GENERAL POWERS. (Hansard, 29 June 1882)

HC Deb 29 June 1882 vol 271 cc780-896 780

§ Clause 16 (Power of Lord Lieutenant as to compensation, to be paid in certain cases of murder or maiming).

§ MR. HEALY moved, in line 1, after the word "appears," to insert "from information on oath and in writing."

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 1, after the word "appears," to insert the words "from information on oath and in writing."—(Mr. Healy.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ MR. SEXTON
said, that he supposed that it was necessary that someone 781 should rise upon that point and say something in order to enable the Government to say whether they would accept the Amendment or not. His hon. Friend the Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) proposed that the Lord Lieutenant should not initiate an inquiry into a case for compensation unless he should have first obtained information on oath and in writing. He (Mr. Sexton) supported the Amendment because he considered it necessary for the safe-working of the clause.

§ THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PORTER)
said, that the Government had no objection to the Amendment.

§ Question put, and agreed to.

§ MR. GIBSON
proposed, in page 8, line 2, to leave out the word "otherwise," and after the word "person," to insert "business or property." He said, that the Amendment was one of very considerable importance, and he desired to present to the Committee in a few observations the nature of its importance and what the mischief was which he sought to grapple with. At present, and, unfortunately, for many months past, one of the greatest crimes and the gravest outrage they had had to deal with in Ireland was that which was known as "Boycotting." A man who was "Boycotted" was prevented from earning his bread or working his farm; prevented from following his ordinary pursuits or aims in life; and the object of this Amendment was to make provision for compensation in these cases as well as in those of murder or maiming. At present the clause recognized that if a man was murdered his family were entitled to compensation, and also that if a man was maimed he was entitled to compensation himself. The condition which had to be satisfied before the compensation was awarded was this—that the murder or maiming was the result of a crime of the character known as agrarian or arising out of the proceedings of any unlawful associations. His Amendment took up these words and left them in the Bill, but he contended that they did not go far enough to grapple with one of the gravest engines which had brought about the present crisis; and, in addition to the clause they had already passed, it was necessary to give to the Lord Lieutenant the power to award 782 compensation to a man who, by the action of his neighbour, had yielded to the terrorism and the action of an unlawful organization, or, taking up the words of the Bill, "had been murdered, maimed, injured in his person, or ruined or damaged either in his business or property." That was the scope of the Amendment he had to propose, and if it was assented to by the Government it would make "Boycotting" more difficult and more expensive. It was very desirable to teach those persons who indulged in this cowardly practice, and who up to the present time had been able to ruin many victims, or impoverish them day by day, that if they adopted this course in future they would he treated as criminal offenders, and that the locality in which it occurred would be put to the expense of compensating the persons who were "Boycotted."

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 2, to leave out the word "otherwise," and, after "person," insert the words "business or property."—(Mr. Gibson.)

§ Question proposed, "That the word 'otherwise' stand part of the Clause."

§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)
said, that the Government could not accept the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend, and for this reason—the proposition was that the compensation should be extended to injuries to business or property. Now, the word "property" was, for all practical purposes, already covered by the Grand Jury Act; and with reference to business, the Amendment would be impracticable. It would be impossible to apply the clause to injuries which a man might sustain with regard to his business. Injury to business would be so utterly remote that he did not think that it would be possible for a jury to ascertain and assess approximately what damage might have been done to a man's business beyond the injury done to his property, which came within the scope of the Grand Jury Act. He was quite satisfied that it would not be possible to carry out the intention of the Amendment, and to reduce the damages in such cases to a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence.

§ MR. SYNAN
said, he was surprised that so able a man as his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the Uni- 783 versity of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) should submit such a proposition to the Committee, knowing that there was already a provision in the Bill which met the case of "Boycotting," and that compensation for injury to property could already be dealt with under the Grand Jury Laws. The present section only proposed to give power to the Lord Lieutenant as to compensation to be paid in certain cases of murder and maiming, and it would be most injudicious to extend it to injury done to property or to a man's business. How was it possible for the Lord Lieutenant to enter into the business engagements of every man in Ireland who applied for compensation? It might be necessary, if the Amendment was adopted, to appoint a Commission in every district in Ireland in order to ascertain what injury, remote, consequential, or immediate, had been inflicted.

§ MR. PLUNKET
remarked, that, so far as the objection of the hon. Member who had just sat down went, there was a very obvious answer to it. The hon. Member in question had said—"Why not stand by the old provisions of the law passed in former times for the protection of persons against injury done to their property?" His (Mr. Plunket's) answer was, that the particular evil which, the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend and Colleague sought to deal with was an entirely new evil brought about since the Grand Jury Act was passed. The object of the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend was to strike directly, to strike strongly, and to strike promptly against the evil of "Boycotting." Another reason for not falling back on the process under the old law was that the damages would have to be assessed by the Grand Jury Act, and that involved a long and tedious delay. If they really wanted to deal with this fearful terrorism, this fearful way of enforcing the decrees of the unlawful associations against whose transactions the present clause was directed, they must find some means of teaching those who attempted to ruin a man in his property or business, that they might be made sufferers in a similar way. As to the objection of his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland, he could not say that he considered it conclusive by any means. The right hon. and learned 784 Gentleman had said that there would be a great difficulty in ascertaining in every case the precise amount of damages which ought to be awarded. So there must be in every case of assessing damages both with regard to loss of life and maiming. Of course, that would be difficult at all times; but they were about to intrust the Lord Lieutenant with the power to appoint at an exceptional time a Commission, if he thought such a step necessary, in order to investigate such matters. For his own part, he (Mr. Plunket) would not say whether it would be more difficult to investigate the claim for compensation in the one case than in the other. He submitted to the Government with great respect and earnestness that the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend, if introduced into the Bill, would strike directly against the methods and motives which had actuated those who had pursued those criminal courses intended to be dealt with by the Bill. It would strike a blow at them by impressing upon them the certainty that they would very speedily be obliged to suffer themselves in exactly the same way that they had been endeavouring to make their fellow-subjects and fellow-citizens suffer, and with impunity, for so long a time.

§ THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOE IRELAND (Mr. PORTER)
said, that the Act of 1870 dealt with injuries to the person, and that Act was amended by the Act of 1871; but neither in the one case nor the other was it proposed to interfere in the case of damage to property.

§ MR. GIBSON
remarked, that "Boycotting" was quite new.

§ THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PORTER)
admitted that "Boycotting" was, to a certain extent, new; but, if the Amendment was introduced into the Bill, it would leave the worst classes of "Boycotting" untouched, because the damages in such cases could not be assessed. The "Boycotting" of a shopkeeper might be a very serious matter; but it was one of those cases in which it would be altogether impossible to assess the amount of injury done. How could they assess the injury done to a man because other persons abstained from spending money which they otherwise might have spent? In such cases it would be utterly impossible to place any pecuniary value on 785 the amount of the loss. It would be impossible in many cases to assess the pecuniary damages in the cases to which the Amendment was intended to apply, and any Commission attempting investigation would be liable at every stage of their inquiry to be imposed upon, and any advantage which might be derived from the clause would be counterbalanced.

§ MR. TOTTENHAM
said, that there seemed to him to be one or two practical reasons why the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend should be accepted by the Government. The Committee might not generally be aware of the mode in which compensation was obtained by persons under the Malicious Injuries Clauses of the Grand Jury Act. Suppose the malicious injuries had taken place immediately after the Summer Assizes in the month of July, then no levy could be put on the county in respect of them until the following March Assizes, and the amount awarded was left unpaid to the persons who had suffered the injuries until the next succeeding Assizes. Consequently, the period of a year, at least, elapsed between the time the crime was committed and the penalty was imposed upon the district. That seemed to him to be a very strong reason in favour of the Amendment, the aim of which was a prompt and speedy retribution upon the district in which the offence had been committed. He certainly could not understand why so reasonable an Amendment should not be accepted by the Government, and he hoped that it was not too late for them to alter their decision.

§ COLONEL COLTHURST
said, he thought that the same objection applied to this proposal which applied to the clause in general—namely, that it involved the levying of a tribute upon a district. He would not, however, enter into that point, but accepted the argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Gibson) in regard to the cruel, cowardly, and disgraceful nature of "Boycotting," which he, however, thought had been specially provided for by the 4th clause of the Bill. He was perfectly convinced that there would be no "Boycotting," when the people who desired to resort to it knew that they were rendering themselves liable to six months' imprisonment with hard labour. He believed that they would be much more 786 careful in the future how they affixed their signatures to important documents which involved "Boycotting."

§ MR. J. LOWTHER
said, that the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite (Colonel Colthurst) had talked of a person guilty of an act of "Boycotting" being liable to a sentence of six months' imprisonment. Of course, any person who was the promoter or instigator of that species of crime should be dealt with in the most summary manner; but the provision of his right hon. and learned Friend was intended to deal with a different class of persons—namely, the sympathizers, the aiders, and the abettors in the crime of "Boycotting," but who had not been included in the indictment against the principals concerned in the crime. He trusted that the Government would reconsider their apparent hostility to the Amendment, and endeavour to produce the impression upon the people of Ireland that, in the view of Government and Parliament, "Boycotting" was a heinous offence. In his (Mr. Lowther's) opinion, "Boycotting" was a crime which should be dealt with as a crime not only against those who were the principals in carrying it out, but also against those who were accessories in that most obnoxious practice. It was desirable that in every way the practice should receive the marked disapprobation of the Legislature. Either the Solicitor General for Ireland or the Attorney General for Ireland had referred to the Malicious Injuries Clauses of the Grand Jury Act. Those learned Gentlemen would be perfectly well aware that the mode of procedure under that Act was extremely cumbrous. As had been pointed out by his hon. Friend (Mr. Tottenham), that had often been a matter of complaint whenever a proposal to amend the Grand Jury Laws had been under consideration. The machinery of the Grand Jury Act was of the most cumbersome character, and was totally inadequate to deal with cases of the kind now under consideration. The delay which would be incident to any reference to a tribunal constituted by that Act would deprive the section of any good effect. Indeed, in many cases a reference to the clause of the Grand Jury Act would reduce the provision to an absolute farce. He hoped that the Government would not so far depreciate the capacity of the tribunal they them- 787 selves proposed to create by declaring that it would be incapable of determining what the value of an injury to a person's business was. To hear the way in which the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite had spoken of it, it might be imagined that, under the clause as it now stood, it would be for the tribunal simply to determine that persons who had been murdered or injured were entitled to compensation under a distinct scale—so much for a life and so much for a limb. The Government must be perfectly aware that the tribunal would have to go into a variety of abstruse questions in settling the claims of the family of a person murdered, just as it was necessary now to enter into a similar inquiry where damages were to be assessed in consequence of railway accidents. The tribunal would have to be constituted in such a manner as to render it capable of dealing with these complicated questions. He hoped that, after the discussion which had taken place, the Government would not omit this opportunity of impressing, once for all, on the people of Ireland that Parliament regarded "Boycotting" as a distinct crime, and not as a venial offence, and that it would be dealt with by the provisions of the Act as any other crime was dealt with.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, that it was not because the Government regarded "Boycotting" as a venial offence, or that they desired to depreciate the tribunal about to be constituted, that they were unwilling to accept the Amendment; but the hon. Members who pressed the Amendment must consider this fact. There was no doubt that the charge upon a district was what must be called an extraordinary charge, and it was necessary to take care that it should only be made use of for purposes that were likely to command public sympathy and approval. At present, the clause was confined to cases where a man had been murdered or maimed or otherwise injured in his person. In all those cases he thought the Committee would agree with the Government that public sympathy and approval would be in favour of throwing the charge for compensation upon the locality; but if they went beyond that—and although the right hon. and learned Gentleman had only referred to "Boycotting," there were, of course, a great number of other injuries to property, such as the burning 788 of houses, which would come under the Amendment—he was afraid that they would not command public sympathy and approval. Many of these injuries to property, as had been already pointed out, were expressly provided for by the Grand Jury Act, and, in his opinion, it would be entirely unwise and impracticable to refer to a special tribunal created ad hoc all offences of malicious injury to property which might arise. It would be a very difficult task for a new tribunal to pick out special injuries produced by "Boycotting," and assess the amount of damage sustained. It would be in the highest degree impolitic, he thought, to transfer the functions already possessed by the Grand Jury to a new tribunal. He had no desire whatever to depreciate that tribunal, which would have to deal with the most important questions; but, on the other hand, everyone must feel that injury inflicted by "Boycotting," although very severe, was one singularly subtle, and peculiarly difficult to ascertain or assess by a money standard. Therefore, without any desire to depreciate the heinous-ness of the offence of "Boycotting," or the nature of the tribunal about to be constituted, the Government were unable to accept the Amendment.

§ MR. GIBSON
said, that he felt the force of some of the observations which had been made in reference to the drafting of the Amendment, and it might be possible to present the views he held in a way that would make them less open to the possibility of objection; but he desired to point out that this evil of "Boycotting" was one of the most insidious, mischievous, and far-reaching evils that was ever found in any country, and it was the duty of the Legislature to discover some means of grappling with it. The evil advanced slowly, but with certainty, and in a way hardly to be traced until the victim was absolutely ruined. The evil results of the practice were to be seen in the murder recorded but yesterday from Tralee. In that case a man, a caretaker on a "Boycotted" farm, had been looking after his master's property and attending to it. He was also in charge of the herding of the farm, and, indeed, was the only person in charge; in fact, he was the sole means by which that "Boycotted" farm could be made worth anything whatever to the owner. This caretaker, now killed, had 789 been fired at previously, within the previous three weeks. By his death the farm was rendered absolutely worthless for the time being to its proprietor, because, being a "Boycotted" farm, nobody would take it for some months to come. He thought it was a scandal to the laws of the country that they were not able to provide some method by which the owner of that farm should be saved from the ruin which must overtake him should that farm be his only means of subsistence. That was a distinct proposition. It was a scandal to our laws if they allowed law-abiding citizens to be ruined because Parliament was not able to discover a method of compensation or protection in such cases. He would take another case which had been mentioned to the House within the last two months. It was a case which occurred in Tipperary, where a loyal citizen gave to the Government for the purposes of law and order permission to erect a police hut on his ground. He was "Boycotted" in consequence, and all his farm labourers and domestic servants left him. He (Mr. Gibson) had been since informed that the man, who was not a man of large means, had been reduced to the greatest possible straits because he had done as any law-abiding citizen ought to do—namely, to give permission to the Executive Government to build a house for the police employed in maintaining law and order. Was it to be tolerated that they were to be told that Parliament was unable to discover a method by which such a man could be saved from ruin for doing what every right-minded person ought to do? It had been said by the Attorney General for Ireland that the object he (Mr. Gibson) had in view was already provided for, so far as injuries to property were concerned, by the Grand Jury Act. The 136th section of the Irish Grand Jury Act did provide the means whereby the Grand Jury could assess damages for injuries to property, but in no sense did that section grapple with such cases as those to which he wished by the present Amendment to apply. It was confined, as his right hon. and learned Friend knew very well, to the particular class of property specified within the four corners of the Act, and the whole machinery of the Act was confined to that particular class of property. Moreover, the working of the Act was extremely 790 cumbrous, and unless the punishment of "Boycotting" was speedy, the remedy provided for the offence would be lost. The old remedy provided by the Grand Jury Act was subject to such a vast variety of checks that to carry it out in these cases would, in some instances, be to contribute to "Boycotting" rather than to punish it. In the Amendment which he submitted to the Committee he did not propose to vary a single condition of the Government clause, but only said that when there was a loss of property or business occasioned by a crime of the character commonly known as agrarian, and arising from the decrees of unlawful associations, it was not unreasonable that some provision should be made for the person who was ruined, although he might not have been actually murdered or maimed. It might be, of course, in some cases difficult to apply the remedy he proposed, and in some cases impossible. But, be it so, he was willing to leave the clause entirely as it stood, enabling the Lord Lieutenant to dismiss any claim if he thought fit, and only to award such compensation as he thought just. He was willing to leave the widest possible discretion to the Executive Government in the matter, and if it was thought by the Executive that no compensation should be given for losses which were difficult or impossible to assess upon reasonable or judicious lines, he would not object. He should consider very carefully the provisions of the Grand Jury Act and those of the Bill before the Committee, and should deem it his duty to again present his Amendment, if not in the same form, yet with the same meaning, at the next stage of the Bill.

§ SIR HARRY VERNEY
supported the Amendment, because he was of opinion that the crime of "Boycotting" could not be committed without the tacit assent of the neighbourhood in which it took place, and, therefore, it was peculiarly a case for imposing a penalty upon the locality. He believed that it was the opinion of the Committee that "Boycotting" ought to be most severely punished, and he knew of no better method of punishing it than by inflicting a pecuniary fine upon the district in which it occurred.

§ MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY
said, that his objection to the Amendment was that, instead of preventing, it was calcu- 791 lated to increase "Boycotting." He hoped that "Boycotting" would be to a great extent prevented by the operation of the Bill. It might exist to some extent. It was a very contagious crime, which might be fostered in various ways by members of secret societies if heavy penalties were imposed upon particular localities. He believed that the Legislature would find itself utterly powerless in endeavouring to prevent "Boycotting" from being carried out by secret societies, and if they worked upon the people by means of fear it would simply exasperate them and increase their demoralization. He thought that the Government could not afford to extend too wide the principle of making a district pay for the crimes and misdemeanours committed within it. They might carry out the principle to such a point as to inflict a great injustice upon innocent people, and by that means they would demoralize them, and induce them to look upon "Boycotting" with indifference. The Committee would do well to take care that they did not over-do the principle of making the people of a certain district pay for the crimes of their neighbours. If they did, they would inevitably create a feeling of exasperation which did not now exist, and increase an evil they were anxious to put down. It must not be forgotten that there were other provisions in the Act which would effectually put down "Boycotting," and he hoped that the Committee would pause before they accepted the proposal of the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson).

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, he hoped that, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman had intimated his intention not to press his Amendment, but to introduce it again upon the Report, that the Committee would now be allowed to go on with the remainder of the clause.

§ MR. HEALY
said, he wished to point out who the Obstructives in this case were. The complaint had constantly been made against the Irish Representatives by the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant that when the Government had given their decision and had expressed a desire to bring the discussion to an end, the Irish Members constantly reopened the question. Now, it appeared to him (Mr. Healy) that that was a charge which would be more fairly di- 792 rected against the Tory Party; because whenever the Government gave their decision and desired that there should not be a prolonged discussion, some Member of that Party rose time after time, after the decision of the Government was given, and insisted upon keeping up the debate. As far as he was concerned, if he believed that the Lord Lieutenant would carry out the provisions of the Bill in a proper and fair manner, he should have no objection to the Amendment, and he would tell them why. An enormous number of persons who had been injured in their property and business would be tenants who had been evicted from their holdings, and if it were shown that they had sustained injury in consequence of being evicted from their holdings, they ought, under this Amendment, to be entitled to compensation. So, also, in the case of the relatives of the unfortunate child murdered a short time ago by the police. That was a case in which persons had been put out of their holdings, and the Coroner's Jury had appended to their verdict the statement that the police had acted with gross inhumanity in preventing the erection of huts for their shelter. If the Lord Lieutenant took into consideration all these cases, as well as those of injury to the property of the landlord, he would have no objection to the Amendment. But he knew that the Lord Lieutenant would do nothing of the sort. He was glad, however, that the Amendment had been proposed, because the answer given to-day was the same which Irish Members had employed against the clause as a whole—namely, that it would be found impossible to assess the damages in these cases. And why? Because there must be a judicial investigation. If a man was injured in his business they could only inquire into it by means of a judicial investigation. But the Government despised judicial investigation. If there were a judicial investigation for the purpose of inquiring into the injuries to property and business, they might insist upon a similar judicial investigation for cases of murder and maiming. He contended that in the cases of murder and maiming it was impossible to assess the damages on any known principle. The present Solicitor General for England (Sir Farrer Herschell) had brought in a Bill to abolish actions for breach of promise, because, he 793 said, that it was impossible to assess the amount of damage which might be done to the feelings of an individual. In the case before them, the new tribunal would be called upon to assess the damages done to the feelings of individuals, and which could not amount to anything else. On the same ground, he thought that the Lord Lieutenant ought to hold an inquiry wherever the tenant and his family had sustained injury by being evicted from holdings.

§ MR. NEWDEGATE
said, that the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) had many times complained that the right of eviction was an abuse. He (Mr. Newdegate) entertained a different opinion, and he hoped that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) would press his Amendment. His own conviction was that the only way of restoring order in Ireland, and the only way of protecting life and property, was to resort to the old Saxon Law, and fine the district in which the crime was committed. That was the old law of England, and he could see no hardship in applying it to Ireland, because he believed that it was only by putting that pressure upon the inhabitants that they would be convinced of the serious criminal character of these offences.

§ MR. T. D. SULLIVAN
said, that it seemed to him that one very good reason against the adoption of the Amendment was that, under it, the most extraordinary claims might be put forward for compensation. Suppose, for instance, the case of a shopkeeper, whose business had fallen off considerably—he might imagine that he had been "Boycotted." Would he, then, have the right to go to this tribunal and claim compensation on account of a falling-off in his business, and which falling-off might have arisen from a very different cause than that of "Boycotting?" He might have sold bad whiskey, bad snuff, or bad tobacco. Were the public to make good his loss in the way of trade, on account of his allegation that he had been "Boycotted," and that, therefore, his business had declined? He was afraid that the adoption of the Amendment would land the Executive Government into a great amount of difficulty, and that it would create a vast amount of confusion; and that, instead of doing 794 any good, it would intensify whatever evils were alleged to exist.

§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

§ MR. SEXTON (for Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR) moved, in page 8, line 2, after the word "otherwise," to insert the word "seriously." The clause would then read— Where it appears that any one has been murdered, maimed, or otherwise seriously injured in his person. The adoption of this Amendment would guard against any claim for compensation being allowed in cases where the injuries had been of a trivial character. There were many cases in which trivial injuries might be made the subject of compensation.

§ Amendment proposed, in page 8, line 2, after the word "otherwise," to insert the word "seriously."—(Mr. Sexton.)

§ Question proposed, "That the word 'seriously' be there inserted."

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, that there could be no legal meaning given to the word "seriously." If the hon. Member wished to confine the class of aggravated injuries against persons, that was already done by the clause, and there was no necessity for accepting the Amendment. Of course, injuries of a very trivial nature were not likely to be regarded by the Lord Lieutenant.

§ MR. HEALY
said, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had stated that there was no legal meaning to the word "seriously." That was the argument which the Irish Representatives had pressed on the right hon. and learned Gentleman with regard to the word "intimidation." Nevertheless, they could not succeed in inducing him to confess that there was no legal meaning for that word. Intimidation was, therefore, agrarianism. The argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman was no argument at all. He (Mr. Healy) thought the Amendment was a very reasonable one. A man might have his little toe injured, and claim £1,000 in consequence, and go to law to recover it; but the question as to damages was always a matter for assessment by the jury. In this case there was no jury. It was to be a tribunal to be appointed by the Lord Lieutenant. Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman say whether a medi- 795 cal assessor would be attached to that tribunal, to ascertain whether the injuries complained of were serious or not?

§ MR. DILLON
said, he hoped that his hon. Friend would go to a division on the Amendment. The Home Secretary had not given the slightest intimation of what he meant when he said that there was no legal meaning attached to the word "seriously," as connected with injuries against the person. Surely the right hon. and learned Gentleman had no intention of levying fines on a district except in cases where aggravated injuries had been inflicted. Suppose a case of this kind happened, and which really did happen last winter in the county of Cork. A number of boys began to shout in the street, and a few of them threw some stones. A man was hit, and, out of pure spite, he went home to bed, and laid up for a fortnight. Then he came forward and said that he was seriously injured. Now, in a case like that, was compensation to be awarded? Would the Lord Lieutenant go down and satisfy himself that everybody claiming compensation in Ireland had really been injured? He did not see what reasonable objection the Government could have to the insertion of this word.

§ MR. MARUM
remarked, that he did not think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman need object to the insertion of the word "seriously," because the legal justification for the word "injury" was that it should have been a serious injury. A trifling injury would not be sufficient to justify action under the clause.

§ MR. MITCHELL HENRY
wished to know whether the hon. Members opposite would class the cutting-off of the hair of a young woman as a serious injury to the person? [Cries of " Yes!"]

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
would say at once that what the Government meant by the words they had put in the clause was that any injury to the person might go before the tribunal. It would be the business of the tribunal to assess the injury, and the Government had no desire to limit its operations in that or any other direction. The Government desired that all injuries, of whatever kind, should go before the tribunal, and that the tribunal should assess the damages.

796

§ MR. CALLAN
said, that his hon. Friend the Member for Kilkenny (Mr. Marum) had a legal mind—of course, if any case came before him, he would decide whether the injury was of a serious nature or not. But it was not specified that the new tribunal was to be composed of barristers. The Lord Lieutenant might, for instance, appoint Mr. Clifford Lloyd to assess the damages. Further, the hon. Member (Mr. Mitchell Henry) had started another objection, or, rather, had made an inquiry, by asking whether the cutting-off a young lady's hair could be considered a serious damage? It was very probable that the hon. Member for Kilkenny (Mr. Marum), being a married man, might not apply the same test of damage as the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry), who was still in the market.

§ MR. MITCHELL HENRY
appealed to the Chair, whether the language applied to him by the hon. Member was regular?

THE CHAIRMAN
said, that he was sorry to say that the words of the hon. Member for Louth had not reached him.

§ MR. CALLAN
said, that he had only called attention to the fact that one Member was married, and that the other was unmarried. He was sorry to say that he did not see any prominent Railway Director present. He thought that they would be the most fit judges of cases of this kind with regard to which it was proposed to limit the claim for damages to serious injury. Only the other day there was a sensational account in the daily newspapers of a serious accident, which occurred North of Peterborough. It was stated that one of the Members of the House of Commons had been seriously cut, maimed, and wounded; but, nevertheless, he saw that same hon. Member perambulating the Lobbies yesterday as if there was nothing the matter with him. Now, would that be regarded as a case of serious injury? A Railway Director would be one of the best judges who could be selected for prescribing what serious injury should mean. They all knew that whenever a railway accident occurred, there was an enormous number of applicants who stated that they had been injured, or that their nervous system had been shattered. But in many cases the claim for injury was not made until after some weeks of deli- 797 beration, and then generally by the advice of a lawyer. The statement then usually was that the nervous system of the applicant had been shattered, that there had been a concussion of the brain, but that the symptoms had not manifested themselves immediately.[Cries of "Question!"] This was the question. The question was what was serious injury? And his object was to protect the Irish ratepayers from being called upon to pay heavy damages for trifling injuries. Was a mere scratch of the nail, or a black eye, to be considered a serious injury? Suppose two men were going home, and they got into a scrimmage, and the next morning they said that an agrarian outrage had been committed, and exhibited a black eye or a bruised nose, were those injuries to be regarded as serious and fit subjects for the consideration of the tribunal under this clause, although they might have been obtained in a scrimmage or by falling through a hedge? He hoped that the hon. Member (Mr. Sexton) would divide on the question.

§ MR. SEXTON
said, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Sir William Harcourt) had referred to the difficulty of defining the word "seriously;" but the difficulty of definition pervaded every department of human life. Nothing since the world began had yet been accurately defined; but the new tribunal would fully understand what was meant by a trivial injury, and what was meant by a serious injury, and would readily distinguish the difference between them. He would ask that right hon. and taught Gentlemen, who was an adept in definitions, to supply some words in the clause which would save the tribunal from being pestered with frivolous cases, and the ratepayers from having to defend themselves against them. The danger of fraudulent applications would be very great unless a definition of this kind were inserted. If anyone suffered a serious injury the criminal origin was easily apparent. In the case of an injury of that kind it would be easy to prove to the satisfaction of a judicial tribunal, by the ordinary rules of evidence, that it was a serious injury; but in the case of a trivial injury, occasioned either by accident or inadvertence and represented as an injury inflicted by criminal means, it would be 798 very difficult for the tribunal to decide. He would ask the right hon. and taught Gentleman to consider that point, and say frankly if there was not some force and weight in it. He (Mr. Sexton) was anxious that the tribunal should not be put into operation except in cases where aggravated injury called for its interference. His principal object was to avoid fraudulent applications.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, that the Lord Lieutenant would not be obliged to require the tribunal to consider every application which might be made to him, and, of course, cases which were evidently frivolous or fraudulent would not be referred to it. But in the present state of Ireland it was not desirable to cut down this clause, and he protested against this attempt to deliberately waste the time of the Committee in the present deplorable condition of Ireland. Every day this Bill remained unpassed it cost the lives of men, and the responsibility of the delay must rest with those who caused it. The Government could not and would not weaken this clause.

§ MR. O'DONNELL
said he was sorry that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would insist in introducing extraneous matter into the discussion. If Ireland was in a deplorable condition, and anything was wanted for the preservation of peace and order in that country, why did not the Government make use of the powers they possessed under the Coercion Act? It could not be that there was a deliberate complicity with the assassins who were allowed to roam about the country.

THE CHAIRMAN
said that the hon. Member was not speaking to the Amendment before the Committee.

§ MR. O'DONNELL
said that he agreed with the object and purport of the Chairman's ruling, but he had only risen to protest against the irrelevant and provocative utterances of the Home Secretary, who was practically in his element when he was endeavoring to turn the Committee from the practical consideration of the Business before it.

§ MR. T. D. SULLIVAN
asked if the distinction proposed by the Amendment was not one that was well known to the law? He was not a lawyer himself, but he thought that he had often seen the charge specified as one of intent to do grievous bodily harm. The distinction 799 was in such cases between grievous bodily harm and trivial bodily harm, and it was desirable to introduce a similar distinction on this clause.

§ MR. DILLON
said, he did not see why the Government should complain of a desire to discuss an Amendment which in every sense was reasonable, and had been moved in a singularly short speech, but had, nevertheless, been refused, and no reason given for the refusal except the sweeping declaration that it was intended by refusing to allow every kind of preposterous claim to be brought forward. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary said that the Lord Lieutenant was not likely to pay attention to frivolous cases of injury, but he (Mr. Dillon) had himself known of cases where very frivolous accusations of that kind were made in a Court of Justice. He recollected an instance where the charge was one of mutilating cattle, and a claim for compensation was made. It was only brought out in cross-examination that the only portion of the tails of the cattle cut off was close to the hair at the end. He knew of another instance, reported in a Blue Book before the House, where a man alleged that his ear had been cut off. He (Mr. Dillon) inquired into that case, and saw the parish priest who had attended the man. Directly after hearing that the outrage had been committed the priest went into the man's house and examined his ear, but was unable to find out that any injury had been inflicted. It appeared that somebody with a pair of scissors had cut off a piece of the skin of the ear, but it was doubtful whether any blood had been drawn. He (Mr. Dillon) reported that case to the authorities in Dublin, and he submitted that it was not a case of mutilation which entitled the man to a claim for compensation for £50 to be levied on the district. What the Irish Members wanted was that the Lord Lieutenant should have sworn information laid before him before any compensation was assessed under the clause, and also that a serious injury had been committed, so that encouragement should not be given to fraudulent claims.

§ MR. SEXTON
said that he should certainly divide the Committee, if only to mark their sense of the propriety of the Amendment. He protested against the deliberate appeal of the Home Secre- 800 tary to passion, and against his attempt to draw the Committee away from the proper exercise of its functions. Whatever might happen from day to day on account of the evil policy of the Government, and the scandalous incapacity of its agents, the Irish Members had their duty to perform in that House, and they would do it in spite of the remarks of the Home Secretary, whose speech was neither argument, debate, nor reason, and which he (Mr. Sexton) treated with the scorn it deserved.

§ SIR JOSEPH M'KENNA
said, he did not think that the efficiency of the clause would be in the least degree impaired by the introduction of the word "seriously." It would altogether depend upon the judgment of the Lord Lieutenant whether the case submitted to him was one of serious injury or not. If it was sufficiently serious to justify the Lord Lieutenant in issuing a Commission, of course he would issue it; but if not, then no Commission would be issued at all. He failed to see what objection could be taken to the introduction of the word "seriously" in that sense.

§ Question put.

§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 32;

§ Noes 256: Majority 224.—(Div. List, No. 190.)

§ Amendment proposed, in page 8, line 2, after the word "person," to insert the words "after the passing of this Act."—(Mr. Dillon.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, he could not accept this Amendment. He should be very sorry if the murders which had been announced that day were not to come within the clause.

§ MR. HEALY
said the right hon. and learned Gentleman always knew well how to work upon the passions of the House. If the murders announced that day were to come within the clause, he asked whether it would also apply to murders committed 200 years ago? As the clause stood, it would refer to any crime committed since the English went into Ireland. Did the Government intend to go back upon the crimes committed during the last 10 years? It was only fair that the Government should state their intentions with regard 801 to the extent of the retrospective character of the clause, and unless they were prepared to respond to this reasonable appeal on the part of the Irish Members, he believed considerable difficulty would be thrown in the way of the passage of the clause. The Committee would see he believed, that the clause should only be made retrospective with regard to the murders committed within a reasonable time. He appealed to the Government to state what their idea of a reasonable time was; otherwise the Irish Members would feel bound to use every form of the House to prevent the passage of the clause in its present shape.

§ MR. DILLON
said, he objected to the way in which the Committee was about to be treated in respect of the all-night Sitting announced by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister.

THE CHAIRMAN
pointed out that the hon. Member was not dealing with the Question before the Committee.

§ MR. DILLON
said, he was about to comment upon the observation made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, with the assent of the Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN
said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman was perfectly correct in the reply which he had made upon the Amendment before the Committee. The hon. Member for Tipperary was speaking to something not in the knowledge of the Committee.

§ MR. DILLON
said the Home Secretary, in replying to the Amendment, had expressed the regret he should feel if the provisions of this clause were not to apply to the murder which occurred at Meath Yesterday. He was bound to confess that he altogether objected to the principle of retrospective legislation in the case of these murders in Ireland. There was a system of coercion in force at the present time in Ireland, which had universally been declared to be a failure, and the Government were now introducing a series of provisions which, he contended, ought to have regard to the future, and not to the past. He maintained that it was intolerable that they should have to look forward to one Coercion Act being piled up upon another, each one of which overlapped its predecessor. Because the Government had reduced the country to a frightful state, it was no reason why the next Coercion Act passed—which in all pro- 802 bability would be as great a failure as the last—should be made retrospective. He repeated that, except in matters of detail, he objected altogether to the principle of retrospective legislation. Surely Irish Members were entitled to ask where the limit to this legislation was to be placed. The Government should give them a hint upon this point, because, for all they knew, the Act in its present form might be made to apply to a murder committed in 1798. On every Amendment put forward by Irish Members with the intention of mitigating the unnecessarily vague powers conferred by this Bill, they had. been met systematically by the argument not categorically stated, but still in substance conveyed, that they must remember the fact that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was a humane and intelligent man who would lay down a line with respect to the powers conferred upon him, which would not be passed. He said that it was an unfair thing to put forward an argument of this kind when the Committee of the House were engaged in the consideration of Amendments that ought to be discussed upon their own merits—certainly not upon the merits of Lord Spencer, which were entirely outside the question. The Government had refused to state that they would lay down any limit beyond which they would not go back; and, as he had already pointed out, the clause, as it stood, afforded no security that the levy would not be made for murders committed many years ago. To say that this would be an unreasonable thing was no answer to his statement. Irish Members had had experience of the Act passed last year, which they had been assured would be used in a certain way; but that experience had been bitterly opposed to the statements made when the Act of last year was passing through that House. He remarked that when an Act for the coercion of Ireland was on its passage through the House of Commons it came forward like a lamb—all its elasticity and the possibilities which it contained of unjust application were then explained away; but when it passed into law and reached the Irish Executive, this sheep's clothing was laid aside and it appeared in its true form as a wolf. Every attempt on the part of Irish Members to obtain information had been met in the same dogged spirit as was then 803 being shown by the Government. The only answer that they could obtain was, that all this was according to law; that Parliament had made the law, and Irish Members had accordingly to submit. As to the profession that this clause would not be used by the Lord Lieutenant, or anyone who succeeded him in the government of Ireland, in the most extravagant and unreasonable manner, he believed, on this point, that they would get just as much satisfaction from this Bill as they had under the Coercion Act as administered by Lord Cowper. Therefore, he said that Irish Members were right in insisting that their arguments should be met by reasons and not by references to the humane nature of Lord Spencer. He called upon the Government to declare whether it was their intention, and if so, to what extent, to limit the retrospective character of this clause.

§ MR. MITCHELL HENRY
apprehended that even if this Amendment were not adopted the Act would not be retrospective in the sense indicated by the hon. Member opposite. He believed that compensation would not be levied under this Act except within a certain limit; but whether that limit should be the commencement of the present Session or the date of the enactment he did not presume to say. He thought the Government should make a statement of their intentions in this respect. Supposing a man applied for compensation for injury done four years ago, would that come within the clause?

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, the Government had followed closely the Act of 1870, so far as the Compensation Clause was concerned, the words of which were precisely the same as those in the present clause. There was no limit in the clause referred to of the Act of 1870. It was taken for granted that the Grand Jury would exercise their discretion as to whether or not the case which came before them should be made the subject of compensation. He saw no reason for departing from the principle of the Act of 1870.

§ SIR JOSEPH M'KENNA
submitted that, unless words were introduced to make this Bill a piece of ex post facto legislation, it would only operate from the time it had received the Royal Assent, and in relation only to offences committed after the passing of the Act.

804

MR. JOSEPH COWEN
said his believed that the Peace Preservation Act of 1870 was practically limited in its operation. He thought the Committee ought to have some definite explanation from Her Majesty's Government on the point raised.

§ MR. CALLAN
remarked, that the hon. Member for Leitrim (Mr. Tottenham) had an Amendment on the Paper for the purpose of making the clause apply to cases which had not been dealt with under the Act which expired on the 12th of June, 1880. Now, the Attorney General for Ireland was the proper person to apply to in a case like the present, and therefore he asked the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether the clause would enable the Lord Lieutenant to give compensation in the case of a murder which took place 12 months ago, or which took place before the commencement of the present Session? The right hon. and learned Gentleman was, by Ms official position, bound to explain to the Committee the legal effect of the clause which the Government were now asking the Committee to pass. This question was a very reasonable one, and a satisfactory reply would, he believed, very much facilitate the progress of the clause, as to the meaning and application of which the Home Secretary had left the Committee in a state of complete ignorance.

§ MR. P. MARTIN
said, he believed the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary was under some misapprehension as to the Compensation Clause in the Act of 1870 being without limit. He thought that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had, perhaps, only looked at the commencing words of the clause, and that had he continued to read on he would have seen that the provisions of the Act of 1870 with regard to compensation were practically limited. The clause was to the effect that any person having to apply for compensation should serve notice in writing upon the High Constable of the barony at the nearest police-station 14 days before the then next session. He believed the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the Committee would see that this Proviso did practically prevent anyone going back for an indefinite period in the matter of compensation, because it was clear that the meaning of the words "the then next 805 session" was the next session after the commission of the crime. The intention evidently was that immediately after a crime had been committed, notice should be given in order that inquiries should be made into the circumstances of the case. This question of the retrospective action of the clause was most important. These claims, which would saddle some of the districts of Ireland with very heavy expense, ought not to be allowed to extend back for an indefinite period. He would remind the Committee that both principle and precedent was opposed to thus making the operation of the clause retrospective. The portions of the Act of 1870 which he had cited followed the analogy of the Block Act, and other Acts dealing with malicious injuries in Ireland; and all of these Acts tended to show that the intention was that the party claiming compensation should proceed at once. If delay was permitted, future claims would be encouraged. After the lapse of any considerable period of time, it became difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain the real facts. But there was another and stronger ground in point of equity and justice why the operation of this clause should be limited to some definite period. The present Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had been met in the House of Lords with the charge that, in consequence of the expiry of the Peace Preservation Act, many claims for compensation for injuries could not be made. The answer of the noble Lord upon that occasion was that the provision in question had been of but little practical advantage in aiding in the prevention or detection of crime, and that the omission of the present Government to re-enact this part of the Act of 1870 had occasioned no inconvenience or injustice. He (Mr. Martin) asked whether it would be just or right that the clause should be allowed to operate further back than the period suggested by the hon. Member for Galway—namely, the time of the introduction of the Act?

§ MR. MITCHELL HENRY
said he believed it was a maxim in law that no Act of a penal character was retrospective unless this was expressly stated in the Act itself. Upon this point the Committee were entitled to look for guidance to the Law Officers of the Crown, who, he trusted, would be able to throw a 806 clear light upon the question before the Committee as to the date at which the present clause should take effect. He was willing that the penalties of this Act should be retrospective, but they must be made retrospective only for a reasonable period. He appealed to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland to state whether the penalties proposed by an Act of Parliament could be retrospective unless so stated in the Act itself?

§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)
said, he thought it unnecessary to reply to hypothetical questions of a general character.

§ DR. COMMINS
said, the Government were asking very large powers in this Act, which, however, he had no doubt the House would grant them. But it was in complete contradiction of the law that they should try to take covertly these powers of a retrospective character. A Statute, as he understood the law, began to operate at the time when it received the Royal Assent, unless some other time were named in the Act. That was the law of England, and a Judge administering an Act of Parliament would not go back one hour beyond the day on which it received the Royal Assent. Did the Government intend the Committee to understand that because these claims for compensation would not be settled in open Court, but by a kind of Commission of Inquiry, that the ordinary principles of English law were to be set at naught?

MR. JOSEPH COWEN
said, he thought the Government should at once give some definite explanation of their intentions with regard to the retrospective character of the clause. The hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) had made what appeared to him a very reasonable proposal; but with this the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary refused to comply, saying that the Act of 1870 was retrospective. But he wished to point out that the Act of 1870 did contain a limit. He thought that the Government should fix some date beyond which the clause should not apply, or else give the Committee a satisfactory reason for not doing so.

§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)
said, the Act of 1870 was retrospective. All 807 that was necessary in order to bring cases within the Statute was that the notice should be prospectively served a certain number of days before the Session. This Act would also be retrospective.

§ MR. WARTON
asked the Attorney General for Ireland whether compensation would be obtainable under this Act with regard to murders committed before the expiry of the Act of 1880?

§ MR. TREVELYAN
said that the point was a practical one of great importance. He wished to inform the Committee that the Government had made up their minds to accept in substance, and perhaps in form, the Amendment to this clause which had been placed upon the Paper by the hon. Member for Leitrim (Mr. Tottenham), to the effect that the clause should apply to cases— At anytime subsequent to the 1st day of June 1880, or where the prescribed notices had been given, in compliance with the terms of 'The Peace Preservation Act, 1875,' in any case which, owing to the expiration of the Act aforesaid could not be brought before the summer assizes of that year. The Government had the opinion that this clause was wise and just, and perhaps one of the most effective for the repression of crime which the Bill contained; and, therefore, they thought it should be made to cover that period of time which had not been covered previously.

§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)
said the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland enabled him to answer in the affirmative the question just put to him by the hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton).

§ MR. MACFARLANE
said, he understood the Government to say that the principle of this clause was to inflict punishment on the residents of the district, in order to give them a distinct interest in the prevention of crime; but he wished to point out that by making the Bill extend back to the period indicated, they would be punishing districts for crimes committed before the interest which the right hon. Gentleman had referred to had been created. It appeared to him that the interest desired to be created with regard to the prevention of crime must refer to the future and not to the past.

808

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, it must not be supposed that the principle of this clause was a new one, because it was perfectly well-known to the Common Law. It was the old law of this country that if a crime had been committed and the offender escaped, the town and the hundred should be amerced. The principle was that each man in the hundred should become security for his fellows that they would not commit crime; the people of the hundreds being responsible to each other for the peace of the district.

§ MR. HEALY
said, he did not think the Government would facilitate the progress of the Bill by the adoption of the words of the hon. Member for Leitrim. Moreover, the Government had given Notices of Amendments extending over seven pages of the Notice Paper. Some of these Amendments were, no doubt, in fulfillment of the promises the Government had made to hon. Members; but the majority of them had been sprung upon the Committee, and must inevitably give rise to considerable discussion and delay in passing the Bill. Under such circumstances, it was difficult to understand why the Government should bring against Irish Members, as they had done in ferocious terms, the charge of delaying the progress of the measure.

THE CHAIRMAN
said, the hon. Member was not speaking to the Amendment before the Committee, which proposed the insertion of the words "after the passing of this Act."

§ MR. HEALY
said that his remarks had been caused by the fact that the Government had stated their intention to accept the Amendment of the hon. Member for Leitrim, and he considered that he was, in making those remarks, practically dealing with the Question before the Committee. Under the circumstances, it seemed to him absolutely necessary to refer to the past.

THE CHAIRMAN
said the hon. Member would be quite aware that it was against the Rules of the Committee to discuss an Amendment which came after the one under consideration. The present Amendment must be decided upon by the Committee before any other Amendment was discussed.

§ MR. HEALY
said, he did not dispute that for a moment. The Question before the Committee was whether the Bill 809 was to be retrospective or not. Now, the Amendment of the hon. Member for Leitrim involved precisely the same question. The Committee had been told that the object of the Government was to prevent crime by imposing a mulct upon the locality; but the Attorney General for Ireland had now admitted that this clause was not for the purpose of prevention, but for the purpose of punition. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary had stated that the extra police provided for in the previous clause was not for the purpose of preventing crime, but for the purpose of punishment. It now appeared that the present clause was to have the same effect—that was to say, it was to be punitive instead of preventive. The Committee would be aware that the Irish Constabulary were perfectly useless for the purpose of detecting crime, and it was for that reason that the Government proposed to punish localities by the levying of a fine. The Government had not the remotest idea that this clause would have any effect in preventing crime; nevertheless they had made up their minds that a number of perfectly innocent people should be punished. Take the case of the murder of Mr. Bourke. He was not murdered in the district where he carried out his evictions; the murderers waited until he got into the county of Galway, and murdered him there. Now, he asked, what justice there would be in making the county of Galway liable? By accepting the Amendment of the hon. Member for Leitrim, which made this Act retrospective, the Government showed clearly that they wished to punish a large number of innocent people for the act of a few individuals.

§ MR. DILLON
said he must divide the Committee upon this Amendment. He had made several appeals to the Government for information, which, had they responded to, would have saved a great deal of time. Now, the Chief Secretary for Ireland had told the Committee that it was the intention of the Government to make this clause retrospective for two years, and two years only. He was bound to say that that did not in the least degree satisfy him, and he was surprised at the spirit shown by the Home Secretary in speaking of the levying of these fines upon people who had no hand in the crimes com- 810 mitted. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman were acquainted with the districts of Ireland in which these occurrences took place he would have known that the crimes in question were the outcome of starvation and poverty. He (Mr. Dillon) knew that the people in the districts where the most murders were committed were starving people, and that these deeds were the deeds of desperate men. But the Home Secretary's remedy was that, in order to prevent starving men committing desperate deeds again, it was necessary to take from them the little food left, and reduce them again to starvation. He believed that if these fines were levied the Government would simply reproduce the condition of things which led to the commission of crime in the past. There would be a half-starved, destitute, and desperate population to deal with, and the Government, instead of preventing crime, the only thing which could justify an atrocious Bill of this kind, would be creating a hot-bed for its future development. He pointed out that the amount which would be levied upon disturbed districts for the outrages committed in them during the last two years would largely exceed the amount of the rent of the holdings; and, therefore, he said that in making this clause retrospective for two years, the Government were not only pronouncing the ruin of the tenancy, but also of the landlords. They would by their intended action make it impossible for the people to pay their rents.

§ MR. MARUM
said, reference having been made to the ancient law by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, he (Mr. Marum] would ask the attention of the Committee to a passage in Lord Macaulay, a relative of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, which had an especial bearing upon the question before the Committee—the practice of levying fines upon a district. In that passage the practice was strongly condemned as an incentive to crime and outrage.

§ MR. MITCHELL HENRY
said, there was not the smallest foundation in fact for the statement of the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) that the crimes committed in Ireland were done by starving men. There was nothing which he admired more than the conduct of the suffering and starving people on the coast of Connemara, by whom, through- 811 out all these troubles in Ireland, no outrages or crimes had been committed. He believed that the crimes committed in Ireland were done by persons who had taken the hints given to them at public meetings, and in newspapers, and by those who were otherwise in communication with the persons who had brought misery upon the country.

§ MR. SEXTON
said that anyone listening to the speech of the hon. Member for Gal way would infer that he was possessed of some special information with regard to the origin of crime in Ireland. He had just announced to the Committee that these crimes were not committed by men in a state of starvation. But how did the hon. Member know that? To be able to make that statement the hon. Member must know by whom they were committed; and, therefore, he thought that the Government might obtain from the hon. Member information which would be much more useful than the declaration with which he had favored the Committee. His hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary had not professed to have any exclusive information with respect to the murders committed in Ireland. He had contended that those outrages, murders, maimings, and crimes of lesser degree were committed only in the districts where starvation prevailed. The announcement which had been made by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant was of a very serious character, and he feared it would lead to results equally serious in Ireland. But did the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary mean to contend that English criminals never escaped detection? It was perfectly well known that they did so, and yet he would challenge the right hon. and learned Gentleman to cite a single case in which an English locality had been amerced or fined on that account. The Government had departed from the rule that a Statute should come into operation from the date of its passing, and in doing so they had overridden the objection raised to this clause; the first effect of which would be that the poor people who had been struggling for bare life would now be liable to a heavy fine any day after the passing of this Act—a fine greater even than the rents which they had been compelled to pay. One would have supposed that if the Government had desired the preservation of law and 812 order in Ireland, they would have taken the exactly opposite course to that which they were now following. They were about to render the people of some of the districts in Ireland liable for enormous fines; and he did not believe, looking at the consequences which would result from the operation of the clause, that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had the slightest idea of the effect which was implied by the words which he had just made use of. In his opinion, nothing more prejudicial to the peace and tranquility of Ireland could be done than to make this compensation retrospective. He appealed to the Government, if it were not then too late, to reconsider this clause, and to say whether they meant it to be exercised with less severity than the words of the right hon. Gentleman implied. There was a strong reason why they should not go behind the date of the passing of the Act. Was it not a fact that during the last year they had had in operation in Ireland a measure of coercion which was claimed by the Government at the time it was passing through that House to be sufficient for the purpose of repressing crime? Last year the then Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant (Mr. W. E. Forster) declared that if he had the power which was asked for in the Bill then before the House, he would not only be able to prevent, but to punish crime. Well, those powers had been given, and with what result? They had proved, to be quite insufficient for the purposes they were intended to perform; crime had gone on, and the Government were now coming forward, and by way of covering their own failure, incapacity, and he might say disgrace, were endeavoring to shift the responsibility of these murders from their own shoulders to the shoulders of hon. Members upon those Benches.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, the Government were not at all insensible to the considerations urged by the hon. Member opposite and his hon. Friends. He could quite conceive that a clause of this kind might have a very injurious effect if it were improperly worked. But that might be stated of every clause in the Bill. That was his opinion; he had never concealed it in that House. As a general remark, he might observe that the 1st clause of this Bill was retrospective as to murders. With 813 regard to the present clause it would be, no doubt, for the Lord Lieutenant to consider how the clause should be worked so as to produce a beneficial effect, and not such an effect as had been alluded to by hon. Members opposite. He had already remarked that the Government were not insensible to the considerations urged by hon. Members in that respect; but the only question before the Committee was as to whether the clause should be retrospective at all. Although a period had been suggested by an Amendment on the Paper, the actual Amendment before the Committee was that the compensation livable under this clause should only take operation from the passing of the Act. That, he must say, for the reasons which had been stated, the Government were unable to assent to. They could not agree that murders which were being committed at the very time that this Bill was under consideration should not come within the operation of the clause. Under those circumstances, the Government felt it their duty to take the opinion of the Committee upon the Amendment of the hon. Member for Tipperary.

§ MR. SYNAN
said, it was quite clear from the observations of the Home Secretary that no one was more sensible of the danger of making the clause retrospective than the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself. The result of making the clause retrospective, and leaving its application to the Lord Lieutenant, would be to render the working of the Bill an impossibility, because henceforward every man in Ireland would be against it; associations would be formed to resist it, and every man in Ireland, so to speak, would become the enemy of the Act. He would now look at the matter from the point of view of the landlords, in whose interests it had been made retrospective. He asked the Government and the Representatives of the Irish landlords in that House whether they had considered what the effect of this would be? In his opinion, it would introduce a state of things which had not been known in Ireland since the famine years. The Government were heaping tax upon tax, and they were thereby rendering it impossible for the landlords to get any portion of their rent.

§ MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY
said, how ever much he desired it, he was unable 814 to give a silent vote on this Amendment, because he wished to enter his protest against making the clause retrospective. He believed that, if persons who had no sympathy with crime were obliged to pay for murders committed in their district during the last four years, the effect would be to drive them into a state of desperation.

§ Question put.

§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 38; Noes 207: Majority 169.—(Div. List, No. 191.)

§ MR. TOTTENHAM
said, he did not propose to proceed with the Amendment in his name, as he understood the Government were prepared to meet him.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, the Government had stated that they would accept the principle of this Amendment, but that the Amendment could not come in here, because, in point of fact, it ought to be in the first line of the clause. If inserted at this point, it would create confusion; and, therefore, he thought, having intimated the intention of the Government with reference to the limitation, the matter should stand over, and subsequently be inserted in the first line of the clause.

§ MR. SEXTON
said that, before the end of this clause was reached, he should move a sub-section making this clause prospective.

§ COLONEL BARNE
said he wished to find out a precedent for this case. By the Act of 1870, there were urgent reasons why the Grand Jury should have this power, and he should like to hear the reasons of the Government for making the proposed change. It must be quite evident that the Lord Lieutenant had not nearly so independent a power as the Grand Jury, or a power enabling him so well to judge of the rights and the wrongs in regard to an outrage, or of the question whether the people were loyal or disloyal, or whether they were able to pay or not. For instance, on the approach of a General Election, was it not evident that a man in the position of Lord Lieutenant, who was a Member of the Government, would think twice before he alienated the votes and sympathies of electors—many Lord Lieutenants might do that; but he had nothing to say against the present Lord Lieutenant. It was evident that he would think more and longer before inflicting 815 a penalty on a district when a General Election was near than if the Election was remote. A Grand Jury, of course, would not take a General Election into consideration, and therefore it would be a much more independent body. Again, the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant ought to be in favor of this Amendment, because it must be evident to him that he would not be liable to the same questions and the same baiting by hon. Members from Ireland if the infliction of a fine was restricted to the Grand Jury than if it was imposed by the Lord Lieutenant, for whom he was answerable in that House. It was quite evident from the past that each time this penalty was imposed the Chief Secretary would have a great many questions to answer with regard to the infliction of the penalty. If the Grand Jury were empowered to impose the fine, it would be no use dealing with the Chief Secretary, as he would be entirely irresponsible for the acts of the Grand Jury. The Grand Jury knew the country better, and the people better, than the Lord Lieutenant or the Chief Secretary, and, for these reasons, were more likely to do justice than the Lord Lieutenant under all the circumstances.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 5, to leave out from the word "Lord," to the word "to," in line 6, and insert "Grand Jury shall."—(Colonel Barne.)

§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."

§ MR. TREVELYAN
said, the power under this clause was a very strong power, and the Government felt extremely the responsibility it placed upon them. That responsibility they could not consent to give to any other authority than the Lord Lieutenant. As to any question addressed to him (Mr. Trevelyan) in connection with this clause, his responsibilities were large already, and were likely to be larger. His chief reason against the Amendment was that the Grand Jury could not possibly exercise a power requiring such very great discretion in its application. There could be no proper authority to exercise that power except the Government themselves.

§ MR. LEAMY
pointed out that under the Act of 1870, as amended by the Act of 1875, this power was entrusted to 816 the Grand Jury. The Chief Secretary ought to show that the Grand Jury had failed in any way to properly exercise that power.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said it was quite sufficient upon this point to mention the fact that the Grand Jury only met twice a-year, and that between one meeting and another there was an interval of five months, during which the purposes contemplated by this clause would be extremely prejudiced. The Government were aware that under the Act of 1870 this power was given to the Grand Jury; but, considering all the circumstances, they thought it better that the Lord Lieutenant should himself appoint what he considered a fit tribunal to deal with these questions, and there was no doubt he would be conscious of all the considerations, and would take care to appoint a reasonable tribunal for this purpose. The Government had abandoned the view of sending these cases before the Grand Jury, for the reasons he had already stated, and to that decision they must adhere.

§ MR. MARUM
said, the question had been already decided on an Amendment he brought forward to extend the provisions of the Act of 1870; but he must still protest against the principle of taxation without representation.

§ MR. REDMOND
said he wished to point out that this was an instance of the fact that the delay in the progress of this Bill was due to the proposal of Amendments by hon. Members, who, after announcing their intention in a half-hearted way, did not press them. In the course of these discussions a great deal of indignation had been expressed by right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench, in reference to imputations which they imagined had been cast upon the Lord Lieutenant. It seemed to him very strange that no right hon. Gentleman had stood up to denounce the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel Barne) for his argument in support of the Amendment, which seemed to him to be the greatest possible imputation upon the Lord Lieutenant. The argument of the hon. and gallant Member was that the Lord Lieutenant could not be trusted with this power, because he might possibly use it wrongly or abstain from using it rightly, in the view of a General Election, in order that the interests of his political Party should not be pre- 817 judiced; and the hon. and gallant Member, having made that grave imputation on the Lord Lieutenant, said that the Grand Jury would not be open to the same imputation, because it was supposed to be composed of men entirely above any desire to shield the interests of their political Party by using this power wrongly. If the Grand Jury would not be inclined to use this power for political purposes, it would be only because they represented a class and school of politics who were entirely outside public life. He supposed that the Amendment must be withdrawn, but he would much rather have seen the Committee refuse leave to withdraw it, and so marked their sense of the obstruction of hon. Members who proposed Amendments and occupied the time of the Committee when they did not seriously intend to press their proposals.

§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

§ MR. T. P. O'CONNOR
proposed, in line 6, after the word "persons," to insert— Being, or one of whom shall be, a practicing barrister of at least six years' standing. It would be seen from Sub-section 2 of this clause that the persons appointed by the Lord Lieutenant would have to discharge duties similar to those of Judges at Petty Sessions.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 6, after the word "Persons" to insert the words "being, or one of whom shall be a practicing barrister of at least six years' standing."—(Mr. T. P. O'Connor.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said he would accept this Amendment on behalf of a Profession upon whom, he was sorry to say, all the unpleasant duties and misfortunes of mankind devolved.

§ Amendment agreed to.

§ Amendment proposed, in page 8, line 7, after the word "parties," to insert the words "on oath."—(Mr. Leamy.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ MR. TREVELYAN
said, he regarded this as a desirable Amendment, and would accept it.

§ Amendment agreed to.

818

§ MR. MARUM
said, before the next Amendment was taken, he intended to propose an Amendment, which he would not press if the Government assented to its principle. Under the Peace Preservation Act, public notice was required to be given to the authorities in order that they might be advised as to outrages at once. That Act defined the notice which should be given, and, in Section 38, stated that any person intending to apply for a presentment under the provisions of that section in respect to any murder, should give public notice of his intention to apply, in the newspapers in which the Grand Jury notices of the county were published, 14 days before the holding of the next Assizes. This provision was necessary to prevent fictitious claims being brought forward. If the Government could see their way to something of this kind in the present Bill he would not move his Amendment, but he regarded it as an essential provision.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, he agreed with the hon. Member that before an application was made the person making such application should give notice. Unfortunately, there was no Amendment on the Paper. Where a claim was made for compensation, some provision should be made for public notification of the claim.

§ MR. MARUM
said he would bring forward an Amendment if the Home Secretary would take charge of it.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
promised to consider how the provision could be in introduced.

§ MR. SEXTON moved to leave out, after "parties," the words "whom he or they deem," and insert "claiming." The effect of this would be to give every person claiming a right to be heard by the Court. The Committee would recollect that some time ago there was a case in England in which a man named Holden prosecuted two men for injuring him and they were sent to prison, but it was afterwards found that Holden had inflicted the mutilation upon himself. Suppose a man inflicted mutilation upon himself for the sake of the money he could procure, and suppose some person was aware of that, if he appeared before the Court as the clause stood the magistrates might say such person had no locus standi. If also some person knew that another person was 819 claiming for injuries which really were due to an accident, he might be shut out of this clause. The Court would be a Summary Court, acting sometimes with very slight notice; and the safe rule would be that, where large parties of people were likely to be mulcted, everybody interested should be allowed to come forward and give evidence. Of course, the acceptance of the Amendment might cause some loss of time in the examination of superfluous witnesses, but the provision would be a great counterbalancing gain.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 7, after the word "oath," leave out the words "whom he or they deem," in order to insert "claiming."—(Mr. Sexton.)

§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."

§ THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PORTER)
said, the Amendment could not be accepted. The effect of it would be to give a vested statutory right, not only to every person interested, but to every person claiming to be interested, to appear. What would be the result of that? It would be absolutely impossible for the inquiry to be conducted; and it would be practically blocked even if only a small portion of those claims to be heard were admitted. The object aimed at by the Amendment was to insure the investigation being as complete as it ought to be; but the Government had accepted the Amendment that one of the persons making the inquiry should be a barrister, and the Court had power, in regard to taking the evidence and all the necessary machinery, for making a proper investigation. That would provide what was now provided at the Assizes under the Malicious Offences Act—nobody having an interest was, practically, shut out. Under this Amendment, obviously every person in the county might claim to have an interest in the matter, inasmuch as such a tax might be levied over the entire county; and that would render an investigation absolutely impossible.

§ MR. HEALY
admitted there was some force in one of the remarks of the Solicitor General for Ireland; but the point was that the Amendment would give every person a statutory right. If his hon. Friend withdrew his Amend- 820 ment, would the Government be willing to admit the words "whom he or they admit to be," and thus make the clause read, "after hearing all persons interested"? The statutory right would not then be given. The omission of the words would not weaken the clause, while the new words would obviate the objection of the Solicitor General for Ireland and meet the Irish Members to a large extent.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said he was afraid that would come to the same thing. Some control must be left to the new tribunal, and no tribunal could exclude the ratepayers generally. But there were Amendments later or, which the Government would be willing to accept, with regard to parties appearing.

§ MR. SEXTON
asked whether witnesses would have a right to be examined on tendering evidence?

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
replied, that he should clearly think the tribunal must admit such evidence. It would be the duty of the tribunal to hear any person who had information upon the matter.

§ MR. SEXTON
said, he thought that was satisfactory as far as it went; but the Home Secretary misunderstood Ireland if he thought every ratepayer would wish to appear. The only appearance would be by a body of ratepayers, and if they thought they could show that a murder had been committed by some stranger they ought to be able to appear before the Court.

§ MR. CALLAN
said, he thought the Amendment of the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) would leave it to the Court to decide upon hearing parties or not. Committees of the House had never refused to hear parties petitioning who were interested and had a locus standi, and it was the same in all the Courts. Every person interested had a right to appear and give evidence, and there was no limitation to that right. He could not accept any compromise if those words, "whom he or they deem to be," were not left out. Would the Home Secretary say this clause was meant to give a power to the person sent by the Lord Lieutenant to refuse to hear parties interested? If not, what objection could there be to leaving out the words as proposed by the hon. Member? He appealed to the Attorney 821 General for Ireland to state whether the omission of the words "after hearing all parties interested" would in anyway interfere with the power at present possessed by the Lord Lieutenant?

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, he thought it was not worth while repeating the arguments he had already given against omitting these words; to do so would simply revive what had been decided some time before.

§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

§ MR. HEALY
asked the Government whether they had any objection to inserting the words "in open Court," and he moved to introduce those words.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 7, after the word "parties," to insert the words "either personally or by counsel or solicitor."—(Mr. Healy.)

§ Amendment agreed to.

§ MR. SEXTON
proposed to introduce the words "any ratepayer or ratepayers of the district." He was sensible, he said, that the argument urged by the Home Secretary would apply to this Amendment; and he would ask whether the Home Secretary would consent to insert those words, in order that a body of ratepayers might appear by counsel?

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 8, after the word "interested," to insert the words "including any ratepayer or ratepayers of the district."—(Mr. Sexton.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PORTER)
said, there was no objection to this Amendment, as the Government had no intention to prevent people being represented, but only to prevent a large number of people appearing individually.

§ MR. CALLAN
said he wished to put a case in which there might be one great proprietor of a barony, and only one ratepayer objecting to the tax. Under this Amendment, such person would be excluded from taking action, because it could not be said that one ratepayer was a body of ratepayers, and yet it would be absurd to say that such person was not a party interested. The effect of the Amendment would be to restrict the parties who had a right to appear.

§ MR. SEXTON
said, he thought his hon. Friend had not given as much 822 thought to this Amendment as he himself had. The individual would still have the right to appear subject to the discretion of the Court.

§ Amendment agreed to.

§ MR. P. MARTIN
said the substance of the earlier portion of the Amendment he wished to propose had been accepted. The Government, as he understood, had acceded to the suggestion of an open Court; and he did not see that there could be any possible objection to the residue of his Amendment.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, insert "And the person or persons so nominated by the Lord Lieutenant shall he bound to state in their report what, in their belief, were the circumstances under which the injury in respect to which compensation is sought took place, and whether any material evidence has been withheld by any persons resident within the said county where the murder, maiming, or other injury may have taken place, and the reasons or grounds on which such belief has been formed. And such person or persons so nominated as aforesaid."—(Mr. P. Martin.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PORTER)
said, that this Amendment would introduce into the body of the Bill a provision which was quite unnecessary. The object of the Amendment was to provide that the person appointed by the Lord Lieutenant should report upon certain matters, some of which were quite unnecessary; whilst it contained no direction as to reporting upon other matters which were of great importance. It would be the duty of the persons appointed to report to the Lord Lieutenant on such matters as the Lord Lieutenant considered needful, and he would be empowered to consider and, if necessary, to send back their Report. That seemed to him to be sufficient.

§ MR. P. MARTIN
said he merely moved the Amendment without observation because he could not conceive that the Government would object to it. Would the Government refuse in the present Bill to make the same concession that had been made by the late Government, and exempt all districts where material evidence was, in fact, not withheld? It would be most unjust to charge a district where the ratepayers had given, or showed a desire to give, aid to the Government in tracing or convicting 823 those guilty of the offence. It appeared to him most material that there should be in the report made by the persons nominated a statement as to material evidence having been withheld in the district. There had been a contest between the Irish Members and the Government for some time whether in reality sympathy existed in Ireland to such an extent as to prevent material evidence being procured, or whether it was not the weakness, want of care, and skill of those charged with the criminal administration of justice and detection of crime in Ireland which occasioned the lamentable breakdowns and failures which, he admitted, not un frequently occurred of late in criminal cases in Ireland. To hereafter decide the validity and accuracy of the allegations thus made these reports would be most important. What reason could be given for refusing to prescribe that the Commissioners should be bound to supply the details and particulars demanded in their Reports? If the Lord Lieutenant sent down competent and experienced men to try these matters, what difficulty would they have in reporting in the manner proposed by the Amendment? The Government ought to be anxious to have the fullest information made public.

§ MR. HEALY
said, he had expected, on an Amendment of this kind, there would have been some satisfaction given by the Government, and he regretted that the Home Secretary had left the House, leaving his Colleagues with strict instructions to accept nothing at all. That was not the way to treat the Committee, and if the Chief Secretary had not power to accept that Amendment, what was the use of the Committee going on? This Amendment in no way interfered with the working of the clause, but simply asked for a Report to the Lord Lieutenant by the legal gentleman of six years' standing, giving some reasons why the district should be fined. This Amendment was refused with scorn, but he could not understand for what reason the Government rejected the proposal. He urged them to reconsider the Amendment, and, if necessary, recall the Home Secretary, in order that there might be some person with authority in the House.

§ THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PORTER)
said, the Bill was sufficiently long without introducing an Amendment which was absolutely un- 824 necessary, and for which no clear reason could be given. The Amendment prescribed certain matters on which the Commissioners were to report, but most of those were the matters upon which, without the Amendment, they must necessarily report; and there were many matters not in the Amendment upon which it would be most important that they should report—as, for instance, the condition of a family. At all events, there was one part of this Amendment which could not possibly stand or be discussed until the later Amendment of the hon. Member for Kilkenny (Mr. P. Martin), which raised a question whether an inquiry under the section should be restricted to cases in which there had been a refusal to give evidence, was reached. In the meantime, what he would submit was that it would be better to leave the matter in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant, who, if the Report was incomplete, could have it sent back and amended. In a Bill like the present surplus age should be avoided. Besides, the insertion of the words proposed would not attain the object of the hon. Member—namely, publicity, because the Report to the Lord Lieutenant would not necessarily be published.

§ MR. LABOUCHERE
presumed that the Government would rather prefer that the Bill should be long than that the discussion upon it should be prolonged. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland had repeated that his main objection to the Amendment was on the ground that it was surplus age. Even supposing that it was surplus age, was it worth while discussing it when hon. Gentlemen were anxious that it should be put in? The hon. and learned Gentleman had said that one portion of the Amendment should not be discussed now, but should come in subsequently; and the hon. and learned Gentleman had referred to the words "whether any material evidence was withheld," &c. "Would it have any effect if the hon. and learned Gentleman who moved the Amendment now withdrew those words for the present with the view of bringing them up afterwards? Would the Solicitor General for Ireland accept the other portion of the Amendment, which he only objected to on the ground of surplus age?

§ MR. T. P. O'CONNOR
said, he had an Amendment of a similar character, 825 and he would like to know what the position really was? Would the Government say that they objected to any specification whatever as to the matters which should be contained in the Report? Was that the position which they took up?

§ MR. TREVELYAN
said the view the Government took was this. They were of opinion that this Bill should not specify the grounds on which the Lord Lieutenant was to come to a decision. The Reports would contain a very great deal more than the matters proposed to be inserted by the hon. and learned Member. The Lord Lieutenant was bound, as the good shepherd of the people, to see that they were not cruelly used by any of the clauses inserted in this Bill; and for that purpose he (Mr. Trevelyan) thought it was most important that the officers who went down should be, in their position as the Lord Lieutenant's Commissioners, his eyes and his ears, so as be able to give him a full, true, and complete picture of what had passed, of the condition of the district, and of the whole of the circumstances of the case. But that was not the principal objection of the Government—their principal objection was that it was not possible in an Act of Parliament to lay down all the possible circumstances which were required to be reported on by the Commissioners for the purpose of determining the judgment of the Central Government. That was the objection which the Government had to the present Amendment, and that was also the objection which they would have to urge against the later Amendment of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor). The point as to the detection of crime and as to the withholding or not withholding of evidence by persons in the neighborhood was a point which might, of course, most properly be raised, and it was a most interesting point, which well deserved to be discussed; but he rather thought, on looking at the Amendment, that it would be more properly raised on line 21. If that was cut out of the present Amendment it would leave it extremely meagre and insufficient to meet the purpose which the hon. and learned Member had in view; but the Government would equally object to the much more full and plenary Amendment of the hon. Member for Galway, and, 826 therefore, he hoped that both those hon. Members would consider that the Government had stated their opinion on the matter distinctly enough, and that they would reserve the discussion as to that part of the Amendment which began with the words "whether any material evidence" for a later period.

§ MR. P. MARTIN
said, a few moments ago the Amendment was objected to as surplus age, but now he understood the objection was changed. No reason had been suggested, however, which, he submitted, ought to have weight with the Committee. There ought to be no concealment as to the evidence taken before the Commissioners to be appointed or the reasons for the Reports which, they might make. Why did the Government seek to thus withhold what, according to the usage of all other tribunals, Parliament and the public were entitled to obtain? Did they fear that if Reports were made in the full form he suggested it would become apparent that the failure of justice in Ireland was occasioned by the weakness and want of capacity of those who administered the Executive Government? He was sorry to see that the present Government, Radical as they professed to be, intended to pursue the course that was taken by their Predecessors, by endeavoring to cover what was alleged, rightly or wrongly, to be the incapacity of Dublin Castle.

§ MR. HEALY
wished to ask one question—Would the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant have any objection to insert the words, "The Report shall be made in the prescribed manner?" That, he was sure, would meet the views of his hon. and learned Friend, for then the Lord Lieutenant would require having his attention drawn to what was necessary in order that he might come to a fitting judgment on the case.

§ MR. T. P. O'CONNOR
wished, before that question was answered, to put another to the right hon. Gentleman. He did not quite clearly gather the object which his hon. Friend had in view; but he wished to ask whether, in the rules, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would undertake that the Report should embrace at least two elements—first, that it should state the grounds for believing that there had been sympathy with the crime in the district; and, secondly, that it should state that the fine had been imposed for that reason? 827 If the right hon. Gentleman would say he would accept that proposal, he (Mr. O'Connor) would not propose any Amendment on that point. Would the right hon. Gentleman undertake to bring in words which would make the Report at least as full as the Report which had to be made under the Peace Preservation Amendment Act of 1875. He supposed the right hon. Gentleman was quite familiar with the clause in that Act, which, in amending a previous Coercion Act, was not passed without due consideration by the Government of the day, or without that Government having been taught by experience that such a limiting of the power of Section 39 of the Peace Preservation Act was necessary. In looking at that Amendment in the Act of 1875, he had been astonished to see how full the Government of that day compelled the Report of these offences to be. They compelled the Grand Jury to say that there had been material evidence withheld, and that was the most important point. In the clause now before the Committee, as it stood at present, the mere fact of murder having been committed, although no person but the murderer might know anything about it, would subject the locality to the severe provisions of the clause. He did not think that a clause which stood thus was in accordance with the principles advanced by the Government themselves, because in every speech which the Home Secretary had made on the subject that right hon. and learned Gentleman's great argument had been that the people should be fined because they showed sympathy with crime, because they did not lead to its detection, and because, by fining them, their desire to find evidence and to convict the guilty would be increased. The second point he had wished to bring forward was this—the Report which had to be made under the Act of 1875 compelled the Grand Jury to state the reasons why they thought evidence had been withheld, and they were also compelled to state the valuation of the district in which the crime had been committed. He could quite see the reason why that was put in. The reason why the Report was compelled to state the valuation of the district was to prevent cases occurring like that in the County Roscommon, where the fine imposed was actually equal to the entire valuation of the town on which it was levied. His 828 hon. Friends had pointed out with, great force how this fine might add to the burdens of the tenants of the locality—a burden equal to the rack rent they were now compelled to pay, or to the fair rent which the Court decided they would have to pay in future. In order to avoid that most stringent and excessive use of the clause, it was essential that the Government should bind themselves to have stated in the Report that which the Grand Jury were compelled to state by the Act of 1875—some particulars—namely, as to the valuation of the district, and, therefore, as to the ability of the ratepayers to bear the fine. He confessed that the clause as it now stood was in a most unsatisfactory condition; still, he did not want to propose his Amendment, because it was a very long one, and would take some time to read, and he would willingly spare both the Chairman and himself that trouble. But he would impress upon the Government the necessity of their addressing themselves to at least these two points—first, that the Report should, under the provisions of the Act itself, and not at the discretion of the Lord Lieutenant, set forth the grounds for supposing that evidence had been withheld; and, secondly, that it should give particulars as to the capacity of the farmers of the district to meet the fine.

§ MR. T. D. SULLIVAN
said that, in this Amendment, as in others proposed from the same quarter of the House, the Irish Members asked for publicity, and the Government asked for secrecy. He hoped the Committee, and others outside the Committee, would take note of that fact, which had characterized the whole of the discussions on this Bill. The Irish Members wanted to let in the light upon the whole working of this measure, but the Government wanted to work in the dark. That was a fact which told heavily against the Government, and the more it was looked into the more heavily it told against them. This Amendment proposed that evidence should be taken in the open Court, and that the persons who took that evidence should, in supplying it to the Lord Lieutenant, state in their Report what, in their belief, was the injury in respect of which compensation was claimed.

§ THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PORTER)
said, there 829 was no mention of proceedings in open Court in the Amendment now under discussion.

§ MR. T. D. SULLIVAN
said, than his reading of it must have been entirely wrong. It provided that such investigations must be held in open Court.

§ THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PORTER)
said, the Amendment now under discussion was not the one the hon. Gentleman supposed. That came lower down.

§ MR. T. D. SULLIVAN
said that, in that case, he would pass from the point. However, the whole thing appeared to be left to the discretion of the Lord Lieutenant from first to last. If that was to be the state of the case, would it not have been wiser to have brought in a measure simply enacting that for the next three years the Lord Lieutenant should be empowered to do just as he liked throughout Ireland? The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had told them that the Lord Lieutenant was to be the shepherd of the people. A nice kind of shepherds they were that had been sent to Ireland from time to time! They were not shepherds, but wolves; and not the good of the flock, but their ruin and devastation, had been their work. What sort of a shepherd was he who cared for his sheep with bayonets and buckshot?

THE CHAIRMAN
Order, order! I must remind the hon. Gentleman that he is going altogether beyond the scope of the Amendment.

§ MR. T. D. SULLIVAN
thought he was speaking in support of the Amendment. At all events, he did support it, and should vote for it.

§ MR. CALLAN
wished to know whether it was the intention of the Government to provide that the parties should make their Report independently of the evidence, or was it to be accompanied by the evidence, and would it be laid upon the Table in the usual manner, within 14 days, if the House was then sitting, and, if not, within 14 days after the House met? It would facilitate matters very much if the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would inform the Committee whether the reporter would simply give his opinion as to whether compensation should be given or not, or whether he would enter into any of the grounds on which his opinion was founded, and whether the evi- 830 dence taken should be deemed to be a part of the Report, or should be independent of the Report, and not be laid upon the Table of the House.

§ MR. TREVELYAN
The Government are ready to agree that the Report shall be in the prescribed form, and that the Commissioners shall be bound to report the evidence to the Lord Lieutenant. The evidence, I presume, will be appended to the Report. The question of the valuation of the district will, of course, be closely looked into. As to the epithet I used about the Lord Lieutenant being the shepherd of the flock, I used it advisedly, and I was not speaking of any particular Lord Lieutenant. I have paid eager attention in my Office to this matter of compensating those who are maimed or injured, for reasons not necessary to detail to the Committee, and I may say that the Government regard it as a matter of great interest, and a great deal of that interest is founded on the desire not to bear heavily on the ratepayers of Ireland. The matter of the valuation of the district will, of course, be carefully attended to. The question of whether the power of the Lord Lieutenant is to be bound by the same limitations as were laid down by the Act of 1875 will be raised later; and, undoubtedly, the Report will go carefully into the question of the amount of direct and indirect complicity which lies upon the neighborhood.

§ MR. SEXTON
said, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had told them, with good reason, that it would be inconvenient, and, perhaps, impossible, to specify in an Act of Parliament all that a Report was to contain; but that put the matter in a fallacious form. The Irish Members did not want to have specified all that the Report should contain; but only certain essential things that it should not fail to contain. The right hon. Gentleman had told them he thought the evidence would accompany the Report; but there must be two conditions fulfilled to make the matter satisfactory. The first condition was stated in the Bill; the other condition, though unexpressed, was equally essential. The first condition was that the crime should be agrarian, or arising from an unlawful association. Now, before the Lord Lieutenant issued a Commission at all, it must appear to him that the crime was of that character, and what security 831 had they that the Lord Lieutenant would not consider the mere appearance sufficient for him?— Where it appears that anyone has been murdered, maimed, or otherwise injured in his person, and that such murder, maiming, or injury is a crime of the character commonly known as agrarian, or arising out of an unlawful association, the Lord Lieutenant may do so-and-so. What was the object of inquiry? Merely to fix the amount of compensation upon the locality the Lord Lieutenant, therefore, might, if he so pleased, exclude the agrarian character of the crime from the consideration of the Commission. The language was simple, and bore but one interpretation. Now, there were two conditions that must be satisfied. One he had already explained; the other was that material evidence had been withheld. Sometimes this and other clauses were described as preventive; at other times as punitive; but, whether they were the one or the other, they rested on the same assumption. If they were called preventive, what was meant was that the people knew who committed murders, and if they were fined they would reveal the names of those who might commit future ones, or give evidence which would prevent future murders from being committed. If the clauses were called punitive, what was meant was that the people knew who committed murders, and should be punished for not disclosing the guilty persons. Either way, the assumption was always that the people had a guilty knowledge of the crimes. That went to the whole core of the thing, and it was evident that the Report, in order to be adequate to the case, must set forth the opinion of the Commissioners, not only that the crime was agrarian, or arising out of an unlawful association, but also that material evidence had been withheld. If there was no ground for believing that, there was no ground for the application of the clause, for it could not be justly applied to any particular district unless it was believed that a guilty knowledge existed in that district. The Irish Members could not abandon their claim to have the Report state these things. It was not such an unreasonable claim as that the Report should contain everything; but at present there was no security as to the rules to be drawn up. The Lord Lieutenant might be satisfied 832 that the crime was agrarian, and he might withhold that matter from the Commissioners. The claim was pressed upon that point.

§ MR. HEALY
wished to make one suggestion. The promise that the Report should be made in the prescribed manner went some way towards meeting the views of the Irish Members, and he was satisfied with the Government for meeting it; but he wished to know whether the rules for making that Report, as in the case of the rules under the Land Act, would be laid before Parliament for a certain time? If such a provision were not in the Bill, would the Government have any objection to putting it in? He presumed there would be no objection to that. There was also another point on which he wished to say a word. There were three things mentioned in this provision—the Warrant, the Report, and the Award—the Warrant issued, the Report of the men to whom it was issued, and the Award made by the Lord Lieutenant himself. He wished to know whether, in a case where an award resulted, the Government would have any objection to lie on the Table copies of the Warrant, of the Report, and of the Award?

§ MR. SEXTON
said, there was also a fourth document—one on which the whole clause hinged—namely, the claim for compensation. Would they also lay that before Parliament?

§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)
I understand these questions to be addressed to me. I am not in charge of the Bill, and, therefore, I cannot say.

§ MR. HEALY
said, he thought it was a very extraordinary state of things for the Treasury Bench to be left in charge of a right hon. and learned Gentleman who had no power whatever, and who did not know what was going on. If the Government were dealing with the Tories in such a manner, the Tories would instantly move to report Progress. He would venture to say that when the Arrears Bill came under discussion, the Government would not leave the Treasury Bench in charge of a Member who did not know what was going on. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland did not know what was going on he should send for someone who did.

833

§ THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir FARRER HERSCHELL)
said, the questions which had been put did not arise out of the Amendment at all; and the question as to the Report being made in the prescribed manner had already been answered by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant.

§ MR. HEALY
Not as to whether the Reports are to be laid before Parliament.

§ THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir PARRER HERSCHELL)
said, this had nothing to do with laying them before Parliament, and it seemed to him reasonable enough that those who were now in the House should deal with the matter in some way or other, when a question was raised with which the Amendment had nothing whatever to do. This was not a question which had arisen legitimately.

§ MR. HEALY
said, it arose exactly out of the Amendment, and could arise out of nothing else. The Government had agreed, upon this Amendment to state that the Report should be made in the prescribed manner, and it was only reasonable to ask whether the rules would be laid upon the Table of the House. If that did not arise out of this particular Amendment, his comprehension of the matter was very different from that which appeared to prevail on the Treasury Bench.

§ MR. PLUNKET
said, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, who was in charge of the Bill, had been in the House to his certain knowledge hour after hour. A suggestion was made that the Report should be in the prescribed form, and the right hon. Gentleman thought it was satisfactory, and assented to it. But a totally different matter had now arisen as to what was to be done with the rules made under a different section of the Bill altogether; and because the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was not here at the instant to give an explicit answer on the point, this attack was made upon the Government. He did think that those who were present ought to be allowed to settle this matter.

THE CHAIRMAN
The question before us is simply whether these words are here inserted.

§ MR. P. MARTIN
said, as the Government had promised that words would be 834 introduced on Report which would effectuate the object he had in view, he would ask permission to withdraw his Amendment.

§ MR. TREVELYAN
I wish it to be clearly understood what it is that I agree to. The Government undertakes to introduce an extension of this clause, to the effect that the Report shall be in the prescribed form, and that the evidence shall be appended thereto. Then I have been asked some questions with regard to the nature of that prescribed form, and I answer most boldly that the subjects which the Commissioners will be called upon to inform themselves upon in such a manner as thoroughly to satisfy the mind of the Lord Lieutenant, are the valuation of the district—the power of the district to bear any given fine—and, secondly, the amount of knowledge which the neighborhood may be said, as a neighborhood, to have of the crime, and the amount of evidence which the people are willing to give for the discovery of the criminal. These two points will be laid before the Lord Lieutenant by the Commissioners, and he will carefully consider them.

§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

THE CHAIRMAN
The next Amendment is practically the same.

§ MR. T. P. O'CONNOR
It is not quite the same, but I will not trouble the Committee by proposing it.

§ MR. HEALY moved, in page 8, line 16, after the word "direct," to insert the words— Any person having taken part in such investigation shall on application be entitled to a copy of such report. He said the Government had stated that they would make the Report in the prescribed form, and that they would add thereto a copy of the evidence given at the time of the investigation, and he presumed there would be no objection to allowing any of the ratepayers who paid the tax to have a copy of the Report. He would have no objection to the insertion of the words "where any award has been made," because, unless they considered that they had been unfairly dealt with, they would have no occasion for the Report.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 16, after the word "direct," to insert the words "Any person having taken 835 part in such investigation shall on application be entitled to a copy of such report."—(Mr. Healy.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
thought that the Report ought to be accessible, but, at the same time, there ought to be some limitation as to the number of copies obtainable.

§ MR. HEALY
said, he was quite ready to admit, as had been stated by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, that it was desirable that there should not be an indefinite number of copies of the Report made. At the same time, it was desirable to make the Report accessible, and he would suggest as convenient that where an award was made it should be presented to Parliament.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow us to consider how this should be done. No doubt, in some form or other, the Report should be made accessible.

§ MR. HEALY
said that, under those circumstances, he was quite willing to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

§ MR. P. MARTIN moved, in page 8, line 21, after the word "or," to insert the words— Provided in his opinion there is room to believe that material evidence has been withheld within the said county where the murder, maiming, or other injury may have taken place. He said that what he wished to do was simply this—to provide that the Lord Lieutenant should not have power to award any compensation in cases where he should be convinced that material evidence had not been withheld.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 21, after the word "or," to insert the words "Provided in his opinion there is room to believe that material evidence has been withheld within the said county where the murder, maiming, or other injury may have taken place."—(Mr. Patrick Martin.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
I understand from my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant that this matter has already been settled. It is understood that the Re- 836 port shall be made in a form to be prescribed by the Lord Lieutenant, who will consider the ability of the district to bear the rate, and the conduct of the district. That, as I understand it from my right hon. Friend, is what has taken place during my absence.

§ MR. P. MARTIN
said, it certainly was to be implied, from what had been stated by the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, that if the people of the district were not shown in the Report to have withheld evidence within their knowledge, the charge was not to be imposed. But this should not be left to a mere understanding, but be made clear by inserting the Amendment in the clause. If this was not done, it might happen that although the Report sent in to the Lord Lieutenant might show that no material evidence had been withheld in the district, His Excellency might yet award the compensation. Surely that was not the intention of the Government. It appeared to him (Mr. Martin) that this Amendment was necessary as a matter of drafting, and in accordance with the clause in the Act of 1875. In the present Bill the Lord Lieutenant was to exercise the powers which, under the Act of 1875, were given to the Grand Jury, and in the Act of 1875 there was an express stipulation that the Grand Jury were not to be allowed to award compensation unless they should be of opinion that material evidence concerning the murder, maiming, or injury, had been withheld. Under these circumstances, he considered the insertion of the Amendment a question of such importance that, if refused, he felt bound to press the matter to a division. Nothing could be more monstrous, nothing could be more unwise, and than that they should leave the clause in its present open condition. It had been stated by the Home Secretary that this clause was modeled on the clause in the Act of 1875—an Act introduced by a Conservative Government. Why, then, should the present Government ask the Committee to leave it to the mere will and caprice of the Lord Lieutenant to say—even though the Report he received might show there was no sympathy with crime or concealment of evidence—that this vengeance tax was to be imposed whether evidence was withheld or not?

§ MR. SEXTON
assured his hon. and learned Friend that whatever the assist- 837 ance of himself (Mr. Sexton) and his hon. Friends was worth he should have it. The Amendment was a most reasonable one; and, as a matter of logic and necessity, it followed upon what the Government had already granted. In the first place, a district could not be made liable at all in respect to murder, or any other crime, unless there was reason to believe that the people had guilty knowledge of the person who committed the crime. The Chief Secretary had agreed that the Lord Lieutenant should direct Commissioners to inquire and ascertain whether or not material evidence was withheld. Now, if the Commissioners were to report upon that point, for what purpose should they report except to enable the Lord Lieutenant to make up his mind on that part of the question? It followed strictly on what the Chief Secretary had granted, that the Lord Lieutenant would have to make up his mind whether the people had withheld material evidence. The Chief Secretary had talked about fettering the Lord Lieutenant's discretion. The adoption of this Amendment, however, would not fetter the discretion of the Lord Lieutenant; but it would enable him to form his judgment upon the light of principles which had been already laid down in that House.

MR. JOSEPH COWEN
said, the object of the clause, as he understood it, was to put this vengeance tax on an entire community, on the supposition that that community was conniving at crime. If a community was not conniving at crime, it was most unjust and unreasonable to tax that community. No one ever attempted to put a tax upon a county in England in which a murder took place, because it was generally known and acknowledged on all hands that people were against crime. If there was a special district in Ireland where it had been proved to demonstration that the community were also against crime, it was most unfair and unjust to tax them. Where the community were in sympathy with crime, he could understand the justification or apology for the Government's proceeding; but where it was clearly shown that no sympathy with crime existed in the district, he could not believe the people ought to be taxed in this way.

§ MR. BIGGAR
said, that in the case of the murder of Mrs. Lea, at Rathgar, the 838 criminals were men who had come up from the country in order to commit the crime. If this clause were allowed to pass un-amended, the people of Rathgar would be made to pay this tax, the fact being that not a single inhabitant of the place knew anything at all about the crime. It seemed to him the Government were acting very unreasonably in refusing this Amendment. Unless some such Amendment as the present was adopted, it would be perfectly certain that persons who had no complicity whatever with crime would be called upon to pay this police tax.

§ MR. TREVELYAN
said, he was very glad to find from the observations of the hon. and learned Member for Kilkenny (Mr. Martin) that there was no doubt in the Committee as to the importance of the statement he (Mr. Trevelyan) made some time ago. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that he intended to proceed to a division on this Amendment. He (Mr. Trevelyan) could hardly imagine any Amendment to the Bill on which a division might more properly be taken, for it raised the question between those who had, on the whole, full and absolute confidence in the Irish Government and those who could hardly be expected to have that full and absolute confidence. The hon. and learned Member asked whether the Government meant to impose what he called a vengeance tax, whether the criminal was given up or not? This clause had two objects. It had the object of compensating those who had suffered in limb or who had suffered by the ruin caused to a family by the violent death of its bread-winner—it had the object of compensating them for having done their duty in performing their legal obligations and in supporting the law. The second object of the clause was to deter the community from crime. With regard to the second point, it was obvious that direct or indirect complicity of the neighbourhood—complicity before or after the fact—would have to be carefully taken into consideration; but the Government were not willing to be bound by the extremely hard-and-fast line which was laid down in the Act of 1875. They considered that justice would be done to the individual, and that injustice to the community would be avoided if the Lord Lieutenant was left with this latitude which he (Mr. Trevelyan) believed His 839 Excellency would be very well able to exercise. The circumstances were to be taken into consideration in the Report of the Commissioners, and the Government were unwilling to be bound by any hard-and-fast rule with regard to the nature of the complicity of the community in the crime. As he had said, the two considerations which would weigh very greatly with the Government were the ability of the district to pay the compensation, and the guilt and innocence—he did not want to use any offensive term—the guilt and innocence of the district with regard to the outrage complained of. He was very sorry that he could not accept the Amendment; but in going to a division they would feel they were taking a vote on a subject which was well worthy of the attention of the Committee.

§ MR. MARUM
said, there was one point which the right hon. Gentleman had not referred to. It was plain that, tinder the clause as it now stood, there would be a distinct encouragement to people to come forward and state they apprehended crime in the hope of escaping taxation.

§ MR. P. MARTIN
said, with all respect for the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, he thought he had used an appropriate and justifiable phrase in calling this a vengeance tax. It could not be contended by its imposition crime had been prevented, or evidence procured. The present clause was taken from the Westmeath Act introduced when Lord Spencer was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Yet no one spoke more strongly as to the uselessness of this principle of compensation, and the injustice inflicted in its working, than Lord Spencer himself.

THE CHAIRMAN
said, the hon. and learned Member was travelling beyond the limits of the Amendment.

§ MR. P. MARTIN
said, he was endeavouring to show that the clause would not prevent crime arising in any district.

THE CHAIRMAN
said, the point before the Committee related to the withholding of material evidence. The hon. and learned Member could not enter upon the consideration of the general merits of the clause.

§ MR. P. MARTIN
remarked, that he was endeavouring to show that this clause would not prevent evidence being 840 withheld. Lord Spencer, speaking of the Westmeath Act, said— My experience of the Act, I must say, led me to the conclusion that not a single case of murder or outrage was prevented by that Act. And then the noble Earl went on to say— I found it was constantly doing great injustice; two or three people being justly punished, while 20 or 30 suffered unjustly. He (Mr. Martin) asked the Committee to bear these words in mind when they came to decide on the Amendment. After this strong opinion thus expressed by the present Lord Lieutenant, were the Committee prepared to impose what he must again call this vengeance tax upon the unfortunate districts of Ireland at the mere discretion and arbitrary will of the Lord Lieutenant?

§ MR. SEXTON
said, the Chief Secretary had developed a new theory—complicity in crime—which was very alarming, and which might become exceedingly grave in its consequences. Up to the moment of the Chief Secretary's last speech, he (Mr. Sexton) always understood that people, in order to be liable to a tax of this kind, would have to have guilty knowledge of crime. Now there was a new phrase used by the Chief Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman talked about complicity in crime, and he gave as the reason for refusing to accept the present Amendment, that material evidence had been withheld. He said, moreover, that it might not be desirable to fix and define the precise value of the complicity which would make a district liable to this tax. Were the people to have such knowledge, before or after the crime, as to enable the authorities to set out on the proper path for the detection of the criminal? If an unpopular man, such as an Irish landlord who had been guilty of any tyrannical acts, were shot or maimed, would the absence of any manifestation of sorrow on the part of the people be taken as evidence of complicity?

§ MR. O'DONNELL
said, it was evident that if material evidence was withheld, or if such evidence was not forthcoming, the Government were determined to impose this vengeance tax upon the locality. He could not see, moreover, that if material evidence was not forthcoming, that in itself was evidence of guilty knowledge on the part 841 of the people. He was struck by the declaration of the Chief Secretary that this was precisely one of the cases in which the Government wished to go to a division, because this was a case in which they could go to a division on the point of confidence. He expected from the Chief Secretary something more novel than that, because the political "confidence trick" was the oldest piece of sleight-of-hand at the disposal of the Irish Administration.

§ Question put.

§ The Committee divided,:—Ayes 32; Noes 92: Majority 60.—(Div. List, No. 192.)

§ MR. SEXTON
said, the Lord Lieutenant had, amongst his many delicate duties, to determine the amount to be given by way of compensation. The Amendment which he was about to move proposed to aid the Lord Lieutenant in the performance of this duty by laying down the principle on which the Lord Lieutenent should be bound to act. The Amendment was as follows:—Clause 16, page 8, line 22, after "just," add— Provided, That the amount awarded for compensation shall consist of such sum, in the nature of special damages, as may be proportioned to the actual injury sustained by the claimant or the party or parties represented by him. No compensation shall be awarded in respect of any murder, unless the claimant or the party or parties represented by him shall have sustained some pecuniary loss by the death of the murdered person. He supposed that no effort would be seriously made to contend that the compensation to be given under this clause should extend beyond the actual pecuniary loss sustained either by the person applying, or, in the case of a murdered person, by the representative of the murdered person. He was strengthened in moving this Amendment by what was said by the Chief Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman said this clause had two aspects; and, in dealing with the aspect of compensation, he said that in case of loss of limb, the person so injured would be compensated to the extent of his less capacity to earn money; and in the case of a murdered person, compensation would be paid to his family in proportion to the loss they had sustained by the death of the bread-winner. He (Mr. Sexton accepted that principle. In the 842 case of a man being murdered, the amount of compensation paid should be in proportion to the income his family had lost by his death. In the case of a person injured, the principle of compensation was very clear. No one would contend that a man should be compensated for the pain he had suffered or for the disfigurement of his frame. Such a man should be compensated for his less capacity for earning money. In the case of murder, it would be a great error to compensate a man's family for their natural agony of feeling; but, in awarding compensation, the tribunal appointed to determine the amount to be paid should strictly confine itself to the consideration of what was the pecuniary loss sustained.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 22, after the word "just," to insert the words "Provided, That the amount awarded for compensation shall consist of such sum, in the nature of special damages, as may be proportioned to the actual injury sustained by the claimant or the party or parties represented by him. No compensation shall be awarded in respect to any murder, unless the claimant or the party or parties represented by him shall have sustained some pecuniary loss by the death of the murdered person."—(Mr. Sexton.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, that by the Amendment a principle would be laid down which was not contained in such clauses in any former Acts. In the Act of 1870 the compensation had no such limitation at all. Under that Act the compensation was to be just and reasonable, and was to be paid to the personal representative of the person murdered, quite irrespective of the consideration whether the personal representative did or did not suffer pecuniary injuries. It was provided by that Act that applications might be made by the personal representative or by the next-of-kin of any person murdered, or by any person maimed or injured, or by the Crown Solicitor of the county, or any person in their behalf authorized by the Lord Lieutenant. The latter provision was made because it was feared that if the person interested made the application himself he might be subject to intimidation, or might share the same fate his relative had just undergone. If a woman's hus- 843 band had been murdered it was fair that she should be compensated, and it was thought necessary that application might be made by other parties on her behalf. He was bound to say that something more than mere pecuniary compensation ought to be given to the injured person. The compensation ought to take the shape, in some respect, of a solatium for the misery, the life-long misery, inflicted on the friends and relatives of the murdered man—the compensation involved that consideration, and it also involved the consideration of the penalty of the deed itself. The Act of 1870 was carefully drawn, and no such limitations as those proposed in the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Sexton) should be included; and he (Sir William Harcourt) certainly could not consent to dopart from the language which was used in that Act, or consent to a declaration that where a person was murdered and left behind him anyone who suffered by his death, the compensation paid should only be paid in respect of any pecuniary loss they sustained.

§ MR. HEALY
said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman could not have understood the Amendment, for his speech was altogether beside the Amendment. The Home Secretary had gone into the question of a solatium for murder. The exact terms of the Amendment were that— The amount awarded for compensation shall consist of such sum, in the nature of special damages, as may be proportioned to the actual injury sustained by the claimant or the party or parties represented by him. No compensation shall be awarded in respect of any murder, unless the claimant or the party or parties represented by him shall have sustained some pecuniary loss by the death of the murdered person. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had stated that he could not depart from the Act of 1870. That seemed a very good argument for the right hon. and learned Gentleman now; but it was a very bad argument half-an-hour ago—for half-an-hour ago, when the Irish Members proposed to take the Act of 1870 as their standpoint, that standpoint was declined by the right hon. and learned Gentleman with thanks. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had been unable to show any reason why this Amendment should not be accepted; but his only argument was that it would 844 defeat the entire Bill. He was glad they had now the presence of the Prime Minister, because he ventured to think he would not fall back upon the stale and musty Act that was passed 12 years ago. Why should the Government object to the compensation paid being in proportion to the actual injury sustained? Would the Government say that the amount given in compensation should not be proportioned to that injury?

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, let the compensation be proportioned to the injury; let the compensation to the father be proportioned to the injury he suffered from the death of his son, though that son was no pecuniary profit to him, and then insert this Amendment, which ended by saying that the measure of the injury was only the pecuniary loss. He (Sir William Harcourt) agreed that the compensation should be in proportion to the injury, but not that it should be in proportion to the pecuniary loss; and that was what he meant when he said that the element in this case was to be the element of solatium. He did not know whether the hon. Member (Mr. Healy) understood the meaning of that word. It was that element which distinguished the matter altogether from this Amendment, which said— There shall be no compensation awarded in respect of any murder, unless the claimant or the party or parties represented by him shall have sustained some pecuniary loss by the death of the murdered person. That was the proposition against which he had contended, and that was not the proposition which had always been involved with these clauses, whether in the Act of 1870, or any other Act upon which these clauses had been founded. It was not a sound principle; and it was because this Amendment proposed to limit and to define the compensation solely by the pecuniary loss that he objected to it. The whole circumstances of the case were to be taken into consideration under this clause. The claim was made for compensation, and the Lord Lieutenant might dismiss the claim if he thought fit, or might award such sum as compensation which he thought just. The Lord Lieutenant, under this clause, would take into consideration all the circumstances of the case. He would take into consideration who the person was who was murdered, and what was the 845 position of the relatives of the murdered person, and he would not be governed or confined solely by the consideration whether those persons had or had not sustained pecuniary loss by the death of those who were near and dear to them.

§ MR. PARNELL
said, the little outburst of the right hon. and learned Gentleman would have been very becoming behind the footlights of a transpontine theatre. It afforded the Committee a very fair indication of the kind of light in which the right hon. and learned Gentleman viewed this matter. He had just intimated to the Committee that the father could be compensated for the death of his son by a sum of money. The compensation was to be a solatium for the loss the father had sustained—[An hon. MEMBER: He does not understand the word.]—or it was to be a solatium to the son for the loss of his father. That was the measure of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's appreciation of the loss. It appeared that he believed that such a loss could be compensated, and that was one reason why he held to the clause as it now stood. The right hon. and learned Gentleman would show the people of Ireland, by presenting them with this clause, or those of them who had the un-happiness to lose a father or other relative by such a terrible calamity as murder—he would exhibit this compensation as the measure of their loss. That was not a sound principle, and it was a principle which the Committee ought not to adopt. He thought the principle involved in the Amendment of his hon. Friend (Mr. Sexton) was a sound one—namely, that where pecuniary loss could be proved, pecuniary compensation should be given; but to hold out to a people that this was the estimate of the British Parliament of the loss which they had incurred, and that they were to be compensated by a solatium—which, he supposed, the right hon. and learned Gentleman knew the meaning of—and that this solatium was to be paid out of the pockets of starving people who had had no part or hand whatever in the assassination, was a thing pitiable to contemplate. What did the hon. Member for the County of Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) say this evening, speaking with local knowledge? The hon. Gentleman came from a county where there had been many of these outrages and murders, and he stated that if the Go- 846 vernment proceeded to give compensation according to the ideas of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, the result would be that the poor inhabitants of Galway would be left without food and without the means of carrying on their occupations. They would be left, in fact, to face sheer starvation. The hon. Member for Galway gave it as his opinion that these murders were not committed by the humbler classes—[Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: Hear, hear!]—and that was the opinion of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary. Well, the Irish Members would submit an Amendment by-and-bye which would test the bona fides of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, excepting the poorer classes of the community, or persons who might seek the benefits of the Arrears Bill, from the purview of this fine. Well, then, it was not the poor people of the locality who had any hand in the commission of these murders. They were committed by strangers, according to the hon. Member for Galway, a statement in which the Home Secretary had just agreed; and yet the Home Secretary was going to give a solatium out of the bread provided for the mouths of the wives and children of the poor people of these districts—at the expense and loss of that bread he was going to give this so-called solatium, and he expected an Irishman who might lose a relative, or who might have lost a relative, to feel that he had received a solatium, when he knew that the cost of that solatium was the starvation and wretchedness and ruin of his fellow-countrymen.

§ DR. COMMINS
said, the Home Secretary had stated that none of these clauses in similar Acts had failed; but that was certainly the worst argument he could advance in favour of this clause. There had been 53 Coercion Acts for Ireland since the Union, and this Bill was about the most practical condemnation of the failure of every one of those 53 Acts that could be made. If the Home Secretary would only condescend to look at the provision which was made in the English law, when the object was not a vendetta, when the object was not to take the last crust from starving people, but when the object was to give compensation to people who had actually suffered injury, he would find that a very different principle was acknowledged and was contained in this Bill. 847 It was hardly possible that the right hon. and learned Gentleman could not be acquainted with the provisions of Lord Campbell's Act; but if he was not, no doubt some of the right hon. and learned Gentlemen who were sitting opposite him would be able to inform him that that Act only provided for compensation for pecuniary loss, although the mental pain and agony would be quite as grave in the cases contemplated by that Act as the cases which would come under this Act. [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: Railway accidents.] Lord Campbell's Act was not confined to railway accidents, but it had reference to every case of loss of life through the negligence of any individual. The loss of life occurring through a railway accident would inflict quite as much pain and sorrow, and would create quite as great a blank in the lives of those to whom the compensation was given as the loss of life by crime. In the case of crime, of course, the law already made provision for gratifying those wounded feelings, for gratifying any desire for revenge which, by the way, seemed to be a very important object in this Act. In the case of loss of life by murder the murderer might be hanged, and it was hoped that a little more consideration would be given by the Government to this point. Lord Campbell's Act restricted the amount which should be given, and it restricted the persons who should receive the compensation. It specially and in terms provided that the only compensation which could be given was to be measured by the loss sustained. Very calm deliberation presided over the consideration of that Act. No passion entered into the matter; no political purposes were to be served by it. Possibly there might have been an outcry in the country in favour of the Act; but that popular outcry was mixed up with vindictive feelings, and in the end Parliament decided that the compensation should be based upon pecuniary loss, and upon pecuniary loss alone. The reason of that was not very far to seek. It was really upon the surface, for it was plain that wounded feelings, that bereavement, that loss to a family of a father or a child, were things that could not be measured by any standard known to the law, and could not be compensated for in money at all. Why not adopt the same rule here as was adopted 848 in Lord Campbell's Act? Lord Campbell's Act, too, provided against fraudulent claims that might arise, inasmuch as it restricted claims for compensation to a very small and limited family circle; for instance— Compensation can only be claimed by a father, mother, wife, or child of the deceased person. Why was there not some restriction like that in this Act? The reason given by the Home Secretary was certainly the most singular one he (Dr. Commins) had heard for a considerable time. It was, that it might be supposed that if near relatives were to make the claim, they might possibly be exposed to the same fate as their relatives. The same argument would apply to every kind of claim, and, in fact, it was really no argument at all. It was clear, from the construction of this clause at it now stood, that the object was not so much to compensate the parties who suffered the loss as to inflict a kind, of vendetta upon the neighbourhood in which crime had been committed.

§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)
said, it must be within the knowledge of most Members that before Lord Campbell's Act, if a person was killed by accident no possible action could be brought, and, consequently, however much a family might be deprived of the means of living by the death of the head of the family, there was no remedy for them. Before that Act was passed, if a person was injured, however slightly, he might obtain damages far beyond the personal injuries. There was no analogy between Lord Campbell's Act and this Act. The Home Secretary had said that solatium was a term well known to the law of England and to the law of Scotland. This section was in-intended to be punitive and deterrent; but if the Amendment were adopted, the person who was about to commit the murder might pick out as his victim a very rich man or a very poor one, so that no persons would suffer any loss by his death. In this way the object of the section would be absolutely frustrated. It would be frustrated because there would be no pecuniary loss sustained by the death of the murdered man; in fact, the Amendment would almost give a licence to crime.

§ MR. SEXTON
said, he had heard nothing in the speeches of right hon. 849 Gentlemen opposite which led him to doubt the soundness of the Amendment. The Home Secretary had propounded to the Committee the extraordinary doctrine that the agony of a father or mother who had lost a son by murder, of a wife who had lost her husband, or of a child who had lost his father could be compensated for by cash. Surely such a doctrine would not find acceptance for a moment in any other country but this. Even in cases where women brought actions against men—in cases of breach of promise, for instance—the jury did not estimate the damage to be awarded according to the wounded feelings, but according to the loss in establishment, and according to the woman's pecuniary loss. The only thing that could be compensated for in money was the loss of money. They could not apply compensation with money to a matter to which money was not relevant. In this matter there seemed to be a difference between the Lord Lieutenant and the Home Secretary, and he (Mr. Sexton) only wished the Home Secretary had been in his place when the Chief Secretary gave his view of this matter, and said that if a man lost a limb and, with it, his power of earning money, this charge was to compensate him on that account; and if the head of a family were taken away, the family were to be compensated on account of the loss of the bread-winner. That was the only proper way to read this clause. The argument of the Home Secretary, to the effect that the anguish of a family was to be compensated for by a money payment, was simply an outrage upon human feelings. If they did not confine themselves to giving compensation simply for pecuniary loss, and if they allowed the people of Ireland to see that they were giving luxurious prices to people for the murder of their relatives—["Oh, oh!"]—well, what else was it? If the compensation was to be something more than compensation for pecuniary loss, what was it but a solatium for wounded feelings, or the fixing a price on the lives of people's relatives? At any rate, that was the only way in which it would be received in Ireland, and the result would be that the people would find it impossible to pay back the rent to the landlord as well as this tax to the relatives of murdered or injured people—either the poor people would not be able to pay the tax, 850 or they would pay it out of the rent due to the landlord.

§ MR. GIBSON
said, he wished from the bottom of his heart that this discussion could be carried on gravely, and without references and allusions calculated to raise a smile, or to provoke a semblance of ridicule. He had heard with a feeling of pain that which was entirely incongruous upon this day—the reference on the part of an hon. Member (Mr. Parnell) to a transpontine theatre, and various other allusions which were certainly not suited to a day when the soil of Ireland was wet with innocent blood. He was as much an Irishman as any man in that House, and he was as jealous and as proud of the honour and credit of his country. He did not think, however, that that was a time when they were in a position in Ireland to apply epithets to Englishmen in reference to the value of human life. It was all very well to use grandiloquent diction about not being able to measure by money the agony and the tears of the widow or the orphan. God knew there were widows and orphans enough left in Ireland now to bitterly mourn the loss of their relatives! But that was no reason why they should say to those who were bereaved, in the hour of their affliction—to the widow, "We know that you have lost your husband"—to the children, "We know that you have lost your father; but your loss is so terrible that we put no money value upon it, that we cannot attempt to measure it in the only way that is left for us to appraise it." At all events, that House could do something. It could make assassination dear, and it could make the widow and the orphan feel that, if they had been deprived of the bread-winner, they had not, at any rate, suffered in material prosperity. If they taught in a neighbourhood that murder, instead of reducing widows and orphans to ruin, would leave them in as good as or in a better pecuniary position than before, it might be a lesson which would come home to those who spurned every kind of moral and religious teaching. Although it might be no comfort to the broken heart of the widow, although it might not compensate the children not old enough to realize the appalling character of their loss, it might still teach a lesson to those who could not otherwise be reached, and it might tend to induce 851 the dwellers in the neighbourhood for the future to be guarantors of human life, and of law and order. If this Amendment were carried, it would certainly not, in his opinion, be any improvement to the Bill, and he could not himself give to it any support whatever. The arguments he had listened to did not commend themselves to his judgment or his understanding. The suggestion that they were to measure crimes committed with every circumstance that could be imagined of brutality and cowardice—where the murderer selected his opportunity—where, from behind the loop-holed wall that protected himself, he despatched his victim without warning—the suggestion that they should compare such crimes as these with the loss of life in a railway accident, was a thing that shocked every feeling of humanity. He had uttered the words that had passed through his mind, feebly giving expression to the strong conviction that animated his own breast. He could not but feel that at this time, when Ireland was too much a subject of observation, it would be better for them as rapidly as they could—or, at all events, without unduly prolonging discussion—to pass a measure which he hoped would, to some extent, however imperfectly, tend to restore to that country the blessings of law and order, and to free it from the foul stains of crime which at present disgraced it.

§ MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY
said, he fully felt the solemnity of a debate of this kind at a time like the present, and he should not, therefore, be led away into any observations with regard to anything that had been said as to matters which were really irrelevant to the question at issue. The right hon. and learned Gentleman who had last spoken had said that they ought to make assassination dear. Well, he (Mr. M'Carthy) said that too. He should be glad to make assassination dear by every means that could bring the terrible responsibility home to those who committed such crimes and those who encouraged them. He should like to make assassination dear by inflicting the penalty of death on the assassins, and, if they had any means to atone to the relatives of their victims, by taking away from them what they possessed. What were they going to do under this clause? They were not talking about extracting money from the 852 pockets of the assassins, but from the pockets of those who were practically innocent people, to compensate the relatives of the victims of assassination. His hon. Friend who had moved the Amendment had made two points very clear in it, and though he (Mr. M'Carthy) could not discuss them as a lawyer, yet he must say that they seemed to him to be in full conformity with common sense and justice. First of all, the hon. Member pointed to the fact that this compensation would be drawn from a number of persons who could not be implicated in the crime; and then he said.—"You are bound not to make such a compensation larger than is just or reasonable." He also said—"Let money compensate for the loss of money, but do not try to compensate for the deepest agony of the human heart by a cash payment." He (Mr. M'Carthy) could think of nothing likely to add more to the grief of some bereaved daughter, or widow, or father, than the announcement that the Imperial Government, in sympathy with their sufferings, and in order that they might be lightened of their load of anguish, tendered them so many golden sovereigns. He hoped the House of Commons would resolutely set itself against a principle of that kind. What people lost in money they were entitled to have made good to them in money, even though the money came—and in this case it must come—from the pockets of many persons who had no more share in the guilt of the murders than the victims themselves. But when they went further, and said—"You must levy your charge so as to make an impression upon the neighbourhood, and teach all persons, poor and rich alike," he said they were doing that which was much more likely to bring the law into contempt and to sow the seeds of murder than to put an end to outrage of this kind. He did not think that the recent crimes in Ireland should make them rush through the present Bill without discussion. They should draw a lesson and a warning from the past. There had already been 53 Coercion Acts, and they had failed to do anything to restore law and order. Therefore, he argued that they could not be induced by the result of the coercion policy in general to rush through this new Coercion Bill, which would have the same effect as those which had gone before it.

853

§ MR. O'DONNELL
said, he certainly thought that, if by any means they could enhance the value of human life, they should endeavour to adopt those means; but, although he had listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), in his favourite character of the affectionate eulogist of Ireland, he had failed to see that the considerations the right hon. and learned Gentleman had referred to were really more germane to this discussion than to a great many others to which he (Mr. O'Donnell) could call the attention of the Committee. Deplorable murders had taken place in Ireland; but he had read in the evening newspapers that two more corpses supposed to be murdered were taken today out of the Thames, and that one of the bodies was evidently that of a respectable man, who must have met his death, under singularly scandalous circumstances. There was a reasonable principle in this Amendment—namely, that as far as loss could be remedied by the payment of money it should be so remedied; but that where it could not be so remedied it was a mere pretence to believe that it could be. However, he did not intend to go at any length into arguments for apparently the hopeless purpose of proving to some right hon. and hon. Members on both the Front Benches that nothing but a loss of money could be compensated for by a gift of money. Doubtless, any arguments he (Mr. O'Donnell) could use would fail to reach minds of the altitude of theirs; but he would point out that, on the face of it, the arguments by which the proposal of the Government was supported were intrinsically absurd. If they were in any way to attempt to apportion the blood tax in the case of murders according to the ties that had been wrenched and to the depth of suffering and misery of a permanent character that had been caused, then they had no ground for leaving in this clause means by which an aristocratic sorrow might be silenced by a gift of £10,000, whilst they would attempt to quiet the sorrow of the poor over a similar loss with a gift of £50, £100, or £500. The Government proposed, in the levying of this tax, not to be guided by considerations of the sorrow that had been caused and of the misery that had been produced, because there would 854 be as much pain and suffering produced in a poor home by a murder as there would be in a wealthy one. Under this Bill, Her Majesty's Government would exact ten times the satisfaction for the suffering in a wealthy home as for the suffering in a poor home; and if Her Majesty's Government acted on this principle, the result of their action would be to spread amongst the people a sense of injustice and of the hypocrisy of the Government measure and the Government policy. The Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) would really tend to repress crime, because it would be perfectly certain of obtaining the moral sanction of the consciences of the people. It was a broad, a free, and a just principle that in such cases real material loss, and only material loss, could be compensated by material means. The Irish people would look with very different eyes upon a proposal of that kind to the view they would take of the proposal of the Government. As his hon. Friend the Member for Longford (Mr. M'Carthy) had reminded the Committee, this measure, if passed by the Government, would in no way tend, to make assassination dear, in the only sense in which a wise Legislature ought to desire to make assassination dear, because the innocent as well as the guilty—the overwhelming majority of the innocent as well as the miserable handful of miscreants—would be taxed and fined and, perhaps, reduced thereby to ruin and misery. In all probability, whilst the innocent were paying this fine, the miscreants who were guilty would not be taxed at all. And let him remind the Committee that it was the fundamental argument of the Government case on this Bill that numbers of these murders were committed by the emissaries of distant organizations. A murder was committed, say, in Galway, by an emissary who might be sent from Tipperary, Waterford, or Cork; and the proposition of the Government was that Galway should be taxed merely because it was the scene of the murder—that the innocent people surrounding the theatre of the crime should be taxed and brought to the verge of ruin, whilst the assassins sped back to their own distant locality, having easily eluded the police, who were more skilled in detecting patriotism than in detecting and repressing 855 crime. Of course, this Amendment of his hon. Friend would be rejected, like all the best Amendments that had come from the ranks of the Irish Party during the progress of the Bill. Of course, the Government would carry their un-amended clause. But in three years' time they would come back to that House with the confession of another ignominious failure and the demand for another Coercion Bill, and with the curses of the Irish race on account of English misgovernment ringing in their ears.

§ Question put.

§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 26; Noes 146: Majority 120.—(Div. List, No. 193.)

§ MR. HEALY
said, the next Amendment on the Paper was one which he should think the Government would have no difficulty in accepting. It was simply a formal Amendment.

THE CHAIRMAN
said, the hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) had an Amendment on the Paper before that.

§ MR. HEALY
said, he wished to ask whether the Amendment of the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) did not come before that of the hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. T. D. Sullivan)?

THE CHAIRMAN
No; the Amendment of the hon. Member for Westmeath was to omit all Subsection 4.

§ MR. HEALY
said, that if the Amendment was negatived, it would prevent Amendments being proposed to the subsection.

THE CHAIRMAN
I shall put the Question in such a way as not to interfere with subsequent Amendments.

§ MR. T. D. SULLIVAN
said, he rose to move that Sub-section 4 be omitted:— The said sum shall be a charge payable by such district and in such instalments as the Lord Lieutenant may by warrant order. He moved that this sub-section be left altogether out of the Bill, because he contended that it was unfair to charge this compensation upon any district in Ireland, or upon the country at all. He regretted the disorder and disorganization that existed in Ireland; but he thought the responsibility for it rested with the Government. He thought that it had done so for a long period, and that 856 it did so at the present moment. The present of Ireland was due to its past. The present of Ireland was as much owing to its past as was the present of England due to the history of England.

THE CHAIRMAN
Order, order! I must remind the hon. Member that the Committee has already decided that an investigation is to be made, and the Lord Lieutenant may, if he thinks fit, award a sum in compensation. The question, therefore, is simply how that sum is to be paid, and not the question of the general policy of the Government.

§ MR. T. D. SULLIVAN
I am free to move, I presume, that the sub-section be left out?

THE CHAIRMAN
Yes.

§ MR. T. D. SULLIVAN
said, he was going, then, to show to the best of his ability why the sub-section should be left out. He could not propose that the charge should come on the British Exchequer, because it was not open for any private Member to make such a proposal. A proposal necessitating the imposition of a tax upon the people, or a charge upon the national funds, could not be made by a private Member. His contention was that this charge should not be made upon a particular district, and that whatever charges were made should be paid by the Government of England, because upon the Government, to his mind, rested the responsibility of the murderous outrages and the assassinations that had taken place in Ireland. He was contending that all the breaches of law and order which had taken place of late in that unfortunate country had resulted from misrule at the hands of the English Government and the English House of Commons. That being so, he contended that it was only right that compensation for the murders should be paid for out of the National Exchequer of England.

THE CHAIRMAN
If the object of the Amendment of the hon. Member is to throw the payment of this charge upon the National Exchequer, he is not entitled to move it.

§ MR. T. D. SULLIVAN
said, he was aware he should not be within his right in making such a proposal, and, therefore, he did not make it. He merely threw out the suggestion to the Government and to the Committee. He merely expressed views of his own, and contended that all these troubles in Ireland 857 sprung from misrule in the past and in the present. The Irish Members had stated in that House over and over again—and events had proved the truth of their assertions—that the recent legislation of this country had been productive of crime and disorder. That being so, it was only fair to suggest that those who had done the harm should cure it. As he had been endeavouring to point out, England was rich and powerful because of its past, and Ireland was poor and miserable and disturbed and distracted because of its past. How could Ireland be otherwise under the Governments to which she had been subjected? He thought it fair to argue that this sub-section, which would have the effect of imposing this tax upon small and limited districts in Ireland, should be left out, and that it should be left to the Government to propose that the burden should be borne out of the public funds. England was rich because of her conquests—

THE CHAIRMAN
I must' again remind the hon. Member that he is not speaking to the Amendment. I must request him to speak exactly to his Amendment.

§ MR. T. D. SULLIVAN
said, that perhaps he had put his view sufficiently before the Committee. He had been very anxious to bring it before them. The Committee would take it for what it was worth—or, rather, he would not say for what it was worth—because he did not suppose the Committee appraised any Amendment coming from that (the Opposition) side of the House at its proper value. Let them take it, to deal with it as they chose. He would put this argument forward, at all events, that all this trouble, which he very much lamented, had come upon his country because of British misrule. ["Order!"] Was he not free to say that he regretted the disorders and the crimes which had taken place in Ireland? He did regret them. There was no Irishman, he supposed, either on Irish soil or in any other country, who had the mind and spirit of the true Irishman, who was not grieved to the heart and wounded to the soul by these deplorable occurrences. He regretted them, and he resented these charges that it was tried to make upon the Irish people. It was because he resented the misfortune and shame and trouble that had been put upon his 858 country by misgovernment, that he argued that those who had done the harm should pay for it—that those who had made the mischief should mend it.

§ Amendment proposed, in page 8, line 23, to leave out from the word "The," to the word "order," in line 24, both, inclusive.—(Mr. T. B. Sullivan.)

§ Question proposed, "That the words 'the said sum' stand part of the Clause."

§ MR. HEALY
said, that, seeing that England robbed Ireland annually of £2,250,000, the proposal of his hon. Friend was a fair and reasonable one. He should like to point out to the Government the extraordinary fact that while they asked that this compensation should be paid in respect of murders, they themselves had brought in a measure to relieve tenants from the payment of rent, where that rent was payable to landlords. He would ask the Government, were these people, who, to obtain the benefit of the Arrears Bill, had to be so poor that they could not pay the rent that was due from them, to pay the assessment the Home Secretary would put on them under this Bill? The extension, of this provision for three years back by the acceptance of the Amendment of the hon. Member for Leitrim (Mr. Tottenham) brought this question into great prominence. After the harvests had been bad for three years, to say that poor people in Ireland could pay this new tax that it was proposed to throw upon them would be a splendid argument for the Tories when the House came to deal with the Arrears Bill. They would be able to say—" Surely, if these people can pay this tax, they can pay their rents." He would make right hon. Gentlemen opposite the present of this argument. He would put it to the Government—were they really acting consistently in this matter? They admitted that at least the sum of £2,000,000 would have to be expended on the payment of a year's rent under the Arrears Bill, and, that being so, what were they to think of the same Government which, while proposing to cancel arrears to the extent of £2,000,000, proposed to make this provision retrospective, as far as the past two years were concerned, in regard to compensation for malicious injury? Surely the Home Secretary could not have considered, when he shaped his policy on this Bill, what had been the 859 previous policy of the Government in Irish legislation. It appeared to him (Mr. Healy) that the matter was so plain, and his argument was so irrefutable, that he trusted they would have some statement from the Government in regard to the point he had raised.

§ MR. REDMOND
said, he trusted that before they proceeded to a division on this matter, they would be favoured with some sort of opinion from the Government. ["No, no!"] An hon. Gentleman said "No, no!" and he knew that in these matters the Government were only too ready to be dictated to by hon. Members on the Opposition side of the House. He would point out to the Government that their present manner of meeting Amendments with contemptuous silence was not the way to facilitate the passage of this Bill through Committee, and he must express the strong opinion he entertained, that if this Bill had been conducted in a different manner, they would, ere this, have reached the termination of the Committee stage. ["Oh, oh!"] Well, that was only an expression of his opinion. No doubt, hon. Gentlemen who, by their silence, supported and contributed to the action of the Government in this matter in prolonging the consideration of this measure, were not likely to agree with him. On this Amendment, and on all similar Amendments brought forward by the Irish Members, hon. Gentlemen on the other side, who were so ready to shout down Irish Members speaking from those Benches, would consult, not only the better despatch of Business, but also the dignity of the House, if they refrained—

THE CHAIRMAN
The hon. Member has not yet approached the Amendment.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
rose—

§ MR. REDMOND
said, he respectfully begged leave to conclude his observations before the right hon. and learned Gentleman commenced his speech. He agreed with the hon. Member for West-meath (Mr. Sullivan) in the arguments he had addressed to the Committee, and he supported him in his endeavour to deprive the Lord Lieutenant of the power of levying money to meet these claims in certain districts of Ireland. That power could be exercised in impoverished districts which would come under the provisions of the Arrears Bill. 860 It might be used to ruin the people of such disbricts, and he could only say that, if it were given, he considered the difficulties of the Government in Ireland would be materially increased, because there would not only be the difficulty before them of being obliged to give the assistance of the forces of the law to enable the landlords to enforce payment of their rents; but they might also have the difficult duty imposed upon them of being obliged to collect this tax. It would be out of place for him to tell the Irish people not to pay the tax. He would do no such thing; but he did not hesitate to say that the Government would find very great difficulty in the levying of a tax of this kind, which would not be looked upon by the people in the light of an obligation, but simply as a matter of injustice.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, he would just ask the Committee to consider what the character of this Amendment was, and then put it to them whether or not it was a bonâ fide proposal upon the discussion of which they ought to waste time. The object of the Amendment was to provide that the sum should not be a charge payable by a district, but that it should be charged on the Consolidated Fund. The hon. Member, as he himself admitted, knew perfectly well that he had not the power to make such a proposal. The Amendment, therefore, was a perfectly illusory one, making the clause nonsense, and he (Sir William Harcourt) had only to say that he would not be a party to the waste of time that would be involved in discussing such a thing.

§ MR. T. D. SULLIVAN
said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman implied that there was no fund from which this money could come. [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: No.] He was fairly stating the purport of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's argument. When money was wanted by the Government for any nefarious purpose in any part of the world, it was provided easily enough. His contention was that he had put forward a fair argument, and that he had not risen for the purpose of moving an illusory Amendment. He spoke from conviction, and his conviction was that this evil work in Ireland was the result of misgovernment, for which the Government and the Imperial Exchequer were responsible.

861

THE CHAIRMAN
I must again explain to the hon. Member that the general argument is altogether out of place.

§ Question put.

§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 168; Noes 28: Majority 140.—(Div. List, No. 194.)

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 23, after the word "shall," to insert the words "if the Lord Lieutenant think just."—(Mr. Healy.)

§ Amendment agreed to.

§ MR. HEALY
said, in the absence of his hon. Friend the Member for Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), he begged to move the Amendment standing in his hon. Friend's name. If his hon. Friend were present, he would probably have asked the Committee that the assessor sent to assess the claims in the locality should state to the Lord Lieutenant, in his Report, whether there was any desire on the part of the inhabitants in the locality to conceal crime. He (Mr. Healy) would remark that that was a very material matter indeed. He contended that where a murder had been committed, and the murderer had been given up and convicted, no punishment ought to fall on the people of the district, because it was clear from the fact that conviction had taken place that they were not in sympathy with the crime. Now, the Government had made two statements at different times which were contradictory of each other—namely, that this clause was punitive as well as preventive in its object. The Committee were entitled to know which of these statements was the correct one. If, as in the case which he had put, someone had been punished for the offence committed, whom else was it necessary to punish? So much for the punitive object of the clause. Again, if the clause were to be preventive, seeing that the person who had committed the crime had been given up, why did the Government want the clause? He regarded this Amendment as the touchstone of the conduct of the Government, and he challenged the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant to say if he would make it one of the conditions of the Report to the Lord Lieutenant that the assessor should state whether there was any desire in the district to shield crime, and, in the event of the 862 criminal having been convicted, whether he would state that the locality was still to be punished for the murder.

§ Amendment proposed, At the end of the foregoing Amendment, to insert the words "if no person is convicted for participation in the crime in respect of which such claim arises."—(Mr. Healy.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ MR. TREVELYAN
said, the Government were unable to accept this Amendment. With regard to the declarations proceeding from that Bench, and to which the hon. Member for Wexford had referred, he remarked that he was only responsible for those which he himself had made. He believed, however, that his statements had been made in the clearest manner, and that they were not only understood, but, to a certain extent, accepted by a very large part of the Committee. The hon. Member for Wexford spoke of the Government having distinguished between the characteristics of this clause by saying that it was both preventive and punitive. Now, nothing could be clearer than what he himself had said on that point. It was that the clause was intended for the purpose of compensation and for the purpose of punishment. The two characteristics, then, of the clause were that it was compensatory and punitive. He had stated that one great object of the clause was to give compensation to those persons who were seriously maimed or injured, and to the relatives of those persons who were killed and were deprived of support in consequence of the person murdered having fulfilled his legal obligations to support law and order in the district. He had stated that it was necessary for the Lord Lieutenant to take into consideration all those circumstances, and that he would be obliged to give great weight to the question as to whether or not the district was guilty in the matter; but he did not say that, if the criminal were discovered and punished, there would be no ground for compensation. For the purpose of prevention it was by no means necessary that, if the criminal were discovered, a district should not pay. It was the object of the Government that the district should pay, because the liability to payment of the kind not only converted every man into a detective to discover 863 crime after it had occurred, but made him also a constable for its prevention. He repeated that the Government had stated that great attention would be paid to the question as to whether the district sympathized or not with outrages; but he certainly did not intend to convey the impression, and it would be quite contrary to his intention if he had done so, that, in case the district had no sympathy with the crime, if a claim was made no compensation whatever should be given.

§ MR. HEALY
said, in that case they were to understand that, where a criminal was caught, the district would still have to pay. That being so, supposing a murder to be committed, what good would it do anybody to give up the murderer? ["Oh, oh!"] Hon. Members objected to that; but, seeing that he did not take the smallest heed of the opinions of hon. Gentlemen opposite, they could hardly expect that their roars would have any effect upon him. He was arguing from the view of the locality itself. The Government said that, whether the locality gave the offender up or not, they would have to pay for the crime which he had committed; and he was contending that the people in the locality would say—"What good will it do to us to give up the murderer?" He said it was a matter of indifference, from the point of view of the locality, whether, under the circumstances indicated by the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, they gave up the murderer or not. Englishmen did not know much about it; they were more concerned with persons who murdered their sweethearts and kicked their wives to death. The Home Secretary said the clause was for the purpose of compelling the district to pay whether the murderer had been given up or not, and to see that justice was done in the future. Thus, it would be seen that, as the Irish Members pressed their Amendments upon the Government, the Government changed about from one side to the other until they were driven to their last ditch, and then they said they were going to pass the clause anyhow. It was a great pity that time would not permit them to refer to the past statements of Ministers when this Bill was introduced into the House; but he ventured to say that, were it otherwise, he should have no difficulty in proving that this Amendment ought to be accepted 864 from the statements which the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary himself had made on the first reading of the Bill. He could not congratulate the Committee on the attitude they had taken up with reference to this matter.

§ SIR STAFFOED NORTHCOTE
said, he did not know what the opinion of the Committee might be; but it appeared to him that if they were to listen to such language as had just been used, they would really be allowing themselves to be drawn into a position altogether unworthy of them. They had heard the hon. Member for Wexford, in the coolest possible terms, discussing what interest a district would have in giving up a murderer, and they felt themselves in consequence brought to argue these questions on a level to which they were unaccustomed, and to which he sincerely hoped not only Englishmen, but the great body of Irishmen were also unaccustomed. With regard to the particular proposal before the Committee, and the arguments by which it had been supported by the Government, it appeared to him that there was no cause whatever for charging the Government with inconsistency in the view which they had taken. They said there were two objects in view—one, to provide compensation for the unfortunate people who were made the victims of these outrages and murders from no other cause than having had the courage and the honesty to obey the law; and, further, they said it was their desire to put a check on the murders committed in Ireland by fining the district in which those murders took place. As the Chief Secretary observed, that fine, if placed on the outrages, whether there was a conviction or not, ought to have, and would have to a certain extent, the effect of interesting the whole district in preventing a murder from taking place, which was even more important than detecting it afterwards. This was a perfectly sound and legitimate reason, and he believed that provisions similar to these had been adopted in former times with good effect. His object, however, in rising, was to say that they ought not to allow such language as had just been used by the hon. Member, for it amounted almost to an apology for murder, or, at all events, to the minimizing of the crime, and was, moreover, 865 calculated to do injury, and to promote crime more than anything else.

§ MR. STOREY
said, the right hon. Baronet the Member for North Devon had charged the hon. Member for Wexford with using language which tended to bring the discussion to a low level. But he felt it his duty to point out to hon. Members opposite that it was not the hon. Member for Wexford who had brought the Committee to its present level; it was the Government and the Bill. The Bill was nothing else than an appeal to the cupidity of the Irish people. The Government held that the Irish people were coerced by secret societies, and proposed to remedy that condition of things by coercing their pockets. It was the Government, therefore, who were to blame for compelling the Committee to consider this sordid question of interest. He would like to point out to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant an additional consideration with regard to this clause. It was the contention of the Government—from which, however, he dissented—that Ireland at the present time was inhabited by a large number of people who were coerced by a limited section of the community. Suppose a murder took place in a district where a great majority, or, at any rate, a large proportion, of the inhabitants were well-affected towards law and order, but were under intimidation. Now, he asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant upon what principle of justice would he, when the law had been justified by the conviction of the offender, proceed to assess damages, not against the sympathizers of the murderer, but against the people who were intimidated? ["Oh, oh!"] Hon. Members cried "Oh!" but probably they had not done him the honour to follow his argument closely. He was saying that the Government contended that a large section of the people were intimidated, and yet they were now proposing to assess the damages upon those intimidated persons and compel them to pay. He had put it to the right hon. Gentleman whether that was just, and he would now ask him whether such a course was likely to encourage those who were well-affected to continue to be well-disposed towards law and order? He admitted that there was much to be said with regard to cases in which offences 866 had been committed, and the perpetrators of them had not been discovered; but, surely, if it were desirable that the district should be fined at all, the fine should be confined to those who sympathized with the crime. It might be well that a fine should be levied upon a district in a case where the offenders had not been discovered; but when the criminals were brought to justice, he could not see the justice, the wisdom, or the policy of fining a district in which the majority or a considerable portion of the people were well-affected towards law and order.

§ MR. SEXTON
said, he thought the right hon. Baronet the Member for North Devon must have addressed the Committee with a very vague idea in his mind of what he was about to say. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman thought it would be dignified and becoming in him to refer to the remarks of the hon. Member for Wexford; but he seemed to have formulated his opinion no further than to say that such language ought not to have been used without taking the trouble to inform the Committee what that language was, or for what reason the hon. Member for Wexford was not entitled to employ it. What had the Government said? They said that the district was to bear a pecuniary loss as compensation for the injuries done to individuals, and for the feelings of grief suffered by their relatives. Secondly, they said the object was to teach the inhabitants of the district that their interest lay in discovering these murderers—to teach them, in fact, to become detectives for the discovery of crime, as the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had described it; that they would have to pay, whether the murderer was discovered or not. Now, he could not conceive a more legitimate use being made of that argument than was made of it by his hon. Friend the Member for Wexford, who contended that, from the point of view of the locality, it was undoubtedly all the same to the people whether the murderer was discovered or not. He would leave the right hon. Baronet the Member for North Devon to make what use he chose of that explanation. If the right hon. Gentleman must attack someone, let him attack those who first introduced the argument. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had attempted no answer to the 867 argument of his hon. Friend the Member for Wexford. If this clause was intended to be preventive, how could the Government hope to prevent crime by better means than by stringing up the individual who committed it? The clause would not be before the Committee at that moment but for the fact that murders had been committed in Ireland and remained undiscovered. Now, if a murderer were detected and hanged, he said that the crime committed by him was taken out of the extreme category and placed in the category of ordinary crimes—justice, the law, and society having been satisfied by the punishment of the offender; and he was unable to see why, in the case of discovery, this clause should be applied at all.

§ MR. A. PEASE
said, that the Amendment, if it were adopted, would tend to the prevention of the discovery of crime, because people would have an interest in keeping it undiscovered, in order that they might claim compensation under the clause.

§ MR. MOORE
said, he thought the principle of the Peace Preservation Act of 1875 ought to be followed, and that a fine should not be inflicted unless material evidence were withheld. That was strictly in accordance with the Act to which he had referred, which said that no presentment should be made unless the Grand Jury making the same should be of opinion that material evidence concerning the murder, maiming, or injury, in respect of which such presentment was made, was withheld by any person resident in the district. If the murderer was freely given up, he did not think that the inhabitants of the district who were unfortunate enough to have the crime committed in their vicinity should be made to pay. That principle had been previously enforced, and he thought its application should be renewed at the present time.

§ MR. HEALY
said, he rose for the purpose of expressing his surprise at the arguments of the right hon. Baronet the Member for North Devon, especially as they proceeded from a Gentleman who suggested that, in the interests of the Jews, oceans of blood should be shed in Egypt.

THE CHAIRMAN
said, that the hon. Member must confine himself to the Amendment before the Committee. The hon. Member had made use of ex- 868 pressions insulting to an hon. Member.

§ MR. HEALY
said, he was, of course, very glad of the ruling of the Chair—that Members of the Committee should not be insulted. The Government were under the impression that, by laying a sufficient tax upon districts in Ireland, they would be able to stop the murders committed there. John Bull could see nothing in matters of this kind but his pocket.

SIR JOHN LUBBOOK
rose to Order. He wished to know whether the hon. Member was speaking to the Amendment before the Committee?

THE CHAIRMAN
said, he had not yet observed that the hon. Member was out of Order.

§ MR. HEALY
said, he sympathized with the amateur Chairman opposite in the position in which he had placed himself. He was about to say that the idea entertained by the Government, that they could prevent crime by levying compensation upon the district in which it was committed, in the manner now proposed, was peculiarly English, and one which did not obtain in other civilized countries. He would point out that hitherto money fines had had no effect whatever. Murders were committed in 1875 under the Peace Preservation Act; and if men of savage passions wished to carry out their deeds of blood, the mere fact that other people would suffer would not deter them from their evil acts. Seeing that the sufferings of their victims had not stopped those men, it could not be supposed that money from English pockets would have any effect. This was a thoroughly English proposal; but it was useless for Irish Members to argue against it, seeing that their arguments had not the slightest effect upon the Committee.

§ MR. DILLON
said, a complaint had been made a short time ago about the debate having been reduced to a low level of argument; but the hon. Member for Whitby (Mr. A. Pease) had reduced it to a somewhat lower level, because he announced, as an extraordinary discovery, that the conclusive reason why this Amendment could not be accepted was that it would cause the relatives of a murdered man to screen the murderer. If that was the frame of mind of the relatives of a murdered man, he could only say that they were 869 people capable of committing murder themselves, and for the lowest possible motive—namely, robbery. The only proper way to deal with such persons was to send them to some savage island; and he wished the Government would take charge of them, and get them out of the country. He hoped no hon. Member would accuse Irish Members of bringing down the argument to a low level after that, because it would tax the ingenuity of any Member, English or Irish, to find a lower argument than that of the hon. Member for Whitby. This Bill was a mass of incongruities and irreconcilable propositions. A few nights ago the Government said that these murders were not committed by persons residing in the district. That was thrown in the face of Irish Members when the Strangers' Clause was under consideration, and they were assured that the murders were committed by strangers; but to-night the scene had been changed, and now the people of a district were to be made responsible for every murder; and the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry), who professed to be personally acquainted with all the murderers, had assured the Government that none of the murders were committed by poor men, but by rich men. The Government had said that these murders were also committed by strangers and the paid agents of secret societies, and yet it was proposed that a district containing poor men was to be heavily taxed for the work of strangers sent by secret societies, no matter whether the murderer was discovered or not.

THE CHAIRMAN
The hon. Member is talking against the clause, and not against the Amendment.

§ MR. DILLON
said, his argument was against taxing a district when a murderer was discovered. The Amendment proposed that if a murderer was to be discovered the district should not be taxed, and he was pointing out the injustice of taxing a district because a stranger came there and committed a murder, and was subsequently detected. He could not see that the Government had advanced any argument in favour of their proposal. If they said they felt so strongly the desirability of recompensing the unfortunate victims of these crimes and outrages, and that they were willing to accept an Amendment to the effect that the whole Province should 870 bear the tax, then Irish Members might be inclined to withdraw this Amendment on the ground that the tax would not fall as a crushing weight upon any individual. He protested against the poor being taxed for outrages, because he could not appreciate the difference between a man shot to death and a. man starved to death by a slow process. He could not see the justice of saying that a whole district was to be starved because an agent came from another district and committed a crime, and the reason why he opposed the clause so strongly was that there was likely to be a frightful amount of injustice. The Government had given no intimation that they would accept the Amendment to widen the district of taxation, in order that the taxation should not be greater than the crime for which the tax was levied.

§ MR. O'DONNELL
said, the view of the Government in opposing this Amendment was really that of a Government who, on their own principles, offered an inducement against the discovery of crime. He could understand a district in which a murder was committed, and in which the murderer had not been detected, being mulcted in a heavy fine. That was perfectly logical. But if the money fine was to be used to induce the population to give up criminals, then he could not see the logic of punishing the district, whether a criminal was surrendered or protected. If a district was to be punished exactly in the same manner whether it gave up the criminal or not, then what was the good of giving up the murderer at all? The right hon. Baronet (Sir Stafford Northcote) had risen in a fit of interesting emotion, and denounced the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) for his most cogent and necessary question, which laid bare the heart of the Ministerial policy. The Government wished to work this clause on the lowest and most sordid motives to induce a district to give up a criminal? If they did that, why should they fine a district even when it gave up a criminal? If they fined a district equally when it gave up a criminal and when it did not, then what was the good, on the lowest sordid grounds, to which the Government appealed, of giving up a criminal? The whole clause destroyed the professed object of the Government policy, and because the hon. Member for Wexford 871 (Mr. Healy) said that he was attacked by the right hon. Baronet the Leader of the Opposition, but was not defended by the Chief Secretary, who knew right well that he was answering cogently, and in the most straightforward manner, the statement of the Chief Secretary himself. There was hardly a less manly course than to attack a man for fair logical argument. Of course, on moral grounds and honourable grounds, it must be worth the while of every district, even in the face of pecuniary considerations, to hand over criminals to justice; but that was not the ground on which the Government stood. They said they would fine a district whether it gave up the criminal or not; and the hon. Member for Wexford rightly asked what, on these principles, was the good of helping the Government to detect crime? A less manly exhibition he had never witnessed in the House.

§ COLONEL MAKINS
said, he had not hitherto taken part in this discussion; but he wished to call the attention of the Committee to the fact that the Irish Members below the Gangway were arguing only on one view of this clause. They took it for granted that murders would be committed, and they argued on the ex post facto ground that the main value of this clause was not so much whether it caused a district to give up a murderer or not, as it was to make it the interest of everybody in the district to prevent murders taking place. The chief value of this clause, in his mind, was in its effect in preventing crime, rather than in the fining of a district where a murder had been committed.

§ MR. TREVELYAN
said, the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) had misapprehended his argument. It was not a question of fining; It was well understood that the question whether a district should be fined would be taken as an element in arranging the amount of compensation; but the Government did not wish to be debarred from giving any compensation.

§ MR. T. P. O'CONNOR
observed, that the hon. and gallant Member (Colonel Makins) had said that he had interposed for the first time in this discussion. He thought it was very reasonable for the hon. and gallant Member to refrain from taking part in the discussion, and, in his opinion, it would have been more reasonable if he had read the clause 872 before he did intervene. The hon. and gallant Member said the object of the clause was to prevent murder, and not to deal with cases where murder had been committed; and, apparently, he could not spare time before speaking to read the clause, or he would have found that the first words of the clause were—"Where it appears that anyone has been murdered." Consequently, this clause could only come into operation when a murder had been committed. The hon. and gallant Member said the object of the clause was to prevent murder, and accordingly, conversely, he denied that the clause could only come into operation when a murder had been committed. When he (Mr. O'Connor) put down this Amendment, he rather flattered himself that he was acting as a docile pupil of the Home Secretary. That was not very pleasing; but he thought he would take the right hon. and learned Gentleman at his word. What had the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, over and over again, in regard to this and similar clauses? The Government said they wanted to make it the interest of these districts that murder should not be committed, and, in order to make it their interest, they would fine the districts if they did not come forward and help in the detection of the murderer. The Amendment was exactly on the same lines, for it was provided that if, in regard to a murder, it was found that a district had done its duty, what became of the necessity for fining the district, by way of making it the interest of the district, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman, reducing the argument to a very low level, had proposed? What was the necessity for the district being punished, when it had given up the murderer? If Irish Members proposed Amendments contrary to the Home Secretary's principles he denounced them; if they proposed Amendments in accordance with the views of the right hon. and learned Gentleman he treated them as a convenient prelude to an all-night Sitting.

§ MR. O'DONNELL
accepted the view of the Government that they should do all in their power to prevent the commission of crime and murder; but which was the best way to do that—by maximizing the chances of detecting the criminal, or merely relying upon the general deterrent effect of the money 873 fine? If, in addition to everything else, the Government could make the money fine act as an inducement to the detection of crime, then the Irish Members could be with them. He did not, in the slightest degree, fail to see the strength of the argument of the Chief Secretary in a certain roundabout way. The indiscriminate taxation of a district, whether a murderer was discovered or not, might be said to be a deterrent to crime; but why should the Government propose in the same clause, and in the same breath, two preventives of crime so entirely unequal? The greatest possible preventive of crime—and that was the root of the idea of this Bill—was that crime should be detected and punished. That was the best way of preventing crime; but to impose a heavy fine upon the locality where a criminal had not been detected would not tend to the detection and punishment and crime. Did not the Government, to a large extent, weaken their arguments when they left it absolutely uncertain in a district to what extent they would fine the district, even if they handed over the criminal to justice? That was a point which constituted a practical answer to the distinction drawn by the Chief Secretary; and the reason why he (Mr. O'Donnell) abstained from laying special stress upon that point when he addressed the Committee last was due to the fact that he was drawing particular attention to the argument, which, so far as it went, was a fair argument. It was advanced by an Irish Member in a fair way, and for advancing it in that fair way he had been vilified, and had received no reparation for the scandalous misrepresentation and misinterpretation of his opinions.

§ Question put.

§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 37; Noes 206: Majority 169.—(Div. List, No. 195.)

§ MR. R. POWER
said, he wished to move a Proviso to the effect— That no charge shall be finally settled or approved of by the Lord Lieutenant in such form that the sum to be levied shall exceed in the whole the amount of one shilling upon each pound of the valuation of the district upon which same shall be charged. He wished, in moving this Amendment, to say that, so far as the clause itself was concerned, if he thought that any line 874 or word of it would reach the cowardly assassins who had disgraced Ireland, he would not seek to alter or add to it in the least degree. But all the reports they received led them to anticipate an exactly opposite result. If it would be a judicious thing to inflict a penalty of this kind on districts in Ireland, he should like to know why they did not inflict the same penalty on districts in England? They could not for one moment say that murders of a serious and disgraceful character did not take place in England. To show how unequal and unjust would be a tax of this description, he would mention a case which had been mentioned two or three times before—the case of a lady who lived at Rathgar, in Dublin, and whose property was somewhere in the Midland Counties. She went up to Rathgar and was there murdered, and under this clause the inhabitants of that place would be taxed for the crime, although there could be no doubt that it was committed by the people on the property in the Midland Counties, or at their instigation. About seven years ago there was a case in County Clare where a man came before a Grand Jury and was awarded £87, the injuries that he was supposed to have suffered having been of the slightest description. He (Mr. R. Power) had been told afterwards by many of the gentlemen of the county that they never heard of a more disgraceful thing than the awarding of such a sum to a man who brought forward no substantial evidence to show that he had suffered any material injury at all. His (Mr. R. Power's) objection to this clause was that they might virtually ruin a district in Ireland by the taxation they could impose under it. It was all very well for them to say that they would not impose a very heavy tax on the people, or that the people would be able to meet it; but he held in his hand a Return of the amount which was levied in 1870 upon certain districts in Ireland for crimes supposed to have been committed. He would only take three or four instances. In the first place there was the case of Donegal. Six extra policemen were sent down there and quartered on the county. The charge was one of firing at the person, and the amount levied was £1,473, which made a poundage of 2s. 3¼d. Well, they all knew that many parts of Donegal was very poor country, and the 875 fact of a poor farmer there being obliged to pay 2s. 3d. in the pound was very serious. But in the case of County Leitrim the number of extra police sent down was five. The charge levied was £6,167, and the poundage amounted to 4s. 7d. They could not overrate the significance of a tax of 4s. 7d. on a very poor person. Next, in County Mayo, which was certainly one of the poorest counties in Ireland, he found that the charge levied was £6,167, the poundage being 5s. 3d. In Leitrim, again, which was another of the poorest counties, the poundage was no less than 8s. 8d. To take from a tenant a poundage of 8s. 8d., in addition to the poor rates and the county cess, it would be absurd after that to ask him to pay his rent, because it would be a practical impossibility to get anything in the shape of rent from him. He (Mr. R. Power) could not understand how any landlord in that House, or any man who had an interest in Ireland, could get up and support a tax of this description. It had been said that the reason this tax had been proposed was to stop outrage. If he thought for a moment that it would stop outrage he should be the last to move any Amendment; but it had been said that the men who committed outrages were men who lived in the locality where those outrages occurred. That he altogether denied. Before the Select Committee it was distinctly pointed out that the men who committed these outrages came from other counties and other districts, so that if the district in which an outrage was committed was punished, in all probability innocent people would suffer, whereas the district that was really guilty would get off scot free. He would not weary hon. Members by going into the evidence that was brought before the Select Committee on this question. He would merely refer to the evidence of Captain Talbot, a police magistrate in Dublin. This witness declared that the men who did the outrages did not belong to the district in which they were committed, but came from adjoining or other districts. Captain Talbot further said he was informed that the well-disposed had consented to pay the tax. He stated that in Mullingar he had been obliged to recommend that the tax should be remitted in the case of a number of poor householders, who, it was found, were altogether unable to meet the 876 charge—he had made a schedule of some 20 or 30 names which had been submitted to the Government. Then Mr. Reid had given evidence to the same effect, and another witness, Mr. Boyd, who was brought up to support the case of the Government for the imposition of the tax, when asked whether he wished to make any observation, said he looked upon the area and incidence of taxation as so faulty as to injure the feeling of loyalty of those who ought to be their best men. The witness said it was in their knowledge that at the present moment, from a tax recently made for outrages, some of the best public men in his county had become reduced in circumstances, and if that kind of thing went on these innocent people would be ruined, whilst those who were guilty would escape. Mr. Mooney, another gentleman brought forward by the Government, and also asked to give his views as to the tax, said he considered the tax for additional police a most iniquitous one, and not only useless, but calculated to produce a feeling of irritation in the minds of loyal people. Then Dr. Nulty, Bishop of Meath, had given evidence against the proposal to levy compensation. It was not necessary that he (Mr. R. Power) should pursue the evidence given before the Select Committee any further. To his mind it was quite conclusive. He had no doubt in the world that the innocent people of localities in Ireland would be taxed heavily, and that many of them would be ruined if the Government chose to carry out this rate; whereas the men who had committed the outrages, and who had planned these dastardly murders, would escape all consequences, and would never be known to the Government. He felt that this was an unjust tax upon the innocent people of a locality. He believed not only that it was unjust, but that it was most impolitic. It would make some small farmers actually beggars—it would pauperize them—and they all knew that there was nothing in the world that bred discontent so much as poverty. If they made these small farmers and tenants beggars and sent them strolling about the country with no means of subsistence, as they had already done in many parts of Mayo and Galway, the results would be disastrous. It was almost impossible for a tenant, even at the present moment, 877 to pay the rent the landlord demanded from him; and when, in addition to that rent, they imposed upon him a tax of 7s. or 8s. in the pound, a condition of things would be brought about which would be most disastrous to British rule in Ireland.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 24, after the word "order," to insert the words—"Provided, That no such charge shall he finally settled or approved of by the Lord Lieutenant in such form that the sum to be levied shall exceed in the whole the amount of one shilling upon each pound of the valuation of the district upon which same shall be charged."—(Mr. Richard Power.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, the hon. Member referred to evidence which he presumed was evidence taken by the Select Committee on the Westmeath Bill. He (Sir William Harcourt) had not had the opportunity of examining the evidence on that clause; but it seemed to him that the other day when the evidence given before the Westmeath Bill Committee was quoted, it was convenient to hon. Members to show that it went in the opposite direction. Whether that was so or not he had not had an opportunity of examining; but this fact, at least, he knew, that after that evidence was given, Parliament dealt with this very subject, and enacted in the Westmeath Act this very provision, without any modification, which they had introduced into the present clause—that the sums should be levied by instalments. That, in his opinion, was really a matter which met the objections of hon. Members, and which prevented the charge from becoming inordinately oppressive. It was in the present clause, and it was in accordance with the judgment of Parliament, after hearing the evidence to which the hon. Member had referred. It seemed to him to be a fair argument upon that ground that a good deal that the hon. Member had said was more against the whole spirit of the clause than in favour of the Amendment. He (Sir William Harcourt) would only say that their experience after the Act of 1870 was that there was a remarkable diminution of crime in Ireland. Experience had shown that this clause would not be without effect.

§ COLONEL BARNE
said, it seemed to him that the hon. Member for Water- 878 ford (Mr. R. Power) wanted to make murder cheap.

§ MR. SEXTON
rose to Order. He wished to know whether any hon. Member was entitled to say that another hon. Member wished to make murder cheap?

§ COLONEL BARNE
said, he begged the hon. Member's pardon. He did not mean to say that the hon. Member (Mr. R. Power) wished to do murder cheap—he did not mean anything of the sort. What he meant was that the hon. Gentleman did not want persons in Ireland who committed these crimes to be fined very heavily.

§ MR. R. POWER
said, he had distinctly said that if he thought the tax would reach murderers he would not object to it; but it was because he thought the clause would not reach them, but would only affect the innocent, that he had brought forward his Amendment.

§ COLONEL BARNE
said, that the hon. Member wished only 1s. in the pound should be charged on a district on account of an outrage which might be a murder. The assessments of Ireland were sometimes very low, so that a district, on account of a murder, might have to pay only 2s. 6d. or 3s. poundage, which would be a very small sum; and what they really wanted to do was to deter people from committing these crimes, or from sheltering murderers. If a man was only to pay 2s. 6d. or 5s. the clause would lose a deal of its deterrent effect. He thought it would be far more advantageous to make a guilty district pay a heavy fine than a light one. The hon. Member (Mr. R. Power), however, said that these murders and outrages were all committed by strangers; but he would ask were they strangers who murdered the two bailiffs, and put them into the Loch at Loughrea? There was no doubt that these bailiffs went into the district to serve warrants, and were murdered by the inhabitants of that district and put into the Loch. If these people living round the Loch had known before they murdered the bailiffs that they would have to pay a very heavy fine, they would have thought twice before they put those men into the Loch. He trusted that, under these circumstances, the Amendment would not be allowed.

§ MR. T. P. O'CONNOR
said, that the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel 879 Barne) had not been very fortunate in his intervention in a discussion on an Irish question. Apparently the hon. and gallant Member had not had the courage of his convictions on this matter, because he (Mr. O'Connor) saw an Amendment in his name on the Paper, which provided that for a murder the rate to be levied should be not less than 10s. in the pound. If he (Mr. O'Connor) were not misinformed, the hon. and gallant Member had run away from that Amendment.

§ COLONEL BARNE
said, he was out of the House when his name was called.

§ MR. T. P. O'CONNOR
said, his hon. Friend (Mr. R. Power) had said that murders were sometimes committed by strangers, and the hon. and gallant Gentleman who followed him (Colonel Barne) had asked, "Who put these two bailiffs into Loughrea?" Well, he (Mr. O'Connor) knew Loughrea pretty well, and he would inform the hon. and gallant Gentleman that in order to commit a murder there, as had been suggested, it would have been necessary to have had rather a heavy shower of rain, because there was no river and no lake at Loughrea. No doubt the hon. and gallant Member had had in his mind the murder which had taken place at Lough Mask. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary had spoken of evidence given against this Amendment; but he had neglected to tell them what that evidence was. His hon. Friend (Mr. R. Power) had read in a most fair and candid manner the evidence given before the Committee by Mr. Mooney, a well-known solicitor, Dr. Nulty, a Catholic Bishop, Mr. Archibald Boyd, one of the wealthiest landlords, whose name in his district was a household word, not, he was afraid, in a popular sense, but as one of the most exacting landlords in the place, and yet he had been one of those who distinctly denounced this blood tax. Mr. Boyd had too much reason to claim to be an authority upon this subject, because, unless he (Mr. O'Connor) was very much mistaken, he had often been himself the subject of outrage. The other people who had given evidence in support of his hon. Friend's view were three magistrates, and he did not think there were altogether more than 12 witnesses examined. Here, then, they had six witnesses—five of them most important witnesses—examined before the 880 Select Committee, every single one of whom opposed the blood tax as doing more harm than good. He (Mr. O'Connor) did not see why the Government should object to this Amendment. A charge of even 1s. in the pound would be an extremely heavy tax on the unfortunate people, 999 out of 1,000 of whom would be unable to pay it. He felt convinced that, instead of inducing people to come forward and give evidence, this blood tax, if imposed, would operate in exactly the opposite direction as a preventive. The feelings of the Irish people would revolt against acting in any degree in the interests of the blood tax, so that the clause, which was intended to put down crime, would absolutely tend to its further concealment.

§ Question put.

§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 33; Noes 177: Majority 144.—(Div. List, No. 196.)

§ MR. P. MARTIN
said, the next Amendment was in his name, and he intended to move it because he thought it perfectly right that it should be provided under this Act for payments to be made by instalments. His Amendment was— Provided every such warrant shall set forth the valuation of the district proposed to be charged, the number of yearly or half-yearly instalments, if any, by which the said sum is to he raised or levied, the poundage rate necessary for raising or levying the same, and the grounds upon which the same has been charged upon the district. The Lord Lieutenant in Ireland was substituted for the Grand Jury, and when they were framing the Act of 1875, after considerable discussion, it was determined that a similar safeguard to that he was proposing should be adopted. It was not inserted in the Act of 1870; but it was incorporated in the Act of 1875, after considerable debate, in which the Irish Members were assisted by hon. Gentlemen on the Liberal side of the House, some of whom he believed were now sitting on the Treasury Bench.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 24, after "order," insert "Provided every such warrant shall set forth the valuation of the district proposed to be charged, the number of yearly or half-yearly instalments, if any, by which the said sum is 881 to be raised or levied, the poundage rate necessary for raising or levying the same, and the grounds upon which the same has been charged upon the district."—(Mr. Patrick Martin.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)
said, it was totally unnecessary to adopt the Amendment. The reason the Act of 1875 set forth these things was because the Act of 1870 did not do anything of the kind. The Act of 1870 provided that money should be provided in the same way as the Grand Jury cess, and did not provide for its being raised by instalments—it could only be levied in one sum; accordingly in the Act of 1875 the alteration was made. Under the 4th sub-section of this clause, the sum was to be A charge payable by such district and in such instalments as the Lord Lieutenant may by warrant order. Again, in the 2nd sub-section of the next clause, it was set forth that the charge payable by any district Shall be applotted rateably upon all rateable hereditaments in the district, and shall be payable by the occupiers thereof. What the hon. and learned Member required was, in point of fact, in the Bill.

§ MR. T. P. O'CONNOR
said, he would suggest to his hon. and learned Friend that he should not proceed with his Amendment, not merely on the ground the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland had set forth, but because of the different elements which would have to be considered in filling up the warrant.

§ MR. P. MARTIN
said, that with the permission of the Committee he would withdraw the Amendment.

§ MR. PARNELL
asked whether the Government would object to bring in a clause to provide that Returns should be laid on the Table giving particulars as to the districts charged, the poundage rate, and the grounds upon which it had been charged?

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, he would consider that point.

§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

§ MR. T. P. O'CONNOR
said, he wished to move the following Amendment, after "order," in page 8, line 24, 882 for the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy):— Every person who shall make any claim, for compensation under the provisions of this section in respect of any injury to his person shall, within one week after the crime out of which such claim arises has been committed, unless prevented by illness or other sufficient cause, make information on oath and in writing before a justice of the peace for the county in which such offence was committed, setting forth the facts connected with such crime, and stating whether he knows the persons implicated therein, or any of them, and in such case he shall enter into a recognisance to prosecute such offender or offenders by indictment or otherwise, according to the laws of this realm. If the Government would not accept such a small Amendment as this, he would ask them whether they were prepared to adopt any limit to the time during which a person could claim compensation? He moved this Amendment pro formâ, in order to give the Government an opportunity of making a statement on the matter.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 24, after the word "order," to insert the following sub-section:—"Every person who shall make any claim for compensation under the provisions of this section in respect of any injury to his person shall, within one week after the crime out of which such claim arises has been committed, unless prevented by illness or other sufficient cause, make information on oath and in writing before a justice of the peace for the county in which such offence was committed, setting forth the facts connected with such crime, and stating whether he knows the persons implicated therein, or any of them, and in such case he shall enter into a recognisance to prosecute such offender or offenders by indictment or otherwise, according to the laws of this realm."—(Mr. T. P. O'Connor.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, he could not accept the Amendment in its present form, because, if he did, it would include the whole question which was discussed earlier in the evening with regard to offences committed before the passing of the Act. They could not, consistently with what had been said on this matter, agree to this proposition, although, no doubt, there ought to be a period of limitation. The claim ought not to be indefinitely postponed, but the time specified in the Amendment was too short. The Government would themselves propose an Amendment.

§ MR. GILL
said, he would ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman whe- 883 ther he would also insert in the Bill words to provide that in regard to outrages committed before the passing of the Act application for compensation should be made within a certain time after the passing of the Act?

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, he would so.

§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

§ MR. T. P. O'CONNOR
said, he had another Amendment to move for his hon. Friend the Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy), as follows:—To insert, in line 24, after "order," the words— Provided, That no single instalment in payment of any such charge shall exceed the sum of two hundred pounds. That, he thought, ought to meet almost any case they could imagine. He saw that even in the excessive charges found fault with by Bishop Nulty, £800 was the maximum compensation awarded to the relatives of a murdered person. To meet that there might be only four instalments over the year. He did not know what the Government proposed to do with regard to the next clause; but, according to the section as it stood, they would have a right actually to assess this tax on a part of a parish—on a small holding, if they liked. He thought, therefore, that this maximum of £200 might be very fairly adopted.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 24, after the word "order," to insert the words "Provided, That no single instalment in payment of any such charge shall exceed the sum of two hundred pounds."—(Mr. T.P. O'Connor.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, he agreed that everyone administering the Act would believe it was in the interests of the Government not to make the charge so oppressive as to produce general and well-founded disaffection in a district. When a maximum of this kind was proposed, the argument against it was similar to the argument against the adoption of the charge of 1s. in the pound. It would depend upon the assessment of a district—£200 might be an oppressive tax on a small district, whereas it might be a very small one on a large district; therefore, it seemed to him it was impossible to fix a maximum of this kind unless they had some maximum and 884 minimum district fixed, and that they did not propose to have. It therefore seemed to him that they could not accept the Amendment. It must be left to the authority to decide this matter according to the magnitude of the district.

§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

§ MR. SEXTON
said, that after what the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary had just said, he was inclined to regard with some hope the possibility of the acceptance of the Amendment he was about to move, because the right hon. and learned Gentleman had said the Government did not desire in any case to make the fine so excessive as to unduly press on the people. His (Mr. Sexton's) proposition was to add, after the word "order," in line 24, the words— Provided, That the district on which any such charge is imposed shall not he of less area than the Poor Law Union within which the crime in respect of which such charge arises was committed. He wished to point out that there were in Ireland about 160 Poor Law Unions, and that they yielded about five to each county. The Committee would, therefore, see that a district of this kind would be small enough for the collection of the tax, and, at the same time, large enough to save the inhabitants from an excessive levy. The Government, he understood, did not propose to impose a ruinous tax upon the people, because, if they did, the result would be that the people would refuse to pay, the Government would endeavour by brute force to secure the payment, and the last state of Ireland would be worse than the first. Cases would arise in which the levy would be so oppressive that the people would not be able to pay under this clause. During the period this Bill was in operation, or for the next three years, numbers of tenants in Ireland would be paying the old rack rents, and not the rents which the Land Court would consider fair, because the Courts would not by that time have reached the cases of some of the tenants. Let the Committee take this into their minds—that these poor people, having only Indian meal for the food of their families, and destitute of every comfort in the world, while they were paying the rack rents, would be utterly incapable of paying any such thing as a blood tax. The right hon. 885 and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary must needs fix his tax so that the people could pay it in order to obviate the necessity of the Government resorting to force to compel payment. If his Amendment were adopted the object of the clause would be served to the full extent—the purposes of the Government would be carried out as efficiently as they could be, because the larger the area over which the amount was levied the more certain would be the collection of the tax. They should not leave it in the power of the authorities to levy the tax upon a single townland, because such an area would be very limited. In all probability, if it was levied upon a single townland, it would not be paid; whereas, if it was levied over a Poor Law Union, there would be greater security for its collection, and, at the same time, they would be spreading what they called the healthy lesson they wished to teach over a wider area.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 24, after the word "order," to insert the words "Provided, That the district on which any such charge is imposed shall not be of less area than the Poor Law Union within which the crime in respect of which such charge arises was committed."'—(Mr. Sexton.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ MR. TREVELYAN
said, that in the view of the Government the area to be charged should be what might be roughly called the area that was responsible for the crime, whatever that area was. The Government could not consent to be tied by any local, any more than by any pecuniary, limit. Looking at the instances of charges of this kind which had been made in the past, the amounts had been very small, and they had been levied only on small portions of the country. They had been paid off by a very small percentage of the value. Glancing down the list of claims, they went from claim to claim, and it was seldom that they ever came to an area the size of a Union. He saw, for instance, where a man was wounded in the head that he got £20, and that the rate levied on the parish was one halfpenny. He could not see why in such cases the area over which the charge should be made should be extended to a Union. It was not the object of the Government to oppress and ruin a single 886 district, Their object, as he had stated over and over again, was to prevent crime and to compensate those who suffered; and the Government, more than anyone in the country, would find it to their interest in the highest sense not to render this clause an instrument of persecution and oppression. If they suited the various objects they wished to obtain by it, they could not accept the Amendment. If the principle was once accepted that the area was to be a very large one, they immensely increased the probability that innocent people would be punished. When once they departed from the principle of making the area of taxation as nearly as possible identical with the area responsible for the crime, so far did they increase the possibility of punishing innocent people.

§ MR. WARTON
said, it seemed to him gross injustice that a farmer upon whom an outrage might have been committed might himself be called upon to pay a tax in respect of that injury. He should like to know whether the Government proposed to make any limitation in this regard?

§ COLONEL COLTHURST
said, he was sorry the Government had refused to accept this Amendment. The Committee apparently made up their minds as to the punitive effect of this clause, and he would not go into that matter, though he thought, as a punitive measure, it would be no use whatever. Looking at the compensation part of it, it seemed to him that it would be of great advantage to make the area identical with the Poor Law Union. It was true they might render liable to be charged a few more innocent people if they made the area that of the Poor Law Union instead of a townland; but they could not enact a measure or a clause of this kind without doing some injustice.

§ MR. TREVELYAN
said, in reply to what had fallen from the hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton), the Government were quite satisfied with the power of exemption which they already possessed in the clause; and they were, therefore, unwilling to introduce in this section the powers contained in the previous clause.

§ MR. SEXTON
said, the question was whether the Government were willing to agree to the area specified in the Amendment, or whether they desired to harass, and, in many cases, to inflict 887 ruin upon a number of perfectly innocent people by concentrating this impost upon a small district. Would the right hon. Gentleman consider the proposal that in the case where the levy over a small area exceeded a certain reasonable taxation, say, of 6d. or 1s. in the pound, a larger area should be substituted for the smaller?

§ MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY
said, that by accepting the Amendment to make the area of impost coincident with the Poor Law Union, which in Ireland might represent the fourth or fifth part of an entire county, the Committee would be only increasing what he considered to be the gross injustice of this clause.

CAPTAIN AYLMER
said, he hoped the Government would remember that the great object of the clause was prevention. It could not be denied that there were many people in the disturbed districts in Ireland who knew when crime was in course of perpetration. It was impossible for walls to be loopholed, and other arrangements of the kind carried out, without people in the neighbourhood being cognizant of what was going on.

§ Question put.

§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 31; Noes 129: Majority 98.—(Div. List, No. 197.)

§ MR. HEALY
said, in the Amendment he was about to propose for restricting the payment of compensation to certain degrees of relationship, he had followed the provision of a similar kind contained in Lord Campbell's Act. He wished to have it made clear that the person to whom compensation was paid, and who suffered the loss, should be an immediate sufferer—a relative. He should have no objection to the addition of the words "brother or sister;" still he wished to point out that Lord Campbell's Act, which he had followed in his second Amendment, confined compensation to the "father, widow, or children of such person." It was necessary that the two Amendments on this subject standing in his name should be taken together. He objected strongly to the phrase "or one of the next of kin" which was the subject of his first Amendment, because it would mean, perhaps, 20 or 100 people, whereas he thought the compensation should be confined to the deceased person's relations as specified in Lord Campbell's Act.

888

§ Amendment proposed, in page 8, line 26, after the word "representative," to leave out the words "or one of the next of kin."—(Mr. Healy.)

§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."

§ MR. PARNELL
said, he hoped the Government would consider this Amendment favourably. It was evident that the clause as it stood was too wide. But the Home Secretary wanted it to be wide. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said, first, he wanted it for the purpose of punishment; secondly, in order to give some sort of compensation to persons who might feel the loss of the person murdered; and, thirdly, as a preventive. Now, it appeared to him that Irish Members might fairly ask that the clause should be amended in the direction indicated by the hon. Member for Wexford, and that if compensation were given to the immediate relatives of the person murdered all that was necessary would be gained. Otherwise, it would be better to take power to fine a particular district for the public benefit and advantage, and spend the money in that way. If the Government wished to punish a district in the manner proposed, or to produce a preventive effect by fining a district, then let the money be spent on works of public utility. But why should persons who had no earthly interest in the life of the person murdered, and who might in no way feel the loss from the point of view of human affection, be benefited by a fine of this character?

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, there was an ambiguity in this sub-section occasioned by the word "claims." The clause should run "applications under this Act may be made," &c., and that the word "claims" ought only to be used in respect of the persons to whom the money was payable after application had been made, and who should constitute a more limited class than those who made the application. He thought that the persons to whom the money was payable ought to be limited in some such way as had been suggested by the hon. Member for Wexford.

§ MR. GIBSON
said, it might be that, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman stated, some verbal alteration was required to make the meaning of the sub-section 889 plain. But in making this alteration great care would be needed in order not to deprive relatives of compensation in cases where the person murdered had no near relations. It would not be reasonable or just to hand over unprotected to the criminal feeling prevailing in some parts of Ireland a man who was not married and had no brother or sister. He was not sure that he had grasped the meaning of the hon. Member for Wexford. Anyone, whether next-of-kin or not, could be a personal representative; therefore, no question would follow there. It was dangerous, he thought, to proceed on narrow grounds to a precise classification of kinship. But all that was suggested was that it was premature to deal with the Amendment now. If dealt with afterwards, the Committee must be cautious to prevent the punitive nature of the clause yielding to the putting of a too narrow interpretation upon it.

§ SIR JOSEPH M'KENNA
said, he did not wish to interfere with the punitive effect of the clause; but what was intended by the Amendment was to prevent anyone who had no interest in the life of a man profiting by his death, simply because he happened to be a relation. The aim of the Amendment was that no man, simply because he was a relation, should have an interest in a man's death, he having no interest in his life. A slight reflection would show that it would be quite possible that a distant kinsman might have some complicity with the murder of a man, if that man's death would enable him to pocket a sum of money which would be charged upon the district. He wished to have the clause limited, so that anyone who would derive benefit, interest, or compensation from the death of the person murdered, must be someone sufficiently nearly related to constitute a reasonable warranty, that he or she would not have violated the laws of affection and kindred or blood, and have had anything to do with putting the man away.

§ DR. COMMINS
said, so far as the ambiguity of the Amendment was concerned, that might be met by the alteration of a word, making the clause to be "prosecuted" instead of "made;" that was a mere prosecuting of a claim. There might be some relations, next-of-kin, going as far as those of Baillie Nichol Jarvie to the 32nd degree, and that he counted very near. Some limit 890 must be made, and without it there was a dangerous element in the clause. It was known that in a good number of agrarian offences in Ireland they had arisen out of family quarrels, in which blood was shed; and this clause would put a premium on such offences as there had been in Louth, in Leitrim, and in Cork, where men had murdered others to get possession of a farm. Under this clause they would not only get possession of the coveted farm, but would get the benefit of the tax levied on the neighbourhood for the murder. As the Home Secretary had promised to consider it, it was not necessary to do more than to suggest the direction in which the limitation should be made. The limitations should be such as came very near the limitations in Lord Campbell's Act. That was the only practical workable one. There must be a pecuniary loss to the person making the claim, not merely relationship, so that there should be some sort of guarantee against any complicity of the claimant with the crime.

§ MR. HEALY
, in withdrawing his Amendment, pointed out to the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Gibson) that an argument such as he had used would cut both ways. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said the Amendment would leave the man without a relative powerless, and with no protection against murder; but, on the other hand, to put, he might almost say, a price on a man's head, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman desired, in a case where a man had no near kin, would be almost a danger to him, for some of his remote relations trying to profit by his death, as had been often known to happen in connection with Insurance Companies, might murder the man. The Irish landlords were not the angelic class as to be entirely free from temptations.

§ MR. WARTON
said, before the Amendment was withdrawn, he wished to make one suggestion. There might be a man standing in relationship to the murdered man, but not connected with him by ties of affinity. A creditor might take out letters of administration, and he might have a certain interest, for he would be paid on the death of the man. Might not a representative mean a creditor?

§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

891

§ MR. SEXTON
desired to move the Amendment standing in the name of his hon. Friend the Member for New Ross (Mr. Redmond), which was to omit all the words subsequent to the word "injured," in line 27. The effect would be that the application to the Court or tribunal would not be made by the Crown Solicitor, or any person authorized by the Lord Lieutenant, but by the representative or next-of-kin of the person murdered. In the case of a person maimed or injured, it was obvious he might make his claim on his own behalf. Now, he had heard the right hon. and learned Gentleman say that persons having a beneficial interest in claims of this kind should be protected; and, really, he pushed the point too far. He did not apprehend any such thing as that the presentation of claims would threaten anyone with danger; but there might be a point of difference there. But in the case of a man injured, everyone would know that if the charge was levied the man injured had made a claim, and that the money would go to him; and he might as well make the claim as make it through a Crown Solicitor, for if there were persons so ferocious and so evil-minded as to make an attempt on the life of the man, they would be equally well-informed whether he made the claim himself, or by a Crown Solicitor, so that nothing would be gained by this vicarious application. And, in the case of next-of-kin, where a murdered person had near relatives, it would be equally apparent that the claim was made for their benefit. If the evils of poverty were to be prevented by means of an income, they might as well raise it themselves, for everyone in the district, every ratepayer, would know that the claim was for the benefit of the widow, the son, or the daughter of the victim. In some cases, where distant relatives claimed, they might be saved from, undue prominence; but he argued generally that this vicarious, roundabout, clumsy method of making claims was unnecessary, and would not have the effect for which it was intended.

§ Amendment proposed, in page 8, line 27, to leave out from the word "injured," to end of Clause.—(Mr. Sexton.)

§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."

892

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, this power of making applications by the Crown Solicitor, or by any person authorized by the Lord Lieutenant, was deliberately copied from the Act of 1870 for obvious reasons. The person suffering the injury might be still under the terrorism that had led to the outrage, and this terrorism might be exercised to prevent him making his application at all. But if the application, was made on his behalf, and he got the money, it would be a totally different thing. He had read the other day a distressing story of an unfortunate farmer who was shot in his own house; but though his assailants were perfectly well known to him, he was under such a terror that he dared not state who they were. That was a condition of things that would make it impossible in many cases for the sufferers to make their claim; and this provision gave them protection, for the claim would be made on behalf of the man, and he would get the money without any action in the matter being taken by himself. It was a necessary provision, and it could not be parted with.

§ MR. SEXTON
said, in such an instance of a farmer shot by a party visiting his house not daring to make his claim, it was inevitable that inquiry would be instituted; and if this farmer went into Court and gave evidence, and afterwards got the money, was he not, to all intents and purposes, in the same position? Making the claim was a formal matter, but his position with respect to evil-doers would be just the same.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, no, he would not be, and the money, at all events, would be levied.

§ Question put, and agreed to.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 28, after the word "Lieutenant," to insert the words—"Provided, That every claim made under this section shall state the name or names, and address or addresses, of the person or persons on whose "behalf it is made, the nature of the claim, and the amount claimed."—(Mr. Healy.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

§ MR. HEALY
said, he thought this was so very reasonable an Amendment that the Government could not object to it. But to meet any objection there might be, perhaps he might be allowed 893 to suggest that, as the Government had agreed on various points to introduce on Report a provision that various matters should be dealt with "in the prescribed form," they would include this also, and provide that applications should be made in the prescribed form.

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
assented to the suggestion.

§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

§ Amendment proposed, In page 8, line 28, at end, to add the following sub-section:—"No compensation shall he awarded under this section in any case in which the claimant has recovered, or might with due diligence have recovered, damages by action at law or otherwise, in respect of the subject matter of his claim."—(Mr. Healy.)

§ Question proposed, "That those words be there added."

§ MR. HEALY
said, he thought this also was a very reasonable Amendment. It was simply to say that if a man by civil action could obtain compensation, then he should proceed in that way before he could come upon the unfortunate ratepayers. It was a reasonable proposal, which, no doubt, the Government would be glad to accept.

§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)
said, he could not accept it. If a man had already recovered damages it would not be a case in which the Lord Lieutenant would take action; if he had not taken action, the Lord Lieutenant would act on his own discretion. If he had brought his action, and recovered damages, the Lord Lieutenant would not give him compensation twice over.

§ MR. HEALY
asked, was there any physical impossibility that prevented this?

§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)
replied, no; but, naturally and necessarily, discretion would be exercised.

§ MR. HEALY
then supposed there would be a guarantee that a man would proceed for recovery in a legal way where such was open.

§ Question put, and negatived.

§ MR. SEXTON
said, he did not intend to move his Amendment now, but the Committee would remember that earlier in the evening they had a conversation in reference to the retrospective effect of the clause, and he hoped that time would 894 be given to consider it when the end of Clause 17 was reached.

§ On Question, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill?"

§ The Committee divided:—

§ The Tellers appeared at the Table and conferred with the Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN
directed the Serjeant-at-Arms to clear the "No" Lobby.
The Serjeant-at-Arms, having reported the Lobby clear, Sir WALTER B. BARTTELOT appeared at the Table, and Lord RICHABD GROSVENOR (Teller) reported that the hon. and gallant Member was in the Lobby when the division was called.

THE CHAIRMAN
Did the hon. and gallant Baronet hear the Question put?

§ SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOT
replied that he had not heard it.

THE CHAIRMAN
The Question is, that Clause 16, as amended, stand part of the Bill. As the hon. and gallant Member was in the Lobby with the "Noes," his vote must be counted with the "Noes."

§ Ayes 113; Noes 34: Majority 79.

895

AYES.
Alexander, Colonel C.	Duff, R. W.
Armitstead, G.	Ecroyd, W. F.
Ashley, hon. E. M.	Elliot, hon. A. R. D.
Aylmer, J. E. F.	Evans, T. W.
Balfour, J. B.	Farquharson, Dr. R.
Baring, T. C.	Fawcett, rt. hon. H.
Barnes, A.	Ffolkes, Sir W. H. B.
Bass, Sir A.	Finch, G. H.
Blennerhassett, Sir R.	Fowler, R. N.
Borlase, W. C.	Fry, T.
Brand, H. R.	Gibson, rt. hon. E.
Brassey, Sir T.	Gladstone, H. J.
Brise, Colonel R.	Gladstone, W. H.
Bruce, rt. hon. Lord C.	Goschen, rt. hon. G. J.
Bryce, J.	Grafton, F. W.
Buszard, M. C.	Grant, A.
Campbell, J. A.	Harcourt, rt. hon. Sir W. G. V. V.
Campbell-Bannerman, H.
	Hartington, Marq. of
Cavendish, Lord E.	Hayter, Sir A. D.
Chamberlain, rt. hn. J.	Herschell, Sir F.
Cheetham, J. F.	Hibbert, J. T.
Coddington, W.	Holland, Sir H. T.
Cotes, C. C.	Hollond, J. R.
Courtney, L. H.	Holms, J.
Cowper, hon. H. F.	Holms, W.
Creyke, R.	Howard, E. S.
Cropper, J.	James, C.
Davey, H.	Jardine, R.
Davies, R.	Johnson, W. M.
Dilke, Sir C. W.	Jones-Parry, L.
Douglas, A. Akers-	Kennard, Col. E. H.
Duckham, T.	Kinnear, J.

895

Leake, R.	Roberts, J.
Leatham, W. H.	Samuelson, H.
Lee, H.	Scott, M. D.
Leeman, J. J.	Shield, H.
Lefevre, rt. hn. G. J. S.	Simon, Serjeant J.
Leigh, R.	Stanley, E. J.
Lewisham, Viscount	Summers, W.
Loder, R.	Tavistock, Marquess of
Lubbock, Sir J.	Tillett, J. H.
Mackie, R. B.	Tottenham, A. L.
Mackintosh, C. F.	Trevelyan, rt. hn. G. O.
Makins, Colonel W. T.	Vivian, A. P.
Maskelyne, M. H. Story-	Walrond, Col. W. H.
Monk, C. J.	Warton, C. N.
Moreton, Lord	Waugh, E.
Morgan, rt. hon. G. O.	Whitley, E.
Morley, A.	Williams, S. C. E.
Morley, S.	Willis, W.
Murray, C. J.	Wills, W. H.
Paget, T. T.	Wilson, I.
Parker, C. S.	Wodehouse, E. R.
Pease, A.	Woodall, W.
Peddie, J. D.
Porter, A. M.	TELLERS.
Powell, W. R. H.	Grosvenor, Lord R.
Ramsden, Sir J.	Kensington, Lord
Richardson, T.

NOES.
Barttelot, Sir W. B.	Nolan, Colonel J. P.
Biggar, J. G.	O'Brien, Sir P.
Byrne, G. M.	O'Connor, T. P.
Callan, P.	O'Gorman Mahon, Col. The
Colthurst, Col. D. La T.
Commins, A.	O'Kelly, J.
Corbet, W. J.	O'Shaughnessy, R.
Dillon, J.	O'Shea, W. H.
Gill, H. J.	O'Sullivan, W. H.
Gray, E. D.	Parnell, C. S.
Healy, T. M.	Sexton, T.
Labouchere, H.	Sheil, E.
Lawson, Sir W.	Sullivan, T. D.
Leahy, J.	Synan, E. J.
Leamy, E.	Thompson, T. C.
M'Carthy, J.
M'Kenna, Sir J. N.	TELLERS.
Martin, P.	Power, R.
Marum, E. M.	Redmond, J. E.
Molloy, B. C.

§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Sir William Harcourt.)

§ MR. T. P. O'CONNOR
invited an expression of opinion which might influence arrangements for the morrow. In the opinion of the Government, had the Committee made substantial progress or not?

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, as the hon. Member asked his opinion, his views of substantial progress were very different from those of the hon. Member.

§ MR. CALLAN
asked, would the House commence its Sitting to-morrow at 4 or at 2 o'clock?

896

§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
said, at 2 o'clock.

§ MR. CALLAN
, in anticipation of an all-night Sitting, hoped that means would be provided for allowing Catholics to attend Divine worship, say, in the Crypt.

§ Motion agreed to.

§ Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow, at Two of the clock.