Ireland as It Is, and as It Would Be Under Home Rule. Buckley Robert John
him, and returned to the house, firing shots at whatever they could damage, and smashing everything breakable, from the windows upwards. Brosna will lose the sight of one eye, which is practically beaten out. His servants, named Larkin, have been compelled to leave by means of threatening letters. Their father has also been threatened with death unless he instantly removes them from Brosna's house.
I could continue indefinitely, continuing my remarks to the occurrences of one month or so; and if I abruptly conclude it is because time presses, my return to civilisation having been effected at 3.30 this morning, after a ten miles' mountain walk, followed by three hours' ride in the blissful bowels of an empty cattle-truck. But for the good Samaritan of a luggage train I must last night have camped beneath the canopy of heaven. No scarcity of fun in Ireland – which beats the world for sparkling incident.
Rathkeale (Co. Limerick), April 24th.
No. 14. – LAWLESSNESS AND LAZINESS
The fruits of Gladstonian rule are ripening fast. Mr. Morley's visit to Cork en route for Dublin corresponds with Inspector Moriarty's visit to the Irish capital. Mr. Moriarty is the county inspector in whose district most of the recent outrages have been perpetrated, and is therefore able to give the Irish Secretary plenty of news. His report will doubtless remain secret, as it is sensational. Mr. Morley has too much regard for the sensibilities of Mr. and Mrs. Bull, and when the Limerick inspector, entering the State confessional of Dublin Castle, advances and says, "I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porcupine," – when Mr. Moriarty utters the familiar and appropriate words the Irish Secretary will say with deprecatory gesture, "Enough, enough. 'Twas ever thus. This is the effect of kindness. What ho, my henchmen bold! A flagon, a mighty flagon of most ancient sack. I feel that I am about to be prostrated. Such is the fate of greatness. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. It is a great and glorious thing, To be an Irish Sec. But give to me my hollow tree, A crust of bread and liberty. The word is porpentine, not porcupine, Mr. Inspector. A common corruption. Verify your quotations. Have them (in future) attested by two resident magistrates. And now to work. All in strict confidence. Let not the world hear of these things. Let not the people know that violence and rapine walk hand-in-hand with my administration. Nameless in dark oblivion let it dwell. Let it be sub rosâ, sub sigillâ confessionis, sub-auditer, sub everything. Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in Askalon, for behold, if the people heard, they would marvel, and fear greatly; and – be afraid."
The officer would then produce his budget, with its horrors, its indecencies, its record of trickery, treachery, cowardly revenge, and midnight terrorism. The local press correspondents of the rural districts are nearly all Nationalists, and they either furnish garbled reports, or none at all. The reporters of Conservative papers, comparatively Conservative, I mean, are also Nationalists. The Irish themselves know not what is taking place ten miles away. How is England to learn the precise state of things? I have fished up a few recent samples of minor occurrences which will form part of Mr. Moriarty's news. These smaller outrages invariably lead up to murder if the victim resist. They are so many turns of the screw, just to let the recalcitrant feel what can be done. In the large majority of cases he gives way at the first hint. Let us relate some neighbouring experiences.
David Geary, of Castlemahon, late in the evening heard an explosion at the door of his cottage. He ran out, and found a fuse burning, lying where it had been cast, while a volley of large stones whizzed past his head. There had been some litigation between a man named Callaghan and a road contractor, and Geary had allowed the road contractor's men to take their food in wet weather under his roof.
On April 15, at two in the morning, a party of masked moonlighters visited the cottage of Mrs. Breens, of Raheenish, and having fired two shots through the parlour window, shattering the woodwork by way of letting the widow know they were there, fired a third through her bed-room window to expedite the lady's movements. Almost paralysed with fear, she parleyed with the besieging force, which, by its spokesman, demanded her late husband's gun, threatening to put "daylight through her" unless it were instantly given up. It was in her son's possession, and she hurried to his room. The young dog came on the scene, and instead of handing out the gun, fired two shots from a revolver into the darkness. Whereupon the band of Irish hero-patriots outside fled with electric speed, and returned no more. At Ardagh the police found a haystack burning. They saved about ten tons, but Patrick Cremmin claims £88 from the county. He had offended somebody, but he declares he knows not the motive. In other words, he wants to let the thing drop – bar the £88. Another stack of hay, partly saved by the police, was burnt because evictions had taken place: damage £20, which the county must pay. R. Plummer, a labourer with Brosna, whose case was given in my last, has received a letter threatening him with death unless he left Brosna's employ. Some say the name is Brosnan or Bresnahan. Beware of the quibbling of Irish malcontents, who on the strength of a misprint or a wrongly-spelt name, boldly state that no such person ever existed, and that therefore the case is a pure invention. Here is a specimen of the toleration Loyalists and Protestants may expect: – A special train having been run from Newcastle to Limerick to enable people to attend a Unionist meeting in the latter city, the Nationalists took steps to mark their sense of the railway company's indiscretion, and a train soon afterwards leaving Newcastle for Tralee, they hurled a great stone from the Garryduff Bridge, smashing the window of the guard's van and doing other injury. At Gurtnaclochy, to deter a witness in a legal case, a threatening letter was sent, sixty yards of a sod fence thrown down, and a coffin and gun neatly cut on the field. On the Roman Catholic Chapel wall at Ashford a notice was posted threatening with death anyone who bought hay or turnips from a boycotted man, and the same day a man named Herlihy received a threatening letter. On April 15 a party of armed, disguised men with blackened faces, called on a poor man at Inniskeen, and having smashed the windows, tried to force the door, but stopped to parley. They called on "Young Patrick" to hand out the father's gun, and the young man complied. Being twitted with this he said, "I want to live. If I had refused the gun my life would not be worth twopence. I would be 'covered' from a bush or a fence when I walked out, or shot dead in the door as I looked down the lane, as was done in another case. I know the parties well, but I would not give evidence. Neither will I give the police any more information. It would not hurt the criminals, but it would hurt me. For while the jury would not convict, the secret tribunal that sat on me would not be so merciful, and many a man would like the distinction of being singled out to execute the secret decrees of the Moonlight fraternity." Another person standing by said, "What happened at Galbally, near Tipperary? A priest denounced a Protestant named Allen from the altar, and a week after the man was shot dead in his tracks. Everybody knew perfectly well who did the deed. All knew the man who wanted Allen's land, and it was thought that there was evidence enough to hang him twenty times. He is alive and well, and if you go any Saturday to the Tipperary market Father Humphreys will introduce you to him. He was discharged without a stain on his character, and brass bands met him on his return, also a torchlight procession."
In Ireland, even more than in England, brass bands are necessary to the expression of the popular emotion. Brass bands met Egan, the liberated, everywhere. Brass bands accompanied the march of O'Brien's mourners at the Cork funeral last week. Not a murderer in Ireland whose release would not be celebrated with blare of brass bands, and glare of burning grease. Mr. Morley could not land in Cork, however privately, for he did not wish to speak, without a brass band being loosed on his heels. The great philosophical Radical, the encyclopædia of political wisdom, the benefactor, the saviour, the regenerator of Ireland, left Cork to the strains of the Butter Exchange Band —con amore, affetuoso, and doubtless con spirito. Yet some will say that the Irish are not grateful! Mr. Morley stayed at the hotel I had just left, the Royal Victoria, which I justly described as a hot-bed of sedition. It was here, in room No. 72, that Dalton so terribly punched the long-suffering head of Tim Healy. At the Four Courts, Dublin, I saw a waiter who witnessed the famous horsewhipping in that city. I asked him if it were a severe affair, or whether, as the Nationalist papers affirmed, only a formality, a sort of Consider-yourself-flogged. How that waiter expanded and enjoyed the Pleasures of Memory! "It was a most thrimindious affair, Sorr. McDermott was a fine, powerful sthrip of a boy, an' handled the horsewhip iligant. Ye could