On this Bill there seems to be a general concensus of opinion in the Dáil that as far as possible the operation of the Bill should be limited to offences against public morality of a sexual kind, but it is not at all clear I submit that the Bill contains any such limitation. We must remember that in this regard it is not the intentions of anybody that counts but the words of the Bill. The Bill deals with publications which are of an indecent and obscene nature or which offend against public morality. I think these are the words of the Bill and the word "indecent" is specifically defined in the Bill to mean anything which incites to sexual immorality or otherwise to corrupt or deprave. I think it is perfectly clear, on the wording of the Bill that any publication whether it be a book or a report of a speech or a newspaper which tends to corrupt or deprave in a sexual way or in any other way comes within the scope of the Bill. The Minister has expressed his readiness, in deference to suggestions made by Deputies of all Parties, to meet that point in Committee by accepting amendments specifically designed to limit the scope of the Bill to offences against public morality of a sexual kind. Deputy Tierney made the point that if there was to be a censorship of books at all that censorship should be limited in the most stringent and specific way. I entirely agree for two reasons. One, I believe, that any censorship of books will only mean a double circulation for these books in this country. I believe having regard to our circumstances, our proximity to a neighbouring country, that is certain to happen, and I think it will be extremely difficult to get anyone in this country fit to censor books. For these two reasons I agree that if there is to be a censorship of books—I think Deputy Thrift made a distinction between books and books advocating say, birth control. I am dealing with the first— then I entirely agree that it should be a censorship which is limited in the most stringent and most specific way. Having said all that I want to say and it seems to be necessary to say it that there are other forms of public morality apart altogether from public morality of a sexual kind. I listened to this debate very carefully. We were all very virtuous and anxious to make the other fellow virtuous, and I presume having finished the debate, having made honest men of ourselves so to speak, we will revert and begin to discuss nice little subtleties whether commandeering is a proper word for robbery or theft, and I suppose the next time we are taking an oath we will call it an empty formula and push the Bible two feet away, and the next time under certain conditions it may be the proper course to embezzle the money lent. All these are questions of public morality and as the Bill stands at present all these come within the scope of the Bill.
ORDERS OF THE DAY. - CENSORSHIP OF PUBLICATIONS BILL, 1928—SECOND STAGE (RESUMED).
Mr. O'CONNELL
What about election promises that were not carried out?
Mr. HOGAN
I think that is not a relevant matter.
What about Malachi Muldoon?
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thine enemy.
Mr. HOGAN
I quite agree. If there are any questions Deputies on the opposite benches are anxious to discuss I am always ready. I do not think they are. The trouble is we cannot discuss concrete cases in this Bill, but I assure Deputies on the opposite benches that I will take every opportunity of discussing them. I am quite clear that Thomas or Pat Murphy, who lives anywhere between Donegal and Cork, is not likely to read either Balzac or Aristophanes even in translation, but unfortunately he is likely to read the publications where those moralities I have just mentioned are expounded, and unfortunately he understands them and all the suggestions and innuendoes and implications of those statements. I am anxious to limit this Bill as much as possible, for this reason only, that I think the Censorship Bill should be limited as much as possible. The more it is limited the better. While I am anxious to limit this Bill as much as possible, I want to say it is my settled opinion that there has been more harm done during the last four or five years by the sort of moral poison I have mentioned than will be done by all the pornographic literature that will come from France or England within a hundred years.
They claim full credit for it.
This Bill has been now very fully debated in this Chamber. A great number of the speeches which were made were, and of necessity had to be, speeches dealing with points which possibly could be better dealt with in Committee. That arose from the nature of the Bill, because the Bill in its nature is one upon which practically everybody in the House is agreed in principle. I am glad to say that none of the storm, I think largely the artificial storm, which has been blowing outside this House has penetrated into it and disturbed the atmosphere of this debate. The Bill has been carefully, calmly and earnestly discussed by practically every speaker. The opposition to the Bill has been very trifling. The only person who expressed fairly strong opposition to it was Deputy Little. Deputy Little is of the opinion that the whole of this question is a police question and can be dealt with under the ordinary law.
On a point of personal explanation, I started out by saying that I supported the principle of the Bill. I said there was a considerable amount of matter dealt with in the Bill which might have been dealt with in the ordinary way by the police.
Of course I accept what the Deputy says, but the Deputy conveyed to my mind that this was a Bill which would not be necessary at all if ordinary police duties were carried out efficiently. The report upon which this Bill has been founded is a report which lays it down very clearly, after hearing all the evidence, that prosecution is not the proper method of dealing with the class of literature with which we have to deal, that prevention is the proper method to be adopted. I think the censorship of publications is the only way in which we can effectively deal with this class of literature. In that finding of the Committee I am completely and entirely in agreement.
I may here say that Deputy O'Connell, in his opening statement, drew attention to the fact that in my opening speech I had not alluded at all to the work of the Committee or to the nature of its report. My reason for not making mention of the Committee and of the good work which it had done was that the recommendations of the Committee had been canvassed for many months in the newspapers. This Bill had also been canvassed for many months in the newspapers. The most careful comparisons had been made between the two, and the points of similarity and the trifling points of dissimilarity between the Bill and the Report had been carefully investigated and had been fully pointed out to the public. It, therefore, did seem to me that I would be rather unnecessarily taking up the time of the House if I went over that matter again. But I think that the Committee may take it that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, and I do not think that a better compliment can be paid to any Committee than that their recommendations should, in fact, be taken up and acted upon. That, after all, is the test and not lip-words of praise which sometimes are sincere and other times are not sincere. The real tribute I think that the Government can pay to the Committee set up is to act upon its recommendations, and that praise we are giving to this particular Committee. Deputy Tierney and my colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, are both of the opinion that a censorship of books is rather a dangerous thing to set up. I cannot myself agree in that view. I cannot agree with my colleague that Balzac or writers of that kind are the ones that will be reported to this Committee or dealt with by this Committee, though I do entirely agree that if reported and dealt with a great deal of Balzac might be found very objectionable. But Balzac is not read in this country at all, and censoring of it would not be altogether necessary. It is not really foreign classics that we are dealing with in this Bill at all. What we are dealing with are cheap editions of objectionable books. There are these cheap editions of these objectionable books, and I believe that these books are doing considerable harm. That is the class of books that we are aiming at suppressing.
Will the Minister accept amendments to that effect?
I will consider whatever amendment the Deputy puts forward.
Surely the Minister does not mean that he only intends to suppress cheap editions of such books.
I did not say that. I mean things that are doing harm in this country, and cheap editions of objectionable books are doing harm. I say there are plenty of those. I am not at all in agreement with the view that no books circulated in this country are doing substantial harm.
No limit is to be put on the wealthy classes. They can have every book they like.
The Deputy has a very great interest in the wealthy classes. I am very glad that the Deputy is coming forward to look after the morality of the wealthy classes.
I would like to point out to the Minister that it is the wealthy classes and not the masses that are reading these books.
The Deputy has great experience of the wealthy classes, I suppose. The Deputy has made a very close and careful study of all their vices and probably he knows the harm—he has read Balzac Aristophanes and these other people, and is in a position to declare that the morals of the wealthy classes in this country may suffer from the perusal of these works. The principal objections which were made to this Bill also included the objection which was made by Sir James Craig and which dealt with books of a medical nature. These scientific medical works are in no danger under this Bill, because I cannot understand that any board of censors would consider that a medical book written purely for medical readers could be considered as being indecent or obscene. Deputy Sir James Craig, however, dealt with the question of advertisements dealing with venereal diseases and their cures, and wanted to know if medical journals containing advertisements of this nature would be prohibited. They would not, because the Venereal Diseases Act of 1917, which is not touched at all by this legislation makes a special exemption in sub-section (2) of Section 2 of advertisements dealing with cures of this disease in any publication sent openly to duly qualified medical practitioners and to wholesale or retail chemists for the purpose of their business.
I come on now to deal with the two main objections which Deputy Ruttledge brought against this Bill as it stands. In the first place, Deputy Ruttledge is in agreement with the Minister for Agriculture in the inter pretation of this Bill. I am afraid the I still remain completely unconvinced I stated what I believe is an ordinary canon of legal interpretation in my opening statement, and I now fortify myself by a very pithy statement which I have taken from a judgment of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Campbell, in the case of the King v. Edmundson. "I accede," he says, "to the principle laid down in all the cases which have been cited. Where there are general words following particular and specific words, the general words must be confined to things of the same kind as those specified." If public morality in this Bill means only sexual morality, as I submit it does mean, it will be perfectly unnecessary to have the earlier part of the section at all. If this Bill becomes law, worded exactly as it is worded now, it would, in my opinion, deal only with cases of sexual morality. Otherwise it would have been quite unnecessary to put in the earlier words and it would have been quite sufficient to confine the drafting of it to any publication contrary to public morality. If it meant public morality in the very wide sense of the term, the earlier words in the section would have been perfectly unnecessary, mere verbiage.
Will the Minister state the necessity for having in the Bill that phrase which deals with public morality?
I think I put it before the House already. The reason of having it in is that every class of literature of that nature which is sexually immoral would be taken in; that the net would be sufficiently wide and sufficiently closely knit; that no objectionable book could get out through any one of its meshes. To stop with simple words might leave a loophole for the escape of some objectionable book and that is the reason why I wished to have this section wide. As a matter of fact I stated, I think, as clearly as I could that it was my intention to bring the wording of this section into line with the thought of the House and also into line with the mode of expression more familiar to the ordinary man in the street. I stated:—"This Bill deals solely with questions of sexual morality or sexual preversion. It has been pointed out to me that this board of censors will not be a board constituted of lawyers, and that they might put their own interpretation upon the section and might give it a wider interpretation than the interpretation which I have now set upon it and which I am satisfied is the correct interpretation. Personally I would not be very much afraid of that, because if they had difficulties about interpretation I fancy they would go to the trouble of getting legal opinion upon the matter, but as far as I am concerned if the wording of that section is difficult and complicated to the ordinary layman I am ready to accept in Committee an amendment which would show to the layman that this Bill is confined to what, in fact, it is confined, matters of sexual immorality or things connected therewith." That, when I gave utterance to it, was clearly expressed, and reading it now again it seems to me to be unambiguous in its terms.
I frankly could not follow the fears expressed by Deputy Ruttledge in that portion of his speech. Deputy Ruttledge raised one other objection upon which he laid some little stress. That is, the number of persons who should constitute the Board of Censors. The suggestion in the Bill is a board of five censors and Deputy Ruttledge put forward the suggestion that the board should consist of nine censors. There is nothing which goes to the principle of the Bill in the actual number of censors who may be appointed. That is, so to speak, a detail. There is nothing sacred or unalterable in the number five. The question which we have to consider is whether it is more likely that five or nine satisfactory persons can be more easily found. Personally, I am still of the opinion that five is a better number than nine. The argument which was the main ground upon which Deputy Ruttledge based his adherence to the number nine is an argument, I must admit, which does not appeal to me at all. It was an argument that you could have different religions, different classes, different interests, I think were his words—in this country better represented if you had a board of nine rather than if you had a board of five censors. For my part, when I come to think of what the work of a board of censors will be, I do not consider that the work they will have to perform is a work which will be well performed by men chosen because they were representing different interests. After all, the real interest of the whole country in this matter is one. I cannot hold that when you are checking indecency and immorality in books or papers or pictures that one section or one class in this country is more interested in it than any other.
Deputy Thrift in his speech pointed out, and I hardly think it was necessary for him to point it out, that the Protestant section of this community is just as much interested in having clean literature in the hands of their children and their children brought up clean-living and clean-thinking people as any other section. I do not think that you will get a happy board if you are going to choose one person from this religion, another person from that religion, another person representing an interest like booksellers, another representing an interest like stationers, and possibly somebody representing an interest like the people who think that nothing can ever be immoral in art and that anything which is artistic must be allowed into the country, added on as a dead weight to retard the efforts of all the others. I do not think working out on principles such as that you will get substantially a good board. What you want are five men who will give a considerable amount of time to this work, men who will be level-headed men, chosen because they are level-headed men, and capable judges of books. I admit that is one of the difficulties in the Bill and, though I believe they can be found, as I already stated it will be a position which, especially in the beginning, will make very considerable demands upon the time of those censors, and it will be easier to get five men than nine men. To begin with, it will be naturally easier to get five. You will begin with your best and, naturally, they will work down to be weaker and weaker. Also, it will be, on the whole, easier to get five men willing to give up their time to this work than it will be to get nine. It is a matter simply of considering how you can get the best board of censors.
Deputy Ruttledge also made a suggestion about the interpretation of the word "book." As far as I gather, Deputy Ruttledge's suggestion merely means that he is in agreement with what I said a little earlier in the debate, that a book should only be condemned if it is ex-professo bad and not if it is obiter bad. That it should not be condemned if there is one small portion of it bad. I think that is obviously the rule which every board of censors would have to carry out. Deputy de Valera followed in a very petulant speech entirely upon the same lines as Deputy Ruttledge. He repeated, though in quite a different tone, all the arguments which Deputy Ruttledge had put forward. I will make no further allusion to Deputy de Valera's speech except to say this: that if Deputy de Valera wishes to put forward amendments to this Bill he is more likely to have those amendments accepted if they do not come in the very supercilious fashion in which Deputy de Valera made his suggestions the other night.
The Minister seems to have learned the "Independent" by heart.
I beg the Deputy's pardon. I did not quite catch the Deputy's remark.
The Minister can go on.
If Deputy de Valera will be kind enough to give this House not merely his conclusion, not merely his statements, "I think,""we considered this matter out,""we came to this conclusion"; but if he will be sufficiently energetic to put his arguments before the House, I think his arguments will be listened to more attentively than his would-be ex-cathedra pronouncements are likely to be. Deputy Flinn and Deputy Brady both suggested extensions of this Bill. I do not think that either suggestion would be practicable for carrying out in the working of the Bill. Deputy Flinn suggested that there should be a licence to keep books. Deputy Brady suggested that the lending of books should be equally prohibited with the keeping of them for sale or distribution. I do not think that either of those suggestions could be very effectively carried out. It would be impossible to make raids from house to house, especially in every house in the Saorstát—to go into them and examine what books are in this house and that house and to see if there are any objectionable books there. It would be impossible also to find out who are lending books and who are not lending them. The law in that respect would be virtually a dead letter.
A great deal, as I have said, of the points which have been put forward in the course of this Second Reading debate are points which can be more carefully considered on the Committee Stage of this Bill. One thing, however, I think, emerges from this debate, and that is a recognition by this House that this is an important question, a recognition by this House that it is a difficult question, and a recognition by this House that because it is a difficult question it must not be shirked. That it is our duty in the present state of the country to produce a Bill which will, without going too far, at the same time go far enough to check this very real and admitted evil. There has been no demand for anything like the extravagant censorship which it has been suggested outside would be set up. I have read articles dealing with myself in somewhat flattering terms—articles which said I could be trusted, but that God alone knows what sort of a person would come after me. I do not know whether those were meant as flattering articles or sops to Cerebus. Upon that question I will not now offer any opinion. But I think it must be plain to anybody who reads the report of this debate in this House that there has been nowhere from any part of the House any demand for anything except a reasonably sensible censorship.
Deputy Lemass put it very concisely when he said: "In a Censorship Bill it is always much easier to go too far than not to go far enough." That expresses the general opinion and view of the House. Where or from what part of the House those terrible successors of mine are to spring from—those successors who are going to make this Bill what on its face it is not and what by nothing approaching honest or honourable administration it can be turned into a weapon of religions oppression—I do not know. I will ask the House to pass the Second Reading of this Bill as a Bill calculated not to oppress any section of this community, but a Bill calculated to take away from young and inexperienced readers of this country the temptation which might lead them into evil.
What date is proposed for the Committee Stage?
I propose to fix it for the 21st November. There has been a general request for time in order to put in amendments.
Committee Stage fixed for 21st November.