TERRORISM IN IRELAND.

Patea Mail, 21 December 1880, Page 3

TERRORISM IN IRELAND.

TAXI)LuII OS IN SKOIiKT COXFEUEXOK. (From European Mail.) It is difficult for an ordinary Fnglishman to realise the present condition of affairs in Ireland ns they were described by noblemen and gentlemen who assembled in conference the other day in the metropolis, and subsequently waited upon the Lord Lieutenant and Chief Secretary as a representative deputation of the whole body of Irish landlords. In Dublin, the third oily of the United Kingdom, the residence of the Viceroy, the scat of the law courts, and the capital of Ireland, within eleven hours of London by rail, the landed proprietors of the country ore actually obliged to meet in private and discuss measures for the preservation of their lives amlproperty without venturing to do so in public, and allow the names and statements of the speakers to be made known. When her Majesty’s representative and the Minister who is especially charged with Irish interests in the Cabinet are compelled to receive a deputation of one hundred and five landlords and agents almost by stealth, and to listen to the statement of men in the highest social position who tell them that it would cost them their Hues where their names to be made known outside the Council Chamber of Dublin Castle, the people of this country will begin to ask themselves whether such a state of things is to bo allowed to cro on, and if the Government are prepared to admit that it is no longer in their power to protect human life or uphold the public tranquillity and the supremacy of the law in Ireland. Noblemen and gentlemen of the highest,character, and whose testimony it is impossible to doubt, presented themselves before Lord Cowper, and, giving their names and titles in a whisper, told hhn that it was a matter of grave doubt as to whether they would ever reach home alive. Others were pointed out to him in the Council Chamber, who had been long marked by the Vehinfjcriich for assassination, and avlioso death by the bullet or the bludgeon was merely a question of time. Others, again, wore being daily guarded by the police, and lived with their houses almost in a state of siege. It is no exaggeration to say that a reign of terror is prevailing at the present moment in the whole south and west of Ireland, and that every man who is possessed of any property in land, or who, from whatever other reason, is obnoxious to the chiefs of the Land League, carries his life in his hand. Landowners and magistrates arc deterred from the exercise of their rights and their judicial duties; tenants who are willing and anxious to pay their rents (as many unquestionably arc) are forbidden to do so, and should they venture to do it arc obliged to invent some excuse for going to sec the agent, and actually decline to take receipts for the money lest they should bo searched on their way home and exposed to the summary vengeance of the secret tribunal. Outrage succeeds outrage with systematic rapidity alike on man, boast, and property, and there is no longer the slightest confidence reposed in the ability of the law to protect anyone or anything.