I desire to raise a question of Privilege as regards the recent arrest of Members of this House, and I purpose to conclude with a motion that a breach of the Privilege of Parliament has been committed. I do not intend to occupy the time of the House for more than a very few minutes; but it is very important that this question should be brought forward. The House of Commons used to fear the tyranny of the Crown; it used to fear invasions of its rights by privileged orders of society. No such fear is now entertained; but there is a fear lest a temporary majority may, for a few years, exercise a tyranny that may, perhaps; in some cases, become insupportable.

Order, order! The hon. Member seems about to refer to a case of Privilege, affecting, as I understand him, three hon. Members of this House. I understood from the hon. Member privately that the main purport of his Motion was to allude to the arrest of a certain Member of this House without any justification. If the hon. Member proposes to refer to the arrest of the hon. Member for West Waterford (Mr. Pyne) and the hon. Member for West Cork (Mr. Gilhooly), he would not, in my opinion, be within Privilege. Privilege cannot be pleaded to an arrest on a criminal charge, nor to the administration of criminal justice. But with regard to the case of the hon. Member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien) there is a clear case demanding explanation, and in that matter the hon. Member is perfectly within his right in calling it a matter of Privilege, and be taking precedence.

I submit, Sir, with great deference, that the House has not yet any information before it as to the case of the two hon. Members for West Waterford (Mr. Pyne) and West Cork (Mr. Gilhooly). It would be very proper for the Government to give us that information, and if they are in a position to tell us that those hon. Members had been arrested on a criminal charge the Government would have the benefit of that fact. [Cries of" Order!"]

The hon. Member evidently was not in the House when I read the official intimation that those hon. Members had been arrested on a criminal charge.

Of course I will follow your ruling, Sir, and will confine myself to the case of the hon. Member for North Monaghan; but I will venture to say that the House ought to bear in mind the danger that may arise from occasional excesses of power on the part of a temporary majority. The question is one of equal interest to both sides of the House, and to both political Parties, and they ought to be on their guard against such dangers. Last Thursday and Friday we had an experience in this House that I think must be without precedent since the days of Pride's Purge. All the doors and avenues of the House were haunted by officers of the law—constables and detectives—on the look-out to arrest certain hon. Members of this House. Any hon. Member who possessed the remotest resemblance, either in features, in form, or in size, to the Members wanted, had to use the greatest care in leaving the House or in coming in lest he should be pounced upon. The House during those two days seemed to be a kind of Alsatia or refuge for criminals. Outside the portals of the House the officers of the law were lying in wait to seize upon their victims. I suppose that I should not be in Order in alluding to an easy remedy for such a state of things; but I will take another opportunity of doing so. All, however, will see that there is considerable danger of mistaking one hon. Member for another, especially in the uncertain light of the gas; and, as a matter of fact, a mistake was made, and in broad daylight. The hon. Member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien), having come down to the House early to attend to his correspondence, left the House again, intending to return speedily. As soon as he had gone outside the gates of Palace Yard a detective came up to him and said—"I beg your pardon, Sir, but I have a warrant for your arrest." Then the hon. Member said—"Produce your warrant." The officer, however, was not in possession of the warrant, and called to a colleague and asked him to fetch it; then, without waiting for it, or asking the name of the hon. Member for North Monaghan, the officer persuaded him by gentle force to come with him some distance up Parliament Street. Of course, it was manifest to all around that the hon. Gentleman was under arrest. The mistake having been made known by another detective to Constable M'lntyre, who had hold of the hon. Member, that officer said to him—"I beg your pardon, if I have made a mistake, and I offer an apology." But the hon. Member for North Monaghan was something of the mind of St. Paul in similar circumstances, and he said—"They have arrested me openly, uncondemned, being a Member of Parliament, and now do they thrust me, Sir, aside privily? nay, verily." I think the hon. Member was within his right in declining a personal apology; but it was not for the individual Member who was thus affronted to take upon him-himself to gain the remedy that was due to the authority and dignity of the House itself. That is for the House itself, and for my own part, it is on behalf of the House, and not merely of the hon. Member for North Monaghan, that I am raising this question now. I should like to call attention to the exceedingly severe terms in which the House formerly condemned any attempt to obstruct, assault, or insult any Member coming to or going from the House. On the 12th of April, 1733, it was resolved—

"That the assaulting, insulting, or menacing any Member of this House in his coming to or going from the House, or on account of his behaviour in Parliament, is a high infringement of the Privilege of this House, and a most outrageous and dangerous violation of the rights of Parliament and a high crime and misdemeanour."

"It is a gross breach of the Privileges of this House for any person to obstruct or insult Members of this House in coming to or going from this House."

"That the wrongful arrest of Mr. P. O'Brien, a Member of this House, in going from the House, on Friday, Feb. 10, was a high infringement of the Privileges of Parliament."

I beg leave to second the Motion. If it had not been the case that I was present at the arrest of one of the three hon. Members, probable I should not have ventured to trouble the House. I feel very strongly that the House should take as strong a view as possible of this question, and treat as a breach of Privilege the arrest of my hon. Friend the Member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien). There are two circumstances in connection with the arrest of the other two hon. Members which, doubtless, you, Mr. Speaker, are not aware of, and which, with all respect, I should like to submit. The hon. Member for West Waterford (Mr. Pyne) maintains that he was actually within the precincts of the House at the time he was arrested.

the arrest of the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Waterford is not before the House. It is my duty to keep the attention of the House confined to the particular question of Privilege raised—namely, the arrest of the hon. Member for North Monaghan. Of course, if the hon. Member desires to bring forward in a proper way the arrest of the hon. Member for West Waterford it is competent for him to do so; but it is impossible for him to bring it forward now on the particular question of breach of Privilege which has been raised by the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Picton).

Then I will not proceed further with the remarks I intended to offer, but I will confine myself to the immediate question before the House. In the case of the hon. Member for North Monaghan it is said not only were there detectives surrounding the House, but they were actually in the building within the precincts of the House; and, in these circumstances, I venture to think the breach of Privilege in the present case becomes a very serious one indeed. The police constables may be doing their duty by arresting Members of Parliament in the streets; but to arrest them when within the precincts of Palace Yard, as in this instance, is to commit a still greater breach of Privilege. My hon. Friend the Member for North Monaghan has Buffered a very serious indignity indeed, and was put to great personal inconvenience. It is no light matter for a Member of Parliament to be arrested in the street within a stone's throw of Palace Yard, and it is all the worse in this case, because the hon. Member was not guilty of any offence at all. A Member of Parliament ought not to be liable to be treated in the way complained of in respect of political offences, for it was merely a political offence, and not a crime, with which the hon. Member for North Monaghan was charged. Of course, if a Member of Parliament commit a crime he must be expected to receive the same treatment as other criminals; but in this case I think a distinction should be drawn between an arrest for the commission of a real crime and political offences. It is for the interest and dignity of Parliament to purge itself from all complicity with persons who are guilty of crime, and not to extend its indulgence to them; but my hon. Friend the Member for North Monaghan, although previously under a sentence of seven months' imprisonment, was even then guilty of no crime, but simply of a political offence. Surely, for an alleged offence on the part of the hon. Member for West Cork, the police were not entitled to drag the hon. Member for North Monaghan through the streets as if he were a common pickpocket. Although my hon. Friend has suffered this great indignity, I do not think that any hon. Member of this House or any man in the country will think the worse of him in consequence; nor even for the sentence of seven months' imprisonment which has been passed upon him. It is our duty to resent as strongly as possible the fact not only that he should have been arrested on a false charge, but that any hon. Member should be arrested for a political offence at all. I and many other English and Scotch Members are very proud to call Irish Members who are undergoing imprisonment our friends, and we feel that they should not be arrested on such charges. The Government will do well, instead of putting Irish Members in prison, to alter their conduct.

Order, order! The hon. Member is not keeping to the Question before the House. He is discussing the difference between political and other offences.

I will only say, in conclusion, that it is clearly proved there was no pretence for denying that an hon. Member has been arrested wrongfully. I hope the House will regard it as a serious breach of its Privileges.

I do not propose to follow in any way the remarks which have fallen from the hon. Member for the Crewe Division of Cheshire (Mr. M'Laren), who seconded the Motion, nor do I propose to deal with the observations which fell from the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Picton). I wish to repudiate in the strongest language possible the doctrine that any difference should be made as between the hon. Member who has just been subjected to an unfortunate indignity in consequence of a mistake, and who represents a constituency in the Sister Island, and any other hon. Member. No such idea certainly entered my mind, nor, so far as I know, that of any Member of the Government. I entirely agree that this I question of Privilege does not concern the individual Member whose personal dignity may have been assailed, or to whom personal discomfort may have been caused; the Privilege is really the Privilege of the House. Now, about the facts I do not think there is the slightest doubt. The hon. Member for Leicester has stated with perfect accuracy that there was a mistake. He went on to say that there ought not to have been a mistake. I entirely agree with him. I am hardly aware of any case in which a mistake can be regarded as permissible. It was a mistake, certainly, on the part of the officer in fault, but the mistake was not intentional. I hold in my hand a Report, carefully made by the heads of the police, which I instantly called for when I heard of the circumstance. I am informed that the sergeant in question, Sergeant M'Intyre, was told—not himself having personal acquaintance with either of the hon. Members concerned—that the gentleman leaving the precincts of the House was the hon. Member for West Cork (Mr. Gilhooly)—[An hon. MEMBER: Who told him?] A constable who was on duty in the precincts of the House informed him that that was the gentleman against whom there was a warrant. The sergeant followed the hon. Member, and, lifting his hat, addressed him interrogatively, "Mr. Gilhooly?" to which the hon. Member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien) nodded his head without making any reply. Thereupon the sergeant informed him that there was a warrant out for his arrest, and that he must consider himself in custody, and asked him to accompany him to Scotland Yard. The sergeant sent an officer to fetch the warrant, which was in the custody of another constable. Well, every police constable cannot have the warrant in his possession. The constable went to get it, and he came back in the course of a minute or two with the warrant in his possession. In the meantime the sergeant was informed that he had made a mistake, and that the hon. Member who was then in custody was not the hon. Member for West Cork (Mr. Gilhooly), but the hon. Member for North Monaghan. The sergeant immediately apologized to the hon. Member, and said he would not detain him any longer. I might add that at first the officer offered to convey the hon. Member to Scotland Yard in a cab. The hon. Member, however, preferred going on foot. I do not defend what has been done; of course, it was a most unfortunate and most regrettable mistake. The Commissioner of Police, the moment he heard of the circumstance, sent Inspector Littechild to the hon. Member to offer him a sincere and absolute apology. I—in so far as I represent the Police Force, though I take no blame to myself in the matter—I repeat, in the name of the Force and in the name of the Government, my sincere apologies and great regret to the hon. Member for the mistake that has been made. I do not know that anything more is called for from the House. I do not know that anything more is called for on the part of the Government. No doubt, Members are free from molestation and arrest except in criminal cases. There was no intentional breach of Privilege. About that there can be no doubt whatever. The officer who made this unhappy mistake supposed he was dealing with an hon. Member with reference to whom no question of Privilege would have arisen, as there was a warrant in a criminal matter against him. There was no intention to commit a breach of Privilege of the House. The police having made their apologies, and I having offered apologies to the hon. Member on behalf of the Government, I leave it to the House to say whether the complaint made by the hon. Member is not now entirely met.

What the Home Secretary has said is perfectly true. We are here not to consider the question of personal indignity offered to an individual Member, but what is due to the dignity of the House under the circumstances. The apology to the particular Member, whether on the part of the police or the Home Secretary—that is one thing, and may be adequate; but what the House has to consider is, how this transaction came to occur, and what precautions must be taken in the future against its occurring again; because I am afraid that we are at the beginning of a chapter at which these arrests of Members of the House of Commons are to become habitual. That is the situation in which we find ourselves in consequence of the policy in which we are embarked. At all events, it is of some importance that the Government should at least arrest the right man. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) would care much about that, because he announces that people have been convicted when they have not been convicted; but it is desirable that we should have some precautions as to who is to be arrested at the instance of the Government among the Members who sit in this House. Now, the arrest was a singular one. The Home Secretary says that one sergeant, who did not know the person to be arrested, told another sergeant that he—the hon. Member for North Monaghan—was the person who ought to be arrested.

I beg pardon—I did, not say that. I said that a constable professing to know the hon. Member who was to be arrested informed Sergeant M'Intyre that that was Mr. Gilhooly.

Well, it appears I am mixing up two sergeants, instead of one constable and one sergeant. One constable, who does not know the man who is to be arrested, informs a sergeant that there is the man, whereupon the sergeant does arrest him, and arrests the wrong man. That is the state of things in which we all are at the present moment. I do not know how many warrants the Chief Secretary for Ireland may have out just at this moment; but anybody is liable to be arrested if some constable who does Dot know the individual to be arrested tells somebody else—"That is the person to be arrested." Now, in my opinion, this is a thing which ought to be inquired into by the House. We ought to know what are to be the forms and proceedings with future arrests of Members of this House. It is quite obvious that this is a serious matter. When the Government attempt to arrest a Member of this House, either within the precincts or immediately adjoining the precincts, surely it is not too much to expect that they should provide constables for that service who know the persons of Members. There should be no difficulty, I imagine, in securing the services of detectives or others who are acquainted with the persons it is intended to arrest. There seems, on the part of somebody or other, to be a very gross act of negligence and carelessness—that they should have employed for a service of this kind persons not properly informed on the subject. Instead of doing these things in this haphazard, ramshackle way, it is desirable there should be some understanding as to what course of proceeding is to be taken in arresting Members of this House. There is the case, exceedingly well known, of Lord Cochrane. There was no doubt whatever in his case. He was extremely well known. The proper course was taken—Lord Cochrane was arrested within the precincts of the House; but the Government of the day, regarding the arrest as a serious matter, took what I believe to have been the proper Parliamentary and Constitutional course of referring the question to a Committee of Privileges of this House. It is only a night or two ago that the House appointed the Committee of Privileges. It is one of the first proceedings of this House to appoint the Committee of Privileges. It is to that Committee of Privileges, if there is any question at all with reference to the treatment of Members, that that question ought to be referred. That was done by the Government in the year 1814 or 1815 in Lord Cochrane's case. The Committee in that case reported that, after an examination of the circumstances, they were of opinion that there was no ground for taking any further action against the person incriminated, who happened to be in that case the Marshal of the Court. It may be that the Committee of Privileges here, having heard the circumstances, will arrive at the same decision; but the Committee of Privileges might do something else. They might recommend to you, Mr. Speaker, or the Government, certain forms and proceedings in the case of the arrest of Members of this House which might prevent the scandal which has been committed in this case, and would insure that we should have some approach to decency in procedure of this kind. That would be an extremely proper thing for the Committee of Privileges to inquire into. They would inquire, first, whether due caution and care had been taken in this particular case with reference to the arrest of this particular Member. They might, or they might not, come to the conclusion that it required no notice from the House under the particular circumstances of the case. Above all, the Committee of Privileges would do that which would be extremely useful to the dignity of the House and to the respect in which the House of Commons should be held in the country if they would recommend some course of procedure in the future which will obviate that which I feel is a great indignity and a scandal in the transaction which has taken place.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) sat down without indicating to the House what question of Privilege has possibly arisen which can be referred to the Committee. I will venture, in a few words, to recall to the mind of the House what the position of the matter is. The police officer has made an unfortunate mistake. Her Majesty's Government—who, as a Government, can give no guarantee (any more than the right hon. Gentleman could give any guarantee when he was Home Secretary) that the police shall make no mistake—have expressed their regret for the mistake, and the Chief Commissioner of Police, through the mouth of the Home Secretary, has also apologized. Now, let the right hon. Gentleman tell the House what the question of Privilege is that can possibly arise. The matter of Privilege was disposed of when the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Picton) admitted that it was a mistake. He did not suggest that any superior or inferior officer intended to arrest a man who was not named in the warrant. The right hon. Gentleman is an esteemed lawyer, and I ask him what the form of proceeding is? First, there must be an offence against the Criminal Law. The police constable had nothing to do with that. Then there must be a charge, and there must be a warrant. There is the charge and the warrant; and a Member of Parliament, as you have said, Sir, to-day from the Chair—and, if I may be allowed, I endorse your statement—has no privilege or protection whatever. Now, the right hon. Gentleman is a great Constitutional lawyer, and he referred to the case of Lord Cochrane. That has nothing to do with this matter at all. Lord Cochrane, as a Privy Councillor, was sitting on one of the Benches of this House, or rather the old House.

I did not say that he was a Privy Councillor. He was not a Privy Councillor.

I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. I referred to the Report of the Committee, and if the right hon. Gentleman will refer to the diary of Lord Colchester he will find that I am correct.

He gat on the Privy Council as a Councillor's Bench; but it did not follow that he was a Privy Councillor.

I do not think it necessary to go into this point, and I will assume that I was wrong there. Lord Cochrane was sitting is the House when arrested, and the question referred to the Committee of Privileges was whether persons sitting in the House were liable to arrest, and did the arrest create a question of Privilege. The Report of the Committee was that there was no breach of the Privileges of the House; and Mr. Speaker Abbott laid it down that the House of Commons Chamber afforded no Privilege unless the Speaker was in the Chair and the Mace upon the Table. I appeal to the House, and to every lawyer in it, what possible question of Privilege can arise here? There has been a mistake—that mistake has been apologized for; and if the hon. Member desires to take proceedings he has a remedy. A mistake having been committed, and an apology having been made, no question of Privilege has occurred. So far as this House is concerned, nobody alleging that there is any real question to go to the Committee, I humbly submit that—unless the right hon. Gentleman will give the Government some prescription by which the Government can insure that no policeman will ever make a mistake again—as there is no matter for inquiry, after the explanation given by the Home Secretary, and after the illustrations given by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby, there is no question of Privilege involved. This being the state of things, if I am in Order, I will move an Amendment to the Motion of the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Picton).

I am rather surprised at one statement that my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General made, that because the arrest was a mistake, as it was admitted to be by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester (Mr. Picton), it was clear that there was no question of Privilege in the case. I cannot understand that argument. I maintain that it is impossible to contradict this statement—that the act of arrest of itself was a distinct breach of Privilege. It was, in fact, an arrest without any legal process whatever. It may be that the circumstances under which that breach of Privilege took place—namely, that it was a mistake—may or may not be a sufficient reason for passing the matter by without further notice; but I entirely contravene my hon. and learned Friend's suggestion, that it is the less a breach of Privilege because the arrest was made under a mistake. My hon. and learned Friend suggests that the Home Secretary, having for himself and his Government, and also in the name of the Police Force, apologized for the mistake, that there ought to be an end of the matter. I will point out to the House that that is not the way in which questions of this kind have, so far as I know, in any previous case been treated by the House of Commons. It has uniformly been the course to refer all questions of this nature to the consideration of the Committee of Privileges, whose functions are directed to this subject, and the reason is obvious—namely, that there shall remain a perfect record of the inquiry, and of the circumstances of the case which gave rise to such inquiry. Before such a tribunal the circumstances can be gone into, and they become a permanent record in the Report of the Committee. As to what the Committee may report in this case I do not venture to speculate. It would be impertinent to do so. I make no suggestion. They may be of opinion that, under the circumstances, no further action need be taken; but before I sit down I should like to make reference to another point in this case. After all, assuming it to have been a mistake—accepting that—it certainly was a clumsy and inexcusable mistake. My right hon. Friend the Member for Derby did not mistake the position of affairs as explained by the Home Secretary, and the House will be good enough to bear in mind that it has no authentic account as to how the arrest was brought about, but merely the statement of the Home Secretary, who receives it merely from the constables without further inquiry. What an extraordinary statement that is—that the constable did not know the hon. Member.

I have already corrected the right hon. Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) when he made that statement, and I would really ask the hon. and learned Gentleman (Sir Charles Russell) to observe that the constable did know.

Then there is no mistake.

The constable mentioned it to the sergeant.

It appears to me that the explanation of the Home Secretary makes the matter more confused and difficult than it was before. The statement now made differs altogether from that which was originally-made. We have now the corrected and amended statement that a constable who did know pointed out the wrong man. It now seems that a constable, who did not know the hon. Member for West Cork (Mr. Gilhooly), pointed out the hon. Member for North Monaghan. (Mr. Patrick O'Brien) as the hon. Member for West Cork to a sergeant who did not pretend to know either one or the other. I should have thought that in this delicate and important matter moderate care ought to have been taken by the Police Authorities to put warrants into the hands of sergeants, police constables, or detectives, who had, at least, taken previous pains to identify the persons to be arrested. The extraordinary part of the story does not end there. It now appears upon the statement of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Matthews) that the sergeant who proceeded to make the arrest, and thereby to commit an assault upon a Member of this House, and thus was guilty of a breach of the Privileges of this House, made the arrest without having possession of the warrant. Again, I say, that is a matter proper to be inquired into by the Committee of Privileges. We do not know yet where that warrant was; whether it was ever in the control or within easy reach of the arresting constable; we do not know in whose custody it was. It is certainly a new doctrine that an officer without the legal document in his possession, or within his reach, can arrest a man upon a warrant, that warrant being in the possession of somebody else. It seems tome, therefore, that this case, in accordance with the ordinary procedure of this House in other cases, ought to be referred to the Committee of Privileges to report upon. Such an inquiry would, at all events, secure two things—first, an accurate statement, which we clearly have not now before the House, of the circumstances of the arrest; and, secondly, a permanent and authentic record of the opinion of this House upon the transaction and the circumstances attending the transaction.

I should not have intervened in this debate but for the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary. The hon. and learned Attorney General asks what is the breach of Privilege to be inquired into. I will suggest that the breach of Privilege really consists in the insulting indignity put upon Members of the House in consequence of surrounding the House with a number of detectives not sufficiently instructed as to the persons they are to arrest, and acting upon information, perhaps, maliciously given. The explanation of the Home Secretary makes it clear that the information was maliciously given. The right hon. Gentleman has himself suggested that the constable wilfully pointed out another Member, knowing that he was the wrong man. [A laugh.] I am sorry that the Home Secretary should think it necessary to treat this as a laughing matter. I feel ashamed that on Friday the House of Commons should have put itself into a lower position than any Parliamentary Assembly in Europe, where precautions are taken to avoid the possibility of insult being offered to their Members. Our Parliamentary morality must have, indeed, fallen low, if hon. Gentlemen will permit insults to be offered to a fellow-Member simply because he is a political opponent, which they would not tolerate if offered to a Member sitting on their own side of the House. It was contended that the arrest without cause of a Member of that House being by mistake, there was no broach of privilege. I venture to deny that contention. In former days there were scores of cases where arrests had been made of servants of Members, which were defended on the ground that the guilty persons did not know they wore servants of Members. But in every case the House exacted an apology, and made the offenders pay the fees of the Sergeant-at-Arms. [An hon. MEMBER: This was only an Irish Member.] Oh, we are not in Ireland. I protest against the whole unworthy fashion in which the arrests of Irish Members were effected, and against the carelessness shown by those who instructed the police of the dignity of that House. The constituents who send us here are more careful of the dignity of the House than Her Majesty's Ministers; and they repudiated the notion that, for some matter made criminal by the House, the House should be surrounded, and in its very Lobbies officers of the detective force should be placed, not for the purpose of protecting Members of the House, but of spying upon the whole of them in order to find out who is the unfortunate Member against whom a warrant has been issued. I am afraid that they have now made themselves a bye word in Europe by arresting the wrong man.

There were some words which fell from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hackney (Sir Charles Russell) from which I so dissent, that I wish to detain the House for a few moments. The question we have to determine is whether a breach of the Privileges of the House has been committed. I do not gather from my hon. and learned Friend what is the breach of Privilege which he states has been committed. [Cries of"No! "] It is true that the so-called arrest of a Member took place in the neighbourhood of this House. But as a matter of principle it would be the same if made in any other part of the country, however distant from this House—[Cries of"No!"]—yes; that is so in regard to such question of Privilege. My hon. and learned Friend does not base his suggestions upon the arrest having been made within this House, or within the precincts of the House. Even if it did raise a matter of Privilege, the point is whether an hon. Gentleman who is a Member of this House has been stopped in a public thoroughfare unintentionally through having been mistaken for another person. I venture to say that a Member has no more protection than the humblest subject of the Queen from a mistaken arrest in reference to a criminal charge. My hon; and learned Friend the Member for Hackney has confused two matters which are entirely distinct. Suppose there was an absence of warrant. That is not a question of Privilege, and would equally apply to the poorest person. Suppose it is pointed out that the constable making the arrest did not know the individual who was to be arrested, and so makes a mistake; that applies equally to the humblest person. It may be a matter deserving of inquiry, or even, of censure of the delinquent, but it is not a matter of Privilege. What is the Privilege which has been infringed? [Mr. PICTON: Going from the House.] Now, I know what it is that is claimed as a Privilege. Will my hon. and learned Friend, or any Constitutional lawyer, assert that there is any Privilege for any Member, either inside or outside of this House, against a criminal process? The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh) has confused the well-known Privilege against civil process, which even applies to the servants of Members, with Privilege against criminal process.

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman permit me to explain? My point was that there was no charge, criminal or otherwise, against the hon. Member for North Monaghan.

That makes it clearer. Where, then, is the Privilege greater than the Privilege which attaches to the humblest man in the street who may be mistakenly arrested? I am astonished that an hon. Member should, under such circumstances, claim Privilege and the right to be protected from a mistake more than any other man who is innocent. There is no privilege on the part of Members of this House against being arrested on a criminal charge more than that which is possessed by the humblest of Her Majesty's subjects. And yet we are asked specially to protect hon. Members of this House from the liability of a mistake being committed. That is certainly not a democratic view of the question, and I hope the House will forgive me for having called its attention to what the real nature of the issue is.

I rise, Sir, to speak upon the Amendment which has been moved by the Attorney General, and I rise, at the same time, to defend the Attorney General and the Home Secretary from their most indiscreet adviser. If there was a doubt whether this question ought to go before the Committee of Privileges, there can be no doubt now. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury (Sir Henry James) has struck at the whole Privileges of this House. He has said that Members of this House have no Privileges, covering that statement by an extraordinary fallacy with respect to criminal process, that they have no Privileges different from those possessed by any other person. Sir, I challenge that statement altogether. It is a statement without a shadow of foundation. The truth is that a Member of Parliament has Privilege against arrest altogether, and under all circumstances, unless it be for criminal process properly directed against himself. That is the doctrine. Here is a case of a Member of Parliament who has been arrested, there being no criminal process properly directed against him. Consequently, the whole doctrine of the Privilege of a Member of Parliament against arrest comes into full force. The moment you have not got distinctive criminal process he has Privilege from arrest. That is the doctrine of Privilege; and how so distinguished a lawyer as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury could have fallen into so palpable a fallacy I cannot conceive. You have a man in the position of my right hon. and learned Friend coming forward and denying what the Government have practically admitted. The Home Secretary did not dispute or deny for one moment that this is a breach of Privilege; but now the Liberal Unionists, who are always in advance of their allies, come forward. If there is some reactionary doctrine, something that will strike against the liberties of Parliament, my right hon. and learned Friend will always be to the fore. I hope the Government will not allow themselves to be led into these imprudent excesses. The Government are going quite fast enough; but if they took my right hon. and learned Friend for their counsel, they would have every man on this side of the House arrested. [An hon. MEMBER: Hear, hear!] My right hon. and learned Friend has got a disciple already. As my hon. and learned Friend near me has said, the House of Commons has never dealt with these matters in this harum-scarum sort of way, and the wisdom of our ancestors ought to be protected as against an occurrence of this kind. It is seldom that the Privileges of this House have been attacked. There may have been a question before the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury; but now we cannot escape an inquiry, because the Privileges of this House must be ascertained upon the challenge which he has made. I hope, therefore, that the course will be taken which was followed in the cases of Mr. Wellesley Pole and Lord Cochrane. In these cases the House, instead of discussing the matter on the floor of the House, consented to send them to the Committee of Privileges. Whenever a case of the kind has occurred, the House has, for the sake of its own dignity, referred it to the Committee of Privileges. The hon. and learned Attorney General put to me a very proper and pertinent question—namely, what it is I want to refer to the Committee of Privileges? I want to refer exactly what was referred in the case of Lord Cochrane—whether or not, in the circumstances, any action should be taken on the matter by this House? The Committee of Privileges in Lord Cochrane's case, having inquired into the matter, reported to the House that there was no call for the interposition of the House. That is exactly what may be reported in this case, not that I think the Committee, or any half-a-dozen Members of this House, would come to such a conclusion as that stated by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury—namely, that there has been no breach of Privilege committed. I do not think that, excepting my right hon. and learned Friend, there is a man in this House who would come to that conclusion. The Home Secretary did not come to that conclusion, for he admitted that it was a breach of Privilege; and until I hear someone who has, I will say that no one but my right hon. and learned Friend holds such an opinion. The case is this—whether, there being a breach of Privilege, it is such a breach as calls for the action of this House? It might be that the Committee would come to the conclusion that was come to in Lord Cochrane's case. Then there is this further matter to be referred to the Committee, and that is the taking of proper precautions that things of this kind shall not recur in future. I do not think that we can possibly accept the Amendment proposed by the hon. and learned Attorney General, more especially after the chal- lenge thrown out by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury.

I hope the House will believe me when I say that if I had had my own choice I would have preferred some other occasion than this on which to address it for the first time, particularly as this matter is, to a considerable extent, personal to myself; but I feel that it is due to the House that it should, as far as I can, be put in possession of the full facts. I wish to make one very important correction in the version of my arrest which has been given by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary (Mr. Matthews), who, I presume, received his brief from the police officer concerned. The officer did not say to me that he thought I was Mr. Gilhooly. If he had done so, I think the House will believe me when I say that I should not have courted the company of the officer to Scotland Yard. What the officer did say—and in a low voice, too—just as I stepped from the Gate was—"I beg your pardon, Sir; I have a warrant for your arrest, and I require you to come with me to Scotland Yard." I said to the officer—"Produce your warrant," and the officer then called out to another who stood at some distance—whose name, I am told, was Sergeant Sweeney—"Go back for the warrant." Touching me on the arm, the officer then said—"Come this way, Sir." Well, I went, and accompanied the officer along the street. It may be asked why I did so without hearing the warrant read. I will explain. I am known in Ireland as what they call, in the Balfourian sense of the term, a criminal—aye, a double-dyed criminal. I have two sentences to serve with hard labour, and I would not be in the least surprised if I had a third added. But why do I expect a third? I will tell the House. On the conclusion of my second trial, when I was found guilty, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment for telling the rack-rented tenantry of the counties of Kilkenny and Carlow not to pay their rack-rents, and for telling the tenantry of Lord Monck not to purchase land at 17 years' purchase with British money—rack-rents which would be equal to 30 years' purchase at a proper rental—when I was sentenced, and after I had appealed, so little did I think myself a criminal that I walked from the Court and repeated to the people word for word the advice which I had given, and for which I had got three months' imprisonment. I afterwards said to my friends that I would not be in the least surprised if, before I reached Dublin, or before getting to London, at the outside, I was arrested again. When, therefore, the officer came up to me, I thought he was about to arrest me on a third charge. That is the explanation I have to give for accompanying the officer without demanding that the warrant should first be read. I was also aware that my hon. Friend the Member for West Waterford (Mr. Pyne) had been pushed off the precincts of the House, and had been taken forcibly into custody, without the warrant having been read; and I was not, therefore, prepared for a street scuffle with the servants of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary has offered an apology to me. I do not feel that any apology whatever is due to me. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the indignity which has been cast upon me. All the indignity which this infamous Government could cast upon me they have already cast, and I should not have troubled the House with this matter if it had been left to my choice. I am not wanting in respect for this honourable House and its great traditions; but I do not pretend to have that respect which British citizens have, and rightly have, for it. Holding that view, I asked the officer, and, as a Member of Parliament, I think I had a right to ask, what was the name of his superior officer. I think that many hon. Members of this House will think it worth while to try the issue as to what extent their Privileges were affected. While I respect British feeling as to the traditions of this House, I confess I am much more concerned about the dignity of the House which—please God—we shall soon have open in Ireland, and I must be content to leave to English Members, and especially to my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester (Mr. Picton), the duty of dealing with this case so far as it affects, or may affect, their liberties and the dignity of Parliament. I have nothing more to add. I have been very reluctant indeed, in the absence of the officer who was the second party to the case, and who cannot be heard in this House, to push anything strongly against him. I should consider myself guilty of mean and contemptible conduct similar to that from which my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien) suffered at the hands of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour), when he had him under lock and key, if I were to attack the officer in his absence. I would prefer to meet him in another place, and face to face, and state my version of the case on oath before a British jury. I scorn to take advantage of him in a place where his voice cannot be heard. I wish, further, to lay stress on the fact that both the officer who arrested me and the officer who was sent back for the warrant refused to give me the name of their superior officer. Now, if they felt that their conduct was above-board in this case, and if Sergeant M'Intyre felt that he addressed me as Mr. Gilhooly, why did they hesitate to give me the name, and why should there have been the necessity for me to return to the House and appeal to the officer in charge of the police there to try and get it? I was arrested without a warrant. The officer who was sent from the Department to apologize to me subsequently told me in the Lobby that as he understood his duty, and as the Metropolitan Police understood theirs, a warrant delivered to any officer of the Metropolitan Police is a warrant to all of them. The invariable practice is that if they should catch their man they should secure him, even without the warrant. We are accustomed to that sort of treatment in Ireland, where we are a police governed people, but it is for hon. Members of this House to say whether they will suffer their liberties to be bandied about in that way. I thank the House for its attention. If it had been left to myself I would have chosen another opportunity for addressing it; but I cordially acknowledge the courtesy and attention with which I have been listened to.

I have before me, in the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury (Sir Henry James), a warning against the consequences of widening the field of debate which he was so completely successful in effecting, and I shall en- deavour to avoid following the example that he set, I think with unfortunate consequences. But when I came into the House I had had some conversation with one or two of my friends, and it appeared to me that obviously this was a case which it would be convenient to refer to the Committee of Privileges. But I did not see that there was any matter likely to be of a contentious character which could enter into the consideration of the question. I will do this act of justice to the Government, and especially to the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary (Mr. Matthews)—that, so far as apology is concerned, I think he has made every apology which possibly can in fairness be expected from him; and so far as vindictive or penal proceedings are concerned, there is no reason why we should entertain the thought of them at all. I have seen, not very long ago, a disposition to establish the doctrine that apology does not purge offence. I think that a very dangerous innovation, and I am glad that on this occasion the Government have adopted a doctrine of a more rational and more merciful character. Now, I wish to put this to Her Majesty's Government—as they will see, in no contentious spirit—that since this discussion began, the grounds for this reference has been greatly widened, and I think that after hearing the statement just made by the hon. Member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien) of the facts, according to his view of them, the right hon. Gentlemen the Home Secretary will see that they are so seriously in conflict with the statement made by himself, that this of itself constitutes a just and reasonable ground, without the least imputation on the right hon. Gentleman, for sending this matter to a Committee of Privileges. We have here before us three points. We have the point that a Member of this House was without cause arrested. He was subsequently released, and no vindictive proceedings are contemplated. But the fact is that a Member of this House was arrested when in a position which has always be recognized by the House as entitling him to special regard and protection—namely, while on his way to or from the performance of his duties in Parliament. The second point before us is that in this very grave matter of arresting a Member of this House on his way to or from the performance of his duty, the officer of police proceeded without being in possession of the warrant. That is a grave fact in this case. Will the hon. and learned Attorney General (Sir Richard Webster) say that the police officer not in possession of a warrant was entitled in law to make an arrest? I do not put the question in any captious spirit; but I am imformed by high legal authorities that the arrest could not be properly and legally made by a man not in possession of a warrant. If not in possession of the warrant he could not be absolutely certain of its existence at the moment. It ought to be shown whether an arrest can be made without the production of the warrant. Although the officer was not in possession of the warrant, yet he was cognizant of the name of the person whom he had intended to arrest. That person was Mr. Gilhooly. He said that he had a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Gilhooly, and that the hon. Member made some sign which made him take it that he assented to that being his name. That is an important matter, because if the hon. Member gave the police constable to understand that he was Mr. Gilhooly, it would have gone very far indeed to dispose of the whole question. But the most important fact is now denied on what we have always been accustomed to consider the highest authority—namely, the deliberate assertion of an hon. Member in his place in this House. I really think that on these grounds alone Her Majesty's Government ought to allow this case to be referred to a Committee of Privilege. But I must, say that after the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury (Sir Henry James), upon which I congratulate the Government, it does appear to me that the necessity for such a reference is most urgent. We are all concerned in it, for there is no saying how far the doctrines of my right hon. and learned Friend are to extend. My right hon. and learned Friend says that except as to civil process there is no Privilege of a Member of Parliament against arrest other than what is possessed by every other member of the community. If that proposition be true, it is a most grave proposition—namely, that any hon. Member of this House, any one of us, at a time when any criminal process whatever is out against anybody, it does not signify whom—that is perfectly irrelevant to the question of Privilege—whether it was by mistake for another Member or not, any one of us may be arrested in mistake, and there is no question of Privilege involved; and the only question, I suppose, is whether he has a remedy by a civil action for false imprisonment. How far does my right hon. and learned friend mean to carry that doctrine? Does he mean to deny personal Privilege altogether? He appeared to denounce it as in itself odious and indefensible. It is odious and indefensible if it be regarded as attaching to us in our personal and individual capacity. But it is because of the great functions which we discharge—it is because it is necessary for the public interest that there should be the free discharge of those functions, free access to and from their discharge—that is the reason why we are surrounded with Privilege. The doctrine of my right hon. and learned Friend appears to me to imperil our liberty. According to the view of my right hon. and learned Friend, what constitutes a breach of Privilege? He says—what the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary and the hon. and learned Attorney General do not say—that there was no breach of Privilege here, although a Member of Parliament was taken into custody, there being no authority or warrant whatever for his arrest. That, in the view of my right hon. and learned Friend, constituted no breach of Privilege. Upon what does he base breach of Privilege? My right hon. and learned Friend's doctrine appears to be that no man can commit a breach of Privilege unless he knows that he is committing, and intends to commit, it. Is he prepared to lay down that as a general proposition? If not, what has he to show for the assertion that there was no breach of Privilege in this case? There was an act done, which act, apart from the motive, was a breach of Privilege—namely, the arrest, without cause, of a Member of this House. The arrest without cause of a Member of this House is a breach of Privilege, and that which, in the case of an ordinary person, is false imprisonment, is in the case of a Member of this House a breach of Privilege. With all my right hon. and learned Friend's ability, with all his astuteness, all his legal knowledge, with all his zeal to out-Herod the Government, can he find any doctrine which will cover his statement that this was no breach of Privilege, except the doctrine that there cannot be breach of Privilege unless there is intention to commit it? If he holds that doctrine he must be prepared to carry it out to all its consequences. The hon. and learned Attorney General referred to the case of Lord Cochrane. In the case of Lord Cochrane, the arrest took place within the four walls of this House at a time when the House was not sitting. The Question was raised as to what this House is, as to the Privileges of Members when the House is not sitting, and the Committee had to inquire into that Question. The Committee was appointed in that instance whether there was a breach of Privilege or not. I humbly submit to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury, as he is the only man in this House who has spoken in this debate and denied that there has been a breach of Privilege, that in deference to the precedent of Lord Cochrane's case—and as the Government have not denied that there has been a breach of Privilege, and as high legal authorities in the House have asserted that there has been a breach of Privilege—I submit to my right hon. and learned Friend that he ought to allow this case to go before the Committee of Privileges. I put it to him—however confident he may be in his opinion that there was no breach of Privilege here—that he must show us why there was no breach of Privilege when an illegal act was done against a Member of this House within a sphere recognized as coming within the range of Parliamentary duty; and if in the case of Lord Cochrane, when there was not only a criminal process, but there was nothing except the bare and shadowy notion that the benches and cushions and walls of the House might by some spell impart a Privilege at a time when the House was not in living practical existence, the matter was yet referred to a Committee of Privilege in order to ascertain if there had been a breach of Privilege committed, surely in this instance the case should be so dealt with. Therefore I contend that there are two grounds on which that course should be followed. Those who think with my right hon. and learned Friend that there was no breach of Privilege in this instance, may yet, in deference to the general opinion, admit that there is in the case fair matter for inquiry. There is also the ground of those who think that an incident has occurred which may lead to very inconvenient consequences. I should be the last person who would wish to press unduly on any member of a Force to which, in my opinion, the Metropolitan community is under the deepest obligations. But I must say it was a very careless proceeding, and not merely a purely innocent error. The officer proceeded without his warrant, and he proceeded in circumstances where his statement of the case which he has given to the Government is diametrically in contradiction on a most material point with the statement of the hon. Member. In these circumstances, I do not myself understand why there should be any sentiment on one side of the House or the other involving the advocacy of extreme doctrines, or the advocacy of any doctrine whatever, to lead to excitement. It is, it seems to me, a matter of plain prudence, in which we ought to proceed as men of business, not willing to extend our Privileges beyond just bounds, and at the same time believing that, they rest upon a just and broad foundation—upon a foundation of public necessity and public interest. Therefore, we ought to ascertain—supposing it is a breach of Privilege which has been committed, and supposing the Committee find that it has been committed, or whatever view the Committee may take of it—whether it is not desirable, after some careful consideration, to see that the recurrence of similar incidents may be avoided. We are not in a position to move an Amendment, because the original Motion has been made, and the hon. and learned Attorney General has moved an Amendment; but we are in a position—if the hon. and learned Attorney General should find it necessary to persevere without seeking any accommodation in the matter, and if his Amendment is carried—to move as an Amendment this proposition—

"That the circumstances attending the arrest of the hon. Member for North Monaghan be referred to the Committee of Privileges of this House to consider whether any or what action shall he taken thereupon and what measures shall be adopted to prevent such occurrences in future."

Although the words which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) has just read are not, of course, formally before the House, they contain a suggestion which I have to say at once the Government cannot accept. It is a suggestion which I may be allowed to point out does not touch the Question before the House to-night. Those words do not say that there has been any breach of Privilege committed at all, and they actually amount to a reference to the Committee of Privileges to provide the means of doing that which it is absolutely impossible can ever be done—namely, if a warrant is issued against one person you are to secure the whole police from making any mistakes in arresting another. It is very inconvenient that there should be warrants out against Members of Parliament at all. It is still more inconvenient that those Members should take a course and adopt expedients which render it probable that mistakes of this kind should arise. But under any arrangement, in any circumstances, such mistakes are possible. The Committee of Privileges of the House of Commons could do nothing whatever to prevent their recurrence. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian said that he did not propose to widen the field of debate, and that he would discuss the matter in a calm and businesslike way. Indeed, he gave an effectual rebuke to the right hon. Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt), who had turned on the right hon. and learned Member for Bury (Sir Henry James) the moment he sat down, and attacked him with great violence, declaring that no one in the House had ventured to endorse the proposition that there was not a breach of Privilege. The right hon. Gentleman never gave the House or any Member of it the opportunity of endorsing the propositions of the right hon. and learned Member for Bury. If he had been good enough to wait until someone on the Government Bench had had the opportunity of speaking, he would have found there were plenty ready to endorse the propositions of the right hon. and learned Member for Bury.

That was not what I said. I said that the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary and the hon. and learned Attorney General had stated exactly the contrary. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary said that there was a question of Privilege, and that nobody could doubt it.

My hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General (Sir Richard Webster) said that in his judgment no breach of Privilege had been committed, and I say so now. With all respect to the right hon. Member for Derby, and the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian, they seem to me to have missed the point and the meaning of the speech of the right hon. and learned Member for Bury. He said there is no privilege for Members of this House in criminal cases anywhere; but out of respect for the authority of the Chair and the order of proceedings of this House, no arrest can take place within the walls of this Chamber while the House is sitting. There would be no need for it, for the officers of the law could wait at the doors of the House and make the arrest as the Member concerned was leaving it. [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: Hear, hear!] I am glad to find that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby agrees with me. Therefore, I submit, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury was perfectly accurate in saying that in criminal cases there is no question of Privilege at all. If he had been a private person walking through Parliament Street, and had been mistaken for the hon, Member against whom the warrant had been issued, there would have been just as much and just as little right to invoke the Privilege of Parliament as there is in the present case. The Privilege of Parliament is a special and peculiar immunity from process on the part of the Members of this House. That immunity does not exist when a criminal process has been issued and a warrant is in existence. That being so, and inasmuch as this was a warrant issued in a criminal case, and the arrest was made by mistake on a criminal charge, I hold with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury that there cannot be a question of Privilege in it. What is the question to be referred to the Committee of Privileges? There is no dispute as to the facts. The hon. Member who began the debate (Mr. Picton) said there had been a mistake on the part of the police. That mistake was apologized for at once, and since then in a more formal manner. What is there to ask the Committee of Privileges about. It has been suggested by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian that that which would be ground for an action for false imprisonment in the case of a private person is ground for invoking the Privilege of Parliament in the case of a Member. I venture to think that the right hon. Gentleman will not find in any book of authority the smallest shadow of foundation for such a distinction as that. These matters are within the knowledge of the House; but the right hon. Gentleman said that on the main point there was controversy. With all submission I think that is not so. The hon. Member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien) told us himself the incidents of his own arrest, and he said that he was spoken to in a low voice. It may be that he did not hear the name which was suggested to him by the officer who spoke to him. There is no other matter in controversy at all, and nothing on which the Committee of Privileges can pronounce. I support the Amendment which the hon. and learned Attorney General has moved. I hope the House, having heard now the statement of the hon. Member principally concerned—seeing that he has no desire to press the House to take penal measures against the person who made the mistake—will consent to the Amendment of the hon. and learned Attorney General and pass to the discussion of other Business.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) has suggested that when an arrest is made the warrant must be in the hand or pocket of the officer making it. That view is quite contrary to all practice. The rule is that the warrant must be in the possession or under the control of the person making the arrest. That is exactly what occurred here. The officer had the warrant under his control, though not in his possession, for he was able to send another officer for it. As to the main question, if the right man had been arrested there would have been no broach of Privilege, for the arrest was on a criminal charge. Inasmuch, however, as the arrest was made bonâ fide by the officer, who believed the hon. Member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien) to be a certain person, and it is conceded by both sides that a mistake had been made, the arrest, which would otherwise have been a breach of Privilege, loses that character, and I cannot refrain from asking whether there is really any question that the House can possibly consider?

I think, Sir, if this had been a question of the arrest, even by mistake, of an English Member, hon. Members opposite would have been in less haste to deny that it was a breach of Privilege. I wonder why it was necessary for the Government Front Bench to wait till it had been fortified by the legal opinion of the right hon. and learned Member for Bury (Sir Henry James) before it came to the conclusion that there had been no breach of Privilege. This is certainly a case in which an hon. Member has not been arrested on a criminal charge. No one pretends that there was any criminal charge against the hon. Member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien), who was arrested, unless they accept the principle, "once a criminal always a criminal," and that the quality which has been attached to my hon. Friend by the judgments of the removable magistrates in Ireland will continue to attach to him during the rest of his natural life. I cannot see how it can for a single moment be suggested that there is any question of proceedings or arrest in any criminal matter or cause. I complain of the arrest, and of the manner of the arrest, and the proceedings of the Government in reference to it. I say, at the commencement, that if it had been an English Member who had been arrested, not only would the question have been treated as one of breach of Privilege, but the Government would have taken care, and the Detective Department would have taken care, to send a member of the Force who at least knew the hon. Member who was to be arrested. It is because there is an opinion abroad that Irish Members are to be treated like vermin that the Government would not take the trouble to see that the Irish Member to be arrested is the right man. How do you effect these arrests? You effect them as if you were arresting some common street rowdy. I am complaining of the method of the arrest of my hon. Friend—a method which may be extended to any of us. The arrest of my hon. Friend was forcibly carried out, and my hon. Friend was taken to the police station as if he were a common thief. My hon. Friend, immediately he got his foot outside this building, was pounced upon when he was outside the precincts of Westminster, and he was dragged through the streets like a thief, without the police knowing or caring whether they were taking the right man into custody. Sir, I protest against this, and also against another matter which has been disclosed in the circumstances connected with the arrest of my hon. Friend. Sir, it used to be the custom, before the Speaker was provided with a residence here, for hon. Members, on the call of "Who goes home?" to accompany the Speaker, in order to protect him from thieves and robbers; but now it appears that hon. Members have to obtain protection from the detectives who are waiting ready to pounce upon them immediately they set their feet outside the gates of Palace Yard, without even knowing whether they may not be arresting the wrong man. I also protest against another practice which the Government are initiating, and which has been disclosed by the circumstances connected with the arrest of my hon. Friend. I do not blame the police in the matter—I do not blame the detectives. They are only imitating the spirit of their masters. If the Irish detectives who carried off one of my hon. Friends to Ireland the other day had not known of this spirit they would not have refused him all opportunity for obtaining refreshment on his long journey from London to Waterford, and have dragged him before the magistrates faint with hunger. I draw a great distinction between the conduct of the English police and that of the Irish detectives. I do not attach any blame either in regard to discourtesy or misconduct to the English police. All I say is that there is a marked difference between their conduct and that of the Irish detectives. What has just been disclosed as to the new departure of the Government in reference to these arrests? We all know that at the commencement of every Session a Resolution is passed by this House directing the officers of the London police to make provision for securing the free egress of hon. Members; and I am sure that hon. Members will join me in testifying to the ample courtesy which constables stationed both inside and outside of this House have always extended to hon. Members in reference to that part of their duty. They are a special class of men chosen for that purpose; and it is with much pleasure that we see the same faces year after year, both at the entrances to the House and in the Lobbies. But, I would ask, what is the duty that has now been imposed upon those men by the Government? It is that of spying about the House. They cannot avoid doing what they are ordered to do; and in pursuance of the new practice initiated by the Government they have to spy after hon. Members, and to give information to the detectives at the gates with regard to those against whom there may be warrants. Sir, I protest against this. I believe that if the opinions of those officers were known, they would support my protest against such foreign duties being thrust upon them. I may remind the House of the case of one of its hon. Members who was pushed back from the steps leading to the passage beneath the Clock Tower at Westminster Bridge by an officer in uniform who had been placed there for the purpose of facilitating the ingress and egress of hon. Members. I say that it is the duty of the Government, when English or Irish Members have to be arrested, to send some person to execute the warrants who is able to identify the Members in question. Is it too much to ask of Her Majesty's Government that hon. Members shall be allowed to leave the House without being pounced upon by the detectives in plain clothes and dragged off to Scotland Yard? Some men are naturally of a nervous disposition, and the shock of such an arrest might kill them, while others of a hasty disposition might be tempted in the heat of the moment to commit acts of violence. Since Irish Members are likely to be arrested in large numbers, and since the place chosen for their arrest is of all others at the gates of Westminster Palace, let them be arrested by those who know them. Do not call upon the constables here to spy about and assist the detectives in the discharge of their duty. I think I have said enough to show to the House that there is a question of breach of Privilege involved in this matter, if there be any Privilege whatever accorded to a Member of this House to come to it or go away from it without molestation. It is true that if there be a criminal warrant out against an hon. Member and he is arrested under it, he can claim no Privilege; but there was no such warrant against my bon. Friend the Member for North Monaghan, for the warrant was against another hon. Member, and therefore, in his case, there clearly has been a breach of Privilege. This question should be looked at as one concerning the whole House, and not merely as affecting Irish Members. The practice adopted lately by the Government is a most inconvenient one, and is likely to give rise to similar occurrences, and as Members of this House I submit that we ought to be free to go and come without molestation by Irish detectives. I am surprised at the line that Her Majesty's Government have taken in reference to this matter, and I hope that even at the eleventh hour they will see the propriety of referring the question to a Select Committee, and of agreeing to the suggestion made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone). They never ventured to deny that there was a question of Privilege involved until they were fortified by the opinion of the right hon. and learned Member for Bury (Sir Henry James), and now they think that they are wiser than you, Sir, who have permitted this discussion to take place as a matter of Privilege. If there is no question of Privilege involved, why are we discussing this question at the present moment? We could not have gone on with this discussion in the position in which we are unless a question of Privilege had been involved. We have now the Front Bench asserting—in opposition to the Speaker—that there is no question of Privilege involved. It is quite possible that the House might not have decided to take action against any particular person in reference to this question of Privilege; but in consequence of the Front Bench opposite denying, in opposition to the ruling of the Speaker, that there is any question of Privilege involved, a much graver issue has been raised. I think that, at all events, the Government might have consented to the matter being referred, if not to the Committee for Privileges, to a small Committee to inquire into the circumstances.

I rise, not for the purpose of protracting the debate, because I think it has been made abundantly clear that a breach of Privilege has been committed in the arrest of the hon. member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien). That the breach of Privilege was committed inadvertently and unintentionally is not less clear. The real question to be considered is what course the House ought to take, and I submit that the proper course is that this question should be referred to the Committee of Privileges, before whom the whole circumstances of the case could be laid, and who would report what course the House ought to take. At any rate, that Committee would be able to point out whether the Privileges of this House have been rashly violated. This course is not without precedent. The case of Lord Cochrane was substantially like the present. Lord Cochrane had been arrested in his place as a Privy Councillor, but at a time when the House was not sitting, and it was plain that no breach of Privilege had been committed; it was also plain, as the Speaker ruled on that occasion, that the offence—if an offence had been committed—was not likely to be repeated. Lord Castlereagh, at that time the Leader of the Tory Party—a Leader whom the right hon. Gentleman the present Leader of that Party in the House may be expected to regard as worthy of some admiration—however, said that if any Gentleman entertained a doubt upon the subject, and if any hon. Member conceived that the Privileges of the House had been violated, it was only proper that the circumstances should be fully inquired into, and an adequate investigation made. Mr. Tierney, who was Leader of the Opposition on that occasion, approved of that proposition; and Mr. Speaker Abbott—your Predecessor, Sir, in that Chair—gave an important ruling upon the matter which, I think, meets the objection of the Solicitor General. Mr. Speaker said that, in his opinion, it was quite clear that Lord Cochrane had been returned to Parliament, and that he had come down to the House in order to go through the necessary form for taking his seat, and that, whatever might be the form of the inquiry, it should be directed to ascertain whether a breach of the Privileges of Parliament had been committed or not. I trust that the right hon. Gentleman the present Leader of the House will see fit on the present occasion to follow the course which was adopted by his Predecessor in the case of Lord Cochrane.

As the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Haldane) has thought fit to appeal to me. I will at once respond. There is no parallel between the case of Lord Cochrane and that of the hon. Member for North Monaghan (Mr. Patrick O'Brien). In the case of the hon. Member a mistake was made by a police officer in arresting him, and for that mistake an apology has since been made by the officer who committed it and by the Secretary of State for the Home Department in this House. Nothing more could be extracted even by the operations of the Committee of Privileges. But then, Sir, it is contended that an inquiry should take place by the Committee of Privileges in order that mistakes may never be committed in future. It is admitted on ail hands that no Member has any Privilege as regards criminal process; while it is also admitted that he is privileged as regards civil process. There is, therefore, no question in dispute, and the matter comes to this—whether there is to be an inquiry as to an accident which has been amply apologized for, with a view of steps being taken to prevent its repetition. To take a wider interpretation of the hon. Member for Cork's (Mr. Parnell's) words, we are to inquire how hon. Gentlemen are to be relieved from the presence of officers in this House—

I did not say anything of the kind.

I am the last person to wish to attribute to the hon. Member anything contrary to what he said. I wish to give a correct and moderate interpretation of the hon. Member's language. He complained that the Government called upon the officers of police in this House to do a duty from which they themselves, at least, would desire to be relieved. On the part of the Government I repudiate any charge of that kind.

Do you deny the facts?

we impose no duty whatever upon the police of this House. The police are discharging' their duty in the protection of Members of this House, and in the protection of this House itself against the designs of persona who might expose Members of this House and the House itself to serious danger.

Does the right hon. Gentleman deny that the police officers in the House of Commons were directed by their superior officers to report when certain Members of this House, who were afterwards arrested, were going to leave the House?

I say that the Government have imposed no such duties whatever on the police. The facts of the case are these. Warrants are in the hands of the police. The police act upon them, and it is their duty to give effect to them, and they never apply to the Government for directions as to the means by which they are to carry out and discharge their duties. The Government have no knowledge whatever of the modes and methods adopted by the police in discharge of their duty.

The Commissioners of Police have.

I know nothing whatever of the Commissioners of Police, of what instructions they give.

I say that the main duty of the police in attendance in this House is to see to the safety and protection of Members of the House under circumstances fully requiring such protection. The question has travelled widely from the original Resolution I moved by the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Picton). That hon. Member moved a Resolution which it was simply impossible for the Government to accept. An indignity has been offered to the hon. Member for North Monaghan (Mr. P. O'Brien), which we deeply regret. We have apologized for that indignity, and we say that, the facts having been fully stated and admitted, there really does not remain any question which could be considered by the Committee of Privileges. We must, therefore, ask the House to accept the Amendment of the Attorney General.

I rise as a private Member of the House to refer to the question from a private Member's point of view. The matter is not one which solely affects the hon. Gentleman who has suffered the indignity referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House. The right hon. Gentleman has sought to establish a distinction between the Government of the day and the police employed in this House, and has declined to accept any responsibility for the action of the police. If it be the case that the Government have no responsibility for the action of the police, I want to know why the Government have taken upon themselves the duty of coming down here and making an apology to a private Member? Surely it is no more difficult for the Government to make an apology to a private Member than it is to make an apology to any other section of the House. Therefore, they cannot but feel that responsibility rests upon them in some measure for the action of the police. Will the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary undertake to say that he had no knowledge of the instructions given to the police in reference to the arrest of individual Members of this House? We want an assurance on that subject. We have all gloried in the traditions of this House, and we know the way in which the Privileges of the House have been regarded in the past. We believe that an inquiry is necessary, because we think it ought to be placed on record now that we are equally jealous of those Privileges in regard to the humblest Member of the House. I confess that it is a poor consolation to any hon. Member who has suffered an indignity to be told that it has been inflicted upon him simply because of a mistake of the police. I think it devolves upon the Government to clear the police of this matter; and, so far from believing that there is no case for inquiry by the Committee of Privileges, I concede that it is the bounden duty of the House to institute an inquiry into the matter. An apology has been made, first, by the superior officer of the police, and, secondly, by the Home Secretary; but that does not satisfy us that there might not be the same motives at work by which some further indignity might be offered to a Member of this House. I think it ought to be enough for the House to know that an indignity has been perpetrated, and, having charge of the dignity of Parliament, it ought at once to assent to the Motion that the Committee of Privileges ought to inquire into the matter in order that it may be cleared up. The mere fact that we have roaming about the Metropolis and the neighbourhood of this House such odious creatures, in my eyes, as detectives constitutes a reason wiry the matter should be referred to the Committee of Privileges, in order to prevent such an event as this from occurring in future. At any rate, we ought to make a protest against this, if we are at all jealous of the ancient Privileges of Parliament.

Before you put the Question, Sir, I venture to suggest to my hon. Friends above and below the Gangway that the best course to attain the object we have in view would be to allow the Amendment of the Attorney General to become the Main Question, and we should then be able to divide on an Amendment to that Motion.

said, that as another of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary's "criminals" he would ask the attention of the House for a few minutes to the manner in which the Coercion Act had been administered in Ireland. That Act had been administered in Ireland with unmitigated ferocity. He had personal knowledge of the way in which it had been administered, and he could say that, instead of its being used for the purpose of putting down and detecting crime, it had been used for an entirely different purpose—namely, for assisting rack-renting landlords in exacting unfair rents and the torture of the political opponents of the Government. He refused to call it a Criminal Law Amendment Act. It was a Coercion Act, and it was intended as such, and as such it was being used at the present moment. The Irish Members had not, however, imagined that the Irish Government would find such pliant and ready tools to their hands as the roving, resident, removable magistrates who had been called on to administer the Act. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Bolfour) took credit to himself for a diminution of crime, and had asserted that such diminution was due to the working of the Act. But that was not the case. The fact was that such diminu- tion in the amount of crime as might be was traceable to the Home Rule Bill of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), which had enabled the priests and leaders of the people to control the less amenable class of the population, and which had infused a better feeling into the hearts of the people. The only parts of the country where crime had increased were just those parts in which the National League had been suppressed, and where it had been prevented by the right hon. Gentleman from exercising its beneficent sway over the people. In the constituency of the county of Cork which he had the honour to represent the right hon. Gentleman was arresting respectable shopkeepers, traders, and farmers, and sending them to gaol as common criminals for what was no crime; and he himself was shortly to go through the farce of a trial for having made a speech to his constituents in which he advised them to enter into legitimate combination for the assertion of their legal rights. Wherever there was strife or conflict between landlord and tenant, owing to the exorbitant demands of the landlord, there was the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary with his Act and his removable magistrates daily at work passing sentences of extraordinary severity on men as honourable as any hon. Member who sat in that House. All the men who had been proceeded against under this Act in his constituency were hard-working, respectable men, of irreproachable character. The right hon. Gentleman was step by step advancing to the inclusion of priests and. Members of that House; but he could tell the right hon. Gentleman that if he was going to tranquillize Ireland with his accursed Coercion Act in that way, he would have to proceed much further and arrest every able-bodied man in the community who happened to be a Nationalist. As an instance of the injustice perpetrated under the Act, he would refer to a case which occurred at Kanturk. Five shopkeepers had been indicted for conspiring to refuse to deal with a certain person. Those men, he pointed out, as had been shown in evidence, had had no communication whatever with one another on the subject, but were convicted notwithstanding by two roving magistrates, and sentenced to two months' imprisonment with hard labour. He contended that exclusive dealing, such, as this, was perfectly-legal, both under the Common Law and under the Coercion Act. There were many similar cases which he could give the House. If his constituents and others were exposed to these terrible risks, whether they could afford it or not, they would be compelled to take costly proceedings in the Court of Queen's Bench or Exchequer, while, in the meantime, gross injustice was being perpetrated. Did the right hon. Gentleman think that the action of the Government was tending to the pacification of Ireland—did ha think he was increasing respect for law and order in Ireland by proceedings of this kind all over the country? He had seen decisions of the Resident Magistrates which shocked all ideas of justice. The very last case charged was that some men wore cards in their hats when going to church on Sunday, and that they were seen going into the priest's house an hour or two after the service. The police were asked, was it not possible that they might be meetings for purposes of the chapel? and the police could not say "no" to that question. There had been a very suspicious connection between a certain speech delivered in Manchester by the right hon. Gentleman and subsequent proceedings in Ireland. Very shortly after that speech it became the rule with the Resident Magistrates to give one month's imprisonment with hard labour, in order to suspend the power of appeal. His hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien) was at the present moment suffering two months' imprisonment in Tullamore Gaol under two sentences of one month each. His counsel asked to have a case stated, but this was refused; it was asked that there should be an appeal to the Recorder of Cork, so that the sentence might be increased in order to give the right of appeal. But that was only a few days after the Manchester speech of the right hon. Gentleman—the whip was in the air, and the terriers knew too well to disobey their masters. In another case, which occurred a few days ago, of the printer of a certain Cork newspaper, it was proved at the trial that he had as much control of the matter which went into that newspaper as the printer's devil or the messenger who delivered it to the subscribers; and yet, because that newspaper contained a report of a meeting of a suppressed branch of the League, the printer got two months' imprisonment—one month each on two charges. Again, it was asked that the sentence should be increased; but the speech of the right hon. Gentleman was too recent, the man was denied the right of appeal, and was then undergoing punishment. It was not alone that they had the printer imprisoned for two months—the very boys who sold the paper were pursued by the right hon. Gentleman's constables all over the streets. Then there was the case of a poor woman, who was pursued and threatened for selling The Cork Examiner and Herald. These were specimens of the administration of the Crimes Act, which, they were told, was so carefully-carried out. They had been told that crime had greatly diminished in Ireland, but Irish Members contended that the abatement of crime was due to other circumstances than the Coercion Act. It was somewhat due to legislation; but it was largely the result of the different feeling entertained by the people of Ireland towards the people of this country, which feeling had been greatly improved and strengthened by the visits to Ireland of hon. Members of that House and other gentlemen. There was one thing in connection with this Act and with the speech of the right hon. Gentleman which he desired to refer to; and that was that for his part, and so far as the majority of hon. Members on those Benches were concerned, they did not take the figures of the right hon. Gentleman with regard to Boycotting on his own showing. They wanted to know how those figures had been obtained, but they had no facilities whatever for testing the Returns. He refused to accept the figures of the right hon. Gentleman altogether; and, what was more, he told the right hon. Gentleman that if this Act continued in operation much longer, he feared that Boycotting would increase rather than diminish. For his own part, he regretted Boycotting as heartily as any hon. or right hon. Gentleman in the House. But he maintained that it was the lesser of two evils, and it was in many cases, unfortunately, the only protection which a persecuted people had been able to devise; and until some better protection could be afforded, they would adhere to it in spite of the way in which this Act had been administered. He had shown the House and the country the extraordinary and eccentric conduct of many of the Resident Magistrates in Ireland. There were some magistrates who stood out in bold relief from the rest; but he believed Irish Members would be able to show that this Act, instead of being carefully carried into effect for the pacification of Ireland, the restoration of social order, and increasing respect for the law in Ireland, had been carried out for totally different purposes; that it had been carried into effect for the purpose of breaking down the legitimate organization of the people of Ireland, and if not with the intention, at any rate with the result, of goading the people of Ireland to a pitch of exasperation.

said, that according to the statement of his hon. Friend the Member for North Cork (Mr. Flynn) it would appear that there were crimes and conspiracies in Ireland other than these which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) was attempting to put down; it seemed there were conspiracies for the purpose of bringing people under the law who otherwise would not have come within the cognizance of the magistrates who administered the law. But though according to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech one class of crime in Ireland had diminished, another was on the increase. If it were true, as was stated in Her Majesty's Speech, that crime had decreased, it was only what had been contended by Irish Members during the discussions which took place in that House on the Coercion Bill of last year. They had contended that crime had been greatly on the increase in Ireland, and that it only reached a greater extent on the day the right hon. Gentleman introduced the Coercion Bill as compared with what it was when the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) was closeted with Lord Carnarvon on the subject of the wishes of the Irish people. Long before the Bill was introduced the Judges had gone round the country, and they had nothing to do in return for their bloated salaries but to congratulate the country on the diminution of crime, and to give white gloves to the Sheriffs. He had noticed that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland blamed Lord Spencer for the administration of the Coercion Act. Although he (Mr. John O'Connor) had suffered at his hands, he took the earliest opportunity of bearing his testimony to the character of Lord Spencer. That noble Lord said that after looking into the organizations in Ireland he was obliged to confess that there was not one tittle of evidence which connected the Irish Leaders with crime and outrage. But he wished to point out that while Lord Spencer had struck them severely, and had put down crime with a strong hand, he restored those rights which were now being filched from the people of Ireland; he found that the right of combination had been taken away from them and he restored it, while he left the country freer from crime and outrage than it was before. Therefore it was that he would stand up in that House and defend the character of Lord Spencer against the attack made upon him by the right hon. Gentleman on the Treasury Bench. But did not the argument of the right hon. Gentleman tell against the administration of the Coercion Act? A tu quoque was no argument at all; and if those magistrates who the light hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary said had been appointed by his Predecessors had administered the Act in a severe manner it was because they were taking their tone from those above them. Irish Members knew well how it was that every man engaged in the execution of the law in Ireland was permeated with the spirit which prevailed in Dublin Castle. Now, although it might be endeavoured to prevent Irish Members examining into the character of those magistrates, they would do so nevertheless. One Resident Magistrate, Mr. Eaton, stated the other day in Court that he did not want any direct evidence to find his prisoners guilty; he had been informed that his victims were seen coming home from Mass with cards of the National League in their hats; their appearance alone was sufficient for him, and he sentenced them to a month's imprisonment with hard labour. Again, with regard to another Resident Magistrate. Upon the day on which Mr. Dillon sentenced Mr. Blunt to prison he himself was adjudicated a bankrupt, and yet the bankrupt magistrate was considered fit to hold Her Majesty's Com- mission and to consign Mr. Blunt to prison for two mouths with hard labour. Then they had before them the character of Mr. Stokes. Mr. Stokes was a man who stood upon no legality whatever; he did not care whether the course he took was legal or illegal so long as he pleased his masters; he was a man who had outraged every form of legality in Ireland, and was the magistrate who had held under arrest the hon. Member for North-East Cork, in whose case the Judge, who sentenced him, said there was no legality for his arrest; and although he trampled on all the forms of the law, yet this man was selected by the Government. Then there was Mr. Curran, whom the Government had appointed to administer this Act; and Mr. Curran was the man who said that Glenbeigh was the happiest and most prosperous part of Ireland. He came now to the character of another gentleman who had played an important part in the South of Ireland—Captain Sea-grave. Captain Seagrave, whom they were in a position to be able to judge out of his own mouth as to his fitness for the post of President Magistrate, was asked the following questions in Court:—

"How long have you been a Resident Magistrate f—About one year. I think the 15th October last was the exact date of my appointment.

Where did you get your legal training for your position of Magistrate?—I had no legal training.

Captain, where did you get your military training?—In South Africa.

Did you ever get a Commission in the Home Army?—Never.

Did you try?—I did.

Did you fail?—I did.

Did you try once more to get it?—I tried once more for the preliminary, and passed the second preliminary.

Did you try again?—I tried a third time and failed—not very ignominiously I must say.

At what time was that?—I think about the year 1875.

Can you tell us whether these interesting qualifications were mentioned in the application for the Resident Magistracy f—Certainly not.

Did Her Majesty's Government take the trouble to inquire before or after that time?—I cannot say.

How long after your failure to get into the Army did you leave for the Cape?—Very shortly.

Did you pass an examination there for your captaincy?—I passed no examination."

"I do not know; I will tell you if you allow me to look in my pocket. I do not see why I should be examined about my legal knowledge."

"If I were to be prosecuted in the morning you would, perhaps, be one of the magistrates to try me."

"I am not a legal Resident Magistrate."

said, that as one of the criminals under the Act passed last year he had been sentenced to four months' imprisonment with hard labour and a proper amount of stone-breaking— Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present,

, continuing, submitted that he had the same Constitutional rights as any Englishman or Scotchman. Representing, as he did, the most populous county in Ulster, he could speak for the Ulster men, because the National Party held the majority of the representation of that Province. The term of imprisonment referred to had been given to him for words which would be altogether innocent if spoken by an Englishman or Scotchman. He had been charged with inciting to the non-payment of rent. He held that he had the right to do that. In this country he could do so, where it was not an indictable offenee; he could tell men in England not to fulfil their contracts and take the consequences, and in doing so he should be committing no crime. No number of wooden-headed barristers in Trinity College could make it criminal in Ireland. He (Mr. Blane) was invited to go to an Ulster county, where the landlord ground the faces of the poor to such an extent that the people had to obtain assistance from the charity of England, Scotland, and America. He found that if the assistance took the form of money, the landlord seized it in payment of his rent; and if it was in the shape of seed, he waited until the crop had ripened and then reaped it. He was actually not ashamed to do this, and to leave the people to starvation. The gentleman who acted in this way was a cousin of the Lord Lieutenant, named Stewart. The tenants used to be served with processes at Lifford, some 50 miles distant, to which place there was no railway, and soon afterwards a man would come down, and without any warrant from the County Court Judge levy blackmail, and carry off the horses and cattle. This man committed a crime under the colour of the law. He (Mr. Blane) went into the district, caused the man to be prosecuted, and for this intervention he got four months' imprisonment with hard labour. He held that that was a grave public scandal. If any hon. Gentleman could show him anything like that in any other country he would throw up the sponge. He was brought before two half-pay troopers, and got four months' imprisonment, because he told the people not to pay the rents as they were not legally due. What was the definition of rent legally due? Rent was not legally due until some Court adjudicated upon it, and issued a decree. He had known landlords issue processes in respect to rents which were not legally due. He had known landlords issue processes when receipts had been given by the agents of the property. He held that the Crimes Act was used for purposes of private vengeance. Nothing could be more clearly demonstrated than that the half-pay troopers who administered this martial law in Ireland had no idea of civil law or civil authority. Anything which they regarded as against discipline they punished with the utmost severity. There were many offences under martial law which would be no offence in the eye of a civil magistrate. The Irish President Magistrates, who were taken from the Army and Navy, were not fit to administer Civil Law. If he were to put the question to them—"How do you know the rent is legally due?" they would not be able to give him an answer. In his case a warrant was issued for his arrest. Under the Act the Resident Magistrates could have proceeded against him by ordinary summons, and if he had refused to appear on the summons they could then have issued a warrant. They chose to issue a warrant at once, and in the morning, long before daylight, his humble dwelling was surrounded by breechloaders and bayonets. He was in bed at the time. He spoke to the officer in charge from his bedroom window. He was scarcely allowed to dress—at least, he was told he must be quick about it or they would force in the door. In short, he was treated as a vagabond. Now, he was the first Commoner in County Armagh, and contended that the authorities had no right to treat him in the way he had described. He did not wish to shirk responsibility for any act of his, and he never would advise a man to do that which he was not quite willing to do himself. He did not mean to apply to the Government to make his term of imprisonment less. Whether his imprisonment extended over four months or 12 months it was all the same to him. He felt called upon to come to the rescue of people he found oppressed. It was the duty of the Representatives of the people to defend their constituents. He and his hon. Friends would go to prison in the cause of the defence of the people. They were holdfasts in their constituencies, and the Government did not dare to contest their seats. They had not ventured to oppose him. Why was that? He had the confidence of the people; but he had not the confidence of the Castle, or of the administrators of this martial law. There was another landlord in the district called Olphert. His son, John Olphert, was the first Gentleman in Waiting at the Castle; he was a Silver Stick, or something of the sort, and walked backwards. This man put on the screw in the Castle, and assisted in getting the warrant issued against him (Mr. Blane). Now, when he was brought to Letterkenny a half-pay trooper committed him to Deny Gaol, and refused bail. Subsequently, the magistrate held him to bail; but so gross was his ignorance of law that he would only hold him to bail in £1,000. Could they point to any such scandal in England? At most, his offence only amounted to a misdemeanour, and yet he was held to bail in—1,000. That was excessive bail. His treatment in that respect, too, was contrary to all ideas of the administration of Civil Law. He was confident the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. Madden) would not say that a man should be held to bail in £1,000 for misdemeanour. At the time of his arrest, the parish priest of Gweedore was arrested. The rev. gentleman came down to the funeral of the late Catholic Primate, and he was there and then arrested. He was taken through Belfast and on to Derry, and there lodged in gaol. A second clergyman, the Rev. Daniel Stephens, was also arrested about the same time. Both these clergymen were arrested because they came to the defence of their people against a man who was levying blackmail. Why should not these gentlemen come to the rescue of the people? Manifestly, it was their duty to do so. What was the use of a pastor having a flock unless he defended them? What was the use of a Member of Parliament unless he was prepared to stand up in defence of the liberties of the people? He and the rev. gentleman he had referred to were quite willing to undergo any imprisonment in the cause they had espoused. The men who put them in gaol would not always be sitting comfortably on the Treasury Bench. There would be a wag of the pendulum which would bring them to the Opposition Benches; and except the close Corporation of landlords in Trinity College, which always preserved Trinity College from Land Acts, very few would regret the change. He asserted that unless the people of England realized that it was to their interest to take up the cause of Ireland, they also would soon lose their liberties. The people of Ireland had lost the right of public meeting, and the people of England had lost the same right. The occurrences which caused so much consternation in London not long ago were the result of the performances in Ireland. He was sure it was not necessary for him to prove to the House the necessity of his action in Donegal. The British public knew the facts only too well. They knew that but for the subscriptions of the charitable people in this country, the people of Gweedore and other places would have perished not by hundreds, but by thousands. Much of the money, however, was taken by the landlords and by the bailiff for bogus law costs and blackmail. "When he was arrested he had a guard as large as that which followed the Queen down Piccadilly on the 14th of June. He never had such a following in his life, and he was highly delighted at the honour paid him. But did the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland or anybody else in the House believe that the cost of the troops would be defrayed by the people of Gweedore and the other districts concerned? Certainly, it would not. The people were too poor to keep the troops, who had to make a forced march because there were no means of accommodating them in the district. All the expense incurred would have been avoided if the landlords had come to some sort of terms with their tenants. Griffith's valuation was 1d. per English acre, but in some cases the rents had been forced up to the extent of 500 per cent. This was not in Cork or Kerry, or in any of the Southern Provinces, but in prosperous Ulster. The rent had been forced up from time to time, until at last the poor people could not live at all. It was not only landlords who resorted to exactions, but the agent's officers had been in the habit of sending out different processes, purporting to be decrees, and the poor people had given them 10s. and 15s. to go away. And now the Government talked about law and order. He liked to hear sermons preached from the Table by men who took as their text law and order, when what he had described was done in Ireland under the name of law and order. He contended that what he had denounced in Donegal was a perversion of justice and a grave public scandal. For endeavouring to prevent the oppression of the people he was to undergo imprisonment. The hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland might ask what was the reason, if he did not believe in the justice of Irish Courts, that he had appealed against his sentence. He was 11 days in Londonderry Gaol, and, as a matter of fact, he found his toes very cold. It occurred to him that it would be well for him to appeal, because then he would have to spend April, May, June, and July, four pleasanter mouths, in gaol. He assured them that in Londonderry Gaol a man got very cold. The floors of the cells were not boarded—at least, that of his cell was not. The floor was of flag, and the cell only measured nine feet by six. But, no matter what their privations were to be, they were bound to defend their people, and. they would do so. No such act3 as those of Murphy, and Stewart, of Ards, should go without resistance. However their toes became when in prison, resistance would be offered to the actions of such men. He and his hon. Friends would persevere in the course they had dictated for themselves, as certain as they would be ultimately successful. The Government could not succeed in their opposition, for they had not justice on their side. If four months' imprisonment was a proper punishment to give him because he advised the tenants to resist the unjust demands of the landlords, was four months' incarceration a righteous punishment for the blackmailing and robbery to which the people had been subjected for years? Perhaps the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland would favour the House with his opinion on that point. The hon. and learned Gentleman, he knew, was well acquainted with law; but he came from an institution where there was no equity. He hoped the hon. and learned Gentleman himself was not deficient in equity, and therefore he appealed to him whether the crimes and sentences he had referred to were at all parallel? Furthermore, he wished to point out that he was brought before a Mr. Hamilton, who refused him bail, committing him to Derry Gaol for eight days, and then for three days more. On a previous occasion he had found it his duty, from his place in the House, to attack Mr. Hamilton's salary. For that attack he gave his reasons. But Mr. Hamilton had his revenge. At the inquiry he (Mr. Blane) did not attempt a defence; it was not of the slightest use for him to do so. He was asked if he had anything to say, and he said he had not. Counsel for the Crown then said he was instructed by the Government to press for the utmost severity against Mr. Blane; and therefore he merely said he was sure the magistrate would pay all due respect to the requisition of the Crown. The magistrate did so, and paid him off for his attack in the House of Commons upon his salary. He maintained it was a great public scandal to bring Members of the House before magistrates whose salaries they had attacked in the House. In a certain sense it made magistrates judges in their own cause. He might, it was true, have employed a wooden-headed barrister, for it would not have been difficult to find one, there being 1,300 wooden-headed barristers in Ireland. He was not, however, rich enough to employ one, and therefore he did not do so. He conducted his own case as best he could, and he lost his case. He would not have got one day less imprisonment if he had had the Solicitor General and the whole Bar of Ireland on his side. He regretted he had occupied the time of the House so long, but the matters he had referred to were so important and grave that he could not refrain from directing the attention of the Solicitor General for Ireland to them. There was scarcely a single item in what he had brought before the House which the hon. and learned Gentleman could defend, and as an honourable man he would not try to. If the matters were tabulated and put before the hon. and learned Gentleman, he would condemn them without hesitation. It was, he maintained, a great scandal that Members who had attacked the salaries of magistrates should subsequently be summoned to appear before those very officials. The practice gave magistrates opportunities for punishing their opponents.

said, he should scarcely have obtruded himself on the House in the course of the debate, were it not for some of the very grave matters which had occurred in Ireland during the past three or four months. His hon. Friend who had just sat down (Mr. Blane) had detailed to the House a statement of facts and a condition of things which, although he was a Representative of the people, had brought him into the position he occupied to-night—namely, the position of having a sentence of imprisonment absolutely hanging over his head. Well, he (Mr. O'Hea), occupying the position he did, must make the assertion that instead of his hon. Friend being under a sentence of imprisonment, which inevitably would consign him for four months to a plank bed, he (Mr. O'Hea) himself was the individual to whom that sentence should apply, because all that his hon. Friend had done had been to honourably and manfully go into his constituency when he (Mr. O'Hea) had written to him saying that it would be inconvenient for him to go. His hon. Friend had gone and addressed meetings, and had stood between his (Mr. O'Hea's) constituents and the prosecution that was staring them in the face. He was thankful to his hon. Friend, and must express his thanks to him for having done a great portion of his work when his (Mr. O'Hea's) other work prevented him being on the spot; and in this connection he might refer to the administration of the Crimes Act in that particular constituency. His hon. Friend had referred to Father M'Fadden. Well, that reverend gentleman's name was known wherever the English language was spoken. Father M'Fadden was a pastor who knew what his duty was, who had always done his duty, and who had never shirked it. The feeling with him was that the post of the pastor was in front of the fold when the wolf was at hand, and there was rapine to fear. His position always had been in front of his fold, stemming the torrent of distress, putting his hand in his pocket, and even, so far as his slender resources were concerned, almost pauperizing himself in order to supply bread to the mouths of the famishing poor of his parish. This was rather fulsome praise for one whose good deeds should be recounted not in his lifetime, but after his death. However, the truth was there, and the truth had a right to be told; and he (Mr. O'Hea), as a parishioner of Father M'Fadden, was in a position to make this avowal, so far as the reverend gentleman's supreme nobility of soul was concerned. Well, Father M'Fadden had an estate in his parish, the tenants of which were standing on the very verge of eviction. He came to their rescue. It was his duty to do so. He examined into every single individual case. He had no idea, good, bad, or indifferent, of doing any injustice whatever so far as the landlord was concerned, and all that he wanted to do was to stave off the evil day and prevent such a recurrence of those things which had so often, unhappily, marked the course of eviction, campaigns in Ireland. The blazing brand put to the thatched roof was a horrible thing to his mind. He did not want to see the crowbar put in operation against the mud or half-stone built walls. He did not want to see the people, some of them, perhaps, in a sickly or delicate state, thrown out on the roadside. He knew the circumstances in every individual case, and, knowing those circumstances, he believed it to be his bounden and imperative duty to do the best he could with a due regard to the interest of the landlord on the one hand, and a due regard to the well-being of the tenant on the other. The reverend gentleman impressed on the people in his parish, first and foremost of all, the obligation of being honest, and of paying their debts so far as they were in a position to do so. He impressed on the landlord, on the other side, the fact that in human concerns the maxim and the adoption of the principle of bear and forbear was a thing not altogether to be ignored. And having told the people their duty on the one hand, and having put before the landlord equally what his duty was on the other—because property had its duties as well as its rights—he succeeded in bringing about a settlement, the result of which was that nearly 60 per cent of all the arrears due from the tenants was wiped away, and instead of having all the careering of the crowbar brigade, accompanied with all the paraphernalia of horse dragoons, artillery, and all the rest of it, these people were, happily, in their homes, thanks to the exertions of that good man. Well, Father M'Fadden was asked to attend a meeting in an adjoining parish. He went to that meeting, and at that meeting he related what his experience had been so far as his own parish was concerned. He did no more than tell the people what his own parishioners had achieved—the success they had achieved. He was asked to be a mediator; the landlord was callous and inexorable, wanting his pound of flesh and nothing short of it, and he wrote a letter which would have brought the blush of shame to his cheek had it been possible for him to blush—had he not been a man of such despicable character—but, at any rate, it was a letter which would bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of every single member of his family for generations. What did he say in his letter? Why, after fair terms had been offered, and every opportunity had been given to have a settlement come to and every opportunity had been spurned and virtually rejected, he said—

"It is useless to deal kindly any longer with these tenants. I may tell you that I would not accept 99 per cent of all rent and coats due to me, as I am going to clear out the town lands, and it is my land that I want now."

"This man is not in the smallest degree responsible for what has taken place. If any person is to be held to be responsible, I am, and I avow my responsibility."

"Let Corcoran be put on one side, and if anyone is to be placed on his trial I am prepared to take all responsibility."

said, that the figures adduced by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) were exceedingly satisfactory as representing the condition of Ireland as to crime; and he (Sir Walter Foster) thought the most important part of the statement of the right hon. Gentleman consisted of the figures by which he compared the agrarian outrages in Ireland during the six months before the passing of the Act, with those which occurred during the succeeding six months. The total result of the comparison was that there was a diminution of 26 per cent for the latter period as compared with the former. It was a scientific rule, in relation to statistics referring to any difficult social problem, to be always careful to exclude any other causes which might be in action. They had been told that there was another cause acting in Ireland—namely, the increased hope which existed in the minds of the Irish people that better administration and more regard for justice in Irish affairs would be granted to the people; and they had this fact, in support of this influence, that during 1886–7, before the passing of the Crimes Act, there was a considerable diminution in agrarian crime. Now, that diminution had been going on ever since the Tory Party in 1885 took a new departure with reference to Ireland and determined not to re-enact coercive legislation. The Tory Party having instilled that hope into the breasts of the people of Ireland, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) had embodied the principles of conciliation in a Bill which, unfortunately, did not receive the assent of this House after the Parliamentary Election of 1885. The hope, however, had continued through succeeding years, and it had influenced the Irish people in such a way as to lead to a progressive diminution of crime. But if the right hon. Gentleman was not content to accept that explanation of his figures, there was another explanation to which he might possibly give assent. If he used those statistics as evidence that, after the passing of the Act of last year, there was a consequent diminution of crime, he (Sir Walter Foster) would tell him that there was another cause at work which came into operation earlier in 1886. Before this cause came into action, in the quarter immediately preceding it, he found that there were 306 cases of agrarian crime; whereas, in the succeeding quarter, they had the remarkable fact that the number of these crimes had fallen from 306 to 166. The cause he alluded to was the Plan of Campaign, and it had been followed by a diminution in crime nearly double in extent of that which the right hon. Gentleman claimed as the result of the passing of the Coercion Act. It was as logical to claim improvement for the one cause as for the other. It was, however, rather the concurrent operation of the two causes which he (Sir Walter Foster) had alluded to that had contributed to the steady improvement in crime of the Irish people, and he referred to these two causes as the probable explanation of the figures which the right hon. Gentleman had brought before the House. They had, at all events, the words of the Leader of the House that at present we had made no great advance in producing obedience to the law, or sympathy with the law, on the part of the Irish people. Surely the way to make the Irish people respect and sympathize with the law was not to carry it out with harshness and cruelty, but to bring its administration more into harmony with justice and the legitimate aspirations of the people. He did not think that any successful attempt had been made to justify the indignities to which prisoners prosecuted under the Crimes Act, whether Members of that House or other persons, had been subjected; and the welcome which had been accorded to the hon. Gentleman the ex-Lord Mayor of Dublin (Mr. T. D. Sullivan), on his arrival in this country after his incarceration, did not, in his (Sir Walter Foster's) opinion, show that Englishmen approved the treatment which the Government had accorded to political prisoners; on the contrary, he thought that a feeling of exasperation and anger at an administration marked with cruelty had been steadily growing in the breasts of the English as well as the Irish people. Again, if this Act had been a great success, its action would have been to enable a greater number of convictions to be obtained by the officials than had been previously obtained. The right hon. Gentleman had said that paralysis of the "Courts of Law" was "the evil he had specially got to meet," and that evidence to convict was not forthcoming. If that evidence was now forthcoming as a result of the Act, they ought to have a larger number of cases brought forward than they had; but, on the contrary, they had a smaller number of offences with which the police had been able to grapple. This suggested that the Act was so far a failure in one of its chief objects. He believed they would obtain the sympathy of the Irish people with the law, not by passing cruel enactments, but by doing something more in harmony with the wishes of the people. The present feeling of antipathy to the law was as rife and vigorous 35 years ago in Ireland as it was to-day; and until law was brought more into harmony with popular sentiment they would not get in Ireland that obedience to the law which existed in this country. They had all been more or less pained that hon. Members of that House, and other persons equally worthy, should have been subjected to indignities under the provisions of the Coercion Act. He did not think that any attempt had been made to justify the manner in which the prisoners had been treated; and many thousands of English people felt that the men who were now suffering under the Coercion Act were men whose motives were almost, if not entirely, political. Their objects had been political in incurring the censure of the law, and their motives were purely political; they had done no moral wrong; they had been endeavouring to carry out their political programme to the best of their ability; and in consequence they came within the category of persons suffering for political offences. Mr. Davenport Hill, who some years ago was Recorder of Birmingham, and an authority on the repression of Crime, said, with regard to political prisoners, and speaking of some men who were imprisoned for taking part in Chartist meetings in Birmingham—

"I regret that of late years the distinction between political prisoners and ordinary criminals has been well-nigh obliterated. The general instinct of the civilized world in all ages has recognized the difference. Political offenders have been felt to be, if not exactly prisoners of war, yet bearing some resemblance to such captives. To keep their persons in safe custody, or even to take their lives on great occasions, gives no shock to public sentiment; but to subject them to degrading treatment, to crop their hair, clothe them in a prison dress, march them to and fro under the command of a turnkey, prevent them from supplying themselves with books and the comforts which habit has changed into necessaries, and above all, to lay harsh restrictions on the visits of their friends, is so revolting to the most ordinary sympathies, that magistrates and governors of prisons will not subject them to such indignities and hardships unless the Legislature has made their infliction imperative. The political prisoner, when his treatment is left to the ordinary feelings of mankind, is dealt with as a person in misfortune, who must undergo the sufferings attached to his position, but whose feelings are not to be wounded by contumely. I admit it would not be difficult to find instances in every age wherein the principle has been grossly violated, but such violations have been condemned by universal consent, whenever the excited feelings by which they were caused have subsided."

said, that last Session the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant stated that this Session he would move for a Select Committee to consider the question of the sale of liquor on Sunday in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman, he believed, intended to move for the Committee on Thursday, and as it was only the proper course that the Bill should be referred to that Committee, he (Mr. Lea) would not do more now than move the second reading of the Bill. He heard the Government were prepared to assent to the second reading, on the understanding that after that stage he should move that a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the Irish Sunday Liquor Question. He begged to move the second reading.

said, that on the part of the Government be desired to assent to the second reading of the Bill, on the understanding, suggested by the hon. Member (Mr. Lea), that after it was read a second time it should be referred t) a Select Committee, which he (Mr. A. J. Balfour) proposed to move for on Thursday next. He did not suppose, under those circumstances, it was at all necessary that the discussion should be prolonged.