Yesterday week was marked by a melancholy incident at Mitchelstown,
County Cork. A large Nationalist meeting was arranged to support Mr. O'Brien in refusing to obey a legal summons, and the authorities sent two reporters. At the order of some leader present (a Member is named, but it is not certain), the crowd, many of whom were mounted or armed with stones and cudgels, refused the reporters permission to pass. A body of fifty police tried to force a passage, but being without their rifles, were fiercely attacked and beaten back to barracks, with many wounded. The barracks were threateneFL six windows being broken ; some policemen left outside wire in danger; and the main body, having regained their rifles, fired. One man was killed, and two have since died of their wounds. The official account, vouched for by Mr. Balfour, declares that the firing was in self-defence; but the Irish Members present and Mr. Labonohere declare it was needless, as the police were in safety, and the crowd dis- persing. No one disputes, however, that the police were violently assailed by a vastly superior force, and had to fight for their lives; and it is useless to expect that drilled men so circum- stanced, and provided with eiviliaed weapons, will not use them. If they do not, they will be beaten off the ground whenever the mob is the stronger,—that is, always. Diseipline increases strength, but it will not enable fifty men with batons to defeat five hundred men with clubs, much less five thousand. In Ireland, it is the friends of order who are "the weak" and "the defenceless."
