The Speeches (In Full) of the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., and William O'Brien, M.P., on Home Rule, Delivered in Parliament, Feb. 16 and 17, 1888.

On this deplorable occasion the agents of the law were the breakers of the law, and those breakers of the law, acting in the first instance under subordinate authority, were adopted and sanctioned by the right honorable gentleman, with the full authority of the Government. (Cheers.) What was the second act of the police? Their wedge was not strong enough; they were pressed back out of the crowd, and it seems to me with perfect propriety and legality, whereupon they brought a large force of police and charged the crowd, because the crowd had not concurred and co-operated in the former illegality. That was a fresh illegality committed by the police. Then violence began; then began the use of batons; then began the use of sticks and cudgels; then began the sufferings of the men in the crowd, and of individual members of the police, on which the right honorable gentleman is eloquent, and which I regret as much as he does. But the police in these two illegalities of attacking and batoning the crowd were defeated. The crowd did not pursue them. (Cheers.) According to all the information before us, the crowd were recalled, and again took their places in the square. A mere scattering and sprinkling of most probably boys, we know not how and to what extent, were in the street where the police barracks are to be found; and among them, those boys or others, succeeded in breaking three windows of the police barracks. (Laughter.) Those three windows were exalted and uplifted by the right honorable gentleman into a general attack on the barracks, compelling the police, in self-defence, to fire on the people. In one sense I must say the police did not fire on the people, for no mass of people was there to fire on. I said at Nottingham, and it is the result of all the inquiry I have made, that there was not more than twenty people in the street opposite the barracks, and under these circumstances the police actually fired into the windows of the opposite house, where there were peaceful people, women, and children; and they fired deliberately at individuals, two old men and one boy, whom they destroyed. That I do not hesitate here to denounce – I think I did not use the words at Nottingham – as cruel, wanton, and disgraceful bloodshed (Loud cheers.) It recalls the period of Lord Sidmouth, and was bloodshed which, so far as I know, has had no example in its wantonness and causelessness since the memorable occasion in Manchester, which is popularly known as the Massacre of Peterloo. (Cheers.)

Now, I have given the right honorable gentlemen my views about Mitchelstown. (Opposition cheers and derisive Ministerial cheers.) It was time that I should say, "Remember Mitchelstown." Mitchelstown might have become what in one particular class of language is termed a "prerogative instance." The Mitchelstown police, commended by the right honorable gentleman, were held up to the police in Ireland as the pattern which they were to follow. (Cheers.) They were told they had acted only in self-defence, and the measure and meaning of self-defence, as exhibited at Mitchelstown, I feared, and it was reasonable to fear, would be the meaning and the measure of self-defence on every other occasion, when, by legality or illegality, the police found an opportunity of coming into collision with the people. (Cheers.) I tell the right honorable gentleman frankly that, in my opinion, he had become, by clear implication, a breaker of the law. (Cheers.) He had given to the breaking of the law authoritative countenance and approval, and not only so, but he had done it under circumstances where that authoritative approval, conveyed to the mind of the police, would naturally, justly, and excusably, almost necessarily, have pointed out to them that that was to be the model and rule of their conduct in every example of the kind. (Cheers.) Sir, it was in the interests of law and order that I denounced the conduct of the police. (Opposition cheers and derisive Ministerial cheers, in which Mr. Balfour joined.) It will be a long time, I think, before he can discover an instance, either on this bench or among any of those who are our friends, in which the law and order of the country, and the security and the lives of the people, had been treated with such recklessness as they then were by the right honorable gentleman and his colleagues. (Cheers.) I have done my best to inform myself, and in conformity with, I believe, uncontradicted and consentient statements, I contend that the inferences I have drawn from these facts are just inferences, and that it was not only natural but necessary to adopt precautions on the part, I will say, of England, against the fatal imitations which Mitchelstown might have produced, and to take securities for law and order in Ireland, first of all, as I pointed out to the people of England, that these things ought to be watched; and secondly, by making known to the Government, and to their agents and their organs beyond the the Channel, that if such occurrences did happen, they would not pass uncensured. (Cheers.) I believe I never spoke more useful – I will go further, and say more fruitful – words than when I telegraphed, "Remember Mitchelstown." (Loud Opposition cheers and derisive Ministerial cheers.) I now come to the statistics of the right honorable gentleman, with reference to boycotting. The Government are particularly stingy in their statistics, but they have given some figures as to boycotting. I do not recollect that boycotting was ever made a portion of Government statistics before.

Mr. Balfour. We have made statistics before on boycotting.

Mr. Gladstone. Yes; but I am speaking of the ancient and traditional practice which this Conservative Government are always so indisposed to follow. (Opposition cheers and laughter.) Statistics of crime deal with facts and matter of record; statistics of boycotting, as far as I understand, are matter of opinion. ("Hear, hear.") What amounts to boycotting, – what is the test of it? There must be, and will be, cases of harsh and unreasonable persecution under the name of boycotting. It is never to be forgotten, though it is very common to forget it, that when you have a state of things that prevails in Ireland, – old and sore relations of friction between class and class, the sense of still remaining suffering or grievance, and consequent instability of social order, – the criminal elements that will always subsist in every community (though I thank God to say that I believe they subsist in Ireland more narrowly than almost anywhere else), I will find their way into social questions, and undoubtedly you will have bad, and very bad, cases exhibited in matters such as these. Therefore the exhibition of particular instances is a very unsafe and insufficient test. They ought to be quoted with great accuracy. The right honorable gentleman has been defending to-night his chosen instruments of the present year. ("Hear, hear.") Yes, but he was met immediately with point blank contradictions on matters of fact, and at present I shall enter no further into that question, which evidently must be made the subject of further examination. ("Hear, hear.") But the right honorable gentleman gave us last year a case of boycotting which was touching to the last degree, – the case of the Galway midwife. (Cheers and laughter.) Does the right honorable gentleman say that the instance he selected last year – the instance of the Galway midwife – was well founded? (Cheers.)

Mr. Balfour. Absolutely correct in every particular. (Ministerial cheers.)

Mr. Gladstone. All I can say is, that here likewise the right honorable gentleman has been met with a point blank contradiction. ("Hear, hear.") But what are we to say of boycotting statistics as a basis for legislation or for congratulation on the rising felicity of a country, when the right honorable gentleman, out of the thousands of cases he has had before him, can only select for us two upon which he is at once met by having his facts challenged, and his conclusions falsified? (Cheers.) Let me point out this. My right honorable friend, the member for Newcastle, well remarked on a former occasion, that there is a chapter of statistics which, if the right honorable gentleman had chosen to enter it, would have been far more to the purpose on this occsion than these he has laid before us, though they are not wholly without value; and that is the statistics of evicted or derelict land. ("Hear, hear.") There could be no difficulty whatever for the right honorable gentleman to have called for returns of the acreage on farms, which, in different counties in Ireland, either all over Ireland or in selected counties, had been derelict a year, two years, or three years ago, in the time of Lord Spencer and down to the present date, and had shown us how, under the recovered liberty of the Irish people, about which he boasts, the acreage of these derelict farms had gradually been diminished. The right honorable gentleman has not only avoided but shirked that question (cheers), and he shirked it because he substituted for any attempt at a rational answer to my right honorable friend, a jeremiad upon the state of feeling which he thought might be produced in Ireland when he found my right honorable friend using language which, in his opinion, was capable of being interpreted into sympathy with the operations of the Land League. ("Hear, hear.") A more unjust charge never was made. (Opposition cheers). But, just or unjust, it has nothing to do with the question.

The right honorable gentleman found himself, and the Queen has been instructed to found herself in her speech, and the organs of the Government have based themselves in their articles, upon the assertion that liberty, as they phrase it, is returning to the people of Ireland. If that liberty were returning, it would be exhibited in a proportionate diminution of derelect farms. ("Hear, hear," from Mr. Balfour.) Then why have you not shown it? (Opposition cheers.) There is one part of the statistics that we have read with increased satisfacfaction, that is the diminution in the amount of crime, limited as that diminution is. I thought when the right honorable gentleman constructed his artificial return, he had some very special purpose in view. It is the first time that I have known the month of January do such good service, and when I look into the return, I find out the cause: The return of offences reported to the constabulary are reported under three major heads, – offences against the person, offences against property, and offences against the public peace. With regard to the offences against the person and property, I find that if I take the five months only of last year, after the passing of the Coercion Act, and compare them with the corresponding five months of the year before, there is no diminution whatever. ("Hear, hear.") But in the month of January there was in offences against the person a sudden, a most well-timed, and fortunate, and rapid decline, for they fell from ten to three. The right honorable gentleman drew January into his service; by means of that declension, he was able to show a diminution of six per cent of offences against person and property. I am extremely glad of it, and wish there had been a great deal more. The offences which have sensibly and really diminished are those against the public peace, and I rejoice that they have diminished. But why? The right honorable gentleman stands up and says that the cause of the diminution is the Coercion Act, but I think I have shown that whereas the diminution of crime proper, as directed against person and property, is an exceedingly small diminution, the diminution of offences against the public peace is much larger. I make it out to be that that they fell in these six months from three hundred and twenty-four to two hundred and thirty-eight, or a diminution of about twenty-five per cent. These are exactly the offences that would diminish under the operation of a conciliatory Land Act. (Opposition cheers.)

The right honorable gentleman has the boldness to say that we, on this side of the House, never gave any credit to the Land Act. Why, sir, the Land Act, grossly imperfect as it was, culpably imperfect in the matter of arrears (cheers), contained a great and important provision which the member for Cork in vain had demanded in the September before, which, if it had then been granted, you probably never might have heard of the Plan of Campaign. (Cheers.) It was denounced to the House by the Government of that day as being a provision totally incompatible with that morality, forsooth, on which right honorable gentlemen prided themselves. (Laughter.) I speak of the provision which, under a great responsibility, her Majesty's Government, though far too late, introduced as a most valuable gift. It was quite evident that, so far as offences against the public peace were concerned, the reopening of the judicial rents, and the concession made to leaseholders, could not but operate in the most powerful manner in favor of that diminution. (Cheers.) There are two other questions to be considered, viz., how the law has been administered, and how the administration of the law has succeeded. Has the administration of the law been of a character to reconcile, or has it been of a character to estrange, or has it been calculated to teach respect for the Government, or to bring the Government into increasing hatred or contempt? I am not going into details of prison treatment, but I am going to touch the case of two members of Parliament, with reference to a matter other than prison treatment. I am not cognizant by direct and personal knowledge of the facts, but I have received them from quarters thought to be thoroughly informed. Unless I had so received them, I would not think of laying them before the House.

Mr. Sheehy, a member of this House, has been arrested and remanded without bail. It was a misfortune which might have been taken into consideration at the time that his wife was ill of a disease known as scarlatina, or scarlet fever. He was offered bail by the Government if he would promise not to open his lips in public. By Government – that, I presume, means the Executive Government. I want to know what title the resident magistrate had to make such a condition as that. (Opposition cheers.) Most dangerous is this introduction of the new discretion of resident magistrates, – a discretion of imposing new restrictions upon prisoners. Why is it necessary to impose these conditions? If Mr. Sheehy chose to commit an offence while he was under bail, he could be taken up for that, and I want to hear from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or some member of the Government, a distinct account of the new doctrine that those conditions may be imposed, which are written, I believe, neither in law nor in custom, which have been set in action in Ireland, but which in England, we know, are not heard of, and would not be heard of or tolerated for a moment. (Cheers.) Mr. Sheehy, I must say, very properly entirely declined to accede to that condition, and he was tried and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. He appealed, as he was entitled to do, and bail was accepted for his appearance at quarter sessions, so that he would have been able to obey the almost sacred domestic form of tie which was at the time incumbent upon him. But as he was going out of the door of the court he was arrested again on another charge, and brought away immediately to a distant part of the country, his wife being in the very crisis of her illness, and her life seriously threatened. On the second charge he was sentenced, not to three months, which would have enabled him to appeal, but to one months imprisonment, (Nationalist cheers), depriving him of the power of appeal.

Mr. Chance. Which had been promised by the right honorable gentleman to the House.

Mr. Gladstone. The right honorable gentleman, the Chief Secretary, is perfectly aware of that promise. He is perfectly aware that in the debate last year he was charged by my right honorable friend near me (Sir W. Harcourt) with breech of faith with regard to that promise, and to that charge of breach he has remained, I must say, very patiently silent. (Opposition cheers.) Now, is that the sort of administration of the act of last year which her Majesty's Government are prepared to defend? (Opposition cheers.) Is it thus that Ireland is to be reconciled? (Nationalist cheers.) Is it thus that the Irish nation is to be converted? Is it in this House of Commons, the most ancient and the noblest of all the temples of freedom, that such operations as this are to be either passed over in silence or defended by those engaged in them? (Loud Opposition cheers.) I cannot understand the extreme severity of treatment in certain particulars, if I am rightly informed, meted out to this gentleman; but I wish to keep for the present to what relates most distinctly to the administration of the law as apart from prison discipline, and in that view alone I would mention the case of Alderman Hooper and others. Alderman Hooper was sentenced for publishing reports of the National League branches that had been suppressed, although, as I understand, there are plenty of these reports published within the cognizance of the Government, with respect to which those who publish them have not been sentenced and have not been proceeded against.

Well, Mr. Alderman Hooper was proceeded against, and was sentenced for publishing these reports for a term of one month. He would have had there no right of appeal, but was again simultaneously charged for publishing another report; another sentence of one month was pronounced upon him. These sentences, though cumulative with regard to him, were not cumulative with regard to the right to appeal. (Cheers.) Therefore, while the right honorable gentleman professed to give the right of appeal for all sentences above a month, by this clever device he has contrived to inflict upon Alderman Hooper, a member of this House, an imprisonment of two months, and yet that Alderman Hooper should have no right of appeal. And there again, sir, I say I am sorry to use strong words, but I am tempted to do so outside this House, and I will do so in this House. (Opposition cheers) This was explained to be not only a constitutional violence, not only a clear evasion of the spirit of the law, but an incredible meanness (loud Opposition cheers), a meanness in the method of administering the Crimes Act, and a spirit is displayed which, if the Irish people had only a hundredth part of the courage, the pluck, and perseverance which they had shown through seven centuries, could only tend to alienate and estrange them from those who attempt so to govern them. (Opposition cheers.) The word that I have thus used I am going to use again. (Ministerial laughter.) I am very desirous to invite the concurrence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the propriety of my application of it, or whether he considers that nobleness would be a better description of the circumstances which I am about to describe. Without knowing what I am going to say, the right honorable gentleman accepts my challenge, and, therefore, I am justified in exhibiting a specimen of the nobleness with which this administration of Ireland is conceived and executed.