eated Mr. Gladstone's
remark.
"Oh!" said the Dean; "you may tell him I don't mind his disestablishing
me again; for he didn't disendow me; he didn't confiscate my ticket!"
With this gentleman was another from Kerry, who tells me there is a
distinct change for the better already visible in that county, which he
attributes to the steady action of the Dublin authorities in enforcing
the law.
"The League Courts," he said, "are ceasing to be the terror they used to
be."
I asked what he meant by the "League Courts," when he expressed his
astonishment at my not knowing that it was the practice of the League to
hold regular Courts, before which the tenants are summoned, as if by a
process of the law, to explain their conduct, when they are charged with
paying their rents without the permission of the Local League. In his
part of Kerry, he tells me, these Courts used not very long ago to sit
regularly every Sunday. The idea, he says, is as old as the time of the
United Irishmen, who used to terrorise the country just in the same way.
A man whom he named, a blacksmith, acted as a kind of "Law Lord," and to
him the chairmen of the different local "Courts" used to refer cases
heard before them![5]
All this was testified to openly two years ago, before Lord Cowper's
Commission, but no decisive action has ever been taken by the Government
to put a stop to the scandal, and relieve the tenants from this open
tyranny. These Courts enforced, and still enforce, their decrees by
various forms of outrage, ranging "from the boycott," in its simplest
forms up to direct outrages upon property and the person.
"This dual Government business," he said, "can only end in a duel
between the two Governments, and it must be a duel to the death of one
or the other."
To-night at dinner I had a most interesting conversation with Mr.
Colomb, Assistant Inspector-General of the Constabulary, who is here
engaged with Mr. Cameron of Belfast, and Colonel Turner, in
investigating the affair at Mitchelstown.
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