"NO RENT" MOVEMENT SPREADING.
The "Daily Express" (Dublin) correspondent writes:
Owing to the immunity which the Government have extended to the operations of the plan of campaign on the estates of Lord De Freyne and Mr Murphy, the "no rent" strike is rapidly spreading, and the latest property affected is that of Mr Dennis O'Connor, Clonalis.
His tenants recently came into Ballaghadereen to pay their rents, but having fallen into the hands of the United League Organisers, who are stationed permanently in Ballaghdoe, they returned home without paying.
Within the last few days, ejectment notices have been served by O'Conor's solicitor the cases of eighty tenants. Nothing could be worse than the reign of terror on the De Freyne estate. Since the open-air meetings have been suppressed, the tenants now have recourse to secret meetings, and as full reports of these proceedings appear in the Dublin Nationalist papers, they are circulated widely on the estate.
On Tuesday night a respectable farmer named Gordon had his house broken into by a party of marked moonlighters, as he was suspected of having paid his rent. He was dragged outside his door, and his protestations that he had not paid had some effect on the midnight gang. They first swore they would cut his ears off, while they contented themselves by cutting off one side of his whiskers, and then decamped.
The house of another tenant named Bartley Regan was also visited. He was dragged from his house and badly beaten. The police are making inquiries into the matter, but up to the present, no arrests have taken place.
In the district between Boyle and Frenchpark boycotting of Protestant farmers is in full swing. In the case of one Protestant farmer, his wife became so apprehensive for her personal safety that she refused to live any longer in the lonely farmhouse; her health broke down, and she had to remove to the neighbouring town.
In another case at Lisadaly, owing to the action of the United Irish League in preventing bidders, the widow of a Protestant farmer named Cox has been reduced to state of extreme poverty.
