The inquest on the suicide of Dr. Ridley ended on
Friday, August 17th, after having occupied twelve days, in a verdict of "temporary insanity, produced by the apprehension of dis- closures at the Mitchelstown inquest." The jury further stated "that Dr. Ridley was compelled to act in his official capacity in contravention to his own humane and considerate views.' We have dealt elsewhere with the inquest as a whole, and have pointed out how it exhibits the organised conspiracy for defaming the characters of their opponents existing among the Irish Nationalists, and how it shows the nature of the machinery of oppression and falsehood employed to maintain that conspiracy. The evidence, so far as it bears upon Dr.. Ridley's death, shows that the unfortunate man was driven to suicide from the sense that he had placed himself in the hands of men absolutely pitiless and unscrupulous,—men who, in his own words, would "use every means to blacken and damage every one opposed to them."
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