THE IRISH CROWN PROSECUTORS

New Zealand Tablet, 11 July 1918, Page 22

THE IRISH CROWN PROSECUTORS

Mr. Sergeant McSweeny, one of the 17 Irish K.C.’s who wrote in approval of the bishops’ action on conscription, writes to the Irish Time* (Carson’s Dublin organ) a letter in which he says; “You put from the point of view of the Attorney-General a series of questions to Crown Prosecutors as to what their action will be in particular cases. I can speak for nobody but myself ; and my answer to your obviously inspired queries is that I have always done what I conceived to be my duty, irrespective of politics in every case, civil and criminal, and that I shall continue to do so. Having thus dealt with your hypothetical case, allow me to express a little mild surprise that as you obviously consider matters of this kind of importance, you have restrained until now the ardor of your thirst for information. Four years ago a conspiracy was started in the North of Ireland, in which many Crown Prosecutors look part, the members of which bound

themselves—and they are still bound—to resist by force of arms the Government of the King in Ireland then about to be established. Four Years Ago. "Your questions might have been very appropriately put to these gentlemen at the time, and they now may be administered to the residue of them who have not in the meantime been appointed to high office under the Crown. I say this because, as we have all seen, Sir E. Carson is engaged in reorganising his 'Provisional Government.' - * " "Above all, I should hope that you will ask the learned Attorney-General, the execution of whose office you have so much at heart, whether he is as ready to prosecute Sir E. Carson, his senior colleague in the representation of Trinity College, for making arrangements to resist an Act of Parliament as he is to pursue with legal penalties all other evil-doers in the like case ding. "It ought to be the first object of every good citizen to see the law obeyed and respected in Ireland; but if this wished-for consummation is to be brought about the law must be equally enforced against all; otherwise it must fall into contemptthat is, indeed, if that point has not been already reached."