Sitting of 28 October 1884

MINUTES.
— SELECT COMMITTEE — Public Petitions, appointed and nominated.
QUESTIONS.

  NAVY—NAVY PAY.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, Whether Her Majesty's Government propose to take any steps to improve the pay and rations of the seamen of Her Majesty's Navy?
  SIR THOMAS BRASSEY: Additions of pay have been from time to time granted, and the pay of petty officers was increased last year. No further changes are at present proposed. The rations are good in quality, and sufficient.

  TRADE AND COMMERCE—RAILS FOR INDIAN RAILWAYS.
  MR. H. H. FOWLERasked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether his attention has been called to statements which have appeared in the public press, that the Government has made large contracts with Belgian ironmasters for the supply of rails for Indian railways; and, whether he will give the House full information as to the nature and extent of these contracts?
  MR. CARBUTTalso asked, What truth there is in the statements made in the South Wales newspapers that the Indian Government had obtained large quantities of rails abroad, to the manifest injury of our ironworkers at home, who are at present only partially employed?
  MR. J. K. CROSS: In reply to my hon. Friend (Mr. H. H. Fowler), I may
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  say, Sir, that on the 23rd of June last, since which date no foreign contracts have been made, I stated the nature and extent of foreign contracts placed up to that time during the last seven years; and I also said, with respect to steel sleepers which had been ordered in Belgium, that they were "somewhat novel to English manufacturers," and that "several of our greatest English manufacturers had declined to make them or to tender for them." I am now glad to be able to say that some of these firms have reconsidered this decision, have accepted the advice I then gave them, and are adapting their machinery to the manufacture of these sleepers. With respect to the Question which my hon. Friend now puts, and in reply also to the Question of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth, I may say that I have not seen any authoritative statement as to the purchase of rails in Belgium. The fact is, not a single rail has been ordered abroad by the Indian Government during the last 10 years; and there is not the slightest shadow of an atom of foundation for the report.

  NAVY—THE DOCKYARDS—REORGANIZATION.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, When it is proposed to promulgate the new scheme for the Dockyards?
  SIR THOMAS BRASSEY: A scheme for the reorganization of the constructive staff at the Dockyards has recently been promulgated. No other changes are at present in contemplation.

  WEST INDIES—ISLAND OF GRENADA—ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS.
  MR. HEALYasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, What reply Lord Derby has given to the petition of the Catholics and Nonconformists of the Island of Grenada in reference to the illegal vote for the Parsonage of the Disestablished Church?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: The history of the case is as follows:—On the 12th of June came a despatch saying that the Legislative Council had voted a sum of money for the Rectory House of St. George's. As the Church had been disestablished in 1874, the Secretary of State replied by an inquiry as to what obligation there was on the Colonial Government to execute these repairs, and at the same time a telegram was sent to the Governor, instructing him

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  to defer the expenditure of the money voted. A reply was received to the effect that, in the view of the Colonial Government, there was an obligation on them to keep the Rectory of St. George's in repair during the lifetime of Canon Anton, whose vested interests had been saved by the Act of 1874, and that on his death they were, therefore, bound to pay for the dilapidations before handing it over to the Church Body. We were also informed in another communication that the largest portion of the sum voted had been already expended—the repairs having been begun as early as the 12th of May. To this Lord Derby replied that he regretted that the Vote had been taken without his sanction, which would not have been given, and that it was not reported to him till it was too late to prevent the expenditure, and directed the Governor to communicate the purport of this despatch to the Memorialists.
  MR. HEALY: Might I ask the hon. Member whether, seeing that this Vote was illegal, the parties concerned will be compelled to refund the money to the taxpayers?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEYsaid the Vote was improper, but it could not be said to be illegal.
  MR. HEALY: Will the hon. Member lay the Papers on the Table?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: I will lay them on the Table if moved for.

  WEST INDIES—ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT—PRISON REGULATIONS.
  MR. HEALYasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, If it is a fact that Mr. M'Leod, the Provost Marshal of the Colony of St. Vincent's, the person who, by virtue of his office, has control of and is responsible for the management of the prisons of that Colony, recently made to the Secretary of State a number of serious charges against Mr. Gore, the Lieutenant Governor of St. Vincent's, in connection with the management and control of the prisons of the Colony, in which Mr. M'Leod accused Mr. Gore of immorality in connection with the female prisoners, and of gross abuse of his position as Lieutenant Governor; if it is a fact that all inquiry into those charges was refused, and that Mr. M'Leod was compelled by the Colonial Office to withdraw the charges he had made; if
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  it is intended to hold any independent inquiry into the truth or otherwise of Mr. M'Leod's charges; and, whether the Sectretary of State for the Colonies recently declared in the House of Lords that the West Indian prisons required the strictest supervision?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: The charge made against Mr. Gore by Mr. M'Leod was addressed, not to the Secretary of State, but to the Governor-in Chief of the Windward Islands, and was that Lieutenant Governor Gore had curtailed Mr. M'Leod's rightful powers as head of the gaol, and sought to deny him a voice in the management of the Kingstown Prison; but there was no reference to any immoral conduct. The statement in the House of Lords referred to in the Question was made by the Earl of Carnarvon, and it was one with which everybody would agree.
  MR. HEALY: Although it is an admitted fact that the West Indian prisons require supervision, nothing at all is to be done.
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: It is a fact that they require supervision, and also that they receive it.
  MR. HEALY: I beg to give Notice that I shall draw attention to this matter, and to the conduct of the hon. Member, on Report.

  PREVENTION OF CRIME (IRELAND) ACT, 1882 — PROCLAIMED MEETING AT CRANAGH, CO. WICKLOW.
  MR. W. J. CORBETasked Mr. Solicitor General for Ireland, Whether it is not the fact that the County of Wicklow is and has all along been in a state of tranquillity; and, whether he can state upon what grounds a public meeting, proposed to be held at Cranagh on the 5th instant, at which the senior Member was to address his Constituents, was suppressed?
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. WALKER): The county of Wicklow is, and has been, peaceable. The proposed meeting at Cranagh was proclaimed because, being summoned to condemn land grabbings, it was announced to be held in the immediate vicinity of an evicted farm, which had been purchased by a man named Murphy, who had been "Boycotted," and as regards whom personal danger was apprehended if the meeting took place there.

  AFRICA (SOUTH) — BECHUANALAND — MURDER OF MR. BETHELL.
  MR. ASHMEAD-BARTLETTasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, If he could state what is the date of the murder by the Boers of Mr. Bethell, Chief of the Frontier Police; what are the dates of the first official Despatch sent from the Government to inquire into the circumstances of Mr. Bethell's murder, and of the official reply, and of the consequent instructions to Sir Hercules Robinson referred to on Monday; and, whether Mr. Bethell was killed while endeavouring to save from the Boers Montsioa, the Bechuana chief who protected British subjects during the Transvaal War, and whose territories were guaranteed by the Conventions of 1881 and 1884?
  MR. STUART WORTLEYasked, At what date the first request was despatched from home for information concerning the murder of Mr. C. Bethell, which took place on July 31st, and which was reported in the English newspapers in the second week in August; and, whether such request was telegraphic?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: In answer to those parts of these Questions which are not rather matter for debate than for Question time, I may say that Mr. Bethell was killed on the 31st of July last. The first intimation we received that there had been any foul play in connection with his death was in a letter we received from his brother on the 22nd of August. On the 25th of August we received a communication from Sir Hercules Robinson, not alluding to Mr. Bethell's death, but in which he stated that Mr. Bethell's appointment as Commandant of Police had been disapproved by him, and that he told Major Lowe he could not approve of it. Having received that letter from Mr. Bethell's brother on the 22nd of August, we sent, on the 26th, a despatch to Sir Hercules Robinson, asking him to ascertain the truth and give all particulars; and we received his reply to that despatch, enclosing Mr. Wright's account, on the 23rd of October, and on the 27th we sent off the telegram I referred to yesterday. The important point to bear in mind is, that it is only by Mr. Wright's communications that we learnt that the names of those who committed the murder are known, and that there is a Native witness who saw and can identify the men. Although on this occasion I
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  must ask the House to take my word for it, in justice to the Secretary of State I must say that he came to the determination, in reply, to send that telegram on Friday last, and it was in no wise in consequence of the Questions which were put down that that telegram was sent.
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH: May I ask if Her Majesty's Government received the intelligence of the death of Mr. Bethell by telegram; and, if so, on what date?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: We received the account of Mr. Bethell's death by telegram on the 8th of August, and we immediately telegraphed out at once to see what Mr. Bethell it was. It merely stated the death.
  MR. W. E. FORSTER: May I ask the hon. Gentleman another Question? Two gentlemen were sent from Cape Town into Bechuanaland in an official position—Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Bowen, who was Secretary to Sir Hercules Robinson. They were not, I understand, far off at the time of the occurrence. Has no Report been received from them?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: My right hon. Friend is incorrect. They were a long way off, in Stellaland, and knew nothing at all about it. Mr. Rhodes went up afterwards. He arrived on the 25th of August in the neighbourhood of Montsioa's country; but he was not within several hundred miles of the plane when the murder took place.
  MR. CREYKEasked whether it was not the fact that in consequence of the publicity given to this matter in the Press by the brother and relations of Mr. Bethell, the Colonial Office took some steps; and whether they might not infer that had it not been for the agitation by the relatives of the murdered officer, the Government would have passed the matter over in silence?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: I can have no control over hon. Members' inferences, but the facts of the case are these. The first statement we received was on the 22nd August, in a letter from Mr. Bethell's brother. In consequence of that the Colonial Office sent out to make inquiries. Most undoubtedly the Colonial Office were as anxious as anybody to bring the murderers to justice; and I can assure my hon. Friend that he is quite wrong in thinking that we required any stimulus in taking action in the matter.
  MR. STUART WORTLEYasked whether on the 8th of August, as the hon. Gentleman said when the first telegram arrived announcing Mr. Bethell's death, it was known at the Colonial Office that Mr. Bethell was in the employment of the English Government?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: Yes; it was known that Mr. Mackenzie had appointed him temporarily, but we did not know exactly whether he had assumed office, and we did not know whether there were any police to command. I am not quite certain whether we knew at that time or not that Sir Hercules Robinson had refused to ratify it; but certainly we did know that he had been appointed by Mr. Mackenzie.
  MR. STUART WORTLEY: Did Sir Hercules Robinson refuse, as a matter of fact, to ratify it?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: Yes.
  MR. CREYKE: May I ask why, if the facts were perfectly well known on the 11th or 12th of August, the Colonial Office waited for a letter from Mr. Bethell's brother before taking any steps?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEYsaid, he really must dispute what the hon. Gentleman had stated. The matter was not well known in England. He believed the first mention of any foul play in connection with the death of Mr. Bethell was on the 19th of August. He thought that was the first date on which there was any mention in this country of any murder having been committed.

  AFRICA (SOUTH)—CONVENTIONS OF 1881–4—MONTSIOA.
  MR. ASHMEAD-BARTLETTasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether, after Mr. Bethell's murder, the Transvaal Government forced Montsioa to submit to their authority; what is the position of Montsioa now; and, how much territory and how many of his tribesmen Montsioa has lost in consequence of his loyalty to Great Britain in 1881 and since?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: It is difficult to answer that Question. ["Hear, hear!"] What I mean is this—it is difficult to answer in a few words. The complete Papers will be in the hands of Members in a very short time. The exact position of Montsioa now I cannot say without making a speech. If the
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  hon. Member asks me to make a speech, I will do so. It is impossible for me to give the figures in reply to the third Question.
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS - BEACH: I think I can answer the last part of the Question. I observe it is stated, with some apparent authority, in the public Press that Montsioa's territory is now confined to 10 farms. What I want to ask is, when Papers will be laid on the Table?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEYreplied, that he was urging the printers forward. One batch of Papers had been, he believed, delivered that day, and the other batch would be in the hands of Members on Friday or Saturday.
  MR. ASHMEAD-BARTLETTgave Notice that, on that day fortnight, in order to give the hon. Gentleman time to obtain the information, he would ask, Whether it was not the fact that the boundaries of Montsioa's territory between his own lands and those of the Boers were fixed by the Conventions of 1881 and 1884; and, whether he could tell the House how many of the tribes had since perished by the hostile action of the Boers?

  FRANCE AND CHINA—HOSTILITIES—BLOCKADE OF FORMOSA.
  MR. J. G. HUBBARDasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the Government are aware that, as reported in The Times of 27th October—
  "The blockade of the west coast of the Island of Formosa began on the 23rd inst. and that no vessels are allowed to embark or disembark at the Island, which is completely isolated;"
  whether this blockade by France of ports belonging to a Power with which she is not at open war is consistent with International Law; whether France has, under the circumstances, any right to prevent English vessels from entering the ports of the Island; and, what measures the Government propose in order to obtain for English commerce the compensation due for damages accruing from the interruption to which it is subjected?
  MR. ASHMEAD-BARTLETTalso asked, Whether British merchant ships have been stopped and overhauled by French men-of-war off the Chinese coast; whether the French have declared a blockade of Formosa; and, whether the French Republic has declared war upon China; and, if not, whether Her Majesty's

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  Ministers will direct the British Admiral in command of the China Station to take steps to stop these piratical proceedings?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: Her Majesty's Government, on the 23rd instant, received from the French Government a formal notice of blockade of the ports of Formosa, and the notice was inserted in The Gazette of the 24th instant. France has undoubtedly the right to blockade those ports, and the notification of blockade might be taken by neutral Powers as a notification of a state of war. France has, in the circumstances, all the rights of war, including the right to prevent access to the blockaded ports, incident to a belligerent blockade if she desired to exercise them; but in the absence of a formal declaration of war, either by France or China, Her Majesty's Government have thought it necessary to communicate with the French Government on the subject, in order to remove all doubt as to the position of neutrals' shipping, and I am unable to make any further statement pending the result of that communication. Before the notification of blockade throe British vessels were boarded off Tamsui; and upon representations being made to the French Government on the subject, it was admitted that the proceeding was irregular, by reason of a regular blockade not having been established. Her Majesty's Government will be prepared to make any claim for damages which can properly be supported by International Law; but up to the present time no such claim has been preferred. In regard to the last paragraph of the Question of the hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett), I can only express my regret that he should have used expressions in this House offensive to a friendly nation.
  Mr. J. G. HUBBARDIn reply to a further Question by Mr. J. G. HUBBARD,
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICEsaid, that he could not undertake, without permission from the Secretary of State, to lay any Papers on the Table. He might mention, however, that certain Papers relating to recents events in China were about to be laid; but he could not give any particulars with regard to them.
  MR. ASHMEAD-BARTLETTgave Notice that he would ask the noble Lord
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  on Thursday whether the examination of neutral merchant ships without a declaration of war did not constitute an act of piracy?
  MR. WARTONasked whether the Government had taken any pains to find out the actual number of French ships, with the view of ascertaining whether the blockade was an effective one, or merely a paper one?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: I do not know, Sir.

  ASIA (CENTRAL)—BRITISH CONSULATE AT KASHGAR.
  MR. ECROYDasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the attention of Her Majesty's Government has been directed to the desirability, in the interests of British commerce, of establishing a Consul at Kashgar?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: This question has been under the consideration of Her Majesty's Government; and it has been decided, after communication with the India Office, that the amount of British trade at Kashgar was not as yet sufficient to warrant the establishment of a Consul there. If the hon. Member has any facts which he wishes to bring to the notice of the Foreign Office, every attention will be given to them.

  AFRICA (SOUTH) — BECHUANALAND—SIR CHARLES WARREN'S EXPEDITION.
  MR. STANLEY LEIGHTONasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether he can give any information to the House as to the scale of the Military expedition which is to accompany Sir Charles Warren from England to Bechuanaland; what is the number of the English Force now in South Africa; and, whether General Warren will be placed under the orders of the Governor, Sir Hercules Robinson, or hold an independent position in South Africa similar to that conferred on General Gordon in Central Africa?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: It is not yet possible to give the House any detailed information on the subject. The War Office are in close communication with Sir Charles Warren and with our officers in South Africa as to the scale and nature of the military forces, and

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  preparations that may be necessary. The strength of the regular British troops in South Africa is about 4,000. Sir Charles Warren will, of course, be under the orders of Sir Hercules Robinson, as High Commissioner for South Africa.
  MR. STANLEY LEIGHTON: Do I understand that an expedition will be sent from England?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: No; I do not say so.
  MR. W. E. FORSTER: May I ask whether we may consider that Sir Charles Warren is going out to South Africa?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: Yes, Sir; I think the House may consider that as settled.
  MR. STANLEY LEIGHTON: When shall we know? Sir Charles Warren is, I understand, still in England; and what we here wish to know is whether the preparations have been settled?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: That Question ought to be addressed to the Secretary of State for War.
  MR. STANLEY LEIGHTON: Would the Secretary of State for War kindly answer that Question?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: I cannot state for two or three days when the necessary preparations will be completed.
  MR. STANLEY LEIGHTON: Will a Supplemental Estimate be asked for?
  [No reply.]

  EDUCATION DEPARTMENT—OVERPRESSURE IN BOARD SCHOOLS—DR. CRICHTON BROWNE'S REPORT.
  MR. STANLEY LEIGHTONasked the Vice President of the Committee of Council, Whether instructions were given by the Secretary of the Education Department to Mr. Fitch, one of the permanent officials of the Department, to prepare an answer to Dr. Crichton Browne's Report, after reference had been made to that Report in this House?
  MR. MUNDELLA: Immediately on receipt of Dr. Crichton Browne's statement it was sent to Mr. Fitch for perusal. Mr. Fitch communicated to me his dissent from Dr. Browne's conclusions, and his dissatisfaction with the methods which Dr. Browne employed; but he was not requested to make any official Report until the document was made public by being laid on the Table of this House.
  MR. STANLEY LEIGHTON: Is it the fact that Mr. Fitch is the gentleman who had the principal hand in drafting the New Code?
  MR. MUNDELLA: He had not the principal hand in drafting the Code. He was one of a Committee of nine or ten gentlemen employed on that Code.

  ARMY (AUXILIARY FORCES) — PENSIONS — SERGEANT INSTRUCTOR LYNE.
  VISCOUNT LEWISHAMasked the Under Secretary of State for War, If, in accordance with his promise of 8th May 1884, he has submitted the case of Sergeant Instructor Lyne to the Admiralty; if he is aware that Sergeant Instructor Lyne has not received the additional pension to which he is entitled; and, what is the reason of this delay?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: Yes, Sir; the case of this Sergeant Instructor was submitted to the Admiralty. I am informed from that Office that the increase of pension will be made as soon as the necessary Order in Council has been obtained. I am also informed by that Department that many points have arisen in connection with the award of pensions to non-commissioned officers in Marines serving in the Auxiliary Forces. Those points are in course of settlement, and an Order in Council will be obtained to sanction extra pensions being allowed.

  PORTUGAL—QUARANTINE AT MADEIRA.
  MR. CREYKEasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether Her Majesty's Government has recently received reports from Madeira as to the quarantine regulations of the Portuguese Government involving loss of life to British seamen, especially with reference to the cases of the s.s. Plessy and the barque Valetta; and, whether Her Majesty's Government, in the event of the Portuguese Government declining to abolish altogether the vexatious and absurd restrictions placed on vessels direct from English ports, will impress upon the Government of Portugal the necessity of at once opening the existing excellent lazaretto at Madeira?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: Her Majesty's Consul at Madeira has

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  furnished Reports on the cases to which the hon. Member refers. Her Majesty's Government regret that, notwithstanding the strongest remonstrances, the Portuguese and other Governments continue to maintain a stringent quarantine system; but attention will at once be called to the importance of opening the lazaretto at Madeira.

  AFRICA (SOUTH)—BASUTOLAND—THE POLICE FORCE.
  MR. W. E. FORSTERasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, What is the number of the Police Force which has been put under the orders of Colonel Clarke to enable him to carry out the instructiens given him by Lord Derby, in his Despatch of January 25th 1884, appointing him Resident Commissioner in Basutoland, and instructing him to protect life and property, and to maintain order on the border; what is the area of Basutoland; what is the length of the border line between Basutoland and the Orange Free State; and, whether any representations have been made by the Government of the Orange Free State with reference to the Force needed to maintain order on the border, in fulfilment of the terms of the Treaty of Aliwal North?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: The police force in Basutoland, under Colonel Clarke, consists of 13 officers—of whom four are Natives—and 146 men. The area of Basutoland is 10,293 square miles, and the length of the Border line between Basutoland and the Orange Free State is, I believe, about 200 miles. It is a fact that Sir John Brand in last July represented that, in his opinion, Colonel Clarke's force was insufficient; but I may remind my right hon. Friend that this was at a moment when there was an abnormal excitement and disturbance connected with the attack of Moroks on Sepinare, within the borders of the Free State, and since this is over complaints have subsided. I may add that Colonel Clarke did not share the opinion of Sir John Brand, and has not asked for more police than the number granted to him.
  MR. W. E. FORSTERasked whether this force had been under Colonel Clarke's orders for some time?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: Yes, Sir; from the time he went to Basutoland.

  POST OFFICE—MAIL SERVICE TO THE WEST OF IRELAND—THE MIDLAND GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY.
  MR. O'CONNOR POWERasked the Postmaster General, If he can inform the House of the nature of any proposals which have passed between the Post Office and the Midland Great Western Railway Company, with a view to the acceleration of the mails to the west of Ireland; and, whether steps will be taken to secure that the mails to and from the county of Mayo shall be accelerated in the same manner and on the same terms as those agreed to recently in respect of the mails in other parts of Ireland?
  MR. FAWCETT: In the first instance an inquiry was made, with the object of ascertaining whether it would be possible to secure an acceleration by making the existing train start at an earlier hour and travel at a faster rate; but, on the Railway Company assuring us that this is impracticable, I am now considering whether circumstances would justify the running of another train. If any acceleration should be secured, I can assure my hon. Friend that Mayo would participate in it.

  LAW AND POLICE (IRELAND)—MR. J. R. COX.
  MR. JUSTIN HUNTLY M'CARTHYasked Mr. Solicitor General for Ireland, If he will state the reasons for issuing the following "confidential communication" to District Constabulary Inspectors in Ireland:—
  "Joseph R. Cox. Midland Division, Crime Department, Mullingar, 24th June 1884. Mr. Jenkinson wishes to have the movements of the above-named watched, noted everywhere. Annexed is his description. By Order (signed), M. Jacques, D.I.C.S. Joseph R. Cox, Secretary to the Lord Mayor, Dublin, 97, Stephen's Green, Dublin, five feet ten inches, thirty-three years, rather stout, sandy hair, regular nose and mouth, fair complexion, round visage, small whiskers under ears; native of Kilmore, county Roscommon, wears glasses, dresses well, wears a silk hat; was arrested under Peace Preservation Act. He was an organiser of the late Land League. His principal associates are leading Nationalists?"
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. WALKER): I stated yesterday, in answer to the hon. Member, that the communication referred to was issued in misapprehension to the County Inspector in one Division. It is

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  not usual, and it would be detrimental to the interests of the Public Service, to state the reasons for issuing confidential communications to County Inspectors. I must, therefore, in this instance, respectfully decline to state them.

  INLAND NAVIGATION AND DRAINAGE (IRELAND) — DRAINAGE WORKS ON THE BARROW.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Whether Mr. Fitzgerald has yet completed his survey and valuation of the lands to be relieved by the contemplated drainage works of the Barrow; whether he can state the estimated expense of the works to be executed on the main stream; and, how soon the final Report of Mr. Manning the Engineer may be
  MR. COURTNEY: I am very sorry to say that in spite of all our efforts we cannot get Mr. Fitzgerald to report, and Mr. Manning's final Report must follow on his. The provisional Estimate for works on the main river only is about £300,000. In view of the delay on the part of the valuator the Treasury communicated with the Irish Government last week as to the expediency of appointing at once a Committee to consider what could be done with the materials in our hand. I have heard to-day by telegraph from the Lord Lieutenant that he agreed to the proposition.

  TRADE AND COMMERCE—THE SHIPBUILDING TRADE.
  MR. MACIVERasked the First Lord of the Treasury, If his attention has been called to the following paragraph, which appeared in The Glasgow Herald of last Saturday, viz.:—
  "State of Trade—Glasgow. Shipbuilding still depressed.…. A significant feature of the depression is a movement on the part of the operatives to procure employment on the Continent. Shipbuilding in France is reported to be on the increase;"
  and, whether Her Majesty's Government are in possession of any information which leads them to doubt the accuracy of this statement?
  MR. CHAMBERLAIN: My right hon. Friend has asked me to answer this Question, and I will do so to the best of my ability. I am not certain whether the paragraph to which the hon. Member calls attention refers to any
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  movement of operatives from Glasgow. If so, I have no information whatever on the subject; but I have heard of a movement of operatives from the North-East Coast, where the depression in shipbuilding is very great indeed; and I have learned that some few men—I believe no considerable number — have found employment in the shipbuilding yards in France, chiefly in connection, I believe, with the repairs which are going on upon French vessels. I may, perhaps, point out to the hon. Member that the French Bounty Law provided that ships might be built abroad up to a certain time, but that they were to be repaired in French ports; and the effect of that has been to increase the pressure of the depression in this way—that, in the first place, it created an exceptional demand for ships in this country, and led to the employment of a large number of persons who might not otherwise have been employed. When the artificial demand ceased, the depression, of course, was increased proportionately, and at the same time there has been an artificial demand for labour created in France by the repairs which have become necessary on these ships.
  MR. MACIVER: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to thank him for his reply, but, at the same time, to point out that he has not answered my Question, which is, whether it is or is not true that shipbuilding in France is reported to be on the increase?
  MR. CHAMBERLAIN: I have no positive information—no late information—with regard to the question of shipbuilding in France; but, as far as I know, there is no considerable increase.

  NATIONAL EDUCATION (IRELAND) — INCREASED GRANT TO CONVENT SCHOOLS.
  MR. BIGGARasked Mr. Solicitor General for Ireland, Whether the Government are now in a position to state what is the scheme for increased emoluments to the Convent National Schools, in Ireland, as promised last Session by the Member for Hawick Burghs?
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. WALKER): On the 18th July last my right hon. Friend the late Chief Secretary stated that this matter was under consideration, and would be dealt with before the Estimates for the coming year are framed. That promise

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  is kept in mind; but I am not at present in a position to make any more definite statement.

  EGYPT (EVENTS IN THE SOUDAN)—REPORTED FALL OF KHARTOUM.
  MR. R. N. FOWLER (LORD MAYOR): I wish to ask the noble Lord the Secretary of State for War, Whether he has received any confirmation of the rumour as to the fall of Khartoum which appeared in the evening papers?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: No, Sir; no information whatever on that subject has been received either at the War Office or at the Foreign Office.

  PUBLIC HEALTH—ALLEGED OUTBREAK OF CHOLERA IN NORMANDY.
  SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOT: I wish to ask the President of the Local Government Board, Whether any steps have been taken to ascertain the nature of the disease which has broken out at Yport, in the North of France; and, if that disease is cholera, what measures had been adopted to prevent its spreading to this country?
  SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: Information as to the nature of the outbreak has been asked for by the Medical Department, and partial information has already been received. With regard to the steps taken to prevent the spread of cholera to this country, a most complete examination of the ports has been made in advance during the last four months; and all the regulations which were formerly in force, and which successfully prevented the last epidemic of cholera in Northern Europe from spreading to this country, and which probably have been improved by experience, are in operation at the present time, and have been supplemented by the examination of ports to which I refer.

  CRIME AND OUTRAGE (IRELAND)—THE MAAMTRASNA MURDERS·MR. JUSTICE BARRY.
  MR. CALLANwished to ask the Solicitor General for Ireland a Question of which he had given him private Notice. It was, Whether the dying declarations of Patrick Joyce and Patrick Casey, taken by Mr. Brady, R.M., the day but one before the execution on the 15th December, admitting their own guilt, but stating the innocence of Myles
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  Joyce, and refferred to in the Memorandum of Earl Spencer, were submitted to the consideration of Lord Justice Barry, who tried the prisoners; and, whether Lorn Justice Barry was consulted in the matter by his Excellency before refusing to grant the inquiry?
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. WALKER), in reply, said, that he had telegraphed to Dublin immediately upon receiving Notice of the Question; but he feared he could not answer it precisely. It appeared that Judge Barry certainly had the papers before him on the 13th of December.
  MR. HARRINGTON: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman mean to insinuate that the depositions made on the 14th were before Judge Barry on the 13th?
  [No reply.]

NOTICE OF AMENDMENT.

  THE ADDRESS IN ANSWER TO THE QUEEN'S SPEECH.
  LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL: Having regard to the statement of the Prime Minister the other night that the Government repudiate violence and outrage, and in order to enable the House to come to a decision on the matter at issue, as well as in justice to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, I now beg to give Notice that I will move the following Amendment to the Address:—
  "And we humbly assure Her Majesty that we regret to find in recent speeches and actions of one of Her Majesty's Ministers, holding the high office of President of the Board of Trade, an incitement to interference with the freedom of political discussion, and a justification of riot and disorder."
  MR. LABOUCHERE: It would be very convenient to the House to know whether the noble Lord intends to bring on his Amendment immediately after the one under consideration has been disposed of; or whether, as is reported, there is to be a debate on the Transvaal, or any other subject? Perhaps the noble Lord will be able to inform us.
  LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL: I cannot tell.
  MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, that it would be convenient to the House if the hon. Member for Birkenhead intended

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  to proceed with his Amendment on the Address immediately after that now before the House was disposed of.
  MR. MACIVERsaid, that he intended to move his Amendment; but he hoped the hon. Member would not think him discourteous if he declined to state when.

ORDER OF THE DAY.
  ADDRESS IN ANSWER TO HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH.

    [ADJOURNED DEBATE.] [FOURTH NIGHT.]
    Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment proposed to Question [23rd October,] "That, &c."—[See page. 69.]
    And which Amendment, as amended, was,
    To insert in the ninth paragraph, after the word "us," the words "and this House humbly assures Her Majesty that it would ensure much greater confidence in the administration of the Law in Ireland if a full and public inquiry were granted into the execution of Myles Joyce and the continued incarceration of Patrick Joyce, Thomas Joyce, Martin Joyce, and John Casey."—(Mr. Harrington.)
    Question again proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
    Debate resumed.

  AMENDMENT (MR. HARRINGTON)—THE MAAMTRASNA MURDERS—CONVICTION OF MYLES JOYCE AND OTHERS.
  MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYsaid, he was glad to see that the hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. Harrington) had found himself in a position to adopt the alteration in his Amendment suggested on the previous evening, for it put more clearly, more precisely and succinctly, what the Irish people most particularly demanded at the present moment. What they most wanted just now was a declaration of opinion from the House as to whether a case had not been made out for a re-investigation of the circumstances under which certain men were condemned to death, some executed, and some imprisoned for life. They did not want to have these murder cases retried in Parliament. The House had no machinery of that kind; but what the House was well entitled to ask was whether an appeal of the kind now put forward for re-investigation by proper authorities and in a proper way had not been made out, and whether they were not entitled to insist
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  on that inquiry being held? Members should be made acquainted with the physical condition of that part of Ireland where the murders took place, and what the population consisted of. The population in the district lived in almost complete separation and isolation from civilization all round. He happened to be in that part of the country almost immediately after the occurrence of these murders; and, though he made no minute inspection, he obtained a tolerably clear knowledge of the district. Those even who had seen a Red Indian settlement or a Bedouin encampment could hardly have an idea of the condition in which the people of the Joyce country had lived. Local feelings of spite and ill-feeling grew and fostered easily in such a district amongst the people. A quarrel once begun would go on there from generation to generation, almost like a Corsican vendetta, and that would in a sense explain the personal hatred that existed, and even the dreadful fact that reckless charges were capable of being made against enemies who were not believed to be guilty of crime. He did not wish to arraign the finding of the jury or the action of the Judge. Nevertheless, there were some extraordinary features in the case. In their testimony the three independent witnesses had alleged that they had followed those ten desperate murderers over three Irish miles of broken country, and had never lost sight of them. Not one of those ten men, going as they were to do a desperate deed, had ever looked round to see whether they were followed. Then it was alleged that the three men had stood behind a bush, and that the murderers had almost touched them. Anyone who knew that part of the country knew that the vegetation was very scanty, and the bushes were all very small. The night was dark, and yet those who swore to the identity of the accused represented themselves as being in a position to state positively to their identity. Surely the very improbabilities of the case were sufficient to justify a re-investigation. Again, he was surprised at the careless way in which the Memorandum of the Lord Lieutenant had been made out. In one paragraph it stated that the evidence was "not merely circumstantial evidence." But the whole of the case had rested on direct evidence; and in the Memorandum,

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  therefore, the Lord Lieutenant seemed to be mixing up one kind of evidence with another. What answer had they received to their request for a reconsideration of the case? The Government appeared to be exceedingly unhappy in its selection of Irish Law Officers. It appeared that they were very much exercised by the difficulty either to get them into the House or to get them out of it; and certainly the statement of the Solicitor General for Ireland had not advanced the case for the Government very much. The hon. and learned Gentleman had made an unusually heated partizan speech on the matter. The ex-Chief Secretary, it was true, had gone into the case more clearly and closely. What did the whole sum of the case as represented by the right hon. Gentleman amount to? It was in great part a contention that there was very much evidence offered by the Crown, so much that the conviction was warranted. He spoke as though it was a question of weighing so many witnesses against so many, the verdict going to that side which had the most; but they claimed that if they could produce one witness who ought to be heard, and was not heard, they had established their contention, and showed that the case ought not to be considered entirely settled at the bar of public opinion. Not a single point made by the hon. Member for Westmeath was disposed of; all the most important points he left exactly as he put them, and nothing that was said in contradiction to the facts they had brought forward ought to change an impartial public opinion. Again, the ex-Chief Secretary attempted to work on the feelings—he was going to say on the passions—of the House, by his reference to the agrarian and other outrages that had been committed in Ireland. But he had nothing whatever to say on that central point of the case—the depositions of the two boys—and he (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) could not help expressing his great regret at the manner in which they had been dealt with, at least by one great newspaper which influenced public opinion out-of-doors and in that House. When the hon. Member for Westmeath made his speech and put his case before the Government, his pamphlet upon the subject was in the hands of all persons who were interested in the facts it contained. Yet
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  the article in The Times newspaper, in stating the case, left out of it all reference whatever to these depositions. How could English public opinion be properly formed if such omissions were made? He supposed it was done by mishap or carelessness; but he asked the House, how could English public opinion be fairly formed on a question like the present when one of its most leading organs could thus deal with a part of the case so important and so momentous? He was quite certain that if similar conditions existed in connection with the administration of the law in England an inquiry would be promptly granted. The Home Secretary also made a speech of some weight and importance in reply to the case put by the hon. Member for Westmeath. Some part of that speech, indeed, was not perfectly consistent. It was conceived apparently in the same spirit as that of an answer given by the Under Secretary for the Colonies that evening to the effect that he had already answered a certain Question, and, besides, it would be impossible to answer such a Question as that. Very much in the same style was the answer of the Home Secretary. He said—"This question has already been re-opened, and, besides, it would be wholly impossible to re-open a question like this." The right hon. Gentleman told them that he had himself thought over the whole question, and had, on his own responsibility, advised the Lord Lieutenant not to grant the sort of inquiry they desired. He did not tell the House, when he gave this advice, that he had any idea whatever of the existence of the depositions of those two boys which were kept by the counsel of the Crown from the counsel for the defence. Irish Members asked the Government to do nothing unusual or unprecedented. They merely asked the Government to do what had been done in the case of Kilmartin—to give an independent inquiry into all the old facts and the new, and say whether, on the whole, there was not a case made out sufficient to allow innocent men to be set at liberty, and to remove from the family of one man who had been executed the stain of guilt if he were proved to be innocent. How could the Government, in face of the support given to this proposition by so many eminent English lawyers, refuse the appeal now made to them? He made no insinuation or re-Section upon the learned Judge or the

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  jury, yet he felt compelled to say that there was at that time a general inclination to say—"We must punish someone." That was a most unfortunate feeling to get into the public mind at a time of excitement. There was a disposition to connect these murders in the Joyce country with the agrarian disturbances and agrarian crime. The Home Secretary pleaded that it was the business of counsel for the defence to have found out and used whatever facts and depositions were favourable to the prisoners. But, surely, whether counsel for the prisoners knew or used certain facts or not, if certain important evidence was not presented to the jury, there was a case for an inquiry. It did not appear to him that the defence in these cases was very skilfully conducted. He thought a little more vigilance on the part of counsel for the defence would have enabled them to get all the evidence that could be brought forward in favour of the prisoners. But if that evidence had been produced at the trial it would have influenced the minds of the jury—nay, it might have entirely changed their verdict. Was not that alone a strong ground for inquiry? He could not help feeling a certain doubt as to whether there was not a want of courage on the part of the Government in not acceding to this demand. It was the duty of the Government, fearless of a perverted public opinion—fearless of the threats and menaces of any particular Colleague; fearless of what might be said of them here or there—to stand up and say—"We do now at last believe that it has been shown that a mistake has been committed; we are willing to make that admission; and with that admission we are willing to grant a proper and independent inquiry, and by all the means in our power secure that justice shall be done to the living and the dead."
  MR. GLADSTONE: Sir, I am sorry to interpose in this debate, and for many reasons I should have been glad if the argument of this case had been left in the hands of those who, from their training and experience, are really competent to conduct that argument with a perfect balance of mind and temper, and the absolute exclusion of all feeling that might bias their judgment, and with the capacity to weigh evidence which the Members of this House in general, and which certainly I myself in particular,
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  can make no claim to possess. But, although that is the case, there are two considerations which lead me to believe that I should not fully discharge my duty unless I made some attempt to give my opinion, and the reasons for that opinion, to the House. The first of these considerations is of very great importance to the question, which undoubtedly neither the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) nor anyone else whom I have heard has, in the slightest degree, exaggerated when they described it in the strongest terms they could command; for there can be no graver occasion than when the House of Commons should be solicited, or feel itself inclined, not merely to correct the conduct of particular persons belonging to the judicial body of the country, but to reopen a great judicial case of criminal justice which has been settled under circumstances of peculiar solemnity, and, as I think, of peculiar advantage for arriving at the truth. I will not say that there would be no case where it would be the duty of the House of Commons to search for the means for attempting an operation of that kind; I only say at present that it is one of the gravest cases that can be conceived; and I will endeavour at least to give this practical proof of my sense of its gravity, when I shall seek to avoid all imputations of motive, all exaggeration of the case, all that could give offence in any quarter; and if I cannot imitate the capacity of those who professionally investigate and conduct these questions, I will endeavour at least to conform to that judicial temper which they all strive to maintain. That is my first reason; and my second reason is that I think it due to Lord Spencer, who holds a high Office, under circumstances of peculiar anxiety, with the entire and unlimited confidence of his political Colleagues, that I should not shrink from giving him—I will not say whatever advantage he may derive—but, at all events, whatever conscientious witnesses may be brought in to support him on an occasion when not merely his judgment has been called in question, but when the severest charges have been launched against him; such charges that, if they could be proved, undoubted dismissal from Office would be no adequate notice of the acts involved in them, and nothing less than impeachment should follow. [Irish cheers.] I

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  am very glad that Gentlemen in that quarter of the House concur in my view of the gravity of the case, as far as Lord Spencer is concerned. Now, let us see what is the Motion that we have before us—what are its terms and what are its objects. The Motion prays for a full and public inquiry into the execution of Myles Joyce, and the continued imprisonment of four other persons. It aims, I think, at three objects—in the first place, it censures; in the second place, it asks for the retrial of the case; and, in the third place, for the revision of the case in consequence of new facts or evidence that is supposed to have come into our possession since the trial was concluded. Now, with regard to the censure upon Lord Spencer, that, I think, it ought to be clearly understood, is as distinctly as possible involved in the Motion itself and in its terms. The hon. Member (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) who has just sat down says we are only asked to do what was done in the Kilmartin case. I distinctly traverse that with all the courtesy that that statement will permit. In the Kilmartin case it was not even the act of this House which caused further proceedings. It was the production of facts and the discussion in this House. [Irish cheers.] I am very glad to hear those highly judicial cheers, which confirm the statement I make. It was the new facts and the discussion in this House which led the Executive Government spontaneously to refer to the Viceroy on the subject, and which led the Viceroy, from his own conviction, to arrive at a certain conclusion. But now, on the contrary, by thy very terms of the Motion which are before us, the action of the Viceroy is absolutely excluded, and he is condemned, if this Motion passes, as incompetent and unworthy to perform the duties of his Office. I hope I have made it clear, even to the hon. Member who has just spoken, that there is a broad and clear distinction between this case and that of Kilmartin. It has been said, and no Gentlemen expressed their own opinion, that the motive of Lord Spencer in declining to re-open this case has been to shield official guilt and offences. I am not cheered as I was a moment ago. Well, I believe that is so now I have obtained the testimony which I should not have asked for had it not been so freely and abundantly rendered on previous
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  occasions. Now, Gentlemen opposite think that the casting upon Lord Spencer of charges utterly destructive of his character and honour is for us a very slight matter. Who is Lord Spencer? Lord Spencer is a man of whom I will say, without fear of contradiction from any of those who differ from him more than from any who agree with him in general politics, that you cannot through the length and breadth of the country name an individual who commands a larger personal confidence. ["Oh, oh!" and loud cheers.] [An Irish MEMBER: Not in Ireland.] I am not speaking of hon. Gentlemen in that quarter of the House. I am speaking of the rest of the community. I am speaking of the general estimation in which Lord Spencer is held, and I affirm without fear of contradiction that there is not a man in this country who enjoys to the same singular degree the respect, the confidence, the veneration, and the affection of his fellow-subjects. Well, Lord Spencer does not stand alone; but I will not speak of those of whom I have less personal knowledge. I will not speak, for instance, of even so distinguished a man as Mr. Hamilton, who was sent to Ireland simply and solely because, on a survey of the whole range of choice, he was found and believed by us to be the best and ablest man whom we could send to fill a most arduous post. As I have never been in close official relations with him, I will not speak of him, and on the same ground I will not speak of the distinguished Gentleman who is now Attorney General for Ireland. But there is one person besides Lord Spencer of whom I will speak—a person who received a well-merited tribute last night from the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), in the admirable speech which he made, if I may presume so to call it, and that is the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. I have known the Lord Chancellor of Ireland well; I have sat by his side in the arduous conflicts of this House; I have seen the interior and exterior qualities of the man, and I have never known a man of a mind more thoroughly judicial, or of a capacity more deserving of, or more entitled to, the absolute confidence of his friends, and of all those with whom he may come in contact. Well, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland has, of

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  course, been the leading adviser of Lord Spencer in these transactions. It was his duty as a Member of the Government, and from no duty of his would he ever shrink. The reason I mention these things is to convey to the minds of hon. Members, if I can, what I think to be an error in their modes of procedure. I tell them plainly that a speech like the speech of the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Macfarlane), couched in terms of studied moderation, and without a word of charge or offence, is infinitely more likely to operate upon the mind of this House with respect to a Motion such as the present, than the making against a man like Lord Spencer, surrounded as he is by other men of the highest character and capacity, charges which, if true, show them to be the unworthiest of mankind. It would be well, if hon. Members desire the favourable judgment of this House, that they should speak a language understood by this House. But they have attempted to approach our hearts and minds through the medium of these sweeping condemnations of the character and motives of men whom we have been accustomed to revere and to love even more than we admire them. They speak to us in a foreign language. [Irish MEMBERS: We are foreigners!]
  MR. SPEAKER: I must request hon. Members not to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman. These interruptions are very unseemly, and I hope they will not be persisted in.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I, Sir, will do what I can to contribute to the peace and order of this discussion by taking no notice of what is said. I think, perhaps, a wider sense has been given to my words than they themselves convey. I say that hon. Members speak a foreign language when they make these charges against gentlemen like Earl Spencer and those by whom he is surrounded, such as the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Of course, I do not mean to say that they really spoke in a foreign language when they argued the case now before us. But I wish to point out to them that that extravagance of speech is an impediment in the way of the object which I have no doubt they unanimously desire to attain. With regard to another class of functionaries in Ireland, I own that it appears to me that there is something very unsatisfactory in this mode of attack.
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  There is a gentleman of the name of Bolton, in respect of whom I shall only take his name as the representative of an official person charged with certain duties. Well, what course has been taken in his case? He has been charged with offences which I understand are indictable offences, and for which, if I am rightly advised, it is in the power of those who believe them to be provable to secure his being indicted. [Laughter.] I am much obliged to the hon. Members who think that scornful laughter is one of the best modes of arguing a judicial question. It might, perhaps, be asked—"Why is not that course taken?" But I will suppose that for some reason or other it is not fit to be adopted; and, on the other hand, that the subject is fit to be treated in this House. I want to call the attention of the House to the manner in which it is treated. This House, according to every sound Constitutional doctrine, is the great inquest of the nation; and although there may be wrongs into which it is not the province even of this House to inquire, yet every one of us would desire to extend and not to contract that province. I will not, therefore, say that it is beyond the province of this House to inquire into these charges of an indictable offence which are made against Mr. Bolton; but this I will say—that the powers which the House exercises when it enters upon such a case are very great powers — powers which require to be carefully limited and checked in their use; and I must say that it is to my mind a dangerous and not altogether worthy practice—not worthy of the dignity of this House and of its Members — to present to the House Motions of great mildness in terms not directly conveying censure, and to support them in speeches involving the most tremendous charges of every kind. What is the effect? The effect is that those charges are scattered abroad to the world with the authority which they derive from having been introduced in debates in this House, but that no man is obliged to prove any of them. Now, that is a dangerous and evil state of things; and my contention is that when these grave and tremendous charges are brought forward by particular persons, these persons ought to be bound to prove them. [Hon. MEMBERS: Let us prove them. Grant the inquiry.] You wish

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  for an inquiry. Then let him who wishes for it lay upon the Table of this House the charges which he wishes to make. That I say, not without some facts in my recollection, has been repeatedly the practice of this House when proposals were made ostensibly for an inquiry, but when the very institution of the inquiry involved at least a primâ facie case of the gravest reproach, to require those who made the charges to bring them under the consideration of the House, and to pledge themselves to prove them, and only when the House has known what pledges were taken by the person making the accusation has the inquiry been granted. I remember a case not so grave as this, but yet a very grave one, in which I was myself concerned. A Notice of Motion was given by a distinguished Member of this House—the late Mr. Horsman—impugning the conduct of a very high functionary, a Bishop of this country—I forget the exact charges—but in regard to his proceeding in instituting to a particular benefice. The Motion was a vague Motion for a Committee to be appointed to inquire into the Bishop's conduct. Well, Sir, I made some investigation of the Journals of the House upon this occasion; and I found that I should be going according to precedent, as well as to principle, if I made a Motion to this effect—that the Member for Cockermouth do lay upon the Table of this House the charges to which he pledges himself, and which he pledges himself to prove before the Committee, before entertaining his Motion for a Committee.
  MR. HARRINGTON: If the right hon. Gentleman will permit me, I shall be very glad to do so.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I am very glad of any amendment in the form of proceedings that can be made. I am only observing upon the practice which has been adopted in the present case, which has been to place upon the Table a mild and comparatively inoffensive Motion, but, in speeches in support of it, to charge Lord Spencer with offences for which he would deserve impeachment, and to be still more liberal in accusations against other persons. I will only say one word more on this point. Were there a Motion made of direct censure upon the conduct of official functionaries, even in regard to judicial business—I
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  mean persons connected with the Crown and Executive Government—that I should consider to be a Motion totally differing from the Motion before us, for I think it is desirable to leave the greatest latitude to accusations against persons in the Public Service; and it is not on account of its bearing on them that I would oppose this Motion at this moment, but on account of its bearing, as it appears to me, upon the judicial system of the country. Well, the first of the objects of the Motion of the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Harrington) is censure, and the second is a retrial of the case. I limit myself to that proposition, because I admit that various Gentlemen in that quarter of the House have more or less declined to adopt the contention that the case out to be retried. But a considerable portion of the arguments of hon. Members opposite is directed to what amounts to a demand for a virtual retrial of the case. For example, the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) who has just sat down went over a good deal of the case with regard to the three identifying witnesses, and likewise with regard to the declarations made by the boys; and with respect to the first he raised a number of contentions as to the improbability or impossibility of their having given sound and true evidence, and in respect of their being under the influence of adverse motives, the whole of which had nothing whatever to do with the new matter which has come in since the trial, but which is a complete revival of questions involved in the original proceedings. Therefore, it is idle for the hon. Member to say, if he adheres to those arguments, that he does not ask for a retrial of the case. The hon. Member went further, because he dealt with the declarations taken from the two boys. He supposes that he has before him the fact that the counsel for the defence, having in his hands so much, at any rate, of those declarations as were given into the hands of the policemen, yet did not think fit to make them the ground of any fresh proceedings; and then the hon. Member actually says that because the counsel for the defence omitted to do for his clients what the hon. Member thinks he ought to have done, therefore there is ground for reopening the case.
  MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY: If he had done so; I did not say he had done

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  so. What I said was that if by some strange neglect on the part of the prisoners' counsel the case had not been put before the jury as it ought to have been, that was ground for making an inquiry.
  MR. GLADSTONE: The hon. Member said two cases—either wilful omission or neglect. We know that the defendants' counsel did not proceed upon this evidence; the hon. Member says that he ought to have proceeded upon it; and his contention is that on account of this neglect on the part of the counsel for the defence there ought to be a retrial of the case. Therefore, let us not conceal from ourselves that this is not a contention for a retrial on account of any new evidence which has come out since the original trial; but it is a contention that there should be a new trial because the prisoners' counsel may not have taken a certain course which the hon. Member thinks he ought to have taken. If we have come to that, that we are to retry a great judicial case, not simply on account of errors committed by the Crown, but on account of errors which we rather think may have been committed by other people whom the prisoners charged had for their defenders, then, indeed, there is an end of the settled administration of justice in this country—then, indeed, it is high time that you should set about devising a totally new set of provisions for the purpose. There is no question at all as to many important facts in the case. I shall not attempt to speak of them with authority; but I will point to what I think is a reasonable view which might be taken of them by a lay and untutored mind who regards them from without. In the first place, it is impossible to put out of view that we are dealing here with the verdict not of one jury, but of three. In the second place, it is impossible, I think, for any reasonably-minded person to omit from his consideration something of great importance in connection with the topic I have just touched on—namely, possible error on the part of the counsel for the defence. Was there ever so fine an opportunity, supposing that some error was committed by the counsel for the defence in the first of these trials, for the counsel in the following trial to notice that defect? [Mr. HARRINGTON: They were the same counsel.] Very well; it is identically the same thing; it is rather stronger. If he was the same counsel, assuredly there
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  never was an opportunity so favourable for a man to consider in the second trial whether he had done his best for his client in the first, and, if he found he had not, to correct it in the second; and, again, in the third trial, to consider whether he had done his best in the first and second, and in the third to supply the defect. These are circumstances which certainly appear to me to give a remarkable solidily to the judgment and the sentence which we have before us. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in his, as I think, very temperate and very dignified speech yesterday, observed on the remarkable strength of the evidence upon which those verdicts were given. I think he said—and even an uninstructed person might well believe that there was something most remarkable in the fact—that you have in this case no less than three distinct identifying witnesses. It was one of those cases in which, as I understand it, the identification amounted to everything; because although the identifying witnesses did not see the deed done, yet they saw the persons charged place themselves in the position which brought them within the guilt of murder. And there were three distinct witnesses to this fact; there were also the confessions of guilt, and there was the evidence of the approvers. With respect to the evidence of the approvers—and it has been one of the most satisfactory features in the debate—there has been no great disposition to rely upon it, on the one side of the House or the other. Several Gentlemen on that side told us they were willing to part with the second deposition of Casey, and I do not think that there is any great disposition on this side to place undue reliance on the first. With respect to the plea of guilt, I know of no reason why it should be invalidated. But with respect to the evidence of the three witnesses, that is a point of such importance that I wish to ask the House to observe some of the particulars affecting that evidence and those witnesses. These witnesses had to go through three trials. There were three opportunities of testing their consistency, each with himself, and their consistency one with another. Not in a single particular in any one of the three was that consistency in the slightest degree impaired or broken down. Next,

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  they were corroborated, up to a certain point, by the daughter; because a fact, very strange in itself, which is not now doubted or questioned, of their having—labouring men—given up the night to an excursion from their dwellings, is placed beyond all doubt whatever. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dublin University (Mr. Gibson) observed last night, a large part of this identification remains practically undisputed—it is only as to a portion that there is a subject of contest. Next, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman observed, out of 10 persons found guilty, nine have, at one period or another, distinctly and formally admitted their own guilt; and there is only one, and he is dead, with respect to whom that admission is not forthcoming. There is another point which I have not heard noticed—at any rate, it is one that strikes me—it is this—that this evidence of the three identifying witnesses is not wholesale evidence given hand over head; but it is evidence given with discrimination. Two of the three identifying witnesses speak to the identity of all the 10 men; one of them speaks to the identity of nine, and says, with regard to the tenth, he did not know him. That is certainly a circumstance of care and apparent fidelity, which goes to support the evidence of those witnesses. But is not this a very extraordinary fact, upon the showing of hon. Gentlemen in that quarter of the House, that whereas 10 persons were charged with being out of their homos in a particular place engaged in committing a particular crime in the middle of the night, no single attempt has ever been made during the trial, or during the subsequent period, to prove an alibi for any of those 10 men? Is it possible to conceive, if those 10 men had not been the guilty persons, it should not have been practicable for some of them to show that they were at home in bed at the time when the murder was charged to have been committed; or, if not in bed, that they were, at least, in some other place than this? [Mr. HARRINGTON: Wives are not admissible witnesses.] But if their wives are not able to give evidence, there are not so many houses in Ireland where there are not children. I understand that there were actually two witnesses paid for by the Crown for Myles Joyce who were not called; and I am not aware that there
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  could be any difficulty in proving that point. Another point that ought to be considered is that we are not dealing with an error of judgment on the part of those three identifying witnesses. They do not say—"I think it was so and so; to the best of my belief it was so and so." They did not give an opinion; they swore to a fact; they bound themselves as absolutely as men could do to the fact of the identity. The consequence is that if they did not speak the truth they were evidently perjurers. Then the House is asked to come to the conclusion that after three juries approved of their evidence, that evidence is to be rejected, and the men are to be treated as guilty of perjury. And does any one of those Gentlemen think that a jury would be found to convict any one of those persons? I do not hear a reply. [Several Irish MEMBERS: That is not the question.] There are ways of treating this question, undoubtedly, which are extremely short and easy. The oaths of the three men thus affirmatively and thus negatively corroborated, and the tale they tell, is dismissed by the hon. Member for Mallow (Mr. O'Brien) as a wild and impudent fabrication. Undoubtedly, if we, sitting here as Members of Parliament, sent for other purposes than to go into judicial decisions, and finding this mass of evidence given by these three men, whose testimony is woven, as it were, one in the other, making a threefold strand hard to break—if with our knowledge of the contour of the country and the circumstances of the case, and with the opinion formed here by us as Members of Parliament, we are to disturb the most solemn judicial proceedings; then, indeed, the position is one of very great peril, and I trust the House will pause before consenting to assume it. Then there are three points that are taken—the evidence of the boys, the dying declarations of the two men, and the recantations of the approvers. So far, I believe, as is known to us, it is the recantation of one approver only—namely, Casey. [An hon. MEMBER: Two.] That is alleged; but we have not facts of that kind in our possession, and I must say I do not regard the matter as of any great importance. Whether there were one or two, it appears to me that such evidence is of very little value; and I believe hon. Gentlemen from Ireland are

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  as well as aware as we are of the absolute impossibility of founding anything upon such evidence if it were to be applied to finding any person guilty of a criminal offence. But I dismiss the evidence of the approver, as I do not avail myself of the evidence of the approver. With regard to the two dying declarations, I would only speak of them as they appear from the statements of hon. Gentlemen opposite. The nature of these declarations is such that I believe in a legal sense they never can be treated as evidence. But I understand it also to be the case that they may present circumstances entitling them to moral weight; and in such a case they ought to be taken notice of and even acted upon by the responsible Minister in the exercise of the Prerogative of mercy. I am only going to offer an unprofessional remark—an extraneous remark—and it is this. It appears to me that if any moral weight is to be attached to such declarations, clearly the very first condition which you must absolutely require is that they should be conceived in the spirit and language of men who, conscious of the grievous offence they have committed against their laws and against their kind, seek at the last moment to make the best atonement in their power by telling the whole truth they know, and doing everything in their power, on the one hand, to exempt the innocent from punishment, and, on the other hand, to bring the criminals to justice. I take the statement of the declarations as it appears from the accounts given by hon. Gentlemen opposite who plead the force of it, and who tell us that these dying men pointed out the persons by whom they said the crime had been committed.
  MR. HARRINGTON: Will the right hon. Gentleman produce the declarations?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I have been tolerably patient of the hon. Gentleman's interruptions. I am not availing myself of anything in the declarations known to me. I am arguing upon what is shown, or stated, of them by those who plead them; and I say that upon their own plea they do not possess the very first qualification for entitling them to assume moral weight, and that qualification is that they shall be declarations of men desirous to atone for their, in this instance, horrible offence, by endeavouring
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  to procure the full and effectual administration of justice. Then it is said that there is great importance in the evidence of the two boys, and here the charge is made of the suppression of the evidence of the boy who survived. Subject to all the reserves I have made as to the value of evidence, I entirely contest the statement made more than once that the declarations of the boys were contradictory to the evidence of the three identifying witnesses. There is no contradiction whatever in my opinion. [Laughter.] I regret that there are Gentlemen in this House who think that contempt, and the free expression of contempt, is the best mode of arriving at the truth in a difficult investigation carefully requiring the exclusion of all such elements. I differ from them, and I am very sorry, partly for my own sake, which is a trifling consideration, much more for their own sakes, and very much more still for the sake of their country, to which, I think, they are not doing justice when they are not able to conduct their operations in this House in modes more agreeable and more consistent with prudence and right feeling. I am of opinion, subject to their better judgment, that there is no contradiction whatever between the statements of the boys, and particularly of the surviving boy, which is the most important, and the allegations of the three witnesses. The points are whether the upper parts of the vestments were light or dark, and whether the faces were dirty or blackened, or in their ordinary and natural condition. I am not an Irish scholar, and it does not appear clear whether the boy who survived declared the faces to be merely dark and dirty, or actually blackened; and I will suppose he declared them blackened. Well, it was observed by my right hon. Friend that they might have been blackened when the men were in the cottage; it does not follow that they were blackened when they were made objects of identification by the three witnesses. And as to the upper vestments, what could be more easy and more simple than upon entering the cottage, or about it, they should strip themselves of the dark clothes they ordinarily were, and should go into the cottage exhibiting a lightness of colour in their vestments? There is nothing approaching to a contradiction between the statements about the blackened faces

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  and the clothes and the evidence of the three witnesses. It is said that all this in the boys' depositions was withheld from the knowledge of the prisoners' counsel. The hon. Gentleman opposite has possessed himself of the brief of the counsel for the Crown. Without making an inquiry into that matter I cannot regret that he has got the brief, for I am very glad he should know everything that can be known. [Mr. BIGGAR: Oh, oh!] The hon. Member for Cavan is maintaining the consistency of his character; but if he will be kind enough to shut his ears for one moment and allow me to proceed without interruption, I will repeat that I am glad the hon. Gentleman should be in possession of everything and anything that will assist him in this investigation. It is said that the final declaration of the younger boy was not communicated as a document to the Court, or to the opposite counsel; but I believe, as a fact, that that final declaration did contain the particulars which I have mentioned about the light clothes, which particulars were not contained in the account the boy gave to the constable. The account given to the constable, however, did contain the important fact about the blackened faces—if the word used signifies blackened. Did the counsel for the defence call, or attempt to call, the boy for the sake of examining him upon that matter?
  MR. HARRINGTON: The Crown produced him; but he was not allowed to be sworn by the Crown, because upon his production on the table it was found that he was not sufficiently instructed to know the nature of an oath.
  MR. GLADSTONE: Yes, Sir; but the hon. Gentleman's account does not draw the distinctions which are essential to the truth. The case is that the Crown suppressed this evidence, and the answer is that the Crown placed the boy upon the table to be examined. The Crown placed him upon the Table where a man is placed when he is going to be examined. What more could the Crown do?
  MR. CALLAN: Teach him the nature of an oath.
  MR. GLADSTONE: The hon. Gentleman interrupts me by an exclamation which I must call impertinent—no; I will not say impertinent. Even the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin
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  M'Carthy), in the course of his remarks to-night, observed that when he heard the speech of the Home Secretary yesterday it reminded him of an answer given by the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to-day. The hon. Gentleman confuses a little the present, the future, and the past tenses. I am reminded by my right hon. Friend that it was in the power of the counsel for the defence, who had been cognizant of the statements about the blackened faces for months before, at any time to have called the surviving boy as a witness; and if he had not been examined it would have been owing to the discovery that he was not a competent witness to give evidence in Court. The Crown placed him in a position to be examined, and that was all they could do, so far as they were concerned. We have this fact before us, that the counsel for the defence did not think it any part of his duty to his clients to take any step whatever to promote the examination of the boy. Such are the grounds upon which it is attempted to disturb these remarkable verdicts, and it is an attempt to disturb them in order that there shall be a full public inquiry. What is this inquiry to be? What are its possible forms? We are to begin by shutting out the only regular and Constitutional form. The Constitution of this country knows nothing of criminal appeal, properly so called, nothing of the retrial of cases, as was explained by the Home Secretary last night. It knows of the reference to the responsible Minister, who, surrounded by the very best advisers, and acting under the deepest sense of responsibility, is entitled to exercise the Prerogative of mercy. That mode of operation you begin by excluding, because what you are asking for is not a further investigation of the question by the responsible officer of the Queen, but it is a full and public inquiry, a description to which his operation could not correspond. What kind of a public inquiry is it to be? Is it to be a Committee of this House? I remember a similar case of endeavouring to overset the verdict of a jury by a Committee of this House. It was in the case, well known at the time, of Mr. Whittle Harvey. It happened in 1833 or 1834, and I myself sat upon that Committee. I voted alone against the Report of the Committee, which attempted to overset the

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  verdict of the jury in Mr. Whittle Harvey's case. Mr. O'Connell was Chairman of the Committee, and he conducted the case with consummate skill and ability. That all but unanimous Report was presented to the House, and, powerful as the House is when acting in its own proper province, it showed how impotent is the House when it makes an irregular use of its machinery, although it was used as well as it could be for the purpose in view. The Report was so little recognized by the public opinion of the country that the Benchers of the Inns of Court, to whom Mr. Whittle Harvey had applied for his admission to the Bar, persisted in their refusal, and beat the Committee of the House of Commons. That was not very promising for inquiry by a Committee of the House, and yet I am by no means sure, if there was to be an inquiry at all, whether that would not be as good a method as any other. What has been suggested? It has been suggested that a very eminent Judge, Lord Bramwell, should be sent to examine into the matter. Has the hon. Member who recommended this appointment satisfied himself that Lord Bramwell will accept the duty? I suspect he knows as well as I do that there is not the smallest likelihood of such an acceptance. What would he or anyone else be invited to do? He would be sent partly to correct the defence at the original trial—for that the argument on the other side distinctly includes—and partly on account of the new evidence, which we believe to be wholly without weight for the purpose in view, and virtually to overset the verdicts of three juries, given unanimously and with a universal recognition of the weight of the evidence on which they were founded. What means would he have? How would he go to work? Whom would he examine? Would he examine this child now of 11 years? [An hon. MEMBER: Certainly.] Well, we know what the child has to say; we know his statement about the faces of the men and about their garments. As to one of these statements, that the faces were blackened, we know very well that the counsel for the defence did not think it worth his while to use it on behalf of his clients. Is he to examine the convicts who pleaded guilty? Is the House to send down some great lawyer to examine these four convicts who pleaded guilty,
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  without any direct evidence tending to show that they were innocent, and to endeavour to convict them of falsehood on that plea, and prove them to be innocent? Is he to examine the recanting approver? I hardly think anybody will recommend that. [Mr. HARRINGTON: Why not?] Then there is one Gentleman who would examine him. I really thought that, throughout the debate, and especially by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), and other hon. Members on that side of the House, a disposition had been shown to abandon as hopeless the statements of Casey as the foundation for any proceedings of a public and judicial character. If anyone could be found to undertake the inquiry, how is he to examine these persons? He has no power to administer an oath; he has to go to work without the sanction of an oath; and upon the strength of such evidence as he gets without the sanction of an oath he is to overset the verdicts which were arrived at in public after solemn and repeated inquiry, and covered by that solemn sanction. [Mr. GRAY: The Kilmartin case.] In that case the proceeding was one known to the Constitution, and it was completely distinct from that of a Court of Justice. But the proceeding you recommend is totally unknown to the Constitution; you have no precedent; it is anew and unheard-of method of disturbing a solemn judgment. It cannot be covered by the sanction of an oath, and the issue is not to be referred even to the judgment of a jury. In these circumstances, I must express my hope that a vast majority, a large and overwhelming majority, of this House will decline to accept this most objectionable and most inefficient Motion. My last objection to the full and public inquiry, be it as full and public as it may, is that it must be totally inefficient. You cannot possibly come at a body of testimony through the medium of such an inquiry, worth for one moment to be put in competition with the testimony upon which was founded the original solemn proceeding. We do not admit that there is any substance in the new evidence. We conceive that there is the greatest danger in arguments like those of the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) for re-opening and retrying that which was publicly, fully, impartially, and repeatedly tried, and

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  affirmed by a Judge and by three juries. We enter our protest against the institution of a Court of Criminal Appeal, in the first place, for a single case, and not upon the foundation of a general law; and, in the second place, against the institution of a Court of Criminal Appeal, totally inferior in all its means of action, and in all its power to investigate the truth, to the tribunals which it seeks to supersede.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid, that the speech of the Prime Minister was really disappointing, not only to his political foes, but also to his political friends. It was one of the weakest, the lamest, and the most halting speeches the right hon. Gentleman had ever delivered in that House. The largest part of it was taken up with questions utterly irrelevant to the points at issue; and, so far as it was relevant, it consisted of nothing but weak and flimsy arguments in support of the case of the Crown. He would just take two of the statements made by the Prime Minister as an example. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of Lord Spencer as having the respect of the general community. Surely it ought to have occurred to the right hon. Gentleman that by far the greater measure of Earl Spencer's success as an Administrator was to be found, not in the opinion of the general community over which he ruled, but of the people by whom he was sent to govern. It was as notorious as any fact in Ireland that there never had been a Representative of Her Majesty in Ireland who was more deeply and more widely loathed and despised in that country than the present Lord Lieutenant. If he were asked for a proof of this statement he need but refer to a recent tour of Earl Spencer, with the main incidents of which the right hon. Gentleman was perfectly familiar. By a consensus of opinion and action that was almost unprecedented, the loathing and the hatred in which Earl Spencer was held by the population of Ireland was then made known. He would give a second specimen of the right hon. Gentleman's statement and argument. The right hon. Gentleman asked, how could the Government convict those three men? What evidence could they produce; what tribunal could they institute to try them; what machinery had they available? That was the confession of the Prime Minister after two
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  years of the Crimes Act—that three men, publicly accused of murder, could not be brought to justice or to trial. But he would give the right hon. Gentleman a fair chance. Let him place at the disposal of his hon. Friend the Member for Westmeath (Mr. Harrington) the Search Clauses of the Crimes Act and the Secret Inquiry Clauses of the Crimes Act, and, if his hon. Friend would accept the loan, the services of Mr. George Bolton, and let his hon. Friend be supposed capable of imitating the jury-packing tactics of Crown Solicitors in Ireland, including the latest accession to the honourable order of Knighthood; and he promised on behalf of his hon. Friend that in three weeks he would have a case which, no jury would reject for the conviction of the real murderers. He was glad that the right hon. Gentleman referred to the Kilmartin case, of which, hitherto, the Government had been a little shy. The late Chief Secretary never said a word about that case until, at the end of his speech, he had to reply to an interruption. Yet that case must have been present to the right hon. Gentleman's mind. It was the Kilmartin case which kicked the right hon. Gentleman upstairs. The Prime Minister denied that there was any analogy between that case and the present. But the two cases were analogous. In each there was a crime committed, a man convicted, a statement that the conviction was unjust, and that the man was innocent, founded on a dying confession. Next, in the Kilmartin case, there was a primary inquiry hold by the Government, and the then Chief Secretary brought forward that inquiry as an answer to the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton). A second inquiry was refused by the Chief Secretary; but it was compelled by the action of the House, and the unhappy man was released after having undergone the horrors of penal servitude for two years. When Kilmartin was released his first thought was what would be the feeling of the Chief Secretary, who had done all he could to prevent the inquiry being held. He had thought that the late Chief Secretary's conscience would have been roused; perhaps it was, and his transfer from Ireland to the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Department was a consequence of that rousing of conscience. He remembered that when the horror which attended the execution of Myles Joyce was brought

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  before the House the Prime Minister seemed to be greatly shocked. But the case was brought forward still more strikingly by his hon. Friend the Member for Mallow (Mr. O'Brien) in United Ireland, in which was given the declaration of those two men from the gallows when they had the noose round they necks. But the result was that his hon. Friend was put on his trial for seditious libel. That was a test of the willingness of the Government to institute an inquiry into the matter, which they professed themselves ready to do if a proper case was shown. But the cheers which last night greeted his hon. Friend were not only an expression of the regard and esteem in which he was held by his friends, but indicated the conviction that the struggle with the powers of darkness at Dublin Castle was coming to an end, and that his hon. Friend's day of reckoning with Lord Spencer was very near. The trial of these men had been conducted with indecent haste, and the jury were only a few minutes in each case in finding their verdict. Everybody in Court, from the Judge downwards—and it was with deep concern that he included the counsel for the defence—were anxious to be rid of the case as soon as they could. [Ironical Ministerial cheers.] Well, he had not intended to refer to the counsel for the defence in these cases, as he did not wish to make it a personal matter; but, having been so directly challenged by the Prime Minister and Home Secretary, he would say that the counsel for the defence were incompetent, notoriously incompetent, to conduct it. The prisoners, as murderers, were defended by the smallest and pettiest counsel which the miserable fees of the Government would allow them. [Mr. KENNY: They were the worst on the Connaught Circuit.] The counsel for the defence were utterly incompetent. [Interruption, and "Eminent counsel."] The counsel employed could in no sense be said to be more eminent than the hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood), who interrupted him. He would repeat that there seemed to be a conspiracy between the Judge, counsel, and the juries to hurry the cases through the Court. Casey in his evidence stated that some time before they reached John Joyce's house they were joined by two additional men, Patrick Kelly and Michael Neale. The Judge called attention to
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  this remarkable discrepancy in the evidence for the Crown, for it was observable that all the independent witnesses swore to there being 10 men, whereas the addition of Kelly and Neale brought the number up to 12. The mention of the two additional names afforded a clue to the whole affair; but although the chief prosecuting counsel for the Crown had declared that these men were at the root of the confederacy, no endeavour had been made to find any trace of them. He would ask the Government who Kelly and Neale were? Mr. Justice Barry remarked that it would be for the jury to say whether it was impossible or improbable that they were the instigators and concoctors of the whole affair. Yet the Government did not even condescend to make any inquiry about them. For once the counsel for the defence made a good fight. Mr. Malley tried to get a postponement, and one of his reasons for demanding it was the very point that had just been referred to; but Mr. Murphy, the counsel for the Crown, declined to accede to the request. He thought he had now clearly established the fact that there was a conspiracy to hurry on the case without a due and thorough investigation of the main and essential circumstances. In his opinion, the Government did not want to find out the true concoctors of the Maamtrasna massacre, because if the illegal murderers of Maamtrasna were discovered the legal murderers of Dublin Castle would also be discovered. With regard to the blackened faces, the Solicitor General for Ireland, in a flight of imagination, gave it as his explanation that black was white and that white was black. The explanation of the ex-Chief Secretary was that the poor boys, seeing the hellish work in which these fiends were engaged, would naturally imagine that their faces were black. This was the kind of evidence which they were asked by the Government to accept as probable and credible. The men who committed the murders were most of them relatives of and all of them well known to these two boys. Persons about to commit a crime in Ireland almost invariably disguised themselves—most commonly by blackening their faces. Almost the first thing that Casey had said when interviewed was that the men had blackened faces. The evidence was conclusive that the faces of these men were blackened.

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  If the two boys were unable to identify the men, who were stated to be their first cousins, when they were standing over them beating their lives out, because the men's faces were blackened, how was it possible that the witnesses for the Crown could have identified them at a distance of 50 yards in the night time? He submitted that there was no pretence for the course which the Crown had adopted of holding back the fact that the boys had stated that the men's faces were blackened. It had been stated by learned counsel of great ability that the practice at the English Bar was that all facts of importance were communicated by the counsel for the prosecution to the counsel for the defence. But was that done in this case? Would the Attorney General for England dare to say it was? He dared not do so. It had been said by the Home Secretary that it was notorious that the boys had said that the men's faces were blackened. But was it notorious that the boys had stated that fact in their dying depositions? Such depositions were perfectly legal documents, and they were wilfully kept back by either the solicitor or the counsel for the prosecution from the counsel for the defence. The Home Secretary had further said that one of the boys was placed in the witness-box in order that he might be examined by the prisoners' counsel, but that it was proved that the lad did not know the nature of an oath. But this boy had been for three months in the care of the police; and could not they in that long period have educated him sufficiently to let him know the consequences of giving false testimony? It must be remembered that the boy was nine years of age, and was stated to be an intelligent lad, who could easily have been taught such a simple matter as that. The police did not train the boy because they did not want his evidence. The note inserted in the Crown brief by Mr. Bolton that the boy's evidence was unimportant was a deliberate lie, because his evidence would have been most important and pertinent. The inference was indisputable that the evidence was kept back wilfully and fraudulently. The Government had refused this inquiry on the ground that to grant it would be to interfere with law and order in Ireland, which was a paraphrase for saying that if it were granted they
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  would lose the inestimable services of Lord Spencer. He, however, asked that this inquiry should be granted in the interests of law and order, and in the interests of Lord Spencer himself. Lord Spencer had, in the minds of the Irish people, as odious and as terrible a stigma upon his character as ever attached to any man. He was believed by the overwhelming majority of the Irish people to have been guilty of a cruel judicial murder; and the belief went further, because it was believed that he had been guilty of that murder in pursuance of a general policy of attempting to strike terror by indiscriminate cruelty and executions. It was believed that Lord Spencer had in his possession documents which would show his guilt in the matter; if, on the contrary, they would show his innocence, let him produce them. The Government had had the meanness to declare that the documents could not be produced, because to produce them would be contrary to precedent. But if there was anything in the world that was in accordance with immemorial precedent, it was that dying declarations of criminals should be made public. The impression, however, would be left upon the minds of the Irish people that Lord Spencer was afraid to produce these documents. He was, therefore, justified in saying that this inquiry ought to be granted in the interests of Lord Spencer himself, and of his own personal repute and his own mental tranquillity. It was one of the highest attributes of the law that all men should be equal before it; and in this case he demanded that the poor peasant, Myles Joyce, and the wealthy, distinguished, and eminent Peer, Lord Spencer, should be placed upon an equality. In the name of the majesty of the law he demanded that the life of the poor peasant should be deemed of equal value with the official career of Lord Spencer. The Prime Minister had said that no Irish policy could be complete unless it won over the hearts of the Irish people; but it seemed to be the favourite theory of successive Administrations that to solve the Irish problem they had only to put sufficient Irishmen in prison, and to put enough Irish bodies under ground. That was not true statesmanship. By refusing this inquiry the Ministry might retain the services of Lord Spencer, but they would lose what was of far greater importance to them

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  —they would lose the sympathy of Ireland. They might obtain a momentary advantage for their policy; but they would deprive law and order in Ireland of its surest, highest, and safest guarantee—the confidence and respect of the people.
  MR. HOPWOOD, in opposing the Amendment, said, that such a demand as that put forward by hon. Members opposite would not for a moment be listened to if it related to some case in England. He (Mr. Hopwood) contended that it was absurd to say there was any difference in the administration of justice in Ireland and England. He was surprised that two of his hon. and learned Friends opposite thought fit to reprove the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland for having shown a little warmth in defending the conduct of his colleagues at the Bar in Ireland acting for the Crown in this case. When he heard the spouting declamation that the poorest peasant should be secured the same justice as the Peer, his (Mr. Hopwood's) answer was that it was secured. They were not accustomed to that sort of bravado in the administration of justice in England. The same course was pursued in the two countries with regard to the treatment of criminals, and he could call to mind several cases in England in which the same course had been pursued as had been pursued in this case. It was now desired to establish, for the purposes of this case, a Court of Criminal Appeal in the House of Commons itself; but he would remind the House that when his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General, with the support of himself (Mr. Hopwood) and other hon. Friends, was doing his best the Session before last to obtain a Court of Criminal Appeal, hon. Members opposite gave him little assistance at any stage of the Bill? And it was the same with the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill), who, in this case, it appeared, had now taken the Irish Party under his patronage. Had the noble Lord in any way assisted them? Nothing of the kind.
  LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL: The hon. and learned Member, I am sure, does not wish to misrepresent me. He will not deny me the same justice he is claiming for himself. I supported the Attorney General in every Division on his Motion.
  MR. HOPWOOD: I should say that that was a ready answer in the extent of its audacity.
  LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL: It is quite true.
  MR. HOPWOODsaid, it was not for him to bandy words with the noble Lord. His impression was rather different to that of the noble Lord. A reference to the proceedings of the Committee would not bear out the noble Lord's statement. A trial had taken place in this case, and the most sweeping accusations had been made against the Judge and jurors who had tried the case. Hon. Gentlemen opposite from Ireland seemed to think that the Judge had acted wickedly, that the jury had acted wickedly, and that everybody had acted wickedly. ["No, no!"] Then, who had? [Mr. HEALY: George Bolton."] Why, on their own showing, George Bolton had nothing to do with keeping back the two depositions. It was further said that there were singular circumstances connected with the case; but did hon. Gentlemen think that they were more capable of dealing with the case now than the jurors who had given so much attention to it? It was desired now to retry the case; but if their real wish was to inflame the hatred of the people of Ireland for this country, that was the way to do it. They had heard a great deal about the alleged suppression of the depositions; but he thought that their production or non-production was altogether a matter of discretion. He, himself, would have shown them to the defending counsel, and left it to him if he thought fit to comment on them; but the Crown counsel, no doubt, considered that they did full justice by producing the surviving boy for examination. The boy, however, turned out to be ineligible as a witness, owing to his not understanding the nature of an oath. Some suggestion had been made that the case should have been postponed, and the boy in the meantime educated. But such an application, when made in a well-known English case, had very rightly been scouted by the Judge. After careful consideration, he had come to the conclusion that what were called the dying declarations did not in the least affect the soundness of the verdict of the jury, and the best proof was that the men most concerned showed their own appreciation of their guilt by pleading guilty. Yet, a new investigation into their case was demanded. Well, he was

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  in favour of inquiry; but there had been an inquiry already, and if any further evidence was forthcoming, he felt sure that Lord Spencer would hold a further inquiry. The present outcry was, he believed, due to a political motive. ["Oh, oh!"] It was simply a handle on which to hang an amount of cruel denunciation of Lord Spencer, that Gentlemen who used it would be ashamed, apart from politics, to apply to any fishwife, or anybody in any other situation in life. Remonstrance, however, seemed to be useless; and he therefore hoped that those who sat on his side of the House, and who were determined to maintain the honour and character of Lord Spencer, would never submit to the present demands made upon them for the passing of this Resolution as a test of political triumph.
  SIR JOSEPH M'KENNAsaid, he was strongly interested in the preservation of law and order in Ireland, and he would rather thrust his hand into the fire and burn it off, than stand up and defend men whom he believed to be guilty. He thought this was a very similar case to that of Kilmartin, who had recently been released. He wished particularly to call the attention of the House to the fact that the case now awaited revision in circumstances wholly different from those which were presented to the jury. When these men were found guilty, he believed in their guilt, and that belief was never shaken until the two fellow-prisoners of Myles Joyce, on the eve of their parting from this world, spent some of the short time left for them to make their peace with God in inculpating themselves, and exculpating Myles Joyce. These men who made that declaration might have been as abandoned as the thieves on the Cross; but they should recollect that one of those thieves was, in his last moments, deemed worthy of acceptance. He also considered that Myles Joyce, in his denial of the crime, was worthy of all credence. The evidence of the independent witnesses would not of itself have compelled any jury to convict the prisoners, and the testimony of the informers, which made their statements good evidence, did not now stand in confirmation of it. Although he admitted that the three independent witnesses were honest, yet he thought they had jumped too readily to conclusions, and had described the men from a distance
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  which seemed to him to be too great for the purposes of recognition. If they could have supposed the exculpation made by these two informers who admitted their own guilt, to reach Dublin Castle at the same time as the communication which subsequently came from the Archbishop of Tuam, he did not believe that it would have been possible for Lord Spencer to have sent Myles Joyce to his death. If Lord Spencer, at the eleventh hour, now ordered this inquiry, and placed the case in the hands of some Queen's Counsel to carry on an independent inquiry, as in the case of Kilmartin, he believed a just conclusion would be arrived at with respect to those men now in prison. The Prime Minister had asked, who could be examined at the proposed inquiry? Were they to examine the informers? And he (Sir Joseph M'Kenna) had interrupted by asking "Why not?" Was not their evidence as good and as trustworthy now as when they were purchasing their lives by their evidence, and as when the Crown aceepted it for the conviction of the men who had been hanged and those sent to penal servitude? What was there to tempt them to come forward now but the workings of their own conscience? Was it to be believed that those men had been so crafty and deceitful as to succeed in imposing upon the Archbishop of Tuam? He maintained that this was a case for such an inquiry as had been given in Kilmartin's case, and if that were granted he should be satisfied. There was no legal difficulty in the way of a further inquiry in the case, and therefore he would strongly support the demand that was made upon the Government.
  MR. T. C. THOMPSONsaid, that no vote he had ever recorded had caused him more anxiety than that which he would be called upon to give that night. During the last few days he had been considering very seriously the course he should take, and he must say that the exciting language that had been used on both sides of the question made it very difficult to form a calm judgment upon. He had, however, endeavoured to eliminate from his mind everything but what bore strictly on the legal view of the question; and when he said it was his intention to vote in favour of the Amendment, which was couched in very simple and plain language, not in any way calculated to excite their passions, he hoped

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  he should not be looked upon as being a lukewarm supporter of the Ministry. It must be remembered that a grave responsibility rested on the prosecution in calling upon men as witnesses who would otherwise have been found guilty. It was only to be done when absolutely necessary, and in 99 cases out of 100 such witnesses were the principal witnesses. Here, on the other hand, they had been called to confirm the principal witnesses. They had been told that this was an attack on the Government in Ireland. He could not see that it was in any way a question affecting the Government; but he would ask the House to eliminate from their minds any such question. He did not see that granting such an inquiry as was demanded would involve any degradation to Lord Spencer. He exonerated Lord Spencer from all blame; but there had been, in his opinion, a slight miscarriage of justice. On the other hand, he did not blame very much the conduct which had been pursued on the other side. The prosecution evidently felt that no jury would convict on the evidence alone of men who swore that they identified the murderers on that dark night, and to back up that story it was necessary that approvers should appear. Since these had appeared—and their evidence doubtless contributed to the finding of the jury—one of these approvers went to his Bishop, admitted that he had done wrong, prayed to withdraw his former statements, and asked for inquiry. It must be borne in mind that if the Bill which the Government brought forward last year had been passed, then these men whose guilt was now in question would have been entitled bylaw to that which they now asked for as a favour. How, then, could the granting of an inquiry be a degradation of justice? He thought they were entitled to further inquiry. The testimony on which the whole case rested had been shaken in consequence of the confession of one of the approvers. He did not know—for no explanation had been given—why the Judge had not asked for the declaration of the dying boy, or why it had not been used by the counsel. If that declaration had been admitted, it would have thrown a doubt on the approver's evidence; it was not offered by the Crown; and now the approver's evidence was contradicted by the approver himself. The evidence for the Crown might have been sufficient
  390
  without calling the approver; but if the Crown thought it necessary to call an approver, and after the trial there had arisen cause to discredit his evidence, should further inquiry be refused? He would ask any fair Englishman could he say that that was just? What did the existence of the best Government they had ever seen matter when compared with the importance of a question such as this, and with their solemn duty as regarded it? The noblest Administration that ever sat in this land would weigh but as a feather in the balance in comparison with the lives of these poor peasants in Galway. Had this case been so critically examined that there was no flaw in it whatever? If there was a flaw, then let them have a further examination. It was said also that to grant a fresh inquiry would be contrary to the Constitution. Was it really so? Was there no instance of that? Many of them must remember, as he did, the case of a man who was supposed to have committed a fraud upon the Bank of England. In that case an inquiry was refused again and again; but after the man had been transported for several years, he was brought back again by the judgment of the country, and compensated for the wrong that had been done to him. He maintained that it was not contrary to the Constitution to grant such an inquiry, as there was no time in a man's life when restitution could not be made to him under the law of England if it was found wrong had been done. He therefore earnestly trusted that the Government would grant an inquiry in the case, for, in his opinion, there had certainly been a clear and evident case made out for it.
  SIR EARDLEY WILMOT, in supporting the Amendment, said, that having been for 20 years Recorder of the borough of which the right hon. Gentleman in the Chair was the Representative in that House, and having, therefore, had a long experience in the Criminal Law and in the conducting of criminal cases, he had had ample opportunity of considering subjects such as those which were involved in the present case, and he had, therefore, endeavoured to come to a just conclusion concerning it. Before going any further, however, he wished to have a matter cleared up as to what took place at the end of last Session, when the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War (the Marquess

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  of Hartington), having been appealed to on the matter, had given a promise that it should be further inquired into. He (Sir Eardley Wilmot) understood that that promise had been redeemed; but in what manner had it been done? Why, the matter was referred back to the Lord Lieutenant, who referred it back to Messrs. Bolton and Brady, whose conduct to a certain extent was impeached.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: No, no. The only thing that Bolton or Brady had to say in the matter was to answer the charges made against them by this particular informer. The inquiry by the Lord Lieutenant was by the advice and with the aid of all the highest legal authorities he had around him.
  SIR EARDLEY WILMOTsaid, he simply wanted to know, was it in consequence of the representations of the Irish Members that the noble Marquess did refer it to the Lord Lieutenant; and whether the Lord Lieutenant held the inquiry; and that the result was that he determined that any further steps were inexpedient? He was, therefore, glad to hear the explanation that the inquiry had been conducted by the proper authorities. For his own part, he had listened carefully, and he hoped with impartiality, to most of the speeches which had been delivered, and especially to that of the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite the Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. Walker), and the one proceeding from the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department; he had waited in the House night after night with the most patient attention; and, bringing to bear his judicial experience of many years upon the matter, he had come to the conclusion that there had been a great wrong done to men, one of whom underwent the sentence of death, and others of whom were now in prison. But, while saying that, and that the wrong done was of such a character as to demand inquiry, he entirely repudiated the charges that had been made against the Lord Lieutenant, who, he thought, had done his duty most fairly and ably as far as his lights went. The noble Lord, however, had not sufficient light to enable him to judge of such a case; and he (Sir Eardley Wilmot) considered—without for a moment blaming him—that he had made a mistake. If,
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  indeed, he could conceive that the charges made by hon. Members below the Gangway were true—that the Lord Lieutenant had entered into a conspiracy to defeat the administration of justice—all he could say was that the just indignation of the people of Ireland should sweep the Castle of Dublin and the whole of those connected with it off the face of the earth. But he did not attach the slightest credit to the suggestion that there was any foundation for such a charge, and he did not believe it for a moment. His own experience of the Legal Profession enabled him to know that there was not unfrequently a desire and a wish on the part of prosecuting counsel to press home a conviction, and to make that their chief and leading object. He had seen that himself in small cases, at the Sessions and on Circuit. A consideration of the two preeminent facts of the case had led him to the conclusion that the case was one for further inquiry. The first was to be found in the declarations made by two of the condemned men before their execution. Here they had two of the men on their way to execution, and almost in sight of eternity, declaring before two magistrates the justice of their own punishment, the innocence of the third man, Myles Joyce, and the innocence also of the four men who were now undergoing penal servitude for life. He confessed he was struck with the utmost astonishment that the confession, made at such a time and under such circumstances, had not been made the subject of immediate inquiry. He would remind hon. Members of the case of Edmund Galley, condemned to death at Exeter many years ago, but reprieved on inquiry induced by the statement of the man condemned with him that he had nothing to do with the crime, although the reprieve was followed by a transportation of 40 years, at the end of which Galley was freed, and granted £1,000 compensation on a Vote passed by that House. He also remembered the case of the Winchester pirates who were condemned to death, one of their number being a boy of 15. They were to be executed on a Monday, and on the previous Saturday, the convicted men sent for the chaplain of the goal in which they were, and said that the boy was innocent of the crime with which he had been charged, as he had only acted under duress, having been threatened with

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  death if he would not join with the others. This confession of the prisoners was not suppressed. The chaplain at once proceeded with it to London to show to the Home Secretary; but unfortunately that official was away at Balmoral, and as he could not be communicated with in time, there being neither railway nor telegraph at that time to that part of the country, the prisoners were all executed. He had never felt convinced of the justice of the execution in the case of that boy, and consequently, since the trial of the Winchester pirates, he had always advocated the establishment of a Court of Criminal Appeal. In fact, he was so convinced of the necessity of a reform in our criminal system that it had led him, although unsuccessfully, on three occasions to bring in a Bill for that purpose. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in his speech the other night, had pointed out that, in the absence of such a tribunal, this case could not now be reopened; but whose fault was it that there was not a Court of Criminal Appeal? It was the fault of the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman was a Member, seeing that it was promised in the Queen's Speech two years ago. He dismissed from his consideration of the case the whole of the secondary evidence of Thomas Casey. With his antecedents, no jury would for a moment credit it. But he repudiated altogether the doctrine which had been raised in the course of the debate, and which had surprised him very much—namely, that the prosecuting counsel had it in their discretion to say whether depositions might be withheld from counsel for the defence which might or might not affect the evidence against a prisoner on trial. In investigations which had for their object the elucidation of truth, that doctrine could not be admitted. It was also well worthy of consideration that if the young Joyces did not recognize their own cousin among the murderers, there was little chance of the independent witnesses being able to identify the whole of the 10 men. The hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. Harrington) had presented the case very ably in his book, and he (Sir Eardley Wilmot) had studied the matter carefully. After 30 years' experience of Criminal Law, he should say that he had never heard of such a thing as depositions
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  being suppressed, as appeared to have been done in that case. In his opinion, the suppression of the confessions made by the men before execution, and the withholding of the depositions of the boys from the knowledge of counsel at the time of the trial, were quite sufficient to justify a call for inquiry. He would, therefore, cheerfully support the Amendment. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department had spoken of the inconvenience which a reopening of the question would involve; but he (Sir Eardley Wilmot) had never heard that if a wrong was done to any one of our fellow-countrymen it could possibly be without a remedy. He could not help thinking that the present case was an illustration of the evils arising from a system of double Administration. He would remind them of the saying of that eminent patriot and statesman, Grattan, that with a united Legislature a separate Government would never succeed or prosper. With a united Legislature there ought to be united Government, and he believed that the time had come when a thorough alteration should take place in the administration of justice in Ireland. They should have equal laws for both nations—Paribus se lêgibus ambo œtema in federa jurisgant — and if they wanted turbulence and discontent to be discontinued, he believed that this was a very good opportunity for the Government to devise and consider whether they could not place the Administration in Ireland upon a better footing and in such a manner as to tranquillize the country and give satisfaction and contentment to the Irish people.
  MR. BULWERsaid, that, like his hon. and learned Friend who had just spoken (Sir Eardley Wilmot), he (Mr. Bulwer) had been connected for more than 30 years with the administration of the Criminal Law, and having some little acquaintance with the mode in which that law was administered in this country, he wished to make a few observations. He should not in the least be influenced by the intemperate and unbecoming language used in that debate by hon. Members below the Gangway, though that might be an inducement to some men of impulsive temperament to vote against them. Neither, on the other hand, should he be inclined to support the Government on the ground of the rubbish which had been uttered

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  both in and out of the House to the effect that if the Amendment were carried Lord Spencer, and probably the Home Secretary, would have to retire. That would not influence him in the least in the consideration of the question before the House, which was whether four or five men should be left in penal servitude for the remainder of their lives. He would also pass over all the talk in and out of the House about the conversion of Casey, and would make only one or two remarks on the points urged by his hon. Friend below him (Sir Eardley Wilmot). As to the observation that the Government had not given due consideration to the statements made by the culprits on the scaffold, everybody who had any acquaintance with Courts of Justice, or criminals, knew that it was far from unusual for guilty men on the scaffold to declare their innocence, or, where four or five men had been engaged in the commission of a crime, for some of them who had no hope of escape to try to do something for the others. The other point, which he confessed had impressed him to some extent, was that the counsel for the prosecution were said to have withheld from the counsel for the defence some evidence which ought to have been made known to them. On the night of the murder the two young Joyces were wounded; they were expected to die; it was said that they were sworn; and if that was the case it gave their declarations some additional solemnity. But then they were not cross-examined. It seemed to have been entirely forgotten in this discussion that a dying declaration could only be given in evidence, if it was evidence at all, in a case where the death of the person making the declaration was the subject of inquiry. Every lawyer knew that the declaration of the boy who died could not have been put before the jury on these trials by any regular process; and, in the case of the boy who survived, he was tendered as a witness; but it turned out that he was incompetent to give evidence, because of his want of that education which the law required that a witness should possess. It was suggested that the counsel for the Crown ought to have handed to the counsel for the defence documents—miscalled depositions—which he himself could not have made use of on behalf of the Crown, and which the prisoners' counsel could not have used if he had had them in his possession.
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  The documents could not have been used before the jury by any regular process; and it was, therefore, absurd to say that the counsel for the Crown ought to have handed to the counsel for the defence documents which neither of them could have made use of.
  MR. HARRINGTON: It could have been made use of in cross-examination.
  MR. BULWERsaid, the hon. Member who interrupted him knew nothing about the matter. Did the hon. Member mean to tell lawyers in that House, or out of it, that a counsel could cross-examine about the contents of a written document which was not admissible in evidence? [Mr. E. CLARKE: He could.] He maintained that the declarations could not have been brought before the jury, except in an irregular way. ["Oh, oh!"] He must protest against the indecorous and personal observations made by those indecent Irishmen sitting below the Gangway. [Cries of "Order!"]
  MR. KENNYrose to Order. He wished to ask whether the hon. and learned Member was in Order in alluding to Irish Members sitting below the Gangway as indecent Irishmen?
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. and learned Member complained, as I understood, of indecorous conduct on the part of some Irish Members; but he himself is quite out of Order in speaking of hon. Members as indecent Irishmen.
  MR. BULWERsaid, he begged hon. Members' pardon if he had applied the word "indecent" in too wide a sense. He had merely intended it to apply to the repeated indecent interruptions he had met with from some Irish Members. He considered them to be indecent at the time, and he thought so still. He wished to point out that the constable who said he had heard one of the boys say that the men had blackened faces could have been questioned upon the point, and in that way the boy's statement might have been brought before the jury; but he repeated that neither of the so-called dying declarations could, by any regular means, have been given to the jury, and he had yet to learn it was the duty of counsel for the prosecution to place documents, which he could make no use of himself, in the hands of counsel for the prisoner, when he knew that he could make no use of them either.
  MR. CHARLES RUSSELLsaid, that if the Amendment had remained in its

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  original form he should have taken no part in the discussion; and he desired at the outset emphatically to say that he did not intend to support any of the general charges which had been advanced on the other side of the House. He declined to believe in the justice of the wholesale accusations which had been launched against several distinguished persons connected with the administration of the law in Ireland. He had not ever constituted, and did not then, constitute himself an apologist for the Irish Executive. He had again and again found fault with acts of their administration; but he declined to believe that Lord Spencer, or the Lord Chancellor, or the ex-Chief Secretary, could any one of them knowingly be parties to any dishonourable act. It was said that although the Amendment did not in words convey this, that in substance it was a condemnation of those official persons. What the Amendment asserted, and what he, after painful and anxious consideration, had come to the conclusion was true, was merely this—that it would insure greater confidence in the administration of the law if an inquiry were granted into the execution of Myles Joyce, and into the case of the prisoners who were still incarcerated. He knew that the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, after whom he had been anxious but was unable to speak, laid great stress on a "public" inquiry; but the pith and substance of the Amendment was that further inquiry was needed. If the Amendment did involve blame on Lord Spencer, the Lord Chancellor, and the ex-Chief Secretary, he could not help it, because he believed it contained a statement which was emphatically true. He began the consideration of this case with the very strongest feeling that an unanswerable case had been made out on the part of the Crown, proving the guilt of the men convicted and of the men who had pleaded guilty. He had that feeling in his mind so strongly that he expressed it in conversation with distinguished persons in Ireland. It was only by slow and painful steps that he had come to the conclusion that there did exist very grave doubt, to put it no higher, of the guilt of the man, Myles Joyce, who had gone to his last account, and the guilt of four of the men who remained in prison. He begged to point out that it was not necessary for
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  those who were supporting the Amendment to make it clear that Myles Joyce was innocent, or that the four men now suffering penal servitude were innocent. If a serious doubt were raised, as, in fact, it had been, as to the character of the evidence, those who entertained that honest conviction were bound to make every legitimate effort until the matter had been thoroughly investigated, even though Administration after Administration, Chief Secretary after Chief Secretary, and Lord Lieutenant after Lord Lieutenant, were supposed to be involved in the case. The opinion he originally formed was decidedly against those as to whom it was now alleged that there were grave doubts of their guilt. He should like to be allowed to point out what struck him as being the strength of the case for the Crown, and the circumstances which, to his mind, seemed to sap and to undermine a great part of that case. The first thing which struck one was that the guilt of the three men executed was proved by three witnesses who had been called "independent witnesses." Now, it was a remarkable circumstance that in the course of the trial, with the exception of a passing question, no serious attempt seemed to have been made on the part of the counsel for the prisoners to disprove the apparent independence of those witnesses. He severed himself entirely from the suggestion which had been made by the hon. Member for Galway, and which he was sorry to hear—that the learned counsel who appeared for the prisoners were wilfully neglectful of their duty, or else were in a conspiracy. [Mr. HARRINGTON: No, no.] He dissociated himself entirely from expressions of that kind.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid, he certainly did make use of the word "conspiracy." But what he meant to say was that there was a conspiracy on the part of those who were engaged in the prosecution, and he was led by the jeering cheers of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to add that that was combined with incompetence on the part of the counsel for the defence, and that the trial was conducted with indecent haste.
  MR. CHARLES RUSSELLwent on to remark that, as the men were brought from different parts of the country, and as few of them could speak English, it was difficult to get up the defence of the

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  prisoners. But who were those so-called independent witnesses? It turned out that they were only Anthony Joyce, John Joyce, his brother, and Patrick Joyce, his nephew. Were these persons independent witnesses against any of the prisoners? He referred to a statement which was vouched for as having been made by the informer Thomas Casey to the hon. Member for Westmeath. He placed no reliance on a statement of an informer as such; but he did place reliance on it in so far as it was capable of corroboration, and in so far as it suggested further means of inquiry. Thomas Casey said that Myles Joyce was in constant quarrel with Anthony Joyce and with Anthony Joyce's friends and family, and he mentioned a fact which was capable of instant contradiction if untrue—namely, that a comparatively short time before the occurrence of the 17th of August, 1882, Myles Joyce had been sent to Galway Graol for a month for an assault upon this so-called independent witness. It was asked, however, how it happened, if the story of the independent witnesses was untrue, that they hit upon some of the right men? That was an observation of great weight, and he would try to answer it. First of all, it should be remembered that they were dealing with a sparsely - populated district, where everybody knew all about everybody else. One little bit of the informer's evidence was significant as to how he, not having had any quarrel with Anthony Joyce or Anthony Joyce's family, came to be included among the persons incriminated. Thomas Casey stated that at the examination before the magistrates he asked Anthony Joyce in Irish why he made a charge against him, and the reply was—"You hold your tongue. I saw Pat Casey going over for you in the evening." Pat Casey admitted his guilt on the scaffold. That notorious character went across to see Thomas Casey, and thereupon Anthony Joyce came to the conclusion that they were both implicated. A great point on the part of the Crown was that some of the prisoners pleaded guilty. But how did they come to plead guilty? The circumstances were these. A batch of men were awaiting their trial for the same murders upon the same evidence as had been given in the first, second, and third trials. They knew that three men had been found guilty on the same evidence which would be forthcoming in order to fix criminality
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  upon them. In these circumstances he could understand the advice given by the priest, although he quite concurred in the remarks of the Home Secretary with regard to it. Could those who were still in suspense doubt that, however innocent they might be, the same evidence must inevitably send them also to the scaffold? No doubt that was the consideration which influenced the mind of the priest when he advised them to plead guilty. He (Mr. C. Russell) had tried to examine all the evidence in this case in as judicial and as calm a spirit as he could assume; and he found that his original opinion was gradually slipping from him, and that he was haunted with doubts from which he could not free himself. He would now look at the other side of the question. He believed that if anyone read the description of the country where this murder occurred, he must come to the conclusion that a more extraordinary account than that given by the so-called three independent witnesses of their identification of the accused men had never been given before in a Court of Justice. The Attorney General (now Mr. Justice Johnson), in opening the case to the jury, stated that the murders were committed on the 17th of August, and the fourth day of the moon, and that, therefore, there was very little light. Anthony Joyce said that he was disturbed by the barking of a dog; he opened the door, and he went out; and it was a curious point what became of the dog, which would hardly stop barking when his master went out, and which would certainly attract attention to Anthony Joyce's house. He went out, he said, and joined the three men, and went along the road at such a distance from the party they were following that he could identify them, and, therefore, within such a distance that they could have identified him. Could he go for two miles or more so near to these men in an open country on murderous errand bent, and they, naturally looking round to see whether they were watched, not observe him? It was strange that he should do so without being seen or heard. There was a police station about a mile distant; and yet these men, who followed the murderers and heard the murder being committed, went home to their beds without going to the police station. If it was said it was the last place an Irish

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  peasant would go to, the answer was that the next day, after the man now charged with being the primary offender was arrested—namely, "Big" Casey, information was given by these men, who had probably some idea of a reward being offered. The Prime Minister made a point of the discrimination of the independent witness who identified only nine men; but that point told with great force as regarded the statement of the informer Casey; he discriminated, too, in his declaration as to the men who were guilty and the men who were not guilty, because it was admitted by him that guilt attached to two of the men executed, and to one of the men in penal servitude. The counsel for the defence would have increased difficulty in meeting the case of Myles Joyce after the other two men had been tried and condemned, and application was made for a postponement of the trial; but the Judge did not think the grounds stated were sufficient. After the second trial, it came to the knowledge of the defending counsel for the first time that Philbin and Casey had turned approvers; but up to that time no intimation of the fact had been given. He did not understand it to be alleged that any statement either by Philbin or by Casey was furnished to the counsel for the prisoners. The English practice was that the defending counsel should be furnished with the statement of every witness. An examination of the statements made by the approvers on the 9th and the 10th August showed considerable differences, which would attract the attention of anyone who had carefully read the evidence of the independent witnesses. The changes in the second statements brought them more closely into accord with the evidence of the independent witnesses. These statements ought to have been at once handed to the counsel for the prisoners. As to the declarations of the dying men, he understood the principle to be that a dying declaration was admissible if, in the opinion of the Judge, it was made by a person under the apprehension of death, and bore on the question of the death then being inquired into of the person making it. There was a decision in a case in which A and B were poisoned on the same occasion, though not by one act; and the Judges held that, the transaction being one, as the murders were in this case, the declarations
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  of A and B were admissible in each other's cases. In this case the charges took the murdered persons seriatim, beginning with the head of the family, and the accused seriatim, each prisoner being charged with a different murder; and, therefore, if a declaration were not admissible in one trial it would be in another. Wholly apart from such a question of admissibility, it was incumbent on the counsel for the prosecution, whether they intended to use the declarations or not, whether strictly admissible or there was a doubt about it, to communicate such documents to the counsel for the prisoners. He challenged his hon. and learned Friends in that House to say whether, as prosecuting counsel, they would not have communicated such dying declarations? He knew that no one had done more to maintain the honour of the Bar and the good character of the Criminal Judicature than the Attorney General (Sir Henry James); and he was perfectly confident that if the Attorney General asked himself the question whether, if he had been the prosecuting counsel in the case, he would have withheld this evidence, he would feel that he would not have done so. Prosecuting counsel were not bound to make as part of their own case a piece of evidence which they had strong reasons to believe was unreliable; but there was no manner of justification for setting up their own judgment as to the character of those documents and withholding them from the opposing counsel; they were bound to hand them to the counsel for the defence. Then the Home Secretary asked what was the effect of this omission. But he carefully expressed no opinion as to what he himself would have done in that case. But he had asked what harm was done, as a statement had been made by two police-constables that the boys had told them in the one case that the men's faces were dirty, and in the other that they were black. But, as had been shown by his hon. and learned Friend opposite (Mr. Bulwer), who had just sat down, that would have been a case of indirect evidence upon which the cross-examination must have been necessarily lame. Could anyone say—could any lawyer say—that the value of such an indirect piece of evidence was to be compared with the solemn declaration of these boys? Of course, it was said that it would not have

  403
  made any difference. But who could tell, who could judge of that? Who knew how far the solemn fact that such a dying declaration had been made might have suggested to the prisoners' counsel questions as to the locality, distance, and circumstances which might have thrown doubts upon the apparently coherent evidence of these so-called independent witnesses? With respect to the other boy who made a dying declaration, but happily survived, he made an accusation against those who conducted the trial to this extent—that they failed to give that information to the prisoners' counsel. Next, as to this boy, if the prosecution was anxious to examine him, the objection to his examination ought not to be made by those who tendered him for examination. The objection ought to be taken by the Judge. But it was remarkable that the objection in this case came from the interpreter. But by whom was it suggested to the interpreter? If the boy imperfectly understood the nature of an oath, he ought to have been instructed, as he had no possible motive to say anything but the simple truth. It seemed to him, therefore, incumbent on the Government as regarded the trial of Myles Joyce, though it was too late to do anything except to clear his reputation, to leave no stone unturned in order to exhaust all possible information. Then it was asked what value could be attached to the next set of declarations, the declarations of the two men who suffered death, and of Myles Joyce himself, whose last breath was a declaration of his innocence? It was not as if they had concerted a statement to relieve others from a fate similar to their own. Each of them, from his separate cell, sent for the magistrate, and before the magistrate each made his separate statement. Now, the Prime Minister had observed that if the declaration had been one that not only exculpated Myles Joyce, but pointed out the true criminals, the case would have been widely different. But what right had the Prime Minister to speculate on what was or was not contained in the declarations? Why were they not produced? He agreed that, according to the circumstances of the declarations, they might attach greater or less weight to them; but in this case each of the declarations was the independent and spontaneous act of each man.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I have not done so. What I said was, that I took the
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  statements of hon. Gentlemen opposite, and my answer was good as against their plea.
  MR. CHARLES RUSSELLsaid, that hon. Members opposite had dealt with the admission only so far as it affected the guilt or the innocence of Myles Joyce. They had assumed that it contained nothing else. No one had a right to speculate as to what was or was not in that document if the inexorable rule of the Home Secretary was to prevail. But the argument of Lord Spencer in the famous Memorandum of August, 1884, was not that of the Prime Minister. Lord Spencer's argument was that when these men said they were guilty and Myles Joyce was innocent, all they meant was that it was not Joyce's hand that did the deed. How did Lord Spencer know what they meant? But if there was a doubt upon his mind as to the nature of these declarations, surely that was a matter of sufficient solemnity and importance to demand a further inquiry then and there. He attached much greater importance to those declarations than the Home Secretary. The law allowed dying declarations to be admitted as evidence without oath and without cross-examination, because it was believed that human nature was so constituted that the solemn approach of death, with its awful sensations, was at least as powerful as binding the conscience than any formal oath taken in a Court of Law. If that influence was powerful upon any minds, he claimed that it was exceptionally powerful upon the mind of the Irish peasant, who, however debased he might be, however low his moral standard, however imperfect his education, did believe earnestly in a future state. He believed in an awful Judge, and in future rewards and punishments. Such men were not likely to have a damning lie on their lips when they were about to be launched into eternity. If that was true in the case of Myles Joyce, how much more likely was it to be true in the case of the two men who, while exculpating Myles Joyce, admitted their own guilt? What motive could be suggested save that they were desirous of saving the life of an innocent man? These were the reasons why he thought that a further inquiry into this matter ought to be granted. He then came to the difficulties which had been stated by the Prime Minister to render it impossible

  405
  to grant the inquiry asked for. The Prime Minister had said that there was no analogy between the present case and that of Kilmartin. Why not? The Prime Minister had said that the inquiry in the Kilmartin case was what he termed a spontaneous act proceeding from the Executive authority. So it had been undoubtedly in one sense, and the fact that it had been instituted was highly creditable to Lord Spencer; but it was only spontaneous after the matter had been discussed over and over again, and after the late Chief Secretary, acting perfectly bonâ fide upon information furnished him by others, had declined to institute the inquiry. He trusted that in that sense there would be another spontaneous inquiry in the present case. There would be no more difficulty in this case than in the other. [Mr. GLADSTONE dissented.] He saw that the Prime Minister shook his head; but he was at a loss to understand what insuperable difficulties were in the way of an inquiry in the present case which did not exist in the other. He entirely agreed with the Home Secretary that there existed in law no machinery by which either he or the House of Commons could be constituted a legal tribunal that could take fresh evidence and could review the former trial. The law was curious upon this, for all that the Chief Secretary could do in case he was satisfied that a man was undergoing punishment for an offence of which he was not guilty would be to advise the Queen graciously to forgive the man for the offence which he had not committed. Was it not the fact, however, that the records of the Home Office furnished numbers of examples of inquiries such as that now asked for? He would recall to the mind of the Home Secretary Smethurst's case, in which Sir George C. Lewis, acting upon the advice of Sir Benjamin Brodie, in effect reversed the judgment of the jury finding Smethurst guilty. In other words, where there was a will there was always a way. He was not concerned in this matter with what hon. Members below the Gangway opposite thought of his remarks; what he was concerned with was what would quiet the conscience of the country. Hon. Members opposite, by the course they had taken, had rendered it very difficult for him to meddle in this matter and to explain why he was speaking as he was doing, and why he should
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  vote in favour of this inquiry being granted. He could tell the House that it was not only among hon. Members opposite that the opinion was held—it was an opinion that was growing and was gathering strength day by day throughout the country—that Myles Joyce was innocent, and that four of the men who were now in prison for these murders were innocent. He said that there should be no limits to the way of inquiry, although whether or not it would satisfy the country or satisfy hon. Members below the Gangway he did not know. An inquiry conducted somewhat on the lines of the Kilmartin inquiry would go a long way towards quieting the minds of the Irish people in reference to this matter. And let him point out one means of testing the truth of the story now told by the informer Casey. The informer Casey, in his evidence, made a statement as to the persons whom he joined and accompanied to the scene of the murders. Among those persons was a man named Michael Casey, who had pleaded guilty, and who was now undergoing penal servitude, and whose guilt was admitted. That man had, therefore, no means of communicating with the informer Casey, and he would have no motive for speaking other than the truth. Let him be asked as to the truth of the story now told by the informer. He was afraid, however, from the course this debate had taken, that for the Government to grant this inquiry would be regarded as a triumph for hon. Members opposite, and that that would increase the difficulty in the way of the Government making this concession. He appealed to the Government, however, to let no such fear stand in the way of an act of justice being done. He admitted that the demand had been made in intemperate, rash, and offensive language; but he contended that if there was a doubt in the matter, the Government were bound to grant an inquiry, no matter what Party or what section would triumph thereby. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster had said that to grant this inquiry would be to shake the foundations of justice in Ireland; but those foundations must indeed be rotten if they could be shaken by an act of justice being done. If there were truth in the suggestions which had been made, an inquiry would strengthen them; if there were no truth

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  in them, an inquiry would make them disappear; and in either case justice would be satisfied. He would even at this eleventh hour suggest to the Government, whatever might be the fate of the Amendment before the House—and it could not be doubted that it would be rejected by a large majority—that they should prosecute with earnestness and zeal an inquiry by means which he, at any rate, believed were still open to them in this matter.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): Sir, I most entirely agree with my hon. and learned Friend when he says there are many difficulties in taking part in this debate—to me there are even some terrors. I will take hon. Members below the Gangway opposite into my confidence, and tell them frankly that, knowing the way in which other speakers from this Bench have been treated, I fear I may not be permitted to state the details I desire to place before the House with the sequence necessary to make them intelligible. But I appeal to those hon. Members. I have often said, and still oftener thought, that whilst there is no matter which can press upon the conscience of a man so heavily as that of having taken part in the conviction of an innocent man, so is there no cause more noble than that of his deliverance. And the cause for which hon. Members opposite are striving cannot be served by constant interjaculation and interruption. Now, Sir, the hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. Harrington), who introduced this subject with great ability, and whose speech has shown great earnestness, has circulated a pamphlet on the subject among hon. Members. The hon. Member, however, must forgive me when I say that that pamphlet is one of advocacy rather than of judicial impartiality. I would ask hon. Members to consider whether they think that to read or to listen to one side only—to the statement of an able advocate—is the way in which they ought to consider the case? My hon. and learned Friend who has just sat down has said that if this Amendment had not been altered in its terms he could not have voted for it. But to us that Amendment now stands as it did when it was first made. It raises the same questions; it has been supported by the same speeches since its alteration as before. I do not know whether those who listen to me now were in the House
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  when the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) made his speech in reply to that of the Prime Minister; but I would ask whether that alteration in the form of this Amendment affected his views? Did it cause him to withdraw in the slightest degree the charge made by the hon. Member for Westmeath—that Earl Spencer, the Crown counsel, and the Crown officials had entered into a felonious conspiracy to do to death men whom they knew to be innocent?
  MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: I did not say that, nor did I mean to say it.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): I think that the hon. Member's observation was made in similar terms to those of the hon. Member for Westmeath before the Amendment was altered. When I listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Galway, who termed Earl Spencer a judicial murderer, I thought the charge very much the same.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: I said that Earl Spencer was regarded by the vast majority of the Irish people as having been guilty of a judicial murder, and that in order to relieve him from that stigma it was desirable there should be an inquiry.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): The hon. Member states that that is the view of the vast majority of the Irish people, and I presume that the hon. Member and the great majority of the Irish people are of the same opinion. But I do not think the alteration in the terms of the Amendment lessens the responsibility of any hon. Member who supports it. It amounts to the same thing; it is supported by the same arguments; it proceeds upon the same lines, and it will arrive at the same results. What were the facts before Earl Spencer was charged with having done to death innocent men, and with having refused to inquire into their innocence? It has been stated over and over again that what was placed before Earl Spencer in substance was the same that was placed before the three juries, all of whom are now admitted to have fulfilled their duty, directed by a Judge, who has, by his conduct, exacted from hon. Members opposite the testimony that he is a just and a fair Judge. The trial was one in the open conduct of which, at least, no evidence of undue harshness can possibly be found. Those juries and that Judge came to the conclusion that the

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  three men were guilty, and they came to that conclusion mainly upon the evidence of three men who have been termed in this debate "independent witnesses." They came on to the table in open Court to give their testimony after every opportunity had been afforded of gauging their position towards the men whom they accused. Under the Prevention of Crime Act, every witness whose presence is deemed necessary is provided to the prisoners at the expense of the Crown. In this case, a solicitor of experience in criminal cases was allotted to the prisoners, and counsel, of whom I shall have to say a word by-and-bye, of their own selection, was allotted for their defence. Three months elapsed between the commission of the offence and the trial, and these three witnesses, who are now alleged in the pamphlet of the hon. Member for Westmeath to have been prejudiced witnesses, and to have had cause of anger and cause of hatred sufficient to have induced them to give false testimony, had been subjected to every test in reference to the truth of their story. If any hon. Member will take the trouble to read the shorthand writers' notes of the trial; if my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell), who, with the great powers of his advocacy, has dealt with certain facts, will do so, it will be found that the evidence of those witnesses was subjected to the test of a Judge and a jury, many of whom individually asked questions in order that they might arrive at a right conclusion as to the truth of the evidence, and, further, that the prisoners had the aid of counsel whose ability was most conspicuous. The case having passed through all that ordeal, the result was that three juries came to the same conclusion—namely, that the evidence established the guilt of these men. The Lord Lieutenant had this full admission, that the learned counsel intrusted by the solicitor of the prisoners with their defence, had shown great devotion to the case of their clients, had visited the spot, and had traversed every portion of the journey of that night between the 17th and 18th of August, and had tested by their own observation whether the statement of the three independent witnesses was probable or improbable. Yet these two counsel, whose qualifications were so great, in terms which I can read to the House if it be necessary to enter into
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  detail, gave these witnesses the same credit the prosecuting counsel did of having been present, of having tracked the murderers, of having dogged their footsteps, and of having witnessed what took place. These able counsel could only present to the jury that the witnesses had been mistaken in their identification, and in the conclusion they had arrived at. The Lord Lieutenant, charged as he is by the majority of the Irish people with judicial murder, had these facts before him, and he had one additional fact, which I cannot conceive any just man in the House would hold to be insufficient to exculpate Earl Spencer from this grave charge. It is said now that the Lord Lieutenant knew, or ought to have known, that these men who confessed gave their evidence—for their plea is the strongest evidence—falsely. Where is the evidence against the Lord Lieutenant? The testimony of these three men was confirmed by that of the two approvers—that there were 10 men present at the murder—and on the day when the Lord Lieutenant had to determine whether these three men were witnesses on whom he could place reliance, nine out of the 10 accused men had, with their own lips, affirmed their guilt. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), with greater force than I can command, brought this subject before the House last night, although the House was not then constituted as it is now. I may, however, be allowed to add this one fact to what the right hon. and learned Gentleman then stated—namely, that when the Lord Lieutenant knew that nine out of the 10 men had confessed their guilt, when he knew that the counsel for the defence admitted that the three men who gave their testimony had been present at the scene of the murder, the fact must be taken into consideration that the only man about whom the Lord Lieutenant could now have any doubt was a relative of the three witnesses. How, then, could the Lord Lieutenant disbelieve the statement of these witnesses, confirmed as it was by a confession of guilt by nine out of the 10 men, and when it was only suggested that a mistake had been made as to a man whom these witnesses would know better than anyone else? There is one other general observation which I would like to make. It is said that the confessions of these men had been

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  obtained by the improper action of the Crown officials, and I hope the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) will forgive me for saying I wondered when I heard his speech whether at the moment he was bearing in mind the great responsibility which fell on him in adding the great weight of his authority to the charges which were made against the administration of justice. The hon. and learned Member stated that much depended upon whether these men were or were not induced by the officials of the Crown to plead guilty, and the senior Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) has stated as a fact that the men had been visited in prison for the purpose.
  MR. HARRINGTON: With the permission of the Home Office.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): I can only say on authority that there is not the slightest foundation for that statement. The charge does not appear even in the pamphlet of the hon. Member for West-meath (Mr. Harrington), and I give the hon. Member full credit for having done the best for the cause he has undertaken; but even he does not suggest that any Crown official ever saw one of these men.
  MR. HARRINGTON: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman allow me to interrupt him? I may not have, stated the fact; but I have it on the authority of their own solicitor, that on the day of the trial they were all visited in gaol by the Crown Solicitor, Mr. Bolton.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): I have to say that I am informed that is not the fact, and it has not been stated before. I say distinctly, on the part of those who were intrusted with the prosecution, that they held out no hope whatever to any of the prisoners; but they told their counsel that whatever might be done would depend upon the judgment of the Lord Lieutenant. But it is said that these men knew that the same evidence which had been given against the three men who had been tried and convicted would be repeated against them. According to the case now put forward, these men knew that they were innocent, that they had not been near the spot of the murder in question, and that they had peacably slept in their own homes. Will hon. Members endeavour to realize what this means? We have to deal with the fact
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  that those who knew these men knew that they were not only innocent, but they had not been near the scene of the murder—that they had passed their hours elsewhere; that they had slept, it I might be, in their own homes; or that they had been, during some period of the night, elsewhere, and that they had never been near the spot at all. Is it credible, I would ask any person of common sense, whether anyone, be he priest or anyone else, knowing this, could have said—"Tell your own tale of guilt, although it may lead you to the scaffold, or to the mitigated sentence of penal servitude for life?" Would none of these men have said at once—"I know where I was on that night, and there are others who know where I was too"—others who would be the witnesses of truth, who would be able to give that evidence which is known as an alibi; who would at once have been forthcoming, for some of these men, at least, would have had that evidence, which every honest man is likely to have at his command, of proving where he was? I admit it is said that in the case of Myles Joyce his only evidence was that of his own wife, and, unfortunately, a wife's evidence being excluded, a difficulty might have been experienced in proving an alibi. But there were five men with different alibis living under different roofs. Each case must have been upon a different footing to the rest; but was there one among them advised by priest or no priest, with wife or no wife, who attempted to establish his innocence? Not a single one. It must have been difficult for the Lord Lieutenant to believe that by some process or other five men had been induced to state falsely that they were guilty of murder, when, as a matter of fact, they had never been near the scene of the murder, and when it was in the power of every one of them to raise his voice and say—"Iwas elsewhere at the time." Is it conceivable that not one man among them to save his liberty, his life, or his character, had the courage to say—"I will stake my all on calling witnesses who can prove where I was." None of these men did that; and yet we are asked to come to the conclusion that five men consented to record a plea of "Guilty," and undertook to bear a sentence of penal servitude for life, and that they did so without one of them making an effort to establish his innocence.

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  Under these circumstances, I must appeal to the feeling that must actuate Irish Gentlemen, and ask them whether, if they had to bear the responsibility of administering justice, and if they had to bear the responsibility of so administering it as to save the peasantry of the country from being murdered in their homes, whether, with all this combination of circumstances—the evidence given before a just Judge, verdicts given by three separate juries, and nine out of the 10 prisoners admitting their guilt—is it possible to conceive that any man with all these facts before him could come to any other conclusion than Earl Spencer did—namely, that the verdict of the jury was correct, and that the pleas of guilty were true admissions of guilt? As to the conduct of the rev. gentleman who advised those men to plead guilty, I will not criticize it. I know how cruel it is to judge others whose manner of thought we may not be able to follow. As the Home Secretary said, let us give credit to him for having acted from the best motives; but I must say this—that if there ever was a person who did an act unintentionally, which sealed the fate of Myles Joyce, and made him suffer the extreme penalty of the law, it was the course pursued by this rev. gentleman. (Laughter from the Irish Members. Let hon. Gentlemen laugh as they may; they cannot help reflecting upon what I say. I do not know what the motive of the rev. gentleman was. I give him full credit for acting as he thought for the best; but he caused these five persons to plead guilty, and that fact made them corroborative witnesses to the truth of the evidence against Myles Joyce, who had been previously convicted. In all this combination of circumstances, and knowing that the guidance likely to be given to men in this condition by their priest would be directed to obtaining the acquittal of innocent men, the Lord Lieutenant could not have supposed that any act on the part of the priest could have the effect of bringing an undue penalty of guilt upon innocent men. Under all the circumstances of the case, I cannot conceive the most liberal and humane man coming to any conclusion but that arrived at by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Having dealt with these general subjects, and traversed the ground which others have traversed much more ably than I have, I will now, with the permission
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  of the House, turn to other matters. I have been subjected to categorical appeals from many hon. Gentlemen opposite in the course of the debate. I have been asked what is the rule of conduct which ought to affect prosecuting counsel in criminal cases, and I have been asked whether I approve of all that has been done by the counsel who conducted this prosecution. I have also been warned in almost minatory language by the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth (Mr. E. Clarke) to be careful what I say, and I have been warned by the junior Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Deasy) that whatever view I express there are those in reserve who will answer them. With these appeals before me, my attention has been directed principally to the consideration of the conduct of counsel prosecuting in criminal cases. In much which has been stated in principle I entirely concur. The counsel who conducts the prosecution in a criminal case stands in a very different position from he who is conducting a civil suit. The counsel who conducts a criminal case has but one client, and that is the public interest. He represents the Crown, and when he represents the Crown he must take care that the fountain of justice is purely represented. He should never seek to win a verdict. These are general rules in which I am certain everyone will concur; but it is useless for me to state those general rules without applying them to the particular circumstances which have occurred in this case. As a deduction from the general rule, it is said that it is the duty of a counsel prosecuting in a criminal case to place in the possession of the advocate of the accused every fact which is in the possession of the counsel who prosecutes. I do not quite agree with that view stated so broadly as it is here stated; but I agree with the substance of it. I agree with the substance to the extent of saying that the counsel who is prosecuting ought to take care that all substantial facts in the opinion of the prosecuting counsel necessary to elicit the truth should in some way be called to the attention of the prisoner's advocate. The prosecuting counsel is bound to lay before the jury what, in his judgment, represents the case against the prisoner, and he is also bound to bring out those things which, in his judgment, will elicit the truth. But it is impossible, when you

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  are laying down a rule to affect the action of an advocate, or speaking of one who is absent and is not able to speak for himself—it is impossible to speak too guardedly when we are applying our judgment to the conduct of such a man. I must confess that if, in this case, I thought there had been conduct which had not been guided by such rules in substance, I believe I should have the courage to say so. But, Sir, admitting as I do the difference between the advocate who represents the Crown, and the position of the advocate who represents the civil suitor, I once more depart from the general statement of opinion I have given to apply that more general view to the particular incidents which occurred in this case, and I think when I have so done I shall have mainly discharged the duty I owe to the House. The charge which is made of the improper conduct of the evidence in this case is, if I understand it rightly, applied to a statement of facts relating to the two statements made by the lads, Michael Joyce and Patrick Joyce, and it is stated that it was the duty of the Crown counsel to have placed in the possession of the counsel for the prisoners the two statements made by those boys. Now, let me at once say on whom I think the responsibility, for good or for evil, in this matter rested. Charges have been made over and over again against Mr. Bolton and against the other Crown officials. I know nothing of Mr. Bolton except what I have read. I have nothing to say of Mr. Bolton, or his conduct in any circumstances in his general relation towards the Irish Executive; but let no man bear a burden he ought not to bear. This is not a question in which the responsibility falls on Mr. Bolton or on any solicitor. The responsibility must fall on the counsel. I know, and the experience of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) will tell him, that it is not the custom for solicitors at an early stage to make any such communication without the sanction of counsel, and if, later on in the trial, it appears that such information ought to have been communicated, the responsibility for withholding it must fall on the counsel. I hope, therefore, that hon. Members, in considering what is right or wrong in this matter, will regard it as a matter affecting the conduct of the Bar, and not the conduct of the Crown officials. It is a matter
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  worthy of consideration that, from the first to the last in this trial, great moderation was exercised by the counsel for the Crown, and I might read an eloquent tribute to that fact which was paid in the course of the trial by the counsel for the prisoners. Therefore, from first to last, the whole charge of what is said to have been an undue exercise of responsibility in the conduct of the case on the part of the Crown is simplified and reduced to this one fact—the treatment of those depositions. I have said that, to my mind, what was material to elicit the truth, if unknown to the prisoners' advocate, should be communicated to him in substance. But my view is that it was so communicated in this case, and I think I shall be able to convince the House that it was. The matter affects the statement of the two boys—one Michael Joyce and the other Patrick Joyce. I think that some misapprehension prevails in the minds of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dundalk (Mr. C. Russell) and the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth (Mr. E. Clarke) in reference to the statement of Michael Joyce. On the 28th of August, Michael Joyce made what was apparently a dying deposition; but, as my hon. and learned Friends know, a deposition is a statement made on oath in the presence of the accused. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dundalk (Mr. C. Russell), in the eloquent speech he has just delivered, appeared to be under the impression that the statement of Michael Joyce was made on oath.
  MR. CHARLES RUSSELL: I do not recollect that I said it was taken on oath; but to my mind that was not at all essential.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENKY JAMES): I have no doubt my hon. and learned Friend said what was in his mind; but, at any rate, it was so stated by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Plymouth (Mr. E. Clarke).
  MR. EDWARD CLARKE: No; I did not say so.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): My hon. and learned Friend has been so reported. I do not, however, care who stated it. The fact is, that on the morning of the 28th of August, at 9 o'clock, Collins went to the cottage where the murder had been committed, and at about 10 o'clock Constable Johnson arrived there. At 3

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  o'clock on that day Michael Joyce was dead. It is, therefore, apparent that all these statements of this boy were made between 10 o'clock and 3 o'clock. He made a statement to Constable Johnson, from which, with the permission of the House, I will read a few words, and I propose to go later on to the statement afterwards made to Mr. Brady; but there is no more legal effect in the statement made to Mr. Brady, and put in writing, than in the statement made to Constable Johnson. Do not let us quibble about words—whether they were declarations or depositions—they were statements—statements made, no doubt, in the belief that Michael Joyce was dying. I assume all that, and any statement made by a person in the belief that he is dying is evidence, no doubt—a dying declaration or a statement relating to the case.
  MR. HARRINGTON: In one case the statement was in writing, and in the other it was only verbal.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): The statement was made verbally to Constable Johnson at 10 o'clock in the morning, and later on it was taken down in writing by Mr. Brady; but the legal effect of both is the same. Now, let me read to the House what it was the boy stated, both to Mr. Brady and Constable Johnson—
  "We then saw Pat Joyce and Michael Joyce. They were in bed. We spoke to them. We asked them what happened then. Michael Joyce then told us that he saw three men in the house. We then asked Michael Joyce if he knew the men. He said he did not know them, as they had their faces dirty. I did not speak to Pat Joyce."
  This is the evidence of Constable Johnson—
  "I asked Michael Joyce how many men did he see, and if he knew them. He said 'No; that their faces were black, and that there were three or four men.' I then asked Pat Joyce what happened to him last night, but got no reply. I then asked him did he know them, and he said 'No; that their faces were black.'"
  The only statement that he made to Mr. Brady, who took it down in writing, in relation to this point, was—
  "Two or three men came in; they had blacked their faces."
  Not one word more was stated to Mr. Brady, and it was the identical statement which had been made to Collins and Constable Johnson—in the one case that the men's faces were dirty, and in the other that he did not know them because
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  their faces were black. I admit that you have the statement made to Mr. Brady in writing; but Johnson and Collins went before the Coroner, by whom their statement was put into writing, and they signed their depositions. Those depositions contained what I have above read. Consequently, the statement of Johnson and Collins, identical as it is with that taken down by Mr. Brady as to what the boy said, was in writing before the Coroner, and was signed both by Johnson and Collins, and one day in the month of September the prisoners' attorney obtained those depositions of Johnson and Collins before the Coroner from the Crown Office. They were obtained from the Crown Office for the special purpose of being placed in the hands of the prisoners' counsel, and the prisoners' counsel, with the full knowledge of the Attorney General for Ireland and the prosecuting counsel, had the statements of Collins and Johnson signed by them in their possession. They, therefore, knew that these two witnesses had heard, as Mr. Brady had heard, from the boy exactly the same statement. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Plymouth (Mr. E. Clarke) says there were depositions which were never put in. There were no such depositions.
  MR. EDWARD CLARKE: I never said there were depositions which could have been put in evidence.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): My hon. and learned Friend has been so reported.
  MR. EDWARD CLARKE: Where have I been so reported?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): My hon. and learned Friend denies the statement. I, of course, accept his denial; and I am glad to find that my hon. and learned Friend did not make that point. I have pointed out that the statement made to Johnson and Collins was exactly the same statement as that afterwards taken down in writing by Mr. Brady, and that that statement to Johnson and Collins was given before the Coroner, who put down in writing what it was the boy had said.
  An hon. MEMBER: White jackets.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): An hon. Member says "white jackets." This boy never said anything about white jackets. I am

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  going to point out that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Plymouth (Mr. E. Clarke) distinctly spoke of the term "white jackets" being mentioned in the depositions.
  MR. EDWARD CLARKE: I can assure my hon. and learned Friend that I did not do so. What I said was that only the younger boy mentioned the "bawneens."
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): This boy I am speaking about is the dead boy, who never mentioned the "bawneens." He was altogether silent upon that. He simply said they were men with their faces black. The Attorney General for Ireland called both Johnson and Collins into the witness-box, so as to give the counsel for the prisoners, who had knowledge that they had heard this boy's evidence, an opportunity of putting questions to them. Not only did the Attorney General for Ireland put both of those men into the witness-box, but I can, if necessary, give from a shorthand writer's notes the exact questions he put to each of them, and their answers. He put these questions—
  "Did you see young Michael Joyce? Did you speak to Michael Joyce? Did Michael Joyce make a statement to you?"
  So he led up to this very point, apparently purposely, and he gave every opportunity to the counsel for the prisoners to ask what that statement was; and the counsel for the prisoners, being so invited by the prosecuting counsel to ask what the statement was, and knowing what the statement was, for he had a copy of the evidence signed by Collins and Johnson at the inquest in his possession, nevertheless thought it right not to ask that question.
  MR. HARRINGTON: The Judge stopped him.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): If I am asked why the prisoners' counsel did not put the question, the answer is clear and distinct—this poor boy had sustained severe injuries, and his statement was made only a short time before his death. He had already passed that stage which might have enabled him to give an intelligible story. He was lightheaded at the time, and when he made his statement to Mr. Brady there was no doubt that he was wandering and incoherent, if not raving. He said—
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  "I was at Mass yesterday at Finney. John O'Brien told me not to tell, and Michael Malley. It was last night when they told me not to tell. They swore me on the Book not to tell. It is John O'Brien of the Wood; I am sure of it."
  Some comment has been made upon the fact that Mr. Brady would not have taken the deposition of a witness who was raving. Now, it was Mr. Brady's duty not to take a deposition which he could not produce in Court, but to take any statement; and that is what he did. There is no proof whatever in the statement that the boy went to Mass on the day before, and the fact that it was untrue was known to the Attorney General for Ireland.
  MR. HARRINGTON: Who says it was not true? His priest does not say so.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): An inquiry was made, and it was found that there had been no Mass at all.
  MR. HARRINGTON: May I remind the hon. and learned Gentleman that the statement marked on the brief, intimating that that statement was not true, was put in by the same gentleman, George Bolton, whose conduct we object to.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): I have good authority for stating that the boy was found not to have been at Mass. The boy further said—
  "John O'Brien told me not to tell, and Michael Malley. They swore me on a book not to tell."
  Now, John O'Brien was never near the place; Michael Malley was never near the place; and all this was entirely imaginative. Therefore, we have the fact that these incoherent statements were tested and found not to be true; and yet it is contended that the statements themselves ought to have been put in evidence. But the matter does not rest there; there is other important evidence on this point. The surgeon who arrived on the scene early on the morning of the 18th examined the boy. He was called before the jury with a view of showing how far the statement of the boy could be relied upon, and what did he say? He said—
  "He appeared to me at some moments to be rational, but taking it all in all I think he was irrational. He appeared to have lucid moments, but on the whole he appeared to be wandering."

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  Three statements out of the four made by the boy proved to be untrue; he gave the names of persons who had never been present at all, and his statements were so unreliable that the medical man said he was wandering and irrational, and only seemed to have lucid intervals. And that was the document which it is said was to be put in evidence, for good or for evil, to convict or acquit men charged with murder. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Plymouth (Mr. E. Clarke) talked about depositions that ought to be put in in evidence.
  MR. EDWARD CLARKE: Will my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General allow me for the second time to deny having stated that these depositions ought to have been put in in evidence?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): I am sorry if I misunderstood my hon. and learned Friend. Would anybody have thought that this was the document charged to be held back, and upon which so much reliance has been placed by hon. Members opposite? I ask, in justice to my right hon. and learned Friend the late Attorney General for Ireland, who was conducting the case, whether he was not entitled to arrive at the conclusion that the evidence was altogether worthless? After hearing the medical testimony, no doubt the Judge intervened and said—"Why, the boy was wandering and raving." Under such circumstances, is it fair that counsel should have imputations cast upon them for withholding this evidence, or that my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General for Ireland should be laughed at for having said the boy was raving? There is one other matter I ought to deal with, and that is the facts affecting the other statement—namely, that of Patrick Joyce. The statement of Patrick Joyce was, up to a certain point, identically the same as that made to Collins and Johnson by Michael Joyce. He had told Johnson that he did not know the men, but that their faces were black, and there is a slight difference in this witness's statement, which was referred to by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), because in the statement Patrick Joyce made to Mr. Brady, which was taken down in writing, he stated—"I think they had no coats, but bawneens." I have endeavoured to discover
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  on what ground the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. C. Russell) had for the strange charge he made against the Attorney General for Ireland of conduct no English barrister would have been guilty of, and which only an Irish barrister would have resorted to. The charge is now narrowed down to this one fact—that in this statement of Patrick Joyce to Mr. Brady this statement is made—"I think they had no coats, but bawneens." That was added to the statement that they had also blackened faces. It has been said that the boy ought to have been taught the nature of an oath. It must be remembered that this poor boy had been recovering slowly from his wounds during the autumn months, and if there had been any teaching of that boy for any purpose—if he had been educated in order to enable him to understand the nature of an oath, or for any other purpose, I fancy that we should have heard some strong statements made about it before this. Knowing that the counsel for the prisoners were aware that the boy could repeat what he had stated to Johnson and Collins—evidence of which had been given by those men and signed by them and was in the possession of the prisoners' counsel—the counsel for the Crown put that boy upon the table, affording every opportunity for converting him into a credible witness. With these facts before him, I must confess that I listened with regret to the speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Plymouth (Mr. E. Clarke). I needed no warning from him. I know that I have received from my Predecessors a great inheritance—a legacy which represents the duty of conducting criminal prosecutions with humanity, and of aiding in the pure administration of justice. I will say nothing of what has occurred during the last four years; but I will say this—that, appealed to, as I have been, bearing in mind the rules I have laid down as to the duties of counsel, I really cannot believe in my conscience—and I am not induced to say so from any feeling that I am supporting the action of a Colleague—I cannot bring myself to think that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland acted in any way unworthy of the high character enjoyed by the members of the Irish Bar. I may go further and say that,

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  while it is difficult indeed for one man to place himself in the position of another, and to invest himself with all the minute incidents of the trial, to weigh in his mind what would be effective in their results, and what was material for the jury to know—while I hesitate to judge for one moment of the conduct of another, I cannot bring myself to say that in this instance I should have acted otherwise than the Attorney General for Ireland acted. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will not think that I have spoken hastily. I have not done so. I have spoken with a sense of responsibility, after having carefully read the shorthand writer's notes of the trial, and have gone carefully through them, with a desire to come to a right conclusion as to what answer I should give to the appeal which has been made to me. There is one other testimony I must bear during the course of this discussion. Many names have been mentioned, and many persons have been accused, from Earl Spencer himself down to the Police Magistrate, the Crown counsel, and the Crown officials. To-night two other names have been added to the indictment. No doubt, as the Prime Minister has pointed out, much of the responsibility in this case rested upon the counsel for the prisoners. A reply had to be made to that argument, so it was left for the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), bringing his judgment to bear upon these facts, to declare, in language by no means doubtful, but clear and definite, that the counsel for the prisoners were grossly incompetent to conduct the trial. It must be remembered that these gentlemen were not counsel selected by the Crown. The view taken by the Government and by the House was that it would be a mitigation of the power of the Prevention of Crime Act, which placed prisoners in such an exceptional position, if witnesses, solicitors, and counsel were found for them at the expense of the Crown. But they do not select the counsel. On the contrary, the prisoners' solicitor, Mr. Concannon, selected the two men whom he believed to be the best for the purpose he could find in the Irish Bar. Is it suggested that the selective power of the solicitor was deficient? Well, it is not only on the bare and primâ facie fact that the solicitor found the prisoners' counsel that I would put the case; but let any
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  man take the record of the trial in his hand, and let him read the defence—the searching cross-examination of the witnesses, and the eloquent appeal to the jury; let him read that trial from beginning to end, and he will soon see whether there is one word of truth in the assertion that these gentlemen misconducted the trial. On the contrary, it will at once be said that the efforts of the prisoners' counsel were worthy of the high reputation which the Irish Bar enjoys. I very much regret that it has been thought necessary to make such a charge, and I am satisfied that those who read the cross-examination of the witnesses, and the speeches delivered by the prisoners' counsel at the trial will at once say that in their opinion there is no trace to be found in the conduct of the trial of the action of incompetent men. I will go further, and I will say that the case appears to have been conducted in a manner that reflected great credit upon the administration of justice. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has defended the action of the Executive in the matter, and my right hon. Friend is able to speak from great experience. Let me further remind hon. Members that no suggestion even now is made that the trial was an unfair one. Then, what has occurred since that such a demand for inquiry is made? My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dundalk (Mr. C. Russell) says that it would quiet the public mind in Ireland. If that is to be the principle upon which an inquiry is to be conceded into every case of a criminal trial, I can only say that it would greatly disturb public opinion in relation to the administration of justice, instead of tending to quiet it. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) said that they could put aside all that has happened since the trial, and yet still be entitled to the inquiry now demanded. The hon. Member said that he need not rely on the subsequent statement of Casey published in the pamphlet of the hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. Harrington), and all that has been brought to light since. The hon. Member said that, putting aside all that, Earl Spencer might fairly concede an inquiry into the circumstances of the case as they were laid before the Court. But what does that represent but a new trial, and a new

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  trial against the judgment of three verdicts given by three different juries? What is to be the nature of the inquiry? Is it to be an irresponsible examination of the evidence? Any tribunal that could be selected must be one with very great responsibility as to its methods and as to its results. Is it proposed to examine the five men who are now, in consequence of their own confession of guilt, suffering penal servitude? Do I understand that that is what is asked for? [Mr. HARRINGTON: Yes.] Will the hon. Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy), if he is in the House, give me his attention for one moment? I would ask him whether, in the interests of Ireland, he considers that would be a right course to take?—because I must remind the hon. Member that he strenuously resisted a Bill the object of which was to enable men upon their trial to establish their innocence upon their own statement. We thought that, under proper conditions, the Judge who tried a criminal case might be allowed to administer an oath to a prisoner upon his trial; but that Bill met with great resistance from hon. Members from Ireland, and the view entertained by the hon. Member for Monaghan was that such testimony could not be trusted, and that it would be detrimental to the interests of justice, especially in Ireland. In that way the sincere effort, which was made to prevent an innocent man from being convicted, was frustrated. Yet the very men who frustrated it, and who said that a prisoner should not be allowed to give evidence on his own trial, who would not allow those nearest to him to give evidence, or permit him any examination and cross-examination, or to tell his own story, are now urging that men who have been convicted upon their own admission of guilt, who cannot be cross-examined, against whom there would be no consequences if they failed to tell the truth, should be invited to make statements in their own behalf, which are in effect to upset the deliberate and solemn verdict of an impartial jury as well as to discredit their own pleas. I owe much to the indulgence of the House in listening to the very inefficient statement I have made. [Cries of "Hear, hear!" from the Irish Members.] Notwithstanding that rebuke, I will say that I have made that statement from no desire to screen
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  facts or men who ought not to be screened. I felt that those who were intrusted with the protection of life and property, which can be protected alone by the due administration of justice, would be acting unworthily and disloyally if they allowed the administration of justice to be shaken by granting this inquiry, and allowing a trial already adjudicated upon to be superseded by a mere popular demand for a fresh investigation. I therefore trust that the House will not listen to the insidious advice of the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill), who tells the Government that they will incur the loss of the Irish vote by refusing to agree to the Amendment. I believe it would be far better to lose that vote than for us to allow political considerations to interfere with the due administration of justice.
  THE O'GORMAN MAHONsaid, that he was by no means insensible to the disadvantages under which he laboured at that hour of the night, especially after the address they had heard from the eloquent Gentleman who had preceded him—a learned Gentleman connected with the law, of which he professed to have very little knowledge—but, above all, after having heard the address of the Prime Minister, from whose mind he wished at once to dissever the idea that there was any intention on his part, in the few observations he proposed to submit to the House—and they should be very few, in order that he might obtain something like a patient hearing—the idea that he felt in the slightest degree anything like prejudice against the noble Earl who filled the high Office of Viceroy of Ireland. The very reverse was the case. In fact, when first Earl Spencer went over to Ireland, a ray of hope—which, unfortunately, had vanished since—glanced across his mind; for he had a distinct recollection of the father of the noble Earl, and from his father's son he had anticipated that something like good would result to Ireland. He remembered that, 54 years ago, the father of Earl Spencer, as a Minister of the Crown, stated in his place in Parliament that if the Irish Party at that period were capable of demonstrating to him, as Minister of the Crown, that the great majority of the Irish people were desirous of dissolving the infamous Union which had been forced upon them, in direct opposition

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  to the will of the people, and by bribery and corruption of the worst type, he would consider it his duty to make a favourable representation of their case to his King. Such a statement, emanating from a man filling so important a position, necessarily prepossessed him (The O'Gorman Mahon) in favour of the son; and he rejoiced when Earl Spencer arrived in Ireland, being convinced that at last something like justice would be accorded to the Irish people. Therefore, he begged Earl Spencer, and those immediately connected with him, to be satisfied that there was nothing like prejudice in his mind excited against the noble Earl, but that, on the contrary, there was a strong prepossession in his favour. Necessarily, at that late hour of the night, he was obliged to be precise in his observations; and he would only mention one or two circumstances, the first of which bore a species of analogy to the case now under consideration. It related to a man in his county, who was condemned to an ignominious death after the most suspicious evidence had been recorded against him. The statements were very interesting. An unfortunate man was shot in the head, some pellets of lead had penetrated his skull; and while he lay on the ground, gasping for life, the clergyman of the parish—his own clergyman—found himself unable to administer the Sacrament to him. Now, this Last Sacrament was one of the most sacred rites connected with the Roman Catholic Church; and in this case the priest declined to administer it, because of the man's utter incapacity to comprehend what was taking place. The clergyman, who was ever desirous to strain a point in favour of a dying penitent, found him quite unfit to receive the Sacrament; but, nevertheless, after the clergyman had refused to administer it, in his sight and his presence a stipendiary magistrate, or some such animal as that, stepped forward. ["Oh!"] If he had made use of an unfortunate phrase he regretted it. Stipendiary magistrates in Ireland were an invention which he believed English Members knew very little about; but they were a class whose very existence depended on the detection of what they conceived to be crime, and their efforts were invariably directed towards the obtaining of a conviction, whether the person accused was innocent or guilty.
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  He asked the House to listen to the sequel. In the presence of that clergyman so restrained—he would not use an offensive word again, and when he did make use of the term "animal" he had merely meant it in a kindly sense—but this person insisted upon extracting information from the dying man. Stooping down, he put his ear to his mouth, and said—"Was it Francis Hynes who shot you?" And the unfortunate man repeated the words "Francis Hynes." To a question of who made the sun, moon, and stars, he would, doubtless, have given a similar answer. Upon that kind of evidence the accused was hanged. He saw that the Secretary of State listened with astonishment to such a statement; but these facts were duly brought before the Lord Lieutenant. The Members for the county, the clergy of the county—clergymen of all persuasions—Grand Jurors, magistrates, Deputy Lieutenants, and many others, signed a Memorial, which was presented to His Excellency, and after considerable consideration and delay the prayer of that Memorial was refused, and the man was hanged—hanged notwithstanding the conviction of thousands of persons in the county in which the crime was committed, and millions of Irishmen generally, who believed Francis Hynes to be perfectly innocent. It might be asked, what had this to do with the present case? It had this analogy in connection with it—it proved the existence of a deep-rooted objection and reluctance on the part of the Viceroy to hear anything like a remonstrance from anybody except the paid officers of the Crown. Notwithstanding the Memorial of the clergy, the gentry, and the people generally, Francis Hynes was executed; and up to this moment he was believed by the united voice of Ireland to have been innocently executed. How many Irishmen believed that Myles Joyce, who was executed the other day, was also innocent? How many believed that the four or five men now suffering the penalty of penal servitude were innocent? He might here mention that he was indebted to his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) for information to the effect that a distinct alibi could have been established for those poor men, but that the evidence of their wives would not be permitted,

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  and their children were too young to afford any. There were millions of Irishmen who, having investigated the case dispassionately, and examined it in every particular, believed in the innocence of Myles Joyce; and, far from attempting or wishing to go into anything like a fresh recital of the circumstances of the case, which had been canvassed by so many legal Gentlemen, he would only say that there was no intention on the part of the Irish Party to offer any insult to the Lord Lieutenant. All that they asked for was a simple investigation, but not a mock investigation. When they spoke of investigation, they meant a fair, an open, and a public one—such a one as Englishmen would require for their own countrymen if Englishmen happened to be similarly circumstanced; and any Minister of the Crown who attempted to refuse an investigation would have shame cried upon him. The honour of a House which they all respected seemed to him to be implicated in the matter. It was alleged, and capable of proof, that a member of the house of Cavendish, holding a high position in Her Majesty's Government, had pledged his word that, under certain circumstances, an investigation into the case should be granted. All who had taken the trouble to read Irish history were fully aware that English faith had often been broken by English Ministers; but he had yet to learn that the house of Cavendish was so lost and degraded as to condescend to resort to the measures of the trader, who would substitute a miserable partial inquiry for the one which the public demanded, and for which he had pledged his word. He believed the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War (the Marquess of Hartington) was absent at that moment; but he would put it to the noble Marquess, and he would put it to his Colleagues, whether it was fitting or proper to expose an English gentleman to the imputation of having trifled with the House of Commons, of having trifled with his own good faith, and of having trifled with the people of Ireland, by holding out the hope of a free, a fair, and a just investigation, and now turning round and saying that one had been given, because there had been something like an inquiry by persons who were themselves implicated in the matter? That he trusted was not what the noble
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  house of Cavendish would ever lend itself to; and, until he received better proof than now existed, he would not believe that that was the course which Her Majesty's Government proposed to adopt.
  MR. CALLANsaid, that to-morrow the speech of the Attorney General would be read, and it would be universally felt that it was one of the ablest speeches he had ever made since the memorable occasion on which he first made his mark in that House when he delivered an address upon Judge Keogh. The present speech was even still more remarkable than that in which the hon. and learned Gentleman defended Judge Keogh. He had been engaged in a similar task of defending a learned Judge, but a Judge whose conduct was not impugned, and who did not require any eulogy at the hands of the hon. and learned Gentleman; but not one word had been uttered by the hon. and learned Gentleman to defend or explain the conduct of His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant. It was as difficult to ask the House to listen calmly to argument after the impassioned speech of the Attorney General, as it was for a jury to calmly try Myles Joyce after the declaration made by the Judge in sentencing the prisoner who had just previously been convicted. What were the facts which had been laid before the House? A fearful murder—indeed a massacre—was committed in the month of August, 1882, in a remote part of the county of Galway. It was well known that a thrill of horror pervaded the country on the announcement of the fact. He had been present in Dublin during the trial, and he had mixed with the jurors who tried the case; and he was able to say that no stronger feeling was excited anywhere than among the jurors of that City. No one had impugned the verdict, and not a word had been said against its impartiality. It was not until the execution had taken place, on the 15th of December, that any doubt appeared to be entertained in regard to the case. No effort had been made by anybody to secure a commutation of the sentence; there was no effort of that kind by any gentleman in the City of Dublin; but when it was announced that two of the prisoners on the day but one before, and on the day before the execution, had made what were called

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  "dying declarations," intense feeling, no doubt, was invoked as to what were the grounds upon which those declarations had been made. The interest, however, died away until last summer, when the Crown informers made their confessions, and the case was brought before the House of Commons. Then, again, the subject of the suppressed declarations was mooted. He would ask what were the circumstances under which the matter was brought before the House? On the 11th of August his hon. Friend—he thought the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton)—brought the case forward. He would not discuss the circumstances under which the conditional promise of an inquiry was made on the part of the Government; but the hon. Member for Mallow (Mr. O'Brien), who was not generally accused of being a very moderate or an extremely timid Member, and himself (Mr. Callan) both recommended the hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. Harrington) to be content with the satisfactory pledge then given by the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War. In compliance with the wish then expressed by the noble Marquess for information, one of the highest and most respected dignitaries of the Catholic Church of Ireland wrote a letter to the Lord Lieutenant, which he regretted had not been included in the pamphlet published by the hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. Harrington). He presumed it had not been so included by accident. What was it that His Grace the Archbishop of Tuam wrote? Now, the Archbishop of Tuam was not an extreme politician—if, indeed, he was a politician at all. He had never given any assistance to the National movement in Ireland, and but for the honesty of his character, and his well-known fearlessness and independence of judgment, he would have been reckoned what was called a Whig official; but the honesty of his character and his independence had saved His Grace from that obloquy. What did the Archbishop of Tuam say in his letter of the 13th of August, from Ballinrobe to the Lord Lieutenant? After recapitulating the circumstances that had arisen, Dr. M'Evilly went on to say—
  "Taking all the circumstances into account, my own conviction is that this latter statement of the wretched man is truthful and sincere—that is, that as an evidence of his sincerity he
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  declared that he was ready, in the interests of justice, to suffer any pain, even death itself, if necessary, on account of having been instrumental in taking away the life of an innocent man. And I may add that since then I am reliably informed that this statement has been fully corroborated by another man named Philbin—one of the leading approvers in the case—and who is, I am informed, prepared to make a similar public declaration. In conclusion, I would ask your Excellency, in order to allay public feeling, so much excited in this neighbourhood, to direct a sworn inquiry into the case."
  That letter was addressed to the Lord Lieutenant by the Archbishop of Tuam, and on the 28th of August the Archbishop addressed a further letter to the Lord Lieutenant, pressing for an inquiry, and giving his reasons for pressing it. His Grace said—
  "I have the honour to acknowledge Your Excellency's letter with accompanying Memorandum of the 24th instant. Notwithstanding the statements and the arguments so ably and so powerfully put forward in the Memorandum, I still feel that nothing short of a public inquiry can satisfy a discerning and expectant public, for they feel that the circumstances of the case are very much altered since the trial; and they, therefore, naturally expect that the Government would take advantage of those circumstances to arrive at an exact knowledge of the actual condition of things. The absence of any conceivably adequate motive on the latter occasion, while he had obviously the most powerful motive on the former—namely, the saving of his own neck from the halter, deeply impressed all who were present as to the truthful sincerity of his statement. Add to this, apart from the strong universal feeling then, as well as now, prevailing throughout Joyce's country respecting Myles Joyce's innocence, the dying declaration of the two men executed with him as to his innocence, as reported in the public 1'ress at the time, it is hardly conceivable how, in the very jaws of death, they would allow themselves to be launched into eternity with a lie on their lips, or an equivocation amounting to a lie, for there are very few—far fewer than seems to be supposed—who are ignorant of this obvious point of Christian morality—namely, that the abettor of, and participator in, murder, are morally just as guilty as the man who strikes the blow or fires the fatal bullet. The exceptional nature of the case as it now stands, with all its circumstances, would seem to call for exceptional consideration on the part of the Government by instituting a public inquiry. As regards the official incriminated, towards whom I can have no feeling one way or the other, being neither advocate nor accuser in the case, but simply laying before Your Excellency the statements publicly made to me, and my impressions, not lightly entertained—one could not help thinking that at the inquiry referred to in the Memorandum, he (the solicitor, Bolton) was witness in his own case; and it might seem more satisfactory, if not necessary in order to satisfy reasonable public expectations if, at a public inquiry, where there could be an opportunity afforded of questioning all parties

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  connected with the prison, it was fully proved that he had not seen Casey on any other occasions than those referred to in the Memorandum."
  To that moderate letter an insolent reply was sent. The first letter in reply to the Archbishop, and sent from Dublin Castle, contained nine paragraphs, in which 10 times over the Archbishop was spoken of as "Your Grace." It might have been thought that the Assistant Under Secretary must have been animated at the time by a spirit of flunkyism when that letter was addressed to "His Grace the Most Rev. Dr. M'Evilly, Archbishop of Tuam." But when the Archbishop would not accept the Lord Lieutenant's Memorandum as conclusive, and it became necessary to write to him again, he was curtly addressed as "you," and his territorial title was thrown on one side, the letter being simply directed to "Archbishop M'Evilly." He (Mr. Callan) had now to refer to another matter—namely, the speech of the Attorney General. The hon. and learned Gentleman had made no reference whatever to the charge against Mr. Bolton of visiting the prisoners in goal. It had not been denied by the Solicitor General for Ireland, by the Attorney General for England, by the Home Secretary, or by the Prime Minister; but not one single word of explanation had been given, notwithstanding that no one ventured to deny the visits of Bolton to the prisoners while they were in confinement. He would not refer to those visits in any other language than that of Judge Barry at the Belfast Assizes, when that learned Judge held that if Mr. Bolton had been in the habit of gliding from cell to cell, he had acted far in excess of his duty, and had been doing that which was not only beneath the position he occupied, but most censurable. Fair play ought to characterize all criminal prosecutions in a free country. Earl Spencer had referred to the Home Secretary as to what should guide him in this matter; but had he referred to Mr. Justice Barry as in the Kilmartin case he had referred to Judge Lawson? Why had he not followed the precedent he had established himself in the Kilmartin case? In the Kilmartin case Earl Spencer well knew that he had a Judge who would back him up in anything; but that in Judge Barry he had a Judge who would carefully weigh all
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  the circumstances which had arisen, and give his conscientious advice upon them. Then, why did not the noble Earl consult Judge Barry when the dying declarations first came before him? The impression existed in Ireland that something in the nature of a judicial murder had been perpetrated, and that the dying declarations, which conclusively established the innocence of Myles Joyce, had been carefully suppressed. He believed that if the declarations of the two men on the eve of execution were published, it would be found they confirmed the innocence of Myles Joyce, and that they contained the admission of their own guilt. They would, therefore, have the effect of relieving the memory of Myles Joyce from the stigma of guilt, and also the character of the men now in prison. Moreover, the declarations would, he believed, be found to agree with the statement of the informer with whom these men had no possible means of communication; and, further, that they would name Casey amongst the murderers. He did not attach so much importance as was attached by some hon. Members to the depositions of the boys which were suppressed. With regard to the boy of nine years of age who survived, and who had been for months in the custody of the Government, he thought it would have been much better had the Government, through some Christian Brother, Catholic priest, or other religious person, instructed him in the rudiments of the Catechism, so that he might have known the penalty that would accrue to the perjurer, rather than have confided him to the tender mercies of Mr. George Bolton. With reference to Patrick Casey, he had made a remark, in the course of the Prime Minister's speech that day, with regard to which he wished to remark that it had been misapprehended, inasmuch as he had made it in answer to what he believed at the time to have been a question asked by the right hon. Gentleman. He wished to make this observation, because the reply he gave at the time had the effect of bringing down upon him the wrath of almost the entire House. Finally, he would ask whether the Government would afford pecuniary aid, as they had done in the case of Mr. Bolton and French, when they thought to immolate the hon. Member for Mallow (Mr. O'Brien)—would

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  they afford material assistance to Casey against the hon. Member for Mallow, who had charged Casey with murder? Would the Attorney General give his fiat to a criminal prosecution against that hon. Member, who, he undertook to say, would prove the charge he had made? If that were done, Irish Members would be able to get the depositions out of the desk of Earl Spencer. Before resuming his seat, he would say that the elevation of Sir Samuel Anderson would be regarded by the Irish public as an endorsement by Earl Spencer of the system of jury packing which for years had been going on in Ireland.
  MR. HARRINGTON: Sir, before the House proceeds to divide on the Amendment—
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is not entitled to reply, but will doubtless be permitted, by the indulgence of the House, to make an explanation.
  MR. HARRINGTONsaid, he rose to make a correction which he believed would be acceptable to the Attorney General. The hon. and learned Gentleman had stated that John O'Brien was never near the place in question; but he would find, on reference to the statement of Johnson, that that was incorrect. He thought the Prime Minister was entitled to apologies from hon. Members on those Benches for the interruptions that came from them during his speech, which, on his own part, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman to accept.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 48; Noes 219: Majority 171.—(Div. List, No. 1.)
  Main Question again proposed.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Sir Henry Holland.)
  Motion agreed to.
  Debate adjourned till To-morrow.

MOTION.

  PUBLIC PETITIONS.
  Ordered, That a Select Committee be appointed, to whom shall be referred all Petitions presented to the House, with the exception of such as relate to Private Bills; and that such Committee do classify and prepare abstracts of the same, in such form and manner as shall
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  appear to them best suited to convey to the House all requisite information respecting their contents, and do report the same from time to time to the House; and that the reports of the Committee do set forth the number of signatures to each Petition only in respect to those signatures to which addresses are affixed:—And that such Committee have power to direct the printing in extenso of such Petitions, or of such parts of Petitions, as shall appear to require it:—And that such Committee have power to report their opinion and observations thereupon to the House:—The Committee was accordingly nominated of,—Sir CHARLES FORSTER, Mr. RICHARD POWER, Mr. M'LAGAN, Mr. CAVENDISH BENTINCK, Mr. REGINALD YORKE, Mr. CHARLES DALRYMPLE, Viscount NEWPORT, Mr. MULHOLLAND, Marquess of TAVISTOCK, Mr. CHARLES TENNANT, Marquess of STAFFORD, Mr. HANBURY-TRACY, Mr. WILLIAM LOWTHER, Colonel DIGBY, and Colonel COLTHURST.
  Ordered, That Three be the quorum.—(Sir Charles Forster.)
  House adjourned at a quarter before One o'clock.