404 



GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



street-car stablemen, and a Nationalist was 

 killed. In the night of August 14 Roman Catho- 

 lics stoned the houses of Protestants, and the 

 latter fired with rifles into the crowd. 



On several occasions the military were called 

 out. Attacks were made on the police in 

 their barracks, who had to be protected from 

 the fury of the mob by the soldiery. The ag- 

 gressions, especially in the early part of the 

 riots, proceeded mainly from the Orangemen. 

 They attacked the police because they were 

 offended with the Government for selecting 

 Catholic policemen. The number of persons 

 killed during the disturbances is not known. 

 Each party, wishing to appear victorious, mag- 

 nified the number of adversaries killed, and 

 minimized its own losses. There were nearly 

 600 wounded persons treated by the physicians 

 of the town, of whom 34 died. A number of 

 the retail stores of the town, which are most- 

 ly kept by Catholics, were wrecked and plun- 

 dered by Orangemen. The districts inhabited 

 solely by Protestants or Catholics were not 

 the scenes of the disorders, except in the early 

 period of the rioting, when the police tried in- 

 effectually to protect the shops and hostelries 

 of Catholics in the Protestant quarter. The 

 police were ultimately withdrawn from the 

 Orange quarter in order to prevent continual 

 bloodshed, and their place was taken by pa- 

 trols of soldiers. The streets where the two 

 parts of the town join and the hostile popula- 

 tions live near each other, sometimes at the 

 different ends of the same street, were the 

 principal battle-ground. Even women who 

 were found in the district of the other faction 

 were set upon and cruelly beaten, and in one 

 case murdered. The police who guarded the 

 border district were constantly stoned by 

 crowds of men and boys, and occasionally re- 

 plied with volleys of buckshot. The hostility 

 to the police was the cause of the continuance 

 of the riots. A remark of John Morley in the 

 House of Commons that the police would be 

 able to deal with Orange disorders, and the 

 drafting of Catholic policemen from the coun- 

 try districts to Belfast after the first outbreak 

 in June, prompted the murderous feeling 

 against the police. On August 7 the troops res- 

 cued several of the police just in time to save 

 their lives, but were attacked by the rioters, 

 who beat down their bayonets with stones, 

 rescued a number of Orangemen who had been 

 captured, and nearly recaptured the police. 

 On August 9, 1,200 additional troops were 

 brought to the city. The stone-throwing from 

 behind corners or over the tops of houses, 

 with which the riots began, was succeeded by 

 rifle-firing, which was kept up all night long 

 from the roofs of the houses. On the night 

 of August 14 bands fired on each other from 

 under cover, killing and woanding many peo- 

 ple. Large crowds gathered in the streets, but 

 were kept apart by the troops. When the 

 magistrates obtained the acquiescence of the 

 Orange leaders in the return of the police the 



principal cause of the trouble ceased to oper- 

 ate, and after August 15 no further serious dis- 

 turbances occurred. Protestant employers in 

 Belfast discharged their Catholic workmen to 

 the number of about 600. 



Agrarian Agitation in Wales. The Welsh farm- 

 ers have complained for about ten years of 

 distress. Prominent editors of the vernacular 

 press have pressed their demands for a reduc- 

 tion of rents, and more recently for a remis- 

 sion of the church tithes, and public men like 

 Mr. Bright and Mr. Trevelyan have testified 

 their sympathy with the Welsh farmers and 

 the Welsh laborers, whose wages are 6*. to 8*. 

 a week with board. Inquiries addressed to 

 the farmers by Thomas Gee, a Methodist 

 minister, and editor of the "Baner," in Den- 

 bigh, elicited almost universal expressions of 

 complaint that the rents were from 10 to 30 

 per cent, or more too high. The question 

 whether the clergymen ever remitted any por- 

 tion of the tithes on account of the distress, 

 received not one affirmative reply from any 

 part of Wales. The payment of tithes was 

 felt to be the greatest grievance, because nearly 

 all the Welsh farmers are Dissenters, and sup- 

 port their own churches. In 1886 the tenants, 

 after their request for a remission of 25 per 

 cent, had been rejected, united for a war 

 against tithes, and agreed among themselves 

 to pay none until their demand was conceded, 

 and to resist legal processes by the same means 

 that had been successful in Ireland. The argu- 

 ment that the reduction of the tithes or their 

 total abolition, which was the height of their 

 desire, would have no effect on their position, 

 because the rents would be so much increased, 

 made no impression on them. The tithe war 

 was not, however, carried to extremities, be- 

 cause neither side showed the same determi- 

 nation, nor were the farmers of Wales able to 

 carry out the same organized resistance as in 

 Ireland. In some counties the tithe-owners, 

 after distraining the goods of some of the 

 farmers in order to vindicate their legal rights, 

 compromised by remitting 10 per cent, of the 

 tithe- charge and paying the costs of the legal 

 proceedings. In Flintshire and elsewhere the 

 conflict was continued, chiefly with the Board 

 of Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who are ex- 

 tensive tithe-owners, and who would not join 

 the rectors of the county in offering an abate- 

 ment of 10 per cent. The principal outcome 

 of the struggle was the conviction formed in 

 the minds of leading English politicians that 

 the tithes should be assessed on the landlords; 

 but the aim and wish of the Welsh is to have 

 the Church of England disestablished in Wales. 



Highland Crofter Tronbles. The Crofters were 

 dissatisfied with the land act passed for their 

 relief, and still more with the composition of 

 the land commission intrusted with the read- 

 justment of their rents, alleging that the com- 

 missioners were the nominees of the landlords. 



Serious disturbances occurred on the island 

 of Tiree, one of the Hebrides, belonging to the 



