More Outrages'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 10, 7 March 1907, Page 10

More Outrages'

1 These is no "sense ' says Mark Twain in his ' Joan of Arc ', ' in forming an opinion when there is no evidence to form it on. If - you build a person without bones in- him, he may look fair enough to the eye, • but he will be limber and cannot stand up ; and I consider that evidence is the 'bones of .an opinion '. * • The ' Wanganiui Herald ' has been forming an opinion on ' The State of Ireland '. But it so happens that it has no evidence, properly so called, to form it 0n.,. It /lias, so to speak,. been building up a person without hones in him — making out a case without the necessary equipment of proven fact, sci that when put to the . test it cannot stand up for a moment against criticism, but flops and slobbers about like a jolly when it ' jells '. GaiTgantua tickled himself to make himself laugh, and our northern contemporary has built a (journalistic) boneless bogey to frighten itself. withal. For it finds the most distressful country in a very pa r lous state indeed. A man named Hall has (so we are told) been boycotted by unknown persons at Loughrea ; the cattle of an unknown person in an unknown place have been driven by unknown persons 'no one knows where '; • and two (named) landlords have police-guards. Hare we have pioof positive that the showers of white gloves at Irish assizes are an optical illusion. „• that the alert and lynx-eyed military constabulary that swarm in unexampled numbers in every part of the country have suddenly become as sightless' as ' blind eld Dandolo ' ; that the Chief Secretary for Ireland lied in his teeth when he recently .described the condition of Ireland ~ as singularly peaceful and tranquil ; and that, somehow, the official "figures are all - awry when 1 they proclaim Erin the least criminal country in the British Isles. It takes some pretty solid evidence indeed— something more serious than the unproven ex-parte assertions of hostile witnesses— to set aside the highest and most authoritative official testimony in regard to crime in Ireland. The only evidence offered by the ' Herald ' are statements made by correspondents in

two such notoriously anti-Irish papers as the London ' Times ' and the ' Daily Mail '. .The only tangible incident recorded by one of Vhem in the -i Herald ' (the boycott of Hall) looks- remarkably like the sort of story that is commonly supposed to be specially suited to -the marines. The rest are vague generalities, and may be. dismissed from consideration until names, dates, and confirmatory evidence are forthcoming. The ' Herald' forgot to put the bones into' its putty figure.

We have dealt so recently with the statistics of crime, and the character and distribution of crime, in Ireland that there is no necessity for entering into the subject here. We will merely; remark that at this hour of the day the old and well tried ..political expedient of manufacturing Irish • outrages ' to suit party requirements has become rather stale, and somewhat disreputable into the b.argain. Still, at the present juncture we must look for a certain measure of ■' outrage '- mongering among the more desperate and less scrupulous of the. anti-Home Rule • press and party. But the 'day

seems to be gone for ever when every measure of relief for Ireland, ' and 'every Coercion Bill, were heralded by . storms of bogus ' Irish agrarian outrages ' that fell upon the public as a bombardment of November meteors falls upon the patient earth. For the rest, if out Wanganui contemporary is really ' onaisy in" its -mind ' about boycotting in Ireland, it will find a wealth of matter to agonise about in the wholesale discrimination that is practised against Catholics in the Government" of Ireland — in the great offices of State in Dublin. Castle, in the Irish Privy Council ; in the - J udigesihips ; in the Crown SoHoitorships ;- in the police force ; in the.Permanent Staff of the Local Government Board ; mi the great railway corporations ; an the magistracy '; and in municipal life of Belfast, Derry, and Portadown, and all over the Jodge-ridden areas of Ulster.- The figures arc before vs — an unpleasantly, bulky pile of tbem. We are prepared to submit them to our Wanganui contemporary. An.d then if it has tears to shed, let it pre- • pare to shed them.