28 APRIL 1888, Page 3

On Saturday last, Thomas Dowling, the Secretary of the proclaimed

Branch of the National League at Lixnaw, and a man named Galvin, were sentenced to six months' imprison- ment each, for intimidation and conspiracy in regard to Norah Fitzmaurice. The evidence of five constables, part of the armed guard of twenty without which the poor girl could not venture to attend mass, showed that Dowling and Galvin went about among the people in the chapel, and induced almost all of them to leave soon after she had taken her seat. What is the condition of public opinion among the Parnellites in regard to such offences, may be judged from the fact that the solicitors for the defence did not scruple to describe Norah Fitzmaurice as "a wretched girl," to declare that the prosecution was " footy, absurd, and nonsensical," and that Dowling and Galvin had a perfect right to do what they had done. This, however, is not the only indication of the sympathies of Mr. Farad's followers. On Tuesday, one of the Parnellite Members, from his place in the House of Commons, asked, without a word of protest from his colleagues, whether it was true that Dowling and Galvin "were sentenced to six months' imprisonment for no graver offence than that they left the chapel at Lixnaw last Sunday, and induced others to do the same, at the moment when Norah Fitzmaurice entered the building." After this, can we be called unfair if we say that it is conduct such as Norah Fitzmaurice's, not as Dowling's and Galvin's, which shocks the moral sense of the Parnellites