Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)Hurlbert, William Henry
History
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
Hurlbert, William Henry
Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
The officers showed us there the new twelve-pounder gun with its
elaborately scientific machinery, its Scotch sight, and its four-mile
range. I compared notes about the Trafalgar Square riots of February
1886 with an Irish officer who happened to have been on the opposite
side of Pall Mall from me at the moment when the mob, getting out of the
hand of my socialistic friend Mr. Hyndman, and advancing towards St.
James' Street and Piccadilly was broken by a skilful and very spirited
charge of the police. He gave a most humorous account of his own
sensations when he first came into contact with the multitude after
emerging from St. Paul's, where, as he put it, he had left the people
"all singing away like devils." But I found he quite agreed with me in
thinking that there was a visible nucleus of something like military
organisation in the mob of that day, which was overborne and, as it
were, smothered by the mere mob element before it came to trying
conclusions with the police.
On our way to Limerick, Colonel Turner caught sight, at a station, of
Father Little, the parish priest of Six Mile Bridge, in County Clare,
and jumping out of the carriage invited him to get in and pursue his
journey with us, which he very politely did. Father Little is a tall
fine-looking man of a Saxon rather than a Celtic type, and I daresay
comes of the Cromwellian stock. He is a staunch and outspoken
Nationalist, and has been made rather prominent of late by his
championship of certain of his parishioners in their contest with their
landlord, Mr. H.V. D'Esterre, who lives chiefly at Bournemouth in
England, but owns 2833 acres in County Clare at Rosmanagher, valued at
£1625 a year. More than a year ago one of Father Little's parishioners,
Mr. Frost, successfully resisted a large force of the constabulary bent
on executing a process of ejectment against him obtained by Mr.
D'Esterre.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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