Dublin Notes.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 43, 14 February 1890, Page 9

Dublin Notes.

(From the National papers.)

Oub anticipations anent the probable ending of the inquiry into the murder of the boy Heffernan have been borne out to the letter. L,ast week the bogus thing was played out. The two Removables £ h0 P r ff' ded 0V L er the P lay did P^cisely what their paymasters in tbe Castle sent them there to do. They found that Disirict-Inspector Carter had acted with great forbearance on the occasion of the snooting and that Constable Tuohy did nothing unlawful in shooting without hesitation when he was ordered so to do. Consequently the informations which tbe Crown pretended it wanted in the cabe were refused. People in Ireland have grown so much accustomed to this sort of justice, when only the lives of mere civilians are concerned, that they have lost all faculty of wonder at it. Furtaermore, their contempt for the vile system is already so deep and intense that there is no possibility of adding to its force or sincerity. • j, M pchester has been the scene of a gathering of Liberals which isdestmed to have much to do in shaping the future of the country. The annual meeting of the National Liberal Federation began there on Monday, and it was made memorable by the appearance of the great Liberal chief, and the wonderful figure he exhibited all through the protrac/ed and fatiguing public sittings and discussions. On the verge of his eightieth year, this wonderful old statesman and orator plunged into the business of the platform and the council-table with all the ardour end energy of a man of thirty-five. Several speeches were delivered by Mr. Gladstone, in the course of which he dealt luminously with every topic now engaging the attention of the Liberal party. But the chief pronouncement was that which waß delivered on Tuesday evening in the famous Free Trade Hall, which was packed to suffocation. The theme of this from end to end was Ireland. The Union, hg proved by a series of convincing arguments and facts, bad been a dismal failure, instead of the success which the Liberal-Unionists pretend to believe it has been. It has failed to make Ireland either loyal, prosperous, or contented— a fact which nobody in Ireland at least can have the hardihood to controvert. In the course of this historic address Mr. Gladstone denounced the conduct of the Government, with regard to the Maryborough trials, in language that will form a text for speakers for many a year. He also once more adverted to the police murders at Mitchelstown and the emergency murder at Coolgreany as crying scandals at the door of the Government. To the Plan of Campaign he also referred, and gave it as his opinion that for its starting it was the Government who were really responsible. To rectify tbe grievances of Ireland by granting her a liberal measure of Home Rule, he emphatically declared, was the first and principal plank in the Liberal platform. His address was listened to with breathless interest and enthusiasm from end to end. As a great political declarjtion it stands, perhaps, without parallel ; as a mere literary performance it was perfect and beautiful ; as a physical feat for a man of eighty, who had gone through a vast deal of public business and delivered several other weighty speeches during the preceding twenty-four hours, it is absolutely unique.

Death has taken from Mr. Balfour the services of an eminent upholder of law and order, the notorious author of the Mitchelstown mot d'ordre, " Don't hesitate to shoot." Captain Plunkett has passed away, and we in Ireland would be glad to forget that such a person played the tyrant for years over a great division of the country, but we are not allowed to forget him. His too diligent friend? will not cease raking up his hated memory and misdeeds, and flinging the most outrageous untruths about him in the face of an indignant public. In commenting on his death last Saturday, that singularly candid organ, the Daily Uxpra.it, complains that the agitators hounded Captain Plunkett to death— that they even tried to serve a writ upon him when it was known that he was suffering from a disease which must prove fatal in a few days. Tbe Express nev^r before attempted anything so magnificent in the way of suppression and misstatement as this. The suppression consists in the fact that the writ which was attempted to be served upon their departed idol was one in a divorce suit, in which he had been named as co-respon-dent ; and the misstatement in the allegation that it was the agitators who had attempted to get this document served. If the officers of tbe law or legal employees are to be classed as agitators, then matters are getting decidedly mixed. It is painful to have to refer to such a subject now that the man has gone to his account ; but the mistaken zeal of the Coercionists will not even allow us to treat his misdeeds while living with indifference now that he is no more. From the light thrown upon the doings of the interesting Neill family it might have been thought that the public had seen the very lowest type of bailiff savagery, but a re jent occurrence would seem to show that the lowermost level had not been touched in their case. A notorious bailiff named Denis Brennan, who had long been obnoxious in the district around BaDtry, came to bis doom there last week (ending December 27), and the" hand which sent him to his account, as all the facts go to show, was tbat of his own son. The narrative of the murder, as told by eye-witnesses and others who forcibly held the parricide, took his revolver from him, and prevented him from still further wreaking bis unnatural and drunken hate upon his parent's body after the death-blow had been given, is a most blood-curdling and sickening tale. The system of which such men are outcome is to blame for their brutality, for under it all the instincts of humanity are trampled under foot, and human beings are taught to look upon their fellow-creaturea as vile things, fit only to be flung into ditches to rot and die. But, shocking as this tale of bailiff life in Ireland is, there is a feature in connection with it which throws a startling light upon the motives and the modes of the rnle under which we live. When the police were apprised of the tragedy, they jumped to the conclusion that it must be an agrarian crime. Plenty of evidence to the contrary was at once forthcoming, but the police had no wish to receive it, and discouraged every offer

of help to bring the murderer to justice. They even went bo far as to keep in custody for some time a couple of respectable young farmers who bad grappled with the parricide and prevented him from drawing his revolver. This incident gives one a good idea of the state of mind which a Coercion regime is capable of inducing in a force whose function ought to be to detect crime and hunt down criminals, rather than harry the people into committing crime. Marvellous, marvellous, and again most marvellous is the steadfast courage with which gallant Tipperary faces the savage vengeance of the bifflod exterminator Smith-Barry. These are the mci to work out a people's deliverance. This is ihe stuff of which a great nation is made : Men who know their rights, and will at aDy cost maintain them. The scenes in Tipperary are in no way distinguished from savage warfare save that the fierce excitement of battle might offer some excuse for the outrages there perpetrated in wanton malice. The houses are deliberately wrecked, the traders driven from their homes, and so far aa the matter rests with Smith- Barry and his abettor, Mr. Balfour, tbe resolve is plain to make a howling wilderness of the pretty, bußy, thriving town of Tipperary, the most prosperous in Ireland of its size. All for what ? The motive of this savage warfare must never be forgotten to this amateur exterminator, who for the mere love of "this devil's work," wantonly interferes on other men's property to prevent peace end promote eviction. He is deliberately destroying the town of Tipperary rather than allow Mr. Ponsonby and his tenants 1o come to terms or forego the delightful privilege of exterminating them.

Mr. O'Brien Dalton is the foremost leader in this great movement, and on him special vengeance is to be wreaked. He never flinched for a moment from bis principles. He has parted with his magnificent shop and square of handsome buildings, erected by his father at a cost of £500©, rather than, even by payment of £6 10a ground rent, aid the head of the Eviction Syndicate in making desolate the homes of the wretched tenantry on the Ponsonby estate. One example of self-sacrifice such as this is sufficient to encourage an entire people ; but Mr. O'Brien Dalton is not alone : what he has done the other Tipperary tenants do, and are prepared to do.

Mr. H. Wiggin, the Coercionist representative cf the Houndsworth Division of Staffordshire, has announced his intention of resigning bin position and not seeking re-election. At the election of 1885 he kept the seat from the Conservative by a majority of over three thousand. In the hurry and shock of tbe election of 1886 he was carried in unopposed as an anti-Home Ruler. But his position as a Coercionist in a strong Liberal constituency has gradually grown so intolerable that he feels constrained to resign. He is not the only one of the Liberal Coercionists that meditate suicide to escape drowing. In social circles Bir Henry James makes no secret of hia intention of not seeking re-election for Bury. He will, at the general election, he declares, start on a tour round the world, and return in a year or so to live at his ease on the vast fortune he has accumulated at his profession. No one now seriously questions the result of the next general election. The time is the only thing in dispute.

A charming illustration the method of the " gentlemen "of the party of reason and intelligence which has nothing to fear from open discussion, was afforded in the speech of Mr. G. S. Lane-Fox, a chancellor of the Primrose League, at a Lodge meeting at Barley Mow, Droitwich. He is reported in the Worcester Times to have said, alluding to the visit of Mr. Dillon to Australia :— " He would tell them the service that the Primrose League had been doing in this connection. They had sent out an emissary to follow Mr. Dillon about Australia wherever he went, to prevent him obtaining halls for the purpese of meetings, and he had been so successful that Mr. Dillon had not been able to obtain any large halls, but had been obliged to put np with schoolrooms and temperance halls. This emissary had cost the League £850, but it had been money well spent, and had done an immense amount of good in Australia " We know that no one succeeded in preventing Mr. Dillon from obtaining large halls for his meetings in Anetralia. We doubt if any attempt to do so was seriously made. But we are pretty certain the money was drawn for the purpose from the coffers of the Primrose League. In the annals of the Primrose League, however, one fact to two lies is a larger percentage of truth than U6ual.

The " Forger is at dynamite agaiu. The blood and thunder article in Monday's (December 9) issue was meant for Mr. Parnell's announced appearance at Nottingham, as the forged letters were con fesselly intended to influence the second reading of ihe Coercion Act. Tbe intense eagerness with which the appearance of the Ir:sh leader was looked forward to through the Three Kingdoms, and the deep and widespread regret with which the news of his sudden indisposition was received, are, indeed, high complimeuts to his power, position, and popularity. But the malignant and impotent fury of the '• Forger" is, perhaps, the highest compliment of all. It would be foolish to examine minutely the thri.lia^ narrative of the infernHl maciine on the Clanricarde estate. In^ Mr. Stephenson's''New Arabian Nights," under the heading of "The Dynamitard," will be found many similar interesting anecdotes of diabolic machines that obstinately refused to no off. The machine was of a peculiarly honible description. It would infallibly have blown the whole evicting party of that amiaole uobleman, Lord Clanricarde into the air— if it had exploded. The story is based on the substantial grounds of a communication of an anonymous correspondent to the Most Vile the Marquis of Clanricarde. It reads like tle seqael of the tale by which tioland Ponsonby Pigott deludhered the innocent Houston. Lord Clanricarde wriU 8 that his informant has written as follows :—" Tne house. No. ;i, when list examined in June, was found vacant, door not locked, but open, and used as a shelter for cattle. Finding it locked now, X detached the luck, pushed the duor open, and he and I, and others went inside. The house was empty, but a pile of stones was heaped up in the di orwav ; some of these had been displaced by the door when opened, and the top of a box six inches square was ee.sa ernbedriud in a barrel containing 2olbs of 'excellent gunpowder,' a bcttlu full of sulphuric acid, and other explosives, as well as a number of cieionators, and the blade of a knife (apparently) with a string

attached by a coil of string to the door, the machine being so I arranged as to be liable to explode in two ways." Why, this, to our mind, is even finer than Pigott's story of the unknown man with the black bag full of criminating letters in the mysterious house in Paris. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to note that an infernal machine aa wall as a letter can be forged . The " Forger " supplies the local colouring .in a fashion of its own. It boldly identifies the house No. 3, the disused cattle-shed, as the residence of Mr. M'Dermott, the principal tenant in the Woodford district, and it graphically depicts the people (who, at this eviction, as at all others, were kept outside the wide cordon of police) pushing and shoving round the doors of all the other houses, in order to emphasise dramatically their absence from the scene of the expected explosion. We have wasted too much time already on this mare's nest and its gunpowder egg. We pass from it with the observation that, though the discovery seems made in June last, the " Forger " does not think it worth while to exploit it until December. Tnank God, th« time is past when this wild, malignant farrago of absurdities, in which it is vaguely hinted that Father M'Fadden, Camn Keller, Mr. Parnell, and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre are all involved in one vast dynamite conspiracy has any more effect than the beating of a broken drum. The episode of the forged letters has destroyed the last vestige of British faith in the honesty of the " Forger." Its wild ravings of impotent malice no longer obtain bolief or demand reply. The conventions go on with a success which would seem monotonous, were it not that some new incident transpires at each recurring one. Three more have been held within the past few days : Longford, Gal way, and Dublin. At the Co. Galway gathering, the feature of the day's proceedings was the speech of Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, M.P., who had been for some time following up, on the Ponsonby and Coolgreany estates, the train of inquiry which he some time ago carried out with regard to the Clanricarde property. This was the first time that any English representative spoke at a Convention of the new League, and from the tone of Mr. Shaw-Lefevre'a address it may be hoped that it may not be the last, so far as the right hon. gentleman is concerned ; for his speech was a distinctly high-toned and hortatory one. The Co. Dublin Convention, which was held recently, at the Rotundo, was graced by the presence of Archbishop Walsh, who delivered an address full of wise warning to the tenantfarmers against any hasty action under the purchase clauses of the Ashbourne Act. The Lord Mayor of Dublin, who opened the first Convention, at Tipperary, presided at the Metropolitan gathering.— Needless to say he played his part in the important drama in a style which left nothing to be desired.

The most interesting controversy of these days in connection with the land struggle, is that which has arisen over the Coolgreany estate. An article describing the actual position of the "planted" domain, showing the bogus character of the " planters," and graphically depicting the desolation which has overtaken the estate, appeared in the Freeman's Journal from the pen of a " special commissioner." Captain Hamilton at once tackled these statements, and audaciously challanged the Freeman on the subject, denounced the whole article as a Up, and dared it to send down " a trustworthy representative " to go over the whole estate with him and investigate the case on the spot. The Freeman, while fully satisfied of the reliability of their first commissioner, determined to pick up this gage of battle, and accordingly Mr. E. D. Gray, accompanied by an experienced member of the reporting staff, went down to Coolgreany, met the gallant Captain, and proceeded to interview and investigate as desired. The whole day was spent in this queer quest ; and the result was not only a demonstration of the thorough accuracy of its special commissioner's story, save in one or two very minor details, but an elucidation of the interesting fact that the bogus '' planters" had been enabled to stock their farms, so far as they were stocked, by means of money advanced, at interest, by Messrs. T. W. Russell and Co , per Messrs. Dudgeon and Emeisjo, and that Captain Hamilton had in many cases given the farms free for a year in order to get the " planters '' to enter on them. Some of the "' planters thcmselven told the Freeman representatives that there was no chance of their being able to mane the rent off the land, even with all the •• ad/antagea " given them. No fact was ever moie clearly established than the bogus nature of the Coolgreauy " plantation."