§ MR. SEXTONI beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that on Tuesday last, the police engaged in the Ponsonby estate clearances broke into the grounds of the Catholic Church, the property of the parish priest, against his will, expelled people who were there by his leave, and remained there after he had directed them to withdraw; that when the parish priest, the Very Rev. Canon Keller, accompanied by Mr. Lane, the Member for the Division, went to where Captain Plunkett, the person in chief control, was standing on the high road, and made a representation to him as to the action of the police, he replied, "Go about your business," and thereupon gave an order which the police executed by pushing Canon Keller and Mr. Lane violently for some distance along the public road, and that a person named Crockett, who had been allowed inside the lines, insulted a young girl, daughter of a widow, an evicted tenant, by asking her to kiss him; whether this insult was also offered to her by Colonel Caddell, R.M., who told her that she must have been kissing the police, the girl having been arrested in her mother's house at the time of the eviction, and kept in custody without any friend to protect her; why Crockett was admitted 550 within the cordon; and, what was his business there?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThe Divisional Commissioner reports that a disorderly mob was assembled in the chapel-yard abusing the police and all engaged in the evictions in the most filthy and obscene language. Members of the mob were posted on the walls and in the trees of the chapel-yard, and if they had not been dislodged the police and military would have been entirely at their mercy in the event of stone-throwing. The police were therefore directed to enter the yard to keep the mob from harassing the evicting party. The Divisional Commissioner did decline to withdraw the police. No assault was committed on Canon Keller or Mr. Lane, M.P. They were requested to go outside the cordon with the rest of the people. They declined to do so. The police then put thorn outside. Mr. Crockett was present at the evictions, being employed as an assistant to the local agent. There is no reason, so far as can be ascertained, for supposing that he offered any insult to any young girl. Colonel Caddell denies that he used the expression attributed to him.
§ MR. SEXTONI wish to know whether the right hon. Gentleman considers that the police were entitled to break into a private enclosure round the chapel and assault people there, although there was no evidence of any disturbance or interference with the evictions, the people simply cheering and making exclamations. Is it not a fact that when Canon Keller and Mr. Lane remonstrated with Captain Plunkett on the illegality of the incursion of the police into private grounds he ordered them to be pushed outside the cordon? I also desire to ask whether the right hon. Gentleman has inquired into the alleged insult to the girl, and why it is that to-day the House have heard nothing of the girl having used the filthy and obscene language which the right hon. Gentleman attributed to her on Friday?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThe reason why I did not refer to the last of the supplementary questions put by the right hon. Gentleman was that, having made the statement on Friday, I did not consider it necessary to repeat it. I consider that the police were perfectly justified in clearing the crowd under the 551 circumstances I have detailed. Canon Keller and Mr. Lane had been admitted into the cordon to discuss any business which concerned them; but they had no business there when Captain Plunkett requested them to leave, and as they refused to go the police were perfectly right in excluding them.
§ MR. SEXTONDoes the right hon. Gentleman maintain the allegation against the girl, who is an honest country girl, and a member of a respectable family? Will he afford an opportunity of inquiry into the truth of the allegations against the girl that she made use of improper language, and whether she was not insulted in the first instance by Crockett, a political agent, and then by Colonel Caddell?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI make no imputations with respect to this girl; but I know that, not only at this eviction, but at others, girls in all other regards respectable did make use of filthy and obscene language.