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.. Gladstone William Ewart
and the country, and for the sake of preventing the enormous mischiefs, probable sufferings, probable bloodshed, and the consequent resistance to the law that might arise in Ireland in consequence of what had occurred at Mitchelstown, and of its adoption and appropriation by the right honorable gentleman. (Cheers.) What was it? It was this: A legal meeting ("Hear, hear") of 4,000 men assembled; the police, under the plea of the common practice of having an official reporter at the meeting, instead of prior communication with those who held it, instead of going to the platform at a point where it was open and accessible, formed a wedge of twenty men, and endeavored by force to drive that wedge into the middle of the crowd. I am here to say that a public meeting is an orderly assembly; that to observe order in a public meeting is part of the law of the land ("Hear, hear"); that the driving a wedge into the meeting was an illegality on the part of the police; and that the police who drove it into the crowd were themselves guilty of illegality, and ought to have been given into custody. (Cheers.)
On this deplorable occasion the agents of the law were the breakers of the law, and those breakers of the law, acting in the first instance under subordinate authority, were adopted and sanctioned by the right honorable gentleman, with the full authority of the Government. (Cheers.) What was the second act of the police? Their wedge was not strong enough; they were pressed back out of the crowd, and it seems to me with perfect propriety and legality, whereupon they brought a large force of police and charged the crowd, because the crowd had not concurred and co-operated in the former illegality. That was a fresh illegality committed by the police. Then violence began; then began the use of batons; then began the use of sticks and cudgels; then began the sufferings of the men in the crowd, and of individual members of the police, on which the right honorable gentleman is eloquent, and which I regret as much as he does. But the police in these two illegalities of attacking and batoning the crowd were defeated. The crowd did not pursue them. (Cheers.) According to all the information before us, the crowd were recalled, and again took their places in the square. A mere scattering and sprinkling of most probably boys, we know not how and to what extent, were in the street where the police barracks are to be found; and among them, those boys or others, succeeded in breaking three windows of the police barracks. (Laughter.) Those three windows were exalted and uplifted by the right honorable gentleman into a general attack on the barracks, compelling the police, in self-defence, to fire on the people. In one sense I must say the police did not fire on the people, for no mass of people was there to fire on. I said at Nottingham, and it is the result of all the inquiry I have made, that there was not more than twenty people in the street opposite the barracks, and under these circumstances the police actually fired into the windows of the opposite house, where there were peaceful people, women, and children; and they fired deliberately at individuals, two old men and one boy, whom they destroyed. That I do not hesitate here to denounce – I think I did not use the words at Nottingham – as cruel, wanton, and disgraceful bloodshed (Loud cheers.) It recalls the period of Lord Sidmouth, and was bloodshed which, so far as I know, has had no example in its wantonness and causelessness since the memorable occasion in Manchester, which is popularly known as the Massacre of Peterloo. (Cheers.)
Now, I have given the right honorable gentlemen my views about Mitchelstown. (Opposition cheers and derisive Ministerial cheers.) It was time that I should say, "Remember Mitchelstown." Mitchelstown might have become what in one particular class of language is termed a "prerogative instance." The Mitchelstown police, commended by the right honorable gentleman, were held up to the police in Ireland as the pattern which they were to follow. (Cheers.) They were told they had acted only in self-defence, and the measure and meaning of self-defence, as exhibited at Mitchelstown, I feared, and it was reasonable to fear, would be the meaning and the measure of self-defence on every other occasion, when, by legality or illegality, the police found an opportunity of coming into collision with the people. (Cheers.) I tell the right honorable gentleman frankly that, in my opinion, he had become, by clear implication, a breaker of the law. (Cheers.) He had given to the breaking of the law authoritative countenance and approval, and not only so, but he had done it under circumstances where that authoritative approval, conveyed to the mind of the police, would naturally, justly, and excusably, almost necessarily, have pointed out to them that that was to be the model and rule of their conduct in every example of the kind. (Cheers.) Sir, it was in the interests of law and order that I denounced the conduct of the police. (Opposition cheers and derisive Ministerial cheers, in which Mr. Balfour joined.) It will be a long time, I think, before he can discover an instance, either on this bench or among any of those who are our friends, in which the law and order of the country, and the security and the lives of the people, had been treated with such recklessness as they then were by the right honorable gentleman and his colleagues. (Cheers.) I have done my best to inform myself, and in conformity with, I believe, uncontradicted and consentient statements, I contend that the inferences I have drawn from these facts are just inferences, and that it was not only natural but necessary to adopt precautions on the part, I will say, of England, against the fatal imitations which Mitchelstown might have produced, and to take securities for law and order in Ireland, first of all, as I pointed out to the people of England, that these things ought to be watched; and secondly, by making known to the Government, and to their agents and their organs beyond the the Channel, that if such occurrences did happen, they would not pass uncensured. (Cheers.) I believe I never spoke more useful – I will go further, and say more fruitful – words than when I telegraphed, "Remember Mitchelstown." (Loud Opposition cheers and derisive Ministerial cheers.) I now come to the statistics of the right honorable gentleman, with reference to boycotting. The Government are particularly stingy in their statistics, but they have given some figures as to boycotting. I do not recollect that boycotting was ever made a portion of Government statistics before.
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