VOTE ON ACCOUNT.

HC Deb 21 March 1889 vol 334 cc415-89

SUPPLY—considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

Question again proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £3,729,203, be granted to Her Majesty, on account, for or towards defraying the Charge for the following Civil Services and Revenue Departments for the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1890.

[See Page 256.]

Debate resumed.

MR. J. MORLEY (Newcastle-on-Tyne)

I rise for the purpose of making some observations relative to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, whose salary comes under Clause 2. We have been asked by the First Lord of the Treasury how it is we did not accept his offer for a day in order to discuss a Vote of Censure. The answer is perfectly simple—it is because every day we discover some new fact; and that it would be most irrational for us to move a Vote of Censure, although I dare say it will come in good time, until we have got complete material for our case. This very day I have put a question on the Paper for the Chief Secretary, to ask him whether it is true that the notes of the private inquiry held by the County Court Judge Curran into the circumstances of the Phœnix Park murders were communicated to the Times, and, if so, by whom? In the remarks I made in moving my Amendment about a month ago, I ventured to ask the Government if it was true, and, if so, upon what principle, that officers of the Irish Government, in receipt of public pay, had been employed as collectors of evidence for the Times; whether Resident Magistrates assisted, or were present, at that collection of evidence; and, whether any Crown Solicitor was employed as a paid agent in the inquiry relating to crime in his own county? I propose to-night to press the question, which I then informed the Government it would be our duty to bring before the House. The Chief Secretary himself has told us from time to time he has not followed the proceedings of the Special Commission with any close interest. I confess this is an announcement that we may be surprised at; and I should have thought that a Minister who, probably more than any other, fired the train, might have curiosity enough to look at the after explosion. But, as the Prime Minister himself, apparently, does not read the proceedings of the Special Commission, I do not know why the Chief Secretary should. And the Prime Minister himself does not think he is wanting in magnanimity, to put it in no other way, in going before the public and declaring he does not know, in spite of the withdrawal of the letters by the original promulgators of them, and in spite of the words used by the President of the Special Commission on the last day of the Court, whether those letters are, or are not, forgeries. These are the particular things on which I shall come to close quarters with the Chief Secretary. On the 7th or 8th of this month—I believe it was the 7th—the Chief Secretary said— I understand the Royal Irish Constabulary have not been employed in collecting evidence, except in relation to the evidence they were prepared to give before the Special Commission, nor have they paid money to or taken proofs of witnesses. Now, the Committee will not, I hope, think it tedious if I test that deliberate statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary by a few facts disclosed before the Special Commission. Prom the evidence given by Head Constable Irwin, Michael Roche, a witness named Iago, James Buckley, Andrew Coleman, and other witnesses, it is clear that police constables, were employed in collecting evidence; so that when the Chief Secretary for Ireland states that the Royal Irish Constabulary had not been employed in collecting evidence, except in relation to what they themselves proposed to give, he was singularly ignorant of what had been going on. The right hon. Gentleman has stated that— When a witness was called, be he connected with the Irish Government or not, it was his business to review in his own mind all such information that he had got and to confirm it in every possible way. The boy named Walsh who was examined before the Commission on the 15th of December last, stated that he was sent for by District Inspector Alan, of Swinford, and that in the course of conversation the district inspector said he did not know what would happen to him about a certain insurance fraud in which the lad had, or was alleged to have, been implicated. Do the Committee realize what conduct that was on the part of the inspector, and does the Chief Secretary for Ireland conceive that it was the right or the duty of the inspector to confirm evidence which he was collecting in this way by threatening the lad? The Home Secretary on the previous day, in a very imposing manner, said that it was the duty of great officers of State to constitute themselves the servants of justice and truth. I wonder whether the Chief Secretary, in sanctioning or overlooking and condoning conduct of that kind, considers that he is making himself and the Government to which he belongs the servants of justice and truth. I am informed that the district inspector was never called to contradict the statement of the boy Walsh. And now about the money. The Chief Secretary has stated that the Government have not paid money in connection with these matters. I cannot prove that they have; but I would ask the attention of the Committee to the evidence of the informer Thomas O'Connor. This witness stated that he received a letter from Houston, from the chief office of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union in Grafton Street, asking him to call upon Sergeant Donaldson, who would give him a railway ticket, and tell him where to go. He wanted to know what were the relations between Sergeant Donaldson and Dublin Castle and Houston. Can it be denied that, although Donaldson did not give the witness money, he did give him what was an equivalent? If it cannot, the observation of the Chief Secretary is unfounded and cannot be defended. I now come to two cases which are, to my mind, the most serious of all. The first is the case of Delaney; and, dark and sombre as has been the history of English government in Ireland, I do not believe that there has ever been a more sombre incident than this. Delaney, as everyone is aware, was a man who was sentenced to death for being concerned in the Phœnix Park murders. The death sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. He was asked about evidence to be given before the Commission in the first week of January, and he was then seen in Maryborough Prison by Mr. Shannon, Mr. Soames's agent. Mr. Shannon produced a letter of introduction from someone, telling Delaney that he could usefully give him—Mr. Shannon—information. The note said, and said falsely, that Mr. Shannon was a Crown official. Delaney said that if he had not understood that Mr. Shannon was a Crown official he would have refused to say a word to him. Mr. Shannon, in that interview with Delaney in Maryborough Prison, referred to a statement which had been made to Dr. Barr, of whom we have heard to-night; but Mr. Shannon took a fresh statement. The statement made by Delaney was made in the presence of the governor of the prison, but Delaney testifies his belief that the conversation was not heard by him. Shannon in the prison took Delaney's statement down, and then was guilty of the gross enormity of administering an oath to him which was wholly unlawful, and then making Delaney swear to the statement he had made. He had no more right to administer an oath than I have to administer an oath to the right hon. Gentleman. This was a monstrous proceeding, and was absolutely unlawful. I do not think anything of the kind was ever done before. Will the Chief Secretary defend that transaction? It is said by the Government that alt they did was for the elucidation of the truth. This proceeding looks far more like subornation of perjury than the elucidation of the truth. What was the position of Delaney at the time? He was in prison under a sentence of perpetual imprisonment. He had nothing to look forward to but a dark and horrible future. In order to support the cause of justice and elicit the truth, you go to a man of that kind, and take evidence on oath from him which you are to use in trying to blacken the character of the Irish Members. Then there is the case of Head Constable Preston, who visited Tracy. The Home Secretary said very honestly, and with a candour which we admire and are grateful for, that Head Constable Preston paid these visits as the representative of Mr. Soames, and on his written application. The Chief Secretary, on the other hand, said that Head Constable Preston acted on his own authority, and paid the visits at the prisoner's request, and the Chief Secretary added that the Government were not cognizant of what Head Constable Preston did. The only way of reconciling these two versions is by supposing that the Irish Government had placed Head Constable Preston entirely at the disposal of Mr. Soames. Instead of being the servants of justice and truth, they seem to have installed Mr. Soames as the master of justice and truth. What business had Head Constable Preston to go to Mr. Soames at all? The Chief Secretary says it was quite natural that he should go to Mr. Soames. Yes; it was natural if it was taken for granted that Preston came to London to do the work of Mr. Soames. It was natural if Preston had been taught that his permament master at Dublin Castle and his temporary master in Lincoln's Inn Fields were the same, had the same objects, and had put to sea in the same boat. The Chief Secretary admitted that Captain Plunkett has been 54 days in London and 54 days absent from his duty. He admitted that Captain Slack has been 60 days in London and 60 days absent from his duty. What were they doing 54 and 60 days in London? Were they coaching the Times lawyers, or were they prompting, directly or indirectly, the hon. and learned Gentleman who was described in these transactions as pursuing at one time a little private practice, and who at others figured as a sort of Public Prosecutor? I dare say we shall be told that Captain Plunkett was here in order to guide the agents of the counsel in the Kerry evidence, but they had given directions to put Mr. E. Harrington into gaol for six months for publishing a speech in which he incited and urged the men of Kerry to give him what evidence they could to guide him in instructing counsel as to the Kerry cases. So anxious were they to elicit the truth that they kept Captain Plunkett here for 54 days, and Captain Slack for 60 days. The Chief Secretary has said that the length of time these and other persons subpœnaed by the Times were kept in London was a great inconvenience to the Government, against which the Government had more than once strongly protested on more than one occasion. To whom did the Government complain? [Mr. BALFOUR: To Mr. Soames.] Then that shows that Mr. Soames had had placed at his unfettered disposal these two important magistrates. I want to know upon what theory of the proceedings of the Special Commission these two magistrates were kept so long in London? Upon what theory did the two Irish constables Gallagher and Faussett receive and obey orders from Shannon to watch Pigott? I suppose I shall be told this was a mere private transaction. Everything in connection with the Commission, as far as the Government are concerned, wears the air of a private transaction. Le Caron, a paid spy of the Government, was the private correpondent of Mr. Anderson. Sir Richard Webster is the Attorney General, and he is also the private counsel of the Times. Pigott was a witness before the Commission, but, as a private friend of the Government, he was admitted into Chatham Prison to see the prisoner Daly. The First Lord of the Treasury was the private friend of one of the parties to this great cause. Houston is the paid secretary of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, but he also figures as the independent gentleman who finds the money to buy the forged letters. I presume we shall be told that Mr. Horne, the Resident Magistrate, who has been employed in examining papers and calculating statistics for the use of the Times, did so merely in a private capacity and in the interests of truth and justice. The police constables were on the same footing. We cannot accept that double capacity. We cannot allow that these constables and these Magistrates who were employed in getting up the case of the Times may do things in one capacity and then defend their action in another. The Irish Government have done far more than take the neutral attitude which they pretend. The Irish police were called to prove the seizure of documents in various places. The fact of the seizure could only have been learned from official sources, and the questions put by the counsel for the Times show that he was aware of the character of the documents and the date of the seizure before the evidence was given. The same observation applies to the seizure of copies of the Irish World in various parts of Ireland. I suppose the Chief Secretary will say that the Government were bound to give all the information in their power to the Special Commission. I am not disposed to quarrel with that contention. I agree that the Government were bound to give information to the Commission when asked by the Commission. But the Government are not bound to shield the accusers from exposure, which, if the charges they make prove to be false, will lay those accusers open to civil or criminal proceedings. They are bound not to allow their agents and officers to interfere until and unless they are called upon by the legally-constituted tribunal; and even then the activity of the agents of the Government ought to be strictly limited to the purposes and the matter for which they are sent before that tribunal. If the Chief Secretary and his colleagues had been sincere in the professions they made at the time of the passing of the Special Commission Act, that they would observe a rigorous neutrality, they could not have adopted the attitude they have taken. They professed then a desire to give the persons incriminated an opportunity of clearing themselves; they insisted again and again that the proceedings were not a Government prosecution in any sense; in no sense was it a criminal trial at the suit of the Crown; it was a process between alleged libellers on the one hand and alleged criminals on the other. If so, will the right hon. Gentleman say on what principle or maxim of administration agents of the Irish Government, from the highest rank to the lowest, have been allowed to engage in active participation on one side? If it is the duty of the Government to give the Commission all the information they can, they ought to have taken a very different course; they ought to have claimed an independent position before the tribunal. If the Commission is to be regarded as what the Home Secretary described it to be—namely, a great State inquiry—the Government ought to have claimed a locus standi of their own before the Commission; the Irish Government ought to have presented its own material in its own way, and it ought not to have done as it has done; it ought not to fight a furtive, a clandestine, and a sinister battle against its own political opponents behind the backs of private persons who are on their trial for a false and malicious libel.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Mr. Courtney, I think we have more than once complained of the procedure of the Opposition respecting the action of the Government in regard to the Special Commission. The Opposition have, for the most part, confined themselves to a process of interrogatory in the House and of assertion out of the House. The plea for not moving a Vote of Censure is that information is wanting on which to found it. But this modest demeanour and careful reticence with regard to any accusations which cannot be proved has not been exhibited outside the House. The right hon. Member for Derby (Sir W. Harcourt), and others who sit beside him, have not scrupled to assert that Houston was the accomplice of Pigott, that the Times was the accomplice of Houston, and that the Government was the accomplice of the Times. A more shocking, a more scandalous, a more unfounded calumny was never uttered by people who are engaged at the very moment in protesting that no crime is so shocking as that of libelling your political opponents. Why, they revel in libel; libel is their daily bread. The right hon. Gentleman cannot go to a public meeting without making these charges that he now applauds from that bench, for not even the meanest of which is there a shadow of proof. Of these charges, the least important is the alleged complicity of Mr. Houston with Pigott, but you have never dared to prosecute even that charge, though Mr. Houston appeared in the box and requested to be cross-examined on the point. That is my first complaint against the procedure of the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. My second complaint is that it would have been far more decorous if they had refrained from commenting on the proceedings of the Commission while the Commission was still sitting. The right hon. Members for Derby and Newcastle have made comments and criticisms upon the evidence given before the Commission, and this is to be deplored. Whatever their motive may have been, no impartial outsider can put upon their speeches any other interpretation than this—that they desire to discredit in the House of Commons the evidence they are unable to shake in the place where it was given. [Ironical laughter.] At all events, they did not attempt to shake it. [Mr. LABOUCHERE: Name!] The evidence I have; more particularly in my mind is that of Le Caron. I have no objection whatever to this method of procedure by question and answer; but if it were possible for questions to be addressed to others than those who now sit on the Ministerial Bench, the results obtained might, perhaps, be still more interesting and fruitful. I have never been able to understand why it was that, after Pigott had stated on the Friday to the Member for Northampton that he was a forger and a liar, no steps were taken to watch him or to arrest him. I confess my curiosity has been greatly aroused by the letter which appeared in the Times this morning from Mr. Anderson as to those unknown documents to which such passionate allusion was made yesterday by the right hon. Member for Derby. There is another question about which I should like to have information—information which would be as valuable to the Commission and the country—how it has come about that witnesses have been intimidated.

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! I must endeavour to keep the discussion within certain limits, and the question now before the Committee is the conduct of the Irish Government.

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I at once recognize the propriety of your ruling, Sir; but there is a great temptation to wander far afield in dealing with charges so recklessly hurled at the Government. Now, in criticizing the attitude of the Government towards the Commission, the right hon. Member for Newcastle has laid down principles of his own. What are the principles laid down by the right hon. Gentleman? He says that we ought, as I understand him, to have adopted an impartial attitude—a matter in which we are of course all at one—but then the right hon. Gentleman implies that by "adopting an impartial attitude" he means that we ought to have abstained as a Government from giving any information or allowing any person connected with the Government to come forward and state what he knew.

MR. J. MORLEY

That is not what I said. I said that they were bound to place their agents at the disposal of the Commissioners, when asked by the Commissioners.

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

If the right hon. Gentleman will cast his mind back to the particular provisions of the Bill constituting the Commission and the precedents for it, he will see that the position taken up by the Government is a right one. That Bill was based upon the precedent of that appointing the Commission to inquire into the rattening case at Sheffield. [Mr. T. HEALY: No.] It was closely—I believe exactly—framed upon that measure. [Mr. T. HEALY: Nothing of the kind.] I confess my own anticipation was that the Commission would employ the method adopted by the Sheffield Commission, and would themselves call such evidence as they desired, and ask for such information as they thought material. For what were no doubt excellent reasons, upon which I am not entitled to comment, the Commission thought that the aims of the investigation could be better and more fully attained by treating the matter as a trial between two parties, one of whom made and the other of whom rebutted allegations. The Commissioners having adopted that attitude, what was the proper line for the Government to take? I thought over the matter to the best of my ability, and the line we determined to take, at all events for the present, was not to volunteer information to the Commission or the parties, but to supply, as far as we could, what the parties appearing before the Commission might apply for, providing always that the information was of that kind which we could supply with a due consideration of the public interests. I perfectly admit that in doing that we may not have gone far enough, but the right hon. Gentleman thinks we have gone too far. We decided to adopt an impartial attitude—[Ironical laughter]—well, I will leave out the word impartial if you object to it, and say the negative attitude of waiting to supply information, as far as we were concerned, until it was required Now, is it possible to conceive of an; other course that could have or ought to have been adopted by the Government Does the right hon. Gentleman think that we ought to have absolutely told everybody concerned—the representatives of the Times and those of hon Members below the Gangway—"We have nothing whatever to do with supplying information to anybody;" that we should have put an absolute veto upon any police officer giving any evidence? With information at our disposal which might assist in enabling the Commission to come to a decision, ought we to have kept ourselves entirely in the background and allow the parties to fight it out themselves? I think that is a wholly untenable position, though I understand that it is the position taken up by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. The questions which we have had brought before us by the right hon. Gentleman are whether the Government have favoured one side more than another; are they guilty of partiality; and, above all, are they or any person in the service of the Government guilty of those darker crimes which the right hon. Gentleman does not hesitate to impute—namely, of attempting to tamper with witnesses, to bribe and suborn them?

MR. J. MORLEY

I did not say that the Government themselves had directly suborned witnesses, but that by their connivance at the interview of Shannon with Delaney they were not providing for the elucidation of the truth.

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I think it would have been better if the right hon. Gentleman had deferred these accusations with regard to the accuracy of the evidence given before the Commission until the Commissioners themselves had given their decision. Let the Committee recollect, with regard to these charges of illegitimate and partial use of information at the disposal of the Government, that ample opportunity has occurred or will occur before the Commission to investigate the matter. Mr. Soames has been in the box, and he could have been cross-examined as to the sources from which he obtained his information It was open to any of the four or five learned Gentlemen in the House who appear for the defence to have done their best to elicit the information; but they refrained from making any kind of cross-examination with regard to any malpractices. The interpretation I put upon their conduct is a natural interpretation; it is that Mr. Soames is an honourable gentleman, and has done nothing in the past of which he need in the slightest degree be ashamed. Now, the right hon. Gentleman has called my attention to four or five specific cases. On some of these I have not been able to obtain information—I know nothing about Burke, of Clonbur, or Sergeant O'Brien, who brought a witness over. Nor do I know anything about the ticket which is alleged to have been given by Sergeant Donaldson, though I may say that, as far as I understand it, giving a ticket appears to be a perfectly innocent transaction. But the point upon which the right hon. Gentleman has chiefly dwelt is the case—which I have heard described as most monstrous—that not only was Mr. Shannon admitted to the prison to see Delaney, but that he took advantage of the permission to administer an oath—an illegal oath. In the first place I will point out that, as I am informed, Mr. Shannon had a perfect right to administer an oath. Mr. Shannon himself has been put in the box and cross-examined on this matter. But whatever Mr. Shannon did, whatever his malpractices may have been, it is perfectly absurd to make the Government responsible. He was the solicitor of the Times, not the servant of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman has asked about the action of Head Constable Preston with reference to Tracy. The right hon. Gentleman does not appear to have fully grasped the fact, which I have myself stated more than once in this House, that the whole investigation with regard to Tracy had no reference to the Times case, but had reference to information which Tracy himself volunteered to the police in the first instance. Tracy subsequently refused to complete his information; but, even in its imperfect form, I hope it may enable the Government to get at the root of some very serious crimes in the West of Ireland. Tracy is a man who I believe has been implicated in a large number of the most shocking and criminal operations that have occurred in that part of the country. He volunteered, for reasons of his own, to give information to the police; that information he would not complete, having been restrained probably by illegitimate influences, and in visiting him Head Constable Preston was only fulfilling what was unquestionably his duty, to get to the bottom of these dark transactions. I am informed that this had no reference to the case of the Times, but was simply an investigation carried on by Preston for the detection of crime. It is perfectly true—and I do not deny it—that an investigation into crime in Ireland may have great relevancy to the inquiry by the Commission. I do not deny that at all, but I say that the detection of crime was his primary object, and one which would have existed had there been no Commission hearing evidence. Then the right hon. Gentleman has asked me questions about Captain Slack and Captain Plunkett. It must surely have occurred to the right hon. Gentleman that these gentlemen were over here on subpœna, and that they were obliged to stay as long as the subpœna lasted. Had they attempted to go away, I presume the Court would have interfered to prevent them going away. I wrote as strongly as I could to the authorities of the Times—I think in October or November—saying that the Irish Government were being put to great inconvenience by the number of constabulary and magistrates who were being brought over as witnesses, and on account of the time they were detained. On behalf of the Times, MR. Soames said they would do their best to minimize the evil, and I believe they have done so; but their best has not been very good for the Irish Government. As to the case of Mr. Harrington, respecting whom the right hon. Gentleman makes the absurd allegation that he was put in prison to prevent him collecting evidence for the defence, let meremind him that if the Government had allowed Mr. Harrington to go on offending against the law on the ground that he was occupied in collecting evidence for the Commission, does not the right hon. Gentleman see that they would have been guilty of a gross neglect of their public duty? Why did not Mr. Harrington appeal? If he had, he would immediately have been let out on bail, and he would have had two or three months, at all events, to continue the investigation in which he was engaged, and which the right hon. Gentleman says was disturbed by his arrest. As a matter of fact, he did not appeal, and personally, therefore, did not rate his own services very high. So much for Mr. Harrington, Captain Slack, and Captain Plunkett. The right hon. Gentleman went into a case which he characterized as still more shocking and scandalous. He alluded to the action of District Inspector Alan in connection with the witness Walsh. Walsh, it is true, was a witness for the Times, but it was not in connection with the evidence he was afterwards asked to give that he was dealt with by District Inspector Alan. The dealings that Inspector Alan had with Walsh had reference to an inquiry under Section 1 of the Crimes Act of 1887, in connection with a local Land League which had been guilty of very gross malpractices. Walsh was a most important witness in that inquiry, and it was owing to his evidence that their malpractices were checked. It was in reference to that inquiry that the interview occurred, and District Inspector Alan positively and absolutely denies that he ever held out the inducement to Walsh that the right hon. Gentleman suggested—namely, that Walsh should not be proceeded against for fraud in Liverpool. That story seems to fail on the face of it, for what power had District Inspector Alan over proceedings that were to take place at Liverpool? The whole contention is not only denied by the Inspector himself, but it is absurd on the face of it. District Inspector Alan was simply concerned in an inquiry under Section 1 of the Crimes Act in which Walsh was concerned, and it was in relation to that inquiry, or to a possible prosecution in consequence of that inquiry, which led to admirable results, that this conversation took place. The Inspector assures me that he held out no inducement or threat whatever to Walsh.

MR. J. MORLEY

The Inspector did not deny Walsh's statement.

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

He denied it to me.

MR. J. MORLEY

The statement was made on oath.

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The Inspector could not, of course, be called to give evidence on that point. As far as I was able to take notice of the right hon. Gentleman's interrogations, these are the main points on which I am able to tell him anything; but I want to know what the right hon. Gentleman thinks is the principle which should regulate the action not only of constables and Resident Magistrates, but of every good citizen? It is the bounden duty not merely of the police, but of every man who has relevant evidence to give, to give it. There is this limitation, and this limitation only, with regard to constables and officials under Government—that they are, of course, bound not to make any disclosure of confidential matter which might be detrimental to the Public Service. Subject to that limitation, and that limitation alone, I would never suggest in public, or order in private, that any man should be restrained from giving what aid and assistance he could to the Commission. What have these men done except to give evidence? If right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite can prove that one of these men has attempted, as they say, to suborn witnesses, to pervert justice, or to conceal facts relevant to the defence, then pass what condemnation you please upon them, and I will concur in it. But, beyond the loose accusations which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir W. Harcourt) has scattered about, there is not a particle or a tittle of evidence to show that any one of these men has so far transgressed his duty or has been concerned in so scandalous and disgraceful a proceeding. In my opinion every encouragement should be given to the police to say what they know of the difficult matters now being inquired into. It is an inquiry not only of enormous magnitude, but of enormous difficulty. It deals with secret societies; it deals with crime; and not only have the police necessarily more information on those subjects than any other class of the community, but there is a special necessity for their giving it. It must be remembered that in Ireland it is the habitual and melancholy practice to intimidate witnesses. Instances may easily be found of wives refusing to give evidence against the murderers of their husbands because they were afraid to do so, and when secret societies and crime are being dealt with, this habitual intimidation reaches a point which renders investigation a matter of the most extreme difficulty. If the information the police are able to give in this matter were stopped in any way, if they are prevented from doing their best to enlighten the Commission, the difficulty under which the Commission labours will necessarily be doubled, and I would urgently suggest to right hon. Gentlemen opposite that, by the course they are pursuing in this matter, they convey the impression—an unjust one, no doubt—that they desire to burke inquiry. I will not imitate the Member for Derby and attribute motives to my opponents; but the whole method of the procedure of Gentlemen opposite in the House and the whole tone of their speeches out of the House must lead and has led many not unimpartial persons to belive that they would desire to see all the evidence at the command of the Government abstracted from the Commission, and that there is nothing they would rejoice in more than to see that avenue to the truth absolutely closed up; to see those who in certain branches of the investigation are the most competent to give information reduced to silence by their criticisms. I do not know that I have anything more to say upon the subject. So far as I am concerned, I will do everything in my power to aid the inquiry before the Commission, whether that aid be given through Mr. Soames to the Times, or through Mr. Lewis to the other side, or direct to the Commission at the request of the Commissioners themselves.

SIR W. HARCOURT (Derby)

It is very remarkable that the Chief Secretary, by getting up to defend himself from the charges made against him by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Morley), should have so far misapprehended the questions addressed to him and the charges made, that throughout the whole of his speech he has never attempted to meet any one of them. He began with observations which you, Mr. Courtney, were obliged to point out to him were irrelevant, and he then proceeded to meet a number of charges which had never been made, and then to suggest that the doctrine for which we contend was one for which we have never contended at all. That was the whole substance of the speech of the Chief Secretary for Ireland. Now the right hon. Gentleman is not an unintelligent man, and I think he might have apprehended what he had to answer. Therefore, I make one more attempt to explain what it is we charge against him and the Government. This Commission was appointed under the pretence—[Cries of "Oh!"]—yes; I call it a pretence—under the pretence that it was a tribunal to enable Irish Members to clear themselves. What have the Government done ever since? They have been employing every method in their power to make it impossible for the Irish Members to clear themselves. I will proceed to give my reasons for making that statement. The Chief Secretary has over and over again stated that Irish constables and magistrates and other officials took no part at all except to appear on their subpœnas. Of course, I do not charge the Chief Secretary with saying intentionally that which is not a fact. He says that he knows nothing about it; no doubt that is perfectly true. When interrogated as to the presence of the Irish officials in London, the Chief Secretary said they were here simply on subpœna, and solely for the purpose of giving evidence. The right hon. Gentleman seems to have had so little communication with the Attorney General that he does not know what a subpœna is. He seems to imagine that when that fatal document is delivered a man must attend for months until he is called; but I will tell the Chief Secretary that, if he ever receives a subpœna, he may tranquilly remain at home until he receives an intimation from the solicitor that his attendance is wanted the next day or the day afterwards. But we all know that that was not what Captain Plunkett and Captain Slack were kept here for. They remained here because they were doing service for the Times, and because the Times did not choose that they should go away. The Chief Secretary, in his jaunty way, gets up at that box and denies things and states things which are directly the opposite of the truth; and, owing to this spirit of recklessness and carelessness of statement, official statements have, in my opinion, been deprived of value to an extent which I never before heard of. My right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle, step by step, followed up the statements of the Chief Secretary, and showed that they were absolutely unfounded; but of all the charges made against him the Chief Secretary only referred to one—that as to Tracy, who was visited by Preston. What is his account of that? The right hon. Gentleman said that that had nothing to do with the Times—that Tracy's offence had no relation to the inquiry or the Times, and that Preston's visit to him was not paid in connection with the Times.

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

No; I did not say that.

SIR W. HARCOURT

No! I think I am in the recollection of the Committee. Statements are made here in the hearing of hon. Members, and are to be remembered. When a man in the position of the Chief Secretary for Ireland makes a statement here, we all remember it.

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I distinctly said the reverse. I said that, no doubt, it was secret crime in which Tracy was involved, and that, like other secret crime, it had a bearing on the Commission. But the primary object was an inquiry under a section of the Crimea Act.

SIR W. HARCOURT

Then I will take that statement. It has been distinctly stated by the right hon. Gentleman's Colleague the Home Secretary that Preston visited the prisoner on two occasions as the representative of Mr. Soames. Was I not right, then, in asking whether there has ever before been a Government whose official statements are so little entitled to credit? What are we to say in the face of such flagrant denials? In administering the Crimes Act, administering exceptional laws and dealings with such a proceeding as the Special Commission, what position are we in when the Chief Secretary for Ireland gets up and makes a statement of the kind in the presence of a Colleague who sits beside him who has stated that it is not the fact? That is the position the Government are in now. Why do not they cross-examine one another? Yet this is the only case which the Chief Secretary has endeavoured to grapple with, and as to the others, he said he knew nothing about them; but that did not prevent his denying the facts a few weeks ago. The Chief Secretary asks—why was there no cross-examination of Houston as to his connection with Pigott? Does he not know? It was because Houston burnt the correspondence.

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! The right hon. Gentleman cannot go into that matter.

SIR W. HARCOURT

Then I will abstain from following it up further. The right hon. Gentleman says our position is that we desire no evidence to be given, and especially no official evidence. The right hon. Gentleman is entirely mistaken. That is not our position at all; we are of opinion that all the evidence which would elicit the truth should be given before the Commission; but, if the Government are to give it, they ought to give it upon their own responsibility under the guarantees which belong to the responsibilities of a Government. They are not to use the whole machinery of the Government without accepting the responsibilities of the Government. If the Government had desired to act in an impartial manner they would have placed the documents before the Commission and not given them into the hands of unscrupulous partizans. This is a most material matter, and it deeply affects the character of these proceedings. If this had been in form as it was in substance a criminal prosecution, then the very principle of a criminal prosecution is that the accused persons shall be made acquainted beforehand with the evidence intended to be brought against them. If the Government had intended to deal fairly with the defendants as well as with the Times, they would have taken care that that evidence should not have been sprung upon those defendants, or dealt with as unscrupulously as it was dealt with. This is the conduct of the Government. If the contention of the right hon. Gentleman is a true contention—that what they were doing for the Times they would do for the other parties—if they had said, "We have nothing to do with private faction; this is a State inquiry"—

THE CHAIRMAN

The right hon. Gentleman does not seem to appreciate the distinction I have pointed out. What we are now discussing are questions relating to administration of the Irish Government.

SIR W. HARCOURT

Yes; I am charging against the Irish Government that they used that evidence unscrupulously and unfairly against the defendants and in favour of the Times newspaper. I say, if they had intended to use it fairly, they should have dealt in the same manner with the defendants, who should have known what constables and Resident Magistrate were doing. They should have placed Resident Magistrates at the disposal of Mr. Lewis as well as Mr. Soames. Why not?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

They could subpœna them.

SIR W. HARCOURT

Yes; subpœna them—subpœna Captain Plunkett! They might just as well subpœna the Chief Secretary or the Prime Minister, who still believes in the forged letters. Really, I do not suppose the right hon. Gentleman uses that as a serious argument. There never, from first to last, has been the smallest intention to deal fairly with this evidence. It has been collected for one party, and for one party alone, and it has been collected by the agents of the Government, from the Attorney General downwards. That is our charge against the Irish Government. We do not complain that evidence should have been collected bearing in any way upon those transactions. Our charge against the Chief Secretary and the Government is that the evidence has been most unfairly dealt with; that it has boon dealt with exclusively in the interests of one party; that it has been offered to—nay, thrust upon—one party alone. I have heard it said—and I should very much like to know whether it is the truth—that the Times newspaper, at a very early period of those proceedings, declared that unless they had the support of the whole machinery of the Government they would not go on with the case; and I should very much like to know whether it was in view of that terrible threat on the part of the Times, that they would withdraw from those accusations, that that machinery of the Government was placed at the disposal of the Times newspaper? It looks uncommonly like it. There never was an instance where anybody professing to be a private plaintiff had anything like the disposal of official resources which has been so conspicuously displayed in this case. It may be said that this is a State inquiry—a public prosecution. Well and good; if that is so, the Attorney General is in his right place. But, if that is so, it ought to have been conducted in a totally different manner and under totally different safeguards, and we should not then have had the shocking scandals, which in my opinion, have defamed the administration of justice, such as we have had exhibited. That is the charge we make against the Irish Government—a charge the Chief Secretary has not attempted to meet.

THE UNDER SECRETARY FOR INDIA (Sir JOHN GORST,) Chatham

The right hon. Gentleman opposite has delivered one branch of the attack against the Chief Secretary, and he has warned us that there is a second to be delivered against the Attorney General. I do not think those intimations will have much effect on the House, for I doubt if there is any sensible man who does not consider that the first attack has proved an utter fiasco. The arguments and reasons have been furnished to the House by the right hon. Member for Newcastle, and the eloquence and elocution by his Colleague; and what does the whole thing amount to? For what purpose has the business of Parliament been interrupted? For what purpose has this debate been conducted as if it were a debate on the whole Estimates of the year, and Department after Department, and Minister after Minister, subjected to strong and violent attacks by the right hon. Gentleman? For what purpose is it that the right hon. Gentleman, who once held the responsible position of Law Adviser to the Crown, has thought it decent, inside the House and outside too, to discuss the proceedings of a tribunal which is still sitting, and to endeavour to prejudice the conduct of a case now pending before the Judges? So long as he could only throw a little dirt at Her Majesty's Government, or make a little political capital, the right hon. Gentleman was perfectly reckless whether he interfered with the course of justice or not. I do not want to confine myself to general statements. I will give the Committee two examples of the sort of way in which the right hon. Gentleman has thought it decent to deal with the case which is now pending. He was extremely eloquent because the names of witnesses ware not given to the parties before the Commission. Did the right hon. Gentleman remember that in that comment he was finding fault with the decision of the Commission itself, and that the Judges had expressly decided that names should not be given for fear the witnesses might be tampered with? We have, therefore, the spectacle of the Judges solemnly deciding in the Royal Courts, and the right hon. Gentleman the temporary Leader of the Opposition and a former Law Officer endeavouring to induce the House of Commons to discredit the Government and the Chief Secretary for Ireland because they had not done what the Commission decided against. Here is another example. One of the witnesses before the Commission was Captain Plunkett. In the remarks which the right hon. Gentleman made a few minutes ago he conceived in what estimation Captain Plunkett's evidence was likely to be held, and he intimated in the very strongest way he could that Captain Plunkett's evidence was worthless and not to be believed. I am certain that so gross a violation of legal etiquette would never have been committed by an ex-Solicitor General unless he was utterly blinded by party passion, and unable to appreciate the situation. I have said that the reasons for this attack have been furnished by the right hon. Member for Newcastle. I listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, and it seemed to me that a more insignificant and trumpery set of accusations against a public Department I have seldom heard, and they certainly do not excuse the delay of the House, or the interruption of public Supply business. What did it all come to, supposing all the accusations which the right hon. Gentleman had raked together were true and accurate? That a few officials of the Irish Government had shown a little too much zeal in furnishing information, ["Oh, oh!"] I am not addressing myself to the right hon. Gentleman or to hon. Members below the Gangway opposite; I am addressing myself to hon. Members who are influenced by reason and argument. I know that hon. Members below the Gangway opposite would think any trumpery accusation made against the Government good enough to cheer; but those who desire to have some real grounds will hardly agree that so extraordinary a course as that which has been taken is justified simply because a few officials in the Irish Office may have been influenced by a little too much zeal. Outside the House we hear different language. We hear of subornation of perjury, and, to do them justice, hon. Members below the Gangway opposite, at least, are consistent with their declarations out of the House; but why does not the right hon. Gentleman, when he comes to the House, make those accusations against the Government which he is so ready to make in Lambeth Baths?

SIR W. HARCOURT

If we have time enough I will do it.

SIR J. GORST

Yes; we had a promise from the right hon. Member for Newcastle that he would make those statements when he had had time to collect the facts. But does the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby always wait for facts before he makes his statements? The right hon. Gentleman is not absolutely innocent of making reckless statements. He spoke about the Chief Secretary for Ireland and his recklessness and carelessness of statement, but a very short time ago the right hon. Gentleman himself told the House the most extraordinary cock-and-bull story about the Times having refused to go on with the case without the support of the Government. Where is the evidence of that? What is the good of the right hon. Gentleman making statements of this kind, unless you give some authority for them? Of course they may be useful in debate. I know the real object of the tactics being pursued. The senior Member for Northampton, who always lets out the object of the course he takes in Parliament, says that right hon. Gentlemen opposite are engaged in trying to identify the Government with the case of the Times. They charge the Government with not being impartial. They say that from the first impartiality was a pretence. I challenge support of such a statement, when you say that a body of honourable men are guilty from the beginning of fraud and pretence.

SIR W. HARCOURT

I mentioned the Prime Minister by name.

SIR J. GORST

If we have not been impartial in the case, let right hon. Gentlemen opposite at once bring for-forward proofs and a Vote of Want of Confidence in the Government. Do this now, instead of relegating it to a later period of the Session. No! you will not do that, you range about, attacking first one Minister, then another, and endeavour to get some trivial contradiction from a Minister on which you can found an eloquent denunciation. These tactics are very useful to an Opposition, but this is not the way in which the business of the House and of the country can make progress. We are engaged in passing a Vote in order that the Government of the country may be carried on; but the intelligent foreigner, who is supposed to sit in the Gallery of the House, would never guess we were engaged on anything so trivial or formal. This year it has pleased the Leaders of the Opposition to turn this ordinary and formal proceeding into an occasion for proposing, not one Vote of Want of Confidence, but for successive attacks on successive Departments of the State. The proceeding is extremely irregular, without precedent, and extremely inconvenient, and I venture to say that it will recoil upon its authors, who, in their extreme zeal in trying to damage the Government, will probably end in inflicting considerable damage upon themselves.

*MR. BRADLAUGH (Northampton)

I beg to move the reduction of the salary of the Chief Secretary by £500, and I do that for the purpose of presenting a definite issue to the Committee on which a vote may be taken. I was very much astonished that in addition to matters of which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary said he had no knowledge, he should have so carefully ignored or omitted several special matters which certainly required his attention, and upon which I will take leave to refresh his memory. There are one or two points also that arise out of questions answered this evening upon which I should specially like to ask the right hon. Gentleman for some explanation and justification. We have had it, that untried prisoners in Ireland are now being taken in inclement weather distances of twenty miles and refused the use of warm clothing sent by friends, without any sort of reprimand from the Chief Secretary to the official who was responsible for the refusal, although in so taking them it was in itself a severe punishment for prisoners yet untried. We have had it in answer to a question, that without any kind of reprimand from the Chief Secretary passes are issued by the Constabulary in districts in Ireland, as if martial law prevailed in those districts, and as though the Constabulary had any kind of right to use any such passes under any circumstances at all. We have had it this evening that the Chief Secretary having placed a Resident Magistrate in a position where his conduct led to loss of life, and knowing that this Magistrate was charged in this House months ago with conduct of a disgraceful character, and having the means within his own hands of instantly satisfying himself by reference simply to an official gazette whether or not there were grounds for the accusations, he continued him in a position of authority until recently, and has only suspended him to-day or yesterday on overwhelming evidence, official documents of a Government Department having been brought to his knowledge. If these charges stood alone—though they are very small compared with the terms of the indictment presented by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle (Mr. John Morley)—they would justify the reduction I propose. The memory of the right hon. Gentleman failed him, or his notes were not enough, for he did not deal with the case of Mr. Horne, the Magistrate, on whose conduct he had been expressly challenged, and of whom we have evidence to show that he acted as though he were expressly an agent for the Times, and who has been promoted either in consequence of or in spite of the help he has given to the Times. The Chief Secretary complains with warmth that we have not scrupled to assert that Houston was the accomplice of Pigott, that the Times was the accomplice of Houston, and that the Government was the accomplice of the Times. I will restate the case. I do not know how far my restatement will have the concurrence of the right hon. Gentleman, but I think it will fairly represent it. The Government have always felt bound to support the Times, their ally, because of the blind support the Times has given to the Government; that the Times has been the willing provider for Houston, furnishing to him large funds for what might or might not be fact, but which they were ready to hope would be fact, in order that they might destroy the political opponents of the Chief Secretary; and that Houston, if not the original suborner of perjury, paid money to an amount that could not under any circumstances have been justifiable to a person whom he wanted to speak the truth, and after he knew the tainted character of the evidence of the man who was to be called, be allowed that man to go into the box knowing that he was going to commit perjury, and gave no warning, as an honest counsel in a criminal prosecution should, to the Court and the advocates on the other side of the dangerous and tainted character of the evidence going to be presented. If the Government were not the accomplice of the Times, then accomplice will want a new definition in any new dictionary that comes into being. If the Times was not an accomplice of Houston, it certainly willingly employed Houston to discover or manufacture evidence in order to destroy the political reputation of a number of men whom it had already recklessly charged with assassination, and printed documents as though they were real, without the slightest inquiry into their authenticity. The Under Secretary for India used the expression about all three being in the same boat, and I think we shall find that they are in the same boat, and will be drowned in the sea of public indignation before these matters close. The Chief Secretary complains of the bitterness of the attack made upon himself, and he said the right hon. Member for Newcastle ought to have refrained from commenting on the proceedings of the Commission while the Commission was sitting and has not reported. But there is one incident before the Commission that has finally closed and determined an incident upon which the presiding Judge said no Report of the Commission could make the case stronger than the abandonment of the forged letters. Our accusation is, that at a time when the Government did know—they could not help knowing from confessions to their own officials and Houston, who was acting with them—of the character of Pigott, they went on with their dealings with that man, hoping that the issue of his evidence might be to blacken the character of the Member for Cork and his friends. One astounding question was put to the right hon. Member for Newcastle by the Chief Secretary. Why, he asked, were no steps taken to watch Pigott after he had admitted his letters were forgeries, and his statements lies? Steps to watch Pigott! Why we had it in evidence before the Commission that steps were taken to watch Pigott by persons controlled by the Irish Magistrates and the Irish District Inspectors who were in London. Police under the control of the Chief Secretary were told off to watch Pigott; but when they knew that he was a liar and forger, they ceased their watching, and allowed him to escape from the country. That is the case which I take leave to present against the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary in express answer to the inquiry he made. Then the right hon. Gentleman says the Government have adopted in connection with this Parnell Commission an attitude of impartiality. Well, all I can say is, that they have carefully concealed their impartiality, and we can only judge them by their acts as we know them. They seem to have pursued the most one-sided course it was possible to pursue. After it was know that Pigott's evidence was tainted, and after he himself had informed the Attorney General that it was dangerous to put him in the box Pigott was allowed to go into Her Majesty's prisons to see men—

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I know nothing about that.

*MR. BRADLAUGH

He ought to have known. If with his police here in England under his control, reporting to him, watching Members round this House, he is ignorant on grave matters of this kind, their ignorance is a crime. Remember the argument of the Government against the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid-Lothian, namely— You cannot have Home Rule in Ireland because certain Home Rule Members are criminals—we will establish a Royal Commission, and have a full investigation into this subject. At one time they were ready to lend the Attorney General himself to aid the investigation, but when the Commission is established, they allow tainted witnesses to go into prison to see men confined there for the term of their natural lives.

*MR. A. J. BALFLOUR

The hon. Member can use what argument he likes, but the accusation he is now making has nothing to do with the Vote before the House. I have no control over English prisons.

*MR. BRADLAUGH

The right hon. Gentleman must be blamed if he allows men in prison in England to be visited in this way by his own constabulary. This attack, personal to himself, I submit is pertinent to the reduction I have moved. The right hon. Gentleman asks "Have we favoured one side more than the other?" and my answer is, "Yes, you have kept from the persons accused matters of great gravity that might have tended to show their innocence." If in an ordinary criminal court you charge a man with murder there is no counsel engaged for the prosecution who would dare to withhold from the counsel for the defence or from the Court and Judge matter which he knew, if made public, would invalidate the evidence on which the man would be convicted. It would be considered disgraceful and monstrous, and yet that is the disgraceful and monstrous position in which I am seeking to put the Chief Secretary by the acts of his agents. His magistrates take down evidence, and they either tell him of it or do not tell him of it, but, in either case, they could not have occupied themselves in this business without his knowing it, unless he entirely refrained from attending to the duties of his office. It is almost impossible, unless he was blind, that Horne and others could have acted as they did without his knowledge. These people, though receiving public pay, acted as though they were simply the agents of a private person. If the right hon. Gentleman had been actuated by any shadow of fairness, it would have been impossible for Shannon to go into the gaol at Maryborough and administer an oath to Delaney. The right hon. Gentleman actually said that Shannon had a right to administer an oath to Delaney.

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I am loth to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I never justified the action of Shannon. All I said was that I did not think the administration of an oath on the part of Shannon was illegal.

*MR. BRADLAUGH

The fact that Shannon is a Commissioner for the Administration of Oaths—if he holds that position—does not entitle him to administer the oath except in cases where the statement may become usable in Court or in legal proceedings. It is utterly illegal for him to administer an oath to a person making a statement which, by no possibility, under any circumstances in the world, would ever have been used as evidence against anybody. If the right hon. Gentleman had no control over Shannon, he at least had some control over the Governor of the gaol in whose presence the oath was administered to Delaney. Is it possible for oaths to be administered to convicts in prison under the control of the right hon. Gentleman without responsibility attaching to anybody? and in the case of Delaney, it must be remembered that the oath was administered in order to inspire terror, the man being given to understand that the inquiry was a State inquiry into the conduct of the Queen's enemies in America and elsewhere. If this is impartiality, it must be spelled without the first two letters in dictionaries which may be prepared in the future. Then, could the right hon. Gentleman have been blind to the fact that constabulary witnesses were being detained in London for purposes other than that of giving evidence? Could he have been blind to the fact that District Inspector Seddall, who was detained in England, was never called upon to give evidence, but was occupied the whole time in getting up evidence for the Times? Did not Walsh declare that District Inspector Alan, in extracting information from him, had terrified him by holding up accusations of frauds and offences committed in the place where he was living? The right hon. Gentleman may say that he did not know these things, but my reply to that is, that ignorance on the part of the Government on matters of this kind is a crime. I say, when we see tainted witnesses permitted to visit prisoners in gaol, when we see agents of the Times getting permission to visit prisoners, when we find police constables and district inspectors endeavouring to frighten criminals into making statements, we have a right to say that the Government have not acted impartially, but have availed themselves of every weapon, however poisoned, in order to stab the reputation of their political antagonists. The Under Secretary of State for India (Sir J. Gorst) asks why the business of the country should be interrupted by this discussion, and my reply is, that it is for the purpose of making the circumstances of the case as I have described them perfectly plain. This is the only opportunity of doing so. If the Government had declared their desire to make reparation to the Irish Members whom they had assailed, we should I hope, have treated them as generous foes, but when, on the contrary, only a grudging word of apology is extorted from one Member of the Government under pressure, and at the same time they are giving the whole strength of the constabulary to watch this and watch that, to terrify this and terrify that, yet let a rascal escape who might have betrayed them, if detained, we say we are bound to delay this Vote. I agree with the First Lord of the Treasury that this is a question not for the Government, but for the country, and to the country we say that in no other kind of debate could we obtain an opportunity of singling out each. Member of the Government by himself and pointing out each offence separately. We intend to do this upon the present Vote, I, upon the question of the Chief Secretary's salary, and other Members on this side upon other items, and whatever defence the Government may have to make, they may rest assured that the electors will be prepared with their verdict long before the Special Commission shall have separated.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the item of £7,000 for the Chief Secretary's Office he reduced by £500, part of the salary of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland."—(Mr. Bradlaugh.)

MR. LEAMY (Sligo)

I should like to ask the Solicitor General for Ireland, who, I see, is about to leave the House, how it is that Mr. Shannon, a Commissioner to administer oaths in the High Court of Justice of Ireland, was entitled to administer an oath in an English prison—as the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary declares it to be his belief that Shannon did not act illegally in administering the oath.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. MADDEN,) Dublin University

It was in Ireland he administered the oath.

MR. LEAMY

Then I have been under a misapprehension, but I question Mr. Shannon's right, as a Commissioner of the High Court of Justice in Ireland, to administer an oath, even in Ireland, as he has done. It is said that the Government acted impartially between the Irish Members and the Times; but it has been proved up to the hilt that police officers and constables have been collecting evidence which they took to Mr. Soames's office. Why did they give copies of the evidence to Messrs. Lewis? It is a foul misuse of language to say that the Government have been acting impartially, and it is proved day by day that they are up to the neck in complicity with the Times. There is another point upon which I want information, and that is with reference to the issue of passports by the police to people going through Donegal. How many of these passports have been issued? Has the Chief Secretary condemned the practice? Are they being issued now, and how long will they be continued? This is an attempt to bar the roads, and to compel men who may not be agreeable to the police to go to them for passports. This shows how far things in Ireland have gone beyond the lines of the Constitution since the Chief Secretary came to govern the country. What, I ask, would be thought if in Wales the peasants and miners were prevented from going to their work unless they had obtained passports from the police? How England would ring with it; but because these things are done in Donegal, the Government think they are perfectly justified in their action. Ireland will have to put up with it for a time, but I am convinced that when the impartial feeling of this country comes to be expressed upon the action of the Chief Secretary, these small points, which are not now considered worthy of notice by the right hon. Gentleman, will be recollected. We on these benches have fought bigger men than the right hon. Gentleman. We have fought single-handed against the two front benches combined without being discouraged or defeated, and now that we have the English people with us, we know that we are marching on to triumph, even if Lord Salisbury sticks as close as he says he will to his office, his majority, and his money. As to the majority, the people will live when that has passed away, and we are content to trust to the verdict that they will give.

MR. W. REDMOND (Fermanagh, N.)

What gave rise to the Commission first of all was that certain charges were made against Irish Members of complicity with crime, and on Conservative platforms that complicity was openly asserted and maintained. The Government, instead of putting the Irish Members upon their trial in a Court of Justice, satisfied themselves merely by making insinuations, and that I hold was absolutely dishonest. They knew they could not connect us with crime, and yet, though they were afraid to try us and attack us in the ordinary course, they did not cease to insinuate that we were connected with crime. And, the next best thing, they inspired the proprietors of the Times with the happy idea of anonymously attacking the Irish Members, and so, day after day, for a considerable time, anonymous articles appeared in the Times affecting to connect the Irish Members with the perpetration of crime and outrages. Upon those articles the Times and the Tory Party and the Government continued to trade, and then when the articles were found to be so silly that they had no effect on the people of England, a deliberate attempt was made, at the instigation of the Government, as it will undoubtedly and unquestionably be proved, to load the dice in the political game against the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), by causing letters to be forged and published in the Times. Now, the Government attempt to say that they had nothing to do with the production of these forged letters. But it will be remembered that the Government refused to give the hon. Member for Cork a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, and that every possible obstacle was thrown in the way of the Irish Members when they demanded a proper tribunal to have these things tried. It was only when they were forced to do something that the Special Commission was appointed—a Special Commission in many respects contrary to the desires of hon. Members on these benches. And then the Government said they were going to remain perfectly impartial, and they showed their impartiality by giving their Attorney General to the Times to conduct its case. Now, from the very first moment that the Attorney General, a responsible Member of the Government, became connected with the Times' case, it was impossible to deny that the Government was on the side of the Times. But the Government was not satisfied with giving the services of the Attorney General. They did not even keep up the semblance of impartiality. But not satisfied with this, the Chief Secretary has again and again attempted to explain away the charge that the police had been deliberately engaged in getting up and manufacturing evidence for the Times. A few days before the Commission adjourned a case occurred which has not been mentioned here tonight—that of the witness Coffey, who is now in prison for contempt of Court. His story was that, instead of his going to the police to offer evidence, the police came pestering and bothering him in order to get up some story—that, in fact, a police constable called on him and invited him to give evidence, and promised that if he did give evidence against the Parnellite Party, he would be rewarded beyond his greatest expectations, and that he would not be allowed to suffer. I say that it is absolutely true that the police are going about Ireland doing everything in their power to intimidate people into manufacturing evidence, and more than one witness has acknowledged in cross-examination before the Commission that he was waited on by the police, and asked whether, if he got money, he could not give evidence. It was only by chance that the witness Coffey had stated what he had, viz., that he got £115 for telling a story of the wildest improbability, for which there was not the slightest foundation, and that in addition to the £115 he was brought over to London and kept for a long time. Nearly every one of the witnesses brought by the Times to substantiate the charges of crime and outrage in Ireland had been directly intimidated by the police, many of them being men over whom the police had some hold, or who had had offers of money as an inducement to give evidence. The Chief Secretary has stated that the police brought over to London were only waiting here till called on their subpœnas to give evidence; but if he had read the evidence given before the Commission, he would have seen that at the Inns of Court Hotel numbers of policemen and police-sergeants, with two Resident Magistrates, were engaged in a large room, drilling, so to speak, the witnesses as to their evidence, and I can, if necessary, give the names of those who took their evidence down. Thus we find that the Irish police, instead of merely waiting to give their evidence, have actually been employed by the Times at the Inns of Court Hotel and other places in getting up evidence, and giving instructions to the witnesses. From beginning to end of this black and disgraceful plot the Government have been up to their necks in the Times swim, not only inspiring and helping the Times in the publication of its articles, but making the police roam round the country endeavouring to intimidate people into coming over to tell atrocious lies against us. Moreover, they are to blame for allowing Richard Pigott to escape. The right hon. Gentleman has said he was surprised that no steps had been taken by us to guard Pigott. Why, Mr. Pigott was from the first held up to us as a most important witness for the Times, and one with whose evidence they could not dispense. It never entered into our heads that the Government would allow him to escape, or that they would not maintain a careful watch over him to prevent his getting away. But, after the second day of his cross-examination, when it was evident he had perjured himself and forged the letters, and had thus compromised the Government—the Attorney General having said before Pigott was examined that he had inquired into the anthenticity of the letters, and would be able to prove them up to the hilt, finding the sort of man with whom he had had to deal—would if he had had any regard for his own honour or for that of the Government—

MR. CHAPLIN (Sleaford division of Lincolnshire)

Order, order!

MR. W. REDMOND

Or of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lincolnshire.

Several Hon. Member

Order, order!

MR. W. REDMOND

I am very much in order. I have great respect, Mr. Courtney, for you, and if you call me to order I will bow to your ruling, but I care nothing whatever for the right hon. Member for Lincolnshire—

MR. CHAPLIN

Mr. Courtney, I rise to order, and would ask you, Sir, whether any Member of this House is entitled to impute dishonourable motives or want of regard for honour to any other Member of the House?

THE CHAIRMAN

The hon. Member's language is certainly somewhat strong, but I cannot say that it amounts to a breach of order.

MR. W. REDMOND

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lincolnshire has sat here longer than I, but he does not know so much about order as I do. I will now continue what I was saying when interrupted. As soon as it was known that Pigott could not support his original statement, and after he had got I do not know how many hundreds of pounds from the Times and Lords This and That, and from others all over the country—as soon as he had told Mr. Soames that he could not stand cross-examination, and when everyone had reason to believe he had swindled the Times and the rest of them out of their money—

THE CHAIRMAN

I am at a loss to see how the hon. Member is going to make this relevant to the subject under discussion.

MR. W. REDMOND

I think, Sir, you will acknowledge that I am in order when I say my object is to prove that Pigott's escape was with the connivance of the Royal Irish Constabulary, men who were set to guard him, and over whom the Chief Secretary has control. In whose interest, I ask, did Pigott escape? Was it in the interests of the defendants? Certainly not. Why, on the last day of his appearance in Court his cross-examination was going splendidly in their favour, and then he suddenly disappeared, although supposed to be guarded by two Royal Irish Constables. Had the case not been one of a forger and perjurer, who had swindled the Times out of £2,000, but rather of some unfortunate Member of Parliament who made a speech in Ireland protesting against evictions, and against whom there was but one-tenth of a shadow of the guilt laid to the charge of Pigott, would he have got to Paris or Madrid with so much ease? No; he would have been arrested before he had got ten yards from the Courts of Justice, and lodged in Scotland Yard. We have heard a good deal about the alertness of the Irish detectives in arresting Irish Members of Parliament; but we are told that Pigott escaped, because, forsooth, our side did not take steps to detain him. I say it was the business of the Chief Secretary to have prevented Pigott's escape, and it was a lucky thing for the right hon. Gentleman, and for everyone concerned in this vile plot, that Pigott did disappear. It would be interesting to know whether Pigott would have committed suicide if the Times agent had kept faith with him, and given him the money he asked for. Had this been done, we might have had the whole story of the truth of the matter, and have heard how Pigott was bribed by the Irish Government and the Times into coming over to support the case got up against the Irish Members. Under these circumstances, I think that for cool—I do not want to use an unparliamentary expression—for cool audacity, the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, that we are chargeable with Pigott's escape because we did not guard him, is unequalled. It was the business of the Government to have prevented his escape, and he would not have escaped had it not been that his escape was opportune and convenient for the right hon. Gentleman and those who have acted with him in this matter. All over the country, from north to south and east to west, the Chief Secretary has done and caused things to be done which have brought him into a notoriety never enjoyed by any other Chief Secretary for Ireland. What I have to complain of particularly is the changing of the venue in certain cases. My friend the Member for Sligo referred to what is going on in Donegal, where martial law prevails; where positively a man cannot lay himself quietly in his bed without the fear of being visited by a party of soldiers, and where no man can walk the road without being asked for his pass by some miserable, half-illiterate sub-constable, who has been put into the position because he has made himself objectionable to the people. What do you do? Instead of giving the people a fair trial, you send prisoners from Fermanagh to a place like Enniskillen, where you deliberately cause juries to be packed. What took place the other day? It was rumoured that Father M'Fadden and the other prisoners taken for the death of this Inspector of Police, were to have the venue changed to Enniskillen. What takes place in Enniskillen? The Orange drum is beat, and all round Sub-Grand Masters and Grand Masters of the Orange Association summon their lodges. Orange magistrates, Orange grand-jurors, Orangemen of position in the county, come to this Orange meeting, and they speak in terms of the utmost violence of the unfortunate death of District Inspector Martin. They speak of the atrocious character of those who caused his death, and at the end of all this oratory they wind up with the significant information to their audience and to the people of the country not to forget that these men are to be tried by a jury in the town of Enniskillen. As soon as that information is given, the Orangemen disperse to their homes, and carried the information through the county. In that way the feelings of the Orangemen have been worked upon, and you may be quite sure that if Father M'Fadden and the other prisoners are to be tried at Enniskillen, there will be a jury jolly well packed, and in all probability half a dozen of these unfortunate men, who I am sure never saw District Inspector Martin, will be hanged. Will the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary take notice of this Orange feeling, and will he issue orders to these Orange Deputy Lieutenants and Justices? "Will he follow the example of his predecessor, who, when I brought a similar case under his notice, that of an Orange magistrate leading 300 men in military array against a peaceful meeting which I was addressing, struck him from the Commission? Again, I want to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman particularly to the claims for compensation made by certain people in Ireland for alleged injuries. A miserable man—a Head Constable in the County of Wexford—said that his eyes were injured, and that he could not see to work, though immediately after cross-examination he was able to take notes and write down the addresses of persons! This man has got £500 compensation, and I think a more atrocious piece of robbery than that was never perpetrated; and I take the liberty of advising the people of that district most earnestly to resist if money is levied for such a purpose as this. It really means that if a constable behaves with special atrociousness in Ireland, and he gets a scratch or a crooked look, he will be rewarded by the grant of £500. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, with his usual attention to public affairs, has gone out. I certainly think, after the specimen we have had to-night of his conduct, that we ought to reduce his salary by one half, or three-quarters at least. [The Chief Secretary for Ireland here returned.] I am glad to see that the threat of a further reduction has brought the right hon. Gentleman back. I want to know specifically about these' two cases—first, the Orange meeting in Enniskillen; and, secondly, the compensation of these men. And, thirdly, will he give us the names and addresses of the two wretched Irish constables who were sent to guard Pigott in Anderton's Hotel, and who allowed him to escape? Will the right hon. Gentleman take any action to bring these men to justice? Imagine what a great deal of trouble would have been spared if these two-constables, instead of winking at Pigott's escape, had arrested him. The right hon. Gentleman has got to account for the conduct of these two policemen. But not all the waters of the Atlantic will wash them clean. They are steeped up to the eyebrows, in connection with the Times, in this atrocious business. In all the transactions between England and Ireland, a viler, a blacker, or more atrocious plot was never heard of. Not only the Attorney General, but the Prime Minister, a nobleman—well, I do not know whether he is a nobleman or not—has not acknowledged he was wrong. The Prime Minister and everybody else, down to the Attorney General and the very smallest clerk in the office of Mr. Soames, solicitor to the Times, should confess and clear themselves. [Laughter.] Yes; and I certainly would advise the Attorney General to confess and make a clean breast of it. Unless from the Prime Minister down to the smallest clerk in Mr. Soames' office they acknowledge they were wrong, they will go down to history as men engaged in the greatest and vilest plot ever heard of.

An hon. MEMBER called attention to the fact that there are not 40 Members present. On the House being counted a quorum was found to be in attendance.

MR. MURPHY (Dublin, St. Patrick's)

Mr. Chairman, upon the Vote for the salary of the Chief Secretary the question of the whole administration of Ireland can very properly be raised, because the entire machinery of Government is under the control of the right hon. Gentleman. The highest, as well as the lowest, of the Irish officials take their instructions from the Chief Secretary. It is not at all necessary that he should issue instructions in the Gazette or by circular, because no secret society in the world conveys its wishes to its Members so surely and secretly as the hon. Gentleman conveys his wishes to his subordinates. The right hon. Gentleman, replying to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle, has to-night indulged in a great many strong epithets—epithets which struck me as being rather of the fishwife character; but the Chief Secretary scarcely attempted to meet the serious charge brought against him, the police force, and the magisterial party in Ire land, by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle submitted to the House a long list of instances taken from the evidence given before the Royal Commission, which proved beyond the possibility of dispute that Irish Resident Magistrates, Divisional Magistrates, and police have been for a considerable period engaged, not only in giving information to the Times, but in collecting evidence. The Chief Secretary only attempted to deal with two of the charges made, allowing the rest to go by default. He dealt with the case of the visiting of Tracy by Head Constable Preston, and the case of the visiting of Walsh by Inspector Alan. The right hon. Gentleman denied that Alan tried to influence Walsh by telling him that a certain prosecution in connection with a criminal fraud upon an insurance company would not be proceeded with against him if he would come over to England and give evidence for the Times. The Chief Secretary scoffed at the suggestion, because, he said, it was not in the power of the Inspector to promise Walsh immunity in respect of an offence committed against a Liverpool insurance company. But it must be remembered that the offence was committed in one of the western towns of Ireland, and that it was in that place and not in Liverpool that the prosecution in respect of the offence would have taken place. The argument of the right hon. Gentleman on that point, therefore, was utterly worthless. It is perfectly notorious in Ireland that the whole machinery of the Government—the whole of the police and magisterial forces—have been engaged in assisting the Times, not merely doing it in a legitimate way, but going the greatest lengths they can, in order to induce people to give evidence which would be adverse to the Irish Members, and to the other persons charged by the Times. The Chief Secretary has laid down a proposition that it is the business of the Government to supply all information in their possession for the purposes of this investigation. All that is quite true, but it must be borne in mind that the object of this inquiry is to consider charges and allegations made by the Times newspaper against certain Members of this House and others. It must be assumed that when the Times made the charges and allegations they had some foundation for the charges and allegations they made, and, therefore, I submit it was not the business of the Government to go beyond giving the Times whatever information they asked for. It was not the business of Government to volunteer information to the Times—to volunteer evidence which the Times could not possibly know anything about at the time they published their articles. Now let me refer to the evictions which have taken place at Falcarragh, and to the resistance made by the people at those evictions, resulting in the trial at Enniskillen before Judge Johnson, It was proved at the trial that the bailiffs who were employed to execute the decrees of possession were not the ordinary bailiffs who had been hitherto, under all previous Acts of Parliament, employed in similar circumstances. I have been told that under the Act of 1887 a landlord, when he has got a decree of possession, is entitled, contrary to the practices under all previous legislation, to appoint his own bailiff. That may be good law, but I submit to the Solicitor General for Ireland that it is a most inexpedient thing that such a proceeding should be encouraged. In the case I refer to, it was proved that a most disgraceful and scandalous scene took place at the evictions. At the present time there are certain people, a kind of freebooters, engaged in carrying out evictions. These men do not go in the professional manner that ordinary bailiffs employed by a sheriff would do, but they go like a pack of freebooters in an enemy's country, and behave themselves accordingly. The men employed in the Falcarragh evictions were not satisfied to take the houses by assault, or by any other of the methods employed by regular bailiffs, but they commenced a cannonade or fusilade with stones at the houses whenever the people presented themselves at the windows. The result was that many people were seriously hurt. Her Majesty's mail cart happened to be passing by and a passenger was struck by a stone thrown by an emergency man. The passenger applied to the Resident Magistrate for redress, but that gentleman refused to take any action in the matter. I mention this in order to urge on the Government the desirability of acting upon and enforcing the suggestions that Judge Johnson made at the trial. He said, in passing sentence on the prisoners, that, when charging the Grand Jury, he was under the impression that the writs had been addressed to the Sheriff, instead of to obscure and irresponsible persons; and he expressed a strong opinion that in all such cases it would be most desirable that the writ should be addressed to the sheriff of the county. The reason of this opinion was quite obvious. I hope that, although landlords are quite within their right in employing these men, when the forces of the Crown are applied for in order to assist in carrying out evictions, the Government, under such circumstances as those I have narrated, will consider the very wise suggestions of Judge Johnson, and will hesitate before they send the military and police, and thereby give their sanction to such disgraceful and outrageous proceedings as took place at Falcarragh. I pass now to questions relating to what is called the material interest of the country. When the Government came into power a few years ago, one of the great planks in their platform was a Local Government for Ireland, similar to English Local Government. In addition to that, Ireland was to have a great scheme of public works. Years have passed, and the only outcome of the promises of the Government has been a scheme for drainage, which was brought in last year by the Chief Secretary in the form of Private Bills. It is true, they were read a first time, but no serious effort was made to get them passed. The fact that objection was raised to the Bills being taken after 12 o'clock at night was made a great handle of in the country. No less a personage than the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself spoke of the alleged obstruction of business, and pointed out that the Irish Members were responsible for the absence of the material development of Ireland. I characterize that as an utter and hollow sham, because, when the Bills were introduced, they were not introduced with the intention of their being passed. I believe that the Bills were utterly inadequate and insufficient for the object they were supposed to have. In my opinion they were merely intended as a sop to the people, who were expecting the Government to fulfil their pledges. As a matter of fact, the introduction of the Bills has had a very injurious effect upon the material development of Ireland. There are, at the present time, in force in Ireland some very useful Drainage Acts. They are capable of great improvement, no doubt, and would be improved if the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Public Works were carried out. But since the Government promised legislation in a direction opposite to the recommendations of the Royal Commission, the result is that, whereas in former years certain work was being done every year, under the existing Drainage Acts, since the Government intimated their intention of legislating in respect of drainage, the whole of the operation of existing Acts has been suspended. While no new legislation has been passed, the existing Acts are now practically at a standstill. The whole scheme of the Barrow Drainage will be a fiasco, and when it is perfected the public and the Government will wish that it had never been commenced. Only quite recently the scheme was condemned at a public meeting in the Queen's County. I submit that, for all practical purposes, it is out of the power of anyone to properly criticize the scheme before the Committee of this House or of the House of Lords, and to submit that the Bill can be much more satisfactorily dealt with on the Second Reading in this House, where the opinions of many persons acquainted with the subject can be taken. I trust that we shall have an opportunity of considering it on the Second Heading, and that we shall not be treated as we were last year by the Chief Secretary throwing the scheme at us after 12 o'clock at night, and telling us that if it was not discussed then it would not be considered at all. With regard to the general policy of the Chief Secretary, I contend that it has been a complete failure. Even those who sympathize with the Party with which the right hon. Gentleman is connected in Ireland, and who originally used to be loud in their praises of the heroic action of the right hon. Gentleman, have learned to considerably modify the eulogistic terms in which they speak of him. The condition of things between the people and the police is infinitely worse than it ever was in the whole of my experience—a result directly to be attributed to the policy of exasperation adopted by the right hon. Gentleman.

MR. HANDEL COSSHAM (Bristol, E.)

I think it the duty of English Members to take part in this discussion, seeing that the matter is one which affects us all. The Police Force of Ireland is paid for out of the National Exchequer; therefore I think it is the duty of English Members to criticize the action of the Chief Secretary with regard to that force; and I am bound to say, from the close examination I have been able to give the subject, I have come to the conclusion that the policy of the right hon. Gentleman in this matter has been completely destructive of the interests of the country. The Ministry have their own policy with regard to the Government of Ireland and we have ours, and it is for experience to show which is right; but the position of affairs has lately very much widened by the indiscriminate use of the Irish Police in connection with the Special Commission now sitting in the Strand. If it has come to this—that the Police Forces in this country are to be used for the purpose of attacking and blackening the characters of Members of this House—I do not know who is safe. The Government stand charged with using the Executive Forces of the Crown for the purpose of blackening the character of a Party in this House; and it is not enough to say they have not succeeded in it, for, as a matter of fact, the result has been to blacken themselves instead of their opponents. Worse than this, the conduct of the Chief Secretary has been completely demoralizing to the Police Force itself, for what can be more demoralizing than to use the Police Force to advance a cause which is founded upon forgery and perjury? The whole thing is demoralizing, not only to the cause itself, but to the people governed. The Police Force of Ireland has cost us an enormous sum of money, and this comes home to the people of England. I, for one, object to my constituents being charged to keep up a system such as the Chief Secretary is now carrying out. His policy is irritating to the people. The object of a Government should be to cement the people to themselves and to the law; but the policy at present guiding the Irish Administration is exactly the reverse—it is one which irritates the people; and history shows us that more Empires have been wrecked by maladministration of that sort than by any obstinacy on the part of the people. So far as the Amendment before the Committee is concerned, I cordially support it; and if I have any fault to find with it, it is that it is too modest, and does not propose to reduce the salary of the Chief Secretary by a sufficient sum. I should have preferred the Amendment if it had proposed to reduce the right hon. Gentleman's salary by half the amount, for, even with half his salary, I should hold he was overpaid for his present misgovernment of Ireland. I trust that the effect of this discussion will be to alter the position in which we stand in respect of the use of the forces of the Crown in Ireland. I am convinced that if the people of England only knew how their money was being squandered in this respect in order to support the Irish landlords and an oppressive Administration, that the Chief Secretary would not occupy his present position ten minutes longer. If the country were polled to-morrow, unquestionably to-morrow would be the last day of the existence of the present Government. Evictions have been carried out in Ireland which have resulted in the death of persons evicted, and I maintain that the conduct of the Government of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary is stained with crimes like that. I maintain that, for one man who has died in Ireland from any attempt to break the law, ten have been killed by evictions. On behalf of my constituents, I declare that we object to the use of the forces of the Crown at these evictions, and for backing up the Times in its policy of forgery and lying.

MR. HARRIS (Galway, E.)

The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary has referred to the man Tracy in an insinuating manner. Well, if he had any charge to make against the man, or if there was anything behind what he was saying, the proper course for him to have pursued was to have put his facts before the House like a man. I do not know that anyone has ever been worse treated by the Irish Office than I myself, with regard to papers seized in my house. I was subpœnaed to produce certain papers, and I had not got them, as they had been destroyed. Many of them were of no value, and even these that were of value were not my property, but the property of persons who had corresponded with me, so I thought it my duty to destroy them. But the Government did not destroy the copies they had, and as soon as the Special Commission was opened they were produced for the use of the Times' lawyers. I do not say that the Government were not justified in their action—at all events in producing some of these letters, if they threw light on the inquiry, but in giving up these private documents the Government should have submitted them to the Judges, and not to the Times, to be garbled and used in any manner the Times' counsel thought proper. There was any amount of whispering in the Court about the seriousness of the matter in my letters; and the Attorney General, in his long, dull, stupid speech, which was a hybrid between a churchman's and a lawyer's, made an enormous deal of the matter. The Attorney General in this way fished to see if he could get informers to prop up the case of the Times by making accusations for which there was not a scintilla of foundation. I say, Sir, that conduct such as this is calculated to bring not only the Government into contempt, but the law of the land. There was nothing in the case against me, except evidence which the Attorney General extracted from perjured informers, and which would not have been listened to even by a Dublin jury. If the Government were anxious that a fair investigation should be made, why did they not call the Resident Magistrates and others from the district in which I live, whom they brought over to give evidence on behalf of the Times, to give evidence as to my character and antecedents. The Attorney General shelters himself behind his brief, but he got his brief from himself; and if he had looked at the matter as a man of honour, surely he would have seen that there was no foundation for the infamous charges made against my character. With regard to another matter last August I received an invitation from my constituents to go down to the district of Portumna. The complaint was raised that there were no efforts being made to get up subscriptions for the defence of those who were being prosecuted by the Times before the Commission, and, having a desire to address my constituents on the subject, I went down to Portumna. As we were acquainted with the practices of the Constabulary in connection with popular demonstrations in Ireland, we came to the conclusion that if our meeting were advertised there would be a Proclamation from Dublin Castle to prohibit it. The result was that we decided upon sending round a circular to the people to the effect that I intended to address a meeting in the open air at the chapel; and as the police were in the habit of resorting to the chapel yard on Sunday, though the meeting was in one sense private, it was public so far as the police were concerned. There was not time for a Proclamation to come down from Dublin Castle forbidding the meeting. Well, the meeting was held, and we intended to talk about the magistrates and the Chief Secretary and the Government, and all that, without the slightest interference on the part of the police. We also should have introduced the question of subscriptions to meet the Times' charges. Now, if that had been kept in the background we should not have been molested, and the police would not have violated law and order as they did. No sooner, however, did I get on the platform than Mr. Reid, the District Inspector, and his police came up, armed to the teeth, with a dreadful look on their faces, and disturbed us. I asked if he had got any order from Dublin Castle to stop the meeting. I said we had a perfect right to hold the meeting; but, said he, "If you are not off the ground in a short time I will let you see." Of course we had to yield to the argument of hard steel, and we then proceeded with our procession, break, cars, and band into unproclaimed Tipperary, where we had, instead of the small gathering we originally contemplated, a monster meeting. Now I would ask the Chief Secretary, or the civil, quietly-speaking Solicitor General, whether the tactics pursued by the police are not only inefficient for their own purposes; but, remembering the condition of things that exists, are they not likely to lead to scenes of bloodshed? We hear much of outrage and assassination and incitement to violence, and many a hasty word uttered on a platform is referred to in this House; but if the account were fairly balanced, I think the danger of incitement would not be found on our side. There was another instance. Father Cohen's car was to be sold for rent, and I, with my hon. Friend the Member for South Tipperary, decided to have a demonstration, and obtain the means for giving the reverend gentleman a new car. Accordingly a meeting was announced. On this occasion Mr. Reid took the precaution to write to Dublin, and so we had the usual Proclamation with "God save the Queen," and here let me say how I regret that the name of the highest lady in the land should be so continually dragged into these proceedings. You cry out often that Her Majesty's Writs will not run. What does that mean but that Her Majesty's subjects object to extermination? Well, this time we had a Proclamation staring us in the face, but it stated that no meeting should be allowed to disturb the sale, and so we determined there should be no disturbance. The sale was over, and then we decided in a Constitutional manner to hold our meeting and express our sympathy with Father Cohen. But Mr. Reid came to the front again, talked about illegality and proclamations; and, though we argued the point, in the result we yielded to the bayonet argument on his side, and once again formed procession and headed for Tipperary, this time not so for off. We started, but on reaching the bridge we found our further progress barred by a line of police with bayonets. There we were, a peaceful procession of people about to express our sympathy with a local priest, acting perfectly legally, not insulting or meddling with any human being, doing as the law required, going into an unproclaimed district; but there on the bridge were the fixed bayonets before us. O'Connor and I walked on in front. Mr. Reid, the District Inspector, came up in great haste, there was some whispering and "colloguing" among the police, and then we were allowed to pass. And so we had a demonstration ten times more effective than if we had been allowed to carry out our original intention. I do not know if the Chief Secretary has any explanation of these things and I do not much care. You may hear him speak for hours in this House; but go to Galway and you will see the state of the facts which I have described, but in mere outline, the skeleton. If I were to go into the subject of evictions, and show you how the whole efforts of the Government are directed against these poor mountaineers, to turn them out of the homes their own efforts have made comparatively comfortable out of a desert waste—if I were to go into that and show you how these homes are torn down, how Her Majesty's soldiers, the Scotch Fusiliers, with bagpipes playing, go about levelling these homes, doing all this in the name of the Queen—if I went into this, I should also say that, though all the laws made since the time of Moses, though all the powers that ever ruled mankind, though all the writers that ever wrote, said differently, the people are right in defending their homes.

MR. FLYNN (Cork, N.)

In the course of the debate this evening the attention of the Committee has been called in a very marked manner by the forcible speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle to the manner in which the Irish police have been placed at the disposal of the managers of the Times, and not only the police, but Resident Magistrates and all the paraphernalia of law and order in Ireland. As so much has been said and so well on the matter, I will not detain the Committee with my observations upon it at any length. What I have to say is by my calling attention to the manner in which, directly and indirectly, the forces of the, Crown in Ireland, and more especially the Resident Magistrates and the Constabulary, have used those who have endeavoured to collect and bring forward evidence on behalf of the defendants in the celebrated Times case. My hon. Friend (Mr. Harris) has referred to Galway, and to meetings called for the purpose of collecting subscriptions for the defendants, and the manner in which these meetings have been ruthlessly suppressed by the Constabulary; and one might have thought that, if only to preserve an outward show of decent impartiality, the police in such instances would have received censure from the Chief Secretary. But the same thing, and that in a much more offensive manner, has occurred from time to time in County Kerry. We hear much declamation about equal laws and equal justice; but what can the outraged peasant of Kerry think of a system which to his knowledge from reading, and from his personal knowledge of local events, places the whole machinery of the police unreservedly at the disposal of Times' agents, while, on the other hand, meetings to promote subscriptions for the support of the defence of their own Members against the charges made by the Times are dispersed? Before the House adjourned at Christmas the conduct of officials in County Kerry was brought before the notice of the Chief Secretary. I regret to say mention of Kerry has been frequently before the Commission, and a number of outrages have been referred to in the evidence of Resident Magistrates, Commissioners, or whatever they are called. The information given was brought forward under circumstances of great suspicion, into which I will not now enter, but of which we may hear something when the Commission re-assembles. Upon the real or alleged outrages in Kerry the Times case appeared very strong; but when my hon. Friend (Mr. Harrington), who now lies under the barbarous sentence of six months' imprisonment, directed, in association with friends who know the localities, inquiries to be made and information to be collected relative to the issues before the Commission, the persons they employed in this duty were hunted by the police from place to place, arrested in many instances, and sent to prison. Three young men from the town of Killarney on a Sunday morning were engaged in collecting evidence for the purpose I have described. They carried with them certain tabulated forms to be filled up with reference to such debates as rentals, valuations, the value of improvements made by the tenantry, and other matters relevant to the inquiry now proceeding. From house to house these young men were followed by the police, and at last, while they were engaged in taking down information in the house of a tenant, the police insisted upon entering. The tenant endeavoured' to prevent the trespass, and the young men explained their business; yet, notwithstanding, these young men were arrested on the spot, taken to the nearest police barracks, and on the next morning sent to gaol. We asked for an explanation of the circumstances here, and after that process of interrogation, which Conservative papers call "badgering Ministers," we had the satisfaction of a declaration that the papers taken from these young men would be restored, and that if no other charges were formulated against them they would be released in due course. There were really no charges whatever, though there was the usual attempt to trump up a charge of intimidation. It was, however, perfectly clear that the business of these men was collecting evidence as to the condition and treatment of their countrymen; but we have never heard from that day to this that the Chief Secretary has caused any inquiry to be made into this matter, no word of apology to the men unjustly arrested, or of censure for the police who behaved in this way. All that was done was the return of the papers seized. Does not the Committee conceive that police intimidation of this kind may go a long way to provoke violence in Kerry? If the Irish Administration had any conception of the elementary laws of administration, they would have instituted a searching inquiry into such matters when brought to their knowledge, and have given specific orders to the Constabulary not to interfere with, except to facilitate, the work upon which these men were engaged. Similar things have occurred in other parts of Kerry, and persons engaged in collecting evidence have found it necessary to receive what is equivalent to that passport which now obtains in Donegal giving to the local police an explanation of their mission and satisfy the official mind of their bona fides. Is not this a scandalous condition of things, another proof—a negative proof— added to the positive proofs brought forward—that the Government, instead of acting impartially, have used all their energies to support the Times, whenever it was possible, to burke and stifle inquiry, and to prevent the elucidation of truth on the evidence brought before the Commission?

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

I was very much struck by an observation of the Chief Secretary in defending the action of an Irish Inspector with regard to charges made against a man named Walsh, and he defended him on the ground that Inspector Alan discovered evidence connected with Walsh in the course of a secret investigation held under the 1st section of the Crimes Act. Now, the moment I heard that, my mind was directed to finding out what amount of accuracy his statement contained. I remembered that there is a provision in the Act requiring the publication in the Dublin Gazette of quarterly Returns showing the number of inquiries held under the 1st section, the place where held, the hours of inquiry, the number of days occupied, the number of summonses issued, the names of witnesses examined, the number and names of persons committed for contempt, and the result of such inquiries. I therefore assumed that, as the Act is only two years old, the law would have been complied with. But will the Committee believe that the advocates of law and order—the gentlemen who proclaim their anxiety to give us the letter of the law—for the two years the Statute has been in force have never complied with the law? Here is the Dublin Gazette pure as a virgin of all information on the subject of secret inquiries during the last two years. We are, therefore, unable to check the statement of the right hon. Gentleman as to the inquiry, and may assume that no such inquiry was held, or else we must assume that the law has not been complied with. We spent months or weeks over the Secret Inquiry Clause, of which, I daresay, Mr. Courtney, you have painful recollection, and at last we got the Government to assent to certain provisions on this subject; but I have searched the Gazette, and as I say, I find no record. Then I may ask the Committee, if we have a Government that will break a Statute like this, which is in the public mind and before the public eye, what may these proceedings be in private which we have no means of checking, what illegality may they not commit in furthering the interests of a gentleman like Mr. Walter and a journal like the Times? That is a subject which no doubt will be foundation of inquiry later on. I turn now to other matters in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. I will take this case of Walsh as a sample of the veracious, the candid manner in which the right hon. Gentleman deals with a subject before the House. He said it was out of the power of the District Inspector in any way to intimidate the witness Walsh in connection with the secret inquiry which the right hon. Gentleman dragged in by the hair and horns—so to speak. He said it was impossible for Inspector Alan to intimidate Walsh, though he said Walsh confessed that he was a fraudulent person; that he had been guilty of various thefts and embezzlements; that it was quite impossible that the Inspector, Alan' could offer the man any guarantee of immunity, because he was an Irish District Inspector, and the crime was committed at Liverpool. Will the Committee believe there is not a shred of foundation for that statement? It is true that the head office of the insurance company who would be the prosecutors was in Liverpool; but it would be a new doctrine of law to say that a man was to be tried in Liverpool for an offence committed in Ireland because the company against whom he committed the offence had their head office in Liverpool. I suppose the right hon. Gentleman got that idea into his head through having had so much to do with changes of venue. The right hon. Gentleman is not a bit abashed or ashamed; and, of course, hon. Members below the Gangway opposite are as proud of him as ever. Well, if Members on this side were detected day after day, and night after night, in making statements which turned out on examination to be without foundation, Irish constituents, who are accused of sending men into this House without regard to their honour and character, would, I believe, quickly dismiss such a man from his position. The right hon. Gentleman has no apology to offer or mitigation to suggest, but rides off on the statement, which, he said, showed that the right hon. Member for Newcastle must he wrong, that District Inspector Alan told him so; and here someone said why was he not called on the point? Whereupon the right hon. Gentleman, receiving inspiration from that distinguished fount, the learned Attorney General, said: "He could not be examined on the point because it was not relevant to the issue." Then, what becomes of the statement that we could have examined Mr. Soames as to the way in which he got up his evidence? I myself tried to cross-examine Mr. Soames, and was at once met by the chief ally of the Times on the Bench—namely Mr. Commissioner Smith!—["Order!"]

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! The hon. Member must withdraw that remark.

MR. T. M. HEALY

I respectfully submit that I am not speaking of any Judges of the land, but of Royal Commissioners. ["Withdraw!"] They are Royal Commissioners appointed by Statute, and are not even mentioned in the Act as Judges. They are mentioned in this way—"Sir Archibald Levin Smith, or Sir something Smith, and Sir something Day." ["Order!" and "Withdraw!"] These Commissioners have not the power of sentence possessed by the Judges, and I respectfully suggest that I am entitled to deal with them as Commissioners. But, of course, I will withdraw if you, Sir, rule that I am out of order. ["Withdraw!"]

THE CHAIRMAN

I must call upon the hon. Member to withdraw the remark.

MR. T. M. HEALY

I will do so without any more words, and will say that I was at once met by Mr. Justice Smith with the inquiry, "How is that relevant to any issue?" In the same way I meet the suggestion of the Chief Secretary when he says that we could have cross-examined Mr. Soames as to how he got up his evidence. I meet him in this way, "How, and in what way, is this relevant to the issue?" The Committee must remember that the witness Walsh stated that he was compelled by Sub-Inspector Alan to come forward to give evidence against the local priests in County Mayo, because, if he did not, he would be prosecuted for felony and fraud. In fact, there was not a single witness who came forward for the Times, of the informer class, who was not either an ex-highwayman, a man who had suffered penal servitude, or was excused from doing so by the police. The Irish Secretary has, I believe, given an answer on that point. He says the fact that they were unable to obtain evidence was owing to the melancholy state of Ireland. Well, according to the Treasury Bench, Ireland is always in one of two conditions—it is always either in a melancholy condition or a condition of great prosperity. If they want to show how the Crimes Act is working, then Ireland is happy, prosperous, and contented. Her Majesty's Judges are being presented with white gloves all over the country, people are settling down, cattle are a pound a head dearer, and the banks have two millions more of investments; but, on the other hand, if we want Local Government, or any concession from the Ministers which will benefit the country, then Ireland is in a most terrible condition—a most melancholy condition. When we say, "Why do not you get proper and suitable evidence?" Ireland gets into a "melancholy condition!" I should have thought that, under the right hon. Gentleman's wise administration, Ireland would have thrown over all its evil practices, and that the law once more would have re-asserted itself in all its majesty, and that, with the power and intelligence of such Resident Magistrates as Captain Segrave, whose firmness, courage, and independence are above all praise, intimidation had been for ever laid at rest. But, oh! that is not the case at all. For the purposes of the Times' inquiry, intimidation is so rampant that the widow of a murdered man is afraid to come forward to face a murderer; that is the result of two and-a-half years of this administration. One-sixth of the period of 20 years' resolute government has expired which was to restore Ireland to the golden rule, and yet these are the extraordinary admissions which come from the Front Bench opposite. I trust the Liberal Unionists will take note of this admission—that law and order have absolutely no friends in Ireland except the police. Probably, this is an admission made by the right hon. Gentleman in one of his unguarded moments—probably, the Committee will do well to correct the Chief Secretary's speech of Thursday by the Chief Secretary's speech of Monday; and, probably, if the Committee could remember what the right hon. Gentleman says on Monday, it would come to the conclusion that his speech on Monday requires no reply from us. It is because the Committee and the House has a knack of forgetting on Monday what was said on Thursday, and of forgetting on Thursday what was said on Monday, that it is necessary for us to make these exposures in this House. So much for the Walsh part of the ease. With regard to the Shannon incident, the Irish Secretary stated that he was no more responsible for Mr. Shannon than any Member on the Opposition side of the House. Is that true or not? Who admitted Shannon into Maryborough Prison? Did he get in over the wall? The right hon. Gentleman gave him the order to see the convict Delaney, who had been sentenced to death and reprieved, and who was also an ex-highwayman, and therefore the most suitable witness for the Times. Shannon saw Delaney and administered the oath to him. Oh, Sir, the value of the oath of Delaney! What a sweet savour it must have had under the nostrils of the Attorney General! I am sure the suggestion that Shannon should get Delaney to give the additional sanctity of an oath to his statement emanated from the pious brain of the Attorney General. There was in it that touch of purity, that determination to do everything that was noble and becoming to the Leader of the Bar. If we could only probe this matter, we should find, I am persuaded, that Shannon took into Maryborough the Family Bible of the Attorney General. Shannon had access to the prisoner Delaney; when, however, I tried to see Mr. W. O'Brien in Clonmel Gaol, I was refused admission. But then Mr. O'Brien had the misfortune not to be an Invincible, and, not being a Times witness, I and a solicitor, also a Member of this House, were refused permission to see Mr. O'Brien for the purposes of his defence until the matter attracted the attention of Mr. Baron Dowse. That was fair play, fair dealing, and impartial conduct on the part of the Chief Secretary in the right hon. Gentleman's own opinion, but it is not so in mine. I now pass from the Shannon incident. The House will remember the splendid way in which the Irish Secretary gets over all his difficulties. He certainly has adopted most unfair tactics in this House, his manner of getting over his difficulties being altogether without precedent—a manner in which I have never seen any official try to get over difficulties before. He says, "Bring your charges," and when we cite four or five different cases, the right hon. Gentleman selects the most trivial, and gives a sort of reply to it, more or less indifferent, and then says, "With regard to the other cases, I know nothing about them." That is the style of the right hon. Gentleman. He does not even take the trouble to get up his facts with regard to these Irish cases. Surely it is due to his character as a statesman that he should treat these matters in a more solid fashion. Surely he should give more value for the handsome salary he receives—though, of course, we know that it is on this side of the House that all the paid agitators sit. We are sure on this side of the House that the £5,000 a-year the right hon. Gentleman draws is always dropped into the poor-box. I maintain that we are entitled in these cases to a distinct answer with regard to the charges we bring, and it is in the ability of the right hon. Gentleman to give these answers that we can test his statements as to the desire of the Government to give real assistance to the Special Commission. We have asked how it is that the police have provided for their informers first-class and third-class railway tickets; and it is fair to ask, if it is only the function of the police to assist in bringing forward cases, why do they make themselves the caretakers and pilots of the Times' witnesses? The Times' informers are as much personally conducted to the Royal Commission Court as a party of Cook's tourists are by those who take them round to see the sights. What, then, comes of this pretended impartiality on the part of the Government? The trick about subpœnas does not avail in the case of Mr. Home, the Resident Magistrate, who has just been promoted 37 steps at a time for taking down the statements of witnesses as the Times proofs. I asked the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary a question today about Mr. Horne—as to his promotion—and the right hon. Gentleman was careful to answer one portion of the question and omit the most important part of it. May I now ask him for an answer? In addition to asking over how many of his seniors Mr. Home had been promoted, I asked how long was Mr. Home engaged in collecting the evidence was used by the Times before the Special Commission, but to that the right hon. Gentleman did not deign to give any reply. You cannot talk about subpœnas in the matter of Mr. Home. Here is an Irish Resident Magistrate, with a salary of £500 or £600 a-year, who is said to be of great value for the purposes of the detection of crime in Ireland, engaged in London preparing evidence for the Times. Now I rejoice to think that Mr. Home has been so successful in detecting crime; but is the Strand or Fleet Street a "disturbed district"? Is the Inns of Court Hotel a proper venue for the exercise of Mr. Home's great ability? Was it to take down the Times' proofs that he was brought over? As far as I can recollect, the evidence for the Times began on the 21st of October, but Mr. Horne was in London long before that time, and I should like to know when Mr. Horne did come? This system of issuing hundreds of subpœnas—throwing the net over all the Irish police barracks—is a transparent farce and humbug. I say you are defiling the avenues of the law and abusing judicial processes by bringing over these men on subpœna, and then never calling them or attempting to call them. You say, "Oh, they were brought over in obedience to subpœna!" But my answer is, the way to test that would have been for the right hon. Gentleman to give me the Return I asked for. I asked for a Return showing the number of policemen who had been brought over from Ireland, the number called, and the time those who were not called remained in London. That would have put the right hon. Gentleman to the test, but it was refused. Mr. Home might have been here on subpœna, but the subpœna was humbug, and I charge upon the Attorney General that he must have been concerned in a direct deception when he directed a whole series of subpœnas—["Order, order!"]—if, having issued those subpœnas, there was no intention of calling the witnesses.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir R. E. WEBSTER,) Isle of Wight

I never directed a single subpœna to be served.

MR. T. M. HEALY

I should like to know who advised the proofs? If the Attorney General did not direct the subpœnas to be served he failed in his duty, and did very little for the £1,500 he got on his brief. Who directed the subpœnas to the Irish constables? It is the duty of someone to advise the proofs, and, so far as I know, that duty is supposed to fall upon the senior counsel in the case. The hon. and learned Gentleman says he did not do that. Who, then, brought over these constables? How long were they here? If there was no intention of calling them, why did not the Irish Secretary take some steps to see that judicial process was not being abused in this way? Mr. Soames issued a circular, in which he informed the Times' witnesses that they would be served with subpœnas when their attendance was required in London. Why was that circular not sent to Captain Plunkett and Captain Slack? Now, in the month of March, the Government are very anxious that it should not be supposed that they are rubbing skirts with the Times, and would have us to understand that they are conducting business on the water-tight compartment system. They wish us to believe that the Government have nothing to say to the Attorney General, and that the Attorney General has nothing to say to the Government. Captain Plunkett, Mr. Andrew Reid, the Inspector General of Constabulary, told me on one occasion, had been in London for several weeks past. I asked him, "Does not his attendance here dislocate the public service?" and his reply was, "Oh, yes, it does, and we wish he were back in Dublin." Hon. Members will find that in the Blue Book relating to the incident which took place one night here in the Lobby. Fearing that Captain Plunkett was dying of ennui while here in London and found time hanging heavily on his hands in the evening, I was anxious that he should return to his official duties in Ireland, and so I asked how long Captain Plunkett had been absent from his duties, whether his pay continued during his absence, whether arrangements similar to those made with other persons subpœnaed by the Times, that witnesses should have notice when they were required, bad been made with him? The Solicitor General for Ireland, in reply, stated that, with the exception of a short interval, Captain Plunkett had been in London since the 22nd October; his examination, be it remembered, not taking place till February, so that at least one-third of the £1,000 a-year you are going to vote him to night be has no right to, as he was acting for and paid by the Times all the while. The Solicitor General for Ireland also said Captain Plunkett's pay continued during his absence, and it was unnecessary to give Captain Plunkett instructions; that the Government were most anxious to have him back in Ireland; but he was bound to remain in London in obedience to his subpœna, and the time of his examination was a matter over which be lad no control. This was before the discovery that Captain Plunkett's absence was a source of embarrassment to the Irish Government; that embarrassment was not discovered until the discovery of the Pigott frauds. It will thus be seen that so far back as December the attention of the Government was called to the needless absence of Captain Plunkett from Ireland, and to the fact that in the case of other Times' witnesses there was a notification that they need not attend until notice was sent. Why was not a similar course pursued with regard to Captain Plunkett? He was being kept here against the will and in spite of the wishes of the Government, just about as much as Le Caron was called in spite of their wishes, both of them having been subpœnaed and called by the Attorney General, who, if be bad not wished to have them here, would have refused to cause the Government the embarrassment which the Irish Government suffered by the absence of Captain Plunkett. When be was at last called Captain Plunkett had not a word to say, and if he said very much we should have published about him a letter that is not forged, and Captain Plunkett's continuance in the Public Service after the publication of that letter would have been about as precarious as that of Mr. O'Neill Segrave after the Government first learned what had happened in his case. But I will pass from this subject. Captain Plunkett may go back and earn his thousand a-year as far as I am concerned. I now come to Captain Slack. He was here for 60 days, and if anyone will turn to the evidence given by him and Captain Plunkett he will see that the pretence that these persons were really wanted for any genuine purpose is all nonsense, because the amount of the evidence they gave was nil—at any rate it contained nothing relevant to the issue. What they were here for was to put pressure on the Constabulary officers and privates, and also for the purpose of aiding in getting up the proofs wanted by the Times, just as much as Mr. Home was here for the purpose of directing the Times' proofs. With regard to the case of the man Tracy, the Chief Secretary says this man was visited by Head Constable Preston in Millbank Prison on a letter from Mr. Soames, and he gives as the reason for this visit that Tracey had been concerned in most serious and abominable crimes in Ireland. Now, if Tracy had been concerned in such crimes, why was he not tried for them? The Chief Secretary is probably under the idea that the man Tracy is in Millbank under sentence. Nothing of the kind; be could walk out of prison to-morrow were he so minded. The fact is that he is there of his own free will, and is kept there, in lavender, by the police, fed by them, and supplied with luxuries by them. Let us see what are the facts. What is the abominable crime Tracy has committed? Will the House believe that Tracy has been for months and months in prison in Ireland, at first in Sligo, and then in Belfast, where there was ample opportunity for the Irish Government to send Head Constable Preston to him, and finally in Millbank? And for what has he been in gaol all this time? He is in gaol because he refuses to find a £5 bail to be of good behaviour. And why was be called on to find a £5 bail? He was never brought before any Court, and never sentenced. If he were, I challenge the records of that Court. I challenge the production of the summons to which he appeared, and the sentence to which he was subjected. He was brought before one of the Resident Magistrates in a police barrack in secret, a pretended trial was gone through, and the man was committed to gaol with his own connivance, the imaginary £5 bail having been put upon him so that the police might have him under their thumbs at the time they might want his evidence, he being in the meantime supported in luxury, as far as a gaol affords luxury, in the matter of food, reading, and so on. That is the case of the man Tracy. What, then, becomes of the Chief Secretary's suggestion that Preston visited him in Millbank because his bosom was the repository of the darkest secrets of Irish crime? What ground is there for the suggestion that any attempt has been made to tamper with Tracy on the part of the Irish Members? Who was to tamper with him? Was he not under the Government lock and key? Nobody can get access to a prison except Shannon and Pigott—I beg pardon—and Mr. Soames. Who was it that was tampering with Tracy? I submit we are entitled to information on that point. For my part, I never heard of Tracy until about a month ago, and then I heard this man was placed under a pretended bail of £5, in secret, in a police barrack—the law providing that such cases should not be heard except in Petty Sessions, when the ordinary magistrates are able to sit. The Government raise up a tribunal when they want one just as a jury-mast is raised on board ship, and after a pretended trial and an imaginary bail, the man, in connivance with the Government, goes to prison. This man, I presume, is really an informer. I know nothing of him, except that I believe him to be as arrant a rascal as ever breathed, who has drawn money from the Times and is trying to draw money from us—which be will not get, as we are not such fools as Mr. Soames. That is the story of the man Tracy, and I ask what becomes of the charge that he was being tampered with by us; and what becomes of the suggestion that he was visited by Preston for some purpose connected with the detection of Irish crime? What, then, was Head Constable Preston doing in London? He was here for months, and you will to-night be voting his salary for doing duty for the Times. If we could only have brought forward one case of this kind, we should have proved up to the hilt connivance between the Government and the Times; but instead of one we bring forward scores, and they are met by the Irish Secretary saying be knows nothing about them. It is curious how retentive the Irish Secretary's memory is on some points, and how absent it is on others. I remember the other day I asked him a question about Inspector Webb, who had been kept here three or four months. The right hon. Gentleman is able to get all sorts of information when it is intended to cast a slur on a Member of this House, the Member for North Fermanagh, whom he described as "courting under a false name." How clear the right hon. Gentleman's information was upon that point. The right Gentleman thinks these are the ways and means of getting him a reputation for candid statesmanship, and to make his rule and government popular in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman has no ambition in this House and no ambition in Ireland except a policy of exasperation. His whole demeanour in this House and his whole policy in Ireland is planned and contrived with the view to exasperation. His statements in this House and his refusals of information are all of a piece, and whenever he cannot give any explanations, his excuse is simply, "I know nothing whatever upon the subject." I ask the House to consider whether, if this was any English, or even any Indian matter, this kind of manner would be tolerated? This House a century ago impeached its Ministers in India, for wrongs done on Indian subjects, and did not think it beneath it to occupy days and days, and months and months, and years and years, in a scrutiny of the misdeeds of its subordinates in India. And when we bring forward, not, it is true, charges of theft and charges of peculation, not charges of stealing mere cash or filthy lucre, but stealing from us our good name—when we expose the mean devices by which your policy is sullied, you have nothing to say except "I do not know"; and different newspapers have no other explanation to give the constituents except that Ministers are being badgered. Poor Ministers! If Ministers do not like being badgered, they have an easy remedy. Let them dissolve. I can promise the Chief Secretary that if he takes the opinion of the country on the question of his being badgered, he will never be badgered more. If he dislikes the operation, it is wonderful how simple is the cure and the remedy. And I now, Sir, invite him to address himself, with some other means than of putting forward the plea of ignorance, to the serious allegations of the Member for Newcastle; and, if he is unable to do so, I ask the House with what seriousness, with what face, with what reasonableness, can you ask us here to-night to vote the salaries of men who are implicated and "mixed up" with transactions as shady and as disgraceful as any that have stained the records of your action with the unfortunate people of the country of Ireland?

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. and learned Member who has just sat down appears to think that I object to what he calls being badgered—that is, having questions asked me from time to time; but he is entirely mistaken. I have always found that operation exceedingly agreeable. I do not know that I have very much to add to what I have said at all since I troubled the Committee last. Still, I think it only courteous to make some reply. The hon. Member for Northampton has moved to reduce the Vote for my salary by £500, and the chief ground for that reduction is that I am involved in this conspiracy with the Times and the publication of the forged letters. One piece of evidence for this is that I was responsible for allowing Pigott to make visits to a convict imprisoned for a long term for some dynamite or other crime. That question may be a very proper one to raise, but not against me, because Pigott did not visit a prisoner, directly or indirectly, in any prison under the control of the Irish Government. If anybody's salary is to be reduced for this proceeding it certainly is not mine. The hon. Member for Northampton, or some other hon. Member who spoke below the Gangway, appears to think that the Government are in some sense responsible for the escape of Pigott, because they alleged Pigott was under the charge of Irish policemen, who must have relaxed their care or he could not have escaped. That was a counter stroke to the question I put to the hon. Member for Northampton or others, as to how it came about that if Pigott confessed on Friday evening that he was a forger and perjurer, the persons to whom he confessed took no steps to have Pigott watched or arrested? What is the value of that counter-stroke of the hon. Member for Northampton? The Irish constable of whom he spoke he appears to think had some power of legal supervision over that man. That is not the case. As I am informed, Pigott had to pass to and from the Court day by day to give his evidence, such as it was, and in order to protect him from annoyance or mobbing a request was made, I suppose by Mr. Soames, but, at any rate, by nobody connected with the Irish Government, to the subpœnaed constables that they would do what they could to prevent Pigott's being mobbed or insulted. It was in no official capacity that they did that, nor had they the slightest right of any sort, kind, or description to watch Pigott when Pigott did not want to be watched. If he ought to have been watched, it was not the Irish constables who ought to have watched him, and the question still remains unanswered, how it came about, when Pigott confessed on Friday evening that he was a forger and perjurer, that no steps were taken to put the English—not the Irish—police on his track, and take care that Pigott did not escape.

*MR. BRADLAUGH

There is the case of Shannon, in Maryport Gaol. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman—

*MR. BALFOUR

I was going to say a word about Shannon, partly in connection with the hon. Member for Northampton, and partly in connection with the remarks of the hon. and learned Gentleman. Then the hon. and learned Member asked a question with regard to Captain Slacke and Captain Plunkett—I was about to say insinuated, but it does great injustice to the style of the hon. and learned Member to say that he ever insinuates: he does not stick at the broadest assertion. He told the House that the whole of that course of issuing subpœnas to Irish magistrates and constables to give evidence was all humbug. They were wanted not to give evidence, but to come to London to supervise witnesses; and he stated, when the Irish Government protested that they were put to great inconvenience by the absence of so large a number of constables from Ireland, that they were also humbugging. I can assure the hon. and learned Member that if he had been responsible for law and order in Ireland—an extreme hypothesis—the hon. and learned Member would have found it quite as inconvenient as I did to be deprived of the services for so long a period of so large a number of Irish constables. All I can say is, that the request of the Irish Government was not only fervent, but genuine. I am informed that they were kept because, from day to day, those who had the conduct of the Times' case intended to call them, though I presume incidents occurred in the course of the trial which prevented them giving their evidence. The hon. and learned Member must be aware of the fact that it is not always in the power of counsel to know at what period the services of particular witnesses may be required, and it was on account of that delay, for which certainly I, whose salary it is now proposed to reduce, am not responsible, that the services of those gentlemen were so long required in London. The hon. and learned Member told me that I admitted that Alan could not be cross-examined upon the action he had taken in regard to Walsh, and said, of course, the same rule applied to Mr. Soames and other persons who might have been called. I feel some diffidence in contesting a legal point with the hon. and learned Member, because the hon. and learned Member is a lawyer and I am not, but I am given to understand that, although it would have been impossible to call Alan for that purpose, still, when Mr. Soames got into the box and offered himself for examination and cross-examination as to the method in which he got every piece of evidence laid before the Court, it would have been entirely competent for the hon. Member for Longford, or any other hon. Members engaged in the case, to have subjected Mr. Soames to the very closest cross-examination as to the methods by which he obtained the evidence which he submitted to the Court. Then, Sir, the hon. Member was very indignant about the action taken with regard to Tracy, and said he had never heard of him. That is very likely. But Tracy was a man who had been well known to the police for a long time. I do not mean to insinuate by that that he was a man who ought to have been known to the hon. Member, but what I meant to point out is, that Tracy has been engaged, as the Government know from many sources, in the commission of serious and organized crime in the West of Ireland. I repeat what I have stated before, that Tracy volunteered information in Ireland to the police on the subject of crime to which he had been a party, implicating also other persons. Soon after that he was denounced in the neighbourhood of the prison in which he was confined as an informer. Thereupon he was removed to Belfast, and the police attempted to obtain a fuller confession from him. He was removed at the suit of the Times to London, but it was in pursuit of the inquiry begun at the instance of Tracey himself that Head Constable Preston acted as he did. That appears to be a clear and lucid statement. As I understand, there would have been no harm in Preston's visiting Tracey on behalf of the Times, But, as a matter of fact, Preston did not visit him on behalf of the Times, or for the purpose of forwarding the Times' case, but for the purpose of making further investigation into the important matters with regard to which Tracy had already given partial information. I admit, of course, that the permission to make the visit was given on the application of Mr. Soames. Not only has the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary stated that in this House, but I have stated it myself also.

MR. T. M. HEALY

Will the right hon. Gentleman tells us what Tracy was in gaol for? And for how long?

*MR. BALFOUR

I believe he was in prison in default of finding bail in connection with a charge of intimidation and threatening life.

DR. TANNER

The Primrose League?

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! The hon. Member is not entitled to interrupt.

*MR. BALFOUR

Now I come to the case of Shannon and his visit to Delaney, a matter which has been brought before the Committee both by the hon. Member for Northampton and the hon. and learned Member for North Longford. The hon. Member for Northampton has admitted that I was not responsible for Mr. Shannon's actions, since Mr. Shannon was in no way dependent on the Government, either of Ireland or England, but he appears to think that I ought to have my salary cut down £500, because when Mr. Shannon did visit this man in gaol he administered an oath to him, and behaved in a manner that did not meet with the approval of the hon. Member for Northampton. Now I do not know how far Mr. Shannon was justified in administering an oath. I believe that although it might not have been an illegal oath, it might have been improper, but it was not administered by my direction, or by a servant of the Irish Government, or even in the hearing of any servant of the Irish Government. I have not inquired into these details. I think it was stated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle that the Governor ought to have been in hearing, and that therefore the Governor was responsible, but I am given to understand that it is not always necessary or usual that interviews should be in the presence of a warder in Ireland. I would remind the Committee that when application was made by the solicitor of Patrick Molloy, who was charged with perjury, for permission to see without the presence of a warder M'Caffery, Delaney, and Mullett the permission was granted by the Prisons Board, and therefore, if the precedent was bad, it at all events applies impartially both to persons who are supposed to be in the interest of the Times and to persons who have certainly shown that they were not in the interest of the Times. I would next deal with the parallel drawn by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Longford between the treatment he received when he desired to visit Mr. O'Brien in gaol and the treatment of Mr. Shannon when he wished to visit Delaney in the convict prison. I would remind the hon. and learned Member for North Longford that he was rather ungrateful in his allusion to this point. The prison rules, as I understand, are in England tolerably precise in this matter. A prisoner may see his solicitor or his solicitor's clerk with regard to a suit pending, but the hon. and learned Gentleman was neither a solicitor nor a solicitor's clerk.

MR. T. M. HEALY

Permission was refused to his solicitor to see him.

*MR. BALFOUR

I am speaking not from book, for I have not inquired particularly into this matter, but I think the hon. Gentleman is wholly misinformed on this point, for I have no doubt that every facility was given to Mr. O'Brien to see his solicitor or his solicitor's clerk with regard to any case pending. But that is not all. This refusal to allow any one but the solicitor or the solicitor's clerk to see Mr. O'Brien at Clonmel was relaxed when Mr. O'Brien got to Tralee in favour of the hon. and learned Gentleman himself, and I think that it is most ungrateful, when the hon. and learned Member, so far as I know, was the only counsel for a prisoner ever admitted to see that prisoner, that he should taunt the Irish Government with undue harshness in that respect.

MR. T. M. HEALY

It was only done after the attention of the Government had been directed to it by Baron Dowse.

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I do not see how that affects the case. It is not the function of the Irish Judges to say who shall see a prisoner or who shall not. Whether rightly or wrongly, the hon. and learned Member, as far as I know, is the only counsel who has been allowed to visit an Irish prisoner in prison under the same conditions as Mr. O'Brien. I am speaking without book; it is possible, though I am not aware of it, that there might be another Member of the House equally fortunate.

An hon. MEMBER

I was visited in prison by my counsel.

DR. KENNY (Cork, S.)

Mr. Carew has been visited by his counsel.

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

I had a private interview with my counsel while I was in prison.

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I should like to have the particulars of these visits, because all persons in prisons have a right to be visited under certain conditions, and the question is whether those were made by the counsel as ordinary visitors or as counsel. ["As counsel."] Then I begin to fear that the ordinary prison rules in Ireland are relaxed in favour of hon. Gentlemen opposite. I was not aware of the circumstance, and I do not know that I particularly regret it. I think I have gone through the main points brought forward, and I hope—

MR. HEALY

How about the breach of Section 1 of the Crimes Act.

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I think the hon. Gentleman must be mistaken on that matter. I have no doubt that the returns are made in strict accordance with the law. I will inquire.

MR. T. M. HEALY

I will put a question about that on the Paper.

*MR. A. J. BALFOUR

By all means. I hope the Committee now begin to realize on how very flimsy foundation accusations as grave as were ever made against public men have been freely used in the country by responsible statesmen. It is bad enough that such accusations should be made, and made without any shadow of ground whatever, but that they should be made in the very same breath when those Gentlemen are complaining of the iniquity of bringing false accusations against your political opponents appears to me to add an additional tinge of darkness to a page already sufficiently dark in the history of the present Opposition.

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

I should not have risen had it not been for some observations of the right hon. Gentleman, from which I gather that, instead of separating himself from one of the most indecent incidents in the career of his relative the Prime Minister, he is rather anxious to follow the very mean lead which that nobleman has given to the country. The right hon. Gentleman meant his words to be understood as implying the same insinuation as the Prime Minister's—namely, that the forgery of these letters is not yet conclusively proved. I think that the bringing forward of these forged letters as a charge was infamous enough, but I describe it as more infamous, more mean, more dishonourable to persevere in the insinuations that those forged letters are genuine after the Attorney General has been compelled publicly to humiliate himself by withdrawing them, after the Times itself has withdrawn them, and after the Judges selected by the Attorney General—for when the hon. and learned Gentleman was asked to consult with the Front Opposition Bench on the point, he refused to do so—after the Judges themselves have described them as so palpable forgeries that it was not worth while even to add an interim report. I think the country will sufficiently judge—aye, the Government will not give the country the opportunity of judging, because, whenever the country has had the opportunity, it has given its judgment in a way you do not altogether like. I say I think the country will judge of the honour of men like the Chief Secretary and the Prime Minister, of the decency and the fair play of the Chief Secretary, who still endeavours to galvanize into life the forged letters of the suicide Pigott.

THE CHAIRMAN

I must ask the hon. Member to withdraw the last phrase, which is not in order.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

What is the phrase?

THE CHAIRMAN

The statement that the Chief Secretary was still endeavouring to galvanize the forged letters into life.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

I was alluding to the Chief Secretary and the Prime Minister. The Chief Secretary has joined himself to the Prime Minister in galvanizing those forged letters into life.

THE CHAIRMAN

I must ask the hon. Member to withdraw that phrase.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

With regard to the Prime Minister, I am afraid, Mr. Courtney, I cannot withdraw it.

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! I again call on the hon. Member to withdraw it.

MR.T. P. O'CONNOR

I withdraw it with regard to the Chief Secretary, but with regard to the Prime Minister I cannot. I desire to draw the attention of the Chief Secretary—

THE CHAIRMAN

I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will assist me in keeping order. I beg hon. Members on both sides below the Gangway to do so.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

I wish to call the Chief Secretary's attention to the fact that he has more than once insinuated that Pigott's flight was procured by hon. Gentlemen on these benches. Does the right hon. Gentleman repudiate that suggestion? [Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: Certainly.] Then I want to know what the Chief Secretary meant by asking how it was that when Pigott made a confession of forgery and perjury on Friday night no means were taken to procure his arrest in England. There were two people. [An hon. MEMBER: Labouchere.] The hon. Member below the Gangway opposite gives articulate and open expression to the covert insinuation of the Chief Secretary. Is the hon. Member below the Gangway right who says that the Member for Northampton was the person to whom the Chief Secretary pointed? Or is the Chief Secretary right, who indignantly repudiates any such suggestion? If the right hon. Gentleman did mean the Member for Northampton, he ought not to have confined himself to insinuation, but to have spoken openly. If he did not mean the hon. Member for Northampton, I am afraid he must have meant Mr. Shannon or the Times. But the Chief Secretary seems to be ignorant of the most elementary facts of the case. It was not on Friday that Pigott made his confession, but on Saturday; and it was made not only to the hon. Member for Northampton, but also to Mr. Shannon, one of the solicitors for the Times. Now anybody who read the letter of the 11th of November, in which Pigott as plainly as language could convey it said that his evidence would not bear examination, must have known that Pigott was a forger, and would prove a perjurer if put into the box. On Saturday Pigott confessed, not only to the Member for Northampton, but also to Shannon, and the difference between the two confessions was that Shannon compelled Pigott to make an affidavit with regard to his confession. Why did he want an affidavit? If he believed the confession to be true, he had only to wait till Tuesday for confirmation of Pigott's statement in the witness-box. Why, then, did he insist on an affidavit? It was because the affidavit would be used when Pigott had escaped. It is therefore perfectly clear, from this fact alone, that on the Saturday before Pigott's flight Shannon knew that Pigott intended to fly, and took good care to facilitate it. Now, the right hon. Gentleman has said that Pigott was not watched by the police. Again, the Chief Secretary is ignorant of the elementary facts. The police swore that they watched Pigott, not only in coming and going to the Court, but in the hotel, and on one occasion followed him into the streets. The most singular part of the whole transaction is, that Shannon felt himself so allied with the Government, he had the police so much under his control, that he actually ordered Irish constables to watch Pigott. That is a pretty state of things for a strictly impartial and just Government, anxious for truth and justice to prevail. They allow a whipper-snapper of a solicitor to order the Irish police about as if he were the Inspector General of the Constabulary. Then the Chief Secretary has not said a word about Inspector Horne, who was proved, by Constable Irwin, to have been in the Inns of Court Hotel superintending the witnesses—drilling, and examining, and cross-examining them, and preparing them for the Attorney General. Was Home then under subpœna? If so, why was he not called and examined? Again, we have not a word from the Chief Secretary with regard to Walsh. The Under Secretary for India commented, with forensic indignation, on what he called the indecency of a former Solicitor General—the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby—interfering with the proceedings of a judicial tribunal. Let us apply the principle to the speeches of the Government. A man called Walsh was examined, and maintained his statement that he was intimidated by a deputy inspector, called Alan, into making a certain statement. Alan was not called before the Court, and yet he had made a private communication to the Chief Secretary—made a private communication with regard to his attempt to make a witness before the Commission commit perjury; and the right hon. Gentleman has thought fit, upon that communication, to charge the witness examined before the Commission with perjury. And he made that charge, above all, against a witness who was a member of the troop of informers and scoundrels who constituted the witnesses of the Attorney General. The right hon. Gentleman has not given us an answer to our charges in regard to Shannon. He says, "I am not responsible for him." Who is responsible for what takes place in the gaols of the country? He has told us nothing about the visits to Nally and Mullett. We are informed we shall have an opportunity of eliciting all these facts from witnesses before the Commission, but how are we to get them from witnesses who are not produced? how are we to learn from these men that Shannon went into their prison cells and attempted to bribe them by promises of liberty into becoming perjurers, and, perhaps, forgers? The Chief Secretary says that the Government are simply anxious for the elucidation of the truth, and that they are libelled by the attacks on them as being the allies of the Times. The right hon. Gentleman said that libel is our daily bread. That was a most unkind remark for the right hon. Gentleman to make in the presence of his colleague, who has made a good deal of daily bread by publishing the forged letters of the Times. If the right hon. Gentleman will spare a little time from his occupation of boycotting libel literature, and from the reproduction of the forgeries of the Times, the reproach would come more effectually from the Treasury Bench. The Government say they stand impartial between the two sides in this case, and are only anxious for the truth. Well, if they have a witness, it was surely part of the truth to know his antecedents, so that those who are attacked by his evidence may have some opportunity of testing his credit. Supposing that this had been a criminal trial, and that the Attorney General had been prosecuting for the Government in name, as he had in this case prosecuted in reality, what would he have had to do? Badly as the hon. and learned Gentleman had acted in the whole business, I think he would have shrunk from the honourable traditions of a Crown prosecutor and not have pursued the course in a criminal case that he had adopted in this case. No Judge would have allowed him to spring on a prisoner in the dock—

VISCOUNT CRANBORNE (Lancashire, N.E., Darwen)

Sir, I rise to order. I wish to know if the hon. Member is in order in what he is saying?

THE CHAIRMAN

I am reluctant to interfere with the hon. Member, but I am bound to say that the argument that he is pursuing is not relevant to the Vote before the House.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

Allow me, Sir, respectfully to point out that I have been dealing with the statement of the Chief Secretary that the Government had stood impartial between the Times on the one side and the Irish Members on the other. But I bow to your ruling. The Chief Secretary says that the Government had acted with impartiality; but if the Irish Members had been prosecuted by the Government they would have been presented with the names of all the witnesses. Did the Chief Secretary instruct the police constables even to give them the names of the witnesses who were to be brought against them, or did they tell them that Delaney had been sentenced to five years' penal servitude for highway robbery? Were they informed as to Le Caron or the other witnesses who were to be brought against them? Not a word, not a whisper, not a syllable did they hear of those witnesses who were to give that most damaging evidence—most damaging evidence if true. I know that the distinction between truth and falsehood is not very clearly grasped by many people. The names of those people were not given to the accused, and yet the Chief Secretary calls that standing impartially between the two sides in the case. The Chief Secretary and the Government went into that business with the Times; they went into it to win; and they did win by it until the calumnies and forgeries were exposed. Probably some hon. Members now in this House have got into Parliament through these calumnies and forgeries. The Government have elected to stand or fall with the Times; and now the Times and its cause and its forgeries have crumbled to dust; and the Times will drag the Chief Secretary and the Government down with it.

The Committee divided.

While the House was being cleared for the Division, Mr. Chamberlain walked across from the front Opposition Bench to the Treasury Bench, where he entered into conversation with Mr. Ritchie. This was the signal for derisive cheering from below the Opposition Gangway. Various cries rose indistinctly above the cheers, and Mr. W. REDMOND shouted, "You are in your right place now."

THE CHAIRMAN

I have noticed repeated irregularities during the evening on the part of the hon. Member for Fermanagh, and if he persists in this conduct, I shall have to order him to withdraw.

MR. W. REDMOND

With very great respect, Sir, I ask you to point out in what respect I have been disorderly. I am totally unaware of it. I must say I think the charge most unjust.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 211; Noes 275.—(Division List, No. 37.)

Original Question again proposed.

MR. MUNDELLA (Sheffield, Brightside)

I beg to move that we do now report Progress.

*MR. W. H. SMITH

I shall not oppose the Motion. I wish to point out that we have now reached the second night of the debate, and I shall have to ask the House to-morrow to come to a decision on the Vote on Account.

Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again,"—(Mr. Mundella)—put, and agreed to.

Progress reported.