the trial in some newspaper file.

Mr. Trench 'adds his testimony to the fact that Ireland is not
altogether unmanageable,' that 'justice fully and firmly administered
is always appreciated in the end.' And at the conclusion of his volume
he says:--

'We can scarcely shut our eyes to the fact that the circumstances and
feelings which have led to the terrible crime of murder in Ireland,
are usually very different from those which have led to murder
elsewhere. The reader of the English newspaper is shocked at the list
of children murdered by professional assassins, of wives murdered
by their husbands, of men murdered for their gold. In Ireland that
dreadful crime may almost invariably be traced to a wild feeling of
revenge for the national wrongs, to which so many of her sons believe
that she has been subjected for centuries.'

There is a mistake here. No murders are committed in Ireland for
'national wrongs.' The author has gathered together, as in a chamber
of horrors, all the cases of assassination that occurred during
the years of distress, provoked by the extensive _evictions_ which
succeeded the _famine_, and by the infliction of great hardships on
tenants who, in consequence of that dreadful calamity, had fallen
into arrears. People who had been industrious, peaceable, and
well-conducted were thus driven to desperation; and hence the young
men formed lawless combinations and committed atrocious murders.
But every one of these murders was agrarian, not national. They were
committed in the prosecution of _a war_, not against the Government,
but against the landlords and their agents and instruments. It was a
war _pro aris et focis_, waged against local tyrants, and waged in the