THE STATE TRIAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 413, 11 March 1881, Page 7

THE STATE TRIAL.

(From the Nation.) Thb trial of the Land League traversers has been proceeding dully up to Tuesday last (January 11th), when the case for the Crown closed. The evidence offered was almost wholly that of reporters, who were called up to prove the speeches of the traversers. The following passage is taken from the Attorney- General's opening address :—: — The Attorney-General also read paragraphs from the Nation in reference to land meetings in Sligo, Miltown-Malbay, and other places. A copy of the Nation containing the poem of Miss Fanny Parnell, " Hold the Harvest." was also put in evidence. The learned counsel read from the Nation of September 18th: — The land wax proceeds apace. . . There is a general agreement among the people not to buy at sheriffs' sales." He also read extracts from meetings of the Land League, at which sums were voted for tenants who had retaken possession of their farms. He also read the following from a poem entitled " Lays of the land League" :—: — " No, we shall leave untilled, unsown, The lands, however fair, From which an honest man was thrown Upon the roadside bare ; As if a curse was on the spot That saw such hateful deeds, We'll leave the empty house to rot— The fields to choke with weeds." Mr. Sullivan — Is there any objection to read the second verse ? The Attorney- General — Read the whole of it. Mr. Bull i van then read toe next stanza, as follows :—: — "We promised all the cruel rent Our landlord could demand ; Still up, and up, our biddings went For every patch of land. Man after man the burdened crushed, And then to our disgrace, Forth from the crowd his neighbours rushed To scramble for his place." The Attorney-General then rea.d from the Nation of the 9th of October an account of a meeting at Barntown, at which the effigy of a man who had taken an evicted farm was suspended in front of the platform, and at the close of the meeting the effigy was shot and then s t fire to. " The work of social excommunication of persons who lave taken evicted farms is being carried out with great thoroughness and great success in various parts of the country." The Nation of October 23 was also put in evidence, containing a report of the Land League weekly meeting, in which it was stated that sums were voted for evicted tenants and tenants who had retaken possession, and that applications for deputations to meetings on the following Sunday were received. The learned Attorney-General also read from the Nation of the 30th October a paragraph headed—" The Land League spreading throughout the whole country," in which it was set forth that money was being subscribed liberally for the purpose of the organisation, and adding, " all of which is mest cheering." The following summary of the proceedings in court on Tuesday is taken from the Freeman :—: — The Attorney-General, at a moment yesterday when the unofficial part of the audience was settling themselves down for their afternoon nap. said the only thrilling thing which it has occurred to him to say in the case of the present prosecutions — The Crown case is closed 1 The announcement will peal through Ireland as shrilly as if every

chapel-bell in the island were set a-ringing it. No more empty benches and sepulchral entertainment 1 No more peaceful slumbers to the lullaby of Connaught speeches done into Cockney ! " Sleep no more" has been sounded through the Queen's Bench, as distinctly as through the chamber of Macbeth. Henceforth there will be more pairs of eyes riveted upon that court than Mr. Goodman will be able to provide tickets enough or the Board of Works' punltah to provide oxygen enough for their owners. On Thursday morning the real conflict begins, with the whole Irish race for spectators. Yesterday was the last of the fine old sleepy, uneventful lotos-eating, splendidly dull days, when it was still possible to bail the apparition of Mr. Gordon, of Claremorris, on the traverseTs 1 bench for the first time as an event of importance. People had nothing better to get excited ab mt than the circumstance that that most dreadful of democrats wore kid gloves and a sparkling blue tie— that, and the condition of heal th of one of the jurors, whom those who are anxious for a collapse of the trials are watching from day to day with as affectionate anxiety as an expensive young man misht bestow on a rich and shaky old uncle. The only other remarkable item in *he day's doings was a constable, the only man of his cloth, or apparently of any oftier cloth, who ever met Mr. Nally without clinking glasses with him ; even to> Constable Kent he stood — pamphlets. All the iest was leather and prunella— that is to say, dead and buried speeches, exhumed out of shorthand notes as out of quicklime. The Crown liave been gradually descending from reporters who know a little shorthand to reporters who know less shorthand. They touched bottom yesterday with a reporter who knew no shorthand at all, but who — good, easy man — would undertake to say he had got down in longhand quite onesixth of what the speaker bad to say. A sixth might be quite as much of the proceedings of the Ballymote land meeting as deserves to be handed down to posterity ; but which sixth ? Por instance. Mr. Justice Fitzgerald chose to regard as " the wildest trash " a story from a speech of Mr. T. D. Sullivan's, at Clonmel, which the admirers of this " Mt. Soolivan" (as his lordship genially called one of the best known men in Ireland), would possibly regard as one of the neatest things in it. The half an hour's adjournment for luncheon was not another half an hour over when the Attorney-General suddenly announced that the case for the Crown was concluded, and launched us into another adjournment. Mr. Macdonogh wa.a still ill ; -would make a struggle to be down in the morning if necessary ; but begged a day's grace until Thursday, when he would be able to come out in his thousands. "I am prepared to state tti3 traveisers' case myself if necessary," said that indomitable Mr. Walker with as light a. heart as if it were an action to try a Connemara right of way ; but he begged it might not be taken out of the hands of his learned friend. The court at one acquiesced, in recognition of the vigilance with which the veteran leader has from the beginning mastered every detail of the case; and the court stands adjourned till Thursday morning (Jan. 13th) to hear what Mr. Macdonagh has to say for the" traversers.