Having been threatened, he was partially guarded by the police who patrolled the district.  However, in April 1885, when the Prince of Wales visited Ireland, and the constabulary from country districts were drafted into the towns through which he had to pass, a number of disguised Nationalists entered Cruickshank’s house at night.  They gave him a frightful beating, even breaking a gun on his head, which was seriously injured.  This was done in the presence of his wife and daughters, and of a young son who, with one of his sisters, went off in the night to a police station four miles distant, to obtain assistance for his father.

Between the fight and the chill received that night, the boy fell into a decline of which he died in May 1886.  One daughter, not strong at the time of the outrage, became a chronic invalid.  The father, as soon as he was able to move after the perpetration, applied for compensation under the Crimes Act, but as it was then to expire in about a fortnight, the Lord-Lieutenant refused to consider the case.  The poor fellow continued to suffer from the wounds on his head, and so affected was he by the shock of his son’s death, that he became insensible and only survived him a few weeks, leaving his widow and three daughters without any means of support.

My wife and the former Archdeacon of Ardfert appealed for subscriptions and obtained L120, which enabled the unfortunate survivors to return to Scotland.

That was the settlement of the land question that suited the Nationalists, namely, to cause the death of the head of the family, and to get the rest out of the country.  It did not say much for the civilisation of the nineteenth century, but after the brutalities of the spring of 1871 in Paris, there can be no doubt how thin is the veneer over the barbarity of even the most civilised; those deeds were perpetrated in the heart of the European capital specially devoted to amusement:  what I describe took place in the most distant portion of Europe, where Nature is lovely and man, alas, the creature of impulse, the prey of those who lead him into the worst temptations.

Another settlement was suggested by an anonymous writer who concealed his identity under the pseudonym of Saxon.  He observed:—­

’Two hundred millions of English money are now (1886) to be spent buying out Irish landlords, but would it not be surely better and more in accordance with reason and justice to buy out the tenants?  At a very low calculation, two hundred millions would put a couple of hundred pounds in every Irishman’s pocket, and there is not one of them that would refuse to leave his beloved country, and bless America or Australia on these terms.  The island could be populated with Scotch and English settlers, and our difficulties be at an end.  The Irish must not have their own loaf and ours too.  I commend this scheme to Messrs. Gladstone and Morley.  It is quite as just, quite as reasonable, and more forcible than their own.’