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.Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
History
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.
Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
It will be remembered that we, in our charges against the bill last
year, did not say that it justified the proceedings of exclusive
dealing. I do not believe the act does justify them; but this I am bound
to say, that the interpretation of the act appears to be deliberately
applied in a variety of instances for the punishment of simple exclusive
dealing. The right honorable gentleman ought to know, if he does not,
for I delivered the speech in his hearing, that when I spoke of the
dismissal of curates by rectors and the deprivation of their daily
bread, that men with wives and children were to be turned out upon the
world, I was not, as the right honorable gentlemen charged me, comparing
them with cases of conspiracy, but I was comparing them with cases of
exclusive dealing, which, while they are practised freely both in
Ireland by the opponents of the Nationalists, and in England by the
party of the right honorable gentleman (_Opposition cheers_), unpunished
by the law, I believe it is stretching and straining even the deplorable
and shameful act of last session to make it include such cases. Now,
sir, I wish to mention eight cases, but first I find I was quite wrong
in saying that two of the cases for selling newspapers had been
dismissed. They were not. The defendants were released upon promise, and
the other four punished. I have now before me eight cases of exclusive
dealing, two of which were dismissed, but in all of which the Government
proceeded. In one of these cases a man was punished with a month's hard
labor for refusing to shoe a horse for a boycotted person; another, for
refusing to sell groceries to a boycotted person; a third, for refusing
to shoe a horse; and a fourth, for declining to deal with emergency men.
Those are all cases of exclusive dealing. They are not cases of
conspiracy. In fact, these men have been punished for doing in Ireland
that which would be perfectly lawful in England, and which, I believe,
is perfectly lawful even in Ireland, under any fair interpretation of
the act. Now, has the act succeeded, or it has failed? I do not think
gentlemen will object to the proposition that its real object was to put
down the National League and the Plan of Campaign.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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