said, that with regard to this Vote he wished to express his opinion that there had been going on in Ireland, for a very considerable time past, proceedings under the Criminal Law which he could not but regard as an abuse and an evasion of the Habeas Corpus Act. It had been of late years in Ireland a custom with the Government to arrest men in large batches on vague and unsubstantial charges, to put them into prison, and to keep them there from week to week before bringing them up at the Assizes for the county in which they had been arrested. "When so brought up their cases were adjourned from time to time, merely to suit the whim of the Government, as represented by their officials; and, as a result, he might say that at the present moment there were some 60 or 70 persons who had been lying in different prisons for the last six or seven months, and must remain there until January next, before they could have a chance of being brought to trial. There was a notable case in the County Meath, where some three or four individuals were arrested on the information of an informer, or rather informers, so infamous in character that Baron Dowse, who heard the case, said that, in his view, they were the lowest type of human nature he had ever met, if even they could be said to possess human nature at all. In the County Mayo there had been a similar case—indeed, it was still going on; and he would ask what had been the conduct of the Crown with regard to the men who had been arrested, and who had been kept in durance and remanded, remanded and remanded again, on the evidence of an informer, which evidence had been spun out in order to keep the case alive, and, as a result, to keep these men in solitary confinement as long as it should suit the convenience of the Government so to do? They were not allowed to talk together, nor were they allowed to have what were to them luxuries—namely, tobacco and newspapers. When these men were first brought up, and on subsequent occasions, the bad French system was adopted of endeavouring to gain information, or rather to invent evidence, by the method of treatment applied to the prisoners themselves. There could be no doubt that under the Prevention of Crime Act the man or men in custody might have been tried a month ago, if tried in the county of Dublin. Another matter of which he strongly complained was that in the case of one of the prisoners, P. W. Nally, a statement concerning him was carefully cut out of the newspapers and sent to his fellow-prisoners before those papers were allowed to reach them. He would not complain if these things were done with the country under Martial Law; if the country was teeming with crime, or if there was any evidence to show that there was any formidable conspiracy against the Government existing in the country. It was well known to everybody that agrarian crime was decreasing with great steadiness; a fact which was shown by the official statements issued from month to month; and yet these prosecutions were continued to be got up by the Government, or, as he feared, by the Government officials, whose only object was the making of large salaries and extra fees. The Votes were full of items which showed that the officials wished the Reign of Terror to continue. The Royal Irish Constabulary, because they thought it would secure rapid promotion, and the Resident Magistrates, because they knew that a collapse of the Reign of Terror would cause their offices to lapse and their salaries to cease, got up mere fishing investigations. It was, therefore, he thought, clear that it was by means of a patched-up prosesecution of the kind to which he alluded that the Mayo prisoners were still kept in confinement, and that in Naas some 20 men were kept in gaol, on the evidence of a prostitute, for three or four months, there being no intention on the part of the Government to proceed with the prosecution. It was, to his mind, a curious thing that in cases where the Government actually did proceed they did so on the evidence of disreputable witnesses; and, as far as the case in King's County was concerned, these men were kept in prison on the unsupported testimony of an abandoned woman. The same state of things existed in the County Clare, where 20 or 30 men were kept in prison, and not brought to trial, on the information of a convict, who was himself undergoing a sentence of penal servitude for life. In this county, however, there was an upright Judge on the Bench—he alluded to Mr. Justice Barry—and he refused an application made by the Crown for a lengthened postponement of the trial, and therefore the imprisonment would not, as in the case of the Mayo prisoners, extend for six months longer without trial. The Crown had refused to proceed with prosecutions at Assize after Assize, in the hope of inducing men to give evidence under the pressure of long spells of solitary confinement; and they had not failed to resort to all sorts of dodges to gain their ends. He was sure that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would not adopt or permit this system of the solitary confinement of unconvicted prisoners if he knew what it really meant; and he could not understand any man in the position of the right hon. Gentleman tolerating a system of the kind on the suggestion made to him by his underlings that it was in any way necessary in order to put down crime. Crime had, practically, ceased in the country in the form and to the extent in which it existed three years ago. In all countries where anything in the nature of civil war had arisen something in the nature also of an amnesty had followed when quiet had been restored; but it was not so in this case, although the country had, practically, returned to the paths of peace, as far as agrarian crime was concerned. In Sheffield, the Commission to inquire into the Trades' Union outrages, which were far more barbarous than any in Ireland, had full power to condone crime; and this had invariably been done there. There was no excuse for the course of proceedings which had been adopted by the Government; and he therefore claimed that the Estimates now put before the Committee were inflated Estimates, and were based on a system which, so long as it existed, would make it impossible for Ireland to return to a condition of peace and quiet.

said, he agreed with his hon. Friend (Mr. Healy) that it was the duty of the Crown in Ireland to do everything in its power for the repression of crime; and he maintained that it was also the duty of the Crown to do that in such a manner as to win respect on the part of the people for the law and its administration. But the means by which the right hon. Gentleman had worked up the administration in Ireland, particularly during the last year, had done more to injure law and the administration of justice than any system which was ever introduced into any country of Europe. With respect to the murder at Loughrea, there was a man who was in gaol on the same charge, named Dilleen, and actually he was one of the witnesses employed by the Crown to bring home the case against these unfortunate men. They were arrested early in January last; they were remanded for eight days, and at the end of those eight days the Resident Magistrate had them before him in the office at Galway Gaol, where none of the friends of these unfortunate men were allowed to enter, and where there were no representatives of the Press present. In point of fact, a solicitor was the only person allowed by the courtesy of the Crown to be present. The men were put on their trial in that informal manner, and on the affidavit of a policeman that he expected shortly to have some further evidence they were again remanded. When they were next brought up the same formality was gone through, and they were remanded again; and so on until they had been remanded nine times, when they were eventually returned for trial on the evidence which had been adduced against them on the first day. He believed that that evidence was such as the Crown could not rely upon for bringing home guilt to either of the prisoners, and in no other country would it for a moment have been accepted as evidence which would justify a committal for trial. The case against M'Carthy was made out on the information of a man who had been a tenant of his for a small house in Loughrea. This man had, on several occasions, made himself obnoxious to M'Carthy, and M'Carthy's family; and, finally, it was found necessary to give him notice, and to evict him. This was immediately after the murder; and, knowing that this man had such evidence to give, was it likely that M'Carthy would have attempted to turn him out of his house? The story was one which ought to have plainly convinced the persons who got up the prosecution that it was a pure fabrication and a mere after-thought on the part of this man, who was really endeavouring to punish M'Carthy for having evicted him. There was another case of a somewhat similar nature, in connection with which a number of persons were imprisoned in Galway Gaol at the present moment. It was a case in which some seven or eight young men from the locality of Loughrea were arrested for a murder committed there about a year ago. He ventured to say that in the experience of hon. Members they never hoard a more extraordinary story put forward by the Crown in justification of the arrest of any person than in the case of these men. They had acted entirely on the statement of an informer—one of those low-class informers, whom the Crown had so frequently to bring to its assistance in administering the law in Ireland. The allegation of the informer was that four or five of these young men, who were farmers' sons in the locality, joined and made common cause with a policeman who was engaged in protecting a bailiff in the locality, and finally committed the murder with the policeman and bailiff. The Crown not only arrested these six young men, but also the policeman; and at present the policeman and these farmers' sons, who were said to have allied themselves with him, were awaiting not their trial, but the pleasure of the Crown, to discharge them. In this case the statement of the informer was certainly directed, not against the policeman, but against these young men; and he had only introduced the name of the policeman into his statement because he believed that the policeman had gone to America. The name of the bailiff was also introduced, because he was also known to have gone to America. The difficulty the Crown had to contend with in this case was that if they found the men guilty they must also find the policeman guilty. The young men charged with this fearful murder were brought forward day after day in the office of the gaol, and were remanded time after time, until they had been remanded nine times in all—that was to say, that from the date of their first examination nine weeks elapsed, and the Crown had them put back each time, on the sworn oath of a policeman, that further evidence might be forthcoming. Up to the present moment, he believed that no further evidence had been forthcoming, and he was satisfied that none ever would be, because he believed the story of the informer, on the face of it, was so absurd and ridiculous that no persons, except those entrusted with the administration of justice in Ireland, would have acted upon it. He now came to the case of a man named Casey, lately in Tralee Gaol, charged with murder. This unfortunate man had been imprisoned on the statement of a little girl, 13 years of age, that on the day of the murder she had seen him in the locality where the crime was committed. It so happened that by some strange misfortune, young as she was in years, this girl did not go into Court with an irreproachable character. The Crown, for a period of 14 months, had been putting the prisoner off trial from Assize to Assize upon applications for adjournment, and they had now finally released him on bail, himself in £10, and two sureties in £5 each. On such information they had been able to remand this man for 14 months, in the vain hope that, in the end, they might have an opportunity of finding him guilty of murder. What were the means resorted to in order to find him guilty? During the time he was in Tralee Gaol he was brought up to the Assizes on two occasions; but the Crown failed to put him on his trial. One day, when he was imprisoned in Tralee Gaol, he was called upon to parade with other prisoners in the prison yard. The Sub-Inspector of the district wont into the prison yard where this man and other prisoners were, accompanied by the Resident Magistrate and a low, ill-clothed tramp, who had been introduced evidently for the purpose of identifying the man. In going along the line of prisoners the Sub-Inspector preceded the tramp, and finally stopped at a point directly opposite this unfortunate man Casey. The would-be informer, following close up, stopped at the same place, laid his hand upon Casey, and said—" That is the man I saw murder Mr. Herbert." Now, if the informer had made that statement bonâ fide, why did not the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland put Casey upon his trial, and bring justice homo to him? If, on the other hand, the statement of the informer was not correct, and there was no foundation for it, what was the defence of the right hon. and learned Gentleman for the employment of an infamous wretch of this kind to point out an innocent man as having been guilty of murder? It had been alleged by his hon. Friend the Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) that in all the cases in which the Crown had found it necessary to bring prisoners to trial in Ireland during the past few years, they had been signally unfortunate in getting the assistance of the evidence of any respectable member of the community. It was a strange fact, and he should like to know how the Attorney General, or the Chief Secretary, accounted for it; but in all the cases which had been brought forward the Crown had never been able to get the evidence of a single witness whose character was unimpeachable. This subject was not now being drawn attention to for the first time in that House; but it had been the subject of comment from the Judicial Bench in Ireland, and not only the Press of the United Kingdom, but the Press all over the world, had expressed surprise that in the recent trials in Ireland the Crown had taken the evidence of the man who, above everybody else, was responsible for the barbarous crime which had been committed, and had made a compact with him in order to find guilty those who had been his dupes. The same tactics which the Crown had adopted in Dublin had been adopted in regard to several other cases in Ireland. Some time ago a murder was committed at Irishtown, near Mullingar, in the county of Westmeath. It was the murder of a young woman named Esther Croughan. At first, an attempt was made to show that the murder was of an agrarian character; but, subsequently, evidence proved that it had nothing agrarian about it. The Crown, for a long time, made an endeavour to bring some person to trial, and ultimately they succeeded. But who was the person employed as their chief witness, and what was his statement? His own statement was, that he was himself employed to commit the murder, and that he employed other persons who came forward at his instigation; that he placed a pistol in their hands; and that he believed they committed the murder. That was the man whom the Crown made a treaty with—the very man who, upon his own confession, was responsible, more than anyone else, for the crime which took place. He (Mr. Harrington) would read a portion of this man's evidence, so that the Committee might form their own judgment with regard to it. It appeared that he had left the county of Westmeath for some time, and had been working in England, before the Crown, by some happy chance, lighted upon him, or before he found that the position of an informer in Ireland was becoming a very lucrative one. His statement was this—

"Previous to my going to England, I was working for the late John Croughan, who was brother of the murdered girl, for over seven years. I was working about the land and the stables. Anne, John, Esther, and the mother were the only persons then living there. Esther and her mother always joined us against John and Anne. There used to be frequent disputes against them. John Croughan died in October, 1881, and I did not work with the family after that. Some time after that I was digging potatoes in one of the fields belonging to the Croughan's, which crop of potatoes belonged to myself. Anne Croughan came to me on that occasion, and told me that she was put out of the house, and that she had got no food from her mother or sister. She then asked me could I get something done for her, and I told her I would see about it. When I asked her what she meant, she told me that she wanted her sister Essy done away with; and if I would do it, or get anyone else to do it, we would get money for it. I got 10s. subsequently from her by a messenger. After that I made appointments with certain persons to do away with Essy. The first I spoke to about it was a man from Irishtown, who said it would be well done, and that there would be plenty got to gain money on it. I also consulted two other men, one of whom said he would do it. I afterwards spoke to him on the subject, asking him would he go along with the other man to shoot Essy Croughan; he said he would. I mentioned to both of the parties about the money to be given, but not the amount, as Anne Croughan did not mention any amount to me; she said she would give me as much as she could get. Some time after I met these men in Mullingar, and I introduced the question of the shooting of Essy Croughan; one of them said he was ready, and proposed to do it at any time, and that he would do it soon; one of the others said he would go with him; the third said nothing at the time, but was listening to the conversation. A few days after, I saw my wife talking to Anne Croughan, who stopped that night with us, and for several subsequent nights; she asked me was I going to get anything done for her; or was I going to let it go by altogether? I said I was not; that I had spoken to men; and that they were satisfied to shoot Essy if she gave them money. She said she would give all the money she could get. A week before the murder, Anne Croughan came to my house, where she stopped for the night, and there was some conversation about the murder. She gave her reason for not stopping at home; that she would not like to be there, if possible, if anything occurred. Previous to this occurrence, a revolver was brought to me by a man who said he was told to bring it to me when he would have done with it. On the night before the murder, I met one of the men by chance near the railway station. He stopped a good while speaking about this affair. He told me that he would go in the morning and shoot her. On the day of the murder, I went into a public-house, where he gave a description of how it was done. He said—'Wasn't it well done? '—and I said it was."

He would ask hon. Members to consider whether, in any other country than Ireland, or under any other administration in the world, a man who, on his own showing, had planned a murder, and employed and paid the very persons who perpetrated it, would have been taken by the hand by the Crown, feasted by them in gaol, and thus employed to convict those whom he had led into the commission of crime? Even the learned Judge, when the case came before him for trial, commented upon the conduct of the prosecution in placing such a man in the witness-box to swear away the lives of others; and added, further, that he did not believe one word of his statement. He (Mr. Harrington) did not believe one word of his statement, or that any of the allegations contained in it were true; but what were they to say of the conduct of the Crown, who had placed him in the box to take away the lives of innocent men by perjury? No man in Ireland was more anxious than himself to put an end to the unfortunate state of crime which had existed there during the last few years; and, in his own humble way, he had done all he could, whenever he was travelling in Ireland, to endeavour to put down that state of crime. He had himself been a victim, and he had himself suffered the luxuries of a plank bed at the hands of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary opposite; but, nevertheless, he challenged the Government to point to one word he had ever said, during the whole of the agitation in Ireland, that was calculated to encourage crime. Furthermore, he challenged them, although he had spent 12 months in gaol as a "suspect," under the administration of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster)—he challenged them to produce a single speech of his during the agitation in which he had not condemned crime and outrage. He came now to the case of another man, whose name was now pretty familiar to the House. As the case had been mentioned incidentally in the House on various occasions, he would not trouble the Committee with full details, especially as he intended to go into them at length at a future time. The case he referred to was that of the unfortunate man, Myles Joyce. He did not propose to deal with the execution of Joyce at present; but he would simply draw the attention of the Committee to the manner of the trial. It was the theory of the law of England that a man, when he was put upon his trial, and had a jury of his fellow-countrymen to try him, should be tried by 12 of his peers. Let them see what was the practice in Ireland. This man was arrested, with a number of others, for an atrocious crime—the murder of an entire family in Maamtrasna, in the county of Galway. The murder was certainly of a most revolting character; and although three men paid the extreme penalty of the law for it, and four or five others were suffering penal servitude for life, he believed that the motives of the crime were shrouded in mystery. Indeed, it was difficult to define the motives, even at the present time, which prompted the murder at all. It was, however, quite evident that the murder was in no sense agrarian; and he thought that fact in itself tended to the condemnation of those who were administering the law in Ireland—namely, that in the case of a murder of this kind, a murder of a purely social character, they should have resorted to a mode of trial which they themselves said they found necessary in cases of agrarian murders, and of agrarian murders only. This unfortunate man and his fellow-prisoners were placed on their trial, not in their native county—not in the county where the murder was committed—but they were conveyed away from their homes for a distance of 200 miles, and brought up to Dublin, to be tried by a jury selected from a special jury panel. Hon. Members, who did not know much of the working of the law in Ireland, were often surprised that the law was not more respected in that country. All he could say was, that if they would study the working of the law in Ireland, instead of being surprised that the law was not respected, they would be surprised that the law was even so much obeyed as it was. Let them take the case of this unfortunate man, Myles Joyce. He was conveyed more than 200 miles from his home, and put upon his trial in Dublin. Not a single word of English was he able to speak; not a single word of his own language were the jury who tried him able to comprehend. The Judge, who tried him, was to him as much a foreigner as if he were a Turk trying the case in Constantinople. The very crier of the Court, and the counsel who represented him, were foreigners to him; and the whole trial, as far as he was concerned, was an empty show and a farce. As if to make the farce still more ludicrous, the very interpreter employed by the Crown to interpret the language of the Court to this unfortunate man was a policeman. Hon. Members asked why was not the law respected in Ireland; why did not the people assist in upholding the law and the administration of justice in Ireland? He would ask, in return, could any man of intelligence, or common sense, give his sanction to a system of law administered in such a manner as that in any country in the world? If this unfortunate man had had a foreign name, if he had been called Arabi, or Suleiman, his case would have drawn attention to it over and over again in the House of Commons. But, unfortunately, he had not lived in a climate sufficiently foreign to excite the philanthropic sympathy of hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side of the House. When that man was brought to trial—certainly, when he was arrested he was arrested on the evidence of two men, who stated that they left their house at night and tracked a party of men to the place where the murder was committed, and they gave his name as that of one of the men they recognized among the party. Previous to the day of the trial two other men who were charged became approvers, and gave evidence against the rest, the Crown, as the Crown always did in Ireland, closing with the informers. Now, this man had been conveyed more than 200 miles from his home. If he had been tried at home, in the very townland in which he had been born—he belonged to a class too poor and too humble to employ legal assistance; but when he was taken away from his home for a distance of 200 miles it was rendered absolutely impossible for him to bring up the witnesses who might be necessary for his defence. He (Mr. Harrington) knew perfectly well that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland would say that the Crown, when it effected a change of venue in cases of this kind, would pay the expenses of witnesses; but any solicitor who had had to defend a prisoner in Ireland knew what trouble he was put to before he was able to obtain the cost of a single witness he might require upon a trial. Even if he got the expenses of the witnesses, he still had to bring them from their homes, and to keep them for two or three weeks, according to the pressure of business, at the place where the trial was held; and it was only on returning home and signing a requisition for the expenses incurred, that he could hope to receive some consideration for his outlay at the hands of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland. This man, being placed in this position, made an application, through his counsel, for the postponement of the trial. That application was, he thought, a very reasonable one, and such an application made in any country except Ireland would have been granted by the Judge, and would not have been opposed by the Law Officers of the Crown. The application was that, owing to the surprise created by the evidence of these men, who endeavoured to save their own lives by sacrificing those of others, it was necessary to go to the locality and examine the truth of the statements made, and, if necessary, to get witnesses to disprove them. When that application was made on behalf of the prisoners the Crown resisted it; and the Judge, as the Judges always did in Ireland, obeyed the direction of the Crown. What was the consequence? That unfortunate man, Myles Joyce, was tried by 12 men specially selected from a special jury panel—12 men actually packed for the trial, because the Crown, although they had a special jury panel, challenged 24 jurors before they succeeded in selecting a jury. The man so tried was found guilty, as also were the others, and they were subsequently executed. He would only say that two of the men found guilty with Myles Joyce, when they knew that they had no object themselves to gain, and that under Heaven they had no mercy to hope for, made a distinct and deliberate statement the day preceding their execution that they were guilty, and that this man Myles Joyce was innocent. That statement was sent to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; but the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland hanged the man. He knew the answer would be made, as it had already been made, that men who were wicked enough to commit such a crime would be wicked enough to make a false statement with regard to the murder. That allegation was made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland in that House, and he could only characterize it as the statement of cold-blooded officialism. It might be the belief of the right hon. and learned Gentleman; but his belief would not uphold government in Ireland, and it would not conduce to good government in that country. The people of Ireland, who were themselves interested in the administration of the law, and who wished to see their country happy and free from crime, declined to concur in it. He (Mr. Harrington) would assort that, so far from that statement being correct, the people of Ireland fully believed—the people in the locality in which the murder was committed fully believed, and he (Mr. Harrington), and many intelligent men with him, and many of the priesthood of Ireland also fully believed—that the man Joyce was foully done to death, and that perfect knowledge of his innocence was in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant. [Cries of "Oh!" and "Order!"]

I do not know if the words of the hon. Gentleman reached me rightly; but I understood him to state that perfect knowledge of the innocence of the man was in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant. Are those the words which the hon. Gentleman used?

I stated that perfect evidence of the innocence of Joyce was in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant, if he wished to examine it.

I understood the hon. Gentleman to say "knowledge."

No; "evidence."

The word used by the hon. Member was "knowledge."

continued: Well, materials for knowledge, if the Lord Lieutenant wished to make use of them. That was the way in which the law was administered in Ireland, and it was the manner in which it would always be administered in regard to one class of people. And now let them see how the law was being administered by the Grown in regard to another class. Some time ago, in the county of Kerry, an agent of the Earl of Kenmare went with firearms to the farm of a tenant of that landlord, and, accompanied by the police, endeavoured to force his way into the man's farm for the purpose of opening a quarry to which he alleged he had a right of way. The tenant denied that any such right of way existed, and said that he had never given his permission for the exercise of it. At all events, it was a question of disputed title; but the agent of the Earl of Kenmare presented a loaded revolver at the breast of the unfortunate man, and forced his way into the farm, aided, abetted, and assisted by a policeman, who presented his rifle and tossed the tenant aside, after which they went and took possession of the quarry. Now, how did the Crown proceed in that case? Over and over again the Judges had commented on the manner in which unfortunate tenants who had been driven out of their homes had endeavoured, under shelter of the night, to gain possession of their dwellings, and the most severe sentences the law permitted to be passed were inflicted by the Irish Judges upon any unfortunate person who sought shelter from the inclemency of the weather in the only place in which he could obtain that shelter. But in the case of this man, who was bailiff of the Earl of Kenmare, Her Majesty's Chamberlain, because he happened to be the agent of that noble Lord—the Crown put him on his trial, it was true, the Resident Magistrate having returned both him and the policeman for trial; but the Attorney General sent down to the county of Kerry and asked the Crown prosecutor to withdraw the case. He would read to the Committee what occurred when the ease was brought before Lord Justice Fitzgibbon, at Tralee, in March last—

"Mr. Moriarty, Q.C., applied to his Lordship for permission to send up a bill before the Grand Jury dealing with a charge of forcible entry and assault brought against Mr. Henry Doran, Lord Kenmare's agriculturist, and a sub-constable named Macallory, by a tenant farmer named Cornelius Casey, who resided on the Kenmare estate. His Lordship delivered a lengthened Charge to the Grand Jury, in which he reviewed the details of the case, and ordered the jury that if they considered the case was one in which a criminal assault could be proved by the tenant Casey, it was their duty to send the case on for trial before the Court; but as the assault arose out of a quarrel which took place when Mr. Doran was trying to enter the lands forcibly, if they considered that the prosecution should be instituted as one of a disputed title before a Civil Court, their ignoring the bill would render the tenant Casey liable to an action for damages. All the same, even if it was a quarrel arising out of disputed title, the strong hand would not be exercised by anyone. With regard to Sub-Constable Macallory's case, it was for them to decide whether he was only doing his duty, or whether he outstepped it. The Grand Jury ignored the bill."

When the Grand Jury ignored the bill, one of the charges which, no doubt, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would be disposed to make against him (Mr. Harrington) was that a leading article appeared in his paper, asking why there was not some machinery put in force by the Crown to compel the Grand Jury in that case to find a bill, when it was so invariably put in force in other cases to compel Grand Juries to find bills? He was at that time a prisoner of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, and he was, therefore, not in a position to give his sanction to that article; but he did so now to the fullest extent. He believed that the article was a sensible and a rational one, and, with the exception of one sentence contained in it, which reflected on the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, he fully concurred in it. But when the article appeared the representative of the Crown actually applied to the Judge for an indictment against himself and the paper, because he had drawn attention to the matter.

asked who made the application?

said, the representative of the Crown, to whom he referred, was Mr. Atkinson; but he thought the right hon. and learned Gentleman was going to be very technical. Mr. Atkinson did not exactly make an application; but he drew the attention of the Court to the article, and said that, pending the decision of the Crown in the case, he would place himself in communication with the Attorney General, and he should not ask the Judge to proceed with it at present; but at the next Assizes he would be in a position to tell the Court what the Crown proposed to do. He (Mr. Harrington) was afraid that he had troubled the Committee at too great length already; and he only wished to say, in conclusion, that he was as fully alive as the right hon. and learned Gentleman, or anyone else, to the importance of enforcing the law in Ireland, where the law required to be enforced; but he believed that the manner in which the law was being administered, and the manner in which it was being enforced in Ireland, tended more to demoralize the people of that country, to make them lawless, and to give them sympathy with crime, than anything previously practised in the country. Instead of making the law respected, instead of inducing those who were subjected to it to sanction, support, and sympathize with it, as was the case in every well-governed country in the world, the means resorted to by the Crown were alienating the people from the law, and compelling them to regard the officers entrusted with its administration not as the friends of justice, but the enemies of law, order, and good government in Ireland.

said, he thought every hon. Member would have heard the declaration made by the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, as to his desire that crime should be brought to justice in Ireland, with satisfaction; but he wished to call attention more particularly to what had fallen from the hon. Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy), with respect to the prosecutions which had recently taken place for conspiring in County Clare. There were two batches of men charged with conspiring—one from Crusheen, on the north side of the county, and on the borders of Galway; and the other from the extreme West, at Miltown Malbay. There was no Member of that House more anxious than he was to see murder, or any other crime, whether agrarian or not, severely and certainly punished in Ireland; but he thought that nothing tended less to the due administration of justice, and the implanting in the breasts of the Irish people a respect for law, than certain prosecutions which had lately taken place, and which had been called "fishing prosecutions." As long as there was straightforward evidence that was likely to bring home a crime to any malefactor, then, by all means, let every engine of the law be put in motion; but these "fishing prosecutions," these prosecutions in which a number of men were taken up, confined in different cells, and where every effort was made to induce one or another to give evidence, whether true or false, against the rest, in order to save his own shin, was really a system which, when made general, could not be too strongly condemned. A great many men who were determined to give every support in their power to law and order entertained a very strong opinion that this was a very bad system indeed. He wished the Committee to understand exactly what took place in regard to these two accusations of conspiring against two batches of men in County Clare. He would take the Crusheen case first. The men were arrested on the information of a convict, and brought to Ennis. The evidence of the informer was taken; but no reasonable evidence was brought forward to corroborate it. Nevertheless, the men were remanded over and over again, every obstacle was thrown in their way, so far as rebutting evidence was concerned; and the end of all of it was that, after the greatest excitement had been created in that part of the county, the Judge ordered them to be let out on bail, notwithstanding an application by the counsel of the Crown for a postponement of the trial until next Assizes. Then, what would happen? Why, naturally, that all the ill-disposed men in the neighbourhood would regard what had occurred as a triumph over law and order. He thought that circumstances of that kind ought to be taken into consideration by the Crown beforehand, and that they ought to feel that fishing investigations of this character were not likely to end in the punishment of the men who were charged. Fishing prosecutions, which were only undertaken on the off-chance of getting proof against a man, should certainly never be resorted to. The same kind of thing took place in the Miltown Malbay case, and the result was that the men were out on bail with the charges still hanging over them. He appealed to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland to look into these cases; and if the facts were as he had stated them, then the prosecutions ought to be withdrawn immediately. There was one cruel circumstance which had been mentioned in regard to these men—namely, that they were on the point of emigrating, and that they had actually taken their tickets. Could anything be more cruel than that, upon the chance of bringing the case to a favourable issue to the Grown, men who had already taken their passes for another land should be kept at home idling their time away, instead of being allowed to emigrate? He could not conceive anything more likely to drive men to the commission of crime than such a state of affairs; and he asked the Government seriously to consider if it would not be better to make up their minds and declare an amnesty against the persons who were the victims of these fishing prosecutions? Various cases had been brought forward by the hon. Gentleman who had spoken last (Mr. Harrington); but he would refer only to one of them—namely, the Maamtrasna murder. He would ask the Committee to reflect for a moment, upon one of the statements which had been made by the hon. Member. He (Mr. O'Shea) had been present at one of these murder trials himself; but he could not say that it was that of Myles Joyce. The hon. Gentleman had, how over, pointed out that that unfortunate man was a perfect stranger in the midst of a Court where no one understood him, and where he understood nobody, and where the interpreter employed was a policeman. He appealed to English Members whether it was right that a policeman should have occupied that capacity in such a case? He did not for a moment suppose that the arrangement was due to anything worse than want of reflection; but half the cruelty of the world was the outcome of want of reflection. It must have been a terrible tiling for a man like Joyce to see that one whom he regarded as his natural enemy was the only person he could speak to. At the last Kilkenny Assizes, which was presided over by Baron Dowse, an informer who gave evidence was spoken of by the learned Judge in language that was seldom used in regard to a witness in a Court of Justice. The learned Judge told the jury that a more infamous specimen of humanity he had never seen than the man brought forward to sustain the prosecution. He (Mr. O'Shea) was of opinion that it was a great mistake on the part of the Crown to bring forward charges which they could only support by the evidence of men who were described by the Judge in such terms. Many of these things seemed but small to the professional man engaged in securing a conviction; but they were things which sank deeply into the minds of the people.

said, he had no desire to enter into a detailed discussion of the Vote under consideration. That would be done by the Irish Members themselves. But there was one point—which struck at the very springs of British justice, and in which English Members were as much, if not more, interested than the Irish—to which he wished to allude. The question had been referred to on previous occasions, but there had never been an adequate answer to it; and the present was the first, as it certainly was the fittest, opportunity for a full and adequate explanation respecting it. What he wished to say was this. When the Coercion Act now in operation was first submitted to the House, it contained provisions for certain trials being conducted by a Commission of Judges. The Irish Judges, however, greatly to their credit, refused to undertake the onerous and objectionable duties that the Government proposed to thrust upon them. In consequence of this refusal, the Ministry, at the end of the Bill, introduced new clauses which empowered the Attorney General to shift the trials from one end of the country to the other, and authorized him to jumble together the county and borough jurymen. In a word, to secure a verdict, he could change the scene of trial as well as the composition of the jury. The first Commission under this Act commenced its sittings in Dublin last autumn, and there were five cases set down for trial at it. For these trials there was a panel of 193 jurymen pricked. Of this number, 112 were Protestants, 80 were Catholics, and one a Jew. The manner in which the jury panel was got was purely mechanical, and no objection was taken to it. The jurors themselves were selected from the panel by ballot, and this operation was also impartial. But, by some legal, arithmetical, political, or other legerdemain, it curiously happened that there was not a single Catholic juror allowed to serve on any of the five juries that were selected. This was a very extraordinary circumstance. It was a veritable Chinese puzzle. What he wished to learn from the Attorney General or the Irish Secretary was—how it came to pass that every Catholic was excluded, and that Protestants alone were allowed to act on these juries? Other cases of a like kind had occurred throughout the country. At Cork, where there were 200 jurymen summoned, 150 were Catholics and 50 were Protestants. By the same species of manipulation, however, 47 out of the 50 Protestants were required to serve on the juries, while only 35 out of the 150 Catholics were chosen. One of two things—either the Government had discovered a process by which they could draw Protestants from the ballot box at will, or they had packed the juries. There was no escape from this dilemma. They were either masters of some mystery, or they had broken what was supposed to be the letter, and certainly was the spirit of the law. The Irish Executive evidently felt that they had been guilty of procedure that they could not defend, because, when attention was called to the matter, they tried to evade it in a very paltry way. On the first two trials the names of the jurymen objected to were read out aloud in Court. The Freeman's Journal called attention to the exclusion of Catholics, and commented on it. At the next trials the names of the men objected to were not read out—only their numbers were called. This was done with a view of concealing the very dubious proceedings that the Irish Law Officers were guilty of. It had been asserted in that House that no man was disqualified in consequence of his religious opinions. According to Ministerial statements, it was the farthest thing from the thoughts of the Irish officials to exclude Catholics alone. This was the stereotyped answer. Jury-packing in olden times in Ireland was reduced to a fine art. It was done to perfection, and the manner of doing it was concealed. Every time the practice was referred to in the House of Commons, however, it was denied, although everybody knew it was resorted to. Hon. Members might recollect the case of Lord Fingall and the members of the Catholic Association. It was roundly denied that they were tried by a packed jury; and yet it was a fact that a list of the jurymen who did try them was afterwards found, in the handwriting of the Irish Secretary, in the possession of the Crown Prosecutor. Sir Robert Peel said, when they passed the Catholic Emancipation Act, that it was one thing to render Catholics eligible for political and judicial offices, but it was another tiling to confer such offices upon them. He (Mr. Cowen) knew that spirit formerly animated the Irish Executive; but he had been led to believe that it had died out. He was certain of this—that the English people were averse to such religious distinctions being made. Conservatives and Liberals alike were opposed to it; and the only reason why it was tolerated in Ireland was because in this country people did not know of its existence. It was, nevertheless, a fact that—54 years after the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act, and 14 years after the disestablishment of the Irish Church—the Irish Executive had so much distrust of Catholic jurymen that they would not allow them to take part in agrarian or political trials. Now, did the Government believe that by this species of exclusion they were likely to make the Catholics more loyal and more contented? If they did, they were greatly mistaken. Distrust begot distrust, and the distrust of the Catholics by the Government would lead to the distrust of the Government by the Catholics. It was a fact that, though nine-tenths of the people of Ireland were Catholics, as many as nineteen-twentieths of the magistracies and like offices were filled by Protestants. This was excused on the ground that the Catholics were usually poor, and otherwise unfit for such posts. But whatever disqualification there might be for filling the office of magistrate, the disqualification did not apply to filling the office of juryman, because here was a case where Catholics were absolutely upon the jury panel, and yet they were prevented discharging the very duties that the Legislature had thrown upon them. He felt sure the Government—even from their own standpoint—were acting very unwisely in this matter. The indirect effects of the pure and impartial administration of law were much greater than the direct effects. Jurists and moral philosophers, from the time of Solon and Socrates to Paley and Jeremy Bentham, had all contended that it was better to allow an occasional criminal to escape than to create a distrust of the justice and impartiality of the law in the minds of the community. Yet, here the largest portion of the Irish people were distrusted, and, by the action of the Executive, declared to be incapable of exercising the powers that by the Constitution they possessed. The moral teaching of the law ought to be such as not to alienate men's minds and sympathies from it, but to lead them to gravitate to it. The Government ought not to keep up the harassing prosecutions by which they were hunting the Irish peasantry to death, or, if not to death, at least engendering amongst them an undying hatred of the English rule. Other Governments in the case of civil wars had cried a truce. They had granted an amnesty after a certain measure of blood had been spilt; and surely the Irish Executive would do well to follow the example. There was another point he wished to call attention to. It was this—Nothing did more to excite popular odium against the Irish Executive than the system of secret inquiries that were conducted in Dublin by the police and the magistrates. One of the first requisites of a Court of Justice was that its proceedings should be public. It was the surest guarantee against corruption and cruelty. The Irish Government, howover, persisted in shrouding all their preliminary inquiries in secrecy and mystery. There were two institutions in this world whose names always sent a thrill of horror through the popular imagination—the Star Chamber in England and the Bastille in France. Every feeling calculated to arouse indignation and excite animosity was stirred by the memory of these two hateful places. The Government might not be conscious of it; but it was a fact that the proceedings now being conducted in Dublin Castle were associating that building with the other two obnoxious institutions. The sooner they tried to shake themselves clear of that prejudice the better. Every Irish peasant at home, and every Irish emigrant abroad, looked upon the Castle with the same feelings of distrust and detestation that the French peasants in times past looked upon the Bastille in Paris. The Government would really serve their own ends better if they would at once proclaim martial law. Everybody knew that there were occasions in the history of the world when the safety of the State required that dictatorial power should be vested in the hands of one man, or a small body of men. These men for a time wielded exceptional authority for the benefit of the community; but their action did not interfere with the ordinary law, or bring discredit upon the administration of justice. The Irish Executive had double powers. They had all the authority of the Dictator, and along with it they discredited the judicial institutions of the country. They created a feeling against the administration of justice, and against the English Ministry, that neither this generation nor the next would see die out. He knew they would not listen, or, if they did listen, they would not heed his counsel; but he was, nevertheless, satisfied that the future would show that what he was now saying was correct.

said, he thought the hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen) would appeal in vain for the secret of jury-packing in Ireland. It was a sort of Chinese puzzle; the secret lay with the Crown Prosecutors, who took care never to admit the public into their counsels. The evils which arose from the system of secret investigation were very great, and not confined to any particular Province. He had been obliged that day to call attention to the case of Mr. M'Hugh, which had arisen out of this system of fishing for crime. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in his answer to the inquiry he had addressed to him on that subject, had denied certain statements contained in the Question. In so doing he admitted that the right hon. Gentleman had acted according to the best of his belief. The statement was that the man was arrested on the 22nd of June last, and then brought to the police barracks, where he was put into the Sub-Inspector's room with a stranger, who, addressing himself to the man M'Hugh, said—" We have evidence sufficient to convict you; but if you will surrender to justice the real author of the murder in this case you shall go to your home, and we shall do what we can for you." Mr. M'Hugh had written to him, and from what he knew of that man he believed his statement to be absolutely correct, that one of the curates of the district—Father O'Beirne—was sent for without any communication with him, and was introduced into his presence. M'Hugh said he believed the probable object of that on the part of the Government was to surprise any confidences that might take place between them; because some three years ago, when M'Hugh was arrested on the charge of murdering Mr. Young, this priest heard his confession in gaol. The man naturally assumed that the object of the Government, in bringing this priest into the room, was to surprise whatever little confidences might pass between the two men, so that they might be able to put the priest into the witness-box against M'Hugh. If anything worse than that happened in the Star Chamber he would like to know it. Did the right hon. Gentleman mean to say that there was the sworn evidence of Clarke the informer—Clarke the confessed murderer—against this man; was that the sworn evidence on which the right hon. Gentleman relied? Now, he wished to call the attention of the Committee to the way in which the law was administered in Ireland, and the story of the man M'Hugh was an excellent case in point to show with what vindictiveness and injustice the law was being used against individuals. Some three years ago this man was arrested with another man whose name he had forgotten. [An hon. MEMBER: Weldon.] He was charged on the evidence of a man named Clarke, an informer, with having murdered Mr. Young, a magistrate, who was very much respected, and was of an amiable character; the Government put him in prison, and kept him there for 18 months; after being remanded from time to time, he was put upon his trial and acquitted. He was acquitted on this evidence. Clarke confessed that he himself was one of the parties who plotted the murder of Mr. Young; he admitted that in the witness-box. When the case came to trial, a priest, a doctor of the town, and a policeman, came forward and swore that at the time the murder was committed M'Hugh was in the Castlereagh Court House; he was acquitted, and disappeared from the scene for a little while until Mr. Forster's Coercion Act was put into operation, when he was put in prison and kept there for more than a year, although no crime had been committed in his locality, nor for miles around; he was one of the first men arrested on suspicion, and one of the last released from prison. On the 22nd of June last he was again suddenly arrested upon the charge of conspiracy to murder. When it became apparent that the Government could not prove anything against him efforts were made to intimidate him to swear away the life of another person. During all the trial there was but one piece of conclusive evidence—there was evidence, of course, that a man had been killed; but it was never able to be proved that any human being had been a party to the murder. The man Clarke was known in the district to have a private grudge against Mr. Young; he was known to have threatened him. When Clarke came forward and attempted to swear away the life of this innocent man, the Government supported him; and when he failed to show that M'Hugh was a party to the conspiracy in which he (Clarke) admitted himself to have been engaged, the Government allowed him to go away, they took him under their protection, and in all probability had him in their pay still. The Government were using the power of the law to persecute M'Hugh, simply because he was distasteful to them. Those were the facts, and he thought Irish Members were entitled to some clear explanation of them, as well as an assurance that there would be something in the nature of a Statute of Limitations for the purpose of protecting this man from lifelong persecution on the evidence of a confessed murder.

said, he had been expecting some attempt on the part of the Attorney General for Ireland to reply to the series of damaging inferences and accusations brought forward by Irish Members, and to the still more damaging query raised by the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen). The whole system of Crown prosecutions in Ireland was so infamous that Irish Members could go on giving instances in point until morning, as bad as those which the Committee had listened to already. He said that the Government, by using this system, were responsible for all the crimes committed last winter in Ireland. The system created more crime than it punished, besides disgusting and disheartening anyone who desired to have respect for the law. What were the facts? From the early part of May, 1882, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. Forster) left the country, the number of agrarian crimes in Ireland was diminishing by leaps and bounds—that was to say, during May, June, and July—and during those three months Earl Spencer did not try a single sort of repression—this peculiar system was not in force at all. There was the evidence of James Carey as to the state of things in July. He said that in that month he relinquished his connection with the "Invincible" Society, which was falling to pieces; its occupation was gone, the horror in the public mind caused by the Phœnix Park murder was unabated; and he ventured to say that if this system had not been put in force the murderous spirit which had developed since by its assistance would never have dared to raise its head. In August, however, Judge Lawson's Special Commission commenced, and so they had a new reign of violence in Ireland. Cases began to be handed over to juries, such as those described by the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen)—juries selected by the secret agent of the Conservative Association in Dublin—Mr. Walsh. [Colonel KING-HARMAN: I beg to deny that.] He took the denial for what it was worth. The Government, who knew better, had not denied it. There were scenes of scandalous foul play taking place on the Bench at the time he spoke of, in the selection of juries and in the jury room; and when the most eminent Journalist in Ireland—the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Gray)—ventured to remonstrate mildly, and call for inquiry in his newspaper, he was thrust into prison with every circumstance of indecency and vindictive-ness. Public opinion was thus driven from the surface, public indignation was smothered, and the expression by every means of lawful opinion was put an end to. The "Invincibles," of course, saw their chance, and began their work again. He asked, who was to blame for that cessation of improvement? In their hurry to hang murderers, by hook or crook, the Executive hanged men whom, as his hon. Friend said, the public sentiment in Ireland believed to that day to have been foully tried and unjustly condemned. What was the amount of credibility to be given to the informers' evidence? When they were in prison, policemen and spies were sent around to work on their weakness, and get them to denounce one another; and, of course, the result was what might have been expected. It had gone on all the winter, and it was going on at the present moment; there had never been any attempt to deny it; the prisons were filled at that moment with men who for months had been awaiting trial, not because there was no evidence against them, but on the chance that before their trial they would be weakened, or suborned, or coerced into telling a story. It was almost flogging a dead horse to be denouncing these infamies when there had not been the slightest attempt to deny them. In dealing with this Vote he wished they could reduce it to the last farthing of its amount, because he believed the smallest coin of the Realm would be worth more than this system of criminal prosecution to the Irish people.

said, he wished that some of the eloquent indignation which had been expressed by hon. Members opposite had been directed against the crime in Ireland which they all deplored, instead of against those who had been endeavouring, under circumstances of considerable difficulty, to vindicate the law and to punish crime. He was sure that if hon. Members would endeavour, whilst condemning crime and outrage, to give the law their sympathy and assistance, they would materially contribute to bring about the state of affairs they wished for. He had said that those concerned in the vindication of the law in Ireland had to deal with circumstances of very considerable difficulty, and he thought this was a proposition which was self-evident. Hon. Members opposite appeared to forget the crime which had existed in Ireland until recently. That crime had really been crime perpetrated by a secret and privy conspiracy. Outrage and crime had not been committed by assassins in the face of day. The outrages had not been committed in daylight in the presence of respectable witnesses; but gangs of men with blackened faces, or otherwise disguised, had gone about in the middle of the night destroying their victims, and, in some instances, leaving not a single human being behind to tell the tale of what had passed. If these men were to be convicted at all, they could hardly be expected to be brought to justice by the clergyman of the place, or by the doctor, or by the magistrate, or by the landed gentry, or by the respectable farming classes, because these, as a rule, had not been the objects of attack, and, therefore, had no testimony to give on the subject. It was freely admitted that it was an unfortunate necessity, not peculiar to Irish law at all, but existing in other countries and other lands, that in cases of secret and privy crime recourse must be had to informers. He regretted that it was necessary in Ireland to obtain the assistance of such persons; and he would gladly have availed himself, had it been possible, of the assistance of persons not in any degree mixed up with crime. He regretted the necessity of having recourse to these men; but he, for one, could never consent to lay down a rule that, under no circumstances, could the assistance of persons, themselves implicated in crime, be used against their accomplices. One of the very circumstances which most strongly tended to produce a want of that confidence amongst secret conspirators which was necessary for the fulfilment of their fell designs was the possibility that, at some time or other, one of their number might turn against them. To that circumstance was largely due the success which had attended the vindication of the law in Ireland. He demurred to the statement which had been made by some hon. Members that in every case where convictions had been obtained they had been obtained on the evidence of informers. This had not been the case. There had been many cases in which such evidence had been used without conviction; there were many cases in which, although it had not been used at all, convictions had been obtained. Hon. Members had called attention to a great number of cases in which they complained of an abuse of the Criminal Law; and a complaint had also been made by the hon. Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) of the delay in bringing persons to trial. The hon. Gentleman had mentioned a number of instances. He (the Attorney General for Ireland) did not profess to recollect the facts of each and every one of those cases with minute accuracy; and if, in any respect, his memory turned out inaccurate, any error he might make was not intentional on his part. He found considerable difficulty in dealing with the cases which the hon. Member had cited; because, in some instances, the prisoners had not yet been tried, and it would not be becoming and fair if he were, in the case of men untried, to express his opinion in relation to the evidence, either one way or the other. He, therefore, was under a restraint which hon. Members opposite had certainly not imposed upon themselves. It might be that some of the cases would result in acquittal. If the evidence was not strong enough to convict, he should be just as happy as any hon. Member opposite could be if an acquittal took place. He had no wish that there should be a conviction, either in the case of innocent persons, or in the case of insufficient evidence, and evidence on which it would not be reasonable to act. It was a matter for thankfulness to those concerned in public prosecutions to know that they had got a verdict from a jury in a case, and that the prisoner had got the benefit of the consideration of 12 of his countrymen. A verdict of acquittal was accepted just as loyally by the officers of the Crown as if the decision had been in the opposite direction. Reference had boon made by the hon. Member for Monaghan to the case of the Mayo prisoners, in which, on the evidence of an informer, a number of men had been returned for trial; but the case had been postponed until the next Assizes. Hon. Members were, perhaps, not aware that when a prosecution was commenced, it was not possible, nor would it be right, to go on if the evidence was not complete. If they had complete, strong, and primâ facie evidence, the case must be returned for trial. It often happened, even if a case had been returned for trial, that there still were threads of evidence which had not been followed up. Sometimes there turned up evidence on the eve of a trial; and in regard to the very case in respect of which the statement of the hon. Member for Monaghan was made—although he (the Attorney General for Ireland) was not in a position to express any opinion with regard to the evidence in that case—since the trial had been postponed very material and important evidence, which, in his opinion, ought to be submitted to a jury, had come to the knowledge of the authorities. He was sorry it was necessary to postpone criminal cases; but sometimes a postponement was very necessary. In all murder cases, it was recognized by the law of the land that it was the right of the Crown to postpone a trial once without giving any reason. After that, it became the right of the prisoner to call upon the Crown to go on, and, if they failed to do so, to claim his discharge under the Habeas Corpus Act. He was sorry if any man had been detained in prison under circumstances in which he ought to have been liberated on bail. At the same time, it must be remembered that the Judges were absolutely independent, and were not under the control of those representing the Crown. They were absolutely independent, and could only be removed by means of an Address presented against them in both Houses of Parliament.

They are liable to promotion.

said, he thought it was only necessary to say that the suggestion of the hon. Member for Roscommon (Mr. O'Kelly) could hardly be intended to be taken seriously, for it could not be supposed that the conduct of the Judges would be affected by what a Crown Solicitor might think or do. As regarded the case of the Mayo prisoners, they were returned for trial not very long before the commencement of the Mayo Assizes. The cases were very complicated, and, as he had already said, additional important evidence had been procured since they were returned for trial. It appeared that the Crown authorities were charged with a slight inconsistency by hon. Gentlemen opposite. Hon. Members had insinuated that those applications for the postponement of trials had been made in consequence of a desire on the part of the Crown to prejudice the cases of the prisoners by having them tried before a particular Judge, and it was hinted that the Judge probably selected by the Crown to try the cases was Judge Murphy, the most recently appointed of the Judges. Now, as a matter of fact, it was Judge Murphy who postponed the cases, so that the trials would not take place hereafter before him. They were told, again, that these applications were made because persons profited by them. The Constabulary certainly did not profit by them, neither did the Crown Solicitors. The Crown Solicitors were paid by salaries, and they, there fore, did not profit to the extent of one farthing by a postponement. The witnesses certainly did not profit by postponements, neither did the counsel. The hon. Member for Monaghan had said that the Attorney General profited by them; but he (the Attorney General for Ireland) was willing, in the presence of the Committee, to have it decided whether he was likely to be a party to a proceeding whereby the imprisonment before trial of any person would be prolonged in order that a couple of guineas might go into his (the Attorney General for Ireland's) pocket. He asserted, with a full sense of his official responsibility, that, so far as he was aware, and so far as he could answer for the time of his Predecessor (Mr. Johnson), in no single instance had a postponement been asked for on the part of the Crown except for bonâ fide and real reasons. The hon. Member for Monaghan had referred to the Naas case. That was a case in which a policeman was murdered. A number of persons, undoubtedly, were concerned in that murder, and several prisoners were returned for trial, chiefly on the evidence of a young girl of the peasant class. He had considered the facts of the case, and had come to the conclusion that not one suggestion of personal impropriety against the girl's character had ever been proved. The Crusheen conspiracy and the Miltown Malbay case had also been referred to. In the Crusheen case there were two sets of persons arrested in different parts of the country. As regarded those arrested in Miltown Malbay, there was against them a very formidable case of conspiracy. The case, however, did not involve the actual commission of any individual outrage, although, undoubtedly, it was a most formidable case of conspiracy by persons who banded themselves together by an illegal oath for the purpose of committing outrages. When he came to read the information, he directed that the men should be discharged. The Crusheen case stood on a very different footing. There a dwelling-house had been attacked by a number of men armed to the teeth. The master of the cottage opened the door and fired in the dark in the direction of those who had fired at his house; and he (the Attorney General for Ireland) only wished that the example of that man were more generally followed. One of the attacking party was shot in the back. He was immediately deserted by his comrades, was arrested, and was convicted of having taken part in the outrage. That man afterwards swore to the persons who were concerned with him in the attack on the house. [An hon. MEMBER: He was sent to penal servitude for life.] Of course he was sent into penal servitude, and why should he not be? He (the Attorney General for Ireland) presumed the man was still undergoing imprisonment. The man came forward, in the first instance, and mentioned the names of a number of persons who were with him on the occasion of the attack, and two persons of very respectable position gave evidence in the strongest degree confirmatory of the charge he had made, speaking to the very oath and the circumstances under which the conspirators were sworn in, and with reference to the general objects of the conspiracy. The man, however, afterwards went back on what he had sworn, and refused, ultimately, to appear as a witness at the trial. Under the circumstances, he (the Attorney General for Ireland) had no wish to go into the merits of the case with reference to the individuals who were still untried. The men had been sent for trial, and they were now out on bail. As to the result of the trial, he would say nothing; but he thought that if the men charged with the crime were guilty, it was highly important, in the interests of the public, that they should be convicted. A good deal of comment had been made with regard to another case—namely, that of John M'Carthy, who was now in prison on the charge of murdering Constable Linton while on duty in a street in Loughrea. It was quite true that other persons had been charged with the murder, and had been tried and acquitted. It was quite true, also, that two other persons were now on their trial with respect to the same murder. In regard to that case, however, it was necessary that the evidence should be complete, and there could be no hardship in adjourning the trial until the next Assizes. He assured the Committee that it was his most anxious desire to avoid any postponement which could by any possibility be avoided; and the case would, undoubtedly, be tried at the earliest possible moment.

said, there had been two postponements.

thought the hon. Gentleman was in error on that point.

said, the magistrates remanded the prisoners from time to time until the Assizes were over.

said, that, recollecting the kind of organizations with which the law had to contend in Ireland, it was not an unreasonable request that in this and several other cases the trials should be postponed. Another case was referred to by the hon. Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy)—namely, that in which a number of persons were returned for trial in connection with the occurrence at Letterfract, in Galway. In that case, a number of persons went to the door of Lyton's house at about 8 o'clock in the evening, broke open the door, dragged Lyton and his son into the roadway, beat them, and fired shots at them, murdering them both. There were, undoubtedly, six or eight persons engaged in this outrage, although only one had been tried and had paid the penalty of his crime.

said, the man was not traced at all. The statement made at his trial was that he was at a wake at the time of the murder; and then his witnesses had been sent out of the country.

said, that the statement that the man's witnesses had gone to America was not made at the trial. As a matter of fact, his witnesses were examined. There were half-a-dozen of them, and they swore that he was at the wake. The man's identity was proved by the dying declarations and the statement, sworn in his presence by the lad, who died within a fortnight, to have been present on the occasion, and to have murdered his father. As a matter of fact, a clearer case had never been submitted to a jury, and it was a case in which the prisoner very properly paid the penalty of his crime. It was not necessary for him to ask the Committee to come to a conclusion, one way or the other, as to this trial. The point was, that one person did not commit the crime alone, but that it was committed by a number of persons; and when positive and clear evidence was given of the complicity of several other persons in the crime, it was a matter demanding complete investigation, and it was receiving such complete investigation. If, in the case of persons now returned for trial, clear and plain evidence was not forthcoming, they would be acquitted. It had been said, more than once, that there ought to be a Statute of Limitation passed in respect of these crimes in Ireland.

said, he heard the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy), and certainly his hon. Friend did not recommend that a Statute of Limitation should be passed in reference to these crimes.

said, that what his hon. Friend (Mr. Healy) had asked was that a Statute of Limitation should be passed with regard to the particular men who had been tried and acquitted.

said, that in regard to crime of a purely political character he should be glad to pass an amnesty when the state of the country would permit of it. But he was not now dealing with political cases at all. He declined to accept the doctrine that midnight assassination, usually against persons who were absolutely unpolitical—against herds and poor peasants—was a political crime in any sense of the word. The hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. Harrington) dwelt upon the case of the murder of the policeman, to which he (Mr. Porter) had already referred. There were several persons awaiting trial on that charge; and there was against them, undoubtedly, the evidence of an informer. That evidence was such as the Courts were accustomed to treat with great caution, and not to act upon except in so far as it was corroborated. The case in question, however, distinctly demanded investigation. There had also been mentioned the case of the murder in the vicinity of Loughrea. That was a terrible crime. A house was attacked at night, and amongst the assailants was a police-constable and a bailiff. The bailiff had escaped to America; but the constable had been returned for trial, along with a number of other persons,

asked how many remands had taken place; and whether, at the last remand, any additional evidence was brought forward?

said, he was really unable to answer the question from memory. That was a matter which must rest with the magistrates. Of course, the Crown felt it their duty to apply for remands as long as there was a prospect of getting additional evidence. Witnesses had to be brought a considerable distance; and in this particular case the postponement had taken place with the consent of those who represented the prisoners. Again, reference had been made to the murder of Mr. Herbert in Kerry; and he (the Attorney General for Ireland.) might say that in that case there was a clear and distinct charge against the man who had boon returned for trial if the witnesses were to be believed. [Ironical Home Rule cheers.] Well, his experience was that a man of bad credit might tell the truth in a particular case; and it was quite possible that though a man was not a safe witness for a jury to rely upon, he might be telling the truth for all that, and it was the bounden duty of the police to investigate the case, and it was the bounden duty of the magistrate to return the man for trial. But when a case came before him (the Attorney General for Ireland) it was his duty, inasmuch as he should have felt if the man was convicted on the evidence of a doubtful witness that the conviction was very unsatisfactory—it was his duty to prevent the trial, and have the prisoner liberated. Under the circumstances, he did not permit the case to go on. Hon. Members said that the authorities ought to bring forward witnesses of unimpeachable character. Of course, they would do so if they could get such witnesses. But these murders were not planned and carried out upon persons of unimpeachable character. Reference had been made to the case of the persons charged with the murder at Mullingar. That case was tried before Baron Dowse at Kilkenny. The learned Judge formed an opinion, which he expressed in very strong language, as to the man Walsh, and he advised the jury to acquit him. He (the Attorney General for Ireland) could only say that with this advice he most heartily agreed. It was the duty of the Crown to act upon evidence which appeared sufficiently satisfactory and trustworthy; but in many cases they had no test of what was satisfactory and trustworthy until the case was heard in Court, although there might be, in extreme cases, such tests as he had mentioned. The case he had just referred to went for trial upon the evidence of a man called Walsh, who, undoubtedly, on his own showing, was an accomplice. The police and the magistrate did their duty, and then the jury did theirs by refusing to convict, because the evidence was not satisfactory to them; but the remarks of the Judge on the character of the witness Walsh, made for the guidance of the jury, did not necessarily involve any condemnation of those who sent the case for trial. The hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. Harrington) then referred to the case of the Maamtrasna murders. Of the details of that horrible crime the Committee had heard so much of late that he would not go into them again. The hon. Member particularly alluded to the execution of Myles Joyce, and he dwelt upon the circumstance that the prisoner did not speak English, and therefore did not understand the language in which the trial was conducted. The proceedings must necessarily take place in the English language; but the evidence, as the case went on, was interpreted into Irish. The objection which was now raised he had never heard put forward before. He could remind the hon. Member who had called attention to this matter that the policeman who interpreted was not one of those engaged in the investigation of the case. The officer was under the immediate control of the prisoner's attorney; and he had, no doubt, done his work faithfully and well, notwithstanding that differences of opinion had arisen as to the proper interpretation to be put upon certain words. When a horrible murder, such as that at Maamtrasna, occurred, they could not allow the man to escape trial on account of his being unacquainted with English; and anyone who was concerned in these trials, at which there had been Irish-speaking witnesses and Irish-speaking prisoners, would know that increased pains and care had been taken that nothing should be done to in any degree prejudice the prisoners. And he might say that an indictment was brought, on an occasion not very remote, in that House against the conduct of the trials in Dublin. The hon. Member who had brought the indict- ment—he thought the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell), who he did not now see in his place—had referred to the Maamtrasna case as one in which there had been no unfairness. The hon. Member was very much against what had taken place on the previous trials mentioned by the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen); but as to the Maamtrasna case, he was of opinion that it was the only one on which the public mind and conscience was satisfied as to its fairness. There was one part of the statement of the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Harrington) which he could not pass by without alluding to. The hon. Member had permitted himself to say that Myles Joyce had been "foully done to death by the Lord Lieutenant, who had evidence in his hands at the time to prove the man's innocence." It would be hardly necessary to ask anybody but people blinded by prejudice—it certainly would not be necessary to ask the vast majority of Members of that House—to come to the conclusion that Lord Spencer, if he had not believed a man to be guilty, would not have allowed him to be executed. [Mr. BIGGAR: Oh, oh!] The hon. Member for Cavan was amongst those who made that charge. He did not know whether the hon. Member for Cavan believed it or not. [Mr. ARTHUR O'CONNOR: All Ireland believes it.] He did not know upon what these hon. Gentlemen founded their statement, for, on the evidence of those who attended the trial, he declared that a clearer or more conclusive case had never been proved in a Court of Justice against any man than that which had been proved against Myles Joyce. The man, with several others, had walked a long distance across fields to the house of his victims, for the purpose of assassinating a whole family—he had killed them all, except one, a boy, and he had left him behind, believing him to be dead. The assassins were watched, almost from the beginning to the end of the proceedings, by two persons, who gave evidence on the trial; moreover, some of the men implicated in the assassination had turned round and given evidence against the others. One of the principal witnesses who proved the presence of this man, Myles Joyce, amongst the gang of murderers in a walk of five miles across the fields and back, was his own cousin, a person who was also related to him by marriage, and against whoso veracity there could not be a shadow of suspicion. It was true that two of the prisoners had subsequently declared that Myles Joyce had not been a party to the assassination; but that was a statement to which the authorities could not for a moment attach weight, in the absence of any other ground to believe that the man had been unfairly convicted. That Myles Joyce was guilty of the murders they had upon the sworn evidence of those present at the time, one of them being his own cousin. However, he would not go more fully into this case, or ask the Committee to re-try it—he was only dealing with the charges that had been made against the Executive. The hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. Harrington) had mentioned the case of the man Casey, complaining that whilst the Crown had prosecuted unnecessarily and convicted unfairly, in some instances, in this case they had unjustly refused to prosecute. In the case referred to—that of Casey—the farm was held by lease, Casey being the tenant, and Lord Kenmare the landlord. Casey had not produced the lease; but the fact, as it appeared in the information, was that for a period of 30 years Lord Kenmare, or his agents, had been in the habit of using the quarry in the tenant's field. On one occasion Mr. Doran going there, as had been his wont to do, found the gate locked. He sent at once for the police, who went to the spot; the gate was then pushed open by Mr. Doran. A statement had been made by one of the witnesses that Doran, the bailiff, drew a pistol when resisted by the man Casey; but there was no evidence on the part of the police that he had done such a thing. That was the entire case against Mr. Doran; there was nothing more than the assertion of a right which Lord Kenmare's agent claimed to have existed for 30 years which the man Casey was attempting to evade, and that right could have been demonstrated if the lease had been produced. It was obvious to anyone who know anything about law that was the real point in dispute; and inasmuch as he (the Attorney General for Ireland) had come to the conclusion that it was a mere attempt to put the Criminal Law in motion for a purely civil purpose, he had refused to allow the case to go on. A bill had been sent up to the Grand Jury, with the sanction of the learned Judge who presided, and the Grand Jury threw it out, and they were quite right in so doing. If in that one case, believing there was an attempt to use the Criminal Law for a civil purpose, he had refused the application of a tenant to proceed against a landlord or an agent, he had certainly on more than 20 occasions stopped proceedings by landlords against tenants where a similar attempt was being made.

Has the right hon. and learned Gentleman stopped any such case which had been returned for trial?

Yes; many.

Does the proportion the right hon. and learned Gentleman mentions bear any proportion to the respective applications to put in force the Criminal Law against tenants for civil purposes?

said, he was not in a position to go into these figures at present. He said that; but, at the same time, he also said that he had never allowed himself to be swayed by any consideration as to whether an application was brought by a tenant or by a landlord. Whenever an action was brought in which seemed to him, either from motives of economy or from ill-will, it was desired to put the Criminal Law in motion for civil purposes, he had always stopped it, and he always should do so; and he believed his Predecessors had always done the same thing. As to the general administration of justice in Ireland, referred to by the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen), and particularly with regard to the late trials in Dublin, it had been remarked that there had been an exceedingly small number of Catholics on the juries. He (the Attorney General for Ireland) had admitted that the small number of Catholics on the juries was a strange circumstance—[Laughter from the Irish Members]—but hon. Members who laughed must remember that last year, when he had the figures before him, he had gone exhaustively into this matter. Mention was made in particular of the earlier cases under the Prevention of Crime Act. It must not be forgotten that in each and every one of these cases the prisoners had the right of challenge, and that they had the advice of persons who were perfectly competent to assist them in exercising that right, from the knowledge they had of the panels. Not in a single case had they exercised that right to the full extent; and that point had never yet been dealt with by Members of that House. He had pointed out that there was a rule which excluded from criminal juries a class of persons, who, no doubt, might be perfectly respectable, but whom it was not thought right to place upon the panel—namely, licensed vintners. That was an established rule, which had not been made by him, but by his Predecessors; but, at any rate, the instruction was positive that these persons should not be put upon the panel. These persons, who retailed spirits, were brought into contact more or less with persons engaged in criminal pursuits, and it was therefore supposed that their decisions would be partial. Anyone who knew Dublin knew perfectly well that this business of licensed vintners was very much more in the hands of Catholics than Protestants; he did not know the reason of it, but such was the fact. Let anybody take a jury list and examine it for himself, and he would see that the statement he (the Attorney General for Ireland) now made was perfectly accurate. It was also the fact that many of the farming class who had been actual sufferers under the conspiracies that had existed in the country were set aside for specific reasons. He did not say that some of those who were set aside might not have made very good jurors, and have returned very fair verdicts; but they were obliged to have jurymen who were altogether above suspicion—in the condition the country was in they were obliged to have jurymen who were above suspicion. The hon. Gentleman had made the same charge against many of the other trials that took place in Dublin recently, on which large numbers of Roman Catholics had been challenged by the prisoners themselves, though there was a desire on the part of the Crown to have Roman Catholics on the juries. In the last case the number was six Catholics against six Protestants—and, on the whole, he could say it had been the anxious desire of the Executive that no man should be excluded from the jury-box on account of his religion. ["Oh, oh!"] Well, he had taken every pains a man could take to ensure that result. He had been acting in concert with Roman Catholic colleagues throughout, and he appealed to everyone connected "with them if it was not the most anxious desire on the part of the Crown—particularly on his own part, because he was charged here with being biassed in this matter—that there should be no distinction made on the ground of religion? Anyone who knew anything about him was perfectly aware that he had as many personal friends who were Roman Catholics as Protestants, and that he had no wish to give preference to one over the other. The hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen) had referred to the process of secret investigation going on in Dublin Castle, and had asked how long was it to last, saying that it would be better to have Martial Law at once. He did not know what the hon. Member meant when he said—"How long is this secret investigation at Dublin Castle to go on?"—he did not know to what the hon. Member referred, as he was not aware of any secret investigation going on. What he would say to the hon. Member was this—that so long as there was atrocities and horrible and disgraceful crime going abroad unpunished, so long as the law armed the Executive with modes of investigation and trial which were likely to prove efficacious in leading to the discoveries of outrage, so long would those powers be employed; and if it was necessary to proceed in the future as they had proceeded in the past, he would be prepared to do it without shrinking, as no doubt would his Successors as well as himself. The hon. Gentleman had said it was better that guilty men should escape than that innocent men should suffer, and he perfectly agreed in that view, and he challenged any fact that could be brought forward against the scrupulous fairness of the trials with which he had been connected. That was all he could do. He had always been actuated by a desire for fair play, and arriving at the justice of the case. It was in the firm vindication of the law that the absence of crime was to be looked for. The hon. Member for Mallow (Mr. O'Brien) had spoken of the remarkable diminution of crime that took place in the months immediately succeeding the Phœnix Park assassinations. The hon. Member had quoted James Carey's remark in reference to that matter, and it was not the first time that the hon. Member had referred to Carey in terms of eulogy.

said, that if the Parliamentary vocabulary were a little enlarged, he would answer that with the retort it deserved. If it were repeated elsewhere, he would give it a very different answer to that which he was compelled to give it in that House.

said, the hon. Member had written his desire to see James Carey lifted on men's shoulders to places where he would do them and the nation no discredit; he had said that Carey had no strength but in the deep heart of the people. He (the Attorney General for Ireland) did not mean to say that the hon. Member had eulogized James Carey after the fact of the man's complicity in the Phœnix Park murders had come to light; Carey was a man who was very jealous of his public reputation. He had stated that immediately after the 6th of May—at any rate, the inference of what he had stated was that immediately after the 6th of May he was drawn from the Invincible Organization, because he believed its end had been accomplished, and that it had nothing further to do; but the work of the Invincibles went on notwithstanding that James Carey withdrew from it. There was distinct proof that it went on on several subsequent occasions; but the increase of crime that went on until the murder trials in Dublin had almost ceased after the first conviction.

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give the statistics of agrarian offences?

said, that his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, no doubt, knew or possessed these statistics; but he himself had not got them. He had now dealt with the statements of hon. Members as far as he recollected them, with the exception of one by the hon. Member for Mallow, to the effect that the prosecutions that had been going on in Ireland were infamous. The Executive were strictly to vindicate the law, and he could not give any promise to the hon. Member that in the future there would be any deviation on the part of the Government for an anxious desire to bring to justice those who were really guilty, and to acquit those who were really innocent.

said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, in his long and able speech, had endeavoured to make things pleasant to the House of Commons. Was there ever a period in the history of the two countries when the Law Officers of the Crown were not found ready to take the same course when the Government of the country were challenged for misrule and wrong-doing? Whatever charges were brought against the Executive the Members of Her Majesty's Government in that House, and especially the Law Officers, at once came forward to show that Ireland was being ruled upon the most beneficent and just system it was possible for human ingenuity to devise. But when he looked back to the past, he knew that the verdict of history was of a far different character; and so it would be in the future. When the history of these times came to be written, notwithstanding the speeches of the Law Officers of the Crown in that House, the verdict would be the same as in the past—namely, that the people were misruled and oppressed, and that outrage and crime were the natural and inevitable consequences. Several of the statements of the right hon. Gentleman had struck him as not being very conclusive, and one of them in particular in reference to the case of Myles Joyce. The case of that unfortunate man was a very remarkable one. Let the right hon. and learned Gentleman say what he might, he (Mr. Sullivan) believed there was not an easy conscience about it in Dublin Castle. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said there was satisfactory evidence that this man, Myles Joyce, travelled five miles with the other men engaged in the murder in the dead of night. Now, he (Mr. Sullivan) believed that to be perfectly true; but what he was also convinced was perfectly true was that Myles Joyce had neither act nor part afterwards in the commission of that crime. It was quite possible for a man to go along with a party bent upon such a deed as that; but it was also possible that, repenting at the last hour, he might have had neither act nor part in it. In this case there was no evidence to show that Myles Joyce had anything to do with this abominable deed. There might be evidence to show that he went along the road with the other men; but it was not clearly established that he was in the house, or that he took any part in the perpetration of that hideous crime. He (Mr. Sullivan) and his hon. Friends were not there pleading for immunity and protection for criminals against the consequences of crime. Nothing of the sort, and he hoped no such impression would go abroad. No men in the world had a greater interest in the preservation of peace in Ireland than the Irish people themselves. They desired to see Ireland peaceable and contented; they desired to see Ireland prosperous, virtuous, and happy; and what was driven into their hearts and souls was the conviction that she never could be so while the present system of government existed. [An Irish MEMBER: And they know it, too.] It had been complained in that House, over and over again, that the whole condition of the country was marred by the treatment the Irish people received. Everything was distorted; everything was set wrong; and it was not owing to England or to English law, but to the influence of the good Irishmen and the priesthood of Ireland that the country was not in a much sadder condition. Irish people were trying to make headway, as they had been for long years, against the evil influences which were acting upon them, and which came from England. It was complained that the name of the law was not revered and respected in Ireland. How could it be? When was it worthy of respect? Was it worthy of respect to-day? Nothing of the sort; the Irish people fully believed, for good reasons, that the law which was administered in Ireland today, although it might be called law, in very many cases could not be called justice. The law had persecuted the Irish people; the law had hunted them; the law had ground them down; it had destroyed their trade, their commerce, their Parliament, and everything they had worth keeping; and the wonder was that there was still in Ireland a people possessed of so much virtue as the Irish. The Irish people had no confidence in English law; they had no confidence in their Judges, no confidence in their juries, and there was neither regard nor affection for the Stipendary Magistrates or the Constabulary. Why should there be? The Crown was now on the rampage in Ireland, and was carrying things with a very high hand. The Crown determined that men should be convicted and punished. Some of them might be guilty, but some were innocent—and he believed many of them were innocent—but, however that was, the Crown must have them convicted. That was the state of the case. He protested against the idea that in Ireland they desired to shelter any criminal from the consequences of crime. They grieved over the horrible outrages which had taken place in the country. It was the hearts of Irish people that were wounded more than those of Englishmen. To them the character of their country was dear; but it was not so to this country, which had been defaming them for centuries, and which would continue to defame them to the end of the earth, spreading its lies and calumnies against them. Theirs was a country of many sufferings and sorrows, and so it would continue to be as long as the iron hand and cold heart of England were the rulers of Ireland. Some day England would have to give up this brutal experiment, which had been tried so long, and which before God and man had proved such a hideous failure. His fear was that before they gave up their misrule of Ireland, England would have spoilt the people, and that when an Irish Parliament came to rule them it would find that its task had been made a hard one.

wished to say a few words in regard to the Vote itself, and the administration of what passed for justice in Ireland. In reference to the question of economy, there was one thing which struck him very much in connection with criminal prosecutions in Ireland—namely, the system of throwing away extravagant sums of money upon lawyers. In the criminal prosecutions in Dublin it was quite common for four or five counsel to be engaged in a single case, although the prosecution itself was carried on by one or two of them. No doubt, legal gentlemen of Dublin looked upon that as a very good joke; and so it was from their point of view, although it was anything but a joke to the ratepayers. The practice was to engage four or five counsel, and to get the work done by one or two, so that the others had a snug sinecure. Not only did these counsel get complimentary briefs, but all the expense of preparing the briefs, and so on, went into the pocket of the solicitor who was charged with the conduct of the prosecutions. There was another matter which had come under his own personal notice—namely, the system of sending down a Queen's Counsel, with a special fee, to conduct cases before the magistrates. He considered a practice of that kind wholly unnecessary, especially when it was a well-known fact that it was arranged beforehand what the decision should be. It would, therefore, be the easiest thing in the world to go through the formality of having the case conducted by an ordinary local solicitor, who for a few shillings would do all that was required, instead of sending down a special counsel from Dublin, whose fee amounted to a larger number of pounds than the shillings that would be necessary if the ordinary rule were followed. He was personally acquainted with instances of that kind in cases heard before the Mayor of "Wexford, and also before the Mayor of Waterford. Seeing that in Dublin the Government could always have a jury carefully packed, and secure as many convictions as they liked, it was preposterous, he thought, to hire high-priced counsel, and a much larger number of them than was really required by the merits of the case. He had heard part of the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland upon this Vote, and there were one or two passages in that speech which had struck him as rather peculiar, and which he desired to point out to the Committee. It seemed to him extraordinary that the Attorney General should protest with such vehemence against the existence of such a thing as jury-packing. Why, the fact was so notorious that it scarcely required even to be stated. Everybody in Ireland knew that the packing of juries was carried on in that country in the most wholesale and barefaced manner. His own opinion was, that such a thing as an honest jury in criminal prosecutions in Dublin did not exist. These juries were selected for a particular purpose, and they made up their minds before they went into the docks to find a verdict of guilty, whether the evidence was slight or overwhelming, and thus to carry out the arrangement under which they were selected by the Crown. There was another matter to which attention had been drawn by the Attorney General—namely, the postponement of trials. Applications were frequently made for postponement on behalf of prisoners, and also by the Crown, in the interests of the Crown, and the invariable custom was for the Court to decide as the Crown wished. If an application for postponement was made on behalf of the prisoner, and the Crown objected, the postponement was not allowed; but if, on the other hand, the Crown made any objection, as a matter of course the postponement was allowed. Again, when the Crown applied for a postponement it invariably got it at once, no matter what might be the case set up. He would not inquire into the motives by which these decisions were guided, because different motives would actuate different Judges; but he did know that a good many of the minor appointments in connection with the Law Courts in Dublin, and the administration of justice, were given away to the relatives and connections of the Judges. Nepotism ran rampant in the Law Courts of Dublin; and it was beyond doubt that the Irish Judges did distribute their favours in such a way that the small game, at any rate, found its way to their own relations and friends. He believed there were some honourable exceptions on the Irish Bench. He did not mean to insinuate that all were similarly tainted. As far as he could form an opinion, there were honourable men on the Irish Bench; but, on the other hand, he believed that a certain portion of the Judges were perfectly untrustworthy, and that they had no disposition to do justice to the prisoners who came up for trial before them. Reference had been made to some of the cases which had been recently tried in Ireland, and notice had been taken of the case of Myles Joyce, who was hanged at Galway. It was well known that two of the persons who were hanged for that offence acknowledged the day before the execution that they were guilty; but they declared, at the same time, that Myles Joyce was innocent. As had been pointed out, these men had no inducement to speak untruthfully in regard to Joyce; and he thought that in a case of that sort, where a prisoner had been condemned to death, and where representations of his innocence were made to the Crown, the Crown was bound to give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt, and, at any rate, to allow his life to be spared, so that further evidence might be called for afterwards, in order to make the matter conclusive one way or the other. But it suited the exigencies of the Government at that time to have a large number of executions, and that was the real cause why this particular execution was allowed to take place. The object of the Executive was not to find out who was guilty, but how to obtain convictions on account of the revelations which had just been made in connection with the Phænix Park murders. In his belief, those murders were a national calamity; and he had never heard any politician of the Irish National Party who did not express an opinion that the Phænix Park murders were aimed more against the interests of the agitation with which they were connected, than against the English Government. Notwithstanding, there was a great outcry got up in this country, and Her Majesty's Government thought they could make political capital by securing a large number of convictions. They, therefore, pursued this system, and hanged every person convicted, whether the evidence was conclusive or not. In the case of young Walsh, who was tried for shooting a policeman at Letterfrack, he (Mr. Biggar) had himself heard the evidence against the prisoner, and he was prepared to say that it was of the most frivolous nature. One part of it was that the mud on Walsh's stockings and shoes was of a similar character to the mud in the street where the murder took place. Everyone knew that this young man was in the habit of going down that street day after day, and naturally the mud on his boots would be of a similar kind to that of the street in which the murder took place; but, although that was the strongest evidence against Walsh, the man was convicted by a packed jury, and was within an ace of being hanged. His brother was hanged, although, in his (Mr. Biggar's) opinion, his innocence was clearly proved, because it was shown that he was elsewhere at the time the murder was committed. The only pretence for a case against the man was a juggle about the different clocks of the district. Although it was perfectly certain that not one of the clocks in the whole of the locality was accurate, the Crown tried to show that it was possible that the man could have been at two places at the same time, although they were a considerable distance apart; and they sought to establish it by saying that one or two of the clocks in the country villages round about were right, and all the others were incorrect. It was upon such evidence that the man was hanged, although he declared his perfect innocence of the crime with which he was charged. Then, they had the case of Francis Hynes. There was no evidence against Hynes at all. The only person who said anything against him was the man who was shot, and his evidence was of anything but a conclusive nature. The statement made by him was made to a priest, who was attempting to hear his confession at a time when he was in articulus mortis, and could really make no statement whatever upon which reliance could be placed. No doubt, the man did mutter the name of Francis Hynes; but what was passing through the unfortunate man's mind at the time it was impossible to say, and certainly there was not sufficient evidence to convict the prisoner of the crime. In addition to this fact, a gross irregularity took place in regard to the jury which tried Francis Hynes. There could not be the slightest doubt that the jury were playing billiards and drinking at the Imperial Hotel during the time the trial was taking place; and he thought that ought to have been held absolutely fatal to the prosecution. What the Judge should have done was to have quashed the indictment, and put Hynes on his trial before another jury. But, in spite of all the facts laid before the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Spencer had Francis Hynes hanged, and this showed that the Lord Lieutenant was not so much engaged in administering justice as in the endeavour to make political capital out of these unfortunate murders. The informer, James Carey, had been held up to very great odium. Now, he (Mr. Biggar) had never had the pleasure of knowing that gentleman personally, and he had never said anything in his favour. He was disposed, however, now that he had an opportunity of doing so, to express the opinion that James Carey was a rather ill-used man. No doubt, Carey was a blackguard for betraying his comrades; but it must be borne in mind that he was placed under great pressure. Carey turned informer for two reasons—first of all, he did so to save his own life; and, secondly, because he was led to understand that somebody else was going to give evidence against him, and he preferred to be the betrayer rather than the betrayed. Certainly, it was not a very high motive Carey had; but he (Mr. Biggar) contended that the motives of Carey were infinitely superior to those of the men who made use of Carey. The Lord Lieutenant, the Attorney General for Ireland, and the Chief Secretary, and, indeed, everybody connected with the Irish Government, used Carey in order to make political capital out of him. Bad as Carey was, the Irish Government were worse for making use of a man of Carey's stamp, because they used as a witness before packed juries a man whom they knew to be of the most despicable character. Not only did the Government make use of Carey to give evidence before juries whom they had packed, in order to ensure convictions whether the evidence was trustworthy or not; but he would go further and say that the men who were tried for the Phœnix Park murders were convicted by dishonest evidence, and he would tell the Committee why. The evidence of some of the witnesses was that they saw four men drive rapidly by upon an outside car whom they had never seen before, and whom they never saw again until 12 months afterwards. Nevertheless, they identified the whole of the men who were on that car. He contended that it was perfectly impossible, under such circumstances, in a large city like Dublin, to identify men whom the witnesses had never seen before, and whom they did not see again for 12 months. He, therefore, thought he was justified in saying that a jury which would convict on evidence of that sort was not disposed to act honestly. His own personal opinion was that the jury which tried these cases—including Mr. Field—were all of them guilty of deliberate perjury. They were put forward as men who had displayed great courage; whereas, in point of fact, they were acting in their own interest. They were men selected from a class who were under police protection, and who were deriving benefit from the system of coercion adopted by the Government. He concurred that the present system was most dangerous to the administration of what passed for justice, and that it ought to be discouraged by all honest men, and especially by the House of Commons. Before he sat down he wished to refer to a case which took place last Assizes—a case in which a number of men connected with his own constituency in the county of Cavan were brought up and put on their trial at the Belfast Assizes. They were tried by Judge Harrison, a Conservative Judge, who told the jury, after hearing the evidence, that there was no case whatever against the prisoners. Nevertheless, the jury convicted them all the same. The jury had been carefully packed. He believed that Judge Harrison was no party to the packing of the jury; but it had been packed by persons who represented the Crown, and this packed jury found the prisoners guilty, notwithstanding the direction of the learned Judge that there was no ease against them. This case strongly showed that the object of the Crown was not to obtain justice, but to secure convictions. If they could get a conviction by honest means they were prepared to accept it; but rather than not obtain a conviction they were prepared to give enormous bribes to dishonest witnesses, and then to pack the jury in order to obtain a verdict. It was absurd to talk of even-handed justice between the farmer class and the landlord class. Let them take into consideration what occurred at Ballina. He should like to know if equal justice had been done in regard to the murders committed by the police at Ballina as it would have been done if the accused persons had belonged to the farmer class? If the murders had been committed by the people the prisoners would have been put upon their trial and hanged. But instead of taking that course in regard to the police, the Attorney General took good care that they were allowed to go scot-free. He believed that a similar course had been taken in regard to the Wexford case, the police having been "whitewashed," and no prosecution having taken place at all. It was the same at Ballyragget, in the county of Kilkenny, where an agent of Lord Kenmare, who was proved to have presented a pistol at a man's head and to have committed a breach of the Arms Act, was released without a prosecution. If, instead of being the representative of Lord Kenmare, who was a Member of the so-called Liberal Government, he had been a tenant farmer, he would have been in penal servitude at the present moment, and the Government would not have been so hard to satisfy about the evidence. In this case the evidence was perfectly clear. The man was seen with a pistol in his hand presenting it at the breast of the prosecutor; but because the policeman said he had not seen the act committed, the Attorney General took the part of this creature of Lord Kenmare, this so-called Liberal Catholic Member of Her Majesty's Government, and no prosecution took place. In another case which occurred in the county of Kerry, certain innocent men were arrested because a woman, who was called at the inquest and denied strongly that the prisoners who were charged had committed the murder, when she had a prospect of a reward placed before her eyes, afterwards entirely changed her evidence, and said they were the murderers—upon which contradictory evidence the men were hanged. Under such circumstances, he could not consent to a Vote for Law and Justice as it was now administered in Ireland, and he thought that the Vote ought to be struck out of the Estimates altogether.

said, the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen) had demanded of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland an explanation of the extraordinary circumstances connected with the recent trials in Dublin, in which there were unmistakable proofs of jury-packing. The hon. Member had received from the right hon. and learned Gentleman the usual answer, or perhaps what might be more properly described the usual answer with a slight difference. The right hon. and learned Gentleman explained that he was not aware of what the religion or politics of any of the persons summoned upon the jury were.

continued. The Attorney General for Ireland had stated that he would be no party to any such proceeding as the packing of a jury, either in Dublin or elsewhere. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said, in another part of his speech, that some of the crimes alluded to were committed by men with blackened faces. The connection between the two statements was peculiar, and he (Mr. Mayne) scarcely knew what argument the right hon. and and learned Gentleman endeavoured to build up upon that fact, unless it was this—the crimes were committed by persons who had blackened their faces, and, therefore, some sort of manipulation was necessary in connection with the jury before whom the criminals were put upon their trial. The natural inference, therefore, was that a jury ought to be selected that might be easily satisfied with the evidence as to identification adduced on behalf of the Crown. There appeared to be no other explanation of the two statements of the Attorney General. The right hon. and learned Gentleman also stated that he was unaware that any juror had ever been struck off from serving on account of his religion or politics. It was not necessary, and he could very well understand why, that Her Majesty's Attorney General for Ireland should be aware of the religion or politics of anybody upon the jury panel; but there were officials under him to manage the business who knew very well. Even if those officials did not feel quite certain about it, special steps were taken to obtain the knowledge from the Conservative Club in Dublin, who had persons connected with them who knew the religion and politics of every man on the rate book; and as the jury panel was made from the rate book, therefore, the religion and polities of every man on the jury panel in Dublin were known. Consequently, when a selection was made by the officials to whom he referred, it could be very easily understood what the grounds were on which they made their selection; but, without any proof at all, the selection absolutely made afforded sufficient evidence of itself. In a city like Dublin, where the vast majority of the inhabitants and a large majority of the gentlemen on the jury panel were Roman Catholics, the fact that a jury panel to try special cases must contain the name of Roman Catholics was a fact which required no explanation. Dublin jurors were more interested than, perhaps, any other body of jurors in the country in the administration of justice, not only in Dublin, but all over the country, and in the preservation of law and order. Their interests, financially and otherwise, extended all over Ireland, and they could have no possible sympathy with crime in any part of the country. Therefore, if criminals against whom satisfactory evidence could be produced were brought before any section of Dublin jurors, no matter what their politics or religion might be, he believed there would be no difficulty in obtaining verdicts if the evidence was satisfactory. It had been a matter of great surprise to find that Roman Catholics had been excluded from the jury panel in the late Dublin trial; and although an explanation had been repeatedly asked for, it had never yet been given. There had been a kind of explanation given by the Attorney General—namely, that Roman Catholic jurors had been set aside not exactly because they were Roman Catholics, but because a large majority of the retail licences in Dublin were held by Roman Catholics, and it became necessary to be very particular in the selection of jurors on that account—in order that persons holding these retail spirit licences should not find their way into the jury box. Now, did the right hon. and learned Gentleman mean to assert that all the Roman Catholic jurors in Dublin were retail grocers; or did he argue on this line—that because the majority of the people dealing in spirits with retail licences happened to be Roman Catholics, that, therefore, all Roman Catholics ought to be kept out of the jury-box? That was the only explanation given by the right hon. and learned Gentleman to the inquiry made of him by the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen); and he (Mr. Mayne) certainly submitted that the matter still required some further explanation. The answer of the right hon. and learned Gentleman could not be accepted as a satisfactory reply to the very important question put by the hon. Member for Newcastle. That there was some truth in it was shown by the fact that in the first series of trials, when the juries were manipulated in this manner, the principal newspaper in Ireland alluded, in a strong manner, to the peculiar tactics which were being pursued in Green Street, and, instead of giving an explanation of any kind—retail licence or otherwise—the proprietor of the paper was arrested and put into Richmond Gaol. If a satisfactory explanation could have been given, surely that was a desirable time to have given it, in order to have quieted the angry feeling then growing up against a manipulation of the jury panel which had started into life again, although it was considered to be dead and gone for ever in Ireland. The result of all this was that, perhaps, the greatest misfortune which had been produced out of all their recent troubles in Ireland—namely, want of confidence and want of respect for the administration of the Criminal Law in Ireland had sprung up—that want of confidence and respect so ably and so fitly deplored by Lord O'Hagan when he introduced his Juries Act. The recent improper and unfair administration of the law had certainly given the Juries Act its quietus, and all the maladministration much condemned in bygone years had come to the surface again. Indeed, at no time, for a long series of years, had the want of confidence in the due administration of criminal justice in Ireland been so pronounced as it was at present. He was able to make that statement with some sort of authority. He resided in Dublin, and carried on his business there, and he mixed with almost all grades of the population. If Lord O'Hagan would introduce any other measure now to put an end to the present state of feeling that existed, as it did when he introduced his Juries Act, he might repeat almost word for word the speech he made in introducing that Act. At no time had there been a more thorough want of confidence in the administration of criminal justice than that which existed at the present moment; and it would be most unfortunate if someone did not step in now to restore confidence. Describing the manipulation of jury panels in recent times as jury-packing, was describing it by the name by which it was known in old times; but it would be better if some more appropriate name could be invented. Jury-packing was done quietly in an office before the jury were summoned. Lord O'Hagan's Act had rendered it impossible for that procedure to be persevered in any longer; and the result was that a new and ingenious method had been adopted. In a recent Act of Parliament ample provision was made for summoning a sufficient number of jurors to attend in certain cases, and those jurors must be of a special kind, and, according to recent experience, of a very special kind. When a jury was formed in accordance with the provisions of Lord O'Hagan's Act, they were taken in rotation alphabetically, so that it was impossible at that stage to exclude a Roman Catholic, or an advanced Liberal, or persons who had retail licences. Later on, there was another provision in that Act which was intended to put beyond all doubt the impartiality of any jury that might be called to try a case. The name of every one of the 200 jurors had to be written on a separate slip of card, all the slips being of the same size and pattern. These slips were placed in a ballot-box, and drawn out in the presence of the full Court and the public. They were called out one by one; and, generally speaking, any man put on his trial for any crime might feel quite easy in his mind that the first 12 taken out, being so mixed up, would, at all events, be perfectly impartial; but the Crown had, in certain cases, an unlimited discretion as to ordering jurors to stand aside. A Crown official could reject those whom he would not permit to serve by ordering them to stand by, and then he could allow those who were opposed in religion, in politics, and in every other interest to the prisoner, to serve. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland had that evening said the prisoner might challenge any jurors he pleased; but what was the use of a prisoner doing that? He could not challenge 200, or 100, or even 50; but the right hon. and learned Gentleman's under-strapper could order the whole 200 to stand by if he chose. A prisoner would be a fool to challenge jurors; it would be far better for him to take his chance, because if he did challenge them the under-strapper of the Government could still get the 12 he wished to have all the same. Was all this necessary? The right hon. and learned Gentleman had sufficient acquaintance with and experience of juries, special and otherwise, in Dublin, to justify the question whether all this was necessary in Dublin? Did he believe that if any jury were taken, even almost at random in Dublin, composed of men of any religion or politics whatever, or even of persons holding retail licences, and that satisfactory evidence was put before them, they would find a verdict which was contrary to the facts, or to what the law and justice of the case demanded? His justification, if it might be called one, about licensed victuallers, did not hold with the persistent putting off of Thomas Leech, of Dame Street, for he was not a licensed victualler, and not even a Roman Catholic. He was one of the religious community known as the Moravian Brethren; and he was not dependent upon any class of the public, for be was a man of considerable wealth. Why was he put off? Was it because he was a conscientious man who would require to be satisfied of the guilt of the prisoners? If the prisoners were men with blackened faces, there might be some reason for keeping Mr. Leech off the jury; but the cases in Dublin were not cases of that kind. They were, in the majority of oases, persons against whom evidence seemed to be fairly clear, and in regard to which an ordinary jury could be trusted. But suppose they could not be trusted, would it not have been better that the men might have got off, and the Jury Law passed by Parliament at the instance of Lord O'Hagan have been left to enjoy the confidence of the people of Ireland which it had earned? In that case, the existing state of things would have been prevented, under which any man called to serve in a criminal case could not help feeling that some taint was put upon him if he was allowed to serve. He knew of men who had refused to go up, and had submitted to penalties rather than run the risk of being placed in the box. He put these views before the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who was responsible for much of what had taken place. He would urge the right hon. and learned Gentleman to devote as much of the remainder of his life as might be necessary to restore the confidence of the people of Ireland in the administration of the Criminal Law in that country.

said, he had listened with very great attention to the speech of the Attorney General for Ireland, and he noticed that while the right hon. and learned Gentleman adverted in minute detail to the cases adduced by hon. Members, with the skill of a practised advocate, he avoided the weak points of the cases. While he referred, in great detail, to the observations of the first three or four Members who spoke, when he came to consider the question put before him by the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen) he skimmed the subject. The right hon. and learned Gentleman imputed to the Irish Members that they gave no assistance to the law, and had no sympathy for the law. He might add that through the way in which the law was administered in Ireland, in respect to criminal juries, it did not command sympathy or respect. When the fate of a man's life was on trial, the Constitution of the United Kingdom gave him the promise of a fair jury; but, from his own personal experience, he could state that in the manner in which the law had been administered in the South of Ireland a prisoner did not get a fair trial. The Attorney General seemed to make a great point of a prisoner being able to challenge jurors, and not doing so. The reason of that was plain upon the surface. A solicitor for the prisoner, although he might do his best to obtain equity for the prisoner, was not bound to ensure an acquittal; but the Attorney General and the Crown were bound to secure a conviction. Therefore, when a man was not known to be very adverse in opinions to the prisoner, and bore a general good character, the solicitor would pass him by; but if a man of the most estimable character as a citizen came forward, and was suspected of the least national proclivities, the Solicitor for the Crown called upon him to stand by. He was familiar with the modus operandi, because he had witnessed the progress of trials in the Court at Cork. The panel was not a long one, and it was printed; but there was attached to it a statement of the proclivities of the persons there named, and any person suspected of unfair or doubtful tendencies was told by the Solicitor for the Crown to stand by. The Crown exercised not only arbitrary power, but a certain kind of unlimited power; because, while a prisoner could only challenge up to a certain time, the Crown could require any citizens actually on the trial to stand by. The Attorney General stated—and he quite acquitted the right hon. and learned Gentleman of having any personal feeling in these matters—that, to his knowledge, no persons were excluded on account of their religion. If he would refer to the complaints made at the time of the sitting of the first Crimes Commission in Cork, he would find that on more than one occasion 40 jurors who had been summoned were ordered to stand by; and that by a singular coincidence 38 of these were Roman Catholics. That, in a panel of little more than 200, was a startling circumstance. So great was the feeling of indignation in Cork that a public meeting was intended to be held even while the Judge was sitting, to complain of the dishonour intended to be put upon Roman Catholic jurors; but by his advice it was not held. He did not think such a feeling of indignation could be excited in Cork without just grounds; and his own personal conviction was that the jurors were selected and manipulated for these trials. The Attorney General had that evening felt himself constrained to make the admission that many of the persons who had been rejected he did not doubt would have made good jurors. He himself had perfect knowledge that many of the men excluded by reason of suspected politics or religion would have given a verdict as truly as the most thorough Orangeman that ever sat in a jury-box. Was the law entitled to respect in the face of these circumstances? He believed that the law ought to be vindicated; but he also considered that by the manipulations practised by the Crown, whilst the law in the minds of some people was vindicated, it fell into very great disrepute with the majority. The Attorney General, seeking to skim over the weak part of his defence, alluded to the fact that a great many of the jurors on the special panel in Dublin were publicans; but he knew that men were excluded in Cork from the jury-box who were not publicans, and no more dependent on the public than any other mercantile men in the Empire. A system was carried on in Ireland which, in the humblest town of England, would have raised a storm of indignation. But he had some other objections to this Vote. For example, he wanted to know what was meant by Miscellaneous Charges in the Law Expenses? It seemed to him that the country was asked to vote £100,235 for what had not vindicated the law, but had brought the law into great disrepute. If it had given advantage to any persons, it had done so to the Attorney General and the Solicitor General, who were down for £9,000; and there was an item of £15,520 for fees to counsel. It was a melancholy fact that the Vote for the administration of the law in Ireland should contain a charge of £53,520 for prosecutors, and that the total should amount to £100,235.

said, he wished to point out the extraordinary inflation of this Vote which had taken place. He found that the total Vote for Ireland was £100,235. Ireland was a small country, with 5,000,000 inhabitants, and England, with 30,000,000, only required £84,006.

said, the hon. Member should take the English Votes 1 and 3, to make a comparison—the Voles for Law Charges and Criminal Prosecutions.

said, he would take Criminal Prosecutions and Sheriffs' Expenses, and he found that they amounted to £260,000; but the population of England was six times greater than that of Ireland. He wondered what became of the political economists when this Vote came on. Where were the hon. Members for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) and for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn)? He had expected them upon this Vote to have pointed out that here was Ireland, with few lawyers, and far fewer criminals, charged with this enormous sum. According to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, as regarded ordinary crime, no country was so pure as Ireland, and even agrarian crime was much less now than it had been at any time in the last three years. It seemed to him that political economy in that House had gone to the dogs; and so it was that when charges of this kind were brought before the House, the answer was—"Oh, it is only Ireland;" and the fact that it was Ireland was sufficient explanation of this state of things. He had not heard the whole of the Attorney General's statement; but, as he understood, the right hon. and learned Gentleman's defence was based on the infamous conduct of the Crown. In regard to Nally, his defence was that the Government had since got additional evidence of an important character. His answer to that was the answer that Gambetta made to McMahon—"I do not believe you." He did not apply that to the Attorney General, but to those who had supplied the right hon. and learned Gentleman with that information, because they knew that their statement was to go forward on the wings of the Press; and that The Freeman's Journal, with a copy of that statement, would go into every cell, carrying fear and terror to the unfortunate prisoners. But he would tell these men, in their prison cells, to distrust that statement, even though the Attorney General made it. He did not believe that statement as coming from the Irish officials; and he ventured to say that the right hon. and learned Gentleman was not skilful enough to affect the minds of the men who were now lying at his mercy in Castlebar Gaol. The right hon. and learned Gentleman was bound to get up and make statements of this kind. For what else did he draw the £9,000 for which he was asking the Committee? The right hon. and learned Gentleman, when he had to come to the Table to ask for his salary, ought to speak with bated breath when he was meeting the Representatives of the people whom he was oppressing. What was this £9,000 for? How much of it had he got in his pocket at the present moment? He came down to make statements in" order to captivate that House; but it was his own salary that he was defending; and it would be a very surprising thing if, having pocketed £9,000, he did not come prepared to make out a very good case. £9,000 was a very large amount, and he did not know whether anyone on the Irish Benches could realize what it was; but, at all events, it was in addition to another salary which the right hon. and learned Gentleman drew under another portion of these Estimates; and he asserted that it was to this system of inflation of the Votes, under the head of fees, that caused all these bogus, fishing prosecutions. He had just received some information showing what was the action of the Attorney General for Ireland in respect to the prosecution of the men who were bayonetted and bludgeoned at Wexford. The Government, having put the men to the expense of engaging counsel for the defence, and then having postponed the case for three weeks, had now changed their mind, and, believing that they could get a conviction even under the Prevention of Crime Act, and by changing the venue, had brought the prosecution under that Act. A gentleman who was Mayor of Wexford last year stated that the Police had issued fresh summonses under the Prevention of Crime Act, 1881.

said, there was no prosecution whatever under the Prevention of Crime Act.

said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman had not added that if the prosecution was under the Prevention of Crime Act he would give instructions to have that changed.

said, he could, of course, hardly undertake to say that; but he believed there was no such prosecution. If there were, it was not with his knowledge; but he was perfectly certain there was not.

said, he was obliged to the right hon. and learned Gentleman; but he had been very guarded. These men might to-morrow got from two magistrates six months' hard labour, although the right hon. and learned Gentleman would regret it very much; and perhaps when they had spent three weeks on plank beds he would let them off the remainder. He had, however, risen chiefly to call attention to circumstances connected with his own constituency—in regard to the Crossmaglen case. There were now undergoing penal servitude a number of men of respectable class—several of them tenant farmers, and one a National schoolmaster, and, therefore, a person of intelligence—on the evidence of an informer named Duffy. He would not quote any words of his own; he would quote the words of The Dublin Express, the chief Orange organ of Lord Spencer, and the editor of which was the Irish correspondent of The Times. The Government took these men in the county of Armagh, and placed them on trial before a jury in Belfast. They brought down Judge Lawson, and the only evidence against the men was the evidence of Duffy, and that of a certain book, which he alleged was built into a wall by himself and a man named Hanlon, who had also, at first, turned informer. The Daily Express—the most rabid organ of landlordism—in an article, two months ago, upon the conviction of these men, said that if the jury could have seen their way to any other result the public would have been inclined to quarrel with the verdict. If the evidence on which the Crown relied was not sufficient to convince the rampant editor of The Daily Express, he thought the Government ought to give it up. But in spite of the dictum of the editor of The Daily Express, those unfortunate men were then undergoing a sentence of 10 years' penal servitude, and one of them, the schoolmaster, was dying of consumption in Mountjoy Prison; and it was notorious in the district that he was not the man implicated in this matter, but that it was the uncle of the man, who was away in America. Now, he often wished that the magistrates who sent men to prison, and the Judges who gave sentences of penal servitude and plank beds, could be sent for two or three days to endure that torture themselves, as a preliminary to their taking office; and if those persons who drew large salaries—the Chief Secretaries and Attorney Generals—for preserving law and order in Ireland could get a taste of prison regimen, they would be more merciful. But of all the horrible tortures to which a man could be subject, that of being convicted on false evidence, when he knew himself to be innocent, was the worst. With regard to these Crossmaglen people, as a matter of fact the Government offered a number of them, if they would plead guilty, that they should be released on their own recognizances. [The ATTORNEY GENERAL for IRELAND dissented.] The right hon. and learned Gentleman shook his head; he might shake it off if he liked. He asserted in that House that something was done to convey to these men that if they pleaded guilty they would be released on their own recognizances, and that the men, who preferred to throw themselves on their country—the Orange jury—were now undergoing penal servitude.

said, the facts were these. After the conviction of the first prisoner the counsel for the defence asked the Crown Prosecutor to deal leniently with the others, on condition of their pleading guilty. The Crown said that they would, and the matter was to stand over until instructions came. But a person connected with the defence would not consent to no fee being taken, and said the case must go on. The result was that the unfortunate men were tried and convicted.

said, the statement of the right hon. and learned Gentleman was correct as far as it went; but the circumstances he referred to were antecedent. But he accepted the statement, and, taking it for what it was worth, he asked what did it prove? It proved that the first batch of men were convicted by Orange juries, and the second as he had described. The Government put forward a certain set of men; they made a vague charge against them; they were found guilty; then they came to another set of men, and said to them—"Your predecessors were found guilty." And to justify what was done to the preceding lot the subsequent batch of men were to be induced to plead guilty. He was so suspicious of anything that the ordinary Crown officials said, that if Mr. Bolton and Mr. Anderson made a statement on oath of the facts in connection with this case he would disbelieve them. Hon. Members looked shocked; but who was Mr. Bolton? A most blackguard and profligate ruffian. The right hon. and learned Gentleman could not contradict him now. Let him get up and say at that Table that Mr. George Bolton was not the most blackguard and profligate ruffian in the service of the Crown.