§
(1.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £116,547, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1882, for the Constabulary Force in Ireland.
§ MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORdesired to ask what the intentions of the Government were in regard to the order in which the Votes would be taken after the present Vote was disposed of. Last night the Committee reached Vote 38 in Class II. The next Vote after that was the one for Law Charges in England, and then there followed a number of Votes connected with England, and several besides that of the Constabulary relating to Ireland. What he wished to know was the order in which it was proposed to take these Votes. Were they, after the present Vote was disposed of, to go back to the place where they left off last night?
§ LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, it was proposed now to take the Vote which was most urgently required—namely, that for the Irish Constabulary. He had, therefore, moved that Vote; and he hoped, if possible, after that Vote was taken, to take the Votes in the order in which they stood on the Paper—that was, to turn back to Vote 23, Class II., and then proceed in regular order.
§ MR. HEALYwished to call attention to a portion of the items included in the Constabulary Vote which was connected with the working of the Peace Preservation Act of last year. He thought it was very desirable that they should have something in the nature of a tabulated statement of the places where arms had been given up, the number of arms surrendered, their quality, and the class of such arms. He found in the Vote an item of £3,500 for payment of the arms surrendered. He had asked the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, last year, if he had any objection to give a Return stating the number of arms sent in, and the amount of compensation paid for their being given up; and the right hon. Gentleman said that a Return would appear in the Estimates, and would afford an opportunity for discussing the matter. He (Mr. Healy) now found that the only entry in the Supplementary Estimate was this item of £3,500, and it was the only explanation afforded. The Committee would remember that when Ireland was placed under the Arms Act it was asserted that an immense quantity of arms had been imported into the country during the six months which preceded the passing of the Peace Preservation Act. Were they now to understand that so few arms had in reality been imported that the entire amount of compensation given for their surrender only amounted to £3,500? If that were so, what became of the assertion that Ireland had been flooded with arms? He thought the Committee was entitled to an explanation, and he respectfully asked for one to be given in the shape of a regular Return. They were fairly entitled to know whether the sum which appeared in the Estimate represented 3,500 pistols, or guns, or sabres, or 100,000. The landlords were calling out for compensation for the property they said they had been deprived of by the operation of the Land Act. They, however, could only have been deprived of a portion of their property; and were persons who were deprived of all their property to remain uncompensated? He certainly thought the Committee ought to have some information on the matter; and he would, therefore, ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to supply it.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, the amount paid by way of compensation 1548 for the surrender of arms was already stated in the Vote.
§ MR. HEALYsaid, he asked for more detailed information of the item which appeared in the Estimates.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERreplied, that he had not at hand the figures asked for by the hon. Member; but if the hon. Member wished to have them, and would send him the form in which he would like them to be given, he (Mr. Forster) would see if they could be furnished. He would only say that he did not at all agree in the statement of the hon. Member that the operation of the Peace Preservation Act proved the existence of a very small number of arms in the country, nor in his argument that the smallness of the sum paid by way of compensation was a practical refutation of the truth of the assertion that an immense number of arms had been distributed throughout Ireland. The fact that only a few arms had been surrendered did not prove that large numbers of arms were not in the country; and the correctness of the hon. Member's statement could not be judged by the number of arms which had been surrendered.
§ MR. LEAMYwished to know who were employed to value the arms surrendered. That was a question upon which the Irish Members had a right to have full information. Under the Peace Preservation Act in Ireland a man might be sent to prison for three months if arms were found in his possession without a licence. But a man who applied for a licence might be refused, and then told by the police—"We know now that you have arms, and you must give them up. If you do not bring them to the police barracks we will prosecute you." What he wanted to know was, who was to fix the value and price in the event of a man taking a valuable fowling piece to the police barracks? That was a question upon which he thought he was entitled to have an answer. The Chief Secretary had promised to give a Return of the number of arms which had been delivered to the police under the Act. Would he extend the information and give a Return of the number of houses which had been searched for arms under the Act? They saw almost every day in The Freeman's Journal, reports of military expeditions in Ireland, which had been 1549 made in the search for arms. He remembered reading, a short time ago, an account of a large force, partly composed of military and partly of constabulary, going out in a search for arms in the county of Clare. The district was a hilly one, and vedettes were posted on the tops of the hills; soldiers were sent to guard the different passes, and then the work of searching for arms commenced. More than 120 houses were searched on that occasion; hut not in more than one of them were arms of any description found. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would tell the Committee at once who it was that placed a value upon the arms delivered up, and whether he had any objection to grant a Return of the number of houses which had been searched for arms.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, the Statute required that the owner of the arms, instead of retaining them, should give them up, and make a declaration as to their value. The proclamation declared how they were to be valued. He believed that they might be valued by the Inspectors of police, and he also believed that some mode of arbitration was provided if there was any difference of opinion as to the value.
§ MR. LEAMYsaid, the right hon. Gentleman had not answered the second question—namely, whether he would have any objection to grant a Return of the number of houses which had been searched under the Arms Act, and also the result?
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERreplied, that if the hon. Member would give him Notice of a Question upon the subject he would give him an answer. He was not in a position to give an affirmative answer straight off.
§ MR. HEALYsaid, he was obliged for the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that he had no objection to give the Return for which he (Mr. Healy) had asked; and he wished further to ask if the right hon. Gentleman would have any objection to give it in this form—Whether pistol, gun, sword, or pike, together with the total number delivered up? If the Committee allowed this Vote to be passed without some clear understanding having been arrived at, the right hon. Gentleman might say that the form of the Return asked for was objectionable, and refuse to give it. He therefore asked the right hon. Gentle- 1550 man, if he was not satisfied with the form he (Mr. Healy) suggested, to propose an alternative form; and he took this course now because he felt that it was the only time they could get a satisfactory answer from the Ministry. They were very anxious at present to get money, and were likely to make concessions. He thought the Return should clearly specify the class of arms delivered up—whether sword, gun, or pistol—the amount of ammunition, and the county in which the arms were seized.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he should not exactly pledge himself to the form of the Return; but, as far as he could see at present, it was desirable that the information asked for should be given, and it was only fair to give it. He did not suppose there would be any difficulty in making a Return, nor would it affect any persons who might not have thought fit to surrender their arms. The Act itself had certainly not led to the delivery of any large numbers of arms.
§ MR. HEALYasked, if there was any intention on the part of Her Majesty's Government to repeal the Act, as it had not been effectual in its operation?
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERWe never imagined that any great effect would be produced by the Act in bringing about a general surrender of arms. It was a very proper provision to put in the Act; but we aid not expect that we should be called upon to pay compensation for any large number of arms.
§ MR. LEAMYsaid, the right hon. Gentleman stated that very few arms had been delivered up under the Act, or, at any rate, those against whom the Act was directed had not delivered up their arms. There was also an admission on the part of the right hon. Gentleman that the searches which had been made in the houses of the Irish people for the discovery of arms had been fruitless. He thought that fact ought to be a strong argument in favour of the repeal of the Act. What the Irish Members predicted at the time of the passing of the Peace Preservation Bill had been fully borne out. A great deal of inconvenience had been put upon innocent men, while those who desired to retain their arms for illegal or criminal purposes had carefully placed them out of the way. They had not come in to ask for compensation for surrendering their arms, but had put them by where 1551 they would be ready if ever they were wanted. He thought the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary ought to have foreseen all that had really happened. Houses had been searched in all parts of the country, and yet only a very small number of arms had either been given up or discovered. He could not understand what further effect the continuance of the Act would have, except that it would irritate, harass, and annoy innocent people.
§ MR. SEXTONsaid, the Committee was asked to vote a very considerable sum. The general Estimate for the year came to £940,000, and they were now asked for a Supplementary Vote of £116,000, bringing up the total charge for the year to £l,056,000 sterling—an unparalleled charge, he believed, for the services of a Constabulary Force, in Ireland. As regarded the difference between the original Estimate and the Estimate now asked for, it was the result of an unwise and an obstinate effort against the public rights of the Irish people. If the Government had regarded their own remedial legislation with any confidence it would not have been necessary for them to resort to this increase of the Irish Constabulary Force and these extensive and exceptional armaments which formed the subject of the Supplementary Estimate. They had thought proper to adopt a double policy, one element of which neutralized and defeated the other—namely, a policy by means of which they seemed to conciliate, while, at the same time, they aimed at repression. It was a foolish and an unparalleled policy; but the Government, for good or for evil, had adopted it as their policy and determined to abide by it, and there was no ground for him to hope that any observation he might have to make would have the slightest influence on the course the Government would pursue in the matter. There were some items in the Vote which certainly required a moment's notice. For instance, under sub-head B, for arms, ammunition, accoutrements, and saddlery, he found that the Liberal Government—this Government, which championed humanity and progress in every part of the world, asked for £4,800 to provide arms and accoutrements for the civil force in Ireland—a civil force existing in the midst of a peaceful people at this moment singularly free from disorder. Then, again, under sub-head 1552 R, he found that the Government had entered into the business of car owners and car drivers, because there was an item of £1,450 for the purchase of horses and cars, forage, &c. This sub-head cast a melancholy light on the pretence put forward by Her Majesty's Government that the people of Ireland were terrorized by the Land League. It showed conclusively the truth of the statement repeatedly made that the Land League was the Irish people; that it was universal, and permeated the structure of Irish society. That this was so was proved by the fact that when the Government wanted to carry out evictions it could not get a horse or a car without purchasing them, and entering themselves upon the business of car owners and car drivers. The necessity of having such a staff was a convincing proof that the Government was detested by the great mass of the population of Ireland; that it was not the terrorism of the Land League that placed difficulties in their way, but the unanimous and stern determination of the people to afford no assistance in carrying out unjust and harsh evictions. Going on to another sub-head—subhead T—he found that the sum of £3,500 was set down as the value of the arms sent in under the Arms Act, and paid for in the shape of compensation. From day to day, and from night to night, there had been requisitions conducted on a grand scale by the police and the military, not only in the remote rural districts, but in the towns and villages; and was it credible that, after these extraordinary exertions in a country which they were told was flooded with arms, Her Majesty's Government had only recovered sufficient: to entitle the owners to receive £3,500 in the shape of compensation? Before he sat down he should have occasion to show in what manner the searches for arms had been conducted, and what vicious and wanton exasperation had been applied by the police, under the Arms Act, to the passions of the people. Under subhead S, it appeared that the Government, had paid some fortunate civilian, who was anonymous in the Return, a sum of £200 for having been injured by the Constabulary during a riot. He was exceedingly curious to learn the name of this fortunate civilian, and he would await with patient interest a declaration from the right hon. Gentleman, the Chief 1553 Secretary on the subject. The civilians in Ireland who had been severely wounded by the police during the conflicts which had taken place—the innocent persons without arms, who had committed no act of violence, who had no thought of acting against the law—the civilians who had been injured by the police during the past year in Ireland had been exceedingly numerous. The civilians actually killed by the police without cause or offence were not a few. He wanted to know, therefore, how it was that there was only one civilian who was to receive compensation? Why were the innocent men, women, and children, who had been bayonetted and shot down by the police not to be compensated? Why was the poor girl who was struck down and brutally assaulted by policemen in the West of Ireland with the butt-end of a musket not to be compensated? What was to be done with the families of the two poor men who were actually murdered? He had visited the cabins which these innocent men had occupied, the farms which they had tilled, and by their industry supported their families. He had seen their comely children barefooted walking by the roadside. The fathers of these children were killed on the public highway by charges of the buckshot of which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary demanded a further supply, and which had already wrought murder and ruin in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman wanted £4,000 more for the coming year. Why were the families of these murdered men not to be compensated, while this nameless civilian was to get £200? Was nothing to be done for the children and widows of the fathers and husbands who had been killed? He wished now, for a few moments, to draw the attention of the Committee to the manner in which the heads of the Constabulary Force had been made use of in putting down public liberty in Ireland. They would all have a clear memory of the series of Circulars issued by Colonel Hillier, the Chief of the Constabulary Force; and in regard to one of them the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, in express terms, avowed his responsibility. He presumed that the right hon. Gentleman would not be unwilling to avow his responsibility in regard to all of them. The first was a Circular in which fault was found with the police for not being suffi- 1554 ciently diligent and vigilant in suspecting persons in their vicinity and having them thrown into prison. Colonel Hillier invited his subordinates to worm themselves into the confidence of the people, to follow the people into their places of resort, and, by any means that could suggest themselves to the intelligence of the police, to wriggle their way into the hearts of the people, and in that way to obtain information to be used in imprisoning the unfortunate persons who might be tempted to place confidence in them. He (Mr. Sexton) solemnly protested against such a use of a civil force; and he asserted that it was base in the extreme to employ such a weapon in the midst of a people only too ready to place confidence in anyone, and to put such a force to so vile and base a purpose. The police were told by Colonel Hillier in the same Circular that they were not suspecting with sufficient alacrity. The right hon. Gentleman took credit to himself for the forbearance with which, in the earlier stages of the existence of the Coercion Act, he had applied it. How could the right hon. Gentleman reconcile that statement with the action of Colonel Hillier? If he was anxious to have only a few "suspects" in prison, why did he instruct Colonel Hillier to issue this Circular? or why did he sanction the issue by Colonel Hillier of a Circular saying to the police—"You are not diligent and efficient enough; you are not suspecting fast enough; we want more men in prison?" How was the right hon. Gentleman to reconcile his account of himself with the incitement to violence and unreasonable suspicion contained in the Circular of Colonel Hillier? Moreover, the police had now an official guide post recorded by which to direct their faculties in regard to whom they ought to suspect. The Land League had not at that time been proclaimed as an illegal and criminal association. The proclamation did not render it illegal if it was not illegal before; and if it was not illegal and criminal before, it was not illegal and criminal now. But, be that as it might, after it was declared to be illegal, the police were told, in terms plain enough for any intelligent man to understand, that the leaders of the Land League—parish priests, he supposed, who acted as presidents of the local branches, with their curates as secretaries; merchants, trades- 1555 men, and substantial farmers were the men who were fomenting and inciting to outrage, and were, therefore, the men who were to be suspected. He denounced the Circular as a deliberate attempt, through Colonel Hillier, to force the police—by playing upon their ambition, by playing upon their fear of dismissal and hope of promotion—to suspect men who were among the most peaceful, respectable, and orderly-minded persons in the country. This Circular was followed up by another which had already been denounced in the House of Commons, and he proposed now to refer very briefly to it. It was a Circular which instructed the police to make themselves the medium of offering money rewards to persons who would come forward secretly and give information to the Government—true or false—of crimes which had not been committed or perpetrated in the past, but which existed only in the brain and in the imagination, in the fancy or in the whim, of some person or persons. He challenged the records of the civilized world, unless, possibly, it was the records of the First Empire of France, to produce a parallel to the Circular of Colonel Hillier. In denouncing it, he did not speak theoretically, but by the light of experience; for, brief as had been the period during which that Circular had been issued, they had already seen the practical results of the inducements and seductions which it held out for the commission of perjury. He referred to the case of the man O'Donough. He was a Crown informer and had written a threatening letter, and there were certain circumstances which directed suspicion against the informer himself as the writer of the letter. The police accordingly instituted a search, and in the house of this Crown informer—the house of a man who had been tempted by this odious Circular to come forward and give evidence—was found a fac-simile of the threatening letter which he had sworn to have been sent by an innocent man. He supposed that even the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland would not now deny that the Crown was the guilty party. He implored the Government, if it was not too late, to consider the effect of these proceedings. Ireland was poor, and there would be found in it persons among the dregs of society 1556 who would only be too anxious to come forward and perjure themselves for the sake of a money reward. It was bad enough to offer a reward when a crime had actually been committed. He knew the evil results which had sprung from it. But how could the right hon. Gentleman hope to avoid the fabrication of evidence and the commission of perjury, leading to the condemnation of innocent men, if he held out, with a promise of secrecy, to the most degraded persons in the community, the offer of a reward for the arrest of suspected individuals? There was no safeguard or precaution whatever against the basest perjury. The common informer was told—"You may come and tell your lies, and commit your perjury with perfect safety. We will keep your secret. If you are unwilling to appear upon the table in Court, we will arrange that you shall not appear. You may tome and tell us, not upon oath, but in the whispering gallery of Dublin Castle, all the foul lies you have to utter against an innocent man. He will never know who did it, and you will be able to pocket the money undetected." He had also to complain of the manner in which the Constabulary Force had been used against two Societies in Ireland—first, the Political Prisoners' Aid Society; and, secondly, the Ladies' League. The Political Prisoners' Aid Society was founded for a humane and, unquestionably, a charitable purpose. It was founded for the purpose of raising funds, so that the "suspects" who had been thrown into the Irish gaols by the right hon. Gentleman for the purpose of preventing crime, and not for the purpose of punishment, should not be punished by being obliged to receive the prison fare. Surely the right hon. Gentleman would not contest the propriety and legality of such a purpose. Surely he did not wish that the hon. Gentlemen and respectable persons who had been thrown into prison under the Coercion Act should be compelled to eat the ordinary prison fare out of tin dishes that were only fit for beasts. The Government had not been able to kill or to stop that Society; but they had been able to harass and worry it, and to turn away timid men by a system of espionage and annoyance unparalleled in any civilized country. What happened was this. A meeting of the Political Prisoners' Aid Society was an- 1557 nounced to be held, and when it was about to be held, two or three constables entered the room, inquired the names of the Chairman and Secretary, and into the nature of the business. In a country like Ireland, where people were acquainted with the extraordinary arbitrary powers possessed by the police, and where they knew that the liberty of every man was at the mercy of the police, the effect of two or three constables entering a room, with an air of mystery and horror, and asking the names and business of all who might happen to be present, might easily be judged. It produced the effect intended by the Government, that effect being to stop the proceedings of the Society. And in this way the Coercion Act was used, not only as an engine of prevention, but as an engine of punishment; and Town Councillors, members of Boards of Guardians, and other respectable citizens were induced to refrain from taking part in the good work of the Society. With regard to the Ladies' League, there were individual members of that League who might have given to the people political advice on various occasions. He supposed that women had as good a right as men to give advice. Indeed, some women were better qualified to give political advice to the people of Ireland than some Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench. A good many of them had given advice to their fellow-countrymen and women as to the best means of passing through the terrible crisis which had afflicted Ireland; but he did not know how their action affected the action of the Ladies' League. The Ladies' League was founded for charitable purposes—namely, to give aid to the "suspects;" to attend to the wants of the starving wives and families of the prisoners; to carry aid and comfort, shelter, food, and clothing to the victims of the Irish landlords—victims to whom the Land Act had nothing to give and whom it failed to protect. It was claimed that all the increase of the Police Force in Ireland, the issue of Colonel Hillier's Police Circulars, all this mean and evasive use of the Police Force against the Political Prisoners' Aid Society and the Ladies' League had been for the purpose of bringing about and aiding good government. The ladies, however, had proved themselves somewhat too good a match for the police of the right hon. Gentle- 1558 man, because, when the constables visited the meetings of the Ladies' League, the ladies ingeniously converted the assembly into a homely and harmless tea party, or they took a rural walk, and, having tired out the police constables, returned for the transaction of business. Who, after this, would deny that the ladies had justified their claim, by their intelligence and their ingenuity, to take part in controlling the affairs of the country? He was glad to hear that the police had given up visiting their meetings [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: No!] The police did not now visit them, or if they did it was furtively and casually, where the ladies were more timid than in some other places, or the police constables more courageous. There was no little difficulty in bringing forward adequately in that House the case of the Irish police, because the Government, he understood, were using every means in their power to prevent information with respect to violent and criminal acts on the part of the police reaching the knowledge of Members of that House. He had just received from one of the numerous editors of the popular Press in Ireland, whom the right hon. Gentleman had under lock and key in Clonmel Gaol—Mr. John M'Cormack, proprietor of a newspaper in Tipperary—the following communication:—
§ "Suspects' Quarters, Clonmel Gaol, "February 20, 1882.
§ "I beg to inform yon that on the 15th inst. I wrote you a true statement of facts relative to the administration of the Coercion Act in Tipperary. The following day the Governor brought me back the communication, stating that as it contained charges against the police in Tipperary he could not take it on himself to have it forwarded to you; but, at my request, he would have it forwarded to Dublin Castle "
§
—the bottomless pit of such communications—
which would only involve a delay of a few days. To this course I assented, and I would now thank you very much to let me know whether you hare received the communication from the Castle or not.
§
He thought he probably knew by this time.
Of course, I cannot here reiterate the charges set forth in the document; but it is of the utmost importance that they should not be kidnapped by the Castle officials. If you have not received the communication I think it would be well to ask the reason why; and also permission for me to forward you a copy of the document which I still retain.
§
That document, impounded nine days ago by the Governor of Clonmel Gaol and forwarded to the authorities of Dublin Castle, had certainly been kidnapped by the officials, for it had not been allowed to reach him (Mr. Sexton), and he merely mentioned the fact to illustrate the vast difficulties which Members of the House of Commons had to encounter in endeavouring to bring the conduct of the authorities under the notice of the House. There were, however, one or two cases which he should like to mention to the Committee as an illustration of the brutality which this Police Force had lately used against the people. A correspondent wrote to him as follows:—
I take this opportunity of bringing under your notice a specimen of police brutality that occurred in this locality only a short time since. On the afternoon, about 2 o'clock, of Sunday, the 23rd of October last, two young men, Bernard Cowan and John Brien, were walking along the public road at a place called New town, near Killeigh, in this county (Meath), when they were met by a party of police, under the command of Sub-Inspector Allen, of Tullamore, and were at once ordered to return. After some little hesitation they turned hack, and were proceeding in the direction of their homes, when the sub-Inspector ordered his men to 'punch them on before you,' and two or three of the police at once left the ranks, and, running after the young men, 'punched' them so violently that Cowan was obliged to take to his bed, where he has since been confined, and his life despaired of for most of the time—one of his lungs being seriously injured. Dr. Ridley, of Tullamore, pronounced him in a dying state at one time, and he is still in a very precarious way. There was no crowd nor excitement whatever at the time of the occurrence—only these two young men. There was to have been a Land League meeting, which was proclaimed, and the people did not attempt to hold it. I have made minute inquiries about this matter from Cowan's father, and the above I believe to be the facts of the case. It has cost him all he possessed to pay doctors, &c, for the last four months, as the state of his son was such that he could not be removed to the county hospital. Clearly, Mr. Forster (the philanthropist) is bound to give compensation in this case.
§
The Committee would remember that, a short time ago, he had noticed the fact that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary proposed to compensate some unknown civilian, and to give him a sum of £200 for having been wounded by the Constabulary during a riot. Now, if the Constabulary had a legal right to wound a man at any time, it was while a riot was in progress, but here they
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had the Constabulary, upon the command of a superior officer, punching a young man upon a lonely road at a time when no breach of the peace was being committed. He wished to know, therefore, if the right hon. Gentleman proposed to compensate him for his long illness and the ruin of his father; and, if not, why not? Had the right hon. Gentleman noticed a resolution which had been passed within the last few days by the Town Commissioners of Ballina? It illustrated the manner in which searches for arms were being conducted in Ireland, and showed a reflective light upon the agencies at work in that country. The briefest way in which he could bring the matter before the Honse was by reading the official resolution passed by the Town Commissioners of Ballina at a meeting of the Commissioners held at their office on the 17th of the present month, Patrick Dillon, Esq., in the chair. The resolution was as follows:—
The Town Commissioners of Ballina, situate in the counties of Mayo and Sligo, in special meeting assembled, hereby enter their solemn protest against a most wanton act of officious-ness on the part of the Constabulary authorities here. On yesterday the Sub-Inspector, F. J. Ball, Esquire, with a force of almost 40 men—nor was this all. for they were supplemented by a detachment of military—searched mercantile and private houses, in some cases tearing up yards and floors in Ballina, so famed for its peace and order, as well as, we may add, the surrounding country, but without any effect, as none were found, after the most rigid searching. Among these was the premises of Messrs. John Dillon and Co., one of the wealthiest commercial houses in the Province of Connaught, and known all over the Realm for its probity and honour, on pretence, as alleged, that some of Mr. Dillon's young men had arms without licence.
§
John Dillon was a namesake and a relative of the hon. Member for Tipperary. [An hon. MEMBER: That is a mistake.] He was told that he was mistaken, and that John Dillon was not a relative of the hon. Member for Tipperary. The similarity of the name had misled him; but, at any rate, John Dillon was a man of extremely moderate opinions, and connected with one of the wealthiest houses in the Province. The resolution went on to say—
In this case we beg to say on a mere intimation to the respected proprietor that such a state of things existed, that he would at once cheerfully have set matters right, provided he found the slightest grounds for so doing, Instead of this, a cordon of police was drawn before his
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place of business, thus heaping indignity, beyond measure, on himself and his great establishment.
§
He wished the Committee to observe that this was a respectable merchant of great probity and extremely moderate opinions, and that a cordon of police was drawn before his place of business. The resolution proceeded—
In the name of justice, and for the fair fame of Government itself, we earnestly pray for an investigation into the method of procedure. If the country he, unhappily, placed in the awful position it is in, to put the matter as mildly as possible, let individuals at least be protected from the whims, the caprice, or ill-judgment of individuals. We therefore very respectfully submit this case for the serious consideration of Her Majesty's Representative in Ireland, in order that His Excellency may be graciously pleased to direct that a full, a prompt, and searching inquiry may be made, so as to allay the feeling engendered in the public mind, which is so painfully aroused at these gross invasions of the liberties of the subject.
(Signed) JOHN CAWLAN, Town Clerk.
§ That was a resolution passed unanimously by the municipal body of the town of Ballina—a body not representing extreme opinions, but including men of all positions in society, of all grades, and of all political opinions—as thoroughly respectable a body as any in Ireland. He called upon the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, before the debate was over, to grant to this body of gentlemen the redress they sought—namely, a full and searching inquiry. He had now to refer to what happened lately in the town of Loughrea, and in reference to which the following communication had been placed in his hands:—
§ "Loughrea, Feb. 17, 1882.
§ "I feel it my duty, in the interest of public justice, to lay before you the following facts with a view to your bringing under the notice of Parliament the state of things in this hapless town. That on the night of the 13th inst., about 10.15 P.M., 11 persons—young men and boys—were arrested under the Arms Act by the military and police, and were detained in custody till noon on the following day, 11½ hours of which were 'put up' in a cell stated to be more like unto a pound than that of a place of detention for human beings."
§
[An hon. MEMBER: In one cell.] Yes; in one cell; in the same cell.
The persons arrested wore at that time returning home from a concert given by the local Ladies' Land League in aid of the Political Prisoners' Sustentation Fund, which I venture will explain the seemingly pre-arranged action of those rusty 'resources of civilization.'
§
He presumed the offence was that the music produced by these ladies were simply harmony to the ears of these young men, however troublesome the ladies of the Ladies' League might be to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland.
Most of them took part in the performance, which will show that they were not of the rowdy class. That this protracted detention was an outrage, since there had been no charge preferred against them, and that the resident magistrate was living within calling distance of the barracks. That such arrests occur nightly with similar results. That no person is safe from such outrage whose business may require him out-of-doors during the evening"—an exaggeration of the Curfew Law. "That the liberty of the subject rests with the good will and pleasure of the police, who trample upon it as I have stated. That this town is like that of one after an unsuccessful resistance to siege, where military and police, not law, reign supreme, patrols of which occupy our flag-way from 6 P.M., whereby the citizens are obliged, when out, to walk on muddy streets, 'weather permitting.' I trust you may be able to gather from this hurried letter an idea of our grievance, which I am sure you will lose no time in utilizing.
§ When these young men were arrested, why did not the Sub-Inspector or the Head Constable send for the resident magistrate, and lay the charge before him on the instant, in which case they would have been released or regularly committed? They did nothing of the kind, but let the resident magistrate sleep, and put these 11 young men in a cell more like a pound, keeping them there until the next day. Instead of preserving the peace and putting down outrages, which he had innocently presumed this Police Force was paid for, they themselves—"the resources of civilization" of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister—perpetrated the outrages themselves. He had now, in the last place, to refer to the famous case which occurred at Belmullet, in which the Coroner's Jury had returned a verdict of wilful murder against the Constabulary, and which raised the question of the utility of holding Coroners' inquests in Ireland at all. In several instances, one of which occurred in the town he had the honour to represent (Sligo), Coroners' inquests had returned verdicts of manslaughter or wilful murder against members of the Constabulary Force; but in every one of them the Government had abstained from taking action against the police. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney 1563 General for Ireland had interposed his legal authority to protect the police. In one the Grand Jury ignored the bill, and in the others no action whatever was taken, thus giving the police impunity to shoot and kill man, woman, and child. Coroners' Juries properly sworn and empanelled might find verdicts of wilful murder; but the invariable result was that the jurisdiction of the most ancient Court of the Realm was snuffed out. The Attorney General interposed his legal power to save the police from a legal prosecution; and the moral conveyed to the mind of the police constable was that if he shot with a little more discretion he might be promoted earlier. At Belmullet the occurrence arose out of the fact that 43 policemen, with Head Constable and Sub-Inspector, armed with 40 rounds of buckshot and bullets, went with a summons-server to serve summonses for £1 16s. 8d. due in the district of Graumpill. For these rates the parties summoned were not primarily liable. Being rated under £4, the owner, not the occupier, was the person rated, and his name appeared in the rate books in accordance with 6 & 7 Will. IV. c. 92. The owner in this case was Mr. Isodore Blake. The poor rate collector—whose name was O'Malley—was Blake's agent; and, instead of taking against him any of the numerous and effective courses pointed out in the Statute, he proceeded against the tenants, who were liable only secondarily. O'Malley admitted on cross-examination that Blake always paid these poor rates, and would have to do so this time if any legal proceedings had been instituted against him. The sins of the police sub-divided and classified themselves under different heads. There was, first, the sin of suggestion by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary; then the sin of Colonel Hillier in issuing unjustifiable directions; then the sin of his subordinates in not waiting for the necessary verbal orders from the Head Constable. The police had no business with the summons-server, as they could produce no order from anyone in authority over them, nor any requisition from the summons-server. The latter swore that he had frequently served summonses in Graumpill, and was never molested—that he would not require police protection if going only to Graumpill. He had the police with him 1564 that day in other places; and O'Malley, the rate collector and agent, swore that he had served the notices preceding the summonses there a month before, and had met with not the least opposition, so that no breach of the peace could have been anticipated there. Every policeman examined admitted that not a single man had been hit when the orders "fix swords," "into them" was given by the Sub-Inspector. The result was that the poor girl Ellen MacDonough was dangerously stabbed. [An hon. MEMBER: Killed!] Yes; for it was upon her body that the inquest was held. Dr. Mullins proved that every person attended by him—about 17 in number—with the exception of old Mrs. Deane, who was shot at the end of the business, was wounded from behind, showing the correctness of the evidence that the people ran away as soon as charged upon, and of Constable Terence O'Reilly, who swore that "the firing was kept up at intervals until the people got behind the stacks." The evidence was that the police fired 43 shots in fives and sixes. The police acted as if they were a military body in the field fighting against the enemy. They fired 43 shots, in parties of five and six, and they continued so to fire until the enemy—the unfortunate, unarmed, defenceless people—had not only run away, but had got under the stacks. Not a single policeman was wounded throughout, except one man who got a blow on the nose and another on the leg—no trace of the wounds being visible two days afterwards. One witness swore that the police were "mortal drunk" when they first charged upon the people. Several said they had the sign of drink. One man picked up and produced in Court a nearly empty bottle of poteen, illicit whisky, which he swore he saw a policeman drop while attacking the people in the field. If there was any attempt at contradiction of this evidence, it could have been sworn that they bought gallons of illicit whisky that morning. He invited the right hon. Gentleman, or those who were responsible for the unmerited suffering inflicted by the police, to account, if they could—and to use their own phrase—for this application of "the resources of civilization." The mother of Ellen MacDonough, the girl who was killed, swore—and she was not contradicted, or even cross-examined upon it—that on the night of the 1565 shooting they arrested, amongst others, her blind son, who had been confined to a sick bed fur several days previous. He was an epileptic—the arrest threw him into a fit of convulsions. Ellen MacDonough was lying bleeding on the floor. The police and summons-server entered, and with oaths kicked the pig into the fire—scattering the ashes about until the sparks were literally quenched in the blood of Ellen MacDonough. And in that supreme moment of human agony, while the desolate mother stood with her frothing epileptic boy on the one hand, and her bleeding dying girl on the other, they served upon her a poor rate summons for 7s. 7d. which her landlord should have paid. On the night of the shooting these police were in a state of intoxication. They fired on the people, murdered this girl, and then arrested every man they could find who they suspected might be witnesses against them. They took those men to Castlebar Gaol, 40 miles away, on outside cars, some of the men being without their coats, many of them bleeding, and at least two dangerously wounded by buckshot; and at the gaol they were put on plank beds and kept there until they could be bailed out. He was informed that it was the official business of the Attorney General for Ireland to sustain the Coroner in that case. The police did all they could to pack the jury, and the Chief Secretary felt such an interest in screening the police in that case that he actually lent to Mr. Bolton, the Crown Solicitor of Tipperary, whom he sent down to the inquiry, a copy of Sir John Jervis's book on the law of Coroners' inquests, which was out of print, and could not have been obtained.
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)Mr. Bolton was not sent down by the Government, and had no instructions whatever to represent the Government in any way.
§ MR. SEXTONsaid, Mr. Bolton was a legal official in the service of the Government; he was Solicitor to the Crown at Tipperary; but he appeared to take action out of his district. Was it usual for Crown Solicitors, on their own motion, to go beyond their districts to other parts of the country?
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)If 1566 they are employed by anyone engaging their services professionally.
§ MR. SEXTONsaid, at any rate, Mr. Bolton had a copy of the book he had mentioned, which was out of print. Mr. Bolton appeared at the inquest, and what did he do? He thought the jury which had been empanelled was too favourable for the people, and he prevailed on the Coroner to dismiss that jury, although they had already viewed the body of the girl, and the new jury was empanelled at the instance of Mr. Bolton. He could see no other object in this but the screening of the police, and whatever Mr. Bolton's instructions were, he appeared, in effect, for the Crown. The jury found a verdict of wilful murder against the Sub-Inspector. But what steps did the Attorney General for Ireland mean to take with regard to that verdict, and other verdicts of wilful murder against members of the Constabulary? It was very shocking—and it was very painful to him—to have to make these complaints, especially as the Coercion Act was only intended to be used for preventing crime; and he did not believe that in the history of the world a more horrible instance could be found than the action in this case of the bloodthirsty janissaries who killed the
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)The direct appeal of the hon. Member induces me to rise at once. I have already assured the House that I should most carefully consider this matter, and I have it at this moment under my consideration. I am resolved not to wait for the determination of the proceedings which I have instituted in the Queen's Bench. I shall consider all the depositions, and not shrink from the responsibility of any action that may be necessary on my part. If I find that the summary given of this case by the hon. Member is substantially accurate—as, no doubt, from the point of view of the person who wrote it, it is, although, as far as I have had an opportunity of investigating the matter, I think it is given with some considerable colour—and if, when I have read the depositions, I come to the conclusion that there is a case for investigation, I shall take the proper means of submitting the case to a jury fully and without prejudice. Mr. Bolton is the Crown Solicitor for 1567 the County Tipperary; but, apart from his duty as Crown Solicitor, he is at liberty to follow his own Profession of a solicitor for anyone who requires his services. On this occasion he had no instructions whatever, directly or indirectly, either from me or from any Member of the Government, to proceed to Belmullet, or to act for the Constabulary. The Constabulary are entitled to defend themselves, and they employed Mr. Bolton, who went down as their Solicitor, and not as a Solicitor on behalf of the Crown. How he got possession of the volume referred to, which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary never saw, and none of us knew he had, I cannot explain. I only repeat that he did not appear in the case as in any way representing the Crown. The circumstances which the hon. Member has stated to the Committee are, of course, such that I am obliged to ask the House to suspend its judgment until the evidence has been properly investigated. The hon. Member, or the person who informed him, has, with the skill of an advocate, selected those parts which represent his case most strongly, and does not dwell upon those parts which would probably afford an answer. But if this is a proper case to be further investigated, no matter who are the persons concerned, it shall be investigated. In reference to the question of the summons, it would not be possible for the police or anybody else to investigate the legality or illegality of such summonses. In point of law, these summonses are to be assumed to be correct. The immediate landlord of these small holdings, rated at or under £4, is the person who is primarily responsible for the rate; but the collectors who are to receive the money are entitled to obtain it from the occupier, who then could deduct the amount from what was due to the landlord, or recover it over from him. The summonses in this case were, presumably, properly issued by the person responsible for that step; and the police were bound to see that the person serving the summons had ordinary protection. In the charges which the hon. Member has made against the Constabulary he has informed the Committee that all these occurrences have taken place in consequence of the action of the police; and the hon. Member then proceeded to 1568 establish that proposition by allegations which were certainly as singular as the proposition itself. He tells us that Ireland is singularly free from disorder, and then complains that in this Vote there is an item for Transport Services which he, I suppose, considers not necessary; but he explains the necessity himself, by showing that the Constabulary, whose duty is to perform their orders, are so effectually prevented from doing it by the state of the country that they are unable to hire the most ordinary means of locomotion, and are obliged to get their own vehicles and horses for conveyance in the discharge of their duty from one part of the country to another. I would ask the Committee whether that is what they would consider a country singularly free from disorder? Suppose that in England the Constabulary, in the discharge of their ordinary duties, were unable to obtain the means of conveyance at the inns, hotels, or livery stables, what would the people of any other country say? Would they pronounce England, under these circumstances, to be a perfectly orderly country? How can it be contended, when the Constabulary cannot get the ordinary means of locomotion, and the Government have to supply them, that the country is in a state of order? Of course, these things have to be paid for; and I think the Committee will have no hesitation in regarding this Vote as one that is necessary. The next objection which the hon. Member raises against the police is also very singular. He complains that the police have been employed in what he terms detective service, for the purpose of gaining the confidence of the people. How are the police to discharge their duties? Is it not by obtaining the clue to the perpetrators and concocters of crimes; and, surety, it does not rest with the criminals themselves to complain that the police have taken means to get into the confidence of the people in order to discover crime in its inception. I think the House will be of opinion that it is the duty of the police to resort to such lawful means as may enable them to discover crime; and the only real objection is that they have not been able to be so successful in detecting crime in these and other ways as could have been hoped for. The hon. Member says the country is poor, and that the people 1569 yield to the seduction of money. The country is poor; and it is money that has permeated and seduced every phase of society. It is the Land League money, which the hon. Member himself stated the other day in the House, and I am sure stated accurately, had amounted in the last month to £20,000. This, I assume, has been circulated among the people; but what was that circulated for? Was it not to set the tenants against the landlords? [Mr. T. D. SULLIVAN: For the relief of distress.] Is not this actually spending money to keep up the disorderly spirit in Ireland? Imagine, for a moment, what the position of the Constabulary is. Is it not the duty of the police to try to discover the authors and concocters of crime before they put their criminal purposes into execution? Then the hon. Member says the Ladies' Land League has baffled the police. That shows the enormous difficulties the police have to deal with in Ireland. I read recently a judgment of the Queen's Bench Division in Ireland, in which it was stated that the Court could see no difference between the Land League and what was called the Ladies' Land League, although it was pretended that the operations of the latter were under the colour of acts of charity. Is it not really an abuse of terms to call an act of charity that which, in fact, is keeping up dissension and conflict of classes, and preventing the country from recovering its orderly condition? As long as there is this dissension and conflict, and as long as it is fomented by hon. Members, or anyone else, crime will be the natural concomitant, if not the direct outcome, of such agitation; and, as long as there is crime, this country would be failing in its duty if it did not sustain the Government in providing military and police to try and meet the emergency. Then, with regard to the Political Prisioners' Aid Society, who would object to such a society if it were bonâ fide and fairly administered? But if you find that, under colour of meetings of the Prisoners' Aid Society, exactly the same thing is done as is done under the colour of the Ladies' Land League, is it not again an abuse of terms? Does it not freeze the very heart of charity to find that these, which ought to be charitable bodies, are used for illegal and criminal purposes? Is, then, the country 1570 to be denuded of police? Is one class of the country to be given up to the other? Are tenants and landlords to be left to wage unchecked a struggle of physical strength between them? Suppose hon. Gentlemen succeeded to-morrow—suppose the authority of the Queen was driven out of Ireland—what would be their first duty? To establish order for themselves. If the disloyal classes were set up and the loyal classes frustrated, would it not be the duty of whatever kind of a Government there was to keep down the disorderly? They would say—"You may say that you are loyal subjects, but we do not think so, and will keep you down." Is it not the first duty of every Government to try to keep order? How are you to do that without police? It is telling a twice-told tale to appeal to the recollection of the House on these matters. Not now only, but for the last year and a-half, hon. Members have read in the daily journals of the occurrences in Ireland; and I would ask the House, whether there is anyone in the House who can venture to affirm that Ireland is an orderly country? Surely it requires no argument to establish that which is as clear as that we have light in this House. If, then, Ireland is in a disorderly state, what are we to do? Are we to have the police; and, if we are to have them, are we not to sustain them? Are they to be reviled by hon. Gentlemen opposite because they have done their duty? I think the House will come to the conclusion that, if anything, we have had too few police instead of too many; and I think the House would rather be disposed to increase the Vote than to reduce it.
EARL PERCYsaid, he desired to ask the noble Lord the Secretary to the Treasury one or two questions with respect to statements made in a former debate, in order to give the noble Lord an opportunity of considering the necessity of correcting some of those statements. The first was that the Estimates for the last few years showed an average increase each year in the cost of the Irish Constabulary of £12,000. The increase on the original Estimates for this year appeared to be £50,000, but the normal increase was £12,000, He would like the noble Lord to correct him if he were wrong; but this was what he found to be the fact. It was perfectly 1571 true that the average increase had been something like £12,000 a-year, if a great number of years were taken together and no discrimination was made between them. But he found that in the year ending March, 1874, the estimated charge for the Royal Constabulary in Ireland was £983,779. That was an increase of £100,000 over the previous year, and it was taken notice of in the House at the time, the answer being that it was incurred in consequence of the erection of barracks and other works in connection with the Constabulary which were then thought to be necessary. In the year following there was a further increase of £78,439, which he presumed was in consequence of the continuation of those works; but from that time he found that the increase was very much less than was stated by his noble Friend, the average increase for the year ending March, 1876, to March, 1880, having been only £7,272, or something a little more than half that given by the noble Lord. The noble Lord's result was arrived at by taking the average increase of the last two years; and therefore he thought an appeal to the noble Lord to state what was the increased cost of police in consequence of the existing state of things in Ireland was fully justified, and that the noble Lord had unintentionally given an answer which would mislead the House. Then he wished to know why it was that while the numbers of the Royal Constabulary had for many years been decreasing, yet the cost had gone on steadily increasing, although not in the ratio mentioned by the noble Lord? And, further, he would ask whether the Government would lay on the Table a Return giving the numbers and costs of the Police in Ireland for every year during the last 10 years, showing the average increase of cost each year.
§ LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, if the noble Lord would refer to the original Estimate of last year, he would see that it showed an increase of £63,000. One item, however, showed a diminution of £4,472. He had not thought it necessary in his answer to the noble Lord to take notice of the diminutions of pensions, as he did not think that had anything to do with the present state of Ireland; and, on the whole, lie rather thought his estimate of £12,000 a year was not too high. To 1572 show that he had not over-estimated the increase he would give figures for 1876. The net cost for 1876 was £l,028,000. The Estimates which were prepared by the late Government for the year 1881 showed a gross cost of £1,134,000; but if they deducted from that the estimated receipts of £30,000, the net cost would be £1,104,000. That was to say, in five years they had increased by £76,000?
§ LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHThe net cost in 1876 was £1,028,000; in 1877, £1,053,000; in 1878, £1,053,000; in 1879, £1,059,000; in 1880, £1,070,000. The normal increase had been £12,000, and that was partly due to an increased rate of pay given in recent years.
§ MR. O'SHEAwished to ask the Chief Secretary, whether it was the fact that during the recent riots in Limerick, as a party of the Constabulary were being marched through the streets, one of the men in the rear fired at random and shot a girl who was standing in her own doorway; whether there had been any investigation into that occurrence; whether the officer examined the rifles of his men on their return to barracks; and, whether the right hon. Gentleman had any information to give on the subject? He also wished to know, whether County Inspector Smith, of Clare, during an eviction some months ago, had brandished his revolver, and, calling the crowd "cowardly dogs," challenged them to "come on;" whether any investigation had been made; and whether during such investigation County Inspector Smith had denied having used that expression, although it appeared that in cross-examination before the magistrates County Inspector Smith was unable to deny having used the expression? He also desired to know, whether any investigation had taken place upon an occurrence between the Resident Magistrate of County Clare, Captain M'Ternan, and the same County Inspector, when, on the magistrate fining one of the Constabulary for assaulting a prisoner, Smith threatened Captain M'Ternan with what was then the direst threat he could use—namely, that he would bring Mr. Clifford Lloyd down on him?
§ MR. REDMONDsaid, the Committee had had to-night another evidence that there was no task so congenial to the 1573 mind and temper of the Attorney General for Ireland as that of reviling his own countrymen. His speech showed that, whilst he was as reckless in his statements as on recent occasions, he was not disposed in any way even to argue the questions. He dealt with the question of outrages, and stated that the necessity for the police was created by the outrages. That was no answer to those who said that the outrages were in a large measure due to the action of the police. He (Mr. Redmond) would have liked the right hon. and learned Gentleman to refer more to the Circulars which had been issued by the police—by Colonel Hillier—which the Irish Members were convinced had been mainly instrumental in increasing the number of outrages which had marked recent months in Ireland. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had spoken of the people whom they represented as criminals, and said it did not lie with criminals to make charges against the police.
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)I referred to those who had committed crimes and outrages.
§ MR. REDMONDregretted that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had not said what he meant. The complaint was of police espionage and interference with the private affairs of people on whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman would not venture to cast any aspersion; and he regretted that the only Member of the Government who had spoken did not enter into the case of the killing of a girl at Belmullet, mentioned by the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton), but only said he would, as Law Officer, deal with the question whether or not the Sub-Inspector should be tried for murder. He would like to know if that Sub-Inspector had been suspended from his duties? Why did he not deal with that case as an instance of the misconduct of the police in Ireland? They had been guilty of cowardly conduct towards the people, and the. Government were not warranted in coming and making a demand for £116,000 as extra money to be given to the police to carry out the Chief Secretary's rule with as much severity as they could. Allusion had been made to the inability of the police to get cars to go to evictions, and it was 1574 said that in England that would not be tolerated. But were the police in England called upon to carry out an unjust and hateful law for the eviction of people who could not pay unjust rents? If the right hon. and learned Gentleman could not show that, he could not enforce his analogy; and the fact that the police had not been able to obtain cars was, to his (Mr. Redmond's) mind, not only not an evidence of disorder, but an evidence that the people had shown their sympathies in the right direction—that their sympathies wore with the starving populations whom the landlords, incited and encouraged by words from the Treasury Bench, were endeavouring to exterminate in whole districts of the country. If such a state of things existed in England for one moment, he was convinced the police would find it every bit as difficult to obtain the means of locomotion as the police in Ireland; and he sincerely hoped that the difficulties which had been thrown in the way of the police in the past would not be diminished in the future. The right hon. Gentleman had also said Ireland was a poor country, and that it was the money of the Land League that caused this state of things. That was a charge which had been continually made by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and one that the right hon. and learned Gentleman was very fond of; but it did not lie with him, as a salaried officer of an alien Government in Ireland, to talk about the seductions of money. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman were not a salaried officer of the Government he might be found taking an independent attitude on the condition of Ireland. But, no! Whatever was said by his Chiefs he would get up and assist them, and argue in favour of any line the Government might choose to adopt. This question of the Land League money was one upon which a great deal of misapprehension existed in the country. It was a mistake to suppose that that money was entirely, or even for the most part, contributed by the expatriated so us of Ireland. If that were true, it would not be anything of which the Irish people need be ashamed. It would rather be a proof that the government of the Irish people had been grievous in the past; that Irishmen, driven out of Ireland to other parts of the world, had carried 1575 with them the recollection of their grievances, and had hoarded up their money and sent it home to help the tight against a system which had ruined and expatriated them. But the right hon. and learned Gentleman and other Gentlemen forgot that a very large proportion of that Land League money had been contributed by the very people who were said to have been seduced by the money. He should suppose that £100,000 had been subscribed by the people themselves during this movement; £20,000 had been subscribed for the support of the prisoners, and £25,000 in support of the traversers in the recent State trials; and he could quote other large sums of money which had been sent by the people in support of the Land League, from local organizations, in addition to many thousands of pounds contributed in various localities, not sent up to the central body, but used for local needs. Those were all proofs that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had cast an unfounded, a malicious, and cowardly sneer at the Irish people in accusing them of having been seduced—and he used the word with its worst meaning—by Land League money. Two subjects were alluded to by the right hon. and learned Gentleman on which he (Mr. Redmond) wanted to say a word, and then he should dismiss them. The first of those subjects was the Prisoners' Aid Society in Ireland, and he could only characterize the statements of the right hon. and learned Gentleman in regard to that Society as absolutely baseless. The statements of the Attorney General for Ireland were that although the ostensible objects of that Society were not only not of a reprehensible but even of a laudable character, they were being carried out by illegal and criminal means, and that under the cover of those objects illegal and criminal ends were sought to be obtained by the promoters of that movement. The statement was false; it was as false as many of the assertions made on Irish matters this Session by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He (Mr. Redmond) spoke from personal knowledge and he maintained that when he spoke from personal knowledge, and when he gave the facts of individual cases, his words ought to carry just as much weight as the general statements, un- 1576 supported by any evidence whatever, which had fallen from the right hon. and learned Gentleman. In the borough of Wexford, with which he was intimately connected, a Prisoners' Aid Society had been started. It was started as soon as the prisoners in the different gaols generously resolved that they would not live on the money which had. been subscribed for the assistance of evicted families, but would throw themselves on the prison diet. In the Prisoners' Aid Society, in Wexford, there were to be found men and women of almost every class in the community; men of various shades of politics; men who, in very many instances, did not approve of the course of action which had been pursued by many of the men arrested under the Coercion Act. There were ladies connected with the Society who up to that time had never been heard of in the political arena, who certainly, since the establishment of that Society, had never, by resolution or speech or act, on their part endeavoured to convert a purely charitable society into a political one. What had been the action of the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his Government towards the Society? He had in his possession letters telling him that at every meeting which had been held of the Society there had been constables and sub-constables sent by the orders of the Government. At the first two or three meetings the police, with the demeanour of bullies and cowards, endeavoured to intimidate the ladies assembled; but, fortunately, the ladies were not entirely unprotected, because there were a few of their male friends present, and the determination and firmness shown by those gentlemen had the effect of somewhat moderating the demeanour of the enterprizing constables. From that day every meeting had been attended by constables. They had taken the names of the persons, and had by their very presence been a standing insult to the people who attended the meetings. If the Chief Secretary in- tended to entertain them with one of his charming speeches, he would like him to give them some proof of the assertion which was made by the Attorney General for Ireland that the Prisoners' Aid Society contemplated or endeavoured to attain illegal and criminal ends. If he could not adduce 1577 some evidence of that, it was his duty to disavow what had been said by the Attorney General for Ireland. It was altogether unworthy of a man who filled a responsible position like that of Attorney General for Ireland to rise in his place and make broad assertions without venturing to adduce the slightest evidence. What the Attorney General for Ireland, however, had said in regard to the Prisoners' Aid Society was only on a par with the statement he made not long ago respecting the Ladies' Land League. Amongst other things the right hon. and learned Gentleman had charged the Ladies' Land League with circulating illegal documents in Ireland. The Attorney General for Ireland would satisfy them very much if he would tell them what proof he had that the Ladies' League had distributed illegal documents, and whether his assertion was based upon evidence in his possession or based entirely upon his own fertile imagination. If he had evidence let him produce it. It had been said the Ladies' Land League had been used to keep up disorder in Ireland. Let them have evidence of that. He objected altogether to those general statements. Let Members of the Government get up and give them proofs of these charges. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) had stated that, no doubt, individual Members of the Ladies' Land League had taken upon themselves, acting upon their own responsibility, to make political speeches. He (Mr. Redmond) presumed they were as much entitled to do that as any other subjects of the Queen, and he must say it was rather a novel doctrine that a society was to be bound by the statements of every member belonging to it. They invariably found that during a Recess statements were made by Members of the Government which certainly did not represent the opinions of the Cabinet; and it followed that if there was to be independence of thought and action, an entire Cabinet, or body, or society was not to be bound by every word and action of ladies or gentlemen belonging to it. The attempt to prove, by means of speeches made by individual members, that the Ladies' Land League was engaged in illegal work had utterly failed. From the first the object of the Ladies' Land League 1578 had been a charitable one. The Attorney General for Ireland well knew that large sums of money were weekly distributed, through the agency of the Ladies' Land League, to support evicted families—to support the families of men who were unable to pay their rent, and to the support of families of men, who, by the exercise of an unjust and arbitrary power which, under the new Land Act, was still left in the hands of the landlord, no matter how unjust and extortionate his demands might be, had been turned out upon the roadside. Did the Chief Secretary for Ireland know that only a few days ago 18 families of evicted tenants applied for admission to the workhouse in Limerick, and they were told there was no accommodation for them? He believed that 100 families in Tipperary had made a similar application, but had been turned away. He wanted to know, if the Ladies' Land League was a criminal association, would the Government save from starvation evicted families? He wanted to know what measures this philanthropic Government, headed by the philanthropic Chief Secretary for Ireland, were going to take to save the people, who, under——
THE CHAIRMANI must point out that the hon. Gentleman is travelling very far indeed from the question of the Constabulary Vote.
§ MR. REDMONDsaid, he was sorry he had travelled beyond proper limits; he was led away by statements made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General fur Ireland. He would, however, bring his remarks back to the exact point by saying that the Ladies' Land League, which he maintained was, in the main, a charitable and benevolent and laudable Society, had been interfered with unduly and in a cowardly way by the Government through the action of the police. The conduct of the police towards the Ladies' Land League had been most unwarrantable. He had in his hand a letter from a lady who wrote from Miltown Malbay, which had now acquired a bad reputation owing to its association with the name of Mr. Clifford Lloyd. His correspondent stated that when she was paying a visit to a private friend of hers—Mrs. Dr. O'Brien—in the town of Miltown Malbay, the 1579 police knocked at the door. They were refused admittance; but they forced an entry, and in a most insulting manner interrogated the ladies, and did not leave until they had apparently satisfied themselves there were no Land Leaguers hiding under the table or behind the curtains. Was not that an exercise of power on the part of the police which was calculated to promote disorder, to exasperate the people and drive them to commit acts of violence? It was his firm conviction that the presence of the police amongst the people of Ireland had almost invariably the effect of promoting disorder instead of quelling it. At large popular demonstrations in Ireland he had often noticed, in the midst of a crowd of thousands of people, a little knot of spike-helmeted and bayonetted police, and their presence and demeanour had been a standing insult to the people. He had often felt it his duty in speaking to those crowds to ask them to take no notice of the men and leave them unmolested; but he knew that the Constabulary were opposed to the people, and that a single spark might create a conflagration. They protested against this Police Vote, because they objected altogether to the maintenance in Ireland, under the name of police, of a standing army. The police in England were a civil body; in Ireland they were a military body. In Ireland they were armed the same way as soldiers, they were drilled in the same way as soldiers, and they acted in concert just as soldiers did. When sent to preserve the peace it was not at all as if a body of police, in the ordinary sense of the term, had been sent. They appeared in their military capacity, and, coming there amongst excitable people—people to whom helmets, bayonets and sabres were representative types of a rule they hated and detested—it was not astonishing that their very presence had the effect of creating that disturbance which it was hoped it would avert. In England when a serious disturbance was anticipated the military were called out, and their very appearance had the strongest effect in quelling disorder. When the military were called out in this country it marked a determination on the part of the authorities to put a stop to disturbance, and the people thought twice before they lent themselves to any acts of 1580 disturbance. In Ireland, unfortunately, the presence of armed men in the shape of policemen was an everyday occurrence, and had not the salutary effect it had in England. He could not travel home to his own county or town, where almost every man, woman, and child knew him, without having two of the Constabulary watching his movements. When he arrived at the railway station two of the policemen of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would pry into the carriage and would watch where he went to; and, indeed, at every step he was followed by the men. He affirmed that, far from maintaining the public peace in Ireland, the police, as at present constituted, formed a standing menace to public order. He desired to say a word in reference to two or three specifics charges. The other evening he made several charges against the police, and the Chief Secretary accused him of not having given Notice. He might be allowed to say that his experience of giving Notice and of asking Questions in the House was not very satisfactory. He occasionally asked Questions based upon statements of fact which were sent to him by persons whose word—and he did not mean any disrespect to the right hon. Gentleman—he valued very much more than he did that of the right hon. Gentleman; he put those statements of fact as Questions to the right hon. Gentleman, and he invariably contradicted him, and said that what he (Mr. Redmond) stated was Tin-true. He knew the right hon. Gentleman did not deliberately state what he knew to be untrue; but he knew that the sources of information to which the Chief Secretary applied were altogether tainted—in fact, the right hon. Gentleman got his information from the very men who were implicated in the Questions. If he asked a Question animadverting upon the conduct of a policeman, the right hon. Gentleman applied to the officer of the policeman, and the officer applied to the man, and he sent up his story, which really formed the answer to the Question. He had very little reason to be encouraged in asking Questions, even on matters on which he had personal knowledge that the right hon. Gentleman had been so misinformed, that he had stated what, in some respects, was entirely untrue. A man over 70 1581 years of age was arrested without a warrant by two policemen of the right hon. Gentleman in the county of Meath. The sub-inspector and the constables went to the man, and said—"We are going to arrest you." Having had some experience of arrests in the locality, and knowing the police ought to have some authority, he asked them for their warrant. It turned out they had none, and the old man said—"I won't go, you have no authority to arrest me;" but he was, however, borne away thus illegally. The right hon. Gentleman told him this was true, and that the sub-inspector had been told to be more careful in future. This act was a gross outrage upon the personal liberty of the man, and he (Mr. Redmond) wanted to know whether the Chief Secretary for Ireland had taken any effective steps to punish the sub-inspector for this gross violation of his duty? [An hon. MEMBER: He ought to have been compensated.] There was a warrant issued subsequently, so there was scarcely a case for compensation. The Rev. Mr. Toner, a clergyman in the North of Ireland, complained that he had been grossly molested by the police in his locality. The rev. gentleman informed him that after Mass, a few weeks ago, he took his breakfast in the house of a respectable tradesman in the town of Pomeroy. The police came to the door of the house and, saying they knew the clergyman was upstairs, insisted, in spite of the resistance of the people of the house, in forcing their way upstairs to find out what he was doing. He was found eating his breakfast, and the police, finding there was no Land League meeting going on, withdrew. What license, he desired to ask, had policemen to force their way into private houses in this manner? Were they all to be subjected to such annoyance on the part of the agents of the Government in the shape of policemen? It was impossible for any man whose sympathies were known to be on the side of the people to live in peace and quietness in Ireland if such license was given to the police. There was another matter he wished to bring before the attention of the Committee. Some time ago a letter appeared in the Press from a dignatory of the Catholic Church—Dr. Croke—complaining that a meeting which was held in his vestry for the purpose of getting up a bazaar for charitable purposes was forcibly broken 1582 into by a number of policemen, and they would not leave until the male portion of the meeting threatened to forcibly eject them if they did not go. He wanted to know what license the police had to break into private houses, to follow people about, and to inquire into their actions in this forcible way? There was an arrest in his own county to which he would draw serious attention. Some time ago a warrant was issued for a gentleman farmer, named Mr. Keating. At the time the warrant was issued the gentleman happened to be in Liverpool, and in his absence the police surrounded the house in the middle of the night and searched every nook and corner, but not finding the object of their search they went away. Mr. Keating was informed that a warrant had been issued against him, and acting upon advice he prolonged his stay in Liverpool for two or three weeks. Acting, he presumed, under the orders of the right hon. Gentleman, and to cause the man to come homo to be arrested, the police went periodically, he believed twice a-week, to the house which was inhabited only by Mr. Keating's two sisters and two farm-servants, and they searched the house with every possible circumstance of aggravation and offensiveness until the man came back. Mr. Keating returned, and wrote a letter to the papers stating that he had been obliged to come back to prevent his sisters being subjected to any further annoyance. Had these offensive searches been made deliberately? If so, it was a contemptible part for the Government to play; and if not, he charged the right hon. Gentleman with the responsibility of not having visited on the head of the police the consequences of such a gross act upon their part. He had no doubt the right hon. Gentleman would ask him to give Notice of these matters. If he did he would ask the right hon. Gentleman formal Questions, although, as he had said, he had found the answers he had received had been unsatisfactory, misleading, and unfounded. There remained the question as to whether Ireland was to be governed, as she was at present, by a police force having unlimited and arbitrary power to do as they liked? The liberties of the people were at the mercy of every sub-constable in the country. The right hon. Gentleman said he investigated every case of arrest. On what ground 1583 did he proceed? Did he consider the evidence given, not even on oath, by a sub-constable of whom he knew little or nothing to be sufficient to arrest a man upon under the Coercion Act? If he did not, he wished he would state so, because there was a feeling in Ireland that very many of the arrests had been made with purely spiteful and petty motives which had guided individual policemen in different localities to make statements to the right hon. Gentleman which had resulted in arrests. He did not know whether the debate was to be long or short; but he did know that if the Government wished to make progress with Supply they had better gag the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, because whenever he rose he threw no light upon the subject, he did not give any evidence of the truth of which he said, but he made a lot of reckless and wild assertions, which the Irish Members believed to be absolutely untrue, and, in addition, he concluded his speeches with contemptible sneers at the Irish people and those who were struggling for them which could only have the effect of rendering his remarks offensive to the Irish people and their Representatives in the House of Commons.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERThe hon. Gentleman speaks rather hardly of my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland. I must really remind him that he has not got the monopoly of hard language, and that he must not expect to be allowed to be constantly bringing charges, which are occasionally couched in very strong language, against the Government without sometimes receiving a reply. He asks me whether I would request him to give Notice of the specific questions he has raised to-night? Well, I certainly would. The policemen, at any rate, are Irishmen, and they have a right to be able to make some sort of defence. [Mr. REDMOND: The Attorney General for Ireland is Irish, too.] It is impossible for me to know the particulars of every case that is mentioned in the House. The hon. Member makes a charge in very forcible language, and then he supposes I can be expected to reply to it without being informed who the policeman is, or without knowing anything at all about the case. It is impossible for me to answer Questions on particular cases without Notice. The 1584 hon. Gentleman the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) mentioned a case which occurred at Newtown. [Mr. SEXTON: At Ballina.] The case at Ballina is rather curious, because the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power) has given Notice of a Question, and I have sent to Ireland to get information with regard to it. It will come on Monday, and then I will give an answer. I am rather surprised the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sligo did not wait until that time in order to see what answer will be given. The hon. Member for Clare (Mr. O'Shea) asked me about one or two cases. One occurred in Limerick, and about which I am not informed; and the other Question was in regard to certain language used by County Inspector Smith. There was a disturbance, but Smith denied having used the language imputed to him. It was quite true the depositions appeared to have contradicted his statement; but, after all, it is merely a question of words that were used, or might have been used, by Smith in the performance of his duty or in the endeavour to keep order. One hon. Gentleman has alluded to the state of affairs at Loughrea, and he said that nothing less than a system of police terrorism prevailed there. There has indeed been the greatest possible terrorism in Loughrea, which has resulted in several murders and every description of crime. It is an unfortunate state of things we have had to contend with. We had to contend with a grave conspiracy in Loughrea, which resulted in murder and outrage, and, had we neglected it, we should not have been worthy of the name of a Government. Strong measures were necessary to be taken; the secret society must be broken up; many arrests have been made, and perhaps more will have to follow. The hon. Member for New Ross (Mr. Redmond) complained of my right hon. and learned Friend because he stated that the police were justified, to a certain extent, in watching the meetings of the Prisoners' Aid Society and of the Ladies' Land League. I consider they were perfectly justified in watching them. Undoubtedly, the object of the Prisoners' Aid Society was perfectly innocent in itself; but we have reason to believe that in some cases the Society was made use of for continuing the organization of the Land League; 1585 and the police have only endeavoured, in the performance of their duty, to find out whether anything illegal was being done under a legal name. Then there comes the Ladies' Land League. We have reason to believe that intimidating organization has been carried on by the Ladies' Land League—that is to say, that they have been instigating to intimidation, and, in some measure, taking the place of the Land League. Its very name is a sort of guarantee of its purpose. [Mr. REDMOND: Prove it.] Well, now, really, that is an unreasonable remark. ["No, no!"] The hon. Member, and those who sit near him, say it is not unreasonable. Why, he himself and other Members of the House, using the Privileges of Parliament, have declared that they mean to carry on that intimidation. Their words convey that impression, and it will be understood in Ireland that such is their meaning. Believing, as we do, that that organization is still being carried on in Ireland, we consider it is rather unfair to us for hon. Gentlemen to ask us to give them the ground upon which we think it necessary to act. We are very desirous to meddle with the ladies as little as possible, and most certainly we have allowed in them what we should not have allowed in men. There is, however, some limit to these things, and, in my opinion, the police would not be justified if they did not, at any rate, carefully watch the proceedings of the Ladies' Land League.
§ MR. HEALYsaid, the right hon. Gentleman had said he could not give them the proof for which they asked. It was not the Irish Members who asked for the proof, but the House of Commons. The Chief Secretary for Ireland referred to the Loughrea business; he stated that a considerable number of murders had taken place in that locality, and he justified the action of which the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) complained on the ground that the murders had taken place. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman, was it not a fact that he had arrested a score of men for every murder committed in Loughrea? Amongst other things, the hon. Member for Sligo complained that some ten or a dozen men going home quietly from a concert were taken up by the police, and kept in a 1586 cell for 12 or 13 hours when the Resident Magistrate was actually within call. He would ask, were the resources of civilization so exhausted that the police dare not wake up a Resident Magistrate? Rather than disturb the slumbers of a Resident Magistrate who lived next door to the police barracks, ten or a dozen men were kept in a cold cell all night; and the right hon. Gentleman justified such action because murders had been committed in Loughrea. If the people of Loughrea were so criminal, why did not the Chief Secretary for Ireland ask for money to build a gaol large enough for the proper accommodation of such a large number of people? The Attorney General for Ireland admitted, in reply to the hon. Member for Sligo, that it was the man Donahoo, Crown informer, who had committed several of the outrages. Would the right hon. Gentleman take steps to release the men who were sentenced to two or three months' imprisonment, with hard labour, upon Donahoo's previous evidence?
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)I know nothing about the matter.
§ MR. HEALYsaid, he presumed the Attorney General for Ireland read United Ireland, and he would read an extract from that paper—
After proof had been given, Donahoo was sent for trial on several charges—robbery, having firearms in his possession without a licence, and perjury. A number of persons in several recent prosecutions at the Spring Assizes were sentenced to two and three months' hard labour on his evidence.The right hon. and learned Gentleman considered that some extracts from United Ireland were well worthy of his attention. He would invite the Attorney General for Ireland to take up his file of the paper, and see whether, upon Donohoo's evidence, men had not been sent to gaol, and if he found they had been convicted upon the evidence of an admitted perjured informer, to cause their release at once. The right hon. and learned Gentleman made another extraordinary statement. He said that it was the duty of the police to find out and discover how crime was committed by every possible means. He would ask whether it was not a fact that last year the police in County Louth, suspecting men. of writing threatening letters, induced men to fill up Census papers so that they 1587 might compare the writing with that of the letters, and that the Government quashed the proceedings, and therefore admitted that the police were not justified in using every means to detect crime? Was it a proper thing that Colonel Hillier, in his Circular respecting the discovery of crime, should tell the police that they might offer rewards to people to tell them what crimes were about to be committed? Men like Connell—discharged with ignominy from one regiment and deserters from another—first of all got up the crime, entrapped young men to join them, and then sold their confederates in order to get the rewards offered by the Government. The right hon. Gentleman further said that so long as the Land League existed, so long there would be crime. If that was so, so much the worse for the British Government, because so long as landlordism existed, so long would the Land League exist. He told the Chief Secretary, when he was able to open his mouth in Ireland six months ago, that he might as well try to "suppress" the Atlantic Ocean as to attempt to suppress the Land League; and his prophecy had turned out correct. The Chief Secretary said that crime and the Land League went hand in hand. The right hon. Gentleman must make up his mind to this—that a number of men representing the people of Ireland, having the majority of the people of Ireland at their back, were determined to fight until landlordism should be abolished. They were determined that there should be no more famines in Ireland.
THE CHAIRMANThe hon. Gentleman is distinctly travelling beyond the Constabulary Vote, which is the question before the House.
§ MR. HEALYsaid, he was touching upon the question of crime, which he thought had in some way cropped up. If the existence of the Land League really necessitated the employment of a large police force in Ireland, the sooner the right hon. Gentleman prepared an Estimate for an additional force the better it would be for the Government of which he was a Member. The right hon. Gentleman had made no reply to the question put to him as to the damage committed by the police when they were engaged in the search for arms. He (Mr. Healy) was of opinion that it was desirable to carry out the 1588 government of Ireland with as little friction as possible. He thought the Government wanted to provoke the people of Ireland as much as they could. The whole of their administration had that tendency. He asked if it was not desirable, in the search for arms, that the police should go about the performance of their duty with some show of decency? There had been searches for arms in a man's haystack, which had been erected with great labour. The police made a descent upon the man's farm, turned over all the contents of his barn and yards, pulled down the ricks which contained the entire proceeds of the harvest and all the little savings of the year, tearing down both haystack and corn-stack, and scattering everything to the winds. This wanton damage was done in the hope of discovering concealed arms or ammunition; and in almost every case the search was fruitless. What he wanted to know was whether, if the police were at liberty to pull down a man's haystack, it was not their duty to build it up again and replace it in the same state as that in which they found it? It was a matter of common sense, that if the police did damage, the Government should make it good again. The police, however, appeared to be armed with arbitrary powers, which enabled them to take possession of a man's premises, to enter his farmyard, and to pull down the stacks which contained the whole proceeds of the year's labour; possibly on a wet and windy day. They were perfectly ready to pull everything down; but they left the farmer himself, or his labourers, to put the stacks together again. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary if that was a state of affairs he was prepared to recognize—was it to be looked upon as one of the "resources of civilization?" He would request the right hon. Gentleman to issue instructions to the Constabulary, that where they wantonly pulled down a man's hayrick, and tore down the boards of his farm-buildings, the damage they did should be made good at the expense of the Government. He thought that this was only a reasonable request, and if it were opposed to the principles of good government, he had yet to learn what such principles were. He came next to the question of the hire of cars. His hon. Friend the Mem- 1589 ber for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) said the police were unable to obtain cars, because they were to be employed against the people in enabling the Constabulary to carry out evictions. That was in all probability true. But he wished to know if it was not also the case that the police requisitioned them wherever they thought there was any necessity for doing so, and that they frequently drove valuable horses so cruelly that they sometimes died and sometimes had their knees broken and were ruined? He asked the right hon. Gentleman, when complaints were made to him, to take care that the persons whose horses had been requisitioned should get something like decent compensation. If the Government refused to do this, what would be the consequence? They would be creating so many hotbeds of discontent and disloyalty. Every man injured would consider himself a drill-sergeant and a picket in the army of agitation, and his hand would he constantly turned against the Government. He therefore asked that where damage was done by the police they would, at least, see that it was made good. Certainly, the Government had power enough to enable them to act against these poor people; and when they found that they had discovered only ''a mare's nest," let them make good the damage they did in discovering it. He had read in the newspapers accounts of some of the night searches made by the police, and they had very much astonished him. He had been under the impression that some sort of promise had been given by the Government that they would not needlessly make night searches. He would not assert that they had done so; but he did complain that in some of the searches which had been conducted at night, decent and respectable women had been pulled out of their beds in order that the search might be made. After having swooped down upon a house and broken in the door, the sub-inspector went into a room in which decent women were sleeping, and required them to get up and dress in his presence. He certainly thought the "resources of civilization" might be contracted so that respectable women, aroused from their sleep might, at least, be enabled to dress in private. He did not think, as an ordinary rule, that arms 1590 were concealed in a bed, and it was scarcely credible that these women, while they were dressing, would be able to smuggle away a gun or a bayonet beneath their clothes. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to consider what his own feelings would be if a similar case were brought home to himself. How would he like to have his family disturbed in the middle of the night, and his wife pulled out of bed and ordered to dress in the presence of a police-constable, in order that she might not leave the room with proscribed weapons concealed upon her person? He certainly thought the Government ought not to proceed to this exasperating extremity—an extremity for which there was no earthly necessity. It was hard enough to live in Ireland at all under the present system of government; and he asked Her Majesty's Ministers not to exasperate the people, unless it was part of their policy to do so. If it were part of the policy of the Government to exasperate the people, in addition to using the bayonets and buckshot of the Constabulary against them, let them say so plainly and at once, and the Irish Members would make no more complaint. What they hated was to have this pretence of philanthropy continually flung in their faces. If they were to be met by brigands in the shape of policemen, let the Government tell them so, in order that they might understand what they were to be prepared for. If the Constabulary were to act as "village tyrants" and "dissolute ruffians," let it be clearly understood what their position was, and do not let it be supposed that they were a force sent out to preserve the peace. That was quite another matter; and, in that case, let the Constabulary act as genuine policemen. He thought the right hon. Gentleman had sufficient evidence before him to enable him to see that it was not at all desirable in all of the little towns of Ireland that there should be set up the sources of disorder which must necessarily be brought into play by such action. The right hon. Gentleman had defended the police generally on the ground that they were employed to preserve the peace, and that, therefore, they ought to be regarded with some kind of grace by the House of Commons. He (Mr. Healy) alleged that they were not employed to 1591 preserve the peace, unless it were the peace which passeth all human understanding. Was it with a desire to preserve the peace that the Government, having declared by their mandate that the rents of the country were exorbitant by at least 25 per cent, permitted the unfortunate people who had been paying these rack rents to be turned out on the roadside? That was a description of peace which might be known to the Irish Office, but it was certainly one which he (Mr. Healy) failed to understand. He was inclined to regard peace in a very different manner from that in which the Government employed the expression. However, he would not carp any longer at the use of that or any other expression; but he would go on to another matter in which he considered the action of the police extraordinary. When a man applied for a licence to carry arms a policeman got up and said he was unfit to receive one, because he was a person who had contributed to the Prisoners' Aid Society. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman, supposing he were a farmer and found his farm infested by crows and rooks and rats, and by those hares and rabbits, to get rid of which the Home Secretary passed his Ground Game Bill two years ago, would he think it right that he should have his crops destroyed by vermin as a punishment for having contributed towards the maintenance of a Society established to afford aid to political prisoners? The dictum laid down by the right hon. Gentleman's police was that because a man subscribed to the Prisoners' Aid Society, therefore he ought to have his corn eaten by rats and hares and rabbits. It appeared to him (Mr. Healy) to be a sort of non sequitur it was impossible to understand; and he therefore asked the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General, when next he employed the police in objecting to the granting of a licence, to induce them to base the objection upon more substantial grounds. The legitimate needs of the prisoners were objects that ought to appeal to the minds of everybody, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself said no Member of the House should have any objection to put his hand into his pocket to assist them, and to enable the families of these unfortunate individuals to be properly cared for. 1592 There was another matter to which he wished to direct attention. He had heard, only as recently as Monday last, after the arrest of Walsh, at Cork, that two young men, who were his friends and assistants in carrying on his trade, were seized by the police, who attempted forcibly to search them, in order to ascertain if they carried arms. The young men stoutly resisted and refused to be searched and it was not until they were taken before a magistrate that they consented to be searched. It was certainly most extraordinary conduct on the part of the police, and altogether illegal. When the Arms Act was passed a provision was expressly inserted in it that no man or woman should be searched by the police, except in the presence of a magistrate. It was pointed out that many irregularities were likely to arise if every man met upon the public highway was to be searched by a police-constable at his own pleasure. Parliament, therefore, decided to introduce into the Act the medium of a magistrate, and, at the instance of the Irish Members, the Home Secretary, in the fortunate absence of the Chief Secretary, inserted a clause in the Arms Act to provide that no person should be searched except in the presence of a magistrate. He wished to know whether the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had made any inquiries into this case, or whether he considered it necessary that every case of the kind which was reported by the public Press should be brought under his nose in Parliament before he would interest himself in it? Was it no part of the vocation of the right hon. Gentleman, as an Executive Officer, when he saw a glaring case of breach of the law to inquire into it? Surely he did not require the Irish Members, who had so many other things to attend to, to act as the scavengers of the public Press, and thrust these unsavoury morsels beneath his nose. He should have thought that it was part of the right hon. Gentleman's duty, for which he was paid a salary, to repress all illegalities on the part of his subordinates; and he would ask the right hon. Gentleman if he had inquired into this particular allegation, and whether, finding it true, he had condemned the action of the police? Then, in regard to the charge which appeared in the Estimates—the item of £200 paid in the shape of 1593 compensation to a man who had been injured in a riot—the ease which had been referred to by his hon. Friend the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton). Although his hon. Friend did not seem to understand what it was for, he (Mr. Healy) had a shrewd suspicion to whom the money was to be paid. He had never heard the fact positively stated, and, of course, he might be wrong; but he thought the compensation in question was paid to an unfortunate man who was bayonetted at Cork Park races—Was he right?
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)said, he was not informed on the subject.
§ MR. HEALYasked if the noble Lord the Financial Secretary of the Treasury knew? Was the compensation paid to a man named Travers for the suffering he had sustained from bayonet wounds inflicted in the riot which followed the Cork Park races? He would ask the noble Lord clearly and directly if this was the man?
§ LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHI think so.
§ MR. HEALYHow was it, then, that when the hon. Gentleman the senior Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Daly)—not the Member who was now in gaol—got up last Session and charged the police with having stabbed Travel's, the Government always denied it, and the Chief Secretary produced his perennial Blue Books, with Reports from the police stating that the man was not stabbed by the police, and that he was a participator in the riot? If that were true, why was Parliament asked to vote £200 for compensation, for that was the sum proposed to be given to this man whom they were told, in the first instance, was a riotous man and had not been stabbed at all? He did not grudge the £200 which Parliament was asked to vote—he wished it was £2,000. Certainly he would not himself take £2,000 for a stab of a similar nature, and therefore he regarded the amount awarded as much too small for the injury. But if Travers was to have £200, why were not all the other persons who had been injured under similar circumstances to receive compensation? Why was not Mrs. MacDonough, the mother of the unfortunate girl Ellen MacDonough, who was stabbed and murdered while running away from a mob 1594 of drunken police, compensated? The answer was plain. It would be an act in support of the verdict of wilful murder, which a jury, packed by the Crown, had, nevertheless, returned against the police. If Travers had died, his relatives or his executors would never have received a penny, because, if a verdict of wilful murder had been returned, it would have been the duty of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General to apply to have the verdict quashed. That was the way in which the matter worked itself out. The whole theory of compensation was singular. If a man was killed, his relatives got nothing, but if he was only wounded, and was able to get at the soft side of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary in some good-tempered or generous moment, he might get £200. And that was Irish government. That was the way in which government was carried on in Ireland. Was there any sense or meaning in it, or any justification for it? One man was injured, and did not die, and he received £200. A woman was shot, and died, and her family got nothing. The right hon. Gentleman evidently acted upon the principle that "when a man's dead there's no more to be said." As yet the Government had vouchsafed not a word of explanation, but he trusted they would do so before the debate was allowed to close. Of Travers he knew nothing. Probably he was a Party man and a Conservative—for it was they who received all the support of a Liberal Government. Possibly he had some friends in Dublin Castle who had the ear of the officials, and, being able to influence Mr. Burke, down went £200 upon the Estimates. The noble Lord the Financial Secretary was very much astonished when an Irish Member made any demand upon the Votes that were brought under the purview of the Committee of Supply. He would ask the noble Lord, as the conservator of the public purse, if he was acquainted with all the incidents of the case of the man Travers? Had he read the description which had been given of him by his hon. Friend the senior Member for the City of Cork; the denial of his own Government that Travers had been unjustly stabbed by the police, and the allegation that at the time he received his injuries he was participating in a riot? If the noble Lord was acquainted 1595 with these facts, how was it that, as guardian of the public purse, he came there that night to give the lie to the declarations of his own Colleague? How was it that after one Member of the Government had denied that Travers was a person entitled to compensation, another Member of the same Government came there to ask for £200? That was the position in which the Government had placed themselves, and their conduct, to say the least of it, was most paradoxical. Personally, he (Mr. Healy) knew nothing of Travers; but his hypothesis was that Travers was some respectable Conservative who had the ear of the officials in Dublin Castle, and therefore he got his £200. Ellen MacDonough was the daughter of a poor peasant, who owed 6s. 7d. for rates. She was stabbed by the police while running away from them. A verdict of wilful murder was returned against the police, and the Government did nothing except quash the verdict of the Coroner's Jury. This was the working of the British Constitution. These were the ''resources of civilization" fully developed. He congratulated the right hon. Gentleman on the development of those resources. These were some of the points on which he should like to get an answer from the right hon. Gentleman, and he thought there were good grounds for complaining of the course which the Government had taken in regard to the various verdicts of wilful murder which had been returned in different parts of the country. To him it was a most extraordinary thing, in the present condition of Ireland, that Her Majesty's Government should venture to obstruct and poison the very fountains of law and order in Ireland. The oldest jurisdiction in the country was that of a Coroner's Jury. It was recognised that the Coroner's Jury was the basis of the whole superstructure of indictment. The right hon. Gentleman's police killed a man; a jury was empanelled. The right hon. Gentleman's Crown Solicitors, engaged on the part of the police, distrusting that jury, got it broken up upon some technical quibble; whereupon a second jury was empanelled, after an attempt on the part of the right hon. Gentleman's coadjutors to pack it. But the jury, resisting every attempt to coerce it, returned a verdict of wilful murder. Now, when the man who was killed was a landlord, or a policeman, or an agent, or a bailiff, 1596 or an "emergency" man, murder was held to be a crime. But it was very different in the case of a mere peasant—he presumed upon the principle that—
That which in the captain is but a choleric word,In the soldier is flat blasphemy.Accordingly, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland went before the Court of Queen's Bench and got the verdict quashed. It might be right or it might be wrong in regard to the particular facts of the case; but he thought the right hon. and learned Gentleman ought to be the last man to take upon himself the function of tampering with the very foundations of justice and order. He ought at least to allow fair play between the subject and the Crown official, and to permit the law to take its course. Had a policeman against whom a verdict of wilful murder was returned rights which an ordinary subject did not possess? Did his uniform clothe him with rights and privileges which another man, not having the honour to rank with the police, did not enjoy? The right hon. Gentleman got the verdict quashed; and when he did not think it worth while to got a verdict quashed, he sent down notice to the Crown officials, as was done by Mr. Law last year, to say that he did not intend to prosecute. The development of the Crown procedure in Ireland had been somewhat extraordinary. The Crown appeared to be always shifting its ground. In the first instance, there was no attempt to quash the verdict of the Coroner's Jury against the police, but a notice was sent down intimating that the Government did not intend to prosecute; therefore there was no case put upon the Calendar for trial. That was the course of procedure in 1881; but in 1882, the "resources of civilization" having developed in the meantime, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General went to the Court of Queen's Bench and got the verdict quashed. If he (Mr. Healy) were suspected of shooting at his landlord, he would be certain of getting 18 months in gaol, without bail, if there was any proof whatever to place before the Petty Jury. In his case, the right hon. and learned Gentleman would certainly never dream of exercising his function to stop the trial, or in the case of Tom, Bill, or Harry. On the contrary, he would take 1597 pains to see that the evidence against him or against any other private individual was made as complete as possible; he would take no trouble to see whether the inquisitions held by the Coroner's Juries were technically correct or not. The right hon. and learned Gentleman used the power his Office conferred on him only to inquire into the case of verdicts returned against the police. If a verdict were returned against a private individual, the right hon. and learned Gentleman would not send down for the records and carefully scrutinize them in order to allow law and order to be perverted; but he would allow law and order to take their course. He could testify, from his own experience, that he had had to pay as much as £200 for his own defence, although he had not had to call a single witness to disprove the farrago of nonsense brought against him. But when a solemn verdict of wilful murder was found against the police, the jury was either packed by the Crown, or the right hon. and learned Gentleman went down in his robes as Attorney General for Ireland, and called on the Court to quash the conviction. He asked the Government if it would not be better to allow the first and oldest Court in the Realm to retain the respect of the people, and to allow the case to go, at any rate, before the Grand Jury? At present, the whole power of the Government was exercised in order to prevent a case against the police from going before a Petty Jury. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had three courses open to him—he could allow the case to go to trial; or he could send down notice that he did not intend to prosecute; or he could apply to the Superior Court to have the conviction quashed. The right hon. and learned Gentleman took the most offensive course of the three—the offensiveness consisting in the greatest Officer of Public Law in Ireland going down to the Court of Queen's Bench in order to obtain the quashing of the conviction. The right hon. and learned Gentleman thrust himself forward as some sort of Deux ex machina, for the purpose of quashing the conviction. His former Colleague (Mr. Law), older and riper in the ways of government in Ireland than the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who was merely a new man at the work, abstained from prosecuting; 1598 but the present Attorney General deliberately pursued the coarser method of getting the conviction quashed. He invited the right hon. and learned Gentleman, for the sake of decency, in future to use discretion in pulling the minor wires of official jugglery, by allowing verdicts of wilful murder against the police, at least, to stand until they could be dealt with by his friends, the landlords, throwing them out on the Grand Jury. Then he had to complain of another matter. The moment the police killed anybody, they proceeded to arrest, under the provisions of the Coercion Act, every witness to the transaction. Nothing could be more detestable than such a system of procedure—a system never heard of before. It was almost like a scene from a pantomime, in which the police killed a bystander, and at once arrested every man on the stage and put all of them in prison, so that there was not a single witness of the transaction left. It might be said, what excellent wit the devisers of that pantomime had; but it was a very different thing when the same scene came to be enacted in actual life, and a policeman fully armed and equipped, having slain one of Her Majesty's subjects, proceeded to arrest all the witnesses. He asked the Government in all sober earnestness whether such an occurence was not too serious for a joke? Two boys, one 16, and the other 18 years of age, had been arrested, one of whom had seen the slaughter committed by the police at Ballyragget. Although it could not be said that a lad of 16 and another of 18 were very formidable opponents of the British Government in Ireland, in this case both were arrested and lodged in prison, one because he was a witness, and the other because he had been engaged in getting up evidence against the police. The object was to destroy the possibility of giving evidence. Instead of being anxious to show fair play between the people and the civil force, the right hon. and learned Gentleman strained the Coercion Law in favour of the police. Everything in Ireland was done by the police. To use the expression of an English poet—Tennyson—the policeman was "the little God Almighty" of the present situation in Ireland. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman would venture to instruct himself as to the real nature of these transactions, the 1599 light which would inevitably be thrown upon them would, in future, prevent many of the annoyances which were now of daily occurrence. But, no; it was the habit of the police to arrest everyone who had been a witness to their misdeeds, and, consequently, the mere word of the policeman became the law of the land. That was Irish government, and the Irish Members and the Irish people were expected to endure it in quiet. The whole power of the Government was, in fact, intrusted to a police-constable. Irishmen, finding that the shoe pinched, objected to wear it. He invited the noble Lord the Financial Secretary, if he wished to have the Estimates passed quickly through the House, when next he saw some case of apparent hardship reported in an Irish newspaper, to deign to throw his eyes over it to inquire into it for himself, and to inquire into the conduct of the police in connection with it—not through the medium of the police themselves, but through some other agency—and then, if the noble Lord found that it was not wholly the people who were in fault, but that the police were also to blame, let him imagine in how many other cases there might have been cause for just irritation against the police—and then, when the Irish Members got up when the Estimates were under discussion and occupied the time of the House as shortly as they could in giving utterance to the grievances of the Irish people, perhaps the noble Lord would begin to feel that, after all, they were only doing their duty. In Ireland men were murdered; women were murdered admittedly—at any rate, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland admitted that in one case there were good grounds for inquiry; but, instead of allowing that case to go before a jury, he got the conviction quashed How could he (Mr. Healy), or anybody, have respect for law and order in Ireland when the people were being dragooned by these janissaries of the Government and these "buckshot" warriors? The whole thing was absolutely unbearable. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade told them, a few months ago, that the government of Ireland was maintained solely by a few thousand bayonets—the bayonets of the military and police—and that if they were withdrawn the government of the 1600 country would instantly collapse. He gave his cordial adhesion to the admission of the right hon. Gentleman, and he thought that if the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland could be made better acquainted with the misdeeds of his subordinates, and the illegalities they were constantly perpetrating, he would cease to regard them with so favourable an eye. Was there to be no buffer between the people and the police? Were the people to be continually thrust aside by the bayonets of the Irish police? That was a question for the House to consider. If the government of the Irish people was still to be carried on from Queen Street, London, in the interests of common decency there should be some system of Inspectorship established. Let the Government get hold of some honest Englishman, if there were such—he was happy to say, although the evidences of it in the English government of Ireland were not very striking, that there were some—let, then, some honest, unprejudiced Englishman be sent over to Ireland to inquire into these transactions, and into the action of the Irish police. If, in one single instance, he would call the police to account for anything they had done, it would be such a lesson to them that he believed the Irish police, in future, would behave themselves with decency. But in all the records of police ruffianism in Ireland there had been as yet no single case upon which the Government had set the stigma of their condemnation. A sum of £200 was included in the Estimates now under the consideration of the Committee as a salve to the man Travers for his wounds; and, having provided a salve for his wounds, the Government were ready to defend the police who stabbed him. Whatever the policeman did in Ireland was right. That was the Alpha and Omega of English policy. He would not apologize for detaining the Committee. He thought he was entitled to debate these important questions as long as was necessary. It was humiliating to him to be required to debate them; and he was sorry to take up the time of an Assembly in which the Irish Members felt their presence was not wanted, where their word was not believed, and where their voices were howled down. But, sickening and painful as it was to him to utter a word 1601 in that House, as long as these crimes continued to be committed by the Government and by their subordinates—the police—so long would the Irish Members take up the time of the House in condemning and denouncing them.
§ MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYsaid, it must be evident to anyone who had followed the course of the debate, even from an outsider's point of view, that the Chief Secretary and Her Majesty's Government were trying a dangerous and a desperate experiment in Ireland. They were endeavouring to reduce the country to absolute submission by the mere force of their superior strength—by the force of their military police and the terrorism of their informers. He did not mean to say that the right hon. Gentleman might not have some good end in view—that he might not entertain the belief that by the methods he was adopting, he would reduce the country to good order, so that, after it had been reduced, what he considered remedial measures might have their chance. He (Mr. M'Carthy) presumed, to put the best construction on the policy of the Irish Executive, that that was the kind of feeling that was, more or less consciously, working in the right hon. Gentleman's mind. It must be apparent to all that the right hon. Gentleman was determined in Ireland to crush out all spirit of resistance.
§ Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; Committee counted, and 40 Members being found present,
§ MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYsaid, he was sorry he was the innocent cause of withdrawing so many hon. Members for a while from something, no doubt, more interesting than an Irish debate, or even the policy of the Chief Secretary. What he should be disposed to accuse the Chief Secretary of, or suggest as the explanation of his conduct, was a determination, by one process or another, to reduce the people of Ireland to an absolute submission to any kind of power in the form of law that might be set over them. If he had the power of examining the conscience of the right hon. Gentleman, and of looking into the inspiration which the right hon. Gentleman set up as his guidance, he should, he thought, be able to extract from them something very like what he had stated. The right hon. Gentleman had made of 1602 his conscience what would seem to be another power of the State; and it might be said that the Estates of the Realm in Ireland were the Queen, Lords and Commons, and the Chief Secretary's conscience. The right hon. Gentleman wanted to make Ireland submissive and to crush out of her all manner of resistance. He wanted to expel from the country all organizations like the Land League; he wanted, if he could, to break down the spirit of the people, and then, if there were any beneficent scheme in hand, either on the part of himself or any other Member of the Government, he hoped to have a fair field for its introduction, and no difficulties in the way to interfere with it. The Chief Secretary had introduced a foreign—a Russian—system into the Government of Ireland. Nothing could be more complete than the change which had taken place in the Government of Ireland since the time when the Conservative Party were in the full strength of their power. They found all the symptoms, all the evidences, of what was called the Continental, the despotic, form of Government prevailing. They found the spy system and the informer system at work, they found newspapers seized, lawful meetings broken up, and the police sent amongst peaceful gatherings to spy and report. Debating societies were watched by the police, letters were stopped—communication between men engaged in perfectly lawful pursuits was interrupted—and all the odious and terrible evidences of the worst Continental system were to be found in every Province, in every city, in every village of Ireland at the present moment. A political Colleague of the right hon. Gentleman in former days—the hon. Member for Newcastle-on-Tyne (Mr. J. Cowen)—had used an expression which seemed to him to have admirably expressed the condition of things they now saw realized in Ireland. He had said that the right hon. Gentleman had introduced a "white terror" into Ireland. That was what the Chief Secretary was striving to do, and hon. Gentlemen knew what it meant. It meant the exercise of reckless repression by those who called themselves the supporters of law and order—by the pretended supporters of law and order—and brought into play for the purpose 1603 of putting down the elements of a lawful agitation. That "white terror" was what they now saw introduced, in such form as it could be introduced, into the condition of Ireland. Look at the question they were now discussing—the conduct of the Police Force. He had been struck by the immense change which had taken place in the feelings of the people towards the police, and in the feelings of the police towards the people, in recent years. He could remember in his early days in Ireland when the police, even in the most troubled times, were not an unpopular body of men. That feeling continued down to recent days. They were not disliked, and they were hardly ever made the victims of private revenge in any form; but the right hon. Gentleman, under his system, had changed all that. He would do the late Government the credit of saying that he did not believe they had, in their time, completely changed the old state of things. The condition of things they now saw in Ireland—the hatred of the police for the people, and the people for the police, was the offspring of the system devised by the Chief Secretary for Ireland. It was owing, no doubt, to the system of private Circular, which the right hon. Gentleman did not invent, and of which, presumably, he was not proud, but which, nevertheless, he allowed to exist. They all remembered the private Circular issued to the police, for it had been read more than once in the House. This private document urged the police, as they valued their position, and would have credit in the eyes of their superiors, to be more quick and ready and searching in their suspicions, and not to be put off by the assumption that many men were well-intentioned—to look round them more keenly and discover more men and women deserving of suspicion, and thus to bring more people under the authority of imprisonment. He would ask the Committee what effect could such a Circular as that have on the police but a debauching one; and what effect could it have on the people but an irritating and unfavourable one? And, as they saw, the Circular had borne its fruit. Every day they saw the Police Force in Ireland becoming more unpopular, and more impassioned against the people, and they had had many instances to-night to show how these feelings worked. The people 1604 were beginning to detest the police more and more, and the police to detest the people. There had been a most striking illustration of this during the late riots in Dublin, where, in spite of the fact that they were a city force, owing to the feelings that had been inspired by the right hon. Gentleman's policy, the police had an inveterate hatred to the people, and used every opportunity that presented itself in that time of passion to show their animus. It was a fact that their position had been so painful, so intolerable of late, that when they got the chance they were certain to act with the extremest violence out of mere passion. That was the state of things which had been found to exist latterly in Ireland, and which rendered good government unspeakably difficult. The right hon. Gentleman followed out the same policy, or something like it, even in his dealings with the House of Commons. He (Mr. M'Carthy) had noticed of late that the right hon. Gentleman had seemed as though he were determined, if he could, to exercise the same kind of intimidation towards the Irish Representatives that he exercised towards the Irish people. Most assuredly he would not succeed; but he must have credit all the same for the intention. He (Mr. M'Carthy) understood—for he was not in the House at the time—that last night the right hon. Gentleman spoke of himself as having to contend against the Irish Members of Parliament, who were engaged in abetting "an organized conspiracy against law and order." [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: Yes.] The right hon. Gentleman entirely approved of the sentiment and endorsed it. If he (Mr. M'Carthy) had been in the House at the time he should have endeavoured to obtain from the Chairman or Mr. Speaker some expression of opinion as to whether language like that was in Order in the House—whether it was not a gross breach of the fundamental Rules of Order to assert that Members of the House were abettors of a conspiracy against law and order? If the right hon. Gentleman believed this—and how he could some Members would be at a loss to imagine—what did he think of a system of law and order to which all the popular Representatives chosen by the large constituencies of Ireland were opposed? He would ask any impartial English Member what he would say to such an argu- 1605 ment as that of the right hon. Gentleman, if it applied to any other country in the world but Ireland? If they were told that in some Continental country—say Poland—the Representatives returned by all the large and popular constituencies had come forward as opponents of law and order, would they not say that the law and order could be nothing more than a sham when such men were against it? The test that the right hon. Gentleman had suggested was conclusive against himself; and the fact that so many Representatives were returned as abettors of a conspiracy against law and order naturally suggested grave doubts as to the character of that law and order. He did not deny that there was an organized conspiracy against true order in Ireland; but he maintained that the system which was now called Government there was an organized conspiracy of the worst kind against permanent law and abiding order in that country. A system of this kind, with its spies, its police subterfuges and deceits, its violence—sometimes brutal violence—formed the most deadly organized conspiracy against law and order that any country could suffer. They had almost come to the condition of things in Ireland which Grattan described, when he said he saw outside the country a threatening enemy, and inside the country a Minister even a worse enemy. That was the condition of things to which they had been brought by the "white terror" of which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was the chief inventor. In days gone by, but which the right hon. Gentleman no doubt remembered, he (Mr. M'Carthy) had the pleasure of acting with him in connection with a public organization which did some good at the time. No doubt the Chief Secretary had forgotten the fact of their having been Colleagues, although he (Mr. M'Carthy) had not. That organization was the Jamaica Committee, got up for the purpose of exposing certain outrages which had taken place in Jamaica in the name of law and order, and he well remembered the effect of some of the Resolutions they had passed. These Resolutions, with which, he supposed, the right hon. Gentleman agreed, as he had never repudiated them, were to the effect that the things which had been done in Jamaica carried with them their 1606 own condemnation in the minds of all right-thinking men. They declared that if the whole system, so-called, of law and order was such that it required repression like that which was adopted to sustain it, then they had better risk any chance of disorder—even the loss of civilization itself—than endeavour to maintain that sort of law and order. The right hon. Gentleman, he was afraid, had rather fallen away from the traditions which had guided his action in the days of which he spoke. The Chief Secretary was placed in an unfortunate position—he was placed in a position that, no doubt, he was not intended by nature to occupy, and Irish Members might give him credit for good intentions. They would allow that he went to Ireland with the sincere purpose of doing well; but he found great difficulties in his way, he became irritated, and he deserted the one only way by which the peace and order of the country could be maintained.
The CHAIRMANI must point out to the hon. Member that his remarks are more on the subject of the Vote we took last night—namely, for the Chief Secretary's Office, than on the subject of the Irish Constabulary Vote.
§ MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYsaid, he was endeavouring to point out that the unpopularity of the police in Ireland, and the ill-feeling on the part of the police against the people, was one necessary result of the kind of policy the right hon. Gentleman had adopted in Ireland. But he had no particular wish to enlarge on the general question, and was quite willing to keep to the strict question of the Constabulary, the condition they had been brought to, the way the right hon. Gentleman had backed them up through thick and thin, in right and wrong, and in every outrage they had chosen to inflict. The right hon. Gentleman could hardly help seeing that the character of his police had become demoralized, and that that demoralization was the outcome of the sort of policy he had adopted. The Chief Secretary would perhaps say that the Land League was responsible; but he would remind him that until long alter the Land League was started and flourishing, and while it was in the zenith of its unchecked power, there was no such feeling as this against the Police Force, and so such feeling as this amongst the police against the people. It was the 1607 policy the right hon. Gentleman had pursued which made him responsible to the country and to the world for the change of feeling which had occurred between the police and the people.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERI am sorry to have to trouble the Committee again; but the hon. Member has made a statement to which I must reply. In saying that the feeling of the people towards the police is worse than it was when we came into Office, I believe he is giving a mistaken account of the feeling between the police and the people; at any rate, I believe he is exaggerating it. It is perfectly true that the police have had to take a great deal of action to prevent outrage and to endeavour to prevent murder. The hon. Member says we are engaged in a desperate and dangerous experiment. I do not think it is desperate. I do not think so ill either of Ireland or the United Kingdom. I do Dot deny that, to some extent, it is dangerous—it has symptoms of danger in it; but it is an experiment, not, as the hon. Member says it is, to see if we can reduce the people of Ireland to absolute submission by violent measures, but whether we can reduce the people of Ireland to obedience to the ordinary law, which prevents outrage, which prevents murder, which protects property, which protects industry, and which protects liberty. That is what we have got to do, and what we will strive to do in spite of the efforts of the hon. Gentleman or of those who may share his views. Rather a curious commentary on the hon. Gentleman's speech has just reached me whilst we have been discussing this very Vote. It is only a newspaper statement, and I trust it may turn out to-morrow not to be true; but it is not unlikely to be true, because it, I am sorry to say, relates what has happened not infrequently of late. A Ballyhaunis correspondent of an evening paper telegraphs—
A shocking murder was committed last night at Ballindrehid, near this town. A farmer's son, named Freely, was taken from his bed and shot dead outside of his own door by a party of disguised men. The father of deceased had paid his rent, and it is alleged that this was the cause of the crime.The information I have received about it is to the effect that there was a murder this morning, and that further information should be sent. I hope the 1608 statement will turn out not to be correct; but if it does turn out not to be correct, there have been outrages very similar. It is not, I am thankful to say, very often that the incitement not to pay rent, and to punish those who pay it, results in murder; but it does sometimes, and I am sorry that the hon. Member's remarks oblige me to repeat what I have said before, that it is to me, of all the matters of wonderment that have come before me in regard to this agitation, one of the greatest, that a gentleman of the antecedents of the hon. Member, and of his general character, should join in this organization; should be, without disowning it, one of the proprietors of United Ireland newspaper; and that he should refrain from disowning his connection with the Land League, which had issued the "no rent" manifesto. I confess it is a matter of wonderment to me that the hon. Member can occupy the position he does without feeling that he is, to a considerable extent—until he disowns these things—responsible for this incitement to violence which results in these murders and outrages. He says the police make themselves disliked by the people by endeavouring to put down disorder and outrage. Well, I wonder what kind of an outcry there would be in Ireland if there was no police force there—I wonder where Ireland would be without it. My experience of the police in that country is that they have shown wonderful forbearance, and courage, and tact. The Belmullet case—which I do not wish to prejudge—has been brought forward to-night. The account I have received is the result of a very careful inquiry, not by the police, but by independent persons unconnected with them, and it is a very different account to that we have received from the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton). The effect of the statements I have received is that the police acted to the last in necessary self-defence. The case, I admit, is one that demands inquiry, and I will not give judgment upon it; but, generally speaking, I may say I do not believe that any body of men ever behaved better under such difficult circumstances than the police. I know of none who ever behaved so well. So much for the police. Then, as regards myself, and as regards my right hon. and learned Friend who assists me, our endeavour has been to use the police for the object 1609 for which they ought to be used—to prevent crime, and to enable the Queen's subjects to walk about in peace and quietness. And I will end by saving; this—the hon. Gentleman declares that to be a desperate and dangerous experiment; well, it is an experiment which, so long as I have anything to do with the matter, I am determined to carry out.
MR. O'CONNOR POWERsaid, that he was very much interested, in the earlier part of this debate, in the attention which the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) directed to what recently took place at Ballina. The Attorney General for Ireland made a very important omission in his speech. He entirely omitted any reference to the recent proceedings of the Sub-Inspector of Police in Ballina; and he (Mr. O'Connor Power) had expected that the omission would be supplied by some statement or explanation from the Chief Secretary. He had given Notice of a Question on the subject to the Chief Secretary, which Question had been postponed at the request of the Attorney General for Ireland. He had hoped, however, that in the meantime the right hon. and learned Member, or the Chief Secretary himself, would have been put in possession of the facts of the ease, and would have been able to offer an explanation this evening.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERThe Question was postponed until Monday.
MR. O'CONNOR POWERsaid, he was aware of that; but he must confess that when he postponed it he yielded over generously to the solicitation of the Attorney General for Ireland. He had not apprehended at the time that so convenient an opportunity as they had had last evening, and as they had now, would be afforded them to discuss the question. Perhaps the Attorney General for Ireland forgot the matter.
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)said, he could assure the hon. Member he had not yet received the requisite information.
MR. O'CONNOR POWERsaid, it was a singular circumstance that he, who did not possess the extraordinary resources and rapid communication which belonged to Her Majesty's Government in Ireland, should have been placed in possession of a copy of the Memorial or Resolution forwarded to the Land League by the Town Commissioners of Ballina before 1610 the Attorney General for Ireland. He wished to give the discussion they were engaged in at present as useful and as practical a turn as he possibly could, without investing it in the slightest degree with anything personal, either on the one side or the other. He might claim, in the first instance, that he was not in the habit of flattering the people of Mayo, or his countrymen at all; and when he singled out the town of Ballina as the centre of a district remarkable in these trying times for its peaceful character he simply stated the bare truth. What happened at Ballina? The Sub-Inspector of that town, with the aid of the police and the military, proceeded to search the houses of a number of the inhabitants, who, if he knew anything of their political opinions, had no sympathy whatever with any form of extreme National politics. He was not considered a very extreme politician himself, and he recognized in the names of some of the gentlemen to whom he was referring political opponents of his at the hustings, because they believed that if he was permitted to represent the County of Mayo the interests of British rule in Ireland would be somewhat in danger. That was the opinion of Mr. Dillon, Chairman of the Town Commissioners, and others. Well, the houses of seven or eight of the inhabitants of Ballina were visited by the Sub-Inspector of Police on Thursday week, and a search was made for what the officers were not successful in finding. To all outward appearances there did not seem to be a particle of justification for the course taken by the Sub-Inspector; and he (Mr. O'Connor Power) was somewhat disappointed that the Attorney General for Ireland had not mentioned the matter. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman was not in possession of the facts he would accept that as a sufficient explanation of his silence for the time being, He had this observation to make with regard to that matter, and also with reference to Belmullet. When the affray between the people and the police took place in Belmullet a few months ago, he confessed he was put under a great effort of self-possession to restrain a public expression of his feelings. He read all the published accounts of the affair, and he followed closely the legal proceedings from day to day. He watched the attitude which Mr. Bolton assumed as an 1611 advocate in that case, and formed a general impression, and had deferred going into the matter until this evening—because the only notice he had taken of the matter heretofore had been to put down a Question to the Government which had not elicited anything like the complete answer he wished to get. He did not get an expression of opinion then, and he pointed out what he thought the Irish Government might have done a few days ago in reference to Ballina—or what they ought to do when they were placed in possession of the facts. He did not wish the Government to condemn the Sub-Inspectors of Belmullet and Ballina beforehand; but he said this, as a matter of sound policy and wise administration—that if any public official, either by the commission of a blunder or a crime, set a community, otherwise peaceful and tranquil, in a state of commotion, the first thing a Government ought to do was to withdraw that official from the arena of disturbance—from the plane where he had hitherto been permitted to administer the affairs of the Government—and keep him out of the district until the matter was decided by a proper tribunal. Now, he was not aware that tin's had been done in the case of the Sub-Inspector; and he should wait with considerable interest to see whether, pending inquiry into the facts of the case, Sub-Inspector Ball was not sent to some other district. It would be casting no needless slur on the character or office of these officers to remove them, when a case of this kind was under investigation.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he had no wish to interrupt the hon. Member for Mayo; but as regarded Ballina, he wished to say that the reply of the Sub-Inspector at that place to the charge made against him had not been received and that it would be hardly fair to remove him until they heard what he had to say. He should be much surprised to hear that the Sub-Inspector of Belmullet was at work there.
MR. O'CONNOR POWERsaid, he was sure that the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) would admit that the right hon. Gentleman was acting strictly within his powers in employing the whole force of the police in any legitimate efforts which might be necessary to prevent crime and to overtake criminals. If such a dastardly outrage had been committed as that described in the 1612 telegram referred to by the right hon. Gentleman, he could only say that the thanks of every right-minded man in Ireland would be due to the Executive that brought the offender to justice. But the danger in Ireland, a country accustomed to almost perpetual coercion, was that large sections of the country people were suffering from what Judge Fitzgerald happily described as "over-protection." That eminent Judge, who had given the strongest support to Her Majesty's Government in the various Charges which he felt it his duty to address to jurors, stated that if the various parties whose rights had been assailed had exhibited the ordinary courage of men whose rights were assailed, they would not have been under the necessity of relying on the local police or the military when they had processes to serve. The police in Ireland had been accustomed for generations to the exercise of almost irresponsible power, and it only brought home again to the mind of the student of Irish politics the fact that he had endeavoured to impress on those responsible for the government of the country—namely, that it was suffering from the effects of placing Irish administration in the hands of those who were aliens to the Irish people. The present state of things would continue as long as people like the Sub-Inspector at Ballina were allowed to exercise irresponsible authority, and while anyone was determined to earn the wages of the spy and the informer in order to wreak personal vengeance on others. Had he been responsible for the government of Ireland, he should have said—" This is a blunder on the face of it; but it may prove on examination to be a crime. One tiling I will do immediately; I will withdraw this man from the district." He was told that one of the Sub-Inspectors was a most high-minded man; but that had nothing to do with the merits of the question, because they were dealing with him not as a man but as a Sub-Inspector of police, and he said the same with respect to Sub-Inspector Ball. With regard to the search for arms in Ballina, that place had been remarkable during the last few years for its peaceable character, and he did not recollect that a crime of any appreciable character whatever had taken place within the town or within a radius of 10 miles 1613 around it. But the effect of the proceedings of Sub-Inspector Ball was that hatred had been sown between the people and the police, and this fact was borne out by the speeches of gentlemen who reported upon the case as members of a Committee appointed to consider it, and who he knew to be opposed to the general policy of the Land League. He had no reason to sow discord between the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary and anyone else; but he said that the Government ought to be over-anxious in these cases, and at a time like the present that no one should act without legal warrant. His reason for expecting that the Sub-Inspector was unjustified in his proceedings was that this gentleman, to whose conduct he had intended last Session to draw the attention of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, had already been engaged in breaking into houses without any warrant, and had been charged with going to them at unsuitable hours. He would not complain of this last proceeding, which might be necessary in the interest of justice; but he must condemn the entering of houses without a warrant, at a time when the whole population was brought to a frenzy of excitement, and when naturally they might be expected to visit on the Government and its representatives the slightest infraction of the law. He said that the Government and its officials at the present time ought to be exceedingly careful not to take any step which was unnecessary, and which might serve to convert a peaceable district into a theatre of disorder.
MR. JOSEPH COWENwished to say a few words in answer to the accusation which had been made by the Chief Secretary for Ireland against the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy). The charge made against his hon. Friend was extremely unjust and unfair. He had known the hon. Member for 20 years, and he was sure there was no one less open to the charge of inciting to infraction of the law and disturbance of order. He understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that he was responsible, to a great extent, for the outrages that had taken place in Ireland because he had not denounced them. He must say that nobody had more strongly denounced those outrages than the body to which the hon. Member for Longford belonged. The purposes of the Land 1614 League could not be served by intimidation, nor could any good cause be served by terrorism, not even the cause of a Government. There was in Ireland a state of social feeling which had created something very like social revolution, and in the course of it things had been done and said which were utterly indefensible. They must reflect that there never was a social revolution among any people without some occurrences of that kind; and he did not think they could point to any such movement in foreign countries which had been characterized by so little outrage. But, as he had already pointed out, the objects of the Land League could not be served by crime; its objects could only be accomplished by unceasing and persistent advocacy. But the right hon. Gentleman was indirectly responsible for the present state of affairs in Ireland owing to the policy he had carried out. He had scattered all over Ireland a large number of men who were connected with the Land League.
THE CHAIRMANpointed out to the hon. Member that the Question before the Committee was not the position of the Land League, but a Vote for the Constabulary Force for Ireland.
MR. JOSEPH COWENsaid, he had no wish to wander from the Question before the Committee; but the charge of the right hon. Gentleman against the hon. Member for Longford was one of a very serious character—namely, that of promoting disorder and outrage in Ireland.
§ MR. O'DONNELLrose to Order. He wished to know whether it was permissible for a Member of the Government to charge hon. Members sitting on that side of the House with being responsible for murder and outrage?
THE CHAIRMANsaid, that the point of Order which he had decided was that it was not competent to discuss the position of the Land League on the Constabulary Vote.
§ MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he had risen to speak to a new point of Order.
THE CHAIRMANThe hon. Member is referring to a past speech, which cannot now be made a point of Order.
MR. JOSEPH COWENsaid, he would simply observe, in continuation of his remarks, that the Government, through the instrumentality of this Constabulary Vote, had largely contributed 1615 to the state of affairs at present existing in Ireland, because the men who had assisted to restrain the tendency to outrage had been thrown into prison. The Chairman having allowed him to make this explanation, he might, perhaps, be permitted to elaborate his point in another sense. The right hon. Gentleman accused the hon. Member for Longford of encouraging disorder; but he would recall the attention of the Chief Secretary for Ireland to the fact that some years ago he (Mr. W. E. Forster) was the member of a Society which had for its object the accomplishment, on behalf of another country, of something very like the result which the Land League was attempting to secure for Ireland—namely, the separation of Lombardy and Venetia from Austria. [Mr. HEALY: Mazzini.] It was as unfair to accuse his hon. Friend of encouraging outrage in Ireland because of his connection with the Laud League as it would be to hold the light hon. Gentleman responsible for the crime and outrage which might have been committed in the foreign country alluded to.
§ MR. O'DONNELLsaid, it was becoming too much one of the leading principles of the Government to bring the very grossest charges against the Irish Party, well knowing, as they did that anything like a detailed answer to their ungrounded charges would, in all probability, lead to discussions outside the strict limits of Order. Now, when Members of the Government brought charges of a grave moral character against Members of the House in the course of a practical discussion like the present, they knew right well that they were bringing charges against men whose lips were practically scaled. The Chairman had ruled, and that rightly, that on a Vote of this character it would lead the Committee into endless discussion if they were to range over the question as to whether the Irish Party was responsible for outrages committed in Ireland. It was as well known to the Chief Secretary as it was known to the Chairman that answers to charges of the kind would be out of Order; and knowing that, the right hon. Gentleman had habitually the unmanliness to make those charges. That evening's discussion, up to the present, at any rate, might have been much more useful and much more practical on one condition— 1616 if the Members of the Government, before laying the Estimates on the Table of the House, had taken the simple precaution of making themselves acquainted with the facts that lay behind those Estimates. It was a fact that almost every objection raised by the Irish Party, and almost every question which they asked with reference to this Constabulary Vote, had been replied to, now by the Chief Secretary, now by the Attorney General for Ireland, by the miserable plea of "no information." Instead of affording explanations, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary rambled off into his usual declaration that so long as he was responsible for Irish affairs he would use all the force of the law for the preservation of order. These platitudes, without a single fact behind them, were the only answers that were vouchsafed to Irish Members; and they not only constituted an injustice to them, but to every Member of the House, Liberal or Conservative, who took a conscientious interest in the government of Ireland. Such was the character of the replies given to Irish Members when they asked on what grounds policemen burst into the bedrooms of sleeping women and insisted upon their getting out of their beds and dressing themselves in the presence of men—and that in a country which was so distinguished for female delicacy. [Laughter.] He did not admire the chivalry of English Members who treated his remarks upon this subject, just and moderate as they had been, with the mockery of laughter, nor did he admire those Gentlemen who evinced this unbecoming levity either as Members of Parliament or as men. Again, they asked for explanation on a material question. The police, on information received, searched the dwellings of farmers; they believed, or they pretended to believe, that arms were secreted, say, in the centre of a certain hay or corn stack that represented, perhaps, the only property of the farmer; after ordering the stack to be taken down, they would rummage it, spread it about the ground, and then leave it to the unfortunate owner, amongst whose property not even the rusty pistol that so much frightened the Chief Secretary could be found. Was that, he asked, an exercise of the law as it was committed to the Chief Secretary and his subordinates which the Committee could approve? He said 1617 that in cases where the Constabulary received information from any source that arms were concealed in the centre of any stack of hay or corn, if they pulled it down without finding any weapon concealed therein, then it was the duty of the Government to compensate the man whose property had been injured by the researches carried out upon the false information supplied to the Constabulary. The Government might call the present system what they pleased; but, unless these men received compensation, the world at large would call it practical dishonesty. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken of the necessity of watching the Ladies' Land League. But, assuming that the Ladies' Land League had to be watched, did watching necessarily consist in the police breaking open doors and forcing their way into parlours where two or three ladies, suspected of sympathy with the popular cause, might happen to be conversing? Why, even if these ladies were talking upon Land League topics, it was not to be supposed that a visit of the police would, under such circumstances, lead to any discoveries whatever. Such acts on the part of the Constabulary were, therefore, as stupid as they were insulting. The Attorney General for Ireland insisted on the necessity for watching the Prisoners' Aid Society, and contended that it was an unnecessary institution. If he were to answer such a statement, he should produce and read at length the letter sent from 40 "suspects" in Omagh Gaol, who had been imprisoned by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, complaining of the foul air, filthy surroundings, sloppy pathways, humid and filthy cells, disgusting food, together with the mean annoyances and insults showered on these unfortunate men; and he was perfectly sure that every right-minded Member in the House would admit that there was a great necessity indeed for the existence of such an institution as the Prisoners' Aid Society in Ireland. The Attorney General for Ireland, in bringing forward his arguments, or, rather, palliation, for the prosecution of the Ladies' Land League, said that the Irish Court of Queen's Bench stated that they could distinguish no difference between the Ladies' Land League and the Men's Land League. But, from the very nature of the charges brought against 1618 the Men's Land League, it was quite clear that a great difference did exist between the two Associations. It was easy for the Committee to understand a charge of intimidation against an Association of men, and intimidation was a crime; but was it alleged that women and girls intimidated, and, when they came together to collect funds for the alleviation of distress, was it to be imagined that intimidation, in the same sense as the term was made use of in the case of the Men's Land League, could be adduced as an excuse for the outrages of the police? The Attorney General for Ireland said he would divide the people into two classes—the loyal and the disloyal. Now, he (Mr. O'Donnell) might observe that in "another place," at present given over wholly to the opponents of Her Majesty's Government, the noblemen who had nominated a Committee destined to be famous in Parliamentary history claimed to have at their back the support of the loyal classes in Ireland; so that, when the Attorney General for Ireland divided the people of Ireland into classes, claiming the support of the loyal and repudiating the support of the disloyal class, inasmuch as the support of the loyal class all belonged to the Conservative Party, he came forward in the proud position of claiming on behalf of Her Majesty's Government the support of no class at all. Irish Members asked for some information, some assurance upon another subject—the manner in which, at the instigation of some policeman, benches of magistrates refused to grant licences to farmers to carry fowling pieces for the extermination of hares and rabbits, when it was well known that the produce of their farms might be destroyed in consequence. It was a fact that if a single constable stood up in Court and declared to the magistrates that such and such farmer had subscribed a few shillings towards saving the Parliamentary Colleagues of the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government from the degradation and discomfort of prison fare, such farmer, on such objection, was at once refused a licence to bear arms, to carry about a fowling piece, or to have one on his premises for the necessary protection of his crops. He had heard, on the side of the Government, several references to the manner in which the various classes in 1619 Ireland were expected to defend themselves against terrorism. But how, when a fowling piece was not allowed to be in the possession of an honest man even for the protection of his crops against the depredations of hares and rabbits, were the loyal people in Ireland, unless they previously secured the favour of every police constable in their districts, to obtain the arms necessary to protect them from the terrorism, whether of Ribbon Societies or Emergency Committees? He did not think that there was any symptom more deserving of the serious consideration of Her Majesty's Government than that presented to the Committee by the warm, earnest, and indignant protest of the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power) against the system advocated by the Chief Secretary for Ireland. Now, if there was a Member of the House who had given fair play, to say the least of it, to the policy of the Government in Ireland, it was the eloquent Member for Mayo; and yet he had denounced the aggravating, harassing, and provocative policy of the Chief Secretary in terms as warm and earnest as could be used by any Member of an irresponsible section of the Irish Party. When the hon. Member for Mayo felt called upon to make a protest of so strong a character, and when he pointed to the town of Ballina, almost a Governmental town, as being filled with hate and detestation for the agents of the Government, it looked as if the writing on the wall had been left there by the hand of the hon. Member. If they resisted the policy of the Chief Secretary to the full extent of their Parliamentary privileges, although not an inch beyond them, if they fought against coercion, they were prepared to face the circumstances as they found them. But they maintained that the Coercion Act did not authorize every policeman in Ireland to insult, to bully, and assault, and to go scot-free. What course were they to take against the outrages committed by the Constabulary, if, when a Coroner's Jury, justly called by the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy)—a Coroner's Jury packed in the interest of the Crown, empanelled on their oaths, found a verdict of "Wilful murder" against a constable, the Chief Secretary for Ireland incited his subordinates to move the Court of Queen's Bench to quash that verdict? 1620 If the authorities of large towns, the municipal authorities of the capital of Ireland itself, waited in person on the right hon. Gentleman and complained of the manner in which a peaceful population had been assaulted, ridden upon, and charged by half-drunken constables, apparently released from all restraint, what was the satisfaction given by the right hon. Gentleman? Why, a sneer worthy of Warsaw. He replied to the municipal representatives of Dublin with the sorry jest that the clearing of streets could not be a milk-and-water business. Let the members for the great City of London, or the members of the Municipalities of Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, or Glasgow try to realize a situation so horrible as this. Let them suppose that the police were charged to run amuck, without distinction, against the peaceable populations of those towns, and that the municipal authorities went to the Home Secretary and complained of the conduct of the police, would not their feelings be those of disgust at receiving for an answer the bitter sneer that "Clearing the streets was no milk-and-water business"? That sneer of the Chief Secretary, which was the only answer vouchsafed to the Corporation of Dublin, was the warrant on which every drunken constable bludgeoned, kicked, and struck down men, women, and children from one end of Ireland to the other. The right hon. Gentleman had presumed to speak of Members of that House being morally responsible for outrages and intimidation in Ireland; but let him prove that he himself was not morally responsible for the consequences of those words. There now only remained two cases out of 100 that deserved comment, to which he wished to call attention in connection with this Vote. He desired to know what safeguards were in force against the improper influence of those Constabulary Circulars offering large rewards for information, which had been issued by the right hon. Gentleman. And not only he, but English Members, wished to ascertain what guarantees there were that such lavish encouragements to the supply of information, not with regard to crimes that had been committed, but about crimes to be committed, would not stimulate scoundrels by the score—scoundrels like Connell, the "moonlight" man, or Donahoe, 1621 the proved perjurer, to entrap innocent men into crime, and, having done so, then to go to the agents of the Chief Secretary and claim a handsome reward? Connell, the drummed-out soldier and the bad character, found, in a district excited by evictions and by police rule, a number of young men, friends or members of evicted families, filled with hate and too often ripe for folly; he led them into criminal enterprizes for terrorizing different persons in the neighbourhood and then turned Queen's evidence against his dupes. That man would, no doubt, consider himself very severely treated if he did not obtain a handsome sum for information given about "outrages to be committed." But, in fact, he had received a handsome reward, for though it was true, no doubt, that Connell was a leader in vile outrages—the evidence on this point being overwhelming, if it was not the result of previous arrangement with the police—and deserved 20 years' penal servitude as richly as any criminal ever did, yet he was the pensioner and trusted agent of the Government, was free from all restraint, and was one of the loyal supporters of the Chief Secretary in Ireland. What guarantees were there that the system was not going on all over Ireland? It was very curious that the constable should have arrested Connell at the very moment when he had his waistcoat pocket full of copious details of dreadful outrages about to take place; and it was very strange that it had not struck the penetrating mind of the right hon. Gentleman that there was a remarkable coincidence between those details and the very terms of the Chief Secretary's Circular. But these were trifling matters upon which the Chief Secretary did not condescend to possess himself of information. Of course the remonstrances made by an Irish Member would be disregarded by Her Majesty's Liberal Government. If he were a Bulgarian and Lord Beaconsfield were in power it would be a very different thing. However, it was not only he, but every honest Member in the House, who desired some information upon another subject. There was a short time back a case tried in Cork relating to an outrage of a very serious and disgusting kind; a case of cutting off the tails of cattle, very brutal and odious in its way, and quite as bad as the acts of 1622 those Englishmen who put their children down sewer pipes to search for missing puppies. A certain man was accused of taking part in a midnight attack on the house where these cattle were in charge, the house being under police protection, in fact garrisoned by the police. A very important question arose at the trial of the accused man—namely, the credibility of the witnesses, who were members of the family. One of the Sub-Inspectors, who had been guarding the family, came forward and deposed that he knew, and had heard during his stay in protecting those people, that the outrages on cattle previously committed on the farm had been done by the members of the family themselves. Let hon. Members imagine such a thing occurring in England and consider what would take place. However, what took place on that occasion was that, without an atom of justification, the Crown Prosecutor at once charged the Sub-Inspector with having been bribed by the Land League. But the matter did not end there. When the unfortunate Sub-Inspector left the witness-box in custody he was brought before a secret tribunal of the Constabulary Force, on the grave charge of having dared to give evidence on oath in a Public Court of Justice, without previously acquainting the Constabulary Authorities. Now, the Land League had been accused of attempting to set up Courts to override the jurisdiction of Her Majesty's Courts in Ireland. But he said it was the Irish Constabulary who, without any Act of Parliament or authority of any kind from that House, had established secret Courts, and that, too, for the purpose of punishing members of their body who dared to give evidence on oath in the Queen's Courts without the previous consent of their superiors. Although the unfortunate constable in question testified that he had previously informed the constable in command of the evidence he was about to give, and that he did not go further in his revelation, because that officer, wishing to please the authorities, told him not to spoil a good Crown case—a good outrage case which was the pride and delectation of Her Majesty's Government in Ireland—he had been dismissed from the Constabulary, while the constable who gave him the order "not to say anything about it" had simply been removed to another 1623 district. As a further example of the spirit in which the Constabulary exercised the authority given by Parliament into the hands, not so much of Her Majesty's Government, as into the hands of the hereditary Orange clique in Dublin Castle which ruled Ireland, he would refer to a case in which the Crown Prosecutor insultingly and profanely asked a sub-constable, who was giving evidence on oath, whether he had not been at confession before giving his testimony; the implication being that some priest or other had used the influence of the Confessional in order to produce a perjured witness to give evidence in Court. These were things which no English Member and no Chief Secretary could control. They were outrages perpetrated by people belonging to some branch of that Secret Brotherhood, at the disposal of Her Majesty's Government, which made the operation of the Coercion Act sheer tyranny, and its name a general recruiting appeal to disaffection in Ireland. Out of 250 officers in the force not more than one in ten was allowed to be of the popular religion in Ireland. A large number of the officers were the sons of former Inspectors and Sub-Inspectors, or were picked up in a still worse area, if possible, by the Government in Ireland. It was the way in which the Constabulary were allowed to make use of every kind of evidence, and to commit unrestrained acts of violence—perfectly sure that even if they committed murder the Coroner's verdict would be quashed—that was causing an organization like the Fenian organization to take the place of the Land League all over Ireland. When the Government made use of the Constabulary and the uncontrolled powers which had been given to them to put down every kind of legal combination on behalf of the Irish people, when they let loose Sub-Inspectors and informers upon the people, the result was Fenianism, or something a great deal more powerful. And if the Chief Secretary imagined he was about to inaugurate a new era of peace and conciliation by replying, when appealed to against the outrages of the Constabulary, that clearing the streets of the capital of Ireland could be no milk-and-water business, he dealt a heavy blow to the connection with Ireland, and gave the coup de grâce to the Government of the Prime Minister.
§ MR. A. MOOREsaid, he desired to bear testimony to the admirable patience, good feeling, and good temper with which the Irish Constabulary had conducted themselves during a time of unprecedented difficulty. He did not believe that any other force in the world could have faced the same difficulties in the same spirit, and nothing but the magnificent discipline which prevailed in the ranks of the Constabulary could have produced this result. Ireland was passing through a period of great trial, and the Constabulary had, in the discharge of their duty, been obliged to attend meetings of the most excited character; they had been present at evictions, and other scenes of a heartrending nature, and, except upon two or three occasions, there had been no complaints of the manner in which they had conducted themselves. He did not mean justifiable complaints; but no complaint whatever had been made. He had been glad to hear the Attorney General for Ireland promise that any charges of violence against the Constabulary committed on such occasions as he had referred to should be unsparingly inquired into, because he believed that the force could afford to stand the most thorough and searching investigation of their conduct. He would remind the Committee that the ranks of the Constabulary were filled by the sons of small farmers; they were naturally thrown into the closest intimacy and sympathy with the people; and hon. Members would understand from this fact that their discipline and good conduct under such trying circumstances as he had indicated was the more remarkable. Nobody could tell the persecution these men had been subjected to. He knew of cases where they had been cut off from the necessaries of life—where even water had to be carried to them over a distance of miles, and where no one in the whole district could be induced to speak to them. ["Hear!"] He was extremely sorry to hear the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) cheer that statement. As long as laws were a necessity men must be found to support them; and it was certainly no fault of the Irish Constabulary if the law sometimes bore hardly on individuals. They had only their duty to perform; and he had availed himself of the opportunity afforded by the present Vote of paying a just tribute to the praiseworthy man- 1625 ner in which upon almost every occasion they had dischargerd it.
§ MR. GIBSONsaid, he did not wish the discussion on the present Vote to close without offering some observations to the Committee. He was very glad the hon. Member for Clonmel (Mr. A. Moore) had spoken so strongly with reference to the services rendered by the Irish Constabulary. He agreed with him that there was no force of the same character which had shown under trying and difficult circumstances more patience, forbearance, and loyalty. It was a common charge brought against those who were in any way connected with the discharge of official duty in Ireland that they were not Irish. But that could certainly not be alleged with regard to the Constabulary, every man of which he believed belonged to the Irish race; and they were, therefore, doubly entitled to respect for the way they had conducted themselves in the present crisis of affairs in Ireland. The Vote being for the support of the Royal Irish Constabulary, he was not there to deny that it might be fair and reasonable to subject an Estimate of so extensive a character to ample and searching criticism. Nevertheless, he ventured to think that anyone who had attended to the criticism which had been bestowed upon it, and followed the course of the debate, must have arrived at the conclusion that the Constabulary Force had stood the ordeal through which it had passed and come out of it seathless. The whole question lay in a nutshell. Could any man doubt that the Vote had been brought forward by the Government for any other reason than because, by the painful and invincible logic of facts, it was found to be absolutely necessary? Throughout the whole course of the discussion not a single suggestion had been made that it was unnecessary or could be dispensed with. In considering this matter hon. Members must look at the probabilities of the case; and every one of these, he ventured to say, were on the side of Her Majesty's Government. Would any Administration put forward an Estimate which was in its very nature exceptional, and from the circumstances of the case calculated to give rise to criticism that would occupy much valuable time, unless they were coerced by absolute necessity? And would not every interest of a Government clothed 1626 with the immense responsibility of administering affairs in Ireland have counselled them to approach the House of Commons with a reduced rather than with an increased Vote had it been in their power to do so? It was because of the present unfortunate and exceptional state of affairs in Ireland that they were compelled to submit these figures to the Committee; and surely it would have been pleasanter for the Constabulary themselves if the Government could have done without additional expenditure, the details of which were set forth in this Estimate, and which for them implied great additional labour and some times popular disfavour. The Constabulary had been, and he believed they were still, a popular body in Ireland. They had administered, as he had already said, their difficult duties in trying times with immense forbearance and great kindness towards their fellow-countrymen. The circumstances by which they were surrounded had subjected them to great disagreeability, and their interest and that of the Government would have been that the Vote should be dispensed with. To his mind the necessity of the increased expenditure had been abundantly made out, inasmuch as if it were not granted the law would be paralyzed, while lawlessness would triumph. He was not inclined to countenance that state of things, and should therefore support the Vote.
§ MR. LEAMYsaid, the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy), in the course of the speech he had delivered during the evening, had alluded to the fact that two men had been imprisoned some months ago upon the evidence of one of the Crown informers named Donahoe, who, he believed, was admitted by the Government to be a perjured witness. This man, he understood, had been indicted for perjury; but his hon. Friend had asked the Attorney General for Ireland whether it was a fact that the two men who were sent to gaol upon his perjured testimony were still undergoing imprisonment? No reply had been given to that inquiry, and he again called the attention of the Government to the circumstances of the case, because they were certainly of a character which entitled Irish Members to ask for information concerning it. The Committee would remember that not many days 1627 since, two men named Johnson and Clowes, who had been wrongfully committed to gaol under a false charge, had been released by order of the Home Secretary, and that compensation had been granted to them for the imprisonment they had undergone. Under the circumstances Irish Members were fairly entitled to an explanation with reference to the two men who had been committed to prison on the perjured testimony of the man Donahoe; and he therefore repeated in substance the question of his hon. Friend the Member for Wexford. Had the Attorney General for Ireland or the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary released these men or made any investigation of the charges upon which they were committed? He had now one or two remarks to offer on the subject of the Constabulary Vote. The Government that night had deliberately attempted to impress the Committee with the belief that hon. Members from Ireland sitting in that part of the House objected to the Constabulary as a body. But that allegation was not correct. It was true that objection had been taken to certain acts of the Constabulary which had been detailed to the Committee, and the attention of hon. Members had been invited to those specific acts. There was, for instance, the affray at Belmullet; the search for arms at Ballina; the arrest of a number of young men returning from a concert, and the attack upon a number of people in the streets of Killea. Those cases had been mentioned with the object of showing that the Constabulary, in following the instructions which they received in those infamous Police Circulars which emanated from Dublin Castle, had been guilty of acts which deserved the strongest reprobation in that House. There was not the slightest foundation for what the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland pretended to believe—that Irish Members wanted to do away with the police. No; they wanted the Constabulary in Ireland to cease to be a military force and to become a civil force; and as a civil force they wanted it to be guided and directed in the manner in which the civil force of every country of the world, where there existed a properly constituted Government, was guided and directed. The right hon. Gentleman had not repudiated the Police Circulars to 1628 which he had referred, and although he had defended men whom Irish Members felt it their duty to bring charges against; although he had defended Coercion and the Arms Act, he defied him to stand up in his place and say a single word in favour of the Circulars to the police. There appeared in the Vote the sum of £200 as compensation given in a certain case about which he thought Irish Members were also entitled to information; and he asked the right hon. Gentleman, who considered it his duty to pay this sum to a civilian wounded some years ago, whether he would be willing to include in the forthcoming Estimates compensation to innocent persons who have been wounded by the police within the last few months? He believed that they would be able to show to the satisfaction of the right hon. Gentleman that in various parts of Ireland, during the last two or three months, men had been injured by the Constabulary, who were perfectly innocent of any offence; in which case he contended they were fully entitled to compensation. He might instance one case, in which a man was killed at Ballyragget, in the county of Kilkenny. If that man had left a family, who had been solely dependent upon him, surely Irish Members were entitled to ask for compensation for them. It had been stated by the Attorney General for Ireland that evening that the sum of £14,000 represented the cost of the extraordinary measures which the police were compelled to take for the enforcement of the law and the maintenance of order in Ireland, and that to the success of those measures was due the present unpopularity of the police. Now, the fact was that the police in Ireland had become unpopular simply because they had been called upon to discharge duties which, he ventured to say, were almost as hateful to the police as they were to the people. No doubt they had been called upon to maintain the peace; but they had likewise been called upon to assist in the recovery of rack rents, by assisting in the arrest of unfortunate tenants who could not pay the unjust sums demanded of them; and this sum of £14,000 really represented the outlay consequent on the ungrudging assistance given by the authorities to the landlords in the enforcement of unjust rents. If he was not mistaken, during the time of the tithe agitation, the Chief Secretary for Ire- 1629 land of that day was frequently applied to for military assistance in the collection of money; but he consistently refused to allow the forces of the Crown to be made use of for that purpose. The conduct of the present Chief Secretary was very different to that of his Predecessor, for no matter how harsh the act of the landlord might be, or whether it came within the purview of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, the right hon. Gentleman was always ready to assist the rack-renting landlord with the military and police. There was no difference between the two cases, because, as a matter of fact, the owner of the tithes was as much entitled to recover them as the landlord was his rent. He could only say that English Members, who voted away these large sums of money, would do well to reflect and consider what gain it was to England that such large sums of money should be periodically expended for the purpose of maintaining what was called law and order in Ireland. He contended that almost every single penny that was so spent was for the maintenance of an unjust system which was admittedly breaking down, and which it was utterly impossible to keep going for any very long time. So long as this alien land system remained, so long would there be agitation in Ireland. Under the circumstances of which they complained, he was not at all sorry to think that there was throughout Ireland a more deep and wide-spread disaffection against foreign rule than there was before, and he felt there were few men in Ireland who did not hold the same views upon the subject as himself. These feeling's were due, in a great degree, to the manner in which, during the last year, both the ordinary law and the Coercion Act had been administered. Every one knew, however, that abuse must follow the enactment of exceptional law; and he could tell the right hon. Gentleman that the manner in which the ordinary law had been administered during the last 12 months would be almost sufficient to account for the present state of feeling in Ireland, and that feeling would continue to exist so long as the laws continued to be administered in a way which had already brought the utmost discredit upon the English Government in Ireland.
§ MR. STOREYdesired to explain his reasons for objecting to this Vote. The 1630 hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) had, in the course of the debate, made some very serious and, as he thought, destructive criticisms upon the action of the Chief Secretary with respect to the administration of affairs in Ireland; and the light hon. Gentleman, in his reply, had adopted a method which he was bound to say was only too common in dealing with Irish matters. The right hon. Gentleman had laid before the Committee the details of a murder alleged to have taken place in Ireland. He had used the announcement as an illustration of his argument, and then said he could not vouch for its correctness, that it was only taken from an English newspaper, and that it might be contradicted to-morrow. The process he had described had become too much the fashion when events in Ireland had to be transmogrified for the information of the people of England; and he thought the Chief Secretary could not wonder that his subordinates in Ireland should exaggerate occurrences when he himself set them such a bad example. The right hon. Gentleman had been supported by the speeches of some hon. Members that evening; but both the speeches and the loudest cheers which had greeted him had come from Gentlemen who were the Representatives of the landowning interest in Ireland, and from Irish landowners themselves, who sat on the opposite side of the House. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), who had just left the House, had urged upon the Committee that this was a Vote for the Irish Constabulary, that the Irish Constabulary were absolutely necessary in the present stale of affairs, and that hon. Members ought not to allow themselves to vole against the Estimate. But he (Mr. Storey) desired to point out that it was not a Vote for the Irish Constabulary for ordinary purposes. That had been freely granted by the House last year, and had been as freely expended. The present was a Vote for a special purpose, and a purpose to which a limited number of Members of the House, to say the least of it, strongly objected. There was, therefore, nothing unreasonable in their opposing this special Vote. He objected in the first place that, for the purpose of detecting agrarian crime, the Irish Constabulary were of no use whatever. 1631 They did nothing, they caught nobody, and, from the very circumstances of the ease, they could not perform the work that was laid upon them. In his view, then, the Vote was simply a waste of money. He was prepared to prove his contention that the force accomplished nothing. The popular idea was that the Irish Constabulary had been singularly active lately, and that, owing to their strenuous endeavours, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, having at last made up his mind to use the Coercion Act with vigour, had been successful in putting an exceptionally large number of people in prison for agrarian offences. But that was an error. He was glad to find there were no women recorded as being imprisoned under the Coercion Act; but with regard to men, he had gone into the figures, and he would, with the permission of the Committee, lay before them the results of his inquiry. He found that a total of 512 persons were imprisoned, and if all these had been arrested for the commission of outrages—he would go so far as to say if they had been imprisoned on the reasonable suspicion of having committed outrages—he would not have risen to speak in opposition to the right hon. Gentleman. But, out of this number of 512 men, there were only 164 against whom the Chief Secretary for Ireland could on any ground allege that they were reasonably suspected of having been either as principals or accessories in the commission of the outrages to repress which he obtained the Coercion Act. What were the grounds for the detention of the remaining 348? Why, the right hon. Gentleman had, in the days of his later vigour, discovered a new offence, which was never mentioned to or contemplated by the House during the passage of the Coercion Act—that A. B. was suspected of inciting C. D. to intimidate E. F. from paying his rent to G. H. He said that, from its very nature, such intimidation must be committed in the light of day, and there could, consequently, be no want of evidence to prove it. Hon. Members would see that if he were to insist, by word of mouth or in writing, that any gentleman should not pay his rent, he committed an offence which was susceptible of clear proof. ["No!"] He challenged any hon. Gentleman who cried "No!" to disprove his statement.
§ MR. STOREYsaid, he thought the Chairman had hardly caught the form of his speech. He was inviting any hon. Member who was able to controvert his statement, and to show where he was wrong. But, whether the offence to which he had referred were susceptible of proof or not, he contended that it was not the sort of offence for which the Coercion Act was obtained from that House. He had taken the trouble to read again all the speeches made by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland during the passage of that measure; and he was unable to discover in one of them, although he had been at great pains to stretch the meaning of the right hon. Gentleman to the utmost, any justification for the assumption that he had either told the House, or made the House understand, or that he himself understood, that he was going to use the Coercion Act for any such purpose as he (Mr. Storey) had described. If the 277 persons now in gaol for that offence were separated from the rest a very small proportion of the 512 men would remain who had been rightly arrested and imprisoned under the Act. Therefore he said that, for the suppression of agrarian crimes and offences, the Irish Constabulary were of no use whatever to the country, and the Vote now asked for should be refused. There was another reason why he objected to voting this money. When the earnestness of the House of Commons and the sympathy of the supporters of the Government began to flag, and whenever the effect of the tales of outrages that were told in that House began to wear off the minds of the constituencies, it was the fashion for the Chief Secretary, and the right hon. Gentleman who fat beside him, to raise another bogey before the House and the country. When the tale of outrage failed to interest and horrify, that of treasonable practices at once came forward; and he had, with reference to this point, also turned back to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman when he was seeking to obtain the Coercion Bill in that House. On the 24th of January last year, the Chief Secretary for Ireland said—
The House will see that power is taken to arrest and detain men suspected of 'treasonable 1633 practices.'… We have information—and I must ask the House to believe me when I say this—that there is danger on this around, that the men generally known as Fenians are making use of this agitation for purposes which may become dangerous; and that obliges us to ask for the power of arrest."—[3 Hansard, cclvii. 1227.]Well, the House did believe the right hon. Gentleman; and what proof had been given in support of his statement? There was no evidence to lead him to believe that serious treasonable practices existed. He knew that this dread of Fenianism had a great effect upon the minds of sound, honest Liberals in the borough he had the honour to represent (Sunderland). When that dread began to vanish the Home Secretary was put upon them. The Chief Secretary for Ireland rather failed in his part, and the Secretary of State for the Home Department being, as he might say, the "heavy man" of the Government, in melodramatic tones told the House of a dreadful conspiracy that was to happen. He asked the right hon. and learned Gentleman, also, where was his proof? Again, the Attorney General for Ireland stated, the other night, that Mr. Parnell was steeped to the lips in treason. Well, the observation he had to make upon this was, that if it were true, and if it represented the deliberate opinion of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, he (Mr. Storey) held him to be guilty, before that House and before the country, because he had not taken steps to punish a man who was "steeped up to the lips in treason." For an offence like that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had no need to trust to an Irish jury.
THE CHAIRMANreminded the hon. Gentleman that he was travelling very wide of the question before the Committee.
§ MR. STOREYtrusted the Committee would pardon him on the ground of his inexperience in the House. He was endeavouring to show that, so far as treasonable practices were concerned, the Irish Constabulary had been singularly unsuccessful in catching these terrible traitors. Hon. Members would doubtless like to know how many men the Chief Secretary had in prison at that moment for treasonable practices. Possibly, hon. Members supposed the number to be large. But, after all this scare, lasting for 10 months, during 1634 which the whole Constabulary Force had been employed in detecting this terrible conspiracy, there were only 11 persons in prison for treasonable practices. He could not but regard that fact as an indication of one of two things. Either the Irish Constabulary had been remarkably unsuccessful in detecting this offence; or else, as he thought was much more likely to be the case, the imagination of the Chief Secretary had been played upon by persons in Ireland, and a conspiracy had been conveniently forthcoming in order to furnish Her Majesty's Government with reasons for the Coercion Act. There was another reason why he objected to giving any extra money for the Constabulary, and that reason related to the meetings which had been held in Ireland and had been put down by the right hon. Gentleman. He did not know whether the Radical Members of the House sufficiently took account of the explanation which the Chief Secretary gave of his method of dealing with meetings in Ireland. The Chief Secretary said—
We were advised that there were two grounds upon which we could disperse these meetings. One was the danger to individuals attending them, and the other was that they tended to a breach of the peace, not directly but indirectly, by causing an excitement that would probably lead to a breach of the peace.Now, if there were no other reason he (Mr. Storey) could urge against this Vote, he would urge that explanation of the method in which the right hon. Gentleman treated public meetings in Ireland. Might he appeal to Radical Members to consider what it meant? What were the reasons given for interfering with these meetings? First, that there was danger to the individuals attending them. Apply that principle to England. Apply it, say, to the Hyde Park Meeting which took place under famous auspices in 1866. Apply it to any of the great demonstrations held in the North. Apply the second reason, that there was danger of a breach of the peace. He had had sufficient experience to know that if a meeting tended to a breach of the peace it was competent for the lawful authorities to prevent it; and if the right hon. Gentleman had stopped there he would have furnished somewhat of a reason for carrying out his policy. But what 1635 was the fact about the meetings in Ireland? There was the singular and wonderful fact that, in connection with the agrarian agitation in Ireland spreading through the country, stirring the minds of thousands of men, hundreds of meetings had been held, and the universal testimony of the police and magistrates was that there had been perfect good order, and that there was no danger until the police interfered. But the right hon. Gentleman only ventured to say that indirectly they tended to a breach of the peace by causing excitement likely to lead to a breach of the peace. He (Mr. Storey) ventured to say there was not a public meeting held in England which could not be dispersed by armed police, according to the theory of the Constitutional Minister who now governed Ireland. Then there was a fourth reason for objecting to this Vote, and that was that under the auspices of the Chief Secretary the Constabulary were being used deliberately, systematically, and with brute force, to enforce evictions whether they were just or unjust. If he had any doubt as to what had been the policy of the Chief Secretary, the right hon. Gentleman resolved it for him the other day. When challenged from the Benches opposite as to whether he had not advised the landlords in Ireland to evict in concert, he gave an answer that filled his (Mr. Storey's) mind with shame. The Representative of the Liberal Government stated that what he did was to inform the landlords who might find it necessary to evict that it would be much better that, when they had made up their minds, they should have some concert with one another, so that the Government could with the least expenditure of force support them. That was using the Constabulary of Ireland deliberately, systematically, remorselessly, to help the landlords to evict tenants and collect rents; and for that reason he should oppose the expenditure of this money. How aid the right hon. Gentleman justify that course? He said—"I justify this conduct on the ground of economy." That was a good honest Radical doctrine, when it was practised. The right hon. Gentleman also said—"I justify it on the ground of the preservation of order; and I justify it, lastly, on the ground of mercy." Yes; but he would appeal to the 1636 right hon. Gentleman, and he would call no other witness but himself against himself—he would remind the right hon. Gentleman of another virtue greater it a Minister than any of the three given by the right hon. Gentleman. Speaking, last year or the year before, of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, the Chief Secretary said—I acknowledge that, in one sense, the Bill is the offspring of fear—the fear that we the Government of this great country, with all the force of this great country behind us, may he using that force against the miserable small cottier tenants of Ireland, when, to some extent, they may have a just and true right to say that they are treated with injustice."—[3 Hansard, ccliii. 1725.]The right hon. Gentleman might have appealed to justice; and when over a whole district the right hon. Gentleman evicted people by concert with the aid of his armed police, could he say that all the people evicted were justly evicted? Did he not know that while there were some who ought justly to be evicted, there were others in the same district who ought not to be evicted by any law of God or man? But what the right hon. Gentleman did was this—he took a district in which there were small and large families of all sorts, and, with the agreement of the landlords, swept the whole country side by his police. There was an element of injustice in that which would recoil with ten-fold effect on the right hon. Gentleman's head, and on the Party who supported him. He (Mr. Storey) could not expect that what he had said would carry conviction to the minds of hon. Gentlemen; but he had felt that it was just to a very large section of public opinion in England—a section, in every constituency, and a very large section in the part of the country he came from—that he should declare that the power of the Government was being used at this moment not to put down outrage, but to enable the landlords in Ireland to collect their rents and evict their tenants.
§ MR. METGEsaid, he felt very strongly upon this matter, and there were one or two points he could not pass over. The Chief Secretary, when he commenced one of his speeches this evening, said it was absurd of the Irish Members to imagine that cases brought up on the spur of the moment could be dealt with at once. But that was the only possible way in which they could bring up these 1637 matters, and then they only got evasive answers. And these cases were so numerous that it would be impossible to bring them up in the ordinary way by Questions. In his own county (Meath), which, according to the Chief Secretary's view, was perhaps one of the most orderly in the country, numbers of these cases arose. He had been surprised to hear the hon. Member for Clonmel (Mr. A. Moore) say the Irish Members wore opposed to the Police Force in Ireland. He denied that charge; they were not opposed to the police, but they were opposed to the uses they were put to. They found the police instigated in every possible way by the Government to adopt a system of espionage such as would be detested and cried down by the Liberal Government if it existed in any other country than Ireland. The worst feature of the case in Ireland was this—the Coercive Laws of the Government were being used to put in the hands of the police the liberty of every individual; and there was not a man in the country who was not at the mercy of the police. Everyone who knew anything of Ireland knew that the police felt that the magistrates, in the main, supported them, and to reciprocate that they must work to support the magistrates. A good instance of this occurred in his county, and it was a case of a practical nature in regard to this Vote. Every year there was a Supplementary Estimate for the Police. How was this increased cost caused? He had to attend a meeting of magistrates in his own county, held to petition the Lord Lieutenant for an increased force of police. He was in a minority, but he had the audacity to ask the Inspector who had brought the matter before the magistrates the grounds for his application. He had no grounds. He said there were no statistics of crime or outrage for the past month, and his only reason was that he considered it necessary to have an increased force. All the landlords present said "Hear, hear!" And simply on that ground they asked the Lord Lieutenant for an additional force of 50 men, at a considerable cost to the ratepayers. That was one way in which the Police Estimates were increased from year to year. Then he had another objection to this Vote. Though the Irish Members did not object to the police in the slightest degree so long as they were used for legitimate 1638 purposes, they did object to them when used to maintain the landlords against the just rights of the people; and when they saw the police absolutely used as a moans of exciting the people to a breach of law and order, they must condemn that system. In one case, a landlord on the outskirts of Meath, who was notorious, had evicted a large number of tenants, and when the land was offered to the people they refused to take it, and the crops lay ungathered. A body of "emergency" men came down and purchased the crops; but instead of taking the crops to the Dublin market by the ordinary means of railway, they took the crops on cars, supported by police through the county, stirring up the people to oppose their progress. In one of the towns they went through they were met at first by a crowd of boys actuated by mere boyish excitement and playfulness; but one of the police officers lost his temper and struck down one of these boys. In a second he set fire to the fuel, and the whole town was all but in a conflagration. The Sub-Inspector tried to quell the excitement, but he found his control gone. The police did not obey him; and for a long time it was a question in the balance whether there would be a wholesale onslaught on the people, who would have been undisturbed but for the "emergency" men marching through the; town accompanied by police. All that would have been prevented if the crops had been taken to the market by the railway. The Chief Secretary had said that the one principle that had actuated him in his administration of the Coercion Laws was his love of justice, and that he was determined that in all cases his decisions should be judicial as before God and man. He expressed that determination in all the solemn tones of which all the Members of the Government were such ready masters; but could the Committee believe that all the decisions of which they had heard were in any sense judicial? The cases were worked up solely by the police. The police gave information, and the magistrates were merely the instruments of the police. The police were the accusers, and the accused had no means of defending themselves. Therefore, the police were the real Judges. That was the case, not only under the Coercion Act, but under the Arms 1639 Act, and he would show it by an example that occurred a short time ago. A tenant farmer holding a large tract of land—a man who was a Poor Law Guardian, and in every way respectable—applied in the ordinary way for a licence to carry arms on his own land. That in itself was humiliation enough for a man in his position; but it was necessary under the law, and he did it. As a matter of course the magistrates granted the licence; but before he had left the Court he was called back, and told that they were very sorry, but they could not give him the licence. His character was taken away, and no reason assigned; and it afterwards was made clear that this change in the views of the magistrates was caused by the whisper of a policeman, supposed to be to the effect that the applicant was an improper person. There was not a single ground of charge against him, except that he was a member of the Land League; but he was refused permission to carry, arms on his own property through the whisper of a policeman. This showed the worst feature of the Coercive Laws in Ireland; every man was under the control of the lowest ranks of the Police Force. It reminded him of what King John said to Hubert, whom he charged with having taken the law into his own hands—
It is the curse of Kings to be attendedBy slaves, that take their humours for a warrantTo break within the bloody house of life;And, on the winking of authority,To understand a law.That was precisely what the police had done. They were ever ready on the winking of authority to understand the law, and the result was that the people were cowed, and in many instances they were implicated in crimes of which they could not be held at all guilty. A great deal had been said about the Ladies' Land League. He did not wish to go out of the way to discuss that; but it had been reported in the newspapers that 18 families of people had applied to the Ballina Workhouse, having been evicted by their landlords. Why had they been thrown out? Because the Ladies' League was not able to support them. Had not that League in numberless cases supported people who had been cast out on the road, and were suffering from degradation? He would remind hon. Members of 1846 and 1848, when there was 1640 no Ladies' League, and when people were thrown out to rot in the ditches; when the roofs were torn off their houses, and the rites of the Church were said over dying people, with only the stars of Heaven over their heads. Let them remember that the Police Force were themselves moved to tears by the iniquities of that class tyranny, supported by the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster) was a Member. Let them remember these facts before they tried to heap calumny on these ladies. Whatever might have been their faults, they had a sense of charity. There was another matter which, was not often referred to—these police were Irishmen; and he thought it was a deplorable fact that Irishmen were found in the uniform of policemen or soldiers. He would rather lose his limbs than wear the uniform; but the men were there, and they deserved to be treated, at least, as Englishmen by the Government. This Vote contained an item of £7,359 for clothing; but he knew there were hundreds of policemen who had had scarcely any clothing for a month. Round about Dublin, where it looked well to have the men well-clothed, they were provided with overcoats up to time; but in remote parts of Ireland, where the men had really hard work to do, they were left without sufficient clothing as long as possible. There were numbers of these men at this moment left in a miserable state for want of the clothing which ought to have been supplied to them long ago. He raised this question from the point of view of humanity. If he spoke simply from his own feelings, he should say, "Let the men rot;" but while they were there he should like to see the Government pay more attention to their comfort. This was a very large Vote, and he would like the Committee to consider for a moment the Report upon which it was based, and the advantages that were obtained by it. In Ireland there were 50,000 soldiers and police at this moment; but, in America, with its vast population, in which there were over 4,000,000 of Irishmen, there were only 25,000 troops; and in India, with a population of 250,000,000 of people, there was only a force equal to that which was necessary to keep Ireland in order. Could any English Member say that the government of Ireland was carried on ex- 1641 cept on a system of the rankest despotism? For this reason, he thought every Irishman, no matter what his views, must vote against expenditure which was robbery of Englishmen, and which at the same time must deepen the hate with which Irishmen regarded the English rule.
§ MR. R. POWERsaid, he felt that it was useless and unprofitable to attempt to argue with the majority he saw before him; but several statements had been made in this debate to which he should like to refer. But before he did so he should like, not only on his own account, but on the part of his Colleagues, to congratulate the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Storey) on the excellent speech he had delivered; and he could not help thinking that if other Englishmen would throw aside their prejudices and consider Irish questions in the same spirit, much more would be done to establish good relations between the two countries. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) had said that on this Vote the Irish Members attacked the Constabulary of Ireland. They did no such thing. He had always considered the Constabulary as a credit to their country; and the Irish Members did not attack the Constabulary, but they attacked the system under which they were bound to act. For instance, the Sub-Inspector of a district obeyed the County Inspector, and the County Inspector received his orders from Dublin Castle. They were, after all, but human beings, and they must obey their orders, no matter whether they were tyrannical or just, when they received them from Dublin Castle. The hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) had asked the Chief Secretary why an anonymous man had been compensated by £200 for some injury he had received in a riot, and had also asked why, if this man was compensated for injuries received in a riot, people who had been ill-treated by the Constabulary should not be compensated? The Chief Secretary had no answer to this; but he (Mr. Power) hoped that before the debate closed the right hon. Gentleman would give some explanation. The Attorney General for Ireland, in his remarkable speech, which would be long remembered by the House of Commons, had said that in September last Mr. Parnell 1642 was steeped up to his lips in treason. If that was so, it was the duty of the right hon. and learned Gentleman to arrest Mr. Parnell and bring him to trial before a jury of his own countrymen. But the right hon. and learned Gentleman, if he knew anything about Ireland, must know that Mr. Parnell was not steeped up to his lips in treason. But if Mr. Parnell, as the Leader of the Irish Party, was steeped up to his lips in treason, it was the duty of the Government to use the forces of civilization in order to put down this treason—which, however, existed only in the imagination of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. But what did the Chief Secretary do? He suppressed public meetings. The suppression of public meetings was a contradiction of the principles which he (Mr. Power) had always believed to be professed by the Liberal Party. Who was it that taught the Irish people to hold public meetings and agitate for the redress of their grievances? And who taught them that if they came to that House and pleaded their cause their claims would be listened to, and their arguments respected? It was the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright) who had said there was nothing so safe as public meetings, and had advised the people to meet together and look each other face to face and discuss the great questions of the day. But the right hon. Gentleman belonged to the Cabinet which had prevented the Irish people from meeting together and discussing the questions of the day, and had driven, the people into secret societies, where the Irish Members, as Leaders of the people, could not follow them. A great deal had been said about the way in which the Constabulary discharged their duties in Ireland. He would cite one case to show the way in which the present government of Ireland was carried on. A publican applied to the Quarter Sessions for a transfer of his licence. The transfer was objected to by the police on the ground that the applicant had been prominent at a Land League demonstration, at which the parish priest and Mr. Richard Power were present. What had the man done? He had ridden in front of a demonstration dressed in green. The magistrate asked if that was all, and the answer 1643 was "Yes;" and to the question whether he had been conducting his business properly during the year, the answer was also "Yes." Yet the police objected to the transfer of his licence. If that man was guilty of an offence in attending the meeting, still more was he (Mr. Power) guilty for having been present. But the police had raised an objection from mere animosity. Then the right hon. and learned Gentleman had said if the Irish people had a Parliament of their own, their first duty would be to preserve order.
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)I did not say that. I said, "If the Queen's authority was driven out and you had to govern Ireland."
§ MR. R. POWERsaid, he wished it were so; and he could assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman that if they had a Parliament of their own their first duty would be to preserve order, and to perhaps pass as stringent a Coercion Act as even the Government had passed, but with this difference—if they passed such an Act they would be punishing their own children. A man might punish his own children, and yet object to a stranger doing so; and that was the case in Ireland. To show how the police carried out the Act he would read two lines from a letter written by a man whom he had known all his life, and who, he would pledge his honour, was as innocent of any act against the law as he himself was. That man wrote—
You will be surprised to hear that I was recently 'reasonably suspected,' and this morning, at half-past 4 o'clock, I was taken out of my bed and lodged here, on a warrant, charged with being guilty of intimidation. I have witnesses to prove my innocence; but I believe they are no use to me at present, as it is so easy now-a-days to suspect people.This was a man who, he (Mr. Power) was prepared to prove before any Committee appointed by the House, or by any Committee of Dublin Castle, was perfectly innocent. He did not believe the Chief Secretary knew anything about that case. The man's name was John Fitzgerald, and he was taken from Waterford. Had the right hon. Gentleman inquired into this case? The danger of the course pursued by the right hon. Gentleman was this. So long as the Irish Members could talk to the people, they could advise and control them, and guide them. But the Govern- 1644 ment had prevented their doing that by quashing public meetings. As he had said, the Government had driven people into societies where their leaders, the Irish Members, could not follow them, and he was afraid the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would find it a very difficult thing to restore peace and order in Ireland unless he repealed the Coercion Act. The great mistake the Government had made in the public affairs of Ireland, and the great mistake they had made in the government of Ireland, was in allowing the institutions of the country to remain opposed to the sentiments of the people. Look at the police. They were paid by the Crown, they were officered by the Crown, and they were sent down to the counties with their pockets full of instructions from Dublin Castle. Until Her Majesty's Government brought the police and the whole administration of the country into greater harmony with the feelings of the people, they could never have anything but Coercion Acts—soldiers and police and repressive measures—in Ireland. If they were only to look at the evil effects of their system to-day in Ireland, the condition of things might not be so deplorable; but the saddest part of their government of Ireland was this—that the injustices and cruelties of to-day would be remembered by the Irish people for generations to come. It was a curious fact that there were no people in the world who had longer memories than the Irish. There were no people who remembered a good turn better or a bad one longer. Their memories stretched far back, and history lived for ever in their country. History in Ireland went down from father to son; and they would find there to-day that the poorest and humblest amongst the people could tell of the cruelties inflicted on them by Cromwell, and of the iniquities of the Penal Laws. Everything was treasured up, and he assured the Government that the more police they sent into Ireland the worse would the state of Ireland be. They could not by force of arms and by increasing their Constabulary Vote restore peace and order. They had tried it. Ireland was more peaceable, there were fewer outrages and crimes there, before the Coercion Act was passed. The Government passed their Coercion Act, and now they found i Ireland worse. He feared there was 1645 little use in appealing to the present Government to once more return to rational courses with regard to the governed classes. He could understand the position of the Conservative Government thoroughly; they promised nothing and did nothing. But he could not understand the position of the Liberal Government, who did nothing whilst promising everything. It was the duty of Irish Members to protest against the increase of the Constabulary on this occasion. It was to be regretted that such an amount of time was occupied in discussing the Estimates; but the Irish Members had to perform a duty, however painful it might be. It was for them to expose the evils of the system which had been adopted by the right hon. Gentleman; and, having made this protest, he hoped that after the speech of his hon. Friend near him (Mr. T. D. Sullivan), the Committee might be allowed to divide on the Question.
§ MR. T. D. SULLIVANsaid, he would not occupy the attention of the Committee for many minutes. He had not had the advantage of hearing the entire debate, but he had heard a portion of the speech of the Attorney General for Ireland, and on that he desired to offer a few brief comments. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had said that the Police Force in Ireland and the extra expenditure the Committee was now asked to vote had been employed in what he called "preserving the peace, and maintaining law and order." These were very nice words with which to catch the ear of the House of Commons. "Preserving the peace" was the name the right hon. and learned Gentleman chose to give to the operation of the Bills for carrying out unjust and atrocious evictions throughout the length and breadth of the country. The whole point of the case he (Mr. Sullivan) took to be this—that these evictions were unjust, and unreasonable, and inhuman, and that they were proved to be so by the evidence before the House given by the Chief Secretary himself. It was now admitted by Members of the Government that rack-renting had existed in Ireland to a much greater extent than they had been aware of when passing the Coercion Act and the Land Act through the House of Commons. Evictions were taking place in consequence of arrears of rent, which arrears had accrued in consequence of 1646 rack-renting. The arrears were such as the people could not pay, and should not be expected to pay, nor asked to pay; and, that being so, the evictions were unjust evictions, and he would defy any hon. or right hon. Gentlemen to prove the contrary of that assertion. They had it on the evidence of the Land Courts. They were reducing the rack rents right and left. The landlords were standing their trial and the verdict was going against them. The Chief Secretary, therefore, was at this moment administering injustice in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman had said in this House that that was a thing that England, great and powerful as she was, might well be afraid to do, and that he, for one, was not ashamed to say that he should be afraid to do it. If over the right hon. Gentleman had had that holy fear it had vanished from him. He was now recklessly and cruely carrying out evictions in consequence of arrears of rent which occurred through rack-renting. The chain of evidence must prove to the right hon. Gentleman's mind, or to the mind of any reasonable man, that these evictions were unjust, immoral, and inhuman. The Attorney General for Ireland said, imagine such a thing in England as cars being refused to the police, whilst endeavouring to discharge their duty—whilst engaged in the preservation of law and order, and the maintenance of peace! Well, but imagine such a thing in England as the eviction of a whole country side, as wholesale evictions throughout the length and breadth of the Kingdom! Was it to be supposed that all that would happen in that state of things would be that cars would be refused to the police? No; the English people would take a very much stronger line of action than that. Then, with reference to the Police Circulars and this expenditure of money, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General said they were for the purpose of detecting crime. The Irish Representatives did not object to crime being detected, but what they did object to was that the system which now prevailed in Ireland, instead of detecting crime, created crime for the purpose of discovering it. The effect of the Police Circulars, the secret service money, and the inducements held out to informers, unquestionably was to create fictitious plots, and to produce informers who 1647 would make crime first and discover it afterwards, for the purpose of putting money in their pockets. That kind of thing had happened in Ireland over and over again. It would happen in any country under similar circumstances. There was in Ireland, as in every country in the world, a base element. There was in. Ireland, as in every other country, a number of base-minded men who would clutch at gold, if offered to them in almost any circumstances; and if Her Majesty's Government said to that class of men—"Here is gold for you, and not only gold, but protection; for we undertake that, if you give us secret information of crime about to be committed, not only will we pay you for it, but your name will never be known to your neighbours;" that was a frightful temptation. That temptation was offered, and was producing its natural and inevitable effect. Sham conspiracies and sham discoveries were reported every day at Dublin Castle, and secret-service money was being paid out for them, and he firmly believed that the informers, who were living on this money, held out inducements to people to commit crime or to go about the commission of crime, for the very purpose of betraying them afterwards and getting Government rewards. One objection he had to British rule in Ireland was that its tendency was to demoralize the people. The tendency of landlordism and British rule, as they knew these things in Ireland, was to encourage and develop base passions amongst the people. It was really wonderful how a shred of virtue remained to the Irish people, subjected as they bad been for such a long period to these degrading influences. He hoped they were drawing near the end of this demoralizing system; at all events, they were grappling with it, and, at whatever risk or peril to themselves, they would carry on the struggle. They had inflicted already a very severe blow upon the landlord system in Ireland and he confessed fairly and frankly that the Land Act was helping them very much in that respect. The Land Act was such a blow to landlordism as it would never recover from. But it only scotched the snake, it did not kill it; and they (the Irish Members) were now here to oppose this Vote for this extra expenditure on Irish Police, believing 1648 that it was not doing good but evil in Ireland, and they would be slaves if they allowed proposals of this kind to pass without resisting them.
§ Question put.
§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 183; Noes 18: Majority 165.—(Div. List, No. 25.)
§
(2.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £1,300, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1882, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of Public Works in Ireland.
§ MR. SEXTONsaid, the Members from Ireland had no option but to offer to this Vote the most determined resistance in their power. The Board of Works in Ireland was well known to Irishmen. They believed it to be most detrimental to the interests of the country, more so than any other Department of the Government. The Chief Secretary occupied the position of President of the Board, or had some official connection with it. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: I have not.] It was hard to say what the right hon. Gentleman was not connected with in Ireland. At any rate, the Board consisted of three or four gentlemen nominated by the Government—gentlemen over whose appointment the people of Ireland had no sort of control, and gentlemen who had not shown in their careers any sympathy for the people, and whom the people knew very well indeed and had absolutely no confidence in. The Supplementary Vote asked for included the salaries and expenses of extra staff and increased duties, due to additional Baronial Sessions having been held in 1881, and payment to draftsmen. He said, without hesitation, that the comparative failure of the system of Baronial Sessions in Ireland, at a time of extreme want and distress amongst the people, had been due to the obstructive policy followed by the Board of Works. In the county of Sligo—and what was true of Sligo was true also of other counties in Ireland—many works of extreme utility had to be abandoned in consequence of the attitude taken up by the Board of Works. He knew that many works taken up by Baronial Sessions had not been ratified by the Board. When the Baronial Sessions, including 1649 as they did members of the Grand Juries and the ratepayers—the gentry as well as the people—guaranteed the cost, the least that could have been expected would have been that the Board of Works would have ratified the undertaking. But he knew, as a melancholy fact, that many bodies of men had been thrown out of work, which would have been given by the landlords and other people, when they were striving to obtain a livelihood for themselves and their families, through the obstinate obstruction offered by the Board of "Works from first to last. The Committee had a right to know what proportion of public works approved of by the Baronial Sessions were abandoned in consequence of the refusal of the Dublin officials to ratify them. He believed that thousands of pounds, tons of thousands of pounds, were kept out of the pockets of the poor starving-people who could not obtain employment by reason of the interference of the Board of Works. There was a sum of £700 put down in connection with the new system of loans to occupiers of land. This "new system," he presumed they were to understand as the system inaugurated under the Land Act of last year. He was curious to know whether the new system had proved as great a failure as the old. Hon. Members would bear in mind that in the Land Act of 1870, the failure of which was now a matter of universal consent, the Board was authorized to grant loans, amongst other things, to enable them to purchase their farms. He referred to Reports of a Committee of this House, and also to the recent Report of the Bessborough Commission, upon which the Land Act was founded, in verification of his statement that the system of loans authorized by the Land Act of 1870 had been an utter failure, in consequence of the obstructive action of the Board of Public Works. He might contrast the action of the Board of Works with that of the Irish Church Temporalities Commissioners, who did not offer to the tenants terms much more favourable than the Board of Works. In many cases the tenants paid to the Irish Church Temporalities Commissioners larger prices than the land would fetch in the open market. Simply because they approached the question in a rational and statesmanlike manner their project met with comparative success. They were enabled, to 1650 aid the tenants in many parts of the country to become proprietors, in the first place, because the Commissioners took the trouble to inform the tenants clearly and plainly upon what terms they might become proprietors of their farms; and, secondly, because when the tenants came before the Commissioners they were not frightened with law costs, with mysteriously legal and official forms—they were not obstructed by red-tapeism. The success which had attended the operations of the Commissioners was large and signal as compared with the failure of the operations of the Board of Works. He challenged contradiction when he said that so complete a failure as that of the Board of Works since 1870 in connection with loans to tenants did not stand on record in the history of Ireland. What he had a right to ask was whether, in the four or five months which had elapsed since the passing of the Land Act, the Board of Works had shown any better disposition to make advances to tenants; whether they had taken steps to inform the tenants in a proper manner upon what terms the Board was prepared to assist them either with regard to the drainage of the land, or the general improvement of their farms? He was anxious to know whether the Board was content to be aware of its own powers, and not communicate them to the tenants of Ireland? Had the Board sent agents to the different districts of Ireland to inform the tenants upon what terms they could obtain loans for the purchase or improvement of their farms? Before they passed this Vote they were entitled to a full explanation of the steps the Board had taken, since the passing of the Land Act, to make the system of loans operative. Judging from the miserable failure of the Arrears Clause, remembering that there must be £2,000,000 now owed for rent by 100,000 tenants, and that only £500 had been advanced in respect of the arrears, he was entitled to regard with suspicion the new system of loans to occupiers through an obstructive and stupid Board. No one would be more glad than he would be to know that some measure of success had attended the operation; but whether he regarded the failure of the Arrears Clause, or whether he regarded the advances made under other heads of the Land Act, he was entitled to regard the whole system with the most grave 1651 suspicion. In the matter of advances to tenants, as well as in other respects, the Land Act had been a failure, and in the interest of candour and fair play he invited the Government to satisfy the Committee that some good results had accrued from the system of loans. He should be curious to see whether it was not like the Land Commission—namely, causing a preposterous expenditure with small nominal results.
§ MR. GIBSONsaid, on one of the items of the Vote he would like to make a few remarks; it was the one of £700 for preparing the Circular with regard to advances made to tenants under Section 31 of the Land Act of last Session. That was a clause inserted by the Prime Minister to enable advances to be made to tenants for the reclamation of lands, and the section contained no restriction whatever as to the amount that was to be advanced. The discussion upon that clause when it was introduced into the Bill was most instructive, as showing what were the intentions of the Government, and what were the views held by hon. Members in passing the clause. It would be found, as he said, that the clause was general, leaving it absolutely to the discretion of the Executive what amount should be advanced. The Minister who first introduced the section to the attention of Parliament was the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright), and, in doing so, he said—
I do not think it is possible to add any words to the clause, or to do anything more comprehensive and, at the same time, more simple or likely to he more useful than that which the Government intend."'—[3 Hansard, cclxiii. 558.]That was a very good paraphrase of the obvious meaning of the clause; but he found that the Government, some two or three months ago, issued a Circular which practically killed the clause. They announced to the tenants that they would not grant advances of less than £100, and that they would only grant advances to tenants holding a farm valued at more than £20. He need not tell anyone acquainted with Ireland that that Circular, by its very terms, excluded at once the vast majority of the tenants of Ireland, and excluded many of those who might have the most need to take advantage of the system of loans. Many of the small tenants might desire, being 1652 thrifty and industrious men, to obtain, a loan of £30, £40, or £50; but under the Circular recently issued he was not allowed to obtain less than £100, and he could not even get a loan at all unless his farm was valued above £20, although his rent might be considerably more. Let them see whether the Circular was in accordance with what was said in Parliament. He found that the Prime Minister, speaking on the question with his usual ability and clearness, indicated very plainly, at least to his (Mr. Gibson's) mind, that he did not contemplate anything like the restrictions detailed in the Circular. He did not intend to quote any of the words of the Prime Minister, although he could quote from a good many speeches of the right hon. Gentleman on that point, because he found that he could quote a more explicit and shorter statement than any made by the Prime Minister. The hon. and gallant Member for the County of Galway (Major Nolan) put this Question to the Government—The Board of Works ought to be enabled to lend sums of less than £100, otherwise the small tenants might not be able to derive benefit from the advances. Would the Government give the Board of Works power to advance small sums? "—[Ibid. 573]It was impossible to have a Question put in a clearer or more direct way. Other hon. Gentlemen followed, and then the Prime Minister made a very short reply, passing by the Question of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, and dealing only with the more immediate questions advanced. But the hon. and gallant Member, who always liked to get an answer to his Questions, returned to the charge. He said he had not yet received an answer to his Question, and then the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary answered as follows:—The hon. and gallant Member is mistaken in supposing that the limit of £100 would apply to this clause."—[Ibid. 578.]Now, that was a most clear and explicit statement, and how it could be reconciled with the Government Circular stating that loans were to be regulated by the £100 Clause, he could not understand. That clause might have been right or wrong in principle, but it was a clause introduced by the Prime Minister, and it must be assumed that the right hon. Gentleman considered it sound and right 1653 in principle if legitimately worked. The direct effect of the Treasury Circular was practically to obliterate that clause; it would certainly take away from a vast number of the tenants any benefit under the clause, and he could not conceive how it could be reconciled with the clear pledges given to Parliament by the Chief Secretary that the limit of £100 would not apply to the clause.
§ LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, he did not think the observations of the right hon. and learned Gentleman covered the whole ground. It was perfectly true, as stated, that the clause did not mention the limit of £100; but, on the other hand, it placed on the Treasury a very heavy responsibility. It behaved them, before making any advances to tenants, to be assured that the security offered was such as to secure the repayment of the capital with interest. The remarks of the right hon. and learned Gentleman were rather severe. If he would carry his mind back two years, he would recollect that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lowther) who was then Chief Secretary for Ireland was pressed night after night by the Irish Members to do the very thing the Government were now trying to do—that was to say, to make advances to tenants for the improvement of their holdings; and he absolutely refused to do so on the ground that it would be quite impossible to get adequate security. The Government hoped it would be found possible to get proper security; but in any experiment of such magnitude they thought they were bound, in the interest of the Irish tenant, in the interest of the experiment as well as of the Exchequer, to proceed by steps, and not rashly—to try the experiment, at least in the first instance, as the Circular itself stated, with the more substantial class of farmers. It was perfectly true the limit of £100 was not in the section.
§ MR. GIBSONIt was expressly stated that it would not be adopted.
§ LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, the responsibility was imposed on the Treasury by the Act of not making advances without making proper security; therefore, was it not wise to make the experiment under the most favourable circumstances? If the experiment answered, they might then make wide advances to tenants for improvement. The Treasury found that the dangers 1654 attending the advances were very great. The very first applications they had exhibited those dangers, because the money advanced went to pay the arrears of rent. They did not wish to make the advances for that purpose, but in order to secure the improvement of the land. He would ask hon. Members to consider another danger that might arise if the advances were made without due care and precaution. Imagine the position in which the Government would be placed if the money was not spent in the direction for which it was in tended, and the tenant was, in two or three years' time, unable to pay the sum due upon it. The Government would be obliged to take steps to sell the tenancy. That was not a position which they would be prepared to welcome on a large and extended scale. If, on the contrary, they found by the experiment they were now trying on a limited scale that the money was applied to the purposes for which it was advanced, and that proper security could be obtained for the repayment, nothing would be easier than to make advances of a smaller amount to smaller tenants. They already saw it might be advisable to come to Parliament for some extra powers in connection with the advances; but, at present, he appealed to the Committee to allow them to try the experiment under the most favourable circumstances, promising, as they did, that if they found the experiment worked satisfactorily, and that the money was spent in the proper directions, they would be only too glad to lower the limit. He asked the Committee not to insist upon their jeopardizing this important experiment by at once removing all limitation. With respect to the Question of the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton), he had to say that, in his belief, never was a Minute drawn up with greater pains to guard the State against loss, and, at the same time, to put the applicant to the minimum of trouble and expense. They had imposed a very small fixed charge in all cases, so that there should be no doubt as to what would have to be borrowed and what paid. Instructions had been issued widespread through Ireland, and, he believed, were generally known. He could assure the hon. Gentleman that their one object was to get rid of all technical difficulties. With respect to the hon. Gentleman's observations concerning loans, 1655 he must say he scarcely expected to be called upon to speak on that subject tonight, because he was happy to say that the necessity for relief loans was past, and, considering the fact that the Board of Works advanced something like £1,500,000, he did not think much blame attached to them. As to the "Bright Clauses," and the comparison of the manner in which the Board of Works and the Irish Church Temporalities Commissioners performed their duty, he would suggest to the hon. Member that the work of the one was very much simpler and easier than that of the other. The work of the Irish Church Temporalities Commissioners was to sell land, as to the title of which there was no doubt; but the land with which the Board of Works had to deal was surrounded with difficulties as to title, and many other complications, besides which, the Board were not selling their own land.
§ MR. GIBSONsaid, the noble Lord had not in the slightest degree grappled with the difficulty he suggested. Section 31 was so clear that anyone could understand its terms and construction. It was a section put in by the Prime Minister as a very popular section. It was fully discussed, and the question as to whether there should in its administration be a limit of £100 was brought under the notice of the Government. His point was that the Government had now, not in obedience at all to any section of the Act of Parliament, but as an act of administrative discretion, issued a Circular, in which it was stated they would not make advances of less than £100. They had laid down that hard-and-fast line themselves. To the point of limitation their attention was drawn specifically by words of the hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Major Nolan), about which there was no possibility of mistake. Those words were—
The Board of Works ought to be enabled to lend sums of less than £100, otherwise the small tenants might not be able to derive benefit from the advances. Would the Government give the Board of Works power to advance small sums?"—[3 Hansard, cclxiii. 573.]In other words, the hon. and gallant Member asked—"Would the Government not issue a Circular refusing to make advances of less than £100?" That was not immediately answered; but 1656 the Question was put specifically again, and then the Chief Secretary said—The hon. and gallant Member is mistaken in supposing that the limit of £100 would apply to this clause."—[Ibid. 578.]Either the Circular was necessary or it was not; either it was an act of Executive discretion or not. If the Executive were free to issue it or not, they must grapple with the responsibility. They might have issued it in ignorance of the undertaking given to Parliament; if so, they were bound to modify it. They were not bound to make for the State a bad bargain. They were bound to consider every case on its merits—to consider whether the tenants could fairly pay; but he did not think they were at liberty, after the distinct pledge given to Parliament, to say they would not entertain an application from a tenant whose holding was under a certain valuation.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, the right hon. and learned Gentleman had quoted some words which he used when the Land Act was passing through the House. He did not remember the circumstances himself; but he had no doubt that what he meant at the time was that there was nothing in the clause, as it stood, introducing the limitation of £100. The clause was passed without limitation, and now the right hon. and learned Gentleman really said a pledge had been broken because a Circular had been issued, stating that, for a time, sums of not less than £100 would be advanced. That was an unfair interpretation. The Treasury were bound to consider what would be good security, and they were able to alter the limitation at any time. In the interest of the clause, and in the interest of the Act, nothing could be more important than that the first loans made should not be made in cases where the security was faulty. Nothing was said in the clause about limitation, and he did not think the Treasury ought to be fettered in the discretion which it thought fit to exercise.
§ MR. J. LOWTHERsaid, the noble Lord (Lord Frederick Cavendish) referred just now to a matter which occurred two years ago. The noble Lord said that those who found fault with the action of the present Government should remember the attitude which he (Mr. Lowther) individually assumed two years ago in regard to advances to tenants. The noble Lord was in his 1657 place just now when the hon. Member for Waterford drew a distinction between the present Government and their Predecessors. The hon. Member said that the late Government promised nothing and did nothing, but the present Government promised a good deal and did nothing. The noble Lord could not have afforded a better illustration of that than he did by what he had just now called attention to. What were the circumstances under which he (Mr. J. Lowther) felt himself bound to resist proposals which wore made two years ago for advances to tenants? The noble Lord had talked about the Treasury being bound to take care that proper security was given for the advances made, and he declared the Treasury found a difficulty in finding security on the part of tenants whose holdings were valued at less than £20. The noble Lord perhaps remembered that two years ago the tenant had only his property to give as security. The tenant could now give as security not only what was his property two years ago, but a good deal more besides. He would not go into the question as to how he had become possessed of what the tenant did not own a couple of years ago; but he would say that the noble Lord ought to bear all such things in mind when criticizing the guardians of the public purse of two years ago. Neither the noble Lord nor the Chief Secretary appeared to have grappled with the question raised by his right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Gibson). What he understood his right hon. and learned Friend said was that in the course of the debates on the Land Act the question was specifically raised whether the boons in the shape of advances would be placed within the reach of small tenants, and that the Government distinctly said they were to be. It was not for him to say whether the Government were wise or not; but it appeared to him that the House was distinctly led to the conclusion that there was to be no hard-and-fast-line as to a limit to £100. It was evident the Treasury had completely disregarded the assurance given to Parliament by the Chief Secretary; and he knew from personal experience the great difficulty a Chief Secretary had in bringing the Treasury to his exact point of view, they being specially charged with the duty of 1658 guarding the public purse. In this instance they had apparently done the very thing which the Chief Secretary thought he was justified in assuring the House they did not do, and that was to place an arbitrary limit on the loans. He was not going to say the limitation was not a wise one; but if it was intended to be made, the Government ought to have candidly informed the House.
§ MR. GRAYsaid, the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Gibson) did not apparently quite understand the procedure by which advances of public money in Ireland by the Treasury through the Board of Works were conducted. It was not altogether a question of Act of Parliament. An Act of Parliament must receive another assent besides that of Her Majesty before it became operative. Sir Ralph Lingen did not give his assent in the present case, and therefore he took the best course to make the Act inoperative. The noble Lord, no doubt, had had some experience of the obstructive tactics of that gentleman. If hon. Gentlemen wanted to know how beneficent proposals carried in Parliament were rendered of no avail they had only to take up the Report of the Royal Commissioners who investigated the condition of the Board of Works. They would find that that Commission reported that the Board was in a thoroughly unsatisfactory condition, and recommended that certain officials at the head of that Department should be dismissed. Notwithstanding that Report the officers remained in their positions, and naturally continued to prosecute the public business in the way they had always done. The Circular to which reference had been made certainly caused great consternation in Ireland. Its effect had been to shut out the great mass of the Irish tenants from any benefit that might arise under the clause. The Circular did not specially state the limit to be £20 valuation, but it got at that limit in rather an ingenious and roundabout manner. A farmer might hold laud the value of which had greatly improved since the Government valuation was made; his land might be worth £30 or £40 a-year, although his valuation was £20 or under. He might be able to give the best security, yet he would be unable to get an advance. Another man's land might be valued at £22, and yet be in a most im- 1659 poverished condition; he might not be as well able to offer security as a man valued at less than £20, yet he could get an advance. He (Mr. Gray) had not the slightest doubt that this silly Circular of the Treasury was issued on the sole responsibility of Sir Ralph Lingen, because he controlled the Treasury advances in Ireland, except occasionally, when the kindly offices of the noble Lord were brought in; and he (Mr. Gray) granted that, whenever the noble Lord did intervene, his object was generally to facilitate Acts of Parliament, and not to destroy them. It was really necessary to ascertain whether an official of the Treasury, be he the noble Lord or be he the Permanent Secretary, had a right to render proposals embodied in Acts of Parliament nugatory, and to repeal a clause of an Act of Parliament by a Treasury Minute or Treasury Circular; because that was what had been done in the present case. As to the question of advances made by Parliament for relief purposes, the noble Lord thought that, because £1,500,000 or £1,250,000 of the relief funds were expended within 12 months, not much blame attached to the Board of Works. That, however, did not prove much. The funds were voted when the distress was practically at its highest point, or nearly so; the relief was required within a limited number of months. When the new harvest came in, the relief was comparatively useless and unnecessary; and the question was not exactly whether the money was spent within the 12 months, but whether, in fact, it was spent in the distressed districts where the famine was raging. He was afraid that only a very small proportion of the money was spent when it was needed. He believed that most of it was spent long after the crisis had passed; and, if so, the fact of its being expended during 12 months, when it was required to be expended within three or four months to be effective, proved nothing whatever. He should be glad if the noble Lord would inform them how much of the money voted in connection with the Canadian grant of £20,000 for the relief of distress in Ireland in 1880, had been expended up to February, 1882. £60,000 to supplement the Canadian Grant was voted by Parliament, making a total of £80,000. He believed there was a Return showing that a very small propor- 1660 tion had as yet been expended. Although the money had been comparatively ineffective for the immediate purposes for which it was voted, he trusted care would be taken that it was expended within a reasonable period, to prevent a recurrence of distress. It was really a serious matter when they came to consider that the Treasury Circular had, in fact, repealed Clause 31 of the Act of last Session. A great deal was expected from that clause. It was pointed out by all sections of the Irish Members that farmers, having small capital at their command, could expend it with care and advantage by utilizing their own labour upon their own farms, for the purposes of reclamation and drainage, and so forth; and that it was the small class of farmers who, having a considerable amount of leisure during the winter, could use a Government advance with great advantage. The Board of Works, by their Circular, had shut out such farmers. They had shut out from any benefit, under the clause, 300,000 or 400,000 out of the 500,000 tenants. It was also a serious matter to find that the officers of the Board of Works who, by a Royal Commission, were condemned in the strongest language for having obstructed and rendered nugatory many of the Acts passed for the material advancement of Ireland, should still retain their offices and continue to pursue their old policy. The noble Lord ought to give them some explanation why Colonel M'Kerlie was allowed to continue in his office, and to retard the action of Acts of Parliament which, if properly and liberally worked, would be exceedingly useful to the country. Why, he would ask, had the recommendations of the Royal Commission been disregarded; and was it the intention of the Government to take any notice of these recommendations?
§ MR. RYLANDSsaid, he did not sympathize with all the remarks that had been made in reference to the action of the Treasury. The taxpayers of the country were entitled to have the exercise of every caution by the Treasury in the distribution of public money, and the Treasury were bound to see that in all loans granted there should be such security sufficient to prevent a public loss. While entirely taking that line, he was not indisposed to think that the Circular which had been animadverted 1661 upon was open to some objection. There was a good deal of force in the remark his right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Gibson) had made, that the intention of the Act of Parliament was that loans should be made to tenants holding comparatively small portions of land. But the hard-and-fast line laid down did, to some extent, interfere with the Act of Parliament and the intention of the Legislature. What appeared to him the right course would be, not to fix a hard-and-fast line, but to judge each application upon its own merits. He did not think the Treasury would be justified in lending money to tenants who had no security to offer in proportion to the terms of the loan; but that was a very different thing from saying that if a man's holding was under the Government valuation of £20 a-year, that, therefore, that man should be excluded from an Act of Parliament, the object of which was to give as much relief as possible to tenants in the development of the soil and resources of the country. Therefore, while he would not at all oppose the present Vote, and did not suppose that more was desired than that this subject should be ventilated, he would put it to the Government whether it was not worth while to re-consider the subject, withdraw the Circular, and judge each application made by Irish tenants on its own merits, without reference to a hard-and-fast line?
§ MR. BIGGARsaid, he very much agreed with what had just been said—that the Government should not lend unless upon sufficient security; but then he saw no reason for drawing a hard-and-fast line at a £20 valuation. A man holding under a smaller valuation might give substantial security, more substantial even than a man with a larger valuation, because he might hold property of a more improvable nature, and he might be a man more likely to honestly and fairly carry out the improvements. As had been properly pointed out by the former Chief Secretary for Ireland, the conditions were different now, and the tenants could give better security than under the Land Act of 1870. But as regarded the Board of Works, common report said that the Board managed their affairs very badly. For instance, under the Relief Act, it was commonly reported that they lent large sums to landlords, 1662 which sums were never expended upon improvements at all. The landlords got the money and gave good security, but really did not follow the intention of the Act and lay out the money on improvements. Of course, it was difficult for a Central Body in Dublin to superintend the outlay of money in remote parts of Ireland; but the fact remained that the Board of Works entirely neglected that part of the business. Reference had been made to the Board of Works Clauses in the Act of 1881, and it might charitably be supposed that the clauses were passed by the Government with some more or less good intentions; but there was the fact that so many restrictions had been imposed with regard to borrowing, and such matters connected with these clauses, that so far they had remained inoperative, and, under those restrictions, were likely so to remain. There was no chance of giving practical effect to the intention of the Act of last year until a fresh Act was passed making these clauses much more simple in operation, and of a more workable nature. It was not the slightest use blaming the Board of Works for the non-success of these clauses, for if the Board did, in agreement with the Act, grant loans for any particular work, the subordinate officials would not carry out their duty in a proper manner. He did not think the Committee ought to sanction the Vote.
§ DR. LYONStrusted the Treasury would re-consider their action in the issue of the Circular, which had caused a great deal of disappointment. It was now more than ever necessary that assistance should be offered to tenants in the way of small loans. There was one particular point he would like to mention. One way in which advances had been obtained of small loans had been from the landlord; but now, under the present condition of things which had been brought about between landlord and tenant, and the impecunious condition of a large number of landlords, there was no prospect of the latter helping the tenants as they formerly did. He would more particularly refer to the water supply. In many parts of Ireland there was considerable difficulty in obtaining an adequate supply of water, and nothing was more common than an application to the landlord for an advance of money—say, from £25 to £40—for sinking wells, or fixing pumps, 1663 or otherwise improving the water supply on a farm. All this class of operations, which used to be carried on with the assistance of the landlords, would practically be suspended for years. He could himself testify to the urgent pressing need for such improvements; but the tenant had no money, and also had the greatest objection to lay himself under the obligation of making application for a large sum. A man would readily borrow a sum of £30 or £40, which he could repay in a short time, for the improvement of his water supply, when he would not undertake a loan of £100. Those who were practically familiar with the Irish tenants knew the difficulty there was in getting them to incur charges in connection with the improvement of their holdings. Of course a full security was a necessity, and ample provision should be made in every case for the repayment of the sum advanced, but he could not see that the difficulty would be greater in making an advance of £50 than in advancing £100. There should be the same inquiry in either case. Practically, if the standard of valuation on which loans were made were lowered, undoubtedly it would largely increase the area over which loans would be sought for. But it was most desirable that the advances should reach those classes which it was most useful to assist. If, instead of taking that strained view which, with all respect, the Treasury did, they took a larger, broader view of the subject, he believed they would more than double the appreciable benefit to the country. Therefore he desired to press for are-consideration of the subject. He did not think the slightest risk need be run, for the most perfect security could be provided for payment of loans. A loan of £5, no more than one of £100, should not be granted to an applicant without absolute security of payment. He asked for nothing more than the extension of the loans when they were urgently needed, and he knew from experience what a large amount of keen disappointment was felt when the Treasury announced the limit they had fixed.
§ MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, it appeared to him a little unfortunate that the Treasury had laid down the limit of £100 and nothing smaller, and for this reason—it induced a man to ask for £100 when probably he did not want so much. 1664 He agreed as to the necessity of requiring perfect and complete security for the money. No money should be advanced by the Treasury unless the security was, as far as possible, absolute and certain; but when there was that security, to say that five times £20 should be the lowest limit to be advanced on a valuation of £20 a-year, was to insist that a man should spend £100 when he might not wish to spend so much. He thought there was an error in that hard-and-fast line, and he would very much have preferred that the security had been the point upon which the Treasury laid the greatest stress. Observations had been made upon valuable public servants, and he thought it right to say as regarded one officer who had served the Treasury for a great many years, that there was no more efficient public servant who had distinguished himself in the Public Service than that gentleman. Naturally, he had no sympathy with the polities held by some hon. Members on that side; but speaking for himself, he could say that the services of the gentleman in question had been given most faithfully and most thoroughly. Speaking for himself, and he supposed he could also speak for those on the opposite Front Bench, he was certain that the Secretary to the Treasury, the Political Secretary for the time, had full responsibility and full control over every act of the Treasury, and that the permanent officer had nothing to say to the policy he himself administered. Some reference had been made to the Chairman of the Board of Public Works in Ireland. No doubt he had served the State long and faithfully, and if he desired retirement and relief from his onerous duties no man deserved honour and distinction at the hands of the State more than Colonel M'Kerlie. But it would be a wrong and an injustice to any public officer for those who knew what work he had done to remain silent when these references were made and not record the opinion that Colonel M'Kerlie had rendered most valuable services to the State. No doubt he had incurred a certain amount of unpopularity, more or less undeserved, at the hands of gentlemen who did not always obtain the recommendations for works they desired to carry out; but whatever he had done had been in the interests of the State, and his services should always be recognized in that House. The time would come when he 1665 might be relieved of his laborious duty; but while he discharged that duty willingly and faithfully he was a public servant who deserved the honour and acknowledgment of every man who desired to see the State well served.
§ MR. GRAYsaid, he had noticed that whenever a Member ventured to criticize the conduct of any officer in the House, some Member of the Government, or of the late Government, would rise and say this was one of the most valuable public servants that ever served an Administration. Now, he thought that they had had enough of that. He had not attacked Colonel M'Kerlie, nor had any Irish Member, on account of his unpopularity for having refused advances, nor had he said anything personal against him. The right hon. Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith), if he wanted to justify Colonel M'Kerlie, should have told the Committee in what he differed from the recommendations of the Royal Commission. The Royal Commission was not a credulous body, and was not composed of Irish Members, he thought, with the exception of one; but it was assumed that the recommendations of that body were worthy of no notice whatever. He did not think the Committee was required to take even the valuable testimony of the right hon. Gentleman as outweighing the deliberate recommendations of the Royal Commission as reported to Parliament. As to Sir Ralph Lingen, he did not say he was not a useful public servant, or suggest that he was influenced by political motives; but he did say that he was too strongly influenced by one idea—how best to prevent public advances being made without paying sufficient regard to the intention of Parliament as expressed in the Act.
§ MR. LEAMYsaid, that, in reference to the Report of the Commission, the noble Lord the Secretary to the Treasury, when interrogated two years ago, said that he hoped shortly to be able to state the plans for the re-organization of the Board of Works. He would like to ask whether, in the two years that had elapsed, any such plan had been matured?
§ MR. GRAYsaid, he hoped that some answer would be forthcoming to his questions in reference to the Royal Commission's recommendations. He was quite prepared to refer to their Report; 1666 but he had not done so at length. He was animated by no kind of hostility to tin; Members of the Board; but he asked, would the recommendations of the Commission be carried out?
§ LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, he had not heard the question; but in answer to it he had to say that he believed that, with little exception, the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners had been carried out. Three Commissioners had been appointed to the Board instead of two. Mr. Roberts was made an additional Commissioner. As to Colonel M'Kerlie, he had read the Report through very often, and he did not think the concluding paragraph at all carried out the strong language the hon. Member (Mr. Gray) had employed. For himself, he must say that, observing the working of the Board of Words under the Relief Act, that Board being intrusted with the carrying out of the Act, it was a surprise to him that the Department carried out such a difficult work so successfully, and great credit was due to Colonel M'Kerlie for the manner in which he performed his task; and it would be an ill requital for what he had done to call on him to retire. With regard to the£100 limit in the matter of loans, he had stated that if it was considered desirable to have further legislation, then that would be the time to consider whether that limit should he retained or not. As to what had been said about having a hard-and-fast line, he did not think it desirable that the State should lend small sums of money as low as, perhaps, £5 or less; so there must be a line fixed somewhere.
§ Question put.
§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 126; Noes 11: Majority 115.—(Div. List, No. 26.)