MOTION OF CENSURE. (Hansard, 23 May 1881)

§ MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY,

in rising to move the following Resolution:— That, in the opinion of this House, the action of the Irish Executive in arbitrarily arresting a Member of the House without reasonable ground; in proclaiming a state of siege in Dublin; in imprisoning the Rev. Mr. Sheehy and many other men of high character and good conduct; and in affording the use of the armed forces of the Crown for the wholesale execution of wanton and cruel evictions is an abuse of the exceptional powers conferred by Parliament; and is calculated to promote disaffection in Ireland; said, he thought most Members of the House would agree that hardly ever had anyone risen to address an Assembly like this under conditions of such great disadvantage. The main object one might have in stating a case of this kind was almost entirely frustrated by the lateness of the hour and the thinness of the House, and by a natural objection to keeping too long an unwilling audience; while the Minister of State to whom he wished particularly to appeal had been in such a hurry to get away from his duties that he had gone home to bed, and left the House to manage affairs as best they could without him. Under those circumstances, he should not make a lengthy statement of the case he had to urge against the Government. The points he wished to state were those set forth in the Motion. The Irish Members contended that the arrest of Mr. Dillon was an act of unspeakable discredit to the Government, and an act which would discredit the Government so long as they remained in power. They had heard some extraordinary casuistry not long ago with regard to the complaint that the Government had arrested Mr. Dillon in order to remove out of their way a political opponent who was coming to oppose them in the House. It was well known to all his Colleagues that the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) had announced in Dublin his intention to come to the House to expose the results of the policy of the Government in Ireland in enforcing evictions by the aid of military and police. He said—"We shall make an attempt in the House of Commons next week to expose the policy of the Government;" and those who 1175 knew the hon. Member knew that when he said "we are going" to do something, he was not likely to mean that he was going to send someone else to do it, and to remain away himself. It was, indeed, a matter of perfect notoriety that he was hurrying to the House of Commons. They were asked by the Prime Minister to prove that; they were bidden to produce their legal evidence; and the Head of the Government, who invented and applied the principle of reasonable suspicion, called upon them to give legal proof that Mr. Dillon had used the words ascribed to him, and had announced the intention which those words would imply. It was a discreditable act on the part of the Government to arrest a political opponent in order to remove him from an important discussion, and they charged the Government with having arrested him without any reasonable ground whatever. They had the word of the Chief Secretary that one of the Judges had declared that Dublin was in a state of exceptional tranquillity; and that because two speeches were made at a meeting by persons whose names it was, apparently, not worth his while to mention, a City containing 200,000 or 300,000 persons was deprived of its liberty. This was another of their charges against the Government. They charged them with having acted discreditably, unjustly, and most unwisely in the arrest of a Catholic clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Sheehy, and other men of good conduct and high character. These arrests were increasing every day. Only to-night they had heard of one other case of arrest; but in arresting a Catholic clergyman the Government had taken a new and an ill-omened departure. Never—at all events, in the time of living man—never, since the worst and most evil days of English rule in Ireland, was a Catholic clergyman arrested on such a charge—nay, on no charge whatever put into tangible form, only on "reasonable suspicion"—and confined in prison. He should have liked to ask the (Thief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, if he were here, whether he would pledge himself, when he came to enter on the defence of the Government, to give distinctly the nature of the charge on which this clergyman had been arrested—not to escape by reading the technical terms of the Warrant, which 1176 conveyed nothing to anyone's mind, but to give them an idea as a statesman, if he had any notion of what the duties of a statesman were, of the offence they were prepared to charge him with before Parliament and the country. The right hon. Gentleman had told them more than once that these arrests were not intended to put down the Land League; and only the other day the Prime Minister had repeated that statement. The Prime Minister had said there was no intention on the part of the Government to put down the Land League, or to put down popular agitation; and he added that neither priest nor layman had been arrested by the Government because he was a member of the Land League, or because he was a supporter of the Land League, or because he had taken part in any popular agitation, even though that agitation might, sometimes, have gone beyond the bounds of that which the Government considered reasonable and consistent with public safety. Well, they had this distinct declaration, that for no speeches made on behalf of the Land League, and for no support given to it, but for something different and much more grave, this Roman Catholic clergyman had been arrested and consigned to imprisonment. See the immense importance of this. Was this clergyman charged with a crime? Were they to understand that the Government believed they could make some charge against him so serious as to amount to actual criminality, and yet, having the knowledge they believed themselves to possess, the public were to learn actually nothing of the grounds of the arrest? Did any hon. Member of the House really believe that the Irish public would for a moment think that the Rev. Mr. Sheehy was guilty of anything like an offence? He had not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Sheehy, but he knew many who were well acquainted with him, and he knew how high his character stood. No priest stood on better terms or higher with his people, and no accusation that the Government could make would, for a single moment, prevail against him. He did not know whether the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had noticed the significant fact that immediately on the arrest of Mr. Sheehy his place in the local division of the Land League was taken by another Roman Catholic 1177 clergyman. He (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) wondered whether that fact conveyed to the mind of the right hon. Gentleman any idea of the difficulties of the situation he was creating for himself. He wondered whether he was prepared to go on arresting clergyman after clergyman. For he could assure him—or he would if he were listening—that nothing was more certain than that the Irish clergymen would stand together, man to man; that they would be deterred by no menaces; that they would be stayed by no punishment the Government could inflict; that they would hold by their order, by their country, by their people, and their principles; that such arrests as that of Mr. Sheehy would make them more firmly resolved to stand by the people than they were before; and that the right hon. Gentleman had raised up an enemy of whose strength and enduring power and patriotic resolve to resist arbitrary rule he had no idea whatever. That was another of their charges against the Government. Then, he charged against the Government the issue of that most extraordinary, that most unparalleled secret Circular of which they had heard for the first time within the past few days. During the whole course of his experience ho had never known, he had never heard, of any such Circular being issued by an English Government. To.-night, when the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, on the spur of the moment, as soon as the Questions on the Paper were over, offered to answer a Question on the subject, he was fully under the impression that the document was a fabrication—he was conconvinced that the right hon. Gentleman was anxious to rise, in order, triumphantly, to announce that the Government knew nothing whatever about the Circular. How great, then, was his surprise when he heard the Chief Secretary, in his place, admit his knowledge of the document, and declare that he had authorized its publication. What was this secret Circular which had been distributed for the guidance of the Irish police? It said— This document is not to leave the hands of the County Inspectors to whom it is addressed, and must be kept under lock and key. Any orders given to insure the instructions in it being carried out must be communicated verbally"— He supposed the word meant was 1178 "orally," the Chief Secretary appearing to be under the impression that things were not written as well as spoken. "verbally."— when practicable, to sub-inspectors, head, and other constables, as emanating from the County Inspectors themselves. That was to say, the Chief Secretary deliberately authorized the issue of instructions which amounted to nothing less than the conveying of false statements to their officials. He would not road the whole of the Circular now. No doubt, there would be abundant opportunity at the next Sitting of the House to comment upon it; but those who read it through would see that it was a most direct incitement to the police to become "reasonably suspicious." It expressed wonder and anger that the police had not suspected a great many more people; it showed the Inspector General at a loss to understand how the police officers could declare that they had no "reasonable suspicion" of all their neighbours; and then it appealed to these officials, at the end, in words that sounded more like those of a military proclamation than of an address to a civil force, to wipe out the disgrace upon their efficiency owing to their lack of suspicion, and to be energetically "up and doing," striving to redeem their honour by the arrest of as many persons as possible. They were reproached and denounced for not having suspected more liberally the people amongst whom they lived. One was reminded, in this matter, of the lines of the Elizabethan poet— —"Have you eyes, And can you not suspect? Peer closely in—There's not a neighbour, be he ne'er so good, But cunning looks shall spy some speck or stain To justify accusers. These were the last words of the Circular— The Inspector General can only express an earnest hope that the energies of both officers and men will be used to wipe out what must necessarily appear to those unacquainted with the difficulties they have to contend with to be a reproach to their efficiency as preservers of the peace and detectors of crime. Now, there were only two explanations of that Circular—either the one that was obvious on the face of it, that the police were to be goaded on, bullied on, to new suspicions and new arrests; or that the Government had reason to believe that the police, so long loyal to the rule of the Crown, could no longer be relied on 1179 when it became a question of a struggle between the landlord class and the peasant class, from whom the constabulary had, for the most part, sprung. He wished the House had an opportunity of seeing that document translated into French. The Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Sir Charles W. Dilke) was a great proficient in the French language; and if he would give them a version in French, he doubted whether the consciences of the most docile supporters of the Government on the other side of the House would approve of such a Circular in the language of the Second Empire of France. He wished they had heard of something like it from Russia. With what virtuous indignation they would all have stormed at the baseness of that despotic Power, which stooped to paltry tricks of this kind to make its heavy hand more heavily felt throughout the country! That, then, was another of the charges they wished to formulate against the Government. But, more than that, they charged against the Irish Executive that their action— In affording the use of the armed forces of the Crown for the wholesale execution of wanton and cruel evictions is an abuse of the exceptional powers conferred by Parliament, and is calculated to promote disaffection in Ireland. Events within the last few days had shown what a result had come from the recent policy of the Government—how nearly, indeed, they had brought them to that civil war which the Prime Minister told them, some time ago, they had come within measurable distance of—how an agrarian war, in which class was against class, had been forced on the country. They had, lately, had scenes of desperate violence in Ireland; and it was remarkable that in one case the blood which, otherwise, would most certainly have been shed, was prevented from being shed by the heroic exertions of two or three members of that order to which belonged the Rev. Father Sheehy, whom the Government had now committed to gaol. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, when he came to make his defence, to tell them what he had got by his coercive measures in Ireland. He could not say that he had been allowed to impose them without warning. There was not an Irish Member—at least, on 1180 that side of the House—who spoke during all those long debates on the coercive measures who did not tell him that the inevitable result would be to increase fourfold the crime and outrage in Ireland. The result they had foretold was now manifest. The right hon. Gentleman had taken away many of the most influential leaders of the people; he had forced many classes into the hands of conspiracy; he had given a new charter and lease of life to midnight organization. Speaking with a most complete sense of the meaning of the words, and the responsibility attaching to them, he could not help saying that no greater calamity ever happened, in our time at least, than the fatal resolve of the Government to open this Session with the Coercion Bill. Then, indeed, whatever good genius the Administration had seemed to have deserted it. He used plain expressions, because he did not think it worth while to waste the time that would be needed for the purpose of qualifying the terms used to describe the policy of the Government. He described that policy in the language it deserved. The Irish Members had been admonished several times in the House that they ought to be courteous and civil in their dealings with the Government. The Prime Minister himself had admonished them more than once. The right hon. Gentleman, if he might be allowed to say so, was the Sir Anthony Absolute of the House of Commons. In a tempest and torrent of invective he reminded them of the necessity of keeping cool and collected; in a wild burst of excitement he told them they must keep their tempers; and, metaphorically, flourishing his staff round their heads, he vowed that nothing they could say should put him into a passion. He (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) should bear the right hon. Gentleman's admonition in mind, and never speak of the policy of the Government in, terms stronger than the barest and baldest description. These, then, were the charges they had to make against the Government. He had stated them in the barest form. They would be enlarged upon to-morrow in terms more effective than any he could use, and he hoped the Chief Secretary would give something like a clear and distinct answer to each of the charges. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he really had a settled policy 1181 with regard to Ireland; whether he knew where he was going; whether he knew where he was drifting, yielding more and more to the suggestions of the officials of Dublin Castle; and whether he had ever asked himself what was to be the end of the strange and hateful policy into which he had launched? If he were here, he would have asked him to tell them candidly one thing more. They had heard many times from those who knew the officials in Dublin Castle that an opinion had long prevailed, amongst some of them at least, that there was a certainty, sooner or later, of an armed insurrection in Ireland. What he wanted to know was this. He did not accuse the Chief Secretary of any suggestion of the kind, he did not believe the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister would harbour the thought for one moment; but would he tell them whether in the minds of some of the officials of Dublin Castle there did not lurk the idea that it would be a better thing for all purposes and for all people to force on this crisis, so as to have the means of crushing it down with arms? He should urge an answer to this question. He did not believe that the Chief Secretary had any such idea, nor that the Prime Minister harboured it; but he wanted to have the question answered—whether there was not evidence which made it seem that such an idea did linger in the minds of some of the officials of Dublin Castle, and that the policy they now saw put in force was the result of an attempt to bring this crisis to a head, in order that force might be used to crush out every effort and movement on behalf of a distracted people? He should press for an answer to that question; and, perhaps, some Colleague of the now slumbering Chief Secretary would inform him, to-morrow, that the suggestion had been made, and that a direct reply was earnestly desired. At this hour of the morning he should not detain the House any longer. It had been with the greatest unwillingness that he had detained them this length of time; and he would now merely say that this was the case which he had stated, and which his Friends would support to-morrow. He would conclude with one parting piece of advice to the Government—though he did not think they would take much heed of it, as coming from his side of the House and from one of his political creed. His 1182 advice was this—they were distinctly drifting more and more to wreck of some kind; and the sooner they made up their minds to throw their Jonah overboard the better.