THE LIXNAW MURDER.
CONVICTIONS for agrarian murder are rare enough in Ireland to make the Lixnaw case, which was tried at the Wicklow Assizes on the first three days of this week, one of real importance. It goes to show that a provision of the Crimes Act which seemed of doubtful efficacy is working well. The Government, it will be re- membered, gave up the clauses which would have enabled them to send prisoners to England for trial, and elected to be content with a change of venue in Ireland. There was no question as to the abstract superiority of this course. As a matter of fact, Irish prisoners would probably have received an unusually large measure of consideration at the hands of English juries ; but the apparent help- lessness of a man confronted with Judges, juries, and counsel of another nation, would have given a superficial air of unfairness to the proceedings which might have had a bad effect in Ireland. On the other hand, it was by no means certain that a simple change of venue from one part of Ireland to another would answer the purpose. The methods of intimidation which have so often been successful near the scene of a crime, might prove not to have lost their force in another district. The Lixnaw case is evidence that this fear is without foundation,—evidence, indeed, in only a single instance, but still in an instance of great sig- nificance. It is scarcely doubtful that if this trial had taken place in Kerry, the jury would have either acquitted the prisoners, or have given no verdict at all. There was, as there almost always is in an Irish agrarian trial, a real conflict of evidence. As regards one of the prisoners, the statements of the witnesses were of the kind that cannot both be true, and the jury had to consider which was most worthy of credence. Wherever this happens, a way of escape from an unpleasant, and perhaps a dangerous duty, is at once opened. A juryman need only declare his inability to decide which of two stories is true, to give the prisoner all that he asks. In Kerry, we can hardly doubt that at least one juryman of this balanced turn of mind would have been found in the box. The chief—almost the only—witness for the Crown was the daughter of the murdered man ; and if the witnesses for the defence are to be believed, she does appear to have told two stories at different times,—or, rather, to different people. But there were obvious reasons why one of these stories should have been told, whether it were true or not. Let it be granted that, after the murder had been committed, North Fitz- maurice led the priest and the parish clerk to believe that she had not recognised the murderers. The boycotted daughter of a boycotted father might very naturally have thought that if she admitted her knowledge of the men who had committed the murder, she might not be allowed to appear at the trial. To the police she made no secret of her ability to identify them. She was very near her father at the moment when he was shot ; the men were but a short distance off when they fired at him ; and North Fitzmaurice not only at once named them to the police, but picked them out from among nine or ten men the next day. If they were not the murderers, her testimony must have been a piece of deliberate perjury, committed with no apparent motive. No such inference need be drawn in the ease of the witnesses on the other side. The case set up by the counsel of one prisoner was that North Fitzmamice was not as communicative to the priest and the parish clerk as she was to the police, and this, as we have seen, was only a natural precaution. The counsel for the other prisoner relied on an alibi ; but in Ireland no evidence is so much discredited, or so easily manufactured. A slight alteration of date or hour is enough to satisfy the con- science of the witness, or, at all events, to ensure him against breaking down under cross-examination. Mr. Justice O'Brien, who tried the case, summed up with great impartiality and care, and the jury were only half-an-hour out of Court. After the verdict was given, the Judge expressed his entire agreement with it ; and whether the prisoners confess or not, there is every reason to believe that they have been justly condemned, and will be justly executed. • It appears that one at least of the murderers has been associated for many months past with the terrorism which bore its natural fruit on January 31st. The family of the murdered man were boycotted in May last, and in June, Hayes, one of the prisoners, was at Listowel fair doing what he could to prevent Fitzmamice from finding a pur- chaser for his pigs. Who it was that decided that the last sanction of boycotting should be invoked, or for what reason the change of treatment was adopted, may never be known ; but there seems no room for doubt that when boycotting proved a failure, it was determined to maim Fitzmaurice, if not to kill him. Boycotting would lose half its terrors if there were no means of punishing the man who persistently disregards it. A few such convictions as the Wicklow con- viction of the Lixnaw murderers, and it would lose half its terrors. It would remain a social penalty of varying severity, but it could never be trusted to frighten those with whom public opinion counts for little. So long as the man who disregards it knows that if boycotting is ineffectual, there is something worse than boycotting behind, there is always a probability that his resolution will give way. But to produce this probability, it is not enough that dis- regard of boycotting should at rare intervals be punished by death ; it must be punished by death whenever it has been shown to exist. Men are always, it would seem, to be found in Ireland who on one condition are ready to commit murder whenever less than murder will not serve their own or their employers' turn. But this one condition is precisely that which such cases as the Wicklow conviction tend to make unattainable. The murderer wishes to see before him a fair prospect of escape. In the disturbed districts, he can usually do this ; but if a change of venue is enough to cloud the prospect, the condition we have described as indispensable is no longer to be had. It is no comfort to a man to be sure of an acquittal in Kerry, unless he knows that his trial will take place in Kerry. If it is to be transferred to Wicklow, everything will depend on the characteristics of a Wicklow jury ; and the condemnation of Moriarty and Hayes seems to show that among these characteristics is included the pettifogging habit of being guided by the evidence, instead of by regard for the political ideas in support of which the murder was committed. There will be very little "exclu- sive dealing" in Ireland, if it comes to be understood that a man who enforces the practice by a musket-shot will in all probability be hanged.
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