no. 45

bill which gave any person holding a war- rant under its provision the power ofdrag- ing a prisoner where he pleased—the ower ofimprisoning him where be pleased ..the power of turning whom he pleased into a lawful gaoler and keeper of the un- happy prisoner?. (Hear, hear.) Ohlsure lie was that this must be the provision of some statute and admirable equitvjudge— ofsome man raised perchanee fr'om com- paratively humble rank to high place and power by his love of freedom and genius. Itmust be the work of some mighty and penetrating genius, for it required no or- dinary ability to devise such a clause. In Algiers they hadjust such prisons as were rendered lawful by this bill; but British subjects had never experience of them be- fore. If such an act were allowed to pass, there was a blight and a curse upon the liberties of England which porteiided ruin to the state. Oh! what a triumph did this act give the Tories over the Whigs! [l lear. When did the Tories bring,r in such an act? He had entertained a political enmity to— wards the right hon. Baronet the member for Tamworth, and at one time a personal enmity? he was wrong in that, and frankly admitted the fact now in the right hon. baronets presence, and he began to find that he had also been wrong in much of his political enmity. This bill empowered any man to imprison another any where, and to detain him any how. But the best was to come. When the Reform Bill was set a working, it was placarded on the doors ofall churches and chapels, but the procla- mation of a disturbed district was to be confined to the Dublin Gazelle. \Vhy, if you wanted to keep anything secret, it was proverbial that the Dublin Gentle was the place wherein to hide it. Much had been said ot'military tribunals; he respected the army; there were a few superior men among the officers, a few excellent young men, and a very many indifferent and worse. But good, bad,or indifferent, So- merville’s case showed to him that they were the worst judges in the world. He had found thatiii some military cases, par- ticulary with respect to paymaster’s ac- counts, the major’s party was generally one way and the colonel‘s another. (A cry of “No, no,”) Look at the canstitiition of this military court. It was to consist of 5 or 9 officers—take it at 5. One of them was to be a field officer, doubtless with a view to secure the perfect independence of the subalterns. But there were more precautions. No officer was to be appoint- ,ed to serve on any such court martial un- less he had attained the age of 21 years. That was an admirable precaution: but he must also have been two yearsin the army, and have learned that obedience was the first of a soldier’s duties and merits. That was the constitution of the tribunal under the act, and was it for such a court that the Reformed Parliament would

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take the judge off the bench, where he had spent. his life in the business of the law, and in studying human nature, with a view to deter- mine the question between guilt and inno- cence, and when the balance wavered to let fall a drop of mercy into the culprit’s scale? Were.these venerable men to be dismissed as useless after their toils and labors ? were their thoughts and learning—viginli annorum lucu- brufftflleSftO be disregarded; and was the ba- lance ofJusticc to be poised by a field officer turning the twelve men out of the box? Eve: ry British subject could quarrel even with the countenances of the jury to the extent of his challenges : but let the prisoner say one word against one of the fo'nrensigns who formed the court, and there was an end of his chance of acquittal. Those militaryjudges had only to obey their orders, and there they were. A

Jury must be unanimous: and the conscientious

debt of one man was suflicient to acquit the prisoner. But before this tribunal a majority ofthree would convict. Th! re was your court martial! OJie instance of oppression he had mentioned on a. former night, and he would now read the case of Sir Edward Crosbie, as related to his son E. Crosbie, Esq. by his ne- phew the Rev. A. Donglas in a letter dated (ilebchousc, Kilcullen, August 1, 1826 :—“I am glad to communicate a fact which came to my knowledge but a few days ago. and which gives decided confirmation of the generally re~ ccived opinion of your lamented father’s inno- cence; indeed there can be but one opinion on this murder ofyour father. Mr. Dundas, who lives near me, was, in the rebellion or 1792, aid-de-camp to his father, General Dun- das, who had the command-in-chiefin Ireland When the report ofthe Court-martial was laid before him, he saw at one glance thatlhe con- viction of Sir Edward Crosbie was againstjus- lice and truth, unsupported by any evidence; be instantly sent ofl'an express to stop pr0~ ceedings, and even to release my uncle; but the General who commanded at Carlow anti- cipated the reprieve he knew must come, and had my dear uncle executed at torchlight about twenty minutes before the dragoon arrived. [Hcan] He related another act of yet greater oppression, the chief feature of which was, the imprisonment of the three sons ofa widow, who were cast into adungcon because their mother demanded her right ofan attorney pro- fessing loyalty, and thereby influencing the de- cision ofa Court martial. He was aware that the right hon. gentleman had denied that this bill rendered the jurisdiction ofcourts martial universal, but be (Mr. O’Connell) would main- tain that it did. There was one section that seemed to qualify the power, but there was a- nother and an antecedent section that appear- ed to render it universal, and he begged as a lawyer to tell the right hon. gentleman, that a particular affirmative did not diminish the force of a general precedent affirmative. One clause gave the bill a retrospective effect, and by the l5th and '161h clauses, there was not a single man in England that might not be car- ried before these courts martial in Ireland; under those clauses every single individual in that House and outof that House—perhaps it might not be astretch of the imagination to suppose that only one individual was looked for—“Herc, hear," from the Irish members)— nsight be summoned before those courts marti- al in Ireland. For let it be observed, that this bill was not limited to Ireland; it wanted the limiting clause. The first principle of the cri- minal law was, that a man should be deemed innocent until he be proved guilty. [bean].— But alas! what was the first measure that a reformed -—a reformed l—House of Commons

was about to pass? a measure which altered die old, the equitable law of the land, and which enacted that a man should be deemed guilty unless he proved that he was innocent. (Hear, hear.) If this act should be passed, an enemy might plaCe arms in a man’s house, and then give information which Would lead to their detection, and unless the said individual could prove that he did not know they were there—a thing, by the way, the hardest in the world to be proved; he was liable to be found guilty by one of those courts martial. So again signals of smoke were made illegal by this act of Parliament, which mingled the ludicrous with the atrocious, and which was, in truth,the veriest compound of absurdity and atrocity that a Whig government had ever put togeth- er. A miserable eottar might be called on to prove that the smoke of his cabin three months before the accusation, was not intended to in- dicate the distant march ot‘a body of troops or police. He would ask them whether, after they had passed such an act for Ireland, they could still believe that there existed a union between England and Ireland ? Ifthere did, it would be only such a union as some of the tyrants of old were said to have formed, when they tied adead body to a living man. [bean] To be sure, in that case the putrcscency of the dead carcase affected the living being; but he would not have the reformers of this coun— try, and the friends of liberty dclude them- selves with the idea that an analogous result would not take place in this instance, and that the junction ofthe sacrificed cadaver of the I- rish constitution Would not ultimately destroy the vitality of the existing constitution in Eng. land. A noble Lord (Ehrington) supported the biilé‘as a friend to lrcland“-—God save Ireland from such friends! A gallant general, (Grey) had been kindly and hospitably treated in Ire- land, and therefore he would destroy her liber- ties. A gallant Captain [Berkely] had beenon a hunting party at Kilkenny, in which the sportsmen carried loaded pistols for their pro- tection, and he had therefore. motive enough for supporting the bill. An hon.b:1ronct (Bur- dett) had said, the repeal of the union had been agitated asa counter proposition to re- form—only one proofot'the hon. Baronet’s hap. py ignorance of the subject. He [Mn O’Con- nell] agitated the repeal of the Union from 1810 to 1817, when be postponed it publicly until the emancipation Bill could he obtaine . He renewed it on the success of that measure, and suspended it ag iin in 1831, for the sake of the Reform Bill. Had the Irish Reform beena measure ofjustice or policy—[an hon. member here counted the O’f‘onnells brought in by that bill]—the repeal of the Union would never more have been heard of. An hon. member, [Ward] had talked of intimidation, and in- stanced the trial ofthe tnurlerers of Mr. Gor- ing. The Reverend gentleman was killed ten years ago, his son was not a material witness, the jury had a doubt, and the prisoners had the benefit ofit; but at the same assizes many 0- ther cases were tried, in all of which there were convictions, and the witnesses were all alive and safe. A noble lord [Duncannnn] had talked of400 cases in two months, forgeting that there had been two contested elections with anti-repeal, and of course antipopular candidates, and that at le ast halfthe list of crimes were merely InlS'lf‘ln'TRnOI‘S in election riots. month fora whole enuntv. [llcaiz] An hon. and learned member [Vlicauley] had referred to his (Mr. O’Connoll‘s] speeches. as the grounds of his vote-where had he read them? In the Dublin Jllorning Register, the Pilot, or the Freeman’c Journal ,- none else were cor-

This left only one hundred crimes a~