Irish Repeal Association

“ Within the Repeal Association there was another organization called the Young Irelanders, which published a paper called The Nation. This paper was an immense factor in arousing and keeping alive a firm nationalist opinion in Ireland. The Young Irelanders were revolutionists, and by their writings counseled the people to adopt military uniforms, to study military tactics, to march to and from the meetings in military order. They made no secret of their belief that the freedom of Ireland must be won by force of arms. ”

“ Government is the perpetual guardian and organ of society in relation to its interests. Government, therefore, prosecutes. This, however, left the original question as to the Repeal of the Irish Union act, whether a lawful attempt or not lawful, untouched. ”

“ Believing as I do in my heart and conscience, and with all the force of the mind that God has given me, that Repeal is the right and the only right policy for Ireland—for healing all the wounds of our community, all our sectarian feuds, all our national shame, suffering, and peril—for making our country peaceful, industrious, prosperous, respectable, and happy—I cannot doubt but that in the enlightened profession of the bar there must be very many Irishmen who, like me, consider Repeal to be right, and best, and necessary for the public good. ”

“ Look at what is called the majesty of the law on one side, and the long deep misery of a noble people on the other. Which are the young men of Ireland to respect—the law that murders or banishes their people, or the means to resist relentless tyranny and end their miseries for ever under a home Government? I need not answer that question here. I trust the Irish people will answer it to their satisfaction soon. I am not astonished at my conviction. The Government of this country have the power of convicting any person. They appoint the judge; they choose the jury ”

“ Why, the mere fact that in one hundred years eighty-seven coercion acts have been passed by the English Parliament for Ireland, in spite of Irish protest, is sufficient to establish the facts that I have adduced. Martial law, suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, suspension of trial by jury, suppression of free speech—these have been the permanent blessings conferred on Ireland by the destruction of the Irish Constitution. No single reform, large or small, has ever been obtained by purely constitutional methods. ”

“ It is strange that no honest man should have protested against such a use of his person and his creed. In the case of O'Connell the Chief Justice of England stated that the practice if not remedied must render trial by jury "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare"; but jury-packing with safe men remained the invariable custom till 1906.
Nothing but evil to Ireland followed from carrying her affairs to an English parliament. The government refused the promised emancipation, refused tithe reform. Englishmen could not understand Irish conditions. ”

“ An act abolishing writs of error and appeal into England, established the judicial independence of Ireland; but a still more necessary measure repealing Poyning's Law, was defeated through the personal hostility of the King. An act repealing the Act of Settlement was also passed, under protest from the Protestant Lords, and received the royal sanction. A bill to establish Inns of Court, for the education of Irish law students, was, however, rejected by the King, and lost; an "Act of Attainder," against persons in arms against the Sovereign, whose estates lay in Ireland, was adopted. ”

“ Meanwhile the dark winter of discontent which privation had unhappily brought about in Ireland had been marked by many crimes of violence, and at length the Government deemed it imperative to ask Parliament to grant them additional powers for the suppression of outrage. The measure met with the opposition alike of Lord John [140] Russell and Daniel O’Connell. The Government moved the second reading of the Irish Coercion Bill, and the Protectionists, who knew very well not only the views of Daniel O’Connell, but of Smith O’Brien, saw their opportunity and promptly took it. ”

“ No honest Home Ruler supposes that, if the Home Rule Bill passes into law, the Imperial Parliament will, even should the tragedy of the Phoenix Park be repeated in some more terrible form, pass a Crimes Act for Ireland; to the Irish Government will belong the punishment of Irish crime. No interest will therefore restrain the Irish delegation from swaying backwards and forwards between the two English parties, in order to obtain from the one or the other some momentary advantage, or some lucrative concession, to the Irish people. ”

“ According to this article as it now stands the Supreme Court of the Irish Free State is the highest court of appeal for all citizens of that State; but if any citizen, or any corporation, desires to affront the sense of those amongst whom he, or it, lives, he or it may carry a case elsewhere, outside the country altogether. This is known as the right of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. ”

“ Under the reign of Liberal Governments the writ of these courts runs where the King's writ cannot run, and the law of the League has been allowed in great measure to supersede the law of the land. We have also an increasing force in Irish Nationalism which seeks to paralyse the government of Ireland by means of the general or sympathetic strike. This organisation seeks to establish courts in Ireland in opposition to the ordinary law courts, and to enforce their decrees by means of illegal intimidation and outrage. ”

“ It comes to this, that the policy of the Government in Ireland is to declare on the one hand, by the passing of the Reform Bill, that the Irish people are perfectly capable of exercising for the advantage of the Empire the highest rights and privileges of citizenship; and by the proposal to renew the Crimes Act they simultaneously declare, on the other hand, that the Irish people are perfectly incapable of performing for the advantage of society the lowest and most ordinary duties of citizenship.... ”

“ Our judiciary includes many masterly lawyers, and many adroit men of the world. But all of them are political appointments. Hence in ordinary cases a man will get clean justice. But the moment politics flutter on the breeze, the masked battery on the Bench is uncurtained to bellow forth anti-Nationalist shrapnel. Irish Judges, in fact, are very like the horse in the schoolboy's essay: 'The horse is a noble and useful quadruped, but, when irritated, he ceases to do so. ”

“ Well, then, if there is such evil necessity, it is unnatural that the Irish newspapers should be free to write as they write and the Irish members to speak as they speak—free to inflame and further exasperate a seditious people’s mind, and to promote the continuance of the evil necessity. A necessity for the Crimes Act is a necessity for absolute government. By our patchwork proceedings we set up, indeed, a make-believe of Ireland’s being constitutionally governed. ”

“ I am now arranging a plan for the formation of the Irish House of Commons.
It is a theory, but it is a theory that may be realized in three weeks. The repeal arbitrators are beginning to act; the people are submitting their differences to men chosen by themselves. You will see by the newspapers that Doctor Gray and my son, and other gentlemen, have already held a petty session of their own, where justice will be administered free of all expense to the people. The people shall have chosen magistrates of their own in the room of the magistrates who have been removed. ”

“ I say, for myself, I sincerely believe that in this country of ours justice is administered by the judges of the Irish Bench with a purity and impartiality between man and man not to be surpassed in the universal world. Let me not be thought to cast reflection on this court, or the learned judges before whom I now stand, if I except in a certain sense, and on some occasions, political trials between the subject and the crown. Apart from this, I fearlessly say the bench of justice in Ireland fully enjoys and is worthy of respect and homage. ”

“ This has not only made the management of Ireland an exceedingly hard thing for an English government to carry on, but it also stands in the way of any other solution of the problem. To allow the Irish to govern themselves means putting the under dog on top and the upper dog underneath. The difficulty has been further increased by a deep-seated divergence in the conceptions of law and justice. Unlike Scotland, Ireland has the English system of jurisprudence. ”

“ The druids' tribunal in Gaul and the brehons', also originally the druids' tribunal, in Ireland, was a subsidiary institution. It did not carry with it the plenary powers of the regular tribunal, and therefore relied in part on the reverence of the people for justice—with regard to which we have the most remarkable testimony borne by Englishmen in Ireland at the time when Irish law was on the verge of total abolition. And one of these writers aptly says that nothing that the Irishman does, however praiseworthy, finds favour with a set of men who are his professional traducers. ”

“ But, while asserting that no compromise with home rule could be admitted, he also contended that in the administration of Ireland conciliation should be pushed to its furthest limits, that coercion by itself could never remedy the evils of the country, and that a large measure of local self-government should be accorded to the Irish people. ”

“ I have known conspicuous instances of the exercise of these high qualities by law officers enabling reforms to be carried, but as a rule, particularly when the initiative of legal reform is left to them, the Irish law officers do not care to move against the feeling of the legal world in Dublin. The lawyers, like other bodies, oppose the diminution of offices and honours belonging to them, or of the funds which, in the way of fees and salaries, are distributed among members of the bar; and they become bitterly hostile to any permanent official who is known to be a firm legal reformer. ”

“ It must embitter the Irish against England, for which there is no need. Nothing can be more shocking than the continual outrages and murders in Ireland; but it is the penalty we pay for a long course of misgovernment, and from which nothing but a long course of mild and good government can set us free; certainly not severe indiscriminate measures which mark out Ireland still more as an unhappy conquered province, instead of a part of the nation. Such are my sentiments, dearest, on this subject, which always makes my blood boil.... ”

“ In short, nothing will satisfy the people but the most unequivocal assertion of the total independence of the Irish legislature. This flame has been raised within this six weeks, and is entirely owing either to the insidious design or unpardonable inattention of the late administration, in including, or suffering to be included, the name of Ireland in no less than five British statutes passed last sessions. People here were ignorant of this till Grattan produced the five Acts to the House of Commons, one of which Eden had been so imprudent as to publish in the Dublin gazette. ”

“ In a few instances statutes passed for England or Great Britain before the Union have not been extended to Ireland, or statutes passed by the Irish parliament before the Union or by the British parliament since the Union create offences not known to English law. In Ireland the system of prosecution is nominally the same as in England, but in practice almost all prosecutions are instituted and conducted under the direction of the attorney-general for Ireland, who is a member of the government of the day, and so responsible to parliament, as in the case of the lord advocate. ”

“ We must remember that the men who would have the control of the new Irish Government would be those who have spent the greater part of their lives in violent conflict with the attempts of the Irish Courts to secure respect for the elementary rights of property and of personal freedom in Ireland. Power which has been won by the open violation of every principle of English law, is not likely either to assert the authority it has lived by defying to maintaining the independence of the courts and institutions which have been its deadliest opponents. ”

“ A judge in the last resort has the whole force of the State behind him, and no one dreams of resistance. With an Irish Parliament and an Irish Executive this would hardly be the case. The judges would still be lawyers, but their power would be greatly impaired. In Ireland popular feeling is always against creditors, and it would be very hard indeed either to execute a writ of ejectment or a seizure of goods. If the sanction of the law is weakened, public respect for it is lessened, and the result will be a general relaxation of the bonds which draw society together. ”

“ Destitution, sectarian animosities, harsh evictions, met by savage outrages, the terror of secret societies, the stern enforcement of law which to the people represented anything but justice, are phenomena of Irish society, which, as they existed before the Volunteers established the Parliamentary independence of the country, and continued to exist when Ireland was subject to no laws but those passed by an Irish Parliament, cannot be attributed to the Act of Union. ”