IRELAND UNDER THE PRESENT GOVERNMENT.
I come now to the policy which has been pursued by the present
Government since 1906. It must be remembered that the Radical party
returned to power pledged to Home Rule as a principle, but with a
sufficient majority to enable them to retain office without depending
on the Irish vote. Hence there was no necessity for them to introduce
a Home Rule Bill; but of course they set aside the policy of the
Unionist Government, and resolved to govern Ireland according to their
own ideas. What those ideas were, and what the result has been, I
shall now proceed to show; but in doing so I shall as far as possible
confine myself to quotations and statistics which can be verified, so
that I may not be accused of giving an unfair report.
The Chief Secretary for the first year was Mr. Bryce, who was
afterwards appointed British Ambassador at Washington. The Government
at once repealed the Act which forbade the carrying of arms without a
licence; withdrew all proclamations under the Crimes Act of 1887;
and resolved not to stop any political meetings. Accordingly the
Nationalists commenced holding a series of demonstrations all over
the country. A few specimens taken from the speeches made at them will
suffice to show their general tenour.
"Let them all be ready, and when England got into trouble with
European Powers, they would pounce upon her with the ferocity
of a tiger."--_T. Walsh, District Councillor._
"They must stand together as one man, and make it impossible
for England to govern Ireland."--_P. White, M.P._
"If there had been 100,000 Fenians in Ireland at the time of
the Boer War there might now have been a Republic in
Ireland, and British supremacy would have been tumbled in the
dust."--_J. Daly, formerly Mayor of Limerick._
And Mr. Bryce, when leaving Ireland at the end of the year, stated
that he had not found any harm in any of the speeches delivered at the
meetings.
At this time the agitation began to assume a new form. One of the most
important of Irish industries is the cattle trade with England,
the annual value of which exceeds £14,000,000. In several parts of
Ireland, notably in Meath and the central counties, the soil and
climate are specially suited for cattle raising, and the land
is generally held in large grazing farms. It was decided by the
Nationalists in the autumn of 1906 that this industry must be
destroyed. Bodies of men assembled night after night to break down the
fences and gates of the farms and drive the cattle many miles away,
in order that the farmers might be ruined and forced to leave the
country; and then the derelict farms would be divided amongst the
"landless men." L. Ginnell, M.P., explained the programme fully in a
speech he made in October 1906:--
"The ranches must be broken up, not only in Westmeath but
throughout all Ireland ... He advised them to stamp out the
ranch demon themselves, and not leave an alien Parliament to
do the duty ... He advised them to leave the ranches unfenced,
unused and unusable ... so that no man or demon would dare to
stand another hour between the people and the land that should
be theirs."
The agitation, commencing in Meath, was gradually extended, county
by county, over a large part of Ireland where the Nationalists are
supreme. Other measures were resorted to, in order to carry out their
object. Arson, the burning of hayricks, firing into dwelling-houses,
spiking meadows, the mutilation of horses and cows, the destruction
of turf, the damaging of machinery, and various other forms of lawless
violence began to increase and multiply. At the Spring Assizes in
1907, the Chief Justice, when addressing the Grand Jury at Ennis, in
commenting on the increasing need for placing law-abiding people under
special police protection, said:--
"In a shire in England, if it was found necessary, either by
special protection or protection by patrol, to protect from
risk of outrage thirty persons, what would be thought?"
And Mr. Justice Kenny at Leitrim, after commenting upon the increased
number of specially reported cases, as shown by the official
statistics, and alluding to several cases of gross intimidation,
said:--
"In these latter cases I regret to say no one has been
made amenable; and when there is such a state of things,
it justifies the observation made by the learned judge who
presided at last Connaught Winter Assizes, that when the chain
of terrorism was complete, no witness would give evidence and
no jury would convict."
Thereupon Mr. Birrell, who at the beginning of the year had succeeded
Mr. Bryce as Chief Secretary, having no doubt studied these and
similar reports, said in a speech at Halifax in the following month:--
"You may take my word for this, that Ireland is at this moment
in a more peaceful condition than for the last six hundred
years."
Soon afterwards, Mr. Justice Ross, who, as Judge of the Land Judge's
Court, Chancery Division, was in charge of many estates in Ireland,
said:
"He had known from other Receivers about this widespread and
audacious conspiracy at present rampant in the West of Ireland
... This was actually a conspiracy which on ordinary moral
grounds amounted to highway robbery, to seize on these grass
lands, to drive away the stock of the people who had been
in the habit of taking it; and then, when the owner had been
starved out, the Estates Commissioners were expected to buy up
the property and to distribute it amongst the very people who
had been urging on the business, and who had been engaged in
these outrages."
When an Ulster member drew attention to this in the House of Commons,
Mr. Birrell replied:--
"There is no evidence before the Government that a widespread
conspiracy is rampant in the West of Ireland."
And in reply to another question he said that:--
"The reports he received from the police and other persons
revealed the condition of Ireland generally as to peace and
order as being very satisfactory."
During the month of October 1907, twenty-nine claims for compensation
from the rates in respect of malicious injuries had been proved and
granted in twelve counties, the amount levied from the ratepayers
being about £900. The malicious injuries comprised destruction of and
firing into dwelling houses, mutilation of horses and cattle, burning
cattle to death, spiking meadows and damaging mowing machines, damages
to fences and walls, burning heather and pasturage, damage to gates in
connection with cattle driving, and injury to cattle by driving. And
in November an attempt was made to assassinate Mr. White Blake and his
mother when driving home from church in the County Galway. A few days
after this occurred Mr. Redmond said at a meeting in North Wales:--
"Whilst there is no crime or outrage there is widespread
unrest and impatience, and there are, over a certain section
of the country, taking place technical breaches of the strict
letter of the law in the shape of what is called cattle
driving. Now let me say first of all that in no instance has
any single beast been injured in the smallest degree in any of
these cattle-drives; in no instance has any malicious injury
been done to property, life or limb, or beast."
All this time the Government adhered to their determination not to put
the Crimes Act in force, but merely to place accused persons on trial
before juries at the Assizes. The results were as follows: At the
Summer Assizes in 1907, 167 persons were returned for trial; of these,
57 were actually tried, of whom three were convicted, 31 acquitted,
and in 23 cases the juries disagreed. The trials of the remaining 110
were postponed. At the Michaelmas sittings, 94 persons were put on
trial, of whom 5 were convicted and 2 acquitted; in 72 cases the
juries disagreed, and in the remaining 15 the Crown abandoned
proceedings. At the Winter Assizes 86 persons were tried for unlawful
assembly, riot and conspiracy in connection with cattle-driving. None
were convicted; 11 were acquitted; in 12 cases the prisoners were
discharged on legal points; and in 63 the juries disagreed.
I fully admit that there is much to be said for the juries who refused
to convict. When a Government is doing its utmost to suppress anarchy
and to enforce law and order, it is no doubt the duty of every loyal
subject to render assistance even at the risk of his own life
and property. But when a Government is conniving at anarchy, and
deliberately refusing to put in force the Act which would put a stop
to it, I say it is too much to expect of any man that he should face
the prospect of being ruined and probably murdered, and his family
reduced to beggary, in order to enable the Government to keep up the
farce of pretending that they are trying to do their duty.
During the first half of 1908, there were 418 reported cases of
cattle-driving; and arson, outrages with firearms, meadow-spiking,
and similar offences increased in proportion. The judges urged in vain
that the law should be put in force. But the policy of the Government
remained unchanged; the _Daily News_ (the Government organ) when
cattle-driving was at its height said that thanks to the excellent
government of Mr. Birrell cattle-driving now had practically become
extinct even in those few parts of the country in which it had
existed; and in July Mr. Birrell, addressing a political meeting at
Port Sunlight, said that:--
"They were led to believe that the state of Ireland was of
an appalling character, that crime predominated, and that
lawlessness almost universally prevailed. All he could say was
that a more cheerful land was nowhere to be found."
In 1909 matters became somewhat quieter, chiefly because Mr. Birrell
promised to introduce a Land Bill by which the cattle-drivers hoped to
get all they wanted. Hence their leaders advised them to "give Birrell
a chance," but Mr. Redmond warned the Government that if they did not
carry out their pledge, they would speedily find Ireland ungovernable.
In February 1909, Lord Crewe, speaking for the Government in the House
of Lords, made the remarkable statement:--
"As regards intimidation, I have always shared the view that
well-organized intimidation cannot be checked by law. I know
no method of checking it."
If this is not an admission that the Government had failed in their
duty, it is hard to say what is. The result of their line of action
will be seen by the following table, which has been taken from various
returns which the Ulster members, by repeated questions in Parliament
at last succeeded in forcing Mr. Birrell to make public:--
Agrarian outrages 1906 234
" " 1907 372
" " 1908 576
Cattle-drives 1905 Nil
" " 1907-8 513
" " 1908-9 622
" " 1908 219
Cattle maiming, mutilating, etc. 1907 142
Persons boycotted 1907 196
" " 1908 270
" " 1909 335
Cost of extra police 1908 £47,000
1911.
Agrarian outrages 581
Malicious injuries to property, Intimidating
by threatening letters, etc. 285
Firing into dwelling houses 58
Rioting, robbery of arms, etc. 31
Killing and maiming cattle 83
It may be asked, why did not the Ulster members call the attention of
Parliament to this state of things? The answer is, they did so again
and again; Mr. Birrell gave stereotyped replies, much after this form,
with hardly a variation:--
I have seen in the newspapers a report that a few shots were
fired into a farmhouse in Galway. No one appears to have been
seriously injured. The police are making enquiries. No arrests
have been made.
(He might as well have added that he knew perfectly well that no
arrests ever would be made.) Then he would go to a political meeting
and say that the peaceful condition of Ireland was shown by the small
number of criminal cases returned for trial at the Assizes; and would
bitterly denounce the "Carrion Crows" (as he designated the Ulster
members) for trying to blacken the reputation of their country.
One instance may be given more in detail, as typical of the condition
to which Ireland had been brought. Lord Ashtown (a Unionist Peer
residing in County Galway) began issuing month by month a series of
pamphlets entitled "Grievances from Ireland." They contained little
besides extracts from Nationalist papers giving reports of the
meetings of the United Irish League, the outrages that took place, and
the comments of Nationalist papers on them. His object was to let
the people in England see from the accounts given by the Nationalists
themselves, what was going on in Ireland. This, however, was very
objectionable to them; and one of their members asked Mr. Birrell in
the House of Commons whether the pamphlets could not be suppressed.
Mr. Birrell made the curious reply that he would be very glad if Lord
Ashtown were stopped, but that he did not see how to do it. What he
expected would be the results of that remark, I do not know; but no
one living in Ireland was much surprised when a few weeks afterwards
a bomb outrage occurred at the residence of Lord Ashtown in the County
Waterford. It was a clumsy failure. A jar containing gunpowder was
placed against the wall of the house where he was staying and set on
fire. The explosion wrecked part of the building, but Lord Ashtown
escaped unhurt. He gave notice of his intention to apply at the next
assizes for compensation for malicious injury. The usual custom in
such cases is for a copy of the police report showing the injury
complained of, to be sent to the person seeking compensation; but on
this occasion the police refused to show Lord Ashtown their report,
stating that they had received orders from the Government not to do
so. But shortly before the case came on, a report, not made by the
police authority in charge of the district, but by another brought in
specially for the purpose, appeared in the Nationalist papers. This
report contained the remarkable suggestion that Lord Ashtown had done
it himself! When under cross-examination at the trial, the Inspector
of the Royal Irish Constabulary who made the report was obliged to
confess that he did not believe that he had, but had only inserted the
suggestion in obedience to instruction received from the Government.
Lord Ashtown proved his case and was awarded compensation. But the
matter did not end there. He had employed a surveyor, Mr. Scully, to
draw plans and take photographs showing the amount of the damage. Mr.
Scully was surveyor to the Waterford Corporation. It was proposed at
the next meeting of the Corporation that he should be dismissed from
his office for having given evidence for Lord Ashtown. The motion
was carried unanimously, eight councillors being present; and at the
following meeting it was ratified by eight votes to two. A question
was asked about the matter in the House of Commons; and Mr. Birrell,
with the figures before him, replied that Mr. Scully had never been
dismissed.
Two other instances of this period must be briefly referred to. It
has already been shown how the Irish Parliament endowed Maynooth as a
College for Roman Catholic students both lay and theological; and how
Trinity College, Dublin, opened its doors to all students, without
distinction of creed. But the Roman Catholic Church turned Maynooth
into a seminary for theological students only; and the bishops forbade
young laymen to go to Trinity. In 1845 Sir Robert Peel attempted to
supply the want by founding the Queen's University, with Colleges at
Belfast, Cork and Galway, where mixed education should be given in
secular subjects, and separate instruction in those appertaining to
religion; but that again was denounced as a "satanic scheme for the
ruin of faith in the rising generation"; and the crusade against
the university was so successful that in 1879 it was destroyed and
another--the Royal University--put in its place. This in its turn was
abolished in 1909; the College at Belfast was raised to the status
of a University, and a new University ominously called the "National
University" was founded into which the existing Colleges at Cork and
Galway were absorbed, with a new and richly endowed College in Dublin
at the head. It may seem strange that the Radical Government who are
pledged to destroy all religious education in England should found and
endow a Denominational University in Ireland. But the matter could be
arranged by a little judicious management and prevarication; it was
represented in Parliament that the new University was to be strictly
unsectarian; during the debate, Sir P. Magnus, the member for the
London University, said that he had no reason to believe that there
was any intention on the part of the Chief Secretary to set up
denominational Universities in Ireland; he accepted his word that they
were to be entirely undenominational. Then, when the Act was passed,
the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin was appointed Chancellor of
the National University, with a number of Jesuits as Professors, and
Cardinal Logue stated as follows:--
"No matter what obstacles the Nonconformists may have inserted
in the Constitution of the University to keep it from being
Catholic, we will make it Catholic in spite of them."
Personally, I do not object to denominational Universities. I regret
that young men who are going to live in the same country should not be
able to study law and medicine together; but if that is their feeling
and the feeling of their parents, I admit that having separate
Universities may be the best solution of the difficulty. But if so,
let it be openly avowed that the University is denominational; to
"make it Catholic" and at the same time to say that it is no injustice
to Protestants that County Scholarships paid for by the ratepayers
should be tenable there and nowhere else, seems to me absurd.
The other incident to which reference must be made was the great
Convention held in Dublin in 1909. The Nationalists, believing that
a Home Rule Bill would soon be introduced, devised the scheme of
assembling a monster Convention, which would be evidence to the world
of how admirably fitted the Irish people were to govern their own
country. It was attended by 2,000 delegates from all parts of the
country, who were to form a happy family, as of course no disturbing
Unionist element would be present to mar the harmony and the clerical
element would be strong. Mr. Redmond, who presided, said in his
opening address:--
"Ireland's capacity for self-government will be judged at home
and abroad by the conduct of this Assembly. Ireland's good
name is at stake, and therefore every man who takes part
in this Assembly should weigh his words and recognise his
responsibility."
The meeting ended in a free fight.
At the end of 1909 Mr. Asquith did a very clever thing. A general
election was pending, and he wished to avoid the mistake which
Gladstone had made in 1885. He therefore, at a great meeting at
the Albert Hall unfolded an elaborate programme of the long list of
measures which the Government would introduce and carry, and in the
course of his remarks said that Home Rule was the only solution of
the Irish problem, and that in the new House of Commons the hands of
a Liberal Government and of a Liberal majority would in this matter be
entirely free. He and his followers carefully abstained from referring
to the subject in their election addresses; and Mr. Asquith was thus
free, if he should obtain a majority independent of the Irish vote,
to say that he had never promised to make Home Rule part of his
programme; but if he found he could not retain office without that
vote, he might buy it by promising to introduce the Bill and refer to
his words at the Albert Hall as justification for doing so. The latter
happened; hence the "Coalition Ministry." The Irish party consented to
please the Radicals by voting for the Budget, and the Nonconformists
by voting for Welsh Disestablishment, on condition that they should
in return vote for Home Rule. As Mr. Hobhouse (a Cabinet Minister)
expressed it in 1911:--
"Next year we must pay our debt to the Nationalist Members,
who were good enough to vote for a Budget which they detested
and knew would be an injury to their country."
But the people of England still had to be hood-winked. It was hardly
likely that they would consent to their representatives voting for
the separation of Ireland from Great Britain; so the Nationalists and
their Radical allies went about England declaring that they had
no wish for such a thing; that all they desired was a subordinate
Parliament leaving the Imperial Parliament supreme. Thus Mr. Redmond
suggested at one meeting that Ireland should be conceded the right
of managing her own purely local affairs for herself in a subordinate
Parliament, subject to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament; and
at another meeting said:
"We are not asking for a Repeal of the Union. We are not
asking for the restoration of a co-ordinate Parliament such
as Ireland had before the Union. We are only asking that
there should be given to Ireland a subordinate Parliament. We
therefore admit the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. That
means that after this subordinate Parliament is created in
Ireland, if the Parliament is foolish enough, rash enough, as
it never will be, but if it were foolish enough and criminal
enough to use the powers given to it for injustice or
oppression of any class or creed, the Imperial Parliament
would have the power to stretch forth the arm of its authority
and to say 'you shall not do that.'"
Of course it may be argued that they had changed their minds; that
in former times they worked for separation, but now realised that
a subordinate Parliament was all that Ireland required. But
unfortunately for this theory, they have themselves repudiated it;
when Mr. Redmond was accused of speaking with two voices, one in
America and one in Great Britain, he passionately replied:--
"I indignantly deny that accusation. I have never in my life
said one word on a platform in America one whit stronger than
I had said in my place on the floor of the House of Commons.
I have never in America or anywhere else, advocated the
separation of Ireland from Great Britain."
How far this is true, the quotations from his speeches which have
already been given, will have shown. But the Government have kept up
the farce; Mr. Winston Churchill said during the debate on the Bill of
1912:--
"The Home Rule movement has never been a separatist movement.
In the whole course of its career it has been a moderating,
modifying movement, designed to secure the recognition of
Irish claims within the circuit of the British Empire."
But not even the immediate prospect of Home Rule can be said to have
made those parts of Ireland where the League is supreme a happy place
of residence to any but advanced Nationalists. The following report of
a case in the Magistrate's Court at Ennis in November 1912 will speak
for the condition of the County Clare:--
Patrick Arkins was charged with knocking down walls on the
farm of Mrs. Fitzpatrick in order to compel her to give up the
farm. Inspector Davis gave evidence that from January 1910 to
that date there were 104 serious outrages in his district.
In 42 firearms were used, 27 were malicious injuries, 32 were
threatening notices, 1 case of bomb explosion outside a house,
1 robbery of arms, and 1 attempted robbery. A sum of £268 had
been awarded as compensation for malicious injury and there
were claims for £75 pending for malicious injuries committed
during the week ended 11th inst. There were two persons under
constant police protection, and 16 receiving protection by
patrol. Head Constable Mulligan said that Mrs. Fitzpatrick was
under police protection. Since February 11th, 1912, there had
been 12 outrages in the district, Mrs. Fitzpatrick was under
almost constant police protection. Acting Sergeant Beegan
deposed that there had been 12 outrages on the Fitzpatrick
family during the last four years; these included driving
cattle off the lands, threatening notices, firing shots at the
house, knocking down walls, spiking meadows; the new roof of
a hay barn was perforated with bullets, and at Kiltonaghty
Chapel there were notices threatening death to anyone who
would work for Mrs. Fitzpatrick. Timothy Fitzpatrick gave
similar evidence as to the outrages, and said that his father
had taken the farm twenty-one years ago, and had paid the son
of the former tenant £40 for his goodwill.
(I may add that Arkins was committed for trial, convicted at the
Assizes and sentenced to seven years penal servitude; and was released
by Mr. Birrell a few weeks afterwards.)
In another Clare case, in February of the present year, the resident
Magistrate said as follows:--
"It is a mistake to say that these outrages are arising out
of disputes between landlord and tenant; nine out of ten arise
out of petty disputes about land. What is the use of having
new land laws? A case occurred not long ago in this county of
a man who had bought some land twenty years ago, and paid down
hard cash to the outgoing tenant. The man died, and left a
widow and children on the land for fourteen years. But in 1908
a man who had some ulterior object got the man who had sold
the farm to send in a claim under the Evicted Tenant's Act,
which was rejected. That was what the advisers of the man
wanted--they only wanted a pretext for moonlighting and other
disgraceful outrages, and the woman was kept in a hell for
four years. A man was caught at last and convicted, and one
would think that this was a subject for rejoicing for all
right-minded men in the county. But what was the result? A
perfect tornado of letters was printed, and resolutions
and speeches appeared in the public press, condemning this
conviction of a moonlighter in Clare as an outrage against
justice."
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, in a sermon preached in
December 1912, referring to County Clare said:--
"That county had had an evil record in the matter of crime,
and they were so accustomed to outrages of almost weekly
occurrence around them that it was not easy to shock them.
There was an inoffensive family sitting round the fireside
with a couple of neighbours. They had given no offence, they
had wronged no man, they had crossed no man's path. But that
inhuman beast went to the door and lifted the latch, and
there, at a few yards distance, fired into that innocent group
of men, women and children, as if they were a flock of crows,
killing the mother outright and almost blowing the forehead
off a young girl. There was no denying the fact that that
brutal murder was the natural outcome of the disgraceful
system of intimidation and outrage that had been rampant for
a long time in certain districts of that unhappy county and
of the immunity from punishment enjoyed by the wicked and
cowardly moonlighter. In addition to their other acts of
savagery, they had shot out the eyes of two men within the
last couple of years. A decent, honest man was shot on the
road to Ennis. The people passed the wounded man by and
refused to take him into their car through fear. Not one
of these well-known miscreants was brought to justice. The
murderers of poor Garvey, the cow-houghers, the hay-burners,
were said to be known. In any other country, for instance in
the United States, such ruffianism would be hunted down or
lynched; but there, in the places he referred to, they had
a curtain of security drawn round them by the cowardice or
perverted moral sense on the part of the community amongst
whom they lived.... It was only last Thursday night, before
the county had recovered from the shock of Mrs. O'Mara's
murder, that right over the mountain an unfortunate postman
was shot on the public road between Crusheen and Baliluran for
no other reason apparently than that another fellow wanted his
job of one and six-pence a day! It has come to this, that if
you differ with one of them for a shilling, or refuse to give
him his way in everything the first thing that comes into his
head is to moonlight you.... They have not elevation or social
instinct to settle their petty disputes by process of law
provided for the purpose by a civilized society, nor have they
Christianity enough to bear a little wrong or disappointment
for Christ's sake. No, nor the manliness even to meet an
opponent face to face and see it out with him like a man; but
with the cunning of a mean and vicious dog, he steals behind
him in the dark and shoots him in the back, or murders the
helpless woman of his family, or shoots out the eyes of the
poor man's horse, or cuts the throat of his bullock and spikes
his beast upon a gate."
Nor has the present year brought much improvement. In May 1913, Mr.
R. Maunsell was fired at and wounded close to the town of Ennis. His
crime was that he managed a farm for a Mr. Bannatyne, whose family had
been in possession of it for about sixty years, but who had recently
been denounced by the United Irish League and ordered to surrender it.
As he has refused to do so, he is now compelled to live under police
protection.
The abolition of landlordism and the acquisition of firearms can
hardly be said to have brought peace and tranquillity to the County of
Clare.
And as to Galway, we may gather the state of affairs from the report
of a case tried at the Winter Assizes of 1912. Three men were charged
with having done grievous bodily harm to a man named Conolly. Conolly
swore that he knew a man named Broderick who had become unpopular but
he (Conolly) kept to him and this brought displeasure on him from the
accused and others. On the night of the 11th September he went to bed;
he was subsequently awakened and found 44 grains of shot in his left
knee and four in his right. He then lay flat on the floor. Other shots
were fired through the window but did not strike him. The judge said
the district was a disgrace to Ireland. Day after day, night after
night, heaps of outrages were committed there, and not one offender
was made amenable to justice. The jury disagreed, and the accused were
again put on their trial. The judge in charging the jury on the second
trial said that then, and for some time, the district was swarming
with police, and though outrages were frequent, it was impossible for
them to bring anyone to justice. No one was sure he might not be fired
at during the night; and people were afraid to give evidence. The jury
again disagreed.
During the autumn of 1912 an effort was made to hold a series of
meetings throughout the south and west of Ireland to protest against
Home Rule. The conduct of the Nationalists with regard to them
supplies a striking commentary on Mr. Redmond's statement at Banbury
not long before, that all through his political life he had preached
conciliation towards those who differed from him on the question
of Home Rule. The meetings were in some cases stopped by force; at
Limerick the windows of the Protestant Church and of some houses
occupied by Protestants were smashed; at Tralee the principal speaker
was a large farmer named Crosbie; all his hay and sheds were burned
down, and he was awarded £600 compensation by the County Court Judge.
But an incident had occurred in the north which, though in a sense
comparatively slight, has, in consequence of the circumstances
connected with it, done more to inflame the men of Ulster than persons
not living in Ireland can realise. In June of last year a party of
Sunday School children from a suburb of Belfast went for a picnic to
Castledawson (co. Derry) under the charge of a Presbyterian minister
and a few teachers and ladies. On their way back to the railway
station, they were met and assailed by a procession of men belonging
to the Order of Hibernians armed with pikes who attacked the children
with the pikes and with stones, seized a Union Jack which a small
boy was carrying, and knocked down and kicked some of the girls and
teachers. Worse might have happened had not some Protestant young men,
seeing what was going on, come to the rescue. The minister was struck
with stones whilst he was endeavouring to get some of the children
to a place of safety. No Nationalist has ever expressed the slightest
regret at the occurrence. Several of the aggressors were tried at the
Winter Assizes and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. Before
the end of the term they were released by order of the Government. Mr.
Birrell, in justifying his action, said that the judge had remarked
that there was no evidence before him of actual injury. This, like
many of his statements, was literally true; but he omitted to mention
that he had prevented the evidence from being given; the injured women
and children were quite ready to give their testimony, but were not
called by the counsel for the crown.
It is unnecessary to say that this foretaste of Home Rule government
has made the Presbyterians of Ulster more determined than ever to
resist it to the bitter end.
I shall next proceed to consider the Bill which the Government have
introduced as a panacea for the woes of Ireland.