The North-Eastern Weekly Gazette. — 1888-01-21 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

THE INFAMOUS SCANDALS AT CORK. PLAIN SPEARING BY AN M.P. •  Mr W. J. Lane, M.P., addressed a great demon- I stration at Youghal on Monday. In the course of his remarks he said: It was only just that the Crimes Act should be administered by as infamous • crew as ever afflicted any country. This was a time for plain speaking, and he would take all the responsibility, whatever it might be, for saying that the Act in this part of the country was administered by murderers, by perjurers, by adulterers, and by the corrupters of innocent youth. The time would come when he would be able to point out the representatives of each of these species of crime. Everyone in the South of Ireland knew who the murderers were; everyone who followed the course of the State trials in Dublin last year knew who the perjurers were; everyone in Cork knew what was going on in official circles there, and knew who the adulterers were; and now everyone in the whole of the British kingdom knew the corrupters of innocent youth. It was not necessary for him to mention any names—their names were written in letters of fire on the hearts of the people, who burned with indignation at seeing that monsters , like these should be allowed to live in the midst of a virtuous and pure nation. It was well that the time should come when the characters of the men who were administering the Crimes Act in Ireland should be known all over the world. The facts of the case had been driven into the minds and hearts of the British people, and it was clearly shown that no persons could be got to work in connection with this vile system of persecution and tyranny in Ireland but persons so degraded that the humblest and lowest man on God's earth would be ashamed to be seen walking with them on the street. When all these things became known in England the Irish people would have reason— thanks to Captain Plunkett for giving, through his stupid blundering, publicity to the state of affairs—to thank that man—he called him a scoundrel—for the invaluable service he had done by having himself arrested. He publicly thanked Captain Plunkett for that, for he never would have had the opportunity of denouncing I him mid the gang by whom be was surrounded were it not for his arrest. .It was a most extraordinary- fact that, notwithstanding that every person in the city of Cork was denouncing Captain Plunkett and those associated with him in the administration of this Crimes Act, to such a low level were the landlord and the Tory party reduced that even during the past week, in the midst of a hurricane of indignation, these despicable men had been whipped by Plunkett and his masters into passing resolutions approving of him and his doings. That was the position that respectable men, fathers of families, were dragged into by supporting coercion, when they had to tack themselves to the tail of the ruffianly clew that private individuals said ought to be shot like dogs. Men otherwise of high character, estimable citizens, found themselves 'nought iuto this whirlpool of odious and loathsome crime, and they had to stand up and say they approved of them rather than say that they sympathised with the vast mass of their fellow-countrymen in their efforts for the restoration of their natural rights and for the annihilation of this gang of ruffians, rowdy ex-policemen, and military men, now swaggering about as the gaolers of the best men in tho country. When the system of government came to this the game was up.