Ireland Under Coercion Volume Ii Part 22

Sir,--You would not, I am sure, allow intentional misstatements to appear in your columns, and I ask you to allow me s.p.a.ce to correct three erroneous observations made about myself in your current issue--

1. The first statement is to the effect that I owe everything I have, or that I am, to the Irish National Party. I owe absolutely nothing to the Irish Party, except an attempt to boycott me on my circuit, which, fortunately for me, has failed.

2. The second is to the effect that I made "frantic efforts" (these are the words, I think) to enter Parliament, and besieged Mr.

Dillon's house during the time when candidates were being chosen. I saw Mr. Dillon exactly twice, both occasions at Mr. Davitt's request. Mr. Davitt urged me to allow my name to go forward as a candidate, and it was at his wish and solicitation that I saw Mr.

Dillon.

3. It is further said that I begged a Crown Prosecutors.h.i.+p.

Fortunately, Mr. Walker and The M'Dermot are living men, and they know this to be absolutely untrue. I was offered such an appointment, and, contrary to my own judgment, I allowed myself to be guided by Mr. Davitt, who thought the matter would be misunderstood in the state of things then existing. I believe I am the only person that ever declined such an offer.

As to general statements, these are of no importance, and I shall not trouble you about them.--Yours very truly,

JOHN F. TAYLOR.

_P.S._--The introduction of Dr. Webb's name was a gratuitous outrage, Dr. Webb and I never a.s.sisted each other in anything except in the defence of P.N. Fitzgerald. J.F.T.

_To the Editor of "United Ireland."_

Dear Sir,--As my name has been introduced into the controversy between yourself and Mr. Taylor, I feel called upon to substantiate the two statements wherein my name occurs in Mr. Taylor's letter of last week. It was at my request that he called upon Mr. John Dillon, M.P. I think I accompanied him on the occasion, and unless my memory is very much at fault, Mr. Dillon was not unfriendly to Mr. Taylor's proposed candidature. This visit occurred some three months after Mr. Taylor had, on my advice, declined the Crown Prosecutors.h.i.+p for King's County, a post afterwards applied for by and granted to a near relative of one of the most prominent members of the Irish Party. With Mr. Taylor's general views on the present situation, or opinions upon parties or men, I have no concern. But, in so far as the circ.u.mstances related above are dealt with in your issue of last week, I think an unjust imputation has been made against him, and in the interests of truth and fair play I feel called upon to adduce the testimony of facts as they occurred.--Yours truly,

MICHAEL DAVITT.

Ballybrack, Co. Dublin,

June 19, 1888.

_To the Editor of "United Ireland."_

Sir,--As this is, I believe, the first time I have sought to intrude upon your columns, I hope you will allow me some slight s.p.a.ce in the interests of fair-play and freedom of speech. Those interests seem to me to have been quite set at naught in the attack, or rather series of attacks, upon Mr. Taylor in your last issue. Mr. Taylor's views upon many matters are not mine. He is far more democratic in his opinions than I see any sufficient reason for being, and he is very much more of what is called a land reformer than I am; but on an acquaintance of some years I have ever found him an honourable and high-minded gentleman, and as good a Nationalist, from my point of view, as most of the members of the Irish Parliamentary Party whom I either know or know of. Of some of the charges made against Mr. Taylor, such as the seeking for Crown Prosecutors.h.i.+ps and the like, I am in no position to speak, save from my knowledge of his character, but I understand Mr. Davitt knows all about these things, and I suppose he will tell what he knows. But of the main matter, and I think the chief cause of your ire, I am quite in a position to speak. I have read at least a score of Mr. Taylor's letters to the _Manchester Guardian_, and I have always found them very intelligently written, and invariably characterised by a spirit of fairness and moderation; indeed, the chief fault I found with them was that they took too favourable a view of the motives, if not the acts, of many of our public men, but notably of Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien. You may, of course, fairly say that I am not the best judge of either the acts or the motives of these gentlemen, and I freely grant you that I may not, for my way of looking upon the Irish question is quite other than theirs; but what I must be excused for holding is that both I and Mr. Taylor have quite as good a right to our opinions as either of these gentlemen, or as any other member of the Irish Parliamentary Party. But this is the very last right that people are inclined to grant to each other in Ireland just now. Personally I care very little for this, but for Ireland's sake I care much. Some twenty years ago or so I was sent into penal servitude with the almost entire approval, expressed or implied, of the Irish Press. Some short time after the same Press found out that I and my friends had not sinned so grievously in striving to free Ireland. But men and times and things may change again, and, though I am growing old, I hope still to live long enough to be forgiven for my imperfect appreciation of the blessings of Boycotting, and the Plan of Campaign, and many similar blessings. It matters little indeed how or when I die, so that Ireland lives, but her life can only be a living death if Irishmen are not free to say what they believe, and to act as they deem right.--Your obedient servant,

JOHN O'LEARY.

June 18, 1888.

_To the Editor of "United Ireland."_

Dear Sir,--I observe that in your last issue, amongst other things, you state that Mr. Taylor accepted a Crown Prosecutors.h.i.+p in 1885.

I happen to know the precise facts. Mr. Taylor was offered the Crown Prosecutors.h.i.+p of the King's County, and some of us strongly advised him to accept it. There were no political prosecutions impending at the time, and it seemed to me that a Nationalist who would do his work honestly in prosecuting offenders against the ordinary law might strike a blow against tyranny by refusing to accept a brief, if offered, against men accused of political offences or prosecuted under a Coercion Act. I know that a similar view was entertained by the late Very Rev. Dr. Kavanagh of Kildare, and many others. However, we failed to influence Mr. Taylor further than to make him say that he would do nothing in the matter until Mr. Davitt was consulted. I, for one, called on Mr. Davitt, and pressed my views upon him; but he was decided that no Nationalist could identify himself in the smallest way with Castle rule in Ireland. This settled the question, and Mr. Taylor declined the post, which was subsequently applied for by Mr. Luke Dillon, who now holds it.--Faithfully yours,

JAMES A. POOLE.

29 Harcourt Street.

EDITORIAL NOTE.

_"United Ireland," June 23._

We devote a large portion of our s.p.a.ce to-day to the apparently organised defence of Mr. J.F. Taylor and his friends, and we are quite content to rest upon their letters the justification for our comments. When a gentleman who avows himself a disappointed aspirant for Parliamentary honours, and who owns his regret that he did not become a petty Castle placeman, is discovered writing in an important English Liberal paper, venomous little innuendos at the expense of sorely attacked Irish leaders which excite the enthusiasm of the _Liarish Times_, it was high time to intimate to the _Manchester Guardian_ the source from which its Irish information is derived. The case against Mr. Taylor as a criticaster is clinched by the fact that his cause is espoused by Mr. John O'Leary. The Irish public are a little weary of Mr.

O'Leary's querulous complaints as an _homme incompris_. So far as we are aware, the only ground he himself has for complaining of want of toleration is that he possibly considers the good-humoured toleration for years invariably extended to his opinions on men and things savours of neglect. His idea of toleration with respect to others seems to be toleration for everybody except the unhappy wretches who may happen to be for the moment doing any practicable service in the Irish cause.

NOTE O.

BOYCOTTING BY "CROWNER'S QUEST LAW."

(Vol. ii. p. 312.)

The following circ.u.mstantial account of this deplorable case of Ellen Gaffney preserved here, as I find it printed in the _Irish Times_ of February 27, 1888.

"In the Court of Queen's Bench, on Sat.u.r.day, the Lord Chief-Justice (Sir Michael Morris, Bart.), Mr. Justice O'Brien, Mr. Justice Murphy, and Mr.

Justice Gibson presiding, judgment was delivered in the case of Ellen Gaffney. The original motion was to quash the verdict of a coroner's jury held at Philipstown on August 27th and September 1st last, on the body of a child named Mary Anne Gaffney.

"The Lord Chief-Justice said it appeared that Mary Anne Gaffney, the child on whose body the inquest was held, was born on the 23d July, and that she died on the 25th August, 1887. A Dr. Clarke, who had been very much referred to in the course of the proceedings, called upon the local sergeant of the police, and directed his attention to the body, but the sergeant having inspected the body, came to the conclusion that there was no need for an inquest. The doctor considered differently, and the sergeant communicated with the Coroner on the 26th August, and on the next day that gentleman arrived in Philipstown. He had a conference there with Dr. Clarke and with a reverend gentleman named Father Bergin, and subsequently proceeded to hold an inquest upon the child in a public-house--a most appropriate place apparently for the transactions which afterwards occurred there. The investigation, if it might be so called, was proceeded with upon that 27th of August. Very strong affidavits had been made on the part of Mrs. Gaffney--who applied to have the inquisition quashed--her husband, and some of the constabulary authorities as to the line of conduct pursued upon that occasion. Ellen Gaffney and her husband were taken into custody on the day the inquest opened by the verbal direction of the Coroner, who refused to complete the depositions given by the former on the ground that she was not sworn. That did not take him out of the difficulty, for if she was not sworn she had a right to be sworn, and the Coroner had no right to prevent her. The inquest was resumed on the 1st September in the court-house at Philipstown--the proper place--and a curious letter was read from the Coroner, the effect of which was that he did not consider that there was any ground for detaining the man Gaffney in custody, but the woman was brought before a justice of the peace and committed for trial. She was in prison from August 27th until the month of December, when the lucky accident of a winter a.s.size occurred, else she might be there still. At the adjourned inquest the Coroner proceeded to read over the depositions taken on the former day, and it was sworn by four witnesses, whom he (the Lord Chief-Justice) entirely credited, that the Coroner read these depositions as if they were originals, whereas an unprecedented transaction had occurred. The Coroner had given the original depositions out of his own custody, and given them to a reverend gentleman who was rather careless of them, as was shown by the evidence of a witness named Greene, who deposed that he saw a car on the road upon which sat two clergymen, and he found on the road the original depositions which, presumably, one of the clergymen had dropped. The depositions were handed to a magistrate and afterwards returned to the police at Philipstown, who had possession of them on the resumption of the inquest. If the case stood alone there it was difficult to understand how a Coroner could come into court and appear by counsel to resist the quas.h.i.+ng of an inquisition in regard to which at the very door such gross personal misconduct was demonstrated. No doubt, he said, he did not read them as originals but as copies, and it was strange, that being so, that he did not inform the jury of what had become of them, and he complained now of not being told by the police of their recovery--not told of his own misconduct. On the 1st September, Ellen Gaffney applied by a solicitor--Mr. Disdall, and as a set-off the Coroner permitted a gentleman named O'Kearney Whyte to appear--for whom?

Was it for the const.i.tuted authorities or for the next-of-kin? No, but for the Rev. Father Bergin, who was described as president of the local branch of the National League, and the Coroner (Mr. Gowing) alleged as the reason why he allowed him to appear and cross-examine the witnesses and address the jury and give him the right of reply like Crown counsel was, that Ellen Gaffney stated that she had been so much annoyed by Father Bergin that she attributed the loss of her child to him--that it was he who had murdered the child. It was a.s.serted that Father Bergin sat on the bench with the Coroner and interfered during the conduct of the inquest, and having to give some explanation of that Mr. Gowing's version was certainly a most amusing one. He said it was the habit to invite to a seat on the bench people of a respectable position in life--which, of course, a clergyman should be in--and that he asked Father Bergin to sit beside him in that capacity. But see the dilemma the Coroner put himself in. According to his own statement he had previously allowed this reverend gentleman to interfere, and to be represented by a solicitor because he was incriminated, inculpated, or accused, and it certainly was not customary to invite any one so situated to occupy a seat on the bench. He (the Lord Chief Baron) did not believe that Father Bergin was incriminated in any way, but that was the Coroner's allegation, and such was his peculiar action thereafter.

The Coroner further stated that no matter whether he read the originals or the copies of the first day's depositions, it was on the evidence of September 1st that the jury acted. If that was so he placed himself in a further dilemma, for there was no evidence before the jury at all on the second day upon which they could bring a verdict against Ellen Gaffney.

In regard to the recording and announcing of the verdict it appeared that the jury were 19 in number, and after their deliberations the foreman declared that 13 were for finding a verdict one way and 6 for another; that Mr. Whyte dictated the verdict to the Coroner, and the Coroner asked the 13 men if that was what they agreed to. Mr. Whyte's statement was that the jury, through the foreman, stated what their verdict was; that he wrote it down, and that the Coroner asked him for what he had written, and used it himself. But in addition to that, when the jury came in the Coroner and Mr. Whyte divided them--placed them apart while the verdict was being written--and then said to the 13 men, "Is that what you agree to?" Such apparent misconduct it was hardly possible to conceive in anybody occupying a judicial position as did the Coroner, and especially a Coroner who had an inquisition quashed before.

What he had mentioned was sufficient to call forth the emphatic decision of the court quas.h.i.+ng the proceedings, which, however, were also impeached on the grounds of its insufficiency and irregularity, and of the character of the finding itself. It was not until the Coroner had been threatened with the consequences of his contempt that he made a return to the visit of _certiorari_, and it was then found that out of ten so-called depositions only one contained any signature--that of Dr.

Clarke's, which was one of those lost by the clergyman, and not before the jury on the 1st September. He (the Lord Chief-Justice) had tried to read the doc.u.ments, but in vain--they were of such a scrawling and scribbling character, but, as he had said, all were incomplete and utterly worthless except the one which was not properly before the jury.

Then, what was the finding on this inquisition, which should have been substantially as perfect as an indictment? "That Mary Anne Gaffney came by her death, and that the mother of this child, Ellen Gaffney, is guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food and care to sustain the life of this child." Upon what charge could the woman have been implicated on that vague finding? He (his Lords.h.i.+p) could understand its being contended that that amounted argumentatively to a verdict of manslaughter; but the Coroner issued his warrant and sent this woman to prison as being guilty of murder, and she remained in custody, as he had already remarked, until discharged by the learned judge who went the Winter a.s.sizes in December. Upon all of these grounds they were clearly of opinion that this inquisition should be quashed, and Mr. Coroner Gowing having had the self-possession to come there to show cause against the conditional order, under such circ.u.mstances, must bear the costs of that argument.

Mr. Fred. Moorhead, who, instructed by Mr. O'Kearney Whyte, appeared for the Coroner, asked whether the Court would require, as was usual when costs were awarded against a magistrate, an undertaking from the other side--

The Lord Chief-Justice.--That is not to bring an action against the Coroner, you mean?

Mr. Moorhead.--Yes, my Lord. I think it is a usual undertaking when costs are awarded in such a case. I think you ought--

The Lord Chief-Justice.--Well, I don't know that we ought, but we most certainly will not. (Laughter.)

Mr. David Sherlock, who (instructed by Mr. Archibald W. Disdall) appeared for Ellen Gaffney.--Rest a.s.sured, we certainly will bring an action.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I have the authority of Mr. Hennessey, "the best living Irish scholar, and a Kerryman to boot," for this spelling. I am quite right, he says, in stating that the people there p.r.o.nounce the names of Glenbeigh and Rossbeigh as Glenbehy and Rossbehy in three syllables.