§ MR. PARNELLasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether, in the secret inquiries which have been held or are being held under the provisions of the sixteenth section of the Crimes Act, witnesses are examined only concerning the offence named in 415 the summons, or whether the questions range over a much wider field, in some cases extending to occurrences which happened several years ago; whether Mr. John O'Connor has been twice summoned before Mr. Home at Cork to give evidence in the inquiry proceeding into an alleged conspiracy there to murder public officials and to damage and destroy public buildings; whether Mr. O'Connor has offered to answer any question put to him with reference to such alleged conspiracy, but was informed that he would be compelled to answer every question on any subject put to him by the magistrate, and has consequently refused to be sworn and been committed to prison; whether he can inform the House if any guarantee exists that the magistrates entrusted with these secret inquiries do not take advantage of their secrecy to exceed the powers conferred upon them by the Statute; and what way is open for a person who considers he has been unjustly committed for contempt of court, under the provisions of the sixteenth section, to challenge the action of the magistrate committing him; whether any guarantee exists against the falsification, intentional or otherwise, by the officials employed for the purpose of taking down evidence at these inquiries of the evidence so taken down; and, whether, for the protection of witnesses at these inquiries, the Irish Government will consider the desirability of permitting to a witness the presence of his legal adviser during his secret examination?
§ MR. TREVELYANIn reply to the Question of the hon. Member, I have to state that I have no reason to believe that at the inquiries held under the 16th section of the Prevention of Crime Act witnesses have been examined as to other matters than the offences named in the summons. Some of these offences—such as the murder conspiracies in Dublin and else where—were of a character necessarily involving a large field of inquiry; but in these, as in other cases, the questions put were relevant to the matters inquired into. As regards the case of Mr. O'Connor, I find that he demanded, as a preliminary to being sworn, that an undertaking should be given to him as to the line of examination to be pursued. He was not entitled to such an undertaking, and, having refused to be sworn, was committed to prison ac- 416 cordingly. As regards the guarantee referred to by the hon. Member, I can only repeat that the character and integrity of the responsible magistrates appointed to conduct these inquiries will prove a sufficient guarantee for the upright discharge of their duties. If a witness be unjustly committed he can challenge the action of the committing magistrate in the High Court of Justice. As regards the concluding paragraph of this Question, I have to point out that the main object of the inquiries instituted under the Act has been to break up murder societies. For this purpose, it is essential to examine persons believed to belong to those societies. In the case of the Dublin "Invincibles," it was the examination of the man Farrell which originally led to the discovery and bringing to justice of the assassins of Mr. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish. If at that inquiry a legal adviser appointed for Farrell—as would most probably have been done by his confederates—had been present, he would never have spoken out, or, if he had spoken out, he would have been murdered within 24 hours, just as Bailey was murdered in Skipper's Alley, Dublin, in an earlier part of the year. Bearing these matters in mind, I do not intend to propose any alteration in the existing law.
§ MR. PARNELLI beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman, arising out of his reply to my Question, whether, in the first place, the guarantee that Mr. John O'Connor demanded previous to his examination was that questions should be confined to the offence named in the summons, and whether that was the guarantee refused by the examining magistrate; and, in the second place, whether the evidence upon which the "Invincibles" were discovered was not evidence voluntarily tendered by the man Farrell to a policeman in the street, who subsequently brought him before Superintendent Mallon, at Dublin Castle; whether Farrell, in examination at the secret inquiry, did not positively deny all knowledge of the conspiracy in question; and whether, subsequently, on the Phoenix Park trials, he did not declare that he committed perjury at those private examinations in order to save himself and his friends?
§ MR. TREVELYANsaid, that Mr. O'Connor's stipulation was very much, 417 if not exactly, that mentioned by the hon. Member. Considering, however, the fact of the immense number of witnesses that had to be called to throw light upon the enormous mass of undetected crime, it was quite impossible to make any difference between witnesses, who ought, as good citizens, to come forward to give evidence. If Mr. O'Connor had been allowed to make that stipulation, other witnesses must have been permitted to do the same; and magistrates could not be bound in that manner. He could not answer the Question about Farrell without Notice, and he doubted, from their nature, if he would answer them at all.
§ MR. PARNELLI wish to say that I put the Question about Farrell because I was challenged about him in the answer of the right hon. Gentleman; and when ha challenged me on the subject I naturally concluded that he knew all about the man of whom he was speaking.
§ MR. TREVELYANsaid, that he had inquired very carefully into the bearings of Farrell's evidence with reference to the Dublin murder convictions, and he had likewise inquired very carefully into the connection between the other evidence and the secret inquiry, and he was quite satisfied that without the secret inquiry they would never have had Farrell's evidence or the convictions.
§ MR. O'SHAUGHNESSYhere rose.
§ MR. SPEAKERcalled on Mr. O'Shaughnessy.
§ MR. SPEAKERMr. O'Shaughnessy.