MR. GORSTasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with 1615 reference to his answer to a Question on Tuesday last, Whether he was now aware that the speech delivered by Michael Davit in Manchester was prepared in manuscript, and copies handed to the reporters, and that the reports in the Manchester papers were therefore identical; and whether Mr. Davit's statement that he had already broken the conditions of his ticket-of-leave was correct; and, if so, what steps the Government proposed to take under the circumstances?
§ MR. PARNELLasked the right hon. Gentleman, before he answered the Question, to state whether he had also seen in the speech of Mr. Davit, reported in the Manchester papers, a passage, which after referring to the stand taken by several Englishmen in the House and outside the House in favor of the liberties of Ireland, proceeded as follows:—
Should we not endeavor to multiply such advocates here in England P It is easy to accomplish. It needs no sacrifice of principle or national aspiration. It calls for nothing but what it is our moral duty to perform, our best policy to pursue. Let outrage cease in Ireland. Let no suspicion of sympathy on your part here in England be made to arise at any act, great or small, that receives justification from past events in the history of our country;and whether Mr. Davit's speech did not also contain many other passages of a most clear and unqualified character, denouncing and repudiating outrages of any kind in Ireland?
§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTI have seen no report in any Manchester paper of Davit's speech. [An Irish MEMBER: Mr. Davit.] I have nothing to add to the answer I gave the other day to a Question put to me upon the same subject by the hon. and learned Member for Chatham; nor do I think, in my position, it would be at all proper that I should enter into anything like commentary on that speech.