UNFORTUNATE IRELAND.

Evening Star, Issue 15075, 6 January 1913, Page 8

UNFORTUNATE IRELAND.

DISTURBING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE. In the course of a letter to ‘ The Time?,' in reply to a correspondent who had accused him of misrepresenting the state of Ireland, the Rijjht Hon. J. H. Campbell, 51.1 1 ., has the 10l lowing : May I say at the outset that in the many speeches that I have made upon this subject in recent years I have never said that the King's writ did not run in Ireland? Such a statement would have been, as regards Ulster*, for example, ludicrous in the extreme, because the King's writ has always run, within my memory, in that loyal and law-abiding province, and 1 devoutly trust that nothing will ever happen. to force its people to treat it otherwise than with respect; but it is a fact that I have ofen said, and said with truth, that during the terrible and bloodstained yea is of the Land League ami of its successor of the present day the law of the land ' was paralysed and the jurisdiction of the King's Courts and writ usurped by the Courts and decrees of the United Irish League. In the early part of the present session in the House of Commons, in a speech upon the Home Rule Bill, I demon-st-rated by official statistics, and by quotations from the addresses of Bishop? of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, the existence in many parts of the. country of an orgy of crime and wholesale intimidation, and the Attorney-General for England, who followed me in the, debate, witn Mr Birrell at his elbow, did not venture to challenge one single fact, or figure. —Recent Outrages.— May I take two facts out of many as an indication of what has been taking place in these parts of Ireland during the last three yeats? Since the Peace Preservation Act was allowed to lapse by the present Government some three years ago there have been 800 outrages in which firearms were used, resulting in 50 cases in the murder of the victim, and in 150 more in his or her mutilation, while in only about 5 per cent, of the 800 cases were the miscreants brought to justice. Again, during the present year, in no less than six counties in Ireland, outside of Ulster, has the Crown applied for and obtained the postponement of criminal trials upon the sworn testimony of the chief police official of the district that a fair trial was impossible owing either to a universal terrorism prevalent in the county or to sympathy with the crime and criminal amongst the jurors, while in the County of Roscommon the police official swore that any attempted trial would be defeated by the organised canvassing and intimidation of the jurors on the part of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Surely the people of England and Scotland who still regard the right of a fair trial by jury as a sacred bulwark of liberty, will yet realise what is likely to be the fate and future of their isolated loyal fellowsubjects in the West and South of Ireland in the green tree when .-rich things happen in the dry. —Jeering at King George's Name.— Your correspondent also alleges that within the last fortnight at Larne and Londonderry King George's name was publicly jeered and groaned at. I believe this statement to be false in tact, and in any case I should require better proof of it than the heresay evidence of any member of the Ulster Liberal Association : but even it it were true, it- should at least furnish food for reflection lo those who, by a cowardly policy of treachery and betrayal, are seeking to sap the allegiance of a minority who have ever been conspicuous for loyalty to their King and devotion to the Empire. Finally, to men like your correspondent, who are so sanguine as to the toleration in store for the loyal minority under Homo Rule. I would recommend a further perusal of a letter written and published in the ‘ Scotsman ’ by Mr T. W. Russell on the eve of the introduction of the Home Rule Bill in 1893, in which he stated that he was aware of his own knowledge of case after case of Protestant farmers who were packing up and flying the country rather than face the persecution that was inevitable under Home Rule, the self-same method of escape that the Rev. Mr Horton had been cowardly enough lo recommend to his co-ieligionists in Tre- : land as Iheir only and ultimate refuge ; from, civil and religious tyranny.