W. E. Gladstone

“ Every colleague of mine who has been punished is being punished for new and statutable offences for which no jury in the world would convict under the ordinary law. The point I press upon the House is that if I can justify my offence, then I say, with a thousand times more force, the conviction of every one of my colleagues is an outrage upon justice, and their treatment in prison is an indelible disgrace to the man who planned it. ”

“ Can he produce a single man from our ranks that he has really frightened, as the result of all the terrific power that he has been wielding in Ireland?
I ask honorable gentlemen opposite to remember with what a shout of exultation they passed the Crimes Act last session, and how they triumphed over us. I can well remember the shouts and peals of delight with which they welcomed the declaration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I think, when he said this was to be a duel to the death between the National League and the Government, and that they accepted the challenge. ”

“ For seven hundred years, with Ireland practically unrepresented, with Ireland prostrate, with the forces of this great and powerful island absolutely united, you tried and failed to do that which you are now trying to do with Ireland fully represented in your Parliament, with Ireland herself raised to a position which is erect and strong, and with the mind of the people so devoted that if you look to the elections of the last twelve months you find that the majority of the people have voted in favor of the concession of Home Rule. ”

“ I shall be able to prove that sorely as our people have been tried and wronged, that they have managed to survive one of the most horrible Coercion Acts that has ever been directed against human liberty: that they have been able to crush and baffle it at every point, and that without one deed that they look upon with shame, but by sheer force of an incomparable national feeling. (Cheers.) ”

“ Well, now, sir, I want to know from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he is to speak to-night, does he see nobleness in the prosecution of these men? ("Hear, hear.") Does he think it rational to prosecute these men? (Cheers.) Does he think it right to require of the vender of a newspaper that he should read its contents? Does he think it right to require that he should have formed his judgment of those contents, that he should have made up his mind whether the proceedings described in the newspaper were legal or illegal? ”

“ Does the wildest man in this House imagine that the second Tullamore experience will be more successful? Does the Chief Secretary's best friend claim that he is a cleverer man or a more profound statesman than Mr. Forster? He is no doubt in a position to inflict untold suffering on our poor people. ”

“ We are for peace and for happiness, and for the brotherhood of the two nations. You are for eternal repression and eternal discord and eternal misery for yourselves, as well as for us. We are for appeasing the dark passions of the past. You are for inflaming them, whether for purposes of a political character I do not know, but for purposes in the interests of that wretched class of Mamelukes whom you support in Ireland, who are neither good Englishmen nor good Irishmen, and who are being your evil 46genius in Ireland, just as they have been the scourge of our unhappy people. ”

“ It is a burning shame that such an ordeal should be inflicted on a people whose only desire is to live in peace, and to rule in peace in their own land. ("Hear, hear.") It is sometimes almost unbearable, but the Irish people will bear it. We are not cowed. We are not even embittered. ”

“ It is one of our national faults to be very ready to resent injustice, and a most generous use our opponents have made of that characteristic. ("Hear, hear.") The whole policy of our opponents towards Ireland, and the whole object of the powerful London newspapers, seems to be to get at the worst side of Irish and of English character, and to sting and goad us into doing things which will put new life into national prejudices that are expiring in spite of you. (Opposition cheers.) Irishmen and Englishmen are becoming only too united for your purpose. ”

“ On the day I reached Mitchelstown, on the appeal of these poor people, I found that evictions had already been carried out on the non-residential holdings, where there was no possibility of resistance. Ah! It is an old story in Ireland. No mercy for the weak who can make no resistance, no scruple about perpetrating a wrong when it can be done in the dark. (Home Rule cheers.) ”

“ These very institutions, the National League and the Plan of Campaign, which would vanish into thin air upon a rational settlement of the Irish difficulty, might with their power drive such deep roots into the soil, they might acquire such a mastery, if not over the understandings, over the passions of the people, for passions in these cases will always be let loose, they might acquire a strength which may enable them hereafter to offer serious hindrances to government which is good. ”

“ Technically speaking, I dare say, it would be an evasion of the law to hold the arm of an executioner if the executioner and I knew that a reprieve was actually arriving. That was precisely the case with these poor people. The reprieve was coming, and the reprieve has come. (Cheers.) Whether I was right or wrong in law, the result proved that I did not miscalculate the statesmanship and the morality of the Tory Government. What happened? The moment that it became evident that those eviction scenes would ring throughout England, the eviction campaign was abandoned. ”

“ The very day I made that speech in Mitchelstown, all was peace with the tenants. Not another eviction took place, and Captain Plunkett, who came down to superintend the eviction campaign, remained, I am glad to say, and proud to say, only to turn his energies to getting up a prosecution against me. Not a single eviction has taken place there from that day to this; not an act of violence has been committed; not a blow has been struck; not a single hair has been injured of any police officer or bailiff in consequence of that speech of mine. Not one ”

“ There is not a shadow or a tittle of foundation for that statement. ("Hear, hear.") We have claimed nothing for ourselves as members of Parliament that we don't claim equally for every man convicted under the summary clauses of the act; for if he is a criminal, there is no reason why he should not be tried before the ordinary tribunal. ("Hear, hear.") We do not ask poor men to make a hard fight harder by resistance to prison rules; but if we win, they shall win as well as ourselves. ”

“ Will the Government continue still to deal with signs, and never to look at the substance, to legislate against symptoms and manifestations and never to touch the disease, to try and prune off from the rankly luxurious vegetation, here a twig and there a leaf, and never to ask themselves whether the proper purpose and design is not to bring it out by the roots? ”

“ There are many things which are said by the Government in debate, but there is one thing which they and their supporters most rarely say. I think, as far as my recollection and experience goes, I may almost venture to go further, and assert they never say,—I never had heard them express a confidence that they will be able to establish a permanent resistance to the policy of Home Rule. (Opposition cheers.) ”

“ I am sorry to think that men who are capable of inflicting pain of this description are quite capable of deriving a still keener pleasure in knowing that the torments have told, and that their victims smart under their wounds. ”

“ This was rather a meek and unassuming claim, after the high and swelling boasts that we heard from the same lips in the palmy days of last session. (Cheers.) But has he even held his own? He has demoralized every department of his own Irish government, and every class of his own officials. There is not an office in Dublin Castle that is not at this moment subjected to as much espionage and as many precations against betrayal as if it were the palace of the Czar. ("Hear hear.") He has the distinction of having developed an entirely new phase of the Irish difficulty among her Majesty's soldiers. ”

“ 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? ”

“ It is a sign that the law does not do its work. It is a sign that the conditions of legality do not exist. It is a warning to set about restoring them. This is not the only place where extra legal combinations and anti-legal combinations have been brought into existence for the purpose of mitigating social disorder. ”

“ They have dealt a death blow to Liberal administrations, and the members of those Liberal administrations never have complained, and would not have been justified in complaining. They are the advocates and the organs of a nation. (Opposition cheers.) ”

“ I am very desirous to invite the concurrence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the propriety of my application of it, or whether he considers that nobleness would be a better description of the circumstances which I am about to describe. ”

“ You are perfectly welcome to treat us to all the punishments that your courts of law prescribe for the very vilest miscreant in society,—the plank bed, or bread-and-water diet-solitary chnfinement, or deprivation of books and writing materials; you are perfectly welcome to heap every physical degradation on us, if that is your generous and chivalrous treatment of political prisoners, and you will never hear a word of complaint from us if you stick to that ”

“ I don't disguise any more than the honorable member for East Cork the strength of the combinations that are opposed to us. They are very strong indeed; they have nearly the whole wealth of the country; they have nearly the whole of the high station of the country; they have most of the elements of social strength which abound 25in them ”

“ Because the penalties of such a struggle are so heavy as to intimidate any tenantry from putting forward an unjust demand, and they are also sufficiently great to terrify a landlord from resisting a just demand. ”

“ There is one part of the statistics that we have read with increased satisfacfaction, that is the diminution in the amount of crime, limited as that diminution is. I thought when the right honorable gentleman constructed his artificial return, he had some very special purpose in view. ”