I move that the Dáil do now adjourn until 3 o'clock to-morrow.
DAIL IN COMMITTEE. - ADJOURNMENT—SEIZURE OF CATTLE BY MILITARY.
I wish to draw attention to the seizure by the military, in certain parts of Galway, in the past few weeks, of cattle they found grazing on certain lands, and to their action in taking these cattle away and selling them. The facts, so far as we are able to learn them from the newspapers, and other sources of information, are that the military found cattle grazing on certain lands and took these cattle away and sold them. Now, I am anxious to know, in the first place, what department of the Government is responsible for this action; whether it is the military authorities or the Minister for Home Affairs or the Government as a whole. The seizure was made by the military authorities, but as far as I can learn the action of the military has been defended chiefly by the Minister for Home Affairs. I also want to know by what authority, or by what sanction, or in virtue of what powers, whether an Act of Parliament or other Order, this military action was taken. We will be told, possibly, that it was military action carried out by the military in virtue of the powers which have been given to them some time ago. So far as I can understand, the position in regard to the military is, that they are engaged in putting down armed insurrection; they are engaged in doing something which it was not in the power of the ordinary civil authority to do. I wish, therefore, to know whether it will be held that in making these seizures as reported, the military were engaged in putting down an armed insurrection or in doing something which was not within the power of the civil authority to do. Now, I am not to be taken as defending illegalities where such illegalities exist. But I do question, undoubtedly, the methods which have been employed in these instances to which I refer in dealing with illegalities which apparently did exist. I would like to make special reference to one case, inasmuch as a certain amount of attention has been publicly drawn to it—that is the case of the Lewin Farm, near Tuam. This gentleman, Mr. Lewin, if my information is correct, is a man whose record, as a landlord in any case, can be equalled only by his county man, Clanricarde. He has obstinately refused to sell to his tenants; he has refused, I believe, even to give them conacre facilities. He has sold to one or two fortunate monied people, I believe, at the rate of £80 or £90 per acre. I do not say he was not within his legal rights in refusing to do this, but he is not exactly of the type that would evoke a great deal of sympathy. His house was occupied for some weeks, or months, during the early part of the struggle last year by Irregulars. When the Free State troops came into the district the Irregulars evacuated the house, and the house was burned on the night of the evacuation. That was not uncommon. As a matter of fact, it was a general practice, I think, at the time, that when they evacuated one of these their fortresses they burned it when leaving. In any case, I believe that some parties did come in shortly afterwards and took away some articles which they found there. I understand they also cut down some timber. I have nothing but condemnation for actions of that kind, and I would have no sympathy whatever with people to whom such actions could properly be brought home. Now, while the Irregulars held the district, or were in possession of it, all the fences in the area were broken down and used to erect barriers on the roads, with the result that there are no such things as fences in that district. I am informed that a few tenants have grazing rights over a certain commonage which adjoins these lands of Mr. Lewin. Their cattle strayed on to the road, and what was more natural than that they should stray into this derelict farm? That may be received with a certain amount of disbelief, but I suggest that it is as much entitled to belief as the ex parte statements of those who have given other information to somebody else, because it is all a matter of one statement against another, and that is one of the reasons why I am raising the question. No steps were taken to notify the public, or to put up notices, that trespassers on the lands would be prosecuted, and without notifying anyone—without issuing any notices—the military swooped down and took away the cattle which they found on this farm. They carried them off and sold them, as I am informed, in the Dublin markets. In all, eighteen cattle were seized. They belonged to four ten ants who hold land immediately adjoin ing this farm. Ten of these cattle were milch cows, belonging to these four people who are small farmers holding ten or twelve acres of land in the neighbourhood. Now, when the cattle were seized, the owners of them offered to pay any reasonable compensation that would be fixed as their part of the damage, but this appeal was ignored and the money was held. This is a point I want to stress; there was nothing, as far as I can learn, in this case in the nature of an attempt being made by or on behalf of these people to seize the farm that was derelict. There was no attempt to seize the land, or to hold it. I believe that this Government is out to establish law and order, and in doing that they will have the sympathy of everybody. But if law is to be established, we must first of all establish respect for the law, and respect for the ordinary formalities of the law. You will not make a law-abiding people by fear of the law; unless there is respect for the law, and for the administration of the law, you will not have that type of law and order which it is essential that we should have. The people must be made to feel that the law is just, and is justly administered. Now, if it is attempted to maintain law by fear, that is not a commendable thing for a Government to do, and these rough and ready methods of dispensing justice that we hear about, are not, in my opinion, calculated to do anything other than to bring the law, such as we know it, into contempt. In this case you have four men, and they have had their cattle carried off to make atonement for the sins of others. For all the military, who made these seizures, knew, these people might have had the right to have their cattle on the land. That, too, may seem a little farfetched, but I will give you an instance of what happened in a similar case near Gort. I have here a letter from a man named Broderick, whose cattle were seized by the military. A springer cow, his property, was seized by the military during one of these raids. He says his cattle were seized on the lands of a lady named Miss Nilan, and adds:—“I paid Miss Nilan grazing money for my cow, and got a note from her to that effect. I produced it to the senior officer making the seizure, but he refused to give up the cow; he placed her on a railway truck with other cattle. I haven't heard anything about her since. Miss Nilan will corroborate my statement. The cow was value to me for £25.” Now, I would like to ask whoever is to reply on behalf of the Government if he is prepared to justify this action?
Yes, I am.
Very well; I will be glad to hear his justification. I would be glad to hear whether they have sold this man's cow, and, if so, on whose behalf they hold the money. My chief reason for raising the matter is that, in my opinion, and from what I know of the general feeling with regard to these seizures, they are calculated to bring the administration of the law into contempt. Law and justice should, as far as possible, be synonymous; all citizens should be equal before the law. If a citizen is found guilty of committing a civil offence he should be tried for that offence through and by this ordinary processes of the civil law, if the civil law is capable of being put into action. I hold that in this case it is capable of being put into action in the ordinary way, and that is my chief complaint. At or about the time that this seizure was taking place in Gort, or near it, I have seen that some people took on themselves to cut down timber on the estate of a man named Major Roxborough, and the Civic Guard rightly summoned these people to the court, and they were heavily find. Now, in these cases I am speaking of, I say and hold, that the civil authority could have acted. Notices could have been put up warning trespassers off these lands. If these notices were disregarded, the Civic Guard could have summoned these people before the District Justice and have them fined for trespass; if that course were not possible, and if I were convinced that it were not possible, then I would not protest if other and stronger action were taken. That is the position which I take up. In that case if that were done the parties would feel that there was a certain sense of justice. They do not feel that now. These men, with four or five cattle, all they owned in the world, taken away and sold, do not feel that they have the value of the grass that their cattle have consumed, and they do not feel that they have been treated justly; and that they have got the full measure of the law to which they are entitled. The Minister for Home Affairs in defending this action stated that there was a conspiracy against Mr. Lewin, and that the conspirators, I think, he said, should be made pay for the damage they have perpetrated. That is quite all right. But what proof is there exactly that they were? What steps were taken before these seizures were made to see if these four people whose cattle were seized were the chief conspirators? And is it on the same principle the seizure of this man's cow at Gort was made? I think we should not forget what Deputy Johnson reminded us of yesterday—that is, that the present is the child of the past to a large extent, and we cannot get away in a few weeks or a few months, and possibly not even in a few years, from the lessons that have been taught to us within the last five or six years; or perhaps, in dealing with land trouble such as this is we should not confine it even to six years. We might stretch it much longer. I do not think that we are going to get back to a proper sense of right and wrong by these sudden exhibitions of so-called justice that we have been treated to within the past few weeks. Now, I would like the Minister who replies to say if these cattle were sold, what price has been obtained for them, who holds the money, and on whose account is the money held, and, if there is law, by what legal right is it held? And if there is no legal right to hold it, then will it be returned? Again I want to stress the point that ordinary civil law can deal with these matters. You can only say that it cannot deal with them if it has been tried and if it has proved a failure. I think, until it has been tried and until it has proved to be a failure, we should have no more of these filibustering expeditions or this rough-and-ready administration of the law or of justice which some members of the Government are so fond of telling us about.
There was one remark made by Deputy O'Connell that I would like to deal with first, and it is the remark about the present being the child of the past. It was used here recently before, and it was used on one occasion on which I visited the Seanad. Now, I have no recollection in the recent past—in the past five or six years—that we are here concerned with, of advice being given to any Irishmen to burn the homes of their fellow-citizens or to seize the property of their fellow-citizens. I think we were probably the most conservative-minded revolutionaries that ever put through a successful revolution. It was stated in the Seanad that we had advocated the non-payment of particular things; that we had told people that they ought not to meet their liabilities. We never did. Neither in the case of income tax nor land annuities nor any other legal payment did we give such advice. If the case is tried to be made against us that we advised anarchy, that is a case which we refute, and which we deny, and which we will meet here or out through the country. With a clear mandate from the people to endeavour to make British administration impossible here, we went ahead. We went ahead with all due respect for the rights of all our citizens, and we never declared war on a particular class or section of our fellow-citizens. Only once, and that was in the course of the Treaty debate in the Dáil by a thoughtless Deputy who is not with us now—and which in any case, I think, was spoken in the heat of the moment—only once did I hear it threatened that in the event of the resumption of hostilities a certain section of our citizens would suffer. So much for that. Deputy O'Connell rather made the case that certain wicked people called Irregulars, who were a class apart, burned Mr. Lewin's house more or less as a military measure, and that certain other innocent people's cattle strayed by misfortune on to his land, and thereby hangs this tale. The military, he says, should look after the proper duties of the military; let them get on with the war, so to speak. Now, in ways the situation in the country is more, and in other ways it is less, than a war. It would be almost better if it were a war as war is properly understood. But this is not a war; it is not a purely physical struggle. It is anarchy deliberately preached, callously preached, preached by one who had the full measure of the guilt that would attach to a person who would attempt to create such conditions in the country; preached by one who knew well that if we were all standing for a settlement there would be a problem in this country and a reaction from the high standards and the selflessness that prevailed in the struggle—prevailed rather generally, at any rate, in the struggle against the British; preached by one whose sole object was to create such a condition here that the native administration would be unable to function. It is not a war in which men surrender when the troops of the Government come within range of them. It is not a war in which a Battalion Council sticks its hands up when three young detectives walk into the room. I would not like to be one of three Black and Tans or Auxiliaries that would stray into a room where there was a Battalion Council going on in the past. It is not a war in which the water supply of towns is attacked and in which the arms, the bombs and the land mines are used only as weapons to cow defenceless civilians. No, not a war, but National sabotage; not a war but anarchy; callously preached, consistently preached, preached with voice and pen; sent out in documents from philosophers in jail. I submit that these things such as have happened in Galway are done under cover of an Irregular campaign and are, in fact, merely an acute manifestation of Irregular mentality. You cannot deal with a situation of that kind with kid gloves. When we get rid of technical terms, what is the Government but a Committee of the people with a mandate to make certain conditions prevail; with a mandate to restore order and to uphold and maintain the legal rights of all citizens? When you get rid of technical terms, too, what is the army, but a number of armed servants of that Committee of the people? And it is right that we should use these armed servants in the way that we think best calculated to restore in the shortest possible space of time normal conditions——
Read the Judgment in the Court yesterday.
Mr. O'HIGGINS
It is to do what a doctor does when he comes on a serious case. He does not play about with symptoms. He treats the cause. We will treat the cause. And the cause is greed; the desire to get rich quick on the part of people who think they have a vested interest in disorder; to get rich quick regardless of law human or divine; to get something for nothing; to get the fruits of work without work. There could be no greater scandal in a community than the sight of people thriving day after day on illegality; doing wrong and profiting by it. That was the scandal that existed largely through the country and the scandal that we have to put an end to and the scandal that we mean to put an end to. It was done without notice! Mr. Lewin should have put a notice on his house:—"This house is not to be burned." He should have stuck labels on his property:—"This property is not to be plundered." We should have a notice on every bank in the country to the effect that they are not to be robbed. Now, as to what department is responsible. It was an act done by the military, demanded by the present conditions in the country. Remember that the military have been enjoined by the Government to restore order in the country.
Any way they like?
Mr. O'HIGGINS
It is an act for which every member of the Executive Council will take responsibility hereafter when seeking an Indemnity Act. It has been defended by me, it is said. It was defended by me because these wretched robbers wired to Mr. Lewin to intercede for them—to intercede for them after they had burned his home, looted his property, made a common of his farm, broken his heart—and he came to me with the wire, and I replied to the solicitor.
Is it alleged that these four people were the wretched robbers?
Mr. O'HIGGINS
I, perhaps, was more readily available to Mr. Lewin than the Minister for Defence, and that is the long and the short of it.
Some little stress was laid on the fact that Mr. Lewin was a landlord. For many a long day we have been seeking in this country a time when one man would be as good as another, and we have it now; and Mr. Lewin's home and property will be defended as sternly and as rigidly as the home and property of any poor man, or tenant or labourer in the country. Just no more and no less. Euphemism has been used. The plunderers were referred to as "people who came to the place, and took away some articles they found there." I do not care what you call it. By any other name this action will smell just as sweet in the nostrils of the great majority of the people in the country, and the great majority of the people in the country do not disapprove the action that has been taken, because these acts on the scale and intensity on which they have been going. are a scandal and disgrace to the country. When such seizures were carried out in the town of Nenagh the townspeople turned out to load the cattle, and the word on every man's lip was, "the devil's cure to them." There were no written notices on the house that it was not to be burned, nor labels on the property that it was not to be plundered, but very grave warnings were given here on more than one occasion by the Minister for Agriculture, myself, and the Minister for Defence, that we could not continue to look on at actions of this kind taking place throughout the country, and allow the country to lapse gradually and surely into anarchy. We had to use the armed servants of this Committee of the people in a way that would check and suppress that, and end it once and for all. We did not stand on technicalities or artificial limitations of functions that grew up as a matter of convenience, and that should not be allowed for a single instant to survive their convenience that stood against the real welfare of the people and the future destinies of the country. For we must restore conditions in which people will, if charity is not sufficient, if neighbourly spirit is not sufficient, respect the legal rights of their neighbours. When I was a boy, if there was a robbery in the parish, the parish was ashamed. It was blamed on some band of tinkers or gypsies that passed the road a week before. Now it is a routine in the country, and the bonds of religion and human respect have broken down, and people are running amok in riot and plunder. Treat the cause. The cause is greed. If it be made clear to them, instead of being profitable they are going to make a handsome loss, there is a chance of ending it, and we cannot make omelets without breaking the eggs. We cannot build up a disciplined and self-respecting decent country without hitting pretty hard a head here and there to encourage the rest. People were told to have a look at their lines of life and see whether they were on the right or wrong side of the law. They were told they were not going to thrive on static illegality. A new police force at half strength cannot deal with a problem of this kind. There are barely 2,000 Civic Guards in the country. There are 1,000 in the Depot, and we are making for a normal establishment of 5,000, but we will not reach it in a year. In the meantime, under cover of this campaign of anarchy, people have gone out with their strong hands—or hands which they thought were strong—to steal the goods of their neighbour, and we are entitled to use all the resources at our disposal to check them, and we intend to do so.
The time allowed for the discussion is over, unless the Dáil decides to continue.
Agreed.
One is challenged to invite the Minister to be as resolute in enforcing the law, finding out and searching out the law breakers throughout the country in other respects, as well as in the respect he has been dealing with. I ask the Minister if he will set afoot as keen an inquiry into the men who burnt the house of Mrs. Hyland the other night, or of Mrs. Kent. Will he institute an equal amount of searching out and protection and punishment of the law breakers in these cases and ensure those particular citizens will have equal protection and that the particular culprits will have equal punishment?
Mr. O'HIGGINS
The Deputy knows that these actions had no sanction or authority from us, and he knows that relatives of the men who burnt our homes and murdered our people are living in safety all over the country, under our protection.
I am quite prepared to accept that. I know it quite well, but when the Minister speaks as though there was nothing but perfect justice, and perfect equality of treatment, one cannot help asking the question, why is it that that kind of reprisal is not met with the same amount of enthusiastic and determined seeking out, as these other evil acts that have been punished or sought to be punished. The gravamen of this particular complaint is not that individuals have been made to suffer penalties for their wrong-doing. It is that the methods instituted by the Government are not going to inculcate that respect for Government and law that the Minister says at one part of his speech is the intention of the Government. We are too often told that the Government is not going to stand on technicalities, that they are not going to be restricted by legal procedure. They are going to do exactly the same kind of thing that under another routine they are objecting to. They are going to reprisal, to buccanneer, they are going to seize the property of citizens because these citizens whose property they will seize have committed offences—and then we are told we are not going to stand on technicalities! Rough and ready justice is the doctrine and motto of this Government. You are doing exactly the same thing under the cover of a legislature, under the cover of an Oireachtas and a Constitution, which you are condemning in that other section of the community, which pretends to have a legislature, an Executive and a Constitution. You are not going to allow any artificial limitations, any legal restrictions. The Government is there, an Executive with a mandate, and a committee authorised to reinforce law and order, meaning not law but order. "But we will go outside the law to reinforce it!" We are not going to depend upon the sanction of this Legislature or any previous Legislature! We are going to carry out what we believe to be required in a way we think necessary, whether lawful or not. This complaint that we are making is that there is a pretence at respect for law, but that under cover of that pretence, all law, legal procedure, legal rights, and legal authority are thrown over. The Minister says, "they burned his home." Perhaps he knows that these particular four people burned the house of Mr. Lewin. If he knows that, can he not bring them to justice? They burned his home. Presumably he knows them. They were engaged in a conspiracy. Presumably he knows it. No, you say, "I assume it. We have proofs in our minds, but cannot produce them." Four men, culprits against the law, we will assume that. The legal procedure is thrown overboard, and the property of these offenders is taken and sold, not in accordance with any law, but in accordance with the decision of a small Committee of a Committee. I maintain that is not going to bring either the Government or the Legislature or the Constitution into respect, in that particular area, or in any other area of the country. You may frighten people, you may terrorise people, but is that going to bring the law into respect?
Yes.
That is the doctrine then, the doctrine of the terrorist—Trotsky—the leader of the advocates of terrorism, the new Trotsky, the advocate of terrorism personified on the Government Bench.
That is Kautsky.
The Minister disclaims that the history of the past few years brings them into the category of exemplars. I suppose the justification for that statement, or disavowal of any responsibility for anarchistic practices, not doctrines, would follow the claim that all the acts of the I.R.A. were justified by the existence of a Constitutional Government, and that they were authorised, and, therefore, being authorised, were not anarchistic. I wonder whether the Minister for Finance will agree that no houses were burnt for which compensation is to be paid in the Cork area?
I am one of those who agreed with the supporters of the Government that the effective check upon the burning of creameries and the houses of the poor, farmhouses and the like, was the reprisals on the houses of the rich who had influence with the directors of the Black and Tan regime.
Mr. O'HIGGINS
So, you did agree with reprisals?
I agreed that it was effective then.
Mr. O'HIGGINS
Then.
It was not right. It was effective. I do not know whether the Minister claims that everything which is effective is right, lawful, and just. Deputy Magennis will probably tell us something about the philosophy of the Pragmatists. If it succeeds, then it is right. If it works, then it is right. Is that the doctrine? Is that the law of the prophets according to the Minister? Terrorism is going to prevail if it is instituted by the Government; if it is practised by this Committee of the people without the sanction of the Legislature. Because it prevails it is right. That is the doctrine of the Ministry. I wonder whether —ah! no; it is not fair to pursue the history of the last four years——
Go on.
And to ask who was responsible for the burning of the Custom House and the Income Tax offices and the hundred and one things that were done under cover of legal sanction against what was legal sanction according to the British authorities. We ask you to remember the lessons that have been taught—that you have taught and I have taught—in regard to the rights of landlords over their land, and the necessity to use that property if they are going to be confirmed in their rights. The Minister for Home Affairs, I am sure, from his history, applauded Laurence Ginnell.
Mr. O'HIGGINS
When?
When Laurence Ginnell preached the hazel stick.
Mr. O'HIGGINS
I was not interested.
No.
Well, his entry into political interests is much more recent than I thought it was.
Mr. O'HIGGINS
Yes.
I applauded Laurence Ginnell's doctrine of the hazel stick, and I am sure some of the members on those benches applauded the doctrine of the hazel stick.
And do now.
When you have a case of landlords holding land out of use, depriving people who need those lands of the right to use them, I say it is culpable on the part of the Government to initiate their new respect for law and order by starting upon the people who are guilty of those agrarian offences. Every citizen of the Saorstát has to be granted equal protection and equal rights within the Saorstát. I put it up to the Ministry that a condition of that equal protection should be that the one person who is to be protected equally is not by his acts depriving other persons, of more use to the community, of their opportunities for living, and their opportunities for the protection of their families, simply by virtue of what legal rights have been granted to the land-grabber and the rancher. You are starting, as I say, your campaign for the restoration of the law and the banishment of the ill-doer upon those poor people who are doing what morally and naturally they had a right, but what legally they had no right, to do.
Deputy Johnson's respect for the law and his love of law—I will leave it there, and not say order, as he made it clear that he does not like that—is, to say the least of it, extraordinary, and the same applies to Deputy O'Connell. Deputy O'Connell started by making it perfectly clear that of course he was not on the side of illegality, but, after all, it was the landlord's house. After all, according to Deputy Johnson, he was not farming his land properly. After all, there was a number of people in the neighbourhood who were morally— and I forget the other adjectives and adverbs—right. I have listened to disquisition after disquisition by Deputy Johnson on law, and he always succeeded in taking away with his left hand what he gave with his right. He always begins in praise of law, constitutions, and forms, and he ends by advocating exceptions which appeal to himself. We have had a magnificent example of that to-night. He did not say it exactly. He is too clever a debater for that, but that is what it came to. "There should not be any illegality, and I am not on the side of illegality, and of course it is wrong to seize property, but"—there is always the but after all. Lewin was a landlord, and he actually refused to set his land in con-acre, and after all there were a number of people in the neighbourhood who really wanted land. Now, Deputy Johnson is an educated man, and if I may say so, a man with considerable intelligence, and he knows exactly that that is speciousness and nothing else. If Mr. Lewin has too much land there is a Parliament here and a law here to take it from him, and Deputy Johnson knows equally that when he is quoting the parallel of the English Parliament and tries to confuse the issue with such a parallel, that he is confusing the issue and that the parallel is false. We lived for one hundred years under a foreign Parliament. We lived for one hundred years under a Parliament that made laws for this country, not according to the popular will, not according to the interests of the country, but according to the interests of an alien class.
If we had a grievance there was no use going to a Parliament where Irish interests were completely swamped by interests which were practically diametrically opposed, and we had to do certain things, though there was a good lot in the Land Campaign that I never liked. We had to do certain things and had to ask people to do certain things and we had to authorise certain illegalities. Does Deputy Johnson or anybody here say there was not a good defence in the circumstances I have set out, namely, that we had no constitutional way of doing what we wanted to do?
You have it now and you will not use it.
We have a Parliament now, and if this Parliament is not good enough, we have given the vote to every man and woman over 21 years in Ireland, to make their own choice. We waited for 100 years for a Parliament, and the national struggle was kept alive during that period, not by men who were thinking of how much land they could get, not by men who were thinking of whether or not they could get rich quickly, not by men with selfish ideals; but men like John Mitchel and Griffith, who would turn in their graves at this sort of policy.
Read Mitchel.
When we have that Parliament of our own we cannot even wait for 3 or 6 months. Every fellow who would not risk his skin for anything but what he could put into his own pocket, is on the loose. I am sorry to say that a small section of people in the country has disgraced the country and their actions constitute a national dishonour. After all we put up a fight for a hundred years or at least our fathers did against desperate odds——
I thought it was seven hundred years?
I am speaking of the period since the Union.
You should have been in the Parliamentary Party.
A good deal has been said to-night, and the Minister should be allowed to proceed with his statement without interruption.
The less said about the Parliamentary Party the better. I was never in the Parliamentary Party, but I read some of their speeches, and I really thought I was listening to a member of the Party when I was listening to the speeches of Deputy Johnson and Deputy O'Connell. They were excellent examples of the good old speeches I used to hear delivered off a tub about ten years ago.
Thanks.
As I have said, we put up at least an honourable fight in this country. We had difficulties confronting us, and all during that fight the one defence put forward by our enemies was that we were an inferior people, and that we were unfit for self-government. We were told that the British troops were here to keep us in order, and that the moment they were withdrawn we would fall upon each other. I regret to say that a small section of the Irish people—only a small section—have done what they, in their little best are capable of doing, to prove that that propaganda was right. I am glad to say that only a small section of our people is concerned.
The armed section.
Not the armed section.
It is.
I say it is a national dishonour that the moment the British troops should be withdrawn from our country, the houses of what are called the Southern Unionists, and landlords, should be burned, that they should be outraged, and that we should fall on them like jackals. It is a thing that would make any great Irishman of the past, who had any touch with the real national demand, feel ashamed. We are asked why we have done this, and what law we have had for doing it. It has been described as a reprisal. We are asked will we give the same protection to Mrs. Hyland and Mrs. Kent. When I heard that question asked I really realised the case that was on the other side. For one year a section of the people, composed of those who in the nature of the case, and taking human nature as it is, would give trouble even in the best of times, after such a revolution as we have gone through, deliberately organised and deliberately taught destruction, and have been attacking in the grossest fashion the civilian population, burning their houses, blowing up trains, murdering defenceless citizens, cutting off water supplies. They are limited by no consideration except the consideration of extreme safety for themselves. In spite of all that the majority of the people support the Government. I am glad to say, and I think it is something that redeems us and the nation, that there has hardly been on our part an injurious outrage. The best that Deputy Johnson could quote was two cases of houses blown up or broken up. We are not all angels; we are not a country of angels. I am very proud to say that in spite of all the provocation not a single civilian supporter of the Government retaliated. There are only two cases on record where civilians have lost their temper and hit back, and if that is the best that Deputy Johnson can bring forward he is welcome to it.
Now, we will give protection to Mrs. Hyland and Mrs. Kent, and we will give equal protection to every citizen in this country. We will give it to the farmers who were burnt in Athy; we will do our best to see who burnt their haggards; we will give protection to the labourer if he is burned out, and to the farmer and the landlord and every other class, and none of us have our tongues in our cheeks when we say that we believe in the doctrine that every man is equal. It is doctrine I think that any man can stand over and be proud of, and we believe in it. It does not matter whether it is a landlord or a tenant or a workman or a farmer; we will do what we can to see that they get fair play and that they get equal justice. Somebody professes surprise that this should be done by the military, and arguments are advanced here as if this was something, say, a war similar to the war between France and Germany, where one side shot at the armed enemy on the other side. I do not know how it is that after almost nine months the distinction is not seen. The Minister for Home Affairs described it as something more and something less than a war. Well, it is hard to define it; it is a sorry and a squalid squabble. That is one thing quite clear. It consists, on one side in any case, of combined attacks with arms and with other agencies on the civilian population. I think the one thing that is clear, the one principle that was always observed since Hannibal's time down to date is that, in war, it was an offence to attack the civilian population. This has been a deliberate, organised attack, with all the weapons that were perfected by the Germans in the last war, on the civilian population, and moreover, under cover of that attack, everybody, every selfish person—and, of course, in every country there are some—everyone who merely looked on this struggle for the honour and the life of the nation, and who looked at it in the light of "How much can I make out of the crisis" was invited to go ahead, and you have land robbed in Galway, a bank robbed in Dublin, and you have the Irregulars shooting our soldiers in the Glen of Aherlow. But we are told that we must ignore all these circumstances and conditions as if this Arcadia or Utopia, where conditions were ideal, and where everything was absolutely normal. I do not know that I need point the moral. It is perfectly obvious. Are the military entitled to arrest a man rushing out of a bank after robbing the till? Are they entitled to arrest an Irregular without a warrant whom they see with a gun? I believe they are. I believe there is something in the present condition of things which gives the military that right. Are the military entitled to arrest a man who, with a sledge hammer, is found smashing up a water supply of a town, or to shoot him if he does not desist, or must they run for the Civic Guard?
Did you arrest the culprits in this case?
I will come to that. But if a man's house has been robbed the military are entitled to go as far as arresting the fellow, or shooting him, and likewise if they find him breaking up a waterworks with a sledge hammer; and they are entitled to stop a man coming out of a bank and to shoot him if they find he has been robbing. They are entitled to arrest an Irregular in the Glen of Aherlow, but when a man robs land and puts his cattle there they are not entitled to seize the cattle. I want to know what is the distinction. The military are entitled to arrest an Irregular in the Glen of Aherlow without a warrant. Why? Because it is not a police job, because there is something approximating to a state of war here. They are entitled to do the same thing to the man who was caught stealing land.
And who steals property.
But it is all right to rob land.
You did not arrest the culprits in this case.
I quite agree that is a distinction. It would be all right if they arrested them and put them into jail as Irregulars, but they are not entitled to seize the cattle that are on the land that has been stolen. I cannot see the distinction myself.
Why not arrest the people who burned the houses?
Mr. O'HIGGINS
We will consider that.
We may do that.
You said you knew them.
Mr. O'HIGGINS
Thanks for the tip.
You were waiting for it. I thought so.
The fact of the matter is there is no difference between a robbery of one kind and of another. There is no difference between the money they will find in the possession of an Irregular —a couple of hundred pounds—which he has robbed from the nearest post office, and the cattle they find on lands which have been stolen.
There is a difference in the treatment.
There is no difference in the treatment. These cattle have been taken by the military, and they have been sold. The money is held. We will come to the Dáil or some future Government will come to the Dáil and ask them to say that the fact that they were grazing these lands is evidence that they were in the swim. They will ask the Dáil to treat the whole grim thing as a conspiracy, and to say that the money that has been obtained on the sale of these cattle should be used to pay at least a part of the compensation for the depredation committed by these conspirators, or their fellow conspirators have done. It will be for the Dáil to consider whether they will do that or not. If I am in the Dáil—I do not know whether this is good politics or not—I will ask that Dáil to not only use the money we have on hands, but to use the property of any or all of the members of the conspiracy that is all over the country to relieve the decent, law-abiding taxpayer. I want to know is the Dáil entitled to do that as a Sovereign Assembly.
If it enacts it, but it has not enacted it.
In the meantime, as I have explained, this has been done by the military just as they would arrest a robber. I wonder what will the Dáil do. I wonder would they say that it is quite right and that it meets the equity of the case to make them pay up. In the meantime the money is safe, and if necessary I hope that the Government will go a good bit further.
Without law.
I have some respect for the Irregular who has been out with his gun, but I have absolutely none for the Irregular who looks at the whole of this terrible crisis not from the point of view of national honour, but from the point of view of how much he can make out of it. Deputy O'Connell quoted one case, and I will just answer that case. It is the case of Broderick, of Gort. I am glad he mentioned that case. He produced a letter, which he read, from a man called Broderick, who alleged he had taken this grass from Miss Nilan, the owner of that land. What are the facts? Miss Nilan is a middle-aged lady of about fifty-five years living on about fifty acres of land, her only means of living. A number of young gentlemen put the Republican flag over that land and took it from her, and knocked her walls. I know the case, as I happen to come from the district. They took that land from her, the only way she had of living, and this gentleman, Broderick, who is a shopkeeper in the town of Gort, and who is worse than the men who went in and took the land, terrorised the woman into allowing him the grass of a cow for one year for 5s. That is the sort of respectable robber I want to get at.
Is he a farmer's son.
He might be. He is a shopkeeper. I am not exempting the farmers from this. We have a similar case in Clare. We have a number of young men getting themselves together and calling themselves the something or other society. In one estate they seized two thousand acres of land from farmers, and they set it to other farmers and shopkeepers. We have arrested these farmers and shopkeepers, and it will give me particular pleasure to see the respectable farmers and the respectable shopkeepers doing six months hard at least.
What about selling the cattle?
We cannot get the cattle, unfortunately. We have taken Deputy Davin's tip; we have arrested the men. Some of the shopkeepers— well-off shopkeepers—who took the grazing were publicans, and when their houses were searched they were found full of poteen.
Did you sell their property?
These people were making hay while the sun shone. I do not know how advocacy of their cause can benefit law or liberty or any worthy social ideal. These are the people who should be made to suffer, and they will be made to suffer in the only way they understand, in their breeches pockets.
The Dáil adjourned at 7.25 till 3 o'clock, Friday March 2nd.