Dublin Notes.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 12, 19 December 1890, Page 21

Dublin Notes.

(From the National papers.)

Jt is very curious to find the thick-witted Removables hammering B[WBy at the old coercion routine, lika the idiot wbo persisted in working the old pump-handle alter it had been removed to the lumber-room in the fond belief that water would come at last if he worked long enough. We find Removable Newton Brady, for example fas bad a boy as there is to be found even amongst the Removables), holding a Star Chamber inquiry at Longford, and sending men to prison for contempt of court, for refasing to be sworn, just as if the Star Chamber section had not proved as worthless as the worm-eaten pump-handle and been carted away to the lumber-room of the Castle.

Let there be no more talk or anxiety about tbe famine, for Judge Curran has found out everything that will turn the black potatoes into white flowery balls. Let boycotting cease and the country will in the twinkling of an eye be flooded with prosperity. We shall want neither light railways to give employment, nor reduced rents nor food for tbe labourers of the West or South. Sitting on a Kerry bench, surrounded by grand jurors, country gentry, policemen, and prosecutors, County Court Judge Curran inhaled a long braath of prophetic inspiration. What did he say ? Well, first be congratulated the gentlemen on the great improvement in the Kerry district. There were only fourteen effences reported ; and he had to add the gratifying fact that boycotting had disappeared. Then said he :— " I trust you will find that I am no false prophet in saying that prosperous times are sure to follow this satisfactory state of factß." Nothing like this delightful news has been heard since the after-dinner prophecies of Lord Carlisle. What a pity that boycotting had not ceased in Kerry before the ra;n began to fall in July. Of course it was boycotting that opened the flood-gates of heaven and let looee the icy winds and caused the potato blight. So Judge Curran is almost amongst tbe prophets. Cattle from the prairie lands of Lord Cloncurry and the Hon. Mr. Ponsonby have, week ending October 11, b«en offered for sale under the kindly hammer of Creamer and Roberts, Crewe— so, at all events, a vigilant correspondent informs us. Twenty-seven of the beasts had been fed and fattened on the Ponsonby wilds ; and when we tot up the cost of herding— enormous in all cases of emergency farming— and add to the expense of shipment, fodder, commission, and roundabout methods of transmission, we mu9t join our correspondent in laughing at the profit and lo3s account which harrows the soul of the syndicate to look at. Think of fat beeves going for ten to fifteen guineas a head I Why, they were worth that six months ago, when they were stores— if they were then sold as honest and unobjectionable bollocks.

The noble Lord Cloncurry did not fair better with his live stock in England than did the Hon. Noodle PoDsonby. His lordsnip is a long time dabbling in the emergency business, and the balance-sheet of his transactions with beasts, vice men, would be an instructive picture for the battering-ram speculators. Our informant gives us a pen-and-ink sketch of tbe way in which the Cloogorey beef is knocked about in the Lancashire market?. The knowing ones over there can smell a bargain when they •' twig " the Irish peeler, in the innocent get-up of a cowboy, keeping one lynx eye upon the cattle and lixing the other upon doubtful dealers. Toe 'cute ones set their quarry and wait until the market is over to pounce upon it at their own pnre. Tbe catile must be sold or slaughtered, in either case at a great lose. The Clcngorey beas's, given to one Lambert, of Salford, were knocked down at a sum which must bring tears from the eyes of tbe cattletrading evictors. Let the exterminators take all the rope they desire Tbe end will be financial strangulation.

Earl Spencer addressed a public meeting at Otley, in Yorkshire, on Friday, October 3, and devoted a con Herable portion of his speech to a criticism of the so-called trial at Tipperary. It has a^ain aa d again been charged against Lord Spencer, whenever the extraordinary doings of the Resident Magistrates (as tbey are very inappropriately named) are called in question, that ha himself is responsible for tbe appointment of many of them. This caarge be dealt with on Friday, very honestly and very claarly. He admitted that it was true, but pointed out that they were appointed for very different duties from those they are now called upon by Mr. Balfour to fill — to deal merely with ordinary petty session cases wherein what is chiefly n quired is common-sense, not legal knowledge ; whereas now these gentlemen are called upon to decide most delicate and difficult problems of law such as in England are always tried by judges and juries. Earl Spencer might have forcibly illustrated this anomaly of Mr. Balfour's creation by recalling the fact that a distinguished Irish judge resigned his appoinruenr, became of tbe v conetitu ional character of the Coercion Act, and that a very able Crowu Solicitor in tbe South also threw up his appointment as he could not conscientiously prosecute in tbe sort of cases which the Coercion Act transformed into crimes. Tbe general election, Earl Spencer believe*, will put an end to that Act and the iniquitous Government which framed it.

The formation of an influential non-political committee in the States for tbe relict of Irish distress has aroused great ire amongst certain sections of the Press. Tbese organs sneer at the idea, and make very little of the threatened famine— indeed some of them go so far as to deny thut there is any danger of scarcity at all. Others see in the American movement a decided slap in tbe face to her Majesty's Guvernmeut— a £ ict which shows that tbe lebuke is deserved. Tbe callous way in which tin impending distress is spjken of by some ot those Tory papers is simply sickening, and suggests the idea that tbe writeis would be heartily glad if by some means, starvation or pestilent, ti.e whole Celtic population of Ir^lan I were sweept out of existiuc". Meanwhile the appeal of the AmeriCdn philanthropists is bein^ well responded to. ftlotiey is beguiling to #ow in freely, and a lurgu bum will doubtless be collected. It id to be

hoped that tffec ive steps may be taken to prevent this fund from being grabbed, at previous ones have been, by the greedy landlords.

Americans find it difficult to believe that such brutal callousness as the Tory journals of England and Ireland, led by the Times, could exist. The utterauces of these shameless organs have been read with amazement. How any perverted ingenuity could torture a purely philanthropic movement into a political trick passes the comprehension of most people in the States. The gentlemen who have initiated the Relief Fund are of different political views, but are distinguished more for acts of benevoleuca than for prominence in political affairs. A formal reply to the editorial of the Tunes on the subject has been drawn up and published by Mr. Vinton, the secretary of tne committee, declaring that the Times exhibits astounding ignorance of tbe facts when it assumes that tbe movement for the aid of the people threatened with starvation in Ireland has anything political about it.

The people of Limerick celebrated en Sunday, October 5, the bi-centeDary of the defence of the city of General Sarsfield and bis army agaiDst the forces of Dutch William. Tbe celebration took the form of a procession around the line of tbe old city ramparts, so far as it is possible to trace them, winding up with a public meeting. A very large number of people came in from the surrounding rural district to join in tbe procession, which, with the trades' banners and a couple of the local bands, presented a picture at once stirring and picturesque. The houses along the route were gay with bunting and evergreens, and in the evening several of them were illuminated. Three members of tbe Parliamentary Party took part in the meeting — Messrs. O'Keeffe, Finucane, and P. O'Brien — and many prominent local men were present. An ode to Sarsfield, written by " the Bard of Thomond," having been read, Mr. Finucane proposed the only resolution of the day, expressing the admiration and gratitude of the people for the brave men and women who kept the walls of the city against the enemy two hundred years ago in so gallant a fashion, and tQ9 determination of Irishmen to carry on the struggle for national independence. Several eloquent speeches in support of this resolution followed, Mr. P. O'Brien expressing tbe belief that Balfourism, in the proceedings at Tipperary, was in its last ditch.

The Star-Chamber farce continues in Longford. Mr. Newton Brady, one of the most corrupt of the Removables, exhausts his suasive eloquence in the vain attempt to induce the members of the League to betray their fellows The prattle, "childlike and bland," about the crops and the weather with which be iavariably opens his inquiry are received in grim silence by tbe Nationalist under examination. His delicate flattery is completely thrown away. "I am astonished," he said to one Nationalist, "to see such a fine, respectable man as yourself — a man of refinement and education — associating with such a low lot of ruffianly Home Rulers." " I never in my life," was the quick retort, " was in such disreputable company as at the present moment, and I would not be in it if I could help it." Thereupon the inquiry closed abruptly.

The majority of the nonjuring witnesses at Longford are set at large to give the notion, if possible, that they have consented to be sworn. A few amongst them — John Hoey, John Ward, and Pat Ward— are specially honoured by being sent to prison. They are of course, regarded as popular heroes, and are greeted with enthusiastic cheers as they leave or arrive at the railway station in transit to and from the gaol. The police have strained every nerve to stifl9 this cheering as zealously as if the integrity of the empire was at stake, but all in vain. Fifty constables are constantly engaged (at tbe public expense) in this meritorious and important undertaking.

But the proceeJing is not all a farce. Tbe police take good care of that. When the order is once given to iraw batons they always manage to use them with effect on soxuboiy, it does not much matter whom . We take the following facts from the graphic account of the iuci tent in the Roscommom, Herald. Tae police were returning from the r dlway station after a vain attempt to suppress a cheer for " the criminals ' wlo had been guiltyot the universal crim^of contempt of a Star-Chamber Court. T&ey overtook a few small boys booing for Bilfjur, whom tbey manfully chuged with drawn batons and dispersed. Then they came upon Mr. Diniel Egan, whose sole crime was that his brother is president of a branch of the League. Him the police incontinently batoned wnb tbe pleasing promptitude which is begotten ot constaut practice. He was stunned and Btrnck to tbe ground by a violent blow on the head ani then dragged, bleeding and wounded, to the police station, Tbe charge, we take it, will be for obstructing the police batons in discnarge of their duty by having his head in thur way. We trust the last bvs not boen heard of this inciden'. Tne time is opportunj for the exposure of tbe barbarity of tbe police.