A public meeting, summoned by the Lord Mayor of Dublin,
Mr. T. Harrington, M.P., was held at the Mansion House on Friday week to protest against the proclaiming of the city under the Crimes Act. Mr. Harrington appealed to the testimony of the Judge who opened the Commission a month ago as to the crimelessness of the county and city of Dublin, and denounced the proclamation as a "foul libel" ; and Mr. John Redmond, the principal speaker, declared that in no other country in the civilised world could such an outrage be perpetrated. The proclamation was "a lie," and "the sitpa- tion in Dublin and Ireland must be made too hot for the men who were guilty of putting this outrage and insult on the people of Dublin. He hoped its effect would be to make the United Irish League in the city as strong, powerful, and menacing to English rule as the Land League was twenty years ago." A resolution advising the citizens to hold a monster meeting in the Phcenix Park to-morrow was subse- quently passed. Mr. Redmond has not often used more violent language than on this occasion, but the impressiveness of his denunciation was not a little impaired by his describing the political situation in Ireland as "in some respects abso- lutely laughable," and its government on a par with " Gulliver's Travels." Real oppression is never laughable. And statistical crimelessness, when it involves immunity to commit offences which cannot be reached under the ordinary law, is a very different thing from freedom from crime.
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