’I went when I was at Tulla to the workhouse, and there saw a poor fellow lying in bed, the doctors around him, with a blue light over his face that made me feel that the doctors were not right, when they told me he might get over it.  I felt sure that he must die, and I see this morning that he has died.  But why did that man die?  He was a poor lone farmer.  I believe he had paid his rent—­I believe he had committed that crime.  He thought it his duty to pay.  Fifteen or sixteen men broke into his house in the middle of the night, pulled him out of his bed and told him they would punish him.  He himself, lying in his death agony as it were, told me the story.  He said, “My wife went down on her knees and said, ‘Here are five helpless children, will you kill their father?’” They took him out, they discharged a gun filled with shot into his leg, so closely that they shattered his leg.’

Now there were dozens of instances of that kind of thing in Kerry.

Mr. Parnell started the whole vile crusade, when at Ennis he gave the advice to shun any man who had bid for a farm from which a tenant had been evicted.

’Shun him in the street, in the shop, in the marketplace, even in the place of worship, as if he were a leper of old.’

His words were implicitly obeyed, and outrage followed mere boycotting till the rapid succession of crimes prevented each one having its full effect in horrifying civilised Europe.

A very bad case occurred in Millstreet.

Jeremiah Haggerty was a large farmer and shopkeeper.  There was no objection to him, except that he declined to join the Land League, for which his shop was boycotted, which he told me meant the loss of a thousand a year to him, but the League failed to boycott his farm, because he was too good an employer.

He was fired at coming into Millstreet, and the outrage had been so openly planned, that it was talked of on the preceding evening in every whisky store.

On another occasion he was leaving Millstreet station, about a mile from the town, and when about twenty yards from the station he was fired at and forty grains of shot lodged in the back of his head, neck, and body.  As it was twilight, a railway porter obligingly held up his lantern to give the miscreants a better view of their victim.

He was a man of most honourable and upright character, who had worked his way up, and he has now regained his popularity.  He started as a clerk in quite a small way, and must now be worth a very large sum of money.  I was instrumental in getting him made a magistrate, and I have the greatest respect for him.

I regard this as a decidedly serious example, because of the popularity of the victim, and also because he had offended no one by word or deed.  Still, there were, of course, many instances which were even more outrageous.

A farmer, name of Brown, was shot at Castleisland.  Two men were arrested for the murder, and were twice tried before Cork juries.  The first disagreed, but the second found them guilty.