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. — John Shaqi
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
Mr. GLADSTONE. I have no intention of charging the right honorable
gentleman with anything which is not true in fact. I am glad he has
contradicted me. I did not recollect, for I did not hear it. But it was
totally and absolutely untrue. (_Opposition cheers._) Either he had not
read what I said, or if he has read it, and the same applies to the
honorable and gallant member for North Armagh, they have absolutely
misrepresented the purport of the speech they professed to quote. I
never named Whelehan except to deplore his death, and to express the
hope that his murderers would be punished. In my reference to that
speech, there is not a word to show that Whelehan was the man who was
the unhappy organ of the police in ministering pecuniary payment to the
infamous informer, nor is there one word in all that reference of blame
to her Majesty's Government. On the contrary, there is an express
declaration that I laid no blame upon her Majesty's Government with
reference to the case of Whelehan. Why, then, did I refer to it? On this
account: The honorable and gallant gentleman, in the careless way in
which he refers to these things, said I must be cognizant of the fact
that prices were paid for obtaining information I said at Nottingham; I
made no reference at all to the rather difficult question of payment of
prices for obtaining information: but what I referred to was the payment
of prices, not for obtaining information, but for concocting and
concerting crimes. (_Cheers._) After the gradual revelations that were
made to us of the mode in which Ireland is administered, according to
the traditions of that country, it is perfectly possible that such
things may have been done, though I have never heard of them. But when I
did learn in that particular instance of that foul and loathsome
practice of paying money for such a purpose to a man, as far as we are
yet informed, who was to attend a meeting of the criminals for the
purpose of putting a hand to the arrangement and the execution of it
(_loud cheers_), then I did think it was time to protest in the name of
the Liberal party, if not of the whole country, against the practice
which, in my opinion, is in itself odious to the last degree, which
would not be for a moment tolerated in England, and in reference to
which I thought it wise and right to point out that it was dangerous as
well as odious, that when in a similar case the population of England
had become cognizant of similar practices, they themselves had resorted
to the commission of crime for the purpose of marking the detestation
with which they regarded it. ("_Hear, hear._")
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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