Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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Is Ulster Right

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similar evidence as to the outrages, and said that his father had taken the farm twenty-one years ago, and had paid the son of the former tenant 40 for his goodwill. (I may add that Arkins was committed for trial, convicted at the Assizes and sentenced to seven years penal servitude; and was released by Mr. Birrell a few weeks afterwards.) In another Clare case, in February of the present year, the resident Magistrate said as follows:-- "It is a mistake to say that these outrages are arising out of disputes between landlord and tenant; nine out of ten arise out of petty disputes about land. What is the use of having new land laws? A case occurred not long ago in this county of a man who had bought some land twenty years ago, and paid down hard cash to the outgoing tenant. The man died, and left a widow and children on the land for fourteen years. But in 1908 a man who had some ulterior object got the man who had sold the farm to send in a claim under the Evicted Tenant's Act, which was rejected. That was what the advisers of the man wanted--they only wanted a pretext for moonlighting and other disgraceful outrages, and the woman was kept in a hell for four years. A man was caught at last and convicted, and one would think that this was a subject for rejoicing for all right-minded men in the county. But what was the result? A perfect tornado of letters was printed, and resolutions and speeches appeared in the public press, condemning this conviction of a moonlighter in Clare as an outrage against justice." The Roman Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, in a sermon preached in December 1912, referring to County Clare said:-- "That county had had an evil record in the matter of crime, and they were so accustomed to outrages of almost weekly occurrence around them that it was not easy to shock them. There was an inoffensive family sitting round the fireside with a couple of neighbours. They had given no offence, they had wronged no man, they had crossed no man's path. But that inhuman beast went to the door and lifted the latch, and there, at a few yards distance, fired into that innocent group of men, women and children, as if they were a flock of crows, killing the mother outright and almost blowing the forehead off a young girl. There was no denying the fact that that brutal murder was the natural outcome of the disgraceful system of intimidation and outrage that had been rampant for a long time in certain districts of that unhappy county and of the immunity from punishment enjoyed by the wicked and cowardly moonlighter. In addition to their other acts of savagery, they had shot out the eyes of two men within the last couple of years. A decent, honest man was shot on the road to Ennis. The people passed the wounded man by and refused to take him into their car through fear. Not one of these well-known miscreants was brought to justice. The murderers of poor Garvey, the cow-houghers, the hay-burners, were said to be known. In any other country, for instance in the United States, such ruffianism would be hunted down or lynched; but there, in the places he referred to, they had a curtain of security drawn round them by the cowardice or perverted moral sense on the part of the community amongst whom they lived.... It was only last Thursday night, before the county had recovered from the shock of Mrs. O'Mara's murder, that right over the mountain an unfortunate postman was shot on the public road between Crusheen and Baliluran for no other reason apparently than that another fellow wanted his job of one and six-pence a day! It has come to this, that if you differ with one of them for a shilling, or refuse to give him his way in everything the first thing that comes into his head is to moonlight you.... They have not elevation or social instinct to settle their petty disputes by process of law provided for the purpose by a civilized society, nor have they Christianity enough to bear a little wrong or disappointment

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