§ CAPTAIN CRAIG (Down, E.)I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can give the grounds upon which Martin Hawes has recently been discharged from Galway Gaol after undergoing only eight weeks and three days of his sentence of four calendar months for assaulton the police, and five weeks additional for drunkenness and disorder; and whether his attention has been called to the character of this man, and to the fact that he has been convicted for similar offences on forty-nine previous occasions.
§ MR. BIRRELLIt would be contrary to the established practice to state the reasons which influence the Lord-Lieutenant in the exercise of the prerogative of mercy vested in him. All the circumstances of this particular case were before the Lord-Lieutenant, including the fact that the prisoner had been previously convicted on forty-nine occasions, as well as the fact that he had now suffered over two months imprisonment.