The Telegram. — 1896-10-06 (Weymouth, Dorset, England)

REMARKABLE ASSERTION.  Mr. Asquith proceeded :it is an invariable rule in our criminal system, which is followed by every Home Secretory in turn, which is applied without discrimination to every class of prisoner or convict that release follows as a matter of course when it is asceitained upon competent medical testimony that continued imprisonment would be dangerous to life. I myself have acted, as everybody holding the position which I once myself occupied has acted, in a vast number of ca-es on that rule. There is no man, I believe, in this kingdom ,vhia is snore opposed than I am, on the ground not merely of humanity but of reason and common seine, an the ordinary criminal cases, to a long sentence. (Cheers.) That is not merely a pious opinion ; it is a conviction on which, when I had the oppor.unity, I acted in hundreds nf cases. But torte are certain classes of crime, such for instance, as uffences asminst children which from the defencelessness of the victim, the pecudar difficulty both of pi evolution and detection and (rent the widespread and irremediable suffering which, if tney are successful, tiley pro• duce, mu my judgment, demand and will always demand exceptionally severe I roatment. Among these crimes and in that category I am bound to place tile offence of which these men were convicted, the essence of which consists in exacting vengeance from society for wrongs, real or imaginary, to One's country or to one's class, by plotting wholesale havoc, suffering, and murder against the innocent and the unprotected. Against enemies of that kind society possessno only three safegnards—the vigilance of the police, the inevitableness of the informer, and the certainty of exemplary punishment. To deal with this particular case, as regards the suggestion that there has been any doubt as to the guilt of the men who have tor many years past been kept in imprisonment, I think it is sufficient to say that their case has now been examined by three success:ve Home Secretaries, each of them exercising a perfectly debauched and independent judgment, and that in no single instance has any one of them been able to persuade himself that the verdict which was passed was not justified. (Cheers.) As regards the fiction, tor it was nothing but a fiction, that they were exposed in prison to exceptionally rigorous treatment, I speak, I suppose' with as full knowledge tif the facts as is possessed, I suppose, by any man in this country when I emphatically declare that for that statement there is not the shadow of a foundation. (Cheers.) As to their' health, I observe that the other stay Mr. John Redmond, whom I do nut know whether to describe more accurately as the patron or as the proCye of the present Government (laughter)—in his zeal, his ardent zeal, for his new friends, had the hardihood to assert that during the time I Was in office I had refused any genuine or honest inquiry into the medical condamns of the prisoners. That is a statement which could not have been made by any one who knew anything of the facts, and ought not to have been made by any one who was totally ignorant of them. (Cheers.) Out of the 18 convicts belonging to this class who were suffering penal servitude at the time when I came into office in 1892, I released six, two of them for special reasons which are not relevant to the present question, and four of them for the very medical grounds upon which ruy successor has recently taken action. During the whole time that I held office and I sin certain that same thing has been done both by those who • canto before and will be done by those who come after nie—l took the most careful pains to sue that they should be kept under constant and expert medical supervision. Periodical reports as to the state of their health were continually coming before me. In the case of one of the HIM who has recently been released two of the most eminent specialists in mental disease to be found its this country were specially sent to inquire into the state of his mind. (Cheers.) Speaking with a complete knowledge of the facts and with a full lease of responsibifity, I say now before you and bens. the COUntry tnat A ! he time when I quitted case in the month of Juno, 1895, there was not in any one of the cases any ground which, acting upon the ordinary rules that govern the exercise of the prerogative of clemency, would have justified nie for medical reasons in setting free any one of the men who have recently been liberated. ((Jheers.)