CLASS III.

HC Deb 07 August 1889 vol 339 cc653-712

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £889,371, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1890, for the Expenses of the Royal Irish Constabulary.

* MR. W. MACDONALD (Queen's County, Ossory)

I should not have attempted to take part in this Debate if it had not been for the very unsatisfactory character of the reply made by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to my hon. Friends who spoke on this side of the House yesterday. My hon. Friend the Member for North Cork (Mr. Flynn) raised one point to which no satisfactory answer was given at all. He spoke of the enormous increase in the cost of the Constabulary since 1871, and he compared it with the cost in a number of important English towns. The Chief Secretary took no notice whatever of that argument, and only dealt with the cost of the police in the Metropolis here in London. He said that there were peculiar circumstances relating to the Metropolis; but that there were also peculiar circumstances relating to Ireland. The peculiar circumstances in Ireland are, that you are trying in that country to govern a people against the will of the people, and therefore, it is that you require this armed force. It is upon that ground that the Chief Secretary will not agree to any reduction of its efficiency. Surely there can be no comparison between this great Metropolis and Ireland. Here you have an enormous population congregated in a small area, and the large aggregation of wealth draws towards it persons from all parts of the world, and naturally produces a thieving class almost unknown in Ireland. It is because this class is so large and is drawn together in so small a space that you have in London to maintain so large a force and to incur such an enormous expenditure. All these circumstances are absent in Ireland; in fact the direct contrary is the case. We have an agricultural population scattered over the face of the land—no great aggregation of wealth—no appreciable number of thieves or dangerous classes to be kept down, as dangerous classes are understood in London. Therefore the comparison is simply absurd. And now let me ask why did the arrest of my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien) take place at a railway station on an occasion when it was calculated naturally to produce a feeling of irritation? The Chief Secretary says that he regrets the batoning of the hon. Member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien). I hope that regret is sincere on the part of the right hon. Gentleman, but I have failed to observe in his remarks in this House, or in his conduct in Ireland that regard for human suffering and that tenderness for the lives and feelings of his fellow creatures, which would induce me to attach much importance to his expressions of regret. I attach less importance to them on account of what he said immediately afterwards. He complained that my hon. Friend the Member for North Monaghan had not attended a trial in which he was interested, although he had indulged in a walk in Dr. Tanner's garden for two hours, and had been out of doors on several days. It appears that the right hon. Gentleman has been able to follow most minutely all the actions of my hon. Friend. Yet he told us a moment before that he had no official knowledge of the batoning of my hon. Friend, or of the severity of that batoning, although he was able immediately afterwards to give full particulars of the proceedings of my hon. Friend for days. My belief is that the right hon. Gentleman has official information of everything he cares to know, and that upon those things which he does not care to know he prefers to be left in ignorance. He implied that my hon. Friend might have been present at the trial to which he referred because he had been out of doors walking in a garden and in various other places previously, but I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman knows very little of human suffering and illness if he thinks that that is a serious argument, which will impose upon this Committee. I myself have suffered from what is known as nerve exhaustion, and I can wellimagine the condition of my hon. Friend after having been subjected to the frightful cruelties that were inflicted upon him by the police. Does not the right hon. Gentleman know that a man may be able to walk in a garden or about a town and yet be unable to endure the worry and annoyance of an examination in a public court? As a matter of fact the right hon. Gentleman has not yet been subjected to batoning, although he deserves it quite as much as a good many of my hon. Friends who have experienced it. I am quite sure that if he had been, it would be a long time before he would come down to this House and make such an able speech as that which he made last night. In regard to the occurrence at Charleville, the right hon. Gentleman said he thought it was to be regretted that the District Inspector himself discharged his revolver, and that it would have been much better if he had simply given an order to his men to do so. Is he prepared to follow that up by any reprimand to the officer, so as to convince him that he did something of which the Government disapproved? On the contrary, I am afraid we shall soon hear that District Inspector Con-cannon has been promoted on account of the extraordinary zeal and pluck he displayed in firing off his revolver upon an unarmed crowd. The same remark applies to what the right hon. Gentleman said in reference to Sergeant Mahony. Sergeant Mahony gave passes in Donegal, and all the right hon. Gentleman said was that the passes so given did not inconvenience any law abiding person. The real question is, was the thing legal or not? Had Sergeant Mahony a right to give these passes? It is not a question of the amount of inconvenience they occasioned, but whether this man had any right to issue passes at all? If not, he should have been reprimanded or degraded, instead of which he has been honoured and promoted. And now in regard to the police. For audacity of assertion I think I never knew anyone to come up to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, because he asserts that at no time were the relations of the people of Ireland and the police as good as at this moment. I readily admit that in certain parts of the country there is a fairly good feeling between the police and the people. In my county for instance—Queen's County—the police and the people live together very comfortably. But why is this? It is because, as a rule, the landlords are forbearing, and with the single exception of Luggacurran, no ease of hardship has taken place. There has been no wholesale eviction of the people, and no instances under the Crimes Act in which men have been dragged in considerable numbers before coercion courts where the administration of the law has been accompanied more or less by violence and disturbance. But will any hon. Member say that that describes the state of things all over Ireland? The Chief Secretary may say so, because he does not go about Ireland, but receives all his information second-hand. But I should like to know whether the relations between the people and the police in Donegal are particularly friendly just now. Are the people of Mitchelstown very fond of the police who shot them down in a wanton, cruel, and relentless fashion? Do the people of Cork feel kindly towards the police who batoned not only those who are in sympathy with us, but even those, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Cork has pointed out, who entertain similar political views to those of the Chief Secretary himself? If a plebescite could be taken in the City of Cork on this subject, I am sure it would be found that never was there a time when the relations between the police and the people were more strained than they are at this moment. The right hon. Gentleman spoke in a highly laudatory manner of the Royal Irish Constabulary as a body of whom persons of every shade of political feeling ought to be proud. I do not think that it is very easy for men who have been batoned without cause to feel proud of the police, and I do not think that this pride in the police is at all as great in Ireland as it was some time ago. I have spoken to policemen in this country who have wondered at the action of the police in Ireland, and have always given the same account of that action. It is not that the police in Ireland are one whit more cruel or arbitrary than the police of this country, but it is that they know that whatever act of cruelty they commit will be condoned by the Chief Secretary in this House, that they will not be called in question for it, and that so far from being degraded they will be promoted. The character of a force like this depends on the character of the man or men who pull the strings, and at the head of the force and virtually at the head of the Irish Constabulary is the Chief Secretary. We shall be proud of the Irish Constabulary when Ireland is governed in accordance with the will of the people; when the members of that body are mild and gentle in the exercise of their duty; and when they are so because they know that it is not from the Chief Secretary here but from a ruler who governs in harmony with the will of the people that they receive their orders. Then, and not till then, will the Nationalist Members of this House feel proud of the men whom the Chief Secretary at present pampers, praises, but never censures or punishes, no matter what crimes against our common humanity they may perpetrate.

MR. SEXTON (Belfast, W.)

The Chief Secretary for Ireland last night, while discussing this Vote from a position of great advantage, towards the close of the Debate—during the course of which the Government had been represented, for the most part, by himself and two or three of his familiars, while the Party in power were represented by some dozen hon. Members artistically disporting themselves on the Benches opposite, dividing their time between conversation and sleep—took occasion to criticise the state of the Benches on this side of the House. Surely it did not lie in his mouth to make a complaint. Complaint, if any, should have come from us, and not from him. The right hon. Gentleman brings forward this Vote at a time when the public business and the proceedings of the House are practically worn out, when hon. Members are exhausted, and when many have left their places for the Session—at a time when it is impossible to secure even a fugitive Debate upon an Imperial question, or to obtain a true expression of the sense of the House of Commons upon any subject that may be brought before it. Our Constitutional rights are struck down by brute force in Ireland, and we are prevented, by a contrivance on the part of the Government, from obtaining a real opportunity of expressing our views. This is the third year in which we have been obliged to discuss the Irish Estimates in a formal, but by no means an effective, Debate. We have tolerated this kind of proceeding much too long, and so far as I am concerned, I warn the Government I am resolved that after this year we will tolerate it no longer. It must not be forgotten that last year we were kept until Christmas Eve discussing the Irish Estimates, and that the First Lord of the Treasury then gave an emphatic pledge that this Session there should be a steady and regular course of Supply—that Supply should be taken every week, and that Members should be able to avail themselves of the Constitutional principle that redress of grievances should precede Supply. That pledge has been broken. This year, as in the two preceding years, the Irish Members have been kept here for six months, hanging about the precincts of the House waiting for the Irish Estimates to be brought forward. For six months no question of Irish interest has been brought on, and now, in the second week of August, in a skeleton House, important Estimates are brought forward, and the Chief Secretary has the effrontery to make the condition of the House a cause of complaint. All I can say is that there are powers in the possession of any considerable Party in the House of which they cannot be deprived, to compel the Government to revert to the steady and Constitutional practice of devoting careful consideration to the Estimates. I can promise the right hon. Gentleman that never again will he be allowed to defeat our Constitutional rights by postponing Supply until the discussion becomes a real sham. We shall compel him, in future, to afford us, from time to time, from the beginning of the Session until the end of it, a full opportunity of discussing our grievances on the presentation of the Votes in Supply. What is the claim of the Chief Secretary in regard to the Government of Ireland? He claims that by active exertion, and by pursuing a policy of conciliation, he has pacified the country. He claims that the National League has become a thing of the past, wherever he has been pleased to lay his hands upon it; that while public meetings were numerous a few years ago, they are few at present; above all he claims that the need for police protection has ceased, and that boycotted persons, counted by thousands a couple of years ago, are now as rare in Ireland as a Whiteboy. If the country be pacified, there ought to be no need for the maintenance of a Constabulary Force as high as in excited times, and no need for that movement from one part of the country to another of large bodies of men which has occasioned so considerable an augmentation of the present vote. This is the vote on which the right hon. Gentleman should be prepared to prove the pacification of Ireland, but it proves directly the contrary. What is the actual fact? The amount of the Vote goes on increasing from year to year. At the beginning of the present generation the cost of maintaining the Constabulary of Ireland was one-half what it is now. At that time the population of Ireland was double what it is now. Therefore, proportionately to the population, the cost of the Irish Police is four times as much now as it was in the year of stress and strain occasioned by the great famine. What is the moral? What a significant and conclusive commentary upon 40 years of coercion! Moreover, up to the present time coercion was intermittent and spasmodic; but now we have reached the Millenium of the Tory Party. We have come to permanent coercion. We have had two years' experience of that system, and why is it that after two years of coercion, and after Ireland has been so completely pacified as the right hon. Gentleman pretends, the cost of the police is at least four times as much as it was a generation ago, and five times as-much as that of the police of Wales and Scotland. The right hon. Gentleman made a comparison between the cost of the police in Ireland and in London, but the comparison in point of cost is in favour of the police of London. The Irish Constabulary Officer leads a life of dignified and gentlemanly leisure, whereas those in this Metropolis are actively engaged in the real duties of their position. But the right hon. Gentleman left out of account the police of the City of Dublin. If you include that force the fact comes out that the police of Ireland at the present moment cost from £100,000 to £200,000 a year more than the police of London. Let me apply another test. At the foot of the first page of this Vote we are told that we are to refund the Exchequer this year a sum of £63,600 for extra police. What is meaning of that? Does it mean that in addition to the ordinary force sufficient for the repression of ordinary crime there are quartered in the counties of Ireland, not on those who can afford to pay, but upon the poor occupiers of land, these bodies of extra police, the maintenance of which makes the burden of life more heavy upon the struggling occupier, who, even if this burden were taken away, would find it hard enough to live. Then what becomes of the pacification of Ireland? Last year the cost of the extra police was £63,400; this year it is £63,600. If matters are now so pacific, the calenders of Assize so blank, if disorder has almost disappeared, and boycotting has practically ceased, what is the reason that these squadrons of extra police are employed? I have received from various public Boards in the different counties of Ireland resolutions of the most bitter complaint against this system of extra police. In one resolution from County Clare, it is stated that, having regard to the destitution which is certain to prevail in the winter and spring in consequence of the want of employment, the failure of the potato crop, the general depression, and the excessive amount of local taxation, it has become imperative necessary to request the Lord Lieutenant to use his influence with Her Majesty's Government in order to secure that the cost of the extra police shall be borne by the Imperial Exchequer. I have received from various public bodies recently urgent letters praying me to bring the grievance of this impost before the House of Commons. I ask, therefore, if there be any reality in the contention of the right hon. Gentleman that the country is pacified and order restored, and his policy successful, whether he can offer any tolerable argument in justification of the continued employment of this extra police. If Ireland is in an ordinary condition, why cannot she be governed by an ordinary force? I intend to conclude my remarks by moving that the amount of the Vote be reduced by the sum of £63,000, which represents the cost of the extra police, because I maintain that upon the showing of the Chief Secretary himself there is not a shadow of ground for their continued employment. I am sorry to find that in regard to this Vote we are deprived of the testimony of my hon. Friends the Members for North East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien) and North Longford (Mr. T. Healy). [An hon. MEMBER: Mr. Healy is here.] I am glad to see that my hon. and learned Friend, in spite of the difficulties which, have been thrown in his way, has been able to find his way back to the House. I know that my hon. and learned Friend has been in the habit of overcoming the apparently insurmountable difficulties which have been placed in his path by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary. But my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cork is absent. The right hon. Gentleman said he would take great pains to secure the attendance of my hon. Friend. What pains has he taken? My hon. Friend was entitled to expect that he would be free to attend to his duties in this House; but a day or two before the day fixed for taking the Irish Votes my hon. Friend was called upon to appear before a Court in Ireland upon another charge. My hon. Friend was called upon to appear on Thursday in Ireland. This Vote was fixed on Tuesday, and yet the Chief Secretary says he might have taken part in this Debate, and still have attended at Thursday's trial. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Clonakilty is a full day's journey from Dublin? Did he imagine it was not necessary for my hon. Friend to engage a solicitor and counsel? Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman thinks that a superfluous operation. He knows the functions of his Resident Magistrates, and the orders they have received from him. He knows the uselessness of any Irish Member preparing a defence, and I suppose he assumed that my hon. Friend would take the same view as himself, and would appear before the tribunal without any preparation, because no amount of preparation could affect the decision to be arrived at. But let me tell him that though the mind of the tribunal could not be affected the mind of the country can, and will be informed of the true nature of the proceedings. Instead of taking pains to secure my hon. Friend's presence the right hon. Gentleman has taken every pains to secure his absence, and the effect has been that the Committee has been deprived of the presence of a Member whose presence would have been an advantage, not only because of his political information, but also because of his personal knowledge of facts properly raised under the Constabulary Vote. That, however, is only in accord with the record of the right hon. Gentleman, whose practice is to get an opponent out of the way, and then to attack his veracity, question the truth of his evidence, and to make scandalous imputations against him. Now what ought to be the function of the Police Force in Ireland? Its function should be the preservation of order, the protection of property, and the detection of crime. But as a fact it promotes disorder. I notice that the charges for election expenses are just as high as ever. What is the meaning of that? There have been no Parliamentary Elections. The right hon. Gentleman says that there are other elections not Parliamentary, but surely in those cases it is not necessary to detail bodies of police for duty. Again, all the elections in Ireland except in one little corner are a walk over for the Nationalist candidate, and there is no necessity to send a policeman where they dare not send a candidate. According to the right hon. Gentleman disturbances only occur in Ireland at places where the people are all of one mind. I could understand conflict of mind leading up to conflict of force, but I cannot understand the contention of the right hon. Gentleman that people fall out, and beat each other for no better reason than that they agree. As a fact disturbances do not occur unless they are provoked by the police. I have seen a policeman taking notes in the midst of a gathering of 20,000 men in a time of great popular excitement and no one has even offered him an uncivil word. There is an item of £3,000 in this Vote for expected disturbances up to next April. Since Ireland is quiet and peaceful the inference is that the item occurs only because the Government intended to promote disturbances as they did at Mitchelstown. I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to show me any case in which disorder has arisen in Ireland except where the police, acting on instructions from their superiors, had interfered with the exercise of the right of public meeting. The fact is the main function of the police force in Ireland is to carry out evictions for rent as in the case of the Ponsonby estate—rent which with this particular case the agents themselves had to admit to be unjust. The police are employed to carry out evictions for the non-payment of exorbitant rents, and they fulfil their duty of protecting property by allowing a fraud on the Imperial Exchequer by the inclusion in the purchase money of certain estates iniquitous-arrears. As to the detection of crime-by the police, why, Ireland is the-most crimeless country in the world, not by reason of the diligence of the police, but because of the natural bent of the people. Whenever crime is committed the police can never find it out. It is not to their profit to do it. They are not encouraged to do it. I never heard of a policeman being singled out for favour or promotion for the detection of ordinary crime. No; they are taught by their superiors in Dublin Castle that the way to promotion and favour is not by serving the public, not by the detection of crime, but to harass public meetings, to insult Members of Parliament, and to inflict physical violence upon them, and to ferret out and trump up false charges against the representatives of the people. That is the function to which the police force in Ireland is degraded. Instead of being simply a police force it is a military force, employed and pampered for the advantage, first, of a social class, and then of a political Party. I have said that their energies are devoted to evictions. Now, what have we heard about the battering ram? I said a little time ago that we should refuse to proceed with this Vote unless we have some information given us on the subject, and I must insist that the Debate be energetically continued until further information about it is vouchsafed to us. I declare the ram to be the type and pioneer of a new policy in regard to evictions in Ireland. A short time ago we were told the purpose of the ram was to protect the police; but, if so, why is it not paid for by the Government like any other equipment of that force? No doubt a county inspector ordered it, and the bill for it was sent to him. The Solicitor General in this House actually stated the amount of the bill. My own theory is that the Government ordered the ram, and that they either paid for it or intended to pay for it, but they found the exhibition of the instrument at by-elections had a deleterious effect. They found that the intrusion of this machine from the Middle Ages into the 19th century and the arena of household suffrage and Parliamentary rule was something too strong for the conscience of the British Electorate, and so they resolved not to pay the bill. Now, the right hon. Gentleman clearly stated that the charge for this machine would appear on the Estimates. It does not so appear; and I wish now to ask who is to pay the bill? If this machine is to be used for the protection of the police the Government ought to pay for it. I venture to think the landlords are not in a condition to pay for it, nor can that mouldy concern the Derelict Farms Trust, nor, I think, can the Land Corporation. Knowing as I do that the First Lord of the Treasury, in a weak moment, subscribed £500 to that concern, he may if he is in a cheerful mood, now whistle for his money. I am disposed to press the inquiry, did the Land Corporation of Ireland pay for the machine? We will not assent to the payment for it being made out of a private purse any more than we allow the police bayonets and batons to be paid for out of a private purse. I know the Chief Secretary for Ireland has two or three capacities. Am I to conclude, because in his public capacity the right hon. Gentleman glorifies the battering ram, that in his private capacity he has paid for it? According to the right hon. Gentleman it is not only a jewel to the Government and a shield to the police, but a palladium to the people. If this importation from the siege of Jerusalem is so valuable all round, in common gratitude the representatives of the people are entitled to know to what anonymous donor they are indebted. Irishmen are not wont to be ungrateful, and we cannot suffer ourselves, even by the reserve and singular reticence of the right hon. Gentleman, to be prevented expressing our gratitude to the man who has placed us in possession of this palladium of the Constitution, more valuable than trial by jury, than secret voting, than household suffrage; more valuable than any boon conferred on us by enlightened legislation, and by the still more enlightened administration of the right hon. Gentleman. We must learn a little more about this ram. Is it to be employed in breaking down the homes of the people in such cases as that of the poor man who had come back to his native place in Donegal, had taken a farm and given that farm all its value, bad built a house and made a home, and was to be evicted because he would not pay the landlord the value of the land which he had himself created? That man said he would sooner die than be turned out of his home as a beggar. I will tell the right hon. Gentleman that the danger of this system begins when a man is driven to the point that he does not care whether he lives or dies. I will ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he will apply the system to the homes in England? Why did he not apply it to the homes of the crofters? He allowed them an abatement of arrears. If he had not done so there would have been bloodshed at the evictions, and that would have had a serious effect upon the people of England. Men who feel that they have been robbed of the fruits of their lives' labour may be made desperate. Moreover, what will be the effect of the use of this battering ram upon the landlords? Some landlords are humane, some have regard for public opinion, some may be deterred from resorting to eviction by the circumstance that evictions are painful. But if the right hon. Gentleman assures us that evictions may be made smooth and rapid, he will be responsible for a course of proceeding which may have a most dangerous effect upon the peace of Ireland: he will multiply evictions and stimulate the resort to this mode of driving people from their homes. To return, however, to the police. Policemen are promoted not only for carrying out evictions, but for getting up evidence. Two of my hon. Friends were recently taken away from their duty in this House to answer a charge in Ireland, where they were bandied about to and fro. When the charge came to be heard the constable swore that he had made a longhand note of the speeches at the meeting, and that he had not had an opportunity of consulting the Dublin papers before preparing his report. It was proved that he had seen the Dublin papers, and that he had made up his Report from extracts out of them. There was elaborate perjury on the part of the policeman. The right hon. Gentleman cannot deny that there was perjury; but he says that the reports appeared in the newspapers, and he invites my hon. Friend—who has stood his trial and been acquitted—to stand up in the House of Commons and admit his guilt. "True," said the right hon. Gentleman, "the evidence of the constable was not to be believed, but the Magistrates did not convict." The right hon. Gentleman has so high an opinion of his own judicial utensils that he claims credit in the House of Commons because two Magistrates in Ireland did not convict a Member of this House upon evidence which they declared from the Bench they did not believe. The right hon. Gentleman is so surprised at it that he takes credit for the novelty. What about the policeman? Is he to get off? We shall probably hear of him next as a Head Constable, and in the course of a few years as a most diligent and efficient officer. If the Magistrates in Ireland are to condemn a policeman because, from over-zeal in the prosecution of Irish Members of Parliament, he has committed a little laudable perjury, what will become of that essential thing—the solidarity of the Public Service in Ireland? Upon the question of evidence I must refer to the case of the Times. A more extraordinary declaration than that of the Chief Secretary on the subject has never been heard in the House of Commons. The Chief Secretary has been asked by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton whether any relief has been given to the Exchequer in regard to pay for the police for their services to the Times. For the last 12 months the service of the Queen has been superseded by the service of the Times. It has been all apathy and indifference in the one case, and all energy and zeal in the other. Of course the explanation is, as I have reason to believe, that Mr. Soames has paid Irish officials of every rank, from the Divisional Commissioner down to the constable, on a scale of allowances amounting to treble their ordinary pay. The Chief Secretary has said that the ordinary course has been strictly followed with the Times' witnesses, but I enjoyed the advantage the other day of cross-examining Mr. Soames in the witness box. The learned Judge had laid down that not more than the ordinary scale should have been given by the Times. I asked Mr. Soames whether more than £60,000 had not been paid. He could not say. I then asked whether £20,000 was the sum paid, and Mr. Soames declined to say. Scores of thousands of pounds have been paid to Irish officials of all classes to ferret out and furbish up charges against those who ought to be their masters—namely,the Representatives of the Irish people. The Irish police have, meanwhile, obstructed in every possible way the evidence for the defence. They have sought out witnesses, gingered-up informers, threatened reluctant witnesses with prosecution, escorted them from place to place in London, mounted guard upon them until, as in the case of Pigott, the moment arrived when the two intelligent constables, discerning the mind of the Executive, allowed him to escape. Never since Constitutional Government began have a body of men, whose position ought to entitle them to respect, been by such base instruments exposed to malignant and petty prosecution as the Irish Representatives have. The police have not only suborned evidence, but they have nursed it, dangled it and taken care of it, penetrating even the prisons of Ireland. They have even approached men under sentence of penal servitude for life, and promised them liberty and fortune if they would give evidence, true or false, in support of their cause—evidence which might result in the ruin of the political opponents of their unscrupulous employers. This was the structure set up by the present Government, and it is falling in ruins about their heads. I do not presume to comment at present on the evidence of the police. We must wait for the Report of the Commissioners. But there never has been anything in the history of Parliament more carefully examined than will be the evidence of these policemen. The House will have very little time for any other business next Session. Hundreds of the force have been in London for months together in order that their statements might be finished to the artistic point. This course has only supplied proof how well the public of Ireland could get on without the police. If it is true, as the Chief Secretary says, that Ireland has never been so peaceful, I would suggest that the reason is that so many agents of provocation from "Don't-hesitate-to-shoot Plunkett," down to Sergeant Johnson, Mr. Soames's cashier, who was kept in the service of the Times. I think that, considering these officials received treble pay from the Times, it is too much to expect that they should be paid by the country at the same time. I lay it down as a principle that, if these men were receiving treble pay in London, it is not necessary that they should also receive compensation from the country. £20,000 is a reasonable estimate of the sum that they have received from the Times; and I submit to the intelligence of the House and of the British taxpayer that I make a reasonable Motion when I move that this Vote should be reduced, not only by £63,000 for extra police, for which the right hon. Gentleman has shown there is no further occasion in Ireland, but also by the £20,000—[An hon. MEMBER: £40,000]—no, £20,000; I will be moderate in my estimate—but also to reduce it by £20,000, which I take to be the amount of money included in the Vote for the pay of the police of various ranks during the time they received treble pay from Mr. Soames. The right hon. Gentleman let fall—no, I will not say that, as it implies inadvertence; but he ejected a statement last night that there never was a period within the past 10 years in which the people and the police were on better terms than now. There is nothing more grotesque than that in the Arabian Nights. The right hon. Gentleman said— In the course of a few months, the relations between the people and the police will be as cordial as the relations between any police and people on the face of the globe. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that if the present policy of the Government is continued, the relations between the people and police in Ireland will be not only cordial, but that they would be exceedingly warm, and before the winter is over, it may be possible to describe them as hot. I do not offer any general assertions on the subject; but I refer to specific facts when I ask, do hon. Members opposite think that the course of affairs in Ireland during the past year has been such as to permit of good terms between the people and the police? I believe that very many of the police would like to be on good terms with the people if they were allowed; I believe the majority would like to confine themselves to their duty, but they are degraded by the Executive; they are degraded by the spirit of mocking insolence of the right hon. Gentleman which he has introduced into his administration in Ire- land. They are taught that if they confine themselves to their duty they will be neglected, they will be degraded, and that the only way to secure favour is to attack the people and to assail their Representatives. I quote as an instance the case of Sergeant Dillon, who was in command of a party of police at Falcarragh, and who, knowing there was no occasion for his men, went back to his barracks. Was he promoted? That man was reduced; he was disgraced. No; I never knew an Irish policeman to be promoted for saving life; but I know of Irish policemen saving life and getting the medals of the Humane Society, and still left sub-constables all their lives. I have found Irish police to be promoted for taking life away. Take the case of Dr. Tanner. Was the treatment of Dr. Tanner such as tends to promote good relations between the people and the police? Three times he has been compelled to enter a prison van, and the right hon. Gentleman has defended that shameful course by a statement which is absolutely untrue. The right hon. Gentleman said that Dr. Tanner had been obliged to enter a prison van because, on a previous occasion, he refused to enter an open break. What is the fact? On a certain occasion Dr. Tanner was, with others, being escorted in custody by police. The prisoners were asked to enter an open break. All of them, except Dr. Tanner, refused; he did enter it. The Inspector of police whom Dr. Tanner is alleged to have assaulted has been allowed, on three subsequent occasions, to gratify his spite by forcing Dr. Tanner into the prison van, on the last occasion with such unnecessary violence that my hon. Friend became insensible. Is that a course likely to promote a good feeling? When will we hear the last of the suggestion that the crowd which went to the station to welcome Mr. W. O'Brien might have stayed to rescue him? Mr. W. O'Brien——

THE CHAIEMAN

Order, order!

MR. SEXTON

I merely referred to the hon. Gentleman by name to save time, and because it is more convenient. The hon. Member for North-East Cork does not wish to escape from the Government, but the Irish Government wish to escape from the hon. Member; it is they who are on the run, not he. Does anyone doubt that the Government would be glad to place the whole of the secret service money for one year in the purse of any agent who would rescue them from the hon. Member, provided that the rescue were made so effectual that there was no chance of the hon. Gentleman ever again falling into their hands? If the hon. Member were only willing to navigate the globe, or to discover the North Pole, I have no doubt the Government would be happy to place at his service one of the troopships they refused to the Lords and Commons the other day. The whole procedure of the police at Cork discloses a set design to provoke a breach of the public peace. Having ample notice of the meeting at Cork, they did not suppress it till the Saturday. They could easily have arrested the hon. Member earlier than they did; but they waited till his return, when a crowd had assembled to welcome the hon. Gentleman. Who was the Inspector in charge of the police on the occasion? Was he a man of discretion and experience? No; as in the case of the arrest of Father M'Fadden, the arrest of the hon. Member for North-East Cork was confided to a man of slight experience in his post and of amazing indiscretion. Mr. Concannon has only recently been made Inspector. A couple of years ago he was a constable engaged in political detective service—the kind of service which secures promotion in Ireland; and I have a letter from a gentleman of position, in which he informs me that Inspector Concannon is well-known to be a man of a singularly infirm temper and a most ungovernable disposition; that less than a couple of years ago in Roscommon, being in the same lodging at the Assizes with a police reporter and a Protestant Unionist named Atchison, a shopkeeper in the town, and others, he not only annoyed the company in the most extraordinary way, but he absolutely made a furious attempt on the police reporter, and when Atchison interfered, he remarked, "Wait till I get my long sword; I'll cut your bead off." Before the arrival of the train at Cork, the Inspector went up to the Member of Parliament and drew this long sword, and that was a signal for the police to baton the crowd who wished to see Mr. W. O'Brien. There is not the shadow of a pretence for say- ing that the crowd exhibited any disposition to resort to violence. It is also absurd to say the police did not know the hon. Member for Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien); they knew him well; the crowd had made way for him; and it was because they knew him, and because of the services he has rendered to his country that he was made a victim. The Chief Secretary has chosen to ridicule the suffering of my hon. Friend. It is in accordance with his policy; he will break an opponent's head and then crack jokes at him. There is nothing whatever inconsistent in Mr. P. O'Brien being able to go out for an airing, and yet too unwell to attend a Magisterial examination. The Chief Secretary should not judge others by himself, knowing that if he has the slightest cold nothing will induce him to get out of bed. The animus of the police is shown by the fact that they did not put Mr. W. O'Brien into a vehicle, but they compelled him to walk through the streets in the midst of an excited crowd. They took him by train to Limerick Junction, well knowing that bodies of people would be returning by that train. It was natural that at Mallow, the hon. Gentleman's birthplace, the people should wish to see him. In the pressure a window of the carriage was broken. At Buttevant Mr. Concannon was in such good temper that he allowed the door to be opened, and permitted a townsman to make a speech to the hon. Member for North-East Cork. By the time the train reached Charleville the blinds were down again. It was midnight, but there were people on the platform. The people of Charleville, however, could not know Mr. O'Brien was in the train, because the telegraph office had been closed since 10 o'clock in the morning. The theory that they did involves the suggestion that the telegraph clerk had remained voluntarily in the telegraph office all day till midnight, waiting to tap the wires, and so discover news, which no body anticipated, of the arrest of Mr. O'Brien 100 miles away. There was a band on the platform to welcome back some fellow townsmen. The band were so ignorant of the arrival of my hon. Friend that they played two airs before they approached the carriage in which he was seated. There were three bodies of police in the train, and in the middle of the train were the police who had my hon. Friend in charge. The head porter and his assistant proceeded to check the tickets of the passengers, and beginning at either end worked towards the centre. The head porter coming to the carriage in which the police were, and asking for tickets, was referred to the Inspector, and together the porters came to the carriage where the prisoner was. The head porter asked for tickets, the sub-Inspector made an insulting reply, giving neither tickets or explanation. Has nobody any duty under the law but a policeman? Has a railway porter no duty to his employers? Was it not his duty to ask for tickets, and to demand an explanation if none were forthcoming? Would he not have been liable to a penalty had be neglected his duty? The Inspector refused any explanation, took the head porter by the throat, and flung him out on to the platform. All this can be proved by 20 credible witnesses. And then the Inspector fired his revolver in the man's face. This was the beginning of the firing. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was, I thought, very faint in his assertion that there was firing from the crowd, and I think, on reflection, he will hardly maintain that assertion. Is it to be supposed that a peaceful crowd, coming with a band to meet their townsmen, having no idea that there was an eminent political prisoner in the train, would come armed with loaded revolvers? So little was the fact of my hon. Friend being in the train known in Charleville that even the two policemen, the almost invariable figures on every railway platform in Ireland, were not to be found there. The sub-Inspector fired his revolver, and made this attack on the porter because the latter asked for tickets. Why, the man must have been beside himself. Reference has been made to his behaviour at Roscommon two years ago, and I think it is shown that, as in the arrest of Father Mc'Fadden, an officer was selected to make the arrest who was most unfitted by infirmity of temper and excitability of disposition for the duty, and whose conduct was almost certain to provoke a breach of the peace. The Inspector gave no order to fire; but as soon as he had fired one of the sergeants who was between my hon. Friend and the window got up, fired his revolver, and, effecting a stra- tegic movement, took up a position on the other side of my hon. Friend, from whence firing would have been equally fatal, but if any firing had come from the crowd, my hon. Friend would have been the first to feel the effect of it. The other sergeant fired, and so three revolvers were discharged from the carriage; and meanwhile the train began to move. The right hon. Gentleman professes that the police were afraid of something, but of what were they afraid? They had passed Mallow, they had passed Cork and Bandon Stations, and there was no one in the crowd foolish enough to wish to attempt to rescue my hon. Friend, who would not permit himself to be rescued from a Government who were far more afraid of him than he of the Government. It is an absurd pretence; the shots were fired not from any fear of rescue or attack, and certainly one of the shots was fired after the train was in motion. And then began the organisation of the defence. The right hon. Gentleman says Inspector Concannon was hurt. We heard nothing of that at the time. He said nothing about it; it was an afterthought. There was a dent upon his helmet, but the valuable frame of the Inspector was then uninjured. When the train had moved out of the station the police began to organise the defence of their conduct, and the Inspector remarked that the crowd had fired. My hon. Friend denied this, but the Inspector asserted that of the three shots only two were fired by the police. "No," said my hon. Friend, "three shots were fired from this carriage; examine the question now." He compelled an examination, and it turned out that the police fired all the shots as I have said, and their smoking revolvers testified to the fact. At Limerick Junction a search was made to find the bullet supposed to be fired at the carriage. It was not found, nor will it be found; they were all police bullets that were fired. Is it not sad to think that after all this reckless, breathless haste of arrest, of hurrying to catch the night mail, of charging and batoning one crowd, firing on another crowd, after all this, my hon. Friend is left at Limerick Junction in charge of a Police Inspector who happens to be a man of sense. He passed from the charge of Inspector Concannon to the charge of Inspector Carter. We speak of the police as we find them; we praise or condemn them as their conduct deserves, the one or the other. Inspector Carter was waiting to receive his prisoner. Did he get up any scene of excitement and violence? He took Mr. O'Brien on his gig—this man whom the people of Ireland were supposed to be bent on rescuing—and drove him without escort to Tipperary, took his prisoner to his own quarters, and then sent for the Stipendiary Magistrate to take bails. It is a very curious commentary on the state of society in Ireland that the Inspector, having sent for the Magistrate, completed the process by sending for the bails, and these two gentlemen were the parish priest and the Chairman of the Town Commissioners. The Magistrate asked the hon. Member for North-East Cork politely how he was; my hon. Friend said he was very well; the local gentlemen provided bail, and the end of all this breathless hurry and excitement in the conveyance of a political prisoner from one end of the county to the other was that my hon. Friend was asked to appear for the preliminary hearing at the end of a fortnight, and for the hearing of the case at the end of seven weeks. And this was the man whose rescue was feared at the hands of an excited people, and to prevent which the police were prepared to take human life. He was given a period of seven weeks to consider whether he would escape or not. Now, I think I am entitled to say that from the beginning to the end of the business there was a manifest design to provoke the people and disturb the public peace. Could anything have been simpler than if the Government wished to vindicate the law to have left out Inspector Concannon, with his long sword and his eccentric behaviour, and to have entrusted the arrest to a man of sense like Inspector Carter, avoiding all this disgraceful behaviour and attack on public life on the part of the police? I say that the pretence that good feeling, under such circumstances can be maintained between the people and the police is audacious in the extreme. Look at your treatment of the priests. If there is one thing more than another upon which the Irish people are sensitive it is the treatment of their clergy. How have you conducted the arrests of priests? By breaking into their houses, by arresting them in the midst of their congregation. Father Keller's house was broken into in the grey of the morning. Father Clark was arrested at two in the morning at the house of a friend. If I were to read to the Committee a letter from Mrs. Damin at whose house Father Clark was staying, if I quoted the indignant terms in which this lady protests against the alarm and excitement created by the needless entrance of the police in the middle of the night, when the arrest could have been made in the middle of the day, then the Committee would understand how little reality there is in the pretence of good feeling between the people and the police. In like manner Father Farelly's house was broken into at five in the morning. For five weeks did the police hold the warrants for the arrest of Father Clark and Father Farelly. They did not wait to avoid arrest, they said they were ready to be arrested. They walked about the streets of the town, they passed the police every day, and the police saluted them. But after five weeks' waiting the police arrested Father Clark at two in the morning at the house of a lady where he was staying, and they arrested Father Farelly by breaking into his house at five in the morning. I ask what is the object of such procedure? What other object can there be except to provoke such a state of feeling among the people of Arklow as will render the maintenance of good relations between the people and the police impossible? For many a day the arrest of Father M'Fadden will not be forgotten in Ireland. Twice he was arrested. On the first occasion, in the midst of his colleagues as he was leaving a Diocesan Conference, in which, with his brother priests, he had taken part. On the second occasion he was arrested under circcumstances which have been brought to the attention of the House, and when the officer making the arrest lost his life. The police on that occasion, waited until noon on Sunday, and then when they were in force sufficient to conduct one of your small African wars, as Father M'Fadden, after the celebration of religious service, issued from the church in soutane and biretta, the usual garb of office, and was surrounded by his congregation, they waited until the moment when the sentiments of respect and veneration the people had for their pastor had reached the highest pitch of exaltation, and then the officer seized the priest by the collar—this priest who was only too anxious to go with him, and who hastened to shorten the scene—and waving his sword, the police officer gave the excited people the impression that he was striking their priest and the unhappy consequence was the officer lost his life. The blood of that officer is upon the head of the Government. They selected a man who was as unfit as any man in Ireland for the discharge of a difficult duty. He lost his life, and the responsibility of that rests upon the Government, while the suffering is with the people. The hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell) attempted to make light of these things yesterday, but I think the hon. Gentleman might have allowed himself an interval of repose after his return from the hearing of a libel action in which he came off second best, in which he was forced to admit that he had made a false charge, and he postponed the admission of the falsehood until it was wrung from him on oath. I trust that this result will have some effect in future upon the value of the communications from the hon. Gentleman the Member for South Tyrone. The hon. Gentleman fell into the error of relying upon that kind of evidence that the Chief Secretary is in the habit of giving us at that Table. The information is given us from anonymous sources, but of course it comes from the police. The hon. Gentleman, misled by example, mistook the evidence of Mr. Commissioner Cameron for truth, and found he had uttered a libel. Failing in his libel outside the House he has made an attack here upon my hon. Friend the Member for South Donegal (Mr. MacNeill), and though there is the advantage to him that for a libel inside the House he escapes responsibility, there is also this disadvantage that the libel is liable to be sooner exposed. We have had a description of the state of affairs in Donegal. When a murder was committed the police came to the conclusion that a certain number of men had nothing to do with it, and that the rest of the people had. The few people who were believed to be innocent received passes and were allowed to proceed along the highway, but the other people were assumed to be guilty, and were liable to be stopped and, if they had no pass, to be taken away from their work to the police barracks. To this treatment the police subjected two poor men as they were gathering seaweed on the seashore. They had no thought of police passes; their thoughts were of their wives and children, whom they supported by their precarious toil. They were hauled off to the police barrack, and when allowed to return to their work, they found the sea had washed away the result of their labour. Domiciliary visits were made at night. Such a visit was paid to the room of women lying in the pains of pregnancy. Before and after the birth the police tramped across the room and on the bed, turned over the bedclothes of the children, and held a gun to the head of a girl of 13 to frighten her into answering questions. This, I say, is worse than Siberian espionage. This torture is inflicted upon the people because of the loss of the life of an official by a course of proceeding for which the Government are responsible. These revelations show that the Police Force in Ireland has been degraded, deliberately degraded, I believe against the will of its members, from a position for performing its true functions—the preservation of order, the protection of property, and the detection of crime—to a position in which it is the servant of a social class, the agent of extortion, and the instrument of suppressing political rights and attacking the Representatives of the people. The pretence that there is good feeling between the people and the police is as unfounded and grotesque as any that ever proceeded from the lips of any Minister. No doubt, at the moment, the police, who are agents for carrying out the will and designs of the Chief Secretary, have things their own way and receive favour and promotion; but I warn all concerned that this Government is but a perishable commodity, and that even in the Constabulary Force where, now, men like Concannon flourish in their achievements, the turn of the honest man, of the faithful public servant who does his duty and no more, will come. I beg to move the reduction of the Vote by the amount I have mentioned, made up of the two items £63,600 and £20,000.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £805,771, be granted for the said Service."—(Mr. Sexton.)

MR. MAURICE HEALY (Cork)

With a full sense of my responsibility as representing the people who were so brutally ill-used, I say that the police had no more Justification for their attack at the Cork Station, than they would have were they to charge into this Chamber at this moment. I was at the station myself five minutes before the train arrived, and had not the slightest expectation of the arrest of the hon. Member for North-East Cork. It is altogether false to say there was anything like a large crowd assembled. There was a considerable force of police drawn up in two files on the platform at the place where the train was expected to stop, and I state in the most positive manner that at the moment the train arrived, the number of people did not exceed four times the number of police present. There were about double the number of people who on ordinary occasions are in the station on the arrival of a train, and the reason was that there was not the slightest knowledge among the bulk of the people that my hon. Friend was in the train at all. Had it been known, undoubtedly there would have been a large crowd at the station. I do not wish unnecessarily to make charges against the police; but the facts that came under my notice, almost irresistibly drive me to the conclusion that so far from desiring to avoid a collision with the people, they deliberately made arrangements to provoke such a collision. If they had wished to arrest my hon. Friend without the knowledge of the people, if they had wished to prevent any demonstration, if they had wished to exclude from the station all but the people who had business there, nothing would have been easier than for them to have done so. But, instead of that, they attracted attention by drawing up their police force at the station, and when the train arrived Sub-inspector Concannon went forward and arrested my hon. Friend as he alighted from his carriage, and I say, in the most positive manner, that until that moment there was scarcely an individual on the platform had the least idea that my hon. Friend was there. Naturally, the people surged forward, and they raised a cheer, but that was the utmost of their offence. There were no stones thrown, no blows struck; there were not even offensive criesraised against the police; the people merely surged forward with the natural desire to welcome my hon. Friend and congratulate him on his return after triumphing over the authorities in their attempt to prevent him from addressing his countrymen. Without warning, the police turned upon the people with the butt-ends of their rifles, and I confesss I was appalled. I have read from time to time accounts of police savagery; but I confess I never thought that a body of men, drawn as they are from the Irish people, could, without provocation, have treated the people as did the police on that occasion at the Cork and Bandon Station. But I confess that after what I saw on that occasion I shall never have any difficulty in the future in believing stories of police savagery. I heard no order given to charge, and I had a perfect opportunity of seeing what went on. The suggestion that there was any attempt at rescue, or any idea of rescue, in the minds of the people is absolutely grotesque. The people were not in sufficient force to effect a rescue from even four policemen, let alone to rescue a prisoner from 20 or 25 armed men. I shall never forget the spectacle of decent and unoffending citizens struck down without even an order to the effect having been given, as far as I could hear, and lying groaning and wounded on the platform of the station. I now wish to say a word as to the attack on my hon. Friend the Member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien). The right hon. Gentleman says the police did not know my hon. Friend.

* MR. A. J. BALFOUR

If my recollection serves me rightly, what I said was I had no official information as to how the assaults occurred, and I think it possible that the police did not know him by sight.

MR. M. HEALY

I think the right hon. Gentleman must have forgotten an answer he gave to this House on the subject. Does he forget that he told the House that Mr. Concannon went up and addressed my hon. Friend, knowing who he was before the arrival of the train in the presence of his men? The right hon. Gentleman ought, at any rate, to try and make his narrative of what occurred consistent. My hon. Friend the Member for West Belfast (Mr. Sexton) has said there is the strongest reason for saying, not merely that the police knew my hon. Friend, but that they assaulted him because they knew. What is the fact, sir? My hon. Friend was assaulted on that occasion no less than three different times, and if that does not imply a deliberate intention, I do not know what does. He took a statement from my hon. Friend soon after he had recovered, and his statement was that he was first assaulted at the platform while he was in the act of speaking to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien), by getting a violent blow in the back, which was exceedingly painful, but did not produce any wound. The Member for North-East Cork was seized and marched out of the station, and the Member for North Monaghan went after him to obtain an opportunity of conferring with him when he should be taken to the police station. My hon. Friend had hardly got out of the station when he was assaulted a second time, receiving a violent blow on the back of the head, which produced a severe wound and resulted in great effusion of blood. While my hon. Friend was staggering under the effects of that blow and trying to get out of the crowd, he was assaulted a third time by a third policeman. He was the only member of the crowd assaulted three times, and that being so, I say there is strong ground for the supposition that the police assaulted him because they did know him. I confess that, with all my experience of the right hon. Gentleman, I was surprised at the way in which he dealt with what happened to my hon. Friend. Captain Plunket himself had the grace to send and inquire after my hon. Friend, and to ex press his regret for what had occurred; but the right hon. Gentleman, so far from doing that, sneers and jeers at the injuries which my hon. Friend received, and suggests, practically, that my hon. Friend was malingering because he was unable to go into Court on the occasion of his trial. Again, I can speak from personal experience. I saw my hon. Friend the night he was wounded. He was lying in bed insensible, and if he was malingering he acted his part remarkably well, because he deceived not only me but some of the most eminent doctors in Cork. I saw him also several times during his illness, and, although after a time he was able to go about, I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that he was very far from having recovered from the very serious injuries he received at the hands of the police. The suggestion that my hon. Friend was malingering is most disgraceful, and brings discredit on the right hon. Gentleman who makes it, and I think the right hon. Gentleman himself will see that it is neither an honourable nor a manly thing to say. I have only one more word to say on the subject of this Police Vote. With regard to the brutality of which the Irish police have been guilty during the past two or three years, I believe a great deal of it arises from the fact that they are encouraged by the Executive to indulge in strong drink. Two or three years ago it would have involved serious disgrace on an Irish policeman to be found drunk when on duty, but now they are on all occasions encouraged to drink, and, unfortunately, no encouragement is necessary. It is inevitable they should, under existing circumstances, drink to some extent, but so far from that tendency being suppressed it has, for obvious reasons, been encouraged. I believe that if the men at the Cork Bandon Station had not been under the influence of drink they would never have indulged in the disgraceful proceedings which then took place. They have almost entirely stopped attempting to enforce the licensing laws in Ireland. I have been always an advocate for temperance legislation, and have always supported proposals for the closing of public houses on Sunday and Saturday night; but I confess that my belief in legislation of that kind has been seriously shocked by the total neglect of the Irish police in the past few years to enforce the existing laws on the subject. The allegation which the right hon. Gentleman has made, that there are at present good relations between the Irish people and the police, is outrageously and grotesquely false, and the policy of the right hon. Gentleman has been, and is, to make those relations more and more strained. I will take the earliest opportunity of saying in Ireland that if proceedings such as those which took place at the Cork and Bandon Station are to continue, I will advise my constituents and Irish people to avoid collisions with the police if possible, and to avoid putting themselves into positions in which the police can make assaults of this kind upon them; but if they are compelled to go into situations in which there is danger of their being attacked by the police to go armed with such weapons as will enable them properly to retort for the attacks made upon them.

* MR. O'KEEFFE (Limerick)

I rise not alone as the Representative of one of the principal cities in Ireland, but also as having held the office of its Mayor or Chief Magistrate for the past three years. It will be readily understood that my official duties have brought me almost daily in contact with police administration. I do not wish to indulge in generalities; but I must repeat what has been said to the effect that the police force in Ireland is not, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, a police force at all. It is an army of 13,000 men, maintained, not for the protection of the persons and the property of the people, but for the sole purpose of upholding the policy of exasperation and coercion so unblushingly and persistently advocated by the right hon. Gentleman. During the short time that has elapsed since my election to this House I have observed the great difference between the police system existing in this country and that in Ireland. Here the police are under municipal control. They are the servants of the public. In Ireland they are the masters, and I regret to say that the word "policeman" in Ireland is synonymous with everything that is odious. Let me give the Committee a few facts regarding police statistics. In the City of Limerick, which has 39,000 inhabitants, we have 95 police. I find that the City of Lincoln, which has a population of 38,000, has only 40 police; that Yarmouth, with 48,000 inhabitants, has only 52 police; Northampton, with a population of 52,000, has 60 police; and Lichfield, with a population of 8,000, has only eight police. In villages in Ireland, with a population of not more than 2000, I have often seen 11 or 12 policemen. The criminal statistics laid on the Table of the House a few days ago show an extraordinary state of things as to crime in Ireland. One would think that crime must exist to a large extent in a country when the Government came to Parliament and demanded a large sum for its prevention. Yet what were the facts? Take the City of Limerick, about which the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland has given some interesting criminal statistics. The net number of indictable offences during 12 months were only seven, and of these not one was of a particularly serious nature. When analysed the proportion of serious crime appears to be 1.8 to 10,000 of the population. Although we have four Quarter Sessions for the trial of indictable offences and two Assizes, there has been hardly any work for them to do. As regards the cases dealt with summarily by the Magistrates—of which I have most experience—I can say that there has not been one of any consequence, and even such cases as drunkenness and assaults, which are the ordinary cases that arise in a large city like Limerick, show a decrease of 544. And I would remind the House that Limerick can be taken as a typical city, for not only is it the capital of its own county, but, from its situation, it is a centre for all the surrounding counties—for Clare, Kerry and Tipperary—so that on market days and holidays the population of the city will number probably 80,000. Having shown the immunity of this town from crime, I would ask how the Government pay tribute to the crimelessness of the place? Why in this city, where we are tired of giving our Judges white kid gloves, we are under the most stringent clauses of the Coercion Act; there is no right of public meeting there; the Resident Magistrates can at any moment set aside the ordinary law if they wish to try a trumpery assault; and we have an excessive number of policemen in our midst. The Town Clerk of Limerick, in a letter I have received from him only to-day, says that the Government make a demand on the city—which already has enough to do to bear its own local burdens—for £3,000 being the cost of the extra police which they have sent to the city "to preserve law and order." Everybody must see the injustice of that tax, and it is hardly necessary for me to say that Limerick will never pay a single penny of it. And now I would refer to a disturbance which took place in Limerick a year and a half since, and I am obliged to do it because of the statement of the Chief Secretary as to the peaceful condition existing between the police and the people in Ireland. A year ago last November, on the occasion of the unveiling of a monument in Limerick to the memory of the Manchester Martyrs, a meeting was proclaimed by the Government. The meeting was proclaimed at the last moment, and soldiers were sent there—even Artillery—to prevent it. On the night the meeting was to have been held, a sort of disturbance broke out; there was a kind of riot, windows were broken, and other property was damaged. Those people who had suffered loss in this way made the usual presentment for compensation, and the Corporation, who were the Local Authority, had to decide whether or not the claims were well founded. Witnesses were examined, and the cases were gone into thoroughly. The damage amounted to about £1,000, and this the Corporation would have had no objection to pay, had it not been shown that the property wrecked in Limerick was not unwrecked, by what you would call rioters, but by the police themselves. Most respectable inhabitants proved that they had seen the police throwing their batons at the windows, some of which were worth as much as £50 a piece. The Corporation refused the presentment. The case came before Judge Holmes at the March Assizes, who considered himself constrained to pass the presentment, no matter who the rioters had been. He held, however, that the police had been the rioters on that occasion. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary is well aware that the citizens of Limerick several times called upon him to institute a local inquiry into the inception of the disturbance and the circumstances attending it, but it was refused. Another little circumstance I would mention. On the occasion of that demonstration, certain flags of a most harmless nature were put out of the window of a private building. Colonel Perse, one of the excitable Magistrates in command, took offence at that, and ordered the police to enter the private house and remove the flags. The police did as they were ordered. The owner of the House summoned the police for trespass, and the case came before the Petty Sessions, and he was fined, with an alternative. The conviction was reviewed in the Queen's Bench, and I remember that Judge O'Brien laid it down that a constable had no right to enter a private meeting, and that those who prevented his entering by force were in the right. I call attention to this to show that even under the existing system in Ireland we are advised that the police in carrying on their illegal action can be legally and properly repelled by force. The right hon. Gentleman the Lord Mayor of Dublin has referred to a case in which perjury was established against a constable at Drogheda, and I may state that I was myself present during the trial of Mr. Sheahy, a Member of this House, who though he offered good bail for his appearance next day was met by a policeman named O'Malley, who, at the instigation of the Magistrate, whose name I cannot at this moment recall, swore that he had reason to believe that Mr. Sheahy, if allowed to go on bail, would not attend the meeting of the Court on the following day. This was perjury of the most appalling and open kind perpetrated under what was supposed to be the protection of the law. In conclusion, I would say, with regard to this Constabulary Vote that a more unpopular vote never is and never was presented to the House of Commons. Whatever may have been said by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, I can see no trace of anything like reconciliation between the police and the Irish people. I do not so much blame the Constabulary for this, although there can be no doubt that individual members of the force have acted in certain cases with great brutality; but, on the other hand, I do accuse the Government of having been the cause of this alienation of feeling. If the Government continue to proceed as they have done they will never gain the respect or confidence of the Irish people. They may double the Constabulary Vote, or make it five millions if they like, and they may increase the strength of the Police Force to 50,000 men, but they will never gain the respect of the law-abiding people. I say that the whole Constabulary system of Ireland is rotten to the core, and as long as I occupy a seat in this House I will never cease to raise my voice against it. Moreover, I say that the action taken by the Irish Members on this question will be applauded by the Irish people from one end of the country to the other. We have nothing to gain by coming here; but at the same time we should be guilty of almost criminal conduct if we did not attend in our places and tell the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary that he is not a fitting interpreter of the feelings of the Irish people, and that as far as we are concerned our votes and our voices will never cease to be against his policy.

MR. E. HARRINGTON (Kerry, W.)

This is practically the first occasion during this Session on which I have had the opportunity of inflicting any observations upon the House. I find that I have now to address my remarks to a single occupant of the Treasury Bench (the Solicitor General for Ireland). I think the speech which has been delivered by the right hon. Gentleman the Lord Mayor of Dublin (Mr. Sexton) was so full, frank, able, and concise a statement of our case against the Government that we might fairly have been willing by that statement to stand or fall; and I challenge any hon. or right hon. Gentleman on the opposite side of the House to adduce any reasonable arguments in reply to it. But, following the example of the hon. land learned Gentleman who spoke last, I, also, will venture to localise my share in this Debate by bringing it within the four corners of the county which has the distinguished honour of being a kingdom in itself, and talking of the pranks played by the Royal Irish Constabulary in the Kingdom of Derry. During the last days of 1888 I had to accept the hospitality of the right hon. Gentleman who is at the head of the Irish Executive, and from that moment until I was released in February, by the gracious privilege of an inequality of the law, one day before my time, I had no knowledge of what was going on in the world outside. Since that time, however, I have learned a good deal of what has taken place with regard to the police, and I believe that if hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side of the House, will, after what is expected to be the early closing of Parliament, go to the County of Derry and there study the doings of the Government, many an honest vote will be diverted from the present Administration by the disgusting scenes they will be sure to witness. Why has the Chief Secretary never had the courage to visit the most disturbed county in Ireland, in which, I allege, 20,000 people have been evicted in the last 10 years? He has been represented there by the representative of that "old and particular friend" of the First Lord of the Treasury, Mr. Soames, who went there, employed Police Pensioners, and scattered gold all over the place in order to get false accusations made against me These accusations have failed, but that is the only way in which the Government have been represented in the County of Kerry. My first experience on going back to that county after a period of enforced absence was an extraordinary one. Of course, I had a legal right to go to my own residence in my own constituency. The first thing I saw when I alighted on the railway platform was that a man who approached the train in order to shake hands with me, was struck under the ear by a policeman for that awful crime. The crime which I had committed, and for which I had been so heavily punished, was publishing in my own paper a report of a meeting of a suppressed branch of the National League, and I venture to suggest that this treatment on my return home was an evidence of moral cowardice and meanness, as well as of the vindictive spirit and enmity of the Police Force. That happened on the tenth of last month. I went to my residence accompanied by a few hundred people. I was told that a band was out, but I did not wish to be a party to any demonstration, for I knew that the danger of gathering the people together was that they would be batoned by the police. Now the police deliberately laid a trap there in order that they might assault peaceable people. They drew up at the entrance to the street in which my house is situate a cordon of police, and in front of the window at which I was standing they planted a police note-taker with a few policemen around him, as if to intimate to the people they intended to take down any words I uttered and to prosecute me for them. It was churlish enough to suggest I was to be so quickly again prosecuted under such circumstances, but still, I did not mind that. What, however, did the police do? As soon as they had, by means of this trap, gathered a few hundred people together, they, without any note of warning or order, as I solemnly assert, clubbed their guns and began to smash people on the head with them. I saw old women knocked down and kicked by policemen when they were on the ground, and these fine brave fellows, this noble force of men, of which the Chief Secretary for Ireland is so proud, acted in this brutal fashion. Mind you, I think there is no force in the world which would not be brutalised under similar circumstances, for the greatest liar of the force, the concocter of stories and the manufacturer of reports is certain of promotion and of being defended in this House by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary. We are accused by hon. Gentlemen opposite sometimes that we are always harping on the same theme, but I venture to say that in no other country in the world can such a picture as this be seen—in no other country would the police dare to charge an unoffending crowd which has simply assembled to welcome home their Parliamentary representative. Had the police had the courtesy to intimate to me that if I addressed the people it would be dangerous for them, I would have induced the crowd to disperse, but instead of that they laid a trap for me by placing a Government reporter under my windows in order to lead the people to believe that I was to be permitted to speak. We were told last evening that the relations between the Irish people and the constabulary are very cordial at the present moment. They are very close, at any rate, for the police are frequently using their batons and rifles on the heads of the people. Then we have a system of shadowing people in the County of Kerry, and I believe that if the representatives of the taxpayers of this country could see the system under which this Police Force is administered, they would call for the abolition of the force. We see men in silk hats knocking about in all directions; policemen in uniform are plentiful, but policemen in all sorts of fancy costumes are still more numerous. They may be seen flying about on bicycles, and you may depend upon it they are not engaged in the detection of ordinary crime. We are told that 3,000 threatening letters are alleged to have been written in the County of Kerry. Now, these letters must be in the hands of the Government, and the only persons who have been brought to justice for writing them, so far, have been two women and a simpleton. This is all that the police have been able to detect in 10 years. Now, I have an offer to make. Let the Government give us possession of these letters for a fortnight, and I venture to say that we will bring many persons to justice. It was well said by the Lord Mayor of Dublin that no policeman in Ireland has ever been promoted for saving life. They are only promoted when they injure the life and limbs of political opponents of the Government. For those acts they are both promoted and rewarded. On the occasion when my newspaper plant was seized, fifty policemen were placed in charge of my house and took possession of all my books and papers and private letters. About thirty of them lived with me for nearly a fortnight in an undecided state of mind as to whether they should arrest me. It was just like the occupation of Egypt. They could not make up their minds whether they were going to leave or to stay. Now, each one of those thirty men have since been rewarded or promoted for the simple service of occupying my house. Policemen who perjure themselves also gain promotion, and notably there is the case of police constable Clark, who is now apparently in the highest confidence of the Government. Now, I wish to relate an incident which happened before my temporary absence from the County Kerry. While the Times case was being placed before the Special Commission, a land agent from Killarney gave certain startling evidence, and some young men in the town of Killarney thought they would assist in the investigation of that evidence. They therefore went out to make inquiries of their friends and neighbours as to the facts which the witness had deposed to, but from the moment they started, they were followed and shadowed by policemen who obstructed them and obtruded themselves between the young men and the persons they were visiting. They went with them into private houses, and at last one of the young men ordered a policeman out of a house. He refused to go and the young man pushed him out and took the person's statement in the policeman's absence. As the young man was not the owner of that house, he was convicted of assault, and he was imprisoned for a week for that act. I assert that the deliberate purpose of the police on that occasion was to obstruct the obtaining of evidence for the Special Commission then sitting in London. They would prevent any evidence being obtained by our side, but they would be willing to get evidence for the side of the allies—the Times and the Government. This is a matter which the Government will have to deal with early next Session, and I can promise them they will have lively times. I believe they will be made ashamed of their allies, and of the use made by the Times of the Royal Irish Constabulary. I appeal to hon. Members not to set down our statements as wholesale imagination. Let them rather go to Ireland and see the course of events for themselves. Let them go as ordinary tourists and visitors, and not announce to the nearest Resident Magistrate that they are Tory Members come to watch the administration of the law. I pledge my word that if they do this, there will soon be a great revolution of feeling on the part of the Tory Party against the administration of the Police Force. I now wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman what reason he can give for the police, without warning on occasion after occasion, when any sort of gathering takes place in the County of Kerry, batoning the people of that place. And here I should like to interpose a few words as to another matter. I have here a telegram which gives us some proof at any rate that the acts of the Government underlings will not always be upheld by the Superior Courts of Justice. I have here a telegram which states that the conviction of Dr. Tanner for assault has been set aside. The second case against Dr. Tanner is still at hearing, but, adds the telegram, "It is all plain sailing now." Yes, Sir, it has been plain sailing with the right hon. Gentleman for a long time. He has taken care that nothing shall obstruct his navigation. It was plain sailing when he removed from his path the Member for North-East Cork. It was plain sailing for him when, after locking me up in gaol on one of the foulest and most extraordinary pretences ever known, he came down here and belied me in this House. But it will not be plain sailing for him any longer, and I do believe that even in that Party, of which for the moment he is the figure head, there will be an awakening conscience, and that they will realise that the policy which they are pursuing is not a policy of union, but that it is a policy of the baton in Ireland and of falsehood in Parliament. I now return to the conduct of the police at Kerry. By what right, I ask, did they assault the people of my constituency? Why was no warning given me that the people must disperse? I asked the Resident Magistrate there if there was any law to justify his proceedings, and, curling his moustache, he replied, "I do not know, I am sure." I have kept the people of that town from spilling blood, for I gave them my pledge that I would raise the question in this House. I hope now I shall get a satisfactory reply. I will leave that part of the subject. I have now to complain that policemen are needlessly and purposely taken from one part of Ireland to another; that they are plied with drink, and that then they are set on to mercilessly baton the people, while the constables who are acquainted with the locality are kept indoors; and this is what the right hon. Gentleman describes as nurturing cordial relations between the police and the people. I know of some remote district in Ireland in which the people stand in fear of the police. But is it to be wondered at, deprived as they are of every Constitutional right? The Government are to-day displaying their mighty army of 26,000 men before the German Emperor, the master of millions, and to do that they are obliged to withdraw the Guards from London and put Lancers to do duty in their places. Why do not the Government make a proper use of the Royal Irish Constabulary? They could be easily drafted into the Army, which is their proper sphere, and then there would be no necessity to brutalise them as you are now doing. I have in my pocket two boycotting letters written by Mr. Cecil Roche, the nominal master of Colonel Turner, which were handed to the secretary of Tralee races by a sergeant of police, and this is the use you are making of the Irish Police Force. This act of this man in trying to instil hatred into the police force will carry its own revulsion of feeling against it, and I believe that decent men who have differed from us in past times in Ireland will see, after all, that it is the selfish policy of those who are administering the law that is estranging the people at the present time from the laws of the country. I will not inflict myself at any further length on the Committee. I was doubtful whether I should speak on this Vote at all. I assert that for 10 or 11 years I have never spoken at a meeting without securing protection for the police present; I have never consented to offering them violence or insult, and I am pained to speak of any section of my countrymen as I have done. But the temptation to them is great. If they do not treat us brutally they will not be promoted. It is by displaying their hatred of us and their animosity to any national feeling and to every instinct of humanity that they may expect promotion from those who have the feelings of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland.

* MR. A. J. BALFOUR

It was my duty last night to address more than one long speech to the Committee, and I propose, therefore, to restrict the remarks I have to make to-day to the very narrowest limits, and to couch them in as uncontroversial a tone as the nature of the subject will admit of. I notice that something I said last night towards the close of my observations with regard to the increased good feeling between the police and the people has caused a good deal of irritation in the minds of hon. Gentlemen opposite. I believe that what I stated is the fact, and I abate no jot nor tittle of the assertion which I then made last evening. I should have thought that in every quarter of the House such an increase of good feeling would be desired; yet the statements made by hon. Gentlemen opposite with regard to the intemperate habits of the police and their reckless cruelty and brutality are not only absolutely unfounded, but certainly do not conduce to that harmony of feeling between the police and the people which hon. Gentlemen in their cooler moments must desire. Such speeches as that of the right hon. Gentleman the Lord Mayor of Dublin (Mr. Sexton), by the very violence of the language in which they are couched, must partly destroy the effect which they would be otherwise calculated to produce. The right hon. Gentleman has not only made the wildest accusations against myself personally, but he has emphasised the accusations against the police. The right hon. Gentleman directly charges the Government with the intention of doing all in their power to promote collisions between the police and the people, and with using, to obtain that object, all the powers of organisation at their own command. Further, he charges us with attempting to inflame the violence of the police by encouraging them in habits of intemperance. The right hon. Gentleman must feel that such accusations, however useful they may be on Irish platforms, are not suited to the atmosphere of the House of Commons. The right hon. Gentleman may attribute to me what motives he pleases, and he may draw a fancy picture of the Chief Secretary as a monster of political iniquity; but even if we granted the truth of this caricature, if we put the morality of the Government at the lowest level, what could the Government, as politicians, gain by promoting conflicts between the police and the public? The right hon. Gentleman must see that, as far as we have political interests to serve, and as far as our conduct is inspired, not by a sense of public duty to the people of Ireland, but by our estimate of the mere political exigencies of the situation, we nave everything to gain by promoting harmony between the police and the people, and everything to lose by the contrary course. To say that the Government are—I will not say so wicked—but so idiotic as to carry out the policy attributed to them is surely to shock the common sense of the Committee and of the English people. The Amendment deals with two points apparently new—the alleged excess in the number of extra police over what is required by the condition of Ireland, and the alleged impropriety of making payments out of the public funds to the police at the time when they were witnesses in the Times' case. Now, I stated last evening without special inquiry that I had no doubt that the same rule was followed with regard to the police over in London on subpœua, which is habitually followed whenever a member of the Public Service is called before any Court of Law. Having made inquiry, I find that this was the case. The rule is—that if a man be called away from home on duty, the Ordinary pay will not be interfered with. If he receives, as is usual, from those who subpoena him, money to support him in his absence from home, no money is paid to him from the public funds for that purpose. This rule, which is founded on common sense, has been strictly adhered to in the case of police called before the Special Commission. They receive no extra remuneration from a public source for the additional cost of their support from home, because that cost was borne, no doubt, by the Times. The right hon. Gentleman desires that not only should these witnesses receive no extra remuneration, but that their ordinary pay should be cut off.

MR. SEXTON

My point is, that they received pay from the Crown in a period during which they discharged no duty to the Crown, but were receiving very considerable payment.

* MR. BALFOUR

The first point I have dealt with. I have pointed out that it is a necessary and, I think, a natural and proper rule of the service that the pay should not be stopped because a man is called away from his ordinary duties to exercise his functions as a citizen. As to the amount of remuneration given by the Times, I have no information to give the House, because I have no information myself. It was a matter that was arranged by the Times just as it is arranged by any party to a suit.

MR. MACNEILL (Donegal, S.)

Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me to interrupt him for a moment? The right hon. Gentleman has frequently stated that in this matter there is no difference between the case of the men called before the Special Commission and the case of witnesses called before an ordinary Court. But other witnesses were given three days' notice by Mr. Soames when they were served. The constabulary were given no notice at all, and some of them were not subpoenaed at all. One man was kept over 100 days in London without subpœna. How is it that the constabulary witnesses were dancing attendance on Mr. Soames and the Times without any subpoena, whilst other witnesses were treated so differently?

* MR. BALFOUR

I am surprised at the interruption of the hon. Member, amounting as it does to a considerable and not unargumentative speech on a subject wholly outside the scope of the Amendment. The hon. Gentleman has attacked the constabulary for being in London without subpœna, but the Amendment is about the remuneration which they received when there. The ordinary rule was followed in the case of these men, and to depart from the habitual practice of the Public Service would be to set an unfortunate precedent. The right hon. Gentleman also desires to cut down the Vote by the amount for extra police in certain counties in Ireland on the ground that because Ireland is said to be no longer in a disturbed condition it no longer requires the extra police force. According to the right hon. Gentleman, either the contention of the Government about the state of Ireland is untrue or else the country should not be asked to pay the extra amount. I do not withdraw anything I have said with regard to the improved state of Ireland. That improvement makes itself manifest in almost every part of the country, and is established by every test that can be applied to it. The right hon. Gentleman has fallen into two errors. The first is, his statement that because crime has diminished, there ought to be no extra police force; and the second is, that there has been no diminution in the extra police force.

MR. SEXTON

I referred not only to crime, but to the proclamation of meetings, and also to the boast of the right hon. Gentleman that the number of boycotted persons had been considerably reduced.

* MR. BALFOUR

I did not know that was the point to which the right hon. Gentleman attached weight, but it really makes no substantial difference in the argument I was addressing to the Committee. The point is whether, judging by the past, the improvement has been so great as to justify the Government in reducing the police force. In 1870 crime in Ireland was at a far lower level than it is now. Extra police were not required at that time, as boycotting, the favourite weapon of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, had not been invented. Yet in 1870 the total amount of police was in excess of the amount of police now required for the preservation of the public peace in Ireland.

An hon. Member

What was the cost?

* MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Surely the hon. Member must see that that is not relevant to the argument brought forward by the right hon. Gentleman. His argument was that we did not require all the policemen now employed, since we said that Ireland was so much quieter than it had been. In answer to that, it is perfectly relevant to point out that at a time when agrarian crime was less, boycotting was not invented, and there was not a large political party actively engaged in promoting disturbance; but it is not relevant to point out that the cost of the force was greater. A larger number of police was required than actually exists at the present time. If hon. Gentlemen will compare the statistics of what was required when Ireland was much more disturbed in 1882, they will see that the amount of the extra police force used in the counties has been diminished by very nearly one-half, and I believe that a still further reduction will be made as the country improves. With regard to other points raised by hon. Members, I cannot go into them without again going over the ground which I traversed last night, and I have confined myself to the arguments which are strictly relevant to the Amendment. I think I have shown the House that there is no reason for refusing this Vote either on account of the action of the Times or on account of the alleged excessive police force in Ireland, and I hope, therefore, they will not assent to the Amendment.

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

The best proof the right hon. Gentleman could give the Committee that there was no vindictive action on the part of the police and no animus on the part of the Government in stimulating them to excesses would be that every excess committed by the police in Ireland made against the Government, and that it was to their interest to promote harmony. No attempt has been made to show this. Why do you do all these hundred petty, mean, and contemptible acts, which show a spirit of vindictiveness on the part of the powers that be? What advantage is it to take away four ounces of bread from my hon. Friend the Member for West Kerry (Mr. E. Harrington) when you took away his hard labour? Did that remove from the minds of the Irish people the idea that you are a mean and contemptible and malignant Government? You cut off men's whiskers and moustaches, you strip your prisoners, and stick them in police vans and foul places. With what face under these circumstances can the right hon. Gentleman get up and say, "We never can incite policemen to act illegally, because it makes against us rather than for us." I regret having to speak about the conduct of the Irish Constabulary during the last four years; but I must bear out what has been said about the police being encouraged to drink stimulating liquors and deprived of food for the purpose of making them savage. I always supported temperance legislation in this House. I shall never do it again as long as the Irish Police are controlled as at present. What are the facts? It used to be a crime for them to be drunk on duty; but now their officers pass it over, and huge barrels of porter are freely distributed amongst them, and in a state, half-hungry and half-drunk, I have seen them with the devil in their eyes attack the unfortunate people and level them with the ground. There is a still more remarkable fact. These men have for years been regarded as a religious body of men. They were respected by the people and on friendly terms with the Priests. Now they are being distinctly encouraged to detach themselves from their religious observances. Every policeman entering the Force has to take an oath that he does not belong to any secret society, except the Freemasons. It is notorious that the Freemasons' Society is condemned by the Catholic Church, as every other secret society is. I am not going to attack it, as it is known in England in the form of a benevolent institution; but I say that in Ireland Freemasonry and Orangeism are the same thing, and if you take up a list of Freemasons you will find that, as a rule, the heads of the Freemasons and the heads of the Orange Society are one and the same. There is no promotion to be had in the force except through the Freemason ring, and these men know it. They are encouraged on this account to join a body which is condemned by their religious superiors, and they do join it. And how are the men officered? The nomination system, which is partly resorted to, is a most pernicious system, and it is one which you have abolished in your own country. Every petty agent and landlord gets a nomination for a son, and the whole of the officers at the present moment belong to that class, except a few Englishmen, who are the most respectable members of the force. Sub-Inspector Tyatt, an Englishman, undoubtedly brought Dr. Cross to justice for poisoning his wife, and—I do not know whether it was because a Petition was sent to the Lord Lieutenant, to let Dr. Cross off because he had been boycotted—the Sub-Inspector was removed, at his own expense, to a more distant station. I say that the spirit that animates the officers goes into the men, and their only chance of promotion is to read the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman, and to act upon his precepts. Why do they do it? Because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that it-pleases the right hon. Gentleman to have Members of Parliament with cut heads, and that by treating the people as they did at Mitchelstown and Charleville, they are best carrying out the wishes of the right hon. Gentleman and pursuing the road to promotion. In the mass the police are an ignorant body of men, and their officers are a most prejudiced class. These men cannot see the Irish policy as a whole, they cannot take, or be expected to take, the statesmanlike view of their superiors, such as the Chief Secretary has put forward, that it is impossible to carry out a policy of exacerbation. But they take a hint from the defence made for them by the right hon. Gentleman; they believe they are carrying out the desires of the Government, and they act accordingly. Now just by way of illustration, not of any act of brutality on the part of the police, but of the absurdity of the system, I will tell the Committee what occurred when I went to visit the Member for North-East Cork in goal in March or April last. I arrived in Tralee with the solicitor for the defence armed with an order of admission from the Attorney General, but from the moment we arrived at our hotel we were watched by a galaxy of these heroes. Step by step, from the hotel to the gaol we were watched, and step by step we were watched back again. I afterwards wrote to Sir Andrew Reid on the subject—I believe he has been made a "Sir," and I think none the better of him for it—I explained the object of our visit to Tralee. I said we had the leave of the Government, and I inquired why we were dogged in this way. The next day after the trial, and after the usual performance of my expulsion from Court by Mr. Cecil Roche, waiting for the train I took a walk in company with the solicitor and my friend, Mr. Condon, now in gaol. I do not think if we had intended to hold a meeting we should have taken the course we did. "We took a walk through the country. We doubled back again, but still we were followed by two policemen, to whom at last I spoke, and I asked why they paid us such attention, but they declined to give me an answer, or to give their names. I wrote to the Inspector under the impression that the men had inadvertently exceeded their duty, but no; I was told they were quite right in acting as they did, and refusing their names. From Sir Andrew Reid I could get no explanation why I was followed. Now this is most absurd. I do not mind being followed, except that I do not care to be thought such a fool that two policemen can find out anything that I desire to conceal. In that sense I do submit to Her Majesty's Government that unless these things are done for purposes of irritation and insult I cannot conceive what object they can have in the wide world. I see these men at the railway station; they have some arrangement with the booking clerk, and from the moment I take my ticket to my return, arrangements are made to keep a watch on me all along the line, as if I were the Lord Lieutenant, and I find a guard of honour at every railway station. Some members of our party are Railway Directors, and I invite them to ascertain by what right these men are admitted to the railway stations. I invite the railway shareholders, the vast majority of whom sympathize with, us, to inquire by what right these policemen enter upon private premises and baton the people there. I trust this irritating system of espionage will be abolished. You find these fellows sticking their pickelhaubes and noses into every railway carriage to find out where you are going, as if we are living under a Russian system of administration. What can be the object except irritation? In Mr. Forster's day, my hon. Friend the Member for the College Green moved for a Return of the number of people arrested at railway stations in 10 years, and the Return was given in 1881, and we found that in that period there had been no arrests, except that on one occasion, at Ennis, some gentlemen of the Clare Militia were arrested for being drunk and disorderly. I should like to have a continuation of that Return. I do not know whether there has been any continuation of the pranks of the Clare Militia; but I think it would be shown that this practice of watching railway stations has no sort of object but exasperation. We have got used to it, but English and Scotch visitors to our country are struck by the appearance of these louts carrying guns, swords, batons, revolvers, and a spike on their helmets—visitors are struck by this exhibition, and in it may afford a useful object-lesson for their enlightenment. We have been told that under the present system of administration there has been an improvement in the state of Ireland, and as proof we are told that the number of boycotted persons has decreased. We have not been told that the number of evicted farms has decreased, that was left as information for Colonel Turner to give the Judges of Assize, a piece of impertinence that deserves censure. The system of boycotting Returns sprang up under the present Chief Secretary. We always have a Chief Secretary who is one of the finest statesmen of his time. All the other Departments of State would be glad to have his services, but England out of her bounty confers him upon the Irish race. The right hon. Gentleman divorcing himself from Scotland, from the Home Office, Foreign Office, the Colonies, India, the Army, the Navy, is good enough to give the benefit of his intellect to Ireland, and during his tenure of office he has developed this system of Returns of boycotted persons. He says when the Coercion Act was introduced there were 4,000 boycotted persons, and now two years of the Act have reduced that number by half or a third. Now, I assume every person of common sense in any district knows who is boycotted there and who is not. A boycotted person must be well known. But these Returns furnished by the Constabulary give us no information whatever by which we can test their accuracy. In my opinion, the Returns are as illusory as other information furnished through the same channel. The right hon. Gentleman has devised a system—probably the most effective that could be devised—for singling out a boycotted person and preventing anybody from buying from or selling to him. There has come into being in Ireland recently a body called a Land Corporation, and also, I believe, a Derelict Trust, which certainly does not belie its name, for it is certainly derelict if not trustworthy. These two bodies endeavour to effect sales of cattle for landlords and the sale of the produce of boycotted persons. What have the Government done in Ireland, headed by a man of the undoubted intellect of the Chief Secretary? With regard to boycotted persons, I am surprised that a man of intellect like the Chief Secretary cannot see the absurdity of the system of police protection. When a boycotted person attends a fair he is accompanied by four or five constables in uniform, with rifles, in order to watch the bargains. Let me suggest, in addition, that when boycotted pigs are brought into a fair the fight hon. Gentleman should give the owner the Union Jack to wave over them, and we should see how brisk the sales would be under the combined influence of bayonets and the flag. This system has sprung up under the right hon. Gentleman, who boasts that he has diminished boycotting in Ireland. At some fairs probably 50 constables are present to look after the boycotted land-grabbers and the landlords. Does this promote good feeling and encourage the sale of boycotted produce? If I wanted a pig at a fair I would steer clear of the bayonets, and I would suggest to the great intellect which now sheds its beams over Ireland that the best way to give a land-grabber a chance at a fair is to let him go there unnoticed and unknown. I make this humble suggestion in the interests of the landlords. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman says these men must be protected from danger, but if in an unfortunate state of affairs they need protection let them stay at home, for certainly they will make no sales at the fair under the circumstances I have mentioned. There is an instance in the case of Lord Courtown. Lord Courtown is, I believe, the head of the "Property Defence Association"—it is not much of a head, it is true, that he can give, but such as it is he gives it to that body. Lord Courtown had a lot of pigs the other day at Gorey Fair, and this great Government, which might employ its bayonets on the Nile, or in any other region where valour will meet its reward, gave the assistance of the police bayonets to Lord Courtown to sell his "bonnives." The hon. Member for Clonmel is now undergoing four months' imprisonment. I had the distinction of defending him before two Resident Magistrates, of whose legal knowledge the Lord Lieutenant is satisfied, and the only evidence against him was that he stood by while a sale was being attempted, and that he winked at the cattle dealer, and asked him for a match. Well, I am not likely to require a match, but if ever I go to a cattle fair I shall be careful to avoid the consequences of winking at anyone. I have given some of the causes of the increase in the numbers of the constabulary, they have duties in the interest of a class, and their duty to the people at large is neglected. Thefts, burglaries, ordinary murders, and manslaughters, and coroner's inquests they despise. I saw recently that, notwithstanding Mr. Carson's opinion, they refuse to give their assistance to the corporation of Limerick in serving processes; they are more inclined to study shorthand than to look after crime. They turn their attention to capturing Members of Parliament. In the rural districts anywhere in Ireland, you can go about with a million of money in your pocket, robbery is unknown, the people never think of it, but in the larger towns there is crime of course, and it is a serious thing to shopkeepers and others that these "swells" give the go-by to regular police duties. The fact is the police have got the idea into their heads that they are a political force, and they are entirely too high and mighty to be troubled with the ordinary duties of thief-catching. The Government have inoculated them with the idea, but the Government might have saved the police from the degradation of working the battering ram. The Government have recently issued a circular of a very peculiar kind. This circular, which has seen the light of day as all Government circulars do—anybody can keep a secret but Her Majesty's subjects—directs constables to find out visitors and give them all the information they can about evictions, and to fake care that no exaggerated stories are told. The constables are to become a sort of Cook's Guides, and personally to conduct visitors. But why is the Member for Fulham admitted within the cordon of police while the Member for North Monaghan is excluded? In like manner, the Member for South Tyrone was passed on from station to station, and a nice mess he made of it. Divisional Inspector Cameron told the Member for South Tyrone a story about a man being refused relief because he was a Protestant; but that has been proved to be a lie, and the hon. Member was challenged to show that there was a single word of truth in it. In this instance we have been able to trace the lie to its fountain-head, and the hon. Member is obliged to admit there was no foundation for the statement to which he gave currency. If you turn to the pages of Hansard for 1883 you will find some record of the proceedings of District Inspector Cameron, as he then was; how, in one instance, he batoned the people, and the Government of the day refused inquiry into the circumstances, and how fie had to be removed from Gort because of the constant trouble and difficulty he caused by his continual annoy- ance to the views in reference to a right of way. He was then sent to Youghal, where he ordered a most illegal and improper charge against the people. You then sent him to Wexford, where, as I say, his conduct was most brutal and arbitrary. And what after that? Why, you sent him to Belfast as Town Inspector, to succeed another who batoned the Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin; and then, being a fit man for the position, you sent him, to Donegal to superintend the Falcarragh evictions. His career throughout has been one of coercion, and because of that, and a breach of a rule—which on the part of an ordinary constable involves dismissal, and is applied without mercy—he received promotion after promotion. This shows the spirit in which these men carry on their duty. They believe they are carrying out the desire of the Government when they beat and ill-use the people, and, as I have shown, their brutality ensures their promotion. We have dual proof of this, for in the case of constables who act with consideration and humanity towards the people we find that they are degraded. There is the case of the sergeant who was reduced to the ranks in Donegal because of his mild action; then there is the still more notorious case of District Inspector Markham. I know nothing about this officer except the facts bearing on the Falcarragh case of Father M'Fadden. Father M'Fadden had spent six months in gaol, and a small, unimportant meeting was held when he came home, to which he addressed a short speech, a speech of a character which no sensible Executive would have taken any notice of. He simply said that the present Government would not be long in office, that the evicted tenants had plenty of friends, and that he believed they would be supported after eviction. For that speech a warrant was issued against him—that was the speech which led to the murder of District Inspector Martin, and which possibly may lead to the execution of a number of unhappy people now in prison. Let the Committee take note of the petty and trivial circumstances out of which this ease arose. Father M'Fadden, as I say, addressed a little village meeting; there was no police shorthand writer present; it was pitch dark, and a policeman who wrote longhand was in the crowd. He took two or three scattered notes of the speech which Father M'Fadden made from the steps of his house, and these notes have been given in evidence in some of the cases. Every one who reads them will see how frivolous it was to initiate a prosecution for such words, especially in the case of a man like Father M'Fadden, who had just returned from six months' imprisonment, and the whole of whose acts in Donegal had been in favour of law and order. Had he not put down smuggling and illicit distillation in the district? Whenever a private still or shebeen was established there Father M'Fadden went straight to the barracks and gave information, and the police put an end to the potheen making. Almost every one of his parishioners are teetotallers, and shebeening is hardly known, notwithstanding that, ordinarily, in these mountain districts the practice largely prevails, and is connived at by the heads of the police and the Magistrates, who always have in their houses a good glass of potheen for the visitor. Well, this man who has done so much for his people, who has begged for them throughout the world, has a warrant issued against him for making this trumpery speech. He remains in his house for an entire week. Although the police are almost surrounding the residence, he is not arrested. No attempt whatever is made to arrest him. He might have been found—in the words of Scripture—almost daily in the temple preaching and teaching. Ultimately the police came with clubs and guns to arrest him on Sunday, immediately after Mass, and it was then that the murder of Inspector Martin occurred. In the ordinary course a man would have been arrested without display, taken before the Magistrates, and admitted to bail. But the authorities waited until a time when there had been some excitement in the village, District Inspector Markham—who has been reduced for cowardice, than which a more serious charge could not be made against a police constable—was ordered up with 40 men to arrest Father M'Fadden. But, seeing the excitement of the people, the Inspector thought it well to wait for a calmer moment, and marched his men back without effecting the arrest. For this conduct, because he did not act on Captain Plunket's splendid maxim, "Don't hesitate to shoot," and because he did not make lanes through the people with baton and bayonet and buckshot, ha was severely reproved and found guilty of cowardice. I do not think that Inspector Markham need pay much regard to such an absurd charge, for he has been found guilty of being a humane person, nothing else. Humanity may be punished by degradation by the existing Government, but the time will come when it will be rewarded, and when men like Mr. Markham will be honoured instead of blamed. These men who are now victimised by the present Administration for their humanity, will be promoted by the Administration which will follow. The fact that police constables who have a leaning to the side of the people are reduced and degraded, whereas those constables who baton and insult the people are promoted shows that the Government want turmoil in Ireland. The policy of the right hon. Gentleman opposite has been to create disturbance in order to lead the English people to believe that the Irish people are unfit for self-government. The right hon. Gentleman asks would it not be to our interest to have quietude prevail in Ireland. Well, that may be or may not be, but undoubtedly acts have been done by the Executive with the object of enabling them to say to the English elestors, "Can we trust people who act like that with the administration of their own affairs? Will they not oppress the loyal inhabitants and Protestants?" That I believe to be at the bottom of the policy of the Chief Secretary. The allegations made by the Home Rule Members are admittedly very serious. Why then, when we ask that inquiry may be instituted into the cases out of which those allegations arise, do we always meet with refusal? Vainly have we asked for an investigation into the conduct of the police at Mitchelstown, at Lisdoonvarna on the occasion, when Head Constable Whelehan met his death, at Drumlish, at Charleville, and at other places. I denounce the state of the law under which, if an Orangeman shoots a policeman in Belfast, no cost accrues to the ratepayers, while if a policeman is hurt in the South of Ireland, a levy is immediately made to compensate him for the damage he has suffered. Head Constable Gardner and Constable Hughes were shot by an Orangeman named Walker at Belfast, but not a penny in compensation was given to their relatives, whereas the constable who was hurt at Mitchelstown—where three of the people were killed—received a thousand pounds compensation. For denouncing this anomaly, I have been attacked by Her Majesty's Government and Members of the Party opposite. But I shall continue to denounce it. I say it shows how the law is administered. County Inspector Stevens got six or eight guineas for the damage done to his coat, which could not have been worth that sum; and another man gat £500 because he said he felt a dizziness in his head. As to the hon. Member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien), who is an object for pity rather than of jest—as the Chief Secretary would have thought if he could have seen him carrying the plasters and bandages on his head—no answer has been given to the statements made as to the attack upon him. Will the Government grant an inquiry; and if they will not, what must be the inference? Inquiries have been demanded into the affair at Mitchelstown, but they have been refused. Well, is not the great argument for Protestantism that the truth can never suffer by inquiry? They tell us Catholics, "Oh, you object to controversy and to having your Faith inquired into, because it will not stand the test of investigation." That is our reply to you now. Even your Liberal Unionist supporters have recommended an inquiry into the Mitchelstown affair, and yet it has not been granted. The Chief Secretary says the Government gain nothing by this system of government. If that is his bonâ fide opinion, I would ask him in a friendly way—because my anxiety is to see matters conducted secundum artem—why does he not give a different cue to his subordinates? Why does he always support the police before he even knows the facts of the ease—why does he not convey the impression that he is anxious for fair play? I have never known him express regret for an act of violence or harshness on the part of the police. He has never said or done anything to pour oil on the troubled waters. His whole policy is one of exasperation; and his statements as to the cordial relations between the police and the people are base coins passed off upon his friends, who profess to accept them, although they know them to be spurious. In Ireland at the present time the police, thanks to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman, are regarded with a feeling of dislike which positively amounts to passion and loathing. On our side, instead of being anxious to keep up ill-feeling or turbulence or anything of that kind, our whole and sole anxiety is to calm down the people and prevent passion reaching undue limits. I strongly support the suggestion of my hon. Friend for the reduction of the Vote. I do not propose to touch upon a number of questions which have been raised, as time does not permit of it. I do not propose, at present, for instance, to deal with the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Times' case, but next year I hope to have the opportunity of doing so. Discussion was cut short at the close of last Session in the winter, because it was said the House would re-assemble so soon; but that plea cannot be expected to prevail now with respect to matters outside of the Times' case; and as to that, fulness of discussion will be insisted upon next year. We have been told that the witnesses have got nothing except the ordinary pay, but an accidental light has been thrown on the matter by an incident at Limerick. Three months ago a policeman went to a large house in the furnishing trade and proposed to buy £100 worth of furniture, stating that Mr. Soames had promised him that sum; but since the recent cross-examination on the payment of witnesses, the man has asked the furnishing house to take back the furniture because Mr. Soames has refused to pay him the £100. That refusal, however, does not touch the promise that has been made. These matters must wait; but as to the ordinary Estimates the Irish Members intend to insist upon the full discussion which was promised last year.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 132; Noes 170.—(Div. List, No. 284.)

Original Question again proposed.

It being after half-past Five of the clock, and Objection being taken to Further Proceeding, the Chairman rose to interrupt the Business:—

"Whereupon Mr. William Henry Smith rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."

MR. SEXTON

On a point of order, MR. Courtney, I wish to ask you whether, after the hour for Opposed Business has arrived, the right hon. Gentleman can move the Closure?

THE CHAIRMAN

The question has been repeatedly decided that the time when Opposed Business shall cease is half-past 5 on Wednesdays, unless a Division is then in progress, and the time for the cessation of Opposed Business in that case is the close of the Division.

Question proposed, "That the Question be now put."

MR. SEXTON

Mr. Courtney, I wish to ask you whether you will be good enough, for the information and satisfaction of the House, to cite any precedent for a case in which after the hour fixed by the Standing Order [cries of "Oh!" from the Ministerial Benches and Parnellite cries of "Order!"]—we will not divide at all if you do not take care—I wish to ask you, Sir, to state a precedent where, after the time for Opposed Business has elapsed, a Motion to apply the Closure was accepted.

THE CHAIRMAN

I am not aware of any specific case, nor is it necessary that I should be. I am informed that there are such cases. The principle of the decision is clear. There have frequently been cases in which Divisions have been in progress at the close of the sitting at 12 or half-past 5, and after the Division was over that moment was treated as the moment of the interruption of business.

MR. SEXTON

Was not one of those cases—[Ministerial cries of "Order!" and loud Parnellite cries of "Order!"]

MR. SEXTON

Why do not you be quiet [cries of "Order!"] I have to warn you——

THE CHAIRMAN

The right hon. Gentleman must address the Chairman.

MR. SEXTON

I again appeal to you, Mr. Courtney, to cite, for the information of the Committee, any case in which the Closure was moved otherwise than before the hour for the close of Opposed Business arrived.

THE CHAIRMAN

As I said, I was not aware of, and could not cite, a precedent, though I was told there were such precedents. I find now that on a Wednesday morning sitting, on the 14th November, 1888, in Committee of Supply on the Vote for the Metropolitan Police, a Division on the reduction of the item was in progress at half-past 5. After the declaration of the numbers the Chairman put the Original Question, and an hon. Member offering to speak, the Chairman proceeded to interrupt the business, when Mr. W. H. Smith moved the Closure, which was put and carried, and the Original Question was then put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 164; Noes 122.—(Div. List, No. 285.)

Question accordingly put.

MR. T. M. HEALY

I respectfully submit to you that the Question cannot be put.

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order!

The Committee divided:—Ayes 163; Noes 123.—(Div. List, No. 268.)

Whereupon the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.

Resolution to be reported To-morrow;

Committee to sit again To-morrow.

And, it being after Six of the clock, Mr. Speaker adjourned the House without Question put.

House adjourned at ten minutes after Six o'clock.