and observation reaches you every day in
all the forms of social life--a system of unseen terrorism, a system of
terror and tyranny that the well-disposed class of the community ought
to detest and abhor, and in reference to which, on all sides, I have
heard, in this county and other counties, one universal expression of
desire--that some means should be found to put an end to it.

'I possess no power myself to effect this state of things, and I cannot
say that in the relation to the law which you fill as members of the
Grand Jury, or in any other relation to the law, you possess the means
to effect it. The duty of providing against so great an evil existing in
the community--the duty and the obligation rests with others. My duty is
simply confined to representing to you the state of things that exists,
and, indeed, in that respect I know that I am doing what is entirely
unnecessary, for the state of the County Kerry now, and for a period of
five or six years, in all its essential features, is known far beyond
the limits of the county, to every single person in the country. I will
merely make use of one general observation--that I by no means share in
the opinion that has been expressed as to the inability to deal with
this state of things. On the contrary, I entertain the most perfect
confidence that it is in the power of those who are intrusted with the
duty of maintaining the public peace to re-establish order and law and
peace in this county. And as my duty is confined to representing that
state of things, that duty does not carry me to indicate to those on
whom the responsibility rests the means to attain that object.'

CHAPTER XX

THE EDENBURN OUTRAGE

In the early part of the winter of 1884, so bad did the state of Kerry
become, and so menacing was the attitude of the Land Leaguers towards
myself, that I felt I had no right to endanger the lives of my wife and
daughters by any longer permitting them to reside at Edenburn.

In all those years, from 1878 to 1884, be it noted that I gave more
employment in Kerry than any one man, a fact which has been testified to
by different parish priests, but at the same time I was agent for a
great many landlords, and tried my level best to get in rents for my
employers.

For this cause my life had been repeatedly threatened, and now, in
November 1884, dynamite was put to my house, the back of it being badly
blown up. There were sixteen individuals in the house, m