GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



367 



members of the Land League, before the Court 

 of Queen's Bench at Dublin, marked a com- 

 plete change of policy on the part of the Gov- 

 ernment with regard to the Irish agitation. 

 Before the coming together of Parliament in 

 January, the Government had not shown a 

 disposition to adopt extraordinary or repres- 

 sive measures. Parliament had not been con- 

 vened to continue or replace the peace preser- 

 vation act of the preceding Government ; but 

 assurances were given that the existing laws 

 would be sufficient to secure order. The in- 

 dictment of Parnell and other prominent mem- 

 bers of the League on the charge of conspiracy, 

 brought with the purpose of obtaining a ver- 

 dict declaring the Land League to be an illegal 

 body, and the agitators, through their public 

 speeches, to be criminally implicated in the 

 homicides and other agrarian outrages, was the 

 first indication that the Government desired or 

 deemed it within the limits of the constitutional 

 prerogative to suppress the political agitation 

 which they had countenanced until then. 



The conspiracy trial ended on January 24th 

 in the disagreement of the jury, and the dis- 

 charge of the fourteen traversers. Justice 

 Fitzgerald, in summarizing the counts, reduced 

 the charges to five : 



1. That the defendants combined to incite tenants 

 not to pay rents, or not to pay more than Griffith's val- 

 uation ; 2. To incite tenants dispossessed for non-pay- 

 ment of rent to re-enter their holdings ; 3. To prevent 

 persons taking or keeping farms from which tenants 

 had been evicted for non-payment of rent ; 4. To pre- 

 vent persons buying goods taken in execution for rent ; 

 5. To excite the people to "Boycott" those who paid 

 rents or took evicted farms. 



He charged that, if the Land League pursued 

 among its objects incitement to " Boycotting," 

 or to a combination to pay no rent, or delib- 

 erately exerted an influence to prevent the 

 Queen's writs from being served, it was an il- 

 legal assembly, and all its members were guilty 

 of conspiracy. All but two of the jurors, it 

 transpired, were for the conviction of the 

 accused. The release of the prisoners was 

 celebrated by demonstrations of popular re- 

 joicing. 



The favor of the Roman Catholic clergy and 

 the encouragement and assistance of the Irish- 

 Americans were two large and indispensable 

 elements in the success of the Land League. 

 The parochial clergy naturally sided very gen- 

 erally and earnestly with the tenantry. The 

 general weight of the Church's influence was 

 favorable to the agitation until the enactment 

 of the land law and the extreme attitude taken 

 by the League later. After that, those priests 

 who engaged in the movement came in conflict 

 with the conservative tendencies of the Church. 

 Archbishop McCabe, of Dublin, opposed the 

 League openly and bitterly from the beginning, 

 but his influence was far outweighted by that 

 of another high prelate, Archbishop Croke, of 

 Cashel, whose outspoken and eloquent advo- 

 cacy gave the movement a mighty impetus in 

 the stages which preceded the passage of the 



land act. The subject of the establishment of 

 the Ladies' Land League brought these digni- 

 taries into open controversy in March. 



The Government promised that the protec- 

 tion act would not be employed to repress 

 agitation, but was aimed at the "village ty- 

 rants," the instigators of such crimes as the 

 maiming of cattle, burning hay-stacks, dragging 

 men from bed at night, and threatening them 

 with fearful penalties if they pay rent, etc M 

 But, in asking leave to bring in the bill, Mr. 

 Foster charged the Land League with being an 

 unlawful organization, which instituted tribu- 

 nals that usurped jurisdiction in the Queen's 

 dominions, and sought to replace the law of the 

 land with what Mr. Parnell called an " unwrit- 

 ten law." His characterization of the men 

 against whom the act was alleged to be di- 

 rected, the plotters of outrages, as " contempt- 

 ible, dissolute ruffians and blackguards," was 

 remembered when the leaders of the land 

 movement were afterward incarcerated under 

 the act. He claimed to be in the possession of 

 evidence of a dangerous Fenian conspiracy, on 

 which ground treasonable offenses were in- 

 cluded in the act. Immediately after the act 

 received the royal assent, March 2d, the coun- 

 ties of Clare, Galway, Kerry, Leitrim, Limerick, 

 Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, and several baronies 

 in the county of Cork, were proclaimed, and 

 many persons were arrested, among them 

 Michael P. Boyton, a native American, whose 

 friends besought the interposition of the Unit- 

 ed States Government. On May 1st Dublin 

 was proclaimed. On May 2d John Dillon, 

 member of Parliament, who had made vehe- 

 ment appeals to the peasantry to preserve the 

 League organization and resist rack-renting, 

 was lodged in Kilmainham Jail, Dublin. He 

 was on his way to Parliament when arrested 

 within a proscribed district. In August he 

 was released on account of impaired health. 

 The arrest of Father Sheehy, a Catholic priest, 

 caused an intense excitement. 



As soon as the land bill was disposed of, 

 Mr. Parnell moved in the House of Commons, 

 August 17th, a vote of censure on the Govern- 

 ment for the administration of the coercion 

 acts, to the effect that it had not been in ac- 

 cordance with the pledges and declarations 

 given by the ministers when the assent of the 

 House to the suspension of the Constitution in 

 Ireland was being obtained. Of the 192 " sus- 

 pects " in prison, only fourteen were returned 

 as arrested for sending threatening letters, four 

 or five for arson, and eight for maiming cattle. 

 Most of the prisoners, he declared, were sub- 

 stantial tenant-farmers, shop-keepers, poor-law 

 guardians, and other respectable classes of peo- 

 ple. The Solicitor-General for Ireland gave 

 the returns a different interpretation. 



Mr. Gladstone replied that, before the Gov- 

 ernment resorted to exceptional legislation, 

 they had applied to the ordinary tribunals, and 

 had failed to obtain the verdicts they thought 

 necessary for the public peace. He declared 



