Sates.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 5, 30 May 1890, Page 21

Sates.

(From the National papers.) New TIPPEEAKY will be honoured by the presence of some distinguished visitors in Easter week, among others the Hon. Bernard Coleridge, son of Mr. Justice Coleridge, Mr. George Leveson Gawer, who is a nephew of Lord Granville's, and Mr. Spencer Balfour. There will also be a contingent from the Eighty Club. No more suitable spot could bo found in all Ireland in which to see both sides of the question — on the one hand, the indomitable spirit and heroic self-sacrifice of the people ; on the other, the fiendish work of ruthless destruction carried on in the name of British law by Irish landlordism.

The Dublin Poor Law elections this year have been signalised by a great increase in the Nationalist and Catholic vote. No fewer than five Beats have been won ; and two Nationalists are to sit tor the forthcoming year as the representatives of the Filzwilliam Ward at the South Dublin Board of Guardians. Neither a Nationalist nor a Catholic, since the Poor Law Act was passed, ever represented the Fitzwilliam Ward before. The victory represents the higb tide of national feeling among the Dublin ratepayers. It is another sign of Mr. Bal four's success.

An old Irish prophecy, says the Daily News, declares that when an O'Doberty rules in Derry and an O'Donnell in Rapboe, Ireland will be free. Old Irish prophecies have before now been verified by events, and it is certainly curious that Dr. O'Doherty has just been consecrated Bishop of the Diocese of Derry, in St. Eugene's Cathedral, Londonderry, and that the preacher on the occasion was Dr. O'Donnell, Bishop of Raphoe.

Trial by jury— even when it is a trial of Catholics by a Protestant jury and of Nationalists by an Orange jury — is not as bad as trial by Removables. So the Carrickmacrosa boycotters, who were brought all the way from Monaghan to Derry to be tried by their political foes, inspired, exhilarated, and encouraged by Mr. Justice O'Brien, have found. Notwithstanding the ingenuity of SolicitorGeneral Atkinson and the harangues of Judge O'Brien, the packed jury who tried the Carrickmacross men disagreed on Tuesday. A oonviction may yet be secured by the methods known to jury-packers and jury bullies, but the significance of "a mere change in the administration of the law and not in the law itself "' is made plain to all men.

The devastation of Donegal ia an expression of the sentiments and opinions of the Cabinet that has framed the Land Purchase Bill. Thoße evictions have confiscated the property of the tenant in the soil. That is the aim of the Purchase Bill also. The evictions would, if the landlord had his way, put the cost of maintaining the people on their richer neighbours. That is the object of the Purchase Bill also. Up to the present Mr. Olphert has pocketed the charitable offerings of the people of Ireland and America for the relief of his tenantry as rent. Tha object of the Land Purchase Bill is to make the offerings not voluntary, but compulsory, to make the Viceroy and the tax-gatherer the collectors of them. So there is no inconsistency in Mr. Balfour's championship of the Purchase Biil and his support of Mr. Olphert.

On Friday March 28 the House of Landlords adopted the Judges' Report. Let them be excused. They have reasou to be angry with us, poor doomed impotents. There were just a couple of sentences in Lord Salisbury's speech that deserve uotice on tliis side of the Channel, Speaking of the auswer made by the Parliamentary party to those who charged them with complicity with ciime Lord Salisbury said : '■ We bave some scepticism ou this. We did not charge them with complicity in crime, ne charged them with using crime. We eaid there was a communication between the two parties which enabled the Parliamentary party to allow cr.me to go forward or reBtrain it in proportion as their political interests might require. As has been well expressed, they had their hands on the throttle-valve of crime. When tbty allowed crime to go forward it acted ; when they pressed it, crime retreated. We were unable to admit, then, that no alliance of a tacit character existed between the bodies connected with such phenomena. ' That "me" is most material to the underBtandmg of the consp racy. It is the first confession of the Tones that it was they who were behind " Parnelhsm and Crime." It is the first public association of the Government with the Times. Tbe "we " of tbe Forger a&d the "we " of her Majesty's First Minister are at length proclaimed to be oue. Tuis is the only thing worth n membering about the debate.

The two vacant Ulster seats were filled without a contest. Down is not the county on which our hopes are built for the increase of the Home Rule majority. Tyrone and Londonderry have first to be won

before we make the final assault on the stronghold of suspicion and bigotry in the north-east. Dr. Kentoul, the new member, though he is a barrister and an LL.D., plays the raw-head-and-bloody-bones as well as ever Saunderson did. He swore before high heavens at the polhng-bnoth that tbere will be a Golgotha ere Ulster submits. If there be, his cranium will n<-t he among " dead men's skulls " that will strew the plain. This valiant County Councillor is detenbed by the Pall Mall Gazette as " a fairly regular attendant at the meetings of the London Council, but be never — or hardly ever — lakes part in the debatep. He has an amiable weakness for appearing resplendent

in a gorgeous sealskin-trimmed overcoat, and from the depths of that

wondrouß garment be blandly smiles upon his fellow counc Uors what » time they fight the battles of Bettermeut, B'ackwall Tunnels, and the like." We dare say he will wear his gorgeous sealskin and his bland Bmile at the promised charge of Ulster's chivalry.

Mr. Vecey Knox is now " the hon. member fur West Ca van.

passes the title of the trusty Joseph Biggar. Well, his mccessor promises to we«r it worthily. He is the eleventh Protestant elected for an Irish c nstituency where the bigoted Catholics aie in the majority. By the Wrty, when will the Cawthulic Unionibts get a chance. Is there no corner of the small domain ot Unionism where

a place might be found for those uneasy Unionist spirits, Messrs. Quill and Sherlock ? Still wa cannot lay the blame for this exclusiveness wholly on the rampant Orangeism of the Irish Coercionists. They have enough of deadheads already — vide T. W. Russell passim ; and any addition from the ranks of the Cawtholics would increase the number. Two other contests will shortly be decided in Great Britain— in the constituencies of Carnarvon and Windsor. The former being situated in gallant little Wales should send the Unionist to the right about, although up to the present the vote of its representative has been cast for coercion. Windsor, on the other hand, ought, as Mr. T. D. Sullivan said of the Isle of Wight, to grow nothing but primroses. Not so thinks the Liberal candidate, Mr. Grenfell, who is fighting to win, and deserving victory. Even in Windsor the tide is said to be sweeping for Home Rule.

If there was any danger of the constituencies forgetting the atrocities that firm the staple record of Mr. Balfour during his reign tbey are not to be permitted to do so. Clongorey came in time for North St. Pancras ; Glasderchoo affords the cruel object-lesson to the electors of Carnarvon and Windsor. Still, there is a sign of wavering in the dealings of the brave champion of the exterminators in Donegal. Twenty-five families were evicted on Wednesday, but it was not until the laßt moment that " the forces of the Crown " were placed at the service of the e victor. The writs on two other estates were allowed to lapse, and for the first time Mr. Balfour imitated the humane policy of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. This is a sign of the times.

la the meanwhile that wonderful Tenants' Defence Fund continues to grow. When we prophesied that it would reach £60,000, we may confess it now, we mistrusted our rashness. However, thera it Btands at more than £54,000, and it i 8 quite apparent the only rash statement we could make about it is a statement that would place a limit to the self-sacrifice and determination of the people. In view of the proposal to impound a quarter of a million a year in order to create an insurance fund for the repayment of the landlord's arrears, the money is well invested by the ratepayers. It is the best " contingent guarantee " for the national credit that could be created.

The law has received another magnificent vindication. On Friday, March 28, an old woman of eighty, one of the Clongorey tenants,, her niece and her niece's husband and infant child, were seized by the agents of the law and hauled to prison for the crime of refusing to demolish the shelter erected on the old woman's farm for her fellow-tenants who had been evicted from tbeir homes. The arrest was accomplished uader a warrant issued by the County Court Judere in conformity with the law as expounded by Vice-Chancellor Chatterton. Judge Darley did not conceal his doubts as to the correctness of the judgment, for which no reason was alleged except the fact that the sheltered tenants were Campaign tenants. The warrant, moreover, has lain by since January, as its indecent cruelty was too conspicuous. Now, however, it is produced before the disgust excited by the proceedings connected with the arrest of Father Kinsella has had time to subside. Under what extraordinary plea the tenants' relatives, who were merely livirjg with her, have been arrested we cannot discern. It looks as if the illegality of the previous proceedings waa being repeated. Legal or illegal, the indecency and cruelty are the same, and they are both perpetrated at a timely moment to remind us of tbe character of the constructors and commenders of the new Land Bill.

Sir Thomas Esmonde is coming back by a French port. He waa due there on Tuesday. April 1, and in London on Thursday. Both the delegates deserve the heartiest of Irish welcomes after the work they have done during the past year. The decision which was delivered by Mr. Meldon, R.M., in Caphel court-house on Thursday, March 27, is the most extraordinary aiid most scandalous yet delivered in a Coercion Court, and that ia saying a good deil. Tbere was not a particle of evidence ag&inst Mr. Kelly. He was proved to have visited certain tenants of Mr. Smith-Barry, and to have asked one of them was be served with a writ ; and on this he is found guilty of conspiracy to compel the tenauta not to pay tbeir rents, and a sentence of four months' imprisonment with hard labour is imposed. It is an outrage — a violent outrage. The Chief Baron has to test Mr. Meldon's law, but even if his law be correct his construction of the facts is a scandal.

A Coercion Court was erected for the first time in the County Carlow, week ending March 29. The cause of the appearance of two Removables in the model county is not witbout instruction at the present moment, when the credit of the taxpayers is about to be pledged over their heads for the carrying out of other agreements. The " criminals " were charged with resisting seizures made for a levy in aid of a railway guarantee which the unrepresentative Grand Jury sanctioned. Carlow haa no rent trouble. It has been panegjrisei by both Pettier the Packer and Mr. Justice William O'Brien. But the infliction of a tax for the purpose of inflating the dividend of the Great Southern and Western Railway is more than the peaceable county can stomach. What is likely, we may ask, to ba their attitude to a tax levied by the Viceregal order for the purpose of making go^d the bad debts of some tenant who has enabled his landlord to walk off with one and a-half times the value of his property ? The Removables will have something to do in. Carlow in that event, and their woik tbere will, judging from experience, be but a faint reflection of the work cut out for them in other parts of Ireland. This Carlow prosecution is a most seasonable incidcrt.

Mr. Sexton brought an ardent Pigottist to book on Friday, March 28. m the House of Commons. Sir W. Marriott, who has been rewarded by the Tory Government for his desertion from the Liberal ranks with the post of Judge Advocate-General, made a mi st malignant attack upon the Irish paity in the United Club, in the course of which, referring to tbe Forgeries Commission, he had the cool audacity to state that, on the whole, the Tones had s ibstantiated the points with which they started, and that 'he letters were not charges ag int-t the Irish members ; that they were only evidences of charges. This coming from one holding an official position in the Government was certainly ccol ; but the shuffling way in which ths

creature endeavoured to get out of it when Mr. Sexton brought the matter forward as a matter of privilege is more characteristic of the Liberal Dnionist allies of the Tory party than anything that has happened for a long time. The Speaker having decided that the matter oculd not be raised as a matter of privilege, suggested that the easiest way would be to ask the right hoa. gentleman for an explanation, whereupon Sir William rose and stated that " a great deal of what was said was not serious, but was rather chaff." Mr. Sexton's retort was magnificent, and brought a volley of cheers from the Opposition, in which the voice of the Grand Old Man was prominent. " I will leave him," said the member for West Belfast, "to what he has richly earned— the contempt of the House and the contempt of the country."