FORCIBLE FEEBLE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 21, 13 September 1889, Page 11

FORCIBLE FEEBLE.

(United Ireland, July 13.)

Mb. CONYBEABE, the sturdy M.P, for Camborne, goes to gaol for three months for crying "Three cheers for the Plan of Campaign," and helping to supply food to the starving victims of Evictor Olphert •• Only this and nothiog more." The Crown prosecutors may accuse, And the quondam I.L.P.U. pamphleteer, Recorder Webb, may convict Mr. Conybeare on what technical Coercion charge they please, but these are admittedly the only " criminal " acts he committed. Indeed the question of evidence has become a totally immaterial consideration in Ireland. The law laid down by the Irish SolicitorGeneral in the cases in which one man was convicted for having an innocent notice in his shop window, and another tor raieing his bat to Mr. W. O'Brien, to the effect that the magistrates are entitled to supplement defective evidence from their inner consciousness as to the condition of the country, might fairly dispense Coercion Courts from the troublesome formality of examining any witnesses at all. The privilege which the Solicitor-General tells us belongs to partisan Immovables to convict without evidence, a fortiori, extends to partisan Becordera. " Castle Cob- Webb," aa the eminent judge who tried Mr. Conybeare's appeal was popularly known before his accession to the Quarter Sessions Beech, certainly availed himself of the privilege to the uttermost . Feeding the hungry is not, so far as we know, a ctime in any Christian country except Ireland. The Plan of Campaign ii cordially cheered at every Liberal meeting in England, Scotland, and Wales. From these two acts the Castle Cob- Webb has, following the Removables, spelled ont a criminal offence than which, to borrew his own words he " can scarcely imagine a greater crime." Carious, it it not, this geographical criminality 7 lo cheer for the Plan of Campaign is innocent in England ; to feed the starving is meritorious in England. These thing in Ireland (Webb judice) are bat one degree removed from murder. His imagination — and it is a powerful imagination — cannot stretch to th 9 conception of a graver crime. Yet are we told that the law and ite administration is toe same in the two countries. It teems ciuel to waste ridicule, much lew argument, on bo defenceless an absurdity. To crown all,

Mr. Conybeare, M.P., was convicted of conspiring with Mr. Harrison, who had been acquitted of conspiring with Mr. Conybeare. Mr. Oonybeare did conspire with Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Harrison did not conspire with Mr. Oonybeare. Such is the logic of the Coercion Courts. Can absurdity stretch further ? but we must not hold the Removables altogether responsible for this absurdity. They would doubtless have convicted Mr. Harrison with all the pleasure in life if so directed by the Castle. But Mr. Harrison's sole offence was that be gave a loaf of bread to a starving woman, and it was feared that the guilt of his conduct would not be appreciated in England, even though it was described in charge and conviction " a criminal conspiracy " to interfere with the administration of the law. What the people of England have got to realise is that there is no such thing as a trial, properly so-called, in Coercion Courts. The Removables are as much officials of the Castle as the clerks. They hold their appointment at pleasure, and are liable to dismissal with shorter notice than a domestic servant if they fail to give satisfaction. Mr. Conybeare declared he had evidence which he was prepared to produce on an inquiry that Mr. Harrison's discharge and his own conviction were the result of direct Castle intervention with the Coercion Conrt. Does any rational man for one moment fancy that Swindler Segrave, Rowdy Roche, the drunken LL.P.U. lecturer, or (with a few honourable exceptions) any other of the rabble-rout of Removables, for the most part superannuated officers and promoted guagera and policemen, with just a sprinkling of briefless barristers, would be specially scrupulous about convicting when his own bread and buttqr might depend upon the conviction. If any rational man could entertain such a notion, a very brief experience of the Coercion Courts would entirely undeceive him. The latest illustration is the promoted guager, Removable Hamilton, the best paid of the gang, committing Father M'Fadden on a charge of wilful murder without, as is now conceded, one shadow of evidence against him. The Oounty Court Judges are, as a rule, little better than the average Removable ; in some cases they are much worse than the average. The two latest appointments of the Coercion Government were the gentlemen known as Mud- Hovel Eisbey and Castle CobWebb, two practically briefless I.L.P.U. pamphleteers, whose truculent partisanship was their sole claim to promotion. The conviction of Mr. Conybeare, M.P., affords one further proof that there is no word or act tf an opponent of the Government in Ireland which a Government Coercion Court will not be found to torture into a crime. It further teaches us what a thing of snreds and patches our brave Balfour is ; what a contemptible mixture of cruelty and cowardice. The two corner-stoaes of his policy were the suppression of the National Press and the prison degradation of political opponents. For these noble objects he prosecuted newrgvendors and tortured political prisoners. But the newsvendors beat him, and the prisoners beat him. There is no man more completely in touch with the Castle than Cob- Webb. It waa he who, with Recorder Henn and Deputy-Judge Hickson, was selected for the unlucky experiment of doubling sentences on appeal. Ho has heretofore been famous, or infamous, for the savagery of his sentences on all charged with participation in the Plan of Campaign. Mr. Kelly got six months from him for participation in the PUu ; Father M'Fadden got six months ; Mr. Blanc got six months. For the same offence on the gime estate Mr. Conybeare got three months. But most remarkable of all, Mr. Kelly, Father M'Fadden, aad Mr. Blanc, AI.P., were sentenced as ordinary criminals, aad Mr. Conybeard, M. P , was made a first-class misdemeanant. The attention of Euglanl 19 aroused. The brave Balfour dare not subject an English Member of Parliament to the horrible degradations winch Mr. Uonybesre would infallibly have resisted. No consideration of consistency will stop Cattle CobWebb from getting his employer out of the scrape. Ho does as he is directed. He will just as read:ly give six months witn hard labour to the next man convicted of combination if the brave Balfour thinks it safe. It is this forcible, feeble vitrol-and-water policy that is to confound Home Rule in Ireland, and convert England, Scotland, and Wales to Coercion. How far it has affected the couiageous spirit of Mr. Conybeare may be gathered from his gallant protest and defiance in the Coercion Court itself. He handed over to Father Boyle a cheque for £15. subscribed in pennies at the public meetiDg in Hyde Park in furtherance of the Plan of Campaign on the Olphert estate, with another cheque of equal amount from himself for the same object, and boldly proclaimed, iv the very sanctuary of Coercion — " Ido this in open court as the best protest I can make, and with a view of showing now little I care for the sentence just passed on me, because I am determined in that way to thwart and defy the processes of the Coercion Act on tue ground of its utterly unconstitutional character, and I shall be glad, when the opportunity occure, to repeat the offence of showing how much I sympathise with the people of this unhappy country." In the indignant and contemptuous defiance of Courciou our English friends are as " Irish as the Irish themselves." If we are a nation of criminals, the majority of England, Scotland, and Wales are criminals too. There is no true Liberal 111 England, or in the Three Kingdoms, who is not in cordial sympathy with the " convict," Mr. Conybeare.