HC Deb 25 February 1845 vol 77 cc1221-33
Mr. Bellew

rose in pursuance of the Motion of which he had given notice— That there be laid before this House a Return of any Correspondence which took place in the years 1842,1843, and 1844, between the Lord Chancellor of Ireland and the Earl of Lucan, relative to the dismissal of the latter from, and subsequent restoration to, the Magistracy: also for a Copy of the Commission appointing the said Earl of Lucan Lord Lieutenant of the County of Mayo. The noble Lord was dismissed from the magistracy not more than two years ago, and, presuming the circumstances still in force which led to that dismissal, that nothing in fact had occurred to better his Lordship's case, it appeared to him that the recent conduct of the Government towards his Lordship must be wrong. The House had recently been occupied with matters of great public interest, and the present might appear but of comparatively small consequence; but be could assure the House that in that part of Ireland where the events to which he was about to call attention had occurred, the interest excited was quite as great as that which had been attracted to great public questions here. The House had always acted with promptitude on all occasions when charges were made against parties holding a public office in this country. Very recently the conduct of a magistrate had come in question, and twenty-four hours had not elapsed before it was brought under the notice of that House. There was also a case last year in which a Lord Lieutenant of a county was concerned. He referred to the case of "The Queen and Humphries v. the Duke of Marlborough," and this case was immediately referred to the cognizance of the Solicitor General. He hoped the same promptitude would be shown in cases of a similar character which related to public men in Ireland, and he trusted the case of Lord Lucan would meet with similar attention to that which had been conferred on cases to which he had just referred. Previously to entering upon Lord Lucan's case, he would briefly refer to another matter in which Lord Chancellor Sugden was concerned, and he was bound to say that he thought the learned Lord in the affair was a very ill-used individual. He begged to be allowed to say that he had not the smallest intention of entering upon questions of Government policy—all he wanted to show was, that it was very difficult to understand the principle upon which appointments were made in Ireland. He would just glance at the dismissals from the magistracy that had taken place. The first was that of Lord Ffrench—it was difficult to understand the principle which had prompted dismissal in this and in other cases. The subject of these dismissals had already undergone discussion in both Houses of Parliament. In the case of the dismissal of Lord Lucan the same course was adopted—the subject was canvassed, and the cause of his Lordship's dismissal was made public. He trusted that the grounds on which his Lordship had been reinstated would also appear in the correspondence which he was about to move for. With regard to the noble Lord he begged to say he had no personal knowledge of his Lordship; he had no personal motive in bringing forward this question. The only feeling which guided him was the desire of doing justice to the public, and seeing that justice was properly administered in Ireland. He had no intention of canvassing the propriety of the dismissal both of Lord Lucan and Mr. O'Malley from the magistracy. It was sufficient for his purpose that enough appeared on Lord Lucan's own showing to warrant their dismissals, and this rendered him quite unable to comprehend how the reinstatement of his Lordship could redound to the credit of the Government. From the statements which were made public in the correspondence between Lord Chancellor Sugden and Lord Lucan, it appeared that the terms "blackguard" and "miscreant" had been used in open Court by Lord Lucan and Mr. O'Malley to each other. After the dismissals had taken place, he found that one party was restored to the magistracy, and the other appointed to the dignity of head of the magistracy of the county. Now, if the statement of Lord Lucan to the Lord Chancellor was correct, then Mr. O'Malley ought not to have been restored; and if Mr. O'Malley's statement was correct, Lord Lucan ought not to have been placed in the honourable post he now filled. What he wished more particularly to direct the attention of the House to was an extract from the letter written to Lord Lucan at the request of Lord Chancellor Sugden. The letter was to the effect, that the Lord Chancellor having considered all the circumstances, had come to the painful conclusion that two magistrates, on the same Bench, in the characters of prosecutor and defendant, had used language towards each other which could not be justified, and which exhibited that want of respect to the law which, unfortunately, too much prevailed—and that it was impossible to have due respect paid to the Court as long as they were privileged to sit there as magistrates. It would appear Lord Lucan had said, that from certain expressions used by the noble Lord the late Secretary for Ireland, that he could not be persuaded that the act of Lord Chancellor Sugden had received the approbation of that noble Lord. That noble Lord was known to be the expositor of the policy of the right hon. Baronet opposite, and he recollected the right hon. Baronet stating that the conduct of that noble Lord had met with his entire approbation. The conduct of the Lord Chancellor had been approved by Lord Eliot, by Lord Wharncliffe, and also by Lord Lyndhurst. Notwithstanding this, it would appear that this very same Lord Lucan had been appointed to preside over the Bench of magistrates of that very county from which two years previously he had been dismissed, and who was considered by the great authorities he had mentioned as unfit to be even a private member of the magistracy. It could not be said that the Government had no choice. They might have selected Lord Sligo, a Nobleman who had taken no active part in politics, but had, nevertheless, taken great interest in the improvement of the condition of his tenantry. There were also many other influential noblemen and gentlemen in the county from among whom they might have selected a fit and proper person to fill the office. The present Secretary for Ireland had said, that Ireland was an integral part of the Empire, and was to be legislated for in the same manner as Lancashire or Yorkshire—that the conciliation of Ireland was necessary in every respect, while, at the same time, the Union was to be maintained, the Church upheld, and the law respected. He uttered the words that the law was to be respected at the very moment when this appointment was made, as if in complete mockery of what the hon. Gentleman said. Enactments were of little use, if the administration of the law was not respected. There was a great difference between this country and Ireland in this point. It was not that there was less crime in this country, but it was that there was here no sympathy for the evil-doer, and that the law was fairly and justly administered without respect of persons. The result of the appointment in question would produce a contrary impression in Ireland. Respect for the law in that country was a feeling but recently created. Lord Wellesley, by establishing Petty Sessions, and Lord Normanby, by appointing Stipendiary Magistrates, might be said to have called the feeling of respect for the law into existence. He could assure the House that this was a matter of grave and serious importance. It was of the last importance that the unpaid magistracy should be above all suspicion. He had no further observations to make; but he could not help stating that it appeared from Lord Lucan's own statement, that for two years previous to his having been dismissed he had not acted as a magistrate, and that since he had been restored he had never sat on the Bench. The hon. Member concluded by submitting his Motion.

Sir T. Fremantle

had no objection to the Papers moved for by the hon. Gentleman. It was perfectly well known that the noble Lord in question had himself moved for them in another place, and had given notice of a Motion on the subject of this inquiry. The hon. Member, at the commencement of his speech, spoke of the jealousy with which the conduct of magis- trates was regarded in this country, and proceeded to draw an invidious comparison between the course taken by the Government of Ireland in this respect, and that taken by the Government of this country. He thought, however, that the hon. Gentleman had been extremely unfortunate in the instances which he adduced in support of his assertion; because, first of all, he adverted to the case of the noble Duke the Lord Lieutenant of the county of Oxford, and stated that when certain charges had been made against him, he proceeded to a court of justice, and vindicated himself. It appeared, then, that Government took no notice of that transaction, but left the noble Duke to vindicate his character in a eourt of justice. It appeared, therefore, that the vigilance exercised on the part of the present Government, with respect to the administration of justice and the surveillance of the magistracy in Ireland, was not worse than it was in England. That, in fact, a similar attention was paid by the Government to this matter in both countries. So much the hon. Gentleman opposite seemed to admit. But, in bringing forward the present case, the hon. Gentleman had not thought it necessary to go into the details of the circumstances and the transactions which had occurred at Castlebar, and out of which the present matter had arisen; and, indeed, he (Sir T. Fremantle) was glad that the hon. Member had abstained from so doing, as it relieved him also from the necessity of going into the case. The hon. Gentleman had only said that the Lord Chancellor of Ireland had thought it necessary to dismiss Lord Lucan from the magistracy, and that the Government of Ireland had supported the Lord Chancellor in that dismissal. But this was not the entire case. The question had been argued in the House of Lords, and Members of the Government in that House had there stated that they shared the responsibility of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland in the course he had pursued on this occasion. Then the hon. Gentleman, having assumed that it was right that Lord Lucan should be dismissed from the magistracy, had also jumped to the conclusion that it was highly improper that he should be subsequently raised to the Lord Lieutenancy of the county. In stating all this, however, the hon. Gentleman opposite had entirely passed over all the intervening grounds and circumstances which induced the same Lord Chancellor who had thought it his duty to dismiss Lord Lucan, to conceive it likewise his duty to reinstate that nobleman. Now, certainly if the hon. Member opposite had thought it right to have the Lord Chancellor for an authority in support of the case he was making out, in the first instance, surely it was open to him (Sir T. Fremantle), to claim the benefit of the same high authority. He was prepared to contend that the Lord Chancellor of Ireland was perfectly justified in reinstating Lord Lucan in the Commission of the Peace. That reinstatement had accordingly taken place; and he was, moreover, prepared to contend that what had occurred before the dismissal might be very fairly forgotten, and that the noble Lord could stand as a magistrate in as fair a position as he had stood before. Was it to be contended for, that an accidental error like that of which Lord Lucan had been guilty, the use of a single intemperate or hasty word, under circumstances of the greatest provocation, and that offence having been visited by those in authority with the highest punishment which such an offence could receive—was it to be contended, he repeated, that such an offence should be considered a bar against the noble Lord for the rest of his natural life; a stigma for ever, and that it should prevent him from ever after acting in the service of Her Majesty? The hon. Gentleman had stated that he (Sir T. Fremantle) had spoken on a recent occasion of conciliation towards Ireland, and that he had professed his disposition to assist in maintaining and creating a respect for the law in that country. The hon. Gentleman had, moreover, gone on to assert that the acts of the Government in the conduct of the prosecution of the case against Mr. O'Connell were in direct contradiction to the statements which he (Sir T. Fremantle) had so put forth. He contended that such was not the case. The Government had come forward to vindicate the law; and the sentence they had passed upon the noble Lord now in question, on a former occasion, was also calculated to vindicate the law and purify the administration of justice in the eyes of the people of Ireland. And though the noble Lord had been reinstated, the mere circumstance of his dismissal would impress on the minds of the magistracy of that country, as well as of the people generally, the determination of the present Government to preserve and secure the proper administration of justice. From the commencement of the proceedings on the day when the altercation took place between Lord Lucan and the other party concerned, this latter individual, by his offensive gesture and manner, as well as by his language, had provoked Lord Lucan to use an improper expression. Now, when a discussion had occurred in another place with respect to this matter, opinions had been expressed by persons not connected with the Government, to the effect that the sentence passed upon that noble Lord had been too severe, and disproportionate to the offence of which he was guilty. It had been admitted that great provocation had been given to Lord Lucan—provocation, indeed, sufficiently great to justify what had passed. Would the hon. Gentleman opposite take the opinion of the Marquess of Clanricarde? The noble Marquess had thought the offence was not such as to merit that, the greatest punishment which could be inflicted for its commission. Lord Brougham too had said that, after the explanation which had been given of the case, not the slighest stigma rested on the character of the noble Lord in his capacity of a nobleman, a magistrate, or a gentleman; and Lord Campbell had observed with respect to the conduct of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland that, though he did not agree with all that distinguished functionary's acts, yet he did in most of them; and he could not but say that he had fallen into error in dismissing Lord Lucan from the magistracy. The noble Lord had been reinstated in the situation he had formerly held before his present appointment, and no imputation could rest upon the Government on that account.

Mr. M. J. O'Connell

rose to express his sincere regret at finding that the professions of kindly feeling and conciliatory conduct towards Ireland, which were made so recently by the right hon. Gentleman (Sir T. Fremantle) on the hustings—professions which were still fresh in the minds of the Irish people—were followed up by the strange practical commentary they had witnessed to-night. That the right hon, Gentleman should (with the recollection of those professions fresh in his memory) have come forward to justify the extraordinary conduct of the Government was to him astonishing. He would appeal to the English Members pre- sent, whether, if an English magistrate had been dismissed from the Commission of the Peace for a gross insult offered in a Court of Justice to another magistrate (neither of them certainly acting in his capacity as a magistrate at the time), and that in two years from his dismissal, or even less, he was not only reinstated, but placed at the head of the whole list of magistracy as the Lord Lieutenant of that county; he appealed to them, would any of them bear that?—would any of them bear that? He asked them for the third time, would any of them bear that? [Lord Ingestre: Hear, hear!] The noble Lord the Member for Staffordshire then stood alone in that feeling. Was there another among them who would bear it? The Irish people were sometimes accused of over-sensitiveness; but with such acts passing before them—with such acts committed within their daily experience, and justified by a Government professing to be wishful to rule upon principles of conciliation—could they wonder that the Irish were occasionally rather more sensitive than they found convenient? But the right hon. Gentleman had talked of magisterial delinquency, watched over with great exactness by the Government of Ireland. He (Mr. M. J. O'Connell) supposed that he was one of the delinquent magistrates so hinted at. Yet he had held the Commission of the Peace for eight years, and he had been dismissed from it under circumstances which made him feel that dismissal to be no dishonour. He was dismissed for no misconduct on the Bench, but simply for having given expression to his political feelings. If delinquents in politics were to be so carefully watched, and delinquents in conduct in Courts of Justice were not only to be forgiven, but within a short time to be promoted, they could not wonder if there was no great confidence entertained by the Irish people in their justice. The right hon. Gentleman had said, that the hon. Member for Louth had assumed the Lord Chancellor to be right in his dismissal of Lord Lucan. Assumed it! Were they going back from their defence of their Colleague, of the conduct of Lord Chancellor Sugden, when he stated that the magistrates guilty of such a contempt of Court as that in question, ought not to continue in the Commission of the Peace, and that he felt it to be his duty to remove them both. The right hon. Baronet had spoken of Lord Lucan's apology and his regret for what had taken place. Was it since his dismissal that these expressions of apology and regret had been used? In the correspondence produced in another place, Lord Lucan stated that he had expressed his regret for what had occurred before he was dismissed. Had he made any further apology since? No, none that he (Mr. M. J. O'Connell) had ever heard of. On the contrary, had he not said in the House of Lords on the 10th of August last, that his dismissal was the greatest injustice, an injustice which could not be exceeded, unless by the re-appointment of Mr. O'Malley with him? Yet, after all, they were both thus restored to the magistracy together. That speech of Lord Lucan's was a violent attack upon the noble Lord the then Irish Secretary, now the Earl of St. Germans. Had Government now thrown overboard their late Colleague? Was the first appearance in his new capacity of the right hon. Gentleman, now Secretary for Ireland, to be in defence of such conduct and such principles as these? He would be allowed to refer to just one point more. The magisterial acts of Lord Lucan would have afforded just cause for his not receiving his recent promotion, but he would call attention to his last public appearance. That was on the occasion or his having refused to grant a lease for building ground in the town of Castlebar, for the purpose of erecting a convent for an establishment of the Sisters of Charity. He understood the sneer of the noble Lord the Member for Berkshire, when he mentioned the subject. It was a sneer at which he could not but feel indignant, and if the noble Lord were attached to the religion he professed, such a refusal to those having such claims to what they requested ought to have given rise to other feelings and gestures. But to return. Lord Lucan refused to grant the lease on a ground which was but the subterfuge of a bigot afraid to avow his sentiments. He said that he must decline to grant it, because he considered such establishments to be by statute illegal. The parties in communication with is Lordship immediately wrote to him to assure him that he was in error—that under the Act which he had alluded to, although such religious societies composed of males were illegal, yet that by its provisions female religions establishments were not interfered with. He then wrote back to say that he considered the spirit of the one as bad as that of the other; and that though he had at first dwelt on the letter of the law, he now preferred to act upon its spirit; thus bearing the full bigotry of his refusal to the Irish people. He told the Government that, if they meant their words to be anything more than mere words—if they had any intention to carry out the principles of conciliation which they professed, this one act should have made them pause before they proceeded to permit this man—the expression of his bigotry still fresh from his pen, and that expression, too, not an honest and a manly one, but sneaking and underhand, and as such an expression which even those who agreed with its author must despise, and those who did not agree with him must hate—he told the Government that such an act, such an expression, should have made them pause ere they permitted such a man to assume the head of the magistracy. It was all very well to talk of their intentions towards Ireland. But the opportunities of legislating for its benefit which they would have would be but few and far between; while, on the other hand, their administrative measures came into collision with the people's feelings and wishes, week by week, and day by day. It would be of no avail to promise benefits which could not come oftener than once or twice a year, if day after day the Irish people were to be galled by seeing men of this class promoted—men with no fair claim on the confidence of Government, called on to administer more annoyance to their feelings in months, than years of legislation could do away with. They should know—however low might be the opinion which they formed of Irish sense or Irish intellect—that his countrymen had keenness and perception enough to judge between the sort of movement going on now, that kind of vacillation dignified by the name of the policy of the Government to Ireland, making one futile step to annoy the Orange party, and another to provoke the great bulk of the Catholic population. They had acuteness enough to distinguish between what he had described, and the course of even-handed rectitude — they could tell the vacillation of indecision from the steady policy which true justice would pursue.

Mr. T. C. Smith (the Attorney General for Ireland)

said, he thought it was desirable that the circumstances under which the Earl of Lucan had been dismissed from the magistracy should be fully known to the House. The noble Earl had been dismissed from the Commission of the Peace at the latter end of the year 1842, and in the course of the Session of 1843 the subject had been brought under the notice of the other House of Parliament. And what had been, then, the complaint made by the opponents of Her Majesty's Government in reference to that matter? Their complaint had been that the Government had acted harshly in dismissing the Earl of Lucan. The Marquess of Clanricarde had made a complaint to that effect in the strongest terms; and Lord Campbell took a similar view of the subject. It should also be remembered that the Earl of Lucan had been restored to the Commission of the Peace towards the end of the year 1843; and yet not one word complaining of that restoration had been uttered during the last Session of Parliament. Lord Campbell had even taken occasion to say, that the noble Earl had only been restored to a position from which he ought never to have been removed. It was certainly rather strange that the Government should first be attacked because they had dismissed Lord Lucan from the Commission of the Peace, and that they should afterwards have been attacked for having appointed him to another office. It was no matter what the Government did, it was always turned into a ground of complaint. Now, he was anxious that the English people should understand what these appeals to them really were. He was not about to justify Lord Lucan's conduct; but he trusted that when the circumstances under which he was placed, and the provocation offered to him, were taken into consideration—although there might be some hon. Members ready to cast the first stone—there was scarcely one among them who would not have given way to feelings of irritation. What was the transaction? It appeared, that two years previous to the transaction, Lord Lucan removed Mr. O'Malley from the office which he had held under his Lordship's father. From that time Mr. O'Malley adopted a constant system of annoyance towards Lord Lucan, manifestly for the purpose of irritating him. Among other things, it appeared, that he had been in the habit of trespassing on his estate in quest of game; although repeatedly warned to desist. On one occasion, he spoke to his Lordship's gamekeeper in the most offensive terms of Lord Lucan, and this was the origin of the case at the Petty Sessions. On that occasion, Lord Lucan was sitting on the Bench, but had not attended with the view of taking any part in the proceedings, and this he stated on the authority of the Mayo Telegraph, a newspaper politically opposed to his Lordship, in which it was stated that he attended at the Sessions, in company with his land agent, Mr. Ormsby, and four officers of the 47th Regiment, stationed at Castlebar, who were seated between Lord Lucan and the Bench. The right hon. and learned Gentleman then went through the facts of the case, and called attention to that part of it in which Mr. O'Malley asked Lord Lucan whether he was there in a judicial capacity, and upon his refusal to answer, stated that he could not find language sufficiently strong to express his contempt for his Lordship, and that his contempt for him exceeded his contempt for any other man. Now, he asked any hon. Member whether such language, addressed to Lord Lucan in open Court, in the presence of four military gentlemen, was not sufficient to excite the feelings of any man? Was no allowance to be made for feeling? He felt quite certain, at all events, that the people of England would not think that Her Majesty's Government had acted wrongly under the circumstances, or that Lord Lucan was disqualified, by what had taken place, from holding the appointment conferred on him.

Mr. Ross

He did not mean to defend Mr. O'Malley's conduct, who, no doubt, acted under irritated feelings. But the Attorney General for Ireland had taken a brief in this case against the Lord Chancellor. His argument went the length of proving the Chancellor to have been wrong in ever removing Lord Lucan. How did that square with the right hon. Secretary's (Sir T. Fremantle's) view of the case, who insisted on a strange infallibility for the Chancellor, who, he said, was perfectly right not only in removing, but in restoring Lord Lucan. The doctrine laid down in that debate struck him as exceedingly strange. It appeared that magistrates were to undergo a species of rustication, and that, like youths at our universities, they were to be sent away for a time, on account of their irregularities, and then restored to their dignity. That was not the case with political offences. Men, like his hon. Friend (Mr. M. J. O'Connell), one of the most unimpeachable characters, who had administered justice to the perfect satisfaction of their countrymen, were swept away in scores from the Commission of the Peace, on account of the honest expression of a political opinion. This was gross injustice. He was sure the people of Ireland would regard the present case as a repetition of that which he had brought forward last year—namely the case of Mr. O'Driscoll.

Motion agreed to.

House adjourned at one o'clock.