Turning the Tables

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 19, 9 May 1907, Page 15

Turning the Tables

When Mr. Court/hope, a Sussex Tory member,- asked a question about alleged boycotting in L'avan (writes the Parliamentary correspondent of the 'Freeman's Journal ') Mr. Dillon very adroitly interposed an inquiry •in which he 3 set forth the terrible Kst of crimes committed in the -past year in his division of Sussex. Every form of offence in the calendar, from -the most violent to the most odious, was plentifully represented in this list, making the trivial matters mentioned by Mr. Courtnope fall into utter insignificance. The experience was" not encouraging for other English Tory members whom the Ulster Unionists may wish to supply with questionscondemning their own countrymen. It also had another not unimportant result. The two Unionist evening papers that give the lengthened reports of the early business of the House entirely omitted Mr. Courthope's question, because of the awkward pendant that Mr. Dillon affixed to it. Seeing that the object, of the framers of such questions as Mr. Courthope's is to obtain wide publicity for the allegations put forward, in" the hope of creating the false impression that Ireland is in a "disturbed state, this suppression of such questions' is rather a disagreeable surprise to their originators. Every English or Scottish Unionist member who identifies himself with the campaign of slander now being pursued by the Ulster Unionists will find that the criminal statistics! of his own constituency will be paraded with equal prominence. No Irish constituency has anything to> lose by such comparisons. Mr. Walter Long is taking a hand in this game. He has given" notice of three long* questions about boycotting, but hs,s not starred them, so that the answers will not be given in the House, but will be circulated with the votes. This is an example of the discretion of which Mr. Walter Long has an ample store,for"^ he foresaw probably that he might have to face an inquiry about the criminal statistics of the county of Wilts, with which he is closely identified. However, the question about Wilts will fee put, all the same, by Mr. Mooney, . and the crimirfal calendar which^ it will be his painful duty to expose to the House is sufficient to explain Mr. Walter Long's prudence in the method of his questioning. _^_^____________