English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.Everitt, Graham
History
English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.
Everitt, Graham
Caricature -- Great Britain; Illustration of books -- Great Britain -- 19th century
the inmates from their beds and so maltreating them that death often
ensued, or by inflicting cruelties which were sometimes worse than
death. The persons belonging to this organization assembled by signals,
made concerted movements, watched the movements of the troops, and by
information received so avoided them that the military were rendered
practically useless.
The ordinary tribunals were powerless to arrest this iniquitous
organization of murder and terror, which the Irish disaffectants and
their advisers even in that day appear to have brought to a system of
execrable perfection. Witnesses and jurors were terrified into silence.
In one case the master of a female servant was commanded to dismiss her
because her _mother_ had given evidence against a person brought to
trial for a capital crime, and similar cases were of almost daily
occurrence. Five armed men went to the house of Patrick Lalor, a man of
nearly seventy years of age, and shot him through the body. His crime
had been disobedience to a mandate to give up some ground which he held
contrary to the will of the Terrorists. The same system prevented a son
of Lalor, and an eye-witness of his murder, from giving evidence against
his murderers. On the trial of these miscreants at Kilkenny assizes, the
jury not being able to agree was dismissed. It had been arranged in the
jury-room that nothing should transpire as to the opinions of individual
jurymen, and yet, in _half an hour_, the names of those in favour of an
acquittal or of a conviction were printed--the former in black, and the
latter, or as they were designated the "jurors who were for blood," in
red ink. The result was that those whose names were printed in red were
obliged to leave the country. At the Clonmel assizes the previous
October (1832), when a person was to be tried for resisting the payment
of tithe, only 76 jurors out of 265 who had been summoned made their
appearance. A gentleman had been murdered in sight of his own gate in
consequence of some dispute in connection with tithes. The answer of his
son-in-law, summoned by the coroner to give evidence against the
supposed murderer, was this: "That he would submit to any penalty the
crown or the law would impose upon him, but he would not appear at the
trial, because he knew that if he stood forward as a witness his life
would inevitably be forfeited." The Irish Government received a notice
from Kilkenny "that many gentlemen who had always" most conscientiously
discharged their duties, "would not attend at the next assizes. They
cared not what penalty was imposed upon them. They refused to attend,
because they knew that death" awaited them if they dared to do their
duty. "It is the boast of the prisoners," continued this document, "that
they cannot under existing circumstances be found guilty." Under such a
disgraceful state of things, outrage had become of course triumphant.
The sickening catalogue of Irish cruelty and crime during the previous
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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