The feeling against the Land League has been exasperated this
week, without much justice, by the murder of a man named Wheeler, son of a land agent in Limerick. The murder was a very bad one, Mr. Wheeler having been shot in a field by an assassin who, to make more sure, fired a second time, and then battered in the victim's skull with a large stone. A herdsman named Michael Moore was with Mr. Wheeler, and he ran away,. frightened, but he reported the murder at the nearest police- station. It is believed that Mr. Wheeler had offended this man's relatives by promoting him over an elder brother's head, and suspicion rests upon the family ; but there is no evidence that the murder was agrarian, or connected with evictions in any way. Mr. Wheeler had not evicted any one, and was wholly inoffensive. The truth seems to be, that in the excited state of this part of Ireland any villain finds murder the easiest method of wreaking a grudge, because he has only to allege an agrarian excuse, to be safe from popular pursuit. Murder, being presumably agrarian, is not in Ireland reckoned the highest crime. That is a terrible condition of opinion, but it has existed for many years, and is not specially due to the Laud League, which, even if murder were part of its programme, could not, on the ordinary rules of evidence, have ordered this one. The evidence at the inquest, as usual, revealed nothing ; but two Moores have been arrested.
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