THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS
The Bill will be the means by which you will be enabled to subject your political prisoners to treatment in your jails which you reserve in England for the worst of criminals, and it is idle to talk about comparison with the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, under which your prisoners were humanely and properly treated—altho imprisonment is hard to bear under the best circumstances; but in the position in which this Bill will place them, your political prisoners will be deliberately starved with hunger and clammed with cold in your jails. I trust in God, sir, that this nation and this House may be saved from the degradation and the peril that the mistake of passing this Bill puts them in.
If, Mr. Speaker, I intervene in the contest of giants which has been proceeding for so many days in this House in reference to this great question, it is not because I suppose that that intervention is specially suitable to the moment; and I certainly should not, under ordinary circumstances, have felt any self-confidence what-
- ↑ From his speech in the House of Commons June 7, 1886, on the second reading of the Government of Ireland Bill (i.e., Home Rule Bill). Printed here by kind permission of the London Times.
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