AGRARIAN OUTRAGES (IRELAND).
RETURN to an Order of the Honourable The House of Coiumons,
dated g May 1887 jTor,
MEMORANDUM " as to the Principle upon which Outrages are recorded
as Agrarian, and included as such in the Returns laid before Par¬
liament."
The condition of Ireland as regards those crimes against which successive
amendments of the Criminal Law have been from time to time directed, has
very commonly been tested by the returns of Agrarian Outrages. It would,
however, be an error to suppose that all outrages not returned as agrarian ought
properly to be classified as ordinary crime. The pi'actice of regularly laying
upon the Table of the House Returns of Agrarian Outrage?, began in the year
1881. Severe Parliamentary criticism was soon afterwards directed against
the classification adopted in many of the cases given in Mr. Forster's
more detailed returns, and the natural consequence has been that the authori¬
ties iu Ireland have been more and more strict in their requirements, before
they permitted any crime to be classified as agrarian. This result was natural
and inevitable. But it has undoubtedly proved somewhat misleading ; for in
order that a crime may be classed as agrarian, it is not merely necessary
that it should arise out of social disorganisation, consequent, or possibly
consequent, upon agrarian discontent, but it must be directly traceable to
some specific motive connected with land. So that a large number of crimes
specially characteristic of Irish disorder, such as maiming of cattle, firing into
houses, moonlighting, and raiding for arms, may never appear in the Return of
Agrarian Outrages at all. Thus, to give illustration drawn from well-known
examples, neither the Curtin case, nor the case in which two girls were attacked
in their father's house by a party of men who cut off their hair and poured tar
on the head of the elder; nor the case of the daughters of Daniel Jones, who
were shot in the Kanturk district by a party demandiiig arms at their father's
house, have been returned as agrarian crimes.
Statistics of 18/0.
In comparing the Statistics of Agrarian Outrages laid before Parliament by
Mr. Chichester Fortescue, in 1870, with those of more recent date, it must be
borne in mind, not only that the process above described of narrowing the
meshes through which crime is admitted into the agrarian class, has been going
on for the last six years ; but also that at the end of 1869 a special method of
enumerating certain kinds of ofi'ences was adopted, which had the effect of
greatly multiplying their apparent number. I append copy of a Note in which
this is fully explained in Mr. Forster's Return of 1881. (No. C. 2756, p. 15.)
r Note J—" A different system of enumerating the offences, ' Levying Contri-
hutions,' ^Administering Unlawful Oaths,' and 'â– Threatening Letters,' was
" adopted in the years 1869 and 1870, which prevents an exact comparison heing
" drawn with other years. This change had the effect of apparently increasing
" the number of outrages; e.g., a 'party of men, about 20 in number, visited the
" dwellings of about 30 persons in the County of Mayo on the 27th of December
MO. " 187
