It is scarcely credible, but it is true, that upon this extraordinary finding the Coroner issued a warrant for "murder" against this poor woman, on which she was actually locked up for more than three months! The jury which made this unique finding consisted of nineteen persons, and it was in evidence that their foreman reported thirteen of the jury to be for finding one way and six for finding another, whereupon a certain Mr. Whyte, who came into the case as the representative of Father Bergin, President of the local branch of the National League--nobody can quite see on what colourable pretext--was allowed by the Coroner to write down the finding I have quoted, and hand it to the Coroner. The Coroner read it over. He and Mr. Whyte then put six of the jury in one place, and thirteen in another; the Coroner read the finding aloud to the thirteen, and said to them, "Is that what you agree to?" and so the inquest was closed, and the warrant issued--for murder--and the woman, this poor peasant mother sent off to jail with the brand upon her of infanticide.[29]
Where would that poor woman be now were there no "Coercion" in Ireland to protect her against "Crowner's quest law" thus administered? And what is to be thought of educated and responsible public men in England who, as recent events have shown, are not ashamed to go to "Crowner's quest Courts" of this sort for weapons of attack, not upon the administration only of their own Government, but upon the character and the motives of their political opponents?
BELFAST, _Monday, June 25._--I left Dublin yesterday at 4 P.M., in a train which went off at high pressure as an "express," but came into Belfast panting and dilatory as an "excursion." The day was fine, and the line passes through what is reputed to be the most prosperous part of Ireland. In this part of Ireland, too, the fate of the island has been more than once settled by the arbitrament of arms; and if Parliamentary England throws up the sponge in the wrestle with the League, it is probable enough that the old story will come to be told over again here.
At Dundalk the Irish monarchy of the Braces was made and unmade. The plantation of Ulster under James I. clinched the grasp not so much of England as of Scotland upon Ireland, and determined the course of events here through the Great Rebellion. The landing of the Duke of Schomberg at Carrickfergus opened the way for the subjugation of Jacobite Ireland by William of Orange. The successful descent of the French upon the same place in February 1760, after the close of "the Great Year," in which Walpole tells us he came to expect a new victory every morning with the rolls for breakfast, and after Hawke had broken the strength of the great French Armada off Belleisle, and done for England the service which Nelson did for her again off Trafalgar in 1805, shows what might have happened had Thurot commanded the fleet of Conflans. In this same region, too, the rout of Munro by Nugent at Ballinahinch practically ended the insurrection of 1798.