visitor sneeringly
asked me how it was that the Irish could not trust one another. I
said, 'We cannot trust these men, and we can give you what ought to be
a satisfactory reason for our distrust. They have been condemned as
criminals by a competent tribunal, presided over by three English
judges, one of them a Roman Catholic. They have been found guilty of
criminal conspiracy, of sympathy with crime, and of having furnished
the means for its committal, and that after the fairest trial ever
held in the world. By a law passed in 1787 by Grattan's Parliament
they would have suffered the punishment of death for this same
criminal conspiracy. And, apart from Home Rule, leaving the present
agitation altogether out of the question, the respectable classes of
Ireland entirely object to be represented by such men, either at
Westminster or College Green. Their conduct has done more to ruin
Ireland than any other calamity which the country has endured for long
ages. They have displayed an ingenuity of torture, and a refinement of
cruelty, worthy of the Inquisition. Look at the case of
District-inspector Murphy, of Woodford, in this county. Not by any
means the worst of the tens of thousands of cases all over the
country, but impressive to me because it came under my own
observation. At the trial of Wilfrid Blunt, Mr. Murphy deposed upon
oath that so severely was he boycotted for the mere performance of his
duty, that his children were crying for bread, and that he was unable
to give them any. Policemen had to bring milk from miles away. In
other cases the pupils of these patriots, the preachers of the Land
League, poured human filth into the water supply of their victims, who
were in many cases ladies of gentle birth and children of tender
years. Go up to Cong, and walk out to the place where Lord Mountmorres
was murdered, near Clonbur. His whole income was L150 or L200, a poor
allowance for a peer, one of the noble house of De Montmorency. He was
shot in broad daylight, a dozen houses within call, and an open
uncovered country, save for low stone walls, all around. The people
danced in derision on the spot where he fell, and threw soil stained
with his life blood in the air. He wanted his due, and, goodness
knows, he was poor enough to satisfy oven an Irish agitator. His name
was down for the next vacancy among the resident magistrates. The
people who were guilty of inciting to those outrages are the most
prominent of the Nationa