I do not remember much about him in the 1922 period but I presume it was his part in the 1922 period which made it necessary to have these permits. These people were, presumably, members of the I.R.A.— an unlawful association, by definition. The I.R.A. is an unlawful association according to the law of this country yet there have only been three men brought up and charged with unlawful assembly under the new jurisdiction. The Government proclaimed the National Guard but before they were able to put their machinery in motion against the National Guard, it was dissolved and abolished and in its place the Young Ireland Association was formed. The Government then came along and declared that the Young Ireland Association was an unlawful body and that membership of it would carry all the penalties that membership of the other association would have carried. The Government did that, and we, being desirous of obeying the law even though it was an unjust law put in operation against peaceable citizens, again readily abolished the Young Ireland Association. But though only a short time elapsed between the Government order and our obedience to that order, they managed to act quickly and, one way or another, and through a certain amount of sharp practice, they managed to get three men punished for being members of this organisation. These men were not guilty of any offence. The association was a perfectly lawful association although banned by the Government, and, as I have stated, when it was banned it was abolished at the earliest possible moment. But there were other associations of which no notice whatever was taken.
When we introduced Constitution (Amendment) (No. 17) Act, in 1931, we took to ourselves great powers. I am not necessarily against coercion. But any Government that takes great powers to be used against the rights of the people must have very complete justification for doing so. We proclaimed that a certain number of organisations in our opinion, as we were bound to do, violated the conditions laid down in Section 19 of that Act, and were against the law. Was there anybody in this country who could question whether that order made by us was in accordance with truth? No one could question the fact that the organisations specifically named by us fulfilled the definition that makes an association an unlawful association. The matter was beyond question. The Bill that we introduced in these circumstances was preeminently a good Bill. It was necessary. Young people in this country, with the trappings and high-sounding phrases of patriotism, the Republic, and the rest of it, were being induced into an organisation whose methods were the methods of crime, and, young people by being connected with these associations could only embark upon a course of crime. That Bill was introduced in the ordinary course as the only effective way of dealing with these organisations.
The Attorney-General referred to Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney speaking about the Harty case, but Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney's point was that that man could have very well been brought before an ordinary court and that there was no need for the Military Tribunal to deal with him. Why did we create a military court? Because the ordinary courts were not adequate. Because a criminal organisation decided by murder, and by threats of murder, to create a position in which they gave orders in the name of the sacrosanct Republic that men must call upon God to bear witness to a lie, or else they must face death. A juryman sworn to give a verdict according to the evidence placed before him and calling upon the Eternal Truth to help him to find a verdict must commit perjury under the orders of this association, and find a verdict contrary to the evidence. The result was that there was a position created in this country that jurymen had to choose whether they would commit perjury, and call upon God to bear witness to their lies, or else come out and face the assassin's bullet. Many people have not that courage. It is most unfair to ask ordinary citizens to take the course that may mean assassination for them. We had to find another course and that is why the Military Court was created. So far as that association is concerned its aim was to try to get jurymen to commit perjury. The Attorney-General says that only three men of the Blueshirts had been in prison for membership of an unlawful association. May I ask how many members of the I.R.A. and of the Cumann na mBan have been brought up and prosecuted as members of an unlawful association? It was only a matter of a few days between the time the National Guard and the Young Ireland Association were proclaimed and the abolition of these associations. The moment the Government made an order, the United Ireland Party came to an agreement to dissolve both organisations, and the time between the proclaiming of them by the Government and the abolition of them was the only period that anyone belonging to them could be said to belong to an unlawful association; whereas during the whole period of this Government's life the I.R.A., their members and their organisation have had absolute freedom, and they own their arms to the knowledge of the Government. During the whole period that the Constitution (Amendment) No. 17 Act has been in force by this Government not one man or woman has been charged with membership of the I.R.A. or the Cumann na mBan. A short time ago a member of the I.R.A. was being tried before an ordinary court on a certain charge. Members of the jury received a document from the headquarters of the Cumann na mBan, with an address in Dawson Street, warning these jurymen that it was an act of treason to the Republic, with the arms of the I.R.A. behind it, if they acted according to the evidence, as they were obliged to do by their oath. The President was well aware of that and he spoke of it at a public meeting afterwards.
One of the reasons we had when we were in office for making these organisations unlawful was that they tried to tamper with justice by intimidating ordinary jurymen. These organisations were endeavouring to demoralise jurymen and destroy the jury system. The document that I have mentioned had the address of its organisation at the head of it. The heads of these organisations are known to members of the Government and are their personal friends. The Government know the people who were trying to corrupt justice in that way. They know that in that way, as by all their other methods, both the associations I have mentioned are by definition unlawful associations and that membership of them is liable to penalties in this country. Yet no one has been brought up and charged with membership of the I.R.A. or the Cumann na mBan. No action was taken to punish people who attempted to seduce jurymen from doing their duty and to perjure themselves. But because Commandant Cronin was in a blue shirt a day or two after the Young Ireland Association was proclaimed, he was hauled before the Military Tribunal and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. We have had two and three-quarter hours of passionate indignation from the President, protesting that there was nothing but the purest methods inspiring their administration. Yet, we have in this country, at this moment, a position in which crime is fostered by the Government.
You can belong to the I.R.A. tomorrow. You can organise such acts as the beating to death of young O'Reilly, be a member of the organisation and be responsible for the running of an organisation that does that sort of thing but nothing will happen to you. But if you should belong to an organisation that aims at preserving for the people of this country their ordinary rights, that aims at keeping the reign of law in this country—not under the method the Government proposes to promote the reign of law, through the operation of injustice but through order based upon justice—if you belong to one of these organisations, the Government can make an order in the middle of the night in the room of the Executive Council or in President de Valera's room and you are breaking the law before you get up in the morning. That was the position of Commandant Cronin. When you do that you can be sentenced by the Military Tribunal. That does not apply against the really unlawful associations. That being so, what is the point of the appalling hypocrisy we have displayed from the Government Benches when they are so indignant at the suggestion that there is partial government in this country? The Attorney-General, yesterday I think it was, got up blandly— and that is one of the reasons why people suffer injustice in this country —when somebody was speaking on this side and he said: "How do you justify the actions of the farmers in Waterford this morning or yesterday who were organised by your Party unlawfully to prevent the auction there?" I heard what he said but certain other members on this side did not quite hear him and they asked him to repeat this statement. When he repeated it he did not repeat the business about their being organised by this Party. He got up in this House to accuse our Party of organising opposition to an auction in Waterford and he had no evidence to support his statement—not the slightest. In the usual way when they see anything happening which is inconvenient for them, they automatically decide that we are responsible for it and that we should be punished for it.
I object strongly to the voting of this sum of money, not because I object to the Military Tribunal as some coercive measure, not because I object to anybody being charged before it when they go shooting along the streets or along the roads, or when they go out to terrify people in their houses. I have no objection to that. It is my duty as a citizen to assist the Government in putting down such unlawful practices, and the obvious way of putting them down is to apply penal sanctions and to see that the guilty parties are brought to justice. But what is the position? We had a man charged the other day with the possession of a rifle, a man who possibly, or even probably, might be in a position of danger from the illegal followers of the Government because, as I read the case in the papers, one of the men had been given a rifle in 1923, after Dr. O'Higgins had been murdered. He was given a rifle because he lived near by, and there was reason to anticipate that the murderers might come back to play the same game with him. I think they actually did return, but the mere fact that he was connected with the murdered man is mentioned against him, so that he may be known to the friends of the Government as a traitor and may, therefore, meet a traitor's fate. The people who think that they have a right to mete out a traitor's fate to people who differ with them politically, belong to the organisation which the President says he has no intention of disarming, but if other people have arms under those circumstances, if they are found with arms, they are going to be punished.
This military court is being used, not by its own action, but is being used by the action of the Government, only to punish one side. The Attorney-General says there is impartial administration, because there are so many followers of theirs in jail, and only so many of ours, but everybody knows perfectly well how action against our followers is pushed to the furthest point on a pure technicality, how, having declared the Young Ireland Party on the 8th December an illegal organisation, they arrest Commandant Cronin on the 9th and throw him into jail, on a charge of breaking the law. The Government does that with regard to our Party, but nothing at all with regard to the other Party. The Government can use and is using that court for the purpose of putting into jail people they do not like, who have been guilty of no crime whatsoever, and who have been rendered liable to arrest merely by virtue of an action of the Government. Nobody could say that Commandant Cronin was guilty of an offence against the moral or the civil law of this country by being a member of the Young Ireland Party, up to a certain hour on the 8th of December, at all events. It is clear that it was not possible for him formally to indicate that he had ceased to be a member up to the time he was arrested.
The Government is using this Act against people in whose minds, or in whose actions, there cannot be any guilt whatsoever. It uses it against people for the ownership of guns and other things, but will not use it against members of its own Party in the same way. I, myself, at various meetings, could really have pointed out 60 specific people who were guilty of offences of interfering and molesting people associated with our meetings, but in the whole country they have only got 50 odd of these people in jail. You had two men murdered recently. You had young O'Reilly and young Daly murdered, and a constant series of outrages. It is a regular thing in every day's newspaper to see reports of several cases of outrage for months past, yet only when they could no longer avoid it, were any men brought to justice on that side. On our side Commandant Cronin has been imprisoned for three months against every conception of justice. Even if the Government were right in banning the Blueshirts, they must still admit that they are imposing on Commandant Cronin a sentence which is an outrage against all justice. They come along now to tax the Irish people for a further sum in order to enable them to carry out similar injustices.
I know that the Government, time and again when they talk about majority rule, think that the term "majority rule" means that the Government of this country can do what they like without any regard to justice. They think that the minority have no right to justice whatever. The President indicated that point of view last night when he suggested that Lord Muskerry, having made a certain statement as to the position in this country, merely because he was Lord Muskerry and was not an Aiken, a Ruttledge or a de Valera, or one of the latter-day patriots, had no right to express an opinion in this country. The President talked a lot about how scandalous it was to use religion for politics. The President did not mention that he had taxed the people of Ireland in order to send a broadcast message into America to suggest that his Party was the Party that was maintaining religion and that we, somehow or other, merely by not supporting him were the enemies of the Government in that. Lord Muskerry is possibly one of the old landowners, possibly a Protestant. Possibly his father may have been a Unionist, but are we to understand from President de Valera that, therefore, he has no right to express an opinion on conditions in this country? It is an outrage, I suggest, to say that nobody, except people who, like themselves, repudiated the Executive and the Dáil in 1922, has a right to organise or to express an opinion in this country. The whole administration of what is called the Public Safety Act, the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, has been operated against justice in this country.
One does not expect a very strong sense of fair play from the Government and one could scarcely expect, knowing how extraordinarily hypocritical the Leader of the Government is, how, whenever he is going to do a dirty thing, he always makes a most high-sounding speech, as we noticed last night and again this morning, that the Government would go out of its way in this matter to act justly or fairly. The President's little point of view, so far as Ireland is concerned, is this: you can do what you like as long as you say the right thing. That is his reading of the Irish situation. He says the right thing, but he intends to do as he likes, and he always likes to do anything that is tyrannical and that is an outrage against justice. We are asked to vote here in order to enable the Minister for Defence to carry on this outrage against justice. I would like to hear any member of the Fianna Fáil Party, the Attorney-General or anyone else, undertaking to show to the House that the sentence passed upon Commandant Cronin was a just one. I would like to hear any one of them trying to suggest that the punishment Commandant Cronin is undergoing is otherwise than an outrage against justice and an outrage that cries out to the people to be remedied.