. Next morning he saw one man whose cheek had been cut to the bone by the police when making a charge right down the street to clear it. The man was doing nothing, but simply standing in the street. The police, no doubt, felt they must do something to justify their existence when they were there in such large crowds. Now, let him give a contrast to that. He went over to Limerick at the request of one of his hon. Friends, and he met an hon. Member who had to speak there upon the occasion. Limerick stood upon the side of the Shannon, with the principal street running parallel with the river. Upon the occasion of which he spoke the number of persons in the town was variously calculated, but, at any rate, there were thousands present. Before the meeting took place he was informed by the Mayor, who was now a Member of the House of Commons, that there had been an interview between him and one of the magistrates. The magistrate said he was going to have the meeting proclaimed. Whereupon the Mayor said, whether it was proclaimed or not it was going to be held. "Well," said the magistrate, "but who is to be responsible for the peace of the town?" "I will," said the Mayor, "on one condition." "What is that?" asked the magistrate; and the reply was, "That you keep the police away." He (Mr. Waddy) should think that that was an unparalleled request; but as the one expedient to preserve law and order the police and the soldiery were withdrawn from the City. The City was filled with strangers; it was just upon the borders of Clare and very near Kerry; people came in by all kind of vehicles and in all kind of ways; people came from the disturbed districts, where they were not to be trusted; but from one end of Limerick to the other there was not the slightest disorder. He walked through the town on purpose that he might make his own investigations as completely as he could. He did not see a particle of disorder, nor did he ever see—perhaps it was too early in the day—one case of drunkenness. Why was this? Because he could not see the nose of a single soldier or policeman in the whole place. It had got to this in Ireland—that, if they wanted to preserve the peace, they must withdraw the guardians of the peace; and if, on the other hand, they wanted to have a disturbance, let them bring in the police. Then they would have a riot, or, as they had had at Mitchelstown, not only a riot, but bloodshed. They could not expect the Irish people to bear this, and therefore he joined in supporting the present Motion. Personally, he should be very sorry to see the salary of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant reduced; but he supported this Motion because it was the only way, clumsy as it was, that Members had of protesting against what they believed to be misgovernment, and which was not known to Members on the Treasury Bench. He did not believe they were informed of these things by their police and others; he did not think they knew the actual truth. He would not detain the Committee any longer, but he thought it desirable that the Government should take into their own careful consideration all these facts, which, sooner or later, they would find too strong for them.

MR. DILLON (Mayo, E.)

said, he noticed that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) carefully avoided what he (Mr. Dillon) considered to be one of the gravest charges that had been levelled against the Government—namely, the charge of administering the laws in a one-sided spirit. It was of no use for a country to have good laws if those laws were not properly administered. He had always held, and he believed it had been held by many Englishmen as well as Irishmen who had devoted attention to the social condition of Ireland, that perhaps the greatest of all the curses which had troubled, and disturbed, and filled that country with ruin and disorder, had been the deep-seated conviction in the minds of the masses of the people in Ireland that they could not look to the administration of the law for justice; that the privileged classes of Ireland had greater influence in the Castle and with the heads of the Executive than they ought to have; that the law was turned against the poor people, against the Nationalists, and that it was not administered with an even hand. He maintained that that charge could be brought home to the Government, and that no charge which the ingenuity of man could devise could be graver or more serious. Let him turn for a moment to the Kinsella case. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), without commenting on this case, used words which were strictly accurate, for he said, in describing the events which took place at the inquest, that there was some sort of a trial of the man who was charged with the murder of Kinsella. The Chief Secretary to-night, and on previous occasions, when replying to the right hon. Gentleman, said, in a scornful tone, that the case was tried by a Judge and an ordinary jury, and not dealt with under the Crimes Act at all. He proposed to examine what amount of truth there was in the right hon. Gentleman's statement. The only defence set up was that the case was submitted to an ordinary jury in the ordinary way, and that the jury acquitted the prisoners, and that a Judge presided over the trial. In the first place, the case was not submitted to a jury constituted under the ordinary law; it was a Crimes Act jury; it was a special panel of the county constituted under the Crimes Act. But that, after all, was a matter of trivial importance. In order to appreciate the full weight of his case that the law was administered in a one-sided spirit, they must compare the way in which the trial of George Freeman, and the other men who were charged with the murder of Kinsella, was conducted, with the way in which the trial—say, of the men who attacked Sexton's house in Clare was conducted. The men who attacked Sexton's house were farmers' sons or poor men, and the offence took place in a Catholic County. Under the Crimes Act the Government had the power of changing the venue and of empanelling a special jury. In the case of the alleged Moonlighters the Government, of course, exercised that power; they did three things—they changed the venue from Clare to Wicklow, because Wick-low had an extremely Orange jury list, and they called for a special jury. Having got a special jury to try the prisoners, they challenged every Roman Catholic that came to the Book until they got a purely Protestant jury. Furthermore, they were not content with challenging every Roman Catholic, but they challenged every Protestant who came forward and was suspected of having Liberal opinions, until they empanelled a jury whose names would remind one of the muster-roll of Cromwell's Army in Ireland. What did the Government do with George Freeman and his friends? George Freeman committed his crime at Coolgreaney. He and his friends were in the payment of an association which numbered among its ranks nearly every one of the leading landlords in Wexford and Wicklow. The Crown had it in their power to transfer the venue to Clare or to some other southern county, but they did not change the venue, neither did they resist, which they might have done successfully, an application for a special jury. They allowed Freeman and his friends to be tried by a jury selected, practically speaking, from their own paymasters and employers. That was not all. When they came to examine the way in which the trial was conducted, the action of the Crown appeared to be even worse than these preliminary proceedings would make one suspect. There were, to his own knowledge, for he was present at the inquest, three men who swore that they were standing opposite George Freeman, and that they saw him lay his revolver across his wrist, and say he would shoot Kinsella through the heart if he did not throw his pitchfork down. They swore that they saw Freeman level his revolver at Kinsella and put a bullet through his heart. These three men went before the Grand Jury composed of the landlords of the county who were trying the Emergency men, and swore that they saw the murder committed with their own eyes. The Grand Jury, however, threw out the bill against George Freeman, a thing which, he believed, hon. Members would seek for in vain in the whole annals of criminal justice in any country in the world. The weight of testimony was against Freeman, but the Grand Jury threw out the bill, and it was sought to be contended that on that account the other men charged must be innocent. What happened when at last the case came for trial? Did the Attorney General, who, in the case of the Clare men, was careful to challenge every Roman Catholic who came forward as juror, challenge the Protestants and Orangemen in the Kinsella case? No; he let every single Orangeman be sworn, and never exercised the right of challenge, as far as he (Mr. Dillon) was informed, at all. The Attorney General turned the whole proceedings into a perfect farce, and the men who were charged with the murder of Kinsella were laughing at the witnesses as they came up. Let Mm direct attention to a few incidents during the trial. He believed that in the whole annals of the administration of justice there was not a more extraordinary instance of bare-faced collusion between the Crown and the accused than this. First of all, let him direct attention to the fact that the Property Defence Association, which included among its members many of those who formed the Grand Jury, had the indecency, on the 17th of November, just previous to the trial, to issue a circular, signed by Lord Courtown, the chairman of the Grand Jury of the neighbouring county, calling on the landlords of Ireland to take the opportunity of coming forward with their subscriptions and expressing their gratitude to the men who had served them. They actually invited subscriptions for these very men. At the trial Mr. Justice O'Brien asked one of the witnesses, "Were you evicted for non-payment of rent, or was your farm sold?" The witness said, "I was evicted for non-payment of rent." The Judge said, "Then you can redeem; has the period for redemption lapsed?" and the reply was, "No; there are a few days left." The Judge said— Well, I need not point out to you that those few days are of more importance to you than appearing here as a witness for the Crown. He (Mr. Dillon) asked hon. Members, as Englishmen, whether they would tolerate such language from a Judge in this country? Here was a poor man coming forward as a witness to swear to a murder. What had the Judge to do with the question whether he had redeemed his farm? What business was it of the Judge to browbeat a witness?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I rise to Order, Mr. Chairman. Is it in Order for the hon. Gentleman to attack the conduct of one of Her Majesty's Judges?

THE CHAIRMAN

It is well known it is outside the province of a Member of this Committee.

MR. DILLON

said, he should, of course, make no further reference to the matter. Indeed, he had been led to make a reference to it by the right hon. Gentleman who found fault with him for criticizing it, and who yet had not been ashamed to say that Mr. Justice O'Brien was one of the most impartial Judges on the Bench. He recognized fully that the right hon. Gentleman had a weak case, and that he did not like to have it attacked. He thought he had made out a strong case for the statement that in the two parallel cases, in the one instance in which the peasantry of Clare, Roman Catholics and Nationalists, were placed on their trial, and in the other instance where men in the payment of Orange landlords in Wicklow were placed on their trial, the law did not stand impartially between the two classes of people and the officials of the Crown, who now ruled Ireland with all the irresponsibility of Turkish Pachas. These officials resorted to every contrivance to secure the conviction of the peasants from Clare, and treated them with the most shameful and horrible cruelty and unfairness. These men were now doing 10 years' penal servitude, while a man who committed a cold-blooded murder in the open day, and before the eyes of three or four witnesses who came to swear to the details of the transaction, was, by the collusion of the Crown, walking about the country triumphantly. That was the kind of justice they had been taught to expect in Ireland. Lot him pursue the matter a little further. Whenever they took up any general line of attack on the Government it had been said, "Oh, these are isolated cases, and you can only pick out one or two cases." He contended that this was not a question of isolated cases. He contended that the detestable poison of one sidedness and unfairness permeated the administration of the law from its highest point down to the lowest police magistrate in Ireland. The whole machinery of the law was strained to breaking point in order to rob the poorer class of the people of their liberties. What were the facts in the case of the Templemore murder? A man named Lloyd was going home from the fair of Templemore in the company of an Emergency man. The man was a small farmer in the district. A poor man in the town who know him went after him, and had some conversation with him, in the course of which Lloyd was heard by some of the bystanders to take an oath, and to say to the Emergency man—"Shoot the ruffian!" The Emergency man thereupon shot the man through the heart. What was the consequence? This crime was committed in open daylight, and was witnessed by several people; but when the case came on for trial the usual course where landlords or the friends of the landlords had to be tried was pursued. The Government did not change the venue, Lloyd was put on his trial before a jury of the very district in which he committed the deed, and he was allowed to get a special jury in order that he might be put on his trial before anti-Nationalists, and therefore his own confederates. Had he been a poor peasant he would not have been tried in North Tipperary, but dragged away to Wick-low, and put on his trial before a packed jury. When the trial came on the Crown did not challenge anybody. The Judge, Mr. Justice O'Brien, intimated plainly that though he shot—well, he would not express what he thought of the Judge's charge—the Judge intimated plainly that he thought it was a case of murder. It was absolutely impossible, on the face of the evidence, for the jury to acquit the prisoner, because there was no attempt to break down the case, and the deed was witnessed by a number of people. But the defence of manslaughter was put in, and the jury convicted of manslaughter a man who had committed as cold-blooded a murder and as unprovoked a murder as was ever hoard of, because there was no evidence that he got any provocation from the man shot. The Judge sentenced Lloyd to five years' penal servitude. How, in the face of such facts, could anyone get up in the House of Commons and tell them that justice was administered with impartiality and fairness throughout Ireland? He could give the Committee numberless instances of the same sort, but he would resist the temptation on the present occasion. He would content himself by directing attention for a few moments to the case tried recently at the Wicklow Assizes, known as the Belfast frauds. In that case men were guilty of one of the most horrible offences that men could possibly be guilty of. It turned out in the course of the trial that the accused had been engaged in widespread conspiracy for the purpose of defrauding Insurance Companies by a course which nearly always ended in murder. They obtained insurances on lives, and in one or two instances there was very strong presumptive evidence that they hastened death by priming their victims with whiskey. The Crown pursued exactly the same course they always pursued when they were trying Loyalists. They did change the venue in this ease; but they changed it to Co. Wicklow. They let the prisoners get a special jury, which meant, of course, a Protestant jury. The evidence, however, was so strong that there was no possibility of an acquittal, and the men were convicted. [Ministerial cries of "Hear, hear!"] Certainly they were convicted; that was what he was coming to; no jury in the world could have acquitted the men. What happened in the course of the trial? By a most scandalous arrangement with the Crown counsel, Mr. Chestnutt Smith, who had been the secretary of the Liberal Unionist Association, who nobly personified that commercial probity which was not to be found among the Parnellites at all, who received the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) on the occasion of his visit to Ulster, and who was never tired of dilating upon the enormities of the Parnellites, was allowed to turn informer on his accomplices, although the Crown had ample evidence to convict the whole gang. Mr. Chestnutt Smith was permitted to turn Queen's evidence, being, by his own admissions one of the greatest scoundrels of the whole lot. In the course of the trial one of the witnesses swore that Mr. Chestnutt Smith was a very pious and Gospel young man. His portrait, no doubt, would ornament a Sunday magazine. Mr. Robert Dunlop, who was one of the chief organizers of the conspiracy, was a man worth £80,000, and yet he was unable to resist the temptation to engage in this detestable and abominable system of fraud which led men into the committal of the vilest crimes. One of the prisoners was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, but Mr. Robert Dunlop got nine months. He got nine months as a common prisoner, but a couple of days after his conviction he was removed from one gaol to another, and they were told that at the time he was wearing a tall silk hat. The law could not be broken against a Parnellite Member of Parliament, but against such rogues and ruffians as that it could be broken. So scandalous were the whole transactions connected with the Belfast frauds that The Dublin Daily Express, the organ of the Orange Party in Ireland, spoke of it in this way— After a trial which kept the Court for four days, the prisoners were found guilty and sentenced—to penal servitude? No; but to nine months' imprisonment without hard labour. We venture to think that the punishment will excite as much astonishment from its lightness as did the frauds themselves for their enormity. He (Mr. Dillon) maintained that it was an outrage and an atrocity that a poor man, who was driven to desperation, and who re-entered his house by what was called "forcible possession," should be sentenced to six months' imprisonment with hard labour, while this worthy gentleman, Mr. Robert Dunlop, should receive a somewhat similar sentence for an offence for which he ought to have got 10 years' penal servitude. What was the reason for the difference; could anyone say that if Dunlop had been a Nationalist he would have got off with nine months' imprisonment?

THE CHAIRMAN

I am reluctant to interfere with the hon. Member for East Mayo, but it must be obvious that what he has been entering upon is not appropriate to this Vote, but appropriate to the Votes in the next class relating to the administration of justice. The discussion has travelled extremely wide of the Motion. It was opened by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian in connection with many trials, but I think that in each one of those cases the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary has associated himself by his expressions out-of-doors with what has been done, and has connected himself not only officially, but personally, with the matters. It would be more convenient to the despatch of Business if the discussion of this Vote were confined to actions for which the Chief Secretary is personally responsible.

MR. DILLON

said, he was led into the line of argument by the course which the debate had taken. He presumed that upon this Vote he might be allowed to refer to the method in which the machinery of the Crimes Act—he meant that portion of the machinery referring to Resident Magistrates—was worked. He presumed that the arrangement of Benches of Magistrates, and the directions as to whether cases were to be tried under the Crimes Act or the ordinary law, came from the Castle itself, and he wanted to give one very striking and extreme case for the purpose of proving the proposition which he should shortly state. It was this: In Ireland, at present, the Crown used the Crimes Act in a great number of cases for the purpose of obtaining convictions where they did not think they had got any case at all.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, perhaps it might be convenient that he should state now that he never, under any circumstances whatever, gave the directions to which the hon. Gentleman had referred. He did not wish to stop the discussion, but he thought it necessary to make this statement.

MR. DILLON

said, that in that case he would not pursue that line of argument any further, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would inform them, for the convenience of subsequent discussion, who was responsible for the directions.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

It is either the Attorney General for Ireland or the Divisional Magistrate.

MR. DILLON

There is no Divisional Magistrate in the district I speak of—it is in County Louth.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

There is a Divisional Magistrate every where.

MR. DILLON

said, that perhaps it would he as well he should postpone the discussion of the matter until the Vote for the salaries of the Divisional Magistrates, and of the Attorney General for Ireland, was brought on. Now he came to this one point, with which he proposed to conclude the observations he had to make to-night. The point was personal to the Chief Secretary himself. The right hon. Gentleman made a charge against him on an occasion on which the right hon. Gentleman really ought to have avoided charges of such a character. He conceived the charge to be one of the most offensive charges ever made against him in the course of his life. It was made on the 26th of June of this year, and it was that it had been given in evidence at a trial by one of the witnesses for the Crown that he, that was to say the witness, was moved to attempt the murder of Mr. Sexton by a speech delivered by Mr. Dillon. That was a terrible charge to be made against a Member of the House, and clearly it ought not to be made against a Member when he was lying in gaol. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say— Perhaps the House will allow me to read the evidence, and I will quote it from The Freeman's Journal, and then the right hon. Gentleman went on to give the evidence. Now, he (Mr. Dillon) knew the case to which the right hon. Gentleman referred very well. It was the case of a magisterial investigation into the attack on Sexton's house, in County Clare. In the first place, the witness was one of the characteristic specimens of the support of which the Crown lent in Ireland; he was the well known informer, Cullinane. But Cullinane did not swear that he, in his innocence, was urged to attempt the crime by a speech of his (Mr. Dillon's), but what he did swear was that some other fellow told him he was incited to this crime by the words he (Mr. Dillon) had spoken at a meeting in Ennis. Therefore the Chief Secretary's speech was inaccurate, but the inaccuracy was a very small part of what seemed to him (Mr. Dillon) to be the gross unfairness of the charge. The natural, and he supposed the intended, effect to be produced upon the minds of anyone who read the Chief Secretary's words was, that he (Mr. Dillon) had advised a man to commit the crime of murder. As he had said, the man never swore anything of the kind. All he said was that another man had told him that he had been incited to an attack on Sexton's house. But it ought to be noticed that there was no question of murder from the beginning of the transaction to the end. Cullinane never swore that it was intended to murder the man Sexton. He never swore that the prisoner had told him he meant to murder Sexton at his (Mr. Dillon's) incitement. What he did swear was that the man said he was incited by his (Mr. Dillon's) speech to visit Sexton's house. What their intention might be was open to opinion; it was not stated. Whatever the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman was, he had no right to put words in the mouth of this detestable informer when they were never uttered. Was it a decent or honourable act to charge a Member of this House, in his absence, with so foul and dishonouring a charge, on the faith of Cullinane, the informer? The right hon. Gentleman had no other ground whatever to go upon. What was the history of Cullinane? Cullinane swore at the trial that he had been a police spy for seven years. He admitted, on cross-examination, that he was twice expelled from the Army for theft, that he was twice convicted of petty larceny, that he had been convicted for perjury, and had served a term of penal servitude for it, that he was convicted of several other different kinds of crimes, and, finally, that he was convicted of a crime for which he was tried by magistrates with the doors closed to the public, because the details were so shocking that the Press were not allowed to publish them, and that for that crime also he had served out a term of penal servitude. He admitted, on cross-examination also, that the police, being aware of these facts, retained him in their pay for several years. He (Mr. Dillon) charged the Government with keeping that man in their pay in order to induce him to go round the country moonlighting.

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! The hon. Gentleman is not entitled to make a charge of that kind.

MR. T. M. HEALY

It is true.

MR. DILLON

said, he would withdraw the charge. Of course, he did not make the charge against the Government, but against the police of Ireland. He maintained that it was rather a new duty of the police in modern times to extend the sphere of the informer. Certainly it was a most monstrous thing for a Minister of the Crown to charge a Member of the House with inciting to murder upon the word of a man like Cullinane. Of course, he did not expect any apology from the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman was not in the habit of making apologies, but he was perfectly confident that if he (Mr. Dillon) were an Englishman the right hon. Gentleman would make a very humble apology to him. He had alluded to the matter because he thought it was pertinent to the Chief Secretary's Vote, and he thought he had proved that the statement was grossly inaccurate, but that even if it was accurate it was a grossly improper statement. Cullinane undoubtedly, at the police investigation, did make that statement in answer to a leading question from the Counsel of the Crown, who put it to him in this way:—"Did so-and-so (namely, the prisoner) make any allusion to Mr. Dillon's speech?" and then Cullinane gave the answer attributed to him. One of the police officers in charge of the prosecution said, in the presence of a friend of his (Mr. Dillon's), that that was one of the most infamous transactions he had ever seen in a Court of Justice. In the interval between the police investigation in Ennis and the trial in Wicklow, the Crown amended their hand, for they never put the question to the witness. They were ashamed. They saw they had carried the game too far, and they did not attempt to ask the man whether his (Mr. Dillon's) speech had had any effect on the moonlighting outrage. He supposed Cullinane was at present carrying on his operations. There was evidence at the trial that Cullinane went to the police at Ennis two days before the attack on Sexton's house, and told them all the details of the attack, that the police constable gave him half a sovereign and sent him on his way to carry on the outrage, that the police constable went out two hours afterwards and found Cullinane lying in the gutter of the town unable to move, that they picked him up, took him to the police station, washed, him, sobered him, and started him out again with 7s. 6d. more to carry out the attack on Sexton's house. When the attack was made the captain of the gang was his friend Cullinane. Cullinane was the man who knocked at the door, he was the man who directed the operations, and he (Mr. Dillon) maintained that it was most extraordinary that facts of this kind should be allowed to go by without any explanation from the Government. He wanted to know, and he thought he was entitled to ask, whether Cullinane was still in the pay of the police, and whether, in the case of many of the unfortunate men who were convicted for the attack on Sexton's house, the conviction did not largely rest on the evidence of this perjured and detestable informer, who first lured them into committing the crime, and then sold them to the police? It was monstrous that creatures of this kind should still be retained in the service of the police, and be allowed to go about performing their attrocious work.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, he did not propose to go through the whole speech of the hon. Member. A good deal of what the hon. Member had said was perhaps relevant to other Votes, but in the concluding part of his speech he made some observations which he was bound to deal with. The hon. Member referred to some observations he (Mr. A. J. Balfour) made in June last, but at which, unfortunately, he had not had time to look. The hon. Gentleman accused him of having said that a speech of the hon. Member had moved the informer Cullinane to the outrage of which Whelehan was the victim. He might have said so inadvertently, but he could not put his finger on the passage in the report of the speech he had before him. But Cullinane was undoubtedly a man of bad character, and he (Mr. A. J. Balfour) could not conceive it would have been relevant to any argument he was addressing to the House on the occasion referred to to prove that Cullinane was influenced by anything the hon. Member had said. But he undoubtedly did say that a speech made by the hon. Member was alleged to have been largely responsible for the unfortunate affray in which Whelehan lost his life.

MR. DILLON

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to read the passage. The words appear on page 1383, and they are as follows:— It was given in evidence at the trial by one of the witnesses for the Crown that he was moved to attempt the crime of murdering; Sexton by a speech delivered by Mr. Dillon."—(3 Hansard, [327] 1383.)

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, he perfectly admitted he said that one of those guilty of the crime had been moved to it by the speech of the hon. Gentleman, but he did not think it was likely he accused the hon. Member of having influenced this particular man, who was a man of bad character, and who, he should think, was influenced by nothing but money. He did undoubtedly hold the hon. Member responsible for certain speeches he made in respect to land-grabbing in that part of the country. If the hon. Gentleman wanted his opinion on the subject, he repeated now most distinctly, though he did not accuse him of desiring that any men should be murdered for the offence of grabbing farms, that the kind of speech the hon. Gentleman made at Ennis on the occasion in question and which his political associates had constantly made and were constantly making, had influenced public opinion in the districts in which the speeches were made in such a manner that they were indirectly, if not intentionally, re- sponsible for some of the ghastly crimes under which Ireland suffered.

SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN (Glasgow, Bridgeton)

My motive in rising is the same as that put forward by the right hon. Gentleman. Some observations have been made in the debate personal to myself, and these observations demand an answer, and demand an answer while they are still fresh in the recollection of the Committee. I have the less hesitation in referring to them, because in answering the charges I shall clearly show what, in my opinion, and I believe in the opinion of many Members of the House, is the difference between the right and the wrong way of governing Ireland. The remarks to which I particularly wish to reply are those made by the Chief Secretary on the treatment of what I will call political prisoners. Speaking at Leeds, the right hon. Gentleman said that as soon as the Irish Members began to "make a row" the old method of treatment which Lord Spencer had adopted with regard to persons imprisoned for speeches was altered. In the first place, I must put in a word of protest against this description of the action of the Irish Members. A great many inferences have been drawn from the conduct of leading Members of the Government, of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, but I say that neither the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, nor Lord Spencer, nor anyone occupying a responsible position in connection with the Government of Ireland of the time, ever used such an expression as the Irish Members making a row in the House. I would like to know what more legitimate and constitutional use this House can be put to than to bring before the notice of the Government grievances—grievances which, when brought before the notice of the Government, are remedied? In order to show that the charges of the right hon. Gentleman against Lord Spencer are off the mark, I will very shortly describe what actually happened when attention was called in the House to the fact that the hon. Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin (Mr. T. C. Harrington) was treated like a common criminal. Correspondence and telegrams passed between myself in London and Lord Spencer, and Lord Spencer, at a very early date, communicated by letter with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt), who at that time was Home Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby wrote to the effect that in England he considered that the Secretary of State had absolute authority to deal with the treatment of particular prisoners as he thought fit under the circumstances. The right hon. Gentleman added— Of course, the regular rules are not departed from except for special and sufficient reasons. I have so departed from the regular rules in Davitt's case. I thought in that case undue severity would do more harm than good. I did not make a formal or official order, but I gave private instructions through the Prison Commissioner to the Governor of the gaol, that special leniency as to diet, employment, &c., was to be used. That was the advice the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby gave to Lord Spencer, in the form of an allusion to the conduct which he himself had adopted in what was practically a similar case. Now the question was, if this was the right treatment to be pursued, by what method it should be carried out, and whether it was within the power of the Lord Lieutenant to order it? Lord Spencer, on examination, discovered that he had the power under the Statute. There was an Act passed in the year 1877 which bore upon Ireland. The Act set forth the case in these words— The Prisons Board shall, subject to such directions as they may from time to time receive from the Lord Lieutenant, and to the provisions of the Act, have the control and management of prisons and the prisoners therein, and Lord Spencer conceived that the words— The directions which from time to time they shall receive from the Lord Lieutenant, gave him the authority which he wished to exercise in Ireland.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THEEXCHE-QUER (Mr. GOSCHEN) (St. George's, Hanover Square)

Is there any Memorandum?

SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN

I will tell my story, and I will see what part of the story the right hon. Gentleman requests to have more information about. Acting under the spirit, and, as he believed, the letter of this Act, Lord Spencer took steps for relaxing the treatment of the hon. Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin (Mr. T. C. Harrington). I will not detail the relaxations which were made. I believe them to have been considerable. A little while afterwards there was another "row" amongst the Irish Members— Mr. O'Brien asked the Chief Secretary whether Mr. John O'Brien, Mr. James Gilhooly, and Mr. Hodnett, at present undergoing imprisonment in Cork Gaol, for words spoken at a public meeting in Bantry, were subject to treatment prescribed for common criminals; and, if so, would he advise that the relaxations allowed in the case of Mr. T. C. Harrington, M.P., should be extended to these gentlemen? The answer I gave to that was that the subject was under consideration. Then Colonel King-Harman— Asked the Chief Secretary whether it was true that a person named Thomas Harrington, undergoing a sentence of imprisonment in Mullingar Gaol, is allowed indulgences inconsistent with the strict rule? And I stated that the Lord Lieutenant had instructed the Prison Authorities that such relaxations of the Prison Rules might be made as were consistent with the maintenance of prison discipline, and as the law would permit, and very shortly after that, with regard to the other men who were convicted and punished in consequence of speeches they had spoken and writings they had written, the same relaxation as had been given to Mr. Harrington was extended to them. The Chief Secretary, speaking, I think, at Leeds, thought it necessary to make an apology to Lord Spencer on account of a passage in a previous speech in which he stated that Lord Spencer had adopted exactly the same method with regard to Mr. Harrington as he himself had adopted towards other prisoners who were imprisoned for the same offences. With regard to that apology, all I can say is that those who heard the apology which the right hon. Gentleman made to me early this evening, for a gross misstatement in regard to me, may have some idea, but only a very faint idea, of the impropriety of the apology he made to Lord Spencer. But in making the apology he said a good deal more. He said— Let me point out that in so acting Lord Spencer was guilty of the gravest official error. The Prisons Board of Ireland is the Supreme Court of Law over the subordinate prison officials. Every order which is given to the prison officials ought to be given through the Prisons Board. It appears from Lord Spencer's own confession, it appears even more conclu- sively from inquiries I myself have made, that Lord Spencer gave his orders orally in this matter to the Governor and officials of the prison where Mr. Harrington was confined, that he never consulted the Prisons Board on the subject, and that they gave no orders, and that he went behind their backs in order to make that illegal alteration in the treatment of one of the prisoners committed to the charge of the Prisons Board. Now what did Lord Spencer do? Did he go behind the backs of the Prisons Board? His account is as follows:— I simply have not the slightest recollection of acting in an improper way behind the hacks of the Prisons Board. Quite the contrary. So far as my recollection goes—but I have no documentary evidence to prove it—I have distinct recollection of having an interview with one of the Board and telling him that I wished to be done what was done in England, and suggesting that an Inspector should go down to any prison when necessary in order to use his discretion. It was a custom of Lord Spencer's to carry on such business by having personal interviews with officials. I remember, when he was selecting the Land Commissioners, he had interviews lasting about a quarter of an hour with about 120 gentlemen. There was no labour that he did not go through in order to make himself personally cognizant of the people who served under him, and his nature was to carry on all the business he had by personal interview, and especially where he wished to pay respect, and rather extra respect, to the officials who were serving under him. Therefore, when this extremely delicate and novel question, for such it was, came before him, he did what he always did when delicate and novel questions arose and had a personal interview with an important member of the Prisons Board, the result of which interview was that Mr. O'Brien, the Vice Chairman of the Board, went himself down to Galway and informed Mr. Harrington personally of the relaxation of prison discipline which was going to take place. Now, as regards the method by which the thing was done, I do not think it could possibly be done with more delicacy and more discretion, and as regards the substance of the matter, as to whether it was right or not, it was quite evident that the Home Secretary and the Government of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) and the Viceroy of Ireland held what I conceive to be undoubted principle of right, that persons who are imprisoned for acts committed with public and political motives, which in themselves were not crimes, ought to be treated differently from ordinary criminals. Now, that principle the late Government always endeavoured to observe. We treated Moonlighters and men who had committed outrages like ordinary criminals, but when you come to these persons who, in the state that the country was then in, and in the political excitement that had long been prevailing, had done acts which by a liberal and generous construction could be considered to be political, we treated them differently from ordinary criminals. If we did not do so in every case I am sorry that we did not; but we laid down the principle that they ought to be treated differently from ordinary criminals, and that it was our intention so to do. Now, we did it with regard to Members of Parliament as well as others—and here, in reply to the conduct of the Government, I repudiate and deprecate in the strongest words I can use the charge which has been brought against us all over the country, against all who sit on this side of the House, with certain well-known exceptions, that we have cut ourselves loose from the old liberal principle of not respecting one man any more than another. ["Hear, hear!"] I hear that charge echoed by cheers of hon. Members opposite. We hear it said—

THE CHAIRMAN

I must point out to the right hon. Gentleman that he is wandering very loosely from the Question before the Committee.

SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN

I was speaking on what appears to me—I do not wish to dispute, Sir, but to explain—a most important question, the most important question of any in consideration of the salary of the Chief Secretary—namely, the question of the wholesale imprisonment of Members of Parliament. If you say, Sir, I am not to discuss that question, I will drop it at once.

THE CHAIRMAN

The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly justified in criticizing the conduct of the Chief Secretary, but he is not justified in entering into a defence of his own action.

SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN

At that moment, Sir, I was not at all defending myself, but the whole Party—everyone on this side of the House who can in any way be said to represent or sympathize with the justice of our charges against the Government in the wholesale imprisonment of Members of Parliament. I conceive that if ever the charge may be made it may be made on the Vote for the salary of the Chief Secretary. The horror with which we regard the imprisonment of 20, or as it will be in a few days 25, Members of Parliament is intimately allied with the sympathy which we have for the great mass of the Irish people. We have always protested against the punishment, as crimes, of offences which appear to us small offences, or excusable offences, or no offences at all, on the part of the common people. We have never been wanting in that respect, but it is worse when you come to their Representatives, for these Representatives are not only individuals, but are the great mass of the people themselves, and when you imprison and insult these Representatives you imprison and insult the Irish people. Now, the right hon. Gentleman apparently noticed in the attacks that I directed against him in the country, I used especially to rely upon the fact that great numbers of people had been put in prison because they belonged to the National League, for supporting the proceedings of the National League, and for offences which were not offences before the Crimes Act was passed. Therefore the right hon. Gentleman found it necessary to find out some charge against our Government which would show that we were guilty of some action which we charged against him. Now, Sir, across the Table to-day he said, and said without rebuke from the Chair, that he had brought forward the case in which Mr. Macnamara had been imprisoned by me, and that I had made no reply. Now, if that charge is an idle one, or an improper one, it ought not to have been made in the House, and if it was made in the House it ought to be answered. The right hon. Gentleman, speaking at Glasgow, said that— In April 1882, when Sir George Trevelyan was Chief Secretary, a man named Macnamara was charged by the police with being a man of bad character and belonging to an illegal association, and Sir George Trevelyan sent that man to prison. Well, that was a personal charge. When the right hon. Gentleman made that charge against me at Glasgow, the audience hissed my name and laughed at Macnamara's being put in prison. Now, I am very indifferent, I was going to say, to either of these two performances, but when they are in combination I am very indifferent to them indeed, because I care little anywhere, and least of all in Glasgow, where my constituency is, about the cheers or about the hisses of men who laugh at Irish prisoners. Well now, what is the answer to this precious personal charge—which is one of the only two personal charges the right hon. Gentleman, searching through the whole of our administration, can bring against me? Personally, the gist of the charge is that I put a man in prison on a certain date, whereas, as a matter of fact, I was not appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland until some time subsequently. The right hon. Gentleman made that charge, and on my denying it he turns it into another charge and says, "Oh, yes, but you are always thinking of yourself." Sir, is this the manner in which the proprieties and fairnesses of debate are regarded on the other side of the House? If you do not want to have personal explanations which are not worthy of this House, then you should not have personal charges, and personal charges are not worthy of this House. To make an attack upon a man and then tell him that it proved that he is always thinking about himself because he answers in the best way he can is, I think, pretty sharp practice on the part of the right hon. Gentleman. Well, I can say that I have learned a lesson from this day's debate which I shall certainly take to heart. During the last year and a half the right hon. Gentleman, instead of defending his policy on the broad argument that it is conciliating Ireland and making the country happier and quieter, he defends it by picking out of the thousands of cases that occurred under other Governments some one or two precedents. The lesson I should draw is that from this time forward I shall discuss every case relating to Ireland and to the right hon. Gentleman on its merits, and on its merits alone, as it has been very largely my custom to do, and never from this time will I answer any charge relating to myself or any other Member of the late Government. Before I sit down I want to say one word on a case which of all others appears to me the strongest against the right hon. Gentleman and his Government. I have never as yet said one word about Mitchelstown, but I shall say a few sentences now, and then shall have taken my share of the debate and shall sit down. What is the real charge, the unanswered charge, and, as I believe it to be, the unanswerable charge against the right hon. Gentleman in the case of Mitchelstown? The hon. Gentleman the Member for Belfast (Mr. Sexton), immediately after that melancholy occurrence, called the attention of the House to what had passed on one of the stages of the Appropriation Bill, and these are the words, in my opinion the very measured and grave and even courteous words, of the Member for Belfast— In the days of Mr. Forster, in the days of Sir George Trevelyan, and Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, the course pursued was at least judicious and discreet, and nowhere was there any serious breach of the peace caused by the presence of a Government reporter. In every previous case, the Government, before a meeting was held, applied to the Committee, or the local promoters of the meeting, or some public man advertized to speak there—they applied to him by the Sub-Inspector, or the Head Constable, to provide accommodation for the Government reporter, and I am not aware of any case in which accommodation was refused or in which it was inadequate. Nothing could be more quietly put than that. It required an answer, and this was the answer received— The hon. Gentleman asks us whether we have in this case pursued what he describes as the invariable practice of former Governments—namely, whether we have gone to the gentlemen who called the meeting, and asked them to guarantee the safety of a reporter. I do not know whether that has been the practice of previous Governments, but to lay it down as a canon which no Government shall outstep that the very persons to judge of whoso conduct the Government are to send a police reporter are to be approached in an attitude of humility, and asked whether they can guarantee the reporter's safety, appears to me to be a most monstrous and unheard of proposition. These words were spoken within a very few days of the occurrence at Mitchelstown. The right hon. Gentleman must have seen what would be the natural consequence of such a policy. It was entirely owing to thrusting the reporter through the crowded meeting that the tumult was incited, and the right hon. Gentleman had stated, and stated in the House of Commons, that the policy of thrusting the reporter through the crowd, instead of asking quietly that he should be allowed to take his place upon the platform, was a right policy, and therefore, by implication, a policy which should be pursued in the future. Now, Sir, on our side of the House I take we mostly regard that as a most reckless policy. We think that to refuse to make an arrangement which will obviate very great danger and certainly very great disorder, because you will not stoop to be courteous to these people, to judge of whose conduct the right hon. Gentleman says the Government are sending these police reporters, or, in other words, the vast majority of the people of Ireland, is a most dangerous and reckless policy, and I must say that until these words are unsaid it is idle to talk of these words being ancient history. It is idle to talk of this being old history until this policy is repented of. The words that the Government will not stoop to ask that a reporter may be allowed to take his place on the platform—until they are unsaid, and until that policy is disowned, the blame for the Mitchelstown disaster must rest at the door of the right hon. Gentleman and the Government to which he belongs.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The right hon. Gentleman has complained of me because I said that to lay down that the Government were to ask the conveners of a meeting for leave before they sent a reporter to take notes of that meeting was a canon that could not be maintained. Does he maintain the contrary of that proposition? Does he maintain that, be the meeting as illegal as it might, even be its object to intimidate the peaceful inhabitants of a district, it is still the inevitable duty of Her Majesty's Government to ask the conveners of that meeting, whether they will or will not permit a reporter to take notes upon which notes subsequently these very persons may have to be prosecuted?

MR. T. M. HEALY

The Police Code states that the conveners of a meeting shall be approached in that way—this is in the Code.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

It is not in the Code.

MR. T. M. HEALY

I say it is in the Code.

MR. A, J. BALFOUR

I refer to the illegal conveners of an illegal meeting.

SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN

No, no.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Then read out my words. I said that usually it might be expedient to allow this to be done, but that the illegal conveners of an illegal meeting of necessity and under all circumstances were to be taken into consultation by the Government before a police reporter is allowed to attend the meeting, is a doctrine which I cannot admit and never will admit. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken with much more interest and authority as to the transaction connected with Lord Spencer to which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) had called attention to, sending the hon. and learned Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin (Mr. T. C. Harrington) to prison. It appeared from the right hon. Gentleman's statement that all Lord Spencer's difficulties arose from the fact that he consulted the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) on a point of law. It was needless to say that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby had led Lord Spencer astray; and, whilst the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby appears to have been guilty of grossly irregular conduct in giving this advice, Lord Spencer seems to have been guilty of no less irregular conduct in accepting it. The right hon. Gentleman, so far as he (Mr. A. J. Balfour) had understood him, had tried to persuade the House that Lord Spencer had acted with the Prisons Board in relaxing the punishment of the hon. and learned Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin; but Lord Spencer did not act with the Prisons Board. It might be that Lord Spencer employed one of the members of the Prisons Board to carry out his behest, but there was no official communication with the Prisons Board, nor would the Prisons Board have agreed to the relaxation of the punishment which Lord Spencer, acting upon his own authority, appeared to have directed the Governor of Galway Gaol to make.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR (Liverpool, Scotland)

How does the right hon. Gentleman know that?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I know it. I observe that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow (Sir George Trevelyan) quoted, as Lord Spencer's justification, the Statute relating to the management of prisoners passed in the year 1877. But even if that Act is capable of the interpretation put upon it by the right hon. Gentleman, which I deny, his argument would inevitably lead to the conclusion that the Lord Lieutenant in Ireland and the Home Secretary in England could interfere not merely to mitigate but to increase the punishment of prisoners. If that is the interpretation to be placed upon that Statute I maintain that the Statute entirely destroys all regularity and justice in the matter of prison management. It renders the punishment of a prisoner not a question of law, not a question to be determined by the Court, by Judge and Jury or Magistrate, but a question to be determined at the goodwill and pleasure of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and the Home Secretary of England for the time being. So much for the interpretation the right hon. Gentleman puts upon this Statute, but even so interpreted the Statute does not bear out Lord Spencer's conduct. The Act says: "Such Board should, subject to such direction as the Lord Lieutenant may give." Yes, but in this case the Lord Lieutenant never gave directions to the Prisons Board. The noble Lord first misinterpreted the Statute and then did not obey the Statute so misinterpreted. The right hon. Gentleman, therefore, I think, was most ill-advised in raising this question, for he did not succeed in defending Lord Spencer, and what he said has only served to give me an opportunity of pointing out even more clearly than before the error of Lord Spencer's policy. The right hon. Gentleman quoted the old traditions of the Liberal Party for carrying out the mitigation of sentences on prisoners whom he describes as political. I do not know whether these are the old traditions of the Liberal Party, but, at any rate, they are not the traditions of the right hon. Gentleman himself when he was in Office. I do not know whether now, as then, he represents the traditions of the Liberal Party, but I will read him for his own instruction, what he said, not in the abstract or a general proposition, but in regard to the very case of the hon. and learned Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin. The right hon. Gentleman says this is a political case which, in conformity with the traditions of the Liberal Party, they treated in a different way to the manner in which they had treated other cases; but what did the right hon. Gentleman say in regard to this imprisonment on February 27, 1883?— Mr. TREVELYAN: I cannot admit that Mr. Harrington has been convicted of a political offence. I am afraid the old traditions of the Liberal Party fare very badly in the hands of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow. The right hon. Gentleman stated in his speech that it was a monstrous thing that Irish Members and other Members of Parliament should be imprisoned. It appears to afflict his soul very greatly; but I observe that when he represented the then traditions of the Liberal Party, on March 9, 1883, he said— The Government of the day were extremely sorry that they had to proceed against anyone for what they said politically. They, however, considered that they were bound in the interests of public safety to prosecute these hon. Gentlemen amongst others. The fact of a man being a Member of Parliament was in itself a double reason for proceeding against him.

SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN

How many did we prosecute?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Oh! the right hon. Gentleman seems to think that it was a double reason for prosecuting one or two, but not for prosecuting three or four. With this quotation from the quondam utterances of the ex-Chief Secretary for Ireland, I leave to the consideration of the Committee the "old traditions of the Liberal Party."

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, there was just one weak point in the illusion of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the utterances of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow, and it was this—as a matter of fact, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton Division never attacked any Member of Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Brigdeton Division had not imprisoned any Member of Parliament. His (Mr. T. M. Healy's) hon. and learned Friend the Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin was not a Member of Parliament when prosecuted, but was elected to Parliament whilst in prison, and Mr. Gilhooly was not in Parliament when prosecuted, but was elected on coming out of prison. In fact, with the single exception of himself (Mr. T. M. Healy) there was not a single Member of Parliament prosecuted during the term of Office of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton Division, and he (Mr. T. M. Healy) was made a first-class misdemeanant. But he did not rise for the purpose of labouring this discussion between the two Front Benches. The Irish Party were always between the upper and nether millstones in this House. The two Front Benches were always attacking each other over what they had done when they had been in Office. The Irish Party had never been in Office, and he could assure the Committee that it was all the same to them whether they were dissected by a Liberal or a Conservative Government; but he thought the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would have been much better advised, when making his observations, if he had referred to the rules and regulations which guided the conduct of the police. No one admired the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary as an artist of imagination more than he (Mr. T. M. Healy) did, because he knew the right hon. Gentleman could get up in that House and say anything, just as in Ireland he could go to the Castle and do anything. He would ask the House to remember what the right hon. Gentleman had said a minute or two ago on the subject of these meetings. The right hon, Gentleman had said that the Government could not be expected to go hat in hand to those who got up illegal demonstrations, and ask for permission to send a reporter upon the platform. The right hon. Gentleman must have a very poor memory. He (Mr. T, M, Healy) had asked his attention some months ago to the Code, and on quoting this Code he (Mr. T. M. Healy) would ask the Committee whether the right hon, Gentleman was well advised in the remarks he had just made, Section 11,102 said:— Whenever any public meeting"—observe, it said "any public meeting," not "some public meeting," but "any public meeting," good, bad, or indifferent—" is announced, it is the duty of the officer of constabulary within whose district such meeting is to be held to be present thereat, or, if that is impracticable, to depute another constable in plain clothes for the purpose of taking notes of any inflame- matory language that may be used. This duty, however, is to be performed with discretion. This was precisely what was not done at Mitchelstown. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian was attacked for exaggeration on this matter, but he (Mr. T. M. Healy) thought the right hon. Gentleman had not gone far enough, because he did not seem to be aware, sometimes owing no doubt to the multiplicity and importance of the duties he had to perform, of the entire strength of the case against the Government. The Code went on to say— In cases where a shorthand writer is sent to take notes at a meeting, the promoters thereof should be asked to provide him with a place on the platform. If this be not accorded, he must take the best position available. Well, he (Mr. T. M. Healy) would ask the Committee to contrast this Official Rule of the Irish police with the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that the police, forsooth, could not go hat in hand to the conveners of one of these illegal meetings, and ask for permission to send a reporter on to the platform The funny thing about this rule was that it was not in existence in 1881 or 1882, and was only put into the Code about 12 months before the Mitchelstown assembly, and, therefore, he might say was put in the Code under the auspices of right hon. Gentleman the present Chief Secretary himself. It was in the face of this rule that in the Mitchelstown case the police had endeavoured to get their reporter to the front by forcing themselves like a wedge into the crowd. In that way they had broken up the meeting. Even after the Mitchelstown meeting he (Mr. T. M. Healy) had several times known the police to come to the promoters of meetings, not hat in hand, for he had never seen a policeman except with his hat on his head, but come to them and ask for permission to send a reporter on the platform. Anyone of common sense would do that, and yet, with the Code staring him in the face, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary could get up and say that to make this application to the promoters of meetings was a canon he could not subscribe to. What was the House to think of a right hon. Gentleman who would do that? Why, it seemed to him (Mr. T. M. Healy), that in this House it was safe to do anything. A more ignorant Body of men than the Members composing it he had never met. They could say anything about Ireland, they could do anything about Ireland, and he really believed if the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary were to get up at that Table and say that the Irish people were blacks, as Lord Salisbury might very easily say, and that they practised polygamy and polyandry, Members opposite would pretend to believe the statements, and go down to Primrose League meetings and announce it as Gospel. What he admired about the right hon. Gentleman most was, that from the first moment that the right hon. Gentleman got up at the Table to make an important speech, on the Coercion Bill, he had always disregarded facts, and sailed boldly into the broad ocean of imagination. The right hon. Gentleman was right in this. If he (Mr. T. M. Healy) were in his position, and if he had, like him, to deal with a lot of ignoramuses, he should do the very same thing. Why should the right hon. Gentleman bother himself with facts? The right hon. Gentleman had a faculty for saying smart things, and that was all hon. Gentlemen opposite wanted. They thought the Irish Question was settled when the Irish Secretary dropped a little drop of vitriol on some sensitive Irish heart. That was all they wanted. They wanted to be made to laugh at Irish misery; they thought that government was a sort of joke. They went to war with a light heart. If they had to deal with an Emin Pasha expedition, or with the Congo, or some similar question, each Member opposite would cram himself for the debate; but when the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary got up at the Table and made a statement, whatever its character, they were without information on the point themselves, and they were willing to believe whatever he said. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) had heard the right hon. Gentleman make statements that evening about Ireland which had positively raised his hair on end. They were, however, just as good for the majority of the House as if they had been true; and the right hon. Gentleman showed a proper contempt for the House, and treated it with just as much respect as it deserved. Allow him to show the Committee how the right hon. Gentleman treated his own word. He would not go into the Mitchelstown occurrence, or anything of that sort, but would deal with a matter in connection with an Island in the West of Ireland. Last year the Irish Members had brought to the notice of the right hon. Gentleman the case of a Magistrate in the Isle of Achill, Mr. Vesey Stoney, who had been found guilty of peculating money intrusted to him under the Emigration clauses. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary on that occasion admitted that Mr. Vesey Stoney had been guilty of a great dereliction of duty, and possibly of something more. Mr. Stoney was the only magistrate in the district in which he lived, and he was the landlord, and practically master of the souls and bodies of a Gaelic speaking people. The right hon. Gentleman had said that he would forward a report which had been received in the case from the Government Inspector to the Law Officers of the Crown, although he doubted whether a criminal prosecution would lie against him. This person was accused of using the funds of the Government supplied under the Emigration clauses for emigrating his own tenants in order to grab their land and destroy their tenant-right. An Inspector, an honest man, was sent down to make inquiries, and he found that in the case of one Mary Moran Mr. Vesey Stoney had improperly emigrated her; in fact, Mr. Stoney confessed that he had weakly, but knowingly, consented to the emigration of this person, who was not eligible for assistance under the measure. The right hon. Gentleman was called upon to make good what was understood to be his position in regard to Mr. Stoney; and, by calling for his removal from the Bench, Irish Members were "forcing an open door"—they had no other position. But they were stopped in the middle of debate, and, so far as they knew, the right hon. Gentleman had never uttered a word of expostulation on the subject to the Lord Chancellor—his Colleague in the Cabinet—for allowing Mr. Stoney to continue to sit on the Bench, the only man to whom these miserable Gaelic-speaking people could go for justice, and who had been found guilty of corruption in the discharge of his magisterial duties. Why, it would seem that a man had only to say he was Boycotted or that he was a Loyalist, and if he had sinned against the Holy Ghost he would be retained in office. Why, he believed that in the appeal made to the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of Dr. Cross, who murdered his wife, one ground seized as a plea for mercy was that Dr. Cross was a Boycotted man. As if that could affect a charge against a man of poisoning his wife. Mr. Stoney wrote to the Lord Chancellor, and he went into the transaction with this woman. He said— In no way did I desire any profit, directly or indirectly, in the matter. Of course, grabbing her father's land was a mere trifle. That was a pecuniary loss, just as the noble Lord the First Lord of the Admiralty (Lord George Hamilton) said his brother suffered a pecuniary loss by pocketing £200,000 under Lord Ashbourne's Act. Mr. Stoney went on— Accounting for the hatred, spleen, and venom the Nationalists have shown to me, some of which may be seen from the police reports for the last few years, is the fact that I am the only magistrate free to do his duty, the only local Justice west of Newport in three Petty Sessions,"— Yes, he was the only local Justice in three Petty Sessions, this corrupt official!— and if they could banish me, the law of the National League would have full sway. Well, he did not pour this tale in vain into the sympathetic bosom of Lord Ashbourne; and here was what Lord Ashbourne said in reply—observe how judicial it was, how fairly in sentiment, how full towards Irish peasants of what Lord Dufferin in India called the "august impartiality of British rule." Lord Ashbourne said— The Inspector does not appear to have come to the conclusion that you were influenced by the surrender of the land, though the coincidence was plainly open to grave suspicion; but he thought the first charge substantiated, and misconduct must be attributed. This was the man who had dismissed members from the Commission of the Peace and from the office of Sheriff for making speeches, who had dismissed a Justice for presiding at a Land League meeting. In permitting Mary Moran to emigrate you contravened the directions of the Local Government Board, which you had no power to vary or infringe. Even assuming you yielded to the girl's cries and entreaties, and acted under impulse in the emergency, still it re- mains you had knowledge, and exposed yourself to the charge of misconduct and a clear dereliction of duty. Here could be imagined the tears falling from Lord Ashbourne's eyes and blistering the paper. A man in your responsible position has no right to yield to weakness: and when, from any motive, he falters in his duty, he must he prepared not only for harsh criticism, but direct rebuke. His Lordship feels your conduct is open to serious observation, and that the rebuke he is bound to administer will make you more careful in future in the discharge of your duties. So this man was allowed to remain the only magistrate in three Petty Sessional Divisions. Then the right hon. Gentleman said he was not going to dismiss this man, that cases had occupied the Superior Courts day after day, and if men were dismissed for a mistake in point of law, how could public servants be expected to serve their country. But he (Mr. T. M. Healy) would not be diverted from this case of a man who had fobbed the public money, who had got a girl to emigrate, seized the land, let it again, pocketed the rent, and this man he showed up in the light of day, when the right hon. Gentleman stopped the debate last year, and then it was found he left the whole matter to the Lord Chancellor, saying it was not in his Department. This was the august impartiality of British rule! The object of Government rule in Ireland seemed to be to harass and annoy the people as much as possible, and then to hold up hands in horror because outrages were committed. The people were treated as enemies of society and the human race, and then there was astonishment because the people revenged themselves in their own way. No doubt this Robert Vesey Stoney would attend before the Commission on a subpoena from The Times, as a witness against Irish Members for crimes and misdemeanours. These were the moan and malicious agents of the Government in Ireland, whose conduct had the effect of keeping up the hatred and horror of the people for British rule. He took his stand upon this case of Mr. Stoney. This man had been caught. That was the only difference between him and his fellows. Barrett was caught stealing money under Lord Ashbourne's Act. White, again, in another instance; but still the Government stuck to such men, em- ployed them and called them as with nesses, and arraigned Irish Members upon their testimony. When the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary took high moral ground, he (Mr. T. M. Healy) declined to soar into those regions; he preferred to confine himself to small details of administration, and so form a judgment of what administration was likely to be in other Departments. Having heard what he had read, knowing what they did of the circumstances from public evidence, he would ask Englishmen, was a man who did as the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary did, likely to conciliate the opinions of 5,000,000 of Her Majesty's subjects who experienced only the worst features of British rule?

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Mr. William O'Brien.)

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, of course he quite recognised that on this Vote for the Chief Secretary's salary a general discussion of the administration in Ireland might be taken, and it was on the understanding that the great debate should take place on this Vote that he agreed to the Motion. He believed he was not wrong in saying that, technically speaking, a good deal of the discussion during the night, if not out of Order, had come very near being out of Order. He did not complain of it; far from it. But if he might illustrate his meaning, a good deal of the hon. and learned Gentleman's comments had been directed to the conduct of the Lord Chancellor, and was, therefore, not connected with this Vote. He did not complain; he only pointed this out, and hoped it would be understood that every question that had been raised on this Vote would not be raised again on other Votes to which they were relevant. In that hope, and in the hope that the discussion might close early on the morrow, he agreed to the Motion. He understood there was a general disposition to conclude the discussion to-morrow night. [Cries of "No, no!" "Certainly not."] Of course he only spoke from information through the ordinary channels, and understood the desire had been expressed in all quarters, and on that understanding he consented to the Motion.

MR. JOHN MORLEY (Nowcastle-upon-Tyne)

said, of course on both sides there was a feeling that the debate on one item ought not to be indefinitely prolonged, and he ventured to hope that there would not be an unreasonable amount of discussion on the morrow. He hoped, however, the right hon. Gentleman did not mean to convey that the Committee were not to go into other Irish Votes, even to considerable length. He was perfectly certain there were other topics to be raised, besides some that had only lightly been touched upon that night, and it was impossible to expect a very early termination of debate.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolution to be reported To-morrow.

Committee also report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.