IRISH MATTERS

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 380, 26 June 1889, Page 4

IRISH MATTERS

The Most Rev. Pierse Power, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Waterford and Losmore, is dead. The work of evicting tenants was continued on the Olpherto estate, May 24th. The evictors met with desperate resistance. Inspector Dufl was badly wounded, the tenants erected barricades and hurled stones and boiling water upon the evictors. A number of policemen were badly scalded. Fourteen tenants were arrested. The first two games of the tennis tournament in Dublin, on May 24th, were very exciting. Lewis and Hilyard beat the famous Henshaw Brothers — their first defeat. On the 24th a great surprise was caused by Hamilton beating Will Henshaw. Hamilton played Ernest Henshaw on the 25th for the championship of Ireland, and beat him handsomely. \ ; At the Falcurragh eviction on May 27th, another conflict occurred between the policemen and the tenants, in which 25 of the former were wounded.

PARNELL'S EXPLANATION. On May 7fch, before the Commission, Parnell corrected his testimony of the week j preceding. He said he had been misled. The fact was when bo Baid in the Commons that Bibbonism and Ribbon Societies generally were dead, he did not refor to conspiracies at large. When he addressed the Commons, therefore, his speech stated only the truth, and he now stood by that speech. He said General Millen and the other members of the " Physical Force " party were strangers to him. Never heard that Egan had joined the Clan-na-Gael. A man could not be a member of that society and true to the League's policy. Any member of the League who advocated the use of dynamite would be a traitor. Father Egan was before the Commission on the 15th, and Father O' Donovan on the 17th. The former said no serious crime had been committed since the formation of the Loughrea branch of the League, except /the murder of Policeman Lyntin — a crime he had denounced from the altar. The latter considered the increase of crime during the League's existence due to evictions. William OBrien testified on the 21st of May that the Leagua prevented wholesale famine and a fearful war in the west of Ireland in 1870. No murders had been committed in Tipperary since its formation. Deputations from all the municipalities of Ireland except Belfast and Londonderry visited London on the 23rd May to present Parnell with an address of congratulation on the result of the Piggott disclosures. The solicitors for the " Times " have paid into Court £2, accompanying the payment with the defence that the sum was enough to satisfy the claim of plaintiff in the Parnell action for libel againat the paper. Editor OBrien was again before the Parnell Commission on the 22nd May. He said the League was formed to oppose the secret landlord combinations, to evict by wholesale and replace the evicted by colonies of tenants from other countries. Witness had attended a convention in America in 1886, but had no connection with dynamiters while there. Irishmen repelled criminality ; but " as to illegality meaning irreverence for law as law, illegality is bred in us." (Laughter.) It was impossible to say what was legal and whafc was illegal in Ireland. The League weaned nineteentwentieths of the people in Ireland from secret societies.