eft on the road,
the neighbouring farmers being afraid to give the poor corpse the
shelter of a barn; when a car-driver named John Downey was killed by a
bullet intended for Mr. Hutchins, J.P.; when young Wheeler, of Oolagh,
whence I dated a letter, was shot dead, to punish his father, who was
an agent--when all these murders took place, every one of them, and as
many more, the work of the Land League, which also was responsible for
more outrages, filthy indecencies, and gross brutalities than the
entire _Gazette_ would hold, and which would in many cases be unfit
for publication--then were the clergy SILENT. No denunciations from
the altar; no influence exerted in the parish. In many cases a direct
encouragement to persevere in the good path. When John Curtin's
daughters attended church after their father's murder they were
attacked by a hostile crowd. The police were compelled to charge the
infuriated mob. Otherwise the pious Papists would in all probability
have consummated the good work by murdering the remainder of the
family, after having, in the presence of daughters who nobly fought
the murderers, assassinated the father.

What did the good priest, Father O'Connor, say to all this; how
express his deep sense of this abject cowardice, this atrocious
savagery, this unheard-of-sacrilege?

He "took no notice of the occurrence"--good, easy man. But I am
forgetting something. Mr. Curtin was killed by a gang of moonlighters,
who knocked him up, and, presenting loaded rifles at the children,
asked for the father's arms. Before the terrified boys and girls could
comply the father appeared and shot a moonlighter dead in his tracks.
The rest fled precipitately, but unhappily Curtin gave chase and was
killed. Good Father O'Connor attended the funeral of the moonlighter,
who did not belong to his parish, and refused to attend that of Mr.
Curtin, who did!

The Catholic Bishops of Ireland stood by and looked on all this
without a word of censure. Silence gives consent. Had they fulminated
against outrage and secret wholesale murder of poor working men, for
nearly all those I have cited were of this class; had they used their
immense influence to stem the murderous instincts of ruffians who in
many cases took advantage of the prevailing disregard for human life
to wreak their private revenge on their neighbours, satisfied that no
man dare testify, and that the clergy would aid them to frustrate the
law--had the Bishops done