IRISH FREE STATE CIVIL SERVANTS. (Hansard, 25 April 1928)

HL Deb 25 April 1928 vol 70 cc810-58 810

§ LORD CARSON rose to ask His Majesty's Government—

1. Whether the attention of the Government has been called to the fact that by a decision of the Judicial Committee 811 of the Privy Council, given on the 3rd May, 1927, in the action of Wigg and Cochrane versus the Attorney-General of the Irish Free State, certain Irish civil servants formerly in the employ of the British Government and transferred to the Free State Government were declared to be entitled to certain rights of pensions and compensation under Article 10 of the Treaty, confirmed by an Act of the Imperial Parliament in 1922;
2. Whether the Government of the Free State was represented before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and took part in the proceedings;
3. Whether the Government of the Free State now refuse to carry out the judgment of the Privy Council, and have declared their intention to deprive the civil servants of the pensions and compensation to which they have been held entitled;
4. Whether the Lord Chancellor at the time of the passing of the Act of 1922 stated that the terms embodied in the Article 10 of the Treaty were fully considered at the time with the representatives of the Civil Service and accepted by them as satisfactory;
5. How many civil servants are affected by the decision of the Privy Council;
6. Whether any change in Article 10 as confirmed by Parliament can be made without an Act of the Imperial Parliament;
7. What negotiations have taken place between His Majesty's Government and the Government of the Irish Free State on this subject;
8. Whether the civil servants concerned have been consulted in the matter and have agreed to a reduction or modification of the rights conferred upon them by Article 10 as declared by the Privy Council;

§ And to move for Papers.

§ The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, I put down the Questions which stand on the Paper in my name some six weeks ago in order to elicit from the Government what was to happen in the event which I will recount to your Lordships. I was asked at the time by the Government to allow them to stand over during the regretted illness of the then Lord Chancellor. It lends at all events to me, who was long associated with him 812 both in law and in politics, a certain amount of sad interest, that the object with which the Questions were put off has never been attained—namely, that we should have him here, as we should love to have him here, to take part in a discussion which largely affects matters connected with his Department. I noticed that in another place the Prime Minister, on being questioned on the same subject a few nights ago, declined—I am not complaining of that—to answer certain questions upon the ground that this debate was pending in your Lordships' House. I only mention that in order that your Lordships may appreciate that, although it may only seem to affect a few individuals—and it is about those individuals that I am specially concerned—yet in my opinion it raises, or may raise, through the way it has been so far treated by the Government, questions of far-reaching importance in the administration of justice, not only in this country but especially throughout His Majesty's Dominions. I hope that in those circumstances, being fully conscious of what is involved, I shall be able to restrain myself and speak with calm deliberation upon a subject on which I feel anything but calm. Still, there is something beyond even the wrongs of individuals or of a class of individuals which we must be careful about, and one must, at least, conduct the debate with such calmness and deliberation as is due to so serious a subject.

§ So far as the question raised by the Notice upon the Paper is concerned, it is a very easy one to state, and I do not think I shall have any difficulty in carrying your Lordships up to the point at which the difficulties arise. When the new Government was set up in the Free State as far back as 1921, the date of the Treaty (as it was called) which was ratified by Act of Parliament, there were a number of men who were in employment as civil servants of the British Government. They belonged to the British Civil Service and I ask your Lordships to bear that in mind. They were not in any sense Irish civil servants. They were merely British civil servants who were allotted to Ireland to carry out their duties just as they might have been allotted to any other part of this country. When the Government was being set up arrangements had to be made, of course, as to what was to become of these men. 813 They were a part of what was called the British garrison. They held very unenviable positions, they did not want to be transferred to any new Government, they had obtained their positions under the British Civil Service and they had obtained them through competition and examination like all other civil servants. But they had no voice in the matter. Parliament here claimed the right—and no doubt it had the right—to transfer these men by Act of Parliament, whether they liked it or not, to positions under the new Government and under the new conditions.

§ What I specially want to get your Lordships to appreciate is that the moment that was done the whole situation for these men was absolutely changed. They had no longer the opportunities and the possibilities of gaining promotion in the higher branches or in any branches of your Civil Service over here. They had to run the chance of promotion under a Government which had a great many people to whom to give various offices and they had to do the best they could. Looking up the debates which occurred at the time that all this took place, I find that I pointed out that I saw very little difference between the charges that were made in reference to Chinese slavery, which used to be called indentured labour, under which men were transferred from one employer to another, and the transference of civil servants, as in this case, from the British Government to a new Government set up, as your Lordships will remember, at a time of great stress and trial in Ireland.

§ At the time that the new Government was set up various Acts of Parliament were necessary—Acts of Parliament passed in the Free State and Acts passed in this country. Amongst others on which a great deal turns in this case, there was an Act which made statutory Article 10 of the Treaty. That Article received the force of law and made the following provisions for these men:— The Government of the Irish Free State agrees to pay fair compensation on terms not less favourable than those accorded by the Act of 1920 to Judges, officials, members of police forces, and other public servants who are discharged by it or who retire in consequence of the change of Government effected in pursuance hereof.… That is their charter. That is still the law of the Imperial Parliament. A great number of the civil servants, shortly after 814 the setting up of the Government, for reasons into which it is not necessary to enter, proposed to retire. They did retire, and then came the question of their pensions. The Free State Government claimed to settle the pensions at their own will. They claimed that these ex-civil servants of Great Britain had no rights whatsoever in the Courts. They said: "This is a Departmental matter, we fixed your pension at so much"—they set up a Committee for the purpose of doing so—"and you must take that decision or get nothing." That decision was challenged by the civil servants. They said that they had a statutory right given them under the Acts of Parliament passed at the time of the Treaty to go to the Courts and have their cases fixed by the Courts and by nobody else, if they did not come to an agreement. There were protracted negotiations, but at last the civil servants who were retiring took the only course that was open to them, and the proper course; they brought an action making the Attorney-General of the Free State a defendant so as to have the case tried in the Courts as between themselves and the Government. In this case both points were raised, namely, whether they had any right at all to go to the Courts and also what their pensions ought to be.

§ I want to trace briefly what happened. After negotiation and finding agreement impossible a writ against the Free State Government to their Attorney-General was issued so far back as 1923. I want your Lordships to notice that date because I may tell the House that since the issue of that writ, now nearly five years ago, the Free State Government have made it—I was going to say a pretext, but I want to use no word that is offensive—a reason why they would allow no other retirements in accordance with the rights under the Statutes, saying that they could do nothing as they did not know their rights until this case, which is now known historically in Ireland, and in the branch of the Colonial Office that is concerned as the case of Wigg and Cochrane versus the Attorney-General of the Irish Free State, was decided. The case was tried before one of the Free State Judges in Dublin, Mr. Justice Meredith. It was tried in 1924, and the judgment was given in July of that year. The Judge decided that the civil servants were right in their contention 815 that they had a statutory legal right to go to the Courts and have it determined what their pensions should be, and he himself, going into the various Statutes and Orders, determined how much the pensions should be. Mark that this was no partisan English Judge, no partisan Northern Judge, but one of their own Judges, who gave that decision. The Free State Government at once took the matter to the Court of Appeal over there, and the appeal came on in 1925. The Court of Appeal in the Free State reversed the judgment of Mr. Justice Meredith, not, as I understand, upon what we should call the merits of the case, but holding that the civil servants had no statutory rights at all and could not go to the Courts for relief. Upon that Mr. Justice Meredith's judgment came, so far, to an end.

§ But the matter did not stop there. Leave to appeal to the Privy Council was then obtained by these civil servants. That leave was granted after a hearing and the case was heard before the Judicial Committee in 1926 and 1927. The Judicial Committee consisted of the late Lord Chancellor, of an ex-Lord Chancellor, Lord Finlay, another ex-Lord Chancellor, Lord Haldane, and one who has been very long one of my own colleagues and who long presided as head of the Justiciary in Scotland, my noble and learned friend Lord Dunedin. No one could say that this was an incompetent Court. The case was thrashed out there day after day with the Attorney-General or his Counsel appearing for the Free State. So far as one could judge every possible point was argued, and on May 3 last year the Privy Council gave a judgment in favour of the contention of the civil servants, holding that they had a right to go to the Courts and again fixing the sum to which they were entitled as pensions. In other words, the Privy Council restored the judgment of Mr. Justice Meredith. That was on May 3, 1927.

§ Immediately thereupon the civil servants took their order from the Privy Council, brought it back and, as we say, made it a rule of court in Mr. Justice Meredith's Court in the High Court in Dublin. From that day to this—and it is nearly a year ago—the Free State Government have refused, under various pretexts, to do anything to carry out the 816 judgment of the Privy Council. Letters were written by various enquirers, and here are some of the answers:— The political preoccupations of Ministers since the judgment was delivered have rendered earlier consideration of these matters impracticable. They are getting into our habits. The Minister would very much regret that they"— that is, the British ex-civil servants concerned— should now feel compelled to incur the expense and trouble of resort to the Courts. That is, further resort to the Courts. Another letter runs:— The whole question is at present receiving the active consideration of the Executive Council, and the matter will be disposed of at the earliest possible moment. The first matter of very vast importance that I wish to refer to in this case is this, that the rule of Court has laid in the High Court in Dublin a whole year after four years of litigation and the matter stands exactly to-day as it did then, and not one single step has been taken to assert the rights of these men.

§ The moment the Executive comes in to thwart the Courts and the judgment of the Courts there is an end of any necessity for Courts at all, and I do not believe if the case happened in this country, that any Government—not even the Conservative Government—would dare to go in and say: "We will not obey the judgment of the Courts." So it dribbled on, and more time was spent. I really do wish that Governments could remember that while the lapse of time may be very unimportant for them it is very important to the individual. It is now some years since the Treaty and we have these poor people hanging about and always thinking that something is going to be done. Some of them are here in London, heartbroken at the delay, and many of them put to the greatest possible suffering because they can do neither one thing nor the other.

§ So the matter rested until what I must call an extraordinary thing happened. In February last the Government of the Free State announced in the Dail, through the Minister of Finance, that they did not intend to carry out the judgment of the Privy Council. They said that they intended to legislate so as to change the terms which the Privy Council had decided 817 were the terms that Parliament had given to these civil servants. May I say, for I think it is important that your Lordships should bear this in mind, that where the obligation conies upon this country so much is that when the Act was passing through this House most specific assurances were given by the late Lord Chancellor and also by my noble friend Lord Salisbury, the Lord Privy Seal, that if these obligations were not carried out by the Free State Government they would be carried out by the British Government. I shall read to your Lordships those pledges in a few moments.

§ What happened next in regard to the case was this. It was announced that the Legislative proposals would include a provision for the setting up of a statutory Committee, constituted somewhat on the lines of the defunct Committee, whose duty it would be to adjudicate upon all pending and future claims under Article 10, and the determination of this Committee on any application or question referred to it would be final and conclusive. That means this: "We do not like the Courts, we do not like the decisions of the Courts"—it is a kind of habit growing up in some of the Departments here—"and so we will turn ourselves into a Court, or somebody who is under us into a Court." When that was brought to the notice of the civil servants I need hardly tell you that there was consternation in their ranks. They had fought for four years and waited for nearly one. They had a judgment filed in the Privy Council, and also in the Court in Dublin, in their favour, and they were told that all that was to be set at nought.

§ What was the next thing? The matter was then raised in the House of Commons here, and I think the most astonishing answer, that certainly any lawyer ever heard, was given in that House. Mr. Amery, Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, on being asked about the question of the civil servants and Article 10, and the judgment of the Privy Council, answered in effect that the judgment of the Privy Council does not carry out what was the intention of those who framed the Treaty in 1921, and that, therefore, His Majesty's Government had joined with the Irish Government and had given them permission in advance so 818 to change the taw that the Privy Council's judgment would not prevail. It is almost unbelievable that any Minister in this country should say that. Let me point out what it means. It says in effect that you must get at the intention of those who framed the Treaty. Does that mean the gentlemen who met at midnight and signed the Treaty? What Mr. Amery entirely forgot was that the only thing with which we are concerned is the Act of Parliament, passed by the two Houses—not the intention of the Treaty-makers, but the meaning of the Act itself. How are you going to ascertain the intention of those who signed the Treaty? Nothing could be more calamitous than to be told even that you are to go back and find, by findings dehors an Act of Parliament, what was meant by Parliament. It would be a revolution in the whole method of conducting administration by legislation in this country.

§ Mr. Amery says that they gave their concurrence and co-operation in the proposed policy outlined by the Government of the Free State. Do just picture what has happened. Who came to Mr. Amery and asked him to allow the Free State to upset the judgment of the Privy Council? It was one of the litigants—namely, the Free State Government, who for five years had been a party to the litigation, who took their chance in the litigation, who were represented in the litigation, and who then, behind the backs of the other party, walked into the Colonial Office, found a complacent Minister and said: "Please, Mr. Amery, you really must allow us to alter what has been done by the Privy Council; it does not carry out our wishes." And he replied: "Certainly, gentlemen. Is there anything more you want?" And he gave his full concurrence. I suppose it is because I have been now for 51 years engaged in one way or another in the administration of the law, but to me the abhorrent part of the whole affair is that this was done behind the backs of the other litigants. And to say either that the judgment should not prevail or that the judgment was wrong without hearing the parties who for years had been litigating in this matter, would be an outrage upon decency in relation to the administration of justice in this country. The same 819 thing was repeated in another form on another occasion, but I need not go through that.

§ There is one ray of hope that one gets about my poor old country—God knows I love it well—and that is that the whole Press in Ireland was against the Free State. I do not think I have ever seen such an agreement between the various parties in their expression of opinion. The Irish Independent, the Irish Times and various other papers one and all condemned the Free State. Here is what was said by the Irish Independent, which is the old Nationalist paper in Dublin:— Taking all the circumstances into account it is unfortunate that the Executive Council should contemplate the course announced by the Minister of Finance, especially as Ministers have frequently stressed the importance of observing and honouring international obligations and agreements. This announcement is tantamount to a repudiation of the Privy Council's decision which, by its attitude at the hearing, the Executive Council had agreed to accept as final. Such repudiation is not, moreover, a good example to private litigants. Is it wise or just on the part of the Executive Council to take the course indicated by Mr. Blythe? Before proceeding definitely in that direction would not it be prudent to give the matter further consideration? I think everybody will agree that those were very sane observations, and this is the first time in my life I have ever praised the Irish Independent.

§ I hold in my hand an article written by a well-known Nationalist professor in Ireland, Professor Magennis, a member of the National University, and some of his criticisms are worth reading. He writes:— Now, has Mr. Blythe clean hands in this transaction? When Messrs. Wigg and Cochrane, on behalf of their class carried their repeal to the Privy Council, the Minister admitted the jurisdiction of the Empire Court, for he briefed lawyers and pleaded his case before it. Had the Privy Council decided in his favour, he would undoubtedly have claimed the victory, and abiding by the decision as final and authoritative, would have enforced it rigorously with costs against the appellants. Because he has lost he refuses to abide by the decision! Is not this on all fours with the despicable trick of the gamester who backs horses on credit with a bookmaker, collects all his winnings when he has winners, until having at last hacked the wrong horse, he refuses to pay his 'debt of honour' and pleads the Gaming Act to evade his liabilities? 820 But he says something more which I think will commend itself to anybody who cares about the pure administration of the law, and something that is hopeful for Ireland. He writes:— Once the Judiciary to which a Minister appeals for authoritative decisions can be set aside when the decision displeases the Minister there is an end to government in any other character than government according to the will of a Minister. Mr. Blythe's proceeding is the negation of what is fundamental to democratic government. He reduces to a nullity all the guarantees of freedom that live in the authority of the law. I have now shown your Lordships what has taken place. The civil servants stand by their judgment, they claim to keep their judgment, and if anything has taken place with reference to that judgment they know nothing about it, and they have never had an opportunity of being heard if any decisions have been come to with reference to it. But all these five years this matter, which affects 1,800 people altogether, has upset the whole procedure of the scheme for the retirement of these men.

§ I want now to refer your Lordships to the promises that were made in this House. There were other promises made elsewhere, but there is no use going into a multitude of them. I am beginning to fear that sometimes when Ministers are trying to get Bills through and to avoid criticisms they make promises that they absolutely forget. In this case when the Irish Free State (Consequential Provisions) Bill was going through Lord Glenavy, who is now President of the Senate in Dublin, and who had been himself Irish Lord Chancellor, was apparently very concerned about these public servants, and put down an Amendment in this House giving them statutory rights to have their pensions fixed by the Court. One thing he said was that he wanted some further guarantee for the carrying out of the pledges that were made to these British officials in Ireland, because he said that however much you trusted the Free State Government at the moment you could not tell what Government would be there subsequently. The debate was a considered debate on the subject. Among others the late lamented Lord Long, who had been a party to the Treaty, spoke and said this:— I hold that the obligation in this case is really much more properly to be borne by 821 His Majesty's Government than by an Irish Government, for this reason, that the great mass of these men"— that is, the civil servants— and the class to which they belong did not desire this change in the Government of Ireland; they did not want this Bill, and were indeed strongly opposed to it, and it is hardly fair to sacrifice them in the interests of the country at large. It is in the interests of the country at large that the Government propose to make this change, and if the change is to be made surely those should pay for it who are doing it because they believe it to be a great public duty. But the Lord Chancellor, my noble and lamented friend Lord Cave, went into the whole matter, and pointed out that it was impossible for this House to put the charge upon the British taxpayer by the Act of Parliament; as, of course, it would be under our procedure seeing that we are not allowed to do anything in connection with finance.

§ Having gone through all that, and having dealt with the arguments that had been used, he said:— So far, I think the facts which I have stated show that the Free State Government is dealing with the matter in accordance with its obligations, and exactly in the manner in which we should be disposed to deal with it in this country. I ought, perhaps, to have said, that he had already laid it down that the Amendment was unnecessary because the Bill as it stood gave the civil servants the right to go to the Courts. He went on to say:— That being so, I do not think we ought for a moment to assume that they will not go on to the end and fulfil the terms of the Treaty, which are binding upon them. I ask your Lordships to listen to this: But I add this—and I am entitled to say it because I am only repeating pledges given by the late Government—I think, in the end, should the compensation not be paid, we are bound to see that the just and fair thing is done. And I can repeat the assurances given before, that, so far as we are concerned, we will do everything within our power to see that this term of the Treaty will be carried out, and that full justice will be done. I spoke afterwards, and I said that was the only part of the Lord Chancellor's speech that I welcomed. I merely mention that in passing.

§ A number of other noble Lords spoke, but I wish only to refer to what was said 822 by the Lord President of the Council, my noble friend the Marquess of Salisbury. He said:— I think your Lordships will recognise that in addressing myself to a point of this kind, I have shown by many speeches how deeply I sympathise with the view which has been represented. That I entirely admit, on all occasions. Of course, we sympathise. No one can blame more than I do the course al policy which led up to this, but I think no useful purpose is served in repeating my view upon that now in this place. I only mention it by way of making it absolutely clear that the present Government are in no sense responsible for the policy which has led up to this Bill. That being said, how can we treat the present Amendment? I think if your Lordships will refer to-morrow, in the OFFICIAL REPORT, to the speech of my noble friend the Lord Chancellor, you will see how very far the Government have gone. In the first place he said—I believe truly—that even if your Lordships saw fit to carry this Amendment it would make no difference whatever, because it is already enacted. It is already part of the law of the land. It is one of the clauses of the Treaty which has become statutory … Then he went on to say that, having regard to what the Lord Chancellor had said, he thought the noble Lord had attained all he desired in reference to the question.

§ Put shortly, then, the matter stands in this way. These men have pursued their legal remedies which were given them by Act of Parliament. They have fought for five years. They got a judgment in the first Court in Dublin, and that judgment was eventually confirmed by the Privy Council here. For all that they have had nothing, and still the time goes on. I have been inundated with heart-breaking letters upon this matter. I do not want to trouble your Lordships at great length with them, but I want to make good this one point—namely, that the Wigg-Cochrane case was not a case merely in regard to individuals. It was a case to settle a principle, a test case. I hold in my hand some correspondence. I can assure your Lordships that I shall not read the whole of it. It refers, among others, to a civil servant in Ireland who is still retained against his will in the civil service in consequence of the Wigg-Cochrane case, like hundreds of others. This gentleman served the British Government in the Post Office for 33 years. He was then transferred against his will by Act of Parliament 823 under the conditions to which I have referred. He evidently did not care to be there, but he stayed some time. As his wife belonged to a different part of the country he applied for liberty to retire and to get his pension.

§ He gave notice on April 4, 1924, asking to be retired under Article 10 of the Treaty. The next day he received this letter:— I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your application for compensation under Article 10, which will, in due course, be brought before the Civil Service Committee (Compensation). That is dated April 5, 1924. To-day is April 25, 1928, and no step whatever has yet been taken upon this gentleman's application. In June, 1924, he received a further document saying that his application for release in October would be forwarded to the Department of Finance and that he may be so informed. From that day to this he has heard nothing from the Department of Finance. In 1927, when the Wigg-Cochrane case had just been decided, he made this application:— Having sought retirement in consequence of the change of Government in April, 1924, I beg leave to ask for my release from duty as from 1st prox. And the reply to that is— Mr. … may be informed that the result of his application for compensation under Article 10 of the Treaty is not yet known and that the question of fixing a definite date for release, assuming that the claim for Treaty terms should eventually be admitted, does not therefore at present arise. That is four years after his application.

§ Then he wrote saying— I would point out that over one year ago I was informed by the Secretary that I would not be released from duty until the end of the Wigg-Cochrane case. This is now in the past tense. I desire to be quite candid. My retention is both illegal and illogical—illegal because I have more than completed the statutory period of notice called for by the Act, and illogical on account of the position now taken up, in view of the several reasons advanced from time to time, for my non-release from the Service. However, I am under no delusions. On the evening of the 4th April, 1926, I ceased in the legal sense to be a civil servant, and having failed to obtain a straight deal I will now of necessity have recourse to another avenue for redress in my case. That man is still in the service; he is still not allowed to go, and is separated from his wife. He has stated in many letters what he has suffered. It is all 824 very well for the Government to say that they are going to back the Free State in this matter; but what have they done for the last year? Nothing. I suppose that gentleman is to remain there until the day of his death rather than that he should get his pension.

§ I have other letters. Here is one which I think I ought to read. It is from a gentleman in the Civil Service who, because he was not allowed to go, had to take the law into his own hands and act. He says:— One of the provisions of the Treaty provided that in the case of civil servants who wished to retire consequent on the change of Government and who gave notice of their intention to take advantage of Clause 10, the Irish Government were at liberty to retain their services for six months certain and for a further eighteen months if cause was shown, but no longer. When the civil servants in Ireland decided to contest their rights (which culminated in the Privy Council case) the Irish Government withdrew its permission to all future retirements and they have all been held up for the past three years or longer. In my case I entered the Irish Service as an established civil servant in 1910, following success at competitive examinations held in London, which is my native town. I served with success and won promotion under the British régime and carried out my duties all through the troubled times. In October, 1924, I sent in notice of retirement under the Treaty and, although I made application after application for permission to retire, this was refused, even after the two years had lapsed. At no time was any cause shown why I should be retained. I had sent my wife and family to England in May, 1925, expecting from day to day to get away and finally, two years and nine months after sending in my notice of retirement, in desperation I took Counsel's opinion.…and on his advice left on the 30th of June, 1927, without permission. I was forced to this course as in April, 1927, which was more than two years after my notice, I had secured a small appointment in Wales and could not afford to lose it. Also my wife's health urgently demanded my care. My case is a perfectly straightforward one and I only claimed the ordinary terms. So far I have received nothing and can only get post-cards of acknowledgment from the Irish Government. I am only one of many in similar circumstances. Numbers of my late colleagues are held up in Ireland although their two years' term has long expired. There are many others who have been held up and, so far as I know, there has never been made in public one single protest upon the part of the British Government who had given guarantees that they would see that these men got fair play.

825

§ That is all they are asking for. They only want what the Courts have given them, and they have a right to ask for that. I suppose it will be said that it costs money. It may be so. How much it will cost I do not know; but in the case of the Free State Government money has always been forthcoming. It will be within the recollection of your Lordships that we had a debate in this House when the Free State claimed that compensation should be paid to men whose houses were blown up by the police during the troublesome times, because they were manufacturing bombs and ammunition in those houses to blow up the British soldiers. Of course Downing Street at once listened to that. "Certainly," they said, "£900,000? Of course they must have it." Again, the question of the boundary came up. The Government wanted the Free State to agree to the boundary and money then was no object. They gave the Free State what they estimated—some £150,000,000, the amount which had been taken over at the time of the Treaty as part of the National Debt. "Certainly, gentlemen," said Downing Street, "Have £150,000,000." But when these civil servants come forward there is no sympathy for them.

§ Of course there is not. They have no vote, no power, no way of making themselves objectionable and therefore they are absolutely ignored. There is not even a Department of Government that you can go to with a claim on behalf of any of the Loyalist Party in Ireland who have been abandoned. There is no Department where you can be heard on that subject. That is one of the reasons why these things come up so constantly before this House. However, these men may not be in such a hopeless position as is imagined. They may not be so easily got rid of as Mr. Amery thinks. I am glad to see that the whole of the Civil Service has taken the matter up, as they ought to do because these men are civil servants and civil servants know well that if the obligations to these men are not to be carried out the obligations to civil servants generally also may be ignored. There was a letter the other day in the newspapers—a rather pathetic letter I thought—from Mr. Alfred Tennyson, a grandson of the Poet Laureate. He was one of these British civil servants in Ireland, 826 being in the Local Government Board, and he wrote as follows:— The Free State Government are able to ignore the decision of the Privy Council. … Why cannot they repeal the pensions altogether? What guarantee have we that they will not? That is the clear case that I am able to put for these men.

§ I do not disguise from myself, as I said at the beginning, that this matter raises a bigger issue than the mere question of the right or the wrong of these men. If the Privy Council is going to be ignored—and it seems to be part of the policy of the Government to ignore it—it is a serious matter. I have speeches here, but it would take too long a time to quote from them. Let it be known and proclaimed to the Empire that the Privy Council can be discarded. I ask your Lordships to imagine a case before the Privy Council from Canada, as we have many cases, in which the Dominion Parliament was at loggerheads with one of the federated Parliaments over some question of taxation, and that the Privy Council decided the matter against the Dominion Parliament. What would anyone think if the Prime Minister of the Government came and walked into Downing Street and said: "We do not like this decision of the Privy Council," and Downing Street replied: "Certainly; we will help you to bring in a law to alter the whole situation and get rid of the Privy Council's decision"? Such a thing, of course, is inconceivable. It would be disastrous, having regard to the position of the Privy Council in the Empire. However, your Lordships have heard these men's case. They have done their best to assert their rights by law and now they are to be thwarted. There is nothing left to them but to appeal to the public in this country through your Lordships' House. I beg to move.

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE
My Lords, if I take the somewhat unusual course of asking your Lordships to allow me to intervene at this moment it is for the special reason that I was one of the Judges who sat under the presidency of Lord Cave to hear this case. I had among my colleagues Lord Finlay, who is unfortunately precluded by illness from being present. I had also Lord Dunedin, whom I am glad to see here this afternoon and who will check my recollection 827 if it seems to him to be in fault. This case has been presented to your Lordships as though some great question of principle had been raised in it which had been denied or controverted in the Irish Dail. I have read the Proceedings in the Irish Dail. I am not in a position to predict what the Irish Legislative Assembly may do hereafter, but all I can say is that up to the present time I have seen no challenge of the only principle (which is a serious one) that has been in controversy.
The question which was brought before us, if your Lordships desire to inform your minds on it, will be found fully reported with the decisions in the 1927 Volume of the Appeal Cases which is in the Library. There, under the title of Wigg and Cochrane against the Attorney-General of the Irish Free State, you will see what was before the Tribunal and what was decided. In the first instance a very grave question came before the Judicial Committee. It was whether the Irish Courts were bound to give effect, as having the obligation of law, to a provision which was contained in the Treaty and afterwards received legislative effect by Act of Parliament in this country and in the Free State. On that question, as to whether there was a legal right, the Irish Judges had been divided, and when the case came to the Judicial Committee we decided, after a very prolonged hearing on what was really the only large and substantial point brought before us, that there was that obligation, that it was part of the law of Ireland, and that the Irish Courts had refused wrongfully to give effect to it. That was the principle we laid down, that the Treaty was binding in the Irish Courts, and I have not seen in any declaration of Mr. Blythe, the Finance Minister of the Irish Government, that he challenges that proposition.

§ LORD CARSON
No.

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE
There is another question altogether as to figures and details, but what Mr. Blythe referred to was simply the judgment—

§ LORD CARSON
No.

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE
My noble and learned friend will produce it if he has got it.

828

§ LORD CARSON
I have read it already.

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE
You did not indeed. I have listened attentively. What I very much complain of is that it has been discussed without anybody having a clear idea of what was the real point at issue. There were two points at issue. One, as I have explained, was the question of principle, the question whether the obligation in the Treaty was binding as part of Irish law. That was decided by the Judicial Committee and, as I have already said, I am not aware that it has been challenged in the Irish Dail. It may have been challenged by somebody. It may be that Mr. Amery has raised some question about it—

§ LORD CARSON
The noble and learned Viscount has said very emphatically that I did not read anything which showed they objected to the judgment of the Court. What I did read was this, and I ask the noble and learned Viscount to listen to it. What Mr. Blythe said was this:— The legislative proposals will include a provision for setting up a statutory Committee somewhat on the lines of the defunct Committee whose duty it will be to adjudicate upon all pending and future claims under Article 10. The determination of this Committee on any application or question referred to them will be final and conclusive.

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE
I heard the noble and learned Lord read that and I have read it myself. I understand Mr. Blythe to be referring to what was decided in the Courts, that the civil servants were entitled to pensions upon a certain arithmetical basis. I will come to that in a moment. The first thing that the Privy Council decided was that there was a right on the part of civil servants who retired to invoke the jurisdiction of the Courts for securing their pensions. But there was a second point. That right being established, what was the individual civil servant entitled to? That, I think, was a very much more difficult question. The noble and learned Lord has spoken as if it was something that concerned only the Irish civil servants, those who have retired, but it really concerns a great many more people. It concerns not only civil servants in Ireland but also a large body of civil servants here, and so far from 829 it being a question of the pension of individuals it is a question which affects the pensions of the whole body of English civil servants who come within this decision. Consequently the English Treasury have bestirred themselves since the case. I only wish we had had the English Treasury before us at the hearing so that we might have had the information which was largely necessary in order to dispose of this question.
What we did do was to dispose of the main question, and Viscount Cave, in a most careful and painstaking judgment, applied the broad conclusion of principle and applied it with the knowledge that there was a whole series of Treasury Minutes, but without any clear knowledge of the effect of the Minute of March 20, 1922, which really applies to this case. He was under the impression that it did not apply. I am not going to express any opinion on that except to say that I think it is a question for careful inquiry, because the effect of the conclusions of the judgment in this particular case, if it is taken literally, is to give a vast number of persons who have no more title to the money than any of your Lordships individually have, sums which will be paid some of them out of the English Treasury, some of them out of the Free State Treasury, and others out of the Northern Ireland Treasury. If the conclusion arrived at is little more than an arithmetical error it is a matter which can be put right without in the least infringing the principle that Irish civil servants have the right to go to the Irish Courts to establish their general title. That has to be worked out in Ireland, whether by such a Committee as was referred to by Mr. Blythe or whether by such a Committee as you have at the Treasury here, which works out these things for English civil servants, I do not know. That is a matter for inquiry, that is a matter to be considered. The whole question before your Lordships is this: whether it is right to pass by a specific conclusion that was come to as regards Wigg and Cochrane in the decision of the Judicial Committee. It is this decision which has gone far beyond individual cases.

§ LORD CARSON
May I ask whether it is in order for a Judge to come down 830 to this House and argue reasons why the judgment he has given in the Privy Council was wrong and ought not to be obeyed? Is there any precedent for such a thing?

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM)
My Lords, I have no more authority to decide on questions of order in this House than the noble Lord has himself. I know no reason why the noble and learned Viscount should not state, if he has made a mistake, what the mistake was, and how it came about.

§ LORD CARSON
May I point out that this is being done in the absence of the parties to the litigation?

§ THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY)
My Lords, I do not want to intervene in the debate at all, but when a matter of order is raised it is my duty as Leader of the House to say a word or two. I do not think that any question of order arises. There has been nothing done by the noble and learned Viscount opposite except what he is fully entitled to do—namely, to state the facts of his own knowledge for the guidance of the House. As to whether the noble and learned Lord behind me thinks that that is appropriate or not is another matter.

§ LORD CARSON
I think it is indecent.

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
I am satisfied it is not a question of order.

§ LORD DANESFORT
My Lords, may I ask the noble Marquess to say if there is any precedent that has ever been recorded in history for a member of His Majesty's Privy Council who has taken part in a judgment coming before this House, behind the backs of the parties who were interested in the judgment and in whose favour the judgment was given, and suggesting that the judgment he himself gave was wrong? Is there any such precedent, and if there is not is it desirable to create such a precedent?

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
I certainly do not carry in my mind any precedent of this kind, but it is perfectly clear to your Lordships that, the matter having proceeded as far as it has done there is no question whatever that nothing but harm can be done unless the noble and learned Viscount is good enough to tell us all he knows. After all, there can be no harm in the truth being told; that is all we desire.

831

§ LORD CARSON
In the circumstances I would ask leave to move that the debate be now adjourned, so that we may consider what course we should take, because it may be thought, rather than have the indecency of this sort of thing going on—

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
That is most improper.

§ LORD CARSON
—that it may be better to drop the thing altogether.

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
I must rise to order there. The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Haldane, is in possession of the House. My noble and learned friend behind me is not entitled to rise a second time in the debate and move the adjournment of the debate.

§ LORD CARSON
Why not?

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
Because he is interrupting the noble and learned Viscount who is in possession of the House, Lord Haldane.

§ LORD CARSON
Go on with the farce.

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE
I go on simply to point out that the noble and learned Lord, who is himself a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council—

§ LORD CARSON
I should be very sorry to do what you are doing.

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE
Whether he would be sorry or not, he has gone a good way to-day. He is putting an interpretation on the judgment of the Judicial Committee which is not the interpretation to which all of us assent, and now he wishes to put a difficulty in the way of a statement of what the decision really was. I have pointed out that there was a large question of principle decided by the Privy Council. I have pointed out that this question of principle has not, so far as I am aware, been challenged in the Irish Dail. I have pointed out that there is a question of amount, a subsidiary question, which was the subject of the judgment of the Judicial Committee and as to which it may be thought that there ought to be inquiry. It is a minor decision, no doubt, but one which affects a large number of civil servants in this country as well as in Ireland. No doubt the British Treasury may wish to have a voice in this matter, but—I 832 am not saying whether this was so or not—if a mistake had been made and if, for instance, a decision was got from the Judicial Committee by suppression of facts, by some form of deceit (which nobody suggests in this case) or by a gross mistake, it may be proper for the only remedy that is possible to be brought into effect—namely, Imperial legislation. That is all that I wish to say. What I wanted to point out was that the question of what the noble and learned Lord who has spoken has given us to understand—

§ LORD CARSON
I rely on the judgment.

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE
I have told you to read the judgment.

§ LORD CARSON
You come to say that it is wrong.

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE
You will find that Lord Cave laid down the broad principle that I have stated as the leading one in his judgment. On the second and subsidiary question of amount, on which Lord Cave pronounced, we all assented. Lord Cave was the most careful and just of Judges, and he worked out this matter in detail, and, so far as we thought at the time, rightly. Whether it was rightly done or not is not a matter into which I am going to enter now, but at least it is a question which in certain circumstances might possibly require the attention of the Legislature.

§ VISCOUNT DUNEDIN
My Lords, I am exceedingly sorry to intervene in this debate, as I know that I shall incur the same censure as the noble and learned Viscount who has preceded me. It is no pleasant matter to stand in a white sheet and say that yon were wrong. On the other hand, I think it is cowardly for a man to run away and not accept his share of responsibility. I think perhaps I can put the matter with greater brevity than has been used, and sometimes brevity conduces to clearness. There were two questions before the Privy Council. One was the question of the right of the man to come there at, all, his title to sue. Upon that the Privy Council held that he had a right to come, and that judgment is perfectly right. When it comes to the question of settling the pension, the matter is made as clear 833 as dad by reading one short sentence from Lord Cave's judgment:— In imposing the disputed conditions— that is, the conditions complained of— the Advisory Committee followed the principles laid down in a Minute of the British Treasury dated March 20, 1922, which was adopted by the Minister of Finance on May 11, 1922 and it is necessary to consider whether the Minute is binding on the appellants. In their Lordships' opinion it is not so binding. The Minute cannot affect the rights of officers who at its date had been transferred to the Government of the Free State. That is a wrong statement. The Minute was dated March 20, 1922, and the transference was on April 1, 1922, and therefore the judgment, when it went on to consider the matter—

§ LORD CARSON
Would the noble and learned Viscount allow me to interrupt? He omitted one sentence:— The appellants' rights must depend upon the construction of the Statute without reference to any Minute.

§ VISCOUNT DUNEDIN
Yes, when the Minute did not apply to them of course it depends on the Statutes, and that is just where the actual case has not in that sense been decided. As your Lordships very well know, there is only one judgment given in the Privy Council. This judgment was written by Lord Cave, and it was the duty of those of us who, like my noble and learned friend and myself, had it circulated to us to find out if any mistake had been made. We did not find it out, and I am sorry for it. I can only say that it is very curious that the Counsel against whom the case was decided on that ground did not find it out. The judgment was circulated and there would have been plenty of time to have put it right, because a judgment of the Privy Council is not like a judgment of this House, where it is put from the Chair, but is without authority until it is passed by the King in Council.

§ LORD CARSON
It is advice to His Majesty.

§ VISCOUNT DUNEDIN
I have nothing to do with the policy of this. I may speculate why the Free State did not take advantage of this fact to say: "There has been a mistake and you must begin again." That is their affair. I have not been consulted by the Government and I do not know what they are going 834 to do, but I should not have thought it fair to keep in the background and not to show that I was a participant in the mistake that was made.

§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD)
My Lords, I think it is proper that I should say a word or two on behalf of the Government in relation to the speech that was made by the noble and learned Lord who introduced this subject to the attention of the House. My noble and learned friend began by saying that on a subject of such Constitutional importance he intended to use moderate language, and indeed, in his speech and in due relation to the strength of the views which it is well-known that he holds on this matter, he adhered to his intention. I was sorry, I confess, to listen to one or two observations that he made in reference to one who has twice held the office of Lord Chancellor, with only such provocation as I shall presently discuss and which in my opinion was wholly inadequate for the heat that my noble and learned friend showed. I am bound, as representing the Government, to analyse this litigation a little more closely than either Lord Haldane or Lord Dunedin, for evident reasons, felt called upon to do. It is in the first place essential that the official view should be placed upon the OFFICIAL REPORT, and to do so requires a slight, fortunately not a lengthy, examination of the history of this litigation.
I must be allowed to say in the first place that, if the decision of the Judicial Committee was in fact wrong—and I affirm my own opinion, not without experience of such matters, that it was indisputably and unarguably wrong, not, as Lord Haldane said, upon the main point but upon the minor points—if it was wrong, then all the complaints that these men have suffered unduly, that they have been paid less than they ought to have been paid, can evidently not be substantiated. I do not propose to deal to-day with the other matters brought forward by the noble and learned Lord and not, I think, indicated as likely to form the subject matter of his speech. He has told us that there are many of these civil servants who, in violation of the terms of the Treaty and of the legislation founded upon the Treaty, are not allowed to end the period of their service, at a time when in law they have a 835 right to do so. I will certainly carry that complaint to my right hon. friend the Secretary of State for the Dominions. I am not myself aware as closely as I should be of the facts. Perhaps on a future occasion the noble and learned Lord will recur to the subject when I am better informed.
What it is necessary to have in mind throughout is that if in fact there is a slight error in the decision of the Judicial Committee, which made that judgment wrong, the whole of the case which is made, of injustice, falls completely to the ground. What is the major issue of which the noble and learned Lord complains? I have examined this case very closely. Two civil servants brought an action against the Attorney-General of the Irish Free State, claiming declarations as to their rights to pension. It was argued, as the noble and learned Lord said, in May last, and by the decision the Judicial Committee declared in the first place that it was not the intention of the Act that the Irish civil servants should get more by way of pension than they could have claimed if they had remained in the British service; but owing to a mistake of fact, which I think I can explain to the House, the decision in fact gave the Irish civil servants more than that amount—more than they would have enjoyed had they remained in the British Service and never gone into the Irish Service.
The Government of the Irish Free State have never expressed any intention of depriving the civil servants of their pensions and emoluments, but they have pointed out to His Majesty's Government that the result of the judgment is to contradict its declared intention. Upon these representations being made to His Majesty's Government, the matter was fully investigated, in order to ascertain the real position, and as a result of those investigations His Majesty's Government became satisfied that there had been the mistake of fact to which I have made reference. Thereupon His Majesty's Government expressed their willingness to assent to such legislation as might be necessary to correct the mistake, and to give the Irish civil servants those rights, by way of pension and allowance, which on the true facts, and which alone, they were entitled to receive. This intention was declared to Parliament more than 836 two months ago, and since it involves a matter concerning the Treaty it will involve legislation in this Parliament, and the necessary Bill will be prepared and laid before the Houses of Parliament in due course.
There are 13,500 transferred Irish civil servants, but, of course, many of these have remained in the service of the Irish Free State Government. In 1,508 cases awards have been made, and so far as we know have been accepted without demur; there are 426 claims pending. But the House will realise that since the Treaty gave to the transferred civil servants the same rights as were conferred by the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, it might be claimed, and very conceivably would be claimed, that the same pensions should be awarded in the case of Northern Ireland; and since the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, conferred upon the transferred civil servants the rights to which they were entitled as British civil servants plus an added number of years to compensate them for compulsory retirement, it might be suggested that all the awards of pensions to British civil servants should be made on the basis laid down in the Privy Council judgment, instead of on that actually prescribed by the Treasury Minute. That is the formal answer to the Questions on the Paper.
I will now address myself more particularly to the points made in this debate. The attention of those of their Lordships who decided this matter was not directed to a Minute upon which in my judgment, and in the judgment of those who are advising His Majesty's Government upon such points, that decision depended. Had the attention of their Lordships been directed to the existence of that Minute it is inconceivable that the passage to which reference has been made in the judgment of that most careful Judge, Lord Cave, could have been found. There is no trace in the records of the case of that Minute. If that Minute was unknown to the Judges who tried the case their judgment in my opinion could not have been supported and sustained. I hope no one will think that I am making the slightest reflection upon the learned Counsel who argued the case. Every one who has long experience of litigation knows how easy it is for the most industrious Counsel to overlook 837 some material, and for the Judge in consequence to be deprived of some material, which is very necessary for his judgment.
I myself remember a case in which I presided in this House, in which very experienced Counsel were present, and in which former decisions of your Lordships in a legal capacity, binding upon us, had evaded the industry of solicitors and Counsel. The labours of my noble and learned friend Lord Atkinson in the Library produced this authority, and while I cannot expressly charge my memory, I believe it to be the fact that our decision might easily have been different had our attention not been called to this volume. I am not recalling this instance because I wish to make any reflection upon the experienced Counsel who argued the case, and still less ought this incident to reflect the slightest discredit upon that distinguished Committee. The case was an extraordinarily complicated one. It had produced a difference of judicial opinion in Ireland, and it does nut appear to me to have come before the Judicial Committee in a particularly clear or complete manner.
But we are here to-day, all members of this House, in our capacity as legislators. I agree—of course I agree—that it is a most undesirable thing in the abstract that any Judge should find it necessary in this House to give an explanation of a decision which, sitting as a Judge, he has made, but the circumstances of this case are both unusual and difficult. What was the alternative? The alternative was that the whole of the debate in this House should be allowed to proceed upon the unsound hypothesis that this decision was a decision of unquestioned validity, and one whose accuracy in point of law could not be impeached. The two noble and learned Lords in question knew perfectly well—they have told us so—that this was not, in fact, the case, and therefore, had the debate proceeded, had a vote been taken upon the basis that this decision was unimpeachable, your Lordships would have been giving a vote upon faulty information, and would have been misled and—give me leave to point out—would have been misled, it is true, by members of this House who are Judges, but also by members of this House who are legislators, and who have a duty as legislators which is certainly as solemn and as important as their functions in the 838 judicial sphere. And I cannot conceive how, after the two noble and learned Lords had reached the conclusion that this decision to which they were parties could not be sustained, and was, in fact, wrong, they could have sat still in their seats, though it would have been obviously much more agreeable to them to do so. I cannot imagine what process of reasoning could have induced them to remain silent and lead the House to reach a conclusion upon a basis which would have been entirely misleading.
I am going even further. I must tell your Lordships—and it is a very moving story—that almost within a period of twenty-four hours before his death the late. Lord Chancellor, Lord Cave, who was adding to the mortal anxieties from which he was suffering by a consideration of this matter, though the Prime Minister had begged him not to allow this to be an addition to his suffering at that moment, would not even then, faithful servant of public duty as he was, rest until he had discharged, however painful to him, as he conceived it the last duty which he could ever render, and he authorised the Prime Minister to state that in his opinion the conclusion which he had drawn—these are his exact words—was probably wrong in law, but for this error the persons principally responsible were those who drafted the opinion; that, this being so, the Irish Free State in his opinion had a constitutional right to amend the error by Irish legislation agreed with the British Parliament.

§ LORD CARSON
Will that require English legislation as well?

§ THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD
Certainly, and the noble and learned Lord will have every opportunity of making his views known upon the propriety and the necessity of that legislation.

§ LORD CARSON
I think my views are very well known already.

§ THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD
Well, I am sure we shall hear them again. If I were to follow the canon of propriety in a most difficult matter which was laid down by Lord Carson—who, after all, does not possess quite as much judicial experience as either Lord Haldane or Lord Dunedin—if I were to follow that canon in what I have conceded to be a very difficult and delicate matter I 839 should have been precluded from informing your Lordships that Lord Cave, who drafted this opinion, had written, in circumstances which showed the importance he attached to its correction, to the Prime Minister at a moment when his life was numbered in hours and not in days. And yet will any one say that your Lordships are not to be told that? Will any one say that I am to withhold that knowledge? What justification could I set up in relation to what I owe to the memory of my former colleague if I had allowed this debate to proceed without the knowledge on the part of this House that Lord Cave realised that he had made a mistake, and that he drew precisely the inferences from that mistake which have been drawn by the Irish Free State, which have been drawn by our Dominions Office, and which have been drawn by the Government as a whole? The House of Lords has its rights, the House of Lords cannot reach a decision while what is fundamental in the case is being withheld from it.
And, as I have made this observation about Lord Cave, may I add this? For no inconsiderable period he and I were Law Officers together. For years I co-operated with him in various legal and judicial matters. This is the first time that I ever knew him make a mistake, and I cannot doubt that if the full material had been before him his conclusion would have been a different one. I go the length of saying—and I do it in relation to the importance of the matter choosing my language with great consideration—that no really competent lawyer who reads the case, with the addition of the relevant Minute, could differ from the conclusion which was formed by Lord Haldane and by Lord Dunedin and by Lord Cave. The whole basis of this additional claim depends upon a decision which is faulty, and the result of doing that which the noble and learned Lord asks us to do will be to involve us in the necessity of paying enormous sums of money, not merely to this relatively small class, but to people who have no other claim except such as could be founded upon this decision, and who would never have dreamt of making such a claim until this decision was delivered. When that is indeed the consequence of that which we are invited to do, the Government would have undertaken 840 a very extraordinary responsibility if they had withheld from the House of Lords, before it gave us its guidance, our true view as to what the facts really are.
I agree that it is very regrettable that there should have been the lapse of time of which the noble and learned Lord has spoken, but it not infrequently happens, when matters go through two Courts to the highest Court of all, that some years elapse, and in this case, as I understand the matter, and when all language of exaggeration is eliminated, what has happened is this, that people who had not in fact a good case have for some years sustained themselves in the hope that they had, and that has happened to them which has happened to so many litigants in so many different classes of litigation—their case has proved to be a bad case in law. And it must be observed that there is nothing so novel as is suggested in the Legislature correcting an error in the ultimate tribunal. In fact there is no other way of correcting it. Supposing that a mistake not of this sort but of a simpler kind is made in a decision of the House of Lords, the highest Judges after all are the Legislature, and the Legislature alone can make good any such errors if such errors arise. How are they to be made good? They can only be made good by legislation. The only singularity of this case is that the language originally to be examined and to be pronounced upon was that contained in the Statutes which gave Parliamentary authority to a Treaty between two contractual parties, each of which represented different communities. Therefore, it is necessary not only that there should be legislation in the Irish Free State but that there should be legislation in Ibis country. If the Governments of the two countries are both agreed that the error in law in fact exists, they have the same right of acting conjointly to deal with it as Parliament would have had if the matter appertained only to this country.
I must be allowed to point out, finally, that we shall, of course, have to justify this legislation. We shall attempt that task. At every stage, if anything I have said to-night is found or is thought to be without foundation, it can be challenged. Any point can be taken, not only of principle on the Second 841 Reading, but upon the Committee stage in order to put right any matters which offend the sense of justice of any noble Lord. I may add that it is legislation which, as it seems to me, cannot be very long delayed; it would seem to demand an early treatment. I listen always with pain when I see that the noble and learned Lord sincerely thinks that we are treating admitted and real grievances with callous indifference. I listened with real pain to-day. I attempt to give ourselves no general certificate; but I am satisfied that when the detailed discussion takes place which must take place upon this proposed legislation, we shall have no difficulty in satisfying your Lordships that in regard to this matter, at least, our hands are clean, that we have worked injustice to no one, and that we have saved the country from an expenditure which has never been claimed, which was never anticipated and which never could be justified by Parliament.

§ THE MARQUESS OF READING
My Lords, I have listened to this debate as I am sure others have listened to it, with the deepest interest and also with solicitude. After hearing all that has been said, the impression left on my mind, the impression that I should imagine is on the minds of most of your Lordships is that the main burden of the argument of my noble and learned friend Lord Carson has been met. We are concerned in this House with seeking the truth and arriving at the justice of the matter. When I heard my noble friend I was much impressed. At the same time I had understood that there was some mistake on which the decision of the Privy Council had proceeded; but I confess I waited before coming to a conclusion till I had heard what was said by the noble and learned Earl. It must be a very unpleasant duty to stand in your Lordships' House and frankly confess that a mistaken impression has been created and that the judgment to that extent has proceeded upon a wrong assumption. I understood at first that the main point upon which my noble and learned friend was proceeding was that the statutory right of access to the Courts, which had been definitely promised in your Lordships' House, was refused. That seems to have been an error.

§ LORD CARSON
It is not an error. I can assure the noble Marquess that it is 842 not an error. I have no information except what the Privy Council said. We were told what the Privy Council said, and that Mr. Blythe, the Minister over there, had said that he was going to propose that there should be no resort to the Courts, but only a resort to a Committee.

§ THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD
I hope the noble Marquess will not assume that that is wrong.

§ THE MARQUESS OF READING
I gather from what fell from the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Haldane, that there was an explanation of the sentence read by my noble friend. I should assume—I may be wrong—that what was intended was that the Committee should apply the judgment, and that it, accepts the decision that there is a statutory right of access to the Courts. We are dealing with a decision, or, strictly speaking, an opinion expressed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to His Majesty the King. That is a constitutional position. Certainly, so far as I am aware, there is no precedent for the statements that have been made to-day. I am not for a moment suggesting that the course which has been taken should not have been taken. I see the difficulty. Indeed, it seems to me that it was a duty on the part of my noble friends to make the statements they have made to your Lordships in order that there should be a complete understanding of what had happened. But my conclusion is that the right of access, which is a matter of law, has been definitely stated and explained in the decision, and is not challenged. That stands as certain.
But there is another question which is dealt with thereafter by the Judicial Committee, which proceeded upon a wrong assumption. It is useless to discuss how it arose. The important matter for your Lordships, I should gather, would be to understand that that part of the decision is based upon an erroneous view of the facts. The transfer which apparently the Judicial Committee thought had happened had not actually taken place. It is a difficult question, as my noble friend Lord Birkenhead has said. What occurs to me is that it would be very unfortunate if there should be debates both in your Lordships' House and in another place when this legislation is introduced, and what I would like to ask His 843 Majesty's Government is whether it is not possible to find some means by which this matter can be brought before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council again in order that the opinion expressed by that Judicial Committee to His Majesty the King, and dealt with by His Majesty in Council, may be corrected.
It may be said that there is no precedent. Neither is there for the question we are now discussing. But is it not infinitely better that some means should be considered and adopted for this purpose in this case? My noble friend or those for whom he has spoken so eloquently to-day would have an opportunity of presenting their views if they chose, and of establishing that no mistake had actually been made. We have been told what has taken place, and I would earnestly ask the Government to consider—I do not press for an answer to-day—whether, by some means or other, a scheme could be devised to bring this matter again before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. There is a vital difference between a decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and one by your Lordships' House. In a matter of this kind your Lordships' House would be bound by a previous decision, but the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is not bound by its previous decision. It can correct the decision if it wishes to do so. If the facts as presented to us to-day are the true facts, then I cannot think that there should be any ground for the miscarriage of justice which has been suggested by my noble and learned friend (Lord Carson) and to which evidently he attaches so much importance. I do venture to ask whether His Majesty's Government will not give this matter their consideration and see whether some procedure can be adopted for bringing the matter again before the Committee of the Privy Council.

§ LORD DANESFORT
My Lords, I venture to think there is some value in the suggestion made by the noble Marquess, Lord Reading. At any rate I feel very strongly that if this question is to be re-opened at all it is not to be done by argument in this House as to whether the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was right or wrong. As the noble and learned Marquess said just now, if this question is to be re-opened on the 844 ground of any alleged mistake in the judgment of the Privy Council it must be done after argument in the Privy Council where both sides can be heard, in order that we may ascertain whether the so-called mistake of date has, or has not, a really important bearing on the actual decision of the Privy Council. I may say that I think there is much in that suggestion and I was going to refer to it in a later part of the observations I was about to make. As regards the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Birkenhead, I listened to it without surprise but with considerable regret. He is never so eloquent, never so happy, as when he is defending some wholly indefensible action of the Free State. That is perhaps not unnatural. The Free State is, to a large extent, his own child. He presided over its birth and he has done his best to keep it alive since. For my part, I find some difficulty in treating the noble Earl's remarks on these Irish questions very seriously.

§ THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD
Do you understand them?

§ LORD DANESFORT
The noble Earl really must not be quite so intolerant and resentful of difference. I know it is very disagreeable to him to imagine that any one can differ from him in anything, but perhaps as his experience leads him to riper wisdom he may see that other people can sometimes be right as well as himself. I may add that some of these incursions into Irish debates of the noble and learned Earl cause much distress to many of his admirers, among whom I count myself, though perhaps I could not say with truth that I was an entirely enthusiastic admirer. The remarkable thing about this debate is this. The Government have entirely shifted their grounds as justifying this action of the Free State and their own action in support of the Free State, since this matter was first brought up. I will point out in a moment the reasons given by Mr. Amery who is the person, as I understand (or his Office was) who conducted the negotiations, and then I will deal with the grounds on which the noble and learned Earl justified the action of the Government and, incidentally, of the Free State.
May I recall to your Lordships mind for a moment what the fundamental and 845 undisputed facts of this case are, and then see what are the reasons alleged, first by the Government and by Mr. Amery and secondly by the noble and learned Earl, for their action? In this case defeated litigants—a Dominion Government—announced their intention to pass legislation annulling the Privy Council decision when they were presented with that decision. They are going to override private rights by retrospective legislation. That would be bad enough if this decision was the decision of an ordinary Court, even a Court of their own Dominion, but this action is taken in the case of a decision of the Supreme Appellate Court of the Empire, a Court, as your Lordships know, which links together the different parts of the Empire. To override that decision by retrospective legislation in the case of private rights appears to me, at any rate, a constitutional outrage. One would have expected that His Majesty's Government, as the custodian of constitutional rights and of Imperial interests, would have entered the strongest protest against such action by a Dominion Government. So far from that, we find that they have approved in advance what is to be done by the Irish Free State Government as announced in the Dail.
I now come to the authoritative reasons that were given by Mr. Amery in the House of Commons and which apparently are the reasons that first actuated His Majesty's Government. I take them to be the real reasons which at any rate at that time affected the Government. Mr. Amery is the head of the Dominion Office, where this arrangement was concocted and where it was approved. Therefore I look to his explanation as a very authoritative explanation of the reasons which led him to that decision. He said most definitely that the decision of the Privy Council was not in accordance with the intentions of the framers of the Treaty and therefore they were entitled to override that decision. My noble friend Lord Carson pointed out that a very schoolboy in law would not have put forward such a reason. The construction of a Statute—and this is a Statute—is a question for the Courts and not for the Executive Government. It seems to me that Mr. Amery's contention must go back to the intentions of the 846 framers of the Treaty and is a doctrine which would have disgraced the Stuart times.
But it is a little remarkable to find that Mr. Amery, fortunately, has already himself given a conclusive answer against his own contention as put forward in the House in February last. On the 10th of March, 1926, in the House of Commons, Mr. Amery, in answer to a question as to what the rights of a civil servant are tinder Article 10 of the Treaty as confirmed by the Act, gave this answer, which is somewhat striking when you compare it with his present position: The rights conferred by Article 10 of the Articles of Agreement upon civil servants transferred from the British Government to the Government of the Irish Free State are statutory rights, the force of law having been given them in the Irish Free State by Article 78 of the First Schedule to the Constitution of the Irish Free State Act, 1922. He ends with these words:— An authoritative interpretation of those statutory rights can, however, only be given by a Court of Law. I wish Mr. Amery, before he made these unfortunate answers in February last, had looked up his own records and had found that the true tribunal to decide the construction of the Statute is not the litigant, not the Executive Government, but the Court of Law. So much for the reasons given by Mr. Amery.
Up to to-day there has been no suggestion that I know of made by the Government in either House of Parliament that Mr. Amery's reasons for this astonishing action of the Free State, backed up by himself, were not the true reasons, but to-day we have had three very remarkable speeches, speeches such as I suppose were never delivered in this House before by three members of His Majesty's Privy Council. Two of those speeches have been made by members of His Majesty's Privy Council whose decision is now being impugned by the Irish Free State and who have come forward and told your Lordships they were wrong. Let me take first the speech of the noble and learned Viscount opposite. Lord Haldane said very truly that the decision on the first point before the Privy Council—namely, whether the civil servants had a legal right—was quite correct, and he went on to say that the Irish Government, accepted that view. They did not do 847 anything of the kind. Whatever may be at the back of their minds they have not expressed it.
I find from the passage which has already been quoted by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Carson, from the utterance of Mr. Blythe, the Finance Minister, that the tribunal they are going to set up to decide the rights of civil servants in this matter is a Committee whose decision is to be final and conclusive. They do not say a word about legal rights. May I read the passage again to your Lordships? Mr. Blythe, after saying that there was going to be legislation, said this:— The legislative proposals will include a provision for setting up a statutory Committee somewhat on the lines of the defunct Committee— that is, the Committee which made the decisions which the Privy Council said were wrong— whose duty it will be to adjudicate upon all pending and future claims under Article 10. The determination of this Committee on any application or question before them will be final and conclusive. What I gather from that is that certainly they do not suggest that they are going to recognise any legal right as declared by the Privy Council.
Then we come to the second point decided, and the noble and learned Viscount dealt with that, if I may say so, in a somewhat tentative manner. He did not say the decision of the Privy Council was wrong. All he said was that it is a matter for careful inquiry. Inquiry by whom? By this House? Are your Lordships, when the Bill promised by the noble and learned Earl is brought in, to hear all the arguments upon one side or the other, to consider the effect of the Minute of March 20, 1922, and the effect of the judgment of the Privy Council, and will your Lordships then be asked to say that the Privy Council was wrong? The noble and learned Viscount admits very candidly that no one can say it is wrong without further inquiry. I will come to what the noble and learned Earl said in a moment, but just now I am concerned with the noble and learned Viscount, who does not dare to say that his own judgment is wrong, but says it is a case for inquiry. Then I come to my noble and learned friend Lord Dunedin. I think he was a little 848 more positive than the noble and learned Viscount and was prepared to stand in a white sheet.
Now I come to ale noble and learned Earl who represents the Government. The noble and learned Earl, Lord Birkenhead, has no hesitation whatever. He has not heard the parties, he has not heard the arguments, but he has dwelt on the matter in the privacy of his chamber and of course he has come to a definite conclusion. He goes so far as to say—I hope I have taken down his words correctly—that no really competent lawyer who reads the Minute of March 20, 1922, can doubt that the Privy Council is wrong.

§ THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD
And reads the other documents.

§ LORD DANESFORT
And reads the other documents. I apologise. That is an astonishing statement of the noble and learned Earl. Has he read the careful and elaborate judgment of Mr. Justice Meredith in the Court of First Instance in Ireland?

§ THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD
Of course I am aware of all the judgments. Does the noble Lord think I should come here and speak to your Lordships if I had not read them all?

§ LORD DANESFORT
I should have expected that the noble and learned Earl would have made himself familiar with them, but when he says that no competent lawyer could take a different opinion I shrewdly suspect he has not read the Meredith judgment. Mr. Justice Meredith had the Minute of March 20, 1922, before him. He referred to it in his judgment. He said it did not affect the case. Therefore I am driven to the conclusion—I leave the noble and learned Earl to settle the matter with Mr. Justice Meredith—that either the noble and learned Earl has not read the judgment of Mr. Justice Meredith or else, according to him, Mr. Justice Meredith is not a competent lawyer. I leave it at that. The noble and learned Earl went on to say that the way in which the Government proposed to deal with this matter was by legislation. In other words, he intends to come here and his colleagues will go to the other House, and they will presumably endeavour to persuade your Lordships 849 and the House of Commons that the judgment of the Privy Council was wrong. Then, upon the strength of that—because unless they can prove that they cannot go a step further—having satisfied your Lordships and the House of Commons that the judgment is wrong, they proceed with their legislation. What a task to set before your Lordships' House and the House of Commons—to ask you to go, as the noble and learned Earl said, into all the documents of the case, I suppose, and then to decide whether the Privy Council were right or wrong.
We have heard something about precedents to-night. We have had two noble Lords, members of the Privy Council, coming here and saying they were wrong in their decision. We shall have a still more remarkable precedent if the legislation indicated by the noble and learned Earl conies forward and the House is asked to sit as a judicial tribunal to override the decision given by the Privy Council. May I suggest to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack—for whose judgment, I need hardly say, I hare profound respect, and in whose character in this matter have the most sincere belief—that if there was a mistake of date made by the Privy Council, in the first place there was strong ground for saying that this had no effect on the ultimate decision. I have already said that Mr. Justice Meredith, who tried the case in Ireland—and no more competent Judge is, I believe, to be found in the Free State—had this Treasury Minute before him, and he decided the case in the way that he did, which is the way affirmed by the Privy Council. Further there is a very grave question to be determined, which cannot be determined by argument in your Lordships' house, and that is whether this Treasury Minute, upon which so much is said to turn, was in fact ever valid at all. I am told that litigation is now pending, if it has not already begun, to test the validity of this very Minute of March 20, 1922, upon which the noble and learned Earl bases his whole case. I do not know whether he has observed this fact in the course of his reading.
Let me say—and this is almost my last word—that if there were any primâ facie ground for saying that the judgment of 850 the Privy Council is erroneous, the question arises, Who shall decide that point? Certainly it should not be the defeated litigant, the Free State Government, who appear to have taken the matter up in the first instance, nor should it be the executive authority either of the Free State or of this country, and certainly it should not be the Parliament of this country, either in your Lordships' House or in the House of Commons. The only tribunal, as I conceive it, which is qualified or ought to attempt to decide whether this judgment of the Privy Council was right or wrong is the Privy Council itself. As the noble and learned Marquess suggested just now, there have actually been precedents for such a case. I have looked up the question, and your Lordships will find it discussed at great length in a book of much authority, that of Bentwich on the practice of the Privy Council. I am not going to discuss the matter at any length now, because the Lord Chancellor will, no doubt, look into it with care, but this is the substance of the matter.
It was stated by a very strong tribunal composed of Lord Hatherley, Lord Westbury, Lord Cairns and others, that great public mischief would arise by any doubt being thrown on the finality of decisions of the Privy Council. It goes on to say in another place that the strict rule is that a decision of the Privy Council, embodied in an order, is final and cannot be altered. I believe that the noble Earl referred to a precedent. I did not catch it very clearly, but I think it was some case in which the Privy Council had not yet come to their decision, and before they did so some case was brought to their notice of which they took account. I do not know whether I am right, but it does not greatly matter. That was the only precedent that I heard mentioned. I expected that, when he was going to take the course of legislating to overrule the decision of the Privy Council, he would bring forward precedents of authority. I need hardly say that no single precedent has been brought forward by which he can justify, after the decision of the Privy Council has been given and after it has been made an Order of the Privy Council and an order of the Court in Ireland, a proposal to override that decision by legislation.
851 I return to the statements of this authoritative book. I am summarising. It says that there are some very exceptional cases where a decision of the Privy Council has been altered, but the only proper way of doing so is through a rehearing by the Privy Council in the presence of both parties upon leave being given, and it goes on to say that such leave is given only in exceptional cases, as for instance where a mistake has been made which makes it impossible to carry the decree of the Privy Council into execution, or to prevent irremediable injustice where by accident a party has not been heard and an order has inadvertently been made in his absence. No such case has at present, so far as I know, come up for a re-hearing, but if there were to be a revision in any sense of the decision in this case it could only be at a re-hearing by the Privy Council. I must apologise for having addressed your Lordships at some length, but I feel that your Lordships are the independent tribunal, above all others, in which we can maintain the rights of the subject and the great authority of the Courts of this country and, above all, of the supreme Appellate Courts against any rash intrusion by legislative or other intruders who want to set that great jurisdiction aside.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I had not proposed to intervene in this debate in your Lordships' House. The position taken up by the Government has been very fully and, I think, very clearly stated by my noble friend Lord Birkenhead, and I have nothing to contribute or to add to his statement of our position. I think, however, that your Lordships will perhaps feel that the suggestion that has been put forward by my noble friend Lord Reading is one which deserves some reply on behalf of the Government. The noble and learned Marquess, in making his suggestion, did not ask for any decision to be announced or to be taken to-day, and therefore he will not expect me either to accept or to refuse the proposal that he has put forward. But I should like to say at once that, so far as His Majesty's Government are concerned, we are anxious to deal with this very difficult matter by whatever is the most convenient method in the interests of all the various considerations that are involved in its decision.
852 The suggestion which my noble friend has put forward, which really reproduces one possible way of dealing with it that had been considered at an earlier stage, will most certainly be reported by me to my right hon. friend Mr. Amery and my colleagues in the Cabinet and will certainly receive their most careful consideration. So far as the Motion brought forward by Lord Carson is concerned, a Motion which, as I understand, challenges the action of the Government in consenting to any reconsideration of the matter or any alteration of the decision of the Privy Council, that is a Motion which the Government can only ask your Lordships' House to reject; but, so far as the suggestion put forward by Lord Reading is concerned, which is not an attack on the action of the Government in consenting to the matter being re-opened but only puts before us an alternative method of carrying out that re-consideration, I can only say, without promising to adopt it, because there are difficulties in the way, that we are grateful for the suggestion and we will certainly give it our most careful consideration.

§ LORD CARSON
My Lords, I will ask the indulgence of the House to allow me to make a few observations. Having regard to what the Lord Chancellor has just said, instead of pressing the Motion which stands in my name, I propose to move the adjournment of the debate, because I look upon this as one of the most important debates, and the result, whatever it may be, as one of the most important matters in relation to the administration of the law that have arisen in the course of my public life. I cannot but deeply regret the way in which the Government have mismanaged the whole business. It is a year since the Wigg-Cochrane case was decided. They have been asked over and over again in the House of Commons the reasons for not going on to get the Free State to enforce the Order, and never until to-day have they told us that the decision of the Privy Council was wrong. When did they find out that it was wrong? It is now a year since that decision was given. Did they find it out yesterday or the day before? While all these poor ex-British civil servants have been going about anxiously trying to find out what was to happen to them, did it never occur to the British Government until to-day that the decision 853 was wrong? When was Lord Dunedin asked whether his decision was wrong? Has Lord Finlay ever been asked whether the decision was wrong? I have never heard him say anything of the kind, though I have seen him quite recently.
All this is a matter of the most vital importance. It is the greatest novelty in the law that one can conceive. I said it was indecent. I adhere to that observation. I have always thought that as long as a judgment remained filed in Court, and particularly in a Court of Appeal, it was final, and could not be impeached by any person except by the ordinary methods of law. These men are having filched away from them what is given to them by the decision of the Privy Council, affirming a decision of Mr. Justice Meredith—that was left out altogether by Lord Birkenhead—and at the last moment, when the thing comes to be thrashed out in a political and legislative Assembly, two of the Judges are brought here to say that, although that judgment stands upon record and nobody has come before the Privy Council or any Court to impeach it, there is a mistake in it—or I think one of them said there might be a mistake in it.
I think that is an awful position for litigants in this country. To do that, behind the back of litigants, without having given them an opportunity of dealing with the point on which the judgment is said to be wrong, is one of the most extraordinary things I have ever known. I must take the decision to be wrong, because Lord Birkenhead has said that no lawyer of competence would say that it was right, but at the same time, even if I thought that it was wrong, I have at least this much judicial spirit left in me that I would not like to take away from a litigant, at the request of the other litigant, his rights without hearing what the man who had succeeded had to say. Yet that is exactly what you are doing in this case. It is lamentable, it is indecent, and I move the adjournment of the debate.

§ Moved, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Lord Carson.)

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will not consent to the adjournment of this 854 debate, not because I underrate the importance of the issues which have been raised, but because I do not think any very useful purpose would be served by a prolongation of the discussion. I will not conceal from your Lordships that I personally, and I speak for my colleagues too, profoundly regret the circumstances out of which this debate has arisen. Personally, of course, I have the greatest sympathy with the Irish loyalists. As has been quoted in this debate, I have given many pledges to this effect, but when your Lordships' House has heard that in point of fact a great injustice would be committed if this judgment were allowed to stand, I do not think it was possible for the Government to take any other course except to find some remedy, so that it should not be enforced:
Of course there were many ways in which the matter could be approached, and the Government have considered nearly all of them, but the one way which we thought must be excluded was that of enforcing a thing which we were assured by the Judges who tried the case was an injustice. What then could we do? I am not going back into the merits of the debate. The noble and learned Marquess opposite has suggested that by some procedure the matter might again be brought before the Privy Council. Lord Phillimore cheers that. That is very encouraging, because nobody knows the law more than the noble and learned Lord. My noble and learned friend on the Woolsack has promised that the Cabinet will consider the matter from that point of view. I do not think that anything more could be done, and I therefore suggest that the discussion might be brought to a close. I do not under-rate for a moment the importance of the matter, but because I think nothing but harm could be done by further dwelling upon circumstances which we all regret, I suggest that we should not go any further. I can assure my noble and learned friend behind me, whose loyal defence of his friends in Ireland we all admire, than he does not lose his remedy—

§ LORD CARSON
What about all those men who have been waiting for five years? They do not matter.

855

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
My noble and learned friend knows that I care. Why should he say that I do not?

§ LORD CARSON
I did not say that you do not care.

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
I suggest to my noble and learned friend that he has amply done what he set out to do. I do not think the Government could have gone on ignoring what they knew to be an injustice. That being so we were obliged to take some course, and I hope that your Lordships will resist the Motion to adjourn the debate.

§ EARL BEAUCHAMP
My Lords, I find myself in some little difficulty in this matter. I should have preferred that we should adjourn, in order to resume the discussion upon a future occasion, but the point at issue with the noble Marquess is so small that I am not prepared to vote against him. We are considering a much more serious and important question. No one has exaggerated the importance of this matter in saying that it is one of the most important questions that have been brought before this House for a great many years. I think, if I may say so, with hardly any exception the tone of this debate has been such as will raise the reputation of your Lordships' House. The matter has been considered in a most grave and serious and a very fitting spirit. The question is now what your Lordships should do. We have listened with the deepest interest to what hag been said. For my own part I confess that I was very much moved by the defence of His Majesty's Government which was made by the noble and learned Earl, Lord Birkenhead. He knows, I think, that he and I very seldom see eye to eye upon political questions, not even upon questions connected with Ireland. But if he will allow me to say so, I do not think that anything in his career will ever do him so much honour as the policy which he has adopted since he became a member of your Lordships' House in regard to Ireland. It is one which my colleagues and myself have always viewed with the greatest admiration. And therefore I am already pre-disposed to concur with His Majesty's Government in the action which they propose to take upon this occasion.
For three days since the last adjournment of your Lordships' House we have 856 had important discussions. The noble Marquess who leads the House is the only layman except myself who has ventured to rise in his place and say a single word upon any of the three days—so much in the course of these three days has the discussion fallen into the hands of the lawyer members of your Lordships' House. As the matter stands at the present moment, the point which is at issue between the noble Marquess and myself, as to whether or not we should adjourn the debate, is so small that I am not prepared to give it as much weight as I do to the promise which he has been good enough to make that he will give, and the Cabinet will give, the greatest consideration to the suggestion which has been made by my noble friend beside me, Lord Reading, and see in what manner this matter can best be raised—not necessarily by Statute, but perhaps by revision. That really seems to me the most important question which is before your Lordships' House, far outweighing the small matter of procedure; and therefore it is that, for my own part, I shall vote for His Majesty's Government in this matter.

§ LORD MERRIVALE
My Lords, I should like to put a question to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. My noble and learned friend is going to lay before His Majesty's Government a suggestion made by the noble Marquess opposite in which, may I respectfully say, I entirely concur. I cannot believe that there is a real difficulty, if the parties are willing, in getting a decision of the Privy Council in another case, not the case of Wigg and Cochrane, but some other case in which this matter can be fully discussed. But that is not the question at the moment. The question is one of immediate procedure. I will therefore ask my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack whether he will inform the House in due course as to the decision of His Majesty's Government upon this matter, so that, if need be, the question can be again raised without any necessity for adjourning this discussion, which has been exceedingly painful to many of us.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I can easily answer the question asked by my noble and learned friend. Most certainly when His Majesty's Government have reached a decision—and the House will understand that it involves 857 not only our decision but consultation with the Irish Free State—a statement shall be made to this House as to what that decision is.

§ On Question, Motion for adjournment disagreed to.

§ LORD CARSON
My Lords, I do not propose to go to a Division, and I ask leave to withdraw the original Motion, having regard to the very unsatisfactory nature of the debate.

858

§ On Question, Motion, by leave, withdrawn.