§ MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY, who had given Notice of his intention to move—
That the system of limiting the number of Ministers entrusted with the direction of Irish Departments and sitting in this House to one, namely, the Chief Secretary of the Lord-Lieutenant, is productive of abuse and neglect in the Government and Administration of Ireland, and requires to be altered;said, that as the Rules of the House would preclude him from moving his Resolution, he should content himself with a few general observations. The subject was one which had long attracted the notice of his hon. and learned Colleague (Mr. Butt), whose absence, and the cause of it, was a source of so much regret, not only to Irish Members, but to all Parties in the House. He might first say that his Motion did not involve any personal reflection on the conduct or administration of either the present Chief Secretary or his Predecessor. It was very hard to fix on any very continuous or aggravated abuse, which, as a rule, was the fault of the system and not of the men, and it was the system which he proposed to discuss. It might be suggested that, in addition to the Chief Secretary, there were the Attorney General and the Solicitor General, but these officers had cut-and-dry functions of their own; they had really to put the Criminal Law into operation, and if other work was thrown on their shoulders it was such that in England would be placed in the hands of some Minister representing a Department. That itself was an abuse. Besides, the Office of Attorney General in Ireland at the present day was not as important as it was 20 or 30 years ago, when juries had no difficulty in bringing in a conviction in every case which came before them, and the Attorney General was a much more active official than now. In addition, the House should remember that it was not always the Attorney General or Solicitor General could get a seat in Ireland. In England they had represented, the Home Office, including all the va- 300 rious duties it managed; the Local Government Board was represented, with the Poor Laws, the Laws of Health, and the various other matters connected with that branch of the Administration. Then they had got the Vice President of the Council sitting in the House, responsible for the large interests coining under the head of Education; and whenever any other matter of great domestic importance arose the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and sometimes the Leader of the Government, were there to direct it, and avow themselves directly responsible over the head of the subordinate officers. In Ireland all these duties devolved on the Chief Secretary, who was responsible for the Local Government Board, for the large and complicated system of Irish Education, and assumed the proportions of Minister of War when he came to answer for that military organization which went under the name of Constabulary. But that was not all. In England there were local institutions regulating to a large extent these matters, and elected bodies exercising control over the policy of the country, while there was nothing of the kind in Ireland. For instance, the Constabulary, with its military discipline, was altogether subject to the discretion and judgment of one man in Dublin—the Chief Inspector of Constabulary. Of course, the Chief Secretary was prepared at 48 hours' notice to answer any question that was put to him with regard to that Force; but he had to telegraph over to the Sir John Wood or the Colonel Hillier of the day, and then he entered the House, and repeated his information as if he were a responsible Minister. The real dictator was a man sitting in a pleasant house in the Phœnix Park; and that was the manner in which the Irish people were supposed to be represented in the House for the administration of that Force. The result was that the Force had become more and more military, and the leading Irish papers were for six months in the year deluged with letters of complaint from discontented constables. Instead of bringing their ingenuity to bear on the catching of thieves, they were compelled to learn all sorts of books of discipline. That was not all. Within the last six months there had been four or five transactions connected with their officers which were nothing less than 301 scandal, and which, if they had taken place in England, would have led to a summary and complete change in the system of managing the Constabulary. If a charge against the management of the Constabulary had taken place in the House the Minister would answer the question in a cut-and-dry form, for it would be impossible for him to concentrate his attention on the great matter on which he was questioned; and whether he was an active or inactive, an honest or dishonest official, he could not deal with these scandals. For many years one of those officials had been pocketing the public money—whether by intentional fraud or by mistake he would not say—but if the persons into whose hands the public money passed felt that there was a responsible Minister sitting in the House directing that large establishment, and not having his attention diffused over a thousand other things, he doubted whether it would be possible for the spirit of red tape to allow such occurrences in Ireland. In a county in the West two constables, for whom the right hon. Gentleman was directly responsible, had devoted themselves for weeks to irritating the feelings of the great majority of the people; but the matter only could become a squabble in the newspapers between the Lord Lieutenant and the Bishop of the Diocese, for there was no use in coming to the Chief Secretary about it. It was virtually by fighting out squabbles in the papers that the people of Ireland were bound to supplement this system of irresponsibility. Then turn to the Education Board. In Ireland the onus of explaining in the House the difficulties of Irish Education lay in the hands of an official, who was responsible for the Constabulary, the Poor Law Boards, and, in addition to other duties, had the responsibilities of the cesspools of the country being cleaned. He was the man that had to explain how the middle schools, which were useless to the great mass of the people, could be made useful to them. It was needless to say, under these circumstances, that the control was left in the hands of officials in Dublin, willing, no doubt, to do what they could, but utterly unable to go beyond the regulations, or to suggest any broad lines of policy for the improvement of the system which they administered. If there was a man capable 302 of devoting his attention to the transactions of the National Board, and fully responsible for them, could it be supposed that the National teachers would so long have had to complain of their miserable pay? Then there was another tremendous Department called the Board of Works; but the abuses and mismanagements of that Board had been so threshed out, that he would only point it out as an instance of the want of direct responsibility in that House. The result of it all was that there was a nominal Parliamentary Government, but it was really administered by a bureaucracy. He might cite the case of the outrage on the people in the Phœnix Park. It was impossible to fix the charge on the officials, so many of them were mixed up in the affair. The red-tape system was so complicated that it was impossible to trace the transaction to its real source; the blame was shifted from one shoulder to another, and the wrong remained unredressed up to this very day. There was a Privy Council managing the executive of the country, and it comprised Attorney Generals and Judges, and men whose office he would not say was interfered with, but whose dignity and impartiality were put in doubt by their being compelled to descend from the Bench to take on themselves duties which ought to be discharged by Ministers in that House. The result was that in Ireland the office of Judge did not carry with it the assumed sacred belief in its impartiality which it did in England. What would be said if these were responsible Ministers in Belgium or Holland? Ireland was the only nation in which the sham of Parliamentary government, leaving the entire responsibility in the hands of one man, was carried out. O'Connell had an expression, which he applied indiscriminately to Chief Secretaries for Ireland. He called them "shave-beggars." He meant, that in the same way as barbers were accustomed to employ untried apprentices to shave poor people for nothing in order to get their hands in, gentlemen were sent over to Ireland who had no experience, but who showed signs of smartness, and who were in all respects apprentices, to operate on the Irish people for £4,000 a-year until they showed themselves fitted for better purposes. If the Chief Secretary showed that he was able to 303 do the work and to be of great service to the country he was, as a rule, removed to another and more important Office. If, on the other hand, he proved incompetent and left everything to his subordinates, he was allowed to retain his Office. He wished the House to understand clearly that in saying this he was in no way referring personally to the present holder of the Office. The only personal matter to which he should allude was the vast amount of relief which was felt by the official classes in Ireland when the last Chief Secretary (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) was removed. Among other good qualities, that right hon. Gentleman had a keen eye for sloth and jobbery and arrogance among officials, and, to use a familiar phrase, he "bowled them over" whenever and wherever discovered. He only mentioned this to show what was the state of things to which those gentlemen were accustomed. It would take a Hercules of labour and ingenuity to cleanse this Augean stable, and perhaps only one man in a thousand would attempt to cope with the difficulties which presented themselves. The real cause of all the existing abuse was that the Government were trying to do in that House a thing which was utterly impossible—namely, to carry on in that Assembly two perfectly different systems of administration. In England public opinion interfered to prevent abuses; but in Ireland, under the present system of managing things by correspondence with officials over in Dublin, there was no public opinion to rectify these matters. Public opinion would not arise and make itself felt unless there was something to be got by its activity, and the present system of Parliamentary government for Ireland prevented the exercise there of public opinion on the administration of the country. The ultimate remedy would be to hand over to an Irish Assembly the management of purely Irish affairs—a proposal which was not so revolutionary as some appeared to think. This would not be done at once, but it was daily becoming more and more apparent to the English people that the claims of Ireland to wise and prudent management should be granted, and he hoped the fact would soon be accepted by the House. In the meantime it was the duty of Irish Members to diminish as much as possible the 304 abuses which prevailed under the present system in the administration of the country. They would fail to-night, as they had failed many times before, but they would at least show the people of England the necessity of a change in the administration. The only duty they could discharge was to awaken English public opinion to the extraordinary and unconstitutional principles on which Irish affairs were managed, and they felt that transcended any duty to the Empire which could possibly be open to them. He saw that nothing could be carried by assault in that House; but they meant to surround the Irish Administration and the system of Irish government by an effective blockade, and when they met with any abuse would make prisoner of the offender and try him by court martial in that House. As long as the affairs of Ireland were governed by the English House of Commons, they would do their best to put an end to the fiction of Parliamentary government which at present ruled over Ireland.
§ MR. J. LOWTHERsaid, that the hon. and learned Gentleman had called the attention of the House to what he considered to be grievances in Ireland, and he had stated what he thought would be remedies for them; but he (Mr. J. Lowther) would not follow him through all his suggestions, some of which would no doubt have an opportunity of being discussed upon some occasion when they could be more legitimately considered than would be the case at that moment; and he, therefore, would confine himself to the specific point which was contained in the Motion of which the hon. and learned Gentleman had given Notice. The hon. and learned Gentleman had referred to the fact that the holder of the Office which he (Mr. J. Lowther) had the honour to fill was the solitary Representative of the Irish Government in that House, and he had expressed an opinion that there ought to be a Minister of Irish Education, a President of the Irish Local Government Board, and an Irish Home Secretary, and that various other officials should be appointed.
§ MR. O'SHAUGHNESSYexplained that he meant that the Chief Secretary could discharge the duties of Home Secretary for Ireland.
§ MR J. LOWTHERWell, that was a matter of detail. What was meant 305 was that, in the event of questions arising which called for the attention of Parliament, it should be within the power of the Minister in charge of the Department more rapidly to master the subject and to give information to the House in regard to it. The reasons which the hon. and learned Member adduced must, he thought, have struck the House as telling heavily against his argument. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that under the present system everything was left to bureaucracy, and he complained that there was great inconvenience in not having some person responsible in connection with any subject on which an inquiry might be necessary; but anyone occupying the position which he (Mr. J. Lowther) had the honour to fill, was responsible to the House of Commons for all the Departments under his charge. Under the system which the hon. and learned Gentleman proposed, there would be an inevitable increase of circumlocution which must aggravate instead of diminish the evils complained of. The hon. and learned Gentleman went on to say that the difficulty which the Chief Secretary had in making himself acquainted with the details of his Department consisted in the fact that, whereas the English Minister had his office in Whitehall, and could easily refer to his subordinate officials, the Chief Secretary had to have recourse to the telegraph, or obtain his information by letter, which might cause a delay of some days. But he would like to know how, by a multiplication of official Representatives in that House of the Irish Government, the difficulties of time and space could be remedied. The hon. and learned Gentleman also said that not only was it necessary that the office of each of these numerous Irish Ministers should be at Whitehall, but that it was necessary that an intelligent public opinion should be formed and cultivated in Ireland. He did not undertake to say what great prodigies might not be achieved by a multiplication of half-a-dozen editions of himself; but the formation of an intelligent public opinion was a feat which, he feared, would require a great many persons of far greater intelligence and ability than any to which he could presume to aspire. The hon. and learned Member held out may temptations to others to share in the duties of the Irish Government, and he spoke 306 of a blockade with a view to waylay every Representative of the Government of Ireland. [Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: No; to catch every abuse, and bring it before the House of Commons.] He thought the blockade was to be of a more practical character. The hon. and learned Member had, he thought, failed to show that mere multiplication of Representatives of the Irish Government would achieve the results of which he spoke. There was one part of the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech, however, which he confessed he viewed with different feelings from the rest, and that was the part in which he drew a distinction between the Department of Finance and the other Departments of the Irish Government. He thought there was a great deal to be said upon that head, as he had felt it himself by no means an agreeable task to be called upon to explain or defend a policy for which he was not responsible. For all the other Departments the Chief Secretary was responsible, but as to financial matters, those were under the control of the Treasury in London, and for them he was not responsible; and therefore he was disposed to agree that it might be considered how far an official Representative of the Irish Department of the Treasury should sit upon the Government Bench, and be charged with the duty of explaining and defending financial matters. He could promise that that was a subject to which attention should be given. With regard to the other Departments, he could only say that so long as he had to discharge the duties of the Irish Government he would endeavour to discharge those savoury and agreeable duties of cleansing the Augean stables to the best of his power. He knew that his right hon. Friend who preceded him (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) had endeavoured to check abuses, although he probably had, like himself, heard that night for the first time of the supposed individual short-comings to which reference had been made, and, without holding out a hope of anything heroic as the result of his own exertions, he could assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that it would be his endeavour to eliminate from the Public Service any abuses which might be proved to exist.
MR. O'CONNOR POWERsaid, he must thank his hon. and learned Friend 307 (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) for the very able address which he had delivered. The review which had been given of Irish administration and Irish government was highly valuable. Irish Members often found that when Select Committees made recommendations which related to England and Ireland, the latter country was sure to be last thought of by the Government. That was shown by the Question which he had put to the Chief Secretary that evening in reference to the administration of the Poor Law. Only last year a Committee made certain recommendations as to the election of Poor Law Guardians in England and Ireland, and while the President of the Local Government Board was preparing a Bill to carry out the recommendations made in this country, they could not even obtain a promise from the Chief Secretary that a similar Bill would be applied to Ireland. It was clear that the Chief Secretary had at present too much work to do to do it well, and the experience of the right hon Gentleman, and of his Predecessor, could not but point in this direction—that there must be some division of labour.
§ MR. MELDONsaid, they did not at all find fault with the present Chief Secretary for want of ability or of anxiety to show that ability; but they did blame him for neglecting the work which had been begun by his Predecessor. He could only come to the conclusion that the Government had recently come to the deliberately-formed intention of changing their policy with regard to Ireland. Nobody could doubt that the present Chief Secretary was a man not only of great ability but of great industry, and yet the work of his Predecessor had not been carried on. The right hon. Baronet the late Chief Secretary had worked hard in respect of matters as to which reform was needed. He had devoted much attention to the amendment of the Poor Law, and also to the subject of Intermediate Education. The Bill in reference to that important subject, which was conceived in a spirit of conciliation towards the Irish people, was carried after the right hon. Baronet had been appointed to his present Office, but to him the credit attaching to it was due. He challenged the present Chief Secretary to point to a single attempt which had since been made to remedy 308 the grievances of which the Irish people complained. The Cabinet had suddenly changed from a conciliatory to an exasperating policy towards Ireland; and the result was that, during the last 12 months, nothing had been done to redress a number of grievances which had been brought under the notice of the Government. A deputation had asked the Chief Secretary to consider the state of Dublin, but he said that he could not give any special attention to the matter. The position of the Board of Works and the National teachers had not been improved, though as to the latter, moneys had been voted by Parliament for the purpose. There must have been incapacity or negligence in those officials who ought to have carried out the wishes of Parliament. Certain inquiries had been promised in regard to the Irish Local Government Board and the election of Poor Law Guardians, but nothing had been done. Surely Ireland demanded some attention to her affairs. And not only were Irish affairs in the hands of a Minister who dealt with them in a light and airy manner, and who was either unable or unwilling to communicate any real information to the House, or to say anything substantial, but speeches had been made by the supporters of the Cabinet with regard to Irish matters which were exceedingly irritating, and which would never have have been delivered if they had not had the sanction of the Government. Those speeches had never been repudiated from the Treasury Bench; on the contrary, some of the occupants of that Bench had gone out of their way to compliment the authors of that class of addresses to which he alluded. The fact was that, for some reason or other, the Government appeared to be determined to go back to the old policy of governing Ireland by underlings and officials who were not responsible in any way to the House of Commons. The last Chief Secretary (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), who was now Secretary of State for the Colonies, had not only encroached upon, but almost put an end to, that pernicious system. Whether the right hon. Baronet had been promoted on account of the representations of certain officials in Ireland, or whether the Government here thought his policy of conciliation unwise, he was not prepared to say; but the change which had marked his 309 retirement from the Office of Chief Secretary made some explanation desirable.
§ MAJOR NOLANsaid, he agreed generally with the observations of the hon. and learned Member for Kildare (Mr. Meldon). He (Major Nolan) did not complain of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, who was not a responsible officer, for not bringing in and carrying Bills for the benefit of Ireland, but he could raise objections and disagreeable obstacles, or smooth them away. The present Chief Secretary had not done anything of that kind to prevent Irish Members from bringing forward Business. He had no fault to find with the right hon. Gentleman in that respect, nor did he suppose that he was hostile in any way to the Irish Representatives in that House. But he certainly thought that the Cabinet had shown itself, during the last month or five weeks, hostile to Ireland by the change of policy that had taken place. Why there should have been such a sudden display of hostility to Ireland he was at a loss to conceive. He could only suppose that they had renounced the idea of earning Irish gratitude by granting to Ireland the modicum of justice which they but lately seemed to contemplate, and that they did not now think it worth while to take any trouble to please Ireland.
§ MR. PARNELLsaid, he regretted that the Rules of the House would prevent the Motion of his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) from being put at the present time. His hon. and learned Friend had not brought it forward as a specific for remedying Irish grievances and for the removal of those radical evils which existed, but to represent to the House those inequalities which were to be found in Ireland; and so far he was willing to support him. There was an undoubted neglect of Ireland on the part of the Government, and one of the causes of that neglect must be that those who were responsible for Irish affairs had not urged with sufficient weight and influence the necessity of attending to those questions. If, besides the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, there were several Ministers responsible for, and thoroughly acquainted with, the different Irish Departments, and acquainted with them to an extent which the right hon. Gentleman could not be, hon. Members might 310 hope to find those Ministers pressing upon the Cabinet and upon the Leader of the House the necessity of doing something in the direction of remedying Irish grievances. At the present time there was only one responsible Minister, who could not be expected to be thoroughly conversant with all those matters; and Irish Members were treated as if their grievances, as if, indeed, their country itself, had no existence. If for only one reason, he would like this Motion to pass, and that was that among the half-dozen Irish officials then having seats in the House, there might have been one amongst the number who might have some sense of the responsibility of his position, and the magnitude of the issues with which he had to deal. It had made a painful impression upon him, and, no doubt, an equally painful impression upon everybody who wished to see the relations between this country and Ireland improved, to see the attitude and bearing of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland when he got upto answer this Motion. It appeared to him that the right hon. Gentleman had no sense of the responsibility of his position, or of the serious importance of the Motion which had been presented with so much ability. He did not wish to charge the right hon. Gentleman with any levity of behaviour in the House or out of it; but he could not help contrasting his attitude and bearing and the tone of his speech with the attitude and bearing which they might have expected under similar circumstances from a former Chief Secretary for Ireland. That right hon. Baronet had now the affairs of the Colonies in his hands. When that right hon. Gentleman was Chief Secretary, he (Mr. Parnell) did not hesitate to criticize his conduct severely whenever he thought it necessary to do so; but, at the same time, Irish Members always received from him the attention and painstaking interest which sometimes convinced opponents that they were trying to meet them, although they might fail to convince them that they were wrong; but the way in which Irish questions had been treated since the advent of the right hon. Gentleman was almost enough to make Irish Members despair of doing any good by the ordinary operations of Parliamentary action. He did not think the hon. and learned Member for Limerick intended 311 to say that public opinion in Ireland was dead, but rather public opinion in Ireland despaired of having the effect which it had in every other country where there was a Constitutional Government. When public opinion was evidenced in the ordinary ways—through the Press, public meetings, Petitions to Parliament, and even by the return of a majority of Members to the House, pledged to a given line of action—these indications of public opinion were entirely disregarded by the ruling powers; and, consequently, people in Ireland said—"What is the use of adopting the ordinary Constitutional methods open to us of explaining our grievances, and bringing them before the authorities, when all our exertions, no matter how persistent or energetic, are entirely thrown away?" Therefore, he maintained that, although public opinion in Ireland was not non-existent, it was undoubtedly dormant and despairing of good effect. He thought it would be a most desirable thing if this House were to show that it was not insensible to the public opinion of Ireland—if they showed that they valued Irish public opinion in the same way that they showed they valued English public opinion. He believed that the change would be a most beneficial one, and they would have that public opinion exercised and made use of in a Constitutional way, and a way that would be of advantage to the mutual relations of both countries. But, as things at present stood, there was no inducement to anybody in Ireland to approach this House with any idea that they were going to derive any benefit from any trouble they might take in making themselves heard and felt in the Constitutional way. They had a great number of boards in Ireland. It had been a favourite saying in this House that Ireland was the most "be-boarded" country in existence. For every Department there was a board, and every Bill that was brought in constituted a fresh board. The Intermediate Education Bill of last year established a fresh board. In England they had a Minister responsible for Education; but that was not so in Ireland, and the only chance there was that the intention of Parliament would not be perverted depended upon the operation of its instructions. They had a Board of Works which fulfilled its functions most imperfectly. 312 The Report of the Royal Commission, on which the hon. and gallant Member for Galway had a seat, distinctly condemned the Board as an obstructive institution. The character of the Board was condemned as having obstructed Public Works in Ireland, and the Commissioners said that all great questions of benefit and improvement in Ireland had been entirely neglected, mentioning particularly the drainage of the Shannon, the important artery through the country; and they found that a whole Session had passed, and the Government had deliberated for a whole year, and the Irish Minister, the Chief Secretary, made no move and took no steps to carry out the recommendations of the Commission. An example came under his notice recently in his own immediate neighbourhood, and in which he felt a special interest. A harbour, which had been visited by the Lord Lieutenant, was very much in need of improvement, and where the expenditure of very little money would produce most important results; but all improvement had been obstructed by the Board. When the Chief Secretary was applied to, he said he knew nothing about it—that it was in the Department of the Treasury; and when the Treasury officers were applied to, they referred the matter back to the Board of Works. So the thing was tossed from one to another, and there was a regular species of political battledore and shuttlecock. In the meantime, the fishermen's families were starving, and every now and then a horrible wreck occurred through boats crossing the bar in the attempts of the fishermen to earn a livelihood. Then, as to the Constabulary. If they had a Minister responsible for that body, they would soon succeed in abolishing both the Minister and the Constabulary. Everybody must condemn the maintenance of an armed Force, armed with weapons of precision—breech-loaders; he was not sure whether they had yet got so far as to the Martini-Henry, but with sword bayonets and all equipments necessary to take the field, except heavy artillery, which he had no doubt they could borrow if necessary. Such a Force was a contravention of the Mutiny Act, and against all Constitutional precedent, and yet money was voted for it by this House year after year, under the pretext that the people of Ireland were dis- 313 orderly—that they required 15,000 armed and drilled soldiers to keep them in order. If the House would only reflect for a moment on the position of Irish Members, they would see that they came over to England, many of them at great personal inconvenience, neglecting their own private interests, and leaving their homes, their friends, and incurring considerable expense, and they felt it to be a great hardship when they saw so fair a case as had been presented by the hon. and learned Member to-night met in the light and disdainful way in which the right hon. Gentleman the Irish Secretary had met it. It made them feel almost exasperated with the conduct of the Government. Irish Members could not but feel exasperated at the way in which such questions were treated, and he really did not know what they should do in future. At the next General Election they would be obliged to admit to their constituents that they were entirely useless, and that they might as well not send any Representatives. But, however that might be, in the interval that remained between this and the General Election, he thought, perhaps, it was their duty to persevere in the discouraging work they had undertaken—to do what they could to incline the ear of the House to a consideration of the justice of their demands. He admitted that prospect was not a bright one. Unless public opinion in this country were acted upon in some very special and unforeseen way—in some way which was not at all likely to occur—they could not hope for any change in the minds of the Government. They were told that the Boers of the Transvaal were seeking their independence, because the British power was menaced in that country, and were about to convene their own Assembly, and take advantage of the feature in England's government of her Dependencies, which had always been manifested since the declaration of Irish Independence in 1782—that the difficulty of England was the opportunity of the Dependency; and the Boers were pressing upon England the necessity of returning to them the independence of which they were deprived by England some years ago. He did not suppose that any such course would help them in Ireland. He did not hope it should so help them, because he supposed it would not be right for 314 him to have any such hope. But, looking to the condition of the country, and the power of England, he did not see any fear of England being mixed up at home as she was with the Zulus in South Africa. He, therefore, did not see any chance of directing the attention of the governing classes to the redressing of grievances in the same way as the Boers were directing the attention of the Government to the necessity of doing them justice. However, he believed they ought to do all they could in pressing that question on the Ministers of the day, and on the necessity of doing something. At all events, they were calling attention to the Irish grievances that existed in a way that was not unconstitutional, and could not be found fault with, and in doing that they were doing all they could.
MR. SULLIVANsaid, the Chief Secretary had treated this subject as pleasantly and amiably as he usually treated most subjects that were brought before him. They did not complain of his good humour, his personal amiability, or his courtesy; but of the inactivity, lethargy, and fatal torpor which, in obedience to some word of command, had recently come over the Government policy in Ireland. But they would not allow the good humour of the Chief Secretary to banter away the seriousness of the question which had been raised. He had no doubt whatever that the Chief Secretary would at once bring to bear on Irish affairs enough power if there were not behind him in the mysterious recesses of the Government policy some controlling influence which had told him that nothing further was to be done for Ireland in this Session of Parliament. The Chief Secretary tried to make a pleasant joke of it, and he wondered what prodigies would ensue if there were five or six editions of himself. It was related that the Duke of Wellington was once talking to the King about a new pair of boots, and His Majesty asked—"What are they called?" "They are called Wellingtons," was the answer; and the story went on to say that the Sovereign exclaimed,—"Impossible! there could not be a pair of Wellingtons." And Nature could not possibly produce two Chief Secretaries like the right hon. Gentleman. It simply came to this—Who was the responsible Governor of Ireland? Did they think the 315 Lord Lieutenant? Not a bit of it. Nominally and on the floor of this House there was one Minister who was the real Governor of the country—the Chief Secretary for the time being. The Chief Secretary for Ireland governed that whole country; he was the Minister of Commerce, the Minister of Education, the Minister of Justice, the Head of the Board of Works, the Head of the Poor Law system. Now, he would ask the House, given a Kingdom of 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 inhabitants in any part of Europe, how many responsible Ministers would an honest Government consider necessary for the public life of that country? If the Emperor of Russia proposed that there should be only one Minister of Bulgaria, would he not be denounced for having made representative government a farce? Yet, while this country was holding out the pretence of Constitutional government to Ireland, she gave her just one responsible Minister. Did they think the Irish people were going to be always content with a system which mocked, derided, tortured them with the semblance of Constitutional government, while in reality denying it? When their Representatives complained of that state of things, they were told to practise self-reliance; and when they asked for the mechanism appropriate to self-reliance, the answer given them was that they must depend upon England, who would manage their affairs for them better than they could do themselves. This was the question they were raising to-night. They maintained—and it was not a matter for mirth—that they had only one responsible Minister in this House. He happened to be in the Court of Queen's Bench, Dublin, when the Irish Board of Works, through its Head, was brought into the witness box, and they saw what came of having no responsible Minister but one. Each Department had about one-twentieth share of that Minister. They found what a myth, what a sham, what a mere delusion, this Board was. The Head of the Board was in the box, and was being examined about the sittings of the Board, and counsel called for the Minute Book; and it turned out that not a single entry had been made in that book for years and years. And how did the Board transact its business. It consisted of two Members who hardly ever met, but who, in 316 fact, attended on and off. Some one of them strolled into the office, read the morning papers, saw the latest news from the club, smoked a cigar, gave orders, wrote a few letters, and went out—and that was a Board meeting. It was probably not known to the Irish Secretary, and yet the Irish Secretary was the only Minister they had in the House.
§ MR. J. LOWTHERI said the Board of Works was not in the Department of the Chief Secretary.
§ MR. J. LOWTHERNo, Sir, he is not; the Board of Works is under the Treasury, and not in any way connected with the Chief Secretary's Department.
MR. SULLIVANThat only made the matter still worse. He had thought that the right hon. Gentleman gave at least one-twentieth part of his time and attention to the Board of Works, but now it seemed that he gave it none at all, and yet Irish Members were taunted with occupying the House with sentimental grievances. It was most important to the Irish people that that Department should be properly managed, because its functions concerned the development of the material resources of their country. Yet in the whole of Ireland there was no Department that had been so completely "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare" as the Board of Works. But the whole system was so bad, so vicious, so rotten, that the late Government sent over a roving Commission to pry into all those Departments, and a precious discovery they made. It would go down from generation to generation in the hereditary officialism of Ireland how Mr. Herbert Murray was an enemy and a terror to the officials, and was rooting out and disturbing the cobwebs of the Departments. The whole system would not endure 24 hours' genuine daylight if they had a responsible Minister in the House. They were not a Party who were clamouring for the creation of official places, because they were not in favour of buying public men by elevating them to place. They saw on the Government Bench at least one Irish Gentleman (the Attorney General for Ireland) appointed to a Public Office in Ireland, and never was one appointed to a Public Office who commanded more widely the confidence 317 of the Irish public than the Attorney General for Ireland. They were not raising this question for the benefit of individuals, but for the benefit of the country. Another thing they had to complain of was the frequency of removal of Irish Secretaries. After the Chief Secretary had been a little while with them and was beginning to have sympathies with the people and the country and to perceive what a noble field there was before him for the exercise of his abilities and his ambition—just as, in fact, he might feel inspired to play in Ireland the part Lord Dufferin had played in Canada, he was removed from his Office and a fresh man was put in his place who had to learn everything from the beginning, and who naturally fell entirely into the hands of his subordinates. That system must be changed if they wished to make Parliamentary and good government a reality in Ireland. At all events, Irish Members had done their duty by calling attention to the subject.
§ Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," put, and agreed to.