Dublin Notes.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 8, 14 June 1889, Page 21

Dublin Notes.

(From the National papers.)

Although Father Mathew, the great Apostle of Temperance, was >not a Corkonian, the people of Cork, not without good reason, are taking the most active steps to commemorate his anniversary, which occurs on the 10th of October next year. There is a church in that city sacred to his memory. He got, it erected, in such shape as it is, and laboured there for many years for the salvation of souls and the reclamation of people from the evil h.ibit of excess in drink. Great and comprehensive steps are being taken by the Cork people to make bis centenary subserve the dual purpose of celebrating bis fame and completing the ecclesiastical ptructure which ii linked with it in Cork. A powerful committee has been formed for the purposa. They make an appeal not only to Cork people, but to Irishmen urbi et orbi, to aid them in the commendable duty. We take it on ourselves to say that they will not plead to deaf ears.

The atrocity of Glenbeigh has been repeated very close to Dublin ; and again tha bayonets of the Crown protect the agents of plunder and destruction. No land in all wide Europe could show a eight like that upon which the moon looked down on Thursday night last week. The sky which bangs over the plain of Kildare was reddened for miles by the flames of the evicted tenants' houses, set ablaze by the incendiaries under the command of Agent Routledge. In the dead of night, and under the protecting steel of our benign Government, this admirable exemplar of British rule sneakei out from Newbridge and got his petroleum cans to work for the destruction of the humble homes which the tenantry of Mr. De Penthony O'Kelly and their forefathers bad built. The mattock and the crowbar came in to finish what the torch had left undone, and before daybreak the place which a few months back was a peaceful and sightly piece of landscape was a hideous and smoking desert. The lesson is a bitcer one, but it will not be lost on the tenantry of Ireland. Landlordism such as Mr. De Penthony O'Kelly's is war to the knife ; and the tenantry hold the sinews of that war. Let them remember that.

A striking illustration of what boycotting means was furnished at Newbridge. We commend it strongly to the consideration of our " moderate " friends who are disposed to be squeamish on the subject. One of the ruffians who was engaged in the moonlight outrage in the village was next day paraded through the shops of the town by the police, and the shop-keepers called upon, under penalty of a coercion prosecution, to supply his wants, of which drink, as might be expected, formed a large item, at his own prices. The night before this wretch bad been engaged in burning down their neighbours' houses ; the next nigrnt he might be engaged in burning down their own ; yet it is their moral duty, so the Coercionists argue, to keep shops open for his comfort and convenience. The refusal to supply him is the horrible crime of boycotting, which is so earnestly denounced by people who have no conception of the meaning of the word which the I.L.P.D. liars try to persuade English voters means shooting in the legs.

On the whole, we are inclined to think that Pigott was a les9 mean and despicable scoundrel than bis accomplice, Houston. Pigott had, at least, the grace to blow his brains out. He was not altogether impervious to shame and disgrace. But Houston seems jauuti y unconscious of his own infamy. He has the sublime audacity to request to be cros--examined, as if cross-examination could reveal any facts more damning than those which are from his own compelled confession already known to the public. He hired Pigott with money, borrowed from men whom be falsely described as his political friends, to procure the forged letters. After the inquiry commenced, and before he got into the box, he burned the letters which would reveal their common guilt, including the letter in which Pigott confessed himself a scoundrel, a copy of which Sir Wretched Fibster falsely declaied he handed to Sir Charles Russell before Pigott was put into the box. All thid the public knows, aad it desires to know no more of him. The auuacity of the fellow is astounding. He clamour* to be cross-examined to clear his character, forsooth, when he confesses that be has with his own hands destroyed the damning documents with whicti he might have been confronted. His own oath a3 to hi 9 own innocence would truly be a most valuable commodity.

Is there any sense or intolligenca left in the people to whose hands is entrusted ihe administration of coercion in Ireland, or are they simply acting lo a cue furnished them by the Oastle ? On no ground of Bt.nse can the conduct of the police in Wexford who have been charged with the harrying of Fathers Clarke and Farrelly be explained. 'J heir behaviour towards these reverend gentlemen, who never sbirued the consequences of their action with respect to the quairel between the buttei -factor O'Connor and his tenants, bears no interpretation but that of a deliberate policy of provocation. They attacked Father Farrelly's rebidence, broke into it, just as though he were a meie pickpurse fleeing from justice, and emashed and demolished everything which ttooa in their way, and conducted themselves generally in a manner which would not discredit the reputation of Bashi-Bazjuks. After the a'tack upon his dwelling, Father FarreHy went to ttie p 'lice barrack, accompioied by bis padsh priest, Father Dunph}, ami several other prominent gentlemen, and gave himself up. A large number of people weot along with the prices, and when the surrender was completed ihe police turned out and batonel everybody upon whom they could lay their hands. It would bo an interesting iuquiiy, how many Orange policemen were imported into Aiklow to penorm this nasty job. Ihe way in wnich the discreditable bufciuess was conducted from start to fhnisn suggests a design of malice prepense and a pot to endanger the public peace. That there was noi |^loody riot on the occasion is a fact for which the Government cannot, claim the credif, but is due 10 the forbearance of the people and tne wife counsels cf their beloved priests.

" Mercenary and stilish." These are the reproaches most frequently hurled at the heady o! the Irish members by the Pigottists, the sole object of whose existence is a long pull, and a strong pull

nad a pull together at the public purse. It was on this theme the immaculate pen of Pigott ran the I.L.P.U. for years before the final explosion. Let us see how it stands. Just two illustrations. First for greed : The Lord Mayor of Dublin is not a rich man. Talents as brilliant as his and work as hard would have won him a aplendid competency in any other careei. As an Irißh patriot they have earned him poverty and abase. The Lord Mayor of Dublin extorted £250 damages from a slanderous Coercion print, the Leeds Daily News, which, following in the track of its big brother, th 3 " Forger," foully libelled him. The money goes in equal shares to the poor of Dublin and Belfast. It is a curious way for avarice to dreplay itself. Again, the selfish William O'Brien and Edward Harrington are offered their liberty by the Forgeries' Commission on the terms that they will for the time being refrain from Irish politics. Imprisonment under the Balfour regime is not a pleasant thing, as the recent incident regarding Mr. Harrington goes to prove. Many earnest and honest Nationalists thought that Mr. Harrington and Mr. O'Brien might fairly tako their liberty on the terms offered. They refused point-blank. They preferred the gaol to anything that even malice might suggest as a compromise of principle. This may be called Quixotic, perhaps, but hardly selfish. The prosecution of Fathers Cunningham and Morris, of the Silvermines (County Tipperary), for venturing to criticise a particularly venomous little specimen of the skinflint agent, one Toler Gatvey, is just the thing that was necessary to arouse the dormant spirit of the premier county. On Friday Newport witnessed a scene familiar enough in other parts of Ireland, but now somewhat strange to North Tipperary eyes — the insolent armed force, the cavalry, infantry, baton-flourishing police, the Ceercion Court, the Removable Magistrates, and the sogga/rth aroon in the dock. The hosts of brawny mountaineers who rode down on their shaggy colts from Keeper and Cl&imalths, must have looked with mingied feelings on this unwonted sight. It taught them, like so many Rip Van Winkles how long " the men of Tipperary " have been asleep. For this lesson, which has been taken home and inwardly digested by that splendid race of men who have ever been the admiration of their country and the terror of her foes, we surely have a right to be thankful to Mr. Balfour. But this ia not all. As if to lay us under heavier obligations, hia Removables have adjourned the case to Nenagh, to the capital of the Riding, where on Tueaiay next the same scandalous scene will be re-enacted, and the people of North Tipperary will have an opportunity of showing, by one of these great demonstrations for which the Premier county is pre-eminent, what it is to outrage the feelings and and arouse the might of gallant Tipperary. Mr. Balfour is excelling himself as a priest-hunter. He ib giving the Orangemen a run after the soggarths north, south, east, and west. Tbis is the first time he has laid hands on a priest in Tipperary. Mr. Toler Garvey has called on him for a hunt and a quarry, and he has promptly responded with a pair of victims. The people of Tipperary will show that they can love the priests who fight battles as well as the people of any other county of Ireland, and, without violence, without crime, without injuring a hair of an enemy's head, they will be able to make it plain to the rack-renters and Coercionists that neither priest-hunting nor evicting is a paying game in the Premier County. A well-behaved, ordinary criminal is entitled as of right to a visit when be has completed three months of bis term. This, the ri^ht of the pick-pocket and the burghr, was denied to Mr. Edward Harrington, M.P. His brother and wife and child, who came to visit him after his three months' imprisonment, were stopped at the outer gate of the prison. Who can say after that there is no distinction between ordinary and political criminals? The brother, Mr. T. Harrington, M.P., gives a brief unadorned description of the incident more moving than the most vigorous comment. Just listen to the pretext the Governor and the Prisons Board have taken for denying Mr. E. Harrington the precious privilege accorde l to the vilest criminal. The Forgeries' Commission has directed that he should be allowed time to prepare his defence. He cannot read and write and pick oakum or break stones at the same time. But he is a criminal senter cc Ito hard labour. If his daily task of hard labour is not accomplished the authorities are entitled to dock his privileges, and they have done it. Jast fancy how the poor fellow most have looked forward during the dreary three months of his imprisonment to that one glimpsa of sunshine to the sight of his wife's face and the music of her voice and the innocent prattle of his little ones to b« cheated of it at last on this miserable pretext. If he had knowa it, we fancy the temptation would have been strong to have struck haril to the oakumpicking and tke stone-breaking and let the Forgeries' Commission go to i be deuce. The Prisons Board, wired to by Mr. T. Harrington on the subject, could not afford a sixpenny telegram in reply. They intimated they would write to the governor. Brave Balfour, questioned in the House of Commons, has no information on the subject.

America scourges the calumniators with her coutempt. "Be hold ! " she cries, " I bestow on this man whom you revile a high place in my Government. Whom I honour, any nation in the world may ba proud to honour. England's representative at Chili muat assume respectful de'erence to the mm whom the little gang of peijurers are hired by England's Government to traduce- How absurd sounds now all this foolish bother about Mr. Patrick Egan coming across to present himself at the Forgeries Commission for examination. What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba that he siould stir one stwp out of his way? The good opinion of the Pigotist pa.rty, and their magnanimous compunc ion for their exploded calumnies, is a valuable commodity truly. But the man whom America graces with her coufidence is not likely to come acros3 th 9 ocean for the pleasure o£ being insulted by the " pettifogging and cozening " knave, Sir Wretched Fibster, and the chan:o of getting that certificate of innocence frem JudgC9 Hannen, Smith, an^i Hay, whoia proper destinition Mr. Healy rightly described as the back kitchdu grate. There is no special pleasure in the prospect of being committed, on a charge of murder by two of Mr. Balfour's Removables, aud convicted by an Or mge jury of Pether's packing". He has been accused, it ia said, and should be anxious to c ear his character. Mr. Parnell has cleared his character, and his calumniators still bssely insinuate

their slanders. Father McPadden, the nubleat and purest priest in Ireland, has been not merely accused, but committed on a charge of murder. That is the answer. The man whom America delights to honour can well afford to treat the slanders of tbe howling pack of Ooercionists with tbe most supreme contempt. The good old Penal days are being rapidly revived in Ireland, and the priest-hunts are grown as common as fox-hunts. The priest. huntera had a splendid time of it last weHc. Father McFadden, in the county of Donegal, was committed by the Removables on a charge of murder so grotesque that the prosecuting caunsel dare not ask for a committal, Father Farrelly's house, in the county of Wicklow, was broken into with violence and gutted, on tbe mere pretence of searching for the rev. Coercion criminal. When, to prevent further raids, he went to surrender hinnelf at the police-barrack he was brutally assaulted. Father John Maher, in the count/ of Kildare, was summoned before the Removables for daring to take the part of the evicted tenants against the Most Noble and Viceregal exterminator the Marquis of Lansdowne, and will get his sentence in due course. In the county of Tipperary, Father Michael Morris, of Newport, and Father John Cunningham, of Silvermines, are dragged into a Coercion court for attending a public meeting to protest against the extortion of Mr. Toler R Garvey, of Birr, the agent of Mr. Lalor. The Removables have not yet announce! the terms of imprisonment the Castle has decided on. Not a bad week's work this for the Coercionists. The priest-hunters of the Penal days hardly did better, though they employed blood-hounds where Mr. Balfour employs Removable Magistrates. We are inclined to think the blood-hounds were the more respectable brutes of the two, if we are to judge from the Roche and Segrave standard. Segra^e, it will be remembered, was the dog that ran down Father Kennedy. From the report of the Scotch Crofters' Cjmmißßion, which has just bean issued, there are some facts obtainable which shed a light upon the cause of the tranquility wh'ch now reigns in the western islands. To put the matter in a nutshell, landlord exaction and unreasonableness have been effectually stopped by the operation of this Commission — so far as it has been enabled to apply its machinery. Arrears, and the demand for irrec werable arrears, were the whole causes of the late troubles in the Scotch islands and in the Gaelic-speaking mainland districts. They are the f ruitfnl source of disturbance here ; and they will continue to be the source of disturbance until we have some legal machinery for dealing with them similar to the Crofters' Commission. The Commissioners report aome very sweeping reductions in rent, as well as a wholesale extinction of arrears. In the county of Caithness they dealt with 27 holdings, the landlords' rent for which came to a total of £346. It was reduced to £169 — a reduction of over 51 per cent. In Orkney they considered 443 casps, and reduced the rents oq an average over 30 percent. They reduced it to £1,519. In Inverness-shire the average reduction excteded 31 per cent. The average reduction in tbe whole of the arrears dealt with by the Commissioners was 68 per cent. In the county of Ross and Cromarty nearly ten thousand pounds were swept away— a reduction of 74 per cent. In Orkney nearly £2,300 was wiped out — an average reduction of 55 per cent. la Caithness the rrductiou averaged 7-i per cent. Vase as these reductions are, they were perfectly uectssaiy to enable the tenants to live, la Ireland it is exactly the same case, with this difference, that the populition affected by ai rears of 2xtortionate rents is infinitely larger.