GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



341 



the buildings, and the other improvements con- 

 tributed by the tenants. 



The League interfered not only between 

 landlords and tenants, but between the tenant- 

 farmers and their laborers, requiring the farm- 

 ers to supply garden-plots, or in lieu of them 

 seed and manure. Many persons who had in- 

 curred the censure of the local branches of the 

 League published abject apologies for their 

 misconduct. The leaders of the National 

 League could boast, as they have in former 

 years, that never was a similar movement 

 carried on with less violence and fewer excesses. 

 The annual return of agrarian outrages re- 

 ported to the Government was 1,066 in 1866, 

 against 944 during the previous year. The 

 number of cases in which the offenders were 

 convicted was 64, the number of cases in which 

 they were made amenable, but not convicted, 

 was 87, and the number of cases in which they 

 were neither convicted nor made amenable 

 was 899. The most prevalent offense was 

 sending threatening letters. There were 70 

 cases of incendiary fires in Munster and 6 mur- 

 ders, in one of ^ which a conviction was ob- 

 tained. Another murder was reported from 

 Connaught, but none occurred in Ulster or 

 Leinster. 



Many of the tenants were unwilling to ex- 

 pose themselves to the danger of eviction by 

 joining their poorer neighbors in refusing to 

 pay rent when the local branch of the League 

 ordered a general reduction. Most of these 

 secretly paid their rent, but regretted it when- 

 ever the evictions began, and begged to have 

 it refunded or to be served with judicial notices 

 like the rest. 



Proclamation of the National Leagnc. On Au- 

 gust 19 a proclamation was issued by the Lord 

 Lieutenant in council declaring the Irish Na- 

 tional League to be dangerous, on the ground 

 that it " in parts of Ireland promotes and in- 

 cites to acts of violence and intimidation and 

 interferes with the administration of the law." 



The first notable prosecution under the 

 crimes act was that of William O'Brien, mem- 

 ber of Parliament and Lord Mayor of Dublin, 

 for inciting persons to obstruct the sheriff's 

 bailiffs in the discharge of their duty in con- 

 nection with evictions on the estate of the 

 Countess of Kingston, in speeches delivered at 

 Mitchelstown on the 9th aud 10th of August. 

 The Mitchelstown estate is a large one, with 

 750 tenants besides the people of the town. 

 The agricultural tenants demanded a reduction 

 of 20 per cent., and when it was refused 

 adopted the plan of campaign. John O'Con- 

 nor, Dr. Tanner, and William O'Brien col- 

 lected the rents, and Mr. Condon spent several 

 months among the tenants. Proceedings were 

 begun in January against the principal tenants, 

 and in February against the shop-keepers of 

 the town who supported the plan. The farm- 

 ers cleared their farms and ceased all cultiva- 

 tion and the towns-people suspended trading 

 operations. As on many other estates where 



the tenants organized under the plan of cam- 

 paign, the evictions were not carried out. Mr. 

 O'Brien was cited to appear for trial at Mitch- 

 elstown on September 9 ; but the proceedings 

 were begun without him, while a monster 

 meeting assembled from all the neighboring 

 country, and Irish and English members of 

 Parliament came to utter condemnation of the 

 enforcement of coercion. When the meeting 

 was opened, some policemen demanded a pas- 

 sage through the dense crowd for a Govern- 

 ment stenographer, the same who in the court 

 had testified to O'Brien's utterances, such as 

 " I am firmly convinced that if these evictions 

 go on they will end not in the destruction of 

 the tenants, but in the destruction of this sys- 

 tem of landlordism," and " There is nobody to 

 oppose except a parcel of broken-down land- 

 lord robbers and the base blood-suckers and 

 hirelings that cling to them." The constables 

 attempted to force a way for the police re- 

 porter, but the horsemen at the edge of the 

 throng drew closer together. The police then 

 drew their sticks, but received blow for blow. 

 A larger body came up and endeavored with 

 clubs and bayonets to make a passage through 

 the crowd. The peasants resisted, and many 

 were beaten on both sides. Finally, the police 

 retreated to their barracks. Some stones were 

 thrown after them, but no one pursued ; yet 

 when safe in the building they mounted to the 

 upper story and fired at persons standing at a 

 distance in the square below. An old roan 

 named Riordan, who had already received a 

 blow from the musket of a fleeing constable, 

 was instantly killed by a bullet, while another 

 man named Shinnick and a boy of the name of 

 Casey were mortally wounded. In the inves- 

 tigation before the coroner's jury, Mr. Har- 

 rington, member of Parliament, cross-examined 

 witnesses from among the police force, and es- 

 tablished the fact that the shooting was wanton 

 and unprovoked. The jury brought in a ver- 

 dict of willful murder against Inspector Brown- 

 rigg who gave the order and the constable who 

 killed Riordan ; but the officers of the Govern- 

 ment would not place them under arrest or 

 bring them to trial. The outcry raised over 

 the affair in England as well as Ireland, and 

 the rallying word, " Remember Mitchelstown," 

 tittered by Mr. Gladstone to his followers, 

 caused the Government to halt in the policy of 

 terrorism and military violence with which 

 they sought to combat the plan of campaign, 

 and to devise other methods against the Na- 

 tional movement. On September 20 the Lord 

 Lieutenant in council issued orders under the 

 crimes act prohibiting and suppressing the Na- 

 tional League in the county of Clare and parts 

 of Galway, Kerry, Cork, and Wexford, em- 

 bracing about two hundred of the eighteen 

 hundred branches of the League. Soon after- 

 ward the proclamation was extended over 

 eighteen Irish counties, including the whole of 

 Cork, Kerry, and Wexford, Kings County, and 

 Dublin. Although unable to destroy the or- 



