CLASS III.

HC Deb 07 July 1890 vol 346 cc941-1030

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £889,490 he 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 1891, for the Expenses of the Royal Irish Constabulary.

*(4.25.) MR. J. E. ELLIS (Nottingham, Rushcliffe)

I think, Mr. Courtney, that there is nothing which can bring home more vividly to the mind of hon. Members, and to persons outside this House, the policy which is being pursued in Ireland by Her Majesty's Government than the character of the Constabulary Force which at present exists in that country, and which, in my opinion, is altogether misnamed. It consists of an armed and drilled body of men, numbering more than 12,000, costing about £500,000 per annum, and employed as instruments in the hands of Her Majesty's Government for carrying out a system of coercive legislation. This Vote raises not only economic but constitutional questions, and I would ask the attention of the House while I dwell briefly upon each of those points. I am sure that no hon. Member can realise, unless he has devoted a considerable amount of time and attention to the subject, the enormous amount of money which is wasted in this Vote. I am satisfied in my own mind that if the Royal Irish Constabulary were confined to the proper duties of a Police Force and paid reasonable sums for their services, there might be, at any moment, saved to the Exchequer a sum of £500,000 per annum. Last year I put down a Motion declaring that the number of the Royal Irish Constabulary was excessive, and might with advantage be reduced. I proposed to ask for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the cost and administration of the Force. We have had a good many Select Committees during the present Parliament, and I think there is no subject upon which a Committee of 13 or 15 Members could more properly or more usefully be engaged upstairs than in investigating the matters I have mentioned. There are many precedents for such a course, and I can only express a hope that if not in this, at any rate in the next Parliament, a Committee will be appointed to inquire into this subject from top to bottom. The Royal Irish Constabulary consists of 12,810 persons, and the cost to the Imperial Exchequer for the year ending March 31st, 1891, is estimated at no less than £1,466,690. To use historical language, this Vote has increased, is increasing, and in my opinion ought to be diminished. Looking back to the year 1845 the cost was under 2s. per head of the population; in 1860 it was 2s. 5s.; in 1870, 3s. 4d.; in 1880, 4s. 4d.; in 1885, 5s. 8d.; and at the present time it stands above 6s. Nor are there any signs of a diminution. On the contrary, relatively to the population the cost is, as I have shown, rapidly rising. The matter is serious, if we look not only at the cost per head to the population of Ireland, but compare it with the cost of other Forces in this country, which are called by the same name. If hon. Members will look to Return No. 350 of Session 1889, they will find some interesting figures with respect to the cost of the Police Force in various districts. In Liverpool it was 3s. 4s. per head of the population; in Glasgow, 3s. 7d.; in Sheffield, Is. 8d.; in Leicester, Is. 7d.; and even in the Metropolis only 4s. 8d.; while in Ireland, as I have said, it is at this moment 6s. per head. I put it to any hon. Member whether this is not in itself a matter which demands our serious consideration. The reasons for this extraordinary disparity are on the surface. In the first place, the constitution of the Force is somewhat anomalous, and still more striking are the uses to which it is put. The Royal Irish Constabulary consists, like ail other police forces, of officers and men. I think everyone who has been in Ireland—as a great many Gentlemen sitting above the Gangway and representing English constituencies have latterly been—will agree that nothing is more striking in that country than to see, when there are a number of the constabulary present on any public occasion, the class of persons by whom they are commanded. I have myself observed on more than one occasion the sergeants and District Inspectors, instead of being middle-aged men promoted from the ranks, are beardless youths taken from a different social status. Such persons, when an emergency arises, are utterly lacking in that self-control and discretion which are necessary for men having to act under difficult circumstances. In answer to a question I put to him on the 25th July last year, the Attorney General for Ireland told me that in the case of third-class District Inspectors there are three methods of promotion. He said that the appointments are made by nomination, in the following classes: —(a) gentlemen—sons of constabulary officers under certain conditions; (b) gentlemen, not sons of constabulary officers; (c) by nomination at headquarters on literary and professional qualifications. Now, I am not quite sure whether it would be possible to find this word "gentleman" imported into the regulations in this country with regard to any such appointments. I would like to ask the Attorney General what is meant by the word "gentleman" I do not wish to cast any aspersion on the word rightly understood, but, if it means that the appointments are to be made from one particular stratum of society, that is not a very healthy state of things, when, as Lord Salisbury has said, there is a land war going on in Ireland. Her Majesty's Government has, I hold, taken a side in that land war which is being waged between the owners and occupiers of land, and, therefore, to draw the officers of the constabulary exclusively from that one side must be to produce a state of things such as we must all deplore. Then I infer from the answer the Attorney General for Ireland was good enough to give me this afternoon with respect to the changes which have taken place in these classes of District Inspectors, that they have been very great recently. I gather from his reply that, since the 1st July, 1887, something like one third of these officers are new to their posts. I venture to think that if one-third have changed in three years, it points to a very serious state of things. I think this word "gentleman," and the drawing of these men in the way I have described from one social stratum, throws a great light on the figures I am about to read. I notice that some of the County Inspectors receive in the shape of pay and allowances and expenses—the items of which are given under various sub-heads —about £600 per annum, while some of the District Inspectors receive at least £500 per annum, and, looking at the duties these men have to perform, and the expense of living in Ireland as compared with England, I should say that in comparison with the pay of officers of a similar rank in the Metropolitan Police the salaries of the officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary are extraordinarily extravagant. So much for the officers. Now, a word as to the men—and here the comparison to be made with the Metropolitan Police is even more striking. According to the information contained in Return No. 154 of the present Session, the Chief Commissioner of Police in the Metropolis enjoys a salary of £2,100 a year, and the Inspector General in Dublin £1,900, and I venture to say that, looking at the difference of the cost of living in London and Dublin, £1,900, as against £2,100, is, again, altogether extravagant. The average salary of Inspectors in the Metropolitan Force, of whom there are 846, is £143, whereas Inspectors of the first, second, and third rank in Ireland, of whom there are 224, get £200 on an average. That, I submit, is perfectly monstrous. As to the rank and file, the salaries of sergeants in London and head constables in Ireland average £96 and £97 respectively, the numbers being 1,398 sergeants in the Metropolis, and 260 head constables in Ireland. The number of constables in London is 12,098, and their pay averages £70 8s., while the 12,250 sergeants and constables in Ireland receive on an average £64 6s. per annum. I submit that, looking at the cost of living in the two countries, a policeman will be rich in Ireland on £64 6s. per annum, and poor in London on £70 8s. These 12,250 Irish constables are drawn from comparatively humble homes, where they are not accustomed to the same style of living as obtains even amongt the class from whom the Metropolitan Police are drawn. These figures must bring home to every Member of the House that we are monstrously extravagant in the matter of these Irish constables. I am not going to dwell on the amounts for allowances, which are very large, and for "travelling expenses," 'clothing," and "arms and ammunition," because I have no doubt some other hon. Members will take up those points. I may say, however, that if we look into those points, they will only add force to what I have said. Before leaving this element of cost there is a matter I should like to mention, as I drew attention to it this afternoon. There are a certain, number of men, members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, who are permanently employed out of Ireland. The Auditor General has called attention to this matter in the Appropriation Account. On the 13th April, 1889, he wrote a letter to the Inspector-General of the Royal Irish Constabulary, in Dublin, requesting that he should be furnished with some information as to the circumstances under which members of the Force are employed outside Ireland, while their cost was charged on the Irish Vote. No answer was sent to the letter until 28th December, 1889, when the Inspector-General gave as his authority the Act 6 and 7 William IV. Chap. 13. He demands carte blanche in the matter, and claims that he may place as many men as lie pleases outside Ireland, and for as long as he pleases. The Auditor-General, in reply, on 2nd January, said he is not assured that a quasi permanent employment inside the country falls within the meaning of the Act. This employment of men outside Ireland is distinctly illegal. The Inspector-General claims practically to over-ride the Act of Parliament without question from anyone. I have now dealt with the cost. I remember the late Mr. Bright used to say, in his more robust days, that the Services are a sort of outdoor relief for the aristocracy. That was his assertion, but I should say, so far as Ireland is concerned, that the Police Service is a system of out-door relief for the younger sons of landlords. The pay of this Force is extravagantly high, and fixed at a standard which is intended to act as a bribe to the men to do the work that is expected of them. But, after all, the £. s. d. aspect of the matter is not the most important and cogent aspect at the present moment. The main reason for this monstrous and unnecessary burden on the taxpayers is the policy which guides the operations'of the Force. The Inspector-General quotes in his letter the Act 6 and 7 William IV. That Act was the work of Thomas Drum-mond, passed during his tenure of office in 1836, and I venture to tell the Irish Attorney General and the Chief Secretary, or anybody who defends the Irish Administration of the present day, that all through the Debates in this House in 1836, and afterwards, there is no warrant to be found for the purposes to which the Irish Constabulary are put. Over and over again, during the discussions, not only Lord Morpeth and Lord John Russell, but Sir Robert Peel, who was then in power, laid it down that the Constabulary should preserve "an even, keel." Speaking as he was then in Opposition, Sir Robert Peel said— He believed it to be of the highest importance that the Police Force in Ireland should he kept perfectly froe from the influence of Party animosity or Party excitement. In the House of Lords it was also held that the police should preserve an even keel, and the view thus taken was illustrated by the Government action in the matter of the Tithe War. Over and over again Drummond refused the aid of the Constabulary in collecting the tithe. He said—"We will lend the police whenever necessary for the preservation of the peace, but never for the collecting of tithe." What a contrast between that policy and that of the present Government. The Prime Minister tells us that there is a land war in Ireland, and yet the Government have placed the Constabulary at the service of one party to that land war, to assist landlords, such as the arch-rack-renter Lord Clanricarde, to collect unjust rents. They have granted their police to evict thousands of these tenants from their holdings. In this connection I must allude to a picture which hangs on the walls of the Royal Academy at this moment, and in which the Royal Constabulary are depicted going away from what ought to be to everyone the sad duty of making houseless and homeless some of these poor tenants. The Prime Minister of this country, speaking at the opening banquet of the Academy, on the 3rd of May, said— There is such an air of breezy cheerfulness and beauty about the landscape which is painted that it makes me long to take part in an eviction, whether in an active or a passive sense. I venture to think no Prime Minister of this country ever spoke on such an occasion before in such a spirit. If the Marquess of Salisbury has not since been ashamed of himself for uttering those words I can only say he ought to have been. I pass to some illustrations of the manner in which this Force has been used. We have seen it used for the arrest of persons and the entry of houses without warrant. I have brought a number of these cases under the notice of the Chief Secretary. On the 9th of May a man was arrested at Portumna by two constables, who afterwards proved to be drunk. No charge was made against him, and he was discharged. On the 12th of June two constables arrested a man at Cork. They were proceeded against, and convicted before a County Court Judge of having made an entry without authority or warrant. Constables are constantly in the habit of tearing down placards and interfering with perfectly legal meetings. Then the Irish Constabulary have been undoubtedly guilty of manufacturing the crime, as it is called, of boycotting, and of conniving' at the even graver crime of moonlighting. You have only to read a Circular which appears in Hansard Vol. IV., of this Session, col. 1588, in order to see an emphatic proof of this conspiracy on the part of the police to manufacture the so-called crime of boycotting. That Circular gives an official sanction to the practice of entrapping the people into action which it is afterwards intended to prosecute them for. I need only to refer to that most unfortunate case in which Head Constable Whelehan lost his life in connection with my charge against the police of conniving at moonlighting. I quite admit that of late there has been some change in the use of the Force. They have resorted to a system of petty annoyance and interference with personal liberty culminating in the watching and shadowing of which we have heard so much. On the 11th of February, the Mayor of Cork went to Cork Station to meet a prisoner who was coming out on bail, and he was on that occasion ill-treated, more or less, in his own city, by a number of constables. On the 21st of February, Father Kennedy was administering religious consolation to a sick woman, and it is admitted that constables went to the place and interfered with him in the discharge of his clerical functions. On the 17th of February, Mr. John Fitzgibbon, of Castlerea, a mostrcespectable-man, who is known to myself, was followed and interrupted in his business for no-conceivable reason whatever. On the 4th of March, Sergeant Hegarty knocked at the door of a room where the Town. Commissioners of Cashel were sitting, and demanded what they were doing, on the pretence that they were holding a meeting of the National League. I put it to the House whether it is not intolerable that a meeting of the Town Council should be interfered with by a constable knocking at the door, and asking whether they are holding a National League meeting. On the l5th of April the Rev. Mr. Brown, Catholic curate, was told that he would be followed if he did certain things, and this after a police-prosecution against him had completely broken down. It is because the authorities know that if matters of this, sort get into Court the prosecution will break down, that they rely on the more odious system of petty personal persecution. I now come to the system that has been stigmatised so forcibly by an hon. Gentleman opposite (Commander Bethell). On the 19th of May the Rev. Father Humphreys and others were; ordered to move on by some of these men. This mode of procedure is becoming notorious, and has been happily made-well-known in this country by the photographs which have been successfully taken by the hon. Member for Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien.) According to-questions put on the l6th June and the 23rd May, Messrs. Cullenane, Frewin, and Gill were followed in the streets of Tipperary by the police, and even into-the shop of Mr. Carew of that place, and they were there asked questions of a very impertinent character. The hon. Member for Tipperary has asked in this House with respect to an insult offered to his wife and another lady in the streets of Cashel. These are only a few of the illustrations of this practice of petty annoyance and interference with personal liberty in Ireland. No doubt we shall hear more details of the practice from hon. Members for Irish constituencies. I believe that even the Chief Secretary is beginning' to see that this system of personal annoyance is one that had better be abandoned. Now I come to my last count against the Irish Constabulary, namely, that of physical wounding and shooting. On the 17th February Miles O'Brien was struck on the neck, felled to the ground, and kicked while down by a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and when he asked a Magistrate for his remedy against this maltreatment he was referred to Colonel Caddell. The Chief Secretary and the Attorney General for Ireland tell us, time after time, that persons injured by the police have their remedy at law, but we who have been in Ireland know what a mockery that statement is. The word law and the word magistrate do not mean the same thing in Ireland that they mean in this country. It is perfectly idle to tell an injured person that he has his remedy at law. In this case the only consolation he got was in being referred to Colonel Caddell, who was the very man who committed all these iniquities in the district. He was the man, too, who a year ago was charged with speaking in a most insulting, offensive, and immoral way to a girl who was in his custody. That charge against him has never been disproved, because it cannot be. Now, we have had full details of what took place at Cashel at the end of May. I will not enter into them here now, but I may say that I was astonished, after all the experience we have had of the Government, that it should refuse any sort of departmental inquiry—or impartial investigation into the circumstances of this case. It has always been held in this House that when hon. Members state facts on their personal authority—facts affecting the character of any public Department —the Government should have some sort of inquiry into the statement. Yet the inquiry was refused in this case. I will give one illustration of the necessity for inquiry. District Inspector Concannon was in charge of a number of men on the 13th June, 1889, when they were conveying my hon. Friend the member for North Fast Cork along the railway, and at Charle-ville, certain incidents occurred and shots were fired. It was stated at that time that the police fired without orders; a quasi denial was given to that from the Government Bench opposite, but in a recent trial the District Inspector has given evidence, and in the course of so doing, in reply to the question, "Did you give any directions to the sergeant to fire?" he replied "No, they fired without orders." That was not admitted at this time last year, These cases might he abundantly multiplied; they might be infinitely strengthened, as I hope they will be, by those who were eye witnesses of these occurrences. I have not dwelt on the want of morale and discipline which is showing itself in the Force. You have convictions for drunkenness which do not seem to he treated in a grave manner by those responsible for the administration of the Force. You have receipts forged; you have, in at least one instance, the name of a Member of this House forged by a police constable. All these things point to a state of demoralisation, and a state of indiscipline, it is lament-able to see in a Force which has its traditions, and which, under proper arrangements, might be made a Force of which any country would be proud. I think the Government is responsible for this state of things. I no longer hold the Chief Secretary personally responsible." The Government is responsible; the Members on the Benches behind it are responsible, and those Members who do us the honour to disperse themselves among us here, but whom the electors will soon do themselves the honour of dispersing, are equally responsible. At the same time, I cannot overlook the most regrettable want of accuracy which is noticeable on the part of the Chief Secretary when he gets up to reply to questions. On the 12th June he was obliged to say, "I was, therefore, in error in the statement I made about these two men." I have here one more illustration of the almost habitual inaccuracy of the right hon. Gentleman. The occasion was-in connection with the funeral of the late Mr. Matthew Harris. On the 17th April the hon. Member for West, Belfast asked a question in relation to what occurred at that funeral, and on the 18th ho renewed his question, but received no answer. He then spoke on the Adjournment of the House, and the Chief Secretary, in the middle of the remarks I was making upon that Motion—when I happened to use the expression "armed men" in reference to the constables who attended the funeral—shouted across the Table, "They were not armed." He repeated the same assertion on the 9th May, when it was perfectly in his power to have obtained correct information. On the 9th May he actually stated that the police on that occasion had their batons only, and not their side-arms. But the hon. Member for Roscommon, who was present on the occasion, saw the side-arms, and I will ask: Does the Chief Secretary mean to say that the word of an hon. Member, who was present and saw the side-arms, is not to be taken in preference to a statement made through the post or by telegraph, either by the constables concerned, or by their superiors—statements which, as we know in matters of this kind, are absolutely unreliable? I do not know anything which can bring home more positively these facts to the mind of the public than this shocking imprudence of armed constables pushing in among the relatives to the side of the grave. I have now gone rapidly through my case as to the cost of this Force and the uses to which it is put. We find that Parliament is asked to vote an enormous and wholly unnecessary sum for this Police Force— a Force put to uses which, I venture to say with some confidence, were never contemplated by the authors of the Act of 1836. The Government have departed from the key-note of those authors—an even keel, showing no favour to one side or to the other. They have placed this Force in a position in regard to the inhabitants of Ireland which is most lamentable. The Royal Irish Constabulary stinks in the nostrils of the people. It was said by William Penn that a man should make it part of his religion to see that his country is well governed, and agreeing as I do with that opinion, I unhesitatingly and with all my heart oppose this Vote.

(5.12.) MR. PICTON (Leicester)

I rejoice at this opportunity of breaking a silence most painful to many Members of this House, and painful to hundreds and thousands—aye, even millions of voters in the country, some of whom, however, have had an opportunity of breaking that silence at Barrow. We have heard their voice there, and we know what it meant. If there is any subject that stirs my constituents to the very depths of their nature it is this wretched, miserable, humiliating tyranny that is exercised in Ireland, through what is called the Royal Irish Constabulary. Look at this Force; there never was such a Constabulary Force in the world anywhere before. In numbers, in arms, in discipline, in the favours of emoluments with which it is bribed, there never was such a Force anywhere. We have an armed Constabulary, indeed, in some remote regions of our Imperial Dependencies, but they are feeble in numbers, compared with the extent of the territory in which they work, and compared with the barbarians with whom they have to deal. Here, in a comparatively small island, with a population of under 5,000,000, you have, as we have just now heard, upwards of 12,000 men, armed with weapons of precision, and drilled like soldiers. What is this extraordinary Force wanted for? Is it wanted to put down crime? If you mean by crime advocating Radical or Republican opinions, or Home Rule, no doubt it may be wanted; but that is not what we usually mean by crime. So far as crime is understood in this country, we have the very highest evidence that there is far less crime in Ireland than in any part of Great Britain. I will refer the House to the weighty words once uttered by Judge Waters, in opening the Quarter Sessions at Waterford. The learned Judge, after congratulating the Grand Jury on the insignificant amount of crime that had occurred in the district— I believe the date of this speech was the 15th of August, 1887 —went on to say that even that record was heavier than in the counties of Cavan and Leitrim, and if they added the Assize cases as well for the three counties, he could show, by quoting official statistics, that the proportion of crime was less by one-third than in England (being 114 cases as against 174), and less by one-half than in Scotland, where the proportion was 114 to 225. Then the learned Judge went on to observe that these three counties fairly represented the condition of Ireland as regarded crime. It is notorious that this statement of the learned Judge has never been, and cannot be, contradicted. Therefore, it is not to put down burglary, or pocket picking, or petty larceny, or ordinary assaults that this terrific Constabulary Force is maintained in Ireland. Then what, in the name of justice, is it wanted for? It is wanted to force upon the majority in Ireland the rule of the minority. That is the long and short of it. Because public opinion runs strongly and persistently in the direction which is condemned by the small minority in Ireland, and because that small minority is held up by the ruling powers in this country, therefore we are obliged to have this large display of armed force in Ireland. That is the sole reason. I maintain that that is a condition of things wholly contrary to all traditions of Constitutional Government—that the majority shall permanently submit to the rule of the minority. In a speech delivered at Bradford, in 1888, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham undertook to defend what we call coercion, and it is for this coercion that the Royal Irish Constabulary is maintained. In the course of his defence he said all law was coercive, and the only thing which distinguished the civilised state from barbarism was the fact that, in a civilised State, the law of the land was observed, and those who disobeyed it were punished. I always thought there was another characteristic distinction of civilised States, namely, that the vast majority of the population consented to the law, and that it was by the consent of the majority that the law was maintained. I could point, of course only by way of illustration, to other instances in which the law, has to be maintained by violence, as, for instance, St. Petersburg, and, surely, that city is not commonly taken as evidence of a state of a high civilisation. It is regarded as evidence that the population are but half emerging from barbarism, and that the higher element in the population is subordinated to the lower. So it is in Ireland. If we want the law obeyed there, let us secure for it the consent of the population. Let us govern the country in accordance with the opinion of the majority of the population. There is no reason why this should not be the case in Ireland. There is no reason why the armed Constabulary should not be abolished at once, if only we could rule in Ireland as we do in this country, and allow the opinions of the majority to prevail. The real effect of the present state of things is sometimes almost more ludicrous than is reported. I have had an opportunity several times recently of visiting Ireland, and of conversing with various representatives of political Parties there, and I have had the satisfaction of being followed by members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. I do not know whether I should be a very dangerous person. I do not know whether I should be a very formidable rebel. I do not know whether I am capable of murdering many people, by committing acts of violence. I have never tried, and, therefore, I cannot answer the question. But why, when inhabitants of this country who have never been suspected of crime and have never come into contact with the law, visit Ireland, should they be followed by police officers? They are not so treated in England, but immediately they enter Ireland, without any change in their character, without any lowering of their principles, they find themselves the objects of the suspicion of the authorities, and they are made the subjects of watching and shadowing on the part of the police. There surely is something wrong in this state of things. Why should well-behaved citizens in this country be made the objects of police suspicion when in Ireland? There is only one way of accounting for all this, and that is, that we are trying to balance the pyramid on its apex in Ireland. We are protecting a perverse, arrogant, bigoted, narrow-minded, selfish minority against the patriotic majority of the population. When one comes into contact with that population—when one studies the difference between those who are in favour of Home Rule and those to be found on the side of the police—it is possible to come to but one conclusion, and that is a very sad one, for it is that the whole object of the system supported by the Royal Irish Constabulary is to suppress the very best elements in Irish character and to encourage and foster the very worst. On the one side you have mutual loyalty, you have patriotism, and you have self-sacrifice most abundantly proved. On the other side—that of the associates of the police and in the ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary themselves —you have weakness engendered by long continued poverty, you have a disposition to accept bribes, you have greed, you have the aspect of Anti-Nationalism, and you have a few selfish people set against the better aspirations of the majority. You have, further, a system of suspicion and of a sneaking, wretched, watching and shadowing, which it is odious to behold; you have moral corruption, and you have continual outbreaks of utterly indefensible violence. The Royal Irish Constabulary are a danger to order in Ireland. We are not disposed to forget their conduct at Mitchelstown, although right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite think by sneering and satire to suppress the memory of it. Then you have a system of falsehood pervading the ranks of officialism in Ireland, and right hon. Gentlemen opposite make themselves the involuntary channels for the conveyance of those falsehoods to this House. For instance, the Chief Secretary, in reference to recent proceedings at Tipperary, said that there was no open air meeting there, or if there were it was a very subordinate part of the day's proceedings. Well, I was present, and the open-air meeting was the most important item on the day's programme. When the Carnarvon election took place some of us were on our way to Ireland, and before we boarded the steamer we anxiously inquired as to the result of the contest, because we knew that if the Liberal were returned the Tipperary meeting would be allowed, while if the Tory were elected it would be proclaimed. Well, the announcement of the Liberal victory made us assured that the police would not intrefere with the meeting. Though you laugh at this reasoning it is justified by what has been the practice; it is founded on experience. Whatever else the Irish race may be, they are not fools, and they can argue from experience. On previous occasions the action of the Royal Irish Constabulary towards innocent meetings had notoriously been determined by the course of political events in this country. Well, the prophecy was fulfilled. As a matter of fact, the meeting was not in- terfered with. The police stood aside gloomily and unsympathetically, but they stood aside and did not interfere. Then, says the right hon. Gentleman, "Yes; it is true English Members were allowed to speak, for his experience was that while the effect of the speeches of Irish Members might be felt, the effect of the speeches of English. Members was absolutely nil" Well, of course, we quite know that we cannot rival, and we do not pretend to rival, the oratory and influence of Irish Members in Ireland, but the point is this; not that the right hon. Gentleman allowed English Members to speak, but that he allowed Irish Members to speak, and some of them, the most prominent, the most dangerous, as they are called, of these so-called criminal conspirators, who, as hon. Members on the other side are fond of reminding us, have been condemned by the renowned Special Commission. Some of the most prominent, or most dangerous of these criminal conspirators-held forth from the platform at New Tipperary. It is not the point that the right hon. Gentleman allowed English Members to address an Irish crowd; the point is that when the Carnarvon election was carried by an Home Ruler, Irish Members, the most prominent representatives of the Home Rule movement, were allowed to address their constituents at New Tipperary. We had a very humiliating exhibition of the dependence of the Government on the current of political opinion in this country. Humiliated they were, and driven from bad to worse, from cruelty and repression to the most shameful exhibition of disgraceful acts of moral torture such as the system of "shadowing" of which we have heard so much. Think what it must be to have a man following by your side, and another at your heels, throughout the live-long day. You may be a solicitor going about your business, you may be a parish priest visiting your parishioners, but whatever your business, whatever your duties, whatever your intercourse with your fellows, whatever the distraction of your own thoughts, you have the tormenting presence of a detective by your side, and another at your heels, never giving you a moment's peace. I say that that is moral torture, and it is intended as torture for those who dare to think and act for themselves in considering their country's welfare. The other day when a question was asked about an Irishman who had turned the tables upon a detective, who had shadowed him, and the shadower became the shadowed, the man was arrested on the charge of having interfered with a constable in the discharge of his ordinary duty. Well, but what about the two constables who interfered with thy parish priest in the discharge of his ordinary duty? What more right have they to interfere with a man's duty than any citizen of Tipperary has to interfere with a constable in the discharge of a fluty, not, so far as I am aware, prescribed to him by the law? It appears to me it is outside the law altogether. But the law means one thing in this is country and another thing in Ireland. We find a Minister, by refinement of speech, by quibbles of analogy, trying to show that, in the abstract, the law is ultimately the same in Ireland as in England, but it is not administered in the same manner. It interferes with rights in Ireland which are allowed full scope in this country, it represses the ordinary modes of political action in Ireland which are freely allowed in this country, it makes even English citizens to be suspected criminals in Ireland when never a shadow of suspicion attaches to them in their own country. The fact is the whole system represented by the Irish Constabulary is a sheer piece of barbarism, of which Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Welshmen are ashamed. We are powerless now to break it down, but, thank God, better days are coming. Barrow has uttered a word of prophecy, and in due time the whole country will rise and sweep away this miserable exhibition of how an English Government can become degraded, and will give freedom and justice to Ireland at last.

*(6.38.) MR. FLYNN (Cork, N.)

I had expected from the Treasury Bench some reply to these damaging speeches; but I suppose we must wait, and that a late opportunity will be chosen for trotting out statements which will be delivered too late for full contradiction on this side. With this Vote we are face to face with some extraordinary facts and figures. Strange to say, in a country where unhappily the population is steadily declining, we find the cost of police mounting decade by decade until the estimate, which in 1871 was £1,000,000, has now reached £1,589,000. The mere recital of that fact ought to be sufficient to arouse the vigilant attention of the Committee, and to focus the attention of the country on a system which requires such expenditure to maintain it, and stands condemned in the minds of all men. The exact figures are, in 1871, for the maintenance of the Royal Irish Constabulary, including the police of Dublin, £1,016,000; this year £1,589,000, or an increase of over 56 per cent., an increase of £573,000. These are alarming figures, and ought to startle every economist in the House. The cost of the Irish Constabulary has risen from 3s. 9d. per head of the population 20 years ago to 6s. 9d. to-day. It is a severe, commentary on the entire system which requires such a Force to be maintained. The hon. Gentleman who opened this discussion has given the cost of police in certain British towns, and I need not dwell upon the comparison beyond noting that, while the cost in Ireland is 6s. 9d. per head of population, in Dundee it is 1s. 11d., in Leeds 2s. 3d., in Bradford 2s. 1d., and Is. 5d. Only in the important town of Sunderland. Significant enough are such figures as these; but the facts of recent may administration of the police are of such a grave character that they cannot be met by legal quibbles, and no amount of polished sneering can explain to the Committee the facts in the indictment against police administration in Ireland during the post 12 months. Notwithstanding what has often been said from both sides of the House, we have always held that the Royal Irish Constabulary have never been at any time in history a popular force; but whatever may have been the feeling towards the Force in past years, there cannot be a doubt that within the last three or four years it has reached a pitch of intense exasperation, little short of hatred absolutely. There was a time when the Irish Constabulary moved about among the people in some sort of amity with them and with some sort of self-respect: but now in towns and rural districts it is held to be a stigma and mark of disgrace to hold intercourse with a member of the Force. It is a grave condition of things that a body of men, administered at such, enormous expense, should be regarded in this manner by the people whose lives and liberties they are nominally supposed to protect. I do not propose to bring forward many instances at this stage of the discussion; they will multiply as the Debate goes on. We charge it against the administration that the Force is going from bad to worse; that acts of folly and violence are being daily committed; and there appears to have entered into the administration of the police, whether it comes from the Treasury Bench or from Dublin Castle I will not undertake to determine, but a spirit has entered into the administration of this undoubtedly fine body of men which has pitted them against the aspirations, the political and the social rights of the vast body of the people of Ireland. Instead of being maintained in the interest of peace and order, for the prevention and detection of crime, the police are part and parcel of the landlord machinery, directed and governed as such. That has been illustrated at Tipperary. But Tipperary Members will refer more particularly to this. I will only say this: that we have often heard the right hon. Gentleman say, in reference to organised combinations against evictions, that it was this resistance to the police that created bad blood between them and the people; that the Plan of Campaign was responsible for violence, which was distasteful to the police. But here in Tipperary, rightly or wrongly, wisely or foolishly, we find the people guilty of no violence; they gave up their homes voluntarily to the officers of the law, no resistance being attempted, and removed to another part of the town. Yet, though the people were not acting in defiance of the law, or in any way attempting a breach of the peace, the police entered upon a long course of brutality and studied insolence. The right hon. Gentleman has never attempted to explain how it was that no inquiry was held into the affray at Mitchelstown, nor has an inquiry been granted in more recent cases of police violence. Honestly, no doubt relying on statements furnished him, the right hon. Gentleman contradicts our facts; and support these by what testimony we will, we never get inquiry. Though there may be loss of life from the reckless use of murderous weapons, yet inquiry is refused, even though Coroners' Juries empannelled by the police themselves return verdicts of wilful murder. What has the right hon. Gentleman to say of the Charleville business? It is admitted that the police fired at the railway station into the crowd with intent to kill. We asked for inquiry into the circumstances. When we attempted civil proceedings we were met by every obstacle that legal ingenuity could suggest to the minds of Dublin Castle lawyers. Only after great difficulty and considerable expense, met by contribution, from the countrymen of the wounded man, were we able to bring the case to trial. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cork will, I understand, refer particularly to the remarkable declarations of the two Judges who presided at the two trials, and who, in the most unhesitating manner, condemned the culpable conduct of the District Inspector and the men under his charge. There are times when a civil force may be called upon to use rough methods towards a crowd; but I have seen the Irish Constabulary over and over again, when people were actually dispersing and had been but listeners to a speech, pursue the people—men, women, or boys—into doorways, and far from the scene of the meeting, and batoning the unoffending flying people about the head. I have seen these things, and I have wondered that from the younger men there have not been reprisals. We have brought such cases forward, but we get no satisfaction —we are simply met with blank and stupid denial. It is but a short time ago that my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cork, passing through Cork, spoke a few words from his hotel—a short speech such as he might have uttered anywhere in England, and it would have been received with applause by an English audience. But without notice, without giving the people time to disperse, a body of police rushed upon the people, inflicting such serious wounds with their heavy batons that many persons had to be taken to the infirmary. Imagine the bitterness of feeling scenes of this kind give rise to. Were it not for the restraining influence upon the younger Irish people, which comes from the knowledge that this state of things cannot last for long, there would be reprisals upon the police for these brutalities. The right hon. Gentleman and the Attorney General for Ireland have recently exercised their ingenuity in connection with a system which an hon. Member on the other side of the House has characterised as damnable. "Shadowing," we have been told by the Chief Secretary, is only put in force against those suspected of complicity in criminal conspiracy. I do not know how the right hon. Gentleman can "square" this statement with the every day facts before us in Ireland. Does it tend to the preservation of the peace that a Catholic priest should be followed about all day while engaged in the ordinary duties of his sacred office, visiting the sick and dying, fulfilling what we regard in our Church as the most solemn function—preparing the soul for departure to another world? "Shadowing" has been carried to such an extent that police have watched the house and peered through the windows of the sick chamber where a dying woman lay. Father Kennedy, I fully admit, was convicted of taking part in the holding of National League meetings in a suppressed district; but those meetings have been discontinued for some time past, and surely it were better to allow 20 League meetings to go unsuppressed than to exasperate the people with the spectacle of their priest being followed day and night in his sacred duties. The right hon. Gentleman cannot deny the facts, of which there is photographic evidence, showing how father Humphries has been subjected to this treatment. Recently I called attention to the arrest of Mr. O'Brien, of Killeagh. Mr. O'Brien was arrested on the spot on a charge of interfering with a constable. He had been followed by the constable in plain clothes all day, and attending a fair and approaching a spot where cattle were being sold, was asked did he want to buy. He replied "No, but this policeman does." It was proved at the hearing of the case that this was I he extent of his interference with the constable. He had previously chatted amicably with him and exchanged the civility of pipe-lighting; but because he thus exposed the policeman's little game, Mr. O'Brien was given in charge to a constable in uniform, locked up, and a Resident Magistrate was tele- graphed for from Cork, and was, in an hour and a-half, duly delivered like a bale of goods as per invoice at Youghal. If Mr. O'Brien's conduct was calculated to lead to a breach of the peace which is likely to be the consequence of two constables continually following a man about his ordinary business, is it not more than human nature can bear? I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not attempt in the Debate on this subject to shelter himself behind the denials that have been given by the police. We can give the right hon. Gentleman chapter and verse for our allegations, and ask for and require explicit statements. We ask for an explanation with regard to Father Humphreys, Father Kennedy, and Canon Keller, and also in reference to the eases of numerous other clergymen throughout the country. And now, Sir, I wish to bring under the attention of the Committee the great hardship arising from the system of shadowing. The administrators of the Police Force of Ireland seem to have got it into their heads that it is a part of their business to be in every market and fair in Ireland, in order that the stock of those who have been locally boycotted must be purchased willy-nilly. In order to carry out their duty they not only hamper and interfere with the business of the fair, but they also inflict great loss and hardship on those who are engaged in fair or market matters. Let me take the case of a cattle dealer going to a fair. If he is known to be a Nationalist, he is followed from his own place to the fair ho attends, and, when there, is shadowed everywhere and to such an extent that it is almost impossible he can do any business. Take the case of Mr. Slattery, who was so shadowed by the police that he was utterly unable to transact his business for many months. When he was endeavouring, in the ordinary way of his business, to buy cattle, one policeman stood on one side of him and another on the other and listened to every word that passed, so that in every attempt to make a bargain the unfortunate man was utterly frustrated. As it was in the case of Mr. Slattery, so it has been the case with hundreds of others; and we want something more than the denial of the right hon. Gentleman in regard to these cases. I do not intend to go into detail with regard to these cases; but I charge that the general administration of the Force has tended to make the police commit acts of illegality and violence utterly unchecked by the authorities. Latterly it seems to have become a legal axiom in the constabulary that any body of men acting together in Ireland must per force give the head constable or the District Inspector an explanation of the business they desire to carry out. Only a short time ago a number of the Fermoy Town Commissioners came together in the discharge of their duties, and the head constable asked them to explain whether they were going to hold a meeting of the National League, because some of them were members of the League. If that doctrine is carried to its legitimate conclusion, wherever there has been a branch of the League, it will be utterly impossible for the people to meet at all, because all the adults have belonged to the National League, and cannot meet for any purpose without being liable to interruption from the police. I will give an illustration of what occurred quite recently. A Town Commissioners' meeting was to have been held at Cashel two weeks ago, and that meeting was interrupted by the police on the pretence that it might be a meeting of the League. Several members of the Board protested against the interruption caused by the police, the Chairman saying, "I ask Mr. O'Brien to order the retirement of the police." Another member of the Board said, "This is a meeting of the Corporation." Police Sergeant Cagley said, "It is not my fault I am here. I am informed it is a meeting of the National League, which is suppressed." The Chairman said, "You must leave this, sergeant;" and the sergeant said, "No; I see several members of the National League here." Suppose this principle were applied to hon. Members on these Benches, we should, in that case, have no right to attend here and assist in conducting the business of the nation, because many of us have been members of the National League. It was only after the strong protest of the Chairman and the threat of legal proceedings that the police withdrew. This is only a sample of what is going on all over the country. In the case of Father Kennedy, the police insisted on forcing their way into his private house, because he would not give them a guarantee that an illegal meeting was not about to be held. This is a state of things which has been denounced by Chief Baron Palles, and which excited the indignation of Mr. Justice Gibson. We are told we have a right of civil action; but when we assert that right, we ore met by a full Bar, and every possible legal obstacle is thrown in our way. There are, however, hundreds of cases in which it is impossible to take proceedings, because there are no means of identifying the constables, whose names are refused by the Inspectors. I remember the case in which the Mayor of Cork and myself each collared a policeman, and said we would have his number. We added, moreover, that if there was a single act of brutality committed by the police we should hold him responsible. The result was that a police charge, which was about being made against hundreds of people, was prevented. There was also the case of my Friend the Member for Monaghan, some months ago, at the Bandon Station. He was waiting peaceably to welcome an hon. Friend, when he was set upon, knocked down, and brutally kicked while on the ground. Priest after priest went to the Inspector to try and stop what was going on, and when they looked for the numbers of the constables they were unable to get them. We also find that when the City Police are sent on outside duty, such as eviction duty or dispersing the people, their numbers are always carefully removed. I know that this is done in the City of Cork. What can be the meaning of this, except that they are to perpetrate any amount of illegal violence without affording the people the opportunity of redress. When we are told that we may take legal proceedings, I would remind the House of what happened a few months ago on the occasion when the hon. Member for North East Cork had been tried at Clonakilty, and was being removed to gaol, On that occasion a large number of priests, professional men, and the most respectable of the inhabitants, were on the railway platform to see Mr. W. O'Brien taken away, intending nothing more than a demonstration of respect. In reference to what then occurred Dr. Magner gave evidence at an inquest which subsequently took place as to what occurred. He stated that there was no disturbance, no crowd, and no excitement, but he was suddenly seized by a policeman, dragged across the platform, and assaulted in a violent manner. He immediately demanded the policeman's name from District Inspectors Crane and Purcell, two officers then present. The Inspector referred him from Mr. Crane to County Inspector Heard, who would not give him the policeman's name. And thus the man was sent from one office to another without obtaining the evidence which he sought. One hundred cases of that kind could be brought forward. I have given the right hon. Gentleman a specific statement. If he does not deny it, I hope he will never again get up in this House, or never again during the short time that remains to the Administration, and refer his to legal proceedings when we complain of the wrongs committed upon the Irish people. I hope the Committee will take these facts and figures into consideration. I hope that they will, at any rate, make an impression upon many Members and upon the country at large. We know that the right hon. Gentleman pays no slavish or superstitious adherence to accuracy in this House; but, however that may be, I hope that these figures, showing how the expenditure on the Irish Constabulary is mounting year after year, will be heard from every platform in the country, as evidence that this Administration is doing nothing for the pacification, let alone the prosperity, of Ireland.

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

Mr. Courtney, we have now listened to three speeches on the subject of this Vote, which we were specially asked by the right hon. Gentleman opposite to bring on at an early date, in order that what they allege to be new grievances in connection with the management of the Royal Irish Constabulary might be brought before the notice of the House. In those three speeches we have had a good many old topics dealt with, to which I and my predecessors in Office have often replied. The hon. Member for Leicester has given us a very interesting, though, perhaps, not very relevant, account of his journey in connection with a meeting held in April at the new town of Tipperary. I do not think it necessary, at this stage, at all events, of the Debate, to reiterate the arguments used by my predecessors and myself on this point, and I will confine myself now to the topic which has been alluded to in violent language by the hon. Member who has just spoken—namely, the practice known in this Debate as "shadowing," which the hon. Member has described as a damnable practice.

*MR. FLYNN

It was one of your own followers who so described it. [Cries of "Bethell."]

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. Member quoted the description of the practice, and I will say that it has been spoken of by two Members of this House as being damnable. It is a curious thing that this topic should not have risen into prominence until the year 1890, because it certainly existed in times past to as great an extent, and, I believe, to a greater extent, than it does now. The invention of this as a new subject of agitation is due to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, who, following me in Debate the other day, made a very violent, very eloquent, and very spirited attack upon the action of the police in this matter, and among a great many very violent expressions he stated that, in his opinion, There are no words strong enough to describe the abominations of which the police have been guilty—the police, and, of course, more directly the Government, who are responsible for the action of the police. I think the right hon. Gentleman would be well advised if, before he makes these violent attacks upon the present Administration, he were to consult those right hon. Gentlemen who sit near him as to what occurred in the previous Administration, with which he was more nearly connected; he would have been saved on this occasion, as he would have been on many previous occasions, from somewhat serious rhetorical misadventures. ["Hear, hear!"] I heard the right hon. Gentleman cheer that last statement I made. He appears to think that we have introduced some very startling novelties into this practice of shadowing. I recollect a previous oc- casion, when a noble friend of mine who, I think, is not in the House now, raised the question with regard to Irish administration with which he was personally connected—I mean when Lord Cowper was Viceroy, and when Mr. Forster was Chief Secretary. He also thought that in those halcyon days of Irish administration the unheard of abomination to which the right hon. Gentleman alluded had no place in the action of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman and his Friends must recollect that though Mr. Forster had undoubtedly great difficulties to deal with in connection with Irish administration, he had methods more drastic than those possessed by the present Government, which saved him to a great extent from having to call upon policemen to closely watch and carefully follow suspected persons. He had even a more summary and effective method, because he promptly put them into prison. I suppose that over 100 out of 1,000 persons who were imprisoned without trial were imprisoned because they were suspected of boycotting and intimidation, and I call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman, who is so very free with his epithets, to the fact that when these men who were imprisoned without trial on suspicion of boycotting and intimidation were again let loose upon society, they were warned by the Authorities that their movements would be closely watched by the police, and that as soon as suspicion again arose against them they would be again imprisoned. That was before the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bridge-ton became specially responsible for the administration of Ireland. I have alluded to the special facilities which the Legislature gave to Mr. Forster. But Lord Spencer also had facilities which are not possessed—and I do not regret it—by the present Government. Lord Spencer and the right hon. Gentleman opposite gave to themselves, through the co-operation of this House, power by which any policeman might, upon reasonable suspicion of criminal intent on the part of any stranger in the district, bring him up before a single Magistrate and bind him over to keep the peace. When the right hon. Gentleman next desires to make an attack upon the Government, I hope that he will reflect upon the power he thought necessary to give himself in order to deal with these very questions of boycotting and intimidation which we are doing—as he was bound to do—our best to cope with. Again, anyone who was found out at night under suspicious circumstances could also be taken up by the police and brought before a Magistrate. But neither Lord Spencer nor the right hon. Gentleman opposite confined themselves to the exercise of the powers specially given them by Statute. I read to the House the other day, in answer to a question, a particular example which was brought before the notice of this House by the hon. and learned Member for Longford, some time in 1882, and I will do myself the honour of again reading, with the permission of the Committee, what I have already called to the attention of the House on a different occasion. In the Belfast Morning News, a Nationalist paper, there appeared the following statement on the 9th of June, 1882, with regard to the case of one Grant, a local contractor:— Grant had a constable by his side during working hours. When the toils of day were ended his second personality hovered about the precincts of his residence. When visiting his farm the same individual invariably was there. While even on Sundays he relaxed not his vigilance, but moved behind this unhappy gentleman while on his way to prayers. On the subject of this statement a question was asked by the hon. and learned Member for Longford of the then Chief Secretary for Ireland. All the then Chief Secretary thought it necessary to say was that it was quite true the police had been carefully watching the individual mentioned, but that in the public interest he declined to say on what ground they were doing so. That person was not suspected, as was stated by the hon. and learned Member for Longford, of having anything to do with the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, but was suspected of having been concerned in a very grave conspiracy to murder, and he was never convicted, although I have myself no doubt he was guilty. I have no doubt that humane and liberty-loving Gentlemen opposite would never have had him shadowed unless they had the strongest ground of suspicion. I do not know I do them more than justice, and ii is on that ground, and that ground alone, I venture to express to the Committee my confidence that probably the police on that occasion, acting under the orders of right hon. Gentlemen opposite, were not acting beyond their duty. That is a case in which on suspicion—on what hon. Gentlemen believe to be groundless suspicion—this man was shadowed with as much severity, and was as such subject to the damnable system—if that is to be the phrase—as any person shadowed during the tenure of office of the present Administration.

MR. DILLON (Mayo, E.)

At what distance did the policeman follow him?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I am afraid I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman the distance.

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

Was the policeman in uniform?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I cannot answer even that; but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will get the information he desires from his right hon. Friend sitting next to him (Sir G. Trevelyan).

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

No; I want you to tell me.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

It happened in 1882, and though I cannot speak with certainty I think it extremely probable that the man was in uniform. It must be recollected that this was not an isolated act of the Government of Lord Spencer. I have looked through the Papers on this subject, and I say that down to the very expression "shadowing" in those records you will find—[Mr. GLADSTONE: Produce them]—that the very men who now denounce us practised almost the same methods.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

I hope the right hon. Gentleman will, for the sake of the public interest, as well as his own character, produce the records to which he now refers.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I doubt whether confidential Orders of this kind should be given to the House.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Then what right have you to state them here?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I have the right that every man has when he is accused of what has been called an "abomination," to point out that his accusers, if there be guilt, are as guilty as himself.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Produce them.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Before I proceed further with my historical view of the matter, there is one part of the case which I venture to brush aside. In this House and elsewhere we have heard of what is most improperly and absurdly described as the shadowing of English visitors. I suppose that what happens is this: Some gentleman, anxious to become acquainted with the Irish question, takes a tour in Ireland. He associates himself with some organiser of the Land League, or other person who is under police surveillance. He then sees the policeman following, and flatters himself that he is the object of this attention. He then finds himself wafted into unexpected importance, and, perhaps, finally he is immortalised by a question asked across the floor of this House.

THE EARL OF CAVAN (Somerset, S.)

Does the right hon. Gentleman mean that description to apply to three men about whom I sent to Ireland and about whom I asked a question the other day? Their luggage was searched when they landed. They could not be mistaken for anybody else, for, besides having their luggage searched, they were shadowed from the moment they landed until the moment they left the country.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The noble Lord has put on a cap which was not intended for him. I know nothing about the searching of luggage to which he refers, but the three persons must surely have had a very suspicious appearance to have attracted the attention of the police so soon. I was not thinking of the noble Lord's friends, whose case I had, in fact, forgotten, but was referring to cases in which persons thought themselves the object of the special attention of the Irish Government, imagined that their presence in Ireland sent a thrill through the Irish Executive, and that special orders were sent down from Dublin Castle to see that the peace of Ireland was not disturbed by their advent. I now come to what I take to be the serious part of the charge, which I propose to deal with somewhat more fully. In order that the Committee may fully understand the peculiar necessities which have arisen in the last few years for close police surveillance, I must ask them to call to mind what took place at the Thurles and other Conventions, called together by the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) and some of his Colleagues towards the end of 1888. At the Thurles Convention the following resolution was passed:— That the names of landgrabbers, grass-grabbers, emergency men, and their supporters, as well as those who dealt with them, be sent to each branch represented at this Convention, as well as of cattle dealers and pig buyers; and that a Committee of six be appointed in each branch to carry out this Resolution. There is not now, and never has been, the slightest doubt as to what that Resolution pointed at. The idea was that any man who had the audacity to do what may be done with impunity in any civilised community in the world—hire a farm which was to let, and from which a man had been evicted—was to be boycotted in the farm and in the town where he went to sell his cattle, and at the fair no man was to be allowed to purchase from him. How was that to be carried out? The Committee of six pointed to the method. What were called Vigilance Committees were appointed to see that those persons who had taken evicted farms should be followed, should be "shadowed" at the markets where they attempted to sell their stock, and that in the pursuit of their lawful calling they should be impeded even to their ruin. The teaching of the hon. Member for East Mayo was fruitful in this case, as it has been in many others. Whatever I have said of the hon. Member for East Mayo, and I have had to say many things of him, and have often found myself in sharp conflict with him, I have never said he was an individual whose teaching did not bear fruit for good or evil. My only regret was that his teaching was so seldom felt for good, and was so often felt for evil. In order that Gentlemen opposite may judge of whether his influence was for good or for evil I will read what was said by the Tipperary Nationalist on November 7, 1888. That paper, giving a description of the proceedings of one of those Vigilance Committees, said— The Vigilance Committee successfully to the front in Clonmel…From early morning scouts were out in the Clonmel fair on Monday, and wherever the emergency man had his cattle the boys manifested the most practical solicitude imaginable…The notorious Ned Tobin was vigilantly watched, and as a consequence he had to take back his stock. So also had another grabber in the person of Major Gobbett. With the characteristic interest which Mr. T. J. Condon, M. P., takes in the welfare of his constituents, he was present all day, trudging almost knee deep in slush, anxious to know, you know —(observe the humour of the Tipperaryi Nationalist)— whether there was an improvement or declension in the price of cattle. That is a general account of the methods pursued by the allies of the liberty-loving Member for Mid Lothian. I will venture to give the Committee an example of the method by which this system of Nationalist shadowing was carried out, and the result which ensued, There was a man named Thomas Fitzgerald; he was poor; he occupied a small farm, and he had a large family. His whole means of livelihood depended upon his working this farm and being able to sell what the farm produced. He occupied this farm in succession to one Casey, who had been evicted [Irish cheers], being hopelessly insolvent. I do not know whether the doctrine above the Gangway opposite is the same doctrine that prevails below the Gangway—that every tenant in Ireland, solvent or insolvent, has an indefeasible title to stay in his farm as long as he pleases, whether he pays rent or not.

MR. DILLON

Will the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to quote, if he can, the statement of any Member below the Gangway to that effect?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I stated that the man had been evicted, and there were cheers from below the Gangway, which showed that hon. Members thought that it was sufficient condemnation of Fitzgerald that he dared to occupy a farm from which an insolvent tenant had been evicted. If those cheers did not mean that, they were even more meaningless than the cheers with which hon. Members usually favour us. This man Fitzgerald, who occupied the farm from which Casey had been evicted, lived for some time afterwards in perfect friendship with his neighbours. For reasons which I need not trouble the House with, this state of things did not last, and he was boycotted. He was brought to the notice of one of these Vigilance Committees, and the wretched man, when he took his pigs to Dungarvan Pair, found that he was being shadowed by one of the vigilance men for whose appointment the hon. Member for East Mayo was directly responsible, and hon. Members above the Gangway opposite indirectly responsible. He could not sell his pigs and he had to take them back; but it was so very necessary that he should dispose of his stock that he determined to take them to the fair at Waterford, a distance of 20 miles from his farm. He started in the middle of the night in order to arrive at the market in time. The vigilance man who had been set upon his track, who was shadowing him, in fact, heard that he had started, took a car, and arrived at Water-ford in time to watch his victim, when that victim should attempt to sell his pigs. Fortunately, the police had reason to believe that Power, the vigilance man who was shadowing Fitzgerald, was engaged in that task, and so Power was himself in turn shadowed. Fitzgerald was relieved from the persecution to which he had been subjected and Power was arrested, and is, I believe, at this moment in prison in default of giving bail. You have here two concurrent examples of shadowing—the shadowing by the National League and the shadowing by the police. Which do you prefer? Which is the damnable system? Is it 'the system by which this unhappy man was brought to the very verge of ruin for doing nothing, except what he had a perfect right to do, or is it the system by which he was protected from his persecutors?

MR. W. O'BRIEN (Cork Co., N.E.)

Is is not the fact that Fitzgerald has since surrendered the farm?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I think it is only too probable that a man subjected to the persecution which I have described has at last succumbed. [Cheers.] If hon. Members below the Gangway think that a subject for mutual congratulation, I should be surprised—no, I do not know that I should be surprised if their sentiments were shared by some of those who now support them above the Gangway. I may be told that this shadowing by the police is useless to stop this form of persecution. Well, look at the well- known Salford case. In that case some cattle were sent over here by a man who had taken an evicted farm on Lord Massereene's estate. The former tenant had been evicted for refusing to pay his rent and joining the Plan of Campaign. I think he was the individual who did the shadowing of the man who succeeded him. He came over to England and attempted to do here what the hon. Member for East Mayo recommends his disciples to do in Ireland, and apparently he was fool enough to rely upon the statement, made so frequently by hon. Members opposite, that the law in England is different from the law in Ireland. I think he will have a lower estimate of the legal knowledge of hon. Members opposite now than he had then, for he was promptly brought up not under the Crimes Act, and not before two removable Magistrates, but under the Common Law of England, before an English Judge and English Jury, and he and his associate in crime were subjected to a heavier sentence than even the much-abused removables would probably have passed in the sister island. One more instance only will I give of the value of this system of shadowing in protecting persons in Ireland in the legitimate discharge of their callings. There was a man named Fleming, a small farmer, who had adopted the principles and practices recommended by the hon. Member for East Mayo. He became a member of a Vigilance Committee, and he was followed by a constable in plain clothes. He was overheard stating that he was a paid agent of the National League that co-operates with the right hon. Gentleman opposite, and he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. He appealed to the County Court Judge, and the sentence of the Resident Magistrates was confirmed. If you will consider the machinery which the hon. Member for East Mayo, with the full consent of his Party above the Gangway, has set in motion in Ireland for the avowed purpose of ruining every man who takes an evicted farm—if you will notice that the machinery consists essentially in shadowing, and that its whole object is to destroy, the lawful calling of those against whom it is directed, I think the Committee will come to the conclusion not only that we are amply justified in the course which we have taken, but that every lawful means in our power should be used to put an end to this cowardly, tyrannical, criminal system. I pass from the general question of National League shadowing at fairs to the case of Tipperary and the shadowing that has gone on there. In Tipperary there was no question of land-grabbing, of agrarian quarrel between landlord and tenant, of excessive rents, of cruel administration of his estate by the owner of the soil. But some Gentlemen from below the Gangway opposite thought fit to go to this hitherto peaceful community to introduce strife which has caused more suffering and misery than have attended almost any other episode in recent Irish history. The tenants of the landlord, rural and urban, were ordered not to pay rents. When their interests were sold up, a few had the audacity to buy in; certain others had the audacity to continue to pay that which they lawfully owed. What was the consequence? Their houses were wrecked—fired into. Boycotting notices were posted about the town; explosive bombs, playfully called squibs by the hon. Member for Hast Mayo, were thrown against their houses or into their yards; their servants were compelled to leave; their customers were followed by vigilance men, men told off to boycott; the goods those customers had purchased were taken from them and destroyed; they themselves were threatened and subjected to outrage. I take it that none of these facts will be denied.

MR. W. REDMOND (Fermanagh, N.)

Every one of them.

MR. W. O'BRIEN

Why did not the right hon. Gentleman submit these alleged facts to examination by a Commission as we proposed?

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! I must beg hon. Members to abstain from these interruptions. They will have ample opportunities of replying.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The shadowing which has taken place in Tipperary is fully justified by the duty of the Government to do their best to stop this chronic intimidation. If a man in Tipperary is known to be engaged in these practices he is shadowed and rightly shadowed. Does the right hon. Gentleman deny that? Does he think that it is a monstrous proceeding on the part of the Government to try to protect these unhappy victims of irresponsible tyranny? Perhaps he may say Father Humphreys was innocent of boycotting. Father Humphreys has had the courage of his convictions, and he has openly declared, without concealment and without disguise, that he, at all events, will not disavow this practice of boycotting. [Home Rule cries of "Why don't you prosecute-him?"] Hon. Members apparently have not realised the fact that if a man makes a speech in favour of criminal conspiracy, or writes a letter saying that he has taken part in a criminal conspiracy, it is not legal evidence. If the ordinary legal evidence had been forthcoming that Father Humphreys had made the speeches which every one knows that he made, he would have been prosecuted. But the fact of his moral guilt is not denied by himself; and whatever surprises this Debate may hold in store for us in the way of assertion, it will not hold in store the surprise that any of Father Humphrey's friends will get up and say that he is innocent of the boycotting which has been the disgrace and the curse of Tipperary for some time past. Are we to be told that we are violating the liberty of the subject by doing our best to stop the practices of this man, whose whole business in life is to make the liberty of the subject impossible in Tipperary? A more preposterous and ridiculous action has never been done in this House than to point to him as the victim of a vindictive Government. It has not been denied that while we are accused of shadowing, the people, who invented it and carried it out to a greater extent than any police in the world are those who obey the unwritten law of the National League. I was amused the other day to see a letter from a Mr. R. Holland Owen in the Macclesfield Chronicle of the 30th of May, 1890. It contains an account of the events of the Tipperary meeting, but I only allude to it for the purpose of reading the following sentence:— I had not made myself known up to this, and I began to feel uncomfortable, as I felt I was shadowed, but who by I did not know, so I showed my letter of introduction to a priest on the quiet, and the shadow was at once re- moved. The Nationalist leaders told me on the Sunday evening they know me for a stranger, and were afraid of an enemy, and had me shadowed. They are the gentlemen who come down here, and, with the countenance of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, profess themselves as the great apostles of the liberty of the subject. They are the men who say that the liberty of the subject is hopelessly interfered with by the process of shadowing, and it turns out that it is a part of their regular system, and that it only differs from the action of the police in that, while they shadow for criminal purposes, the police shadow for the sole purpose of preventing crime. I do not wish to make any attack upon hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway. I have not to-night, and I never have, concealed my view of the practices by which they carry out objects which, no doubt, they think noble and patriotic. But I do not propose now to make them the subjects of any personal atttack. If I were disposed to make a personal attack at all it would not be upon them, but upon right hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway. I honestly confess that I do not think that history shows any meaner or more contemptible spectacle than that of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen, Members for English constituencies, who have themselves been responsible for the government of Ireland, turning round and, in concert with their former foes, doing all in their power to prevent the police from carrying out the most elementary duties of justice—the elementary duty of protecting every man in the exercise of his rights. I think sometimes that to hon. Gentlemen themselves it must occur that they play a very sorry part in this business. To the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bridgeton it must occur that, when he makes these attacks upon those who are his successors in a difficult office, they deserve some better treatment than he and his allies give them. I do not mind, and I never have minded, personal criticism and attack; but what I do mind is that the task which we have taken in hand—the vindication of the law—is deliberately hampered in the interests of a particular political combination, and by men whose traditions should have taught them a very different lesson. When I listen to speeches such as that delivered the other night by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, who came down and denounced me in the most violent terms because of what he described as the nameless abominations of which we have been guilty, I confess I thought that the ancient traditional honour of a great political Party had fallen low indeed.

(7.8.) MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

As the right hon. Gentleman has done me the honour to drag me into this Debate, I shall be compelled to occupy for a very short time the attention of the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman closed his remarks with what I may call—though I do not think he considered it so—a personal attack. One of the peculiarities of the right hon. Gentleman is that he has got a set of definitions which he applies at his will, and any criticism of his government in Ireland is a personal attack on himself, while the loudest denunciation and the use of the most violent epithets with which the dictionary can supply him—advanced by the right hon. Gentleman without the smallest attempt at particularity or proof—is not to be considered as a personal attack, but as an outburst of honest indignation from a gentleman who is engaged in nothing more or less than a vindication of the law. The attacks of which he complains have not been for his legality, but for his illegality—for the grossly illegal acts to which he has given the direct countenance of the Government in Ireland, and for the culpable indifference with which he has tolerated the illegality of those who act under him. But I am not about to waste the time of the Committee in a general discussion of that kind. The right hon. Gentleman has cast his net very wide. It will not be his fault if this Debate does not extend out of consonance with the views of the right hon. Gentlemen at his side with regard to the speedy winding up of the business of the Session. He has thought fit to make a personal reply to a speech delivered by me on a former occasion; and in regard to that speech I need not say—for it is so much a matter of course—that he has misrepresented it. The right hon. Gentleman says that I made charges on that occasion with respect to which I ought to have made inquiry as to their foundation, or as to the countenance which they have received from former Governments; and he says that with regard to the practice of shadowing—which was described from his own side of the House in language much more violent than that in which I characterised it—I accused him of that abominable practice. I made no accusation upon my own credit or upon my own knowledge. I stood entirely upon what had been said in the Debate in the House of Commons, and I apprehend that it was impossible for any conduct to be more thoroughly Parliamentary. My hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) has given details of a practice under the name of shadowing, which practice, in my opinion, deserves condemnation in the severest terms that can be found to apply to it. But I do not believe that I used one single expression charging the guilt of that practice on the right hon. Gentleman. I never do make such charges upon him until he has himself adopted, avowed, and defended the abuses that we endeavour to condemn. The hon. Member for East Mayo made those charges, and the right hon. Gentleman did not reply to them. He did not disavow the practice. He did not condemn it. Thus, without holding myself personally responsible—because I did not know how far the right hon. Gentleman might be exactly acquainted with the facts—I described the practice of shadowing, such as it had been described without contradiction in this House, and such, therefore, as I was bound to take it to be, in language less strong than that which was applied to it by a supporter of the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman says that, in order to avoid rhetorical misadventures, I ought to consult those who have information as to what has been done in former Administrations. The hon. Member for Mayo made known these facts to me before his statement in the House, and I did ask him if there was any precedent for such proceedings in the former Government of Ireland. He said that, to the best of his knowledge, there was not. But I know well that the spirit of Administration has long been anti-national and anti-Irish, and that there have obtained a footing in it practices which are frequently unknown to the heads of the Government in Dublin; and the right hon. Gentleman charges upon me, as Prime Minister in a former Administration, what he ought never to have charged upon me, even if I had been the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant. I never make a charge of that kind until I know that the facts have been within the cognisance of the person engaged in the Irish Administration, and until I know that he has made himself responsible for it. I am sorry to say, Sir, that on this occasion the right hon. Gentleman has gone very near to making himself fully responsible for this practice—this abominable practice—which was charged against the Irish Administration in a former Debate, and with which, no doubt, I did charge the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman quotes the case of Mr. Grant, which he says deserves all the blame that has been allotted to the recent proceedings in Ireland in our late discussions. Well, Sir, with respect to the case of this man Grant, I requested the right hon. Gentleman, as he made this accusation, to produce the facts. He has given no engagement to produce the facts. I shall again request him to produce the facts. I shall again state that we have a right to the production of the facts, and I shall again show how hollow is the refuge behind which the right hon. Gentleman has endeavoured to shelter himself against the production of the facts and of the supports on which he relies for the imputation he thinks fit to make. We have not the facts before us. I hope my right hon. Friend near me will be able to give to the House some light upon this subject—some fuller light than we have obtained from the right hon. Gentleman; but I point out, for the present, that the essence of the charge made against the Irish Administration with respect to the shadowing at Tipperary is this—that it depended upon the fact, first of all, that the shadowing police were kept close to the persons shadowed; secondly, on the fact that the shadowing police were common police-constables, or, at any rate, constables in uniform, thus blazoning the insult in the face of the public; and, thirdly, on the fact that the police were shadowing individuals upon the mere suspicion of what the right hon. Gentleman calls boycotting. When we spoke of boycotting seven years ago we meant boycotting associated with crime. The right hon. Gentleman means boycotting entirely apart from crime.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

No, I do not.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

What I mean is this—that the acts which he has denounced and for which he shadows are acts which we contend are acts totally apart from crime. What are the resemblances so far as we know them? The Member for Mayo (Mr. Dillon) asks what was the distance between the police officer who watched Grant and Grant himself. The right hon. Gentleman says he does not know. I asked the right hon. Gentleman across the Table whether the police officer was in uniform. The right hon. Gentleman said he did not know, and suggested that I should ask my right hon. Friend near me. Then, with regard to the cause for which the shadowing took place, it appears from the mouth of the right hon. Gentleman himself that this man was watched—I will not say whether he was shadowed or not until I know more about it—that this man was watched because he was deemed to be guilty of a conspiracy to murder. That is the parallel the right hon. Gentleman gives for what is now being done. Relying always upon the argument of to quoque—and I fully grant he has nothing else to rely on—that is the sort of parallel the right hon. Gentleman has established and on which he thinks to ground his charges. So much, then, for his parallelism of circumstances which I need not further elaborate. But I asked the right hon. Gentleman to produce the facts, to produce the records. What said the right hon. Gentleman? "I doubt very much whether I can produce confidential instructions." It is extremely convenient that there should be a class of controversial papers in existence, the essential conditions of which are these—first of all that they have been made the subject of charges made publicly across the Table in the House; and, secondly, when you are challenged to produce them—"Oh, no, they cannot be produced." This is the gallant and chivalrous conduct of the right hon. Gentleman, who sees nothing so mean and contemptible as the conduct of politicians above the gangway. Let him show what it is that is mean and contemptible in our conduct, as I will endeavour to show what is gallant and chivalrous in the conduct of the right hon. Gentleman. He has quoted especially against me the contents of papers which he says he cannot produce because they are confidential. I ask whether those are the terms upon which Ministers of the Crown have ever been accustomed to defend themselves, and whether those are the terms upon which we are to submit to be lectured by the right hon. Gentleman upon honour and gallantry? All this about confidential papers was a mere subterfuge. We never asked for the production of confidential papers. I want the production of facts, and the right hon. Gentleman having made a charge in this House that we are guilty of, that we allowed, proceedings analagous to those which a supporter of the right hon. Gentleman described as being "damnable," let the right hon. Gentleman produce the record of the facts. He shall not ride off upon the confidential character of instructions. There is no question about instructions. The question is, What has actually been done? I must ask the right hon. Gentleman's attention to this. I ask him for no instructions. He has made a charge in this House as to what was done. I ask him, I request him, I demand from, him—[Laughter from below the Ministerial Gangway.] An hon. Member makes my demand a subject for indecent laughter. The hon. Gentleman deserves no notice from me, but if he thinks fit to defend his conduct, he can rise and do so in this House. The right hon. Gentleman now understands, I hope, what I am about. He has made an accusation against me. I ask, and I demand, that he shall produce the facts on which it rests. Does the right hon. Gentleman understand that?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I am not quite sure that I do. What exactly occurred was this. The right hon. Gentleman stated this was a new practice.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

I did not say so.

MR. DILLON

I said so; and so it is.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. Member for Mayo said it was a new practice. I pointed out from existing Parliamentary records that a precisely-parallel case—[No, no!" from the Opposition]—in my opinion, at all events, a precisely parallel case—occurred before. These facts were alleged by the hon. and learned Member for Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy), and they were not denied by the Minister of the Crown responsible for the government of Ireland. I do not know what more facts can be asked for.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

What the right hon. Gentleman stated was simply an extract from a newspaper. The answer given at the time by my right hon. Friend near me (Sir G. Trevelyan) did not give, and did not purport to give, the exact facts of the case. What I demand of the right hon. Gentleman now is that he shall give a statement from the official records of the Department of the circumstances which occurred and which he made the foundation of his charge. There is nothing in this House by which we can judge of the circumstances of this case. A statement in a newspaper does not help us to judge how far it was a parallel case. I want the police accounts of what the right hon. Gentleman himself describes as a most important police proceeding, not less abominable, if abominable either of them be, than the proceedings that have lately occurred.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I do not now understand what the right hon. Gentleman wants more than he has got. He is not content with my account taken from a Nationalist newspaper—the Belfast Morning News—as to what occurred. I was, perhaps, in error in reading from a newspaper. I will, therefore, now read to the Committee what actually took place in the House:— Mr. Healy asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention had been called to a statement in the Belfast Morning News of June 9 to the effect that the police at Castleblayney have for some days past been perpetually watching a local contractor; that a constable remains at his side during his working hours, and afterwards hovers about his residence; and if he can state the object of this surveillance, and by whom, and for what object it has been directed? Mr. Trevelyan: Sir, it is quite true that the police have been carefully watching the person referred to; but I must decline in the public interest to say upon what grounds they are doing so.

(7.28.) SIR G. TREVELYAN (Glasgow, Bridgton)

It is very easy for hon. Gentlemen to cheer, but they will not cheer, I think, when they have heard what I have got to say. I thought from the first moment of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman that he had a very poor case indeed. We had a definite case before us—that of a policeman in full uniform walking by the side of a private citizen, and another policeman in full uniform walking almost upon the heels of the man, following him in the marketplace, following him in company, never allowing a word of his to go unheard, and subjecting him to the greatest temptation to take the law into his own hands. What is the parallel case? The right hon. Gentleman had to defend that, and now he has to defend the statement he made the other day, which, for the first time, I have now the opportunity of answering, that these things were constantly done in our day. The right hon. Gentleman took advantage of the enormous privilege a Minister has in replying to questions, and made a statement I will now proceed to controvert. He made a statement in regard to which he was mistaken. The right hon. Gentleman, and those who listened to him, knew perfectly well that the forms of the House prevented a denial being given at the time; yet they and the Conservative Press have gone on repeating the statement that the most serious charges have been proved against the Liberal Government, and especially against myself. This modern shadowing is a definite thing; it is not the same thing as watching a suspected criminal; it is not the same thing as is known in every civilised country of following a man who is suspected of murderous or dangerous intentions, seeing that he does not commit those actions, keeping an eye upon him. It is as different as the thumbscrew and the handcuff. In one case it is a precaution against crime: in the other, it is the persecution of a supposed criminal, or a man whom the Government determine to regard as such. This species of persecution is perfectly new under the present Government. I have referred to the legal advisers of the Irish Government under the right hon. Member for Newcastle and myself, and the distinguished lawyer who was Solicitor General, and after- wards Attorney General for Ireland, writes— I did not, while I was in office, know or hear of this system of shadowing now practised. The MacDermot's recollection is the same. It seems to he a question of degree. No doubt men were watched in our time: but they were not deliberately dogged as they are now—a system which seems more likely to annoy the individual followed than to prevent crime, What is the case now? A parish priest, Father Kennedy, whose worst crime is that he twice attended meetings of a branch of the National League which the Government had suppressed, is accompanied by policemen in uniform, one at his side, and one close behind him. Take an instance of the watching done by the Liberal Government. In 1882 Dublin was in a terrible state. There had been six or eight dreadful political murders committed. It was known that murderers wore abroad in great numbers; it was known by the Government who the murderers were; and what is more, it was known they were premeditating other murders; and there were a series of—thank God, not murders—but attacks made, of which that on Mr. Field will be remembered. We considered it our duty to have a watch kept upon these murderers, or would-be-murderers, and among these so watched was Carey, who will be remembered in connection with the Phœnix Park murders. Carey was watched in such a manner that, though he perceived it, the policeman who followed him was under the impression that Carey did not know he was watched, for I well remember an anecdote in this connection. The Dublin Exhibition was being held at the time, and Carey went to visit it. When he came to the turnstile he paid for himself, and he paid, he said, "for the man who was following him," much disconcerting the policeman, who up to then had been under the impression that Carey did not know he was being watched. The contrast between this mode of watching and the way in which Father Humphreys is dogged by the police, is a contrast everyone can understand. I have asked Irish Members whom I have been able to communicate with, the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon), and the hon. Member for North Roscommon (Mr. O'Kelly), and others, whether, under the Liberal Government, they suffered from this method of shadowing, and they unanimously say it is new to this Government. Similar testimony is given by a newspaper correspondent, who writes in a spirit of great hostility to the Government to which I belonged—the Irish correspondent of the Manchester Guardian—who says that, irritating as was the administration of Sir G. Trevelyan, of which he had full knowledge clown to the most minute particulars, it had nothing in common with the despotic encroachment on the liberty of the subject which is now being practised. Thus a writer who is not at all prejudiced in my favour supports the views-of our legal advisers and the statements of Irish Members. Against this body of evidence the Government have no official facts to quote. The new method is one of gross personal insult, from which a man cannot free himself. If he commits a technical assault, he is brought before a Resident Magistrate and charged with assaulting a constable in the execution of his duty, and he will get a month's imprisonment, against which sentence there is no appeal. If he brings an action against the constable, everything will be done that a powerful Government can do to cause delay, to prevent damages being obtained, and to hinder the highest Courts from pronouncing against the system. This is the Police Vote, and I will now say a few words on police administration generally. Undoubtedly, the police in Ireland are demoralised by the peculiarities of the present system of administration; and, speaking generally, there are three circumstances which are adverse to good relations between the police and the people. One is the intense centralisation, which renders the Force very costly. In Scotland there are 4,000 police, who cost in pay and pensions £400,000. In Ireland, with only a million more of population, the police number 14,000, and their pay and pensions cost £1,600,000 a year. That is not all. The effect of centralising administration of the police in Ireland is an economical lesson for us in England; it makes reduction of expenditure impossible. In local administration you have the advantage that the authorities can apportion the pay to the rate of wages ruling in the district. In Scotland the rate of police pay differs from 27s. to 21s. a week; in Ireland, whether a constable is employed among the highly paid artisans of Belfast, or in the remote parts of Kerry, his pay and pension is the same. The despotic Military Police Force of Ireland is decidedly expensive as compared with other Police Forces. Then the Irish Police are in bad relations with the people on account of the teaching the police receive from the Government. They are taught to despise the public feeling of their countrymen, and to disregard the right to free speech, because one of the crimes for which a man is shadowed is that he is suspected of having attended a meeting of a suppressed branch of the League. They are also taught to show disrespect to the priests, the very men who can bring some influence other than official influence to bear upon their own relations with the people. Thirdly, they are taught to look down upon Members of Parliament. The Constabulary have been taught to regard with disrespect the representatives of five-sixths of their countrymen. They have carried this to the extent of attempting the arrest of an Irish Member at the door of this House; and though an important Committee drawn from both sides declared this an infringement of privilege, the Government used its majority outside the Committee to burk the Report. The police have been taught to despise the representatives of their country in Parliament—taught to regard their statements as unworthy of credence, and a Force intended to be a neutral body has become the Force of a partisan minority. These assaults upon the freedom of Irishmen arise from the fact that Irishmen have no political power. As Fox once pointed out, "Civil liberty can have no security without political power," and for practical purposes Ireland has hitherto had no political power, being outvoted in this House, and having no representative whatever in the Upper House. For this latest attack on the liberty of individual Irishmen the Government have not even the miserable excuse of precedent. This form of shadowing they did not find. They invented it. It has arisen with the r^°gime of the present Government. With that r^°gime it will die.

(7.49.) MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Perhaps I was not sufficiently clear in regard to the information which I asked the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to produce, and I may be allowed this opportunity to explain. I demanded from the right hon. Gentleman certain information, and I wish to withdraw the word "demand," which, though I may be entitled to use it, may sound, perhaps, somewhat dictatorial. I will substitute the word "request," and I now beg to request the right hon. Gentleman to obtain information in regard to the case of Grant on three points—first, whether the watching policeman was in plain clothes or in uniform; secondly, at what distance, so far as is known, did the policeman watching stand from the person watched; and, thirdly, whether his presence was purposely made known to the person watched? If the right hon. Gentleman will have the goodness to ascertain these things, so far as he can, he will do something to clear up the matter.

(7.50.) MR. WADDY (Lincolnshire, Brigg)

The objections we maintain to this Constabulary Vote have not been met; there is no pretence of answering our arguments. I have said on previous occasions it is no answer to indulge in mere tu quoque statements. I do not believe in the accuracy of these statements, but even assuming them to be true, they are wholly irrelevant material, and no answer. When the right hon. Gentleman began his speech by saying that statements made from this side had been answered by himself or his predecessors, he entirely forgets that the only answer given before is one we cannot, will not accept, that somebody else was just as bad. Yon ask us now, in 1890, for very heavy Estimates on account of the Irish police, and if you asked us for the Vote under similar circumstances to those upon which you ask the English Vote, I should not be prepared to deny that you are entitled to every penny of it. But our complaint is that this money is not used for the purpose for which you ask it. Exception is taken to this Vote because the Irish police, instead of being used, as in England, for the purpose of keeping the peace and protecting the people, are planted like an alien army amongst them. It is all very well for you to talk of boycotting and intimidation j we know that you have Ireland in a state approaching that of civil war, and that when you boast of peace and order there you say the thing which is not. Instead of being the guardians of peace and order, your police have become the tools of tyranny. You have succeeded in producing a condition of things which year by year becomes worse. I noticed it was but in a halfhearted way—until he had lashed himself into indignation—that the right hon. Gentleman addressed himself to the defence of his Administration; and this gave encouragement to those of us who have a hope that the right hon. Gentleman will some day get better light and come to be a good Home Ruler. There was something very different in the speech to-night from the earnest, powerful flow of eloquence to which the right hon. Gentleman has long accustomed us, and as we saw him try to make headway our hope of better things from him grew stronger. But the facts remain. I, with other English Members, have been an eye-witness to the brutal proceedings of the Irish police. We have seen the people beaten by the police without provocation or justification. Those assaults have been made upon Members of this House, who have made their complaints here. But you use the police to prevent inquiry. Yon give us police statements; but you will not Call the witnesses. When we complain of what we have seen—some of us of what we have felt—you meet us with statements of witnesses whose names yon will not give, whose evidence you will not submit to the test of examination. In vain we heap up facts; we get no answer, and I suppose we must bear it while your system of administration becomes more demoralising and humiliating—I will not say more despised, for that is scarcely possible. The Irish people suffer under the worst possible form of despotism, a constitutional despotism, and we can only go on protesting against a state of things which, though denied, is known to exist. I assume it is right for these policemen to watch, and to follow persons who they believe are going to be guilty of crime, But I desire to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the energies of the police are being devoted only to the detection and punishment of crime such as is of a political character. Now, the attack on this Constabulary Vote is of a political nature. The Force is being used for the maintenance of Her Majesty's Government, and not for the maintenance of public peace. It is the Government who are determined? to break the peace, rather than leave their seats on that Bench. I maintain that the money granted under this Vote is not honestly appropriated. It is devoted to political purposes. It is used for hindering Irishmen from expressing their opinions. It is used in order to try to persuade the people that you have put down the National League. It constitutes the sinews of war, and the war is a civil one between the Irish people and Her Majesty's Government. We protest against your using for your own purposes a Force employed for National purposes. It is all hypocrisy to pretend that this thing, which you call a Constabulary Vote, is really a Vote in the interests of peace and order. There will be peace and order if you clear this Force out of Ireland. I can give instances in which, in the absence of the police, the largest assemblages of Irishmen for political purposes have passed off without the slightest disturbance. That has taken place constantly, and if you would only allow the Irish people, as you did in Limerick the other day, when I was there, the power of assembling together—a power which you dare not deny to the people in London—for the purpose of maintaining their political opinions, the work of the police would be gone at once, and a great deal more than one-half of this expenditure would be saved. But, instead of that, you try to suppress these meetings. You use your police for the purpose of watching those who attend them. At one meeting in Arthurstown there were actually more policemen than grown-up civilians present. Had the police been absent there would have been perfect peace and order. There would have been no attempt to create a disturbance; but, in consequence of the presence of the police, there were broken heads and broken musical instruments. No doubt, I shall be told that we have heard these' things over and over again; but I maintain that it is necessary to make these statements in the place in which, if they are untrue, they will be contradicted. They are never contradicted, and we are quite willing to leave the people to draw their own conclusions from that fact. attended an enormous meeting which was held in Limerick recently. There were probably 60,000 persons present—persons from a neighbourhood which the Government had proclaimed because they said it was disorderly and dangerous. Yet there was no disturbance, and why? Because there were no policemen present. The soldiers and the police had been withdrawn, and if you would only on other occasions trust Irishmen to conduct themselves with decency and propriety, I say there would be perfect peace, perfect order, and perfect quiet. But you do not want to see that. You will not save the public money and time, and it is because you have taken up that attitude that we oppose this Vote. If you will only do justice to Ireland, and the people who live there, you may get rid of this enormous Constabulary Force. You have only to believe that the people are—as we are always telling you they are—law-abiding citizens.

*(8.10.) MR. J. ROCHE (Galway, E.)

I intend to give a few facts as to the manner in which the police are used in Ireland by the Chief Secretary. Speaking of the Clanricarde estate I find the rental is something like £1,900 a year, and within the past four years the cost to the Government of evictions on that estate has been something about £10,000, or more than the rental of the estate. The police in the locality have been increased from 15 to 60. The Force has not been increased for the purpose of detecting crime or preventing outrages, or breaches of the peace. Within the past four years there has not been one serious outrage committed in the locality; and as for the peace of the locality, I venture to say that half a dozen policemen could have protected the peace. This extra force has been brought into the district to act as the servant of the landlords, who are the friends of the present Government. Now, how have they been employed? In October, 1887, on the night of the famous midnight meeting at Woodford, the police for their own reasons waited until the excitement was at its height, namely, just as the Member for North-East Cork and his English friends arrived in the town, before they served a proclamation on the promoters of the meeting. Their object, I contend, was to create a breach of the peace. No doubt when the proclamation was served there was some little friction between the police and the people for a little while, but I, together with other gentlemen, interfered, with the result that the friction cansed by the conduct of the police ceased there and then, and we received the thanks of the District Inspector of Police for our action. But, strange to say, eight weeks after that, without the slightest intimation, eight or ten of us were arrested, brought to the police barracks, let out on bail, summoned before two Removables, and sent to herd with thieves and pickpockets in Galway Gaol. On the same occasion Mr. Kerry was arrested and charged with taking part in an illegal assembly. The only evidence against him was that of a constable who looked in through the window of Mr. Keary's house and saw Mr. Keary. There was no evidence that Mr. Keary took the slightest part in that meeting, or that he was outside his own door that night; yet he was sentenced to one month's imprisonment. In December, 1887, Mr. Boland, Mr. Reilly, and I went to Loughrea to meet Mr. Egan, whom Mr. Boland and myself had left behind us in Galway Gaol. The fact of a man being singled out by the Chief Secretary as a criminal is sufficient in itself to have him honoured by the people of Ireland. Mr. Egan was accordingly met by a large number of people, and was brought home in triumph. At Mr. Egan's request I addressed a few observations to the people. I was told by one of the police that stones had been thrown at them, and at the commencement of my remarks I stood up on a car, and, in the strongest language I could command, condemned the stone throwing that had taken place; the result was that there was not another single stone thrown. Both my friends, Mr. Boland and Mr. Reilly, remained on the car while I was speaking. On the night of the 12th January following, I was leaving a irelative's house, at about 9 o'clock at night, when I was suddenly arrested by two policemen. I asked for, but was denied, the privilege of sending any message to my family, and it was only by shouting to a passer-by that I got the information conveyed to them. Accordingly, my brother, a curate in the town, and my brother-in-law, came to the barracks to see me, but they were not allowed to. A few minutes later Mr. Boland was brought in in custody, having been dragged from off a sick bed. We were point blank denied a cup of tea, and were kept sitting on a form till 9 o'clock the next morning, when we were taken a distance of four miles, brought before two Removable Magistrates, admitted to bail, and left to make our way home as best we could. Although Mr. Reilly sat on the car with Mr. Boland at the time I was speaking, ho was not interfered with, but Mr. Boland, who did not take any part in the meeting, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment. That is the kind of treatment to which we are subjected in Ireland. The real wonder is that with what we have to suffer we are so quiet and peaceable. It is not the Chief Secretary and police who are to be thanked for that quietness and submission, but the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. I have other illustrations to give. Four men, Messrs. Lynan, Morrissey, and two others, were summoned and sentenced to a months imprisonment for intimidating a man named James Mitchell, and ordered to find bail at the end of the time to be of good behaviour for four months more, although Mitchell himself positively swore that he knew none of the defendants, and had not been intimidated by any of them. I desire next to show that collusion exists between the Government and the landlord. There is a head constable who has been going about the parish of Portumna with a list obtained from the agent of Lord Clanricarde, and he has been saying to the tenants, "Here is the list of your neighbours who have paid their rent. Why not go and do likewise? If you do not you will find by-and-by that all the other tenants have paid their rents, and you will be left in the lurch." Now, if any hon. Member on this side of the House had stood up at a public meeting in Ireland and named a single tenant as having paid his rent he would as sure as fate be given six months on a plank bed. The next case to which I wish to refer also occurred in my neighbourhood. It is that on an estate, the rental of which is about £1,100 a year, while the cost of it to the Government for police to assist the landlord in collecting his rack-rents is £1,607 a year. Mr. Lewis, the owner of the estate, supplies forage for the horses used by the police, so that if Mr. Lewis is not making a profit out of his laud, he is, at all events, making a handsome profit out of the Government for forage. In the harvest of 1888 I find that those policemen arrested a little girl, 13 years of age, for pulling a few turnips on her father's land. She was taken first to the landlord's house, and from thence before a Local Magistrate four miles distant. She was ordered to be released about 8 o'clock at night, and allowed to get home as best she could. The tenants recently held a meeting on this very estate todiscuss adocument to which there were 25 forged signatures of tenants—I do not know whether the forgery emanated from the Times office or some other Government Office—who asked the interference of the Archbishop in reference to a settlement on the estate. The Archbishop wrote to the signatories, with the result that he found that none of them knew anything whatever about the matter, and they publicly declared that the document was a forgery. The meeting had been announced publicly, and the police, instead of assisting in detecting the forgers, charged down upon the people and batoned them. It was manifest that the police were not in the neighbourhood for the protection of the people, and I have failed to see a single instance in which they have detected crime. With 60 police in the locality, and, except when employed at evictions, having scarcely any duty to perform, they can be frequently seen drunk. At a not very long distant from the town two policemen were found lying drunk upon the road. One was minus his rifle; the other had his side arms. They were taken to barracks, and an investigation was made. Search was made for the rifle, but unsuccessfully. At length the Sergeant came to my house, and requested me to find the rifle for him. I believe the rifle is to be found still; at any rate, I have not heard anything about it, nor do I know that the police have found it. I believe the police are employed to assist the land lords to collect their rack-rents, and if there is any hesitancy about believing that statement I will read the following letter, dated from the seat of Sir Henry Burke, January 13th. Note how it is addressed:— Roche.—I think my letter to Carey explains what I mean, that if Sir Henry Burke's rents are paid at 4s. in the £1 the police tax will he removed for the future. What explanation will the right hon. Gentleman give of that? Although there has not been the slightest friction between Sir Henry Burke and his tenants, the cost of extra police to the district has been 6s. in the £1, not one single penny of which has been levied off the Lewis Estate, nor from off the Clanricarde Estate, except a little corner of it from which the people are not yet driven. The unfortunate people of Woodford, between whom and their landlord there has not been the least friction, have been compelled to pay 6s. in the d£l. The facts which I have stated ought to command the attention of the British people, and to lead to the amelioration of the condition of the people of Ireland, while those who are responsible for this tyranny should be driven to the obscurity from which they should never have been allowed to emerge.

(9.11.) MR. W. REDMOND

The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary commenced his speech by saying that he had nothing new to reply to. He said that the complaints that were embodied in the speeches delivered before he rose were old complaints that he had replied to over and over again. He waited until the hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division of Nottingham had finished his speech, he then waited until two Irish Members had spoken, and though several other Irish Members—myself amongst the number—rose to continue the Debate, and make other charges against the police, instead of giving way to those whom he might reasonably have imagined had complaints to make he insisted on delivering his own speech, which he commenced by saying he had little to reply to. I think the right hon. Gentleman would have been better advised if he had postponed his speech and note of triumph until he had heard more speeches from this side of the House, and found himself in a position to judge whether there were really any new complaints to make or not. The hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division did not by any means confine his indictment of the police to the matter of shadowing. He made a great many other complaints, and stated a great many other grievances, in connection with the police in Ireland, which the right hon. Gentleman completely ignored. He ignored every complaint with the single exception of that of shadowing, and he endeavoured to answer the case made against the police on that ground by declaring that a similar system had been carried on in Ireland under the administration of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian. The Chief Secretary did not attempt to support that assertion by a single particle of proof. Every Member who has had experience of the practice of Government in Ireland for the last 10 years will agree with the statement made by the Member for East Mayo that shadowing or dogging the footsteps of those against whom no crime can be proved is a totally new practice, and that, whatever the right hon. Gentleman may say, this system of shadowing will be always associated with his name and term of office. Now, I do not propose to follow the right hon. Gentleman in the arguments he used in support of shadowing. He declared that it was practised by the organisers of the National League. To begin with, I say that that statement is absolutely without foundation, and I think it is monstrous that the right hon. Gentleman should come down here and solemnly charge the Irish National League with practising a system of shadowing in Ireland, without being able to prove a single case where shadowing: has really been practised by anybody save the police. The right hon. Gentleman then attempted to arouse the sympathies of his followers by giving a description of the persons who have been shadowed by the police. He said that only those persons had been shadowed who had been engaged in preventing law-abiding citizens from pursuing their lawful callings, and doing what the law of the land entitled them to do. He gave us the case of the man Fitzgerald, in the neighbourhood of Dungarvan, in the county of Waterford, and he drew a pitiful picture of this man, who had taken an evicted farm, who was not allowed to sell his stock. Yes, but the right hon. Gentleman did not tell the House that the man Fitzgerald, being in possession of that farm, was actually in possession of property which did not belong to him, but to the previous tenant, who had been unjustly evicted, and thrown on the roadside by the landlord. No one can allege for a moment that a man would be interfered with in the slightest degree who occupied a farm in a legitimate manner. But in Ireland a system has grown up which is called land grabbing, which has been proved to be the most disastrous system which has ever afflicted Ireland or the Irish people. It means that when people have been evicted—as they are every day—their property in the land is practically confiscated, and that the man who goes in and takes an evicted farm is, in the opinion of the great majority of the Irish people, in possession of property which does not belong to him. The right hon. Gentleman objects to boycotting land-grabbers. What does he want? No matter how slight his acquaintance with Irish history may be, he must know that these difficulties have always existed in Ireland, so long as evictions have been carried out by the landlords. In one way and another the sense of Ireland is against people taking evicted farms. The right hon. Gentleman objects to boycotting. But as long as the people have grievances they must protest against them, and as long as they are assailed they must protect themselves. The advice of the Irish Members is that it is much better for the people to protect themselves by combination than by resorting to the old methods of outrage and murder, which, under the auspices of the National League, have completely died away, so that Ireland is now freer from crime than England, Scotland, or any other country in Europe. The right hon. Gentleman went on to give us an elaborate account of the circumstances that prevailed in New Tipperary. He said that people had been ordered not to pay their rent, and that people who had shown a disposition to come to terms with their landlords had had their houses wrecked. I will not enter into that more than to say that the statements of the right hon. Gentleman on that head were absolutely misleading, and without foundation, and I have no doubt that when some of my hon. Friends who are acquainted with the circumstances of the struggle in New Tipperary come to address the House they will be able to put a different complexion on the whole case to that sought to be put upon it by the right hon. Gentleman. When the subject is properly gone into it will be found that the invasion of right and acts of illegality are not on the part of the people, but on the part of the hon. Member for Huntingdonshire (Mr. Smith-Barry) himself, who wantonly went down to Cork and interfered to prevent a settlement on an estate with which he had previously had no connection whatever. But now the Chief Secretary would have us believe that the only people who have been shadowed in Ireland have been those engaged in what he called shadowing boycotted men in Ireland. Why, Sir, that is completely begging the whole question. Some of the most gross cases of shadowing have been in regard to people who have had no connection with boycotting or with the land in any degree. I will refer to one case mentioned by the hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division in his opening statement—the case of Father Brown, of County Wexford. It was never alleged that he had been engaged in a boycotting transaction, or that he had not done everything he could to prevent a breach of the peace in his district. The Government considered that he was guilty of some great conspiracy, and brought down hundreds of soldiers and police, and put in operation, all the varied machinery at their disposal under the Coercion Act. But they were unable to find him guilty of crime, so they dogged his footsteps, and even, on one occasion, insisted upon following him into a house where an unfortunate woman was at death's door, and they would not let him alone though he protested he was there to administer the last rites to the woman who was dying. It was not until I raised a question in this House with reference to this priest, who is respected throughout the whole country, that the system of shadowing from which he suffered was discontinued. And yet in his speech the right hon. Gentleman had not one word to say as to cases of that kind. He had not a word to say in the case of Father Humphreys, who has been shadowed; and I fully expected he would have said something about the case of shadowing I brought under his notice the other day. A lady from New Zealand—a Protestant and an Anti-Nationalist—was shadowed in my constituency. I drew attention to the matter, the Chief Secretary denied that the lady had been watched, and the lady herself wrote a letter declaring that the allegation was true, and that the conduct of the police had been abominable. But shadowing is not the only thing we have got against the police in Ireland. We charge against them that instead of being an impartial Police Force, such as you have in this country, or such as any civilised country possesses, the Force is used almost exclusively in the interests of the landlords. If the landlords had not found that the Constabulary were at their beck and call to carry out evictions, they would in nine cases out of 10 have come to terms with their tenants. It is the easiest thing in Ireland to clear a whole townland. In this country if a landlord has a quarrel with his tenant, and wants to evict him, he would find it very difficult to get at short notice a fully-equipped force of men to march to a given part of the country and help him to turn out the inhabitants from their houses, but in Ireland a landlord who wishes to do this—to pull down houses and make grazing farms—has the means ready to his hand. The police of Ireland are really in the hands of the landlords. It is a monstrous thing that the taxpayers of this country should be called upon, year after year, to pay£l,500,000 to support a body of men, one of whose chief occupations is the carrying out of the harsh and cruel evictions of which we read day after day. Another chief occupation of the police is the suppression of public meetings. They are never engaged in hunting down real crime. When murders occur in Ireland, and happily they occur much more seldom in Ireland than in this and other countries, but when they do, the police are the very worst people in the world to detect the criminals. In Kerry, where moonlighting has, unfortunately, taken place, the police have signally failed to detect the criminals. But when a public meeting, is to be prevented, you find, as in the case of Tipperary and Cashel meetings, hundreds and hundreds of police present, for the purpose of charging in upon the people, dispersing them at the point of the bayonet, or breaking their heads with batons, preventing Members of Parliament addressing their constituents, shadowing and hunting them as if they were the commonest criminals. These are the duties which take up almost the whole time of the police in Ireland, and it is for this reason that, year after year, the Irish Members, who are as anxious as any English or Scotch Members to see an adequate and proper Police Force in Ireland, come here, and, in the interest of justice, protest against this large sum of money being annually spent in support of an armed Force who fulfil the duties I have described. What is our chief complaint in connection with the police against the Government? It is that, no matter what the police may do, we never can get them censured by the Government. Certainly, in the case of the hon. Member for Spalding (Mr. Halley Stewart), a policeman was punished. The hon. Member went to Tipperary and was shadowed. A lot of constables were-told off to drive behind the waggonette in which the hon. Member was seated, and, when driving home at night, the police behaved in a most disgraceful and disorderly manner. Several of them, got blind drunk and used insulting language towards some ladies who formed part of the party. For very shame, as an English Member of Parliament was concerned—it was not a matter of insulting half-a-dozen Parnellite-Members—the Government reduced one of the police sergeants to the ranks and censured another constable. That is absolutely the only case, as far as my knowledge goes, in which we have alleged anything against the police, and in which the Government have done anything except back up the police through thick and thin. Hon. Members are in the habit of laughing when Mitchelstown is mentioned, but a great many things have occurred, as heartrending and unjustifiable as the Mitchelstown affair. Take the case of the murder by the police of the boy Hepburn in Tipperary. Not a single policeman had been injured. There was no danger to life or property, but the officer, in panic, or deliberately, ordered his men to fire a volley down a narrow street, with the result that Hepburn, a boy of 14 years, was killed. A Coroner's Jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against the police, but not a man of them was proceeded against by the Government. When we ask for an inquiry into the conduct of the police on that occasion, the Chief Secretary refuses an inquiry. The Attorney General for Ireland backs up the Chief Secretary. What are we to think here? We can only think that the Chief Secretary and the officials in Dublin Castle know that the conduct of the police was unjustifiable, and that they murdered the boy. Why are they afraid to give us an impartial inquiry, which, before the whole world, would set the matter at rest, and decide whether we or the Chief Secretary are right in the view we take? I want to refer to another breach of conduct of the police in Ireland. The police have been constantly set by the Government to perform the duties of shorthand notetakers. There are a few men in the Force who are professional shorthand writers, but outside of these men the Government have extensively employed common constables to report speeches. Some time ago I had the advantage of being prosecuted by the right hon. Gentleman on the ridiculous charge of conspiracy. The right hon. Gentleman got his usual conviction, but he has never had the pluck to follow it up by sending me to prison. At the trial a policeman produced a note-book, and in the most glib manner read my speech, sentence by sentence, without a single inaccuracy. My counsel, in order to test the capacity of the constable to take shorthand notes, read out deliberately, much more slowly than it is customary to speak at a public meeting, half a column of a speech or a leading article, and asked the constable to take it down in shorthand. After he had taken it down he was required to retire and to transcribe his notes. In the course of two hours he returned to Court, and was asked by Counsel, "Well, have you written out the Report you took in shorthand of what I read?" "No, Sir" "And why?" "I was not able to do it, Sir."— "And you made no attempt?" "No, Sir; I could not do it." And yet this miserable wretch evidently thought that by swearing against me he might get some promotion and favour at the hands of the authorities. All over Ireland it has been proved that so demoralised have the police become, so utterly are they lost to a sense of shame, so great is the system of bribery, and egging them on to commit injustice against their fellow-countrymen, that they are guilty of the grossest perjury. Do the right hon. Gentleman and the officials in Dublin Castle take any notice of this conduct? Certainly not. I have known men convicted of perjury, and seen them two or three days afterwards with their notebooks in their hands, taking down speeches which might be used at some subsequent trial. If for no other reason than the perjury of these men we are entitled to protest as strongly as we can against this Vote. In this country the police are employed for the purpose of promoting law and order, but, speaking from experience, I fearlessly assert I have never known a single occasion in Ireland on which a large Police Force has been present, when their presence did not imperil in the greatest possible manner the public peace. A short time ago I was announced to address a public meeting in Wexford. The meeting was to be at night, and the District Inspector came to me and said, "Mr. Redmond, I must have some policemen here. I am greatly afraid there will be a collision, the people are so excited. What do you think we ought to do to keep the public, peace?" I was glad to be accosted in that spirit, and I replied, "If you will remove the police from the streets and confine them to barracks, I will guarantee there will be no breach of the peace." I added that he and another policeman might' come to the platform and see and hear everything that went on. He acted on my suggestion; 4,000 people attended a night meeting, but there was not the slightest mishap of any kind. It was generally remarked that on other occasions, when the authorities insisted upon having the police present, the results were very different. Under these circumstances, we are entitled to demand that some change should be made. It will not do for the right hon. Gentleman, in a sneering and insolent way towards Members of this House, to impute, what he has not the courage to say openly, that we are in favour of disorder, that we are less anxious than he is to see proper law, and real and true order properly respected. He knows it is the merest absurdity for him to say that 85 Members are so lost to every sense of right and justice that they, deliberately pursue a line of conduct which they know to be wrong. We know that the right hon. Gentleman's view is not the view taken by the peoples of England and Scotland. We have confidence that when those peoples get the chance they will declare that the lawfully elected Representatives of Ireland sitting on these Benches are far more desirous to see law and order promoted in Ireland than the right hon. Gentleman, with his imprisonments, shadowing, boycotting, proclamations, and all that miserable machinery which has been tried so often, and failed so often, and which no Government, even a much stronger Government than the present, would attempt to put in force, for a single week, against the people of England or Scotland.

(9.50.) MR. J. O'CONNOR (Tipperary, S.)

I cannot congratulate the other side of the House on the interest they seem to take in this matter. I suppose they consider that the short and smart speech of the Chief Secretary meets the case. I see the Attorney General for Ireland quietly taking a nap, and the Under Secretary of the Lord Lieutenant in an attitude that is anything but one of interest in the discussion that is going on. The Chief Secretary thinks that when he comes here and gives utterance to an official falsehood, supplied to him from Dublin Castle or by some of the implicated parties, the case is met. We will be satisfied with nothing of the kind. I notice that the right hon. Gentleman affects to despise certain right hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House, but, at the same time, he offers them the sincerest form of flattery by saying in reply to the accusations that are made against him, "You have done likewise, and I am following your example." The only example he can find is that which he finds in the columns of the Belfast Morning News. The right hon. Gentleman says that the prisoners released in 1881 and 1882 were warned to be of good behaviour. I am one of those who; at that time, in the language of the Chief Secretary, was 'let loose upon the land." I was not warned, and I never met one of the thousands of my fellow-prisoners who was, nor have I ever met a suspect who was shadowed after the manner in which my constituents are being shadowed now. As the right hon. Gentleman says, what we want an explanation of is the illegalities of the Government and the police. These illegalities the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. A. J. Balfour) calls the elementary duties of the police. I shall have to trouble the Committee with the narration of a few of these illegalities—a few of these elementary' duties of the police. The first case I shall refer to is that of Father Kennedy. That rev. gentleman has been persecuted for years. He has been imprisoned more than once, and he is also, I will admit, actively engaged in all the movements of a political character that interest his congregation and parishioners. Was it the elementary duty of the police to go to the house of Father Kennedy, and insist upon entering it, on the ground, as the policeman stated, that there was a National League meeting being held there? Father Kennedy said to the police: "You have nogrounds whatever for presuming any such thing, and you have no right to invade my private grounds in this way." The sergeant said insolently to the priest: "I will force my way into your very bedroom." The priest having advised the people to go home, they dispersed, and afterwards, when the case was being tried in a superior Court in Dublin a few days ago, the Judge emphatically denied that the police had any inquisitorial rights under the Act of Parliament. The Crown Prosecutor (Mr. Murphy) suggested that the police had inquired of Father Kennedy the character of the meeting, and had been refused the information. And what was the language used by the Judge? "And quite right," retorted the Chief Baron. "He had no authority to ask such a question, and, under the same circumstances, I would refuse to answer it myself." That language of the Chief Baron directly contradicts the statement officially made from the Treasury Bench in reply to the statements made from this side of the House. We are told, whenever we complain that our constituents are being badly treated, that we have a remedy in a Court of Law. Father Kennedy got a verdict with damages to the extent of £105 and costs. What is the result? That yesterday, or the day before, a notice of appeal was given against the decision of the Chief Baron. It is an insult, therefore, to the intelligence of the people to make these statements day after day. Take another ease of a similar character in Cashel, about which I asked the Chief Secretary a question. There a man was assaulted by the police, and he had the temerity to bring his assailant into the Court. The man, O'Brien, who was assaulted, was a retired soldier, belonging to the first-class Army Reserve. The Chief Secretary, in one of his replies, said that was no guarantee of character. At the same time, I trust that Her Majesty's soldiers know how to conduct themselves, and that the discipline which they undergo in the Army is calculated to make them good citizens. A blackthorn stick was broken over O'Brien's head and arm. He swore to the facts of the case, and the constable, Martin Kelly, was asked questions. Well, the Chief Secretary denied that this man was assaulted, although it had actually been sworn by the Inspector who ordered the charge that four men were standing at the corner and assaulted in the manner described; that they were not doing anything to break the peace, but they were standing there, and it was thought they might possibly do something. This evidence having been adduced by the Inspector, the Magistrate who had been in charge of the police who batoned the people at the suppressed meeting in Cashel dismissed the case against O'Brien, and this was all the satisfaction the unfortunate man got for accepting the invitation of the Chief Secretary to avail himself of the Courts of Law in Ireland. I shall now refer to the system of "shadowing," which I unhesitatingly say has been adopted to provoke a breach of the peace. In the town of Tipperary the evicted people left their homes in peace, abandoning the property they had created in their holdings to the landlord, and they had taken possession in peace of the homes that they had built for themselves. These homes had been built by an active section of the people of Tipperary. Father Humphreys, Mr. John Kinnane, Mr. Gill, and Mr. O'Brien Dalton, are the men who have been, beyond all others, engaged in constructing these homes. These are the men who have kept the people within the bounds of peace and order, and these are the men who have been selected by the Government for this species of persecution. An account of this system of boycotting by an independent journalist from Cork shows that prominent men are surrounded by the police, and watched from an early hour in the morning until some hours after dark; or if one stops to exchange a handshake or word with another, the policeman, in the most offensive and provoking manner, orders them to move on. And if any party," the correspondent says, "attempts to remonstrate with the policeman, he is ordered away, or rudely pushed into the street, the same as if he were a corner boy of the most dangerous character. Every stranger is watched, no matter what his political character, and is pursued and annoyed. I now come to the case of Carew, about which I asked the Chief Secretary a question the other night. Carew is a man who keeps a public house and a grocer's shop in the town of Tipperary. A short time ago I asked a gentleman whether two policemen had not followed my friend, and was told that when the policeman drove him from the shop they actually went upstairs after Mr. Carew. The Chief Secretary said the police did not follow him upstairs, and did not force their way into the private apartments of the publican, but remained only on the licensed part of the premises. I wonder where the Chief Secretary gets-his information? Does he get it from the Castle; if he does, the Castle supplies very false information. Mr. Carew, the plaintiff in this case, was sworn and examined, and he stated that both constables were in uniform, and he noticed that one of them had a revolver. He asked them whether they had a warrant for entering his place. They said they had not. He asked them if they had any documents entitling them to enter and they made a similar reply. They also said that it was for nothing connected with his licence that they had gone there. Then Constable Gully was sworn and cross-examined by Mr. Truen, in reply to whom he said he had never stated that he did not go beyond the shop. Mr. Truen said such a statement was made in the House of Commons by the Chief Secretary, and the witness replied that he did not see that statement. I want to know whether the Chief Secretary still adheres to his original assertion that those constables did not go upstairs or beyond the licensed premises. The Chief Secretary blames us for bringing forward these matters, and asks us to be satisfied with his statements, but, in the face of these inaccuracies, with the fact that he denies the sworn statements of the witnesses, how can he expect us to accept his assertions? I have asked the Chief Secretary questions about the interference of the police with individuals patrolling the streets, which they have as much right to do as the Chief Secretary himself, and I have received nothing but the most unsatisfactory replies. There was the case of Mr. David Helan, a Town Commissioner, and a highly respected Tipperary merchant, who was fined for having his goods projecting 17 inches beyond his shop front, although the District Inspector had told him that there was no obstruction, and another person had stated that an arrangement had been come to by which goods might project 18 inches into the streets. This case was nothing but an act of unprovoked interference with the people's rights, and which, under certain circumstances, might have led to a breach of the peace. Then there was the case of Patrick Burke, of William O'Brien Street, Tipperary, who was prevented by a "shadowing" policeman from going to mass, and who later on, when going along the main street, was threatened by a policeman with arrest, and had to return home. Subsequently, on the 17th May, the policeman threatened to put him out of a shop in the main street, and threw him on the top of his head. The man was pointed out to the District Inspector, on the 26th May, and his name asked, with a view to his being summoned, whereupon the District Inspector, whose name was ' Gamble, replied, "What do you want his name for? I will break your head, you scamp." "Summon that man" said the District Inspector to Police Constable Jennings, and the man was summoned Mr. J. O'Connor and imprisoned for two months for asking the name of the policeman He was summoned on the 20th inst. for being drunk on the 6th inst., although he was a temperance man, and had not taken drink either on that day or for 11 months previously. Then there was the case of Nicholas Delaney, a Street Inspector employed by the Tipperary Town Commissioners. He was removed off the flags on to the main street by Sub-Constable Erle. When Delaney remonstrated, and stated who he was, the policeman said, "I don't care a damn what you are." Shortly after this Constable Erie came up to Delaney and said, "I told you before to leave the flags," and Delaney left the flags and went into the roadway. Some hours later an Acting Sergeant removed Delaney off the main street, and refused to tell Delaney his name, so that Delaney was unable to prosecute him. Delaney was soon afterwards liberated without being brought before the Magistrates or subsequently summoned. There are two points connected with this case on which I think we are entitled to an explanation from the Government. This man, being employed by the Town Commissioners, had as good a right to be about the streets as the policeman who turned him off, and if arrested why was he not charged, assuming he had committed an offence? If he had committed no offence why was he arrested? And, having been arrested, why was the name of the policeman refused when asked for? But this sort of thing is a common occurrence in Tipperary. I have given you enough instances to justify our coming to the conclusion that the District and County Inspectors have given their subordinates instructions to refuse the names of policemen, and break the law and commit the illegalities of which the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian has complained as being part of the elementary duties of Irish police constables. There was another case, namely, that of Bridget Callan, who was standing at her own door when a policeman, named Hobson, inquired what she was doing. She asked his authority for entering her house; he roughly demanded whether she meant to obstruct him in the discharge of his duty. This I would point out is a very common phrase. A policeman asks if you mean to obstruct him, thereby provoking you into a quarrel which leads to your arrest and punishment before the Resident Magistrate. This man struck the woman across the neck, forcibly driving her head against the latch of the door. He then entered and searched her house, but without finding any one there. Her voice was husky and her throat sore some weeks after the assault. These are a few instances of what occurs in the town of Tipperary. I have numbers of others with which I will not trouble the Committee. I have myself observed the harsh and violent treatment of the people by the police on various occasions. An instance occurred on the day the meeting was addressed at Cork. My hon. Friends the Members for North East Mayo and North East Cork were away in a distant part of the country holding a meeting which the Government had intended to suppress. I was in the town of Cashel, where there were a great many people and a great many policemen. While waiting there I thought I should like to have a look at the historical ruins of the Rock of Cashel. I went there, accompanied by an old man belonging to the place, and he described to me those historical remains. When we came down into the town this old man, who was a respectable tradesman of the place, was walking a few feet behind me when a policeman came up, and, without the slightest provocation or a word being uttered, struck the unfortunate man a blow under the chin, causing blood to flow from his mouth, and from the cut on the lower part of his face. I was so disgusted that I turned round upon the policeman, and asked him why he had committed that assault. I took hold of the policeman and walked up to a District Inspector, named Fruen, and said, "You see that old man, he has been in my company to the Rock of Cashel, and coming back he has been assaulted by this policeman without the slightest provocation." What did Mr. Fruen say? He said, "I can't help that." I said, "Will you restrain that man?" "I will not," he said, "and if you don't leave the place you will get just as bad as he." Well, Sir, I left the place and took the old man away with me. I saw by this incident, and many others during the day in Cashel, that the police were in a brutal state of excitement, and that the Magistrates in charge of them were little better. The more violent the police were, and the more wounds they inflicted on the people the more applause; did they receive from their superiors, from whom there was no chance of getting any redress. Now, Sir, this is the state of things at present in Tipperary; but it is not alone in Tipperary that these things occur I noticed that day in Cashel, and have noticed on other occasions elsewhere, that the police seemed to be utterly demoralised and to have abandoned all discipline. They are very often drunk, and the man who assaulted my guide was in that state. Occasionally we have it on the testimony of the police themselves, I who are sometimes obliged to admit that they are not the best of characters. Last year a policeman, who had fired a shot, was put in the box as a witness, and he admitted that he had got into trouble for drunkenness, and had been fined for breach of discipline. He stated that when he fired there were 50 people flinging stones at him and his companions. It often happens in Ireland that when the police have nothing else to do, they get up a conspiracy against people whom they want to get out of the way, and we have recently had a strong case of this kind at Portumna, when five Nationalists were charged with riotous conduct, the police declaring that they had been waylaid and stoned by the defendants, whereas it turned out that the whole story was concocted by the police, who were themselves the worse for drink, one of them admitting that he had been fined for discharging his revolver, when drunk, on the public road. The charge against these men was dismissed, but why is it that the policemen and the emergency men engaged in that affair have not been prosecuted by the Government for perjury? The fact is that the whole machinery of the law is strained for the protection of those who thus abuse the people. The Chief Secretary may think he has done a good day's work when he has disposed of questions put from this side of the House, and made a smart speech in reply to the accusations against the Government, but there is a Court af Appeal before whom we put our case, and that Court of Appeal hiss given its verdict, which is one of condemnation of the Chief Secretary and his Government in Ireland—a verdict which gives hope to the Irish people that not only the Chief Secretary and his Government, but the present police system of Ireland will be speedily at an end.

(10.38.) COLONEL SAUNDERSON (Armagh, N.)

The Committee ought to be assured by someone on this side of the House that there is a large portion of the Irish people who do not agree in the condemnation which is bestowed by Members opposite on the police of Ireland. The Opposition at the commencement of this Debate have apparently, in the exercise of their undoubted right, felt it their duty to offer very little to strike against. They have put up two English Members who seem to know very little about Ireland, whose intervention in this Debate has been of an exceedingly watery description. Those two Englishmen grounded their objections on the difference which exists between the expense involved in the maintenance of the Irish Constabulary and that which is involved in the maintenance of the English police. We were told by one of those hon. Members that the expense of the Irish police per head of the population is three times as great in Ireland as it is in the Metropolis. I could explain the abnormal difference if three-quarters of the Metropolitan Members of Parliament devoted their time and their abilities to inciting the criminal populace of London to break the law, and if they were assisted in that amiable operation by wandering Radicals from various parts of the country, and, furthermore, if they were assisted by right hon. Gentlemen who sit on the Front Opposition Bench, who have occupied a distinguished and prominent position in public affairs, in hounding on the population to resist, and, if possible, overturn the law, I venture to say the Police Rates in the Metropolis would very soon be largely augmented. If, for instance, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian made a speech in London, and said, as he said about Ireland not so very long ago, that the people ought not to obey a Government which was a Government of unequal laws, then we should have every reason to believe that crime and outrage and lawlessness would largely increase in; the Metropolis. We do not find that English and Scotch Members advocate a policy of that kind on this side of the Channel, but whether it is the effect of the Irish air or not, this we know to our cost, that when hon. Members opposite visit Ireland, their great object is to fan and keep alive the flame of disorder and lawlessness. When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian rose I looked forward with very great interest to his speech, for I thought that during the course of that speech he would define the policy of his Party, which had deliberately adopted opposition to the law in Ireland as the very foundation stone of the policy they now rest upon. But the right hon. Gentleman devoted his speech to a florid and somewhat violent attack upon my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and challenged him to produce a quotation which the right hon. Gentleman had made from a newspaper extract. When the Chief Secretary for Ireland read an extract from a report, I suppose it was from Hansard, the speech of the light hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian came to a sudden and almost comical end. At any rate, there was a very short peroration But what I want to hear from right hon. Gentlemen opposite is this, how can they now, in the year 1890, defend in the House of Commons, and before the country, boycotting and intimidation, which, four years and a-half ago, they were foremost to condemn? I listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridge-ton Division in the hope that he would1 give us some reasons for his remarkable conversion. I thought he would have told us how it comes about that at the present moment he is advocating and supporting a policy which for so long he so manfully resisted. But not a word. We have not had a single word from any hon. Member opposite to account for the fact that the great Liberal Party, to which they profess to belong, now support the policy of boycotting and intimidation. The Committee must remember that we are discussing a far wider and a far deeper question than any petty details of police administration. We are discussing the great question whether the House of Commons, and whether the country, will finally adopt or discard criminal intimidation in Ireland, whether an Irishman, no matter how low his position may be, shall enjoy the same freedom as every Englishman and every Scotchman enjoys. I am very glad that hon. Gentlemen opposite agree with me on that. I am aware that the police in Ireland are at loggerheads, not with the Irish people, but a section of the Irish people. Unfortunately, in every civilised country the Executive and the police are always at loggerheads with a certain section of the population. It is so in London; but it is always with the criminal section of the population, and it is exactly that section of the population in Ireland with whom they-find themselves at loggerheads. What is the meaning of the attack that has been made upon the Administration in Ireland? It is twofold. First, the Administration are attacked with interfering with the rights of public meeting, and interfering with the right of the subject in the shape of shadowing. Shadowing is a very disagreeable necessity. But if the League shadow a tenant it is the duty of the Executive to shadow the shadower. There is a very great difference between shadowing a Nationalist Member, or one of the Radicals who have gone over to Ireland, and shadowing an Irish tenant. Shadowing an Irish or an English Member, leaves them, what we see them to be on these Benches, very fair specimens of well-fed humanity, but shadowing an Irish tenant, following him into the fair, means his ruin. He does not come and present himself at this House in a well-fed condition, but he calls on us to tell the House of Commons and the country the condition in which the tyranny of the Land League has left him. I say the Government of the country, to whatever Party it belongs, would be unworthy of the name of Government if it did not exert every effort that it can command to stamp out and destroy the most cowardly, most odious, and most detestable tyranny that has ever been exercised in any country. It is said that the Government have interfered with right of meeting. I venture to say if the hon. Member for West Belfast were to go to Belfast tomorrow he might address, as he would with great eloquence, an audience there, depicting the Government in the most odious terms, and might hold them up to public reprobation, and he would not be shadowed in Belfast. Why? Because the necessity for shadowing in Ulster does not exist, and it does not exist because the people there will not allow it to exist. But in Tipperary it is another thing. In Tipperary a meeting was held, not for the purpose of allowing hon. Members to address their constituents, but for the deliberate purpose of furthering the policy of intimidation. We all heard how the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton said, in eloquent terms, that it was a monstrous interference with the inalienable right of Members of Parliament to interfere with the recent meeting at Tipperary, which was got up for the purpose of enabling the Member for South Tipperary to address his constituents. That meeting, of which we have heard so much, and for interfering with which the Government have been, so much condemned, was not a meeting got up to enable the hon. Member to address his constituents. It was got up for a very different purpose, to which I will allude.

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! I do not quite see how this comes in the Debate on the Police Vote. It will corner in the Debate on the Chief Secretary's salary. The question now is in regard to the actions of the police.

COLONEL SAUNDERSON

Of course, Sir, I bow to your ruling at once. As the hon. Member for South Tipperary alluded to the events at Tipperary, I thought I was justified in doing so. Now, in reference to the action of the police at Tipperary, what I wish to point out is that the police in shadowing hon. Gentlemen who visited that town, were, in my opinion, fulfilling the duty the police of any country ought to perform. The shadowing of hon. Members opposite, and other persons in Ireland, is one of the chief grievances levelled by hon. Gentlemen opposite against the Government. The hon. Member for East Mayo was shadowed—

MR. DILLON

I never was shadowed in the whole course of my life.

COLOXEL SAUNDERSON

Well, the hon. Member ought to have been. The hon. Member pourtrayed the action of the police at Tipperary, and described it as a monstrous perversion of justice, or words to that effect. The hon. Member went to Tipperary for a set purpose. The meeting was got up to meet the hon. Member who had been round the world with the Home Rule hat, and the Government prevented the hon. Member from making a speech at Tipperary. But great fault has been found with the police, and I suppose we shall hear a great deal about it in the House. I venture to say that the action of the police in Tipperary in preventing the hon. Member making a speech has been amply justified by the hon. Member himself. The action of the police was to prevent intimidation, to prevent the hon. Member, or any other man, from intimidating the Irish people, and forcing them to obey the law of the League instead of the law of the land. It was against such action that the police had been, and, I hope, will be, set in force. The hon. Member has never been ashamed to acknowledge that boycotting is a justifiable course of action. The contention of the Government, backed up by the law, is that, by law, boycotting is a crime. The hon. Member appears to have added a new commandment to the decalogue, "Thou shalt not interfere with intimidation."

MR.DILLON

The hon. Member is making a serious and pointed charge against me. I have always advocated boycotting as an unfortunate necessity in Ireland, and I shall continue to do so. But I have never advocated intimidation, and I defy the hon. and gallant Gentleman to qnote any passage from any speech of mine in which I have advocated intimidation.

COLONEL SAUNDERSON

The hon. Member has challenged me to quote, and I will do so. The hon. Member said on a well-known occasion— If any man back down, whatever the Government may say, I will denounce him from public platforms by name, and his life will not be a happy one in Ireland or beyond the sea. I do not know if hon. Members know what making a man's life unhappy means in Ireland. Intimidation, I think, a very weak phrase to describe it. But knowing this, and remembering the warning, the Government were justified in setting the Constabulary in action to prevent the delivery of a speech in Tipperary which, undoubtedly, would have had the very same import as the speech I have cited. I am justified in saying that by the hon. Member himself, for that very night, though prevented from addressing a public meeting, the hon. Member used words which show the frame of mind in which he returned from the other side of the world.

MR. DILLON

Where?

COLONEL SAUNDERSON

On the night of Saturday, May 25, 1890—

Mr. DILLON

Where was it delivered?

COLONEL SAUNDERSON

It was delivered at Tipperary, not at a public meeting, but at a banquet, where sometimes it is said people speak with more freedom and truth. In speaking that same night at a banquet the hon. Member said that those who had been turned off their farms would, in a short time, retake possession of them, and their names would be honoured from generation to generation, while those of the cowardly dastards he denounced would be dishonoured and their children would be pointed to as the children of traitors. It is said that such language is not intimidation; but it amply justifies the action of the Government in setting the constabulary in action in Tipperary and preventing the hon. Member from openly intimidating people as he did at the banquet. The tenants in Tipperary have no more choice in the line they have taken than Nationalist constituencies have in the choice of their Members. What the Committee have to decide is whether intimidation is to continue in Ireland, whether the Government are or are not to employ every means at their disposal to put down attempts to intimidate the Irish people and deprive them of liberty. For such action the Executive are condemned, because they are interfering with the unquestionable right hon. Members opposite think they possess of intimidating the Irish people by every means in their power for the purpose of building upon that intimidation a political fabric in which the Nationalists shall be masters. The House and the law have decided that intimidation and boycotting are crimes, and before the House condemns the Government it must revoke a number of laws and reverse the proceedings of the last few years, and especially those of the time when the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian was Prime Minister. The policy of the Opposition is based on intimidation; they depend on the League; the League depends on intimidation; therefore, the policy of the Opposition is "Down with the law and up with intimidation," and the policy of the Government is "Down with intimidation and up with the law." I can scarcely realise—it sometimes seems to me an evil dream that any responsible Party in the State should consent to adopt such an un-British, an un English policy, the policy of the dastard—that men who are safe themselves should hound on the Irish people to resist and disobey the law, and then leave them in the lurch and come over to the House of Commons. [Cries of "No, no!"]

MR. DILLON

I rise to order, Sir. I put it to you whether it is conducive to order in Debate in this House, that the hon. and gallant Member should make grossly offensive charges—charges that are false and baseless. I have never hounded on the Irish people to any action I would not take myself.

COLONEL SAUNDERSON

The war between us is war to the death.

THE CHAIRMAN

Discussion must be carried on within the usual limits of the Rules of Debate, and the language of the hon. and gallant Member has rather exceeded that scope.

COLONEL SAUNDERSON

I regret, Sir, if my warmth has betrayed me beyond the Rules of Debate. It is not easy for hon. Members who do not understand the condition of affairs in Ireland, and who do not know what boycotting means, to realise the misery that has been brought about by the action of the League, but it makes my blood boil to think that these things should be supported by a great Party in the State. I cannot believe that it will ultimately be the policy of that Party in the country. I regret that so many of my compatriots have adopted it. It would be to me a great satisfaction if some of the most eloquent of Ireland's sons would forget this policy, which must end in nothing, and join with me, as I am ready to join with any man, in promoting the good of my country. But this policy is one that every loyal Briton, every loyal Irishman ought to resist to the end. I shall resist to the utmost of my power the prospect held before us of a League Parliament, a League Government, League Judges, League Juries, and League Police.

*(11.10.) MR. HERBERT GLADSTONE (Leeds, W.)

A good many hon. Members, even the hon. and gallant Member himself must be wondering what is the practical value in the interests of the peace and prosperity of Ireland of such a speech as that to which we have just listened. Whenever the hon. and gallant Member speaks, whether within or without this House, he seems to be seeking to irritate and to exasperate his political opponents. Across the floor of the House to-night he has flung epithets of contumely; he has used the word "dastard;" but the hon. and gallant Member speaks in the safe precincts of the House, where he is protected by the Chief Secretary, and in Ireland under the protection of the Chief Secretary's policemen. I leave it, therefore, to hon. Members to say where, in such circumstances, the word "dastard" is best applied. The hon. and gallant Gentleman commented on the ignorance which ho said two hon. Members who represent English constituencies on this side, who have spoken in the Debate to-night, had shown of Irish affairs; but it may be well to remind the hon. and gallant Gentleman that there is a Party in this House and a Party in the country not always impressed with the views and the knowledge of the hon. and gallant Gentleman when he speaks on Irish affairs. The hon. and gallant Gentleman said that in the Debate to-night no attempt had been made to; show that the police in Ireland had exceeded the boundary of law. He frequently used the term "criminal intimidation," and it is the practice of hon. Members on the other side of the House to use that phrase as though it applied to one party only. In a few words I desire to comment on one episode that has taken place in Ireland, and to this I invite the attention of the Committee and the Chief Secretary, whom I am glad to see opposite. My hon. Friend the Member for the Rushcliffe Division referred to the Charleville shooting affray, but passed from it as a case sub judice. In that he was under a misapprehension. The matter has been made the subject of two actions, and the jury, having disagreed in each case, the whole thing has, I understand, been allowed to drop. The case is, therefore, no longer sub judice. Justice has not been done, and we are entitled to bring the case before the House of Commons and ask justice from the Chief Secretary in regard to it. The incidents at Charleville are among the most extraordinary that have taken place in Ireland during the last few years, and I hold the Chief Secretary responsible for everything that took place on that occasion. Personally, I have never denounced the Royal Irish Constabulary, who have been induced by good pay and pensions to join the Force, the work of which they afterwards find to be anti-national, political, and extremely distasteful to them. I have always blamed the system which has produced these men, not the men individually, who have only been carrying out their orders. But, at the same time, it must be said that the constabulary of Ireland entered the Force of their own free will, and, therefore, they must be assumed to accept the responsibility of their position, and they must be held to that responsibility, for, being unlike the police in England, armed with deadly weapons, their capacity for mischief is so much greater. We have heard the Chief Secretary glorying in the system of shadowing; does he approve of revolver practice by the Constabulary upon an unarmed crowd t The circumstances that occurred in Charleville were these: The hon. Member for North-East Cork, having been arrested in Cork, was conveyed by a night train to Charleville. At the time that the train reached Charleville a small number of people, about 70 in all, were gathered upon the platform with a band, in order to greet the return of a deputation from Cork, they not knowing that the hon. Member was in the train. There were no police on the platform. The hon. Member was in a compartment with six policemen armed with rifles, and there were 12 other policemen in the train. When those assembled on the platform found that the hon. Member was in the train they began to cheer, and attempted to shake hands with him, but there was no idea of rescuing him. Natural excitement there was, and the wonder is that the people of Ireland can control themselves under such circumstances. There was some cheering, and hooting, and pushing, the head of the District Inspector was bruised, probably by a stick, and this was the only blow alleged to have been struck, and a window in the compartment was broken. Under these circumstances it was that the police deliberately fired three or four shots into the crowd with the deliberate intention, according, as the Attorney General knows, to their instructions, of killing or wounding. By some miracle very little damage was done by the shooting. The man Nolan who subsequently brought an action is alleged to have been wounded in the leg, and the nose of a railway porter was grazed by a bullet. But into these matters I need not enter; they do not affect my case. The fact that people escaped serious injury is no excuse for, or extenuation of the action of the police. Now, what is the alleged justification? There were seven witnesses for the defence, all policemen. There were eight for the plaintiff, including three railway men. In the evidence at the trial it was admitted by the police there was no attempt at rescue, either organised or made. The question is, Were the police justified in thinking that an attack was about to be made upon them? Mr. Justice Murphy pointed out that panic or excitement among the police can be no legal justification for firing into a crowd. The police are expected to keep their heads cool. Here was a small and harmless crowd, and in the train was an armed body of 18 policemen. They could have held their carriage against a much larger number of persons than were on the platform. Mr. Justice Murphy remarked:— The people might have cheered Mr. O'Brien and groaned some one else; hut there was really nothing in that circumstance. There was evidence that such words as 'We have him now and we won't let him go' were used by the crowd; but ho did not think the jury should attach much importance to such words. They might be uttered by some boys on the outskirts of the crowd, or by people in the crowd; but such words should not affect the minds of men with firm minds who were in a carriage armed and prepared to do their duty, though the words might put the men on their guard. Further, Chief Baron Palles said— That it was a fearful necessity this sudden disorder arising at that station in which it was said it was necessary for justification in point of law to shoot down any one. Four shots were fired. He did not know whether the defendants aimed at any one, but simply fired at the crowd. Now, on the evidence of the defendants themselves, was that necessary? It occurred to him that primâ facie the duty of the police should have been to aim at their opponents, such as the man who aimed the blow at District Inspector Concannon; but what they did was to fire into the crowd in the darkness of the night, a crowd of 50 or 100 persons, careless whom they killed. Let the Committee remember that the ether police were not agitated or alarmed. Those in the other compartment neves left it, showing that no rescue was feared. The only pretext for this cowardly, unprovoked, illegal action war the allegation that a shot was fired. The police declared on their side that a shot was fired from the crowd; but when challenged at the time by the hon. Member for North-East Cork to search the carriage for the bullet, they refused, because they knew nothing of the kind had happened. Further, is it likely that the sympathisers with the hon. Member would fire into the carriage in which he was seated? There is no reason to believe that a shot was fired. Well, we demand justice from the right hon. Gentleman. What is he going to do in this case? He is responsible for the police in Ireland. That police system I have long condemned, and not for the first time, when the right hon. Gentleman took office; and I say it is an atrocious thing to arm a civil force with revolvers and cutlasses, and rifles, not against criminals, but against the people in the case of political disturbances. Let the right hon. Gentleman remember what occurred when a proposal was made to arm the London Police against burglars. Why, the police themselves were unwilling to allow themselves to be armed. Why? They knew they might be provoked into the improper use of their arms, which would lead to investigation and perhaps punishment. In Ireland the motto with the Chief Secretary, as we all know, is that "the police can do no wrong," and it was because he adheres to this motto that this kind of thing is happening in Ireland. If he had kept them up to a full sense of their, responsibility, these men would never have lost their heads; but the police are reckless, because they think that in the mind of the Chief Secretary there is the wish that they should do as they like against the Nationalists of Ireland. I ask again, what is the right hon. Gentleman going to do? The interest of the Force and the interest of the public demand inquiry. The episode is discreditable to the Constabulary. And if the Government refuses an inquiry, their conduct will be on a par with the blind and obstinate policy which in England is rapidly becoming as much despised and hated as it is in Ireland, and the most conspicuous feature of which is its disastrous and miserable failure.

(11.27.) MR. W. O'BRIEN

I am rather supprised that it is necessary for me to rise. I should have thought a Representative of the Government might have answered the hon. Member. Up to the present the Government have evaded discussion of this matter upon the plea that legal proceedings were pending, but that excuse is now at an end. The juries have disagreed on a subsidiary technical point, whether the wound was caused by a bullet or a fall; but upon the main point, whether the police were or were not justified in firing, there was no difference whatever between the Judges and the juries. In both instances the Court held that the police fired in reckless panic. What defence has the right hon. Gentleman to offer, or what does he propose to do? On the day after the occurrence the Chief Secretary and the Attorney General, when questioned, I think by my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast (Mr. Sexton), made a distinct allegation that there was an organised attempt by an armed crowd to rescue me that night at Charleville, and that this was when the crowd was fired on. Does the Chief Secretary stick to that statement now? If he does not, all I can say is that he ought by this time to have humbly withdrawn it and to have apologised to the House for having made it. If he sticks to it, he is the only human being who does so. It is admitted on all hands that the people came there for a wholly different purpose, never dreaming of seeing me there. But, though it is now acknowledged that this is a ridiculous story, though the Judges and his own police witnesses have admitted it neither of the right hon. Gentlemen has, up to this hour, in any manner apolo- gised to the House and the country for his misleading statements. I will not attempt to give the facts of the case as my own version. I find that I have simply to take the facts as they are stated in the charges of the two Judges who tried the case. They were two of the most eminent Judges on the Irish Bench, and, certainly, partiality to us or partiality to the police are the very last things anybody would accuse them of. Mr. Justice Murphy presided at the first trial. He said it appeared from the evidence that a small crowd of persons went from the town of Charleville to the railway station to meet the deputation from Cork, and there was No evidence that they expected Mr. O'Brien in the train, so that there could have been no attempt beforehand at organising a rescue. There was, he said— No evidence that the people had any arms with them or used violence. They might have cheered Mr. O'Brien and groaned at somebody else, but there was nothing in that circumstance, or in any words they said, that should have had any effect on firm minds. He added that such a thing as a rescue by an armed force he had never heard of in the country. It was clear, said his Lordship, That, on the instant of the firing, Mr. O'Brien insisted that all the firing was from the police themselves, and that there was no firing from outside. Through his whole charge the Judge intimated in the plainest manner, and without the slightest disguise, his own opinion that the story of an attempted rescue was a perfectly ridiculous one and that the story of a shot having being fired from outside is a story which the police themselves did not venture to insist on when they were taxed with it by myself on the spot. It was impossible to hear Judge Murphy's charge without feeling that he himself believed there was not a shadow of justification, either in the way of attack by the people or of danger to the policemen's lives, for the reckless discharge of firearms into the midst of an unarmed crowd. Yet that is the state of things confessed by the Judge's charge, and yet the jury were allowed to ride off on the false issue of whether the wound was caused by a spike or a bullet. On that point alone legal remedies have failed, and there has been a disagreement of the jury. The Government, taking advantage of that miserable little technicality, will institute no inquiry, and will administer no rebuke to the police in the face of the Judge's plain declaration of their recklessness and their panic. The case came on for trial a second time before the Lord Chief Baron, and again, in the plainest way, the Judge intimated his opinion that the conduct of the police was reckless, indefensible, and criminal. He said he thought that the jury might come to the conclusion that the crowd which went to the station to welcome their townsman back from Cork was in its initiation a perfectly lawful assembly. If, he added, there was an attempt to rescue Mr. O'Brien, it must have been a very sudden affair, and must have been arranged in the space of three minutes. Looking broadly at the matter," he said, "Having regard to the suddenness of the whole affair, the plainly innocent purpose with which the people went to the station, it is for the jury, as men of the world, to say whether they are prepared to hold that the assembly was a riotous assembly, bearing in mind that the acts were the acts of individuals, and that there was no common purpose for rescuing Mr. O'Brien or attacking the police. From beginning to end of the charge the Judge showed he took the very same view as Mr. Justice Murphy as to the recklessness with which the police acted that night. In each case 10 of the jurors were for finding a verdict for the plaintiff. Two of them in each case could not satisfy themselves that it was a bullet wound, and not a wound caused by a spike, and upon that miser- able little side-issue District Inspector Concannon has ridden off. I say it is monstrous in a case of this sort for the Chief Secretary to refer people to civil relief. The proper legal remedy would be for District Inspector Concannon to be placed on his trial for a most wanton and murderous outrage. I want to know from the Government whether they are going to let the matter rest here. In the face of the Judge's Charge, is the District Inspector's action to be allowed to face without investigation or the slightest judicial censure? At least £500 expenses must have been incurred by the police in fighting these cases in the Law Courts. Are the Government going to pass those expenses? Are they, in defiance of the Judges' Charge, not only going to shield Mr. Concannon from justice, but actually to reward him by paying his expenses out of the pockets of the British taxpayer? If they are, I venture to say that a more scandalous misappropriation of public money was never made, and I hope it will be resented and resisted by every means in our power. We want to know from the Government whether anything will be done to bring the perpetrators of this night's work to justice? There ought to be no beating about the bush in the matter. If the Government approve of District Inspector Concannon's conduct, let them say so and take the responsibility of backing him up. On the other hand, if they do not approve of it, let us have an apology for the utterly baseless excuses on which their conduct was championed before. We are entitled to demand an explicit, unambiguous answer to that question, whether or not District Inspector Concannon's expenses are to be paid out of the public purse? If they are, I venture to say that the Government are just as guilty as the District Inspector; and if they will give us no legal remedy now, please God some day or other we shall get, at a General Election, the only legal remedy open to the Irish people under the circumstances. And now as to the general question that we have been discussing to-night. The Chief Secretary spoke on almost all subjects connected with the Royal Irish Constabulary except the three topics of expensiveness, inefficiency, and brutality. The Chief Secretary finds it easier to indulge once more to-night in his habit of launching vague general accusations against the people of Tipperary. He can slander Tipperary. He has failed to conquer it. I daresay the object of all his proclamations and of all this shadowing in Tipperary has been to breakdown the combination of the Smith-Barry tenants. Well, Sir, I venture to say that speeches like his to-night are very awkward speeches for his own purpose, for the moral of all his complaints about Tipperary is the utter futility of all this police tyranny. The effect of all that has been done for nearly 12 months in that small town is, that the combination of Smith-Barry's tenants holds the field more victoriously than ever, and the right hon. Gentleman, with all his police force in that town, has to acknowledge himself perfectly helpless and baffled in face of that combination. There have been 12 months now of a conflict of that sort, with all the intolerable little petty tyranny that these policemen have exercised on every man who has been on the Nationalist side, and the police have failed to detach a single tenant from the Smith-Barry combination, and have only succeeded in detaching constituency after constituency from the Tory Party in the United Kingdom. So once more the Chief Secretary has illustrated to-night the utter hopelessness of his attempts to make true the boasts that he published through England a year or a year and a half ago, that all was halcyon peace in Ireland. Once more, practically speaking, he has confessed his utter hopelessness and helplessness in the face of the spirit of the people of Tipperary. Take an instance as a proof of how utterly worthless and ineffectual is this Police Force, which costs you nearly £1,500,000 a year—take the case admitted by the Attorney General himself last Friday—the case of a boycotted woman in Tipperary who was attacked, we are told, and her house wrecked by the mob, and nobody made amenable. As far as the attack and wrecking are concerned, I do not believe a word of it. I am not imputing anything to the Attorney General personally, but to his informants. But suppose it is true, where was Colonel Caddell and the 137 policemen who had been massed in the town for the last nine months? I take it for granted that Colonel Caddell and his 137 policemen were too busy shadowing Father Humphreys, who is a stamp of criminal that the Chief Secretary alone is responsible for; but they did not succeed in doing that much effectually—for what is the fact? Why, yesterday week, right under the noses of these policemen, Father Humphreys presided at the branch of the National League which you solemnly declared to be suppressed nearly 12 months ago, and which you assured the English people was a thing of the past; and at that League meeting, held under their noses, the only three adherents of Smith-Barry left in the town of Tipperary came forward and made their peace with the National League, and petitioned to be allowed to join the combination of tenants, and were accordingly allowed to do so. That is how you are succeeding in Tipperary. Let me give another instance of the utter helplessness of the police in reference to the work of detecting real crime as compared with crime which we glory in, and which three fourths of our race glory in. Take another case, admitted the other day in this House. The Attorney General told my hon. Friend the Member for East Clare that during the last six months there were 66 agrarian outrages in the County of Clare, which Colonel Turner boasted nearly 12 months ago had been reduced to a state of halcyon peace and contentment by coercion—66 agrarian outrages in a county which is mulcted to the extent of £5,000 a year for extra police, and the Attorney General told us not one single person had been made amenable. The fact of it is, these policemen are fit for nothing in the world except whatever they can do with their rifles and bayonets. The whole system is one of the most atrocious in the world. Take their system of promotion. Let me mention one instance. There are at this moment 11 cases in which verdicts for wilful murder stand recorded against the police in Ireland, and in not a single one of these instances has one of these policemen been brought to justice. But that is not the worst, because some of these men, some of these murderers, have been actually promoted. I will give chapter and verse. Constable Swindell was, by a Coroner's jury, found guilty of the wilful murder of a man named Aherne, in Middleton. Of course, he was shielded from justice by the Crown, and prevented from being brought to trial. But that is not the worst. A couple of months afterwards, the man absolutely received what is called "a favourable record" in the General Orders of the constabulary. He received a favourable record, which is the invariable preliminary to promotion, and it was expressly stated to be for distinguished conduct in retaining a prisoner under difficult circumstances. The distinguished conduct was running a bayonet through the body of an unarmed man and killing him, and for that distinguished conduct, which a Coroner's jury called murder, Constable Swindell received the public thanks of the Inspector General, and is now on the high road to promotion. Every young constable in the Force is taught that if he wants promotion he had better imitate Constable Swindell. The fact of it is, that you proceed upon the principle—and that is at the bottom of the whole failure of your system in Ireland—of treating the Irish people as inferiors and as enemies; and the result is, you have the most utterly inefficient and utterly brutal Police Force in the world. No decent man, woman, or child in the community will touch a policeman with a 40 foot pole, and to break heads and give perjured evidence against Members of Parliament is all they are fit for, except that we are conscious that their action is opening the eyes of the English people to their character. Latterly we are inundated with instances of crying wrong and violence inflicted by the police upon the people. There is scarcely a parish in Ireland which does not furnish you with instances. Our only difficulty is to choose between dozens and dozens of cases which crowd in upon us from every part of the country. The Member for Leeds has just brought forward one case, and it is only one out of hundreds in every part of the country—one ease which has elicited the condemnation of two Judges. When the conduct of the Police who, in the most horrible circumstances fired three or four shots into an unarmed homestead at night, is brought to your notice, we are not even favoured with a reply to the charge. I can only tell you there are hundreds and thousands of the best men in the Royal Irish Constabulary who feel just as keenly as we do the demoralisation you have been introducing into the Force, and the encouragement you have been giving to the bad and reckless elements amongst them. I verily believe that Englishmen, sooner or later, will be horrified at the inner working of this Force in the matter of promotion, and in the matter of utter demoralisation, and I believe that if there was no other argument for overturning the whole of the Dublin Castle system of government root and branch, you would have a conclusive one in the exclusiveness, utter inefficiency, and utter anti-national character of the enormous Force you preserve in Ireland for the purpose of domineering over the Irish people and repressing their just aspirations.

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

Committee report Progress; to sit again to-morrow.