§ MR. GRAY, in rising to move—
That the Letter of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, informing the House of the arrest of Messieurs Parnell, Dillon, O'Kelly, and Sexton, Members of this House, he referred to a Select Committee, for the purpose of considering and reporting whether any of the matters referred to therein demand the further attention of the House,said, he was sorry that a Motion so important as this had not been intrusted to a Member of more experience than he had on the precedents which should guide the House in a matter of this kind; but it appeared to him that the course which the House had invariably taken under circumstances somewhat similar was so plain, that he hoped they would have no difficulty in agreeing to the Resolution which he had read. In one respect the case was almost unprecedented. The only precedent which he could discover was the first arrest of the hon. Member for Tipperary 99 last year. He was not aware that up to that period any Member of the House had been arrested by Her Majesty's Executive under a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Up to a comparatively recent period all suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act contained a provision exempting Members of the House from its operation; and he believed the Act which was passed in 1848 was the first which did not contain a provision of that kind. But although no such exempting provision had been included, he believed that since 1848 no Member of the House had been arrested under a suspension of the Habeas Corpus until last year in the case of the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon). Therefore, in searching for precedents he was driven to seek the cases which were most analogous to the present one. He found that very frequently Members of the House had been arrested on criminal charges of various kinds, and that, up to a comparatively recent period, the practice had been to refer the question of the arrest to the Committee of Privileges. The most recent precedent was the case of Mr. Whalley, a Member of the House, who was committed in 1874 by Lord Chief Justice Cockburn for contempt of Court. It had been the custom to refer all such cases to the Committee of Privileges. Mr. Whalley himself proposed that course; but the Prime Minister of the day (Mr. Disraeli) pointed out what was undoubtedly the fact, that the Committee of Privileges was not a convenient body to refer the question to, and that a Select Committee was preferable—a view which the House unanimously adopted. Numerous cases of the same kind as Mr. Whalley's were to be found in the Journals of the House; but into these he did not think it worth while to enter. Up to the present time the House had been very jealous of the liberties of its Members, and exceedingly careful to guard them; and although it had invariably happened of late years that the Report of the Committee supported the imprisonment of the Member whose case was brought under the notice of the House, yet he was not aware of any precedent for the refusal of the House to take cognizance of the arrest of one of its own Members, and carefully to investigate all the facts in order to preserve their ancient privileges and legal rights. All the more, there- 100 fore, did he expect that the House would take cognizance of so serious a matter as the arrest of four of its Members; and it was well known that the number would have been considerably larger but for circumstances over which the Executive had no control. The limits of the discussion of this question being very narrow, he was well aware that he could not debate the general policy of the Government with regard to its administration of Ireland, or even the general policy of the Act under which the arrests now in question had been made. He should endeavour, therefore, to confine himself to the question at issue, and make out a primâ facie case for the referring of the question to a Committee to inquire whether the Government were justified in arresting a considerable number of their political opponents in that House. In doing that he thought he would be justified in quoting from the speeches of Ministers, who were responsible to the House for the passing of the Act under which the arrests were made, in order to show the pledges which they gave to the House, and the manner in which those pledges had been violated. He should also quote from some of the speeches made immediately prior to and since the arrests, in order to show the justification which responsible Members had endeavoured to make out for the action they had taken; and he should also show from quotations that the construction which they put upon the speeches and acts of the Members who were imprisoned was not the natural and proper construction. The subject was one on which the true light could be thrown by recalling the statements of Ministers rather than by mere vague declamation. His contention was that the Protection of Person and Property Act had not been used, with reference to the arrest of the four Members of Parliament in question, in the manner in which the Government undertook that it would be used, when they induced the House to pass a measure placing the liberty of every Irish Member of Parliament at their disposal, the moment he reached Irish soil. It would be remembered that the Chief Secretary for Ireland declared that the Act was aimed against "village tyrants and dissolute ruffians, who were few in number and known to the police." The right hon. Gentleman also said— 101If this Bill is passed we shall be bound upon our honour to satisfy ourselves that in the case of all arrests there is reasonable suspicion. We shall act in the full, and clear light of public opinion, on and under the eyes of a Parliament of a free and Constitutional country—a Parliament not slow to criticize and punish the conduct of those of its servants who transgress their powers."—[3 Hansard, cclvii. 1228.]Again, he said that—Holding the harvest and not paying rent is not one of the offences against which this Bill is directed.
§ MR. SPEAKERThe hon. Member is now reviewing certain debates which took place on a Bill last Session. The Question before the House is one of Privilege, raised on a communication made to the House by me; and the hon. Member is wandering from the Question.
§ MR. GRAYsaid, that, of course, he would at once bow to the ruling of the Speaker; but he thought what he was endeavouring to show was relevant to the position that he had taken—namely, that Her Majesty's responsible Ministers had given the House, during the passage of the Act, certain specific pledges, upon the honour and faith of which the House placed the liberty of the Irish Members at their disposal. They had, in the carrying out of those powers, violated the spirit of the Act, and violated the pledges on which they obtained it. He was endeavouring to show, by reading the extracts, that a breach of faith with the House had been committed, and that the privileges of Members who were arrested on account of that breach of faith had been violated. He therefore regretted he was not allowed to read them. He might be permitted, however, to quote a very remarkable extract from a speech made by the Head of the Government. First, however, he would read the Warrant under which the four Irish Members had been arrested. The Warrant stated that they were arrested—
On reasonable suspicion of being guilty of a crime punishable by law—wrongly intimidating divers persons to abstain from doing what they have a legal right to do—namely, to apply to the Land Court to have a fair rent fixed.Now, the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government stated that the Land League could not be touched by the Coercion Bill, except as far as they 102 fell within the very stringent definitions in the Bill, according to which no one could be arrested but upon reasonable suspicion, "and the reasonableness of that suspicion might be challenged on the floor of the House." That was what ho now challenged. Those who were to be arrested were defined to be principals or accessories to a crime punishable by law, being an act of violence or intimidation, or exciting to an act of violence or intimidation.
MR. GLADSTONEI beg pardon of the hon. Member and of the House; but I think, as a matter of convenience to the House, it is well at once to raise a question of Order. As I have understood, it is not competent for the hon. Member to discuss the policy of the arrests, or the propriety of the proceedings with regard to them. He has just told us that he proposes to bring under consideration the question as to the reasonableness of the suspicion under which these arrests were made. I think it would be greatly for our convenience if it were understood, not whether the hon. Member is justified in bringing that subject under the consideration of the House—for I should be the last person to deny he has a right to do so—but whether this is the occasion on which to raise it.
§ MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he was sorry the Leader of the House did not explain what he meant. There was a claim that the Privileges of the House had been violated by the arrest of the Representatives of four constituencies—by the misuse of an Act of Parliament—a misuse which, in their opinion, had been prompted by a desire to get rid of political opponents. Did the Leader of the House venture to suggest that evidence of that fact was to be kept from the House? How, then, could breach of Privilege be shown unless they could show that the Government had falsely and fraudulently arrested Representatives of Imperial constituencies, in order to prevent formidable political opponents appearing in that House?
§ MR. DAWSONsubmitted that, of all questions of Privilege recorded in Constitutional history, this had scarcely a precedent. Was it to be contended that important evidence bearing upon the violation of Privilege complained of should be withheld? What his hon. 103 Friend the Member for Carlow (Mr. Gray) wished to show was that, in carrying out the Statute, the Statute was not only strained, but broken.
§ MR. SEXTONsaid, he understood that the Leader of the House had raised a point of Order, which, if confirmed, would prevent the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Gray] from going into the merits of the case. As one of those who suffered imprisonment under the Coercion Act, he desired to protest against the point of Order raised by the right hon. Gentleman; and he called upon him, and the Government of which he was a Member, to allow his hon. Friend to fully and fairly open the case, and to state in return upon what evidence, in virtue of what acts and speeches, they were accused not only of inciting persons not to pay rent, but also of treasonable practices. The accusations were too serious, the consequences had been too painful, for the public opinion of Ireland, or, he ventured to hope, for the public opinion of Great Britain, to permit a question like this to be shelved in the evasive and cowardly manner suggested by the Prime Minister.
§ MR. SPEAKERThe point of Order I understand to be this. The hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Gray) was good enough to wait upon me on this matter to-day, and I informed him that if it was desired to raise the question of Irish Administration, or of the manner in which the Land Act was carried out, he would not be entitled to do so under a Motion of Privilege; that I considered he was bound to confine himself to the Question of Privilege solely. Of course, it is open to the hon. Member, as I informed him, to raise all these points at the proper time, but not under a Motion of Privilege. He may move an Amendment to the Address to the Crown, or he may select an opportunity hereafter, when he thinks proper. But he is bound, on a Question of Privilege, to keep very closely to the Question.
§ MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he understood the ruling to be that it would be outside the Question of Privilege to show that in the arrest of four Members of that House the Privileges of that House had been violated by the fraudulent application of the Coercion Act. He asked, could they not show that in the case of these four Members the law had been violated, public faith broken, 104 and the Privileges of the House destroyed?
§ MR. GRAY, resuming, said, he hoped he need not say that he really and sincerely desired to keep strictly within the proper bounds. He could well understand the desire of the Premier not to allow him to make that particular quotation. The effect of the Speaker's ruling was that he would not be permitted to quote the solemn pledges which the right hon. Gentleman had given, and which he reiterated on subsequent occasions. He left him his triumph of having suppressed it. He left the House to judge of his appreciation of the promises under which he obtained the Act, and his very manifest desire that his words quoted from Hansard should not be laid before the House. He might say that the right hon. Gentleman stated distinctly—and the words he uttered could have no other meaning—that the Act which he succeeded in inducing the House to pass would not apply to the particular crime—if, indeed, it were a crime—-which was charged against the hon. Member for the City of Cork and the others in the Warrants, and for which they had been put in prison. Within three or four days after the arrest of the hon. Member for the City of Cork and the other Members, the Government themselves recognized in what a false position they had placed themselves by that Warrant. They saw that on the face of it the Warrant was a sham, if not illegal, as he (Mr. Gray) believed it was, and they supplemented it by another Warrant handed to the prisoners in gaol, charging them with treasonable practices, of which there was not a tittle of evidence. They were told by the Government that no Members of Parliament were included in the number of those persons who were to be arrested under the Act. No speech had been made by these Members after the passing of the Act different in character or stronger than those which they had made before the passing of the Act, and while the Premier was giving those pledges; and yet he put them in prison, contrary to the pledges under which he obtained the passing of the Act. He would not quote anything further from the speeches of the Prime Minister, neither would he quote from the statements of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor 105 of the Duchy of Lancaster, in which he said that a law of this kind became a tyranny in the hands of tyrants, but that, administered by men such as now sat on the Treasury Bench, it would come as a been and a blessing to men; but when some Members on the Irish Benches ventured to challenge the generosity which proposed to take powers to imprison any man in Ireland upon suspicion, the right hon. Gentleman rose and said—''Who dare to question this statement of mine?" How dare they question the bona fides of their intention to administer this Act in accordance to the pledges they gave? The result, so far as these Members were concerned, was that four of them had been put in prison, and Warrants issued against a large number of others. They also knew that the votes of three Irish Members ejected from Office some eight years ago the Government which now sat upon the Treasury Bench, and ho could well understand that a nice calculation might have been made that possibly three absent votes might be very desirable upon a division—the votes of three absent men who would vote against the Government. Ho could, therefore, well understand why the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster might ask him how dare he venture to make such a statement as that—how dare he challenge the administration of the law in Ireland or the treatment of his brother imprisoned Members? But there were a number of men who ventured to challenge the administration of the law, and state that the Act had not been administered in accordance with its own terms, not to say its own spirit. He did not know whether the Prime Minister would object to his quoting from some of the speeches which he made during the Recess, and in which he justified the arrests now in question. He was very anxious, if he was within the limits of Order in doing so, to show that the pledges under which the Act was obtained had not been kept; that the right hon. Gentleman made charges against these Members of the House now in prison which were capable of being refuted by quotations from the speeches of these men themselves. In that celebrated oration which the Prime Minister made at Leeds on the 7th of October, he said that the hon. Member for the City of Cork— 106 this was a specific charge against an individual—and a small band of his friends were preaching the doctrines of public plunder, and he stated that he could sustain that on demonstrative evidence—that was to say——
§ MR. SPEAKERI must point out to the hon. Member that he is reviewing at large the conduct of the Government, and is, therefore, exceeding his rights.
§ MR. GRAYsaid, he was not at all pretending to review the general conduct of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman had made charges against individual Members as a justification for the individual arrests. He did not at all desire to review the conduct of the Government in arresting 500 men in Ireland; but what he did desire to review was the conduct of the Government in arresting four Members of the House, and the justification which the right hon. Gentleman gave for his action in arresting the four Members. The right hon. Gentleman stated at Leeds that their immediate object was rapine. The hon. Member for the City of Cork had, he said, opened up and preached a new and enlarged doctrine of public plunder; and subsequently, in his speech at Liverpool, on October 27, after the arrest, he said that the policy of the hon. Member for the City of Cork was that the rental of Ireland of £17,000,000 should be reduced to £2,000,000 or £3,000,000. How were these results to be carried into effect, ho asked? By intimidation. Those were the doctrines which he attributed to the hon. Member for the City of Cork, and which he set forth as a justification for arresting him. He (Mr. Gray) was desirous to quote the real doctrines of the hon. Member for the City of Cork, as set forth in his speeches, to show that, so far from advocating any doctrine of that kind, he advocated a totally different doctrine.
§ MR. SPEAKERI am bound to say that the course the hon. Member is new taking is irregular. He is really wandering very wide of the Question before the House. The Question before the House is one of Privilege; and the House expects, upon a Motion of Privilege, that hon. Members should adhere very closely to that Question, and not wander from it. What happened is simply this—a communication had been made by the Irish Government reporting to the Speaker the imprisonment of certain 107 Members of this House; and upon that communication the hon. Member is undoubtedly within his right in raising a question of Privilege. But in travelling beyond that Question the hon. Member is abusing his right.
§ MR. GRAYwas quite willing to bow to the Speaker's ruling; but he regretted that, by closing his mouth at the present moment, it might have the effect of postponing for a long time the consideration of the questions which he desired to bring before the House—a postponement during which the imprisoned Members would still remain incarcerated. He regretted that the decision of the right hon. Gentleman in the Chair precluded him from showing, by speeches made by the arrested Members, that the Prime Minister was mistaken with regard to their utterances, and that, instead of having advocated a violation of the law, they advocated the reverse of that. The Prime Minister stated in a speech at Liverpool that the various points he made at Leeds against the arrested Members had not been answered, and that, not having been answered, he appealed to all persons to assist him in maintaining law and order. But the speech in which the Prime Minister made his points on the 7th of October was completely answered in a speech delivered at Wexford on the 9th of October. The words of the Act under which the arrests were made were peculiar. To justify an arrest there must have been an inciting to an act of violence or intimidation, an interference with law and order being a crime punishable by law. Now, suppose those charges were proved against these Members in a Court of Law, of what crime would they be guilty? He found that by an Act passed in 1875 relating to trades unions, with a view of making the penalties against them less severe, every person who compelled any other person to abstain from doing an act which he had a legal right to do, or who used violence or intimidation against such other person, was liable to a penalty not exceeding £20, and to be imprisoned for a period not exceeding three months. If the four Members who had been arrested on suspicion had been tried before a jury and found guilty the utmost punishment that could have been awarded against them was an imprisonment for three months. But they had 108 already been four months in prison for being suspected of being guilty. Would the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster—whose services to Ireland in the past could never be forgotten notwithstanding his recent actions—continue in the face of that fact to cry out in virtuous indignation—"Who dares to think this Act will be administered in a tyrannical manner?" Would he state it was not a tyrannical administration of the law for the Government to give a man longer imprisonment for the mere suspicion of a crime than he could receive if found guilty of that crime? In consequence of the ruling of the Speaker, he could only say, in conclusion, that he believed if the House consented to refer this question to a Select Committee the Irish Party could place on record the incontrovertible evidence which he was now prevented giving. If the House should refuse to take cognizance of the arrests of Members of that House, and should refuse to refer this subject to a Select Committee, it would be departing from immemorial precedent. He was aware that the hon. Gentlemen who had been imprisoned were Irish Members, and perhaps the precedents of English Members might not be considered applicable; but he hoped the House was still jealous of its dignity, and that it would not allow several of its Members to be arrested without, at least, taking some steps to ascertain whether those arrests were legal according to the terms of the Coercion Act, and whether they came within the spirit of the Act, because he contended that if the arrests were carried out in opposition to the pledges on which that Act was obtained an unequivocal breach of Privilege had been committed. It was all the more important that the inquiry sought for should be granted, because the hon. Member for the City of Cork was not merely a Leader of a considerable Party in that House, but he represented the popular opinion of a great portion of Her Majesty's Dominions. He appealed to the House, therefore, not lightly to reject his Motion, which was intended to guard the rights of individual Members. They should guard those rights all the more carefully, because they belonged to a Party in the House which was in a minority, and was accordingly defenceless. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving his Resolution.
§ MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY, in rising to second the Motion, said, that, in his opinion, his hon. Friend the Member for Carlow had made out a strong and reasonable case in its favour. His hon. Friend did not ask the House to declare at once that a breach of Privilege had been committed. They desired to institute an inquiry into the circumstances. All these circumstances justified the course taken by his hon. Friend, and would justify the House in yielding to the Motion. He would ask the House to remember that this was a case which might strictly be called absolutely without precedent. The only precedents that came at all near to it would justify the House in following the course it was now asked to take. But no absolute precedent existed in the history of this country of a great Prime Minister arresting and imprisoning without trial some of his most obnoxious political opponents. They were about to make a precedent in the course they would take that evening. If the Motion were refused they would establish this precedent—that a Ministry might at any time, under the powers of a special Act of Parliament, arrest four or five, or even 20 or 25 Members of Parliament, and imprison them without trial, or without any intention of bringing them to trial, and that that was not only not a breach of Privilege, but could not even be argued to be such a breach of Privilege as would make it right that the House should inquire into it. Did either Conservative or Liberal Members of the House consider that a condition of things which should be established? If so, then he certainly misunderstood the ideas of Constitutional liberty which hitherto existed in the minds of English Members. That the Government might have suspected the imprisoned Members of the House to be men likely to disturb the country did not touch the question before the House. The sole question was whether the Privileges, not of Members only, but also of the constituencies, had been invaded by the arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, without trial, of Members of the House, They had been told by the Prime Minister that night, speaking on another topic, that the House was not likely to be a qualified tribunal for deciding a question then before it, giving as his reason that whenever the question arose the Members exhibited extreme 110 impatience and emotion. He (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) feared that on this Irish question the House exhibited, instead of extreme emotion, too great an amount of indifference to be a satisfactory court of appeal. It was a question of constituencies that was now under consideration. Many times had they heard from the Treasury Benches indignant complaints that the constituency of Northampton should be deprived of half its representation without sufficient reason. How differently the Ministry spoke when the question became an Irish one. Unless they held that fortunate and favoured Northampton had rights belonging to an order totally different from the rights of Cork, Tipperary, and Roscommon, they must admit that the policy which deprived those three Irish counties of half their representation might, at least, be an invasion of the Privileges of the House, and might form grounds for inquiry before a Select Committee. He should have thought that the mere fact that three or four Irish Members of Parliament had been arrested and put in prison without trial would inspire the House to make instant inquiry as to whether their Privileges had or had not been invaded. The conduct of the Prime Minister, in objecting to allow the citation of his speeches in disproof of the justification which he claimed for the arrests, was enough to add one other element to the reasons given by his hon. Friend (Mr. Gray) in support of the Motion for a Select Committee. He would, however, ask the House to accede to the Motion, if only on the ground that a very serious question had been raised as to whether a breach of Privilege had been committed.
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the Letter of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, informing the House of the arrest of Messieurs Parnell, Dillon, 0'Kelly, and Sexton, Members of this House, be referred to a Select Committee, for the purpose of considering and reporting whether any of the matters referred to therein demand the further attention of the House."—(Mr. Gray.)
MR. GLADSTONESir, the speeches of the two hon. Gentlemen have undoubtedly abounded with charges of great severity against Her Majesty's Government; and there is, at least, one proposition of which I can take notice, and with which I can express my agreement. I agree with them that the 111 arrest of four Members of this House under the Act for the Protection of Person and Property in Ireland is a matter of the utmost gravity, and one which hon. Members of this House are perfectly justified, and may feel it from their points of view an imperative duty, to bring under the notice of the House and make it the subject of Motions, either for inquiry or of direct accusation. These concessions I freely make; but, having made those concessions, I am bound to say I cannot consent to reply on this occasion to any one of the accusations made against us. They certainly are very strong accusations, and they descend to imputing the utmost meanness. They answer a double purpose, because the hon. Member who made the Motion contrived, while imputing to me the most disgraceful meanness, to pay a very considerable compliment to himself at the same time. He had prepared so formidable a weapon by dint of his great ingenuity and power, that I, when I got an inkling that this weapon was about to be discharged against me, pretended to have in view the Order of the House—hypocritically had in view the Order of the House—when my real object was to avert the tremendous and crushing effect which was to result from the charge brought against me. Now, Sir, in my opinion, the whole speech of the hon. Member, with very slight exceptions, and the entire speech of the Seconder—though they consisted of matter of the gravest importance—consisted of matter wholly beyond the legitimate scope of the present debate. They were entirely upon the merits of the present administration of Ireland, so far as the administration of Ireland had to do with the arrest of the four hon. Members. This is exactly the matter which I understood you, Sir, I think, five times, by very distinct declarations from the Chair, to exclude from the purview of the present debate. I wish it, therefore, to be clearly understood that I do not in the slightest degree dispute the importance of the subject-matter raised; but I entirely decline to go into the charges made on the present occasion, because I believe if I did enter into them I should be violating the Rules and Orders of the House, and the distinct rulings which you, Sir, have given from the Chair. I will just notice this Motion within the limits of what I con- 112 sider to be legitimate discussion. The Act of Parliament intrusts Her Majesty's Government with large and exceptional powers, entirely beyond the usual operation and spirit of the Constitution. An exceptional power to put in prison for a limited time without bringing to trial, but for a period according to the discretion of the Government within the statutory limits, of persons whom they judge and shall declare to be reasonably suspected of having done certain things, has been granted to the Government, and it appears to me a most judicious and proper thing that the Act should require that notice of the imprisonment of any of its Members should be given to the House. The Members of this House are the servants of this House. They are to be protected in the discharge of their duties, and are to be at the disposal of this House for whatever services the House may think fit to require. It is, therefore, obviously necessary that when imprisonment of this kind takes place, it should be brought to the notice of the House. But, as I understand the hon. Gentleman, though he was entitled to follow precedent as far as he could, he was not able to adduce one. He had not adduced a single precedent applicable to the case as an authority for raising, in any form, the question as to the merits of the proceedings under which the Members of this House have been imprisoned. In former instances, the question had been directed entirely to the form of proceeding; and if the hon. Member had moved to refer it to a Committee to consider whether the proceeding in the present case was within the power and provisions of the Act of last Session—as, for instance, whether the Warrant was in due form, or whether the proceedings were in due form. [Ironical cheers.] Very good; I am much obliged to that description of assistance which is rendered by the jeers of hon. Gentlemen; but I will, with their permission, endeavour to continue my explanations. They would have been acting in conformity, if they had taken a course of that kind, to ascertain clearly whether the proceeding was within the powers of the Act, and conformable to its provisions—they would have been taking a perfectly regular course, and I should have made no objection to the appointment of such a 113 Committee, because I conceive, on the contrary, that perhaps it may be not without advantage that when an act of this kind takes place the House should make an investigation of that sort. So it appears it was done in the case of Mr. Whalley. The House determined to satisfy itself whether Mr. Whalley had been committed for contempt of Court by the Lord Chief Justice, and whether the Lord Chief Justice was doing an act which, by the law of the land, he was entitled and empowered to do. All the precedents appear very much to support this view, and they have been of a purely formal character, because the references were made to a Committee of Privileges—not to a Committee of Inquiry. Hon. Members have spoken of privileges on this occasion; but there is not a word of their speeches which would enable anyone listening to them to gather in what way it was that the privileges of the Members of this House had been invaded. They say that the pledges of the Government, given in speeches during the time when the Act was under the consideration of the House, had been violated. Sir, of course we deny that, and I hope we shall confute that charge when it is made at the proper time and place. If it were perfectly true, that would be no breach of Privilege. There can be no breach of Privilege in applying to a Member of this House the provisions of a law which is applicable to his case, and the whole question touching Privilege on this occasion cannot by possibility go beyond that point which was jeered by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar), to ascertain whether the provisions of the Statute have been complied with. Now, the very proof of what I have said is this—that I find in the proceedings in these cases, usually when a Committee has been appointed—for example, in the ease of Mr. Long Wellesley—the Committee is instructed to deal with the case, and to deal with it on the very next day, in the nature of a purely formal and technical inquiry. The cases that are before us are the cases of Lord Cochrane in 1815, and Long Wellesley in 1831, both of which were before the Committee of Privileges. The hon. Gentleman has quite omitted—he has been as defective in this part of the case as he has been superabundant in 114 what I shall call the disorderly part of his statement—to mention that in two of the five cases no Motion whatever was made for a reference to a Committee. There was no Motion in the case of Mr. Dillon last year, and there was no Motion made in the more important case of Mr. Smith O'Brien in 1848.
MR. GLADSTONEI am not charging the hon. Member with stating what was incorrect. I am merely noticing that he omitted an important part of the facts of the case. Now, the hon. Gentleman professes to follow the Motion in the case of Mr. Whalley; but even in that case the Motion was made purely for a formal purpose. It was a Motion to examine whether Lord Chief Justice Cockburn had been justified in his action; whether ho was acting within the exorcise of his legal powers; and in not one single sentence is there a scintilla of evidence to show that the House has ever dreamt that the application of an Act of Parliament to a Member of Parliament, or the known law of the land to a Member of Parliament, could by possibility be made the subject of inquiry as a broach of Privilege. It is a new doctrine, and, indeed, if Privilege is to be set up as a reason why Members of this House are, as a body, to be exempted from the general obligation of obedience to the law incumbent upon Her Majesty's subjects—an obligation in which they, beyond all others, are bound to set an example and fulfil—I make this concession in the case of Mr. Whalley, that the terms of the Motion acceded to by the House did not distinctly and clearly explain the extremely limited nature of the object in view, because the question was referred to a Select Committee for the purpose of considering and reporting whether any of the matters contained therein demand the further attention of the House. It is quite evident, I presume, that under those words the hon. Gentleman would be justified, and would be enabled, if the House granted a Committee, to bring before the Committee the whole policy of Her Majesty's Government, and the propriety of their action in this case. Now, that is what we contend cannot possibly be raised on the matter of Privilege. The question of Privilege 115 must be confined to our obedience to the provisions of the law. When the hon. Gentleman chooses to make any Motion for inquiring upon a proper occasion and opportunity, we shall be ready to meet him in argument, and in considering with him in what way the House is to be put in possession of the merits and the whole proceedings of Her Majesty's Government. But not now. This is not the proper occasion for entering into that matter. It would only tend to throw Public Business into confusion were we to allow to be dealt with as matters of Privilege those which are, in fact, matters of policy. I should be most willing to accede to the Motion of the hon. Gentleman if he had confined himself to the objects which he formally had in view—namely, the ascertaining the strict regularity—and I care not how strict he is in that investigation—of the proceedings of the Government. I must oppose the Motion made by him in terms which undoubtedly go very much beyond that object, and supported by a speech which goes beyond it altogether, and introduces matter which he will have ample opportunities of dealing with on other occasions, but which, on the present occasion, is wholly irrelevant and inappropriate. On these grounds, I am compelled to oppose the Motion of the hon. Gentleman.
§ Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present,
§ MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he was sorry that the Business of the House should be taken while everybody was otherwise engaged. He thought the answer of the First Lord of the Treasury itself almost a breach of the Privileges of the House. He understood the Prime Minister to state that when the Government had the formal power to imprison Members of the House, that power could not be called in question. If this were so, the Prime Minister would be empowered to arrest the whole of the Irish Representatives, though it was absolutely notorious that he was keeping them in prison in order that he might prevent them from entering the Voting Lobby. In addition to the Coercion Acts, there were other Acts under which Members might be imprisoned. One Statute enabled magistrates to arrest 116 those whom they suspected merely, and under that Act, if the Government had a number of magistrates subservient enough, they could arrest the whole Irish Representation and keep them in prison for a year without bail; with a docile magistracy, and a docile majority, the Government could throw into prison as many Members as they pleased. According to that contention of the right hon. Gentleman, the House would not be allowed to go into the merits of the case. If that contention were true, all he could say was that the whole Constitution of both countries in its most essential parts was absolutely at the mercy of any Minister with a docile majority. The right hon. Gentleman could throw any political opponents into prison without touching the Privileges of the House. Of course, there were differences in the various cases. The arrest of the four Irish Members was different from the arrest of the five English Members by a Royal personage, whom the right hon. Gentleman resembled. It was true that the Irish Members had waived their right of raising the point of Privilege upon the arrest of Mr. Dillon; but then the Government had promised to give them an early day for the discussion of the question. The Prime Minister's plan was this. As soon as the Irish Members attempted to raise a discussion on this matter, he would bring in his gagging Resolutions. He would wish the Government to understand that they did not, in the slightest degree, consider the exposure of coercion in Ireland essential. The Government might gag them if they pleased, and so attempt to evade responsibility; but he thanked God that the Irish were no longer dependent upon the goodwill of the people of England. There were 23,000,000 Irishmen throughout the world, and they meant to make use of the international power they had thereby acquired.
§ MR. BIGGARsaid, the Prime Minister had met the Motion of his hon. Friend in a very quibbling and unworthy manner. The right hon. Gentleman's argument amounted to this—that if the Warrant under which a person was arrested was made out in proper type and on proper paper, then no inquiry could be made into the merits of the case, though the Act might have been put into operation from corrupt 117 motives. It was notorious in England and Ireland that the real reason for the arrest of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) was not the offence imputed to him, but a speech delivered at Wexford, in which he tore the statements of the Prime Minister to tatters. The fact of it was the Prime Minister was a very vain old Gentleman, who did not care to meet on the floor of the House a political opponent of the calibre of the hon. Member for the City of Cork for fear he would expose his sophistries and explode his windy orations. It might be very convenient for the Government to use the Coercion Act for the purpose of putting political opponents out of sight; but, in his opinion, they had put themselves in a very awkward position by not answering specifically the charges of corrupt motives brought against them.
§ MR. SPEAKERThe hon. Member is charging the Government with corrupt motives. The Question before the House is the narrow one of Privilege. If the hon. Member desires to raise the whole question of the conduct of the Government, he should do so on the Address, or on another occasion.
§ MR. BIGGARsaid, he did not intend to bring any further charges against the Government; but, at the same time, he held it was contrary to the Privileges of the House that political opponents of the Government should be arrested under cover of an Act of Parliament which did not really apply to them. That was notoriously the case with the hon. Member for Tipperary, whose offence was that he would not allow himself to be made the catspaw of the Prime Minister. He did not think the Government deserved much credit for the manner in which they had met the Motion of his hon. Friend.
§ MR. SEXTONsaid, that, according to the Prime Minister, the arrest of Members of Parliament was not to be distinguished in injury from that of other subjects of Her Majesty. With regard to the Warrants under which the Members in question were arrested, he said in some cases these were double-barrelled, charging those accused not only with inciting the people not to pay rent, but also with treasonable practices. It was clear from this that the hateful and morally murderous policy of suspicion which was launched upon 118 the country by the Coercion Act was the policy of the Government at the present moment. The Prime Minister would tolerate no inquiry into the administration of the Coercion Act whatever. But oven on the restricted ground as to whether the law was applicable to the case of the Members of Parliament who had been arrested he ventured to challenge the conduct of the Government. What became of their declarations that the Coercion Act was designed to strike at the "dissolute ruffian" and the "midnight marauder," and to operate against the difficulty of obtaining testimony? As one of those who spoke in the light of noonday in the presence of the Government and the presence of the public, had he not the right to say that such an Act was not applicable to their case in respect to deeds and speeches? It was again and again repeated in the debates on the Coercion Act that it was an Act against secret crime; and he contended that it was not in any moral and ordinary sense applicable to acts of which ho and his hon. Friends had been accused. As to the Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for Carlow, he ventured to say that it was framed in a manner which ought to have commended itself to the considerate attention of the Government. The Irish Members had been recklessly charged with Obstruction. Had they chosen they might have brought forward this Motion in a form which would inevitably have led to a long debate—namely, as an Amendment to the Address; but they had given the Government the option of at once granting the Select Committee, and so saving the time of the House The right hon. Gentleman declined to take that course. It was evident the Irish Members were to have no satisfaction upon the present occasion; it was evident that the conciliatory spirit displayed by the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Gray) had been thrown away upon the Government; it was evident that it would be farcical to attempt to approach in any degree to-night the minds of the Government on this great national question. He should not put himself in the position of earning the rebuke of the Chair, and it only remained for them to take the course indicated by the Prime Minister, and that was to bring forward their Motion on the Address to the Crown, and to 119 insert in it a full statement of the reasons why they had been charged not only with agrarian offences, but with treasonable practices. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: Hear, hear!] From the somewhat grim assent given by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, it was evident that the right hon. Gentleman was prepared, in the event of an Amendment being proposed to the Address, to attempt to vindicate the cruel, evasive, cowardly, and unconstitutional policy which he had pursued in Ireland. If so, he trusted the right hon. Gentleman would tell the House why, in the case of the hon. Member for Cork City and his associates, he had resorted to the powerfully brutal but contemptible instrument of the Coercion Act instead of the Constitutional remedies which were at his command—remedies most suited to the men whose speeches had been delivered in the hearing of the Government, and whose actions had never been hidden from the light of day—and that he would repel, if he could, the statement universally made in Ireland that the arrest of the Irish Members had been dictated by the cowardice of the Government collectively, and by the vanity and rancour of the Prime Minister personally. He would expect the right hon. Gentleman in words to carry out the intentions he had avowed this evening by pantomime.
§ MR. P. J. SMYTHobserved, that the "suspects" might be divided into two classes—the authors of the "no rent" manifesto and the instruments of it. If all were to be liberated well and good; but he could not admit that the mere fact of men being Members of that House established their claim to exceptional treatment. He should like to hear some explanation of the "no rent" manifesto. Was it issued in consequence of the threat from America of the stoppage of supplies? [Cries of "Order!"]
§ MR. SPEAKERThe hon. Member is travelling beyond the Question, which is that of Privilege. I must call upon him to confine himself strictly to that Question.
§ MR. P. J. SMYTHsaid, he merely wished to have some explanation of the "no rent" manifesto. The "suspects" now consisted of two classes—the persons who were the authors of that manifesto and the instruments of it; and he 120 was endeavouring to elicit from hon. Gentlemen opposite an explanation of that document. The fact of a man being a Member of Parliament only increased his responsibility, and the humblest subject of the Crown had the same right to his liberty as the highest Member of that House.
§ MR. LEAMYsaid, no one who supported the Motion of the hon. Member for Carlow desired to draw a distinction between the "suspects." They believed that not a single man who was detained in gaol on suspicion ought to be kept there. Some of them, he might remind the House, were arrested before the "no rent" manifesto was issued. It would be as well if the House bore this in mind, as even the Members of the Cabinet did not appear to be aware of the fact. He was willing to admit that the Coercion Act was applicable to Members of Parliament as well as to anybody else; but he believed that if a Committee were granted, it could be shown that there had been a gross misuse of power on the part of the Government; but he supposed that, as this was the case of Irish Members, the Liberal battalions would be much more faithful to their Leader than they had been when the case was an English Member. At all events, he hoped the Attorney General for Ireland would inform the House what the offences were for which these hon. Members were imprisoned. His contention was that the Warrants for their arrests did not disclose any offence which was punishable by law.
§ MR. DAWSONsaid, the present state of the House showed in how different a manner questions affecting Irish and English Members were treated. They appeared to view with complacency the incarceration of four Irish Members; but if an English Member was deprived of his right of sitting there the whole country was up and demanding explanations. Nothing indicated more emphatically the difference between the two countries, and the interest which was felt in them. He regretted very much that a Liberal House of Commons in the nineteenth century should be found to pass laws which were a disgrace to the person proposing them and the Parliament passing them. As to the question of Privilege, he would observe that in the case of Mr. Whalley, the right hon. 121 Gentleman said it was within the privilege and the duty of the House to inquire whether the Lord Chief Justice had not overstepped the statute law. The House of Commons lowered its prestige by allowing Members to be apprehended on suspicion, incarcerated in places like horse-boxes, and gazed at by visitors through the bars of a cage as if they were wild animals in a menagerie. Surely some explanation was due to the House for all this. In order to illustrate the slight grounds on which suspicion could be built up, he might state that when he went to Carlow to address a meeting of his constituents, the Inspector of Police waited on him and asked him whether he intended to hold a Land League meeting. He sought in vain to obtain from the Inspector and the Sub-Inspector an explanation of this impertinent and supercilious inquiry; but a constable afterwards came to him and said he might speak to him if he would say nothing against the Prime Minister and the Land Act. That constable only acted in the spirit of the Government that inspired him. But was not the right hon. Gentleman as open to criticism as any other man? No doubt, if he had ventured to criticize the acts of the right hon. Gentleman he would have been placed in the position which other hon. Members now occupied. The House had given the Government exceptional powers of a wide, indefinite character; but, nevertheless, there must be reasonable suspicion of breaking one of the known laws of the land. The great privilege not only of a Member of Parliament, but a common citizen, was that he should not be illegally imprisoned; but, he asked, where was the reasonable suspicion on which the "suspects" had been incarcerated? He could not but admire the British Constitution, but he and his Party certainly did not share its advantages. The right hon. Gentleman was constantly invoking precedent, and they had gone from precedent to precedent, and were narrowing down until their very liberties were imperilled. If a law such as this was passed for England, it would not be tolerated. This ought not to be a question of Party or nationality—it was a question affecting the prestige and liberty of the great House. If they were to allow the Cabinet to do us they liked, or if they were 122 to allow the Prime Minister to exercise the personal government which he now wielded, and which had not been exercised in any country, or by any autocrat—if they were to allow the Bench of Ministers to exercise a power which no Stuart or dynasty that had been abolished had ever exercised, then the privileges and liberties of every individual Member of the House were seriously threatened. If four English Members had been imprisoned by methods which wore worthy of the Star Chamber, there would have been an outcry throughout the whole country. A Liberal Ministry wore not only destroying the liberties of Ireland, but were sapping the foundations of the boasted liberty of England.
§ MR. SPEAKERI must remind the hon. Member that he is going beyond the Question before the House. If he desires to raise the larger question he must do so at the proper time.
§ MR. DAWSONsaid, he would only add that it was not legal that four Members of the House should be held in prison merely upon the caprice of the Members of the Government. It was the Irish Members to-day, but the case of the Irish Members might be that of the English Members to-morrow. He hoped that the Committee would be granted, so as to allow the Government, if it could, to clear itself in the face of Ireland from the charges brought against them; and if not to brand it, so that it might descend from the high position it had once occupied into one which was never surpassed by the most autocratic Government that had ever existed.
§ MR. T. D. SULLIVANsaid, the Irish Members were much restricted in speaking on this question, as it was to be discussed merely as a question of Privilege; and he and some others were beginning to doubt whether there were any privileges at all. It used to be thought a privilege of Members of Parliament to be tried before being imprisoned; but this privilege had now been lost by Irish Members of Parliament as well as other people. Without any trial three Members of the House were at present detained in gaol from the service of their constituents, and the number would be six if the opportunity had been given to the Chief Secretary of arresting certain others who were, however, better employed elsewhere. There was not a Member of the Irish Party whose liberty 123 was not in the hollow of the right hon. Gentleman's hand; and, therefore, he (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) would like to know what privileges they had left? The privileges of Irish Members had hitherto been attacked; but now the privileges of all Parties were alike in danger, whether Conservatives, Whigs, or Radicals, from the present Government, and therefore the question ought not to be regarded too much from a Party point of view, for they would each find their own turn coming if they did not oppose to the utmost the tyrannical measures of the accomplished political seducer at the head of the Government. He hoped the House would consent to the matter being referred to a Select Committee.
§ Question put.
§ The House divided:—Ayes 45; Noes 174: Majority 129.—(Div. List, No. 2.)