NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ON Tuesday, the Government, acting under the powers con- ferred on them by the Crimes Act, issued proclamations suppressing the National League in the County Clare and in portions of Galway, Kerry, Cork, and Wexford. The effect is to render about two hundred branches of the League "unlawful Associations," and to make it an offence under the Crimes Act for any person to call together the members of these branches, to publish their notices or proceedings, or to contribute to or receive their funds. These offences are to be tried in a Court of Summary Jurisdiction, before two Resident Magistrates, who are able to inflict imprisonment up to six months with hard labour. The Nationalists, of course, describe the action of the Govern- ment as tyrannical ; and so it no doubt is, when regarded from the point of view of those who consider that the Parliament at Westminster has no right to legislate for Ireland. For the Daily News, however—which, we presume, has still enough of the old Radicalism to regard Parliament as supreme within the United Kingdom—to speak of the suppression of the League carried out under an Act passed for the very purpose as an "act of violence," is simply ridiculous. The Minority, no doubt, have many rights, but the right to role is not one of them.
