MR. O'BRIEN, who had the following Motion on the Paper, which he was prevented from moving by the Forms of the House:—
That, in the opinion of this House, Captain Plunkett, Special Divisional Magistrate of the Cork District, by repeated and unconstitutional invasions of the right of public meeting, and by the imposition of arbitrary and unjust burdens on the people, has abused his authority and created wide spread discontent and ill-will, and that, in the interests of good government and of respect for the administration of the Law, it is expedient that he be dismissed from his office,said, he was sorry to be obliged to turn the attention of the House from the exciting and burning regions of the Soudan to a no less interesting part of Her Majesty's Dominions, called Ireland. The Resolution which he had intended to move was put on the Paper with the object of drawing the attention of Parliament to the conduct of one of the Special Magistrates in Ireland—Captain Plunkett—and he wished to do so because he thought he could show that Captain Plunkett's office was an unnecessary and a vicious one, and that, while he was supposed to be preserving the public peace, he was, in reality, a common disturber of the peace, and a scourge to one of the most peaceful districts in the whole of Ireland. The whole of the County and City of Cork was included in Captain Plunkett's district; and, perhaps, before he proceeded further, it would be well to show what was the condition of the district that this man was treating as if it were a hotbed of crime, and in a state of smouldering insurrection. During the past six months, while Captain Plunkett's reign of terror had full swing, besides threatening letters—which, of course, were of no importance as showing the condition of a place when not followed by crime, and which they all received, and sometimes had to pay the postage on—besides threatening letters, there were in the East Riding of the County Cork in August last only two outrages, and one in the West Riding; in September, five in the East Riding, and two in the West; in October, two in the East Riding, and two in the 1730 West; in November, one in the East Riding, and none in the West; in December, one in the East Riding, and again a virgin record in the West; and in January, one in the East Riding, and two in the West. The only serious case reported during the time was the manslaughter of an unfortunate man named Spence. That occurrence, however, was altogether of a non-agrarian character, Spence's death having arisen out of a family dispute; and yet the Chief Secretary was not ashamed to quote the other day this case as justifying the suppression of the right of public meeting in the district for 15 miles around. In the entire of that six months, in a district of 500,000 inhabitants, no single murder took place—not a single case of manslaughter, robbery of arms, or any other offence of such a nature occurred, the only outrages perpetrated being the outrages perpetrated by Captain Plunkett himself, in order that a condition of things would be produced which would keep: Dublin Castle alive to the necessity there was of retaining him and his expensive establishment. Now, he would like to ask any intelligent English Member—if they wished to know anything of this subject, which, of course, they did not—what would English people do if in a district equally free from crime a semi-military Governor was planted, and if he had the right virtually to proclaim a state of siege, and to bayonet and bludgeon any persons who dared to assemble in public meeting to discuss his proceedings? That was exactly what Captain Plunkett was doing for the last six months, and doing with the connivance and the apologetic ingenuity of the Chief Secretary. The hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Deasy) was living for a time under Captain Plunkett's rule, and was, he believed, on a few occasions in rather unpleasant proximity of being bayonetted. He dared say the hon. Member would tell himself what sort of a man Captain Plunkett was. There in Cork he had his head-quarters; and his place there, he believed, swarmed with detectives and villainous-looking hangers on. He had his staff and his armed escort and his parades, until the unfortunate men were worked off their legs. At night the city was patrolled by immense bodies of armed men, as if 1731 there was a danger of some attack or revolt. Now, he would venture to say that Captain Plunkett was not able to establish a shadow of justification for all these extraordinary proceedings. He made one attempt, by means of Star Chamber inquiry, to prove that a murder conspiracy existed in Cork; and notwithstanding all his threats and intimidation he failed utterly to prove anything of the kind. One agent of the dynamite conspiracy attempted to establish a footing in Cork—as he supposed they attempted to do in every city in the Three Kingdoms; but Captain Plunkett's infamous attempt to connect the Nationalists of Cork with these proceedings utterly broke down; and he did not give up the attempt until four of the most respectable men in Cork, some of whom the House might have an opportunity of seeing for themselves, owing to Captain Plunkett's proceedings, not until four respectable men were made prisoners, week after week, because they refused to submit to the indignity of being cross-hackled at these secret inquiries, just as if they were participators in abominable crimes. Having failed to show any grounds for the measures he adopted by proving that a murder conspiracy existed in Cork, Captain Plunkett deliberately attempted to create a murder conspiracy and suppressing the right of public meeting by putting down public opinion. Every meeting proposed to be held by the National League in Cork was suppressed, and suppressed in many cases with violence; and not only were they suppressed, but invariably their proclamation was delayed until the very eve of the meeting, in order, no doubt, that the people might fall into the trap that Captain Plunketthad prepared for them. He charged now that these proclamations were wickedly and deliberately delayed by the instrumentality of Captain Plunkett, in the hope that the people might be tempted and exasperated into doing something that would justify Captain Plunkett's office; and he charged, furthermore, that the proclamations were enforced with a violence on the part of the police, and an insolence on the part of the magistrates in charge, deliberately calculated to create riot and disturbance in ordor, as he had already said, that Captain Plunkett might be able to hold power a little longer. Having described at length the proceedings 1732 at the suppressed meetings at Inniscarra and Ovens, the hon. Member proceeded to call attention to the treatment of the Conna and Tallow band at Castlelyons meeting. The proclamation of the Castlelyons meeting was delayed to the night before the people of Tallow and Conna, 12 miles off, could know nothing about the suppression of it; and yet without any notice this band, immediately on its arrival, was set upon with fixed bayonets by the police and chased over the country. Contrast that treatment with the deference and tenderness of Captain M'Ternan at Rosslea, to Lord Rossmore and his Orangemen, who, instead of coming to a peaceful meeting, came as a body of armed men determined to create riot and do murder. If the Tallow men happened to be Orangemen, or if they had arms in their hands to defend themselves, perhaps Captain Plunkett and his police would not be quite so free with their bayonets that day. The Chief Secretary gave an excuse for the suppression of that meeting. He said that the parish priest had been lately evicted from his house, and that public feeling was very much excited. He (Mr. O'Brien) should say it was a nice way Captain Plunkett had of allaying that excitement. Having referred to the meetings at Lissarda, Dononghmore, and Aughabollogue, the hon. Member proceeded to speak of the suppression of the meeting at Killavullen, which he said was a good illustration of the force, and fraud, and mixed system of lying and tyranny which characterized Captain Plunkett's proceedings. Captain Plunkett's favourite device—an old device with tyrants—for putting down disturbance which he himself had created, was the quartering of the police on the people, and the levying of enormous imposts. Captain Plunkett first attempted this system in Cork; but he believed he was sorry now that he did so, for in the Cork Town Council Whig Knights and Deputy Lieutenants—men who were indebted to Dublin Castle for most of the glory they enjoyed in this world—joined with the Nationalists in protesting against this tax, and refused to present for it, as Captain Plunkett, in order to justify the continuance in districts of large police forces, in order, too, to justify his own continuance in his salary, attempted everywhere he went to foment disorder. He tried that 1733 system in Kerry, but had to drop it, and he was now practising on Monanimy. There Captain Plunkett had imposed a tax of £500 a-year to pay for the protection of a ruffian named Hallissey, whom he found to be a serviceable instrument in his operations. When he took the liberty, last year, of exposing and denouncing Hallissey, the Chief Secretary defended the man; and, of course, the English House of Commons regarded the fellow as an injured, innocent victim of some frightful conspiracy. What had turned out since? Captain Plunkett had been told to his teeth by one of the local magistrates (Mr. Hickey) that Hallissey's story about his being fired at was a fabrication. And did Captain Plunkett venture to deny it? On the contrary, he was reported in the Cork papers, and though Captain Plunkett might now find it convenient to deny that report—he was informed that it was supplied by an official shorthand writer brought down by Captain Plunkett himself—he was reported to have said that the police were originally placed on the district on account of the "Boycotting," the "Boycotting" consisting, according to Captain Plunkett himself, in a few people in the district refusing to deal with Hallissey. It came to this, therefore—that the district was now paying £500 a-year for a ruffian who ought to be put in the dock for perjury. But Captain Plunkett could not long do these things in Cork if he had not an apologist in that House to put a nice aspect upon things which, when seen in their colour, were ugly and hideous. The hon. Member then referred to the suppression of the Killavullen meeting, County Cork, and to the incidents which took place on the spot. The police struck the people with the butts of their guns, and two women sustained severe injuries, one of them having a rib broken. In regard to these proceedings he had put a Question to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, and his reply was that Mr. O'Connor had not been assaulted; that the police had not been assaulted; that the police did not charge; and that there was no crowd there to be charged. He had received numerous letters from persons who were present on the occasion characterizing the statement of the right hon. Gentleman in terms which he wished he could quote; but they were more natural than 1734 Parliamentary. The right hon. Gentleman, however, seemed invariably to act upon the belief that the statement of one police official was worth dozens of statements from priests and laymen. He quoted at length from statements of Mr. John O'Connor and others in support of the charges he had advanced against the police. All this was dismissed by the right hon. Gentleman with the cool statement to that House that the police never charged the people. He did not believe there was a race of slaves who would not rebel against treatment of that sort. Here were people loaded under false pretences with this tax, and when they attempted to make any public protest against it, they were assaulted at their own doors, even in their own houses, by the police with the butt ends of rifles; and after all this an English Minister told the English House of Commons that the people were never attacked; that they were not there to be attacked; and that the whole thing was an hallucination; and that Captain Plunkett and his policemen could do no wrong. These things the Government had the power to do in Ireland; and he supposed they would go on doing them until some hour of weakness or disaster taught them better sense. He and his Friends had no hope whatever that the House of Commons would be moved by any exposure of Captain Plunkett's tyranny and mendacity. He expected in a few minutes to hear the right hon. Gentleman shielding and defending Captain Plunkett as before. The Irish people had only themselves to look to. Thank God, they had taken this matter into their own hands, and had refused, in Cork, Limerick, Loughrea, and Monanimy, to pay a penny of this police tax. He hoped sincerely they would continue refusing to pay a penny of it until it was wrung from them at the point of the bayonet. He only referred to the subject here because it was well to saddle Englishmen with the knowledge of what was going on in Ireland. Now, at all events, the few Englishmen who were present knew how Captain Plunkett was oppressing and belying as peaceable a district as could be found in the world. If there was to be no redress here, and if the result that night should be like the result on every previous night when they complained of the conduct of officials in Ireland, all he 1735 could say was the English people must, be very unreasonable if they did not understand why the minds of the Irish were filled with hatred and resentment to England. He verily believed Irish-men would welcome the Mahdi or the Grand Turk if he came to deliver them from English rule. He could not move the Motion standing in his name; but he would divide the House on the Motion that the Speaker do leave the Chair as a protest.
§ MR. TREVELYANsaid, that the hon. Member for Mallow had made a very strong attack upon a public servant, one of the officers employed by the Irish Government. He thought the hon. Member for Mallow would have mitigated his language, or directed it else where, if be had known that the main charges he had pressed against Captain Plunkett ought to have been addressed to the Irish Government. He had differed from Captain Plunkett in certain small matters, none of which had been brought forward to-day. It was impossible that one should always agree with every recommendation that Captain Plunkett made, and on one occasion he had not quite agreed with certain proceedings which that gentleman thought right to take. But, considering the enormous number of decisions that Captain Plunkett had had to make, and the circumstances under which he had had to make them, he knew of no public servant whom the Irish Government thought more fit for the sort of work he had had to do, and he knew of no public servant who had been more severely tried, and, on the whole, had been more successful. He desired to take upon himself and Lord Spencer the full burden of all the criticisms made upon Captain Plunkett by the hon. Member for Mallow; because all those criticisms had been directed against actions of Captain Plunkett, which had been always enjoined upon him by the Irish Government, and had always been approved of subsequently by them. The hon. Member for Mallow did not generalize in his charges. He was extremely specific. He was very glad to think that in the County Cork generally crime was very much reduced. But that would not be the point of his observations to-day; because the charges of the hon. Member would be found to refer, not to the County Cork in general, but to certain 1736 very limited districts, and with regard to those districts he could not endorse the statement of the hon. Member that they were not in a serious condition. Seven meetings had been stopped in County Cork since Parliament separated last year. No doubt seven meetings was a very large number to stop in a single county; but on examination they would find that five were in the immediate vicinity of the police district of Ballincollig. Thus they were dealing with a particular district in which one meeting had been stopped. The promoters of these meetings were not satisfied with the decision of the Government, but announced meeting after meeting; so that the action of the Government resolved itself into having stopped meetings in this particular district.
§ MR. BIGGARIrish geography!
§ MR. TREVELYANheld that, in any ease, the district of Ballincollig was in an extremely critical state. First, there had been a most terrible murder there. The hon. Member described it as a manslaughter; but he (Mr. Trevelyan) thought he had never heard a more complete misnomer. A man was done to death by a violent mob on account of an agrarian dispute. It was very much more serious as regarded the general peace of the district, than if he had been killed by two or three men in a lonely lane. It was sad that an immense number of people witnessed this brutal murder; and the description of the attitude which was shown by the apathy or sympathy of those persons clearly rendered it necessary for Captain Plunkett to take most careful measures in order to preserve the peace of the district. There were two incendiary fires, four threatening letters, and one other very serious case—the case of a band of armed Moonlighters who stopped a man named Connell, whom they mistook for a man named M'Carthy, who had taken an evicted farm. This was a very large party, indeed, of armed men, and there was every reason to believe that this agrarian dispute might result in more outrage.
§ MR. TREVELYANWithin the last six months.
§ MR. TREVELYANsaid, it was reported in the Reports of the Government officials. The first of the meetings to which the hon. Member had referred was at Inniscarra. It was stopped on account of the District Inspector believing that outrages would follow, and that a man named M'Carthy, who had taken an evicted farm, would be injured. A man was going to Cork on October 4, when two men jumped over a wall and asked him if he were anything to M'Carthy. He said "No," and was allowed to pass; but he saw about 50 men behind the wall, some of them armed. The authorities believed if M'Carthy had been present at the moment he would have met his death. Under these circumstances, the authorities stopped the first meeting, and all good citizens ought to have refrained from attempting to hold violent meetings in the same district. Then came the meeting at Crookstown. In that case some evictions had taken place, and others were about to follow. That might be said to be an insufficient reason for stopping meetings; but if outrages followed from the taking of farms from which others had been evicted, he thought that the fact of evictions being about to occur in the neighbourhood was a fair reason for stopping the meetings which were about to be held.
§ MR. TREVELYANWhat does that mean? It means that you will tell the landlords of the country that they are not to exact rent for their own property; and hon. Members can hardly believe that any Government in a civilized country can, in order to avoid the risk of breaking the peace, consent that the ordinary obligations of citizens should not be fulfilled. In the case of Castlelyons, the Rev. Mr. Ferriss, the parish priest, had been evicted for nonpayment of three years' rent, and on that occasion the people for miles around had been greatly excited. The rev. gentleman made a very violent speech, and after the eviction the mob rushed into the house and damaged property to the extent of £400. He wished to ask why places of this kind were chosen for the holding of National League meetings? There were hundreds of other villages and towns in Cork where such meetings could have 1738 been held, and where the Government would be very willing to see them held. Why was it necessary to go where another eviction had taken place, where a parish priest had been evicted under very exciting circumstances, and where the burning question of Hallissey was in progress? The object of hon. Members opposite was to spread their political opinions, and a very legitimate and honourable object it was; but why choose for that purpose those places where the Government, rightly or wrongly, thought meetings should not be held? He thought that those who had thrust the unfortunate people on the point of the bayonet, according to the expression which had been used, were those who had insisted upon holding a meeting where there was obvious danger of life; whereas, if it had been held 30 miles off, it would have been exactly the same political fact, and would not have risked the same danger of a collision between the people and the police. [Reverting to the Castlelyons meeting, the right hon. Gentleman read a portion of the speech of Father Ferriss, which was loudly applauded by the Irish Members.] Resuming, he said, the remainder of this violent speech was of the same character as that which hon. Members opposite cheered so loudly, and would produce the same effect upon the minds of English Members. The hon. Member asked what would the English people say if an English incumbent had been treated like the Rev. Mr. Ferriss? His answer was that if the English incumbent owed his landlord three years' rent, and if because the landlord demanded what was his due the incumbent denounced him as a land thief and a robber, then he would say that the sympathies of the English people would be with the man who was asking for the natural produce of his property, and not with the man who was trying to hold that property without paying a farthing for it. [Mr. WHITWORTH: Hear, hear!] Unfortunately, in this case, the sympathy went the other way, and the result of the violent speech he had just read to the House was that property to the extent of £400 was damaged. There were a good many Members who had remained in the House to hear him who had heard the speech of the hon. Member for Mallow; and he would ask them whe- 1739 ther they did not think that if the hon. Member were to go down and make the speech which he had made that day, and in the same tone, there would be a danger of the peace of the district being disturbed? [Mr. WHITWORTH: Hear, hear!] He now came to the case of Hallissey, which rested on a different basis, and for which the hon. Member for Mallow always reserved his choicest and most formidable epithets. Hallissey was a blacksmith, earning 35s. a-week He became unpopular because he worked for a farmer named Carton, who had been "Boycotted." "Boycotting" notices had been posted up, and Hallissey's trade went from him; several people who tried to employ him having had their property destroyed. He and his family had become quite destitute, and had received assistance from Government. This state of things had continued until August, 1882, when it had been endeavoured to counteract "Boycotting" by proclaiming the district under the Prevention of Crime Act, and sending police at the expense of the locality. Soon after this Hallissey reported that he was fired at with a revolver, and at the magisterial investigation Mr. Hickey, J.P., stated that he disbelieved the story. It was said Captain Plunkett concurred in that view; but Captain Plunkett's remarks had reference to no doubt of his own as to the truth of Hallissey's statement, but as to the doubt expressed by Mr. Hickey in believing Hallissey's story, and in that view he was supported by two other magistrates, Messrs. Longan and Butler, who were of opinion that the man had been fired at. The right hon. Gentleman then referred to the proposal of a subscription to emigrate Hallissey, which was originated, he said, by the District Inspector, and supported by the parish priest, Father Ahern. He could imagine nothing in which a parish priest who really loved his people could more willingly engage in than thus assisting an innocent man.
§ MR. BIGGAROh, oh!
§ MR. TREVELYANThe hon. Member for Cavan interrupts me. What charge has the hon. Member for Cavan against him?
§ MR. BIGGARA charge of perjury and fraud.
§ MR. TREVELYANIt was not because of perjury or fraud he was "Boy- 1740 cotted." He was "Boycotted" because he worked for a "Boycotted" farmer. [Mr. WHITWORTH]: Hear, hear!] The hon. Member for Cavan has given no grounds for stating that the man is not an innocent man.
MR. O'BRIENIf I might be permitted to interrupt, I would reply by saying that the right hon. Gentleman himself used these words—"Whatever doubt there may be about Hallissey being fired at." Now, why should there be a doubt if he was an innocent man?
§ MR. BIGGARThe right hon. Gentleman says that Hallissey is an innocent man. Does the right hon. Gentleman mean to say that a man who is guilty of perjury and fraud is an innocent man?
§ MR. TREVELYANI say that it was not proved in any sense that Hallissey was guilty of perjury and fraud. Out of the three magistrates who were present at his examination, one did not believe it, and two did. That was not a state of things on which he could be charged with perjury and fraud. [Mr. WHITWORTH: Hear, hear!] He regretted very much that the subscription for Hallissey was not successful. [Ironical Irish cheers.] It was much to be regretted that hon. Members took up the case in that House in the spirit in which they did. He thought it might be the case that, owing to the way the question was made a ground of battle in that House, the benevolent object he had referred to fell through. [Irish cheers.] He was very sorry for that; because he thought it would be a good thing if the man had been emigrated, and the district might well have made some amends to him for the loss he had sustained as an honest tradesman. Subsequently a Memorial was again sent to His Excellency by certain inhabitants of the district, with Father Ahern at their head, praying to be relieved from the tax, and expressing their abhorrence of crime.
§ MR. TREVELYANFourteen. I am sorry that not more than 14 people in the district could be got to express abhorrence of crime.
§ MR. TREVELYANIf they did so it was under the influence of intimidation. The Lord Lieutenant would much 1741 rather foster a feeling of abhorrence against crime than run the risk of checking it by the imposition of an unpopular tax. That was the policy of His Excellency, and he acted under the ad vice of Captain Plunkett. It should, however, be borne in mind that both His Excellency and Captain Plunkett were carrying out a statute passed by Parliament, and they were bound to put it into practice where necessary. He could not see, looking at the figures he had quoted, that Captain Plunkett could be said to have recommended His Excellency in the direction of severity in the matter. As regarded stopping meetings, he could not find that Captain Plunkett had recommended any meeting to be stopped, except in the single district of Ballincollig, where some circum stances had occurred which rendered such a step advisable. In one district a meeting had been stopped on account of outrages in another district; one had been stopped on account of the violent speech delivered by a Catholic clergy man. In another a meeting had been stopped on account of proceedings with regard to Hallissey. It was no cruelty to prevent a meeting being held in a place where a murder had been committed. He deeply regretted that in their anxiety to challenge the Government, the National Party should assert that the Government put down free speech. He also regretted that the promoters of these meetings insisted over and over again in trying to hold meetings in such districts as these. He was sure that it was impossible to persuade the Irish people that the Government wished to put down freedom of speech—[Mr. BIGGAR: Oh!] The hon. Member for Cavan alleged that they did put down freedom of speech. He would like to read some extracts from the speeches of the bon. Member for Cavan about Earl Spencer and him self, and then ask whether Ireland was a country in which there was not speech the very freest of the free? The most extreme and violent speeches had been made in Ireland——
§ MR. TREVELYANFreedom of speech has not been stopped in Ireland.
§ MR. TREVELYANsaid, he was not speaking of that period. If in some 1742 limited districts freedom of speech had been stopped, that was not because it might produce possible annoyance to men in high station, but because it might lead to crime and outrage against humble residents in the neighbourhood. Those districts had now become very few; but as long as such districts were there, the Government would continue to pursue the same policy. With regard to the charges which had been brought against Captain Plunkett, he thought the hon. Member very willing to strike a blow at Captain Plunkett and likewise against the Irish Government. [Mr. BIGGAR,: Hear, hear!] He (Mr. Trevelyan) held that the fact of being engaged in a very powerful political movement might have the effect of distorting a man's judgment; but be believed that the great body of the people of the country, and a large number of people in Ireland, would believe that he had not exceeded his duty. In conclusion, he believed he had vindicated the conduct of the Irish Executive, and answered all the charges made against it.
§ MR. SEXTONsaid, that the sentiments of the Chief Secretary with regard to freedom of speech in Ireland reminded him of the utterances of another distinguished Englishman, Oliver Cromwell. That individual had once said—"You may have freedom of worship, but while I live you shall not perform the Mass." The right hon. Gentleman boasted that he allowed freedom of speech; but they all knew, from personal experience, that when they said anything unpalatable in flavour to the Government, freedom of speech was only in the perception of Dublin Castle. He asked them to look at the condition of the Tory Benches, which were deserted by all except the indefatigable hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton). The Tory Party, having driven and deluded the Government into the adoption of this miserable coercion policy towards Ireland, now left them to defend themselves as best they could. [Cheers.] He heard a mocking cheer from the hon. Member for Drogheda (Mr. Whitworth); but, recognizing the meaning and animus which prompted that cheer, he would proceed no further than to say that the intelligence of the Irish people would enable them to recognize what they got from those Representatives who joined the English ruling 1743 Party. He was glad to observe that the hon. Member was about to transfer his affections from the uncongenial scene of Drogheda to the more congenial region of Marylebone. The people of Ireland would be able to form a conception from the course of the debate of the method of Government in steering an "even keel" in Ireland. Had the people of Cork been accorded by Captain Plunkett the polite and exquisite treatment which had been extended by Captain M'Ternan to Lord Rossmore, when he endeavoured to violate the public peace and provoke civil war? They remembered the fact that Major Robert Hamilton, who had signed a murderous placard, urging an attack upon a peaceable meeting in Ulster, had endeavoured to break through an armed force of the Crown. Not only was no attempt made to repel him and his party at the point of the bayonet, as was done in Cork, but he was treated with civility and courtesy, and the next day he was permitted to go upon the Bench of Justice and denounce a servant of the Queen for having caused the death of the Orangeman Giffen. The debate upon the question of the conduct of Captain Plunkett had, from the facts disclosed, proved the evil of appointing such a class of persons who, having received a large salary, high dignity, and extensive power, then endeavoured to create disturbance, in order to show that there was a necessity that they should be retained in their position. He observed with pleasure the presence during the debate of the hon. Member for Leeds (Mr. Herbert Gladstone). They all knew that to the keen perception of the hon. Gentleman they owed the declaration of his belief that the Government existing in Ireland was the worst in Europe. He believed that the hon. Gentleman's knowledge of Ireland was much less than that of the Chief Secretary, but he believed that his frankness was much greater; and he hoped that the knowledge he had gained would have an influence upon future English policy. The whole system pursued by Captain Plunkett had been sinister. Its aim and its real objects were apparent. He had conducted a secret inquiry at Cork into the landing of dynamite agents at Queens-town; and he had endeavoured to implicate persons of the highest standing and 1744 respectability—men whose public life was well known, and who were as far removed from such transactions as Hell was removed from Heaven. Men of the most blameless character had been summoned and examined and cross-hackled by Captain Plunkett, who showed by his conduct that he desired to continue in his employment by disturbing the public peace within his district. Such men as John O'Connor, of Cork, so far from tending by their presence to crime and disorder, possessed the confidence of the people, and inspired them with a sense of tranquillity. It appeared from the arguments of the Chief Secretary that because a crowd had assembled on one occasion at a certain place, and because two men jumped across a hedge at another, these localities were to be regarded as dangerous ever afterwards. Why did the Irish people wish to give expression to their opinions? It was because they wished to ask for what had been promised by the Solicitor General for Ireland to his electors at Derry. He asked the right hon. Gentleman, if he was a leaseholder himself, would he not desire to be placed under the Land Act? And if he was not a leaseholder, he had a right to complain if he was required to pay rent upon his own improvements under the present law. The reason why the Rev. Mr. Ferriss was unable to pay his three years' rent was because it was excessive; and the Chief Secretary had passed over the case very lightly, because he knew so little of the difference between the condition of the oppressed Irish priest and the prosperous English incumbent. It appeared to him that the Government were willing to allow meetings in districts where they knew there was no particular reason why they should be held; but in districts where they were aware that the people had some grievance to complain of they prevented them. The Chief Secretary had passed by the infamous method by which the meetings were suppressed, and he alleged that Captain Plunkett had acted upon the spur of the moment. But why did he postpone the announcement of the suppression of a meeting until the very morning on which it was to be held, and then disperse the people with an armed force? Why did he keep his mind to himself for a fortnight or three weeks, and then after dark, on the 1745 night before the meeting, send round a policeman with the "omnipotent paste pot"? Clearly because he desired to give the people, if they had no one to advise or restrain them, what Napoleon called a whiff of grape-shot, and because he wished to administer to them brute force instead of law. All this was with the object of endeavouring to demonstrate the necessity for his continuing longer in Office. He would deal with the case of Hallissey in a few words. The Chief Secretary had, with the literary skill with which he was endowed, before he entered the House, in other walks of life, which, perhaps, for his own reputation, he would have done better to have confined himself——[Mr. BIGGAR: Hear, hear!]—he had drawn a most pathetic picture of the blacksmith Hallissey's pitiable condition. Well, that worthy, he might inform the House, was one of these ill-conditioned persons of evil character and repute who were to be found in almost every community. For years before he had been "Boycotted" he was in the receipt of outdoor relief; but in times of suspicion and coercion this creature, who they had been told had been "Boycotted" and ruined, thought he could obain a more desirable occupation than beating an anvil all his life. He saw the sums of money paid to informers, who were then high in the market. He had then fabricated the story which two magistrates declared themselves convinced was a falsehood, and in which declaration even Captain Plunkett himself was obliged to concur. The result of his fraudulent scheme of perjury was that an oppressive burden of £500 per annum, in the shape of a police tax, was imposed upon the people, who were then advised to subscribe £50 or £60 in order to transport him to happier climes. No doubt the country could well afford to dispense with him; but he would ask the Government were there not many steam-packets for the conveyance of distinguished persons at their disposal? Hallissey was now a very distinguished person; and could not the Government, who could give £50,000 to the Tuke Emigration Committee to ship away people who were valuable to the country at £5 a-head, send him off in one of these packets? He might as well, however, frankly tell the Government that Hallissey would wait till his hair grew gray, and till the palsy of old 1746 age came upon his limbs, and until he occupied six feet of Irish ground, before the poor people of Monanimy would subscribe this money in order to satisfy the arrogance and despotism of the Government of the right hon. Gentleman.
§ MR. DEASYsaid, he would not have intervened in this debate but for the disingenuous way in which the Chief Secretary had met the charges of the hon. Member for Mallow (Mr. O'Brien). He wished to reply to his defence, for the reason that he was one of those who had been favoured with considerable attention from Captain Plunkett, both in the County and City of Cork. He was well aware of many little acts of which probably the Chief Secretary had never heard. He was surprised that one of the most important points brought forward by the hon. Member for Mallow, the tax for the extra police force, had not been met, or attempted to be met, by the Chief Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman stated that the reason for the suppression of the meeting at Castleisland was because the parish priest made a violent speech on being evicted. He (Mr. Deasy) was sorry the right hon. Gentleman did not read that speech in full; because he thought it was an able and clear exposition of the state of things in Ireland, and a speech every Member sitting on the Irish Benches would endorse, and which would be endorsed throughout the length and breadth of the country. But the right hon. Gentleman forgot that, if the parish priest of Killavullen was evicted for nonpayment of rent, there were evictions also convenient to where they were at present, in the county of Kent, for the non-payment of tithes, and violent meetings were held there, but the Government did not interfere with or suppress them. As to Hallissey, there could be no doubt at all that he succeeded in obtaining a sum of money from the Government by pretending to be "Boycotted." As for the meeting at Inniscarra, it was miles away from Coachford, the scene of the murder, which the right hon. Gentleman alleged to have taken place in the neighbourhood. Mr. Justice Johnson, who tried the case, declared emphatically, in his opening Charge to the Grand Jury, that there was nothing of an agrarian character in it, and that it had no connection whatever with the present or past agitation in the country. He did not know 1747 whether the right hon. Gentleman was disposed to believe Mr. Justice Johnson or Captain Plunkett. Evidently Captain Plunkett was the favoured one. As to the meeting at "The Ovens," which was also suppressed, he did not believe that there was a quieter district in all Ireland, or a more peaceful district in England, than "The Ovens," But on that day Captain Plunkett had his men posted at every cross road and lane in the parish, who prevented any three men coming together for any purpose; and what was the result? It was the custom with the farmers of the surrounding country to meet the labourers every Sunday after Mass, and engage them for the coming week; but, owing to the tactics of Captain Plunkett, the poor labourers of the neighbourhood were not able to get work, because they were not allowed to go to the men who would employ them. The right hon. Gentleman did not assign any reason for suppressing the Donoughmore meeting at all. It was 13 or 14 miles from the scene of any outrage, and for the last 10 or 15 years there had been no outrage committed in that part of the country. The meeting was to have been held for the purpose of establishing a branch of the National League, and the National League had not the effect of producing outrages, but had the contrary effect. In proof of this, he would mention that previous to the suppression of the Land League one of the most flourishing branches was in Donoughmore. The right hon. Gentleman also said that an attack was made on a man named Connell in some other part of the county of Cork within the last six months. If such an attack took place, nobody ever heard of it except the Irish Government and Captain Plunkett. He would not dwell any further on these meetings, except to say that he was present at most of them himself. He was present at Donoughmore, and he could not step from one side of the road to the other without being followed by three or four policemen, or go into the house of a friend without its being taken possession of by four or five policemen; and the people who went to the house with him were carefully noted by the police. During his canvass of the City of Cork, he was followed by the police from meeting to meeting. They took notes of the observations which fell from him; and at 1748 his meeting every night in the City of Cork, the crowds were mixed with a large number of detectives, who probably took notes of his speeches and also those of his supporters. Was that the way in which they treated his opponents? Violent meetings were held in the Protestant Hall, at which people were incited to murder and violence by gentlemen holding high positions in the City—by magistrates and Deputy Lieutenants. Two evenings before the election took place, a gentleman, the Master of an Orange Lodge in the City and County of Cork, Captain Sarsfield, made a violent speech; and what was the result? That within two hours a Catholic church was wrecked in the city. Now, he asked, where were the Government note-takers from that meeting; and he asked, furthermore, where were the extra police who ought to have been on duty, and ought to have prevented the perpetration of that sacrilegious act? The scene of the outrage was within a few hundred yards of a police barrack; it was visited next morning by the police authorities and a number of magistrates; but no one was made amenable. There was, however, a strong belief in Cork that not only the police, but that the authorities, were aware of the names of those engaged in the commission of the crime. There was no secret inquiry held as to who did it; and it would take all the eloquence of the Irish Government to persuade a single man in the City of Cork that Captain Plunkett could not name the gentlemen who were concerned in the perpetration of this sacrilege. It was an evening on which they had a great deal of rain, and there was a great deal of mud about the chapel which was wrecked; and it would have been very easy for the police to have traced the parties who committed the deed to their mansions in the vicinity of that church; but they took care not to do so. They appeared, however, to have given them private information that they would be proceeded against sooner or later; and the result was that certain young gentlemen of high position had left the city in a day or two after. Many other instances of this sort he could bring before the House; but he would not do so, because the charges made by his hon. Friend the Member for Mallow had not been met at all. But he would refer to the tax for extra police, amounting to £15,000, 1749 which had been levied on the citizens of Cork. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary explained, at the end of last Session, that the Government had placed extra police there because the Corporation of Cork had requested the Lord Lieutenant to permit them to remain, on the ground that it was necessary for the peace of the city. No sooner did this announcement appear in the Cork Press than an indignation meeting of the Corporation of Cork was held, and a Resolution was moved by Mr. Lane stating that such was not the fact; that the only application that was ever made by the Town Council was an application to remove the police force, or that if they were not removed that the cost of their maintenance should be defrayed out of the Imperial Exchequer. Immediately after that a presentment was made to the Corporation for £465 4s. 10d. Mr. Lane moved the rejection of the vote as the most emphatic denial the Council could give to the statement of the Chief Secretary in the House of Commons. He was seconded by the present High Sheriff of Cork and ex-Mayor of the city, and by a gentleman who, he should say, had often made the acquaintance of the right hon. Gentleman, because he was a constant attendant at Dublin Castle, Sir George Penrose, J.P. He said that for 13 years the Corporation objected to the imposition of the tax for extra police, and years ago they brought the matter before Parliament; but they were unsuccessful. Mr. Harris, a Conservative member of the Corporation, said he had no doubt if a Conservative Government were in power the burden would be removed. One thing was certain as the result of the action of the present Government, and that was that what was regarded as one of the most Liberal and Whig cities in Ireland did not possess a gentleman of that political persuasion at all. The present Mayor said, in his speech during the discussion, that from his extensive knowledge of the city he did not think there was the slightest necessity for the police force. They should resist the payment of this tax the best way they could; and if it was to be paid, it should be paid out of the Consolidated Fund. They were not required, and the fact should be strongly placed before the Government. He was followed by Mr. Kennedy, J.P., who spoke in the same 1750 strain. The only crimes committed in Cork which would justify the presence of this extra police force were committed by the police themselves. The most serious charge he had to bring against them was the murder of a tramp by two detectives. A sort of mock trial was gone through, at which Sub-Inspector Newell, Sub-Inspector of jury-packing fame, was prosecutor, and they were defended by the ablest solicitor in Cork, with the result that the magistrates refused to grant informations against those detectives. The Crown, it appears, sent up a bill against them to the Grand Jury; but the County and Sub-Inspectors refused to go on with the prosecution, and absolutely declined to give any information as to how the bill found its way to the Grand Jury. This extra police force had been quartered in the city so far back as 1867, and ever since the citizens of Cork had been petitioning the Government to withdraw them. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman, who had been again reminded that this police force was a crying grievance in Cork, would take some steps to remove, or, if he would not remove them, would relieve them from the unjust tax they had to pay for their maintenance. If not, and if by this means he hoped they would make the people of Cork loyal, he never made a greater mistake. He did not expect that the right hon. Gentleman would have taken upon himself all the acts of cruelty and injustice perpetrated by the Hon. Captain Plunkett in the City of Cork, and he was rather inclined to think that he had spoken in absolute and utter ignorance of this man's conduct. [Mr. TREVELYAN dissented.] If not, he did not envy his present position. He told them there were hundreds of places in which they might have held Nationalist meetings in Cork if they liked to do so. [Mr. TREVELYAN: In the county of Cork.] As one of the organizers, he must say that he was not aware of that fact; and he believed that if they had attempted to hold meetings anywhere in the county they would have been suppressed, just as they were suppressed in other places. The only meeting they permitted before the opening of Parliament was at Bandon, at which two Members of Parliament attended; but they had their revenge, for the police invaded the hotel and prosecuted every gentleman who entertained 1751 the two hon. Members (Mr. T. D. Sullivan and Mr. T. P. O'Connor). He would like the right hon. Gentleman to map out the districts in the county of Cork where meetings could be held; and, if so, he assured him they would endeavour to meet his views in some way. He really did not see that there was very much truth in the observations of the right hon. Gentleman. He thought he had been misled in this matter. If not, it augured very badly for the future relations between the English Government and the Irish people.
§ MR. PARNELLSir, I confess I have listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary with a great deal of surprise and a great deal of disappointment. I had hoped that he would have chosen the occasion of the Motion of my hon. Friend to make some favourable announcement, and hold out some prospect with regard to this question of the extra police in Cork, which would have been satisfactory to the suffering citizens of that town.
Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present,
§ MR. PARNELLresumed: The City of Cork, which I have the honour to represent, was distinguished, during the whole of the great agrarian movement which resulted in the passage of the Land Act, by its entire absence from agrarian or political crime of any kind, and that state of affairs has continued to exist up to the present moment. During the last four years, and for a number of years previous, there has been an entire absence of agrarian or political crime of any kind in the City of Cork; and it is a city such as that that the satellites of the Irish Government choose for the practice of deeds which have not been paralleled in any part of Ireland. They have inflicted on the citizens of Cork an extra police tax, which since it was first inflicted amounts to the enormous sum of £15,000. They have held secret inquiries under the Prevention of Crime Act, and they have hauled respectable citizens, entirely innocent of any crime, before the magistrates, and sent them to prison because they were unable to give any information. They have endeavoured to blacken the fame of individual politicians, not 1752 because they believed these persons could give them any information about anything, but simply because their general political course had made them obnoxious to magnates such as Captain Plunkett. When at last all parties in Cork united together, and asked that those extra police might be removed, they got a reply from the Chief Secretary which I do not wish to characterize as shuffling, but which entirely evaded the point put forward, and leaves the subject in a most unsatisfactory state. I wonder that the right hon. Gentleman, when he found that this city, containing a population of 100,000 inhabitants, was perfectly peaceable, and had been perfectly peaceable before he ever came into Office—I wonder that he did not signalize his appointment, and show his appreciation of such a peaceful state of things, by some such act of grace and justice as that asked for on the present occasion, and not only asked for on the present occasion, but asked for persistently ever since the right hon. Gentleman held Office in Ireland. I wonder that he did not tell us that the question would be taken into consideration. But what will be the result, and what has been the result, of the attitude assumed by the Irish Government in this matter? Why, this. The Corporation of Cork, in reference to this matter, have determined that they will not pay the tax, and the Corporation of Limerick have followed their example. Now, does the right hon. Gentleman ever consider what would be the effect of a general strike in Ireland, not against paying rent, but against the payment of this police tax? Has he ever considered whether the difficulty of his administration would not be enormously increased if the ratepayers who are being mulcted, and who have been mulcted for a number of years, for the cost of extra police in the different districts and counties of Ireland were to say—" We will not pay this tax, but we will allow you to collect it." Suppose the example of the City of Cork and the example of the City of Limerick were to be followed generally throughout Ireland, does the right hon. Gentleman mean to tell me that he could collect the tax? He could collect the tax perhaps; but it would cost him ten times as much as the tax itself to do so, and he would excite such a state of political feeling in Ireland in the attempt to do so 1753 that the right hon. Gentleman would be obliged to admit that the remedy was a great deal worse than the disease. I recollect when the farmers of Ireland were advised not to pay rent. A great many people thought that movement would be successful, and they brought forward to show that the resistance to the tithes in 1832 and 1833. I never thought so myself; but I do believe this—that a resistance of this payment for extra police and for blood-money would be just as successful as the resistance to the tithes in 1832 and 1833. The situation is precisely analogous. Why did the movement against the payment of rent fail? That failed because the tenants and their families could be turned out of their homes; but that was not so with regard to the police tax and the blood tax. The cost also of the collection of this tax, which would fall on the ratepayers, is very insignificant; while the heavy law costs which result from the ejectment and from sales of stock by the Sheriff, in satisfaction for a judgment obtained in the Superior Courts for non-payment of rent, can be inflicted on the tenant who refuses to pay. In view of the attitude that the right hon. Gentleman has exhibited tonight, and has exhibited with regard to the infliction of this tax from the beginning, I give it as my deliberate judgment that the farmers of Ireland are fools to continue to pay this tax any longer. They have the remedy in their own hands; and if they choose to exercise that remedy they will very soon put an end to those crutches that the Irish Government is leaning on in the shape of the levy of taxes for blood-money and extra police. The right hon. Gentleman tells us that we have the utmost freedom of speech in Ireland. I should not care to go to Ireland, I must say, and exercise my right of free speech. I do not believe in the freedom of speech of the right hon. Gentleman. The fruit-growers of Kent are allowed to summon tumultuous meetings, and mob the officers of the law, and collect crowds, and refuse to pay extra tithes. Persons are allowed there to advise, to aid, and abet to incitements against those tithes without any interference from the Executive. These things will not be permitted in Ireland. But a spontaneous movement on the part of the farmers of Ireland against the payment of this unjust tax 1754 is perfectly possible, and, in my judgment, would be successful. Now, Sir, we have the utmost freedom of speech in Ireland according to the right hon. Gentleman. Some freedom was afforded, no doubt, to Nationalist speakers last winter for the first time; but would it have been possible for the Government to have set in motion the Prevention of Grime Act against the moderate language of the Irish Nationalists, while at the same time they allowed to pass unnoticed the deliberate and direct incitements to assassination and outrage which the Orange speakers were indulging in? The right hon. Gentleman also told us that we might have held 100 meetings in the county of Cork, and that we would not be interfered with. Now, I doubt whether there are 100 places in the county of Cork in which we could have held meetings; but every district and every portion of the county was tried, and nowhere, except in the town of Bandon, and one in Charleville, would the right hon. Gentleman and Captain Plunkett permit meetings to be held. Well, Sir, we will take the right hon. Gentleman at his word. We will search out every place in the county where it is possible to hold meetings, and we will announce them. We will make up for the lost time, and we will test the sincerity of the right hon. Gentleman by taking him at his word. I confess I think the right hon. Gentleman might have noticed some of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Mallow (Mr. O'Brien). He might have explained how it was that the notices of the suppression of the meetings in Cork, and throughout Ireland generally, were only sent down at the last moment, and posted in the dead of night, so that the people, coming often from great distances, only knew of the proclamation when they arrived at the place of meeting, and found the platform in possession of large bodies of police and military. I cannot help thinking that with the military soul of such men as Captain Plunkett this method of suppressing meetings suggested itself, in order that they might make a display of armed force before the people, and endeavour to provoke a breach, of the peace; and it is very creditable to the people that, notwithstanding the great excuses given by the Government, not the slightest disturbance was attempted 1755 by them. And if the people have disappointed the good intentions of those military gentlemen, certainly it was not because of any foresight on the part of the Executive Government. It need hardly be said that the Prevention of Grime Act conferred most extraordinary powers on the Irish Government. It gave powers of summary punishment such as never before were given even to an Irish Government. It gave powers of changing venue; powers with respect to juries and trials by Judges; powers to levy blood taxes and extra police taxes; powers, in fact, that the Irish Government consider sufficient, and more than sufficient, for all purposes. But Captain Plunkett, in a district almost entirely free from crime during the agrarian agitation, did not think these powers sufficient, and so he set his inventive genius to work to discover new powers; and what was the plan he hit upon? It was a plan to intimidate the people of Monanimy into getting up a fund for the emigration of an obnoxious blacksmith named Hallissey. I would like to know what would happen to one of us if we told a farmer—"You must subscribe to this testimonial, and if you do not, something else will happen to you." Yet this was practically what Captain Plunkett said to the ratepayers of Monanimy. He went to the parish priest, knowing him to be an easy man, likely to be taken in, and perhaps intimidated, and he said—" Subscribe to this testimonial to Hallissey, the blacksmith, you and your people; if you do not, we will flood your district with extra police; we will have night searches. Your flock will be visited; in the dead of night their doors will be battered down with rifles; their humble furniture will be overturned in search of documents; their daughters and their wives will be dragged from their beds; their haystacks will be pulled about; and the whole district will be exposed to all the torture and infamy and hardship which it is possible for police and magistrates to inflict; but if you subscribe to my testimonial—for it is as much Captain Plunkett's testimonial as Hallissey's—those things will not take place, and your district can continue to bear the peaceful character that distinguished it—free from crime and outrage." Fortunately, however, the majority of the ratepayers were not to be 1756 frightened by Captain Plunkett's threats, and he was defeated in his little plan; and now, whether he likes it or not, the police tax will have to be removed. But, notwithstanding the great force of police in Cork—notwithstanding that the extra force cost the citizens £15,000 in a time of great depression—the police were unable to protect the citizens from outrages from those who were often spoken of by the right hon. Gentleman and his Predecessor in Office as upholders of law and order. During the election of my hon. Friend (Mr. Deasy), after some inflammatory speeches had been delivered at an Orange meeting, the Lough Chapel was wrecked, every window of it broken, the altar, sacred furniture, statues, and so forth, destroyed, and largo stones found next morning on the floor. The right hon. Gentleman talked about his "even keel;" but what had he done to discover the perpetrators of this outrage? What value had the citizens of Cork received for their payment of £15,000 as regarded the perpetrators of this outrage? Have any secret inquiries been made under the Prevention of Crime Act? Had any reward been offered by the Government? Nothing had been done; although it was believed by the general public, upon very good foundation, that Captain Plunkett and the police could place their hands to-morrow upon the perpetrators of the wrecking of the chapel. The outrage remains still unavenged by the majesty of the law, and yet the Government have the temerity to come to this House and say their desire is to administer justice evenly. The right hon. Gentleman had shown that, whatever his private desire may be, he is unable to administer justice. It was, undoubtedly, a great temptation to the right hon. Gentleman, when he entered upon his Office, to spread abroad the belief that a great crisis still existed in the country. A great crisis might have existed in Dublin; but outside Dublin I deny that there was any conspiracy existing in Ireland for purposes of outrage, or for any illegal purpose, although the right hon. Gentleman made no difference in his treatment of Dublin, where there was a conspiracy, and the rest of Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman has endeavoured to trade upon the Invincible conspiracy, and to represent in his speeches that the whole 1757 of Ireland was seething in one vast conspiracy, instead of insisting that his officials throughout Ireland should learn to govern the country without reliance upon exceptional methods, so as to prepare for a return of the time when they would have to do without them, a time which is very fast approaching. The right hon. Gentleman had taught these officials that it would be practically impossible for them to govern the country without exceptional measures. Recourse to coercion is like recourse to opium—the more you have, the more you want. While the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) was content with the power of imprisonment, the present Chief Secretary had used every clause of the most stringent Coercion Act over and over again, although there was practically no crime and no movement of any importance to disturb his peace of mind. I want to ask the Irish Government a question. The Coercion Act has not very much more than 18 months' longer existence. Does not the right hon. Gentleman think he ought to see that that Act should be so administered as to prepare for a return then to Constitutional Government? So far as the right hon. Gentleman has gone, he has been adding fuel to fire, exasperating the people, depriving moderate politicians and moderate advisers of the people of all power and influence. I myself have always strongly desired the absence of coercion in Ireland. I think it is not good for the cause of reform, nor for the people, nor the Government. But I cannot help saying that the whole course of conduct of the Irish Executive is directly leading up to the renewal of the Act which was passed in 1882. I regret this exceedingly, and trust that, limited as the time is for the Government to turn over a new leaf, they will make some attempt to dispense with this excessive and stringent enactment, and will endeavour, during the next 18 months, to rely upon the honour of the Irish people that they will check and restrain the zeal of their permanent officials in the use of these keen-edged-weapons, so that they may return to what is alleged to be the traditional policy of the Liberal Party. The consideration of what will happen when the Prevention of Crime Act expires is well worthy the attention of the Irish Executive. 1758 I do not know the intentions of the Government. I do not know that at the time the right hon. Gentleman came into Office there was a desire on the part of the leaders of the people, and of the rank and file, that any movement should be of a temperate and Constitutional character; but I think the administration of the Prevention of Crime Act has very much changed that spirit; and if the course which has been pursued be followed out to the end, I do not see the least chance of any English Government governing Ireland without a renewal of the Coercion Act, supplemented, perhaps, by more stringent provisions. I should be glad to hear what the Solicitor General for Ireland has to say in reference to this matter. The hon. and learned Gentleman, as Representative of an Irish constituency, must know that, so long as the minority—the landlord class—was able to rely upon such instruments as Captain Plunkett for checking Constitutional liberty, the land improvements which he so eloquently advocated in his address to his constituents would be perfectly impossible; and I should hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will be able to agree with me in the opinion which I venture to express to the House to-night, that it is high time for the Government to commence the governing of Ireland as if they were not going to rely upon a Prevention of Crime Act perpetually for that purpose.
§ MR. HEALYsaid, he hoped the Government would take seriously to heart the admirable speech of his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). When he heard the Chief Secretary defending the Irish Administration, he did not believe the right hon. Gentleman's heart was in the matter. He could not believe that the Gentleman who had written the life of Charles James Fox could really be a supporter of a man like Captain Plunkett. Who was Mr. Plunkett? He believed he was the brother or the son of a lord. Well, did being the son or brother of a lord put brains in your head? Did that invest you with extraordinary powers of government? What was there in being a lord, or being a son of a lord, that entitled him to fitness for government? Why, he had seen a good many lords who were fools, and he had seen a good many people who were not lords who 1759 were very clever people; and he was inclined to say that the mere fact of Mr. Plunkett being the son or the brother of a lord—he did not know whether he was an honourable something or another—was not sufficient to entitle that gentleman to be made a Resident Magistrate, and to ride rough-shod over the people of Ireland. A lamer defence than that of the Chief Secretary of Mr. Plunkett he had never heard; but that was not the fault of the Chief Secretary, but the fault of his case. When he had a good case, no man could handle it better, and his admiration of how he handled a bad case was becoming greater every day. He said to himself—"When he can make so much out of a bad case, what could he not do if he had a good case? "The right hon. Gentleman had told them they had only suppressed seven meetings. First and foremost, the Government did not know how many meetings Captain Plunkett had suppressed. He (Mr. Healy) was a native of the County Cork, and he had had several applications from that county to attend and address meetings; but he had said—"No; what is the use in them going to the expense of getting out placards and making preparations for a meeting, when they knew very well that Captain Plunkett would cry 'Open Sesame,' and a proclamation would issue from Dublin Castle, and the whole thing would be prevented? "This gentleman boasted publicly that he would not allow a single meeting to be held. Therefore, it was no use for the Government to say that they only suppressed seven meetings. Then, again, why did the Government wish to have meetings suppressed? In order to be an advocate of Land Reform in Ireland you must be a Solicitor General, for the Castle would not allow any other persons to point out the defects of the Land Act; and the reason the Government did not wish others to address meetings on the subject of Land Reform was because they thought it would fill the farmers of Ireland with the notion that they were going to get Land Reform; but when they heard the Solicitor General for Ireland say it, they would say—" We know very well that he is going to break his word when he gets into the House." The Government were quite willing that the Solicitor General for Ireland should tell the people of Ireland about Land Reform, because they knew very well 1760 that they would discount what he told them. He did not know if there was a map in Dublin Castle. If there was not, he was prepared to put down a small subscription to provide the Office of the Chief Secretary with a map of the country he governed. With one exception, all these meetings, they had been told, had been held in the neighbourhood of Ballincollig.
§ MR. TREVELYANExcept the meetings in reference to Ferriss, and the Monanimy meeting.
§ MR. HEALYsaid, he accepted the right hon. Gentleman's correction. Then four meetings had been suppressed because they were in the district of Ballincollig. Now, he entirely traversed that statement. A number of those places were 15, 20, or even, he might say, 35 and 40 miles from one another, and had just about as much relation to Ballincollig as the county of Middlesex had to the county of Kent and the county of Dorset; and he wondered that the Chief Secretary—of course, from his want of time to study Irish geography—had allowed Captain Plunkett to impose upon him in this manner. If he would buy one of Bacon's maps, and study the scale, and calculate with a piece of tape what the distance of those places was one from another, he ventured to say he would discover by that means the erroneousness of the argument which he had himself developed in that House. But grant, for the sake of argument, that these suppressed meetings were all in the district of Ballincollig, what was the reason that he gave for their suppression? He said a foul and horrible murder, "most strange and unnatural," had been committed in this district comprising 500,000 people. Take an English town where there were 500,000 people gathered together—such as Liverpool, or Glasgow, or Birmingham—you would think by this there should not be one slaughter in six months. In six months, out of a population of 500,000 people, there were 18 offences reported by the police, some of them of the most trivial description; and the central outrage, on which the case for the Government depended and round which the arguments of the Chief Secretary circled, was this murder. A family had a quarrel about a farm. There was no public feeling whatever about it. The murder was committed on a Sunday, after those 1761 persons who committed it had left a public-house. He would like to know whether there was in operation in Ireland an Act called the Sunday Closing Act; and would the hon. Member for Drogheda (Mr. Whitworth), who so vehemently cheered the Chief Secretary and who was so ardent a Sunday Closer, inform the House how this public-house in Dripsey was open for the sale of liquor on that day? This family had a dispute about a farm; and in the course of the dispute, owing to the public-house being open on a Sunday by the favour of the police, they fell to blows, and one man hit another with a spade, or some other agricultural weapon of that kind. This unfortunate man got a blow and died, and the Chief Secretary described it as a murder. A Prevention of Crime Act jury brought in a verdict of manslaughter; and what then became of the argument of the Chief Secretary, that the public meetings of the whole county were to be put a stop to because of a manslaughter committed in a drunken brawl in a particular district? He got up that shrouded kind of mystification which the right hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. Forster) was fond of maintaining in that House, and said that after this murder two men jumped over a hedge and threatened a third man, and on another occasion a crowd appeared in some particular town and said to somebody else—"Are you John Smith? "and received for an answer—" No; I am John Brown," and the crowd thereupon dispersed. Was the House of Commons to believe that public liberty ought to be destroyed in Ireland at the beck of a Resident Magistrate because of flimsy phantasies of this description? What would take place in Glasgow, or in Liverpool, or in London, where they had murder, he would not say every 15 minutes, but he supposed murder, or manslaughter, or suicide, or something of the kind, every day—what would be said among their criminal population—and Englishmen could boast of being as criminal as any among the human race, so far as murder, and manslaughter, and robbery, and other acts of violence were concerned—what would be said if they were to be denied the right of public meeting because in six months there had been 18 crimes amongst 500,000 people reported to the police, one of which was manslaughter? 1762 They could understand frank despotism; they could understand Cromwell or Carhampton; but they could not understand Trevelyan. And what he de-tested in these Liberals was this—the pretence that it was being done for the honour and glory of civilization; and that, if he might say it without profanity, the Almighty could be brought down from Heaven to preside over their acts in uncivilized countries like Ireland. It was the pretence of horrible, hateful hypocrisy. The brigand who came out to rob on the highway did not carry a Bible in his breeches' pocket—the Briton did, and that was the difference between the two. The Chief Secretary suppressed meetings in order to put down crime. It was extremely remarkable that whether there was crime in Ireland, or whether there was no crime, meetings must be suppressed in the interests of the peace of the district. You pays your money and you takes your choice—you pays your taxes and you gets your British Government. But the Irish people were not be deluded in this manner. They had been trying it for 700 years, and they had not succeeded, and they would not succeed now. He hoped those people who had refused to pay the taxes would continue to make the opposition which they had been making against the payment of those taxes in the interests of scoundrels of the Hallissey type. He ventured to say that if the Irish people were as well armed as the Soudanese the Government would not be so very keen in putting blood taxes upon them. He ventured to say that if the policemen who were so fond of knocking down women and children indiscriminately in Ireland with the butt-end of their guns knew that the husbands or the fathers of these women possessed arms at home in the thatch, and that they would use them in defence of female honour, those policemen would not be so extraordinary anxious to bludgeon the women as they did at Killavullen and other places. The Government were dealing with a defenceless people, and they were acting as the Briton always acted. Wherever they saw the power of resistance, there an Englishman diplomatized and dealt in Circular Notes. That was their game, and they could not deceive intelligent people at that time of the day, for the people of Ireland were 1763 thoroughly alive to the situation. The Government might commit these outrages for a time. Let them commit them. Keep at them. The blood of the people ought to teach them to nurse their wrath to keep it warm; and by-and-bye the time would come, and perhaps even the unfortunate people would be able to get square with them. If they could not get square, they would hand down the quarrel to their children; and if their children could not succeed, they would hand it down to their children's children. So long as an Irishman existed in Ireland, and so long as a British satrap existed to oppress him, so long the battle of freedom and right would be continued in their country.
§ MR. T. D. SULLIVANsaid, that the speech of the Chief Secretary had shown the Irish Members what he very much regretted to observe in the administration of Ireland—that persons who performed such functions as Captain Plunkett did in Ireland could always obtain the support of the Government in that House. Any oppression, any injustice, or any tyranny would not be merely condoned and defended by right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench, but in due time it would meet its reward. By-and-bye, Captain Plunkett would follow Mr. Clifford Lloyd, Mr. Blake, and every other despot in the country, to some foreign clime, to the Ruler of which he would be recommended by the Government. What wonder was it, then, that Captain Plunkett played such pranks when he knew that for the present he had pay, and, if he needed it, praise; and that, by-and-bye, he would receive a more substantial reward at the hands of the British Government, who could procure him employment under the Khedive or some other foreign despot, in order that he might practise in his service the arts of oppression and despotism in which he had been trained by the British Government in Ireland? They were now labouring on so that when the time came they could ask for a renewal of the Prevention of Crime Act on its expiration. No one who watched the state of affairs in Ireland would fail to see that this was part of a deliberate design on the part of the ruling classes and Orange faction to have a renewal of this Act for three or four years more. 1764 Mr. Justice Lawson at the Kerry Assizes, some time before, had admitted that the country was very peaceable. He could not, however, leave the matter there, as an English Judge would have done; but he had, as Irish Judges of his character did, added a few words with a view to their being adopted and quoted in the British Parliament. He would quote some of the Judge's words—
There was peace in the county, and there was an improvement in the condition of the people, but it was owing to the Prevention of Crime Act.It was absurd for any statement to be made as to the independence of the Irish Judges. Their Charges were made with a view to being quoted as a subject for political speeches from the Treasury Bench in the House of Commons. He ventured to say that this speech of Judge Lawson would be cited as a proof for the necessity of the renewal of the Prevention of Crime Act. A great deal was said about crime in Ireland; but they never heard of the crimes committed in England. A few days ago, an English newspaper had declared that—Although only three months of the present year had elapsed the air was already heavy with undetected crime in England.But this, of course, was regarded as a matter of no importance, as it was stated that they were of a different class to those committed in Ireland. If owing to the acknowledged bad condition of the law, the poor peasants, suffering under gross injustice, actuated by the "wild justice of revenge," committed crimes which were, of course, to be regretted, a great outcry was made about it, and the name of Ireland was pilloried everywhere in England, whilst cold-blooded and cowardly crimes committed in open day in the English capital were utterly unnoticed. There was no connection between meetings in Ireland and the disturbances that had occurred; they were due to the misery of rack-rented tenantry, whose condition was without a parallel in any civilized country, and was a standing disgrace to the British Government. Lord Clanricarde drew £30,000 yearly from his property in the Loughrea district, and the rack-rented people were made paupers by a system of absenteeism. On Lord Dunsandle's estate the same evils resulted from rack- 1765 renting and absentee landlordism. General Gordon saw the misery of the inhabitants of some parts of Ireland; and in a letter published in The Times he stated that, although he had been in many lands, civilized and savage, he had never witnessed anything to equal the destitution and the suffering, and, at the same time, the patience, which existed among the people living on the rack-rented estates of Ireland. Was it to be wondered at that there should be disaffection in Ireland, when Captain Plunkett and every other pasha and bashaw like him were allowed to tyrannize over them? They feared to allow public speech to explode in Ireland, and they got explosions of another kind. He asked the Chief Secretary to consider, even at the eleventh hour, whether it would not be more manly and courageous to remove the grievances which the people complained of than to continue the system of oppression which he was carrying out?
MR. O' DONNELLconcurred with the observations which had been made by the hon. Member who had just sat down. He thought it was of as little use to complain to the Government of the conduct of such men as Captain Plunkett as it would be to complain to Satan of the conduct of his imps. He heartily endorsed the sentimates of the hon. Member for Westmeath, whose songs of Irish patriotism had impressed him when he was a student in one of those Colleges which Her Majesty's Government founded in order to stifle in the minds of those instructed there any such sentiments. However, like many other institutions of the kind, it totally failed in its object. The hon. Member had then been one of their guides, and they still recognized him as the exponent of the sentiments which filled the breasts of the majority of the Irish race. A public meeting held under the suffrance of a Foreign Power was not less but more odious in consequence of that suffrance; and, for his part, he preferred that scores of those brutal tyrants like Captain Plunkett should act as they did than that they should have these expressions of hypocritical and pretended friendship of Ireland from the Government Benches. It was worse than the despotism of the Czar of Russia, for under even his sway equality 1766 was recognized; but under the rule of England neither liberty nor equality was recognized. Captain Plunkett had done everything to provoke the hatred of the people, and for that very reason he deserved the confidence of the Government. English tyranny in Ireland was only a part of that general system of the exploitation of suffering humanity which made the British Empire a veritable Slave Empire. Wherever there was oppression there they should find allies, and they should take up an attitude of defence commensurate with the area of the tyranny. The rule now maintained in Ireland by the Plunketts and the Jenkinsons and the suave Liberals on the Treasury Bench was no more for the true benefit of the masses of the English people than for that of the mass of the Irish people—it was in the interests of "caste" and clique that this legislation was upheld. The people of England claimed to have a modern Rome in London; but even Caligula granted equal rights to every citizen of Rome. He thought that Parliamentary agitation would not be very effective until the Irish people, crushed down under their present tyranny, effected a coalition with the oppressed Natives of India and other British Dependencies, and all regarded England as the common enemy. They would have the people who had been driven out of their country to remote climes formed together into one solid confederation, determined to obtain the rights which they sought in spite of all opposition. Until that day came Parliamentary agitation would be Parliamentary agitation, and nothing more. They would have every decade new reforms which would only result in increasing the dependence of the Irish people. Englishmen did not appear to awaken to the necessity for reform until they had been taught by the occurrence of catastrophes. As long as the present system continued nothing would prevent the people of Ireland from continuing the crusade against the accursed system which the English people supported.
§ Main Question put, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."
§ The House divided:—Ayes 57; Noes 15: Majority 42.—(Div. List, No. 40.)
§ [10.20 B.M.]