The First Lord of the Treasury moved the second reading
of the Members of Parliament Charges and Allegations Bill on Monday evening in a very brief speech, in which he mentioned that the Lord Chancellor had appointed Sir James Hannen as President of the proposed Court, and Mr. Justice Day and Mr. Justice A. L. Smith as his colleagues. Mr. Parnell rose immediately after Mr. W. H. Smith had sat down, and stated that the Government had extended the investigation from Members of Parlia- ment to " others," after taking private advice from the Attorney-General, and probably from Mr. Walter. He protested that the intention was to divert attention from the charges against himself to charges against the Land League, which he treated in the most airy way as an Association to which he had hardly any relation,—he was only its President,— and he maintained that so far as his boycotting speech went, and his other speeches, they were all matter of public notoriety which needed no investigation at all. The question of the forged letters was the:only one affecting him, and the reason that the investigation was to be carried away from the forged letters to all sorts of other deeds by other persons, was that the Government and the Attorney-General and the Times knew that the case as to the forged letters was going to break down. He demanded the exclusion of the words " and others," after the words " Members of Parlia- ment;" he demanded that strictly legal methods should be used in the trial ; and he demanded that the Bill should pro- vide for the discovery of documents before the commencement of the trial, to give him and his colleagues time to consider them, and to prepare their answers. Without these condi- tions the method of inquiry into " these infamous charges " would not be " fair, decent, English ;" it would be " cowardly and unjust."
