COMMITTEE. [Progress 30 th July.]

HC Deb 31 July 1888 vol 329 cc960-1101

[SECOND NIGHT.]

Bill considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

Clause 1 (Appointment and duties of special commissioners).

Amendment again proposed, in page 1, line 18, after the word "allegations," to insert the words "of complicity with murder or violence."—(Mr. Robert Reid.)

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

MR. PARNELL (Cork)

I was referring last night, when the proceedings were interrupted by the clock striking 12, to communications with reference to proceedings inside the Cabinet of the Parliament and Ministry of 1880 to 1885, which had been divulged by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain); I have not a word in my statement of last night to alter save one, and I deem it right to alter that word at once. I used the word "always," and I should have used the word "frequently." These communications were made to several persons—some of them, but by no means the majority of them, or anything like the majority of them, were made to me, and some of them were made to my hon. Friends.

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! I must say that I understood the line of argument last night was that the hon. Member was indisposed to accept the reasonings or opinions of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain), in consequence of certain experiences of the right hon. Gentleman's action. That was admissible as a statement; but it is quite foreign to the question raised by the present Amendment.

MR. PARNELL

I bow to your ruling, Sir, and I merely say that I shall reserve any further statement on a matter that you rule to be out of Order until I come before the Commission, when I shall proceed to prove this and other statements by my own mouth out of the mouth of other persons by letters written by the right hon. Gentleman himself, and out of the mouth of the right hon. Gentleman himself, whom I shall put into the box. I shall then give him the opportunity which he does not appear to be desirous of availing himself of in the interval between last night and this afternoon. Now, Sir, to return to the question of the Amendment, the right hon. Member for West Birmingham is very indignant with us for not rushing at these charges like so many mad bulls, with that indignation which the right hon. Gentleman would have us suppose he has always exhibited when charges have been made against himself; but, unfortunately, the experience of history, and of very recent and modern history, does not acquit the right hon. Gentleman of similar conduct to ours. I find in a report of a debate in this House on the Address in answer to Her Majesty's Gracious Speech on October 30, 1884, the right hon. Gentleman, in speaking of charges which the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill) had made against him, said— As regards the charges against myself personally, let me clear the way by protesting, in the most absolute terms, against the new doctrine laid down on Monday, and brought forward again to-night, that if a man does not deny violent charges brought against him, he is to be assumed to admit them. That is a favourite doctrine of the noble Lord, who has brought more reckless charges against political opponents than any other living politician. Public life would be perfectly unendurable if a public man were to be held responsible for every crime of which he may be accused unless he immediately takes steps to refute the accusation. There is not a day passes in which I do not see some old slander revived, or some new libel devised, and if I am to deny them I should have to keep another secretary. In a Court of Justice a defendant is not called upon for an answer until some evidence, at all events, is brought forward, and I do not see why it should be different in a Court of Honour."—(3 Hansard, [293] 567.) We are perfectly willing to answer in a Court of Justice, or before a Commission, any evidence that may be brought forward against us. The right hon. Gentleman continued— But this practice of the noble Lord of flinging charges in the air in the hope that they may strike an opponent is a very common one."—(Ibid.) That is precisely what you are seeking to do by this Bill, and what this Amendment seeks to prevent you from doing. We say we believe we have with us the people of this country, as we undoutedly have with us the people of Ireland, and of every other civilized nation. We say that what we desire is, that if we have offended against the law of this country, or have been accomplices in any offences against the law of this country, or have been accessory to offences against the law of this country, those charges should be inquired into, probed to the bottom to ascertain whether they are true or false; but we deny your right to set up against us any such statements as the allegations that are contained in the pamphlet called Parnellism and Crime, because those allegations contain no definite statement of any offence against the law, of complicity in any offence against that law, or of being accessory to any offence against the law. We deny your right to invite us to come before this Commission on such vague charges as these, and to say that you are offering us a just and fair tribunal to inquire into charges which could be made in a Court of Justice. I say the charges and allegations in Parnellism and Crime are not capable of any legal definition in a Court of Justice, that no Court of Justice would entertain nine-tenths of them for a single instant, and that you are setting up this Commission, and are framing the Reference in so vague, wide, and unsatisfactory a manner, in order that you may get suspicions whispers, and injurious imputations entertained and published against us and not inquired into—because it will be impossible for any Court or Commission to inquire into them—and not for the purpose of arriving at the truth or definitely settling those questions, but for the distinct political purpose of raising against us a cloud of suspicion which you may hope may damage us in the estimation of the public. It is our duty to fight this Bill in Committee, and to appeal to the sense of justice of the House. It is not reasonable to ask us to go before this Commission, unless you tell us either who our accusers are to be or of what we are accused. If you were going to hang a dog, or to try a dog before he was hanged, would you not tell him what you wished to hang him for? Is it practice, is it fair play, to do less for Irishmen? It is because we are Irishmen, and for no other reason, that you take advantage of the national prejudices that unfortunately exist, and which you have done so much, through your Unionist literature and on platforms, to disseminate and, if possible, perpetuate. You take advantage of these unfortunate national prejudices to endeavour to put us in a position which you would not venture to put your own countrymen in. It is not the first time that fair play has been denied to Irishmen, and I do not suppose it will be the last. It is not the first time it has been denied to Irishmen in Ireland—not the first time that you have poisoned the bowl and used the dagger against your political opponents in that country, where you could not overcome them in fair fight; but I venture to think that the enlightened opinion of this age will not permit you to pursue this course, but the public opinion of your constituents will toll you when you return to thorn that you have been guilty of un-English traditions which are not in accordance with their opinions in this matter. We ask that we shall be told what we are accused of. We are referred by the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury to the pages of Parnellism and Crime. I decline to wade through the pages of that filthy and lying pamphlet for the purpose of extracting those accusations. Either we have offended against the law or we have not offended against the law; either we have been accessories to offences against the law or we have not been accessory to offences against the law; either we have condoned offences against the law or we have not condoned offences against the law. The Home Secretary talked about arson not being a crime of violence. That is the first time I ever heard it suggested that to set a man's house on fire is not an act of violence. The Home Secretary tells us that Moon-lighting offences are not crimes of violence. I do not believe that any Irish lawyer would have any doubt about it. The very definition of one of the offences under the Whiteboys Act is an assault upon a house, and what is that but a crime of violence, and what are the other offences under the Whiteboys Act, such as roaming through the country unlawfully, but crimes of violence? The right hon. Gentleman tells us that these Whiteboy offences are not crimes of violence. He attaches no weight to them. I maintain that they are. But let there be no difference upon that point. If you consider that there are any offences in the calendar which are not covered by the recital contained in the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member (Mr. R. T. Reid), we are perfectly willing to admit them into the Amendment. If there is any single unlawful act contained in the whole Criminal Law of England which would not be covered by the Amendment, we are willing to have the Amendment amended to the fullest extent, so as to make it wide enough and large enough for your purpose. By all means inquire into our connection with crime; but I do not moan by that our connec- tion with offences against the law, which we admit, and which are notorious. That would not be defended even by the Home Secretary. I refer to our taking part in the Plan of Campaign, or taking part, as undoubtedly I did in the winter of 1879–80, in incitement to tenants not to pay their full rents. Such speeches as I then delivered, of course, can be proved in abundance. There is no concealment about them. If they are offences, and according to the doctrine of Lord Fitzgerald—who, if not a very impartial Judge, has, I suppose, a sufficient knowledge of the law to express a sound opinion upon the point—such speeches and incitements do constitute offences against the law. They do not form a subject of inquiry before this Commission. When I say, "inquire into crimes committed by us," I do not mean such constructive offences against law as alleged conspiracy to incite tenants not to pay their full rents, or incitements to Boycotting, or the actual offence of Boycotting. But with regard to any other offence, secret or open, I invite the fullest, freest, and most thorough inquiry that you can institute. But I protest against admitting the vague and indefinite charges of the London Times which are contained in this pamphlet—drawn up by whom we know not—as substitutes for the legal and judicial phraseology which ought to enter into this Bill if this is to be a judicial inquiry.—I protest against that, and upon this Amendment, and upon others which are to follow, I shall renew my attempts to awaken the conscience of the Committee to the injustice to which you are asking us Irishmen to submit, an injustice which I do not believe you would ever ask your fellow Englishmen to submit to.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN (Birmingham, W.)

I must ask for the indulgence of the Committee while I say a very few words by way of personal explanation. The hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) has just taunted me with not taking an opportunity to deny the accusations which he brought against me last night. The hon. Member appears to forget that yesterday he himself occupied the whole time of the Committee until the moment arrived for adjournment. I did not rise when you, Sir, took the Chair this afternoon, because I understood that the hon. Mem- ber for Cork had possession of the Committee, and I waited for him to conclude his remarks. The hon. Member complains that charges of a most vague and indefinite character have been brought against himself, and then he brings against me charges or accusations infinitely more vague and more indefinite and shadowy, so that I am bound to say that I have not the most remote idea to what special circumstances he alludes. The hon. Member says that he will produce these accusations when he goes before the Commission which this Bill will appoint if they are germane to the subject of the inquiry. Well, I shall be delighted to enter into any explanation which may be necessary, and I promise the Committee and the hon. Member for Cork that I shall not shirk any inquiry. There appear to be two accusations which the hon. Member has formulated. The first is that before I became a Minister—that is, in the time between 1876 and 1880—I was always most anxious to put the hon. Member for Cork and his Friends forward to do work which I was afraid to do myself. Well, Sir, I confess that I do not think that that would be a very serious accusation, even if it were true; but I am perfectly prepared to leave myself in the hands whether of my Friends or my foes upon any question of personal cowardice. The second charge is that I was always most anxious to betray to the hon. Member and his Party the secrets and counsels of my Colleagues in the Cabinet, and to endeavour, while sitting beside them and in consultation with them, to undermine their counsels and their plans in the interest of the hon. Member for Cork. He refers to the time between 1880 and 1885, when I had the honour of a seat in the Cabinet of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone). As far as I can recollect at the present moment, I had only once—no, I do not remember even during that time having had any direct communication with the hon. Member for Cork.

MR. PARNELL

Not after the Phœnix Park murders?

MR. CHAMBERLAIN

I thank the hon. Member for his interruption. I had forgotten for the moment the incident to which he refers.

MR. PARNELL

Once in this House and once in your own house.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

I am much obliged to the hon. Member for refreshing my memory. I will deal as far as I can with all the occasions. There were two important occasions to which I imagined the hon. Member last night especially referred, occasions when I had numerous indirect communications with the hon. Member for the City of Cork. The first of those occasions was in connection with his release from Kilmainham; and when he is willing to go into the particulars of those communications, I shall be most happy to oblige him. But in regard to those communications, I have now to say, in the presence of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian that the whole of them—that the substance, at all events, of every communication of that kind was communicated to my right hon. Friend, and also to the late Mr. W. E. Forster, who was then Chief Secretary. Every communication, of every kind, important or unimportant, which passed indirectly between myself and the hon. Member for Cork was communicated to those of my Colleagues who were specially interested in the matter. The second occasion was in connection with a proposal which has been known in this House and the country as the proposal for National Councils. The hon. Member for Cork has denied having ever given any approval to that proposal.

MR. PARNELL

No; I have never done anything of the sort.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

The hon. Member says now that he never did anything of the sort. The hon. Member is very apt to contradict important statements in this House; but I am unable always to accept the accuracy of his contradiction.

MR. PARNELL

I did not deny that I gave assent to proposals for the construction of a National Council in Dublin. What I denied was that I had constructed the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

The hon. Member not only denied, as he now says, that he had constructed what he calls my scheme for a National Council, but he put up Colleagues in this House—the late Mr. Gray, for instance, the hon. and learned Member for North Long ford (Mr. T. Healy), and others—to declare that this scheme was my scheme, that it was Popkins' plan, and that it could not have the approval of the Irish Party. Now, I have to state that this scheme which the hon. Member calls my scheme was brought to me from him, and I am glad to say, and to tell the hon. Member that I have the proof now, which I had not got at the time, of what I assert in his own handwriting, in letters which are wholly in his handwriting, and not in the handwriting of his secretary. Sir, those proposals were brought to me on behalf of the hon. Member for Cork. I do not say now that they were either good or bad; but they were in accordance with principles that I had laid down in previous letters to Irishmen who, I believe, had shown them to the hon. Member for Cork; and although, as regards some of the details to which I need not now refer, I disapproved—they did not, in fact, go as far as I was willing to go—yet I sent word to the hon. Member for Cork that I accepted them as coming from him, and that, if satisfactory to the Irish Party, I would lay them before my Colleagues and endeavour to secure for them all the support I could. But what is, above all, important, having regard to the charges now brought against me, is that these proposals of the hon. Member and the whole of the communications which took place at that time between him and me were laid before my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian, before my noble Friend who is now sitting beside me (the Marquess of Hartington), and before every prominent Member of the Cabinet who had an interest in the subject. The hon. Member has reminded me of two other occasions when he says I had direct personal communication with himself. I believe he says that one of those interviews took place in the House of Commons. I have no recollection of it. The other occasion I recollect perfectly. It was on the Sunday following the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish. Mr. O'Shea, who was then, I believe, a Member of the House of Commons, came to my house on the afternoon of that day, and brought the hon. Member for Cork with him.

MR. PARNELL

That is not true.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

The hon. Member is perfectly at liberty to state his own recollection of the circumstances, but I do not think that there is any particular importance in that point. Mr. O'Shea was present with the hon. Member on that occasion, and my recollection is——

MR. PARNELL

He came in afterwards.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

Yes; he may have come in afterwards, but he also came in before. I am perfectly confident—my recollection is quite clear upon this point—that it was through Mr. O'Shea——

MR. PARNELL

No.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

That I became aware of the desire of the hon. Member for Cork to see me on that occasion. He did see me on that occasion. Nothing passed then which had any reference to the charges which the hon. Member has now brought against me; but I am perfectly prepared, either now or at any time that it may be necessary, to state what did pass. Nothing passed at that interview which, in my opinion, was otherwise than honourable to the hon. Member for Cork, or of which, as far as I am concerned, I am in the least ashamed. I have now dealt with all the occasions, as far as my recollection goes, on which I had any communications, direct or indirect, with the hon. Member for Cork, and I leave the matter in the hands of the Committee.

MR. PARNELL

The right hon. Gentleman may be a very clever man; but I think he is not sufficiently clever to ride off, as he is attempting to do, by raising so transparently false an issue as the question of local government in Ireland. The communications I referred to from the right hon. Gentleman to myself and my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon), who is now in Dundalk Gaol, and to a third person who is no longer a Member of this House, were communications in reference to other questions than the question of local government for Ireland. They were communications in reference to what the right hon. Gentleman has called my release from Kilmainham, but which I call the Arrears Bill. They were communications in reference to the renewel or non-renewal of coercion in Ireland after the Phœnix Park murders. There were communications later on in 1885 in reference to the non-renewal of the Crimes Act, an Act which was expiring at that period, and which the Government proposed to renew in part. The right hon. Gentleman represented himself to us as opposing the renewal of that Act within the Cabinet. So far from these communications being merely confined to the subject of local government for Ireland, the statement of the right hon. Gentleman has no foundation whatever. The right hon. Gentleman has now enlarged upon this question of local government in Ireland, and the communications which, he says, I had authorized to be made to him on the subject. Well, Sir, if all the statements of the right hon. Gentleman upon this subject were perfectly true, if I had authorized communications to be made to him on the subject of local government, if he holds, as he alleges, proofs, by means of letters in my handwriting, that I constructed this scheme of local government in Ireland, it would not touch the question at issue at all, which has reference to the violation and disregard by the right hon. Gentleman of his oath as a Member of the Cabinet to preserve its secrets. When the proper time arrives, or when the right hon. Gentleman formulates his charges against me, as I presume he will do, before this Commission with regard to this question of local government in Ireland, I shall have a full and abundant explanation to show that the statements and assertions of the right hon. Gentleman which he has made now for the first time through his own mouth, but which he has previously made through the mouths of other people, are erroneous and unfounded. It is possible that the right hon. Gentleman may have been misled himself—it is possible that information may have been conveyed to him which was not absolutely trustworthy, and I should recommend him the next time he asks for information on the Irish Question to deal at first hand, and then he will not be in the position in which he has unfortunately placed himself on this occasion, of having to establish a life-long spite against Irishmen, because he is informed by some third person that these Irishmen, once on a time, agreed to his scheme of local government. I have nothing further to say in regard to this question, except this, that among others of the letters in the handwriting of the right hon. Gentleman which I can produce,—and this has an important bearing upon the right hon. Gentleman's contention, that this was only a question of local government in Ireland—is a letter from him, in which he alludes to the defeat or withdrawal of the Police Bill for Ireland, and glories in Lord Spencer's discomfiture at the withdrawal. With regard to the memory of the right hon. Gentleman, which, I am sorry to say, appears to be very defective—the matter is only of importance as showing this—

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! The hon. Member has made his statement in answer to the right hon. Gentleman's personal explanation. It appears to me the hon. Member has exhausted all he has to say in reference to that personal explanation.

MR. PARNELL

No, no.

THE CHAIRMAN

I would urge on the hon. Gentleman the advisability of bringing to a close what he has to say in reference to that personal explanation. This discussion is, I think, very inconvenient.

MR. PARNELL

I had only one further matter to refer to, and it has relation to a matter of fact. The right bon. Gentleman has stated that my interview with him was arranged by Mr. O'Shea immediately after the Phœnix Park murders. That is untrue. I never informed Mr. O'Shea I was going to see the right hon. Gentleman, or gave him any previous intimation of the fact whatever. It is also untrue that Mr. O'Shea came with me. I was accompanied to the residence of the right hon. Gentleman by my hon. Friend the Member for the City of Derry (Mr. Justin M'Carthy), who will corroborate my memory in that particular. Mr. O'Shea called at the right hon. Gentleman's house, after we had been there for some time, and it was evident by his manner that he was very much surprised and very much mortified to find we were there. That is all I have to say on the subject.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

I will not occupy the time of the Committee further than to allude to the addition which the hon. Member has made to his previous statement. I do not pretend, and have never pretended, that I had any charges to formulate against the hon. Member for Cork, either before the Commission or anywhere else. I do not say that the only subject of communication between the hon. Member and myself was the question of National Councils. On the contrary, other matters alluded to by the hon. Member for Cork were undoubtedly part of the subject of that correspondence. I have only to say, with regard to this and to everything else, that I took care that those of my Colleagues who were chiefly interested in the matter should be informed of all I was doing.

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

I am sensible, Sir, of the inconvenience which you have pointed out and I am no party to the questions which have arisen between two distinguished Members of this House; but my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham having very distinctly referred to me as a witness in support of his recollection on two important matters, I do not feel justified in remaining altogether silent in presence of such an appeal. My right hon. Friend, if I understand him aright—I may be mistaken in my apprehension of what he says—referred to two subjects of communication between himself and the hon. Member for Cork. The first was, I think, that there had been a variety of communications between him and the hon. Member for Cork of an indirect character while the hon. Member for Cork was in Kilmainham Prison on the subject, at any rate, of his release from that prison. My right hon. Friend states that the result of these communications was made known to me, and, I also understand, to the late W. E. Forster. Well, Sir, I am reluctant to be brought, without preparation, into this subject, because I am bound to say that before I could undertake in any degree to confirm or question the recollection of my right hon. Friend, it would be necessary for me to know, and know with some exactness, what those communications were. In the present state of my recollection, I am unable to enter into the question. My right hon. Friend also referred to communications which he had with the hon. Member for Cork in 1885, on the subject of an important and extensive plan which was in the nature of local government for Ireland. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham says those communications were made known in their substance fully to me. I think upon that subject my memory is perfectly clear. It is not necessary to enter into details and particulars; but, undoubtedly, my memory is in accordance with what has been stated by my right hon. Friend.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 197; Noes 249: Majority 52.—(Div. List, No. 250.)

MR. ANDERSON (Elgin and Nairn)

, in moving, in line 18, after the word "allegations," to insert the words "set out in the schedule thereto," said, that the sub-section would then read as follows:— The Commissioners shall inquire into, and report upon, the charges and allegations set out in the schedule hereto made against cercurtain Members of Parliament or other persons in the course of the proceedings in an action entitled O'Donnell versus Walter and another.' He considered the Amendment to be of very great importance. As the Bill stood at present, charges and allegations might be made of any character against any person, without such charges being in any degree formulated, or without the person accused being in any way mentioned. He wished to invite the attention of the Committee to the unfairness and injustice which must arise from the mode in which the Bill was at present framed. The Sheffield Inquiry had been referred to; but nothing of this kind was embraced in the Sheffield Inquiry. In that case no charges were made against any particular person; but the Commission was ordered to make a certain inquiry as to certain outrages which had been committed. In this case it would be observed that charges and allegations of the most serious character were made against Members of that House and other persons, and he thought that was the first occasion when charges of such gravity bad been made without their having been formulated with some degree of certainty. He thought the Committee would see at once why it was important that there should be some definitions as to the nature of the charges, and why some statement in regard to the charges of a more definite character than was included in the Bill at present should be made, together with an indication of the persons to whom they referred. In all criminal inquiries the person charged was given some notice of the charge to be brought against him. Unless that were done, the greatest possible injustice must arise towards the person against whom the charge was made. The hon. and learned Solicitor General (Sir Edward Clarke) had made it thoroughly plain to the Committee yesterday that what the Government now proposed was to spring charges of a serious character against individuals without notice. He was sure the Committee would be of opinion that such an injustice ought to be prevented. It was perfectly possible to conceive that persons might come forward with false evidence. It was strongly believed already in this case that The Times had, by payment of large sums of money, obtained false evidence, and it was not difficult to conceive that there were a number of persons who might come forward and give false evidence. It was, therefore, possible for two or three witnesses to formulate and bring forward the most serious charges against hon. Members of that House, and bring them before the Commission, although no notice might have been given to the persons accused. It would be perfectly possible for witnesses to bring forward allegations of complicity with crime, and the consequence would be that the persons accused would remain under the stigma of being accessory to a serious offence which he would be entirely prevented from answering if a provision such as this were to be contained in the Bill. Apart from that injustice, there was another question to which he invited the attention of the hon. and learned Solicitor General; unless some limit were imposed the inquiry would be absolutely interminable. It was stated yesterday by the Home Secretary that the Judges appointed under the Bill would have a discretionary power to inquire into the various matters referred to under the head of charges and allegations. He (Mr. Anderson) would ask the hon. and learned Solicitor General if he took that view of the clause? As he (Mr. Anderson) read the clause, it was compulsory upon the Commissioners to go into such charges. What was the meaning of the language employed? The clause said— The Commissioners shall inquire into, and report upon, the charges and allegations made. He understood "shall inquire into," in legal language, to mean that they were to inquire into, and that they had no discretionary power in the matter. If the words were "it might be lawful," the case would be different. The view generally taken of the meaning of the clause was that the Judges would be bound to investigate and go into all the charges and allegations that were brought forward. If that were so, and he was satisfied it was a legal construction to be placed on the words, the inquiry would be an interminable one. He hardly thought that the Government and their Supporters appreciated the length of time this Commission was likely to occupy, and the expense to which the parties implicated would be put. In his opinion, therefore, justice demanded that the charges and allegations to he inquired into should be set forth with some definiteness in a Schedule attached to the Bill. He therefore, begged to move the Amendment of which he had given Notice.

Amendment proposed, in page 1, line 18, after the word "allegations," to insert the words "set out in the schedule hereto."—(Mr. Anderson.)

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

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

said, the Amendment which had been moved by the hon. and learned Gentleman would, in his opinion, completely neutralize the whole object of the inquiry. It evidently proceeded from a misconception of the object of the inquiry, which was not an investigation into the pamphlet entitled Parnellism and Crime, but an inquiry into the whole truth in regard to the allegations which had been made in the case of "O'Donnell v. Walter and another," and to enable the Commissioners to do that, they must have their hands left free, and must be at liberty to inquire into charges which were not scheduled. It would be most unfortunate if the Commissioners were precluded from pursuing a certain line of inquiry merely because it concerned some person whose name did not appear in the Schedule. In the case of the Sheffield Inquiry, there was a general suggestion of outrages having been committed at the instigation of certain members of Trade Associations. No individuals were named at the time. [An hon. MEMBER, Broadhead.] Broadhead was an indi- vidual who was spoken of at the time; but if his (Mr. Matthews') memory served him right, the offences which were committed by that individual were brought home to him and to other persons who were not even known before the appointment of the Commission. The hon. and learned Member said that charges might be sprung upon individuals, and that thereby they would be subjected to injustice. If any accusation were made against any individual before the Commission, he would no doubt, be allowed ample opportunity for defending himself, and no doubt, by adjournment from time to time or otherwise, ample time would be given to any person charged with a criminal offence to defend himself. If the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member were adopted, the Commission would be unable to inquire into the authorship of the alleged forged letters, because the person who must have forged them was not at present known. It was, therefore, impossible to name him in the Schedule. In such case, the Commissioners would feel themselves constrained to hold their hands and not to inquire into a matter of that kind, because the individual was not named in the Schedule.

MR. COMMINS (Roscommon, S.)

said, the object of the Government appeared to be to obscure the issue, and not to define it. All the Amendments that were proposed were met by the Government with the remark that they would defeat the object of the Bill. The object of the Bill was not to bring definite charges against certain persons, and to enable such persons to meet them, or even to define the persons against whom the charges were made, so that they might be able to show that the charges themselves were false; the object of the Bill appeared to be to make the charges and allegations as wide as possible. The last argument of the Home Secretary was that if a Schedule were attached to the Bill, and the forger of those letters were subsequently discovered, he could not be proceeded against; but if the forger of the letters could be discovered, he might be prosecuted by law without the intervention of an extraordinary Commission such as it was proposed to appoint under the Bill. No doubt the Bill gave an indemnity to the forger; if he came forward and said that he had forged these letters, he would be entitled to a certificate. Indeed, the framers of the Bill gave power to every person who was anxious to come forward and make charges against others. The Home Secretary did not contend for a moment that it would not be imperative under the Bill for the Commissioners to hear the evidence of every person who was desirious of bringing forward a charge. All that was required by the Irish Members was that the persons charged should be specified, and that the charges themselves should be put in in an intelligible and tangible shape. They wished to have them defined in such a way as the meanest thief would be entitled to have a charge against him defined. If the Bill were not a bogus measure, if it was not intended to cloak the charges, and furnish a platform for a repetition of them, then something like this Amendment must be inserted in the Bill, and some definition must be given. Let the Government make the charges as wide as they please, but they ought to be enumerated and defined, in order that it should be known what were the charges to be made. This was not to be a judicial investigation, but rather like an inquiry into corrupt practices at an election; but everybody had the Corrupt Practices Act at hand, and knew what charges were to be made; they were clearly defined, and the proceedings were governed by the rules of judicial procedure. If the inquiry was not to be a judicial one, the charges were, at least, graver than many which occupied the attention of ordinary Courts of Justice. A convict with 60 convictions against him, even if charged with the most trivial offence, was entitled to have a copy of the evidence that might be produced against him at Court; but no such provision was made here. There were none of the guarantees in this Bill that legal experience and judicial wisdom had established for the protection of innocence, for giving fair play to the accused, and for restraining that license of prosecution which very often degenerated into an abuse of law and resulted in the greatest injustice. This Bill would not give the means of establishing the guilt or innocence of an accused person; but it would afford moans for bringing various accusations against anybody, and for constituting further slanders. Unless something was done in the direction aimed at by the Amendment, the Bill would be a bogus Bill, a travesty of justice, and a mockery towards those upon whom it was proposed to confer benefit.

SIR JOHN SIMON (Dewsbury)

said, he hoped his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary would excuse him (Sir John Simon) for saying that he had forgotten the Title, the Preamble, and the enactments of his own Bill. He had stated that this was to be an open inquiry for ascertaining the truth of certain charges and allegations. It was a Bill to inquire into charges and allegations made against certain Members of Parliament. The recital went on to say that— Whereas certain charges and allegations were made against certain Members of Parliament and other persons, &c.; and the first clause they were now considering enacted that the Commissioners should inquire into and report upon the charges and allegations against Members of Parliament and other persons. Then what possible objection could the Government have to stating what the charges were into which the Commission was to inquire? The Home Secretary said that the Members of Parliament were not on their trial. He (Sir John Simon) took issue with the right hon. Gentleman on that point. If ever men were placed on their trial, they were the Members of Parliament who were being arraigned on those charges. It was contrary to every principle of justice and of Constitutional procedure that Members of Parliament should be placed in such a position, and that a Special Commission should be appointed to inquire into the charges and allegations made against them. It was unconstitutional, and contrary to all principles of justice, that those Gentlemen should be kept in ignorance of the charges brought against them. The Government must either believe the charges or they do not. If they believed that they were charges and allegations to justify the Commission, then why did they not state them? The Bill would be utterly unjustifiable if the Government did not believe that the charges and allegations made against certain Members of Parliament ought to be inquired into. The continual reference which was being made to the Sheffield Commission and to an Election Commission was absurd. There was no analogy between the proposed Commission and the Sheffield and a Commission to Inquire into Corrupt Practices at Elections. In the case of corrupt practices, the charges were known to the law and specified. Every Judge knew what the corrupt practices were, and what he was called upon to inquire into. More than that, under the regulations of such inquiries, particulars had to be furnished of the corrupt practices charged; and even dates, times, and places were given, so that the person who had to answer had the fullest possible information. In the Sheffield Commission, no person was charged with crime. Certain crimes and wrongful acts had been committed through the means and operation, it was alleged, of the Trades Unions, and it was an open inquiry sent down to ascertain who the persons were who had perpetrated or instigated the perpetration of illegal acts. This, however, was not an open inquiry, because the Bill itself stated that the Commission was to inquire into the charges and allegations made against certain Members of Parliament and other persons. If, then, they knew that there were charges and allegations, why did they not state them? Why keep them locked up in their own breasts? He regarded the Amendment as a most fair and necessary one, and he should certainly support it. He was utterly at a loss to conceive why the Government were so determined to prevent anything like a statement of the charges, and why they were so determined to refuse every Amendment of this nature, when he should have thought that, as English Statesmen, they would have been only too solicitous for their own reputation for fairness to have gladly received any suggestion, even although it came from the Irish Members or from that side of the House.

MR. ATHERLEY-JONES (Durham, N.W.)

said, he had listened with surprise to the observations of the Home Secretary, who stated at the commencement of his speech that this was not an investigation of definite charges. From the statements made in The Times, it was perfectly obvious that there were definite charges to be investigated. If that were so, then the proposed Commission differed toto cœlo from all previous Commissions, such as the Trades Unions Commission, which was a Commission issued for the purpose of ascertaining whether there were persons who had committed certain crimes. This Commission started with the presumption that certain persons—namely, Mr. Parnell and others—had committed crime. He, for one, was not in sympathy with any hon. Member who sought to limit the scope of the inquiry. He believed that the inquiry should be as extensive and as comprehensive as the charges which had been formulated, but it was a very different thing, limiting the scope of the inquiry, and defining what the inquiry should be. There was no precedent for any inquiry as to the criminal conduct of any individual in which the person criminated had not the right to claim full and accurate particulars of the charges brought against him. It had been well said that this inquiry differed only from the trial before a Judge and jury in this, that there was to be no judgment delivered. There would be a verdict, and if that verdict were adverse to the hon. Member for Cork and other hon. Members, they would be condemned to odium and infamy. He asked whether it was fair or reasonable to make carefully formulated charges against individuals for which a mass of testimony had probably been marshalled, while, at the same time, the persons criminated were not given the opportunity of marshalling the evidence for the purpose of rebutting these charges? He insisted that, as an elementary principle of justice, there should be given to every person charged a full and accurate description of the charges made against him.

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

said, that the section, if literally carried out, meant that the Commissioners should inquire into and report upon certain charges and allegations made in the case of "O'Donnell v. Walter and another." The Government did not even mention where this case was tried, and they did not even refer the Commission to a report of the case. If the section were carried out, the three Judges would some day have to walk to one of Mr. W. H. Smith's bookstalls and each pay twopence for a copy of the report of the case he had referred to. But who was to guarantee that the report of the proceedings published by The Times was accurate; who was to guarantee that it was taken by a shorthand writer, or that it had not been revised after it had left the Court by the forgers of the letters attributed to the hon. Member for Cork? He had not the slightest hesitation in saying that the persons who had supplied these fraudulent letters were capable of furnishing a fraudulent report of the trial. The Times had dismissed two of its correspondents because they had given true accounts of what had occurred at Ennis and elsewhere in Ireland. The object of the Government in refusing to place these crimes in the Schedule was to give The Times an opportunity of mending its hand with reference to these charges. The Times had had already to amend its budget of charges. It had published a ridiculous statement about his hon. Friend the Member for the Scotland Ward Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), who had disproved the statement of The Times that he was in America at a time when he was alleged to have been there by that newspaper. But his hon. Friend was not the only man who could disprove, in as equally effective a manner, the charges made against him; and under the clause as it stood The Times might be able to mend its hand, and also to spring fresh charges upon the persons it had accused; it would find fresh readings of the original charges, and there would be no counsel engaged before the Commission who would be able to point to a single word in the Act of Parliament forbidding them to refer to those additional charges or investigate them. He protested against The Times being allowed an opportunity of hiding its guilt in this manner. The Government could not either name the charges which they pretended to desire to have investigated by the Commission, or they were afraid to name them. If they could not name the charges, their excuse was gone altogether; if they were afraid to name them, their condemnation was written in refusing justice to men who were of as unimpeachable integrity as themselves—he would withdraw the words "as unimpeachable" and substitute "of far more unimpeachable integrity." He warned the Government that if a Schedule was constructed of charges on which Mem- bers of Parliament and others were to be tried, he would propose, as an independent Member, that the name of the Right Honourable Henry Matthews and his relations with the Fenians of Dungarvan should be included in it; and, notwithstanding the denial given last night by the right hon. Gentleman to the charges brought against him by the hon. Member for the Scotland Ward Division of Liverpool, the House would find that a great deal more had to be told on that subject than had been yet divulged to the public; and it might be found that in the case of the right hon. Gentleman, as well as in that of others, it might be necessary that the Commission should sit in New York as well as in London. He repeated that the Government were in this dilemma, either that they could not name the charges, or they were afraid to do so, and in his conscience he believed the latter to be the truth.

MR. SEXTON (Belfast, W.)

said, he did not want to draw attention to the circumstances to which his hon. Friend who had just sat down (Mr. Clancy) had referred. He must, however, say that the Home Secretary had shown inexcusable carelessness in dealing with the Amendment before the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman argued that the Amendment would neutralize the Bill. And why did he think it would have that effect? Because, according to the right hon. Gentleman, the Commission was not intended to inquire into definite charges at all. Were the Committee really talking about matters which had convulsed the country for a year or more; were they speaking of charges which had been described in The Times as so serious that at a date not remote they would have caused the heads of Members of the House to adorn the City gates? He was extremely surprised to find that the charges to come before the Commission were such as might be conceived in the dim recesses of an Old Bailey lawyer's brain, but could not be put in definite words. The Commission were not intended to deal with definite charges. They were not to make charges of that kind; but they were to beat about for game like hounds in a cover. The Government wanted no definite charges. He had heard two statements in the course of the debate—first, that the Government did not want to be in the position of accusers. That was a flagrantly transparent excuse, and he submitted that if the Government accepted the Amendment proposed from that side of the House to make a specification in the proposed Schedule, they would not place themselves in the position of accusers, because the act would not be the act of the Government, but the act of the House of Commons. Another point was that there was no punishment to follow the decision of the Commission. The Committee were told that if a man was fined half-a-crown or sent to prison for a day, the charges against him must be stated, and the evidence given must be legal. That had been shown to be necessary to the investigation of truth and the exclusion of improper evidence by the experience of centuries. But was there no punishment to follow? There were two classes of persons concerned—one, Members of Parliament; and the other, persons outside the House; and between those classes there was the important difference that one asked for this inquiry and the other did not. With regard to persons outside the House, their position was purely personal; but as regarded Members inside the House, the hon. Member for Cork amongst others, they had to consider not only personal reputations but also their position as Members of the House, and in that were involved their race and their country. What charges were hon. Members to answer? Were they to be left till the Commission met and until it had arrived at some conclusion? He would take his own case. He had read the pamphlet Parnellism and Crime, and he had read it with the endeavour to see in what way his name was mentioned in connection with the specification of facts, and he found that it had been mentioned three times. His name was first mentioned in connection with a public meeting held in 1880, since which time there had been one suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act and two Crimes Acts. It was said that in the month of October, in 1880, he had been present at a public meeting at which another Member of Parliament made a statement. Was it really come to this, that a Member of the House was expected to go back eight or nine years to explain his relation to a speech not made by himself, but made by another person? Would the hon. and learned Solicitor General defend that proposal. That speech related to a prosecution in Dublin which had ended abortively. Then he found reference made to him in connection with what was called "The Flight to Paris" of certain Members of Parliament, who, it was said, in 1881 fled to Paris in order to avoid arrest under Mr. Forster's Coercion Act. He (Mr. Sexton) was arrested in the month of October, 1881, while ill in bed; he was taken to Kilmainham, and kept in bed until he had to be carried out by warders. As soon as he came out and was able to walk, he came to London and placed himself under the care of a medical man, and in the following year, on the 1st or 2nd of June, he went to Paris under medical advice. His hon. Friend the Member for Wrest Cavan (Mr. Biggar), who was a tender-hearted man, and would not allow him to go alone, came forward and accompanied him to Paris; and he (Mr. Sexton) was at the time so weak as to be compelled to stop at Newhaven on the way. He remained at Paris a month, and came back to take part in the Business of the Session of that year. He had no reason to expect arrest, nor had the hon. Member for West Cavan, because the Suspension Act was only executed in Ireland. That was the true reason of his "Flight to Paris," and he had tendered that explanation over and over again. It was said that, on his hon. Friend's (Mr. Parnell's) release from Kilmainham, he had gone to Paris to avoid arrest; but, having attended every Sitting of the House until the Easter Recess, hon. Members would admit that he needed some rest; and he chose to take a week at Paris, instead of going to Ireland. He returned from Paris in time to join the House the first day after the conclusion of the Recess. Was it contended that a Member of Parliament, because he was an Irish Member, was not to go to Paris for the benefit of his health, nor to visit it during the Easter Recess, without being called upon nine years afterwards to explain his reasons? He asked, on the eve of the appointment of this Commission, to what extent he was to defend himself, how he was to instruct his solicitor as to the case to be laid before his counsel, and what witnesses he was to have in attendance? The Government did not arrange for a man to bring up his own case; they had left everything to the Commission, and they might make or adopt a charge against a man on one day and drop it the next, and so on; for weeks or years no man would know what case would be made against him. This inquiry would last for years. ["No, no!"] He was not aware that the proceedings in previous cases had been disposed of in a few weeks, and certainly the present inquiry, which related to a race and a political Party, could not be settled in that time. It was not enough to say that he was charged with having had communication with someone connected with crime. He had never in his life had any knowledge of any intention on the part of anyone to commit any crime. He knew that when any crime had been committed, he had no knowledge of it other than what was obtained from the Press and public rumour; he had never associated with any man whom he knew to be guilty of crime. Knowing all that, he challenged the Government to give him and others in a similar position, some idea of the charges they were to meet. The short and long of it was, that the Government claimed a position for themselves which was untenable, the while that they endeavoured to put him and his hon. Friends in a position which was intolerable, and the country would understand and condemn their conduct.

MR. JOHN O'CONNOR (Tipperary, S.)

said, the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary objected to any Schedule of the kind proposed in the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Elgin and Nairn (Mr. Anderson). How far was the scope of this inquiry to extend? Would it go back into the history of Ireland? If so, the right hon. Gentleman himself might come off second best. When the right hon. Gentleman was a younger man—20 years ago—the election for Dungarvan took place; and, if the scope of the inquiry was to extend back to that time, the right hon. Gentleman would find it very difficult to prove that he had not accepted assistance from certain men in Ireland, well knowing that they were engaged in bringing about a separation of the two countries; and he would find it very difficult to prove that he did not part with a certain sum of money to those men for the purpose he had mentioned. If it were necessary, he (Mr. J. O'Connor) would bring before the Commission the men who served the right hon. Gentleman on that occasion, and the men who received the money. He had much to say on this matter; but he would restrict himself to the Schedule proposed by the hon. and learned Member for Elgin and Nairn. All they asked for was that persons and facts should be defined. Would the Government describe persons, so far as to mention the National League? Because, in that case, they would narrow the inquiry to some extent. Hon. Members were quite prepared to have all the affairs of the National League investigated, because they knew from reports in newspapers that many outrages had been committed in Ireland by persons who were not connected with the National League. It was for the National League alone that they were responsible.

MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY (Londonderry)

said, the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. J. O'Connor) had made a very effective speech in support of the Amendment, and he had given as a reason that, if the Government did not do something in the direction of the Amendment, they would leave Members of that House open to vague unmeaning charges such as no man ought to be called upon to reply to. He (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) wanted to impress on the Committee the reasons why there should be a Schedule to the Bill. If the Committee did not agree to this, they would have the real prosecutors in this case, or the instigators of the charges, sneaking out of some of the gravest allegations made against Members of the House, and saying they never were meant in that sense at all. His hon. Friend had given some of his experiences, and the Committee would allow him (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) to give a little of his own experience as regarded these accusations. One of the foulest charges ever made against a public man in any country was contained in certain sentences of a pamphlet called Parnellism and Crime, and in which he himself was involved. The statement was that on a certain day he, accompanied by Mr. Frank Byrne, met his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) at Willesden Junction, on his way to Paris, and that they conferred together in secret—Mr. Byrne, himself, and the hon. Member for the City of Cork—that they were met by other persons, and it was implied that the arrangements for the Phœnix Park murders were made at that conference. What really occurred was this—Mr. Frank Byrne came as secretary of the organization; he met the hon. Member for the City of Cork at the station; he left the hon. Member and himself (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) together, having fulfilled his official function. His hon. Friend and himself went to his own residence, where they spent some time talking over the Arrears of Rent Bill then coming in. But in the pamphlet it was urged over and over again that the murders took place immediately afterwards; that Mr. Frank Byrne escaped, and that he was mixed up in those murders. It was distinctly implied, although not put in these words, that his hon. Friend and himself know of it. Now, since that time, The Times had specifically and pointedly declared that they did not mean to connect him in any way with the murders in the Phœnix Park. But they had made the charge, and he now insisted that the charge should be kept to; that it should be put into the Schedule of the Bill, and that no chance should be given to the inventors of these abominable slanders to say that they never meant the actual outcome of their words, and that, when they said that the hon. Member for Cork, himself (Mr. Justin M'Carthy), and Mr. Frank Byrne met at Willesden, and that the murders were committed immediately afterwards, they merely meant to mark a curious chronological coincidence, and imputed no charge whatever. If the Committee did not make such a Schedule as was now proposed, they would give these people the chance—these false, treacherous, and ignoble libellers—whenever they might think fit hereafter, of reviving their old slanders, and saying that they had never been disproved.

MR. W. REDMOND (Fermanagh, N.)

said, the people of England would see that it was most unjust that Members of that House should be put upon their trial for charges not stated. The commonest criminal in this country when arrested had the right of having the charge against him distinctly stated, in order that he might be able to disprove the allegations made against him. But charges made against Irish Members were not stated for them in any definite and decided way; and when they asked what it was this Bill was passed to try, the Government refused to answer them, and pointed to the confused mass of statements which were to be found in the pamphlet called Parnellism and Crime. It had been pointed out, on the second reading of the Bill, that in the whole of that pamphlet there was not a single hint made against the Members sitting on those Benches which had not over and over again been made for a number of years. With the single exception of the forged letters, there was not a particle of anything new in the whole of the allegations contained in that pamphlet. It should be borne in mind that every one of those charges were made against Irish Members from time to time in that House, when each one of the accusations which The Times had now made against them had gone through the ordeal of debate; and, notwithstanding the repeated discussions which had taken place as to the alleged connection of his hon. Friends with the perpetrators of outrage and crime in Ireland, there never had been the slightest particle of evidence adduced to support the statements that hon. Members had ever done anything in Ireland, except to use their influence to restrain and prevent the commission of crime and outrage. Again, notwithstanding the Coercion Acts which had been in existence in Ireland and the fact that the whole National Organization had been under the watch of the police, and that they had been working under a system of espionage unknown before—in spite of all that, Irish Members were to be put on trial for a lot of old rumours which had never been proved to have any foundation, and they were supposed to thank the Government and their supporters for the present opportunity of clearing their characters. If the Government were earnest in this matter, they would agree to the proposition which had just been made, first of all, to test the truth or untruth of the infamous letters attributed to his hon. Friend the Member for Cork. But the Government would not do that; they refused to tie themselves to those charges which had been made against him. Whatever might be the result of the action of the Government and their supporters, the people of the country would believe that it was an unfair thing to ask that these matters should be inquired into in this way, and they would decide that it was an unfair thing on the part of the Government to refuse to allow an inquiry in connection with these letters. The Government knew that the letters would be proved to be forgeries.

THE CHAIRMAN

said, the hon. Member was anticipating an Amendment which would come before the Committee later on.

MR. W. REDMOND

said, he maintained that, unless the Amendment were accepted, the Commission would be placed in a most perplexing position. They would not know what they were to inquire into, and when they looked for the charges they would have nothing to go upon except the rumours of The Times newspaper. He thought it perfectly monstrous and infamous that any Party in this country should deny to any considerable section of the House the right to have the charges against them stated. The Government professed to believe that Irish Members were connected with all sorts of crime and outrage in Ireland. Could not the Government state their charges? They had their police, and he was convinced that if they had been able to prove anything against them, they would not have hesitated to put them on their trial. But the Bill was to inquire into charges and allegations against Members of that House. He wanted to know from some Member of the Government what the charges and allegations against Irish Members were to be. If the charges and allegations against Members of the House were to be inquired into at all, the Commission ought also to inquire into the conduct of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland for being instrumental in the murders at Mitchelstown and the murder of Mr. Mandeville in Tullamore Gaol. The scope of the inquiry should also extend to the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington, who went over to the North of Ireland and made speeches to the people, the result of which was to dye the streets of Belfast with blood. Whatever was contained in Parnellism and Crime against Irish Members, there were charges against Members on the Treasury Bench and their supporters which were equally grave and equally serious, and which could be put forward with a great deal more evidence than the Government had to sustain the charges against Irish Members. Irish Members were charged with creating crime and outrage in Ireland; but the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson) was as responsible as any man in the country for outrage in Ireland. The hon. and gallant Member could not deny that the author of Parnellism and Crime had carefully excluded from its pages everything relating to the violence of hon. Members opposite; but the hon. and gallant Gentleman had advised the people of Ireland to fight against the will of the House of Commons and to fight against the Government of Her Majesty the Queen; he had brought over to Ireland the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill), and his Party had brought bloodshed among the people and the burning of houses over the heads of tenants. He did not care more than a snap of the fingers for the Government Commission. Irish Members knew very well that they were playing with loaded dice; they knew that everything unscrupulous would be done by the Tory Party to shield The Times from the results of its infamous attack; and they looked to the people outside, who would be with him when he said that the inquiry would be a sham, inasmuch as the Government had not stated correctly the chargee against his hon. Friends, and had not also made the subject of inquiry the conduct of hon. and right hon. Members on the opposite side of the House. Whether the Commission sat or not, it would not alter in the slightest degree the opinion of the people of England, who believed that the prejudice in this case was against the Irish agitation. It was not Irish Members who were responsible for the unfortunate outrages in Ireland, but those who insisted, at the instance of a Tory Government, on ruling the Irish people against their will, torturing the most respectable men in the country, and turning out industrious people from their holdings, because they could not pay rent. That was really the cause of tumult and violence in Ireland; and the result of his own investigation was that outrage would continue until an end was put to the present system of government, which allowed Irish Members who sat in that House to hear their opinions ridiculed and their characters bespattered by little men who knew a good deal about Law Courts, but nothing at all about the wants or desires of the people of Ireland.

MR. LABOUCHERE (Northampton)

said, the Bill was the result of a conspiracy, speaking in a Parliamentary sense, between Her Majesty's Government and The Times newspaper. The Government were at that moment in a conspiracy of silence. His hon. and learned Friend the Member for Elgin and Nairn had proposed a fair and legitimate Amendment, and the only Gentleman who had risen to answer him was the Home Secretary, and his answer was that there would be no punishment attaching to anyone who was found guilty by the Commission. But he (Mr. Labouchere) wanted to know whether it was true that no punishment would attach to anyone? It was perfectly true that that Commission could not impose it; but supposing some persons were found to be parties to murder or arson in Ireland, would they not be prosecuted? Most unquestionably they would, and the fact of their disclosure would be the cause of their being prosecuted, and it would be used against them. He was ready to support the Bill, if the Government would only convince him that it was fair and just. What was the Commission going to do, if there was no Schedule? What was to be the nature of the proceedings? Was no individual to know with what he was to be charged? Was he not to be allowed to ask for discovery of documentary evidence, and know what witnesses would be brought against him? In short, were the ordinary rules of the Criminal Law to be adopted or not? He asked hon. Gentlemen opposite to look at the enormous cost that would be cast upon hon. Gentlemen if there was not to be some distinct plan laid down beforehand. Anyone might send a letter to the Commissioners and say he wanted to be heard; the Commissioners might, at any moment, start some fresh hare, and make a charge against some Gentleman belonging to the Nationalist Party, and that man must employ counsel during the whole time, and, of course, be put to an enormous expense. It would be said that the expense of evidence was very great in the case of the Metropolitan Board of Works. But that was an accident, and he himself was one who had been called upon to pay; the counsel in that case were paid for by the ratepayers of the Metropolis. Were the Government going to provide the members of the National League with counsel? Most assuredly not, and the expenses would be something perfectly enormous. He thought that at this stage of the Bill some explanation should be given of the procedure; it would simplify matters, and the Bill would be allowed to pass more speedily than at present it was likely to do. They ought to have some clear statement on this subject from the hon. and learned Solicitor General, whose name was on the Bill, and who was present to support the action of the Government because the hon. and learned Attorney General did not like to do so. Let the Committee have some explanation from him as to what would be the course of procedure, who would inaugurate the charges, and who would decide how they were to be taken. All these things were difficulties standing in their way, and it was necessary to remove them before they could give their assent to the Bill being passed.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir EDWARD CLARKE) (Plymouth)

said, he was very doubtful whether anything he could say would shorten the discussion on the Bill. The reason why, during the last two hours, no speech had been made from the Government Bench was that those two hours had been spent in the mere repetition of arguments that had been used over and over again, urged and answered. There had not been, in the course of those two hours, one single fresh objection made, or one single new point started, upon which it would be reasonable that a Member of the Government should be asked to assist those who were impeding the progress of the Bill; and he declined, by repeating the statements he had before made, to increase the waste of time which had been caused by speeches made on the other side of the House. The tone of the speeches delivered had been clearly more applicable to the second reading of the measure. The objections made by the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) were objections that had been made on the second reading of the Bill, which had been carried without a dissentient voice, because no one had dared to challenge a Division. Without a dissentient voice the House had declared that a Commission should be established for the purpose of dealing with the charges and allegations made in the course of the trial which had taken place, and there was no doubt whatever at the time as to what those charges and allegations were, nor was there any doubt at the present moment. He entirely declined to repeat arguments which were properly referable to the second reading of the Bill. But the Amendment proposed that night was one which the Proposer knew would make it absolutely impossible to pass the Bill at all; he said that the Commission was to sit for years, because it would have so much to inquire into, and he proposed to the House to set to work and construct a Schedule which he (Sir Edward Clarke) ventured to say would take the Committee months to construct. In the first place, there was no reason for a Schedule at all. The hon. and learned Member for Dewsbury (Sir John Simon) said that the Government were keeping the Irish Members in the dark, and that they kept locked up in their breasts the charges against them. What conceivable ground was there for that statement.

SIR JOHN SIMON

Because you refuse to specify the charges.

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

said, the hon. and learned Gentleman would not deny that he had quoted him correctly. [Sir JOHN SIMON: I do not deny it.] His hon. and learned Friend said that the Government were keeping charges against Irish Members locked up in their own breasts.

SIR JOHN SIMON

said, he did not state it as a fact that the Government were keeping the charges locked up in their own breasts. His argument was, that the Government either know what the charges were or they did not. That if they did know what the charges were, it was unfair and contrary to all ideas of justice that they should keep them locked up in their own breasts whilst they kept the Members referred to in the dark.

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

said, the Government had no more means of knowledge with regard to these charges than hon. Members opposite. The charges were not charges any Member of the Government made. They were charges which were published in a public print, and which had been before the world for months, and they were charges the gravity of which and the importance of which and the character of which no Member had ever doubted. The only thing that was remarkable was that they had had two instances to-night that those who were mentioned in the articles on Parnellism and Crime were extremely anxious to take the opportunity of making statements as to fact in the House to which the Committee listened with respectful and silent interest, but those persons were very careful indeed not to take the opportunity of making those statements as to facts where they could be challenged by cross-examination.

MR. SEXTON

We want to know what the charges and allegations are.

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

said, that that was the only thing which was remarkable in this matter. All the charges and allegations were known long ago. What did the hon. Member (Mr. Anderson) propose by this Amendment? He proposed that a Schedule should be added to the Bill, and that it should contain a list of the charges which the Commission was to investigate. Who were to frame that Schedule? The Government? The Government absolutely declined to take that responsibility. He thought that by taking that duty upon itself the Government would, in a most unjustifiable way, change the whole character of these proceedings. The Judges who would be appointed as Commissioners in this matter would have before them very serious statements of fact to consider and investigate. Those statements of fact were not statements of fact which would be brought before them by the Government, or in respect of which the Government took, or ever had taken, the character of prosecutor. And suppose the Government were to take this step, which he maintained would be a most unjustifiable step, and one which would be a gross and unjustifiable departure from the lines they had followed—suppose the Government were to take upon themselves the task of preparing a Schedule of 30 or 40 charges against different persons, how long would hon. Members think that it would take to discuss that Schedule in the House?

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

Half-an-hour.

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

said, that with regard to every charge and every line in the Schedule, the first question asked would be—"Can you find accusations at all in Parnellism and Crime? If you can find accusations, against how many are they directed, and how many will you specify in connection with them?" The Commission would be at once involved in an operation which was absolutely unnecessary for the guidance of the three Judges who would have this matter before them. The Amendment would only have the effect of limiting the inquiry, for it could not extend the area of the inquiry by the Judges, and moreover it would lead the Commission into a controversy which would certainly occupy weeks, and possibly months, of Parliamentary time. It was not difficult, after what had taken place to-night, to see that the purpose of the Amendment was to induce the Commission to take a course which would make the passing of this Bill impossible. They, on the Government Benches, wanted to have the Bill passed and the investigation made, and they would not be parties to the taking of any step which would make the passing of the Bill impossible.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT (Derby)

said, the Solicitor General had said one very important thing which he wished the hon. and learned Gentleman had followed out. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that everybody knew what the charges and allegations were. If everybody knew that, the hon. and learned Gentleman might, in much less time than he had occupied by his speech, have given them a statement as to what he thought the charges and allegations were. He was not saying that the hon. and learned Gentleman might have produced them on behalf of the Government, but he might have said what he understood them to be. He (Sir William Harcourt) confessed that until this discussion began he did think he knew what the charges and allegations were. He thought the charges and allegations were that the hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) and other Members of the Parliamentary Party had been accomplices in crime in Ireland; but there was no man who had taken more pains to explain to the Committee that that was not the charge than the Solicitor General. He (Sir William Harcourt) confessed that he had derived the impression from the language of the Government throughout this debate that they had made up their minds that that charge had broken down or would break down. [Cries of "No, no!"] Yes, because he observed that the moment it was endeavoured to fix the inquiry to that charge which they all believed to be the charge, the ingenuity of the Home Secretary and the Solicitor General was employed in escaping from that charge, taking care to provide themselves with some other. It would be remembered that last night the great object of the Solicitor General was to explain that it was not complicity with crime against the hon. Member for Cork or his Colleagues which was the main charge. The Solicitor General said—"What we want to get at is intimidation."

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

I never said that.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

said, he was speaking in the presence of hon. Members who heard the Solicitor General. Would the hon. and learned Gentleman say he never referred to intimidation? It was urged against the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid) that the words would not include intimidation. What was the conclusion to be drawn from that? That the Government, at all events as far as they were concerned, desired that this inquiry should embrace intimidation. What did that mean? It meant exactly the very thing which his right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) said ought to be excluded. The object of the Solicitor General in rejecting the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries, was that he wished to drag in the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting. The word "intimidation," to which had been given the widest possible definition, included what was called exclusive dealing and the like, and that was what the Government desired above all things to include in the inquiry. There was no man who was more responsible than the Solicitor General for having altered the universal impression of what was the intention of this inquiry, and of what was the meaning of the charges which had been brought. They were told by the Solicitor General that these charges and allegations were to include intimidation. What did he mean by intimidation? He (Sir William Harcourt) thought they ought to know before they went any further with the Bill how much or how little the Solicitor General intended to include in this inquiry under the plea of intimidation. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that the object of the Amendment was to restrain and to limit the inquiry. In a certain sense, of course, it was. It was intended to restrain and limit the inquiry to crime and complicity with crime in the ordinary and popular sense of the word. He did not want to go into any technicalities. They all knew perfectly well what they meant when they were talking of crime. If they did not know it, depend upon it the people outside knew it. They did not mean a charge against an individual or against associations with reference to offences—and he would not ask the question as to how far they were offences or not—of Boycotting and so forth. His right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham had said questions of that kind ought to be excluded from the consideration of the Commission, and yet they had the Solicitor General insisting that that was a vital and principal part of the inquiry. Under such circumstances, he asserted that the hon. and learned Gentleman had no right to say that everybody knew what the charges and allegations were. If the charges and allegations were charges and allegations of intimidation, meaning by that to include all questions of the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting, he (Sir William Harcourt) said that everybody did not know what the allegations and charges were; because, even by those who were supporting the Bill, like his right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham, such a scope of the Bill had been refused. The Government had no right to complain that the Opposition should still be pressing for a further understanding as to the meaning of this Commission, for they themselves, through the mouth of the Home Secretary and the Solicitor General, had been the principal persons to throw doubt and misgiving and suspicion upon the character of the inquiry. If the Solicitor General was right, and if intimidation was to be a main and principal part of this investigation——

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

I have never said so. I have never said a word about this matter this evening, because we have passed from the Amendment to which that question was relevant. I did not at any time last night say that intimidation was to be the main part of the inquiry.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

I did not say the main, but I said a main and principal part of the inquiry.

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

There cannot be two principal parts.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

said, that that was special pleading unworthy of the hon. and learned Gentleman. Would the hon. and learned Gentleman get up and say that intimidation was not to be a main part of the inquiry? Would he get up and say that intimidation, including Boycotting and the Plan of Campaign, was to be no part of the inquiry? That was a definite proposition.

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

I did not say that the Plan of Campaign would form any part of the inquiry. As regards intimidation, what I said was that it ought not be excluded from the Commissioners' purview.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

asked if Boycotting was to be part of the inquiry? If the hon. and learned Gentleman would not answer, then he had no right to say that everybody knew what the charges and allegations were. The hon. and learned Gentleman might have it one way or the other. He might have it as the unavowed counsel for The Times; but he could not have it as the representative of the Government, and say they had nothing to do with this inquiry. If they shirked them, what were they shirking? They were shirking what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said ought not to be included in this inquiry. Why ought it not to be included? Because, if it was excluded from the inquiry, this would fail to be what it was intended be—a political prosecution against a political organization; because it would no longer be an inquiry into the conduct and connection of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) and his Colleagues with the commission of crime, and it would fail to be a convenient engine to be worked in concert with the Crimes Act. The Go- vernment were really conducting this Bill as if it were a Crimes Bill. If the Bill were amended as proposed, the Government realized that it would deprive them of the advantage that they expected and desired—namely, of using it as a means of collecting evidence in Ireland for the purpose of enabling them to work against a political organization. When he heard the words of the Solicitor General last night, he said—"For once an ingenious and a wary counsel has forgotten himself; he has revealed the true intentions of this wide net you are spreading; he has made it evident and conspicuous that this is not what it pretends to be." The Government pretended that they were no party to this matter, and that they could not settle the issues. Why did they not get the assistance of Mr. Walter; why did they not get the assistance of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Wight (Sir Richard Webster) to settle any issues they chose upon this subject? They said they had not the knowledge. They had plenty of knowledge. What they wanted was in these vague and general words to be able, first at one moment and then at another, to enlarge the issues so as entirely to escape from the objects for which they pretended to appoint this Commission, and to convert it into a general political prosecution by which they hoped to overwhelm their political enemies. He hoped the Committee would, by the adoption of this Amendment, refuse to allow that to be done.

MR. MATTHEWS

said, that by the Amendment before the Committee, it was proposed that the charges to be inquired into by the Commissioners should be set out in the Schedule. Upon that Amendment the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) had thought fit to deliver a speech, which, if it had any credit at all, was a second reading speech; yet the right hon. Gentleman allowed the Bill to be read a second time without challenging a Division. Now, all the Bill proposed to do was to refer to inquiry by the Commissioners the charges and allegations made in the course of the proceedings in the case of "O'Donnell v. Walter." Did the right hon. Gentleman know what those charges and allegations were? He told them he did. If he did not know what they were, why did he allow the Bill to go to a second reading without a Division? If he did know what they were, why did he come now and ask the Government to make them clear by defining them? The matter was really so plain it only required stating. What was to be inquired into were the charges and allegations made during the trial of the action of "O'Donnell v. Walter," and either those charges were clear or not. If they were clear, there was no necessity to define and state them in the Schedule. If they were not clear, did they call upon the Government to make them clear? [Cries of "Yes!"] That was precisely what the Government declined to do. Did hon. Members opposite desire that the Government should commit—should he call it the mistake or the folly of adding charges which were not theirs, which they did not endorse, and which they did not accept? The Bill was to inquire into the charges which were there, for they were there or they were not there. If they were there, they needed no definition from the Government; if they were not there, what were hon. Gentlemen afraid of? The Commissioners would not inquire into a charge which was not made in those proceedings; they would not inquire into a charge which was so undefined or vague that no one could gather what it was. It might be said there appeared to be some suspicion of a charge, some vague innuendo which they did not understand in the paragraphs of the newspaper or in the proceedings of the action. That was precisely why neither the Government nor, he should think, anyone else in the House would undertake to define, or amplify, or add to the charges and allegations. The Government were not in the position of accusers, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby had most unjustly suggested they were. They did not propose to add one tittle to the allegations made in the course of the proceedings. If the articles in The Times, and the proceedings in the trial were so vague that no charge could be extracted from them, the Government desired to leave them in that imperfect condition. He maintained that the only purpose of inserting a Schedule must be either to limit the inquiry into that which was charged—and that the right hon. Gentleman would not avow openly to be his object—or the purpose was to endeavour to fix upon somebody, probably the Government, the odious office of adding to vague statements, and amplifying them by making them clear and distinct. That was precisely what the Government had never undertaken to do, and what they would not do. Such as the charges were, such as the accusations were in the articles in The Times, they referred them to the Commission. That was perfectly intelligible and clear. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby fastened upon an expression used by the Solicitor General last night, and he said—"You have alleged that Boycotting is to be a main, or principal, or some part of this inquiry." It was to be a part of the inquiry if it was alleged as a charge in the articles, and why not? The right hon. Gentleman had, perhaps, detected some passage which had escaped his (Mr. Matthews') notice; but, as he read these articles, Boycotting was made a matter of charge only in so far as it was part of a course of outrage culminating in criminal violence; and if any evidence of that sort could be laid before the Commission, did the right hon. Gentleman propose to exclude from the Commission the course of proof which should be given, which should be traced through a clear course of intimidation, Boycotting, and ultimately of more serious outrage? Did he propose to cut out all the middle links of the chain? He (Mr. Matthews) proposed to put nothing in; if it was in the proceedings of "O'Donnell v. Walter," the Commission would inquire into it; if it was not alleged there, they would not inquire into it. He had failed to detect any distinct reference to Boycotting at all in the articles. It might be that there was a passage here and there in which intimidation was alluded to as one of the means of terrorism and outrage which certain persons were alleged to have used, or encouraged, or connived at, or availed themselves of. That was what would form a proper part of the inquiry before the Commission. As to the Plan of Campaign, he had said already in the course of the debates—indeed, the debates seemed to consist of reiteration—he had said he could not find the Plan of Campaign hinted at or alluded to in the course of the articles. It followed, therefore, that the Plan of Campaign would not be a subject of inquiry by the Commissioners. The bulk of the charges contained in the articles were intelligible enough. There might be passages, such as that which the hon. Gentleman the Member for Belfast (Mr. Sexton) alluded to this evening, from which it was difficult to adduce precisely what the writer of the article meant; whether he meant to impute that the visit of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) to Paris was accidental or wilful, or whether, being wilful, it was for a mischievous purpose or not. Until the Commissioners thought that there was something suspicious about the meeting in Paris, the hon. Member need not trouble himself about the charge or allegation. Of course, if any evidence were produced giving a complexion of any seriousness or gravity to the meeting in Paris, the hon. Member would have an intimation of it, and would be called before the Commissioners. The hon. Member had himself said the only passages in which his name was alluded to contained no charges or allegations against him. Very well, there would be nothing to be inquired into by the Commissioners so far as he was concerned. But whatever was there the Government desired to refer to the Commissioners; they referred nothing more, and they declined to put their hands to the very invidious and hateful office of amplifying and making clear that which was obscure, to add to that which was imperfect, to amplify that which was incomplete. If the allegations in the proceedings were obscure, incomplete, inconclusive, let them remain with all their sins on their heads; the Government left them there to fall by their own imperfections. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby had referred to the request to refer these matters to a Select Committee; but the constitution of the tribunal could not alter the substance of the charges. The charges were there always, the indictment was always there; there were many bad counts in it, no doubt. So be it; they had got a tribunal which would be better able to strike out of the indictment its bad and invalid counts; by altering the tribunal they did not alter the charges which the Irish Members themselves desired to submit to some tribunal only a few months ago. He thought that of all other tribunals the one the Government now proposed was the most competent to winnow out the material substance of the charges and allegations which were made.

THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON (Lancashire, Rossendale)

said, he only desired to say one word upon this point. He did not intend to continue the argument which had been going on now for two or three hours, but wanted to put before the Committee that which seemed, in his opinion, to make it impossible to place the charges in the Schedule. The debate up to now had been conducted as if the Irish Members and certain other persons who had been connected with them were the only defendants in this case, and as if the Commission was going to be a Court which was to try them on certain charges; but the Irish Members and those who had been connected with them were by no means the only defendants. The Times newspaper was as much a defendant as any Member of the Irish Party. Members of the Committee would recollect for one moment how these proceedings began. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) asked for a Committee of the House to inquire into certain charges which, in his opinion, affected his character and his honour. The Government refused, for reasons which it was unnecessary to discuss now, to grant a Committee this year as they refused to grant it last year; but, in place of a Committee, they now offered the hon. Member a Commission which was to investigate those matters which he desired should be investigated by a Committee. No doubt the hon. Member for Cork might have desired the Reference to the Committee should be a more limited one than the Reference which was proposed to be made to the Commission; but, undoubtedly, the Reference which the Government proposed to make to the Commission would, at least, be as extensive as the one which the hon. Member for Cork desired to make to the Committee. If the hon. Member or any of his Friends were aggrieved at anything which appeared in The Times articles, and in the statement of the Attorney General, in the case of O'Donnell v. Walter," he conceived it would be competent for those hon. Members to bring such statements before the cognizance of the Commission, and to call upon The Times to substantiate the allegations, or to call upon the Commission to declare that those allegations had not been substantiated. In the course of the discussion speeches had been made which seemed to prove absolutely the impossibility of specifying certain charges in the Schedule proposed. The hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Sexton) and the hon. and learned Member for Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy) had said their names were included in The Times articles in such a way as to insinuate, if not to make, charges against them. He maintained it was competent for them, under the Reference as it stood, to go before the Commission and to point out the charges, and to point out the manner in which they considered their characters affected by anything which appeared in the articles, and call upon The Times either to substantiate their statements, or to call upon the Commission to declare that the statements were unfounded. Of course it was competent for The Times, as the hon. and learned Member for Longford said, to contend that in the case, for instance, of the hon. and learned Member for Longford himself, a criminal charge was never made against him at all; but if the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) could show that his character was affected by anything which appeared in the articles, under the Reference as it stood it would be competent for him to have his character cleared before the Commission. How on earth could anything of that sort be done if the Government were called upon to put certain charges in the Schedule? That would be a limitation of the rights of hon. Members to appear before the Commission, and it seemed to him it was absolutely incompatible with the grounds upon which the Commission was ever granted. It, therefore, appeared to him that they were indulging in a most lamentable waste of time which was utterly inconsistent with the purpose for which the Commission was to be instituted.

MR. J. B. BALFOUR&c.) (Clackmannan,

said, it appeared to him that what had been said by the Home Secretary and the Solicitor General very recently made it quite essential that in some form or another there should be a definition of the subjects of inquiry. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had told them that the Government did not at any stage of these proceedings propose to take or accept any responsibility for formulating the charges or conducting the proceedings. If it had been a case in which the Government was going to conduct the proceedings or formulate the charges before the Commission, then, of course, the Government would have held itself bound by statements made by its Members in this House; and those who felt there was very great danger of this inquiry wandering over subjects which could never be contemplated, or ought not to be contemplated, would have had the security that the Government would have limited the charges to those things which had appeared. But they were told that the Government were simply to start this Commission, to set it at large, and that they were to have no responsibility for it. It seemed to him to be in the highest degree essential that the limits and scope of the inquiry should be defined in the Bill, because they would not get any help from the Government in the matter. It had been said by the right hon. Gentleman that he would not say what were charges and what were not charges in The Times' pamphlets. But surely the Government promoting this Bill knew what they meant by the charges and allegations? The demand the Opposition were now making was simply that the Government should define what they referred to by the words "charges and allegations." If the word "charges" had been used alone there might have been considerable ground for saying the inquiry was limited by the expression of criminal charges; but the Government resisted an Amendment to strike out the word "allegations," and, therefore, it seemed they intended the inquiry to wander over allegations which were not in the nature of charges. They had had other admissions from the Government, and they were most important admissions. They were, for instance, told that there were some matters, such as intimidation and Boycotting, which were not intended to be the subject of this inquiry. If this were a universal inquiry, one could understand the position of the Government; but if it was not to be a universal inquiry, if there were some things set out in the pro- ceedings in the nature of allegations which were not to be inquired into, then surely it became absolutely necessary that before they started a Commission like this they should define and separate things which were to be the subjects of inquiry from those which were not. And so he submitted that, whether it be by Schedule or definition in another way, the Government ought to say what it meant by charges and allegations which it appointed the Commission to inquire into. By this Amendment it was simply asked that it should be stated what the charges were, and he submitted to the Committee that that was a very reasonable demand and one which ought to be conceded.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 200; Noes 245: Majority 45.—(Div. List, No. 251.)

MR. MOLLOY (King's Co., Birr)

said, that in respect to all the Amendments moved up to the present moment, the staple argument of the Government and their supporters had been that the Amendments were calculated to restrict the powers of the Judges, to restrict the area of their research into the mass of charges and allegations which had been made. Against the Amendment he now proposed that charge could not be brought; on the contrary, the Amendment would extend the powers of the Commission. It would give to the Commissioners even a much larger power than they would have under the Bill as it now stood. It would enable them to sift more thoroughly and accurately and in the sense the Government had desired, the charges and allegations which had been made. Yesterday he took the opportunity of asking the Government what interpretation was to be placed on the words of the Bill, "The Commissioners shall inquire into and report upon," and the Home Secretary said that the Judges sitting upon this Commission would have full power to use their discretion in declining to go into any matter which they thought was not worthy of investigation. The answer of the right hon. Gentleman not being as clear as he thought it ought to be, he again pressed the Home Secretary upon the point, and again the right hon. Gentleman asserted that the discretion of the Judges would practically be absolute. He (Mr. Molloy) had some doubt on the point at the moment, but he did not like to enter upon an argument as to the legal interpretation of words with so emiment an authority as the Home Secretary. Since then, however, he had taken counsel with those who were better able to decide what would be the interpretation of the words, and while some of them agreed with the Home Secretary's view the greater number of them had told him that the interpretation of the words of the Bill to which he called attention would not be such as the right hon. Gentleman stated. Whether that were so or not mattered little, because the Government, speaking through the Home Secretary, stated it was the intention of the Government and the interpretation of the Bill itself that if matters were submitted to the Judges which their Lordships thought were not worthy of notice and which really did not affect the main Question under consideration, they might be able to throw them out. The right hon. Gentleman also stated that the Government had no desire that the main and real issues which were to be tried by the Commissioners should be obscured by anything in the nature of frivolous statements or allegations. One right hon. Gentleman and others on the Opposition side of the House, who were entirely in accord with the Government with regard to this Bill, had in the course of their observations stated that that was their view. A doubt had arisen, not in the minds of the Government, because the Government had declared their interpretation in the clearest and most distinct language, but in the minds of some who were also entitled to an opinion upon the subject, and the Amendment he had put down asked no more from the Government than that they should put in the Bill words—whether they were the words he suggested or other words to the same effect he did not care—to make clear that which was the real and proper interpretation of the Bill. If the interpretation put upon the words by the Judges was the same as that put upon them by the Home Secretary, it did not matter, but if the words he proposed were added nothing in the Bill would be altered, nothing in the intentions of the Government would be altered, the Judges would not be crippled in any- thing they did, they would be restricted in no sense whatever. The Amendment would do no more than enable the Judges if some counsel appeared before them on behalf of some accuser and called on them under the mandatory words of the clause to enter into that which was frivolous and which might be oven exceedingly stupid, to say—"We don't think there is anything in the matter you have brought before us and in the exercise of our discretion we will not at present enter into it." He was bound to accept the bona fides of the statement the Government had made on this question, he was bound to accept the statement that the Government did not mean that the Judges should be compelled to enter into irrelevant matter. But the Government, if they wished to prove their bona fides in the matter, could not, he assumed, refuse to accept his Amendment. He begged to move the Amendment which stood in his name.

Amendment proposed, in page 1, line 18, after the word "allegations," to insert the words "or such of them as the Commissioners may think fit."—(Mr. Molloy.)

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

MR. MATTHEWS

said, he sympathized with the motives the hon. and learned Gentleman had in moving this Amendment; but the words of the Amendment were larger than they need be to effect the object the hon. and learned Member had in view. If the Amendment was adopted the Commissioners would not be bound to inquire into anything unless they liked. [Cries of "Oh!"] Yes; that was so. The words of the Amendment were "or such of them as the Commissioners may think fit." They might not think it fit to inquire into any subject, however grave and important. In point of fact, it would be left entirely at large for the Commissioners to select their own subjects for inquiry as they thought fit. He did not think that would meet the wishes of any party; what was more, he did not think that would be fair to the Commissioners themselves. What was the use of giving the Commissioners power without telling them what they were to do? The hon. and learned Member (Mr. Molloy) con- tended last night that the words of the clause as they now stood would compel the Commissioners to inquire into everything, however minute and frivolous, which might he alleged. He did not know whether the hon. and learned Gentleman bore in mind that there was no process known to the law by which they could control the action of Commissioners. Discretion must be left to the Commissioners; it could not be demanded that they must inquire into this, that, or the other. A good deal must be left to the judgment of the Commissioners appointed in matters of this kind. Of course, he assumed they would conduct the inquiry conscientiously. Being men of sense and honour it must be taken for granted they would not allow themselves to be dragged into an inquiry—into what the hon. Member called frivolous and irrelevant allegations. The clause did not say the Commissioners were to inquire" into each and every allegation," which were the words used by the hon. and learned Member last night. The words of the clause were general words, and they were wide enough to embrace whatever was charged. But it appeared to him it was perfectly clear that the Commissioners were masters of the situation. The thing was committed to their good faith and honour and discretion and judgment. The instant the Committee put in the words suggested by the hon. and learned Member, they left the Commissioners nothing to inquire into; they imposed no duty upon the Commissioners; they would give the Commissioners no criterion of what they should think fit to inquire into. He never knew of it ever being suggested before that Commissioners had no discretion. The Commissioners in this case would realize that they had been referred to charges and allegations which had a real meaning and significance, and they would decline to waste their time in going into matters of no significance or value. Such was the course which a Judge took in a civil action. When a Judge was convinced that matter was irrelevant, he stopped it and would not allow it to go on. A fortiori the Commissioners would have the power to do the same.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

said, that every word of the speech of the Home Secretary was an argument for the Amendment. The right hon. Gen- tleman said the Commissioners should be told what they were to inquire into. That was what the Opposition had been contending for all along, but what they could not get. The present demand, however, was a much smaller one, for it was that the Commissioners should not be put under an obligation to inquire into things which they did not think were necessary to the inquiry. Why did the Government object to that? Because of the pressure put upon them to go into all sorts of things. It was because Mr. Walter wanted to go into everything concerning the Irish National movement. That was the meaning of it. The Government could not decently argue against the Amendment. The Home Secretary said the Commissioners must have discretion. This Amendment was to give them discretion, and the Home Secretary refused it. Why? Because the hon. and learned Member for the Isle of Wight (Sir Richard Webster) had told them the Commissioners ought to have discretion; that they were to inquire into everything Mr. Walter wished them to inquire into. How did the Home Secretary meet the Amendment? The right hon. Gentleman said—"Oh, a Judge in a civil action has the discretion to stop matter irrelevant to the issue. That was quite true; but the Government took very great care there should not be any issue in this case. They saw exactly what the meaning was. Of course, the Home Secretary could not state the real reason of the extraordinary proceeding of pitch forking into the inquiry allegations which they were so careful not to define. Why was it? Because they want to allow The Times to fling its dirt without any restraint. That was the real meaning of it. The Government could not stop this debate; they could not close the mouths of the Opposition. It was clear that Ministers were merely making this Bill a conduit pipe for the foul water which The Times wished to throw on the Irish Nation and its leaders. That was the policy the Government were pursuing, hoping and desiring that they might destroy the National cause or discredit it by this miscellaneous flinging of dirt. And that was why they would not trust the Commissioners. They said—"Oh; let us leave it to the Commissioners to say what is to be inquired into." Let them take as an illustration the Plan of Campaign. The Solicitor General said, "Oh, no; they will not inquire into the Plan of Campaign." But there was a much more powerful man behind the Solicitor General and the Home Secretary, and that was the proprietor of The Times; he said—"Oh, yes. It is all very well. You are the nominal promoters of this Commission, but it is my Commission, and the Commission must be made to suit my purpose, and it will not suit my purpose at all to have a judicial man saying this is not a thing which ought to be inquired into. I claim the right to go into whatever I like, and I will fling dirt exactly in the way I like, and you shall have no means or authority to say me nay." The Government might wrap it up and disavow it as they liked, but to any man of common sense the position was perfectly transparent. If the Government meant the Judges to have the discretion to say what should be inquired into and what should not, why did they refuse this Amendment? The Home Secretary said that if the Committee passed this Amendment, the Commissioners would not be obliged to inquire into anything. That was the Government's confidence in the Judges. That was the way they believed in the Judges. They said—"Oh, if you let them off they will inquire into nothing." Was there ever an argument so preposterous and ridiculous placed before reasonable men as that stated by the Home Secretary? Let the Government say at once they did not trust the discretion of the Judges. The Home Secretary also said—"There is no penal process you can take." Was that the way they wanted to treat these Commissioners? If the Government meant the Commissioners to be judges of what was to be done in this matter, they ought to indicate in the Bill that that was their view; they ought to say—"We fling at you the miscellaneous slanders in the Attorney General's speech to inquire into, but we do not force you to disentangle and to deal with every particle of this slimy web of calumny which has been woven by The Times and its counsel. We treat you as reasonable men. You shall pick out what you think is worth investigation. We do not expect you to wallow for ever in this slime or to continue in it any longer than you need. We leave you the discretion to pick out of this gigantic libel what you think worth inquiring into. We do not regard ourselves as the agents of Mr. Walter for the purpose of working out his wish in this matter." If that was not the intention of the Government, why did they refuse to give the Judges discretion as to what should be the matters they should inquire into? Nothing would more test the real meaning of the Bill, and the real objects of the Government in this Bill, than the course which they took upon such an Amendment as this. They could not pretend that this was an Amendment to limit the inquiry. As a matter of fact, the Amendment was intended to give to the Commissioners whom the Government professed to trust a discretion which the Government refused them, but for which refusal, he ventured to say, they could give no valid reason.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR SCOTLAND (Mr. J. P. B. ROBERTSON) (Bute)

thought he could discover in the strange rhetoric of the right lion. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) some echo of a former speech in which the right hon. Gentleman spoke of persons as being stewing or wallowing—he (Mr. J. P. B. Robertson) forgot which it was—in Parnellite juice. He could not help thinking that to-night there had been a strange exhibition of the extreme danger of indulging a propensity which seemed so congenial to the right hon. Gentleman whether it referred to politics or flowers of rhetoric. The right hon. Gentleman had said that this Bill was an attempt to throw miscellaneous slanders at the Government's political opponents. That, of course, he denied; but he knew that every Amendment proposed to the Bill had been used by the Party opposite as an opportunity for throwing slanders at their political opponents. Certainly, no more unfounded slander could be uttered than that which the right hon. Gentleman had thrown across the floor—namely, that the Government were at present in collusion with the proprietors of The Times. That was a statement which the right hon. Gentleman could not be prevented from making, but it was a statement which must be met with a most unqualified and unceremonius contradiction.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

I will withdraw the statement when the First Lord of the Treasury denies the statement which I have challenged him to deny more than once, that in settling this Bill Mr. Walter, of The Times, was consulted.

MR. W. H. SMITH

The charge was so contemptible that I did not think it worth while to deny it in this House. But I deny it absolutely, as being utterly and entirely without foundation; and I am amazed that a Gentleman could be found to advance it.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

If I am to understand the First Lord of the Treasury to say that he has not seen Mr. Walter, I beg leave to withdraw what I have said.

MR. W. H. SMITH

I have not said that I have not seen Mr. Walter. I deny absolutely that there has been—[Loud derisive cheers.]

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! I must appeal to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen to remember some of the traditions of the House. These demonstrations are most unseemly.

MR. W. H. SMITH

I say I deny absolutely that I have had any negotiation, any arrangement whatever, with Mr. Walter with reference to this Bill. Mr. Walter has called upon me, as it has been his practice to do, as an old friend; but we have made no arrangement whatever of any kind. He never saw the Reference; he never saw the Bill. I never had any sort of plan or scheme or contrivance with Mr. Walter in regard to this Bill.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Are we to understand in plain terms that the right hon. Gentleman has had no communication with Mr. Walter on the subject of this Bill and on the subject to which it refers?

MR. W. H. SMITH

I think I have spoken as plainly as I could. I distinctly stated that the Reference of the Bill was settled without any communication whatever with Mr. Walter, that the Bill was settled without any communication whatever with Mr. Walter, and that he has had no influence with me or on my mind. I have had no communication with him.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

I wish the right hon. Gentleman had been able to say that he had held no communication with Mr. Walter on the subject of this Bill, because, if so, I should have been in the position of being able to withdraw what I have said, and to apologize to the right hon. Gentleman.

MR. GOSCHEN

Does the right hon. Gentleman not withdraw the statement after what has been said by my right hon. Friend? [Cries of "No!"] Does he not withdraw the statement that this Bill has been drawn up in connivance with Mr. Walter?

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

I did not use the word "connivance;" I used the word "communication."

MR. GOSCHEN

The whole purport of the right hon. Gentleman's speech was to show that the Bill had been arranged with the proprietor of The Times, and that it was in consequence of communications with him—[Cries of "Collusion!"] Yes; collusion was the word he used. I should have thought that the right hon. Gentleman, occupying the position which he does, after the denial of my right hon. Friend, instead of trying to ride off on the point of "communication," would have thought it his duty to apologize.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

I say, with all sincerity, that no man in this House has greater personal respect than I have for the First Lord of the Treasury, and I hope I have never done or said anything inconsistent with that feeling. But I have stated exactly what I desire to condemn. I think it extremely improper that in a matter of this kind the Government should have communicated with one party and not with the other. The fact stands, and the Government now admit it. I will not say how far they have arranged or what was the character of these communications. That, of course, I do not know, and I am perfectly willing to accept the statement of the right hon. Gentleman. But the point of my condemnation was, and, I am sorry to say, is, that in a matter of this extreme delicacy and importance the Government have communicated with the proprietor of The Times, and they have not communicated with the hon. Member for Cork.

MR. W. H. SMITH

I think I have been explicit. [Loud cries of "No, no!"]

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order!

MR. W. H. SMITH

I have stated that the Reference was settled without any communication whatever with The Times. I have stated that the Bill was drafted without any communication whatever with The Times, and when I admitted that Mr. Walter called on me I admitted a fact which I could not deny and which I did not wish to deny. But I say that he made no communication to me which has had or could have the least weight or influence upon me. He mentioned the fact of the Bill to me; but he neither sought to influence me, nor should I have permitted him to influence me. If I had kept back the fact that he had called at my house once since the Bill has been in print, I should have been unworthy the belief which I trust the House will always have in any statement I make. I assure the House that neither by word nor by writing has The Times, through its proprietor or editor, exercised the least influence or pressure whatever on the Government with regard to this Bill.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

I must say I think the right hon. Gentleman, when he was speaking on this matter, might have given the House the assurance that he was not influenced either by the proprietor or the counsel to The Times.

MR. W. H. SMITH

I think I have said so. [Cries of "No, no!"]

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order!

MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON

said, that what he was particularly anxious to point out was that the present proposal of right hon. Gentlemen opposite was not in sequence with their action last year. The proposition incessantly advanced by right hon. Gentlemen opposite was that the very best method of elucidating the truth was to refer this question to a Committee of the House. What would have happened suppose such a reference had taken place? Let him read what was said by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Mr. John Morley) in the debate on the 6th of May, 1887; and the right hon. Gentleman spoke, as he stated, merely because the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian had spoken already, and, therefore, was disqualified from speaking. What the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. John Morley) said was— What is submitted to the House is a proposal by which the whole body of the charges made by The Times newspaper against the Irish Members shall be submitted to the judgment of a Committee of this House."—(3 Hansard, [314] 1223–4.) It was not that the Committee was to have the right of selection of the charges: it was the whole body of charges which was to be submitted to the Committee. The Committee, of course, would have had to determine what was the substance and gravamen of the charges. That was matter for the Judges. They were to make up their minds as to what in truth and fairness were charges and allegations, but once having made up their minds upon that point they were to prosecute inquiries into those charges and allegations. What was the proposal of right hon. Gentlemen opposite? Why, it was positively this—that the Judges were to make a selection of the charges and allegations. Could anything be more invidious than to throw on the Judges such a duty as that of the selection of the charges and allegations? What he maintained was that the Judges would eliminate and throw aside those statements or propositions in the articles which did not constitute charges or allegations, but which were merely incidental or trivial or irrelevant assertions. But what they would prosecute their inquiries into were, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Mr. John Morley) said, "The whole body of charges made by The Times newspaper." [Mr. MUNDELLA (Sheffield, Brightside): Oh, oh!] Did not the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield suppose that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne did not mean that the whole sum and substance of what was alleged by The Times should be investigated?

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Certainly not.

MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON

said, that the right hon. Gentleman was entitled to have his own opinion. [Cries of "Read, read!"]

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

I beg pardon——

MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON

(who refused to give way) said, that the right hon. Gentleman's (Mr. John Morley's) words were— What is submitted to the House is a proposal by which the whole body of charges made by The Times newspaper against the Irish Members shall be submitted to a judgment of a Committee of this House.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Read on.

MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON

said, he should exercise his own discretion as to what he read. The only way to give fair play in this investigation was to allow the Judges to exercise judicial discretion as to what the sum and substance placed before them was. It was not, as the hon. and learned Member below the Gangway proposed, that they should make a selection.

MR. MOLLOY

I never said anything of the sort.

MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON

, thought there was every necessity that the Judges should have merely the duty of ascertaining what the charges and allegations were, instead of being permitted in the most invidious way to say, "We shall investigate one thing and not another."

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

said, he certainly thought there never was a case in which he would have been more justified in interposing in the course of a speech if the hon. and learned Gentleman had extended to him the usual courtesy. The hon. and learned Gentleman quoted a speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle (Mr. John Morley) to show that the right hon. Gentleman was speaking his (Mr. Gladstone's) sentiments. The hon. and learned Gentleman, having fastened upon him those sentiments, denied to him the opportunity of giving any authoritative exposition of his meaning. That was the hon. and learned Gentleman's legal manner.

MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON

said, that he read the words of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle, and he added, on the authority of that right hon. Gentleman, that those sentiments were adopted by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Gladstone). He did not give way, because he desired to complete his proposition without interruption, and he was pretty sure the right hon. Gentleman would find an early opportunity of reply.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

said, that what he took exception to was the hon. and learned Gentleman's attempt to fix the words upon him (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) as if they were his own. The hon. and learned Gentleman said—"Oh, yes, the right hon. Gentleman may have his opinion about them." Why, certainly he had. He was entitled to have his opinion of his own language. Unquestionably they never meant to ex- clude any charge against the Irish Members. But by charge they meant a distinct charge. [Cries of "Specific!"] He had not the report of his right hon. Friend's speech by him; perhaps it would be advantageous if the right hon. Gentleman would allow him to look at the report. [Mr. MATTHEWS handed across the Table the volume of Hansard containing the report of Mr. John Morley's speech.] The hon. and learned Gentleman had objected to the figures of rhetoric of the right hon. Member for Derby. Modes of quotation might likewise be open to very great objection. Now, they heard the quotation of the hon. and learned Gentleman. Was it a fair quotation?

MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON

I read it not once but twice, and I read the sentence textually.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

said, that the hon. and learned Gentleman did not read what he was going to read. The hon. and learned Gentleman read a certain sentence, and then left it to be inferred that everything that could be alleged was included under the name "charges." He would read what the hon. and learned Gentleman deliberately omitted to read— My hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) expressed his willingness, and that of his Friends, to extend the Reference mentioned in the Amendment of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian, so as to include not only the charge made against the hon. Member, but also the subject of the letter imputed to the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), and any other specific and definite charges which can be extracted from the articles called Parnellism and Crime. It would be necessary for them on the present occasion and on future occasions to watch the hon. and learned Gentleman in the matter of quotations. Now, the hon. and learned Gentleman said that the object of this Amendment was to place upon the Judges the duty of making a selection of the charges. It was nothing of the sort. It was intended to secure to them a discretion to repel irrelevant, insignificant, and improper matter. Would the Government give them some other words that would do that? Were the Commissioners to have that power or not? Were the Judges to have the power of refusing what was irrelevant, what was trivial, what was malicious, and what was caluminous from the sources from which these charges proceeded? If the Government gave them that power under the Bill, where was it? The Commissioners were to inquire into the charges and allegations; that was to say, the whole charges and allegations contained in a speech lasting 12 or 15 hours, and contained in a pamphlet of he knew not how many scores of pages. Were the Judges to be compelled, at the option of one of the parties appearing before them, to go through the whole of the matter; or were they to have the discretion of repelling and refusing that which was malicious, that which was irrelevant, that which was trivial? He thought the Committee were entitled to an answer to that question. Where the Commissioners to have that power or not?

MR. GOSCHEN

We do not want to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman in the middle of his speech.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

begged the right hon. Gentleman's pardon, but he was bound to say that the right hon. Gentleman was certainly good at interruption. When the right hon. Gentleman frequently asked "aye" or "nay" in the middle of a speech, he was not entitled to take the exception he had now taken. Was he to understand that they would be told by-and-bye whether the Judges were to have this power or not? If so, he would wait until they had it explained. If the Judges were to have the power, then why not express it in the Bill? It was not expressed in the Bill, but it was substantially excluded from the terms of the Bill. In the Bill the whole of the charges, the whole of the allegations in this voluminous document, were included, as far as the literal and grammatical sense of the words was concerned. They wished to know, and he thought they had every right to know under these circumstances, whether there was to be this power of rejecting matter such as he had described, and if there was to be this power, why was it not to be stated; why was it not to be specified in the Bill? He would not answer the Solicitor General for Scotland any further. The hon. and learned Gentleman complained of a want of a sequence in the proceedings of the Opposition. By the suppression of essential matter it would not be difficult to show a want of sequence in the proceedings of anybody. That disposed of the argument of the want of sequence.

MR. FINLAY&c.) (Inverness,

said, he thought that what the right hon. Gentleman had stated by way of an attack upon the Solicitor General for Scotland was really based upon a misconception of the point raised by the hon. and learned Gentleman. The point was that it had been proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle (Mr. John Morley), just on the eve of the Division last year, that the whole body of the charges should go to a Select Committee. It was not proposed that the Select Committee should have power to pick and choose, but it was proposed that every specific charge which was in these articles, or could be extracted from them, should be dealt with by the Select Committee. In the name of common sense, how did that in any way modify or qualify the argument the Solicitor General for Scotland based the sentence he read? He apprehended that the context for this purpose, which had been read as if it reflected some discredit upon the Solicitor General for Scotland, was absolutely and utterly irrelevant. The question was whether the whole body of the charges was to go to the Select Committee, and for that purpose what did it matter to read another sentence saying that the charges were to be specific. It might have been relevant to the Amendment they had discussed some time ago; but for the present purpose he apprehended it had no bearing upon what the Solicitor General for Scotland had said. Now, he desired to say one or two words upon the general question. It was asked, with very considerable force and vehemence, by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) whether the Judges were to have the power to exclude inquiry into matters which were trivial and irrelevant. He apprehended it was clear beyond all possibility of doubt that the Commissioners had that power. What was referred to them was every charge and allegation made against Members of Parliament and other persons in the course of these proceedings. That meant, beyond all doubt, every charge and allegation which was in substance in the proceedings. If a charge or allegation was frivolous, or irrelevant, or trivial, it came to nothing. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella), interposing during the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, cried "calumnious." Of course, if the charges were true, they were not calumnious, and what the Commissioners were to do was to inquire into the truth of them. He apprehended that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Mundella) had been playing with a word, the full import of which he did not quite appreciate. If the allegations were frivolous or trivial, they really came to nothing. The Commissioners who were entrusted with this inquiry were to deal with the whole matter—that was to say, with every charge and allegation contained in these proceedings which had any substance in it. This Amendment was wholly unnecessary, and therefore he hoped the Government would not be willing to accept it.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

said, the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Finlay) had played his accustomed part, which was to step in on occasions of difficulty to the assistance of the Government. The hon. and learned Gentleman often endeavoured to find a means of getting out of a difficulty when the Government could not find it themselves. He was surprised, however, that the hon. and learned Gentleman had done this on the present occasion. The hon. and learned Gentleman told them that the words, "definite and specific" were irrelevant to the statement of the Solicitor General for Scotland. As a matter of fact, they formed the substance of the whole thing. The Opposition were willing to refer everything that was definite to the Select Committee—they were willing to refer to the Judges everything which was definite and specific, but it was the Government and the patrons of the Government who were shirking the real issue and insisting on referring to the Judges what was neither definite nor specific. The Government were now insisting upon forcing upon the Judges the consideration of matters whether they desired it or not.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, the right hon. Gentleman was certainly discussing this question in a very judicial spirit. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to object to a lawyer of eminence, such as the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay), intervening in the debate and explaining to him that which apparently he was ignorant of, or not informed upon by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt)—namely, that the powers which he asked the Government to put in the Bill were inherent in the Commission.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

What is your objection?

MR. GOSCHEN

said, the objection was that when they specified something that was inherent in a body there was supposed to be some object beyond that. It could not be otherwise. If an Amendment of this kind were adopted, the Judges, knowing perfectly well that they had the inherent power of refusing to inquire into irrelevant or trivial topics, would look for some special direction from the House. He could quite understand that there were hon. Members who wished that there should be some special directions given to the Commission that certain matters should not be inquired into. But why did the right hon. Gentleman press for the insertion of words of this kind in the Bill if the powers were inherent in the Commission? One would have thought that some of those who had advised the right hon. Gentleman would have found a precedent in other Commissions for directing Commissioners to inquire into such portions of the question as they thought fit. But the right hon. Gentleman thought that the Judges would inquire into irrelevant and trivial matter.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Not only irrelevant and trivial. Those are part of the epithets I used. Let the right hon. Gentleman quote me accurately.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, he was quoting the right hon. Gentleman far more accurately than the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby quoted the First Lord of the Treasury in a previous portion of the debate; but after what had been said in that respect he thought the least said the bettor. He had quoted the right hon. Gentleman accurately. The right hon. Gentleman did not dispute what he had said. [Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE: Quote the rest.] The right hon. Gentleman wished him to quote the whole. It was rather difficult to quote the whole of the right hon. Gentleman's speech.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Quote the epithets.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, he would quote another epithet, and that was the epithet of calumnious——

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

No; malicious.

MR. GOSCHEN

asked if the right hon. Gentleman meant to say that before they heard the evidence, and before they inquired, the Commissioners were to decide which of the charges were malicious or not? Without any inquiry at all, without having called witnesses, or without having heard counsel, the Commissioners were to refuse certain charges because they thought they were malicious. Such were the grounds on which the right hon. Gentleman suggested that the words of the Amendment should be inserted. He thought the very fact that the right hon. Gentleman had used all these epithets went to prove that the Amendment was not only quite unnecessary, but would be mischievous.

MR. MOLLOY

said, that the incidents which had just occurred had somewhat obscured the real objects of the Amendment, and even the very words of the Amendment. The Solicitor General for Scotland, in a somewhat excited manner, said he (Mr. Molloy) had asked for the passing of this Amendment in order that the Judges might select only such charges as they thought proper, and leave out others. A more monstrous interpretation of plain English it was impossible to conceive.

MR. J. P. B. ROBERTSON

Perhaps I may be allowed to say I made no reference whatever to anything the hon. and learned Member said. I referred to his Amendment.

MR. MOLLOY

said, that the hon. and learned Gentleman spoke of a Member below the Gangway who had spoken, and as he (Mr. Molloy) was the only Member below the Gangway who had spoken he took it the hon. and learned Gentleman referred to him. Whatever the Committee might think, he wished now to bring the Committee back to the Amendment. It was distinctly stated yesterday by the Government that it was not their intention that irrelevant matter should be gone into. The Home Secretary, not being certain of his facts, said that, according to his opinion, there was a discretion on the part of the Commission to refuse to go into irrelevant matters. The Amendment he (Mr. Molloy) now proposed was for the purpose of making that clear. In moving the Amendment he said he had taken legal opinion on the subject, and that there was a considerable number of those he consulted who said that the discretion was not within the four corners of the Bill. He said distinctly that the only object of the Amendment was that irrelevant matters should not be forced on the Judges against their own discretion. He made no allusion to the Commissioners picking out or selecting any specific charge. On the contrary, in his opinion every allegation made ought to be gone into fully, and the deeper it was gone into the more he would be pleased with the Commission. He also said in the course of his remarks that if the words he suggested were too large, if they were not satisfactory to the Government, any words they might suggest which would carry out their explanation and opinion of yesterday were words he would accept. When the Home Secretary rose yesterday, having been in consultation with the First Lord of the Treasury, it was evident that there was an inclination on the part of the Government to accept the Amendment. Since the Amendment had been placed on the Paper it had been criticized as one giving power to the Judges to select the charges. He would only further say that the Government declared that they wished the Commission to have power to discard irrelevant matter. If the words he had proposed did not carry out their object, he was prepared to accept any words which might be put in which would carry out what they had said not only once, but twice and thrice.

MR. ASHER (Elgin and Nairn)

said, he rose for the purpose of addressing to the Committee a very few words. He did so chiefly in consequence of what fell from his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay). He understood his hon. and learned Friend to say that it appeared to him to be quite beyond question that the introduction of the words now proposed could nut affect to any extent whatever, the powers of the Commissioners. As he (Mr. Asher) was accumtomed to deal with the interpretation of Acts of Parliament, and as he entertained very serious doubt whether the opinion expressed by his hon. and learned Friend was correct, he thought he should not be doing his duty if he did not give his opinion to the House for what it was worth. The statement of his hon. and learned Friend was of great importance because he understood from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the Government, in refusing to adopt this Amendment, were virtually proceeding on the assumption that no guidance would be given to the Commissioners by the introduction of these words. His hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General for Scotland (Mr. J. P. B. Robertson) seemed to think that the Amendment they were now considering had no logical connection with the series of Amendments which had been previously proposed. With all deference to his hon. and learned Friend's opinion, he maintained that the Amendment now under discussion was perfectly consistent with all the preceding Amendments which the Opposition had supported. Their endeavour had been to get the words of the clause "charges and allegations" combined with certain other words which would make their meaning clear and distinct. They had, up to the present time, been altogether unsuccessful in effecting any such change. If they had succeeded in limiting the clause to "charges," he thought that such a Commission as was to be constituted by the Bill could then have decided without any discretionary power what were the subjects to be investigated and what were the subjects to be excluded, because the very able men who would constitute the Commission would, he could not doubt, have interpreted the word "charges" to mean charges of crime or complicity with crime on the part of the persons against whom they were directed, and they would have had no difficulty in making up their minds what were the portions of the articles in The Times which could be placed in that category. The Government, however, had insisted on retaining in the clause the words "charges and allegations." When they came to the term "allegations" they came to a term which a lawyer was no more qualified to interpret than a layman, because the word "allegation" was not a legal term; it did not belong to any branch of law he was acquainted with. Besides, what were the allegations contained in? In a speech he did not know of how many days, a speech in which the Attorney General, in the discharge, no doubt, of his duty, had from the beginning to the end of it made charges and allegations. The hon. and learned Gentleman certainly did not neglect his duty in that respect, because he believed for a series of days the hon. and learned Gentleman continued to make charges and allegations against the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) and an indefinite number of persons. The Attorney General's speech consisted of charges and allegations from beginning to end. As the clause now stood the Commission would have to inquire into and report upon every charge and allegation. Every lawyer would know that the words of the clause meant all charges and all allegations. How were the Judges to know where they were to draw the line? If they appointed a Commission with the duty of investigating and reporting upon such charges as they thought fit, the Commissioners would know where they stood; but when they were told not to stop there, but extend their investigation into everything in the nature of allegation, not only with regard to Members of that House but other persons, it seemed to him a difficult thing to say that it was so clear as was supposed by the hon. and learned Member for Inverness that the functions of the Commission would not be affected by the introduction of the words proposed. If the Government could see their way to inserting these words, they would be depositing in the Commissioners a discretion as to the charges and allegations to be investigated. If they received their Commission in the terms of the clause as it at present stood he thought they would be bound to investigate all the charges and allegations contained in the lengthy speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General, but if the words of the hon. and learned Member were introduced they would know that only such charges as they thought fit would legitimately form the subject of investigation at their hands. The work of the Commissioners, if these words were inserted, would be quite plain; but if they were resisted by the Government and the Bill were passed as it now stood, with a direction to the Commissioners to investigate all charges and allegations in the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech, it might be that the Commissioners would exercise a discretion, and refuse to investigate such charges as they thought unworthy of investigation; but he thought it would be open to doubt whether in doing so they would not be straining their powers. He asked the Government if they seriously intended that the Commissioners should have power of reading over the whole of the Attorney General's speech, critically examining all charges and allegations contained in it, and making up their minds which of those were worthy of investigation and which were not, why they did not expressly state that in the Bill and make it perfectly clear? They had heard a good deal said in the course of the discussion about wasting the time of the Committee. He supposed there was no candid Member of the Committee who would not admit that some things had been repeated, and that the discussion might have been confined within shorter limits without prejudice to anybody; but he was bound to say that there was no waste of time in the discussion of the Bill in Committee which was comparable to the waste of time which had been brought about by the Government refusing to insert words giving expressly that discretion to the Commissioners which they said it was their desire they should have. It had been the custom of all Governments, whore an honest doubt was entertained in any quarter of the House whether express words were not necessary to embody the view of the Committee, to consent to the insertion of such words where everyone agreed they could do no harm. Why had the Government deviated from that practice; why had they refused to insert words which would have no other effect than giving the Commissioners appointed under this Bill the power of saying what should be inquired into and what should not, which the Government said they intended they should have? He sincerely hoped that Her Majesty's Government would not refuse consent to this very reasonable Amendment, but that they would put in at least this limitation that the three Judges should have this power. The Commissioners were able and experienced men, and they should have clearly before them on the face of the Bill that they had the power of selecting and determining what were the charges and allegations which in their opinion ought to form the subject of inquiry.

MR. STAVELEY HILL (Staffordshire, Kingswinford)

said, there seemed to him to be a great amount of reason in the Amendment proposed by the hon. and learned Member opposite. He could not but think that as the clause stood at present the person most put upon his trial would be the hon. and learned Attorney General. The case that would have to go to trial would be founded upon the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General; the question before the Commissioners would be as to whether the charges and allegations made in that speech were true and well founded. He had felt during the whole of this Debate how unfortunate it was that the hon. and learned Attorney General should have been retained at all in a political trial, and that he should have allowed himself to be retained in a case in which his proper clients, the Government, were not parties. It was most unfortunate that it was not so, and he felt it would have been much better to have left the case to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Bury (Sir Henry James), about whose power and capacity to be counsel in that case there could be no doubt whatever. But the hon. and learned Attorney General having made his speech, the question was, could the charges and allegations made in that speech he substantiated? And when the Commission came to inquire, it would be as to the extent to which those charges and allegations should be substantiated. It would be better at any rate, if those charges were not to be defined in some way, to leave to the Commissioners full power to say which of the charges and allegations they would entertain and which they would reject. Now, if the definite article had been left out, the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member opposite might have been unnecessary; but the "the" was there, and they would, unless the Amendment were accepted, have to inquire into the truth and substance or otherwise of all the charges and allegations contained in the hon. and learned Attorney General's speech. If the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary was correct, and if the Commissioners were to have full power to say what they would entertain and what they would not entertain, why should the Government object to this Amendment? The Amendment carried out the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, who had told them over and over again, and on one occasion particularly, when he himself went into the Lobby to vote with him, that the Commissioners would not entertain any charges which they themselves did not think to be sufficient. If that were so, either these words were unnecessary—and he did not understand the Government to say they were—or else they ought to be put into the Bill. It was with this view that he earnestly entreated the Government not to throw away their position in reference to the Bill, and that, having up to the present carried their own views so far, they would allow themselves to be supported by those who wished to see this Bill a reality. He strongly urged upon the Government to admit this Amendment.

MR. SEXTON

said, the hon. and learned Gentleman had just made an appeal to the Committee on the ground that the Amendment was one which called for immediate attention. He did not think the Government were depending on the common sense of their Supporters as the hon. and learned Gentleman thought they ought to depend. The hon. and learned Gentleman had delivered a sensible and straightforward speech. He (Mr. Sexton) had sat with him for years in that House, and he had never known him to act otherwise in any affair than as became a man of upright character and disposition. He explained the hon. and learned Gentleman's position by the assumption that his character had qualified him to appraise and under stand the nature of the scandalous blot on this Bill. He did not know whether the hon. and learned Gentleman was present when the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, when exposed to the most severe and searching examination to which a Minister of the Crown had ever been subjected in debate, avowed the existence of communications between himself and Mr. Walter, although he had not confessed their nature. The Bill was the offspring of Mr. Walter's two legal advisers and the hon. and learned Attorney General, who was the political adviser of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord. He (Mr. Sexton) could say in a few words that, from the point of view of hon. Members from Ireland, the refusal of the Amendment made it clear that this was a Bill introduced by Mr. Walter and promoted by the Government as his servants and agents. The language of the clause without the Amendment was absolutely unmistakable. The Commissioners were directed to inquire into allegations and charges made by Mr. Walter in the case of the recent trial of "O'Donnell v. Walter." As the clause at present stood, if Mr. Walter brought to the notice of the Commissioners any one charge or allegation in the whole course of the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General, the Commissioners would have no option but would at once be compelled to investigate it. Irish Members had been charged with insulting one of Her Majesty's Judges, because, in the discharge of their public duty, some of them had suggested the reason why they thought him unfit, on account of his conduct and language on previous occasions, to conduct this inquiry. But what was the insult levelled by any Member of that House at Mr. Justice Day compared with the insult levelled by Her Majesty's Government against the three learned Judges in declaring that they absolutely refused to allow them any discretion in this matter. The Government threw down before the Commissioners this formidable and momentous speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General, and said—"Inquire into every allegation and charge and innuendo;" they refused to give them any discretion whatever. The Bill was Mr. Walter's Bill; it was more a private than a public measure. Hon. Members were invited to walk into Mr. Walter's parlour. Mr. Walter, in his paper, had inserted infamous and shameful charges against Irish Members, and the Government were so considerate as to say that they would not grant a Select Committee of that House to inquire into those charges, lest the Committee might be prejudiced against Irish Members; but now they had appointed a Commission of Judges over which they had placed Mr. Walter.

COLONEL NOLAN (Galway, N.)

said, he rose to comment on the extraordinary conduct of the Government in not advancing a single argument against this Amendment. The Government had lately been in the habit of putting up the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Scotland (Mr. J. P. B. Robertson) to speak for them on law points, and the opinion of the hon. and learned Gentleman carried with it additional weight, because he represented another Party in that House. The Committee had had a speech from an hon. and learned Gentleman who had for a long time sat in that House, and whose speech had been listened to with the closest attention. The hon. and learned Member for the Kingswinford Division of Staffordshire had told the Committee that unless these words were put into the Bill, the Commissioners might consider themselves obliged to go into the charges and allegations contained in the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General. He remembered the late Mr. Butt saying in that House that there was nothing more discrediting to a Government than to refuse to reply to the speeches of the Opposition; but here was a Government who refused to reply, not only to the arguments of a legal Member of the late Ministry, but also to the arguments of one of the very best lawyers who sat behind them. He believed the Government had made up their minds to admit no Amendment into the Bill, because they believed that if they passed the Bill as it stood there would be no Report stage. That was one reason, he said, why the Government would not accept the Amendment. The other reason was that they acted simply from a Party spirit. They considered that their existence in Office was of so much importance to the nation that they would sooner pass a measure of this kind through the House to deprive a certain number of the subjects of the Queen of their right of a fair trial than they would agree to an Amendment by which the position of their Party might be endangered. One of these reasons must influence the Government in the course they were now adopting, and that would be felt by all unless one of the Law Officers of the Crown rose to reply to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Staffordshire or that of the late Solicitor General for Scotland.

MR. P. STANHOPE (Wednesbury)

said, as a Member for Staffordshire he wished to thank the hon. Member for the Kingswinford Division for his honest and sincere speech in support of the Amendment. He was glad to see that there were occasionally expressions of conscientious feeling on the opposite Benches. It was of great importance to Members on those Benches that hon. Gentlemen opposite should be encouraged occasionally to follow the dictates of their own consciences, and speak their minds freely to the House. The Committee were informed by the Government that the acceptance of this Amendment would endanger the success of the Commission. He would like to know why the acceptance of this Amendment should involve such a result? He supposed the truth to be that the Government were afraid to accept the Amendment without consulting their friend, Mr. Walter, and he was not at all sure that it would not be desirable to move an Instruction to the Committee that Mr. Walter should be kept permanently on the premises in order that those unfortunate Ministers who had no mind and no conscience of their own in this matter, should be able to appeal to their associate and friend with reference to these unfortunate transactions. Mr. Walter, no doubt, would be able to make certain slight concessions which, to an extent, would appease the sentiments of Liberal Unionists. Nothing was so regrettable as to see on those Benches men who, he was sorry to say, claimed the name of Liberal, but who remained silently in their places, and would not raise their voice or give their vote or make the slightest effort to obtain for their Colleagues a fair trial. He thought it was a matter of perfect indifference to the ordinary Liberal Unionists whether their Colleagues received a fair trial or not, so long as they avoided a General Election and kept their seats in that House. He would ask a question of the noble Lord opposite who seemed so disturbed, and who was the son of the prime malefactor.

THE CHAIRMAN

said, he appealed to the hon. Gentleman to address himself a little more to the terms of the Amendment.

MR. P. STANHOPE

said, he would follow the ruling of the Chairman with great satisfaction, and confine himself to the terms of the Amendment; if he had been temporarily led somewhat far afield, it was in order to denounce the conduct of hon. Members who could not support an Amendment even of this rational scope and moderate language, which Amendment, he was proud to say, had the support of the highly representative Member for the Kingswinford Division. He was glad that an Amendment of this character had been supported, or, at all events, approved, by an independent Member of the county which he had the honour to represent, and it was on that account that he rose to endorse the hon. and learned Gentleman's remarks.

MR. MUNDELLA (Sheffield, Brightside)

said, he had waited to see whether any Member of Her Majesty's Government was about to rise to reply to the speeches which had been addressed to the Committee in support of the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Elgin and Nairn (Mr. Anderson). For the last three-quarters of an hour there had been a series of speeches on one side. There had been speeches made which demanded an answer. There was the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Kingswinford Division of Staffordshire (Mr. Staveley Hill) and that of his hon. and learned Friend the late Solicitor General for Scotland (Mr. Asher), and if they had not been answered the reason was, in the opinion of hon. Gentlemen on that side, that they were unanswerable. It was quite true that the Government were free not to answer all the speeches of hon. Members below the Gangway; but when the hon. and learned Member for Kingswinford, who had the respect of all Members on both sides of the House, and who, during the 20 years in which he had sat in that House, had shown common sense and independence in all matters, made such a forcible speech as he had made on this Amendment, they, at least, thought they knew why Her Majesty's Government did not reply. The hon. and learned Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay), who sat so properly behind that Bench, from which position he so well used his opportunity of striking from behind, and for which he would one day have to answer to his constituents, had taunted him with using the word "calumnious" with reference to these charges and allegations. He (Mr. Mundella) affirmed that he had used that word rightly, and he would tell the Committee directly why he had used it. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had also reproached the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian with using the word "malicious." But were his right hon. Friend and himself to defend words that they believed to be calumnious and malicious? What they asked for at the hands of the Government was that the Commission should be allowed to eliminate all the filth that had been thrown upon Irish Members, that which was calumnious and malicious, and which ought not to be gone into. [Laughter.] The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary laughed; but he was not sure that if all these questions were inquired into, there were not questions relating to the right hon. Gentleman himself which were very important and might be as much the subject of inquiry as the allegations made in the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General. The hon. and learned Attorney General had delivered himself of a speech which covered 144 closely printed pages. [An hon. MEMBER: The whole trial.] It did not matter if he was wrong to a few pages more or less; it would be admitted that there were enough of them. It was very difficult to say who were included in his allegations and who were excluded from them. Here was what he considered a specimen of the allegations which he made, and which would have to be dealt with. On page 112 he said— It is worth noting, by the way, how many of the worst of these puppets owe their freedom of action to Mr. Gladstone. O'Donovan Rossa, the open-mouthed advocate of arson and murder and the organizer of dynamite outrages, was sentenced in 1865 to penal servitude for life. In 1870 he was released by Mr. Gladstone's Government together with other 25 Fenian conspirators. Devoy and Luby were among the number who were sentenced to well-merited punishment and were released by Mr.Gladstone, and subsequently devoted themselves with redoubled energy to the traitorous work which their imprisonment interrupted. Other prominent ruffians like Sheridan and Egan would have been secured and rendered incapable of further mischief but for the culpable laxity of the Executive. To whom did that allegation refer? It was an allegation against the ablest and oldest Member of that House. Were the Commissioners to have power to eliminate allegations such as this? He would like to ask the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Inverness, whether that was a malicious or calumnious allegation or not? He (Mr. Mundella) said it was, and that such allegations ought to be eliminated from the inquiry of the Commissioners. In conclusion, he repeated that the two speeches he had referred to remained unanswered by the Government because they were unanswerable.

MR. LABOUCHERE (Northampton)

said, the Committee were in a very great difficulty. They were not all lawyers. They had had the opinions of two lawyers, the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay) and the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Kingswinford Division of Staffordshire (Mr. Staveley Hill), and those two opinions were entirely antagonistic. It seemed to be agreed on all sides that the Commissioners ought not to inquire into all the charges and allegations; and the question was whether these words without the Amendment would enable the Judges to inquire into some of the charges and not into others. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Kingswinford Division said that these words would not give the Judges the right to pick and choose; and that they would be obliged to inquire into all the charges and allegations. The Committee looked to the Government and to the hon. and learned Solicitor General, in the hope that he would say something to enlighten their ignorance and tell the Committee whether he held with the hon. and learned Member for Inverness or with the hon. and learned Member for Staffordshire. They were accustomed in that House to be treated with some amount of contumely; but when they found themselves supported by Gentlemen of the eminence of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Staffordshire, then he thought it was an insult not only to Gentlemen on those Benches, but to the entire House, that the Government did not put up the hon. and learned Solicitor General to answer. His right hon. Friend the Member for the Brightside Division of Sheffield (Mr. Mundella) had pointed out that allegations had been made in the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General against the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), and there were many hon. Gentlemen on those Benches who thought that some of those allegations told against the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary. Where was this inquiry to finish if the Judges were allowed to go into the whole of the allegations? The Government and hon. Gentlemen opposite perhaps thought that the debate on this Bill was going somewhat slowly. But whose fault was that? It was obviously the fault of the Government. The addition of those words could not do any harm; but the Government did not dare to alter a single word in the Bill without the permission of Mr. Walter. A little while ago they had had a discussion as to whether the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury had been in communication with Mr. Walter. They now knew that Mr. Walter had called upon the right hon. Gentleman on the very day on which he came down in the evening and said that he would grant this Commission.

MR. W. H. SMITH

That is not true. [Cries of "Withdraw!" and "Name!"]

THE CHAIRMAN

The right hon. Gentleman says, "That is not true." Does the right hon. Gentleman mean that the statement is not accurate?

ME. W. H. SMITH

I do.

MR. LABOUCHERE

said, the right hon. Gentleman was so very excited that the Committee, he (Mr. Labouchere) thought, might allow something to him. He supposed the right hon. Gentleman meant that he apologized. He accepted his apology. As he understood it, the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House had admitted that evening that Mr. Walter had called upon him.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIE) (Tower Hamlets, St. George's)

said, the hon. Gentleman was assuming that Mr. Walter called upon his right hon. Friend previous to the Bill being framed. His right hon. Friend had stated distinctly that Mr. Walter called upon him after the Bill was in print.

MR. LABOUCHERE

said, it was very convenient for the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury to put up his right hon. Friend to answer for him; but let him answer for himself this specific question—"Did Mr. Walter call upon him on the day he came down to this House and announced that he would grant this Commission?

MR. W. H. SMITH

I have stated to the House everything that has occurred. I decline to be catechized by the hon. Member.

MR. LABOUCHERE

said, he defied the right hon. Gentleman to answer that specific question; and if the right hon. Gentleman did not specifically deny the statement, he thought every hon. Member of the House would think, whatever he might have said on Thursday, that he could not do so. [Cries of "No!"] He congratulated hon. Gentlemen opposite on their credulity. He did not wish to dwell too much on this subject; it was a painful thing to be obliged to consider the position in which the right hon. Gentleman was placed; but he would go back to the fact that the hon. and learned Solicitor General had been requested by Members on that side of the House and on the opposite side—["No, no!"]—to throw some legal light on the subject before the Committee, and explain why there was any objection to put into the Bill the words of the Amendment.

MR. T. M. HEALY (Longford, N.)

said, he thought, after the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Brightside Division of Sheffield (Mr. Mundella), who had referred to a remarkable passage in the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General relating to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, that he (Mr. T. M. Healy) had not before seen or heard of, that the time had arrived when hon. Members should be provided with a copy of this pamphlet, for the distribution of which the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury had unusual facilities. How many hon. Gentlemen opposite could lift up their hands and say they had read Parnellism and Crime? It turned out that not a single Gentleman opposite had read it, and he believed the only Member of the House who had done so was the right. hon. Gentleman the Member for the Brightside Division of Sheffield. It was most unreasonable that while the Government refused in any way to guide the Commissioners in their course of action, the entire policy of the late Administration from 1868 to 1874 might possibly be inquired into under the Bill. It might be that the Government were very anxious in this matter with regard to the relations of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary with some of the Fenian prisoners. They could show that certain gentlemen were brought to Dungarvan who presented revolvers at the heads of certain of the electorate, and that £1,000 was paid by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary.

THE CHAIRMAN

said, it was very much out of Order to travel into questions irrelevant to the Amendment before the Committee. It was impossible that the conduct of the debate could be properly maintained unless the Chair was assisted by hon. Members on both sides of the House. The hon. and learned Member must be aware that he was now entering upon matter which was foreign to the present Amendment.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, he bowed to the Chairman's ruling, but seeing that he had not read Parnellism and Crime he could not see what was relevant to the discussion and what was not. He did not know whether the Chairman had read it himself.

THE CHAIRMAN

The Amendment before the Committee is whether after the word "allegations," the words "or such of them as the Commissioners should think fit" should be inserted.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, he must say, for his own part, what the Irish Members required was, to know how many charges were made against them, that the House might at least be put in the position of seeing whether every wild and idle charge that any man liked to originate and supply to The Times was to be made the subject of solemn investigation. He had been much struck by the observations of the hon. and learned Member for the Kingswinford Division of Staffordshire (Mr. Staveley Hill) and was surprised that the Government had not given him a reply. The course the Government were taking had not received the support of their own Followers behind them, and he would remind the Committee of this, that to-night the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington) had laid down a remarkable doctrine which had not been accepted by the Government, for he had said that it would not be necessary for the hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Sexton) or the hon. Member for Derry (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) to go into any matter until The Times in the first instance had proved something. That showed that in the mind of the noble Lord something in the nature of a primâ facie case should in the first place be made out. What did the Irish Members ask here? Why, they asked that some definition at least should be given of the offences of which they were alleged to be guilty—that the Commissioners might, if they saw fit, exercise the discretion of defining what the charges were. The Government would not allow the Committee to define what the charges were, and now they tried to prevent the Commissioners from defining what they were. He conceived that the first business of these three prominent Judges, if this Bill passed, should be this, to read over Parnellism and Crime and the hon. and learned Attorney General's statement in the Law Courts—he presumed they would not send for Mr. John Walter, like the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, but would leave him in his proper place—and then having read the statement of the hon. and learned Attorney General and the Parnellism and Crime pamphlet, they would say, "We conceive that certain rules must be adopted for the conduct of this inquiry, and we conceive that certain allegations, if proved, will constitute grievous and heinous offences!" In such an event the Judges would act as they did in connection with Election Petitions—that was to say, before entering into the inquiry they would make out the charge to go upon. He submitted that the hon. President of the Court, Sir James Hannen, would say this—"I conceive the charges made against hon. Gentlemen, Members of the House of Commons and others, are as follows, subject to what I may hear from Counsel." He would lay down, with the sanction of his Colleagues, that which was to be the subject matter to be gone into. Unless the Judges had power to do that, it would be quite impossible for them to conduct this inquiry satisfactorily. What would probably happen would be this. Somebody who had received instructions from Her Majesty's Government would go before the inquiry and say, "I am the representative of The Times; we have made the following charges and we repeat them now, and we ask you, the Judges, to call A, B, C, D, E, F, and G." Suppose someone wanted to insult the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone)—and he conceived there were plenty of Gentlemen opposite who from their conduct every day would be very glad to drag that right hon. Gentleman down to London to have him examined before the Commission as to whether he had not opened up negotiations for the release of O'Donovan Rossa as far back as 1869. Let them suppose that such a thing as this occurred. When they got the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian into the box, and this Gentleman representing The Times had examined him as to the reasons which guided him in releasing O'Donovan Rossa, that Gentleman might then put to him a whole series of questions as to his general views with regard to the Irish Members—as to what he believed was done in the time of Mr. Forster and Lord Spencer. Having given a bonâ fide reason for calling the right hon. Gentleman, the person who wished to insult him would then, if he chose to do so, diverge into all kinds of subjects. So to speak, they first hooked their salmon, and then being caught with a fly they brought him to land by the gaff, and it was to prevent this that he submitted there should be some protection for witnesses in the shape of a preliminary statement by the presiding Judge as to what he considered the object of the inquiry. It was well known that the majority of these men, against whom these charges and allegations were made, were poor men, and that they might be easily worn out by having to obtain counsel to defend them and by having to dance attendance from day to day before such a Court as this, unless there was some definition either by the President of the Court or in a schedule of what the charges were which were to be met. He maintained that unless the Government accepted this Amendment the Irish Members, and others against whom charges were brought, would be compelled to have counsel before the Court from day to day. Perhaps the Court would insist upon sitting in London instead of going to Dublin, and therefore he held that if this proposal were not accepted, enormous injustice would be done. Take the case of a poor man. It was supposed that because the Members of the Irish Party all worked together in this House, therefore that the funds at the disposal of the Nationalist exchequer would be devoted to the defence of every individual of that Party. But supposing those who had control of the funds took the view that politically, so far as the Party was concerned, the character of a certain individual was unimportant, and should say to him—"We will not provide you with Counsel." What was this poor man to do? His character would he as dear to him as anybody else's would be to them, and he would have to be present in Court, dancing attendance upon it from day to day, not knowing what moment the Counsel for The Times might spring his charge upon him. He might wish to take a holiday whilst the Commission was sitting, and for a whole month whilst he was away he might not read a newspaper. His ears would be closed as to what would be going on in his absence, and he would not know when he would be wanted; whereas upon the day of the opening of the tribunal the President would say that so and so only was what was to be inquired into, the scope of the inquiry would be limited in a most Constitutional manner. No objection would then be taken by the Irish Members, as the inquiry would be limited to what was considered most important. However, it was probably useless to make this appeal to hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, seeing that upon this question they were acting in a body. He believed that very few of them would individually support Her Majesty's Government in the view they took up and in acting unjustly towards Members on that (the Opposition) side of the House. It was only when acting under Party discipline and in the mass that they were unjust. He therefore appealed to thorn, whether it was not reasonable that the views of the hon. and learned Member for Staffordshire (Mr. Staveley Hill) should prevail, and that the President of the tribunal should be allowed to frame rules or to make a statement as to the grave and definite charges which were to be entered into against certain individuals?

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

I desire to ask a question of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General (Sir Edward Clarke). Here is a grave allegation in the statement of the hon. and learned Attorney General. Of course, he considered it material, or he would not have made it. I do not know whether it is a charge or an allegation; but I want to know whether it is an allegation which the tribunal is to inquire into. The words are these— It is worth noting, by the way, how many of the worst of these puppets owe their freedom of action to Mr. Gladstone. [Laughter.] Yes; that was a very fair test case— O'Donovan Rossa, the open-mouthed advocate of arson and murder and the organizer of dynamite outrages, was sentenced in 1865 to penal servitude for life. In 1870 he was released by Mr. Gladstone's Government, together with other 25 Fenian conspirators—Devoy and Curley were among the number who were sentenced to well-merited punishment, and were released by Mr. Gladstone and subsequently devoted themselves with redoubled energy to the traitorous work which their imprisonment interrupted. I wish to ask whether, in the view of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General, that is a charge or an allegation against my right hon. Friend of complicity in crime?

SIR EDWARD CLARKE

I must decline to interpret in any way any part of the articles which have been published. The words which have been read by the right hon. Gentleman are not the words of the hon. and learned Attorney General, but they are the words of an article which was read by him from Parnellism and Crime. The purpose of this Bill, and the purpose which has been assented to unanimously by this House on the second reading, is the purpose of sending to a tribunal consisting of Judges, wholly or mainly as the House has been informed, allegations which have been publicly made. The matter that the right hon. Gentleman has read is part of those allegations. ["Hear, hear!"] Hon. Members cheer that statement of an obvious fact as if it were some new discovery. The sentences the right hon. Gentleman opposite has read are part of an article published in Parnellism and Crime, and read by my hon. and learned Friend in the course of his speech, and if these articles are referred to before the tribunal the Judges will have to look at the articles, and see what in truth are the charges which those articles contain, and into such matters as they find in those articles they will inquire. But in order that the House might see that in the course of a number of articles of this kind there are expressions used, whether by way of illustration or in adding historical circumstances to the questions with which they are particularly dealing, I will read a few sentences. That the Committee might see how this matter stands, let me just read the whole passage from which the right hon. Gentleman quoted the first sentences— Devoy and Luby were among the number who were sentenced to well-merited punishment and were released by Mr. Gladstone, and subsequently devoted themselves with redoubled energy to the traitorous work which their imprisonment interrupted. Other prominent ruffians, like Sheridan and Egan, would have been secured, and rendered incapable of further mischief, but for the culpable laxity of the Executive. It is painful to note that Ford, unmoved by these great services to his cause, refers to Mr. Gladstone as 'this venerable humbug,' and charges him with 'outdoing even Disraeli' in the merciless oppressiveness of his coercive legislation. The horrible doubt suggests itself whether even now the paymaster of the conspiracy cherishes any genuine respect for his illustrious recruit. It is impossible for it to be suggested by the right hon. Gentleman (Sir William Harcourt), or by anyone who applies a reasonable amount of consideration to those articles, that the three Judges who constitute this tribunal will have anything to do either with the repute of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, as described by Mr. Ford, or with the repute of the late illustrious Leader of the Party to which I belong.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

One or two of my right hon. Friends, and I believe I myself, cheered the hon. and learned Gentleman, and he commented upon our cheers by describing them as a recognition of an obvious fact. He seems to think it a most extraordinary thing to think that a cheer should come from this side of the House in recognition of an obvious fact; but, from our point of view, the recognition of an obvious fact is an extremely rare occurrence with hon. Gentlemen opposite. We gave the hon. and learned Gentletleman a cheer in gratitude for his recognition of an obvious fact. Let us look at the facts before us. The hon. and learned Gentleman has admitted that there are allegations contained in the pamphlet respecting myself, and I am bound to say that if the hon. and learned Gentleman would go a step further and say that it might be a very proper thing that those allegations should be investigated by the Judges, I am the last man to make an objection. It appears to me that these allegations are quite as good as a great number of others that have been made. They are distinct statements of condonation of crime, because, although the writer in The Times was so good and so courteous as to apply to me the epithet "illustrious," which I do not deserve, the writer distinctly charged me—I admit that there is here some mixture of the tragical and the ludicrous—with being a recruit to the doctrines and practices of Ford, who was, in this affair, in strict partnership with O'Donovan Rossa. I should be told, however, that this is not relevant to the matter in hand. Then, why did the hon. and learned Attorney General read it out? The hon. and learned Attorney General read out this passage as part proof of his case with respect to Parnellism and Crime. It was perfectly within the purview of the Bill; it was within the grammatical and literal meaning of the Bill, and I want to know, if am told that there is no likelihood of its being inquired into—and I do not care a pin whether it is or not—I want to know why did the hon. and learned Attorney General read it out. Why did he add to a speech that was already sufficiently prolonged to satisfy even the most voracious legal appetite for length of speech? The field of this question has been enlarged by the appearance of a new champion in the arena. My right hon. Friend the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) objected, in an early part of the discussion, to the dealing with calumnious charges. I, myself, afterwards objected to the dealing with malicious charges. I presume that, in a case of this kind, where it is necessary to apply some sort of riddling and contracting process, that there are a number of charges in controversial writing which were plainly, and on the surface, on the threshold, fit to be set aside as being obviously devoid of reasonable ground. But what says the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has come out to-night as an authoritative expounder of the meaning and object of this Bill? He says— I refuse to recognize any title of the Commissioners to set aside malicious charges, because you cannot tell until you have examined them whether they are malicious or not. Everyone of these allegations, however devoid they may be of ground, however they may bear on the face of them evidence sufficient to satisfy every rational man that they are unworthy of attention, according to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer the Government will not bar them, or exclude them, or give the Judges a discretion to exclude them, because, as he says, until they have made an examination they cannot know whether they are malicious or not. That is the defence made by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer for this Bill. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for having cast some light on the subject, and for having shown the Committee what it is we are really discussing. There is one observation of the hon. and learned Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy) which seems to show that, owing to absence during the last 24 hours, he was not aware that it had been decided that although the murderer and the felon might be tried on a specific charge, that is to be reversed here, and the chosen Representatives of the people are not to be allowed the privilege of hearing the charges they are to meet. Now, the Committee has reached a different point. We are now asking—and we have totally failed to obtain any concession to our demand—that the Judges on whom this large discretion is to be conferred, might be permitted, if they thought fit, to set aside charges which were in their judgment totally unfit for examination. Grave legal authorities are ready here to state, and have stated this evening, that in their opinion the plain purport of this clause would compel the Judges, unless the Committee introduced some words of this kind, to go through all this frivolous matter. The hon. and learned Member for North Longford has well said—and I, for my part, adopt the sentiment—that there are few Gentlemen sitting opposite, if one were to argue a private matter face to face, who would for a moment hesitate to accept and recognize the reasonableness of the demand now made. But Her Majesty's Government appear to think that it is their business to force this Bill through the House, and we are virtually told by the hon. and learned Solicitor General that we are not at liberty to propose this Amendment be- cause we have assented to the second reading of the Bill. I trust the Committee will look a little beyond the purpose immediately in view, and consider to what kind of principles of jurisprudence you are giving your sanction in the adoption of a scheme so novel and extraordinary as that now before us, and in refusing the admission of any mitigating phrase or safeguard or security whatever, although demanded by the joint voices of those who are inculpated perhaps, and have a special title to consideration, and also of no inconsiderable minority of the House of Commons.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 207; Noes 250: Majority 43.—(Div. List, No. 252.)

MR. R. T. REID

said, that the next Amendment in his name was merely a verbal Amendment designed to follow an earlier proposal which had not been accepted.

MR. SEXTON

said, he begged to move the next Amendment standing on the Paper in his name—namely, in lines 18 and 19, to leave out "certain Members of Parliament and other," in order to insert "the." This was connected with another Amendment standing later on the Paper, and if both Amendments were accepted the clause would read in this way— The Commissioners should inquire into and report upon the charges and allegations made against the persons whose name are set forth in the schedule hereto. The Amendment, therefore, asked the Committee to insert in or append to the Bill a schedule of persons against whom the charges and allegations were intended to be made. He might look back for a moment and remind the Committee that the majority, which was not often a large majority, had refused to confine the Bill to "charges," and had decided to add to "charges" "allegations," no matter how vague and shadowy their character might be. It had also refused to give any definition of charges and allegations against any person whatever, and had even refused to allow the Commissioners, in praise of whose high character they spoke so emphatically, the least discretion as to the charges and allegations which were worth investigation and those which were not. Now, in the face of these refusals he asked the Committee to con- sider for a moment if it was possible, in a spirit of equity at least, to agree, if these charges were not to be defined, and if the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General was to be taken by the Commission, that the names of all persons charged, whether Members of Parliament or others, should be inserted in the Bill. Two classes of persons were pointed at in this affair. One class comprised Members of this House, and the other was composed of persons outside. Now, with regard to the persons outside the House he offered two reasons why their names should be scheduled in the Bill. Some of these persons lived in this country, some of them were born and bred beyond the sea, and some of them had their residence at the ends of the earth, and he thought it was but fair that those persons so situated should not be left to pick out the fact that they were incriminated from a pamphlet taken from The Times report of a trial or a debate in this House, but they should be solemnly notified by the statute of the condition in which they stood. He offered a second reason that these names should be scheduled in the Bill. Members of this House were accused of complicity with these "other persons"—indeed, it was only because of such alleged complicity that these other persons were inserted at all. A few days ago The Times in a leading article said it must be observed that the language of the Bill as to inquiry into the charges and allegations made against certain Members of Parliament "and," not or, "other persons"—"and this," said The Times, who ought to know, having been present at the drafting of the Bill— Giving the words their strict legal as well as their natural and obvious meaning implies that the subject of investigation so far as other persons are concerned is their conduct in relation to Mr. Parnell and his colleagues. We can see in this nothing unreasonable. That was the interpretation offered by The Times, and if that were a fair interpretation—and he spoke in the presence of the hon. and learned Gentleman who was both Attorney General and the Counsel for The Times—he said that they made no objection. They made no objection to the inquiry into the guilt of other persons so far as that inquiry was made to bear on any allegation against a Member of this House. He took his stand on the interpretation of The Times, and claimed that Members of Parliament should be told within the pages of the Bill the names of the persons complicity with whom was charged against them. He asked the Committee individually to divert themselves of Party considerations, and each to consider for himself how any man could prepare his defence unless he was notified and warned of the names of the persons complicity with whom was charged against him. This Commission, under the Bill as at present framed, would not be able to act on any definite lines. It would not sit to inquire into the conduct of one man at a time. It would not open one charge and close it, but would proceed in a zigzag method, without order—it would take up one charge to-day and another to-morrow, and decide one charge in one case to-day, and defer to another day the decision in another charge. In this way, as had been pointed out, persons against whom charges were made would have to dance attendance on the Commission from day to day and from month to month and from year to year. He maintained that it was impossible for a defence to be carried on under such conditions, and that the inquiry would range over a period of at least nine years. It would cover proceedings in many countries, it would be conversant with the acts of some millions of people, and he put this to the Committee: whether it was not obvious that the defence of every Member of Parliament charged would be a most elaborate and costly affair? Therefore it was essential that those Members should have given to them the means of preparing themselves for the inquiry and for deciding what course they should adopt. Now he passed from "other persons" to Members of Parliament themselves, and he raised the question for the first time in these debates as to what Members of Parliament were impeached. Did they mean to impeach, first, the Members of Parliament who were members of the executive of the Land League—the Land League which passed out of existence seven years ago—which came into existence, grew up and flourished when the present Ministerial Party were in power, and which passed away under the shadow of an Act which put an end to liberty in Ireland. Was it meant to impeach those Members of Parliament who were members of the National League which came into existence five years ago, and which had existed during the last year under the sway of a most drastic Act of Parliament, and which the Lord Lieutenant could suppress with a stroke of the pen at any moment he chose if he saw any reason for such a course? Was it intended to impeach the 10 Members who were spoken of together in one sentence in Parnellism and Crime—who were spoken of, not for the purpose of charging them with any legal offences which he was able to appreciate, but for having "trade and traffic" with certain persons, and who were grouped together, not in connection with any specific facts, but as a rhetorical phrase merely because in the opinion of The Times they were likely to form the first Home Rule Ministry in Ireland. He maintained that that observation, even if it stood alone, exposed the animus of the whole conspiracy against the Irish Members. These names were grouped together, not because of any crime or complicity in crime, and not because of any aspect of their conduct, but because they were supposed by The Times—a supposition which was accepted afterwards by the Government—to be the men who stood highest in the confidence of the Irish people. He (Mr. Sexton) was one of these 10 Members. At an earlier hour of the evening he referred exhaustively to matters of fact with which his name was connected, and he had, he thought, exposed the accusations brought against him to the ridicule, if not to the contempt, of the whole House; and he thought that if every one of the 10 Members referred to were to take the trouble he might easily do the same. However, he (Mr. Sexton) would confine himself to his own case. Well, he was one of these 10 Members grouped together in this way by The Times. Now, in the month of December, 1886, a Colleague of the hon. Gentleman sitting on the Front Bench opposite, the Tory Lord Lieutenant, appointed him to be High Sheriff of the City of Dublin, and he was High Sheriff of the City of Dublin when Parnellism and Crime appeared. During the months of March, April, May, and June, when, according to the statement of the hon. and learned Attorney General, upon evidence which that hon. and learned Gentleman thought satisfactory, he (Mr. Sexton) was in trade and traffic with dynamiters and criminals, he was the principal officer of the law in the capital of Ireland. The Lord Lieutenant could have dismissed him at any moment if he had seen good cause for taking that course, but the Lord Lieutenant did not see any such cause. The Government would not take a step that involved them in any accusations in this matter, but they were willing it should be taken by others with their complicity. They thought to make political capital out of the statements of others levelled at the Irish Members. A year had passed and he had continued in the performance of his functions, and the fact that he had never been interfered with was a conclusive proof that the Lord Lieutenant and the Government in their own minds and hearts—whatever they might choose to say in Parliament—spurned as ridiculous the charges made against him. He was at this moment a Visiting Justice of Her Majesty's prisons in Dublin. Probably Her Majesty's Government thought that at the present moment he ought to be in prison himself, but their Lord Lieutenant thought otherwise, and he would ask the Committee to consider the ridiculous contradiction between the action of the Government and that of their Viceroy in Ireland. If the Government desired a larger enumeration of Members than the 10 grouped together in the article to which he had referred, he would suggest it to them. If they would agree to insert in the list of Members against whom charges and allegations were made to be inserted in a schedule, he would inform thorn that the Home Rule Members would not object to 25 or 30 names being introduced—the Members who were mentioned in Parnellism and Crime. Not a voice would be raised against such a proposal. All the Irish Members on the Opposition side of the House but two—namely, the Members for South Derry and South Tyrone (Mr. Lea and Mr. T. W. Russell) were impeached by The Times, or an instrument of The Times, the hon. and learned Attorney General, and this he could prove in a few words. Parnellism and Crime stated that the Parnellites without limitation—and every man of their Party was proud to bear the title—every man of the 85 who sat there was charged directly by The Times with treasonable designs upon the State, and that was something more than an allegation. Would the Government then consent to schedule in the Bill the names of every Irish Member on that side of the House except the two to whom he had referred? Furthermore, the Irish Home Rule Party without exception were charged with having belonged to two organizations, the Land League and the National League, which depended upon a system of intimidation carried out by terrible means resting ultimately on the sanction of murder. That was an infamous charge—it was a criminal charge, certainly, and one which Mr. Walter would compel the Government, his servants, to inquire into. Let them schedule in the Bill every man who was with audacity and inconceivable recklessness included in this charge—and there was this charge against the whole party, that they knew, or had reason to believe, that the Phœnix Park murder or some similar crime was intended to be attempted. That was an infamous lie, but it was also a charge, an infamous charge, and now that they had refused the last Amendment which would require the Commissioners to define the charges to be gone into, and now that other Amendments defining in the Bill the charges made had been refused, Mr. Walters would compel the Commissioners to examine into it. He challenged the Government to schedule in the Bill every man whom Mr. Walter with the greatest possible audacity coupled with that charge. Last of all, the Home Rule movement was charged with aiming to bring about the complete separation of Ireland from Great Britain. Now, that was a charge of treason, for to charge men with combining together to separate Ireland from Great Britain was nothing else than to charge them with an attempt to divide the Sovereignty of the two Realms and that constituted treason. He challenged any lawyer to deny that, and in the face of that charge, he challenged the Government to schedule in their Bill every Irish Member in that House. That might not satisfy their instinct of revenge; but, at any rate, it might satisfy to the utmost the desires of Mr. Walter. In this case, let them not limit themselves to six men or to 10 men, let them not pick out a few of the chief supporters of the movement and schedule them as traitors and associates of murderers, but let them schedule every Irish Member, and then the House, in all parts of it, and the country in all parts of it, would be able to understand to their full extent and would be able to examine by the light of truth, the motives and nature of the base plot directed by a ring of political Thugs against the Representatives of Ireland.

Amendment proposed, in page 1, lines 18 and 19, to leave out the words "certain Members of Parliament and other persons."—(Mr. Sexton.)

Question proposed, "That the word 'certain' stand part of the Clause."

SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL&c.) (Kirkcaldy,

said, he had an Amendment very similar to the one under discussion as to whether the inquiry was to be a vast and large one, or whether it was to be limited to the conduct of certain prominent men. Many speakers on the side of the Government had said that this Amendment would tend to limit the scope of the inquiry. That was certainly the case, and he held that the scope of inquiry should not be too wide; it should be confined within reasonable limits. The Times had charged the National League Members, who were really the Parnellite Party, and who constituted five-sixths of the Representatives of the people of Ireland, with very grave offences; but were they, by means of this Bill, to enter upon an inquisition against the whole of the people of Ireland, and against their actions for the last 10, 15, or 18 years? Could they justify a demand for such an inquiry as that? He spoke as a sort of professional expert on these matters. He had been engaged in a similar inquiry, and, looking at this matter from a practical point of view, he held that if grave and serious crime were rampant in Ireland, and ordinary means failed to deal with it, they were bound to adopt extraordinary means. Now, he at once admitted that a demand for a Special Inquiry on crime generally in Ireland would be reasonable, and he further admitted that if they were to have such an inquiry they could not specify the persons against whom it was directed. But the fact was, that serious crime in Ireland had now ceased; they had no more of it in Ireland than they had in England at the present time; in fact, he believed they had not so much, and the explanation was that the grievances that gave rise to the crime had been remedied. There was, therefore, no ground for entering into a historical inquiry such as the Government proposed. He asked the House and he asked the Government if an inquiry of that kind were necessary? Why was it not proposed at a time when crime was rampant in Ireland?

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! I think the hon. Member is very much exceeding the scope of the Amendment, which requires that specific persons shall be named in the Schedule.

SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL

said, the question he wished to put was, whether the inquiry was to be directed against certain specified persons, or whether it was to be an investigation into the question of the whole crime of Ireland for the last 10 or 15 years? He submitted that the circumstances did not justify them in having an inquiry of the wide scope he had suggested. Hon. Members belonging to the Nationalist Party were willing that their conduct should be inquired into generally, but the object of the Government, in their proposal, was not to do that; it was not to secure the punishment of crime, but it was to blacken a political Party. He thought the conduct of the Government, in refusing to abate one jot or tittle of the measure now before Parliament, was most extraordinary; but he did hope that now they would consent to specify the charges alleged and the persons whose conduct it was intended to inquire into.

MR. T. D. SULLIVAN (Dublin, College Green)

said, he wished to say a few words in support of the Amendment before the House. He did not know whether he was included or even mentioned in the publication called Parnellism and Crime, which should be more properly called Walterism and Crime; but this he did know, that he had been a member of the Land League from its inception to its final meeting; and he had also been a member of the Irish National League from its inception down to the present moment, and he was proud of his connection with both those bodies. He was conscious of no criminality in connection with either one or the other; he feared no investigation, either for his own part, or on the part of the gentlemen with whom he had the pleasure and honour to be associated in the working of that movement. It was curious that several Members of a Party supposed to be so iniquitous should have recently been honoured by the Representative of the Sovereign in Ireland. There was his hon. Friend the Lord Mayor of Dublin (Mr. Sexton), who had been appointed High Sheriff of that city by the Lord Lieutenant. There was another Member of the Party who had filled the same office, and he himself had been appointed one of the Judges to open the Commission for the trial of prisoners in Dublin, although it was well known at the time that he was a member of the National League. The document recording his appointment was a large parchment, with a big seal of the size of a dinner plate, and in this document he was styled "Her Majesty's trusty and well beloved." Much had been heard lately of O'Donovan Rossa and dynamiters, and he wished to tell the Committee that when Rossa wanted to adduce arguments for his misguided action, he quoted extracts from The Times newspaper, such as— Liberty is a serious game, to be played with knives and hatchets, and not with soft petitions. The time of the House had been wasted in the present debate. Yes, but how? It had been wasted through the contention of the Government that facts which were matters of notoriety, and were not denied, should be included in the scope of this investigation. The Members of his Party acknowledged that they had resisted, and had taught their people to resist, certain unjust, oppressive, and cruel measures that bore the name of law in Ireland. What the Government ought to inquire into, if they wanted to inquire into anything, was complicity in real and actual crime, known and understood as such all over the civilized world.

THE CHAIRMAN

said, he would call the attention of the hon. Member that the question now before the Committee was as to the names to be appended to the Commission.

MR. T. D. SULLIVAN

said, he hoped that all names which were likely to be mentioned in connection with this investigation would be included—not merely a score of names, but a thousand, or more, if necessary. He would tell the Committee what would happen. The Leaders of the Irish National Movement—and, above them all, the Leader of the Irish Party—would come out of this investigation more than ever endeared to their fellow-countrymen. His hon. Friend (Mr. Parnell) had long been trusted, admired, and loved by his countrymen; but never had he been so dear to their hearts and so high in their estimation as he was at this moment, when he had been so shamefully and so cruelly persecuted by Gentlemen on the opposite side of the House and by their organ, The Times newspaper. Never did he feel such an intense affection and such high admiration for that hon. Gentleman as he did at the present moment, when his hon. Friend had been persecuted—aye, crucified—for the sins of men over whom he had no control, and with whom he had no connection.

MR. COMMINS

said, he had been connected with the National League and the Land League and with the Home Rule Association, as well as with every association which had existed for the purpose of giving self-government to Ireland, from the days of their inception. He had been on the executive of every one of those movements, and he was proud to be included in the sweeping charges made by the organ of the right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench. He challenged investigation, and he challenged the Government to place his name in the Schedule; for if there were any secrets in connection with the organization no one had a better opportunity than he had of knowing them. If any man were guilty among the 85 Irish Members, no one could be more guilty than himself, for he had stood in the front rank of the inner circle till now. Why did the Government refuse to name those who were charged? Simply because the charges were not bonâ fide. The Bill was not bonâ fide. This was only a movement for the propagation of slander; there was safety in generalties, and the Government feared to come to close quarters. The position of the Government reminded him of a recent international prize fight, one of the combatants in which kept running away until his opponent wearied himself. The Government were adopting a similar policy to that pursued by Mitchell. The Commission was not intended to be a Court of Justice; it was merely a means of propagating slanders which the promoters knew to be utterly unfounded.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, there had been considerable difficulty in getting a copy of the charges brought against his hon. Friends and himself; but he had just procured a copy of Webster's Dictionary, and after a short perusal of it he had come to the conclusion they might fairly ask for the acceptance of the Amendment of his hon. Friend. Since the last Division he had heard why the Government refused to allow any Amendment. The reason was a purely technical one, for the Government hoped thereby to save the Report stage. But they could not possibly do that, as the names of the Judges who were to constitute the Commission had been inserted since the second reading; therefore, he would urge them to give some consideration to the Amendments. Now, on looking at the book, he found an accusation against himself, and he wondered was it to be seriously brought before the Commission. On page 50 of the report of the trial of "O'Donnell v. Walter," the hon. and learned Attorney General was asking—"Who are the Irish Members who took flight?" That was a very serious allegation from his point of view; far more serious than many of the charges which had been advanced. The answer was—"I believe Mr. Biggar, Mr. Healy, and Mr. Sexton." As far as he (Mr. T. M. Healy) was concerned, he repudiated the charge of cowardice; but he would never think of seeking to justify his reputation before a Commission of Her Majesty's Judges. Were they to be engaged for the rest of the evening in seeking to extract from Her Majesty's Government the names of the men against whom the charges were made, as well as the nature of the charges themselves? But he had not yet done with the New Testament which he held in his hand. The hon. and learned Solicitor General, in his very able speech, referred to himself and others as Members of the first Home Rule Ministry who were to be caught red-handed as being in traffic with dynamiters. Well, he could never imagine he would be a Member of the first Home Rule Ministry were it not he knew that so many duffers were Members of existing Ministries. Per- haps he might some day find himself in receipt of, say, half the salary paid to the Civil Lord of the Admiralty. Now, would not the Government consent to define these charges? Let them be good enough to state who were the Members who were charged. What had the hon. and learned Solicitor General said on that subject? He said it would take all day and all night to find out what the charges were. Whatever the charges might be, the Government would not define them; but at least the Irish Members could ask them who the individual Members were who were charged? Now, this question affected, to a large extent, the convenience of individuals in that House, and he wished to warn the Government that if his name was not put in the Schedule of this Bill what he intended to do was to go away for a long holiday. He respectfully submitted to the House that he deserved it, and after a long season of arduous labour he intended to go somewhere for the benefit of his health. If they put him in the Schedule of the Bill he should stop in Ireland and come over to this country when he got his viaticum—that was to say, his means of going and returning—and not before. If they wanted to get him they would have to send over their Inspector, Littlechild, who would take him from Ireland to London for nothing. If his name was put in the Schedule, even if he did not defer his holiday, he should at least abridge it, and although he might leave the country he should not wander beyond easy reach of it. But he did not want it to be said, if he went for two or three weeks—"Oh, Healy has fled from justice." And such charges, as they knew, could be easily made by the hon. and learned Attorney General. It seemed to him that the higher that a man's functions were, and the larger his fees, the more easy it was for him to make charges. Therefore, when he found charges strewn around with the profusion of flowers that bloom in the spring in this book, Parnellism and Crime, if it were only for the sake of giving Members a holiday, and that relaxation which even the Chairman of Committees would be glad of, he trusted that the names of Members who were to have charges brought against them would have their names placed in the Schedule, so that they would know exactly where they stood, and what to do with their time. He would urge the Government, at any rate, to put his name in the Schedule, because he gave them fair warning that he was going away. As a matter of fair play, if they should require the attendance before the Commissioners of large numbers of persons who would be scattered far and wide at the close of this Autumn Sitting—who would go forth, North, South, East, and West for their holidays, although not to shoot grouse, as very few of them had grouse to shoot—put their names in the Bill, and by so doing give them notice that their services would be required within the shores of Great Britain. If the Government did not do that, they would have The Times watching the booking offices to see what became of the Irish Members, and they would have The Times stating—"We find from our respected agent who has attended at the booking office at such-and-such a place that So-and-So has gone away once more to Paris, once more to join with the birds who nestle in that gay capital." He thought that of all the unreasonable proposals he ever heard, it was most unreasonable to expect that the Irish Members would anchor themselves down here in the month of August—he was going to say sweltering, but that was not likely in this climate—pigging three in a bed in the slums of Pimlico, as was once said of the Irish Members, or wasting the American dollars in some palatial home in Belgravia—as was said of them at another time. The Government desired to anchor them down here until the hon. and learned Attorney General got steam and acquired sufficient momentum to enable him to instruct The Times as to what charges should be made, or what persons should be charged. Either the Government knew the culprits, or they did not; either this was a fishing business, or it was not. Members of the Government, and other hon. Members, were at liberty to go away whenever it suited them. They would go shooting their grouse, or go to Norway, or to the Holy Land; but the Irish Members were to stop here in order to be fired at by the blunderbusses of the hon. and learned Attorney General, or, rather, to be drenched from the hose of his liquid manure tank—the sweet smelling reservoir he had dammed up for their edification, and with regard to which those Irish Members were not to receive one word of explanation as to who was the exact party to be bespattered. He said this—that if he was to be attacked, and if an investigation was to be made into his conduct, he was entitled to some knowledge of what was to be done beforehand. They were not to stand there for months to be shot at, whilst Members of the Government were taking their pleasures abroad and recruiting themselves for the Autumn Session. He submitted that out of common courtesy to Members of that House—putting aside altogether the question of decency or propriety—in common courtesy and fairness, the Members of that House—who had been in attendance for so long and had been engaged upon such arduous duties—were entitled to some attention. How did the Government treat their own Members? Why, when they brought charges of corrupt practices and so on against them, they took great care that they should have every notice of the charges which were to be preferred a long time in advance. But the Irish Members, forsooth, were to wait, like the man in the novel, for something to turn up—for the Government to speed their explosive bullets at them, and then, when the Government had lain like Moonlighters behind a hedge with their faces blackened discussing who was to make the charges, at one time from behind the mask of The Times and at another from behind the mask of the hon. and learned Attorney General, the Irish Members were to wait here in town until they heard the explosion, and then they were to come forward in white sheets and submit themselves to the examination of their Conservative Inquisitors. That was a condition which he declined altogether to put himself into. He would not stop within reach of the Commission unless he was told he was wanted; that was a fair challenge. They had put a certain number of names in their charges, or, rather, into this pamphlet, Parnellism and Crime. The hon. and learned Attorney General had found no difficulty, when he had received a certain fee, of mentioning his (Mr. T. M. Healy's) and other persons' names. He had done this at the behest of his masters, The Times. Well, could not the hon. and learned Gentleman's masters put his (Mr. T. M. Healy's) name on record now? The hon. and learned Gentleman, when he desired to do so, and when it was to his interest to do so, found no difficulty in putting his finger upon the name of an accused party. Let him do so now. It was not necessary to this demand to say—"Oh, by-and-bye other accused parties will turn up." If other parties did turn up the Judges would be able to deal with them—if they turned up after the inquiry concerning persons whose names were in the Schedule, the Judges would have no difficulty in stating that they had not been able to complete their inquiry and in obtaining further powers. Hon. Members opposite, who so loved their own comfort and their own ease that they could not sit here to pass the Estimates, the consideration of which was one of their public duties and the highest duty cast upon them, were not the persons who should insist upon large numbers of people waiting to be called before a Commission without being told definitely beforehand that they would be wanted. They were waiting, perhaps, until a man went upon a little holiday, when they would come forward and say—"Oh, now is the time for us to get out a subpœna for him. Now is the time to throw a little mud." Conduct like that was conduct which he, for one, could not sit there and witness without entering his protest against it. But it would be said that the Irish Members were dealing with gentlemen of honour. Yes, very fine gentlemen of honour they had found them—very honourable men—men who met Mr. Walter in their closets, men who received his money and then fulminated these charges, and others who sold these pamphlets 13 to the dozen with 30 per cent over. When they found that these were the characters of the men who were making these charges, they ought not to be slow in considering whether they ought not to take an advantage—even a temporary advantage of this kind—of every opportunity for running away. The Irish Members insisted, therefore, upon knowing who it was that the Government expected to remain at home during the next autumn in order that they, the Government, might hurl their charges at them.

MR. CLANCY (Dublin Co., N.)

said, he thought it a most extraordinary thing that there was no response from the Treasury Bench. He did not know how the Treasury Bench could conceive it at all consistent with their duty to allow the speeches that had been delivered from the Irish Benches to-night to remain without an answer. If he were to interpret the feeling of that side of the House, he should say that since the revelations made by the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury they could come to no other conclusion from the silence of the Ministry than that Mr. Walter was not at present in the House. He (Mr. Clancy) said he would advise the Leader of the House, before this debate wont on much further, to send for Mr. Walter and let them have some answer. If the right hon. Gentleman could not get at Mr. Walter, let him get at the counsel for The Times, who was sitting near him. The right hon. Gentleman could sit closer to him, if he liked; but, at any rate, do not let them allow the scandal to continue of remaining silent when on an occasion of this importance speeches such as they had lately heard were delivered. Do not let the scandal be any longer witnessed of a number of men, who, under ordinary circumstances, were able to answer speeches, and even to give an appearance of answering in a very bad case—let not the scandal be witnessed of these men sitting silent all of a row, like mummies, laughing and pretending not to care for the allegations which had been made against their own honour in this matter. He supposed that if an answer were given to the speeches of the Irish Members, it would be that the Government felt it necessary to refuse the Amendment, as they had refused all other Amendments emanating from the other side of the House. He would repeat what had been already alleged on the Opposition side of the House more than once—namely, that the reason the Government would not accept the Amendment was that The Times would not permit them. The Times on Monday morning had an article, in which it indicated precisely the course of this debate. It reviewed the Amendments then put upon the Paper. There were eight or nine Amendments so discussed, and every one of those, with the exception of two, were declared inadmissible by The Times. Those two Amendments had not yet been reached, and it was very odd that all the Amendments which had been reached had been, as The Times called upon the Government to do, rejected summarily by enormous majorities. It must be, he contended, because The Times would not allow the Government to accept this Amendment, that the Government would not make any answer, but were determined to reject the Amendment without discussion on their side. If the Government could not conveniently consult Mr. Walter or the counsel for The Times, let them, at any rate, call into council that great friend of The Times on the Opposition side of the House—namely, the hon. and learned Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay), and let them so have an answer to the appeal which Irish Members felt it necessary to make. If no answer were given, he should feel bound to move that the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again.

MR. MATTHEWS

There are speeches made in this House, Sir, in such a tone and temper that they do not deserve an answer. The hon. Member opposite who has just sat down has thought fit, in language that I would rather not criticize by any epithet, to heap upon my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House offensive insinuations. ["No, no!"] Yes; and accusations. I say that advisedly, and I do not think that observations of that sort introduced into a serious debate ever deserve or call for answer. As to what has fallen from the hon. and learned Member for Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy) I have listened, as we have all done, with much amusement to the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech, and I am delighted to find that the hon. and learned Member's Friends who sit about him no longer object to the introduction of a little good-humoured banter into what they have previously described as a debate so solemn and serious that no one on the Ministerial side was to be allowed even to smile. With regard to two other speeches we have heard this evening I have not a word to say. [Cheers.] I understand that cheer. One of the speeches I refer to was the speech of the late Lord Mayor of Dublin (Mr. T. D. Sullivan). I can quite understand a speech of that kind coming from an hon. Member protesting in favour of his own innocence, and making a self-laudatory speech, and I do not use that word offensively. With regard to the speech of the Mover of the Amendment, which is the other speech to which I allude, it appears to me that the hon. Member answered his own proposal in a most conclusive manner. The hon. Gentleman read from these articles and these proceedings passages which everyone would admit are passages deserving of the fullest answer. The hon. Gentleman himself read a passage which is the key-note of the whole of these charges which have been the subject-matter of the recent action. I refer to this passage— There are volumes of evidence, and it is being added to every day, to show that the whole organization of the Land League, and its successor the National League, depends on a system of intimidation carried out by most brutal means, and resting ultimately on the sanction of murder. The Irish Home Rule Party glory in being the inventors of this organization, and so on. You could hardly pick out a sentence embodying the whole character of the charges made, and no man is named in connection with these charges. Can the hon. Member suppose that we are going to listen to the appeal.—"Name those you charge under that sweeping allegation?" We charge no one. Is this charge of our contrivance? [Opposition Cheers.] Yes; I am going to meet that proposition. Why, it was only a few months ago upon these very accusations—these accusations in connection with which nobody is named, but which strike vaguely at the whole Party—that hon. Members below the Gangway opposite themselves came down and asked for an inquiry, and now they want us in this House to anticipate the very work that the Commission is to do. It is the Commission which will have to ascertain who, if anybody, is answerable, what persons, if any, belonging to the National League, or the Land League, or the Irish Home Rule Party are fitly described and criticized in The Times, and are contained in that sentence which the hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Sexton) himself read. Why, if we were to name any persons, we should be anticipating and forestalling the very work the Commissioners will have to do. It is for the Commissioners to say that nobody at all belonging to the Land League or the National League are men upon whom these accusations properly rest. We trust that will be the result of this inquiry. The Commissioners may find either, as I say, that there are none of the Party to whom the charges and allegations apply, or it may find against A, but not against B, and for C and not for Z, and so on. But how is this House to fix beforehand the names of those persons who are to be scheduled? You will, from beginning to end of this pamphlet, find allegations made whether the subject-matter of the inquiry is matter that can either be very truly said of any person, or cannot be truly said of any person. There is one other matter to which I should like to allude. It is said that we are resisting the Amendment because we wish to avoid the Report stage of the Bill; but it is not the case, there having been a blank left in the Bill for the names of the Commissioners when the measure was introduced, and that blank having been filled up by an Amendment proposed on behalf of the Government, it is absolutely inevitable that the Report stage should be taken.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

said, the right hon. Gentleman had complimented Members sitting on the Opposition Benches for their good humour in this debate, and in so doing he had thrown a remarkable side light on the genuineness of this whole business on the part of the Government, and had afforded some test of the amount of sincerity there was in relation to these charges. Irish Members were charged with participating in, with complicity with and conniving at, the most serious crimes that could be laid at the door of any man; and the Government, which pretended to believe in these charges, was delighted that those hon. Members were able to discuss them in a spirit of good humour. The right hon. Gentleman had stated that the Government had never made these charges. He wondered how the right hon. Gentleman could have the face to make such a statement as that, when these charges had formed the stock-in-trade of the political Party opposite for years. The only frank speech they had heard from the other side of the House was that of the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Elliott Lees), who had said that they had made these charges to his constituents, and that they repeated them to the House. It was a notorious fact that there was scarcely a Member on the Benches opposite who had not made these charges before his constituents. The forged letter had actually been used as an electioneering placard when the constituency of Taunton was being contested. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) understood that one of the Conservative Members for the Metropolis was so anxious for the enlightenment of his constituents that, though there was no contested election going on, he took the trouble to have published and circulated amongst his constituents a copy of this forged letter. [Cries of "Name!"] He did not wish to appear to be making a personal attack upon anyone opposite, but the fact he had referred to was notorious. He found that these charges had formed a staple of Tory proceedings during the past year and a-half. Then down came the Home Secretary and made a statement as to the absolute impartiality of Her Majesty's Government. Why, did the right hon. Gentleman think the Irish Members were idiots enough to believe that in face of the fact that the Government bad been in connivance—he would not say in consultation—with the Editor of The Times, they were impartial in this matter? He had listened very carefully to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman as he read the passage which charged the whole Home Rule Movement and the whole of the Home Rule Members and associates with complicity in these crimes. Well, did not this extract prove what the Irish Members had been saying all along—namely, that this was not to be an inquiry levelled against Members in that House, but an inquiry into political movements and political organizations? The Irish Members had never asked for this inquiry. They had always refused to have any part in, or responsibility for, any such inquiry. The right hon. Gentleman had given them a history of the rise of this Bill which was as accurate as his story of his relations with Dungarvan and O'Donovan Rossa. When did the Irish Members ask for and demand an inquiry in the interest of the Home Rule Movement? The whole inquiry had a Parliamentary origin in the attacks made upon specified individuals. If that were not the nature of the case, this Bill would have had no existence. They would not have been concerned in this Bill if the charges made had been brought against persons outside the House, for the Government would have said that the charges must be brought before the Criminal Courts of the country to be decided by them. The Homo Secretary had lately had to deal with charges against the police, and had taken up a perfectly justifiable position with regard to them. He had rightly and properly said that he would deal with no charges of a general character. He had said—"Produce your individual case; name your offenders; bring specific charges against them, and then I will order an inquiry." The right hon. Gentleman had stated for once with genuine indignation that he would have nothing to do, and no connivance with, inquiries founded upon vague charges against the police-constables of this City as a body. He insisted upon having the names given; he insisted upon having the charges brought before him, and all the specific details set forth, before he would order an inquiry; but when Members of this House, against whom charges were made, appealed to the Government before inquiry was granted to require specific details to be given, the right hon. Gentleman and his Colleagues refused to listen to them. Members of Parliament were to be refused those rights and privileges which the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary demanded for the commonest police-constables of the Metropolis. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) did not think he ever heard a more unfair discrimination as against Members who happened to be politically opposed to the Government. He would point out how the right hon. Gentleman might get the names of the Members against whom charges might be brought. At page 97 of Parnellism and Crime, O'Donnell v. Walter, this passage occurred— We suspend our studies of Parnellism. They do not affect to be complete. They are made of a cursory examination of a small portion of the published evidence. They have, however, revealed nearly all the chief Members of the first Home Rule Ministry—Mr. Parnell himself, Mr. Justin M'Carthy, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. Sexton, Mr. Arthur O'Connor, Mr. Healy, Mr. Biggar, the Messrs. Redmond, Mr. William O'Brien, and Davitt"— he did not know why Mr. Davitt should not have been treated with the same courtesy as the others— in trade and traffic with avowed dynamiters and known contrivers of murder. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) did not know that he should not feel particularly honoured by being considered a candidate for the first Home Rule Ministry, or that he should necessarily object to being included in the list of those who were said to be "in trade and traffic with avowed dynamitards and known contrivers of murder;" but he thought he might say, on behalf of his hon. Friends the Member for West Belfast (Mr. Sexton), the Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy), the Member for Londonderry (Mr. Justin M'Carthy), the Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), and others, and also for himself, that they had not the least objection to having their names set forth in the Schedule, and of being tried and possibly convicted of the offences named in this charge. So that, so far as they were concerned, do not let anyone try to delude the country into the belief that they were shrinking from this inquiry. If they were shrinking from it, they took a most extraordinary way of showing it. They asked that their names might be put before the world as criminals to be prosecuted, and who were not skulking and shirking an inquiry, to use the words of The Times. If the Government did not think the list of names he had mentioned sufficient, they would not mind the addition of a few more. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, for instance, might add the name of his friend, O'Donovan Rossa; but, so far as he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) and his Friends were concerned, there was not one person who could be added to the list who would object to his name being put upon this Newgate Calendar of the Schedule of the Act. The hon. Member for Longford had asked— Are men who have business in Ireland to be kept hanging about London until The Times and the Government between them make up their minds as to what charges and what persons shall be brought before this tribunal? Here was a charge against the leaders of a political movement; the political existence of some of them might depend upon the result of the inquiry, and yet the Government refused to name, not only the charges to be brought, but the criminals to be charged. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary said the Government were perfectly aware that the mere fact of their having filled in the blank for the names of the Commissioners showed that they did not wish to avoid the Report stage of the Bill, and he had said that, therefore, that was not a reason for the Government refusing Amendments. Well, he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) did not cast a doubt upon that declaration; but not a single Amendment which had come from the Opposition side of the House had met with any encouragement, or even with decent discussion, on the part of the Government. With regard to the difficulties of putting in a Schedule in the Bill, they were all imaginary. He believed that if the Government had assented to reasonable Amendments in the Bill they would have got through the whole discussion in the course of five or six hours. He repudiated entirely all responsibility for any delay which had occurred in the passing of the measure. [Cries of "Oh!"] He did not expect that that statement of his would find credence on the opposite side of the House. He could only make the statement on behalf of his hon. Friends and himself, and he repeated that they entirely repudiated responsibility for any delay or discussion which had taken place on that Bill. They had allowed the Bill to go through the second reading stage with great rapidity—with a rapidity which had since been made a reproach to them. And why had they done this? First, because they heartily and cordially accepted the principle of inquiry—because they had demanded and were ready to accept an inquiry. But they had heard speeches from the right lion. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) and from the Conservative Member for Oldham (Mr. Elliott Lees), in which both agreed with the terms which the Irish Members had laid down. The speech he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) had delivered on the second reading of the Bill contained a number of statements as to the principles which guided the Irish Members, and between those statements and the statements in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham there was scarcely a single real or material difference. The same thing might be said of the speech of the Conservative Member for Oldham, who demanded there should be certain charges specified, and that the inquiry should be confined to those charges which were really considered serious charges of complicity with crime and violence. Irish Members asked for the exclusion of all charges of a political or speculative character, and with these terms both the right hon. Member for West Birmingham and the hon. Member for Oldham cordially agreed. That was the reason why the second reading of the Bill was allowed to pass with little discussion and no Division. But how had the forbearance of Irish Members been rewarded? In the first place, that forbearance had been utilized to make capital to their disadvantage; and, in the next place, the hopes and expectations they founded on the reasonable attitude of supporters of the Government, more especially that of the stable and constant supporter of the Government on the Front Opposition Bench, had been deceived and disappointed; the Government had thrown over their own supporters, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had thrown over himself, and the result of this was that the Parliamentary good faith upon which he and his Friends relied when they allowed the second reading to pass unchallenged had been abused, and they were now met with a non possumus from the Government to every Amendment, however moderate. However, they would continue what he was afraid was a futile and fruitless effort to bring reason to the Government. The Government might try to burke and stifle discussion by a conspiracy of silence, or by other means at their disposal, the sinister nature of which he would not anticipate; but Irish Members had made their case clear before the Committee and before the country by their readiness, nay, by their demand, to have names in the Schedule and the charges specified. They had proved, to the mind of every honourable impartial man, that they were ready to meet face to face, every single one of them, any charges that could be brought against them, their only condition being that the charges should be brought in such a manner that the country would understand them—not mixed with and submerged in a general inquiry into a political organization.

MR. ELLIOTT LEES (Oldham)

said, as allusion had been made to himself, and his remarks of the other night had been misrepresented, he might be allowed to say that on that occasion he appealed to hon. Members not to hamper the progress of the Bill. But what was their attitude on this occa- sion but an attitude of obstruction? He had asked hon. Members to consider this—that if they could quite disprove the charges of complicity with murder made against them the public would think very little of the other charges; and, therefore, he appealed to them to accept the whole inquiry proposed by the Government. They might take little account of the other charges if they could disprove the accusation of complicity with murder. He could quite understand the attitude of a man against whom a trumpery charge was brought shrinking from disclosures that cross-examination might bring about; but what ghastly, fearful revelations those must be before which charges of murder shrank into insignificance! ["Oh, oh!" and Cries of "Explain!" "What do you mean?"] He would explain what he meant. Hon. Members had here the chance of clearing their characters from a charge of complicity with murder; but they shrank from and obstructed that inquiry, because they said they did not want small details connected with their past organization to be brought before the country. Further, he would say this inquiry was undertaken, this proposition was brought forward by the Government, as had been pointed out by the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Hartington) in response to an appeal from hon. Members opposite, and he would remind the House that they had to consider not only fair play to hon. Members opposite—they had given him credit for a desire to act in a spirit of fairness—they had also to consider fair play towards The Times newspaper. The question whether there should be any inquiry into charges made against hon. Members of the House or not was a question upon which laymen—Members who were not lawyers—were quite as competent to express an opinion as lawyers, but the question as to the mode in which those charges should be investigated and the truth discovered was a question upon which lawyers were specially qualified to give an opinion. Trained lawyers had given opinions at variance one with the other; and hon. Members surely could not complain of him if, on a question where he had to seek counsel's advice, he preferred to take the legal opinion from his own side.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN (Birmingham, W.)

said, that the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) and other hon. Members had referred to the speech he made the other night as a justification for the present Amendment. As he had pointed out, he was very hopeful that some agreement might have been come to between both sides of the House for some limitation of the charges in this case. Had it been possible in any way to define more clearly the charges brought against hon. Members he would have been glad to see it done. But no Amendment had hitherto been proposed which in the slightest degree carried out the limitations which he expressed his willingness to accept. When the hon. Member for the Scotland Division referred to his speech as a justification for the present Amendment he seemed to forget what he had said. He urged Her Majesty's Government not to accept any proposal limiting the persons who might be accused, and he justified his argument by references to previous Commissions. More particularly he pointed out that, in the case of the Sheffield Commission, nothing whatever of importance would have been discovered if any such limitation had been accepted. [An hon. MEMBER: No one was accused there.] [Another hon. MEMBER: It was only in one town.] It was extremely difficult to take up these interruptions, some of which were inconsistent. One hon. Member said that no one was accused there, but he did not see what bearing that had on the present argument. It would be easy for the Government to take out every name mentioned in The Times articles and put them in a Schedule—it would be perfectly easy; but, under those circumstances, it might be that the result of the inquiry would be to exclude those who were guilty. It might be, as he had pointed out, that in this inquiry, as in the case of the Sheffield Commission, the person or persons who were really guilty, and whom the whole House would desire should be brought to justice, were not the persons who were accused. Under those circumstances, it was perfectly absurd on the part of hon. Members concerned, who professed their innocence, which he was perfectly ready to believe—it was perfectly absurd of them to endeavour to make a limitation which would exclude from the inquiry those who were the guilty persons. For that there were some guilty persons in this matter there could be no doubt. [An hon. MEMBER: Guilty of forgery.] There could be no doubt that they had an agitation professing to be Constitutional which shaded down by imperceptible degrees into the most flagrant crime. Hon. Members below the Gangway said that they were not responsible for that, and that they were entirely innocent. He hoped they were—he was quite willing to believe they were; but that was the more reason why this inquiry, once instituted, should go to the bottom of the matter, and not only find out who were innocent, but who were guilty. He rose for the purpose of protesting against the references to his observations by the hon. Member for the Scotland Division, and to point out that whether the argument he used was sound or not it was in opposition to this Amendment.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

said, he was quite ready to acknowledge the fair spirit of the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Elliott Lees), and had no desire to recede from what he had said. But if he mentioned the hon. Member in connection with any complaint, it would be because he had not used his influence with his own Party to induce them to accept the sound and fair principle he laid down in his speech on the second reading of the Bill. He might remind the House of what the hon. Member then said. He did not hear the speech—it was his loss—and he had some difficulty in finding a report of it, because, the speech being fair in tone, and showing something like a spirit of impartiality and fair play to Irish Members, it was notoriously doctored and considerably suppressed in The Times report. The point he was endeavouring to impress upon the Committee was that the attitude of Irish Members in allowing the second reading to pass without Division was largely due to such speeches as that of the hon. Member and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. The hon. Member for Oldham said— It may be true that the strongest part of the case is the letters which are said to have been written by the hon. Member for Cork. Hon. Members opposite say—'You are going to put a lot matter into the inquiry, and the letters will be burked and stifled in the midst of it all, while the point to which the country is looking is that of the letters.' That was exactly the point of Irish Members, stated tersely and clearly. The hon. Member went on to say— I fully admit the force of that objection; but, on the other hand, if they can succeed in disproving the genuine character of these letters they would cause a tremendous revulsion of feeling in the country. Let the inquiry, then, be first directed to this point, and the authenticity of the letters being disproved, then let the Government, if it liked, go into extraneous matter. That was the whole case of the Irish Members. They took up the position the hon. Member indicated, and said the letters had excited the interest of the country, and the charges contained in those letters they were called upon to meet; let the definite charges connected with the letters be put into the Bill, and not a roving, fishing inquiry directed not against Members, but against a political movement. He acknowledged the fair position taken up by the hon. Member, and regretted that the hon. Gentleman's Leaders were not so well advised as to accept the position. Then, to turn to the speech of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham, he might say that if he showed a certain shortness of memory as to the right hon. Gentleman's proposals and speeches, he might be excused in view of the extraordinary shortness of memory the right hon. Gentleman himself displayed on the same subject. The right hon. Gentleman said, in his speech on the second reading— It may be said on behalf of hon. Members—'We do not want this inquiry to last for an indefinite time, and therefore we do not want to go into mere offences against property, into Boycotting, and matters of that kind. They are illegal; they are crimes in a technical sense, but they are not the sort of crimes into which inquiry is now demanded. Then the right hon. Gentleman added— Well, exclude them by all means. I certainly think matters of that sort would be altogether irrelevant to the main object of the inquiry, and I do not see why the inquiry should not be confined to general charges of real importance affecting complicity with crime on the part of hon. Members, and with crime of personal violence and outrage. The right hon. Gentleman said he stood by those words; but his difficulty appeared to have arisen from the fact that nobody had ingenuity enough—not even in the House, where there were so many eminent masters of language—to frame a form of words to carry out that perfectly intelligible principle. The right hon. Gentleman, however, did less than justice to himself and to the ingenuity and draftsmanship of the House when he attributed his difficulty to such a cause. Moreover, it wasn ot correct—the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries did carry out the principle, and almost in the words used in the right hon. Gentleman's speech. The right hon. Gentleman had now endeavoured to sustain his consistency while opposing an Amendment that almost borrowed the words of his own speech to carry out his own idea. The right hon. Gentleman said he wished to include in the scope of the inquiry all men, whether Members of Parliament or not, whether guilty or innocent. Irish Members were grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the doubting faith he had expressed in their innocence. Hon. Members generally might be thankful that they had seen the glorious day when one Member of the House could say of other Members—"After all, we are not convinced that you are all foul murderers." Representatives of Ireland were more than grateful for the compliment conveyed. What was the avowed origin and purpose of the Bill? Not to inquire into the acts of Frank Byrne, or the inflammatory writings of Patrick Ford, or the guilt of other persons in America. What would be the use of such an inquiry? If they were found guilty of any crime the inquiry would not bring them under the sword of justice. That was not the question the country was interested in; it was not a question of the guilt of men in America, but of men in the House. What was the whole case of The Times; and why were all these charges made? He did not suppose they were due to personal animosity to his hon. Friend the Member for Cork and his associates; he would acquit the writers in The Times of any personal animosity against men whom perhaps they had never seen and with whom they had no acquaintance; these attacks were made as against leaders of a political movement, as against Members of a Party in the House; they were made clearly and avowedly for the purpose of showing that a movement having such leaders was not a movement deserving the support of honest and honourable men. That was the whole origin of the attack, and of this proposal for inquiry, and the right hon. Gentleman was only endeavouring to lead the House and the country astray on a false issue when he raised the question of the guilt or innocence of Frank Byrne and the revolutionary or inflammatory writings of Patrick Ford. The Bill had really nothing to do with those matters; the whole question upon which the country was excited was the guilt or innocence of men who sat as Representatives in the House, responsible for the legislation of the whole Empire as well as their own country. It was unfair and uncandid that Members should endeavour to lead the country on a false issue away from the definite charges against Members of Parliament to charges against other persons in all parts of the world.

MR. W. H. SMITH

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

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

Question put accordingly, "That the word 'certain' stand part of the Clause."

The Committee divided:—Ayes 259; Noes 204: Majority 55.—(Div. List, No. 253.)

SIR JOHN SIMON

said, that in moving the omission of the words "other persons," it was necessary to refer to the circumstances under which the Bill was introduced. Although those circumstances had been referred to already, he should not be able to explain the reason for his Amendment without reference to them. He need not remind the House that after the appearance of certain letters in The Times last year, the hon. Member for Cork came down and moved for a Committee to inquire into their authenticity. ["No, no!"] The noble Lord contradicted that statement.

THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON

The hon. Member never moved for a Committee of Inquiry.

SIR JOHN SIMON

said, he did not, in the technical sense, it was true; but he made an appeal to the Government for such an inquiry, and the appeal was refused. The point was that the appeal was in reference to the authenticity of the letters that appeared in The Times. Then what happened? A trial took place between a gentleman formerly a Member of the House and the proprietors of The Times, and during that trial these letters were produced as evidence, and formed matter of comment in the speech of the Attorney General. The hon. Member for Cork in the House challenged the authenticity of those letters, declared them to be forgeries, and asked the First Lord of the Treasury to grant a Committee of Inquiry into their authenticity. The authenticity of the letters was the subject of the hon. Member's request last year and during the present Session; but that request was refused. A few days later the First Lord came down to the House, and said that in response to the request of the hon. Member he was prepared to bring in a Bill to establish a Commission of Inquiry into the letters and other matters that formed the subject of the Attorney General's speech at the trial. Now, it was not in response to the request of the hon. Member for Cork that the Bill was introduced. That hon. Member did not ask for a Commission, but for a Committee of the House; nor did he ask for an inquiry into the conduct of any other persons than himself and his Colleagues. It was in strict conformity to usage and custom that the hon. Member made his request. When a charge was made against any of its Members, the House took cognizance of it. The character of its Members was, in a sense, its property, and it was bound to see that right was done. That was the Constitutional course that the hon. Member took when he confined his request to the charges concerning himself and his Colleagues, as a matter concerning the honour and dignity of the House, and with which the House was the proper tribunal to deal. The First Lord of the Treasury must not suppose that it was any disrespect to himself when he (Sir John Simon) challenged his conduct as unconstitutional and unwarrantable in handing over an inquiry from the proper tribunal to a Commission to inquire into the conduct, not only of the Members concerned, but that of other persons with whom those Members might or might not have been in communication. It was not a fair response to the appeal of the hon. Member for Cork. It might be said that if the conduct of other persons was not included in the Reference to the Commission, circumstances might, in the course of the inquiry, come to light in reference to other persons; that if those "other persons" were excluded from the scope of the inquiry, the Commissioners would be debarred from inquiring into, perhaps, the most criminal acts. But that would not be so. He appealed to the Attorney General, or to any lawyer in the House, if, in the course of an inquiry of this nature into matters affecting the conduct of Members of the House, anything were to come to light showing that there had been connection between them and persons guilty of criminal conduct, though the conduct of these persons did not form the subject of inquiry, whether an investigation of these acts would not fall within the duty of the Commission? Often in a Court of Law, when in course of evidence matters were disclosed as to persons other than the one immediately concerned in the trial, such matters, if they affected the guilt or innocence of the person on his trial, were not and could not be excluded. So in this Bill, if the terms of the inquiry were confined to Members of Parliament, and if any circumstances arose in the course of inquiry as to the actions of other persons in relation to these charges that threw light on the inquiry, though those persons were outside the terms of the inquiry, the Commissioners would be entitled to go into the whole matter, and ascertain the truth. But he contended that this proposed Commission was not a response to the appeal of the hon. Member for Cork. That hon. Member applied for an inquiry into the conduct of himself and the Members by his side; he did not ask for an inquiry into the history of the last nine years' agitation in Ireland. Although he did not impute any improper motive to the Government, he would say that if they were trying to induce the public to form an unfavourable opinion of their motives, they could not have taken a course more calculated to do so than the course they had adopted; for instead of the Committee which the hon. Member for Cork asked for, they proposed to establish a Commission of Inquiry to go over the whole history of agitation in Ireland for the last nine years, and to arraign, perhaps, before that Commission persons with whom hon. Members below the Gangway had nothing to do. What did the public care about the doings of Rossa, of Egan, of Byrne, or of any other persons on the other side of the Atlantic? What the country was interested in knowing was whether the hon. Member for Cork wrote the letters that were attributed to him in The Times. That was the head and front of the whole case—the only question in which the country took the slightest interest. But it seemed to him that the case of the letters had already broken down, and the Government wanted something else to fall back upon in justification of themselves, and to keep themselves right with The Times newspaper. The tendency of the inquiry was to throw an unfair odium on those hon. Gentlemen, and it was for that reason he protested against other persons being included in the Bill. The public did not care one straw about the inclusion of other persons. Their acts had been reported over and over again in connection with proceedings in Ireland, and it was, therefore, no enlightenment to the country or the House to go into those cases again. What the country was interested in was, whether the letters attributed to the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) were or were not forgeries. When the Government stated that they were not the accusers of the hon. Gentleman, he (Sir John Simon) denied that statement. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General had stated that evening that the Government did not bring the charges against hon. Members. No; but they adopted them, and so placed themselves in the position of accusers. Notwithstanding their denials, they stood there as the prosecutors of hon. Gentlemen.

Amendment proposed, in page 1, line 19, to leave out the words "and other persons."—(Sir John Simon.)

Question proposed, "That the words 'and other persons' stand part of the Clause."

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir EDWARD CLARKE)

said, there was really no encouragement to the Government to repeat denials which were met in the way in which their denials were met by the hon. and learned Gentleman. He (Sir Edward Clarke) had stated yesterday, and he had stated in the course of the evening, that the charges were not originally made by the Government ["No, no!"] No one could deny that. The charges were originally made in articles which appeared in The Times newspaper. Now, his hon. and learned Friend had said that the Government had adopted the charges, and made themselves accusers by instituting these proceedings. The Government had instituted no proceedings at all. The appeal to the Government proposed that proceedings of a particular kind should be instituted for the discovery of the truth in this matter. They believed that the proceedings which were proposed would not effect a satisfactory investigation of the matter. As he had said, he was sorry that the denial which the Government had made was not more fully accepted than it had been by the hon. and learned Gentleman; but he repeated in the most distinct way that the Government did not originate the charges, and that they had not made themselves responsible for them. They were not, and did not mean to be, accusers in this matter. What they had done was to offer a tribunal which should, as they believed, do full justice, and give satisfaction to all parties by ascertaining the truth. It appeared to him that the arguments of the hon. and learned Gentleman would have been more properly used upon the Motion for the second reading of the Bill; and, moreover, they had travelled over ground which had been traversed on another Amendment, and hon. Members could hardly expect the Government to reply to them again.

MR. SHAW LEFEVRE (Bradford, Central)

said, that this Amendment was one of the most important that had been moved to the Bill. He was one of the few Members of the House who had read through the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General, and he ventured to say that the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman contained hundreds of allegations against persons other than Members of the House, and what they had to consider was whether these allegations should be submitted to the proposed tribunal. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General had stated that the Bill was drawn up to meet the case of hon. Members below the Gangway. But those hon. Members asked that there might be a Committee of the House instituted to investigate their case; they did not ask that the cases of other persons should be inquired into in addition to their own. What hon. Gentlemen on those Benches said was that it would not be fair to include other persons in the Bill who were not Members of the House, and who could not reply to remarks made with respect to them. The Attorney General said—and lie would quote this as an illustration— I will next refer to a case at Woodford, which shows that there has been continuity of action between the Land League and the National League. It has been proved over and over again in the House of Commons that the Land League and the National League were practically the same. Now, at Woodford, in Galway, on December 18, 1885, a meeting was held, and John Roche and Father Egan recommended Boycotting. After some of Father Egan's remarks there were cries of 'Finlay.' This Finlay had been a soldier, but was then a process-server. John Roche said—'The landlords had their "Balaclava" serving processes, but that the people would have their "Fontenoy."' On the 26th of December, 1885, the windows of Finlay's house were broken. On the 9th of January, 1886, he became strictly Boycotted, and on the 3rd of March, 1886, he was shot dead. Now, the implication was that one sentence in the speech of Mr. John Roche, made on the 18th September, was the cause of the murder of Finlay three months afterwards. Did hon. Members opposite really believe that to be so? [Cries of "Yes!"] He (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) happened to know something about this John Roche; he had made inquiries about him. It appeared to him that Mr. John Roche was one of the "other persons" included in the Bill. That was an illustration of the kind of cases which would be tried before the tribunal, and it would be extremely hard to bring people of the kind forward, and put them to the enormous expense of defending themselves with respect to matters which were known to all the world, and on which they might have been prosecuted at the time. They were known to the authorities, who might have brought them before the tribunals of the country. [Cries of "Question!"] It appeared to him that the remarks he was now making were, if he might say so, perfectly relevant to the Amendment before the Committee.

THE CHAIRMAN

said, they were perfectly relevant to the case of other persons being brought before the Committee; but he had understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that he was going further.

MR. SHAW LEFEVRE

said, it was extremely hard that cases of this kind should be tried before the Commission. But there were very many other cases mentioned, all of which were known to the authorities, and which might have been tried before the tribunals of the country at the time that they occurred. He asked whether such cases as that were to be tried under all the disadvantages of their being brought forward in this country, where the parties concerned would have no opportunity of being heard by counsel? In the particular case of Mr. Roche, he undertook to say that he had not the means of appearing before a tribunal by counsel. He knew that the poor man had been ruined in health and fortune from having been sent to prison three times under the Coercion Act most unjustly. [Cries of "No!"] He was using this argument so that no injustice might be done by bringing such cases before the Commission. There were, at least, 100 charges of the hon. and learned Attorney General, every one of which was similar to that he had mentioned. He believed that there were many other causes for these murders and outrages; and if anyone would look into the history of Ireland, they would, unfortunately, find that whenever there had been a bad season, and whenever landlords had been evicting their tentants, agrarian murders had taken place, and he had no doubt that the same cause might have acted in the cases referred to. But he asked whether the Commission was to go into a historical inquiry as to the causes of agrarian crime during the last four or five years in Ireland? If so, it seemed to him that the inquiry was an entirely unlimited one, and could not be conducted without a great deal of injustice to the members of the various Land Leagues, which were practically charged with participation in murder. But when hon. Members looked at the statements of the hon. and learned Attorney General, they would find innumerable cases of the same nature. He believed that the House desired, and that the country desired, that an opportunity should be given to Members of the House to have the charges against them tried and sifted to the bottom; but he did not believe the country wished that the Commission should go into a vast number of other cases, most of which were fully known at the time they occurred, and might have been tried before the ordinary tribunals of the country. For his own part, he was most desirous that there should be a full inquiry into the conduct of Members of that House. He believed that to have been the real object of the agitation made by the hon. Members in question when they originally asked for a Committee of the House. They were quite content that their conduct should be inquired into by a tribunal, but they did not think it would be just or right that there should be an inquiry into the enormous number of other matters which had occurred in Ireland within the last four or five years.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

said, he thought the reply of the hon. and learned Solicitor General to the hon. and learned Gentleman who had moved the Amendment (Sir John Simon) was not quite respectful to the Committee, because he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) ventured to say that the hon. and learned Gentleman's Amendment was of the most important kind. He would point out that the hon. and learned Solicitor General made no attempt—in fact, he disclaimed making any—to answer the arguments of the hon. and learned Member for Dewsbury. He said the matter had been dealt with already, and required no further attempt to argue it on his side. That, he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) ventured to say, was entirely inaccurate. On the 12th July the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. H. Smith) announced the intention of the Government with regard to the Bill; and his statement was confined entirely to a Bill relating to Members of Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman now said that he meant to have expressed in it the inclusion of other persons. It was a very great pity that the right hon. Gentleman's phraseology did not coincide with his intentions, for he allowed the House to believe for 24 or 48 hours that the Bill was the Bill which hon. Members asked for, in order that the charges against Members of Parliament might be inquired into. It was a very curious circumstance that the interview with the proprietor of The Times took place in the interval between the first announcement of the Bill and the amended announcement. It seemed to him, having regard to the tactics of The Times, that it was, at least, a most extraordinary coincidence that the right hon. Gentleman——

MR. W. H. SMITH

I beg to say that that is perfectly inaccurate.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

said, the right hon. Gentleman might have allowed him to finish his sentence. What was the date of the interview which took place? He understood that the statement of the right hon. Gentleman was made on Thursday, the 12th of July; that the interview took place on the following day, and that it was on the following day that the House heard of the inclusion of the words "and other persons."

MR. W. H. SMITH

That is entirely inaccurate.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

said, he did not object to the right hon. Gentleman's interruption; but he thought the more orderly and intelligible course would be for him to stand up and correct the statement made. He should be quite willing to accept the correction. Whether the right hon. Gentleman was influenced or not he would not say, but would point out that the second draft of the Bill was not that which the right hon. Gentleman at first announced to the House. That announcement was first made to the House on Thursday, the 12th of July, and he would call attention to this—that on Friday, the 13th of July, an article appeared in The Times, which said— But since the proposal has been made on behalf of the Government—— What proposal? Why, that he was alluding to, for an inquiry into charges against Members of Parliament, and them alone. The Times continued— We, at least, are prepared to accept it, provided it is so framed as to subject to investigation the whole mass of facts involved in our charges against Mr. Parnell and his Party and brought before the Court, although, unfortunately, not examined in the course of Mr. O'Donnell's recent action. And so they had The Times newspaper accepting the original draft of the Bill—namely, that which dealt entirely with the charges and allegations against Members of Parliament. Again, the title of the Bill was "Members of Parliament (Charges and Allegations) Bill." If the Bill was to be enlarged in the direction which the words "and other persons" imply, it was clear that this title was an entire misnomer. It was a Bill directed against a political organization, and a movement in which a certain number of Members of Parliament were engaged, and millions of other people as well. Such was the history of this extraordinary proceeding on the part of the Government. He now turned to another article of The Times, which appeared on the 17th of July, and in which it was said— We have only to say, so far as we are concerned, that the proposal which we unreservedly accepted last week, waiving our rights as ordinary citizens, is that which the Government placed on the Paper, and no other. It must be observed that the language of the Bill is to inquire into— Charges and allegations made against certain Members of Parliament and other persons. And the article went on to say— That implied that the subject of investigation, so far as other persons are concerned, is their conduct in relation to Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary Colleagues. That was the first allusion to the fact that this inquiry included Members of Parliament and other persons. If the Government were willing to limit the inquiry, in accordance with the dictum of The Times, so as to confine the inquiry into the charges against "other persons," to the connection of such other persons with the charges against hon. Members, it would not be necessary to retain the words "other persons," at all. Charges and allegations against Members of Parliament could not be examined unless there was some examination into charges against other persons who had been associated with them. After the speeches which had been delivered from the Treasury Bench, he could not put so innocent or limited an interpretation upon the meaning of the words as was placed upon them by The Times itself. He did not believe the Government intended to confine the investigation as to "other persons" to those who had been associated with the Members of Parliament. What the Government wanted was a rambling and roving investigation, which would take in numbers of persons who had not been associates of Members of Parliament at all. Such a purpose was, in the first place, entirely alien and contradictory to the original proposal of the Government; and, in the second place, it was grossly unfair and unjust to the Members of Parliament involved. Why should they be delayed in proving their innocence of the charges made against them by an inquiry into a Boycotting case in Kerry, or a murder somewhere else, or the charges made by The Times against Mr. John Roche? He believed the charges against Mr. Roche to be most unjust and unfounded. But what had the Irish Members to do with the charge against him? He was, in Ireland, subject to the ordinary law. He had been subjected also to the extraordinary law, having been three times in gaol. He had been almost ruined in fortune and in health. He had escaped the fate of John Mandeville by the very narrowest and closest shave. It was quite possible that he had not entirely escaped, as it was said that his life was in the greatest danger still. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) hoped the Chief Secretary for Ireland would not, however, have against him a second crime like that connected with the death of John Mandeville. What the Irish Representatives were concerned with was the charges against Members of the House of Commons. He conceded to the Government the right to investigate charges against other persons in their relation to the charges against the Irish Members; but he held that they could do so without the use of those words at all. If the Government would agree to limit the investigation to the charges against Members of Parliament, and against other persons in relation to the charges against those Members, the discussion on the Amendment would stop in the course of five minutes. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) and other hon. Members had frequently referred to the Sheffield rattening inquiry. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) had before him the terms of Reference with respect to that inquiry. Its main purpose was to inquire into the rules and organizations of trade societies and other associations, and power was given to the Commissioners to suggest any improvements that might be made in the law on the subject. The Sheffield Commission was avowedly one to inquire into an organization; but this Bill had had its birth in charges against individual Members of that House. Under these circumstances, it was the falsest of false analogies to defend the Bill, which arose out of charges against persons, by reference to a Commission which was an inquiry into a great organization. The Sheffield Commissioners had power to suggest means of improving and bettering the relations between employers and employed. Would the Government adopt a similar provision in the present case, and allow the Commissioners to inquire, not merely into the Land League and the National League, but into the land history of Ireland? He would ask the First Lord of the Treasury (Mr. W. H. Smith) to candidly consider whether it was fair to ask the Irish Members to consent to an investigation born of charges against particular Members, but spreading over a political movement 10 years in duration, and to shut out their counter case, which was based upon the landlord tyranny of Ireland? Let the Government follow the analogy of the Sheffield Commission, and inquire not merely into the charges of intimidation against the poor, but into acts of tyranny and oppression on the part of the rich and powerful. Let them give the Irish Members an opportunity of making out their counter case, and showing that, if there had been acts of lawlessness in Ireland, they had been the result of no organization whatever, but had been the children of the terrible tyranny, oppression, and plunder to which the Irish people had been subjected for a long period of years. He thought he had proved his case, and had shown that if the Government were to be true to their own first intentions in that House, they would knock out the words "other persons" either as superfluous or mischievous.

MR. W. H. SMITH

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

THE CHAIRMAN

withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.

Debate resumed.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, he could quite understand the anxiety of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury to close the discussion. He could quite understand the results upon the right hon. Gentleman's conscience of his interview with Mr. Walter, and his apprehensions lest that matter should be further probed during the course of the debate. He asked the right hon. Gentleman what was the date of his interview with Walter? The right hon. Gentleman said they must be fair to The Times and Walter. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it was fair to Walter to suggest that, though he was influenced in no degree by Walter's visit, yet Walter visited him for the purpose of corrupting him——

THE CHAIRMAN

I must ask the hon. and learned Member not to abuse the extension of time that has been given, but to address himself to the Question.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, the point of his observation was this. His charge was that on a given day the words "and other persons" were added to the Bill, and he sought for an explanation of the enlargement of the ambit of the Bill in the interview of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. H. Smith) with Walter. The right hon. Gentleman, in his first address to the House on that subject, never mentioned "other persons;" but, on a particular date, they heard of those words having birth in the Minerva-like brain of the right hon. Gentleman. Under these circumstances, he asked who begot those children of the right hon. Gentleman? He (Mr. T. M. Healy) said they were begotten by Walter in conjunction with the right hon. Gentleman. [Ministerial cries of "Divide!"] He supposed that was the way they would be treated by the Commission. Gentlemen opposite were setting an example to their Judges. He supposed that the witnesses brought forward by those who were accused would be shut out, and that charges would be made behind the backs of those against whom they were directed. In response to the exhibition of British fair play which had just been forthcoming, he asked the right hon. Gentleman who had illustrated his view of fair play by moving the closure to tell the House what was the object of his interview with Walter? Did Walter call to inquire about the right hon. Gentleman's health, or to ask how the sale of Parnellism and Crime was getting on? On a given day, the date of which approxi- mated with the visit of Walter, this idea about "other persons" took its rise in the right hon. Gentleman's brain. The idea was the idea of Walter, but the Bill was the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury (Mr. W. H. Smith) and of hon. Gentlemen and noble Lords who constituted the Liberal Unionist Party. The noble Marquess the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington) and others must know that the Irish Members accepted the Bill in good faith, because it was confined to Members of Parliament—and surely the crimes of 86 men were a pretty large order. [Ministerial Cheers.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite cheered that; then why did they not stick to the Nationalist Members? Would the jocose hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson) vote for the Amendment? That hon. and gallant Gentleman admitted that the crimes of the Nationalist Members were a sufficient matter to be inquired into. When the Nationalist Members found the Unionist Party declaring themselves willing to give them that inquiry, and when they asked what was Walter doing in the closet of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, was it to be supposed that they would allow themselves to be put off with the explanation that he was inquiring into the circulation of The Times? The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury had got up and made explanations which he (Mr. T. M. Healy) regarded as shuffling. The right hon. Gentleman had said things beneath his breath; he had made a thousand contortions of uneasiness, and he had wound up by attempting to apply the closure. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) asked the right hon. Gentleman, if he was not ashamed of his interview with Walter, to tell the Committee what took place at it. He would suggest, in order that they might get at the bottom of this conspiracy about "other persons," that a clause should be inserted in the Bill giving the Commissioners power to find out how those words got into it, and how the counsel for The Times in the case of "O'Donnell v. Walter and another" obtained possession of certain documents which were supposed to be in the Government archives. The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury posed in that House as the old Roman father—full of frankness and full of the milk of human kindness. Let them confer on him all the great virtues to which he laid claim; let them acknowledge that, with the spiritual eye, they could see a halo and a nimbus round his respected features. He asked the right hon. Gentleman to tell the Committee on what date he agreed to the insertion of the words "other persons." There was, at the present moment, a deep shadow resting upon Mr. Walter, of The Times. Either he went to the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, and asked him to insert "other persons" in the Bill, or he did not. If his visit was made with the purpose of influencing the right hon. Gentleman, he (Mr. T. M. Healy) could understand why the right hon. Gentleman refused to state its object. If, however, it was an innocent visit, and had no reference to that Bill, the right hon. Gentleman would have no difficulty in making a clean breast of it, and stating what occurred. What would be said of parties in that House who were supposed to be incriminated if they went sneaking to the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury and asked to be let off by reason of ancient friendship, or by reason of the sense of favours to come—thirteen to the dozen, or fourteen to the dozen, or otherwise? It was a remarkable thing that the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury should have received Walter under the circumstances of the case. Walter was in the position, as far as the Nationalist Members were concerned, of an accused criminal. He was accused of perjury; he was accused of conspiracy; he was practically accused of getting up crimes like those of Titus Oates. And where did he find harbour, refuge, and counsel? In the chamber of the First Lord of the Treasury. If Walter did not know he had a friend and counsellor in the right hon. Gentleman, why did he visit him? There could have been no good or proper motive in the visit. It must have been a malignant visit. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) said nothing about the state of the mind of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, but, as far as Walter was concerned, the visit must have been undertaken with a bad and evil motive. The Party opposite were not ashamed to make grave charges of murder against Irish Members whom they endeavoured to shout down. ["Oh, oh!"] Those who made the charges and assisted the authors of those charges were not ashamed to gag those who were accused, by the application of the closure, in order to shut out discussion of their own doubtful acts. ["Oh, oh!"] Leaving that point, he came to another suggested by the Solicitor General and by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham. It was said—[Cries of "Divide!"]—if he was interrupted by the closure, he would accept that as a main force procedure, but meanwhile would talk so long as he had anything to say. It was said that Irish Members were willing last year that these matters in relation to other persons should form a subject of inquiry before a Committee. This was the view taken by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, but that right hon. Gentleman had wholly misconceived the position and the incidents of last year. The right hon. Gentleman had been such a success as a Fishery Commissioner that he did not hesitate to pronounce judgment in reference to all "fishing" Commissions. ["Oh, oh!" and "Question!"] He said that last year there were no proposals to limit the inquiry when certain allegations were made regarding the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon), now in gaol; but what were the facts? A debate was started by the hon. Baronet the Member for North Antrim (Sir Charles Lewis), and when he had made his Motion the Solicitor General carried an Amendment declaring there was no Breach of Privilege, and to this an Amendment was moved by the right hon. Gentleman who led the Opposition to refer the allegations against the hon. Member for East Mayo to a Select Committee. It was a wholly different set of facts. The hon. Baronet the Member for North Antrim had moved that the allegations constituted a Breach of Privilege——

THE CHAIRMAN

This is very remote from the Amendment before the Committee.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, he would, then, come immediately to the point. He had been considerably impeded by interruptions from hon. Gentlemen opposite. What he was endeavouring to say was that it was not the case that last year they were willing to refer vague and indefinite charges to a Select Committee. What they were willing to do was to refer certain specific matters and allegations respecting themselves; they never suggested that a Committee should inquire into charges affecting A, B, and C. In reference to the unfairness of introducing these words "other persons," he would take an illustration applicable to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham himself; it was a convenient way of bringing to the mind of the right hon. Gentleman the feelings of Irish Members, if such treatment were meted out to him. Some two or three years ago allegations were made against the right hon. Gentleman by the noble Lord the Member for Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill) that he had produced certain false affidavits. Supposing the right hon. Gentleman had asked that his conduct should be investigated by a Select Committee, and the Government had said—"We will grant a Select Committee, but we will join with the Reference to your action Instructions to investigate the character of the persons alleged to have made the false affidavits"—the persons in question were, he believed, a certain number of prize fighters at Aston—would Members of the House have cared twopence about the investigation into the character and offences of the Aston prize fighters? The right hon. Gentleman would naturally have denounced the proposal, and the House would have discarded it. Take another illustration. Supposing there had been a pamphlet issued containing serious allegations against the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, and suppose that in the allegations other members of his family were included, and that the allegations were issued under high authority, say, for instance, that of the Judge Advocate General, and suppose the right hon. Gentleman should say that these charges and allegations were made by a political opponent, and for political motives, and ask for an inquiry, and to this the Government were to say—"Oh, no; we do not want to inquire what you did, but we want to know what your brother-in-law did, or your firm did, what 'Nettlefold' or the 'and Co.' did," the right hon. Gentleman would at once challenge the fairness of such a proposal as that, and even his most prejudiced opponent would be with him, and would repudiate the idea that the right hon. Gentleman was responsible for the offences of other members of his family. But what was now the position of the right hon. Gentleman? He said—"We want to get at the truth, we want to get at the causes of crime." But why was that not done before the publication of these forged letters? Why seize upon the demand for an inquiry into the authenticity of these letters to investigate everything in the history of the Land Movement? This was not treating Irish Members with fair play or candour; it was not treating them as other Members would be treated were they attacked in a similar manner; but it was treating them as Irishmen had always been treated, and always would be treated to the end of the chapter until Irishmen had the management of their own affairs. They were treated as inferiors, as victims to be worried, and every opportunity was availed of to throw any aspersion upon their political reputation. It was vain to expect fair play; the Government played with loaded dice after secret conference with Walter, the alleged forger. He challenged the Government to investigate their whole lives and political transactions so far back as they liked; but no, the Government would have inquiry associated with other persons unnamed, some in America, some at the Cape of Good Hope, some living, some dead; he did not know where inquiry was to stop. It would include, perhaps, the late Mr. E. Dwyer Gray and the conduct of the newspaper with which he was associated. The respected gentleman was dead; but no matter, the inquiry might embrace living and dead, every country and all time. Was this British generosity and fair play, to slink off from a challenge into this vague allusion to other persons? He cared not for "other persons." If other persons had done wrong, there were laws to punish them. What he took to be the motive and mainspring of this Bill was that the House was concerned in the honour of its Members. When their characters were impugned, they asked for the chance of clearing them; but no, the Government were off on an inquiry into something that happened at Loughrea, at Lough Mask, or a thousand other things with which time would be taken up. The main purpose of the Bill was changed on that fatal interview between the First Lord and the man who published the forged letters which led to the introduction of this extraneous foreign matter. The First Lord had now the opportunity he said he was going to give Irish Members before the Commission; let him now, instead of moving the closure, get up and clear his own character. Their characters, forsooth, they were to have an opportunity of clearing along with those of "other persons;" but the right hon. Gentleman had heard what their opinion was of his interview with Walter; let him be frank and honest, and, standing at the Table for once without thinking of the closure, clear his own character.

MR. PARNELL moved to report Progress. He did so on the ground that the House had now been sitting for over 11 hours, and had arrived at a period of the night when the most important Amendment of the hon. and learned Gentleman, an Amendment directed to one of the leading provisions of the Bill which dealt with a matter of great moment, could not be profitably discussed. He did so, also, on the ground that the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member was similar to one he had put upon the Paper himself, but which, owing to the order in which the Amendments were arranged on the Paper, he could not move, and, consequently, he would be obliged to take the decision of the House on the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member; but he and his Colleagues were entitled to place their views before the Committee at a time when they were physically capable of doing so. He was justified in the request that they should not be asked to proceed further with the discussion of the grave subject-matter of the Amendment. During the three quarters of an hour occupied in the discussion these arguments had increased in weight; he protested against proceeding further with the Amendment, and claimed for himself and his Friends who were directly concerned, the right of speaking in daylight on this important subject.

Motion made and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again;" but the Chairman, being of opinion that the Motion was an abuse of the Rules of the House, put the Question thereupon forthwith.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 168; Noes 219: Majority 51.—(Div. List, No. 254.)

Question again proposed, "That the words and other persons' stand part of the Clause."

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

begged to move that the Chairman do now leave the Chair. He did not think he was saying too much when he said that the figures just read from the Chair would indicate to the Government not only the propriety but the necessity of reconsidering their position. The Government would see that a minority not far removed from a moiety of the House was entitled to respectful consideration. He suggested that the Committee had to deal with an entirely novel, even an entirely unprecedented proposal; the House had been sitting for 11 hours in deliberations that had tried the nerves and tempers and also the physical powers of every Member, more especially Irish Members, who were deeply concerned in the issue. Moreover, in nine hours the House would resume its sitting, and the interval would afford but the minimum of natural rest. He ventured to remind the Committee of the forbearance of Irish Members in these debates. ["Oh, oh!"] The debate on the second reading was short, and only three Irish Members took part in it, and that stage was taken without Division. The forbearance of hon. Members was favourably commented upon by right hon. Gentlemen opposite. The progress made, considering the novelty and importance of the subject, the variety and moment of the questions involved, was as much as the Committee could reasonably expect. They had debated several important points in connection with the question, and he did not believe that there had been any undue prolixity. They had determined six cardinal points; and even if their good name, their honour, and their Membership of that House were not immediately and directly concerned, they could not consent, in justice to their constituencies—before which nine out of every ten of the hon. Members opposite would not dare show their face—to proceed any further with the debate that night. They owed it to their constituents and to their country, which trusted them, as well as to their own good name—not to proceed further with that Bill at that hour of the night; and he believed that public opinion would justify them in the course they were pursuing.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do now leave the Chair."—(Mr. Sexton.)

THE CHAIRMAN

The question is one of great difficulty and responsibility. On this Motion I have to make two observations. In the first place it has been said by the hon. Member himself that he does not so much object to the inclusion of "other persons" so far as they are charged in connection with Members of Parliament. This has also been said, more than once in the course of the debate, by other Members. If the Committee now took a vote on the question of adding "other persons," it would still be open to it to limit the addition to persons acting in complicity with Members, or to add the words which stand in the name of the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. E. Robertson). I have also to point out that in guarding and respecting the rights of the minority it is essential to consider the use which the minority make of their opportunities of debate—whether they show regard for the economical distribution of time. Taking these two questions into consideration, I am of opinion that I ought not to put to the Committee the Question, "That the Chairman do now leave the Chair."

MR. T. M. HEALY

said, if they were to decide the Amendment that night, he would offer no further objection, although he had not been to bed since Sunday, and he had been travelling uninterruptedly in order to reach the House. But he did contend that they were entitled to an answer to their arguments. A march through the Division Lobbies did not answer them. They had proposed certain questions to Her Majesty's Government, which had great and undivided responsibility in the matter. They had asked what was to be the particular form and mode of inquiry; they had asked with regard to the manner in which the term "other persons" had been conceived; they had asked an explanation from the Govern- ment of the circumstances which drove them from their original purpose, and he contended they were entitled and bound to demand an answer. He denied that they were a minority in the House; on the contrary, they were a majority; they were a majority of the Irish nation. The Government had proposed the Bill for the purpose, if they could, of extinguishing the rights of the Irish people, for the purpose of drowning their characters and records in muck, and, if possible, in blood. The object was to stain their characters and destroy their movements, by bringing in the acts of extraneous persons; and under those circumstances they were entitled to demand from the Government an explanation of their change of front. The time of the House was being occupied by the urgent necessity of securing an answer to their questions. Was it satisfactory to his Colleagues and himself to see the First Lord of the Treasury mutter something, or to hear the howls of hon. Members opposite? Was it satisfactory to hear the right hon. Gentlemen the Leader of the House shout out—"That is not true" in such a manner as to draw down on himself a rebuke from the Chair? No, it was not a sufficient answer for the Representatives of the Irish nation, and if they were consuming English time it was simply because necessary explanations were refused. Thanks to the Government, what was going on in the House at that hour was not likely to reach the country. They were debating in a sort of padded chamber, and no adequate report of the proceedings could be published. They were not to be satisfied with the extinguishment of their votes in the Division Lobby; they demanded the application of reason to their arguments. The First Lord of the Treasury had declared that this was an inquiry which the Nationalist Members had asked for, and it rested with them to say whether they would accept or reject it. His reply was that the Government proposal would necessarily leave their characters at the risk of every dilatory application to be made by the counsel for The Times with regard to the acts of unknown persons all over England, Scotland, Ireland, America, and Australia. It was impossible for them to accept such conditions; their characters were at stake, and they could not rest under that cloud of obloquy. The counsel for The Times had said that nothing would drag from them explanations as to how they got those forged documents, and so, if on the first day of the inquiry Mr. Walter was committed to prison for refusing to answer questions, he would be hailed as a martyr to the Unionist cause. The Judges would be unable to proceed any further, the main object of the inquiry would be closed against them. In any Court of Law, if the case were being tried before a jury, they would have been entitled, on the refusal of the chief witness to give evidence showing the source of his information, to claim a verdict in their favour; but now, they were to be confronted with witnesses from every convict gaol in England and in Ireland where there were malefactors or criminals, and these men, on the promise of life or liberty, or even money, were to swear their characters away. In view of the fact that there had been secret interviews between Mr. Walter and the Government, he ventured to say that a journal which would not hesitate to suborn testimony, and pay £1,000 for such testimony, would also not shrink from suborning additional false testimony to back up their case. The Government had receded from their original purpose, and, perhaps, those who were anxious to maintain the Union, who were anxious that the Irish Members should be retained in the House, and who were anxious to secure the dignity of the House, would find some difficulty in approving the conduct of their own Leader in holding that secret and extraordinary interview, an interview between the chief criminal, or, as they alleged, the forger of the letters and the forger of the Bill—perhaps he had better substitute the words, the framer of the Bill. He presumed the Government would not expect to go beyond that particular branch of the Bill at that sitting; and that being so, it could not be upon any plea of want of time that they refrained from fully discussing the Amendment. They had from that hour until 12 o'clock in which to explain their interviews with Mr. Walter; and, so far as the time and convenience of his Friends and himself were concerned, it would confer a great pleasure upon them to wait and hear the explanation which they were entitled to receive. He was not anxious, for his own part, to put an end to that discussion; but perhaps hon. Members opposite were anxious to secure that progress of Business which would lead to their dispersement to their beds. However, the self-sacrifice of staying up in order to secure adequate discussion must be a very small matter to English Gentlemen. He would end as he began. With regard to a matter affecting the names and fortunes of 86 Members of that House, constituting five-sixths of the Representatives of the Irish people, he submitted it was not too much to ask what was the secret influence which led the Government to deflect from their original proposal, and to send their Judges on a wild-goose chase in New York or Melbourne, and perhaps to occupy for years and years the time of those Judges in dealing with the cloud which had been cast upon the reputations of Irish Members? The Government might continue to stay upon those Benches, and draw their very sufficient salaries for their very inefficient services, and they might continue to commit in the meantime in Ireland those crimes which had characterized their career. They had already sent one victim to his grave; they had compelled another, out of remorse, to put an end to his life. Under those circumstances, the Nationalist Members called for and demanded the explanation to which they were entitled, and he submitted that the House in honour and in conscience ought not to disperse until that full explanation had been given.

MR. GOSCHEN

There are some speeches conceived in such a tone and in such a vein that they ought not to be answered by anyone with a sense of self-respect. How could my right hon. Friend, with any sense of self-respect, repeat his statements after the hon. and learned Member for North Longford, with the applause of a certain section of this House, has treated those statements in the manner in which he has ventured to do so. My right hon. Friend stated in the strongest possible terms, which were not misunderstood, I believe, by the great majority of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite—he stated, in the clearest terms, that he had had no communication whatever with the editor of The Times——

MR. LABOUCHERE

He never stated that.

MR. GOSCHEN

He stated that he had had no communication——

MR. LABOUCHERE

No, no.

MR. GOSCHEN

Considering how the hon. and learned Member for North Longford spoke—a speech which I can scarcely characterize in Parliamentary language—and considering the patience with which the insults which were heaped upon my right hon. Friend were listened to, I should have thought that decency would have required that at least, after the appeal made to us to give an answer, that answer would have been listened to without interruption. My right hon. Friend has stated that no communication with Mr. Walter had, in the slightest degree, borne upon the introduction of these words. [Cries of "Oh!"] Hon. Members scoff at that; they scoff as much as to say that we are telling falsehoods. ["Hear, hear!"]

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! If I could identify any Member who received that declaration with approval, I should at once Name that Member.

MR. GOSCHEN

My right hon. Friend declared, in the strongest possible terms, that no communication whatever with the editor or proprietor of The Times had borne in the slightest degree on the insertion of these words. Now let me state to the House, with regard to these words, as to which the hon. and learned Member for North Longford has made two long speeches, that they were in the original Reference settled by the Cabinet on the first day when my right hon. Friend introduced his Notice to the House. They were in the Notice which was given on the Friday, at the request of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. It is not my right hon. Friend, it is the Cabinet, that settled upon those words, and that without any communication with the proprietor of The Times; they were in the original proposal, and, therefore, the whole of those two long speeches of the hon. and learned Member for North Longford fall entirely to the ground, and there is not the shadow of a foundation for the attacks and insults which were contained in them.

MR. PARNELL

said, the right hon. Gentleman who last spoke talked about decency; yet he was a Member of the Government which had denied that right to his fellow-Members, the right to know what the accusations against them were, and the right to know who were accused. The right hon. Gentleman had, however, lifted the veil a little upon the history of the introduction of these words, and he had made his position worse than it was before. He had admitted, in terms for the first time, that it was at the Cabinet meeting following the reply of the right hon. Gentleman to his (Mr. Parnell's) question, that the question of these words being added and the extension of the Reference was decided. But who attended at that Cabinet meeting out of his place and out of order? What right had the counsel for The Times to be there? Let them have no further equivocation on that matter. It was odd, it was singular—no, it was not singular—they could not get a straightforward statement from any of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite. They could not get from the First Lord of the Treasury a statement or a definite assurance which did not subsequently require emendation from the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer; they could not get any distinct information with regard to the matter which did not require further immediate explanation from him. That was his sense of decency. That was the "decency of debate!" That was the way in which minorities were to be treated! That was justice and the desire for fair play! That was the assumption of judicial impartiality—to call in the aid of the counsel to The Times to a Cabinet meeting for the purpose of adding to the Reference to the Commission! He should be ashamed, if he were contending against a Party, or a man twice his own strength, to stoop to such dishonest expedients; but contending against a minority, and against whom the Government had the advantage of six-fold numbers, against men who were strangers in this country, who were ambassadors, as it were, to stoop to such miserable dodges and expedients! Oh, it was poor, it was mean, it was cowardly. It was loading the dice, it was poisoning the daggers. They had to contend against men guilty of such things, and who would stop at nothing in the attempt to crush Irish Representatives, and ruin the hopes of a nation they represented. But they were not afraid of them. So when the end of this long story was reached—and it would now have to be a long story—on their side would be the victory, and on the side of the Government shame and disgrace.

Question put, "That the words 'and other persons,' stand part of the Clause."

The Committee divided:—Ayes 222; Noes 166: Majority 56.—(Div. List, No. 255.)

Motion made and Question, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again,"—(Mr. William Henry Smith,)—put, and agreed to.

Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.