in Africa, but
on Ireland he was silent. Lord Carnarvon, on the contrary, came forward
voluntarily with a statement of policy, and he opened it on the broadest
general lines. His speech deserves as close attention as any deliverance
of this memorable period. It laid down the principles of that alternative
system of government, with which the new ministers formally challenged
their predecessors. Ought the Crimes Act to be re-enacted as it stood; or
in part; or ought it to be allowed to lapse? These were the three courses.
Nobody, he thought, would be for the first, because some provisions had
never been put in force; others had been put in force but found useless;
and others again did nothing that might not be done just as well under the
ordinary law. The re-enactment of the whole statute, therefore, was
dismissed. But the powers for changing venue at the discretion of the
executive; for securing special juries at the same discretion; for holding
secret inquiry without an accused person; for dealing summarily with
charges of intimidation--might they not be continued? They were not
unconstitutional, and they were not opposed to legal instincts. No, all
quite true; but then the Lords should not conceal from themselves that
their re-enactment would be in the nature of special or exceptional
legislation. He had been looking through coercion Acts, he continued, and
had been astonished to find that ever since 1847, with some very short
intervals hardly worth mentioning, Ireland had lived under exceptional and
coercive legislation. What sane man could admit this to be a satisfactory
or a wholesome state of things? Why should not they try to extricate
themselves from this miserable habit, and aim at some better solution?
"Just as I have seen in English colonies across the sea a combination of
English, Irish, and Scotch settlers bound together in loyal obedience to
the law and the crown, and contributing to the general prosperity of the
country, so I cannot conceive that there is any irreconcilable bar here in
their native home and in England to the unity and the amity of the two
nations." He went to his task individually with a perfectly free, open,
and unprejudiced mind, to hear, to question, and, as far as might be, to
understand. "My Lords, I do not believe that with honesty and
single-mindedness of purpose on the one side, and with the willingness of
the Irish people on the other, it is hopeless to look for some
satisfactory