THE CRIMES BILL.

Evening Star, Issue 7236, 11 June 1887, Page 4

THE CRIMES BILL.

THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE LETTER DENIED. IFbom Our Special Correspondent.] London, April 20. In expectation that Mr Parnell would offer Borne explanation of the famous facsimile letter anent the Phoenix Paik murders published in that mornings 'Times, the House of Commons was crammed to excess at question time on Monday afternoon. Sir William Fitzherbert, Sir J. W. Downer, and other colonial delegates occupied seats in the strangers' gallery, and at the far back sat the expelled Mr Healey, wearing his hat. The following is the ' Pall Mall Gazette's' account of what occurred : MB HEALY's SUSPENSION. At ten minutes past five o'clock Mr Sexton, rising with his hat in his hand, took action with a view to the reinstatement of Mr Healy; but Mr Smith unexpectedly declined to move the withdrawal of the bus-

pension, one of his points being that there had been no expression of regret from Mr Healy, and Colonel Saunderson declining to make a more explicit withdrawal than he offered on Friday night, Mr Sexton was unable to make any advance on behalf of Mr Healy, and the incident ended without tho suspension being closed. During this conversation Mr Gladstone, who was loudly cheered each time by the Opposition, was manifestly the real leader of the House. The talk excited great interest, and as twice or thrice there were long _ pauses midst the greatest quietude the interest almost developed into excitement. Tho incident occupied a. quarter of an hour. During Mr Gladstone's speech, Mr Healy, who wore his hat, took his scat in the very back row of the strangers' gallery, by the doorway, right at the back of tho House, where he remained until the division was taken. COLONEL SAUNDERSON's CHARGES. The debate on the Coercion Bill was then resumed at twenty-five minutes past five o'clock by Mr Sexton. If this Bill were passed, he observed, " the official description of Britain and Ireland would be the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the slave settlement of Ireland." The hon. member (who now had Mr Healy as a listener) then replied at great length in an able, effective speech to the charges of Colonel Saunderson, giving them a general, distinct denial, and offering good evidence in disproof; and also showed that Mr Sheridan and Mr Egan were at one time, just after the Fenian rising, the political associates and confidants of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Ireland (who was absent from the House at the time). Mr Sexton spoke for an hour and forty minutes. Lord Hartington then spoke for an hour. While pointedly declining to endorse the charges of ' The Times,' he persistently insisted that they should be met, and observed that denial was rfot disproof. In one or two of his passages in which the noble lord spoke of Mr Gladstone there was an unusual viciousness of tone observable. MR GLADSTONE. Captain Colomb, of "No Coercion" celebrity, having been heard amid groat laughter from tho Parnellitc benches, Mr Gladstone, who carried an orchid in his button-hole, rose at half-past ten o'clock. He was received with ringing cheers, unusually prolonged, the Irishmen being strikingly enthusiastic. An allusion to the American " tribute " to Ireland being met with a cry of " Oh !" from the Tory benches, he exclaimed indignantly " I am shocked !" and then, with a splendid downward and forward movement of out-turned palms, he shot across the House, as it were, his protest against scoffs at contributions to the relief of famine-strhken Irish people, contributions to the rents of their landlords and the like, as scoffs at one of the glories of the United States. Then Mr Gladstone, in a quieter manner, proceeded to deal with the charges of inconsistency founded upon his support of coercion on former occasions, and next demanded an unequivocal answer to the question: "Does the"Government intend to stand or fall by its Relief Bill ?" The foregoing was the introduction to the speech. Turning now to the condition of Ireland, the right hon. gentleman observed that the supporters of tho Government seemed to imagine that the demand for coercion carried its own warrant. Inquiring how wo had succeeded in our stewardship since the Union, the right hon. gentleman quoted, with pathetic power, a striking passage from a book by an eminent statistician, showing that, so far as Ireland was concerned, the reign of Victoria had been the most disastrous since tho reign of Elizabeth. "This is a Bill not against crime," he said, " but against combination. Combination is now detached from crime, and because it is detached you are going to strike at it. But combination, as Sir Redvers Puller has declared, is the only means by which the Irish people, in their weakness and poverty, have been able to make headway against wealth and strength." With a passing acknowledgment of the law-and-order disposition manifested by Mr Parnell since 1881, he indicated that the wish lately expressed to do justice to Ireland had weaned the people in a wonderful degree from tlie use of violence, and he feared that the result of this Bill would be an increase of crime, through an increase of secret societies. "It is a Bill aimed at the nation !" Mr Gladstone exclaimed amid loud cheers: and it was with great eloquence of action as well as words that he delivered this which was warmly cheered : " The Bill, sir, in my view, is a cup of poison. I will not commend it to the lips of Ireland. It must he offered to them by another hand than mine. To me it will be honor and happiness enough should I be permitted the smallest share in dashing it to the ground." Mr Glodstone occupied an hour and twenty minutes. He spoke throughout in fairly good voice, but he repeatedly complained of conversations on the Treasury bench. It was a good speech, strong in criticism and argument, and was delivered with every sign of vitality and vigor. MR RALI'OUR COMES A SKIiILS 01' " CROPPERS." Mr Balfour and Mr Parnell rose together at ten minutes to twelve o'clock, and, amid much noise, both persisted for some time in an attempt to gain precedence. Mr Balfour, obtaining the call, proceeded to refer to the " Parneliism and Crime " charges, which, he observed, Mr Gladstone had passed over—an observation which the Ministerialists loudly cheered. While taking care to say " I do not myself offer any opinion as to the subject," he pressed for action against 'The Times ' on the part of the Parnellites, and remarked that the people of this country would know what to think of men who preferred the platform to the witness-box, wherein the parties could be subject to cross-examination. The Chief Secretary spoke disdainfully of the ex-Premier's speech as an attack upon the Bill. As to the Land Bill, "of course, the Government is committed to every Bill of first-class importance." He then replied to Mr Parnell's ten-days'-old speech, in the course of which he came several nasty "croppers," Mr Harrington being able to assure the House in successive explanations that in three cases where branches of the League had ordered boycotting, the branch had been dissolved or censured. It was by far the best speech Mr Balfour has made since he entered the office. MR PARNELL'S ANSWER: "A VILLAINOUS AND HA REFAOED FORG ERY." It was just one o'clock when Mr Parnell obtained the opportunity he had sought at midnight. Rising amid the cheers of his party, he was speedily discovered in the course of an introductory sentence denouncing as " a villainous and barefaced forgery" the letter ascribed to him in ' 1 he Times' with the wish to influence tho division—a denunciation which evoked loud cheers on the Opposition benches. He complained that, although he had only asked for ten minutes of time, " the Chief Secretary, with characteristic unfairness," had deliberately delayed his explanation until it was too late for him to secure adequate attention in the Press—in fact, that the Government had already " loaded the dice ;" but Mr Balfour declared that he had only held his ground in accordance with an arrangement by which he was to follow Mr Gladstone—an arrangement which was entirely at variance with an arrangement in which Mr Parnell had acquiesced. Mr Parnell (with left hand in trouser pocket, and right hand on coat lappel) went on to say that when he heard of " this precious concoction " —for he does not read ' The Times' usually—he imagined that some person for whom it was intended had got hold of some signature given in an autograph—here there was a sneering " Oh, oh," from some person on the Tory bench—but when he came to examine the letter he found that the signature was an audacious forgery. There were only two letters in the whole signature (and only tho signature was alleged to be in his writing) which bore any resemblance to those in his signature, and instead of being written in a cramped hand (for he wrote with great difficulty, with such great difficulty that it was a labor for him to write at all), the signature was evidently the work of a ready penman, whose writing was certainly strange to him. But the hon. member was determined to be much more explicit—" I never heard of the letter," he said, " never directed such a letter to be written, and never saw such a letter before I saw it in 'The Times' this morning." The subject matter was preposterous, the phraseology was as absurd as it possibly could have been, and in every part it bore evidence of want of genuineness. All this had been spoken with clearness, without hesitation, and the Opposition cheered the statement. "THAT TERRIBLE DEED IN THE I'HOJNIX PARK." Mr Parnell continued :—"I had no more notion than an unborn child of such a conspiracy as that of the Invincibles, and no one was more astonished than I was when that bolt from the blue fell upon us In tho Phoenix Park murders. I knew not in what

direction to look for this calamity. It is no exaggeration to say that if I had been in the park that day I would gladly have stood between Lord Frederick Cavendish and the daggers of the assassins—(Cheers and cries of " Burke ")-and for the matter of that between their daggers and Mr Burke. Now, sir, I leave this subject. I have suffered more than any other man from that terrible deed in the Phoenix Park, and the Irish nation has suffered more than any other nation." Mr Parnell's face was flushed, and the strong voice in which he began the allusions became slightly hoarse as he uttered the concluding sentences ; his deliverance was unfaltering and manly, without heroics, but he spoke with evident feeling, and the last sentences were uttered almost after the manner of a man with the well-known " lump in his throat. 1 ' NO DEALINGS WITH SECRET SOCIETIES. The hon. member then took up Lord Hartington's demand that he Bhould make an answer to the allegations with respect to his communication with Fenian leaders in the United States. He pointed out that, unlike Lord Hartiugton, he did not possess the facilities of a member of a Government, with its detective agents, for acquiring information as to the composition of an oathbound secret organisation like the Clan-na-Gael, and as a matter of fact he had not known, and did not know, for he had no means of knowing, that Mr Alexander Sullivan was a member of the Clan-na-Gael. He added, in a firm voice: " I have never had any dealings with him or any one else in respect to the doings or proceedings of any secret society whatsoever. (Home Rule cheers.) All my goings and sayings and doings in public life have been open and above-board, and they have stood the tess of the searching investigation of the three years' administration of the Crimes Act by Lord Spencer, who has left it on record that neither any of my colleagues nor myself were in any way connected with the commission of or approving of the commission of any crime." The Opposition, of course, cheered the explanation warmly, while the Ministerialists were curiously silent. The attention, not to say tension, with which Mr Parnell had hitherto been listened to was relaxed when he proceeded to refer to the Coercion Bill. Taking up his hat, Mr Parnell, in a strong voice, and with emphasis over every phrase, said: "I trust in God' that this nation and this House may be saved from the degradation, mistake, and peril of passing this Bill."