I think that we might describe this Bill as a Bill to provide that certain citizens of an alien country acting through a person named de Valera shall control a newspaper purporting to be national—the Irish Press—for the purposes of saying that the Irish people's minds shall be moulded not according to the wellbeing of their own country but according to the policy that these aliens wish to dictate. I base that on a statement made by the President (column 1930, volume 48 of the Official Debates). He said: “The only case where I would intervene actively—and I would intervene as trustee on behalf of those who subscribed the moneys—would be if the policy of the paper were to depart from that of supporting the movement for Irish independence and supporting the policy of economic independence also.” It is rather interesting to notice how typically that phrase is worded: “The only case in which I would intervene actively”—one gathers from the word “actively” that there are other occasions when intervention of a nonactive sort might take place. The House will remember when this Bill was being debated before, the President, who is not announced as a director, who stated time and again he had no interest in this paper, was able to tell us that he had told the newspaper to publish its balance sheet owing to misunderstandings outside. I do not think its non-publication was a departure from the policy of Irish national independence or whether his action was some other form of passing intervention. I would not call this “graft,” because “graft,” within the meaning of the word used in America, the country which controls this newspaper, implies a form of getting public moneys into one's pocket by a method not in accordance with the law. In this country—I do not know if it is happening in any other country in the world —we go out of our way to legislate, and permit a politician to put public funds, I will not say into his own pocket, but to use them for the purpose that is most likely to make for his own betterment and his own glorification. I maintain that this Bill, being for that purpose, is a Bill moulded in such a way as to see to it that the unfortunate people who subscribed these moneys originally and who were misled into parting with their bonds some years ago, should have no opportunity of getting even part of their money, which, as the President and the Minister for Finance told us, they needed very badly. It was suggested in that usual vague way we associate with the President, that these people, in handing it over, had every possible notification of the value of what they were handing over. “Everybody with these bonds got notification that these claims were to be met” (col. 1783, volume 48 of the Official Debates). What does this mean? “Every person who had these bonds got notification of the fact that the claim was to be met.” Did every person get notification telling them that they were to get 125 cents to the dollar? The most they knew was that they would get 58 cents to the dollar, and now we are told that we are bound to hand over these dollars to this kept newspaper because the people who handed them over originally knew what they were doing. Again, the President's statement you find of such a contradictory nature that he always puts in because, as the Acting-Minister for Industry and Commerce admitted, their whole policy, indicated clearly, consists in sharp practice and trying to pull the wool over people's eyes. He says this money was to go towards this kept organ to be controlled by one person in the interests of people abroad: “It was because of that assignment which I regarded as worth money and as an equivalent to the cash coming in at the time that I expected according to the Estimates we went on with the enterprise.” (Col. 1784, Volume 48 of the Official Debates.) He regarded it as worth cash. How much cash? He has stated that he has formed a corporation of bondholders and every bondholder is given a share equivalent in value in the ownership of the paper. He stated that has been done in the first instance here. He invited us, challenged us, offered to bear an examination on oath and so on, but he has not told us that when he assigned, when he gave his interests to his corporation, he, I suggest, never told them that the bonds were equal in value to 125 cents. I think it is much more likely that the most value they were given was 58 cents. I pointed out that Miss MacSwiney had stated that most of the people holding the bonds were “Free Staters.” Consequently, one must assume that most of the people who handed over bonds to this organ were holders of bonds of low denominations. Low denominations would generally be less than ten dollars. The prospectus sent to these people in America gave them no promises whatsoever that they would have any interest in the ownership of the paper or any profits if their bonds were value for less than ten dollars. The President made great play about the confidential document. He said there has been so much publicity that we could not go into the courts to say that the people did not know there was value in their bonds. The value of their bonds, by virtue of this Act, is 125 cents to the dollar. Did it imply that the people realised the bonds were worth 125 cents to the dollar, and did some of them who were sufficiently wide-awake know that the bond was worth 58 cents to the dollar? If you happen to put a comma wrong, the President denounces you as a blackguard and a liar.
When Deputy McGilligan challenged him on that point he said that the Deputy was not here and asked what did he know about it. I used no such remarks. I said no such thing. If it had been the other way about, the President would have got up, thumped the board, denounced us, and said it was part of our continual policy to misrepresent what he says. He, himself, the man who cannot remember whether he was Minister for External Affairs in the Irregular Organisation in 1925, will purport to give what we meant to say and give as a version of our statements something that we neither meant to say nor suggested. I made no reference to Irish servant girls but his paid organ, kept for the intelligent people of the country, has in this day's or yesterday's issue—in view of the present circumstances I am not quite sure of the days—a letter from some unfortunate individual who was obviously impressed by that statement that we had talked about servant girls in America. That is the way the President does it. He invents a thing and passes it on to somebody else but when anybody seeks to place a meaning on his words, that any intelligent person must necessarily put on the words, he denounces him as carrying on a propaganda against him and misrepresenting what he said.
The President called it quibbling to suggest that there was any difference between these bonds and the bonds of the National Loan. If there was ever a dishonest quibble, that is an instance of it. As I pointed out, the National Loan is the direct equivalent of national money. You can open your paper and see what it is worth; you can go to the bank to discount it or you can get your broker to sell it. It has a fixed value. These bonds had no value whatever beyond the 58 cents, and before the finding of the courts, they had not even that value. It has had, as I said, a negotiable value, a realisable value, is fixed on the strength of the Government who promised it. These unfortunate people were induced by a method that makes me almost invoke the shade of that comparatively honest man, Horatio Bottomley, to part with their bonds, first of all because they attached no value to them and did not realise that they had any value, and secondly because the agents of these company promoters went round, and if the people were inclined to favour Cumann na nGaedheal, they were assured that Cumann na nGaedheal was intensely anxious that this paper should be brought into existence. In order to get the money they maligned honourable Irish newspapers. They suggested to the people in America that the existing Irish newspapers were owned, controlled and directed from England, and that these newspapers existed for no other purpose but to subject this country and to make it malleable to every wish of the English Government. That was blackguardly misrepresentation. The newspapers of this country then existing were in every way more honourable, more upright and, consequently, more Irish.
When I suggested that these unfortunate people who subscribed this money should at least have the opportunity of getting not their 100 cents in the dollar, not the 125 cents in the dollar we have to pay now, but that they should be allowed to get 67 cents in the dollar, of their own money, I was denounced as being inspired by Party motives. That suggestion of mine was inspired by nothing but spleen, I was told. It was only because we wanted to injure this national newspaper that we ever thought of such a thing! I invited the President to tell us whether or not when we were taking the steps to repay in 1924 or 1925 the Loan raised in Ireland we had not taken steps to see that anybody who obtained possession of a receipt for that Loan here in Ireland, without giving an adequate equivalent payment for those bonds, would not get possession of the money that was going to be paid on them. I pointed out that we gave a warning to the people that such transfers would not be recognised, if an unfortunate person in the country were induced to part with his bonds or receipts not realising the actual value of them. This Government acted in that way as it was bound to do for the protection of the weak and the honest and for the frustration of the dishonest. We were prepared to bring in a Bill with exactly such a clause as I proposed should be introduced into this measure. There was no thought then of the Irish Press. We had no object in our mind then except to protect people who subscribed money of that kind. But when we proposed that the same thing should be done in relation to the American Loan, because in that case it was eminently more necessary that it should be done as the people in America as I pointed out had not the same opportunity to know what was being done in the matter—when I proposed that it was said that it was motivated by nothing but spleen. It was mean and vindictive.
Why was that said? The man who said it revealed his mind. He could not understand, he is temperamentally and characteristically incapable of understanding, why any man should want to protect the weak. He sees everything which everybody else does through the spectacles of his own mind and he gave expression to his own mind when he leant over that board, with his lock hanging over his forehead as I said before, and when he stated full of venom:
"I know it is gall and wormwood to them that they are not here to do it and that is the whole trouble. They are not here to do it, and it is the great and supreme pleasure of my life to know that they will have to digest that gall and wormwood."
That was the mind of a man who is preaching around the world that he is trying to create a new civilisation in which only the tenets of Christianity will have force. What does he say? "I know it is gall and wormwood to them that they are not here to do it." To do what? To do what we endeavoured to do in 1924 in relation to the Home Loan, to see that the people who subscribed the money would get the money and that it would not go to the Horatio Bottomleys, the tricksters who got possession of the bonds from these unfortunate people. It is gall and wormwood to us that the rightful subscribers do not get the money. It is gall and wormwood to us to-day to see that the people who subscribed that money will not get it and that the people who swindled these people will get it. It is gall and wormwood to us that we should have handed over the government of the country to a Party who are disgracing this country by passing a Bill to make legitimate what would be known in any other country in the world by the one word "graft." I do not know, as I said before, of any other country in the world where there was such shamelessness as we have here where a Government comes in to put a Bill through to make their graft legal. The most they can do in other countries is to use a word I myself learned from the President in 1917, to be sufficiently "ikey."