May I ask whether the two last dates in June clash with the Coronation, the two Fridays at the end of June?

That is the third and fourth Fridays; we will provide for that.

I desired to call attention to it.

Are we to gather from the answer of the right hon. Gentleman that it is the intention to sit during Easter week?

No, Sir.

May I ask whether we are to understand it is possible, if not probable, that after Easter there will be no dates available for private Members?

Everything is possible, but I hope it is not probable.

The unusual brevity and corresponding obscurity of the Gracious Speech with regard to the programme of legislation for the ensuing Session have given rise to a good deal of doubt and a good deal of speculation as to the exact nature and extent of that programme. Not very much additional light is thrown upon it by the reticence of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister yesterday, but if we are to look for guidance in this matter I think we naturally would look to the declarations and speeches of the responsible leaders of those various sections of the House upon whose continued allegiance this present Government must depend even if it is to survive the first week of the Session. Anyone reading between the lines of the Speech delivered last night by the hon. Member who now leads the Labour party in this House (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) must have recognised that lie was speaking with more than prophetic instinct when he asserted his confidence that the Government would deal in this Session not merely with the question of the Payment of Members, but with the question of the Osborne Judgment. Curiously enough, there is nothing in the Speech to lead to any such conclusions, but I am quite certain that the hon. Member had very good reasons for the confidence that he ex- pressed. In the same way, no one who has studied the speeches of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond), who leads the Irish Parliamentary party in this House, and no one who has considered the action of himself and his colleagues up to the present can have any doubt that the attitude is to be continued which they pursued in the previous Session, as the result of the understanding or bargain, by which, in consideration of the assistance of himself and his friends in the Division Lobby, this House was exposed to what I consider the ignominious position of conducting its whole debates and its entire legislation on lines dictated and controlled by the hon. and learned Gentleman. It is perfectly plain that state of affairs is to continue.

I am quite sure that right hon. Gentlemen opposite would have been very glad to have escaped from this position, and it is in this connection that I wish to call the attention of the House very briefly to the attitude adopted and the position taken up by right hon. Gentlemen opposite immediately before and during the early days of the recent General Election on the question of Home Rule. I would rather imagine—I think it is a rather reasonable suggestion—that in their anxiety to escape from the position in which they had been placed during the previous twelve months the right hon. Gentleman opposite would have gladly welcomed either a decisive victory or a decisive defeat, because either of those would have saved them from coining back and putting themselves once more in the position to which I have already referred; because I can hardly conceive anything more galling to men with a high sense of political honour than that they should be once again placed in the same alliance—a position in which they would be coerced to admit that the great interests of the country and the great business of this House were to be carried on and controlled, not according to the interests and wishes of the Empire, but according to the views and requirements of the hon. and learned Gentleman, the Member for Waterford. That probably is the explanation of a very extraordinary coincidence in the election addresses of several of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite. In the election address of the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Postmaster General, and some others, there was absolutely no reference of any sort or kind to the question of Home Rule, and the election had progressed for some days in this country—up to a stage which made it pretty evident there was going to be no real change either way in the state of parties—before these responsible leaders of public opinion ventured to let the electors know, even in their own Constituencies, what was the sort of view they had as regards Home Rule and what were the intentions of His Majesty's Ministers in respect to it. Finally, on the 7th of December the Prime Minister, speaking at St. Andrews, said:—

"I have spoken of Ireland, because the else of Ireland is one that is prior in point of time and urgency, but do not we here in Scotland feel, are we not made to feel perpetually, the incapacity of the Imperial Parliament, not from want of will, but from want of time and from the competition of other business and other concerns, to give us in Scotland what the Scottish people need. It is the same thing in Wales. It is the same tiling for my own poor and despised country of England."

In a subsequent speech the right hon. Gentleman said—and it will be seen that he is giving the keynote to his followers—the idea being to suggest that after all, just like this Constitutional revolution that he proposed to carry out, this question of Home Rule was going to be a very simple and trivial matter. Here is what he said on 12th December:—

"That was a very simple policy, and that was to maintain undivided and undisturbed the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament and, subject to that condition, to give to their Irish fellow-subjects the power by legislature and by an executive of their own to deal according to their own ideas with matters which were of purely Irish concern."

The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary thought it was even a simple matter. Here is the way he put it on 10th December:—

"It would free the British House of Commons from a mass of petty details, which would be far better settled locally, and the representatives of the nation would be left free to deal with the great questions of real magnitude and importance."

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs also defined his views as regards Irish Home Rule with the following remarkable proposal, which is from a speech delivered on 5th December:—

"Irish Home Rule when it came would be part of a great reconstructing of the House of Commons in this sense, that there would be a redistribution of seats according to the numbers and population. Ireland, when it had Home Rule and when the House of Commons was left free for Imperial matters, would have fewer members in the House of Commons than it had to-day. Under a scheme of Devolution, England, Scotland and Wales, as well as Ireland, would each of them have more scope for dealing with their own local affairs."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer made even lighter of it, I observe, when he in his speech at Bangor on 9th December said this:—

"After disposing of the Veto of the House of Lords the first thing will be to reconstruct our present. Imperial machinery in such a way as to free the House of Commons from trivial local and provincial details, which can be attended to so much better in the district concerned, in order to leave Parliament untaxed for the purpose of attending to the immense Imperial questions that are awaiting consideration."

That is the way in which responsible Ministers proposed to deal with the question, and as we suggest at the dictation and under the control of hon. Members from Ireland below the Gangway, they are rushing this great constitutional revolution with the intention and desire that in the interval, while the Second Chamber and its power are in abeyance they will, with the assistance of their Friends below the Gangway, force upon the unwilling electors of this country those Home Rule proposals which on two occasions the intelligence and good sense of the electors have signally defeated and rejected. The only other commentary upon that to which I would like to refer is the very remarkable statement that was made at Bristol by the Chief Secretary for Ireland. He made it on the 1st of December, and it seems to have been one of those rare intervals of political fortitude which he reserves for English platforms. He seams to have regretted it ever since, because he has given a variety of explanations of it culminating, in a suggestion that he meant the very opposite of what he said. Here is the prophetic statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland.

What are you reading from?

I am reading from the report of "The Times" of the 2nd of December:—

"Home Rule was one of the questions which ought to be left, and should be left, to the judgment of the whole people. If they thought that they could smuggle a Home Rule Bill through the House of Commons three years following, all he could say was that their ignorance was beyond all conception."

The right hon. Gentleman has been at pains ever since to emphasise the use of the word "smuggling," and he suggests that all he was referring to there was any suggestion about smuggling.

That is not a full report of my speech.

It is all I have got. It is more than enough for my purpose, and ought to be more than enough for his, because some of his friends in Ireland telegraphed to him to know whether he was correctly reported, and stating that very curious and very startling results were supposed to flow from this utterance of the Chief Secretary. A friend had written to him:—

"The following conclusions are drawn from your statement:—1. That it would be improper for the Government to introduce a Home Rule Bill within three years from now. 2. That you are of opinion that Home Rule is not being adequately submitted to the judgment of the whole people at the present election. 3. That any Liberal scheme of Home Rule would exclude finance from the purview of the Irish Parliament."

Here is the right hon. Gentleman's reply, as telegraphed and as published in the "Freeman's Journal":—

"I repudiate the three statements as untrue and misleading Mistake is possibly due to the use of the word 'smuggling.' No big" Bill can be smuggled through the Commons "

As far as I know, that is the only attempt to repudiate the meaning of the passage that I have read, and up to the present I have never heard on the part of the right hon. Gentleman any repudiation of the correctness of the extract I have given from his speech. I pass from that, because it is only interesting as leading up to the present position of this question in Ireland. Matters have been developing there in a very remarkable and a very startling way. For some months there has been an attempt in the English Press and on the English platform to provide for Irish loyalists promises and pledges of toleration under a Home Rule Parliament; but while these attempts have been made, and made by gentlemen who neither have the power to redeem these pledges nor any authority to fulfil these promises, there is going on in Ireland contemporaneously the assertion of the law of the League, and it is keeping its hand alive and in use by occasional outrage's, by occasional cattle-driving, and by occasional boycotting. But, perhaps, the most awkward reminder of all in reference to these pledges of political toleration, is to be found in the extraordinary scenes of intimidation and violence which prevailed in many parts of Ireland during the last General Election. There were many constituencies in which freedom of opinion and the exercise of the franchise was accompanied by personal risk. Organised mobs intimidated voters, who had to be escorted to the poll under the protection of the police, and scenes of the most discreditable character occurred in many parts of the West and South of Ireland. In the city of Cork alone, as the result of the election fight there, no fewer than 1,400 individuals were treated in the public hospitals for external wounds and injuries.

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to say that as far as I know, being personally present all the time, there is no foundation for that statement. If it was made I am certain it was made in error, and, at any rate, I say, without fear of contradiction, that there was no more disturbance, no more violence, no more damage done in that contest than in any contest in this country, and that as a result it cannot be shown that any single person was seriously hurt.

I am sorry my senior colleague is not present to corroborate the statement of the hon. Gentleman. A more peaceful election than that which took place in Cork did not take place throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

I am very glad to hear the statements made by the hon. Gentlemen who have intervened. All I can say is this: The statement I have made in reference to the 1,400 individuals who were treated in these institutions appeared in the public Press, and not only that, but actually applications came in for extra grants to these institutions owing to the extra trouble and labour imposed upon their staffs. I have a very distinct recollection of a telegram published by the senior Member for Cork as regards the intimidation and violence which he alleged prevailed in the contest which he went through in the county of Mayo. Be that as it may, all I can say is that those who at the time were living in Ireland, and know what was going on, are not likely to receive any very great reassurance on the subject of political toleration under any system of Home Rule.

But this whole question has been rather rudely shaken and interfered with by the recent issue of the Ne Temere decree. It is to this matter particularly that I wish to direct the attention of the House. In April, 1908, the Vatican promulgated a decree, now notorious as the decree Ne Temere from the opening words of the document, by which the Vatican claimed over the Roman Catholic Church the right to declare illegal, with all ecclesiastical consequences, any and every marriage in which one of the contracting parties either was, or ever had been, a Roman Catholic, unless celebrated according to certain con- ditions to be attached by the Roman Catholic Church and by this decree. At the time of its introduction it was dealt with at a meeting of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, whose bishops and laity denounced it as an attempt to invade the civil liberties and rights of the people of Ireland. It passed for some time without much criticism under the belief, I should imagine, prevailing in this country, as well as in Scotland—because this decree applies both in England and Scotland as it does in Ireland—that it was going to be a mere ornamental decree, and that no one would have the courage or the audacity to attempt to enforce it as against the civil and religious status of any individual in the Empire. Speaking for myself, I can only say that even if this decree in its operation had been confined to the members of the Roman Catholic religion in Ireland, I should have bitterly resented it, because I do not think it is in the power or duty or right of any Church to super-add its own conditions to what the law considers to be sufficient in the case of civil marriage. Therefore, as a layman, I should have resented it. But it became intolerable when it was sought to apply it in the case of mixed marriages, and to assert ecclesiastical jurisdiction and control over a married couple in any and every case in which either of the parties to the marriage contract was, or ever had been, a baptised Roman Catholic.

It was not very long before a concrete case of the application of this decree arose in Ireland. The circumstances connected with it have aroused such alarm and such a sense of indignation and anger throughout the length and breadth of Ireland that I must ask the indulgence of the House if I explain minutely and in some detail the facts and features of this remarkable case. I can do that best by reading the account given by the person who in this particular case was made the victim of this decree, and this account is contained in a memorial or petition which was addressed by the woman in question—Mrs. McCann—to His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. This statement of hers has been public property for many weeks. It has never been challenged in any particular as to its accuracy, and an important and influential committee, non-political in its character, of gentleman in Belfast have taken the trouble to verify it in every detail, and they have assured me that I can stand over every statement that was made in it. I will read it for the benefit of the House without comment. She says:—

"May it please your Excellency, I pray your Excellency's assistance under the following circumstances: I am the daughter of a small fanner in County Antrim and a Presbyterian. I was married in May, 1908, in a Presbyterian church by my own clergyman to my husband who was and is a Roman Catholic. Before our marriage, he arranged with me that I should continue to attend my own place of worship and he his. After our marriage, we lived together for some months at my mother's house in County Antrim, but work called my husband to the West of Ireland, where I joined bun and we lived some months there. Afterwards we came to Belfast where my first child (a boy) was born, in June, 1909. During all this time there never was any difference between us about religious matters, and our boy was baptised by my own clergyman. My husband on Sundays would take care of the baby when I was out at church. A short time before our second baby (a girl) was born, in August last, my husband spoke to me about changing my faith, in consequence, he told me of the way the Roman Catholic priest was rating him, and I was visited on several occasions by this priest who told me I was not married at all, that I was living in open sin and that my children were illegitimate, and he pressed me to come to chapel and be married properly. I told him that I was legally married to my husband, and that I would not do what he wished, and on one occasion my husband and I besought him to leave us alone-that we had lived peaceably and agreeably before his interference and would still continue to do so if he let us alone. He threatened me, if I would not comply with his request, that there would be no peace in the house; that my husband could not live with me and that if he did his co-religionists would cease to speak to him or recognise him. When he found he could not persuade me he left in an angry and threatening mood.

"From this time on, my husband's attitude to me changed, and he made no secret to me of the way he was being influenced. Our second baby was taken out of the house by my husband without my leave, and taken to chapel and there baptised. My husband also-began to ill-treat me, and told me I was not his wife, that I was nothing to him but a common woman. I bore it all, hoping his old love for me would show him his error. But the power of the priests was supreme, and on returning to my home some weeks ago, after being out for a time, I found that both my dear babies had been removed, and my husband refused to tell me where they were beyond that they were in safe keeping. I did everything a mother could think of to get at least to see my babies, but my husband told me he dare not give me any information, and that unless I changed my Faith I could not get them.

"A day or two after this, on pretence of taking me to sec my babies, he got me out of the house for about two hours, and on my return I found everything had been taken out of the house, including my own wearing apparel and underclothing, and I was left homeless, and without any means or clothing beyond what I was wearing. My husband left me, and I could not find out where he went. I subsequently saw him at the place he was working. He was very cross with me, refused to tell me where the children were, or to do anything, and told me to go to the priest, in whose hands he stated the whole matter was, and also said unless I was remarried in chapel I would never see the children. I subsequently saw the priest who said he could give me no information, and treated me with scant courtesy.

"I have tried to find my husband, but have failed, and cannot now get any information of his whereabouts or that of my babies, and I do not know even if they are alive. My heart is breaking. I am told the police can do nothing in the matter, although if it was only a shilling was stolen they would be on the search for the thief; but my babies are worth more to me than one shilling. In my despair I am driven to apply to you as the head of all authority in this country for help. I am without money, and but for the charity of kind friends I would be starving. I want to get my children, and to know if they are alive: and I have been told, kind sir, that if you directed your law officers to make inquiries they could soon get me my rights.

"Will you please do so, and help a poor heartbroken woman, who will continue to pray for the Almighty's blessing upon you and yours? "

Now, I ask hon. Members to notice two matters in that petition. In the first place, I think it is a great tribute to the courage and spirit of this poor woman that, sooner than admit that she had been living in a state of concubinage, sooner than turn her first-born into a bastard, she declined the intervention of this reverend gentleman, and refused to submit to their degrading conditions. In the next place, what I wish to emphasise is the double complaint that letter contains. In her absence her humble home had been raided, and every little possession of hers in the world, all her personal belongings, had been stolen from the house. That was the first matter mentioned in the petition to the Lord Lieutenant. The second was this, that her husband had disappeared, that she could find no trace of him, and that her children had been buried away in some institution or place unknown to her and by hands she could not trace, and in these piteous terms she appealed to his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant, as the fountain of law and justice in Ireland, for advice or assistance. Now let us see the extraordinary way in which this matter was dealt with by the Executive. That letter was sent on 2nd December and reached his Excellency on the 3rd. On the 3rd, the following telegram was sent to the Lord Lieutenant:—

"The Belfast Presbytery have unanimously resolved to support the case of a woman who has been deserted by her husband and deprived of her children. The legal adviser proposes to institute proceedings. Would like the police to help in finding whereabouts of husband, so that he may be served"

Following up that telegram, a letter was written in these terms on 3rd December:—

"May it please your Excellency,—In confirmation of my telegram of to-day, I write to say that the Belfast Presbytery, at the special meeting held yesterday, expressed its sympathy with the woman, a member of Townsend Street Presbyterian Congregation, who has been deserted by her husband and deprived of her children, and we have unanimously resolved to support her in her efforts to have justice done in the case. A committee was appointed, with myself as convener, to take whatever steps they may consider necessary under the guidance of our solicitor, Mr. MacDowall. Mr. MacDowall has been consulted, and he advises that legal proceedings should be instituted against the husband, but the difficulty is to find him. It would be a great help if the police gave all the assistance they could in the effort to find out the husband, so that he might be served with the necessary legal documents."

On the day that letter was written the Lord Lieutenant wrote to this poor woman the following letter:—

"I am directed by the Lord Lieutenant to acknowledge the receipt of your letter referring to your regrettable domestic difficulties, and I am desired to ask you to be good enough to mention for his Excellency's information the name of the church in which the marriage took place, and the name of the clergyman who officiated."

She had already stated that in the Memorial. The letter continues:—

"His Excellency would also be glad to have some further particulars with regard to your maiden name, and your father's residence, your husband's late residence, and the name of the parish and of the priest referred to."

The lady, in reply, sent a letter, of which no copy was kept, and therefore I cannot give the exact contents, but I am assured that the contents were substantially these: The answer gave the particulars asked for, so far as she knew them. She gave the name of the clergyman who married her, and the name of the church in which the marriage took place. She gave her father's name, and her father's residence. She said she did not know the name of the priest who told her she was living in sin and not married, but that he was on the staff of the clergy of the church to which her husband belonged, and that she could identify him if she saw him. Now, what was the answer sent after all this process of red-tape on the part of the Executive? Let the house not forget this. On the face of her petition she set out an act of common theft on the part of those who were responsible for raiding her house and plundering her little goods and chattels. If it was the woman's husband who did this, he was as great a thief in regard to those articles as any thief in the land, because, under legislation passed by this House, a married woman has as good a title and claim to any article of that kind as any of us have to any article in our possession. In the case of a husband who interferes with any articles of that kind coming under this description, he is as liable to be prosecuted for theft as the commonest thief in the land. Therefore, in the first place, his Excellency had called to his notice the fact that a theft of this kind had been committed under circumstances of grave outrage. The woman was enticed from her home, and while away some persons, presumably acting on the instigation of the husband, came and carried off all she possessed. Her two children were also taken, one of them an infant only a few months old, who was almost literally torn from the breast of the mother. Her husband's whereabouts were unknown, for steps had been taken to secrete him. Her application was that the Executive would authorise the police to assist her in dis- covering where her husband was, because until she knew she could not take any steps to recover either her property or her children. You cannot take proceedings for any habeas corpus to recover the custody of children unless you are in a position to give the name of the place where the person from whom you intend to recover is located. You have to serve documents, and you must have the residence of the person you propose to make the defendant. Therefore, you must have some place in which the documents will find him. This poor woman was absolutely without remedy or redress of any kind, unless and until she ascertained the whereabouts of her husband, or the exact locality in which the children were. One would have thought that the heart-breaking letter she sent would have at least elicited a letter of sympathy, if not of support, from the quarter to which it was addressed. Here was the final and only reply, dated 5th December:—

"Sir,—I am directed by the Lord Lieutenant to acknowledge the receipt of your telegram of Saturday, and also your letter of that date received to-day. His Excellency also received on Saturday morning a letter from Mrs. McCann alleging that her children had been removed from her by her husband, who has also deserted her. In the absence of any evidence that a criminal offence has been committed his Excellency is advised that there is nothing to warrant his intervention or the interference of the police. So far as can be judged from the very general statements submitted to his Excellency the matter appears to be one altogether for a civil action, and his Excellency notes that the Belfast Presbytery propose to institute legal proceedings, presumably on behalf of Mrs. McCann."

That letter ignores the whole point of the request made by the woman and made on her behalf, namely, the assistance of the police as a condition precedent to the institution of these proceedings. It ignores that altogether, and in doing that it betrays the elementary duty of the Executive, because under our Constitution, as always understood and as always enforced in practice, if any member of the community loses the smallest article of property, not to say his or her children, but even the smallest article of property; if a dog strays, if an umbrella is lost, and the loser gives information to the police, they will not say "it is a trivial matter," they will not say "it is not a criminal offence," but they will endeavour to trace the lost, stolen or strayed property. But in this case, where there was an outrage of this kind, which was not merely an outrage on common humanity, but in direct violation of civil and religious rights, in this particular case the Lord Lieutenant, forsooth, says he is glad to hear that civil proceedings are going to be instituted and that it is entirely a civil matter. I say that that was a direct violation and an abandonment of the duty of the Executive. There was no ambiguity about the facts. The facts in that document which I have read are as clear as any poor woman, under the circumstances, could make them. She gives details of the raiding of her house, of the abstraction of her property, even of her clothing. She gives minute details of the kidnapping of her children, and informs the Executive that her difficulty is that those who are responsible for all this have succeeded in covering up their steps, and that she does not know where her children are living, and she cannot find the residence or address of her husband, and all she asked for, the only appeal she made to the Executive was that the police should be directed to do for her in this great trial and calamity what the police would voluntarily of themselves and without direction do for the humblest individual in the land who came to them with any complaint either of stolen or lost property.

These are the facts of this remarkable case, and the commentary remains that all that has to be done, even under our boasted constitution and civilisation, in the case of any persons in this country who are legally married according to the second law of the land is that the emissaries of any Church—I do not care what church it may be, or the clergyman of any church take possession of the children, bring them away to some place where they cannot be discovered, and then calmly defy the law. That will be, and must be, the position if the attitude taken up here on behalf of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland is sound either constitutionally or politically. Once you seek to cover up your tracks, once you make it impossible for the outraged father or mother to ascertain the exact place in which the children are, once a thing of this kind is done in the absence of the mother or father, the whole thing is complete, and there is no redress. The parties have no redress and can get no redress civilly, because there is no person on whom they can serve the necessary civil document, and these children are now, as far as we can see, for all time lost to the unhappy mother. She is not only homeless, but she is husbandless and childless. Thank God, she is not helpless, because kind friends have come to her aid, and everything is being done so far as charity is concerned to relieve her in her position. But it is a very striking warning, and a most extraordinary case to occur in this century, and under so-called constitutional Government, under a responsible Imperial executive. It may be said, if this has occurred under an Imperial executive, and while an Imperial Parliament is sitting, what argument is that against Home Rule? I only say this in reply: if anyone is misguided enough to raise that contention, that we have no Imperial executive in Ireland, nor have we had since the year 1906. I say deliberately that the whole function of Imperial Administration and Government in Ireland has been allowed to drift from the hands of the responsible Ministers and agents of His Majesty, and has been transferred into the hands of the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond) and his colleague, the Member for the West Division of Belfast (Mr. Joseph Devlin). Now, that is not my statement. I am not making that statement on my own responsibility. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford in the month of September, 1909, told his audience in America that ever since 1906 the United Irish League had been running the whole Government of Ireland.

I did not say that. I did not say since 1906; I said for years before that date.

Not on the occasion that I am referring to. He did not extend it in any sense that would have conveyed to anyone that he was referring to any period except that one.

Yes, I did.

But in another speech he made his meaning even plainer, because on the occasion of his last visit to America, that is 1910, he repeated the same statement, but he gave us this piece of additional information, which was not news to Irishmen but might come as a revelation to Englishmen, namely, that his colleague the hon. Member for the West Division of Belfast, was the de facto Chief Secretary of Ireland. Therefore it is idle to say that the Imperial Executive took any responsibility in this matter. They have abrogated their position in Ireland; they have handed it over to their allies and Friends below the Gangway, and of course they, under any system of Home Rule that the ingenuity of man would ever devise, would take the controlling position in the happy days when Home Rule arrives. At least this case of Mrs. McCann is a solemn warning to those of us in Ireland who feared such results, and I can assure this House that it has strengthened the unalterable determination of Loyalists and Protestants in that country that at any sacrifice or at any cost they will struggle to retain what they believe to be the only guarantee for the continued enjoyment of their civil and religious rights, that is that they should live under laws that have received the sanction of this Imperial Parliament. I have stated the whole case and nothing but the case as regards Mrs. McCann so far as I know, and I have kept nothing back from the House. I have told every single fact in connection within my knowledge or that of those who have been communicating with me. But I wish to make this one other observation in this connection. It would be much more valuable indeed and much more consoling to those whose future welfare and rights depend upon the state of affairs that may develop in Ireland if instead of prophetic assurances as to what would or would not happen under a system of Home Rule the hon. and learned Member for Waterford and his colleagues would occasionally take the opportunity of going down to the country and visiting the localities in which from time to time outrages upon person and property occur and denouncing them there, a course which they have never taken. And so long as they abstain from doing that, so long will they fail to delude us by any of these paper assurances or paper guarantees. And in this connection I venture to say it is not unworthy of remark that although the facts of this case are notorious, and have been notorious in Ireland ever since they occurred—that is to say, in the early part of December last—so far as I know no expression of repudiation and no expression of reget for them has come from any quarter represented by hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway from Ireland. All I can say is, that so long as oases of the kind are possible, so long will it be the duty of those who represent the interests of the Loyalists in Ireland to call the attention of the House to matters of this kind. I do not know how the Government propose to meet the position. This much I can assure them: if they attempt to deal with it in any way that will fail to give justice to this unfortunate woman, that will fail to place at her disposal the resources of the Executive in order that she may trace out not merely her children and recover them, but also that she may bring to justice those who are responsible for this great outrage, so long will we continue to arraign the Government, if not at the bar of this House, at least at the bar of public opinion in this country, until we have obtained in this particular case the justice that we demand, and until we obtain a still greater requirement, and that is the suppression or withdrawal of this intolerable decree.

I may say I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. J. H. Campbell) should have thought fit, in the disquisition which he has given in the time at his disposal, to smother up the circumstances of this McCann case, which, I agree, are of a distressing character, with matter and imputations which, I think, might have been left to some of those other very frequent occasions that arise in our political life. I certainly do not propose to reply to the earlier part of his speech, and I am well content to leave the reference that he made to my own observations at Bristol in the very fair way in which he left it. I think it must be apparent to everybody in this House what I meant, and indeed what I said. I am perfectly well content to leave that matter where it is because I am in a position intellectually and morally totally different from the impression left by the speech of the right hon. Gentleman; for I am well persuaded that when my observations are read by any intelligent man it will be perfectly obvious not only that I meant what I said, but that I said what I meant. What I said was, you never could smuggle any great measure through this House. About this other matter the right hon. Gentleman was a long time in coming to his statement, but I knew it was there, and I waited patiently. The right hon. Gentleman introduced this Ne Temere decree of the Pope of Rome. He did not read it to the House, but it can be read in all its details by anybody who cares to obtain a copy from Messrs. Brown and Nolan, printers and publishers in Dublin. All I have got to say is that they have nothing to do with this matter. Mrs. McCann is the lawful wedded wife of Mr. McCann, according to the laws of this realm. She is entitled to every legal right that flows from her status as a married woman. With her, for my part, the matter rests, and must rest. The right hon. Gentleman in Dublin laid great emphasis upon the fact that she is a married woman in the eyes of God.

I said in the eyes of God and man.

Of course, and man—in the eyes of God and man; and the Pope of Rome is of opinion that a Roman Catholic who marries should be married in a Roman Catholic chapel, and, if he does not so marry, in the opinion of His Holiness, the persons are not validly married according to the law of that Church. The right hon. Gentleman differs—we have a Pope and an Anti-Pope—as to what is marriage in the eyes of heaven. That is a matter upon which it is within Mrs. McCann's legitimate sphere to say that it is just possible that neither one nor the other authority knows or is entitled to speak upon that subject. All we know is that these people are married. To every Court in England. Ireland and Scotland and throughout this Realm, they are married people, and married people they must remain. Mrs. McCann is entitled to her remedies and her rights as a married woman; and, if she comes into a court of law and justice, this decree will not be available to be raised or considered by counsel or judge. My sympathy—I say this quite frankly—is with Mrs. McCann, and undoubtedly so. The case has not been tried out, but I am well content to base my sympathy on the fact that she has been deprived of her children of tender years, and that she does not know at this moment where they are. That is quite enough to excite my sympathy. The memorial which the right hon. Gentleman read was, of course, not of her composition; it was that of Mr. Corkey, who admits it himself. All I can say is, if she had written it herself, if she had not asked for the interposition of a clerical scribe, I am quite satisfied I should have been moved even more to the depths of my heart than I was by the style of that composition. I am prepared to take it in this way, that she has been deprived of her children by her husband, and, by the laws of this country, her Husband is entitled to the custody of his children. To speak of it as a case of kidnapping is obviously not correct. Kidnapping it was not. In my own opinion it was a wrong and a cruel act on the part of this man, about whom I do not say a single word, however.

I know nothing of the circumstances of their married life. It is enough for me to know that they were married, that she had children of tender years, that she came home one day and found they had been taken away, and that she does not know where they are. This happened a long time ago—several months ago. After a lapse of time it came to the knowledge of a number of influential persons in Belfast, who were interested, as indeed who would not be interested, in the story which this poor woman laid before them. All I can say is that they seem to me to have given the most extraordinary advice. The right hon. Gentleman tells me that nothing can be done, that this woman has no court and no chance unless she can lay her fingers upon her husband. That is not so. She could have obtained the means of applying to the Court of Chancery, and have made them wards of the Court on the ground that they had been taken away from her.

She would have to say that they were within the jurisdiction.

Let us say that; suppose them to be in the jurisdiction.

She did not know where they were.

Your contention is that unless she can lay hands on this man for all time, this poor woman has got no chance and no opportunity of discovering where her children are.

Will you help her?

With all the wealth of Belfast behind her and of all these important bodies, nothing would have been easier for her—I am perfectly well satisfied of that—than to obtain in a Civil Court all the remedies she requires. No difficulties would have been put in her way. Do you suggest that this decree would have been available in the Court of Chancery?

Will the right hon. Gentleman suggest in what way she could have made the Civil Law amenable so long as she could not find her husband or the place in which her children were detained.

I am perfectly satisfied that the mother of the children, upon an affidavit stating the facts—I presume they are the facts read out by the right hon. Gentleman—could have obtained in that Court of Chancery the protection of her children which she requires, and they would have entitled the Court to use all its powers to find out where they were and who had the custody of them, and to issue a Habeas Corpus to have them brought up. I decline altogether to believe anything of the sort suggested by the right hon. Gentleman. At all events, some attempt might have been made during these three months. It is quite obvious and apparent to anybody that the interests of this woman were sacrificed. [HON. MEMBERS: "Shame," "Withdraw."] You have only got to read the speeches made by a number of clergymen. One Presbyterian, who thanked God for this case, and another said that Providence had arranged that it should happen just at this time to show the good people of England and Scotland what would happen if a Home Rule Government ever came into office. The point that I make is that it would be perfectly easy, without waiting for the discovery of this man, to have taken proceedings. This, at all events, is a view which I confidently contend for as a lawyer. The right hon. Gentleman very much complained that the Castle had not perceived the point about the petty larceny which had been committed.

It was not petty larceny.

The theft.

It was a gross outrage.

Gross outrage is not a legal term. The contention of the right hon. Gentleman was that the father had removed these children, and that, although entitled by law to their custody, he was not entitled to the clothes in which they were wrapped up or the clothes of his wife, which it was alleged he had taken away. The point was not in any way brought to the notice of the Castle. It was neither in the letter or the telegram of Mr. Lowe.

It is in the woman's petition.

The point was not raised that the assistance of the police was required in order to bring to justice somebody who had committed a theft. That was an after suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman, one which he made with very great force in his speech in Dublin. The view taken by the Executive, I believe, is the view of the right hon. Gentleman the Attorney-General, which he is quite prepared to justify, that it was not a case for the police at all, inasmuch as the woman had behind her the whole of the Presbytery of the North of Ireland, and Dr. Lowe was the person who wrote the letter to which the right hon. Gentleman read the letter in reply that they had the best advice that a civil remedy was the true remedy. With regard to the state of facts as they are, it came to my knowledge a very short time ago that the father Mr. McCann—a man about whom I do not say a single word—has himself disappeared; he has gone, and he is no longer the custodian of his children. I think that makes a very great difference.

Where are the children?

I do not know. As soon as it became clear to me that the legal guardian of the children, who was entitled to have them in his custody, had disappeared I thought the time had very properly arrived when it was the duty of the police to find out where the children were. So long as they were under Mr. McCann, and so long as he was looking after them, it was not a case for the criminal law. As the right hon. Gentleman has said, the police could be invoked, but you cannot invoke them in every case. They may be asked to find a pocket-handkerchief or an umbrella, but that is not a case which would give rise to litigation, or discussion, or consideration. But to say the police are to be invoked to provide detectives to find out the position of children who are assumed to be living with their father, their natural guardian, and in his legal custody, is a proposition which I cannot agree with. But as soon as the father had gone—I do not know where he is, I am told he is gone. I have no certain knowledge—and that the children were left without their natural guardian, the mother was obviously entitled to their custody and to complete access to them. That being so, the police are instructed to find out where they are. I hope they will prosecute their inquiry with the utmost zeal. So far as I am personally concerned, if any subscription were necessary to provide Mrs. McCann with the means of obtaining her legal rights and position, I should be the first, myself, to subscribe.

No, we want justice.

No, you do not want it, and you never did want it. You do not want it; I want it. I think it is a most painful state of circumstances for Mrs. McCann, and I confess I am thinking only of her. I do not care very much for the angry voices of Gentlemen opposite. If the address of these children can be ascertained, and if they can be brought back and placed under her control, that is the object I have in view. That the police could have interfered at an earlier stage is not a suggestion which can be supported. They are inquiring now as best they can, and I am sure that after the debate in this House, they will inquire with all the greater fervour and zeal. I am not at all sorry that the matter should have been brought under the notice of this House. I am glad it has been brought forward, but let us have none of the quarrelling and wrangling like that described in "Ginx's Baby"; do not let us be quarrelling about irrelevant points, but let us discover where these poor children are, and return them to their mother.

I cannot but think, having regard to the very serious way in which this case is looked upon by all coreligionists of Mrs. McCann in Ireland that the majority of people in that country who have any sympathy with her will think that the speech of the right hon. Gentleman is not only absolutely disappointing, but really, so far, is no answer at all, while that attempted to be given shows how disgraceful and scandalous has been the conduct of the Executive in Ireland. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that neither sarcasm nor jokes will dispose of this case. The people who have taken it up—namely, the Presbytery of Belfast, where rights have been violated, are not the class of men to be deterred from doing what they believe they ought to do, as Members of a Christian Church, towards one of their congregation, by any sneers or by any jokes, or any ridicule by the right hon. Gentleman, who never recognises any responsibility in his office except it be to his masters below the Gangway. The facts of the case have not been denied. They cannot, I suppose, be controverted, and what the right hon. Gentleman has solemnly laid down in this House under the British Constitution is this, that a woman who has been legally married by the law of the land can be so interfered with that her children can be abstracted from her, hidden away from her, that her husband can leave her upon the plea that she is an immoral woman and that her children are bastards, and that when her house is raided in her absence, and her petty goods taken away, and when she can no longer find her children, then that the British Constitution knows of no remedy under which the Executive would be entitled to give assistance. I venture to dispute the accuracy of the right hon. Gentleman's law, and I can only say if it is the law, as he has laid it down, I would venture to think that the time of the House had been better taken from this time to Easter to set right such a monstrous law.

What does the right hon. Gentleman say? Does he mean to tell me that if this poor woman had gone to Scotland Yard and said that her children had been taken away, that she could not find them and did not know where they were, does he mean to tell me that she would be told: "Go to the High Court of Justice and file an affidavit and go into the Court of Chancery; we do not want women like you here"? Would the police say that, and would they say, "Go away; you have the whole Court of Chancery open to you; but the last thing we will allow you is that the police, who would go and look for your stolen dog or cat, should for a moment concern themselves about your children"? Yes, Sir, and all the more forsooth that is the law as regards the interference of the Executive, and as to why it cannot be applied. Why? It is because, as the right hon. Gentleman said, it is only a case of Pope against anti-Pope, which is right or wrong, as to where the woman ought to be married. What a way to treat a serious question! The right hon. Gentleman says all you have to do is go and file an affidavit in the Court of Chancery. What good will that do? I will assume for a moment you can do that, although I am not at all sure that you can. Supposing you go there, what is the Court of Chancery going to do if you cannot tell them where the children are? What are they going to do if you cannot tell them where the husband is? "Oh!" he said, "get a habeas corpus." But direct it to him where, to bring up the children before the Court. [Mr. Birrell made an observation which was inaudible.] What is the good of that when you neither know where the husband is or the children are, and when you will not direct the police to go and do their duty and find out. That, Sir, is the gravamen of the charge against the Government. I venture to think His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant would have been doing much better service if he had applied himself strenuously to this case instead of writing about the great benefits Home Rule would confer upon Ireland, when we have got Home Rule and when this Imperial Parliament will not be able to interfere in such a case as this. The right hon. Gentleman gives some tardy hope to this lady. He says he now has found out in some way or other, which I do not know, that the husband has gone too. When did he find that out?

The other day.

It is in the woman's petition to the Lord Lieutenant as far back as the 2nd December. Who told him this man had gone away? Was it his police? What right had they to be interfering in the case? Now he tells us because the husband has gone away he is interested in the children. Has the husband taken the children with him. What, then, is the difference in the situation?

I do not know that he has taken the children.

Nor he does not know if he has not.

No.

No more than he knew at the time of that petition as to whether the husband had still custody of the children. He put forward the plea here that the husband-in-law has the right to the custody of his children—that is, children of infant years of this kind. He did not know, and he does not know, whether they were in the custody of the husband. It never occurred to him at the time to inquire, before he was refusing the use of the police, as to whether they were not abstracted away, and in the hands of the reverend gentleman who had gone there and broken up that home. But now, when Parliament has assembled—yes, Sir, the Imperial Parliament to which we appeal, when that Parliament is assembled it suddenly strikes him that, after all, those children may not be in the custody of their parents, and that he may show a little interest. I say the whole proceeding in this case, from the beginning to the end, is a grave public scandal, and I say that if one part of that scandal is more grave than another it is the action, or rather the inaction, of the Irish Executive, and if anything could aggravate that inaction it is the conduct and methods and manner of the right hon. Gentleman to-day.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University (Mr. J. H. Campbell) before proceeding to what constituted the indictment in his impeachment referred to outrages recently in Ireland, but referred especially to the scenes of disorder that took place in one of the southern constituencies, in certain of the southern constituencies, but he did not give a single argument or fact to bear out the statement he made to the House. Two hon. Members who were engaged in the conflict in Cork have both denied his allegation, and I suppose all his other allegations would be equally denied if there were hon. Members here to take them up It is unquestionably true that there were outrages in Ireland during the recent General Election. But when the right hon. Gentleman was delivering his lecture to the party, to which I belong, and saying that the Members of it ought to go down to the south of Ireland and lecture their constituents on the desirability of observing law and order as he conceives it ought to exist, why did he not ask some of his colleagues to go down to Belfast and deliver such a lecture to his friends there? I know of only one striking outrage that took place in Ireland during the recent electoral conflict, and that was in the city of Belfast, when a bomb was thrown, not, let me remind the House, not at a Nationalist Member or a Nationalist gathering or at a Nationalist hall, but which was flung at the hall of the Independent Orangemen in Belfast. The Independent Orangemen constitute a class who have torn themselves away from the wretched religious bigotry which has been the stock-in-trade of hon. Gentle-men above the gangway. The Independent Orangemen represent the enlightened spirit of Ulster Protestantism, the Independent Orangemen are men who have endeavoured to tear themselves away from privilege and ascendancy, and to associate themselves with the fortunes of their fellow workers in the capital of Ulster. How were those independent Orangemen treated, by having a bomb thrown into their hall, by the lives of the workers, who constituted that body, being made intolerable in the public works, by being threatened that their lives would be made intolerable in the city of Belfast if they continued to advance along the lines of democracy. I can call the attention of the House to another instance that took place at the election of last January (1910). In one of the divisions of the city the managing director of the great firm of Harland and Wolff stood as a Parliamentary Candidate. A Unionist he declared himself to be and a Free Trader, and, standing, as he was entitled to do as a citizen, for the representation of one of those great divisions, the "Northern Whig," the organ of the gentlemen who have organised all this scandalous transaction, which I will expose in a moment or two, the "Northern Whig" declared that if Mr. Carlile, who was the managing director, as I have stated, of one of the largest industrial concerns in the world, did not withdraw his candidature and stand down, that his life ought not to be worth twenty-four hours in the city. Those are the gentlemen who come here, and from their lofty positions as representatives of the Unionists and as Front Bench statesmen, to lecture the Irish Parliamentary party, and the representatives of Ireland, as to how they should demean themselves in the pursuit of the cause of law and order.

I listened with great attention to the speech delivered by the right hon. Gentleman on this case. It was not precisely the same type of speech which he delivered in Ireland. He confined himself as far as he could to facts which he thought could not be denied. He says the accuracy of the charges contained in Mrs. McCann's memorial have not been denied. Who is to deny them? From the moment this case was first mentioned in the public press until even now, with all the privileges of Parliament to defend them, they have not told the House who the priest was. I challenge him in the face of this House to let us know the name of the priest. I tell him further, to my knowledge the priest against whom these sinister insinuations have been made is prepared to take him, or any of his impeachers, into the Public Courts. He (the right hon Gentleman) says that there is no tribunal before which this question can be tried.

Let him come out and make a charge openly against this or any other priest as having been associated with this trans action in the manner he declares, and then the tribunal before which that action will be tried will test the worth of the melodramatic performances which have been carried on in this House to-day. This has been, to my knowledge, the whole stock-in-trade upon which Ulster Toryism has depended for its existence during the last six months. The right hon. Gentleman said that the reason he could not name the priest was that Mrs. McCann did not know him. Let the House mark this. Documents have been published and statements have been made in which the priest's name has been published as "Father C——." His name has never been given in full. I can produce documents which have been published in which "Father C——" appeared, if not several times, at any rate once or twice. But if the woman does not know the name of the priest, who got the name of the priest, and why is it not mentioned? The right hon. Gentleman said that it was one of the priests in the district in which the woman lived.

I never made any such statement.

The right hon. Gentleman made himself responsible for all the declarations contained in the woman's statement—the touching, elaborate, and pathetic statement of this illiterate woman, written six weeks or two months after the incident took place, written five days before my election in West Belfast, written and printed before the Lord Lieutenant ever received it, and sent in shoals into England and Scottish constituencies in order to affect the minds of Nonconformist electors. That was the statement; that was the condition which existed. I regret the necessity for my intervention. I say that it will be proven that it is a wretched domestic quarrel between these people, and one of the lowest, meanest, domestic quarrels that was ever brought into an ordinary court, much less submitted to the high judgment and inquest of this great Parliament of the Empire. I have asked that statements should be sent to me for this Debate from the clergymen in this district, and the only definite declaration made by any of these clergymen is that Mrs. McCann herself sent for this priest in order that he might exercise his undoubted influence as a priest in bringing peace into the family, in trying to assuage whatever trouble might exist, and in bringing domestic peace and happiness into the home which we are told the priest entered for the purpose of kidnapping the children. The right hon. Gentleman has not declared that the priest kidnapped the children, but his friends have. I was told that I myself kidnapped the children. I was asked by the Tory and Unionist Press in Belfast in their leading articles during the progress of my contest, to produce the kidnapped children. The priest has been charged with kidnapping the children. Why did not the right hon. Gentleman repeat that charge here? He has not dared to do so. Posters were placarded on the walls at Belfast, saying, "Will you vote for Devlin and have your Protestant children kidnapped by the priest?" Mrs. McCann has been the greatest asset of the Ulster Tory party since the days of King William III. I will read the declarations of the three clergymen in whose district the McCanns lived. This is the declaration of the first clergyman:—

"Mrs. McCann, residing with her husband at 167, Cavendish-street, Belfast, called on me at the beginning of October, 1910, to see if I would come to settle some difference between herself and her husband. I went to her house at once, and with pleasure, in the hope of being able to do some good. This was my first visit. I found that their life was unhappy, that disputes had been frequent, and carried so far as to call for the intervention of the police. I listened to their charges, and councilled peace. …. Contrary to certain statements that have appeared persistently in the Press, I wish to add—

(1) That it is absolutely false to say that I or any other priest took the children away;

(2) That I never once accused Mrs. McCann of being a "common woman "or living in" concubinage";

(3) That before any priest in Belfast called on these people, their domestic life was anything but happy;

(4) That the police had to be called in frequently owing to their quarrels."

I would have preferred that the Chief Secretary had told us something as to the reports of the police in regard to the domestic quarrels of this family, because I understand that the intervention of the police was a more constant occurence than the intervention of the priest.

"(5) That while they had what has been referred to as a 'happy home,' in Barton Street, before meeting the priests, Mrs. McCann left her husband in consequence of their disagreement and took lodgings in Buckingham Street."

Now I come to the statement of one of the curates:—

"In my capacity as priest in charge of the district in which the McCann's lived, I visited them for the first time in January, 1910. Neither then, nor on any subsequent occasion, did I inform Mrs. McCann that she was not properly married, nor did I tell her that she was living in sin, nor that her children were illegitimate.… Neither directly nor indirectly have I had any part in breaking up the home of these people, or in bringing about a separation."

Now I come to the statement of the third priest. He says:—

"I never called on Mr. or Mrs. McCann at their house, and only met them once under the following circumstances. On Sunday, 9th October, 1910, I attended in church here as usual to baptise any children that might be brought to the font. Among others, Alexander McCann came carrying his own infant child in his arms for baptism. As this was rather an unusual thing I inquired the reason, and was told that his wife was not a Catholic, and that any of the women in the neighbourhood who would otherwise have brought the child were afraid of her. I asked a young woman who happened to be present in the church to act as sponsor, which she did.

"I was just proceeding to baptise the infant when Mrs. McCann, who had also come to the church, rushed forward, evidently with the intention of attacking the young woman who held the child. Mr. McCann stood in the way to prevent her, and as he did so she attacked him most violently, using both hands and feet."

I am afraid she would use her hands in this direction more than in drafting a pathetic epistle to the Lord Lieutenant:—

"She made a very unwomanly exhibition which I prefer not to describe, her actions and language being very disedifying. The sacristan managed to remove her and her husband from the church, but I understand that she continued the display outside. This is the extent of my personal connection with the McCann case."

I received this morning by post a letter from a friend of this man McCann. I have the letter here. It was written by McCann to this friend, who has forwarded it to me. It is, I believe, all in McCann's handwriting, and it tells a most tragic and sorry tale of domestic misery. I do not want to attack Mrs. McCann; the whole thing is to me absolutely repellant; but, after all, I think that Members of the House ought to know something of the particulars that are stated. Every statement in the Memorial is denied. I have not had time to read the document all through, but I would say to hon. Members that, before they believe one side of a sordid and sorry domestic story, they should read the other side of the story; they would then find out for themselves that irreligion, and not religion, was responsible for all these troubles. I am willing to give this letter to any two Protestant Members of the House. They may then take the statements contained in the Memorial and other documents which the right hon. Gentleman has presented to the House, and form for themselves a judgment as to whether this is not one of the most scandalous political dodges ever known. All these incidents occurred in October. We have heard of the touched hearts of the Presbyterian ministers, of the leaders of privilege in Ulster, and of the men who constitute the Ulster Unionist party, who slander and libel a nation, dragging a miserable domestic conflict into the arena of Parliamentary discussions for their own scandalous and party ends. The matter occurred in October, but their hearts were not touched until the eve of the election in Belfast. Why from October until December were not the right hon. Gentlemen and his merry men engaged in pursuit of these children and of this man McCann? They had all the facts in their possession for six weeks.

Who had?

Your adviser had—the man who supplied the brief. Who was the lawyer who drafted the memorial and prepared the case and presented it with such irresistible force to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland? It was Mr. Alexander McDowell, of Belfast. Mr. McDowell is the unelected pope of the Ulster Unionists. He prepared the case, and during the General Election here is what he wrote in a letter—which was not intended to be published, but which somehow did find publication—to one of the colleagues of the right hon. Gentlemen when on these benches. After denouncing the Ulster Unionists, and saying that they were very difficult people, that they were very stupid and hard to understand, he said:—

"I have found a tit-bit at last which will raise all the dormant enthusiasm for the Unionist cause and for the banner which you carry." (An Hon. Member: "That is a stolen letter.")

I suppose the hon. Gentleman thinks that I stole the letter as I kidnapped the babes. I assure him that I have the most profound respect for him. I do not think there is anyone in this House who has less political or personal offensiveness than he has, and I am not going to read any lecture, as did the right hon. Gentleman as to the way we ought to conduct ourselves throughout our Constituencies—in the course of that lecture telling all the peculiarities of the people represented. You know in Ulster you do not understand the people if you are an Ulster Tory Unionist. You only come there and curse the Pope.

That statement is untrue.

Everybody knows the hon. and learned Gentleman would not curse the Pope. Everybody knows that the Pope is the best asset he has in Portadown. The hon. and learned Gentleman's methods of electioneering are not by cursing His Holiness, but by using a blackthorn stick with his coat off. What did this Mr. McDowell, this simple lawyer, this gentleman, who, I understand, did not get a knighthood from the last Government, but expects to get one from this? I hope, by the way, the right hon. Gentleman opposite will take a note of that. Mr. McDowell says:—

"I suppose you saw yesterday's 'Whig' and 'News-letter' in relation to the kidnapped children. It is having a tremendous effect here. I am told it will have the same tremendous effect in Scotland. It ought to be useful to you in the shape of stiffening the waverers."

It is not to assuage a sorrowing mother. It is not to bring back the long lost babes. It is not to impeach the wandering and degraded father; but it is to bring back and stiffen the waverer!

The House will perhaps wonder why this is being made so tremendous an issue in Belfast. I have already stated that the embers of religious bigotry are dying there. The democracy, once the instrument of a faction who never thought of the people, but only of themselves, are coming nearer and nearer to the light. They have begun to read and think for themselves. Last year, though they differed from the Irish party on the question of Home Rule, the great mass of them were in hearty sympathy with the Liberal party on all those great social reforms to which the Liberal party has committed its honour and its name. These people in Belfast are a class of the community who are really good and genuine at heart—a hard-working and an enterprising people. They are not, I admit, Home Rulers, but they will be Home Rulers by and bye when they come to understand. Recently, in Belfast, Dr. Bailie, the Public Health Officer, an ex-Unionist member of the corporation there, for the first time in his life—as for the first time in the lives of the Tories of Belfast—came into contact with the social and economic conditions that exist in this great big and wealthy city. He drafted a report of his experiences. That document was presented to the Public Health Committee. It was a very simple document, largely composed of statistics, but it was a very human and tragic document, because under all this veneer of wealth and greatness which the people boast of in this House—out of it all, I say, we see labour conditions for which there is no parallel. The report says:—

"I am called upon to state that the women are compelled to make children's pinafores at 4½d. per dozen, women's aprons at 2½d. per dozen, men's drawers at 6d. a dozen, men's shirts at 10d. a dozen, ladies' blouses at. 9d. a dozen, and ladies' overalls at 9d. a dozen. From these very low rates of pay must be deducted the time spent in visiting the houses for work, the necessary upkeep of the workers' sewing machines, the price of thread used and almost invariably provided by the worker. After these deductions are made, the amount left to the worker is so extremely small as to make one wonder if they are benefitted at all by the work. The same is found among the workers in the various processes of the linen trade. These workers constitute the larger proportion of the workers in Belfast. A penny per hour——"

Let the House listen to this:—

"A penny per hour is the ordinary rate, and in many instances it falls below a penny per hour."

Then Dr. Bailie goes on to say:—

"It cannot be too frequently and strenuously insisted that such underpaid labour must inevitably cripple and In great part nullify the good effects of any schemes of social reform. The underfed and overwrought physique of the sweated worker, with his weakened stamina, lacks the resistance necessary to combat disease, and is undoubtedly one of the main causes of the high death rate,"

Then listen to these sorrowing mothers—the mothers who have called forth the sympathy of these gentlemen. Dr. Bailie says:—

"The sweating evil injures more than those immediately concerned. Practically the whole of these underpaid workers are mothers, and the evil effects of unremitting and under-remunerated toil must be transmitted to the next generation …."

I attended the meeting in Belfast of these sweated women and their sympathisers. It was a crowded gathering. There was not a single clergyman in the hall—not one of the gentlemen who met on the platforms when this question of Mrs. McCann was the battle cry of Unionism. One Christian clergyman, like a voice crying in the wilderness, wrote a letter and said:—

"I wish the manufacturers of Belfast would pray less and pay more."

The popular indignation was aroused. The pathetic faces of these women were being mirrored in the feeling of indignation that was burning in the hearts of every section of the widespread population. The workers were beginning to think what this meant. They had stood by these party political adventurers and upheld a system which makes women work for 4d. a day, and by which they receive a shilling for making a dozen shirts. Yes, Sir, there was not a single clergyman there. But when Mrs. McCann's case came on there was a crowded meeting in the Ulster Hall. Who were on the platform? The crushers of the poor, the manufacturers who sweated women, and the responsible agents for the pinched faces. These were the men who came there for wretched political capital, and had not a single voice to raise on behalf of the toiling women who were doing so much to build up the greatness of the city, and advance the material interests of their masters in Belfast. Nine-tenths of the audience were Protestants. I am a Catholic, and I was the only Member of Parliament present. They thought they have well switched off discussion and examination of all these crimes against democracy by catching at an isolated case, and by using some domestic incidental instance to prevent light being cast upon the economic conditions they impose. They will not do so so long as I am a Member of this House. Of course, if Mrs. McCann's case could have helped it, I would not have been a Member of this House.

I happen to be the Lord Mayor of the City of Belfast. I was hoping for an opportunity to speak here this evening, and I was in the hope that I would get the support of the hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Devlin). The hon. Member has somewhat widened the basis of the discussion. I can tell him that there is no such thing as sweating in the city of Belfast. The matter came before me in my official capacity. I told gentlemen interested in the city that, having regard to the outdoor trades and in view of the Government in power, that they should have no difficulty whatever in getting an inquiry if there was any sweating in Belfast. I would not be a party to any such disgrace in Belfast. I asked gentlemen who complained to ask for the inquiry; I entreated them to do so. I know there is no sweating; it is impossible that there should be any. I also happen to be chairman of an association whose efforts are to spread the industrial prosperity of this district over a wider area in Ireland. Some of the members are termed Tories, others are Home Rulers, and there are also Catholics and Protestants.

6.0 P.M.

And I could tell the hon Gentleman who has spoken that Father C. referred to in his speech is a member of that association, and I will tell him what happened at the last meeting at which I had the honour to be present. There is only one trouble in Belfast in regard to industries at present, and that is that we need 2,000 women, and cannot get them. There are 1,000 looms idle, and there are 1,000 other vacancies because there are collateral industries. The question we put to Father C. at that meeting about getting these women into Belfast, but he was doubtful whether he could do it. Sweating is an utter impossibility in Belfast. That matter can be investigated, and I promise, if the Chief Secretary will arrange it, we will have a sworn inquiry into the matter.

There is prodigious prosperity in Belfast and in the best, and even in the second class industries women workers get wages reaching as high in some cases as 22s. a week. There is no such prosperity in any town in England or Scotland, and the reason is simple. The trade unions arrange the wages, and that is a matter of fact which can be ascertained by anyone who takes the trouble to write a letter on the subject. The worker in Belfast has a cheaper house by 3s. a week than he would get in any town in Great Britain, with the possible exception of Barrow-in-Furness. The 4s. 6d. house in Belfast is 7s. 6d. in England, and workers on this side of the Channel are perfectly delighted to get away to Belfast. I have been applied to by numbers of men in England to get them situations in such a perfectly prosperous town as Belfast, and that, although we have to pay carriage on corn, iron and flax, because we cannot induce our Nationalist friends in the south and the west of Ireland, where they have the beautiful land that we have not got, to grow flax, and therefore we have to import it from Belgium and Holland, It is perfectly absurd to suggest that there is any difficulty in Belfast other than that of getting the people to come into work. I hope Father C. will consider that matter, and I hope we will get the women who work for 5s. and 6s. a week all over Ireland to come to Belfast, where they may make 12s., 15s. and as high as 22s. a week. That is admitted, and I hope the hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Devlin) will support us in the attitude we are taking up.

I am in a position to say that there is perfect unanimity among the laity in Belfast, and I include the laity for whom the hon. Member speaks on the subject matter of this debate. The women, including the women in that large community represented by that hon. Member, are speaking to the Protestants in the streets of Belfast and asking them can they not stop this. The condition is appalling. It is perfectly well known to all of us here that this matter has been the subject of correspondence in the newspapers of Belfast and Edinburgh, and other places. And I particularly observed a correspondence carried on in a very interesting paper, and one for which I have a great respect, although it happens to be a Home Rule organ—the "Yorkshire Post."

That is a Tory paper.

Oh, then, I am wrong, but I happened to see the correspondence carried on in that journal. Correspondence has been going on for several months, and there never has been a suggestion made in Belfast, Edinburgh, or Leeds that there was one particle to be said against Mrs. McCann. Not only that, but Father Hubert, in a public speech, and other priests who have written to the papers on the subject, have taken up the position from the beginning that the clergyman in this matter was right. We do not know the clergyman, that is admitted.

It is not admitted.

I say to the hon. Gentleman again, what I said before, that a document was published in the Press with the words "Father C." following it, and that that was the name of the priest, although the full name was never mentioned.

It was never suggested that Father C. interfered. It was suggested that he was the Parish Priest, and that the man who did this—it is perfectly well known over the town—was one of his curates.

If he is one of his curates you know the man.

The woman herself does not know him. How could I know him?

Everyone in Belfast knows him.

If anyone could give his name I should think it would be the hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Devlin) or perhaps the Chief Secretary, who may be better informed still. Mrs. McCann does not know him. It is perfectly well known that Father C. is the parish priest and no one wants to say an unpleasant word about Father C, but knowing the character and organisation of the community to which they belong we know that no curate would do what was done in this instance without the approval not only of the parish priest, but of the bishop.

To whom will I send the telegram?

I will tell the right hon. Gentleman privately. If it is sent to a gentleman whom I know, and, if the children are in Ireland, you will get them in twenty-four hours. If the Government, with their large majority, will not stand up for the rights of individuals, if they will not protect the rights of ordinary citizens in these islands, nothing can be done. If the suggestion I have made is carried out you will get the children. I offer the Government all the help I possibly can from the few men who are members of the Ulster Unionist party, and if they act for themselves in this matter they will save a lot of time. If they do not act, I intend to act myself by sending such a communication as will secure some attention and get the children. The Government are supposed to look specially after the poor, and it is remarkable that they have not evinced the least interest in this particular case. I assume if the man in this case had been a Peer, if it had been Lord Shaftesbury, or Lord Londonderry, and those children had been taken out of the house, we should have bad screams all the way from Dublin across here to Westminster, but because this has been done by a clergyman, there is dead silence. I am perfectly satisfied that there is a horror of the whole situation in the minds of my fellow-countrymen. Probably the course I suggest would inconvenience hon. Members below the Gangway and they would perhaps lose their seats. Now it appears that it is right for the Government to protect the oppressed all over the world, with the exception of the case of this poor woman in the city of Belfast.

I do not wish to dwell at any length upon the details of this extremely sad and pathetic case. I hope the children will be speedily found, that every effort will be made to discover the father, and, if he exists at all, the priest against whom these charges have been made. I venture to prophesy that if all that is done, and the case is properly brought before a Court of Law and tried, it will be discovered and proved to the satisfaction of every fair-minded man that at any rate the ecclesiastical authorities of my Church have had no share whatever in the gross and brutal conduct of this man. We have heard a good deal of what the Church is supposed to have done with regard to this case, but we have not heard anything as to what the Church actually does in such cases. To my own knowledge, what happened is this: It is true that my Church lays down conditions as to how a Catholic must be married. It is true that no Catholic can be married in accordance with the law of our Church unless he is married in a Catholic Church, by a Catholic priest, and in the presence of two witnesses. Those are the conditions laid down by the Catholic Church. We have cases of mixed marriages, and cases have occurred quite recently in this country where a Catholic has married a non-Catholic, and, either wilfully or through ignorance, has married, not fulfilling the conditions of the Church. Subsequently the Catholic party of the Union has either discovered his or her error, as the case may be, or has repented of the sin committed against his Church. What does he do? He goes to a priest and explains the situation. He says: "I have unwittingly (or on purpose), knowing I was doing wrong against the law of my Church, contracted this marriage. I regret it, and I want to have it put right in accordance with the laws of my Church. What am I to do?" The priest tells him to bring his wife and agree to be married again by a Catholic priest. If that is done, and both parties consent to it, then the matter is happily arranged; but supposing you have a case where the non-Catholic refuses, and says: "No, I have already been married, and I am not going to bother about being married over again; I don't care about your conscientious scruples in this matter, and I decline to be bothered by going through another marriage ceremony in accordance with your religion." Such a case as that is provided for. The Church looks after the interests of its own members, and the duty of the priest in such a case as that is to report to his bishop that here is a case where the Catholic party, either through a mistake or ignorance, or through culpable error, has not obeyed the marriage laws of his Church, and wants to get the matter put right, explaining that the non-Catholic party will not consent to be married by the priest. In a case of that kind, the bishop of the diocese, either by a general authority granted to him to deal with such cases, or by an authority which he can obtain for dealing with a special case, can pronounce that marriage valid from the date on which he is satisfied that the the two parties concerned wish to continue in the matrimonial state. Cases of that kind have occurred and been so arranged and dealt with within the last two years. That legitimatises in every way the children born of such a union. I thought it advisable, considering the great interest aroused by this very sad case, that I should be allowed to state to the House exactly what does happen, and how these matters, when they do occur, are dealt with by my Church.

On many occasions in the past, I have differed from the Noble Lord who has just spoken, but I hope I have never said anything personally offensive to him. I thank him now for the opinion which he has expressed. The Noble Lord has stated that he is of opinion that it will be found that his own Church has not been concerned in this matter. Whether that is so or not, the Noble Lord has been frank enough to say that this woman has been subjected to a gross and abominable outrage. That contrasts and differs very much from the opinion expressed by another Roman Catholic Member below the gangway, who made use of his position in this House to vilify, attack, and insult this woman whose statement has been declared to be true by the Chief Secretary. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."]

I said the admitted facts, namely, that the children were taken away, and that she does not know where they are. That is enough for me.