The news from Ireland is still disastrous. Not only do
out- rages continue without the attacked tenants making any fight for themselves, but a landlord has been shot dead. Mr. T. E. Herbert, J.P. for Kerry, was returning home from attending Petty Sessions on Thursday, when he was shot, about two miles from his own house, with a rifle-ball. The only cause as yet assigned, is that Mr. Herbert had " shown a great deal of feeling" against the land agitation, but there was, probably, some more definite agrarian complaint against him. Whatever the reason, the agitators could have done nothing worse for their cause. It is simply impossible to obtain even a hearing for the tenants' view of arrears, or of their rights, while their sympathizers punish the assertion of the rights of landlords by assassination. Such acts involve the miserable with the guilty, in popular opinion, in the same stain of crime. They are not, of course, in themselves, worse than outrages on tenants ; but they make fax more impression on English opinion, and not unjustly. A landlord who evicts cannot even be accused of being faithless to his class. He is within his right, even from the Land League point of view, which condemns, not him, but the farmer who accepts a farm on which an eviction has occurred.
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