Ireland and the Home Rule Movement by Michael F. J. McDonnell
page 26 of 269 (09%)
page 26 of 269 (09%)
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summing up of a judge in England is a model of impartiality, goes on to
say that in Ireland, "c'est trop souvent un acte d'accusation." The fact is that in Ireland, where the salaries of judges are higher than the incomes earned by even the most successful barristers, the judiciary has become to an extent far greater than in England a place of political recompense for Unionist Members of Parliament, who, unlike their English brethren, carry their political prejudices with them on appointment to the Bench. As recently as 1890 Mr. Justice Harrison, at Galway Assizes, asked why the garrison did not have recourse to Lynch law, and until his death Judge O'Connor Morris, unchecked by either party when in power, month by month contributed articles to the reviews, in which he denounced in unmeasured terms the provisions of Acts of Parliament which, in his capacity of Judge of a Civil Bill or County Court, he was called upon to apply. The jury system is discredited in Ireland by every possible means. Many crimes, which in England are classed as felonies, have been statutorily reduced to misdemeanours in Ireland so as to limit the right of challenge possessed by the accused from twenty jurors to six, and at the same time, after Lord O'Hagan's Act had withdrawn from the sheriff the power of preparing jury lists, which he used for political purposes; by resuscitating a common law right of the Crown which has not been used in England for fifty years, arbitrarily to order jurors to "stand aside," the provisions of O'Hagan's Act have been evaded, and a panel hostile to the accused is most frequently secured. The natural protection by which the balance is artificially redressed when the application of the laws has not the sympathy of those who are subject to them is a common symptom in every country and every age. When |
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