MB. JUSTIN M'CARTHY ON MR. FORSTER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 5, 25 May 1883, Page 3

MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY ON MR. FORSTER.

AFTER Mr. Justin M'Carthy, in his speech, had related the incident of Mr. Foster's connection with Mazzini, he continued as follows :—: — That incident was not without its interest and its moral (hear, hear). He wondered that tbe memory of that time did not make him somewhat more generous, somewhat more honest (cheers), towards men of whom in heart he as little believed in the trath of the charge of sympathy with assassination as honest men believed it of him then (cheers). The hon. member then vindicated his connection with United Ireland, and said the right hon. gentleman went over a great many points by which he endeavoured to connect him and others with plots of assassination. For example, the right hon. gentleman spoke of a telegram sent by Mr. Brennan as correspondent to the irUh World, " All sorts of theories are afloat concerning this explosion (that was the Salf ord dynamite explosion) but the truly loyal one ia that Fenians did it." He put it to the House whether the plain and evident meaning of that was not while there were many explanations, yet the fashionable and loyal theory, the theory of those who made parade of their loyalty, was, as a matter of course, that the Fenians did it (hear, hear). Mr. Forster — I would ask the hon. member to read the remainder of tbe telegram. Mr. M'Carthy said ho had got no more ; he had copied that from tbe papers (hear, hear). The whole theory and purpose of the right hon. gentleman's declamation and defamation (Irish cheers) was to make members of that House responsible for every violent act done, or even every violent word said, by any supposed partisan or hangeron of their leader and party, either in this country or in America. How would that theory apply to the right hon. gentleman ? (Hear, hear.) The right hon. gentleman had not forgotten the riot which led to the breaking down of the Hyde Park railings, and to the maiming and wounding of many persons in the mob and the police force there. The right hon. gentleman and his friends came back into power, he might say, on the smashing of Hyde Park railings (hear, hear, and " Question "). The right hon. gentleman was well acquainted with the leader of the democratic movement, the late Mr. Beales. Mr. Forster— No ; I did not know him. Mr. M'Carthy — He is dead (laughter). But, living or dead, Mr. Beales was a man of honour and courage. I knew him and I respected him. But he certainly got around him, and could not help getting around him, men of very odd character and very odd pretensions (cheers and laughter). " Does the right hon. gentleman remember a certain Mr. Joseph Leicester, a famous glass-blower ? Mr. Forster — I do not remember him. Mr. M'Carthy — He does not remember him. As a famous actor said on one occasion, " What a candour, but what a memory 1 " (cheers and laughter). At the time when Mr. Leicester's name used to appear in every London newspaper every morning (hear, hear), this distinguished supporter of the right hon. gentleman's party went to a great meeting one day — a great trades demonstration, held, I think, in Trafalgar Square — and this was part of the speech of Joseph Leicester. There was then, as there has been more lately, much talk of a kind of rush and raid on the House of Commons to force them to pass the right hon. gentleman's Reform Bill, and this was what that demagogic hero said :—: — " The question is, were they to suffer those little-minded, decrepit, hump-backed, one-eyed scoundrels, who call themselves the House of Commons (laughter) to defraud them any longer of their rights ? " I was not a member of the House of Commons then, and did not come in for any part of that censure, but I ask the right hon. gentleman if someone as nearly connected with the hon. member for Cork as Mr. Leicester was with the right hon. gentleman, had used words of that description to a meeting of Irishmen, what would he have said ? (Loud cheers, and cries of " Oh.") Biots took place and people ware wounded (cries of " Question "). There was no cry of question when the right hon. gentleman was defaming me and others, and went over land and sea and over years, to find charges against us. It is quite to the question. I want to say to him and the House that it is impossible in any movement to hold the leaders responsible for

every idle word and act done by their followers (cheers). Of this movement Mr. Beales was the leader, and when the right hon. gentleman and his friends came to power did they repudiate Mr. Beales ? They made him a county court judge (cheers and laughter). Did they at any time while these proceedings were going on repudiate the language of that man 1 No. There was once a newspaper in London of which the right hon. gentleman, and the right hon. gentleman sitting near him (Mr. Bright) knew something — the Morning Star. One morning there appeared an article by a writer not now living, calling upon the people unless a certain thing was done to destroy the House of Lords, and strew the Thames with the wrecks of its painted chamber. The right hon. gentleman (Mr. Forster) took in that paper, whether he read it or not. The article was not under the notice of the House, but he (Mr. M'Carthy) never heard that the right hon. gentleman ever said a single word against it. Mr. Forster — I was not a shareholder in it. Mr. M'Carthy — That was not a time of peace. There was danger then of something like a democratic rising in the streets of London. The right hon. gentleman had put him through a shorter catechism yesterday. Let him now ask the right hon. gentleman if he never heard at the time that a famous Continental leader of rebellion was over in London and was in negotiation with some of the men concerned in these affairs for the purpose of assisting them in a democratic rebellion 1 (Mr Forster shook his head). -He never heard of that. He never read any papers at that time or histories published since. Over and over again has the story of that foreign incendiary's visit been told, and the right hon. gentleman never read of it, yet he supposed that he (Mr. McCarthy") read every copy of the iVfcw York World and every American paper which contained a hasty sentence or phrase. He had shown that the right hon. gentlemen ought to be 'jajitious in making charges of sympathy with assassination, and slow 1p laying down the theory that a man was bound to know everything said and done by everybody on the outskirts of agitation under pain of coming under the penalty of organising and conniving at crime. The Land League was formed with the full and deliberate intent of drawing agitation above the surface, and it was because that was its motive that he joined it, and set forth his reasons in a letter which was published in many papers, but had not been seen by the right hon. gentleman, who only read the Irish. World (a laugh). The League was tending to close the era of conspiracy, and then there came one winter, three influences of evil altogether — famine, the House of Lords, and the right hon. gentleman (Parnellite cheers). The house of Lords rejected a poor little Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which might have stopped for a while the tide of eviction and given a breathing space ; and then to accumulate the misery and horror of the situation the right hon. gentleman' presently got in his laws for the arrest of suspicious men, and drew into the net every local leader who might have kept order in his place. Then the movement, leaderless and hopeless, went down from the high tide to which it had risen to seethe and ferment in the old channels of conspiracy. Mr. M'Carthy then referred to Mr. Redpatb, and pointed out that that gentleman had been a member of the Cobden Club, yet he (Mr. M'Carthy) could never dream of holding either Mr. Forster, who he believed was a member, or Mr. Potter, the president of the club, responsible for ' words uttered by Mr. Redpath. Mr. M'Carthy concluded by warning tbe Government, since it was now clear that there was to be no free speech or free Press in Ireland, not to rest too securely on a penal system, or assume that the decrease in outrages in the past has been due to that system rather than to the decrease of evictions. . The penal system was driving disaffection beneath the surface again. Only the Irish members stood between the Government and the elements of conspiracy. The warning as to the future was for the present Chief Secretary. The blame for the calamities of the past he laid on the shoulders of another, of whom, adapting cortain famous words written of a politician of a former day, he would say it had seldom been within the power of any human creature to do so much good as the right hon. gentleman the member for Bradford had prevented.