Chapter I: OWE an apology to the Irish Members for stepping in to make an

observation to the House on this question. My strong interest in the affairs of their country, ever since I came into Parliament, will be my sufficient excuse. The Secretary of State, on the part of the Government of which he is a Member, has called us together on an unusual day and at an unusual hour, to consider a proposition of the greatest magnitude, and which we are informed is one of extreme urgency. If it be so, I hope it will not be understood that we are here merely to carry out the behests of the Administration; and that we are to be permitted, if we choose, to discuss this measure, and if possible to say something which may mitigate the apparent harshness of the course which the Government feels itself compelled to pursue.

It is now more than twenty-two years since I was first permitted to take my seat in this House. During that time I have on many occasions, with great favour, been allowed to address it, but I declare that during the whole of that period I have never risen to speak here under so strong a feeling, as a Member of the House, of shame and of humiliation, as that by which I find myself oppressed at this moment. The Secretary of State proposes--as the right hon. Gentleman himself has said--to deprive no inconsiderable portion of the subjects of the Queen--our countrymen, within the United Kingdom--of the commonest, of the most precious, and of the most sacred right of the English Constitution, the right to their personal freedom. From the statement of the Secretary of State it is clear that this is not asked to be done, or required to be done, with reference only to a small section of the Irish people. He has named great counties, wide districts, whole provinces, over which this alleged and undoubted disaffection has spread, and has proposed that five or six millions of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom shall suffer the loss of that right of personal freedom that is guaranteed to all Her Majesty's subjects by the Constitution of these realms.

Now, I do not believe that the Secretary of State has overstated his case for the purpose of inducing the House to consent to his proposition. I believe that if the majority of the people of Ireland, counted fairly out, had their will, and if they had the power, they would unmoor the island from its fastenings in the deep, and move it at least 2,000 miles to the West. And I believe, further, that if by conspiracy, or insurrection, or by that open agitation to which alone I ever would give any favour or consent, they could shake off the authority, I will not say of the English Crown, but of the Imperial Parliament, they would gladly do so.

An hon. Member from Ireland a few nights ago referred to the character of the Irish people. He said, and I believe it is true, that there is no Christian nation with which we are acquainted amongst the people of which crime of the ordinary character, as we reckon it in this country, is so rare as it is amongst his countrymen. He might have said, also, that there is no people--whatever they may be at home--more industrious than his countrymen in every other country but their own. He might have said more; that they are a people of a cheerful and joyous temperament. He might have said more than this--that they are singularly grateful for kindnesses shown to them, and that of all the people of our race they are filled with the strongest sentiment of veneration.

And yet, with such materials and with such a people, after centuries of government--after sixty-five years of government by this House--you have them embittered against your rule, and anxious only to throw off the authority of the Crown and Queen of these realms. Now, this is not a single occasion we are discussing. This is merely an access of the complaint Ireland has been suffering under during the lifetime of the oldest man in this House, that of chronic insurrection. No man can deny this. I dare say a large number of the Members of this House, at the time to which the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire referred, heard the same speech on the same subject, from the same Minister to whom we have listened to-day. [Sir G. Grey: 'No!'] I certainly thought I heard the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department make a speech before on the same question, but he was a Minister of the Government on whose behalf a similar speech was made on the occasion referred to, and no doubt concurred in every word that was uttered by his Colleague.

Sixty-five years ago this country and this Parliament undertook to govern Ireland. I will say nothing of the manner in which that duty was brought upon us--except this--that it was by proceedings disgraceful and corrupt to the last degree. I will say nothing of the pretences under which it was brought about but this--that the English Parliament and people, and the Irish people too, were told, that if they once got rid of the Irish Parliament they would dethrone for ever Irish factions, and that with a united Parliament we should become a united, and stronger, and happier people. During these sixty-five years--and on this point I ask for the attention of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Disraeli) who has just spoken--there are only three considerable measures which Parliament has passed in the interests of Ireland. One of them was the measure of 1829, for the emancipation of the Catholics and to permit them to have seats in this House. But that measure, so just, so essential, and which, of course, is not ever to be recalled, was a measure which the chief Minister of the day, a great soldier, and a great judge of military matters, admitted was passed under the menace of, and only because of, the danger of civil war. The other two measures to which I have referred are that for the relief of the poor, and that for the sale of the incumbered estates; and those measures were introduced to the House and passed through the House in the emergency of a famine more severe than any that has desolated any Christian country of the world within the last four hundred years.

Except on these two emergencies I appeal to every Irish Member, and to every English Member who has paid any attention to the matter, whether the statement is not true that this Parliament has done nothing for the people of Ireland. And, more than that, their complaints have been met-- complaints of their sufferings have been met--often by denial, often by insult, often by contempt. And within the last few years we have heard from this very Treasury bench observations with regard to Ireland which no friend of Ireland or of England, and no Minister of the Crown, ought to have uttered with regard to that country. Twice in my Parliamentary life this thing has been done--at least by the close of this day will have been done--and measures of repression--measures for the suspension of the civil rights of the Irish people--have been brought into Parliament and passed with extreme and unusual rapidity.

I have not risen to blame the Secretary of State or to blame his Colleagues for the act of to-day. There may be circumstances to justify a proposition of this kind, and I am not here to deny that these circumstances now exist; but what I complain of is this: there is no statesmanship merely in acts of force and acts of repression. And more than that, I have not observed since I have been in Parliament anything on this Irish question that approaches to the dignity of statesmanship. There has been, I admit, an improved administration in Ireland. There have been Lord-Lieutenants anxious to be just, and there is one there now who is probably as anxious to do justice as any man. We have observed generally in the recent Trials a better tone and temper than were ever witnessed under similar circumstances in Ireland before. But if I go back to the Ministers who have sat on the Treasury Bench since I first came into this House--Sir Robert Peel first, then Lord John Russell, then Lord Aberdeen, then Lord Derby, then Lord Palmerston, then Lord Derby again, then Lord Palmerston again, and now Earl Russell--I say that with regard to all these men, there has not been any approach to anything that history will describe as statesmanship on the part of the English Government towards Ireland. There were Coercion Bills in abundance--Arms Bills Session after Session--lamentations like that of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was not made perpetual by a clause which he laments was repealed.

There have been Acts for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, like that which we are now discussing; but there has been no statesmanship. Men, the most clumsy and brutal, can do these things; but we want men of higher temper--men of higher genius--men of higher patriotism to deal with the affairs of Ireland. I should like to know whether those statesmen who hold great offices have themselves comprehended the nature of this question. If they have not, they have been manifestly ignorant; and if they have comprehended it and have not dealt with it, they have concealed that which they knew from the people, and evaded the duty they owed to their Sovereign. I do not want to speak disrespectfully of men in office. It is not my custom in this House. I know something of the worrying labours to which they are subjected, and I know not how from day to day they bear the burden of the labour imposed upon them; but still I lament that those who wear the garb--enjoy the emoluments--and I had almost said usurp the dignity of statesmanship, sink themselves merely into respectable and honourable administrators, when there is a whole nation under the sovereignty of the Queen calling for all their anxious thoughts--calling for the highest exercise of the highest qualities of the statesman.

I put the question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is the only man of this Government whom I have heard of late years who has spoken as if he comprehended this question, and he made a speech in the last Session of Parliament which was not without its influence both in England and in Ireland. I should like to ask him whether this Irish question is above the stature of himself and of his Colleagues? If it be, I ask them to come down from the high places which they occupy, and try to learn the art of legislation and government before they practise it. I myself believe, if we could divest ourselves of the feelings engendered by party strife, we might come to some better result. Take the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Is there in any legislative assembly in the world a man, as the world judges, of more transcendent capacity? I will say even, is there a man with a more honest wish to do good to the country in which he occupies so conspicuous a place?

Take the right hon. Gentleman opposite, the leader of the Opposition--is there in any legislative assembly in the world, at this moment, a man leading an Opposition of more genius for his position, who has given in every way but one in which proof can be given that he is competent to the highest duties of the highest offices of the State? Well, but these men--great men whom we on this side and you on that side, to a large extent, admire and follow fight for office, and the result is they sit alternately, one on this side and one on that. But suppose it were possible for these men, with their intellects, with their far-reaching vision, to examine this question thoroughly, and to say for once, whether this leads to office and to the miserable notoriety that men call fame which springs from office, or not, 'If it be possible, we will act with loyalty to the Sovereign and justice to the people; and if it be possible, we will make Ireland a strength and not a weakness to the British Empire.' It is from this fighting with party, and for party, and for the gains which party gives, that there is so little result from the great intellect of such men as these. Like the captive Samson of old,--

They grind in brazen fetters, under task,
With their Heaven-gifted strength--'

and the country and the world gain little by those faculties which God has given them for the blessing of the country and the world.

The Secretary of State and the right hon. Gentleman opposite have referred, even in stronger language, to the unhappy fact that much of what now exists in Ireland has been brought there from the United States of America. That is not a fact for us to console ourselves with; it only adds to the gravity and the difficulty of this question. You may depend upon it that if the Irish in America, having left this country, settle there with so strong a hostility to us, they have had their reasons--and if being there with that feeling of affection for their native country which in all other cases in which we are not concerned we admire and reverence, they interfere in Ireland and stir up there the sedition that now exists, depend upon it there is in the condition of Ireland a state of things which greatly favours their attempts. There can be no continued fire without fuel, and all the Irish in America, and all the citizens of America, united together, with all their organization and all their vast resources, would not raise the very slightest flame of sedition or of insurrectionary movement in England or in Scotland. I want to know why they can do it in Ireland? Are you to say, as some people say in America and in Jamaica when speaking of the black man, that 'Nothing can be made of the Irishman'?

Everything can be made of him in every country but his own. When he has passed through the American school--I speak of him as a child, or in the second generation of the Irish emigrant in that country--he is as industrious, as frugal, as independent, as loyal, as good a citizen of the American Republic, as any man born within the dominions of that Power. Why is it not so in Ireland? I have asked the question before, and I will ask it again--it is a pertinent question, and it demands an answer. Why is it that no Scotchman who leaves Scotland--and the Scotch have been taunted and ridiculed for being so ready to leave their country for a better climate and a better soil--how comes it, I ask, that no Scotchman who emigrates to the United States, and no Englishman who plants himself there, cherishes the smallest hostility to the people, to the institutions, or to the Government of his native country? Why does every Irishman who leaves his country and goes to the United States immediately settle himself down there, resolved to better his condition in life, but with a feeling of ineradicable hatred to the laws and institutions of the land of his birth? Is not this a fit question for statesmanship?

If the Secretary of State, since his last measure was brought in, now eighteen years ago, had had time, in the multiplicity of his duties, to consider this question; instead of now moving for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, he might possibly have been rejoicing at the universal loyalty which prevailed, not throughout Great Britain only, but throughout the whole population of Ireland. I spent two autumns in Ireland in the years 1849 and 1852, and I recollect making a speech in this House not long afterwards, which some persons thought was not very wide of the mark. I recommended the Ministers of that time to take an opportunity to hold an Irish Session of the Imperial Parliament--to have no great questions discussed connected with the ordinary matters which are brought before us, but to keep Parliament to the consideration of this Irish question solely, and to deal with those great matters which are constant sources of complaint; and I said that a Session that was so devoted to such a blessed and holy work, would be a Session, if it were successful, that would stand forth in all our future history as one of the noblest which had ever passed in the annals of the Imperial Parliament.

Now, Sir, a few days ago everybody in this House, with two or three exceptions, was taking an oath at that table. It is called the Oath of Allegiance. It is meant at once to express loyalty and to keep men loyal. I do not think it generally does bind men to loyalty, if they have not loyalty without it. I hold loyalty to consist, in a country like this, as much in doing justice to the people as in guarding the Crown; for I believe there is no guardianship of the Crown in a country like this, where the Crown is not supposed to rest absolutely upon force, so safe as that of which we know more in our day probably than has been known in former periods of our history, when the occupant of the Throne is respected, admired, and loved by the general people. Now, how comes it that these great statesmen whom I have named, with all their Colleagues, some of them as eminent almost as their leaders, have never tried what they could do--have never shown their loyalty to the Crown by endeavouring to make the Queen as safe in the hearts of the people of Ireland as she is in the hearts of the people of England and of Scotland?

Bear in mind that the Queen of England can do almost nothing in these matters. By our Constitution the Crown can take no direct part in them. The Crown cannot direct the policy of the Government; nay, the Crown cannot, without the consent of this House, even select its Ministers; therefore the Crown is helpless in this matter. And we have in this country a Queen, who, in all the civilized nations of the world, is looked upon as a model of a Sovereign, and yet her name and fame are discredited and dishonoured by circumstances such as those which have twice during her reign called us together to agree to a proposition like that which is brought before us to-day.

There is an instructive anecdote to be found in the annals of the Chinese Empire. In a remote province there was an insurrection. The Emperor put down the insurrection, but he abased and humbled himself before the people, and said that if he had been guilty of neglect he acknowledged his guilt, and he humbled himself before those on whom he had brought the evil of an insurrection in one of his provinces. The Queen of these realms is not so responsible. She cannot thus humble herself; but I say that your statesmen for the last forty--for the last sixty--years are thus guilty, and that they ought to humble themselves before the people of this country for their neglect. But I have heard from Members in this House--I have seen much writing in newspapers--and I have heard of speeches elsewhere, in which some of us, who advocate what we believe to be a great and high morality in public affairs, are charged with dislike to the institutions, and even disloyalty to the dynasty which rules in England. There can be nothing more offensive, nothing more unjust, nothing more utterly false. We who ask Parliament, in dealing with Ireland, to deal with it upon the unchangeable principles of justice, are the friends of the people, and the really loyal advisers and supporters of the Throne.

All history teaches us that it is not in human nature that men should be content under any system of legislation, and of institutions such as exist in Ireland. You may pass this Bill, you may put the Home Secretary's five hundred men into gaol--you may do more than this, you may suppress the conspiracy and put down the insurrection, but the moment it is suppressed there will still remain the germs of this malady, and from those germs will grow up as heretofore another crop of insurrection and another harvest of misfortune. And it may be that those who sit here eighteen years after this moment will find another Ministry and another Secretary of State ready to propose to you another administration of the same ever-failing and ever-poisonous medicine. I say there is a mode of making Ireland loyal. I say that the Parliament of England having abolished the Parliament of Ireland is doubly bound to examine what that mode is, and, if it can discover it, to adopt it. I say that the Minister who occupies office in this country, merely that he may carry on the daily routine of administration, who dares not grapple with this question, who dares not go into Opposition, and who will sit anywhere except where he can tell his mind freely to the House and to the country, may have a high position in the country, but he is not a statesman, nor is he worthy of the name.

Sir, I shall not oppose the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman. The circumstances, I presume, are such that the course which is about to be pursued is perhaps the only merciful course for Ireland. But I suppose it is not the intention of the Government, in the case of persons who are arrested, and against whom any just complaint can be made, to do anything more than that which the ordinary law permits, and that when men are brought to trial they will be brought to trial with all the fairness and all the advantages which the ordinary law gives. I should say what was most unjust to the Gentlemen sitting on that (the Treasury) bench, if I said aught else than that I believe they are as honestly disposed to do right in this matter as I am and as I have ever been. I implore them, if they can, to shake off the trammels of doubt and fear with regard to this question, and to say something that may be soothing-- something that may give hope to Ireland.

I voted the other night with the hon. Member for Tralee (The O'Donoghue). We were in a very small minority. ['Hear, hear,'] Yes, I have often been in small minorities. The hon. Gentleman would have been content with a word of kindness and of sympathy, not for conspiracy, but for the people of Ireland. That word was not inserted in the Queen's speech, and to-night the Home Secretary has made a speech urging the House to the course which, I presume, is about to be pursued; but he did not in that speech utter a single sentence with regard to a question which lies behind, and is greater and deeper than that which is discussed.

I hope, Sir, that if Ministers feel themselves bound to take this course of suspending the common rights of personal freedom to a whole nation, at least they will not allow this debate to close without giving to us and to that nation some hope that before long measures will be considered and will be introduced which will tend to create the same loyalty in Ireland that exists in Great Britain. If every man outside the walls of this House who has the interest of the whole Empire at heart were to speak here, what would he say to this House? Let not one day elapse, let not another Session pass, until you have done something to wipe off this blot--for blot it is upon the reign of the Queen, and scandal it is to the civilization and to the justice of the people of this country.

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IRELAND.