§ MR. FLYNN (Cork Coanty, N.)I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland, in connection with recent proceedings at the Cork Sommer Assizes, in the trials of Michael Barry and Patrick Fitzgerald, is which forty-five and twenty-five jurors respectively were ordered to stand by, whether he can now say on whose authority and upon what information the Crown Solicitor acted in stating that canvassing of jurors was practised before the opening of the trials; and whether the constabulary authorities made any report in regard to the alleged canvassing.
§ THE ATTORNEY - GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. ATKINSON,) Londonderry, N.In the case of Barry, the Crown Solicitor obtained his information from the police and from one of the Grand Jurors who stated that he was himself canvassed. In the Fitzgerald case, which was a Whiteboy offence, the Crown Solicitor came to the conclusion on which he acted from the fact that a subscription for the defence of the prisoner had been got up and was extensively subscribed to throughout the county, and that before the assizes the principal witness for the prosecution, when on his way to Mass, was publicly hooted at, called an informer and stoned, and also from the reports furnished to him by the police.
§ MR. FLYNNIs the right hon. Gentleman aware that owing to this system of jury challenging Sergeant Sheridan procured the conviction of three innocent men?
§ *MR. SPEAKEROrder, order!
§ CAPTAIN DONELAN (Cork County, E.)Is it the fact that out of seventy jurors ordered to stand aside at least sixty-five were Catholics?
§ MR. ATKINSONI have no information as to that.