IRISH LANDLORD TYRANNY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 152, 31 March 1876, Page 8

IRISH LANDLORD TYRANNY.

f L. We find, under the above heading, in the ' Tuam Xews ' of November 5, a letter signed "Observer," in which a vivid Account is°-iven of heartless evictions recently carried out in the neighbourhood of Ought erar.l, in the adjacent county of Gal way. "On the Ist of Xo\ ember." writes the correspondent of our contemporary, " Mr. Eobinson, the well-known agent of Mr. Berndge, and the Law Life Assurance Society, at the he i<l of a strong force of armed police, came to cast upon the worl-l the families of three townLxnds, in the parish of Killannin, county (i.ihvav. On arriving among these poor unfortunate people, orders were immediately given" to the bailiff and others to dear the houses of people and effects, and these orders they carried out, s.> >iningly with a vengeance, for one poor man, of a highly respectable character, who on that morning was talking about the village, almost expired in their arms whiltTthey were in the act of putting him out of his house, although the poor old man told them repeatedly that he would willingly go, but to allow him time. J/V died a few minutes after/cards, a martyr to landlord ti/ranni/." Then follows a graphic description of the popular indignation which this heart-rendiug scene aroused to fever height —of the anger, the excitement, of the lookers on. On the following day an inquest was held on the body of the unfortunate de. ceased, and the jury gave expression to the universal opinion in their verdict, which was thus worded : — " We find that the deceased John Sulluan, came to his death on yesterday, the Ist November, 1575. To the best of our judgment, and the evidence before us, we are unanimous in saying that his death was accelerated by 'the rough treatment he received from Bartley Murphy and others, in putting him out of his house." Bartley Murphy is, we believe, a sort of bailiff on the est Ue. We are informed that the parish priest interceded for the unfortunate tenmts, and that these poor people have been allowed back into their houses m the capacity of caretakers. What their future destiny may be, it requires no prophetic knowledge to divine. Those who have reached the decline of years will sink rapidly into the grave on being violently torn from the humble homesteads endeared to them by so many pathetic associations. Heart-broken old men and women do not live lono- in the workhouse, that li\ing tomb of the industrious destitute Those who are still strong and vigorous, through whose veins' courses the hot blood of youth, will inevitably seek the emigrant ship, to waft them from their native land, and will go to swell the ranks of that second Ireland beyond the Atlantic which throbs with an unquenchable lon-ing for vengeance on Ireland's bitterest oppressors—the extermin Uors of the tenantry of Ireland. We do not believe that in any Cliristian country, save in this poor land of ours — that under any Government save that of Britain — scenes similar to that which resulted in the death of John Sullivan could be legally enacted in the open day. If we are to believe the evidence of Mr. Sebastian Nolan, as given a fc the recent land sessions at Athlone — as reported in the ' Roscoinmou Journal ' — the property on which John Sullivan was a tenant is let at an average rent of three hundred per cent, over Griffith's valuation. It was either for being unable to pay this exorbitant rent, or for refusing to submit to an increase, that the tenants of the townland of Killannin were on the Ist November, ejected from their dwellings, sufficient violence being used in one instance to cause immediate death to ensue