or tumultuous assembly compensation they were going to allow the poor man could be obtained in England as in Ireland. whose property was injured in this way, Of all the cases read out by the Attorney- to be ruined by not getting any comGeneral he was not able to state one pensation. His point was that the law single case of this kind arising out of should be the same in England as in riotous or tumultuous assembly. It Irel nd. These offences were not common was notorious that there had been no in Ireland or England, and therefore the riotous or tumultuous assemblies in law should be the same. He heard with Ireland and no injuries had been inflicted some amusement the answer which was in that way. It was not with reference given to his hon. friend the Member for to injuries arising from tumultuous South Tyrone. He called attention to assemblies that the law was different in the fact that there had, under this law, England to what it was in Ireland. In sprung up in Dublin a system of breaking ! England if a tramp came from London windows, on the part of idle tramps or to the Midlands and in passing through criminals, for the purpose of getting sent the country set fire to a rick of hay to prison, and in all those cases the unformaliciously, or to a house, there was no tunate ratepayers of Dublin had to pay the power to put the compensation for that damage. The right hon. Gentleman replied act upon the people of that locality. It that so long as the law was that the would be a monstrously unjust law which community was liable they could not go would mulct a number of innocent people into the motives of the men who committed living in a peaceful hamlet in England, the crime. That was the whole case they for the offences committed by a tramp put before the House, and he thought a from London. In Ireland the law was conclusive case had been made out for an different. In Ireland those injuries to alteration in the law. The remedy, properties which had been mentioned, however, of the right hon. Gentleman was were the acts of individuals, and in not an alteration of the law, but an some cases those individuals had alteration in prison treatment. His been caught, put upon their trial, and remedy was not to make the law the same punished, and it had often been shown in England as in Ireland, but to make during the trial that the offender prison treatment so much more severe in had no connection with the locality. Ireland that the men would not break Nevertheless, in all those cases compensa- windows in order to get sent to prison. tion for the injury done had to be paid, The right hon. Gentleman had said somein Ireland, by the ratepayers of the thing about flogging. If that was his particular district. What answer to that remedy he confessed it was quite worthy had been made by the Attorney-General? of him. That was a remedy which was He had not faced that question at all. in keeping with every speech he made He had told them about tumultuous upon an Irish question. The right hon. Gentleman sneered at them by saying that assemblies, but the case put by his hon. sometimes they asked for identical treatfriend had not been met at all by the ment with England and sometimes for right hon. Gentleman except by the different treatment. He noticed that reading of a considerable number of whenever they got different treatment it offences of this kind and by asking whether was always different in the direction of coercion or hardship of some kind. lower level in Ireland than it had been for They had pointed out in this case a many years, so low that he did not propose difference in the law between England to continue the quarterly returns of and Ireland, which hit the ratepayers agrarian outrages. That did not alter one of every district in the country very hard, jot of the force which underlay every one and they had been met by this kind of of the arguments of the Attorney-General. speech from the Treasury Bench. He Who were the people whose property was hoped that in Irish debates, if the Chief damaged? In the main they were tradesSecretary could not attend he would get men in town, but we also knew perfectly someone else, either the Civil Lord of well that the property of the agricultural the Admiralty or the Secretary of State community was damaged. If a man's for War, or anybody else, to represent property was damaged everybody would the view of the Irish Government rather hold that, if possible, he ought to be than the Attorney-General, who never compensated, but from what source? interfered in an Irish debate without There were three sources. In the first causing bitterness and bad feeling. THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM, Dover) said he wished to repudiate the interpretation which the hon. and learned Member opposite had placed upon the speech of his right hon. friend the Attorney-General. The hon. and learned Member opposite had issued to him a challenge to take part in the debate, and there was a suggestion that he would have been able to deal with this subject with greater confidence than his right hon. friend. [Nationalist cries of "Hear, hear!"] That was an absurd suggestion, because the law of malicious injury filled some five or six Statutes, and upon them his right hon. friend was quite competent to speak. His right hon. friend had given a very interesting analysis of the Acts dealing with this question which stood upon the Statutebook, and he had also gone into the philosophical aspects of the theory of retribution, which stood behind all sanctions imposed by law. No word in that speech could be held to cast any reflection upon Ireland or hon. Membe.s from Ireland. He said himself, as his right hon. friend had said, that crime was at a place he could be compensated by the person who inflicted the damage, if he could catch him, and if that person had sufficient worldly wealth to pay the com pensation. He might, under a system which did not exist in England, Ireland, or any where else, be compensated by the community at large, or in the third place he might be compensated by the people who lived around. The law in Ireland was that he should be compensated and, if he could not secure compensation from the persons who inflicted the damage, there was a great deal to be said for the method which existed in Ireland, namely, that compensation for injury to property should be paid by the community in which the person injured lived. That was an incentive to the detection of crime. and germane to the whole tenor of Irish life. There was a great deal of force in the argument used by his right hon. friend that hon. Members from Ireland sometimes pleaded for absolute uniformity and at other times insisted upon discrimination. They had been asked that evening to revert to the judicial process under the grand jury, and it had been stated that Ireland preferred that tribunal might be avoided. But looking forward to the remainder of this session, he saw no great prospect of ample time for dealing with what, after all, were minor defects in the Statute - book, and he to a County Court Judge. In all good local government a sharp division was made between the administrative and judicial functions, and the same division had been made in Ireland, where all questions of a judical or quasi-judicial character thought that such time as might be at were reserved for magistrates. It had their disposal could be devoted with been argued that the district or county greater advantage to Ireland to other council affected ought to assess these matters. damages instead of a legal tribunal. He had listened to the speeches and that was what he understood from them. He should not have intervened in the debate at all but for the tenor of the speech of his hon. and learned friend opposite, and he wished to repudiate as strongly as he could the interpretation which had been put upon the very interesting and cogent speech of his right hon. friend. He thought it would be a great mistake to allow proceedings of a judicial character to be undertaken by an elected body. From the point of view of the ratepayers he was prepared to admit that hardship was sometimes inflicted. He did not take a very grave view of some of these reprehensible acts on the part of young men who broke windows, and he admitted a money penalty ought not to be inflicted on the rates if it could be avoided. He agreed that the Government might consider whether by some method that 153. MR. POWER (Waterford, E.) said that perhaps he might be allowed to say that he had never heard a more pointless, illogical, and impudent reply than that which had been delivered by the Attorney-General. Not long ago a series of outrages, including the maiming of cattle, prevailed in the county of Staffordshire and a gentleman belonging to the legal profession was now undergoing imprisonment for those outrages. The question he wished to ask whether the ratepayers of that was particular district in Staffordshire where these outrages were committed, were penalised for the act of this miscreant. He thought this was a parallel case which would show clearly the difference in the law of the two countries. Question put. The House divided:-Ayes, 90; Noes, (Division List No. 34.) AYES. Abraham, William (Cork, N.E.) | Condon, Thomas Joseph Crean, Eugene Cullinan, J. Hayden, John Patrick EEC Campbell, John (Armagh, S.) VOL. CXXX. Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark) [FOURTH SERIES.] 3 D MacDonnell, Dr. Mark A. M'Arthur, William (Cornwall) M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North) Nolan, Col. J. P. (Galway, N.) Agg-Gardner, James Tynte Balfour, Rt. Hon. G. W. (Leeds Boscawen, Arthur Griffith Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.) O'Kelly, Jas. (Roscommon N.) Redmond, John E. (Waterford) NOES. Galloway, William Johnson Shackleton, David James Slack, John Bamford Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) Wason, Jn. Cathcart (Orkney) TELLERS FOR THE AYES-Sir Thomas Esmonde and Captain Donelan. Morpeth, Viscount Platt-Higgins, Frederick Hope, J.F.(Sheffield, Brightside Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm. Lawson, Jn. G. (Yorks., N. R.) Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E. Lee, A. H. (Hants., Fareham) Lees, Sir Elliott (Birkenhead) Dickinson, Robert Edmond Morgan, D. J. (Walthamstow) Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Lancs.) TELLERS FOR THE NOES-Sir Alexander Acland - Hood and Mr. Ailwyn Fellowes. Speech indicates revision by the Member. An Asterisk (*) at the commencement of a INDENTURED COOLIE LABOUR. Address for "Return of Ordinances now in force in self-governing or Crown Colonies respecting the importation therein of Indentured Coolie Labour from India or elsewhere."- (Sir Howard RAILWAY, ETC., BILLS. Copy ordered, "of Report by the Board of Trade upon all the Bills and Provisional Orders of Session 1904 relating to Railways, Canals, Tramways, Harbours and Tidal Waters, and the supply of Electricity, Gas, and Water."(Mr. Gerald Balfour.) Petitions against alteration of Law: Vincent.) from Wimbledon; Mitcham; Jump; Kexbro; Higher Broughton; Forton; Shipley (six); Mossley; Northampton; Aberdeen; Leicester; Scalford; Mid Kent; Failsworth; Wiltshire; Leintwardine; Goodleigh; St. Helens; Gosport; Bournemouth; Uttoxeter; Cor sham; Chippenham (two); Calne; New Kent Road; Bratton; Bath; Kettering; Leeds (three); North Wilts; Sibford; Berwick-upon-Tweed; Anniesland; Dinmael; Abergele; Colwyn Bay (five); Eyam; Preston Patrick; Liverpool; CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES. Rochester; Capel Mawr; Llangynhofal; Waen; Malton; Bampton; Parkgate; Royal Leamington Spa; and Salford; to lie upon the Table. RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC. EDUCATION (SCOTLAND). EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) (GENERAL Copy presented, of General Report by the Chief Inspector of the Southern Division of Scotland for the year 1903 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table. VOL. CXXX. [FOURTH SERIES.] QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Income-Tax Collection in Scotland and MR. CORBETT (Glasgow, Tradeston): To ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he has taken any steps to secure that in future years demand notes for the payment of income-tax will not be sent out earlier in Scotland than in England. (Answered by Mr. Victor Cavendish.) The date of the issue of the demand notes does not appear to me to be material, so long as the date on which payment is required is the same in the two countries. Post Office Telephone Directory. |