inutes the police fled to their barracks--some two hundred and
fifty yards away. So far there is no material discrepancy in the various
versions of this dismal story. What followed is matter of conflicting
testimony. One side alleged that a furious throng rushed after the police,
attacked the barrack, and half murdered a constable outside, and that the
constables inside in order to save their comrade and to beat off the
assailing force, opened fire from an upper window. The other side declared
that no crowd followed the retreating police at all, that the assault on
the barrack was a myth, and that the police fired without orders from any
responsible officer, in mere blind panic and confusion. One old man was
shot dead, two others were mortally wounded and died within a week.

Three days later the affray was brought before the House of Commons. Any
one could see from the various reports that the conduct of the police, the
resistance of the crowd, and the guilt or justification of the bloodshed,
were all matters in the utmost doubt and demanding rigorous inquiry. Mr.
Balfour pronounced instant and peremptory judgment. The thing had happened
on the previous Friday. The official report, however rapidly prepared,
could not have reached him until the morning of Sunday. His officers at
the Castle had had no opportunity of testing their official report by
cross-examination of the constables concerned, nor by inspection of the
barrack, the line of fire, and other material elements of the case. Yet on
the strength of this hastily drawn and unsifted report received by him
from Ireland on Sunday, and without even waiting for any information that
eye-witnesses in the House might have to lay before him in the course of
the discussion, the Irish minister actually told parliament once for all,
on the afternoon of Monday, that he was of opinion, "looking at the matter
in the most impartial spirit, that the police were in no way to blame, and
that no responsibility rested upon any one except upon those who convened
the meeting under circumstances which they knew would lead to excitement
and might lead to outrage."(238) The country was astounded to see the most
critical mind in all the House swallow an untested police report whole; to
hear one of the best judges in all the country of the fallibility of human
testimony, give offhand, in what was really a charge of murder, a verdict
of Not Guilty, after he had read the untested evidence on one