§ MR. VINCENT SCULLYsaid, he wished to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland has he now received official information respecting the recent Evictions of 280 inhabitants from the Lands of Derryveagh, in the county of Donegal; and is it intended that the landlord who has caused these Evictions shall hold Her Majesty's Commission of the Peace for that county? He 843 did not recollect any circumstance which had caused such a thrill of horror in Ireland, and he thought a discussion in that House upon the subject would be attended with beneficial effect. The subsequent accounts had confirmed the reports which first appeared in the newspapers, to the effect that 280 persons, comprising 45 families, were flung out on the road on the side of a mountain. For the first two nights the people who wore evicted found refuge in the houses of their neighbours which were still left standing; but, on the third night, when all had been levelled, they were left without shelter of any kind. On the fourth day the relieving officer came, not having previously received notice, and conveyances having been provided for the sick and infirm, they were removed to the workhouse. Forty-three heads of families applied for admission, believing that the expense of their maintenance would be thrown upon the landlord off whose property they had been turned; but, finding it would be imposed upon their neighbours, they expressed their determination to suffer any extremity rather than become a burden to them. He did not press for an immediate answer to the second part of his question, but he thought it right to state that the landlord who had acted in this manner was not of ancient family in the county, and that his sole claim to the Commission of the Peace was founded on the property which he had purchased only four or five years before, and from which he had ejected every human being. The facts were not disputed—indeed, they were tacitly admitted in the letter which this gentleman had written to the clergyman of the district, both the Protestant and the Roman Catholic ministers having joined in a touching appeal to him. He (Mr. Vincent Scully) was delighted to see those clergymen united in a manner that was unfortunately so rare in Ireland. It was said that this question was arguable, and that the principle on which Mr. Adair had acted was an old Saxon one. Now, the Normans had certainly acted upon it, but it was neither an old Saxon principle nor a Christian principle. The Earl of Derby, who was thought at one time to contemplate a wholesale eviction, in consequence of a murder which went undiscovered upon his property in Ireland, had declared that it was not for a single moment his intention to countenance any wholesale or indiscriminate evictions, and thus to visit 844 with punishment both the innocent and the guilty. It was desirable that the Government should have an opportunity of expressing their horror at such acts as these. An Englishman said to him recently, "Such acts might legally be done here, but if I did so I should be quite sure that no gentleman in the county would associate with me." It might be impossible for the Government to apply any effective remedy in the case; but they might, at all events, indicate their disapproval of the conduct of Mr. Adair by removing him from the Commission of the Peace.
§ MR. CARDWELLsaid, he had received information of what occurred on the occasion to which his hon. Friend had referred, and he learned that the resident magistrate, with a large force of the constabulary, was present for the maintenance of the public peace, while the sheriff proceeded to execute forty-seven writs of ejectment, involving in the whole 244 persons. The people stood by quietly and calmly, and saw most of their houses unroofed, some expressing their determination to emigrate; but the great mass declaring that they would seek for relief in the workhouse. His hon. Friend had asked whether the relieving officer had received the notice which the landlord was bound under the statute to serve upon him before ejecting, and whether he had discharged his duty or not? So far as his information went the relieving officer had received a statutory notice, and he had heard nothing which led him to suppose that the officer had not attended according to the notice, or that there was any failure of humanity as regarded the relief of the people under the Poor Law. These wholesale evictions were happily now becoming extremely rare in Ireland, and it was not possible to hear of any such case without feelings of the deepest commiseration for those who were the subjects of such a proceeding, especially for the aged and the young, who were necessarily involved in the sufferings, although they could have had no share in the guilty transactions which led to them. The hon. Gentleman would find from the papers for which he moved on the previous day that when the Government heard that it was the intention of the landlord to proceed to so extensive an exercise of the rights with which he was undoubtedly invested by law, they did not fail to call his attention to the serious responsibility under which he would 845 act. Perhaps he had better enter no further upon that part of the subject. "With regard to the removal of this gentleman from the commissiom of the peace, he had, since the hon. and learned Gentleman had given notice of his question, communicated with his learned colleague the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, whose duty it was to advise the Crown upon matters of this description, and had received from him an answer, in the propriety of which he hoped that the House would concur. The Lord Chancellor said that as Mr. Adair had not acted in excess of his legal rights, and had not been guilty of a breach of his duty in his capacity of a magistrate, it would be an unusual, and too strong an exercise of power, to deprive him of the commission of the peace.
§ MR. CONOLLYsaid, he would refrain from giving any opinion with respect to the merits of the case which had been brought under their notice by the hon. and learned Member for Cork. The circumstances were, no doubt, of the gravest possible character, and it would require a very careful and a very extensive investigation of the state of the district to enable any one to pronounce a competent opinion upon the course which Mr. Adair had pursued. He had himself been, for the last ten or twelve years, a member of the grand jury of the county in which that transaction occurred; and he could state that there had not been one of those years in which their attention had not been called to outrages committed in that locality. Nothing could produce a more gloomy impression upon the mind than the yearly investigation of crimes of that sort, and there must be something deeply wrong in a district in which such acts were constantly taking place. He agreed with the hon. and learned Gentleman who had introduced the subject, that when things had come to such an awful pass as that represented by those fearful evictions, all the facts of the case ought to undergo a searching inquiry on the part of that House; and it would afterwards require the most consummate discretion to determine what was the proper remedy to apply in the case. Under these circumstances, he had to express to his right hon. Friend, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, his thanks for the discretion which he had shown in answering the question that had been put to him; he did not think the right hon. Gentleman could have proceeded upon the evidence before him to adopt the extreme 846 measure of depriving Mr. Adair of the commission of the peace, and he had only to add that he was afraid the condition of that district would be found, upon inquiry, to be far worse than people generally imagined.