Sitting of 6 June 1882

MINUTES.
— PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—First
Reading —Com Returns* [193]; Settlement and Removal Law Amendment* [194]. First Heading — Elementary Education Provisional Order Confirmation (London)* [195]; Elementary Education Provisional Orders Confirmation (West Ham, &c.)*[196].
Second Reading —Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Order (No. 4)*[173]; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Order (No. 5)* [175]; Vagrancy [62].
Referred to Select Committee — Settled Land [120].
Committee —Prevention of Crime (Ireland) [157] —R.P. [Fifth Night].
Report —Tramways Provisional Order* [141]; Tramways Provisional Order (No. 2)*[149].
Considered as amended —Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 3)* [152]; Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders (No. 2)*[150].
Third Reading —Local Government Provisional Orders (Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings)*[162]; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (Ballymena, &c.)*[155], and passed.

QUESTIONS.

  EGYPT (POLITICAL AFFAIRS)—THE ANGLO-FRENCH FLEET AT ALEXANDRIA—THE EARTHWORKS.
  MR. BOURKEgave Notice of his intention on Thursday to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether he still adhered to the statement made by him on the 2nd of June that the earthworks in Alexandria Harbour were not yet armed in any way; and whether it was not the fact that, some time before the 2nd of June, there were in those earthworks three 18-ton guns and 20 34-pounders? He would put that Question on Thursday, if convenient to the hon. Baronet.
  SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: Sir, I will answer that Question at once. The information received from Sir Beauchamp Seymour at the date on which I spoke did not mention any armament on the forts—only the day before he stated that they were not armed. After I made that answer we received information that they were being armed, and I informed the House of the fact.
  MR. BOURKE: Then, is my information correct that, before the 2nd of June, the forts were armed?
  SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: That Question I shall be glad to answer on Thursday. I can only say that we were not in possession of such information on the day I answered the Question. I will inquire in the meantime, and if we can get the information by Thursday I will then give the answer. I do not think we possess it at present. I do not think Sir Beauchamp Seymour stated on what day the guns were there.

  PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881 — MR. P. J. QUINN.
  MR. HEALYasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether Mr. P. J. Quinn, assistant secretary to the Land League, is confined in Enniskiilen Gaol, after so many other prominent members of the League, arrested at the same time and for the same offence, have been released; and, if the Lord Lieutenant has re-considered his case?
  MR. TREVELYAN: Sir, Mr. Patrick J. Quinn is detained in Inniskillen Gaol. The Lord Lieutenant re-considered his case at the end of last month, and decided that he could not then order his release.
  MR. HEALYasked whether Mr. Quinn was only assistant secretary to the Land League, and had never made a speech before ho was arrested? Mr. Brennan and Mr. Davitt, the chief secretaries of the League, had been released, and he was subordinate to them.
  MR. TREVELYANsaid, he would answer a further Question on the subject on Thursday.

  PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881—DETENTION OF PERSONS ARRESTED UNDER THE ACT.
  MR. HEALYasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether eleven men arrested in Hook, county Wexford, on 27th February, are still confined in Kilkenny Gaol, although two others from the same district, arrested on the same charge were released a month ago; whether it is the fact that no outrages have been committed in the district; if he can state the reason for the detention of these men; if the Government have re-considered the case of Mr. James Ennis, and the other suspects from Bannon, county Wexford, now in Kilmainham; and, why Mr. Pierce Meaney, of Tintern, county Wexford, is detained in the same gaol, while another prisoner from the same district and arrested for the same offence has been released?
  MR. TREVELYAN: Sir, I find that there are only seven of the men arrested at Hook on the 27th February still in custody, and I have learnt by telegraph that His Excellency has had their cases
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  under his consideration to-day, and has decided to order their discharge. Mr. James Ennis was released on the 31st ultimo. I have received no information about other persons from Bannon, County Wexford, being in Kilmainham; but if the hon. Member will name them I shall ask about their cases. Mr. Pierce Meaney, referred to in the final paragraph of the Question, was released on the 26th of last month.

PETROLEUM ACT (INDIA), 1881—IMPORTATION OF EXPLOSIVE OILS FROM AMERICA.
MR. MACFARLANEasked the Secretary of State for India, If his attention has been called to the statement of the Correspondent of the "Times" from Calcutta with reference to the importation of dangerous explosive oil from America; and, if it is true that he has instructed the Government of India to repeal or modify the Act passed by that Government only last year; and, if it is true that the Government of India, in obedience to such orders, is legislating upon the subject at Simla where no independent or commercial member of the Council is present?
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: Sir, my attention has been called to the telegram of the Calcutta Correspondent of The Times, which contains an inaccurate statement of the facts. Representations have been made to me by respectable firms that four cargoes, containing 2,500,000 gallons, of petroleum have been rejected by the Government Inspectors as below the standard, though they had taken every precaution to comply with the requirements of the Act. They have laid before me documentary evidence to support the latter assertion. It is also stated that other cargoes are on the voyage, under similar conditions. On consulting Professor Abel, who is the inventor of the test employed here and in India, I find that he is uncertain whether his test, intended to be used in a temperate climate, can be entirely depended on under very different climatic conditions in India. This opinion seems to be confirmed by the fact that identical samples of oil refused at Bombay last autumn have been re-tested in London and admitted. Under these circumstances, and considering that merchants who appear to have taken every reasonable precaution

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to comply with the requirements of the law are subjected to very heavy loss by what it is, at least, possible may be an imperfection of the test laid down by the law, and also that a reduction, by the rejection of the cargoes in question, of something like a quarter of the year's imports must greatly raise the price of petroleum in India and cause loss and inconvenience to the Indian consumer, I thought it right to communicate the facts before me by telegram to the Government of India, and to ask their earliest consideration of the matter. The question of any permanent modification of the test under the Act cannot be considered for some time- -till the opinions of the experts who have been consulted are received. But, to meet the pressing case of the alleged hardship to shippers of cargoes of petroleum already arrived in India or afloat, the Government of India propose to pass in their Legislative Council to-morrow a temporary Act, admitting petroleum certified by the New York Public Inspectors not to flash below the standard required by the Act. I have issued no instructions in the matter, but have simply communicated the information received and the opinions of experts, leaving it to the discretion of the Legislative Council whether to pass the Act.

NAVY—THE RIGGERS IN THE DOCKYARDS.
SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked the Secretary to the Admiralty, Whether any answer has been or will shortly be sent to the petition presented to the Admiralty by the established riggers in Her Majesty's Dockyards?
MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Sir, several representations have recently been received from the Dockyards in favour of an increase of pay. So far as this year is concerned, no provision has been made for such a purpose; but, before the next Estimates are framed, the claims which have been urged will receive full consideration.

PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881—THE REV. THOMAS FEEHAN.
MR. MARUMasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether, in view of the precedent established by the release of a person
The Marquess of Rartinglon
228
from Limerick Gaol last week, imprisoned in default of bail for good behaviour, he will take into his favourable consideration the discharge from Maryboro' Gaol of the Rev. Thomas Feehan, in custody under similar circumstances?
MR. TREVELYAN: Sir, His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland has had the Rev. Mr. Feehan's case under consideration. I will let the hon. Member know more on Thursday.
MR. LEAMYasked whether the right hon. Gentleman could state whether the cases of other persons imprisoned under the Act of Edward III. were also under consideration?
MR. TREVELYAN: They are, Sir. The same considerations govern all these cases.
MR. GIBSONasked whether His Excellency, in considering these cases, had regard to the question whether intimidation was likely to be exercised by the persons released?
MR. TREVELYAN: What His Excellency has considered is the relation of the length of imprisonment which these people have undergone to the charges on which they were imprisoned. He has also considered the effect of their release on the peace of the districts in which they lived.

IRELAND-STATE-AIDED EMIGRATION.
CAPTAIN AYLMER (for Mr. FITZ-PATRICK)asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether, having regard to Mr. Tuke's letter in the "Standard" of June 5th, stating the anxiety of the people in the western districts of Con-naught to emigrate, and the difficulty of procuring funds for that purpose, Her Majesty's Government will make arrangements to supplement the power now possessed by guardians of Poor Law Unions of giving money in aid of emigration, by granting a loan at a low rate of interest to those Poor Law Unions which were scheduled under the Belief of Distress (Ireland) Act of 1880; and, whether, having regard to the great urgency of the case, they will make such arrangements as rapidly as possible?
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHE-QUEE (Mr. GLADSTONE): Sir, there is no doubt of the importance of this question; but, if it be an urgent question, it is not the only urgent one in connection with

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Irish, legislation, for there are other matters which have been partially the subject of discussion this year, some relating to the various clauses of the Land Act, and more particularly to the Purchase Clauses, which likewise demand the consideration of the Government. But I do not think that any advantage will arise from my entering at this period into a statement of what the Government intend upon the subject. We have before us the passing of two Bills, which form the bulk of our immediate duty in this House. By the time these two Bills are disposed of, there is one subject which it will be quite necessary to take up—namely, the Taxes Bill. When that again has been disposed of, and it is not a matter that can possibly occupy a great deal of time, then will be the time when we may fairly be called upon to state our intentions with regard to other subjects.
MR. T.P. O'CONNOR: May we hope, from what the right hon. Gentleman has said, that we shall have a statement from the Government with reference to the other points under the Land Act before the close of the Session?
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GLADSTONE): Yes; I do not pretend to say now, Sir, what we shall be able to deal with practically, and what we shall not be able to deal with practically, during the remainder of the present Session; but I think it will be quite proper for the Government to state their intentions when we have arrived at the point to which I have referred.

EGYPT (POLITICAL AFFAIRS).
SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked the First Lord of the Treasury, If he can state which of the Powers have consented to the Conference on the affairs of Egypt; and, whether, before issuing invitations to a Conference at Constantinople, Her Majesty's Government and the Government of France had taken steps to ascertain whether such conference was acceptable to the Sultan, the Sovereign of that capital? The hon. Member further asked whether the French text of the Circulars published in The Times and addressed by the Sultan to the other Powers was authentic; if so, when where the Circulars received, and had any answer been sent by Her Majesty's Government?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: Sir, my hon. Friend asks which of the Powers have consented to the Conference? All of them have expressed themselves favourable to the idea, except the Porte, which, without declining, has expressed the belief that the Conference is unnecessary. The text of the Circulars which appears in The 'Times is no doubt accurate, as it corresponds pretty closely with the purport of a conversation which Musurus Pasha had with Lord Granville yesterday evening, and which was the first expression of the opinion of the Porte on the matter which we have had before us. The hon. Member also asks whether, before issuing invitations to a Conference at Constantinople, we have taken steps to ascertain whether the Conference was acceptable to the Sultan? No, Sir; we did not. I find from examination of the latest precedent—that of the Constantinople Conference of 1876— that the late Government took the initiative in proposing it, without taking steps to ascertain whether it was acceptable to the Sultan. All the Powers expressed themselves favourable to the idea, except the Porte, which objected to it. The preparations were actively pushed on all the same, and the Porte only agreed 14 days later. As my hon. Friend may be inclined to agree with me that the precedent is an interesting one, I will give him the exact dates. The invitations to the Conference of 1876 were sent out on the 4th of November.
SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFF: Were they laid before Parliament?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: Yes; I am quoting from the Blue Book. On the 8th of November Lord Salisbury was named British Plenipotentiary. On the 8th of November the Porte made its first answer, stating that—
"The meeting of a Conference would be too disadvantageous for us not to wish that the desired understanding be obtained without the meeting of foreign Plenipotentiaries, having as their mission the discussion of the internal administration of the empire."
On the 13th of November, the Porte again protested against the Conference. On the same day the reply sent somewhat intimated that the Conference might take place, whether the Porte joined in it or not. It was not until the 18th November that the Porte agreed to the Conference.
SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFF: Is the hon. Baronet not aware that the result of that Conference was entirely futile, and does he anticipate a similar result from the proposed Conference?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: The hon. Member might obtain information as to the result of the Conference of 1876 from right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench opposite.
SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: I wish to ask whether the answers received from the other Powers except the Porte, which are said to have been favourable, were distinct acceptances?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: No, Sir; I take it that the Powers are following on this occasion the precedent of 1876. In 1876 the Powers informed us that, while they were generally favourable to the idea, they should keep back their formal answers until they had agreed amongst themselves upon the terms. That was the answer of Germany, and I think it probable that the same course is being taken on this occasion.
SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: Have the Government received any communication from any of the Powers to the effect that they think a Conference unnecessary?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: No, Sir.
MR. JOSEPH COWEN: Have the Government received any intelligence as to the arrival of Dervish Pasha in Egypt, or as to the instructions he has been empowered to carry out?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: The conversation between Musurus Pasha and Lord Granville has placed generally before the Government the instructions given by the Porte to Dervish Pasha, and they are substantially on the same bases as those proposed for the Conference. With regard to the arrival of Dervish Pasha in Egypt, judging from the distance, which is only 800 miles, I think he would probably arrive to-night or to-morrow morning.
MR. O'DONNELL: I should like to ask whether the instructions to Dervish Pasha contained any instructions to the effect that the terms of the recent Anglo-French Ultimatum should be insisted on—with respect, for example, to the exile of Arabi Pasha and other matters?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: I do not think it would serve any good end
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to go largely into discussion on this subject, and I could not answer without entering considerably into discussion. I have already stated that the document in question is not an Ultimatum, and I have given certain reasons why it is not an Ultimatum. The instructions given to Dervish Pasha have not been communicated in detail to Her Majesty's Government, but only general terms; and they resemble those that have been placed before the Powers as the bases of the proposed Conference.
MR. M'COAN: I beg to ask the hon. Baronet, whether, in the instructions given to Dervish Pasha, the expulsion of Arabi Pasha from Egypt was included?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: I do not think we know the exact nature of the measures which the Porte is prepared to take. The measures are, generally speaking, the restoration of order in Egypt, and of the authority of the Khedive.
SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked when the promised Papers relating to Egypt would be distributed to Members'?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: Communications with the Government of Franco with regard to them have now ceased, and the Papers went to the printers this morning. I think it will take two days to get them printed, but they will probably be distributed on Friday morning.
SIR WILFRID LAWSONinquired if this referred to the distribution of all the Papers?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: No, Sir; these are only the first set down to February 5. We are still discussing with the French Government with respect to others, and I think, as I said yesterday, we shall obtain their assent to the production of the remainder.
BARON HENRY DE WORMSasked the hon. Baronet whether the fortified works at Alexandria had been discontinued, because the statements in that day's newspapers on the subject were contradictory?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: I am sorry I cannot give any additional information on the subject. Sir Beauchamp Seymour may have telegraphed further particulars to the Admiralty since I came to the House; but, so far as I know, he has not yet telegraphed.
MR. O'DONNELL: Was it on the authority of the Government that Admiral Seymour applied to the Sultan for the protection of the British Fleet against the fortifications?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: No, Sir. I stated the facts yesterday, and I have nothing to add to the statement.
MR. ASHMEAD-BARTLETTasked whether, in view of the gravity of the Egyptian crisis and the dangers that threatened the interests of England in that country, the Government would fix an early day for the discussion by that House of the policy to be pursued with regard to Egypt and the Ottoman Power?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: In reply to the Question of the hon. Member, I can only repeat what I have already stated, that Her Majesty's Government desire to place the House in possession of all the facts, by laying on the Table the Correspondence up to the end of May, and they have asked the French Government for their consent, which, as I have also stated, has been partially given. Her Majesty's Government must decline to enter on a fragmentary discussion.
MR. ASHMEAD-BARTLETT: Are we to understand that when the Papers are on the Table an opportunity will be given for discussion?
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: I have no doubt that if a Motion of Want of Confidence in the Government in relation to their foreign policy is proposed by the responsible Leaders of hon. Gentlemen opposite, a suitable opportunity for its discussion will be given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.

PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881 — MR. THOMAS BRENNAN.
MR. TOTTENHAMasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If his attention has been called to the report of a speech in the Dublin papers of the 3rd instant, attributed to Mr. Thomas Brennan, late Secretary to the Land League, immediately after his release from Kilkenny Prison, in which the following passages occur:—
"I value personal liberty as much as any one, and feel to the fullest extent the necessity to have to conform to the rules of gaolers, especially when the gaolers are the enemies of our
234
country. And when I say 'gaolers,' I do not mean the gaol officials, much less those of Kilkenny, from whom I have received nothing hut uniform courtesy and politeness; I mean William Ewart Gladstone, and John Bright, and Joseph Chamberlain, and the whole crowd of pseudo humanitarians and renegade Republicans that comprise the Cabinet of England (loud and prolonged cheering). These are the enemies of our country.
"Compared with what we have yet to do we have done but very little. I hope that if ever again I am called upon to surrender my liberty in the cause of truth or justice that I will do more to deserve it than I did before. We started with the programme of obtaining the land for the people. Well we have not yet obtained that desirable reform, and we will require to give and take many a hard knock yet before it is accomplished.
"We commenced with the work of eradicating landlordism. Well, the old tree and the superstitious dread that overshadowed the people have been wiped away from the Irish mind, but the roots are still deep in the Irish soil, and though time may rot them we cannot afford that time. We want the place on which to build the structure of an Irish nation, and the roots must come up and be cast into the fire;"
and, if the Government had, before the release of Mr. Brennan, any information leading them to the conclusion that he would range himself on the side of Law and order in Ireland?
MR. LABOUCHEREwished, before the right hon. Gentleman rose to answer, to ask him also whether his attention had been called to a speech made by the hon. and learned Member for Launceston (Sir Hardinge Giffard), somewhat of the same nature as the speech of Mr. Brennan, in which, after accusing Her Majesty's Government of nefarious negotiations, the hon. and learned Member said he had been taught to regard with abhorrence that which was known to lawyers as misprision of treason, and that those who did aid and abet traitors and enter into a compact with traitors, were themselves guilty of an offence? He asked the right hon. Gentleman whether it was contemplated to submit statements in that speech to the Law Officers of the Crown, with the view of seeing whether any legal action could be taken to restrain such speeches on the part of the hon. and learned Member for Launceston, as they were most injurious to the cause of law and order in Ireland?
LORD JOHN MANNERSasked the hon. Member for Northampton, whether he had given Notice to the hon.

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and learned Member for Launceston (Sir Hardinge Giffard) of his intention to put that Question?
MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, he had only had the pleasure of reading that speech to-day. He did not know whether the hon. and learned Member was in his place, but he had had no opportunity of giving him Notice.
MR. T. P. O'CONNORasked the hon. Member for Leitrim (Mr. Tottenham) whether he had given Notice of his Question to Mr. Thomas Brennan?
MR. TREVELYAN: My attention has not until this moment been called to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Launceston. My attention has been called to the speech reported as having been delivered by Mr. Thomas Brennan. As to the grounds of his release, they are simple and avowable. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had regard to the ground of Mr. Brennan's arrest, as stated in the warrant — namely, reasonable suspicion of incitement to riot contained in a public speech; and also to the fact that he had been over a year in prison, and he was satisfied that Mr. Brennan's release would not endanger the peace of Dublin, where he resides. These were the considerations which weighed with His Excellency when deciding upon this case.

PARLIAMENT—BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
MR. J. G. HUBBARDwished to ask the First Lord of the Treasury a Question as to the Business of to-morrow. After many disappointments, he had obtained the first place to-morrow for the Motion of which he had given Notice relating to the administration of the Income Tax. He therefore asked whether the Government proposed to occupy the whole of to-morrow with the Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Bill, or whether they would not consent to a portion of the Sitting being devoted to the discussion of the important subject which he wished to bring forward?
MR. GLADSTONE: Sir, unless the Committee on the Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Bill should terminate in the course of the Sitting to-morrow, I am afraid we must occupy the whole of the Sitting with it; and I have but a slender prospect to hold out to my right hon. Friend.
MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, it appeared to him that the Business of Scotland and England was unduly postponed. He therefore asked the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, whether he would not apply the Rule of Urgency to the Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Bill?
MR. HEALYsaid, that before the Question was answered, he would ask the Premier whether, having regard to the manner in which Ireland continually occupied the time of Parliament, he would find some other way out of the difficulty than that just proposed?
MR. GLADSTONE: I think, as far as our present experience has gone, that the Rule of Urgency has been regarded, certainly it was so regarded last year, as a Rule that had reference to what is commonly known as Parliamentary Obstruction. Now, the position of the House at the present moment is a most unfortunate one, and no one feels that more strongly than I and my Colleagues do. Although the debates upon the Irish Crime Bill have been long, and we could have wished they had not been so long, yet I must say I do not think they have been of such a character as that we could justly tax them with the offence, if I may so call it, of Obstruction; and unless it could be so proved, I do not think we should be justified in asking the House to declare Urgency for this Bill?

NAVY—BREECH-LOADING GUNS.
COLONEL NOLANasked the Secretary of State for War, If he can state the number of breech-loading guns supplied during the past financial year to the Navy; the system of breech-loading on which these guns were constructed; and, at whose recommendation such system was adopted?
MR. CHILDERS: None, Sir, during the past financial year. But during the present year 16 25-pound 4-inch guns, weighing each 22½ cwt., have been issued. The system is known as the French system, with some improvements by Sir William Armstrong. It was adopted, on the recommendation of the Director of Artillery, and approved by both the late and present Ordnance Committees.

PREVENTION OF CRIME (IRELAND) BILL.— [BILL 157.]
(Secretary Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Attorney General, Mr. Solicitor General, Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, Mr. Solicitor General for Ireland.)
COMMITTEE. [Progress 5th June.]

PREVENTION OF CRIME (IRELAND) BILL.— [BILL 157.]

  FIFTH NIGHT.
  Bill considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)

  FIFTH NIGHT.
    PART I.

      SPECIAL COMMISSION.
      Clause 3 (Constitution of Court of Criminal Appeal, 40 & 41 Vict. c. 57).
      MR. MARUM, in moving, in page 3, line 9, after "The," to leave out to the end of sub-section (3), and insert—
      "Appellant shall be acquitted unless the whole Court of Criminal Appeal concur in the determination of the appeal,"
      said, the object of this Amendment was to provide that the non-agreement of the Court of Appeal should virtually amount to acquittal of the appellant. In the Supreme Court the principle of unanimity was adopted; but the Government did not seek to put that principle in force in regard to the Appellate Court. He thought it was desirable that they should accommodate themselves as much as they could to the principle of the jury system, and in the jury system, both in England and Ireland, unanimity was required. It must be remembered that they were seeking to deprive Her Majesty's subjects in Ireland of the right of trial by jury, and it was desirable to retain, as far as possible, every part of that right which it was not absolutely necessary to dispense with. In the next place, unanimity was one of the main principles of the Bill. It was required that three Judges should be unanimous in the first instance, and unless they were unanimous there was an acquittal. Therefore, neither one nor two Judges were sufficient to procure a conviction. In the Appellate Court there were four or five Judges, and, it might be, more. He would take a case where there might be seven. In that case, if three of the
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      Judges were in favour of an acquittal, and four were in favour of a conviction, the prisoner or the accused would be convicted—that was to say, that three Judges would not be able to procure an acquittal in the Appellate Court, although the dissent of one Judge would procure an acquittal in the Court of First Instance. He therefore thought it was not an unreasonable matter, seeing that, under the present law, there must be unanimity on the part of the jury before they could convict a man of a criminal offence, that they should endeavour to accommodate the same principle to the Court of Appeal. They were now taking very exceptional powers, which would deprive a large number of the subjects of Her Majesty of the right of trial by jury; and he thought it would be admitted that the effect of that course would necessarily be to lessen the confidence that was reposed in the administration of justice. He thought they ought to do nothing which they could possibly avoid in this Bill to increase the want of confidence which existed in Ireland; and certainly to deprive the Appellate Court of the unanimity which was necessary in the Court of First Instance would very materially shake the confidence of the Irish people in that Court. This was a very important thing to look at in a country where there was already, as he had said, a want of confidence, to a certain extent, in the administration of justice. If he were inclined to enter into statistics, he could show that one of the greatest obstructions to the peace and tranquillity of Ireland was this want of confidence in the administration of justice; and he contended that the adoption of provisions of this kind would very materially increase that want of confidence. It certainly was an extraordinary thing to say that three Judges should not procure an acquittal in one case when the dissent of one Judge in another case would be amply sufficient. The people of Ireland would certainly not be able to understand the distinction; and he thought they were bound to do all they could to show that this Court, exceptional as it was and objected to as it was by the country and the Representatives of the Irish people, would be as little objectionable as possible. He begged to move the Amendment of which he had given Notice.
      Amendment proposed,
      In page 3, line 9, after "The," leave out to end of sub-section (3), and insert "appellant shall he acquitted unless the whole Court of Criminal Appeal concur in the determination of the appeal."—(Mr. Mar urn.)
      Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
      THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)said, the hon. Gentleman was not quite correct in stating that this Amendment would put the Appellate Court in the same position as a jury, and would secure to a prisoner the same advantages as he would have if tried by a jury. The hon. Member sought to make out that if one juryman differed, the prisoner would be acquitted. That was not the fact. If one of the jury differed from the rest, there was a new trial. The prisoner, therefore, in that case, was put on his trial a second time; but by this Amendment the hon. Gentleman provided that, in case of a disagreement on the part of one Judge, there should be an absolute acquittal, and that if out of eight Judges seven were in favour of a conviction and one differed, that difference should prevail to the extent of declaring that the man was not guilty. He felt bound to oppose the Amendment, because, although the Government thought there should be unanimity in the first tribunal in order to secure a conviction, they were, nevertheless, of opinion that the second tribunal might overrule the conviction by a majority of Judges. That would practically leave the law as it stood at the present moment.
      MR. LEAMYsaid, that the appeal under this Act amounted to a new trial. It was proposed virtually to give the prisoner a new jury. In the Court of First Instance, if the three Judges were not entirely unanimous, the accused person was acquitted, so that one Judge out of three could bring about an acquittal, and the man could not be tried again. The new Court of Appeal would constitute a perfectly new jury, composed of five Judges, none of whom would have been upon the first jury. Two out of these five Judges might think the man innocent, and there was a possibility that one out of the Court of First Instance might have considered the man innocent.
      THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)said, the hon. Member was entirely mistaken, because in the Court of First Instance the Judges must be unanimous.
      MR. LEAMYsaid, he accepted the correction. Unless the three Judges were unanimous the man would be acquitted. Even if two were in favour of a conviction, the other dissenting Judge would bring about an acquittal. But, in the case of five Judges in the Court of Appeal, two might be in favour of an acquittal, and, nevertheless, if the other three went the other way, the conviction would hold good. Take the case of a man charged with murder, and suppose the man were convicted by the Court of First Instance, and the case were sent up to the Court of Appeal. Suppose, then, that two out of five Judges held that the conviction was wrong, would it be possible, in the face of public opinion, to hang that man, when two of the Judges who tried him were of opinion that he was innocent? He submitted that it would not be possible to do so, and, therefore, there was a great objection to allow the second tribunal to do that which the first could not do.
      MR. HEALYsaid, there was one other consideration which had been raised, and that was that the clause as it stood would, on the whole, degrade the Judges. It was contended that the Court of First Instance was placed on the low level of an ordinary jury in a horse-stealing case. In such a ease one juryman could upset the entire verdict of the rest, and the same consequences should follow if there were one dissenting Judge in the Court of First Instance. But in the Court of Appeal it was contended that even two dissenting Judges would not be able to bring about the same result. If the proposal that there should be unanimity in the one case was good, why should it not be necessary all along the line? If they were going to give a verdict to a majority in a special Bill of this kind, after having constituted the Judges the jurymen, why not apply the same principle to all cases? If it was available in one particular instance, why not adhere to it always? In the Court of Appeal they might have one or two Judges differing from their colleagues, and, although, as Judges, they were men of judicial power, calmness, and great decision, they were not

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      to have the same weight and. authority as an ordinary juryman in the most trumpery criminal case. The disagreement of a juryman with his colleagues would upset the whole trial; but one of the Judges of the land, a man who was not likely to arrive at any conclusion until he had given the case the most careful consideration, and who would fully appreciate the gravity of the position, was thought so little of in this Bill that, although he disagreed with his colleagues, his dissent would not be sufficient to upset the conviction. Was this the position Her Majesty's Government wished to take up? In establishing the Court of First Instance they praised the Judges to the highest possible pitch. They said the Judges were a tribunal they must all respect, that they were men of impartiality, standing, candour, and so forth; but, nevertheless, they were not of sufficiently high character to warrant Parliament in intrusting to them the lives of Her Majesty's subjects. In an ordinary tribunal, if one man thought that a man put upon his trial for a criminal offence was not guilty, he could upset the whole proceeding; whereas one of the Judges of the land, in a case of murder. was to have less power than a juryman in an ordinary case of felony. This Bill was a bundle of inconsistencies from first to last; but of all the inconsistencies of which the Government were guilty, the worst was in placing the measure before Parliament with two voices. While, on the one hand, they praised the Judges as the only tribunal which could give a fair and impartial decision, on the other, when it came to a question of appeal, they thought so little of them that they refused to repose in them the powers that were given to an ordinary juryman.
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he did not think that the Judges would be degraded by this proposal. If they were, they had been degraded long ago, because upon questions of law which did not deal with questions of fact, a man's life might depend upon a majority of one. In the Court of Criminal Cases Reserved questions of law in a murder case were decided by a majority. There might be 11 Judges, or any number, sitting in the Court, and a decision involving the life of a man would be determined by the vote of a majority, although the majority might, perhaps,
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      be only one. One Judge could not, therefore, in that Court veto the opinion of all the rest. In the House of Lords, which was the highest Court of Appeal, the Lord Chancellor had no power to veto the opinion of the rest of his Colleagues if that opinion was given against him; and, therefore, in all the cases where the Judges acted as a Court of Appeal, the decision was really by a majority, and sometimes by a very small majority indeed, and the Judges did not exhibit any appearance of having been degraded by the practice. It was quite true that in some parts of the United Kingdom, although not in all, they adopted the principle of unanimity; but many people thought that, excellent as that principle was, it was one which might be reformed. But as regarded the position of the Judges being affected by the fact that one Judge had no power to veto the decision of the majority, that was the ordinary practice at the present moment, and he saw no reason whatever why it should be changed.
      MR. METGEsaid, he thought that the answer of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, as far as it went, was a good one. But the Government seemed to evade the question as to what the grounds were for leaving the case to the determination of the majority of the Judges. He could not understand why in one case unanimity was necessary, while in the other the opinion of the majority was sufficient. If the Government had no confidence in the decision of the majority of Judges in the Court of First Instance, why should they have confidence in the decision of the majority in the Court of Appeal? He could not see any difference between the two cases, and he thought the Government should give some strong ground before the Committee consented to depart from the rule which had been already laid down in regard to the Court of First Instance.
      MR. SYNANsaid, he could not concur with his hon. Friend behind him (Mr. Metge) that the answer of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary had at all met the real objection which was raised by this Amendment, because his reference to questions of law, decided by the Court of Appeal, had nothing whatever to do with this case, which was in reality that of a new trial before a new tribunal.

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      At the same time, he thought the Amendment of his hon. Friend went a little too far. He thought a disagreement among the Judges ought not in the Appeal Court to secure an acquittal; but that unanimity ought to be necessary in order to secure a conviction, so that a man might be put upon his trial again. Therefore, if his hon. Friend would shape his Amendment in the manner he (Mr. Synan) suggested, ho would certainly support it. The argument of the hon. and learned Attorney General (Sir Henry James) had nothing to do with the case, because the hon. and learned Gentleman had placed the question on an analogy with the ease of a new trial before a new jury, asserting that if they disagreed there would not be an acquittal, but that the man would be put on his trial again. But unless this was a new tribunal deciding on a question of fact, the only effect of a disagreement among the Judges, in order to make the analogy complete, would be that a conviction would not be secured, but that the accused would be put upon his trial again.
      MR. GIBSONsaid, that the suggestion made by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for the county of Limerick (Mr. Synan) practically amounted to this—that if one Judge dissented from the decision of the Court of First In-tance, it would be impossible to obtain a decision upon anything. He was bound to say that the Bill, as it was drafted, was exceedingly mild. They had in the Court below given the power to one Judge to overrule the decision of two. That, in itself, was rather a strange power to give; but he would pass that by, seeing that it was already decided, and he had no wish to go back upon it. But to say that in the larger tribunal of five Judges they would allow one to negative the possibility of a decision being given by the Court of Appeal was absurd. He failed, himself, to see any argument in support of the Amendment; and, unless everything was to be reversed according to the ordinary rules by which judicial tribunals were governed, he did not see how a Committee could adopt the principle which had been proposed.
      MR. REDMONDsaid, it seemed to him that the argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman who had just spoken did not count for very much. The right hon. and learned Gentleman
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      said that the action of a single Judge would be sufficient, if the suggestion of the hon. Member for Limerick (Mr. Synan) were adopted, to overrule the decision of the Court below.
      MR. GIBSON: And his four colleagues in the Court of Appeal?
      MR.REDMOND: Certainly. But that did not affect what he was about to say. It was, in fact, not really a new trial upon the question of law, as in the case of a criminal appeal for reserved cases, but a completely new trial on questions of fact as well as questions of law. The whole circumstances of the trial might be changed. New facts might be disclosed that were not known at all to the Judges who decided in the first instance; and he must say that it seemed extraordinary to him, in a case of this kind, that the action of a single Judge should be sufficient to secure the conviction and, perhaps, the execution of the prisoner. He had always thought that in criminal cases of this kind the benefit of the doubt was to be given to the accused man; but, in this instance, there might be so strong a doubt as to the facts that two Judges out of five might be convinced that the man was innocent, and yet that doubt would not be sufficient to save the prisoner, perhaps, from execution. It seemed to him that there was another matter that was raised by this Amendment, and that was the way in which the Irish people would look at this tribunal. They must take into consideration the feelings with which the Irish people would view this Bill. They would view the measure, from beginning to end, with distrust; and, instead of attempting to invest the tribunal they were creating with anything that would increase the confidence of the people, they were doing all in their power to diminish that con6dence. When the Irish people saw that, in a particular case, a reasonable doubt was entertained by two Judges out of five, and yet this was not sufficient to save a man from execution, they certainly would have very little confidence in the tribunal; and, as he desired to secure a fair trial for every criminal who might be tried under the Bill, he trusted that his hon. Friend the Member for Kilkenny (Mr. Marum) would press the Amendment to a division.
      MR. FIRTHsaid, the difficulty of the case was that they were dealing

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      with an entirely new and exceptional tribunal. The ground upon which they claimed to establish this tribunal was not that the verdict of the jury ought to be unanimous, but that the verdict would be likely to be biassed by, or subjected to, intimidation. Upon questions of fact, he failed to see that any case had been made out for allowing the judgment of the Court to be that of the majority. With respect to questions of law, the observations of the Home Secretary would certainly apply; and the majority of the Judges might very well decide on questions of law. But, although the decision of the Court of Crown Cases Reserved was given by a majority, it must be borne in mind that it was never given upon a question of fact. Therefore, when sitting as jurymen and judges of fact, he was of opinion that each Judge should have a veto, such as jurymen now possessed.
      MR. NEWDEGATEbelieved that a question had been raised by an hon. Member near him as to the Bill, involving a stigma on the character of the Irish Judges. Now, the case of Ireland was an utterly distinct and exceptional one. The Government had declared that Irish juries could no longer be trusted to give fair and impartial verdicts upon the facts of a criminal case submitted to them, and Parliament had assented to that proposition. All this proved that they were dealing with a totally exceptional case; and he thought that a special tribunal ought to be constituted for the trial of cases under such exceptional circumstances. In short, he shared the opinion which he knew prevailed among a large number of Members on that side of the House—that it would have been better to establish Martial Law than to constitute this new tribunal. As the case was a totally exceptional one, so the treatment should be exceptional; and all attempts to accommodate the forms of the Common Law to a state of things which was practically a state of warfare were most objectionable. He thought it was a dangerous precedent, that it would be perfectly understood, and that it was calculated to undermine the respect which the people should entertain for the Common Law. He hoped the Committee would excuse him for expressing so strong an opinion; but he certainly
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      thought that the employment of the Irish Judges upon the proposed tribunal was a grave mistake.
      MR. R. T. REIDsaid, the declaration of Martial Law would really have meant no law at all; and the last example of establishing Martial Law in Jamaica was by no means satisfactory. At the same time, it appeared to him that it would be a most shocking thing if any man in Ireland were to be executed by a Court consisting of five Judges, when two out of the five were of opinion that he was innocent. It must be remembered that the Judges were by this Bill made judges of fact in place of juries; and it was not unreasonable to extend to them the principle which now applied to the decisions of juries. Juries must be unanimous, or otherwise there could be no conviction; and when, instead of 12 jurymen as the first tribunal, they were to constitute a Court of three Judges, and refer their decisions to five other Judges sitting as a Court of Appeal, it was not unreasonable to say that, instead of the unanimous opinion of 12 jurymen, there ought to be the unanimous opinion of the Judges who sat in the place of the jury before a conviction could take place.
      SIR EARDLEY WILMOTsaid, he thought that there was great force in the observation of the right hon. and learned Gentleman below him (Mr. Gibson), that it was objectionable to require the decision in one case to be that of a majority, and in the other to be unanimous. It was proposed by this section to refer appeals to a Court of five Judges, the conviction being affirmed if three were in favour of it, although two might be in favour of an acquittal, and these two, in professional language, strong Judges. He quite agreed with his hon. Friend near him that if such a case as that did occur there would be a feeling on the part of the people of Ireland that the view of the two Judges who were favourable to an acquittal should not be set aside. Therefore, if there happened to be a powerful public opinion upon any particular case, a difficulty might arise. If unanimity was impossible, he would suggest that they might make the proportion greater. Perhaps if it were decided that four-fifths should be in favour of a conviction, they might get rid of a good deal of the objection.
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he thought that the arguments advanced on both sides were rather self-destructive. His hon. Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. Reid) supported the view of the hon. Member below the Gangway (Mr. Synan), that there should be a new trial in case of a difference of opinion; but he thought, on consideration, that his hon. Friend would see that there could not be a new trial. Who was to institute the new trial? Was it to be the very same tribunal who had given the first opinion? The Judges being appointed by rota, there would be nobody else to send to it. In criminal cases, when they had a new trial they had a new jury. Then it was said that they ought always to give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. Every Judge in the Court, sitting as a juryman, would be bound to give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt in the decision at which he arrived; but it was not necessary to give prisoners the benefit of the doubt in cases of criminal appeals, as they were now heard. Doubts might exist in matters of law, but not upon matters of fact; and if there was a doubt in a matter of law it was just as material to the prisoner as a doubt upon a matter of fact. But they did not give the prisoner the benefit of that doubt. In the Court of Criminal Appeal there might be five or six Judges who entertained a doubt or a strong opinion that, by law, the prisoner was not guilty. But did they give him the benefit of that doubt? Not at all. There might be five Judges on one side, and six on the other. The five might think that, by law, the prisoner was not guilty; but he was, nevertheless, liable to be executed if the other six thought that he was guilty. Then, again, it was argued that a strong popular feeling would exist against the execution of the criminal sentence if one or two Judges felt a doubt as to the propriety of the conviction; but that equally applied to a case where five or six Judges entertained a strong opinion that by law a man was not guilty. In point of fact, all these arguments as to the feeling of a doubt in a case were much more proper to be addressed to the Crown, in regard to the exercise of mercy, or upon the question whether the actual sentence should be carried out. No doubt, in such a case it would become a proper matter for consideration. His hon. and
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      learned Friend the Member for Chelsea (Mr. Firth) said the difference between doubts of law and doubts upon questions of fact was very great. He (Sir William Harcourt) was unable to appreciate the distinction. What was the difference between entertaining a doubt whether in fact a man was guilty or whether in law he was guilty? To his mind there was no distinction at all. He could not see why a man's life should be more in jeopardy upon questions of fact than upon questions of law. He ought to have the full benefit of the doubt in either case, and he got the benefit. It seemed to him that both the doubts amounted to exactly the same thing. But upon questions of law it was not so necessary that there should be unanimity as upon questions of fact. It was necessary to guard, in the first instance, against any careless mode of procedure; against anything having been overlooked. It was not unusual for something or other to be overlooked in the first consideration of the matter, and, therefore, it was most desirable to afford an opportunity for re-consideration. It was with this view that the Bill proposed to give an appeal; but it was not considered necessary, in the case of an appeal, that the decision of the Judges should be unanimous, but that if the majority were of opinion that the man was guilty the conviction should then stand.
      SIR JOSEPH M'KENNAsaid, he wished to point out the great distinction between the law in regard to cases of criminal appeal, and the law as it would exist after the passing of this Bill. The cases reserved for the decision of the Judges in criminal appeals were altogether dependent on points of law, and the Judges decided whether the law was clearly stated, and was applicable to a certain condition of facts which had been previously presented to the consideration of the Judges on points of law alone. But he understood that the appeal under this Bill was not entirely an appeal on points of law, but that it amounted to a complete re-hearing of the case; and, for the life of him, he could not see why they should require, in the first instance, complete unanimity or a complete acquittal; and, in the second place, should give to the majority of the Court, on re-hearing, the right to say that the judgment of the

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      Court below should pass without question. In fact, what they did in creating this Court of Appeal at all was to afford facilities for the consideration of doubts as to the justice of the first conviction. There was no way of getting out of the difficulty except by having an appeal to a single individual; and he ventured to think that an appeal to a single Judge would be better for the prisoner than an appeal to a number of Judges, if the majority were to decide the case; and for this simple reason, that the appeal to a single Judge, if that Judge happened to be in the prisoner's favour, would acquit him, whereas the appeal to a number of Judges merely meant this—that if the prisoner's case were not sufficiently strong to secure a majority in its favour on questions of fact as well as of law, the judgment of the Court below would stand. They were all familiar with the continual reversal of judgments in the Courts below, and it was rarely asserted that in that reversal there was any denial of justice. On the contrary, it frequently happened, on the re-hearing of a case, that new lights were flashed upon it, and it became, as it were, a trial de novo. What it was proposed to do in this case was, that where there was a case for a second trial, and sufficient material to shake the judgment of the Court below— indeed, if there was enough to shake it almost completely— nevertheless, if by a majority of one the judgment of the Court below was affirmed, the prisoner would be left for execution. It was not a sufficient answer to the objections that were raised to say that such a case would commend itself to the mercy of the Crown. The point was, not whether the mercy of the Crown should be extended or not. It was whether a man should have been found guilty in the first instance or not, and whether they were to decide that the judgment of the Court below ought to be reversed or not. His own opinion was that the Court of Appeal should decide, once for all, without merely shaking the decision of the Court below. There might he new questions of fact throwing an entirely new light upon the whole of the case, which new questions of fact might not have been submitted to the Court below at all. If it were considered necessary to obtain the confidence of the people of Ireland, he
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      thought the Government should satisfy them that the judgment of the Court below was unshaken, and that, although there had been practically a new trial on questions of fact, no doubt had been expressed as to the propriety of the first decision. It was very well known that cases were frequently remitted from the Courts above to the Court below, with instructions to inquire into statements of fact, so that, in point of fact, cases frequently did occur in which the Court above were of opinion that some questions which had been disposed of ought to be re-considered. He thought that in one shape or another they ought to require the unanimity of the Court before they passed a sentence upon a man which involved the forfeiture of his life.
      MR. CHARLES RUSSELLsaid, his right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary seemed to think there was an analogy between this case and the cases referred to in ordinary Courts of Appeal. He (Mr. Charles Russell) failed to see the analogy. On the contrary, there was a wide distinction to be drawn between the majority of Judges deciding upon such questions as those which would be referred to them under this Bill, and the majority upon the ordinary questions of law which were sent up to the Court of Appeal. The questions which came before the Court of Appeal were legal questions; but they were legal questions which assumed admitted questions of fact, which brought home to the prisoner clear moral guilt; and the question which went before the Court of Appeal was generally whether certain technical difficulties existed in regard to the law which had been provided as a safeguard for liberty and life. It seemed to him, therefore, that there was a clear distinction between the two cases, and that the analogy did not hold good. In this case the Judges were to be judges of fact. They were to be the jury as well as the Judges, and the ordinary rule of law with regard to the decisions of the jury was that there should be unanimity. His right hon. Friend seemed to see some difficult}' in having a new trial. He said there was no machinery in existence by which a new trial could be ordered. But that did not seem to him (Mr. Charles Russell) to be any real difficulty at all. If the Act provided that there should be a new trial, then the Lord Lieutenant would be called

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      upon to issue a new Commission; and there was nothing to prevent the machinery for a new trial being created by an Act of Parliament. He thought it was desirable, as this was a very serious departure, and a departure which he, for one, sincerely regretted, and which he viewed with very great apprehension, that if the change was to be effected it ought to be surrounded in every way by safeguards, as far as possible, especially when it had been already pointed out that the confidence of the Irish people in the administration of justice so to be administered was already shaken.
      MR. WARTONwished to remind the Committee that all this difficulty, and a very serious difficulty, indeed, it was, arose from the ill-considered nature of the clause. If last night the Committee had not exhibited that extreme desire to hurry through Sections 2 and 3 in the course of half-an-hour, they would have saved the time of the House by listening more patiently to the arguments of those who had given the subject mature consideration. He was not saying this for the purpose of embarrassing the Government, because, as far as his humble power went, he wished to give them every assistance; but he wished to point out that they were now a consultative Body, and the questions they were in consultation upon had reference to the constitution of a very complicated Court of Appeal. He was not surprised at the very large number of difficulties which had been raised in regard to the proposal of the Government. One difficulty was, to give an appeal at all on matters of fact. An appeal was generally confined to disputed questions of law; but he regretted to find that hon. Members, possessing minds and intellects of the highest order, like the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell), were stooping to the level of advocates who endeavoured to get off a prisoner at whatever cost. He hoped still to see the Government take courage and strike out of the Bill everything in it that related to giving an appeal upon matters of fact. In regard to an appeal on matters of law, the Home Secretary had already stated what the practice was in the Court of Crown Cases Reserved. In that Court, six Judges could over-rule the opinions of five; but by the constitution of the
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      Court of Crown Cases Reserved, an appeal on matters of law was heard, in the first place, by five Judges; and if these Judges differed, then it was heard before all the Judges. Therefore, when the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary expressed an opinion that there was an analogy between the two cases, that analogy was not quite complete, because, if any Judge out of the five differed at all, the case must go to the Court above. Personally, he objected to this appeal altogether; and, considering the limited number of the Irish Judges, and also the fact that they would already have appointed three to act upon the Special Commission, he did not see how the ordinary business of the country was to be conducted if many of these cases came before the Court of Appeal. He would suggest to the Government that the Bill was also defective in reference to the reasons of the Judges which were to be submitted to the Court of Appeal. A shorthand-writer was to take notes of the evidence; but he failed to see how any shorthand-writer could give the reasons of the Judges. He could only give what he imagined to be their reasons. So far as the present Appeal Court was concerned, the practice was for the Judge who tried the case to state a case for the information of the Court above; but there would be no such case stated for the information of the Court above, under this Bill. He would suggest that no point of law should be reserved unless it had been taken by the counsel at the trial.
      MR. SERJEANT SIMONsaid, he concurred with his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dundalk (Mr. C. Russell), that there was no analogy between an appeal on questions of fact and the appeal to the Court of Crown Cases Reserved on questions of law. The jury found a man guilty of the offence charged against him, and the subject of appeal was always upon questions of law, irrespective of any question of fact. The matter for the consideration of the Court of Crown Cases Reserved was simply and solely the question of law, and it was no part of the province of the Court to determine a question of fact. The arguments of his right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary were, therefore, illogical. This was a matter which went altogether beyond the do-

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      main of politics. It was a matter which had to do with public sentiment, and the House of Commons ought not to ignore that public sentiment. Take the case of murder. They gave an appeal from three Judges to a higher Court, composed of six Judges, or, taking the lowest number mentioned in the Bill, five Judges. Did anyone think that it would be possible for any Government to execute a man who was found guilty by three out of five Judges only? He ventured to think not. The public feeling would be outraged, and such a Court would not be endured at all. If that were the case, why should they not require unanimity? Why should they be satisfied with a conviction by three Judges, when they felt that they ought not to act upon it, and when they dare not act upon it, because, if they did, they would outrage public opinion? Then why should they not require that all convictions upon matters of fact should be unanimous? At the same time, he could not support the Amendment, because he thought it was too large. But if the hon. Member would introduce words requiring the decisions of the Court to be unanimous on questions of fact, he should certainly support it, and he hoped his hon. and learned Friend would re-consider the Amendment with that view. He was afraid that the Bill was altogether an outrage upon the natural instincts of Englishmen. Englishmen were accustomed to trial by jury, and it was a tremendous wrench all of them were making when they agreed to take away that safeguard which had been provided for the liberties of the people, and when they were deliberately depriving a prisoner of the judgment of his peers. He deeply regretted that the Government had been obliged to introduce a clause of this kind. He was afraid, however, that it was an inevitable necessity, although he should have much preferred to see some other mode adopted for dealing with the question. Perhaps a jury of 18 instead of 12, requiring the unanimous verdict of 12 out of the 18, would meet the case. He presumed this question had been fairly considered by the Government, but that they had not been able to see their way to the adoption of such a plan. But as they had taken away trial by jury in order to meet a special emergency, he thought they were bound to guard it in
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      every way, so as not to ignore the well-known principles of our jurisprudence further than was absolutely necessary. It had always been held that there should be unanimity on questions of fact. The real analogy lay there, and not between the provisions of the present Bill and an appeal on questions of law. The true analogy would be obtained by carrying out the principles of unanimity on questions of fact, leaving questions of law as they were now to be decided in the Court of Appeal by a majority. He hoped the hon. and learned Member would accept this suggestion, and amend the Amendment.
      MR. O'SHAUGHNESSYsaid, that it was not the principle of giving a prisoner the benefit of the doubt that they were now trying to assert. What they were trying to assert was the principle of unanimity. If the Bill were allowed to stand as it was now drawn, the result would be this, that out of eight men who tried a case, six would be able to convict, although two might dissent, and be in favour of an acquittal. But as the law stood at present, before they convicted, they required the unanimity of 12 men. He quite agreed with the Home Secretary that a new trial was not to be thought of, and for this reason, that the going before the Court of Appeal would be in reality a new trial. It was proposed to take a case before a new Court composed of five Judges, not for the mere purpose of trying questions of law, but for re-hearing the whole case and deciding on questions of fact. That, in itself, was a new trial, and ought to be guarded by all the circumstances of a new trial. The Home Secretary failed to see any distinction in regard to the purposes of the Bill between questions of law and questions of fact; but already an analogous tribunal existed for the purpose of deciding criminal appeals, and in that tribunal the distinction which the Home Secretary failed to see was drawn. The law fully recognized that a majority on questions of law might be sufficient, but that in regard to all questions of fact there must be absolute unanimity. There was also this distinction to be borne in mind. An attempt had been made to create an analogy between this case and the case of the Court of Crown Cases Reserved; but there was no analogy whatever between the two

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      Courts. One was a Court solely for the consideration of questions of law; while the Court of Appeal it was proposed to establish was as much a Court for the decision of matters of fact as a jury of 12 men. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that the cause of the dissent of two Judges was a thing which would weigh with the Executive just the same as a recommendation of the jury to mercy, when it became a question of inflicting a severe punishment. But he was sorry to say that this was not the experience they had had in Ireland in analogous cases. They had had cases in Ireland where jurymen had disagreed one day, and where a new jury was sworn to try the same case, and on the second jury convicting, the sentence was carried out. Therefore, they could not hope that this result would invariably follow on the dissent of two Judges, because the mere fact of a disagreement on the part of the first jury, in the case he mentioned, showed that there were doubts entertained, and that there was a considerable amount of dissent. He would suggest to his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kilkenny (Mr. Marum) that he should add to the Amendment words to this effect—
      "That the appellant should be acquitted unless the whole Court of Criminal Appeal concurred in the determination of the appeal on questions of fact."
      He thought it might be possible to add these words, and the principle of the majority deciding on questions of law would not be disturbed.
      MR. MARUMsaid, he should be glad to avail himself of the suggestion which had been made on the other side with reference to the distinction between matters of law and matters of fact. The Amendment would then run in this way—
      "The appellant shall he acquitted on matters of fact unless the whole Court of Criminal Appeal concur in the determination of the appeal."
      He would, however, if the Government accepted this suggestion, leave the drafting of the clause in its details to the Government themselves. After the expression of opinion which had been elicited from all sides of the House, he trusted the Government would, in the face of so great a body of feeling, consent to the amendment of the clause in its present shape. He concurred in the statements
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      which had been made that, as a matter of sentiment, the proposal to deprive the people of Ireland of trial by jury would be very distasteful in this country, and, therefore, it ought to be safeguarded in every shape and form with reference to the sentiment of the people. They were now going to try persons accused of crime by a Judge without a jury, and they ought to throw around the proceeding all the elements of trial by jury as far as possible. One of the most important of these elements was that there should be unanimity in the decision. If the Government desired to secure the confidence of the Irish people in their legislation, they would certainly accept this Amendment.
      MR. GIBSONsaid, that, as for high considerations of proved expediency, it was thought right to suspend trial by jury for the purposes of this Bill, why, in the name of common sense, should they set up in its place an impossible and unworkable tribunal? They should either retain the existing system with all its imperfections, or else set up in its place something that would work satisfactorily. When hon. Members talked of safeguards, what was evidently present in their mind was that it was desirable to make the working of the new tribunal impossible. They might surround it with so many safeguards that they would make it absolutely impossible to arrive at any decision at all. Take the statements that had been made that there must be unanimity throughout in regard to matters of fact. It was said that the Court of First Instance was to follow the analogy of the jury, and to be unanimous in their conviction of an accused person; but they had got more than that in the Bill, as framed by the Home Secretary. If a jury disagreed and was not unanimous, the consequence was not an acquittal, but that the man could be tried again. Hero, however, the Court of First Instance was so constituted that if it disagreed, the analogy of the jury system was not followed, but an acquittal resulted. That being so, he should like to ask if the analogy of the jury was followed up? The three Judges of First Instance were supposed to be in the place of a jury, but in the existing system of a criminal jury trial there was the power of getting a second trial before another jury. There was nothing of that kind hero. In addition to the

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      changes he had indicated, there was the power of taking the case to another Court, on dissatisfaction being expressed at the result—because, really, it came to that, without any certificate of the Judge that there were reasonable grounds for an appeal. On the mere motion of the criminal that ho would like to have another chance, and without any suggestion from the Bench that they themselves desired to have certain cases referred, the case could be reviewed. The prisoner, who naturally would always be dissatisfied with every sentence, and extremely dissatisfied with every conviction, had power to bring on the case again on an appeal from one tribunal to a larger tribunal; and the contention now was, that that larger tribunal was again to be subjected to all the analogies of a jury trial. If that were done, they practically surrounded the case with what were called safeguards to such an extent that they ran the risk of giving far greater impunity to crime under the new system than could possibly exist under the old one. In the Amendment suggested by his hon. Friend the Member for Kilkenny (Mr. Marum), the hon. Member himself departed from the analogy of the jury system, because in the event of the Court of First Instance being unanimous upon the question of guilt and sentence, the Court being composed of three of the highest Judges of the land, the case was to go before a tribunal of five Judges. In that tribunal the judgment might be affirmed by four to one, the four being four of the highest Judges in Ireland. Practically, therefore, there would be seven to one in favour of a conviction; but the result would be that the dissent of the one Judge would acquit the prisoner. The effect of the dissent of the one Judge would not be the same as the disagreement of a jury, but would amount to a direct acquittal. He thought it was impossible to carry safeguarding to a more absurd extreme.
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he had listened very carefully to the debate, and he was bound to say that it had not altered the views he had already formed on the subject. He thought his hon. Friend the Member for Limerick (Mr. Synan) would see how utterly impracticable it would be to give a new trial. It was absurd when, for instance, a man had been unanimously convicted, and
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      four Judges out of five had affirmed the decision, that the dissent of one Judge should operate to send the case for a fresh trial. The result would in that case be three distinct trials. In his opinion, the introduction of such a provision would entirely defeat the object of the Bill; and, after all, they would not get rid of this doubt which was spoken of as being of so much importance in regard to the sentiment of the people. Even if a new Court confirmed the decision of the first tribunal, the prisoner would always be able to refer to one Judge as having been in his favour; and however many Judges might give a decision in the case, and however many convictions there might be, he would always be able to turn round and say there was one Judge who differed. Therefore, no trial would, in the least degree, cure or mend the evil they were asked to guard against. The only question to consider was, whether they would get a sufficient preponderance of opinion on the part of the Judges in the case. His hon. and learned Friend (Mr. C. Russell), who, no doubt, had had great experience, had stated that the Court for Crown Cases Reserved was always confined to the consideration of questions of law. His hon. and learned Friend said the questions brought before that Court were technical questions. But they were not all of them technical questions. Take the question of treason. Supposing an appeal to the Court of Crown Cases Reserved were made in a case of this kind, and the question was whether a certain thing was treason or not. Certainly, that was not a technical question, but it was a question of substance and of Common Law,whether particular conduct of moral guilt amounted to treason. The matter would stand thus. There would be certain conduct on the part of a certain man, or of a number of men, and the question of law would be whether that conduct constituted treason. They allowed that to be determined by the vote of one Judge. It was quite true that by long immemorial practice unanimity was required in all cases that were tried by a jury; but when they came to a Bill which changed the whole of the procedure in cases of this kind, there was no sort of reason why they should be bound by anything beyond the desirability of the thing. Certainly, nothing which had occurred

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      during the course of the debate had altered his opinion, and the suggestion which had been made to confine the unanimity to questions of fact would do very little towards removing the evils that were complained of in regard to dissenting Judges. He was bound to say, having carefully considered the whole subject, that he saw no reason for departing: from the principle laid down in the Bill.
      MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he was not much surprised at the line of argument used by the Irish Representative of the Front Opposition Bench (Mr. Gibson)— or, rather, the Representative of Irish coercion on the Front Opposition Bench, for the term "Irish Representative" was rather a misnomer. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Representative of the University of Dublin objected to the multiplication of safeguards in connection with the new tribunal. The drift of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's speech was to support the proposition that the great thing was to hang somebody; and it must be remembered, in justice to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, that that was the great principle of the packed jury system during all the long years of Tory domination in Ireland. Juries were then so constituted that they certainly hung the men they were ashed to hang. Her Majesty's Government were not satisfied with this packed jury of Judges; but they objected to having even unanimity in their packed jury. It must be said on behalf of the old system in Ireland that a packed jury had to be unanimous. They had now a distinct packed jury, and the fact that the jurors were paid Government nominees, instead of being unpaid supporters of law and order under the old system, was by no means an argument in favour of the new packed jury. It was only yesterday that the Home Secretary mentioned in that House that the appeal to the five Judges would be really a new trial on new facts. Well, he wanted to know why unanimity was to be required in regard to the facts brought forward at the first trial, and unanimity was not to be required in regard to the new facts— which were, at least, matters of as great importance—that were brought forward on the second trial? The Government asked them to consider the case of four Judges being in favour of the guilt of the
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      prisoner on the second trial, and one Judge being in favour of his acquittal; but it might be the case that three Judges only were in favour of finding the prisoner guilty, and that two Judges might be in favour of an acquittal, and yet the Government would hang the prisoner on a bare majority of one vote in a packed jury of Government nominees. They had been talking about the effect of all this on popular feeling in Ireland. He asked the Committee to consider for a moment what must be the effect upon a packed jury of Government nominees. He asked what must be the effect on public opinion in Ireland of a man being hanged on a single vote in a packed jury of Government nominees? The Government might call that execution as long as they liked; but the people of Ireland would call it murder. He said that a man convicted in a lower Court upon his first trial got his second trial, as he had a right to get it, in the Superior Court, and was there only condemned upon new facts, and upon new evidence given by new witnesses. This constituted absolutely a new trial, and he was to be condemned on that absolutely new trial on the vote of three Government nominees against two. The people of Ireland would consider that the negative of two nominees against conviction would be of more weight than the decision of three nominees for the Crown. When a man was condemned to death by only three votes against two, when he suffered that penalty of death, would it not be universally agreed in Ireland that that man had been judicially murdered? He asked the Government what must be the effect of such a rule as this bearing upon the great question of evidence? That difficulty could not be removed by the proposals of this Bill, for although witnesses would always be ready to give evidence before a fair tribunal, before a tribunal where the dice were cogged against the prisoner's life; the witness before such tribunal would, in fact, share the odium of the tribunal itself; aye, and in the tribunal of his own conscience, he would feel himself an accomplice in that judicial murder. Let it be remembered that the only ground on which the Government refused trial by jury was the ground of the alleged partiality of jurors. If it were not for the partiality of jurors they said they would be happy to main-

      261
      tain the existing jury system. That was the statement of Her Majesty's Government; but they could not, on their own principles, impugn the partiality of the tribunal which they themselves selected; and where, then, was the ground of their objection to unanimity on the part of a jury consisting of impartial and intelligent Judges? In this case the question of unanimity could not arise in an ordinary way, because this jury was to be composed of impartial and intelligent jurors. But the Government denied that intelligent and impartial jurors were to be obtained, and that, therefore, they were obliged to have a jury of impartial and intelligent Judges. Why not, a fortiori, insist on the unanimity of the tribunal of impartial and intelligent Judges? The Government attacked either the intelligence or the bona fides of their own tribunal for the purpose of insuring the condemnation and execution of the accused. The Government, then, professed their want of belief in the capacity of the new Judges, because, had they regarded these Judges as capable, intelligent, and honourable men, they would have insisted upon a verdict by unanimity of votes. That was their own declaration upon their own case. Were this simply a matter of dealing with a question of law, he could understand the action of the Government, because the majority of Judges might be led to decide on the question of law, but not so on questions of fact. The appeal to this Court would constitute a second trial as completely and absolutely as the proceedings before the Special Commission Court or the Court of First Instance was the first trial. As he had already pointed out, it was a new trial, upon new evidence that had never been before the jury on the first trial; and he said that, if unanimity were necessary in the case of the first trial, it was still more necessary to have unanimity on the part of the Judges in the second trial, because the jury in the second trial would be labouring under that great disadvantage to the accused man—they would be labouring under that injury to the accused man—namely, the fact that the jury of Judges in the first trial had found against him. In order, then, to redress the balance in favour of the prisoner, in order to make his trial really a new trial, it was absolutely necessary to have unanimity amongst the new jurors; other-
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      wise, unquestionably, the new tribunal would be prejudiced against the prisoner by the fact that the first trial went against him. He said, therefore, it was absolutely necessary, if the Court was not to be detested by honest men from one end of Ireland to another, as judicial murderers, to have unanimity on the second trial, where so great a prejudice already existed against the prisoner, owing to the result of the first trial. If there remained any respect for the old maxim, "That it was better that 99 guilty men should escape rather than that one innocent person should suffer," then he said there was no justification or palliation for the conduct of a Government which would insist upon having a man tried for his life, found guilty, and executed by the mere majority of one individual in a jury of only five jurors.
      SIR EARDLEY WILMOTsaid, he proposed to amend the Amendment of the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) by substituting for the words, "whole Court of Criminal Appeal," the words, "four-fifths of the Court of Criminal Appeal."
      THE CHAIRMANsaid, that the Amendment could not now be put, inasmuch as the Question before the Committee was, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Bill."
      Question put, and agreed to.
      MR. MARUMsaid, he understood that the hon. Member who last addressed the Committee had an Amendment to move to the clause; if that were so he would not now move the Amendment standing in his name.
      THE CHAIRMANsaid, the hon. Member for South Warwickshire came up to the Table of the House with an Amendment, and he informed him that it was impossible that such an Amendment could be put, because the Question before the Committee was, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Bill." That Question was then put to the Commitee, and decided in the affirmative.
      MR. SYNANsaid, he had an Amendment to Sub-section 3, which he considered he had a right to move.
      THE CHAIRMANsaid, the words were now part of the clause, that the determination of any appeal should be according to the determination of the majority of the Judges who heard the appeal. The hon. and learned Member

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      for Chelsea (Mr. Firth) had an Amendment upon the Paper next in order, and, consequently, his Amendment had priority.
      MR. OALLANrose to Order. The hon. and learned Member for Chelsea, not having moved his Amendment, was it not in Order that an Amendment which another hon. Member wished to move could be put?
      THE CHAIRMANsaid, the hon. and learned Member for Chelsea had given Notice of the Amendment on the Paper after the word "appeal," and it was his right now to move that Amendment.
      MR. CALLANrose to Order. The words down to "appeal" had not been agreed to by the Committee.
      THE CHAIRMANsaid, that the words down to "appeal" had been carried by the Committee on the Question "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause," which was determined in the affirmative. The words did, therefore, stand part of the clause. That being so, after the word "appeal," the hon. and learned Member for Chelsea had priority.
      MR. SYNANbegged to remind the Chairman that he had given him Notice that in case the Amendment of his hon. and learned Friend were negatived, he should move one that was substantially the same. He was quite willing to put his Amendment after the word "appeal."
      THE CHAIRMANsaid, he must ask the hon. Member not to disturb the proceedings of the Committee. The hon. and learned Member for Chelsea, according to all rule, had priority to move his Amendment after the word "appeal." When that was settled the hon. Member could move.
      MR. FIRTHsaid, he was bound to say, if the question was one of right, that he should be quite willing to waive his right. If, however, the question was one of the ruling of the Chair, he should proceed with his Amendment.
      MR. SYNANsaid, as the hon. and learned Member for Chelsea had not moved, he would now submit his Amendment to the Committee. In doing so he did not intend to occupy any length of time, as the subject had already been fully discussed.
      Amendment proposed,
      In page 3, line 9, to insert "on the determination of any appeal the whole Court shall agree to secure conviction."—(Mr. Syrian.)
      THE CHAIRMANpointed out to the hon. Member that the words "determination of any appeal shall be" were already part of the Bill. He would now call upon the hon. and learned Member for Chelsea.
      MR. FIRTHsaid, he accepted the ruling of the Chair, and begged to move the Amendment standing in his name. He had already remarked that we had never had a Court of Appeal on questions of fact in criminal cases, although such appeal existed in civil cases where the Court was equally divided. There was no provision in this Bill as to the number of Judges being odd or even. Having regard to the fact that the Courts of Law had always had a tendency in favour of innocence, he thought, in case the Court were equally divided in opinion, that the appeal should be allowed.
      Amendment proposed,
      In page 3, line 10, after "appeal," insert "but if such Court be equally divided in opinion, the appeal shall be allowed."—(Mr. Firth.)
      Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he regretted that he was unable to accept this Amendment; but he had given instructions for an Amendment to be put down to the effect that the Court should always consist of an unequal number of Judges.
      MR. FIRTHsaid, on that understanding, he was willing to withdraw his Amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      Amendment proposed,
      In page 3, line 10, at the end of the Clause, to add the words "except in questions of fact, when such determination shall depend on the unanimity of the judges."—(Mr. Redmond.)
      Question put, "That those words be there added."
      The Committee divided: —Ayes 55; Noes 216: Majority 161.—(Div. List, No. 111.)
      MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYasked if it were in Order to add, after the word "appeal," the following words:—
      "Except in cases where fresh evidence shall be adduced, in which case the appeal shall only be rejected by the unanimous decision of the Court."
      MR. HEALYasked whether it would be in Order to move the omission of the sub-section altogether?
      THE CHAIRMANsaid, the sub-section had been agreed to.
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, that the Amendment suggested by the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) was inadmissible in its present form, inasmuch as it would not agree grammatically with the clause as it stood.
      THE CHAIRMANsaid, the Amendment of the hon. Member for Longford, as far as he understood it, was substantially the same as the Amendment which had just been negatived by the Committee. That Amendment was that, except in questions of fact, there should be unanimity; whereas the Amendment suggested by the hon. Member for Longford was that, except in questions of new fact, there should be unanimity on the part of the Judges. The Amendment, therefore, was not in Order, and could not be put.
      MR. REDMONDsaid, he should not occupy the attention of the Committee at any great length in moving the Amendment which he was about to propose, inasmuch as it turned upon questions which had already been discussed; but, as had been pointed out in the course of this discussion, he was bound to say that it seemed to him the most monstrous thing that a man should be executed for murder in a case where two Judges actually protested that he was innocent. The execution of a man under the present clause of the Bill was really dependent upon the voice of one Judge. It was not fair to say that they must take into consideration that the three Judges in the previous trial had been unanimous in their decision, because, in the previous trial, the facts before the Court might have been incomplete, and the five Judges might have to try the man on a totally different state of facts and evidence to that which the Court below had before it. In point of fact, it would be an entirely new trial, and in the Court of Appeal a man's life depended, as he had said before, on the opinion of one Judge. It was, he thought, useless to argue in favour of a clause which contained a provision of this kind, and it was useless to think there would be any respect among Irish people for a tribunal which convicted a man on one
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      vote. If the Government desired that the people in Ireland should believe that it was not the wish of the House of Commons that a man should be convicted, although innocent, and executed for crimes which he had never committed, it was essential that they should make some provision of the kind which he ventured to propose in his Amendment. He desired that there should be a new trial. Hon. Members had been told it would be a mischievous thing to have three trials; but there had been instances of three trials in cases where juries had disagreed; and he could not see why, now that the safeguard of a jury had been taken away, there should not be a third trial. It had been pointed out clearly by the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell) that there would be no difficulty in this; and, as he (Mr. Redmond) had already pointed out, in reality there would not be three trials, for the trial he had in view would be only a second trial. It would be that the Judges were to decide on a new set of evidence and new facts. Now, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) seemed to object to the introducing of any safeguards into this Bill. [Mr. GIBSON: No.] The right hon. and learned Member said "No"—he did not actually use the words that he objected to the introduction of any safeguards; but he said that their introduction might lead to interference with the tribunal, and that they would not work satisfactorily. He seemed to go on the principle that trial by jury should be maintained in its present form, or else that they should sweep away every safeguard that the accused man should have. He was unable to see how the right hon. and learned Gentleman could get out of that position if he objected to introduce safeguards whereby the accused possibly might escape conviction for crimes they had not Committed, by the provision which enabled the Judges to disagree upon new facts. He could not see how he could object to the introduction of this Amendment, if no new evidence were forthcoming before the second tribunal. He could understand the right hon. and learned Gentleman arguing in favour of the proposal in the Bill; but where new evidence might be forthcoming, and where new facts might have come to

      267
      light, he said then that it was right that the Judges should be just as unanimous in the second case as they were in the first. The Amendment he was about to move exempted from the operation of the Bill cases of treason and treason-felony and cases of murder.
      Amendment proposed,
      In page 3 at the end of the Clause, to add the words "except in cases of murder, treason, and treason felony, when such determination shall depend on the unanimity of the judges."—(Mr. Redmond.)
      Question proposed, "That those words be there added."
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, the hon. Member had very fairly admitted that there was not much more to be said upon the subject. The hon. Member asked whether it was conceivable that any man's life and death, that the fate of a man, should depend on the voice of one Judge, either in England or Ireland? But, in the Court of Crown Cases Reserved, it was well known that, in matters of law, the fate of a man might depend upon the voice of one man. He had said, over and over again, it was plain, if a man was not guilty in law, he was just as much not guilty as if he were not guilty in fact; and if you executed a man not guilty in law, it was just as great an outrage as executing a man who was not guilty in fact. A man might be executed under circumstances in which a considerable number of Judges had declared their opinion that, according to the law of the land, his life was not forfeited.
      MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid, there was a family resemblance of a very strong character in the reception which the right hon. and learned Gentleman gave to all the Amendments of an important character proposed from those Benches. The attitude of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, from the beginning, had been one of absolute non possumus. He had not admitted a single Amendment of importance.
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he had accepted 10 yesterday.
      MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid, the right hon. and learned Gentleman, for all he knew, might have accepted 400; but be still maintained his position that be had rejected every Amendment of importance emanating from those Benches. The Amendment before the Committee
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      expressed not only the views of hon. Members near him, but it was also supported by Members of various shades of political opinion on the opposite side of the House—the noble Lord the Member for Calne (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice), for instance, and other hon. Members. To every one of these Amendments—supported as they had been by a consensus of opinion from all independent sections in that House—the right hon. and learned Gentleman had given a refusal. When the right hon. and learned Gentleman sought support for the measure which he now endeavoured to carry through the House, he applied to those two right hon. and learned Gentlemen the Members for the University of Dublin, who knew—probably better than he did—the purpose to which this Act would be applied in Ireland. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, and his two supporters on the Front Opposition Bench, looked upon this Bill not as a means of putting down crime in Ireland, but as a means of giving a few more years of life to that system of landlordism which he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) said was doomed. His hon. Friend the Mover of the Amendment before the Committee objected that the life of a man should depend on the voice of one Judge. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, in reply, said that that was a thing which took place every day. Now, he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) had a large faith in the powers of the Parliamentary face of the right hon. and learned Gentleman; but he thought upon that occasion, in putting forth such a statement, he had almost excelled the unrivalled powers which he possessed. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said a man's life depended on the word of a single Judge, because it rested with a single Judge to lay down the law.
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, that the majority of one in the Court of Crown Cases Reserved decided the question of law. [Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR: No.] The hon. Member said "No:" but, unless he were misinformed, the hon. Member was not in the House at the time his statement was made. His statement was that, no doubt, on appeal in case of murder in the Court of Crown Cases Reserved, the question was determined by the voice of one Judge whether the accused was guilty on questions of

      269
      law, although a minority of five Judges might be of opinion that he was guilty on questions of fact.
      MR.T. P. O'CONNORsaid, it was an utter perversion to say that the life of a man was dependent on the voice of a single Judge in England in the same sense as it would be under this Bill. He challenged the right hon. and learned Gentleman to produce from recent history a single case in which a prisoner had been executed, or whose execution depended on the voice of a single Judge. So far as the Court of Crown Cases Reserved was concerned, the result might depend on the verdict of a single Judge; but the Committee must bear in mind that behind that Judge there stood the verdict of 12 jurors. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had not adduced a single argument to show that the Court of Appeal would not be virtually deciding a new case in matters of fact and matters of law. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) altogether disputed the dictum of the Home Secretary—high authority as he was on matters of law —that a decision on a matter of law was the same as on a matter of fact. In the Court of Crown Cases Reserved, the smallest breach of regulations at the trial, or the smallest breach of the Law of Evidence, or of any other detail, might invalidate a trial for murder. He appealed to the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite whether that was not so? But if there was a second trial it might involve the question of fact, whether the offender was at the time in the place where the crime was committed. Would anyone say that the small details which he had alluded to as invalidating the trial of the Court below were of the same importance as the question of an alibi, which might be raised in the case of a prisoner accused under the present Bill? He thought the Home Secretary very much mistook the spirit of himself and his hon. Friends if he supposed that he was going to carry this Bill easily through the House of Commons without the most strenuous opposition, so long as he took his cue from the two right hon. and learned Gentlemen upon the opposite Benches—the Members for the University of Dublin.
      MR. FIRTHsaid, that the argument was complete that there had not been any occasion where a man had been
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      found guilty and punished for the offence of murder, unless the tribunal before which he came was unanimous in their judgment with regard to the facts on which their judgment was based. It could not be suggested that in Ire-or any where else a man could be hanged for murder if two Judges of the land said that the identity of the man who committed the offence had not been established.
      MR. MACFARLANEsaid, he wished to treat this question from a common-sense point of view. He imagined that it was impossible, where the guilt of a man was thoroughly and absolutely established to the entire Court of First Instance, consisting of three Judges, that there should not be a real unanimity in the case of the Appeal Court, consisting of five Judges. He assumed that the Government did not wish to hang anyone who was not certainly guilty, or punish them for manslaughter or any other offence dealt with in this Bill; and, therefore, he could not see why they should so much object to the unanimity proposed. As the matter stood at present, there would be eight Judges trying the case, assuming that there was an appeal. Now, if six Judges were capable of agreeing on matters of facts and matters of law, surely eight Judges might also agree. He believed it would be quite as easy to get unanimity in the upper Court as in the lower Court. As he had already pointed out, it was not conviction that was wanted, but the punishment of guilt; and he was, therefore, quite at a loss to understand why the Government so determinedly opposed everything relating to this Court of Appeal, which was in favour of the prisoner. Her Majesty's Government should remember that they were dealing with exceptional legislation, and that, therefore, exceptional Amendments were permissible. It was only reasonable to suppose that persons who objected to the Bill as a whole would object to it in all its parts. Moreover, it was absolutely their duty to reduce the mischievous effect of the Bill as far as it lay in their power. It was with that object that hon. Members on those Benches, and upon the Benches in front of him, proposed Amendments seeking to mitigate the effect of the Bill. He was sorry that the arguments which

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      had been adduced in favour of this Amendment had been thrown away upon the Home Secretary, of whom it might be said, in the words of the popular song, that—
      "In spite of all temptation
      To understand another nation,
      He remained an Englishman."
      MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYsaid, it was hard to understand the views of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary; but he supposed that the difficulty in his own case arose from the fact that he did not possess a judicial mind. As far as he understood the right hon. and learned Gentleman, he gave it as his opinion that fact and law were one and the same subject, and that the Judges were just as well qualified to judge of fact as a jury could be. If that were the position, why not abolish the entire system of trial by jury? What could be the use of going through the form of putting 12 men into a box, when a single Judge could settle both questions of fact and law to the satisfaction of the persons charged and of the community in general? After all, this section of the Bill constituted, in certain cases, distinctly a new trial. Take, for example, the case where fresh evidence was adduced. There the Court had before them an entirely new set of facts. In the first trial, a man could only be convicted on the unanimous decision of three Judges; but, on the second trial, he was to be convicted by the majority of the Judges. Now, he urged upon the Home Secretary whether this was not peculiarly dangerous in the case of trials for treason or treason-felony, because, although a Judge might be able to decide fairly on fact and law taken separately, yet, where so much depended on the relation of facts to law, and where constructive law came in to assist the imperfect statement of evidence, it was highly dangerous to have anything short of a unanimous verdict. Now, the right hon. and learned Gentleman was well acquainted with history, and at one time he had taken the honoured name of "Historicus;" he must, therefore, have in his mind what evidence was furnished by English history with regard to trials for treason. That being so, he asked the right hon. and learned Gentleman where, in the history of the country, there was any instance in which the
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      integrity of the Judges had broken down so much as upon trials for treason. He assumed that the right hon. and learned Gentleman was aware that the Judges had frequently endeavoured to coerce juries, who had stood up against the constructive law laid down by them into convicting persons of treason. In the trial of Lord Dundonald, then Lord Cochrane, the decision was notoriously unfair, and the jury were almost compelled to find according to the ruling of the Judge, rather than according to their own view of the facts. With those tilings in recollection, it was most dangerous and reactionary to introduce a tribunal which took away trial by jury from the man who most required it, and left men accused of treason wholly at the mercy of the Judges.
      MR. DILLONsaid, he wished to ask the Home Secretary whether the difficulty with respect to Irish Judges was not likely to arise in regard to the Irish Judges. Nobody, he said, proposed to do away with the unanimity required in the case of a jury; but it was proposed to do away with that in the case of the Judges on the assertion that no jury could be obtained who would not give way to terrorism or to sympathy with crimes, and, therefore, would not convict a prisoner. It appeared to him that the only real argument that could at all apply in the case of not requiring unanimity among the Judges, who were practically a jury for trying matters of fact, was that the Judges seemed to have sympathized with treason and murder; and he did not see how the Government could get out of that dilemma. Then there was another consideration in favour of the Amendment, which he was glad to see proposed, and that was this—he always believed that one of the greatest objects, from a Constitutional point of view, to be gained by the institution of trial by jury, and one of the reasons which induced the people of England to value it so much as a protection for liberty, was not so much that it came into action in regard to ordinary crime, as that the common sense of the country should stand between them and a too strict interpretation of the law on treason and treason-felony, and which might place the subject at the mercy of an Executive too often infuriated by agitation. It was not so long ago that in England—perhaps not 50 years ago—

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      men held their lives simply by the fact that an English jury could not be got to bow strictly to the legal interpretation of the law on treason; and he knew that the Law of Sedition, which was passed for the purpose of dealing with certain men in Ireland, if legally and strictly interpreted, would place himself and other men who took part in the Land League movement outside the pale of the law. He had heard it laid down by an Irish Judge that practically almost any political action would come within the law on sedition. He had studied that law, and he believed no man could condemn the action of the Judges without being held guilty of sedition, if the interpretation of the law was strained. There was nothing to prevent anyone who had been trained to lay down the law in the strictest way from sweeping into the net of these Acts every man who spoke strongly in condemnation of the action of the Government. If these laws had been enforced in England according to their strictest letter they would long ago have been repealed or modified; but the reason why they had been left on the Statute Book was that the juries were a sufficient security to the subject against the law being strained. It was now proposed to take from the people of Ireland that protection of the common sense of juries, and to leave them at the mercy of Acts; but if this was enforced he was sure public feeling, and the feeling in this House, would revolt against that enforcement. He could not understand why the Government had determined to withdraw that protection from the people of Ireland in regard to political action, and also to refuse to give to them the slight protection of the unanimity of the Judges. He could not see why such refusal did not amount to an impeachment of the Irish Judges; and surely, from an English point of view, it was a very much worse charge than ever the Irish Members had aimed at the Irish Judges. They were prepared to prove that the Irish Judges, by their speeches from the Judicial Bench, by their well-known opinions in private, were not fit to try matters of fact where politics were involved. Nine out of every ten people in Ireland believed that, but they had never said the Irish Judges had sympathized with treason or murder; and, therefore, the refusal to accept this
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      Amendment was a more severe charge against the Irish Judges than the Irish Members had ever made against them.
      DR. COMMINSsaid, he hoped the Committee would credit those who supported this Amendment with having no intention to propose anything that would protect any person who was really found guilty of murder. What they wanted to do was to protect the innocent, and, as was done in every country that had any jurisprudence at all, to introduce checks against the abuse of the powers under this Act. Judges might have a clearer view of evidence, and be better able to sift the facts and convince each other by argument, than a jury; yet juries were practically unanimous. In England they seldom acquitted, and, notwithstanding all that had been stated, he ventured to say that in Ireland juries seldom acquitted where the evidence showed the accused to be guilty. The Irish Members wished to protect accused, but possibly innocent persons against an abuse of power or a mistake by those who had to administer the law; and one of the great advantages of the English jury system—the praises of which had been sung by the greatest of English political philosophers—was that the jury interposed the strongest and best protection against arbitrary, illegal, unconstitutional, or corrupt action by Judges. Juries stood between innocent persons and a possible abuse of the power of the law. It seemed to him that those who argued in favour of the clause had forgotten that the Criminal Law was an instrument that might be used for a great many purposes than the putting down of crime. It did not lie with the Government to set the law in motion. Any person might set the Criminal Law and all its powers in motion against any person—
      THE CHAIRMAN: I must point out to the hon. Member that the only Question before the Committee is whether there shall be a unanimity among the Judges of Appeal in regard to treason, treason-felony, or murder, and there is no question of unanimity of juries.
      DR. COMMINSsaid, his point was that in these cases of treason or murder the unanimity of the Judges of Appeal was as necessary as with the three Judges in the Court of First Instance, because without that unanimity the one great protection previously interposed between the people and the arbitrary power of

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      Judges was taken away—namely, the protection of interposing juries. If a ease was clearly proved by the Court of First Instance, it could not he supposed that the Judges of Appeal were not as clear-sighted and as equally anxious to ascertain the facts as the Court below. New light might be thrown on a case; new evidence might be produced before the case reached the Court of Appeal, in view of which, though it might convince one or two of the Judges, a majority of Judges was yet to be sufficient to support a conviction. There ought not to be that distinction at all, because the protection of juries was being taken away, and the only protection against an abuse of the law was in the unanimity of the Judges of Appeal, as in the case of the Judges of First Instance. In cases of treason, treason-felony, or murder, the Government was not only the nominal, but the real prosecutor. The Government were the power that moved the whole case; they had all the strength to secure a conviction. They could not, and would not, be separated in the minds of the people from the prosecutor; and the Judges were so identified with the Government as their appointees and paid servants, that they ran the enormous risk of having their opinions coloured, and their minds to some extent prejudiced—at all events, they would be believed to be prejudiced, and to have their minds warped by their identification with the prosecutor in these cases. In regard to cases of murder, there was an equally strong reason for unanimity, because there, although the Government were not identified with the Judges, and were not the actual prosecutor, but only nominally so, private malice in every case of murder might accuse any innocent person, and weave round him a web of seeming evidence which it would require the greatest possible skill to appreciate, and there would be one thing which the Judges would not have—namely, the popular instinct, the popular power of knowing whether a witness was telling the truth or not, and of appreciating the character of the prisoner. All these things the Judges would want. The power of the law might be misapplied, and the Judges might be made the instruments of atrocious crimes in regard to innocent persons accused of murder. Let the guilty be punished, but with proper safeguards for the protection of innocent persons. If the
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      Judges were not to be degraded by being made the instruments of private vengeance; if that distrust which at present justly existed in Ireland with regard to the Judges was to be removed, there must be unanimity. The last point of the matter was wholly important. It used to be a principle of English law that it was better that 99 guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer; but this clause reversed that principle, and seemed to say that it was better 99 innocent persons should suffer than that one guilty person should escape. That was how the Act would be read by the people, and the disposition to regard the law as their enemy would in crease instead of diminishing. He could quite understand how difficult it was for English and Scotch Members to realize the state of things existing in Ireland; but every hon. Member was acquainted with the history of his own country—
      THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member is not speaking to the Amendment, and it will be impossible to proceed with the work of the Committee if hon. Members discuss the whole Act and all the clauses upon a single Amendment. The Question before the Committee is, whether the Judges of Appeal shall be unanimous in cases of treason, treason-felony, and murder; and I must ask the hon. Member to keep to that subject.
      DR. COMMINSsaid, he was trying to keep to that question, and he was about to ask English and Scotch Members what, judging from the history of their own countries, would have been the state of things, if the Judges had had sole power, without juries, to convict people by a majority? Yet that was the kind of tribunal now to be set up in Ireland; and he maintained that, in all these cases, there ought to be this unanimity in the Court of Appeal as in the Court of First Instance.
      MR. SYNANsaid, that a great Revolutionist had stated that audacity was the great secret of success in a revolution. He was sorry the Home Secretary was not then on the Treasury Bench, as he wished to pay the right hon. and learned Gentleman a compliment. It seemed to him that audacity in a statesman and a lawyer was also the great secret of success, for the Home Secretary had attempted to repeat, in the presence of lawyers in that House, that the Judges

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      of the land in this country every day found persons guilty of treason and treason-felony and murder. He had never heard such a proposition; but the oftener it was contradicted the oftener it was repeated by the Home Secretary. The right hon. and learned Gentleman wished to deceive those who were ignorant of the law, or he did that knowing that he was perverting language by using words in a double sense—confounding verdicts of juries on facts with questions of law—and he wished to see whether simple Members would accept that notion. The plain question was this. The Government proposed to make the three Judges a jury; they were to form the Court, return the verdict, and pronounce judgment. Then there came the Court of Appeal, which was substantially a Court for a new trial, and again the Home Secretary wished to deceive the Committee.
      THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member has used the expression that the Home Secretary tried to deceive the Committee. I am sure he did not intend to use that expression, and the hon. Member will withdraw that expression.
      MR. SYNANsaid, he would not say the Home Secretary had tried to deceive the House, but that he had used language calculated to deceive the Committee. The primary Court was to be a Court and a jury, and to pronounce judgment; but to the Court of Appeal a different rule was applied by the Home Secretary. The right hon. and learned Gentleman called it a Court of Appeal; but it was not a Court of Appeal upon questions of law. It was a tribunal to try facts, and really to enter upon a new trial; and their verdict or judgment would not be an affirming of the Court below, but a new verdict or judgment. In the Court of First Instance the three Judges were to be unanimous; and upon what principle was it that the five Judges in the Court of Appeal need not be unanimous in pronouncing judgment, not upon law, but upon facts? Upon what principle was there a different rule, and upon what principle was it that three out of five Judges could convict a man of treason, treason-felony, or murder? The proposition was ridiculous, and could not for a moment hold water. It could not be believed in by those who made it, and it was calculated to deceive Members of the House who were unacquainted
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      with the law, and had to accept the authority of Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench.
      MR. D. GRANTsaid, he regarded the Amendment as one which it would be wise for the Home Secretary to accept. The present position was such that it was of the greatest importance that the Irish people should feel strongly and distinctly that the judgment given was on the lines of an effort to do justice to them. If, however, under existing circumstances, the people saw sentences passed simply by a majority of Judges they would feel that they were not being fairly treated. He, therefore, hoped the Government would accept the Amendment, not so much because of the question itself, as on account of the evil of a wrong impression in the minds of the people; and he should vote for it himself.
      MR. LEAMYsaid, it appeared to him that for the next three years prisoners would not get the benefit of the doubt. In cases of capital offences the Judges always told the juries that if they had any reasonable doubt they should acquit the prisoner. Irish Members were now asking that in cases in which an appeal was made—in cases of treason, treason-felony, or murder—the Judges to whom the appeal was made should be unanimous in their judgment; and they were asking that simply because it would often happen that new facts would be adduced, which, if they had been produced at the first trial, might have prevented the Judges finding the prisoner guilty. The question had been put several times to the Government whether they would dare to hang a man who was found guilty by a majority of Judges. Everybody knew they would not, and yet they refused to accept this Amendment, knowing that they would not dare to hang a man in England for murder or high treason unless the Judges were all agreed. Under these circumstances, he thought the Government ought to accept the Amendment. Although the Irish Members had proposed many Amendments, the Home Secretary had not assented to any single important Amendment. This Amendment, however, was supported not only by Irish Members, but by many supporters of the Government; and he thought it was nearly time that the Home Secretary should show some readiness to meet the

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      Committee by accepting this Amendment.
      MR. BIGGARsaid, that in cases of treason or murder the prisoner always got the benefit of the doubt, and even if only one Judge out of eight—which was the smallest number that should deal with questions of this kind — was in favour of acquittal, it must be quite clear that there was a substantial doubt as to the justice of the sentence; and more especially was it desirable that the law should not be pressed in such a case, because, of course, if a sentence for murder was carried out, there was no means of restoring a man to life should he be proved to have been innocent. Even in England, where Party prejudices did not run as high as in Ireland, innocent people had often been executed for murders. Not very long ago the man Habron was convicted at Manchester, and he would have been sent to penal servitude if another man had not confessed that he had committed the crime. He believed that some, at least, of the Members of the Government did not desire to have the power of sending people in Ireland to the scaffold when there was reasonable doubt; and in Ireland, under the old system of jury-packing, people had been hung who had afterwards been proved to be perfectly innocent. A disagreement among the jury had in many cases been very beneficial, where it was subsequently proved that the accused persons were innocent, although if they had been convicted they would have been hung. There was the case, for instance, of George M'Cormack in Tipperary, who had a quarrel with two brothers, and afterwards went to America, without telling anyone of his intention. He was supposed to have been murdered, and the men he had quarrelled with, being the last men seen in his company, were put on their trial for his murder. The first jury disagreed, but another jury found them guilty, and they were executed; and yet, a short time afterwards, the man returned from America, and so proved conclusively that the men executed were innocent.
      THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member is not speaking to the subject before the Committee, which is the question of appeal in a particular class of crimes.
      MR. BIGGARsaid, he understood the question to be whether the Judges should
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      be unanimous; and he submitted that he was thoroughly justified in showing that there ought to be unanimity, by the fact that innocent persons had been executed for murder. In Armagh, a few years ago, a man was condemned and hung who was afterwards proved to be innocent; and in another case, in which the governor of the gaol represented to the Dublin Castle authorities that he had evidence of the innocence of a certain prisoner; but they insisted on his being hung, because they did not wish the public to discover that they had convicted an innocent man. That was how justice was administered in Ireland; and he did not think there ought to be very rigid rules in discussing such matters.
      THE CHAIRMAN: I have already warned the hon. Member, and must now ask him to keep strictly to the Amendment before the Committee.
      MR. BIGGARsaid, if the Judges were practically unanimous, there could not reasonably be any doubt as to the guilt of a prisoner; but if two out of the five were of opinion that he was not guilty, did the Committee think the authorities would be justified in hanging the man, more especially as according to the police arrangements in Ireland any evidence which the police might have which was calculated to tell in favour of a prisoner would be suppressed, and nothing would be brought forward but what they thought most likely to bring a conviction? It was also known that means would be used by the police to get evidence of a perfectly untrustworthy character with regard to an alleged crime. He thought he had made it pretty clear that such a thing as hanging a prisoner by a bare majority of the Court of Appeal ought not to be allowed, and that the Government ought not to hold that the life of a person should be taken when, in the view of some of the Judges, he was as likely to be innocent as guilty. In all such cases there must be absolute certainty—or, at least, there should be no reasonable doubt; but if two of the Judges held that the prisoner was not guilty there would be something more than a reasonable doubt. Under the circumstances, he thought the Government might agree to this particular Amendment. Then with regard to the question of treason or treason-felony, he

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      did not know that that part of the subject was of so much importance, because, according to experience, for many years no prosecution had taken place in Ireland, or, he believed, in England, for treason or treason-felony, so that the presumption was that during the three years during which this Bill would last probably no person would be put on his trial for either of those offences. At the same time, the fact remained that the Government would have so much power of influencing all the legal machinery in Ireland, and that they had situations for Judges and their relatives. It seemed to him that in these cases, in which the Government and the accused would come into such direct conflict, absolute proof ought to be required to convict a man of guilt. In England, in former times, persons who agitated for the reform of Parliament were put on trial for high treason, with, however, the intervention of a jury. But in this case that intervention was to be taken away; and he could not see on what grounds it could be refused in regard to such charges as treason or treason-felony, such charges being liable to so much doubt as to what constituted the offence. A great deal had been said as to what constituted an offence of treason or treason - felony; and it would only be right that in all cases where there was a reasonable doubt the prisoner should have the benefit of the doubt.
      SIR EARDLEY WILMOTsaid, he could not support the Amendment, because he did not see why there should be less unanimity among the Judges than among jurymen. He deeply regretted that his Amendment had not been put, prescribing that a proportion of four-fifths of the Court of Appeal should decide. Hon. Members on both sides of the House were prepared to accept that proposal; but he was sure it was some unintentional haste on the part of the Chairman which prevented his putting the Amendment.
      THE CHAIRMAN: There was no haste on the part of the Chairman. I did simply what it was my duty to do. The hon. Member brought up an Amendment, which could not be moved, on the Question "That these words stand part of the Clause," and not being able to put that Amendment, it was my duty to put the Question, "That these words stand part of the Clause."
      SIR EARDLEY WILMOTsaid, the Chairman had not intimated to the hon. Member in charge of the Amendment—
      THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)rose to Order. The Chairman had ruled that the Amendment could not be put; but the hon. Member was now questioning that ruling, and he submitted that the hon. Member could not have done that even at the time, and it was doubly objectionable to do so now.
      SIR EARDLEY WILMOTbegged to move that the Chairman should now leave the Chair.
      Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do now leave the Chair."—(Sir Eardley Wilmot.)
      THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Baronet cannot question what I have already ruled. The Question is that I now leave the Chair.
      COLONEL NOLANsaid, he thought the Committee need not go on quite so fast, although the Motion to leave the Chair was a very useful safety-valve. An hon. Member had been bringing in cases to show—
      THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. and gallant Member is now raising another question of ruling which has been previously settled, and upon this Motion the hon. and gallant Member cannot raise that question.
      COLONEL NOLANsaid, the question before the Committee was that of the unanimity of Judges, and the hon. Member had been giving certain cases in which innocent persons had actually been hung; and he thought hon. Members ought to have an opportunity of referring to general matters—
      THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. and gallant Member cannot, on this Motion, discuss any general Amendment. The hon. Baronet had a right to move that I leave the Chair; but the Committee cannot discuss the ruling I have already given.
      COLONEL NOLANsaid, he believed any Member could discuss any general subject connected with the Bill on the Motion to leave the Chair.
      THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. and gallant Member is under some misapprehension. The hon. Baronet has moved that I do leave the Chair with the hope of discussing questions of Order upon

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      the ruling I had given on an Amendment being out of Order; but he was not in a position to discuss the ruling, and, therefore, the object with which he moved does not exist. As to the claims of the hon. and gallant Member to discuss the Bill generally on a Motion to leave the Chair, that latitude may exist in the House; but it is certainly not allowed in Committee when the Amendment alone is under consideration.
      MR. BIGGARsaid, he understood that if the Motion of the hon. Baronet should be agreed to, this Bill would fall to the ground; and, therefore, he submitted that the Committee might discuss some of the questions connected with the merits of the Bill. On the Motion to leave the Chair he thought it was advisable to discuss the general merits of the question.
      THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Baronet moved that I do leave the Chair for the specific purpose of raising a point of Order; but the particular point which the hon. Baronet wished to raise could not be brought before the Committee, and any observations must now be upon a point of Order within the Motion. The hon. Baronet's observations were not within the Motion.
      MR. BIGGARsaid, that the Chairman's last ruling corroborated his own view; but as the Motion was not made to get leave to discuss some question already decided, and as something had taken place which might kill the Bill, he thought the Committee had a right to discuss the Bill upon this Motion.
      THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member must see that it is perfectly impossible to discuss the general merits of the Bill in Committee under any circumstances. The subject of discussion must be the Amendment which is before the Committee for the moment.
      COLONEL NOLANasked whether the Committee might not speak on the Bill upon the Motion to leave the Chair, believing that on such a Motion they were at liberty to discuss any question connected with the Bill. If this Motion would be fatal to the Bill if carried, it was important to discuss everything connected with it; and probably some hon. Members, who would be shut out by the Chairman's ruling, would wish to enter upon some general observations which they could not make on specific Amendments.
      LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICEsaid, the discussion in the Committee had hitherto proceeded in so orderly and amicable a manner that he hoped the ill-timed intervention of the hon. Member for South Warwickshire (Sir Eardley Wilmot) would not be allowed to act as a firebrand thrown into the discussions. He thought he might draw attention to the fact that this Motion had not been made by an Irish Member, but by an English Conservative, and the full responsibility of the Motion should rest upon that hon. Member's shoulders. He earnestly entreated the hon. Member not to press his Motion.
      SIR EARDLEY WILMOTsaid, he was the last person in the House to wish to interpose and delay the Business of the Committee. He had hitherto given a cordial support to the Bill, and should continue to do so; but, in rising to speak to the Amendment, he had simply referred to what he thought had been an injustice to himself in regard to an Amendment respecting the unanimity of the Court of Appeal. He regretted that he had done anything to delay the Business of the Committee, and he would respectfully ask leave to withdraw his Motion.
      MR. BIGGARsaid, that this incident was only another illustration of the absurd idea some people had as to trying to save time. The invariable results of these attempts to save time was a waste of time. He believed he had a right to offer such arguments as he thought were legitimate with regard to any particular Amendment before the Committee; and he thought the hon. Member was entitled to the thanks of the Committee for having given them an opportunity of complaining of the manner in which some of their arguments had been treated.
      Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
      Original Question, "That those words be there added," again proposed.
      MR. METGEsaid, it was of vital importance to everyone connected with Ireland to endeavour to enforce this proposal. The whole theory of this clause of the Bill was that the jury System had broken down in Ireland, and two or three methods of reforming that system had been suggested—one was to raise the status of the jurymen, the other

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      was to limit the number who would decide. By this clause Judges were to take the place of a jury. It was the first duty of all Irish Members to press one and all their Amendments; but, apart from that, he thought the three crimes which it was proposed to place under the control of the Judges were those very crimes upon which the Government had admitted that it was possible to get juries to convict. In regard to charges of treason and treason-felony and murder— and certainly in regard to treason-felony—there had not been a single case brought forward in which a jury had decided in opposition to the weight of evidence; and in regard to murder, he did not believe a jury could be found in Ireland at this moment who, if a case were proved, would deliberately decide against the evidence. Some cases might be cited in which that seemed to be the fact; but Irish Members who had had experience of these things in Ireland knew how such cases were got up, and for that reason he held that they ought to offer their most strenuous opposition to these proposals. He wished the Government could see their way to making some concession in the direction urged by the Irish Members, even if only by raising the majority of Judges from a majority of one to a majority of four. But whether they did that or not, a new departure was being proposed in regard to Ireland. Under the old system the juries were invariably packed by the Government; but under this new system the jury would not only be a packed jury, but it would be a jury of paid officials who had been chosen because of their known opinions and the tendency of their education and career officially and privately. Further, each of them was a member of that Executive which would, in the first instance, issue the laws, which the Judges would after words have to decide; and that, he believed, would upset for ever any little confidence that existed in Ireland in regard to the judicial system. That confidence was now very slight, and, in his opinion, that fact was one of the causes of undetected crime being so rife in Ireland. The people were in direct antagonism to the judicial system in Ireland, and regarded it as intended to oppress them; and this new tyrannical measure, he was confident, would sweep away from the mind of every man. who
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      had any national aspirations all respect for the judicial system in Ireland, and increase to an enormous extent that crime which the Bill was designed to prevent.
      MR. O'DONNELLsaid, they had arrived at an extremely disappointing part of the Bill. It had already been pointed out that the Government now asked the Committee to authorize the execution of accused persons in Ireland by the casting vote of a single paid servant of the Crown. It was clear that if that provision was maintained, the object of the Bill was not to do justice, but to exasperate the people. The result of the Bill would be only to perpetuate the régime, of exceptional government. It would be impossible in any excess of crime to introduce so monstrous a proposal into England. The hon. Member for Meath (Mr. Metge), who had just spoken, appealed to the Government whether they had in view, or professed to have in view, the reconsideration of this subject. He (Mr. O'Donnell) believed that the Government had nothing in view in this matter but the satisfaction of English prejudice, and in that point of view this clause was admirably calculated to carry out their purpose. It was a simple act of savage Lynch law, carried through the House with certain State formalities. A proposal that a jury of this kind, composed of salaried Crown servants, were to be empowered to sentence a man to death by the casting vote of a single one of their number, on every point of morality, was infinitely below the verdict of a tumultuous Texan crowd who sentenced a horse-stealer or a murderer to instantaneous execution, and proceeded to carry it out on the bough of the nearest tree. For his own part, he sincerely regretted the obstinacy with which the Government stuck to this clause. He had never despaired of conciliation between England and Ireland until now. He altogether discarded the idea that it was through any real horror of crime that this Bill was being thus persevered with.
      THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member has just come into the House, and he seems to think that the Question before the Committee is that the clause should stand part of the Bill. That is not so; but what is before the Committee is only an Amendment dealing with murder, treason, and treason-felony.
      MR. O'DONNELLsaid, the right hon. Gentleman was mistaken. He had been present when the clause was moved, and during three-fourths of the discussion which had taken place upon it; and, although it was only a clause for the trial of Irishmen for treason, treason-felony, and murder, still the observations he was making were intended to impress upon the Government the propriety, the prudence, and the expediency of giving Irishmen a somewhat greater chance for their lives than was proposed to be given to them by this Bill. He was sorry that the right hon. Gentleman should mistake the object with which ho was speaking, because, naturally, these interruptions from the Chair interfered with his line of argument, and retarded the progress of the discussion. He would conclude, therefore, by saying that a measure such as this came very badly from the Government of a country whose great rivers rolled hundreds of victims of undiscovered murder to the sea every year. If this clause were passed without Amendment, if the Government of England insisted upon Irishmen being liable to conviction and execution upon the casting vote of a single bad Government servant, he could only say that it was the bounden duty of every Irishman to prevent the success of the Bill by every means in his power.
      MR. BIGGARsaid, that, before the Amendment was put from the Chair, he wished to make an appeal to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Homo Secretary. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had charge of the Bill, and some people said it was through his influence that so stringent a measure was being brought in. Whether that was so or not he did not know, and did not very much care. If it were the case, he presumed that it was only for the purpose pointed out by his hon. Friend the Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell), that in the exigencies of the so-called Liberal Party it was considered necessary. But he wished to make an appeal to the right hon. and learned Gentleman on this ground—that as far as his (Mr. Biggar's) observation went with regard to his conduct in the capacity he filled as Home Secretary under the present Government, he had always shown, as far as he (Mr. Biggar) could form an opinion, a desire to mitigate the severity of the law, and not to press it to the
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      full extent of its power. They all knew, or, at any rate, it was the common report, that not nearly so many executions in proportion to the number of convictions had taken place under the régime of the right hon. and learned Gentleman as had taken place under other Governments. They knew, further, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had mitigated the punishment of juvenile offenders; and throughout he had exercised the Prerogative of Mercy invested in the Crown to an extent that was unknown in this country prior to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's term of Office. Under these circumstances, he would appeal to the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether he would not act towards the people of Ireland, as far as his influence went, upon the same principle and upon the same lines as those which he had considered it his duty to act upon in his capacity of Home Secretary? If the right hon. and learned Gentleman would do so, he (Mr. Biggar) had not the slightest doubt in his own mind that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would be at once prepared to agree to the Amendment now before the Committee, which simply required that a man, convicted and sentenced to capital punishment by the Court of First Instance, should have an appeal to a second Court, and that the Judges of the Appeal Court should be unanimous before the conviction could be affirmed. That was the entire length to which the Amendment went. If the question contained such an element of doubt that one or two out of the five members of the Court of Appeal should be in favour of an acquittal, he thought, with propriety, the sentence of the first Court should not be carried out. In regard to the other part of the clause, the right hon. and learned Gentleman must be fully aware that in political cases prosecutions never took place except in a time of great excitement; and it was clear that convictions would never take place at all unless the evidence and proof of guilt was of the strongest nature. If there was any room for reasonable doubt as to the guilt of a prisoner charged with treason or treason-felony, it was the custom to give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. A case of treason, or treason-felony, was not so strong as one of murder, because a man convicted of treason, or treason-felony,

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      would only, at the worst, be sent to penal servitude, with almost the certainty that, after a lapse of time when the excitement had subsided, he would receive a free or conditional pardon. It was different in a case of murder. A prisoner, under such circumstances, ran the risk of being tried, in a time of excitement, by partizan Judges, and of having his life sworn away, although he might be perfectly innocent.
      MR. HEALYsaid, he thought that his hon. Friend the Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) had put the case with extreme moderation; and he trusted that the Home Secretary would see his way to accept the Amendment. The right hon. and learned Gentleman found it necessary to interpose in many cases in order to mitigate the severity of a sentence; but the necessity for that interference would be much stronger in a case of treason or treason-felony, or murder, where there was a liability of penal servitude or execution following, than in many of the trumpery cases in which he was now required to interpose. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman was willing, in his own person, to supersede the action of the Courts after sentences were inflicted, the objection to the clause would probably not be so strong; but he did not understand that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would take upon himself the power of reviewing the sentences passed by the new tribunal. At the same time, he could not be of opinion that the Irish Judges — men of learning and legal knowledge—could be persons against whom the Government could apply the faintest suspicion of partiality, or otherwise they would not impose upon them this extra duty. Therefore, when they came to revise a sentence, and were not unanimous in the view they took, he (Mr. Healy) hoped the right hon. and learned Gentleman would be prepared to listen to their doubts in the manner his hon. Friend the Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) had pointed out. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, who himself exercised the Prerogative of Mercy in many cases, remained quite passive when it was argued that a similar prerogative should be exercised by the Irish Judges. The objections to this provision of the Bill were not at all answered by the argument that the Judges were Irish. Per-
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      sonally, he would rather be governed by Englishmen, under the present régime in Ireland, than by Irishmen. He would rather have the Home Secretary as an Irish Judge, or as an Irish Law Officer, than an Irishman. He said this with all respect for the Irishmen who filled Offices of the Crown in Ireland; but he would rather deal with Englishmen for this reason. An Englishman was brought up, to a large extent, without bias; he was not reared in the region of prejudice, and fed on all the miserable stories of past Irish history. For his part, he had no sympathy with the complaints that were constantly made in Ireland, that the Chief Secretary, the Lord Lieutenant, and other officers, were Englishmen. He thought it was much better to have Englishmen than Irish place-hunters who sold their country; and it was no answer to the argument now raised to say that the Judges were Irish. He would far rather have an Englishman, reared in English traditions, than a man reared in the Irish traditions prevalent in Dublin Castle. Therefore, he had no objection to urge to the fact that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and the Chief Secretary were Englishmen. In this case they had a number of Irish Judges to deal with. No doubt there were a limited number of them who were above all suspicion; and, in the opinion of the Irish people, the verdict given by Baron Fitzgerald in one of these cases, upon a single appeal, might overtop and outweigh the decision of all the other Judges who might sit with him on the Irish Bench. He would give an instance to justify this assertion. A case recently occurred down in Kerry, in which a prisoner was convicted of posting a "no rent" notice; and in a case, either at Leitrim or Carrick-on-Shannon, Baron Fitzgerald refused to allow it even to go before a jury. He (Mr. Healy) knew that was so as a matter of fact. Then, again, in Ireland, it was highly probable that they might hare a Judge, with a strictly judicial mind. taking one view, and a partizan Judge taking another; but it appeared to be the view of the Government that a conviction must be had at all hazards, or that justice would not be done. But if the Government really desired justice to be done, they must pay some respect to the popular feeling. In England, not many

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      years ago, they found all the people disagreeing with the decision of the Judge who tried the case of the gas stokers. In that case the whole popular mind was against the judgment of Mr. Justice Brett, and the Home Secretary was obliged to interfere and cut down the imprisonment which had been awarded. That was a case in which the unanimous opinion of England was against the Judges, and the public opinion in England was allowed to have its due effect. But in Ireland what did they have? He was not going to find fault with the Attorney General for Ireland; but he knew that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had been brought up to entertain certain views in regard to treason. The Bill dealt with treason, and it was now proposed to exclude treason, treason-felony, and murder from a non-unanimous decision. The right hon. and learned Gentleman was a very amiable gentleman to deal with in that House. He was always courteous to the Irish Members, and easily approached; but the right hon. and learned Gentleman upon the Bench would be a very different mortal, and he said it with all due respect to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. The right hon. and learned Gentleman would, in that case, have to deal with his own personal views and his own conscientious opinions of what strict law was. The right hon. and learned Gentleman's view of law, however, might be perfect, or it might be imperfect; but, whatever it was, he would have the full power of enforcing it; and he had already intimated that, in his view, the declarations of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) amounted to rank treason. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, in the course of time, would find his way to the Irish Bench; and holding this view that certain declarations amounted to treason or treason-felony, with all due respect to the opinions of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, he thought it was necessary that any view taken by the Irish Judges should be unanimous. He asked the Government if it was worth their while to get verdicts by what he might call the skin of their teeth? Let the Home Secretary, for a moment, take a review of public affairs. Was it desirable, in a time of political passion—and he should not be afraid of this particular portion
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      of the Bill, except in a time of political passion—to put in force a clause of this nature? He was not apprehensive of any verdict which an Irish Court of Appeal might give, except in a moment of political passion. They all knew very well that if his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) had been before the Judges when the Prime Minister made his Guildhall speech, he would inevitably have been sent into penal servitude, seeing the views which prevailed at the time with regard to treason and treason-felony. Taking a careful review of human agencies, was it worth while, seeing that the number of cases would be very few in which this Amendment would come into operation, to waste the time of the House by resisting it? Without putting it as a question of law, but rather as one of administration, was it worth the while of the Government, as public administrators desirous of seeing justice done, to enforce so arbitrary an opinion? While the Home Secretary in that House was so very severe on O'Donovan Rossa, and what he considered to be the rampagious course of certain Irishmen, as an Englishman the right hon. and learned Gentleman was an ornament to the position of Home Secretary; and he could scarcely pay a sufficient tribute to the merits of the right hon. and learned Gentleman in that capacity. But, while he said this, in his dealings with Irish crime the right hon. and learned Gentleman had no stronger opponent than he (Mr. Healy) was. He thought the right hon. and learned Gentleman had allowed his views and prejudices to run away with his judgment; and he asked him whether, on this particular point, he could not import something of English judicial temper into the matter? Why should he allow O'Donovan Rossa to run away with his judgment? They were dealing with a very simple state of facts. He doubted whether two such eases would come up during the three years the Bill was to last. There would certainly not be more in which the majority of the Court of Appeal would differ from their judicial brethren. He would, therefore, appeal to the Home Secretary whether the matter was worth contesting, for, as, he confessed, there was no principle involved in it? He really could not see why the Government should refuse to give way upon the

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      point. The Home Secretary had obtained several clauses of the Bill with great celerity. It was astonishing, considering that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had not given way upon a single point, the absolute ease with which he had obtained the most important clause of the Bill. The right hon. and learned Gentleman was not able to make such rapid progress in the case of the Rabbits Bill, introduced a few years ago, although it only dealt with hares and rabbits, and not with the lives of the Irish people. On that occasion the House was kept up night after night by hon. Members who sympathized with British poachers. Then, why should not the views and feelings of the Irish Members be taken into account here? What was there in the position of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, as the man in charge of the Bill, to prevent him from casting away altogether this exceptional treatment of cases of treason, treason-felony, and murder? The Irish Members believed that the Irish Judges were appointed as a jury to try these cases, because they were Government nominees; and he should have thought the Government would desire to escape from the reflection that a few Government nominees might be afraid of the decision of the more impartial of the Irish Judges. He trusted that the Home Secretary would import into his decision on this point some of that judicial temper and of those attributes of merey which he had so signally displayed in dealing with the administration of justice in England.
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, that, after the personal appeal which had been made to him by the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) and the hon. Member for Meath (Mr. Metge), he could not refuse to say a few words, notwithstanding the fact that he had already spoken several times on the subject, and had said all that he had to say. He had certainly not said much upon this particular Amendment, because he considered that the opinion of the Committee had already been taken very fully upon the principle involved in the Amendment. The hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) and the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) had been good enough to pay a very undeserved compliment to him upon the administration of the Department with which he was connected; but he wished
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      to point out once more that the administration of the Prerogative of Mercy was a totally different thing from the decision which these Courts would have to give. He had already indicated that if any of the Judges differed upon questions of facts, it would be a very proper consideration to place before the Executive Government in reference to the carrying out of any sentence; and there was not the smallest doubt that a circumstance of that character would have the greatest effect upon the mind of a person occupying the position which he had now the honour to occupy. It would require very strong circumstances indeed to induce him to allow the execution of any person who had been recommended to mercy by the jury, and it would be the same in a case in which doubts wore entertained upon questions of fact. The hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) and the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) said the judgment might be confirmed by a majority of partizan Judges; but that was an argument which he (Sir William Harcourt) could not listen to. The real truth of the matter was that the Government had gone to the extremest limits in protecting the accused. In point of fact, the Bill placed a convicted prisoner in a much better position than he was in at present. There was ordinarily no appeal, either in Ireland or in England, upon facts at all. [Mr. HEALY: Yes; but there is a jury.] He assumed that a tribunal of Judges, for the purposes of the present Bill, would be thoroughly impartial; and, so far as the prisoner was concerned, would be quite as good as a jury. A prisoner tried in England would certainly be quite as safe, as fully under the protection of the law, and subjected as much to a merciful construction of the law, as he would be if tried before any jury. [Cries of "Oh!" from the Irish Members.] That, at any rate, was his conviction. In this Bill it was considered advisable to grant an unusual appeal simply from a desire, not to prevent a conviction by partizan Judges—for there was no reason to anticipate that any of the distinguished men upon the Irish Bench would assume the character of a partizan—but because, in creating a new and extraordinary tribunal, it was considered necessary to provide an appellate machinery in order to give a chance to prisoners which they would not

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      have under ordinary circumstances. The Government felt that that was a desirable thing to do, because the tribunal was a new and extraordinary one, and because they thought it ought to be fenced round with reasonable provisions of this character. He could honestly say that that was the sincere desire of the Government. The hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) asked why they would not yield. They did not yield because they could not come to the conclusion that it would be right to yield. They had undertaken a grave responsibility in framing this Bill. Of course, they knew that objections would be taken to some of the provisions of the measure. It was only natural that there should be objections. Many of the objections were obvious, and were, of course, in the mind of the Government when the Bill was framed. They had carefully considered every matter, and they were quite aware that there was hardly any question upon which a good deal might not be said on both sides. He trusted that hon. Members opposite would give the Government credit for a desire to arrive at a right conclusion; and they had come to the conclusion that the course which they proposed in regard to an appeal was at once a safe and a humane course towards the prisoners themselves, and that it was also a course consistent with the fair and due administration of justice. Having come to that decision— and the House of Commons, after hearing the arguments on both sides, having pronounced, by a large majority, in favour of the view of the Government— was it reasonable to ask them now to yield to that which they deliberately thought was not the best plan? He was sure that hon. Members opposite would acquit him of anything in the nature of personal obstinacy, when he said that Her Majesty's Government declined to yield, because, in a matter of such consequence, they had already gone to the extreme verge compatible with the proper administration of justice and the maintenance of law and order in Ireland.
      MR. HEALYsaid, he would ask one question of the right hon. and learned Gentleman before the Committee went to a division. In providing for an appeal, the Government had made no provision in the Bill for the payment of fees to counsel in cases of murder, treason, and treason-felony. Would they
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      be willing, in the event of an appeal to the Appellate Court in the case of a poor prisoner, to do what they had agreed to do in reference to the expenses of witnesses before the Court of First Instance?
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, that, in a matter of that kind, the Government would always be willing to do what was fair and reasonable; and the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) would find no obstinacy in him on such a question.
      MR. HEALY: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman bring up an Amendment in that sense?
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Yes.
      Question put.
      The Committee divided: —Ayes 35; Noes 64: Majority 29.—(Div. List No. 112.)
      Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Clause 3, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
      Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; Committee counted, and 40 Members being found present,
      MR. BIGGARsaid, the clause, as it stood, was of a most objectionable character, and its most objectionable feature was that it provided that if the Court of Appeal was composed of six Judges, and they were equally divided in opinion, the decision of the Court below must be confirmed and the conviction stand. In case of such a division of opinion, he certainly thought the benefit of the doubt ought to be given to the accused. There was also another objection to the clause, and that was that it did not recognize the right of appeal in criminal cases. If the Government had agreed to an Amendment which had been proposed to the clause now under consideration, the clause might have been beneficial in its operation; and, in addition, it would have acknowledged a principle of great importance, and one which, sooner or later, must become a common principle of English jurisprudence—namely, the right of appeal in criminal cases. It seemed preposterous that, in civil cases— in which, as a rule, the consideration was merely a monetary one—the right of appeal should be given; but that in criminal cases, in which the liberty, and possibly the life, of a man might be involved that right was withheld. Under

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      all the circumstances, he considered his Party would do well to divide against the clause.
      Question put.
      The Committee divided: —Ayes 82; Noes 29: Majority 53.—(Div. List, No. 113.)

    PART II.

      OFFENCES AGAINST THIS ACT.
      Clause 4 (Intimidation).
      MR. HEALYproposed, in page 3, line 13, before "every," to insert—
      "An agreement or combination by two or more persons to do, or procure to be done, any act or thing in contemplation or furtherance of any dispute between landlord and tenant of the character commonly known as agrarian, shall not be indictable as a conspiracy of such act or thing, when committed by one person, would not be punishable as a crime."
      THE CHAIRMAN: I do not think that this Amendment comes within the scope of the clause under consideration. As, however, it is within the title of the Bill, it can be brought up as a separate clause.
      MR. HEALYasked if the Chairman was aware that the Amendment of which he had given Notice was taken almost word for word from the Conspiracy Act of 1875, and that he proposed to insert the words in a precisely similar place to the place they occupied in the Act he had mentioned? He really was at a loss to know what they were to do if they were not to follow precedent. The only alteration he had made in the words was to substitute for "master and servant" "landlord and tenant;" and he submitted that, having followed the line which Mr. Playfair's Predecessor had permitted in regard to the English Conspiracy Act, if Irish Members were unable to insert the same words in the present Bill?
      THE CHAIRMAN: I told the hon. Member the words came within the title of the Bill, but that they could not be properly entertained at this stage of the Bill. As a separate clause the words would be quite in Order.
      MR. HEALYsaid, he presumed that, without being disrespectful to the Chairman, he might venture to offer his opinion. ["Oh!"] Hon. Members seemed to imagine that the Chairman was beyond the region of argument. Now, he thought the Chairman was a very com-
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      petent person to argue with; and, therefore, he ventured to submit a point to him for his decision. The clause dealt with intimidation, and he proposed this Amendment because, if something of the kind were not adopted, it would be quite possible for a magistrate to hold that such a thing as combination between landlord and tenant amounted to conspiracy. What he wanted to do was to make it clear to the mind of the magistrate who had to administer the Act that such a combination would not be conspiracy.
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, the hon. Gentleman did not seem to understand what the point of Order was. In the Conspiracy Bill this paragraph did appear; and, subject to the Chairman's ruling, he (Sir William Harcourt) would venture to submit that in an Amendment to a clause they could not sweep away everything in the clause, and then interpose at the commencement something altogether new, in the shape of a new Amendment. According to their Rules, it was necessary that something should remain, even if it be only the word "that." The Amendment of the hon. Member, as he would see, left nothing of the clause.
      MR. HEALY: It does not interfere with the clause.
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, that the hon. Gentleman proposed to bring in a whole paragraph before the first word of the clause, so as to make it a new clause in itself.
      THE CHAIRMAN: I have no doubt whatever about the ruling I have given. The hon. Member drew attention to a previous Act, and seemed to indicate that in the Intimidation Clause of that Act the words which he has placed on the Paper were put in as a preface to that clause. That is not so. The words are not in that clause at all, but in another clause. These words must, if they are moved at all, be moved as a new clause.
      MR. HEALYsaid, he bowed to the ruling of the Chairman. He had taken the words from the 1st clause of the English Act; and he would like to ask the Chairman if he was not entitled to move the words at the beginning of Clause 4; whether he might not move their insertion at the end of the clause? At the end of the Bill the words would be absurd.
      THE CHAIEMAN: I have already explained that the cases are not at all similar. These words are in the 3rd clause of the Act of 1875, and the Intimidation Clause is the 7th. The Amendment would not be suitable at this stage, and I rule it can only be brought up as a separate clause.
      MR. HEALYsaid, he would now move, in page 3, line 13, after "who," to insert—
      "Shall be proved, on the complaint of the person or persons alleged to have been aggrieved, to have."
      This Amendment, if carried, would necessitate a slight change in a subsequent part of the Bill. For instance, the word "uses," in line 14, would have to be altered to "used," and the word "incites" would have to be changed to "incited." The point was most important, for in Ireland it was generally the police who instituted prosecutions for intimidation. He made a speech in the South of Ireland, and the police chose to consider he had incited somebody. They went to the person alleged to be incited, and that person swore an affidavit at the request and under the compulsion of the stipendiary magistrate. The affidavit was made owing to the intimidation of the stipendiary magistrate, and under the pressure, as they believed, of the agent of the property. What he wanted to lay particular stress upon was, that the stipendiary magistrate who got up the case against him was the very man who afterwards returned him for trial. The whole thing was absurd. The idea of a man acting as policeman and then as Judge and jury was one which could only be met with in a comic drama. He presumed that the Government did not mean to act upon the advice of police and police magistrates; he presumed they would wait until somebody said he had been intimidated, and then proceed upon the alleged act of intimidation. As the clause now stood, any insignificant policeman in Ireland who heard a man had made a speech in denunciation of land-grabbing or landlordism as an abstract thing; and any sub-constable and sub-inspector, or Resident Magistrate, could indict him, and say he had been guilty of intimidation. He wondered if the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary was acquainted with the case of Miss Reynolds? She
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      was down in Queen's County, and when a car had been seized by the constabulary she said —"Well, never mind, you can't compel anybody to drive it!" The constable said—"This looks very like intimidation;" and he had her up before Mr. Blake, who gave her six months in gaol. They wanted to avoid subjective intimidation on the part of Mr. Blake and Inspector Smith, and all the tag-rag and bob-tail of the Irish police; and they wanted to have the men who had just complaints coming forward. The argument of the Government, no doubt, would be that an individual would be too much intimidated to come forward; they would say there was a double intimidation—the intimidation of the man who was guilty, and the intimidation of the populace. [Mr. GIBSON: Hear, hear!] He was glad to hear so excellent an authority on Irish matters as the right hon. and learned Gentleman offer an opinion on the subject. It would be said, in the first place, that the aggrieved person would be intimidated by the accused; and, in the second place, it would be contended that no one would come forward, because he would be intimidated by the people. He intended, as soon as his Parliamentary duties would permit, to go down to Wexford and make a speech to his constituents. He would tell them that in future they could not say a word against land-grabbing and landlordism; but they must regard the land-grabber as the saviour of Ireland, as a person upon whom all the future—["Question!"] Hon. Gentlemen had better understand the Question before they cried it. He would remind hon. Gentlemen that the Question was that of intimidation, and it was to that Question that he was addressing himself. He was venturing to tell the Committee what kind of speech would only be permissible if the clause were passed in its present shape. When he next met his constituents he promised to eulogize the land-grabber, the bad landlord, and, indeed, everything that was bad in the Irish Government, and then allow the people to draw their own conclusion. Would he be entitled to praise land-grabbing under the Bill? He believed there was once a celebrated case in which it was laid down that gestures and accents could be brought under the cognizance of the law. Was it intended by this Bill to deal with nods

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      and words, and gestures and accents? If so, he should be glad to have the thing laid down, and he would also be pleased to hear whether the Government intended to rest their machinery upon the police? He would like to know what sort of intimidation would be permitted under the Bill? For instance, Mr. Clifford Lloyd came down to County Clare, a few days ago, and said to a certain trader—"Unless you serve out goods to a certain person I shall put you into gaol under the Coercion Act;" and the right hon. Gentleman the late Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. W. E. Forster) backed up Mr. Clifford Lloyd by sending the man to prison for six months. For his (Mr. Healy's) part, he thought a clause was very badly needed in the Bill, laying down that intimidation by policemen, or by Sub-Inspectors or Resident Magistrates, should amount to a misdemeanour. In his own case, the wife of the man who was alleged to have been intimidated stated that her husband was compelled to swear the affidavit upon which he (Mr. Healy) was arrested. Was this Bill going to rest upon the action of the police, or was it not? Was it going to rest on the action of men who would simply say that every word spoken or every act done by political opponents was a just cause of complaint; or were the Government going to accept, as he trusted they would, his reasonable Amendment, which provided that no person should be prosecuted unless the person aggrieved made the complaint?
      Amendment proposed,
      In page 3, line 13, after "who," to insert the words, "shall be proved, on the complaint of the person or persons alleged to have been aggrieved, to have."—(Mr. Healy.)
      Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, that everybody knew that in the cases of intimidation they desired to put down the people intimidated dare not complain. He had read of a dreadful case in which a man was horribly wounded by a shot, and nothing would induce him to give information for fear that even worse things might happen. To make the clause dependent upon the complaint of the person indicated would be to provide complete immunity from intimidation. If it could only be made
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      sufficiently apparent that the man who made a complaint would suffer for it, they would have intimidation carried out with complete success. That was the reason why the Government could not assent to the Amendment.
      MR. HEALYsaid, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had dealt with the Amendment in a very summary manner, and he had not touched upon the most important part of it. Who were to be the judges of intimidation? Were the police to decide what was intimidation, or was the right hon. and learned Gentleman to do it? [An hon. MEM-BEE: The tribunal.] What tribunal? Was Mr. Clifford Lloyd to decide what was intimidation? Was Mr. Henry Blake, who sent Miss Reynolds to gaol for six months because she said no one could be compelled to drive a horse and cart, to be the judge of intimidation? The Home Secretary did not see the importance of the point. If the Government would provide a Judge of intimidation, who should decide upon the merits of a case before it was sent forward, it would be all very well. They, however, did nothing of the sort; they left it with the sub-constable to say what intimidation was. The Home Secretary had given them a very dreadful instance in which a man did not dare to give information. He (Mr. Healy) would give them a case of hardship. He personally was put to great expense, he was kept in terror and panic, so far as his nature would permit, for two months before being brought to trial. Who, he should like to ask, were to decide what was intimidation in such cases as his own? He supposed they would in future have to make speeches in favour of the land-grabber; that they would have to tell the people that the land-grabber, instead of being an enemy, was really a friend of the country; that he had run up the price of land, and, therefore, was a benefactor to the agricultural interest. He presumed they would have to praise bad landlords, and show the advisability of emigration. Might he ask who were to initiate proceedings? Whoever had drawn the Bill in this respect had exhibited great skill. With the exception of one or two points later on in the Bill—which was evidently not drawn by an Irishman or by anybody who knew anything about Irish affairs—the clause was drawn with great skill, because it was carefully ex-

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      cluded from the mind of the Committee who was to he the party to take the initiative. Whether it was to be the local police or the local magistrate there was no indication. The clause simply said—
      "Every person who wrongfully or without legal authority uses intimidation,…shall he guilty of an offence against this Act."
      Who was the person to form an opinion as to intimidation? Let the Home Secretary get up and answer that question.
      MR. DILLONsaid, a case occurred a short time ago in the county of Clare bearing on the question involved in the Amendment before the Committee—that was to say, an answer was given to a Question in that House, on the authority of two magistrates—Mr. Clifford Lloyd and another. It was said that certain tenants on a well-known estate had remained out of their houses because they were intimidated from re-entering. Shortly afterwards a document was placed in the hands of hon. Members of that House, signed by every one of the tenants, and not only so, but the document was accompanied by a letter from the parish priest, stating that no intimidation had been exercised on the tenants; that the signatures were obtained in the Presbytery of the chapel without the slightest pressure being put upon the tenants. This was a very serious case, because the statement was made in the House, on the authority of Mr. Clifford Lloyd and another magistrate, that intimidation of the grossest character had been exercised, and was being exercised, towards the tenants. Numbers of men had been sent to gaol for six months, with hard labour, for the intimidation alleged to have been exercised; whereas they had the testimony of the tenants themselves, backed up by the evidence of the parish priest, that no intimidation had been practised towards them, and that the intimidation was alleged simply for political purposes. As the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) put it, they should know, before the clause passed, who was to institute proceedings for intimidation. He must say that men—and he was not the first to say it, for he believed the late Chief Secretary had said it, and he was certain Mr. Justice Fitzgerald had said it — were such cowards that they were afraid to complain that this House was very badly employed in de-
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      fending them. He did not believe, moreover, that the House of Commons would be able to protect them. Any man who was coward enough to be intimidated, and was afraid to bring his case before a tribunal, was not worthy of the attention of that House, or of any other assembly of men; any woman would be ashamed to display the cowardice which was exhibited by some men in Ireland. It was now a question whether they were to allow a combination and conspiracy of Resident Magistrates and landlords to trump up charges of intimidation against obnoxious men, and cast them into prison. There were two kinds of intimidation. Intimidation might be used for political purposes. They knew that in several instances it had been alleged that intimidation had been practised upon a whole body of people, and that afterwards the people had come forward and sworn that they had not been intimidated. They knew that intimidation had been exercised upon witnesses to prevent them coming forward against the popular side. They knew that landlords and agents did exercise intimidation, and would, if this clause passed in its present shape, exercise it. They knew that tenants who wanted to go to Court to give evidence in favour of an accused person would be told to stop at home, and that if they did not keep quiet they themselves would be charged with crime. He considered the Amendment an exceedingly important one, and he intended to vote for it.
      MR. JOSEPH COWENasked the Home Secretary how it was possible to get at the fact of intimidation unless the man intimidated came forward and lodged a complaint? There must be someone to set the law in motion, and the proper person to do so was the person aggrieved. [Sir WILLIAM HAR-COURT dissented.] The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary shook his head. That was the law of this country. It constantly happened, in case of strike, that the blackleg went and lodged his charge with the police or magistrate, and thus the law was set in motion by himself. That was what the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) wanted to provide for in the case of intimidation in Ireland; all the hon. Gentleman wanted to do was to provide that the man intimidated should himself set the law in motion. He (Mr. Joseph

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      Cowen) had often heard the Home Secretary denounce grand-motherly Government; but it seemed to him that this was the best specimen of it they could very well have.
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he must differ from the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Joseph Cowen) as to the principle of English law. The hon. Member said it was only the person injured who took proceedings; and he said, moreover, that that was the principle of the law of this country. Why, it was the general principle of the Criminal Law that the State should prosecute in cases of injuries sustained. The hon. Member for Newcastle had entirely misapprehended the principle of the law of England. It happened, over and over again, that where a person did not wish to proceed with a case, the Public Prosecutor stepped in and compelled a prosecution in the interest of society.
      MR. PARNELLsaid, the right hon. and learned Gentleman had stated that the Public Prosecutor, in cases of injury, was the person upon whom the duty devolved to initiate proceedings. [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: Or the police.] He (Mr. Parnell) ventured to say it was nothing of the sort in either England or Ireland. He did not pretend to know very much of the law; but, at least, he knew that where a person was assaulted and desired to obtain his remedy before a Court of Summary Jurisdiction, he laid the complaint himself, and not the Public Prosecutor. In Ireland, the only cases in which the police took the initiative were those in which the public generally were injured. For instance, if a donkey was found straying on the road, the police would summon the owner. In a case where an individual was affected, it was left to that individual to apply to the magistrate for a summons to protect himself, or to obtain the punishment of the person injuring him. That was the practice in Ireland in cases of summary jurisdiction, and he believed it to be the practice in England. They knew that, over and over again, there were many cases where the police had actually desired that prosecutions should be instituted, and where the parties had not. In eases where the parties injured felt there had been no intention to intimidate, or where there had been no absolute vindictiveness, they had not desired to proceed further, and the police
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      had not felt themselves justified or able to initiate proceedings. What were the facts? In a clause of 20 lines, the Government had attempted, in this extraordinary Bill, and in this most extraordinary part of this extraordinary Bill, to set up in Ireland a new Law of Conspiracy and Intimidation. Open combinations among Irish tenant farmers had not been usual in times past. There had been combinations of a secret character. According to the statement of a former Chief Secretary for Ireland, in 1849, no bargain with regard to the letting of land in a large district— in a whole province in Ireland — could be made without the consent of the Secret Ribbon Lodges. Open combinations of tenant farmers in Ireland were attempted for the first time after the institution of the Irish National Land League. He said upon the second reading of this Bill that he had no objection in the world to the passing of a Statute dealing with combinations of Irish tenant farmers, and dealing with the Law of Conspiracy as regarded combinations of Irish farmers, on the same principle as the combinations of English workmen were dealt with in the Conspiracy Act of 1875; an Act which, by the way, was introduced and passed by a Conservative Government. They were asked to deal, in a clause of 20 lines, with a subject which was dealt with in the English Act relating to working men in a Bill of 10 pages. Now, was that reasonable? Was it reasonable to compress their regard for the right of combination amongst Irish tenant farmers into 20 lines, and to take away, at the same time, the right of trial by jury which they gave in the English Act? He did not believe the House of Commons would submit to the attempt this Liberal Government was making to so alter the Law of Conspiracy and Intimidation as to make it practically impossible, after the passing of this Act, for any Irish farmers or Irish working men to combine to any legitimate purpose. He saw the master hand of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) in these clauses. He was quite sure this clause was designed by the right hon. Gentleman, and that it was the result of the careful study he had made of Irish questions during the 24 months of his official existence. He knew something of the practical results of the working

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      of the mind of the right hon. Gentleman. He knew that the right hon. Gentleman had arrested hundreds of men in Ireland on the charge of intimidation, simply because they refused to pay their rents or asked that their rent might be reduced. He could give the names of many most respectable tenants who were arrested by the right hon. Gentleman and sent to Kilmainham, and who were in Kilmainham Gaol still, simply because they presented a petition, adopted by the tenants of an estate at an open and public meeting, to their landlord praying for a reduction of rent. He would give one name, that of Mr. Crosbie, a tenant on the estate of Colonel Boyce, in the county of Wexford. Mr. Crosbie was the occupier of two farms of considerable extent; he was also a trader, with a large business in his village; he was a man of an unassuming and retiring disposition, and he was asked to take the chair at a meeting of the tenants of Colonel Boyce held last October, and at that meeting a resolution was passed in favour of paying no rent until they got a reduction of rent. Mr. Crosbie, a gentleman of about 60 years of age, of portly and respectable appearance, was selected as the leading tenant on the estate, and the leading man in the neighbourhood, to present a petition to the landlord. He did so, and Colonel Boyce replied—"I will go up to Dublin tomorrow, and I will see Buckshot Foreter, and get you arrested." The right hon. Gentleman the late Chief Secretary for Ireland was in his place, and if he was able to contradict the facts he had stated—namely, that he arrested Mr. Crosbie last October, that Mr. Crosbie was still in Kilmainham prison on a charge of intimidation, that Mr. Crosbie committed no other intimidation than that alleged to be contained in presenting a petition to his landlord, and that a day or two subsequently the right hon. Gentleman was visited by Colonel Boyce, and compelled to arrest Mr. Crosbie on a charge of intimidation, he (Mr. Parnell) would very cheerfully withdraw the statement he had made. He mentioned these facts to show the Committee the way in which these things were done in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford stated, when the Coercion Bill was being carried last year, that he would act as if he were a sworn juror, and that he would refuse
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      to arrest any man whom he did not conscientiously believe to be guilty of the offence with which he was charged. Was there any outrage committed last October on the estate of Colonel Boyce, or in the neighbourhood of it? Was there the slightest intimidation exercised there? He might extend the area from the estate of Bannon to the whole of the county of Wexford, from which county there had been, he supposed, fully 20 persons arrested under the Coercion Act—
      MR. HOPWOODrose to Order. Had these remarks any earthly connection with the clause?
      THE CHAIRMAN: I think the hon. Member is going very far away from the Amendment.
      MR. PARNELLsaid, he did not wish to go any further away from the Amendment than the Chairman thought right; but he desired to point out that he was surprised the hon. and learned Member for Stockport, by whose side he had fought in that House to abolish the infamous practice of flogging in the Army, and to secure for English working men the right of combination, should be so zealous in interfering to limit his (Mr. Parnell's) illustrations in support of his argument in favour of the right of combination for Irish farmers. They wanted to know —and the question had been asked several times, and had not been answered by the Government—they wanted to know who was going to initiate the prosecutions for intimidation? They were told that Mr. Clifford Lloyd was not to be trusted to administer this law; he was not to be allowed to initiate prosecutions against individuals. If the prosecutions were not to be instituted upon the complaint of the persons injured, upon whose complaint were they to be instituted? They were told the other day by the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant that in certain cases of alleged intimidation— in such cases as the erection of wooden huts for the purpose of sheltering evicted tenants—the Lord Lieutenant would be the judge as to whether it would be right that prosecutions should be instituted. He would be perfectly willing that the Lord Lieutenant should be the judge in such cases; because, just as they had left the initiation of the prosecutions of trials without jury to the Lord Lieutenant, so they should also leave the initiation of the trials before the

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      special tribunal and Resident Magistrates to the Lord Lieutenant. He was not willing to leave the initiation of these prosecutions to the stray Resident Magistrates throughout the country. The people were entitled to know what the law was in the first place; and, in the second place, they were entitled to know what they could do, so as to keep within the law. Under the clause as it now stood it was perfectly impossible that anybody could know what the law was, and what they could do to keep within the scope of the law. In asking for information as to who were to initiate prosecutions, they were asking for uniformity in the administration of the law throughout Ireland. If the initiation of the prosecution was to be left to the Resident Magistrates in Ireland, they would find offences differing in every county and district in the country; and it would be impossible for anyone to know what the law really was. The law would depend, in that case, for its interpretation and its administration upon the whims of 40 or 50 different stipendiary magistrates. He, therefore, thought that, upon the threshold of the clause, they were entitled to know who was to initiate the prosecutions for intimidation. Was it to be the police-constable, was it to be the Resident Magistrate, or was it to be the Lord Lieutenant? The Government ought to give them some information, some light as to what men must do to obey the law. They wanted to obey the law, they were willing to obey the law; but under an Act of this kind it would be quite impossible for them to obey the law, because they would be left completely in the dark as to its nature and extent.
      MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he wished to make a few remarks, in consequence of the observations of the hon. Member for the City of Cork. He understood the hon. Gentleman to say that he (Mr. W. E. Forster) had arrested, or caused men to be arrested, simply because they had paid their rents. He absolutely and entirely denied the statement.
      MR. PARNELL: What did the right hon. Gentleman arrest Mr. Crosbie for?
      MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, that the hon. Member, without giving him the slightest Notice, questioned him with regard to a particular arrest. Though he had had no Notice, if the hon. Gentleman was prepared to raise a discussion
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      on the subject, he would be prepared to meet him. Mr. Crosbie was arrested because he (Mr. W. E. Forster) believed he had been guilty of intimidation. Mr. Crosbie was not arrested because he refused to pay his rent, but on the charge of intimidation.
      MR. PARNELL: What was the intimidation?
      MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, the hon. Member was perfectly aware that the Protection of Person and Property Act was obtained upon the ground that it was impossible to give the reasons for arrests. If they had given the reasons for arrests—
      MR. HOPWOODrose to Order. He could quite understand the right hon. Gentleman's desire to answer on the spot anything the hon. Member for the City of Cork might have said; but he asked whether they were to enter into an interminable debate upon matters which had nothing to do with the Amendment?
      THE CHAIRMAN: Allowance is always made by the Committee for a personal explanation. I must state, however, it would be quite out of Order to continue the discussion on this subject.
      MR W. E. FORSTERsaid, he must repeat, although he did not wish to dwell upon the point, that it was a very well known fact that the reasons for arrest could not be given without endangering the personal safety of the people who gave the information. ["Oh, oh!"] Really, hon. Gentlemen seemed to think there was no such thing as intimidation in Ireland. He should have thought that any person who had paid the slightest attention to what had happened in Ireland during the last six months would have been aware that there was such intimidation in the country that, if the names of the persons who had given information upon which any man had been arrested had been published, the lives of those persons, and their property, and their comfort and peace, would have been seriously endangered, and they would have had very little chance of carrying on their daily occupation.
      MR. O'KELLY: I rise to a point of Order. The right hon. Gentleman rose to make an explanation with reference to the case of Mr. Crosbie; and he repeats now, for the twentieth time, his infernal speech.
      SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSON: I move, Sir, that the words of the hon. Member be taken down. He has said, in my hearing, "the right hon. Member's infernal speech." I move that those words be taken down.
      Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the words 'the right hon. Member's infernal speech' be taken down."—(Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson.)
      THE CHAIRMAN: Order! Is it the desire of the Committee that the words of the hon. Member be taken down?
      MR. PARNELLsaid, it was a well-known precedent in that House that words could only be taken down if they had been heard by the Clerk at the Table, and immediately upon utterance. [Cries of "Name, name!"] No; there was another method of procedure open. A Motion had been made that the hon. Member's words be taken down; but his words had not been heard.
      THE CHAIRMAN: They were heard by the Chairman quite distinctly.
      MR. PARNELL: I confess, Sir, that although I was sitting very close to the hon. Member, I did not hear him make use of the words mentioned.
      SIR R, ASSHETON CROSS: I rise to Order, Sir. I believe on these matters there can be no debate. The Chairman heard the words; therefore he can direct that they be taken down.
      MR. PARNELLsaid, that in the last Parliament, as he distinctly remembered, there was a debate which lasted, not only for a few minutes, but for the whole evening—a debate in which the right hon. and learned Gentleman the present Home Secretary took a very distinguished part—upon the Motion of the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote), that some words uttered by an hon. Member sitting on that (the Opposition) side of the House—he thought the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr.O'Donnell) —should be taken down. A debate arose, and the present Home Secretary, then in Opposition, entered very strongly in to the debate, and proposed the taking down of the words; but finally the Motion to take down the words was withdrawn. On the present occasion, ho submitted, the situation was precisely the same. Words were uttered by his hon. Friend as to the precise nature of which there seemed to
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      be some difference of opinion. He (Mr, Parnell) confessed that though he sat very near the hon. Member for Roscommon—
      THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member cannot debate the question as to whether the words are to be taken down or not. The Rule is that if a Motion is made that the words of an hon. Member be taken down, and
      "It does appear to the Speaker, or the Chairman of Committees, that it is the evident sense of the House that they shall be taken down, he will then direct that the words ho taken down, and will then put as the question that the words be reported to the House."
      The words having been taken down by the Clerk—
      THE CHAIRMAN: The Question I now put is, that the words taken down —namely, "the right hon. Member's infernal speech," be reported to the House.
      MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid, he wished to ask the Chairman, as a matter of Order, whether it was a Rule of the House that this Motion should be put to the House or the Committee, and decided without debate, and whether there were not precedents for a debate, and a very lengthened debate, taking place on such a question?
      MR. JOSEPH COWENsaid, he might suggest, with a view to the general harmony of the Committee, that as this was a matter calculated to create bitterness of feeling on the part of some hon. Members, and as the debate had been, so far, conducted in good temper, the way out of the difficulty would be for the hon. Member for Roscommon to withdraw the expression he had used.
      MR. PARNELLsaid, he certainly did not catch the exact adjective used by his hon. Friend; but some hon. Members said that a certain adjective, which he would not repeat, had been used. He was sitting behind his hon. Friend when the objectionable word was used, and sound did not travel backwards as well as it did forward. That was the reason, perhaps, that the exact phrase had not reached him, there having been considerable noise in the House at the time of the occurrence. Since he had last spoken, however, he had consulted his hon. Friend, who had told him that he did use the objectionable adjective. His hon. Friend, he was sure, would see, if the Motion that the words be reported

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      to the House were withdrawn, that it was desirable that he should withdraw the expression he had made use of. The hon. Gentleman would, no doubt, be glad to withdraw it, and to express regret for having made use of it.
      MR. GLADSTONE: I think the matter may be settled without carrying it further; but I am bound to say that I do not think, with regard to the Order of the House, that a mere withdrawal would be sufficient. The House is certainly entitled to an expression of regret from the hon. Member.
      THE CHAIRMAN: I must explain to the hon. Member, who, I have no doubt, will do so, that a mere withdrawal is not sufficient, but that he must express regret for having used the words.
      MR. O'KELLY: I confess at once that I did use the adjective, and I must say that it escaped me in the heat of debate, and quite without my intending to use that particular adjective. I withdraw it, and express to the Committee my regret for having used it.
      Question again proposed, "That the words 'shall be proved, on the complaint of the person or persons alleged to have been aggrieved, to have.'"
      Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again,"—(Mr. Healy,) —put, and negatived.
      MR. W. E. FORSTER, continuing, said, he did not wish to make any further remark in regard to the facts alluded to by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). He should not have spoken at all had it not been for words the hon. Member had used. With regard to the Amendment, it would make the clause of no use. If the clause was required at all, it was required to prevent extensive and constructive intimidation. He believed it was necessary for that purpose; but, whatever had rendered it necessary, the person intimidated would be very easily prevented by fresh intimidation from initiating a prosecution. The hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) had said he understood he (Mr. W. E. Forster) had alluded to people being cowards in this matter. He did not know what remark he might have made; but he might state that he considered that it would require great courage—more, indeed, than they
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      had any right to expect from the average of individuals—to initiate prosecutions with the system of intimidation known as "Boycotting" existing.
      THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)said, he wished to say a few words in reply to that small portion of the speech of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) which was relevant to the matter before the Committee. This 4th clause dealt with offences that would include breaches of the peace and acts of violence towards the person intimidated by the person intimidating, and the Amendment was to the effect that no person should make complaint of these acts of intimidation, except the person intimidated. Apart from the question of policy, if this Amendment were accepted, it would be another innovation in the law of the country. The general law was that, whenever a breach of the peace was committed, any person could make complaint of that breach of the peace; but it was proposed to make exception to that law, and require that the person who had been the victim of a breach of the peace alone should complain. How often did they not hear of persons assaulting women or children? In these cases, who made the charges? Not the persons assaulted, but some other person who was aware that a breach of the peace had been committed. Any person would make the charge; and the Amendment, which, it was said, would carry the general law into effect would, if applied, limit the right of complaint to the person assaulted, who might be afraid to make complaint. Let him give an instance that closely approached the condition of things sought to be dealt with by the clause. Reference had been made to the Act of 1878, which was an Act to prevent intimidation and persons being interfered with when doing that which they had a perfect legal right to do. Who could make complaint under this Act? Not only the persons intimidated. They had had constant complaints under the Workman's Act of 1875, not only from masters—who declared that their workmen were intimidated—but from persons who stood by and witnessed the acts of intimidation. The workman would be the last person to make complaint, and those by whom complaint would be made would be, in most cases,

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      persons who represented society, and their complaints would be heard. They had been asked to make an exception, as against the general principle to which he referred, where breaches of the peace occurred. The whole purpose of the Act was to protect people who could not protect themselves. It was by the shield of the present legislation that they were endeavouring to protect those who were in a state of terror, and were unable to protect themselves. They had had to deal with a very paralysis of action in which, in Ireland, persons could not protect themselves, and especially in this case, where terrorism of two kinds existed—namely, that which was immediate and worked on the people directly, preventing them from doing lawful acts; and then, when the people were intimidated, that secondary intimidation that prevented them from making complaint of the primary intimidation. If they accepted this Amendment, people would intimidate with this knowledge —that no consequences could possibly ensue if they only intimidated still further, and prevented their victims from making complaint.
      MR. BULWERsaid, he wished merely to say one word as to the extreme inapplicability of the Amendment to the clause under discussion. The clause was one for the definition of offence, and it said—
      "Every person who wrongfully and without legal authority uses intimidation, or incites any other person to use intimidation, with a view to cause any person or persons, either to do any act which such person or persons has or have a legal right to abstain from doing, or to abstain from doing any act which such person or persons has or have a legal right to do, or towards any person or persons in consequence, either of his or their having done any act which he or they had a legal right to do, or of his or their having abstained from doing any act which he or they had a legal right to abstain from doing, shall be guilty of an offence against this Act."
      Then it was proposed, in the definition of the offence, to introduce words pointing out how intimidation was to be proved. Why, the absurdity of the thing was self-evident to introduce into a clause which dealt with the definition of an offence words referring to proof of that offence. The words of the Amendment were—
      "Shall be proved, on the complaint of the person or persons alleged to have been aggrieved,"
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      But the clause dealt not with proof, but with the definition of the crime. He submitted to the hon. Member who had brought forward the Amendment that this was not the proper time to do so. If the Amendment was appropriate to the Bill at all, the right time to propose it would be when they were dealing with the proof by which the offence was to be established.
      MR. PARNELLsaid, the Amendment of his hon. Friend was really a very important one, because at the very threshold of the clause they were met by the question—"Who is to initiate these prosecutions?" The Chief Secretary for Ireland informed them the other day that complaints, as regarded intimidation in connection with the erection of wooden cabins for evicted tenants, should only be brought before the magistrates for decision after they had been first investigated by the Lord Lieutenant. If, however, this clause was passed, it would practically override the announcement which the Chief Secretary made. Did the Chief Secretary make the announcement in ignorance of the effect of this clause, or did he only intend it to be taken as referring to the present law in force until this Act should have been passed? The matter was of great importance, whatever reply wore given to this question. Under the present law, charges of intimidation could only be dealt with in two ways, and the punishments to be inflicted for such offences were much less in magnitude than the punishments to be inflicted under the operation of this clause. At present, a person who was charged with intimidation could be required by the magistrates, under a section of the Statute of Edward III., to give bail, and in default of giving that they could be sent to prison for a period not exceeding six months. They were treated as untried prisoners, were allowed to supply themselves with food, and there was, in fact, the clearest distinction drawn between them and prisoners convicted of crime. The other remedy against intimidation, under the present law, was that magistrates could send a person to prison for three months, with or without hard labour, with the option of a fine, and from that decision of the magistrates there was an appeal to the Quarter Sessions. If it was necessary to reserve to the Lord Lieutenant the

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      right of putting into action a charge of intimidation under the present law, it became much more necessary to reserve such a right to the Lord Lieutenant, under the very stringent provisions of this clause. Now, the Irish Members wished to know did the Government intend that this Intimidation Clause was to be put in force by every policeman in Ireland—was every policeman in Ireland to have the right to drag any man, woman, or child, at any moment, before the nearest stipendiary magistrate? There was no limitation in their Intimidation Clause. It was not necessary to summon a person offending under it—he could be taken at once, at any hour of the day or night, before the stipendiary magistrate, and charged with intimidation. Did the Government intend that the provisions of this clause were to be exercised in this way, doing away with the right of trial by jury, doing away with the right of appeal, doing away with the option of a fine, and increasing the punishment from three months to six months? Did they intend that these provisions should be exercised in the spirit of the statement made the other day by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, with regard to the erection of the huts for evicted tenants, or did they intend that they should be exercised in the spirit of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) and his pet, Mr. Clifford Lloyd?
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he could answer the hon. Member in a single sentence. It was intended that the clause should be exercised in exactly the same manner, and the informations given by exactly the same people, as was the case under the English Act of 1875. The two cases were precisely similar. There was no limitation in the Act of 1875 as to the persons who were to lay the informations for offences under that Act; no more would there be under this Act. The hon. Member for the City of Cork, on the second reading, he thought, or two or three nights ago, made a fair statement as to this Intimidation Clause—namely, that he wished it to be a clause resembling the English law on the subject, with such modifications of that law as the condition of Ireland rendered necessary. That, he (Sir William Harcourt) thought, was as fair a statement of the case as could
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      possibly be made. Well, that was the intention of the Government with reference to this clause; and everything which tended to show that it did not resemble the principle of the English law, with such modifications as the peculiar circumstances of Ireland rendered necessary, were matters which, he thought, would properly command the attention of the Committee, and also its assent to any Amendment which might be requisite to carry out the intention of the Government. But if the Amendment were accepted it would make the clause differ altogether from the English law; and he, therefore, claimed the support of the hon. Member for the City of Cork on his own principle in opposing this Amendment.
      MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid, he, on the other hand, claimed the support of the Home Secretary for the Amendment of his hon. Friend, on account of the principles the right hon. and learned Gentleman had defended, and the measures he had introduced into the House, at an earlier and more independent stage of his career. The right hon. and learned Gentleman would not forget that golden youth of his, when he was prominent in the House in demanding the largest right of combination for the working men of this country, and when he brought forward Motions for the adjournment of the House, for doing which now the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) brought on himself the thunders of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. There was no analogy with regard to the initiation of prosecutions for intimidation between the cases of England and Ireland. As far as he was concerned as to the other part of the proposition, he was ready to accept it. If the intimidation was clear and defined, as in England, he would be content; but the initiation of proceedings was quite a different matter. In England they had not a whole class of magistrates who were officials of the Crown. The magistrates in England, and those in Ireland, were men of an entirely different order. The police, likewise, were different. Here they were the servants of the people, there they were their masters, licensed to stare at, accost, search, and offend every person they met. The Irish magistrates were men who did the things referred to by the exploded politician he was sorry his hon. Friend the Member

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      for the City of Cork had brought into notice again this evening.
      MR. BULWERsaid, he rose to Order. The Question before the Committee was the definition of an offence. ["No, no!"] Yea. Whoever did a certain thing would be guilty of an offence. The Amendment, as to how the offence was to be proved, was out of Order, and out of place. It was not for them on this occasion to discuss the mode in which the proceedings were to be initiated, in order to determine whether or not an offence had been committed.
      MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid, it was very inconvenient that the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Bulwer) should attempt to take part in the discussion without having taken the trouble to read the Amendment on which the Committee was engaged. If the hon. and learned Gentleman would allow him, he would read the Amendment which the hon. and learned Gentleman should have read for himself. It was to insert the words—
      "Shall he proved, on the complaint of the person or persons alleged to have been aggrieved, to have."
      Plainly the question was as to the initiation. The hon. and learned Member had told them the other night they were rather asleep on questions affecting Ireland; but the hon. and learned Member himself did not seem to be very wide awake with regard to these Amendments. He would ask the Home Secretary how he could reconcile the fact that all prosecutions under this Bill were to have the sanction of the Attorney General, or the Solicitor General for Ireland, for the time being, with his position now, which left to the lowest and meanest policeman the right of initiating proceedings? [A laugh.] The right hon. Gentleman laughed. He was like Job in one respect —he laughed at the vows he had made, he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) would not say in love, but in politics. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had no more solemn expression than a smile for the Bill he had brought in. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman would make the prosecution dependent on the initiation of the Lord Lieutenant, as the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had consented to do in the case of the huts, it would meet the objections of the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy).
      SIR GEORGE CAMPBELLwould put it to hon. Members opposite whether
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      it was worth while to press on the Amendment, which would have the effect of stultifying the clause? He would suggest to the Home Secretary that in the matter of the initiative he could adopt a much better model than the English model—namely, the Scotch model. They had a much more complete system of jurisprudence in Scotland than they had in England. In Scotland the Lord Advocate and his subordinates controlled prosecutions, for though they might be initiated by private individuals, they could not be initiated without the sanction of the Lord Lieutenant or the heads of the Criminal Department.
      MR. T. D. SULLIVANsaid, he wished to know whether, in working this Act, the Government would take account of intimidation practised on the Irish people by the police and the landlords? These had been the real terrorists they had had in Ireland for many a long year. They had heard a great deal to-night about intimidation; but only one view of the case was taken; only one side of the question was looked at. Could any hon. Member in the House deny that intimidation of a most cruel and serious kind had been practised, and was being practised with impunity, against the Irish tenants by the Irish landlords, the bailiffs, the agents, and the police? Why, the fact was that in many towns and villages in Ireland no young men dared to walk abroad two or three together without being followed by policemen and intimidated or cautioned. Policemen listened at their windows at night. [A laugh.] Yes; he had good reason to say this. [Renewed laughter.] He had very good, sufficient, reliable authority for saying that policemen went and watched and listened outside the windows of law-abiding people at all hours of the night, and that they intimidated people in every way they could morning, noon, and night. As to the Irish landlords, had they not been intimidating the Irish tenants, preventing them from doing what they had a legal right to do? Had they not intimidated the Irish tenants, compelling them to do that which they had a legal right to refuse to do if they chose? It was because the landlords had been intimidating the Irish tenants that they had in Ireland and in America to-day thousands, yes, and millions of Irish-

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      men, sworn enemies to Irish landlordism.
      THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member is not within his right in referring to such intimidation, which is not in the Amendment before the Committee. The Amendment is to insert the words—
      "Shall be proved, on the complaint of the person or persons alleged to have been aggrieved, to have."
      It does not in any way define intimidation.
      MR. T. D. SULLIVANsaid, he hoped the tenants of Ireland would take care that this Act should not be a one-edged, but a two-edged sword, and that they would avail themselves of the so-called protection of this law against the intimidation practised on them by their landlords. If they did that, hon. Gentlemen in this House and their friends outside it would, perhaps, be sorry they had taken such pains to forge this weapon in the House of Commons.
      MR. O'SHAUGHNESSYsaid, he looked with grave apprehension upon the probability of what this new and stringent law might bring about. He should like to see some provision adopted that would save the people from the arbitrary action of policemen and magistrates. It had been suggested that the operation of this new law should be placed under the control of the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary for Ireland; and with great respect to the late and the present Chief Secretaries, and with perfect confidence in their personal justice, he would say that then-control would only be a nominal one, and that the Act would be open to very serious abuse, because he knew, as a matter of fact, that the ultimate decision as to prosecutions would be left to the Resident Magistrates, not the ordinary magistrates, but those special magistrates who had been appointed to meet the present emergency in Ireland. He knew the feeling of the country was that this would lead to a great deal of abuse. There was another authority which should be placed in control of the operation of the Act, and that was something analogous to the authority suggested by the hon. Member who had spoken last but one (Sir George Campbell). Some control should be left with the Attorney General for Ireland, and an Amendment to effect that object
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      would, he thought, meet the emergency. The punishment for this—he would not call it a new crime, but, at least, a crime which was to be tried under very new circumstances—would be very heavy, and the jurisdiction would be very summary. Ho trusted that the prosecutions would not be numerous; and he did not think it was too much to ask that before this machinery was put in motion, the authority of the Law Officer of the Crown should be obtained.
      MR. HINDE PALMERsaid, they were discussing matters which were really not germane to the Amendment. The object of the clause was to define the nature of the offence—to point out what the offence of intimidation was to be; and the Act by no means left it indefinite as to who was to put it in motion. There was a clause which expressly provided how the Act was to be set in motion, and who was to be the prosecutor; and yet they had been discussing the measure all the evening on the assumption that there was nothing whatever in it to provide for putting it in operation. He agreed that wherever the intimidation came from, whether from the landlord or tenant, it was equally reprehensible, and ought to be equally punished under the provisions of this Act; but the question was, who was to put it in motion? They were discussing all this on the definition of what the offence was to be; and if they looked at page 9, Part IV., they would see who was to put it in motion, and that the prosecution was to be in a certain definite way. It seemed to him that when they came to page 9, would be the time for them to consider this subject. He did not say whether it was right or wrong; but if it was right that the Motion of the hon. Member for Wexford should be adopted, the time to bring it forward, in some shape or other, would be when they came to Part IV., which dealt with the machinery for working the Act and the punishment for intimidation. He agreed with the hon. and learned Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Bulwer) that they were now discussing what the definition of intimidation was to be.
      MR. MACARTNEYsaid, the hon. Member who had just sat down seemed to forget that the proposal made by the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) was to substitute for words in the Bill, the words—

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      "Shall be proved, on the complaint of the person or persons alleged to have been aggrieved, to have."
      If these words were introduced now, they could not discuss, at a later stage, who were to be the persons to make the complaint, because the matter would have been settled; and it was, therefore, clear that what they were now discussing was not the definition of the crime, but the person who was to put the Act in motion. He, however, had only risen for the purpose of saying this—that that much - abused body, the Irish magistrates, found it necessary very often, when severe assaults had been committed in their neighbourhoods, and when the injured persons would not bring forward complaints, to get the police to go to those persons and ascertain why they did not prosecute. The answer generally given was, "I am afraid;" or "I dare not do it." The magistrates then gave instructions to the policeman to go to the Sub-Inspector, and he instituted a prosecution in the name of the Crown, and summoned witnesses who were present at the assault. This was an excellent system allowed by Common Law. In this way cases were very often brought before the magistrates, with the result that not only one side, but both sides, were punished. Sometimes these assaults were of such a character that the person assaulted was brought to the brink of the grave. As the Sub-Inspector, then, was allowed to initiate prosecutions under the existing law, it seemed to him that it would not be such an anomalous thing to introduce it into the present Act.
      MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYsaid, the hon. Member had given good reason why they should go on with the discussion. He had explained that the Irish magistrate was not a person under intimidation, and that he could set the law in motion—that was to say, he could suggest to a constable to go round and see, when an assault had taken place, who had been intimidated, and whether he could not persuade someone that he was the victim of intimidation. There could not be a better argument for showing that when they defined a new offence they should say who was to work it. A new offence must depend on the mechanism by which it could be made to operate and bring persons within the reach of those who were to inflict the punishment.
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      His contention was, that it was perfectly legitimate, and even essential, when they were creating an offence, to define distinctly by what process it was to be brought under the control of the law. The right hon. and learned Home Secretary had told them that in this clause he had followed the lines of the English Act of 1875. Let him remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman of the conditions under which that measure was prepared. The Act was passed, he might say, roughly speaking, altogether in favour of the working class. It was an Act passed to relieve the working man from legal responsibility for doing certain things which, up to that time, had been held to be illegal. By that Act these things were declared to be legitimate. A great variety of combination which the working man had entered into, and which the law previously held to be illegal, was held to be legal, and he was relieved from punishment for doing certain things for which, before that time, he was liable to be punished. But the present Bill was one which was altogether against the class who, in Ireland, represented the class in England in whose interests the Workmen's Act of 1875 was passed. This was to be an Act against, and not in favour of, the Irish tenants. It imposed now penalties upon that class, and invented new crimes of which they could be guilty. In the former case it was easy enough to see why there was no occasion to distinguish, first of all, by what means the Act was to be brought into operation. The class who were suffering a grievance were relieved from that grievance, so that they would not be likely again to employ those weapons of so-called intimidation, by which they had compelled Parliament to attend to their claims and relieve them of their grievance. But, by the present legislation, they were inflicting new grievances upon a class aggrieved already; and it was only fair and just, even from the example of the English legislation, that they should define the machinery by which the new penalties were to be brought to bear on the people.
      MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, he quite admitted that there was more in the opposition of the Home Secretary to this Amendment than there had been in his opposition to some of the previous Amendments; but, at the same time, he thought hon. Gentlemen opposite had

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      made out a strong case, if not in favour of this Amendment, at any rate in favour of an Amendment of a similar kind. Ireland, it must be remembered, was peculiarly situated. It was not England. In Ireland the landlords had long confederated together against the tenants, and they had a Resident Magistracy in the country, who had to decide on these cases, who were in many ways allied to the landlord class. What hon. Gentlemen feared was that there would be some species of unholy alliance between the landlords and Resident Magistrates; that persons would be brought up for intimidating; that the landlords would give evidence against them, and that the magistrates would condemn on that evidence. They knew perfectly well that many of the people who were put in prison by the late Chief Secretary for Ireland—though, no doubt, the right hon. Gentleman believed they had been guilty of intimidation—were held by the present Heads of the Irish Executive and the Government not to have been guilty of the offences for which they had been put into gaol on suspicion. Fully one-third of those the late Chief Secretary for Ireland thought ought to remain in prison had been let out by the present Chief Secretary for Ireland; and amongst the number, he took it, were a good many who had been put in on a charge of intimidation. As he had said, he admitted there was some point in what had fallen from the Home Secretary. It was rather an absurdity to suppose that if A intimidated B, C should come forward and complain; still there might be some wretched, timid creatures in Ireland who were absolutely afraid to complain of intimidation practised upon them. ["No! no!"] Hon. Members said "No!" but he (Mr. Labouchere) was repeating what had been said by the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon). He had no sympathy with these people; still, if the person was one of so timid a nature, it was necessary that the law should step in. But he was anxious to ask—and many on the Ministerial side of the House were anxious to ask—were they to understand that a person was to be condemned by a Resident Magistrate, on the complaint of a third person, for intimidation, without the person who had been intimidated coming forward as a witness, and the person who was said to have intimi-
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      dated having an opportunity of cross-examining the man he was accused of having injured? That was what he wanted to arrive at; and if the Home Secretary did not intend to accept this proposal, if he did not intend to take the view that he (Mr. Labouchere) had stated, he might accept the Amendment before the Committee—that was to say, provide in the Bill that in every case where there should have been a conviction, the person supposed to have been intimidated should have been called as a witness, to give the prisoner or his legal adviser an opportunity of examining him.
      MR. GIBSONsaid, he was not surprised that a good deal of attention had been directed to this clause, because, unquestionably, it might be one of the most important clauses in the Bill, and it dealt with one of the most important incidents to be found in the present condition of Ireland. He supposed that no one, at this time of day, was ignorant of what the offence of "Boycotting" was, or the terrible weapon that it had been found in keeping Ireland in a state of demoralization for a considerable number of months. It was a great deal better that this clause should be discussed with a full knowledge of what it was it purported to deal with. It purported to deal with the most insidious forms of terrorism that had ever been applied to any country, the forms of terrorism that, in many cases, had almost eluded definition, and that must be grappled with, and that must be overcome, if Ireland was to be restored to a state of quiet and peace; and if any attempt were made to cut down the efficiency of the clause, no matter on what specious pretext it might be put, it was really an attempt to leave Ireland in its present state of disturbance, and, he ventured to believe, it would not deceive any sane person in the community. The Committee would not have forgotten what had occurred within the past few days. The hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) had pointed out that he would not condemn "Boycotting;" and even the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell)— who tried, it seemed, without direct authority, to explain that remarkable speech of the hon. Member for Tipperary—in cautious and measured language had said he would only condemn "Boycot-

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      ting" when it was not applied to cases of unjust eviction. So that it would be seen they were dealing with the most dangerous and difficult forms of terrorism. which had had such a hold upon the minds of the people, and upon the minds of those who led the people, that it was difficult to get from them a clear, distinct, and open definition of them. Now, this Amendment was the first attempt that had been made to fritter away the clause, and to hamper it with conditions that would make it difficult, if not impossible, to work it; and that was the reason he felt it to be his duty, at this stage of the proceedings, at once to point out the meaning which he placed on the Amendment, and to express the hope that in this and the other Amendments, which were sometimes more insidious and sometimes less, the Committee would not lend themselves to hon. Members who—to use a common expression— sought to "drive a coach and four" through the salient provisions of this Bill. The Amendment before the Committee was one which proposed that no prosecution for intimidation should be initiated unless the person who was intimidated came forward. The mere statement of it showed that it was intended to kill the clause. Well, the person who came forward to defend it was the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), who spoke the other night in such a remarkable manner, not only in support of "Boycotting," but in denunciation of hon. Members who had previously expressed some disapproval of "Boycotting." The hon. Member for Tipperary had said that a person who was afraid to come forward and complain of intimidation was unworthy to be protected, or some such thing as that. In plain English, what was the meaning of that? That a person who had been treated in society as a leper, who had been ostracized and shunned in every way, and did not shake off his terrorism—which, he ventured to say, even a courageous man would feel a little of if he were resident in Ireland under the present conditions —if such a person did not shake off his terrorism, go into Court and give evidence against the accused, and then go back to the same atmosphere of terrorism, there was to be no prosecution. Surely it was obvious that an Amendment of this kind, if it were intended or not, would have the effect of thoroughly and entirely de-
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      stroying the clause; therefore, he hoped that in this, as in the other Amendments that might be proposed to this particular clause, the Committee would take care that this terrorism, coupled with the "Boycotting" with which they were all familiar, would receive a blow from which it would never recover.
      DR. COMMINSsaid, that, unless the Committee exercised great care in amending it, this clause would be made an instrument of most grievous oppression. The section created no new offence and defined no new offence, and hon. Members who, in the course of the discussion on it, had said so had been wide of the mark, and had not had a proper appreciation of it. The offence that it proposed to deal with existed already, and against it a number of Statutes had been passed in this country. In the Act of 1871 considerable pains were taken to define the offence, and the opinion the country had of its provisions and of the almost revolting operations of the whole Statute were such that it was repealed in four years. In 1875 another attempt was made, and the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, which also defined the offence of intimidation, was passed, and pointed out what the prosecutions were to be. He must say he thought the Home Secretary had failed to refresh his memory by referring to that Act, or he would not have compared its provisions with those of the present Bill. The Act of 1875 provided that, whenever a charge of this kind was made against a person, and where the result of the charge might be a fine of £20, or one month's imprisonment, then the person accused might elect to be tried by a jury, and might refuse to submit himself to the jurisdiction of even the very excellent, impartial, and exemplary stipendiary magistrates, who mostly had to try offences of this sort in England. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary was very wide of the mark in assuming that this Bill did nothing more in the case of Ireland than the Conspiracy Act of 1875 did for England. But there was this difference between the Act of 1875 and the present proposal of the Government. The Act of 1875 was only put in motion in the large municipal towns of the country, such as Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds. Now, in every case where the attempt was made to apply

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      the Act to one of these large towns, the matter had to be submitted to a Watch Committee, before whom all charges were brought by the police before a summons was applied for, the evidence being in all cases thoroughly examined by the Watch Committee. But there was no such thing as a Watch Committee in Ireland, and the police could put this Act in operation by themselves. And, again, he thought the hon. Gentleman the Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell) might have given a different description of the state of affairs in Scotland in matters of this kind. In all towns in Scotland there was a Procurator Fiscal, and every complaint, before a summons was issued, passed under the hand of that official, when, if it was found that the charge was a credible one, and rested upon respectable testimony, application was made to the Court because it was supposed that a conviction might reasonably be expected. But in Ireland there was no protection of this kind. The parties there would simply be worried to death by the manner in which this Bill would be worked. There had been many instances in Ireland tending to show how Acts of this kind might be used for the purposes of the most atrocious oppression. As an instance of this, he reminded the Committee of the manner in which a charge of intimidation had been brought against persons who were subsequently imprisoned for collecting money on behalf of the Land League. In the case to which he referred, the party supposed to be intimidated swore that no intimidation had been practised upon them, and that they had subscribed their money willingly. Now, unless some means were taken to prevent charges being made by the police, in spite of the evidence of the party supposed to be intimidated that no such offence had been committed at all, the people would be simply at the mercy of informers and busy bodies. There was no check whatever proposed in this Bill upon any of the prosecutions which might be instituted under its operations; there was nothing to prevent the Act being made an instrument of oppression, and, in the default of some such measures in the Act, he felt it his duty to vote for the Amendment of his hon. Friend, notwithstanding that the Amendment made some slight inno-
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      vation upon the existing law of the country. Undoubtedly the law of the country was, as the Attorney General had stated, that any person might be imprisoned for breach of the peace; but this Act was altogether an innovation on the law of the country. It was, moreover, an innovation in the wrong direction, which could not but result to the people of Ireland in further trouble and vexation.
      MR. CALLANsaid, the hon. and learned Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) suggested that the best course to pursue would be that the directory and management of this Bill should be left to the Attorney General for Ireland. An exemplification of the absolute necessity for the Proviso which was before the Committee had occurred in his own county not long ago. A person went to a spot to take a photograph of a Land League hut constructed for an evicted tenant; a policeman came up to the place, probably hoping to be included in the group standing around. He approached too near the photographic apparatus, and was told that he had better take care, as there might be dynamite about. The policeman was not alarmed, or in any way intimidated; but on the 26th May the gentleman in charge of the photographic apparatus was arrested, during the sitting of the Petty Sessions at Dundalk, and brought before the magistrates; and the stipendary magistrate, on hearing the evidence, directed that he should be sent to prison without bail. He presumed the case had come before the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, because the Crown Prosecutor was sent down to prosecute this unfortunate photographer for alluding even to dynamite. He had a report of the case in his hand, from which it appeared that the policeman swore he was not afraid; he was asked why he had not made a complaint, and he said he had no complaint to make. The complaint here was not the complaint of the policeman, it was the complaint of a Sub-Inspector; the same man who, the other day at the sessions, called a certain farmer a blackguard, and added, afterwards, that if a man had called him one, he would have put him into the mill-pond. This Sub-Inspector brought up the gentleman to whom he had referred,

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      and charged him with having used language calculated to intimidate. Hon. Members would understand from this the way in which the Bill would be used in Ireland. As he had said before, the policeman was not frightened; he made no complaint; but on the 26th May his superior officer complained, and a State prosecution followed for using intimidating language. But ho (Mr. Callan) pointed out that the only intimidation which had been used in this case had been exercised over the magistrates by the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, who sent down his Crown Prosecutor. He hoped that his hon. Friend would proceed to a division on his Amendment, in which case ho should feel it his duty to support him.
      MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, that this Amendment had been opposed on the ground that it constituted a very serious innovation and an entire departure from the ordinary law. But he replied that the whole Bill was a serious innovation and departure in this sense— inasmuch as it created a number of new offences, and made things which were formerly not offences at all, crimes, to which penalties of the most serious kinds were attached. As he repeated, it was a most complete departure from the law of the country. For instance, it was no actual crime in this country to make use of any verbal threat to kill or murder, and it was not an actual crime to write a threat of killing; but by this Bill it was made a crime to threaten by looks, acts, or words. The remedy in this country for intimidation, by means of verbal threats to murder, was merely the binding over of the person to good behaviour and the keeping of the peace. But, then, when that took place, it was necessary that the person who had been intimidated should himself come forward and swear the information on which the recognizances were required. What was done in England, he and his hon. Colleagues asked might be done in Ireland. They could not conceive a more serious innovation of the law than that which was proposed by the present Bill; and the Amendment of his hon. Friend simply went to the extent of providing that the Government should at least preserve so much of the law in Ireland as existed at the present time in England, in respect of proceedings of the
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      kind. The hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. T. A. Dickson) had pointed out, with great truth, that it was no uncommon thing in Ireland, that a man who, unhappily for his country, occupied a seat on the Judicial Bench, should both instigate proceedings and sentence the individual afterwards. That was done in Ireland at the present time; and Irish Members therefore asked that the person alleged to be intimidated should come forward in open Court and state the facts. It was not enough in this country that the person should say he was intimidated, because it was for the Court to judge whether the alleged intimidation was sufficient in that particular instance to affect a person of ordinary firmness and strength of mind. If it was not shown that the alleged intimidation was insufficient to disturb the peace of an individual of ordinary strength of character, the Court would then decide in favour of the complainant. But here, in this Act, the police were to be allowed to come forward and say that a man had looked or spoken a word which, in the terms of the Act, would amount to intimidation. Now, it was very difficult to say in what intimidation consisted, because that which appeared to one person to be intimidation might, in reality, be nothing more than salutary advice. It was almost impossible for anyone except the persons threatened in these cases to state, with anything like certainty, whether intimidation was intended or advice. Therefore, it appeared to him that nothing could be more moderate than the proposal of his hon. Friend the Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy), that the person alleged to be intimidated should come forward. The reply of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General showed not only how these matters would be settled in Ireland, but also how oblivious he was to the law as it at present existed in this country.
      MR. HEALYsaid, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department had made an extraordinary admission in saying that the Government would be quite ready to apply to Ireland the same law which existed in England. Now, if that were the case, Irish Members were quite willing to meet the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Under the Workmen's

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      Act, anyone who was desirous was entitled to be tried by jury. In that sense the right hon. and learned Gentleman might be well assured that they would be ready to agree with him in applying the same law to the two countries. It was said, "You could not have complaint made on the prosecutor's application, because the prosecutor himself washable to intimidation." But, he asked, would there not be as much intimidation against the man who came forward and gave evidence as the man who prosecuted? But the Government must have evidence in some way or other; and unless the policeman was going to swear that he himself had been intimidated, he did not see that evidence could go before the Court. According to the theory of the Government, a man could not prosecute because he was going to be intimidated —ergo, a man could not give evidence because he would be intimidated. A witness who was intimidated might not come forward, and if he came forward he could not be said to be intimidated. He trusted the Government would give some further information on this point, and be induced to abandon for a time their masterly policy of silence. Unless some information was forthcoming, he might feel it his duty to take another step.
      MR. TREVELYANsaid, it was one of the characteristics of intimidation that the person intimidated was unwilling to come forward and state the fact. He had in his hand a considerable budget of cases of intimidation, from which he would make one or two selections. The first was a case of intimidation of a gentleman, which began in August, 1881, and constituted a typical case of intimidation by means of "Boycotting." In his case, no person, save two or three permanent labourers, could be got to work for him; persons were warned not to work for him; he had great difficulty in getting his stacks in, and patrols had to be kept constantly about the place. In this case a notice was put up on the 7th of August at the chapel gates, calling on every person to "Boycott" him, and warning persons not to deal with him or work for him. Now if the police, or any private person, saw this notice being posted, and identified the persons who posted it, that, of course, could be used as evidence, without resorting to the evidence of the person intimidated. In
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      the next case of "Boycotting," a manuscript notice was posted up in the town and in the vicinity; in some cases there was a manifesto issued; and in another a bellman was sent round to say that a man was not to be dealt with, or his goods bought. Here, also, if you could get the bellman to come forward, you would have clear evidence without resorting to the person intimidated.
      MR. PARNELLsaid, he thought it was quite clear that the notices the right hon. Gentleman had described would come under the category of illegal notices, and could be dealt with fairly by the ordinary law of Ireland. He did not object to special cases of intimidation being forbidden and punishable by law; but he wanted to know what such acts were. It was all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to say such and such acts were what the Government objected to; but they were not in the clause. Certainly it was a common thing, and an act of intimidation, to send a bellman into a town or village to call upon the people to Boycott" certain person; and he did not desire, but should reprobate, that practice. If such things had happened during the last six months, it was because Constitutional agitation had been put an end to, and people had been driven to put up illegal notices, and to resort to other practices that were illegal. He did not defend those practices, for they were clearly illegal, and he should be perfectly willing to give the Government power to punish men for such acts; but this clause went much further than that. A short time ago two tradesmen in Mil-town Malbay refused to supply a certain man with goods, and Mr. Clifford Lloyd, regarding that as intimidation, gave them so many days within which to supply that man, on penalty of being arrested under the Coercion Act. It was in reference to constructive intimidation of this kind, which was not defined in the Bill, that he objected to give the Government powers. He and his hon. Friends were quite willing to see the Government exercise their ingenuity to define the kinds of intimidation against which they wished to guard; but those acts should be put in the Bill, as in the case of the Conspiracy Act, and then much of their preliminary objection would be removed, and it would not be necessary to insist on the insertion of safeguards such as that moved by the hon. Member. In-

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      timidation was defined in the Act of 1875, but not in this Bill, where it was left entirely vague and open.
      MR. FIFTHsaid, he did not think the question discussed by the hon. Member quite arose upon this Amendment; but with respect to this Amendment, he thought, in three-fourths of the cases that occurred, the complaint of the person aggrieved ought to be given. That would not, however, be necessary in the remaining fourth.
      MR. O'SHEAsaid, he did not think a more outrageous exercise of despotic power had recently occurred in Ireland than that referred to by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) at Miltown Malbay. The shopkeepers in that town were called together by Mr. Clifford Lloyd, and told that unless they sold goods to a certain person in the neighbourhood, within three days they would be sent to gaol; and they were not licensed victuallers, who, under their licences, might have been brought under the operation of the law by Mr. Clifford Lloyd or any other magistrate, but ordinary tradesmen, several of whom sold bread and flour, and provisions generally. They were unable to sell to the person in question, because they would, by so doing, have lost all their other custom; and they were accordingly sent, to Limerick Gaol. He (Mr. O'Shea) had done his best at Miltown Malbay—and, he believed, not unsuccessfully—to abolish "Boycotting;" and all the people asked for was that it should be clearly laid down what intimidation was. If that was defined, he was sure the people would keep within the law; but it was impossible to keep peace in a neighbourhood where such illegal action was carried on by Mr. Clifford Lloyd.
      MR. O'SULLIVANsaid, he would ask his hon. Friend to withdraw the Amendment, if he thought coercion would be exercised on both sides alike. He had heard of a case in which a policeman had met a respectable lady, named M'Cormack, walking with two other ladies through a town in Limerick, and, without assigning any reason, had ordered her to leave the town at once. He was not aware of any Statute which empowered a policeman to act in that way, and such an act was intimidation of the strongest kind. Would the Government prosecute that constable, or any other constable who acted in such
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      a way? He feared the prosecutions would be one-sided, and, therefore, he should support the Amendment.
      MR. HEALYsaid, he thought the point made by the Chief Secretary for Ireland was a reasonable one; but his Amendment did not deal with that. As the hon. and learned Member for Chelsea (Mr. Firth) had said, that Amendment dealt with a three-fourths majority; and if the Government would bring up an Amendment in that direction, he would be quite willing to make a concession, and withdraw this Amendment. It, was not desirable to allude to oneself; but he was arrested by a magistrate, who had got up a case against him, and sent for trial on a charge of intimidation. Yet the man who swore the information against him had also stated that he did it at the request of the Resident Magistrate, but said he was not intimidated. He wished to prevent "fishing" cases being got up; and he would like to know whether the Government would meet him upon that point? The Government might have power to deal with threatening letters; but that was a different thing from the powers to be given under this clause. In one town, a year and a-half ago, the magistrates summoned certain people for collecting money for the "Parnell Defence Fund." Those people were arrested, and charged with intimidating the shopkeepers. The shopkeepers swore they were not intimidated; but the magistrates fined the accused £10 or £20 a-piece. When that decision, however, came before the Quarter Sessions it was quashed on appeal; but that was very poor satisfaction for the shopkeepers, many of whom could not provide the fine. Such cases it was that the Irish Members wished to prevent. As they were willing to meet the Home Secretary as to the cases he brought forward, they hoped he would meet them upon their cases.
      Question put, "That the words 'shall be proved, on the complaint of the person or persons alleged to have aggrieved, to have,' be there inserted."
      The Committee divided: —Ayes 27; Noes 219: Majority 192.—(Div. List, No. 114.)
      MR. DILLON, in moving to insert, in page 3, line 13, after "uses," the words

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      "in a proclaimed district, and after such district has been proclaimed," said, that Clause 20 of this Bill provided that—
      "The Lord Lieutenant, by and with the advice of the Privy Council in Ireland, may from time to time, when it appears to him necessary for the prevention of crime and outrage, by proclamation declare the provisions of this Act which relate to proclaimed districts or any of those provisions to he in force within any specified part of Ireland."
      But there was very great vagueness in the Act as to what were the provisions of the Act, and whether those now being discussed would apply to the whole of Ireland or only to portions; and he proposed to insert these words, so that those portions of the Bill creating new offences should not apply to any part of Ireland where the crime was not of such a character as to require proclaiming. He did not suppose any hon. Member would pretend that every portion of Ireland was in such a state of disorder as to require exceptional legislation; and he thought even the Chief Secretary would admit that the vastly greater part of Ireland had been as peaceable and free from outrage as any part in England. Those districts in which disorder prevailed were the districts heard of; but there were enormous districts where there had been no outrages. It would be monstrous to say that large districts where no outrages had been committed, and no organized intimidation had been carried on or even alleged, should be brought within this Act; and he saw no reason why the question of proclaiming districts should not be left to the discretion of the Lord Lieutenant. There was one other point. The present Coercion Act contained an obnoxious provision— which was largely used and created bitter feelings among the people—and that was the retrospective provision, under which men could be proceeded against for things done before the proclamation was issued. That was a new feature in Acts of this kind; and it was very invidious and improper to make a man subject to a law when he could not know what was an offence. With these views, he moved this Amendment to provide that an offence must have been committed after the district had been proclaimed.
      Amendment proposed,
      In page 3, line 13, after the word "uses," insert "within a proclaimed district, but after
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      such district has been proclaimed."— (Mr. Dillon.)
      Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
      SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, that under the Amendment it would be necessary to proclaim the whole of Ireland. If Ireland were proclaimed, a number of other and severer clauses would be called into general operation; whereas now they were confined to the proclaimed districts. He did not see what hardship there was in making a general law that people should not intimidate others. Intimidation which existed in the manufacturing districts of England had made it necessary to pass a law for its suppression, and that law had been made general to the whole country.
      MR. HEALYsaid, it was proposed to appoint special magistrates to administer this Act. If it was the intention of the Government to appoint special magistrates all over Ireland, was not that exactly the thing which the right hon. and learned Gentleman deprecated? The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had said, in answer to a question put to him, that it was intended to appoint special magistrates all over Ireland, including Ulster.
      MR. TREVELYANsaid, the promise which he gave was that technically so-called special magistrates would be appointed to sit in the Summary Jurisdiction Courts; and then he went on to say, alluding to a passage in Lord Spencer's letter, in which His Excellency promised that a magistrate who had acted in getting up the case should not sit in judgment on it in the Summary Jurisdiction Court, that it was believed by the authorities that the present staff of Resident Magistrates would be adequate to deal with all the cases under the Act.
      MR. DILLONsaid, he would not proceed with the question then. He, how ever, considered it of such consequence, on account of the declaration made by the Home Secretary, that he would bring it up again on Report. He hoped the Government would, between this and Report, consider seriously whether they could not make a concession in the direction of the Amendment. The Home Secretary had declared that the whole of Ireland was in such a condition that this law against organized intimidation was

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      absolutely necessary. The point raised by the Amendment could not be adequately discussed in the short time at their disposal now. Therefore, he asked leave to withdraw the Amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdratvn,
      MR. CHARLES RUSSELL, in moving, in page 3, to leave out lines 14 and 15, and insert—
      "By acts or throats of violence, or injury to person or property, uses intimidation, or incites any other person to use intimidation,"
      said, he considered this Amendment of great importance. He had no desire to conceal the real meaning of the Amendment from the Committee; ho desired to have it clearly and openly understood what the effect of the Amendment would be, and he equally desired to have it plainly defined what was to be considered intimidation within the clause. He wanted the intention of the Committee to be clearly expressed in language, so that it should not be left to the arbitrament and decision of a particular magistrate as to what should and what should not, merely according to his view, be intimidation. His Amendment was addressed to two objects. Those objects were to limit the extent and application of the new crime of intimidation, as he ventured to call it, and also to have in the clause itself as exhaustive a statement as possible of what intimidation was meant to be in the clause. He could not avoid saying, at the outset, that the clause in its initiatory words was a very extraordinary one. The opening words of the clause were—"Every person who wrongfully, and without legal authority, uses intimidation," and so on. He hoped the framer of the clause, if he were in the House, would inform the Committee what were the cases in which a man could "rightfully, and with legal authority, use intimidation." He hoped to have some explanation given of what this wrongful and illegal use of intimidation was. Passing by the intention, or "view," as it was called, of the person—
      "To cause any person or persons, either to do any act which such person or persons has or have a legal right to abstain from doing, or to abstain from doing any act which such person or persons has or have a legal right to do," &c.
      The clause went on—"In this Act the expression 'intimidation'"— and he particularly called the attention of the
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      Committee to the next words —"the expression 'intimidation' includes any word spoken or act done," &c.; "includes" thereby implying that this was not an exhaustive explanation; "includes" all the things which followed that word. It was left, therefore, practically to the imagination of the particular magistrate who was to administer the law to say what should and what should not be considered intimidation. Recollecting that intimidation was to be made a new crime, it surely could not be the wish of the Committee that the Bill should be drawn in this imperfect way. Then the Bill went on—
      "Includes any word spoken or act done calculated to put any person in fear of any injury or danger to himself, or to any member of his family, or to any person in his employment, or in fear of any injury to or loss of his property, business, or means of living."
      That was not considered sufficient; but beyond and outside those things were to be certain other things such as in the opinion of the magistrate might mean intimidation. It seemed to him important, in discussing the clause, to inquire what was this crime of intimidation, and what was its history, as we had it in our law. Speaking subject to correction, it was only in recent times —he believed it was the Act of 1873 or 1875—[An hon. MEMBER: 1871.] He thanked the hon. Gentleman for the correction. It was the Act of 1871 which first formulated this crime. Up to that time threats were not strictly so called a crime. They came within the purview of the law in this sense, and in this sense only—that if they were uttered under circumstances likely to provoke a breach of the peace, the person against whom they were uttered had the right, for the sake of preserving the peace, to go before a magistrate and have the offending party bound over to keep the peace towards him. Beyond that, until the Statute of 1871 was passed, intimidation was not considered a distinct offence. The Act of 1871 was followed by the Conspiracy Act of 1875, under which particular acts of intimidation could be dealt with. Both of those Acts applied to Ireland as well as to England; and he would like to know what part of this new enactment was required by the case of Ireland that was not covered by the general law of the two countries found in the Statute of 1875? The Amendment

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      that he proposed would, perhaps, bring out more clearly and more particularly what he desired to convey to the Committee. He proposed that there should be omitted altogether lines 14 and 15; that was to say, the words—
      "Wrongfully and without legal authority uses intimidation, or incites any other person to use intimidation."
      And he also proposed to omit the whole of the last paragraph of the clause— namely,
      "In this Act the expression 'intimidation' includes any word spoken or act done calculated to put any person in fear of any injury or danger to himself, or to any member of his family, or to any person in his employment, or in fear of any injury to or loss of his property, business, or means of living."
      The clause would then run thus—
      "Every person who by acts or threats of violence, or injury to person or property"
      —which, of course, would include a threat of injury to a man's wife and family—
      "Uses intimidation, or incites any other person to use intimidation."
      He maintained that those words were clear, intelligible, not contrary to any existing law, and they were adequate to the case. It would be said they were not; and his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), who had taken the offence of "Boycotting" under his special protection, would say it would not meet the case of "Boycotting." [Mr. GIBSON: Hear, hear!] He expected the right hon. and learned Gentleman to say so, and he (Mr. Charles Russell) would speak with candour too. What were the cases of "Boycotting" that the Government meant to deal with under this clause? Were they cases of individual "Boycotting, "or were they cases of "Boycotting" carried on in concert by several persons and amounting to a conspiracy at Common Law? If the Government had in their mind, in framing this clause, "Boycotting" carried on in concert to injure a particular individual, which would amount, at Common Law, to a conspiracy, they would find the clause would not touch such cases; and if the clause was directed at individual cases of "Boycotting," it would create an offence unknown to the law at the present moment. It was to that point he wished to direct the attention of the Committee; and he hoped that the Committee, whether they agreed with him
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      or not, would at least understand that he did not desire to blink the question. Did the Committee desire that there should be created the new offence of "Boycotting" by individuals, and that that new offence should be made a crime under this Bill? [Mr. NEWDEGATE: Yes.] The hon. Member for North Warwickshire gave an emphatic assent to the proposition that individual "Boycotting" should be a crime under the Bill.
      MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, he only affirmed that an individual might be a representative.
      MR. CHARLES RUSSELL, continuing, asked what was "Boycotting, "as it was generally described? There were two kinds of "Boycotting," as one might easily see. There might be individual "Boycotting." For instance, a man might say to another—"If you do or do not do a particular thing, I will not deal with you; I will not speak to you; I will not recognize you." That was what might be rightly and fairly described as individual "Boycotting." Was that to be made a crime? If so, it would certainly be, of all the novel things that this Act proposed to introduce, the most novel. On what principle, when dealing with the acts of individuals—and he hoped the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate) would recollect he was speaking of the acts of individuals—could they, by Statute, declare it to be an offence for one man to say to another—"If you do or do not do a certain thing, I will not deal with you; I will not consort with you; I will not be on terms with you; I will not employ you or any of your family?" There was no trace of any such offence in any of the Law Books; there was no such moral offence existing in the purview of the law. But then it was said there were other kinds of "Boycotting." He was not defending "Boycotting" in detail or in general. He was arguing the question as a lawyer, desiring to see crime put down. Individual "Boycotting" ought not to be included within the purview of the Bill. Those acts of "Boycotting" which received their sanction in threats of violence against any person, or any member of his family, or anyone in his employ, he admitted, should be covered by the Bill; and he submitted they would be covered by the Amendment he now proposed. How about other kinds of "Boycotting"—

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      "Boycotting" by individuals combining together for that purpose? That stood in an entirely different category. It was a somewhat curious anomaly in our law that there were certain things that individuals might do by themselves, but not in concert. If a number of persons joined together, and conspired for the purpose of not dealing with a man and of injuring his business, it would be—and ought to be—considered an offence against the Common Law, because their action would amount to conspiracy. But the present clause would not touch such a case. He challenged the Home Secretary or the Attorney General to say whether the clause would touch a case of "Boycotting" by conspiracy, or by concerted action on the part of a number of people. He would not now enter upon the question of the Law of Conspiracy, because he feared it would provoke a somewhat lengthy discussion. All he desired at this stage was to convey to the Committee what were the objects of the Amendment he now proposed. The first object was to exclude from the clause what he thought was now intended to come within its purview — namely, individual acts of "Boycotting," not having illegal and criminal means to give them sanction; to exclude, as not being offences at all under the Bill, what the Prime Minister called exclusive dealing. The second object was, by the terms he had used, to define precisely and accurately, and not leave it to the varying judgment of the magistrates to define, what should be and what should not be intimidation.
      Amendment proposed,
      In page 3, to leave out lines 14 and 15, and insert "by acts or threats of violence, or injury to person or property, uses intimidation, or incites any other person to use intimidation."— (Mr. Charles Russell.)
      Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
      MR. TREVELYANsaid, the Amendment which had just been moved by the hon. and learned Gentleman was certainly one of the most important Amendments that had yet been proposed. His hon. and learned Friend took exception to the wording of this most important clause. He took exception, to begin with, to the words "wrongfully and without legal authority." The precedent
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      upon which the Government rested was a very strong one indeed, and that was that the words were in the Act of 1875. He would have imagined that the reason why such words were inserted would have struck everyone. Undoubtedly, acts of intimidation might be used with perfect legal authority, and quite rightfully, under certain circumstances. An hon. Member, earlier in the discussion, took exception to the clause because it would strike too far, He had said that a tradesman might, under the clause, bring an influential customer before the Court, because the customer had written him a letter complaining of his having supplied a bad suit of clothes or a bad sack of flour. He (Mr. Trevelyan) need hardly point out that the very words "wrongfully and without legal authority," would guard against any such case. The hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Charles Russell) had said the clause would create a new offence. The crime was not a new one; it was a crime already known to the law; it was a crime under the 7th clause of the Conspiracy Act, in which clause it was stated that any person who, with the view to compel any other person to abstain from doing any act which such other person had a legal right to do, used violence, should be guilty of the offence of intimidation. This was an old crime; but the conditions of the crime were extended in a most important manner by this Act, because in this Act intimidation not only referred to its effect upon the future action of the person intimidated, but it went back, by Sub-section b of the clause, and made it a crime to intimidate—
      "Any person or persons, in consequence cither of his or their having done any act which he or they had a legal right to do."
      The English Act did not meet the case of a man who had paid his rent, and who, in consequence, was subjected to intimidation. The gist of the Amendment laid in the omission of the words "business, or means of living." The hon. and learned Gentleman asked what were the acts of "Boycotting" which the Government intended to deal with? And he said it was necessary to define those acts, so that magistrates might be perfectly aware what the crimes were they had to deal with. The Government had defined those acts as they best knew how, and he was inclined to think

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      that the words "business, and means of living," were all-important, and could not be omitted from the clause without upsetting the main purpose for which the clause was intended. His hon. and learned Friend asked if the "Boycotting" the Government meant to strike against was an individual act, or an act of conspiracy? If it was an individual act, he contended that they would create an offence unknown to the law. The Government were not so careful to deny that; but they said it was recognized as an offence which was almost universal in large parts of Ireland. He was very glad to think there were large districts of Ireland—he believed that at this moment there were 10 counties—where "Boycotting" might be said to be an almost unknown offence. Where, however, it did exist, it was aimed at a man's "business, or means of living," words which the hon. and learned Gentleman wished to exempt from the scope of the clause. What was "Boycotting," and how was it carried on? He would give them a description by a friend of the system. A rev. gentleman, speaking at a public meeting, used these words — [Mr. HEALY: Name?] It was the Rev. Mr. Rowan. He said—
      "He wished to remind them that to meet this array of mighty warriors, great generals, and English gold and influence, they had hut one weapon—that weapon the substitute of the old pike that did such good service in 1798 (applause), and that was the all-powerful weapon, the power of 'Boycotting,' the power of crushing by social ban, as by a Nasmyth steam-hammer of a thousand tons, every traitor to the country (cheers). Use that weapon with discretion, use it wisely, but, when needed, use it without mercy (renewed cheers)."
      Now this was the systematic nature of this offence, this system of resistance to law.
      MR. DILLONasked on what date the speech was made?
      MR. TREVELYANsaid, the speech was delivered on the 27th September, 1881, and the extract was taken from The Freeman's Journal.
      MR. DILLON: The place?
      MR. TREVELYANsaid, he did not know the place. The worst of all was, that this systematic resistance of the law was carried out at the expense of the personal suffering of individuals. Now, that was a description of a friend of the system. He would give them a description of it by a very determined
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      foe. Mr. Justice Barry, speaking at the Winter Assizes of 1882, said—
      "I am one of those who do not attach the same importance to them as others do, for I think they never represent any intention to commit the injury threatened; but I think the posting extensively through the country of threatening notices promoting a system of intimidation stands upon an entirely different footing, especially if they are used for the promotion of that terrible system of intimidation recently introduced into this country, and now known by the name of 'Boycotting;' and more especially when the injuries that are threatened are daily and hourly inflicted on persons and property in various parts of the country. In this county (Waterford) we find threatening notices on all sorts of subjects. 'Not to use a mowing-machine,' is one. 'Not to deal with a certain shopkeeper.' 'Not to work for a particular man.' And to a shopkeeper—'Not to supply goods to a particular man.' Such notices as these spread terror and intimidation."
      "Boycotting" notices were directed also against magistrates for doing their duty on the Bench; in consequence of which, in one case—and here he could give the gentleman's name; it was the case of Mr. Stopford—provisions were refused to be served to the magistrate of the village by those with whom he had been in the habit of dealing, and who were deterred against their will from serving him. He had given this gentleman's name; but in these cases, for obvious reasons, he should be by no means ready to give names. A baker in a neighbouring town had also received a threatening letter, warning him not to supply this magistrate of whom he spoke with bread. This was an instance of interference with a magistrate for performing his duty as a magistrate. In another instance, the absolutely necessary police system for the preservation of law and order had been interfered with. The Resident Magistrate wrote that, referring to the Government Minute, he begged to state that a certain man who was a pawnbroker, and who carried on other trades, had been "Boycotted" in the various branches of his business, because he had given the use of his cars to the police. The letter went on to say that the system of "sending to Coventry "and persecution of every possible kind—this more than petty persecution—was regulated and conducted by notices, which were posted in all parts of the town and frequently renewed.
      MR. DILLON: May I ask the date of that letter?
      MR. TEEVELYANsaid, the date was September 27th, 1881. Then, another most necessary condition of "Boycotting" to bear in mind was its close connection with terrorism. It was impossible to separate the system of "Boycotting," properly so called, from terrorism. In one case, a bailiff and under agent was "Boycotted," because he was supposed to have recommended the eviction of a man who owed several years' rent and would not pay. The Boycotting" was commenced in August, 1881, and, in order to effect it, a well-known ruffian in the vicinity went about actively engaged in intimidating the persons who had been working for that man.
      MR. HEALY: Why was he not arrested under the Protection Act? [Cries of" Order!"]
      MR. TREVELYANsaid, he would read three or four instances to the Committee from the Government Return, which would show how inextricably this system of "Boycotting" was mixed up with the grosser forms of terrorism, and how impossible it was to separate them. Shots were fired into a house, and the inmates were warned not to deal with a shopkeeper who had been "Boycotted" because he had paid his rent. A threatening notice was posted on a man's door for having taken conacre on the landlord's farm. In the county of Clare shots were fired into the house of a farmer, who had in his employment a workman whose mother acted as laundress to a "Boycotted" smith. He could give various other instances from the Papers before the House, in which outrages had been committed to support the system of "Boycotting," and where that system had been directed against men's businesses and means of living. The extreme cruelty inflicted by the system could be illustrated from every class of life. A blacksmith became thoroughly "Boycotted;" although doing a very good business before, and earning 30s. a-week, he was soon reduced to penury and sickness, and even the medical officer who attended him incurred great unpopularity for doing so. That cruel system was pursued very far indeed. He would mention a case, which had often been referred to as one of hardship inflicted by the authorities—the case of Mrs. Maroney, of Miltown Malbay. She was "Boycotted," she was intimi-
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      dated by threatening letters, her servants were similarly intimidated and compelled to leave her; while a manservant, an old man named Simmonds, 77 years of age, was shot dead by his own fireside because he refused to leave her. He would not occupy any more of the time of the Committee by reading cases which proved how inextricably "Boycotting" was connected with loss of business and means of living. "Boycotting," which was, in his opinion, so marked in every respect by the result attending every other class of outrage and intimidation, was mixed up with those grosser forms of outrage that everyone recollected, and that the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell) had not lost sight of. With regard to the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member, he looked upon it with great suspicion, because ho could not but think that it laid itself open to the same difficulty that they experienced in connection with the Amendment of the hon. Member for Wexford. He did not think it was easy to bring home cases of intimidation without assistance from the intimidated person, which that person was so often unwilling to give. He would give an instance, which might have been adduced against the Amendment of the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy), which would show to hon. Members the conclusion which attended so many of these eases of "Boycotting," and the reason why considerable power should be put into the hands of the magistrates, to draw conclusions from the facts before them as to whether intimidation was practised or not. Some years ago, a man named Geelan was evicted from Lord Leitrim's property in the County Leitrim. About a year ago a man named Bernard Beirne took the farm formerly occupied by Geelan, and had since been unpopular. On the 8th November, Bernard Rutledgo, a farm-servant of Beirne's, was met on the farm by a party of four men, disguised by having their faces blackened, was knocked down, and a spear held to his chest, one of the men threatening him and a fellow-servant of his—not present—and saying that if Beirne did not give up his farm he would be killed. Police protection had since been afforded to Beirne. On the 11th November, the people at the fair of Mohill refused to have any dealings

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      with, either Beirne or his son, in the way of buying or selling. On the 25th November, a letter, signed "Bernard Beirne," appeared in The Leitrim Advertiser newspaper, saying that, as he was unable any longer to stand the "Boycotting" to which he had been subjected, he pledged himself to surrender the farm. Beirne had since given up possession of this farm, and the police protection afforded him had been withdrawn. That was an instance of the combination of violent outrage and "Boycotting," or interfering with a man's business or means of living, by which thousands of people had been brought to ruin. In this case and so many others that system was triumphant. The Government were determined that they would only endeavour to administer Ireland on condition that that system should triumph no longer. They were glad to think that the system was only local, and that there were some counties—he might say many counties —which were free from it; but where it existed they were quite determined that they would not put up with it; and, in order that that end might be accomplished, they considered it necessary for the House of Commons to give them power to deal with the subtler and, generally speaking, with the earlier stages of this dreadful malady.
      Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again,"—(Mr. Dillon,) — put, and agreed to.
      Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.

SETTLED LAND BILL [Lords.]
(Sir R. Assheton Cross.)
SETTLED LAND BILL [Lords.]

  [BILL 120.] COMMITTEE.
  Order for Committee read.
  SIR R. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, he wished to move that the Order for going into Committee on this Bill be discharged.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Order for going into Committee be discharged, and that the Bill be committed to a Select Committee."— (Sir R. Assheton Cross.)
  MR. ARTHUR ARNOLDsaid, he proposed to leave out all the words after
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  the word "discharged" in the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South-West Lancashire, his proposal being virtually one for the rejection of the Bill. He (Mr. Arthur Arnold) would be very greatly embarrassed, no doubt, if he were putting his opinion on any matter of law against that of the right hon. Gentleman, or of the noble and learned Lord (Earl Cairns), who was the author of the Bill. But the opposition which he offered to the measure was not inconsistent with a great admiration for the masterly skill which had been displayed in its framing, and the power the noble Author of the Bill had shown in dealing with that "tortuous and ungodly jumble," the English law with regard to real property. In the clauses of the Bill there was not a tittle of amendment of the Law of Settlement in regard to land in this country. If it were reasonable to think, as he confessed he had always hoped, that great learning was combined with a strong desire for the welfare and improvement of mankind, what must be the pain with which such a distinguished lawyer as Lord Cairns framed a measure of this sort, in which he made not the slightest effort to reform abuses which, for many years, had been cried out against. In 1859, Lord Cairns, in this House, had spoken against the law as to transfer of land in language quite as strong as he (Mr. Arthur Arnold) could himself have desired to use. And when the late Government were in the waning months of their power, it was proposed to bring in this amongst other Bills. In the last year of Office of Lord Beaconsfield's Government, the Bill now before the House was brought in by them, with a great flourish of trumpets. To put the matter shortly, his objection to the Bill was four-fold. He objected to it—First, because it was not compatible with any comprehensive measure for Land Law Reform, and could not possibly form a part of any effective dealing with the laws relating to the transfer of land, or the law relating to the settlement of land. Secondly, he objected to it, because it came to this House from another House—
  MR. MONKsaid, he rose to a point of Order. He wished to ask whether it was competent for the hon. Member, at this stage, to enter into an argument

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  against the Bill after half-past 12 o'clock?
  MR. SPEAKER: I consider that the Rule with regard to opposed Business does not apply in this particular case, because the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill does not propose to advance it, and, hereafter, the Question that the Speaker do leave the Chair will be put from the Chair in the usual manner. The hon. Member (Mr. Arthur Arnold) proposes to leave out all the words after the word "discharged." I must point out to the House that the Motion before the House consists of two parts. First of all, the House will have to determine the Question whether the Order of the Day shall be discharged; and I presume that the hon. Member would have no objection to that proposition. Then, the second Question put would be "That the Bill be referred to a Select Committee," and on that Question the hon. Member would be in Order in voting the negative. If the hon. Member will allow me, I will first put the Question which refers to the Committee being discharged.
  Question, "That the Order for going into Committee be discharged," put, and agreed to.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be committed to a Select Committee."—(Sir R. Assheton Cross.)
  MR. ARTHUR ARNOLDsaid, he thanked Mr. Speaker for putting him in Order. He would now propose that they should reject the Motion for referring the Bill to a Select Committee. The second reason why he wished to see the measure thrown out was because it had been sent down to this House from another House, which was composed mainly of tenants for life, for whose benefit, together with other tenants for life, the measure had been composed and devised. The House of Lords told them distinctly that they did not think that settled land required legislation of a more extensive character. He objected, in the third place, to this measure, because, whereas the great need of the country was the liberation of the land, this Bill would certainly provoke a further settlement of landed estates, and would, it was absolutely certain, largely increase the area of land under settlement in this country. And, fourthly
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  —and he was sorry to interrupt the conversation of hon. Members opposite—he objected to the Bill, because Her Majesty's Government were pledged to introduce a measure dealing in a comprehensive manner with this subject. The present Parliament, he held, was specially charged by the people of this country to deal with the question of Land Law Reform—some said to restrict the practice of settlement—
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member appears to be discussing the Bill in detail, although the question before the House is simply that the Bill be referred to a Select Committee. I must point out to the hon. Member that upon a question of this character he is not entitled to discuss the Bill as a whole.
  MR. ARTHUR ARNOLDsaid, he should be careful to confine himself to the matter before the House. Why he thought the measure should not be referred to a Select Committee was because ho believed it would promote the settlement of land, and because the House of Lords told them, by the voice of Lord Cairns, that this was the full measure of their views as to the legislation that was required on the subject. As to his third objection, the area of settled land in the country was now estimated at 50,000,000 acres—
  MR. WARTONsaid, he rose to Order. The hon. Member was now going into the question of the area of land.
  MR. ARTHUR ARNOLDsaid, the effect of this Bill would be to increase the area of land under settlement. He would only refer to the opinion of a very distinguished authority on this Bill, which would certainly be very much in point, and which, he thought, would decide many hon. Members with regard to it. Sir James Caird said that, under Lord Cairns' Bill, a limited owner would have power to sell—first, in order to pay off debt; and, secondly, to raise money for improvements—
  MR. SPEAKER: I must point out to the hon. Member that he is not in Order in going into these subjects. On the Question to go into Committee on the Bill, or on the Motion that the Speaker do leave the Chair, the hon. Member would be in Order; but he is not in Order in going into these matters on the Question that this Bill be referred to a Select Committee.
  MR. ARTHUR ARNOLD, resuming, said, then he would only say that he objected to the measure, because this Bill could form no part whatever of any comprehensive measure for dealing with the subject with which it professed to deal, because it would tend to increase the area of settled land and hinder the progress of reform by producing some satisfaction among the limited and powerful class of tenants for life; because it tended to confirm and perpetuate the public evil of settlement. He asked the House to reject the proposal for a Select Committee, joining with himself in the hope that Her Majesty's Government would, at the earliest possible date, engage themselves in a comprehensive measure for dealing with the whole of this important subject.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)said, he did not wish at that hour to occupy the attention of the House, and having before him the ruling of the Chair, ho would not go into details. So far as he had authority to express the views of the Government, they were disposed to give the Bill their careful support, and the best way of giving it consideration was by means of a Select Committee. He could not refrain from saying that they ought to be generous in their way of dealing with the Bill, seeing that it proceeded from those who were the political opponents of the Government, and they could not deal with it in any narrow spirit, accepting the high authority from whom it had emanated. With reference to what had been said, he would only say that he did not endorse the view that they ought to accept no reform unless it was an entire and complete reform. He thought, in the first place, that it would be more prudent if they travelled by degrees, instead of attempting to do that which would shock the feelings of many, by a measure which should be more comprehensive. He thought the step proposed to be taken, to give to tenants for life, and limited owners, power to sell an estate, and so free it from encumbrances, or from being held by persons who could not do justice to the land, was a substantial reform. The step was the more important, and should be gladly accepted as an acknowledgment from those from whom, in the first instance, it would not have been expected to proceed, that they were willing to make
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  great concessions. He felt that on these matters of detail the Bill would be best dealt with by a Select Committee, especially as, he hoped, that Committee would be composed of Members having special knowledge and experience of matters relating to real property. He hoped the Bill would come out of that Committee in a shape that would effect a substantial reform, and as a measure which any sincere reformer would sacrifice personal opinions to obtain.
  MR. HORACE DAVEYsaid, as he had a Motion on the Paper for referring the Bill to a Select Committee, he could only express his gratification that the right hon. Gentleman had been good enough to accede to that course, or, perhaps, he had no right to suppose that he had any influence with the right hon. Gentleman; but he was glad the proposal for a Committee had his support. For himself, he gave a general support to the Bill, and, disagreeing with the hon. Member for Salford (Mr. Arthur Arnold), believed it to be a step in the right direction; that it was a measure which, if passed, would give considerable relief to landowners; and, more than that, it would remove several of the more prominent objections rightly made to the system of settlement in this country. It was a Bill that ought to have general support; but, at the same time, it was a Bill as to the details of which most careful consideration was required, because everbody who had taken part in the administration of the Law of Settlement, and had particular acquaintance with a Bill of this character, knew that these details needed to be carefully tested by those acquainted with the workings of these things. It was for this reason, and out of no spirit of hostility to the Bill, he had put down his Motion for a Select Committee. Having said thus much, he would only say that, in supporting the Bill. he considered himself perfectly free, when the hon. Member for Salford, or any other Member, or any Government brought in a measure dealing with the law relating to the settlement of real estate in a comprehensive spirit, or even partially—he considered himself perfectly free to support any measure of the kind. In supporting the present Bill, he did not consider that he or any Member prejudiced himself from dealing with the subject in a larger way. But he felt quite sure

  355
  of this, that anybody who had tried his hand at legislation of what the hon. Member for Salford called a "more comprehensive character," had felt the extreme difficulty of the undertaking. This he would venture to say, for he had himself tried his hand at it, and had drafted Bills for the purpose, and he had always found the extreme difficulty in his way of in any way abolishing or limiting the power of settling real estate, unless, at the same time, you abolish or limit to the same extent the power of settling personal estate; and, so far as he could judge, he did not think public opinion would sanction or support any measure by which persons would be prevented from making provision for their wives or families on marriage or by will. In that being so was the extreme difficulty; and any conveyancer or lawyer would be able to defeat the best-drawn scheme by charging the real estate, with a sum of money, and settling it, or by vesting the real estates in trustees for sale. But he did not consider that because he was an advocate of a more drastic way of dealing with the subject he was precluded from giving his support to this Bill.
  COLONEL ALEXANDERsaid, as the Bill was applicable to Scotland, he hoped that Scotland would be represented on the Committee by Members from both sides of the House. Care was always taken to include Irish Members on every Committee, but Scotland was as often neglected; he, therefore, felt it his duty to say that he should oppose the nomination of any Committee that did not contain a proper proportion of Scotch Members.
  MR. H. H. FOWLERsaid, he must dissent from the views expressed by the hon. Member for Salford (Mr. Arthur Arnold). The Bill was a very wise and a very safe step in the direction of Land Law Reform, and he was surprised that the House of Lords had passed so sweeping a measure as this was, with respect to the power it proposed to give to tenants for life of settled estates. Though the Bill did not go to the extreme in altering the Law of Settlement, it went, as the hon. and learned Member for Christchurch said, as far as public opinion was prepared to go. When the Bill had gone through the ordeal of a Select Committee, he hoped it might emerge
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  in such a shape that it would pass this Session, and be one of the greatest improvements in the law on the subject that the country had obtained for many years.
  MR. MELLORsaid, he hoped the Bill would be sent to a Select Committee, and only wished to add to what had been said by the hon. and learned Member for Christchurch that he was anxious to have a discussion as to the propriety of extending the Bill to the property of intestates. On this subject he had introduced a Bill last Session, but it was blocked, and he had been unable to obtain a discussion, and with the same object he had placed a Notice on the Paper that the Committee be instructed that they have power to extend the Bill to the disposal of land not devised by will, or included in a settlement; and he hoped that if he did not move this Motion to-night another opportunity would be given of raising the question.
  SIR R. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, he was glad to have the views of the Attorney General on this matter. He was not going to say that this was the only reform that could be made, far from it; but he was quite sure that it was a substantial reform, and that it was actually wanted. It would be unwise to object to the passing of a Bill of this kind, because it failed to remedy all the defects in the law on the subject, for it did remove a great many of those blots so often charged against it by owners of land. No doubt the Bill would meet a great many of the difficulties which had to be dealt with, for it would enable the limited owner to act much as the real owner would for the benefit of the estate. The hon. Member who moved the rejection of the Bill objected that it did not form a settlement of the question; but it was largely so, and he could not help thinking that when the Bill came into the Committee, of which he hoped the hon. Gentleman would be a Member, it would be found that the reform was a very great one, and ought to be accepted. He agreed with many of the observations of the hon. and learned Member for Christchurch (Mr. H. Davey), as well as those from the Attorney General, and he was quite sure that the Bill would not only enable holders of land who were limited owners to do all that owners in fee ought to do, but it would have this practical effect,

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  that a larger amount of land would be thrown into the market than was the case at the present moment. His hon. and gallant Friend behind him (Colonel Alexander) expressed a desire that Scotch Members should be nominated on the Committee; but the misfortune was that, owing to the peculiar tenure of the land there, this Bill did not apply to Scotland at all, and the hon. and gallant Member would see from the 1st clause that it did not extend to Scotland. It might be wise, perhaps, to extend a similar measure to Scotland; but this Bill did not propose it, and he hoped that that objection would not be pressed. He only hoped the Bill would be referred to a Select Committee at once; that the Committee would sit as soon as possible, and that during the Session the measure might pass. He could only say to the observations of the hon. Member opposite as to the Bill of last Session that if he would again bring it forward he (Sir B. Assheton Cross) would do his best, so far as he had any influence, to obtain for it a fair discussion.
  MR. ARTHTJK ARNOLDsaid, he desired to explain that, in his first objection, he had quoted the words used by the present Lord Chancellor himself.
  MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, he trusted the Bill would be referred to a Select Committee, and that full opportunity would be given to consider the names of those nominated to serve thereon, because if he did not find among those names that of his Colleague in the representation of Northampton, who had much spare time, and who had a perfect legal right to sit on any Committee of the House, he should add his name to the nominations, and take the sense of the House upon it.
  SIR R. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, he did not wish to touch on the last question raised; the hon. Member could take any course he thought proper; but perhaps the proper course now would be to withdraw the Motion actually before the House, and move that the Bill be referred to the same Committee that should be appointed for the Conveyancing Bill.
  MR. LABOUCHERErose to Order. Was the Committee to be settled by arrangement between the two Front Benches without the House knowing the names of the Committee? He wished to raise the question of the appointment of his Colleague.
  SIR E. ASSHETON CROSSexplained that no Members had yet been appointed. The names would be put down to-night for dealing with both Bills.
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. B. BALFOUR)said, with reference to the suggestion which had been made that the Bill should be extended to Scotland, that no later than yesterday a Bill applicable to Scotland had been introduced in the House of Lords, not only containing conversion clauses similar to those occurring in this Bill, but also provisions for disentailing.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Motion made, and Question, "That the Bill be committed to the Select Committee on the Conveyancing Bill,"—(Sir R. Assheton Cross,) —put, and agreed to.

VAGRANCY BILL.— [BILL 62.]
(Mr. Pell, Mr. John Talbot, Mr. Bryce, Mr. Cropper, Mr. John Hollond.)
VAGRANCY BILL.— [BILL 62.]

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Beading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Pell.)
  MR. DODSONsaid, he had had some communication with his hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell) in regard to this Bill. The Government could not accept the Bill in the form in which it stood; but he had suggested to his hon. Friend certain Amendments, and if he would agree to their insertion, the Government would assent to the second reading-, with the understanding that the Bill should afterwards be committed pro forma, to receive the Amendments proposed by the Government. It was not necessary to detain the House then with any further observations.
  MR. PELLsaid, he was in hopes that the right hon. Gentleman would, though the hour was late, have mentioned the nature of the changes be proposed should be adopted. They were important; one especially, which touched a principle of the Bill—namely, the removal of the demoralizing distinction the law draws between the class termed tramps and ordinary paupers. In accepting the proposal, he could not do so without observing that he thought they were losing sight of a very mischievous

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  state of things which now existed. We had in our country something like 40,000 or 50,000 persons who, under the invidious term of "tramps" or "vagrants," were treated in a very different way from other destitute persons. In our workhouses as little as possible was given them to maintain life for a few hours; the next morning all the work that could be got out of them was exacted, and then they were dismissed with the certainty that they could not get through the day without some offence against the law; and they passed on to the next workhouse, miserable examples of cruel, impolitic, un-Christian, barbarous treatment. The Government said, if the 4th clause were removed, the Bill could go forward. Now, a great deal had been said about centralization; and over and over again it had been asserted by heads of Departments, and especially by the heads of the Local Government Board, that nothing was more mischievous than the exercise of a centralizing authority. Here, however, in reference to this particular portion of the Bill, while the opinions of Boards of Guardians throughout the country had been taken, and they, after mature deliberation, and on their own experience as local authorities—small, perhaps, but important—were almost unanimous in removing this degrading distinction, the central authority—the Local Government Board—stepped in and set local opinion at nought. There were one or two other matters in which the Government required modifications, though they were not so important as the point to which be had referred; and with the objections to the 6th clause he would not now trouble the House. He was prepared to accept the offer of the Government— thankful for small mercies, and a step in the right direction; and if it was the pleasure of the House, he would ask that the Bill be now read a second time.
  MR. CROPPERsaid, he was glad to find that the Local Government Board had accepted the Bill. One important feature in the measure was, that Boards of Guardians would be enabled to detain travelling vagrants for a longer time—a useful provision, that would enable Guardians to exercise some deterring influence over vagrancy. Other portions of the Bill would be best discussed in Committee; and he should be glad to see it passed, in the belief that it
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  would have a good effect throughout the country.
  MR. BRYCEsaid, he regretted that the President of the Local Government Board could not accept the Bill in the form in which it was introduced; but the particular Amendments which the Government proposed to make were matters for discussion in Committee. He agreed with his hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire that the Bill was better in its present form than in that to which the right hon. Gentleman proposed to cut it down. But, at the same time, as an instalment, it was valuable; and it was worth while to accept even this modification in the treatment of vagrants. He hoped his hon. Friend would bring in his Bill again next year, and persevere in his attempt until something considerable was done in the direction which the Bill indicated.
  MR. J. G. TALBOTsaid, it was the misfortune that there seemed to be no discussion upon anything save that which had relation to Ireland. There was an opportunity for a discussion of this Bill some 14 days ago, on a Wednesday afternoon; but, since then, the condition of things had become intensified, and there was still less prospect of a discussion. In the result, the House was now asked to give assent to the second reading of a Bill on a subject to which many Members, irrespective of political Parties, had given considerable attention, and with which Bill they were not thoroughly acquainted, while, at the same time, they were told the Bill was to be considerably amended, he might almost say emasculated, in Committee. Really, he did not know what the Bill was to which they were asked to give a second reading. Of course, he agreed in the maxim, "that half a loaf was better than no bread;" but he was sorry the right hon. Gentleman did not give some indication of the alterations he proposed, rather than leave to the hon. Member for South Leicestershire the task of mutilating his own offspring. He, with the faltering voice a parent would naturally adopt under such circumstances, told the House of important changes he was bound to accept in Committee. He (Mr. J. G. Talbot) would only now say that he regretted exceedingly that a Bill which seemed to be a moderate and, presumably, an useful alteration of the law,

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  should be turned into a mild, he might almost say an inefficient, attempt to deal with a great question. At that hour he would not detain the House beyond saying that he gave his unwilling assent to the second reading of this emasculated Bill, and he hoped that next year a more efficient attempt would be made to deal with the subject.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed for Thursday.

COMMONABLE RIGHTS BILL.

  CONSIDERATION OF LORDS' AMENDMENTS.
  Order for Consideration of Lords Amendments read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Lords Amendments be now considered."
  MR. WARTONsaid, he wished to call attention to the position in which the House stood with regard to this Bill. They had not the Bill as it was printed by the Lords, and they had a Paper of Lords' Amendments, which even in the paging did not correspond with the Bill. He, therefore, objected most strongly that they should be asked to go on with a measure in which they did not even know the effect of the Lords' Amendments they were asked to agree to. He had the greatest respect for the House of Lords—more, perhaps, than was entertained by hon. Members on the other side; but here was the absurd position—the House was asked to leave out something on page 4, and the Bill had no page 4 in it. He begged to move the adjournment of the debate.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—{Mr. Warton.)
  MR. BRYCEsaid, the hon. and learned Member must be under some mistake. He held a copy of the Bill in his hand, and there certainly was a page 4 in it. The Lords' Amendments were simple and short, the Paper contained a sufficient reference to the places where the Amendments came in, and he did not think that any hon. Member, with the Bill and the Paper before him, would have any difficulty in seeing the effect of the Amendments. They were extremely simple, they offered not the least difficulty, and, while they were
  362
  improvements, they made no considerable alteration in the substance of the Bill.
  MR. WARTONsaid, he was under no mistake, and within the last few minutes he had been in the Vote Office. Perhaps the hon. Member had an opportunity of getting a copy of the Bill not open to all. No doubt the hon. Member had a sufficient copy before him; but he (Mr. Warton) had something else, and he repeated that in this something else there was no page 4.
  Question put.
  The House divided: — Ayes 16; Noes 38: Majority 22. — (Div. List, No. 115.)
  Original Question put, and agreed to.
  Page 3, line 6, leave out the word "Enclosure," the first Amendment, read a second time.
  MR. WARTONsaid, he rose to Order. Would the Amendments be read by the Clerk and considered en bloc, or would they be taken separately?
  MR. SPEAKER: Each Amendment will be considered by itself. Does the hon. and learned Member object to the Amendment?
  MR. WARTONsaid, he did so. Looking to the reference and then to the Bill, he did not find in line 6, on page 3, the word "enclosure" appearing at all, and he was quite unable to see how they could consider the omission of a word from a line where it had no existence. The hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce) had given an assurance, which, no doubt, could be relied on, that these Amendments were all right; but, right or wrong, he (Mr. Warton) took the course of objecting to proceeding to vote without having proper information as to what they were doing. It was absurd in the face of the country to do such things. How could the word be left out of the line when there was no such word in? He begged leave to object to the Amendment, and would take the sense of the House upon it.
  Motion made, and Question put, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
  The House proceeded to a Division.
  Mr. WARTONwas appointed one of the Tellers for the Noes, but no Mem-

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  ber appearing to be a second Teller, Mr. SPEAKER declared that the Ayes had it.
  Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present,
  Subsequent Amendments agreed to.
  Schedule.
  MR. WARTONsaid, he desired one parting observation. He did not object to the addition of the Schedule, for however imperfect a Bill might be, it must have an end somewhere; but how Amendments could be made on a page 4 that had no existence he did not understand.
  Schedule agreed to.

  CORN RETURNS (NO. 2) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. CHAMBERLAIN, Bill to amend the Law respecting the obtaining of Corn Returns, ordered to be brought in by Mr. CHAMBERLAIN and Mr. JOHN HOLMS.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 193.]

  SETTLEMENT AND REMOVAL LAW AMENDMENT BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. DODSON, Bill to amend the Law of Settlement and Removal, ordered to be brought in by Mr. DODSON and Mr. HIB-BERT.
  Bill presented,and read the first time. [Billl94.]
  House adjourned at a quarter before Two o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading— Somersham Rectory* (116); Lunacy Districts (Scotland)* (117); Artillery Ranges* (119); Irish Reproductive Loan Fund Act (1874) Amendment* (120).
Second Reading —Arklow Harbour*(98).
Report —Union of Benefices (London) (101–118); Imprisonment for Contumacy (103).
Third Reading — Inclosure (Arkleside) Provisional Order* (92); Inclosure (Bettws Disserth) Provisional Order* (93); Inclosure (Cefn Drawen) Provisional Order*(94); Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Order*(95), and passed.

UNION OF BENEFICES (LONDON) BILL.
(The Lord Bishop of London.)
UNION OF BENEFICES (LONDON) BILL.

  (NO. 101.) REPORT OF AMENDMENTS.
  Amendments reported (according to order).
  EARL NELSONsaid, he wished to ask a question as to Clause 10, which said that certain sections of a certain Act already in existence should be incorporated into this Act. That mode of legislating was, he was sorry to say, now very often adopted; but it was a slovenly and objectionable way of proceeding. In the first place, it was very difficult for a person who did not know the old Act to understand what was done; and, in the second place, it was very hard to amend the imported clauses. Under the section with regard to the appropriation of seats in the case of the church of a united parish, while reserving half seats free, power was given to the Bishop to appropriate the remaining seats. In the City churches there were a great many old appropriated seats. When he was a Member of one of the Committees on this question, he found that the Sheriffs and Lord Mayor had certain rights to seats in a great number of those churches. If their rights were taken away in regard to other churches, the Bishop had the power by this clause to make up for the deprivation by giving them seats in the churches of the united parishes. As many of the old churches were doing good work, because they had entirely thrown open the seats, it seemed very hard, when the parishes were united, that the Bishop should turn half these seats into appropriated seats.
  THE BISHOP OF LONDONsaid, it appeared to him that the difficulty was a small one, as no church would be pulled down where there was any large body of parishioners; but where there were a few persons left in a parish, who were entitled to appropriated seats in the church pulled down, they should be in the same manner accommodated with seats in the church to which their parish
  220
  was joined. The Bill, as it stood, would do no one any harm.
  THE EARL OF POWISbegged to move, after Clause 14, to insert as a new Clause—
  (Provision for special services.)
  "On the application of the patron of any church, and with the concurrence of the bishop of the diocese, the Commissioners may by any scheme under this Act provide for the appropriation of such church for holding services for sailors or any other special class of population, and for nominating and licensing, and for the remuneration of any spiritual person or persons to serve such church, subject to the provisions of section nineteen of the Act twenty-third and twenty-fourth Victoria, chapter one hundred and forty-two, with respect to repair and monuments, and also for the application of any repair funds or endowments belonging to such church in furtherance of the objects of the scheme: Provided that on a representation by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to the effect that such appropriation has become unnecessary, Her Majesty in Council may at any time approve any scheme to determine such appropriation and provide for the future use and appropriation of the church and its endowments, if any."
  THE BISHOP OF LONDONsaid, he had no objection to the Amendment. The object of the Bill was to remove the churches which had no adequate use; but if churches could be made useful for services for sailors and the like, by all means let them stand. If an appropriation of that kind was found on trial to be inexpedient, power was given to the Commissioners to determine it.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Bill to be read 3a on Tuesday next; and to be printed as amended. (No. 118.)

IMPRISONMENT FOR CONTUMACY BILL.—(No. 103.)
(The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.)
IMPRISONMENT FOR CONTUMACY BILL.—(No. 103.)

  REPORT OF AMENDMENTS.
  Amendments reported (according to order).
  LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNEsaid, that having made his protest against the Bill on the second reading, believing that the measure would encourage lawlessness in the Church, he did not propose to offer opposition to it on the present occasion. He desired, however, to move an Amendment similar to that brought forward by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, and in-

  221
  troduced into the Public Worship Act (1874) Amendment Bill, an Amendment enabling the ecclesiastical authorities to deprive contumacious clergymen of their livings. He did not see anything in the circumstances of the Bill of last year to warrant the addition of this provision, which was not to be found in the circumstances of the present measure.
  Moved, after Clause 2, insert the following Clause:—
  (Party not to be released from further observance of justice.)
  "Such party or person shall not by reason of his discharge in manner aforesaid be released from further observance of justice in the suit in which he has been pronounced in contempt: Provided always, that no further proceeding shall be taken in such suit unless the bishop of the diocese certify in writing under his hand that the party or person has since his release from custody had an opportunity of submitting to his admonitions and has failed to submit to the same. And upon such certificate being filed in the registry of the Court in which such suit shall be depending (whether the same shall have been instituted under the Act for better enforcing Church Discipline passed in the fourth year of Her present Majesty, or under the Public Worship Regulation Act, 1874,) the said Court shall issue against such party or person, being an incumbent within the meaning of the Public Worship Regulation Act, 1874, for the purpose of enforcing obedience to the monitions or monition, orders or order, previously made in such suit, an inhibition, which shall have the same force and effect in all respects as if the same had been a second inhibition issued within three years from the relaxation of an inhibition under the thirteenth section of the Public Worship Regulation Act, 1874; and from and after the time when such inhibition shall have been duly served upon such party or person, or after the expiration of the time (if any) during which the effect of such inhibition may have been postponed by the bishop, pursuant to the power in that behalf given to him by the said thirteenth section of the Public Worship Regulation Act, 1874, every such benefice or other ecclesiastical preferment held by such party or person as is mentioned in the thirteenth section of the Public Worship Regulation Act, 1874, shall become void in the same manner and with the same effects and consequences in all respects as if such inhibition had been a second inhibition duly issued under and by virtue of the thirteenth section of the last-mentioned Act: Provided also, that in any case in which such inhibition shall have been issued, no further signification of any sentence of contumacy or contempt shall be made against the same party or person with a view to the issuing of a writ Do contumace capiendo under the provisions of the Act passed in the fifty-third year of King George the Third, intituled 'An Act for the better Regulation of Ecclesiastical Courts in England, and for the more easy recovery of Church Rates and Tithes,' or of any Act amending the same."— (The Lord Oranmore and Browne)
  THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, he had not receded from the view he held on this point last year. The law must be enforced, and disobedience to it could not be by that House allowed, whether in an ecclesiastical or any other matter. But this Bill was differently framed from the one of last Session, both in other respects, and particularly because it contained a provision under which the released clergyman would be liable to be imprisoned again if he should again be guilty of contempt or contumacy, and if the promoters of the suit should apply for it. Besides, this Bill was only a temporary one, and was intended merely to provide a remedy for an imprisonment of unreasonable duration until the Commission now inquiring into the Ecclesiastical Courts had reported upon such alterations as they might recommend to be made in the law, and until Parliament should have had an opportunity of considering such recommendations. This Bill would practically apply to only one special case, and there was no reason to apprehend that any other case would have to be considered while the measure remained in operation. The effect of the Bill would simply be to release the clergyman referred to; and if he, after his release, repeated his contumacy, he must immediately be put in prison again, if the promoters of the suit thought fit to to press for it. There was nothing in the Bill which permitted contempt and contumacy to pass unpunished, although it was true that no other punishment but imprisonment could be inflicted under it. On a former occasion, he (the Lord Chancellor) had stated, that the inhibition in the case of the Rev. F. S. Green was issued on the 16th August 1879, and consequently, that, unless he complied with the provisions of the Act, he would be deprived at the end of three years—namely, on the 16th August next. Since he made that statement he had seen an opinion expressed by others, that the three years should run from the monition, which was in this case issued on the 27th day of June, 1879; and, therefore, that the three years would expire on the 27th of this month. But the clause was very singularly worded; it spoke of the inhibition as "remaining in force" for three years from the date of the monition. It ought not to be construed loosely against the subject; at all events, there was room

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  for serious difference of opinion as to its true construction: and he would recommend that, for all practical purposes, the later date should be considered the correct one.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTREBURYsaid, that the present Bill did not in any way interfere with the provisions of the present law as to proceedings being taken against a clergyman for contumacy. It simply had reference to the question whether or not a certain clergyman, and any others whose cases might correspond to his, should be released from prison, and was designed to remedy the evils that had arisen from the unexpected application to modern cases of the hitherto forgotten Act of George III. The Amendment, which he hoped the noble Lord (Lord Oranmore and Browne) would not press, complicated the matter, and was a new departure in reference to the mode of dealing with the offence of contumacy.
  Amendment negatived.
  Bill to be read 3"on Tuesday next.

  SOMERSHAM RECTORY BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill for disannexing the Rectory of Somersham from the office of Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Camhridge, and for making better provision for the cure of souls within the said rectory, and for other purposes—Was presented by The Earl of Powis; read 1a, and referred to the Examiners. (No. 116.)

  LUNACY DISTRICTS (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to make provision for altering and varying lunacy districts in Scotland—Was presented by The Earl of DALHOUSIE; read 1a. (No. 117.)
  House adjourned at Five o'clock, to Thursday next, a quarter past Ten o'clock.