“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 for Christ’s sake.  No, nor the manliness even to meet an opponent face to face and see it out with him like a man; but with the cunning of a mean and vicious dog, he steals behind him in the dark and shoots him in the back, or murders the helpless woman of his family, or shoots out the eyes of the poor man’s horse, or cuts the throat of his bullock and spikes his beast upon a gate.”

Nor has the present year brought much improvement.  In May 1913, Mr. R. Maunsell was fired at and wounded close to the town of Ennis.  His crime was that he managed a farm for a Mr. Bannatyne, whose family had been in possession of it for about sixty years, but who had recently been denounced by the United Irish League and ordered to surrender it.  As he has refused to do so, he is now compelled to live under police protection.