The abolition of landlordism and the acquisition of firearms can hardly be said to have brought peace and tranquillity to the County of Clare.

And as to Galway, we may gather the state of affairs from the report of a case tried at the Winter Assizes of 1912.  Three men were charged with having done grievous bodily harm to a man named Conolly.  Conolly swore that he knew a man named Broderick who had become unpopular but he (Conolly) kept to him and this brought displeasure on him from the accused and others.  On the night of the 11th September he went to bed; he was subsequently awakened and found 44 grains of shot in his left knee and four in his right.  He then lay flat on the floor.  Other shots were fired through the window but did not strike him.  The judge said the district was a disgrace to Ireland.  Day after day, night after night, heaps of outrages were committed there, and not one offender was made amenable to justice.  The jury disagreed, and the accused were again put on their trial.  The judge in charging the jury on the second trial said that then, and for some time, the district was swarming with police, and though outrages were frequent, it was impossible for them to bring anyone to justice.  No one was sure he might not be fired at during the night; and people were afraid to give evidence.  The jury again disagreed.

During the autumn of 1912 an effort was made to hold a series of meetings throughout the south and west of Ireland to protest against Home Rule.  The conduct of the Nationalists with regard to them supplies a striking commentary on Mr. Redmond’s statement at Banbury not long before, that all through his political life he had preached conciliation towards those who differed from him on the question of Home Rule.  The meetings were in some cases stopped by force; at Limerick the windows of the Protestant Church and of some houses occupied by Protestants were smashed; at Tralee the principal speaker was a large farmer named Crosbie; all his hay and sheds were burned down, and he was awarded L600 compensation by the County Court Judge.

But an incident had occurred in the north which, though in a sense comparatively slight, has, in consequence of the circumstances connected with it, done more to inflame the men of Ulster than persons not living in Ireland can realise.  In June of last year a party of Sunday School children from a suburb of Belfast went for a picnic to Castledawson (co.  Derry) under the charge of a Presbyterian minister and a few teachers and ladies.  On their way back to the railway station, they were met and assailed by a procession of men belonging to the Order of Hibernians armed with pikes who attacked the children with the pikes and with stones, seized a Union Jack which a small boy was carrying, and knocked down and kicked some of the girls and teachers.  Worse might have happened had not some Protestant young men, seeing what was going on, come to the rescue.  The minister