§ A judge of the Supreme Court or other superior Court in Ireland, or of any County Court or other Court with a like jurisdiction in Ireland, appointed after the passing of this Act, shall be appointed by the Lord Lieutenant, and shall hold his office by the same tenure as that by which the office is held at the time of the passing of this Act, with the substitution of an Address from both Houses of the Irish Parliament for an Address from both Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and during his continuance in office his salary shall not be diminished or his right to pension altered without his consent.
§ The CHAIRMANThe first Amendment I will call is that standing in the name of the hon. Member for Wirral (Mr. Stewart), and following that I propose to call upon the hon. Member for Windsor (Mr. James Mason) to move his Amendment.
§ Mr. STEWARTI beg to move, to omit the word "shall" ["shall be appointed by the Lord Lieutenant"], and to insert instead thereof the words "may, unless His Majesty otherwise directs."
The object of my Amendment is to insert in the Clause words providing that power should be retained for the appointment of judges by the Central Government of the Crown. This is necessary in order to guard against undue pressure upon the Lord Lieutenant by parties in Ireland seeking promotion for their own individual friends. Under certain circumstances we 2122 can well imagine that the best qualifications for appointments of this sort need not necessarily be the strongest recommendations of those seeking office, and it is the opinion of many that the present Viceroy has proved himself very partial in the matter of appointments—
§ Mr. ROBERT HARCOURTIs that remark in order?
§ Mr. SWIFT MacNEILLIt is distinctly out of order.
§ The CHAIRMANI was about to intervene. I think the, hon. Member has been long enough in the House to know that any action of the Viceroy should be dealt with by direct Motion and not in debate.
§ Mr. STEWARTI am sorry if I have transgressed the Rules of the House, but I was not aware that the Viceroy had such sanctity about him. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] I am prepared to express my Regret to the House and to hon. Members if I have said anything discourteous. I say it is most supremely important in regard to the appointment of the judges that they should only be appointed by the Crown. It is recognised both in India and in this country that such a course of action lifts the judicial bench out of the arena of party politics, and I think we should spare no efforts when dealing with such an important question as this to ensure, as far as possible, that those who administer the law should be free from the possibility of party bias. I am quite aware that every Amendment which has been proposed from this side of the House has been regarded as a wrecking Amendment to this Bill, but I do not think that the most microscopic examination of the few words which I ask the House to insert in this Bill can be regarded even by the most nervous Radical imagination as a wrecking Amendment. On the contrary, I submit that it is a strengthening Amendment. This continual cry of wrecking Amendments shows the extreme debility of the patient we have under consideration and what a delicate constitution is being set up. We are also told, if we desire to strengthen the Courts of Law in a matter of this sort, that we are attributing to the Nationalist party a double dose of original sin, but I hope that accusation will not be brought against this small Amendment. I suppose the Nationalist Members will say that we are Orange bigots, and they will ask us to trust them in the Courts they set up I 2123 do not say that we cannot do so, but in a case of this sort we should make assurance doubly sure, and I think we are asking the Government to take a wise course when we ask that they should lift themselves out of the atmosphere of suspicion and timidity which they have shown towards all Unionist Amendments. If the Committee adopts the Amendment I now propose, I am sure we shall do something to assuage the minds of future suitors in Irish Courts, and this will materially strengthen the Home Rule Bill.
§ The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith)I have listened carefully to the hon. Member's remarks, and I must confess that I did not hear any argument in support of his Amendment, and I am not sure that he has explained to the Committee what the effect of it would be. The Clause as it stands in the Bill proposes that judges, after the coming into operation of this Bill, shall be appointed by the Lord Lieutenant, on the advice of the Irish Executive. As I read it, the hon. Member's Amendment would substitute for that provision an absolutely indefinite time, "unless His Majesty otherwise directs." I believe his idea is that the appointment of the Irish judges should remain with the Imperial Executive.
§ Mr. STEWARTYes, unless otherwise directed.
§ The PRIME MINISTERIs that the intention? [An HON MEMBER: "Yes."] My hon. Friend says "Yes," but I was putting my question to the Mover of the Amendment.
§ Mr. STEWARTYes, that is what I wished to express.
§ The PRIME MINISTERI wish to ascertain the effect of the Amendment. Now we understand that the Amendment proposes that the appointment of the Irish Judiciary shall remain indefinitely with the Imperial Executive.
§ Mr. STEWARTMot necessarily, but they should not part with that right.
§ 4.0 P.M.
§ The PRIME MINISTEROf course, that is an Amendment which the Government cannot accept. I remember that in the Home Rule Bill of 1893 there was a proposal of this kind, but I do not think it was discussed, under which the Imperial Executive claimed the power of appointment of the Irish judges for a definite 2124 period—I think it was six years. I do not think that was ever regarded by the framers of that Bill or by its supporters as a matter of very much importance, but at any rate it had the advantage, as compared with the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman, of limiting the power of the Imperial Executive to interfere in these matters for a definite period of time, but I am bound to say, so far as my own judgment goes and that of my colleagues, we think, if the Irish people are entitled to have a Parliament, a Legislature and an Executive of their own, they ought to have the power from the first of appointing their own judges. The hon. Gentleman has given no reason whatsoever beyond the vague suggestion that the Irish Executive might be exposed to illegitimate pressure from undefined sources for saying, "If you are prepared"—I quite agree that is the assumption on which the Bill rests—"to give Ireland such powers as this Bill gives, the power of legislating for her own affairs and the power of administering within the Executive's sphere her own laws, why should you deny to her the power which every self-governing Colony of the Empire possesses, that of appointing her own judges?" If he looks at the various Constitutions we have established under the authority of the Imperial Parliament throughout the length and breadth of the British Empire, he will find in no one of them is there any provision in the least degree analogous to that he proposes to insert in this Bill. We have in every case accompanied with the grant of self-government, of legislative and executive power, the power of appointing the judiciary. We have provided in this Clause, and I think rightly, that as a condition of the grant to the Irish Legislature of the appointment of judges, it should be subject to the provision which has obtained in this country ever since the Bill of Bights and Act of Settlement namely, that the judges appointed should be irremovable except in the one case of bad behaviour, and that in the case of bad behaviour they should only be removed on an Address being presented by both Houses of the Legislature. We believe that to be an ample safeguard. As regards selection by nomination, it is an absolutely essential condition to the grant of real autonomous government to even our most remote Colonies, and, still more, to fellow citizens so near to our own doors that this invidious discrimination of reserving from them the selection 2125 of their own judges should not be retained by the Imperial Executive. I cannot imagine anything which would give rise to more friction or which would be more justly resented by the Irish people, and the Government certainly cannot accept the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman.
§ Mr. GOLDSMITHThe right hon. Gentleman has just told us the object of this Amendment is to take away from the Irish Executive the power and the right of appointing their judges. I do not think that is the intention of my hon. Friend who moved the Amendment. If the right hon. Gentleman will look, at the words proposed to be inserted, he will see it is intended the Irish Executive should retain the right of appointing the judiciary, but that on the other hand the Imperial Government should also retain some power and control to keep the right to step in at any moment if the Irish Executive misuse the power which has been entrusted to them. If it is the intention of the Government that Ireland should occupy the position of a self-governing Colony, then it is quite natural I agree, you should confer upon Ireland this unlimited power of appointing and controlling her judges, but I thought we had been told by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, and especially by the First Lord of the Admiralty, this Bill was the first instalment and the first step towards setting up a federal system for the British Isles. If that is the case, I think we have a right to examine the various federal Constitutions of our Colonies. We find that every Colony before any federation was formed, had the right to appoint and to control all judges, but as soon as they entered a federal system, that right and that power to control their judiciary, was either curtailed or taken away altogether. In the case of South Africa, the judicial system is unified, and is in the hands of the central Government. In the case of Canada, although there are provincial Courts, the judges of those provincial Courts are appointed, paid, and are removed by the Dominion Government. It is true that in the case of the Commonwealth the States have their own judiciary, but at the same time the Commonwealth Government provides a National Judiciary for enforcing and guarding the Commonwealth power. Therefore, if it is the intention of the Government this Bill should form part of a federal system, then certainly Ireland 2126 ought not to have the absolute right of appointing and controlling her judges.
It is, in my opinion, of the greatest importance, and it is essential, the Imperial Government should retain some sort of control over the appointment of the judges in Ireland, and that is all that is intended by this Amendment. It is of importance because everyone knows from history that by means of the judiciary you can exercise political pressure and political oppression. The hon. and learned Member for Water-ford (Mr. John Redmond) and his friends will no doubt be in power in the Irish Parliament, and by their past actions they have not given us any convincing proof they are going to use that power in a fair and impartial manner. It is evident, if we are to judge them from the speeches which they have delivered, they are going to use their power for their own purposes and for their own ends. I know the hon. and learned Gentleman is always telling us now that he wishes to see toleration in the political life of Ireland, but I should like to remind the Committee he used the same words after the passing of the Local Government Act in 1889 in a speech which he made at Dublin, and which is reported in the "Irish Independent" of 14th September of that year, lie said:—
We desire toleration in (lie public life of Ireland. We think that to adopt the policy of excluding from those public bodies every man who differed from us politically or religiously would bean absolutely suicidal policy for Irish Nationalists' future. For my part, and I know I speak in the name of the Parnellites of Dublin, I would be willing to give them not only in Dublin but all through Ireland a fair. I would even say a generous, share of representation upon these bodies.I daresay the hon. and learned Gentleman meant what he said when he used those words, but we know, as a matter of fact, the Unionist representation on the county councils and other public bodies in Nationalist districts is practically nil, and we know also that when a public appointment, has to be made only Nationalists need apply. However that may be, there is no doubt the minority in Ireland fear more from Executive and administrative oppression than from Parliamentary oppression. Whether those fears are founded or not I am not able to tell, but I do say it is essential we should insert in this Bill every possible precaution so as to have a fair and impartial administration of the law in Ireland and an absolutely independent judicial bench. I should also like to remind the Committee that a safeguard which was contained in the Bill of 1893 is not contained in this Bill. Under the Bill of 1893 2127 there were two Exchequer judges to be appointed under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom, to be paid out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, and to be removable only by His Majesty on an Address by the two Houses of the Imperial Parliament. At the present time all the judges under 'this Bill are to be appointed by the Lord Lieutenant, and they are to be removable by the Lord Lieutenant on an Address from the two Houses of the Irish Parliament. That safeguard which was contained in the Bill of 1893 is not contained in this Bill, and I think it is an additional reason why the Government should accept the Amendment which has been moved by my hon. Friend.
§ Mr. CHARLES ROBERTSThe hon. Gentleman has succeeded in making an Amendment which was bad to start with considerably worse. The hon. Gentleman who moved it began by saying it was not a wrecking Amendment. I can quite believe it, but I think it was a bad one as he explained it. I understand his supporter explained it in this way. The appointment of judges is not to be in accordance with any definite rule laid down for any prolonged period, but is to be spasmodic, sometimes by the British Government and sometimes by the Irish Government, according as they think fit at the time. That was what he said, but, perhaps, he did not explain himself. I think he was also incorrect in his statement that invariably where you get federal systems the appointment of the State judges is in the hands of the federal authority. He quoted Australia, but in the case of the Australian Commonwealth the appointment of the State judges is in the hands of the State Government. I admit in South Africa a different system prevails. There is something perhaps to be said either on the one side or the other, but there is certainly nothing to be said for a system which shifts from the South African system to the Australian system, according to the whim or caprice of the British Government. He has therefore in his interpretation of the Amendment greatly worsened it. I think it is thoroughly bad. Two results will almost inevitably follow. The hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment was anxious to remove any suspicion of partisanship which might attach to the character of the judges, but I am bound to say he was not very successful in his speech in avoiding that danger himself. Supposing the British Government took it I 2128 into its head at any particular moment to suddenly seize upon a vacant appointment and make its own choice to fill up the gap with a nominee of its own, one can imagine the suspicion of partisanship which would attach to a proceeding of that kind. It would be said, no doubt, in Ireland as elsewhere: "Here is a Government seeking the opportunity of a job, putting its nominee into a vacant judicial position." That judge would certainly be in by no means a strong position to carry out justice without the faintest possibility of bias attaching to him. There is another objection of a very serious kind. Some of us on this side of the House look forward to the possibility of economies in the administration of justice in Ireland. Whether that will be carried out or not, I do not know, But I should have thought that the Irish judicial system was so extravagant at the present time that there is a possibility—a real possibility—of saving money by a judicious reorganisation of that system.
§ Sir E. CARSONHow much will you save if you abolish them all?
§ Mr. C. ROBERTSI am unable to follow the suggestion of the right hon. and learned Gentleman that all the judges should be abolished. I do not suppose that even he would desire that.
§ Sir E. CARSONThe hon. Member was saying that there could be great economy by reducing the salaries. I simply asked what, if he were to abolish the salaries of the existing judges altogether, the economy would amount to.
§ Mr. C. ROBERTSI have not the figures of the cost in Ireland, but I daresay some of my hon. Friends can supply the gaps. I am told, however, that the total cost of the administration of justice in Ireland exceeds £600,000 per annum. Is it really seriously argued from the other side of the House that there is no possibility of saving money on the administration of justice in Ireland? I am talking, of course, about the judges of the High Court and of the other Courts. Is it seriously contended from the other side that in the administration, for instance, of the county courts of Ireland there is no possibility of effecting a saving? I should very much like to hear what those who are much more acquainted with the conditions obtaining in Ireland have to say upon that point. So far as my own limited experience goes in this matter, however, I have 2129 always understood that there were opportunities by combining the County Court system in Ireland to effect some small economies which hon. Gentlemen opposite apparently think of very slight importance for the welfare of their country.
§ Sir HENRY CRAIKIs there anything in the Amendment or in the Clause that has to do, in the remotest way, with the diminution of legal expenses in Ireland?
§ The CHAIRMANThis Amendment deals with legal appointments, and I imagine that the organisation must depend to some extent on appointments.
§ Mr. C. ROBERTSThat is the point I was about to put at the moment I was interrupted. It is far more difficult to secure a reorganisation if the appointments are to rest sometimes in the hands of the British Government and sometimes in the hands of the Irish Government. That being my argument, I venture to say that, on the grounds I have indicated, this Amendment, as moved by the hon. Member, is a thoroughly bad one, while the way in which it was supported by his seconder makes it still worse.
§ Mr. LONGThe hon. Member who last spoke apparently advocated this Clause in the Bill on the ground of economy. He challenges us to say whether we believe there is no room for economy in the Government of Ireland. As one responsible for the Government of Ireland, I have to say I believe that many of the suggestions that have come from the other side, that we should have great economy under a Home Rule Government, are entirely without foundation. If the hon. Member had taken as much trouble as I have to conduct an investigation into the administration of the law in Ireland and the cost of it, he would have come to the conclusion that economy will be very difficult indeed to effect. I should like to make this general remark: If hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite have throughout their careers been remarkable for one thing, it has been for the practice of preaching economy. They put it forward as a virtue which ought to be pursued, but nobody has ever been so conspicuous as the present Government in the neglect of economy and in the increase of appointments of all kinds. Consequently their practice has differed entirely from their preaching. I rise not to support the Amendment, because, I agree, it does not do what I think it is intended to do, but 2130 in order to say a word with reference to the speech just made and also with respect to what fell from the Prime Minister.
If the hon. Gentleman really desires to give the new Irish Government power to exercise its economy in the administration of the law and also to follow precedent in this case, he could not do better than adopt the Canadian system, which carries out exactly what he desires, and at the same time reserves to the federal, or the Dominion, or central Government the right of appointing the judges. In the case of Canada, the provinces decide how many judges there shall be, and the administration of justice within their respective areas enables them to decide what economy shall be effected, if economy there can be, or what shall be the increase in the number and cost of the judges. If that power were given to the Irish Government you would be following exactly the precedent set by the Dominion of Canada. I do not refer to the hon. Gentleman's remarks about Australia, because everybody knows that the Australian case stands out differently from that of any other form of federal Government that has taken place within the British Empire. But in the two best known cases—the cases of Canada and South Africa—you have exactly the reverse of what you are asking us to do today for Ireland. In Canada power is given to the provinces to decide the number of judges to be appointed, but the responsibility of appointment rests entirely with the Dominion Government. In South Africa, where you had four distinct provinces, each with their own Chief Justice and their own appointed judiciary, you took the whole power away from the provinces when you unified the Government, and gave the control over the appointment of judges, including even the decision as to their number, to the Union Government. Therefore, there is no precedent whatever for the proposal except the Australian one, which is very different, because the federation of Australia was on a much looser basis than the federation of either Canada or South Africa.
The Prime Minister told us that in every case you have given to your Colonial Government the task of selecting their own judiciary. But he knows better than I do that the only case is the Australian case, and that in the other two cases these powers have been given (o the federal Government. When I was in Canada the other day I discussed this, amongst other 2131 questions, with Canadians of all classes and of all kinds of political opinion, and the universal opinion was that to place the appointment of the judiciary in the hands of a subordinate Parliament would be to erect a Parliament practically independent and supreme. These are the views held by men themselves occupying positions on the judicial bench, and by men who hold Liberal views and who have been, and are now for all I know, advocates of Home Rule within the British Isles. Surely it is not necessary to suggest either that we are opposed to economy or that we are unwilling to trust this Irish Parliament, if we ask you to keep in the hands of the central or Imperial Parliament the appointment of the judiciary which has been practised in Canada, and which many of the students of Canadian prosperity, and of the increased strength of the Canadian Dominions, believe to be one of the causes which has led to the difference between the administration of justice in Canada and the administration of justice in other countries contiguous to Canada. That is one of the things upon which the greatest stress has been laid, and I submit that the Prime Minister's speech, in answer to the argument of my hon. Friend, makes it perfectly clear, if there had been any room for doubt, that the action of the Government in setting up this Parliament in Ireland does not mean the creation of a subordinate Parliament similar in its powers and duties to the subordinate Parliament of Canada or the Assemblies in South Africa, but would really mean the erection of a Parliament into whose hands you are giving all those powers which hitherto have been exercised by the supreme and the independent Parliament, and you are making not for peace, not for the avoidance of friction, but you are laying securely the foundations for far greater friction and trouble, and more bitter animosity than we have ever known even in the history of the government of Ireland b}' the Imperial Parliament.
§ The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell)The right hon. Gentleman has made a speech not in support of the Amendment, as one would imagine from his opening observations, but with the idea of discussing whether it would be a good thing to reserve for all time the appointment of the judges in Ireland to the Imperial Parliament or the Imperial Cabinet—or whether it would be better to 2132 hand it over entirely to Ireland. Nothing could possibly be clearer than that if as suggested in the Amendment of the hon. Member this House or Cabinet should avail itself of sporadic opportunities to-advise the Crown to appoint a judge who, I presume, would always be known as the English judge, as distinct from Irish judges, it certainly would not lead to his friendly treatment or to good fellowship as between the judges themselves, neither would it add to the confidence to be felt in that particular judge when he went on assize circuits throughout the country. We are apparently agreed that the Amendment which has been moved by the hon. Gentleman opposite would not be an improvement or constitute a desirable precedent for the appointment of judges. The suggestion, as I understood it, of the right hon. Gentleman was that the Irish Parliament should have the power to say how many judges should be appointed; that they should cast their eyes over the country, make a survey of the judicial system and the amount of business to be disposed of in the Irish Courts, and should say, "We want eight, nine, or ten judges," as the case may be; "we want so many County Court judges, so many judges of the High Court," and that then the matter should be handed over to the Imperial Parliament to determine who should be appointed to fill those particular posts. I should like to remark that in this matter we have to deal with Ireland as it exists at the present time, and I am not by any means satisfied that the right hon. Gentleman, if lie casts his mind back to the time when he was Chief Secretary, will admit that he considered that the appointment of Irish judges was a thing which, as a matter of course, was dealt with by the Imperial Parliament or by the Prime Minister of the Imperial Government. I notice that in a somewhat similar discussion, in 1893, Lord Randolph Churchill asked if the Prime Minister was or was not consulted in regard to such appointments, and Mr. Gladstone replied:—
My varied experience enables me to say that the Prime Minister has no concern whatever in the appointment of Irish judges.My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is near me, and I do not want in any way to seem to be entrenching upon his prerogative, but I think he will agree that that is the case. English and Scotch Members, not knowing how things are done in Ireland at present, are really ignorant of how these questions are disposed of. I think Mr. Gladstone states the case there in a 2133 very strong manner, although I doubt very much whether there are many people who would venture to contradict even his memory.
§ Mr. LONGI did not intend to suggest that under our present system of administration the Chief Secretary, who is the Minister who conducts the' Government in Ireland, refers to the Prime Minister in regard to every appointment. Of course he does not. It is the case in Ireland, as in ether Departments of the Government here, that power is delegated to the head of that Department, and he is trusted to carry out that administration. The right hon. Gentleman will not deny that if the Chief Secretary or any other Minister sought to make an improper appointment the Prime Minister has not full power to interfere and to prevent that being done which would be injurious to the administration of the law.
§ Mr. BIRRELLI do not in any way differ from the extreme case which the right hon. Gentleman puts, notwithstanding this very tremendous obiter dictum of Mr. Gladstone. I almost think that Mr. Gladstone went a little bit too far in saying that he had no concern whatever with the appointments. What he meant, no doubt, was that it did not enter into the ordinary life of the Imperial Minister here to concern himself with the appointment of Irish judges, although if so be that some improper appointment was made I do not know that the Prime Minister would be able altogether to say he had no concern with it. What I mean is that, as a matter of fact, the administration of justice in Ireland and the appointment of Irish judges has been under the existing system and is still considered as an Irish concern, that the appointments are made on Irish grounds, of Irishmen, and by an Irish Minister, who is, I admit, responsible to this House and a Member of the Cabinet. It is undoubtedly the fact that the administration of Irish affairs and the question of the Irish judges have been considered by themselves. If you are going to discuss the question at large whether the appointment of judges either in England or in Ireland has always been made solely out of regard for the legal capacity and eminence of the person who is appointed, I dare say there would be a very good case probably all over the world. I do not think you will make much out of that. If you are going to discuss generally whether any Minister ever yields to pres- 2134 sure or ever appoints a person who may be importunate, in order that he may see his face no more, if you cast your eye over the last hundred years or so, I am afraid examples of that kind of appointment might be found. I do not think you will, therefore, make very much out of that. You cannot imagine anything worse than to have the suggestion proposed by this Amendment embodied in this Bill, namely, to enable the people over here to interfere whenever they chose, by saying that they have a right in all cases to interfere. Therefore, confining myself to-the Amendment, I think that by general consent of the Committee, at any rate of the majority of those who have spoken on both sides, this Amendment is one which ought to be rejected.
§ Sir EDWARD CARSONI think it is a pity that on an important subject of this kind—for I conceive there is nothing more important, having regard to the position of parties and, unfortunately, of religions in Ireland, for it is no good burking a matter of that kind—the Debate should proceed merely on the terms of the Amendment. All that the Amendment itself states is that His Majesty -which, of course, means the Government for the time being—should be able to interfere, if it became necessary by reason of injustice which was being done, or if there was anything improper in a promotion to the Bench.
§ The PRIME MINISTERDoes it not. go further than that?
§ Sir E. CARSONThe Amendment says that the Lord Lieutenant is to appoint, unless His Majesty otherwise directs.
§ The PRIME MINISTERDoes that mean that when the Imperial Executive like they can claim the right of appointment?
§ Sir E. CARSONI agree that in form it does. The object is to retain some control in the Imperial Government over the appointment of judges.
§ The CHAIRMANI understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that he did not wish the Debate to be restricted to the particular form of this Amendment. If that is so, would it not be better that the Amendment should be withdrawn, then the right hon. Gentleman could move to-leave out the words "the Lord Lieutenant," and propose to substitute the words "His Majesty."
§ Sir E. CARSONI think it would.
§ The CHAIRMANIs the hon. Member who moved the Amendment agreeable to that course being pursued?
§ Mr. STEWARTYes.
§ Mr. LOUGHWould not appointment by the Lord Lieutenant be an appointment by His Majesty? Would the question that it is desired to discuss be raised as well by the Amendment you have suggested, as by the Amendment before the Committee now.
§ The CHAIRMANI think it raises it in a clearer form, and makes the issue clear.
§ The PRIME MINISTERNobody appears to be much enamoured of the Amendment now before the Committee. The Government would certainly not raise any objection to the larger question being raised, if the right hon. Gentleman (Sir E. Carson) desires to raise it. If it is clear that he does desire to raise it I will not oppose the withdrawal of the Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Sir E. CARSONI beg to move to leave out the words "the Lord Lieutenant" ["shall be appointed by the Lord Lieutenant"], and to insert instead thereof the words "His Majesty."
I am obliged to the, Prime Minister for allowing us to raise this question, because, to my mind, it is a matter of very extreme importance, having regard to the position of affairs which exists in Ireland now, and which will be very much aggravated if this Bill in its present form is persisted in. The question I desire to raise by the alteration in the Amendment is whether the appointment of judges should remain with this Imperial Parliament and with the Ministers responsible to this Imperial Parliament, or with the Irish Parliament and the Ministers responsible to the Irish Parliament. That has reference to the question of the sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament, as was pointed out by my right hon. Friend (Mr. Long) in relation to the Dominion Parliament in Canada and the Parliament in South Africa, and the Provincial Parliaments that are under those Parliaments. It is true, as the Chief Secretary has said, that the Committee is very often ignorant as to how these appointments are made, and it is well that they should understand what the procedure is at the present time. So important has it always been considered in elation to the United Kingdom that the judges in Ireland should be appointed 2136 by the Imperial Parliament that I think I am right in saying that one of the matters excepted from the Lord Lieutenant's warrant—or whatever it is that appoints him—is the creation of judges. The Lord Lieutenant in Ireland is especially forbidden by his warrant of appointment from creating judges for the special reason that it has always been thought right, having regard to the state of affairs in that country, that the creation of judges should rest in the hands of this Imperial Parliament, which means of course the Cabinet and the Prime Minister. The practice certainly has been on many occasions, whoever may be the right person to suggest the appointment of a judge, that the Government of the day, i.e., the Cabinet, has been responsible for the appointments. I think I am right in saying, although I have not had the honour of being at a Cabinet meeting when these matters were discussed, that these questions come before the Cabinet.
§ The PRIME MINISTERNo.
§ Sir E. CARSONThey certainly came before the late Cabinet when the Unionist party were in power.
§ The PRIME MINISTERI cannot say anything about that. I can only say, and I say it for the information of the Committee, that I have never known the appointment of a judge coming before the Cabinet.
§ Sir E. CARSONI do not know whether it is very important, but I believe the appointments did come before the Unionist Cabinet. At any rate they were excepted from the Lord Lieutenant's power. There is no doubt about that. If excepted from his power they must be appointments by the Imperial Government. There is no question about that. I daresay the Prime Minister, with the great confidence he has in his Chief Secretary, probably thinks that having regard to the peculiar condition of affairs in Ireland the Chief Secretary is more capable of selecting the individual to be appointed than he could be, as he could only obtain his information second-hand. The main point is that it has always been considered desirable, having regard to the position of Ireland, that the appointment should be an Imperial one, and not left with the Lord Leiutenant. So important was this question of the appointment of judges and the administration of the law by them considered when the last Bill was before this House, that in the Bill of 1893 not only was it safe- 2137 guarded by retaining the appointment of judges in this House for a period of six years—a period of which we complained, and tried to make it absolute for an indefinite time—
§ The PRIME MINISTERI do not think the Amendment was moved.
§ Sir E. CARSONAt any rate there were Amendments put down. So important was it looked upon by Mr. Gladstone, and so important has it always been considered, as going to the very root and foundation of what I may call fair play in Ireland, that Mr. Gladstone in his Bill of 1893 put in a special Court, the Exchequer Court, which was to be for all time a Court in which two judges were to sit who were to be appointed by the Imperial Government. They gave them in the first place the power of adjudicating in all questions of revenue.
§ The PRIME MINISTERThe Court, not the judges.
§ Sir E. CARSONI mean that the Court had the power and the duty of adjudicating in all questions of revenue between the two countries under a Bill in which the financial questions were not nearly so complicated as they are under the present Hill. I look upon that as being very important for the prevention of friction between the two countries or in regard to any difficulty this country may have in securing revenue in Ireland. That was not the only function of the Exchequer Court set up by the Bill of 1893. There was also the power of any subject in Ireland to take his business into that Exchequer Court and to do that as a real guarantee for the administration of the law. The present Bill, which is abounding in safeguards, not a single one of which is any use, abounding also with ideas of the sovereignty of the House, is abrogating the whole of these functions and proposes to hand over the whole of the powers in relation to Ireland, the whole of the powers affecting the life and liberty and property of every individual in Ireland, to this newly set up so-called subordinate Parliament under the strange and very difficult circumstances which exist in Ireland for anybody taking the most optimistic view of the results of this Bill.
I believe there will be no Clause in this Bill which will be more resented by those who are determined opponents of the Bill in Ireland, and especially in the North of Ireland, than this. The Irish Executive 2138 will always be composed, in the majority, of persons whose whole ideals and whole ideas as regards the administration of the law and liberty are entirely different from those who are opposed to them in Ireland, These people will always be in a majority, and will always have the power of putting upon the bench, for trying their cases, whether civil or criminal, men to whom they are absolutely opposed in every idea they have as to how the law ought to be administered in Ireland, and that is what raises the great importance of this question. I do not believe anything you ever could do will force them to submit to tribunals of this kind. I believe they will resent them from the start. I believe they will look upon them as being put upon the bench there, rightly or wrongly, for no-other purpose than to act unfairly to them and oppress them in regard to the various rights which they conceive they have. No-one who knows Ireland and who looks at the real Ireland can look at that operation coming into force the moment thi3 Bill passes without the very gravest misgiving. That is the way in which it will affect the minds and the ideas and the attitude of these people as regards this Bill, and if I were asked to point to any one thing more than another which is objectionable as regards this, I should say, putting it plainly, apart from all language of the law or anything else, that the ordinary citizen in the North of Ireland who objects to this policy would say above all things, "I object to my life and my liberty and my property being subject to a number of people whom I look upon as absolutely unfitted to be put over me in relation to the adjudication of any such judicial matters as may have to come before them." I do not think Members of this House understand the strong feeling as between the two different classes in Ireland.
There is nothing in the world I hate talking more about than the religion of the two parties in Ireland, but there is no use shutting your eyes to the fact, when you are setting up a Constitution, and when the Protestants of the North and other parts of Ireland know they will be subject to a perpetual Catholic majority which* will always have the power of putting any persons, if they so please—I am not saying whether they will, but that is their idea—of one particular religion into the adjudication of these matters, that you will have a state of affairs which it will be impossible to cope with. At the present 2139 moment people talk a lot about the bigotry of these men. I believe there is a great deal of talk upon that score which is absolutely unfair and unjust, because what is called bigotry arises out of the history of the country. It arises out of the different races in the country. The whole reason why questions are called bigoted questions in Ireland is to a very large extent historical. For instance, the Protestant religion has always been confused with British rule in the past. It has always been looked upon as somewhat of a foreign religion, as something which came in there, which was anti-Irish and was British, and therefore was hated because it was British, far more, perhaps, than because it was Protestant. I know everyone hates to talk about these matters, but that is the truth in relation to Ireland, and you cannot get over 200 years of this history by the passage of any Bill and say that the moment we pass this Bill the history of 200 years will be wiped out. It is ridiculous. You cannot do it. We have at present in Ireland a Chief Secretary—and I am not doing this as a matter of criticism for a moment, though I am quite ready to criticise it at the proper time—who has thought it right to adopt the policy of making his appointments so as to be appointments which will be popular with his Nationalist supporters.
§ Mr. BIRRELLI do not recognise that as a perfect description.
§ Sir EDWARD CARSONI am not put-thing this forward in the least as a matter for which at the moment I am criticising the right hon. Gentleman. I am saying this now on this false accusation of bigotry. Take the present moment. I am not quarrelling with your appointments. I have never quarrelled with one of them, or said a word in Ireland against one of them, and, what is more, I have not heard anyone quarrelling with them in the North of Ireland, where the people are Protestant, because they are made by the Imperial Parliament. But at present your Lord Chancellor is a Catholic, your Attorney-General is a Catholic, your Solicitor-General is a Catholic, your Serjeant is a Catholic, your Chief Justice is a Catholic, your Chief Baron is a Catholic, and the Master of the Bolls is a Catholic.
§ Sir E. CARSONThe right hon. Gentleman mistakes my argument. I am not objecting to that. I have never said one word against any one of these appointments. I am prepared to admit that they were proper appointments.
§ The PRIME MINISTERBy both parties.
§ Sir E. CARSONYes, by both parties. But I believe if these same appointments were made under an Irish Parliament with a permanent majority, as it must be in the Irish House, of one particular persuasion, the appointments would be not merely criticised, but objected to, and looked upon as an engine of oppression. I hope I am not misunderstood. Certainly, one of the things which to me would be most distasteful would be to criticise any man's appointment in consequence of his religion. I have never done so, and all these Gentlemen to whom I am referring, I hope, are in various degrees my own friends. If even these appointments had been made by an Irish Government with a perpetual majority of one particular persuasion, I believe it would be looked upon as having been done purely for denominational reasons and for no other. I believe that would be, in regard to judicial appointments, disastrous to the administration of the law, and I think it was for that reason that Mr. Gladstone, when he brought in his Bill, not only set up a Court of Exchequer, but he retained the appointment of the judges for six years, as well as I remember, in the Imperial Parliament. That, I think, although a very limited matter, is a very wise matter. But to say that at once when this Bill passes, at a time when parties in Ireland will probably be more polemic than they have ever been before, the whole distribution of the basis of society is to be handed over to an Irish Parliament is in my opinion a fatuous proposal, and one which will lead to the greatest disaster in Ireland. Then what reason is there for it? There was some question mentioned about a compromise, that the salaries and the numbers of these gentlemen should be within the regulation of an Irish House of Parliament. You have no real precedent. Australia stands out in a peculiar way in consequence of the number of independent Governments which have been from time to time set up, and which were brought into somewhat closer union at all events by the Australian Commonwealth Act. In the Dominion Parliament and in the South African Parliament the emblem of unity 2141 between them all is strengthened in every way by retaining in the Central power the appointment of these judges. I really think that in countries so closely connected as England and Ireland, where the Common Law of the two countries is the same, and where hitherto it has been always attempted to keep the progress and the advancement of the law running upon the same lines, it would be disastrous if anything happened that there should arise any feeling as between the two countries that there was a difference in jurisprudence in any way arising by reason of the way in which appointments were made, and I think it is well worth the consideration of the Government as to whether they ought not to do something, at all "events for the time, if they are not prepared to do it perpetually, to see that any changes of this kind which are made—though I should deprecate them at any time—should be made after you have known how your new Parliament, and the Executive responsible to it, are likely to act in the case of such important matters as this.
§ 5.0 P.M.
§ Mr. T. P. O'CONNORI do not know that any proposal in the course of these Debates has been made which I regard as more offensive, more impractical, and more prejudicial to the administration of law in Ireland than the proposal just made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. There are one or two observations of the right hon. and learned Gentleman with respect to which I must express my entire dissent. We must look at historical causes in this matter. What is the position in which the right hon. Gentleman proposes to put the judiciary in Ireland? He proposes to make it to all intents and purposes a foreign judiciary, and not an Irish judiciary. He proposes that the judges in Ireland should not be chosen by the Executive Government of Ireland, but by the Executive Government of this country. I put it to any man who looks at the question free from party bias or religious or other prejudice—[HON. Members: "Oh."] I do not know whether I succeed or not, but I try to look at the question in that way—I put it to any man, could there be any proposal more calculated to destroy all confidence among the Irish people in the judicial system than the system proposed by the right hon. Gentleman? I go to the historical case, too. Everybody who has read the works of Dean Swift knows that one of the most constant criticisms of Irish administration was the character of the bishops 2142 appointed to the Anglican Church in Ireland by the Imperial authority. He said that these bishops were usually so bad that the only explanation he was able to give was that on their way through Hounslow Heath the bishops were taken out of their coaches and that highwaymen were put in their place. Any man who has studied the history of the Episcopal Church in Ireland will know that, according to some of its wisest heads, a great deal of the comparative failure—I use the word "comparative" in quite a non-contentious sense—of the Anglican Church in Ireland was due to the fact that its bishops were created by the Imperial authority and not by the Irish authority. I put it to anybody, what would be the position of an Irish judge in a judiciary chosen not by the Government of his own country, but by the Government of this country? Why! you would cut at the root of any popular confidence in any such judge or in such an administration of justice.
The hon. Gentleman who proposed the first Amendment and the right hon. Gentleman spoke as if everything were quite satisfactory in Ireland now as regards the judiciary. I abstain from any language which might be regarded as provocative, but I think I am justified in saying that there is a profound want of confidence among the Irish people at the present moment in the whole judicial system of the country, and it is not, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, because of any religious ground. I wish he would try to inculcate his friends in Ulster with his own enlightened opinions. He said that he had nothing to say against Catholics being judges. He told us that he had no criticism to make on that matter. I have a criticism to make, and it is this. I know some Protestant judges in Ireland who enjoy the confidence of the people, and I know some Catholic judges who enjoy no such confidence. The right hon. and learned Gentleman entirely misconceives—and he has no excuse for misconceiving it, for he knows Ireland—the position in this matter of religion of the party to which we on these benches belong. In our politics, both in private and in public, we allow no sectarian issue whatever to guide our action. [Cheers and a laugh.] That observation was received with what, I suppose, were meant to be jeers from hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway, and it is not creditable. If you look at these benches at this period of Irish history, or at any period since this party came into existence, you 2143 will find always a considerable Protestant minority. You will find that since it came into existence three powerful Protestant leaders were elected by the party. I assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman—I said this before, and it does not seem to get credence; it seems rather to annoy him—that if any man in the councils of our party, either public or private, would affirm preference for or hostility to any man for any public appointment on the ground of religion, he would be ruled out of order by the chairman of any such meeting, and he would be howled down by any such assembly.
I put it to any man, could you do anything worse for the administration of justice in Ireland than to make the appointment of the judges remain in the hands of the Imperial Parliament I The man appointed might be an Irishman, probably he would be an Irishman, but, as the Chief Secretary said, he would be known and regarded as an English judge—a judge imposed on Ireland by the Imperial authority, and not because he happened to be in sympathy with the national aspirations of the people. The right hon. and learned Gentleman spoke of the mistakes made by those who do not understand Ireland. One of the mistakes is that the party which he represents, known as the English garrison, have been regarded as representative and typical of the English people, and as a sort of citadel and safeguard of English authority in that country. As a matter of fact, although that View is now rapidly passing away, there was a time when it was true that the Irish people regarded the English garrison as typical and representative of the English people, instead of being its negation. I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman ought to teach the people in whose name he speaks here how misguided they are in some of their opinions. Can the right hon. Gentleman say that there was no objection among his friends in the North of Ireland to the Government appointing a Chief Justice and a Master of the Polls although they were Catholics? He said there would be no objection if Catholics were appointed by the Irish Government. What is the distinction? They would be Catholics in the one case as well as in the other. Does anyone suppose that we are not going to have a rational and civilised Government in Ireland as in every other country? I know the hon. Member for North Armagh gives the majority of the Irish people credit for toleration.
§ Mr. T. P. O'CONNORThe majority of the Nationalist party represent the majority of the Irish people. You have tried that issue several times, and I cannot congratulate you on the result. The hon. and learned Gentleman has a strange, crazy, topsy-turvy idea of the character, ideas, and purposes of the Irish Nationalist party, and of anybody that will be elected by them. The right hon. Gentleman, talks about the majority in the Irish Parliament being Catholic. That may be. The majority of the Irish people are Catholic, but it does not- follow that the majority of the judiciary, or the majority of the Cabinet, would be Catholic. In my opinion, in my confident hope, in my sincere desire, political lines in Ireland, after Home Rule, will not be drawn on sectarian, but on economic lines.
§ The CHAIRMANI think we are getting back on to a Second Reading Debate. The right hon. and learned Gentleman quite legitimately referred to the origin of certain feelings in Ireland, and the hon. Member is now making a reply, but I think in dealing with interruptions the line he takes is calculated to lead to a Second Reading Debate all over again.
§ Mr. T. P. O'CONNORI do not desire to go one hairbreadth beyond the legitimate limits of debate. I will get back more closely to the Amendment than in the observations I was making, which were partially provoked by the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I come back to this point. If you want a judiciary which will administer justice fairly and will be a safeguard of law and order, you must have a judiciary which has the confidence of the nation over which it presides. You cannot carry on law in any country unless you have the sympathy of all the citizens in the country.
§ Mr. T. P. O'CONNORI will put two questions to the hon. Gentleman who interrupted me. Has the judiciary in Ireland the confidence of the Irish people?
§ Mr. T. P. O'CONNORI know it has the confidence of hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway, and that is just the reason 2145 it has not the confidence of the majority of the people. Secondly, I will give hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway from the North of Ireland full reason to take any steps they like, even civil war, the first day that an Irish Parliament, or an Irish judge, interferes either with their property or their liberty.
§ Mr. T. P. O'CONNORI say you would absolutely deprive the judiciary of the confidence of the Irish people if that judiciary were imposed by another authority. The true, proper, and democratic road for the judiciary in Ireland is to leave it in the hands of the Government of that country.
§ Lord HUGH CECILThis seems to me one of the most instructive and interesting discussions to which? have ever had the pleasure of listening. The Chief Secretary, in a speech, not on a different, but really on the same question earlier in the Debate, pointed out how very Irish the existing Government practice was, and he seemed to me incidentally to convince me that it is quite untrue to say that in this matter of appointments the Irish Government under the Act of Union is not conducted according to Irish ideas. I thought that an interesting contribution, but it is one inconsistent with other declarations. We have had an interesting speech from the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) and from my right hon. Friend (Sir E. Carson). The hon. Member for the Scotland Division says that the judiciary must be trusted, and that the history of Ireland proves, among other things, that the judiciary appointed by the Imperial authority never would be trusted. That is a very striking statement, because the judiciary in Ireland has always been appointed by the Imperial Government. When there was an Irish Parliament the Executive were chosen by Imperial authority. Home Rule is a new experiment in two respects. It is to be a Parliament representing the whole people, and not merely the aristocracy or the Protestant party, and also the Executive and the judiciary, if the Clauses pass, will be appointed by the Irish Parliament. The old historic arrangement was that the Executive and the judiciary were in the hands of Great Brtain. What is the hon. Member's objection to retaining the judiciary, as they always were, in the hands of the Imperial Government? It is that they will not regard them as national judges. 2146 These are his very words—that they will not belong to his own countrymen. [HON. MEMBERS: "Foreigners."] I do not remember his using the word "foreigner," but that was the sense of what he said. Does it not occur to hon. Members opposite that that sort of statement is absolutely conclusive against the position which they have taken up all through the Debate? If Ireland and Great Britain are not to be one country after this Bill passes, to such an extent that you can trust the judiciary to be appointed by the Imperial Government without creating in the minds of the Irish people a feeling of prejudice against the judiciary, does anyone really conceive that the arrangement set up by this Bill can be permanent?
Is it not perfectly clear that, according to the hon. Member's own opinion, what you are really doing is to create a state of restricted separation and not a state of extended connection'? You have got two separate nations and a certain artificial connection, but the moment you come to make one of those artificial connections so important as the one to keep the judiciary in the hands of the Imperial Government, that moment it becomes intolerable to Irish Nationalist sentiment, and the plan is to be rejected. How profoundly, significant is that statement by the hon. Member of the whole attitude of the Nationalist party towards this Bill. In his view the two countries are separate, distinct nations, and every connection that is left in this Bill will be an artificial connection contrary to the inherent nature of what you are doing. I would like to have that speech, properly interpreted, sent to every Liberal supporter of Home Rule. If they did not altogether misunderstand that point of view-it would convert them all to be Unionists. The hon. Member misapprehends the force of what my right hon. Friend said about Catholic appointments. My right hon. Friend not only did not say that the existing appointments were open to objection, but he did not say that the appointments of the Irish Government would necessarily be open to objection, or would be made on sectarian grounds. What he said was that they would be suspect, that they would be thought to be made on sectarian grounds. There again what a light from another point of view is thrown upon the workability of the Bill. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division says that if the judges are appointed by the Imperial Government, they will be regarded as English judges. My right 2147 hon. Friend says that if they are appointed by the Irish Government, they will be thought Popish judges. Without sympathising with that point of view, may I say, what a prospect of Home Rule working under these terms; how clear it is that the whole thing is unreal, that the whole erection is on quicksand, and that no sooner is it set up than it is certain to be swallowed up by these two great forces, the Nationalist antipathy of England felt by the Nationalist party, and the Protestant antipathy of Romanism felt by the Protestants in Ireland. I am not setting up my own judgment; I am merely drawing attention to the very important testimony of the very experienced Members who have spoken, one from the Nationalist and one from the Unionist benches.
§ Mr. MacVEAGHWhat would the Duke of Norfolk say?
§ Lord HUGH CECILI have no idea, but I am sure that it would be more worth hearing than what the hon. Member would say. It is certainly desirable that the judiciary should be trusted, and it is apparent from the speeches to which we have listened, that it is literally impossible to make a judiciary which will be trusted by all parties, or schools, or thought in Ireland; but we cannot but remember that both the Government and the Nationalist Members have repeatedly invited the minority in Ireland to formulate any demand for safeguarding them under this Bill, and that they have been told, not once, but many times to do so. While the actual exclusion of Ulster it is said cannot be considered, any safeguards short of that will be considered. Not for the first time, not because it meets their objection to the Bill—for nothing will meet their objection—they have asked for a safeguard in response to these invitations. Is it to be refused? It is perfectly plain that an independent judiciary is, so far as safeguards can be of any real value, when you distrust the whole machinery of government, as good a safeguard as can be set up. When this safeguard is asked for, the response from the Nationalist benches is that it is an insult to Ireland and that it would bring the judiciary into contempt in every part of it. What is the use of telling the minority in Ireland you are going to treat them fairly, and that you are really anxious to offer them safeguards if they only ask for them, if, when they do ask for safeguards, when they make 2148 some proposal which does offer some apparent protection to themselves, they are at once told that such protection is impossible because it is an insult to Ireland? Yet in the very speech in which the safeguard is refused language is used which might reasonably cause apprehension in the mind of any of the men who dissent from the majority in Ireland. We are told about the future Nationalist judiciary being quite different from the present one. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division says that he does not like the present judiciary, and that he does not think it is to be trusted. We are actually asked to invite the minority in Ireland to acquiesce in this arrangement, that the Nationalist party are to have the, power of appointment and removal of Irish judges, because the safeguards which are absolute in our case, by the Address of both Houses of Parliament, may well be believed not to be a safeguard in this case, where the two Houses are animated by feelings less reasonable than prevails in the Houses of Parliament here. The minority in Ireland are asked to trust this judiciary, which is to be quite different from the judiciary which now presides in their Courts. Is it possible to approach this matter in a spirit less likely to cause reasonable apprehension among the minority in Ireland? The deplorable part of these discussions is that they are very thinly attended by Members of that majority that decide the issue. I cannot count, without unduly delaying my speech, how many Liberal Members are present at this moment, but there is certainly not one-sixth of the party which will afterwards vote in the Lobby against this Amendment.
§ Mr. PRINGLEWhat about your side?
§ Lord HUGH CECILThat does not make it any better. This Debate is not any bettor because it is not listened to by Conservative Members. The deplorable thing is that those who are the deciding authority, who are the majority in this House, do not attend. I am not blaming them. If I were in their place I would do exactly as they do. But it is a deplorable arrangement in conducting a discussion of this kind, full of new lights and instruction on the whole Irish question, that there should be no one present who really matters to listen to it. So I submit that this Amendment ought to be adopted, first of all, because it is claimed on behalf of the minority as a safeguard for what it is 2149 worth, and because the speech in which it has been opposed by the hon. Member for the Scotland Division is absolutely inconsistent with all the foundations of the Bill as laid down on those benches, and also because in that speech he used language which was calculated in the highest degree to excite apprehension as to the character of the judges to be appointed under this Section.
§ Sir WILLIAM BYLESThe Noble Lord has blamed hon. Members of the party to which I belong for not being present in larger numbers, but whenever we do come into these Debates we find exactly the same thing going on. Whatever the Amendment may be, it is always an attempt to destroy Home Rule bit by bit. The party opposite no doubt does not want to concede Home Rule to Ireland. Our party does want to concede it. The plan of the Opposition is to object bit by bit to everything that is proposed. I think one of the first Amendments was an attempt to prevent the Irish people speaking their own language. The next was an attempt to prevent them controlling their own workpeople as to the conditions under which they should labour. A little later efforts were made to take from them every power of taxing themselves, as if self-taxation was not the first essential of self-government; and now, by this Amendment, the endeavour is to man all the local Courts by English judges. Why there would be no Home Rule if these things were done. I do not in the least wonder at my hon. Friend the Member for the Scotland Division saying it would be an insult to the Irish people to keep them in English judicial leading strings all the time. We want Home Rule; the Noble Lord does not. He thinks that Ireland should still be a county. We do not. We think that it should be a separate Government, and we hope that that is what we shall see. I may be allowed to make one general observation. I really do wonder that the Tory party do not take up this Bill. It may seem a bold suggestion to make, but it would be tremendously for their own interest. They might get Amendments in the House of Lords and pass the Bill this year and send away sixty Irish Members, and then perhaps they might hope to break up this Government and come into power themselves.
§ Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSONThe only-observation which the hon. Member has permitted himself to make on this Amend- 2150 ment was a grotesque travesty of it. He spoke about it ensuring that the Irish Courts are going to be manned by English judges. It is nothing of the kind. The Amendment proposes that the power of appointing judges in Ireland shall remain, as it does now, in the Imperial Government. How many judges in Ireland now are English judges? [An HON. MEMBER: "Every one of them."] Somebody on the Nationalist Benches says, "Every one of them." That is the confusion of mind which is unable to distinguish between an Imperial appointment and an English appointment.
§ Sir WILLIAM BYLESOf course what I meant was that they would be English appointments.
§ Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSONWe say that they are Imperially appointed judges, and Nationalist Members are only doing what the Noble Lord has said, emphasising more and more the idea of nationality which makes them demand this Bill, and getting further and further away from the idea of federal government. My Noble Friend the Member for Oxford University (Lord Hugh Cecil) has dealt with the hon. Member for the Scotland Division (Mr. T. P. O'Connor). I do not propose to make any comment on what I can only describe as an amazing piece of Parliamentary effrontery on the part of the hon. Gentleman, further than to say this: He accuses those who represent Ulster constituencies in this House of sectarianism; he assures us that our Amendment suggesting that the judges should be appointed by the Imperial Parliament is offensive and prejudicial, and would destroy confidence in the judges. He went on to say that if the appointments were given into the hands of the Nationalist Parliament we might be assured that there would be none of that sectarianism; that he and his party would never have anything to do with sectarianism, and that any fears that we may have on that ground are entirely groundless. Could anything be more ridiculous than that. As the Bill stands the judges are to be appointed by the Lord Lieutenant, and that is, in effect, by the Chief Secretary. Members on the Nationalist benches are never tired of boasting that the real Chief Secretary in Ireland, the man who really pulls the strings, is the hon. Member for West Belfast. Who is the hon. Member for West Belfast? He is the head of a secret organisation whose first principle is to impose, as a test for membership, that a man shall not hold 2151 certain religious principles. Yet we are assured that appointments by the Nationalist Parliament would be non-sectarian. That is all I desire to say about the religious point of view.
I wish to say a word about the constitutional aspect of this subject, which is somewhat more important than the Chief Secretary suggested. The Chief Secretary went back to the time of Mr. Gladstone, and he quoted an obiter dictum of Mr. Gladstone. I am not so much concerned on this question with the obiter dicta of Mr. Gladstone as I am with what Mr. Gladstone put in his legislative proposals. The Chief Secretary completely failed to remember that Mr. Gladstone in his 1893 Bill, in Clause 19, Sub-section (2) provided for the appointment of two Exchequer judges; he, in point of fact, provided that these two Exchequer judges, to whom there was to be appeal, were to be appointed and removed, not by the Irish Parliament, not by the Lord Lieutenant, but by His Majesty, which is the Imperial Government. The right hon. Gentleman might have gone on to say that in the Bill of 1886 not only two judges, but in the whole of the Exchequer Division of the High Court, every judge was to be appointed, not by the Lord Lieutenant, but by His Majesty on the joint recommendation of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. The precedent to which the right hon. Gentleman referred is in support of the Amendment and against his contention. But there is a wider point of view in which to discuss this matter. The Debate we have had on this Amendment only illustrates once again the way in which the Government change their point of view with regard to the whole question of the granting of self-government to Ireland, exactly as they choose. They hop about like so many kittens on hot bricks. At one moment they stand on the Dominion analogy, at another moment they go on the Colonial and provincial analogy; if that does not suit they hop off, and they fall back and say, "This is a case not on exact precedent, but it is consonant with the eternal principles of essential justice."
I do think the Government should make up their minds as to where they do stand. If they have got a platform they should try and stick to it if they possibly can. The Prime Minister and the right hon. Gentleman have quoted the Colonial precedent. It has been pointed out already that the Colonial precedent ought to be 2152 considered on the assumption for the moment that the Government are really sincere when they say that this Bill is the first step in a system of Home Rule all round; that they are going at some future date to fulfil their pledge and set up separate Parliaments in Scotland, England, and Wales, as well as in Ireland. I say that if we take the case of the great Dominions there is not a single one, not even Australia, which supports the Government proposals. Not only that, but the United Slates precedent is against the Government. In the United States the State chooses the minor judges, but the major offices are filled by the federal Government, who appoint the judges. The case of Canada has been mentioned. In regard to Canada the facts are extremely plain. In 31 Vict., Section (96) (i.e., the Act of 1867), it is provided that the Governor-General, who corresponds to His Majesty, shall appoint the judges of the Superior Courts and the County Courts in each province, except the Courts of Nova Scotia and Brunswick, for which there was no particular reason at that time to provide. That is the position with regard to Canada. All these judges are appointed by the central federal authority, and the privilege of appointment is carefully guarded.
I believe there have been two or more cases in which a Legislature has attempted to pass an Act appointing new judges. What has happened? I have a note of one case—I believe there was one about the year 1907—so long ago as the case of the Quebec Act, 51 and 52 Vict., cap. 20. The Quebec Act proposed to set up District County Courts in Quebec; it proposed to set up County Court Judges, and it made provision for the appointment of those judges. What happened? The Federal Minister of Justice (Sir J. Johnson) wrote a long and elaborate report, of which the hon. Gentleman, if he cares to look up "Lefroy on Legislative Powers in Canada," will find a summary. The Minister of Justice wrote this long and elaborate report advising very strongly that the Act should be disallowed as a complete infringement of the power of the federal Government. He indicated what ought to be the power of any federal Government, and so strongly did the report impress His Majesty's Government that in point of fact the Quebec Act was disallowed and the power of the different States in regard to the appointment of judges was 2153 definitely declared, once for all, to reside, not in the States, but in the central federal Parliament. I do ask the Government, and I think the Committee are entitled to ask them, to make up their minds where they are going to stand. It is all very well for the Prime Minister to talk about the appointment of judges being in the hands of our autonomous Colonies. I want to know whether we are going to have Ireland in the position of an autonomous Colony or under a federal system? If any reply is to come from the Treasury Bench I hope that a reply will be given on that point. I say perfectly distinctly that the appointment of the judiciary is always treated in our Imperial Possessions as a badge of sovereignty. The appointment of the judiciary is the act of a self-governing community with an independent Parliament. The hon. Gentleman was perfectly explicit—he said, "We want a separate Government in Ireland, and a separate judiciary." Is that what the Government mean? I hope we will have an answer.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYThe right hon. Member for Trinity College (Sir Ed. Carson) said that this Amendment was probably the most important Amendment in the whole of the Bill, and the one to which most interest attaches in the North of Ireland. It struck me as rather odd that the Amendment should not be on the Paper. The Conservative party during the last few months have been drafting Amendments to this Bill, and apparently this point never struck them.
§ Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSONMay I explain that the Amendment was put down in this particular form in order to comply with what was believed to be the Rules of Order, but on subsequent consideration it appeared to your predecessor in the Chair, Sir, that it might be modified with a view to its being submitted in this form.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYIt is rather curious that the Prime Minister was left exactly under the same impression as I was, because the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment was only, by the grace and leave of the House, the unanimous leave of the House, allowed to withdraw it, and this Amendment was substituted. It is news to me if Amendments of this kind are put on the Paper in concoction with the Chair, which is the suggestion—in other words, you are to go to the Chair with 2154 your Amendment to see whether it is in order or not. I do not think that practice has hitherto prevailed. The Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord Hugh Cecil) complained of the paucity of attendance in the Home Rule Debates. Will he allow me to give him the reason? In past years I do not think I have been absent a quarter of an hour from any Irish Debate. What has taken the life out of these Debates is this: It is perfectly plain that you are all reading from briefs. It is all cut, dried, and prepared like horses' fodder. The Conservative organisation prepares a long list of matters, mostly nonsense, in a printed form, and it is then given to hon. Gentlemen to be phonographed. That is not debate; that is absurdity. It is the first time it has ever been tried in this House, and it has failed. It is that which drives Members out of the House. While I would not go within miles of supporting this Amendment, I do think this question is one of great importance, and it is an issue that well deserves the attention of the House. As regards religion, let me say that the only occasion on which, so far as I know, the present Irish party intervened was to prevent the appointment of a Catholic. When Mr. Bryce was Chief Secretary he was waited upon by two members of the Irish party to protest against the appointment that was about to be made, with the result that the Catholic was prevented from being appointed a High Court Judge, and a Presbyterian appointed in his place. So that, therefore, I think I will be able to convince the Committee that, as far as religion goes, the action that was taken upon that occasion had no religious purpose of any kind.
Secondly, I would like to point out that while the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin has suggested that the present Government have appointed as High Court Judges a large number of Catholics, the fact is that until last year they appointed no Catholic whatever. They appointed first the Master of the Rolls, the Right Hon. Mr. Meredith, a most excellent man, and not only a Protestant but a Conservative. That was the first appointment made by the present Government, and they appointed a Unionist, a Conservative, and a Protestant to the greatest office in their gift. Their next appointment was the appointment of Mr. Wylie, a Presbyterian gentleman, certainly not a Nationalist, and a most excellent appointment. Their 2155 third appointment was the appointment of Serjeant Dodd. Hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side may remember him. He was also a Presbyterian appointment. I am quite satisfied that not one of those appointments would have been made if they would have invoked or provoked the disfavour of the majority of the Irish Nationalist party. So it is absurd to suggest in this matter there is any religious feeling of any kind. Then again, of course, we can remember the vacancy in the Lord Justiceship. Ireland had a great loss in the death of Lord Justice Fitz-Gibbon, one of the greatest men probably that ever lived, and it is always a regret to me that this House never had the honour of having him as one of its Members, because I think he would have adorned and made famous the name of his country. That vacancy occurred, and a fourth appointment was the appointment of a Presbyterian in the person of the present Lord Justice Cherry. Thus the four appointments made under the Administration which had then lasted six years to High Court judgeships were appointments of Protestants. I should also have mentioned that Lord Chancellor Walker was also a Protestant appointment, so that in this Administration for five or six years everybody connected with the administration of justice appointed by the Liberal Government was in fact a Protestant.
Then what happened? The right hon. Gentleman suggests that recently Catholics had been appointed. Quite true and quite inevitable. The position of Master of the Polls became vacant owing to the illness of Mr. Meredith, a really great judge, and they appointed their Attorney-General, Mr. Charles O'Connor, who happened to be the very man, whose original appointment was objected to by two Nationalist Members when they waited on Mr. Bryce. That will show you he had not taken a very large part in, at all events, extreme Nationalist politics. What was the other appointment? It was that of his predecessor, Mr. Redmond Barry, to the Lord Chancellorship, when the vacancy occurred, and which was inevitable, since he had been Attorney-General and therefore got the appointment. Everybody here will remember his great moderation and high character. Therefore, so far as this Government is concerned, acting, I have not the smallest doubt, with the approval of the present Nationalist 2156 party, they have appointed a series of gentlemen, judges, against whom not a word can be said. Let the Committee remember that this Amendment deals, not merely with High Court Judges, but with County Court appointments; and of all the suggestions of absurdity I ever heard, it is that the County Court judges should in future, under a Home Rule system, be appointed by the Imperial Government. That is the Amendment, but when I say that, I am far from belittling the spirit in which the right hon. Gentleman made his speech. In dealing with this, I should like to say a word as to what was said by the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University. He has made us this reproach, that we have said we are willing to give any safeguard. I think there are words to that effect to be found in the speeches of the hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. J. Redmond). I do not go quite that length, but in this matter I am quite prepared to agree that something might be done, provided there comes to us some suggestion of a settlement. Allow me, at all events, to express my own thoughts on the subject.
We are told again and again and again that we show no response to the appeals that are held out to us. What response can we make to threats of civil war? It is absurd. I understood my Friend, if he will allow me to call him so, the Member for North Armagh (Mr. Moore), even in this Committee this evening, to say, he is going to go to war before even a single hair on the head of anybody is hurt. It is the first time in history such a thing will have occurred. How then can we, met by arguments, if they be arguments, of that character, say anything that would go to mollify fears and apprehensions such as those expressed. For my part I take this view, that the present system of appointment by the Imperial Government is a bad one. It has not led to any good results in the whole of the century, and you propose to perpetuate it. I say it is a bad and impossible system. I do not agree that the position of the Irish judges is the same as it was twenty years ago. Their influence in the country has largely ceased. They no longer intervene in politics, they have to a large extent become Civil servants, and when I hear what I may call the Mid-Victorian arguments that we used to address to this House thirty years ago, reproduced by the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) it seems to me such speeches do not keep in touch with the realities of the present time. There was a time when 2157 the judges in Ireland attended every Privy Council meeting, and when their names were appended to every coercion Act proclamation, and when their one object in life was to set themselves against the Irish people. That has utterly disappeared. The Irish representation in this House by long and constant criticism has absolutely killed and broken that power; so that to consider this question now from the standpoint of thirty years ago, is really antediluvian.
On the other hand, people in the North of Ireland, I do think, are entitled to have upon the judiciary a fair proportion of Protestants. But what is the present system which is so much belauded in Belfast. You have the Chief Secretary for Ireland driven from pillar to post on the look-out to get a Protestant Recorder for Belfast. Why, Sir, the Protestants of Belfast would have been delighted if they had appointed a Catholic Recorder. I venture to say that the present system, which seeks to accommodate itself to the North of Ireland by looking here and there on religious grounds for an appointment, is not good for the administration of justice, and I say especially in Belfast, and I doubt if the people of Belfast are especially satisfied with the appointment, to say no no more. What is the solution which one would like to find. Is it to be found in this Amendment? I say no more absurd Amendment was ever moved or was ever proposed. The notion that in the state of things where there will be some forty Irish Members left in this House to criticise, and where in fact any criticism can be interpolated, to say that in that condition of Parliament you should leave the Executive Government on this important point in the hands of the Imperial administration is, to my mind, something absurd. We have suggestions of analogies drawn from Canada and Australia, and the Cape of Good Hope. I would as soon draw them from Morocco and Persia, and they would have just as much reality or actuality in them. The peculiarities of Ireland and its peculiar circumstances will not be provided for by pills, either from Canada or Australia or the Cape of Good Hope. I therefore say that, such an Amendment as this cannot be supported by any Nationalist, or by any man in favour of Home Rule, but let it not be said that we are unconscious to the necessity for meeting Protestant opinion.
What is the present system? I may name with honour the name of a man who is a constant adviser of the hon. Gentle- 2158 man the Member for Waterford and the hon. Member for Mayo. It is a scandal that in the case of a man like Mr. Stephen Ronan, one of the ornaments of the Irish Bar, that neither side has appointed him a judge, and I challenge any man on that bench to say that that is not a disgrace to your existing system. The Tories would not appoint him, and the Liberals dare not appoint him, and yet he is a man of the very highest and most subtle intellect, and would be an ornament to the bench. What you do is this: You look to your party hacks in this House.
6.0 P.M.
I remember well, when for over a year the late Mr. Justice Munro, a great man, was stricken with paralysis, and when for twelve months before his death he was unable to attend Court. That judgeship was allowed to remain vacant in order that when you came in you should be able to appoint one of your own members. There was The MacDermot, who also would have been an ornament in the administration of justice. He would not be selected at the hands of the Tory party when they were in office for twenty years. They preferred to appoint men inferior to him in position. Therefore to suggest that the present system is a system which we ought to go back to, or a system which deserves any eulogy, is to speak of a system which has been tried and failed, and which has absolutely broken down. I have an idea in my mind, but it is no good my making a suggestion, and on that account I will not make it. But a system could be devised which would meet the reasonable fears of hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway. So long, however, as they say they have nothing for us but the sword, we can only treat in this House the arguments they put forward in the spirit in which we believe those Amendments are moved. Their system has been this: Attack everything in the Bill whether it is good, bad, or indifferent.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYThere it is. Attack the Bill in every Clause, line, and comma, and then complain that nothing is done from our side to meet you. I believe I am expressing the spirit of the Irish people when I say that there is no desire to confine these appointments either to Catholics or to Nationalists. I further say that at any moment when a system of rota or otherwise is forthcoming from the Bar of 2159 Ireland, by which fit and suitable men can be proposed, I believe it will meet with general and hearty acceptance.
§ Mr. J. H. CAMPBELLAll sides will agree that probably the most real and vital of all safeguards that could by any possibility be introduced into a Bill of this kind is one that would secure that impartial and able men are appointed to the judiciary in Ireland. Therefore we are entitled to say, and we do say, that this Amendment—I am not wedded to its form—affords an opportunity to the Government to demonstrate the sincerity of their oft-repeated profession of willingness to give to the loyalist minority in Ireland any reasonable safeguard that they demand. Nothing more vitally affects the loyalist people at home, nothing appeals to them more strongly than the fear that under a Home Rule system the men who will be appointed to the judicial bench would not satisfy either of those requirements; and it seems but a reasonable request that some provision should be made, if not by this Amendment, at any rate in some form, to meet that fear. The hon. and learned Member (Mr. T. M. Healy) says that that is impossible as long as we retain our present attitude on the question of Home Rule. I should have thought that that was a poor way of dealing with a matter of this kind. Either it is right or it is wrong that judges should be appointed by the Irish Executive and the Irish Parliament. If it is right, the question cannot be affected by the opposition to the loyalist minority to Home Rule. If, on the other hand, it is wrong in itself, the mere fact that the loyalist minority in Ireland object to Home Rule root and branch ought to be no reason, even in the mind of the hon. and learned Member, why this Committee should not do what is right. But assume that the loyalist minority are not to be taken into account because of the attitude which they adopt, and I hope will continue to adopt throughout, with regard to this Bill. Is there not public opinion in England to be affected? No man knows better than the hon. and learned Member that there are hundreds of thousands of people in England and Scotland who are just as much alarmed on behalf of their loyal fellow-subjects in Ireland as are the Ulster loyalists themselves, and I should have thought that they deserved some consideration in this matter. The hon. and 2160 learned Gentleman has suggested that we on this side are speaking throughout these Debates as phonographs. He will hardly deny that my right hon. Friend and colleague and myself have as much knowledge of Ireland as most men in this House, and that we are competent to speak in matters of this kind without instructions or brief. I listened with some interest to the account which the hon. and learned Gentleman gave of the judicial appointments made in the course of the last six years. It is quite true, as he stated, that four of the gentlemen appointed were of the Protestant religion, but he omitted to mention that in one case it was not an original appointment, but a case of transfer.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYAnd promotion.
§ Mr. J. H. CAMPBELLPromotion of a not very elaborate kind. It was a case of transfer from being Judge of the Land Commission to being Master of the Rolls. The hon. and learned Gentleman also omitted to mention that the other three were pronounced Home Rulers. They would have had no more chance of selection, as he knows, had it not been for that fact, than I would. I regret that he thought it necessary to make an attack on my friend the Recorder of Belfast. I have known Mr. Walker Craig for over thirty years. A more upright, honourable, and straightforward gentleman I have never known, and I believe that his appointment to Belfast was welcomed by everybody in that place who has any regard to the fair and impartial administration of justice. But I was glad that he referred to the case of the present Master of the Rolls, because I cannot conceive a better illustration of the reality of the danger which we apprehend so long as under any Home Rule system the uncontrolled appointment of the judiciary is left in the hands of the Irish Executive. What was the history of that appointment? A vacancy occurred in the judgeship of the Irish Land Commission owing to the fact that the Government transferred the then judge (Mr. Justice Meredith) to the Rolls Court. The Government of the day selected Mr. Charles O'Connor, who also is a personal friend of mine of many years' standing, and a most upright and able gentleman. At once hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway interviewed the Chief Secretary of the day. They took him by the throat and said, "You must cancel this appointment." He 2161 asked why. Would the Committee believe—they may take it from me, because I am acquainted with the facts—that the sole and only objection was that some years before this gentleman had in his professional capacity acted as counsel for a landlord who was involved in litigation with his tenants. That was the sole and only objection urged against him. [Laughter.] Laughing does not get rid of a fact of this kind. Whoever wishes to contradict my statement let him get up in his place and do so. It is notorious that that was the sole and only ground of objection against this gentleman. The proof of it is seen in the fact that subsequently he was made Attorney-General. His position in his profession and his claims were so strong that the present Chief Secretary found it impossible to ignore him. But on the occasion when his predecessor had selected him as one of the leading men in his profession for this judgeship, he was compelled to cancel the appointment after he had actually recommended it, on the sole and only ground that on one occasion he had taken, as lie was bound to do in his professional capacity, a brief for a landlord.
The hon. and learned Gentleman referred to another case, and I am glad he mentioned it—the case of a leader of the Bar at home, a friend of his own and of mine, a very eminent and distinguished lawyer. He said that that gentleman, a Roman Catholic, had never been appointed by either Government, a fact which he described as a great scandal. The hon. and learned Gentleman ought to know—he probably has forgotten—that about the year 1905, when the late Government were going out of office, there was a vacancy in the judiciary, and the popular opinion of the Bar was that this gentleman would get the post. There and then there appeared in the columns of the "Freeman's Journal" a violent article, attacking and denouncing him as a Castle Catholic. They said they would prefer any other person to be appointed in his place.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYThey immediately appointed him their counsel.
§ Mr. J. H. CAMPBELLI cannot help that. They have done me the honour to do the same. But the fact remains that the very cases which the hon. and learned Gentlemen gave are positive illustrations of the danger that we anticipate and desire to meet by this Amendment. There is one other point to -which I wish to draw atten- 2162 tion and particularly desire to impress on right hon. Gentlemen opposite. Be the system of appointing to the judiciary distingushed members of the profession who are advocates of the policy of the Government who appoint them a good or a bad system, it is the plan that has prevailed, and prevails to-day, in England and Scotland, and the plan that has prevailed in Ireland ever since the Union. The result, speaking generally, has undoubtedly been that these different countries have got the very best men in the profession. It is quite true that, perhaps, once in a generation, a man may have bad luck, like the late Attorney-General, to whom the hon. and learned Gentleman referred, a very distinguished lawyer indeed, The MacDermot. There was no ostracism of The MacDermot; he was simply the victim of fate. He was Attorney-General when the Liberal Administration went out of office, and had he survived to the next Administration they would have undoubtedly selected him for either their Lord Chancellor or their Attorney-General, but, to the regret of all of us, he was removed by death before that opportunity arrived. Therefore the case has no application to the point under discussion. He was the mere victim of circumstances; his non-appointment was not-due to any attempt by his own party or by our party to boycott him or to deprive him of legitimate promotion. That system being prevalent, as the hon. and learned Gentleman and the Chief Secretary know, many prominent men in the ranks of the profession at home—it would be invidious to particularise or to say what the proportion is, but it is a substantial proportion—are declared and pronounced Unionists, and in the ordinary course of things if the Government remained as it was—that is to say, if there was an interchange of Conservative and Liberal Administrations—those gentlemen in the future would get their legitimate chance. It is in view of that, I assume, that in one of the former Bills a provision was made that the transfer of the power of appointment was not to take place for a certain number of years. There is no such provision in this Bill, and the inevitable result will be that all these gentlemen, who are legitimately entitled to look forward to promotion in the ordinary course of time, will, as I believe, be for ever debarred therefrom. I do not think that is reasonable or right. You have even in the case of the constabulary—I admit to suit your own purposes, 2163 and to give you a force to back you up if you wish to collect your taxes or coerce Ulster—retained them for six years. Surely if you have not confidence in the Irish people to allow them to have their own police, except after an interval of six years, it is much more important and material that you should secure to the minority some arrangement by which they will at least have the guarantee that those who represent their views and opinions, and whom they regard as honourable and impartial men, will get their fair chance in the distribution of these great offices!
So long as the proposition of the Government remains unaltered, so long that will be impossible. I have never in this House and never will criticise any members of my own profession at home who have, been fortunate enough to obtain these appointments, or draw invidious comparisons with those who are there today as compared with those who were there a few years before, or make observations of any kind derogatory to these gentlemen, who, while I do not in the least begrudge them their good luck, and am glad, indeed, to see them get these prizes—for their time has come and they are entitled to them—yet I do complain, in the interests of these men, who are to-day many of them prominent and foremost men in the rank of their profession, that under this Home Rule scheme, if carried out on these lines, they will be entirely and for all time deprived of their legitimate chances of promotion and advancement. That can be easily secured. I do not say that this Amendment may not go too far, but at least I would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman opposite that something should be done in fairness to these men, who have no desire to leave their country, and cannot, of course, leave their profession, who have continued in their profession and gained eminence with the hope and reasonable ambition—at least in the case of some of them—that they will ultimately find their way to office of high dignity and importance. I think it is only fair and right in their interests, and in the interest of those anxious for some security and some guarantee, that all should feel that those who are competent and able to fill these places should have their legitimate opportunity and chance.
I think it is a reasonable suggestion to say that the Government at least should insert an Amendment in this Bill that for a definite period of years to come—I do not 2164 want to dogmatise as to the particular period, which I leave to the Government's own good taste and sense—but that for some particular period to come appointment to the judiciary should remain as it is at present, leaving it after a certain number of years to lapse to the Irish Executive, if at that time their conduct and actions have been such as to justify reposing in them so great confidence. I put that forward in the interests of my own profession, and I hope, in the interests of those who at home are clamouring for a safeguard of this kind. I am not putting it in the interests of those who, like myself, say that this Bill in all its branches will be a disaster and danger to Ireland. I firmly and honestly believe that, and I hope I am Irishman enough to say that which I honestly believe. If I believed that the Bill was going to be for the permanent good of my country, I hope I would willingly stand aside, and not oppose it, but I am opposed to it, and will oppose it, because I believe in my heart and conscience that it will destroy the prosperity that Ireland at present enjoys. Instead of peace, it will introduce a sword. Instead of progress and prosperity, it will bring disaster and decay. That is my own opinion. It is an opinion that justifies me in the attitude and position I have taken up in regard to this Bill. Nevertheless, I have to think of those of my fellow-countrymen at home who have been loyal in their devotion to the Union, who have been Unionists in politics and principle. I say on their behalf that I think it is eminently unfair that they should be left, as they will be if this Bill passes in its present form, with no chance of realising what is the legitimate and honourable ambition of those who fill a foremost position in the distinguished profession of which I have the honour to be a member.
§ The ATTORNEY - GENERAL (Sir Rufus Isaacs)The right and learned Gentleman who has just spoken in the latter part of his speech, travelled to regions much more appropriate to Second Reading.
§ Mr. J. H. CAMPBELLI was replying to the hon. and learned Gentleman behind me.
§ Sir RUFUS ISAACSI am not in the slightest degree attempting to criticise what the hon. and learned Gentleman said in his speech other than in the most friendly spirit. What I meant was that 2165 during the course of his speech, particularly towards the latter part of it, we were being led, I think over ground which has been travelled so often during these Debates, that I think we are justified now in taking it as the well-settled dividing line between the two camps in this House. On the one hand we know that hon. Members opposite of the Irish Unionist party, of whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman is one of the distinguished leaders, are opposed root and branch to this Bill. I have never said one word, do not say one word, and never shall attack in the slightest degree, the earnestness or sincerity of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. But I do say, without discussing or debating some of the propositions which he put forward during the latter part of his speech, that I shall ask the Committee to assume that we, on this side of the House, adhere to the view we have taken, and we equally ask that we should be taken as sincere and earnest in our views. Having said that, I am really very anxious to pass into what is the proper sphere of this Debate. It is worthy of observation when we are told what we are, that the opposition to this Bill does not seem, even yet, to have quite made up its mind what Amendment it is it wants for this Bill. I have some ground for that observation. Just let me recall to the Committee what has happened this afternoon. We had the Amendment moved to which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Strand Division made a speech on behalf of the Opposition. He said quite frankly during the course of his observations that he did not support the Amendment; that he was opposed to the Amendment, upon which my right hon. Friend and others spoke, and upon which this Debate opened—an Amendment which gives power to His Majesty's Government in Great Britain to interfere in the appointment of judges, if thought desirable.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Trinity College, when he spoke on this Amendment during the course of his arguments, developed a far wider range, the result of which has been that we have had a substitute—I am not going to criticise the words of the Amendment, because though they may not be very apt for the purpose, they have, at any rate, afforded an opportunity for this very interesting, and no doubt very valuable discussion on both sides. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, who 2166 has just spoken, has put forward another Amendment. As I understand him—I will not go so far as to say that it is inconsistent with the view of his colleagues—but it is another Amendment and he has asked us to take into account, during the discussion of this Amendment which is to limit the appointment in Ireland of those who are not at the present time judges in Ireland, the question of not interfering in any way with the appointment of those judges who have been appointed by the Executive here—that is appointed during the period before the Government of Ireland Bill becomes operative. That, as I understand it, is his proposal. There is another proposal suggested, that we should allow this system at present in vogue to continue for some few years. I think I could show that there is no consensus of opinion on the Opposition side as to what is the particular Amendment desired.
I shall address myself to some criticisms and observations made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman, the Member for Trinity College. He pointed out that in 1893 there were two safeguards—I am not sure whether he used that word—which are absent from the Bill. First of all, in the 1893 Bill, there was a power of appointment reserved for six years to this Parliament. Then, he continued further, there was the appointment of the Court of Exchequer. Let me deal with those two points. First of all, with regard to the Rill of 1893; it is quite true that during six years matters remained as they were. I want to show this Bill, which is different to the Bill of 1893, has far greater safeguards than the Bill of 1893, both in regard to this first matter and the Court of Exchequer, because here what we have done is to give under Clauses 29 and 30 the right of appeal to the Privy Council. There is a far better right than was given in the Bill of 1893, which enables both Governments, it enables anybody to petition the Governments, and to go direct to the Privy Council instead of having to go to the Privy Council through the Courts. That is a far better safeguard than the one to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman referred, the six years limitation before the appointments will begin in Ireland, or to the Court of Exchequer.
§ Sir E. CARSONmade an observation (which could not be heard) as to the Constitution.
§ Sir RUFUS ISAACSThe right hon. Gentleman is technically right. He is not right if he refers to the words on the Paper and the result of discussions which we have already had for some two or three days. With reference both to the constitutional question and also to other questions which may arise in regard to legal interpretation, or in regard to the decision of law, it is impossible, so far as I can think, to devise a better safeguard than that. We are to continue the judges in the same conditions of tenure as they are now, and they can only be removed upon an Address to both Houses of Parliament. It is perfectly true, as the hon. and learned Gentleman says well, that confidence is essential to the administration of justice. Of course it is! I am not going to attempt to travel into the various differences there may be between certain particular judges in Ireland or, it may be, between certain particular classes of appointments. What I do know with reference to it is this: that in any event what must determine whether or not there is confidence in a judge is, I should have thought, not so much the person who appoints him or the Government who made the appointment; not so much the particular gentleman; what will determine whether the judge has the confidence or otherwise of the people is the soundness and impartiality of his judgment.
§ Sir E. CARSON: You do not know-about those qualities.
§ Sir RUFUS ISAACSIf the right hon. and learned Gentleman is right, you know nothing about any man before the appointment is made. But what you do know is something of his capacity, something of him as a man. You appoint him because you think he will make a good judge. It is quite true you have to wait a little to determine, but, in any event, what more can you do than to give power to select, from amongst the best men, irrespective of religion? You appoint this man whom you think will be the best man, I really cannot understand how it can be said, if you are granting this Parliament to Ireland with all the powers you are going to grant to Ireland for the government of Ireland, that you should not include in them also the appointment of judges. And, indeed, so far as I understand the argument put forward by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, it is not that you should not give the power of appointing judges to Ireland, but that you should not 2168 do it for a few years. That, I think, is the utmost to which he goes, and after listening to the whole of this Debate I gather that was the view put forward by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Trinity College, who instanced what happened in 1893. So far as the Government's views are concerned in this matter what we have done is this: We have taken elaborate precautions to safeguard the Irish people and to safeguard the minority under this Bill. I am not going to argue these things again; they have been discussed on several occasions. All I desire is that those who do so argue should bear in mind the safeguards which we have put into the Bill.
The hon. Member for North Down (Mr. Mitchell-Thomson), who spoke in the course of this Debate, challenged us to say what precise precedents we were following. I will answer him. As I said before, if I may for once quote my own words, used in a much earlier portion of these Debates, we are not following any precedent. What we have said all along is you will not find any exact parallel for this Bill. We never suggested you would. It is not as if some Member discovered that the precedent in Australia and in South Africa, and so on, are not exactly like what is done here. Of course they are not. The circumstances are not the same, and you cannot find an exactly similar set of circumstances. We have not slavishly followed everything done with regard to our self-governing Dominions, but we have derived from the long experience which this country has had in creating Legislatures what is the best course to pursue and the best expedient to resort to in order to give a symmetrical measure to Ireland which will enable the Irish people to value the Parliamentary Government they have themselves, and which will give confidence to the people of this country in that measure.
§ Mr. MITCHELL - THOMSONMy point was this. The Government told us they are going to treat Ireland as they treat the Colonies. The question I ask is this, When you say you are going to treat Ireland as a Colony, do you mean as a dominion or a province?
§ Sir RUFUS ISAACSI do not think anybody has said that we are treating Ireland as a Colony. It is very difficult, of course, to pledge oneself to exact words, but I think the hon. Gentleman will find he is mistaken in saying that we said we 2169 are treating Ireland as a Colony, whole basis of the argument from hon. Gentlemen opposite, from first to last, was that that was not so. I remember, not so many weeks ago, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the senior Member for Trinity College and the Leader of the Opposition both said, "We would far sooner you treated Ireland as a Colony, and give her all you gave to South Africa, Canada, or Australia, than the way in which you are treating her." It is really a little difficult to see how anything that was said from these benches conveyed the idea that we purported to treat Ireland as a Colony. I do not dispute the proposition if the hon. Gentleman means what, I think he means. In certain aspects of the matter, no doubt, what we have done is to refer to other Constitutions for the purpose of seeing if we could find some precedent for this or that particular aspect of our Bill. In that sense I quite accept what the right hon. Gentleman said, but he will agree with me that that is a very different thing from saying that we are attempting by this Bill to treat Ireland exactly as we treat one of our self-governing Dominions; and that brings us back to what I was saying just now, that we base this Bill on experience which we have obtained of Constitutions and of the making of Constitutions. Undoubtedly the history of the British Empire, and certainly during the last twelve or fifteen years, there has been a good deal of experience in that direction, and the result has been we have taken, no doubt here and there as we thought right, from particular Sections of the Acts passed portions which we have introduced into this Government of Ireland Bill, but we never said that we attempted to deal with Ireland as a Colony, and I said myself there was no parallel for this Bill. I am glad if I have rightly interpreted the meaning of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, and to learn that he did not mean to go further than I understand him. I have only one or two more words to say as to what fell from the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Trinity College. He told us you cannot deal with this matter without at the same time arousing religious feeling in Ireland, and that there was bigotry in Ireland.
§ Sir E. CARSONNo, I did not say that.
§ Sir RUFUS ISAACSI think it follows from his argument. I am not suggesting that he said on which side it existed. I 2170 understood him to say that it was the result of the experience of 200 years.
§ Sir E. CARSONI said there was no bigotry in the ordinary acceptation of the word, but that there was a history which made the question of religion difficult.
§ Sir RUFUS ISAACSI agree entirely that represents it. But I say this, in regard to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's observations upon this question I am sure that the Committee feel that nothing could be more moderate and nothing could be more reasonable than what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said in dealing with one aspect of this matter, and I know perfectly well that he meant and felt every word of it, and that he would be the last to attack any person or to make any adverse criticism with reference to any person on account of his religious beliefs. I accept that fully and entirely. But still as a result of it you do get to this, that the right hon. Gentleman says if you appoint a Roman Catholic the Protestants will be suspicious of that appointment if made in Ireland. Equally, I suppose, if you appoint a Protestant in Ireland it might be said that the Catholics would be suspicious. That was the logical result of the right hon. Gentleman's argument.
§ Sir E. CARSONNo, it was not.
§ Sir RUFUS ISAACSIt was the result of what he said. He pointed out that where you have an appointment which is made by the Nationalists—I am assuming for the moment that the Catholics are in the majority and have the power of appointment—that moment, as I understood his view, that judge would become suspect.
§ Sir E. CARSONI said that under Home Rule the difference would be you would have a perpetual majority of the Catholic religion, and I said that matter would render suspect as regards the Protestant minority the appointments made by Catholics.
§ Sir RUFUS ISAACSI will take what the right hon. Gentleman says, and I will not attempt to reintroduce in my own words the effect of what he says. What does it mean, after all? Look at what happens at the present day in connection with appointments. It seems to me quite clear, according to what we are told, that here you have a Government, which is said to be run entirely by the hon. and 2171 learned Member for Waterford and his party, and which we are always told dare not make any appointments or any move without the sanction of the hon. and learned Member. Now what has happened? Apparently more Protestants have been appointed than Catholics. That seems to be established beyond all doubt. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Cork (Mr. T. M. Healy) gave us a history of what had transpired in Ireland during recent years. It was a very interesting history, and it showed that there was not the remotest foundation for the suggestion that if the appointment of judges were in the hands of the Nationalist party that the result would be that none but Catholics would be appointed, and, in consequence, there would be all suspect judges. I submit to the Committee no one who is responsible for the appointment of judges would appoint men whom they thought would be bigoted or partial. When you get actual responsibility that does not happen. Men are careful whichever party is in power to select the best men. I grant you it may be that at times some man is appointed who, according to the views of many, does not happen to be the best man for the place. I grant you, if you like, that there may be occasions when it may be thought that it would have been better to appoint some other person or some other man of a different political party, but dealing with this matter broadly and in substance, I think we are entitled to say that the responsibility of the Irish Executive would be the best corrective to any tendency, if there was one, towards appointing men who would make bad judges.
§ Lord HUGH CECILKing James II.
§ Sir RUFUS ISAACSThat was a very long time ago. If the Noble Lord has to go back all that time to find a precedent, I am afraid it is a little stale. All I desire to impress upon the Committee is this: That when we grant responsibility to Ireland we do believe that the effect of it, the power that would be placed in their hands, the desire to have their country properly governed, and also to have impartial judgments delivered in their Courts, so that they might secure the confidence of their own people, would be the best incentive and the strongest inducement to them to select the right men, absolutely regardless, as I confidently 2172 believe they will be, of either religious or political feeling to occupy such high positions in their country.
§ Mr. MOOREI have listened with pleasure, so far as one can take any pleasure in these speeches, to the speech of the Attorney-General. I must say I would much rather have listened to him than take part in the harlequinade of the Chief Secretary, or to endure the superciliousness of the Postmaster-General. There really is an atmosphere of conciliation about now, because, although the Attorney-General was most careful and tried in a meticulous fashion not to make any concession of any sort, still, his manner of refusing it was so genial that for the present, following the conciliatory speech of my right hon. and learned Friend below me, I should be very sorry to say or do anything which would cause any rupture in the harmony which has at present settled down; and therefore I say very little indeed about the speeches we have just listened to. In the earlier part of his argument, the Attorney-General seemed to say, "We are so very careful of you all in Ireland, in drawing up this Bill, that even if you had as many bad judges as you like we have given you an appeal to the Privy Council." You reply that there is a Privy Council. The unfortunate litigant is to be swindled out of his right by a corrupt judge on the bench, and the remedy is that he can go to the Privy Council direct. There is not a word about the successful litigant before the Privy Council getting his costs. Fancy a humble litigant, defrauded of his rights by one of your Nationalist judges being told that he can go to the Privy Council in England and pay his own expenses! That is one of the safeguards. The Attorney-General told us with great candour that when you come to search, there is nothing like it to be found in the world. I noticed the apologetic manner in which the Prime Minister spoke, and I am sure he was ashamed of his party. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh."] Yes, he was because I watched him. You can always tell when the Prime Minister is doing something he likes and is not ashamed of. To-day he was uneasy and fidgetty, and he was at his wits' end to find a precedent. The right hon. Gentleman said the analogy of the whole world was in his favour, and the Attorney-General stated that we are not bound by analogies or comparisons, and we are going to do the best we can for ourselves regardless of 2173 what happens elsewhere. With regard to the appointment of judges, I have not the least objection to Roman Catholic judges, and why? I have personal friends on the Bench who are Roman Catholics. I know in Belfast your Roman Catholic judge comes down there, and he has to sentence a great many people who are not of his own religion, and I have never heard a complaint against him on account of his religion. Why is that? Because if you put a Roman Catholic judge on the Bench now he is a high officer of the United Kingdom under one Constitution. He is not independent of Parliament, but he is there to carry out the laws of the Imperial Parliament, and his position gives him a respect which everyone recognises, no matter what his predilections are.
What respect is he going to have if the judge happens to be a gentleman at present unknown, nominated not by the Imperial Parliament, because you have now betrayed your trust to a majority composed of cattle drivers and moonlighters. Under those circumstances, if your judge is the most impartial man in the world, do you think he gains in reputation for impartiality or ability if he permits himself to become the nominee of the men who will appoint him in the new Parliament in Ireland? What respect could he have? I heard the hon. Member for Cork speak in a manner in which he has frequently done in this House. He advocated toleration for Protestants, and we are very much obliged to him, and I know he is quite sincere. He is a leading Member of the Nationalist party, and I wish to remind him that if he had not been so pronounced in his desire to see fair play for Protestants and his fellow countrymen he would now have been sitting for North Louth. I do not want to say anything very harsh about people because the Blue Book is good enough for me. If you look at the report of the Louth election petition, it illustrates what happened to my poor Friend. We loyalists are accused of having undue apprehensions, but when you hear all these professions from courageous Nationalists we cannot forget their treatment and what their course of conduct has always been. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) says there are no people so tolerant and anxious to give Protestants fair play as the Nationalists of Ireland. He puts this view week by week in a weekly journal for which he is responsible, but the people in Ireland, who have 2174 to live there as a matter of daily life, do not believe all this. They are the people in contact with Nationalist machinations. They have to live with this majority, and you cannot get more than 1 per cent. of these people to believe all these professions. You know this yourselves, otherwise you would not go about saying, "Look at the safeguards." If there is no cause for anxiety, why put in those safeguards, in regard to which you have shown your cleverness by making them illusory? You say to your supporters you have safeguarded these people, and you wink the other eye to the Nationalist Members. I know the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) agrees with that, because he says that the safeguards are no use whatever.
The hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool said you cannot have any satisfactory system of judges unless it is one which commands the confidence of the entire people. Those are not his actual words, but that is the effect of them. With regard to the judges appointed by the Imperial Parliament, the hon. Member said two things. First of all, he had the audacity to say that a judge appointed by the Imperial Parliament, Irishman though he might be, would be a foreign judge. At present a man cannot be made an Irish judge unless he has been an Irish barrister for ten years, but because the Parliament of the United Kingdom appoints him, he is considered a foreign judge. That is the standpoint of hon. Members below the Gangway. We loyalists are supposed to be a bigoted people, but that is not our standpoint, because, although our relations with the Radical party are not very cordial, we look upon Englishmen as our kith and kin, although hon. Members below the Gangway do not. We look on the Union Jack as our flag, and they call it "the pirate flag of England." The hon. Member for the Scotland Division referred to us as a Protestant garrison, but we happened to be rather proud of that. The Committee will recollect that that term appears also in the Blue Book, and it is to be found in the findings of a Commission appointed by this House, which declares that the leaders of the Nationalist party had associated themselves with a career of crime and outrage to expropriate from Ireland the landlords, who were called a British garrison. You will find that in the Report of the Parnell Commission, and you will find a great many men involved in that finding who will be in the Irish Parliament in Dublin. And we are asked to 2175 believe that from such people you will never get anything but the purest justice.
Whether you like it or not, you have to recognise that there are two nations in Ireland, and if you are going to have a judiciary it will not be enough to have one that gives confidence to the majority only, because you will have to secure also the confidence of the minority, and more especially have you to do that when the minority happens to be the industrial and revenue-producing part of the country. It is not a matter of counting heads, and you cannot ignore these facts. You must gain the confidence of the minority, and you cannot do this by putting in power to rule over them a series of gentlemen appointed by the people who started this conspiracy of outrage and crime and everything else against the British garrison, men who have kept up outrage and intimidation in every part of the country, who have broken every law in the most cowardly way, and who at the present time are the only people in Ireland who are causing the Chief Secretary trouble. You now say that these law breakers are now to become the law makers, and they are to appoint the judges. How is that going to give confidence to the minority. Take the case of a Peer who has often been attacked in this House for the share he has taken in politics—I mean Lord Ashtown. He has been attacked again and again. I do not want to go into ancient history, but the Committee will remember that Lord Ashtown had an explosion at his house in Waterford, and an attempt was made to fasten the blame upon him. Lord Ashtown has a gamekeeper who is either an Englishman or a Scotchman, and that man on two different occasions has caught a Nationalist absolutely in the act of poaching. [HON. Members: "Oh, oh!"] This is not for amusement; it is a fact. On two occasions that gamekeeper has brought a Nationalist before the local Bench, and on both occasions the local Bench have acquitted the Nationalist and lodged the prosecutor in gaol. On two occasions the Chief Secretary has been obliged to telegraph over to Ireland to have that man liberated.
§ Earl WINTERTONIs there anything funny in an innocent man being imprisoned?
§ 7.0 P.M.
§ Mr. MOOREI make that statement with full responsibility, and the Chief Secretary cannot deny it. By this Bill you are 2176 taking away the Executive, and the more you weaken the Executive, the more we require an impartial Bench for the protection of the minority. I will give an illustration. Suppose a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians comes on my land, and I will assume I am in the right, that I do not use force and I take out a summons against him. I have to get a constable to serve the summons who is a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. When I enter the charge, a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians takes it down, and if he is at all friendly with me he will probably laugh at the idea that I should bring such a charge. I go before a Bench of magistrates, packed to such an extent that even the Chief Secretary himself cannot get a conviction in Nationalist Ireland. I either have my charge dismissed or I am treated like Lord Ashtowms gamekeeper, except that there is no one to let me out. Then the Attorney - General suggests you are going to have such pure unpartisan excellent judges in Dublin that you can get a certiorari from one of them. I go to that judge, or my counsel does, and I find he is a Member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians as well, and after that I am told, "Why should you grumble, you can always go to London and appeal to the Privy Council?" I say the whole thing is perfectly ridiculous. I will assume for the sake of argument that when the lawbreakers and cattle drivers have nominated a man, he will be anxious to do what is right. What will be his position? Will he be independent of the Irish party? Not a bit of it. He can be removed, as the Prime Minister told us—this is another safeguard, please note the safeguard—on an Address from both Houses. There will be no difficulty in the first House. There will be 160 sworn members of the brotherhood, for those who are not members of the United Irish League will be Ancient Hibernians. How about the Second House? The Second House is to contain forty Members. Will the Attorney-General tell us whether the provision about sitting together applies only to Bills, or does it apply to an Address from both Houses of Parliament on the conduct of judges? If it does not apply to such an Address, what is the remedy of the judge? It will be as easy to get a resolution denouncing a judge passed by the same forty Members in the Upper House, as by the subservient 160 Members in the Lower 2177 House. Suppose they do sit together, then the greater House will absorb the smaller, and the judge is gone. And that is how an impartial and independent judicial bench is to be maintained in Ireland.
We had a case where a judge—one of the Chief Secretary's appointments; I think he was a most excellent judge—had the audacity to sentence a member of the Limerick Corporation to a month's imprisonment for burning the Union Jack in the street before a crowd and assaulting a man. The Limerick Corporation, carrying on the business of the people, discharging their duty to the ratepayers—a miniature Parliament, exclusively Nationalist—adjourned their business for a month as a protest against the action of the judge in venturing to send one of their members to imprisonment for a month. Supposing the Irish Parliament were to adjourn their business for a month in a similar manner. Do not you think it would be a lesson to all the other judges? Then you say to us people in the North, knowing this Nationalist majority in Dublin is dominating the whole thing from the humblest member of the Executive to the highest person on the judicial body, "Rest and be thankful; it is all right for you." I think my right hon. Friend was perfectly right, when he said those men may do their duly, but it is not fair to put them in that position, because when they go to the North of Ireland they will be looked upon not as judges but as nominees of the Nationalist majority in Dublin; not independent of them, but absolutely dependent upon them and as being sent down, as it will be put, to do their dirty work. How can there be security on the commercial side if commercial men cannot trust the administration of the law, and how can you have peace preserved if people do not trust the administration of the law in criminal matters? The thing is absolutely a deadlock. There has up to this been only one solution, and you will never get a better one. When you have your two sets of people in Ireland, the majority and the minority, the only safe rule of statesmanship is that you should not put one of them under the heel of the other.
You talk about analogies and every time we have Africa, Australia, and Canada brought out. You have never had a case in Australia, Africa, or Canada of a minority up in arms against the majority determined not to submit to any invasion of their rights. The African Bill was an 2178 agreed Bill by all parties. This will never be that. Do not let there be any illusion on that head. This may be passed by force, but it will never be an agreed Bill, and, if it is not an agreed Bill, you have not an analogy for it. It has at last been conceded we are honest in our belief that these rights are in danger. There is no more certain way of impairing them than to have a partisan judiciary, and we can expect nothing else under the circumstances of the case. It is not a matter of appointing a Protestant judge or a Roman Catholic judge. It is a matter of appointing an impartial judge by the central authority which sees fair play between the two sets of the people. That is the statesmanship which has made the law respected in Ireland, because, in spite of what the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool has said, I still think the law is respected in Ireland, and the judges are respected, too. If they were not you would not have the Courts, the County Courts and the High Courts, flooded by litigants from all over the country as you do. I have never heard a word against any judge by a Nationalist except in this House, when it is done as part of the party game. The ordinary Nationalist farmer has just as great a confidence in the judges of the High Courts as any Unionist living in the North. The only system that can ever work in Ireland, where you have these two conflicting interests is the system of an impartial, independent, irremovable bench appointed by the central authority and not by either of the warring factions in the country. That is why this Amendment ought to be supported, and why the proposal in the Bill, above all others, is thoroughly bad. It will only have the effect of doing away with confidence on the part of the minority in the existing system of justice.
§ Mr. LARDNERI think this is about one of the most interesting Debates we have had in connection with the Government of Ireland Bill since the Committee stage began, and I have been very much struck to-night by the tone of the speech of the senior Member for the University of Dublin. Whilst the hon. and learned Member for Armagh (Mr. Moore) was speaking, I was asking myself whether the hon. and learned Member for Armagh had run away with the hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin, or whether the hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin had run away with the hon. and learned Member for Armagh. The hon. and learned Member for Armagh said 2179 you could never have a fit and impartial judge, in whom the people would have full confidence, unless he was appointed by the Imperial Government. The view of the hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin is that if this Bill is going to pass you ought at least to retain the power of appointment of judges in London for ten years, so that our Unionist friends in the day of their power should not miss their opportunity. There was one thing which the hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin said which I cannot allow to pass. He said that in 1905 there was a vacancy, and it was about to be offered to Mr. Stephen Ronan.
§ Mr. J. H. CAMPBELLNo, I did not say it was about to be offered to him, but that his name was mentioned in the Press in connection with it.
§ Mr. LARDNERThat was the reason given why his name was not considered further.
§ Mr. J. H. CAMPBELLNo, I said that was followed by an article in the Nationalist Press attacking him as a Castle Catholic.
§ Mr. LARDNERThat, I understood, was the reason given why his name was not considered further. I am surprised to hear the Tory Government in 1905 was terrorised by anything which appeared in the Nationalist Press. One would think listening to the hon. and learned Member for Armagh that the magistrates all over Ireland were without stain or blot of any kind. What happened at Belfast only a few weeks ago? You had a panel of magistrates—
§ The CHAIRMANThe hon. Member is getting a long way from the Clause.
§ Mr. LARDNERI must bow to your ruling. The hon. and learned Member for Armagh said, "We do not object to a judge in Ireland because he is a Catholic," and the hon. and learned Member for the Dublin University, with regard to the Protestant appointments made by the present Government said they were all Home Rulers. Has the hon. Gentleman for Armagh such a poor opinion of his colleagues at the Irish Bar as to think it is impossible for a Roman Catholic, who is also a Home Ruler, to be impartial Hon. Members above the Gangway do not object to a Roman Catholic, quâ Roman Catholic, and the hon. Member for Dublin University said all the appoint- 2180 ments made by the present Government were Home Rule appointments, although they were Protestants. You do not object to a judge because he is a Home Ruler; you do not object to him because he is a Catholic; but you do object to him because he is a Catholic and a Home Ruler. That is what we are driven to. All I can say is, if the judiciary is to have the confidence and the respect of the people in Ireland, the judges should be appointed from Dublin and by the Irish Executive. It struck me to-night the hon. and learned Member for Dublin University did not get the reply he wanted from the Attorney-General. The hon. and learned Member said he wanted some concessions and some safeguards. The Attorney-General got up and said, "You have the appeal to the Privy Council." That is the last safeguard the hon. and learned Gentleman wanted.
§ Mr. RONALD M'NEILLIt appeared to me that the points raised by the hon. Member were deliberately intended to convey a misunderstanding of what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Dublin University. My right hon. Friend did not say that judges in Ireland are objected to on the ground of religious or political opinion, but he did suggest that if the appointments were carried out under the proposals of this Bill they would be tainted with some suspicion in the eyes of a large portion of the people of Ireland. In the speech made earlier in the evening by the Attorney-General there was one phrase which struck me very much. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that, in framing these provisions, the Government had gone on the experience they had gained in making other Constitutions. Unfortunately there will not be time to get a reply from the Government as to the conditions under which we are working, and I think it is a very great pity, when the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that they had framed these provisions in the light of experience of Constitution making elsewhere he did not tell us what that experience was. I would ask, is it the experience of our own Dominions? After all, experience can only be of value if we know how these institutions have worked. Does the Attorney-General seriously tell us that the Government, before they drafted this Clause, had taken the trouble to inquire from sources of authority in Cannda. Australia, or South Africa, whether the working of the judiciary in those Dominions 2181 had or had not been a success? I think it was the hon. Member for North Armagh who pointed out that, in this matter, the Attorney-General is entirely at variance with what was said earlier in the evening by the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister said they had followed the examples of all the Dominions with regard to this matter. But in the course of the subsequent Debate it was pointed out that the right hon. Gentleman was entirely wrong, and we have been endeavouring to discover where the Government are seeking to place Ireland under this Constitution in a similar position to the Dominion Government, or in the position of one of the provincial States forming part of a great federation. It has been brought out in this Debate that, so far as the provincial Governments are concerned, whether in Australia, in South Africa, or in Canada, in every case the appointments of the judges in the provinces of a federation rests in the hands of the central Government. When the Attorney-General said there is no analogy which we can follow in this Bill, but we must take a bit here and a bit there, and take them in the light of experience elsewhere, surely it is reasonable for us to point out that in this particular regard there is a perfectly consistent series of precedents, and it is also reasonable for us to ask the Government if they are departing from that series of precedents, and, if so, what is their reason for so doing? We have had no reason given to ns why, when we have got a perfectly consistent series of precedents, they have been neglected instead of being followed.
There is one other point I am particularly anxious to put to the Attorney-General. So far as I understand it—I may be wrong—in this Clause there is practically no limitation on the power of the Irish Parliament in regard to the appointment of judges, and, under those powers, of the creation of new Courts. Is there anything in this Bill to prevent the Irish Government, if they feel so disposed, from appointing an Ecclesiastical Court for the trial of matrimonial causes? Under this Bill the whole of the law of marriage and divorce is given over into the hands of the Irish Government. We have had precedents in our own past history, and I believe there are precedents in other countries of the establishment of an Ecclesiastical Court for the trial of cases of that sort. But from our own experience that is a sort of Court which would certainly stink 2182 in the nostrils of the people of this country, and it also would do so in the nostrils of the minority in Ireland. I do not like touching on the religious aspect of this great controversy. I am not saying this in any offensive way to my Catholic fellow subjects in Ireland, but it is well known that there is, in this matter, an ecclesiastical view which is distinct from the civil view, and there is not an unlikelihood that, under the powers given in this Clause, the Irish Parliament would set up an Ecclesiastical Court for the trial of matrimonial, probate, and other causes. I say that that is a power, even if it is not exercised, the very existence of which would perfectly legitimately arouse a great deal of apprehension in the minds of the minority in Ireland, who take a view entirely hostile to ecclesiastical institutions of that sort. I think it would be consistent. We always have been told that we have only to ask for any reasonable safeguard and it will be granted by the Government. I think that when a possibility of this sort is obviously on the face of the Bill it would be reasonable on the part of the Government if they would give us a safeguard in regard to it.
I have not the smallest doubt that the only reason why the precedents from the Dominions have been departed from in this case is simply because a demand has been made by the Nationalist party in Ireland that they should have the appointment of judges, not because they think that those judges will command anymore confidence in Ireland or be more efficient than if they were appointed by the Imperial Government, but simply that through that provision a badge of sovereignty will be conferred on their new Constitution in Ireland. Some of us on this side are perfectly persuaded that this Bill, if it is carried into law, will be used, and is intended to be used, as a mere lever for the obtaining of very much more extended powers than are given under this provision. I remember that in a recent Debate the Prime Minister laid it down that there was a gulf between the two sides of the House represented by alternative hypotheses. He said that on the one side the hypothesis was that the Constitution would be accepted by the Nationalists in a spirit of goodwill and with every desire to work it out loyally, while on the other side the hypothesis was that it would be worked in a spirit of hostility and with a desire to wrest something more than is already conceded. I 2183 have not time to discuss these two hypotheses or the reason for advancing them. I think it would not be difficult to show a good deal more evidence in favour of one than in favour of the other, and I should like to read a few words from a speech made by the hon. Member for West Belfast on another occasion—a speech which has already been quoted before, although not these particular words. Speaking in New York, the hon. Member said:—
I know there are many men in America who think the means we are advocating to-day for the good of Ireland are not sufficiently sharp and decisive. But I suggest that those who constitute themselves censors of our movement might very well give our movement a fair chance and allow us to have, as owners and tillers of the land, an Irish Parliament that will give our people authority over the police and judiciary. …. When they have authority over the police and judiciary, when they are equipped with comparative freedom, then will be the time for those who think we should destroy the last link that binds us to England and to operate by whatever means they think best to achieve that great and desirable end.At all events in the mind and intention of a very prominent Member of the party below the Gangway the object of getting control of the police and judiciary is in order that they may achieve the desirable end of complete separation from this country. When these words, which are perfectly familiar to us, are quoted in the House of Commons or elsewhere, as showing the real intentions of these people, hon. Gentlemen shrug their shoulders and regard them as a negligible quantity, and take up the position that they are at liberty to disregard and disbelieve this statement and many others that might be quoted. But we are asked to assume, notwithstanding this statement as to the control of the judiciary and police, that the powers given by this Bill will be used in a spirit of perfect goodwill and loyalty towards this country. I cannot agree, and I have no hesitation under these circumstances in supporting this Amendment. I am sorry to hear from the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) that he regards this proposal as the most offensive proposal brought forward on this side of the House. I have not the slightest desire to be offensive to the hon. Member and his Friends, but we cannot absolutely disregard the plain facts that lie on the surface, and if we have regard to the statements of the hon. Members themselves I do not think that, in the interests and safety of this country, and also in the interests of the spirit of unity, this Amendment ought to be carried and 2184 the appointment of judicial officials maintained in the hands of the Imperial Parliament.
§ Mr. MACMASTERAs there are only two minutes before the guillotine falls, hon. Members have the best guarantee that I shall be brief in my remarks. For my part, having been brought up in a Mixed community of Roman Catholics and Protestants, I am heartily sick of these references to these two religions. I have had a very extensive practice in the Law Courts, and I find I get just as good law from Roman Catholics as from Protestants. But that is not the real question. The point is, is it in the best interests of all concerned that the judges in Ireland should be appointed by the Government of the United Kingdom or that they should be appointed locally. If you refer to experience, we gather from the Attorney-General that there is no parallel in our great self-governing Dominions over the seas. But we have in the Dominion of Canada judges appointed by the central power for the various provinces, not Englishmen or English appointed judges, for such a thing could not possibly happen, but judges appointed from their respective bars in the different provinces. I can say that these judges are not regarded as Dominion judges but as judges coming from the bars of the respective provinces, although receiving their appointments from the central power. In all my experience I never heard in any province a contention made that the judges should be appointed by that province, and I venture to suggest that, in the present case, they will be appointed from the bar in Ireland, and one of the greatest safeguards we have that good appointments will be made is in the fact that there is a strong bar there which would insist on the right men being appointed, and the value of the appointment would not be diminished by the fact that it was made by the central Government.
It being half-past Seven of the Clock, the Chairman proceeded, pursuant to the Order of the House of the 14th October, to put forthwith the Question necessary to dispose of the Amendment already proposed from the Chair.
§ Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 319; Noes, 194.
2189| Division No. 378.] | AYES. | [7.30 p.m. |
| Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour) | Ferens, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson | Lyell, Charles Henry |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Ffrench, Peter | Lynch, A. A. |
| Adamson, William | Field, William | Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester) |
| Addison, Dr. C. | Fitzgibbon, John | McGhee, Richard |
| Agnew, Sir George William | Flavin, Michael Joseph | Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J. |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | France, G. A. | MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South) |
| Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbartonshire) | George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd | Macpherson, James Ian |
| Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud) | Gilhooly, James | MacVeagh, Jeremiah |
| Armitage, Robert | Gill, Alfred Henry | M'Callum, Sir John M. |
| Arnold, Sydney | Ginnell, L. | M'Kean, John |
| Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry | Gladstone, W. G. C. | McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald |
| Atherley-Jones, Llewellyn A. | Glanville, Harold James | M'Laren, Hon. H. D. (Leics.) |
| Baker, Harold T. (Accrington) | Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | M'Laren, Hon. F.W.S. (Lincs., Spalding) |
| Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.) | Goldstone, Frank | M'Micking, Major Gilbert |
| Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark) | Greenwood, Granville G. (Peterborough) | Manfield, Harry |
| Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple) | Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland) | Markham, Sir Arthur Basil |
| Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset) | Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward | Marks, Sir George Croydon |
| Barnes, G. N. | Griffith, Ellis J. | Marshall, Arthur Harold |
| Barran, Sir John N. (Hawick B.) | Guest, Major Hon. C. H. C. (Pembroke) | Martin, Joseph |
| Barran, Rowland Hurst (Leeds, N.) | Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.) | Masterman, Rt. Hon. C. F. G. |
| Barton, William | Gulney, Patrick | Meagher, Michael |
| Beale Sir William Phipson | Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway) | Median, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.) |
| Beauchamp, Sir Edward | Hackett, J. | Menzies, Sir Walter |
| Benn, W. W. (Tower Hamlets, S. Geo.) | Hall, F. (Yorks, Normanton) | Millar, James Duncan |
| Bentham, G. J. | Hancock, John George | Molloy, Michael |
| Bethell, Sir J. H. | Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose) | Molteno, Percy Alport |
| Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine | Hardie, J. Keir | Mond, Sir Alfred M. |
| Black, Arthur W. | Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds) | Money, L. G. Chiozza |
| Boland, John Pius | Harmsworth, R. J. (Caithness-shire) | Mooney, J. J. |
| Booth, Frederick Handel | Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Morrell, Philip |
| Bowerman, Charles W. | Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West) | Morison, Hector |
| Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North) | Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.) | Morton, Alpheus Cleophas |
| Brace, William | Haslam, James (Derbyshire) | Muldoon, John |
| Brady, Patrick Joseph | Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Munro, Robert |
| Brocklehurst, W. J. | Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry | Munro-Ferguson, Rt. Hon. R. C. |
| Bryce, J. Annan | Hayden, John Patrick | Nannetti, Joseph P. |
| Buckmaster, Stanley O. | Hayward, Evan | Needham, Christopher T. |
| Burke, E. Haviland- | Hazleton, Richard | Neilson, Francis |
| Burns, Rt. Hon. John | Healy, Timothy Michael (Cork, N. E.) | Nolan, Joseph |
| Buxton, Rt. Hon. S. C. (Poplar) | Helme, Sir Nerval Watson | Norton, Captain Cecil W. |
| Byles, Sir William Pollard | Hemmerde, Edward George | Nugent, Sir Walter Richard |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Henderson, Arthur (Durham) | Nuttall, Harry |
| Cawley, Sir Frederick (Prestwich) | Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.) | O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny) |
| Cawley, H. T. (Lancs., Heywood) | Henry, Sir Charles | O'Brien, William (Cork) |
| Chancellor, Henry George | Higham, John Sharp | O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.) |
| Chapple, Dr. William Allen | Hinds, John | O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool) |
| Clancy, John J. | Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. | O'Doherty, Philip |
| Clough, William | Hodge, John | O'Donnell, Thomas |
| Clynes, John R. | Hogge, James Myles | Ogden, Fred |
| Collins, G. P. (Greenock) | Holmes, Daniel Turner | O'Grady, James |
| Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) | Holt, Richard Durning | O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.) |
| Condon, Thomas Joseph | Hope, John Deans (Haddington) | O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.) |
| Cotton, William Francis | Horne, C. Silvester (Ipswich) | O'Malley, William |
| Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) | Howard, Hon. Geoffrey | O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.) |
| Crawshay-Williams, Eliot | Hudson, Walter | O'Shaughnessy, P. J. |
| Crean, Eugene | Hughes, Spencer Leigh | O'Shee, James John |
| Crumley, Patrick | Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus | O'Sullivan, Timothy |
| Cullinan, John | Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh) | Outhwaite, R. L. |
| Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy) | John, Edward Thomas | Palmer, Godfrey Mark |
| Davies, Ellis William (Elfion) | Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea) | Parker, James (Halifax) |
| Davies, Timothy (Lincs, Louth) | Jones, Edgar R. (Merthyr Tydvil) | Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) |
| Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.) | Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth) | Pearce, William (Limehouse) |
| Dawes, J. A. | Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East) | Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph (Rotherham) |
| De Forest, Baron | Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe) | Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton) |
| Delany, William | Jones, William (Carnarvonshire) | Phillips, John (Longford, S.) |
| Denman, Hon. R. D. | Jones, William S. Glyn- (Stepney) | Pirie, Duncan V. |
| Devlin, Joseph | Jowett, Frederick William | Pointer, Joseph |
| Dickinson, W. H. | Joyce, Michael | Pollard, Sir George H. |
| Dillon, John | Keating, Matthew | Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H. |
| Donelan, Captain A. | Kellaway, Frederick George | Power, Patrick Joseph |
| Doris, William | Kennedy, Vincent Paul | Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central) |
| Duffy, William J. | Kilbride, Denis | Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.) |
| Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley) | King, J. | Priestley, Sir Arthur (Grantham) |
| Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.) | Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S. Molton) | Priestley, Sir W. E. B. (Bradford, E.) |
| Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) | Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade) | Primrose, Hon. Neil James |
| Eiverston, Sir Harold | Lardner, James Carrige Rushe | Pringle, William M. R. |
| Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.) | Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rid, Cockerm'th) | Radford, G. H. |
| Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.) | Leach, Charles | Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields) |
| Essex, Richard Walter | Levy, Sir Maurice | Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough) |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | Lewis, John Herbert | Reddy, Michael |
| Falconer, James | Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas | Redmond, John E. (Waterford) |
| Farrell, James Patrick | Low, Sir Frederick (Norwich) | Redmond, William (Clare, E.) |
| Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles | Lundon, Thomas | Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.) |
| Richards, Thomas | Snowden, Philip | Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay |
| Richardson, Albion (Peckham) | Soames, Arthur Wellesley | Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan) |
| Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven) | Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert | Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney) |
| Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) | Stanley, Albert (Staffs., N. W.) | Watt, Henry A. |
| Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs) | Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West) | Webb, H. |
| Robinson, Sidney | Sutherland, J. E. | White, J. Dundas (Glas., Tradeston) |
| Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke) | Sutton, John E. | White, Sir Luke (Yorks, E. R.) |
| Roche, Augustine (Louth) | Taylor, John W. (Durham) | White, Patrick (Meath, North) |
| Roe, Sir Thomas | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) | Whitehouse, John Howard |
| Rowlands, James | Tennant, Harold John | Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P. |
| Rowntree, Arnold | Thomas, James Henry | Whyte, A. F. |
| Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter | Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton) | Wiles, Thomas |
| Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland) | Thorne, William (West Ham) | Wilkie, Alexander |
| Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees) | Toulmin, Sir George | Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen) |
| Scanlan, Thomas | Trevelyan, Charles Philips | Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough) |
| Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir C. E. | Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander | Wilson, Rt. Hon. J. W. (Words., N.) |
| Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton) | Verney, Sir Harry | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Seely, Col. Rt. Hon. J. E. B. | Wadsworth, John | Winfrey, Richard |
| Sheehy, David | Walsh, Stephen (Lancs., Ince) | Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glas.) |
| Sherwell, Arthur James | Walters, Sir John Tudor | Young, Samuel (Cavan, E.) |
| Shortt, Edward | Walton, Sir Joseph | Young, William (Perth, East) |
| Simon, Sir John Allsebrook | Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton) | |
| Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe) | Wardle, G. J. | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. |
| Smith, H. B. Lees (Northampton) | Waring, Walter | Illingworth and Mr. Gulland. |
| Smyth, Thomas F. (Leltrim) |
| NOES. | ||
| Agg-Gardner, James Tynte | Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.) | Long, Rt. Hon. Walter |
| Anson, Rt. Hon. Sir William R. | Falle, Bertram Godfray | Lonsdale, Sir John Brownlee |
| Anstruther-Gray, Major William | Fell, Arthur | Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. A. (Hanover Sq.) |
| Archer-Shee, Major Martin | Fetherstonhaugh, Godfrey | MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh |
| Ashley, Wilfrid W. | Fleming, Valentine | Mackinder, Halford J. |
| Baird, John Lawrence | Fletcher, John Samuel | Macmaster, Donald |
| Baker, Sir Randolf L. (Dorset, N.) | Foster, Philip Staveley | Magnus, Sir Philip |
| Balcarres, Lord | Gardner, Ernest | Mason, James F. (Windsor) |
| Baldwin, Stanley | Gastrell, Major W. Houghton | Meysey-Thompson, E. C |
| Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Gibbs, G. A. | Middlemore, John Throgmorton |
| Barlow, Montague (Salford, South) | Glazebrook, Capt. Philip K. | Mildmay, Francis Bingham |
| Barnston, Harry | Goldman, Charles Sydney | Mills, Hon. Charles Thomas |
| Barrie, H. T. | Goldsmith, Frank | Moore, William |
| Bathurst, Charles (Wilts, Wilton) | Gordon, John (Londonderry, South) | Newton, Harry Kottingham |
| Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth) | Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton) | Nicholson, William G. (Petersfield) |
| Bennett-Goldney, Francis | Goulding, Edward Alfred | Nield, Herbert |
| Bentinck, Lord H Cavendish- | Grant, J. A. | O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid) |
| Beresford, Lord Charles | Gretton, John | Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A. |
| Bigland, Alfred | Guinness, Hon. Rupert (Essex, S. E.) | Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William |
| Blair, Reginald | Guinness, Hon. W. E. (Bury S. Edmunds) | Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend) |
| Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffiths- | Gwynne, R. S. (Sussex, Eastbourne) | Parkes, Ebenezer |
| Boyle, William (Norfolk, Mid) | Haddock, George Bahr | Peel, Captain R. F. (Woodbridge) |
| Boyton, James | Hall, D. B. (Isle of Wight) | Perkins, Walter F. |
| Bridgeman, William Clive | Hambro, Angus Valdemar | Peto, Basil Edward |
| Bull, Sir William James | Hamilton, Lord C. J. (Kensington, S.) | Pole-Carew, Sir R. |
| Burn, Colonel C. R. | Hamilton, Marquess of (Londonderry) | Pollock, Ernest Murray |
| Butcher, John George | Hardy, Rt. Hon. Laurence | Pretyman, Ernest George |
| Campbell, Capt. Duncan F. (Ayr) | Harris, Henry Percy | Pryce-Jones, Colonel E. |
| Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. (Dublin Univ.) | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Quilter, Sir William Eley C. |
| Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred | Henderson, Major H. (Berks, Abingdon) | Randies, Sir John S. |
| Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward H. | Hewins, William Albert Samuel | Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel |
| Cassel, Felix | Hickman, Colonel Thomas E. | Rees, Sir J. D. |
| Cator, John | Hill, Sir Clement L. | Remnant, James Farquharson |
| Cautley, Henry Strother | Hills, John Waller | Roberts. S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall) |
| Cecil, Lord Hugh (Oxford University) | Hill-Wood, Samuel | Ronaldshay, Earl of |
| Cecil, Lord R. (Herts, Hitchin) | Hoare, S. J. G. | Rothschild, Lionel de |
| Chaloner, Col. R. G. W. | Hohler, Gerald Fitzroy | Royds, Edmund |
| Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.) | Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield) | Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W, Derby) |
| Chambers, J. | Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian) | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry | Home, Edgar (Surrey, Guildford) | Samuel, Sir Harry (Norwood) |
| Clay, Captain H. H. Spender | Horner, Andrew Long | Sanders, Robert Arthur |
| Clive, Captain Percy Archer | Houston, Robert Paterson | Sanderson, Lancelot |
| Coates, Major Sir Edward Feetham | Hume-Williams, W. E. | Sassoon, Sir Philip |
| Courthope, George Loyd | Hunt, Rowland | Scott, Leslie (Liverpool, Exchange) |
| Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.) | Jardine, Ernest (Somerset, E.) | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Craig, Ernest (Cheshire, Crewe) | Jessel, Captain H. M. M. | Smith, Rt. Hon. F. E. (L'pool, Walton) |
| Craig, Captain James (Down, E.) | Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr | Spear, Sir John Ward |
| Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet) | Kerry, Earl of | Stanier, Beville |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Kimber, Sir Henry | Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk) |
| Crichton-Stuart, Lord Ninian | Knight, Captain E. A. | Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston) |
| Cripps, Sir Charles Alfred | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North) |
| Croft, H. P. | Larmor, Sir J. | Swift, Rigby |
| Dalziel, Davison (Brixton) | Law, Rt. Hon. Bonar (Bootle) | Sykes, Alan John (Ches., Knutsford) |
| Denniss, E. R. B. | Lewisham, Viscount | Talbot, Lord Edmund |
| Duke, Henry Edward | Lloyd, George Ambrose | Terrell, George (Wilts, N. W.) |
| Eyres-Monsell, B. M. | Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey) | Terrell, Henry (Gloucester) |
| Faber, George D. (Clapham) | Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R. | Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North) |
| Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, North) | White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport) | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart- |
| Tobin, Alfred Aspinall | Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset, W.) | Wright, Henry Fitzherbert |
| Touche, George Alexander | Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Tryon, Captain George Clement | Wills, Sir Gilbert | Yerburgh, Robert A |
| Valentia, Viscount | Wilson, A. Stanley (Yorks, E. R.) | Younger, Sir George |
| Walrond, Hon. Lionel | Winterton, Earl | |
| Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent) | Wolmer, Viscount | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. |
| Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid) | Wood, John (Stalybridge) | Stewart and Mr. R. M'Neill. |
| Wheler, Granville C. H. | Worthington-Evans, L. |
§ The CHAIRMAN then proceeded successively to put forthwith the Question necessary to dispose of the business to be concluded at half-past Seven of the Clock at this day's sitting.
2190§ Question put, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."
§ The Committee divided: Ayes 320; Noes, 193.
2193| Division No. 379.] | AVES. | [7.40 p.m. |
| Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour) | Dawes, J. A. | Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.) |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | De Forest, Baron | Henry, Sir Charles |
| Adamson, William | Delany, William | Higham, John Sharp |
| Addison, Dr. C. | Denman, Hon. R. D. | Hinds, John |
| Agnew, Sir George William | Devlin, Joseph | Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Dickinson, W. H. | Hodge, John |
| Allen, Arthur Acland (Dumbartonshire) | Dillon, John | Hogge, James Myles |
| Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud) | Donelan, Captain A. | Holmes, Daniel Turner |
| Armitage, R. | Doris, William | Holt, Richard Durning |
| Arnold, Sydney | Duffy, William J. | Hope, John Deans (Haddington) |
| Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry | Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley) | Home, C. Silvester (Ipswich) |
| Atherley-Jones, Llewellyn A. | Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.) | Howard, Hon. Geoffrey |
| Baker, Harold T. (Accrington) | Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) | Hudson, Walter |
| Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.) | Elverston, Sir Harold | Hughes, Spencer Leigh |
| Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark) | Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.) | Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus |
| Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple) | Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.) | Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh) |
| Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset) | Essex, Richard Walter | John, Edward Thomas |
| Barnes, George N. | Esslemont, George Birnie | Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea) |
| Barran, Sir John N. (Hawick) | Falconer, James | Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil) |
| Barran, Rowland Hurst (Leeds, N.) | Farrell, James Patrick | Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth) |
| Barton, William | Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles | Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East) |
| Beale, Sir William Phipson | Ferens, Rt. Hon, Thomas Robinson | Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe) |
| Bcanchamp, Sir Edward | Ffrench, Peter | Jones, William (Carnarvonshire) |
| Benn, W. W. (Tower Hamlets, S. Geo.) | Field, William | Jones, William S. Glyn- (Stepney) |
| Bentham, George Jackson | Fitzgibbon, John | Jowett, Frederick William |
| Bethell, Sir John Henry | Flavin, Michael Joseph | Joyce, Michael |
| Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine | France, Gerald Ashburner | Keating, Matthew |
| Black, Arthur W. | George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd | Kellaway, Frederick George |
| Boland, John Pius | Gilhooly, James | Kennedy, Vincent Paul |
| Booth, Frederick Handel | Gill, A. H. | Kilbride, Denis |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Ginnell, L. | King, J. |
| Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North) | Gladstone, W. G. C. | Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S. Molton) |
| Brace, William | Glanville, H. J. | Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade) |
| Brady, P. J. | Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | Lardner, James Carrige Rushe |
| Brocklehurst, William B. | Goldstone, Frank | Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rid, Cockerm'th) |
| Bryce, J. Annan | Greenwood, Granville G. (Peterborough) | Leach, Charles |
| Buckmaster, Stanley O. | Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland) | Levy, Sir Maurice |
| Burke, E. Haviland- | Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward | Lewis, John Herbert |
| Burns, Rt. Hon. John | Griffith, Ellis Jones | Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas |
| Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney C. (Poplar) | Guest, Major Hon. C. H. C. (Pembroke) | Low, Sir F. (Norwich) |
| Byles, Sir William Pollard | Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.) | Lundon, T. |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Guiney, Patrick | Lyell, Charles Henry |
| Cawley, Sir Frederick (Prestwich) | Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway) | Lynch, A. A. |
| Cawley, H. T. (Heywood) | Hackett, J. | Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester) |
| Chancellor, H. G. | Hall, Frederick (Normanton) | McGhee, Richard |
| Chapple, Dr. W. A. | Hancock, John George | Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J. |
| Clancy, John Joseph | Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose) | MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South) |
| Clough, William | Hardie, J. Keir | Macpherson, James Ian |
| Clynes, John R. | Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds) | MacVeagh, Jeremiah |
| Collins, Godfrey P. (Greenock) | Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire) | M'Callum, Sir John M. |
| Collins, Stephen (Lambeth) | Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | M'Kean, John |
| Condon, Thomas Joseph | Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, W.) | McKenna, Rt. Hon, Reginald |
| Cotton, William Francis | Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.) | M'Laren, Hon. H. D. (Leics.) |
| Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) | Haslam, James (Derbyshire) | M'Laren, Hon. F. W. S. (Lincs., Spalding) |
| Crawshay-Williams, Eliot | Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | M'Micking, Major Gilbert |
| Crean, Eugene | Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry | Manfield, Harry |
| Crumley, Patrick | Hayden, John Patrick | Markham, Sir Arthur Basil |
| Cullinan, John | Hayward, Evan | Marks, Sir George Croydon |
| Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy) | Hazleton, Richard | Marshall, Arthur Harold |
| Davies, Ellis William, (Eifion) | Healy, Timothy Michael (Cork, N. E.) | Martin, J. |
| Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth) | Helme, Sir Norval Watson | Masterman, Rt. Hon. C. F. G. |
| Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.) | Hemmerde, Edward George | Meagher, Michael |
| Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardiganshire) | Henderson, Arthur (Durham) | Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.) |
| Menzies, Sir Wlater | Pollard, Sir George H. | Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West) |
| Millar, James Duncan | Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H. | Sutherland, John E. |
| Molloy, Michael | Power, Patrick Joseph | Sutton, John E. |
| Moiteno, Percy Alport | Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central) | Taylor, John W. (Durham) |
| Mond, Sir Alfred Moritz | Price, Sir R. J. (Norfolk, E.) | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) |
| Money, L. G. Chiozza | Priestley, Sir Arthur (Grantham) | Tennant, Harold John |
| Mooney, John J. | Priestley, Sir W. E. B. (Bradford) | Thomas, James Henry |
| Morrell, Philip | Primrose, Hon. Neil James | Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton) |
| Morison, Hector | Pringle, William M. R. | Thorne, William (West Ham) |
| Morton, Alpheus Cleophas | Radford, G. H. | Toulmin, Sir George |
| Muldoon, John | Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields) | Trevelyan, Charles Philips |
| Munro, R. | Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough) | Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander |
| Munro-Ferguson, Rt. Hon. R. C. | Reddy, M. | Verney, Sir Harry |
| Nannetti, Joseph P. | Redmond, John E. (Waterford) | Wadsworth, J. |
| Needham, Christopher Thomas | Redmond, William (Clare) | Walsh Stephen (Lancs., Ince) |
| Neilson, Francis | Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.) | Walters, Sir John Tudor |
| Nolan, Joseph | Richards, Thomas | Walton, Sir Joseph |
| Norton, Captain Cecil W. | Richardson, Albion (Peckham) | Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent) |
| Nugent, Sir Walter Richard | Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven) | Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton) |
| Nuttall, Harry | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) | Wardle, George J |
| O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny) | Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs) | Waring, Walter |
| O'Brien, William (Cork) | Robinson, Sidney | Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay |
| O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.) | Roch, Walter F. | Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan) |
| O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool) | Roche, Augustine (Louth) | Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney) |
| O'Doherty, Philip | Roe, Sir Thomas | Watt, Henry Anderson |
| O'Donnoll, Thomas | Rowlands, James | Webb, H. |
| Ogden, Fred | Rowntree, Arnold | White, J. Dundas (Glas., Tradeston) |
| O'Grady, James | Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter | White, Sir Luke (Yorks, E. R.) |
| O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.) | Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland) | White, Patrick (Meath, North) |
| O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.) | Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees) | Whitehouse, John Howard |
| O'Malley, William | Scanlan, Thomas | Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P. |
| O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.) | Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles E. | Whyte, A. F. (Perth) |
| O'Shaughnessy, P. J. | Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton) | Wiles, Thomas |
| O'Shee, James John | Seely, Col. Rt. Hon. J. E. B. | Wilkie, Alexander |
| O'Sullivan, Timothy | Sheehy, David | Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen) |
| Outhwaite, R. L. | Sherwall, Arthur James | Williams, Penry (M'ddlesbrough) |
| Palmer, Godfrey Mark | Shortt, Edward | Wilson, Rt. Hon, J. W. (Worcs., N.) |
| Parker, James (Halifax) | Simon, Sir John Allsebrock | Wilson, W T. (Westhoughton) |
| Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) | Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe) | Winfrey, Richard |
| Pearce, William (Limehouse) | Smith, H. B. L. (Northampton) | Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glas.) |
| Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham) | Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim) | Young, Samuel (Cavan, East) |
| Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton) | Snowden, Philip | Young, W. (Perthshire, E.) |
| Phillips, John (Longford, S.) | Soames, Arthur Wellesley | |
| Pirie, Duncan V. | Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. |
| Pointer, Joseph | Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.) | Illingworth and Mr. Gulland. |
| NOES. | ||
| Agg-Gardner, James Tynte | Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.) | Grant, J. A. |
| Anson, Rt. Hon. Sir William R. | Chambers, James | Gretton, John |
| Anstruther-Gray, Major William | Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry | Guinness, Hon, Rupert (Essex, S. E.) |
| Archer-Shee, Major M. | Clay, Captain H. H. Spender | Guinness, Hon. W. E. (Bury S. Edmunds) |
| Ashley, W. W. | Clive, Captain Percy Archer | Gwynne, R. S. (Sussex, Eastbourne) |
| Baird, J. L. | Coates, Major Sir Edward Feetham | Haddock, George Bahr |
| Baker, Sir R. L. (Dorset, N.) | Courthope, George Loyd | Hall, D. B. (Isle of Wight) |
| Balcarres, Lord | Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.) | Hall, Fred (Dulwich) |
| Baldwin, Stanley | Craig, Ernest (Cheshire, Crewe) | Hambro, Angus Valdemar |
| Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Craig, Captain James (Down, E.) | Hamilton, Lord C. J. (Kensington) |
| Barlow, Montague (Salford, South) | Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet) | Hamilton, Marquess of (Londonderry) |
| Barnston, H. | Craik, Sir Henry | Hardy, Rt. Hon. Laurence |
| Bathurst, C. (Wilts, Wilton) | Crichton-Stuart, Lord Ninian | Harris, Henry Percy |
| Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth) | Cripps Sir C. A. | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. |
| Bennett-Goldney, Francis | Croft, Henry Page | Henderson, Major H. (Berks, Abingdon) |
| Bentinck, Lord H. Cavendish- | Dalziel, D. (Brixton) | Hewins, William Albert Samuel |
| Beresford, Lord C. | Denniss, E. R. B. | Hickman, Colonel Thomas E. |
| Bigland, Alfred | Duke, Henry Edward | Hill, Sir Clement L. |
| Blair, Reginald | Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M. | Hills, John Waller |
| Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith- | Faber, George Denison (Clapham) | Hill-Wood, Samuel |
| Boyle, William (Norfolk, Mid) | Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.) | Hoare, S. J. G. |
| Boyton, James | Falle, B. G. | Hohler, G. F. |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Fell, Arthur | Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield) |
| Bull, Sir William James | Fetherstonhaugh, Godfrey | Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian) |
| Burn, Colonel C. R. | Fleming, Valentine | Horne, Wm. E. (Surrey, Guildford) |
| Butcher, John George | Fletcher, John Samuel | Horner, Andrew Long |
| Campbell, Captain Duncan F. (Ayr, N.) | Foster, Philip Staveley | Houston, Robert Paterson |
| Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. (Dublin Univ.) | Gardner, Ernest | Hume-Williams, William Ellis |
| Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred | Gastrell, Major W. Houghton | Hunt, Rowland |
| Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward H. | Gibbs, G. A. | Jardine, Ernest (Somerset, East) |
| Cassel, Felix | Glazebrook, Capt. Philip K. | Jessel, Captain H. M. |
| Cator, John | Goldman, C. S. | Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr |
| Cautley, H. S. | Goldsmith, Frank | Kerry, Earl of |
| Cecil, Lord Hugh (Oxford University) | Gordon, John (Londonderry, South) | Kimber, Sir Henry |
| Cecil, Lord R. (Herts, Hitchin) | Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton) | Knight, Captain Eric Ayshford |
| Chaloner, Col. R. G. W. | Goulding, Edward Alfred | Lane-Fox, G. R. |
| Larmor, Sir J. | Pole-Carew, Sir R. | Terrell, George (Wilts, N. W.) |
| Law, Rt. Hon. A. Bonar (Bootle) | Pollock, Ernest Murray | Terrell, Henry (Gloucester) |
| Lewisham, Viscount | Pretyman, Ernest George | Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North) |
| Lloyd, George Ambrose | Pryce-Jones, Col. E. | Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, North). |
| Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey) | Quilter, Sir William Eley C. | Tobin, Alfred Aspinall |
| Lookwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R. | Randies, Sir John S. | Touche, George Alexander |
| Long, Rt. Hon. Walter | Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel | Tryon, Captain George Clement |
| Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. A. (S. Geo. Han. S.) | Rees, Sir J. D. | Valentia, Viscount |
| MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh | Remnant, James Farquharson | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Mackinder, Halford J. | Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall) | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid) |
| Macmaster, Donald | Ronaldshay, Earl of | Wheler, Granville C. H. |
| M'Neill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine's) | Rothschild, Lionel de | White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport) |
| Magnus, Sir Philip | Royds, Edmund | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Mason, James F. (Windsor) | Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W. Derby) | Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud |
| Meysey-Thompson, E. C. | Salter, Arthur Clavell | Wills, Sir Gilbert |
| Middlemore, John Throgmorton | Samuel, Sir Harry (Norwood) | Wilson, A. Stanley (Yorks, E. R.) |
| Mildmay, Francis Bingham | Sanders, Robert A. | Winterton, Earl |
| Mills, Hon. Charles Thomas | Sanderson, Lancelot | Wolmer, Viscount |
| Moore, William | Sassoon, Sir Philip | Wood, John (Staiybridge) |
| Newton, Harry Kottingham | Scott, Leslie (Liverpool, Exchange) | Worthington-Evans, L. |
| Nicholson, William G. (Petersfield) | Smith, Rt. Hon. F. E. (L'p'l, Walton) | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart- |
| Nield, Herbert | Spear, Sir John Ward | Wright, Henry Fitzherbert |
| O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid) | Stanier, Beville | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A. | Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk) | Yerburgh, Robert A. |
| Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William | Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston) | Younger, Sir George |
| Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend) | Stewart, Gershom | |
| Parkes, Ebenezer | Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, N.) | |
| Peel, Captain R. F. | Swift, Rigby | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Sir J |
| Perkins, Walter F. | Sykes, Alan John (Ches., Knutsford) | Lonsdale and Mr. Barrie. |
| Peto, Basil Edward | Talbot, Lord E. |