The Home Secretary showed that agrarian crime is still on
the increase. In October, November, and December of last year, the number of agrarian crimes was respectively 54, 55, and 57. In January, February, and March this year, the number was 65, 77, and 99, showing an increase of 83 per cent. since October, 1886. But the case was worse than the number of crimes could at all test. " Throughout large districts in Ireland, there are in active operation societies which call them- selves local committees of the National League, and which consist of a set of busybodies and petty tyrants, who interfere- with every transaction of trade and business, and constrain and coerce the liberties of decent men to carry on their business in an honest way." The interference extends to a degree of minuteness and pettiness unrivalled in any civilised country. They exact apologies from men for doing what they have a perfect right to do; publish private names in newspapers,. and hold them up to odium. The juries in Ireland, says Mr. Matthews, consist half of people whom the Government do not trust to give an honest verdict according to the evidence, and half of people denounced by the Nationalists as "Castle hacks ready to imbrue themselves in innocent blood. What could more absolutely condemn trial by jury in all cases involving revolu- tionary or Conservative sympathies than such a fact as this ? Yet. the Opposition not only refused their support to this Bill, but used language palliating in effect the crimes against which the Bill is aimed. Mr. Parnell boasted that he could discourage outrages, and therefore, " when he and his lieutenants tell us of the dangers that will meet us, we shall not call them threats, but we know what these hints mean. We heartily despise them, and we say that we will not alter our course in the slightest degree." Mr. Stansfeld replied to Mr. Matthews in a speech in which he said that " a Government which could not rule without abolishing triak by jury was not fit to rule at all," which certainly condemns the Government of 1::21 ::5 as strongly as it condemns the present Government. Mr. Stansfeld might just as well say that a Government which cannot rule without abolishing free contract between landlords and tenants is unfit to rule at all.
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