ADDRESS FOR PAPERS. (Hansard, 27 March 1865)

THE MARQUESS OF WESTMEATH

said, he had to bring under their Lordships' notice a case arising out of an investigation 269 that took place on the 25th of February, before the Petty Sessions at Colooney, in the county of Sligo. The young woman, of whose assault and ill-treatment the magistrates took cognizance, was named Catharine Gaughran. She was a young person of sixteen years of age, born in Scotland of Irish parents. She remained in Scotland until she was about sixteen years of age, when, her parents being dead, she was invited by her so-called guardians, her uncle and aunt, to return to Ireland. She did so, and went to service in a town near Colooney. She had been a Roman Catholic; but having attained to years of discretion, she changed her religion in Scotland and became a Protestant. The manner in which she gave her evidence was such as to convince the magistrates that she was well able to judge for herself. She took service in a Protestant family, and was there visited by her uncle and aunt, who endeavoured to persuade her to change her religion. She refused, and they then called in a Roman Catholic priest, who assured her she was going to hell, and pressed her to return to her own faith; but she still refused, saying that in Scotland she had acquired a taste for reading the Bible. Her aunt thereupon, in the house of this Protestant, violently assaulted her, by kneeling upon her, and otherwise using her most inhumanly. On the 20th of January she was sent on an errand, but was hunted out of the house to which she was sent. Her aunt dragged her by the hair of her head, and other persons assisted to drag her along the broken stones of the road for several yards. Four of the police were present while this was going on, and were appealed to, but in vain, to take her out of the hands of those persons. A sub-inspector, named Burke, was looking out of the window of his house, and saw the assault. He was called upon by a Mr. Simpson to interfere, but he never stirred. "No," said the police, "It is a family matter, and we cannot interfere." The poor girl was hunted into the house of a man named Hart, and was there detained until the evening of the following day. She was then rescued by a magistrate's warrant, obtained by the Protestant minister of the place. An investigation, which occupied four or five days, took place at Colooney, before four magistrates—two Roman Catholics and two Protestants. The aunt was found guilty, and sentenced to be imprisoned for one month, and some of the wretched boys who were 270 concerned in the assault and had been no doubt instigated by the priest were imprisoned for two or four months, with hard labour. Three out of the four constables were found guilty of neglect of duty; the sub-inspector was fined £2, while the magistrates left, as they said, his particular case in the hands of the Government. If a Government really existed in Ireland there could be no doubt that it was bound to take notice of the misconduct of the police; for, if the constabulary were not bound to discharge their duty, irrespective of the wishes of Roman Catholic clergymen, the British dominion in Ireland would be nothing but a myth. But so far from the sub-inspector, who had so grossly misconducted himself, being dismissed, he believed he had escaped punishment altogether, except as to the fine of £2inflicted by the magistrates. It might be said by some parties that he was sensitive with regard to what he regarded as Roman Catholic encroachments, and he admitted that such was the case; but he certainly never complained without reason. He was of Roman Catholic lineage himself, and had many friends and relatives belonging to that religion. In 1825 and 1826, though not then in Parliament, he assisted the Roman Catholics to obtain that measure of justice to which he believed them entitled; and at that time no form of protestation was too strong for them to make that no danger to the Protestant institutions of the country could arise from the concessions which were then made. But now-a-days men seemed to glory in the overthrow of the Established Church, as a matter which was not only possible, but must be near at hand. Their Lordships had only to look at what was going on around them every day to be convinced that that was the fact. There was the case of Mary Ryan, in which the right hon. Gentleman, whose duty it was to look after such matters, had taken no steps, or shown the slightest disposition, to grapple with the parties who had violated the law. The right hon. Gentleman said the persons—miscreants of both sexes he (the Marquess of Westmeath) would call them—who were charged with taking this helpless woman beyond the seas and burying her alive, had no bad motive for it. If they had no bad motive, why was a law put on the statute book to punish the offence? The fact was that the right hon. Gentleman dived into people's motives for the purpose of saving himself from the trouble of doing 271 his duty. Another recent case was that of Eliza M'Dermott, a girl who was surreptitiously decoyed from her mother and conveyed to one of these pandemoniums. And now this poor girl in Ireland was obliged to leave the country, as she could no longer remain there in safety. Was that no proof of the powerlessness of the law in Ireland? Revise the Liturgy, banish the pews and crinolines into the galleries, which is their proper place. Give up the body of the parish churches to the people, to whom they belong. He would here say a few words with all respect and affection to the right rev. Bench. Revise the Liturgy, conciliate the Independants and the Wesleyans into the Church. Banish the pews and the crinolines out of the body of the parish churches into the galleries, for the body of the church belongs to the people, and pews are an usurpation. Now, the real question which he wished to bring before their Lordships was whether the constabulary in Ireland were or were not to carry out the law irrespective of any private interests or personal influences? In the present case the Lord Lieutenant appeared to have taken no action whatever. If he did not know the merits of the case, he must have allowed himself to be betrayed by the police. Regarding the uselessness of the office of Lord Lieutenant, he had often expressed an opinion. The Lord Lieutenant was in the receipt of £20,000 a year, and he had since he went over to Ireland received something like fifty deputations, every one of which, with a single exception—that upon the subject of the Shannon navigation—asked to be exonerated from some obligation, or for a share of the public money. Such was the way in which the government of Ireland was carried on; and he had deemed it to be his duty to lay the present case before their Lordships—and he would probably have another to bring under their notice before long—in order to warn the Government as to the course which they were pursuing, and to show that, under existing circumstances, the constabulary and its management in that country were a machinery in the hands of the Popish priesthood. It was, he knew, the fashion to attribute the outrages which had taken place in the north of Ireland to the Orangemen; but that he contended—and he was no Orangeman—was a cruel misrepresentation. They were not the cause of the riots in Belfast, for everybody knew that they were excited by a treasonable procession which had a short time previously 272 taken place in Dublin. They had, however, so far as he could see, been guilty of no crime, unless it were a sensitiveness with respect to the support of the Protestant religion as by law established. The noble Marquess concluded by moving an Address for— Copy of the Conviction made at the Hearing of the Magistrates of the Petty Sessions of Colooney in the county of Sligo, on Tuesday the 25th February last, and on the subsequent Jays, in the Case of the Complaint of Catharine Gaughran against Michael Hart, Wineford Hart, and others, on a Charge of assaulting and afterwards violently putting her in Duress on the 20th of January last, and there detaining her until released by a Magistrate's Warrant; and also of the Conviction of Sub Inspector Burke and others of the Police Force, having been present at that Outrage in open Day and declining to interfere and rescue Catharine Gaughran from the brutal Treatment she was receiving; and for a Copy of the Decision of the Inspector General of the Constabulary upon the Conduct of the Individuals of the Force inculpated upon that Occasion.