§ MAJOR NOLAN, in rising to move—
That Jurors in Ireland should be remunerated for the cost to which they are frequently put under the present Law,said, he rose with very great regret, and almost an apology, for bringing an Irish subject before the House at that time, for he would have wished not to have done so, so soon after the death of their great Leader (Mr. Butt), who had served his country so well, and whose loss hon. Members on all sides of the House so deeply deplored. But if he had not brought forward this subject on the present occasion, he would, in all probability, have not been able to find any opportunity of doing so during the present Session, and as when he was last in Ireland he promised several jurors to 1888 bring on the matter as early as possible, he felt constrained to do so on the present occasion. The House might not be aware of the great change that had taken place in the last few years in the jury system in Ireland. Formerly, jurors were only chosen from a privileged, exclusive, and small class, and the system had many disadvantages. It had recently, however, been greatly improved, and a great number of the middle class were now eligible to serve. He believed the change thus introduced by Lord O'Hagan's Act was a very valuable one, and that it had been productive of very good results in educating public opinion, and in putting the jury system on a perfectly fair basis. In introducing a change of practice in matters of this kind, however, they could not help inflicting a good deal of inconvenience, and that was exactly what had happened in this case. In Ireland the counties were sub-divided into baronies, and as a consequence of the system pursued in summoning juries, men were often brought from one side of the county to the other to attend Quarter Sessions and Assizes. In his own county of Galway, a juror travelling from Ballymaugh to the town of Galway, where the Assizes and Quarter Sessions were held, would have to travel something like 60 or 70 English miles to obey his summons. He also found a very strong feeling existing among these jurors who were called on to give up a great deal of valuable time to attend the Courts. An additional complaint was that they were often summoned when they were not wanted, as in a recent case at Quarter Sessions, where 125 jurors were summoned, and only 24 were required to serve. These jurors were often put to great inconvenience and loss in attending; but they told him that they did not mind their loss of time, but they did not see why they should also lose the money they had to pay out of pocket for travelling and hotel expenses. Many of them were poor men—only rated at £40 or £50, with incomes not much larger in amount; and it was to them a great expense to have to travel 40 or 50, or, in extreme cases, 60 miles, and to have to live at their own expense in an Assize town for four or five days. He himself quite thought that every juror should give his time for nothing; but, on the other hand, he ought to be paid something to cover the expenses out of 1889 pocket, so that he should not lose money as well as time. He would make the payment so low, that the amount received should be rather under than over the amount paid. Prom questions he put to various jurors, he thought from 5s. to 8s. a-day would satisfy the most of them. Some wanted their travelling expenses in addition, but the majority thought a lump payment of about the amount he had indicated would be better. He would leave the House to decide what the amount should be; but a very small sum indeed would make a material difference to men in this position who were most of them men with very small incomes. He knew the argument used against the proposal was that jurors ought to be willing to expend their money as well as time in the service of justice and the country. That was a tenable proposition in one way; but, on the other hand, this was to be viewed as taxation imposed on a particular class of men, many of whom were perfectly unable to boar it. Several classes were altogether exempted from the liability, as doctors, clergymen of all denominations, and many others, so that the small farmers and commercial men constituted the bulk of the jurors, and they alone had to pay that money tax. The cost of the administration of justice ought, confessedly, however, to be spread over all classes of the community, and he did not see why small farmers and commercial men should alone be mulcted. If they gave their time in the lambing season or mowing time, as they often had to do, they ought not also to be called on to bear the entire burden of railway fares and hotel bills. Then the question arose as to the sources from which the money should be obtained. He knew that there was a very great objection to charging local expenses on the Imperial funds; and he, therefore, did not propose that the whole of the cost of this charge should fall upon the Imperial funds. But as, on the other hand, the jurors had to perform duties which were partly Imperial and partly local, and were called upon to judge between the Crown and members of the community, he thought the fair way would be to pay half out of the Imperial Exchequer, and half out of the county rates. The county rate, or county cess, would appear, at first sight, the natural source from which this payment should come; but he would 1890 propose, instead, that it should be charged on the poor-rates, because the county cess was paid entirely by the tenant, while the poor-rate was divided between the landlord and the tenant. There would be one great advantage in that division. The main object was to summon sufficient, and not too many, persons at the minimum of inconvenience to them. The jurors now complained that they were summoned too soon, and that certain persons were favoured by omission from the summons list. But if this system of paying jurors was adopted, it would induce the officers of the Crown to be more particular about seeing that jurors were not summoned too soon nor kept unnecessarily long, as they now were. On the other hand, the fact of the allowance being paid partly out of the local rate would make the jurors themselves anxious, in order to keep down the rates, that the amount of the remuneration should be kept within the mark. If there were the same complaints in other counties of Ireland as there were in his own, this would soon become a great question; but it might very reasonably be presumed that the pressure of the inconvenience was only seriously felt in the larger counties. At present it was thought more of in Galway than elsewhere, because the distances the jurors had to travel there were greater than in any other counties of Ireland. He hoped the Government would give some assurance that, in some form or another, the jurors should be recouped at least a portion of their expenses. He had suggested the lines on which the matter might be settled, and he begged to move the Resolution of which he had given Notice.
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That Jurors in Ireland should be remunerated for the cost to which they are frequently put under the present Law."—(Major Nolan.)
MR. MACARTNEYreminded the hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Major Nolan), that of late years great efforts had been made to add to the jury lists a class of men who, from their position, were almost certain to be incapable, from their limited income, of bearing the expenses of attendance. If, then, these men were unable to bear their own expenses, that surely was rather an argument for not making them jurors than for charging their expenses on the rates. 1891 He feared that the satisfaction this proposal would give to the juror would be far more than counterbalanced by the general dissatisfaction at the increase in the rates which must necessarily follow. Again, it would be very unfair to throw half the charge on the Imperial Exchequer, for the Imperial cases certainly were nothing like half of those tried. He did not think this proposal would be received with general satisfaction in Ireland. Every man had to perform a certain amount of duty to the State gratis, and he certainly could see no reason why Irish jurors should be under a different system from that which existed in other parts of the United Kingdom.
§ MR. O'SULLIVANsupported the Motion. He could assure the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. Macartney) that they did not want a reform in the jury law. All that was asked was, that men who came 25 and 30 miles to perform their duties to the State should have returned to them the bare expenses which they were out of pocket. A poor struggling farmer, with a very small income, was brought from his home to an Assize town, perhaps a distance of some 20 or 30 miles, which would cost him at least 5s. each way, and he could not get on for less than 5s. a-day in the town; so that if he were kept there four or five days it would be a matter of £1 10s. or £2 to him, no inconsiderable sum to a poor man, though it was a mere bagatelle to the county. He really did not think the Government ought to object to so moderate a proposition. Of course, he did not wish the payment to be made to jurors in cities or boroughs, because there the jurors could go home, and were at no expense, as the farmers were. In one case, a farmer complained that he had been fined £2 for non-attendance when his cattle had been seized the day before, and he actually had not the money to pay the railway fare. Such cases showed how poor the tenant-farmers were. He sincerely hoped the Government would do something in the matter.
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. GIBSON)said, he was not sure that the hon. and gallant Member for Galway had considered all the difficulties surrounding this question, or bore in mind the exact position in which 1892 they stood in reference to legislation as to the jury laws in Ireland. The terms of the hon. and gallant Member's Resolution were in themselves very vague, and they could hardly, indeed, be more general or indefinite. He simply asked the House to remunerate Irish jurors without specifying the class of jurors, or the character or limit of the remuneration, or source from which it should be paid. The speech of the hon. and gallant Member was more definite; but even that did not define what was wanted with sufficient clearness to make the House to realize what he wished to have done. He understood the hon. Member who had just spoken (Mr. O'Sullivan) to say that he wanted the jurors—who were, he (the Attorney General for Ireland) would admit, very poor, and, in some cases, not well educated—to have their expenses paid; but he only asked them for a limited class—namely, for the county jurors, and not for those in boroughs.
§ MAJOR NOLANsaid, he did not propose to exempt the jurors in small towns. All his hon. Friend had suggested was, that they should exempt the jurors in large cities.
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. GIBSON)begged the hon. and gallant Member's pardon. That was precisely the position of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. His proposition was that only jurors in counties should be paid, but that the constituents of hon. Members who represented large boroughs should not be paid. He need not say that any such distinction would introduce, without the smallest possible logical reason, the greatest possible amount of heart-burning. In the boroughs of Galway, Limerick, Waterford, and others, there was a very poor class of jurors, not distinguished in either position, education, or circumstances, from their brethren in the counties; and would it not be very hard to say that they must lose their time, while their more fortunate brethren, who were summoned from outside the boroughs, were to get from 5s. to 10s. per day? That was the first and a most moderate criticism that he had to make. But, then, who was to bear the cost of this charge? At the first blush, they would surely say it should be the suitors, who had the benefit of the services of these jurors. In civil cases that might in the event 1893 of such a change have to be done, and the result would be to weight the litigant still further, and to place a very substantial barrier in the way of poor claimants. The hon. and gallant Member did not seem to have borne this point in mind, for he had quietly proposed that half the expense of this charge should be borne by the poor-rates, which were never adapted or intended for any such matter, and half by the Treasury. He had personally nothing to say to the proposition that half the cost should be borne by the Treasury; but from his (the Attorney General for Ireland's) knowledge of that Department, he ventured to think that his hon. and gallant Friend would find very considerable difficulty in inducing the officers of that Department ever to consent to his proposition. He never yet met a Secretary to the Treasury with a soft heart, and there were many intelligent and close critics in the House who would look with great jealousy on any such proposal as this. Then it must be borne in mind, that there was a great difference between criminal and civil cases, and it was obvious that, while in one case part of the costs should be borne by the ratepayers, the costs in other cases should not be so borne, and in Ireland only one panel was summoned for the trial of both civil and criminal cases. How, then, could they know when a juror was wanted for a civil or a criminal case? It was, therefore, obvious, that there were a variety of difficulties in the way of the adoption of the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Member which were of a practical character, and which he did not think appeared to be considered at all. Again, supposing a juror were summoned, and got his expenses, and then did not attend, was that to be treated as a case of obtaining money under false pretences? But, supposing the man was not to be paid till he attended the Court—and it might be said, of course, that the objection he had urged was merely an objection as to the machinery—was he to be paid whether he gave a verdict or whether he did not? Was he to be paid without any regard to the way in which he discharged his duties? Everyone must feel a sympathy with the case of these jurors; but, at the same time, he thought the proposal could not be carried out. It had even been tried for a time in 1894 England. In 1870, jurors were put in a very much better position; but the plan did not work. The difficulties were so great, and the cost pressed so seriously upon suitors, that the plan had to be abandoned the year after. As the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. Macartney) had said, every man had a certain duty to discharge to his country, and part of that duty cast upon every man was to assist in the administration of justice. It had been said, that this duty of serving on juries exercised great influence on the minds of many persons as a great popular educator, and as teaching the advantages and benefits of the Constitution. But, although he could not agree in the Motion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, he went quite as far as he did in practical sympathy for the class of men whom it was sought to benefit. Certainly, everything should be done to place as few inconveniences as possible in the way of persons who were called upon to serve on these juries, and everything should be done to make the times and places convenient for them. An attempt had already been made in this direction by summoning jurors for the Quarter Sessions from the immediate locality. The names, also, were taken in rotation, and men who had once attended, even if they did not serve, were not summoned again till their turn came round. These were attempts by which the inconveniences which unquestionably did press upon jurors were sought to be reduced. He admitted that it was a hardship that men who were very poor should be exposed to this expense and trouble; but it was a duty they owed to the State, and they must not mind being called upon at certain intervals to perform it. He hoped the hon. and gallant Member would be satisfied with the discussion he had raised; and though, as he had said, that he was unable to agree to the Motion, he had pointed out its present position, and when it came to be considered next year, it would be time to see whether further facilities would be placed in the way of jurors, so as to make it as little irksome as possible.
§ MR. SHAWhoped his hon. and gallant Friend (Major Nolan) would not divide the House, because he could not say that he was prepared to vote for the Motion, The question was one of con- 1895 siderable importance, and great difficulty. He could not for himself see why the jurors in civil cases should not be paid, for law was a luxury which all must pay for. It might, of course, be a tax on poor litigants; but the result would be that these men, instead of going to the Assizes or county towns, would have their cases tried at the Sessions. He remembered that at the last Assizes one man had to travel 100 miles in order to be present. That was a very great grievance, for the man was kept from his business for over a fortnight. Of course, it would be wrong for an impression to get abroad that the people had not a duty to perform in regard to criminal cases, or to allow them to think that they ought to be paid for their services in such matters. But he did think something might be done by dividing the large counties. They had tried that in vain, in Cork, for some time past. Although the injury which some of the poor people suffered by having to travel long distances was manifestly great, he would not, of course, pay jurors in cities; but he did not see why jurors coming from a distance should not receive a small sum, and he thought that might be easily raised, and without coming on the Treasury for it.
§ MAJOR NOLANsaid, he would not trouble the House with a Division, and he must admit that the question at present was not ripe for decision. Many jurors, certainly, did feel very strongly on the subject; and he should advise them to exercise their Constitutional right of Petition in order to make their grievances known. He must also add that he was not in favour of charging this amount on the suitors, nor did he think any juror should be paid until he attended.
§ Motion, by leave, withdrawn.