Instead, the isolated arrests revealed that the criminals were provided with special accommodation and superior fare.
A district officer, asked by Lord Spencer for his views on the Coercion Act, replied:—
'The only coercion I can perceive, your Excellency, is that people accustomed to live on potatoes and milk are forced to feed on salmon and wine.'
The last outrage I intend to mention in this chapter was a very remarkable one.
There was a contest for the chairmanship of the Tralee Board of Guardians. The Land League put forward a candidate who was at the time an inmate of Kilmainham gaol. The landlords, who at this earlier stage still had some power, conceived that the residence of the Home Ruler would not facilitate his control over the Board, and chose a candidate whose abode was not only more adjacent, but whose movements were unfettered.
The voting was even, until Mr. A.E. Herbert came into the room and gave his casting vote against the involuntary tenant of the Kilmainham hostelry. For this he was murdered three days later, and by the crime they hoped to ensure that on the next occasion the landlords would abstain from voting at all.
That murder of Mr. Arthur Herbert on his return from Petty Sessions at Castleisland was one of the worst, and as an exhibition of infernal hatred and vengeance it transcended the murders of Lord Mountmorres and Lord Leitrim. It cannot be denied that Mr. Herbert committed acts of a harsh and overbearing character. He was a turbulent, headstrong man, brave to rashness and foolhardiness, and too fond of proclaiming his contempt for the people by whom he was surrounded. As a magistrate, sitting at Brosna Petty Sessions, he expressed his regret that he was not in command of a force when a riot occurred in that village, when he would have 'skivered the people with buckshot,' language brought under the notice of the Lord Chancellor and the House of Commons.
He was the son of a clergyman, and lived at Killeentierna House with his mother, a venerable old lady over eighty, he being himself forty-five. His income was estimated at about four hundred a year, and as his relations with tenantry were not harmonious, he never went out without a six-chambered revolver in his pocket. Physically he was very robust—over five feet ten in height, and very corpulent. In his own neighbourhood he always was known as 'Mr. Arthur.'
Leaving Castleisland about five in the afternoon, he was accompanied for about a mile by the head constable, who then turned back. Mr. Herbert had not proceeded a quarter of a mile further when he was felled by the assassins. The spot chosen was singularly open, no shelter being visible for some distance. Several shots were heard by a labourer at work in a quarry, and when he came up he found Mr. Herbert lying on his face in the road, quite dead, the earth about him being covered with pools of blood. The body was almost riddled with shot and bullets.
That night a further illustration of the vindictive ferocity of the outrage was given. The lawn in front of Killeentierna was patrolled regularly by some of the large body of police which at once occupied the house. On this lawn eleven lambs were grazing. At half-past two these were seen by the police to be all right. At daybreak the eleven were found stabbed with pitchforks—nine of them killed outright, and two wounded to death. This act, as wretched as it was daring, added a new horror to the crime.