cursionists were injured, and that the police were injured in the execution of their duty. But if it were true that the sentences were too severe, then, no doubt, they would be corrected on appeal to the County Court Judge. As to the treatment of prisoners, he regretted to observe that the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) had left the House; and he would not advert, as he should otherwise have done, to the unfortunately violent tone which characterized too large a portion of the speech which the hon. Gentleman had addressed to the House. The contention was that an entirely different treatment ought to be applied to so-called political prisoners under the Crimes Act to what was applied to ordinary criminals. [Mr. BRUNNER: Hear, hear!] He thought the hon. Gentleman who cheered was not a Member of the House during the discussion of the Act, or he would have known that not only the opinion of the Government, but also of every competent lawyer who had pronounced an opinion on the matter, was that the Act dealt solely with offences which were already offences under the existing law. Persons, therefore, who offended against the Crimes Act offended against the ordinary law, and the only difference made by the Act related to the machinery by which they were tried. There appeard to him to be no adequate justification for different treatment of these persons after condemnation. He entirely conceded that political offences ought to be distinguished from offences that were not political; but the Government did not propose to deal, and would not deal, with offences which were political under the Crimes Act any more than under the ordinary law. Part of the speeches against prison discipline were aimed at the whole existing system, as it applied to every kind of prisoner. That might be a very proper subject for Parliamentary inquiry. He did not profess to have any knowledge of the subject. He had never been brought in contact with it, nor had he ever made it a special study; but if the question of prison discipline was to be dealt with at all, it ought to be dealt with with regard to England and Ireland at the same time, and not simply with reference to any particular Act of Parliament or any class of prisoners. It might be that prisoners were treated too harshly. By all means let Parliament make inquiry. No one would rejoice more than he if such an inquiry produced a reform, if that reform were needed. What he had always said was that he should always to the best of his ability see that precisely the same system was adopted in Ireland as in England with regard to all prisoners who came under the law. The hon. and gallant Member for North Galway (Colonel Nolan) tried to draw a distinction between educated and uneducated prisoners, and between those who had been accustomed to manual labour and those who had not. He was perfectly ready to concede that the same punishment might be a very different punishment to one man and another; but he was unable to say whether any distinction of the kind was actually made in prisons. That, however, was not a question which came up only with regard to the Crimes Act; it came up with regard to the ordinary law, and in quite as striking a manner. Everybody knew that the criminal classes were not entirely composed of uneducated persons and those accustomed to manual labour. If there was any injustice in regard to these matters, by all means let it be redressed, not only in connection with persons condemned under the Crimes Act, but also in connection with others who were condemned under the ordinary law in England. Hon. Gentlemen opposite had dwelt at great length on the hardships of prison discipline. He wished they and their friends in Ireland had always recollected those hardships when they were discussing the Crimes Act at public meetings; but in speech after speech they told the unfortunate peasantry of Ireland that the Crimes Act would not have any terror for them, for, after all, they would be better off in prison than outside of it. How that kind of exhortation was consistent with the speeches just made in the House a man must have a great deal of ingenuity to discover. The hon. Member for East Mayo went the length of accusing him of so contriving matters as to put the hou. Member for North-East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien) in prison for several days before trial out of a feeling of personal spite, and of personal vengeance which he was supposed to entertain on account of certain articles in United Ireland. He thought at first that that suggestion was a grim joke until he re collected that in Monday's debate the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Dillon) gave the House to understand that he was himself so moved and influenced by articles in The Times that he found it almost impossible to refrain from, as it were, giving practical contradiction to those articles by refusing to use his influence to disperse meetings peaceably in Ireland. Well, if the hon. Gentleman felt newspaper criticisms so acutely he could imagine that the hon. Gentleman attributed the same sensitiveness to him. If that were true, he (Mr. A. J. Balfour) would have an even more uneasy time of it than he had at the present moment. But he could assure the hon. Gentleman that no articles he had ever read either in Irish or English newspapers had ever given him a moment's uneasiness or the least desire to inflict vengeance upon an editor. The main contention of the hon. Gentleman who had spoken on this question was that the Government ought to draw a wide distinction between political and other offences, and the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel Nolan) who was the first to raise this point in the House said a broad distinction might me made if by political offences they meant speeches and writings, and by ordinary offences they meant actions. He asked the House to consider for a moment what that position amounted to. It meant that those persons who conceived it to be their duty-most unhappily and wrongly conceived it to be their duty to urge the Irish peasant to commit ordinary offences, for which they would be treated by punishment under the ordinary law, were to receive a far less share of punishment than those whom they practically drove to the commission of crime. He could hardly believe that hon. Gentlemen, who urged that contention, were serious. He could understand that a perverted sense of public duty might induce hon. Gentlemen to urge the Irish peasants to the commission of crime; but he could not conceive that they should come down to the House and ask the House and the British public to treat those who provoked to crime in a different manner from their victims. He could hardly believe that they seriously contemplated the proposition which they asked the House to accept. For themselves-those who were going to make the speechesthey asked one measure of justice, and VOL. 000XXI. [THIRD SERIES.] for those who were going to be the dupes of their speeches another measure. He believed that when the line which those hon. Gentlemen were taking was thoroughly understood in Ireland, it would hardly conduce to the continuance of that confidence with which, doubtless, they were now treated by their followers in that country. The hon. Member for East Mayo went on to make certain specific allegations of an extraordinary kind regarding the hon. Member for North-East Cork. He (Mr. Dillon) said that the Government arrested him to prevent him coming over and making a speech in Parliament. The hon. Gentleman seemed to regard a speech in Parliament as being as formidable as an article in a newspaper. Did the hon. Gentleman really suppose that the Government would alter by one iota the action they took in this matter in order to avoid a speech by the hon. Member for North-East Cork, or any Member of that House? It was perfectly known what kind of speech the hon. Member for North-East Cork would make if he came to the House, and it would not have made the slightest difference to the Government whether he had or had not given the House his views. The hon. Gentleman had not got the story right. It was erroneous to say that the police constable who took the hon. Member up said he would not take him up if he would promise not to come over and take part in the debate in that House. That was an entire delusion of the hon. Gentleman. He (Mr. A. J. Balfour) did not think it necessary to reply to the story, which really had no foundation in fact; but the hon. Gentleman asked if the Government were deliberately keeping this Gentleman in prison instead of bringing him up at once. Surely, before making that accusation-which he supplemented by other accusations of personal spite the hou. Gentleman might have made himself acquainted with the law under which the Government were acting. He might have made himself acquainted with the fact that Petty Sessions Courts were held at fixed intervals, and it did not rest with the Executive to hurry on the hour at which the trial took place. They had no choice in the matter. If the hon. Member for North-East Cork was at that moment in prison, whom had he got the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon). The right hon. Gentleman had also used very strong language as to the attitude taken up by the hon. Member for North-East Cork (Mr. William O'Brien) with reference to the proceedings now pending. But the right hon. Gentleman forgot that this kind of language and this kind of attitude were due to the fact that the officers of the Government were not now administering the law in the ordinary and normal sense in which it was understood in England, but were carrying out under exceptional provisions administration by an exceptional tribunal. It was because the Government by their legisla tion had distorted and warped the whole conception of the administration of justice that the hon. Member for North-East Cork assumed such an attitude and that the hon. Member for East Mayo used such violent language. The Government had been warned by the Opposition before this miserable Act was passed what the consequences would be and how much language they would have to hear and how many acts they would have to deal with and to grapple with-crime which in a country administered by the ordinary law as in England would never arise. The Government had themselves entirely to thank for any unreasonable imputations made upon them or any inconvenient or irregular action taken in reference to their proceedings. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had repeated now at the eleventh hour what the Opposition had systematically denied during the whole course of the Session since the Crimes Bill was introduced. The right. hon. Gentleman had assumed that every competent legal authority in the House admitted that Crimes Act created no new offence. He denied that most emphatically. His hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hackney (Sir Charles Russell), who was as good a legal authority as any hon. Gentleman opposite, had always insisted that new crimes were created by the Crimes Act. to thank for it? If he had done ment and amazement at the tone of what it was his bounden duty to do namely, to obey the law and to attend on Friday at his trial; and if, further, he had done what the hon. Member for East Mayo said he would do-namely, appealed after his trial to the County Court Judge, the hon. Member would at this moment not be in the cell, whose horrors had been so feelingly described by the hon. Gentleman-he would be at large on bail. It was simply monstrous that the Government should be attacked for putting a man in prison when that man was in prison solely in consequence of his own action. The consequences were what he must have foreseen when he refused to appear in Court. He had nothing more to say on the speech of the hon. Member for East Mayo but to express his regret that the hon. Gentleman had thought it necessary, at the close of his remarks, to make a violent attack on the magistrates who had to administer justice, and on the witnesses who would have to give evidence in the impending trial. The hon. Gentleman described the witnesses against the hon. Member for North-East Cork as paid spies. He also stated that all who were connected with the trial would receive the vengeance of the Irish people. The hon. Gentleman seemed to forget the result which language of that kind had already had in Ireland. He seemed to forget that one of the witnesses-one of the persons whom he described as paid spies of the Government, who gave their evidence not according to truth, but in order to get promotion in a police force -was at this moment hovering between life and death, in consequence of the brutal outrages which were inflicted on him by the mob on Friday last. Whatever view the hon. Member for East Mayo might take of the Government or of the magistrates who enforced the law, it would have been well could he have refrained from using the violent language about persons who, after all, were only doing their duty, and who in doing their duty had suffered so severely at the hands of the irresponsible ministers of vengeance whom the hon. Gentleman had told them they must fear in future. MR. JOHN MORLEY (Newcastleupon-Tyne) said, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) had expressed in rather excessive language his astonish THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir EDWARD CLARKE) (Plymouth): He never said so. MR. JOHN MORLEY said, he must stick to his text, and if his hon. and learned Friend were present, he would say what he had already said—namely, that the Crimes Act does create new offences. It would be in the recollection of the House that the assertion had been made a 100 times on that side, and it had never been denied, that Mr. Justice Holmes himself, when Attorney General for Ireland, expressed the same opinion. MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have denied that at least six times. MR. JOHN MORLEY said, that the Irish Attorney General of that day never denied it. The words were taken down by his right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) the moment they were uttered. THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH) (Strand, Westminster): The right hon. Gentle. man is entirely mistaken. There is absolutely no record of these words at all in the newspapers or in any record which has been referred to. It is contrary to Mr. Justice Holmes's own statement and contrary to every statement which has been made on this subject on this side of the House. MR. JOHN MORLEY said, he could only repeat that his right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian, while sitting next to him, took the words down. But he did not want to argue that point. All he wanted to do was to dispute the assumption of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary that all the legal authority in the House, and other great authority in the House, accepted the proposition that the Crimes Act created no new offences. As to the question of prison discipline and the treatment of prisoners who were in prison under the Crimes Act, it was no doubt true that offenders ought to be treated in a general way in the same fashion. But he appealed to any hon. Gentleman on either side of the House, who was acquainted with the practice of foreign countries in Western Europe, whether, if they imprisoned a man for a political offence, he was not treated in an entirely different way from other offenders. Whether the hon. Member for NorthEast Cork, if he were convicted, would be deemed to have been in prison for a political offence he (Mr. John Morley) did not feel himself at present called upon to give judgment; but if, as the hon. Member for East Mayo said, between now and Christmas 30 or 40, or three or four, Members of Parliament were imprisoned there was not a reasonable man in the House or the country who would not believe that they were in in prison for political offences. The speeches for which it was assumed they were to be condemned to terms of imprisonment would, no doubt, be speeches offensive to the Government because of their political complexion. He would not make any remarks on the prudence or the wisdom of the Government in instituting these proceedings. He should have thought that, even from their own point of view, and accepting their own policy, it would have been more prudent and more judicious not to have inaugurated the new régime by a comparatively unprovoked proceeding of this kind. He could only explain it on the belief that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary intended to govern Ireland between now and the time when Parliament met again in the most rigorous and most strenuous manner, and with the most uncalculating rigour that his instruments would enable him to employ. His language last night bore no other interpretation but that. He was not in the House when the right hon. Gentleman answered a Question standing in his name upon the Paper, but he understood that he said that it would be impossible to grant a commission of inquiry into the action of the police at Mitchelstown on Friday last, for two reasons-one, that proceedings were or might be pending of a judicial character, and the other that an Act of Parliament would be necessary to authorize the holding of the inquiry with power to take evidence on oath. But the precedent of the Belfast Commission altogether disposed of the first reason. The Government appointed a Commission to inquire into the Belfast riots, although it was perfectly certain that judicial proceedings would arise out of those riots. MR. A. J. BALFOUR: What he stated was that a Commission of Inquiry into the Mitchelstown riots must be in the nature of a criminal inquiry, but this was not so in the case of Belfast. MR. JOHN MORLEY said, the right hon. Gentleman would find that there was an extraordinary resemblance between the circumstances of Mitchelstown and Belfast. At Belfast the police were driven back, just as they were alleged to have been at Mitchelstown. They then fired on the crowd, and lives were lost. Undoubtedly, if it had been found that the police at Belfast fired without good reason, they would have been subject to criminal proceedings. There was an identical resemblance between the two cases. It was quite true that an Aot of Parliament would have to be passed in order to enable a Commission to be issued capable of taking sworn evidence. But he should have thought that, considering the importance of the subject, and its effect upon the public mind both in England and Ireland, it would have been worth while, even at this period of the Session, to have passed the necessary Act of Parliament. There were other inquiries, however, which might be held, and which did not require an Act of Parliament. In the case of the Belfast riots, for instance, Mr. Reed, the Inspector General of Constabulary, stated that before he learnt that a Commission of Inquiry was going to be instituted he intended to hold an investigation. into the conduct of the police with regard to the firing from Boweshill barracks. He should have been glad to hear that, at all events, it was intended to hold this Departmental inquiry into the occurrences at Mitchelstown. It would be almost an intolerable thing that that House should separate in a matter of such great moment. when the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, representing the Irish Government, had to base the decision of the Government upon reports that came hurriedly from the police, unverified, unsifted, and uncriticized. Was that the position? Were they to suppose that, so far as the mind of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was concerned, it was closed as to the firing that took place at Mitchelstown on Friday last? If so, it appeared to him (Mr. John Morley) that the right hon. Gentleman had brought himself, or the Government, into a very unfortunate position. That was not perhaps a great source of public regret to him (Mr. John Morley); he had no particular admiration or good wishes for the Government; but he thought that in the interests of good government in Ireland, which all of them desired, and that in the interests of the police themselves-a body against whom he had never said one single word, or ever joined in the charges against them, and whom he had often defended-it was most important that there should be an inquiry, whether a Department inquiry or one of some other form that the right hon. Gentleman might devise that would satisfy the public mind that the action of the police on Friday last was not excessive. The right hon. Gentleman yesterday made an answer to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) which he evidently thought was quite conclusive. He said that the police at Mitchelstown were acting under the same instructions as during the time that the Government of 1880 was in Office. If that was so it was most unsatisfactory, for experience ought to have taught the Irish Execu tive that the police required special instructions for special occasions. When the Belfast riots broke out in June last year the first thing almost the Govern ment did was to send a telegram to Belfast to the following effect : "As it would appear that in some cases parties of Constabulary had to fire when Magistrates were not present to give orders, please instruct the officers to see, should this occur again, that such a serious step is taken only as a last extremity." He referred to that to show that the Government of the day did not rely on the old instructions, but sent special instructions. Since then the Government had had plenty of time to consider the advisability of issuing new instructions to the police as to their duties in cases of riot. He would urge the Government to issue such special instructions, because the Government had to deal with very exceptional circumstances. They admitted that there was considerable excitement in Ireland, and therefore the probability of collisions of this kind. Under such circumstances he thought it would have been the duty of the Government to issue to Constabulary officers and Resident Magistrates instructions warning them of the consequences that had been realized at Mitchelstown, and urging upon them the necessity of caution. He wished to know were any special instructions sent to Mitchelstown; if not, the Administration was guilty of a grave dereliction of duty. In the course of his evidence given at Belfast, Mr. Reed strongly recommended that where firing had to take place it should be done by the military, and not by the police. He |