HC Deb 26 July 1850 vol 113 cc339-46
MR. HUME

begged to call attention to the report of the Ceylon Committee. He wanted to know by what authority the Committee had referred the evidence to the Government. For his part, he was not disposed to leave anything connected with the subject to the Government, for they were in fact implicated in the charge, for they had acted in violation of all the principles which ought to have governed their conduct in the matter. He spoke in so far as they had approved of the acts of the Colonial Secretary. The Committee recommended last year that a commission should proceed to Ceylon; but the noble Lord at the head of the Government, to stifle truth, proposed that the inquiry should be resumed by the Committee this Session, and that the witnesses whose evidence might be necessary to elucidate the truth, should be ordered home here. But when the chairman of that Committee pointed out the names of the parties from whom evidence was required, the Committee were informed that the noble Lord the Colonial Secretary would not consent to their being summoned. He mentioned this to show the nature of the obstructions which the Government had thrown in the way of the inquiry. The Committee had now determined not to make any report to the House, and the inhabitants of Ceylon were to remain unprotected, and their grievances unredressed. He wished to know from the Government whether the consequence of that decision on the part of the Committee would be to put off the question altogether until next Session, or whether any steps would be taken in the meantime? There was no reason whatever why martial law should have been proclaimed; and as martial law could only be justified for the purpose of protecting the lives and properties of the Queen's subjects, and as no such reason existed in Ceylon, he contended that the whole proceeding, under which these military executions—which he could only designate as murders—had taken place, were illegal. And to add to the severity of the act, that protection, which even the forms of military law secured to those who became amenable to it, was withheld from those who had been made the victims in this case, by the court having departed from the ordinary mode of conducting their proceedings. The courts, it appeared, were appointed by Colonel Drought, under the orders, as it was said, of Lord Torrington himself, and the proceedings were carried on without reference to form or precedent; and as a proof of the irregularity which had marked the whole business connected with these courts-martial, he might state that the Committee, after two years' inquiry, had been unable to ascertain by what means Lord Torrington sent the proclamation to Colonel Drought, authorising martial law to be established. The Commander-in-Chief had been sent for by the Committee, in order that some evidence might be obtained on this point—

MR. SPEAKER

must remind the hon. Member that it was out of order to allude to evidence which had not yet been laid before the House.

MR. HUME

said, that lie was alluding to nothing but what had already been laid on the table in the last year's correspondence. He had the information last year, and was then prepared to produce it, and he knew of no order that prevented him from quoting evidence which he obtained from sources independent of the Committee, He contended that the result of such evidence was, that if a court-martial sat upon Lord Torrington's conduct in any part of the world, he would not be allowed to hold Her Majesty's commission for one hour afterwards. He therefore appealed to the House, and to those who were anxious that justice should be done to our fellow subjects in distant parts of the world, whether Ceylon was to be subjected to a tyranny worse than that which prevailed in any other part of the world, and which it was disgraceful to this country to permit? He, for one, was not willing that any part of the Queen's subjects should remain for one hour under the government of a man who had violated the principles of humanity, and outraged not only the feelings of a gentleman, but, he must add, the ordinary usages of civilised life. Last year, when the proceedings of the courts-martial were called for, they were told they had not yet been received in England. Yet the noble Lord, in the absence of those proceedings, without any knowledge of the evidence, gave his sanction to them. This year, for the first time, they had some account of those proceedings, and they found that Lord Torrington had ordered the sentences of the courts-martial to be carried out at once, without going through the ordinary form of referring the evidence to the Commander-in-Chief. The conduct of Sir Henry Ward in Cephalonia was bad enough, but that of Lord Torrington at Ceylon was infinitely worse. He had abolished all the safeguards which the law required should be extended to Her Majesty's subjects when subjected to military law. As he had said, he believed there never was any ground for martial law, and, consequently, the proclaiming it was an illegal act; but supposing he had the power to establish martial law himself, it was clearly illegal to delegate that power to Colonel Drought, and for him to delegate that power again to the other officers of the Army, was a course wholly unprecedented. It was on these grounds that at this late period of the Session he was anxious to call attention to the subject. He regretted to say that they had not been met in the Committee in that way they had a right to expect from the Government. Instead of affording them every information to enable them to judge, they had rather stood; between the people of Ceylon and the parties who had been guilty of these cruelties. It should he remembered that besides the sacrifice of life which had been inflicted, numbers of the people had been sent into banishment, and were at this moment suffering all the miseries of that condition; and, in addition to this, under Lord Torrington's proclamation, the military had entered the houses of those persons who had fled to the jungle for fear of the martial law, and, taking their absence as a proof of guilt, had plundered their dwellings and seized and sold their property. This question of the plunder of the property by the military was of itself a matter for grave investigation, even were there! no other feature in the case. These were the acts which the Committee upstairs had, by the course they had adopted, stifled all inquiry into. He demanded on the part of the people of Ceylon, who had petitioned the House, that those who were guilty might he punished, and that they should not be screened by the Colonial Office. He contended that Earl Grey, by approving of the proceedings of the colonial government had made himself a party to all their acts—the letting loose the military upon the people without any reason—the wanton sacrifice of life—the conducting the courts-martial without any of the necessary safeguards with which such tribunals were ordinarily clothed; and, again, letting loose to prey upon the people a number of young officers, one of whom behaved so bad that Captain Watson was obliged to send him under an escort, for exacting money from the natives, as a bribe to leave them unmolested. He hoped that the House would order the evidence to be produced, in order that they might be made acquainted with the facts of the case. It pained him to think that those with whom he had for years acted should attempt to cloak and cover the faults of parties who had so grossly abused the trust which had been reposed in them. Up to the present time they had not heard by what means Colonel Drought had received his orders. They could not ascertain whether he received them from Gene- ral Smelt or not. If General Smelt had allowed the troops to he placed under the command of the Governor—if he had neglected his duty, the Horse Guards ought to institute an inquiry whether he was fitted to remain in his present position? On every gound—on behalf of the people of Ceylon, and on behalf also of the people of this country—he appealed to the noble Lord, that as he had refused the report of last Session to the Committee, the evidence taken before which had been suppressed by a majority of one—a decision which, had the late Sir Robert Peel lived, he believed would never have been come to—he appealed to the noble Lord, as a matter of justice, to move that that evidence be printed and laid before the House.

LORD J. RUSSELL

thought the House would be of opinion that it would be impossible then to enter on the grave consideration of the affairs of Ceylon, with reference to the proceedings of the Committee appointed to investigate those affairs. The Committee had not thought it right to report the evidence to the House. The Committee having come to that decision, for the House now to act on the statement of the hon. Member for Montrose, he submitted, was entirely out of the question. He trusted, however, that no hon. Member would take for granted that the hon. Gentleman's statements were at all borne out by what took place before the Committee. The report of that Committee was— your Committee also regret that, notwithstanding their utmost diligence and perseverance, they find themselves still unable to make a complete report upon some of the various matters into which they were directed by the House to inquire. Your Committee are of opinion that the serious attention of Her Majesty's Government should be called to the evidence taken in the course of this inquiry; and they recommend that a Royal Commission should be appointed to proceed to Ceylon to ascertain what changes may be necessary for the better government of that colony, unless some step should forthwith be taken by the Government which may obviate the necessity of further investigation. Without entering into the question, whether the Committee were justified in coming to that conclusion, he could only say that the Government would give their attention to the subject, and take such steps as might be deemed most advisable. The Committee, no doubt, thought there were sufficient reasons why the evidence should not be given to the public. Accounts from Ceylon showed that some portions of the evidence had been published before the inquiry was complete. That evidence must have been purloined from some Member of the Committee. As the Committee had come to the conclusion that the evidence should not be published, he should only express the hope that more care would be taken in future to prevent evidence from being published till due authority was given for its publication.

MR. GLADSTONE

agreed with the noble Lord that it was impossible to enter satisfactorily into this important question at present. At the same time, he was not surprised at the strong expressions used with regard to the proceedings of the Committee by the hon. Member for Montrose. The proceedings of the Committee were, in his judgment, of such a nature, that though it was impossible on the present occasion to discuss them, they must infallibly be discussed at some future time. It was true the Committee had decided not to report the evidence to the House; but it was equally true, and it would be seen from the proceedings which the Committee had printed for the use of Members, that, on the day before they came to this decision, they came by a large majority to a directly opposite decision, to report the whole evidence to the House, with the exception of that which was personal and confidential. He should offend against the rule he had himself laid down, if he were now to go into the particular considerations which led him to think that this matter was a subject for the full consideration of the House. In his judgment, the hon. Member for Montrose, or the hon. Member for Inverness-shire, would do no more than their duty to the public if, on the earliest opportunity that the state of the public business would permit—if not on this, certainly on the earliest opportunity next Session—they again raised the question by a Motion for the production of the evidence, to draw the attention of the House both to the merits of the case with respect to the Governor of Ceylon, and with respect to the Government at home, and to a third subject, which, in his mind, was not the least instructive or the least important of the three—to the proceedings of the Committee which this House had appointed.

MR. J. S. WORTLEY

said, there was one point in the proceedings of the Committee of which he was a Member, that he wished to advert to, rather with a view to the regularity of the proceeding than with any other object. Because it would be observed from the report of the Committee—for which, to a small extent indeed, was he responsible—that they had determined not to report the evidence to the House, and yet at the same time they had determined to recommend that evidence to the serious attention of Government. He must say he was not aware of any constitutional means by which that evidence could he laid before the Government. It happened that, on the Committee, the Government was represented by one Member, who might have submitted the evidence to the consideration of the noble Lord the First Minister of the Crown, or to the Government at large. But what he wished to point out was, that the Committee had taken an anomalous course, in refusing to report the evidence to the House, and at the same time in recommending that identical evidence to the consideration of Her Majesty's Government. He would say no more upon the subject now. He felt that there must be other opportunities of entering into the general question; but he must say that the inquiries before the Committee had disclosed a state of things in the colony which not only demanded the serious attention of Government, but which induced him to hope that, before next Session, Government would take measures to remove the serious evils that existed, and that the House would not be required to go full' into the consideration of this painful case, as it would otherwise be constrained to do.

MR. HAWES

would not have said a word, but for what fell from the right hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down, with reference to the Committee recommending the evidence to the serious attention of Government. Now, he had the honour to be a Member of the Committee, and it had been a part of his duty to submit the evidence to the noble Lord the Secretary of State for the Colonies. But, more than that, the Committee had ordered that a regular copy of the evidence should be sent from day to day to the Colonial Office; and therefore the Government were fully cognisant of it.

MR. J. W. PATTEN

was afraid that was contrary to the rules of the House. It was done, he dared to say, with the best intentions; but he put it to Mr. Speaker whether any evidence taken before a Committee appointed by order of the House could be laid before any department of the Government before it was laid on the table of the House?

MR. SPEAKER

said, that all the Committee could do was to report the evidence to the House; and the evidence so reported might, with the approbation of the House, go to the Government. Or, the Committee might state that it was not proper or right that the evidence should be made public, and the House might order the evidence to be referred to Her Majesty's Government. The Committee could not do it of themselves.

MR. BRIGHT

said, he had seen many reports presented to the House, but never had he seen a report so ridiculous, so lame, so unworthy an investigation of this serious character, as the one in question. He was satisfied that when they read the report, and considered the painful rumours which were afloat, the very nature of the report itself would force them to call for the evidence. It was clear that either the Committee had been sitting for two years about nothing, or that they had discovered evidence of so painful a character that they had shrunk from reporting it. At the commencement of the Session they had had a discussion relative to the attempts made for bringing witnesses from Ceylon to this country. He confessed that suspicions of the gravest nature had been aroused in his mind; and he urged the House to call for the evidence, and to insist on its being placed on the table. Nothing could be more preposterous than the idea of the Committee passing over that House with the evidence, and giving it at a Government office. The House had better go home if such a system were to be pursued, and let the Government take the course it pleased. The whole thing tended to create grave suspicion, and he hoped the House would not be content until the evidence was laid upon the table.

Subject dropped.