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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Monday, 2 Jul 1923

Vol. 3 No. 35

PUBLIC SAFETY (EMERGENCY POWERS) BILL, 1923. - SECOND STAGE RESUMED.

Question: "That the Bill be now read a second time," again proposed.

I think I have a recollection that when the Minister for Home Affairs sprung this bombshell on the Dáil, on the occasion of the First Reading of the Bill, he gave us to understand that on the Second Reading he would produce sufficient evidence to convince us of the necessity for the introduction of this measure. I think there is hardly anybody in the Dáil will hold that he has produced that evidence. He has acted, in his own words, in the role of intelligent anticipator, and told us what is likely, in his opinion, to occur. One would have thought that before he would ask this Dáil to commit itself to pass these proposals into law that he would give us some evidence on which, as ordinary individuals, we could found an opinion that there was at this moment an abnormal condition of affairs existing in the country. He has not done that. In every country after a period of war, or after a period of revolution such as this country has passed through, it is the normal condition that ordinary crime should be, generally speaking, much more rampant than it was in more peaceable times. That was the position in England after the Great War. It was the position in France and in other countries. But the English Government, in order to cope with that position, did not introduce or ask its parliament to give them the extraordinary powers that are asked for of this Irish parliament. These English are no fools. They have fought for the liberty which they have through the centuries, and one of the dearest liberties in their possession is this right which is known as habeas corpus. The Minister for Home Affairs and the other Ministers from time to time quote or use as an argument the fact that we have, under the Treaty, as much right to form our own Government as the Englishman has in his own country. But they have been careful not to say that we have as much liberty as the Englishman has in his own country. The English Government did not resort to these extraordinary laws for the preservation of order. Before the Dáil was asked to give its sanction to these emergency powers, even though temporary, the case should be absolutely plain and clear to the Deputies and to the country that the ordinary law that exists has failed to maintain and to restore order. What are the facts? Take this country for the last month or two—and I will mention that period specially—and compare its record so far as ordinary crime is concerned with any other country, and I think, if you take all the circumstances into account, particularly the fact that we have been just emerging from four or five years of very great disturbance, you will find the records in that respect will compare favourably indeed with those of any other country. But the Minister for Home Affairs, by way of intelligent anticipation, puts this view before us. Perhaps he knows some things which he has not told to us in this Dáil. He tells us that the crime of arson and robbery under arms, and these things for which special powers are being applied in this Bill, will be common. Now, I think it would be very much better in the interests of this country if until there is some more evidence and some greater evidence than exists at the present time, that his anticipation would be correct, this measure were not introduced.

There is one particular phase of this question to which no speaker has so far drawn attention, and which is worthy of attention. In defending his measure, and in telling us why it is important that his hideous provision with regard to flogging should be disinterred and reintroduced, great stress was laid on the necessity for meeting robbery under arms by this proposed flogging. Usually, when this is referred to through the country or in this Dáil, people take it that under this Bill robbery means robbery with a gun, with a revolver, by force of arms as arms are generally understood. That is the only meaning that is attached to it by the ordinary individual; but when we come to the Bill, and see how robbery under arms is defined, we see it has quite a different complexion altogether. In Section 5 of the Bill it sets out, "Every person convicted by a Court of Summary Jurisdiction of any of the offences mentioned in Part 2 of the Schedule to this Act shall be sentenced to suffer imprisonment with hard labour for a term of twelve months," and so on. In Section 5, Sub-section 4, it says, "Every male person who shall be convicted by a Court of Summary Jurisdiction or found guilty on indictment of the offence of robbery under arms as defined at No. 6 in Part 2 of the Schedule to this Act"; and we turn to Part 2 of the Schedule of this Act, and we find that robbery under arms is here defined as "robbery or attempting to rob while armed with any offensive weapon or instrument." Now, what is an offensive weapon or instrument in this sense? It is not necessarily a loaded revolver, a rifle, a shotgun, or a bomb. It may be a blackthorn stick. A man's fist might be considered an offensive weapon or instrument in this particular direction, or a man's boots, as I am reminded. Through the country the impression is that this is a special measure to deal with a certain heinous offence which nobody wishes for a moment to palliate—robbery through fear excited by a gun. It is not that. We may be told, as it has been the habit to tell us lately, that that is not intended, and that something different is intended. We are told that nothing is intended except the flogging of a man who uses a gun; but there is no option left to the Judges. The measure is absolutely definite. To test how it may be worked an extreme case may be taken. As far as I can gather from Section 5, suppose a young lad of 15 or 16 years is convicted in a Court of Summary Jurisdiction of robbing sixpence or a shilling from another youngster, and using during the course of the robbery an offensive weapon or instrument—to wit, a lump of stick—if he is convicted, the Judge has no choice whatsoever but to order that the young lad should be whipped once privately, and the number of strokes at such whipping, according to the section, shall not exceed 25. He shall be whipped, and the Judge has no option. You may tell me that is an extreme case. I grant it, but it is possible under this measure. The position will then arise, as far as I can judge, that either the Judge, seeing what is going to happen, will refuse to convict, or he will simply have to carry out the law as put down before him.

The Government have declared very definitely and candidly that the powers which they are seeking to hold and intern prisoners represent their desire to get around habeas corpus. That is their declared and definite intention. The suspension of habeas corpus was asked for because there was armed rebellion existing in the country. It is necessary during the course of armed rebellion, and the Judges will not grant habeas corpus while armed rebellion exists. We may sympathise with that point of view. Now, the Judges may, one of these days, hold that armed rebellion no longer exists, and therefore those people held as prisoners will have the right to demand and get their freedom. I cannot see why we should alter the regulations that exist in every modern country. It is only during the existence of a state of affairs under which the Civil Courts could not function, and would not be allowed to function, that this special provision of habeas corpus is suspended. The Judges are the persons who are, or will be, in a position to say when Civil Courts will be able to function. When they do so, and when the Civil Courts are in a position to function, armed rebellion will have ceased, and what is the necessity for those powers with which the Government are attempting in this first Parliament of the Saorstát to blacken our Statute Book? There is also in the Bill a provision dealing with the seizure of cattle. That comes into Section 6. It is a kind of attempt, I daresay, to legislate retrospectively, and justify some of the things that have been and are being done by the Government as a military necessity. Again, we are told that this, of course, will only occur where there is “wholesale and flagrant defiance of the law.” We were told these things when the “Sheriffs Bill” was going through. Some of us were led to give a vote in favour of that Bill, because there was an impression that it would be used only in a special direction. Those who voted under that impression found their mistake afterwards. They found that the Government had no right whatsoever to interfere with the administration of the law once the law was made. It may be the very same in this case; the same thing will probably happen; and once this Bill becomes law, there will be very little to prevent wholesale seizure of cattle in cases where there is nothing but ordinary trespass. This whole measure is one that, in my opinion, is calculated to do the Government itself infinite harm. It shows, as it were, a want of belief in the people. The people want, and are anxious for, peace; but no repressive measures of this kind can bring peace of the type we all want, unless the people are anxious to co-operate in every possible way with those responsible for public order. This measure will be looked upon by the people as a want of faith—and not only want of faith in the people, but want of faith in the Judges. It does not trust the Judge to carry out and administer the law, using his discretion as to severity or leniency as occasion may require, but it says that in certain circumstances he must do certain things. That is why I think the Government, even in the interest of the ideal which they themselves have at heart, are making a mistake in asking the Dáil to give them the powers sought in this Bill.

"This Bill out-Herods Herod." But there is a deeper depth of villainy and iniquity even than that to which Herod is reputed to have sunk. "It out-Higgins O'Higgins." I have chosen these flowers of rhetoric from the report of a speech delivered by Deputy Johnson. There is one old friend of history whose name, strange to relate, was not invoked in these criticisms. I should have expected to hear that the Minister for Home Affairs, in proposing this measure, was the relentless Torquemada of the New Inquisition. I make a present of that to some future speaker.

Looking through Deputy Johnson's speech, and listening to his lieutenant's just now, we find repeatedly the phrase, "The re-institution of flogging" and "the re-creation of flogging." Where have these Deputies been living? Surely not under a British Administration! Or if they have, they have allowed themselves to remain in blissful ignorance of the character of the laws under which they were living. One would think, from hearing these diatribes against the whipping of criminal offenders, that we had, as Deputy Gavan Duffy puts it, to "go back to the Middle Ages" for these tortures. I have been at pains, in the interval since the last sitting, to write down for the benefit of these Deputies the offences for which, in very recent years, legislation decreed whipping. As to the spirit of the age, I will have more to say presently. I leave out convictions under the Knackers Act, for that was in 1876. These are authorisations by Statute without any limit whatever as to the number of strokes to be inflicted. It is not a case of being flogged once or being flogged twice——

Once only under the 1914 Act.

I am speaking of one thing, and Deputy O'Shannon's mind immediately turns to quite another thing. That will come in its own time. I am speaking now of offences which, by the enactments on the British Statute Books of comparatively recent years, inflicted the punishment of flogging without limit to the number of times of its infliction. Whipping is provided for in sentences at Quarter Sessions on incorrigible rogues, under the Fifth of George IV., on conviction under Section 2 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885—an Act popularly known as Stead's Act, which some of us are old enough to remember the circumstances of. Section 2 of that Criminal Law Amendment Act is re-enacted by the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1912. These are not ancient days or days of feudalism. Whipping is also provided for on conviction for offences against the person of the Sovereign under V. and VI. Victoria. That also is not a feudal date or a mediaeval date. Similarly, under Section 23, Sub-section (1), of the Larceny Act of 1916, and under Section 21 of the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861, which is a little bit more ancient. These two sections—and I would ask Deputy O'Connell and Deputy Johnson to listen very attentively to this—declare robbery under arms a felony. The felony of robbery under arms, even an assault under arms with intent to rob, robbery accompanied by violence to their person, or robbery with intent to rob by at least two persons—that felony is punishable by penal servitude for life, plus whipping, and the very words of the section are the words of this much-abhorred Section No. 5, Sub-section (4). Furthermore, prisoners in any convict or local prison may be flogged for offences against prison discipline under the Rules set up in 1899. Now, whatever may be thought about whipping or flogging, at any rate let our minds be clear about this—this is not a new invention. It is not the effort of a few frenzied legislators in despair to resort to something that will save them in an emergency. Now, what is all this declamation about? What is the difference between the Statutes and Rules which I have just read and those in the present Bill?

Why the Bill? They have those Acts already.

I will answer that. There is a difference. I want to be perfectly frank in this matter. I shall come to another offence—that of arson— and I can deal with the two together. In the present Bill "every male person"— I am reading from Sub-section (4)—"who shall be convicted by a Court of Summary Jurisdiction"—that is comparatively new—"or found guilty on indictment of the offence of robbery under arms as defined at No. 6 in Part 2 of the Schedule to this Act, or of the offence of arson as defined at No. 7 in Part 2 of the said Schedule, etc." There is a difference. Arson is considered in England a crime of such enormity that the offender is always proceeded against on indictment, and he is not brought before a Court of Summary Jurisdiction. Furthermore, let me be franker still, the word "shall" in the present Bill leaves no option whatever to the Court. There is a discretion left in those other Acts, the Criminal Law Amendment Act even, and the Larceny Act of 1916.

In every one of those Acts.

It is generally exercised.

We prefer to take our own responsibility.

There is no discretion left here. Consequently there is power taken here in this Bill that is not conferred in the Statutes that were re-enacted; hence the new legislation.

Consequently the analogy fails.

What analogy Deputy Gavan Duffy declares to fail I cannot see. I am for the moment merely engaged in attempting to discover what all the excitement is about. I am analysing the situation. I found on attempting to enter this Dáil that agitated crowds were calling out "Murderer" and other similar epithets to members coming in. Why all this agitation? That is the first question I put to myself, and that is all for the moment I am considering. Now, Deputy Gavan Duffy appeals to American criminologists in this matter, and he assures us that, as a result of research and study into penal systems, the learned world is satisfied that it is a mistake to attempt to suppress crime by anything in the nature of so-called deterrent punishments, unless, perhaps, the punishments are slight. That is a paraphrase, a lengthened paraphrase no doubt, of Deputy Gavan Duffy's statement. Perhaps I ought to read the exact words, as I have the advantage of holding the Official Report here—

"I know that flogging is defended on the ground that it is the only effective means. I deny that it is effective, and I deny that it is the only means. I invite the Minister to give to the Dáil the opinion of American criminologists who have gone into the question of deterrent punishment. I invite him to examine the statistics proving that this kind of punishment makes the kind of criminal out of whom you can get nothing, whom you cannot make into a normal man. I invite him to read the evidence that has been collected in America as to the proper steps by which to eradicate the kink from the criminal. They are not steps such as these."

Now, I am willing to make a present to Deputy Gavan Duffy of his American criminology. We are all aware that there is more crime than mere deliberate viciousness. There are criminals and criminals, just as there are politicians and politicians. It is true that penal enactments press very harshly on men who are the offspring of degraded parents and who were brought up in the terrible school of the slum—people who, rightly regarded, are more sinned against than sinning. But that need not shut our eyes to the fact that, over and above that class, for which we ought to have mercy when they have done wrong, and for the relief of which there is so much humanitarian work being done at present, there is the deliberate criminal. There is the criminal, above all, who shelters himself under the profession of high ideals, the camp follower of patriotism, the looter, the saboteur, the man with the petrol can. We know very well the genesis of that type of criminal here, and we do not require American criminologists to tell us anything more about it than, unhappily, we know already. People, especially unthinking people, are very easily aroused. Catch-cries circulate with marvellous rapidity in this country, and it is quite easy to foment excitement among the populace, who will not stop to analyse or consider. “This is the Flogging Bill; we are going to flog our political opponents, those noble-hearted patriots whom we cannot coerce, whom we cannot bribe, whom we cannot cajole. We shall at least brand them as men who have been scourged, and put upon them the personal humiliation of being flogged.” That, according to the opinion of many people outside, is the purpose and the sole intention of this measure. Against whom is it intended to direct Sub-section (4) in Section 5? Not against what Deputy Gavan Duffy ingeniously calls our political opponents; not against sincere patriots, who do not accept the Free State, and who look for what they regard as a wider, fuller expansion of liberty for Ireland. These men do not commit arson; these men do not rob under arms. Section 5, Sub-section (4) deals exclusively with those who rob under arms and who commit arson. I remember some years ago a great work of a French sculptor was presented by the Second Republic of France to the United States —Liberty enlightening the World. These people's conception of liberty is Liberty lighting the world with the torch of the midnight incendiary. These are not the idealists who are going to make Ireland free and great among the nations of the earth. These are the people inspired by some personal wrong, some feeling of vindictiveness, or perhaps merely the impersonal hooligan spirit that sees an opportunity of damage and does it. Do Deputy Gavan Duffy and Deputy Johnson and Deputy O'Connell tell us that the Government is to take no steps to protect the citizen from these outrages? What do they suggest? Deputy Gavan Duffy is a highly critical spirit—in fact, like Iago, he is “nothing if not critical.” I find, however, that his criticism is rarely constructive. In the present case he assures us repeatedly that this measure will not bring about the result that it is intended to secure. “We all want peace; this will not bring peace; men's convictions are only deepened in the prison cell.” Well, we are dealing now with men of previous convictions; forty-nine or sixty previous convictions; not with the other type of whom I have spoken, and of whom I mean to continue to speak, with respect. What does Deputy Gavan Duffy suggest should be done? I rather gather—I hope I am not doing violence to the words of Deputy Johnson—that he would prefer that those men should be shot. One of his henchmen was reported in the newspapers a few days ago as declaring; for his own part, that he would rather be shot than flogged. I fully agree with him. Personally, I should very much rather be shot than be flogged. I think it was Deputy Davin——

You will pardon me, it was not.

Then I wronged him. Deputy Davin would rather be flogged.

I no not want to come under your lash, anyway.

It was I who said it.

I agree with Deputy Lyons. Anyone can easily screw up his courage, allow himself to be placed with his back to the wall, and in a moment it is all over. It is as easy, as the Americans say, as falling off a log. It certainly is as easy as falling asleep. It is a very different thing to bear the mark of the lash on one's body and to wear the badge and remember the humiliation of it. Yes, to people like Deputy Lyons and the rest of us who are sensitive. But what about the man who resorts to arson? The man who robs with violence, has he that acuteness of sensibility, that delicacy of feeling? I doubt it very much. Under the Criminal Law Amendment Act I quoted a few moments ago, the souteneur was flogged. Many of those gentlemen have been flogged repeatedly.

Has it been a deterrent?

It has been a deterrent.

Has it cured the evil?

It has not cured the evil, I agree, but it has considerably minimised it. It has been admitted on all hands that it is sufficient if we can mitigate the evil, even if we cannot altogether remove it. Absolute removal of crime is an ideal, but no one hopes to encompass such an ideal, least of all in these times. Let us remember what the situation is. I could, like Deputy Johnson, lecture on high ideals and theories of sociology by the hour. I am paid for it, but here in this Dáil we are not expounders of theory and doctrine; we are men with a definite task, a painful and difficult task, which it requires a considerable amount of courage and resolution to discharge. Do the arguments of Deputy Gavan Duffy, in his criminology, represent the spirit of the times. That was the crescendo in Deputy Johnson's attack the other day. I think he ended on that, in fact, I should have begun with it, if I had been possessed of a nice sense of literary effect. "If you are going to make a man a good citizen by frightening him into citizenship, I say that is reactionary"—presumably you must coax him into it—"and contrary to the spirit of the age, and I say that the passing of this Bill will be a foul blot upon the Session of the Dáil." It is contrary to the spirit of the age. That is the argument common to the two Deputies, Deputy Duffy and Deputy Johnson. Now, is it? Of what age is the Deputy thinking? Surely before the war. We have entered into a new world altogether. Could anyone in 1914 conceive of the possibility of the First Parliament of a liberated Ireland being engaged on legislation of this sort, or anything dimly approachng it? Deputy O'Connell made that point a few minutes ago, so we are to legislate in a vacuum. The world outside is in a welter of disorder and confusion, with open rebellion still in some places, and we are to sit inside these placid walls and shut it out and forget about it, and our enactments are to be as applicable to Laputa or any other place on the map or not on the map, as to this country. Surely that is not commonsense. Deputy Gavan Duffy stated that there is not a solitary argument in favour of this thing that could not be advanced at a later date, six months hence. Well, he is referring now to the internment question. This is an old trick of the magician of which we are all aware. The trick of Saritis. It is known, as you may remember, in the texts book on logic, as the failure of the mare's tail or the bald head. If you pluck a hair from a man's head, do you make him bald? No, but take another hair and another, and is he bald? No. Then it does not matter how many you take, he never becomes bald. Or at what particular night in the biography of a puppy does he become a dog. Did he go to bed a puppy and rise up a dog? This is a trick of people who try to take things that belong to a concrete complex state of affairs out of that complexity and treat them as simple isolated abstracts, and not as they are, facts. I should have thought the point would have been made that when this becomes an Act it will expire on December 6th or thereabouts, and the elections will be all over. Why not say that this is created to keep what Deputy Duffy calls our political opponents in durance vile until the election is over so that we can win seats?

I am glad Deputy Johnson agrees with me. It is perfectly obvious that this measure is intended to control the period between this and the coming into office of a new Government, and that ought to be proclaimed from the housetops. It is not something to conceal. I will answer you out of the Deputy's own speech. He says: "I think that in any good democratic State, and we claim by our Constitution to be a democratic State," etc. We claim, of course we do, to be a democratic State. And what does that involve? When President Lincoln, on a memorable day, consecrated the battle of Gettysburg to the sacred dead of the Northern States, he uttered that famous formula which we have all been repeating ever since—the formula of democracy—"Government of the people, by the people, for the people." The fundamental idea of democracy is that the people shall have ultimate control over government and the institution of government under which they are called upon to live their lives. The people do not actually, as we know, exercise government, but they control it, and the purpose of a General Election is to give them the machinery for the exercise of that ultimate control which is theirs.

And if there be any junta of men or mænads, any cabal, that would reserve to itself the power or force to control what ought to be the ultimate control, then I say that is the negation of democracy; it is the very definition of what constitutes the essence of irresponsibility and capricious tyranny. We are making ready for a General Election. There may be many issues at that election, but the great issue of which everybody will be conscious hardly requires to be formulated. Now, Deputy Gavan Duffy wants us to coax those people, to make friends with them. Well and good! We have tried that. Apparently from his arguments—and I hope I shall have time to go into them later—we have not done it in the proper spirit or on the proper lines. At any rate, the attitude taken up by them is that they have reserved their arms; that they have called off hostilities. That is not peace; it is armed peace. I remember—the reference to President Lincoln brings it back to me—that during the War of the North and South there was a deputation from Jefferson Davis to some of the Generals of the Northern Army, and one of the staff, writing of the deputation, said: "It consisted of men who came there with the war paint removed from their faces temporarily"—the tomahawk and the scalping knife dumped for the time being, and the terms to these de-painted warriors was "unconditional surrender"; and it followed within two months of the interview. How can there be a democratic State, or even a pretence of democracy, if men are to retain arms during the period of the election, and be at liberty, if they are so minded, to use these for the intimidation of the electorate? A few days ago I was walking in the neighbourhood of Palmerston Park, and I noticed this very interesting inscription on a wall: "Is the majority always right? Up the I.R.A." There is a challenge to democracy—the full recognition, on the part of some people anyhow, that they claim by the right of some superior wisdom or higher illumination, to be able to dictate to the people how they should live and die. Well, I have no love for this paternal system of misgovernment. I ought to say—I think it is due to myself to say— I have no propensity for idolatory. I am not prone to set up idols either of men or institutions, and certainly the last idol before which I would bow would be the idol of force. Now, which is to be here? To which are we to bow the knee—to the force wielded by the irresponsible, undelegated force, or the force exercised through the courts of law, or the tribunal similar to them or substituted for them, but set up in the name of the people in their own Legislature? All this talk here is about force. For certain classes of people repression is necessary even in their own interests; but when a choice is put to me to submit myself to the irresponsible or the responsible, surely in claiming to have some measure of sanity I have no difficulty in making a choice. Deputy Gavan Duffy has a euphemistic phrase here—what he calls "the failure of the negotiations.""Failure of negotiations" follows very well from the description of "rebels" as political opponents. It assumes the whole point at issue. Is this a Government set up by the will of the people and officiating in the names of the people, or is it not? If it is not, then well and good. In God's name let the Irish people get rid of it; and there is a constitutional way of getting rid of it—namely, at the General Election; but that election must be free.

On the other hand, if it is, as we know it to be, an expression of the popular will, why raise all these clouds of learned and other dust to confuse the minds of the unthinking? These negotiations failed. Why? Because the terms of peace would be the surrender of government by the Government. Again, I ask these Deputies what do they propose instead? Suppose, by the whirligig of chance, that after the General Election, or in a week, say, from now, to make the case better, this Government is turned out and the Opposition is in office, how will they deal with the situation as it now exists? Benjamin Disraeli, in the sixties, was able to defeat Mr. Gladstone on a measure of Reform, and by a stroke of unconscionable adroitness he passed, in the very succeeding Session over which he presided as Premier, not merely a Reform Bill, but a Reform Bill far more Radical than that through opposition to which he had thrown out Mr. Gladstone's Administration. It is a fairly good test of the Opposition. What would they do were they a Government? I fail to find, from these speeches, any answer to that. Would they liberate the 13,000 prisoners, and say, "Go home and be good; we know there are arms secreted in various dumps about the country waiting for you, but we can count upon your good feeling and your fine instincts of honour not to use them against us." I think if the electorate were told beforehand that that was the proposed policy, there would be very few First Preference votes for the candidates that espoused that. There are so many things to deal with in this that I feel, like the editor of an Irish-American Western paper who published the morning issue with five columns blank, and with an explanation at the top of the paper that "owing to the pressure of news we have had to go to press with this space blank." Deputy Johnson is opposed to flogging in private, and yet he appeals to us in the name of the spirit of the age. Hanging in public in the eighteenth century was such an entertainment, especially for the aristocracy, that the rising democratic spirit of the age insisted upon hanging being private.

Why? Because—and I have no hesitation in saying this—it is barbarous. If Deputy Johnson could make it more barbarous by having it a public degradation and a hurt to those who might have to look on, would he think he had improved it? Apparently as there is a murmur of assent, or something that I construe in that fashion, he would. Flogging undoubtedly is barbarous; all these penal enactments are barbarous. To take a man and shut him away from his friends, and give him solitary confinement, and put him upon black bread and water, that is barbarous. That has driven many a man mad, and possibly will do so in future times. But what do these Deputies propose instead? That is the point, and that is the pressing urgent issue, because an election is coming on.

I have seen statistics, I do not know whether they are accurate or not, that the liberation for some months past of prisoners arrested on suspicion has been going on at the rate of something like 300 a month. Of course, that is very slow. It ought to be possible, and apparently under this Bill it will be possible, to make enquiries more rapidly. That, at any rate is to be done. I see that under Section 2, with regard to future detentions: "It shall be lawful for an Executive Minister to order the detention in custody in any place in Saorstát Eireann of any person arrested under this Section in respect of whom such Minister is of opinion that the Public Safety would be endangered by such person being set at liberty. Whenever any person is arrested under this Section, such person shall, not later than one week after his arrest, unless an order for his detention is made by an Executive Minister under this Section, either be released, or be charged with one or more of the offences," and so on, with certain reservations. It may be Deputy Johnson will say that I insist too much upon this enquiry. What is the substitute, or what do these Deputies propose? Personally, I have already, I think, stated my own sentiments and emotions on the matter. I am opposed to war, I am opposed to bloodshed, more particularly to human bloodshed, especially between brothers. I hate even punishment inflicted on a dog. Very good. But, here is the confusion that upsets so many minds, and even so clear and so subtle a mind as Deputy Gavan Duffy's has not escaped from it. There is all the difference in the world between the claim of ethics and the moral system upon the individual as a unit and the individual in the collectivity of society. Take an example. If a man, to escape disgrace or punishment, or fleeing from something that he dreads, commits suicide, morality blames him—the act is regarded with reprobation. But if, of his own volition, deliberately he gives up his life—for instance, surrendering his place in a boat, whereby he might have been saved from shipwreck—why we regard that as a noble act of self-sacrifice. "Greater love than this no man hath, that he should lay down his life for his friend." Similarly "Thou shalt not kill" applied to the individual. Yet, in spite of his emotions and his sympathies, his hatred of suffering and the infliction of suffering, a man with all that delicacy of feeling placed in a responsible position, a fiduciary position, exercising the trust of government on behalf of a people may, like an officer in battle who gives the word of command that means the death of thousands of men, have to act differently.

There is one thing, anyway, that we can do, and that is, we can prevent ourselves from confusing the issues for the outside public. This may be called, ignorantly and intemperately, a flogging Bill. It is nothing of the sort. It may be spoken of as a Bill for the repression of our political opponents. It is nothing of the sort. If there is any man who believes in an Irish Republic as something attainable and possible now or shortly, and that the repudiation of the Free State is the first necessary step to its attainment, and he believes in that with the sincerity of conviction— as regards his convictions I have no fault to find with them—but if, against the decision of the general sense of the majority of his people he would take up arms to force them to act as if they shared his conviction of the immediate possibility of this thing, social order and social peace, the political expansion and development of the country demand that that man should not exercise what he claims is his right, to limit the freedom of opinion and of conduct on the part of his fellow-citizens. It is not qua believer in a Republic for Ireland that he is being detained, but as a disturber of the social peace. If he is willing to become a Constitutional opponent within the Dáil——

If a military captain believed he was a Constitutional opponent.

If he can satisfy a military captain that he was willing to be a Constitutional opponent, why, then, Constitutional opponent let him be. Surely Deputy Johnson has no fault to find with that doctrine. Surely he must satisfy some responsible authority that that is the category to which he belongs. Deputy Johnson makes great play of the fact that it is not sufficient that he should sign an undertaking. With some people the signing of undertakings is a light thing, to be treated with levity. Surely, to look for some bail, to look for some guarantee of his good conduct when liberated, is not unreasonable? We did all these things under the British regime. Why is the slave mind so ready to display itself, that now, when dealing with our own countrymen things that were done before, and believed to be reasonable and proper will not be done? No one need be a prisoner unless he condemns himself to imprisonment.

On suspicion.

On reasonable suspicion. Must you, if you hear a rustling in the thicket wait for the rattle-snake to strike before you are satisfied that it is there?

Petty jealousy

It is useless to argue with representations of that kind.

I am glad that Deputy Magennis sets such a stern face against the torrent of abuse that was poured forth on this Bill from the opposite benches. It looked for a time as if we were going to be completely overwhelmed by it. I do not think that anyone has any praise to bestow on a measure of this kind. Its necessity must be its sole justification. I do not think that anyone can seriously contend that it is not necessary. The Bill falls naturally into two divisions. The first part of the Bill, I take it, is made necessary by the fact that the technical state of war, which is the sole legal justification—I stress the word legal —for the internment of a large number of prisoners, may be declared at an end long before the actual state of affairs in the country would justify their release. I think no one will seriously argue that those prisoners should be let out before the country returns to normal—that is, all those prisoners any way. Those men have consistently refused to accept the principle, the recognition of which is the first essential of the establishment of order and security in any democratically governed State—the principle of majority rule, of self-determination—and the acceptance of that principle must be a condition precedent to any relaxation of vigilance on the part of this or any other established Government.

Until the prisoners, and those who speak for the prisoners, accept that principle it would be the height of folly for this Government to release them under present conditions. Even if we were in a position to release these prisoners at the present moment, some such measure as this would be necessary, because such a large number of prisoners could not be released haphazard. Some system of release by batches will have to be devised, and that system would, naturally, have to be under the control of the Executive rather than under the control of the Judiciary, because the Executive would have to make all the regulations for release, and the Judiciary would be obliged to release them according as applications were made for release, no matter in what numbers such applications were made or in what order, regardless of its effect on the general public. Some such measure as this is necessary in the interest of the general public, to whom it would be most unfair to throw open the flood-gates of the prison, thereby creating endless social and economic difficulties without any provision being made to deal with them. Some such provision is necessary in the interest even of labour itself, because, as well all know, the labour market is sufficiently glutted at the present moment without having it further congested by the release of a large number of prisoners without any provision being made for their economic assimilation. Some such regulation is necessary in the interest of the prisoners themselves, who might easily find themselves faced with starvation if all were suddenly released in a haphazard and irresponsible way.

With regard to the other provision, I think we are all sorry to see such a measure introduced. We are still more sorry to see that the situation makes it necessary for such a measure to be introduced. The severity of the penal code must be proportioned to the seriousness and prevalence of crime in any country, and crime, as Deputy O'Connell remarked, always becomes rampant in every country after war. That applies with greater force after both war and revolution, and applies with even greater force to the guerilla war such as we waged against the English, and to civil war—if we can dignify what went on in this country for the past 12 months as civil war—than to any other kind of war. Since the Great War, which was not nearly so demoralising as the kind of warfare we had in Ireland, many Powers have found it necessary to re-institute this punishment of flogging who had no such provision for some time before. We must face the fact that in this country we are confronted with the complete breakdown of all the normal restraints on crime in civilised communities. Law, religion, honour, even common decency, were swept aside in Ireland up to a couple of months ago, and if the normal restraints on criminal violence are again to take root and grow they can only do so under the protection of strong measures like those outlined in the present Bill. Imprisonment under ordinary circumstances is a sufficient deterrent to crime, but imprisonment has been turned into a farce in Ireland. Imprisonment is a deterrent to crime, principally for two reasons. First, because those who suffer it, suffer considerable physical discomfort if not actual pain; secondly, because those who suffer it, suffer disgrace and carry a stigma to their graves. For instance, in a prison like Dartmoor, in England, the discipline is so severe and is brought to such perfection of minute personal interference as to strike horror into the mind of the would-be criminal. In Ireland the prisoner, from the point of view of physical discomfort, is scarcely worse off than a boy at college or a traveller in a hotel.

With regard to the other element, we all know that imprisonment, far from being a disgrace, has been regarded in very many cases, as an honour in Ireland for a long time. Things have got so mixed up here within the last few years that it is impossible to differentiate between honourable and dishonourable imprisonment. There is a type of mentality in Ireland that judges the merit of prisoners by the ferocity of their deeds, and pays homage to the criminal that performs in the grand manner. When I was in Limerick gaol I had the honour of associating with a gentleman who had the distinction of having kicked his barmaid to death. I know that that gentleman found it very difficult to conceal his contempt for those of us who had placed ourselves in a similar predicament for such offences as drilling volunteers, making seditious speeches, and refusing to recognise the Court.

That type of mentality is very prevalent in Ireland at the moment, and I expect will continue so for a somewhat longer period. The present Bill has been found very effective in actual practice, both from the point of view of physical discomfort and mental humiliation, and I believe it is well calculated to reduce the villain who perpetrates such shameful outrages, because you cannot call these crimes anything else, to a condition befitting the foulness and meanness of his crime.

It is a pleasure, if I may say so with all sincerity, to follow a speech such as that to which we have just listened. Deputy Burke has given the most moderate and reasoned defence of this Bill that it has received. He recognises the gravity of the provisions that are outlined. He defends them because he judges them to be essential at the present moment, if the evils which are outlined in this Bill are to be cured. That of course is the only possible line of defence upon which this Bill can be defended. I have been asking myself since first the text of this Bill came into my hand, whether the provisions of the Bill were of such a kind that they would achieve the intentions which the Bill professes. I think it is only right to say, when one contrasts a speech like Deputy Burke's, reasoned, careful and moderate, with scenes such as most of us who had not the privilege of entering this chamber by the backway, but entered from the front, had to encounter from the shrieking maenads who taunted us with a variety of offences, murder being quite a small one among them—I do not think any of us were taunted with kicking barmaids to death— whatever one says in this Dáil with regard to this Bill, whatever one says in criticism of this Bill, not persuaded that it is such a Bill as should have been brought to this Dáil, is said, not because of the scenes that were enacted outside the Dáil, but in spite of these scenes, and in spite of the persons who came here insulting both themselves and us.

There are two main sections in this Bill. It has attracted attention under two chief heads. To both of them Deputy Burke refers. The first of them deals with interned prisoners. The second deals with the various sections that deal with shooting and with flogging for certain specified offences. Let me deal with the first of these first. Deputy Burke stated reasonably that it was not to be expected that all the prisoners who are now in internment should at once be liberated. I state my own view, and it is that I entirely agree with that; that I think it would be unwise if, on a given date, thirteen thousand prisoners were to be loosed upon the country. But the Bill, nevertheless, does not establish what I think it is time that we should establish, and that is what I would call, for lack of a better phrase, some kind of a definitely ending procedure. We are all aware that prisoners are being liberated at a certain rate. The Bill states that any prisoners may be held for six months. The Bill further states that it will expire at the end of six months. We are, therefore, faced with this problem—are we likely in this country to be in a better position at the end of six months to endure the liberation of prisoners than we are here to-day? Not very long ago the Minister for Defence stated here that it was the intention to demobilise the Army so that there would be twenty thousand persons demobilised between now and the end of this year. That is to say that at the end of this time there will be twenty thousand more unemployed persons creating a great deal more unrest at the end of six months than to-day, and it is at that moment, if this Bill be not continued, that we are going to liberate these prisoners. It is at that moment, when a greater amount of unemployment will come as a consequence of the demobilisation of the Army, that these prisoners will be liberated. I think it would be very much better to bring in definite provisions into this Bill of a more emphatic nature than there are here by which the process of liberation will begin on a fairly large scale. Sooner or later these prisoners will have to be liberated. They cannot be held indefinitely. My objection on that head of the Bill is not one of substance, but rather this, that I do not see in the Bill any reasonable machinery by which we can forsee this machinery bringing us to the end of the period at which it is found necessary to hold prisoners without trial and without conviction. I believe that under that head the intentions and provisions of this Bill are hostile to the ordinary meaning of the Constitution that we passed here not very long ago. It is very unfortunate that having passed the Constitution that we should then proceed to legislation that begins at once to empty that Constitution of the meaning which its words plainly ought to carry. Nevertheless, while I hold that, and while I think a procedure ought to be started by which these prisoners should be released and ought be released within a definite period, I agree with the Minister and I agree with those who have suggested in this that it would be unwise and indefensible if all these prisoners were at once to be released. It is not in respect therefore of that section of the Bill that I find my chief difficulty arising in connection with it, but rather in regard to the sections decreeing whipping or flogging for two offences, robbery under arms and arson.

It must be remembered that the Bill has stated quite fairly that provisions passed in this Dáil, I think in October last, whereby such persons may be shot, still remains in force. These provisions of flogging now first introduced are not to take the place of shooting. Shooting may continue as shooting has up to now continued. Flogging is merely put in as an alternative to it. I do not have much sympathy with the compunction, even what I would be inclined to describe as the squeamishness, that has greeted this proposal of flogging. I think it is retrograde, but so far as I am personally concerned, if it could achieve the purpose which it is intended to achieve, I would be one in its favour. Will it achieve that purpose? What is the purpose that should be the intention to achieve? By what measure is success going to be estimated under this Bill? Merely to stop a number of persons robbing banks, merely to stop a number of persons burning buildings? Or is it not rather a worthier, a deeper or better intention, to bring about that state of mind in this country that will make such offences impossible to continue? That state of mind can only be brought about in the country by carrying the consent of the entire people. Deputy Johnson asked why these floggings were not to be conducted in public. Strange as it may seem, I would be much more favourable to the flogging if it were conducted in public than I am to the proposal of conducting such floggings in private. Because, who is it has undertaken the flogging of such prisoners but the people at large? It is either their will or it is not their will. If it is their will then it ought to be done so that they may see the execution of their will. I do recall, in reference to certain executions that occurred not long ago at Tuam, hearing a number of persons demanding, within the past week, firm government and strong government. Nevertheless, when certain persons were shot for robbing a bank they recoiled from that, and stated that only where life had been lost in the country should executions take place. They expressed their conviction that no person's life ought to be taken unless the taking of life by that person was either the intention or the achievement. But there is another method by which this can be tested.

The Minister speaking on the Second Reading of the Bill, used these words: "The Bill was not conceived in any spirit of vindictiveness." I hope I may say that there was no necessity for such words to have been used. No one imagines the Bill was ever conceived in any spirit of vindictiveness. The Minister went on to say: "Men have been led wrong, men who were decent men, and who will again be decent men, have been led wrong over dark and criminal paths by people to whom they gave habitual obedience. Some of the best, and a great deal of the worst in the country, rallied to that particular call." In other words, these offences which he was then defining had been undertaken and were being undertaken, so far as they are being undertaken at the present moment, in response to a certain definite, erroneous— I will even use the word criminal—leadership, and I think the Minister was right in saying that. But some of those leaders have been held prisoners, and are to-day being held prisoners by the Executive Council. In respect of them, I think, wisely, the Executive Council has decided to exercise clemency. It has even decided so far to exercise clemency as to forbear from the trial of those prisoners, amongst whom are people who gave the original orders on which banks were robbed. Yet, the Minister, being one of those who has exercised that clemency, and has undertaken that decision to be merciful—I am glad that decision has been taken—comes to the Dáil and says, that although this decision be taken in respect of persons whom we already hold, who gave orders for carrying out by the rank and file, to the powers that already exist, and will continue to exist, of shooting such persons, will now be added the extra power of flogging such persons. I think that is not very consistent.

Take the case of men who are known to have conducted a bank robbery. They have not been tracked. I think the Dáil will agree that in connection with offences of that kind, until we have got the people to rally to the assistance of what is their Government and to cooperate with the police in tracking criminals, all the most drastic penalties in the world will fail; they will fail until that has first been achieved. Supposing two or three men have been robbing a bank and they manage to get away unapprehended, and supposing it was in the knowledge of their neighbours that they had been indulging in such offence, clearly the best procedure is to awaken such a sense of responsibility in those people's minds that they will help in the arrest of those persons and that they will feel that their law is at stake. I venture to suggest very few persons will help in the apprehension of people and so assist in their flogging. They may be wrong; it may be a false squeamishness on their part; but I believe no folk can be expected to assist in the arrest of persons if those persons are to receive a sentence of which they themselves do not entirely approve. It is because I think the first result of this measure will be to separate still further what has already been separated too widely—the responsibility of the Government towards the people, and more of the people towards the Government—that this particular penalty is going to fail to achieve that which it sets out to achieve. There is another argument I would like to put before the Dáil and I will, if I may, quote from one of the greatest statesmen and politicians in history. I have not bothered the Dáil on previous occasions with any quotations from classic authors. This time I do so because it happened by a chance that the other day I turned on a copy of an old Roman author, and I read a speech in it which might have been delivered for this occasion in the Dáil, so fittingly appropriate was it. The person to whom I am referring was a great statesman and a great politician. He saw with that near and accurate vision of the politician, and with that far and distant vision of the statesman. The man was Julius Caesar. In the City of Rome a conspiracy broke out and violent measures were being taken first to stop the conspiracy and in the second place to deal with the disaffected people who were taking advantage of the conspiracy to commit crimes of violence. This man rose and used words almost identical as, in his opening speech, the Minister for Home Affairs will be glad to learn he has himself used. He said: "All men who deliberate upon difficult questions ought to be free from hatred and friendship, anger and pity." Deputy Magennis suggests I should read it out in the Latin, but I am proposing to read it in English. Speaking of these men whom it was decided to scourge or kill he said: "If a punishment commensurate with their crimes can be found, I favour a departure from precedent, but if the enormity of their guilt surpasses all men's imagination, I would advise to limit ourselves to such penalties as the law has established. I consider no torture is sufficient for the crimes of those men, but most mortals remember only that which happens last, and in the case of godless men forget their guilt and descant upon the punishment they have received if it is a little more severe than common. I have no doubt a certain Senator (to whom he refers) was led by patriotism to say what he did say; yet his proposal seems to me, I will not say cruel, for what could be cruel in the case of such men, but foreign to the customs of our country. But what punishment is too rigorous or too grievous for men convicted of so great a crime? If, however, it was because scourging is the lighter punishment, what consistency is there in respecting the law in the lesser point when you have disregarded it in the greater? Whatever befalls those persons will be well deserved but you are called upon to consider how your actions will affect other criminals. All bad precedents have originated in causes which were good, but when the control of the Government falls into the hands of men who are incompetent or bad your new precedent is transferred from those who will deserve and merit such punishment to the undeserving and blameless."

That is another consideration which I desire to put before the Dáil. I believe we are establishing a precedent for the future that will be made use of in ways we little suspect at the moment, and if it be argued that those are matters that are not our concern at the present moment, I retort they should be, for not only should we take such action to cure the evil that exists by the least rigorous methods, but we should also take care only to adopt such methods as will not lend themselves to perversion in the future. The chances of perversion are too obvious to need much detail, so I come back again to the question which I started—is this flogging bad? Is it with all the evils inherent in it, likely to achieve the purpose we all wish to have achieved? Deputy Magennis quoted from a large number of Statutes to show that flogging is not entirely a new thing. The large number of statutes to which he referred, even so late as that of 1870, are dealing with mentality entirely different from that of to-day.

There was only one that did refer to our own mentality, to our own times; it was the Bill introduced in the British House of Commons to deal with the class of person whom the Deputy described by the French word souteneur.

It was the Larceny Act of 1916, that I quoted as the latest Act. The Act of 1912 amended the Act of 1885.

I was referring to that particular Act of 1912 for a special reason I intend to mention later. He described persons in respect of whom flogging was necessary as souteneurs. I prefer the homely English word “pimp.” There is no person in this Dáil who would not himself take lash in hand if he thought it would stamp out that evil, but what is the result of the 1912 Act? I remember at that time being resident in England, and speaking to one of the original drafters of that Bill. It is a fact that, within sixteen months of the introduction of that Bill, flogging was not operated under it, because it failed to achieve its purpose, and this gentleman who had made himself responsible for the introduction of that measure was speaking to me some time subsequently, and he said it would have succeeded in its purpose if we could have conducted it publicly, but when it was conducted privately, the people passed by unmoved, and the result was in respect of the people who were flogged that instead of acting as a deterrent it merely demoralised them more. The effect on the persons who were scourged was the very opposite of the intention of those who proposed the measure. It is a fact that that crime, as base a crime as exists in any of the great cities to-day, still exists more widely in London than before. In spite of that, the fact nevertheless remains that flogging is not administered because it has failed to achieve its purpose. Now, I stated earlier, if it were to be the case that a weapon of this kind would bring about law and order, and would bring about what is more important, namely, the feeling of public consent with the operation of law and the enforcement of order, I would be inclined to change my mind with regard to this Bill. I have no a priori presumptions against it. I look on it from the practical side, and know that not only with regard to things which it ought to do, but also with regard to things which it purports and pretends to do, that the result will not be success but failure, and if it be failure it will be doubly a failure because of the very drastic measures by which failure will have been achieved. The Minister may reply, and say, “In that case suppose we wait and see whether this flogging does, or does not, achieve its purpose.” Deputy Magennis admitted wherever in any Bill before in any country, certainly with regard to all the Bills from which he quoted, flogging was introduced it was made optional, and was not made absolutely indispensable. What we are doing here to-day is a much graver thing. If certain persons are taken conducting robbery by force, because robbery under arms as defined in this Bill, and as Deputy O'Connell rightly showed, means robbery by force, and all robberies are in the nature of force, then the magistrate has no alternative but to administer flogging, unless it should happen that the military provisions had been already put into effect as in the case of the Tuam robbery, and the persons have already been shot. The making of flogging absolutely essential is one of the worst provisions of this Bill. There is nothing left to the option of the District Justice. The teaching of the future, within six or seven weeks, may be sufficient to show that the provision was not wise. There is yet another general difference between the Acts Deputy Magennis quoted, and this Bill. I am not familiar with all the various Acts to which he referred, but I am familiar with some of them. I do know in respect of those with which I am familiar that flogging is not administered under them unless the person has been found guilty by a verdict of his fellow-countrymen. In other words, the consent of a selection of the people is embodied in the administration of that punishment. That is not in the present Bill. If it were in the present Bill, and people desired that the punishment should be administered, then my objection to it would very largely disappear.

The fear I have with regard to this Bill—and it is surely a fear which should exercise every Deputy of the Dáil —is whether we are not, by virtue of its provisions, going to place still wider apart the public, on the one hand, and the Government of the day on the other, so that the people will not feel that the punishments being administered by the Government are the punishments which they themselves would administer. It is not until we achieve that identity that we will really achieve not only law and order in the ordinary meaning of the term, but law and order in the true and deep meaning of the term, which it should be the intention of every legislature to seek to achieve.

I fear we have wandered a very long way from the ordinary Second Reading course of a Bill in this debate. I am not one of those who stayed outside during the debate to wait for the division bell. I have been in here and I have listened to every word said for and against the Bill since it was introduced on Monday or Tuesday last. Nine-tenths of the objections raised to the Bill seem to have been directed to matters which can—and some of which, in my opinion, should— be removed during Committee Stage. The only question of principle I find involved in this Bill is the question of interning prisoners without trial for the period between the cessation of active war and the return of normal procedure in the Courts, when one can try cases with juries in the ordinary course of the law. The question of flogging has been laboured over and over again, as if this Bill was concerned with nothing but flogging. I find that, in the Bill, twenty-five lines out of five hundred are devoted to flogging. Flogging is only one of a number of alternative punishments which can be inflicted for two crimes only of the long schedule of crimes set out in the Bill. That can be dealt with in Committee. If we are not satisfied that the infliction of this particular penalty for these particular crimes is justified by the Minister in charge of the Bill, then it will be open to us to deal with it.

For my own part, I hope that when we are in Committee on this Bill the Minister in charge will produce some statistics to us for the purpose of showing that those crimes for which flogging has been inflicted as a punishment elsewhere have been put an end to by the infliction of that punishment. It seems to me that the Minister might very well direct his attention, when we are in Committee, to showing that it is an effective penalty for these crimes. I say no more about it now because it seems to be a pure Committee question. It is open to doubt whether a compulsory infliction of that or any other punishment should be imposed upon the magistrate who tries the case. Section 5 says, several times, that this particular punishment, and no other, "shall be inflicted by the magistrate." It seems to me that that is putting too great a burden upon the magistrate. When we come to the Committee Stage I think it would be reasonable to suggest that these penalties should not be compulsory.

Deputy O'Connell instanced a case in which an abettor might be compulsorily sentenced to flogging for a very trifling offence. The same thing occurred to me in reading over the Bill. A potboy in a public house who happened to sell a glass of illicit spirits—although all he might have done was to hand the glass across the counter, the liquor being purchased by his employer—might be convicted of aiding and abetting in the sale of illicit spirits, and become liable to imprisonment with hard labour for twelve months, and a fine of £50. In default of being able to find £50 he would get another six months of hard labour for an offence which, in his case, might be merely nominal. Those are matters in which I think the Bill goes too far, and in regard to which I think it should be amended in Committee. But they do not appear to me to be grounds for voting against the principle of the Bill in toto. Points have been made against the Bill which can be dealt with in Committee, and it will be open to us to consider, on that Stage, whether or not the infliction of flogging has been justified, and to act accordingly.

The real principle of this Bill is one which will have my support. I do not think that anybody who lives in this country and who sees what is going on, can reasonably support the view that those persons who have set themselves up in arms to overthrow the Constitution of this country, agreed to by the representatives of the majority of the people, shall be given an opportunity of re-commencing their operations at or immediately after a General Election, at which it is quite possible they may find themselves in even a greater minority than they are to-day. The first duty of the Government is to see that the safety of this new State is protected against those who are trying to overthrow it by force of arms. I have been always a Constitutionalist, and if, when this Treaty had been adopted, any of those people who were Unionists had tried to set up a conspiracy to overthrow the Free State, I would have backed the Government in any measure it thought fit to take against that body of men, just as I have backed them against another body of men who are trying to overthrow the State in a different direction, in putting down all unconstitutional and armed attempts to prevent the will of the people having its due effect. If, at the next General Election, those people who claim a free and independent Republic should be returned in a majority and should take steps to abrogate the Treaty and to set up an independent Republic here, I should vote against them as long as voting against them here was any use, but I should not think I would be justified in giving outside support to those who are now Ministers, if they should engage in an armed attempt to overthrow that new Government, set up by the will of the people expressed at the poll. But when the will of the people had declared itself I should not think that I was justified in going outside and supporting those who are now the Ministers in an armed attempt, if they should attempt it, to overthrow that new Government which had been set up by the will of the people, expressed at the polls. However much I might disapprove of the particular form of the Government, still, being a constitutional Government and set up by constitutional means, I should hold it as much my duty to support it against armed rebellion as I do to support the present Government against the armed rebellion trying to overthrow it. It is not a question as to whether one approves of the form of government or not, but all forms of constitutional government must be supported against any unconstitutional attempts to overthrow them, and for these reasons it does appear to me that it is right and proper that those who are conspiring to overthrow by violence the established Constitution of the State should be kept interned, at any rate until the new State has decided for itself what form its government will take. It is all very well for people to say, "The war is over, and therefore we ought to return at once to the methods of peace." To talk like that is to talk nonsense. In times of peace people have the right to be tried by juries, and so on. We know that in this country, for one cause or another, trial by jury has not always been a success, and it has been a success least of all when you come to political questions, because juries go into the box—we have seen it thousands and thousands of times—and they will decide, not according to the evidence, but according to their own political views; and just after attempts to prevent the will of the people being exercised, to put these people on trial in the ordinary course by ordinary juries in the counties to which they belong would be a perfect farce. Everybody knows it. But it is said, "You have in this Bill power to change the venue." You have power to change the venue without this Bill, I think; but, at any rate, that is only going back to the old bad ways that have brought all law in this country more or less into disrepute. You will not try a man in his own place, but you will go off and find some other people who do not like him, and impanel a jury of them to try him. That only brings justice into contempt, and to my mind it is far more honest and far better for the country that this Government should not rely upon methods which brought no credit on past Governments, but that they should rely on their own judgment and the judgment of those appeal tribunals which they have set up to liberate those prisoners against whom no just cause for internment can be found, rather than to go through trial after trial, disagreement after disagreement, by juries who will go into the box determined to find according to their own views. This brings me to another point which, I think is also a matter for Committee. I agree with Deputy Johnson that it is not fair that a person should prove that there was no reasonable grounds for suspecting him. I do think that when a man appeals to the Appeal Tribunal it is for those who claim to hold that man in jail to show that there is some just and reasonable ground for suspecting him. They are not asked to prove him guilty, but they should show that there is just ground for suspicion. Again, I do not think that it is either reasonable or fair that when that tribunal, set up and selected by the Government itself, finds that there is no just grounds for keeping a man interned, that the next section should enable the very executive Minister, perhaps, who set up that tribunal to say, "Very well, my judges tell me that there is no good ground for keeping you in, but I intend to keep you in all the same." But, as I say, these do not seem to me to be good grounds for throwing out this Bill upon the Second Reading. These seem to be proper points to be amended when we come to Committee. It does seem to me that the only vital question of principle involved in this Bill that I can find is, whether or not, the moment we are enabled to say, "No longer is there war going on in the country," the prison gates are to be opened, and 10,000, 12,000, 13,000 men, whatever the number is, at once discharged upon the country to recommence their operations which brought about the original state of war, and which would at once involve us in war again. Because I think it is necessary that those people should be detained until there is some prospect of peace—and this Bill puts a limit of six months on it—I intend to vote for the Second Reading.

Deputy Figgis made great play with Julius Caesar on a similar occasion; he can hardly remember that Julius Caesar was up to the eyes in the same conspiracy with the very men whom he was trying to get the Government to let out, and I think if you consider the verdict of contemporary history on his speech it will not go very far to help Deputy Figgis. "The fate of the prisoners did not come into his consideration at all. Had his schemes demanded it he would have sacrificed them. He was just as far from any care for the Senate which undertook the grave responsibility by sentence of death as from any zeal for law or the established constitution. His purpose was to oppose the Government and its resolutions, whatever the circumstances might be, and to throw as much light upon his action that it might appear in a just form and create as much excitement as possible." It was for that purpose that he made the speech that Deputy Figgis has so belauded. What he did propose was that those men should not be executed by sentence of death, but that they should be committed to jail for the rest of their lives, and that if anybody in the Senate should refer to the matter or move that they be released he should be denounced as an enemy of the Republic. So that this Bill, against which Deputy Figgis has quoted Julius Caesar, proposes to intern for six months persons guilty of the crime which that gentleman had adjudged was worth imprisonment for life, without any prospect of release.

I have listened to the various speeches in this debate, and I have been trying to make up my mind. One thing is clear as far as I can see, that every Bill brought forward by the Ministry is certain to get a majority of the Dáil to support it. If the people want to be governed in a proper manner it is for them to decide at the next election, when they will have the opportunity of voting. I have listened for nearly an hour and a half to Deputy Figgis, but I do not know what his decision on the subject is, and whether he is inclined to vote for the Bill or against it. I want to make it quite clear to the Dáil that, as far as I am concerned, I hold no brief for any robbers or for any man who may stoop so low as to burn the dwellinghouse of his fellow-countryman, but still I am of the opinion that we must be a little patient. I know that a hard time has been gone through, and that the people of the Saorstát have suffered a great deal for the past twelve months, but I ask the Dáil to remember what the Irish people suffered before the Dáil came into being. Some of the very men who have succeeded in creating the Saorstát will be liable to imprisonment and punishment if this Bill goes through in its present form. Take, for example, Section 1—"It shall be lawful for an Executive Minister to cause the arrest and, subject to the provisions of this Act, to order the detention in custody in any place in Saorstát Eireann of any person." My reading of that is that if the Minister or his associates or his captains have in their minds that any persons in the Saorstát may in the next six months be likely to have a thought pass through their minds hostile to the Government they can now arrest these persons and put them in prison in order to prevent that thought from coming. These are unlimited powers. You have 13,000 prisoners, and what is to prevent the Minister in charge of the Bill, or the Government, arresting every individual in the Saorstát who may have in their minds the idea that they will not vote for the Government when the election comes along? In a district where the Government are not very popular I have heard people expressing the opinion that robbery should certainly be punished and put down, and also arson and murder of all descriptions, but at the same time people do not want to go back to the old law. Pontius Pilate is dead, and I hope that there is no Minister of this Government going to fill the place he has evacuated. The Minister for Home Affairs said on Friday evening that thousands of the prisoners could be released without any danger to the peace and welfare of the country. If thousands of those prisoners could be released without danger to the public, what is the idea in detaining them? The Minister for Defence, answering a question some days ago, said it took £53 per head a year for the upkeep of these prisoners. That would work out at something like £700,000. If this little bit of a country that we call the Saorstát can afford to spend another £700,000 on the number of prisoners who may be arrested under this Bill and put in to keep company with the number already imprisoned—some thousands of them without being charged with any crime—and if the people of the country are to be taxed to that extent, I certainly would prefer not to be returned at the next election. I would never cast a vote for that purpose. I have seen it in the Press, and I have heard it stated to-day, that a number of prisoners are being released daily, but they are not being released fast enough. The dependants of these people are suffering, and I think it is nearly time that this Government did draw a line and not give power to any Minister or Captain to intern without charge or trial citizens of the Saorstát simply because they may be able to read a thought passing through people's minds that they would prevent the Government functioning. Take Clause 3 Sub-section 1: "Every person who is now detained in the custody of or held in internment by the military authorities, and has not before the passing of this Act been sentenced to a term of imprisonment or penal servitude by any tribunal established by the military authorities, may be detained in custody under this Act." From my point of view that is ridiculous. Persons who have not been tried will be liable to the punishment which may be given under this Act. We are going back again to the time of reprisals, we are returning to the old stunt. You are going to take these people now who have been suffering in prison, probably for months, and sentence them. When brought before a Judge he has the power to see that these people are flogged. To my mind that is as bad as the shooting of these four men as a reprisal for the death of a worthy Deputy, and that is a thing I will not agree with. You are going to say that this flogging penalty shall apply to these people who are in prison, and who have not yet been charged, because you probably have no charge to bring against them. The charge you may bring against these people might not be strong enough to get them penal servitude or the death penalty, but it will be sufficient under this Bill to entitle them to the punishment of the birch. I hope that the Minister will be able to say that these people will not be liable under this Bill to that punishment, for to my mind flogging is one of the most degrading punishments that it is possible for a Judge to inflict. You specify the number of strokes, and you say that a boy under sixteen could receive twenty-five strokes, but you do not say how often the twenty-five strokes can be administered. Will they be given once a day or once a month, or will it be twenty-five strokes only? It lies with the Judge to specify the number of strokes to be inflicted and the instrument to be used. If the Judge happened to be an employer in a certain district, and that a Captain living in the locality happens to be the son of the employer, and that a trade dispute took place in the neighbourhood, I do not see what is to prevent that Judge or Captain swearing that the labour men concerned in the dispute were guilty of some act that would entitle them to the punishment of flogging. I am against the portion of the Bill that provides for flogging; I am also against that portion of the Bill that sends men to prison without charge and that keeps men in prison without any charge being preferred against them. I think it is time that we realised our position and exercised common sense. Now we come to Section 6.

"It shall be lawful for an Executive Minister to order the seizure of any cattle and other animals found trespassing on land belonging to any Board or Department of the Government or to any private person or body, and the removal and detention of such cattle and other animals to and in any place within or outside Saorstát Eireann."

Now, that is a beautiful clause for the farmers' representatives to fight for, and it is one that is going to do them and their people justice. It is one that is going to cause their sons to be slaves the same as heretofore. This is the section of the Bill which is to crown Deputy Gorey with a crown of virtue, and also a crown of thorns, the same as was placed upon the heads of the people who tried to get a living in their own part of the country. I say it is wrong for any representative to support this clause when he knows in his heart that the people who returned him to this Dáil would not support such a clause. I hope the Land Bill will have passed and will have become the law of the land before this clause is passed; if that happens the farmers of the country will have been safeguarded.

One further point. I want to hear the voices of the members of the Dáil ring out loud and strong when a division on this Bill is challenged, and I want to hear each Deputy cry out "Níl" and not "Tá." I think you will do more for the country by rejecting the Bill as it stands at the present time than by passing it. If this Bill is properly amended in Committee and if these objectionable clauses are struck out I would be willing enough to support it, because I do not agree with robbery, I do not agree with burning, and I do not agree with murder, and I do not agree with crime. I do agree that they must be punished, but I do not believe in bringing a man out, stripping him, tying his hands to a post and flogging him. That is the thing we object to; that is punishment of the worst possible kind. Although a crime may deserve that punishment, or worse still, and as some Deputies want to go back to the old law, then I say there are other forms of punishment. You could take men through the streets and make an exhibition of them, which would cause them a great deal more trouble of soul than ever the lash will. By giving men the lash you will only be adding to the expenses of the public and crowding the asylums, already overflowing, with more patients, because you will drive these men mad. I ask the Dáil to vote against this Bill and reject it.

When Deputy Figgis informed us that he was going to quote from the greatest statesman and politician the world had ever seen I thought he was going to give us a quotation from one of his own articles in the London Times. I am sorry he was not here to learn from Deputy Fitzgibbon that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I would remind him that a little moral courage is a very good thing. I am sorry that the Deputy will not be here to answer to the call of Deputy Lyons. Now, I agree with Deputy Fitzgibbon that much that has been said at this stage could well have been reserved, and reserved with advantage, for Committee. I do not propose to make anything like that searching analysis of the enormities of the Bill that the last Deputy indulged in, but I do want to call the attention of Deputies, who seem to be living detached from realities in this country, to symptoms that indicate the reason that makes such powers necessary. I heard of one case myself; that of a man on the eve of his marriage who wanted, I suppose, to secure a dowry for his bride, and who broke into the house of a man and attacked him and wounded him seriously in the head with a billhook. The man so attacked, I understand, still lies in danger of death. Would flogging of such a criminal as that one excite compassion in any man, no matter how sensitive he might be to the cruelty inflicted upon his fellow-creatures?

We are told that it will not be a deterrent, that it will have no effect; but the fact of the matter is that the mere announcement that such powers are asked for has already created quite a striking effect upon many people in this country. I consider that the main fact we have to realise is that this country is not yet normal, that there are still great potential elements of disorder seeking an opportunity to disrupt the State. Deputy O'Connell, in the beginning of his remarks, referred to the utterances of some Minister. He said that the Minister had refrained from saying that the people of this country had as much liberty as the people of England. The only thing that prevents the people of this country from exercising even greater liberty than the people of England do in the government of their country is the menace that this Government has been confronted with in the shape of Irregularism, crime and anarchy. The same Deputy also commented in this way, that, taking the last couple of months, the situation in Ireland compares favourably with the situation in any other country. If that is so it is because of the means and the measures adopted by the Government to restore order, security and established government, each and every one of which measures was opposed by the Deputy, who now confesses in effect that these measures have been successful. They have not yet been successful in securing in the minds of many people the fact that the law must prevail—real, legitimate law. We have all heard the attempts that have been made to excite our compassion for those who are interned and who possibly may be interned for some time, but we are only deluding ourselves and shutting our eyes to the real fact if we do not admit that the great majority of these people are avowedly determined to smash the State and the Constitution that at present governs the Free State at the first available opportunity. In Tullamore yesterday I saw a rather humiliating exhibition. A number of people were acting like frenzied maniacs in the interests not of the Republic, because the main cry was "Up the Bolshies," but in disturbing in every possible way they could the public peace. It is well that their powers of disturbance were limited; their teeth had been drawn, but they were still able to bark. Now, these are symptoms of the fact that there are still great potential elements of disorder in this country, and the reason why I vote for the Second Reading of this Bill is because I take it from the Government that they are cognisant of the extent of these elements and of the dangers, and that certain additional powers are necessary to repress them. This is not a question for the Minister for Home Affairs to be a thought reader, and to be able to anticipate that, in six months' time, a certain thought will pass through Deputy Lyons's head. I wonder does anybody anticipate that such a phenomenon is likely to happen, but if it were to happen, how is the Minister for Home Affairs to know it? I think Deputy Lyons may dismiss that apprehension from his mind. Nor is there any likelihood, I think, of that rather mean eventuality which Deputy Lyons suggested, that someone who happens to have a son an officer in the Army would utlise this measure for selfish personal vengeance against his neighbour. These are too far-fetched ideas to meet with any serious consideration, and certainly they are not arguments that should induce any Deputy in the Dáil to agree with the point of view expressed by Deputy Lyons. There may be defects in this Bill; it may have been drafted loosely here and there, but that is a matter to be examined on the Committee Stage. The main thing is to give to the Government that wields legitimate authority the power to make life and property safe; these things are essential, and we would fail in our duty if we did not give to the Government adequate powers to meet such a contingency. We were told by Deputy Figgis that this would have no effect on the public mind. I do not suppose that, if a criminal was lashed, flogged or whipped in Mountjoy that the public outside would feel that scourging, but this they might feel, a sense of greater security, because a man who once deservedly got that punishment would think twice before he would bring the danger of such punishment upon himself a second time. No one can tell how long, or how short, it may be till this menace against the life of the State is destroyed, but, despite the utterances of Deputy Lyons, I say that the safety of the State and the future of Ireland is well worth paying £700,000 a year for many years to come.

I had expected that any of the observations I would have to make on this Bill would have escaped the lash of Deputy Professor Magennis. It seems to me that the lack of support from the Government Benches for this Bill, up to the present at any rate, was influenced possibly by the nature of the speech that we heard delivered by Deputy Professor Magennis. Perhaps I am wrong, but I can see in that speech the vision of a coming Coalition Government. There is one extraordinary thing that has struck me throughout the debate, coming especially from those who intend to support the Bill. It seems to me to make no distinction whatsoever between the criminal classes who took advantage of the rebellion which started in June of last year and the class or section which some people are prepared to meet, although they do not agree that they were influenced by political considerations, believing they were following a leader who was doing right. There are people in the country, at any rate, who believe that a distinction should be made between the criminal element which undoubtedly took advantage of the insurrection of last year and the element that was influenced to follow the leadership of certain individuals. The Government, by putting the criminal element on the same level as the people who were engaged in that struggle through political considerations have invited many people of the criminal class to take advantage of the conditions in the country to get inside the jails, where they are so decently treated, as we are told through the official publications. I have read the speech delivered in one of the principal towns of my own constituency by a Deputy who was described as a most modest and unassuming man. If the speech, as it intended, correctly represented the character of every individual in this Dáil, with that one exception, I think every one of us may expect, when we are cleared out of responsibility after the next election, that we shall certainly come within the terms of this flogging Bill. It may be that the few individuals who are indispensable to the carrying on of the work of the State— the 10 or 11, whoever they may be—may escape that very nasty experience.

Deputy Lyons referred to a very important point in the Minister's speech when moving the Second Reading. The Minister said there were many thousands of prisoners interned at the moment, and he had no doubt that thousands of these could be released without serious prejudice to the public safety. The Minister himself has admitted that the cost of keeping these people in prison amounts to £1 per head per week. Deputy Johnson has rightly pointed out that many people now in jail are kept there in spite of the fact that they have signed the necessary form. I cannot see, especially in view of the Minister's declaration, why such people should be detained at such expense to the State if they can be released without any prejudice to the safety of the State. Deputy Burke stated that it is in the interest of labour that these men should remain inside, even, I suppose, in spite of the Minister's statement. I wonder if the doors were thrown open to allow the many thousands of unemployed outside —thousands of whom are starving—to go inside and get the good food that is provided at the expense of the State, would there be more going in than coming out. It seems to me, if this is put up as a solution of the unemployment problem, it might work in the wrong direction. The Minister made many points in his speech on the Second Reading, but throughout the speech there seemed to be a lack of confidence, first of all in the law-abiding section of the population, and then, as one can see from certain sections in the Bill, in the Appeal Tribunal which is to be set up under his direction. He reserves to himself the right to say, in spite of the opinion of the Appeal Body that certain persons might be released, that these people must be kept in internment. He says: "The hidden arms will, no doubt, be a factor in the situation in intimidating weak jurymen whose public spirit is not sufficient to overcome their private fears." That shows lack of confidence in the law-abiding section of the population. Lack of confidence is also shown in the body to be set up by himself by reserving the right to himself to say who is and who is not to be interned or kept in internment.

The Minister also says: "There are throughout this country at the present moment more arms and explosives hidden away to be accessible to people than ever before." I think it is generally accepted by people who know that there were very little arms at the disposal of the I.R.A. at the time of the Truce. We must infer from that statement that any arms now in the possession of people presumably opposed to the Government must have been got in some way or another from the people who took over control after the signing of the Treaty. It would be interesting to know from the Minister for Home Affairs or the Minister for Defence what is the real explanation of that condition of things. Is it a fact that there is not that proper supervision over the arms and ammunition paid for by the people of the Saorstát for their protection which would prevent them getting into the hands of people who would use them in opposition to the present Government? Something must be radically wrong if that statement is true, and that should be explained to the Dáil.

Deputy Magennis, and others who followed him, appeared to ignore altogether the internment question, and to harp on and thresh to death the question of flogging. I intend to vote against this flogging Bill, and particularly against that section which gives such arbitrary power to the Minister to keep in internment men whom he has admitted in his own speech could be released without any danger to the public safety. I would like to know from the Minister, if he can get it from police or other sources, how many people have been arrested and are now interned for arson and robbery under arms since the issue of the declaration by the Irregular leaders? That information would be some guidance to us, and if the Minister cannot give it at the moment, he should give it on the Committee Stage, in order to show whether there is a greater reason now for the infliction of such penalties and for the policy of internment than there was during the period of hostilities between the Irregulars and the Free State Army. From what I know of the country, I think that there is not the same amount of crime abroad, especially since that declaration was issued by the leaders of the Irregulars, that there was previous to that date. There is not such a number of armed criminals going about the country—when I refer to criminals I mean those who commit robbery under arms—because the coast is not so clear for them now, and there is not the same amount of freedom for the commission of that kind of crime now. The Army and police authorities have a freer hand in endeavouring to catch these criminals than they had during the time when hostilities were proceeding between the Irregulars and the Free State authorities.

Some Deputy referred to the necessity of the people co-operating with the police in tracking down criminals. I think there is a growing disposition amongst the law-abiding section of the people to co-operate with the lawfully constituted Government in tracking down what can be termed the real criminals. If the Minister and the Government only place trust in the overwhelming mass of the people, and give them a reasonable amount of protection, I think there would be no necessity to come before the Dáil or to expect the people of the country to countenance the passing of such a Bill as this. If there was greater trust shown in the people by this Government, or whatever Government follows it, I think there would be a greater disposition on the part of the people to co-operate with that particular Government. When speaking on the Second Reading of the Bill the Minister also stated that "there would be an amnesty even for men against whom it would be no doubt possible to secure proof of serious crimes." What does he mean by serious crimes? Does he mean men who are guilty of robbery under arms and arson, and who are now interned? Does he mean that such men would be released under the amnesty referred to? If he means that, I would say he is going the right way to invite criminals to do the very thing he thinks he is going to stop by this Bill. A section of the Bill also deals with stolen Government property. It is pretty well known that in some areas where there were large barracks, previous to their occupation by Free State forces a considerable amount of furniture and other Government property was taken from these barracks by people in the surrounding districts. I would like to ask if the Minister has any information from the Army authorities as to what has been done to trace that furniture. I have reason to think that statements I heard in that respect are true. I know also that the Free State forces who took possession of many of these barracks from which the furniture was taken were local men.

I do not think this is relevant. The section here deals with animals only.

There is a Section dealing with stolen property.

Section 7 refers to stolen property. What is the point?

I think there is power under this clause to deal with people who have Government property that was stolen out of military barracks before occupation by Free State forces.

Section 7 merely says that the property must be restored to the owner.

The owner would be the Government in that particular case.

I am not able to say.

I speak with a certain amount of authority in this matter, and I would like to know if anything has been done by the military authorities to recover the stolen property, which I think Deputies do not deny was taken out of many barracks, particularly in the South of Ireland. Deputy Burke, in speaking on the Bill, referred to imprisonment in this country having been turned into a farce. He cited the case of some individual who happened to find himself in Limerick Jail who was guilty of some criminal offence. That is the point I wish to make, and to ask the Government to explain. Why have they not made any distinction between men now interned and known to them as having been guilty of robbery under arms and arson, and of criminal offences apart altogether from political offences, and those being held on suspicion of being opposed to the Government? Why are criminals treated on the same lines as those who claim the treatment of political prisoners?

Mr. O'HIGGINS

Because there is no distinction.

Deputy Milroy stated that the introduction of this Bill had a very striking effect. If it had that remarkable effect on the public outside, and on that very small section to whom it will be applied, if it is passed, then I suggest the introduction of the Bill has met the position, and that for that reason the Minister might see his way to withdraw it. I do not wish to go into the clauses at this stage, but in Part 2 of the Schedule, Sub-section 9 deals with certain offences, "interfering with or preventing without lawful authority the lawful occupation, use or enjoyment of any land or premises." Do I take it that the punishment which is referred to on another page for crime of that kind is intended to meet doubtful cases of picketing? I think that is what it is intended for. So far as I am concerned I intend to vote against this Bill because I think that in the state of affairs now existing in the country, which is practically normal, the Minister has made no case for its introduction. In my opinion, it will have a very bad effect on the overwhelming majority of the law-abiding citizens. The general opinion outside is that there is no necessity for the introduction of this measure except to prevent as far as possible—and I think we should know what the Ministry expect in that respect—any reaction as a result of the coming elections. I have already stated that, so far as I am concerned, I am not going to hamper the present Government or any future Government in dealing with those who commit robbery under arms. If there is any distinction between people who commit murder and people who commit robbery under arms, I think it is only to the extent that murder does not happen when people go out to rob under such circumstances. I oppose the Bill, as I think flogging is a thing that is not going to meet the case put up by the Minister of a few people who, as far as I know, are now going around and are supposed to be carrying out these offences of robbery under arms. I would like to ask him to give us at a later stage any information in his possession, or in possession of the police authorities, showing the number of such offences since the declaration that was made on behalf of the leaders of the Irregulars.

Tá beagán le rádh agam. Acht ba mhaith liom freagra a thabhairt do Dharghal Figes i dthaobh cuid d'a chainnt. Chualas a lán mar gheall ar an tuairim atá ag muinntir na h-Eireann ar an Bhille seo. Bhios thios in Gallimh an t-seachtmhain seo gaibh tharrán agus sul a d-imthigheas shaoileas go raibh muinntir na Gallimhe ar shon an Bhille seo. Tar éis dul sios go Gallimh táim lán-chinnte go bhfuil siad go léir ar shon na Bhille seo.

I am a bit nervous in talking about this Bill on account of the speech made by Deputy Figgis when he spoke about the people who got into the Dáil by the back stairs or the front stairs. I never got in by the back stairs, and I think my moustache is just as full as before I came in.

There is a misapprehension in the matter. Deputy Figgis mentioned the back and front entrance to-day.

The case has been made that the Minister, in moving this Bill, made no case for the adopting of such drastic measures as are proposed in it. On the first reading I said I thought a case had been made for the introduction of the Bill. I am more than convinced that a case has been made out now. We are told that nothing is happening at the present moment to justify the introduction of this Bill. We are told that things are normal. A charge has been made by Deputy O'Connell against the Government; he says that nothing is happening. Now, he and I represent the same constituency. Inside the last week four post offices were raided in Galway by armed men and money was taken out of these post offices. I think neither Deputy O'Connell nor myself can congratulate ourselves on representing a normal constituency when such things happen. I do not intend to speak long on this Bill, but the nail was hit on the head by Deputy Fitzgibbon when he said we were debating matters that should only come on in Committee. What has struck me most is that although we have heard all about the indignity of flogging prisoners who are caught in armed raids and robberies, and who in these very raids brutally assault and beat women, we have not heard one word of condemnation from the opposition to this Bill of the people who carry out these armed raids and robberies——

I protest against that. That is absolutely wrong. There have been several Deputies who spoke from these Benches condemning these raids and robberies.

We have simply been listening to one diatribe against the Government for adopting these drastic measures. We have had to suffer and endure for a long time in coming here to listen to such assaults on the Government, but we have heard little condemnation of the people who have committed these outrages.

Will the Deputy explain? What is the necessity of denouncing robbery and murder and rape and other crimes? We are not charging the Ministry with these crimes.

He was not listening. He was outside.

Do bios ag eisteahact; bios annso, ni rabhas amuigh. We certainly have had no condemnation during the long period of these armed assaults and robberies from the Deputies on the Opposition benches.

Did the Deputy ever move a resolution denouncing them?

It is lesc majeste to criticise the Government.

We have heard England quoted on each side of this argument. Well, there is one thing that England certainly did, and when there was such an armed conspiracy or a conspiracy for robbery by violence in England, England, by adopting this very measure that is before the Dáil now, put an end to the campaign of violence that was against it.

Will the Deputy say when England adopted that measure?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle at this stage took the Chair.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I do not propose to speak on the Bill just now. I want to move that, in the event of the discussion being prolonged, the Standing Orders be suspended to permit of the continuance of the debate beyond 8.30 o'clock.

Agreed.

I desire to register my protest against every section of this brutal and degrading flogging Bill, and against the passing into law of a Bill which will give powers to the Government which can, and may, be used to punish those who are in active opposition to it. That is more or less the object of the Bill. In the country people are crying out against it and demanding its withdrawal. It is foreign to Irish sentiment and tradition, and I heard electors saying that it is a reversion to the methods of the Yeomanry of '98, the only thing absent being the Pitch Cap. I wish to warn the Deputies that they will have to answer to the outraged conscience of the people if they allow this Bill to pass into law and sully the national honour. This is not the sort of legislation that should take up the time of a new Parliament in the first year of its life. I appeal to every Deputy here not to allow the annals of the Oireachtas to be disgraced by finding this Bill a place in the records of the Legislature. I thought we were done with this sort of legislation. We have read enough about the Pitch Cap and tortures of '98. If this Bill is passed it will be a monument to our incapacity to govern this country. If the Deputies vote for this Bill they will be held up to public odium in a short time. I can see the Minister for Home Affairs smiling. Very well. If they think the people of this country are in favour of this Bill, let them delay its passage and put it as an issue at the General Election, and they will soon get their answer.

Deputy Magennis, in the course of his remarks, made reference to a statement of Deputy Johnson on Tuesday last when he said that this measure would be a blot upon the present Session of Parliament. I endorse this remark of Deputy Johnson. I consider that the Bill that we are asked to pass in this Dáil now is a disgrace to any Legislature. A Bill such as this was one of the first things to be passed by the Belfast Parliament. We all held up our hands in holy horror when it was passed, and we justly denounced the Belfast Parliament for enacting such a measure. Deputy Magennis seeks to justify the passing of this Bill by reminding us that we have already power to flog under the English Statutes. One would have thought that he would not bring forward such extenuation as that to justify the passing of this Bill. One would have thought that the first Act of an Irish Parliament would be not to perpetuate such an Act as that, but to scrap it. Deputy Nicholls has referred to the fact that nobody from these benches during these debates has condemned robbery with violence. The inference he wants drawn from that statement is that the Deputies who occupy these benches would condone such acts as these. I have never had any hesitation in and out of my constituency in condemning acts of violence, and for doing so I have been subjected to harsh treatment, and I have got as many threatening letters as any Deputy. I have vindicated and sided with the Government in many of their operations in my constituency, and I will suffer for it. We do not condone such acts as robbery and arson. I have been against Irregularism in all its phases and all its methods, and it is because I have respect for the Government that I appeal to them to withdraw this measure. I feel that this measure is going to do the Government immeasurable harm.

I have not very much to say on the measure as a whole, but I do appeal to the Government to reconsider their position in so far as the flogging clause is concerned. With regard to the internment of prisoners, it has been stated here by the Government that the country is not normal. We know it is not exactly normal, but at the same time it is not going to get normal unless the huge majority of the prisoners is released. So long as the prisoners are in prison, so long will you have an aggravated feeling abroad in the country, so long will you have the relations of those prisoners against the Government, and so long will you have a feeling of unrest. Mr. De Valera, in the course of the last few days, has stated it is the intention of what he calls his organisation—Sinn Fein—to put forward one candidate in each constituency. The test, he says, is going to be made this time for or against the Treaty. I do not place much credit on his words, but he states that he is going to take the views of the people this time on first preference votes. It would be a pity not to give Mr. De Valera an opportunity of testing the feeling of the people by releasing a good deal of the prisoners—at least the prisoners not convicted for any crime—in time for the General Election, and so give them a chance of voting, and not give Mr. De Valera's or any other party an opportunity of saying that they have not had the voice of the people. There are many prisoners in jail merely on suspicion. Of course, the Minister will make answer and say that a tribunal is to be set up to enable those prisoners to seek release if they so desire. It has always been an axiom in this country that a man is innocent until proved guilty. The boot is on the other foot here, and the man is presumed guilty until proved innocent. I agree with Deputy FitzGibbon that it is the duty of the Government to come forward and prove those men's guilt. It should not be up to them to prove their innocence. After all, the majority of them are members of a political organisation. So far as I know, a certain direction has gone round to them not to do certain things. Practically every Deputy here has been a member of a political organisation for a number of years, and we know that when we got certain directions we tried to carry them out as best we could, and we also know that it is not so easy to detach yourself from the practices and customs that have prevailed for the last few years as some people seem to think. We must remember the country has not been normal for the past five or six years. It would be an act of grace for the Government to release the prisoners, and I do not think there would be any danger. In the case of any man you have evidence against, I am not seeking to have him released; but there are men interned on suspicion, the majority of whom have not been caught with arms in their hands, and I believe it would be a good thing if the Government were to release those men. Deputy Davin has referred to Clause 9 in the Schedule: "Interfering with or preventing without lawful authority the lawful occupation, use or enjoyment of any land or premises." Any officer with a biassed stretch of imagination could, I feel sure, prevent, under that clause, a man engaged in a labour dispute from peaceful picketing. There is no doubt at all, although some may consider the arguments put forward by Deputy Lyons a bit exaggerated or far-fetched, that there are people sometimes sent into a district to interpret the law and they do not know the law, and they are often biassed in their interpretation of the law and its implications. That particular clause is a clause the Labour Party is going to fight tooth and nail, because we believe it is levelled against the Labour movement, and we consider it should be taken out of the Bill. In conclusion, I will say that to my mind this Bill of the Government is a retrograde step, and it is one that is unworthy of any Irish Government.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

I have been thinking it would be a useful thing if some Deputy who has time for research would bring out a dictionary of words that are unparliamentary, because I have been wondering whether it would be parliamentary to say that there has been more piffle, more unadulterated piffle, spoken in opposition to this Bill than with regard to any other Bill that has been brought before the Dáil, with the possible exception of the Constitution. It has been branded in extravagant language as tyrannical, as reactionary, as the product of a feudal mind, or a feudal combination of minds, and generally language was used that would still be extravagant if the proposals in the Bill were to put those 13,000 prisoners in chain gangs repairing the damage that they have done throughout the country. But that is not the proposal in the Bill. Power is sought to detain for a period of six months those of them whose release is considered prejudicial to the public safety. To detain any it is necessary to get power to detain all. Having got it, you can proceed to use your discretion and to sift fairly harmless and fairly decent men amongst them and give them an opportunity of taking up the broken threads of their lives. But, as I say, you must get the power to detain all the prisoners if you wish to detain any. We have had our hands fairly full inside the last 12 months, and we have not had time to do the sifting that is necessary. We propose to do it when this Bill is passed. It has been said there is no case for a measure of this kind. These men who are interned, or most of them, are members of an organisation, and that organisation has been in arms against this State for the last 12 months, has challenged this State in its infancy by the most wanton and the most criminal methods, and it would not be extravagant or unduly bitter to say it has challenged this State by an organisation of crime and sabotage. The arms and the explosives that they have used, not so much against the armed soldiers of the State as against their unarmed fellow citizens, have not been surrendered into the effective custody of the people or of the accredited representatives of the people. They have been hidden. They have them for the moment laid aside, and the people are told that if, within a short time, they do not show that they are thoroughly cowed, if they do not show they are prepared now to submit and subject their will to the will of those who have been bludgeoning them, then the hidden arms will again be used against them. It is in these circumstances that this Bill is introduced. There has been much talk about habeas corpus. I just want to point out that habeas corpus is a check on arbitrary and irresponsible action by an Executive, and that it came into existence in the first instance as a check upon arbitrary and irresponsible action by a monarch. The Constitution provides that men shall not be kept in prison without trial—that, in fact, men shall not be kept in prison at all save in accordance with law. But it is the duty of an Executive, when it considers that the circumstances in the country demand the exercise of certain powers, so to inform the Parliament, and it is the duty of the Parliament, when it is convinced that those powers are necessary, to give them. We do not propose that men shall be kept in prison save in accordance with law. But we come here and ask for law, so that it may be possible for six months to hold those of the prisoners whose release we consider, or find on investigation, would be seriously prejudicial to the safety of the State and to the well-being of the citizens. I do not think there is anything tyrannical in that, and I have been wondering whether Deputies would prefer that we would put on trial all of these men against whom we could prove offences or of whose crimes we were in a position to produce evidence, and to have them sentenced, according to law, to very long terms of imprisonment.

We have been pressed for acts of grace. In point of fact, this whole situation has been handled with the maximum clemency and with the maximum grace. Men who set out, in a very criminal spirit, to plunder and rob and burn and wreck, from one end of the country to the other, have been only interned and detained under conditions which they themselves agree are extremely comfortable. It is true that, in a certain number of cases, it has been necessary to take more drastic action than that, and that it has been necessary to impose and inflict the death penalty. That was a very grim necessity. It was a necessity that was not at all pleasant to those who had recourse to it, but, taking the situation from the start, taking it in all its bearings, and remembering that these men, who challenged this State in its infancy, were to a very large extent men who had not challenged the preceding administration, it will be agreed that there has not been any harsh or any tyrannical or overbearing action taken against them. The measure that is now proposed is not harsh, and we would be false to our trust and to our responsibility to the people if, despite the hidden arms and in face of the definite refusal to admit the right of the people to decide policy, whether domestic or international, we were to turn loose upon them twelve or thirteen thousand men who have been challenging them and challenging their most fundamental rights during the past year.

These men struck at the very heart of democracy. They struck at representative government, and they challenged principles that are basic in every modern civilised State. They have not withdrawn that challenge. On the contrary, it has been within the last few weeks and the last few days reiterated. Perhaps, when people come to think calmly about things, it will be considered that the finest and healthiest symptom within the past year has been the manner in which members of both Houses of the Irish Parliament have stood up to that challenge. Deputies and Senators of all parties, Deputies and Senators who had not become acclimatised to terrorism by reason of having participated in the struggle against the British, stood their ground. The line was not broken, and no man turned tail and ran, though they were struck at through all the things that are dearest and most sacred to a normally constituted man—struck at through their wives, through their families, and through their household goods. But no one, as I say, broke the line in either House, and as a result of that solidarity, and as a result very largely of the solidarity of the great mass of the people of the country, we have run into somewhat smoother waters. But we have not run into peace. The fewer delusions there are about that the better.

I have here two documents. One of them deals with a statement by two very prominent Irregulars recently captured. It says:

"If liberated, every Irregular will take up arms again. We have all our guns safely dumped, and substantial supplies of ammunition. We have only to put our hands on them when we get free, and we must get free soon."

A gentleman associated with that movement outside the jurisdiction of Saorstát Eireann, addressing his associates, says:

"The Republican Army is not beaten. It still retains its arms, and it intends going on the offensive in the winter. All men attached to this brigade are to try to procure as much material as possible and ship same to Ireland. During the summer months we will devote our time to training, equipping, and intelligence work, so as to be in a position, when the opportunity comes, to strike the death-blow to the Free State."

He went on to say that to some people's minds this might seem impossible, but when the elections were over, no matter what party should be returned to the Dáil, the Free State Army would be reduced, so as to cut down expenses, and during all this time the I.R.A. would be increasing. He advised the brigade staff to work very hard, as De Valera was playing a very cute game and was assured of victory.

For a variety of reasons we do not come here and read to the Deputies all the information at our disposal. We do expect from Deputies in the Dáil generally just that degree of trust and confidence which a Parliament should have in those to whom they have entrusted the powers of Executive Government. Neither have I thought fit to come here with statistics with regard to particular classes of crime. When statistics of that kind are given, they are seized on by people who wish to distort and exaggerate the situation here, and who wish to discredit this country and its Government—people in England and elsewhere, whose political games statistics of that kind would happen to suit. So I have not brought them, but Deputy O'Connell and other Deputies know that there has been a loosening of bonds throughout the last year, a breaking of moral restraints, a breaking down of the restraint of human respect, and robbery, which ten, twelve, or fifteen years ago was happily a rare crime in this country, and one of which people stood ashamed, has become rather a routine. There is undoubtedly in this country at the moment a wave of demoralisation. In addition to that, there is, as I said, a supply of arms and explosives secreted throughout the country and available to many.

Those two facts present you with a moral certainty that unless the most stringent measures are taken you will have, to an unprecedented extent, robbery under arms. Arson has become the stock-in-trade of the man with the message, of the idealist. We all remember the mental shock we experienced when the British police, moryah, first had recourse to that method of warfare, and when they went out amongst the people to burn their homes. The nation, after all, is simply a collection of homes. The home is the unit of the nation, and perhaps the Black and Tans were sound in their instinct when they said "To destroy this nation we will set out and destroy the homes," and perhaps the Irregulars were equally sound in their instinct when they said "To destroy the existence, morale and solidarity of the people we must threaten their homesteads.” They did burn largely through the country, and the seeds they sowed will not die to-day or to-morrow, and will not die at all unless those on whom the responsibility lies take the very strongest and sternest measures to stamp them out. Arson and robbery under arms are crimes of terrorism. It may sound to Deputies of fine sensibilities, Deputies who preen themselves and strut before us as liberals, a very crude thing to say, but I know no means of meeting terror save by terror. I know no means of meeting those crimes of terror save by something that will be to the perpetrators a greater terror. It is easy to be a liberal. Deputy Gavan Duffy patted himself on the back as a liberal. When one is not primarily responsible, the Wee Free Liberal is a delightful role to play, but one may not be liberal of one's country's honour and one may not be liberal of the fundamental rights of one's fellow-citizens, and when there is a direct mandate from the people to restore peace, order, stability and security in the country, that will enable people to live their lives and do their business in peace, and make investments with a reasonable hope of return—then one cannot be liberal after that fashion. The terrible taunt of being reactionaries was thrown at us, this retrograde Executive! I think that any Government would be reactionary in the penalties which attach to offences when their country takes any step at all back to an era of barbarism. The world was getting out of those more savage penalties, was getting away from them, and might perhaps but for the World War have continued in a state of civilisation and society that would permit of very much lighter sanctions for the law, and no doubt criminologists in America and elsewhere were getting busy with their theories, but when you come face to face with stark anarchy, worse still if it masquerades as political idealism, you have got to be reactionary. When people use the torch, the petrol can, and the land mine as arguments for their theories, then you have to meet that situation in a very different way from that with which you would deal with crime in 1910 or 1912. I will give this assurance to one Deputy who raised the point, that it is not proposed to go back and deal with offences under the provisions of this Bill that have already taken place. We can secure that in the Committee Stage if it is not secured at the moment in the Bill. I take it that our first duty as an Executive, and the first duty of Deputies constituting this Dáil is to save the life of this infant State, the life which is challenged and menaced. That which has been won belongs to the people. It belongs to them by the higher claims of proprietorship. It was born of their travail, and we would be false to our responsibilities if we did not take every step to secure it for them, and no man has the right to jeopardise it without the expressed endorsement of the people for such a line and such a policy. We do not propose to jeopardise it by turning loose immediately and indiscriminately upon the people thirteen thousand men who had been challenging them throughout the year. We propose to go very cautiously and very guardedly about this whole question of releases. Men have been released of recent months at the rate of from 200 to 300 a month, and it is admitted that that was slow. If the improvement of recent months in the state of the country is progressive it will be possible to release prisoners at a very much quicker rate than that, but we are going to do nothing rash, nothing impetuous, and we are going to see the ground in front of us for every step we take. There are provisions in this Bill dealing with agrarian anarchy, the forcible seizure of land. The complete and flagrant defiance of property rights in land is something that the Executive is bound to take steps to curb and check, and it is proposed to ask from the Dáil very complete powers to deal with that particular problem, powers of seizing and selling stock placed on lands in open defiance of the law.

At this stage An Ceann Comhairle resumed the Chair.

Mr. O'HIGGINS

There is one factor which I would like to put seriously to Deputies, and that is the question of the country's credit. The criminal activities of those who have opposed this State have placed on it the necessity of borrowing, and borrowing to a very considerable extent. When you go to borrow, there is in business circles usually a certain advertence to your prospects of repayment. They inquire into the stability of the State, whether your writ runs from end to end of your territory, whether conditions within it are such as to attract investment, and our duty, as we see it, is to secure these conditions, and to secure them in the shortest possible space of time. We cannot afford to be liberal, and we cannot afford to gamble with the fate and future of this country by turning loose prisoners indiscriminately. We are in the position of being on the money market, and people who lend money for the most part do not do so out of benevolence, but in the hope of securing a reasonable return for their money. It is very easy to get up, as Deputy Lyons and others have done, and rail against particular penalties, and point out that those people, after all, who have been burning and so on, have been merely giving way to certain amiable eccentricities. But we will not win out to a sense of responsibility along these lines of thought, and we will not win out to decency of life as between man and man. The wantonness, the irresponsibility and the criminality summoned up inside the last year will not give way to that particular kind of treatment, and in the long run every State and every Government at some period of its history has had to show that its arm was stronger than any collection of arms within it. I do not know any State that has ultimately any other sanction for its laws than the sanction of force. Men give way to criminal instincts, and there is criminality latent in men everywhere waiting for the opportunity to come into active operation. But in a certain situation within a country men give way to irresponsibility; they give way to their worst instincts, and having given way to them, and given way on the scale that we have had in this country within the year, they will not suddenly turn into cooing doves because people pat themselves on the back and call themselves Liberals. The task ahead of this Government, or ahead of any Government returned as a result of the elections, will not be a light one, and if the people who think they are Liberals, and that we are reactionaries, find themselves in a position of primary responsibility, they will begin to see more than one side of the question. It is the duty of a Government to govern.

Question put: "That the Bill be now read a second time."
The Dáil divided: Tá, 37; Níl, 13.

  • Liam T. Mac Cosgair.
  • Donchadh Ó Guaire.
  • Gearoid Ó Súileabháin.
  • Seán Ó Maolruaidh.
  • Seán Ó Duinnín.
  • Séamus Breathnach.
  • Pádraig Mag Ualghairg.
  • Peadar Mac a' Bháird.
  • Deasmhumhain Mac Gearailt.
  • Seán Ó Ruanaidh.
  • Micheál de Duram.
  • Risteárd Ó Maolchatha.
  • Pilib Mac Cosgair.
  • Domhnall Mac Cárthaigh.
  • Earnán Altun.
  • Sir Séamus Craig.
  • Gearóid Mac Giobáin.
  • Liam Thrift.
  • Eoin Mac Néill.
  • Pádraig Ó hÓgáin.
  • Pádraic Ó Máille.
  • Seoirse Mac Niocaill.
  • Piaras Béaslaí.
  • Fionán Ó Loingsigh.
  • Criostóir Ó Broin.
  • Caoimhghin Ó hUigín.
  • Próinsias Bulfin.
  • Séamus Ó Dóláin.
  • Liam Ó hAodha.
  • Próinsias Mag Aonghusa.
  • Éamon Ó Dúgáin.
  • Peadar Ó hAodha.
  • Liam Mac Sioghaird.
  • Earnán de Blaghd.
  • Uinseann de Faoite.
  • Domhnall Ó Broin.
  • Séamus de Burea.

Níl

  • Tomás de Nógla.
  • Tomás Mac Eoin.
  • Seoirse Ghabháin Uí Dhubhthaigh.
  • Liam Ó Briain.
  • Tomás Ó Conaill.
  • Aodh Ó Cúlacháin.
  • Séamus Éabhróid.
  • Liam Ó Dáimhíin.
  • Pádraig Mac Artáin.
  • Seán Ó Laidhin.
  • Cathal Ó Seanáin.
  • Risteárd Mac Fheorais.
  • Domhnall Ó Ceallacháin.
Motion declared carried.
Third Stage ordered for the first day of sitting next week.
Barr
Roinn