I claim that the House and the country are being treated most unfairly and most unjustly, not only by the type of legislation that is introduced here, but by the particular time selected to introduce it. Amongst all the legislation that ever passed through this House in its 23 years' history—Public Safety Acts, Flogging Bills, Execution Bills, etc.—there was never a measure enacted that interfered, or claimed to interfere, more with the ordinary normal constitutional rights of the people than this particular Act. This is the time selected to introduce an Act of that magnitude by the individual who nearly lifted the roof off this building when it was proposed by law, and with the sanction of Parliament, to intern people on suspicion without trial. That was the attitude of Deputy de Valera when he stood over here. That was his championship then of the democratic rights of the people. That was his conception then of what the real power of democracy meant. His conception now, at the eleventh hour of the life of the Parliamentary year, in the middle of July, when the urgent call of feeding people inside and outside of this country should be demanding the time, the energy, and the attention of all Deputies in this House associated with production, is to introduce a Bill of this nature. He introduces it without argument to support it, without any case made, but with the accomplished technique at which he has become proficient in recent years, of pulling bogeys out of the bag and trying to play upon the imaginative fears of the people.
If another lawyer made the speech from an independent position, from any impartial side, that was made by Deputy Moran a few minutes ago, the people would say that he was unfitted to be a member of that profession or of this Assembly. We can be charitable and we can excuse his speech on account of his political affiliations and the particular seat he happens to occupy. That any lawyer in 1945 should get up and tell us that our constitutional rights are still there, that they have not been interfered with by this Bill when the very architect of this Bill admitted on its first introduction that it was only a very real emergency that would justify placing the Constitution in abeyance as this Bill does, passes comprehension. You have in the same speech cheap meaningless bleatings about democracy. If he can spell "democracy", at least he knows the meaning of it. The meaning of "democracy" is that laws are made for the people by the elected representatives of the people, by Parliament, and the one justification for this Bill is that legislation will be carried out by regulation and not by the elected representatives of the people. Anybody defending this measure can defend it on any grounds of necessity, of emergency, of danger, but certainly not on grounds of democracy. Let us at least be honest, and, if such powers are required, let the case be made. The parent Bill was passed one night in September, 1939, and the case made, the case believed and the case that might have been true was that we were right up against a situation in which it might be impossible for Parliament to meet, and in which, even if it were possible for Parliament to meet, we might be faced with such an appalling crisis that even the very 24 hours' delay necessitated by assembling Parliament and putting the necessary implements into the hands of the Government might be too costly and too damaging to the security of the State or the lives or properties of the people.
That was the case made at that time, and it was in the face of that case and confronted with that possibility, if not probability, that such drastic powers were given to the Government. All that is five years ago, and, even in any of the past four years, there was no justification, except the weight of numbers behind the Taoiseach, for coming in here year after year to ask for renewal of those powers. Now we have reached a point at which, so far as the western hemisphere is concerned, the war is over. There is no militant action anywhere in the western world, but the political junta which constitute the Government of this State, anxious to cling on to powers, anxious to be able to favour or to victimise, want to hold in their grasp, independent of Parliament and independent of the people, powers which would be given only in face of the most imminent disaster a people ever faced.
No case is made for it. Hints—not clear statements—are thrown out of internal danger. Does the Taoiseach think that we never faced internal danger in this State and under this Dáil when he occupied a different bench from that which he now occupies? Does he not remember that this Dáil faced internal danger of a most calamitous kind, the most tragic civil war in the history of any country, and that when his mantle and the mantle of his Party were thrown over every one of those activities, the constitutional rights of the people were left? Whatever powers the Executive of the time wanted to deal even with that appalling situation were got through the law of the land, through Parliament. The aftermath of that, the shadow and the trail of that were seen over the lives and the homes of the people, and when even the free coming and going of Deputies to and from Parliament were challenged and interfered with, and when they fell in their tracks in an attempt to carry out Parliamentary duties, was there ever a Bill such as this asked for? The only weapon which the Government of the time asked for was the weapon that was within the reach of the law and the protection of the courts was still there for the individual citizen.
Yet, because three-fourths of the world suffered from a disaster and a tragedy which never even signed us, we here for political purposes, stimulated purely by power, greed and bolstered up by a regimented, obedient and docile majority, want to keep that stranglehold on the people, and we do it with cheap bleatings about democracy and insincere hints about internal danger. Whether the danger is internal or external, so long as we have the type of Opposition Parties at present in this House, all the weight, all the power and all the influence of Opposition Parties will always be at the beck and call of the Government and will always be there to face any threat to democracy, whether outside Parliament or inside the Executive.
There are Deputies who speak with the same voice in Government and in Opposition, who stand for the same rights, even though they changed their seats in this House, and who have the same veneration for sacred principles and national aims and objects. The only reward for a nation that for centuries has been trying to burst the chains of slavery and to emerge under the sun as a free country was the right to emerge as a free and democratic country. If the democratic rights of the people are to be trampled upon, it does not matter very much to the people whether it is a Cromwell or a de Valera who tramples on them, and all that is best in this country, all that is best in this Dáil, irrespective of the wilted will of disciplined politicians, should resist with the same determination, when such an attempt is made by a de Valera, as when made by a Cromwell.
Yet we have lawyers and posturing nationalists standing up to say that there is no interference with the people's constitutional rights or democratic principles when we give over, by our votes, to a junta—it does not matter whether of ten, six or one —without any reference to the elected representatives of the people, the right to take every possession that an Irish person owns, even to the extent of life, when we give them powers to do anything whatsoever they like, except conscript man power, conscript wealth or censor our Press. That is what we are doing in the name of democracy, and, with that policy, we have courts functioning in a meaningless kind of way. We have courts, with all their expense, all their pomp and all their splendour, sitting and listening to evidence, weighing up evidence by experts and imposing a penalty which suits the crime, measuring it according to the offence, and, when that is done, we have a Government Minister or an unknown civil servant, without reference to anybody, imposing a penalty on top of the court penalty, which makes the court penalty look as the fraction of a farthing in comparison with a £100 note. That is democracy, according to Deputy Moran, and that is justice.
That state of affairs is to be continued because a couple of armies and a couple of navies are fighting away on the far side of the Pacific. All these powers are to remain because we have the revived bogey of the I.R.A. Was the present Government or was the previous Government ever denied any powers they sought, no matter how drastic, to deal with any external or internal trouble, any threat from within or without to the people or to the security of the State? Is there any reason to believe there is a change in our breed—that if there is any new danger growing up outside, or in the imagination of the Taoiseach, any powers that are required by law will be denied them? Leaving out those hints of internal danger, what is the case made with regard to the necessity for retaining all those powers up to the end of 1946? Over an Order which we hear nothing about in the Dáil, which is never considered, which is never discussed, which is never approved over the signature of any one of the Ministers, we can find all the property that anybody owns and just commandeer it overnight, no answer being given to Parliament and no defence made to Parliament.
It is just a little bit too late in the day for any glib-tongued defender of the unreasonable to stand up here and say: "The powers given five years ago were never abused." The powers given five years ago were very extensively abused. There was discrimination between one individual and another. There was no such thing as uniformity of decisions or uniformity of penalties. Anybody can take his own view as to what were the deciding factors. The deciding factors, I take it, were the mood or the temper of a particular individual on a particular day; then a particular action was taken. That is putting it in the most charitable way. Every one of us within our own knowledge can turn up cases of similar offences, with similar penalties imposed by the courts, which is legal evidence of the similarity of conditions, but quite different action was taken under the emergency powers by the particular Minister or civil servant. Are we to ask our people to continue to live under that intolerable burden? Are we to say to them: "You still have your full rights under the Constitution, or so Deputy Moran says. This is the way of democracy, or so Deputy Moran says"? At least, whatever we are doing, let us, number two, do it openly and candidly and honestly. We are continuing to deprive the people of this country of any semblance of constitutional rights. If any emergency Order is made to-morrow, whatever constitutional rights the Deputy referred to as having been argued in the courts can go like a snap of the fingers. If those rights were there last week, it is because no emergency Order was brought in to deprive them of those rights. If we are going to do it, number one, let us see if there is a case made for doing it. If we are, or if we pretend to be, democrats with a democratic outlook, let us at least admit that we are doing anything but a democratic action, and that only an extreme emergency or very real and very imminent danger would justify such action. But a case has got to be made. Number two, let us do whatever we are doing honestly and not behind a smoke-screen of words, of camouflage, of cant and "cod".
If we are robbing them of their constitutional rights, and if we are taking an extremely undemocratic course, then let us say that we are taking this course because we are compelled to do it in the interests of the people on account of extreme and acute and imminent danger. But where is the extreme, the acute, the imminent danger? A mental myth, an old-time bogey, an organisation that had been deprived of its skin long before you people took responsibility for running this country; an organisation that at its mightiest was comparatively impotent and helpless. That is the myth, that is the bogey to stampede democratic Deputies into giving those powers to a political junta that want them for political reasons.
If there is a better case, surely the Taoiseach is capable of making it. Surely the Taoiseach has not suddenly become a retiring, modest, tongue-tied Deputy. There is nobody who can be as eloquent and nobody who can be as plausible and nobody who can be as verbally tricky as the same Taoiseach when he wants to put across a case, but the fact of the matter is that even he is bankrupt in making any case for this particular piece of legislation or proposed legislation beyond the wink to the boys behind, the tinkle of the bell, and away through the counting gates. Is that fair play by the people? Is that reasonable? Is it democratic? What do we drop in this Bill, exactly? We drop the powers of censorship. When did we drop them? When the centre-piece of the world war dropped them across the water, and not any sooner. If we were covered with the hide of an elephant we would blush with shame to retain them for 24 hours longer. That is when we dropped censorship, and only then, and if it were not for the fact that it was dropped across the water it would be in this Bill this year the same as last year.
With the exception of that, the Government says to Parliament: "For another 12 months, we are going to take powers, full powers, over everything and everybody in this State, short of the conscription of human beings, and the conscription of wealth, and we require those powers because of the emergency.""Emergency" is something more than a word. Emergency is a condition or state of affairs. Emergency is an assembly of facts that can be portrayed and displayed before Parliament. Did the Taoiseach endeavour to do that? Did he endeavour to make a case for doing the really damnable thing it is proposed to do on our people? No. He made a case in 1939. At that time he had not a clear majority here. He made a case, and the case was listened to, and without a division—merely as a result of verbal assurances which were given from that seat and dishonoured—he got the Bill through without a division. Now, he has not a case, but he has the man-power. Man-power is going to replace argument. Man-power is going to replace fair play. Man-power is going to replace democracy. Man-power is going to filch every right that is dear to the people, and was dear to those who went before them, and who fought and struggled for those rights. I say it is not fair in the time of its introduction, the methods of its introduction, or the substance of what it is intended to do.
By any ordinary standard of nationalism, decency or fair play, that particular Bill would be withdrawn and substantially modified. There is nobody here arguing that there should not be a retention of emergency powers. We all know it is quite possible that, in the field of supplies, the post-war position may, in fact, be more difficult than the war position. We all admit that, with regard to production and distribution, power has to be there for quick action to be taken. Authority has got to be vested somewhere to deal with situations arising suddenly. It is better to get a drink out of a leaky vessel than not to get a drink at all, and weak and all as the vessel is that we have placed our trust in, we are prepared, where there appears to be necessity for them, and where there is a case made for them, to give whatever powers are required with regard to production and distribution, and for the exercise of controls over supplies.
Those powers would be given freely. With regard to all the other powers that are being retained in this Bill, no case has been made for their retention, and until a convincing case is made, a staggering case and a case that justifies their retention on the grounds of this country being face to face with a very real and a very new crisis, no Deputy who votes for this Bill, no matter who asks him—he may call himself what he likes after the division; he may call himself a Deputy, a Fianna Fáil Deputy, a Fianna Fáil dupe or a Fianna Fáil tool—but what ever he calls himself can call himself either an Irish Nationalist or an Irish democrat.
