A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF IRELAND'S CONDITION.

Waikato Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1524, 11 April 1882, Page 3

A BIRD 'S EYE VI EW OF IRELAND'S CONDITION.

The state of Ireland at the end of January is thuB desciibed by the correspondent of the S.A. Register :—: — Irish landlordism must be bad indeed when announcements are made by the society papers that Lord Landsdowne has let his town mansion to Lord Roseberry for a term of years and intends shutting Bowood, his magnificent family seat in Wiltshire. He is to live in a smaller house till his Irish tenants think proper to'resume paying their rents. I was present a few nights ago at an address delivered by Mr Gibson, the AttorneyGeneral for Ireland, in the course of which he stated that ladies who had been delicately brought up and been accustomed to consider their prospects in life secure, were at this moment ending their poverty in a workhouse. A friend of mine who is inspector of agencies for an insurance company in Ireland informs me that the state of the country is worse than anything he has ever read of Bulgaria hi its worst days of Turkish misrule. He writes to me regarding a tour of several days which he has just made 411 the counties of Cork and Limerick, Of Limerick town he says that it is splendidly built with handsome quays, but the dead - and alive appearance of all he saw, combined with the absence of shipping, sickened him. A land agent on whom he called showed him his six-shooter, without which he never goes out, as his life has been threatened repeatedly. From Limerick he travelled by the night express to Cork, and in the same compartment were several landlords returning from the Conference which had been held that day in Dublin. They were all armed with pistols— mostly six-shooters— and the next morning the first thing he read in the papers was that one of them had been shot at within fifteen minutes of leaving the station. In the same district, in the week following, an Episcopal clergyman was shot at three times on his way home from celebrating divine service. The only conceivable reason for the attack was that after been warned he had continued to deal at the shop of a boycotted shopkeeper. New kinds of outrages are being invented from day to day, adapted, as one might say, to the character of the district. In Dublin garotting has come into fashion as a safe and speedy means of carrying on the vendetta. Two cases occurred in one night last week, and the victims in both were so badly hurt that they had to be taken to the hospital. Process-servers have been virtually frightened out of their business. The poor fellows, father and son, who disappeared in the vicinity of Lough Mask, are as yet unavenged, and no clue can be obtained to their murderers. Another process-server, who had gone casually into a roadside beer- house, fell into the hands of a drunken mob returning from a Land League hunt, and was mauled within an inch of his life. His assailants rushed upon him with their shillelaghs, and those who had not sticks ran out for stones to pelt him with. He received eight frightful wounds on the head, and his life is considered in danger. A process-server named Abram was sitting in his own house about 10 o'clock, when he was fired at through the window and mortally wounded. The same man was brutally assaulted not many weeks ago, and lost an eye in consequence. Near Ballyhana, a member of the same dangerous and unfortunate profession was fired at and wounded, but not fatally. There have been suspicious deaths among cardrivers who took employment from the police, or from the Emergency Committee. Since Land League hunts came into vogue, gamekeepers have found their duties more exciting than ever. Where they venture to object to the proceedings of the trespassers, they are generally answered with a pot shot from a pistol. One keeper who was thus fired at has judiciously declined to identify his assailants.