No. 14.—LAWLESSNESS AND LAZINESS.[ToC]
he 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 hear the whack, whack, whack in the refreshment room wid the doors closed, twenty yards away. It was for all the world a fine, big, healthy kind of batin' that Tim got. An' the way he wriggled was the curiousest thing at all. 'Twas enough to make yer jump out of yer skin wid just burstin' with laffin'."
Leaving outrages and violence to Messrs. Morley and Moriarty, let me narrate the effect of the impending Home Rule Bill on some of the commercial community. A well-known tradesman says: "A man in Newcastlewest owed me £24 for goods delivered. He had a flourishing shop and also an excellent farm. He was so slow in paying, and apparently so certain that in a little while he would escape altogether, that I sued him for the amount. It was a common action for a common debt, between one Irish tradesman and another. But I am a Unionist, and therefore fair game. I got judgment, but no instalments were paid. I remonstrated over and over again, and was from time to time met with solemn promises, the debtor gaining time by every delay. At last I lost patience, and determined to distrain. Everybody laughed at me. 'Where will you get an auctioneer, and who will bid? they asked. I determined to carry through this one case, if it cost a hundred pounds. I got a good revolver, and succeeded in bringing an auctioneer from a distance. The debtor said he would brain me with a bill-hook if I put my foot on his ground, and another man promised to shoot me from a bed-room window. It was necessary, to carry out the sale at all, to have police protection. I went to the barracks and submitted the case. Had I a sheriff's order, &c., &c., &c.? All difficulties overcome I went to the 'sale.' We seized a cow, a watch, and some of my own goods, and commenced the auction. Nobody bid but myself, and when I had covered the amount due the sale ceased, the aspect of the people being very menacing. Remember, this was not agrarian at all. The debt was for goods delivered to be sold in the way of trade. Most of them were there before my face. The debtor came and said, 'You can't take the things away. But we like your pluck, and if you will settle the matter for £5 I will give you the money.' I declined to take £5 for £24 and costs, although the police looked on the offer as unexpectedly liberal, and the bystanders shed tears of emotion and said that Gallagher was 'iver an' always the dacent boy.' When I wished to remove the things the troubles began. I had my revolver, the police their rifles, but things looked very blue. I drove the cow to the station and got her away, but the other things could not walk aboard, and how to get them there was hard to know. I asked people I knew to lend me their carts—people who were under some obligation to me, men I had known and done business with for years. They all refused; they feared the evil eye of the vigilance committee of a Fenian organisation still in full swing among us, and keeping regular books for settlement when they have the power. I was determined not to be beat, so I went to Limerick, nearly thirty miles away, to get a float or wagon. The news was there before me, not a wheel to be had in the city. At last, by means of powerful influence, I got a cart, on condition that the owner's name should be taken off, and my name painted on. Then I returned to Newcastle and bore away the goods in triumph. Alas! my troubles were only beginning! I had been told that the goods were not the debtor's, but belonged to someone else. The cow, they said, was a neighbour's, who had 'lent' it to my debtor. The watch, they said, was the property of a friend, who had handed it to my debtor that he might take it somewhere to be repaired. The landlord of the house claimed that he had previously seized everything, but had allowed things to remain out of kindness. I was cited in four actions for illegal distraint, all of which were so evidently trumped-up that they were quashed. But the time they took! And the annoyance they caused. The expense also was considerable, and the idea of getting expenses out of these people—but I need add nothing on that score.
"There were six witnesses in one case, and they could never be found, so long as the judge could have patience to wait. Every lie, trick, subterfuge you can imagine, was practised on poor me. At last all was over, but at what a cost! The big chap who had threatened me with the bill-hook came humbly forward and said: "Plase yer honner's worship, I'm very deaf, an' I'm short sighted, and I'm very wake intirely, an' ye must give me toime to insinse meself into the way of it." And that rascal had everything repeated several times, until I was on fifty occasions on the point of chucking up the whole thing.