The Manawatu Herald. Thursday. February 4. 1909. LAWLESSNESS IN IRELAND.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 450, 4 February 1909, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday. February 4. 1909. LAWLESSNESS IN IRELAND.

The Loudon Times, commenting, in its issue of December 15th, on the State of Ireland, remarks that in spite of Mr Birrell’s confident language the condition of Ireland in regard to lawlessness is now worse than at any time since the defeat of the second Home Rule Bill. As Mr Butcher said in a recent speech at Belfast, when commenting upon the Chief Secretary’s statement that his desire was “to associate the people with the administration of the law,” what has, in fact, been done is to “ dissociate the Government from the administration of the law.” The inaction of the executive practically amounts to complicity in lawlessness, and lawlessness —as it was quite certain would be the case when the Chief Secretary pointedly declined to make use of the powers entrusted to the Executive by the Crimes Act of 18S7 — has been rapidly spreading from point to point and from day to day. Scarcely a week passes without some new invasion of private rights and some new affront of public law. The land war is no longer confined to the agitation against the letting of grass lands for cattle feeding, or to the prosecution of organised attacks upon holdings from which tenants have been evicted many years ago. Individual liberties are threatened in all directions whetever persons do not immediately conform to the “unwritten law.” Cases have recently occurred in which mobs have forcibly interfered to prevent people from getting mairied, although they and their families had made all arrangements for the ceremony. In one instance obstructions were placed along the road by which the wedding party was returning, and a fusillade was opened upon the guests, male and female, whose cars were stopped. In another case the funeral of a Protestant gentleman who was to have been biuied by the Church of Ireland clergyman in bis own parish church, of which lie had been for many years churchwarden, was forcibly interrupted by a large gathering armed with sticks, who tore the coffin from the hands of his relatives with threats and blows, refusing to allow him to be buried as a Protestant. The ordinary law, on which Mr Birrell still professes to rely, is treated with open contempt, no only when prosecutions are initiated in Court, but when the police are sent out with the object of restraining outrage or unlawful attacks upon property. Patrols of constabulary have more than once lately been attacked by ambushed and armed peasants, among whom, as some of the judges have lately pointed out, the free possession and use of revolvers has become, since the repeal of the Arms Act, more and more dangerously common. All this has been accompanied by a great and progressive increase of threatening letters and other forms of intimidation, including firing into dwelliughouses.