THE STATE TRIALS IN IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VIII, Issue 415, 25 March 1881, Page 19

THE STATE TRIALS IN IRELAND.

The State trials were a farce almost from, the beginning. It was clear at the start that the government had no case. It tried tv make one, but broke down in the first attempt. All Ireland could not help laughing at the absurd figure that the prosecution was obliged to cut. The end was Been from the moment the malignant Chief Justice May was compplled, by public opinion, to withdraw from the Bench. It would be the same, however, if May had presided instead of Fitsgerald, who disgraced a good name by a charge as vindictive and indecent as the language for which May was forced to retire. It was not the court, but the jury, that held the issue in its hands, and the jury proved honest and sound. The air of burlesque about the whole business was heightened by the conduct of the men on trial. Instead of sitting in fear and trembling in the Dublin court while the trial w«nt on, they deliberately shook its dust from their feet and went off to London to bother Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Foster with obstruction. The proceedings i a Dublin did not seem to interest them at all. They were told by the Government newspapers that if they attempted to leave Ireland during the trials they would certainly be arrested. But they did leave Ireland, and no one spoke of arresting them. It was a very odd thing indeed — rather a droll one — to see men who were on trial for " political offences " turning their backs on the court and going off to plague, with Patliamentary tactics, the very Ministers who had ordered them to the Bar. The break-down of the Government was complete, when in order to prevent the travelers from proving the crimes of the landlords, it found itself obliged to abandon the principal count in the indictment. That settled the whole case. The Government did nol dare to face the facts. Only one result could then be expected, and it came just as soon as the jury had an opportunity to take the case in band. What Judge Fitzgerald said about Irishmen in America did not ■ help his side in the jury room. We say his side, because he spoke as ! a prosecutor rather than a judge. His attack on the American Irish was not only entirely out of place, as well as entirely unjust, but it probably made the jury see more clearly the spirit in which the Government was acting. His awn malice was shown in a special way when he refused to detain the jury for the mgbt, after satisfying himself that the on ly verdict that could po.«sibly be reached would be one iof acquittal. If instead of standing ten for acquittal and two for i conviction, the jury had stood ten for conviction and two for acquittal 1 it is pretty certain that Judge Fitzgerald would have tried a little • harder to force an agreement. i The Irish in America know what they are doing. They have no i thought of breaking any American law, but they have a Very firm i thought of giving their countrymen at home all the aid in their power, within the law. The fiasco at Dublin is the greatest set back that Gladstone, Forster & Co. have yet received in their efforts to make English lair override common justice in Ireland. It is a humiliating defeat, under which they should smart as under the stings of a lash. The result of the trials cannot do otherwise than encourage the people in the determination to keep on striking till the chain of landlordism is broken. It affords a hope, besides, that the time for so-called State trials in Ireland is very nearly expired, if not wholly so. — Pilot,