Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 March 1887 — THE IRISH TRIALS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE IRISH TRIALS.

Result of the Traversers’ Trial in Dublin—Disagreement of the Jury. Notwithstanding the desperate efforts of the British Tories to obtain the conviction for conspiracy of Mr. John Dillon, Mr. O’Brien and the other Irish gentlemen who have for six months made heroic efforts to

save Irish tenants from the exactions of heartless landlords, they have failed. The jury at Dublin refused to agree and were discharged. The disagreement is equivalent to a verdict of acquittal. The Government will hardly undertake to put the accused gentlemen in the dock again. At the trial just closed the chances were entirely in favor of the Crown. The venue was changed to Dublin County from Dublin City that a jury of landlords might be obtained. All the leading members of the Irish bar were employed by the Crown to prosecute. The presiding Judge, a son-in-law of the infamous Judge Keogh, and a bitter partisan landlord, presided, and in effect ordered the jury to convict. All this did not avail,

and the Irish “campaigners” stand virtually acquitted and the so-called plan of campaign has received a quasi-legal indorsement. The result is a staggering blow to the Tory Government and policy, and will be disastrous to the Irish landlords. Tenants who have hitherto held back from adopting the plan of campaign, which is no more than a strike against unjust rents and pooling of issues by tenants, so to say, will be emboldened to adopt it now, and the landlords will have to meekly surrender or go without any rents whatever.

Irish Agitations. During the past few months a new form of agitation has arisen in Ireland. The autumn and winter have been a season of distress to the Irish tenants of land, who have found it hard to pay the rent due by them to their landlords. The chief cause of this is the fact that the prices of the products raised on Irish soil have fallen during the past year, while the amount of rent, on many of the estates, has remained at the same figure. While, then, the tenants have received less for their labor, they have been expected to pay the same as before for their land. Rents on very many Irish estates have been lowered during the past five or six years by the land courts, appointed under the land act of 1881. But these lowered rents were fixed at a time when products brought higher prices than they do now. The difficulty which the tenants have had in paying their rents suggested a new plan to£ some of the Irish Nationalists, especially to two members of Parliament, Mr. John Dillon and Mr. William O’Brien, and they organized what is now notorious as “the plan of campaign.” It was the purpose of this plan to protect the tenants from paying to the landlords a rent wnich the organizers of the movement regarded as too high. In brief, it was proposed that the tenants should pay into the* hands of certain designated members of the National League—among others Messrs. Dillon and O’Brien—what was considered a fair rent for the lands they tilled. Money thus received was to be held as a trust The trustees were to proffer to the landlords what they regarded in each case as fair rent; and if the landlords refused to accept it, the trustees were to hold the money for the benefit ifnd support of the tenants who had paid it in. The “plan of campaign” was carried on uccessfully in many cases. Mr. Dillon and others went from place to place and called meetings of the tenants, who flocked in and paid into their hands the sums agreed upon as fair rents. At the same time inflammatory speeches were made, and the agitation became an excited and serious one. But the Government would not allow it to go on. Mr. Dillon was arrested and arraigned, and one of the Irish Judgesudeclared the plan of campaign to be a conspiracy against the law, and therefore a crime. But Mr. Dillon, when set free on his own recognizances, continued his speeches and efforts, until he was again arrested. Several other prominent movers in the plan,wei;e also arrested at the same time. ~ > ,-f <

JOHN DILLON.

WILLIAM O’BRIEN.