and
prevented from presenting his views in rational fashion to men the
majority of whom at least were present for honest consideration of
arguments. It is a thing not easily forgotten or forgiven for the
Irishmen who engineered it, that such a ferocious and foolish display
of truculent cowardice should have taken place. For an hour Mr O'Brien
manfully faced the obscene chorus of cat-cries and disorder. He
describes one of the incidents that occurred in the following words:--

"While I was endeavouring, by the aid of a fairly powerful voice, to
dominate the air-splitting clamour around me, Mr Crean, M.P., on the
suggestion of Father Clancy, attempted to reach me, in order to urge
me to give up the unequal struggle. He was no sooner on his legs than
he was pounced upon by a group of brawny Belfast Mollies and dragged
back by main force, while Mr Devlin, with a face blazing with passion,
rushed towards his colleague in the Irish Party, shouting to his
lodgemen: 'Put the fellow out.' At the same time Father Clancy, Mr
Sheehan, M.P., and Mr Gilhooly, M.P., having interposed to remonstrate
with Mr Crean's assailants, found themselves in the midst of a
disgraceful melee of curses, blows and uplifted sticks, Mr Sheehan
being violently struck in the face, and one of the Molly Maguire
batonmen swinging his baton over Mr Gilhooly's head to a favourite
Belfast battle-cry: 'I'll slaughter you if you say another word.'"

So does this Convention go down to history as the beginning of an
infamous period when the sanctity of free speech was a thing to be
ruthlessly smashed by the hireling or misguided mobs of an
organisation professing democratic principles. The miracle of the
Easter Rising was that it put an end to the rule of the thug and the
bludgeonman. But many things were to happen in between.

Certain police court proceedings followed, in which Mr Crean, M.P.,
was the plaintiff. The only comment on these that need now be made is
that Mr Crean's summons for assault was dismissed, and he was ordered
to pay L150 costs or to go to gaol for two months, whilst the police
magistrate who tried the case was shortly afterwards rewarded with the
Chief Magistracy of Dublin!

The Board of Erin now began to march south of the Boyne and to usurp
the functions of the United Irish League wherever it got a footing. It
was frankly out for jobs, preferments and patronage of all kinds, so
that even the dirty crew of place-hunting lawyers which Du