The Lyttenlton Times. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1887.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 8323, 10 November 1887, Page 4

The Lyttenlton Times. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1887.

Me O’Bkien’s treatment in prison at present seems to monopolise most of the attention devoted in England to Irish affairs. It is a revival of the interest occasioned by his treatment in gaol before he was liberated on bail. The Irish Secretary is, of course, consistent in refusing to draw any distinction between the ordinary crimes of the calendar and the purely political offences created by the Coercion Act. Mr Balfour’s plea virtually is that when the Government asked Parliament to decree the punishment, in certain cases, of imprisonment with or without hard labour, it meant to have that punishment enforced in the ordinary manner. It is a plea that Coercion was not a weapon without edge or point. Moreover, the Government, which professes to regard the use made by the Irish leaders of the right of free speech as an abuse which encourages crime, and keeps tap a criminal agitation, is logical when it refuses to mitigate in any way the punishments of which the law places the administrative control in their hands. But the consistent, and the logical course is the very course best calculated to open English eyes. When the Tories and the Liberal Unionists were opposing Mr Gladstone before the electors, they declared that Coercion was neither the necessary alternative to Home Rule, nor the alternative which they had any intention of adopting. Having declared that they held Coercion in horror', they have not only adopted Coercion, but are making it the sharp and drastic instrument it always was supposed to be. The sufferings of Mr O’Brien and of any others of his colleagues among the Irish leaders will not be without their effect. But these, though hard, are among the things that are endurable. Their effect on English opinion, moreover, if they stood alone, would be at least slow. But they do not stand alone. The terrible ending of the Mitchellstown meeting supports them with most tremendous potency- The correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. has given a description of the proceedings, which leaves no doubt in the mind of any reasonable man who approaches the subject in a dispassionate frame of mind that the authorities were to blame on that occasion. In the first place, the meeting was not proclaimed; on the contrary, arrangements had been made for the presence of an official reporter. In the second place, the official reporter’s presence was not the cause of the affray. The cause was the conduct of the police, who arrived after the appointed hour, found the meeting assembled, and disturbed it by trying to force a way to the centre, where the speakers were, by the free use of their batons. This proceeding on the part of men who ought to have condescended to be punctual, and who not being punctual ought to have accepted the usual consequences, was too much for the warm blood of Tipperary, as it would have been too much for the blood of any men of any nationality. These produced their blackthorns, resisted the advance of the police, and finally drove them from the field. Finally, having taken refuge safely in their barracks, the police fired on the people in the streets, who were not pursuing them, and by no means trying to storm the barracks, and without any reading of the Riot Act, or any other of the safeguards provided by the law of the land against the shedding of blood. Three men were killed. Such are the main points of the report iu the Daily Telegraph. It establishes the fact that the conduct of tho police , was violent, arbitrary, and illeqal

from the first, and that it ended in the unnecessary shedding of blood. Here is a reality of Coercion which will come home to the mind of every man and woman in England, Scotland, and Wales, and of every country throughout the Empire with painful, surprising, awful force. Mr Dillon’s vehement, convincing, denunciatory narrative in the House of Commons, and Mr Parnell’s powerfully solemn warning in the same place on the last occasion when this terrible matter was before the House of Commons, have placed the real issue before the English people. What that issue is the Daily News has placed before its readers with the clear cogency for which that journal is usually distinguished. "The perfect wantonness of this butchery is its most revolting feature. The day was observed as a public holiday; the crowd was a holiday crowd. The final responsibility for this crime does not rest with the Government, or with the weak-kneed creatures who hound them on from the newspaper offices of London. It rests with the English people. The issue is a perfectly clear one, and it lies between legalised murder on the one hand, and, on the other, justice and conciliation.” Strong words these. Their appearance in a London newspaper, and the appearance of words of similarly solemn import in a host of other journals circulating in Great Britain, is a factor new in Irish affairs, and as powerful as it is new. So is the multitude of speeches by English members in the House of Commons following the same lines. So is the determination of a great party in the State led by the greatest chief the Liberals have ever had, to strive unceasingly for justice and conciliation to unfortunate Ireland. The times have changed, and the Eoglish manner of looking across the Channel at things Irish is changing. The only fear, when the mail left, was the fear expressed so solemnly by Mr Parnell that it might be impossible to restrain the Irish people roused to ungovernable passion by the massacre at Mitch■vllstown. There was also a hope in that remarkable oration, that the Irish would, after all, see that the bnlk of the English people was with them, and an earnest appeal to them to trust to the irresistible force of the friendly public opinion, led so grandly by Mr Gladstone. This was in the closing days of September. The cable news from Ireland since that date shows us that the Hopes and the appeals of the Irish leader have proved truer than his fears. Of this gratifying fact the manner, more in sorrow than anger, in which the Irish people are regarding the treatment ot their imprisoned champion is typical. With a race so intelligent and so remarkable for political self-restraint, though of quick temper and hot-headed and courageous to the verge of foolhardiness, any other result under the bettered circumstances surrounding the Irish problem would have been surprising indeed.