And what right have Englishmen to expect their dominion to stand in Ireland when their party leaders for party ends shake hands with men who wink at and use this terrorism? It has so wrought upon the population here, that in another case, in which the truth needed by justice and the fears of a poor family trembling for their substance and their lives came thus into collision, an Irish Judge did not hesitate to warn the jury against allowing themselves to be influenced by “the usual family lie”!
A magistrate told us a curious story, which recalls a case noted by Sir Walter Scott, about the detection of a murderer, who lay long in wait for a certain police sergeant, obnoxious to the “Moonlighters,” and finally shot him dead in the public street of Loughrea, after dark on a rainy night, as he was returning from the Post-Office on one side of the street to the Police Barracks on the other. The town and the neighbouring country were all agog about the matter, but no trace could be got until the Dublin detectives came down three days after the murder. It had rained more or less every one of these days, and the pools of water were still standing in the street, as on the night of the murder. One of the Dublin officers closely examining the highway saw a heavy footprint in the coarse mud at the bottom of one of these pools. He had the water drawn off, and made out clearly, from the print in the mud, that the brogan worn by the foot which made it had a broken sole-piece turned over under the foot. By this the murderer was eventually traced, captured, tried, and found guilty.
Mr. Morphy, I find, is coming down from Dublin to conduct the prosecution in the case of the Crown against the murderers of Fitzmaurice, the old man, so brutally slain the other day near Lixnaw, in the presence of his daughter, for taking and farming a farm given up by his thriftless brother. “He will find,” said one of the company, “the mischief done in this instance also by prematurely pressing for evidence. The girl Honora, who saw her father murdered, never ought to have been subjected to any inquiry at first by any one, least of all by the local priest. Her first thought inevitably was that if she intimated who the men were, they would be screened, and she would suffer. Now she is recovering her self-possession and coming round, and she will tell the truth.”
“Meanwhile,” said a magistrate, “the girl and her family are all ‘boycotted,’ and that, mark you, by the priest, as well as by the people. The girl’s life would be in peril were not these scoundrels cowards as well as bullies. Two staunch policemen—Irishmen and Catholics both of them—are in constant attendance, with orders to prevent any one from trying to intimidate or to tamper with her. A police hut is putting up close to the Fitzmaurice house. The Nationalist papers haven’t a word to say for this poor girl or her murdered father. But they are always putting in some sly word in behalf of Moriarty and Hayes, the men accused of the murder.”
“Furthermore,” said another guest, “these two men are regularly supplied while in prison with special meals by Mrs. Tangney. Who foots the bills? That is what she won’t tell, nor has the Head-Constable so far been able accurately to ascertain. All we know is that the friends of the prisoners haven’t the money to do it.”
Late in the evening came in a tall fine-looking Kerry squire, who told us, à propos of the Fitzmaurice murder, that only a day or two ago a very decent tenant of his, who had taken over a holding from a disreputable kinsman, intending to manage it for the benefit of this kinsman’s family, came to him and said he must give it up, as the Moonlighters had threatened him if he continued to hold it.
A man of substance in Tralee gave me some startling facts as to the local administration here. In Tralee Union, he said, there were in 1879 eighty-seven persons receiving outdoor relief, at a cost to the Union of £30, 17s. 11d., being an average per head of 7s. 1d., and 1879 was a very bad year, the worst since the great famine year, 1847. A Nationalist Board was elected in 1880, and a Nationalist chairman in 1884. 1884 was a very good year, but in that year no fewer than 3434 persons received outdoor relief, at a cost of £2534, 13s. 10d., making an average per head of 14s. 9d.! And at the present time £5000 nominal worth of dishonoured cheques of the authorities were flying all over the county!
“On whom,” I asked, “does the burden fall of these levies and extravagances?”
“On the landlords, not on the tenants,” he promptly replied. “The landlord pays the whole of the rates on all holdings of less than £4 a year, and on all land which is either really or technically in his own possession. He also pays one-half of the rates on all the rest of his property.”
“Then, in a case like that of Griffin’s, evicted at Glenbehy, with arrears going back to 1883, who would pay the rates?”