On Tuesday, just one day before the Nationalist demonstra- tion
in Dublin, the morality of the movement was once more dreadfully illustrated. Two brothers, named Fitzmaurice, held a small farm near Listowel, in Kerry. They were evicted, but the elder retook and worked the farm. This created ill-feeling, and the Lixnaw Branch of the National League denounced James Fitzmaurice as a "land-grabber," and condemned him to be boycotted. The sentence did not deter him from his farming, and on Tuesday, therefore, while he was walking to Listowel behind a cart containing his daughter and some pigs, another "method of persuasion" was adopted. Two men shook hands with Fitzmaurice, began a conversation with him, and then, as he stood unsuspecting, riddled him with revolver- ballets. He was sixty-five, and he died in an hour. The daughter was unable to interfere, either from terror or because her horse ran away, and at first refused to identify the assassins. She at last, however, pointed out two men who have been arrested, and are strangers, and who, if guilty at all, were hired as bravoes for the work. The Freeman's Journal professes great horror of the crime, bat suggests that it occurred at a convenient moment for the Government, and asks why the police who were protecting Fitzmaurice did not accompany him to Listowel! There can be no moral doubt that the sentence of the League on James Fitzmaurice caused his murder, and it is to the wielders of this wicked tyranny that we are asked to hand over the lives and fortunes of the people of Ireland. We would sooner cede the island to France, which would at least guillotine all murderers.
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