THE ACCUSED IN IRELAND.
THE rather remarkable debate of Thursday, in which the Parnellites made so fierce a resistance to the application to Ireland of the Criminal Evidence Bill,—a Bill which makes it competent for a person charged with any offence, or the wife or husband of any such person, to give evidence in defence of the accused, though not without the full consent of the accused,— shows at least one thing very clearly, that the Parnellite Party are at least as anxious to prevent the conviction of the guilty, as they are to promote the acquittal of the innocent. Sir Henry James, indeed, grounded his remonstrance against ex- tending the Bill at once to Ireland on the plea that it may prejudice the Irish people against a law which is sure to be beneficial to them, and that if the experiment be tried in England first, the Irish people may be reconciled to it by seeing how beneficially it works on behalf of the innocent. But surely Sir Henry James, in urging this plea, is ignoring the real ground of the Parnellite objection to the Bill. It is impossible to deny that a very great number of offences which in England popular opinion severely condemns, popular opinion in Ireland not only extenuates but applauds. That is a very unfortunate state of things, but it is the actual state of things. And undoubtedly the effect of any Bill which will greatly promote the acquittal of the innocent, must tell more or less in favour of the conviction of the guilty. The Judge and jury will know that if the accused were innocent, he might easily have cleared himself by asking to go into the witness-box ; and though it cannot be made part of the evidence against him that he made no such offer, it will certainly tell in confirmation of the evidence actually brought against him, that he did not avail himself of a privilege which, had he been innocent, he would have eagerly claimed. We do not see how this necessary con- sequence of an Act allowing the prisoner or his wife to give evidence, at the discretion of the prisoner, can possibly be avoided. A refusal to offer such evidence must more or less confirm the positive evidence against him, and therefore those who believe that there will probably be quite as many people convicted, as a result of the negative evidence afforded by their not offering themselves as witnesses (and convicted of offences which they really committed, but which four Parnellites out of five do not condemn), as there will be acquitted of such offences by virtue of the evidence they give on their own behalf, will think the operation of the Bill mischievous. Indeed, it is not improbable that the sympathy of a great many of the Parnellites is far more actively engaged on behalf of those who have committed these offences, than on behalf of those who are innocent of them. The former they regard as conspirators against the British rule, and the latter as persons who are unwilling to conspire against that rule ; and, of course, they care to aid the former and do not care to aid the latter. They would rather get a boycotter who really had been guilty of the offence of which he is accused, acquitted, than they would get a person acquitted who abhorred boycotting, and who had been unjustly suspected of it. This being, as we believe, the real reason why Mr. Healy and his friends attack so furiously the extension of the Criminal Evidence Bill to Ireland, we cannot agree with Sir Henry James that it would be right to confine the operation of the Bill to England or to Great Britain, solely on account of the protests of the Parnellite Members. It seems to us per- fectly clear that even if the Irish Courts of Justice were as biassed against the accused as the Parnellite Members assert, none the less those who are innocent of that of which they are accused would obtain under this Bill
a much greater chance of acquittal than they would otherwise have. And holding as we do that it is an infinitely greater evil that one innocent man should be convicted of a crime he has not committed, than that even two guilty men should escape conviction of crimes they have committed, we think the Government bound to give the persons accused of crime in Ireland this additional chance for their escape. As a matter of fact, however, this Bill, if extended to Ireland, would not only very materially aid the innocent, but would doubtless contribute indirectly, in the way we have pointed out, towards the conviction of the guilty ; and that is, we believe, the sub- stantial reason why the violent opponents of the Crimes Act of last Session dislike it so much. Their sympathies are much more deeply enlisted on behalf of persons guilty of such crimes as boycotting and intimidation, than on behalf of persons who are innocent of them.
Sir Henry James thinks that if the Irish see how well the law works in England on behalf of the accused, they will soon be glad to have it extended to Ireland. But it is obvious that that altogether depends on the question whether Irish popular opinion really does sympathise more with persons guilty of such crimes as are oftenest committed there, or with persons innocent of them ; and we greatly fear that it is the former, not the latter, who still attract the most considerable amount of sympathy. But that does not make it less a duty, or a less imperative duty, on the part of the Government to give the innocent every fresh security they can against an unjust conviction ; and we cannot conceive that the provisions of this Bill could operate unfavourably to an innocent person under suspicion of crime, except under the rarest and most exceptional circumstances. It would certainly tell greatly in favour of an innocent person, in the vast majority of cases. If it would indirectly tell also against guilty persons, that is not a conse- quence which the Government ought to regret, though it is very natural that people who in their hearts approve of intimi- dation and boycotting should regret it, and should do every- thing in their power to avert it. But that regret is just the source of all our troubles in Ireland. And it seems to us that it would be an act of the very greatest cowardice to buy off the resistance of the Parnellites to this Bill by deliberately- consenting to diminish the innocent prisoner's chance of escaping an unjust conviction only on the ground that those who detest the Act of last Session are pledged to do all they can to save persons who have really made themselves amenable to its provisions, from the penalties they have justly incurred.
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