Mr. O'Brien's action for libel against Lord Salisbury was heard
in Manchester yesterday and this day week, before Mr. Justice Stephen, and ended, as might have been expected, in a verdict for the defendant. The ground of the action was a speech delivered by Lord Salisbury at Watford on March 19th, in which he described Mr. O'Brien's exhorta- tion to the people of Tipperary in the preceding September to treat persons who take unlet farms as they had been treated during the last ten years in the locality in which he spoke (Ballyneale, near (Jlonmel), as meaning, in effect, that they should murder them, shoot their cattle, and devastate their farms. Mr. O'Brien's contention was that he had always warned the Irish people everywhere against crime of all kinds, though he had exhorted them strenuously to boycott, and that Lord Salisbury's gloss on his language was an utter perversion of his meaning The defence was that, looking to what had actually happened, and repeatedly happened, to boycotted men, it was a very reasonable in- terpretation of what Mr. O'Brien's audience would understand him to suggest to them ; and on that issue the trial turned, the question being whether Lord Salisbury had substantially misrepresented Mr. O'Brien, and if he had, whether his interpretation was not a fair inference by Lord Salisbury as to the effect which Mr. O'Brien's language would convey to his audience.
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