RESOLUTION.

HC Deb 27 March 1893 vol 10 cc1205-84

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The Prime Minister, when he very courteously gave us this day for discussing the important questions connected with the government of Ireland, implied that, in his opinion, the criticism about to be made by myself and my friends would be of a Departmental character. The right hon. Gentleman laid down the doctrine that, while the Government were bound to give a day for a Vote of Censure on themselves as a Government, they were not bound to give a day for the discussion of mere Departmental action. He clearly intimated, at any rate, that our line of attack to-day would be a Departmental line of attack, and that we were merely considering certain errors on the part of the Executive with reference to Ireland, and were not impugning the action of the Government as a whole. But that is not the case. It may be necessary, and, indeed, it is necessary, to deal with particular actions, and special resolutions of the Government of Ireland, but I wish to begin my observations by laying down in the clearest manner that I do not think that the Chief Secretary for Ireland is so much responsible for what has occurred and is occurring in Ireland, as the administrator of that country, as he is as a Member of the Government of which he is not the least important Member, because, in my view, all that has happened, and is happening, in Ireland is the direct result of the logic of the situation. It has come about as it has come about because it could come about in no other way, for Ireland is to be governed nominally in the name of the Liberal Party of England, but really in the joint name and by the joint influence and efforts of the Separatist Party in England and the Nationalist Party in Ireland. Those two Parties, through many a long and weary fight during the last Parliament, were engaged in an assault on the late Irish Administration, and too often then, I thought, hon. Members opposite lent a hand in support of crime—too often, I thought, they sacrificed their political consistency for the sake of Parliamentary support. But, after all, that matters little. The divisions against the Government might be larger or smaller; the speeches might be more or less violent, but the assaults then made upon us had little or no effect on the general Administration of the country, which we carried out irrespective of them on principles in which we then believed and in which we believe to this hour. The result of the General Election has been to make an important change. These two Parties, who were allies in assaulting the position, have now become allies in holding it, and they are concerned in working together, not merely in carrying on the opposition tactics of Parliamentary welfare, but in carrying out legislation for Ireland, and, above all, in carrying out Administration of the Law in Ireland. The consequence of that necessarily is that some kind of basis of agreement has been come to between the two Parties. Articles of association have been arranged between them. I do not say they have been formulated in print. I do not say that they are "signed, sealed, and delivered"—one copy in the pocket of the Prime Minister, and another in the pocket of the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. T. M. Healy)— but I say it is perfectly obvious from what has passed in this House and in Ireland, and still more from the general necessities of the situation, that there are, and must be, terms of agreement between the two Parties which have a great and disastrous effect on the Administration of the Law in Ireland and upon the respect with which that Administration ought to be held by the Irish people. Before the General Election, Irish Members, in Ireland at all events, never concealed their opinion that in the event of the election ending as in fact it has ended, they would be masters of the situation, and that they would control the gentlemen in Office with an absolute rule. I recollect the Nationalist Member for South Down (Mr. M'Cartan) stating at a public meeting that at no distant date they would be masters of the Liberal Party. I think that was a mistake. I do not think that they are masters of the Liberal Party, but I think that they and the Liberal Party have come to some kind of concordat by which, until certain objects are attained, the Nationalists will give much on the one hand, and gentlemen opposite will give much on the other —the worst of it being that what is given up by the Liberal Party is nothing that immediately concerns themselves, although it does immediately concern the loyal population in Ireland. In the first place, the Liberal Party promised Home Rule. In the second place, they coquetted with amnesty. In the third place, they uttered very vague and very illusory promises about the evicted tenants. In the fourth place, they let it be understood, as far as they could, that they would work the Executive Government of Ireland in harmony with the particular views of the Nationalist Members; and, in the fifth place, they promised, I will not say to repeal the Crimes Act, but to un proclaim all Ireland if that Act were still in force. On the other hand, the Nationalist Party promised their Parliamentary support, which I must say has been most loyally given. They promised, in so far as in them lay, to make the Government of Ireland easy by seeing that rents were paid, and that as far as possible order was maintained. I wish to call the attention of the House to the points directly concerned with the Government of Ireland, and more or less concerned with the Resolution I have put upon the Paper. I do not, of course, mean again to go into the question of the evicted tenants. They asked for bread; they received a Commission. On the amnesty question, though I shall have to say something about it, I will not dwell at length. But this I must point out to the House, that all the promises and half promises— half promises which were interpreted by hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway to mean whole promises—were necessarily subject to the control of the majority of this House; and the Government have clearly found that, while the policy of amnesty is not an impossible policy if you are dealing with Ireland, it is an impossible policy if you are dealing with England. Members of this House look with a very different eye on releasing dynamiters when the crime for which they have been put in prison was an attempt to blow up their own honourable selves and on crime directed against others. They may be expected to bear with great patience and toleration—and as a matter of fact they have borne with the utmost patience and the inmost toleration—the release of persons whose crime was only a little less heinous—if less heinous at all—and whose victims or intended victims were not Members of this House, and respectable English middle-class gentlemen, but policemen in remote parts of Ireland, or the oppressed victims of the Plan of Campaign in Tipperary. The amnesty question is vital to my Resolution, but it is not a subject on which I mean to occupy the time of the House at any great length this afternoon. I wish to direct attention more especially to two parts of this compact between the two fractions of the Separatist Party—the part which deals with the administration of the law in Ireland and the part which deals with the repeal of the Crimes Act. I will say at once that I do not believe that the Chief Secretary has any love of illegality. I believe, on the contrary, that if he were left to himself—if he were governing Ireland with a free hand, and under happier conditions—few of the complaints I have to make against him to-night would have to be made. What he has done he has done because he had unfortunately to do it. I cannot give a better illustration of the strain that has been put upon the right hon. Gentleman than that he should, though doubtless acting under legal advice, nevertheless have attempted to do that which is dangerous in any country and fatal in Ireland—namely, to refuse to give to those whose duty it is to carry out the orders of the Court the necessary police protection. The House will recollect the very curious controversy that has risen this Session on the subject of the support of the Sheriffs by the Government. The way the question came up was this: A certain man named Kissane owed, not rent to the landlord, but a certain amount of money in payment of instalments to the Board of Works. In other words, he owed it to the taxpayers of this country, of whom you are the representatives. Eight separate times the Sheriff attempted to collect that debt, due in consequence of a public loan; and eight several times, by a fraudulent proceeding not unfamiliar in Ireland, he found nothing to distrain. He then applied to the police for protection in order to make a night seizure. He applied to enable him to do that by which alone this conspiracy to defraud the English public could be defeated— namely, to surprise the man at night, and take possession of so much of his goods as was required in order to pay the public debt. The police refused to give that protection, acting under the direct instructions of the Irish Government, who did not take the trouble to inquire into the circumstances of the case, or into the character of the debt, but laid down the hard-and-fast rule that, under no circumstances and for no purpose whatever, would police protection be given at night. It appears to me that this is, on the face of it, an unjust proceeding. It was not only unjust, but a grossly illegal proceeding. It was a proceeding which, if the right hon. Gentleman did not know it to be an illegal one, he ought to have known it, and upon which the Judges of the laud before whom it was tried has pronounced very emphatic opinions. I will not read all these opinions, but I must read one from Mr. Justice O'Brien, because it not merely points out the illegality in which the Irish Government were guilty, but shows the remote consequences, which, in a country like Ireland, must inevitably flow from it. Mr. Justice O'Brien said— It is obvious that if such a licence of resistance to the Sheriff were allowed it could not be confined to writs of Executive, but must immediately spread to all orders of the Court, to writs of attachment, to injunctions, and all kinds of proceedings which arise out of the invasion of private rights, and, with that swiftness of intuition with which the lessons of disorder are wont to be applied in this country, leading from confusion to resistance, from resistance to violence and crime, and ending, as in this case, in a state of open confusion, in which all law and order would beat at an end. I quote that because it indicates a truth of what the Chief Secretary must be well aware, namely, that this Act was no casual mistake of the Law Officers, no stray blunder into which the right hon. Gentleman was led; but that it would surety be interpreted, and I believe rightly interpreted, as part of a general system, by which, in the words of my Resolution, the "administration of the law would be brought into contempt." The Chief Secretary has made no defence of his proceeding. Indeed, he does indulge in a tu quoque. He said it in a tone which reminded me of the old Motions of Adjournment and Votes of Censure with which we were so familiar in the good old days before Tory obstruction was thought of, that we had been guilty of boundless illegality of the same character, that we had done acts which might be compared with cattle lifting and highway robbery. It appeared at first that no less than 712 atrocious cases of highway robbery and cattle lifting were to be attributed to the myrmidons of the late Government. But the right hon. Gentleman was led, as he afterwards so frankly admitted, into a very grave mistake in point of numbers. We are all likely to err, but the 712 cases were whittled down upon examination to 66, which is rather a large margin of error. And it appears from the further cross-examination to which we have endeavoured to subject the right bon. Gentleman that even these 66 did not seem to be very fully substantiated. An invitation was given to my hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Carson) to go to the Irish Office to examine for himself. He went, and was given four cases. I do not know whether they were the best that could be found, but at all events my hon. and learned Friend examined them, and he found that not a single one of the four bore out the original contention of the right hon. Gentleman. There remained, therefore, about 62 cases, but of these we cannot get any authentic statement whatever. The Sheriffs whose conduct is impugned emphatically deny the whole thing from beginning to end; and I have a reason, which to me, at least, appears stronger than the denial of the Sheriffs, which is, that any Sheriff who is guilty of illegality of the kind described, and guilty of cattle stealing or highway robbery, in the amiable language of the Chief Secretary, would lay himself open, and the Government who had given him protection, not only to the severest criticism, but to very heavy costs. I cannot, knowing what I do of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway— knowing how, year after year, month after month, and day after day, they watched with lynx eyes every single proceeding of the late Irish Administration: remembering how every case, good or bad—and bad usually, I must say— was discussed in this House and hammered out in this House until every human being was sick of it—I cannot believe, and reconcile it with the admiration which I feel for the hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, that those 62 breaches of the law of the laud were permitted by them to go on from year to year unchallenged and unattacked. Well, Sir, I am not bringing a Motion in defence of the late Irish Government; I am bringing a Vote of Censure on the present Government, and I will not dwell on that point any longer. I will pass on to what in itself is, undoubtedly, of far greater gravity than any action which the right hon. Gentleman intended to take, or was stopped from taking, in the matter of the protection of Sheriffs' officers. I allude to the repeal of those remaining clauses in the Crimes Act which enable him to change the venue and for Special Juries to try a certain class of cases. I do not know how many gentlemen now listening to me were in the last Parliament. Many of them, I imagine, were not, and in that case they are probably not familiar with what the abolition of these clauses empowering a change of venue really means in a country like Ireland. I do not think the Chief Secretary, or any man, will get up in his place and contradict what I am going to say about the effects on the administration of the law of depriving the Attorney General of the day of the power of changing the venue. I say it means that in every agrarian case whatever you abandon all hope, even the remotest, of obtaining a conviction, no matter what the evidence may be. And there is not a single man who knows Ireland, of whatever political Party, there is not a single Nationalist Member who will have the courage to get up and tell us that a man made amenable for an agrarian offence—however brutal, cowardly, or horrible it may be, and whatever the evidence against him may be—will be convicted if you bring him for trial before a jury in the district where the crime has been committed. The Government of the day, therefore, in deliberately depriving themselves of the power of changing the venue, announced to all mankind that they had abandoned the last hope of administering the Criminal Law effectually in Ireland with regard to one class of criminal offence. But I observe that that is not the only disastrous result which follows from the course the Government have chosen to pursue. If you cannot get a conviction, and if everybody knows you cannot, you will not get witnesses. The victims of the outrages themselves will not make complaint, and the police cannot be expected to do their best to make a case. We sometimes hear that it is a strange and cowardly thing on the part of the Irish peasant, into whose house shots have been fired, or whose cows have been tortured to death, or who has been subjected to some of the many forms of agrarian ontrage in that country, not to come forward and complain to the police, with a view of bringing the offender to justice. Sir, that is a difficulty which under all circumstances every Irish Government must feel. But it is a difficulty which becomes an impossibility if a man knows that the net result of his coming forward to make a complaint is that he will be marked out for vengeance by the man against whom he complains, while the man who commits the offence can walk about with absolute security, and in the face of day, knowing that not a hair of his head can be touched by the laws which he has outraged. Heavy is the responsibility, indeed, from the point of view of administration, and from the points of view of getting evidence and making up your case, of the Government which shall deliberately, and for no object whatever, except for a political object, deprive themselves of this great method of purifying trials by jury in Ireland. Under what circumstances did the present Government deprive themselves of this power? Did they wait until they had some knowledge of what was going on in Ireland or until they had consulted the responsible officers of justice in Ireland, or until they could form some judgment as to the consequences of their own action. They did nothing of the kind. Part of the price they had to pay for Irish support was the repeal of the Crimes Act; and, in mere lightness of heart, without a moment's consideration, they threw away this great weapon for protecting the weak against the strong, the innocent against the guilty. So much for the English part of this compact. So much for the price which the English Separatists had to pay for the support of the Irish Separatists. Now for the Irish part of the bargain. They let it be understood that they would, under the present Chief Secretary, pursue precisely the opposite policy to that which they pursued under the late Chief Secretary; and whereas they openly boasted that they would make government in Ireland impossible between the years 1886 to 1892, they said they would now use all the influence they possessed as the head of a great and far-spreading organisation to assist the present Chief Secretary in the responsible task he has taken in hand. If anybody doubts this, they have only to consider the one question of the payment of rents. The Chief Secretary boasted, I do not blame him for it.

MR. J. MORLEY

I did not boast.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Well, the Chief Secretary stated in the Debate on the Address that in no period of recent Irish history had Irish rents been better paid. Everybody knows that Irish agriculture has been suffering under a depression in this year, greater I will not say than any other year during the last 10 years, but which is undoubtedly very great. Most certainly the economic difficulties which are prevailing over a large part of Ireland this year are not less, they are very much greater, than in many years in which there has been a considerable difficulty found in getting rents paid. To what is the present better payment of rent to be attributed? The explanation to those who know anything of Irish history is as simple as ABC; it lies on the very surface of the facts. The agitation for the non-payment of rent has been the great weapon in the hands of the Irish agitators. Therefore it is that, when Irish agitation is at its height, when it is desired to embarrass the Administration of that country, the tenants are encouraged not to pay rent either openly or tacitly. The non-fulfilment of bargains connected with the land is encouraged, and the consequences flowing from that state of things may be counted upon by the agitators as likely to ensue. But when you come to a period in which it is the game of the agitator to make government in Ireland easy, and to smooth the path of the Irish Administration, to make straight the crooked way, and to smooth the rough places, then you find that, whatever be the economic difficulties in the way of paying rent however bad the season, the rent is paid, by the testimony of the Chief Secretary himself, better than for many years past. What has happened with regard to rent has, by the same agency and for the same objects, occurred with regard to crime. I have no doubt that hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, and those with whom, directly or indirectly, they are interested in influencing the rise and fall of agrarian crime, have done their very best to help the right hon. Gentleman over the period which they regard as the transition period between one in which crime is punished, and another in which it is to be allowed, as I understand, to stalk unchecked across the land. There are conveniences in the alliance, especially to the Government, in which the ally can give so much substantial assistance. But it is a state of things which in the first place in essentially unstable, and in the second place is not calculated to maintain respect for the law. I shall show to the House, by arguments which I think are conclusive, that it is impossible to rely permanently, it is even impossible to rely temporarily, on such methods for enforcing the law. Hon. Gentlemen after all can only act upon their friends by promises. I suppose they have promised that they are to have their land for nothing, that they are not to pay rent, that contracts are to be things of the past, and that a sort of agrarian millennium is to dawn upon them as soon as Home Rule is passed. But a certain number of people cannot be kept quiet with promises alone, especially when they see so many of those promises come to nothing; and so it happens, naturally and inevitably, that in parts of the country there is a recrudescence of terrorism, which the Government are absolutely helpless, by their own action, to meet. It is not necessary that I should go into the condition of Clare, as that county was fully discussed the other day on the Adjournment; and hence, as the Chief Secretary pointed out with a certain amount of force, there is no doubt that Clare has always occupied a somewhat separate position from the other counties, and is subject to somewhat exceptional influence. But take three other counties in the South and West—Kerry, Mayo, and Limerick— and consider the last information available, at all events, to hon. Members who have not at their disposal the official records of the Government and the Reports of the police. Consider the Judges' Charges recently made in those counties. No man can read what was said by Mr. Justice O'Brien in Kerry without seeing that the condition of that county is bad, and that it is going from bad to worse. When the late Government took over the Administration of Ireland in 1887, Kerry was the worst county in that country. By a steady application of the change of venue, and of the other powers given us by the Crimes Act, we made Kerry one of the most peaceful counties in the whole of Ireland. A change was made in the state of Kerry that was almost miraculous; the worst characters left the country, I hope never to return, and for terrorism a condition of peace and order was established, eminently satisfactory to those who felt they might have some share in bringing about that result. After reading Mr. Justice O'Brien's Charge, I am afraid that state of things has vanished. The social order so painfully built up is again dissolving, and a condition of terrorism is arising in Kerry as bad, or likely to be as bad, as that which prevailed five years ago. I notice that the Judge especially lays his finger upon terrorism, and he narrates one story which, for its ingenious brutality, appears to me to recall the worst days of the Land League. He tells how an unfortunate woman—I suppose because her husband had taken an evicted farm, or done something which offended local opinion—was by devilish ingenuity deprived of medical assistance in her confinement. That story is horrible in itself. But is it not horrible that the Government should have deliberately deprived themselves of the only possible method by which crimes like that can be punished? Is it not horrible that, knowing such crimes may occur, and have occurred, you should delete from the Statute Book, or delete from effective operation, the one solitary method by which the devilish brutes who could encompass such an action might be brought to the justice and punishment which they deserve? What is true of Kerry appeal's to be more true of Mayo. Mayo, again, is a county which, at one time, bad a very bad reputation, but which towards the end of the tenure of Office of the late Government I believe was brought to a condition of real and substantial tranquillity—a condition in which for the most part a man could pursue his lawful vocation without fear of midnight assassination or of the horrors of boycotting. But there are indications that the condition of society in Mayo is following all over the condition in which it was before the Crimes Act was passed. Here is a significant fact. The Vice Chancellor in Dublin was appealed to, and has granted the appeal, to give permission to serve writs on certain tenants in the County Mayo by post, and not by personal service. That may seem to be a small matter to gentlemen who are not acquainted with Ireland, but to those acquainted with Ireland it means that there are parts of that county where the officers entrusted with serving writs cannot discharge their duties except at the risks of their lives——

MR. J. MORLEY

I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman. Probably the right hon. Gentleman was not present at Question time; but in answer to a question below the Gangway I said there was possibly another side to that story, and that I was making a very careful investigation into the matter. I do not advise him to lean too heavily upon that case.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I am not going to lean too heavily upon it. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will allow me just to read out what doubtless he is acquainted with—namely, what the process-server swore in his affidavit. I may remind the right hon. Gentleman and the House that no landlord applies for power to serve writs in this way if he can help it, for it costs money, and money is not too plentiful just now with landlords in Ireland. The process-server stated by affidavit that he had attempted to serve the writs personally, but was assaulted and beaten by a mob. Bight of the writs were personally taken from him, and he believed they were afterwards destroyed. He believed that any attempt to serve the writs would endanger his life. The right hon. Gentleman is investigating this case. Doubtless he has that fact before him, and I should be very glad to hear his views upon it, and trust that he will be able to lighten the apprehension which otherwise we might be justified in entertaining with regard to the condition of Mayo in that regard. But the condition of Mayo does not rest merely upon this sworn testimony of the process-server. The Lord Chief Justice at the Spring Assizes commented upon the material increase of crime since the Winter Assizes. As I understand the matter, the total amount of crime in the last year is not so much greater than it was in the year before, but the increase of crime in the Winter Assizes—in other words, during the latter part of the régime under which we are now living—was, in Mr. Justice O'Brien's opinion, important and material. The case of Limerick, again, affords a most marked contrast, judged by the statement of the Judges, between this year and last year. Here is an extract which I must road. In July, 1892, at the Summer Assizes, Mr. Justice O'Brien said this about Limerick— Almost all forms of exception to the ordinary state of society in. the County of Limerick in reference to the violation of the law have, I may say, entirely disappeared. Life is more secure, not only against violence, but the menace or the apprehension of violence. … Property is more secure from all forms of invasions, and all forms of social relations are relieved from the burden of that intolerable restraint upon personal liberty with which unhappily we have been too long familiar in this country. I pass over the nine months which intervened between the Summer Assizes of last year and the Spring Assizes of this year; and this is what Mr. Justice Gibson said on March 2— Although there was no form of the worst crime, such as murder or attempt to murder, there is in the Police Returns evidence of crime, and of a very formidable state of affairs. There has been an increase of specially reported crime of a very substantial character. The number this year was 81, as against 54 last year. There were two eases of firing at the person, and in one of these the houses of two persons were visited and fired into.… The only motive attributed for that outrage was to prevent these people from paying their rent unless a reduction was given by the landlord. Yet the O'Connors, who were the subjects of such a grave attack, would give no information of the outrage to the authorities. A man named Curtin was visited by four men with hurleys. A shot was fired, and the younger Curtin. a son of the older man, resisting, he was savagely beaten with a hurley. The motive of the outrage appeared to have been the taking of an evicted farm they afterwards surrendered, and the Curtins would give no information to the police. Another house was visited by three men who fired a shot, and they got the son of the owner of the house, young O'Brien, to hold a greyhound while they shot it. There was no identification of any of the criminals. There were nine cases of killing and maiming cattle, and in one of these two horses were poisoned by arsenic at, different periods of time. The owner of the horses had committed no offence, except that he settled apparently with his landlord, Mr. Arthur Smith-Barry.… In one, to show the mean form of intimidation that prevailed among certain classes of the community, a notice was given to the employer of a poor servant girl to dismiss her or he would receive a visit from Captain Moonlight. The motive for depriving this poor girl of her livelihood was that her father had bought some hay from the caretaker of an evicted farm…. In one case a shot was fired over the head of a labourer as a persuasion to induce him to leave his master's employment, the master being suspected of having paid his rent. The labourer appeared to have declined to work, but he refused to give any information. In these cases none of them were of the worst form of crime. Fortunately there was apparently no loss of life in connection with any of them, and there was no attempt to commit murder, but the cases indicated, in his opinion, two things, one a certain amount of hardy lawlessness in the community, and, secondly, an utter and highly objectionable disinclination on the part of the victims of those outrages to come forward and give evidence. …. In conclusion, he trusted that, when he next came among them, he would not be encountered with the same increase of undetected crime that appeared to be indicated in these Reports, and that this lawlessness, of which he at present saw the indications, might then come to have disappeared. Let the right hon. Gentleman note that my point is twofold: First, that there is apparently an increase of crime; secondly, apparently that increase is in the form of intimidation; and thirdly, I repeat again that you have absolutely deprived yourselves by your own political action of the slightest hope of bringing these men—these brave men—who intimidate servant girls, to justice. But I do not rely wholly or almost mainly on the Report of the Judges for my view of the condition of the country. There are two cases which I should particularly desire to call the attention of the House to, and for two separate reasons. One is that they are very remarkable and significant cases: the other is that we appear to have heard of them by accident. They are bad boycotting cases, and were never, apparently, reported to the Judge. They have not appeared in any statistics, and so far as I can make out it was action at headquarters, in Dublin Castle itself, which prevented them, but from the accident of the Judges having got word of them, from ever coming before the public. The right hon. Gentleman has told us several times in this House that the method of preparing statistics and the principles on which they are prepared have undergone no alteration in his time. I entirely believe him; I am certain that the right hon. Gentleman is incapable of coming down to the House and making a statement of that kind when there is no foundation for it. But I find myself extremely puzzled by these cases. I suppose the right hon. Gentleman has not heard of them, but as far as I can make out it is quite clear, in the first place, that they were serious offences; and, in the second place, that they ought to have been reported; in the third place, that they were not reported; and, in the fourth place, that the persons responsible for not reporting them were not the police authorities in the locality, but the authorities in Dublin Castle. This is mysterious. I will give the House and hon. Members particulars of those cases, and then I do not think their wonder will be diminished. It appears that a man named McGinley, in County Mayo, took an evicted farm in January last. The usual process of intimidation—the old familiar process—was resorted to. A great mob collected not far away from the man's farm and proceeded to march towards it. Meeting the police, there was a conflict; stones were thrown at the police, and ultimately the mob was dispersed. McGinley bitterly complained that life was made impossible for him, and that he could not hold his farm if proceedings of this description were allowed to continue against him. He was given police protection, but his life was made a burden to him. He could not attend market nor go about the ordinary vocations of a peaceful citizen. This case was sent up in the ordinary course to Dublin, but the authorities directed that the case should not be reported. It was not reported, and the case was not brought under the notice of the Judge until he cross-examined the police authorities on the spot and found out what were the real facts. The Judge said that the police stated that no evil consequences had ensued. I cannot make out whether this is the fact; but a meeting was to be held on the Sunday after the Judge called attention to the facts. The same kind of intimidation was practised upon this subsequent Sunday meeting, and now the Government, two months after the original offence, spurred on, apparently, by that action of the Judge, and possibly by the questions asked in the House—spurred on, at least, by some causes in which this may or may be not included—have now directed a prosecution. I can hardly complain of the Government not having prosecuted before, because, under the law as they choose to have it, a prosecution must be useless. They now order this prosecution in order to meet public opinion at the eleventh hour, having condoned the right of unlawful assembly—having condoned the intimidation; and now that the intimidation is repeated, they have directed a prosecution, but they know perfectly well that those persons will not be convicted. They know that without the change of venue they may as well leave the thing alone. Is it not scandalous that those persons responsible for the maintenance of the law should thus put it out of their power to see the law respected and obeyed? Another remarkable case, also not reported, came to light through the action of the Judge alone. That is the case of Mr. Harper Campbell, of Sligo. What happened in the Sligo case? Boycotting resolutions were pasted all over Sligo and published in the local papers. The whole origin of the incident was a case in which Mr. Campbell, so far as I understand the particulars, was justified in what he did. But that is not the question; the question we are now concerned with is the action of the Executive. They took no steps whatever to protect this unhappy man. He was threatened in the local papers, by public placard, and meetings were held to denounce him. Boycotting resolutions against him were passed, and not only so, but three Members of Parliament unkindly oblivious of the consideration they are bound to show the present Chief Secretary, went down and took part in that meeting, and made interesting speeches. The hon. Member for South Galway (Mr. Sheehy) said— Campbell did a very large trade with the shopkeepers of the county, but he (Mr. Sheehy) thought that the sooner the shopkeepers closed their accounts with Mr. Harper Campbell the better for themselves. He would advise them the next time his agent came round to tell him never to call again. It was very easy for Mr. Harper Campbell to turn out poor Catherine M'Donagh and to knock down her humble dwelling, but it was equally easy for the Sligo people to knock down the business which he had built up. The shopkeepers in the various towns in the West and North-west of Ireland should inform him that they will have no dealings with him, and by this means they will give a lesson that will be good enough for all his tribe. (Cheers.) …. The best service they could render to their country would be this— that while they remained resolute and courageous they should keep their hands stainless. They could crush the tyrant without putting any stain on their name or cause—(Cheers)—by the simple process of giving the go-by—by the good old system of boycotting—they could compel Mr. Harper Campbell to feel the pressure of public opinion. The hon. Member for North Leitrim (Mr. P. A. M'Hugh) made a speech, in which he said— We miss from this meeting one of the features which for so long we were accustomed to associate with National meetings in this country. We have no police here. We stand here their masters and rulers, and those spike helmeted gentlemen are our servants, and we will teach them to be our servants. That was the kind of pressure, familiar enough to all of us, by which three hon. Members endeavoured to destroy the trade of Mr. Campbell, because he evicted a tenant who owed him seven years' rent. Mr. Campbell took a step which anyone would take placed in similar circumstances. He applied to the Government for protection. What, did the Government do? The Government told him that if no wanted protection he must protect himself. [Mr. J. MORLEY dissented.] Well, he applied to the Government to proceed against them and to give him the protection which the law-allowed; and the Government said, "Proceed against them yourself." [Mr. J. MORLEY: Hear, hear!] There is not a single man from Ireland who does not know that this is another way of saying that in asking for the protection of the law you shall not have it. In Ireland all criminal prosecutions, practically without exception, certainly every criminal prosecution of this kind is conducted, has always been conducted, and must be conducted, by the police and the Government. In the circumstances in Ireland it is quite impossible for a private individual to collect evidence or to conduct a ease. Yet the Government made it clearly understood that, so much were they bound to their Irish allies, who had been advocates of boycotting ever since that system had been invented, that they would not take upon themselves to put the law in force against those who had broken it. Mr. Campbell showed a very sanguine disposition when he asked the Government to prosecute three Members of Parliament who support them. We on this side used to be denounced for putting Members of Parliament into prison when they broke the law. Are we to understand that under the present Government the opposite principle prevails to such an extent that an Irish Member of Parliament may in Ireland do anything he likes—may break the law, attack private rights, threaten the fortunes and liberties of peaceable citizens, and that the aggrieved persons, if they are to have any remedy at all, must find that remedy themselves? If those are the principles on which the Government mean to proceed, surely the House will agree with me that their action is Calculated to resuscitate the system of terrorism and intimidation which formerly prevailed in Ireland, and to bring the administration of the law into contempt. But the hard thing is, that the right hon. Gentleman opposite did not in this case even receive a meed of gratitude from those against whom he had refused to proceed. In The Sligo Champion, the local organ in which the boycotting notice had appeared, and which belongs to one of the gentlemen who ought to have been brought to trial for this boycotting—namely, the hon. Member for Leitrim—the following remarks were published with references to the Chief Secretary, who had said, in reply to questions in this House, that the language used by the hon. Members was in the highest degree reprehensible:— Mr. Morley is of course, entitled to his opinion. But the Members of the Irish Party who attended and addressed the meeting at Carbownagh do not care a pinch of snuff for the opinion of Mr. Morley, or of any Englishman, as to the character of their language. The Members of the Irish Party would be unworthy of their position if they condescended to entertain the slightest regard or respect for the opinion of mere British officials like Mr. John Morley and the Chief Justice on matters connected with the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland. I have not read that passage merely to cause a smile at the expense of the Chief Secretary. I have read it because I wish to show the difference between the language used by Irish Members in Ireland and that used by them here. We have in this passage and those circumstances a pretty clear indication of what one Irish Member means when he looks forward to dealing with the land in Ire- land in an Irish Parliament. Now, I want to know why these cases were not reported, why the offenders were in one case not brought to justice at all, and why, in the other case, no steps were taken until after attention had been drawn to it by the Chief Justice? When I remember that we only heard of these cases by mere accident, I cannot help thinking that there may be other instances of the kind in other counties— other cases which have been burked somehow. Now I come to the subject of the Plan of Campaign. On the Temple-more estate the tenants have announced their intention of joining the Plan, and have already contributed towards the legal expenses which the prosecution of the Plan may entail. I do not believe that they are acting upon representations from head-quarters—that is, from hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, because I know nothing would so embarras the present Government as a large recrudescence of the Plan of Campaign. What I wish to point out is that, if there be a recrudescence of the Plan, the right hon. Gentleman is at present quite without means to cope with it adequately, because, in the first place, the tenant knows perfectly well that he will not be proceeded against by the Government; secondly, that if he is proceeded against there is not the remotest chance of his being convicted; and, thirdly, that if he is convicted he will probably be released by the exercise of the prerogative of mercy of which, on the principle of "justice, wisdom, common sense, and, above all, of policy," the right hon. Gentleman has made such free use since he has it under his control in Ireland. Then the tenant knows, further, that when he has been released by the exercise of the clemency of the Crown, there is some hope, if this precious Evicted Tenants Commission is to bear any fruits at all, that he will be restored to his holding at the cost of the British taxpayer, and that when he is restored to his holding, at the cost of the British taxpayer, that holding will be stocked for him at the cost of the landlord whom he has injured. Now, Sir, under these circumstances, I want to know whether the present Government are not absolutely powerless by their own action, and by the attitude they have deliberately taken up, to see that the law, which is their first duty to obey, is really obeyed, and is really respected. I have mentioned, as I was bound to mention, the separate case of the Government and the separate Charges of the Judges, but let it be understood that I attach no value to these in their isolation. It is not a particular Charge of a particular Judge, it is not this act of clemency or the act of feeble administration of which I complain. It is not the letting out of this particular man or that particular man, but it is the whole policy, taken, as a connected whole, and regarded as an essential and necessary part of the present situation. It is from that point of view, and from that point of view only, that I ask the House to consider it. I observe that the hon. Member for Glasgow has given notice that he will move the Previous Question as an Amendment to my Motion. I presume, therefore, that the hon. Member thinks that the points to which I have referred are of slight importance.

DR. CAMERON

No; I gave notice to move the Previous Question, because I considered that the manner in which the right hon. Gentleman gave notice of his Resolution was insulting to the House.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Why, I gave notice of this Motion at the suggestion and request of the hon. Member himself!

[At this stage Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE apparently asked some question which did not reach the Press Gallery.]

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I have had a slight personal altercation with the hon. Member for Glasgow, who says that he put down his Motion for the Previous Question because I had insulted the House by the notice I had given.

DR. CAMERON

No, no. My reason was that the right hon. Gentleman's notice was given without consultation with the right hon. Gentleman's colleagues, and that to entitle such a notice to precedence there should be consultation of that kind.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. Gentleman, I suppose, will speak later on, and he will have an opportunity of explaining that his reason for moving the Previous Question was because I had not consulted with my colleagues on the Front Opposition Bench. It has been my lot in this House to hear many astounding reasons given for astounding propositions, but a more astounding reason for an astounding proposition I have never heard. I await with the deepest interest the further explanation which the hon. Member will doubtless supply us with before the Debate comes to an end. But if there are any Members who are not so morbidly anxious that I should not offend the susceptibilities of my colleagues, and who are not so consumed with anxiety lest I should take upon myself alone Parliamentary action which should be collective in its character, I ask them to consider the condition of Ireland, taken as a whole, the machinery which still exists for enforcing the law in that country, and the extent to which that machinery has failed. It is a monstrous thing that we should have to depend for the machinery for repressing crime upon any organisation apart from the law of the country. It is not surprising that this alien machinery which the right hon. Gentleman attempts to substitute for the normal and proper machinery for repressing crime is not carrying out the work intrusted to him. It is not surprising that moonlighting has increased; it is not surprising that witnesses are afraid to come forward; it is not surprising that the victims of outrage are silent through the terrorism to which they are subjected; and it is not surprising that, as usual in such cases, it is the old, the poor, and the helpless who are made victims of this atrocious system. It is our business, as far as we can in opposition, by word, as we did while in power by act, to see that these things shall cease; and we believe they never can and never will cease until the right hon. Gentleman has the courage to shake himself free from the political trammels which embarrass his administrative action and can use freely the powers of the law which this House and Parliament have intrusted to him.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the action of the Executive in condoning serious offences, and their failure to support and enforce the Law, are calculated to resuscitate the system of terrorism and intimidation which formerly prevailed in that Country, and to bring the administration of the Law into contempt."—(Mr. A. J. Balfour.)

THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. J. MORLEY,) Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Mr. Speaker, I rise to make a few observations on this, the fifth Vote of Censure moved within the last eight weeks. In the debate on the Address the right hon. Gentleman spoke, and we were all glad to hear him speak, six pages of Hansard upon the Evicted Tenants Commission and of Gweedore. On the 2nd of February the hon. Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson), the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain), and others, gave us another Irish Debate. On the 3rd of February the hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Carson) brought up again the case of the Evicted Tenants Commission and the case of Gweedore. On the 10th of February the hon. Baronet the Member for Basset-law (Sir F. Milner) and other Members also brought up the Gweedore case—and it is the great case that the right hon. Gentleman has brought against me—and a Debate was again raised. Hon, Gentlemen opposite now talk very loudly about my amnesty policy, but they had not the courage on that occasion even to go to a Division. Then on the 5th of March a Motion was again made for the adjournment of the House on the subject of Clare, and there was another long Debate. On the 13th of March there was a Debate on the Evicted Tenants Commission, which took up the whole evening, and which was again negatived, and on the 23rd of March a Motion for Adjournment was again made because we had let out of prison a young man who would have been in the ordinary course in prison for 20 months longer. The Irish Party have often been charged with making frivolous Motions for Adjournment, but never did the Irish Party, in their most aggressive moments, make so frivolous a Motion as that Motion for Adjournment. This Parliament is not yet two mouths old, and yet we have had four Votes of Censure moved upon the question of Irish Administration. The right hon. Gentleman to-night has not brought forward one fact that is new to anybody who has followed the proceedings of the House this Session. He has not brought forward a single fresh argument, not a single undetected enormity of mine, not one unexplored case of my truckling to the priesthood or to sedition-mongers. Yet in eight weeks we have this fifth Motion of Censure on our Irish Administration. Now, Sir, I have often listened to the right hon. Gentleman during the Last 10 years in this House, often with admiration, sometimes with agreement, and once or twice, I will admit, with discomfiture; but to-night I have nothing for him but pity that he in his position should bring forward a Motion of this kind—so serious as it is, corning from him—without, anything new in it either in the way of fact or argument. I venture to think it is not only rather a waste of time of the House, but that it is also an error in tactics. As for the Motion of the hon. Member for Glasgow for the Previous Question, we, at all events, cannot accept it. We shall meet the right hon. Gentleman's Motion, as we have met the other four Motions of Censure made this Session, with a direct negative. If on this occasion, as in the Gweedore Debate, hon. Members opposite wish to have the Motion negatived without a Division, we shall be glad, but if they desire a Division we shall be quite prepared to meet them. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the Concordat between us and hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway. He said the administration which he impugns is the result of joint action between the Nationalist Representatives from Ireland and the English Liberal Party. What is the charge? The charge is that for the first time you have a British Administration trying to govern the country with the sympathy of the majority of the people. That is the concordat. He says, "You have been working, and you must work, the Executive in conformity with their ideas." What are their ideas? According to his own statement in the next sentence, what they have done is to advise the people to pay rent and to keep order. Is that criminal? Is it a policy which shakes faith in the administration of the law, that you endeavour to carry out the proper action of the Executive in conformity with the sympathies, wishes, and views of the majority of the population? I agree, of course, that if those ideas and views led us into culpable neglect of the duty of preserving the law, if it landed us in a failure to preserve order, then I admit that the concordat would deserve all the strong language the right hon. Gentleman has used. But how does he illustrate the malignant working of this concordat? His first point was that we now practise to a most profuse and indefensible degree some agreement for the amnesty of convicts. I declare I am ashamed of my own moderation, like Clive, when I say that the Lord Lieutenant has only released 13 convicts during the seven months we have been in Office. With the exception of the four cases of the Gweedore prisoners and the case of Foley, there is not a single case which is not of a routine kind, where prisoners have been let out for reasons of health or for reasons in which the Judge concurred. Yet you rest upon the case of the release of the Gweedore prisoners for this sweeping charge of a general amnesty. In 1886 I was Chief Secretary, and had then to answer a question in this House which brought to light a rather interesting precedent, which illustrates the absurdity of the language used in the Gweedore Debate, and the still more senseless absurdity of the language used on Thursday night. In 1882 there were four men brought up for a moonlighting attack on a certain lady in Tralee. They were all sentenced, in August, 1882, to penal servitude—three of them to 10 years each and one of them to 15 years. By September, 1885, the whole four men had been released. One of the 10-years' men was released on licence after serving two and a-half years, two after serving two and three-quarter years, and the 15-years' man after three years' imprisonment.

LORD R. CHURCHILL

What is the date of that?

MR. J. MORLEY

I will tell the noble Lord the date. The 10-years' men were released by Lord Spencer, and the 15-years' man by Lord Carnarvon.

LORD R. CHURCHILL

They were not released by Mr. Forster.

MR. J. MORLEY

What on earth has that got to do with it?

LORD R. CHURCHILL

They were released after Mr. Forster's resignation.

MR. J. MORLEY

I will give the noble Lord the date. The prisoners were committed in August, 1882. The three 10-years' men were released by Lord Spencer in the early part of 1885, and the 15-years' man was released by Lord Carnarvon in September, 1885: and the noble Lord knows more than I do as to the reasons which probably influenced Lord Carnarvon to take that step. The Judge who tried them, certainly not one of the most lenient Judges—Mr. Justice Lawson—wrote to Lord Spencer, then Viceroy, concurring in his proposal to mitigate the sentences. Why? Because, as he said, "Your Excellency has visited the district and satisfied yourself that the district is quiet." That is the very reason I gave for releasing the four men of Gweedore. Yes; in those days they had not got this new doctrine of which we have heard so much this Session, that the Judges are to dictate to the Executive as to what is the proper time to exercise the clemency of the Crown. I do not wonder at the right hon. Gentleman not saying much more about Gweedore, or much more about the miserable case on which a night was wasted last week. To show how absurd all that was on Thursday night, my attention has been called to a sentence that was passed in Millstreet, County Cork, in those days one of the most disturbed districts in Ireland. A man was brought up at the Spring Assizes on a charge of having attempted an explosion of powder in Millstreet. He tried to blow up the police barrack. He was detected by the police red-handed, so that there was no mistake as to his guilt. Did he get the seven years' penal servitude which the Chief Justice inflicted on this wretched Foley? The Judge stated that the attempt was a most reprehensible one, and that if it had succeeded the man might have been tried for murder, and yet he gave the prisoner 12 months' imprisonment. So much for amnesty. The right hon. Gentleman made no new case upon amnesty, and I do not believe we shall ever again hear of either the Gweedore prisoners' case, upon which he did not dare divide, or Foley's case, upon which we wasted a night. The right hon. Gentleman then passed to our action in refusing police protection to the Sheriff for night seizures, and he seemed to think it a very serious thing that the Executive should have been censured by an Irish Court. But he forgets that the most authoritative censure of the Executive was not pronounced against me, but it was pronounced in 1886 by a Judge, who is really a learned lawyer, against the right hon. Baronet the Member for Bristol (Sir M. Hicks Beach) when he was Chief Secretary. Of course, that is not an answer to the charge. [Opposition cheers.] No; but it is a very good reason why you should be a little more careful in assuming that the censure of a Court carries with it great criminality on the part of the Executive. The right hon. Gentleman has not had time, I presume, to master the varied history of the case upon which he commented. He surprised me enormously by pitying me for relying on Irish sources of information. Why, for six long years he stood at this Table and gave us nothing but Irish sources of information. It was upon Irish sources of information that this House was led to pass the Crimes Act. If Irish sources of information were good enough for the right hon. Gentleman when be was Chief Secretary, why was I wrong in assuming that they are good enough for me?

MR. A. J. BALEOUR

Of course the right hon. Gentleman must rely upon Irish sources of information, as everybody in his position must. All I said was that in dealing with alleged facts which come from various parts of Ireland great care has to be exercised, even sometimes in cases which come from official sources.

MR. J. MORLEY

I welcome this conversion of the right hon. Gentleman.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

But I was always right.

MR. J. MORLEY

I have learnt a lesson from the right hon. Gentleman. When the Irish officials, in whom I have the same confidence as the right hon. Gentleman had, tell me a thing, I primâ facie accept it. My action with regard to night seizures was not taken from any particular desire to restrict the protection, but arose from certain practical difficulties of administration which confronted us, and with which I need not trouble the House. The consequence was that we examined the regulations in force. We found that from 1837 to 1860 protection for night seizures had been in all cases prohibited. From 1860 to 1880 a certain change was made in that rule. If the Sheriff demanded protection, he was made the master of the situation as to the execution both of writs of the Superior Courts and civil bill decrees. There was another regulation from 1888 to 1892, the only subject dealt with in it being the execution of writs and civil bill decrees. Night protection was forbidden in executions, but was to be given if the Sheriff required it. I admit that the regulation was arguable either way, but I contend that the construction we put upon it was the plain construction. At any rate, what we did was this: In the face of these difficult and discrepant regulations we issued a Circular in the exercise of a prudent discretion. In our Circular we said the constabulary were to protect the Sheriff in going and coming. Complaint was made. We wrote to the Sheriffs of Cork and Kerry, telling them that we should interpose no difficulty in the way of their taking a judicial decision on the legality of our action. The Queen's Bench decided that our Circular was illegal. Well, if so, from 1860 to 1880 the Constabulary Code contained an illegal prohibition. We took the case to the Court of Appeal. Did the Court of Appeal treat us in the way the right hon. Gentleman's position would lead the House to believe? No. The Court of Appeal said: We cannot enter into the merits of this case, because in criminal matters the Court of Queen's Bench has exclusive jurisdiction on these points. Did the Lord Chief Baron say that we were trifling with the law, or that we had committed an illegal act? What he said was— Having been myself the Judge who for the first time in the present half century had occasion to call attention to the law which I conceive regulates the relations between the High Court and the Royal Irish Constabulary in reference to the execution of writs of the High Court"— that refers to the Woodford case under the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol— I do not desire to reflect in the slightest degree on the decision of any of the distinguished Judges who tried the case in the Queen's Bench Division when I say that personally I am most desirous that some mode should be devised which would involve a judicial decision of the House of Lords upon the matter. I can conceive no matter more worthy of the consideration of that high tribunal. So the House will see that the Lord Chief Baron was desirous that the case should be taken to the House of Lords.

LORD R. CHURCHILL

Why did you not take it there?

MR. J. MORLEY

Because it appeared that we could not. If the noble Lord will read the Judgment of Lord Justice Fitzgibbon in the Court of Appeal he will see that it is extremely doubtful whether, after the refusal of the Judges to entertain the case, we could have taken it to the House of Lords. Besides, I think that, on the whole, legislation would be a more satisfactory mode of dealing with the question. Lord Justice Barry said— I regret, in common with the other members of the Court, that we are not here in a position to give an authoritative opinion on the question involved in the proceedings in the Court of Queen's Bench which have been brought under our notice in this appeal. It would be more satisfactory if the matter could be put on a solid and distinct basis. Therefore all the enormity with which the right hon. Gentleman charges us amounts to this, that we were endeavouring to get the opinion of an authoritative Court, and to put the matter upon a solid and authoritative basis. There is not, I think, much to be made by the right hon. Gentleman or his friends out of this part of the case. I pass to the suspension of certain proclamations by which certain parts of Ireland were placed under the operation of the Crimes Act for certain purposes. The only matter in connection with that subject upon which the right hon. Gentleman dwelt was that we deprived ourselves of the power of change of venue. He said that was the price we had to pay for the concordat with gentlemen below the Gangway, and that it led to the most disastrous results. Let us measure the disastrous results. I will give one or two figures which will enable the House to gauge the exaggerations to which the right hon. Gentleman has committed himself. In the Spring Assizes of 1892 there were returned for trial 338 persons; in 1893 the number was 444, or an increase of more than 31 per cent. That does not look very like a slackening of administrative vigilance on our part. Then let us go to the proceedings before juries. I exclude from the figures those who pleaded guilty, or who did not actually come to trial. In 1892 the convictions were 48 per cent.; in 1893 they were 49 per cent. In 1892 the acquittals were 44 per cent.; in 1893 they were 40 per cent. In 1892 the disagreements were 15, or 7 per cent.; in 1893 they were 30, or 10 per cent. The right hon. Gentleman said that there are places in which there has been a failure of justice and a failure of putting down crime, and he referred to the case of Clare. But how does the case of Clare help him? I am not going to repeat all the arguments. I am not sure that he did not pass that case over; at any rate I will answer him in the case of Kerry. The difficulty in Clare would not be met by a change of venue. The difficulty is in Kerry to get persons made amenable to trial. The right hon. Gentleman must know this very well—until you get persons made amenable to trial, how would change of venue work? There is no co-operation. This is the curse of the situation in the County of Clare, that there is no co-operation on the part of the public—and I am sorry to say this applies not merely amongst the humblest class of the people, but it applies also to the police and authorities. You constantly find persons shot at who will not report, and the police only come to hear of those cases through careful investigation and indirectly. When an outrage is reported, the persons subjected to it will not identify and give evidence. But what I want to point out is that this is not a new state of things, and that even in Clare, which is the worst county in Ireland, and the county in connect on with which we may be supposed by hon. Gentlemen opposite to have done ourselves most mischief by the course we have adopted, it has been impossible to get men made amenable to trial—to get people to report cases, to identify, and to give evidence. I will read a couple of cases to show the difficulty any Government in Ireland has to contend with. Here are two cases which happened in the time of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, when the power of change of venue was as full as it could be. In October, 1889, a man was shot in the leg by a party of four men. They were convicted and sentenced to 10 and eight years' penal servitude respectively. From that day to this the victim of the outrage has been under police protection, and he has often declared that he wishes he had never given evidence. What would change of venue have done for that man? Take another case which occurred in the time of the right hon. Gentleman. A man was fired at and founded by two men, one of them he asked. This was in September, 1890. He gave evidence against the men con- victed; he has been under police protection ever since, and must continue so. Is it not idle to say that by loss of special power to change venue we have lost the power of dealing effectively with so demoralized a state of things as is revealed in cases of that kind? The right hon. Gentleman then passed on to three counties. He referred to Kerry, Mayo, and Limerick, where he said that there had been a great recrudescence of terrorism and intimidation; but, in referring to the Judge's Charges, he enormously exaggerated their purport and tenor. In Mayo the Lord Chief Justice, who is not particularly prone to take a favourable view of these things, said that in some parts of the county there was a bad spirit. I admit that that is to be deplored, but it is not enough foundation for the charge that we are demoralising Ireland, that we are relaxing the administration of the law, and bringing the administration of the law into contempt. In regard to Limerick, the right hon. Gentleman appealed to Mr. Justice Gibson's Charge. The learned Judge no doubt took an unfavourable view, and I will admit that there are some unsatisfactory features there; but I must point out, on the other hand, that the Report of the County Inspector to the Judge informed him that the condition of the county was, in his experience and judgment, satisfactory. No doubt all that the right hon. Gentleman said about the condition of Kerry when he came into Office is perfectly true, but it does not present any of the alarming and disastrous features that he suggests— quite the contrary. There are unsatisfactory features, but he forgot entirely to tell the House that there were only 87 reported cases in the county this year against 100 for the corresponding period of last year. The Judge told the Grand Jury there had been an increase in the hateful offence of maiming cattle; but by some erroneous information the learned Judge was mistaken. There was not an increase in the number of cases of maiming cattle, but a decrease. There were only 12 cases.

MR. SEXTON

Twelve against how many?

MR. J. MORLEY

Twelve against 20. The right hon. Gentleman referred to what he rightly called the devilish case where aid was refused to a woman in her confinement; but did the Judge say that that was an unheard-of enormity? On the contrary, while, of course, condemning it as diabolical, he referred to cases which he had known in his own experience, such as when the last Sacraments were refused to a dying man. These things are not new in Kerry or some of the other more turbulent parts of Ire-land. Of course, we all detest them equally, but they do not furnish a good foundation for a political case against a Government when it has failed to do what another Government equally failed to do. There were 42 cases reported at the Kerry Assizes—15 of arson, 12 of cattle maiming, and 17 of threatening letters. Only one person was made amenable. What good would your change of venue have done?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

My great point about the change of venue was that if you gave it, and there was some chance of a conviction, you would get people to give evidence.

MR. J. MORLEY

The right hon. Gentleman did not get more convictions when he had change of venue. Even in regard to the state of Kerry, remember what the learned Judge said — and knowing, as we do, how deeply the payment of rent goes into the social life of Ireland, we must not forget this statement as affecting a turbulent district where we are charged with loosening the joints of the armour of society by allowing our special powers to lapse—the learned Judge said— I am glad to announce that, as regards the fulfilment of social and civil obligations connected with contracts, this county is by no means in an unfavourable position at present. I am glad to find that the great natural good sense of the people of this County of Kerry has led them to the conclusion that they have greater security for their own interests and their own prosperity in fulfilling their legal contracts than they have in any other means. There are fluctuations of crime in given spots in Ireland, such as anyone familiar with Irish history knows must constantly be observed, but at the present moment there is nothing to make us view them in the alarming light that the right hon. Gentleman does for the purpose of buttressing up the Motion that has been forced upon him by accident. One figure only I am going to give you—after all, it goes to the root of the matter. It is of no use talking about a small increase of crime in Kerry, or Mayo, or Limerick, or Leitrim; you must look at Ireland as, a whole. Now this is only one figure, remember, bearing upon the terrorism and intimidation of which the right hon. Gentleman speaks in his Motion. Take the period during which we have been in Office, from August 22, 1892, to March 22, 1893, with the corresponding period of the preceding 12 months, and take the agrarian crimes, which are the test and measure of the most serious aspects of social disorder. In your period there were 215 reported cases, in ours 191. If you exclude, by a well-known method of calculation, threatening letters and notices, in your period there were 122, and in ours 101. So that you see this recrudescence of terrorism and intimidation, of which the right hon. Gentleman complained, has been accompanied by a decrease of over 11 per cent. in agrarian crime. I wish to deal in good faith with the House, and to admit that in non-agrarian crimes the figures are not so good; they are bad for us. In your period they were 745, and in ours 812, an increase of 7½ per cent. Yes; but mark, those are non-agrarian offences. I hope the House will realise what they mean. Taking the first 25 cases, I find that 13 were merely the result of drunken rows, another five were casual quarrels, one was a case of insanity, and two were poaching. [Mr. CARSON: How many were moonlighting?] I have admitted all through that there has been an increase in moonlighting, but not in outrage. The power of changing the venue, and the revocation of the proclamations under the Coercion Act, have no more to do with condoning offences against law and order than it has with the precision of the Equinox. You drew the fangs of the Crimes Act when you revoked these proclamations as to suspending summary jurisdiction. If you reproached me with having dropped these, and charged certain results with following, it would be difficult to answer it.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I do.

MR. J. MORLEY

Yes; but the fact is that the late Government dropped this power of summary jurisdiction when the state of Clare was as bad as it is now. The right hon. Gentleman says we recalled these proclamations because of the concordat, knowing that we were doing a thing which would weaken our administration of the law. No Sir we dropped the Coercion Act because we meant to adhere to our declarations—in my own case for 10 yearn. For my own part, I do not believe we have lost an instrument of the slightest value in the present state of Ireland, and I do not believe that the instances produced by the right hon. Gentleman are calculated in the slightest degree to shake that judgment. The right hon. Gentleman referred to Ginley's case. I thought I had sufficiently dealt with that case in answer to questions. The hon. and learned Gentleman opposite, whose passion for cross-examination at times is excessive, and who cross-examines me across the Table till we get at the root of all these cases, put a series of questions to me upon Ginley's case. Ginley's ease is a bad case, but I am surprised rather that the right hon. Gentleman should suppose that the Authorities in Dublin Castle, either Parliamentary or permanent, could have taken any different course from that which was actually taken. As I told the hon. Member for Tyrone the other day, the Judge himself said that he did not suppose for a moment that the County Inspector (who, us the right hon. Gentleman knows, is one of the most able and competent officials in Ireland) was capable of concealing anything, or that gentlemen in Dublin Castle were capable of concealing anything. What happened was this. A mooting was announced— and here I would say that the first question was, "Why was not this case returned as a boycotting case?" The right hon. Gentleman knows that in all cases of alleged boycotting the doubt is whether they shall be returned as boycotting cases, complete or partial. I am glad to say there is not now, and was not when we came into Office, any case of complete boycotting. In all those cases the Authorities always take some time to consider how they shall be recorded.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

This case was not only one of boycotting, but of unlawful assembly and riot.

MR. J. MORLEY

The right hon. Gentleman has, I think, mixed up two things. There were two meetings; one Was is going to be held near Ginley's farm—an evicted farm—the police, acting under the direction of "those who wish to loosen the joints of the armour of the law," Said to the promoters, "You shall not hold that meeting at an evicted farm." The view of the Inspector was that that attempted meeting did not constitute an unlawful assembly, and he was therefore justified in not reporting it. He would not have been justified in reporting it at headquarters as an unlawful assembly. Then what happened? It was proposed to hold a meeting with a view, I daresay, of terrorizing and intimidating Ginley. Language was used by two men which we thought deserved to be brought before the notice of the Courts. It is said that we condoned that serious offence. On the contrary, we directed a prosecution, in that as in all cases where we believed we were likely to get evidence enough to support a prosecution, and if the late Administration had been in Office they could not have done more than we have. Then, as to the Campbell case in Sligo, I have never heard of a more extraordinary piece of exaggeration. The right hon. Gentleman, I suppose, was told of the case by somebody. I have answered any number of questions in this case, and been cross-examined in regard to it. Because Mr. H. Camp-boll had evicted a woman, for a certain time people ceased to call upon him on their way to market for coal; they very soon resumed their dealings with him, however, and that is the only way in which his business was affected—so I am informed. The interruption of his business—or rather of the business of the firm, for it is a limited company—was very short. To attempt to make out this case as one of persistent boycotting is one of the most childish attempts that could be made. I do not think I will detain the House any longer. I have dealt with the right hon. Gentleman's allegations and charges point by point, and if this is the best case that can be made by one so experienced in Irish affairs and who is so well able to argue the present case, I do not think that we need fear the vote of this House to-night or the judgment of the country tomorrow.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL (Tyrone, S.)

said, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had commenced his speech by complaining that the Government had been made the subject of five Votes of Censure in eight weeks, but he remembered that the right hon. Gentleman himself once moved a Vote of Cen- sure on the late Government in consequence, of a street row in Tipperary. Therefore any complaint on that ground came with a very bad grace from the right hon. Gentleman. This Vote of Censure was moved because the Opposition had, or thought they had, a good case on several grounds against the administration of the right hon. Gentleman in Ireland. For his own part, he could sum up nearly all he had to say in a sentence—that there was not a law-breaker or an evil-doer in Ireland who committed an offence who could not reply upon the right hon. Gentleman minimising his action at the Table of that House; and there was not an honest or loyal man seeking to do his duty in that country who might not be perfectly assured that if he happened to come before the House in regard to any of those questions he would be sneered at by the Chief Secretary.

MR. J. MORLEY

No, no.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL

In the past they had had law breakers punished in Ireland. Now they had them petted. That was the gravamen of his charge against the administration of the right hon. Gentleman in Ire-land. But the Leader of the Opposition and the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had glided away from the County of Clare much too quickly. Let them look at County Clare and at the County of Limerick for a moment. The Chief Secretary himself admitted that they were in a most unsatisfactory condition, but when he replied to the Leader of the Opposition across the Table it was simply the old story of—"You are another." The right hon. Gentleman said, "Things were as bad in your time as they are in mine," as if that mattered a straw in a discussion of this kind. Everyone admitted that the condition of the two counties was as unsatisfactory as it could well be. Crime was increasing in both. Let them note this—and the Chief Secretary knew it—before the last Assizes in Clare the jurors were visited and intimidated. The right hon. Gentleman gave an amusing answer to the Loader of the Opposition on this point, for he said, "You have to get hold of these men and make them amenable." Yes; but out of 80 cases of reported crime seven men were made amenable at the Assizes. What became of the seven? There was only one conviction; but as in that case the offending person was a gamekeeper, the jury probably thought they might convict with safety. The right hon. Gentleman said he wanted to get hold of criminals in County Clare, he wanted people to be made amenable, and he asked, "What is the use of changing the venue when you cannot make these people amenable?" Let him call the right hon. Gentleman's attention to an answer he had given in the House. The hon. Member for North Deny (Mr. Mulholland) asked what were the results of the venue clauses of the Crimes Act, and the Chief Secretary replied— As regards the County of Clare, I am informed that the number of offences specially reported to the Inspector General from August, 1891, to August, 1892, was 1,255, and that of those persons were made amenable in 282 cases only. There were 15 cases of change of venue out of 1.500 tried. Those 15 changes appear to have affected 49 persons, and of those 49 persons 34 appear to have been convicted. What, therefore, was the use of the right hon. Gentleman stating that the change of venue was of no use in face of his own figures. He came now to the conduct of the police. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that when a question had been put in the House about a case that case ought not to be mentioned again. He put a question to the Chief Secretary with reference to boycotting in Cloughjordan, in County Tipperary, and the right hon. Gentleman replied that there had been no boycotting for two years, and that in regard to the formation of the Defence Association, he really did not know what object it had. The next day he (Mr. Russell) had received a Memorial from the district strongly protesting against the answer given by the Chief Secretary to the question asked by him (Mr. Russell). The Memorial set forth— Mr. Morley states that there was no boycotting, and there has not been since 1891, and plainly indicated that there was no real ground for the formation of the Defence Union. This statement," the Memorial continued, "is distinctly opposed to the facts which are well known to all residents in this district. The worst cases of boycotting have occurred since 1891. The Defence Union was formed in 1895 Up to then the shopkeepers were boycotted am deprived of their customers. The farmers were hindered in having their corn thrashed, and local blacksmiths were not permitted to works for a considerable number of farmers. This Memorial was signed by gentlemen as incapable of stating that which was not true as the right hon. Gentleman himself was—by the Protestant rector, the Methodist minister, three magistrates, and 74 members of that Defence Union which the Chief Secretary the other day called an Orange Union without the slightest foundation. The right hon. Gentleman had no right to call it an Orange Union. In The Midland Tribune it was asserted that the right hon. Gentleman had stated that the Cloughjordan Defence Union was an Orange Association.

MR. J. MORLEY

I did not say anything of the kind.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL

was glad to hear it. It only showed how much they could rely upon the newspapers of hon. Gentlemen opposite. He asked what the right hon. Gentleman was going to do in regard to that case, which was not a trifling one. He was bound to inquire into it and sift it to the bottom, and, perhaps, he might appoint a Commission, with a Judge of the High Court as President. The gravamen of his (Mr. Russell's) charge was not only that the right hon. Gentleman was misinformed, but that the whole facts were withheld from the late Chief Baron when he was charging the Grand Jury of the County of Tipperary. Then he wanted to mention the case of Patrick Doorley, who was tried at the Summer Assizes at the town of Tullamore, King's County, on a charge of shooting into a house in custody of a caretaker—a house on an evicted farm. The jury disagreed, there being ten for a conviction, and two against. It was arranged to put the man on his trial again. Two new witnesses presented themselves, and everything was ready for the trial, when the Attorney General sent down orders to enter a nolle prosequi. The local police authorities were never consulted; the Attorney General and Mr. Coll arranged it in Dublin Castle.

MR. J. MORLEY

I was asked a question about this some time ago. My recollection is that the late Attorney General intended to bring the trial on again, and that there is no ground whatever for stating that Mr. Atkinson did not wish the trial to come on. I am assure that there was nothing new in the fresh evidence.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL

said that when the lion, and learned Member for Dublin University spoke the House would, no doubt, hear something about Mr. Atkinson's opinion. The right hon. Gentleman the late Chief Secretary was taunted with having sent Roman Catholic priests to gaol, and he thought the right hon. Gentleman had done perfectly right in doing so. He did not believe in differentiating in such matters between priests and peasants, but under the present Chief Secretary's administration there was not a priest in Ireland who could not break the law with perfect impunity and with perfect certainty that he would not be punished. Take the case of Father Humphreys——

MR. J. MORLEY

He has been in difficulty since I have been Chief Secretary.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL

Yes, and I am sure he was a great embarrassment to the right hon. Gentleman. He was in prison because the right hon. Gentleman could not help it; he was in prison for contempt of Court, and it was done before the right hon. Gentleman knew anything about it. Father Humphreys was returned for trial for rioting in Tipperary along with a number of other people. What did the right hon. Gentleman do? Did he send them for trial? Not at all. He withdrew the prosecution. And why. Because Tipperary was now "quiet," and the riot took place during an election. He did not see why every criminal in the country should not be liberated on those terms. A prisoner's friends had only to keep quiet in the town where the thing took place and the right hon. Gentleman would exercise that clemency in which he rejoiced so much. At all events this rioter, although he was returned for trial, was never brought to trial. Then there were two other cases of priests in Meath. Father Casey was acquitted notwithstanding the clearest evidence, and the point he (Mr. Russell) wanted to bring out was this: Father Casey was returned for trial at the next Assizes, which would have been the Winter Assizes, and had Father Casey gone, to the Winter Assizes he would not have been tried in the county of Meath, where the offence was committed.

MR. T. M. HEALY

The Judge's Charge was for an acquittal.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL

said be did not care a button about that. The Judge might have charged for an acquittal, but that did not say that there ought to bean acquittal. His (Mr. Russell's) point was, that Father Casey ought not to have been tried in the County of Meath at all. The right hon. Gentleman said he was tried in that county because he was a bail prisoner, and it was not usual to send bail prisoners to the Winter Assizes. But the right hon. Gentleman could not maintain that that was so, and that no bail prisoners were sent for trial at the Winter Assizes. He held that when a priest, above all men in the world, was charged with assault, that man ought to be removed from his own district for trial, especially when the Winter Assizes directly afforded a mode of doing it. The same thing took place in regard to Father Clark. There were, then, three priests, every one charged with assault and riot, and every one of the three had escaped under the administration of the right hon. Gentleman. He came now to the case of the civil bill decrees, to which the Chief Secretary, in his remarks, had given the go-by. The right hon. Gentleman had been found guilty by the Court of Queen's Bench in Ireland of going outside the law and acting in excess of the law. On the same night that that verdict was given the right hon. Gentleman stood up at the Table, and by a tu quoque stated that he had a list of 712 statutable misdemeanours committed by the Leader of the Opposition in connection with civil bill decrees during the last six or seven years. The right hon. Gentleman's friends cheered that statement at the time—they were frantic with delight. But when the matter came to be fined down, what did it amount to? The right hon. Gentleman was now able to produce only 66 such cases. The Sheriffs were charged with breaking the law. Then, surely, the right hon. Gentleman ought to give them an opportunity of clearing themselves from such a charge. The right hon. Gentleman refused to do it, though they were entitled to his protection. But was the right hon. Gentleman certain as to the law in this matter? He (Mr. Russell) was not a lawyer, but he held in his hand an extract from a legal journal—The Irish Law Times—which commented upon the right hon. Gentleman's statement that under civil bill decrees it was illegal to seize between sunset and sunrise. The Irish Law Times said——

MR. T. M. HEALY

It is a Tory paper—written by Tory lawyers.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL

But a Tory lawyer might be a good lawyer. The probability was that a Tory lawyer would be bettor than a Nationalist lawyer. At any rate, The Irish Law Times, in discussing the matter, laid it down that it was legal to seize between sunset and sunrise, but not legal to carry away. The right hon. Gentleman had said that since he came into Office agrarian offences in Ireland had diminished, whilst non-agrarian crime had increased. Well, in regard to the Returns of agrarian crimes, it was easy to lessen them if they included nearly all moonlighting outrages as non-agrarian, and that was precisely what the servants of the right hon. Gentleman in Ireland had done. The crime of moonlighting was almost always agrarian in its character. There were very few that were not. It all depended on how they were entered in the records. Take the case of Kerry. The right hon. Gentleman supplied him with information in answer to a question, which he must be taken to have considered perfectly accurate. He said that since he had been in Office there had been two murders in the county. In receiving answers he did not object to the absence of civility, but facts ought to be given. What were the facts as to murders in Kerry on the 15th August?

MR. J. MORLEY

That was before my time.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL

A week before. Perhaps so. I will drop that.

MR. J. MORLEY

You will drop a good deal more.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL

On November 14, 1892, Dan O'Connor was murdered at Cammerhayes near Athyfield.

MR. J. MORLEY

That is not Kerry at all.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL

said, he expected that remark, and there was a doubt whether the exact spot was in Kerry. But the right hon. Gentleman was not entitled to ride off on that. He was cautioned against paying rent, and, as an additional reminder of the wisdom of not doing so, was shot in the legs, and died from the effects on November 14. Was that included in the right hon. Gentle- man's answer? On January 7, 1893, John and Pat M'Carthy were attacked; the former was killed on the spot, while Pat was not expected to recover. On January 18, W. Whelan was found dead near Listowel, and the coroner's jury found a verdict of "Died from exposure," but, subsequently, the body was exhumed, and inquiry showed that there had been foul play. The man had been hung, and there were a lot of gashes upon him.

MR. J. MORLEY

I may remind the hon. Member that I mentioned these cases, and the reasons why they were not classed as agrarian.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL,

proceeding, said he had asked how many murders there had been in Kerry during the right hon. Gentleman's tenure of Office. He was told two; but there had been five.

MR. J. MORLEY

One took place before my accession to Office, and another was returned as not committed in Kerry, but Limerick.

MR T. W. RUSSELL

said he wished next to deal with the Galway case, and he complained that the Judge was not informed of the facts. Some of the witnesses in the Maamtrasna and Lough Mask murder cases had been under police protection ever since these trials. That protection had, in one case, been withdrawn four years ago, in the case of one of four men who gave evidence. For that, of course, the Chief Secretary was not to blame. He happened to know a good deal of the case, for he was a juror, and paid for it, by a good deal of persecution. That man was assaulted by a huge mob the other night, and left for dead on the ground. But the case appeared at the Galway Assizes as a drunken riot, and not a word was said of the facts of the case. Let them look at the instructions to the Constabulary. A Circular was recently issued to the Constabulary pointing out that evictions should not be carried out when there was sickness in the house. The Constabulary needed no such reminder, But what had taken place in the case of many evictions? sick persons had been manufactured for the purpose—it was an old offence in Ireland. Everybody that knew Ireland knew that this was one of the difficulties interposed in the way of eviction. He had a letter giving particulars of a. case in which the Constabulary warned the Sheriff there was sickness in the house. and, the Sheriff proceeding, found it was a bogus sickness, and the tenant paid rent and expenses on the spot. The right hon. Gentleman had deprived himself of the Venue Clause, and was powerless in Clare and Limerick. He was not entitled to say the change of venue was useless. He had withdrawn the secret Inquiry system, and said it was no use, but he would make bold to say that never vet had a secret inquiry been held when those concerned did not find out all about the guilty parties, and many ruffians fled the country fearing the result. The inquiry might have failed in not getting legal evidence, but it got useful information, and rascals left the country pellmell. He feared that they would now return. Under the wise policy of the right hon. Gentleman, guided by clemency and common-sense, Clare, Limerick, Kerry, Mayo are to be left for six mouths, though a Judge of the High Court had said that there was no protection for life and property in one county, and though crime was increasing in others, the right hon. Gentleman only sent 50 extra police to Clare and refused to do more. Why? Because of his preconceived doctrinaire opinions about Crimes Acts, because he had pledged himself to take Ireland from under the operation of the Crimes Act. And, in consequence, the people of Clare must suffer as they had suffered in the past, without security to life and property, and other counties were allowed to lapse back into crime. This was too much for the House to agree to. If there were no other grounds for a Vote of Censure than this charge of allowing things to drift in the West of Ireland, then there was enough upon which to impeach the administration of the right hon. Gentleman. Ha should vote for the Motion, because he believed there was not a law-breaker in Ireland who could not count on the right hon. Gentleman minimising and excusing his action, and, on the other hand, no honest man would get from the right hon. Gentleman any more sympathy and support than he could help giving.

MR. SMITH-BARRY (Hunts, S.)

said he did not wish to make the task of the Chief Secretary a more difficult one than it was at present. The government of Ireland was not an easy question for any person. The right hon. Gentleman, however, by the concordat which he had spoken of, now had hon. Members from Ireland below the Gangway on his side, and forces which had been used against the Government for so many years were now endeavouring to assist him in his task of governing that country. On the other hand, the right hon. Gentleman had speeches before him made by himself and his colleagues, and the action which had been taken during the past six years, which had made it more difficult for him to govern the country than if he had been supposed to be determined to maintain the law in the eyes of the people of Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman the First Commissioner of Works went about Ireland and took an active part in furthering and approving of the Plan of Campaign, and the Chief Secretary himself went down to the town of Tipperary at the critical time of the conspiracy trials there. He knew that the right hon. Gentleman's actions and wishes were thoroughly pure and straightforward; he had not the slightest belief that he sympathised with the evil doings that were going on in Tipperary at that time, but the effect had been among the people there and throughout Ireland to make them imagine that the right hon. Gentleman sympathised with, if he did not actually approve of, the misdeeds and many of the crimes which were then taking place. These things made it all the more necessary that the Chief Secretary should be careful as to how he exercised the clemency of the Crown, and released men who had been sentenced for grave offences. The condition of the country, the statistics of the Chief Secretary notwithstanding, was, in the opinion of those who knew the country, certainly not that of thorough peace, such as it was in when the right hon. Gentleman came into Office. There was a feeling throughout the country that there was a sympathy with crime, and directly the right hon. Gentleman quarrelled with those who now checked it, but who had fostered and encouraged it in the past, crime would burst out again. The right hon. Gentleman had admitted that there was an increase in what he called non-agrarian crime, but was there not an increase in the total sum of crime, agrarian and non-agrarian together? How were they to know that the crimes which were put down as non-agrarian were really non-agrarian or agrarian? Let them take the cases of moonlighting It was admitted that moonlighting was greatly on the increase, and it was a new thing to him, and would doubtless be to others, to hear that there was much non-agrarian moonlighting taking place throughout the country. They would find that there was something agrarian at the bottom of all these moonlighting cases. What was the condition at the present moment of the district about New market, in the County of Cork—that which bordered rather on the Kerry side? In that part of Cork it was as bad as any part of Kerry, or any part of Ireland, that Sir E. Buller went over to take charge of some years ago. Under the influence of Sir E. Buller, the Crimes Act, and the government of his right hon. Friend, that part of the country had become perfectly peaceful again. He thought the present Chief Secretary would not deny that that part of the country was now swarming with moonlighters. Let them take another part of the country, the part of Tipperary about Roscrea. That was a part of the country where little or no agrarian crime or moonlighting existed. It was supposed to be one of the very quietest parts, but he understood that within the last few days an aged farmer was attacked by moonlighters, dragged out of his bed, and severely beaten; that he had to be taken to a hospital; and that after the moonlighters left the house they threw stones at the open window of a room in which his daughter was. That, he thought, showed that in those districts, which had previously become quiet, they had certainly not got any of that improvement which the right hon. Gentleman had been boasting of. On the contrary, it showed that crime was cropping up again where it had previously ceased to exist. He would like to refer to a case which naturally interested him, and some of his tenants very considerably—the case of John Foley, which was discussed in the House the other night. The Chief Secretary stated in his speech that that was a thoroughly frivolous case—that the charge against him was a most frivolous charge. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that in Tipperary that was not looked upon as a frivolous matter at all John Foley was a well-known vigilane man, and was in the pay of the National League or of the Tenants' Defence Association.

MR. T. MORLEY

I did not say that Foley's case was a frivolous one. I said the Motion was a frivolous one.

MR. HARRINGTON (Dublin, Harbour)

said, Foley was not in the pay of the National League.

MR. SMITH-BARRY

said, he did not know in whose pay Foley was, but he knew, at any rate, that the police gave evidence to the effect—and most people in or about Tipperary at that time knew—that Foley was a regularly paid vigilance man. He had spent his time in picketing shops against which black marks had been made, and in assisting in the boycotting of the unfortunate people who had honourably stuck to their agreements, and were driven out of their houses. He was caught red-handed with an explosive in his pocket, with others who had been previously engaged in posting boycotting notices, and in inciting to intimidation. The explosive had been laughed at by hon. Members behind him, but the bombs that were manufactured in Tipperary at that time were very serious things indeed; they were many of them formed of pieces of cast-iron gas pipe, plugged at either end with wooden plugs and filled with gunpowder, capable of doing most serious injury both to life and property. That no one was killed by them or seriously injured was a matter of good luck and bad management on the part of those who threw them, but it was not from any fault in the construction of the missiles themselves. This was a very serious matter, and to let this man out after only serving two of the seven years' penal servitude he was sentenced to must have a very bad effect in the town of Tipperary and the surrounding neighbourhood. As was said by his hon. Friend the Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell), it would appear that priests now went about and said pretty much what they liked. To-day he asked the right hon. Gentleman a question of a case that arose out of an eviction. The circumstances were somewhat peculiar, as it was not an eviction in the ordinary sense. Part of the demesne land, or as in England they would term it the home farm, was let to a man named White. This man said he must have a very large reduction of rent, and because the landlord would not consent to give him what he required he insisted upon going to the Land Court to have a fair rent fixed under the Act of 1881. In the Court, Captain Townshend very naturally took the objection that it was demesne land, and on that ground the Sub-Commissioners declined to consider White as a tenant within the meaning of the Act; White then declined to pay any rent at all, and consequently he was evicted. The Sunday following the eviction Father Lyons, the administrator of the parish, made a most violent speech, one for which he might well have been brought to justice. It appeared that the mother of White was an old woman, and was lying ill in the house at the time, and the priest made a speech, in the course of which he said— It cannot be said we are not a patient race when a son can look on and see his mother inhumanly treated and not rush on to the bailiff and. even at the risk of being spiked on the policemen's bayonets, batter out his brains. He thought the right hon. Gentleman would agree that that was incitement such as the rev. gentleman might well be brought to justice for. The rev. gentleman went on— Finally, I would only say I expect the people of this locality have been sufficiently educated by the experience of their fellow-countrymen during the last six years under a Tory Government as knowing what their duty is on this occasion, and knowing it to act up to it. These were direct incitements to the people in that part of the country to make attacks and to commit crimes against Captain Townshend and those in his employment. What was the consequence? Threatening letters of a most horrible description were sent to people in that neighbourhood, one being sent to Mrs. Townshend, the mother of Captain Townshend, signed "Jack the Ripper." he had copies of boycotting notices, one of which was put up on the shop of a man named Kingston at Mycrosswood, and another sent to a man called Donovan, a blacksmith. The notice in this latter case ran— A warning to you, blacksmith, that you had better leave oft working for Townshend, for as soon as you see this be ready for judgment without further notice. He had two other notices, originals that had not been in the hands of the police, one sent to a man named Daly and the other to a man named Carrol, but both in the same strain as the one he had quoted. His point was this. Here they had a country in a peaceable condition until a priest was allowed, unrebuked, to go and make speeches such as he had read extracts from, and then followed the threatening letters. The mother and sisters of Captain Towns-bend were insulted when they went to church; horns were blown at them; they were called all sorts of horrible names by young women connected with the late tenant, and the right hon. Gentleman had not now got the machinery of the Crimes Act by which a stop might have been put to this state of things. In order to stop it men like Father Lyons must be brought to justice. Another very curious and instructive case took place within the last week in the County of Sligo at a place called Dromore. He was given to understand that a priest named O'Kelly was imprisoned some time ago on a charge of misconduct, and was subsequently liberated on the ground that he was in ill-health. The circumstances of the case he did not know, but he knew it was the fact that O'Kelly was imprisoned for some fault or other, but his point was the same— namely, that in these cases clemency was a mistake. For instance, if this man were in prison, where he ought to be, he would not have been able to upset the whole side of the country as he had been during the last week. There was, it appeared, an election going on for Poor Law Guardians, and in the Union of Dromore there were two candidates—a Mr. Ormsby, a Conservative and a landlord, and a Mr. Maloney, a Nationalist. Father O'Kelly was determined that Mr. Ormsby should not be returned, though he was popular amongst both the Protestant and Catholic tenantry, and therefore he went at the head of a large mob to do all he possibly could to prevent the voting papers being distributed to Mr. Ormsby's tenants. The police only consisted of a District Inspector and 10 constables, and they were overcome by Father O'Kelly's mob. The District Inspector threatened, and, in fact, proceeded to read the Riot Act, when Father O'Kelly defied him, saying he did not care for the law, for the officer, or for anyone else, whilst the mob proceeded to call out, "To hell with Queen Victoria." That did not look like the unity of hearts or much loyalty in that part of the County of Sligo, and if Father O' Kelly was to be a leader among men in the County of Sligo he did not think that loyalty, and peace, and order were likely to increase. It seemed that the proceedings in this case were so scandalous that at last the whole thing had to be adjourned until the following Monday, when a force of over 100 policemen had to be taken down to deliver the voting papers, he thought he had now given a few cases to show that the country was not in the condition the right hon. Gentleman supposed. He was sure the right hon. Gentleman was actuated by the best intentions in the way in which he was governing the country, but unfortunately good intentions were not sufficient to govern a country, or to restore peace in Ireland or anywhere else. There was a place winch was proverbially said to be paved with good intentions, and he very much feared that if the right hon. Gentleman continued to establish the same good intentions throughout Ireland they would soon find he had turned that peaceful country into a place very little more pleasant to live in than the place he had mentioned as being paved with them.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE,) Edinburgh, Midlothian

I do not know whether the hon. Member who has just sat down is under the impression that he has made out a sufficient case for a Vote of Censure on the Government. He has given us various incidents and various facts. They go to show that there still exist turbulent elements in Irish society —that after England has, with absolute supremacy of force, been managing the country for 700 years, and for 700 years there have only been brief, intervals of variation from the system under which it has been governed, administered, and legislated for, in a spirit absolutely adverse to the sentiments and sympathies of the people, you have the result in these turbulent elements which still remain. Good has been done, good measures have been passed, and I call the hon. Gentleman to make this admission— that the great measures of reform, which are now constantly alluded to on the other side of the House as having removed Irish complaints—no doubt they have been measures of great importance, and have done great good, but they have been passed in utter defiance of the whole mass of the Irish Party, and in total departure from the system which, as I say, for 700 years has unhappily supplied the most miserable and most disgraceful chapter in the history of this country. The hon. Gentleman's chief point was his reference to the case of Father O' Kelly. We do not very much differ from him in our disapproval of the proceedings he has referred to; but are those proceedings a reason for a Vote of Censure on my right hon. Friend and the Irish Government, and the Government at largo? Is the hon. Member certain the case is not at this moment under the consideration of my right hon. Friend, and of the Irish Government? It is not for me to give any opinion on the proceedings; they are only before me in an ex parte form, and it would not become me to prejudge the case, even if the hon. Member could assert the case is not, at this very moment, under the consideration of my right hon. Friend and the Irish Government, in order that they may form a judgment whether it is a case in which they should take proceedings for the vindication of the law. Even if there is force in the statement, the hon. Member has not laid any ground on which this Vote of Censure may be justified. Then, Sir, where is that ground? We have had, according to the catalogue given by my right hon. Friend, eight debates on the affairs of Ireland during the eight weeks of the Session. It is admitted we have an enormous mass of business before us. It is supposed, or supposable, that, in the view of rational men, there ought to be some attempt at economy of time; but eight debates have been found necessary. I am very glad at last, if it was to come at all, that the issue has taken a definite form. Hon. Gentlemen opposite, and indeed all Members, are stewards of the public time; and in my opinion it does little credit to them, or to their cause, that only after eight debates in eight weeks they have found their consciences driving them to the opening up of the affairs of Ireland, and apparently, owing to some suspicion that a challenge had been thrown out which had never been delivered at all, they have screwed their courage up to the sticking point. I listened with attention to the hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell). Does he suppose he has laid a ground for a Vote of Censure? I am not speaking of the correctness of the allegations he made; but I am speaking of their breadth and solidity. Speaking of a place, the name of which it is difficult to pronounce—Sloughjordan—he said that he had got in his hand a document signed by 74 members of a defence association, alleging the existence of boycotting in the place. I have not a word to say against the good faith of those who signed that document; but their allegations were perfectly general; neither names, nor places, nor times were mentioned. I do not say that statements of that kind ought to be set aside; the Chief Secretary would be the last man to deny that such statements, proceeding from trustworthy sources, are fair subjects for careful examination. But is the existence of that document in the hands of the hon. Member a reason for a Vote of Censure on the Government? Granting every allegation he made, those allegations do not at all afford a sufficient ground for the proceeding which has been adopted after eight weeks of hesitation. The hon. Member's next allegation was that Patrick Dooley had been tried and not convicted, that two more witnesses had turned up, and yet he had not been tried a second time. But why? Because the persons who are responsible for officially examining the case have arrived at the conclusion that no additional evidence of a material character has been produced. If that is the case, if that is their conscientious and responsible belief, it would be tyranny and oppression to place the man a second time on his trial; and, besides being tyrannical and oppressive, it certainly would not tend to commend the administration of the law to the mass of the people in Ireland. The hon. Member's third case was that of the priest Humphreys. If I remember rightly, it was the case of an election riot, in which 34 people were charged; it was apparently a temporary ebullition, and not a case of malignant and deep-seated conspiracy against life, property, or public order, but growing out of one of those casual occurrences in respect of which it would not have been wise to set the law in motion. It frequently happened, during the time of the late Government, when allegations were made against the right hon. Gentleman, he fell back upon Irish officials and the information they gave him, and, when he was pressed, he said, "I rely upon that information." In those days the hon. Member for South Tyrone and those who think with him had unbounded faith in all the information that came from the Irish Office. It is not to be supposed that Irish officials as a body have at this moment any violent prejudice either against the right hon. Gentleman or the system he sought to administer; but it appears that their conclusions sometimes lean to the side of mildness and clemency; and the moment they take that line the hon. Member for South Tyrone and those who think with him turn round and complain of these men, and find them open to all manner of suspicion—those in whoso assurances they formerly placed implicit belief. Take the Returns of crime; they are made now as they were in the time of the right hon. Gentleman. I am not aware that any serious change, or indeed any change, has been made in the classification of crimes. So long as they suit the views of the Member for South Tyrone these Returns are accepted by the hon. Member without the smallest qualification, but when it appears they do not suit the hon. Member for South Tyrone and his Party he is not satisfied with the Returns of crime. It is true that in the extreme of his generosity he acquits my right hon. Friend from personally intervening and altering the Return. I am convinced," he says, "that a very great number of offences that ought to be returned as agrarian are returned as non-agrarian. I am not sure that my conclusion is right, and therefore in defiance of figures and facts I affirm that crime in Ireland has increased, and the system pursued by the Government is bad, and that they ought to be censured and turned out of Office. With a license and a latitude such as that it is perfectly evident that we could all take up whatever argument we like and arrive at any conclusion we like. The hon. Member complained that a priest named Casey, of County Meath, I believe, had not been taken out of his county for trial. According to the view of the hon. Member, laity ought to be taken out of the county or not according to circumstances, but a priest ought always to be taken out of his county. You must carry them to what to them is a foreign land and then for the first time put them on trial. The hon. Member does not appear to understand the spirit of the jury system. The spirit of that system is that a man should be tried by his friends and neighbours. He thinks that upon mere speculation a priest is of such formidable character—and undoubtedly he is formidable to men like the hon. Member—that as a matter of course he ought to be exported from his own county and tried elsewhere. Sir, no constitutional statesman, no constitutional lawyer, will over give his sanction to that doctrine. The true doctrine is that a man is to be tried among his friends and neighbours, who know the circumstances of the locality and can take the whole of the case into consideration. There may be peculiar circumstances of time and place that require him to be removed. I am not speaking against change of venue, but the doctrine that a priest, simply because he is a priest, is to be taken away from the sympathies of his own neighbourhood is a doctrine untenable in law and in argument, and not fit to be propounded in a popular assembly such as this. What is the gravamen of the case? It is that my right hon. Friend is to be censured and put out because this priest Casey was not sent out of his county to be tried. Were the circumstances of this priest's case so outrageous that they constituted a special reason for it? No, it is admitted that not only was he acquitted in fact, but that the Judge charged the jury for an acquittal. In the early part of the century there was an Irish Judge who distinguished himself by enlightened and very popular and large and liberal opinion with respect to the people of Ireland. I have forgotten his name. [Mr. TIMOTHY HEALY: Judge Fletcher.] What persecution did that man undergo? The moment a Judge began to charge in favour of a prisoner in Ireland he became open to censure. That is what I believe all Judges in Ireland have to expect who are so unfortunate as to allow the slightest suspicion to go forth that from the crown of their head to the sole of their foot they have one drop of blood in sympathy with the people of Ireland. Another charge made against my right hon. Friend is with respect to the 66 cases in which Sheriffs were concerned in the execution of the civil bill decrees. It is an exaggeration to say that my right hon. Friend made a charge against the Sheriffs. Undoubtedly his opinion was that they had taken steps which had resulted in proceedings not in accordance with the law, but he never said that they had done this wilfully. He treated it as one of those incidental errors likely to occur where the proceedings of the constabulary have from time to time been radically changed. We have no intention of imputing to them anything dishonourable or anything that requires reference to them. I am bound to take notice of what appears to me to be the general character of the Debate. I was under the impression that we should hear something about the release of the Gweedore prisoners and about the release of Foley. The right hon. Gentleman was prudent enough, however, to avoid these cases. He knew very well, I believe, that no one had gone so far in the direction of releasing prisoners as a Tory Viceroy of Ireland. Lord Carnarvon, dealing with the case of a man who had been sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment, did, I believe, in September, 1885, with the full sanction of the noble Lord opposite (Lord R. Churchill), who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, release him.

LORD R. CHURCHILL

May I say a word? Lord Carnarvon only let out that one prisoner after Earl Spencer had let out the two other prisoners.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

The noble Lord admits that the Liberal Government, in the indulgence of its revolutionary appetite, let out two men, while the Tory Government let out one man whom the Liberal and Revolutionary Government had not been able to lot out. But the noble Lord has, I believe, understated the case. Instead of two there were three men lot out by Lord Spencer, but the cases are not parallel. The three men were sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. Three months later the Tory Government comes in, and finding a man sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment lets him out. The history of that time has not yet been sifted to the bottom, and is a chapter of our history in reference to which the contrast between the con- duct of the Tory Government down to the time of the Election, and the conduct of the Tory Government after that, will have to receive some day or other a far better and more comprehensive justification than that which has just been put forward. Therefore I say the right hon. Gentleman was prudent in avoiding the subject. I do not intend directly or indirectly to censure the conduct of the Judge who originally pronounced this sentence of seven years on Foley. First of all, I think we are a great deal more reserved and cautious on this side of the House in commenting on the conduct of Judges than are right hon. Gentlemen opposite. I feel it would be going beyond my duty and knowledge, and I speak of this sentence only as part of a system under which Ireland is governed. It is my deliberate opinion that crime of this class is more severely viewed in Ireland than it would be in England. I do not believe that that sentence of seven years would have been passed in England. Let me describe this man, whose conduct I do not for a moment justify. The case has been described as if he had had at command all the resources of science for the purpose of creating this subtle, powerful, dangerous, and highly-complicated machine. Foley was wrong; he was highly culpable: he deserved punishment; he got punishment, he got seven years. My opinion may not be entitled to much weight in such a matter, but I would say that that was a sentence which would never have been pronounced upon such an offence in England. What did the Judge say? How did he describe this terrible, this awful machine in which so much power-had been concentrated for the destruction of property? He said that "the instrument might not be one very formidable in the way of explosion, but it had not a legal look." I own to my uninstructed and non-legal mind that appears a narrow and unstable foundation for a sentence of seven years. Foley had served two years and two mouths of his sentence, and I believe he has now been released through the exercise of the clemency of the Crown by the immediate action of the Irish Government. We, the British Members of the Government, thoroughly concur in that, as we think, wise, and politic, and just act of my right hon. Friend and the Irish Government, and I say, take it as you will, and expunging from your memory the treatment of the 15-years' man in 1885, is the fact that my right hon. Friend differed from the Judge to the extent of 21 months with respect to the proper length of imprisonment of this man—is that a reason for inviting the House of Commons to put into action the formidable authority of censure on the Government of Ireland. I must own it appears to me that my right hon. Friend in his reply—to which I paid particular attention, as I did to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman—it appears to me that my right hon. Friend reduced the speech of the right hon. Gentleman to atoms. In saying that, I do not believe that any other man on that side or on this side of the House, with the same materials in his hand, could have made a more ingenious speech. All the serious allegations of the right hon. Gentleman utterly vanished. The right hon. Gentleman was large and eloquent in his denunciation of the Irish Government, because he said that by parting with the power to change the venue they parted with all the best means of security—apprehension, evidence, and convictions. With regard to the matter of the venue, of course the right hon. Gentleman recollects very well the year 1885. One of the early acts of the Government which then came into Office was to abandon the intention of asking for the continuance of this power of change of venue, which Lord Spencer intended to retain. Let me remind the right hon. Gentleman and his friends that when they made that declaration, and said that they renounced the intention of trying to govern Ireland by coercion, they were not met from this side of the House by ungenerous taunts or by endeavours to create dissatisfaction against their own Party, but by expressions of our good wishes in the responsible course they were adopting, and those good wishes we heartily entertained. But why did they give up change of venue in 1885 if they found it so valuable? Do not let mo be told that I am using the tu quoque argument. lam doing nothing of the kind. The argument of tu quoque is this: that you have done a thing you cannot defend, and you find that the other man has done it also. That is a tu quoque, but this is the very converse of that case. We have done a thing which we can and do defend—a thing that is wise and right, and when we quote its having been done by right hon. Gentlemen opposite, what we mean is to claim the great moral weight of their authority, and to invite them to be consistent with themselves, to recede from the course they have unfortunately committed themselves to, and return to the lessons and temper of these wiser days, and make an attempt to govern Ireland on those principles which we think were wise and just. The right hon. Gentleman said that the County of Kerry was in a very formidable state. Well, my right hon. Friend met him by showing that in Kerry agrarian offences, upon which we always admit these discussions essentially turn——

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I have never admitted it.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

That is the general sense of the House. ["No, no!"] Then if that is so, why have not the general accounts of crime in Ireland always been published along with agrarian crime? Agrarian crime is crime which is taken as the social and distinctive groundwork, and upon that we must found our arguments. Well, this dreadful state of County Kerry has been met by my right hon. Friend by showing that, instead of 100 offences, as at the last corresponding Assizes, they have been reduced to 87. My right hon. Friend then went to Ireland as a whole, and showed that in 1891–92 there were 215 offences, which had dropped to 195. What is the state of the case? I do not accuse the right hon. Gentleman of being actuated in making this Motion by the spirit of faction, though I own it would have looked better if it had not been preceded by seven other similar Motions of the most trivial character. I admit that this is a question of principle, and of deep principle, at issue between him and us. I admit that the subject of legislative autonomy is the great question for Ireland; but there is another question which is also great, and is only second to it, and that is the question of the administration of the law in Ireland. I have always said that if it were possible to arrest the Home Rule movement and to dissociate the people of Ireland from that darling purpose which they have pursued under varying circumstances and with undeviating consistency, the way would be by a bold experiment to be made by the enemies of Home Rule to administer the law in Ireland with some regard to Irish sympathies and to the principles which govern the administration of the law in England and Scotland. In 1835, when a Liberal Government came into Office, O'Connell was very well aware that there was no hope for his favourite measure of Repeal, or even for the legislative measures of improvement and reform which he was desirous as a wise man to accept for the good which they might contain, But at that time there appeared in Ireland an Under Secretary, with a sympathising Chief Secretary and a sympathising Lord Lieutenant—a man whose name will be ever fondly cherished in Ireland, Lieutenant Drummond, who determined to endeavour to administer Ireland upon English principles. I do not mean by that in deference to English prejudices. On the contrary, in defiance of English prejudices and upon the same principles which Englishmen and Scotchmen expect to be applied to the administration of their law. These were the principles which Mr. Drummond powerfully, energetically, and with marvellously good effect applied to the administration "of the law in Ireland. And how was he treated? This attempt of Lieutenant Drummond to govern Ireland in harmony with Irish sympathies was denounced in the strongest language, and the denunciation reached a climax when Lieutenant Drummond, by official authority, inserted in a letter something which was declared to be worse than dynamite. In answer to a representation from the magistrates of Tipperary, Lieutenant Drummond actually inserted in the reply these words, "Property has its duties as well as its rights." Any gentleman that will refer back to the comments made in those years will find that anything which has been said by the right hon. Gentleman is the feeblest and weakest possible reflection, with all the strength taken out of it, of what was said then of Lieutenant Drummond's policy. In the release of prisoners, neither in Ireland nor in England are there any abstract sweeping principles to be introduced, but every case has to be carefully examined on its own merits, and every word in which my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary described his proceedings in England is adapted and appropriated in just the same manner with respect to the proceedings of my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary in Ireland. But, Sir, our opinion is that you cannot govern a country for the purposes of law and order without some regard to the sympathies, convictions, and traditions of the people. As I said, for 700 years, with rare intervals, you have tried the opposite system, and you see the result has been the shame of England throughout the civilised world. We are determined to use our best efforts to establish a better system; we seek to lay the foundations of order in the hearts and understandings of the people we govern. We do not believe that the Irish are under an original, universal, and irreversible curse, which renders them incapable either of the duties or blessings of civilisation. We are convinced they are a people to be governed on the same principles as the inhabitants of other countries, and that when these principles are fairly applied they will meet at the least with corresponding success. That is the effort in which my right hon. Friend has been engaged; that is the effort in which he has our true and full concurrence. We claim to be partakers of his responsibility; we appeal to the judgment of the House of Commons, and we have no other desire except to share his fate.

LORD R. CHURCHILL) (Paddington, S.

I am sure the House, with what Mr. Disraeli called its unerring instinct, will see that I am at a great disadvantage in following the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury after the impressive and entrancing speech which he has just delivered. It has been my fortune—and I use the word "fortune" in its best sense—to have had at different times during my Parliamentary career disputes, and I may almost say encounters, with the right hon. Gentleman; but this is the first time, as far as I can recollect, that I have ever had the opportunity, which I do not at all rejoice over, of following him in debate. The only reason that makes me glad that I am taking part in this Debate to-night is, that I came down early to the House—I was obliged to come down early—and have had the advantage of hearing one more among a long roll and long record of speeches from the right hon. Gentleman, most of which I vividly recollect, and I hope it may be still my fortune to hear many more Parliamentary speeches from him. But the right hon. Gentleman and his supporters will understand that there were one or two or more expressions of opinion and forms of argument which he made use of which he cannot expect hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House to allow and concede. He accused my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition of depreciating the figures and Returns of crime which the Chief Secretary has put forward. But he did not seem to recollect that when my right hon. Friend was Chief Secretary for Ireland, and he put forward statements founded upon Returns of crime, there was no one by whom those Returns were more disputed—there was no one who threw greater doubt upon their validity than the Prime Minister himself when he was Leader of the Opposition. The right hon. Gentleman made a very extraordinary remark. He said that in England it was not the custom to pass long and heavy sentences; but he seemed to forget that was the Government that he carried on from 1880 to 1885—he had as his Attorney General perhaps one of the most distinguished Law Officers, and one of more influence in the House than any who have occupied the post during recent years—I mean the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bury (Sir H. James)—and that that- right hon. Gentleman brought forward a Bill to establish a Court of Criminal Appeal, because, in his opinion, the sentences of some of the English Judges were so barbaric and savage that it was impossible that the English law could be administered in the absence of such a tribunal without terrible injustice being inflicted. And yet the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury fixed upon the Irish Judges the charge of passing long, heavy, and cruel sentences as distinguished from those passed by English Judges.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

What I said was, that I did not believe that a sentence of seven years' penal servitude in this particular case would have been pronounced in England.

LORD R. CHURCHILL

Has the right hon. Gentleman had time to obtain the necessary knowledge to be able to pronounce a positive judgment on the Tipperary explosion case? Does not the right hon. Gentleman know that the attempt to bring off the explosion meditated by Foley was only one of a long series of attempts which had been made to carry apprehension and intimidation, and if necessary, frightful injury among the peaceful and innocent inhabitants of Tipperary? Is it not the case?—and I appeal to everybody who has any experience of the practice of the Courts—that very often the Judge and jury take a lenient view upon an isolated crime; but that when a group of individuals are banded together to commit crime and there is a long experience of crime in a particular locality, it is customary in the Courts in England to take the most rigid and severe view of the circumstances; and does it not always imply a heavier sentence than would be imposed in a case which stood absolutely by itself? That is the defence I would offer to the argument that the sentence on Foley was too severe. If the case had stood alone, if it had been the case of one individual trying to produce terror by explosions of gunpowder in an iron cylinder, then I admit seven years would have been a heavy sentence. But it did not stand alone, and that would be a wrong impression to convey to the House; it was connected with a variety of other attempts, which would probably have been followed up by successive explosions if they had not been checked by a severe sentence. The right hon. Gentleman forgets that the duty of the Judge is not only to apportion on technical legal grounds the sentence on a prisoner convicted of a crime, but he has always to consider, in looking at a serious case, the effect on society of certain crimes passing either without punishment or with a very lenient punishment. It is wrong. I will not say it is very wrong, but it is over censorious to come down upon an Irish Judge who, finding that state of things in Tipperary, inflicted a severe sentence. And now I come to what was a very interesting part of the right hon. Gentle- man's speech. The right hon. Gentleman talked about the change of venue, and brought it as a charge against the Tory Government which came into Office in 1885, and he did me the honour of especially naming me, that they did not renew the Crimes Act.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

That was not a charge, but an eulogy.

LORD R. CHURCHILL

I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not give us many of those eulogies. I certainly understood the right hon. Gentleman to argue that we could not complain of the present Government not putting in force the change of venue clauses of the Criminal Law Procedure Act, because the Tory Government of 1885 on coming into Office did not renew the Crimes Act that had been in operation under the Government of the right hon. Gentleman. That argument is really not of any force or weight. Why did not the Tory Government of that day renew the Crimes Act?

MR. SEXTON

Because they promised not to do it.

LORD R. CHURCHILL

The hon. Gentleman generally intervenes in a Debate with far greater effect than accuracy, and I set my statement against his, because, as far as the Tory Government of that day are concerned, I am better informed than he is. The Conservative Government did not renew any portion of the Crimes Act, because it was beyond their power to do so. The Liberal Government of that day had gone out of Office, and had deliberately planned their own fall. It was their duty, if it was anybody's, having a majority in the House, and having all the responsibility of governing the United Kingdom—it was their duty to have renewed the Coercion Act. They knew, however, that if they tried to do it, serious differences would break out among them, which would lead probably to their disruption; and, therefore, they chose to go out on a totally different question connected with the liquor traffic and their Budget. Nothing would have persuaded them to resume Office at that time,

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

I beg your pardon; we were perfectly ready to do so.

LORD R. CHURCHILL

I intensely dislike differing from the right hon. Gentleman on a question of fact. Of course, my information was very good at that time. The right hon. Gentleman well remembers the days of 1873, when he had been forced to go back into Office by the refusal of Mr. Disraeli to take it. The right hon. Gentleman, bearing in mind the precedent of 1873, having come out of Office to escape an awkward question, kept out of Office, and really forced the Tory Party to take it when they were in a minority, and when it was no more in their power to pass a Coercion Act than it was for them to do what the bimetallists wish to do— turn silver into gold. The right hon. Gentleman then talked of the jury system in connection with the change of venue, and he gave vent to some sentiments of a very beautiful and almost poetic character on the spirit of the jury system. He said that spirit was that a man, under almost every circumstance of civil society, was to be tried by his friends and his neighbours. I do not think that has been the practice in England. Mouth after month cases are removed into the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court, and frequently also into the Central Criminal Court in London, so that the attractive and alluring rule which the right hon. Gentleman lays down with respect to the spirt of the jury system, though excellent in theory, is too good for the usual practice of this wicked world. I could not help being reminded, when the right hon. Gentleman said that the spirit of the jury system was that a man or a woman, when accused of crime, should be tried by his or her friends and neighbours—I could not help being reminded of an anecdote, which I believe to be perfectly authentic, of an old woman who was tried at Nenagh for an assault. The evidence was conclusive, and the old woman had no witnesses to call in her defence; she had nobody to represent her, and the Judge, seeing her most forlorn condition, asked if she had any witnesses, or a solicitor or barrister. "No, your Honour," she replied, "I have no witnesses, no barrister, and no defence; but I have several very good friends among the jury." It is on these principles that the rule laid down by the right hon. Gentleman about the jury system would work so admirably in the interests of those who are prosecuted. With the permission of the right hon. Gentleman, I will pass to the more general features of this Debate. I will only add one remark. The right hon. Gentleman alluded to the prophecies which we have made from time to time on his legislation for Ireland. He said we are making great prophecies now, but he had heard them all before. Sir, the right hon. Gentleman is not alone in that position, nor does he enjoy any monopoly in that advantage. The right hon. Gentleman has legislated for Ireland for a long time, and I shall be able to show, if the House will allow me to continue my speech for a little time, that he has legislated for Ireland largely, and that he has introduced great reforms, and, although I was not in the House at the time of his great legislation which marked the Parliament of 1868, I am well acquainted with what was passing at that time, and I have heard since 1874 every measure which the right hon. Gentleman has introduced was to restore, according to his prophecies, for all time the greatest peace, tranquillity, and prosperity to Ireland. Time after time have I, in my brief experience of Parliament — not amounting altogether to 20 years—known the right hon. Gentleman to come down to the House, not indeed to admit that his prophecies were false, but to ask for new and larger measures and more immense concessions to the demands of Ireland, conceiving, no doubt, that he had to take that course because his former measures had entirely failed, and because his prophecies had turned out to be altogether fallacious. It does not, therefore, lie with the Liberal Party to taunt the Tory Party with prophesying evil, and certainly, so far as Ireland is concerned, there is more right on our side than there is on that of the right hon. Gentleman. It is possible that in the present dispute—in the great issue that exists between us—whatever results may attend our predictions, they will follow what has been the invariable course ever since I can remember—the course of Irish politics. I have dwelt so long on the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury that possibly the Chief Secretary for Ireland will not take it ill of me if I do not go at any length into his most interesting speech. I would endeavour to set up again—though it has not been greatly wounded—the case of my right hon. Friend which the Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary for Ireland had done their best to destroy. They have minimized every case which my right hon. Friend has brought forward. They have ridiculed all the illustrations of what he considers the serious defects in the government of Ireland which he submitted to the House, and they have done their best one way or another to divert the attention of the House from the real question at issue and to make out that we (the Opposition) are offering an invidious and fictitious opposition, and that we have absolutely no case to bring against the Government. The case we have to bring against Her Majesty's Government is, I admit, at some disadvantage, because it is so full of materials for indictment that in one night's Debate it requires singular power of condensation to give the House even an idea of the real causes which lie deep in our political position and opinions and which divide us from the right hon. Gentleman and his Government and his Party. I will not dwell—I am sure the House would not wish me to dwell—on the absurd charge that has been made against us that this is an obstructive Debate. We did not seek this Debate; but holding the opinions we do as to the policy which the right hon. Gentleman is pursuing in Ireland, how could we, such a strong minority, refuse what I will not say was a challenge, but what was tantamount to a challenge, to censure the Irish policy of the Government? I should like to know what would have been said by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at some convenient place in the country where he could not be contradicted? He would have said, "We challenged the Opposition to censure our policy, but they did not dare to bring forward their case." But I do not think it will be gravely asserted, as the Chief Secretary has insinuated, that the Debate has been an "abominable waste of Parliamentary time"; that it has partaken of the nature of obstruction; and that we, the Unionists who took up the provocation which was brandished in our face, are responsible for bringing before Parliament matters which are not relevant to the policy of the Government. I assert that we have seized this opportunity of coming to an issue with the Government because of the strong opinions which we hold as to the nature of their Irish administration; but do not let the House think, and do not let the Government say, that our opinions as to their policy are opinions of to-day or yesterday. I can trace their origin and their growth for a long time back. They are opinions which have gradually come into existence, and year after year, as we have watched and studied the policy of the Liberal Party in Ireland, have come to take such a hold of us that we cannot refrain from embracing every ordinary opportunity for placing them before Parliament and the country. We hold that the Government have adopted a policy which consists of a total abandonment of all sincere and genuine attempts to enforce the law in Ireland, and to preserve tranquillity and order. It was not always so. Some years ago the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House did not take the view of Irish government which the takes now. In the year 1868 he carried great reforms. He disestablished the Irish Church, and he passed the Irish Land Act, which was a great advance upon all prevailing ideas with respect to the holding of the land, and he encountered at that time the opposition of the Tory Party. But the opposition of the Tory Party at that time was strictly limited to the ordinary customs of Parliamentary opposition. And why? Because there was one great link between the two Parties—there was one great object which we had in common, which the Liberal Party carried out with the same energy and the same success as the Tory Party, and that was that Irish agitation, Irish disorder, Irish defiance of the law were to be kept down in spite of all the Liberal legislation which the Government passed. No one was more successful in maintaining law and preserving order in Ireland than the Liberal Government, which I have more than once held up to admiration in this House—the first Government over which the right hon. Gentleman presided, which existed from 1868 to 1874. That is what it was which kept the Debates in the House free from the intense opposition which we feel it our duty to offer now. I will now pass on to the year 1880, remarking only that in the year 1869 or 1870 the Government of the right hon. Gentleman passed one of the strongest Peace Preservation Acts for Ireland which has ever marked the Statute Book of this country. That Act was renewed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol (Sir M. Hicks-Beach) when Chief Secretary in 1874, but greatly modified by the efforts of Mr. Isaac Butt. I pass over the Tory Government of 1874 to 1880, and come again to the time when the right hon. Gentleman acceded to power. He declared at that time that Ireland was in a state of profound tranquillity, and he obviously looked forward to a peaceful and tranquil time which he could devote mainly to the promotion of reforms which were called for generally by the British people. He expressed the opinion that there was nothing in the state of Ireland to cause the slightest alarm or to divert the attention of Parliament from the great subjects on which it was the intention of the Government to offer legislation. But by far the greater portion of the time of that Parliament was occupied with Irish matters and Irish controversies. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman at that lime showed some reluctance to enforce strong coercive measures for the maintenance of law, and in consequence he lost his Chief Secretary, Mr. Forster. Then followed the Kilmainham Treaty, and you had a regular eirenicon, in which all coercion was to be abandoned, and there was to be union of hearts. But the union of hearts was followed after 48 hours by the bloody desolations of the Phoenix Park. Then the Prime Minister aroused himself and returned to the policy of his former days. Ireland was coerced with an iron hand. Even trial by jury was suspended, the law was administered in the sternest fashion, and the right hon. Gentleman denounced the leaders of the Irish Party who were resisting his stern repression "as men marching through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire."

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Never after the passing of the Crimes Act.

LORD R. CHURCHILL

I am not pinning the right hon. Gentleman down to a particular day or week. I am talk- ing of the policy pursued by his Government, and I am saying that in its determination to enforce the law, it was the same in policy as former Governments. Well, Sir, I now come to the right hon. Gentleman's legislation. Although he was keeping law in Ireland by the sternest measures, he passed a Laud Act which was undoubtedly a great advance on the former Act, and on all the recognised principles of the responsibilities and liabilities of contracts. He also extended the franchise to the Irish people on the same principle as it was applied to England. But did he encounter from the Tory Party the same opposition as I think he is likely to meet with now? No; because the responsible Leader of the Party recognised that, in enforcing the law, he and his friends and the Tory Party were all at one, and that whatever might be their dislike for his legislation, the order of the country was safe in his hands. These were the old lines of Liberal policy—large concessions to Irish grievances, but concessions which were inseparable from the policy of enforcing law and order. Now, Sir, I have laid down the premisses of the position which we to-night—and, I expect, for the future—shall have to take up. In 1885 we witnessed a startling change, a now departure. Look at the strangeness of that departure. The right hon. Gentleman, appealing to his own policy of maintaining law in Ireland, appealed to the country to give him a majority sufficiently large to dominate the Irish Party, and to make the Executive Government respected by them. The appeal was not successful. The country did not give him what he asked, for reasons which I do not care now to inquire into. What happened? When the right hon. Gentleman found that his Party was not sufficiently strong to control the Irish Party in this House, he made that great surrender of all the principles upon which he had for years conducted the government of the Empire. The bulk of his followers changed front with him. All idea of governing Ireland under the Imperial Parliament was abandoned. There was an expression of one of his colleagues which ran all over the country and was to the effect that the game of law and order was up. A separate Parliament and Government in Ireland was then suddenly declared for. Whether the change was sudden in the right hon. Gentleman's own mind I do not know; but certainly, as far as his followers and opponents were concerned, it was a change of stupefying suddenness. The right hon. Gentleman said that Ireland was to be left to look after herself, while England was to look on and wash her hands of all responsibility. That great surrender of great principles involved a very great relaxation in the moral strength and political fibre of his colleagues and the great Liberal Party. Crimes of violence, treasonable speeches, and associations for the purposes of robbery and intimidation, which they formerly denounced, were now systematically explained away. They were treated as the ordinary incidents of Irish government and Irish life, and the natural result of the system of Irish government. All through the late Parliament, when the then Government were encountering the greatest difficulties, the present Prime Minister, departing from his former attitude and from all the great traditions of his Party, set himself in opposition to the Executive Government in Ireland. Every act of that Government was assailed fiercely and with an unlimited expression of hostility, and frequently the Business of Parliament itself was unnecessarily delayed by the uncontrolled and unrestrained hostility of the Opposition. The Party opposite have lately been charging us with obstruction. They bring such charges absolutely fruitlessly against us. But we can bring against you, in the days of the former Parliament, charges of obstruction which we can effectually demonstrate and which you cannot compare with anything that has taken place in this Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury and the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary constantly brought a charge against my right hon. Friend (Mr. A. J. Balfour) that he would always defend the magistrates and police, whether they were right or wrong. I think on almost every occasion my right hon. Friend successfully resisted that accusation. But what is the charge we make against your Government now? We charge you with this: that owing to your conduct in the late Parliament, the Irish knew—and know—that no excess of violence in Ireland, no defiance of the law, no amount of riot and disorder will find the right hon. Gentleman, as it then did not find him, not prepared to place the best construction on all these acts, and even to defend and justify them. Does the right hon. Gentleman remember Mitchelstown? [Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE: Hear, hear!] The right hon. Gentleman does remember it, and he wanted the English people to remember it. But the memory of the English people does not seem to be up to the standard of the right hon. Gentleman's memory. The English people so remembered it that they returned against the right hon. Gentleman, at the last election, a majority of some 80 Members. What was the cry that was raised by the right hon. Gentleman and his Party in reference to Mitchclstown? It was, "Down with the police." I will take another instance that occurred in the last Parliament and which troubled the Irish Executive severely—I mean the Plan of Campaign. That combination was pronounced by the highest legal authority in Ireland to be the most illegal combination which human ingenuity had up to that time been able to devise. Did the right hon. Gentleman ever condemn the Plan of Campaign? Never once. When he was questioned about the Plan of Campaign when we tried, as we had a right to do, to obtain some definite opinion of that combination from the right hon. Gentleman, his reply invariably was that it was the direct result of the government of my right hon. Friend. At the same time, we had a great development of boycotting, and I think that during the whole time that the right hon. Gentleman has studied the affairs of Ireland he has never once condemned boycotting and its extraordinary and bloody consequences. Never have I heard from the right hon. Gentleman anything that could be construed into a denunciation of the system of boycotting. All the boycotting was, in the right hon. Gentleman's words, "a system of exclusive dealing." Taking the right hon. Gentleman's utterances through all the years from 1886 to 1892 the violators of the law in Ireland, the promoters of agitation in that country, knew that in him they had their strongest advocate and their most confiding friend. Then I come to the election of 1892. The right hon. Gentleman accomplished a feat which I do not think will take its place in history as one of great glory and magnificence. With the aid of his Irish friends, he came into power with a majority of about 40. Well, Sir, what happened? Of course, the right hon. Gentleman took Office. From that time, and from the date at which the right hon. Gentleman opposite accepted the office of Chief Secretary for Ireland, it was clear to any observer, in the slightest degree acquainted with the affairs of Ireland, that there was a great relaxation in all Executive control, the Irish disposition to license and to lawlessness, which the right hon. Gentleman and his followers had winked at and almost smiled on for years was now positively stimulated. All the clauses of the Crimes Act were immediately suspended. As my right hon. Friend has said, they were suspended without inquiry, without consultation with a single judicial authority, and before the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues could have acquired the slightest real knowledge of the circumstances of the country. Some of the magistrates and police who had shown activity under the late Government, and who were supposed to be men of bad disposition with respect to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman, were dismissed, while many were exiled to inferior positions in other parts of the country. There was a general feeling amongst that portion of the Irish people who agree with the Government that the bright and joyful day had come when old scores could be paid off. That feeling was apt to be encouraged by the policy of the right hon. Gentleman. I hope the right hon. Gentleman is beginning to understand some of the grounds upon which we have brought forward this Motion.

MR. J. MORLEY

I do not quite understand the statement of the noble Lord. I should like him to justify what he says.

LORD R. CHURCHILL

The right hon. Gentleman has an unfortunate habit of not understanding the statements we make, but that does not lead to the slightest diminution of their value. I say that the state of Clare, Limerick, and Kerry, which must have been brought under the notice of the right hon. Gentleman, was completely neglected by him. The Charges to the Grand Jury of Judges, who devote their best energies to endeavouring to administer law and justice, and to obtain convictions from juries against guilty men, are deliberately mocked at by the right hon. Gentleman.

MR. J. MORLEY

I beg the noble Lord's pardon. On the contrary, I have produced the Judges' Charges in support of our policy. We get more, and not fewer, convictions.

LORD R. CHURCHILL

Again I regret that I cannot altogether accept the statement of the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman never loses an opportunity of assuring the House that the Charges and utterances of the Irish Judges are not worthy of attention. When we Unionists bring the condition of affairs in Ireland before the House of Commons we are flatly contradicted; and in the face of all the evidence we bring in support of our statements we are accused, as we have been to-night, of gross exaggeration, and are declared to be the Party of obstruction. Sir, if the right hon. Gentleman or any of his supporters think that we care twopence for those accusations they are very much mistaken. Our withers are unwrung. We know that the bringing of these charges is part of a deliberate and settled plan devised for the purpose of inducing the House of Commons to depart from its duty of insisting upon maintaining the administration of the law in Ireland. Now I come to close quarters, and I wish to ask as to the question of the indiscriminate release of convicts. The right hon. Gentlemen the Chief Secretary and the Home Secretary, whom I do not see in his place, treated us the other night to a very great exhortation as to the great duty of the dispensation of mercy and the independent exercise by a Minister of the clemency of the Crown. "He was bound," he said, "by no rule; he was subjected to influence," and he did not even admit responsibility to the House of Commons. He claimed entire independence, and he declared that the clemency of the Crown was exercised by him in a manner thoroughly independent. Let me ask him to explain this: Who is the judge, the supreme arbiter in the House of Commons of his acts as Chief Secretary? Who supports his profes- sions if they choose? Who but the Irish Party and the Irish majority of 40 votes, who imagine, rightly or wrongly, that they gain politically by the Government action, which may be impugned by us, but who are under the impression—entirely mistaken as I believe—that a liberal enlargement of Irish malefactors will be advantageous to their prosperity and to their cause? These are the judges, these 40 Irish votes, of your independent exercise of the clemency of the Crown. If they go against you, where are the merits of your policy? If they stay away, you know the sentiments of the British Parliament are hostile to you. And these are the interested parties who applaud you and acquit you, and this is the biased verdict, which is the only verdict you can get, and which apparently completely satisfies you. I certainly do not wish to exaggerate the position in Ireland, or to say that it has reached the proportions of the former condition of disorder; but to those acquainted with Ireland it is no exaggeration, but the precise truth, to say that it appears to be the initiation of a new land agitation, which will probably, if the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues remain in Office, renew the old agitation in a worse and more disastrous form. That is what you have got in Ireland now. In Kerry, Clare, Limerick, and Mayo you have the commencement of an agitation connected with laud and worked by intimidation, and, if necessary, by crime. That agitation, which under the late Government was confined to Clare, has under your Government spread to Limerick, Mayo, and Kerry. Anybody acquainted with Ireland knows how rapid and how contagious that movement is; how quickly it spreads! I do not understand, I admit, the state of mind in which the Government face the House of Commons on this question of the condition of Ireland. I cannot realise what expectations they have formed as to the future of Ireland under the Home Rule Bill from the manner in which they are governing it now. They know the Nationalist Party well; they have known them as enemies, and they know them as the dearest of friends. They know their nature, and they know by experience their manner of going to work, and they know that under their pro- posals for the better government of Ireland the Nationalist Party will have the upper hand. What lessons have they taught this Party in the House? They have taught them a studious and persistent contempt for the enforcement of law; they have taught them constant and ready submission to popular clamour and violence so long as it is loud and violent enough; they have taught them the policy of possible extenuation of serious crime and wholesale denunciation of agents of the permanent Executive; they have scattered broadcast amongst the Irish people constant proclamations of suspicions and insinuations as to the incorruptibility, impartiality, and honesty of the Judicial Bench. These lessons Irishmen might have learned from the Government now in power, who know perfectly well that the Irish Nationalist Party have vowed vengeance against those who during six years have crossed their path. We find that not only in the Home Rule Bill, but in the actual Executive administration the right hon. Gentleman places every facility in the way of the now Irish Party, and to-morrow of the Irish Parliament, for the fulfilment of their vow. This Vote of Censure which I am supporting now, I say, is justified over and over again, and more justified than in any Votes of Censure which have been moved in Parliament, by the steady, planned, and plotted relaxation of the law by the Chief Secretary and by his deliberate attempt—his unsuccessful attempt—to hush up crime. I could give, many examples which would support that position; but I have been speaking for a long time. I will, therefore, pass on to larger questions. For a few moments I should like to argue in some detail the question of the right or the wrong of the Chief Secretary in abandoning the clauses of the Criminal Law (Procedure) Act, which gave power to try accused persons by change of venue. The Chief Secretary denied that the power to change the venue in a trial was of any value to the Government. But in an answer made in the course of a Debate some days ago, he admitted that in County Clare the late Government, by the powers of change of venue, convicted no fewer than 37 accused persons. The right hon. Gentleman, however, could not point to one case in which he has been able to convict since he became Chief Secretary, and since he has abandoned the Crimes Act. The right hon. Gentleman thought that 37 was a comparatively small number; but it was curious that he only quoted the districts of Clare. Why did not the right hon. Gentleman give the districts in Kerry under the late Government, or show how this clause operated on the peace and order and crime of Kerry? Why did he not tell the House that it was by trying accused persons under this clause that conviction was obtained in certain specified cases, and that through it the capital charge was based? Why did he not say that it was by trying the eight moonlighters in one indictment at Maryborough under this clause that they were convicted, and a great blow given to moonlighting in Kerry? The right hon. Gentleman's object is to conceal the effect produced by that clause on the administration of justice, and to travesty and ridicule the arguments of my right hon. Friend founded on the most assured experience of the great benefit in the conviction of criminals by that clause. I pass to another point, on which I think we are perfectly justified in attacking the Government. The Chief Secretary spoke lightly of the conduct of the Government in suspending the clauses of the Criminal Law (Procedure) Act the moment they came into Office. But has the Government reflected upon the immeasurable limits of the power which the Government claim? That Act is on the Statute Book. You have chosen to dispense with it altogether, although it is an Act of Parliament. The suspension of that Act by the Government raises a great constitutional question. They come into power and find this Act part of the law of Ireland, for the purpose of governing Ireland, and they can use as much or as little of it as they choose. But the Act is passed by the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland in a constitutional manner, and it is on the Statute Book; and I hold that it cannot be set aside in this manner. I could respect the Government if they had taken up the question and had said, as we said in 1885, "We are going to try and govern Ireland without coercion." That would have been an honest attitude. It might have been an imprudent attitude, but it would have been honest. But they have not the slightest intention, so far as we know, of trying to repeal that Act. They are not even pledged to repeal it. They construed their pledge to repeal it into a pledge to dispense with it. Why do they not bring in a Bill to repeal the Act and pass it through the House of Commons? The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury was asked a question upon that subject. What did he say? Did he say he would bring in a Bill at the earliest possible opportunity? Nothing of the kind. He contented himself, in answer to that question, with qualifications involved by the limitations of Parliamentary time. One short clause would do it. They have the power of preventing protracted debate. I ask the right hon. Gentleman's Irish friends, and I ask the opinion of this House generally, whether they are acting honestly, as a British Government ought to act, in dispensing with a Statute which their knowledge of the country, or, at any rate, of parts of the country, tolls them might be of great use to them—in dispensing with a Statute which they have not the courage nor the energy to repeal. I find in the position taken up by the Chief Secretary, and I wish the House to realize the platform on which he stands—I find a deliberate attempt to evade in every direction in Ireland the real operation of the law, and there is enough in the case even of dispensing with a Statute to justify half a dozen Votes of Censure. I cannot pass from the enlargement of convicts, I cannot pass from the principle of mercy, wisdom, and common sense which the right hon. Gentleman claims as his guiding motive without making a brief comparison between the case of a convict in Gweedore and the case of a convict in Belfast. The Gweedore convicts were the cause of the death of a Police Inspector, and they have been released. It was said that they acted in a fit of violent passion and excitement caused by the imprudent conduct of the police, and that their act was on that account almost excusable. But curiously enough these were Catholics defending their priest, and they merited the clemency of the right hon. Gentleman. But I will tell the House of a case that occurred when he was Chief Secretary some years ago. I will tell the House of the case of a man named Walker, who, labouring under excitement and immeasurable passions approaching almost beyond the constraint and control of human reason, in the midst of a great throng of rioters, in a wild moment fired a shot at a policeman and killed him. I do not know whether that occurred when the right hon. Gentleman was in office or after he had gone out of office, but this man was sentenced to 20 years' penal servitude, and that sentence will probably see his life out. This old fellow bore before the riots a good character for decent and orderly behaviour, and since he commenced his convict life he has borne an irreproachable record. He is a very old man, and in his case—unfortunately for him he is a Protestant—petitions for the clemency of the Crown have been sent to the Lord Lieutenant, but up to the present moment no reply has been given to them.

MR. J. MORLEY

Were they not sent to the late Government?

LORD R. CHURCHILL

I am informed that they were actually laid before the present Lord Lieutenant, and I suppose they would come before the Chief Secretary; but even if I am wrong in my statement, the right hon. Gentleman would not be able to detract from the damaging comparison we are able to make between the two cases. The right hon. Gentleman has considered the cases of several convicts in Ireland. In his search for cases, the Chief Secretary had entirely overlooked this un-fortunate Protestant with one foot in the grave. Much more might be said, but I will not further trespass on the time of the House. I do not admit that this Debate has been useless or fruitless. We have placed before the House a case which, if the majority do not regard it, will certainly produce an effect on those outside, who will ultimately decide the issue between us. Do not imagine I underrate, or do not realize to the full, the magnitude of the issue. I know well —and nobody knows better—that the Unionist Party has probably before it anxious and trying times. There are periods in the life of great States when Providence permits the courage of leaders, the strength of Parties, and the endurance of a nation to be tested for good or ill; and perhaps we are going through one of those periods now. I do not admit that the courage of the Unionist Party need for a moment falter. We found our hopes on the truth of our principle as ascertained by long experience, on the proved stability and continuity of our Irish policy going back even as far as the days of Sir Robert Peel; and, morally, we found our policy on the contrast we can draw—a contrast supported by unanswerable facts— between the social order and tranquillity among the Irish people which distinguished the last two modern Tory Administrations, and the calamities and turbulence which distinguished the three Administrations of the present Prime Minister. Beyond this we place our reliance for Imperial safety on the clear perception between right and wrong, on the great force of high moral common-sense of the English people. It is to them we look for justice and for judgment; and it is to them that to-morrow we shall appeal.

DR. CAMERON (Glasgow, College)

said, that the speech of the noble Lord would have been fresher if it had been delivered in the last Parliament, and still more fresh if it had been delivered in the Parliament before. The noble Lord had undertaken to support the case of the Leader of the Opposition, and he had signally failed. The case of the Opposition had been demolished by the Chief Secretary for Ireland and the Prime Minister beyond all possibility of dispute. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition had complained of the government of Ireland, and thought it would have been better if they had taken a different course; but when he was Secretary for Scotland, he threw the Highlands into a state of excitement which could not be defended. When the Leader of the Opposition was Secretary for Scotland, a house in which a man was dying was invaded by his police. He also changed the venue in a case for trial, with the result that the accused were not in a position to call witnesses in defence. There was a poor imbecile taken amongst a batch of prisoners who were tried in Edinburgh. No witnesses could be brought forward, and he brought the matter before the right hon. Gentleman, stating that one of the accused was a hopeless imbecile, yet he refused to listen to his appeal. He thought that capped the example quoted by the noble Lord. He agreed with and approved everything that the Government had done in the matter of the Irish prisoners referred to in the course of the Debate, for he was perfectly certain that Ireland would not suffer there from. It seemed to him that there could be no more proper method of meeting the Motion than by refusing to discuss it, for it had been put before the House in circumstances which he considered was an insult to the House, under pretences which insured for it priority to the dislocation and inconvenience of the Business of the House. He held that the method in which this sham Vote of Censure had been brought forward was calculated to endanger what was a constitutional practice of great utility, and it should receive the most contemptuous rejection the House could give it. He had thought that if he moved the Previous Question it would take out of the hands of the Government the responsibility, and would allow the House to vindicate its own honour. He, however, understood that the Government objected to his Amendment. They did so on very intelligible grounds. They said that the Previous Question had a conventional significance attached to it outside of the House, and if this Vote of Censure was got rid of by the Previous Question the decision would be misunderstood. They thought on that account that it would be better met by another Amendment or a direct negative. He therefore ventured to propose now not the Previous Question, but an Amendment that would confer on the Government a Vote of Confidence, while at the same time conveying to the House a warning against intruding such Motions in future. What he ventured to propose was to leave out all the words of the Motion after the word "That," in order to insert— This House records its unabated confidence in the Irish Executive and in. Her Majesty's Government, and resolves that henceforth no Resolution calling in question the conduct of the Executive or the Government be held as worthy of the precedence accorded by usage to serious Motions of Want of Confidence, unless the terms of such Motion have been decided upon after deliberation by the recognised leaders of the Party on whose behalf such Resolution is proposed to be moved. He cordially agreed that the Government deserved the highest Vote of Confidence which it was in their power to give them. He was not going to dwell on the Vote of Confidence part of his Amendment, but proposed to confine himself to the latter portion of it. On the Prime Minister's assent, the Leader of the Opposition forthwith gave notice that he would move a Vote of Censure. He did so purely on the impulse of the moment. But when the Leader of the Opposition gave notice at any time of a Vote of Censure on the Government the House were bound to consider that that was done after deliberate consultation with his colleagues of the Cabinet to which he belonged. But in his instance there was no such consultation. Two minutes before notice was first given the right hon. Gentleman had not the smallest idea whatever of moving. That first notice was given at a quarter-past 5 o'clock on Thursday night. At a quarter-past 7 o'clock on the same evening the right hon. Gentleman gave public notice of the terms of his Motion. Where was there reason for thinking that the right hon. Gentleman in this instance behaved with proper respect to the House? There was no deliberate and decorous consultation with his colleagues of the late Administration. He had been under the impression that Lord Salisbury was the Leader of the Conservative Party. Had the noble Marquess been deposed? If so, the Government had a right to know, and to know who was his successor. The right hon. Gentleman had told the House that he had consulted his colleagues on the Front Opposition Bench, or some of them. That he had confined his consultation to a few of his colleagues was what he complained of. He supposed these few colleagues included the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thanet (Mr. J. Lowther), the Member for Dublin University (Mr. Carson), and the noble Lord the Member for Paddington —a more unfortunate trio of councillors it would be impossible for anyone to conceive. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thanet was notorious for his desire for omnivorous discussion—a tendency that had recently developed to such an inconvenient extent as to call for restrictive treatment at the hands of no less an authority than the Speaker himself. The Member for Dublin University imagined he knew more about Ireland than those who did know, and that what he did not know was not knowledge, while the noble Lord was known to give advice which, if followed, brought about fatal results. But, acting on the advice of that trio, the Leader of the Opposition had hastily scribbled out the terms of the Vote of Censure, and handed it to the Clerk at the Table with indecent haste. The proceedings were an insult to the House. The Prime Minister, notwithstanding, had accepted the challenge with chivalrous courage. He had given to the Motion the precedence due to a serious Motion of Want of Confidence, and he had even fixed for it the very day the Leader of the Opposition made a demand for. He could not help feeling that in fixing on Monday for the discussion the Prime Minister was very wide awake, because he possibly feared that if the Easter holidays were allowed to intervene the Leader of the Opposition would find some way of wriggling out. Why was the Leader of the Opposition in such a hurry? Why was the Leader of the Opposition desirous of having this Debate over before the Easter Recess? It could not have been obstruction that could have induced him to bring forward the Motion; for if he had chosen to wait until after Easter, he might have got a week for it. Why, then, was the demand made for Monday? He could imagine only one reason. The prophecy was that the Government would not last till the end of March, and the Opposition felt that they must have an early opportunity for striking a fatal blow. He asked the House to accept the Amendment which he had read. [Ministerial cries of "No, no!"] Well, he would venture to ask the House to take steps to assert its dignity and put down this unprecedented abuse of a valuable constitutional privilege and practice by rejecting a Vote of Censure so inopportunely and insultingly thrust upon it, simply for the purpose—to paraphrase the classic words of the noble Lord—of gratifying the ambition of a young man in a hurry.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 272; Noes 319.—(Division List, No. 49.)