ing in
this island about the right to combine, the right of public meeting, the
frequent barbarities of eviction, the jarring indignities of prison
treatment, flowed stronger and stronger. The general impression spread
more and more widely that the Irish did not have fair play, that they were
not being treated about speeches and combination and meetings as
Englishmen or Scotchmen would be treated. Even in breasts that had been
most incensed by the sudden reversal of policy in 1886, the feeling slowly
grew that it was perhaps a pity after all that Mr. Gladstone had not been
allowed to persevere on the fair-shining path of conciliation.

V

The proceedings under exceptional law would make an instructive chapter in
the history of the union. Mr. Gladstone followed them vigilantly, once or
twice without his usual exercise of critical faculty, but always bringing
into effective light the contrast between this squalid policy and his
anticipations of his own. Here we are only concerned with what affected
British opinion on the new policy. One set of distressing incidents, not
connected with the Crimes Act, created disgust and even horror in the
country and set Mr. Gladstone on fire. A meeting of some six thousand
persons assembled in a large public square at Mitchelstown in the county
of Cork.(237) It was a good illustration of Mr. Gladstone's habitual
strategy in public movements, that he should have boldly and promptly
seized on the doings at Mitchelstown as an incident well fitted to arrest
the attention of the country. "Remember Mitchelstown" became a watchword.
The chairman, speaking from a carriage that did duty for a platform,
opened the proceedings. Then a file of police endeavoured to force a way
through the densest part of the (M137) crowd for a government note-taker.
Why they did not choose an easier mode of approach from the rear, or by
the side; why they had not got their reporter on to the platform before
the business began; and why they had not beforehand asked for
accommodation as was the practice, were three points never explained. The
police unable to make a way through the crowd retired to the outskirt. The
meeting went on. In a few minutes a larger body of police pressed up
through the thick of the throng to the platform. A violent struggle began,
the police fighting their way through the crowd with batons and clubbed
rifles. The crowd flung stones and struck out with sticks, and after three
or four m