COERCION AND RELIEF ACTS.

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Regarded in the most charitable light—giving the English Parliament credit for an unbroken pavement of good intentions—these 97 coercion acts and 41 relief acts, making 138 in all, can only be regarded as so many random or despairing efforts to govern properly. And those acts are not the full total that might be reasonably quoted, for there are numerous others concerning constabulary, gaols, prisons, juries, militia, magisterial jurisdiction, and other such matters, intended as direct or indirect means of coercion ; and others concerning cash payments, the Church, collieries, drainage, fisheries, reform of representation, Roman Catholics, and other matters in .the nature of relief or concession, or both, and coming, with the 138 acts first mentioned, under the proper head of exceptional legislation. Has that legislation succeeded? Is it not a fact that coercion, as a permanent cure for chronic disorder, has utterly failed from beginning to end? Is it not a fact that the utmost efforts to give relief and make concessions have been entirely abortive for the promotion of lasting prosperity or contentment? After all these laborious and vain efforts to do justice and have mercy, the last end is worse than the first. Never was chronic disorder more widespread and more successful than now; never was there more evidence of discouragement to industry and aggravation of pecuniary difficulties than at this moment.

Viewed from this aspect, the British Parliament stands convicted of impotent efforts for the greater part of a century, and it is essential to a true appreciation of the real difficulties of the case to read the Irish history of the last eighty years by the light of reflections arising out of the matters of fact derived from the legislation we have referred to. In order to have the nature of the most prominent of that legislation clearly before us, it is necessary to deal with it at some length in the next succeeding chapters.

CHAPTER IV.

SUSPENSION OF HABEAS CORPUS.

UST as the first Parliament of Charles II., though repudiating the

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authority of the Parlament of Cromwell, hastened to adopt such of its "ordinances " as best suited them, so the first Parliament of the United Kingdom, though it had extinguished the Irish Parliament on account of its alleged blundering, hastened to take a leaf out of its last blundering book. Such leaf was a truly Irish mode of what is too well known in Ireland as the suspension of habeas corpus. It being the last thing of the kind done by the Irish Parliament, it is desirable that the whole of the Act should be given entire.

"An Act to empower the Lord Lieutenant, or other chief governor or governors of Ireland, to apprehend and detain such persons as he or they shall suspect for conspiring against his Majesty's person and government. [April 10, 1800.]

"I. Whereas a traitorous and detestable conspiracy has been formed for subverting the existing laws and constitution; therefore, for the better preservation of his Majesty's sacred person, and for securing the peace, the laws and liberties of this kingdom, be it enacted, by the King's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal and Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by authority of the same, that every person or persons that is, are, or shall be in prison within the kingdom of Ireland, at or upon the day upon which this Act shall receive his Majesty's royal assent, or after, by warrant of his Majesty's most honourable privy council of this kingdom, signed by six of the said privy council, for high treason, suspicion of high treason, or treason

PROVISIONS OF THE ACT.

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able practices, or by warrant or warrants signed by the Lord Lieutenant or Chief Secretary, for such causes as aforesaid, may be detained in safe custody, without bail or mainprize, until the twentyfifth day of March, which will be in the year one thousand eight hundred and one; and that no judge or justice of the peace shall bail or try any such person or persons so committed without order from his said Majesty's privy council, signed by six of said privy council, until the said twenty-fifth day of March, one thousand eight hundred and one, any law or statute to the contrary notwithstanding.

"II. And be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that in cases where any person or persons have been before the passing of this Act, or shall be during the time this Act shall continue in force, arrested, committed, or detained in custody by force of a warrant or warrants of his Majesty's most honourable privy council of this kingdom, signed by six of the said privy council, for high treason, suspicion of high treason, or treasonable practices, or by warrant or warrants signed by the Lord Lieutenant or Chief Secretary for such causes as aforesaid, it shall and may be lawful for any person or persons to whom such warrant or warrants have been or shall be directed to detain such person or persons so arrested or committed in his or their custody in any place whatever within this kingdom; and that such person or persons to whom such warrant or warrants have been or shall be directed shall be deemed and taken to be, to all intents and purposes, lawfully authorized to detain in safe custody, and to be the lawful gaolers and keepers of such persons so arrested, committed, or detained; and that such place or places where such persons so arrested, committed, or detained, are or shall be detained in custody, shall be deemed and taken, to all intents and purposes, to be lawful prisons and gaols for the detention in safe custody of such person and persons; and that it shall and may be lawful to and for the Lord Lieutenant of this kingdom for the time being, by warrant signed by him, or the Chief Secretary of such Lord Lieutenant, by warrant signed by such Chief Secretary, or for his Majesty's privy council of this kingdom,

by warrant signed by six of the said privy council from time to time as occasion shall be, to change the person or persons by whom, and the place in which such person or persons so arrested, committed, or detained, shall be detained in safe custody.

"III. Provided always, and be it enacted, that copies of such warrants respectively shall be transmitted to the clerk of the crown and shall be filed by him in the public office of the pleas of the crown at the city of Dublin.

"IV. Provided always, and be it enacted, that nothing in this Act shall be construed to extend to invalidate the ancient rights and privileges of Parliament, or to the imprisonment or detaining of any member of either house of Parliament, during the sitting of such Parliament, until the matter of which he stands suspected be first communicated to the house of which he is a member, and the consent of the said house obtained for his commitment or detaining."

The Act of the following year, passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, on March 24, 1801, is a copy of the aforesaid Act, so far as its operative provisions are concerned, and it will be noticed that it was passed one day before the former Act expired.

These Acts form the bases upon which so many similar Acts have been framed. They are all in the same spirit, and nearly in the same terms. However necessary and judicious such Acts may have been, and however successful they may have proved in deterring or detecting the crimes and offences of evil-disposed persons, they carry with them the essential elements of persecution and oppression of very numerous innocent persons out of all proportion to the benefits derived. Though proceedings under them cannot be taken without the direct intervention of the Lord Lieutenant, the Chief Secretary, or the privy council, it is manifestly impossible for those individuals to enter personally into the merits of every case. Therefore the administration of such Acts, though professedly limited in theory to persons who are presumably beyond suspicion of corrupt motives or ill-considered action, yet, in practice, the real power of decision and action with reference to most cases must necessarily rest with subordinates of every grade, not

CRUELTIES IN PRISON.

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excluding the very lowest, from whom, it may be presumed, much of the original information upon which proceedings are founded must be derived. The evidence is beyond reasonable dispute that such Acts have been made the instruments for gratifying the malice and facilitating the revenge of viciously disposed persons, who have turned them to account against private individuals, who are thus placed at the mercy of every scoundrel who has the opportunity of getting up a case, so easily sustained for such a purpose by a few unblushing lies and a little hard swearing. The opportunities for such corrupt proceedings must be multiplied and the consequences made all the more cruel by the provision permitting and suggesting the secret removal of prisoners from one prison to another, so that they may be totally cut off from all knowledge and succour.

Mr. Plowden, who, as a recognized writer, has generally been esteemed an apologist of the government, has admitted the existence of the grievous wrongs we here refer to, as well as others of a more serious character, alluded to by him in the following extract: "Sensible that general charge and invective come not within the province of the historian, the author felt it his duty to inform the reader that at this time commenced a new system of gradual inquisitorial torture in prison. Suffice it here to observe, that there are many surviving victims of these inhuman and unwarrantable confinements, who, without having been charged with any crime, or tried for any offence, have from this period undergone years of confinement, and incredible inflictions and sufferings, under the full conviction that they were inflicted from motives of personal resentment, and for the purpose of depriving them of life."

In recognition of the truth of the foregoing, modern Acts for the suspension of habeas corpus have never omitted to limit the time of imprisonment: the Act of 1866 limited it from February 17 until the 1st of the following September, and the Act of 1868 (the last of the grim series) limited the time from February 28, 1868, until the 25th of March, 1869. The last-named Act, in further recognition of notorious abuses included a clause not appearing in former Acts, providing that “All