THE IRISH MAGISTRACY. (Hansard, 21 April 1853)

The EARL of CLANCARTY

said: My Lords, after what your Lordships heard in the course of the debate on last Tuesday, relative to the restoration of Mr. Kirwan, a stipendiary magistrate, to the performance of the duties of his office, from which he had been suspended, it will hardly be necessary for me to add anything in support of the Motion of which I then gave notice, and which I am now to submit, for the production of the correspondence between the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and the Earl of Roden, which originated in the desire of the noble Viceroy to restore the noble Earl to the commission of the peace, and which resulted in his not being reinstated. It may be in the recollection of your Lordships that the act of the Lord Lieutenant in proposing to restore my noble Friend to the commission of the peace, from which the Government in 1849 had thought proper to have his name removed, was referred to by the noble Duke opposite, in connexion with Mr. Kirwan's restoration, as showing bow impartially his Excellency had distributed his acts of grace—that when restoring the suspended stipendiary magistrate, Mr. Kirwan, who the noble Duke informed us was a Roman Catholic, the Lord Lieutenant had shown himself equally ready to restore to the magisterial office the noble Earl, who was described to your Lordships as an opponent of the present Government. My noble Friend was very naturally displeased at his case having been thus noticed as in any degree analogous to that of Mr. Kirwan, and in the course of the speech he then addressed to your Lordships, brought before the House the correspondence that had taken place between the Lord Lieutenant and himself in reference to his reinstatement. My Lords, I think it important that that correspondence should be laid upon the table of the House. It may be objected that in point of form that correspondence was private, but I cannot so consider the subject of it. It is the only record of a public act of the highest public functionary in Ireland, and that act one of great public interest; as such it was manifestly referred to by the noble Duke', and as such it was regarded by my noble Friend who read the correspondence, and rested upon it his justification in not having at 154 once accepted the Lord Lieutenant's invitation to him to resume the office and responsibilities of the magistracy. In order to my noble Friend's restoration to the commission of the peace, it appeared that he must recognise the propriety of his having formerly been removed from it. My noble Friend could not do any such thing. The very questionable grounds upon which he had been superseded were debated in this House in 1850, and the papers relative thereto were laid upon the table; it is therefore unnecessary that I should now further refer to them. I may, however, observe, that the verdict of public opinion was entirely in condemnation of the act of the Government. It is, I think, much to be regretted, that my noble Friend the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who, I am sure, sincerely desired the restoration of the noble Earl to a position in which he had ever been most highly respected by his countrymen, should have so worded a communication designed to have been at once most gracious and friendly, as to frustrate its object—as, in fact, to have the appearance, almost, of having been designed to entrap the noble Earl into an admission inconsistent with his known feeling of undeserved wrong, and with his opinion that there was no necessity for his having been before superseded. My noble Friend, upon such terms, could not but decline the honour intended him in the Lord Lieutenant's communication, but at the same time expressed his willingness to resume the duties of the magisterial office if he might do so without making an admission which his conscious rectitude forbad. The Lord Lieutenant did not accede to his terms; an act of self-condemnation upon the part of my noble Friend must be the condition of my noble Friend's reinstatement. I pray your Lordships to contrast this treatment of the noble Earl with that of the stipendiary magistrate whose case was under your consideration on Tuesday last. Mr. Kirwan having been sentenced to a suspension of six months from his office for most improper conduct in the discharge of his duties, for which he ought rather to have been dismissed, is, as the first official act of the Lord Lieutenant, freely and unconditionally restored. My noble Friend, who had been most improperly dismissed, and whose high character in the administration of justice, and in the performance of every public duty had been ever unimpeachable, can only be restored upon terms 155 that would have been disparaging; while the proved misconduct or utter incapacity of Mr. Kirwan was no bar to his reinstatement in the important office of a stipendiary magistrate. The refusal on the part of my noble Friend to admit that he had done wrong, when he knew that he had not, and that the Government in 1849 had done right when he knew they had done wrong, is a sufficient reason for continuing to deprive the country of his truly valuable and unpaid services. My Lords, I move for the correspondence in no unfriendly spirit towards either the Lord Lieutenant or Her Majesty's Government; but I think the case of my noble Friend was hastily and inconsiderately disposed of, and am confident that if attention be again directed to it, the reconsideration would be followed by results more satisfactory to the country, and just by the individual. There is an inconsistency between the terms of the Lord Lieutenant's letter to my noble Friend proposing his reappointment to the commission of the peace, and the tenor of the letter addressed by his predecessor in 1849 to the Lord Chancellor recommending that he should be superseded; that step was recommended on the ground "that a due regard for the future preservation of the peace and for the administration of justice in a manner which would be entitled to public confidence and respect, imperatively required it." My Lords, is it less important that the administration of justice should be respected now than in 1849? And yet we are now told that the necessity for my noble Friend's exclusion from the commission of the peace had now ceased. It is difficult, my Lords, to conceive how the noble Earl's exclusion should have been at any time justified in the mind of the noble Viceroy, who testifies so truly in the subsequent part of his letter to his high character and the just estimation in which he is held by his countrymen. Entertaining the high opinion he expresses of my noble Friend's claims upon the esteem of the public, I trust the Lord Lieutenant may now be authorised to carry out what was intended as an act of grace by him in a manner unexceptionable. I have only now to move that there be laid upon the table of this House— A Copy of the Correspondence that has taken place between the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and the Earl of Roden relative to the restoration of the latter to the commission of the peace.