The Earl of Limerick said, he felt ashamed, as an Irishman, to be obliged to declare that the bill was absolutely necessary, to give security to the loyal inhabitants of Ireland. Convinced as he was of the invaluable blessings enjoyed by the subjects of Great Britain under the constitution, it must ever be a painful duty for him to perform, when he found himself reduced to the necessity of consenting to give up a part of those blessings for a time, in order to avoid the greater evil of losing the benefit of the whole. Such, however, was the unfortunate and disgraceful state of his native country at present, that he could not, with a due regard to truth, hold any other language. Some of the arguments of the noble lord, who had just sat down, had not a little surprised him; among these, one of the leading arguments was, his endeavour to insinuate that men born in Ireland, resident there all their lives, and familiarly acquainted with the manners, habits, tempers, and prejudices of the lower order of the people, were less competent wit nesses to the necessity that loudly called for the passing of the present bill, than persons who had never seen the island, and were utter strangers to its internal commotions. A great deal had been said of torture practised in Ireland against the rebels. He begged leave to say, that there was not to be seen in any one town in that part of his majesty's dominions, what he had often beheld in country towns in England, the walls at the entrance of them plaistered with large posting bills stating that if any vagrants were seen passing through the town, they should be lord had not ventured to prove that a conspiracy was sufficient to justify martiallaw, nor that conspiracy (admitting it a sufficient ground) did actually exist. The only reason the noble lord had adduced was, that marquis Cornwallis had acknowledged the necessity of it three months ago. Upon that principle it might continue for ever. However, he should have been glad to have had a declaration to that effect from the marquis. He wished it had come down in the shape of a message from that nobleman; for then it would have rested on his assertion, for which he would have been responsible. But, even in that case, he must take the latter assertion of that nobleman against his former declaration on the subject; and, therefore, when he found him recently congratulating the country on the suppression of rebellion, he must consider the noble marquis as an evidence against the learned lord. The principles stated went to a justification of the past; but these were not the grounds of the present bill. The question was not, whether the past was right or wrong, but whether this anomaly of law should be continued, and why? To this the observations of the noble lord might be considered an answer; for if all that had been done was inadequate to the purpose, it was some evidence of the inefficacy of the measure. He denied that history could produce precedents to justify a government of force, and contended that the noble lord had used the word democracy in a very fallacious sense when he applied it to the mass of the people. Though the opinion of the mass of the people was not to be followed in every case, yet every govern-apprehended and publicly whipped. Now, ment was made for the benefit of the mass of the people. He ridiculed the argument drawn in favour of the bill, from the circumstance of T. W. Tone having cut his throat, instead of suffering the sentence of the court-martial. If it were necessary to prevent such evasions of punishment, he wondered it did not occur to the noble lord to propose an easier and an equally efficient measure; as, for instance, a bill to prevent the interference of any other court with a court of martial-law, For his part, the barbarity, the cruelty, and the horrors with which Ireland was charged, formed in his mind a strong objection to the bill; for, if the human mind could be so depraved and debased, it became his duty to reflect upon the possibility of the abuse of such an instruinent, should it fall into improper hands. was putting a man, more than suspected of providing instruments of slaughter for the rebels in Ireland, to a momentary pain, in order to obtain a full confession of the extent of his guilt, more enormous, or less justifiable, than proceeding to summary and severe punishment without trial in England. Those English gentlemen who opposed measures of coercion in Ireland, were ignorant of its situation. From whence did they receive their information? From traitors, who had come over from that country, and deceived them with false representations, so as to induce them to go and give evidence in their favour on their trials. Lord Carleton said, that nothing but a conviction that the measure was essential to the safety of Ireland could have induced him to give it support. The present state of the country was such, that the municipal law was altogether inadequate to the suppression of disorder or the protection of loyalty, and the judges were unable to apply this law to the various crimes which had sprung out of the rebellion. No one would suspect him of preferring the decisions of military tribunals to those of the municipal law, but believing that the latter were not calculated for the distracted state of the country, he was willing, for a time, to relinquish their advantages, to give up a part to save the whole. The bill had not been originally adopted without a full persuasion of its necessity, and he had reason to think this necessity was no less at present; for, he believed that Ireland was less tranquil at this moment than it had been a year or two ago. Lord Hay said, that, from the facts which had been stated, he had no doubt of the necessity of the measure, and that, instead of destroying, it would be the means of saving the constitution. Marquis Townsend said, he considered the lower order of the Irish, who had been deluded into rebellion, accompanied with the most savage practices of deliberate cruelty and assassination, as madmen, and that they ought to be treated as such. He had the misfortune to have had a near relation in a state of derangement, and he had been ordered a straight waistcoat, which soon brought him to his senses. The present bill might be considered as a species of straight waistcoat; and it might be taken off whenever the rebels were restored to reason. Lord Grenville trusted, that a measure of this nature would never be adopted by a British parliament without the fullest consideration, and the strongest proofs of its necessity. He was convinced that sufficient proofs had been adduced to show, that it was essential to the preservation of the lives and property of the loyal inhabitants of Ireland. The Earl of Caernarvon said:- -We are called upon, in this early stage of the imperial parliament, to renounce all those principles, by which, for ages past, our forefathers have gradually humanized the law of treason; and to place it where the barbarity of our remotest ancestors never saw it. The act proposed for our confirmation is a libel on the British constitution; it is a fac simile of the Jacobin government of France, and sinks infinitely | below comparison with the present government of that country. Is it expected that such a government as that which is proposed for our approbation, will sooth the discontent in Ireland? Is it a soil in which patriotic zeal can take root? What is there in such a government that is worth defending against an invading enemy? For my own part, I should feel indifferent to the choice. This measure is called, in flattery, martial law, as if it had the slightest resemblance to any law, or did not annihilate all law, and was not incompatible with all regular distribution of justice. By this act, the governor of Ireland, or any persons appointed at his pleasure, are authorized to put to the torture, or to death, whomsoever he or they may suspect of aiding rebellion, without bringing them to trial, or examination; and the agents so deputed, unless they are military men, are totally irresponsible for the foulest murder and most barbarous tortures, exercised under the authority entrusted to them. To add insult to this flagrant subversion of the principles of our constitution, this horrid tyranny is proposed to a British parliament, without the slightest proof of its necessity. No proof even that rebellion exists at this moment, has been adduced. The learned lord has borne testimony to the practice of torture, for the purpose of making discoveries: short, indeed, he states it to have been; but he has justified its use from its possible advantages. Nothing but a contempt of parliament, and a persuasion of its inattention to its duties, could have encouraged those who bring this bill forward, to suppose that such a deviation from every principle of the constitution could pass without a single proof of its use. The history of mankind forces me to disbelieve the necessity of this measure, and the concealment of its use or abuse, during its trial of two years, raises my jealousy and suspicion. I trust that we shall convince he authors of this act that par liament retains its constitutional vigilance, and that this bill will meet with the fate it deserves. The Archbishop of Cashel went into an historical detail of the origin of the bill, and the reasons on which it was founded, as well as the grounds on which it had been renewed at two different periods. He stated, that when, in 1798, the Irish parliament armed the crown with the authority of martial law, they did so upon the serlous inquiries of the secret commit. ။ tee; that when they continued it in 1799, they did not renew it without a new and ful. investigation of facts; they that exercised the utmost caution, when, in 1800, they again continued it to the 25th of March, 1801; that, as an incontestible proof of its being still necessary, the trials under it had been, in the last two years, not fewer than 200; that civil justice would not have its due course, if the courts were not under the protection of martial law; and that the only thing he could regret, in regard to the bill was, the shortness of its duration. Lord King said, that the ground of necessity urged for passing a bill which struck at the root of the constitution, strongly reminded him of that sort of argument with which Robespierre's innumerable trials before his novel tribunals might have been defended. The number tried and convicted before courts-martial in Ireland, and executed there, was an argument against rather than for the bill. 2. "Because, were it ever advisable to arm the executive government, by posi tive law, with a power of depriving a whole kingdom, or any part of it of the protection of its laws, and of the regular administration of justice, at the discretion of ministers, it ought to be on clear and incontrovertible evidence of the truth of the facts assumed, or at the least on a formal recommendation from the throne for the grounds of which ministers might be made answerable: whereas this bill comes before us, not only without evidence of that supposed state of things in Ireland, which is said to make the grant of such power indispensably necessary, but is founded on a direct contradiction to documents and authorities, on which alone parliament can regularly proceed, or safely rely: the preamble asserts that a rebel lion still exists in Ireland," whereas we find that, on the 15th January 1800, the lord lieutenant did declare to the parliament of Ireland, that all tendency to in80,surrection had been effectually repress The House divided: Contents Proxies 10-90; Not-Contents 7, Proxies 0-7. The bill was then passed; as was also the Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill for Ireland. ed;' and on the 10th of July following, that he had the happiness to acquaint them, that the country in general had in a great measure returned to its former 'state of tranquillity; and if, in some disProtests against passing the Irish Mar-tricts, a spirit of plunder and disaffection tial Law Bill. The following Protest was entered on the Journals: "Dissentient, 1. "Because it appears to be useless and unadvisable to attempt to provide for possible cases of extreme necessity by legislative acts; since the effect of such cases is to supersede all legal provisions. A state of things, in which the ordinary course of law and justice in a civilized country must be suspended, cannot be legally supposed. Necessity, whenever it occurs, will dictate its own measures, without regard even for the law that provides for it; and those measures, in our own judgment, should be left, in every instance, to a special justification on the merits of the case. With respect to the case of rebellion said to exist in Ireland, it is particularly superfluous to give or to confirm by act of parliament to the crown, or to its representatives, a power to act by discretion, considering that by the laws passed in Ireland, and which it is now proposed to continue, it is repeatedly declared, though not as we conceive on constitutional principles, to be the undoubted and acknowledged prerogative of his majesty to resort to the exercise of martial law for the public safety. 16 still existed, those disorders he believed 'would prove to be merely local, and 'would, he doubted not, be soon effec tually terminated: and if, in the interval between the latest of those dates and the meeting of the present parliament on the 2nd of last month, unexpected events had proved that a rebellion still existed in Ireland, we cannot doubt that such events would have been taken notice of in his majesty's most gracious Speech from the throne: opinions of individuals, however respectable, are in no case to be evidence even in parliament, unless they are subject to examination; least of all, in legal acceptation, is a voluntary witness enti tled to legal credit, to whom no questions have been or can be proposed in the present instance, this objection is to our minds particularly weighty, considering the state of violence and contention to which Ireland has unhappily been subject for some years past; and from which it is fair to presume that the parties charged with factious principles and unprovoked rebellion, if they were in a situation to be heard, would be equally ready to com plain of violated rights, of cruel treatment, and of a general system of oppression exercised over them. Furthermore, if the opinions to which we have alluded, are in this instance to guide the resolutions of parliament, no reason occurs to us, why they should not equally prevail in all other cases, in which the future go. vernment of Ireland may be concerned; but if that should be omitted, one of the principal objects of the Union, strongly urged in debate by eminent persons; viz. the establishment of an impartial and dispassionate legislature for the united kingdom, aloof from local prejudices,' would be defeated. The dissolution of a local legislature would have been unnecessary, and the Union an unjust and useless measure, if the government of Ireland had been conducted on principles which ought still to prevail, or if it had not been principally intended, by uniting the two countries under one parliament, to take power out of the hands of prejudice, and not to suffer the affairs and interests of Ireland to be governed by the same parties or passions which prevailed in its own legislature, and which were said to make the dissolution of that legislature indispensably necessary for the good of both kingdoms. 3. "Because the remedies proposed by this bill far exceed the exigency of the case stated: the executive power is bound, in the first instance, to provide for the due administration of justice, in its ordinary course, and for the security of the civil magistrates; but if it were true that, in particular districts, such terrors prevailed, that juries could not be found to do their duty in the trial of offenders; and if, in such circumstances, it became unavoidably necessary to resort to other courts, and to other forms of proceeding, it does not follow that new and exorbitant powers should be given to such courts; much less that offenders under trial or in custody of the civil magistrate, should be removed from thence and brought before a military tribunal, or that persons already tried and acquitted, should be seized and tried again for the same offences by a court-martial. We are well assured that abuses of this kind, which, in their nature suppose a complete suspension of the administration of justice, have been practised, and do still prevail in many parts of Ireland, where the courts of law are actually open, and in the face of the judges. 4. Because it has been uniformly maintained in debates on the merits and advantages of the Union, that it would reconcile all parties, and put an end to all divisions in Ireland; whereas the pre sent measure seems to us to amount to an acknowledgment that all such views were fallacious; and that the hopes, held out of removing discontents in that country are as little likely to be accomplished now as they were before the Union, considering that the very first effect of that measure, and the first act of the united parliament is, to continue a military govern. ment there, with all its unavoidable severities, and all its possible abuses. 5. Because it is neither constitutional nor safe to trust exorbitant power to the discretion of any individual, on a presumption drawn from private character and personal reputation, that it will be exercised with lenity and moderation. Such power in its nature tends to corrupt the minds of those who hold it; nor can it be applied to its own purposes, without devolving into many hands, by all which it must be exercised discretionally and without control. In this case, the hopes. to be derived from experience or confidence in personal dispositions, are defeated by the actual removal of the noble person in whose prudence we might be most disposed to confide. 6. "Because the power which has been already exercised in Ireland without a law, and which the present bill is intended to confirm, viz. to punish all persons concerned or said to be concerned in the rebellion by death, or otherwise by the sentence of a court martial, may be em ployed in the infliction of tortures and cruelties unknown to the laws of England, and from which the greatest criminals in this country are exempted. We will not consent to vest such dangerous and arbitrary powers in any hands and least of all in courts martial, in the constitution of of which no care is taken to exclude the effects of levity or passion, and in which it is left to the discretion of seven officers or of a majority of that number (none of whom, possibly, may be of age) to pronounce a sentence of death, or to inflict tortures worse than death. (Signed) THANET. ALBEMARLE. HOLLAND. KING. PONSONBY." A second protest against the passing of the bill was also entered, but was afterwards ordered to be expunged, as will be seen by the proceedings of the House on the 31st. roneous that application may appear to the majority of the House), cannot warrant a resolution for expunging the ReaThe Protest against the Irish Martial sons of a Protest. The right of indiviLaw Bill ordered to be expunged.] March dual judgment cannot be submitted to the 31. The House being cleared of stran- will, or exercised according to the pleagers, and the entry in the Journal of the sure of the majority, against whose act it 23rd instant, and also the second Protest is intended to object; and the privilege of being read, lord Fitzgibbon (earl of Clare) protesting is at an end, if the reasons inmoved, "That it is contrary to the ho- serted in a protest must be made agreeanour of this House, and would be of dan-ble to that majority, and subject to their gerous consequences to permit the rea- approbation. sons for the separate protestations entered on the 23rd of March 1801, and signed Thanet, Albemarle, Holland and King, to remain on the Journals, and therefore that the same be expunged." After an animated debate, the motion was agreed to upon a division by 92 against 20. Protest against expunging the Protest on the Irish Martial Law Bill.] The following Protest was entered on the Journals: "Dissentient, 1. "Because this resolution appears to us an alarming infringement of that ancient and peculiar privilege by which peers have been enabled to record their opinions, and justify their conduct to posterity. 2. "Because, in the right of protesting is necessarily included a right to record those reasons which have been urged in debate against any resolution taken by the House. 3. "Because we conceive the objections urged against the bill in the Protest (whether applicable or not in this particular instance) to be such, as any member of the legislature is competent to feel and to express, in strict conformity with the principles on which this government is established, and with the duty and attachment which he owes to the constitution of this country.-The possibility of a law, which by its nature would weaken, and even dissolve the ties of allegiance is not to be controverted; and the apprehension of such a tendency in the provisions of any bill, if entertained by the majority, would infallibly lead to the rejection of it; we are therefore at a loss to discover how an objection, which would induce a majority to reject a measure, can when conscientiously felt by any lord, be represented as an unfit topic of debate, or an unapt Reason in a Protest. 4. "Because the application of a principle in any case admissible (however er (Signed) NORFOLK, E. M. WENTWORTH FITZWILLIAM, PONSONBY. HOLLAND. SUFFOLK and BERKSHIRE. THANET. DUNDAS. ALBEMARLE. Bedford. KING. OXFORD and MORTIMER. YARBOROUGH. Debate in the Lords on Taylor's Divorce Bill.] March 19. The House being put into a Committee on the Bill to dissolve the Marriage of George Taylor, gentleman, with Catharine, his own wife, and to enable him to marry again, The Marquis of Buckingham said, he rose to call the attention of their lordships to a proviso of very great importance to the morals, the religion, and the virtue of the public. This proviso had made part of a bill upon the subject which had been fully discussed last session, but which had failed in the House of Commons. The subject of the proviso having been amply and ably discussed, it would not be necessary for him to go into a detail on the efficacy of its principle. The first thing he had thought it right to look to, was the practice of our ancestors, and what was their opinion as to the legality of the adulterer marrying with the adulteress; and he found, that, previous to the Refor mation, divorces were not recognised by any other jurisdiction than that of the ecclesiastical law. The first case he met with was that of lady Boucher Par, wife of lord Par, and daughter of the earl of Essex; the next was, the case referred to in the debates on the subject last year, that of the marquis of Northampton, who, after four years, married again, which |
