The Minister for Agriculture told us that he is going to prove the connection between this Party and the murder gang. He proceeded to give us quotations from papers and from articles written by people in the "Nation."
Private Business. - Juries (Protection) Bill, 1929—Second Stage (Resumed).
resumed the Chair.
But the Minister failed hopelessly to do what he set out to do: that is, to prove a connection between this Party and the people responsible for the shootings. I propose to show a connection between some of the Ministers opposite and the gunmen of the present day, as they are called. I think, if I can prove first of all, that a certain Minister at present in the Government urged by every means in his power that all the men of this country should arm themselves, and, secondly, if he deliberately encouraged them to shoot to kill, and thirdly if he deliberately encouraged them to get away with the killing by dumping their arms, then I will have proved my case. I think I can prove the first point by giving the House a quotation from "Irish Freedom," of December, 1913.
That is a long time ago.
Not quite so long ago as some of the quotations given by Deputy O'Sullivan and others. The Minister for Finance, writing an article on "Arms and Drill," told the young men of the country: "There is no power in politics like the armed man. He is the final arbiter. When the poets have sung and the orators declaimed, when the politicians have planned and the kings taken counsel, the man with the bayonet shall make law."
It was worth hearing that, but what is its relevancy?
I do not think, sir, you were in the Chair when the Minister for Agriculture was speaking, but he developed his argument on those lines and challenged us to answer certain arguments that he put forward. Then, as he usually does, evidently thinking so much of his own speech, having made it, he departed and I, sir, with your permission, would like to follow on his arguments.
But how is this an answer to the Minister? I did not hear the Minister, of course, but how is this an answer to whatever he did say?
The Minister set out to prove that there was a connection between this Party and the people who were shooting.
At the moment?
Yes, and he proceeded to give quotations from various papers.
Current papers, I take it?
Current papers. I want to prove that if there are armed men in the country there is one man in this House more responsible than any other, and if you permit me to read the quotations I think I can prove that there is one man responsible more than any man in this House for the armed men in the country at the present day.
I am afraid I could not rule that as relevant. Is not the position this, that the Deputy wants to take us back to the organisation of the Irish National Volunteers?
No. I want to take you back to the men who are in the country at the present day.
That would not be taking me back: that would be keeping me just where I want to be, that is, in the present day I think that the Deputy cannot go into the history of the Irish Volunteers for the purpose of proving who organised them, and what the resulting responsibility was. That is a subject of very great magnitude that is not relevant to this Bill.
Is the Deputy entitled to prove that some members of the Executive Council may be responsible for the situation which exists in the country to-day?
I think not —absolutely not. The vista of debate that opens out is vast and limitless.
We have before us at the present time a Bill to punish the armed men. Would it not be far more just for us to get at the man who is responsible for the armed men? I want to fix the blame definitely on the present Minister for Finance, and I think I can do so if you give me permission to read the quotations that I have.
The Deputy must bring us nearer home than 1913, and take periodicals of more recent date than "Irish Freedom."
I am sorry that other speakers got a certain amount of liberty while you, sir, were out of the Chair. Perhaps I was unfortunate in this, that I stood up at the moment that you came back.
I do not accept for a moment the view of the Deputy that more latitude is given when I am out of the Chair than when I am in it. I have heard the reverse view also put very strongly. The Deputy will get every liberty possible if he confines himself to the subject of this Bill. But I think he will himself realise that although I did allow him to quote one excellent piece of English——
That was only the first one.
I know it was not all. I allowed the Deputy to quote one, but I think he will realise that the area of quotations is very large and the number of persons it would be possible to quote very great. That could not be done. It would carry us far away from this Bill—absolutely away from it.
The whole point that I had to make was that we were accused of being connected in some mysterious way or another with these armed men. The Minister for Agriculture deliberately made that statement. He made it in a very eloquent fashion, and having set out to prove it, he merely gave a few quotations from some papers and then proved nothing. My whole case is, that if there are armed men in the country those armed men were brought into existence by certain articles that were written previously, and that there is a continuity between those articles and the armed men that we have in the country at the present day. However, if I am not allowed to give the quotations perhaps I will be allowed to prove the three points that I set out to prove.
The Deputy will have to prove some connection between the individuals and the people at the moment. As I understand the Deputy's rendering of the Minister's speech, it is to prove a connection between another Party and the present criminals in arms.
It is the latter that I am trying to prove: a connection between his Party and the present armed men.
A present-day connection must be proved. Is the Deputy not continuing?
No, it knocks the whole argument. If I am not allowed to rebut the Minister in that way there is nothing for me only to sit down.
I hope I will not attempt anything so nonsensical as to connect somebody who had something to do with the starting of the Volunteers sixteen years ago with the armed men of to-day. I had not the pleasure of listening to the Minister for Agriculture, and I do not know what attempt he made to connect the chief Opposition Party with the armed men of to-day. I feel certain that if he did try to make a connection that it had relation to to-day and not to sixteen years ago. I think it is entirely beside the point to make a case against the men who were in the organisation of Volunteers. The opponents of the measure here, as Deputy O'Higgins said last night, try to make a case for the man on trial, be he guilty or innocent. We would all like to make that case, but there is a man entitled to consideration before the person on trial, and that is the man who is called in from his business or ordinary calling to serve on a jury for the trial of a case. We have not heard from the chief Opposition members any genuine expression of regret, at least as far as I have heard, of the treatment of jurymen in Dublin. No suggestion has been made by that Opposition Party that would offer security to those people. When a man is taken from his ordinary calling and brought into court to deliver a verdict, he is bound by his oath, and he calls upon his Creator to witness the truth of his verdict. I believe the Government that calls on a man to perform that duty has an obligation towards him to see that he is protected and that he will not suffer for any verdict he brings in.
Deputy de Valera said yesterday that the existing law was sufficient for his protection. I wonder has Deputy de Valera been living in the moon, or has he been living in Dublin city, or has he been viewing those things through smoked glasses which give whatever hue he wants? Not only did Deputy de Valera say that, but to the ordinary man listening to his speech there ran through it an undercurrent, if I may say so, of approval of the treatment jurors were receiving. Has the ordinary law given sufficient protection to jurors? One juryman was shot at and wounded and a man who gave evidence was murdered. Of what use was the ordinary law to these people, and is it because they were only jurymen that they should not get protection? If these people happened to be prominent politicians they would probably get the sympathy of Deputy de Valera, but is it because they are ordinary citizens called in from their every day work to do this duty that they are not entitled to protection? Refusal to provide protection is to my mind a condonation of the crime of shooting down these people. I cannot see anything else to it. If the Government of the day does not give these people protection, if the members of this House will not give them protection, then refusal to do so is nothing less than a condonation of the crime of shooting these jurymen.
I am afraid it could be read into Deputy de Valera's speech that not alone was the existing law good enough for the protection of these people, but that the treatment they were getting was also good enough for them. I am not prepared to support the Bill before the House as a permanent measure, and I will not do it. I am prepared, as Deputy Anthony said he was last night, to support any measure which will give protection to the jurymen, even to the extent of the abandonment of the jury system altogether for a time, but I am not prepared to support a measure that will hand down to posterity an Act which is nothing more or less than a prostitution of the jury system. I cannot imagine the application of this Act under normal, peaceful conditions in the country, and I would like to hear from the Minister for Justice if he is satisfied that in normal times this Juries Act would give satisfaction. Personally, I cannot see how in normal peace times there would be any commonsense in calling it a jury system, where the accused person was tried by unknown people. I have very little faith in the Bill. I am afraid it will not achieve its object, but the Government is obliged to protect the jurymen. It is obliged to put down crime, and if the Government thinks that this Bill is sufficient to meet the needs of the day, very well, I am prepared to support it as an emergency measure, but not otherwise.
The Deputy used the phrase "prostitution of the jury system." Yet he says he is prepared to support the Bill.
As a temporary measure. If the Government say that this is our best effort to protect the jurymen, then, as an emergency measure, I am prepared to support it.
Temporary prostitution.
Yes, if it fills the bill. Deputy Anthony last evening gave us to understand he was going to vote against the Second Reading of the Bill, but that he would attempt to amend it on Committee. What guarantee has Deputy Anthony that it will ever reach Committee? Personally, I have none. I think it would be better if Deputy Anthony and other people who feel as he does would appeal to the Minister to have this as an emergency measure, and an emergency measure only, so that we can give it the support the Government thinks it ought to get and which one would like to give it for the sake of the people whom it seeks to protect.
I think we have listened to a very interesting speech, and a very interesting revelation of a Deputy's mentality when he, a man apparently who is considered fitted by a certain section of citizens in the country to represent them, is prepared, temporarily even, to support a measure which he himself describes as a prostitution of the jury system. I am not going to repeat the phrase. I think the fact that it has been said once in this House ought to suffice for this Bill. It ought also to suffice for the constituents of any Deputy who is going to support such a measure as this, even temporarily. But it is not going to be a temporary measure: according to the Minister who introduced it, it is not going to be "a mere temporary expedient, but a permanent measure." Those are the Minister's own words—"not a mere temporary expedient, but a permanent measure," and I would ask the Deputy, who, I presume, will go into the Division Lobby to support this as a temporary measure, to go into that Lobby realising that it is not, in the words of the Minister, "a mere temporary expedient, but a permanent measure."
I will take my own responsibility.
That is the Minister's contribution to the liberty of the subject under a Constitution which we have been told is a free Constitution. I would like the Deputy to understand also that this measure does not apply only to those to whom Deputy Tierney, I think, referred as "extraordinary criminals." It applies to every single citizen of this State who may be charged, rightly or wrongly, with an offence against the laws of this State. It does not apply only to those who may be thought to be responsible for the recent attacks upon jurors; it applies to every single citizen, not to that little isolated group, but to the 2,900,000 people who live under this Constitution. That is the gravamen of this Bill, and that is the gravamen of the offence which the Minister and the Executive Council are committing against the liberties of this people. They are making an excuse of what is, in my opinion, a mere sporadic outburst, which already, I believe, those who are guilty of have repented, deliberately to destroy what is written in the Constitution as one of the fundamental liberties of the people.
I condemn, and wholeheartedly condemn, the attacks upon the jurors. I condemn any man who takes the life of another without due and proper trial in open court before a jury of that man's countrymen. And because I do condemn it and because I reprobate it utterly, I am absolutely and bitterly opposed to this Bill. I say that this is a remedy which is bound to fail, that it is a Bill which is not justified in the excuse which has been made here for its introduction. No honest, right-thinking man in the country condones, in any way, the attacks upon the jurors. No significant section of the people support those who were engaged in them, and therefore the attacks upon the jurors ought not to be made the excuse for interfering with the rights of the vast majority of the citizens. If a mad dog were to run amok I do not think that any person would contend that it would be a proper remedy for that situation that the citizens as a whole should be maimed. Yet that is what the Minister who introduced this Bill proposes to do.
No more than the other dog.
This is not muzzling any dog. This measure relates to the trial of certain prisoners, to men who are possibly being apprehended on suspicion and who, if they are brought to trial, must be brought to trial on evidence. I have not yet heard that those who are responsible for the attacks upon the jurors have been apprehended. This Bill does not propose to make it easier to apprehend or to detect those persons. It proposes to make it easier for the Executive to secure the conviction not only of those prisoners, ordinary or extraordinary, who offend against laws which have a political complexion, but of those who offend against laws which have a purely ethical justification. Irrespective of whatever class of law they offend against, this Bill is designed to make it easier for the Executive to secure the conviction of those people whom they wish to arraign before a judge and a packed jury.
The President has told the people of the world of the wonderful progress which we are making under his régime. This Bill is the finest example of that progress which could possibly be produced. Like a crab, it progresses backwards. It goes back, not merely to the age of Queen Anne but, in the words of the Minister for Justice himself, to the golden age of Justinian when jurors were swept away.
In introducing the Bill the Minister told us that it proposed to repeal a Statute passed about 1854, that it proposed, in his own words, to make the jury panel a confidential official document. Why should the Minister hold that out to the Dáil as a desirable thing? Surely if men are to be tried as they ought to be tried, in open court, before the eyes of the people, the people are entitled to know, apart altogether from the rights of the prisoner in the matter, the names of those who will constitute the jury which will deliver the verdict. It has been held that the publicity given to the jury panel is a very vital and a very important safeguard for the prisoner. The Minister for Justice himself admitted that though the right was only enjoyed in a certain limited way in England, it was yielded to the prisoner in the most important cases and in the most important issues upon which a citizen can be brought to trial. In England, though it may be withheld in a case of murder, though it may be withheld in other cases where a man is charged with crimes of dishonesty, in cases which have a political complexion, where an issue is to be tried out between a citizen on the one and and the Executive on the other, the right of scrutinising the jury panel is yielded freely to the prisoner. The Minister admitted that in cases of treason and misprision of treason, in these vitally important cases, the gravest crimes known to the English law, the prisoner is entitled to secure the publication of the jury panel.
But not under the Constitution.
But in case of a like kind in this country the only justification which the Minister has for introducing this Bill is that here, where it is more important, possibly, than in England, in order that the confidence of all men may be established in the Executive and in the Judiciary, in order that those who have been divided most widely by bitter political differences may be taught and made to feel that they will secure justice in the courts of this country, the right which is yielded freely in England is, by this Bill, to be denied to its citizens.
Deputy O'Higgins accused us of speaking in this debate as though the only people in this country who matter were the prisoners.
It looks like it.
That is not an accurate representation of our attitude. There are other things to be considered. We say that not only do the prisoners matter, but other things matter. The due discharge of justice, the administration and the preservation of the law also matter. But above and over all, the great thing that matters is that justice should be done and that a man should be fairly and openly tried, that he should know beforehand those before whom he will be arraigned, that he may have an opportunity of scrutinising the panel of jurors, that that panel may not be constituted without his knowledge in such a way that there may be included upon it persons, possibly unknown to him, who, because of some political, business or family feud, some difference of religion or of political principle, may be so prejudiced that they may not be able to yield him a fair trial. Men's minds are often so warped that even by the exercise of their will they are unable to adjudicate fairly on some issues. Therefore it is of the utmost importance that the fullest publicity should be given to the jury panel, so that——
——they should be shot.
That is an excellent exemplification of the attitude of the Minister and of the Minister's supporters in this matter—if a man differs from them they believe he should be shot. A number of them have shot men that have differed from them, without even the appearance of the mock trial that is going to be afforded under this Bill. The point I was making was this, that it was quite possible that there would be included on a jury panel the names of people unknown to the accused, who, because of some political or religious difference or other affiliation of theirs would not be capable of doing justice between him and the State. There are in this country of ours, unfortunately, two secret organisations. One, I believe, is established on a definitely religious basis; the other is established on at least a non-sectarian basis. Supposing the Grand Panjandrum of one of these organisations, for some reason or other, has incurred the enmity of the Executive of this State, and they decide to bring him to trial, how better could they secure his conviction than by seeing that the jury panel was constituted of members of the rival secret organisation? The person brought to trial might be utterly unaware that the members of the jury panel were members of the rival organisation. None of them would be known to him either by name or by sight, and yet they certainly would be, I believe, incapable of giving him a fair trial under certain circumstances. It possibly would depend upon the charge in the indictment, but, if the jury panel were published, it would be then open to the accused's friends, with their wider knowledge of men, to come and point out the names of men on that jury panel who, because of their known associations, would be incapable of giving him that fair trial, and they would put him in a position to object in open court to the inclusion of such men in the jury empanelled to try him.
I would like to point out that not only is the panel to be a confidential document, but the very identities of the jurymen are to be lost. Their names are to be kept secret, divulged to no independent man, not even to the prisoner; they are to be known only to those officials of the Executive who are charged with the conduct of the trial and prosecution. Every precaution is to be taken to ensure that that secrecy is preserved. The jury is to be summoned by stealth—summoned by post. The jurors are to notify their attendance by stealth. Not once are the chosen agents of the Executive to appear in the light of open day.
Under Section 4 of the Minister's offspring they are to come early in the morning, to whisper their names to a certain functionary of the court, and then they are to depart, no man knowing whence they came, no man knowing whither they are going. No man to challenge whether they are honest citizens or ruffians. You can picture them stealing away, coming to the court early in the morning like members of an Italian conspiracy, or of the Ku Klux Klan and whispering to the officer of the court that the conspiracy is all complete, that the bravadoes are all present and ready so that the trial may now proceed. In what country except this, under what Executive except this, would such an atmosphere of conspiracy be permitted to pollute the courts of justice? Not even when the prisoner is arraigned is he going to know the names of the men who are about to try him. Those names are to be kept secret. Under Section 4 (d) of this Bill we read: "...every person attending the court as a juror shall be called, addressed, and referred to for all purposes in the court solely by the number by which he is distinguished on the panel of jurors from which he is drawn and no such person shall be called, addressed, or referred to in the court by his name, nor shall the address or description of any such person be called or mentioned in the court."
Every precaution is to be taken to ensure that the names of those persons who are empanelled to try the issue between the Executive, on the one hand, and the citizens on the other, will be kept secret from the people of this State. The jury is no longer to be constituted of twelve citizens, but of twelve cyphers— twelve changing and unstable cyphers, of uncertain and unascertainable identity—with no precaution and no safeguard, as Deputy Boland pointed out, to ensure that the same juror, or batch of jurors, who have proved themselves the ready and pliable instruments of the Executive, will not be empanelled over and over again, under varying numbers, to try those prisoners whose conviction the Executive wishes to ensure. It may be said that that is possibly an extravagant construction to put upon the section, but it is quite clear from the Bill that that sort of procedure can take place. This Bill opens the way to that abuse, and once the way is opened a hard-pressed Executive is sure to take advantage of the facility offered for that sort of thing by this Bill. We will have professional jurors springing up—jurors who, because they are ready to do the will of the Executive, will have great influence with the Executive and will be able to operate the channels of patronage, will be able to do good turns for their friends because they are the faithful servitors of the Executive, and though they will not be paid they will be, by reason of the patronage which they control, and of the influence which they exercise, as much professional jurors as if they were receiving a daily stipend.
They will do as they are told until at last the whole jury system, prostituted as Deputy Brennan said by this measure, is brought into disrepute and becomes an abomination in the minds of all honest men. Possibly, that is the position which the Executive Council wishes to bring about with these jurymen No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, and so on ad infinitum. The C.U.R.'s, as they will come to be called—Cosgrave's universal robots of jurymen—mere mechanical voting machines empanelled to ensure, as I said before, that the conviction of an enemy of the Executive Council will inevitably take place. Possibly, that is the consummation to which the Minister for Justice is looking forward, that this system which he is now initiating will become so odious that what happened in what the Minister described as the golden age of Justinian will come about and jurors will be swept away, and that the Minister, who so far has established no claim upon the recollection of posterity, will be remembered by it as the Minister for Justinianism. When the Minister was first nominated to his present place on the Executive the country wondered at this strange and unknown name. We wondered with the rest, and when we came into this House and saw the Minister in his place on the Government Bench, with uncongenial and unaccustomed colleagues, looking as much out of place as an egg shell in mayonnaise, we wondered what had brought him there, but when we heard him speak in this House that wonder was dissolved, because we heard then the true accents of Hamar Greenwood and we knew at once the Minister's justification in the Government. Is his a case of political atavism? This stone-age revival, this last of the Chief Secretaries who has so steeped himself in British coercion Acts that his very soul has become pickled, has been dug up by the Executive.
On a point of order. Is it right, sir, that a Minister who has been elected by this House should be subjected to a personal attack? I submit it is not in order.
I was hoping that Deputy MacEntee was not going to devote the remainder of his speech entirely to the Minister.
I am enjoying it thoroughly. I wish the Deputy would go on.
It is not for the Minister to decide.
The Minister is one of those holy men who believes in flagellation.
Fortunately the Deputy has not a punch. So I am all right.
I was saying that the Minister—the last of the Chief Secretaries—has been dug up by the Executive in order to put in legal form the policy of coercion and oppression which the Executive planned immediately after the election of June, 1927. That election was a writing on the wall for the Executive Council, a writing which became more emphatic in the following election of September, 1927.
What wall?
The walls even of County Dublin.
Dundrum Asylum.
Even written up inside the walls of that asylum you will find "Vote No. 1 for Deputy O'Sullivan"——
Now, about the Bill.
A writing which will become a final notice to quit when again the feeling in rural Ireland in regard to the Acts and legislation of the Executive is tested. But before it becomes too late I would ask members of this House, those of them who because they are not mere political hacks, those of them who were elected as honest citizens to represent honest citizens, those of them who feel that the liberties of Irishmen are as sacred and should be held as high as the liberties of men of any other nationality, that they will not permit the Statute Book even of the Irish Free State, the Statute Book which this Legislature can write, to be disgraced by writing upon it a Bill so destructive of the elementary, fundamental rights of the citizens as this Bill, which has been misnamed the Juries Protection Bill, but is really meant and designed to make easy for the Executive the packing of juries and the securing of partisan verdicts against those who are its political opponents.
Mr. Byrne
It was a very great pleasure to me to hear Deputy MacEntee say he did not condone the attacks upon the jurors in the city. of Dublin. He went on to say that no decent man would condone them. I would point out to Deputy MacEntee that although this sympathy is very welcome in this House, unfortunately it will not give back to the family of Mr. Armstrong the man who has been shot down by the bullet of the assassin. In considering the Bill now before the House, we are faced with two alternatives, either the abolition of trial by jury or the maintenance of the present jury system. It has been generally agreed in this House that trial by jury is the best system of the administration of justice and that, therefore, it should be maintained. But if trial by jury is to remain in this country it is the fundamental duty of this State to protect the jurors who act upon these panels from either the threat of violence or the bullet of the assassin. Jurors, without any pecuniary reward and at great personal loss, perform their duty to the country and their reward is that death is dealt out to them at their homes in the night. I suggest that there is a grave duty upon this State to say that this state of affairs must come to an end.
The citizens of this State, particularly those whom I represent, have been generally and grossly intimidated. Threatening notices have been received. They have been served on people known to be about to act on these juries and the whole object sought to be achieved was the abolition of the system of trial by jury. I need not remind the House of the tragedies which have happened in this State, but what I particularly want to remind the House and the Opposition of is what remedy do they propose. Deputy MacEntee has offered this House sympathy but this House needs something more practical than sympathy. This House wants something that will be a remedy for the existing state of affairs. We have been told that the Bill the Minister has just introduced is a coercion Bill which cannot succeed, that all coercion Bills have failed and that the rights of prisoners must be maintained. I, for one, will not contend for a moment that the rights of every prisoner put before the Bar are not sacred rights. I will not for a moment contend that these rights are not of outstanding importance, but what I would ask Deputy MacEntee and the Opposition is this: do the rights of one prisoner at the bar outweigh the rights of the twelve men empanelled to do justice to the State and the prisoner. What about these twelve men acting there without fee or reward? Are they entitled to no protection? Have they no privileges and does the State owe to these twelve men no obligation? Why did not Deputy MacEntee and those associated with him deal with that aspect of the question?
A challenge has undoubtedly been thrown down to this State. The Minister for Agriculture has made it perfectly clear in this House that a decided challenge has been thrown down to this State, and it is the duty of this State to take this challenge up. The Bill is a very reasonable Bill which every reasonable man should support, a Bill with few faults and a Bill that can easily be amended and which, with the good will of this House, should be very considerably improved. The Bill, we are told, will not remedy the defects it sets out to remedy. There is one thing the Bill will do, and that is, it will render the obtaining of the jury panels in the future a very difficult matter for those gunmen who obtained them so easily in the past. The jury panel in future will be a confidential document, and Deputy MacEntee suggests that this means a sort of KuKlux Klan. Was there ever such absurdity put before a House as arguments of that particular kind? Simply because the names of the jury will not be known to those who shot them down, something secret, something hidden and something mystical exists in that.
One of the members of the Labour Benches told us it was almost a futile proceeding to introduce a Bill containing sections of this kind. He told us that these men will be in open court and that they will be recognised, and that the same action can be taken in the future as has already been taken in the past. I suggest that the difficulties will now be a thousand fold greater to carry out the objects of this secret organisation under this Bill than those existing up to the present moment. The terrorising of jurors by circular, under this Bill, will become an exceedingly difficult and dangerous matter. The names of those actually serving on the jury will be almost impossible to obtain, and unless that information should come from the jury themselves, and I am sure that people, who have the good citizenship to serve upon juries, who have faced the danger that serving upon juries has involved, will not be the people to give away the names of their colleagues who have done their duty to the State.
We are told that this Bill destroys constitutional liberty, the liberty of the subject, whereas in reality, this Bill is an honest attempt not to destroy but to maintain the rights of the citizen against the bullets of the assassin. We will be told here, and we were told here from the Labour Benches, a rather amazing thing, that non-recognition of the court is not a crime. What does non-recognition of the court imply?
Who said that?
Mr. Byrne
The leader of the Labour Party. Non-recognition of the court implies that the courts you have set up to try criminals are a mere travesty and that they have no foundation in fact. When the prisoner says, "I decline to recognise your court," he says in effect "I decline to recognise your law and I refuse to obey your law," and when a man says that, knowing what the consequences are, declining to recognise the just and the right authority of the State to which he owes his duty and allegiance, then I say that man becomes an ordinary criminal, that, as an ordinary criminal, he is entitled to his punishment, and if he is a man he will take that punishment without whining. There can be no doubt that there is a secret conspiracy in existence at the moment which is challenging the very existence of this State, and if those people who constitute these secret bodies intend in future to carry on their nefarious work which they have been successful in carrying on up to the moment, then it is time that this non-recognition of the court should receive the just penalty it ought to receive.
Deputy de Valera told us that if juries followed the proper course they would refuse to serve on such juries and that they would take the consequences. The State in this Bill is determined to afford the amplest protection in its power to those acting upon juries. They have determined that those who interfere with trial by jury must take the consequences and must pay the price. Deputy de Valera further says that there is another way. The jury may take another course. They jury may in verdicts that will show that they have no sympathy with the law and that the people have no sympathy with the law.
What, in plain language, does that mean? In plain language that simply means condonation of perjury. Men serving on a jury take a solemn oath to find a true verdict on the facts of the case presented before them. Deputy de Valera exhorts these jurors—the common, plain citizens of this country—to commit perjury, and for what? To protect the assassin and bring contempt upon the law. I suggest that is a very serious step for the leader of a great Party, for the leader of the official Opposition in this House. I suggest that it is subversive of all law, and I go further and say that these people, who have posed in this House as the champions of the liberties and rights of the people, when they advocate a policy such as that they are advocating the subversion of all individual liberty, and that that can end only in bringing disaster upon themselves and upon the State.
The Public Safety Act is gone. There were many Deputies on these benches who appealed to the Executive to repeal that Act, and when that Act has been removed from the Statute Book the consequence is the shooting of jurymen in this city. If trial by jury goes what will happen ultimately to this country? The Minister has told this House plainly in very quiet and unassuming language that the Executive are prepared to take further steps if necessary if this Bill fails. This Bill is an honest, reasonable and fair attempt to maintain the existing law. If this Bill should fail in its operation, it will be a really serious thing—it will be a disastrous thing for this country.
What is the alternative?
Mr. Byrne
You have one alternative. We have removed one Public Safety Act, and I am sure it will not be in the interests of the country if it should be necessary to have that Act renewed again. There are many alternatives. We have been told, with the usual want of logic, that this is a Bill for all time. Deputy Little knows something about the law. Perhaps he will tell us what Bill ever lasted for all time. He knows as well as I do that Bills that were passed with the deliberate object of lasting for all time did not last for all time, and could not last for all time. This Bill has been brought in under very difficult circumstances, to cope with a very difficult situation. We did not expect the Minister to say that the Bill had been introduced for six or twelve months, or whatever particular period may please those on the Opposition Benches.
Deputy MacEntee evidently has very little faith in the coming into power of his Party. He told us that the writing was on the wall—that the writing on the wall after the North City election was more plain and more deeply engraved than before. If that is the case, surely the remedy would lie in the hands of Deputy MacEntee and his Party, by wiping out this Bill in a short period of time when they hope to take up office here. If the liberties of the subjects of this State are to be maintained and the rights of the ordinary citizens preserved, the successful working of this Bill would be one of the finest things that could possibly happen for the upholding and maintenance of these rights, and any reasonable man who opposes this Bill has not the liberty of the subject nor the freedom of the State at heart.
Deputy Derrig said the Minister introduced this Bill on a very flimsy pretext. I do not think that an attempted murder and a murder form a very flimsy pretext. I really think the Minister introduced the Bill in an effort to preserve the system of trial by jury. Every fair-minded man, I think, approves of that system, and, if so, he must approve of some safeguards for jurors, so that when they come into the box and hear the evidence given on oath they may be free to give a verdict in accordance with that evidence. My criticism of this Bill is not that advanced by the Fianna Fáil Party or the Labour Party. My criticism is that I fear that it will not achieve its object. Although Deputy Byrne has said it may make it a thousand-fold more difficult for certain organisations to get at jurors' names and such things, I think it may have the effect of increasing their efforts a thousand-fold. Moreover, I have a very high opinion of the Dublin citizen, but I do not think it is impossible that one out of twelve jurors may divulge outside how the other eleven voted.
Mr. Byrne
Why should he?
Mr. Murphy
I say that I do not think it is impossible. Therefore, while I intend to vote for the Bill, I do not believe that it will achieve the object for which it is intended. I am afraid, from what the Minister for Justice said the other night, when he told us that he had other measures up his sleeve, that he also thinks it will not be a success.
Deputy Pádraig Hogan (Clare), I think, was quite correct when he suggested that Deputy Byrne had a large number of briefs in his locker. We have just seen the Deputy let the cat out of the bag, when he suggested that the alternative to the failure of this Bill was the re-enactment of the Public Safety Act. I am not sure that the Minister, when he is replying, will confirm that statement.
Mr. Byrne
Will Deputy Davin do me justice? I never made any such suggestion. Deputy Davin asked what alternative there was to the Bill, and I replied that there were many—that we have had an alternative one, but do not want it back.
I take it the Minister is a greater authority on the question of an alternative than Deputy Byrne, and I accept from Deputy Byrne what he has now stated in explanation of that part of his speech. Personally, I think that this Bill is more likely to frighten the ordinary fearless juror than to help him to do his duty more fearlessly in the future than in the past. I quite agree with Deputy Murphy that the ordinary Dublin juryman is not inclined to be frightened or bullied into decisions in ordinary criminal cases. I do not think that putting a number or a ticket upon the tail of the coat of a juryman, instead of allowing his face to identify him, is going to make that juryman any more inclined to do his duty. In opposing this Bill as it stands I want to say quite definitely and deliberately that I disassociate myself entirely from certain statements made by Deputy de Valera. Deputy de Valera in his speech yesterday is reported to have said: "If jurors to-day do not bring in verdicts to suit the view of the Executive, the lesson the Executive was to learn from that was that there was grave need for bringing the law and the aspirations of the people into accord." I never heard that it was the duty of a juryman in trying an ordinary criminal case, or a case of a semi-political or a political nature, to decide for himself whether the law was in accord with the aspirations of the people. I prefer to think, and I believe I am right in thinking, that it is the duty of the jurymen on oath to decide on the facts of the case as stated in the court. I do not think there is any justification for that particular statement, and I would go into the Lobby against Deputy de Valera if that were the one reason on which he relied for opposing this Bill.
This Bill is going to picture this country as being in a condition to-day in which I think it is not.
We have heard in this House this evening two speeches delivered from the Government Benches, one by Deputy Tierney and the other by the Minister for Agriculture, giving different points of view as to the extent to which this conspiracy exists. Deputy Tierney said in his opinion it was only a method of advertising on the part of the conspirators to proclaim their existence. The Minister for Agriculture said it was a cowardly and a well organised attempt to smash the system of trial by jury. I am inclined to agree, as the result of inquiries I have made, that there is a conspiracy to do away with trial by jury and to that extent every Deputy who feels he is responsible to the people must feel—if he wants to protect the trial by jury system—he must protect the jurors if he is prepared to do his duty. That I am prepared to do but I think that this is not the right way to do it. We read, and others have read, and I think the President also has read the report in the "Daily Express" of the conditions in this country some weeks ago. The President did not take any steps to contradict the report as to conditions in this country as presented by Mr. Ketcham to the readers of the "Daily Express." But when he found that that picture had been repainted in papers that appeared in America and when he discovered— and he was right in thinking so— that it was likely to prejudice this country in the eyes of America he very soon sent a message to the American Press to correct the wrong impression that Mr. Ketcham's picture had given to the English public through the columns of the "Daily Express."
The President said that this country was quite normal. But he gave a different impression, if I have read his American Press interview correctly, from the impression given by the Minister for Agriculture this afternoon. If there were thirty or forty young men associated with a number of women making an attempt as they are doing to smash up trial by jury in this country that does not show that there is anything radically wrong with the condition of the country as a whole. In every day and generation and in every country you have men who are prepared to go out to smash the law by any methods that will enable them to do so. I do not want to refer to any particular country or to any city in any country but there is more crime committed in one city in America to-day than has been committed in the whole of this country in the last three or four years. That has not any great effect upon the financial or general condition of the United States. We are inclined, unfortunately I think for political purposes, to exaggerate the conditions in this country when it suits us to do so. It should not be done for the purpose of trying to persuade or trying to goad Deputies into voting for a measure of this kind.
The courts and the whole legal machinery in this country, and the system of trial by jury that goes with it, has, in my opinion, the approval of the overwhelming majority of the citizens of this State, and as far as I know from those who support Fianna Fáil, also Deputies such as Deputy Gorry and Deputy P. Boland were supported by people who approve of it. It is, therefore, up to Deputy de Valera, and those who sit with him, to protect jurors who are prepared to do their duty. No case has been made, and no information has been given to the House which would enable ordinary Deputies to vote freely for this measure as it now stands. I am quite in agreement with Deputy Anthony in what he suggested yesterday. I would prefer to see trial by jury suspended for a temporary period and substituted by some other form of trial rather than adopt the system proposed in this Bill as a permanent method. No matter what Deputy Byrne may say, and no matter what number of briefs he can pull out of his pocket, or take from under his desk, if he votes for this measure as a permanent measure, and if he can justify that vote here to-day he will have to justify it here and in the future.
I suggest an alternative to this measure—that is, the setting up of a court of three or four High Court judges for the trial of certain cases, and that a majority decision of these judges on certain types of cases would be effective. Here in this measure we have in Section 6 the right of a High Court judge in the Criminal Court to deal with persons who refuse to plead guilty or not guilty. Sub-section (3) of Section 6 says:
"Whenever a person, charged in the Central Criminal Court or in the Circuit Court with any crime or offence, at any stage of his trial in such Court on such charge by any act or omission displays gross disrespect of the Court or refuses to recognise the Court or refuses to recognise the authority or jurisdiction of the Court, or does any act (other than standing mute or lawfully objecting in due form of law to the jurisdiction of the Court to try him on such charge) which in the opinion of the judge is equivalent to a refusal to recognise the Court or the authority or jurisdiction thereof, or in any other way acts disrespectfully or contumaciously towards the Court, such person shall be guilty of an offence against the Court and the judge shall forthwith sentence him to suffer a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months."
I think if the Government can set up a High Court judge in the Central Criminal Court to decide certain matters the same judge with two others should be given authority and responsibility in peculiar circumstances to try persons and to find them guilty or not guilty on charges preferred against them. That is an alternative to this permanent measure of making a mockery of trial by jury in this country.
With regard to the methods suggested in this Bill of numbering jurors and making them known by numbers rather than by their names, if the people engaged in this conspiracy in this country are as active as we are led to believe, and a small number of them are very active and intelligent, they will find the names of the jurors who are only identified by numbers and they will identify them. There is nothing in this measure to prevent them doing it. I say it is an incentive to these young men and women to be more active in the future to try to break through the words of this measure and to find out and deal with, as they have done in the past, the jurymen who have done their duty conscientiously and faithfully under the terms of their oath. We have, of course, the power in another section of this Bill given to a High Court judge to sentence an individual who refuses to plead or to recognise the court to six months' imprisonment. When that individual comes out there is power given again to arrest him and bring him before the same court and the judge has power to repeat the sentence of six months' imprisonment, and he can repeat that indefinitely if the individual is so disposed to persist in committing the same offence when brought up. There would be no finality under the ridiculous procedure of this Act. It would make a mockery of the whole system of trial by jury which is recognised in this and every other country as a democratic system of trial. Again, I believe the power which is asked for to get a majority of the jury is making for conviction purposes and would make it much easier in the future for the prosecuting counsel or people responsible for instituting the proceedings of packing juries than ever before.
Somebody suggested—I do not say that it was stated—that the prisoner had no rights, and that it is the people prosecuting who have all the rights. It has been discovered in this and every country that people were charged with crimes which, on investigation, were found to be untrue and the prisoners were unanimously acquitted. Prisoners have rights, and they should have the right to see that the juries are not packed against them. I think this provision of imposing a sentence on the finding of a majority of the jury is something to enable the prosecuting counsel, no matter what Government he may be serving, to pack a jury as against the system that was adopted in the past. The Minister for Agriculture laid great stress upon certain paragraphs from unknown writers, anonymous letters or signed letters, which he read from certain so-called, if you like, Republican journals.
There is a misunderstanding in the minds of a very great number of citizens in this country as to what is the real meaning of the word "Republican." It has caused many hours of acrimonious debate in this House, and many disputes and discussions elsewhere, as to whether Deputy Lemass was a better Republican than Peadar O'Donnell, who does not recognise this House, or than President Cosgrave. I wish we could wipe that word altogether out of the Irish dictionary. If we could we would have less trouble in the future as regards the real meaning of patriotism as understood or misunderstood by Irish citizens. Some fellow named Langley sent a document, which was printed in the "Nation," which we are now informed is not the official organ of the Fianna Fáil Party. I take it the "Star" is not the official organ of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. I believe that one of the Ministers who wrote an article in the "Star" wrote another article afterwards in that paper saying that the "Star" had no connection with the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. I am pleased to learn that the "Nation" and the "Star" have no connection with either of these Parties, and to that extent I think the extract read should be treated more lightly than it was treated by the Minister. At any rate, he laid some stress upon certain articles which were printed in the "Nation."
I wonder then if the Minister knows the person who is responsible for writing these articles; and why the gentleman who has written those articles encouraging citizens of this State to murder jurymen is not in gaol? Why is the man who wrote these articles allowed to walk about? The Minister for Agriculture said "We know them." Is that man in gaol locked up or is he walking about? I suggest that if the Minister knows the gentleman who has written those letters to the papers encouraging citizens to murder jurors, his duty is to lock up that man and have him brought to trial, as any man who commits such things should be.
The Minister for Agriculture charged the Fianna Fáil Party with being directly associated with these incitements. Why does he not arrest the leader of the Fianna Fáil Party and put him on his trial, and let him have an opportunity of disassociating himself from these incitements? I think the Minister for Agriculture was so enthusiastic about the success of the Show that he exaggerated the position here this evening in stating the case against the Fianna Fáil Party. He did not, to my satisfaction, definitely associate the Fianna Fáil Party with any of these so-called incitements. If I thought, as a Deputy of this House. that the leader of the Fianna Fáil Party was directly associated with people in this country who are inciting people to murder jurors I would never be accused of walking into the Division Lobby with him on this or on any other measure.
The particular evil of this Bill is that it exaggerates certain evils which exist already in former enactments, for instance, by adding the element of secrecy it makes jury-packing not only extremely easy, but it makes it impossible to criticise or expose or check the growth of that subsequently. First of all, in Section 2 of the Bill you have a development of the Jury Act of 1927. You have here a change over from the jurisdiction of the sub-sheriff to the jurisdiction of the court direct.
The old practice had a very valuable principle contained in it, because the underlying principle of the existence of the jury was, as has been referred to by Maine who is a big authority on constitutional law, as one of the remnants of real democratic government. It is one of the remnants of democratic government in this sense, that the people themselves acted as judges, and it was the people themselves who protected themselves against various other powers and influences working against them. Under this particular section there was formerly, before the Act of 1927 was brought in, some remnant of popular influence, because the sub-sheriff was not appointed either by the Minister or by the judge. Here you have the empanelling officer and the summoning officer both directly under the control and authority of the judge and Minister. Therefore there is a principle involved in this which is a departure from the spirit of trial by jury.
The reason given by the Minister was that by handing over the powers now to these two officers he was going to add to the secrecy. Of course secrecy is written across the whole of this Bill. In the last century there was a great uproar against the methods of trial by jury in Ireland. Lord Macaulay referred to the trials as Star Chamber methods. These are Star Chamber methods over again. They are worse. They have the air of an Inquisition about them. I think really the Executive should bring in a section saying that jurymen should be disguised, should have large cloaks with hoods upon them to cover their figures and their faces so that no one will recognise them. They should be brought to Court in vans so that no one would see who they are and they should be taken away again in vans. The whole measure has an air of furtiveness about it which is as far away from open, fair trial as night is from day. It is entirely contrary to the spirit of normal and fair justice in a country which on the whole is not in an abnormal condition at present.
Under Section 3 the panel in future is not to be posted up. This it is purported is a remedy for something else. Deputy O'Higgins referred to the seizure of jury lists. How does the not hanging up of the panel affect the seizure or non-seizure of the jury list? It is a completely different thing. One would imagine that the obvious thing in future would be to put the jury list where it could not be raided, and not be passing Acts dealing with the panel. The accused is not now to get an opportunity of seeing the panel. This is bringing us back to somewhere in the 16th century. This privilege was given by an Act of Anne in England and was extended to Ireland subsequently. It is repealing the Juries Act of 1871 and it is going back to the old methods by which an accused man will have no chance of challenging anybody. According to the Act of 1927 he should have at least the right of peremptory challenge of six jurymen. How is he to know whom he should challenge? He does not know their names. He has no indication whatever as to who they are. Is he to judge by the colour of their hair, the shapes of their faces and so on? The man who is charged should have some facilities to enable him to know who the people are who are likely to be prejudiced against him so that he may be in a position to get a fair trial. This element of secrecy makes it impossible to have any remedy against the packing of the jury. Under the Act of 1927 you have made law something which was an abuse in the former law, namely, the right of a prosecuting counsel to order every juryman to stand by. It would be well for us to examine how that abuse started, because an abuse it is. That abuse is greatly aggravated by the fact that all criticism of its use and of the power to order a standby is gone once this Bill has been passed.
took the Chair.
"There are two kinds of challenge to jurors, the challenge for cause and the peremptory challenge, the former being employed whenever a clear case of disqualification could be assigned. It has always been permitted to the Crown and to the subject alike and it has constantly been made use of by both. The second system of challenge which had formerly been employed arbitrarily by the Crown had been abolished by a statute of Edward I. The Irish subject, however, unlike the Crown, still possesses the power of peremptory challenge." This was written by an Englishman in 1907. By an Act of 1829 he was permitted to challenge peremptorily not more than 20 jurors, having formerly been able peremptorily to challenge 35. But the Crown had gradually got behind the law in this matter, and although, as we have seen, forbidden by the statute of Edward I. to challenge peremptorily, managed to rid itself of the jurors it disliked in a manner quite as summarily as in pre-Edwardian times. It accomplished the trick in the following manner. The Act of Edward I., before alluded to, was wrenched from its meaning and interpreted to signify that the King was not bound to state his case or challenge a juror until the whole panel of jurors was called over, and that the Crown might, on a juror being called, direct him to stand aside for the present; that is to say, until the jury lists had been got through. In this way, therefore, if a jury could be made up out of the list without recourse to the persons so set aside they were ipso facto excluded. By this method the Crown virtually resumed the power of peremptory challenge and the Act of 1829 mentioned above, whilst reenacting that of Edward I, declared that the latter could not affect the power of the courts to exclude jurors by making them stand aside for the present on the petition of the Crown Prosecutor. It is superfluous to observe that this privilege was made use of to the full in order to exclude from juries whomsoever the Government might happen to dislike either as being Roman Catholics or persons of liberal opinion. The abandonment of this vicious system was initiated by Louis Perrin, Irish Attorney-General in 1835, and its discontinuance completed by Sir Michael O'Loghlen and his successors in the Attorney-Generalship. It is hardly necessary to emphasise the excellence of a reform which purified the fountains of justice.
This practice, formerly used against certain sections of the community and which an Englishman boasts was abolished, is glorified in this Bill and made a permanent part of the institution of justice—this power of being able to tell jurors to stand by. Let us suppose under the pressure of excitement, under the pressure of some tragedy, under the pressure of a murder such as occurred recently, the Government seized one or more individuals and, in a moment of panic, tried those individuals and took advantage of the powers given by this Act and packed a jury. After all, packing a jury is not a new thing in Ireland. Let us suppose that they packed the jury and got a verdict. When afterwards in cold blood they would look back on what they did and would find on investigation that the man had been innocent, what remedy would there be? Suppose it was not the Government that discovered it, but that some citizen had discovered it, the editor of some newspaper, it would be impossible in such a case then for such a person to bring before public opinion the abuse that had occurred. Such abuse as this occurred during the land war in Ireland. It was in a case which became famous. A man named Hynes was tried for his life before a packed jury and was found guilty by that packed jury. He was condemned to death and executed. It was discovered afterwards that at the time the jury was impounded some of them were drunk and disorderly and they decided their verdict in those circumstances.
When an expose was made of that, the names of the jurymen had naturally to be mentioned. Under this Act, however, if such a thing occurred, the public generally would have no remedy against such a jury.
After all, if we want to have the greatest possible confidence in our system of law, we want to make the people feel that everything is being done in the fairest way possible, in the most open way possible, and that, unless it is done in that way, the machinery of justice is always suspect, and in a time of great stress it will not have the confidence of the people generally. This Bill, by imposing this element of secrecy, and other elements to which I will refer later, is, in fact, poisoning the sources of justice and making all the things that have been said in the past against jury-packing true of every trial which will take place under this measure. If in the future in regard to some trial someone like the late Archbishop Walsh comes out and denounces the method of trial or the jury-packing, he will be liable to prosecution. It will not be possible for an Archbishop Croke to condemn a particular trial or the methods used in that trial, because, if he uses the strong language used in the days when similar things were being done, and when similar remedies were resorted to by the Government, and if he makes reference to the methods of the jury, he also will be liable. He will be liable if, for instance, he uses strong language such as this: "Our money goes to fee and feed a gang of needy and voracious lawyers."
Is that you or I?
In Clause 6 of the Bill we find something which is extremely petty. Suppose you have a conscientious objector, a person who conscientiously cannot recognise the authority of the Free State courts— after all, there are such persons in the country—and supposing a man, who is entirely innocent of any action whatever in regard to any deed for which he may be charged, comes into court and feels that it is his duty not to stand mute, but to say honestly that he does not recognise the court and that he has that kind of temperament of which we have had experience in the past, the passive-resister type, he will be imprisoned. After six months' imprisonment that man will come back into court and, because he says that he does not recognise the authority of that court, he will get a sentence not exceeding six months. That is a curious piece of petty legislation. It is just the kind of thing that you would expect to come from the Crown Prosecutor complex, looking about everywhere for something to hit, absolutely devoid of any tolerance to political convictions different to his own, and seeing crime where there is only difference of political convictions.
Then again we have Section 7, which will muzzle the Press, and which will only allow such journals to have representatives in court as it pleases. If anybody comes into court who is in any way displeasing to the Executive he can be excluded, even though he may be representing one of the journals which the Government is pleased to permit to be represented there. The independence of any journal is destroyed by such action. No journalist appearing in court would dare to report otherwise than as he thinks would please those who can exclude him from the court at any other action. Then we have the clause which perpetuates imprisonment for those whom the Executive particularly wish to keep in jail constantly without bringing to trial. It would be bad enough to have to make this case merely as a matter of theory, but when you have examples in the conduct of government in the past where they have continued to keep men in jail from session to session without trial, it is perfectly obvious that Section 8 will be used in future as an excuse to keep them in jail from session to session without bringing them to trial, and there is no remedy.
Under Section 10 the jurors are to receive notice by post, not by registered post. That, I think, is hard on the jurors, because, after all, if a juror receives notice by registered post he is certain to get it, but he is not certain to get it by ordinary post. I cannot see that there is very much difference in the matter of secrecy between the ordinary post and registered post. It is an indication of the distorted mentality of the authors of this Bill that they should expect that there may be a difference between secrecy in the ordinary post and in the registered post. We are told by the Minister that if this does not succeed other methods will be tried. Looking back on the past, we wonder what the other methods are. There is the possibility of another Public Safety Act, and if that does not succeed, there are, of course, courts-martial. If these do not succeed I suppose they will have recourse to their earlier methods of unauthorised murders. The whole business is a vicious circle coming from the morbid psychology of the civil war. It is going backwards towards that. That is the fundamental reason why it is not a remedy for the evil. It is creating the old atmosphere of hatred, anger, and civil war.
I do not wish for a moment to pass over lightly the murder and the attempted murder which took place but I do suggest that this is not the method in which you are going to meet the difficulty. You have a condition of things in this country which we ought to look into deeply. We ought to try to examine this not so much as an outsider, not so much as someone who is forcing with violence something upon various sections of the people with a sense of anger and determination to carry it through no matter at what cost to human feeling, but rather to face it as the fathers of the people, as those who have a difficult situation to face and who want to do it in a way that is most just and most human. I submit that if the Government succeed in doing it in that way they would be doing it in the most permanent way. You have in this country a spirit, on the one hand, which is deeply hostile to Irish nationality, which indulges in the waving of Union Jacks, which creates an atmosphere of hostility and of anger amongst a certain section in this community. The people who display that spirit have been unfortunately encouraged; they have been allowed to wave their Union Jacks. They have been given a feeling of domination in this country once again. You have reacting against that element a certain element which has been brought up in another school of thought. It is well for us, I think, to dwell upon that other school of thought and to remind ourselves of the kind of intense spirit there is behind it. It may at times express itself in a very mistaken line of conduct, but between those antagonisms you have all the factors for the agent provocateur. What we want to do is to ease that situation, to make those people with that intense feeling of nationality, feel that things have not come to a deadlock, that there is some hope before us.
Deputy Tierney referred to the spirit of nationality and made the amazing contention that Irish nationalism meant the right of the majority—I do not want to misinterpret him—I gathered that he said that it meant the right of the majority in the country to do more or less what they liked because they were the majority. Now, there is a different conception of nationalism. I think the President, the Minister for Education, and the Minister for Defence attended a ceremony recently at the graves in Arbour Hill. One of the graves is the grave of Patrick Pearse. I take it that in attending that ceremony Ministers were paying a tribute to the beliefs of Patrick Pearse. He had expressed, perhaps better than anybody else. what he calls authentic nationalism. He certainly has conveyed that intense spirit of nationalism with which we have all become familiar during the period of the last thirteen years, if we were not familiar with it before. In one of his pamphlets, the name of which was "The Ghosts," he deals with different people who had expressed what Irish nationalism was. He quoted Parnell, and he said:
Ireland a nation. Ireland has been a nation, she is a nation, and she shall be a nation. England will respect you in proportion as you and we respect ourselves. They will not give anything to Ireland out of justice or righteousness. They will concede your liberties and your rights when they must, and not sooner. We can, none of us, do more than strive for that which might seem attainable to-day, but we, at the same time, ought to recollect that we should not impede or hamper the march of the nation, and although our programme may be limited and small, it should be such a one as shall not prevent hereafter the fullest realisation of the hopes of Ireland. We shall, at least, if we keep this principle in mind, have this consolation: that while we may have done something to enable Ireland in some measure to retain her position as a nation, and strengthen her position as a nation, we shall have done nothing to hinder others who may come after us from taking up the work with perhaps greater ability, strength and power and advantages than we possess, and from pushing on to that glorious and happy conclusion which is embodied in the words of the toast which I now ask you to drink—"Ireland a Nation."
In that you have the principles of Parnell, the constitutionalist, and the enemies of Ireland were always trying to associate him with those who were not constitutionalists, very much as the Minister for Agriculture tries to associate us with some section of the community who have been guilty of recent crimes. Pearse, continuing, says——
Perhaps the Deputy would point out to me the relation between what he is quoting now and the Juries Bill. I do not think there is any.
The connection is this, that it is only fair that we who are opposing this Bill should offer something as an alternative, some way in which to alleviate the situation at present existing. I say that alleviation must come, first by the recognition of principles as they are laid down here, and secondly by their application in whatever way the House might decide. Now it is on those principles that I am dwelling for the moment.
I would point out to the Deputy that any quotations which he may give must have some reference or relation to the Bill before the House.
Can you, sir, not realise the position which we are in? In opposing this Bill we are attempting frankly to offer a proper solution for the situation. After all, behind this Bill there is a cause. I do not deny it. I think it is only fair that we in opposing the remedy put up by the Government should be entitled to express what we believe to be the right remedy.
I have no desire whatever to restrict the Deputy any more than I can help, but I think he will realise that the Chair must have some regard for order, and that if he were allowed to go away altogether from the Bill before the House other Deputies would claim the same right, and eventually we would not be discussing this Bill, but something which had nothing at all to do with it.
I submit that I am not going further away from the Bill, or extending the scape of discussion beyond what it has been extended already.
I am afraid the Deputy is.
In any case, I would like to point this out: that what we want to do is to find a remedy for a difficult situation, and even if that does mean going technically beyond the actual four corners of the Bill, some good may be served by reminding this House of certain fundamental principles. Pearse says then——
I am afraid I cannot allow the Deputy.
I thought I had made my point.
The Deputy made his point, but he has not proved to me that there is any relation between his point and this Bill.
But, surely, if conveying a certain set of principles, and getting people to understand that there is a certain attitude of mind which, if taken up, is going to do more than all this kind of legislation, it is very much to the point, and I should be allowed to quote those who have laid down these principles.
I am afraid the Deputy cannot do that on this Bill.
Well, I can only refer the House to the collected works of Patrick Pearse and suggest that members, before going to the Wolfe Tone anniversary ceremony, should read this book and try to get back something of the old spirit, because there is more chance of our finding peace in at least keeping our minds open to that point of view, even if we feel ourselves that there is no possibility of achieving those ideals. We should keep this State in such a condition that progress towards those ideals must always be possible, and that the extreme element in the community should feel that there is a possibility of proceeding upon peaceful lines. That, I submit, is a greater remedy and a greater safeguard to the jury system, which is extremely valuable, than any Act of this kind, which simply creates a vicious circle of anger on one side and anger on the other, and of deed to deed.
Deputy Davin objected to Deputy de Valera's remarks about the conduct of juries. It is held by authorities that the jury system, after all, has another function to discharge besides that of determining questions of fact in criminal causes. "It is the prime guarantee of public liberty, the supreme judge of laws and institutions, and if juries systematically refuse to convict it is because there is some disease which calls for the political knife of the surgeon." The authority I quote refers to what juries in England did as a protest against the severity of the law and refused to bring in verdicts, with the result that the law had to be changed. The effect of this Act will be to do exactly what it has been said was done at the trial of O'Connell, when the jury was packed. The jury system, which, according to Burke, was "the palladium of civil liberty and the ultimate aim and contrivance of all Government" was, according to Chief Justice Denman, who reversed the decision against O'Connell, turned into "a mockery, a delusion and a snare.""The popular and the liberal institutions turned into a mask for the worst vices of unchecked despotism."
This Bill is, in fact, in the nature of a coercion measure. Deputy de Valera followed the various Coercion Acts covering a period of 120 years or so, showing in what succession this Act came. From the foundation of the present State we have had a number of Coercion Acts to finish that list. We had the Public Safety Emergency Powers Act, passed on 1st August, 1923. That Act was passed in order to defeat the law decided in the case of O'Brien versus the Minister for Defence. It will be remembered that the object of that was to retain the civil war prisoners in jail, but in their extreme hurry to pass that Act they did it in such an unconstitutional manner that on 2nd August they had to pass another Public Safety Act to deal with another crux that had arisen. Then there was the Public Safety Act of 1924 imposing conditions of release. There was the Public Safety (Temporary) Act of 1924, No. 15, giving the Minister, or the proper authority, power to change the venue for trial. Following that we had the Firearms (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1924, No. 9; the Treasonable Offences Act, 1925, No. 18, which was very comprehensive, and there was also the Firearms Act, 1925, No. 17. Then came the Public Safety Act of 1927. Some of these were temporary, and the Public Safety Act was repealed. There is an ample power in these Coercion Acts in existence, and the adding of this one more to them does very little to assist the Government, but does a great deal to bring further discredit upon it.
There is something the matter with the Government. It pleads that it is an Irish Government, that it has a purely Irish outlook, but I wonder, when people come to look at it in an impartial manner from the point of view of history and judge it by its results, will they judge it to be an Irish Government at all, or will they say of that Government exactly what was said of every administration in Ireland during the 19th century? After all, in its results it is producing the identical results of the British administrations in this country. The reason given by a distinguished Frenchman for the results of British administration was that no matter how well-intentioned a British Minister was coming over here, he could never carry out his intentions, because, he said, the English element in Ireland dominated the Minister and the Government. We have now the same results, emigration and poverty on the one hand, and on the other coercion upon coercion. These are the big results. I submit it is reasonable to argue that the same causes are producing the same effects, and that the present Government and its Party are dominated by those who give funds to that Party, and that they are Freemasons, the enemies of this country. They are the real enemies and are the real factors of disorder.
This has been a rather long debate, and I think I will take about three-quarters of an hour to reply. I take it I will be allowed to reply at a quarter to ten?
I know that three or four Deputies want to speak. If the Minister takes three-quarters of an hour it does not look as if they will be able to speak tonight.
My contribution will be very short. I have been listening the greater part of this day to speeches made against this Bill. An effort has been made, especially by the Fianna Fáil Party, to camouflage the issue before this House. The Bill is introduced simply for the protection of jurors. It means nothing else, but Deputies get up and try to camouflage the issue. It is quite easy to understand why this Bill is needed. In the constituency which I represent in this House, Co. Dublin, reports have been made to me about men who served on juries and who from that day to this have had to have police protection. A poor stonecutter living in the Dublin mountains had to attend a jury much against his wish, for he sacrificed his day's pay. He served on the jury. Though he had received a threatening notice, he obeyed the summons to attend the court, and performed his duty to the State. Since that, every day and night that man is protected by the police. Every juror who has sat on a jury and who has been protected these months past is costing the State a little over £16 a week. That is something for the Fianna Fáil Deputies to consider. They have been preaching economies and saying we have too many Civic Guards and could do with a great deal less. We could if they stopped preaching intimidation. I say deliberately that from the start of the Treaty dispute intimidation is their strong plank, and it is because of intimidation they are in this House in such force. Have they yet in this House condemned intimidation?
One would expect, the appeal is so fair and honest, that some member of the Fianna Fáil Party would get up and say they condemn the intimidation of jurors. No, but they get up and try to get the House to believe that what the Bill is intended for is to do away with trial by jury. The intention of the Bill is to see that trial by jury will be maintained. I hope it will. Let us be very honest about this. That is what is expected from us. We want no more as supporters of the Government than to see that people who assist on a jury will do so without being afraid that they are to lose their lives. In plain language that is what it is, and it is only fair and reasonable that we should try and pass legislation here to make it safe for people who sit on juries and who, acting on their judgment and according to their oath, decide whether a thing is right or fair. We stand for that. Do you? It is because I stand for it that I get up to give my contribution, which is very short, and not like the long-winded speech from the Deputy who has just sat down, and the Deputy who preceded him, Deputy MacEntee, who smacked his lips while attacking the Government all the time. Why do they not get up and defend the jurors? We are here to defend them. That is what the Bill is intended to do, and I support it heartily.
I would like to answer right now the appeal made by Deputy O'Connor to be straight, honest, and above board in dealing with this or with any other Bill, and I would like to say that we do not stand—I am not the only one on these benches who has said it—for the shooting or for the intimidation of jurymen. Is that plain, definite, and clear enough? We have not stood for it, we have not approved of it, and it has been condemned, not once, but many times, by many speakers on behalf of Fianna Fáil. But in discussing this Bill we cannot ignore recent history. I do not want to go back very far. I will not go back to the golden age of Justinian; I will not go back even to Magna Charta; I will not follow the speakers on the other side who have gone back not alone a hundred years but several centuries. But I do say that, in discussing a matter of this kind, that goes to the very roots of constitutional law and constitutional government, we cannot particularly ignore the recent history of this country. Nobody will contradict the statement that the troubled state of the country arises out of the history of the last thirteen or fourteen years, and further back. How far it is troubled is a question. Whenever political trouble arises we cannot ignore our history, and our very recent history. It is all very well for Deputies on the Government Benches to denounce in the most violent terms men and women who belong to Republican organisations, men and women who use arms and who encourage the use of arms. Who can deny that up to quite recently Ministers were members of these organisations—secret and public organisations—and that they preached the very same doctrines and swore young men into these organisations? You cannot deny these facts, and you cannot get rid of this recent history in a week or in a year, or perhaps in ten years.
President Cosgrave quite recently made a pronouncement. It has been stated—and probably there are good grounds for the statement—that it was made purely for political purposes in the recent North Dublin election. He said that the whole fabric, the whole basis, of the social structure of our country was being undermined. These are not his exact words, but I think they are fairly accurate. He said that there was a terrible conspiracy rampant in this country that was striking at the very foundations of our Constitution. Now, I suggest that in making such statements he grossly exaggerated the position, even though we all have clearly before our minds the fact that a juryman was wounded and that a gentleman who was a witness was shot dead. These facts are very much before our minds, but even with these facts before our minds I say that it was a gross exaggeration of the position to state that the whole fabric of the Constitution of the Free State was about to topple over, for that is what President Cosgrave's remarks amounted to. His remarks were taken up widely and were circulated. I get papers from many places. Yesterday Deputy Gorey asked us to go to Chicago and see what happens there, and other Deputies asked us to go to other places. I do not know about Chicago and I have had no newspapers from there, but I have seen newspapers from other places in America which gave huge headlines to extracts from the statement made by President Cosgrave, headlines referring to the awful conditions in Ireland, stating that life in Ireland was not safe, that nobody's life there was worth an hour's purchase. These were the types of headings that the American Press put to the unwarranted statements made by President Cosgrave. These statements were printed in Continental newspapers—I saw them in French, German, and Italian papers—and Ireland was defamed because of what the President said. The President had to realise that, because as a result of the wide publicity that was given to these unwarranted defamations of our people and of our country he was invited by an influential journal in New York, "The New York Times," to reassure the American public, many of whom had probably intended to visit Ireland this year.
We are told that the Tourists Association is working hard to get Americans, among others, to visit this country, but President Cosgrave did his best to frighten these people off. Then realising the situation when the harm he had done was brought forcibly under his notice he tried to undo it and he wrote for "The New York Times," a statement which appeared on April 12th, withdrawing the statements he had previously made and saying that Ireland was not a crime-ridden or a murder-ridden country, as he had practically said, that it was a peaceful, law-abiding country, a crimeless country, a country in which there was much less crime than there was in neighbouring countries, which is true. Two crimes had been committed, and because of these two crimes he defamed the country and its people. He had to withdraw that, and he had said: "It would be a great mistake to pay serious attention to scaremongers." Who was the chief scaremonger? Who was the man who of late times defamed and scared the people most? President Cosgrave. He gives the lie to himself here. He said: "It would be a great mistake to pay serious attention to scaremongers." Of course the American and the Continental Press did not know that his original statement was made merely to frighten the electors of North Dublin. They did not realise the circumstances and they did not know the facts. But we now have him running away from his own statement. He says here again: "No doubt the struggle for independence and the subsequent internal troubles have left their aftermath. You could not expect otherwise, could you? After every storm the waves run high for some time. Even when they have almost completely subsided an occasional wave shows signs of former fury." He was speaking the truth there, and I say that he and his colleagues should try to remember that, should try to be consisent in their attitude, should try to be a little more wise and a little more careful in dealing with the situation that he recognises we have to face in this country as a result of recent history, as a result of his own teaching, as a result of his own actions, as a result of the teaching of the Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Free State and of his actions.
There is no man in all Ireland to-day, inside or outside the I.R.A. or the I.R.B., or any other organisation, who taught with greater force and more frequently that it was the duty as well as the right of every young man in the country to carry arms than did the Vice-President of the Executive Council. You cannot get away from that in a year, you cannot get away from it in five years. The Vice-President of the Executive Council said: "For our manhood's sake we must not merely deplore our conditions, but must sweat and starve until each has a gun and can shoot to kill." These were his words.
It is safer now.
The Vice-President of the Executive Council, the man who comes here to-day to denounce in the most violent language young men who belong to Republican organisations, said: "He that enjoys the rights of manhood, but has not the courage or ability to guard them, asks to be spat upon. He is a cheat and a traitor. In this land the iron of slavery has been so driven into our souls that few of us think it a disgrace, a clear mark of degradation, to be unarmed. Courage and a hankering for weapons we have, but if we are content to rest at that where do we differ from those who are unarmed from choice and shudder at the sight of steel?" Nobody on these benches ever used language that could compare with that, in inciting young men and young women to arm, and to shoot to kill. I will admit that when he was writing that there was a direct British Government in control here. I will admit that there has been a change. I will not admit that this is the absolute Irish Government, that the Vice-President and his colleagues on the Front Bench say it is. I say it is a Government and a Parliament elected by the Irish people, or by part of them. I admit that certainly, and I admit that we here— and I myself am here recognising these facts such as they are—have a House that is representative, not of the Irish people first of all, because we only represent twenty-six counties, and secondly, because we do not represent the type of people that the Vice-President spoke for not so long ago. We do not represent those, because they cannot come in here owing to the barriers that he, the Minister for Defence, and others, have set up—the very men who imposed an oath on the young men, the very men who went around the country into every parish— these two gentlemen particularly in County Kerry—swearing in these young men and teaching them to get arms however they could.
I think it was the Vice-President, on another occasion, who stated that it was their duty to sell their shirts, but that they must get arms, that they must teach each other to shoot, and to shoot to kill. What I want you to realise is—some of you who were old colleagues of mine in the old I.R.B. and I.R.A. days know it as well as I do—that until this country is absolutely free, free of all outside interference, and until it is united, anything that the Dáil can do, anything and everything that Ministers opposite may try to do, will not eradicate the aspirations and even the organisations that are in existence. We must recognise that they will continue. You will drive them harder and harder. It will be more difficult for them to live, if you like, but they will remain. I am old enough, and so is the Vice-President, and the Minister for Defence, to remember when we were members of secret organisations, sworn organisations, when we were harassed and chased about. I remember that I could not leave Dublin any day for the last twenty-five years to go anywhere in the country that I was not tracked and followed. Every item of my day's journeyings in and around the city, and in the country, and of theirs also, was noted down by detectives, because we went around preaching the gospel, that these young men and young women of to-day believe is the right gospel. We were followed and harassed, but that kind of harassing only lent a kind of glamour to our association with the I.R.A. and the I.R.B. Some of us believed that we were great heroes in belonging to these organisations. I am sure that is what the Vice-President thought as he went around with great fervour teaching and preaching to these young men. Some of those who were in these organisations when he was a member are still in them, and they have gone back to being secret organisations, as they were when he and I were younger. They will remain, and will continue. Do what you like, and do your worst to them, they will continue. I say here frankly that I hope, in carrying on, not alone their propaganda, but carrying on their legitimate work, to hand on the torch of Irish liberty that has not yet been achieved, they will not stoop to murder. That is plain, clear and definite. I was never associated with that. The Vice-President and the Minister for Defence were. They were associated with murder in their day. I was not.
There is no necessity to tell us that.
All right. Be it so. I was not. I was not a great brass-hat General, I know, but I was associated as a soldier with a rising. I happened to be Staff Captain to Padraig Pearse in 1916, and I am not a bit ashamed of it. It was in my office, three weeks after the war broke out, that the Rising of 1916 was decided upon. There were seven or eight of us; a small minority we were then. There were one or two Labour men in that office that afternoon, and we decided we would have a rising before the war would end. We were only a small minority then. How many could we speak for in the country? Very few. Organisations associated with Republicanism were, in the eyes of the majority of the people, contemptible, and our Press was called whatever you like—gutter press, mosquito press. It was called all kinds of names. We did not mind them any more than we mind what the Minister for Agriculture calls some of our papers to-day. The same kind of papers were in existence then, and were called the same names. These were the papers that the Vice-President wrote for, and wrote these violent tirades. I can give you a dozen other extracts in equally violent language from statements written by the Vice-President, calling on the young men and women of the country to join these organisations, to learn to shoot, and to shoot to kill.
I am sure the Leas-Cheann Comhairle is probably getting a little impatient, but I would say this much, if he asks me if we are speaking to the Bill, I say we are very much speaking to the Bill. There is not a clause in that Bill that has not relation to the recent history of which I have just spoken. There is not a clause or sentence in it that has not relation to the previous political history of those gentlemen sitting in front of him, and what they taught in their time. The Minister for Justice was not associated with it, but was one of the great majority who thought that Republicans at that time were despicable, low-down creatures, I am sure.
I do not know what he thought, but I am suggesting this. I know he was not in any way associated with the I.R.B. or the I.R.A. He probably had no sympathy, and he may be quite honest and above board in bringing in any Bill he brings in to stamp out that opinion. He probably did his best, or would have done his best, to stamp it out thirteen or fourteen years ago, and he is acting probably in accordance with his traditions and convictions. But these other gentlemen are not. That is what I want you to remember. In bringing in a Bill of this kind they are not alone uprooting the basis of all constitutionalism but they are trying to uproot, not alone the principles they taught, but to uproot, at the same time, the principles of Irish nationality, which are the basis of the work of the members of the organisations that were mentioned here to-day and yesterday, these Republican organisations, but this Bill and a dozen other Bills like it which may be introduced in the next twelve months or five years will not achieve their object.
In clause 2 you suggest that secrecy will in future be observed when juries are being empanelled. My belief is that you will not be able to secure that secrecy, no matter how you try. I have known such methods tried in the past, and I have been associated with—I am sorry he is not here now—Deputy Batt O'Connor and others in trying to defeat those who tried methods of that kind in earlier days. I know some of the gentlemen opposite were, at different times, associated with others, Republican organisations, in bringing influence to bear on jurors when political cases were brought on. They know all the work that used to be done in these times, and they know or at least they ought to know that no matter how you try it is practically impossible to keep lists of that sort secret. You suggest here in this Bill that jurors in future shall not be known by name when they enter the court but by number. That is, I will say, to any law-abiding man, to any man in this Assembly who has any respect for human liberty, for the rights of citizenship, for traditions of law, an abrogation of all the rights and safeguards of human liberty. Where are all the important principles of law that were fought for down the centuries? Where are they going? They are being thrown on the dust heap. It may be the I.R.A. people that are attacked to-day. It may be the late colleagues of Deputy Duggan, of the Minister for Defence, or the Minister for Finance that are being attacked to-day. It may be some of those they swore into the organisation. They murdered some of those a few years ago. And more of them they want to imprison now for sticking loyally to and upholding the principles they were taught by those men. It is their turn now. Whose turn may it be to-morrow?
I am glad to know that the Labour Party are opposing this Bill. It is wise on their part, because with an unscrupulous Executive, with men who are capable of murder, and have done murder, and have absolutely employed men to murder——
I do not think the Deputy ought to go on these lines.
If they care to deny it, I am here to oppose them.
I do not think it ought to be brought into this debate at all.
If you think I ought not to emphasise it any more I will not, but I maintain what I have stated. They have done it, and they have at the moment in their employment, I believe, the men who were responsible for the murder of the late Deputy Kevin O'Higgins. That is a deliberate statement. These men are harassing the I.R.A. to-day. I do not object to them harassing murderers and assassins. What I would like to see them do is to harass more those who are responsible for all the murders done in 1922 and 1923, whoever they are. Some of them are known to these men and not a soul has been tried for them. Some of the men responsible for the murder of Kevin O'Higgins are in the employment and the pay of those men, and not one of them has been tried or arrested for it. These are deliberate statements. I am speaking with a sense of responsibility. I know what I am talking about. I know these men. I assure you it is not a pleasant thing to have to say these things, but in justice, in fairness to our own, we have to say things that are not pleasant. Somebody said to-day that we do not like the truth and the truth is bitter. Sometimes the truth is hard. Sometimes it is, and it is often bitter. But when we are faced with an abrogation of all law and of all liberty of the individual, it is up to us to talk out.
This Bill, in clause 2, states that secrecy must in future rule so far as the empanelling of juries is concerned. That, if used by an unscrupulous Executive, might have very serious consequences. What if an unscrupulous Minister who wishes to convict somebody could influence a County Registrar? The Sheriff's power in this matter is done away with under this Bill, but whether it is the Sheriff or the Registrar is immaterial. You might get some man who for some reason that seems good to himself, would agree with the Minister or the Minister's agent or official that a jury could be empanelled of political or other friends of the powers that be. Such things have happened before, and they could happen again. Knowing our history as we know it, some of us fairly well, from the inside, during the last fifteen or twenty years, it is not too far-fetched a thing to say that a County Registrar might be got at to include in the panel men who are agents of an unscrupulous Minister. I do not know much about the present Minister for Justice or of his political record. I know very little of it, but I am inclined to think, for his own sake and for the sake of his standing in the profession of which he is a member, he probably would not be guilty of using an official in that way. But there might be others who would do so. Are we going to leave it in the power of anybody, if there were a Minister for Justice who would like to get anybody convicted or put out of the way, that he could have put on that jury men who he was satisfied would give a verdict in a certain way? It could be done; he could have agents collected from God knows where, agents of his own or friends of his own, and included in that jury. All he would have to do would be to get the County Registrar to agree. We have seen queer things done in the last seven or eight years, and from that knowledge I am inclined to think that it would be possible to empanel or to pack a jury in that way, a jury that would do the Minister's or the Executive's behest. We all know that juries were packed in the old days. It is common knowledge. There is no necessity to argue that matter. There were some lawyers who were notorious for that in the days of the British Government here, but that packing was done in the light of day. It was open and above board. Everybody knew that it was being done. Those who were defending political prisoners in days gone by realised what they were up against, and they fought it as best they could. They exposed it in the public Press, but now it will be done in the dark. The Vice-President has somebody that he wants to be put out of the way, somebody who perhaps knows too much, somebody who is too active in following the behests and the doctrines preached to him by the Vice-President and his colleagues, and that man is a nuisance. He reminds him too often of his past; he should be got rid of, and a jury can be empanelled in secret and the prisoner will get no justice. That is my belief. Deputy Gorey may smile, but he does not know as much about these matters as I do. He does not know the history of the last fifteen years as well as I do. He was not associated with these things. He never preached these things as far as I know.
He was not a fighting man.
No, he was not. Neither were you.
Mr. Hogan
And you were.
I have just told the House what part of a fighting man I am.
Mr. Hogan
I hope I am not a fighting man if you are.
I am not ashamed of whatever little bit of fighting I did.
You ought to be ashamed of how little you did.
If I ought, so ought Deputy Gorey, because he would make a much better soldier than I did. He has all the inches.
Too much surface exposed.
If he were a follower of John Redmond he ought to have been a soldier as much as those who went on the other side. Perhaps he was a wise man. I am not going to find fault with him for that. He was complaining yesterday of somebody else being careful of his skin. I suppose it is because he has so much of it that he is careful of it. I like a man who fights, whatever side he is on, a man who stands up for it and fights for it and is not ashamed of it. I did not do perhaps all that I should have done and perhaps the Minister for Agriculture is sorry that I did not do a great deal more.
Mr. Hogan
On the Continental front.
I did not do enough. Anyhow I did as much as he did.
Mr. Hogan
I doubt it.
This has nothing to do with this Bill.
When the Minister for Agriculture interrupted me I was talking about the secret methods of empanelling juries.
took the Chair.
I am satisfied that under this section juries can be empanelled, and I believe will be empanelled, who will carry out the behests of an Executive, be that Executive scrupulous or unscrupulous, be the Minister or the agents of the Minister scrupulous or unscrupulous. What I object to is that the empanelling of the jury, if this proposition be accepted, can be done in the dark, it can be done without proper publicity and without first of all the prisoner and his counsel knowing who the jurymen are, or where they come from, what their history is, or without the Press being able to be informed or being able to inform the public of what is happening inside these closed doors. That is a wrong principle, a principle that is going to vitiate every branch of criminal law in the country. If we had such a state of disorder in the country as President Cosgrave described in that famous speech of his in the Rotunda, if the whole foundations of society were rocking, as he suggested, and it might be even then doubtful, there might be reason for introducing this Camorra kind of legislation. But there is none, and I say that I can prove it out of the mouth of the President himself. There is no reason on earth to-day in this country for uprooting the principles of constitutional law and of social and personal liberty that have been established after such great fights for so many centuries.
The President, himself, in this "New York Times" article of April 12th, says: "This is a crimeless country to-day. The fact is that the Irish people in general are one of the most law-abiding peoples in the world. If you want proof of this, you have only to compare the statistics of serious crime in Ireland with those of other countries, not excluding England. It must be remembered, too, that the percentage of crime detection in this country is very high." On the showing of the President himself, there is no necessity for including a section of that kind in this Bill. This country is not a crime-ridden country. It has seen very turbulent times in recent years. I do not want this to be taken in any way in palliation of what has happened, but, if you look at it calmly, I say you are bound to have reactions such as we have had in the last year or so. As I said earlier, you cannot expect in one year to undo the teachings of twenty—it cannot be done. It is against human nature. I do not want to overelaborate that, but I should like Deputies who are supporting this measure to think seriously of that. I should like those who were associated with the movement in its violent or in its constitutional days to think of what we have gone through—to think of the teachings to which the young men and young women have listened. I should like to say to them, as Deputy de Valera said yesterday, "Have patience." Time is a great healer. If you have patience, if you do not insist on putting on the screw, and sending your gunmen to fight it out with guns with these men of the I.R.A., you shall have a better chance of getting peace and order in the country.
You have, on the one hand, still existing in the country the organisations that the Minister for Agriculture mentioned, or some of them. He probably knows more about them to-day than I do. He is supplied, I presume, regularly with information from the Intelligence Department of the Government. He knows what organisations are there and how numerous they are. I do not know. All I know is what we all know— that there are such organisations in the country, and that some individuals in them are active. We know it is natural that they should be there and that they will be there. We also know that violent methods have been used in the last year or two to try and suppress these organisations—very violent and illegal methods, unconstitutional methods. My belief is that these methods have the opposite effect to that desired, so far as some of these organisations are concerned. If different methods were tried, I say, in all sincerity, that I believe we would have different results. Every Deputy, if he looks at it impartially and calmly in the light of the history of our country during the seven hundred years odd of fighting against English rule, will realise that there has been developed a mentality in the country that reacts in a violent way to political measures of compulsion. You have that mentality still in the country; you have it perhaps developed to a higher degree because of our own recent history. If you put the screw tighter and tighter, you will have reactions, and such reactions as we have recently of that type, I, for one, as a citizen with some sense of responsibility and knowledge, would like to see stopped. I do not say that you are going to succeed in inducing all the young men of the country to give up, for all time, the idea of physical force.
You will not do that; it is foolish to try it—that is my honest belief. You will not get them to give it up —perhaps they will after a time; but it will take a long time, I believe. I have already given good reasons why you will not uproot these ideas in a hurry. Empanelling a jury in secret and putting it in the power of any Executive, whether the present Executive or any other, to treat their political opponents as men have been treated in the past, by juries got together in the fashion in which it is proposed to get these juries, will not make for peace or harmony or good order. I take it that the suggestion behind this Bill is that it is to promote peace and order. My belief, and I say it in all sincerity, is that it will have the very contrary effect. If you think otherwise, then you will go ahead and pass your Bill. But if you really want it to aim at one class of crime, and one only, the Bill should have been so framed that it would deal with that one class of crime. I must, however, say frankly that even if these methods were proposed to deal with that one class of crime I still would oppose them. But you propose to make this not a temporary, but a permanent Bill to regulate criminal law procedure for the whole country for all classes of crime in future. I think that is a gross mistake; I think that is a blunder that the Executive will probably have very great reason to regret before they are much older, if this Bill be passed as at present framed.
One of the safeguards that every person tried in a court has to-day is that the court is an open, public place; that the Press are present, and that the members of the Bar have the privilege of attending. The prisoner knows in advance by whom he is to be tried, and if he is a citizen of the area in which he is tried, he has a fair idea in advance whether or not he will get a fair trial. All these safeguards are abolished under this Bill. Section 2 states that the empanelling of a jury is to be done in secret and that the jurymen are to be known henceforth not by name but by number.
Section 4 tells us that nobody can be present in Court during the calling of the panel. Now that does away with one of the principal safeguards for every citizen whose misfortune it may be to be in a criminal court. It is within the knowledge of everybody that it has been the misfortune of many an innocent man to have been dragged in and tried in a criminal court, without talking of political prisoners at all. It has been the misfortune of many decent, upright citizens in the past to be dragged into the criminal courts and charged with offences of which they were afterwards proved to be innocent. There have been well-known cases, some of them in recent history, where men were convicted, and perhaps after suffering years in jail were proved to be entirely innocent of the charges on which they were convicted. Whatever chances there are of errors occurring, of unjust convictions and unjust sentences in open court—and we all know there have been such—is it not in accordance with commonsense that there is bound to be a much greater number of mistaken verdicts if these ordinary safeguards of open courts—publicly empanelled jurors known to the prisoner and his counsel, the right of having the Bar and the Press present—are removed?
rose in his place and claimed to move: "That the Question be now put."
The Minister claims to move "That the Question be now put." I think the House will be soon ready to take a decision, but I would like to give Deputy O'Kelly an opportunity of concluding.
Are we to take it that you are accepting the motion "That the Question be now put"?
I am not now accepting the motion that the question be put. I think Deputy O'Kelly should be given an opportunity of concluding.
What becomes of the liberty of any citizen who may find himself in the unfortunate position of being tried perhaps for his life in a criminal court when all the safeguards are gone? There is nothing between him and eternity but nine men, and these men may be empanelled in secret. If the accused happened to be a prominent political figure, or even not connected with politics, if he happened to be a man who had powerful enemies, all the safeguards of life and liberty are gone. The rights of citizenship are no more. Ministers may jeer and jibe at these rights, but there must be some value attached to them when all down the centuries such tremendous fights were made for the preservation of those liberties and rights.
What is coming over us in Ireland all of a sudden that we are proposing to tear up and fling away, in perhaps a moment of passion and of fright, all those rights so dearly won? I would appeal to Deputies of all shades of opinion to give Section 4 very serious consideration before voting in favour of any Bill which includes it. Imagine what you are doing? You are, perhaps, sentencing to death beforehand, many men or women who may be entirely innocent of charges brought against them. Up to the present it has been the rule in court that one person, having a strong and and honest conviction that the prisoner was not guilty of the offence with which he was charged, could save the prisoner, perhaps, from death. Now a majority can convict him, and if there are three persons honestly and sincerely convinced of the innocence of the prisoner their belief goes for nothing. If the House passes this Bill it is taking on a very serious responsibility for the future. It is well to consider and to weigh what it is that we are doing if we pass this Bill. We would be condemning, perhaps, to death many innocent people. That is what Deputies would be doing, and that is a very serious obligation to take upon their shoulders. I do not profess to be well versed in the law, but I would like to hear if there is any country to-day that has on its Statute Book a law or laws similar to this proposed here for our adoption. I doubt if there is. There certainly is not in any country with which we are most familiar. In America, in England or Scotland, in Australia or Canada, and other countries that have adopted the English system, they certainly have nor anything approaching the racoman methods proposed in this Bill for adoption as the criminal law of the land. Yet, in many of these countries crime is much more rampant than it is here.
I do not want to defame any country. I do not want to particularise. But it is familiar to every Deputy that crime is rampant in other countries with which we are familiar and about which we read in our daily Press; every day we read of crimes; they are of daily occurrence, and they are crimes of a very serious nature too. Crime of a political nature is a daily occurrence in these countries, but no law of this kind would ever be dreamt of in these countries. So highly are the rights of individual citizens valued there that they are prepared to do their best to trace the criminals and to expend a great deal of money in the endeavour to trace them. They certainly would not attempt to uproot their whole constitutional system for the sake of convicting one or two of these criminals who may even have been guilty of capital offences. Deputy Lemass speaking here yesterday said that there would have been no necessity to bring in a Bill of this kind if the police that you pay so highly were doing their duty. We are paying for the ordinary Civic Guards £1,500,000 a year. Imagine a country with a population slightly over 3,000,000 paying £1,500,000 for its Civic Guards. Crimes of this kind are committed and, according to President Cosgrave, the men or the women who are supposed to be responsible for these crimes are well known. President Cosgrave said in that interview, extracts of which have been already read for you: "It is quite true that a conspiracy exists to prevent the detection and punishment of a certain type of crime which masquerades under the cloak of politics. The numbers engaged in this conspiracy are very small; the majority of them are well known to the police and their movements are under constant surveillance." What are we doing with the £1,500,000 a year? On what are we spending it? Are we spending it on handsome young men who are charming all the good-looking girls of the country, because they have nothing else to do, and sending up the marriage rate at such a rapid rate as they have been doing all this time? Is that their chief occupation? It must be. It certainly cannot be said that they are wasting their time——
Might I ask again for leave to move the closure? I think the Deputy is wandering very far.
I am prepared now to accept the motion that the question be put——
If I might intervene ——
I am reluctant to accept a motion of this kind when a Deputy is speaking, but I indicated to the Deputy some time ago that I was giving him an opportunity to conclude. I do not think he has any intention of concluding. I will now accept the motion that the question be now put.
Will you allow me to say this much?——
I am not going to debate the matter at all——
The question must be put now.
I want to say this much——
Is it on the question before the House or on the motion for the closure?
It is on the closure motion.
There is no comment permitted on a closure motion. The question before the House is that the Bill be now read a Second Time——
I think the question is that the question be now put.
If Deputies would only allow the Ceann Comhairle to do his own work, they would find that he is often right. The question before the House is "that the Juries (Protection) Bill, 1929, be now read a Second Time." On that question the Minister for Finance has claimed to move that the question be now put. That has been accepted by the Chair.
Question put: "That the question be now put."
The Dáil divided: Tá, 71; Níl, 59.
Tá.
- Aird, William P.
- Alton, Ernest Henry.
- Beckett, James Walter.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Blythe, Ernest.
- Bourke, Séamus A.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Byrne, John Joseph.
- Carey, Edmund.
- Cole, John James.
- Collins-O'Driscoll, Mrs. Margt.
- Conlon, Martin.
- Connolly, Michael P.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Craig, Sir James.
- Daly, John.
- Davis, Michael.
- De Loughrey, Peter.
- Doherty, Eugene.
- Dolan, James N.
- Doyle, Peadar Seán.
- Duggan, Edmund John.
- Dwyer, James.
- Esmonde, Osmond Thos. Grattan.
- Fitzgerald, Desmond.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Gorey, Denis J.
- Haslett, Alexander.
- Hassett, John J.
- Heffernan, Michael R.
- Hennessy, Michael Joseph.
- Hennessy, Thomas.
- Hennigan, John.
- Henry, Mark.
- Hogan, Patrick (Galway).
- Jordan, Michael.
- Kelly, Patrick Michael.
- Keogh, Myles.
- Law, Hugh Alexander.
- Leonard, Patrick.
- Lynch, Finian.
- Mathews, Arthur Patrick.
- McDonogh, Martin.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, James E.
- Murphy, Joseph Xavier.
- Myles, James Sproule.
- Nally, Martin Michael.
- Nolan, John Thomas.
- O'Connell, Richard.
- O'Connor, Bartholomew.
- O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
- O'Hanlon, John F.
- O'Higgins, Thomas.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Mahony, Dermot Gun.
- O'Reilly, John J.
- O'Sullivan, Gearoid.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Reynolds, Patrick.
- Rice, Vincent.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Shaw, Patrick W.
- Sheehy, Timothy (West Cork).
- Thrift, William Edward.
- Tierney, Michael.
- Vaughan, Daniel.
- White, John.
- White, Vincent Joseph.
Níl.
- Allen, Denis.
- Anthony, Richard.
- Blaney, Neal.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Boland, Patrick.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Seán.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Broderick, Henry.
- Buckley, Daniel.
- Carney, Frank.
- Carty, Frank.
- Cassidy, Archie J.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- French, Seán.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Goulding, John.
- Hayes, Seán.
- Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Jordan, Stephen.
- Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
- Kent, William R.
- Kerlin, Frank.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Colbert, James.
- Cooney, Eamon.
- Corkery, Dan.
- Corish, Richard.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Davin, William.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Doyle, Edward.
- Everett, James.
- Fahy, Frank.
- Flinn, Hugo.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- O'Connell, Thomas J.
- O'Dowd, Patrick Joseph.
- O'Kelly, Seán T.
- O'Leary, William.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- O'Reilly, Thomas.
- Powell, Thomas P.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, James.
- Sexton, Martin.
- Sheehy, Timothy (Tipp.).
- Smith, Patrick.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Duggan and P.S. Doyle; Níl: Deputies G. Boland and Allen.
Question declared carried.
Question:—"That the Juries (Protection) Bill, 1929, be now read a Second time"—put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 71; Níl, 59.
Tá.
- Aird, William P.
- Alton, Ernest Henry.
- Beckett, James Walter.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Blythe, Ernest.
- Bourke, Séamus A.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Byrne, John Joseph.
- Carey, Edmund.
- Cole, John James.
- Collins-O'Driscoll, Mrs. Margt.
- Conlon, Martin.
- Connolly, Michael P.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Craig, Sir James.
- Daly, John.
- Davis, Michael.
- De Loughrey, Peter.
- Doherty, Eugene.
- Dolan, James N.
- Doyle, Peadar Seán.
- Duggan, Edmund John.
- Dwyer, James.
- Esmonde, Osmond Thos. Grattan.
- Fitzgerald, Desmond.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Gorey, Denis J.
- Haslett, Alexander.
- Hassett, John J.
- Heffernan, Michael R.
- Hennessy, Michael Joseph.
- Hennessy, Thomas.
- Hennigan, John.
- Henry, Mark.
- Hogan, Patrick (Galway).
- Jordan, Michael.
- Kelly, Patrick Michael.
- Keogh, Myles.
- Law, Hugh Alexander.
- Leonard, Patrick.
- Lynch, Finian.
- Mathews, Arthur Patrick.
- McDonogh, Martin.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, James E.
- Murphy, Joseph Xavier.
- Myles, James Sproule.
- Nally, Martin Michael.
- Nolan, John Thomas.
- O'Connell, Richard.
- O'Connor, Bartholomew.
- O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
- O'Hanlon, John F.
- O'Higgins, Thomas.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Mahony, Dermot Gun.
- O'Reilly, John J.
- O'Sullivan, Gearoid.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Reynolds, Patrick.
- Rice, Vincent.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Shaw, Patrick W.
- Sheehy, Timothy (West Cork).
- Thrift, William Edward.
- Tierney, Michael.
- Vaughan, Daniel.
- White, John.
- White, Vincent Joseph.
Níl.
- Allen, Denis.
- Anthony, Richard.
- Blaney, Neal.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Broderick, Henry.
- Buckley, Daniel.
- Carney, Frank.
- Carty, Frank.
- Cassidy, Archie J.
- Colbert, James.
- Cooney, Eamon.
- Corkery, Dan.
- Corish, Richard.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Davin, William.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Doyle, Edward.
- Everett, James.
- Fahy, Frank.
- Flinn, Hugo.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- French, Seán.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Goulding, John.
- Hayes, Seán.
- Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Jordan, Stephen.
- Boland, Patrick.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Seán.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
- Kent, William R.
- Kerlin, Frank.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- O'Connell, Thomas J.
- O'Dowd, Patrick Joseph.
- O'Kelly, Seán T.
- O'Leary, William.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- O'Reilly, Thomas.
- Powell, Thomas P.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, James.
- Sexton, Martin.
- Sheehy, Timothy (Tipp.).
- Smith, Patrick.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Duggan and P.S. Doyle; Níl: Deputies G. Boland and Allen.
Question declared carried.
Bill read a Second Time. Committee Stage fixed for Wednesday, 22nd May.
The business to be taken to-morrow will be the Seanad By-Elections Bill, 1929; the Game Preservation Bill, 1929, and the Estimates.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.45 p.m.