On Thursday, there was a short debate in the House
of Commons on the report of the Featherstone Commission as to the conduct of the soldiers who fired upon the rioters, and as to the demand of the Labour Members that the families of those killed and injured by the discharge should receive some public compensation. The report of the Commissioners as to the facts was approved on all sides, though Mr. Keil- Hardie (M.P. for West Ham), who had been sharpest in his attacks on the Home Office for the use of soldiers, was, for the second time, not in his place to confront the Home Secre- tary. Mr. Burns (M.P. for Battersea) made a moderate- speech in favour of compensation, and Mr. Asquith conceded that, owing to the general ignorance as to the state of the law, the chief victims of the volley, who took no active part in the riot, though they remained on the scene with the rioters after the Riot Act had been read, might perhaps have imagined that they were not breaking the law, and that they were not in personal danger, since the popular impression seems to be that in such cases the soldiers' first discharge is only blank cartridge. Mr. Asquith, therefore, is disposed to grant some small compensation, as a matter of compassion, not of legal right, to the friends of the killed, and to the more innocent among the wounded,—a decision which was not- challenged in the House, but which may lead to a good many Irish claims,—in Mitchelstown and elsewhere,—for which the- Government may not perhaps be prepared.
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