DO 
 
 
 r\c r k 1 1 cnn„ 
 
 
 J JI 

 
 
 ^OJITVO-JO^ /j ^' 
 
 iFCAIIFO% 
 
 
 v>AOSANGFlf 
 
 
 "7//0UTA I 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 "^HHAINd-]^ %0i ^OJIIVj 
 
 
 ^OFCAllFO/7 &u 
 
 % 

 
 VISITS TO IRELAND
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 PEEL AND O'CONNELL : a Review of the 
 Irish Policy of Parliament from the Act of Union 
 to the death of Sir Robert Peel. Demy 8vo. 
 cloth, 10s. 6d. 
 
 London : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO. 

 
 AA 
 
 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 A JOURNAL 
 
 OF 
 
 VISITS TO IRELAND 
 
 IN 
 
 1882 AND 1888 
 
 THE RI 
 
 G. SHAW. LEFEV 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1888
 
 ( 'Die rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved)
 
 DA 
 
 f6'7 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 >•©*■ 
 
 tfi During the last few months I have had many demands 
 
 j^from all quarters for a reprint of my letters to the 'Times ' 
 
 >- describing the dispute between Lord Clanricarde and his 
 
 Si tenants in Galway, and the methods of coercion carried 
 
 3 out under the Act of last year in that district, and also of 
 
 some speeches which I have made on the same subject, and 
 
 on the kindred subject of the dispute on Lord Massereene's 
 
 property, and the trial of Mr. John Dillon, M.P. 
 
 In lieu of republishing these letters and speeches as 
 
 qjfthey stood, I have thought it better to wait till I should 
 
 ^ have leisure, after the rising of Parliament, for writing a 
 
 . fuller and more connected account of what I saw and heard 
 
 <--> in my various visits to the Loughrea district, including that 
 
 Li-' J 
 
 e in the year 1882, and also in my visit to the Massareene 
 property, incorporating such parts of the letters and speeches 
 as seemed to lend themselves to this treatment. 
 
 As regards the Clanricarde case, I should have been 
 \ far better pleased to be able to let the subject drop'; I have 
 ' no personal feeling against the landowner of the district, 
 
 :WHr?39
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 whom I have held mainly responsible for the state of things 
 there. His errors are mainly due to ignorance, and to 
 the attempt to direct from London, in every detail, his rela- 
 tions to a vast body of small tenants in a remote district in 
 Ireland, without any personal knowledge of them, and with- 
 out any appreciation of the rights of those who have been 
 recognised by recent legislation as co-owners with himself 
 of their holdings. 
 
 If this dispute had been happily brought to a con- 
 clusion I should not have reverted to it, or have again 
 brought before the public the facts in relation to it. Un- 
 fortunately, it is still as remote as ever from a settlement. 
 Evictions in wholesale have quite recently been resumed. 
 A whole township has been cleared of its tenants. Twenty- 
 three families have been evicted from their homes. Many 
 of these people and their friends, forty in number, have been 
 committed to trial for resisting these evictions. Others have 
 gone to the workhouse. More recently the houses on their 
 holdings, erected by the tenants or their predecessors, have 
 been razed to the ground, and it is announced that the 
 landlord, admitting that in the present state of public 
 opinion in the district it is hopeless to expect to let the 
 farms, will use them himself for grazing purposes. 
 
 Other evictions are announced to follow. Many hun- 
 dreds of the tenants have already been proceeded against 
 in the County Courts and Superior Courts. Ejectment 
 decrees have been obtained against them, and notices have 
 been issued against them under the Act of last year, which 
 have turned them into mere caretakers. They have lost all 
 their rights under the Land Act of 1881, and they only
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 await the moment when it will be convenient to the land- 
 lord to evict them, or when the Government will be able to 
 lend the forces of the Crown for this purpose. 
 
 In this prospect, therefore, it is important that all the 
 facts of the case should be accessible, so that public opinion 
 may be brought to bear upon the dispute with a view to its 
 settlement, either directly between the parties to it, or in- 
 directly by the intervention of the Legislature. 
 
 In this view alone I have thought it necessary to state 
 more fully than I have yet done the result of my personal 
 inquiries and experience in the district. In doing so I 
 shall also be able to put on record my personal vindication 
 for the part I took in February of this year, which has been 
 the subject of many attacks on me, in insisting upon my right 
 to hold a public meeting at Loughrea for the purpose of 
 expressing sympathy with the tenants of the district, where 
 others have been less fortunate than myself, and have 
 found their way to prison for attempting this. 
 
 It has also afforded an opportunity of describing the 
 working of the Coercion Act of 1887 in a district where 
 probably more prosecutions have taken place than in any 
 other part of Ireland, and where illustrations are to be 
 found of every kind of procedure under it. 
 
 In another chapter I have described a more recent visit 
 to Ireland for the purpose of being present at the trial of Mr. 
 John Dillon at Dundalk, and have given the result of in- 
 quiries on the spot as to the causes of the dispute between 
 Lord Massereene and his tenants, which was also the motive 
 for the speech for which Mr. Dillon has been prosecuted 
 and condemned. The case so closely resembles the Clan-
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 ricarde case that it may fairly be considered as part of the 
 same subject. 
 
 More recently still I have visited the west of Ireland on 
 the suggestion of persons interested in the dispute on the 
 Vandeleur property in the county of Clare. I have added 
 some pages giving the result of my inquiries there, and 
 others describing the proceedings under the Coercion Act 
 in the town of Miltown-Malbay, where very numerous 
 prosecutions have been instituted against the tradesmen of 
 the town for refusing to supply goods to boycotted persons 
 and to the police. 
 
 It will be seen that my account of the proceedings at 
 Miltown-Malbay, and also on the Clanricarde property, 
 differs in every essential particular from that given in a 
 recent work on 'Coercion in Ireland' by Mr. Hurlbert. 
 My account of the Clanricarde dispute was in print before 
 I had read this work, but I have seen no reason for making 
 any change. It appears to me that Mr. Hurlbert has ob- 
 tained his information in that case mainly from the agent of 
 the property, and in the Miltown-Malbay case only from 
 the police authorities. 
 
 I have endeavoured myself to obtain the views of both 
 sides to these disputes. I have made every effort to arrive 
 at the truth of the facts which I relate. Whatever may 
 be the inference drawn from them, I feel certain that the 
 facts themselves will stand the test of a critical examina- 
 tion. 
 
 In the Miltown-Malbay case it may appear that I have 
 gone into somewhat minute details ; but I have felt that it 
 is impossible to understand the case or the attitude of the
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 people there without a full and complete record of even the 
 minor incidents which have occurred there. 
 
 The first chapter, giving an account of my visit to 
 Loughrea in 1882, was written and was in print before the 
 proposal was made to Parliament for a Commission of Judges 
 to inquire into the charges of the ' Times ' against the 
 leaders of the Irish party — an inquiry which may possibly 
 involve an investigation as to the causes of the crimes 
 committed in this district in 1880-2. 
 
 G. S. L. 
 
 October I, 1888.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTKK PAGE 
 
 . I. LOUGHREA IN lSS2 I 
 
 II. LOUGHREA IN 1886-7 iS 
 
 III. The Woodford Meetings 37 
 
 IV. LOUGHREA IN l888 -.46 
 
 V. PORTUMNA 55 
 
 VI. Letters to the ' Times ' 69 
 
 VII. The Meeting at Loughrea 78 
 
 VIII. The Sequel at Loughrea 97 
 
 IX. Mr. Dillon's Trial . . . . . . . no 
 
 X. A Week in Clare 131 
 
 XL The Miltown-Malbay Prosecutions . . . 141 
 
 XII. The Vandeleur Evictions 160 
 
 XIII. Retrospect and Conclusions 174 
 
 APPENDIX A. — Mr. Wilfrid Blunt on his Prison- 
 Treatment 185 
 
 APPENDIX B. — The Punishment of Political Prisoners. 
 
 By Mr. F. Harrison . . . . . 18S
 
 b*bscY(biY$ ^rlslxCnj 4? kurckccSt party 
 
 *tauls\L<L G" SlrvA* Cfcciiir 41417* tj (f* cfCC 
 Jib varum t *A+*> «hIL s&rua l^A^rticuJ^ys of* 
 ru& clA Sri*/ as &L ihn/fCcci4^ve/ %h^ri^O
 
 F rra ta. 
 
 Page 28, footnote, for Galway read Kilkenny. 
 ,, 89, line 16, for a solicitor read an official. 
 ,, 132, line 3, for 1839 read 1829. 
 ,, 133, line 1, for seventeen read twenty-five. 
 ,, ,, line 2, for twenty-five read seventeen. 
 
 L efei re s Incidents of Coercion.
 
 INCIDENTS OF COERCION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 LOUGHREA IN 1 882. 
 
 In January 1882, at the suggestion of the then Chief 
 Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the late Mr, 
 W. E. Forster, I paid a visit to that country. Mr. Forster 
 wished me to have an opportunity of forming an opinion 
 on the spot as to many matters connected with the then 
 condition of the country and its administration, with a view 
 to discussions in Parliament. 
 
 I spent a few days with him at the Chief Secretary's 
 Lodge in the Phoenix Park. During this time I occupied 
 myself in seeing as many people of different parties and 
 opinions in Dublin as was possible. Unfortunately, my 
 official position as a member of a Government which was 
 enforcing coercion in Ireland precluded the possibility of 
 communication with any representatives of the Nationalist 
 party ; but I met several men of the moderate Liberal type, 
 such as the late Mr. Pirn, the late Mr. John Vernon, and 
 his colleague at the Land Commission, Mr. Litton. 
 
 The time was one of greatest gloom in Ireland. Most 
 of the prominent leaders of the Nationalists were in prison, 
 under^ the powers conferred on the Government by the 
 
 u
 
 2 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 Coercion Act of 1 88 1 . An order had been issued by the Land 
 League advising the tenants of Ireland to refrain from paying 
 any rent to their landlords, until their leaders were released. 
 It was difficult to form an opinion to what extent tenants 
 were acting on this. In most parts of the country it was 
 certainly without any effect. Where landlords made reason- 
 able reductions of rent, to meet the difficulties caused by 
 the bad seasons of 1879 and the two succeeding years, they 
 were obtaining their rents, and the circular of the Land 
 League was without effect. 'Where arrears had accumulated 
 and landlords were pressing for their full rents, there was a 
 firm determination on the part of the tenants to refuse 
 payment. Many landlords, who would perhaps have been 
 ready to deal leniently with their tenants, were induced 
 by the 'No Rent' circular to press their claims to the utmost. 
 Agrarian crimes and outrages were alarmingly frequent 
 throughout the west and south of Ireland, and since the 
 Coercion Act they had increased in number and gravity. The 
 Land Commission had recently begun its work of reducing 
 rents. The Irish leaders had advised the tenants not to 
 apply for judicial rents in great numbers, but to wait till 
 certain test cases should be decided. This advice, however, 
 was not very generally followed. The decisions of the 
 Commission, and the great reductions of rents, were already 
 giving more or less satisfaction to those who had applied 
 to the Court. On the other hand, many landlords were 
 alarmed at these reductions, and were the less inclined to 
 make any abatement of arrears due to them. By threaten- 
 ing to insist on the payment of arrears, they were able to 
 prevent their tenants going into Court for a reduction of 
 rent. 
 
 I found a growing feeling among moderate men, such 
 as Mr. Pirn and Mr. Vernon, that the imprisonment of 
 the leaders of the Irish party under the Coercion Act of 
 1 88 1 was a grave mistake. They held also that the policy
 
 LOUGHREA IN 1882 3 
 
 of shutting up, without trial, so many hundreds of the local 
 leaders, under the plea that they were ' village ruffians,' was 
 of little avail in quieting the country. There was reason to 
 believe that, in spite of every care and precaution taken by 
 Mr. Forster, many persons were thus dealt with only to 
 gratify the caprice of the local authorities, or because they 
 were obnoxious to the landlords of the district. 
 
 After a few days spent in informing myself of opinions 
 in Dublin, I went, at the suggestion of Mr. Forster, to the 
 West of Ireland, with the object of personally seeing what 
 was then considered the most disturbed part of the country. 
 I was told that my visit would be attended with personal 
 danger, if it were known that I was connected with the 
 Government ; and I was advised, therefore, to preserve a 
 strict incognito, and to avoid especially travelling by night 
 in an open car. Beyond this, however, I took no pre- 
 caution, and was not under any special care of the 
 
 police. 
 
 I first visited Lord Dillon's property in Mayo and Ros- 
 common. It is one of the largest in the West of Ireland, 
 consisting of 85,000 acres, with about 4,500 tenants. The 
 holdings of the vast majority of these people do not average 
 more than ten acres. They are, in fact, labourers rather 
 than farmers, migrating to England and Scotland during 
 the summer months, either for harvest work or for work in 
 the brickfields and other great works, which require extra 
 hands during a part of the year. They return to their 
 homes in the autumn, in time to dig their potatoes, and do 
 not leave again till after the planting in the spring of the 
 next year. 
 
 Their rent is wholly paid out of the earnings which they 
 thus make at a distance from their homes. They are an 
 industrious and thrifty set of men, and, though their standard 
 of living and of comfort is low, their children are very 
 healthy and grow up into strong and vigorous men. The 
 
 b 2
 
 4 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 then depression of agriculture and of trade in England had 
 told very severely on these people. Great numbers of them 
 had been unable to find their usual employment in England, 
 or had returned with very much less than the average of 
 savings. The wet season of 1879, when the potato crop 
 had been a failure and the turf had not dried, had greatly 
 reduced their resources. These two causes had brought 
 them into great difficulties, and they were in heavy arrears 
 of rent. 
 
 Lord Dillon's agent, Mr. Strickland, resided in a part of 
 the family mansion, in the middle of one of the largest and 
 most beautiful parks in the West of Ireland. The house, 
 with the exception of the rooms occupied by the agent, was 
 unfurnished and dilapidated. None of the successive heads 
 of the Dillon family have resided there since the beginning 
 of the century. During these eighty years they have drawn 
 their large rental from the district, and have spent it in Eng- 
 land. No capital has ever been expended by them in 
 improving their Irish property, unless it were money lent by 
 the State for drainage, for which the tenants have paid 
 interest. Every improvement, which has gradually brought 
 the land into cultivation from its original condition of waste 
 bog, has been effected by the tenants ; all the houses and 
 buildings have been erected by them. When Arthur Young 
 visited this district at the end of the last century the rental 
 of the estate was 5,000/. a year. This has been gradually 
 increased to 24,000/., the nominal rental when I was there- 
 This, it was stated, was far beyond the real value of the 
 land, and could only be paid out of the earnings saved by 
 the tenants during their yearly visits to England. None of 
 the functions of landowners, as generally understood and 
 acted upon in England, have ever been performed by the 
 Dillon family. They have not, however, followed the 
 example of many other landowners in this part of Ireland 
 in clearing their property of the smaller tenants and turn-
 
 LOUGH RE A IN 1882 5 
 
 ing the land into large holdings. It is certain that their 
 rent-roll would have been greatly reduced by doing so, as 
 the land is of very poor quality and not fit for grazing. Mr. 
 Strickland told me that in average years, when the tenants 
 could get employment in England, the rents were well paid 
 without deduction, but that in bad years, when the potatoes 
 failed, or when employment fell short in England, it was 
 necessary either to make abatements or to allow arrears 
 to accumulate. 
 
 At the time of my visit to this district Lord Dillon had 
 offered no abatements of the rents and arrears then due, 
 and the agent justified this on the ground that the Land 
 Commissioners would certainly make great reductions of 
 rent in the future, which he considered to be unjust and 
 amounting to confiscation, and that the only way of meeting 
 the ' No Rent ' circular was to insist upon the full payment 
 of what was due. He said that tenants were refusing to 
 pay rent, and he attributed this to the advice of the Land 
 League ; he admitted, however, that there had been a great 
 failure of employment in England for these migrating 
 labourers, owing to the great depression of agriculture and 
 the bad seasons of 1879 and 1880, and generally to the 
 depression of trade ; and he also agreed that the tenants 
 had suffered from the wet years of 1879-80, when their 
 potatoes had failed and it had been impossible to dry the 
 turf, and that consequently the pressure on them had been 
 very severe. He represented the district to be in a most 
 lawless state ; notices were at the very time posted up, call- 
 ing a Land League meeting in the park itself, and a large 
 force of police was expected for the purpose of suppressing 
 this gathering. The contrast between this beautiful park 
 and its deserted mansion and the small holdings and cabins 
 with which it was surrounded was very striking. 
 
 From Lord Dillon's property I drove to Tuam. I had 
 intended to stop at two or three of the small towns on the
 
 6 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 way for the purpose of making inquiries, but there was not 
 a single person to whom Mr. Strickland or the police 
 authorities could recommend me. It was alleged that 
 these small towns were even more disaffected than the 
 country around them, and were the centres of disturbance 
 and Fenianism, and that I could not safely make myself 
 known to any one residing there or obtain information of 
 any value. 
 
 At Tuam I made acquaintance with the Catholic Arch- 
 bishop, Dr. MacEvilly, and had an interesting conversation 
 with him on the state of the country. He was very much 
 opposed to the ' No Rent ' circular. He considered it most 
 unjustifiable and immoral and the cause of untold mischief; 
 but he held that a grave error had been committed by the 
 Government in arresting and imprisoning the leaders of 
 the Irish party. He thought that Mr. Gladstone and Mr. 
 Forster should have had greater faith in their own remedial 
 measure, the Land Act. If this were supplemented by one 
 dealing with the arrears of rent, he had the utmost con- 
 fidence the country would be quieted. 
 
 One of the sub-Commissions, presided over by Mr. 
 T. G. McCarthy, was then sitting at Tuam, hearing and 
 deciding cases under the Land Act for judicial rents. I 
 spent the best part of the day in listening to its proceedings, 
 and in watching the keen interest of the tenant-farmers who 
 were present. 
 
 From Tuam I drove to Athenry, where I met Mr. 
 Blake, then one of the chief inspectors of the Irish Con- 
 stabulary, and now Governor of the Bahamas. His wife, a 
 daughter of the late Mr. Bernal Osborne, was an old 
 friend. I drove from Athenry to Loughrea with Mr. 
 Blake. I shall not soon forget the journey. The district 
 we passed through had been the scene of some most brutal 
 agrarian murders. Mr. Blake told me the details of them as 
 we passed near the places where they had taken place. At
 
 LOUGH RE A IN 18818 7 
 
 one point I observed two armed policemen standing on the 
 opposite side of the road to a small cabin. The former 
 owners of this cabin and its small holding had been evicted 
 for non-payment of rent. A new tenant had been found to 
 take it, and had paid the penalty of his life for doing so ; 
 he had been cruelly murdered a few weeks before my visit. 
 His widow still lived there; relays of police watched her 
 day and night, and it was alleged that her life would 
 be in danger if these guards were withdrawn for a single 
 hour. 
 
 At Loughrea I found myself in the centre of the Clanri- 
 carde property, which extends from Athenry to Portumna, a 
 distance of about thirty miles, intermixed, however, with other 
 properties, such as that of Lord Dunsandle, Sir Henry 
 burke, Mr. Lewis, and others. The whole town of Loughrea 
 itself belongs to Lord Clanricarde. My position as the 
 friend of Mr. Blake, although my name was not known, 
 made it most difficult for me to get information from in- 
 dependent sources. It was not impossible, however, to pick 
 up some facts, even in quarters friendly to the Government 
 and to the landlord interest, which threw much light on the 
 condition of the country. 
 
 Lord Clanricarde's property consists of 52,000 acres, 
 with a rent-roll which then amounted to about 25,000/. a 
 year. He had never visited the estate since he came into 
 possession of it in 1S73, except for the purpose of being 
 present at the funeral of his father. He had drawn this 
 immense income from it without ever expending anything 
 in the way of improvement. He had left uncompleted 
 the great mansion commenced by his father in Portumna 
 Park, a most beautiful and romantic demesne of immense 
 extent. 
 
 There were the gravest complaints on the part of the 
 people of Loughrea, even those of his own political party, 
 of his treatment of them. It was said that he refused to do 
 
 *r; 4
 
 8 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 anything which would tend to the improvement of the dis- 
 trict, or the prosperity of his tenants. His action as a land- 
 lord was the subject of general complaint. In spite of bad 
 times and the severe depression of agriculture through which 
 the tenants had passed since the terrible year of 1879, Lord 
 Clanricarde had refused any general abatement of rent; he 
 had, however, in response to a demand from the tenantry, 
 promised not to press them unduly, but to allow what rent 
 they were unable to pay to go to a suspense account and to 
 be treated as arrears. It was alleged that he had not kept 
 even this meagre promise, and that the tenants were unduly 
 and harshly pressed for rent. It is fair to add that the rents 
 were not considered to be very high in proportion to those 
 of other landlords in the district. This was made the justifi- 
 cation for not making general abatements in bad seasons. 
 The passing of the Land Act of 1881 and the action of the 
 Nationalist party in the issue of the ' No Rent ' circular were 
 also put forward as grounds for refusing any concession. 
 
 Most of the other landlords of the district were also 
 absentees; and of the few who resided in the county some 
 were represented to be very deficient in those personal 
 qualities and habits which create respect and confidence 
 among the people. In this respect, it was said, there was a 
 very sad contrast with what had, at no distant date, been 
 the condition of the county and its gentry. On my return to 
 Dublin I had a most interesting conversation on this subject 
 with Mr. Burke, the then Permanent Assistant Secretary to 
 the Irish Government, himself belonging to a Galway family. 
 He deplored in the strongest terms the deterioration of so 
 many of the landlords of that district ; he stated that the pre- 
 vious generation had been men of great personal weight and 
 popularity, many of them residing on their estates through- 
 out a great part of the year, and universally respected; but 
 that it was very different with the present generation. He 
 went through a list of them, showing how some of them
 
 LOUGHREA IN 18SJ 9 
 
 were intemperate in their habits, how others had lost the 
 respect of their dependents for other reasons, and how few 
 of them performed any of the duties of landowners, such as 
 are discharged elsewhere by that class. Mr. Burke attri- 
 buted this change in part to the loss of influence of the 
 landlords, through the centralising system of the Irish 
 Government, and in consequence of political reforms, such 
 as Catholic emancipation, and in part also to their efforts to 
 vie with Englishmen in personal expenditure. 
 
 There could be no doubt, from what I heard in the 
 district, that the landlords — whether through ignorance, as 
 absentees, of the true condition of things, or other reasons 
 — had not met the tenants, during the recent bad times, in a 
 reasonable spirit of concession. The tenants were unduly 
 pressed for rent, which they could not pay; abatements were 
 refused ; arrears of rent accumulated ; evictions were carried 
 out, or were threatened on a large scale; resistance followed; 
 combinations, for the most part secret, took place ; outrages 
 and crime became frequent — the work of individuals driven 
 to despair or inspired by small and secret societies. 
 
 Nearly a hundred persons had been arrested and sent 
 to prison under the Coercion Act of 1881, without trial, in 
 this district alone — not, I was informed, for complicity in 
 crime, but for alleged connection with combinations not to 
 pay rent. Among these were many of the leading tradesmen 
 of Loughrea, against whom there was no real evidence. 
 Their arrest and detention had not quieted the district, but 
 rather the reverse. The worst outrages and murders took 
 place after the arrest of these people. Meanwhile, the great 
 remedial Act of 1881 had not a fair chance, as the tenants 
 were unable to go into Court on account of the arrears 
 which hung round their necks. It seemed to me that the 
 question of arrears was far the most pressing, and that it was 
 hopeless to expect the district to be quieted until a measure 
 tvas passed dealing with these arrears.
 
 io INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 My visit to the district of Loughrea was cut short by 
 proceedings of a very strange and exceptional character, 
 which opened my eyes as to what was possible under the 
 Government of Ireland. Mr. Blake informed me that he 
 had received instructions from Dublin to search the two 
 towns of Loughrea and Athenry for arms and treasonable 
 correspondence, which there was reason to believe would be 
 found there. For this purpose a large force of military and 
 police were collected, and he proposed to surround the two 
 towns at daybreak, and to execute his task by searching 
 every single house in them. 
 
 Telegrams on this subject were passing continually be- 
 tween the local authorities and the Castle, and the morning 
 was already fixed when these proceedings were to take 
 place. I thought it undesirable that, as a member of the 
 Government, I should be present on the occasion, the more 
 so as Mr. Blake thought it not impossible that the proceed- 
 ings might result in a serious disturbance, and I therefore 
 left Loughrea the day previous to that on which this man- 
 oeuvre was to be executed. 
 
 The operation was carried out on the morning after my 
 departure in the manner intended. The two towns were 
 surrounded by a large force of police and soldiers, and al- 
 most every house was entered by the police and searched. 
 Nothing was found in them of the slightest consequence. 
 This, however, was not to be wondered at, for the cipher 
 telegrams which passed between the Castle and Mr. Blake 
 were so ill constructed — only a few of the more important 
 words being in cipher — that nothing was more easy to an 
 intelligent person than to discover the purport of the mes- 
 sages. The head of the post office at Loughrea was said to 
 be in the interest of the Nationalists, and it was thought 
 probable that the intentions of the Government were dis- 
 covered and made known to the Land League of the district, 
 and, consequently, when the search was made, arrangements
 
 LOUGHREA IN 1882 u 
 
 may have been taken to make it fruitless. That such pro- 
 ceedings should take place in any part of the United King- 
 dom, that they should be submitted to without disturbance, 
 and that no notice should be taken of them by the English 
 press, impressed me not a little. 
 
 My observations in this district, added to the informa- 
 tion and opinions I had obtained at Dublin, led me to a 
 conclusion that the policy of ' Coercion,' as carried out 
 under the Act of 1881, was a grave error ; and that more 
 especially mistaken had been the arrest and imprisonment, 
 without trial, of the leaders of the Nationalist party. These 
 measures had greatly aggravated the position, and had pre- 
 vented the great remedial measure, the Land Act of 1881, 
 from having effect in quieting the country. This Act, how- 
 ever beneficial as regards the future, was defective as regards 
 the past, in not having dealt with the question of arrears of 
 rent. So long as these accumulated arrears hung round the 
 necks of so large a proportion of the smaller tenants, placing 
 them completely at the mercy of their landlords, and pre- 
 venting them from going into the Land Court for a reduc- 
 tion of future rent, it seemed to me to be impossible to 
 expect order to be restored or the tenants to be satis- 
 fied. 
 
 On the other hand, I was equally impressed by the mis- 
 chief effected by the issue of the 'No Rent' circular. It had 
 greatly aggravated the condition of the country. It was used 
 as a justification by many landlords for refusing to make 
 abatements and for pressing for arrears. On my return to 
 Dublin I pressed these views on Mr. Forster. I told him 
 that, in my opinion, the wise course would be at once to 
 release all the suspects from prison, and to apply to Parlia- 
 ment for a measure to relieve the tenants from the great 
 arrears of rent which had accumulated during the bad 
 seasons of 1879-81; and that subject to these two measures, 
 it would be possible to support the landlords to the utmost
 
 12 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 power of the ordinary law against the ' No Rent ' cir- 
 cular. 
 
 The agrarian outrages, I contended, had their origin in 
 the agrarian difficulty, and this arose chiefly from the action 
 on the part of many landlords in pressing for arrears of rent. 
 I held that when this difficulty was removed, and when it was 
 made clear and certain that the Government would, subject 
 to this and to the Land Act, support the landlord in the col- 
 lection only of just rents, the ' No Rent ' circular would be 
 defeated and agrarian outrages would cease ; but that, as a 
 first condition to a better state of things, the suspects should 
 be let out of prison, with the exception of those against 
 whom there was certain evidence that they had been con- 
 nected with actual crime. 
 
 I was unable to convince Mr. Forster of this view of the 
 position. He said that the Government was quite unable 
 to devote any considerable part of the time of the coming 
 session to another Irish measure such as one for dealing 
 with arrears, and he disagreed with me as to the policy of 
 releasing the suspects. 
 
 My visit to Ireland on this occasion suggested to me for 
 the first time grave doubts whether the system of adminis- 
 tration of that country, known as the Castle Government, 
 and its relations to the Imperial Parliament, were beneficial 
 or defensible. The logical sequence of events was clearly 
 brought home to me. The neglect of remedial measures 
 for Ireland by the Imperial Parliament was due to want of 
 knowledge and want of time. This neglect and delay re- 
 sulted in disturbances and outrages of an agrarian character. 
 These outbreaks were seized on by the Irish officials as 
 an excuse for their old familiar policy of Coercion. Coer- 
 cion was used locally in the interest of landlords to support 
 their extreme rights, and consequently only aggravated the 
 evils, and led to an increase of outrages. I came to the 
 strongest conclusion adverse to Coercion, and I determined
 
 LOUGHREA IN 1S82 13 
 
 that I would not myself be responsible in the future in any 
 position connected with the Irish Government for renewing 
 or carrying on a policy founded on Coercion. 
 
 I did not, however, at the time I speak of, formulate 
 any views distinctly favourable to Home Rule. But what I 
 then saw induced me to study Irish history from a different 
 point of view than I had previously done, and in the course 
 of the following two or three years my views as to Home 
 Rule underwent a gradual change, which ripened into con- 
 viction on the subject in 1885. 
 
 In the debate on the Address at the opening of the 
 session of 1882, 1 spoke on the subject of the ' No Rent ' cir- 
 cular, and I denounced it in the strongest terms I could use ; 
 and I held that in face of such a circular the landlords were 
 justified, subject to due consideration in abatement of 
 arrears, in putting in force their rights, and that the Govern- 
 ment was justified in supporting them in so doing. I was 
 unable, however, on account of my connection with the 
 Government, to develop other points in the policy which I had 
 recommended to Mr. Forster — namely, the abandonment of 
 Coercion, the release of the suspects, and the passing at once 
 of a measure relieving the tenants from arrears of rent. 
 
 My speech, on the occasion to which I refer, led to a mis- 
 apprehension of my views in Ireland, and was the cause of 
 severe attacks against me in the Irish papers ; and I was un- 
 able to defend myself in the House of Commons or else- 
 where by stating fully the policy which I had considered 
 should be adopted. 
 
 A few weeks after my visit to Loughrea, Lord Clanri- 
 carde's agent, Mr. Blake, was brutally murdered. He was 
 driving into Loughrea with his wife and a servant on an Irish 
 car on a Sunday morning. About half a mile from the town 
 two shots were fired at the car from behind a stone wall, and 
 both Mr. Blake and the driver were killed on the spot. 
 The body of the former fell from the car and the horse
 
 14 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 proceeded slowly on its way to the town, Mrs. Blake being too 
 agitated to take the reins or even to explain to others what 
 had occurred. Mr. Blake was seventy years of age, and had 
 filled the post of agent for many years, and till within a 
 recent period had been not unpopular in the district. 
 Great complaints, however, Avere prevalent as to his conduct 
 to the tenantry during the two years previous to the murder. 
 It was said that he was personally responsible for the refusal 
 of Lord Clanricarde to make any abatement of rent during 
 this period of depression. His widow desired to vindicate 
 his memory against these charges by publishing his corre- 
 spondence with Lord Clanricarde, with the object of show- 
 ing that he had acted on all occasions by the orders of his 
 employer, and contrary to the advice which he had himself 
 often given, and that he had received express instructions 
 from Lord Clanricarde to insist upon the payment of full 
 'rent in spite of his own recommendation to make abatements. 
 Lord Clanricarde, on being informed of Mrs. Blake's intention, 
 moved in the Court of Queen's Bench in Dublin, and ob- 
 tained an injunction prohibiting her from making any use 
 of her husband's correspondence. 
 
 In the early part of the session of 1882 there occurred the 
 crisis in the Government which resulted in the resignation 
 of Mr. W. E. Forster. Negotiations were entered into 
 between the leaders of the Irish party then in prison and 
 Mr. Chamberlain. It was represented to the Govern- 
 ment that if the suspects were let out of prison, and if 
 a measure dealing with arrears of rent were passed, the 
 leaders of the Irish party would use all their efforts to quiet 
 Ireland. 
 
 The Government decided to act on this in spite of the 
 ultimate objections of Mr. Forster, who opposed not so 
 much on the ground of principle, that it was wrong to 
 negotiate in any way with the Irish leaders, as that definite 
 terms of a more complete and satisfactory character, and
 
 LOUGHREA IN 1882 15 
 
 distinct pledges for good conduct in the future, should have 
 been exacted from them before they were let out of prison. 
 He resigned his post. Lord Frederick Cavendish was ap- 
 pointed in his place. Lord Spencer had already replaced 
 Lord Cowper as Lord-Lieutenant. His appointment in 
 that capacity, with Lord Frederick Cavendish as the Chief 
 Secretary, was accepted by the Irish people as an indication 
 of a policy of conciliation and a reversal of that of Mr. 
 Forster. Their arrival in Dublin was hailed with popular 
 demonstration and great rejoicing, to be dashed to the 
 ground again the same night by the terrible murders of 
 Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke in the Phoenix 
 Park. 
 
 No more unfortunate or disastrous event ever occurred 
 to Ireland. There can be no doubt it was deeply deplored 
 and condemned by the leaders of the Irish party. It 
 caused an immediate revulsion of public opinion in 
 England. It appeared to justify all that had been said against 
 the policy of conciliation and agreement with the Irish 
 leaders. It necessitated an immediate application to Parlia- 
 ment for coercive powers of a kind differing in method and 
 degree from the Act of 188 1. No Government could have 
 remained in office for a day, which was not prepared to 
 propose some such measure. 
 
 I thought then, and still think, that it would have been 
 wise to consult with the Irish leaders as to the measure 
 which should be adopted. They were prepared, I believed, 
 under the exigencies of public opinion at the moment, to 
 concede much in the direction of an exceptional measure, 
 to secure the punishment of the murderers in the Phcenix 
 Park tragedy, and to suppress disorder in Ireland. It 
 would not have been difficult to obtain their co-operation 
 in the framing and passing of such a measure. 
 
 It was held, however, to be impossible to dally further 
 with the Irish party. Public opinion in England would not
 
 1 6 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 have borne an agreement with men who, for the moment, 
 were held responsible for what had taken place. The 
 Government were. carried away by the popular demand for 
 a strong measure, or were unable to resist it. The Coercion 
 Act of 1882 was passed in the face of the violent opposition 
 of the Irish members. As originally proposed, it was too 
 mild for the House of Commons, and important clauses 
 increasing its severity were carried against the will of the 
 Government. 
 
 Apart from this measure, the main lines of the policy, 
 which I had advocated on my return from Ireland, were 
 now carried out. The suspects were released from prison. 
 A measure dealing with the arrears of rent was proposed to 
 Parliament and was carried. It is still held in some quarters 
 that the improved condition in Ireland which followed from 
 the middle of 1882, and which lasted till the autumn of 
 1885, was due to the Coercion Act of the former year, and 
 to the wise and firm administration of it by Lord Spencer. 
 My own belief has always been that it was mainly due to 
 other parts of his policy, its remedial side— namely, to the 
 Arrears Act — which removed for the time the agrarian 
 difficulty, stopped the evictions which were taking place for 
 arrears of unjust and impossible rents, put money into the 
 pockets of many needy landlords, enabled thousands of 
 tenants to go into the Land Court and obtain large remis- 
 sions of rent, and was the immediate cause of the reduction 
 of agrarian outrages. 
 
 If this view be right, the Coercion Act of 1882 was an 
 impediment to the restoration of peace in Ireland rather 
 than the cause of it ; and it would have been far better if it 
 had not been passed, or if it had been limited, as might 
 well have been done, to what would have been conceded 
 at the time by the Irish leaders. The severer clauses of 
 the Act were never in fact put in force. 
 
 Whatever may be the proper conclusion on these points
 
 LOUGH RE A IN 1S8.2 17 
 
 of policy, there can be no doubt that the agrarian position 
 was immensely improved between the years 1S82 and the 
 autumn of 1885. The Arrears Act was a most successful 
 measure. It was carried out with a rapidity which did 
 infinite credit to its authors and to those who were entrusted 
 with the execution of it. An immense number of the 
 smaller tenants in Ireland were relieved by it, and for the 
 following three years rents throughout the greater part of 
 that country were collected with less difficulty and with 
 smaller deductions, even in cases where the Land Com- 
 missioners had made no awards, than was generally the case 
 during the same period in England and Scotland.
 
 1 8 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LOUGHREA IN 1 886-7. 
 
 In the autumn of 1885 a new agrarian difficulty com- 
 menced in Ireland ; this time it had its origin, not in 
 the failure of crops or in bad seasons, but in the great 
 fall of prices of agricultural produce, affecting specially 
 stock and dairy r products, and making it impossible for 
 the bulk of farmers, whether large or small, to pay their 
 full rents, even their judicial rents as reduced by the Land 
 Commissioners. 
 
 The Irish tenants, however, as a rule, paid their rents 
 for 1885 in the hopes of better prices, and the difficulty as 
 regards rent did not culminate till the autumn of 1886. Many 
 landlords of Ireland then met the crisis by conceding large 
 abatements of rent, even of judicial rents. The reductions 
 ranged from 20 to 30 per cent., and even in many cases 
 40 per cent. ; a difference of 5 or 10 per cent, being 
 generally made in the abatements of judicial and non- 
 judicial rents. The Land Commissioners showed their 
 appreciation of the great fall of prices, for their decisions 
 in the year 1886 as regards judicial rents averaged 20 per 
 cent, lower than those given in 1S82-4 as compared with 
 Griffith's valuation. In the autumn session of 1886 the 
 Irish representatives made a strong appeal in Parliament 
 for legislation to meet this serious state of things, to shorten 
 the period of judicial rents, and to enable those who had 
 obtained decreases in 1882-4 to re-open the question, and
 
 LOUGHREA IN 18SG-7 19 
 
 also to enable leaseholders to apply for judicial rents. The 
 Government of Lord Salisbury met their demands with a 
 direct refusal. They denied that there had been any 
 such fall of prices as justified the reduction of judicial 
 rents. The utmost they would do was to appoint a 
 Royal Commission, with Lord Cowper as its head, to 
 inquire into the subject of prices, and to report as to the 
 condition of the Irish tenants. This Commission, which 
 reported in the early part of 1887, fully confirmed the 
 case which had been made by the Irish members, and 
 advised that judicial rents fixed before the year 1885 should 
 be reduced. 
 
 The intervening autumn and winter had been a period 
 of great difficulty throughout Ireland. The Chief Secretary, 
 Sir M. Hicks-Beach, having refused the constitutional demand 
 of the Irish members in Parliament for legislation, went 
 over to Ireland after the session was over, and very soon 
 found that the condition of things there was such that he 
 was compelled to bring all the influence of the Government 
 upon landlords to induce them to make abatements of their 
 rents. The greater number of landlords were already re- 
 sponding to the exigencies of the time, and were making 
 abatements of rent ; but, as always happens, a large minority 
 of landlords, whether through ignorance or want of means, 
 were unwilling or unable to make any abatements of rent, and 
 were pressing their tenants for full rents by threats of eviction. 
 
 In the Loughrea district Lord Clanricarde set the bad 
 
 example of refusing to make any abatement of rent to his 
 
 numerous tenantry, and his course was followed by other 
 
 landlords of the district. Very few of Lord Clanricarde's 
 
 tenants had gone into Court and obtained judicial rents, 
 
 partly because their rents were not very greatly in excess of 
 
 the judicial rents as fixed by the Commissioners in 1882-4; 
 
 partly also because the agent had made it a point of policy 
 
 in the management of the property to appeal in every case, 
 
 c 2
 
 20 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 thus adding greatly to the cost of obtaining the judicial 
 rents, and deterring his tenants from entering the Court; 
 and partly also because it had been the practice of the 
 estate to allow arrears of rent to accumulate, which were 
 used as a means of preventing tenants going into Court, by 
 threats of insisting on payment of back rents. The rents, 
 however, which, so far as I could ascertain by local inquiry 
 in 1887, averaged about 10 per cent, above the judicial 
 rents of from 1882 to 1885, were fully 25 to 30 per cent, 
 above the judicial rents of 1886, and it was certain that the 
 bulk of the tenantry in the neighbourhood of Woodford 
 and Loughrea were quite unable to pay them. Difficulties 
 of a most serious character, therefore, arose in the autumn 
 of 1885, and Mr. Joyce, who had succeeded Mr. Blake as 
 agent of the property, found it expedient to advise his em- 
 ployer to make abatements of rent. 
 
 The tenants in the neighbourhood of Woodford met 
 together and signed a petition to Lord Clanricarde praying 
 for an abatement of rent, and offering to pay, subject to a 
 reduction of 25 per cent. The petition was signed by their 
 parish priest and by the coadjutor-bishop of the diocese, 
 Dr. Healy, a prelate whose views on agrarian questions were 
 known to be rather favourable to the landlords, and who 
 differed in this respect from the Bishop of Clonfert and 
 most other members of the Catholic Episcopacy. 
 
 In forwarding the petition to his employer, Mr. Joyce 
 •expressed the opinion that an abatement ought to be con- 
 ceded, as other landlords in Galway were making reductions. 
 Lord Clanricarde, whose very address in London was un- 
 known to his tenants, and who was as much an abstraction 
 to them as if he had lived in the planet Saturn, made no 
 reply whatever to the petition ; he reprimanded his agent 
 for forwarding it to him, and declined to follow his advice. 
 ' You must,' he wrote, ' at once, without losing a second of 
 time, take full and drastic measures to recover the amount
 
 LOUGH RE A IN 1SSG-7 21 
 
 of rent due.' From other correspondence with his agent it 
 would appear that he regarded the Land Act of 1881 as an 
 unjust invasion of his rights of property, justifying him in 
 pressing what remained to him to their fullest extreme. 
 Living in London, knowing nothing personally about the 
 property, caring little for the effect of his decision, and in- 
 curring no personal risk himself for any conclusion he arrived 
 at, he nevertheless left no discretion whatever to his agent, 
 and considered himself able to direct the management of 
 the estate in its minutest details, and to interfere in every 
 point concerning it. 
 
 All these details of management, his relations to his 
 agent, and his refusal to grant an abatement of rent, became 
 matters of public knowledge by the merest accident, in con- 
 sequence of a speech which I had myself made in the debate 
 on the Address in the House of Commons in the session of 
 1887. After my visit to Loughrea in 1882, I had always 
 watched with interest the proceedings in that district, and 
 had kept myself informed from time to time of what took 
 place there. I had ascertained on authority, which I did 
 not doubt, that Mr. Joyce, Lord Clanricarde's agent, had 
 been called as a witness before Lord Cowper's Commission, 
 and had given evidence to the effect that he had advised 
 his employer to make a general abatement of rent, and that 
 his advice had been refused, and that he had further ex- 
 pressed his opinion that if this remission had been made 
 the country would have been quiet. In a speech on the 
 Address I adverted to this subject. I told the story of 
 Lord Clanricarde and his agent, to illustrate the case of 
 a great absentee proprietor refusing to do that which his 
 representative on the spot considered to be essential in the 
 interest of peace and order in the district and of justice to 
 the tenantry, and I used it as an argument in favour of 
 legislation on the subject of arrears of rent. In another 
 speech at Oldham I had also adverted to the same subject,
 
 22 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 and had further illustrated my argument by referring to the 
 fact that Lord Clanricarde had for some years drawn from 
 his property an income of about 20,000/. a year without 
 doing anything for his tenants in the way of improving his 
 property. 
 
 Lord Clanricarde thereupon wrote to the ' Times ' to say 
 that my statement with respect to the advice of his agent was 
 a falsehood ; that, so far from being true, the fact was that 
 his agent had told him that his tenants were engaged in a 
 strike against the payment of any rent ; and he also wrote 
 to an Oldham paper to the effect that my statement with 
 respect to the income he had drawn from his Irish property 
 was a lie, and that he had never in any one year received from 
 it from 18,000/. to 20,000/. 
 
 His agent, Mr. Joyce, considered that the publication 
 of these letters was calculated to do him serious injury, and 
 he called upon Lord Clanricarde to make some explanation. 
 ' This year,' he said in one letter, ' is a bad one, and every 
 landlord is giving an abatement. ... I consider it most 
 unfair that the whole blame of your not having granted any 
 abatement, when other landlords are doing so. should fall 
 on me.' And in another letter he begged to remind his 
 lordship that in each of the years 1883 and 1884 he had 
 paid into his lordship's account at Messrs. Ransome and 
 Co.'s a larger sum than 20,000/. 
 
 Lord Clanricarde not only refused to withdraw his state- 
 ments, but called on Mr. Joyce to write him a letter, contra- 
 dicting my statement, for publication. Mr. Joyce refused to 
 do this, resigned his agency, and brought an action for libel 
 against his employer, founded on the letter to the ' Times ' 
 stating that he had advised that the tenants were engaged in 
 a ' No Rent ' agitation. In the trial which ensued in this libel 
 case at Dublin in the autumn of 1887 tne whole facts were 
 elicited. The correspondence fully proved all that I had 
 said. It showed that Mr. Joyce had advised his employer
 
 LOUGHREA IN JS86-7 23 
 
 to make abatements, and that Lord Clanricarde had refused 
 to do so. It showed that I had understated the amount 
 which Lord Clanricarde had drawn from this property, and 
 the evidence proved conclusively that he had received in 
 the two years 1883 and 1884 the immense sum of 47,000/., 
 a larger proportion of the nominal rental of 25,000/. than 
 probably any other landlord in the United Kingdom had 
 been fortunate enough to receive. In summing up the 
 evidence, Chief Baron Palles said that Lord Clanricarde's 
 conduct to his tenants had ' aroused the indignation of the 
 empire,' and even the London ' Times,' in commenting on 
 the case, said that the evidence showed 'that Lord Clanri- 
 carde had treated his tenants with incredible baseness.' 
 The jury gave a verdict in favour of Mr. Joyce, with very 
 heavy damages against his late employer. 
 
 The inquiry was most opportune, for it opened the eyes 
 of the public in England to the real condition of things in 
 that part of Ireland and to the causes of disturbance there. 
 In the meantime, and before the resignation of Mr. Joyce, 
 most serious events occurred on the property. The 
 Woodford tenants, finding their applications for a reduction 
 of rent treated with a contemptuous indifference, and not 
 even answered by Lord Clanricarde, entered into a strict com- 
 bination to resist the landlord's demand for payment of full 
 rents. The case is of the utmost importance in the agrarian 
 history of Ireland. It was the first occasion in which the 
 tenants of a large property entered into an open combination 
 against their landlord. The movement was a purely spon- 
 taneous one, and of indigenous birth and growth ; it was 
 not prompted by any of the leaders of the National party. 
 The combination of these tenants was the legitimate out- 
 come of the position where, on the one hand, was a great 
 landowner with gigantic means, unapproachable and beyond 
 the reach either of prayers or imprecations, of injury or 
 threats, and, on the other, of a vast number of small tenants,
 
 24 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 each of whom alone would be powerless against the despot r 
 and who, taken singly, would have certainly to succumb to 
 the threat of eviction, or be cleared out of their last penny, 
 or even of the stock necessary for the cultivation of 
 their holding, but who united might be strong enough to 
 induce or compel their landlord to come to reasonable 
 terms. 
 
 Who can wonder that under these circumstances the 
 tenants should combine to protect themselves and their 
 property ? Strictly speaking, the occupiers of land in 
 Ireland, whom we call tenants, are not tenants in the English 
 sense of the term; under the Act of 1881 they have been 
 recognised as co-owners of the land with the landlords. 
 The terminology of the English land system, which is based 
 on the universality of landlords and tenants, is no longer 
 applicable to the Irish system, where the occupying owner 
 and the non-resident or rent-receiving owner are co-pro- 
 prietors. The determination of the relative interests of 
 these co-owners is the problem of the Irish land question. 
 When a grave and permanent fall in prices occurs, the ques- 
 tion arises whether the whole of this loss should fall on the 
 one, or whether it should be shared by both. If the law for 
 the moment should hold it to fall upon the occupying owner, 
 common-sense and a finer regard for equity would concur 
 in holding that it is most unfair that the whole loss should 
 fall on one co-owner, and that it is only right that the other 
 co-owner should bear his share in the loss. In this view 
 the claim made by the tenants was not merely of an eleemo- 
 synary character, an appeal for indulgence, but was founded 
 on an equitable consideration of mutual rights. It was 
 equally put forward on behalf of those tenants who by- 
 reason of their poverty could not pay their full rents, 
 and by those who by reason of their industry or thrift in 
 the past had saved money for their old age or for the 
 support of their families.
 
 LOUGH RE A IN 1886-7 25 
 
 The traditional practice on Irish estates has been to 
 treat all tenants in the same manner as regards rent when 
 any common disaster, in the shape of bad seasons or low 
 prices, has made an abatement of rent reasonable and just. 
 It has not been the custom to say to the many who are 
 unable to pay the full demand that they shall have a re- 
 mission of rent, but to the few who are able, by reason of 
 their past prudence, skill, and thrift, to pay if pressed, that 
 they must draw upon their small hoards in order to meet the 
 full legal liability of rent. Equality of treatment, under cir- 
 cumstances of common causes of loss, is the very essence 
 of sound policy in the management of landed properties, 
 even in England. Still more is this the case in Ire- 
 land, where the claim can be based on the right of occupa- 
 tion as co-owners, on a footing equal in point of law 
 and historical origin to the right of ownership of the land- 
 lords. 
 
 It was on these considerations that the combination of 
 the tenants of Eord Clanricarde, as in many other cases 
 was based. They all entered into a common agreement to 
 stand by one another and to resist to the utmost the claim 
 for full legal rent, which they held, and rightly held, to be 
 unjust under the altered economic conditions of the time. 
 It was an essential feature of the combination that the 
 stronger and better circumstanced among the tenants would 
 stand by the weaker, and would not by yielding weaken 
 the force of the whole body as against the landlord ; and, 
 further, that if some should be evicted in defence of the com- 
 mon cause, no final arrangement should be come to by others, 
 unless it should involve the reinstatement in their holdings 
 of those who had in the early stages sacrificed themselves 
 for their fellow-tenants, by incurring and enduring eviction. 
 It is all-important to appreciate this condition as to the 
 evicted tenants, for it is the rock on which many arrange- 
 ments with landlords have come to grief. It is the point
 
 26 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 on which many landlords have been to the very last most 
 unwilling to give way, and it still forms one of the main 
 difficulties of any final agreement between Lord Clanricarde 
 and his tenants. 
 
 Whatever may be the legal right of the tenants or co- 
 owners to combine together for common protection of their 
 property — and it would seem that the Irish Courts have laid 
 down that the mere combination is an illegal conspiracy, 
 even without the adjuncts which, under the Plan of Cam- 
 paign, have made the combination of questionable morality 
 in the eyes of many people — it may be fairly asked how and 
 by what other process people under this condition could 
 find protection for their interests created by their ow r n indus- 
 try and sanctioned by law ? and how could they stand up 
 against such a landlord as Lord Clanricarde ? 
 
 For my part, I have always felt that the combination 
 under the circumstances was justifiable and necessary, and 
 was the only means by which the occupiers of this district 
 could protect themselves and their property against such a 
 man as their landlord had proved himself to be. The case 
 was very analogous to that of combination of workmen 
 against their employers, and should be judged by similar 
 considerations. A combination may be just and neces- 
 sary, or may, on the other hand, be unjust and un- 
 necessary, and public sympathy is given to either side as 
 the equities of the particular case may lie. In the dis- 
 pute now under consideration the equities of the case 
 were, and still remain, unquestionably on the side of the 
 tenants. 
 
 Lord Clanricarde and his agent met the combination with 
 boldness, and with the full determination to break it down 
 by means of all the force with which the law would arm them. 
 A large body of constabulary, more than 500 in number, was 
 collected together, with the sanction of Sir M. Hicks-Beach, 
 for the purpose of enforcing the evictions on the Woodford
 
 LOUGH RE A IN 1886-7 27 
 
 property. The tenants met the attack by every means in 
 their power, short of actual armed resistance. They placed 
 every impediment in the way of the police. They blocked 
 up the roads with trees; they broke down the bridges; they 
 barricaded the houses and made them as far as possible into 
 little fortresses. Thousands of persons collected together to 
 demonstrate against the evictions, and stood by while the 
 police endeavoured to effect an entrance to the houses 
 which had been selected by Mr. Joyce for the first attack. 
 The farms were garrisoned by a number of young men 
 of the district, who assisted the owners in resisting the 
 physical entry of the police. The bailiffs and police were 
 not deterred from doing their duty. They attacked the 
 houses, crept on to the roofs, and effected an entrance as 
 best they could. The inmates threw boiling water from 
 within. It does not appear that any of the police or 
 bailiffs were seriously injured by this. The people are said 
 to have been under the impression that this kind of re- 
 sistance was permissible by law. They stopped short of 
 personal violence, and their resistance was rather that of 
 obstruction. 
 
 By immense exertions, and at a very considerable cost 
 to the State, in the hire of cars to convey the bailiffs and 
 the police on their campaign of eviction, four or five of the 
 tenants were finally ejected from their houses. For this 
 resistance seventy-five young men of Woodford, of good 
 character, were summoned before the magistrates, and were 
 committed for trial at the next assizes for the offence of 
 violently resisting the officers of the law. Bail was refused 
 for them, and these men were sent to prison for many weeks, 
 during which they were treated as common prisoners, and 
 Were herded with criminals, pending the trial of their cases 
 at Sligo. 
 
 At the assizes the juries empanelled to try these men 
 were deliberately packed by the Crown officials, in the
 
 28 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 sense that every Catholic, of whatever position in life he 
 might be, was challenged, and the juries sworn to try these 
 men were composed solely of Protestants, who in that part 
 of Sligo necessarily meant men in the interest of the land- 
 lords. By means of these packed juries, the greater num- 
 ber of the Woodford men were found guilty of the charge 
 of resisting the bailiffs in the execution of the law, and were 
 sentenced to most severe terms of imprisonment with hard 
 labour, varying from six months to eighteen months. 1 Chief 
 Baron Palles, who inflicted these sentences, was apparently 
 not then in possession of the knowledge which, as already 
 stated, induced him at the subsequent trial, in the action 
 between Lord Clanricarde and Mr. Joyce, to say that the 
 action of the former to his tenants had aroused the indig- 
 nation of the empire. Had this learned judge known as 
 much of the case as he did later, it may not unreasonably 
 be supposed that the sentences would not have been so 
 severe. 
 
 These young men, however, had not acted as they did, 
 and did not go to gaol under these severe sentences, without 
 effect on public opinion. The Woodford evictions aroused 
 public attention to the case of the tenants through the 
 length and breadth of England. The Irish Government 
 could not then support the odium of sending another army of 
 police to support further evictions on this property. Every 
 influence, therefore, was brought to bear on Lord Clanricarde 
 to induce or compel him to make abatements of rent to his 
 
 1 Galway Gaol was overcrowded by these numerous prisoners, and 
 an epidemic broke out among them. One of them, a young man named 
 Larkin, became seriously ill and was cruelly neglected. He died in 
 prison without the solace even of a minister of his religion, and untended 
 and uncared for by any relative or friend. His father, on returning 
 home from the funeral of the son, found a writ of ejectment waiting his 
 arrival. A coroner's jury found that Larkin died from the neglect of 
 the prison authorities, but no further notice was taken of the matter by 
 the Government at Dublin.
 
 LOUGIIREA IN 1886-7 29 
 
 tenants, and to come to a reasonable settlement with them. 
 Sir M. Hicks-Beach, the Chief Secretary, sent for Mr. Joyce, 
 and gave him to understand that the Government would not 
 lend the forces of the Crown for the purpose of assisting 
 Lord Clanricarde in carrying out further evictions unless a 
 reasonable abatement of rent was made. Lord Clanricarde, 
 on receiving information of this interview, wrote a letter of 
 remonstrance to the Chief Secretary. ' My agent, Mr. Joyce,' 
 he wrote, ' informs me that you sent for him and desired 
 him to inform me that the Government would not carry out 
 another eviction on my property until I gave back to the 
 tenants an allowance on payment of their rents. I at first 
 concluded that my agent must have invented so incredible 
 a message and was playing into the hands of the Land 
 League. ... I must ask you to be good enough to let 
 me know — 1. If my agent's statement in question is 
 correct ; 2. As I have every wish to facilitate, as far as 
 I can, the Government's (I fear feeble) efforts to govern . 
 Ireland, . . . can I trust the Government to support me 
 in carrying out new evictions (should they be necessary) 
 if I give back 20 per cent, on the rents due the 1st of 
 November?' 
 
 To this the Chief Secretary replied in terms such as have 
 been seldom, if ever, written by the head of the Irish Govern- 
 ment to a landowner since the days of Thomas Drummond's 
 celebrated letter to the Tipperary magistrates, in which he 
 first used the famous aphorism, that ' property has its 
 duties as well as its rights.' In this letter, while disclaim- 
 ing the interpretation given to his personal statement to 
 Mr. Joyce, that he would absolutely refuse the use of the 
 forces of the Crown in support of Lord Clanricarde's evictions, 
 he said : ' I stated to Mr. Joyce, as I have to many others, 
 my strong objection to anything like wholesale evictions, 
 and my opinion that, when it became necessary to proceed 
 to eviction in order to maintain the rights of property, the
 
 3 o INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 proper course was to select a few leading cases in which the 
 tenants were able but declined to pay. ... I then ques- 
 tioned him as to the ability of your tenants to pay their 
 rents. He replied that he thought some of them could do 
 so, but, on pressure from me, he admitted that he had 
 advised you to make considerable reductions to others, 
 though so far without success. I requested him to inform 
 your lordship that if you adhered to that decision against 
 the advice of your own agent, and contrary to the general 
 action of Irish landlords, the responsibility would be solely 
 yours ; that you might find further proceedings costly and 
 ineffective ; and that, in the event of application to the 
 Government for the services of constables and military on 
 such occasions, compliance with the request would certainly 
 be retarded by the pressure of other claims and duties, and 
 would most probably be postponed to the utmost extent 
 permitted by law . . . ; ' and in reply to Lord Clanri- 
 carde's question, whether in the event of his making an 
 abatement of 20 per cent, the Government would lend him 
 the support of the forces of the Crown for his evictions, 
 the Chief Secretary declined to express the opinion that 
 even this would be sufficient, and pointed out that the 
 Land Commissioners were making even greater reduc- 
 tions in cases which had come before them for that estate, 
 and that other landlords were making even larger abate- 
 ments. 1 
 
 It may be doubted whether the offer of Lord Clanricarde, 
 if made to the tenants, would at this late period have satisfied 
 them or have effected a settlement ; but it is certain that 
 if it had been made in the previous year, when the dispute 
 first arose, and when the tenants had petitioned for abate- 
 ment and had offered to pay, subject to an abatement of 
 25 per cent., an arrangement would have been effected on 
 
 1 Letter of Sir M. I Ticks-Beach to Lord Clanricarde of Oct. 25, 
 1886, printed in the Times, Dec. 10, 1887.
 
 LOUGH RE A IN 188G-7 31 
 
 those terms, and all the unfortunate and disastrous everts 
 which have occurred in the interval — namely, the com- 
 bination and the evictions and the imprisonment of the 
 seventy-five young men, and all subsequent proceedings 
 under the Coercion Acts— would have been avoided. 
 This was apparently the opinion of Chief Baron Palles in 
 the libel case. He pointed out that the tenants might be 
 expected to ask rather more than they were prepared to 
 accept, and he showed that there was all the difference in the 
 world between a ' No Rent ' agitation and a combination for 
 a reasonable abatement of rent, such as that of the Wood- 
 ford tenants. 
 
 Many months elapsed between the date of Sir M. Hicks- 
 Beach's last letter in November 1886 to Lord Clanricarde 
 and the next attempted proceedings of the latter against his 
 tenants. The Chief Secretary never again, during the 
 remainder of his tenure of office, lent the forces of the 
 Crown to a renewed action against the tenants of this 
 district. It appears also that the offer made by Lord 
 Clanricarde to the Chief Secretary of an abatement of 
 arrears of 20 per cent, was never made to the tenants 
 themselves. The offer made to them through Mr. Joyce 
 was very different, and was most inadequate. The dispute 
 with the tenants had then lasted more than a year, and one 
 full year's rent was then owing besides the usual hanging 
 gale, or the half-year's rent payable six months after it was 
 due. The offer made through Mr. Joyce was that, if the 
 tenants would pay in full the year's rent then due and 
 payable, he would make an abatement of 20 per cent, on 
 the rent payable six months later. In other words, an 
 abatement of 20 per cent, on a single half-year's rent, not 
 then payable, was all that was offered. A more preposterous 
 and absurd offer could not have been made. In the corre- 
 spondence laid before the jury in the libel case there is a 
 letter from Mr. Joyce explaining to his employer that this
 
 3 2 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 offer was nugatory, and could not possibly be accepted by 
 the tenants ; and in his reply Lord Clanricarde positively 
 declined to make any further concession, and said that any 
 abatement of past rent would be ' a swindle as against him- 
 self.' Mr. Joyce, in an interview which I had with him on 
 my subsequent visit to the district, told me that he could 
 not make Lord Clanricarde understand the effect of his 
 offer, or that it was illusory as a means of effecting a 
 settlement — another illustration of the effect of absenteeism, 
 and of the evil results of a great landowner endeavouring 
 to manage his property from London, against the advice of 
 his local agent. 
 
 In October 1886, after the evictions already referred 
 to, and after the Sligo convictions, the tenants of the Clan- 
 ricarde property in this part of Galway, including those 
 of Loughrea and Portumna, by the advice of Mr. Dillon 
 and Mr. O'Brien, organised a more thoroughly complete 
 and definite combination, and adopted what is known 
 as the 'Plan of Campaign.' The previous combination 
 already referred to was of a somewhat loose character ; 
 there was nothing to prevent any tenant who was a party to 
 it breaking away at any moment when threatened with legal 
 proceedings by his landlord; there was no security to those 
 who resisted and suffered eviction that they would receive 
 any support from their fellow-tenants until a general 
 settlement should be effected, or that their reinstatement 
 would be made a condition of the final settlement. Under 
 the combination known as the Plan of Campaign, the 
 parties to it agreed to pay their rent, subject to what they 
 then considered a reasonable abatement, into the hands of 
 some outsider, in the confidence of all the. tenants ; this 
 money was to be used for the purpose of maintaining the j 
 evicted tenants until a settlement should be arrived at; 
 when the final arrangement should be come to, the balance 
 was to be handed over to the landlord.
 
 LOUGH RE A IN 1886-7 33 
 
 It is obvious that such a plan gives to the majority of 
 a combination a great hold over their weaker members. A 
 tenant, who pays 60 per cent, of his rent to the fund thus 
 constituted, gives this security for remaining true to the 
 combination ; he is little likely to have the means of 
 paying another full rent to his landlord, even if he should, 
 under the pressure of eviction, be induced to do so. It 
 also gives great confidence to those who are first attacked 
 by the landlord, and who suffer eviction for the common 
 cause. They are assured of subsistence out of the fund 
 thus created ; they have security that no settlement will 
 be arrived at, which does not provide for their reinstate- 
 ment. 
 
 It must be admitted that there are features in the 
 combination known as the Plan of Campaign which make 
 it distinctly illegal. Whether by the law of England a 
 simple combination of tenants collectively to refuse pay- 
 ment of rent, and to put their landlord to the necessity of 
 evicting any or all of them, with an agreement to stand by 
 one another in such event, is illegal, has been questioned by 
 many able lawyers. The case has never been decided in the 
 English courts. There are many reasons for thinking that, 
 under decisions in analogous cases, such a combination would 
 not be held to be a criminal conspiracy ; but the law relating 
 to conspiracies is very obscure, and much is left to the clis 
 cretion of the judges ; and judge-made law in cases of this 
 kind is not always of the best, and is not unfrequently in 
 conflict with public opinion. 
 
 Whatever, however, may be the law on the subject, it is 
 for a jury to decide on the facts, whether there has been a 
 conspiracy ; and there would be little chance of a jury 
 agreeing to a verdict against the parties to such a combina- 
 tion. This may account for the fact that no such case 
 has been as yet tried. In Wales at the present time there 
 
 D
 
 34 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 are combinations of this character among the tenant 
 farmers to resist the payment of tithes ; but no attempt has 
 been made to try any of the persons concerned in them for 
 criminal conspiracies, and it is most improbable that any 
 Welsh jury could be found to convict. The collection, how- 
 ever, and payment of rent, qua rent, into a fund beyond 
 the reach of the landlord, and the use of it for the purpose 
 of resisting the landlord, is the feature which, according to 
 the best views I have been able to ascertain, gives a more 
 certain illegal aspect than attaches to the simpler form of 
 combination. The essence, however, of both transactions 
 remains the same — namely, the combination of tenants to 
 refuse the payment of full rent, and to put the landlord to 
 the onus of eviction. 
 
 It is all-important to recollect that the Plan of Campaign 
 was in the Clanricarde case, as in many others, the last refuge 
 of a people driven to despair, who could expect nothing 
 from their landlord, and against whom all the forces of the 
 State were being used to enforce evictions which public 
 opinion of the country unanimously condemned; and where 
 seventy- five young men of blameless character had been 
 condemned to most severe sentences for resisting these evic- 
 tions. The scheme was not devised till Parliament had 
 rejected the constitutional demands of four-fifths of the 
 Irish representatives, demands which subsequent events 
 have shown were necessary and just. It must, in fact, 
 be regarded as a desperate remedy to meet a desperate 
 wrong. 
 
 The Plan of Campaign was adopted unanimously by the 
 tenantry of Lord Clanricarde in this part of Galway. It 
 speedily spread, and was adopted by the tenants of many 
 of the principal estates in the neighbourhood of Loughrea, 
 by those of Sir Henry Burke, of Lord Dunsandle, of Lord 
 Westmeath, of Mr. Lewis, and many others. In the prose- 
 cution which was instituted against Mr. Dillon and others
 
 LOUGH RE A IN 1886-7 35 
 
 for a criminal conspiracy in respect of the Plan of Cam- 
 paign, the judges laid down as law that the combina- 
 tion was criminal; but the Dublin jury, in spite of all the 
 efforts of the Crown to pack it and to secure a convic- 
 tion, refused to give a verdict against Mr. Dillon, and it 
 is said that a majority of the jury were in favour of an 
 acquittal. 
 
 These proceedings took place in the winter of 1886-87. 
 The opening of Parliament in 1887 led to the debate already 
 alluded to, and the resignation of Mr. Joyce. In his place 
 Mr. Tener was appointed as the agent of the vast property of 
 Lord Clanricarde, upon the understanding that he was to be 
 paid by a commission on the rent collected. This change in 
 the agency caused some delay before further proceedings 
 were commenced against the tenants. In February of the 
 same year Sir M. Hicks-Beach resigned his position as Chief 
 Secretary, and was succeeded by Mr. Balfour, under whom 
 were passed the Coercion Act of 1 887, and the Amending Land 
 Act of the same session. The latter conceded some very 
 important advantages to certain classes of Irish tenants ; it 
 gave the benefit of judicial rents to leaseholders, and it 
 enabled the Land Commissioners to make temporary reduc- 
 tions in judicial rents, which had been fixed previous to 1885, 
 reductions varying according to the district, and regulated 
 by the price of agricultural products. It provided, however, 
 no equivalent abatements for arrears of rent, which had accu- 
 mulated during the period of low prices. On the other 
 hand, it greatly facilitated evictions by enabling landlords, by 
 mere paper notices, after decrees of ejectment, to turn their 
 tena .its into caretakers, and to deprive them of all rights 
 under the Land Act, except that of redemption within six 
 m jnths of such notice, and thus to postpone the actual 
 c iction, until a convenient time. 
 
 The joint effect of this provision and of the Coercion 
 
 d 2
 
 36 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 Act has been to strengthen enormously the hands of the 
 landlords, while no remedy has been provided to tenants 
 who were in arrears of rent, and who disputed the justice 
 of the claims made against them, as in the case of the 
 Clanricarde tenants.
 
 37 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE WOODFORD MEETINGS. 
 
 Some months elapsed after the events described in the 
 previous chapters, before Mr. Tener, the new agent of the 
 Clanricarde estate, found himself in a position to assert the 
 claims of his employer, or the Government was again in- 
 clined or able to support him with the forces of the Crown, 
 and the powers of the Coercion Act, in the enforcement of 
 these claims. 
 
 The agent, as he subsequently informed me, was under 
 the impression that he opened proceedings by making a more 
 favourable offer to the tenants than his predecessor had 
 done. Having, however, made careful investigation on this 
 point, and having submitted the offer, as given to me in 
 writing by Mr. Tener, to one of the ablest lawyers in 
 Dublin, The McDermott, I am able to say that it practically 
 amounted to nothing better than the previous offer of Lord 
 Clanricarde through Mr. Joyce. It offered substantially 
 no more than an abatement of 20 per cent, on a single half- 
 year's rent out of the two and a half years' arrears then due, 
 conditional upon payment in full of a year's rent, and upon 
 the remainder going to an arrears fund, without any promise 
 of future reduction. Such an offer was quite illusory, and 
 could not be expected to lead to a settlement. Upon its 
 failure Mr. Tener entered upon more active proceedings. 
 He commenced by razing to the ground the houses of the 
 tenants who had been evicted in the previous year, as an. 
 
 388g39
 
 38 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 indication that all hope of reinstatement was cut off. He 
 also made known to the tenants that Lord Clanricarde was 
 determined to resort to every measure that might be neces- 
 sary to enforce his claims, and would expend whatever funds 
 should be required for the purpose. 
 
 These proceedings and threats caused the greatest alarm 
 among the tenantry, and meetings were summoned to pro- 
 test against them and to call for sympathy from the public. 
 The Government, under the powers of the Coercion Act, 
 proclaimed these meetings, and announced their intention 
 to disperse by force any attempt to hold them. 
 
 When the authorities of a country or district act in such 
 an unjustifiable and unconstitutional manner, it cannot be 
 matter for surprise that the people should show their in- 
 dignation in strong measures and in stronger language, by 
 way of protest against the violation of their rights. It was 
 determined to hold a meeting at Woodford in spite of the 
 declared intention of the Government to prevent it. The 
 anniversary of the day when the Plan of Campaign was 
 adopted, October 16, was chosen for the demonstration; 
 and to elude the authorities, and to avoid any chance of a 
 conflict with the police, the meeting was held at midnight. 
 Father Coen, the parish priest, presided. The meeting 
 was addressed by Mr. W. O'Brien, M.P.; Mr. Sheehy, the 
 member for that division of Galway County; Mr. Rowlands, 
 the member for Finsbury; by Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, and by the 
 delegates of several Radical associations in England who hap- 
 pened to be in Ireland at that time. The meeting was held in 
 the principal street of Woodford, and the speakers addressed 
 it from the windows of a shop of one of the leading trades- 
 men. All Woodford was present. Many of the speeches were 
 of a somewhat excitable character, as was to be expected at 
 such an hour, and under the fear of being dispersed by the 
 police. The Plan of Campaign was lauded and approved. 
 Father Coen, who presided, showed his contempt for the
 
 THE WOODFORD MEETINGS 39 
 
 proclamation of the Lord-Lieutenant, prohibiting the meet- 
 ing, by wiping his shoe with it; and Mr. O'Brien subse- 
 quently burnt the document amid the cheers of the 
 assembled people. Eight policemen were present, a force 
 obviously quite unable to disperse the meeting. They were 
 not interfered with. They knew and could recognise every 
 one who was present. 
 
 To appreciate the object of the meeting it is necessary 
 to bear in mind that there was at that time the gravest alarm 
 among the leaders of the people in the district that Lord 
 Clanricarde's renewed threats of eviction might result in 
 reprisals in the shape of outrage or crime. The history of 
 the district, and especially that of the years 1881 and 1882, 
 showed that crime and even murder was too frequently the 
 last resort of individuals driven to despair. The method of 
 combination had been commended to the people as a 
 substitute for such violent and brutal courses. It had 
 been eminently successful in preventing and suppressing 
 such crime. The district was perfectly free from taint of 
 this kind ; but there was general fear lest there should be 
 a relapse in this direction ; and it was alleged that the 
 main object on the part of the leaders in holding the meet^ 
 ing was to impress on the people of the district the belief 
 that they would be supported by public opinion, so long as 
 they avoided outrage and crime. There cannot be a doubt 
 that such a speech as that of Mr. O'Brien had a most 
 powerful influence in this direction. His last words were; 
 1 No crime and no surrender,' and these, it is certain, had 
 a greater effect in restraining the people throughout the 
 West of Ireland from crime than all the provisions of the 
 Coercion Act. 
 
 The most moderate of all the speeches made on the 
 occasion was that of Mr. W. Blunt. He had come down to 
 the district with Mr. O'Brien, knowing little of what was 
 intended to be done at the meeting. He was in no way
 
 40 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 responsible for it. From his position in the room from 
 which the speeches were made, he could hear little of those 
 of others, and did not even see what was done to the Pro- 
 clamation. 
 
 It was not Mr. Blunt's first visit to the district. He had 
 been there the previous year, and had made many inquiries 
 into the condition of the tenantry. He had then done his best 
 to bring about a friendly settlement of the dispute which then 
 existed between another landlord of the district, Sir Henry 
 Burke, and his tenants, and I was informed later by the 
 Bishop of Clonfert that Mr. Blunt had most generously 
 undertaken to pay a very considerable sum for the legal 
 costs incurred in ejectment proceedings, in the hopes of 
 settling the case — hopes which were unfortunately not 
 realised. 
 
 The meeting over, Mr. Blunt returned to Dublin ; but 
 he was speedily summoned back to Woodford by the news 
 which followed him there. 
 
 Two days after the midnight meeting, Lord Clanri- 
 carde's agent renewed his evictions under circumstances of 
 more than ordinary harshness and want of consideration, 
 and with the aid of the police, who, under the altered 
 regime of Dublin Castle, were no longer refused to him. 
 The agent and bailiffs, with 150 police, secretly crept up 
 the Shannon by night in boats, and, landing just before day- 
 light on its banks, surprised the occupants of three farms im- 
 mediately after sunrise and succeeded in evicting them, not, 
 however, without serious resistance in one case, for which 
 five persons were sent to gaol for five months, with hard 
 labour, by the magistrates under the Coercion Act. Mr. 
 Blunt, when he heard of these evictions, returned at once to 
 the district, made inquiries into the cases, visited the farms 
 from which the tenants had been evicted, and determined to 
 hold a meeting at Woodford to protest against further pro- 
 ceedings of the same kind. His inquiries resulted in the
 
 THE WOODFORD MEETINGS 41 
 
 conclusion, which every other person who has looked into 
 the cases has come to— namely, that the evictions were harsh 
 and unjustifiable, as they were for arrears of rent, which the 
 grave fall of prices had made unjust and excessive. 
 
 Feeling strongly the necessity for calling public attention 
 to the subject, for the purpose of saving the Clanricarde 
 tenantry from further proceedings, Mr. Blunt summoned a 
 meeting at Woodford for October 23. It was attempted 
 later by the Government to connect this meeting with the 
 previous midnight meeting of the 16th. Nothing could 
 possibly be more unfair or more unjust to Mr. Blunt. The 
 earlier meeting was held at midnight in the open street of 
 Woodford ; it was held for the purpose of celebrating the 
 anniversary of the Plan of Campaign; it was addressed in 
 speeches, many of them of a violent character. Mr. Blunt's 
 meeting was held for the single purpose of protesting 
 against the harsh evictions of Lord Clanricarde, evictions 
 which had been renewed in the interval between the two 
 meetings ; it was held on private grounds outside the town 
 of Woodford, in the middle of the day. It was to be 
 addressed only by Englishmen, and Mr. Blunt wrote to the 
 local magistrates, giving his personal pledge that the speeches 
 would be of a moderate character, and that the resolutions 
 would be under his control. It is difficult to conceive any cir- 
 cumstances or conditions, under which a meeting would be 
 more justifiable and less open to objection than that now pro- 
 posed. Yet this meeting also was proclaimed ; and when 
 Mr. Blunt and his wife Lady Anne, Mr. Rowlands, M.P., 
 and a few others, endeavoured to ascend the temporary 
 platform, and to address the people, who were assembled 
 there, the authorities interfered with force to prevent it. A 
 personal struggle ensued between Mr. Byrne, the resident 
 magistrate, and Mr. Blunt and Lady Anne, which led to the 
 arrest of Mr. Blunt and his subsequent prosecution. 
 
 Three trials have taken place in respect of this single
 
 42 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 meeting — that of the criminal prosecution of Mr. Blunt be- 
 fore the two resident magistrates at Woodford ; his appeal 
 before the County Court judge, Mr. Henn, at Portumna ; 
 and his civil action against Mr. Byrne for illegal assault before 
 Chief Baron Palles and a special jury at Dublin. In all three 
 the issues were the same — namely, whether the meeting 
 was an unlawful one, justifying the authorities in dispersing 
 it by force, or a lawful one, whether the action of the au- 
 thorities was illegal and whether Mr. Blunts resistance was 
 justifiable. It will be seen that the Crown lawyers put for- 
 ward a different defence of their action at each of these 
 trials. At the first prosecution before the resident magis- 
 trates, the Crown officials contented themselves with putting 
 in evidence the proclamation of the Lord-Lieutenant forbid^ 
 ding the meeting ; on the strength of this the magistrates, 
 without further evidence, convicted Mr. Blunt and sentenced 
 him to two months' imprisonment. 
 
 When the news of Mr. Blunt's conviction reached me, I 
 felt profoundly shocked at the idea of his being condemned 
 for holding a meeting to protest against Lord Clanricarde's 
 action, and at the prospect of his being treated as an ordi- 
 nary criminal. I knew the general circumstances of Lord 
 Clanricarde's property and his treatment of the tenants. I had 
 followed closely all the facts of the case ; I felt most strongly 
 that there never was a case where public sympathy was more 
 required, or where it was more necessary that public opinion 
 should be brought to bear against the harsh and unjust con- 
 duct of the great landlord of the district to his tenants 
 or co-owners. The public was not then fully aware of the 
 facts. The trial between Lord Clanricarde and his agent, 
 Mr. Joyce, had not by that time taken place, and all the 
 damaging facts, which were elicited at that trial, had not been 
 made public. I made no secret of the view I took of Mr. 
 Blunt's case. Speaking at a public meeting at the Memorial 
 Hall, Farringdon Street, I condemned the prosecution in
 
 THE WOODFORD MEETINGS 43 
 
 no measured language. I said that I could conceive no 
 case in which a public meeting to protest against cruel treat- 
 ment by a landlord could possibly be more justified. I 
 stated that, in my opinion, it would be an honour to stand by 
 Mr. Blunt in the dock or in prison on behalf of such a 
 cause ; and at the instance of Mr. Blunt I determined to go 
 over to Ireland for the hearing of the appeal, that I might 
 give such support as was possible "to one who, in the 
 opinion of those who knew the real facts, had taken a 
 commendable and patriotic course, and one for which he 
 should be publicly thanked rather than be prosecuted and 
 imprisoned. 
 
 In the interval between the two trials of Mr. Blunt two 
 matters of interest occurred bearing on the case. The one 
 was the trial of the libel case between Mr. Joyce and Lord 
 Clanricarde, which for the first time made public on oath, 
 and on the correspondence and admissions of the noble 
 defendant, all the features of his conduct to his tenants, 
 conduct which drew upon him the strongest censure of the 
 judge who tried the case, and the universal condemnation 
 of the Press of England and Scotland. The other was the 
 prosecution of twelve persons for having attended the mid- 
 night meeting at Woodford on October 16. For many 
 weeks no notice had been taken of this meeting by the 
 authorities of Dublin. About seven weeks after the event 
 the authorities suddenly woke up to action. They directed 
 the prosecution of twelve persons living at Woodford for 
 being present at it. On what principle the selection of these 
 particular persons was made has never yet been sufficiently 
 explained. The case is one singularly illustrative of the 
 working of the Coercion Act. The only explanation which 
 has been suggested for the prosecution, after so long a 
 delay, is that when the Crown lawyers had to prepare their 
 case on the appeal in Blunt's case, they found that they 
 could not sustain a criminal charge against him, without
 
 44 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 connecting the meeting on October 23 with the previous mid- 
 night meeting of the 16th, and that they were then met with 
 the difficulty that no action had been taken by the Crown 
 against the persons who had attended the earlier meeting. 
 To dispose of this difficulty, it is suggested that a tardy 
 determination was arrived at to prosecute a number of 
 persons for attending the earlier meeting ; and that orders 
 were sent to the local authorities to do this, leaving with them 
 the selection of the individuals. What is certain is that none 
 of the principal parties to the midnight meeting were prose- 
 cuted. Father Coen, who presided, was left untouched; no 
 prosecution was attempted against Mr. W. O'Brien, M.P., 
 who burnt the proclamation and made a strong speech, or 
 against any of the English and Irish members of Parliament 
 or delegates of English Radical clubs who spoke at the 
 meeting and made more or less strong speeches. 
 
 Of the twelve persons selected for prosecution, only 
 one, Mr. John Roche, had taken the smallest part in the 
 proceedings of the meeting ; he had moved Father Coen into 
 the chair without any speech, and, having done so, occupied 
 himself in doing his best to protect the police from violence, 
 and with such success that on the following day he was pub- 
 licly thanked by the inspector of the police for what he had 
 done on behalf of the force ; and yet seven weeks later this 
 very man was prosecuted for attending the meeting, and on 
 the evidence of the same inspector was sent to prison for a 
 month, with hard labour ! Of the other eleven persons who 
 were prosecuted, none had taken any part in the meeting 
 beyond being present in the street and listening to the 
 speeches. The whole of Woodford was present, and the 
 police must have known them all. Why, then, select these 
 twelve persons for prosecution ? The majority of them had 
 taken no part in the arrangements for the meeting. There 
 was no evidence of any having done so. It is scarcely pos- 
 sible to suggest any other motive than that some of these
 
 THE WOODFORD MEETINGS 45 
 
 men were leaders among the tenants of the district, were 
 active men in the combination, and as such were especially 
 obnoxious to the landlords. Mr. Roche was the secretary 
 of the Tenants' Defence Association, and was, therefore, 
 selected on this and other occasions for prosecution. 
 
 When these men were summoned before the magistrates 
 they found themselves deprived of their counsel, Mr. T. 
 Harrington, M.P., who had been arrested the previous day 
 on a bogus charge of being connected with the ' Tralee 
 Herald,' of which his brother, Mr. E. Harrington, M.P., was 
 editor, and who had been recently sent to prison for pub- 
 lishing reports of proceedings of the National League in a 
 proclaimed district. 1 The Woodford men asked for an 
 adjournment of a week in order to secure another counsel. 
 This was refused, although seven weeks had been allowed 
 to elapse since the offence was committed. They were 
 forthwith convicted of attending an illegal meeting, and 
 sentenced each to a month's imprisonment with hard 
 labour. They then asked that the sentence might be en- 
 larged to five weeks, so as to enable them to appeal ; this 
 favour also was refused, and they were sent to prison. It 
 is difficult to believe that such cases could occur under the 
 form and semblance of law. It would be far better to 
 give to the local authorities the power of shutting up in 
 prison any persons whom it may seem expedient to therm 
 in the public interest, to deprive of their liberty, than to 
 arrive at the same end by a travesty of legal proceedings, 
 such as this case presents to us. I shall have later to 
 refer to other proceedings in respect of Mr. Roche, show- 
 ing a determination of the local authorities to ruin him. 
 
 1 The resident magistrates convicted Mr. T. Harrington and sen- 
 tenced him to two months' imprisonment ; but on the application of his 
 counsel they stated a case to the Superior Courts. The Crown has 
 never proceeded further with it.
 
 46 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LOUGHREA IN l88S. 
 
 The appeal in Mr. Blunt's case was fixed for January 3, 
 1888, at Portumna, and, in pursuance of my promise to stand 
 by him and to give him such support as I could, I went 
 over to Ireland a few days in advance, with the object of 
 making some further local inquiries into the condition of the 
 tenantry of the district. I went by train to Athenry, and 
 passed the night at the little inn where I had stayed six 
 years before on my first visit to the district. The next 
 morning I drove over early to the residence of Mr. Joyce, 
 the late agent of Lord Clanricarde. 
 
 Mr. Joyce kindly invited me to lunch with his father-in- 
 law, Mr. Maxwell, of St. Cleran's, a gentleman of position in 
 the neighbourhood. I found myself there in a pleasant circle 
 with many common acquaintances, and heard much from 
 them of the condition of the country, from the point] of view 
 of landlords of the better class, who condemned the conduct 
 of the black sheep of their class, as fiercely as any Nationalist 
 could do, but who not the less could scarcely see any justi- 
 fication for the agitation which was going on around them. 
 It was then that I satisfied myself that no offer had been 
 made to Clanricarde tenants, such as had been suggested to 
 Sir M. Hicks-Beach. Mr. Joyce said that he could have 
 settled the dispute with the tenants on a most satisfactory 
 basis at an abatement of about 20 per cent, if he had been
 
 LOUGH RE A IN 1SSS 
 
 47 
 
 allowed a free hand. The grave mistake that Lord Clanri 
 carde had made was in attempting to manage his estate from 
 London, without any personal knowledge of the people or of 
 the condition of the country. Mr. Joyce told me that he 
 had recently conceded to the tenants of his father-in-law, 
 for whom he was now acting as agent, an abatement of 25 
 per cent, on the judicial rents. He said that all the better 
 landlords of Gal way had freely and without pressure made 
 abatements during the last two years of from 20 to 30 per 
 cent. 
 
 My kind and friendly hosts were evidently not a little 
 surprised at finding me their guest for the nonce, and our 
 arguments on the subject of Home Rule and the Irish Land 
 question waxed a little hot at times, but nothing ruffled the 
 courtesy which is innate in Irishmen and Irishwomen of the 
 best type. I left St. Cleran's in the afternoon and drove to 
 Woodford — one of the coldest and most trying journeys I 
 had ever experienced. 
 
 At Loughrea I found a hospitable welcome at the 
 Bishop of Clonfert's, Dr. Duggan. He is one of the most 
 advanced, from a political point of view, of the Irish 
 Catholic bishops, and also one of the kindest and best be- 
 loved of them. After dinner some twenty of the leading 
 men of the Clanricarde tenants in this district met me by 
 arrangement, and discussed with me the position of affairs in 
 their dispute with their landlords. They were a most intelli- 
 gent set of men, quite alive to their legal position under the 
 two Land Acts, fully competent to discuss their attitude 
 under the Plan of Campaign. I pointed out the legal 
 difficulties to the particular form of combination which 
 they had adopted. They argued the question with mode- 
 ration and force. They contended that the payment of a 
 proportion of the rent into the hands of a third person 
 was not different in substance to a general contribution 
 from the tenants towards the objects of the combina-
 
 48 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 tion, and they could not see the difference in law or 
 morality. 
 
 They claimed that their combination had had the effect 
 of completely putting an end to crime in the district ; that 
 during the last two years, since they had entered into the 
 combination, there had been no single case of outrage or 
 crime. Their chief alarm for the future was lest, in the 
 terror caused by the renewed action of Mr. Tener, some in- 
 dividuals, driven to despair, might revert to old methods, 
 and by committing acts of violence set public opinion of 
 England against them. It was to restrain this that all their 
 efforts were directed. I told them that it would be impos- 
 sible for me to advocate their case either on the public 
 platform or in the House of Commons, unless I felt con- 
 vinced, and unless I was able to give the assurance, that 
 they were prepared to act in a reasonable manner, and to 
 come to an arrangement with their landlord upon such 
 terms as would be considered reasonable and just to both 
 parties. I had their most positive and solemn assurances, 
 given in the presence of the Bishop of Clonfert, that there 
 never had been a time, since the commencement of the dis- 
 pute, when they had not been anxious and willing to come 
 to an arrangement with Lord Clanricarde, upon the same 
 terms of abatement as had been practically conceded by 
 all the better landlords of Galway. This was confirmed by 
 the Bishop, who also gave me his most solemn assurances 
 to the same effect. He had in the past, and always 
 would in the future, use his efforts in that direction, and 
 he firmly believed that a reasonable offer on the part of 
 Lord Clanricarde would even now at the last hour be 
 accepted. 
 
 The leaders of the movement were fully aware of the mis- 
 chief resulting from the present state of things, and they were 
 anxious to bring it to a conclusion. One point, however, 
 they insisted upon as an absolute condition of settlement,
 
 LOUGH RE A IN 1888 49 
 
 without which an arrangeme.it was out of the question — 
 namely, the reinstatement of the evicted tenants, the re- 
 placement in their homes and holdings of the seven or 
 eight tenants who had already been evicted, and who had 
 suffered for the general cause of their fellow-tenants. They 
 feared that this would be one of the greatest difficulties in 
 any arrangement. Apart from this, I found that there was 
 no insuperable difficulty in coming to terms on a most 
 reasonable basis ; and although no specific abatement was 
 mentioned, I gathered that an abatement of 25 per cent, 
 of the arrears of rent then due, with time for payment of 
 a part, and the reinstatement of the evicted tenants, 
 would probably bring this unfortunate dispute to a conclu- 
 sion, and would restore peace and content to this district. 
 My informants stated that Lord Clanricarde gave the lead 
 to many other landlords of that district, that he was 
 fighting their battle with his great means, and that, if a 
 settlement could be arrived at with him, they felt confident 
 there would be no difficulty with Sir Henry Burke, Lord 
 Dunsandle, Mr. Lewis, and others who had followed his 
 course, and whose tenants had also adopted the Plan of 
 Campaign. Before parting with these men I again as- 
 sured them that I should hold them to their promise to 
 accept any reasonable offer of settlement which might be 
 made, and that I could not advocate their case if they 
 failed in this respect. 
 
 Early the next morning I drove in a car with Mr. Mac- 
 Donald and Mr. Hill, the correspondent of the 'Pall Mall 
 Gazette,' to Woodford, distant about fifteen miles. The 
 morning was bright and fine. A good deal of snow had fallen 
 in the night-time, which made the roads heavy and our 
 journey slow. On our way we overtook several men, whom 
 our carman pointed out to us as being on their "way home 
 from Galway Gaol. Indeed, almost every man we met had 
 either been to gaol in respect of resistance to evictions, 
 
 E
 
 50 . INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 or for holding meetings in connection with them. We 
 talked to many of them, and found them full of spirit, glory- 
 ing in their fate, and not in the least subdued by the im- 
 prisonment they had undergone. They were quite prepared 
 to encounter the same fate if evictions were again renewed. 
 
 At Woodford a Court was being held by two resident 
 magistrates under the Coercion Act for the purpose of trying 
 two men who had been present at the midnight meeting 
 of October 16. I went into the Court House and heard the 
 whole case. A greater burlesque of justice could not well 
 be conceived. Neither of these men had taken any part 
 in the meeting beyond being present in the street while 
 the speeches were being made. The inspector of police 
 admitted that one of them had been concerned with Mr. 
 Roche in protecting the police. 
 
 Of the two men, one was sentenced to imprisonment- for 
 a month with hard labour, and the other to a fortnight, in 
 consideration of his having done his best to help the police. 
 A request for an extension of the sentences beyond a month, 
 to enable these men to appeal, was promptly refused. 
 
 The trial over, I spent what remained of the afternoon 
 in visiting some of the tenants who had been evicted from 
 their holdings in the autumn of 1886, and also in looking 
 over the farms from which they had been evicted. Tem- 
 porary wooden huts had been erected on the glebe land of 
 the parish priest, Father Coen, about two miles from Wood- 
 ford, in which four or five of the evicted families were 
 housed. The huts had cost from 20/. to 30/. apiece, and 
 were paid for out of the funds collected under the Plan of 
 Campaign. Here the evicted tenants were living in the 
 confident hope and belief that they would be reinstated in 
 their old homes, whenever a settlement should be arrived 
 at. Meanwhile they were receiving a small monthly pay- 
 ment, scarcely sufficient to keep body and soul together, 
 but eked out by odd jobs, by the slender earnings of the
 
 LOUCHREA IN 18SS 51 
 
 daughters in dressmaking or washing, or by contributions 
 coming from members of the family in the United States, 
 that source from which so much of the rents of the smaller 
 holdings in Ireland is paid. Nothing could be more touch- 
 ing than the patience of these poor people in their present 
 stress, or than their confidence in their fellow-tenants. 
 
 Within a short distance were the farms from which they 
 had been evicted. I was surprised to find how good in most 
 cases had been the houses and farm-buildings. They were 
 anything but the typical cabins, which one associates with 
 the smaller tenants of Ireland. They were comfortable 
 houses of stone, with slate roofs, many of them with two 
 storeys ; the farm-buildings were greatly in excess of what 
 one would suppose necessary for the amount of land 
 attached. The land had in all cases been originally wild 
 moor and bog. It had been reclaimed, drained, and fenced 
 by the tenants and their predecessors ; the houses and 
 buildings had been erected by them. No capital had ever 
 been expended by the successive landlords ; no assistance 
 ever rendered by them. For land originally almost worth- 
 less, the rent was gradually increased till it represented but 
 little less than the rack-rent of the improved land without 
 its buildings. Here is one of the cases which I entered 
 on my notes at the time. The tenant of farm A held 
 twenty acres of land at a rent of 15/. The land was origi- 
 nally moor and bog of the most worthless description, for 
 which a more experienced man in such matters than 
 myself (Mr. Evelyn), who inspected it a few days later, said 
 that 6d. per acre was a high rent. It was reclaimed by 
 the grandfather of the present tenant, and by great ex- 
 penditure of labour of three generations it was drained 1 , 
 fenced, and improved ; a substantial house and farm- 
 buildings were erected, which certainly could not have cost 
 less than 200/., irrespective of the labour of the tenant. 
 The landlord never spent a farthing upon the holding, but 
 
 e 2
 
 52 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 the rent was raised from time to time from 2/. io.y. a year 
 to 15/., at which it stood when the eviction was carried out. 
 Three years ago, before the agricultural depression, the 
 tenant's interest was worth at least 300/., and, estimating 
 the landlord's interest at twenty years' purchase of the rent, 
 it was worth at least as much, making a total value oidool. 
 
 The fall of prices had reduced the gross value of the 
 holding, including both landlord's and tenant's interests, by 
 at least 40 per cent. ; and the question at issue was upon 
 whom this loss of 240/. should fall. Was it to be borne 
 wholly by the occupying owner, or was it to be shared by 
 the non-resident owner? If the tenant were now to go into 
 Court it is certain the rent would be reduced by 35 to 40 
 per cent. The tenant claimed that a reduction should be 
 made in the rent due, and in the arrears which had accu- 
 mulated from the autumn of 1885, when the pressure of the 
 fall of prices became intolerable and when the dispute arose. 
 The landlord refused to take this view, and in 1886 evicted 
 the tenant for a year's rent plus 17/. of costs, sooner than 
 agree to an abatement of 25 per cent., at which a settle- 
 ment could have been arrived at. The tenant's interest 
 was put up for sale, and was bought in by the landlord for 
 4/. The land has since remained uncultivated. No one 
 has been found to take the farm ; no one would dare face 
 the public opinion of the district by becoming tenant of 
 the holding, from which the tenant had been evicted. 
 
 As a result, the land has rapidly deteriorated, and has 
 already gone back into a condition where it is worth no 
 more than 5/. a year as a rack-rent, and if allowed to re- 
 main will speedily relapse into its original condition of bog. 
 Under the recent policy of the landlord the house has been 
 unroofed, and presents the appearance of a ruin. The 
 property which three years ago was worth 600/. between 
 landlord and tenant, and which after the fall of prices was 
 still worth 360/., is now worth no more than 100/. The
 
 LOUGHREA IN 1888 53 
 
 entire interest of one co-owner has been confiscated by the 
 other owner, the landlord ; but in his hands it has become 
 worthless, and has disappeared, while the landlord also has 
 lost two-thirds of his own interest. What a commentary 
 upon the landlord's proceedings ! The case illustrates 
 better than any argument can do the case of the Irish 
 tenant, the origin of his rights as co-owner, the equity he 
 has for a reduction of rent, whenever the primary conditions 
 on which it was settled are substantially altered by a serious 
 fall in prices. The difficulty in making the English people 
 understand the claim is that we still retain the words 
 ' landlord and tenant ' to express the relations of these two 
 persons, in lieu of the term 'co-owners.' 
 
 The case I have just described is typical of others. 
 Some of the farms are smaller. One holding that I visited, 
 where the tenant was under notice of ejectment, and ex- 
 pected at any moment to have it enforced, consisted of six 
 acres only, for which he paid 6/. a year. It was almost im- 
 possible to make out how the tenant lived upon it. The 
 potatoes grown were scarcely more than enough to feed the 
 tenant and his large family ; but he admitted at last that a 
 daughter in America occasionally sent him a 5/. note. 
 
 We returned to dinner at Father Coen's, and at his 
 hospitable board we met several of the tenants and heard 
 many stories illustrative of the state of things in the district. 
 Amid much that was sad, in spite of many alarms for 
 the future, there was the fixed determination to maintain 
 the struggle to the end, to stand by one another, and allow 
 the whole country to be cleared of its inhabitants, sooner 
 than give way singly, and abandon the cause of those who 
 had already made such sacrifices. 
 
 After dinner we mounted our car and drove to Por- 
 tumna, distant about ten miles. As we neared the town the 
 sky was ablaze with light. This was due to a general illu- 
 mination in honour of Mr. Blunt, who had arrived that day
 
 54 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 to take his trial on appeal the following day before the 
 County Court judge. As we passed through the streets we 
 observed that every window in every house in the town, 
 without exception, was lighted with wax candles, the most 
 efficient of all kinds of illumination, and which made even this 
 poor little Irish town, whose decadence is ordinarily only 
 too manifest, look bright and cheerful. There could not 
 be better testimony to the universal feeling in favour of Mr. 
 Blunt.' 
 
 1 Some paragraphs in this chapter are taken from a letter which I 
 wrote to the Times on January 12, 1888.
 
 55 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PORTUMNA. 
 
 Portumna is a small town of about 1,500 inhabitants, con- 
 sisting of little more than a single street, with houses well 
 built of grey stone — at one end the Court House, at the 
 other the entrance to Portumna Abbey, the splendid park 
 and demesne of Lord Clanricarde. Within this demesne 
 stand the beautiful ruins of the Abbey, now serving only 
 as a burial-place for the Clanricarde family, but cruelly 
 neglected in this respect. The late Marquis and his wife lie 
 buried there without monument or inscription. The elder 
 brother of the present peer, well known as Lord Dunkellin, 
 and most popular with all classes in the county of Galway, 
 was buried at the other end of the property in the ruined 
 Abbey of Athenry, also without monument or inscription. 
 
 A little beyond the Abbe)', the Shannon, which flows 
 through the park, widens into a beautiful lake ; on its banks 
 stand the ruins of a splendid Elizabethan mansion, which was 
 devastated by fire some forty or fifty years ago, but the external 
 shell of which is still in good order and of stately appear- 
 ance. The late Marquis, in lieu of repairing this building, 
 commenced another on a palatial scale at no great distance, 
 on a site better chosen for the view of the lake. It is said 
 that he spent 60,000/. on the shell of this new house, which 
 was to be worthy of his great property in this district. 
 Unfortunately, it was never completed, and the present 
 Marquis has left it, as he found it, incomplete, and a sad 
 
 *e 4
 
 56 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 memento of an absentee landlord. It is generally believed 
 that this neglect of his property by the present owner dates 
 from the election for the county of Gal'way in the year 
 1872, when, after a severe contest, the electors for the first 
 time emancipated themselves from the Clanricarde yoke, 
 and returned Colonel Nolan in place of the candidate sup- 
 ported by the landlords. 
 
 The town of Portumna has suffered severely from the 
 prolonged non-residence, of its owner and the consequent 
 1 essation of so much local expenditure. It presents also 
 the solitary example of a town, which at one time was con- 
 nected with the outer world by a railway, but which has since 
 lost that advantage. A line from Parsonstown was con- 
 structed and worked for ten years, but not having paid was 
 abandoned. 
 
 At Portumna I found Mr. and Lady Anne Blunt, and 
 not a few of their friends who had come there, like myself, to 
 stand by them during the hearing of the appeal — Mr. Evelyn, 
 then member for Deptford, and his brother, the Rev. E. B. 
 Evelyn, Mr. Stafford Howard, Mr. Rowlands, M.P., and 
 some dozen other representative men from England. The 
 bishop of Clonfert and the principal Catholic clergy of the 
 district were also there to receive the Blunts. The Crown 
 was represented by its able advisers, Mr. Atkinson, Q.C., 
 and Mr. Carson; while Mr. Blunt had retained the services 
 of The McDermott, and Mr. T. Harrington, M.P., whose 
 special experience in such cases, including his own, is be- 
 coming unrivalled. 
 
 Rarely had the town of Portumna been so crowded, and 
 great was the difficulty of finding accommodation for so 
 many. With such a galaxy of legal talent it was not sur- 
 prising that the appeal case extended over five days, a 
 period which I could ill spare from other duties, but, having 
 come over to support Mr. Blunt, I felt it would look like 
 abandonment of him on my part if I were to leave Portumna
 
 PORTUMNA 57 
 
 in the middle of the case. Mr. Henn, the County Court judge, 
 has been long on the Bench. His reputation among the 
 tenants is of the worst; on no possible consideration would 
 any tenant in the district enter his Court for the determination 
 of a judicial rent under the Land Act. It is perhaps some- 
 what unfortunate that Mr. Henn should give countenance to 
 these adverse opinions by habitually living as the guest of 
 landowners at each one of the towns in East Galway where 
 he holds his Court. At Portumna he has always been lodged 
 and fed at the cost of Lord Clanricarde; on this occasion 
 he was wise enough to drive over daily from Ballinasloe. ' 
 The impression left on my mind by the long proceedings in 
 the case now before him was that he was completely under 
 the influence of the Crown lawyers; almost without excep- 
 tion, he followed their direction or suggestion in the various 
 legal points which came before him. 
 
 Under the practice of the Irish Courts, the case was 
 treated, not as an appeal from the two magistrates of the 
 Court below, but as a rehearing. The Crown lawyers 
 completely abandoned the line taken by their representative 
 at the first hearing, and presented their case in a totally new 
 light. They no longer relied on the proclamation of the 
 meeting by the Lord-Lieutenant; they did not even put this 
 document in evidence; they endeavoured to prove that the 
 meeting itself was an unlawful one, justifying the magistrates 
 in dispersing it by force, and for this purpose they endea- 
 voured to connect it with the previous midnight meeting 
 of October 16. Nothing could be more bitter than the tone 
 of these representatives of the Crown towards Mr. Blunt. 
 Every particle of evidence which could be scraped together 
 to connect him with proceedings of a more doubtful legal 
 character and with more violent persons was adduced, and 
 
 1 It was stated in the House of Commons that the Land Commis- 
 sioners forbid the Sub- Commissioners receiving hospitality in their 
 districts.
 
 5S INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 was admitted by the judge, while everything throwing light 
 upon his objects and intentions, and every point of evi- 
 dence bearing on the conduct of Lord Clanricarde and the 
 eviction of his tenants, tending to justify the holding of a 
 meeting, to protest against such conduct, and for the pro- 
 tection of the tenants, was rigidly excluded. Yet this was 
 the very essence of the position — the main and, I believe, 
 sufficient justification for Mr. Blunt in desiring to hold a 
 meeting. Whatever may be the merits of the case from a 
 purely legal point of view, as regards the reception of such 
 evidence, it would obviously be impossible to exclude the 
 common knowledge of them from jurors, if, as in the ordinary 
 course, and apart from the Coercion Act, the case had been 
 tried before a jury. 
 
 By withdrawing the case from a jury, by remitting it to 
 a single judge, who was legally entitled to look at it from 
 a purely technical point of view, it was possible for the 
 Government to obtain a verdict against Mr. Blunt ; but I 
 contended at the time that under no possible circumstances 
 would it have been possible to obtain a verdict from any 
 jury that could have been empanelled in the United King- 
 dom. This view of the case was subsequently confirmed 
 in a most striking manner. In the civil action tried later 
 at Dublin before a special jury, in spite of an adverse 
 summing-up by Chief Baron Palles, on the issue whether 
 the meeting was a lawful one, only a single member of the 
 jury wa3 found to give his voice in favour of the Govern- 
 ment and against Mr. Blunt. It is absolutely certain, 
 therefore, that if Mr. Blunt had been tried by a jury, even 
 a special jury at Dublin, there would have been no con- 
 viction. 
 
 It cannot be too strongly insisted upon that the right 
 of public meeting in this country rests upon the yet wider 
 right of trial by jury. It is not within the power of the 
 Government to determine, by proclamation or otherwise,
 
 rORTUMNA 59 
 
 as to the legality of a meeting ; the proclamation, unless 
 authorised by a special and exceptional Act, has no legal 
 effect whatever; the Executive Government or the local 
 authorities who interfere with a meeting and disperse it by 
 force, and who prosecute persons for resisting must, under 
 the ordinary law, prove the meeting to be actually unlawful 
 to the satisfaction of a jury. Any member of the public is 
 justified in insisting upon his right to hold the meeting, sub- 
 ject to the same reference to a jury. 
 
 There are two courses open for the Executive, if in its 
 view a proposed meeting is unlawful, within the definition 
 of the law : it may prevent the meeting and disperse it by 
 force, or it may allow the meeting to be held and prosecute 
 those who call it together and attend it. In the first case, if an 
 individual, under the belief that the meeting is a lawful one, 
 should resist, the Executive may prosecute the person, so 
 resisting, for an assault on the officer of the law who dis- 
 perses the meeting ; on the other hand, the person resisting 
 the executive officer may on his part prosecute such officer 
 for an assault. In either case it rests with the jury finally to 
 determine whether the meeting w T as lawful or not ; it is not 
 a question of law, it is one of fact. The jury, therefore, is the 
 great palladium of the right of public meeting. With the jury 
 rests in all cases the final determination of the legality or 
 otherwise of a meeting. The effect of the recent Coercion 
 Act in Ireland is to withdraw such cases, where the Crown is 
 the prosecutor, from the jury, and to relegate the facts as well as 
 the law applicable to the case to two resident magistrates, who 
 are practically only the agents of the Executive Government, 
 with an appeal to a single judge of an inferior order, who may 
 be a prejudiced man, and who is invested with the power to 
 determine the most delicate and important of all the politi- 
 cal rights with which the people of this country are invested. 
 There remains, however, the right of the individual who has 
 asserted his right by resistance to test the case by an appeal
 
 6o INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 to a jury in a civil action against the police officer for assault ; 
 but he does so with this disadvantage, that he must get the 
 unanimous verdict of the twelve jurors in order to obtain a 
 conclusive finding in his favour ; if a single juror is unwilling 
 to find in his favour there is no verdict. In Mr. Blunt's case 
 the County Court judge, sitting alone and deciding ques- 
 tions of fact and law, determined that the meeting at Wood- 
 ford on October 23 was an unlawful one, and sent him 
 to prison as an ordinary malefactor ; in his civil action 
 against the police officer who dispersed the meeting, eleven 
 out of twelve jurors desired to give a verdict in his favour 
 and against the Executive; but a single juror stood out and 
 refused to join in the verdict, and consquently Mr. Blunt 
 failed in his action. But it is equally certain that if the 
 criminal prosecution against Mr. Blunt had been tried, even 
 by a special jury, it would have been totally impossible for 
 the Crown lawyers to have secured a verdict against him. 
 We have, therefore, on the one hand eleven special jurors 
 favourable to Mr. Blunt, and a single special juror and Mr. 
 Henn unfavourable to him, and yet the latter was able to 
 condemn him and to send him to prison as an ordinary 
 criminal. After a five days' trial, in which every possible 
 advantage was allowed by Mr. Henn to the representatives 
 of the Crown, he gave judgment in the case. 
 
 Time and reflection have confirmed the view which I 
 formed at the time, and to which I gave public utterance on 
 the same night, that no more prejudiced, intemperate, and 
 partisan judgment was ever delivered than that of the judge. 
 
 Mr. Henn was evidently determined to do his utmost to 
 prejudice Mr. Blunt in the eyes of the British public, and 
 to cover him, if possible, with ridicule and contempt. Mr. 
 Blunt, in his view, in coming to Woodford, was actuated 
 only by a desire for notoriety ; he was a vain man, of an 
 unbalanced judgment. In order to convict Mr. Blunt, and 
 to hold the meeting of the 23rd an unlawful one, the judge was
 
 PORTUMNA 6 1 
 
 obliged to bring in aid the midnight meeting of the 16th. 
 For this he held Mr. Blunt to be responsible \ he described 
 the burning of the proclamation of the Lord-Lieutenant, 
 which the Crown lawyers had treated as a document of no legal 
 value, as an act of insurrection for which, as Mr. Blunt did 
 not intervene to protest against it or to prevent it, he was 
 equally responsible as Mr. O'Brien. Mr. Blunt was also 
 held responsible for the strong language of Mr. O'Brien and 
 other speakers. The concluding exhortation of Mr. O'Brien's 
 impassioned speech, ' No crime and no surrender,' was, in 
 Mr. Henn's view, to be construed by the context as a direction 
 to the people to commit crime, and Mr. Blunt was held 
 responsible for it. 
 
 On the strength of these views Mr. Henn affirmed the 
 appeal, and condemned Mr. Blunt to imprisonment for 
 two months as an ordinary criminal. Nothing more un- 
 just, in my view, has been done in the name of law in 
 recent times. Even on the assumption that the meeting 
 was unlawful, which no jury in the United Kingdom 
 could have been found to hold, there can be no doubt 
 that there was nothing criminal in the action of Mr. 
 Blunt. His resistance to the officers of the law was a 
 purely technical one, for the purpose of raising the question 
 of right, and consisted only in a slight push; he believed in 
 his right to hold the meeting ; his act was a purely political 
 one, without a vestige of criminality about it, justifying his 
 condemnation as an ordinary malefactor. The sentence, 
 therefore, should have been one which distinguished between 
 an illegal act done in the belief that it was lawful and in 
 good faith, and an illegal act, committed with a criminal 
 intent. At the most, Mr. Blunt should have been treated 
 as a political offender, and sent to prison as a first-class mis- 
 demeanant, or his action should have met with a nominal 
 punishment of fine ; and I conceive it to be to the lasting 
 disgrace of the Irish Government that they should have
 
 62 JXCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 allowed this sentence to stand and have treated Mr. Blunt 
 as an ordinary criminal. It appears, however, to be their 
 deliberate policy to treat their political opponents in Ireland 
 as criminals, in the belief that by so doing they will put 
 down the political and agrarian movement in Ireland, quell 
 the spirit of the Irish people, and deter any English sym- 
 pathisers from venturing over to Ireland to give aid and sup- 
 port. A more mistaken view of human nature and of the 
 motives for action in men of patriotism and courage could 
 not well be conceived. 
 
 During my stay at Portumna I had many opportunities 
 of making further inquiries into the position of affairs on the 
 Clanricarde and other neighbouring estates. I had also two 
 or three interviews with Mr. Tener, the agent, with the object 
 of ascertaining on what terms a settlement could be arrived 
 at. He told me that he had made on Lord Clanricarde's 
 behalf most generous offers to the tenants ; and he promised 
 to put in writing the terms, that I might compare them with 
 the information I had received from the tenants them- 
 selves. 
 
 He could hold out no hopes that Lord Clanricarde 
 would make any advance on the terms already offered ; and 
 with respect to the all-important condition which the tenants 
 insisted upon, and which in my view they were bound as 
 men of honour to maintain— namely, the reinstatement of 
 the evicted tenants — he stated that Lord Clanricarde was 
 inexorable, and under no circumstances would give way. 
 
 I came, therefore, reluctantly to the opinion that no 
 settlement could then be hoped for. The promise of a 
 written statement of the terms which had been offered to the 
 tenants was not fulfilled till within an hour before my 
 leaving Portumna, when it was too late to communicate again 
 with Mr. Tener or with the representatives of the tenants 
 for explanations ; but on submitting these terms on my way 
 through Dublin to The McDermott, who is not only a most
 
 PORTUMNA 63 
 
 able lawyer, but also the owner of a considerable estate in 
 Sligo, he told me that substantially it did not differ from 
 the version given of it by the tenants, that it amounted to 
 no more than an offer of an abatement of 20 per cent, on a 
 single half year's rent of the two and a half years' rent then 
 generally due, and that in his opinion it was equally illusory 
 with others which had been made before, and could not be 
 expected to form even the basis of a settlement ; even 
 this illusory offer was not to apply to those with judicial 
 rents, or to holdings with a rental of over 50/. a year, who 
 were to be dealt with individually at the discretion of the 
 agent. 
 
 The attitude of Mr. Tener was such as to convince me 
 that, supported, as he then was, by the forces of the Crown 
 under the regime of Mr. Balfour and by all the powers of the 
 Coercion Act, with the object of prohibiting combination 
 and of preventing the expression of public opinion in the 
 district, as shown in the unscrupulous prosecution of the 
 leading tenants of Woodford for attending the midnight 
 meeting, and of Mr. Blunt for the later meeting, Lord 
 Clanricarde was determined to press his claims to the ut- 
 most. Even while I was at Portumna no fewer than 150 
 processes of ejectment were issued against the tenants, and 
 stood for hearing at the next session of the County Court, 
 while hundreds of others were in different stages of pro- 
 gress. The whole country-side was in a state of alarm and 
 terror which it would be difficult to exaggerate. 
 
 I left Portumna after the conclusion of the trial deeply im- 
 pressed with the gravity of the position of things in the dis- 
 trict, convinced more than ever that a terrible wrong was being 
 done to the tenantry by the invisible and unapproachable 
 despot, who ruled the country, by the aid of the forces of 
 the Crown ; with the conviction also that all these evils 
 might have been avoided, all the proceedings have been 
 prevented, if concessions had been made by Lord Clanri-
 
 64 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 carde in the earlier stages of the dispute, such as the better 
 landlords of the county had voluntarily and without undue 
 pressure made to their tenants ; and with the assurance that 
 even now the tenants were willing and anxious to come to 
 terms on a reasonable basis. 
 
 The trial over and the cruel sentence passed, Mr. Blunt 
 was allowed time to bid farewell to his friends before being 
 carried off to Galway Gaol. During this interval he re- 
 ceived an address of sympathy and respect from the people 
 of Portumna. An address was also presented to myself. 
 A large force of police occupied the town and roughly 
 repressed all attempts at a demonstration. An escort of 
 mounted police was formed, and Mr. and Lady Anne 
 Blunt were conveyed in a covered prison van in the direc- 
 tion of Ballinasloe, where it was supposed they would take 
 the railway to Galway. There followed several cars contain- 
 ing the many friends who had stood by them during the 
 trial. 
 
 I had promised to receive an address at Ballinasloe that 
 night, and in my reply to speak upon the result of the trial. 
 I had steadily refused to speak in public or to attend any 
 demonstration during my stay at Portumna or on my way 
 there ; but now the trial was over there was no longer reason 
 for silence. 
 
 Our journey to Ballinasloe was nearly productive of 
 serious accidents to many of us. Two of the cars came 
 into collision, and the two Evelyns, Mr. Hill of the ' Pall 
 Mall Gazette,' and myself were flung into the road. Mr. 
 Hill alone received serious injuries, and we were compelled 
 to leave him by the side of the road in charge of Dr. Tan- 
 ner, M.P., who most carefully nursed him and brought him 
 eventually to Dublin. The police, with their prisoner in 
 charge, separated from us a short distance from Ballinasloe 
 and went to Woodlawn station, in order to avoid a popular 
 demonstration at the former place, and I saw no more of
 
 PORTUMNA 65 
 
 Mr. Blunt till six weeks later, when he was brought up in 
 his prison clothes to give evidence at Dublin in his action 
 against Mr. Byrne. 
 
 I drove on to Bajlinasloe with others of the party. I 
 met there the Bishop of Clonfert. The town was in a state 
 of excitement ; a vast concourse of people filled the hall 
 where the meeting was to be held, and overflowed into the 
 adjoining streets. It was proposed to form a procession of 
 carriages, preceded by bands of music, to attend me to the 
 meeting. I declined the demonstration as inappropriate 
 to the day when Mr. Blunt had just been conveyed to 
 prison. After dinner I walked down to the hall with the 
 Bishop of Clonfert. We found a large force of police in 
 the street near the hall, and the commanding officer 
 assumed a most menacing tone to us. In an overbearing 
 and insolent manner he stated to the Bishop and my- 
 self that he had strict orders to prevent any disturbance ; 
 he complained that already some stones had been thrown 
 at his men, a fact which was positively denied by many 
 spectators ; he demanded in peremptory terms that a 
 Government reporter should be present at the meeting. I 
 replied that I had not the smallest objection to a reporter 
 being present, although, as the meeting was merely to pre- 
 sent me with an address, it was a private one, to which the 
 police had no right to be present. I stated that, in my 
 opinion, the best course to avoid any disturbance would be 
 to withdraw his force of police to barracks, and I would 
 hold myself personally answerable for the maintenance of 
 order. He positively refused to act in this manner. 
 
 The Bishop, however, was so impressed with the 
 menacing attitude of this officer and his men, and with the 
 evident intention to bring about a conflict with the people, 
 so as to justify measures for dispersing them with force, 
 that he strongly advised me to abandon the intention of 
 receiving the address in the hall. He said that if the 
 
 F
 
 66 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 leaders were in the hall it would be impossible for them to 
 be responsible for what might take place outside it, and 
 that a conflict would almost certainly be provoked by the 
 police. He strongly advised me to return to the hotel 
 and to receive a deputation there, in lieu of addressing the 
 meeting in the hall ; he refused himself to go into the hall. 
 I acted on his advice and retired to the hotel, followed by 
 large crowds of people. Father Costelloe, the parish priest 
 of Ballinasloe, addressed the people from the hotel window, 
 and told them that, under the circumstances, and to avoid 
 a conflict, the Bishop had advised this course, and desired 
 them all to disperse as soon as possible. The people acted 
 on this advice without difficulty, and the streets in a few 
 minutes were cleared of people, showing how completely 
 they were under the control of their leaders. 
 
 I then received a deputation of thirty or forty of the 
 leading men of Ballinasloe, who presented me with an 
 address, to which I replied in a speech of considerable 
 length. The Bishop had earnestly entreated me to be 
 moderate in my language, so as not to shut the door against 
 a settlement of the dispute between Lord Clanricarde and 
 his tenants. I endeavoured to act on this advice. I spoke, 
 however, in strong terms of condemnation of Mr. Henn's 
 judgment and sentence in the sense I have already explained. 
 I defended Mr. Blunt's action in summoning and endeavour- 
 ing to hold the meeting on October 23, for which he had 
 been condemned. I said that, having made inquiries on 
 the spot into the case of the tenantry of that district, I had 
 come to the same conclusion as he had done, and that, with 
 the knowledge that evictions had recommenced and that 
 others of a serious character were pending, I should have 
 thought it my duty to do as Mr. Blunt had done. I should 
 have insisted on my constitutional right to hold a meeting 
 to express sympathy with the tenants ; that in this view, I 
 should not have been ashamed to find myself in the dock
 
 PORTUMNA 67 
 
 beside Mr. Blunt, or in the prison to which he had been 
 condemned. I pointed out that the effect of the condemnation 
 of Mr. Blunt was that the right of public meeting was com- 
 pletely at the mercy of the Government and the police. I 
 said that what struck me most forcibly about the trial was 
 that the one question which above all others was the object 
 of the meeting, the condition of the tenants of the Clan- 
 ricarde property, and the justice of their complaints against 
 their landlord, was hardly even mentioned, and was expressly 
 excluded. It was held to be irrelevant at law, although 
 every other fact was relevant. If we were to assume that 
 the contentions of the Crown lawyers were justified, that the 
 combination of tenants and their resistance to evictions made 
 the district disturbed, the question would still remain — What 
 was the cause of this ? and whether the cause could not be 
 better dealt with or removed by allowing free expression to 
 public opinion at a public meeting, rather than by suppress- 
 ing meetings and speeches, and endeavouring to drive below 
 the surface the expression of suffering, with all the danger 
 of its breaking out in other far worse methods ? 
 
 I pointed out the change in policy from Sir M. Hicks- 
 Beach to Mr. Balfour; how the one had practically refused to 
 lend the forces of the Crown to support Lord Clanricarde in 
 his unjust evictions, and the other had not only again given 
 the aid of the police to support these unjust evictions, but was 
 allowing the Coercion Act to be used in the most unscrupulous 
 manner by the suppression of meetings and the prohibition 
 of combination, in support of the same cause. Nothing, I 
 pointed out, could be more absurd than the idea that any 
 meetings held by Englishmen, such as Mr. Blunt, were 
 likely to do harm or to lead to violence. The very opposite 
 was the case. The Bishop of Clonfert would agree with me 
 that the sympathy shown by Englishmen who had come over 
 there had a most important effect in calming the minds of 
 the people in the struggle in which they were engaged. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 Mr. Blunt had explained in his letter to the resident magis- 
 trate that his object in holding the meeting was to preach 
 patience to the people, to call upon them to endure their 
 wrongs, and to tell them that aid would be forthcoming from 
 England to redress their grievances. To prohibit the meet- 
 ing and to imprison Mr. Blunt must have the very opposite 
 effect, and it was to be feared might goad them on to acts of 
 violence and wrong. 
 
 The meeting over, I bade farewell to the Bishop and my 
 other friends, and returned to Dublin by the night train and 
 thence to England.
 
 6 9 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LETTERS TO THE ' TIMES.' 
 
 A few days after my return to England from attending Mr. 
 Blunt's trial at Portumna, and after reflection on what I had 
 seen and heard in Galway, I wrote a long letter to the 
 London 'Times,' bringing up the information contained in 
 my previous letter to the latest date, embodying the result 
 of my personal inquiries and conclusions as to the merits 
 of the case of the Clanricarde tenants, making good my 
 complaints against Mr. Henn for his recent judgment, 
 explaining the legal position of the tenants under the recent 
 Land Act, showing that it provided no kind of remedy, and 
 justifying Mr. Blunt for his action. I ended with these 
 words, which I desire to put on record as a justification for 
 my subsequent action : — 
 
 ' All the past history of this and many other parts of 
 Ireland shows that while wrongs of this terrible nature are 
 inflicted there is gravest danger that individuals will be 
 found to resist them by still more terrible revenge. It is the 
 constant fear of the clergy of the district that some dreadful 
 occurrence of this kind, not approved by the common feel- 
 ing of the tenants as a whole, may rouse the indignation of 
 the people of England against them. They believe that the 
 opportunity of making public their grievances, the power of 
 combination, and the influence which it is able to bring to 
 bear upon individuals for their protection and restraint, and 
 the sympathy which they now find is expressed for them by
 
 70 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 Englishmen, when permitted by the authorities, alone pre- 
 vent the occurrences which they dread. How inexpressibly 
 sad is all this ! How shocking that it should be due to 
 the ignorance and obstinacy of a single man, who knows 
 nothing personally of the estate, and cares nothing for it 
 except as a source of revenue ! Lord Clanricarde is not in 
 the position of many Irish landlords, loaded with mortgages 
 and charges, with little margin under the old rent whereon 
 to live, where a reduction of rent will reduce their available 
 margin to zero, and where they have small means with which 
 to enter on a conflict with their tenants in combination. He 
 is a man of vast wealth independent of his Irish property, 
 and without encumbrance. He can afford any expenditure 
 necessary to crush resistance. He could reduce his property 
 to a wilderness by evicting all his tenants and still be a rich 
 man. The case is of all the more importance as he is fighting 
 the cause of all the worst landlords of Ireland. They are 
 looking on while he engages with the enemy. If he should 
 succeed in evicting his tenants or in driving them from the 
 soil, there are great numbers of properties in Ireland where 
 the result will be disastrous to the tenants, and where the 
 heavy hand of the oppressor will be strengthened and made 
 all-powerful. On the other hand, if a just settlement could 
 be effected, there will be thousands of tenants elsewhere who 
 will be relieved at the same time. The case is a test one of 
 infinite importance beyond its own district, and to none is it 
 more important that it should be settled speedily than to 
 the better landlords of Ireland. Under the present law, 
 strengthened by the ejectment clauses of the Land Act of 
 last year, and enforced by Mr. Balfour, not only by all the 
 powers of the common law backed by the forces of the 
 Crown, but also by the Coercion Act, there is no remedy ; 
 there is no hope for the tenants but an appeal to public 
 opinion against the action of Lord Clanricarde and against 
 the policy of the Government. This appeal must have its
 
 LETTERS TO THE 'TIMES' 71 
 
 origin in the district ; expression must be given to it by 
 public meetings there; and every one who has inquired there 
 can come to only one conclusion, that such meetings, so far 
 from leading to evil, tend to calm the minds of the people 
 there, and direct their efforts to constitutional courses. 
 These considerations appear to me to afford a full justifica- 
 tion to Mr. Blunt for summoning a meeting at Woodford for 
 the purpose, as he announced, of expressing sympathy with 
 the tenants and detestation of Lord Clanricarde's conduct, 
 and of bidding the former have patience till England should 
 deal with their case. Had I been in Ireland and in the dis- 
 trict at the time of the renewal of evictions, I should un- 
 doubtedly have felt it my duty to summon or attend such a 
 meeting. It seems to me to have been most unjust on the 
 part of the Crown and of the judge to have connected the 
 meeting with the previous midnight meeting, and to have 
 shut out all the other surroundings to which I have called 
 
 attention 
 
 ' It also appears to me that the importance of giving 
 expression to public opinion, and especially to that of the 
 district, has been greatly increased by what has taken place 
 since October, and by the knowledge we now have of Lord 
 Clanricarde's intended ejectment campaign on a vast scale. 
 This being so, I should feel myself wanting in moral courage 
 if, with the special knowledge I have acquired through the 
 last few years of the case and of the district — if, with the 
 firm belief that a terrible wrong is about to be perpetrated, 
 I were to neglect any step which is necessary to save these 
 unfortunate tenants from the fate which is impending over 
 them. I have, therefore, intimated to my friends in the 
 district that, unless there is reason to believe that this 
 campaign of ejectment is abandoned, I will, whenever they 
 may think it expedient, again cross the Channel and preside 
 over or speak at a meeting to be called at some central 
 point of the district, where the people may have the oppor-
 
 72 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 tunity of stating publicly their grievances and of preparing 
 a petition to Parliament. I will also, if no better exponent 
 be found, present their petition and lay their case before the 
 House of Commons. Such a meeting would, I feel no 
 doubt, be free from all the objections raised by Mr. Henn 
 in the recent trial, and, if proper conditions are observed, 
 will be unassailable in point of law or policy by Mr. Balfour 
 and his subordinates. At all events, I am prepared on 
 my own responsibility, and without involving any of my 
 political friends, to assert the constitutional right of public 
 meeting within the law, and to do my best to save the 
 Clanricarde tenantry from a great wrong.' l 
 
 After a fortnight's delay Lord Clanricarde, through the 
 pen of his agent, Mr. Tener, made a reply, in which he 
 maintained the justice of his past action, explained the offer 
 which he had made to the tenants in April 1887, added to 
 it the further terms which he had proposed in September 
 1887, and endeavoured to controvert some of my statements. 
 The offer of September 1887 was to the effect that he was 
 prepared to accept a half-year's rent at once as a present 
 payment and give time for the balance. This was obviously 
 a mere postponement of the question in dispute, and the 
 relegation of the remaining rent due to arrears. There was 
 nothing, therefore, in the letter substantially at variance with 
 the account I had given — namely, that the only offer of 
 abatement of the two and a half years' rent then due was 
 20 per cent, of a single half-year, equal to 4 per cent, of 
 the total sum due. He asked how it was that I had never 
 alluded to the case of Sir Henry Burke's tenants in the 
 neighbourhood of Woodford, 'who had also rejected most 
 liberal offers, and who were on strike, so to speak, equally 
 with the tenants of Lord Clanricarde.' 
 
 He endeavoured to show that many of the tenants were 
 anxious to throw over the tyranny of the League, that some 
 1 Letter to the Times, January 16, 1888.
 
 LETTERS TO THE ' TIMES' 73 
 
 of the evicted tenants cursed the authors of their misery, 
 and that tenants not unfrcquently paid their rents secretly 
 in spite of the combination. This is to be explained by the 
 fact that in such cases there are generally to be found a few 
 timid persons who are anxious to stand well with both sides. 
 Mr. Tener's letter ended with these ominous words: — 
 
 'All tenants of the Clanricarde estate who will honestly 
 discharge their debts, even by small payments, can rest 
 undisturbed in their farms, and able to obtain the benefits of 
 the recent land legislation so favourable to their class. But 
 with no doubt as to my duty, and without hesitation or delay, 
 I shall require them to surrender the property which they 
 hold if they do not fulfil the conditions of their tenure.' 1 
 
 The correspondence closed with a reply from myself, 
 dated February 3, 1S88, which, owing to an unfortunate 
 misunderstanding with the Editor of the ' Times,' was not in- 
 serted in that paper. It appeared, however, in the ' Freeman's 
 Journal' To the readers of the 'Times,' Mr. Tener's letter 
 remained unanswered, and my explanations of my intended 
 action in going over to Loughrea to hold a meeting there, 
 so important as a personal vindication, were withheld. 
 
 I undertook in this letter to prove, if necessary, the sub- 
 stantial accuracy of all my previous statements. I showed 
 that Mr. Tener's account of his offers to the tenantry did not 
 differ from the account I had given of them, and that his 
 offers were illusory, and such as could not be expected to 
 form the basis of an arrangement. I pointed out that he had 
 made no answer whatever to the greater part of my state- 
 ments, and especially to that where I had alleged that Lord 
 Clanricarde had never made to the tenants the offer of 
 abatement which he had made to Sir M. Hicks-Beach, or 
 that other landlords of Galway had been making abatements 
 of from 20 to 30 per cent, throughout the whole period of 
 
 1 Letter to the Times, February 1, 18S8.
 
 74 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 depression ; nor did he deny that Lord Clanricarde was 
 entering upon a new campaign of ejectment, and had already 
 issued several hundred processes. 
 
 ' My contention,' I concluded, 'is that the campaign of 
 ejectment thus commenced is as unjust as the evictions 
 which took place in 1886, and which after the recent trial 
 were universally condemned, and nowhere more emphatically 
 than in the "Times," where Lord Clanricarde's conduct to his 
 tenants was described as "incredibly base." I have shown 
 that the Land Act of last year provides no remedy for such 
 a case, as it gives no power to the Land Commissioners or 
 to the County Court judges to make reasonable abatements 
 of arrears of rent, and only gives an illusory power of spread- 
 ing them over a period which has been construed in a very 
 limited sense. 
 
 ' What is a reasonable abatement has been judicially 
 decided within the last few days on high authority. An 
 adjoining property to Lord Clanricarde's, near Loughrea, 
 has come under the control of the Landed Estates Court, 
 on the petition of creditors for its sale. The tenants were 
 three years in arrear of rents ; they applied to the Court 
 for abatement, alleging the fall of prices. The judge, after 
 hearing the representations of the owner and creditors, 
 awarded what was practically an abatement of 33 per cent, 
 of the rent due, with six or twelve months' time for payment. 
 There are many other cases of the same kind before the 
 same judge. We have, therefore, on the one hand, the 
 judge of the Landed Estates Court giving an abatement of 
 33 per cent., and, on the other hand, Lord Clanricarde 
 offering only 4 per cent., and the judge of the County Court 
 is compelled to issue decrees of ejectment against one co- 
 owner in favour of the other, without any power of making 
 the abatement which to the higher Court seems reasonable 
 and just. 
 
 ' I have come, then, to the conclusion that there is no
 
 LETTERS TO THE 'TIMES' 75 
 
 prospect whatever of an arrangement being arrived at of 
 an equitable character between Lord Clanricarde and his 
 tenants, and that the fault lies with the former and not 
 with the latter. The ejectment processes are this very 
 week being proceeded with by wholesale ; and, through his 
 agent, Lord Clanricarde announces that, " without doubt as 
 to his duty, and without hesitation or delay, he will require 
 his vast body of tenants to surrender the property which 
 they hold if they do not fulfil the conditions of their tenure." 
 In other words, a whole district is to be depopulated at his 
 instance. . . . 
 
 ' The only remedy that can now be looked for to save this 
 large population from the fate which is impending over it is 
 the pressure of public opinion on Parliament and on the 
 Executive Government. If a remedy is to be provided, it 
 must be within six weeks after the ejectment decrees, and 
 before the paper notices are issued under the Act of last 
 year, which so fatally facilitated evictions, and which will 
 place the tenants completely at the mercy of the landlord, 
 and deprive them of all right save that of redemption within 
 a short period. 
 
 ' It is doubtless in this view that many hundreds of the 
 tenants on the property have signed and forwarded to me 
 an address, asking me to fulfil the promise which I made in 
 my letter to the " Times" of January 19, that if the campaign 
 of ejectment were proceeded with I would hold a meeting 
 on their behalf at some central point of the district. I have 
 felt it my duty to reply that I will comply with the request, 
 subject to certain conditions, which I understand they 
 have agreed to. The meeting will be held on Friday, 
 February 10, at the most central place of the Clanricarde 
 property, Loughrea. I shall myself preside over it. It will 
 also be addressed by other Englishmen who have kindly 
 volunteered to go with me, and by some representative men 
 in the district. The proceedings of the meeting and the
 
 76 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 resolutions to be submitted to it will be under my control. 
 Its object will be to express sympathy with the tenants under 
 the campaign of ejectment and eviction now commenced, 
 and to petition Parliament for a redress of their grievances. 
 I shall, on my part, impress on the people the duty of 
 patience and a resort to constitutional remedies, and I shall 
 explain the direction in which I think it will be possible to 
 attain this object, either by legislation or amendment of the 
 Act of last year, or by a change of action of the Executive 
 Government. 
 
 ' It is also intended to appoint delegates at the meeting 
 to represent the districts of Portumna, Woodford, Loughrea, 
 and Athenry, where the Clanricarde property chiefly lies, 
 and who will meet me in conference after the meeting and 
 discuss the details of such remedies, so that I may be in a 
 position to speak with authority on their behalf in Parlia- 
 ment or elsewhere. Stewards will be appointed to keep 
 order. Every facility will be given to a Government re- 
 porter on the platform, if desired. I see no reason why the 
 landlords of Galway should not be present. I know from 
 personal communications that some of them disapprove of 
 the proceedings I have referred to in terms as strong as any 
 I have used, and no class is more interested in the just and 
 speedy settlement of the case. 
 
 ' I shall act in no spirit of defiance, but under the belief 
 that it is my right and that of the people of the district to 
 hold such a lawful meeting under circumstances free from 
 the difficulties which in my opinion have been most un- 
 fairly held to justify the prohibition of that held by Mr. 
 I Hunt and his subsequent prosecution. I believe I shall be 
 doing my best to effect a settlement in a conflict of immense 
 importance, the ultimate issue of which, if left undealt with, 
 it is hard to predict — a settlement which will be a precedent 
 in many other cases in Ireland. 
 
 ' No one who has visited the district — where there is but
 
 LETTERS TO THE 'TIMES 77 
 
 one opinion among the people — can, I think, come to any 
 other conclusion than that such a public meeting, so far 
 from adding to public excitement and leading to disturbance 
 or crime, will have the opposite effect by inducing patience 
 and a resort to constitutional courses for the redress of 
 grievances.' ' 
 
 My letter was published by the ' Freeman's Journal ' on 
 Saturday, February 4, and I had made arrangements by 
 which copies of it were placed the same day in the hands 
 of the magistrates and the head of the police at Loughrea, 
 at the same time that public notices of the intended meeting 
 were posted in the town, so that the authorities might have 
 full information as to the objects of the meeting proposed 
 to be held there at the same time as they were informed of 
 the meeting itself. 
 
 1 Letter to the Freeman's Journal, February 4, 18S8.
 
 78 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE MEETING AT LOUGHREA. 
 
 On Sunday evening, February 5, in pursuance of my an- 
 nounced intentions to hold a public meeting at Loughrea 
 for the purpose of protesting against the intended evictions 
 of Lord Clanricarde, I crossed the Channel with two per- 
 sonal friends (Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Vivian), and arrived 
 at Dublin on Monday morning, where I spent Monday at 
 the house of the late Mr. Dwyer Gray, M.P. In the course 
 of the day I met in consultation at Mr. Gray's several 
 gentlemen who were interested in my mission to Loughrea, 
 including some who had volunteered to attend the meeting 
 there. Among them were Mr. Walker, Q.C., Mr. Dwyer 
 Gray, M.P., Mr. Alfred Webb, and others. I explained 
 to them my objects and the method I proposed to adopt 
 so as to insure the holding of the meeting. Some one 
 suggested that it might be well to make a communication 
 of my intentions and objects in holding the meeting to 
 the authorities of the Castle. I declined most positively 
 to do anything of the kind. I said I had nothing to add to 
 my public declarations ; that my letter as published in the 
 ' Freeman's Journal,' and which had been placed in the 
 hands of the authorities of Loughrea, was a sufficient ex- 
 planation, and, indeed, all that I could give ; and that any 
 private communication to the Castle would be misinter- 
 preted by the public. 
 
 by this time I had received letters from several members
 
 THE MEETING AT LOUGHREA 79 
 
 of Parliament and others announcing their intention, without 
 any suggestion on my part, of being present at the meeting. 
 They included Mr. Brunner, M.P.; Mr. Rowntree, M.P.; 
 Mr. Wilson, M.P.; Mr. T. Ellis, M.P.; Sir James Carmichael, 
 Bart. ; Mr. Plimsoll ; Mr. T. A. Dickson, who has since been 
 elected for the St. Stephen's Green division of Dublin ; Mr. 
 Alfred Webb ; Mr. Spence Watson of Newcastle, and others 
 — a list the mere publication of which was a guarantee that 
 the meeting would be of a most influential and moderate 
 character. 
 
 I left Dublin by the afternoon train for Ballinasloe, and 
 thence drove by car to Loughrea, where I was again re- 
 ceived and hospitably entertained by the good Bishop of 
 Clonfert. My objects in going to Loughrea a few days 
 in advance of the date fixed for the public meeting were 
 these. I wished to be present at the sittings of the County 
 Court under Mr. Henn held that week, at which the eject- 
 ment processes issued in such vast numbers were to be 
 heard ; I should then have the opportunity of meeting and 
 conversing with tenants from all parts of the Clanricarde 
 property, who would come to Loughrea for the hearing of 
 their cases ; I desired also to avoid all demonstrations on 
 the way, and to be on the spot in anticipation of any action 
 the Government might take to prevent the meeting ; and I 
 also proposed to make every arrangement for holding the 
 meeting without the possibility of disturbance or conflict 
 with the police in the event of the Government proclaim- 
 ing it. 
 
 In an interview with some representatives of the Press 
 on the day after my arrival at Loughrea, which was reported 
 in the papers, I spoke as follows : — 
 
 ' I wish it to be distinctly understood that my object in 
 holding the meeting is not to aggravate the position of 
 things or to widen the breach between those whom it is a 
 misnomer any longer to call by the names of landlord and
 
 80 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 tenants, but who are co-owners of property, of which one 
 is the occupying owner and the other the rent-receiving 
 owner. Indeed, the very reverse is my object. I feel 
 as strongly as any one the expediency of a settlement be- 
 tween these two parties. In all that I have said and done 
 since first I visited this district I have kept this in view. 
 I have impressed it strongly on the representatives of the 
 tenants, and I have satisfied myself that there is no real 
 obstacle to a just settlement of the case on their part, and 
 that they are ready to make sacrifices for the purpose, and 
 not to insist upon the full terms of their demands. So far 
 as I have been able to judge from Mr. Tener's attitude, 
 there has been as yet no similar disposition on the part 
 of Lord Clanricarde. On the contrary, arrangements for 
 a campaign of ejectment on a vast scale are now being 
 proceeded with, and the uncompromising expressions of 
 Mr. Tener's letter to the "Times," in which he said that he 
 should feel it his duty without hesitation and without delay 
 to call upon the tenants to surrender their property unless 
 they were prepared to fulfil the conditions of their tenure, 
 point to a disposition the very opposite. It was under 
 these circumstances that I received an address signed by 
 many hundreds of the tenants asking me to fulfil the under- 
 taking I gave in the " Times " to preside over a meeting. 
 In my address to the meeting, however, I shall still bear 
 in mind the necessity for a settlement. My hope and 
 belief is that the meeting will operate in this direction ; 
 and the fact that so many Englishmen are prepared to come 
 over to Ireland at such a time and at a considerable risk, 
 for the sake of showing their sympathy with the tenantry, 
 and that such deep interest is felt in the case in England, 
 will, I believe, do much to persuade the landlord and his 
 friends that public opinion will not brook the depopulation 
 of a district, and that the time has come for a settlement 
 on a broad and generous basis. I hope that, while pre-
 
 THE MEETING AT LOUGH RE A 8i 
 
 serving the general tone of moderation at the meeting, we 
 shall at the same time impress the tenants with the con- 
 viction of our sympathy and determination to see them 
 through their present difficulties. But whether this is to be 
 effected by legislation, or by the action of the Executive, or 
 by agreement with their landlord, I feel that the first step 
 is that wc should be able to speak and act with authority on 
 behalf of the tenants. I know of no way in which this 
 authority can be given otherwise than by a public meeting. 
 The mere fact also that my account of the dispute con- 
 cluded with the announcement of a determination to hold 
 the meeting, has done more to induce the public in England 
 to read the case, and to form a judgment on it, than a 
 hundred letters without such an announcement could have 
 done. Having made the promise, I feel that I am bound 
 to fulfil it under the conditions that I have laid down.' 
 
 It appears that on the same day on which I spoke these 
 words, there was a meeting at Loughrea of several magis- 
 trates from the surrounding districts, and of the County 
 Inspector, to consider what course they would advise the 
 Government to take with reference to the intended meeting. 
 It was alleged that there was much difference of opinion 
 among them. Reports from the sub-inspectors of the district 
 were presented, and many of them stated that there was a 
 disposition on the part of the tenants to settle if a reason- 
 able offer were made. In consequence of this difference no 
 course was recommended to the Government, but the magis- 
 trates separately sent their opinions to the Castle. It appears 
 also that on the same day (Tuesday, February 7), Mr. T. A. 
 Dickson, who intended to be present at the Loughrea 
 meeting, called at Dublin Castle without my knowledge, and 
 had a conversation on the Clanricarde case with Sir West 
 Ridgeway, the Under-Secretary. The Attorney-General for 
 Ireland, in the course of the subsequent trial of Mr. Blunts 
 civil action against Mr. Byrne, referring to this interview, said 
 
 G
 
 82 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 that ' Mr. Lefevre had taken care to send an emissary to the 
 Castle to promise to be of good behaviour.' Mr. Dickson 
 wrote at once to the Irish papers to denounce this as an 
 audacious falsehood. He added that, in his interview with 
 Sir West Ridgeway, he simply pointed out that if the 
 meeting at Loughrea, called by the tenants of Lord Clanri- 
 carde for the legitimate object of giving expression to their 
 grievances and demanding redress, were proclaimed and 
 prevented, the crisis there would be seriously aggravated, 
 and a settlement of the question would be hopeless. 
 
 It is very improbable that what Mr. Dickson said really 
 influenced the Government, or that they thought he came 
 on my behalf. Had this been the case, they would have 
 communicated to him or to me their intention to allow the 
 meeting upon such representations. No such communica- 
 tion was made, and till the very last moment we had not the 
 slightest indication at Loughrea whether the meeting would 
 be permitted or not. 
 
 Meanwhile I spent the four days at Loughrea in making 
 further inquiries into the position of the dispute, and into 
 other events which had occurred since my last visit. It 
 appeared that ejectment processes were being issued by 
 Lord Clanricarde by wholesale, over the length and breadth 
 of his great property. No fewer than 500 to 600 such pro- 
 cesses had been served, and many of them had already been 
 heard and decided; 150 of them were before the County 
 Court then sitting at Loughrea. I spent some hours in 
 listening to these cases. 
 
 They threw much light upon the management of the 
 property, and the knowledge in the estate office of the con- 
 dition of the estate and the position of the tenants. It 
 would be difficult to convey an adequate impression of the 
 confusion in the affairs of the property and in the rental 
 books. In a great proportion of cases a far larger amount of 
 rent was claimed than was really due to the landlord. As a
 
 THE MEETING AT LOUGHREA S3 
 
 great number of the cases were undefended, and verdicts 
 were taken for the amounts claimed, it is probable that 
 decrees have been issued in a large number of cases for 
 amounts considerably beyond what was really due. The 
 tenants, as a rule, raised objections only to the amounts 
 claimed or to some technical points. They made no appli- 
 cation under the Act of 18S7 for spreading the arrears over 
 a period. They held this provision to be illusory and 
 worthless ; they disputed the justice of the arrears claimed ; 
 and they intended to maintain their combination, and to 
 resist payment in full of arrears to the last, unless reasonable 
 abatement's were made. 
 
 Not a few cases were dismissed on technical points, 
 showing the grossest errors on the part of the landlord ; and 
 many a victory was scored by the counsel who appeared for 
 the tenants, to their inexpressible delight. It would be 
 difficult, however, to exaggerate the degree of alarm and 
 terror which Lord Clanricarde's action caused, as decrees were 
 obtained by the score with accumulated costs, and with the 
 terrible uncertainty as to when and upon whom the next 
 blow of actual eviction would fall. Meanwhile, Mr. Tener, 
 as the agent of the property, and the police on behalf of 
 the authorities supporting him with coercion, were harassing 
 the people to the utmost — the former by making frequent 
 and unexpected raids upon the tenants' farms, sweeping away 
 cattle and anything he could find in distraint for rent ; the 
 latter by capricious selections for prosecutions under the Co- 
 ercion Act. 
 
 I have already described how the midnight meeting of 
 October 16 was made use of to send many of the leaders of 
 the tenants to gaol. Some of them had come out of prison 
 since my last visit, and their return home had been the 
 occasion of rejoicing and demonstrations, which again 
 afforded the opportunity for prosecution, and for selecting 
 those whom it was desired to send to prison. Notably was 
 
 g 2
 
 84 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 such the case when Mr. T. Egan came out of gaol. An 
 impromptu meeting of neighbours was held to welcome him 
 home again. A bonfire was made at the cross roads near 
 his house, and a short speech was made by Mr. John Roche. 
 While he was speaking, some one threw a stone at a police- 
 man. The policeman was not hurt, and there was no 
 further disturbance. Mr. Roche at once protested against 
 such action in the strongest terms, and his advice pre- 
 vented any further disturbance. But this slight matter was 
 made the excuse for treating the meeting as an unlawful 
 one. The police knew and could recognise every one of the 
 200 to 300 people present. They selected twelve persons 
 out of the number for prosecution ; chief among them was 
 Mr. John Roche. On what principle the others were se- 
 lected has not been explained. In the case of one of them 
 I was assured that he was in a car with another man ; they 
 stopped near the meeting, but not near enough to hear 
 Mr. Roche's speech. Both came from Woodford, and were 
 equally well known to the police. One of them was prose- 
 cuted and sent to prison for three months ; the other was 
 allowed to go free. 
 
 For this most harmless affair twelve men were sent to 
 prison, most of them for a month, with hard labour. Mr. 
 Roche, however, was singled out for a sentence of three 
 months' imprisonment. He appealed, and his case has 
 since been heard and decided by Mr. Henn. A conviction 
 followed as a matter of course. His counsel asked that he 
 might be treated as a first-class misdemeanant, alleging as a 
 reason for this that his health would certainly not stand 
 another term of imprisonment, as he was most delicate, and 
 his lungs were already seriously affected. Mr. Henn, from 
 the report of the proceedings, appeared to be unaware of 
 the difference between the treatment of a first-class mis- 
 demeanant and that of an ordinary prisoner, and, when this 
 was pointed out to him, held that he had no power to direct
 
 THE MEETING AT LOUGH RE A 85 
 
 imprisonment under the first class. A precedent was then 
 quoted in which Mr. O'Connor Morris had directed Mr. 
 Hayden to be imprisoned as a first-class misdemeanant. 
 Mr. Henn declined to act on this, saying that he had heard 
 this decision much questioned in certain quarters ! 
 
 This refusal nearly cost Mr. Roche his life. He was sent 
 to prison for the third time under the capricious action of 
 the Coercion Act. He was not in prison long before he broke 
 down under the harsh treatment of an ordinary prisoner ; 
 and the authorities were compelled to release him, when he 
 was on the point of death. No more clear case of perse- 
 cution has ever been brought under my notice. Among 
 other actions taken against him was this. Two summonses 
 were served upon him for trespassing upon the deserted and 
 uncultivated farms of Lord Clanricarde, from which their 
 tenants had been evicted. Mr. Roche had shown Mr. and 
 Lad) Anne Blunt over these scenes of desolation, and for 
 this he was summoned and fined by the local magistrates. 
 He refused to pay the fines, and on being let out of prison, 
 when at death's door, another warrant of arrest was issued 
 against him, and was only not executed because it was 
 physically impossible to remove him to gaol. When I 
 mentioned Mr. Roche's case in the House of Commons, 
 Mr. Balfour justified or excused this persecution, on the 
 ground that Chief Justice Palles, in the civil action of Mr. 
 Blunt, on the evidence of a policeman, attributed to Mr. 
 Roche some strong language two years previously which 
 might be interpreted as inciting the people to violence. 
 Mr. Roche had no opportunity of meeting this evidence. 
 He denies altogether the meaning attached to his words. 1 
 
 My own conversations with Mr. Roche have led me to the 
 
 1 The charge against Mr. Roche was that at a puhhc meeting in 
 1SS5 he used the expression, 'the landlords have had their Balaclava, 
 hut the day will come when the people will have their Fontenoy.' 
 Balaclava was the nickname of a process-server, Unlay, who two 
 
 *G3
 
 36 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 conviction that he is quite incapable of inciting to any criminal 
 course such as was imputed to him. This is also the 
 opinion of other English members of Parliament who have 
 visited Loughrea, and who have made acquaintance with 
 Mr. Roche. I have also learned from eminent ecclesiastics 
 in his district that his private life and irreproachable charac- 
 ter are guarantees that he would be incapable of harbouring 
 even in thought the imputations uttered against him. There 
 cannot be a doubt that his real offence, the cause of all this 
 persecution, consisted in his being Secretary to the Tenants' 
 Defence Association at Woodford. As such he was un- 
 doubtedly one of the main supports of the combination ; 
 but in this capacity he was also most reasonable and very 
 anxious for a settlement. It will be seen later that I was able 
 through Mr. Roche to bring about a settlement of a most 
 satisfactory character between Sir Henry Burke and his 800 
 tenants. 
 
 The conviction was forced on me by the cases I have 
 thus referred to, that the Coercion Act is being used as a 
 means of putting down the expression of public opinion 
 in the interest of one of the parties to the agrarian disputes ; 
 and that men are prosecuted and convicted for at- 
 tending meetings declared to be unlawful, because they 
 are leading men of the tenants, and are concerned in 
 combinations ; and thus indirectly, even if unintentionally, 
 the Act is used to assist landlords in the collection of 
 arrears of excessive rents. It is only in this way that 
 I can explain the capricious and arbitrary selections of 
 persons for prosecution and conviction. I will under- 
 take to say that if juries fairly chosen in any part of the 
 United Kingdom had tried the 100 men of Woodford 
 
 months later was murdered. It appears to me to be absurd to hold 
 that the language amounted to a threat or incitement against Finlay. 
 The obvious meaning of the words was that the landlords would suffer 
 some future day for their present policy of eviction.
 
 THE MEETING AT LOUGHREA 87 
 
 alone who have been sent to gaol, scarcely a single one 
 of them would have been convicted. The conclusion forced 
 upon me is that of all the bad clauses of the Coercion Act 
 the worst is the abrogation of Trial by Jury. Practically 
 there is little difference between the working of the Act 
 and that of the Act of 1881, when the Government was 
 entrusted with the power of imprisoning any person it 
 thought expedient ; the same arbitrary power of selection 
 is now exercised, not perhaps by the Chief Secretary, but 
 by the local authorities and under the fiction of legal pro- 
 ceedings. The law is thus brought into contempt. 
 
 On Thursday evening all my various friends who had 
 volunteered to attend the great meeting on the following 
 day arrived at Loughrea, and we had a long consultation as 
 to our proceedings. We had still no information as to the 
 intentions of the Government, whether the meeting was to 
 be permitted, or to be prohibited and dispersed. I laid before 
 my friends my plans for holding the meeting, in spite of any 
 action that the authorities might take to prevent and disperse 
 it. I was determined, on my part, that the character of the 
 meeting should be perceptible to all the world, and that the 
 speeches which we proposed to make should be delivered and 
 published. I intended to appeal to public opinion against 
 the action of the Government, if it should prohibit the meet- 
 ing, a course which I believed to be illegal and unconstitu- 
 tional in the highest degree. 
 
 My only fear in the matter was lest there should be a 
 conflict between the police and the people, for which I 
 should be held personally responsible, and I was determined 
 to avoid this by all possible means ; but I was equally de- 
 termined that the meeting should be held, and that the 
 Government, if it decided to treat the meeting as illegal, 
 should be put to the legal proof by criminal proceedings 
 against those taking part in it. The people of this district 
 have been so well drilled in meetings, whether permitted or
 
 88 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 prohibited, that they were under perfect discipline ; and with 
 the aid of Father Meagher, Father Coen, and Father Egan, 
 and of other lay leaders of the people, all the necessary 
 arrangements were made, and I have not the slightest 
 doubt that the meeting would have been held in spite of 
 any proclamation of the authorities, and without any con- 
 flict with the police. My friends all agreed with me in the 
 course I proposed, and were prepared to take the risk, what- 
 ever it might be. 
 
 The risk, I admit, was not inconsiderable, for it is abso- 
 lutely certain that if the Government had determined to treat 
 the meeting as an unlawful one, their agents, the resident 
 magistrates, would have decided the question in the manner 
 desired by them, and I doubt not we should all have been 
 sent to prison as ordinary malefactors. 1 There would, how- 
 ever, have been an appeal to public opinion ; and on the 
 issue whether five English members of Parliament were 
 rightly sent to prison as ordinary criminals for insisting on 
 their right to hold a meeting to protest against Lord Clan- 
 ricarde's conduct, there can be little doubt what the verdict 
 would have been. 
 
 It was not till nine o'clock the next morning that the 
 intentions of the Government with respect to the meeting 
 were announced. The chief of the police in the district 
 called upon me, and informed me that he had just received 
 orders from Dublin to permit the holding of the meeting^ 
 and he asked my opinion as to what course the police should 
 take — whether they should appear on the ground for the 
 purpose of keeping order or not. I strongly advised him to 
 
 1 In a recent speech at Croydon, Mr. Goschen, speaking of these 
 proceedings at Loughrea, and referring to a former colleague, said that 
 'Mr. Shaw Lefevre would certainly have been treated to a "plank 
 bed" if he had broken the law.' It is satisfactory at least to know 
 that the Government carefully scrutinised my actions and language, 
 and found them to be strictly lawful, even when measured by their own 
 standard.
 
 THE MEETING AT LOUGIIREA 89 
 
 confine his police to their barracks throughout the day, and not 
 to show them at the meeting. I held myself and my friends 
 responsible for the maintenance of order. My advice was 
 followed. Not a single policeman showed himself, and, as a 
 result, there was the most perfect order and quiet, and the 
 day passed off without the slightest disturbance of any kind. 
 How different from Mitchelstown and many other cases ! 
 
 In the interval between the visit of the inspector of police 
 and the meeting, two very interesting and most unexpected 
 incidents occurred. Sir Henry Burke, the owner of one of the 
 largest estates in the district, sent his brother to Loughrea to 
 see me, and to endeavour to enlist my intervention, on his be- 
 half, with the great body of his tenantry, who had adopted the 
 Plan of Campaign, and had paid no rent for two and a half 
 years ! I had already received a suggestion of the same 
 kind from a solicitor at Dublin, Mr. Morris, the brother of 
 Chief Justice Morris. Sir Henry Burke apologised for not 
 coming himself ; he would have done so had his health 
 permitted. He evidently thought that, as the meeting was 
 not to be prohibited, it might be well to utilise my influence 
 with the people, and effect a settlement with his tenants. I 
 discussed the position of affairs with Mr. Burke, and found 
 that there was not such a difference between what Sir Henry 
 Burke was inclined to concede, and what the tenants were 
 supposed to be ready to take, as to make a settlement hope- 
 less. I promised to see the leading men of the tenants, and 
 to endeavour to bring about a settlement. I did so. I found 
 that Mr. John Roche was the man with most influence with 
 them. I had a long conversation with him and others on 
 the subject. 
 
 I soon found that the main difficulty in the case was that 
 Sir Henry Burke, like many other Irish landlords, had 
 hitherto refused to recognise any right whatever of his tenants 
 to combine, and had declined any negotiation with them as 
 a body. He had issued notices from his estate office from
 
 90 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 time to time, offering terms to those who would come in to 
 them, but had never negotiated with the leading men of the 
 tenants. While urging Mr. Roche and his friends to be 
 moderate and conciliatory, I wrote to Mr. H. Burke, to the 
 effect that I had reason to hope that if he would communi- 
 cate directly with Mr. John Roche on behalf of his tenants, 
 and treat him in a friendly and conciliatory spirit, an arrange- 
 ment might be arrived at; adding that, if no agreement could 
 then be come to, I would, on the application of both parties, 
 act as arbitrator. Sir Henry Burke acted on my suggestion, 
 and I had the satisfaction of hearing a few days later that 
 through my intervention, and by Mr. Roche's efforts with his 
 fellow-tenants, a final agreement was come to with Sir Henry 
 Burke and his 800 tenants. An abatement of 25 per cent, 
 on the arrears of rent was conceded ; time was given for pay- 
 ment ; but, most satisfactory of all to the tenants, the evicted 
 tenants were replaced in their holdings, and a considerable 
 sum was allowed for the cost of maintaining these evicted 
 tenants during the combination ; and all legal costs were 
 foregone. A more complete vindication and justification of 
 the combination of the tenants could not have taken place. 
 Similar terms were conceded, a little later, in the cases of 
 Lord Dunsandle and Lord Westmeath, other landlords of the 
 district. There could be little doubt that similar conces- 
 sions would settle the dispute between Lord Clanricarde and 
 his tenants and the other remaining cases in this district. 
 
 Another incident of the same kind, and as little ex- 
 pected, but not brought to so satisfactory a conclusion, 
 occurred on the same morning of the meeting. To the sur- 
 prise of every one, a printed notice was posted throughout 
 the district by Mr. Tener, making a far more generous offer 
 to the tenants on the part of Lord Clanricarde than had 
 ever before been made. It was strong testimony to the 
 action and effect of public opinion, if allowed to have its 
 full expression. There can be little doubt that it was
 
 THE MEETING AT LOUGHREA 91 
 
 extracted at the last moment by fear of the open and full 
 discussion which the meeting, when permitted, would give 
 rise to. There can equally be little doubt that no such 
 offers would have been made if the meeting had been sup- 
 pressed and dispersed. On the face of it, it was an offer of 
 an abatement of all arrears of rent to the amount of 20 per 
 cent., but it was subject to the immediate payment of the 
 balance, which very few, if any, of the tenants were able to 
 do. It was also subject to exceptions which could not be 
 accepted by the tenants. It applied only to tenancies below 
 50/. a year ; and, above all, it contained no stipulations 
 for the reinstatement of the evicted tenants. The mistake 
 which it seemed to me that Mr. Tener had made in issuing 
 this notice was in not preceding it by negotiations with the 
 leading tenants. Lord Clanricarde, however, had not yet 
 arrived at the point of recognising the right of the tenants 
 to combine, or of negotiating with their leaders. 
 
 So little time elapsed between the issue of the notice and 
 the meeting that I was unable to ascertain the views of the 
 tenants upon it. Those I consulted said it would not suffice, 
 and that was also the view of Mr. T. A. Dickson, and later 
 of The McDermott ; but, at least, it showed a disposition for 
 the first time to make a real concession, and was in curious 
 contrast with Mr. Tener's letter in the ' Times ' only ten days 
 before, in which he had defended Lord Clanricarde's past 
 offers as amply sufficient, and had adopted so uncompro- 
 mising an attitude. 
 
 Already, however, the tenants of the district were crowd- 
 ing into the town. A procession of 1,500 tenants came 
 from Woodford alone on horseback or on cars, preceded 
 by bands of music. Other large contingents came from 
 Portumna, Ballinasloe, and other places. The meeting 
 was held in a field just outside the town, in a most ad- 
 mirable place for open-air speaking ; the sun shone brightly 
 during the meeting, and the weather was most delightful.
 
 92 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 We had measured out an angle of the ground the day before 
 in selecting the point to speak from, and calculated that 
 6,000 people could fill it, and hear with ease. The meeting 
 largely exceeded this space and was densely packed, and I 
 have no doubt that more than 7,000 persons took part in it. 
 The meeting was one of the most orderly and attentive I 
 ever addressed. I presided myself. The meeting com- 
 menced by reading the address, signed by several hundreds 
 of the tenants, asking me to hold the meeting ; and, as the 
 case of the tenants could not be put in more earnest and 
 simple language, I must give it at length : — 
 
 ' We, the undersigned tenants of the Marquis of Clanri- 
 carde, representing every district on his vast estates, beg 
 most respectfully to thank you for the sincere sympathy 
 you have displayed for us and your earnest efforts to bring 
 our wrongs and sufferings home to the minds and the hearts 
 of the people of England. We are and have been through- 
 out the struggle most anxious for a general and reasonable 
 settlement with our landlord on such reductions as all fair- 
 minded resident landlords have allowed their tenants ; but 
 this has been steadily and harshly refused, and no alterna- 
 tive has been offered but pay or go — that is to say, the 
 payment of rents which the depression of the times has 
 made impossible, or wholesale eviction. At present, evictions 
 stare us in the face ; ejectment notices have been issued 
 wholesale, and hang in bundles on half the police barracks 
 in the east riding of the county. Numerous decrees have 
 been granted, and if the Government insist in putting them 
 in force the whole country-side will be cleared of its in- 
 habitants. Under these circumstances, we respectfully 
 suggest that the time has come for you to redeem your 
 generous promise to preside at an orderly and peaceful 
 meeting held on the estate, which will make our miserable 
 position known to the public and Parliament, and afford us 
 some hope of constitutional redress.'
 
 THE MEETING AT LOUGH RE A 93 
 
 In moving myself the first resolution, I said that the 
 address which had just been read was a complete vindica- 
 tion of the meeting, and was such as alone would have 
 made it impossible for the Government to suppress it. I 
 touched lightly upon the history of the combination and 
 the past conduct of Lord Clanricarde. I purposely avoided 
 saying anything to aggravate the position. Speaking of the 
 combination, I said in the presence of the Government 
 reporter, and expressing my hope that he would report it, 
 that whatever might be the state of the law on the subject, 
 the law ought to permit the free combination of tenants, 
 and that, in my opinion, it was the only way in which they 
 could protect themselves in such cases as the present. I 
 thought also that great landlords such as Lord Clanricarde 
 and Sir H. Burke made a great mistake in not recognising 
 combinations of their tenants, and in not negotiating directly 
 with them, instead of issuing notices from their rent offices 
 without having made efforts to come to an agreement. I 
 declined to express an opinion on the offer which had just 
 been made, but I hoped that the tenants would consider it 
 in a conciliatory spirit, and that it might form the basis of a 
 negotiation. I pointed out its deficiency in one most im- 
 portant respect — namely, as regards the evicted tenants ; and 
 I warned Lord Clanricarde that he could not hope to settle 
 with his tenants except upon the terms of reinstating those 
 who had been already evicted. This, I said, was a point of 
 honour with the tenantry, and, in my opinion, rightly and 
 justly so ; for they would not be justified as men of honour 
 in abandoning those who had borne the brunt of the battle, 
 or in coming to terms with their landlord without requiring 
 that the evicted tenants should be reinstated. I discussed 
 the alternative methods by which, in the absence of an 
 agreement with their landlord, the question might be settled 
 — namely, by legislation on the Arrears question, or by the 
 action of the Executive in withholding the forces of the
 
 94 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 Crown in aid of evictions, and in not supporting Lord 
 Clanricarde with the powers of the Coercion Act. I pointed 
 out how little distinction there was between the meeting 
 and that held by Mr. Blunt, for holding which he had been 
 so unjustly imprisoned, and I claimed that we had vindi- 
 cated the right of public meeting. I concluded by saying 
 that so long as they were moderate in their demands, were 
 prepared to meet their landlord in a conciliatory spirit, and 
 avoided crime, they would have the sympathy of people 
 in England ; and I promised to bring their case before 
 the House of Commons. The resolution which I moved 
 was to this effect: 'That this meeting desires to express 
 its sympathy with the Clanricarde tenants in respect of the 
 wholesale ejectments, which have recently been commenced 
 for the non-payment of arrears of excessive rent, which the 
 poverty caused by the depression of agriculture has made 
 it not only impossible but unjust for the tenants to pay ; 
 and it desires to express its hopes that a fair and just 
 settlement may be arrived at, which will obviate the re- 
 petition of the distressing and painful scenes which must 
 follow if the depopulation by force of an entire district is 
 attempted.' 
 
 My friends from England supported this and other 
 resolutions, condemning, among other things, the treatment 
 of Mr. Blunt and the working of the Coercion Act, in a 
 series of most able speeches. Seldom, indeed, have I 
 heard so high a level of speaking at an open-air meeting. 
 Einally, a petition to Parliament was agreed upon to this 
 effect : — 
 
 ' That, owing to the great and almost unexampled fall 
 of prices of live stock and produce during the last three 
 years, the tenants were unable to pay their full rents, and 
 that they were quite willing, and have always during the 
 said time been willing, to pay their rents with such reason- 
 able and necessary abatements as all considerate land'
 
 THE MEETING AT LOUGH RE A 95 
 
 lords have been granting to their tenants without external 
 pressure. 
 
 1 That Lord Clanricarde during the said period has 
 persistently refused to make such reasonable or necessary 
 abatements, and has insisted upon the payment of impos- 
 sible rents. 
 
 ' That, in consequence of the inability of the tenants to 
 pay their full rents, arrears have accumulated, and that Lord 
 Clanricarde has now commenced proceedings of ejectment 
 in a wholesale manner, and threatens to clear the country of 
 the tenants if the arrears are not paid. 
 
 ' Your petitioners pray that your honourable House will 
 pass such measures in amendment of the Land Act of 
 1887 as w iH enable the Land Commissioners to deal with 
 arrears in a just and reasonable manner and with due re- 
 gard to the interests of the tenants in their holdings, as has 
 been done in the case of the sister country of Scotland, 
 and will thereby enable the tenants without fear of eviction 
 to avail themselves of the provisions of the Land Act of 
 1887.' 
 
 With this the meeting closed. The people dispersed 
 in perfect order and quiet ; there could not possibly be 
 stronger testimony to their self-control, and to the policy of 
 allowing free expression of opinion at public meetings. Our 
 task was over. We had established most important points— 
 the right' to hold a meeting in the heart of a proclaimed 
 district, and in what was held to be the most disturbed 
 part of Ireland, to protest against the conduct of a great 
 landlord, and to express sympathy with the tenants even 
 though they should be engaged in the Plan of Campaign. 
 We had maintained the right to discuss the conduct of the 
 landlord. We had vindicated the right of public meeting, 
 which had been most unjustly and cruelly abrogated in the 
 case of Mr. Blunt. 
 
 After the meeting we all met at the hospitable board of
 
 96 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 the Bishop of Clonfert. I shall not soon forget the eloquent 
 and sympathetic speech in which the Bishop reviewed the 
 work of the day, thanked us all for the part we had 
 taken, and bid us God speed in the work still before us 
 in Parliament on this and other matters affecting his 
 country.
 
 97 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 THE SEQUEL AT LOUGHREA. 
 
 On my way through Dublin, returning from the Loughrea 
 meeting, I spent a day in listening to the proceedings in the 
 civil action of Mr. Blunt against Mr. Byrne, the Constabulary 
 officer, who had assaulted him at the Woodford meeting. 
 The action substantially raised the same issue as in the 
 previous trials— whether the meeting which Mr. Blunt at- 
 tempted to hold was lawful or not, and whether the authori- 
 ties were justified in prohibiting and dispersing it by force. 
 The only difference was that the issue was now to be tried 
 by a jury, and not by two resident magistrates. 
 
 Mr. Blunt was brought up from Galway Gaol to give 
 evidence. Sitting by me in Court, he was for the first time for 
 six weeks able to talk to a friend. He told me of his prison 
 experiences. The imprisonment had been carried out with 
 rigour, apparently by express orders from the Prison Board at 
 Dublin — the smallest details being referred there for orders. 
 He had been treated as any ordinary felon or pickpocket. 
 No books of any kind were allowed to him, and no writing 
 materials with which to occupy his mind. To a man of edu- 
 cation and refinement this deprivation of all mental occu- 
 pation is infinitely greater punishment than if hard labour 
 were awarded, and renders imprisonment as an ordinary 
 criminal most severe and almost unbearable. 1 
 
 It made me blush as an Englishman that this should be 
 
 1 See Appendix A. Mr. Blunt's Prison Treatment. 
 
 H
 
 9 8 JXCWENTS OF COERCION 
 
 the prison treatment for a purely political offence, and that 
 Mr. Blunt should appear in the prison garb in the witness- 
 box. It was my deliberate conviction that in attempting to 
 hold his meeting at Woodford he did no more than I had 
 more recently done with impunity, and had been actuated 
 by the same motives, the same sympathy for the tenants, 
 the same wish to bring about a settlement between them 
 and their landlord, and the same conviction that this could 
 only be effected by bringing public opinion to bear on the 
 case. 
 
 The district was not more disturbed when Mr. Blunt 
 was there, than later, when the meeting at Loughrea was 
 held. If anything, the condition of the district was more 
 critical and dangerous at the later period. It is true that 
 fresh evictions had actually taken place a short time before 
 Mr. Blunt's meeting; but a campaign of ejectments on the 
 largest scale had been since commenced, and the country- 
 side was seething with indignation, and was in great alarm 
 at the later period. The objects of both meetings and the 
 terms on which they were held were the same. His meeting 
 was no more connected with the previous midnight meeting 
 than was mine. Mr. Blunt had undertaken that there should 
 be no speakers at his meeting but Englishmen; he had given 
 his personal undertaking that the speeches should be mode- 
 rate, and that nothing illegal should be done. I had myself 
 refused to give any undertaking of this kind. 
 
 Why, then, should Mr. Blunt be in prison as an ordinary 
 malefactor, and I and the other members of Parliament, who 
 were with me, free and permitted to speak to the people of 
 Loughrea ? Such difference of treatment is the very essence 
 of arbitrary and capricious rule, and would not be tolerated 
 for a moment if a jury intervened between prosecution and 
 conviction. It is true that Chief Baron Palles, by admitting 
 evidence of everything that had occurred at Woodford in 
 the way of disturbance and crime for years previously, and
 
 THE SEQUEL AT LOUGH RE A 99 
 
 excluding all evidence bearing upon the main question at 
 issue — namely, the action of the landlords towards their 
 tenants — appeared to be of opinion that the meeting of 
 October 23 was an unlawful one ; but the ablest of judges 
 are bad substitutes for jurors, and eleven out of twelve 
 special jurymen of Dublin, a majority of them Protestants, 
 were of an opposite opinion, in spite of the judge's 
 charge. Doubtless they did not feel themselves bound by 
 the same rigid rules of law to exclude all the surrounding 
 circumstances from their consideration. 
 
 Whatever, however, were the opinions of Chief Baron 
 Palles on the main issue — the lawfulness of the meeting — it 
 is clear that he would have been better satisfied if a merely 
 nominal sentence had been passed on Mr. Blunt. His 
 charge relieved Mr. Blunt from all the unjust imputations 
 cast upon him by Mr. Henn ; it is evident that he con- 
 sidered Mr. Blunt to be ignorant of the conditions which 
 might have justified the Government in concluding that the 
 meeting would lead to intimidation. The Crown lawyers, 
 however, pursued Mr. Blunt throughout the trial, as before, 
 with extreme bitterness, and with the determination to raise 
 every prejudice against him. It is to the lasting discredit of 
 the Government that, after this charge of the Chief Baron, 
 they should have allowed Mr. Blunt to be returned to 
 prison as an ordinary criminal, and to be treated for the re- 
 mainder of his term with the same harshness and indignities 
 as before. 
 
 I was very anxious to see Mr. Blunt in private, and I 
 therefore called on Sir West Ridgeway at the Castle, to ask 
 permission for an interview with the former at Kilmainham 
 Gaol. I was referred to the Prison Board, but none of its 
 members were in Dublin, and I failed to get leave. In my 
 interview with Sir West Ridgeway the conversation turned 
 upon the recent meeting at Loughrea. He said that the 
 Government had not expected any evil effects from it; they 
 
 h 2
 
 ico INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 had reason to believe that an agreement would soon be 
 arrived at between Lord Clanricarde and his tenants for the 
 purchase of their holdings under Lord Ashbourne's Act. 
 To this I replied that I had heard nothing whatever on the 
 spot of any suggestions or negotiations in this direction, 
 and it was very strange, if Lord Clanricarde contemplated 
 anything of the kind, that he should have issued so many 
 hundred processes of ejectment. ' That is the way they do 
 things in this country,' said Sir West Ridgewayj ' they open 
 negotiations by a declaration of war ! ' A very belligerent 
 view of the position, but perhaps what is to be expected of 
 a military man who has been appointed to what is, or should 
 be, a purely civil post, that of Under-Secretary to the Irish 
 Government. 
 
 There are many, I believe, who think it is only by pur- 
 chasing out the landlord under Lord Ashbourne's Act that 
 the dispute between Lord Clanricarde and his tenants can 
 be settled. I cannot myself see the expediency of lend- 
 ing public money to enable such a landlord to force better 
 terms upon his tenants ; nor do I believe in the necessity 
 for it. So far as I was able to form an opinion, there is no 
 impediment whatever to a just and fair settlement, on the 
 part of the tenants, upon the basis of rent. I was not a little 
 surprised to find how strong is still the old feudal feeling 
 on the part of the tenants to the family, with whom they 
 have been connected for so many centuries. It is my confi- 
 dent belief that if Lord Clanricarde were to announce his 
 intention to return to his property, and to take his part 
 as a resident landlord, and were to treat collectively with his 
 tenants upon terms such as most other landlords have con- 
 ceded, he would be welcomed with joy and acclamation, and 
 all the ill-feeling of the past would speedily be forgotten. 
 There is, I am certain, no strong feeling against the rela- 
 tion of landlord and tenant, or rather that of co-owners, and 
 no desire to avoid the payment of a just rent ; on the con-
 
 THE SEQUEL AT LOUGH RE A ioi 
 
 trary, much remains of the traditional feeling, which might 
 develop into happy relations were the landlord to become 
 a resident and to take interest in the welfare of the district. 1 
 
 On my return to London I took the earliest opportunity 
 in the debate on the Address of bringing the case of the 
 Clanricarde tenants before the House of Commons, on a 
 motion calling upon the Government to pass a measure 
 dealing with arrears of rent. I stated in substance the 
 main points of the whole case. The Chief Secretary, 
 in his reply, made no attempt to controvert my facts. 
 He did not pretend to justify the proceedings of Lord 
 Clanricarde ; he admitted in his argument all that had 
 been said against the management of the property, and 
 the unjust treatment of the tenants, but he resolutely de- 
 clined to propose any legislation on the subject of arrears. 
 His speech gave no hope of any remedy. He threw the 
 responsibility for a failure to deal with the question of 
 arrears in the Land Act of 1887 upon the Irish members, 
 who had rejected the bankruptcy proposals. It appeared 
 from his speech that the Government was prepared to per- 
 mit and support wholesale evictions on this estate, when 
 Lord Clanricarde should desire to enforce them. My 
 motion was rejected by a majority of eighty, and the hope 
 of the Clanricarde tenants of redress from the present Par- 
 liament, through legislation on the subject of arrears, was 
 dispelled. 
 
 In the six months which have elapsed since my visit to 
 Loughrea no further approach to a settlement has been 
 made. The tenants found themselves unable to accept the 
 offer held out to them on the day of the meeting. In the 
 opinion of men well qualified to form an opinion, such as 
 The McDermott and Mr. T. A. Dickson, the offer was not 
 one which was intended to lead to a settlement, or even to a 
 negotiation. It was apparently issued for the purpose of taking 
 1 This was written before the recent wholesale evictions.
 
 102 INCWEXTS OF COERCION 
 
 the wind out of the sails of the meeting, and with a view to 
 public opinion in England. Lord Clanricarde had not, in 
 fact, arrived at the first and essential condition of agreement 
 by consenting to deal with his tenants collectively; he still 
 adhered to the plan of issuing a ukase from his rent offices, 
 without consultation or negotiation. Since then no further 
 step has been taken by him towards a settlement. 
 
 No more evictions, however, took place there for many 
 months. There were good reasons for their not being 
 carried out at once. Under the Land Act of 1887, notices, 
 can be issued within a short time after the decrees of 
 ejectment have been obtained, turning the tenants into mere 
 caretakers or tenants at will. After these notices the tenants 
 can at any time be evicted in a very summary manner, but 
 there are still six months from the date of the notices 
 during which the tenants have the right of redeeming their 
 holdings, on payment of arrears of rent and costs, and it 
 would not be safe for any landlord to evict during this inter- 
 val, as he might be held accountable for the profits by the 
 law, and in any case could not find new tenants for this 
 interval. 
 
 It was not, therefore, till the end of August that Lord 
 Clanricarde found himself in a position to renew his evic- 
 tions on any large scale. But as soon as the six months 
 had elapsed from the issue of the first batch of notices, Mr. 
 Tener again commenced operations. He appears to have 
 had no difficulty in persuading Mr. Balfour and the Irish 
 Government to lend the forces of the Crown to Lord 
 Clanricarde for wholesale evictions. - No conditions, it would 
 seem, were exacted that reasonable offers of abatement, such 
 as other landlords in the county had given their tenants, had 
 been made prior to such aid being given. It will be recollected 
 that Sir M. Hicks-Beach, while not going the length of saying 
 that he would in no case lend the forces of the Crown, 
 intimated that, if no reasonable abatements were made, he
 
 THE SEQUEL AT LOUGH RE A 103 
 
 would postpone doing so till the latest possible date, and 
 till all other demands upon him were satisfied ; he also said 
 that when it became necessary to proceed to eviction in 
 order to maintain the right of property, the proper course 
 would be to select a few leading cases in which the tenants 
 were well able but declined to pay. 
 
 Mr. Balfour, it will be seen, laid down no conditions of 
 this kind, and apparently had no hesitation in supporting 
 these wholesale evictions. Mr. Tener obtained from the 
 Government a force of 150 police and 150 soldiers of the 
 Scots Fusilier Guards ; and with their aid he succeeded in 
 evicting the tenants of a whole township in the neighbour- 
 hood of Woodford, to the number of twenty-four. 
 
 The holdings were of various sizes, the largest being of 
 60 acres, with a rent of 40/. ; but the bulk of them were 
 under 10/. The tenants, in some few cases, had stock on 
 their farms of value sufficient to pay the claims made on 
 them ; but in most cases they were very poor. Evidently no 
 effort had been made to select only those holdings where 
 the tenants were able to pay. The rents on the average 
 were at about the rate of the valuation. In recent cases 
 on this property the Land Commissioners had reduced the 
 rents to 22 per cent, below the valuation. It may be taken, 
 therefore, that in nearly all cases where these evictions were 
 carried out, the rents since 1885 have been 22 per cent, 
 higher than they ought to be. There was resistance to 
 eviction in most cases. All the houses were barricaded. 
 In some the resistance was very determined, and friends 
 of the tenants joined in the defence, garrisoned the houses, 
 and ejected hot water on the police and bailiffs. About 
 40 persons, including several young women and boys, were 
 arrested and sent to prison. The arrangements of the 
 police were carried out with great skill. The soldiers kept 
 guard and prevented any strangers approaching the field of 
 action except the reporters of the press.
 
 104 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 In all cases, before final eviction Mr. Tener made an 
 offer to the tenants to leave them in possession if they 
 would pay a year's rent and costs, time to be given for 
 payment of the remainder of the rent due. The tenants, on 
 the average, owed two and a half or three years' rent from 
 the commencement of the dispute. This offer was invariably 
 refused. There was an apparent moderation in the demand. 
 Acceptance by the tenants and payment of a year's rent and 
 costs would have left them at the mercy of the landlord, 
 with the remaining rent due to be enforced whenever he 
 should think fit. The acceptance of it would have merely 
 postponed the evil day, and the tenants in doing so would 
 have broken faith with their fellow-tenants in the combina- 
 tion without any permanent alleviation of their own condi- 
 tion. I have been told that in every case the tenant asked 
 whether, if he paid, the other evicted tenants would be re- 
 instated, and that the invariable reply was that this was 
 no business of theirs. 
 
 It was stated in the ' Times ' report that some of the 
 tenants appeared inclined to accept the offer, but were 
 evidently afraid to do so. It may readily be supposed that 
 when eviction was thus brought home to them, some may 
 have hesitated to stand by the combination ; but in the 
 end there was no flinching, and all submitted to be turned 
 out of their homes, with the prospect of the prison for resist- 
 ing, or the workhouse, rather than give way and abandon 
 the evicted tenants. In no case would Mr. Tener enter into 
 any negotiation ; he could deal only with individuals, and 
 they were not, he said, in a position to make conditions. 
 It was evident that Lord Clanricarde would not recognise 
 his tenants in any collective capacity. 
 
 It was announced at the close of the proceedings, which 
 extended over four days, and must have entailed a con- 
 siderable cost on the Government, that as the land could 
 not be relet, Lord Clanricarde intended to clear the property
 
 THE SEQUEL AT LGUGHREA 105 
 
 and to turn it into grazing-land. In this view all the 
 houses of the tenants recently evicted have been razed to 
 the ground, and their value destroyed. Other evictions, it 
 was stated, will follow at an early date. It is certain, then, 
 that Lord Clanricarde is determined to enforce his claims a 
 Voutrance, to evict by the wholesale, and to clear his vast 
 property of its population unless the tenants yield ; and it 
 is to be feared that the Government is prepared to assist 
 him in so doing with the forces of the Crown. On their 
 part, the tenants show no sign of giving way, and it is obvious 
 that every fresh batch of evictions increases the claim on those, 
 who remain in possession of their holdings, to stand firm by 
 the common agreement, and to insist upon the reinstatement 
 of the evicted as a condition of any settlement. 1 
 
 1 Much has been made of the fact that one of the persons evicted on 
 this occasion was a man named Tully, who is notorious for a speech he 
 made in 1882, in which he is said to have recommended 'leaden pills' 
 for landlords. Tully is a boat-builder by trade ; he held 17 acres of 
 poor land from Lord Clanricarde, at a rent of 2/. 105., the valuation of 
 which was 4/. On this land Tully had built a house at a cost of over 
 200/. He joined the combination, it is said, not on his own account, 
 but from sympathy with the whole body of tenants. It is not to be 
 supposed that if he had stood alone he would have refused to pay 
 the small amount due from him for rent ; nor would any court 
 have leduced his rent, or have relieved him from arrears. Tully has 
 shown his earnestness for the cause of the tenants by joining with them 
 in their demands, and by submitting to eviction, and to the loss of all 
 his interest in his house and holding, rather than give an example to 
 others of submission by paying in full and avoiding eviction. We may 
 condemn this man's action in joining the combination when he 
 had no personal cause of complaint, but we may equally recognise 
 the fact that he did so on public grounds, and that he has made an 
 enormous sacrifice for the sake of the tenants as a body. A single case 
 of this kind, or it may be a few others where tenants could pay the full 
 rent by selling their stock, should not divert our sympathy from the 
 great mass of the tenants, who undoubtedly, as was admitted in 1886 
 by the late agent, Mr. Joyce, to Sir M. Hicks-Beach, were unable to 
 pay their full rents when this dispute began.
 
 io6 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 Meanwhile the Coercion Act has been further employed 
 as an engine of oppression in the hopes of quelling the 
 spirit of the tenants by imprisoning their leading men. On 
 April 8 another great meeting was held at Loughrea, on 
 the same site as that which I had summoned, and was at- 
 tended by the same people. It was called as an answer to 
 the challenge of the Chief Secretary in a speech at Staley- 
 bridge, to the effect that the Land League had been effectu- 
 ally suppressed in all the proclaimed districts. To those 
 conversant with the country the statement was ludicrously 
 false. It was scarcely necessary to disprove it. But a meet- 
 ing was summoned for the purpose, at which Mr. William 
 O'Brien, M.P., was to be the chief speaker ; the people 
 attended in vast multitudes, all with the National League 
 cards in their hats. The Government proclaimed the meeting 
 and endeavoured to suppress and disperse it, but did not 
 succeed in preventing Mr. O'Brien making his speech to a 
 subsidiary meeting. 
 
 For his action on this occasion, and for attending the 
 meeting, Mr. William O'Brien and twelve other persons were 
 arrested and prosecuted, and but for some technical point, 
 and for some irregularity in the proceedings, would long 
 ago have been convicted and sent to prison. What possible 
 good results from these proceedings? and what possible harm 
 would have resulted from permitting the meeting ? and why 
 suppress this meeting when my meeting had been allowed? 
 The eccentricity of arbitrary power is the only possible ex- 
 planation. 
 
 Not satisfied with these many prosecutions, the officers 
 of the Crown have tried their hands at other criminal pro- 
 ceedings, and by the aid of secret inquiries under the Star 
 Chamber clauses of the Coercion Act, they have raked up a 
 criminal charge against a number of the leading tradesmen of 
 Loughrea. 
 
 The case is curiously illustrative of the state of the
 
 THE SEQUEL AT LOUGH RE A 107 
 
 country and of the action of the authorities. So far as I 
 have been able to sift the facts, they are as follows : — So 
 long ago as 1879 a widow named Dempsey was evicted 
 from a farm in the neighbourhood of Loughrea. A man 
 named Kennedy hired the grazing of the farm ; but as, in the 
 opinion of the neighbourhood, the eviction was unjustifiable, 
 there resulted a strong feeling against him as a ' land-grab- 
 ber.' A hut was erected for Mrs. Dempsey by the Nation- 
 alists of Loughrea hard by her former dwelling, and there 
 she lived in confident expectation of being reinstated in her 
 former holding. 
 
 At length, in November 1 886, a meeting was held on the 
 farm, at which Mr. Sweeny, of Loughrea, and others spoke. 
 Kennedy came on the platform, and there and then gave up 
 the farm to Mrs. Dempsey, amid great applause, and he was 
 carried on the shoulders of the people round the field amid 
 loud cheers. Later, Kennedy met Mr. Harris, M.P., and Mr. 
 Sheehy, M.P., and agreed to surrender all claim to the farm. 
 Relying on this undertaking, the two sons of Mrs. Demp- 
 sey entered the farm in July 1887, and cut the hay, with 
 the full knowledge, it is said, of Kennedy and the police. 
 The hay thus cut was stacked on the farm by the Dempseys, 
 and was afterwards removed and sold at Loughrea in open 
 market, where it was bought by Mr. Sweeny. The police 
 subsequently seized it and removed it to the police barracks, 
 where it finally disappeared. 
 
 In October 1887 a batch of eight persons, including the 
 two Dempseys, were arrested and brought up before the 
 Court of Quarter Sessions at Ballinasloe on a charge of felony 
 for stealing this hay, and also for conspiracy. Mr. Blake, 
 the Crown solicitor, applied to have the cases sent for trial 
 to the Sligo Winter Assizes. This was done, and the 
 prisoners were let out on bail. When the case came on at 
 Sligo, the Crown applied for an adjournment of it, and 
 the judge agreed to this course, directing the Crown to pay
 
 108 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 the costs of the solicitor and counsel of the accused. The 
 case next came on at the Spring Assizes at Gahvay in the 
 present year. The Crown lawyers were still unprepared to 
 deal with the case, and another adjournment was asked 
 for. Mr. Justice Murphy again allowed this on payment 
 of costs by the Crown, and the case then stood for trial at 
 the Gahvay Assizes for July. In the meantime a Star 
 Chamber inquiry was held at Loughrea in secret, under the 
 Act of last year, and was protracted over a long period. 
 As a result of this, on June 13 last, four men were suddenly 
 arrested at Loughrea at 3 a.m., including the two Sweenys, 
 and six other persons at Killimore, at the same hour of the 
 night. Among these people were six of the leading trades- 
 men, town councillors, of Loughrea. They were thrust into 
 gaol, and the next day were brought before the magistrates, 
 and were charged with conspiracy to prevent Kennedy 
 using his farm, and to deprive him of its produce, and with 
 feloniously carrying away the hay from Kennedy's farm, and 
 with being in unlawful possession of it. Bail was refused, 
 and they were put into the Loughrea Bridewell, where they 
 remained for two days, pending the investigations by the 
 magistrates, in a room with only three beds and with no 
 arrangements for ablutions. 
 
 The magistrates committed these ten men for trial at 
 Gahvay, and refused bail. The prisoners were brought out 
 of the police barracks, and in spite of their vehement remon- 
 strances, were handcuffed in the presence of the people, who 
 were collected in great crowds outside the Court-house. 
 This caused the greatest indignation among the crowd. A 
 disturbance resulted ; the military were called out ; a con- 
 flict arose, and a number of persons were seriously injured. 
 The accused were carried off handcuffed to Gahvay Gaol 
 by a circuitous route. 
 
 Two days later an application was made on their behalf 
 before the judges in Dublin for the release on bail of these
 
 THE SEQUEL AT LOUGH RE A 109 
 
 ten men, and the application was granted at once. At 
 the instance of the Crown the venue in all these cases has 
 been changed from Galway to Wicklow, where they will he- 
 tried by a special jury in October. 
 
 In spite of the orders of the two judges, I am informed 
 that the representatives of the Crown have refused to pay 
 the costs of the accused at Sligo and Galway. It is difficult 
 to suppose that the Crown can sustain a charge of felony 
 against these men. Whether a case can be made out of a 
 conspiracy to prevent Kennedy using the farm I forbear to 
 say. The people fear that the usual course will be pursued 
 at Wicklow, and that the Crown will challenge ever}- Catho- 
 lic juror, so that the accused will be tried by a special jury 
 of landlords. 
 
 What, however, must be the effect on the minds of the 
 people of all the previous proceedings, the long delays, the 
 secret inquiries, the arrests in the middle of the night, the 
 refusal of bail by the magistrates, the handcuffing of the 
 accused in the sight of the people, the refusal to pay cost>, 
 the change of venue to Wicklow with the prospect of a 
 packed jury. Are not these calculated to show, like all the 
 other cases I have referred to, that all the powers of the 
 Executive are ranged against them in the agrarian dispute 
 between the tenants and their co-owners, the landlords ? 
 
 *\\ 7
 
 io INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 mr. Dillon's trial. 
 
 On June 19 of this year (1888) I again crossed the Irish 
 Channel, for the purpose of being present at the hearing of 
 the appeal of Mr. John Dillon, M.P., before the County 
 Court judge at Dundalk, against his conviction by two 
 resident magistrates for his speech to the tenants of Lord 
 Massereene at Tullyallen. 
 
 I had seen much of Mr. Dillon during the previous 
 few months, and now in the hour of his trial I was glad to 
 find myself able to stand by him. I went over with other 
 Members of Parliament as representatives of the Liberal 
 party, and at the suggestion and wish of my political 
 friends. Others of the delegates were Professor Stuart, 
 M.P., Mr. John Ellis, M.P., Mr. Schwann, M.P., and Mr. 
 Rowntree, M.P. We travelled from Dublin to Dundalk in 
 the same train with Mr. Dillon, M.P., his counsel, Mr. 
 T. Harrington, M.P., Mr. W. O'Brien, M.P., and other 
 representative men of the Irish party. 
 
 At every station on the route there were crowds of 
 people anxious to testify their affection for and confidence in 
 Mr. Dillon. At Drogheda an address was presented to him 
 by the Mayor and Corporation of the town. His progress 
 little resembled that of an accused to his trial. On arriving 
 at Dundalk we found the approaches to the Court held by 
 dragoons and a large body of police. There was an immense 
 concourse of people from all the surrounding districts, and
 
 MR. DILLON'S TRIAL in 
 
 the streets were decked with flags and green boughs. A pro- 
 cession was formed from the station to the Court House, 
 so far as it was permitted by the police, and on arrival 
 there Mr. Dillon and his friends were admitted. Some of 
 our party, including Mr. Byles, of the ' Bradford Observer,' 
 and Mrs. Byles, were not so fortunate, and, being shut out, 
 found themselves involved in a me/ce, caused by a wholly 
 unprovoked attack on the people by the soldiers and police, 
 which resulted in several persons being severely batoned. 
 Mr. and Mrs. Byles were thrown on the ground during a 
 charge of the constabulary and received some injuries. The 
 Court House was reserved mainly for the friends of the 
 officials, and few or none of the Massereene tenants were 
 admitted. Contrary to our expectations, the trial (of which 
 I shall speak more fully later) was concluded within the day. 
 A long delay took place between the decision of the judge 
 affirming, the sentence of the resident magistrates, and the 
 removal of Mr. Dillon to gaol, while police arrangements 
 were being made to secure his safe transfer. This was 
 effected in a private carriage guarded by a troop of dragoons. 
 
 Later, Mr. W. O'Brien, M.P., addressed the people from 
 the windows of the hotel. A wanton attack was made on the 
 people assembled in the streets by the police on one hand and 
 by the dragoons on the other flank. The crowd thus hemmed 
 in was attacked by the police with clubbed muskets and 
 batons, and numbers of persons were severely injured. So 
 far as I could learn there was not the slightest justification for 
 these attacks. Twelve persons, however, were charged with 
 unlawful assembly on this occasion, and were sent to prison 
 with hard labour for terms of from one month to three months. 
 
 Some of our party went to Greenore for the night, and 
 the next morning returned by rail to Drogheda, where we 
 met by arrangement some of the leading tenants of Lord 
 Massereene, who had invited us to visit the property. 
 Our party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Byles, Mr. Wilfrid
 
 ii2 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 Blunt, and myself. Four or five of the Massereene tenants 
 drove us in a break to the centre of the estate. We visited 
 there several of the tenants, who were engaged in the com- 
 bination against their landlord. At Monasterboice we called 
 upon Father M'Kee, the priest of that part of the property, 
 who from the first had sympathised with the tenants ; his 
 curate, Father Rock, had been still more active in the cause, 
 but had been recently removed to another part of Ireland, 
 at the instigation, Father M'Kee told us, of a Catholic 
 relative of Lord Massereene, who had considerable influence. 
 In the village of Newtown-Monasterboice we met a dozen 
 of the tenants, extremely poor men, with holdings of from five 
 to ten acres. We held a small council in the road and heard 
 their story. They had joined the combination against Lord 
 Massereene in 1886, and had demanded a reduction of rent 
 of 25 per cent, in common with the great bulk of the tenants, 
 and on its refusal had since paid no rent to their landlord. 
 They had later applied to the Land Commissioners for 
 judicial rents, and only a few weeks before my visit, after a 
 long delay, their judicial rents had been decided on. By this 
 decision their rents had been reduced by an even larger 
 amount than they had asked for— namely, 27 to 30 per 
 cent. More recently, and only a week ago, processes for 
 their ejectment had come on before the County Court ; the 
 judge, it was said, had suggested to the representative of the 
 landlord that he thought that in issuing a decree of eject- 
 ment the arrears of rent should be reduced in the same 
 proportion as the Land Commissioners had reduced the 
 rents. This course was assented to by the landlord's agent, 
 and decrees were issued for ejectment, subject to the pay- 
 ment of rent thus reduced, and the liquidation of which was 
 spread over fourteen months. The tenants admitted to me 
 that they were in the main satisfied with this proposal ■ they 
 were to get a larger reduction than they had asked for when 
 they joined the Plan of Campaign. When I asked whether
 
 MR. DILLON'S TRIAL 113 
 
 they were now prepared to come to terms with their landlord, 
 and to pay the arrears of rent thus reduced, they one and 
 ■all replied that they would not pay a shilling, unless Lord 
 Massereene agreed to reinstate the tenants whom he had un- 
 justly evicted, and who had fought the battle for them and 
 others of the tenants. 
 
 I did not then know all the facts of the case as I sub- 
 sequently learned them from Lord Massereene's late and 
 present agents, and therefore refrained from giving these 
 tenants any advice. Had I known what I have since 
 learned, I could not have done otherwise than express 
 approval of their action. I contented myself with express- 
 ing a general sympathy with them, and the hope that a 
 settlement might be effected. At Monasterboice we visited 
 a very interesting specimen of the ancient round watch- 
 towers ; in the burial-ground surrounding it were also 
 three splendid examples of ancient crosses, of elaborate and 
 beautiful design. I was glad to find that I had scheduled 
 the tower under an Act I had passed in 1882 for the pro- 
 tection of ancient monuments. 
 
 On our way thence to Collon we called at the huts of 
 some of the tenants who had been evicted, and heard their 
 stories. At Collon we were fortunate enough to find at his 
 house Mr. Wynne, the late agent of Lord Massereene, and I 
 heard from him an account of the dispute between Lord 
 Massereene and his tenants, from the point of view of one not 
 unfavourable to the former, and who cannot be regarded 
 as otherwise than in the interest generally of landlords. 
 Mr. Wynne is the agent for many other large proprietors in 
 this district. In 1886, when the great fall of prices occurred, 
 he advised all his employers that abatements should be 
 made to the tenants of about 15 percent, in the case of 
 judicial rents, and 20 per cent, in non-judicial rents. Lord 
 Massereene alone refused to take his advice, and actually 
 dismissed him from his post as agent, for his leniency to the 
 
 1
 
 114 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 tenants. In all the other cases his advice was followed, and 
 as a result no difficulty had occurred on other properties ; 
 and Lord Massereene's was the only one in the county of 
 Louth where a combination of tenants had taken place, and 
 where the Plan of Campaign had been adopted. Mr. Wynne 
 had no doubt that an arrangement might have been arrived 
 at on this estate in 1886 without difficulty; he held, however, 
 that the tenants were on their part to blame for entering into 
 a combination so speedily, and without waiting longer to 
 see whether Lord Massereene would make concessions. He 
 thought that some of the tenants were able to pay their 
 full rents ; he considered that there would be no difficulty 
 now in settling the dispute if it were not for some of the 
 leaders of the movement who had been evicted ; and that 
 the difficulties of a settlement had been increased by the 
 violent speeches which had been made. He thought that 
 Lord Massereene, who was open to reason, should not be 
 called upon to humiliate himself by reinstating these leaders 
 of the movement in the farms from which they had been 
 evicted. 
 
 After calling upon Mr. Wynne and hearing his account 
 of the dispute, I saw Father Taafe, the priest of Collon, who, 
 it was alleged, had originally been favourable to the tenants, 
 but who had more recently been engaged in trying to induce 
 them to give way. Father Taafe showed me his correspon- 
 dence with Messrs. Dudgeon and Emerson, the new agents 
 of Lord Massereene, who through him had made an offer 
 to the tenants ; he had forwarded this to Dr. Logue, the 
 Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, whose reply he also 
 showed me, and from whom I have since received per- 
 mission to make what use I think fit of it. 
 
 It was difficult to make out the views of Father Taafe. 
 He was under great excitement, from having been charged 
 with being the cause of Mr. Dillon's speech and his conse- 
 quent imprisonment. His main object was to relieve himself
 
 MR. DILLON'S TRIAL ,, 5 
 
 from this charge. I gathered from him that he considered 
 the dispute might have been settled if the negotiations with 
 Lord Massereene had been left in his hands. 
 
 On our way back from Collon to Drogheda we visited 
 others of the evicted tenants. The Government paid us the 
 delicate attention of following our movements by a small 
 detachment of police, mounted on a car. They had been 
 sent over to Collon under the apprehension that we intended 
 to hold a meeting there. 
 
 The following day I spent in Dublin, with the object of 
 calling on Messrs. Dudgeon and Emerson, the new agents of 
 Lord Massereene. It was evident from what I had heard on 
 the estate that Lord Massereene was ready to give way on 
 every point except as to the reinstatement of evicted tenants 
 and the costs of legal proceedings. 
 
 My object in calling on Messrs. Dudgeon and Emerson 
 was to use such influence, as I might have, to effect a settle- 
 ment, and to induce concessions on these two points. I did 
 my best to persuade them that it would be wise, even in the 
 interest of Lord Massereene, to make no vindictive excep- 
 tions, to treat all his tenants equally, and to reinstate all those 
 tenants whom it was now practically admitted had been un- 
 justly treated. I was quite unable to make any impression 
 on these gentlemen. They seemed to me to be typical 
 solicitors of an aggressive class ; it was their mission to put 
 down combinations of tenants; they looked at the matter of 
 the Massereene tenants from the point of view generally of 
 landlords ; it was necessary to make examples and to punish 
 the leaders of such a movement, otherwise it might spread 
 to other parts of the North of Ireland. They boasted that 
 they had already, by a mixed policy of legal proceedings, of 
 threats, and concessions, broken down the combination on 
 this property ; a majority of the tenants, they said, had paid 
 part of the rent due. To give way wholly now, and to 
 reinstate the leaders of the movement, would, in their view, 
 
 I 2
 
 n6 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 be a confession of weakness, and would be a humiliation to 
 Lord Massereene, which he could not be expected to submit 
 to. After seeing these gentlemen, and hearing all that they 
 had to say, I was able to form an opinion on the whole case, 
 and make out a complete story of the dispute between Lord 
 Massereene and his tenants. 
 
 Lord Massereene's property in the county of Louth con- 
 sists of about 200 tenants, with a rental of 6,000/. a year. 
 Some of the tenants are men of substance, with large farms ; 
 others are very poor, with holdings of from five to ten acres ; 
 but the bulk of them hold farms of between twenty and 
 thirty acres. It is admitted on all hands that there was no 
 better or more orderly class of tenants in the North of Ireland. 
 
 The case curiously resembles in all its main features 
 that of Lord Clanricarde. In 1886, Lord Massereene re- 
 fused to act upon the advice of his agent and to make abate- 
 ments of rent to them ; as already explained, he dismissed his 
 agent for offering this advice to him, and put his affairs 
 into the hands of Messrs. Dudgeon and Emerson, an indi- 
 cation in itself of war with his tenants. 
 
 The tenants then met, and sent a deputation to their 
 landlord. Lord Massereene refused to see them, and sent 
 a message by his servant that he could only communicate 
 with them through his new agents. The bulk of the Catholic 
 tenants then entered into a combination and adopted the 
 Plan of Campaign, refusing to pay their rents unless an 
 abatement of 20 per cent, were conceded in the case of 
 judicial rents and 25 per cent, in the case of non-judicial 
 rents. The Protestant tenants, about thirty in number, 
 did not join in this movement. They are not in the habit 
 of acting in concert with their Catholic neighbours. I was 
 told, however, that it was well understood they would re- 
 ceive ' the most favoured nation ' treatment, and would get 
 whatever abatements should be ultimately conceded to those 
 who joined the combination. It was said that the Protes-
 
 MR. DILLON'S TRIAL 117 
 
 tant tenants were planted on the estate by a predecessor of 
 the present owner, in place of Catholic tenants, who had 
 been cruelly evicted. There was fear among the tenants of 
 the same process being repeated. They had seen adver- 
 tisements in an Antrim paper offering farms in Louth to 
 Protestant tenant farmers. 
 
 Thenceforward war ensued between the landlord and 
 these tenants. Proceedings of ejectment by wholesale were 
 commenced by Messrs. Dudgeon and Emerson in the 
 Superior Courts and County Courts. They admit that they 
 received instructions to resort to every means known to the 
 law, for the purpose of breaking down the combination 
 of the tenants. On their part, the tenants made every 
 resistance which the processes of law permitted ; costs on 
 both sides were multiplied. Eventually, and as an example, 
 ten of the tenants were evicted with the aid of a large force 
 of police and soldiers, and several persons were sent to 
 prison for resistance to these evictions. The farms from 
 which these persons have been evicted have since remained 
 derelict and uncultivated ; no one has been. found to take 
 them; their former owners are living near by, either in huts 
 built for them out of the proceeds collected under the Plan 
 of Campaign, or in neighbouring farms, in the confident 
 hope of being reinstated. 
 
 For nearly two years this legal warfare proceeded ; Mr. 
 Dudgeon himself headed raids of bailiffs and police in the 
 night time to seize cattle in distraint of rent. Proceedings 
 in bankruptcy against some of the tenants, attachments 
 of property of others, have been resorted to. By these 
 and other measures enormous costs have been piled up 
 against the tenants and added on to the claims of the land- 
 lord. I was informed on very good authority that the costs 
 were ten times what they ought to be. During the same 
 period arrears of rent have accumulated, and on the average 
 three years' rent is now due.
 
 n8 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 Recent proceedings have thrown a light upon the posi- 
 tion of the tenants and the course of Lord Massereene in 
 refusing abatements to his tenants in 1886. Under the 
 Land Act of 1887 the Land Commissioners have made a 
 proportional reduction of judicial rents for the gale due in 
 November of that year and subsequent gales, averaging about 
 t 5 per cent. ; and in several cases where fresh applications 
 had been made by the tenants for judicial rents the Com- 
 missioners have recently made awards averaging about 23 
 per cent., and in many cases considerably more. 
 
 Lord Massereene has lately been prepared to make large 
 abatements in respect of the arrears of rent which have 
 accumulated during the period of the dispute. His agents 
 have offered to make the same proportional abatement of 
 the arrears of judicial rent as the Land Commissioners, under 
 the Act of 1887, have decided should be made in respect of 
 rents due since that Act ; and in the case of non-judicial 
 rents they have offered to make abatements of arrears of 
 rent in the same proportion as the Land Commissioners 
 have reduced the rents, or may do so in the future. 
 
 This is a practical concession of the justice of the 
 tenants' claim. If made originally in 1886 it would have 
 settled the case, and there would have been no dispute, 
 no combination, and no evictions. It fully justifies the 
 advice of Mr. Wynne, the late agent, and the demand of 
 the tenants for abatements of rent, and it has shown that 
 their action in combining together for the non-payment of 
 the full rents was justifiable and successful. But for the 
 combination these terms would not have been conceded. 
 There remain, however, two questions — that of the re- 
 instatement of the tenants, who, it is now practically ad- 
 mitted, were unjustly evicted, and that of the legal costs 
 piled up in the harassing proceedings of Messrs. Dudgeon 
 and Emerson. 
 
 It is an element of this case, as of so many others, that
 
 MR. DILLON'S TRIAL 119 
 
 the landlord, by the advice of his new agents, will in no 
 way recognise the right of the tenants to combined action, 
 that he will not negotiate with them collectively, but insists 
 upon dealing with them individually or through others than 
 their recognised leaders. 
 
 It seems, then, that Messrs. Dudgeon and Emerson, 
 acting on this principle, when they were prepared to make 
 these concessions, approached the tenants through the two 
 priests, Father Taafe and Father McKee. It is worth while 
 to quote their letter as showing the manner in which such 
 offers are made. 
 
 ' Our instructions,' they wrote on March 27 of thisyear to 
 Father Taafe, ' are to deal with the case of each tenant sepa- 
 rately and on its merits. In the cases of all the tenants who 
 recently got their rents fixed by the Land Commissioners, we 
 are prepared to give them the benefit of the reduction, made 
 by applying the fair rent to the arrears due and not as in 
 strictness merely to the gale due last November. In some 
 of these cases we are allowing more than this owing to special 
 circumstances. 
 
 ' In case of those tenants who had judicial rents fixed by 
 statutory agreement, and not by order of the Court made 
 after a hearing, we have advised Lord Massereene to give the 
 same allowance on all arrears as is allowed in respect of 
 the November gale of last year by the schedule issued by the 
 Land Commissioners, and his Lordship has accepted our 
 advice. With regard to costs, our firm are prepared to deal 
 liberally with each tenant who avails himself of the offer now 
 made and pays his rent. 
 
 ' Lord Massereene has been put to great expense owing to 
 all the cases being defended, and he cannot be the sufferer 
 by reason of the tenants having acted in such a foolish 
 way as to defend actions when they had not a shadow 
 of defence. 
 
 ' If the general body of the tenants settle on the terms we
 
 120 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 have mentioned, the cases of those who have been evicted, 
 and whose farms are now the absolute property of Lord 
 Massereene, will be considered with a view to reinstating them 
 in their farms ; but we are instructed to state that Francis 
 Cooke, James Byrne, and John Drumgoole are excepted from 
 the offer now made, as his Lordship considers that they are 
 in a great measure personally responsible for what has taken 
 place on this estate. 
 
 ' If the terms now offered are not accepted within a week 
 from this, our instructions are to proceed at next Quarter 
 Sessions against all in arrears, and also to execute forthwith 
 the decrees which have already been obtained. . . . ' 
 
 A similar offer was made through Father McKee to the 
 tenants in the other part of the property. Father Taafe 
 referred this letter of Lord Massereene's agents to Dr. Logue, 
 the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, whose answer is of the 
 utmost value for the understanding of this case and for the 
 admirable manner in which he reviews the proposal. 
 
 ' Armagh : March 30, l{ 
 
 ' Dear Father Taafe, — I have carefully considered your 
 letter and that of Messrs. Dudgeon and Emerson which 
 you enclosed. I am sorry to say that I can see in the 
 proposals made but very slight reason to hope for a satis- 
 factory settlement. I would not be much inclined to find 
 fault with the scale of reduction proposed by Messrs. Dud- 
 geon and Emerson, though they grant very little beyond 
 what is granted by the letter of the law. 
 
 ' However, it appears to me that at this stage of the 
 dispute the amount of the reduction is a secondary con- 
 sideration. The costs seem to be the great obstacle. From 
 what I have heard I believe that the tenants, with the best 
 will in the world to do so, would not be able to meet these 
 costs or anything approaching to the amount. 
 
 'True, the solicitors say that these costs have been
 
 MR. DILLON'S TRIAL 12 1 
 
 swelled by the useless defences on the part of the tenants. 
 From the information I could gather I am led to believe that 
 these costs have been piled up to such an enormous figure 
 by vexatious actions taken in the Superior Courts, while the 
 decrees of a County Court would have served all practical 
 purposes equally well. 
 
 ' But, apart from the money question, I see in the soli- 
 citors' letter indications of an intention which, if carried out, 
 would render an amicable settlement of the dispute, and one 
 that would lead to permanent peace, impossible. 
 
 * 1. It appears that Lord Massereene wishes to deal with 
 the tenants individually ; that means war and not a settle- 
 ment. 
 
 ' 2. It appears that his Lordship intends to make 
 victims, and I am much mistaken if that intention does 
 not shut the doors against an amicable arrangement. He 
 may perhaps succeed in patching up some kind of tem- 
 porary arrangement on these terms, but he will leave an 
 amount of smouldering discontent which is likely to break 
 into a fresh flame of still greater volume. 
 
 ' Were I asked to make a suggestion of what I think 
 best for Lord Massereene and the tenants, it would be 
 something like this : — 
 
 ' 1. Both sides should agree on the amount of reduction 
 to be allowed on the rents now due and on the arrears ; and 
 I think neither side should stand out on trifles in settling 
 the amount. 
 
 ' 2. I would advise all those who can possibly pay the 
 reduced rent and arrears to do so at once. For those who 
 cannot pay at once I think some arrangement should be 
 made to enable them to pay by instalments. 
 
 ' 3. The costs, which appear to me to be the great 
 difficulty, should be brought within the capability of the 
 tenants without pressing more than can be avoided on the 
 landlord.
 
 122 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 ' 4. There should be no exceptional treatment of indi- 
 viduals and no victims. 
 
 ' I am yours faithfully, 
 
 'Michael Logue.' 
 
 It would be impossible to point out more clearly the 
 present issues of the dispute and the principles on which 
 it should be settled, if permanent peace is to be hoped for, 
 than in this excellent letter. 
 
 It would appear that Father Taafe took no further 
 action on receipt of it. On the other hand, Father McKee 
 called together the tenants of his district, and, after dis- 
 cussing the question with them, made this reply to Messrs. 
 Dudgeon and Emerson : — 
 
 ' The tenants of the Massereene estate, also parishioners 
 of mine, are anxious to come to a settlement with Lord 
 Massereene on terms honourable to themselves as well as 
 to his Lordship. . . . 
 
 1 They cannot forget the evicted tenants, who have suf- 
 fered so much in the recent struggle. They cannot, therefore, 
 accept any terms from which any of the tenants should be 
 excluded.' 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Dillon had crossed over to Ireland in 
 March last, with the intention of making political speeches 
 in reply to the challenge of the Chief Secretary for Ireland 
 at Staleybridge, in which he had claimed that the Govern- 
 ment had succeeded in suppressing the National League in 
 all the districts in which it had been proclaimed under the 
 Coercion Act. Mr. Dillon had no previous connection 
 with the Massereene case, and had taken no part in advising 
 the combination. It was only when in the district that he 
 heard of the position of affairs there, and of the desperate 
 efforts then being made to induce the tenants who had 
 joined in the combination to come to terms separately 
 with their landlords, and to abandon the evicted tenants.
 
 MR. DILLON'S TRIAL 123 
 
 It was represented to him that there was danger lest, 
 under the joint influence of threats of eviction, of favour- 
 able terms offered to them individually, and of the advice 
 of Father Taafe, the tenants would separately agree to 
 terms and abandon the evicted tenants to their fate. He 
 was, therefore, induced to address the tenants at Tullyallen 
 on April 8. His speech must be considered as an impas- 
 sioned defence of the Plan of Campaign, and an appeal to 
 the tenants to stand by one another, and not to give way 
 singly. 
 
 ' When I recommended,' he said, ' the Plan of Campaign 
 as a policy to the tenantry of Ireland, I did it deliberately — I 
 did it because I believed it was a policy that would make 
 the fate of the traitor an unhappy one. What has been the 
 curse of Ireland in the past, when time after time the 
 leaders of the people have endeavoured to lead the poor 
 tenantry out of the land of bondage? What has been the 
 curse of previous movements ? It has been the traitor, the 
 man who, in the very hour when victory is at hand, who in 
 the hour of the thickest of the fight turned his back on his 
 comrades and basely betrayed the cause which he was pledged 
 by every principle of honesty and manhood to sustain. I 
 came to the conclusion that if we could not place before 
 our people some policy, we could not hope to do what was 
 also a dear object to my heart — namely, to win our people 
 from the methods which they used to adopt towards traitors. 
 What used they to do towards traitors in the olden times ? 
 They used to shoot them. Well, I wanted to turn away our 
 people from that course. It is a course natural to desperate 
 men ; a course of outrage and of vengeance. It is a course 
 which naturally occurs to men when they see they are 
 betrayed ; but it is a course which will not lead to victory, 
 and I wanted to place before the people of Ireland, a Chris- 
 tian, a civilised, and a moral plan, by which, if they adhered 
 to it bravely, they would put down the infamous system of
 
 124 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 rack-renting and treachery to which the people of Ireland 
 have been so long subjected.' 
 
 He then pointed out the many cases where combina- 
 tions had been successful, and especially those of Lord de 
 Freyne's and Sir Henry Burke's tenants, where the land- 
 lords had .ultimately conceded almost all that the tenants 
 had asked for, and had reinstated the evicted tenants and 
 had paid all the costs of legal proceedings. He went into 
 details of the Massereene case and gave illustrations of the 
 way in which costs had been piled up by Messrs. Dudgeon 
 and Emerson, whom he described as belonging to the very 
 worst class of agents in Ireland. He ended by a strong 
 appeal to the tenants to stand by one another. ' If there be 
 any men amongst the Massereene tenants who feel weak or 
 inclined to yield, let me tell them this, that the only danger 
 they have to dread is the danger of yielding. If they yield 
 they will be ruined men ; they will be put to great costs and 
 expenses ; the landlord will never again have mercy upon 
 them ; he will know they are beaten, and from any part of 
 the Irish race they will get neither support nor sympathy. I 
 have come here to tell them that the whole power of an 
 organisation will be at their backs ; and I say without the 
 slightest hesitation, and in the plainest way, that any man 
 who takes their farms and any man who goes back and takes 
 advantage of the position to get possession of their property, 
 that his life won't be a happy one. ... Is the life of a pick- 
 pocket or cheat a happy one ? I say that the man who does 
 an act which makes every honest neighbour [illegible], his 
 life will not and ought not to be happy wherever an honest 
 man be. . . . The man who turns his back upon the people 
 who have entered into a fight of this character will be looked 
 upon, and justly looked upon, by all his neighbours as a traitor 
 and dishonest man.' ' 
 
 1 This report is taken from the notes of the police reporter read at 
 the trial, some parts of which were illegible.
 
 MR. DILLON'S TRIAL 125 
 
 There are passages in this speech which have seemed 
 to some people as dangerously near to threats of physical 
 violence against those who should be traitors to the cause ; 
 but the obvious meaning of the words is that traitors will 
 suffer in the estimation of their neighbours, and will be con- 
 sidered no better than pickpockets or blacklegs ; and even 
 if another construction be possible, it is always right and 
 fair to adopt that which is the most moderate. 
 
 Having regard to the state of the dispute between Lord 
 Massereene and his tenants, to the offers made by Messrs. 
 Dudgeon and Emerson, and to the pressure brought to bear 
 from all quarters on the tenants to induce them to give way 
 and to abandon the evicted tenants to their fate, the speech 
 must be regarded as a passionate appeal to them to stand 
 by the evicted tenants, on whom the burthen of the fight 
 had fallen, and not to come to terms except by common 
 agreement. 
 
 In this sense the speech was understood by the tenants, 
 as was evidenced, by the resolution forwarded to Messrs. 
 Dudgeon and Co. by Father McKee, which has already 
 been quoted. For my own part, knowing, as I now do, all 
 the facts of the case, and after hearing all that could be 
 alleged on behalf of Lord Massereene by his agents, and 
 without committing myself to all the language of Mr. 
 Dillon, I have no hesitation in saying that I should have 
 advised the tenants to stand by one another, and not come 
 to terms with their landlord unless all the evicted tenants 
 were reinstated, and no vindictive exceptions were made in 
 the settlement. My conviction is that the same view would be 
 taken by any independent inquirer, or by any jury, to whom 
 the facts should be submitted, or who should be conversant 
 with the district. 
 
 As in the case of public meetings, so also with respect to 
 speeches, the jury is, under our Constitution, the real palla- 
 dium of the rights of the public. It rests with the jury to de-
 
 126 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 cide whether a speech infringes the law; and it is impossible 
 to withdraw from a jury the matters which, within their know- 
 ledge, have led to the speech being made. It is absolutely 
 certain that no jury could have been empanelled in Ireland, 
 even in Ulster, which would have convicted Mr. Dillon 
 for such a speech. I doubt whether any jury in the United 
 Kingdom would do so. There is conclusive proof of this 
 proposition, as regards Ireland, in the action of the Govern- 
 ment. At the time Mr. Dillon made this speech, the county 
 of Louth was not proclaimed, and he could, therefore, be 
 tried only before a jury. The county has always had a re- 
 putation for the independence and integrity of its juries. It 
 would have been easy for the Crown to empanel a jury there 
 exclusively composed of Protestants without any sympathy 
 with the Nationalist Party. The Government, however, felt 
 that it was hopeless to expect a verdict even from such a 
 jury. With the object of withdrawing the case from a jury 
 and securing a conviction, they proclaimed the county of 
 Louth four days after the Tullyallen speech, for the express 
 and only purpose of relegating Mr. Dillon's case to their 
 complacent agents, the resident magistrates. There was no 
 crime whatever in Louth, and no justification, therefore, for 
 proclaiming it under the Coercion Act. A more flagrant 
 case of ex post facto proceedings with the object of secur- 
 ing a conviction against a public man could not be con- 
 ceived. 
 
 For the purpose of the case two resident magistrates, 
 who could be relied upon, were brought from a distance, one 
 of them fresh with the honour of having convicted Father 
 MT'adden ; they naturally did the work expected of them. 
 Mr. Dillon was charged and tried for two distinct offences 
 arising out of his speech — the one for unlawfully taking 
 part in a criminal conspiracy to compel and induce certain 
 tenants not to fulfil their legal obligations, and to refuse to 
 pay and not to pay to the owners of such farms the rents
 
 MR. DILLON'S TRIAL 
 
 127 
 
 which they were lawfully bound to pay ; the other for in- 
 citing other persons to take part in an unlawful conspiracy 
 known as the Plan of Campaign. The magistrates con- 
 victed him of both these offences, and sentenced him in 
 each case to six months' imprisonment without hard labour, 
 the sentences to run concurrently, and they gave as a reason 
 for giving the fullest sentence in their power ' the influence 
 which the accused is well known to exert over masses of his 
 fellow-countrymen.' 
 
 From these sentences there was an appeal to the County 
 Court judge of the district, Mr. Kisbey, a gentleman who, 
 before his recent appointment to the Bench, had been a 
 most bitter political partisan of the Orange type. If any- 
 thing could add to the scandal of the proceedings, it is 
 that a man whom three-fourths of the people of Ireland 
 look upon as their most trusted leader, and adore as their 
 benefactor and friend, should be tried without a jury by 
 Mr. Kisbey. 
 
 At the trial at Dundalk, Mr. Dillon conducted his own 
 defence. The evidence against him was confined to a 
 report of his own speech at Tullyallen, a speech of simi- 
 lar tenor at the same meeting by Mr. Gill, M.P., who, 
 strange to say, was not himself prosecuted, and a previous 
 speech of Mr. Dillon delivered in November 1886, before 
 the passing of the Coercion Act, and for which he had been 
 prosecuted before a jury and not found guilty. Not a tittle 
 of evidence was given of a conspiracy. Mr. Dillon defended 
 himself in a speech of remarkable eloquence and power — a 
 speech which was unfortunately not reported in the English 
 papers as it deserved to be. The judge confirmed the 
 sentences in both cases. He refused to make his order in 
 such a manner, by referring to the depositions, as to enable 
 the accused to appeal to the higher tribunals on the point of 
 law whether the evidence disclosed any crime punishable 
 by law, although it was pointed out to him that it was
 
 128 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 within his power to do so, and had been the constant 
 practice till within the last few months. He insisted upon 
 the warrant for the imprisonment of Mr. Dillon being made 
 out at once, instead of waiting for the signature of the 
 magistrates who originally convicted, as had also been the 
 practice till lately — a course which would have afforded Mr. 
 Dillon a short interval, before going to prison, in which to 
 arrange his affairs. 
 
 The proceedings throughout the whole trial showed a 
 fixed determination on the part of the Crown and the judge 
 to press the law to the utmost, to secure the conviction 
 and imprisonment of their victim, and to treat him with 
 the utmost severity. 
 
 The climax, however, of the whole case was the committal 
 of such a man to imprisonment as a common criminal. 
 The speech of Mr. Dillon, even if within the law of con- 
 spiracy, was spoken with no criminal intent ; it was purely 
 political in the highest sense of the term ; it was uttered with 
 a sense of duty and with a belief in the justice of his case, 
 which placed it altogether outside the intent and scope of 
 the criminal law. To four-fifths of the Irish people, to a 
 great majority of the people of Scotland and Wales, and 
 to a very large section, perhaps even a majority, of the 
 English people the speech was justifiable and praiseworthy, 
 or at least excusable and defensible under the circum- 
 stances. No one even of Mr. Dillon's political opponents 
 could hold that such a speech rendered him in any sense 
 dishonourable or infamous, as the commission of an ordi- 
 nary crime would do ; it is certain that he will be treated 
 with the same respect in the House of Commons, and 
 in any society he finds himself, as if he had never been 
 convicted. To treat such a man as a criminal, to subject 
 him to the indignities of a gaol on the level with felons and 
 pickpockets, to invest him with the prison garb, to run 
 the immense risk of destroying his health, is a wanton
 
 MR. DILLON'S TRIAL 
 
 129 
 
 outrage on the feelings of a large part, and possibly of a 
 majority, of the people of the United Kingdom. 1 
 
 It can have no possible effect in deterring others from 
 the like acts, but the very opposite. It must inspirit others 
 to do the utmost which a sense of duty impels them to. 
 All past history tells us that such a policy defeats its own 
 purpose. There is not a civilised country in the world, 
 except our own, where experience has not resulted in the 
 treatment of political offences in a totally different spirit, 
 and with penalties having no comparison with those accorded 
 to crime in its ordinary sense. 
 
 A review of the dispute between the Massereene tenants 
 and their landlord or co-owner, ending in its climax, the 
 imprisonment of Mr. Dillon, shows a striking similitude 
 in all its main features to that of the Clanricarde tenants ; 
 in both cases the landlords refused to act on the advice of 
 their agents or to make reasonable abatements of rent, such 
 as other good landlords were freely making at that time, and 
 parted with their agents in consequence of their having given 
 this advice; in both cases they refused to recognise any com- 
 mon action on the part of their tenants, or even to negotiate 
 with them as a body ; in both cases this unwise action of the 
 landlords was followed by strict combination on the part 
 of the tenants and their refusal to pay full rents without a 
 reasonable abatement ; in both cases evictions were then 
 carried out by the landlords, supported by the forces of 
 the Crown and the penal powers of the Coercion Act, and 
 every possible effort has been made, by harassing pro- 
 ceedings in the law courts, to break down the combi- 
 nation ; in both cases the demands of the tenants have 
 since been fully justified by the action of the Legislature in 
 sanctioning the reduction of judicial rents, and by the Land 
 Commissioners in awarding reductions of rents equalling 
 or little less than those demanded by the tenants ; in both 
 1 See Appendix B, Treatment of Political Prisoners. 
 
 K
 
 i 3 o INCIDENTS OF COERCION' 
 
 cases the landlords have lately shown, by their offers to 
 concede large abatements of arrears of rent accruing since 
 the disputes arose, that they now admit that they were 
 wrong in the first instance in refusing to listen to the de- 
 mands of their tenants ; in both cases there have been 
 added to the difficulties of settlement the legal costs which 
 have been piled up, and the position of the evicted tenants, 
 who, it is now practically admitted, were unjustly evicted. 
 
 In both cases the Government has interfered to prevent 
 and prohibit the free expression of opinion in public meet- 
 ings, and to prosecute and send to prison as criminals those 
 who have spoken words of sympathy for the tenants, and 
 who have bid them stand by one another, and not to 
 abandon the evicted tenants, who have suffered for them.
 
 m 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A WEEK IN CLARE. 
 
 In August of the current year, and after the preceding 
 chapters were already in print I had occasion again to visit 
 Ireland. It was strongly urged on me to visit the district 
 where the evictions. on the Vandeleur property had recently 
 taken place, and where a still greater number were threat- 
 ened. It was suggested that my influence might be of use 
 in effecting a settlement between the landlord and his 
 numerous tenantry, who had entered into a combination 
 for abatements of rent. I agreed to go there and to make 
 personal inquiries into the case. 
 
 I took the opportunity of seeing something of the county 
 of Clare, and especially of its coast scenery, which I had 
 long desired to explore, and incidentally also to inquire on 
 the spot as to some of the proceedings under the Coercion 
 Act, of which grave complaint has been made in the House 
 of Commons, and which have led to much controversy. 
 
 The county of Clare is in itself well worthy of study 
 from a political and social point of view. It is the part of 
 Ireland where the national feeling is more intense, and where 
 political passions are stronger and more ready for action, 
 than in any other. It has a larger infusion of Celtic blood ; 
 it is more intensely Catholic, 94 per cent, of the population 
 being of this persuasion ; it is the district where English 
 ideas have had least influence. Its traditions keep alive in it 
 a strong political feeling, which at momentous periods has not 
 
 k 2
 
 132 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 failed to exhibit itself in action. The national force which 
 surrendered at the capitulation of Limerick was largely 
 drawn from Clare. In 1839 it was the famous election for 
 the county of Clare, when the tenantry emancipated them- 
 selves from landlord influence, and returned O'Connell as 
 their member, which persuaded the Duke of Wellington and 
 Sir Robert Peel that the demand for Catholic Emancipation 
 could not safely be resisted. It was in a bye-election for its 
 capital town, Ennis, that Mr. Finnigan, an utterly unknown 
 man, was returned in opposition to the united forces of the 
 Tories and Whigs, who supported the candidature of Mr. 
 O'Brien, the Solicitor-General of Mr. Gladstone's Govern- 
 ment — a struggle which showed the influence of Mr. Parnell 
 and secured him predominance in the National party. 
 
 The electors of this county have ever since showed the 
 most implicit confidence in Mr. Parnell. In 1885, after 
 the extension of the county suffrage and the division of 
 the county, the Western division returned as its member Mr. 
 Jordan, a Protestant tenant farmer and merchant of Ennis- 
 killen, a gentleman quite unknown to the electors, but 
 suggested to them by Mr. Parnell ; the majority was 6,474, 
 the votes given to the Conservative candidate, Mr. Reeves, 
 landowner, and brother-in-law of Captain Vandeleur, being 
 only 289. The Eastern division returned Mr. T. R. Cox, 
 of Roscommon, by a majority of 5,985. 
 
 The county is purely agricultural, and in recent years has 
 been almost entirely laid down in grass. Some portions of 
 it consist of excellent land, noted for the sweetness of its 
 pasture ; others, and perhaps the larger part, are very poor, 
 and have only been cleared of rocks and stones by enor- 
 mous labour of the tenantry. Much of the richer land has 
 been cleared of small tenants, and has been turned into large 
 grazing-farms, some of which are held by Scotch farmers; the 
 smaller tenants as a rule occupy the poorer lands. There are 
 very few resident landlords; one may travel long distances —
 
 A WEEK IN CLARE 133 
 
 as, for instance, from Ennis to Kilrush, a distance of seventeen 
 miles, or from Kilree to Miltown-Malhay, twenty-five miles 
 — without passing a single gentleman's house, and very few 
 residences occupied by large farmers or men of the middle 
 class. Lord Leconfield owns 37,000 acres of some of the 
 best land in the county, without a residence ; the Marquis 
 of Conyngham owns 27,000 acres, Mr. E. P. Westby 25,000, 
 Colonel White 18,000, and are none of them resident. The 
 population has been reduced by considerably more than a 
 half during the last forty years. The general appearance 
 of the county shews that it is inhabited by small tenants 
 occupying from ten to forty acres of land, each with his 
 small house and homestead. The houses are for the most 
 part stone-built, well thatched to resist the violent winds 
 from the Atlantic. They are by no means the hovels 
 which are too often associated with rural life in Ireland. 
 The climate is mild ; snow very seldom lies on the ground ; 
 but the district is much exposed to violent gales from the 
 west, and for some distance inland trees only grow under 
 shelter. 
 
 The county must have been from a very early time 
 thickly populated ; there are evidences of wealth and civili- 
 sation and of an intensely religious feeling in the earliest 
 times. There are ruins of nearly 100 castles, some of then?: 
 still occupied by farmers ; and there are also remains of 20 
 abbeys or religious houses, some of which, like Quin Abbey,, 
 must have been of great size ; it is said that at one time 
 upwards of 6,000 young men received a higher education in 
 these abbeys. There are no ecclesiastical buildings in the 
 present time of any pretensions to architectural beauty. 
 The priests, however, are everywhere in close sympathy with 
 the people, exercise great influence over them, are their 
 advisers in their agrarian troubles, and identify themselves 
 with the political movement. 
 
 I spent a day at Ennis, a tidy little town of 3,000
 
 134 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 inhabitants. There is a statue of O'Connell on a lofty pillar, 
 and a more recent monument in honour of Larkin, O'Brien, 
 and Allen, the so-called Manchester martyrs. It must have 
 been a surprise to the people that the Government permitted 
 the erection of this. There is also a court-house of very 
 good architectural design, erected by an Irishman, who 
 afterwards went to the United States and made a great 
 reputation. I found little more of interest beyond the 
 traditions and memories of the Clare Election. I visited 
 the great corn-store where the recent conflict arose between 
 the police and the people. It was clear at once how utterly 
 unjustifiable it must have been to order an attack on the 
 people in such a place. 
 
 I also saw Mr. Macnamara, the young newsagent who 
 was able to defeat the Irish Government, supported by all 
 their powers under the Coercion Act, in respect of the sale 
 of newspapers. It appears that the inspector of police of 
 the district sent for him and other newsvendors in the town 
 and announced that his instructions were to suppress the 
 sale of ' United Ireland ' in the district. He called upon 
 them to give a written undertaking that they would no 
 longer sell this paper. In the event of their declining they 
 would be prosecuted under the Coercion Act. Three of 
 the newsvendors were frightened into this course, and gave 
 the undertaking ; Macnamara alone refused. He was then 
 prosecuted (November 25, 1887) before Mr. Cecil Roche 
 and Mr. Hodder. He was sentenced to seven days' im- 
 prisonment with hard labour, and to another seven days' 
 imprisonment for calling out in Court 'Three cheers for 
 O'Brien, and groans for Balfour ! ' While he was in prison 
 his wife continued the sale of the papers. Shortly after 
 coming out of his prison Macnamara was again prosecuted 
 for selling ' United Ireland,' and was sentenced to two 
 months' imprisonment with hard labour. 
 
 On his release he continued the sale ; he was then pro-
 
 A WEEK IN CLARE 135 
 
 secuted and fined for exhibiting a placard with the harp, 
 shamrock, and 'God save Ireland !' upon it ; the police also 
 broke into his shop and seized his stock of United Ireland,' 
 for which an action is now pending ; they also stationed two 
 men at the door of his shop for some days, who were in- 
 structed to take the names and addresses of all who entered, 
 with the apparent intention of prosecuting them. All these 
 steps were in vain ; Macnamara still continued the sale of 
 the papers undismayed. The only effect was that his sales 
 increased from fifteen dozen a week to fifty dozen. In the 
 end the police were obliged to admit themselves beaten, 
 and for some months past no further proceedings have been 
 taken ; the three other vendors of papers have resumed their 
 sales. 
 
 Ennis has been the scene of many other prosecutions 
 under the Coercion Act. They were chiefly in connection 
 with the refusal to supply the police. On January 9, fifteen 
 owners of cars in the town were prosecuted for conspiring 
 to compel persons not to convey goods to the police and 
 to farms where emergency men were employed ; the only 
 evidence against them was a mere refusal. There was no 
 evidence of conspiracy, or of compelling or inducing others 
 to refuse. Nine of them were convicted and sentenced to 
 three weeks' imprisonment with hard labour. 
 
 On February 22, 1888, fourteen men of Kildysart were 
 prosecuted at Ennis for refusing to sell turf to the police. 
 The head-constable, in his evidence, deposed that during 
 his service at Kildysart, and up to December n, he had no 
 difficulty in procuring turf; subsequently, and owing to the 
 dispersion of a meeting of a suppressed branch of the 
 National League, he met with a general refusal for fuel. 
 The defence was in some cases that the turf had been pre- 
 viously engaged, and this was borne out by independent 
 witnesses. In spite of this the resident magistrates con- 
 victed ten of these men, and sentenced them to imprison-
 
 136 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 ment for two, three, and four months. On appeal to the 
 County Court judge, these sentences were confirmed. On 
 March 2, three other car owners were convicted of con- 
 spiracy to refuse cars to the police, and were sentenced to 
 two months' imprisonment with hard labour. 
 
 It is now certain, since the judgment of the Court of 
 Exchequer in the Killeagh case, that all the above convic- 
 tions were illegal. There was no evidence whatever of con- 
 spiring to compel or induce others ; the only evidence was a 
 simple refusal on the part of each person applied to. 
 
 It was at Ennis, also, that Mr. Cox, the member for this 
 division of the county, was prosecuted, on January 28 of 
 this year, for a speech delivered to his own constituents. 
 The speech is worth referring to as an illustration of what 
 constitutes incitement to crime in the view of the au- 
 thorities. 
 
 ' I would implore,' he said, ' the young men of Clare — 
 and I wish my voice could reach the ears and hearts of 
 every young man to-night, and this Lisdoonvarna case may 
 point a moral, if it cannot adorn a sad tale for them. Let 
 them shun outrages and avoid the tempter to evil deeds as 
 they would shun Satan himself, and if for no holier and 
 higher motive, at least for the selfish motive of their own 
 safety. There were foolish people in the country who 
 thought revenge should be wreaked for every petty act of 
 local tyranny. I do not think the common sense of the 
 country will accept their opinions and views against the 
 opinions and views of our great leader, Mr. Parnell, or the 
 greatest statesman of modern times, Mr. Gladstone. Wher- 
 ever and whenever you meet with such men, avoid and shun 
 them, for, believe me, theirs is no good purpose. The 
 louder they boast of their patriotism, and what they are 
 prepared to do and dare, the more reason have you to shun 
 them, for, believe me, nine out of every ten of such men 
 are in the pay of our enemies. We have now the great
 
 A WEEK IN CLARE 137 
 
 Liberal party of England at our back, with their great leader 
 Mr. Gladstone ; we have the English democracy with us, 
 as will be told to you in a few minutes by Mr. Conybeare. 
 With such allies nothing can stop or stay our march to 
 liberty, save and except the commission of outrage, which 
 must inevitably drive our allies from our side, and bring joy, 
 hope, and satisfaction to the hearts of the miserable gang of 
 coercionists — the Cullinane Balfour now in office. Hearken 
 then to the advice of the great leader, who never yet gave a 
 wrong counsel or advice ; follow the counsel of the veteran 
 leader of the Liberal party ; be guilty of no crime or out- 
 rage. Eollow the open and constitutional agitation which 
 has always brought us to the goal of our long-lost right. 
 Adhere to the teaching and doctrine of the National 
 League — but I forgot, my friends, Balfour says the League 
 has been proclaimed in Clare. I ask you, is it? (Loud 
 shouts of " No.") I wish Balfour were here to listen to that 
 thundering shout ; he would know the value you place on 
 his proclamations.' 
 
 For this speech, which to most people must seem a 
 powerful appeal to the people against crime, Mr. Cox was 
 convicted of the offence of inciting the people to take part 
 in an unlawful assembly, and was sentenced by two Resident 
 Magistrates, Mr. Cecil Roche and Mr. Hodder, to four 
 months' imprisonment. The conviction was affirmed on 
 appeal by the County Court Judge, but the sentence was 
 reduced to two months' imprisonment as a common 
 criminal. 
 
 Ennis is the centre of the district over which Colonel 
 Turner is Divisional Magistrate. Colonel Turner's position 
 is more like that of a Prefect of a French Department 
 than anything we know of in England. It differs in this 
 respect, that his only legal means of action is through the 
 police, and in the administration of the criminal law, and 
 also in the protection of evictions. The Coercion Act,
 
 138 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 however, has placed enormous powers in his hands, and 
 has made him something like a dictator of the liberties 
 of the people, subject, of course, to approval of the Govern- 
 ment, which can only act on his information. He can 
 virtually forbid and suppress public meetings, direct prose- 
 cutions for attending meetings or making speeches, and 
 can prohibit the sales of newspapers ; in furtherance of 
 this, or where any boycotting exists, he has been able to 
 select for prosecution almost any person he may think 
 expedient to deal with. The resident magistrates are prac- 
 tically his agents. It will be seen that he considers it his 
 duty to advise a landlord, like Captain Vandeleur, to resort 
 to extreme measures in the general interest of the public, 
 and for the purpose of putting down combinations. He 
 can threaten prosecutions and promise to withdraw them, 
 or to relieve of imprisonment, on the people promising good 
 behaviour. I heard, not only at Ennis, but everywhere I 
 went in the county, loud complaints that Colonel Turner 
 has completely identified himself with the landlord party. 
 He has taken up his abode permanently as the guest of Mr. 
 Stacpoole, who is the leading man of the landlords of Clare, 
 and who by his action, whether rightly or not, has incurred 
 great unpopularity with the people. It is said that Colonel 
 Turner cannot be regarded as impartial, in the important 
 duties conferred on him, while he is under obligations to 
 this gentleman. 
 
 From Ennis I went to Miltown-Malbay, a small town of 
 1,200 inhabitants, within a mile of the sea-coast. It has 
 been built under a system of leases for three lives, on land 
 belonging to Mrs. Morony. This lady, who is also owner 
 of much of the land in the neighbourhood, is trying to 
 develop a watering-place on the small coast. She has 
 erected an hotel there, which she manages herself, and there 
 are a few scattered residences and lodging-houses. The bay 
 is an exceedingly pretty one, with a beautiful strand of hard
 
 A WEEK IN CLARE 139 
 
 sand ; the Atlantic breaks upon the shore with its full power. 
 With the pure air and the beautiful coast scenery, the place 
 ought to have a future before it, now that there is direct 
 communication by railway. 
 
 I called on Mrs. Morony and had a very long conversa- 
 tion with her, in the course of which she told me fully the 
 whole of the circumstances connected with the 'boycotting' 
 which she has undergone the last six years. 
 
 She has told the story to many other travellers ; her 
 case has found its way into the English papers, and has 
 created a widespread sympathy, as a typical one of the worst 
 kind of persecution on the part of the National League. It 
 will be seen that, after hearing the other side of the question 
 (which many visitors' have failed to do), I can by no means 
 accept Mrs. Morony's views of her case as conclusive. 
 
 Miltown-Malbay is represented in official circles to be 
 the black spot of Clare, and the centre of disturbance ; and 
 the county generally is stated to be second only to Kerry 
 in lawlessness, disaffection, and addiction to agrarian crime. 
 If, however, Miltown-Malbay is to be taken as a measure 
 of blackness, I can only say, after careful inquiry, that there 
 must be the grossest exaggeration. As will be seen, there 
 have been very numerous prosecutions there, mainly for the 
 same kind of offence, that of refusing to supply goods to 
 boycotted persons and to the police. They all have their 
 origin in a very few cases of harsh eviction, which greatly irri- 
 tated and offended public opinion in the district ; and I 
 cannot but think these boycottings might have been brought 
 to a conclusion by a little tact on the part of the authorities. 
 Of crime in the true sense of the term there has been only 
 one case in Miltown-Malbay in the last fifty years, and that 
 one, as will be shown, of a most mysterious and unaccount- 
 able character. 
 
 I spent a day in driving over to Lisdoonvarna and the 
 Cliffs of Moher. At Lisdoonvarna are the well-known
 
 i4o INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 chalybeate springs ; the place is much frequented by priests 
 from every part of Ireland. I was there some years ago, 
 when staying with the late Sir Colman O'Loghlen. It then 
 consisted of little more than a single hotel ; it has greatly 
 increased since that time ; but there is much room for im- 
 provement in the general laying-out of the place. With its 
 sulphur and iron springs, which are of the highest value, and 
 with its wonderfully pure air, coming direct from the Atlantic, 
 and its neighbourhood to the Cliffs of Moher and the roman- 
 tic coast scenery of Clare, it ought to make great progress. 
 
 I was wonderfully favoured by the weather on my visit 
 to the Cliffs of Moher. There was a fresh breeze blowing 
 from the north-west, with alternate sunshine and clouds ; a 
 grand swell from the Atlantic broke on the rocks. The Cliffs 
 extend for about four miles, with an almost uniform height of 
 nearly 800 feet. They rise precipitously from the shore like a 
 wall ; so much so that from almost any part it is possible to 
 let down men by ropes to gather the eggs of sea-fowl which 
 build their nests in the narrow ledges of the rock. I doubt 
 whether in the United Kingdom there is a grander scene. 
 The cliffs far surpassed any anticipations I had received of 
 them from the accounts of others. 
 
 Kilkee is some miles further south than Miltown- 
 Malbay, and, in spite of its distance from the railway, has 
 made great advance of late years as a summer resort for 
 sea-bathing. It is situate in a bay, on either side of the 
 narrow entrance of which are bold rocks, not of the 
 grandeur of those at Moher, but well worth a visit. The 
 great Atlantic waves break upon them with all their force. 
 The open downs along the coast also add greatly to the 
 attractions of this place. 
 
 After a visit to Kilrush, of which I shall speak later, I 
 returned to Miltown-Malbay, and made further inquiries of 
 the people of the town as to the proceedings under the 
 Coercion Act and the disputes which have led to them.
 
 141 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE MILTOWN-MALBAY PROSECUTIONS. 
 
 The two leading spirits of the district, in fierce antagonism 
 to one another, are Mrs. Morony and Father White. 
 
 Mrs. Morony is the widow of a gentleman of position, 
 a magistrate, once High Sheriff for the county. She was 
 the daughter of an able solicitor of Limerick, and it is 
 said that during the last few years of her father's life she 
 assisted in transacting his business. Perhaps it is this which 
 has given her so complete a knowledge of every legal point 
 connected with the land question, and so clever a method 
 of stating her case, making the utmost of every point which 
 tells in favour of her views. I have never met a woman 
 better able to hold her own in argument. She has also 
 great courage and determination, without loss of the gentler 
 qualities of a lady. She is evidently, however, possessed with 
 the idea that the Land League is composed of some of the 
 most turbulent spirits of the district, with Father White at 
 their head, and is the source of all her difficulties with the 
 people of the place ; that her tenants are prevented by it 
 from showing their attachment to her ; and that if she can 
 put it down everything will go well with her and the place. 
 Mrs. Morony has further very strong views as to the in- 
 justice of the several Land Acts of 1870, 1881, and 1887, 
 and is determined to uphold her remaining rights at every 
 point. Holding these views, she is prone, I think, to ex- 
 aggerate, and to allow her imagination to outstrip the facts ;
 
 142 IXC/BENTS OF COERCION 
 
 and in so doing has made out a most interesting story, 
 which has induced many people to think that there is no 
 other side to the question. She has also told it with an able 
 pen in many of the English newspapers. 
 
 Like many others of the smaller landlords of Ireland, 
 Mrs. Morony's financial position has been greatly embar- 
 rassed by the Land Act and the fall of prices. Out of an 
 income of about 2,500/. from the property she told me she 
 enjoyed a few years ago a margin of 600/. a year to live upon. 
 This has disappeared, and she has now only the house and 
 demesne of 60 acres, and an hotel on the sea-shore which 
 she has taken into her own hands, and which, under her 
 able management, is doing very well. It is alleged by her 
 opponents that her struggles with the League have largely 
 contributed to the success of her venture, and that many 
 people have been attracted there by sympathy for her. 
 
 Father White, on the other hand, is as good a specimen 
 of a parish priest as I have met for many a long day : active, 
 intelligent, fully alive to all that is going on in the world, in 
 hearty sympathy with his people in their social and political 
 wants. He is equally able to raise his voice or to use his 
 pen for their cause. He is, in most respects, a good match 
 for Mrs. Morony ; but he is not able to meet her in the 
 society where she principally finds her sympathisers ; he is 
 at variance with her on many questions of fact ; in those 
 which I have been able to test I have found him in the 
 right ; and from having seen much of him during my visit 
 to the district, I feel implict confidence in his statements. 
 I doubt not, however, that the police authorities and Colonel 
 Turner consider him a somewhat dangerous character. 
 Father White is the president of the local branch of the 
 National League, and the officials are under the same belief 
 as Mrs. Morony, that the League is a conspiracy of the few 
 to work injustice, and to carry out its decrees by intimida- 
 tion. It will be seen, on the contrary, that it acts rather as
 
 THE MILTOWN-MALBAY PROSECUTIONS 143 
 
 a moderator of public opinion of the place. Father White's 
 influence has unquestionably been used to denounce and to 
 prevent crime, and to put down or limit boycotting. He- 
 told me that he had made it a condition of presiding over 
 the League that no resolution for boycotting any person 
 should ever be submitted to it. He also assured me that 
 the boycotting which has been at times directed against 
 Mrs. Morony and her employes was the spontaneous ac- 
 tion of the people indignant at her proceedings, and in no 
 way emanated from the League ; that the influence of this 
 body has been a restraining one, and that he himself has on 
 many occasions interfered to prevent and restrain this form 
 of reprisal. He indignantly repudiates the suggestion that 
 the League has at any time been the cause of crime. With 
 one exception, which will be adverted to later, there has not 
 been any crime of violence in his parish for a great number 
 of years past. 
 
 It must, I fear, be admitted that Mrs. Morony's pro- 
 perty was one of the most highly rented in this part of 
 Ireland. In the better times, between 1850 and i860, the 
 tenants were impelled to take leases at rates close on 100 per 
 cent, above Griffiths' valuation. In 1880, after two of the 
 worst years that Ireland had seen, they asked for abate- 
 ments. There are about seventy agricultural tenants. Sixty 
 of them met and sent a deputation to Mrs. Morony to ask 
 an abatement. She declined to receive them. She said 
 that she would have nothing to do with the Land League, 
 or with any combination. She refused pointblank to make 
 any general abatement: she would deal equitably with indi- 
 vidual cases. She says herself that in some cases she made 
 abatements of 6s. in the pound, in others of 4s., in others of 
 2s. From the statements of the tenants I think it must be 
 taken that the larger abatements were made in a very few 
 individual cases, and that the great bulk of the tenants were 
 allowed no more than 2s. in the pound only, or 10 per cent.
 
 144 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 The tenants after a time found themselves unable to meet 
 her claims, and refused to pay rents with this abatement of 
 only 10 per cent. They demanded a reduction of rents to 
 Griffiths' valuation. Mrs. Morony then proceeded to evict, 
 and towards the end of 1881 or the beginning of 1882 
 evicted fourteen of them with their families. 
 
 These evictions caused the greatest possible indignation 
 in the neighbourhood. The public opinion of Miltown- 
 Malbay was very much excited. Without any meeting, or 
 conspiracy, or any action of the Land League, Mrs. Morony 
 was at once subjected to the social ostracism known as 
 'boycotting.' All her farm servants left her service at once ; 
 she could no longer get supplies from the shopkeepers in 
 the town ; she could not sell her produce there or get her 
 horses shod. As her expenditure in the town had been 
 considerable, this refusal of the small tradespeople was a 
 measure of the general wrath against her. Those who did 
 not feel it were at least afraid of losing other customers, 
 if they continued to supply this evicting lady. The main 
 pressure of public opinion came from the country people 
 outside the town. 
 
 Mrs. Morony met the popular movement with courage. 
 It is impossible not to admire her energy and pluck under 
 these difficulties. She engaged emergency men from the 
 North of Ireland. She set up a store for the supply of 
 herself, her servants, and her hotel. She succeeded to a 
 great extent in overcoming the difficulties. In 1882, after 
 the passing of the Arrears Act, she reinstated several of the 
 evicted tenants in order to get the advantage of the Act, by 
 which she obtained a full year's rent at the rack rental, out 
 of the fund arising from the disestablishment of the Church. 
 She positively declined, however, to reinstate four of them, 
 and especially one named James Clancy, whom she regarded 
 as leader of the movement. 
 
 These four have ever since been housed in temporary
 
 THE MILTOWN-MALBAY PROSECUTIONS 145 
 
 huts, or have lived with their neighbours. They have re- 
 ceived weekly allowances from the Land League and its 
 successor, the National League in Dublin, in the confident 
 belief that the day will come when Mrs. Morony will be 
 induced or compelled to reinstate them. 
 
 It is stated in proof of the rack-renting of this property 
 that four of the tenants who had not got leases, but who 
 were rented at the same level as others, went into court 
 under the Land Act of 1881 and got reductions in 1883 of 
 40 per cent., to which an addition has been made under the 
 Act of last year of 15 per cent., and they now stand at rents 
 below the valuation, while the unfortunate leaseholders till 
 quite lately have been without a remedy. 1 Early in 1882 
 an effort was made to settle the dispute by effecting a 
 purchase under the Bright clauses of 1881. Mr. Bonynge, 
 the Protestant clergyman, and Mr. Crawford, the manager 
 of the National Bank, represented to Father White that 
 Mrs. Morony was prepared to sell her land to her tenants 
 under this Act. Father White communicated this to the 
 tenants, and after Mass on the following Sunday they all 
 met and agreed to enter into negotiation with her on this 
 basis. They sent a deputation to her of four of their leading 
 men, and said they were quite prepared to purchase, subject 
 to the reinstatement of the evicted men. They say that Mrs. 
 Morony expressed her readiness to do this, and only waited 
 the return of her agent to settle the terms. The tenants 
 
 1 In the present year thirty-six of Mrs. Morony's leaseholders 
 have gone into the Land Court under the Act of last year for judicial 
 rents. To their dismay the reductions have averaged only 25 per cent., 
 and the rents are still more than 40 per cent, above the valuation. At 
 the same time several of Lord Leconfield's tenants, holding adjoining 
 farms of the same quality, went into Court ; their rents were reduced to 
 a point 5 per cent, only above the valuation. Mrs. Morony's tenants 
 have all appealed against the decisions of the Sub-Commission, who, 
 they think, have been unfairly prejudiced against them. 
 
 L
 
 146 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 expected to get three-fourths of the purchase-money from the 
 Government, and hoped to borrow the remainder from the 
 bank. 
 
 This was on the Monday. On the following night occurred 
 a terrible tragedy, the only serious crime within the memory 
 of men in the parish, but which has cast a slur on the place 
 ever since, most unjustly, as the people say. Lennane, the 
 herdsman of Mrs. Morony, an old man aged seventy-nine, 
 who had remained in her service, was sitting in his cottage 
 at night, with his son opposite to him and his grandchildren 
 playing about him, when suddenly a shot was fired through 
 the window which struck him in the heart. He died instan- 
 taneously. The shot was from a revolver, and as the per- 
 petrator must have stood at some distance from the window 
 to avoid being seen, he must have been a marksman of no 
 ordinary skill. No clue whatever has ever been discovered 
 for this murder. It has ever since been alleged by Mrs. 
 Morony and her friends that it was an agrarian murder, 
 intended to intimidate any one who should work for her, and 
 the inspiration of the local Land League. 
 
 This is indignantly repudiated by her tenants and by the 
 people of Miltown-Malbay. They assert that all motive for 
 the murder, if there could ever have been a motive for so foul 
 a deed, was entirely wanting, as the negotiations for the 
 purchase of their holdings and for the reinstatement of the 
 evicted tenants had already been commenced, and the tenants 
 were under the belief that Mrs. Morony had consented to an 
 arrangement. They assert that it was more probable that 
 the murderer was one of the emergency men, among whom 
 were some discharged soldiers, who were capable of shooting 
 with skill, and they suggest as a motive the fear lest the 
 negotiations with the tenants might lead to their dismissal. 
 
 It has been alleged that the people of Miltown-Malbay 
 showed sympathy with the crime, and that there was diffi- 
 culty in getting a coffin made for the poor man. This
 
 THE MILTOWX-M ALBA Y PROSECUTIONS 147 
 
 again is denied by Father White, who himself instructed a 
 man to make the coffin. He says that Lennane having 
 neglected altogether for years past his religious duties, it 
 would have been more in accord with the rules of the Church 
 to refuse a service at the house of the dead man ; but his 
 curate, Father Stewart, performed this office, and the funeral 
 was fairly attended by the poor man's neighbours. 
 
 Whatever the cause of the murder, it was followed by 
 most grievous results to the tenants. Twenty of them were 
 arrested by Mr. Clifford Lloyd, on suspicion, and were 
 lodged in gaol for many months without a shadow of a 
 ground for it. A secret inquiry was held under the Star 
 Chamber clause of the Act of 1882, but without any clue 
 being obtained. Mrs. Morony was placed under police 
 protection, and ever since she has been followed by two 
 policemen, involving constant relays. The relations between 
 Mrs. Morony and her tenants and the people of Miltown- 
 Malbay were greatly embittered. The negotiations for 
 purchase of their holdings fell through. It appeared that 
 Mrs. Morony demanded eighteen and a half years' purchase 
 of the rents at their rack rates in the leases— a rate which 
 would have left the tenants much worse off in respect of 
 their annual payments, when the rates were taken into 
 account, than before the purchase. The better times, how- 
 ever, which followed 1883 to a certain extent relieved the 
 position, and Mrs. Morony says that the boycotting fell off 
 till 1887, when it was again renewed. 
 
 In 1886 another incident occurred which has an im- 
 portant bearing on the case. Among the men arrested on 
 suspicion by Mr. Clifford Lloyd in 1882 was a person 
 named Carroll. He held a farm from a small landowner of 
 the same name. The valuation of the farm was 9/., and the 
 rent was 24/. During the bad years of 1879-80 the landlord 
 gave no abatements, and the tenant began to be in great 
 difficulties. His imprisonment affected his reason, and he 
 
 l 2
 
 148 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 came out an altered man. He went, however, into the Land 
 Court, and got a reduction of rent from 24/. to 12/. 15s. 
 He was, however, already a broken man ; he struggled on, 
 and got into arrears again, and finally his landlord evicted 
 him in 1886, together with his sub-tenant, named Connell. 
 The people thought the eviction was a harsh one, as the rent 
 was still 40 per cent, above the valuation, and the tenant 
 had been broken down by the previous rack rent ; and he 
 had offered to pay at the rate of the valuation. In conse- 
 quence of this strong feeling in the district, no one has been 
 found to take the farm ; it has become derelict, and has 
 remained for two years uncultivated. Connell was allowed 
 by the landlord to remain as caretaker of the house and 
 garden which he held as sub-tenant. AVhen the period for 
 redemption by Carroll was run out, Connell was admitted 
 as tenant at his previous rent, and there was added to 
 his holding a half-acre of land previously occupied by 
 Carroll. Connell was also employed as watchman on the 
 derelict farm. The taking of this additional portion of 
 Carroll's land and his employment as watcher on the farm 
 brought him in conflict with public opinion of the district. 
 
 It appears that some discussion took place at a meeting 
 of the National League on the subject of Carroll's eviction, 
 and Connell, who was a member of the League, protested 
 in the most vehement manner that he had nothing to do 
 with the land. It was soon after discovered that at this very 
 time he had hired a small part of it, and was in the employ- 
 ment of the owner. This was so much resented by the 
 members of the League that he was turned out of it ; and 
 from that time he was generally avoided by the people, and 
 was unable to supply himself with goods in the town. 
 Father White, however, denies in the most positive manner 
 that there was any resolution or agreement in the League to 
 boycott Connell. He would not have permitted any such 
 motion to be put.
 
 THE MILTOWN-MALBAV PROSECUTIONS 149 
 
 Connell earned a living partly by lobster-fishing ; using 
 a boat which had been got for him from the Fishery Com- 
 missioners through Father White. He also occasionally got 
 a day's labour with the neighbouring formers. He lived in 
 his cottage with his old mother, a woman aged seventy years 
 or upwards. It is alleged by Mrs. Morony and her friends 
 that the boycotting of Connell and his mother resulted in 
 great hardship to them, and almost starvation, and that 
 they could not even get the necessaries of life. This, how- 
 ever, must have been an exaggeration ; Connell had always 
 found a market for his lobsters at Mrs. Morony's hotel, 
 and he could supply himself with everything that he could 
 possibly want in the shape of flour, groceries, and cloth- 
 ing at that lady's store, which is very little further from 
 his house than the town. The boycotting of Connell began 
 in August 1887, and he was soon after taken into employ- 
 ment by Mrs. Morony. She has made a merit of doing so, 
 as an act of charity. 
 
 In September of the same year the National League 
 was proclaimed in the district, and this greatly added to the 
 irritation and ill-feeling of the people. It led to a renewal 
 of the boycotting against Mrs. Morony. The League itself 
 was not only not reduced in numbers by this attempt to sup- 
 press it, but the reverse ; almost every man and boy joined 
 it, with the exception of Mrs. Morony's labourers. Unable 
 to hold its meetings any longer in the room where it had 
 been used to do so, the League summoned meetings fort- 
 nightly, in the open air, in some field in the country. The 
 attendance at these meetings was much larger than before 
 the suppression of the League, and they have been held 
 regularly ever since. 
 
 In December 1887 a series of prosecutions against the 
 tradesmen of Miltown-Malbay was commenced. The first 
 case was the prosecution of four car-owners for refusing to 
 hire cars to the police for the purpose of carrying them to a
 
 IiO 
 
 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 meeting of the National League which they intended to 
 suppress. The charge was, in the words of the Coercion Act, 
 ' for conspiring to compel and induce others to refuse,' &c. 
 There was no evidence of a conspiracy and none of inciting 
 others. The only evidence was that when asked to supply 
 cars they refused. Two of the men were acquitted; the 
 other two were convicted and sentenced to a month's im- 
 prisonment with hard labour. They were told, however, that 
 if they would promise to supply the police with cars in the 
 future, the sentences would not be carried out. The two 
 car-owners refused to do this. They asked for the state- 
 ment of a case to the superior court. This was refused, 
 and the two men were sent to prison. Mr. Cecil Roche 
 and Mr. Hodder were the resident magistrates. It is 
 absolutely certain, upon the subsequent decision of the 
 Court of Exchequer in the Killeagh case, that the convic- 
 tion was illegal, and that these men were unjustly punished. 
 
 On the same day, three other tradesmen in the town, 
 blacksmiths, were prosecuted for refusing to shoe Mrs. 
 Morony's horse. Mrs. Morony had for some years past got 
 her horses shod at some other place, but she now sent a 
 servant with her mare to these three men and asked them to 
 shoe it ; she had never employed two of them before : they 
 simply declined, saying they were otherwise occupied. For . 
 this they were prosecuted before Mr. Cecil Roche and Mr. 
 Hodder, who sentenced them to a month's imprisonment 
 with hard labour. As in the previous case, there was no 
 evidence of conspiracy or inducement, and it is equally 
 certain that the convictions were illegal. The magistrates 
 refused to state a case for the superior courts, or even to 
 extend the sentences so as to allow of an appeal. In this 
 case the papers reported that a long procession of carts 
 from the farmers in the neighbourhood brought provisions 
 for the families of these convicted car-owners. 
 
 The success in these prosecutions speedily prompted
 
 THE MIL TO I VN-MALBA V PROSECUTIONS : 5 r 
 
 Mrs. Morony to others of the same kind. She sent her 
 two servants, McKeon and Kelly, to four of the trades- 
 men of the town asking, the one for a pennyworth of lace, 
 and the other for a bottle of porter. The tradesmen refused. 
 None of them had ever previously supplied Mrs. Morony. 
 One of the servants swore that they did not require what 
 they demanded. The other, Kelly, in cross-examination, said 
 that he had no money with him — that he went by the order 
 of Mrs. Morony, well knowing that he would be refused, so 
 as to make up a case under the Crimes Act. He could 
 procure all he wanted at Mrs. Morony's store. The four 
 men were prosecuted, but the magistrates, in face of the 
 evidence of Kelly, were unable to convict ; Mr. Hodder 
 saying that it appeared to him ' the conspiracy was on the 
 other side.' Within two or three days after this evidence, 
 it is said that Kelly, who had served her for six years, was 
 dismissed by Mrs. Morony. 
 
 On the same day ten other tradespeople in the town were 
 prosecuted for refusing to supply Mrs. Connell with goods. 
 Mrs. Connell had rarely made her appearance in the town 
 since the boycotting of her son. She had never been in the 
 habit of making purchases there. There is no doubt what- 
 ever that she and her son, at the time of the prosecution, 
 were getting all that they required at Mrs. Morony's store. 
 Prompted either by the police or by Mrs. Morony, or both, 
 she made her appearance in the town a little before Christ- 
 mas and asked for goods of various kinds at different shops; 
 she was refused, and she subsequently returned with a 
 policeman and asked again. It is certain that she came, 
 not for the bond fide purpose of getting goods, but in order 
 to get up prosecutions against persons in the town specially 
 selected for this purpose. The evidence, as in the other 
 cases, was simply a refusal to supply ; there was no evi- 
 dence whatever of conspiracy or inducement. Four of these 
 tradesmen were convicted and sentenced to three months'
 
 152 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 imprisonment with hard labour. The four who were con- 
 victed appealed, with the result that the County Court 
 judge, tailing into the same error of law as the magistrates, 
 confirmed the conviction, and increased the sentences 
 to six months' imprisonment with hard labour. Yet it is 
 absolutely certain that in these cases also the convictions 
 were illegal ; for there was no evidence whatever of a 
 * conspiracy to induce.' 
 
 In the interval between the charge and the prosecution 
 these tradespeople, at the suggestion of Father White, had 
 offered to supply Mrs. Connell if she would come to their 
 shops without the police. In spite of this the prosecutions 
 were proceeded with. Three days before these two trials 
 came on, Father White received a telegram from Mr. Cox, 
 M.P., begging him, if possible, to keep the country people 
 from coming into the town on the day of the trial, as he had 
 reason to believe that Mr. Cecil Roche, R.M., was making 
 preparations for a conflict with the people. Consequently, 
 on February 2, after Mass, Father White, speaking from the 
 altar, appealed to the people of the country not to come into 
 the town on the day of the trial, and with that object he 
 asked the shopkeepers to close their shops during the trials. 
 The people acted on this advice ; the shops were all closed, 
 including all the public-houses. The police had two days to 
 provide all they wanted, and on oath admitted that they did 
 so. In spite of this they knocked at the doors of many of 
 these houses during the trial and demanded drink ; the 
 owners refused to admit them ; but they opened their doors 
 immediately the trials were over in the early part of the 
 afternoon, after which the police could have got what they 
 had asked for. 
 
 For this no fewer than twenty-six publicans were prose- 
 cuted for refusing to supply drink to the police. 1 Father 
 
 1 No fewer than thirty-four of the tradespeople in this little town 
 -of 1,200 inhabitants are licensed to sell spirits.
 
 THE MILTOWN-MALBAY PROSECUTIONS 153 
 
 White gave evidence on their behalf, and explained the cir- 
 cumstances under which he had advised them to close their 
 houses. On cross-examination the police admitted they had 
 all they wanted at their barracks. In spite of this evidence 
 twenty-one of the accused were convicted of conspiracy to 
 refuse supplies to the police, and were sentenced each to a 
 month's imprisonment with hard labour. After the convic- 
 tion, an offer was made by Colonel Turner to relieve them 
 from the sentences, if they would promise to supply the 
 police in the future. Eleven of the men thus convicted 
 refused to give this undertaking, and were sent to prison. 
 The other ten gave the undertaking, and were released. 
 
 The action, however, of these ten men in entering into 
 an agreement with the authorities to avoid imprisonment 
 caused a very strong feeling against them in the district. 
 For the month during which the others remained in prison, 
 no one at Miltown-Malbay would deal with them. Their 
 houses were shunned by the country people, and even their 
 own near relations and customers kept away from them. They 
 were more miserable than if they had been in jail. This 
 ostracism was only removed by the entreaties of Father 
 White, on the release from prison of the other eleven, who 
 had refused to sign any such undertaking. The people all 
 asked why these publicans should be afraid to go to prison, 
 when members of Parliament, and Priests, and Englishmen 
 like Mr. Blunt had gone there. It was equally certain in 
 these as in the other cases that the convictions were illegal ; 
 there was no evidence whatever of conspiracy, and there was 
 in fact no vestige of a conspiracy. 
 
 This closed the cases of prosecutions for boycotting. On 
 June 2 1 of this year the judges of the Court of Exchequer 
 in Dublin decided, in the Killeagh case, that the conviction 
 of four men under precisely similar circumstances for simply 
 refusing to supply goods to a boycotted person, and without 
 any evidence of a conspiracy to compel and induce other
 
 154 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 persons to refuse, was illegal. It is absolutely certain upon 
 this decision that all the convictions for the same offence 
 at Miltown-Malbay were equally illegal. Unfortunately for 
 the four men still in prison, there was no redress for them; 
 they had appealed to the County Court judge, who had been 
 equally wrong in his decision as the resident magistrates, 
 and there was no other way of raising the legal point. 
 
 It was to be expected then that the Government would 
 be only too glad, under these circumstances, to exercise its 
 clemency, and to release the four men who had been sen- 
 tenced to imprisonment for six months with hard labour. 
 The case was brought before the House of Commons ; the 
 depositions were read there ; it was made absolutely clear 
 that the case was on all-fours with the Killeagh case, and 
 that there was no possibility of appeal. The Chief Secretary, 
 however, declined to interfere ; he alleged that the case of 
 boycotting for which they had been charged was a cruel one. 
 At the time I write these men are still serving out their 
 sentences in jail with hard labour, with the additional cause 
 for dissatisfaction that they have been convicted in defiance 
 of the principles laid down by the judges. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, at Miltown-Malbay these convic- 
 tions led to another batch of men being prosecuted. In 
 March there was a demonstration of country people to sym- 
 pathise for the families of those already imprisoned. A large 
 number of farmers brought turf, potatoes, and other sup- 
 plies to their families. There was a procession of carts and 
 country people through the town, but no disturbance or 
 disorder of any kind. It was admitted by the police that 
 the demonstration was of a peaceful character. For this, 
 however, nine men were prosecuted for taking part in an 
 unlawful assembly, and five of them were convicted, and 
 sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment. 1 
 
 1 In four out of these five cases the County Court Judge, on appeal, 
 reversed the conviction.
 
 THE MIL TO WN-MALBA Y PROSECUTIONS 1 5 5 
 
 This made a total of fifty-six prosecutions and of thirty- 
 eight convictions arising, directly or indirectly, out of the 
 two cases of Mrs. Morony and Mrs. Connell, and practi- 
 cally it may be said that all convictions were illegal. 
 
 On February n of this year, after all the prosecutions 
 for refusing to deal had been commenced, Colonel Turner 
 wrote to Father White suggesting to him whether it would 
 not be better that the latter should use his influence with 
 the people to put an end to boycotting. ' If it is not put a 
 stop to, I am determined to stamp it out, and restore to all 
 ordinary rights of citizenship.' ' I should very greatly prefer 
 that the citizens should stop it themselves, and save me 
 from taking strong measures, which I should deplore.' 
 
 Father White replied that no man living was more 
 anxious for peace than he was. ' There is but one obstacle 
 to peace. If you can advise Mrs. Morony to restore the 
 evicted tenants, whose rents you admitted were as high as 
 Colonel O'Callaghan's, I can guarantee, on the part of the 
 people, the return of good-feeling ; or, failing that, if she 
 and her employes are content with the goods which she 
 has of all kinds in her own shop, there need be no further 
 trouble. I have a promise from the people that the police 
 will be supplied in the future. This being so, if you will 
 kindly have the prosecutions withdrawn, or even postponed 
 for say a month, it will very much strengthen me in the 
 effort I am making to calm down the feeling. Regarding 
 Mrs. Connell, the head-constable was told by me that she 
 was to get goods, and she did get bread till the police went 
 round with her. This upset all my arrangements, as I had 
 induced the people to give her what she might really 
 want.' 
 
 To this Colonel Turner replied that he could not 
 adjourn the cases. But if those who were prosecuted were 
 prepared to make reparation by promising future good 
 conduct in court, he could see his way to interfere, and to
 
 156 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 prevent them from suffering imprisonment. He concluded 
 by saying, ' I am greatly pleased at your evident wish to 
 co-operate with me in calming down the ill-feeling which 
 exists, and I am satisfied that success will attend our 
 efforts.' 
 
 One may ask why these efforts on the part of Colonel 
 Turner were not made at an earlier date and before the 
 prosecutions ? It is difficult to suppose that a little tact on 
 his part would not have induced the people to supply Mrs. 
 Connell with all she wanted. As regards Mrs. Morony, 
 she had her own store. It was also ridiculous to suppose 
 that, in view of the facts I have stated, the people so unjustly 
 prosecuted for refusing to supply drink to the police during 
 the trial of Mrs. Connell's case, would all acknowledge them- 
 selves wrong in open court. These eleven men have since 
 been threatened that their licenses will be cancelled for 
 refusing to give this undertaking, although, in fact, they 
 have been willing to supply the police ever since they were 
 let out of prison. 
 
 In review of the whole case it is impossible not to come 
 to the conclusion that all these convictions for refusing to 
 supply were illegal. They show also what enormous power is 
 vested by the Coercion Act in the police and the authorities. 
 Out of the whole number of shopkeepers and tradesmen in 
 the town, the police selected just those whom they thought 
 fit, or who were suggested to them for prosecution. The 
 police called upon those indicated and asked them for 
 goods or drink, passing over others whom it was thought 
 expedient not to send to prison. Could anything be more 
 capricious and arbitrary ? 
 
 It cannot be denied, I think, that the ill-feeling in the 
 town had its origin in the harsh evictions of Mrs. Morony, 
 and in her refusal to reinstate the four tenants when she 
 reinstated the others. It would seem that Sir West Ridgeway 
 and Colonel Turner have recognised and admitted this, for
 
 THE M ILTOWX-MALBAY PROSECUTIONS 157 
 
 they joined, long before the prosecutions, in pressing on 
 .Mrs. Morony the expediency of reinstating these tenants. 
 
 The action of the people in meeting Mrs. Morony's 
 harsh conduct by social ostracism was evidently purely 
 spontaneous ; it was not directed or enforced by the Na- 
 tional League or its leaders. It was a popular movement 
 proceeding mainly from the country people outside the 
 town ; rather than from the small tradesmen, whose per- 
 sonal interests would have led them to continue to supply 
 Mrs. Morony. This lady met the movement with courage 
 and determination ; but to most people it must appear 
 that she would have acted more wisely, even in her own 
 interest, and certainly in that of the public peace, if she 
 had yielded to the suggestion of Sir , \Yest Ridgeway and 
 Colonel Turner and had reinstated the injured tenants. 1 
 Instead of that she boldly confronted the popular feeling, 
 and turned upon it with the power conferred upon her and 
 the police by the Coercion Act. It is impossible to justify 
 her action in selecting tradesmen in the town for prosecu- 
 tion, when she was not really in want of anything that she 
 demanded. 
 
 The case of Mrs. Connell and her son is an incident 
 really arising out of Mrs. Morony's ; but for Mrs. Morony 
 the Connell case would never have attracted public atten- 
 tion. It is certain that the Connells must have known they 
 could get supplies at Mrs. Morony's store. The allegations 
 about starvation are gross exaggerations, merely for the 
 purpose of adding effect to the story and to justify the 
 prosecutions. Whether the prosecutions in the Connell 
 case were at the instance of Mrs. Morony or of the police 
 only is still uncertain. It would seem that Mrs. Morony 
 wished it to be believed that the prosecutions in her own 
 
 1 Along with their farms, she holds, after tumbling their dwelling- 
 houses, five other houses built by them or their predecessors, confis- 
 cated to her by the eviction.
 
 158 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 case were due to the police. On her going into one of the 
 shops at Miltown Malbay with her two guards, the owner 
 of the shop said to her, ' Didn't we always pay our rent to 
 you, Mrs. Morony, and why will you come here to injure 
 and persecute us ? Don't you see the country people force 
 us to do it ? ' To this Mrs. Morony is said to have replied, 
 ' I can't help it, Mrs. Donollan. I'm compelled to it. If I 
 didn't do so my guard would be taken from me.' 
 
 When the three blacksmiths came out of prison again, Mrs. 
 Morony again sent her mare to them to be shod, and they 
 again refused. Another prosecution would probably have 
 followed. The Killeagh case, however, put an end to this 
 and all further prosecutions for simply refusing to supply 
 goods. 
 
 The distinction drawn by the judges in this case between 
 a ' conspiracy to compel and induce others to refuse to 
 supply goods ' and a mere refusal to supply on the part of 
 individuals is of the utmost importance. Where boycotting 
 is the result of a deliberate conspiracy of an association, 
 who by intimidation compel a whole neighbourhood to 
 refuse supplies to the person under their ban, it is highly 
 criminal and cruel. Where, however, it is the result of 
 a general popular feeling, roused to indignation by the harsh 
 action of an individual, but without concert or direction, it 
 is certainly not criminal. We may deplore it, and we may 
 deplore equally the harsh action which has led to this 
 popular feeling, but it certainly is, and ought to be, the 
 right of tradespeople to refuse to deal with any person, 
 without alleging a reason for the refusal. 
 
 The story of Miltown-Malbay therefore is of interest as 
 throwing light on this subject. It shows the tenacity with 
 which the people hold to their views of injustice in a case 
 of harsh eviction ; their determination to insist upon the 
 injustice being remedied by the tenants being reinstated. It
 
 THE MILTOWN-MALBAY PROSECUTIONS 159 
 
 shows the method by which popular feeling manifests itself 
 through social ostracism against those who err against this 
 popular code; it shows how a courageous and determined 
 woman can confront this popular feeling, and how she can 
 persuade the authorities to put in force the Coercion Act 
 for her, and in defiance of principles of law and justice im- 
 prison any one of the people whom she or they may think 
 it expedient to punish.
 
 i6o INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE VANDELEUR EVICTIONS. 
 
 At Miltown Mai bay, August 31, I met Father Dinan, the 
 Vicar-General of Kilrush, a venerable priest with great 
 influence among the people of his district, and especially 
 with the tenants of Captain Vandeleur. It was at his 
 suggestion and request that I had agreed to visit the district 
 and to enquire into the dispute between Captain Vandeleur 
 and his tenants. I drove with Father Dinan to Kilrush, 
 passing through a somewhat dreary country. My com- 
 panion, however, had much to tell me of interest. He had 
 been one of the bodyguard of O'Connell in the celebrated 
 election for the county in 1839, and well recollected all the 
 scenes of that celebrated contest. 
 
 He also told me all his version of the dispute on the 
 Vandeleur property. He denied that he and the other 
 priests of the district had in any way prompted the tenants 
 to enter into the combination or to adopt the Plan of Cam- 
 paign. This action of the tenants was purely spontaneous, 
 and was not the result of advice from the National League. 
 When, however, the tenants had entered on their course, 
 the priests, out of sympathy for them, and believing their 
 cause to be a righteous one, had thrown themselves heartily 
 into the movement. He was, however, most anxious to 
 bring the dispute to a conclusion, and he believed that 
 a very little concession beyond what had already been 
 offered might effect this. He said that the National League
 
 THE VANDELEUR EVICTIONS 161 
 
 flourished in every parish in the district, and that all the 
 efforts to suppress it had only resulted in more members 
 joining it. 
 
 As we approached the estuary of the Shannon the 
 country improved in appearance. Kilrush is a town of 
 2,000 inhabitants, with some small trade as a seaport, and 
 the rudiments of a manufacturing industry, but without any 
 indication of progress. Captain Vandeleur's demesne is 
 at one end of the town, and is well wooded. 
 
 The following morning I met a deputation of about 
 twenty of the leading tenants of the Vandeleur property and 
 heard their statements. Several of them had been included 
 in the recent evictions. They explained to me at length 
 the points of the dispute, and expressed their earnest desire 
 for a settlement on reasonable terms. The reinstatement 
 of the evicted tenants would, they all asserted, be a neces- 
 sary condition. I refrained from giving any opinion as to 
 the merits of their case or any advice as to their action 
 beyond recommending them to be moderate in their 
 demands. I promised to see Mr. Hallam Studdert, the 
 agent of»the property, and to talk the matter over with him, 
 with a view if possible to a settlement. There was present 
 at the interview Mr. Micks, an inspector of the Local 
 Government Board, who had previously been the Secretary 
 of the branch of the Land Commission which had dealt 
 with Arrears under the Act of 1882 ; this had given him 
 great experience in forming an opinion in such cases. He 
 was well conversant with the facts of this dispute, and had 
 at the last moment suggested terms of settlement which 
 had been agreed to by the tenants but rejected by the agent. 
 
 On the following morning I visited several of the farms 
 from which the tenants had recently been evicted. The 
 walls of many of the houses had been broken down by the 
 battering-ram, and the buildings were practically in ruins. 
 Emergency men were in possession of some of the premises 
 
 M
 
 1 62 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 In others the evicted tenants were apparently permitted 
 without hindrance to go upon the land for the purpose of 
 saving the crops of hay. The holdings ranged from fifteen 
 acres to fifty or sixty. The houses were well built with 
 stone, and with three or four rooms ; the land apparently 
 well cultivated. The families of many of the tenants had 
 been in possession of these farms for generations. The 
 houses had been built and improvements of every kind had 
 been effected by them. Their tenants' interest was at least 
 equal to that of the landlord. They had been selected for 
 attack as those most solvent and best able to pay in the 
 opinion of the agent. 
 
 Temporary huts were in course of erection as near as 
 possible to their former homes for the accommodation of 
 the evicted families. Nothing could be more melancholy 
 than the evidences of conflict in these ruined homesteads 
 and derelict farms over a wide area of country. I saw no 
 sign of yielding on the part of those evicted men I came 
 across, or of regret that they had not accepted the terms 
 offered. They were all confident that their fellow- tenants 
 would stand by them, and that they would be reinstated 
 when a settlement should be arrived at. 
 
 I was unfortunately unable to see the agent, Mr. 
 Hallam Studdert, before leaving the district. He was 
 absent from home at the time of my visit, and I had not the 
 advantage of hearing personally from him his account of the 
 dispute. On his return he wrote asking me to call upon 
 him, but it was too late, as I had already left the district. 
 I have, however, corresponded with him at some length, and 
 I offered to go again to the district if he found himself able 
 to make any further proposal to the tenants which it would 
 be worth while that I should use what influence I might 
 have with them to induce them to accept. No such pro- 
 posal has been made by Mr. Studdert, and I fear therefore 
 that there is no present prospect of a settlement. The
 
 THE VANDELEUR EVICTIONS 163 
 
 case of the landlord has been most ably stated in two letters 
 to the 'Times' by Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P., who was 
 present at the evictions. 1 So far as I can form an opinion, 
 this statement can only be accepted with reservations, and 
 with the addition of many facts which have been omitted. 
 
 The case, however, is not one to be put in the same 
 category as those of Lord Clanricarde and Lord Massereene. 
 There has been no disinclination to negotiate with the 
 tenants as a body or to make the same proportional abatement 
 to all. There has been a demand by the tenants, and a 
 proposal by the landlord ; there has been a difference be- 
 tween these two, neither party in the dispute having been 
 able to give way. It seems to me to be all the more la- 
 mentable that there should be no means of adjusting such 
 a dispute by reference to independent authority or to arbi- 
 tration. 
 
 The Vandeleur property consists of about 20,000 acres, 
 with a valuation of 11,200/. a year, and a rental of 13,000/. 
 The rents previous to 1874 were moderate. The then owner, 
 Colonel Vandeleur, had been member for the county. In 
 1874 he was defeated at the general election, and it is 
 alleged that, irritated by this defeat and angry at the little 
 support he received from his tenants, he determined to 
 raise his rents ; on the average they were increased by 25 
 per cent., and in many cases a great deal more. The land- 
 lord, however, took upon himself the payment of half the 
 county cess, equal to about i\ per cent. The real increase, 
 therefore, was 17^ per cent. I was most positively assured 
 in many quarters that the increase took place after the 
 defeat, and not before the election, as has been represented 
 in some quarters. 
 
 What is certain is that from an early date after this in- 
 crease large abatements were annually allowed by Colonel 
 Vandeleur and his successors; and from March 1880, 20 per 
 
 1 See the Times, August 4 and 5, iSSS. 
 
 M 2
 
 1 64 IXC I DENTS OF COERCION 
 
 cent, was regularly allowed in abatement of the rents for 
 several successive years. The rents therefore must be 
 considered, previous to the dispute, to have been only 
 nominally at the high rate fixed in 1874, and have really 
 been very much less. In 1882-3 many of the tenants 
 went into court, and obtained reductions of about 20 per 
 cent. 
 
 Colonel Vandeleur died in the year 1881, but for a few 
 years before that he had greatly failed in his health, and 
 was quite unable to manage his affairs. His property was 
 completely in the hands of his then agent, who neglected 
 his work ; in very many cases no rent was demanded or 
 collected at all for four or five successive years. In this 
 manner large arrears accumulated, and in the case of the 
 poorer tenants it must be admitted that these arrears would 
 necessarily be irrecoverable. 
 
 On the death of the late owner the arrears of rent were 
 left under his will to his younger sons, and the eldest son, 
 the present owner, is said to have bought out his brothers' 
 interest in these arrears for the sum of 16,000/. It appears 
 that on this estate there was always what was called a ' dead 
 year's rent.' The rents were allowed to be a year in arrear, 
 and this formed a provision for the younger children of the 
 owner. The next heir received no rent for a year. Of the 
 16,000/., 11,500/. represented this hanging gale. It is evi- 
 dent, therefore, that the arrears beyond this were reckoned 
 of very little value. 
 
 The present owner resided for a short time on the 
 property, but for the last three and a half years he has not 
 visited it. He now resides on the Continent, and it is believed 
 that he is in very bad health, and unable to take part in 
 managing his estate. The management, therefore, has fallen 
 into the hands of his lawyers and of the new agent, Mr. 
 Hallam Studdert. There have been no communications 
 whatever between the tenants and the owner himself.
 
 THE VANDELEUR EVICTIONS 165 
 
 In 1886, when the great fall of prices of agricultural 
 produce had been confirmed after more than a year's ex- 
 perience, a large number of the tenants asked for a reduc- 
 tion of 40 per cent, in the case of non-judicial rents. This 
 might appear at first sight to be excessive, but it must be 
 recollected that 20 per cent, had been allowed in several 
 preceding years, and that the real rent was practically very 
 much less than the nominal rent. The agent on his part 
 offered to make an abatement of 20 per cent, to non- 
 judicial tenants, but nothing to judicial tenants. He states 
 that this was accepted by a considerable number of the 
 tenants, and he believes it would have been accepted by all, 
 but for the interference of the priests. The tenants deny 
 this, and say that the 20 per cent, represented only the 
 customary abatement, and that the offer practically gave 
 little in respect of the fall of prices. 
 
 A large proportion of the tenants, 250 in number, then 
 joined in combination and adopted the Plan of Campaign. 
 Many others, about 100 in number, preferred not to join, 
 but acted on the same lines as those who were in the com- 
 bination, and refused to pay without a similar abatement. 
 On the other hand, a not inconsiderable number of tenants 
 were so much in arrears that it was considered they could 
 not be treated in the same manner, and they were purposely 
 excluded from the combination, as non-paying tenants. 
 Many of the tenants with judicial rents also joined, asking 
 an abatement of 20 per cent. Of the 250 tenants who 
 joined in the combination, all but 80 had paid their full 
 rents up to March 1885 • they were, therefore, in arrear 
 only to the amount of the year's hanging gale. No further 
 negotiations took place till the middle of 18S7. The Land 
 Commissioners, in the beginning of June of that year, had 
 settled several cases of judicial rents on the Vandeleur 
 property, and had made reductions averaging 32 \ per cent. 
 Negotiations were then resumed between the tenants and the
 
 1 66 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 agent. The tenants were prepared to reduce their demands 
 for abatement by 5 per cent., and the agent, on his part, was 
 willing to make some concession beyond what he had origi- 
 nally offered. He was prepared to take the decisions of the 
 Land Commissioners as a basis, and apply it to the arrears 
 of rent, the tenants, however, to pay the half county cess. 
 This, when worked out, was equivalent to an abatement c f 
 25 per cent. The tenants, on their part, asked for 35 per 
 cent. In the case of judicial rents the agent was ready to 
 make abatements of rents decided previous to 1886, so as 
 to make an equal abatement of 32^ per cent., as given in 
 the recent decisions of the court. 
 
 A difference of 10 per cent., therefore, existed between 
 the landlord and the tenants. It is impossible for an out- 
 sider without special knowledge to say which of them was 
 in the right. One cannot but feel how unfortunate it was 
 that at this point of the dispute it could not have been 
 settled by independent authority or by arbitration. If the 
 Act of 1887 had contained a clause dealing with arrears, as 
 asked for by the Irish members and supported by the 
 Liberal party, the dispute would undoubtedly have been 
 brought to a conclusion. 
 
 No agreement being come to, the dispute continued, and 
 in 1888 became more complicated, owing to the increasing 
 arrears of rent, and to the fact that judgments having been 
 obtained against many of the tenants, there was the greatest 
 sense of insecurity, and the tenants were unable to cultivate 
 their lands to advantage. It is very difficult to follow the 
 negotiations which ensued, or to understand the offers and 
 counter-offers that were made. The agent in the course of 
 the present year (1888) offered to give a clear receipt up to 
 March 1886, upon payment of a year's rent subject to a 
 deduction of 32^ per cent, as previously offered, the 
 tenant to pay the half county cess ; all previous arrears 
 were to be cleared off by this payment. The tenants
 
 THE VANDELEUR EVICTIONS 167 
 
 on their part asked for a clear receipt up to March 1887, 
 on the same terms. 
 
 Finally, just before the evictions commenced a great 
 effort was made by Mr. Micks, the Local Government 
 Surveyor, and by Mr. Reeves, a local landowner, brother-in- 
 law of Captain Vandeleur, to get the tenants to make some 
 further offer of concession on their part. Mr. Micks per- 
 suaded them to offer to take a clear receipt up to September 
 1886, instead of March 1887, on payment of a year's rent 
 with abatement, thus approaching the landlord half way. 
 Mr. Reeves is also said to have made a proposal for a 
 settlement even more favourable to the tenants. The 
 tenants say that these proposals were rejected by the agent. 
 
 On the other hand, Mr. Studdert gives a somewhat dif- 
 ferent version of Mr. Micks' offer ; he says that he was pre- 
 pared to accept it, but that the priests interfered to prevent 
 the tenants coming to an agreement. Whatever the real facts, 
 it is certain that the two parties to the dispute had very 
 nearly approached to one another ; and it seems to be very 
 unfortunate that more time was not given for the negotia- 
 tions before the evictions were carried out. I have strongly 
 urged on Mr. Studdert that even now the question between 
 Captain Vandeleur and his tenants should be referred to 
 arbitration. The tenants, I am assured, are prepared to 
 adopt this course ; but the agent has refused. It seems to 
 me to be lamentable that when the difference is so small 
 some means should not be devised to bring this dispute to 
 an end and to avoid wholesale evictions. 
 
 Meanwhile legal proceedings of a costly character were 
 adopted. No fewer than 86 ejectment decrees were 
 obtained, and the tenants were turned into caretakers. 
 Notices were issued to the Poor Law Authorities of the 
 intended evictions of these 86 persons and their families. 
 There was a period of dreadful suspense, and no one knew 
 on whom the blow would fall. The houses of all of them 
 
 *m 4
 
 1 68 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 were prepared for a siege, and remained in this condition 
 for some weeks. In July last a large force of police, sup- 
 ported by detachments of the 3rd Hussars and of the Berk- 
 shire Regiment, were brought into the country and were 
 placed at the service of Captain Vandeleur and his agent. 
 They were accompanied by Colonel Turner, the Divisional 
 Magistrate, and by Mr. Cecil Roche. A battering-ram, 
 consisting of a huge beam with an iron ferule supported on 
 a tripod, was for the first time brought into use. The pro- 
 ceedings were of a most methodical and strategic character ; 
 no one was allowed to approach the houses on which the 
 attack was to be made, except the reporters of the press and 
 a few favoured persons, such as Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P., who 
 came there in company with Colonel Turner. 
 
 The tenants in every case encountered the attack with 
 more or less resistance. They barricaded their houses 
 and ejected hot water and stirabout upon the police. The 
 battering-ram proved very effective, and soon disposed of 
 resistance by making breaches in the walls. The bailiff and 
 police then entered, arrested those engaged in the defence, 
 and summarily ejected all the furniture and household goods 
 of the inmates. In some cases, after all resistance was over 
 the police assisted in battering down the buildings. 
 
 The prisoners, in most cases, were brought up at once 
 before Mr. Roche, R.M., who, sitting in the open air, on a 
 rock or on a rail, dealt with the cases, drew up warrants for 
 their arrest, remanded them for further trial at Kilrush, 
 and, refusing to accept bail, except in the case of girls,- sent 
 them to prison. The proceedings lasted over several days ; 
 twenty-two tenants were evicted. In many cases notices 
 had been served on the sheriff and agent that the Act of 1887 
 had not been complied with in a very important respect, and 
 warning them that the evictions were illegal. In spite ot 
 these notices, the sheriff, in seven cases, carried out the 
 instructions of the agent, and evicted the tenants, and
 
 THE VANDELEUR EVICTIONS 169 
 
 almost demolished the houses. Civil and criminal pro- 
 ceedings have been at once commenced against the autho- 
 rities by the tenants, and a crop of litigation is promised. 
 It would seem that in these cases, at least, the proceedings 
 were reckless of consequences. 
 
 In all cases the agent appears to have made the same 
 offer before finally evicting the tenants, that is, that on pay- 
 ment of costs and of a year's rent up to March, 1886, subject 
 to abatement, the previous arrears would be wiped out, a 
 clear receipt would be given up to this date, and the remain- 
 ing rent would be allowed to stand over for future demand. 
 To the bulk of the tenants who had joined the combination, 
 and who had paid their full rents up to March, 1S85, the terms 
 amounted to no more than those offered in 1887. On the 
 other hand, to tenants owing four or five years' rent the 
 terms were more generous, as all arrears of rent due previous 
 to March 1885 would be wiped out. These, however, 
 could not be considered as otherwise than irrecoverable. 
 
 It is alleged in the ' Times ' report that in some cases the 
 tenants very reluctantly refused these terms. It has been 
 stated that the cases selected for eviction were those where it 
 was considered that the tenants were best able to pay ; and 
 possibly, in some of them, the tenants might have been able 
 to pay out of other sources than the profits of the land, and 
 if they had stood singly would have elected to pay, when 
 threatened by eviction at the point of the bayonet, rather 
 than be thrust from their homes and lose all their interest in 
 them. But they felt bound in loyalty to their fellow-tenants. 
 The essence of the combination was that those in a better 
 condition should stand by those who were poorer, and that 
 all should be willing for the common good to submit even 
 to eviction. All, however, equally with the poorer tenants, 
 claimed the abatement as a matter of right ; and if they had 
 stood alone, while submitting to the payment, would have 
 bitterly complained of it. I was assured that it was an entire
 
 170 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 mistake to suppose that any of them were influenced by fear 
 into doing that which they believed to be wrong. In this, 
 as in some other cases of the same kind, the agent has stated 
 that he is able to produce communications from a few in- 
 dividual tenants, expressing their disapproval of the action 
 of their fellow-tenants, and saying that they were coerced 
 into refusing to come to terms separately. In such com- 
 binations, however, there are always a few individuals who 
 desire to stand well with both sides ; who, while joining 
 with the tenants on the one hand, and expressing hearty 
 sympathy and co-operation with them, go behind their backs 
 and endeavour to curry favour with the landlord, and so avoid 
 being the objects of the first attack, by representing that they 
 are unwillingly coerced by their fellow-tenants into refusing 
 his offer. There always have been, and always will be, in 
 every combined movement, a certain few individuals of this 
 kind. They do not affect, however, the general aspect of the 
 combination. 
 
 It is my belief, from what I have heard, that the com- 
 bination represents the average opinion and convictions of 
 the tenants, and that they are voluntarily parties to it. The 
 wonder is that in face of eviction, with the threat of losing 
 all their interest in the home and holding to which they are 
 so passionately attached, with the certainty of imprisonment 
 if they resist, or in any case of being cast homeless on the 
 world with very uncertain prospects of maintenance, there 
 were none found ready to come to terms individually 
 with the landlord, but that all stood true to their fellow- 
 tenants. If there were among those evicted, men who were 
 known to the agent to be unwilling victims of a combi- 
 nation, it evidently did not occur to him to make ex- 
 ceptions in such cases ; they were evicted equally with 
 those who were known to be heartily in accord with the 
 movement. 
 
 Colonel Turner has since written to the ' Daily News ' to
 
 THE VANDELEUR EVICTIONS 171 
 
 say, that having been present at these evictions, 1 'he was 
 convinced by most careful investigation that one and all of 
 them were well able to pay ; and many resolved to do so, 
 but were afraid, as more than one admitted ; that there 
 was no case of hardship, as far as the landlord was con- 
 cerned, but quite the contrary. To show what the coercion 
 exercised on the tenants was, one of them who resisted but 
 little, and whom he directed to be released, begged him to 
 keep him a prisoner, and have handcuffs put on him, in order 
 that it might be judged he had resisted sufficiently.' 
 
 On the other hand, it is undoubtedly the opinion of 
 many other persons who have made inquiry into the general 
 circumstances of the tenants, that the final offer made by 
 them through Mr. Micks, and to which their assent was 
 obtained with great difficulty, represented the very extreme 
 which, with rare exceptions, they were able or could be 
 expected to pay. 
 
 In this case, as I have already pointed out, it is im- 
 possible for an outsider to form an opinion as to whether 
 the terms offered by the landlord or those claimed by the 
 tenants were under all the circumstances fair and reason- 
 able. I have endeavoured to state the case fairly between 
 them. What is certain is that, in the early days of the dis- 
 pute, in 1886, far better terms might have been made by the 
 landlord than now after two years' delay. As in other cases, 
 his offers have come too late ; delay has aggravated the 
 position ; and the recent evictions have created still further 
 difficulties. 
 
 It is obvious that the reinstatement of the evicted 
 tenants, and the rebuilding of their houses so ruthlessly 
 broken down, must enter into the consideration of any future 
 settlement. Meanwhile the uncertainty and alarm under 
 which the tenants still in possession live, prevents them 
 from cultivating their farms to the best advantage. 
 
 1 Daily Netvs, September 12, 1S88. 
 
 *M 6
 
 172 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 From the latest accounts I have received, the tenants 
 not yet evicted stand firm, and have determined not to give 
 way. It would seem from Colonel Turner's letter already 
 referred to, that he is urging on the agent, Mr. Studdert, to 
 fresh measures ; he says : — 
 
 ' I have not hesitated to express my regret that so far 
 no steps have been apparently taken on behalf of the land- 
 lord to utilise the effect of these evictions and work the 
 evicted farms. Evictions are a sad necessity, and especially 
 so where the tenants can pay and will not ; but certain 
 duties are incumbent upon a landlord in the assertion of 
 whose just rights the forces of the Crown are properly em- 
 ployed, and if the vile and dishonest conspiracy known as 
 the Plan of Campaign, than which a more fraudulent scheme 
 was never started by seditious minds, is to be successfully 
 fought, more must be done than merely evicting tenants and 
 leaving the evicted farms idle ; and the. combination will not 
 be defeated until such takes place. In this connection I 
 am able to state, in fairness to the agent, Mr. Studdert, that 
 this defect is now being remedied, and that active steps are 
 being taken on behalf of the landlord to save the crops, 
 to stock the lands, and generally to utilise these evicted 
 farms.' 
 
 It appears, then, that the Government, through Colonel 
 Turner, is urging on the agent to fresh acts of hostility, 
 and holding him back from any attempt to conciliate and 
 to effect a settlement. It may be for this reason that 
 Mr. Studdert has shown himself less ready to act on my 
 suggestion that the question in dispute should be referred 
 to arbitration. I hear that emergency men are being 
 employed by the agent to gather in the crops ; and by the 
 last accounts several of the tenants are being prosecuted 
 for trespassing on the farms from which they have been 
 evicted. Fresh evictions, it is announced, are to follow, as 
 soon as the Government is in a position to lend its forces 

 
 THE VANDELEUR EVICTIONS 173 
 
 again in aid of them ; and the tenants have again met and 
 decided to stand firm in their resistance. 
 
 What then is to follow ? Is a whole population to he 
 evicted because of a dispute involving a difference origin- 
 ally of not more than 10 per cent. ? Are the forces of the 
 Crown to be used for carrying out to its bitter end this policy 
 of clearing the estate rather than give way on so small a 
 difference ? Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that 
 the tenants are in the wrong, and that they ought to accept 
 the offer of the landlord ; is it the best mode of persuading 
 them that they are in the wrong to send the forces of the 
 Crown to evict them by wholesale? If it be the fact, as is 
 believed by the agent, that the attitude of the tenants is due 
 to the priests, and to other agitators, who are using them 
 for political purposes, does not this constitute the stronger 
 reason for endeavouring to withdraw them from these influ- 
 ences, by offering some other arbiter of their claims ? What 
 then is required in this and other cases of the kind is that 
 some independent authority should intervene between them 
 and their landlords, and decide as to what is reasonable and 
 fair under all the circumstances.
 
 174 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 A review of the dispute between landlords and tenants in 
 the three principal cases which I have dealt with shows that 
 they all had their commencement and origin in the same 
 cause, the great fall of prices in agricultural produce which 
 occurred in 1885 and 1886 — a fall which made it most 
 difficult, if not impossible, for tenants in Ireland to pay 
 their full rents, even their judicial rents, where these had 
 been fixed before 1885, on the average of prices which had 
 previously prevailed. 
 
 Large numbers of landlords met this fall of prices, even 
 in the year 1885, by not inconsiderable abatements of rent 
 in the case of non-judicial tenants ; but in the following 
 year abatements of rent were far more general, were of 
 larger amount, and were conceded even in the case of 
 judicial rents. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, while there are in Ireland very 
 large numbers of landlords who are considerate to their 
 tenants, and who are anxious to meet them half way when 
 difficulties of this kind arise, there is also a minority of 
 landlords who are the very opposite, and who are not 
 inclined to make any abatement of their claims, however 
 great the difficulties may be ; and between these two classes 
 are others of every gradation from good to bad. 
 
 The problem of land legislation in Ireland has always 
 been how to protect the tenants from the bad class of land-
 
 RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSIONS 175 
 
 lords, and how to induce or compel such landlords to act as 
 reasonable men, and to follow the example of those who are 
 ready to do what is just, without compulsion. 
 
 In the autumn of 1886 Mr. Parnell introduced his 
 temporary Bill to deal with this difficulty. He proposed 
 to enable the Land Commission to make abatements on 
 judicial rents, and he also proposed to admit the large 
 class of leaseholders to the benefit of judicial rents, from 
 which they had been excluded by the Act of 1881. 
 
 The Government opposed this measure and caused 
 its rejection. They declined altogether to deal with the 
 question in that session. They disputed the urgency of 
 the claims of the tenants. They denied the contention 
 that prices had fallen so as to make judicial rents unfair. 
 The utmost they would do was to appoint a Royal Com- 
 mission to inquire into the subject. 
 
 It will not be contended that the proposal of Mr. Parnell 
 was altogether satisfactory or complete. It did not affect 
 the position of tenants who had not obtained judicial rents. 
 These tenants laboured under two difficulties : the one, that 
 under the Land Act of 1881 the judicial rents dated, not 
 from the time when the application was made, but from 
 the time when the decision was given, and as from the 
 press of business a long delay took place, it was generally 
 two years, and often more, before the tenants could get 
 relief, and meanwhile they remained under the legal obliga- 
 tion to pay the excessive rents. The other difficulty was, 
 that many of them had old standing arrears hanging round 
 their necks. These arrears, though not fatal to the tenants 
 going into court for judicial rents, were yet used by the 
 landlords with tins object ; for, if the tenant in arrear 
 announced his intention to go into court, the landlord 
 threatened to enforce his claim for arrears of rent. Cases 
 have not unfrcquently occurred where tenants, having 
 obtained a judicial decision largely decreasing their future
 
 176 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 rents, have been evicted immediately for non-payment of 
 arrears of excessive rent. Such a case occurred on the 
 Clanricarde property, 
 
 The first of these defects in the Act of 1881 was cured 
 by the Act of 1887, by which it was provided that judicial 
 rents should in future date from the time when the tenant 
 applies to the Court. There can be little doubt that if legis- 
 lation had been conceded in 1S86, this provision would have 
 been included. 
 
 In 1887 the Royal Commission presided over by Lord 
 Cowper, and on which there was not a single representative 
 of the Irish Nationalist Party, reported, and fully admitted 
 the agricultural crisis ; they recommended that judicial rents 
 fixed in 1885 and later should be revised and readjusted to 
 the fall of prices. They confirmed, therefore, most fully the 
 case on which Mr. Parnell had relied for immediate legisla- 
 tion in the previous autumn. The Government acted upon 
 this report, though with great reluctance and against then- 
 previous declarations ; they gave way, not to the justice of 
 the claim or to the demands of the Irish members, but to the 
 exigencies of party pressure in the House of Commons, and 
 because the Dissentient Liberals could not be depended on 
 to support them in their refusal. 
 
 Lord Salisbury, Mr. Balfour, and even Mr. Goschen had 
 seldom spoken on the Land Act of 1881 without referring 
 to it as a measure of confiscation, and as one opposed to the 
 dictates of political economy, in having created a system 
 of dual ownership of land in Ireland ; and they set before 
 themselves the task of remedying this evil by restoring single 
 ownership and freedom of contract. It was, however, by a 
 curious Nemesis, their task to give the widest possible 
 expansion to the principles of the Land Act of 1881, and 
 very much to extend the system of dual ownership. 
 
 The Act of 1887 effected these objects in the interests 
 of tenants : —
 
 RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSIONS 177 
 
 1. It admitted to the benefit of judicial rents the very 
 large classes of leaseholders and holders of town parks. 
 
 2. It provided that judicial rents should in future date 
 from the time of the application by the tenants, thus 
 accelerating them by two years or more. 
 
 3. It allowed judicial rents fixed before 1885 to be 
 revised in accordance with the lower range of prices. 
 
 The Government also admitted the expediency of dealing 
 with arrears of rent. Unfortunately, however, instead of 
 listening to the proposals of the Irish members for a remedy 
 in this respect, they lent their ear to the Dissentient Liberals, 
 who proposed to deal with them through the medium of 
 bankruptcy; and when this remedy was unanimously objected 
 to, and rejected by all parties in Ireland, the Government 
 declined to deal with the question. 
 
 The Act, however, as it passed, was a practical admis- 
 sion that the demands of the Irish members in the previous 
 year were fully justified. Nothing had occurred in the inter- 
 val to alter the justice of the claim. Unfortunately, as has 
 so often been the case in Irish affairs, the remedy had been 
 too long delayed. The agrarian crisis did not wait for the 
 report of the Cowper Commission, or for the Parliamentary 
 convenience of the Government. The tenants claimed an 
 abatement of rents due in the autumn of 1886, as a matter 
 of equity between themselves and their co-partners the 
 landlords. The claim was conceded by a large proportion 
 of the landlords, but was strongly resisted and refused by a 
 minority of them. 
 
 The then Chief Secretary, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, having 
 rejected the demand for legislation, went over to Dublin for 
 the autumn, and soon learned the true state of things, and 
 in a most laudable manner used the whole influence of the 
 Government in favour of the tenants ; he did his utmost to 
 induce landlords to make abatements ; his letter to Lord 
 
 N
 
 178 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 Clanricarde is strong proof of the length he was prepared 
 to go. 
 
 The tenants, on their part, had not been idle. Finding 
 their demands rejected in Parliament, they met the emer- 
 gency by combination. The Plan of Campaign was a very 
 acute and unquestionably an illegal form of combination. 
 It was a weapon to compel landlords of the worst class- 
 to concede abatements, which public opinion in Ireland 
 declared to be essential, which the Chief Secretary and the 
 Irish Government considered to be expedient, and the 
 justice of which Parliament in the next session affirmed. 
 
 The Plan of Campaign has never been justified, even 
 by its inventors, as a method which should be adopted 
 in ordinary times ; they have defended it as a desperate 
 remedy to meet a desperate emergency, and in the belief, 
 that if some means of safety were not devised, vast numbers 
 of tenants would be ruined and evicted, and that there would 
 be another outbreak of agrarian crime. The combination 
 was a powerful engine of compulsion, not merely on land- 
 lords of the worst class, but on many others who were 
 hesitating what to do. 
 
 No proposition was ever more clearly and certainly 
 affirmed by subsequent events and experience than this, 
 that if the Act of 1887 had been adopted and passed into 
 law in the previous year, there would have been no combi- 
 nations, and the Plan of Campaign would never have been 
 invented. The responsibility for it, therefore, must be largely 
 shared by those whose neglect of their duties as statesmen 
 brought about the state of things which gave birth to it. 
 
 The Act of 1887 has been most satisfactory in its opera- 
 tion, so far as it went ; it has relegated to the Land Commis- 
 sion future disputes as to judicial rents, and as to leaseholds 
 and town parks, and it has greatly improved the position 
 of non-judicial tenants by the provision already alluded, 
 to. There cannot be a doubt that if it had also dealt with
 
 RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSIONS 179 
 
 arrears of rent, much of which was due to the delay and 
 neglect of Parliament to legislate in the previous year, all 
 the remaining disputes between landlords and tenants would 
 have been disposed of, combinations would have ceased, the 
 Plan of Campaign would have disappeared. 
 
 In the failure of Parliament to deal with the question, 
 the combinations and Plan of Campaign have also had an 
 important effect. Out of the seventy cases where it was 
 adopted by the tenants, agreement has been come to in nearly 
 two-thirds. The landlords gave way in great part, and the 
 tenants accepted something less than they had asked for. 
 Agreement was thus arrived at, and where that was the case, 
 peace and content were at once restored, every semblance 
 of disturbance ceased, and there has been no excuse for 
 putting in force the Coercion Act. 
 
 It is very different where these disputes still exist. It is 
 probable that there are not more than two dozen cases over 
 Ireland where disputes exist on any scale between large 
 bodies of tenants and their landlords, and where the Plan 
 of Campaign is still in force ; there are also numerous other 
 individual cases of dispute between landlords and tenants 
 on the same subject, namely, as to arrears of rent ; but 
 they are few in number, in proportion to the whole body of 
 tenants. But these cases of combination and dispute are 
 the centres of disturbance, and almost the sole cause for all 
 the proceedings under the Coercion Act. 
 
 Of the 1,700 prosecutions and 1,200 convictions under 
 the Act, nearly all can be traced directly or indirectly to 
 these remaining disputes with respect to arrears of rent. 
 
 Why has it been found expedient by the Government to 
 proclaim a particular district and not another ? to suppress 
 branches of the National League, to prohibit meetings, and 
 to forbid the sale of ' United Ireland ' ? Why does boy- 
 cotting exist in one district and not in another ? 
 
 The answer is, that in the districts where these proceedings 
 
 N 2
 
 180 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 take place, there is some unsettled dispute with respect to 
 arrears of rent, and that the others are free from them. 
 
 It will be found, on examination of the cases of prosecu- 
 tion, that they occur in groups ranged round some central 
 dispute, or that they follow in a kind of logical sequence. 
 The Clanricarde case is a fair example of this. It will 
 appear from my narrative that over 160 persons have 
 already been prosecuted directly or indirectly by reason of 
 this one case of dispute. 
 
 Seventy-five persons, I have shewn, were prosecuted at 
 Sligo for resisting evictions ; twelve persons were convicted 
 for being present at the midnight meeting at Woodford 
 called to express sympathy with the tenants ; twelve other 
 persons were prosecuted for being present at a demonstra- 
 tion on the release from prison of some of those previously 
 convicted ; later, eight more men were prosecuted for resist- 
 ing further evictions. Mr. Blunt was then sent to prison 
 for holding a meeting to express sympathy with these 
 tenants. At his trial a demonstration took place, and a 
 batch of persons were prosecuted for it ; and on his way to 
 prison another demonstration took place at Galway, and 
 another batch of ten persons were sent to prison. Later, 
 Mr. W. O'Brien attempted to hold another meeting at 
 Loughrea, and he and thirteen others have been prosecuted 
 for so doing. Lastly, wholesale evictions have been again 
 renewed, and forty persons are now under trial for resisting. 
 As only thirty tenants out of 1,500 have as yet been evicted, 
 and there is no sign of yielding, it is impossible to say how 
 many more persons may yet find their way to prison out of 
 this single case. It may, however, be confidently stated 
 that the cost to the Government in the movement of troops, 
 in the briefs for prosecutions, and in the imprisonments, 
 vastly exceeds the total amount in dispute between Lord 
 Clanricarde and his tenants. 
 
 In the same way the dispute between Mrs. Morony and
 
 RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSIONS 181 
 
 her former tenants has already led directly and indirectly to 
 the prosecution of about fifty-four persons ; that between 
 Lord Massereene and his tenants to the imprisonment of 
 fifteen persons for resisting evictions, of twelve persons for 
 an alleged disturbance at the trial of Mr. Dillon, of five 
 others for booing at and hooting Mr. Dudgeon, the agent 
 of Lord Massereene, and, lastly, of Mr. Dillon himself— a 
 total of thirty-three persons. The Vandeleur case also has 
 already resulted in the incarceration of twenty persons for 
 resisting eviction, and while I write twenty-one others are 
 being prosecuted for trespassing on the farms from which 
 they have been evicted. 
 
 In view of these figures and of the facts which I have 
 established, it must be clear that the Government have 
 brought all the forces at their command and all the excep- 
 tional powers of the Coercion Act to bear in favour of one 
 party to the dispute, and against the other ; that the local 
 authorities, acting under this inspiration, and doubtless with 
 the most conscientious motives, have used the powers en- 
 trusted to them in the most unsparing manner to put down 
 combinations, to suppress public meetings, to stifle free 
 speech, and to imprison in any way or for any cause those 
 who, they think, are engaged in combinations against the 
 landlords. 
 
 It is fair, however, to look at the position from the point 
 of view of the landlords concerned. They hold that the 
 combinations are the prompting of external agitators and not 
 the spontaneous action of the tenants themselves. They 
 believe and contend that the tenants were well able to 
 pay the full rents, and if left to themselves would have 
 done so. They claim that they were quite prepared to 
 deal equitably and generously with any individual cases, 
 but they object to any collective demand on the part of the 
 tenants. They hold that a large proportion of the tenants 
 have been coerced into joining the combinations, and that,
 
 1 82 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 if freed from intimidation, they would come in separately 
 and pay their rents ; they point to individual cases in which 
 tenants have come to their agents privately, and have ex- 
 pressed their readiness to pay, if permitted by the League ; 
 they maintain the combination under the Plan of Campaign 
 to be nothing but a dishonest and fraudulent attempt to 
 escape the payment of debts, and to injure and ruin the 
 landlords. They honestly believe that if the Coercion Act 
 is freely used the combinations will be broken, and the 
 tenants will return to their proper allegiance. 
 
 On their part, the tenants reply that the combinations 
 have in all cases been spontaneous, originating with the 
 tenants themselves, and not under the advice or compulsion 
 of the National League ; though they admit that when once 
 entered upon they have received support and advice from 
 outside. They hold that the condition of things in 1886 
 justified them in a demand for a general abatement of rent; 
 they quote, in support of this, the general action of other 
 landlords, the pressure on landlords by Sir M. Hicks-Beach, 
 and the action of Parliament in 1887. They claimed 
 abatements as a right arising out of their position as co- 
 owners with their landlords ; they maintained that it should 
 be general, and proportional to the rent, and should not be 
 refused to those who, by better skill or thrift, or through 
 other employment, had the means out of which the full 
 rent could have been paid ; they say that the offer of land- 
 lords to deal with individual cases is only a familiar form of 
 refusing to do anything ; they maintain that the combina- 
 tions have been freely entered into without compulsion, 
 though they admit that there are and always have been a 
 few individuals who, while joining heartily in combination, 
 are ready to go behind the backs of their fellow-tenants, 
 and to curry favour with the agent, by representing that 
 they are ready to pay their rents if not coerced by others. 
 They allege that they are and have been all along ready to
 
 RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSIONS 183 
 
 come to terms, such as all reasonable landlords have been 
 conceding to their tenants during the last two or three 
 years, and they are willing to submit the question in dis- 
 pute to arbitration, subject only to the reinstatement of 
 those who, they maintain, have been unjustly evicted. 
 
 In some cases, as in that of the Massereene property, 
 the dispute has been narrowed down to the question of 
 those evicted tenants. The landlord has given way, and is 
 willing to concede the abatements asked for, or something 
 closely approaching them, but will not reinstate those who 
 were the leaders of the movement. The tenants in such 
 cases say that they are bound in honour to stand by the 
 evicted tenants who have cruelly suffered for their fellow- 
 tenants, and they refuse to come to terms unless those 
 leaders are reinstated. 
 
 These, I believe, fairly represent the issues, and the argu- 
 ments of both sides to these disputes. In the cases I have 
 inquired into, and with some reservation as to the Vandeleur 
 case, which differs in essential particulars from the other two, 
 I think the contentions of the tenants can be sustained. 
 
 It is said, however, that even if the main contentions of 
 the tenants be proved, yet, as they have adopted a form of 
 combination which the courts of law have declared to be 
 illegal, they have put themselves in a position where they 
 are not entitled to consideration, and that the Government 
 are justified in supporting the landlords in their resort to 
 ■wholesale evictions. 
 
 Is this, however, wise and practical statesmanship? 
 Assuming all that can be said against the Plan of Campaign, 
 the question still remains whether the best mode of dealing 
 with it, and of preventing its being resorted to again, is to 
 throw the whole weight of the Government against the tenants, 
 and to assist the landlords in these wholesale evictions. 
 
 Would it not be wiser to recognise the fact that this 
 form of combination came into existence through the re-
 
 1 84 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 fusal of the landlords to act reasonably and as other land- 
 lords were doing in 1886, and through the neglect of 
 Parliament in the same year to appreciate the gravity of the 
 agricultural crisis and to legislate in accordance with the 
 demand of the Irish members ? Would it not be true 
 statesmanship to cut off the excuse for combination by 
 removing the cause ? 
 
 The present position in Ireland is very similar to that 
 which I have described in 1882, when the leading men of 
 the Nationalist party were in prison, when the tenants had 
 been invited by responsible leaders not to pay rents, and 
 when the same difficulty with respect to arrears of rent 
 existed. Parliament was not then deterred by the existence 
 of the No-Rent Manifesto from dealing with the question of 
 the arrears or from releasing the suspects. 
 
 So now again some of the most popular men in Ireland 
 are in prison or are awaiting prosecution, and a number of 
 other less conspicuous persons are in the same position. If 
 I am right in what I have said, all these imprisonments 
 may be traced directly or indirectly to disputes between 
 a comparatively small section of landlords and their tenants 
 as to arrears of rent. 
 
 Can there be a doubt then as to what should be the 
 policy of the Government? If they would, even now at 
 the eleventh hour, announce that they will not lend the 
 forces of the Crown for the wholesale eviction of tenants, 
 but will, when Parliament meets, introduce a measure to 
 deal with arrears of rent, and to enable tenants who have 
 been evicted for excessive rent to redeem their holdings, 
 and if in the meantime they would direct a jail delivery, 
 all difficulties would be removed. It may confidently be 
 predicted that these measures would have an instantaneous 
 effect, peace would be restored to the proclaimed districts, 
 and all cause for prosecutions under the Coercion Act would 
 entirely disappear.
 
 iS 5 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 MR. WILFRID BLUNT ON HIS PRISON 
 TREATMENT. 1 
 
 When taken to Galway Gaol I had no intention of refusing to 
 comply with the prison rules, but I found it necessary to make 
 a stand on the subject of my own coat. The prison dress is 
 neither sufficient in cold weather, nor for a grown man quite 
 decent, and I insisted on retaining my own coat in addition to 
 it. The governor allowed me to wear it for several days, and 
 it was only, as he himself told me, under direct and imperative 
 orders from Dublin that he used force to deprive me of it. 
 There is nothing in the printed prison rules authorising such 
 violence. He apologised to me for it at the time, and so did 
 the warders. The visiting justices recommended that my coat 
 should be restored to me, that I should have firing, a large 
 print Bible, books, and writing materials. All these matters 
 were referred to Dublin and refused, the telegraphic answers 
 being signed ' Prisons Board,' but headed ' Chief Secretary's 
 Office.' Capt. Mason, when I asked him what the relations were 
 between the Prisons Board and the Chief Secretary, answered 
 that they were precisely the same as those between himself and 
 the Board, that is to say, ' they must do exactly as they are 
 told.' It was never pretended that the order to deprive me of 
 my coat was given by any one but the Chief Secretary. 
 
 The petty vexations to which I was submitted, the with- 
 drawal of my Bible, the seizure of my pocket handkerchiefs, my 
 deprivation of hair-brushes and ^tooth-brushes, and the rest, 
 were in consequence of visits from the Prisons Board Inspector 
 
 1 Extract from the Home Rule Journal, August 1S88.
 
 1 86 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 Joyce. At the time he ordered the seizure of my great-coat, 
 another political prisoner, Martin Egan, in the same gaol, 
 was wearing his own ordinary clothes unmolested ; so that it 
 cannot be pretended that I was assaulted in accordance with 
 any immutable rule. The warders in Galway Gaol told me 
 they could not in practice cany out the rules in every case to 
 the letter. It would be cruel, and sometimes dangerous. In 
 my case the rules were constantly relaxed. I was never required 
 to clean my cell, or to take more exercise than I wished. The 
 oakum I picked was entirely at my discretion. I was never 
 once ' punished,' though my warders were ; and the Governor 
 and other officials always addressed me as ' sir.' The special 
 treatment allotted to each prisoner was unquestionably decided 
 by caprice. 
 
 The prison officials in Ireland are, without exception in my 
 experience, humane and worthy men. For their own comfort's 
 sake, they are anxious to avoid collision with the prisoners ; 
 and, except under pressure from the Prisons Board, would 
 remain on a kindly footing with them. They are, however, 
 terribly afraid of the Board, and of the system of delation en- 
 couraged by it. They are ill-paid, and are subject to fines for 
 breaches of discipline, and are dismissible at will. Leading a 
 melancholy life, they are particularly subject to the temptation 
 of drink ; and this lays them open to charges of intemper- 
 ance, which afford an easy occasion, when it is desired, for their 
 dismissal. 
 
 Of the six officers most directly responsible for my disci- 
 plinary treatment, five have, to my knowledge, incurred punish- 
 ment. Capt. Mason, the governor of Galway Gaol, an easy- 
 going man, who relaxed the rules very considerably in my 
 favour, has been required to leave the service. Chief-warder 
 Grant has been degraded in rank, reduced in pay, and removed 
 to a convict prison. Warder Denby, especially in charge of 
 me, has been dismissed ; and two other warders connected 
 with me have been fined and reprimanded. The charges brought 
 against them were, indeed, mainly foreign to my case ; but 
 I have no doubt whatever that their humanity towards me was 
 the prime cause of their disgrace. They are practically at the
 
 APPENDIX A. 187 
 
 mercy of the Board, and, through the Board, of the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Similarly, in regard to medical treatment, the prison surgeons 
 are, I believe, humane and honourable men. But in their 
 relations with their political prisoners they are interfered with 
 by the Government. Dr. Kinkaid,"who attended me at Galway, 
 was, to my knowledge, summoned before the Prisons Board 
 at Dublin and cautioned regarding me by Mr. Bourke, the 
 Chairman of the Board. He was forbidden, I understand, to 
 take me into hospital except in the case of my very serious 
 illness, and was threatened with the interference of another 
 doctor if he should so remove me. I attribute to this warning 
 the fact that he afterwards neglected to take Mr. John Roche 
 into hospital until it was almost too late. It seems to me highly 
 probable that the unfortunate Dr. Ridley had similar pressure 
 put on him at headquarters ; and that he destroyed himself on 
 finding that he had been made an instrument of by the Govern- 
 ment, without means of proving the orders he had received. 
 Dr. Kinkaid's instructions in my case were verbal. 
 
 I argue from these facts three things : — 
 
 1. The Prisons Board, which was instituted to protect 
 prisoners from local abuses and irregularities, has been made 
 use of, like every other institution in Ireland, as an instrument 
 of the Government against political prisoners, the ordinary dis- 
 cipline of the prisons being strained in their case capriciously 
 by the Chief Secretary. 
 
 2. The prison surgeons, who should be solely responsible 
 for their patients' health, have been subjected to Government 
 pressure through the Prisons Board, and have thus ceased to 
 be quite responsible agents. 
 
 3. The Chief Secretary remains as the sole representative of 
 power, and the sole person responsible for life and death in the 
 Irish prisons.
 
 1 88 INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 THE PUNISHMENT OF POLITICAL PRISONERS. 1 
 
 By Mr. Frederic Harrison. 
 
 What is a political prisoner? What constitutes a political 
 crime ? On what principle are political criminals to be treated 
 with any exceptional indulgence ? 
 
 A political prisoner is one whose offence is committed, not 
 for private profit, but for public duty ; who glories in the act as 
 a meritorious public service in itself; who is supported by the 
 devoted admiration of a political party ; whom his own side 
 regard as a martyr, and whom the other side regard as mis- 
 chievous, but certainly not as dishonoured. A political offence 
 is such that one political party denies it to be an offence, and 
 the other political party does not pretend it to be infamous. An 
 ordinary criminal does not venture to say that the act of which 
 he is accused is honourable. He simply asserts that he did not 
 commit it. Such friends as he ever had cease to be his friends, 
 much less his admirers. No man whatever admits that a decent 
 man could be guilty of such a crime. No man glories in it, or 
 admires it. To have committed it is to be by universal consent 
 out of the pale of self-respecting men. No one will associate 
 with an ordinary criminal. Neither he nor any one else denies 
 that the act, if committed at all, is a permanent mark of degra- 
 dation. 
 
 A political prisoner, again, is usually a man of culture, of 
 social refinement. He is often in nurture, in tastes, in delicacy 
 of mind, the equal, it may be the superior, of his jailor. He 
 
 1 Extract from the Home Rule Journal, March 1888.
 
 APPENDIX B 189 
 
 has acted up to his conscience; he abhors the brutality of crime; 
 he is quite as sensitive as any Minister of the Crown. To treat 
 such a man as a gaol-bird is an act of wanton outrage and 
 malignant stupidity. The system of our prisons is rough, harsh, ■ 
 and intentionally degrading. Ninety-nine out of every hundred 
 prisoners arc, or arc believed to be, coarse, degraded, filthy, 
 shameless wretches— the scum and refuse of the people, inured 
 to physical hardship, and callous to personal degradation. Here 
 and there a cultivated man commits a vulgar crime, but the in- 
 famy of his offence is rather increased than lessened by his 
 higher breeding ; and if he suffers more, he has sinned more 
 deeply and more unpardonably. He knows it, and does not 
 deny that the act is a crime. Prisons would be holiday-homes 
 for our criminal classes, unless they were designedly brought 
 down to the level of the most callous, brutal, and roughest of 
 the people. To force a high-minded, refined, and honourable 
 man to submit to the same humiliation is a wanton and das- 
 tardly outrage, akin to the infliction of torture. 
 
 It in no way follows that a political crime is not to be 
 punished. Political crimes are, in effect, often as bad as any 
 crimes ; they may deserve any punishment up to death itself. 
 The political criminal may be a great offender against God and 
 man; but he is not, or is not often, a personally degraded wretch. 
 He has not lost his personal honour. He is not brutalised. He 
 may be violently wrong-headed ; but he carries himself, in his 
 own eyes and that of his party, as a man of stainless honour 
 and unspotted character. No degradation that is inflicted on 
 him alters that sense in his mind or that of his friends. Neither 
 he nor they feel at all degraded by outrage, any more than we 
 feel it in the case of martyrs and apostles. And to inflict outrage 
 on such men is either petty spite or blundering stupidity. 
 
 No one pretends that laws can be strictly adjusted to politi- 
 cal crimes, or that some very brutal wretches might not possibly 
 be brought under any definition of political criminals. ' Offences 
 of a political character' is, however, a term known to English 
 law. No political offender has ever been asked for out of 
 English hands, and none will ever be surrendered. If a single 
 phrase in an Act of Parliament has sufficed to define a political 
 offence, it need not be impossible to define it for purposes of
 
 iqo INCIDENTS OF COERCION 
 
 English prisons. But no one demands any hard and fast rule. 
 In truth it is a matter not of law but of discretion. And not so 
 much of discretion, as of prudence, of decency, of self-respect, 
 and of honour. It is hard to understand how a man, accidentally 
 invested with executive authority for the span of a single Parlia- 
 ment, can meet his political rivals in the House, in society, in 
 business, treat them as his social equals and his honourable 
 opponents, and the next day can force them to herd with the 
 foulest and most brutal ruffians — obscene, verminous, and loath- 
 some wretches — can subject them to every physical and moral 
 outrage that can be heaped on them, short of actual torture, 
 and then turn round and quietly say, ' Oh ! it is the law ; these 
 honourable members should not break the law.' Such may be 
 the law ; but it is not the ways of gentlemen — at least, outside 
 of official circles. 
 
 PRINTED BV 
 
 SPOTTISWOOEE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 LONDON
 
 Demy 8vo. 16s. 
 
 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY, 1 691- 1870. 
 By W. K. Sullivan, George Sigerson, J. II. Bridges, Lord 
 Edmond Fitzmaurice, James R. Thursfield, and G. P. 
 Macdonell. With Introduction by James Bryce, M.P. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 5.?. 
 
 IRISH WRONGS AND ENGLISH REMEDIES, with 
 other Essays. By R. Barry O'Brien, of the Middle Temple, 
 Barrister-at-La\v. 
 
 Two Vols. Demy 8vo. with Portrait, £1. is. 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN MITCHEL. By William Dillon. 
 With Introduction by John Dillon, M.P. 
 
 Demy 8vo. 10s. 6J. 
 
 PEEL AND O'CONNELL: A Review of the Irish Policy 
 of Parliament from the Act of Union to the Death of Sir Robert 
 Peel. By the Right Hon. G. Shaw Lefevre, M.P. 
 
 Second Edition. Cloth is. 6</. ; paper covers, is. 
 
 HANDBOOK OF HOME RULE. Containing Articles 
 on the Irish Question by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, 
 M.P., the Right Hon. John Morley, M.P., Lord Turing, 
 James Bryce, M.P., the Rev.Canon MacColl, E. L. Godkin, 
 and R. Barry O'Brien. Edited by James Bryce, M.P. With 
 Preface by the Right Hon. Earl Spencer, K.G. 
 
 Demy 8vo. 
 
 THOMAS DRUMMOND, Under-Secretary for Ireland 
 in Lord Melbourne's Administration. Life and Letters. By R. 
 Barry O'Brien, of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-La\v. 
 
 [In (he press. 
 
 London : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO.


 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 

 
 
 
 
 IV 
 
 
 liin inn uilmim REGl0NAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 393 994