Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 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 1 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 shanged 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 tbe 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 o£ 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 ra;sed on Irish f?oi 1 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. Bents 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 lbihl. But these lowered rents were fixed at a time when products brought higher prices than they do now. T he (Tfficulty which th’eTenants*have liad in paying their rents suggested a new plan to some of the Irish .Nationalists, especially to two members of Parliament, Mr. Join Dillon and Mr. William O’Brien, and they organized what is now notorious as “the plan of campaign.” It was the purpose of this fstiin topiotect the tenants from paying to the landlords a rent which 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’Britn—what was considered a' fair rent for the lands they tilled. Money thus received was to be held as a trust. The trustees w’gre to proffer to the landlords what they regarded in each case as fairrentf and if the landlords refused to accept it, the trnglfes were to hold the money for the benefit and support of the tenants who had paid it in. The “plan of campaign” was harried on successfully in many cases. Mr. Dillon and others went from place to place and t-alled meetings of the tenants, who docked in and paid into their hands the sums agreed upon as fair r'ei.ts. At the same time inflammatory speeches were ni’ude. 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 Jndg s declined the plan of campai n to be a conspiracy ngainstthe law, and therefore a crime, but Mr. DilloS, when set free on his“bin recognizances. his sp eches and effort, until he was again arrested. Several other prominent movers in the plan were also arrested at the same tune. The noblest part of a friend is -an honest, boldness in the notifying of errors. He that tells me of fault aiming at my good, I must think him wise and^faithful—wise in saving that which I see not ; faithful in plain admonishment not tainted with flattery.

Irresolution is a fatal habit; it is not vicious in itself, but it leida to vice, crcen’ng upon its victims 'with a fatality the penalty of which many a fine heart has paid at the scaffold. The idler, the spendthrift, the epicurean and the drunkard are among its victims.

JOHN DILLON.

WILLIAM O’BRIEN.