§ MR. J. E. ELLIS (Nottingham, Rushcliffe)said, he thought it would be acknowledged that the debate on the previous evening was opened by two speeches, the different tone of which was most significant. The House would never forget that the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow (Sir George Trevelyan) had administered the Office of Chief Secre- 478 tary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at a time when Ireland was a seething cauldron of discontent and disaffection. The difficulties of the present Chief Secretary were very slight indeed compared with those which Lord Spencer and the right hon. Baronet had to confront during the years they administered the affairs of Ireland. He ventured to render his humble tribute to the speech of the right hon. Baronet on the previous evening, and to thank him, not only for the generous sympathy running through his speech, but more especially for the high level at which he opened and maintained the debate during his remarks. The hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson) had made what he (Mr. Ellis) had no doubt was felt by hon. Members opposite to be a very effective contribution to any Party debate. ["Hear, hear!"] He had expected that that remark would meet with a responsive cheer. He (Mr. Ellis) had been asked by hon. Members who sat on the opposite side of the House whether that speech was not an amusing one, and his reply was that these were not times when hon. Members came down to the House to be amused. If the highest tribute to a speech in the present crisis was that it was very amusing, it was certainly not a speech that was appropriate to the circumstances of the moment. The hon. and gallant Member was a master of the art of innuendo. He contrived, after long practice, to convey to the minds of those who listened to him insinuations of their complicity in things of which he did not accuse them in a straightforward manner. Several hon. Members had to rise on that side of the House, including the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), in order to repudiate that which was conveyed to their minds in the remarks of the hon. and gallant Member. He (Mr. Ellis) ventured to say that any Member of the House, be he who he might, and sitting where he liked, should convey what he had to say in clear and unmistakable language, and should not go behind the backs of hon. Members to insinuate charges of the basest description against them. He promised, for his own part, not to be guilty of the same offence, and he did not think that he had ever been guilty of it during the 479 time he had had the honour of a seat in that House. He might, however, remind the hon. and gallant Gentleman that only last Session he had initiated one of the most painful episodes which ever occurred in Parliament. The tone and temper of the speech of the hon. and gallant Member last night was such that, if the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury (Mr. W. H. Smith) was really anxious to secure the honour and dignity of the debates in that House, he (Mr. Ellis) would venture to appeal to him to put some pressure on the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh to restrain his remarks of a provocative character, so that they might not during this Session be led into any of the painful scenes which were due primarily to the hon. and gallant Member last year. In one part of the hon. and gallant Member's speech he endeavoured to connect a particular murder with a local branch of the National League. [Sir ROBERT FOWLER: Hear, hear!] The hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir Robert Fowler) evidently approved of the course taken by the hon. and gallant Member; but the hon. and gallant Member absolutely failed to connect the two together, for the very good reason, as pointed out by the hon. Member for the St. Patrick's Division of Dublin (Mr. Murphy), that there was no local branch in existence at that time, the local branch of the National League which had been in existence having died. [Laughter."] The hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General (Sir Richard Webster) smiled at his observations; but he ventured to maintain that it was a grave matter for the hon. and gallant Member to connect what was held to be a perfectly Constitutional situation with such awful crimes as murder. Certainly, in an attempt to connect what they on the Opposition side regarded as a perfectly Constitutional association with such crimes, the House should demand as strict a sequence of proof as would be demanded in a Court of Justice. No hon. Member had a right to attribute such terrible crimes to local branches of the National League, unless he was prepared to produce every link that connected the League with the actual crime itself. The House had to debate the reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech under somewhat grave 480 circumstances. It had been the lot of the Speaker to read to the House already, although this was only the fifth day of the sitting of Parliament, letters informing the House that no less than 10 of their Colleagues had been, or were, in Her Majesty's prisons. Now, he did not regard that as a very light matter—namely, that 10 Members of the House of Commons should have been committed to gaol. He had listened with astonishment to the remarks which fell from the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Bury (Sir Henry James) the other night. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, towards the conclusion of the speech in which he tried to come to the aid of Her Majesty's Government—although whether he did so or not was not quite so certain—the right hon. and learned Gentleman, referring to the complaint of the imprisonment of the Irish Members, said that those who complained did not take a democratic view of the matter. To his (Mr. Ellis's) mind, the question was not what was a democratic view or an aristocratic view, but what was the right view, and he would venture to submit to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the advice of an old philosopher, that he should clear his mind of cant. It was a favourite device of Conservative orators on public platforms at the present moment, and it had been made use of in the somewhat hysterical harangue of the hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell)—it was a somewhat favourite device of hon. Gentlemen to say that there was but one treatment for everybody, and that no difference was to be made between a Member of Parliament and anybody else. He entirely agreed with that, nor did he ask that Members of Parliament should be dealt with in a different manner. They would, however, take care, whenever an opportunity came to remind the Conservative Party and their allies, that that doctrine must be applied all round. On that side of the House they certainly did regard the fact that a constituency so deprived of the services of its Member in the Commons House of Parliament as a very important matter. By imprisoning a Member of Parliament, the Government were depriving a considerable number of persons of the only effective voice they had in the government of the affairs of 481 the country. He did not care whether the Member imprisoned sat on that side of the House or on the other, the fact remained that Her Majesty's Government were imprisoning a Representative of the people. He was not at all surprised that a number of those who were returned last time to the House by Tory votes, but who called themselves Liberals, should undervalue the principle of representation, because no one knew better than they did that a good many of them were not now truly representing their constituencies. He had no desire to enter into that point at the present moment, but he could give name after name of Members sitting on those Benches who never dared to go among their constituents. Since their election in 1886 some of these hon. Members had not visited their constituents at all. No wonder, therefore, that they were shy of the principle of representation. The circumstances under which the House met were grave, not only because several hon. Members had been imprisoned, but also because, by putting persons into gaol who were not believed to be criminals or law-breakers, the Government were striking at the very source and fount of respect for law in the community which furnished the only real security that the law should be observed. What was the offence for which the hon. Member for North-East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien) was arrested? In that constituency there was a certain estate owned by the Countess of Kingston, upon which there were a number of leaseholders. Those leaseholders, as the House well knew, were, unfortunately, against the remonstrance of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), excluded from the benefit of the Act of 1881. A measure to remedy that defect was introduced last Session by the Government, and these leaseholders asked the hon. Member for North-East Cork to give advice as to what they were to do under the circum-stances in which they were placed. Their landlady was proceeding to eject them, and, as he (Mr. Ellis) held, to deprive them of the property which the Act of 1881 ought to have given to them, and which it did give to the other tenants in Ireland. The hon. Member for North-East Cork told them that there was a Bill before Parliament promoted by the present Government, and that 482 that Bill, if passed into law, would procure them access to the Court. "Therefore," said the hon. Member, "I advise you to hold your holdings against all comers by all honest means." The tenants did so. The Bill became law, and received the Royal Assent during the third week of August, and within some three weeks after that time, Mr. W. O'Brien, the hon. Member for North-East Cork, who gave them that advice, was arrested and suffered imprisonment. Now, he (Mr. Ellis) maintained that, in the ordinary sense of the term, the hon. Member for North-East Cork was not a law-breaker, and was not a criminal. He had been guilty of no breach of the moral law. No doubt, he had suffered under the provisions of an Act passed by this House; but did the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland uphold the doctrine that they must not look into the circumstances under which an Act had passed through that House? That Act was passed through the House of Commons as no other Act was ever passed. Of no other Act could it be said that a similar circumstance had happened to one which he had witnessed in connection with the Act of last year. Hon. Members on that side of the House all passed through the House washing their hands of all responsibility. The Chairman of Committees, the hon. Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney) rose in his place and put 14 clauses of the Bill without debate. Now, he maintained that that was not legislation. Would it be contended by the hon. and learned Attorney General that this House—of course, the hon. and learned Gentleman would say it could—but would it be contended that an Act of Parliament passed in the way he had described should be binding on the people on whom it was intended to apply. Suppose, by way of illustration, that a Bill was introduced by Her Majesty's Government imposing tremendous penalties on the county of Nottingham, of which he (Mr. Ellis) was one of the Representatives, and that it was ordered that the Speaker or Chairman of Committees, at a particular moment, should interrupt the debate and put the whole of the clauses of the Bill without any hon. Member being able to touch a single line or word in the Bill. He contended that that was suspending the representation of the people by a side wind, and in the interests of the 483 dignity of the traditions and the Privileges of the House, he considered it was the duty of every Representative to watch carefully the progress of a Bill as it was passing through the House. There was a great deal of nonsense talked about the law at the present time. One would fancy, to judge from the utterances of many hon. Members on the other side, and some who were sitting on the Benches below him, that the law was a kind of fetish or mumbo jumbo. That was not the idea which prevailed in other days, nor ought it to prevail now. Even the hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell) said last night that he could conceive circumstances under which it might be proper for him to disobey the law, but he should take care to do it with dignity. That admitted the whole question. There were many laws on the Statute Book at the present moment which he (Mr. Ellis) should feel it his duty to disobey. What was said by a London police magistrate only very recently? It was that if any attempt were made to induce him to put into operation a certain Act, he should entirely decline to do it, until he was compelled by a mandamus from a higher Court. All this nonsense about obeying the law without inquiring what the law was would not hold water for a single moment. It was opposed to the highest principles of the English Constitution, and he protested against it in the strongest manner. They were told in Her Majesty's Speech that agrarian crime had diminished. He was not going to enter into the figures at any length, but he noticed that the Chief Secretary was very shy at any allusion to them. More than once since the debate began the right hon. Gentleman had got up at the Table to explain away any allusion that was made to them. He (Mr. Ellis) wanted now to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to one or two serious discrepancies in the figures which had been given to the House. The right hon. Gentleman had made use of this expression—"that the amount of known agrarian crime in 1886 was 2,195, in 1887 it was 1,837." He wanted to know where these figures came from, as they were not contained in any Return presented to Parliament last year. Then, again, the right hon. Gentleman said—"Agrarian crime, 484 without threatening letters, was 1,056 in 1886; and in 1887 it was 883." But the Returns given by the Chief Secretary included threatening letters, which were surely a very important matter. His (Mr. Ellis's) point was this—that the Chief Secretary said that agrarian crime, without threatening letters, was 1,056 in 1886, and 883 in 1887. Now, from Return 55 handed to the House yesterday morning, the figures 1,056 included, and did not exclude, threatening letters. As everybody knew, this diminution of outrages was going on long before the Coercion Act was brought into the House. He did not intend to labour the point. The Chief Secretary had attempted to do that which every amateur chemist knew was a very dangerous thing to attempt. He had attempted to show that a particular effect had followed from a particular cause, when, as every man knew, that effect had been produced by a multitude of causes. Take the last six months of the years 1886 and 1887, and it would be found that there was nothing in the argument of the diminution of agrarian crime. In the last six months of 1886 the agrarian crimes were 473, and eliminating threatening letters, were 291. In the last six months of 1887 agrarian crimes were 399, or 285 without threatening letters—that was to say, that agrarian crime fell in the last half of 1887, as compared with the last half of 1886, by six cases only. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary referred to Boycotting, and there was a long Return which, as far as he could discover, was the first Return ever presented to the House of Commons in regard to Boycotting. He (Mr. Ellis) submitted, however, that this Return was absolutely valueless, and would remain so until they had the names and dates and the whole particulars which went to make up the return, so that they could be investigated. He ventured to say that it was a little too much to ask the House to accept a Return like this on the mere ipse dixit of a Minister at the outset of a debate. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman to supplement the Return by the names, dates, and particulars, so that hon. Members might have some means of investigating the matter and putting themselves in a position to discuss it. It must be remembered that the right hon. Gentleman did not come into Court 485 with very clean hands in this matter. They had not forgotten Mitchelstown. The right hon. Gentleman was in such a hurry towards the end of September to accept the verdict of his subordinates with regard to that unhappy incident, that he made at least six statements which within a few days were absolutely contradicted by his own police witnesses. He would not go through them after the very exhaustive examination which had been made of those statements by the senior Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere). Nor had they forgotten the curious incident of the Galway midwife. The right hon. Gentleman got up at the Table and, in a theatrical manner, declared that a horrible state of society must prevail where such things could occur; but when the right hon. Gentleman was challenged to make good his assertions, he ran away from them. He (Mr. Ellis) maintained that it was not worthy of a Member of Her Majesty's Cabinet to traduce the character of humble people in Ireland, and then refuse to substantiate his accusations by facts. They were told that the measure which was passed last Session for the benefit of the Irish people had been carefully carried into effect. Who were the principal agents of the Government who were carrying the Coercion Act into effect? He might mention the Lord Lieutenant; but the principal agents in carrying out the policy of the Government were the Resident Magistrates. He would preface what he had to say of the Resident Magistrates of Ireland by the testimony of a very competent observer, who was not one of the Supporters of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), but one who had filled the position of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—namely, Earl Cowper. What was it that Earl Cowper said of these men? In a letter written to The Times in January, 1886, Lord Cowper said—
In Ireland all local matters are really managed through the instrumentality of the Resident Magistrate, and the Resident Magistrate is in constant communication with the Castle. This state of things has partly arisen from the helpless nature of the Irish, and has partly contributed to prolong that helplessness. A hateful system of bureaucratic government is the result—hateful in itself and only rendered tolerable in my time by the large-minded-ness and fairness, as well as industry and skill, of the eminent man who then filled the post of Permanent Under Secretary.486 What had the Government done with that individual? [An hon. MEMBER: It was not Sir Robert Hamilton.] Whether Sir Robert Hamilton was Permanent Under Secretary or not in the year 1882—when Earl Cowper was Lord Lieutenant—someone, at all events, was Permanent Under Secretary who blended the relations of the Resident Magistrates with Dublin Castle, and made things tolerable, and it was quite certain that the same man was not there now. Therefore, Earl Cowper's words must be true if they admit his authority that the position is no longer tolerable, because the only person who rendered it tolerable had been removed. One remark of the Chief Secretary the other night, when the Return of Resident Magistrates was spoken of, seemed in the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman and of hon. Members opposite to settle every question as soon as any criticism in regard to the Resident Magistrates was raised. It was quite enough to say—"Oh! Lord Spencer appointed them." But that argument might soon be disposed of. Lord Spencer said distinctly that he took the utmost pains that no confusion should arise between the action of the judicial and executive functions of the Resident Magistrates. That was no longer the case, but there was confusion from top to bottom. At one time a man was Judge, and at another an Executive Officer. The position of a Resident Magistrate under Lord Spencer was entirely different from what it was under the rule of Lord Londonderry. The House knew very well, as Earl Cowper said, that the Resident Magistrates were in direct communication with Dublin Castle. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary summoned them to Dublin to meet him in order to be interviewed by him, and to receive, as one of them said, his orders. Now, who were the Resident Magistrates? The House had a Return of them, and he found that out of 76 names there were 32 appointed from the Army and Navy, and 21 from the Constabulary, making 53 out of the 76 directly connected with the forces, because the Royal Irish Constabulary were nothing else than an armed force; of the remainder, 11 were barristers, and there were 12 others. Take the case of Mr. Eaton. Something was alleged with, respect to that gentleman 487 last evening by the hon. Member for one of the divisions of Dublin which demanded explanation on the part of the Government. The matter he (Mr. Ellis) was going to mention was a very simple and significant one. In the case of the trial of the hon. Member for North-East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien), when the first charge was concluded, Mr. Eaton said, before the hon. Gentleman opened his mouth in his defence, "We are perfectly ready to give our decision." That was a most significant commentary on the administration of justice in Ireland. He would appeal to any hon. Member in that House who was in the habit of acting as a magistrate, what would be thought of a magistrate in an English Court, if he were to say, before an accused person had an opportunity of offering his defence, "I am perfectly ready to give my decision." When that case was mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Mr. John Morley) at Halifax, and reported in The Times, Mr. Eaton sent a letter to The Times absolutely denying the fact; but he little knew that among the persons present in Court was the hon. Member for Scarborough (Mr. Rowntree), who took down the words in his pocket book at the time. The hon. Member for Scarborough wrote to The Times corroborating the statement of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. John Morley), and Mr. Eaton had not ventured again to deny the fact. He came now to the case of Captain Sea-grave. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) had mentioned two or three of the incidents which transpired in connection with this magistrate at Mitchelstown. He was nowhere to be found when he was most wanted, but he was the responsible Executive Officer in charge both of the military and police. What did Captain Seagrave admit in his cross-examination? He was asked by the council for the Accused, who represented the relatives of the deceased—'Would a politician be guilty of a direlection if he did not give your message to the County Inspector?' Answer, 'I don't know; I suppose he would; but I know nothing about Constabulary duties.' Mr. Harrington: 'That is another revelation. You don't know anything about Constabulary regulations. You had the command of the Constabulary on that day?' Captain Seagrave: 'Yes, I was in charge of them.' Mr. Harrington: 'Did you ever see the Police Code?' Captain Seagrave: 'I never saw the Police Code.' Mr. 488 Harrington: 'Where you in ignorance of the Police Code as to firing?' Captain Seagrave: 'I was.'Consequently, they had Her Majesty's executive officer in command on that occasion declaring that he was absolutely ignorant of the code which should govern the conduct of the police in case they were ordered by him to fire. He (Mr. Ellis) should wait with some curiosity for the answer that would be given to this case from the Bench opposite. He came now to the case of Mr. Cecil Roche, in regard to whom the Government attempted to stop all discussion by flinging at that side of the House the fact that Earl Spencer had, upon one occasion, appointed him a Special Commissioner under the Land Act. No doubt that was an important position; but Mr. Roche did not hold it very long. Mr. Cecil Roche told one gentleman, when he came before him, that Her Majesty's Government did not want English agitators in Ireland. But what was Mr. Cecil Roche himself? He was an itinerant political agitator at the General Election of 1886, in the pay of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union; and he went about defaming the Liberal candidates, and aspersing the character of his own countrymen on that occasion. This was one of the men who was now employed by Her Majesty's Government to administer the Coercion Act—a man who sat one moment on the Bench, and went outside the next to order the Constabulary ruthlessly to charge the people. Another magistrate was Mr. Meldon, at Limerick. He (Mr. Ellis) knew nothing of that gentleman's character; but Mr. Meldon had done that which would not be tolerated in England for a single moment. Certain persons were charged before the magistrates in Court. The case was heard, and the accused were discharged. Mr. Meldon, however, went outside the Court, and gave instructions in regard to particular persons that they should be again arrested. He then took his seat upon the Bench, and the prisoners were brought before him as a magistrate under the Coercion Act on the same charge as that upon which they had been acquitted by the magistrates a short time before. Now, he (Mr. Ellis) maintained that that was repugnant to all notions of fair play or 489 justice. He was, however, coming now to a much more serious matter. In Tipperary there was a magistrate named Colonel Carew. This Colonel Carew was sitting in the Court on the 15th of September; and the report of the proceedings from which he (Mr. Ellis) was about to quote was contained in The Tipperary Nationalist, published in Clonmel on the 17th of September—Certain persons were brought before Colonel Carew under the Coercion Act. Mr. Higgins, counsel for the prisoners, said: 'The position of my clients is this—they are brought here to be charged under one mode of procedure, and when they come they are told that the whole thing is to be altered, and they receive no summons to that effect. I wish to know, does the Crown withdraw its first proceeding?'—Colonel Carew; 'I represent the Crown here.'—Mr. Higgins: 'Pardon me, Sir, but you no more represent the Crown than I do. You ought as much to represent the prisoners as the Crown, as your business is to hold the balance evenly between the two.'That was a very fair observation for any counsel to make. Did the hon. and learned Attorney General (Sir Richard Webster) think that if an English magistrate so far forgot his duty as to say, on the Bench, that he represented the Crown, his conduct would not be immediatey and justly questioned in the House of Commons? After that observation on the part of the prisoners' counsel, Colonel Carew said—'But I am the Resident Magistrate here, and as such represent the Crown. The prisoners will be tried under the Crimes Act.'—Mr. Higgins: 'And I suppose the first proceedings are abandoned against them.'—Colonel Carew was understood to say that they were.—Mr. Higgins: 'Then I ask that the prisoners be discharged. There is no charge against them now that the Crown withdraws the charge of assaulting Constable Power, on which they were brought here.'—District Inspector Knox: 'But the charge is not withdrawn. It is on that we go.'—Colonel Carew: These men will be brought up under the Crimes Act this day fortnight.'—Mr. Higgins. 'I think the Crown ought to give their reasons.'—Colonel Carew: 'I have received orders from the Government which I cannot disregard, and I do not feel called upon to give any other reason.'Certainly not; the 76 Resident Magistrates received their orders from the Government, and did not feel called upon to give any other reason. That was called justice, and the way to win the sympathy of the people on the side of law and order— 490Mr. Higgins: 'I would again remind you, Sir, that you no more represent the Crown here than you do the prisoners.'The prisoners were then removed to the railway station in charge of a strong force of police. Colonel Carew suspended the business of the Petty Sessions for nearly an hour in order to accompany the prisoners to the railway station. These were proceedings which were not tolerable. The Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. Madden) said, the other night, that someone on the Opposition Benches—he forgot whom—had made an ungenerous attack upon the Resident Magistrates. The word generous or ungenerous came with a very bad grace, in this Irish matter, from any man who sat opposite. The Government must act, in this matter, with a little more generosity before they claim generosity from the Opposition. Well, such were the men who were carrying out what he should always call this most infamous legislation. In all gravity and seriousness he warned the Resident Magistrates of Ireland that when the Opposition crossed the floor of the House of Commons, as cross it they would in a very short time, every detail of their administration would be carefully scanned, as it was at the present moment, and if it was found that they had performed their functions in a manner for which they could justly be held responsible they might rely upon it such a course would be taken. He advised them to be careful. They could not shelter themselves behind the plea that they were merely carrying out orders. In times gone by Ministers of the Crown, even Speakers of the House of Commons, had not been allowed successfully to urge the plea that they had acted in a Ministerial capacity, but had been tried and punished accordingly. Let not these Resident Magistrates think they could escape being called to the strictest account. The hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) invited the House to say—That the administration of the Criminal Law Amendment Act as well as much of the action of the Executive in Ireland has been harsh, partial, and mischievous.Some members of the House, and many, perhaps, out of the 400 or 500 persons who had been condemned, had received their sentences in consequence of words they had uttered in public. He invited 491 the attention of the House to the mode in which proof had been tendered as to the language for which men had suffered. Take the case of Father M'Fadden, of Gweedore, an upright priest, a man who had preserved the peace of his district much more satisfactorily than the armed forces Her Majesty's Government had thought fit to send down. The Rev. Mr. M'Fadden was tried at Londonderry on the 28th of January. The first witness called was a police shorthand writer, Sergeant Mahony, who, in reply to Mr. Ross, said—'I am sixteen years in Gweedore district, and I am well acquainted with Father M'Fadden.' 'Are you able to write shorthand?' 'I am.' 'Did you take a note of the speech of Father M'Faddon?' 'I did.' 'Produce your notes and read from them?' Witness then proceeded to read from his notes as follows:—'My good friends,'—Mr, Adams: 'I presume those are the only original notes?' 'Yes. I did not report this—" First, that the cause is just."' Mr. Adams; 'What do you mean by saying that you did not report it?' 'I mean that I curtailed it.'It seemed to him (Mr. Ellis) a very dangerous thing to curtail the report of a speech on which a man was about to be tried.Mr. Ross; 'Read what you have there?' Witness continuing; 'I may state that there was a whole lot that I did not report.' Chairman: 'You must read what you hare.' Witness; 'I don't profess to be a verbatim reporter, and it might not make sense all along.' Mr. Adams; 'Read your broken sentences.' Witness: 'After some other remarks he says in Irish'—Mr. Adams: 'Have you notes in Irish?' 'I mean to say I translated it into English and then wrote it down.'Such was the way in which evidence was given against men tried under the Coercion Act. He (Mr. Ellis) supposed that in that case the magistrate had received his orders from the Government. Take the case of the hon. Member for South Galway (Mr. Sheehy). The shorthand writer was examined—'Did you ever study shorthand?' 'I did not. I might look over the book; but that is all. As f sir as I know, shorthand is not studied by any man in the barracks. There was no constable to my knowledge in French Park on the day of the meeting who knew shorthand. I think the day on which the meeting was held was a fine day. The meeting lasted from three o'clock till a quarter to five, and Mr. Sheehy was speaking the greater part of the time. When Mr. Sheehy spoke a sentence, or a sentence and a half, I took down all I could remember at the time. I took no note of what he would be saying while I was taking down the two sentences which I remembered at the time. I consider 492 Mr. Sheehy a slow speaker.' 'While you would be writing a sentence, how many sentences would he get ahead of you?' 'He might get two or three.' 'Then, when you would complete your sentence, would you skip over what he had said in the meantime and then catch him up again?' 'Yes; I would try and remember what he would say in the meantime.' When you say that you would try and remember, what do you mean?' 'I mean that when I heard a sentence or two, I would take that down and pay no attention to what he would say in the meantime,'He asked the House whether that was a system which ought to prevail in the ease of prosecutions of Members of Parliament. What occurred at the trial of the hon. Gentleman the Member for North-East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien)? The police reporter admitted that the notes were not written out till next day. The reporter who took the notes was not called till the Counsel for Mr. O'Brien insisted upon him being called, and then, on the production of his report, it was found that someone had written across the report, "Not to be used." There was a very strong suspicion that those words were in the handwriting of Captain Plunkett. Why was the report not to be used? He ventured to think it was because this loosely taken report differed in three particular points from the charge against Mr. O'Brien, and each of those points more favourable to the accused than the words in the charge actually preferred against him. This was a mockery of justice, and he made no apology for dwelling on such things. They were worth a good deal more than some of the amusing parts of the statement of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson). The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow (Sir George Trevelyan) made a dignified and weighty protest which he (Mr. Ellis) hoped would be felt by members of the Bar on the opposite side of the House, against the conduct of Crown Counsel in Ireland. He hoped that rebuke would go home to the learned Attorney General for Ireland in regard to the case he was now conducting. The conduct of the Crown Solicitors in Ireland could hardly be characterized in Parliamentary language. A case was brought before Mr. Cecil Roche, and Mr. Morphy asked for a short adjournment. Even Mr. Cecil Roche said— 493I am not inclined to give the Crown any facility; they have come into Court in a very curious way.It was then arranged that the further hearing of the case would be taken up on Monday three weeks, when Mr. Morphy said, "Oh, won't you hear our side?" He was astonished that one of the Resident Magistrates, a removable, one of the men who received and took their orders from the Government, would not hear his side. Mr. Cecil Roche replied, "I think you deserve no consideration." That was a pretty strong observation for Mr. Roche to make. What took place in the case of Brosnan, the newsagent? In the first place, the man's demand for an appeal was refused by the magistrates. In the next place, the Queen's Bench decided that they would not grant an appeal as frivolous. But the Court of Appeal granted it on the express ground that there was substantial matter for argument. What was the position of the prisoner? He was in gaol, bail having been refused. The Queen's Bench refused to admit him to bail, but his indefatigable counsel, the hon. and learned Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy), went to the Castle, and pointed out to the authorities what the exact facts were. The Castle Authorities liberated the man. That was a case in which the Chief Secretary used the dispensing power. Would it not be better that the state of the law should be such that no dispensing power would have to be used by the Chief Secretary? The hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. Madden) passed very lightly over the case of John Sullivan, in which judgment was given by Chief Baron Palles. He (Mr. Ellis) could not mention the Chief Baron without saying that in this grievous crisis in Irish history, it was a good thing that on the Bench of Ireland there was a man absolutely fearless, whose mind was saturated with the traditions of law, and who would recognize no authority guiding his conduct but law. In the case of John Sullivan, Chief Baron Palles decided that there was no evidence to justify his imprisonment. The Solicitor General for Ireland said that the evidence should have been given in a different way.
§ THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. MADDEN) (Dublin Uni-494 versity) said, he stated that the Court of Exchequer held that there was no evidence sufficient to justify the imprisonment, and then he had pointed out how that occurred.
§ MR. J. E. ELLISwas much obliged to the hon. and learned Gentleman for his explanation. He now supposed the hon. and learned Gentleman wished them to understand that the want of evidence occurred through the evidence not being presented in the right way. Did he mean to say that there was evidence, if the evidence had been presented in the proper way?
§ MR. MADDENsaid, he did intend to say that. There were five cases tried, but separately tried. That was to say, each person accused had the benefit of a separate trial. The evidence was given in the first of the cases, but it was not separately given and reduced to writing in the following cases. [An hon. MEMBER: Oh, oh!]
§ MR. J. E. ELLISsaid, the explanation of the hon. and learned Gentleman was challenged by an hon. Gentleman below the Gangway, and therefore the case remained where it was. The fact of the matter was, that Sullivan had been illegally put in prison, and had been liberated by the Court of Exchequer. Again, the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) asked them to declare that the action of the Executive was partial. That was a very serious charge against the Executive. He (Mr. Ellis) did not propose to dwell long on the case of Mr. Stoney, which was mentioned last night by the hon. Gentleman the Member for North Dublin (Mr. Clancy). The case of Mr. Stoney was brought up on the 1st of September last, and the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary admitted that Mr. Stoney was guilty of very grave neglect, and in some cases, of even more than that—namely, wilful neglect and misapplication, of public money. If the right hon. Gentleman would refer to Hansard, he would see that those were the exact words he used. Now, when a man had been declared by a Minister in the House of Commons guilty of such an offence, surely he ought no longer to remain in the Commission of the Peace, especially when the Lord Chancellor had removed from the Commission Mr. Byrne, whose only offence was that he travelled by train a 495 few miles out of his own Petty Sessional district. Every member who held Her Majesty's Commission of the Peace for a county knew perfectly that, although a magistrate entered his name for a particular Petty Sessional district, the Commission covered the area of the whole county. The only possible explanation of Mr. Byrne's treatment lay in his Nationalist sympathies. He (Mr. Ellis) asked that the offence of misapplication of public money in this case should be followed by the condign and proper consequences. But he was going for a moment to deal with an instance of partility on the part of the Government, much more important than this, relating to a particular magistrate. A very interesting deputation waited on the Prime Minister the other day. Last year Lord Salisbury said there was a land war in Ireland, and that it must be put an end to. The noble Marquess added that Her Majesty's Government had laid before the House a Bill to put down certain combinations. Upon the confession of the Prime Minister of England, the Coercion Act was an Act to put down the combination of tenants. The deputation which waited on Lord Salisbury a few days ago consisted of a near relative of the noble Lord the First Lord of the Admiralty (Lord George Hamilton), and a number of other noble Lords, or their cadets. After all, the Irish Land Question reduced itself into a very small family matter. The whole force and power derived from the people of this country was being placed by the Government at the beck and call of a handful of families in Ireland. What did the Marquess of Salisbury say to these men? He told them that if they had been as united in former times as they were upon that occasion, much of the evil would not have happened. He significantly informed them of his continued dislike to the Land Act of 1881, and reprobated it as flagrantly unjust. In other words, the noble Marquess told the landlords of Ireland that they must strengthen their trades union as against the tenant. That was an instance of impartiality on the part of the Government. That illustration alone ought to be sufficient to win assent to the declaration of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). Illustrations of 496 character of the policy carried out by the Government in Ireland were abundant, and of every sort and kind. They were of daily occurrence, and the one difficulty was to avoid so multiplying them as to overload a speech. They found that Justices of the Peace illegally refused access to prisoners; they found that the proper formalities were not observed in proclaiming the National League; they found that evictions proved to be illegal had been carried out with the aid of the Government; they found that even in the case of the murder of Kinsella, the criminal, Freeman, was a trespasser, He would not dwell upon the minor indignities heaped upon prisoners under the Coercion Act. Particular clergymen had been refused access to prisoners, and the late Lord Mayor of Dublin (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) was removed from the Richmond Gaol to the gaol at Tullamore, without the Government having the courtesy even to inform Mr. Sullivan's wife of his removal. In Loughrea, John Roche, a man of the highest character, was laid hold of the other day by an officer of Constabulary. He was a well-known man, and he said—"Kindly let me send a message to my wife." "No," said the policemen, and took him off at once. He begged for a cup of tea, but was refused, and kept sitting all night on a bench, not being allowed even to stretch himself on a hard deal table by way of change of posture. In the opinion of the Irish people these were not trivialities, but they went far to explain the burning sense of injustice on the part of the people and the execration in which the chief author of this policy was received. The administration of the Coercion Act reeks with paltry malignity and calculated brutality. If the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary thought the strong things he (Mr. Ellis) and others had said could not be supported, let him give them a Select Committee to inquire into the operation of the Act. If he did, they could fill many a page with illustrations of the gross manner in which the Act of last Session was being carried out. Where did the responsibility lie? It laid with the Cabinet; but before he proceeded to say what he had to say, with regard to the chief author of the present state of coercion in Ireland, he desired to refer to some remarks of the hon. and learned Attorney General (Sir 497 Richard Webster). The hon. and learned Attorney General stood, deservedly, no doubt, at the head of an illustrious profession; he was the head of the Bar of the country. Speaking iii Leicestershire on the 2nd of November last, the hon. and learned Gentleman said, according to a report in a most respectable paper, The Leicester Journal—
That being the position of the Irish question, what had they got at the present. They had Mr. Dillon—they had Mr. O'Brien, and he was thankful to say he was now for three months in the hands of the law. They had got Mr. Dillon—(A VOICE: 'He ought to have five years,' and cheers). He (the speaker) thought if he had his rights he would have.In The Times of the 5th of November, the hon. and learned Attorney General explained that he meant his reference to apply to the hon. Member for North-East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien). That made no difference whatever. The hon. and learned Attorney General, the head of the Bar of England, the Chief Law Adviser of Her Majesty, went down to a public platform and said that if a man had got his deserts, he would have got more than the law gave him. That was unprecedented. Now, they heard something of people saying the same thing in the House as they said outside. He promised the Chief Secretary he would do so. He admitted to the full the responsibility of speaking as a Member of Parliament, and he thought that a man should say stronger things if possible in the House than he said outside. He had never been a party and never would be to inflaming sentiment from public platforms; and he said in his place that it was not creditable to the hon. and learned Attorney General to publicly criticize the decisions given in Her Majesty's Courts of Justice, and especially to say that a man ought to have had five years' imprisonment if he had his deserts. He (Mr. Ellis) hoped the hon. and learned Gentleman would not think he was guilty of personal discourtesy when he said that if the hon. and learned Gentleman was not ashamed of what he said in Leicestershire he ought to be. He now turned to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. He maintained that from a Minister of the Crown they had a right to expect a little more respect for the House than the right hon. Gentleman habitually displayed. The habitual levity and sneers of the right hon. Gentleman were 498 altogether unbecoming his position as Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant. In one of the most tremendous crises that had ever occurred in Ireland, the right hon. Gentleman could do nothing but sneer and laugh from his place in Parliament. A story had been told by one, who was now in prison, with respect to certain words which the right hon. Gentleman was said to have uttered. If those words were not true the right hon. Gentleman by his callous demeanour in the House had only himself to thank if anybody believed they were true. Well, they had had 12 months of the 20 years of resolute government. What was it all to come to? The state of Ireland might be gathered as the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) pointed out, by the Government's own confession. They came down to Parliament in 1887, saying they would introduce local government in Ireland, and in 1888 they had nothing to say on the subject. That was all gone by the board. At the outset of their proceedings that day the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Akers-Douglas) moved that the Speaker do issue his Writ for the election of a Member to represent West Bristol. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) was again entering the Cabinet. He might be taken to be in hearty accord with the Front Bench opposite; and, therefore, he (Mr. Ellis) would recall certain words the right hon. Baronet had lately addressed to his constituents. The right hon. Gentleman said —We must administer and legislate in a bold and sympathetic spirit of statesmanship, free from those narrow prejudices which swayed so much the action of the Tories 30 years ago, but which now have no influence whatever in Irish political affairs. And further, I would say that we must do everything, consistently with justice and honour, to give to Irish Members of Parliament as great a voice in the settlement of purely Irish questions as for years past we have given to the Scotch Members in the settlement of purely Scotch questions.Was that the policy of Her Majesty's Government? It was the policy of the newest recruit, and the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General (Sir Edward Clarke) seemed to adopt it. He wished the hon. and learned Gentleman were in the Cabinet, and able to give effect to it. If that was the policy of the Government, they would have to 499 treat the Irish Members with a little more respect to begin with; they would have to give more civil replies to Questions put by hon. Gentlemen from Ireland; they would have to promise investigation into Irish grievances a little more readily than they did. The right hon. Gentleman (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) went on to say—and this was very >apropos—Further, those Irish matters which it is necessary to retain under the control of the central Government ought, in my mind, to be administered by political officials directly and personally responsible to Parliament, instead of permanent officials only nominally controlled by a single Minister, who cannot possibly find time for all the details of the administration of the country.There would have to be a great change in the policy of the Government, if they adopted those words. They knew that the Chief Secretary could not find time to administer, or even to know anything about the administration of affairs in Ireland. There had not been a Chief Secretary for Ireland—not even Mr. James Lowther—who had displayed such a want of knowledge of the Business of his Department. He (Mr. Ellis) thanked the House most sincerely for their kindness in listening to him so patiently. The spirit of the Irish people was yet unbroken. The Irish National League was as strong as ever—nay, stronger. The Government had consolidated in one mass the people against them. He listened with great admiration to the words which fell from the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) the other evening, when he said he thought he might with some reason congratulate himself, at the end of 12 years in the House of Commons, upon the improvement in the state of Ireland. At the beginning of those 12 years, there was but a very small minority in favour of Constitutional agitation; at the end of those 12 years there was a large majority of the people who looked to the House for the redress of their grievances and for the realization of their hopes. They had watched with sympathy and admiration the moderation which had come over the occupants of the Benches below the Gangway, with the consciousness of the just power they exercised. They had watched with great admiration the manner in which they had responded to the great effort of the right hon. Gentleman the 500 Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) to solve this troubled question. Hon. Gentlemen from Ireland might rest assured that the Opposition felt the responsibility of the position, that they felt it was incumbent upon them to respond to their somewhat changed attitude, and the efforts of their great Leader (Mr. Parnell). They felt that the responsibility to make the people of this country acquainted with the true merits of the Irish problem lay heavily upon them, and hon. Members from Ireland, and hon. Members opposite might rest assured that, having put their hands to the plough, they did not intend to turn back; but that it would be their resolute endeavour to saturate the minds of the people of England with a knowledge of the Irish Question in its, whole length and breadth, perfectly sure as they were that as soon as that knowledge was obtained, the electorate of the country would sweep away that miserable mockery in Ireland which called itself government, and carry home to every dweller in that country all those blessings which good government brings in its train.
§ THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Colonel KING-HARMAN) (Kent, Isle of Thanet)said, he was unable to follow the hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division of Nottingham (Mr. J. E. Ellis) in his eulogy on the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow (Sir George Trevelyan) and in his characterization of the speech of his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson) as amusing. His hon. and gallant Friend, of all men, was least open to the charge of being a master of insinuation. Innuendo and insinuation were assuredly not the arts usually employed by his hon. and gallant Friend, who was accustomed to call a spade a spade and to thoroughly master his facts before he dealt with them. The only attempt to answer the speech of his hon. and gallant Friend was made by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for South Hackney (Sir Charles Russell), who in his account of the Dopping incident had omitted the most important part—namely, the letter of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) before he had been written to by the 501 lawyers. The statement of his hon. and gallant Friend that the murder of Fitzmaurice was attributable to the action of the National League had been contradicted by the statement that the local branch, of the League had ceased to exist before the murder was committed. That might be so; but it was none the less true that Fitzmaurice had been over and over again tried by the tribunal of the League and condemned by that self-constituted Court, and so he was murdered shortly afterwards, as many another poor and honest man had been. He was not speaking of landlords, but of farmers who paid their rent, and tried to fulfil their obligations. One after another they were condemned by a gang of rebels in Kerry, and their dead bodies were found by the roadside or elsewhere. He had no patience with those who could support or palliate a system by which honest men were made to suffer for honest deeds. Then the hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division had passed on to the imprisonment of the hon. Member for East Cork (Mr. Lane) and the question of the leaseholders. Now the leaseholders had been admitted to the benefits of the Land Act of 1881 by the action of the present Government, and he had himself always advocated that course. But there was no reason why the landlord of the leaseholders should not get his rent when it was due, and the hon. Member for East Cork was justly imprisoned for advising the tenants not to pay their rents—advice which would have involved penal consequences to all who might be induced to follow it. He (Colonel King-Harman) dissented most emphatically from the hon. Member's statement that the National League was as strong as ever, and maintained that it had been seriously weakened during the last two or three months. He ventured to prophesy that in another six months' time the power of the League would be still further diminished. This they knew not only from returns and statistics, but from experience and personal knowledge. The gentlemen at the head of the treasury of the League knew it, because they saw that the payments into their exchequer were falling off. They knew that men who were gradually forced year after year into joining the League against their will were now leaving it. They knew that no real at- 502 tempts were being made to hold National League meetings in proclaimed districts, and the only persons who strove to prolong the life of suppressed branches were the secretaries and other paid officials who were making their livelihood out of it.
§ MR. EDWARD HARRINGTON (Kerry, W.)There are no paid officials.
§ COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid, that there was not a branch of the National League in which there was not some secretary or paid official who was making money out of it. [Cries of "No."] It was all very well to say "No!" but he would put his knowledge and veracity against that of any hon. Gentleman opposite.
§ COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid he would give the how and the why. Money was raised by shilling and half-crown subscriptions from the members, and perhaps out of the entire amount £5 was sent up to the headquarters in Dublin. What became of the rest of the money? That was the question that the people in the country were asking. They wanted to know how men who used to have hardly a coat to their backs and never did any work, now wore tall hats and good coats, and walked about and enjoyed themselves with money in both pockets. It was very easy to see that the money did not come from honest work. In fact, it was well known to be a very lucrative and profitable thing to be the secretary of a local Land League. The hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division repeated various accusations which had been disproved against the Resident Magistrates. He solemnly warned the Resident Magistrates that when the Gladstonian Party came back to power—which God forefend—every detail of their conduct would be carefully and minutely inquired into. In point of fact, he had threatened them just as other hon. Members had threatened the Irish police, bidding them take care what they were about, and not to carry out the provisions of the law too rigidly. He might remind the hon. Member that almost every one of the magistrates who had been attacked that day had been the subject of similar attacks in a former year, and that their conduct had been inquired into and defended by Lord Spencer and 503 the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow. As to Mr. Stoney, against whom a charge of malversation of public funds had been brought, his case had been investigated by an officer of the Local Government Board, who certainly was not tainted with Conservatism, and by the Lord Chancellor, and they had come to the conclusion that Mr. Stoney had been guilty of neglect only. The sole case of any substance proved against him was that he had allowed a young girl to use an emigration ticket as member of a family to which she did not belong. She was, however, a friend of the family, and lived close to them. For this error of judgment Mr. Stoney had been censured by the Lord Chancellor, who acquitted him of all mala fides or malversation. At any rate, Mr. Stoney's conduct could not be compared to the conduct of certain magistrates who had been removed from the Commission for going out of their divisions, in order to pack Benches elsewhere. In his opinion the statistics which had been laid before the House fully bore out the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary. He had letters in his pocket from individuals thoroughly acquainted with the country, every one of them saying the same thing—namely, that especially in the South of Ireland trade and commerce, even in the smaller towns, were increasing, and that confidence in the law was daily strengthening. It was known that at the recent Assizes evidence had been forthcoming which could not have been obtained during the "reign of terror," and that convictions had been procured, and that juries had not hesitated to do their duty. A letter which he (Colonel King-Harman) had received from a gentleman who was likely to know the true facts stated that all through the South the Queen's writ could now be legally executed, although recently process of law was openly resisted even in the case of fair trade debts. His correspondent also stated that jurors were now convicting fairly on the evidence placed before them; that comparative order was observed, especially in the populous centres; that mobs were easily dispersed; and that they were mainly composed of small boys and girls, who came to obey the order of some local agitator—probably to assist at a demonstration in 504 honour of some person who had been convicted of having broken the law of the land. This showed that what hon. Members opposite called "the great heart of the people" was not on the side of disorder and lawlessness. His correspondent concluded as follows:—
An unmistakable feeling pervades the whole country that at last the Government of the Queen is stronger than any mere local associations, and the people are beginning to feel confidence that the Government can establish security, as every Government of a civilized country ought to do.[Cries of "Name!"] He should certainly not give the name. His informant was a merchant of considerable business in the South of Ireland, and he wondered what some hon. Members opposite would do to this gentleman if his identity were known. He did not suppose that their action would stop short at "exclusive dealing." He agreed with his correspondent that Ireland was now more peaceable and law-abiding; but, of course, it was possible that a serious outbreak of crime might yet be seen, for the history of the country taught us that organizations like the National League fought hard and died viciously, and sometimes gave an expiring kick. But if that did come, the law was strong—the law would be carried out, and the law-abiding persons would be protected. There were many hon. Gentlemen opposite—besides those who sat below the Gangway—who thought any means of pacifying Ireland was preferable to that of using the law. They would not agree that Ireland should be pacified by carrying out the same law that applied to England and Scotland and other civilized countries. They said that was all nonsense, and that there must be conciliation; that Ireland was the only country in which the law would not be carried out; and that conciliation, concession, or giving in in some way or other to agitation and crime was the only way of keeping that unfortunate country in order. He (Colonel King-Harman) could remember when a suggestion was made that Ireland should be pacified by bringing back from America Sheridan—the murderer and organizer—and sending him round through the West—a proposition which was made by no less a person than the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), and. was endorsed by no less a person than the 505 right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian—
§ MR. MUNDELLA (Sheffield, Brightside)Nothing of the sort.
§ COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid, he thought he would be able to show that there was something of the sort. He had many quotations to bear out his statement, but he would only read one. On the 16th of May, 1882, the then Member for Maidstone (Captain Aylmer) asked the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, a Question in the House, which was duly reported in Hansard as follows:—
Captain Aylmer: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman one Question. When he and the Cabinet came to the decision that the three Members could no longer be kept in prison on account of reasonable suspicion, were they then in possession of the conversation between the hon. Member for Clare and the late Chief Secretary for Ireland, in which it was stated that he had such control over Sheridan, who had instigated riot in the West of Ireland, that if released he could induce him to put down the outrages? Mr. Gladstone: Yes, Sir."—(3 Hansard, [269] 832.)Notwithstanding the contradiction of the hon. Member for West Leeds (Mr. H. Gladstone), he (Colonel King-Harman) thought that that quotation from Hansard amply bore out his statement that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian endorsed the proposal that Sheridan should be employed to put down crime in Ireland. If this did not prove his case, no case ever was proved. One of the most astounding ideas ever put before the House was that crime had been diminished in Ireland, not by the action of the law, but by the action of the National League. There never was a more ridiculous or absurd statement. A glance at the statistics of crime would show the absurdity of that proposition. In 1877 there were 286 cases of agrarian crime. In 1878 321, and in 1879 863. During that year the Land League was founded, and in 1880 the cases of agrarian crime had risen to 2,585. In 1881, which was not a famine year, but a remarkably good year for small farmers in Ireland, the cases of ordinary crime were 7,788, and of agrarian crime 4,439; in 1882 the number of cases of agrarian crime was 3,433. After the first six months of the Crimes Act coming into operation, and the Land League being suppressed, the number of cases of agra- 506 rian crime fell to 870, and in the following year to 762. Was there ever such a suggestion that law-breakers should be law-makers, and that those who provoked the breaches of the law were the men who were keeping down crime and making law respected? The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian never said anything truer in his life than when he said that "crime dogged with fatal precision the footsteps of the Land League." That was true then. It was true now, and it would be true as long as the Land League existed. Hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway spoke of conciliation and the union of hearts, and so forth, which was very fine on English platforms and in the House of Commons; but there was not much of that kind of thing in their speeches on the other side of the water. One hon. Gentleman—the Member for South Tipperary (Mr. John O'Connor)—went to address a League meeting in Tipperary not long ago, and he said he had been talking so much conciliation in England that he hardly knew how to address a National League meeting. If conciliation were the order of the day—as would be inferred from the speeches made in the House of Commons—what about the articles in the Nationalist Press in Ireland? If people were to be conciliated, how was it that the Nationalist organs did not preach that doctrine? How was it they preached hatred to English law as much as they could? How about their allies and friends in America? How about the meeting at New York on Sunday last?—a meeting of Fenians and Invincibles, at which the knife and dynamite were freely advocated, at which Frank Byrne—once secretary of the Land League—advocated the destruction of Liverpool Docks by fire. Of all the speeches made during the debate, none had been so marvellous as that of the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow, who seemed to have forgotten his own past record. Nothing was so marvellous as his abnegation and his forget-fulness of self, and of what he did when he was Chief Secretary, and when he was responsible for law and order in Ireland. Nothing was so remarkable as the way in which he spoke of the National League, considering that it was he who promulgated the document 507 by which, the Land League was suppressed. The right hon. Gentleman taunted the Government with having brought in a Bill to enable the law to be properly administered before there was a sufficient amount of crime to make such legislation justifiable. But it was not the business of a civilized Government to wait until crime was rampant and honest men could not hold up their heads. It was the duty of the Government, if it was necessary, to alter procedure so that law could be enforced. The right hon. Gentleman justified the action of the present Government by referring to the amount of crime under his own maladministration. If, as he said, the Liberal Government only took power to suppress the Invincibles and kindred associations, how was it that his Government suppressed the Land League? The Land League died the moment it was proclaimed; and if the right hon. Gentleman had exercised one-half the vigour in the latter part of his Ministry that he did in the earlier, there would not have been half the difficulty there was now in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman, by his laxity, was, therefore, personally responsible for much of the evils at present existing in Ireland, and the way that he went on to attack the administration of the present law was simply puerile. He complained of the arrest of a football party at Kanturk, who had assaulted the police. Did he mean that the players were entitled to a "free kick" at a policeman? He spoke of men being driven to prison in droves; but he did not adduce any examples, However, it was satisfactory to know that the law was beginning to prevail in Ireland, especially in the matter of Boycotting, which had greatly diminished throughout Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had brought forward a case to show what Boycotting was. That case had been challenged, and he would leave his right hon. Friend to give his version of the story again if he pleased. He (Colonel King-Harman) would give one case, which he did not find in the Police Returns, of the accursed practice of Boycotting which had occurred within his own knowledge—a case, however, which was typical of hundreds and of thousands, but which he could personally vouch for. In the county of Sligo, a man named. Goffin was Boy- 508 cotted for about two years. The man was a small farmer and a shopkeeper; no servant was allowed to work for him, and no customer was permitted to enter his shop. A poor widow, named Sweeney, who had a family of five children, and was in receipt of outdoor relief of 4s. per week, assisted the Boycotted man as a means of helping herself and family. In October or September last the woman did some work for him, for which she was rewarded in kind out of his shop and not in money. For this she also was Boycotted. The National League disapproved of this, and the other day the poor woman was in consequence struck off the outdoor relief list by the Guardians, and was told that if she wanted relief she might go into the house, and thus be separated from her children. All this was because she did some work for a Boycotted man, and yet hon. Members opposite were asking for an extension of local self-government for such men as the Guardians of this Union. Let them give the country law and order first, and a real free voice, which the people had not at the present time, and then such Guardians would not be re-elected. If the people were allowed to exercise the franchise according to their conscience, they would not elect men who committed such heartless acts, and who had brought the Unions into the condition in which they now were. Let them look at the condition of the Unions in the South and West of Ireland. He would not speak of what were known, as the distressed unions, to which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Mr. John Morley), when he was in Office, advanced £20,000, and he would not say whether that advance was necessary or not, though an inquiry into the management of that grant had proved that it was maladministered to an extent which even those who thought that they knew something about it were not aware of. But he might say that more than one-half of the Unions in the South and West of Ireland were practically bankrupt. The Guardians spent their time in talking politics and in passing seditious resolutions against the Government, and against anybody who did not happen to agree with them, while the poor were neglected, and those who were in receipt of outdoor relief 509 could not get their money because the cheques of the Guardians were dishonoured by the bank through their accounts being overdrawn—[Cries of "Where?" "What Unions?"]—He could not give the full list from memory, but he would name off-hand the Unions of Tulla, Ennistymon, and Dingle to go on with, and he would be prepared with other names later if required. These were the kind of people to whom it was proposed to give local self-government, and through whom the hearts of the people were to be won. The first thing that should be done, however, was to keep these people in order, to teach them their business, to teach them the first principles of honesty and duty. After that they might begin to talk about giving them local self-government. Let the law be obeyed first. Law in Ireland must be carried out. There was no nation in the world—as Irish history from the remotest ages proved—that required to be governed, and that must be and would be governed, as the Irish race required to be governed. They must be governed. History showed that before the Saxon ever put his foot on Irish soil the few bright spots in Irish history were where the Irish sceptre was wielded by a strong and powerful Monarch to enforce the law; and where the Irish nation was not governed bylaw it would be governed by lawlessness. It was the duty of any Government, and it would be the duty of hon. Members below the Gangway opposite, if ever the unfortunate chance—which God forbid—should occur of giving into their hands the government of Ireland, to see that the laws which they made were carried out. Every country must have law. The excitable nature of the Irish people must have law, and if they did not enforce it the people would submit themselves to what they believed was stronger than the law, even though it might be what Mr. P. J. Smyth called the League of Hell—the Land League. The law must be protected. Puny it had been in the past, but punitive, deterrent, and protective, please God, it should be in the future. Men who wished to do their duty must be protected by Government, if Government was to be worth anything at all, and procedure must be framed so as to make the law operative. The Irish people were not free from original sin any more than any other nation; but 510 he believed that they were more easily governed by a strong and just Government than the Anglo-Saxon race. He thought it most creditable to the Irish people that after six years of misgovernment, intimidation, and incentive to wrong-doing they had maintained so good a position as they had. It could not be expected that the evil effect of six years of misgovernment could be done away with in a moment; but he claimed that the action of Her Majesty's Government was doing away with those evil effects gradually but steadily. He believed that the people were looking to the law for protection to themselves —they were turning to industry, and were trying to improve their position, because they believed that the law would protect them in the honest fruits of their industry. Her Majesty's Government were doing their duty by Ireland and by the Empire, and the House might be perfectly certain that they would continue in their present course. He believed that God would bless their efforts, and that they would see Ireland as it should be—free from, crime, happy, prosperous, and industrious.
§ MR. H. GLADSTONE (Leeds, W.)said, that at the outset of his remarks, he wished to protest strongly against the tone adopted by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet Division of Kent (Colonel King-Harman) in his attack upon the hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division of Nottingham (Mr. J. E. Ellis) for some comments which that hon. Gentleman made on the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson). Yesterday he (Mr. H. Gladstone) heard the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh, and he said emphatically that the hon. and gallant Gentleman brought a distinct charge in the way of innuendo against his hon. Friend the Member for West Kerry (Mr. Edward Harrington) of inciting to crime and outrage, and he also brought a similar charge against another right hon. Member, which he (Mr. H. Gladstone) would not touch upon on the present occasion. The Chief Secretary cheered when the right hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel King-Harman) said that the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh did not deal in innuendos, but delivered downright invectives; but it seemed to him (Mr. H. Gladstone), 511 that the hon. and gallant Member delivered his speech in innuendos thundered forth as invectives. But, however that might be, he denied the charge brought against his hon. Friend (Mr. E. Harrington), and everyone who knew that hon. Gentleman would agree with him in saying that such charges were false and infamous. He had listened with attention to the speech of the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Ireland, as he wished to gather an accurate idea of the real state of Ireland; but he was bound to say that the speech of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman had left his mind in a complete fog, because at one moment he spoke of the excellent state Ireland was in, and almost in the same breath he said it was in a shocking condition—so bad, in fact, that they must not ever think of giving local government to it. He could not make either head or tail of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's speech, and he should have to content himself with the plain facts which the Government had given in their Returns. There were, however, one or two remarks made by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman which he must notice. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman made charges against members of the National League in Ireland—he charged them with purloining the money of the League. In saying that, he (Mr. H. Gladstone) was not doing the right hon. and gallant Gentleman an injustice, he thought. The worse his charges were against the National League the more fierce in tone and the more savage in demeanour he became, and he gave hon. Members the opportunity of forming an opinion upon the judicial spirit in which the authorities of Dublin Castle worked the Crimes Act. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman had made some allusion to Mr. Sheridan, and a Question that was asked in the House in the Session of 1882, and with regard to which he (Mr. H. Gladstone) only wished to say that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman only had blame and condemnation for one unfortunate individual. Why had not he brought down the thunder of his invective upon the noble Marquess the Member for Rossendale and the other Liberal Unionist Leaders who, at the time, were in the Cabinet and privy to what had taken place?
§ COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid, he had read the answer of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. If the noble Marquess the Member for Rossendale had made a similar answer, he should have read it.
§ MR. H. GLADSTONEsaid, the question was in reference to the Government; and, as the right hon. and gallant Gentleman knew, it was referred to the Government, and all the Members of the Cabinet were privy to the answer. Then the right hon. and gallant Gentleman had gone into the ancient history of agrarian crime in Ireland, and had quoted the figures from 1877, and had tried to show an intimate connection between those figures and the course of the Land League. He had said that crime only began to fall when the Coercion Act of 1881 began to work. He was speaking in reference to the allegations of Liberal Members, that the present improved state of the country was owing to the Land Act of last year. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman would recollect that when, seven years ago, there was a fall in outrages, the Land Act of 1881 was at work.
§ COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid, that after the passing of the Land Act crime rose to an unexampled extent.
§ MR. H. GLADSTONEsaid, that might be; but, as the right hon. and gallant Gentleman knew, it took some time for the Land Act to get to work. Now, he was going to make a few remarks on the state of Ireland as it appeared to him, and the position of the Government with regard to it. They were very much misled last year in the course of the debates in the House, for they were led to expect from the Government much drastic vigour and effective brutality in restoring law and order in Ireland; but they had had nothing of the kind. The policy of the Government had been exasperating without strength —it had been ineffective without any action calculated to maintain the dignity and supremacy of the law or to create respect for the Administration itself. No serious attempt had been made by the Government to put down the National League. Now, this debate had brought into prominence three facts, which, he thought, were incontestible in spite of the remarks of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman. First 513 of all, with, respect to the National League. No attempt had been made to suppress it. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman said that the power of the National League was going down, and he brought forward some arguments—the stale, old arguments—which had been in use in Dublin Castle from time immemorial, which he (Mr. H. Gladstone) remembered using himself in 1881 and 1882, and which were continually used by Mr. Foster in this House, to the effect that the subscriptions from America to the Land League were falling off, and that the sympathies of the people were being transferred from the Land League to the Government. Well, were they justified in using that argument then? They were as much justified as the right hon. and gallant Gentleman was now—perhaps more justified. In the next place, the Government having tried to suppress a certain number of branches of the National League, as everyone admitted, had failed to do it. They read in the papers that the branches continued to hold meetings. Reports of their proceedings were published in a great number of Irish papers. These facts were incontestible. Then, in the third place, the Plan of Campaign had run its course in Ireland almost without interruption. Most hon. Members would recollect that last year there were two main reasons adduced in support of the Crimes Bill by hon. Members in all parts of the House—namely, that the National League should be put down, and that the Plan of Campaign should be sternly suppressed, and should never be allowed to raise its head. Coercion, they were told, was of no use whatever if it did not enable the Government at once to deal with those two formidable evils. He felt great compassion for the unsatisfied desires of the hon. and gallant Member (Colonel Saunderson), the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington), and many others. That was the view then entertained by the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh and the noble Marquess the Member for Rossendale; but the failure of their hopes had been the fulfilment of the expectations of the Opposition; for the Opposition had said at the time in the House that the National League was in reality the Irish nation, and that they could no more put down the League and the spirit of the League than they 514 could put down the spirit of nationality among the Irish people. Well, the 1,800 branches of the League were now flourishing, and no attempt was made to hew down its main trunk in Dublin. A great deal had been said about the illegality of the Plan of Campaign and its failure; and he did not dispute that technically the Plan of Campaign was illegal and susceptible of grave abuses in any well-ordered community; but what attempt had been made by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, by the Chief Secretary, or anybody else, to prove that in its effects and its working during the last 12 months it had done any injustice to anybody? Would the right hon. and gallant Gentleman say that the settlements on the estates to which the Plan had been applied would have been effected if the Plan had not been adopted? Would the hundreds of poor tenants on the Kingston Estate have got the benefit of the Government Land Act of last year but for the action of the hon. Member for North-East Cork?
§ COLONEL KING-HARMANThe settlement was refused by the National League three months ago.
§ MR. H. GLADSTONEI am given to understand that a settlement has been quite recently made.
§ COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid, that settlements made by Lady Kingston were made on terms which were offered to the tenants some time ago and refused. ["No!" from the Home Rulers.] He had it from the lady herself.
§ MR. H. GLADSTONEsaid, he would leave that point to be dealt with by hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, who had a special knowledge of the subject, and were well able to deal with it. But whatever might be said about that settlement, it was clear that a great number of the poor tenants would have been turned out of their holdings but for the action, legal or illegal, of the hon. Member for North-East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien); and they might talk about technicalities and the letter of the law as much as they liked, but it was well known that people whose vital interests were at stake and who were driven to desperation, would take the best weapons which came to hand for the defence of their homes and their lives. Did the right hon. and gallant Gentleman deny that all the landlords except 515 one to whom the Plan of Campaign had been applied had given in, though they had at their backs all the armed forces of the Crown to support them? Did the right hon. and gallant Gentleman constitute himself the champion of the one distinguished landlord who had remained obdurate? He (Mr. H. Gladstone) had listened to the right hon. and gallant Gentleman when he had denounced murders and outrages, and he hoped that they in that House all joined in denouncing them; but he had never heard from the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, or from the Chief Secretary, or from any occupant of the Treasury Bench, any denunciation of the hideous crimes of the landlords. He did not want to make any sweeping charge against the landlords of Ireland. He had always said, in every speech he had made on the subject, that the vast majority of the landlords of Ireland had done, or had tried to do, their duty; but a remnant of them had been criminals in the true sense of the word, by bringing destruction on thousands of men, women, and children; and the right hon. and gallant Gentleman never uttered a word of condemnation of their conduct. [An hon. MEMBER: He is one of them.] In regard, then, to these points which he had dwelt upon, from the point of view of order and the general condition of Ireland, the Government had not much cause for satisfaction. He now came to the Chief Secretary's statistics, and what were they? In regard to the figures relating to Boycotting, he admitted that cases of "total Boycotting" were of importance, and he was glad to hear the right hon. and gallant Gentleman say that there were fewer of those painful cases to be found in Ireland; but in the Return given they found thousands of cases of what was called "partial Boycotting." He should like to ask what was this partial Boycotting? They had no definition of it. If anything was refused to anybody in Ireland he supposed that that constituted "partial Boycotting." If such a Return were made out for England he could undertake to give 50,000 as good cases of partial Boycotting as the right hon. and gallant Gentleman gave for Ireland. He spoke with some knowledge on this subject, for in many parts of England he had seen and spoken to men who had 516 been, he would not say wholly ruined because they did not allow that in England, but partly ruined by the withdrawal of custom because of their politics. In England they did not allow the system to do much mischief, because they believed in their cause and fought Boycotting and the Boycotters; and if the people who were Boycotted in Ireland had a better cause they would be able to stand out much better against Boycotting than they did. But how were those Returns made up? He had some slight experience of Dublin Castle, having been there four months, and he had some knowledge of the temper and the methods of the loyal minority in Ireland. At Manchester, not long ago, the Chief Secretary happened to mention the question of evictions, and pointed out triumphantly that when the right hon. Baronet (Sir George Trevelyan) was in Office, a great number of evictions were carried out, while there was a much smaller number during his own tenure of Office. There were special points which were referred to yesterday on which the Chief Secretary was challenged by the right hon. Baronet, and he only wanted to say that it was a matter of notoriety that the landlords and the "loyal minority" had, during the last 10 years, done their best to hamper a Liberal Government and to give every assistance to a Conservative Government. Mr. Forster found that out when in Office, and there was ample proof of it. They know very well that numbers of Irish landlords had held their hands in order not to embarrass a Tory Government, when the same men had at other times insisted on their full legal rights, knowing that their insistance must add to the difficulties of the Liberal Government. The case was the same in regard to Boycotting. The police and the Resident Magistrate were naturally largely under the influence of the gentry and of those calling themselves Loyalists, who cried for coercion and gave figures last year to show they required protection. Now, these gentlemen were bound to show that coercion had succeeded, and he had no doubt had gladly given evidence to Dublin Castle to the effect that their position was much better, in order that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary might have excellent figures to present to the House to justify coer- 517 cion. ["Oh, oh!"] He made no reflection on the good faith of the Chief Secretary. He was well aware that the right hon. Gentleman could not go into the details of these cases. It had been the standing evil of the Castle that they were at the mercy of the allegations and figures sent to them from all parts of the country. Now, he passed to the Return concerning outrages. Looking at this Return, hon. Members would do well to compare the last five months of 1886 with the last five months of 1887. They would find that the Government could take small satisfaction from the Return. He admitted that there was little crime now; but there was little last year. The Return altogether was of small value; but attempts had been made to found something on it. In the five months of 1886 there were 239 outrages, and in the eight last months of 1887 there were 223, giving the Government the small advantage of 16. He omitted threatening letters and notices, which were of no importance. All this came to very little; and for this paltry advantage the Government last year went through the prolonged and bitter debates on the Crimes Act. It was for this the Government had, if possible, increased the distrust in Ireland in the administration of the law and even weakened the respect for the law itself. More than that, the Government had succeeded, unhappily, in leading a large part of the people of England and Scotland to view the summary jurisdiction in Ireland in the same light as the Irish people. The hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division of Nottingham (Mr. J. E. Ellis) had gone into this matter, and he (Mr. H. Gladstone) did not intend to follow him. With all that the hon. Member had said he agreed, and he thought that it proved his contention. It was singularly unfortunate to see in Ireland the responsible authority representing the Government—the 40,000 police and soldiers—standing in hopeless antagonism to the people and their Representatives. Perhaps he might be allowed to give one small illustration of what he meant. A gentleman whom he happened to meet some time ago—a man of unimpeachable position and respectability—was the spectator of some rather notorious evictions in Ireland. He was a gentleman eminently peaceful—peaceful to a 518 fault; and, seeing there was some rough work, he was removing himself to a safe distance at the time an order was given to clear the ground round the cottages, and for the police to form a cordon. The police charged, and this unfortunate gentleman, who had been, going off before the order was given, was knocked down three times, and rolled into the ditch. He did not resist at all. After the occurrence, the District Inspector went and apologized to him, and said—
The fact of the matter is that my men did not know you were an Englishman. They thought you were an Irish Member.He added—The Irish Members do not spare us with their tongues, and we go for them when we get the chance.Now, there was a good deal of humour in that story; but it conveyed a serious moral. It showed that this antagonism must last while the Government persisted in their traditional policy—a policy which, whatever might be said of any other policy, had always been a wretched and complete failure. Now, with regard to the position of the Government and their supporters in respect to their administration in Ireland, the main charge he brought against them was—and the point had been alluded to before in the course of that debate—that they had broken their solemn pledges in regard to local government in Ireland, and they had in this way made their action harsher, more partial, and more mischievous. He asked this, by what Constitutional or moral right were they governing Ireland by coercion alone? In his opinion, not enough had been said of the manner in which the pledges of hon. Members opposite, and of hon. Members sitting on the Liberal side also, had been broken. The Liberal Party were beaten at the last Election because of the promises those Gentlemen had made, and which they had entirely failed to keep. He wished to show that by quotations from speeches; and he assured hon. Members that he would give as few extracts as were necessary to prove his point. All the speeches of hon. Gentlemen opposite and of the Liberal Unionists at the last General Election were saturated with pledges that they would push forward local government for Ireland, and with re- 519 pudiations of a coercion policy. At Leeds, on June 19, 1886, Lord Salisbury made a speech—his last speech before the Election—in which he gave the text of his policy. He said—Of a good system of local government for England, Scotland, and Ireland, I have always been an advocate. I believe the extension of local government to Ireland would he a great advantage;and the noble Marquess admitted that the present system constituted "a substantial grievance "in Ireland. In his address to the electors of Edinburgh, June 18, 1886, the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer said—To the assertion that there is no other choice than to accept the Government plan or to fall back upon simple repression, the opponents of the Bill give a point-blank denial…I am an advocate of large measures of decentralization.He would now quote passages to show how completely the Government had realized the binding force of the pledges which they gave to the constituencies before the General Election. The noble Lord the Member for South Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill), on August 19, 1886, said in the House of Commons—The Queen's Speech of January last announced the introduction of a Bill with regard to local government in England as well as in Ireland. … The great sign-posts of our policy were at that time, and are still, equality, similarity, and, if I may use such a word, simultaneity of treatment as far as is practicable in the development of a genuinely popular system of local government in all the four countries which form the United Kingdom,"—(3 Hansard, [308] 1323.)The noble Lord, later on, on September 14, said—He thought that the functions of the Board of Works and the Local Government Board called for the most careful consideration from the Government, with a view to their development, as far as might be, in accordance with Irish ideas and desires. It was the decided intention of the Government to make proposals to Parliament at the earliest opportunity, which he hoped might be next Session.Now, last Session came and went without any sign of the fulfilment of that promise. The Solicitor General said the hope was disappointed; but it had been disappointed this year, and there was now less hope than ever from the mere fact that they brought in a Bill for the reform of local government 520 limited to England and Scotland, which was not so much wanted as in Ireland. He now passed to the speeches of the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale, who they all knew was the pillar and support of the present Government, which speeches were even more significant than those already quoted. The noble Lord, speaking at Glasgow, on June 26, 1886, said—To what I said at Belfast last year about local government in Ireland, I adhere now.At Belfast on November 5, 1885, the noble Lord said—I would not shrink from a great and bold reconstruction of the government of Ireland; I would not be disposed to deny that it is probably too centralized in Dublin, and that owing to the delegation of so many of the functions of government to irresponsible Boards, it is wanting in vigour and responsibility.Speaking at Rossendale, on July 5, 1886, before the General Election, he said—I admit that any reasonable desire for the extension of self-government must now be considered in the Imperial Parliament.Two days later the noble Lord said—We have long been endeavouring to find the opportunity of giving to the people of England "and Scotland greater control over the management of their own local affairs, and whatever rights we give'' (hon. Members would mark this) "to England and Scotland we all are ready to give equally, and, if a case can be made out for it, in a greater, a further, a more generous degree to Ireland.One more extract he would make from the speeches of the noble Lord. Speaking at Glasgow, June 25th, 1886, the noble Lord said—I confess for myself that I am not going to be intimidated by the name of coercion from supporting, or if need be proposing, such measures as may be necessary for the enforcement of just and equal laws and rights in Ireland, when once I am satisfied we have met, or endeavoured to meet, the legitimate desires and legitimate demands of the Irish people.Well, what did these extracts show? He regretted to say, and he said it respectfully, as he had a genuine and great respect for the noble Lord, that those extracts clearly showed that the noble Lord must have led his constituents to believe that, if returned to power—and he was practically returned to power—he would see that the question of local government in Ireland should be taken up, because he admitted that the absence of it was a grievance. The extracts showed 521 that the noble Lord gave his constituents to understand that he would not vote for coercion until he had satisfied or attempted to satisfy the just desires and wishes of the Irish people. The noble Lord admitted that they had just desires and wants; but he had voted for coercion, and he (Mr. H. Gladstone) deeply regretted to say that the noble Lord had not lifted a finger to remove the grievance which he himself at his Election admitted to exist. These extracts proved up to the hilt that the Government were returned to power under a complete misapprehension—not to use a harsher word. That misapprehension in the popular mind was brought about by their own speeches and their own pledges, which they had not attempted to fulfil. They had had one excuse that he knew of from a distinguished Member of Her Majesty's Government as to why they were not dealing with this question of local government. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer—he was quoting from memory, and the right hon. Gentle-mad would correct him if he was wrong—had said that they were unable to deal with the question of Local Government because a wave of lunacy had passed over the people of Ireland.
§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GOSCHEN) (St. George's, Hanover Square)I gave many other reasons, but I do not think I used the phrase.
§ MR. H. GLADSTONEsaid, he quoted from memory, and would not pursue the point. He had seen no valid reason brought forward on the part of the Government for not fulfilling the pledges they repeatedly made to their constituents. He believed they held their position under a misapprehension, and that that explained the speech of Lord Salisbury at Liverpool, in which he said that, though the Government might often be beaten, they would take very good care they did not go to the country. In conclusion, he said that as the National Party became more Constitutional, more moderate, and more reasonable, as it saw the dawn of hope brightening into day, so the loyal patriots of whom the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh was the Leader, were marching in the opposite direction; and the hon. and gallant Member, judging by his own speeches, was the potential advocate of violence and rebellion in Ireland. 522 He did not envy the position of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. He was the last and the only hope of the worst landlords in Ireland; but even the right hon. Gentleman had not been strong enough to hold his shield over the great majority of them. One remained under his aegis, and he wished him joy of the noble Lord whom he protected. Unhappily, the Government was the friend of all who were despised and distrusted by the Irish people. He and his hon. Friends, however, saw no reason for despair. They condemned all the wretched details of the present coercion administration in Ireland; but, taking a broad view of the situation, there was every encouragement to the Liberal Party for a renewal of their efforts in opposition to the policy of the Government. Their task might be long; but whether long or short, hon. Members might be sure that there was a lasting alliance, defensive and offensive, between the British and the Irish people, and that that alliance would continue until the Government gave Home Rule to Ireland, or until they were compelled to give place to those who would give it.
§ SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOT (Sussex, North-West)said, he could not pass by the speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds (Mr. H. Gladstone) without saying that a more bitter speech had, in his (Sir Walter B Barttelot's) opinion, never been made- in that House. The hon. Gentleman had marl o a threat that law and order would not be maintained in Ireland until Home Rule was granted by the Government of this country. He (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) stood up in his place to say, in reply to that threat, that so long as they could keep out of power the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), hon. Gentlemen on those Benches and their supporters would use every Constitutional means in their power, in the best interests of the country, to secure that result. The Government had been backed—and he (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) said it with the greatest pride and gratitude—by the noble Marquess the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington), whom the hon. Gentleman, while professing great friendship, had, nevertheless, done everything in his power to damage before the country. That noble Marquess, however, could 523 well support the criticism of the hon. Gentleman; and they were, at any rate, proud of a man who could throw Party feeling to the winds to secure the best interests of his country, which he knew would only be maintained by the Liberal Unionists uniting with a Party which, whatever their faults or their politics might be, were determined at all hazards to maintain the integrity of the Empire. The hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had spoken with much violence against Irish landlords.
§ MR. H. GLADSTONEsaid, he had distinctly guarded himself against that. He had limited his remarks to a very few.
§ SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTsaid, the words were—"The hideous crimes of the landlords."
§ MR. H. GLADSTONEI said "some landlords."
§ SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTsaid, that reservation might have come in afterwards; but it was not in the first statement of the hon. Gentleman. The hon. Gentleman had spoken of the disgraceful way in which the Irish landlords had behaved. He would only say, with regard to the landlords of Ireland, that they had for many generations and in many instances done their duty nobly to their Queen and their country; whereas hon. Members below the Gangway opposite merely showed respect for the Queen in that House, while everything they did outside showed the bitter feeling entertained against the Sovereign and against the Government.
§ MR. SPEAKERI think the remarks of the hon. and gallant Gentleman ought not to pass without notice. They are un-Parliamentary.
§ SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTsaid, that as his expression was considered too strong he would withdraw it at once. His feelings upon this subject were strong, and were shared by a large number of hon. Members on those Benches. He protested against one thing being said within the walls of that House by hon. Members opposite, and to totally different language being used elsewhere. With regard to the landlords, he wished to say that they had surely been heavily mulcted in the interest of the tenants of Ireland. The Land Act of 1870 was the first step in that direction, and the second step was the Land Act of 1881. He had on every 524 occasion voted against the Land Act of 1881, and he had never disguised that fact. He had spoken in his place against it, and had never hesitated fearlessly to state his views, for he had never changed his opinion. The hon. Gentleman opposite had stated that the Government had not fulfilled their pledges with regard to Ireland. He, on the contrary, considered that the Government had done almost more than could have been expected with regard to the amelioration of the condition of the Irish tenants. He had not thought it either right or fair that the Act of last year should be passed, nor did he expect that it would be; but it had been passed, and no one would now deny that it had been an Act of amelioration in the interest of the tenant. While it was passing, he remembered how it was reviled and denounced by hon. Gentlemen opposite, who said it would fail, although now they said it was an Act which was contenting the Irish people. The great question which they were assembled, to discuss was that of law and order in Ireland; and the argument of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) was that disorder would continue to prevail there. He would call attention to the speech which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian delivered at Shorncliffe on his return from abroad a short time ago. The right hon. Gentleman had said that there was a fact before us of terrible solemnity; it was that in this country, which boasted itself the home of liberty, we saw the spectacle of one nation holding down by force another nation; that they might cast their eyes over Europe and they would scarcely find such a thing; in the North, South, and West of Europe no such spectacle was to be seen, and no such spectacle was to be seen in America; that even in the East of Europe the most despotic of countries gave to Finland her own institutions, and Russia could say what England could not say—namely, that 32,000,000 people in England were afraid of 5,000,000 in Ireland being hostile to Great Britain if they had a local Parliament. But why had not the right hon. Gentleman named Poland, and why did he speak only of Finland, the most peaceable of countries? He (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) had seen in Poland and around Warsaw in 1864, just after the rebellion, troops 525 and troops of pinioned and fettered men being sent to Siberia. Here was a case far more applicable than that selected by the right hon. Gentleman, and which would not have enabled him to say what he had of despotic Russia. Again, what the hon. Gentleman had said about the number of those who supported the Government had been so well refuted by those hon. Members who had gone into statistics and by an able statement in The Times newspaper that he did not think it necessary to refer to the matter further than to say that the Government had a majority of 100 which he trusted they would retain; and his firm belief was that if they wont to the country to-morrow they would comeback to the House even stronger than they were at present. When the Crimes Bill was in that House hon. Members opposite discussed and opposed it to their hearts' content; and yet when that Bill became the law of the land, and hon. Members were bound to obey it as such, there were some who had declared in Ireland that the Act ought not to be enforced, and that what was the law of the land need not be obeyed by the people. Lord Selborne —for whom everyone in that House had respect—said with regard to the statement of a man high in Office, whose name he need not mention, that—
The making of speeches against law and Government could not stop with Ireland.The noble and learned Lord called that nothing less than gambling with the highest interests of the country, and he concluded by asking whether anyone differed from him in saying that the supremacy of the law was the very essence of freedom, and saying that, nevertheless, there were people who used the name of freedom as if it had anything to do with the subversion of the law which was going on. He (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) thought there were few who would get up and say that the views which the noble and learned Lord condemned were not those which had been impressed on the Irish people during the Recess. If they went back to the year 1880 they would remember that the Peace Preservation Act was allowed to drop by the Government which was then led by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone). What happened? Why, in 1881 things bad become so bad 526 in Ireland that the right hon. Gentleman was forced to bring in the Acts of 1881 and 1882, the two strongest Coercion Acts that had ever been introduced. Moreover, there were many hundreds of men in prison without one particle of evidence against them, and who were not brought to trial; and yet hon. Gentlemen opposite were abusing the present Administration because men were brought to trial upon specific charges of crime. The hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), speaking at Wexford on the 9th of October, 1881, at the time when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian had refused his demands, said—You have an opportunity of studying the utterances of a very great man—a very great orator—and who recently desired to impress the world with a great opinion of his philanthropy and hatred of oppression, but who stands today the greatest coercionist, the greatest and most unrivalled slanderer of the Irish nation that ever undertook the task. I refer to William Ewart Gladstone.That was the language of the hon. Member for Cork towards men whom, having abused in the strongest language before their opinions were changed, the hon. Member and his supporters, now that they thought they could get something out of them, fawned upon and flattered in a manner that it was not using language too strong to describe as disgusting. He would like to know when and how it was that the arrangement existing between the right hon. Gentleman and hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway opposite took place? They all recollected the Session of 1885, and that in the autumn of that year the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian prayed that he might not have to deal with Irish Members. But his prayer was not granted, and there was a majority against the right hon. Gentleman unless he could get the Irish Members on his side. And he did got them on his side by a promise of Home Rule; and all the right hon. Gentlemen at that moment on the Front Opposition Bench at once changed their opinion at the right hon. Gentleman's bidding. He would like to know on what plea or principle it was that those right hon. Gentlemen went against the principles they supported when they were elected, and which they had stated inside that House, as well as outside of it. He ad- 527 mitted that the Conservative Government were absolutely wrong, in his opinion, when they allowed the Grimes Act, which had not expired, to lapse, and he felt they would have been in a better position had they not taken that course. He did not think that the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) would deny that, after the Act of 1848, Ireland enjoyed peace, prosperity, and contentment, which lasted for 20 years. [Mr. DILLON: Because you starved 2,000,000 people.] If ever there was a statement without foundation it was that. No nation could have been more generous than, England in subscribing for the relief of distress and providing against the famine. He denied that we were three separate nations. We were indissolubly bound together as one nation; we had been so for hundreds of years; and no more mischievous thing could be done by any statesman than to try to sow dissension between English, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian had done. What they were endeavouring to do was to secure that Ireland should be governed fairly and honestly, while, at the same time, the law was maintained. He had read in an American paper a report of a speech of the hon. Member for East Donegal (Mr. Arthur O'Connor), which, if it were a true report, showed that the hon. Member had stated in America what he dared not state in that House. The words he referred to were these—If any English spies are present, I want them to note what I say with regard to the armed men here. These men are ready to fight for Ireland if the chance should arise, and any nation which England tries to strike can have 100,000 such men to fight against the British Crown.He also had road the speech of the hon. Baronet the Member for South Dublin (Sir Thomas Esmonde), which stated that—Allegiance would continue only so long as it was impossible to throw it off, and if it was not for the brute force held over Ireland by the English Government its power would not exist for 24 hours longer,
§ MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR (Donegal, E.)May I ask where and on what occasion those words were uttered?
§ SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTAt Chicago. Were they to believe that hon. Gentlemen made statements in America which they were afraid to make here? 528 Did they wish to be considered rebels in America and loyal subjects of Her Majesty when they were sitting in that House? They had all last year an opportunity of showing their loyalty and respect for Her Majesty. Hon. Members below the Gangway opposite were asked to go to that place where others went to meet Her Majesty; but everyone of them had steadily absented himself, and he asked if that was not disloyalty to the Crown? Irish Members said that so long as there was a Crimes Act there would be no peace in Ireland. But had there been peace when there was no Crimes Act, and was it the Crimes Act that had incited to the deeds that had been done in Ireland? He would mention three cases of murder in West Kerry which would be well known to the hon. Member who lived there. He made no accusations whatever against any hon. Member.
§ MR. EDWARD HARRINGTON:Make them if you can.
§ SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTWhy should I make them? I do not know that they are true. Do you think I would accuse a man if I did not believe that what I said was absolutely true? I make no accusation; but it is an extraordinary thing how sensitive a man is when no accusation is made against him. That gives a strong suspicion that there may be something which we know nothing about.
§ MR. EDWARD HARRINGTONMr. Speaker, I rise to Order, and I claim your protection. This is the second time that an accusation of murder by innuendo, has been made in this House. I would rather be taken from this House and expiate the charge of murder than be forced to sit down and listen to insinuations which just stop short of actual accusation. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, kindly to request the hon. and gallant Baronet to make such accusation as comes to his lips or his mind, and thus give me an opportunity of replying.
§ MR. SPEAKERThe hon. Gentleman can, no doubt, reply, and I allow him to make a statement and to repudiate any insinuation or charge, if the hon. and gallant Baronet has made any charge of that kind. I do not quite know what the hon. Member's point of Order is.
§ MR. EDWARD HARRINGTONThe point of Order is this—whether it is capable for an hon. Member to men- 529 tion first the name of another hon. Member of this House, and then, immediately in connection with that name, to mention murders, and then to pass it off and say "I make no charge," leaving thereby the impression on the mind of the House that there is some connection between the name of that hon. Member and the charge?
§ MR. SPEAKERThis is a matter not for the intervention of the Chair, but for the general judgment of the House.
§ SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTI made no insinuation, nor did I even mention the hon. Member's name, further than this—[Cries of "Withdraw!"]—and I adhere to it—that it was in Kerry that these murders took place. I do not say that the hon. Member had nm-thing in the world to do with them. I make no accusation against him. But it was in Kerry, and he knows perfectly well that they were most disgraceful murders. I shall hope to see him get up and repudiate that the National League had anything to do with them.
§ MR. EDWARD HARRINGTONMay I now appeal to you, Sir, on a point of Order, whether it is at all required of me to get up and repudiate that with which I have no connection, and with which I am not charged? I ask whether there is not such a covert insinuation in the charge of the hon. and gallant Baronet that there is some necessity for my repudiating it; and that he inclines to put it to the House that there is some connection between me and the charge of murder?
§ MR. SPEAKERAgain I say that that is not a point of Order. If the hon. and gallant Baronet had made any charge against the hon. Gentleman in the House in un-Parliamentary language, I should certainly have called him to Order. If the hon. Gentleman thinks any insinuation has been made against him, he is at perfect liberty to repudiate the insinuation so made, and to state that there is no foundation for it. No question of Order has yet arisen. If anything disorderly arises it will be my duty to interfere.
§ MR. E. ROBERTSON (Dundee)May I ask whether it is in Order for an hon. Member to insinuate that another hon. Member is responsible in some kind of way for a murder which has been committed? An. insinuation, as I under- 530 stand, has been made, and the imputation is distinctly made on one hon. Member of this House that it is his duty to disclaim, in the name of an association of which he is a member, responsibiliy for that murder.
§ MR. SPEAKERI cannot be responsible for the effects which any insinuation, so-called, may produce on the House. It is not for me to say to what extent the insinuation goes. If any insinuation or charge had been made in un-Parliamentary language it would have been my duty to interfere. It will be quite sufficient for the hon. Gentleman, if he thinks it necessary to do so, to repudiate anything of the kind which he thinks laid to his charge.
§ SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTsaid, again, that he had not the slightest intention, nor had he, to the best of his belief, done this. He had stated that murders had occurred in the district in which the hon. Member for West Kerry lived, and that he knew them to be most foul and abominable murders; he stated also that if that hon. Member could say that the League was free from any connection with them he would be doing that body a great service. The whole of the proceedings of the League showed how necessary it was that we should have a resolute and determined Government in Ireland; and he (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) wished to say how he and all of them on those Benches appreciated the efforts of his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and the courage and determination which he had shown in enforcing the law which had been placed in his hands, without which he would not have discharged the duties of the position in which he was placed. When they remembered how his right hon. Friend the Member for the Bridge-ton Division of Glasgow (Sir George Trevelyan) had suffered in mind and body, and how in the agony of his soul he had in his defence exclaimed, "I am an English gentleman," they felt that in the present position of affairs they must look for a man who would unflinchingly do his duty; and they looked to the noble Marquess the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington) and the body of men who supported the Government in their policy for the means of securing to every man in Ireland the freedom to which he was entitled. That was the policy they intended to pursue. 531 God grant that his right hon. Friend might be permitted to restore that freedom to the people of Ireland, and it certainly should not be the fault of the Unionists of this country if he were not able to do so.
§ Motion made, and Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned,"—(Mr. W. O'Brien,)—put, and agreed to.
§ Debate further adjourned till To-morrow.