Speeches from the Dock Part 11

The prisoner heard the sentence without giving the slightest symptoms of emotion, and then spoke as follows:--

"I will accept my sentence as becomes a gentleman and a Christian. I have but one request to ask of the tribunal, and that is that after the execution of the sentence my remains shall be turned over to Mr.

Lawless to be by him interred in consecrated ground as quietly as he possibly can. I have now, previous to leaving the dock, once more to return my grateful and sincere thanks to Mr. b.u.t.t, the star of the Irish bar, for his able and devoted defence on behalf of me and my friends. Mr. b.u.t.t, I thank you. I also return the same token of esteem to Mr. Dowse, for the kind and feeling manner in which he alluded to the scenes in my former life. Those kind allusions recall to my mind many moments--some bright, beautiful, and glorious--and yet some sad recollections arise of generous hopes that floated o'er me, and now sink beyond the grave. Mr. b.u.t.t, please convey to Mr.

Dowse my grateful and sincere thanks. Mr. Lawless, I also return you my thanks for your many acts of kindness--I can do no more."

He was not executed however. The commutation of Burke's sentence necessitated the like course in all the other capital cases, and M'Afferty's doom was changed to penal servitude for life.

EDWARD DUFFY.

On the day following that on which M'Afferty's sentence was p.r.o.nounced, the trial of three men, named John Flood, Edward Duffy, and John Cody was brought to a conclusion. When they were asked what they had to say why sentence should not be pa.s.sed on them, Cody denied with all possible earnestness the charge of being president of an a.s.sa.s.sination committee, which had been brought against him. Flood--a young man of remarkably handsome exterior--declared that the evidence adduced against himself was untrue in many particulars. He alluded to the Attorney-General's having spoken of him as "that wretched man, Flood." "My lords," said he, "if to love my country more than my life makes me a wretched man, then I am a very wretched man indeed." Edward Duffy, it might be supposed by anyone looking at his emaciated frame, wasted by consumption, and with the seal of death plainly set on his brow, would not be able to offer any remarks to the court; but he roused himself to the effort. The n.o.ble-hearted young fellow had been previously in the clutches of the government for the same offence. He was arrested with James Stephens and others at Fairfield House, in November, 1865, but after a brief imprisonment was released in consideration of the state of his health, which seemed such as would not leave him many days to live. But, few or many, Duffy could not do otherwise than devote them to the cause he had at heart. He was re-arrested at Boyle on the 11th of March, and this time the government took care they would not quit their hold of him. The following is the speech which, by a great physical effort, he delivered from the dock, his dark eyes brightening, and his pallid features lighting up with the glow of an earnest and lofty enthusiasm while he spoke:--

"The Attorney-General has made a wanton attack on me, but I leave my countrymen to judge between us. There is no political act of mine that I in the least regret. I have laboured earnestly and sincerely in my country's cause, and I have been actuated throughout by a strong sense of duty. I believe that a man's duty to his country is part of his duty to G.o.d, for it is He who implants the feeling of patriotism in the human breast. He, the great searcher of hearts, knows that I have been actuated by no mean or paltry ambition--that I have never worked for any selfish end. For the late outbreak I am not responsible; I did all in my power to prevent it, for I knew that, circ.u.mstanced as we then were, it would be a failure. It has been stated in the course of those trials that Stephens was for peace.

This is a mistake. It may be well that it should not go uncontradicted. It is but too well known in Ireland that he sent numbers of men over here to fight, promising to be with them when the time would come. The time did come, but not Mr. Stephens. He remained in France to visit the Paris Exhibition. It may be a very pleasant sight, but I would not be in his place now. He is a lost man--lost to honour, lost to country. There are a few things I would wish to say relative to the evidence given against me at my trial, but I would ask your lords.h.i.+ps to give me permission to say them after sentence.

I have a reason for asking to be allowed to say them after sentence has been pa.s.sed."

The Chief Justice--"That is not the usual practice. Not being tried for life, it is doubtful to me whether you have a right to speak at all. What you are asked to say is why sentence should not be pa.s.sed upon you, and whatever you have to say you must say now."

"Then, if I must say it now I declare it before my G.o.d that what Kelly swore against me on the table is not true. I saw him in Ennisgroven, but that I ever spoke to him on any political subject I declare to heaven I never did. I knew him from a child in that little town, herding with the lowest and vilest. Is it to be supposed I'd put my liberty into the hands of such a character? I never did it.

The next witness is Corridon. He swore that at the meeting he referred to I gave him directions to go to Kerry to find O'Connor, and put himself in communication with him. I declare to my G.o.d every word of that is false. Whether O'Connor was in the country or whether he had made his escape, I know just as little as your lords.h.i.+ps; and I never heard of the Kerry rising until I saw it in the public papers. As to my giving the American officers money that night, before my G.o.d, on the verge of my grave, where my sentence will send me, I say that also is false. As to the writing that the policeman swore to in that book, and which is not a prayer-book, but the 'Imitation of Christ,' given to me by a lady to whom I served my time, what was written in that book was written by another young man in her employment. That is his writing not mine. It is the writing of a young man in the house, and I never wrote a line of it."

The Lord Chief Justice--"It was not sworn to be in your handwriting."

"Yes, my lord, it was. The policeman swore it was in my hand-writing."

The Lord Chief Justice--"That is a mistake. It was said to be like yours."

"The dream of my life has been that I might be fighting for Ireland.

The jury have doomed me to a more painful, but not less glorious death. I now bid farewell to my friends and all who are dear to me.

"'There is a world where souls are free, Where tyrants taint not nature's bliss; If death that bright world's opening be, Oh, who would live a slave in this.'

"I am proud to be thought worthy of suffering for my country; when I am lying in my lonely cell I will not forget Ireland, and my last prayer will be that the G.o.d of liberty may give her strength to shake off her chains."

John Flood and Edward Duffy were then sentenced each to fifteen years of penal servitude, and Cody to penal servitude for life.

Edward Duffy's term of suffering did not last long. A merciful Providence gave his n.o.ble spirit release from its earthly tenement before one year from the date of his sentence had pa.s.sed away. On the 21st of May, 1867, his trial concluded; on the 17th of January, 1868, the patriot lay dead in his cell in Millbank Prison, London. The government permitted his friends to remove his remains to Ireland for interment; and they now rest in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, where friendly hands oft renew the flowers on his grave, and many a heartfelt prayer is uttered that G.o.d would give the patriot's soul eternal rest, and "let perpetual light s.h.i.+ne unto him."

STEPHEN JOSEPH MEANY.

The connexion of Stephen Joseph Meany with Irish politics dates back to 1848, when he underwent an imprisonment of some months in Carrickfergus Castle, under the provisions of the _Habeas Corpus_ Suspension Act. He had been a writer on one of the national newspapers of that period, and was previously a reporter for a Dublin daily paper. He joined the Fenian movement in America, and was one of the "Senators" in O'Mahony's organization. In December, 1866, he crossed over to England, and in the following month he was arrested in London, and was brought in custody across to Ireland. His trial took place in Dublin on the 16th of February, 1867, when the legality of the mode of his arrest was denied by his counsel, and as it was a very doubtful question, the point was reserved to be considered by a Court of Appeal. This tribunal sat on May the 13th, 1867, and on May the 18th, their decision confirming the conviction was p.r.o.nounced. It was not until the 21st of the following month, at the Commission of Oyer and Terminer that he was brought up for sentence. He then delivered the following able address to show "why sentence should not be pa.s.sed on him":--

"My lords--There are many reasons I could offer why sentence should not--could not--be p.r.o.nounced upon me according to law, if seven months of absolute solitary imprisonment, and the almost total disuse of speech during that period, had left me energy enough, or even language sufficient to address the court. But yielding obedience to a suggestion coming from a quarter which I am bound to respect, as well indeed as in accordance with my own feelings, I avoid everything like speech-making for outside effect. Besides, the learned counsel who so ably represented me in the Court of Appeal, and the eminent judges who in that court gave judgment for me, have exhausted all that could be said on the law of the case. Of their arguments and opinions your lords.h.i.+ps have judicial knowledge. I need not say that both in interest as in conviction I am in agreement with the const.i.tutional principles laid down by the minority of the judges in that court, and I have sufficient respect for the dignity of the court--sufficient regard to what is due to myself--to concede fully and frankly to the majority a conscientious view of a novel and, it may be, a difficult question.

"But I do not ask too much in asking that before your lords.h.i.+ps proceed to pa.s.s any sentence you will consider the manner in which the court was divided on that question--to bear in mind that the minority declaring against the legality and the validity of the conviction was composed of some of the ablest and most experienced judges of the Irish bench or any bench--to bear in mind that one of these learned judges who had presided at the Commission Court was one of the most emphatic in the Court of Criminal Appeal in declaring against my liability to be tried; and moreover--and he ought to know--that there was not a particle of evidence to sustain the cause set up at the last moment, and relied upon by the crown, that I was an 'accessory before the fact' to that famous Dublin overt act, for which, as an afterthought of the crown, I was in fact tried. And I ask you further to bear in mind that the affirmance of the conviction was not had on fixed principles of law--for the question was unprecedented--but on a speculative view of a suppositious case, and I must say a strained application of an already over-strained and dangerous doctrine--the doctrine of constructive criminality--the doctrine of making a man at a distance of three thousand miles or more, legally responsible for the words and acts of others whom he had never seen, and of whom he had never heard, under the fiction, or the 'supposition,' that he was a co-conspirator. The word 'supposition' is not mine, my lords; it is the word put forward descriptive of the point by the learned judges presiding at my trial; for I find in the case prepared by these judges for the Court of Criminal Appeal the following paragraph:--

"'Sufficient evidence was given on the part of the crown of acts of members of the said a.s.sociation in Ireland not named in the indictment in promotion of the several objects aforesaid, and done within the county of the city of Dublin, to sustain some of the overt acts charged in the indictment supposing them to be the acts of the defendant himself.'

"Fortified by such facts--with a court so divided, and with opinions so expressed--I submit that, neither according to act of parliament, nor in conformity with the practice at common law, nor in any way in pursuance of the principles of that apocryphal abstraction, that magnificent myth--the British const.i.tution--am I amenable to the sentence of this court--or any court in this country. True, I am in the toils, and it may be vain to discuss how I was brought into them.

True, my long and dreary imprisonment--shut away from all converse or a.s.sociation with humanity, in a cell twelve feet by six--the humiliations of prison discipline--the hards.h.i.+ps of prison fare--the handcuffs, and the heartburnings--this court and its surroundings of power and authority--all these are 'hard practical facts,' which no amount of indignant protests can negative--no denunciation of the wrong refine away; and it may be, as I have said, worse than useless--vain and absurd--to question the right where might is predominant. But the invitation just extended to me by the officer of the court means, if it means anything--if it be not like the rest, a solemn mockery--that there still is left to me the poor privilege of complaint. And I do complain. I complain that law and justice have been alike violated in my regard--I complain that the much belauded attribute 'British fair play' has been for me a nullity--I complain that the pleasant fiction described in the books as 'personal freedom' has had a most unpleasant ill.u.s.tration in my person--and I furthermore and particularly complain that by the design and contrivance of what are called 'the authorities,' I have been brought to this country, not for trial but for condemnation--not for justice but for judgment.

"I will not tire the patience of the court, or exhaust my own strength, by going over the history of this painful case--the kidnapping in London on the mere belief of a police-constable that I was a Fenian in New York--the illegal transportation to Ireland--the committal for trial on a specific charge, whilst a special messenger was despatched to New York to hunt up informers to justify the illegality and the outrage, and to get a foundation for any charge. I will not dwell on the 'conspicuous absence' of fair play, in the crown at the trial having closed their cases without any reference to the Dublin transaction, but, as an afterthought, suggested by their discovered failure, giving in evidence the facts and circ.u.mstances of that case, and thus succeeding in making the jury convict me for an offence with which up to that moment the crown did not intend to charge me. I will not say what I think of the mockery of putting me on trial in the Commission Court in Dublin for alleged words and acts in New York, and though the evidence was without notice, and the alleged overt acts without date, taunting me with not proving an _alibi_, and sending that important ingredient to a jury already ripe for a conviction. Prove an _alibi_ to-day in respect of meetings held in Clinton Hall, New York, the allegations relating to which only came to my knowledge yesterday! I will not refer with any bitter feeling to the fact that whilst the validity of the conviction so obtained was still pending in the Court of Criminal Appeal, the Right Hon. and n.o.ble the Chief Secretary for Ireland declared in the House of Commons that 'that conviction was the most important one at the Commission'--thus prejudicing my case, I will not say willingly; but the observation was, at least, inopportune, and for me unfortunate.

"I will not speak my feeling on the fact that in the arguments in the case in the Court for Reserved Cases, the Right Hon. the Attorney-General appealed to the pa.s.sions--if such can exist in judges--and not to the judgment of the court, for I gather from the judgment of Mr. Justice O'Hagan, that the right hon. gentleman made an earnest appeal 'that such crimes' as mine 'should not be allowed to go unpunished'.--forgetful, I will not say designedly forgetful, that he was addressing the judges of the land, in the highest court of the land, on matters of law, and not speaking to a pliant Dublin jury on a treason trial in the court-house of Green-street.

"Before I proceed further, my lords, there is a matter which, as simply personal to myself I should not mind, but which as involving high interests to the community, and serious consequences to individuals, demand a special notice. I allude to the system of manufacturing informers. I want to know, if the court can inform me, by what right a responsible officer of the crown entered my solitary cell at Kilmainham prison on Monday last--unbidden and unexpected--uninvited and undesired. I want to know what justification there was for his coming to insult me in my solitude and in my sorrow--ostensibly informing me that I was to be brought up for sentence on Thursday, but in the same breath adroitly putting to me the question if I knew any of the men recently arrested near Dungarvan, and now in the prison of Kilmainham. Coming thus, with a detective dexterity, carrying in one hand a threat of sentence and punishment--in the other as a counterpoise and, I suppose an alternative, a temptation to treachery. Did he suppose that seven months of imprisonment had so broken my spirit, as well as my health, that I would be an easy prey to his blandishments? Did he dream that the prospect of liberty which newspaper rumour and semi-official information held out to me was too dear to be forfeited for a trilling forfeiture of honour? Did he believe that by an act of secret turpitude I would open my prison doors only to close them the faster on others who may or may not have been my friends--or did he imagine he had found in me a Ma.s.sey to be moulded and manipulated into the service of the crown, or a Corridon to have cowardice and cupidity made the incentives to his baseness. I only wonder how the interview ended as it did; but I knew I was a prisoner, and self-respect preserved my patience and secured his safety. Great, my lords, as have been my humiliation in prison, hard and heart-breaking as have been the ordeals through which I have pa.s.sed since the 1st of December last, there was no incident or event of that period fraught with more pain on the one hand, or more suggestiveness on the other, than this sly and secret attempt at improvising an informer. I can forget the pain in view of the suggestiveness; and unpleasant as is my position here to-day, I am almost glad of the opportunity which may end in putting some check to the spy system in prisons. How many men have been won from honour and honesty by the stealthy visit to the cell is more of course than I can say--how many have had their weakness acted upon, or their wickness fanned into flame by which means I have no opportunity of knowing--in how many frailty and folly may have blossomed into falsehood it is for those concerned to estimate. There is one thing, however, certain--operating in this way is more degrading to the tempter than to the tempted; and the government owes it to itself to put an end to a course of tactics pursued in its name, which in the results can only bring its humiliation--the public are bound in self-protection to protect the prisoner from the prowling visits of a too zealous official.

"I pa.s.s over all these things, my lords, and I ask your attention to the character of the evidence on which alone my conviction was obtained. The evidence of a special, subsidized spy, and of an infamous and ingrate informer.

"In all ages, and amongst all peoples, the spy has been held in marked abhorrence. In the amnesties of war there is for him alone no quarter; in the estimate of social life no toleration; his self-abas.e.m.e.nt excites contempt, not compa.s.sion; his patrons despise while they encourage; and they who stoop to enlist the services shrink with disgust from the moral leprosy covering the servitor. Of such was the witness put forward to corroborate the informer, and still not corroborating him. Of such was that phenomenon, a police spy, who declared himself an unwilling witness for the crown! There was no reason why in my regard he should be unwilling--he knew me not previously. I have no desire to speak harshly of Inspector Doyle; he said in presence of the Crown Solicitor, and was not contradicted, that he was compelled by threats to ascend the witness table; he may have had cogent reasons for his reluctance in his own conscience. G.o.d will judge him.

"But how shall I speak of the informer, Mr. John Devany? What language should be employed in describing the character of one who adds to the guilt of perfidy to his a.s.sociates the crime of perjury to his G.o.d?--the man who eating of your bread, sharing your confidence, and holding, as it were, your very purse-strings, all the time meditates your overthrow and pursues it to its accomplishment?

How paint the wretch who, under pretence of agreement in your opinions, worms himself into your secrets only to betray them; and who, upon the same altar with you, pledges his faith and fealty to the same principles, and then sells faith, and fealty, and principles, and you alike, for the unhallowed Judas guerdon? Of such, on his own confession was that distinguished upholder of the British crown and government, Mr. Devany. With an affrontery that did not falter, and knew not how to blush, he detailed his own partic.i.p.ation in the acts for which he was prosecuting me as a partic.i.p.ator. And is the evidence of a man like that--a conviction obtained upon such evidence--any warrant for a sentence depriving me of all that make life desirable or enjoyable?

"He was first spy for the crown--in the pay of the crown, under the control of the crown, and think you he had any other object than to do the behests of the crown?

"He was next the traitor spy, who had taken that one fatal step, from which in this life there is no retrogression--that one plunge in infamy from which there is no receding--that one treachery for which there is no earthly forgiveness; and, think you, he hesitated about a prejury more or less to secure present pay and future patronage? Here was one to whom existence offers now no prospect save in making his perfidy a profession, and think you he was deterred by conscience from recommending himself to his patrons? Think you that when at a distance of three thousand miles from the scenes he professed to describe, he could lie with impunity and invent without detection, he was particular to a shade in doing his part of a most filthy bargain?

It is needless to describe a wretch of that kind--his own actions speak his character. It were superfluous to curse him, his whole existence will be a living, a continuing curse. No necessity to use the burning words of the poet and say:--

"'May life's unblessed cup for him Be drugged with treacheries to the brim.'

"Every sentiment in his regard of the country he has dishonoured, and the people he has humbled, will be one of horror and hate. Every sigh sent up from the hearts he has crushed and the homes he has made desolate, will be mingled with execrations on the name of the informer. Every heart-throb in the prison cells of this land where his victims count time by corroding his thought--every grief that finds utterance from these victims in the quarries of Portland will go up to heaven freighted with curses on the Nagles, the Devanys, the Ma.s.seys, the Gillespies, the Corridons, and the whole host of mercenary miscreants, who, faithless to their friends and recreant to their professions, have, paraphrasing the words of Moore, taken their perfidy to heaven seeking to make accomplice of their G.o.d--wretches who have embalmed their memories in imperishable infamy, and given their accursed names to an inglorious immortality. Nor will I speculate on their career in the future. We have it on the best existing authority that a distinguished informer of antiquity seized with remorse, threw away his blood-money, 'went forth and hanged himself.' We know that in times within the memory of living men a government actually set the edifying and praiseworthy example of hanging an informer when they had no further use of his valuable services--thus _dropping_ his acquaintance with effect. I have no wish for such a fate to any of the informers who have cropped out so luxuriantly in these latter days--a long life and a troubled conscience would, perhaps, be their correct punishment--though certainly there would be a consistent compensation--a poetic justice--in a termination so exalted to a career so brilliant.

"I leave these fellows and turn for a moment to their victims. And, I would here, without any reference to my own case, earnestly implore that sympathy with political sufferers should not be merely telescopic in its character, 'distance lending enchantment to the view;' and that when your statesmen sentimentalize upon, and your journalists denounce far-away tyrannies--the horrors of Neapolitan dungeons--the abridgement of personal freedom in Continental countries--the exercise of arbitrary power by irresponsible authority in other lands--they would turn their eyes homeward, and examine the treatment and the sufferings of their own political prisoners. I would, in all sincerity, suggest that humane and well-meaning men, who exert themselves for the remission of the death-penalty as a mercy, would rather implore that the doors of solitary and silent captivity should be remitted to the more merciful doom of an immediate relief from suffering by immediate execution--the opportunity of an immediate appeal from man's cruelty to G.o.d's justice. I speak strongly on this point because I feel it deeply. I speak not without example. At the Commission at which I was tried there was tried also and sentenced a young man named Stowell. I well remember that raw and dreary morning, the 12th March, when handcuffed to Stowell I was sent from Kilmainham Prison to the County Gaol of Kildare. I well remember our traversing, so handcuffed, from the town of Sailing to the town of Naas, ancle deep in snow and mud, and I recall now with pain our sad foreboding of that morning. These in part have been fulfilled. Sunday after Sunday I saw poor Stowell at chapel in Naas Gaol drooping and dying. One such Sunday--the 12th May--pa.s.sed and I saw him no more. On Wednesday, the 15th, he was, as they say, _mercifully_ released from prison, but the fiat of mercy had previously gone forth from a higher power--the political convict simply reached his own home to die, with loving eyes watching by his death-bed. On Sunday, the 19th May, he was consigned to another prison home in Glasnevin Cemetery. May G.o.d have mercy on his soul--may G.o.d forgive his persecutors--may G.o.d give peace and patience to those who are doomed to follow.

"Pardon this digression, my lords, I could not avoid it. Returning to the question, why sentence should not be p.r.o.nounced upon me, I would ask your lords.h.i.+ps' attention to the fact showing, even in the estimate of the crown, the case is not one for sentence.

"On the morning of my trial, and before the trial, terms were offered to me by the crown. The direct proposition was made through my solicitor, through the learned counsel who so ably defended me, through the Governor of Kilmainham Prison--by all three--that if I pleaded guilty to the indictment, I should get off with six months'

imprisonment. Knowing the pliancy of Dublin juries in political cases, the offer was, doubtless, a tempting one. Valuing liberty, it was almost resistless--in view of a possible penal servitude--but having regard to principle, I spurned the compromise. I then gave unhesitatingly, as I would now give, the answer, that not for a reduction of the punishment to six hours would I surrender faith--that I need never look, and could never look, wife or children, friends or family, in the face if capable of such a selfish cowardice. I could not to save myself imperil the safety of others--I could not plead guilty to an indictment in which six others were distinctly charged by name as co-conspirators with me--one of those six since tried, convicted, and sentenced to death--I could not consent to obtain my own pardon at their expense--furnish the crown with a case in point for future convictions, and become, even though indirectly, worthy to rank with that brazen battalion of venal vagabonds, who have made the Holy Gospel of G.o.d the medium of barter for their unholy gain, and obtained access to the inmost heart of their selected victim only to coin its throbbing into the traitor's gold and traffic on its very life-blood.

"Had I been charged simply with my own words and deeds I would have no hesitation in making acknowledgement. I have nothing to repent and nothing to conceal--nothing to retract and nothing to countermand; but in the language of the learned Lord Chief Baron in this case, I could not admit 'the preposterous idea of thinking by deputy' any more than I could plead guilty to an indictment which charge others with crime. Further, my lords, I could not acknowledge culpability for the acts and words of others at a distance of three thousand miles--others whom I had never seen, of whom I had never heard, and with whom I never had had communication. I could not admit that the demoniac atrocities, described as Fenian principles by the constabulary-spy Talbot, ever had my sanction or approval or the sanction or approval of any man in America.