342 



GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



ganization, the Government made numerous 

 arrests. T. D. Sullivan, the new Lord Mayor 

 of Dublin, was arrested for publishing in the 

 " Nation " a report of the proceedings of sup- 

 pressed branches of the League. The tirst 

 case against him was dismissed on the techni- 

 cal point that there was no evidence of the 

 meeting except the report ; but the decision 

 was overruled, and he was tried again on a 

 similar charge, sentenced to two months' im- 

 prisonment as a first-class misdemeanant, and 

 lodged in Richmond jail on December 2. 

 Some of the Irish orators against whom war- 

 rants and summonses were taken out evaded 

 arrest by going to England. Mr. Dillon and 

 some of the other leaders transferred their 

 work of agitation to English soil. Mr. Parnell 

 took no part in the extra-parliamentary action 

 of the party during the year, but hid himself 

 from public notice after the close of the session, 

 as he was an invalid and in need of rest. As 

 a check to the English Radicals, who defiantly 

 engaged in the work in Ireland that Irishmen 

 could not continue without going to prison, 

 Wilfrid Blunt was convicted at Woodford, and 

 incarcerated on a criminal sentence for inciting 

 to resist the law. He had held a meeting to 

 denounce the cruelty of the evictions on Lord 

 Clauricarde's estate in spite of the warnings of 

 the authorities, and when it was roughly broken 

 up by the police not only he and many other 

 men, but his wife, Lady Anne Blunt, was bru- 

 tally treated. 



The Highland Crofters. The grievances of the 

 crofters and cottars in the Highlands, and dis- 

 turbances connected therewith, engaged the 

 attention of the Government as well as of the 

 local authorities all through the year. In the 

 last week of 1886 nine men were tried at In- 

 verary for rioting at Easdale, in Argyleshire. 

 Five of the charges were withdrawn, but four 

 were proved, two of the prisoners being sen- 

 tenced to sixty days' and two others to thirty 

 days' imprisonment. In the first week of Janu- 

 ary two other sets of rioters were tried. In 

 the case of eight Garalapin prisoners the 

 charges against two were withdrawn, and the 

 other six were acquitted. Seven Herabusta 

 crofters were tried, of whom three were sen- 

 tenced to two months' and four to one month's 

 imprisonment. At the same time the crofters 

 were encouraged in their resistance to the law 

 and its officers by meetings of their sympa- 

 thizers both in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Some 

 time afterward a little excitement was caused 

 by the arrest of two Skye crofters when in 

 bed, and after that it was found possible to 

 serve notices in Skye without opposition. The 

 tenants on the Ellore estate, in Aberdeenshire, 

 following the example of Ireland, adopted the 

 plan of campaign, and the speeches of Michael 

 Davitt in Dornoch, Dingwall, and at other 

 places in the Highlands, tended to keep the ex- 

 citement alive. Further encouragement was 

 given to the malcontents by decisions partially 

 favorable to the crofters in an action for 



wrongful apprehension raised against Sheriff 

 Ivory. Meantime, a branch of the Land League 

 was established in Skye ; and a conference of 

 land law reformers was held at Oban. There 

 was a fresh outbreak in the island of Lewis in 

 November, when an army of discontented and 

 impoverished cottars made a raid on the deer- 

 forest of Lochs, and slaughtered a number of 

 deer. The prompt appearance on the scene of 

 disturbance of the gunboat " Seahorse " checked 

 the raiders, and the ringleaders subsequently 

 surrendered themselves. At the same time 

 there was a similar and sympathetic movement 

 on the opposite mainland. Certain pasture- 

 lands belonging to the Duke of Sutherland, at 

 Clashmore, in Assynt, were seized by crofters 

 and cottars, who drove their cattle on to them 

 day after day. The crofters claimed the land 

 as theirs, alleging that their forefathers had 

 been unjustly deprived of it. They also ob- 

 jected to the best of the land being rented " to 

 a man of means who had hotels in different 

 parts of the country." Fires occurred at more 

 than one of the Duke's farm- steadings, which 

 aroused suspicions of incendiarism. To bring 

 the offenders to justice in this case was not so 

 easy as in the case of the Lewis cottars. The 

 ringleaders escaped to the hills, and concealed 

 themselves in caves which strangers could not 

 reach. At length the gunboat " Seahorse " 

 was dispatched to Lochinver to protect and 

 support the police in the discharge of their 

 duty, and arrangements were made for vindi- 

 cating the authority of the law in the disturbed 

 district. The labors of the commissioners un- 

 der the crofters act of 1886 were continued 

 during the year. In Sutherland and Caith- 

 ness, in Skye and Uist, rents have been judi- 

 cially reduced by twenty, thirty, and even fifty 

 per cent., and arrears of rent have been wiped 

 off in even a greater ratio. Yet the crofters 

 are not satisfied, and the discontent continues. 

 In South Uist, Lady Cathcart waived her claim 

 to object to leaseholders demanding the fixing 

 of fair rents, but the leaseholders cared little 

 for the concession. In its latest phase the re- 

 lief has taken the form of a proposal for the 

 emigration of necessitous crofters to British 

 Columbia with the aid of the Government. 

 The proposal is to advance 150,000 to enable 

 1,250 families (or about 6,000 persons) to settle 

 on the rich lands of the western continent. It 

 is noteworthy that these disturbances in the 

 Highlands have increased the amount of smug- 

 gling in these regions. For the protection of 

 crofters whose cases were under consideration, 

 a short amending act was passed by Parliament. 

 It provided that, where a crofter had applied 

 to the commissioners to fix a fair rent for his 

 holding, his effects could not be seized or sold 

 for rent until his case had been heard and dis- 

 posed of. 



Socialist Agitation. The misery in London, 

 where the unemployed increased constantly 

 during the year, and great numbers of home- 

 less people from the provinces, as well as the 



