Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE. FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 1903.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9641, 16 January 1903, Page 2

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE. FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 1903.

BOYCOTTING CONDEMNED. : A good deal was heard a few weeks ago, through the medium of the cable news, about what was termed tlie Tallow case, but it was only on the receipt of the latest English papers that we were able to gather ; information as to the nature of the. case \ and the facts composing it. From an ] interesting summary m the Spectator, we. ! learn that an Irish Judge and an Irish jury have struck, and an Irish Roman Catholic prolate have driven home a blow ; of incalculable value for the deliverance of Ireland from her worse and weaker self. The matter had been before the law courts for .some considerable time, and four successive juries disagreed. The first two trials, held successively at Waterford and Cork, were on a criminal charge at the instance of the Crown, for conspiracy m injure one David O'lvee-fe m his business m the small Walerford town of Tallow, and on each occasion the jury disagreed. So did that which wa.s empanelled m May last to try a civil action for £20,000 damages brought by Mr O'lveefe against Francis Patrick Walsh, President of the Tallow branch of the United Irish League and Chairman of the Waterford County Council, and some eight or nine others, whom he alleged to have conspired for hi.s ruin. In June the second trial of the action and fourth of the ease was begun before the Lord Chief Justice and a specioJt jury, but one of the jurors falling ill, and the* plaintiff refusing to proceed with the eleven remaining jurors, it also proved abortive. Mr (VKeefe persevered doggedly and uncompromisingly, and at last reward came. On November 5, before Chief Baron I'iiUes and a special Connty Dublin jury, his suit for damages again came on for hearing. The hearing occupied six days, and on the 12th hist., within a,n hour after a- clear and decisive charge from the Bench as to the law on boycotting, a verdict, not indeed of £20,000, but of £5500 damages was returned against the defendants. This, comments the Spectator, was a really great event, even by itself, and the greater by much on account of the specially recognised impartiality and learning of the Judge who presided. Peculiarly significant and impressive was his exposition of the "good old common law," less on his own authority than on that of eminent legal members, past and present, of the. House of Lords, as affording a bulwark against tlie destruction of any citizen's liberty of mind and of act,' through the deliberately hostile combination of a number of individuals to achieve his hurt by conduct which m the case of each individual of them might not be unlawful. Mr O'Keefe, the tradesman whose ruin was so very nearly achieved, did not by any means commit one of the ordinary offences against the unwritten agrarian law. lie- appears to have paid a family of the name of Parker, whose father had left them a holding near Tallow, a substantial sum of some £800 or so for the tenant right of that holding, which by reason of quarrels among themselves, and probably general incompetence, they were not succeeding m making remunerative. He allowed them, however, to remain m occupation of the. holding, with the view of seeing whether, with the aid of the purchase-money, they could turn it to good account. So far from doing that, they were not ab.le to pay the rent during tlie ensuing year, and Mr O'Keefe thus became liable for another £170. In those circumstances he insisted on entering into occupation himself. O'Keefe acted absolutely within the law, and the combination which wa.s organised against him by th'e United Irish League, and which for the time destroyed his flourishing business, was clearly'of the kind -against which the common law of Ireland, as of England, provides protection. The case led. to an article m the Freeman's Journal on Chief Baron Pallcs's charge m which, while the. distinguished Judge's legal erudition was fully acknowledged, he was accused of making of the law "an abstract fetish, to be worshipped with an undiscriminating reverence." In the same article the view was suggested that "no great social or legislative reform can be accomplished without injury to an individual or a clars. These remarks were significant for the fact that they eJicited a prompt and pathetic protest from Archbishop Walsh, who wrote to say that he could not but regard the publication of the Freeman's article, "m view of all the circumstances of the case," sus being "simply deplorable." Practically the. effect of this declaration must be taken to be the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin's deliberate ranging of his spiritual authority by the side and m support- of the Chief Baron's interpretation, adopted by the County Dublin jury, of the rightful function of the law m presence- of -agrarian and other conspiracies like those organised by the. United Irish League It is, therefore, hardly too much to say thiit this is the most notable utterance by a lading Roman Catholic cerlic on the Irish question rince the publication of the lai>al Rescript condemning boycotting, llmsin one week, .says the Spectator, we •have had a heavy blow struck at the snibverrors of individual liberty and a strong nv-ral reinforcement given to the honest and law-abiding citizen. A second blow to boycotting, of hardly less significance, occurred a few weeks later, wiiwi- the English law courts gave substantial damnj?»« against the. Amalgamated Railway Servants for illegal conspiracy to brine about the famous Taff Vale s-trike of 1900 Tt is satisfactory to find individual liberty being so strongly upheld.