MR PARNELL'S DENIAL. SPEECHES IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 291, 18 August 1888, Page 3

MR PARNELL'S DENIAL. SPEECHES IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

On iho aftoinoon ot July u'th great inleiu&L cen tied in the Jloute of Commons on the announcement bhat Mr Parneil mLondcd making a statement, following 1 on the collap.se on iho piovioiio day ot the case O'Donncll v. bhe " Times." J\Jr Parnoil, who was clieeicd by ins followers, oaicl : — Certain cbaigcs wore made again t>b mo in lho trial of O'JJonncll v. Waltcis and another which I consider seiiouoly alleeb my chai actor as a member of Parliament — chaia.es which I consider 1 ought to lose no lime in conuadicting. They are contained in a, horios ot lottcis — -some of them alleged to have boon written by other pereons, .some ot them alleged Lo have bean written by me. I will hay with regard to any charges made against me in reference to the question involved in that trial, and also with regard to any charges which might be made, that 1 intended to be in court dining a poLtion of the proceedings in the expectation that I would have been called as a witness, and that I would have had the oppoitunity of answering those charges that ha\e been made against me. However, the form— the unexpected turn — the case took deprived me of the opportunity. I therefore now take this first oppoitunity of making a statement. I will deal with the lottery in the order in which they were given by the counsel for the defence. The first, I think, was a letter purporting to have been written and .signed by Air Patrick Ejjan, under date February 4bh, 1888. It is to the following eflcct :— My Dkaic Fkikni),— Write under cover to Madame J. Pouj or, 9L» Avenue cle ViUitrs. Mr Parnell i& here and will remain tor about a week. 1 Itavo spoken to him about iurther advances ror the iunrl ; lie has no objection and jou may count upon it. All goes -well. We have nfet ivir O'L. and other friends who are here, and all aro aprrced that prompt and decisive action is called lor. — Yours very faithlulJy, P. Mgax. The Attorney-General ventuied to state that Mr O'Leaiy was. the person who had been convicted of treason felony. Well, with regard to the letter, I have not seen it : but lam perfectly convinced it is an i undoubted forgery, and that, if the case had gone on and that letter had been pioduced, it would have been easily proved to the satisfaction of the jury that the letter was a forgery. And with regard to Mr O'Leary I wish to say I know him personally, and from my long [ know ledge of him I am convinced he never would ha\c countenanced or taken part in any .scheme of assassination whatever. ii\uthei, I have no doubt that Mr O'Lcaiy, it he had been asked to do so — he is now Living in Ireland, and has been for several >eais —would ha\e come into the box and would have sworn there was no foundation tor the imputation made against him in that lecter. The nevt one is from myself. It bears no date except that of Tuesday, and it is a shoit letter in the foUowmg teims :—: — Tuerylay— Dear Sir,— Tell Jj. to write to me (liloct. iJavc not \ rtrocen ed the papers.— \ oins \eiy liTulj, C'JiAb. l\\n:iKLij. 1 can only say, sir, that 1 ha\onot seen this letter. It may be that I have written it, but I ceitainly have no recollection ot any business of that kind which could have called uyon me to write such a letter. The Ictcor, ot course, is of an innocent character. All I have got to say about it is that it may have been written by mo, but I am inclined to believe it was not written by me. Then, as regards the next letter. This is one from Mr P. "Egan, alleged to have been written under date October 25, 18b'l :—: — Dear Sir,— l have by this post fccnfc in £200. lie will give jou w hat you nant. When will you undci stand to ijct to work and give us value for our inonej ?— 1 am, dear sir, iaithtully yours, Pai- JCoan. .Jcis. Cavej , Esq. Now, tliis loiter was alleged by counsel t° have bcon tound m James Careys house in Dublin. It was found Ihcio by the police, who tlioioughly searched James Carey's* house from top to bottom.andfoundsomeadniittodlj genuine lcttcis ot Egan s, which had nob been produced in the case. But it this lcttoi wa& found by the police, the excuse — and this is the only controversinl matter I .-hall go into with leference to this case, because it concerns aiiabsoiit man, -who is nofclrcie to defend him self (Mr P. Egan), against w horn no case has over been ud\a.ncod in a comb of justice in reference t>o these matters-— the excuse that was given, foi not producing the poisons horn ■whom they got any documents docs not hold good because thcao could bo no objection to pioducing them. Well, I mu&t pay that jSJv Egan has fcolegiaphed from Ann rica to deny in the strongest tt'ims that lie cvci wrote such, a letter. The next letter is one alleged to .have been in the wilting ot Mv Henry Caa'npbell, who was my piivabv secretary lor some years. It was dated January 9bh, 1882 .: — JJcar Esau,— What, are those tello ws waiting for? Ttiis> inaction i, most inexcusable. Our best men aire m pribon and uothing is b.yijiy done. Let there bo an end ot this hciitancy ; prompt action is called tor oid .Kostoi and company ; let. us "liavo bi'iuc evidence ot j-our po\vertodo bo. Mi healtk it> j<ood, tlniiks. — Yoti is % cry truly, Ciias. S. Pak.Mi.ll. That letter. I deny as an absolute for gery. 1 never wrote, I never sent it ; I no\ or directed it to be written and never authorised it to be \vj ittcn ; and I nt vcr saw it. lam not able to say whether it is m Mr Campbells hand-wiiting ; but if it is the bailie as ujac of another lette r said to be mine and published lafat ye.iiVi then 1 must unhesitatingly say that it is nob in Mr Campbells handwriting. The next letter is alleged to have been sent by myself. It is dated May 15, 1882 — a' Dear Sir,— l am »ot surprised at your iriend . anger, but he and you shouut know that to do jiouncc the murder w.is the only coiote open to us. To do thai promptly was phuiLlj T our best policy, but you can toll him anrt all others concerned that, though I regret the accident of Lord Cavendish's death, 1 cannot refuse to admit that Burke got no more than his descrtd. You are at liberty to show him this >and others whom you can trust, but let not my .address be known, lie can writo to the House ot Commons.—Yours truly, Ciias. 11. ParnKoL. That letter a\ as published in iac-t>imih' a year ago. 1 denied at the time in the strongest terms that it was signed by me, or authonscd by me, or Unit i knew anything about it. 1 repeat that denial to-day, and 1 say that the s tat cm cut made in courtthat the body of the letter Avas in Mr Campbell's* handwiiting i-s unbeue I may, though, mention a fact 1 haves no\or mentioned beioie. At the time I was dealing -with the subject in the JBoiisg iormeily I Mas not aware ot the f«ct, and it is that tJic signature attached lo the letter is a copy of a signature of mino which 1 have nob u&cd since fcjbo end oi 1879. The,

letter bears the date " May 13, 1882," and j to it is attached a copy of a signature of i mine that I had not used since 1879. I had I forgotten at the time that I had ever used such a signature. The interval between 1879 and 1882 had caused me to forget I had ever used such a signatui-e as was attached to that letter ; and it was only on looking over my correspondence with different persons during the last ten years that I iound 1 had changed my signature after the end of J879, and thatl then remembered clclinitely for the lir&fc time I had changed ie ahead of 1879, when 1 first went to America, and I have not been able since then to find a single letter written by me with a single signature attached by me to any document, public or piivate, which is the signatuie used by me up to the end of that year. Now I come to the letter alleged to have been written by Mr Frank Byinc, dated November Bth, ISB2, from Cannes, and which inlar alia said : Mr M (\Swecncy Will have informed you that I received the promised, cheque lor £100 from Mr PuruulL on the day 1 lcil London I haA c not s-een the letter and < annot say whether it ics genuine or not ; bub it would appear to me from the nature of its contents and from tho context to have been a genuine one. I am only concerned with one paragraph which appears in that letter; that is that in which ho say&MrMcSweeney lias received the promised cheque for £100. I must say that I did not know Mr F. Byine was about to leave London, and I never pave him a cheque for ClOO, nor any money whatever, during the whole course of my lite, save on one occasion many years ago, at the time when Mr Isaac Butt was alive. That was 10 or 12 years ago, ami on that occasion a testimonial was got up for Byrne, who was an officer of the Home liule Confederation of Great Britain, because he had fallen dangerously ill and it was thought he was going to lose the sight of one eye. I subscribed a small sum to that testimonial, and the subscription I have mentioned is the only sum I ever gave him. Mr Justin McCarthy will tell you who it was who paid Mr Byrne a cheque ior £100, which was given in connection with his duties to the National League of Great Britain. I had very little to do with Mr Byrne at any time. I saw him very seldom and had no means of knowing as to what be was doing. That finishes the references I have to make to these letters. The great majority of them are palpable forgeries and most undoubted forgeries. (Opposition cheers.) They bear forgery on their very face, and some ot them which are attributed to me are perfectly absurd, becau&e they would leave it to be supposed I deliberately kept myself in the power of a great number of people who had entered into the Phoenix Park murders ; that I had put myself in the power of men who had halters at the end of their necks ; and that I also put myself in the position, being an accessory before and after the fact. Ido not wish to enlarge upon the matter. I could go over all these letters to show the utter absurdities connected with e\ cry one of them, but will only say that the absurdity ot the whole series of letters with one or two trivial exceptions which 1 have pointed out, must be palpable on the face of them to every fair-minded man. Mr Justin McCarthy roseafter Mr Parnell and said : I wish to a-ik leave of the Houso ior a very few moments, whilst I make a very plain &tiaight statement about the mysteuous ehaigo for £100 which I gave or sent to Byrne on the day he left tor Cannes —as I understood for a holiday, because he had been in ill-health. He had applied to his employers for leave to go abroad, and I gave him a cheque in the most simple business way, as I wish to exp am in a few words. Our association, of which my hon. Iriond Mr Parnell was never a member, wa> supported by contributions from all parts of the country, by the profits of meetings and of lectures held here, there and everywhere, by subscriptions from branches, and by the sale of cards of membeiship. The sums of money came to Mi Byrne, a? the secretaiy, in all sorts of forms — laige cheques and small cheques ; in post-office oiders, and even a post-office note for Is. Our association had then no banking accounts, ana therefote to make matters easy I received all these various cheques at dillerent times for Mr Byrne, who gave me a note of the amount, at d I always gave him a cheque ot my own on my bank for the amount. When Mr Byine was abou.t to leave ior Cannes he came to where I was living in Victoriastreet and sent in for me, saying he had got some cheques and Post office orders which ho wanted changed. I could not see him : I was too bus.y, >o I sent my son to him and he brought me in a pile ot cheques and orders with a note ot the amount. There was some other money which lie wanted, a few pound*, and I gave him a chccjuc for this ClOO, pasting all the note-? and oidcrs ho had brought through my I bank. Thin i-> the simple tian&action out of which this whole story has come. I must be allowed to say I cannot take any blame to my&ell, not Slaving any suspicion that there was any siuislei purpose on the part of Byrne, lie had been an officer ot one of our associations for many years;. Never in mypieseme, and 1 \\ a& constantly in hU company, did he ?>ay a wo>d which would make anyone suppose for a moment that he was any other than a practical huid-woiLitig servant of the association, tlnowintr all hi& mind and faculties into the work ot registration and the work oi lighting elections in this countiy. The w hole thing to far as 1 am concerned , was a simple business transaction. X never knew or Jieaid of my chaigcs against Mr JL<\ Byrne until after he had gone aw ay. Whatever my impression of the case now may be, I havp told how thin whole affair occurred. Thoio was not I a reason which I could havo had or which anyone could have had for noL giving Mr Byrne that cheque upon this occasion, and I leave this manellous and portentous story, out of which so much has been made, to the judgment of this House and this country at large. (Parnellito cheers'.) The matter then dropped.