THE DEBATE ON INCREASE OF SENTENCES. T HE Home-rule Party seem
determined to deny moderate men all chance of supporting them. Even when they have a strong case, they contrive to put it forward in such a way that no man who has any sense of public duty can give help or countenance to their demands. For instance, on the question of the increase of sentences on appeal under the Crimes Act, lately decreed by an Irish County-Court Judge, we, in common with many other Unionists, are very much inclined to agree with the con- tention that an appeal ought not to involve the possi- bility of an increase of punishment. That is undoubtedly the usual theory of appeals in England, and we are by no means satisfied that this theory was not silently under- stood when the Crimes Act was passed. We think, therefore, that the Parnellites, in their remonstrance of Tuesday, had, at all events, apparent justice on their side. What, however, was the manner in which the demand was actually made ? Instead of an appeal being made to the House of Commons to consider on its merits a point which did. not necessarily involve any party feeling, the Opposition wantonly indulged in an attack of the most furious and unscrupulous kind upon the Irish Judges and the Irish Executive. Instead of arguing the question with fairness and. temper, they threw broadcast the gravest and most terrible accusations as to judicial pliability and executive interference. Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Gladstone vied with each other in insinuating that an Irish County-Court Judge had actually been corrupt enough to obey orders issued by the Irish Executive as to the way in which he was to decide the cases before him, and that the Government had been wicked enough to issue such orders. In a word, instead of raising the simple question of criminal jurisprudence, 'Shall appeals involve a possible increase of sentences ?' the Home-rule Party directly attacked the adminis- trators of the law in Ireland, and did their best to discredit and destroy the feeling that an Irish prisoner has the prospect of a fair trial, and to create the opinion that the Irish Judges receive and act upon the orders of the prosecutors. Under such circumstances, could any man of moderation, could any man who desires to see a body like the Irish County-Court Judges protected from perhaps the most hideous charge that could be possibly brought against a human being—that of defiling the fountain of justice— take any other course than that of supporting the Govern- ment in repudiating in the strongest possible way what Mr. Balfour, with no excess of indignation, termed" a foul libel upon an honourable, an able, a learned, and a most indepen- dent body of men " ? The language we have used to describe the tone of the Opposition speakers in the debate may seem too strong to our readers. We should be only too glad to think it was so. Unfortunately, a reference to the speeches themselves must render such a notion absolutely untenable. To say of Sir William Harcourt's speech, as Mr. Balfour said of it, that it was imitation of the style of United Ireland, is in no sense an exaggeration. Those who have the mis- fortune to be obliged to read that print, can remember plenty of diatribes against the conduct of the Irish Judges which may well have served the Member for Derby as his models. Sir William Harcourt, for instance, did not scruple to speak of the action of the Judge whose conduct he was discussing as "brutal, savage, and furiously oppressive," though practically admitting that his legal right to increase sentences coming before him on appeal was un- questionable. Surely it would not be too much to say that here, at least, the copy has almost gone beyond the original.
If, however, it is painful to find Sir William Harcourt thus lowering a debate which might so easily have been con- ducted in a worthier spirit, to the usual Parnellite level of vituperation, what is to be said when we find Mr. Gladstone actually stooping to employ language almost as violent and certainly as ill-judged ? It is with the profoundest feeling of regret that we feel obliged to write thus of Mr. Glad- stone's speech. We would infinitely rather have passed it by in silence. We must, however, state our opinion frankly, since not to do so would be to abandon what seems to us an imperative public duty,—the pointing out of the terrible evils which must arise if the exercise of their duty by the Judges is to be open to casual, wanton, and groundless criticism in the House of Commons, and to the attacks of those who, like Mr. Gladstone, have been in other times responsible for affording that support and protection which the administrators of the law rightly claim from the Executive. We can see no possible way in which to read Mr. Gladstone's speech without coming to the conclusion that he meant to assert that a deliberate policy was to be traced in the exten- sion of the sentences on appeal,—that policy being the destruction of the privilege of appeal by inspiring would-be appellants with the fear that their sentences were as likely to be increased as lightened on rehearing. To whom the invention of this policy was to be credited, to the Judges or to the Executive, Mr. Gladstone would not say, though he seemed to hint that it was probably their common property. In the course of his speech, Mr. Gladstone traced the history of the way in which the right of appeal had been granted to the Irish prisoners, and declared that "Parliament intended it to be a gift to the prisoner, whereas now it has been wantonly and cruelly used against him." It is with the utmost sorrow that we are compelled to draw from these words what seems to us the only possible conclusion,—namely, that Mr. Gladstone meant to condemn as wanton and cruel the action of a certain Irish County-Court Judge, in the cases brought to the notice of the House by Mr. McCarthy in his speech raising the whole question, and on which the whole debate was based. Mr. Gladstone, it must be remembered, did not prefer his charge as the result of careful personal investigation. He founded it on the ex parts state- ment of the facts made by Mr. McCarthy, and this not- withstanding the fact that Mr. McCarthy himself most significantly refrained from bringing any such charge. If Mr. Gladstone had said that it was most ill-judged—most monstrous, if you will—of Parliament to allow such a power to exist, no one could have denied him his opinion. To say, without the slightest evidence of the fact, that this power has been "cruelly and wantonly" used against prisoners, is to assume that the Judge who exercised the power was not justified in doing so by the facts elicited at the rehearing of the cases before him. No doubt it is possible that this was so. To assume it, however, from Mr. McCarthy's speech, which was confessedly all Mr. Gladstone had to go upon—he made no kind of allusion to any other information—was perhaps the most extraordinary instance of impulsiveness ever exhibited by a great states- man. Mr. Gladstone followed up this statement by declaring that originally the right of appeal was no sooner given than an attempt was made to destroy it. "We find that the first attempt was to evade and nullify this power by cumulative sentences,—a trick of the meanest kind, the dishonour and discredit of which I will not attempt to divide between the Government and the authorities in Ire- land. There could be nothing more mean and miserable than to descend to such a trick as that, and it is a transac- tion which should receive the contempt of every honest man, —nay, almost of every dishonest man." It is hardly to be wondered at that Mr. Gladstone should, before the debate was over, have been obliged in effect to withdraw these astonishing words, which attribute so sinister a motive to either the Magistrates or the Executive. It was shown that the same "trick of the meanest kind" in regard to cumulative sentences had been in vogue under his own Government, and Mr. Gladstone was then obliged to admit that he at least could claim no right to bring such an accusation. Surely even Mr. Gbdstone's most fervent aupporters must feel that there is something melancholy in the sight of a great statesman bringing an accusation of the most terrible kind against his opponents at the begin- ning of a debate, which has to be withdrawn at the end because it would otherwise only rebound on his own head.
In spite of the grave difference which exists between the principles now advocated by Mr. Gladstone and those held by ourselves ; in spite of conduct which to us seems not only utterly disastrous to the best interests of the nation, but to the reputation of the man whom it is impossible not to regard as one of the greatest of English statesmen; in spite of our dislike and disapproval of every item in his Home-rule policy, it is, nevertheless, with the sincerest grief that we are compelled to admit that the speech made by the Attorney-General, Sir Richard Webster, in the debate of Tuesday, did not go too far in its con- demnation of his attitude. To those who have followed. and honoured Mr. Gladstone as pre-eminently the states- man who has endeavoured to rule England. with a sense of the higher needs of politics, it is almost like a per- sonal humiliation and indignity' to read the reproof given to him by Sir Richard Webster, and yet to feel that every • word in that reproof was deserved. It is sad indeed to think that Mr. Gladstone should have been subjected, and justly subjected, to such treatment as he received. from one not only so far inferior to him in force and experience, but from one whose right to speak as the special ..hampion of what is honourable, just, and fair-minded in the conduct of public affairs, ought to have been so infinitely smaller than that of the statesman who could once claim to be the leader and representative of all that was best in English political life. Sir. Richard Webster is an honourable and fair-minded man, but there is nothing derogatory to him in deploring, as we do, that Mr. Glad- stone should have received at his hands such a lesson in duty.
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