[Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) by William Henry Hurlbert]@TWC D-Link bookIreland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) CHAPTER VI 9/74
Ten of them signed, in open court, a guarantee not further to conspire, and were thereupon discharged upon their own recognisances, after having been sentenced with their companions to a month's imprisonment with hard labour.
The magistrate tells me that when the ten who signed (and who were the most prosperous of the publicans) were preparing to sign, the only representative of the press who was present, a reporter for _United Ireland_, approached them in a threatening manner, with such an obvious purpose of intimidation, that he was ordered out of the court-room by the police.
The eleven who refused to sign the guarantee (and who were the poorest of the publicans, with least to lose) were sent to gaol. An important feature of this case is the conduct of Father White, the parish priest of Milltown Malbay.
In the open court, Colonel Turner tells me, Father White admitted that he was the moving spirit of all this local "boycott." While the court was sitting yesterday all the shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, Father White having publicly ordered the people to make the town "as a city of the dead." After the trial was over, and the eleven who elected to be locked up had left in the train, Father White visited all their houses to encourage the families, which, from his point of view, was no doubt proper enough; but one of the sergeants reports that the Father went by mistake into the house of one of the ten who had signed the guarantee, and immediately reappeared, using rather unclerical language.
All this to an American resembles a tempest in a tea-pot.
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