Ireland simply because that country was brought eminent counsel to the Quarter governed by a people who did not know Sessions and the Judge, who, in the early the country and cared very little about it. proceedings, was rather inclined to favour Even if the provisions of the law in prin- the views of the railway company, in the ciple were not objectionable the law was end threw out the claim of the railway objectionable in its application. Under company, which appealed. The appeal the grand jury system there were was heard by the Chief Baron, and here, numerous cases in which a rate was again, the railway company brought struck in a district, and where townlands forward the best counsel they could get. occupied by known supporters of the The county council had to do likewise, ascendency party in Ireland were deliber- and the neighbouring county council of ately omitted from the levy of the rate. Galway had also to be represented. In the It might be said that these persons were end the application of the railway comomitted because it was pretty well known pany was thrown out and the county to the grand jury that the occupiers of council got £36 costs against the those lands did not perpetrate the outrage, railway company. But the bill of but in that case other people ought to the solicitors to the county council have a right to claim that they should came in the other day, and it amounted be omitted from the levy if they to £500. That took no account of the also could prove that they were expenses incurred by the county council, innocent. This system of levying a rate of Galway. over a district for malicious injury, under the present law in Ireland, had been handed over to the jurisdiction of the county court, which was no doubt a judicial tribunal, but it was a very curious fact that on the passing of the Local Government Act in 1898, which gave over the powers of the grand juries to the county councils, it should have been discovered that this was a judicia! and not an administrative proceeding. This case illustrated what was going on all over Ireland. The ratepayers were put to considerable expense to prove their innocence, or rebut the evidence of persons whose property had been injured. He had not the slightest doubt that the Attorney-General believed that this law was grossly abused by people who set fire to their own property and then came forward and made application for compensation against the county council. If a lawyer whispered in a casual sort of way the word "boycott" at the hearing of the case, or said that the man was not popular in the district, immediately-it did not matter what kind of evidence there was-the application was granted, and compensation was levied on the county. Many Members of the House would remember a rather notorious case which occurred in his own constituency. It was an effort made by the Midland Railway Company to make the ratepayers of the county pay the insurance for accidents on the railway. An accident took place on the Roscommon and Mayo Branch Now, why should innocent people be put of the railway, one life was lost, several to all this trouble, annoyance, e,and expense passengers were injured, and a good deal when there was no such law in England? of damage was done to the train and the Everybody knew that Ireland was far line. There was not the slightest trace more crimeless than this country. The of malice having caused that accident, Chief Secretary last year quoted statistics but the Midland Railway Company lodged to show that Ireland was the most the claim for some thousands of pounds crimeless country in the world. There to cover the damage. The representa- was more crime in one county in England tives of the unfortunate man killed in a year than in the whole of Ireland, could not make any application for compensation, nor the people who were injured. The county council was put to an enormous expense for their defence as if they were criminals, but they had to make a defence, as the case was a test one involving a great principle and the character of the district. They including agrarian offences. But, even if the law was the same in both countries, the principle of it was wrong. He asked the Attorney-General to give the most serious consideration to this matter, and if the right hon. Gentleman did not defend the principle of the law--and he Motion made, and Question proposed, "That, in the opinion of this House, the time has come for a revision of the Law which enables compensation for malicious injuries to be levied in Ireland on particular districts, involving an unjust and iniquitous burden on innocent persons." (Mr. Boland.) did not see that the Attorney-General He had much pleasure in seconding the could-and if he could not prove that Motion. there was anything exceptional in the amount and character of crime in Ireland over what existed in England, then he should make the law of Ireland similar to what it was in this country. Since the passage of the Local Government Act, whenever a window was broken, the insurance company actually insisted that, before they paid the money, the owner of the house damaged should make application for compensation to MR. J. P. FARRELL (Longford, N.) said the city or county.. If the counties he wished to support the Motion moved by were to be treated as insurance companies the hon. Member for Kerry in a speech for the owners of property, the premiums of great moderation, and, therefore, of all should be paid to the ratepayers. Some the more force. Strange as it might provision was made by the Irish law by seem, he preferred the administration which, where a magistrate or police of this Malicious Injury Law under the officer was injured in the discharge of old grand jury system to that under his duty, he could be compensated the present Act. Under the old law, at the expense of the rates. There when a malicious injury occurred, it was was a case recently in Westmeath dealt with at the Presentment Sessions, where a policeman was struck on the where the magistrate had associated with head in trying to arrest a drunken man, him a number of cesspayers. These, and he made application to the county representing the ratepayers, in many for a sum of £800 as compensation for cases stood between them and the imposi his injury. He thought it right that a tion of a large amount of compensation. policeman injured in that way should be From that point of view it was much compensated in some sort, but why more preferable to go before the grand should there not be an insurance fund for jury than before a County Court Judge the purpose amongst the policemen to whom it was only necessary to mention themselves? Or why should he not take the word "boycott" to make him give the risk of his well-paid position? Why compensation. It was one of the greatest should innocent people have to pay for it? blots on the Local Government Act that One could understand this law if it applied a body to whom was entrusted the only in the case of a general riot, where collection of £40,000 or £50,000 of the the whole people of the county sym- ratepayers' money should be put in the pathised with the rioters. For instance, dock by anyone who thought that he an hon. Member for Wales paid a visit had sustained a malicious injury. He to the city of Birmingham, where a believed that many cases of malicious general riot took place, considerable injury were bogus claims, and that the damage was done to property, and ninety burning of hay and corn was frequently policemen injured. The general body the result of fire bugs. In the county of the people of Birmingham, sympathised of Longford as much as 6s. 6d. in the £ with the rioters, and one could have had been assessed on an unfortunate understood it if the ratepayers had been townland where a malicious case happened made to pay compensation; but not a to be brought up. Within the last single farthing was levied on the rates two years there was a case connected for compensation to the policemen or with the burning of a shop, which the owners of the damaged property. But in Ireland, if a riot occurred, and the sympathies of the people were alto. gether against the rioters, the ratepayers were nevertheless mulcted in large figures and a great burden imposed on the rates under this unparalleled law. was not a shop at all, but a small counter at the end of a thatched house. A sum of £100 was claimed against the rural council, and the whole house and its contents were not worth £100. There was not a single scintilla of evidence that anybody had been seen near the place. All that was known was that in the middle 1 1 of the night a fire broke out. A policeman was put forward to prove malicious injury, and all that he could say was that he "believed" that this was a case of malicious burning. And the result was that a sum of 5s. 6d. in the £ was assessed on the district. Then there was a case where a townland was assessed for the destruction of a horse which had been drowned ina bog through stress of weather. By a stretch of imagination on the part of some of the witnesses it was said that there was ill-feeling against the owner of the horse, and the ratepayers had to pay. One of the worst features of the Act was the facilities it gave to policemen to recover large sums of money from the ratepayers. In Mullingar a madman fired a shot in the direction of a policeman, and a few pellets lodged in the calf of the policeman's leg. The policeman lodged a claim for compensation against the county council. Had there been any imputation of serious results, the people of Longford might have been mulcted in a sun ranging from £300 to £800. There was, he submitted, no justification for continuing this part of the Local Government Act in its present shape. The right hon. Gentleman had been challenged to defend it either in principle or in practice. He could not defend it in principle because there was no similar law in force in England, and it certainly could not be defended in practice seeing how ridiculously it worked. It imposed a cruel fine on people who were not guilty of any offence and it put a premium on blackguardism which the ordinary law of the land ought to to be able to deal adequately with. Further than that, when once a claim for malicious injury had been lodged, the police rested on their oars and made no further attempt to bring to justice the perpetrators of the .crime. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman wonld show some indication of willingness to meet them in that matter. At least let him concede the right to have a jury to sit with the County Court Judge. Let him take away from the County Court Judge the absolute power to decide these cases distinct from the evidence and on lines dictated by prejudice and political bias. Let the right hon. Gentleman try and remove some of the distrust with which this provision of the Irish Local Government was regarded in Ireland. MR. JOYCE (Limerick) said this afforded another illustration of the mischief worked by laws passed by this Parliament presumably for the benefit of the Irish people. He would like to tell the House how the city of Limerick suffered from these claims for malicious injury. In two years alone it had had to pay compensation to the extent of £624 16s. Some time ago there was a riot in Limerick originating in a strike, in connection with which some blackiegs had been imported to take the The blacklegs places of the men on strike. assistance. In the disturbance Sergeant were assaulted and the police went to their Mullens, R.I.C., was struck by a stone believed to have been thrown by a woman. The missile hit him over the eye. He went into the hospital and claimed compensation for the injury he had received. Evidence was given to the effect that the eye was irretrievably ruined and that he was in danger of losing the sight of the other eye. The learned County Court Judge who sat in Limerick, and than whom there was no fairer Judge in all Ireland, awarded the sergeant £500 as against the city of Limerick. The man got his money and retired from the force on a good pension and promptly married a buxom widow and thriving public house. Twelve months afterwards some strangers came into the city to attend an athletic gathering. In the evening there was a row-in which none of the citizens were concerned-and another police sergeant was injured. He, too, put in a large claim against the city, but the learned County Court Judge having learned that Sergeant Mullens had duly recovered his eyesight only awarded the second sergeant £75. But he thought that in each case injustice was done to the citizens of Limerick. Now for some reasons soldiers stationed at Limerick were anxious to get out of the Army, so they indulged in plate-glass window smashing at some of the large establishments in the city. For that they were sent to gaol and no doubt subsequently attained their object of being drummed out of the Army, but the ratepayers were mulcted time and again for the mischief they had done, in one case a claim being made for £34. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, in his light and airy fashion, had accused him of having been misinformed, as the claim was only £24. But as a matter of fact the right hon. Gentleman was himself misinformed, and he could only say that if he were the Chief Secretary-and he might be some day in a Home Rule Parliament-he would, if his officials gave him wrong information, hang half a dozen of them. What he wanted to urge was that this provision of the Irish Local Government Act was inflicting an intolerable burden on the ratepayers, and he earnestly trusted that the right hon. Gentleman would that day give them some practical proof of his sympathy by undertaking to repeal this obnoxious provision. *MR. O'DOWD (Sligo, S.) also supported the Motion. As chairman of an Irish county council he naturally felt deeply interested in this question-a question of such vital importance to the rate payers of Ireland and their representatives on the various councils created by the Local Government Act. The reten tion of the clause in his opinion could not be defended or even justified. He would much prefer that system which obtained under the old grand jury laws to the present state of affairs. The former practice was that when a claim for malicious injuries was made it was first lodged before the Presentment Sessions-a body composed jointly of the magistrates and cesspayers of the barony in which the outrage was alleged to have occurred. After consideration by that tribunal the claim went before the grand jury, which adjudicated upon it. The aggrieved party had a right of appeal from the decision of the grand jury to the Judge cf Assize, and, if he wished, the assistance of a petty jury could be invoked. The Act of 1898 had altered all that and put the power of deciding claims for malicious injury in the hands of the County Court Judge. There was of course an appeal to the judge of Assize, but for the petty jury a special jury had been substituted and it was composed usually of the understrappers and hirelings of the landlords of the locality instead of poor ratepayers of the county. Hence he averred that the old order of things was preferable to the new, and he considered that the provision, as it stood, constituted a serious blot on the Irish The Local Government Act of 1898. MR. CULLINAN (Tipperary, S.) re ferred to the breaking of windows and the perpetration of robberies by soldiers in the town of Bray. Although the soldiers were arrested and sent to prison, the ratepayers had had to pay for their blackguardism. There was no justification for such a system, and he thought the people of Ireland were entitled to demand the removal of this intolerable burden on the ratepayers. It was a most remarkable fact hat since the passage of the Local Government Act there had been, throughout Ireland, most frequent burnings of heather and gorse. In his own locality a landlord had his heather burnt, and obtained £400 compensation. The local authority were rather doubtful whether it was done maliciously, but they took no action. The next year the landlord had another fire, and obtained further damages. When suspicions were aroused; strong action in the third year another claim was made leaving a balance of £45,853 which could only be considered as being fraudulently claimed. His own county had paid £1,842 out of a total claimed of £3,180, of which £1,000 was paid in respect of a few acres of heather and briars, a fire probably caused by the carelessness of a passing smoker. Ulster had paid £3,974 out a total claimed of £11,536. According to the Parliamentary Return, Sligo was crimeless, not one single case has been reported from the eunty, and yet the county council was engaged year after year in defending these claims for malicious injuries which could only be described as fraudulent and frivolous. It was too bad; the money could be much better employed. The retention of the clause in the Act implied a want of confidence in the local authorities which was hardly justified by the flattering reports periodically furnished by the Government auditors and inspectors. In the interests of the ratepayers of Ireland and in the interest of the good name of the country he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would remove this blot from the Act and give the county councils the right to investigate these claims. No loss would be suffered, as there would remain the right of appeal, but it would show that the local authorities were at least trusted, and he hoped for the sake of the fair fame of Ireland the Chief Secretary would give his consideration to the matter. MR. T. W. RUSSELL (Tyrone, S.) asked whether the attention of the Attorney-General had been directed to the fact that since the passage of the Act of 1898 there had been a regular epidemic of window-breaking in Dublin, and to the language of the Recorder of Dublin on the subject. The rates of Dublin were high enough in all conscience; they had reached breaking point; things could not go much further without serious consequences. If the police could not control these people who broke windows to get into gaol, the shopkeepers ought to be compelled to insure their windows and the insurance companies to pay for the damage. The ratepayers could not bear the strain, and it was an imposition which ought not to be cast upon them. He hoped his right hon. friend would be able to hold out some prospect of relief in that direction. VOL. CXXX. [FOURTH SERIES.] was taken, the claim was thrown out, and from that day to this there had been no further burnings. In several cases it had become the regular practice to set fire to useless heather in order to secure damages from the ratepayers. In some instances where they believed the people to have been badly treated, they had come to the conclusion that the police were not doing their duty. Outrage after outrage occurred in one particular district; the police were changed; fresh men. were brought in ; and no further outrages had committed the outrages themselves, but occurred. He did not say that the police they were certainly in touch with the guilty parties. It was a gross injustice that this clause should be allowed to remain on the Statute-book. The County Court Judge or the Judge of Assize knew nothing about the local circumstances of the case, whereas the local authority had all the local knowledge necessary to do justice in such matters. THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. ATKINSON, Londonderry, N.) quite admitted that there was a gross abuse of the law involved in the circumstances referred to by the hon. Member for South Tyrone, but as long as it was the law that the infliction of malicious injuries entitled the owner of the injured property to compensation, it was impossible to draw distinctions as to individuals or the 3 C |