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
There is one still more important point. The right honorable gentleman
made no attempt to connect the National League or the Plan of Campaign
with the commission of crime and outrage. The Attorney-General did make
an attempt, and what was the narrow basis of that attempt? Why, it was
one upon which a tight-rope dancer might perhaps have found a footing,
but from which men with only ordinary means of locomotion must have
fallen. (_Laughter._) He got hold of two crimes,--one of the Plan of
Campaign, and one of the National League, and how did he establish the
connection? Intuitively, out of his inner consciousness, for as he could
not see the causes of the crimes, he thought it reasonable to put them
down to these institutions, and, to prevent jealousy, he gave one crime
to each. (_Laughter._) What course was open to the honorable and learned
gentleman? What course remains open to the Government if they intend, as
they ought deliberately and seriously, to show a connection between
crime and outrage, and these considerable powers which they are laboring
to put down? There are two courses they might pursue. If there were
grounds for this imputation, the Attorney-General ought to have searched
the evidence in all the numerous prosecutions the Government have
instituted, and to have shown from that evidence that witnesses
testified, and that judicial authority acknowledged, facts which tended
to show that a connection existed between crime and the National League,
and crime and the Plan of Campaign.
Not the smallest attempt was made by the honorable and learned gentleman
or by the Government to do anything of the kind. The reason was that
they could find no such evidence, and I give no credit to the Plan of
Campaign or to the National League for the absence of such evidence,
because to encourage crime on the part of either, or to tolerate it,
would be suicidal to them. (_Cheers._) The right honorable gentleman
might have pursued the course which I took in 1881, when arguing the
unhappy bill of that year (unhappy as to the nature of its provisions),
which was designed to meet what was at the time a most threatening
evil. I argued that the Land League, as i operated at that time, was an
organization imparting danger to the country. I showed, or tried to
show, that wherever you traced the footsteps of the League, you traced
the increase of crime. The Attorney-General did not pursue that course,
because he knew it would result in total failure. Therefore I think we
have evidence before us, so far as it goes, and it goes pretty far, to
show that as regards these great objects which the Government have had
in view, of putting down the National League and the Plan of Campaign,
their efforts have resulted in total failure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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