COMMITTEE. [Progress 31st July.]

HC Deb 01 August 1888 vol 329 cc1107-89

[THIRD NIGHT.]

Bill considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

Clause 1 (Appointment and duties of Special Commissioners).

MR. R. T. REID&c.) (Dumfries,

, in moving in page 1, line 19, after "persons," to insert "in so far as the same bear upon the alleged complicity of the said Members," said, the Amendment was rendered necessary by the refusal of the Committee to accept the earlier Amendment he had moved on Monday. If the Amendment were adopted the clause would run thus— The Commissioners shall inquire into and report upon the charges and allegations made against certain Members of Parliament and other persons, in so far as the same bear upon the alleged complicity of the said Members. In justifying the Amendment to the Committee, he desired to point out that, as the Bill stood, it proposed to institute an investigation into the conduct of two classes of persons; the first class of persons consisted of Members of Parliament, and the second of what were called "other persons." who, as the Bill stood, might be any persons, whosoever they might be and wheresoever they might be, who might be said to be implicated in the charges made in the proceedings in the trial of "O'Donnell v. Walter." The Amendment did not in any way limit the scope of the inquiry in so far as Members of Parliament were concerned, and it left absolutely unfettered the powers of the Commissioners as far as the charges and allegations against them were concerned. He could not help thinking, notwithstanding what had passed, that the primary object of the Bill was to inquire into the conduct of the Members of that House; but when it was proposed to inquire into the charges and allegations against. "other persons" generally, they were entering into an altogether different field. It was quite possible, under the provisions of this Bill, in order to deal with the case of Members themselves, to inquire into the conduct of "other persons." It was also clearly possible under the terms of the Bill, for the Commissioners to expend an enormous amount of time in examining into the charges and allegations against "other persons" who might have had no connection with Members of Parliament at all, and who were altogether independent of the conduct of Members. It was, therefore, necessary for the Committee to consider what was the real intent and scope of the powers to be given to the Commissioners as far as "other persons" were concerned. There was to be no limitation to the class of persons or the class of allegations, and having regard to the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General, there might be a field of inquiry illimitable in extent. To show the extent to which such inquiries might be pushed, he would quote from an article of Mr. Arnold Forster, which was referred to by the Attorney General in the course of his speech in "O'Donnell v. Walter." It was to this effect— Three score of cruel murders of men and women, with mutilations, burnings, robberies innumerable; more than 10,000 outrages com- mitted in the short space of two years and a-half, concocted and perpetrated in the interests of a cruel and illegal conspiracy. Under the provisions of the Bill, it would he competent for the Commissioners to inquire into the circumstances attending every one of these outrages extending over two and a-half years, and there was no reason why the outrages which had been perpetrated in other years should not also be inquired into. That was the nature of the powers conferred on the Commissioners, and he maintained that it would be their duty to make that inquiry. Was the Bill to be one to enable hon. Members of that House to meet the terrible charges which had been made against them, and to enable the House to inform itself whether or not there were sitting in it men capable of the conduct which had been attributed to them, and which he certainly declined to believe they had been guilty of, or was it to be a Bill for the purpose of enabling the Government to parade before the country a catalogue of melancholy and disgraceful crimes which had occurred in Ireland, crimes which no one disputed were disgraceful, but which ought not to be made the subject of any special inquiry, unless it was thought that they were connected with the conduct of Members of that House. Of course, it was competent to place three Gentlemen on a Commission, and parade before the public week after week and month after month details of the horrible crimes committed in England. What would be thought if Irish Members, for the purpose of inflaming the feelings and passions of the Irish people against the Union with Great Britain, and inducing them to demand separation from it, were to ask for a special inquiry into the crimes that had been committed in England during the last few years? It would be a most unworthy step on their part, and would be bitterly resented by hon. Members opposite. Then, was it possible to suppose that hon. Members on that side of the House would acquiesce in the present proposal. The object of the Amendment was to limit the scope of the inquiry in regard to "other persons" to this point only—namely, in so far as the inquiry bore upon the charges and allegations against Members of Parliament. It seemed to him that if this Amendment were adopted the Commissioners would be given free powers to investigate anything having the smallest bearing on or connection with the conduct of Members of Parliament, and to exclude everything that would protract or lead into an indefinite and vague inquiry into the conduct of persons in respect of whom it should be admitted that they had no bearing whatever on the conduct of hon. Members in that House.

Amendment proposed, In page 1, line 19, after the word "persons," to insert the words "in so far as the same bear upon the charges and allegations against the said. Members."—(Mr. Robert Reid.)

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

THE LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN (Mr. SEXTON) (Belfast, W.)

said, he thought that the argumentative character of the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid) would have induced the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary not only to rise and reply to the arguments advanced by a Member of such high standing, but to have displayed an eagerness to accept the Amendment itself. If the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member were carried, the clause would read in this way— The Commissioners shall inquire into and report upon the charges and allegations made against certain Members of Parliament and other persons in so far as the same bear upon the alleged complicity of the said Members. He had followed the debate with care from the beginning, and had studied the speeches of the Government, and especially the speech of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) at his garden party last Saturday. He had come to the conclusion that what was proposed was an inquiry into a conspiracy. Certainly, that was what was conveyed in the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General to the jury. It was an inquiry into the whole history of the Land League and the National League; it was to be an inquiry, not into independent or isolated crime on the part of any individuals, but into crimes in respect of which there was complicity and connection between Members of Parliament and other persons, crimes committed by other persons which were connived at and condoned by Members of that House. The whole and sole assertion, therefore, was the assertion of complicity between persons in that House and persons outside. In these circumstances, the inquiry into the conduct of persons outside had no relevancy, except so far as it tended to cast light on the suggested criminality of persons who were Members of the House. He was sorry that the First Lord of the Treasury was not present, because he desired to point out to him that his old friend, Mr. Walter, did not desire the words "other persons" to be included in the Bill. The Committee would remember that on Thursday, July 12, the First Lord of the Treasury announced that he was willing to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the charges made against Members of Parliament. There was not the slightest reference to "other persons" on that occasion. His reading of the situation was that at that time the Bill had been drawn up, and that the title or measure did not bear the words "other persons." In fact, it was then, or immediately afterwards, that the First Lord of the Treasury confessed that the Bill was in existence, and the Government, on the suggestion of Mr. Walter, introduced the words "other persons" into the Bill, forgetting at the same time to amend the title in order to make it accord with the proposed change. What was the course taken by the First Lord's old friend—Mr. Walter? He (Mr. Sexton) was able to prove that he did not require the words "other persons" to be inserted in the Bill from his own words. On the 13th of July, the day following the announcement of the intention of the Government, The Times said— But since the proposal has been made on behalf of the Government, we may say at once that we at least are prepared to accept it, provided it is so framed as to subject to investigation the whole mass of facts involved in our charges against Mr. Parnell and his Party. Not a suggestion or hint in regard to "other persons." If the words "and other persons" had been contained in the original draft of the Bill, Mr. Walter would have known it. The Attorney General was present at the Cabinet meeting, and he was the counsel for Mr. Walter; but the words, "other persons," were not contained in the first draft of the Bill. If they had been, Mr. Walter would have pointed out the contradiction between the announcement made at the Table by the First Lord of the Treasury and the first draft of the Bill. But the day after the First Lord of the Treasury gave Notice of the Motion, Mr. Walter called upon him as an old friend. There was no negotiation or arrangement, but Mr. Walter called on the First Lord of the Treasury, and in the most simpleminded way mentioned to him the fact that there was a Bill. He should have thought that it was quite unnecessary for the two old friends to mention to one another a fact so notorious to all the world as the fact of the Bill. Did Mr. Walter come to the First Lord of the Treasury on the 13th of July, and say, "My old friend, I hear there is a Bill to be introduced in the House of Commons to inquire into charges against certain Members of Parliament?" Was that the nature of the communication? No, Sir; but the fact was this, that Mr. Walter was well aware on the 13th of July that the letters would go by the board, that they would have been shown to be forgeries, that the charges against Members of Parliament would be proved to be "all fudge," and that the only chance of Mr. Walter escaping from his disgrace and the ruin of his journal, was to establish a roving inquiry into the acts of "other persons," over whose acts Members of Parliament had no control, and for whose proceedings Members of Parliament had no responsibility, and by thus raising a false issue, and by reason of a delusive inquiry, promoted in bad faith, misleading the public mind as to the real facts of the case. The First Lord's old friend, Mr. Walter, had committed himself to the declaration that he would have been satisfied with an inquiry against Members of Parliament, and that he did not require the charges against "other persons" to be gone into; but a few days later the First Lord's old friend told a lie. On the 17th of July The Times contained the following words:— We have only to say, so far as we are concerned, that the proposal which we unreservedly accepted last week, and which involves the waiver of our rights as citizens, is that which the Government placed on the Paper, and no other. Why, what Mr. Walter accepted was not what the Government placed on the Paper; it was something which the Government had not placed on the Paper. What the Government placed on the Paper, after the two old friends had seen each other, was an inquiry into the charges against Members of Parliament, "and other persons;" but what Mr. Walter had accepted, was an inquiry into the charges against Members of Parliament alone. Now, there was a manifest lie. [Laughter.] The Chief Secretary smiled; but he always did. The Chief Secretary regarded lies from a point of view in which he (Mr. Sexton) did not regard them. The Chief Secretary, on the theory of falsehood, was a most ingenious casuist, and judging from the daily course of proceedings in that House, he (Mr. Sexton) was entitled to say that he held no common opinion with the right hon. Gentleman on the subject. He was curious, however, to know how the Chief Secretary would meet this case. On the 13th of July The Times said it would be satisfied with charges against Members of Parliament alone. It was quite evident that that statement was absolutely false and inaccurate—not only misleading, but absolutely false, because on the evening of that day the Government put down upon the Paper their intention to appoint a Commission to inquire into certain charges and allegations against Members of Parliament and other persons. But the First Lord's old friend, Mr. Walter, on the 20th of July attached to the words "and other persons" in the Bill a scope and meaning which was sought to be attached to them by the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid), who said that the Commission should not inquire into the conduct of other persons, except so far as it concerned Members of Parliament. But The Times said afterwards— The subject of investigation, so far as other persons are concerned, is their conduct in relation to Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary Colleagues and the matters that are charged against them. Surely, the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries appealed with extraordinary and irresistible force to the Government, apart from the merits of his case, when he was able to plead, as he could plead, that he proposed this Amendment at the instance and fortified by the support of Mr. Walter himself. What was to be proved at this inquiry. The charges made by The Times and nothing else. The charges made by The Times and nothing else were referred to in the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General, and the speech of the Attorney General at the trial was to be the sole matter of inquiry. If The Times, in order to prove its charges, was satisfied with an inquiry into the conduct of Members of Parliament and other persons so far as it concerned Members of Parliament, and if The Times thought that the Reference was sufficient to enable it to prove its case, he wanted to know why the Government should prolong the inquiry and public excitement, should waste the public time and cause great expense by importing into the charges matters which were not strictly relevant to them, and which Mr. Walter declared to be superflous. He would suggest a practical course to the Government. As the First Lord's old friend, Mr. Walter, had made a call on him, he would suggest that the First Lord might now call upon his old friend, Mr. Walter. There need be no negotiation, no arrangement. The First Lord of the Treasury need not call on Mr. Walter as First Lord, nor need he call upon Mr. Walter as the owner of The Times. They were old friends, and could call upon each other as old friends. The First Lord need only do at this interview what Mr. Walter did at the last. The First Lord of the Treasury need only mention the fact of the Bill. He might say—"By the way, Walter, you know there is a Bill before the House which as at first arranged was for an inquiry into charges against Members of Parliament, but which was subsequently, at your suggestion, altered to a Bill for an inquiry into charges against Members and other persons, and, in regard to which The Times subsequently told a lie. We find ourselves in some difficulty in relation to the inquiry into charges against other persons; because you say, Walter, that you do not require to investigate charges against other people, except in so far as they concern the conduct of Members of Parliament. In the House to-day, a troublesome Amendment has been moved by Mr. Reid, an English lawyer, and Member for Dumfries, who, acting on your suggestion, asks us to accept what has been suggested by The Times itself. You will confess, Walter, between me and you as old friends, that this puts us, the Government, in a difficulty." It was now only a quarter to 1 o'clock—the afternoon was long, the discussion could proceed; the right hon. Gentleman could make a call on his old friend, and then return and inform them by what course of logic his old friend authorized him on the 1st of August to oppose an Amendment which that old friend himself suggested on the 13th of July.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. MATTHEWS) (Birmingham, E.)

I had thought it better not to rise immediately after the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries sat down, but to wait until some other hon. Gentleman had an opportunity of speaking, if he wished to do so. I must, at the outset, challenge the very foundation of the argument by which the Amendment has been supported—namely, that the primary object of the Bill is to enable an investigation to be made into the conduct of Members of Parliament, or to enable them to clear themselves. That was not the primary object of the Bill. The primary object of the Bill was to investigate charges which my hon. and learned Friend has correctly described as constituting a catalogue of melancholy and disgraceful crimes which have been left uninquired into and uninvestigated by those who are most concerned—[Cries of "Who are they?" and "Name!"] [The CHAIRMAN: Order, order!]—and with regard to which the Government thought it a matter of public interest and importance that not only the truth, but the whole truth should be ascertained and made known. For that reason he proposed to institute the tribunal which we believed to be best calculated to investigate the whole matter and to elicit the whole truth. As I have in substance repeatedly stated before, an organ of the Press, which certainly has a very large circulation, has openly and deliberately alleged that an organization has existed which in reality connived at crime, encouraged crime, was aided by crime, and drew its resources from the perpetrators of crime. That was a proposition so startling, so alarming, I may say, in its nature and extent, that an investigation, and a full investigation, of it became, in the judgment of the Government, expedient and proper. It is perfectly true that a certain number, I may say a large number, of Members of Parliament, were connected more or less closely with that organization, and held positions more or less prominent in it; but it was not in their capacity as Members of Parliament, but as Members closely connected with that organization that they were attacked. The primary object of the Bill, therefore, is that that ground of accusation should be disposed of one way or the other—that it should be either crystallized into certainty if it is true, or disproved if the accusations are false; and the object of the Government will not be accomplished, nor, I believe, would the desire of the country be satisfied, unless that result be attained, I should have thought that to Members of the House sitting below the Gangway no result would have been more desirable than that the result of the inquiry should be to prove either that the guilt of secret encouragement of crime and outrage attaches itself to that organization or did not attach to it. But the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member would hamper the Commission by preventing it from inquiring into and ascertaining the truth as to that alleged fact. The second argument of the hon. and learned Member was based on the complexity of the inquiry which that would involve. Let me point out that, assuming that Members of the House are in any way involved in any of the charges brought before the Commission, that complexity could not possibly be avoided. In the course of the evidence as to some of the crimes that are to be inquired into, one case might be found to be connected with another, and nothing could be more unsatisfactory than that the Commissioners should be stopped on the very threshold of an inquiry that would go to prove the guilt or the innocence of Members of this House, because it involves the case of other persons whose guilt might be established. It is obvious, I think, to any understanding that the main and most serious charges in the action of "O'Donnell v. Walter and another," are not the charges made against hon. Members. [Cries of "Oh!"] Yes; certainly. When it is alleged that Egan was the treasurer of the League, and provided the funds for the perpetration of the Phœnix Park murders, and that Byrne, the Secretary of the League, provided the weapons for their perpetration, surely those are much graver charges than the charges that are levelled against Members of the House. It is perfectly true that in the statement of those charges is involved the proposition that influential members of the organization known as the Land League and who were also Members of Parliament were so associated with Egan and Byrne as to render probable the conclusion that they must either have known what those officers of the organization were doing or must have deliberately shut their eyes to their proceedings. But the gravest charges are those that are made against the officers of the organization whom I have named; and the House will remember in connection with the articles of The Times that in his letter Mr. O'Donnell said that Byrne was directed by abler and more wicked men than himself. Mr. O'Donnell did not say whom he meant by that remark.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR (Liverpool, Scotland)

Does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that he meant us? [Cries of "No!"] Then do not insinuate the charge.

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order!

MR. CLANCY (Dublin, Co., N.)

That is the insinuation.

MR. MATTHEWS

If the hon. Member will do me the honour to wait for a moment——

THE CHAIRMAN

The hon. Member for North Dublin (Mr. Clancy), following the action of other hon. Members, has interfered in a disorderly manner in throwing words across the House. I must give Notice to the hon. Member that if this conduct is repeated, I must exercise the power that the House has conferred upon me.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

I wish to say—and it is only fair that I should do so——

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! The right hon. Gentleman had not concluded his sentence when he was interrupted.

MR. MATTHEWS

I beg to assure the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool that neither in this House nor elsewhere do I deal in insinuations; but if I intend to make a charge against any person I make it in the plainest and most unambiguous manner. I intended no insinuation against anyboby. I only used words that have been used in these proceedings. Mr. O'Donnell, in his letter, said that Byrne was directed by abler and wickeder men than himself. I do not say for one instant that he meant by that hon. Members below the Gangway; but I say it is of public interest to know who those men were. Whether they were Members of this House or not, the importance of the matter and the public interest of such an inquiry are equally grave. I do not suggest who they were; but whoever they were, it is, I repeat, a matter of public interest that it should be ascertained who they were. I myself do not in the least make any suggestion on the point; but the suggestion has been made, and it is not improbable, that there was somebody acting in complicity and connivance with Byrne and Egan. But if the matter of who egged on, encouraged and promoted these crimes is left uninvestigated, the result of the inquiry would obviously be most unsatisfactory and incomplete. I repeat, then, that the primary object of the Bill is not to attack or to clear Members of Parliament. The object is to get hold, in the most efficient way, not only of the truth, but of the whole truth in relation to the organization to which I have referred as regards its connection with crime.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT (Derby)

Complaint has been made of the protracted character of these debates; but if we require any justification it will be found in the speech which we have just heard. It has only been by the most persistent pressure that we are at last beginning to discover what is the real meaning of this Bill. Gentlemen on this side have previously said—and it has been met by indignant denials—that the object of the Commission is not, as has been pretended, to give an opportunity to Members of Parliament to clear themselves from foul and calumnious charges—that that is only a secondary and incidental object; but that the real object is to inquire into the conduct of political organizations. At last, on the third day of the debate on the Bill, the Committee have extracted from the Government that that which has been repudiated over and over again is now, for the first time, avowed by them. Let us look back to the history of this transaction. If it were of public importance that there should be an inquiry into this political organiza- tion, why was not that inquiry instituted by the Government? All these statements were made in a newspaper of great influence and circulation. I suppose it was part of the duty of the Home Secretary to make some inquiry into the grounds upon which the charges were made before the Government advised the appointment of a Royal Commission.

COMMANDER BETHELL (York, E.R., Holderness)

I rise to Order. Are the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman relevant to the question before the Committee?

THE CHAIRMAN

called upon Sir William Harcourt to proceed.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

The articles upon which the Home Secretary justifies this Commission have been before the public for the last 15 months. The Government at first desired to escape the responsibility for the appointment of this Commission; they said—"It is not our doing; it is not our wish; it is done at the instance of the hon. Member for Cork;" and now we are told that the Commission will not mainly concern itself with the hon. Member for Cork and his Colleagues, but that it has a totally different object; that its main object is to inquire into a political organization, and that it is only as members of this organization that the conduct of Members of Parliament is to be inquired into. Is it possible for the Government to exhibit themselves in a more double-minded form than they have done from the beginning to the end of these transactions? They have said, and the Home Secretary now says, that the charges and allegations in The Times do not mainly affect the Irish Members. It is hardly possible to conceive how a man in so responsible a position could make a statement of that kind, which common sense will repudiate with indignation? It is perfectly well known that the articles entitled Parnellism and Crime were written with a definite object; that they were intended as an attack upon Home Rule; that they were intended to disparage the hon. Member for Cork and the Leaders of the Home Rule movement. Everyone knows that that was the case. Then what were the primary objects of the inquiry? I wish hon. Members to mark that the inquiry had been stated by the Government to have been set on foot, not be- cause it was necessary to inquire into the action of the Land League and the National League. The Government have confessed that they would never have proposed it if the hon. Member for Cork had brought an action against The Times. They have said that over and over again. Now, if the hon. Member for Cork had brought an action, nobody knows better than the Home Secretary, from his practice at the Bar, that the conduct of the Land League and the National League could not have been brought under the purview of that action, nor could the guilt of Egan and Byrne have been tried. These things would have been as irrelevant as the conduct of the hon. Member for Cork in the action of "O'Donnell v. Walter." The right hon. Gentleman knows that perfectly well. Well, Sir, the Commission is offered as an alternative to a proceeding which could not have had as its primary object that which is now stated to be the primary object of this inquiry. When the Home Secretary says that the conduct of the Irish Members is not the main or the primary object of attack in the articles of The Times, or of the action to which they invited or hounded on the hon. Member for Cork, whom does he expect to accept such an assertion? 'What, then, is the primary object of these articles and the primary object of this inquiry? I quoted last night one of the allegations which was intended to insinuate the connection of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) with crime. Is that the primary object of this inquiry. If that is not intended as a political calumny which the Government desired to include in the allegations to the Commission, why was it read out by the hon. and learned Attorney General at the trial? I suppose that the Attorney General would hardly get up and state that he deliberately read a calumnious passage about the most eminent Member of this House in mere wantonness. No, Sir; he thought that that was a material circumstance, or he would not have put it into the indictment which is to be referred to the Commission. I confess that I heard with deep regret that in order to defend himself the Attorney General sheltered himself under the approval and authority of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury (Sir Henry James). He said that no allegation had been brought forward by him which did not meet the approval of my right hon. and learned Friend. In the absence of my right hon. and learned Friend, I will repudiate, and I repudiate on his behalf, that he was a party to the putting in an allegation that was utterly irrelevant to the issue to be tried; and an allegation which could only have been put in for the purpose of making a wanton attack upon my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian, in order, if possible, to hold him up to the execration of the public. An attempt which, like all your other attempts, has ignominiously failed; an attempt to damage political opponents by putting forth allegations against them which were not to be specified as distinct charges that could be properly encountered. I know that it is of no use our moving Amendments on this Bill. You will defeat them by your majority, although I am happy to see that you carry with you only about one-half of your Party majority, showing that there is some sense of shame among those who usually support you. We have, however, another and a different object, and one which we shall persistently pursue both in this House and out of it—namely, the object of making the country understand the real issue. We have succeeded to-day in extracting from the Home Secretary the statement that the Commission is not offered to the Irish Members to afford them an opportunity of meeting foul and calumnious charges, but that its object, as now stated by the right hon. Gentleman, is to make an attack upon a political or ganization which you hope to damage and destroy by vague accusations which cannot be formulated, and by miscellaneous calumnies, some of which you hope may stick to those against whom they are uttered.

THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR) (Manchester, E.)

The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has complained of what he described as a wanton attack on the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone). The right hon. Gentleman ought to be a great authority on wanton attacks; no one has made more than he has; nobody has shown greater ingenuity than he has in dragging them into debate in the most irrelevant manner; and in the speech which he has just delivered he has made a wanton attack upon my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General. If the hon. and learned Gentleman has associated himself with the right hon. and learned Member for Bury (Sir Henry James), it was not because he needed protection, for the Bar of England, of which the right hon. Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) was once an ornament, are unanimous in believing that the Attorney General has not departed by a hair's breadth from that path of rectitude and professional honour, of which he affords so distinguished an example. The right hon. Gentleman proceeded to say that by the exertions of himself and his Friends he has, after three days' debate, succeeded at last in extracting from the Government the true object with which this Bill has been brought forward. Sir, the right hon. Gentleman cannot have done us the honour of listening to the speeches which have been made from this Bench. My right hon. Friend, in the speech he has made to-day, was guilty of no fault but that of repetition, for he has repeated what has been said three or four times, and he has added nothing to the declarations that have been formerly made by the Government. The history of the matter may be summed up in a few words. The Times made certain accusations against Members of Parliament and other persons who had ample opportunity of submitting the charges to a Court of Law. One of the other persons did so, but Members of Parliament shrank from appealing to a Court of Law, and yet were not ashamed to come down to the House and complain in Parliament that justice was denied them. These charges were not now uttered for the first time, but were made last year. Wearied by the endless iteration of these complaints, the Government said at last that matters had reached such a pass that it was absolutely necessary, in order to satisfy the public mind, that there should be a full, clear, and exhaustive inquiry into all the transactions set forth in Parnellism and Crime. The Government have not proposed this Bill with the simple object of providing Gentlemen with one tribunal, after their rejection of another. The purpose of the Government in proposing the inquiry is to find out the whole truth, not merely the truth about the allegations against Members of Parliament, but the truth about the whole of these transactions in which Members of Parliament are rightly or wrongly alleged to have been mixed up. That is the attitude of the Government, and there has never been any wavering in the matter. It is the view which they have always taken, and which they take still. The right hon. Gentleman opposite has complained of my right hon. Friend sitting near me for saying that Members of Parliament are not the persons principally implicated in the charges of The Times. Has the right hon. Gentleman read Parnellism and Crime? The main accusation affecting Members of Parliament in that pamphlet is, that they had connived at and condoned criminal outrages; and, serious as it is, that is certainly not as serious an accusation as the actual charge of committing criminal outrages. Those who are accused of actually committing crime are the persons most seriously concerned. The right hon. Gentleman opposite says that the object of the Government is to inquire into what he calls a political organization.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

I took, I think, the exact words used by the Home Secretary.

MR. MATTHEWS

I did not say "political organization."

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

I think I am responsible for the addition of the adjective.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I am bound to say that the word "political" has received and is receiving the most extraordinary extension at the hands of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House. I do not deny that the Land League may have had political among other objects. The right hon. Gentleman has stated that the chief agents of the League were Fenians, and I am not prepared to deny that Fenianism had political objects, and in that sense the Land League might be called a political organization. But the Government do not want to inquire into the objects which that organization, whether political or not, had in view, but into the means which it used; and if these means were criminal means, as is alleged in Parnellism and Crime, and if hon. Members of this House had cognizance of them, then the Government would not be instituting an inquiry into the objects of the Land League as a political organization, but into the acts of the Land League as an organization, which, whatever its objects, used as its means foul crime. Does the right hon. Gentleman opposite mean to tell the Committee that an investigation of that sort is an investigation aimed exclusively at a political Party as such? Has the right hon. Gentleman changed so much in the last five years that he can confound the political or semi-political objects of an association with the criminal methods by which they may seek to attain those objects? It is into the methods, and the methods alone, that this Commission would investigate; and it is because I believe that if the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member is accepted the investigation would be unduly limited, and would not have the the effect of clearing up the public doubts, that I cannot agree to the proposal now before the Committee.

SIR LYON PLAYFAIR (Leeds, S.)

The Chief Secretary for Ireland has complained that the Opposition are giving an extraordinary extension to the meaning of the Government.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

My observations referred to the use of the word "political."

SIR LYON PAYFAIR

The Home Secretary has certainly given the most extraordinary extension to the object of the Bill. According to the right hon. Gentleman, the object is to examine into an organization which caused political crimes of a very outrageous character, and he says incidentally that Members of this House might be concerned as having been connected with those crimes. Now, let me remind the right hon. Gentleman that when this House has desired to inquire into organizations producing crime in Ireland they have appointed. Select Committees. There have, for example, been Select Committees upon the White-boy organization, upon Ribbonism and crime, and upon other organizations charged with crime in Ireland. If it was the intention of the Government to inquire into any organization producing crime they ought to have appointed a Committee instead of introducing this Bill. If the Home Secretary had made the same speech on the Motion for the second reading which he has made to-day, most certainly there would have been a Division.

MR. MATTHEWS

I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. I said exactly the same thing on the second reading.

SIR LYON PLAYFAIR

I have been an attentive attendant during these debates, and I have listened with the greatest attention to the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman; but none of his previous speeches contained such an extension of the object of the Government as he has announced to-day. If the main object of the Bill is concerned with an organization which produces crime, why has not that been declared in the title of the measure? The title of the Bill is—" Members of Parliament (Charges and Allegations)." Is it not plain, therefore, that the original intention of the Government was to enable certain Members of Parliament to clear themselves from the foul calumnies of which they were the objects? That was the title of the Bill, but it is true that subsequently the Government added the words "or others" to the Preamble; but what could these words mean, except that the investigation was to be confined to the charges against Members of Parliament and "others" in connection with Members of Parliament? The meaning must have been that "others" in connection with Members of Parliament were to have an opportunity of clearing their characters. That was the meaning which it was desired to fix to the words by the Amendment before the Committee. The country, I am sure, will be astonished at the extraordinary extension which has been given to the object of the Bill. The Committee are now told that the Commission is to examine into an organization which was responsible for crime, and the Members of Parliament who have believed that the measure was a Bill to enable them to clear their characters are, it appears, only to be brought in incidentally as members of the organization in question.

MR. BRADLAUGH (Northampton)

said, there had been two speeches delivered by right hon. Gentlemen from the Government Bench against the Amendment which, he confessed, filled him with some alarm. At any rate, he had attended to all that had been said during the debate, and also to what had occurred in previous debates upon the Bill; and he was sure he would be within the judgment of the House and of the country, when they had an opportunity of reading the debate, and especially the speech of the Home Secretary, if he asserted that an absolutely new case had been presented that afternoon by the right hon. Gentleman, and endorsed by the Chief Secretary for Ireland. He would endeavour to make that fact, he hoped, as clear to the Committee as it was to his own mind. He understood the Home Secretary to object, in very careful language, to the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid). The right hon. Gentleman said he could not accept the Amendment because the Government, moved by the startling and alarming statements made in The Times, had felt that it was their primary duty to inquire fully into the truth of those statements as to the crimes put in the forefront of the startling and alarming articles in question. The right hon. Gentleman added that it was for that reason that the Bill had been introduced. But The Times was not printed yesterday, and the Government had not heard those statements for the first time just before their determination to introduce the Bill. Portions of those very statements were, by the knowledge of the Home Secretary, circulated in a Parliamentary Paper placed in the hands of Members last year, and portions of them formed the subject-matter of discussion in the debate on Breach of Privilege. He did not know whether the Forms of the House would permit him to put the question in the words he was about to use; but he would ask, how dared the Home Secretary entertain any hope that any human being of reasonable sanity would believe that alarming and startling statements which did not startle the Government last year had startled them to this extent this year? They went away for the holidays comfortably last year. The statements did not startle them during the winter after their publication, but they now startled them so much that they felt it their duty to issue a Commission. What was the true explanation of their conduct? It was that the hon. Member for Cork having asked for an investigation, the Government, being desirous only to damage the rising cry for Home Rule in Ireland, had determined that the inquiry should not be an inquiry, except in a subsidiary fashion, into the conduct of the Members of Parliament, but an inquiry into all the mischiefs, all the crimes, and all the horrors which had arisen in the country we had misgoverned, as part of the fruits of our misgovernment. He would look a little more to the language used by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, as well as by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was supposed to be a master in the use of language, and able to express what he meant. The right hon. Gentleman said that the object declared to-day by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had always been the object of the Government; that they did not bring the Bill forward—he noticed the word "primarily" was now introduced—primarily for the object of clearing Members of the House, but for the purpose of ascertaining the whole truth. Well, if that be true, why did they not upon their own initiative bring the Bill in a long time ago? Portions of the inquiry they had already made; they took statutory powers to make secret inquiries into a large number of the very crimes and outrages with which the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary tried, not improperly, to harrow up public feeling. He said "not improperly," because he was one of those who thought that the more all crime and outrage could be denounced in connection with any political movement the better for the welfare of the country. But he could not believe that the Government were quite truthful in their declarations in the House now, because either in the secret investigations which they had conducted they had some evidence affecting people within their reach, and in that case they were traitors to the country that they were called upon to govern by not putting those people on their trial, or the investigations had shown them that there was no foundation for the insinuations The Times had made over and over again, and which were repeated by the hon. and learned Attorney General. Of course, he did not blame the hon. and learned Attorney General for repeating them, because it was his duty, as advocate for The Times, to make out the strongest case for The Times he could. He thought it, however, a misfortune that the advocate of The Times should have happened to be the first Law Officer of the Crown when he appeared as counsel for The Times, for he knew how difficult it was for a man in the hon. and learned Gentleman's high position to distinguish between the Law Officer of the Crown and his position as the advocate of his clients in what he was doing. But it was still more embarrassing to private Members of the House when the hon. and learned Attorney General's Colleagues used his statement in Court, and characterized it, very properly, as a terrible indictment. They had told the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell)—"It is you who asked for the investigation;" and yet, after all, the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary came down to the House now, and said—"It is not because the hon. Member for Cork asked for an investigation, but because the Government were alarmed and startled by these terrible allegations, that this Bill was introduced." If he (Mr. Bradlaugh) had said that, The Times would have said it was untrue. He appealed to the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, as an able man, as a clear-minded man, as a man used to advocacy, as a man used to moving juries, whether the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General was not a speech to the jury outside intended to beguile away votes, whether the attack which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. James Lowther) made upon the Leader of the Opposition did not show that the object of the Government was really to cast dirt upon particular political opponents? He should vote for the Amendment. He was told that the Amendment was intended to limit the scope of this investigation. But, surely, when men were to be put in peril for the rest of their lives for having connived at murder, the inquiry should be so limited that the peril should not be unfairly put upon them. A man charged with any sort of misdemeanour had some kind of show of justice even in Ireland; certainly he had some in Scotland; certainly he had some in Wales, certainly he had some in England; and yet he understood the right hon. Gentle- man the Home Secretary to put it that out of all the cases of crime that had taken place in Ireland in connection with an agrarian crisis of exceeding bitterness, an agrarian crisis which was only the culmination of generations of agrarian wrong, the Commissioners were to be permitted to select instances and put them as damaging to the Irish Party. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary put it to the Committee that to connive at crime was not as serious as the committal of crime. He knew the right hon. Gentleman was a great logician; he did not pretend to be one; but he had serious doubts as to the morality of the right hon. Gentleman's proposition. He understood the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General in the case of "O'Donnell v. Walter and another" to more than suggest that there were men of intellect, men of means, who induced poor, and angry, and wretched, and poverty-stricken men to commit crime; and in that case he (Mr. Bradlaugh) suggested that the men who connived at crime, and who were accessories beforehand to it, were the greatest of all criminals. What was the object of depreciating the case which the Government thought they had against the Irish Members? Either they thought that some of those Members were tainted, or they did not. If they did not, then every speech they had made to their constituents was so far removed from the truth that he felt a difficulty in characterizing them without bringing himself under the censure of the Chair. If hon. Members opposite did not think that the Members named in the articles in The Times had been accessories before the fact to felonies, and had connived at them, most of the speeches they had made when they had put to their constituents the character of the men who would be brought into power if a certain kind of political proposal were successful—all those speeches must have been so unfair, so dishonourable, that the result of an investigation which cleared Members sitting around him would be to stamp upon those who had now the charge of the government of the country the degradation of having descended to calumny and libel against their opponents. The way the debate proceeded rendered it exceedingly difficult in speaking to an Amendment to keep oneself within the strict limits of what a technical speech on an Amendment should be, yet, if there be an Amendment which left room for the whole of the kind of address he was making, it was surely the Amendment they were now discussing. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid) wanted to limit nothing. These charges and allegations referred to Members of the House, and the hon. and learned Gentleman's proposal was that wherever the charges and allegations born against hon. Members they should be inquired into, and yet they were told that this Amendment would limit the inquiry. What must be thought when the Government wanted to pile up every bad word every man who happened to be an Irishman in any part of the world had said, when they wanted to pile up every wicked act any Irishman in the world had done, when they wanted to pile up every word of vengeance that some man, who had been turned out of the house in which he was born, and possibly seen the roof of thatch burning over some of his little belongings, might have uttered? Every one of those words and acts which might not have any bearing upon any charge made against any Member of the House were to be brought forward to save the Government from discredit. Then the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary said it was the alarming and startling statements in The Times that had moved the Government to bring in this Bill. That was an alarming and startling statement for every lover of the truth. The right hon. Gentleman had hidden his alarm for a number of months; the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury had managed very well to hide the startling effects of those statements upon himself. He thought he bad heard the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury say—and, as he believed, truthfully say—that the hon. Member for the City of Cork had the remedy at law in his own hands, and that however eminent might be the persons attacked, or however serious the charges might be, it was no duty of the Government to interfere so long as a legal remedy remained. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary told them that when the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury told them that, he was not speaking the truth. [Cries of "No, no!"] Yes; because he said the Government, startled and alarmed by this indictment of crime, from the very beginning had always determined to investigate it—that they had never changed their minds upon the subject. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary said the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had told them nothing new, but that he had only repeated what had always been the decision of the Government. If that be true, the Government had very carefully hidden their decision. He (Mr. Bradlaugh) asked hon. Members opposite to have a little fairness; charges of murder and complicity with murder were not things to fling about lightly. Let those who sat around him, if they were guilty, be condemned on clear and fair evidence; but do not bring in every outrage of which the Committee knew, every White-boy or Moonlighting expedition of which they had heard; and he was surprised to hear the hon. and learned Solicitor General (Sir Edward Clarke), who had a careful judgment, and who often exercised it with considerable independence, introduce Moonlighting into this matter. Unless the hon. and learned Gentleman meant that some of the Members who sat around him (Mr. Bradlaugh) were criminals, connivers at crime, and hirers of men to commit outrages; unless he meant they knowingly employed agents to carry out Moonlighting expeditions; unless he meant something of this kind, the introduction of Moonlighting was unworthy of the hon. and learned Solicitor General, and he (Mr. Bradlaugh) appealed to independent Members only to condemn men for what they deserved to be condemned, and not to throw a huge amount of odium and calumny in the hope that some of it might stick.

MR. J. E. REDMOND (Wexford, N.)

said, that it might be thought that, after the powerful speech to which the Committee had just listened, there was very little need for a speech from one of the Irish Members in support of this Amendment. But the situation, so far as they were concerned, had been absolutely changed by the speech which was made by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary. The Irish Members, especially those of them who were incriminated in the libels in The Times, found themselves now face to face with an entirely different situation to that with which they found themselves face to face up to to-day. He asked what was, according to the Government, now the object of the Bill? The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary told them that the primary object of the Bill was not to inquire into the guilt or innocence of Members of Parliament—was not to afford Members of the House an opportunity of clearing themselves from odious charges; but he told them—and he (Mr. J. E. Redmond) took down the right hon. Gentleman's words—that the accusation was that an organization ostensibly peaceable was really of a criminal character. The Bill, therefore, was a Bill introduced for the purpose of inquiring into, not the conduct of certain Members of the House, but into the conduct and the history of two organizations which, for eight or nine years, had been in existence in Ireland. He would be the last to deny that an inquiry into those organizations might be a most proper thing; not only might it be a most proper thing, but the duty of instituting an inquiry into such organizations might be an imperative duty on the Government. But what he claimed was this—that if the Government intended this Commission to be a Commission of Inquiry into the Land League and the National League, let them say so in their Bill. What was the title of the Bill? It was "Members of Parliament (Charges and Allegations) Bill." If the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had truthfully interpreted the meaning of the Bill, it should be entitled, not "Members of Parliament (Charges and Allegations) Bill, but "Land League and National League (Investigation) Bill," or something of that kind. He repeated that he would be the last to deny that an inquiry into those organizations might be necessary, although he could scarcely understand how the necessity for such an inquiry arose now more than at any other time. There was not, he asserted, a single charge or allegation against the Land League which was contained in The Times pamphlet which was not repeated formally and solemnly in the House by the late Mr. Forster. There was not a single allegation against the National League in The Times pamphlet which had not been repeatedly and publicly made against that organization in the Press and on the platform for years past. There was not an allegation in the pamphlet which was not known to every Member of the Party opposite when, in 1885, they were allied with the Irish Members; when, in 1885, they, by the aid of the Irish Members, turned the Liberal Party out of power; and he wanted to know why, if the duty of inquiring into these crimes was an imperative one, if the duty of inquiring into the Land League was an imperative one now, it was not considered an imperative one by the Tory Government which came into power in 1885, and who then had precisely the same information on the subject as they had now? The change in the situation was this. Some years had elapsed, and these charges had been revived with certain additions; and he maintained that those additions, which consisted of the letters alleged to be forged, were the only things which had attracted the attention of the public, and which called, in the estimation of the public, for investigation. So it came to this—that they were now told that stated charges made years ago in the House and out of it against an organization which had ceased to exist for seven years demanded from the Government that a Commission of Inquiry should be established, and such a Commission was proposed to be established by a Bill which did not honestly state its purpose in its title, and which was called "Members of Parliament (Charges and Allegations) Bill." This was the first time he had spoken a word during the course of this debate, although there were very few of his Colleagues who were more deeply implicated in the libels of The Times than himself; and, for himself, he might say he would be very loth indeed to support any Amendment at all which had the object or could have the effect of altering the scope of the inquiry so far as he or his Colleagues were concerned. They courted the fullest inquiry into their actions; he went a step further, and said, as one who was a member of the Land League and as a member of the National League, they were willing to have an inquiry into those organizations, and they courted such inquiry; but they asked that the two things should not be confounded. They asked Parliament—not under the pretence of inquiring into their conduct—to enter upon an inquiry into two organizations, which would necessitate, in the words which were used by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary the other night, a scrutiny of eight years of Irish history. They understood perfectly well the object of the Government as avowed by their speeches to-day. For his (Mr. J. E. Redmond's) part, he rejoiced that the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had made the speech which he made at the Table just now, because at last the true meaning of this Bill would dawn upon the public outside. The public would at last understand that the Bill, which they were told was an answer to his hon. Friend's (Mr. Parnell's) appeal, and a concession, forsooth, to him, was in reality a Bill intended not to afford the hon. Member for the City of Cork that opportunity of clearing himself which he demanded, but a Bill intended to raise a discussion and inquiry into eight years of Irish history. He (Mr. J. E. Redmond) did not think they had any reason to fear an inquiry into eight years of Irish history; but he, as a man who was accused definitely and clearly beyond all doubt, who was accused of having had trade and traffic with known contrivers of murder, and who, as such an accused person, demanded an opportunity of clearing himself from that charge, objected altogether that the inquiry should be converted into an inquiry into eight years of Irish history, with some seven years of which he had had little or no connection, into transactions with which he could have had no possible connection at all, and into the conduct of men of whom he knew nothing at all and never had seen. He demanded that the inquiry should be confined to the accusations, and should not be spread indefinitely over this number of years. He had made these remarks, and he would make no further remarks during the progress of the Bill in Committee. It was to him a most loathsome and painful thing to have to stand up in the House of Commons and speak a single syllable on this Bill. If he consulted his own feelings he would simply say—"Pass your Bill, pass your Bill as it is, pass any Bill you choose, and I will leave myself absolutely in the hands of any tribunal you may set up, because I know it will be impossible for any tribunal to fasten upon me any shade or taint of responsibility for criminal acts." He maintained that it was a cruel and unjust thing, not to him personally, but a cruel and unjust thing to the cause he was associated with and the country he represented, that, in the Government's attempt to fasten guilt upon him, or, he ought to have said, in their desire to give him an opportunity of proving his innocence, they should go into an inquiry into eight years of Irish history, not with the object of showing his guilt or innocence, but with the object of raising a cloud of prejudice in this country, with the object of parading before the English people a number of crimes which the Government knew could not be connected with the Irish Members, and which many of them knew, or ought to know, were the direct result of the policy which they supported in Ireland, in order that by reviving their memory they might be able, as they thought, to induce some English people to still indulge in those prejudices against the Irish people which, unfortunately, had so long stood between the two countries. As he had said, he would say no more upon this matter except this—that he did not care a single fig for any opinion that might he formed of him by hon. Gentlemen who mainly composed the majority of the House. He did not either care a fig for what The Times might say of him, or for the libels they might publish of him. He would never dream of bringing such an accusation against anyone in that House; he would never think of complaining about anything The Times wrote about him. He would however like to qualify the last assertion, because in one small particular he did complain. He found in one of the articles which he read that he was accused of a certain definite thing which was untrue, and he wrote to The Times a letter—he did not care to go into the particulars.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

Certainly, state the details—they are important.

MR. J. E. REDMOND

said, his hon. Friend asked him to state the details. He was loth to go into them, but with the permission of the House he would state them briefly. The day after the Phœnix Park murders—at 3 o'clock on the Sunday—he was to have addressed a meeting in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. He rose on Sunday morning, having heard nothing whatever of the news, and he went to service at the Catholic church, and did not come back until about 1 o'clock in the afternoon. He then heard an indefinite rumour, which was to the effect that Lord Frederick Cavendish, and, as the rumour said—happily it was untrue—Lord Spencer had been assassinated. He endeavoured, as well as he could by communicating, not personally, but indirectly, with the detective force in Manchester, to find the truth of the statement before he went to the meeting. All he ascertained was, that the rumour was untrue so far as Lord Spencer was concerned, but that it was true as regarded Lord Frederick Cavendish. With that information solely he went to a mass meeting in the Free Trade Hall, and what did he do? He rose the moment the chairman took the chair, and he told the people that a terrible misfortune had happened to Ireland, and that they could not hold their meeting; and he proposed, in the strongest terms at his command, a resolution denouncing the atrocious murder which had been committed of Lord Frederick Cavendish in Dublin, and he expressed his opinion—his words were on record—that under no circumstances—under no conceivable circumstances—could assassination be tolerated. He came up to London, and next day the London Times, in publishing his remarks in Manchester, deliberately accused him of having withheld any mention of the murder of Mr. Burke, because he approved of that murder. He wrote to the London Times at once a letter pointing out the facts; that letter they had from that day to this refused to publish. He was not content with that, but he came down to the House a night or two afterwards, and took an opportunity of complaining of what The Times had done and of stating the facts, and The Times the next morning reported the rest of his speech, but omitted that portion—[Cries of "Will they report this?"] Hansard reported it. In the hon. and learned Attorney General's speech in the trial of the action of "O'Donnell v. Walter and another," he found the old charge raked up and stated against him again without any mention of his con- tradiction. He was wrong, perhaps, in going into detail; but his object in stating the fact was to show the Committee why he thought he was justified in saying he did not care, and that he did not believe his countrymen in Ireland and throughout the world cared a snap of the finger for what The Times might say of him. The Times were welcome to go on publishing calumnies that they know to be calumnies; the Members of the Government were welcome to repeat calumnies that they had opportunities of knowing were calumnies; Members of the House on the other side might go on believing those calumnies in spite of the evidence of their senses, as, for his part, he cared nothing about it. If Parliament chose to appoint this Commission of Inquiry into his conduct, they were welcome to do it; if they called him as a witness before the Commission, he was willing to go before it, and to disclose every act, and word, and thought of his whole life, public or private. He had nothing, and his Colleagues had nothing, to screen. But what he did say was that it was a cruel thing, and an unjust thing, when pretending, forsooth, that they were giving the incriminated Members an opportunity of clearing their characters, that they should in reality be doing what the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary admitted to-night—namely, endeavouring to throw the charges against them into the background, and to convert the Commission into a Commission of Inquiry into eight years of Irish history. He was astonished when he heard the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary say that he did not conceive that the Irish Members mentioned in the libels were those who were chiefly incriminated in the libels. Who did the right hon. Gentleman think were more incriminated? It was said, those who committed the deeds. Aye, it was a pleasant thing to find the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland lectured, and deservedly lectured, as he was on a question of morals in this matter by the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh). The Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland seemed to think that the tool, the dupe, who performed a criminal act was more responsible than the trader and trafficker with known contrivers of murder, those who executed and contrived and then condoned murders. No; the men chiefly incriminated in these libels were the Irish Members; those whom the Government had refused to name in a Schedule in the Bill; those against whom they had refused to state the definite charges. He and his Colleagues had at least a right to say that, having refused to state the names of the Members in a Schedule, having refused to state the charges on which hon. Gentlemen were going to be tried, in common fairness at least the Government should declare in the Bill that the inquiry should be into the conduct of hon. Members, and only into the conduct of others so far as that conduct of others tended to prove the guilt of hon. Members. It was playing with words to say this was a limitation of the proper scope of the Bill; it could not be said that this Amendment would exclude inquiry into the conduct of Mr. Egan, into the conduct of Mr. Ford, into the conduct of Sheridan, or of anybody whose conduct in the slightest degree tended to establish the guilt of Irish Members. By all means let them inquire into such conduct; but all that was asked was that the Commission should not inquire into the conduct of men, whether they be criminal or not, unless it could be shown that their conduct tended to prove that the Irish Members had any guilty connection with them. They did not desire that the conduct of guilty men should be screened, or that there should be no inquiry into the Land League. Let there be such inquiry; but let there be avowedly such inquiry by a Bill designed, and framed, and titled for the purpose; and do not, under the pretence of affording Members of the House an opportunity of having their conduct inquired into, go into inquiries into the conduct of Tom, Dick, and Harry, without showing, in the first place, that they had been connected with Irish Members. Personally, he had a very shrewd suspicion of what would take place when the Bill was passed. He had a very shrewd suspicion indeed that the inquiry would very soon be turned to Dick, Tom, and Harry. He believed that the inquiries into the acts of the Irish Members would, from the point of view of the counsel for The Times lamentably break down; but he also believed that the hon. and learnel Gentleman would be able to, if the Bill was passed as the Government had framed it, cover his retreat by showing that, although his statements were false against Irish Members, there undoubtedly was a certain amount of crime in Ireland, and that the inquiry might, perhaps, have the result of pointing to men who were responsible for that crime. He did not say that was not a useful and right thing to do, but he maintained that it was not fair to combine the two things. Their conduct should be inquired into on its merits. If The Times failed to establish the guilt of Irish Members, then the Commission, so far as they were concerned, should stop—so far as the Members of Parliament (Charges and Allegations) Commission was concerned the inquiry should stop—and any inquiry into the acts of other men ought to be an entirely distinct and separate matter, except so far as those other men were proved to be in connection with the Irish Members, except so far as the conduct of those other men might tend to prove the guilt of hon. Members. He had been betrayed into speaking much longer than he intended. He would finish as he had begun, by saying that neither he nor any of his hon. Colleagues wanted to limit the scope of the inquiry, so far as they were concerned, in the slightest degree. They courted inquiry into every public and private act of their lives, and they ventured to think that when the end came the English people would see that the criminals, and the conspirators, and the forgers were not in the part of the House in which they sat.

MR. WINTERBOTHAM (Gloucester, Cirencester)

said, he had not previously intervened in the discussions on this Bill. He had waited patiently until this Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid) was reached, because he could not but believe that it was an Amendment that the Government, judging from all they had said, were bound to accept. The other day the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House (Mr. W. H. Smith) announced this Bill as an offer to the Irish Members, and said "let them take it or leave it." To-day the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary (Mr. Matthews) said it never was intended for the Irish Members at all. He (Mr. Winterbotham) read the title of the Bill, and he could not believe that the title of the Bill was a lie on the face of it. The title of the Bill was "Members of Parliament (Charges and Allegations) Bill," and now the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary asserted that the proposed inquiry was not an inquiry mainly or principally into the allegations against hon. Members of the House, but it was an inquiry into the political history of Ireland for the last eight years. The Committee had just heard a speech from one of the incriminated Members. He (Mr. Winterbotham) hoped there was some chivalry left in the House of Commons; he hoped there were men who would get up and take the line adopted last night by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Kingswinford Division of Staffordshire (Mr. Staveley Hill). The Irish Members appealed to the House for justice. Were the Government going to let justice be denied to them in a cloud of muddy aspersion and in an inquiry into events which had happened during the last eight years? Was there an hon. Member of the House who would deny that the history of every national movement was full of details of questionable actions by various sections of men? Did they attack the memory of Cavour because he might have had communication with Mazzini, and Mazzini might have had communication with Orsini? Were the Government going into the recent history of Ireland without, at the same time, inquiring what had brought about the present lamentable state of Ireland? Were they going to stick to the letter of the Bill? Were they going to keep the pledge of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House to give hon. Members an opportunity of clearing their character? He could not understand how this Amendment could be refused by the Government, still less did he understand how this Amendment could be refused by high-minded and honourable Gentlemen opposite. He entreated hon. Gentlemen to rise above Party allegiance, and to insist that this inquiry should be conducted in the spirit and for the end for which it was all along avowed by the Government. Was the inquiry to be one mainly into the question whether Gentlemen who sat amongst them were guilty of complicity in hideous and abominable crimes, or was the inquiry to be one into all that had happened in Ireland by way of crime during the last eight or nine years? There was one other point he wished to raise—it had not been raised hitherto. If they were going into the question of crime in Ireland, were they going into one sort of crime only? Had all the outrages and all the bloodshed in Ireland been the result of two organizations—the Land League and the National League? Had there been no blood spilt in Ulster? Were the violent speeches which were alleged against hon. Members the only speeches which had stirred up evil blood and passion in Ireland? Were the Government going to prove that crime had dogged the steps of the Land League, and not going to inquire into the loss of life and rioting and disturbance which had followed incendiary speeches delivered by hon. Members belonging to the Party opposite? His appeal was an appeal for justice. An inquiry into the history of Ireland for the last six or eight years would be a very valuable inquiry. He had not the least objection to such an inquiry. He would vote with pleasure for an inquiry into the causes which had led to the lamentable state of things in Ireland; but he wanted this inquiry to be what it was upon the face of it—"Members of Parliament (Charges and Allegations) Bill." He wanted the country to know whether these accusations were true—whether the letters were forgeries or not. He assumed hon. Members did not care twopence about having the old stories raked up. Not only did the country not care for it, but the country were sick of it, and hon. Gentlemen opposite were sick of it. He believed there were many Members opposite who wanted to see something happier and brighter than the raking up of this old mud. He was sure there were Members opposite who were prepared to admit that all the fault had not been with the revolutionary movement, but that it had been caused by acts connected with the policy of the English Government. He believed there were hon. Members opposite who wanted to see this movement kept within, as it had been gradually approaching, Constitutional lines, and that some solution should be found to put an end to the long tale of wrong and misery and out- rage and bloodshed. He should support with the utmost delight the Amendment of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dumfries. He appealed to hon. Members opposite to let them confine the inquiry to the question which the country and which the House understood to be the question when the Bill was introduced.

SIR EDWARD HAMLEY (Birkenhead)

said, that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) had just treated the House to another of those exhibitions with which he had long rendered it familiar. He never saw the right hon. Gentleman hurling his studied insults at the Treasury Bench without thinking of Goliath of Gath striding up and down in front of the Israelitish camp and challenging some unfortunate Hebrew to come out and fight him. Everybody was pleased last night when the Treasury Bench was found to send forth a David in the person of the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Scotland (Mr. J. P. B. Robertson), who slung a pebble which smote that boastful and arrogant champion right in the middle of his forehead. But the right hon. Gentleman was only boastful and arrogant when addressing the Treasury Bench. When he turned to those respectable clients of his below the Gangway, what a change in his demeanour! How his shoulders seemed to stoop, his knees to bend; how he seemed to address them as "his very noble and approved good masters;" and his masters they undoubtedly were, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman was proud of his servitude which nobody envied him. What a descent for the right hon. Gentleman, with his legal training, with his literary pretensions, with his former fellowship with men once eminent in the State, to be reduced to beg a cheer—or the discordant noise which passed for a cheer—from that quarter of the House! With every such exhibition he inflicted fresh damage on the rags of his political reputation. Now, it seemed to him (Sir Edward Hamley) that neither the right hon. Gentleman nor any of his clients appreciated the situation in which they at present stood. They had had for long two alternatives open to them. The first was that which all men in their situation would adopt, especially if filled with that consciousness of their own inno- cence which animated the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell)—namely, an appeal to a jury. The other was to accept the too indulgent offer of the Government in this Bill—too indulgent, because a good many Members thought that there was no occasion to open the doors of justice wider in order to accomodate a particular political Party. And there was yet another alternative, and that was the one which, according to all experience of the course of hon. Gentlemen opposite in this matter, they were inclined to adopt, and that was to evade all inquiry and let matters remain as they were. But let them not lay the flattering unction to their souls that because they wished matters to remain as they were, therefore matters would remain as they were. Let them not suppose that, even if they succeeded in evading a trial, there would be no trial. Why, even now a tribunal was sitting on them—the tribunal of public opinion. Every man of sense, every honest man in the Kingdom, was of the jury.

THE CHAIRMAN

I must invite the hon. and gallant Member to narrow the scope of his remarks.

SIR EDWARD HAMLEY

said, the people of the country were carefully watching, with reference to this and other Amendments, the manœuvres, the shifts, the evasions, the calculated delays, and the studied abuse of hon. Members opposite, and it would probably not be long before they arrived at a verdict, and that verdict would be final. Now, he was not venturing to suggest to hon. Members opposite that they should adopt this, or that, or the other alternative. He was only pointing out to them that, do what they would, they could not evade a trial.

THE CHAIRMAN

I must again ask the hon. and gallant Member to speak to the Amendment.

MR. E. ROBERTSON (Dundee)

said, he did not think it was at all necessary he should attempt to follow the hon. and gallant Gentleman in the extraordinary language he had used. He would only say that in tone and temper the speech was entirely different from anything he could have expected from the hon. and gallant Gentleman, having regard to the opinion which, perhaps, erroneously, he had been led to form of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. It was his intention to offer a few observa- tions on the Amendment proposed by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid), for the reason that he had himself put down on the Paper an Amendment pointing in the same direction, and which would become unnecessary if his hon. and learned Friend's Amendment were carried, but which he was afraid would be ruled out of Order if the present Amendment were rejected. He admitted that the ground had been cut away from under his feet by the speech which had been delivered by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary (Mr. Matthews). That speech created in him profound astonishment, because to him, at least, it virtually changed his opinion of the character of the Bill. Since the right hon. Gentleman sat down he (Mr. E. Robertson) had taken the trouble to refer to the speech the right hon. Gentleman made on the second reading of the Bill. He was bound to admit that there was nothing in that speech, so far as he could discover from a cursory examination of it, inconsistent with the statement the right hon. Gentleman had made. He was bound also to say there was nothing in that speech which would have led them to expect he would make to-day a speech of the character he had made. But the reason why many of them were astonished at the observations of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary was, that they had not taken their opinions of the Bill from his speech on the second reading. He was afraid the right hon. Gentleman's speech on the second reading made no impression on his mind at the moment at all; and if they felt the inconsistency of the position the right hon. Gentleman had taken up, it was the inconsistency between what the right hon. Gentleman said to-day and what the Government last week led them to believe was the character of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman's was not the only speech he had consulted on this question. He had gone to higher quarters. He had gone to the speech which originally defined the character and scope of the Bill, and from which he, for one, had taken all his ideas as to the character and scope of the Bill. He would not repeat what had been said by an hon. Friend of his as to the language used by the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury (Mr. W. H. Smith) in defining the scope of the Bill; but he would add to the incidents which had been alluded to that when the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury told them that this proposal was to be made to the House, he expressly guarded and excepted himself from any responsibility for providing an opportunity for debate on the Bill. Were they to be told that a measure of the magnitude and character now defined by the Home Secretary was to be passed through the House without the Government being responsible for giving them an opportunity of debate? In the first place, the First Lord of the Treasury, in his speech on the second reading, said— The measure is one which has been proposed as an alternative to that asked for by the hon. Member for Cork. What did the hon. Member for Cork ask for? He asked for a Committee of Privilege to examine charges which had been made against him in his character as a Member of the House, and it was as an alternative to that Committee that this proposal was made by the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury. Then the right hon. Gentleman went on to explain why he could not accept a Committee, and the reason he gave was that a Committee would be composed of persons who were subject to political prejudice, and who, therefore, would not be impartial judges of the case affecting the hon. Member for Cork. Then he went on— We are of opinion that if this inquiry be entered upon it must be a searching inquiry, and must finally dispose of the charges which have been made bearing wholly or partly upon hon. Gentlemen opposite. There was not the slightest allusion in the defining speech to any charge whatever except the charge which, in some way or other, wholly or partly bore on the hon. Member for Cork and his Friends. The object of this Amendment, and of his (Mr. E. Robertson's) Amendment, was to limit the inquiry to charges which did either wholly or partly concern the hon. Member for Cork and his Friends; and he maintained that those Amendments were entirely consistent with, and necessary to, the defining language the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury placed before the House when he intro- duced the Bill. Then the right hon. Gentleman went on— We do not think that we should be acting in fairness to those Gentlemen accused by or concerned in those charges if we failed to afford them the most full and complete inquiry by a judicial tribunal. That was not quite all. The right hon. Gentleman went on not only to define the scope of the inquiry, but wont on in a prophetic spirit to anticipate the result of the inquiry. He hoped that the result of the inquiry would be to clear hon. Members. There was not the slightest allusion to anybody else. Then, again, the right hon. Gentleman speculated on the character of the inquiry as well as on its result, for he said The issues are tremendous"— tremendous to what?— tremendous to the character of the House and those concerned in this great trial, this great inquiry. He (Mr. E. Robertson) thought he had made out a strong case to show that even if the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary was consistent with himself—and he did not say the right hon. Gentleman was not—he was not consistent with the language in which the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury introduced the Bill to the House, and to which they had a right to look for a definition of the intentions of the Government. He had only risen to justify the Amendment which he had put upon the Paper. If the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had made the speech he had made to-day on the second reading, or if the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury had made on the second reading such a speech as the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had made to-day, he (Mr. E. Robertson) would never have thought of the Amendment he had put upon the Paper, or have ventured to offer a single word in support of the Amendment of his hon. and learned Friend. Now that the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had spoken, he declined to argue with the right hon. Gentleman or the Government that his Amendment or his hon. and learned Friend's Amendment was consistent with the scope of the Bill as the right hon. Gentleman had defined it. Under the circumstances, it was matter for reconsideration how they should treat this Bill—whether it was worth while to go on proposing Amendments which were consistent with the scope and character of the Bill as originally introduced or not. Personally, he declined to say a single word in support of the Amendment he had placed upon the Paper and in support of his hon. and learned Friend's Amendment, because the character of the situation had been entirely changed by the definition they had had to-day from the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary.

MR. FINLAY&c.) (Inverness,

said, he had listened with some interest to the speech of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dundee (Mr. E. Robertson) by way of justifying the charge that this morning there had been an entire change of front and new departure on the part of the Government. He apprehended that his hon. and learned Friend had entirely and absolutely failed to make good that charge. His hon. and learned Friend candidly admitted that in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary he could not find a word to sustain the charge of inconsistency. The hon. and learned Member also quoted certain passages from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury which would not, to any Member of the Committee except his hon. and learned Friend, possibly convey the idea that there was a trace of that new departure in regard to the Bill. What took place on the second reading of the Bill must be in the recollection of Members of the Committee. The debate partook largely of the nature of a discussion in Committee, and one topic which was very much discussed was whether the inquiry was to be confined to Members of Parliament or not. That was one of the main points around which the discussion ranged itself, and the position taken up throughout by the Government, and certainly by many hon. Members on the Opposition side of the House who approved of the Bill, was that it would be irregular and unconstitutional to confine the inquiry to those who happened to be Members of Parliament at the present date. They were told sometimes about ancient history. The debate on the second reading of the Bill could hardly have passed out of the memory of all Members sitting on that side of the House. If any hon. Member had succeeded in forgetting it, he respectfully asked the hon. Gentleman to refer to what was said upon that occasion. He apprehended that no one could read the second reading debate without seeing that this charge was lightly made and so often repeated—repeated with such boisterous emphasis that a new departure on the present occasion was utterly and absolutely destitute of foundation. If he believed that his hon. Friend the Member for the Cirencester Division of Gloucester (Mr. Winterbotham) thought the Bill as it now stood, and without this Amendment, would amount to a denial of justice to any hon. Members of the House, he certainly would be the first to vote for the Amendment. He did not believe that it amounted to a denial of justice all all. It did not in the slightest degree impair their full and absolute liberty to clear themselves of every charge that was preferred against them. Further than that, it enabled them to establish their innocence still more completely by showing who were the guilty parties, and he appealed to the common sense of the House whether there was the slightest foundation for the passionate denunciation of which they had heard so much during the last two hours about the allegation that unless this Amendment was carried the Bill would be in such a form as not to grant justice to hon. Members? He submitted that a very important principle underlay the question which was now being discussed, and it was—was there or was there not in this country a right on the part of Members of Parliament alone to have a special tribunal created for their benefit whenever a charge was brought against them—was it part of the Constitution of this country that if any charge was brought against a Member of the House of Commons he was entitled for his benefit to have a special tribunal created which would not be created in favour of anyone else? He presumed that the only case in which a special tribunal could be set up for a Member of the House was a case in which a Member's conduct could suitably be inquired into by a Select Committee. If a charge was brought against an hon. Member, affecting his conduct as a Member of the House, it might be right and proper that his conduct should be inquired into by a Select Committee; but he apprehended that in the present case a Select Committee, almost by the confession of all, would be so constituted as to render an inquiry into these charges inconclusive. If any proof of that were wanted it would be supplied in the speech of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dumfries. [Mr. R. T. REID: No.] His hon. and learned Friend shouted "No."

MR. R. T. REID

said he did not shout "No."

MR. FINLAY

said, that in any case his hon. and learned Friend said "No." Now, if a Select Committee had been appointed, his hon. and learned Friend would very likely have been elected to serve upon it. What proof did the hon. and learned Gentleman give of the judicial temper in which Members of the House would approach such an inquiry? The hon. and learned Gentleman told them to-day that personally he absolutely and utterly declined to believe in the possibility of the truth of the charge which had been made.

MR. R. T. REID

said, he did not say he declined to believe in the possibility of the charges being true; but he did say what he thought any man, with any genuine instinct, would say—that he did believe that gentlemen, some of whom he had the honour to know personally, could be guilty of the crimes imputed to them.

MR. FINLAY

said, he honoured and respected his hon. and learned Friend for what he had said, and for the motives which prompted him to say it; but he maintained that the very statement the hon. and learned Gentleman had now made was the strongest possible proof of the unsuitability of Members of the House to sit in judgment upon men with whom some of them had familiar and friendly intercourse, and with regard to whose conduct as politicians some hon. Members of the House must have some very clear and definite opinion. Now, let him call attention to the Amendment before the Committee—because a great many speeches had been made which would have afforded to no one coming into the House any clue to the Amendment under discussion. The proposal was that inquiry into the conduct of persons, other than Members of Parliament, should take place only in so far as the charges and allegations against them bore upon the charges and allega- tions against Members of the House. What were the circumstances which had given rise to this Commission? A charge had been made against a Party—that of connection with crime and relation with criminals of a highly reprehensible kind. Some of the members of that Party happened to be Members of the House at the present time. Others were not, and it was actually proposed that the inquiry into the charges made against the Party, some of whom were in the House, and some of whom were not, should be confined to the conduct only of those who happened to be in the House at the present moment. [Cries of "No, no!"] That was the proposal; most certainly it was. It was proposed that the conduct of other persons should be inquired into only in so far as the charges and allegations against them bore upon the charges and allegations against Members of Parliament. That was and had been all along the meaning of the Amendment. The Amendment really introduced in another form a question which was discussed last night. He did not say that there was anything irregular. Last night they had a lengthened debate upon the question whether the inquiry should be defined in terms to the conduct of hon. Members. That was disposed of. To-day they had another debate, which really raised the same principle in another form, because it claimed that the conduct of other persons should be inquired into only in so far as it bore on the conduct of hon. Members. That was the same thing over again, and he submitted to the common sense of the House that it was perfectly preposterous that whether the Bill was justified and good, or justified only on the ground that in a matter of public interest very serious charges had been made against the whole Party, a claim should be made to limit the inquiry to the Members of the Party who happened to sit at the present moment in the House of Commons. On these grounds he should certainly feel it his duty to vote against the Amendment.

MR. JOHN MORLEY (Newcastle-upon-Tyne)

Before making a remark upon the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay), I should like to notice one fact which was mentioned by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for North Wexford (Mr. J. E. Redmond). My hon. and learned Friend told a story which, in my opinion, if it be true, if it is capable of verification, if it is incapable of denial, loads The Times newspaper and its conductors with something which I, as an experienced journalist, do not hesitate to call the deepest infamy. Of course, the conductors of The Times newspaper may have some explanation to give. My hon. and learned Friend may or may not have left out some link in the story; but if the story be true, I say it amounts to a charge which The Times ought not to lose one moment in answering, and answering fully and clearly. I pass now to the position taken up by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay). I cannot understand how my hon. and learned Friend reconciles his position with the Preamble of this Bill. The Preamble of the Bill—of which the Committee has, perhaps, heard enough—begins by reciting that charges and allegations had been made against certain Members of Parliament and other persons; but the position now taken up by my hon. and learned Friend and by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, in spite of the disclaimer of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, does undoubtedly indicate a complete change in the purposes of this Bill. My hon. and learned Friend referred to remarks that were made in the course of the second reading; but I want to go a little further back in the history of the introduction of this Bill. The Committee will remember that this is to be an inquiry, as the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary said, endorsing a remark of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, into the whole truth of organizations in Ireland and of crime in connection with those organizations. What did the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury say when he first announced his intention of offering such a measure as this to hon. Members from Ireland on the 12th of July? The right hon. Gentleman said— If hon. Gentlemen are prepared to accept the offer which has been made, I am prepared to put on the Notice Paper a Motion for leave to bring in a Bill with reference to the Judges."—(3 Hansard, [328] 1102.) That was to say, that the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury and the Government—though their minds were, on the theory of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, full of the alarming and startling statements that had been made by The Times newspaper, and though the Government were bent, as the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary now said, on inquiring into the whole truth about these criminal organizations—were yet prepared when they first introduced the measure, to leave it at the discretion of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) whether the inquiry should be made. What did the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury say for this Bill? And again I beg the Committee to keep in mind the pretension which is now made. At a later day, on the 16th of July, the right hon. Gentleman made a very remarkable statement which I do not think any hon. Member of the House can have forgotten. The right hon. Gentleman said— If the Motion"— that is the Motion to bring in this Bill—" is received and accepted by the House, the Bill will be immediately printed and circulated."—(Ibid. 1410.) What was the Bill? The Bill was to constitute an inquiry into criminal organizations in Ireland.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I do not wish to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but I hardly think he can have been in the House when the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury made his statement.

MR. JOHN MORLEY

I assure the right hon. Gentleman I was in the House on that occasion. At all events, the position had been taken up, and it is now taken up by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary. I certainly think that when the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary reads his own language to-morrow, he will readily say that I have described the position he has assumed. The position is this great inquiry—the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary will not deny that his language bore that construction—which is going to take place into crime in Ireland; this great inquiry during the last eight years was to be left at the discretion of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). For what did the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury say? He said— Here is an offer made by the Government to the hon. Gentleman and his Friends to be either accepted or rejected. Now, I ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, whatever he said in his remarks earlier this afternoon, whether he contends that the Commission, that the scope which the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary and himself wished to assign to it—whether he contends that this great operation, this great political and social operation, ought to be left to be either accepted or rejected by a single Member of the House at his own discretion? I think that disposes of the argument of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Inverness. I want to know what the Judges are to do according to the new name given to the Bill by the right hon. Gentlemen the Home Secretary and the Chief Secretary? They are to investigate crime in Ireland. I want to know whether they are in their investigations also going to inquire into the causes of crime in Ireland? Because I, for one, very much object to setting up a tribunal to introduce the country, which will read its proceedings with such passionate interest, into a chamber of Irish agrarian horrors without, at the same time, leading the country to perceive the social conditions, the conditions of landlordism, for example, which were undoubtedly at the bottom of agrarian agitation in 1880 and 1881. If you are to have a judicial expression of opinion upon crime in Ireland, you ought to establish such a Reference to the Commission as will enable them to expose the whole social condition of Ireland. Indeed, from the Government's point of view, there ought to be two Commissions. There ought to be the Commission which this Bill first announced and introduced to inquire into the conduct of Members of Parliament, as the title of this Bill indicated, and as its Preamble also indicated; and there ought to be, according to all historical precedent, an inquiry into the social malady in Ireland by a Commission of the House of Commons, and not by a Commission of Judges. But, whether I am right or not in this, you ought to have two operations—one, an inquiry into the conduct of Members of Parliament which had caused the whole of this discussion and the whole of these transactions; and then you ought to have a Select Committee to inquire into the origin of the Land League if you pleased, and into the origin of the National League, and into all the sources from which the results of these organizations derived their life. I shall certainly vote for the Amendment, because I conceive that it is only on the condition of this Amendment being accepted that either the purpose of the Bill as originally announced will be carried out, or that the expectation of the country in respect to the Bill will be satisfied. Before I sit down I should like to make an appeal to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain). My right hon. Friend made a very important speech upon the second reading of the Bill. I was able with satisfaction to cheer many of the positions the right hon. Gentleman took up; but the positions he took up, and which I assented to and cheered, were positions which were exactly identical to the position taken up in this Amendment. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will tell us what his view is upon this Amendment, and how he thinks it in any way incompatible with the position he took up in his speech upon the second reading.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN (Birmingham, W.)

I had no intention of taking part in the debate, but I must reply to the appeal just made to me by my right hon. Friend. I think he is under a misapprehension. In the speech to which he refers I spoke of the possibility or desirability of somewhat limiting the charges which are brought in this Bill, and said that if the lawyers could see their way to put it in legal language I would be glad to see some limitation introduced. I do not think my right hon. Friend will find in that speech one single word which proposed any limitation as to the persons whose conduct was to be inquired into. Now, I listened with very great interest to the greater part of the speech of the hon. and learned Member for North Wexford (Mr. J. E. Redmond), and I think those who heard that speech must have been impressed, as I was, with its evident sincerity. In the first place, the hon. and learned Member challenged investigation into his own conduct, private and public, with a clearness and fulness to which no one can possibly take exception, and which, I must say, augurs very favourably for the result of any investigation in his case. But the hon. and learned Member appears to fear that as the Bill is drawn, the Commission will be drawn away from an investigation into the serious charges which are brought against him and his Colleagues, will be led over the whole field of Irish organization and Irish crime, and that the true issues will in this way be concealed. I put it to the hon. and learned Gentleman that he is really raising a bugbear in this matter. Suppose what he fears were actually the case, and that the Commission were to be led into what is, by comparison at all events, unimportant and irrelevant matter, it seems to me that no vindication of the hon. and learned Member and his Friends would be more complete than such a course as that. If The Times fails to maintain its principal charges, I do not think much importance will be attached to other charges. Any attempt, as it appears to me, on the part of The Times to put aside those principal charges, or not to put them in the forefront, will redound to their discredit, and I do not think the hon. and learned Member need fear in the slightest degree that the charges against himself and his Colleagues will be or can be ignored. Now, let me put another point to the hon. and learned Gentleman. A man is accused of committing murder. Well, the very best way in which he can substantiate his innocence is to bring forward the man who did commit the murder. [Laughter.] I confess I am not clever enough to understand what is the meaning of that laughter. I think hon. Members below the Gangway must be cute enough to know I am not suggesting that that is the only way in which a man can prove his innocence. But, undoubtedly, there is no way which could be more satisfactory to the man accused of murder, and who is innocent, than the production of the guilty man. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] Surely that is a simple proposition which no one will deny. Now, applying that to the flagrant charges which are brought against Members of Parliament, I want to put it to the hon. and learned Member for North Wexford whether it would not be to him and his Friends the most satisfactory conclusion of these proceedings, if not only The Times failed to substantiate their charges against them, but if the course of the inquiry showed who were the parties who were responsible for crime in connection with the agitation in Ireland? Surely that is a reasonable proposition; and surely, if that is a reasonable proposition, it is unwise of hon. Members to seek to limit this inquiry in such a way that other persons who may be guilty, while they are innocent, cannot be brought before the tribunal. It is said they may be brought before the tribunal if their actions bear upon the complicity of hon. Members below the Gangway. The point I was trying to make just now is that there may be no such complicity, and yet it may be desirable that the guilt of those other persons should be established. But there is another point. How are you to know beforehand whether those "other persons" whom you can show to have been closely connected and identified with crime in Ireland are in complicity with hon. Members of this House? That might come out in the course of the inquiry as the first step in the proof; and why should you limit the inquiry, which the hon. Member for North Wexford (Mr. J. E. Redmond) declares he wishes to have as full and complete as it possibly can be, by excluding all consideration of "other persons" except that limited number whose complicity can be proved with hon. Members below the Gangway? What is complicity with hon. Members below the Gangway? Why, the proof of it is the first step in this investigation. You can prove association, but association may be absolutely and entirely innocent. It may be extremely important, as a link in a chain, to show that these "other persons" are guilty, though at that point of the inquiry it may be impossible to show to the satisfaction of the Judges that there is any complicity with, though there may have been association with, hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway. Therefore, I do not think, and I again put my point to the hon. Member for North Wexford, whose speech appears to me to be entitled to the most respectful consideration of the Committee, that no investigation would be satisfactory to him or clear his Friends, which did not take cognizance of the action of other and guilty persons.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down could not possibly have made the speech he has made if he had heard the speech the Home Secretary made in answer to the hon. Member for North Wexford. He says—"you may be quite certain that you cannot be thrown into the background, that the charges against you cannot be made secondary and subordinate charges, because The Times, unless it brought forward the charges against the Members of Parliament as their principal charges, would be utterly discredited before the House and the country." The Home Secretary says that the charges against the Members of Parliament are not the principal charges; that he never intended them to be the principal charges. He says, in effect—"We never dreamt of dealing with the charges against Members of Parliament as the main charges, and Members of Parliament are only imported into the inquiry inasmuch as they are members of this organization." Therefore, my right hon. Friend's consolation to the hon. Member for North Wexford has gone at once—that the compilers of the Bill have laid it down that Members of Parliament are to be thrown into the background. We know very well why they do that. They have very good advisers, who have told them that the charges against Members of Parliament cannot be sustained. The Attorney General knows nothing of the views and counsels of The Times; but the Attorney General, like the rest of us, has general information on the subject, and he has, no doubt, read the speech of the counsel for The Times. He keeps his two individualities always separate, but still he cannot be less well-informed than all of us; and he, having read the speech of Sir Richard Webster in The Times, has, no doubt, come to the conclusion that it would not do to put the charges against Members of Parliament foremost as the best foot of The Times. Therefore, it is that the Government now come foward and say that the charges against Members of Parliament are only secondary, and may possibly come in at some time or other as part of the investigation into the conduct of members of the National League or the Land League. But that is not our object. I venture to say, Sir, that if they had dared earlier in the day to hold the language which the Home Secretary has held to-day, this measure would have been declared out of Order as incompatible with its title of "The Members of Parliament (Charges and Allegations) Bill." Now, I ask everybody, not only in this House, but in this country, to-morrow to read the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, and compare it with the title of this Bill. We have been told by the Government that their object never was to make this a Bill especially applicable to Members of Parliament; but when they are confronted with the title of the Bill, I maintain that no one can believe the statement they have made. I say that the statement made by the Government to-day is a statement not deserving of credit, because it is absolutely inconsistent with written documents—it is absolutely inconsistent with the statements they made when the Bill was introduced. Those statements were that the Bill was brought in so much in reference to the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) that it would be proceeded with or dropped according to his desire. Therefore, the Government will be convicted to-morrow of having, for purposes which it is not difficult to define, made a statement absolutely inconsistent with the title of their Bill and with all their previous declarations. Sir, I challenge that issue, and I hope it is one upon which a public decision will be taken. Now, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain)—and I am sorry that he has gone away—says he wishes the scope of this Bill to be restricted. My right hon. Friend, in that way, frequently gives expression to the most amiable hopes and wishes; but I never observe that he takes any step to give effect to them. It is not on this occasion alone, but also on many others, that he has got up in this House to make what might be called a Liberal speech, but he has never given a Liberal vote. He made on another Bill a speech in which he expressed the desire that certain Amendments would be introduced; but when it came to the point he voted against every Amendment which tended to carry into effect the speech he had made. Now, he has said that this Bill as it is drawn is too wide, and that he desires it to be restricted; but he finds none of the Amendments exactly to his taste, so he is going to vote against them all. He is going to vote for the carrying through of a measure of this extreme importance, know- ing and believing that it is of a character of which the House should not approve. Why, I ask, has he not put down his own Amendments? Is he wanting in capacity; is he wanting in sufficient intelligence to prepare Amendments—is he not aware that the common sense of this country thoroughly appreciates the fact that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham is quite equal to the task of putting his views into practical shape when he desires to do so? The country, Sir, will give due weight to the right hon. Gentleman's declaration of a desire to modify the Bill, when he will not himself put into form what it is he desires to be done, and when he comes forward on every possible occasion for the purpose of backing proceedings of which he does not approve. That is the position in which my right hon. Friend seems to stand with reference to this matter. Here we have an Amendment absolutely conformable to the title of the Bill—that is to say, conformable to a Members of Parliament Bill so intended and so declared by the Government in its inception, so declared by the Government in their offer to the hon. Member for Cork when they told him that it rested with him whether the Bill was to be proceeded with or not proceeded with. I think no one in this House, however hon. Members may vote—no one in this House or out of it will fail to understand the double dealing which has characterized the conduct of the Government from first to last in this transaction. In my opinion, their conduct is characterized not only by conspicuous want of fair play in the manner in which it has been conceived, but by a conspicuous hypocrisy in the method in which it is endeavoured to conceal the real objects the Government have in view.

MR. MATTHEWS

The right hon. Gentleman has, in the broadest language, charged me with having put a different construction and a different meaning on the Bill to that which I put on it on the occasion of the second reading.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

No, I did not.

MR. MATTHEWS

Then, with putting a different construction upon it to that which the Government had put upon it. On the occasion of the second reading, however unworthy, I was, at any rate, the spokesman of the Government.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

I said nothing about the second reading. I spoke of the introduction of the Bill and of the title of the Bill.

MR. MATTHEWS

I hardly know to what the invective of the right hon. Gentleman was directed, if it was not to this, that this morning I explained for the first time what the scope of this measure was to be. I dare say the right hon. Gentleman considered the remarks I delivered to the House on the second reading of the Bill not worthy of attention; but however unworthy I might have been of the post, I was the spokesman for the Government on that occasion. I have not a report of the speech I then made by me, but I have here the notes from which I spoke. I know that on that occasion I told the House that the Government were granting an inquiry into the charges and proceedings in the case of "O'Donnell v. Walter." I told the House that I had done my best to gather what those proceedings were and what the charges were; and I stated two points as being, in my judgment, the main charges therein made. I said the principal charge was, that the Land League and the National League and the members thereof had used their own organization and connected organizations for the purposes of intimidation, outrage, and crime; and I said that the second charge or head of inquiry would be that the Land League and the National League and the members thereof allied themselves with the perpetrators and contrivers of intimidation and crime, and had availed themselves of their help. That was the statement I made deliberately on the second reading of the Bill, and from those observations I have not departed by one hair's breadth to-day. That was the identical statement which was before the House when hon. Members unanimously accepted the second reading of the Bill, and the quibbles—I am obliged to use the word, but I do not adopt it in any offensive sense—based upon the title of the Bill are altogether unworthy of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. The title of the Bill was framed by the Clerks at the Table.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

It was in the Notice.

MR. MATTHEWS

The title was drawn up by the Clerks at the Table.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

I say it was in the Notice.

MR. MATTHEWS

The Notice placed by the Leader of the House on the Paper on the 12th July was this—"A Bill to constitute a Special Commission to inquire into certain charges and allegations"——

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

Begin at the beginning of the Notice.

MR. MATTHEWS

I am beginning at the commencement of the Notice.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

The Notice was "Mr. William Henry Smith Members of Parliament (Charges and Allegations) Bill," and so on.

MR. MATTHEWS

That was the heading put to the Notice by the Clerks at the Table. The right hon. Gentleman thinks he can throw dust in the eyes of the House, and in his attempt to do so he is hardly complimentary either to our understanding or his own. The substance of the Notice was this— A Bill to constitute a Special Commission to inquire into the charges and allegations made against certain Members of Parliament and other persons by the defendants in the recent trial of an action entitled O'Donnell v. "Walter and another.' It is not competent to cut out one-half of the phrase. Members of Parliament have some precedence given to them, no doubt, but they are put on the same footing as the "other persons" against whom charges are made. The allegation that the Government have changed their front in this matter, or have announced anything now to the House from what was in the Bill when the second reading was moved, is an allegation absolutely without foundation in fact.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE (Edinburgh, Mid Lothian)

As you, Mr. Courtney, have come in after the interval for refreshment which you so well earn, and which for your sake I am sorry is not longer, I would ask permission to refer to the narrative of the history of this Bill which, no doubt, is a matter worthy of consideration by the Committee. The contention of this side of the House is, that after the acceptance of the proposal made on behalf of the Government by the Leader of the House across this Table, that proposal became a covenant, and after that covenant, which was of a most solemn kind, was made, the proposal of the Government has been absolutely and entirely changed. The original subject which the Government engaged should be brought forward has been removed from view and cast into the shade, and another and perfectly distinct subject has been substituted for it, and is now being dealt with on conditions not only different from, but absolutely incompatible with the conditions voluntarily proposed by the head of the Government. Now, Sir, I take it that I have the general assent of the House when I say that although Her Majesty's Government made in conformity with, or at least not in violation of, Parliamentary principle, the offer to a particular Member of Parliament and his Friends of making an investigation into the charges concerning them contingent on their acceptance or refusal of such an inquiry. There was another kind of inquiry which it was impossible for them, consistently with any public principle whatever, as dependent on the will of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Cork or those who sat around him. The two subjects are these. One is an inquiry into the allegations which began with the publication of the famous letter of last year, and which after the disposition which has been shown by the counsel for The Times and by others to cast it into the shade, I think I may now without extravagance call the forged letter.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir RICHARD WEBSTER) (Isle of Wight)

I ask to be allowed to say that I have neither directly nor indirectly said one word to justify the statement that as counsel for The Times I threw that letter into the shade or put it into any secondary place. So far as I am allowed to speak—and I may do so as my speech has been quoted—I may say I intended to put it forward as one of the principal allegations in the course of the case.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

I quite admit that what I am stating is quite in the nature of a matter of opinion, and consequently as one which cannot be decided by assertion on my part, or denial on the part of the counsel for The Times. The counsel for The Times might consequently retain the opinion which he has expressed; but I assert that, speaking generally of the allegations, the opinion is that the counsel for The Times has partially withdrawn from the proceedings that letter. It is that letter and the charges connected with it with respect to which on the 12th of July the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury made the explicit offer—the voluntary and spontaneous offer—to the Irish Nationalist Party, of having an examination by a body consisting wholly or mainly of Judges, as to the charges made against certain Members of Parliament, and into nothing else whatever. Those were the terms of the covenant. What I contend is, that nothing would be more fatal to the character of Parliament and worthy of condemnation than that such a promise as that should be altered, after the covenant had been laid before the House, and something totally different be by degrees substituted for that to which the covenant originally related. I believe I am correct in stating—and I am not stating anything discreditable to the right hon. Gentleman when I say it, and this is only a matter of recollection, but I believe I am right in my statement—that the right hon. Gentleman road from a paper the terms of the reply which he made to my hon. Friend the Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), and that after he had expressed an opinion unfavourable to the appointment of a Select Committee, the right hon. Gentleman said— The Government are willing to propose to Parliament to pass an Act appointing a Commission which should consist wholly or mainly of Judges, with full powers, as in the case of other Statutory Commissions, to inquire into the allegations and charges made against Members of Parliament by the defendants in the recent action of O'Donnell v. Walter and another.' That was the position in which the question was spontaneously placed by Her Majesty's Government, and to that proposition the hon. Member for Cork was requested to give an affirmative or negative answer. On that affirmative or negative answer of the hon. Member for Cork was to depend whether the Government would or would not proceed with the inquiry which they had offered to him, and which offer was repeated on the following Monday as a thing for him to accept or reject—which, if he accepted, they would go forward with, and which, if he rejected, would be heard of no more. Now, that is the original covenant offered by the Government to the hon. Member for Cork, and not refused or disowned by him at the time. For the purpose of securing perfect accuracy, I interposed in the debate. It appeared to me that a verbal offer made across the Table was one without authoritative record, and I requested, for the purpose of securing perfect accuracy, that the offer should be made in writing, and the terms of the Notice appeared upon the Notice Paper of the Friday following, when, for the first time, the words "Members of Parliament and other persons" appeared. [Ministerial cheers.] Yes, the words "other persons" then appeared; but it had formed no part of the covenant tendered across the Table by the First Lord of the Treasury. There can be no question at all that you have now effected a complete metamorphosis of the terms of the original offer. We have now travelled wholly out of the question of the letter of last year, and wholly out of the question of the charges against certain Members of Parliament, and we have arrived now at a point where we are plainly told that the inquiry is to extend into a long period of crime in Ireland and the method of its organization, which are matters totally separate and distinct from the promised inquiry into the conduct of certain Members of Parliament. The two things have no right to be mixed together. If charges against hon. Members are to be inquired into, the hon. Members whose conduct is impeached have a right to the privileges and immunities of accused persons. Those privileges and immunities, apparently, it has not been deemed safe to give them, and, consequently, the issue has been surreptitiously and gradually shifted until the House has now before it a totally different question from that set forth in the covenant made across the Table, which was as to charges against certain Members of Parliament. If those charges are to be gone into at all, it is only as part of a great mass of evidence involving the whole condition of Ireland and the history of every agrarian crime in that country. The question now proposed to be inquired into involves not only the condition of Ireland during recent years, but the history of agrarian crime and the history of the operations of certain Leagues alleged to be connected with it. That the issue has been so changed has been confessed, and what is the defence that has been put forward by the Home Secretary for this change? The Home Secretary does not dispute, and he cannot deny, that there has been a total and absolute shifting of the issue. He has not attempted to deny it; but what has he said? He has raised a question as to the time when the issue was shifted, and he says that if we had attended to his speech on the second reading of the Bill, we should find that he had placed the issue much as it now stands. Well, Sir, I should like to refer to the history of that speech. The matter stands thus. The case of the hon. Member for Cork had been stated with much ability by that hon. Gentleman himself, and Her Majesty's Government did not think proper to answer it. There was danger that the debate would prematurely collapse—the Speaker rose to put the Question, and, in the extremity, to prevent a premature conclusion, I myself rose shortly before 8 o'clock, and pressed the Government to give some reply to the speech of the hon. Member. Whether they wished it or not, I held it to be a matter of obvious necessity that they should give a reply. Then came an incident which, happily for human nature, intervenes in all our lengthened sittings. The Speaker retired; with the Speaker the House retired. The Speaker returned; the Home Secretary returned; but the House did not return. The House took a more liberal view of the interval accorded, and then was delivered the speech of the Home Secretary, which might almost as well have been delivered during the 15 minutes during which the Speaker was absent. In that speech the Home Secretary, as the right hon. Gentleman has shown, boldly reversed the covenant and the engagement which had been made by the First Lord of the Treasury. He says, and I am not able to deny what he says, nor am I concerned in denying it, that he gave a description of the issues that were to go before the Judges. He says he has gathered these from the careful perusal of Parnellism and Crime. He brought the result of his investigation to two main propositions, which he has given us to-day from the notes he then prepared. I will not for a moment question the accuracy of those notes, but these propositions were given in a speech which I say was hardly heard by any- body except the smallest fraction of the House.

SIR RICHARD WEBSTER

By a full House.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

It was not a full House at the time.

VISCOUNT CRANBORNE (Lancashire, N.E., Darwen)

It was 9 o'clock, and there was a full House.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Let that pass. It is a matter of opinion, and we have no power of confirming either view. But the right hon. Gentleman does not deny that there has been a change in the issue. He gave the main points, but he did not call attention to the fact that they were totally different from the covenant entered into by the First Lord of the Treasury. That covenant was suggested by the right hon. Gentleman with the view of obtaining an immediate answer from the hon. Member for Cork on the question of the allegations against Members of this House. According to the summary the right hon. Gentleman has read to us to-day, he dropped out Members of Parliament altogether. Will he kindly read again his notes of the two propositions in which he summed up the purposes of the inquiry?

MR. MATTHEWS

It is true that in the two propositions Members of Parliament are not mentioned; but I went on to say that the Members of Parliament had been members of the Leagues and Associations.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

But these two propositions were the quintessence of the inquiry. They were the charges to which the right hon. Gentleman tells us he devoted his researches. These were the points to which the inquiry was to be addressed. I do not say that he excluded the Members of Parliament, but I say that he did not include them as a portion of the main question of the inquiry; and I say, therefore, that according to his own account the covenant entered into by the First Lord of the Treasury was, without any intimation to the House, absolutely and entirely changed. Now, Sir, we are involved in another question altogether—the question whether the affairs of the Land League in 1881 and 1882 ought or ought not to be examined into. Well, Sir, if it be the general sense of the House after all that has happened, that there should be an inquiry into the Land League and its proceedings, I, for my part, do not know that I am called upon in any way to make an objection; but I feel with a Member who spoke on this side of the House, and with no less a person than the right hon. Gentleman near me, that you cannot look into the acts of the Land League without asking what it was that gave force and efficiency to the League—what it was that made the League a great power, almost omnipotent in Ireland. You cannot refrain from inquiry as to the way in which force was given to the League by the decision of the House of Lords in 1880, when they refused the very moderate and limited Bill proposed by our Government, and a more moderate and limited Bill than that was for the purpose it would be difficult to find. The rejection of that Bill threw the whole of the Land Question into confusion, and had by casting upon the people of Ireland all the consequences of distress and of bad seasons, made the Land League and its promoters practically omnipotent in the country for the time, and has brought the Land Question into a position from which it has never since escaped. For my part, I do not care to inquire why it is that the issue has been changed. It has been totally changed. A great deal that was alluded to by the First Lord of the Treasury when he authoritatively gave the basis that the circumscription of this project has disappeared entirely from view in the speech of the Home Secretary, which speech he says he made as the spokesman of the Government; and, on the other hand, that which the right hon. Gentleman produced as the purpose of the inquiry embodied in his two important propositions—which I will not attempt, for fear my memory should fail me, to repeat textually—refer mainly to the Land League and the National League in Ireland and the consequences of their operations, and did not so much as touch upon the purposes described by the First Lord of the Treasury. Under the circumstances, I may say it is not inconsistent, but rather in keeping with the rest of the proceedings of the Government that the time they are devoting to the prosecution of their plans is time which was obtained from the House for an entirely different purpose. Statements were made across the Table as to what the Government proposed to do and what they proposed not to do, and I, for one, did my best to assist the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House in obtaining absolute command of the House. The House agreed to give the Government its time, and in that way time was obtained for one purpose which is now being largely applied to another purpose. The Government must not shut their eyes to the fact of the principle they have established in the course they have adopted, and they must not shut their eyes as to what may be the effect of their action upon future transactions across the Table in this House with regard to arrangements for the conduct of Government Business. I contend that it is not easy when so astonishing an operation takes place as the complete conversion and inversion by the Government of a scheme propounded by them as a matter of solemn arrangement, it is not easy to fix on a particular moment as the epoch of the transformation. The introduction of the words "other persons" clearly did not effect the transformation. It opened the door to the transformation, which was made gradually, and it was quite evident that it was meant through that door to let in the transformation, but the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary has no right to put upon what has occurred the construction we have heard from him. By degrees we see what the transformation is, and it may become a matter of prudence with us to consider what course we shall take in the matter. One thing which we certainly shall do is this. We shall take care that the country shall understand that in the most solemn and formal manner an engagement was entered into by a minister—who read it from a paper and most properly read from it, so solemn was the transaction—to consider one thing, while now we are asked to consider another and an entirely different thing.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

There are a good many things in the speech to which we have just listened upon which I confess I should like to comment. I should like to call attention to the amazing delivery by the right hon. Gentleman of a decision that the letters with which we have been so much concerned were, in his opinion, forged letters. I never heard of such an unusual course being taken as that a Gentleman occupy- ing the position of the right hon. Gentleman on the eve of a judicial Commission being appointed to inquire into these and other facts should pronounce upon the very issues on which the Commission were called upon to decide.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

What I said was this—that in consequence of the manner in which this letter had been put forward as the head and front of the inquiry, and owing to the extraordinary manner, not consistent I think with good faith, in which it has been withdrawn from view and cast into the shade, I am compelled to say that there must be a motive for such a proceeding.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The right hon. Gentleman now says that he cannot conceive what the motive could have been; but he told the Committee what in his opinion the motive was very plainly when he made his original speech. Be the inference good or bad, I say it is a most unusual and improper proceeding for the right hon. Gentleman thus to give his conclusions on a matter which is to be submitted to a judicial tribunal, before that tribunal meets. I should like to say a few words as to the right hon. Gentleman's historic views of what occurred in 1881; but I pass by that to come to what, after all, is more relevant to the present issue—namely, the history of what happened last week, and of that history, I am bound to say, the right hon. Gentleman has given a most incorrect version to the House. The right hon. Gentleman said that the terms of a covenant were laid before the House by the Leader of the House on Thursday afternoon, and that there was evidence that the terms of that covenant omitted the words "other persons"—that these words were, so to speak, surreptitiously introduced on the Paper on Thursday night.

MR. T. M. HEALY

Friday night.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The Notice appeared in Friday's Paper.

MR. T. M. HEALY

No; Saturday's Paper. That is the whole point.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I believe it was Friday's Paper.

MR. T. M. HEALY (emphatically)

No; it was Saturday's Paper. That, I say, is the whole point.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The Committee will see directly that that is not the whole point. My right hon. Friend (Mr. Ritchie) will refer to the Paper and verify the statement I have made. The allegation of the right hon. Gentleman is that the terms of the covenant were enunciated by my right hon. Friend on Thursday; that the terms of the covenant were departed from, and that in departing from it, the Government were guilty of a breach of faith. I emphatically say that the intention of the Government with regard to the words "other persons" has not wavered from the beginning. There was a meeting of a committee of the Cabinet on Wednesday. On Wednesday the terms of the offer which was to be made were decided upon. They included the words "other persons." The Cabinet met on Thursday, and according to the decision of the Cabinet the words "other persons" still remained in, and my right hon. Friend put on the Paper a Resolution asking leave to bring in a Bill. The Resolution was drawn up with such completeness and detail that practically the whole substance of the Bill was put within the cognizance of Members, and in that Resolution the words "other persons" were included.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

My statement was, that they did not appear in the formal words read by the First Lord of the Treasury from a Paper at that box as the basis of his offer to the hon. Member for Cork and as the description of his policy to the House.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

If the right hon. Gentleman had allowed me to pursue my speech, I should have dealt with that point. The question at issue is this—which was the formal offer which the hon. Member for Cork was called upon to accept or reject? I am in a position to state what the Government considered the formal offer for this reason—I was present at and took part in the discussions in which the Cabinet determined that it was only fair that the hon. Member for Cork, before he came to a decision on this point, should have before him not merely the ordinary jejune title of a Bill to be introduced, but that the Resolution asking leave to bring in the Bill should be of a full, complete, and exhaustive character, so that when the hon. Member for Cork saw it on the Paper he might say that he rejected or accepted it in full cognizance of what he was doing. In the opinion of the Government, at all events, the formal offer made to the hon. Member for Cork was not made in the communication of my right hon. Friend across the Table on Thursday, but was deliberately made in the full, complete, and exhaustive statement which we put on the Paper on Friday.

MR. T. M. HEALY

On Monday.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

And which appeared, therefore, for the first time on Monday. I think I have fully answered this part of the case of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. Then the right hon. Gentleman went on to say that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary had taken the opportunity of a comparatively empty House on the second reading, to put an entirely new complexion on the proposal of the Government. What happened on Friday was this. The right hon. Gentleman made a speech which lasted until the Speaker went out for dinner. He knew that when he sat down he would be followed by the Home Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman said the House does not necessarily come back when the Speaker comes back. "The Speaker came back," says the right hon. Gentleman, "the Home Secretary came back, but the House did not come back." Sir, the House came back, but the right hon. Gentleman did not come back. The right hon. Gentleman made his speech; he knew he was going to be answered by the Minister in charge of the Bill, but knowing that, he did not care to sacrifice his dinner and come back to the House. Now, however, he accuses my right hon. Friend of having sprung this proposal on the House at a time when the House was not full. A more astonishing statement I never heard. It may astonish the right hon. Gentleman, but it is nevertheless true that the House was a full House, though he was not in it. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Government have made surreptitious changes in the objects we have in view. Now, I could understand the right hon. Gentleman's argument if we had introduced Amendments into this Bill which we had imperfectly explained to the House, and which contained within them the seeds of change which ultimately bore fruit, but can we be accused of making a surreptitious change when we have made no change at all? We have not altered the Bill by a line, we have not altered it by a comma. The Bill has been brought in in exact conformity with the Notice which has been given. It has been in the possession of the House for nearly a fortnight, and has been debated at length on the second reading. Not only was the Bill debated for a long time on the second reading, but these words now in point, "and other persons," were in the Bill, and were debated with it. The hon. Member for Cork is as perfectly well qualified as we are to make out what the legal effect of the Bill put upon the Table will be. That legal effect does not depend upon the will of the Government. If the proposal of the Government is adopted, and turns out as we expect it—well and good—but it will not be in the power of the Government to alter it. Hon. Members know what our objects are. They are now what they have always been, and I submit that it is rather too hard on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to say that within the last 10 days the Government, who, so far as the substance of the Bill is concerned, have remained absolutely quiescent, have, with some sinister design, turned this important inquiry off the track till it is lost in some Serbonian bog of small details and petty investigations. I am unwilling to trespass further on the time of the Committee. I think I have shown by the history of last week and by the comments I have made on the right hon. Gentleman's speech, that nothing can be more hollow, nothing less capable of withstanding criticism, than the case he has attempted to make against the good faith which throughout all their proceedings has animated the Government.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

said, he had not intended to make any personal charge against the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary for making his speech on the second reading at the time he did. He had stated that it was delivered to an inadequate audience, but he did not wish to imply that that was the fault of the right hon. Gentleman.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, it was a remarkable fact that the Committee should be discussing a matter affecting the conduct and character of the Leader of the House in the absence of that right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had said that it was a matter of some importance as to what was the date when the Notice was given. The demon of inaccuracy seemed to pursue the right hon. Gentleman. He had stated that the Notice was upon the Paper on Thursday; but, as a matter of fact, it was not put upon the Paper until Friday night. When the right hon. Gentleman's statement was disputed, "Oh," said he, "my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board will look up the Notice and see whether those who interrupt me are right or not." Well, the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board had made his researches, but the result had not been announced to the House.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, that in the latter part of his observations he had stated that the Notice was put upon the Paper on Saturday and appeared on Monday.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, they would now see how history as written by Hansard agreed with history as stated by the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman had stated that at all times hon. Members were in possession of the fact that the conduct of "Members of Parliament and other persons" was to be inquired into. He said that on Wednesday the Committee of the Cabinet, who were especially charged with this matter, met and decided on a certain thing. He said that on Thursday the Cabinet itself met, and full of the idea that was in their breast at the time, and having knowledge of the views of their own Committee, deliberately adopted the terms of the Reference, including inquiry into the conduct of "other persons" as well as Members of Parliament. Well, the Cabinet met on Thursday, and on Thursday what happened? Why, on Thursday the hon. Member for Cork came down and asked whether a Select Committee would be granted; and what was the answer given? Why, the answer read off from a written Paper, and no doubt prepared as the result of the gravest deliberation, not only by the Cabinet on Thursday, but by the Committee of the Cabinet on Wednesday, was to this effect—after those two different Bodies had scrutinized and examined the whole matter, what did the First Lord of the Treasury say in reply, not only to one question, but to a second question? Why this— The Government retain the opinion which they had expressed, in which the House concurred by a large majority last year, that the proposed tribunal is altogether unfit to deal with the question—limited as it is in scope and character—which the hon. Member proposes to refer to it; but they are willing to propose to Parliament to pass an Act appointing a Commission, which should consist wholly or mainly of Judges, with full powers as in the case of other Statutory Commissions, to inquire into the allegations and charges made against Members of Parliament by the defendants in the recent action of O'Donnell v. Walter and another.' But that was not all. It was not even half. What did they find—and they must remember that this was with regard to a matter settled by a special Committee of the Cabinet, in consultation with the counsel for The Times then and there present—had happened? The hon. Member for Cork asked— Does the right hon. Gentleman propose to place on the Notice Paper the terms of his Motion with regard to the Bill which will be necessary for the Act of Parliament to which he has referred?

Mr. W. H. SMITH

If hon. Gentlemen are prepared to accept the offer which has been made, I am prepared to put on the Notice a Motion for leave to bring in a Bill with reference to the Judges.

Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE (Edinburgh, Mid Lothian)

As the precise terms of the Notice will probably go far to determine the character of the Bill, I think that they should he placed on the Paper, so that we may have them in an absolutely authentic form.

Mr. W. H. SMITH

I will place them on the Paper to-morrow, for Monday."

[Ministerial cheers.] Hon. Members opposite would not cheer so loudly presently. This occurred on the 12th July. Then, on the 16th July, which was the Monday, the right hon. Gentleman's Notice having appeared on the Paper, and having, as they learned that day for the first time in the statement of the Home Secretary, had a heading placed to it by the Clerks at the Table—a statement which he did not propose to controvert—other questions were asked which he would presently go into. First, however, with regard to this heading, the counsel for The Times, who was apparently taking up the modest position in this House of entire aloofment from everything that was going on, said it was the Clerk at the Table who had called the Bill "The Members of Parliament (Charges and Allegations) Bill." But as he (Mr. T. M. Healy) was informed on the Friday night, the hon. and learned Gentleman sent up a communication to The Times in his own handwriting, a communication which was still extant, which was more than could be said of the forged letters—containing the title of the Bill as it stood at the present moment on the Paper.

SIR RICHARD WEBSTER

The hon. Member is absolutely misinformed. I did not send up any communication on that occasion to The Times containing the title of the Bill.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, that if the hon. and learned Gentleman said that the communication was not in his handwriting, he (Mr. T. M. Healy) should be very glad to do what the hon. and learned Gentleman refused to do in the case of statements of the Irish Members as to handwriting—namely, accept the hon. and learned Gentleman's disavowal. He would ask the hon. and learned Gentleman, however, first to say absolutely that no communication was sent by him.

SIR RICHARD WEBSTER

Beyond stating to a member of the Press, and who was not a representative of The Times, who asked me whether the Notice had been handed in——["Oh!"] It is my hon. and learned Friend over there who interrupts me. Beyond answering the inquiry of a representative of the Press, who asked me whether the Notice had been handed in, which I did after having spoken to the Clerk at the Table, I did nothing whatever of the kind suggested by the hon. Gentleman.

MR. ANDERSON

The hon. and learned Attorney General referred, I believe, to me as having interrupted him. I did not utter one syllable.

SIR RICHARD WEBSTER

I apologize to my hon. and learned Friend.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, he accepted the disavowal of the hon. and learned Attorney General, and apologized for having made the statement; but a communication was sent to The Times that night.

SIR RICHARD WESTER

I wish the House to know exactly what happened. I made no communication of any kind containing the title of the Bill, or anything to anybody. One of the Clerks, having the Notice before him, showed me the title that night—I think it was the Gentleman sitting on the left—having the Notice before him, showed me the title which had been written out by himself, I believe, and simply asked me whether it would do? I said I knew nothing about the question of drawing the title. I had not sufficient experience to know how it was done. If it was not the Clerk at the Table, it was the very courteous gentleman we see at the Bill Office, who on meeting me asked me whether the title would do? I said I knew nothing about it, and that the matter was settled entirely by the officials without me, and I deny absolutely having had anything whatever to do with fixing the title of the Bill.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, that after the statement of the Home Secretary that the title was absolutely fixed by the Clerk at the Table, they now found that it was submitted to the counsel for The Times. ["Oh!" and "Hear, hear!"] Then why did the Clerk at the Table go to the hon. and learned Attorney General, unless it was because he knew that he was going to the right man—because he knew he was going to the Gentleman who was immediately concerned for The Times? Therefore, they found that the Clerk at the Table, having drawn up the Reference, submitted it to the Attorney General, and then, after that submission, a communication was made to The Times as to the exact title. On the Monday night, after the Notice appeared on the Paper, the hon. Member for Cork said— I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, in view of the fact that the Government have full power over the order of Business for to-day, both as regards Orders of the Day and Notices of Motion, and that the Notice of Motion with respect to the Members of Parliament (Charges and Allegations) Bill is placed by the Government after 31 Orders of the Day, and after 4 Notices of Motion, whether we are to understand that its place on the Notice Paper is a measure of the importance with which the Government views the Bill in question?. …

Mr. W. H. SMITH

The hon. Gentleman asks me whether I attach to this Order the relative importance which belongs to the position in which it stands on the Order Book? Sir, the Bill of which I have given Notice is a Bill to be introduced in accordance with the offer that I made to the hon. Gentleman and those who are associated with him, It is for him to say whether he will accept the proposal of the Government. I do not desire to debate that proposal; and I put it in its position on the Order Book, in order that it may be rejected or accepted by the hon. Member in the form in which it stands. If the Motion is received and accepted by the House, the Bill will be immediately printed and circulated, and I will then name a day for the second reading. But I may say frankly that I do not anticipate being able to make provision for debate on the second reading of a measure of this kind. It was an offer made by the Government to the hon. Member and his Friends to be either accepted or rejected."

On the very Friday, after that offer had been made by the right hon. Gentleman to the hon. Member for Cork, there appeared in The Times a leading article attacking his hon. Friend, because he did not, on the spot, spring up and accept the offer. Under those circumstances, he (Mr. T. M. Healy) maintained that they were entitled to-day to the presence of the First Lord of the Treasury, and the reason he gave for it was this—that transaction, it was said, was settled by the Cabinet Council on Wednesday. The terms were settled by the Cabinet on Thursday, and a whole 24 hours intervened before the Notice was handed in at the Table, between 11 and 12 o'clock on Friday night. Was it on that Friday that Walter visited the right hon. Gentleman? What was the date of the visit of Walter, and of Buckle who accompanied him, to the First Lord of the Treasury? He would ask this. The First Lord of the Treasury said last night that Walter visited him, because he was his old friend. Was Buckle also his "old friend?" What did Buckle come down for? They were entitled to know from the First Lord of the Treasury what was the date of the duplicate visit from Buckle and Walter. If they were to give facts their proper application, and if they were to draw reasonable conclusions from the conduct of the Government, they must conclude that it was on the Friday, after Walter and Buckle had read in the public prints the statements made by the First Lord of the Treasury on Thursday, that this pair of worthies came to remonstrate with the right hon. Gentleman. If that were not the case, let the House have the date. It would not do to tell them what did not take place at that interview; what they wanted to know was what did take place. They wanted to know what took place at that interview. The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury said "What Mr. Walter said did not affect me." But what did be do, and what did he bring Buckle there for? He would also remind the House of another extraordinary matter, that at that time there appeared in The Times this remarkable statement, "We regard letters only as secondary evidence." To-day the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary said the charges against Members of Parliament were not primary but secondary charges, and so the forged letters were the secondary evidence of secondary charges. Yet the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Lees) and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) said, "Disprove the letters and you will dissipate the entire cloud of suspicion which is hanging over you." Yes; but the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary said that the charges against others are primary charges, and The Times says that the letters are secondary evidence of the charges. It was quite clear in the mind of the Government and the accusers of hon. Members that, so far as the main and chief purpose of this inquiry was concerned, these letters sank into insignificance and might be relegated to the dim and distant future. Irish Members wanted to pin the forgers of the letters. What the Government said was—"Oh, no; we will run the League to bay over the flowers and blossoms of Land League crime, and if it suits us some years hence we will then begin to inquire into these forged letters." Let him remind hon. Members of the time when their own characters were affected. Under the Corrupt Practices Act it took an Act of Parliament to get evidence of bribery and corruption to get at Members in whose interest those acts were alleged to have been committed; but the Government proposed this Bill, and put in charges and allegations made against Members of Parliament and others, so that they could get evidence as to crime committed no less than 15 years ago. Every speech made and every action done in that time they could enter into before any single charge or allegation might be made against any single Member. That was the way this Bill was framed. He said they were entitled to this—that the Government should first inquire into charges against Members of Parliament, and that when they had done that, if they could, connect Irish Members with the murders, outrages, and crimes. The plan of the Government was to invert the natural order. They framed the Bill so that they might inquire into every crime committed for 20 or 30 years, whether relevant or not, and then having concocted a dainty dish to lay before Primrose Dames, when perhaps no attempt had been made, as far as Irish Members knew, to connect them with crime, the Government might close their case, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) would say—"Yes, it is quite true. It is owing to the way the Bill was framed. I would have put in the exact words." It would be said—"The Commissioners held their inquiry and gave us a vast body of evidence by which we may judge of the fitness of your people for Home Rule; they have given us a picture of the Irish people to enable us to show their fitness for Home Rule." What the Irish Members wanted and claimed was this, that if the Government had allegations against them, they should be made apart from the allegations to be made against those who made them; but if they proposed to go into this long and sad drama of Irish crime they must investigate the causes as well as the effects. He said that for a Government proposing to act generously and nobly, simply to inquire into crime at a distant time committed by other men unconnected with the House of Commons, was not only futile, but absurd. Had they not got statistics of crime presented every day to that House? Had they no records of accusations for those murders, and in every shape and form the exact account and measure of what those crimes were? The Government pretended not to want to connect Irish Members with those crimes, and they challenged the Government, they dared them, and invited them to say why, if it was not merely to pile up a ghastly crop of crime—which they could out of the Blue Books if they liked,—they did not limit the inquiry as they demanded? The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary and the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Scotland said on the second reading of the Bill if they did not put in the words "and others" they would exclude the acts of Egan, Ford, Byrne, and Sheridan. Now this proposal was not to omit the words "and others," but to insert after them "who are found in complicity and con- nection with Members of Parliament," and, therefore, the argument on the second reading that to omit the words "and others" would prevent investigation of the cases of Ford, Byrne, Egan, and Sheridan, fell to the ground. They could investigate here every act of every Member of Parliament in connection with these men. But the Government wanted to go on a wider range. If so, they did not need to go beyond their own Blue Books, and Irish Members demanded that the inquiry should not be confined and restricted to acts on one side. They would ask that the acts on the other side should be considered. If agrarian crime was to be gone into, there must be inquiry into causes as well as effects; into rack-renting and evictions, pauperism and emigration, and into the treatment and deaths of prisoners. If they were to go into Parnellism and Crime, why should they not have Balfourism and Crime, Landlordism and Crime, or Orangeism and Crime? There were more deaths in the town of Belfast in consequence of the speeches made by hon Gentlemen opposite, who, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had said, were men of rank and station—there had been more murder and outrage in the North of Ireland in three weeks from the passions excited by Ministerialists and Orange speeches than could be proved to have taken place in three years in connection with the Land League movement. If the Government insisted on extending and widening the terms of Reference, they must do so with the exposure which the Irish Members would make of their objects. It was not that the Government wanted to get at the truth, or that they wanted to get a picture of what had taken place in Ireland for the last eight years; that picture might be seen, among other things, in the charred ruins of many a home, and in the workhouse wards and poor-houses in Ireland. All those things were worthy of inquiry—the dispersal of the Irish peasantry, the destruction of their homes; all these went to make up a question of liability and responsibility for crime in Ireland, as well as the speeches made in Ennis in October, 1880. Irish Members maintained and claimed that, if the Government persisted in this broad, general inquiry, their purposes were not truth and honesty, but malignity and the endeavour still more to stir up the prejudice of the English people so that they might be able to retain their seats and salaries. It was said that the inquiry was intended to get at the truth. Yes; the Government truth, but not "the" truth. If they wanted that they must go into the entire matter; if they wanted the Government truth they must simply get a new edition of The Newgate Calendar; if they wanted history, Irish Members wanted history, not as written by the author of The Defence of Philosophic Doubt, but as it stood written by the Coroner's jury on the death of John Mandeville and others. The Government, backed by the Unionist Party and the hon. and learned Gentleman above the Gangway, were not doing this thing in love for truth, but as a mere political manœuvre and vendetta. When the right hon. Member for West Birmingham said he was no lawyer, he asked the right hon. Gentleman had he no assistants? Had he not the assistance of the hon. and learned Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay)? And were Members for Ireland to suppose there was so little collegiality with the learned Queen's Counsel who was Member for Inverness that the right hon. Gentleman could not turn round his head and say to him—"Would you not now, out of collegiality, draw me up this little Amendment which I am so anxious to move?" Was it to be supposed that the draft he made on the good nature of his Unionist Friend would be so great that it would meet with no response? The introduction which the hon. and learned Member for Inverness had granted the Committee into the sanctuary of his mind and conscience in his speech was an extremely valuable one, for it charged that the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid) was an unfit person to sit on a Select Committee to inquire into these charges because he did not believe in advance in the guilt of the Gentlemen accused.

MR. FINLAY

said, he never said anything of the kind. He had said that no Committee of Inquiry should consist of Gentlemen who had made up their minds beforehand one way or the other.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, he understood that the hon. and learned Gentleman never expressed his opinion that the men were innocent of these charges; because the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid) adopted the Common Law view with regard to their conduct, and the un-common law view taken by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay), and amongst the Unionists of that quarter, was that because his hon. and learned Friend had not convinced himself in advance of the guilt of the Irish Party, he was an unworthy and unfit person to sit on this Commission. That, he said, gave Irish Members the measure of the fair play which they were receiving in that House. They had asked for inquiry, and they granted they got it on certain terms. That was the great point of the Cabinet; the great point of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, who skulked behind that Chair and would not come out before the House. [Cries of "Order!" and "Withdraw!"]

MR. AIRD (Paddington, N.)

said, he rose to Order. He asked whether it was right for the hon. and learned Member for North Longford to say of the First Lord of the Treasury, that he was skulking behind the Chair?

THE CHAIRMAN

said, that the expression to which the hon. Gentleman referred was undoubtedly strong. It was also one on which, perhaps, the opinions of some hon. Members would differ from the opinion of others.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, he would withdraw it when the right hon. Gentleman came into the House. He would then change the expression, and ask him, "Why did he linger behind the Chair?" He trusted the right hon. Gentleman would not feel offended if, when he returned, he was greeted from that side of the House with cries of "Welcome, little stranger."

MR. JOHNSTON (Belfast, S.)

said, he rose to Order. He asked whether the expressions of the hon. and learned Member were proper, considering that the First Lord of the Treasury was suffering under a domestic affliction?

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, he now heard of the circumstance for the first time, and he unhesitatingly expressed his regret for having commented on the right hon. Gentleman's absence. It was not to be supposed that communications passed from the opposite Benches to that part of the House, and Irish Members were entirely ignorant of the cause of the right hon. Gentleman's absence. Under the circumstances, he said, in conclusion, that Irish Members had not got from the right hon. Gentleman a proposal in conformity with the pledge he gave, that they should have this Bill confined to Members of Parliament. To enlarge the scope of the Commission, as the Government were now doing, by going into a general inquiry extending over 10 or 15 years, was to take a course which could only end in obscuring the position of hon. Members with regard to these charges with a cloud of words and devious allegations. He said that if any regard for the character of hon. Members of that House still prevailed, the Committee ought still to insist that this inquiry should be confined to such matters as those in respect of which other persons could be proved to have been in complicity with hon. Members on those Benches.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

A question of great importance has been raised in the course of this debate by the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, which evidently requires, on the present occasion, or upon some very early occasion, to receive a full explanation from the Government. I learn, with deep regret, the cause of the absence of the First Lord of the Treasury. It is possible that one of his Colleagues may answer the question I am going to put; but, if no answer is now given, an answer is absolutely necessary at an early period. We have been told by the Chief Secretary for Ireland that on Wednesday, July 11th, a Committee of the Cabinet met and formed the opinion that it was necessary—not merely desirable—that the Government should press for an inquiry into charges and allegations against Members of Parliament "and others." That was the proceeding of Wednesday. Then we are told that on Thursday the Cabinet confirmed that conclusion of its Committee, so that, therefore, they determined on Thursday in Cabinet, as on Wednesday in Committee of Cabinet, that the inquiry should not be confined to Members of Parliament, but extend to other persons. On the same day the First Lord of the Treasury came to the House and read an answer from a written paper to an appeal of the hon. Member for Cork, and he made a definite proposal to the hon. Member, which was distinctly confined to Members of Parliament, and which was also distinctly at variance with what we have been informed to-day was the solemn decision of the Cabinet. Seeing three or four Members of the Cabinet opposite me, I wish to know how it was, if the Cabinet had come to a positive determination to include in the inquiry other persons besides Members of Parliament, that the First Lord of the Treasury, speaking on behalf of the Cabinet and making the proposal to the hon. Member for Cork, varied the covenant and declared that the intention of the Cabinet was not that the inquiry should extend to other persons, but that it should extend to the charges and allegations against Members of Parliament alone?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The account I gave to the Committee half-an-hour ago is, I believe, absolutely accurate. The right hon. Gentleman opposite has repeated the statement made by him in a former speech, that the announcement of the First Lord of the Treasury on the Thursday contained a definite offer which the hon. Member for Cork was to accept or reject. I have not had an opportunity of referring to Hansard; but I have heard what the hon. and learned Member for North Longford has read from it, that the right hon. Gentleman himself had said—"We must have the offer in writing in order that we may see what it is all about." Well, the right hon. Gentleman got it in writing, and the writing was in exact conformity, as I have before stated, with the decision arrived at on the Wednesday by the Committee of the Cabinet, and on the Thursday by the whole Cabinet. If the right hon. Gentleman asks me how it is that my right hon. Friend did not on the Thursday read the particular words to which attention has been drawn, I can only express my surprise that he should not have done so, and I suppose that the omission was a mere slip.

SIR, WILLIAM HARCOURT

The right hon. Gentleman, with his usual ingenuity, has answered everything except the question put to him. He has stated that on Wednesday the Committee of the Cabinet met and considered the material part of their decision, to the effect that the inquiry was to em- brace not only Members of Parliament, but other persons as well. The right hon. Gentleman says that the Cabinet met on the Thursday, and that also before that Cabinet meeting the material question was the inclusion of other persons besides Members of Parliament.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I said that the Cabinet confirmed the decision of the Committee.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

Quite so. Well, the First Lord of the Treasury, who is not a careless or inaccurate man, takes care to come to this House to announce the decision of the Cabinet in writing. He stands up at the Table and announces the decision of the Committee of the Cabinet and of the Cabinet, and he has drawn up what is in effect a Minute of the decision of the Cabinet, and that Minute, which he read to the House, does not contain the smallest allusion to anybody except Members of Parliament. That is the point on which we are entitled to a reply.

MR. GOSCHEN

The right hon. Gentleman has already received a reply, but he will not accept any reply. [Cries of "Oh!"] Yes; it has been stated several times that the First Lord of the Treasury was himself under the impression that he used the words "and others" when he made his statement in the House. He has stated that here in this House, and if he did not use the words it was simply a slip. [Laughter.] Of course, if the word of a Member of the Government is not to be accepted, we can have no more to say. The right hon. Gentleman asks what took place. I stated it yesterday, and my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland has stated it to-day more fully. The Cabinet had agreed to the words "and others." They were part of their policy on the Wednesday, and they were part of their policy on Thursday, and the First Lord of the Treasury has stated that he was under the impression at the time that he had used the words. However many speeches you may make, you cannot alter the fact that from the beginning the words "and others" were a part of the intention of the Government.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

The right hon. Gentleman has, I think, rather worsened the case; because he says that the First Lord of the Treasury, who came down to announce to the House an important decision of the Cabinet, by a slip omitted from his written answer which he had prepared, words which we now find have completely reversed and metamorphosed the nature of his proposal. His declaration to the House was tendered as a covenant to the hon. Member for Cork, and the hon. Member for Cork was invited to accept or reject the offer made to him, and not only did this extraordinary fact happen that the First Lord of the Treasury by a slip omitted the most essential part of it, but likewise that six or seven Cabinet Ministers who were sitting on the Bench beside him, and who heard him read this written announcement of the decision of the Cabinet—these six or seven Cabinet Ministers, all and each of them, all made a similar slip. They were totally unaware that the essential words—the turning words upon which everything that has since taken place has been founded—were omitted, and according to the luminous statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it appears that they all simultaneously and instinctively fell into the slip of the First Lord of the Treasury, and completely forgot the important decision on which they were engaged on Wednesday in Committee, and on the Thursday in the Cabinet.

MR. GOSCHEN

The right hon. Gentleman has not improved his position. He does not answer my challenge. I can only gather from his speech that he disbelieves the statement of my right hon. Friend. I do most profoundly regret, and I shall regret always, that the right hon. Gentleman—[Laughter]—Oh, I have nothing to do with hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway opposite who laugh. I have to do with the right hon. Gentleman, who has been for more than 50 years in political life. I deeply regret that he will not take the word of Members of the Cabinet. I am quite sure that, in the course of the 50 years during which he has taken so prominent a part in this House in politics, never has he acted as he has now. I profoundly and sincerely believe that the right hon. Gentleman will regret the insult to my right hon. Friend. He cannot wish to be under the imputation of not accepting the word of a man who, I believe, he must admit is as honourable a Gentleman as himself. The right hon. Gentleman's point was this—that we on this Bench were silent when my right hon. Friend made his statement. But the right hon. Gentleman himself at once rose and asked that the statement should be made in writing. He said it would be more satisfactory to have the words in writing, and the matter then dropped. The next day the words agreed upon by the Cabinet were put into writing, and laid on the Table. No ingenuity, no speeches, can do away with the fact that these words "and other persons" were from the beginning included in the policy and the intention of the Government.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

The right hon. Gentleman charges me with disbelieving the word of honour of a Member of the Government. No such idea entered my mind. [An hon. MEMBER: Oh!] I repeat what I have said; but I observe that there is an hon. Gentleman opposite who apparently thinks it just to express disbelief of an assertion positively made by me. Will he rise and make au apology? I hope for his own sake he will—for myself I am perfectly indifferent, and, Sir, I have not the smallest intention of dealing as a matter of truth with any statement of Members of the Government. With regard to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, I am willing to believe all assertions I receive from right hon. Gentlemen opposite when put into rational and intelligible shape; but I have endeavoured to point out that the statement laid before us by the Government was neither rational nor intelligible. The statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not accurate. He says that when the First Lord of the Treasury had announced the terms of the inquiry which he intended the hon. Member for Cork should accept or reject, I immediately rose and demanded the words in writing, and so the incident terminated. That is not the fact. I did not immediately rise. The hon. Member for Cork rose, and he was next followed by the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, and it was only then that it appeared to me to be a positive necessity that I should call for the production of the words. But do not the Government see that they are in this most unfortunate position—that, on their own showing, the proposal made to the hon. Member for Cork for his immediate acceptance or refusal was couched in terms essentially different from those which the First Lord, it is now stated meant to use, and essentially different from those which six or seven Cabinet Ministers knew to have been decided upon in the Cabinet?

MR. GOSCHEN

I do not think it clear that the acceptance of the hon. Member for Cork would depend simply on the inclusion or omission of the words "and others." The question was whether the offer of this inquiry would be accepted. The Government never for one moment supposed that the words "and others" would have such an effect that if they were included hon. Members would shrink from the inquiry.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is trying to ride off. He knows that he is beaten. We have, however, not done with him yet. He complains that the word of a Member of the Government is not accepted. But the Members of the Government have no special privilege in that respect. How has the whole question arisen? It has arisen because of the Government and their supporters behind them. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says that he has nothing to do with hon. Members below the Gangway. That is the spirit of the Government. Who are the Members below the Gangway? They are the Representatives of Ireland. It is quite true he has nothing to do with them. Their words he and his Friends will not accept. On the contrary, they endorse, patronize, and promote every calumny of The Times against them. So far from accepting their word, have they not by every process endeavoured to fix the charge of perjury and falsehood upon them? He complains that he and his Friends are not always believed. Let me tell him that no man sitting on the Treasury Bench has any peculiar privilege in this matter above "the men who sit below the Gangway." They, as well as other Members of the House, are entitled to be treated as men of honour. But the Government do not recognize that fact. That is the doctrine of the Government; that is the spirit of this Bill. Every day, every hour, we are unmasking their policy. I only wish we could get the Chancellor of the Exchequer to rise on his legs a little oftener; for the temper he displays reveals to us the nature of the policy of which he is the advocate. There are far more adroit men sitting on that Bench than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant is much cleverer. He wears a better mask. But if you want to see true bitterness, true unfairness, and true hypocrisy, commend me to the frank innocence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. By all means let us have the principle established that Members of this House shall be treated as men of honour, whose word is to be taken, and then there would be no reason for this Bill.

THE CHAIRMAN

said, he would point out that the position was perfectly well ascertained on both sides of the Committee, and that nothing advantageous could ensue from these recriminatory speeches.

MR. FORREST FULTON

rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."

Question, "That the Question be now put," put, and agreed to.

Question put accordingly, "That the words 'in so far as the same bear upon the charges and allegations against the said Members' be there inserted."

The Committee divided:—Ayes 194; Noes 241: Majority 47:—(Div. List, No. 256.)

It being half an hour after Five of the clock, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.

Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.