Читать книгу: «The Speeches (In Full) of the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., and William O'Brien, M.P., on Home Rule, Delivered in Parliament, Feb. 16 and 17, 1888.», страница 4

MR. O'BRIEN'S SPEECH

Mr. W. O'Brien rose amid loud and prolonged cheers from the Irish members, and speaking for the first time in this House since his release from Tullamore Jail, said: All the speeches which have been made in support of the Government have seemed to follow the keynote struck by the Chief Secretary. They all appeared to be more or less artfully designed to draw angry retorts from these benches. It is one of our national faults to be very ready to resent injustice, and a most generous use our opponents have made of that characteristic. ("Hear, hear.") The whole policy of our opponents towards Ireland, and the whole object of the powerful London newspapers, seems to be to get at the worst side of Irish and of English character, and to sting and goad us into doing things which will put new life into national prejudices that are expiring in spite of you. (Opposition cheers.) Irishmen and Englishmen are becoming only too united for your purpose. Yours is a noble ambition! But you have failed in Ireland, and you will fail, I promise you, in this House also. There was a time when we came here with our hand against every man's, and every man's hand against us. We expected no quarter, and to the best of our ability we gave none. It seemed to no purpose to struggle against the tremendous and cruel forces arrayed against us; but that is all at an end forever, thanks to the right honorable member for Mid-Lothian. (Cheers.)

We have come to this House no longer as enemies among enemies. We count ourselves Ishmaelites no longer in this House, nor in this land of England. We are now among allies and friends who were not ashamed nor afraid to stand by our side and by the side of our people in many a bitter hour of trial and calumny last year. (Opposition cheers.) We come here now among a people whose consciences, I believe, have been deeply stirred by the sufferings of our unfortunate people; and though we are confronted by a hostile majority, callous to those sufferings, we know that that majority does not represent Scotland and Wales. (Opposition cheers.) We believe that it does not even represent England. (Renewed Opposition cheers, and counter Ministerial cheers.) It is a majority obtained by foul means and upon representations which have turned out to be utterly false. We know that it is a majority who, two years ago, were not ashamed to receive their offices at the hands of the men whom they are now libelling in England and torturing in Ireland. (Loud Opposition cheers.) We have no respect for that majority. I doubt whether in their secret hearts many of them have much respect for themselves. ("Hear, hear.") I know very well that they are extremely ill at ease. We believe, as I say, that we are winning. (Cheers.) The right honorable gentleman opposite (the Chief Secretary) has failed in Ireland. (Home Rule cheers.) He has failed to smash our organization. He has failed to break the spirit of our people. He has failed to degrade us, I won't say in the eyes of our countrymen, for that would be absurd, but in the eyes of every honest man within these three realms. He has failed in every one of those calculations in which he indulged so confidently last autumn.

I shall prove before I sit down that failure is written on every clause and upon every provision of this act, abject failure, discomfiture, and disgrace. I shall be able to prove that sorely as our people have been tried and wronged, that they have managed to survive one of the most horrible Coercion Acts that has ever been directed against human liberty: that they have been able to crush and baffle it at every point, and that without one deed that they look upon with shame, but by sheer force of an incomparable national feeling. (Cheers.) Now, in the first place, I shall try to deal very shortly with my own case; and if I refer to it at all, it is, not in order to notice the coarse sneers of the honorable member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell), – I do not think it would be as parliamentary as it is true to say malignant sneers ("Hear, hear"), – I think it possible that before very long those sneers may be answered in the only way they deserve, by the electors of South Tyrone, – it is because I recognize that I am the very worst parliamentary criminal under this act. I am the only one who could have been proceeded against under the ordinary common law, with the shadow of a chance of conviction. Every colleague of mine who has been punished is being punished for new and statutable offences for which no jury in the world would convict under the ordinary law. The point I press upon the House is that if I can justify my offence, then I say, with a thousand times more force, the conviction of every one of my colleagues is an outrage upon justice, and their treatment in prison is an indelible disgrace to the man who planned it. I find that foul misrepresentation has been resorted to to mislead and to deceive the English public as to the offence for which I was sentenced.

Within the last week I have been reading the papers, and I am sorry to find that Lord Salisbury was not above stooping to encourage and to lead this attempt most unfairly and untruly to poison the English mind against me. He made a speech at Oxford, in which he indulged in flouts and gibes at my own humble expense. I do not complain of that. It is not the first time that he has been accused of making flouts and gibes at the expense of persons with whom he was more intimately allied than he is with me. (Opposition cheers and laughter.) But here is how this great nobleman describes my case to an English audience. He says, "What is there in the case of Mr. O'Brien to make him a martyr?" And then he goes on with his creditable witticisms. He says, "I do not refer to his small clothes. (Laughter.) Their vicissitudes would furnish a theme for an epic (rewewed laughter), and I hope an Irish bard will arise worthy of the subject. (Continued laughter.) But taking the man apart from his clothes." (Roars of laughter; Ministerial cheers.) I notice that your cheers do not rise to a roar. (Opposition cheers.) I do not answer these remarks. The noble lord went on, "What is there to excite the sympathy of the loyal subjects of England? He broke the law; he incited others to break the law, and recommended that the men who were endeavoring to collect just debts should be met with violence. In consequence of his recommendation, they were met with violence. They were scalded with hot water, and some of them were brought next to death's door. What is there to excite the sympathy of the loyal subjects of England?" (Cries of "Nothing.")

Now I shall tell you briefly the circumstances under which my advice was given, and the results of that advice. I will ask any candid man in England, after he has heard me, whether that speech of Lord Salisbury is not calculated to convey to the average Englishman an impression, so false, so misleading, that I am afraid I should be obliged to travel beyond the region of parliamentary epithets to characterize it. Now, on the 2d of August, this House had, practically speaking, passed the Land Bill, enabling over a thousand people of Mitchelstown, who were leaseholders, to have their rents revised. On the 8th of August, word reached me that the police and the military were gathering in Mitchelstown to carry out an eviction campaign. The effect of that campaign would have been to forestall all the operations of the Land Bill, and, practically speaking, to defeat the intentions of Parliament, and to fling these poor people naked upon the world before the relief, which was actually entering the door, could reach them. (Opposition cheers.) That was technically legal for the landlord for a few days longer, but I hold that if ever there was a crime committed against society, it was that which was being attempted the day I went down to Mitchelstown. Well, but what was to be done? If the right honorable baronet, the late member for West Bristol (Sir M. Hicks-Beach), were still Chief Secretary, at all events, in his early manner, we might have had some hope that the Queen's troops would not have been made accomplices in such an act.

On the day I reached Mitchelstown, on the appeal of these poor people, I found that evictions had already been carried out on the non-residential holdings, where there was no possibility of resistance. Ah! It is an old story in Ireland. No mercy for the weak who can make no resistance, no scruple about perpetrating a wrong when it can be done in the dark. (Home Rule cheers.) That was the bitter thought which passed through my mind that day, when these poor people, my own constituents, came to me in helplessness and despair, to know what was to be done to save them from the ruin that was impending. There was just one hope for these people in all the world, and it was this. The Northwich election was pending (Opposition cheers), and the Irish evictions were an awkward topic for a Tory candidate. The stories of Glenbeigh and Bodyke were beginning to horrify the English mind. I knew that Tory statesmen would not scruple to lend troops if it could be done without commotion, but I thought they might hesitate, lest they should lose the Northwich election. I had not a moment to consult anybody, and absolutely on my own responsibility, and on the spur of the moment, I did there and then, in the open square of Mitchelstown, and in the hearing of a number of policemen, tell the people if, under these special circumstances, the evictions were carried out before the Land Bill, which was almost law, did become law, it would be no outrage of the law, and that they would be justified before God and man in defending their homes by every honest means. (Cheers.)

I might have been right, or I might have been wrong. I have no doubt that technically it was illegal for me to save the people, as it was legal for the landlords in a few days to ruin them. Technically speaking, I dare say, it would be an evasion of the law to hold the arm of an executioner if the executioner and I knew that a reprieve was actually arriving. That was precisely the case with these poor people. The reprieve was coming, and the reprieve has come. (Cheers.) Whether I was right or wrong in law, the result proved that I did not miscalculate the statesmanship and the morality of the Tory Government. What happened? The moment that it became evident that those eviction scenes would ring throughout England, the eviction campaign was abandoned. The very day I made that speech in Mitchelstown, all was peace with the tenants. Not another eviction took place, and Captain Plunkett, who came down to superintend the eviction campaign, remained, I am glad to say, and proud to say, only to turn his energies to getting up a prosecution against me. Not a single eviction has taken place there from that day to this; not an act of violence has been committed; not a blow has been struck; not a single hair has been injured of any police officer or bailiff in consequence of that speech of mine. Not one; and yet Lord Salisbury is not ashamed to say what he did.

What was the result? That those poor tenants, who but for our action – but for the action of John Mandeville and myself – would have been beggared and homeless men, were able to take advantage of the Land Act, such as it was, while we were in prison. A Land Sub-Commission, carefully chosen, was sent down to the Mitchelstown estate to prophesy against us, and to prove the guilt and the dishonesty of the Plan of Campaign. But they could not do it. These picked Tory officials, two of them convicted rack-renters, were obliged to declare that these poor tenants were entitled to remain in their homes, and on lower terms and at a lower rent than had been demanded. (Loud cheers.) What has happened since? The landlord has actually taken refuge from the judgment of even a Tory Land Commission in the moderation of the Plan of Campaign. Three days ago my honorable friend and collegue, the member for South Tipperary, signed, sealed, and delivered a treaty which secures these poor people safely to their homes. This is the transaction as to which Lord Salisbury is not ashamed to say that I "recommended that the men who were employed by the Crown in the recovery of just debts should be met with violence, and that in consequence, some were maltreated and scalded and brought to death's door." (Opposition, cries of "Shame.") The fact is, that not a single act of violence took place in any way on the estate after my speech. But justice was secured to those people and their children in their homes. (Cheers.)

If there is anybody who has reason to blush at the name of Mitchelstown, and to remember Mitchelstown apart from the blood that was shed there, I should think it is not I, but her Majesty's Government. They had neither the humanity to forbid these evictions, nor the courage to persevere with them. They superintended and sanctioned them as long as there was any prospect of resistance; they had the cowardice to abandou them the moment they threatened to become inconvenient to a Tory candidate, and they had the incredible meanness, while my hands were bound in prison, to present a story to the English people, in a false and untruthful guise, in order to reconcile Englishmen to having me treated worse than a thief or a cutthroat, for saving my own constituents from the fate which now the Land Commissioners and everybody on this earth acknowledge would have been a most unmerited and a most awful calamity. I won't weary the House by going into all the miserable circumstances, all the foul play, and the violence and the indecencies that were resorted to against us. Unfortunately they are common-place and every-day occurrences in Ireland, through the infamous tribunals you have set up. I certainly am not going to enter into any recital of the miserable little prison torments and iniquities that were employed to give us pain and humiliation, and to besmirch the character of the Irish representatives in the eyes of the people of England and Ireland. I think we can afford to pass these things by. I believe that our opponents are not all so lost to generous and manly sentiments as not to feel ashamed rather than exultant about the Chief Secretary's exploits.

There is another class of opponents. I am sorry to think that men who are capable of inflicting pain of this description are quite capable of deriving a still keener pleasure in knowing that the torments have told, and that their victims smart under their wounds. I cannot gratify them, for the simple reason that I do not feel wounded. I do not feel in the least degraded. I rather suspect that the right honorable gentleman, under his jaunty bearing, has his conscience not quite so easy as mine. I confess that I did feel keenly when in prison a letter which the right honorable gentleman published to a Mr. Armitage, not making any honest charge against me, but conveying a stealthy and loathsome insinuation that I sheltered myself under the plea of illness from being forced to wear prison dress. I challenge the right honorable gentleman to refer to any one of the three official doctors who examined me, for one tittle, I will not say of foundation, but even of countenance, for such an assertion. (Loud cheers.) Here we are now face to face. (Great cheering from the Opposition.) I challenge him in defence of his own character, for it is his own character that is at stake (cheers), to appeal to any one of those three officials to give him the slightest countenance. ("Hear, hear.")

I have said I was angry about it when in prison, but since reading the letter over fully, I am angry no longer; I confess it would be an ample vengeance, if I were a much more vindictive man than I am, for a statesman who had any reputation to lose, to pen such a letter. (Cheers.) The letter conveyed a hideous and cowardly imputation against a man whose mouth was shut. (Cheers.) That letter breathed in every sentence of it the temper of a beaten and an angry man (cheers), – I was going to say, of an angry woman (laughter and cheers), but I don't want to say it, because it would be a gross libel on a gentle and tender sex. ("Hear, hear.") From all I have been able to learn in England since, I feel that it is no longer necessary for us to defend ourselves to the English people. (Cheers.) I feel there is not a Tory of the fifth or sixth magnitude, who really in his heart believes for one instant that Irish members are such poor creatures as to cry out against the appearance of a prison. (Cheers.)

The honorable member for Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell) said that we attempted to set up a distinction between members of Parliament and the peasants, our comrades and friends who are convicted under the act. There is not a shadow or a tittle of foundation for that statement. ("Hear, hear.") We have claimed nothing for ourselves as members of Parliament that we don't claim equally for every man convicted under the summary clauses of the act; for if he is a criminal, there is no reason why he should not be tried before the ordinary tribunal. ("Hear, hear.") We do not ask poor men to make a hard fight harder by resistance to prison rules; but if we win, they shall win as well as ourselves. ("Hear, hear.") Our position simply this: You are perfectly welcome to treat us to all the punishments that your courts of law prescribe for the very vilest miscreant in society, – the plank bed, or bread-and-water diet-solitary chnfinement, or deprivation of books and writing materials; you are perfectly welcome to heap every physical degradation on us, if that is your generous and chivalrous treatment of political prisoners, and you will never hear a word of complaint from us if you stick to that; but if you not only do that, but go further, and try and subject us to moral torture, from which criminals are altogether exempt, when you ask us to make a voluntary acknowledgement of our equality with criminals, then we say, "No; we will die first (cheers from Irish members), and you will have to learn the distinction between your criminal classes and Irish political prisoners, even if it should take a coroner's jury and their verdict to make the distinction." (Loud cheers.) I can only say that if any one has reason to blush, it is not we. ("Hear, hear.") I hope I am not detaining the House. (Cheers.)

The only thing I can plead is, that I shall not have an opportunity very soon of claiming your attention; but I should like to ask, "Where is all this to end?" What object has it accomplished? and if it is to go on for ever and for ever, what object can it ever possibly accomplish, except misery to a weak people and eternal worry and shame to yourselves? (Cheers.) Is it the object of the right honorable gentleman to convert the Irish people, or to dragoon them out of the aspirations which are as deeply lodged in the breasts of millions of men as the blood in their hearts? Does the right honorable gentleman in his wildest hour imagine that he has made one single genuine convert through the length and breadth of Ireland? (Cheers.) Even to take it on the lower and meaner sphere of brute force, I ask the right honorable gentleman to name one single village club that he has effectually stamped out. (Cheers.) Can he produce a single man from our ranks that he has really frightened, as the result of all the terrific power that he has been wielding in Ireland?