Dublin Notes.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XV, Issue 51, 13 April 1888, Page 21

Dublin Notes.

(From the National papers.) OH Thursday, February 9, the Parliament commenced buiiness with the usual formalities, including what is called the Queen's Speech. In this Ministerial document, her Majesty is made to express satisfacti n at the result of the " careful " application of the Coercion Act in Ireland. For careful might be substituted other epithets, ■nch as stupid, blundering, brutal, and recklessly mad ; and they would more aptly describe the application of the so-called ltw of the English majority, who had no mandate from their constituents to s«ss5 «ss it. As soon as the Address had been moved md seconded, [r. Gladstone exposed the fallacy of the assurance that agrarian crime had been diminished by the operation of the Coercion Act. The real question was, had the Irish people been more reconciled to the lawt Mr. Balfour, in his reply— marked by gross insolence towards the veteran statesman— shirked Mr. Gladstone's pertinent question. The Chief Secretary prepared the figures last year to ■how that coercion was necessary. On Friday last, he furnished a cooked account to prove that coercion was succeeding. Last year his task was one of addition ; this year it was a sum in subtraction he had to work out. Mr. Morley analysed the Chief Secretary's case, and exhibited the tawdry attire in which it was presented to the House. But what will the landlords think of Mr. Balfour's boast 1 Has the diminution in crime brought the rents into their pockets f The surrender of the landlords to the Plan— not only at Bodyke and Mitcbelstown, but in other places— is convincing testimony to the failure of coercion.

The names of Pyne and Gilhooly cannot be relegated to an obscure corner in the history of these times. The session was only • day old when the one was arrested while entering the precincts of the House in the afternoon ; the other seised as he Btepped outside the boundary line , a little bejoreimidnight. They had been watched and followed on Thursday, and on Friday they were pounced upon. By An act of violence, doubly illegal, Mr. Pyne was dragged outside the precincts to be arrested. Mr. Gilhooly was surrounded by Members of Parliament, English, Scotch, and Irish, when h3 was grabbed. Although it was midnight, a large crowd collected. They vociferously cheered the prisoner and Home Rule. They fiercely groaned Balfour and coercion, and threatened to " pay them for this." For London, the demonstration was remarkable . Both hon. members were duly conveyed to Ireland to be tried — no, but to be sentenced.

The so-called trial of Mr. J. D. Pyne at Kilmacthomaa concluded Wednesday, February 15, the defendant being sentenced to three months' imprisonment. The evidence given by Constable Stundon bearing on Mr. Pyns's incriminated speech was as absurd as it was untrustworthy ; but, of course, it suited the Removables. Mr. Pyne, having given notice of appeal, vras liberated on bail, only to be Te-amsted, however, immediately afterwards, on apother charge of intimidation, which will be tried at Clonmel. Application to have the accused remanded on bail was refused on the ground that Glonn»el was the proper place where such a request should be made of the authorities. Mr. Pyne was accordingly amid the cheers of the multitude, taken off to Clonmel, via Waterford, where the Mayor, High Sheriff, and other leading citizens welcomed the political prisoner. As an instance of how the boycotting dodge ii exploited by uncanny Unionists on the other side of the Channel, we may point to a meeting held at West Wilts, where a real, live boycotted Irishman, named Tom Toole, who had come all the way from Killan, County Wexford, was trotted out on the platform in order to Bhow the friends of law and order what a howlimg pandemonium and a horribly anarchical pit Ireland had become under the despotic heel of the National League. Toole stumbled through the astounding declaration that his Bole complaint against the National League was that it reduced the rente, and thus prevented the landlords from employing him I If this be a typical specimen of the Irish Unionist pariahs whose misfortnnes are to damn Mr. Gladstone ia the eyes of the Britisk electorate, the National League could hardly do better than send a troupe of such whining imbeciles throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain as propagandists of the National creed: The "trial" of Father Stephens at Dunfanaghy concluded on Wednesday, February 15, the rev. defendant being sentenced to three months' imprisonment. Another sentence, concurrent with the preceding one, was passed on the rev. gentleman. Notice ot appeal was given and bail accepted. Father Stephens's case, like that of Father M'Fadden, points to the ignominious depths to which BalfourUrn can stoop in Ireland. M. Lane stepped outside Tullamore gaol on Tuesday, February 14, greatly reduced in strength, but faller tkan ever of the fighting spirit. Irish gaols have been and still are our best schools of patriotism. If a man goes in holding moderate views he is Bure to come out confirmed and hardened in his National convictions. The Town Commissioners, the Poor Law Guardiaas, and the National League of Tullamore gave Mr. Lane a cordial reception, and presented him with addresses. Mr. Lane dwelt upon the immense value of local bodies that are in full sympathy with the aspiration of the people. As long, he said, as the public boards are with the people, they ne«d not begrudge Balfour his petty revenge. In Cork, of courss, the ovation to Mr. Lane was overflowing ; businebs houses illuminated, the streets crowded with multitudes, and music filling the air. The folice, to be sure, celebrated Mr. Lane's release after their own fashion, hey smashed the band instruments, broke a poor man's arm, and inflicted several injuries upon the people. They actet' m the spirit of tbeir masters, as Mr. Parnell said in Parliament the other night. Dead, stone-dead, upon the floor of his desolate, tireless cabin Bartley Geary, 80 years of age, was found on Friday morning, Februrary 10. On the previous day he was evicted from bis little holding in Kilterrin, Connemara. The same evening he re-took

possession, having nowhere to rest his weary bones, and the following morning was found a corpse. Poor old creature, his eviction was indeed a sentence of death, surely and swiftly carried out. By another . correspondent the story is differently told, but the result is all the same. The evictor is stated to be a Mrs. Foreman, of Wigan, Lancashire, and very probably she is an exemplary Christian. In a speech delivered at Dalkey on Sunday, February 12, Mr. Michael Davitt replied to the recent boastful utterances of Balfour. Mr. Davitt brought the Chief Secretary to task for manipulating crims statistics for his own immediate ends and purposes. When Mr. Balfour wanted a Crimes Act, for instance, he exaggerated such statistics. Now, whenheiwishei to show wbat his Coercion Act has done.be wilfully minimises them. At the introduction of the Crimes Act, continued the speaker, everything which constabulary imagination could class under the term of " agrarian crime " was trotted oat by Mr. Balfour in order to make good bis case for exceptional legislation. Threatening letters were included in the returns of agrarian outrages. But now, when the same " statesman " wants to prove that agrarian crime has diminished, he deals with threatening letters as if they ceased to be offences within the meaning of bis coeroionist polioy. Ireland's admiration of Mr. Blant's noble character will be intensified by the perusal of his cross-examination. Mr, Blant's action for assault against Mr. Byrne. 8.M., was opened in the Court of Exchequer on Saturday, February 11. The plaintiff, dressed io his prison- clothes, w&s brought into conrt amidst the plaudits of the people assembled. After his direct examination he was taken in hands by the notorious Castle back, Attorney-General Pether the Packer. At the very start the coarse brutality of the Packer broke out in a boarsa laugh at Mr. Blunts intimation that, his eyesight having suffered in prison, he could not read small print. Counsel for the plaintiff having protested against Pother's vulgar contempt, the creature apologised to Mr. Blunt. Mr. Blunts uncompromising firmness was splendidly elicited in his cross-examination. Pether thought he had him when he asked did he protest against Mr. O'Brien's burning of the proclamation f • No, certainly not. A proclamation ia not a valid document ; it is not a crime to burn a proclamation, though it emanated from a Tice* roy." Pether had mistaken his man. Mr. Blunt is not a milkflop nor a half-hearted defender of public liberty. Asked did he not think it his duty to protest against the burning of the proclamation, he answered, " Most distinctly not." During the rest of the examination the Packer referred to Woodford as a " black spot," upon which Mr. Blunt remarked ; "lam very fond of the people of Woodford. I consider it a very bright spot. It is bright for their patriotism." Pether was staggered by these frank assertions, and then showed his irritation in offensive remarks. Bat there was more in store for him. Replying to further questions , Mr. Blunt said he felt no indignatiom at the assaults on the police during one of Clanricarde's evictions, and if the defenders of their homes threw stones at the police he would not feel any indignation. After this cross-examination Mr. Blunt rises higher, if possible, in the estimation of the Irish race. Not merely by reason of the great constitutional questions involved is the great trial of such deadly daager to the Executive. It exhibited their meaaness and malignity as nothing else could. The entreaty to Mr. Blunt to wear his own clothes during the trial was well worthy of the firm and rtsolute Executive, which would have stripped him stark naked, and left him to famish on bread and water in * stone-paved cell if he claimed to wear them in Gal way. If the rule was imperative in the prison in Galway, it was equally im« perative in the Four Courts of Dublin. But the Government shrunk from the open exhibition of their meanness and malignity, which so disgusted the public in the case of Mr. Sheehy, M.P., and led to the revision of the sentence by the County Court. Truly it was not a spectacle to promste reverence for law and order to see the true-hearted Englishman, whose crime was sympathy with the poor and the oppressed, marched through the Hall of the Four Courts in the garb of a felon amid the ringing cheers of his admirers who filled the place. On Thursday, February 9, the handsome theatre of the Ursnhne Schools at Thurlea presented attractions which we could wish to see more frequently taken advantage of in this country. Amateur theatricals and a very fine selection of Irish airs, admirably rendered by a bevy of beautiful Tipperary girls, formed a literary and musical treat worthy of the record of the Rock of Cashel itself. The Archbishop, in the speech which he delivered on this occasion, laughed to scorn the idea that Christian education has suffered, or is suffering, from the want of State patronage. An equal absurdity, in his Grace's eyes, is the notion that we should go down on bended knees and ask the Tories to build and endow a University for us. Dr. Croke very aptly observed that, as an old educationist who had experiences of foreign as well v ot home schools, he found as substantial a literary and a better religious education in our Catholic colleges and our conventual institutions than in the endowed establishments of any other country on the face of the globe. Despite the lack of pecuniary assistance, religion and literature did not suffer in our Irish Catholic schools. " They do not suffer," continued his Grace in his characteristically virile style, "because we teach the rising generation that national liberty is the inalienable property of man ,- that we Irish have been long and wrongfully deprived of it ; and that now, when the blood of the Gelt is up, and we have a host of influential friends to support us in the struggle, we shall never cease to agitate— come what may — until we have recovered our lost rights, and aecu ed for Irishmen the uncontrolled management of pnrely Irish affairs." His Grace, in conclusion, said that the voluntary principle may be the very best means of securing i fflciency in our Catholic schools. Dr Croke s manly and independent declaration on the subject is aa appropriate answer to the Unionist intriguers in Borne, who would have people imagine that a sop such as a Catholic University would be ape to satisfy the cravings of the Irish Cerberus. No such red-herring will ever tempt us to deviate one hair's breadth >rom the path that leads to the goal of our national aspirations. Mitchelstown is the last victory (nntil the next), and, we are inclined to think, toe greatest victory yet achieved under the Plan of

Campaign. . Lady Kingston's advisers have surrendered on her, behalf ---surrender absolute and complete l . 'All that was olaimed adder the Flan of Campaign was unconditionally granted. Many valuable concessions not Bet down in the Plan programme were also granted. Mr. William O'Brien has saved the Kingston tenantry. An effort was made to basely defraud tbe tenant-leaseholders of theii prospective rights under the latest Land Act. Mr. O'Brien saw the dodge and defeated it. By bis interposition he himself get 9 three months? on the plank-bed. But six hundred tenant-leassbolders were, saved from the roadside/ Mr. O'Brien is the last' man living to complain of the consummation. What a fine, ambiguous phrase that is :— " Calculated to promote •breach of tbe peace." Any meeting is calculated to provoke a breach of the peace if the police hare orders to break the people* skulls as a preliminary. No police, no disturbance, is the universal role in Irish assemblies. The Castle authorities act on it themselves. They did not want a tow at Mr. Shaw-Lefevre's meeting. They kept the police away, and there was none. Foremost amongst the testimonials to tbe succsss of the meeting was that of the Most Tile the Marqui? of Olanricarde, through hir mouthpiece, Mr. Tener. The day the meeting was held he raised his offer of four per cent, on the arrears to twenty per cent. The offer is Valuable as indicating the progress of bis education, not in any way as affording a basis of settlement. The badger is being gradually and gently drawn more and more out of his hole. Even Pether the Packer's thick bide was pijarced by The MacDermot's taunt — " Why did yon not suppress Mr. Bhaw-Lefe>re's meeting?" He is there to do the dirty work of the Castle, and he' did it. Be defended his master by a lie — by a lie transparently false and grotesquely stupid. ' Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, he said, " took good care to send his emissaries to the Caßtle promising to be of good behaviour, and he pledged himself 'to it." It did! not need Mr. Lefevre's prompt and emphatic contradiction to stamp this braien statement as a falsehood. Mr. Dickson, at whom Pether pointed, supplements Mr. Shaw-Lefevre's telegram in a very outspoken letter. He writes to say that " Mr. Shaw-Lefevre sent no emissary tq the Castle,, and the statement of the Attorney- General is a most audacious falsehood." He himself called without the knowledge of Mr. Shaw-Lefevre to warn Sir West Bidgeway of the dangerous consequences of suppressing the meeting. On tkis slender foundation Pether'a stupendous He was erected.