GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



399 



after another, the men who remained on the es- 

 tate were forced to give up their premises and 

 join the combination. To combat boycotting 

 the Government resorted to the new custom 

 called " shadowing." Persons suspected of in- 

 citing or encouraging boycotting were attended 

 wherever they went in public by a policeman in 

 uniform, or sometimes by two, one walking at 

 the side and the other close at the heels of the 

 suspected individual. In this manner the popu- 

 lar priests, Father Humphreys and Father Ken- 

 nedy, were dogged about. The practice was 

 loudly denounced by Mr. Gladstone and his fol- 

 lowers as an abomination, a degrading punish- 

 ment without trial. Boycotting notices bearing 

 the names of Mr. Smith-Barry's tenants who 

 secretly paid rent were posted on June 24 and 

 Aug. 18, crops were destroyed, windows were 

 smashed, shots were fired on various occasions, 

 several rude bombs were exploded, and the 

 police were assaulted, but only twice, for they 

 were everywhere present in numbers, and an 

 English regiment was quartered in the town as 

 a reserve force. In September fresh evictions 

 took place, and the last of the tenants were 

 driven from the Youghal and Glensharold 

 estates. 



On Sept. 16 a warrant was issued for the arrest of 

 William O'Brien and John Dillon, together with 

 Thomas Joseph Condon, David Sheehy, and Pat- 

 rick O'Brien, three other members of Parliament, 

 the Rev. David Humphreys, and six others, on the 

 charge of having taken part in a criminal con- 

 spiracy to induce persons not to pay rent to 

 Arthur Hugh Smith-Barry. Their arrest took 

 place just as the two lead'ers were on the point 

 of embarking for the United States, and was 

 attributed to a desire on the part of the Govern- 

 ment to defeat their mission. With the promi- 

 nent Nationalists who hastened to Tipperary 

 when the trial opened on Sept. 25 went John 

 Morley. A crowd assembled to receive Patrick 

 O'Brien, who was conveyed as a prisoner on the 

 same train, raised a cheer for the ex-Chief Sec- 

 retary for Ireland, whereupon the police charged 

 with their batons. When the hour for the trial 

 came people gathered before the gates of the 

 court-house and struggled for entrance. The 

 police, who had orders to admit only those in- 

 terested in the trial, repeatedly drove them back 

 with their clubs, wounding many, among them 

 Mr. Harrison, member of Parliament for Tippe- 

 rary, and provoking the citizens to fury, until 

 finally Col. Caddell, the district magistrate, was 

 persuaded to open the doors. Mr. Dillon and 

 Mr. O'Brien both objected to being tried before 

 Resident-Magistrate Shannon, but their objec- 

 tion was overruled. The trial was postponed, the 

 procedure of the obsolete act of Edward III pre- 

 cluding appeal was adopted, and the two prison- 

 ers, who had given bail, determined to escape in 

 order to fulfill the mission to America intrusted 

 to them by the Convention of the Nationalist 

 party held in Dublin. Leaving Dublin clandes- 

 tinely, they sailed in a pleasure yacht to Cher- 

 bourg, and took passage on a steamer for New 

 York in the middle of October. 



The conference of the Irish Parliamentary 

 party convened at Dublin on Oct. 6, by Mr. Par- 

 nell, although he remained away, passed resolu- 

 tions : (1) Demanding that the bodies of tenants 



evicted in a mass by the Irish Executive acting 

 in conjunction with syndicates of landlords, al- 

 though they have always been willing to submit 

 their claims to arbitration, should, by a legisla- 

 tive enactment, be restored to their holdings on 

 terms similar to those of the act of 1887; (2) 

 calling on the Government in view of the fact 

 that a large part of the population in all the 

 western seaboard counties is in imminent danger 

 of famine, to introduce a bill to suspend pro- 

 ceedings for the recovery of rent in holdings un- 

 der 20 a year, and draw plans for useful and re- 

 productive works to save the people from starva- 

 tion ; (3) expressing amazement and indignation 

 at the arrest of five members of Parliament, in 

 presence of a threatened famine, on the eve of 

 the departure of two of them to America to in- 

 voke aid for the suffering people, and appealing 

 for subscriptions to enable .the Tenants' Defense 

 Association to frustrate the latest despairing de- 

 vice of the Tory coercionists ; (4) commissioning 

 John Dillon, William O'Brien, T. D. Sullivan, T. 

 P. O'Connor, Timothy Harrington. W. Abraham, 

 and T. P. Gill, to proceed to the United States 

 for the purpose of explaining the circumstances 

 of the struggle in Ireland and the enormous bur- 

 den placed on the national resources by the late 

 wholesale clearances and the heavier expenditure 

 necessitated by the coming general election. 



Contest over the Irish Leadership. The 

 suit of Capt. William H. O'Shea for a divorce 

 from his wife, Catherine O'Shea, a daughter of 

 the Rev. Sir John Page Wood, and sister of Gen. 

 Sir Evelyn Wood, in which Charles Stewart Par- 

 nell was made corespondent, came up for trial 

 on Nov. 15, the petition having been pending 

 since Dec. 24, 1889. It had been averred that 

 Mr. Parnell would come out of the trial " with 

 out a stain on his honor," and a denial was 

 entered ; yet when the case was called, Mrs- 

 O'Shea's lawyer announced that he did not in- 

 tend to cross-examine or call witnesses or take 

 any part in the proceedings, and no one appeared 

 for Mr. Parnell, the respondent having chosen to 

 let the case go undefended. Testimony was of- 

 fered to show that since Mr. Parnell first be- 

 came acquainted with Capt. O'Shea, in 1880, 

 when tlie latter was elected to Parliament, and 

 was introduced into his home, the Irish leader 

 had secretly visited Mrs. O'Shea in her husband's 

 absence, had lodged in her house, and had met 

 her in other houses rented under false names ; 

 and that, so far from conniving, Capt. O'Shea 

 had exerted all his influence over his wife to in- 

 duce her to cease to communicate with Mr. Par- 

 nell ; had challenged him to a duel when his sus- 

 picions were first confirmed : had been answered 

 by both with ingenious and circumstantial false- 

 hoods ; and had endeavored to the last to put an 

 end to the scandal, for his children's sake. On 

 the verdict of the jury, affirming adultery with 

 no connivance on the husband's part, Justice 

 Butt, on Nov. 17, pronounced a decree dissolv- 

 ing the marriage. 



The Irish Parliamentary party, feeling that 

 the suit had been brought for political ends, were 

 not inclined to desert their leader, although the 

 case of Sir Charles Dilke furnished a precedent 

 for the view that, in the Liberal party at least, a 

 man against whom a similar charge of immoral- 

 ity had been established in the divorce court 



