At Tipperary, on Monday, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald and Mr H.
Bruen, Stipendiary Magistrates, resumed the hearing of the charge of assault preferred against Dr. Tanner for spitting at County Inspector Stevens on May 2nd. On that day the defendant was at Tipperary Station, in a railway-carriage, in the custody of the police. When Inspector Stevens was passing the carriage, Dr. Tanner called out his name, and said,—" Let me out until I spit upon him." He then got his body a good way out of the window and spat upon Mr. Stevens. The charge was originally preferred on July 2nd, but was ad- journed in order to allow Dr. Tanner to obtain evidence for his defence. On Monday, however, he produced no evidence, but instead declared " that he would not subject gentlemen of posi. tion, worth, intellect, and standing to the insult " of appearing before such a Court, and went on to speak of the Bench in terms of gross disrespect. After consultation, the Magistrates sentenced Dr. Tanner to one month's imprisonment for the assault, which, as they pointed out, was extremely aggravated, the police officer having to tamely submit to a peculiarly vile outrage. For his flagrant contempt of Court, they further bound Dr. Tanner over to be of good behaviour for a year,— himself in £200, and two sureties in £100 each. Failing his procuring such sureties, they sentenced him to another three months',—a sentence which, as he refused to find bail, was ordered to be carried out. Such is the Parnellite political martyr. Dr. Tanner, it must be remembered, though, per- haps, considered somewhat vulgar by Mr. Gladstone's fol- lowers, is by no means objected to by his own party. If Dr. Tanner had been an Irish landlord and Peer, and had spat upon a member of some Radical deputation engaged in assisting resistance to the law, he would have been well-nigh lynched, had he set foot in England, for his brutal, cowardly, cold-blooded insolence' towards a poor man ; and we should have been told that every Lord at heart looked on the people as curs fit only to be kicked into the gutter and spat on. Since, however, Dr. Tanner calls himself a Radical, and the man he outraged was only a police officer, the new democrats remain perfectly unmoved.
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