The Phoenix Park Murders

The Phoenix Park Murders

Excerpt from “Random Records of a Reporter” by J. B. Hall.

Perhaps the most vivid of my random recollections is centred around the Phoenix Park murders of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Thomas Henry Burke, which took place on the 6th May, 1882.

That night, it was a Saturday, I attended a performance of *Maritana *by the Carl Rosa Opera Company. During the first act, Mr. Barton McGuckin and Mr. Michael Gunn came to my box in a state of great excitement and informed me of the appalling news that had reached them, the only definite fact being that the two men had been murdered-whether shot or stabbed was not at the moment mentioned.

A question arose whether it were judicious or otherwise to have an announcement made publicly from the stage, and to stop the performance; but after a conference it was deemed more prudent, and I think wisely, to avoid even a possibility of panic - the house was packed - not to make such an announcement, but to let the news percolate, as it were ; to inform the artistes and the conductor and to shorten the opera as much as possible.

I need scarcely say that my hands were full from that moment. I have never known anything to exceed the wave of excitement which spread throughout the city, an excitement made all the more intense by the fact that the rumours that night were so indefinite, and in many respects so conflicting.

How all hands were turned on for the bringing out of a midnight edition of the old *Evening Telegraph *; how the available staff scurried hither and thither to collect what facts were to be gleaned, and how later on from nearly every house one passed came people straining eagerly to gain tidings of what had really happened.

I remember one strange scene. As I drove home I pulled up after midnight at the old Portobello Hotel, now a private hospital, then patronised greatly by theatrical artistes. Within a weird spectacle presented itself. In the coffee room under a flickering light were gathered a crowd of the principals of the Carl Rosa Company, and in their midst stood Snazelle, the great baritone, reading out from the hastily produced edition, such information as was then available of the details of the tragedy which proved, indeed, to be historical in the annals of Dublin.

On the trials of the Invincibles which long afterwards followed, I am not inclined to dwell; it were an oft-told tale, and I refrain. The one incident, however, which was to me the most dramatic of all was the appearance in the chair as informer of James Carey, the arch-criminal of all.

It was in Kilmainham Courthouse on February 3rd, 1883, when “James Carey, Town Councillor, builder,” and Joseph Brady and a group of six others were put forward and charged with the murders. Evidence was given and an adjournment followed and one informer gave evidence; but on the 17th February, there was consternation in the dock when it was seen that one figure was absent and when James Carey was led forward to the witness chair. Had Joe Brady, who glared at him and stretched forward towards him, been able to reach him, I believe he would have been torn to pieces, for Brady was a powerful young fellow, and for the moment he was for all the world like a tiger on the spring.

Amidst painful excitement and a silence only broken by the voices of counsel and witness, Carey, in graphic language and dramatic manner, described the approach of the victims, the hurrying away of the scouts to warn the gang, the signalling and the grouping of the assassins. He named the men who were waiting to do the murderous work and described the fatal scene with a calm and callous precision dreadful to listen to.

The arrest of James Carey, Joseph Brady, Timothy Kelly, Michael Fagan and others, had taken place in February, 1883, nine months after the tragedy, and the trial of Brady was opened in Green Street before Judge William O’Brien on the 14th of April following. No trial in my experience attracted to it anything approaching the almost feverish excitement which centred upon this case.

I remember that the prisoner was conveyed from Kilmainham prison under a mounted escort of military and police, with armed police and marines following on cars. In a second vehicle were the four informers, James Carey, Richard Farrell, William Lamie and Michael Kavanagh (who had driven the outside car to the Park).

The Judge, who was known as ” hatchet-face,” was of singularly cadaverous appearance. The case for the prosecution was opened by the Attorney-General, Mr. A. M. Porter, afterwards Master of the Rolls, in an extremely calm but powerful speech, to which Brady listened with apparent unconcern, occupying himself at intervals picking his teeth with the stump of a pencil.

The calling of Carey as a witness created a sensation far exceeding even the earlier scene at Kilmainham. Knowing him, as nearly everyone in Court had done as a Town Councillor and a citizen of repute, and with a reputation for ostentatious piety, there was something indescribable in the effect his presence produced, and with every head stretched forward, and breath almost held, the scene was striking, indeed.

He spoke slowly and calmly as he had done at the preliminary hearing. During his evidence he had occasion to look straight at Brady, and their eyes met, and I can never forget the look of scorn, contempt and hatred with which the prisoner fixed his piercing eyes on the informer. Carey quickly shifted his position and looked at him no more until leaving the table he was brought face to face with him and received the same appalling and loathing look.

The cool description by the informer of the preparations for the murder of Mr. Burke, the arrival in the Park of the conspirators, some on a car driven by Kavanagh and others in a cab driven by Fitzharris (” Skin the Goat ”), the arrangements for the signal to be given by Carey and the hideous incident of the flashing knives, the brief struggle of the victims, and the final fatal blows-was dreadful to listen to. It is but a mild statement to record that Carey left the witness chair amidst the undisguised disgust of those who had listened to him.

When sentence of death was pronounced on him, Brady, bowing to his counsel (Dr. Webb and Mr. Adams), thanked them. Brady’s father was in court and was deeply afflicted, and a pathetic figure in the front of the gallery was a gentle-faced young girl, said to be his sweetheart, and whose tearful eyes were riveted upon him to the end.

The trial of Tim Kelly, who, according to the informer, had assisted actively in the actual murders, created an interest second only to that of Brady. Kelly was extremely youthful and simple-looking, and had an air of bewildered anxiety. He was known to have borne a very good character, and it was with profound dismay and astonishment that those who were acquainted with him learned that he was associated in any way with the “Invincibles.”

He was tried three times, the jury disagreeing on two occasions. The unhappy boy had been a chorister in one of the Dublin Catholic churches, and I was told by the Governor of Kilmainham that the night before his execution he sang in his cell Wallace’s pathetic song “The Memory of the Past.”

I recall the trial of Michael Fagan especially by reason of the fact that two compositors, engaged on Dublin newspapers, were called by the prosecution to give evidence, but refused at first point-blank to do so - until the Judge threatened to send them to prison for twelve months, when they consented to be sworn, and their evidence went the length of identifying the prisoner as having been in the Park on the evening of the 6th of May.

Both Carey and another informer named Smith mentioned that they had impressed upon the perpetrators to “mind it is the man with the grey suit” (meaning Mr. Burke). The defence was an alibi, but it was of no avail, and Fagan, who was the least concerned in his demeanour of all the accused, was sentenced to death.

James Fitzharris, alias ” Skin the Goat,” was twice tried, first for murder and secondly for aiding and abetting the perpetrators by conveying them in his cab to and from the Park. He presented a most remarkable appearance. Although plain to the point of ugliness, there was something almost comical in the expression of his rugged face, and he had a habit of winking to friends whom he recognised in the Gallery, or even to strangers who happened to catch his eye.

One of the English newspaper correspondents, describing his countenance, said it presented the appearance of having at some remote period been “badly battered by contact with a traction engine.” He had the reputation of being an honest, decent type of cabman, quite incapable of being a blood-thirsty conspirator.

I enquired how he came by his extraordinary nickname and I was informed that Fitzharris had been the possessor of a very fine goat which he kept in his back-yard, and that when he was extremely hard-up ” and at his wit’s end to procure the means of satisfying an “unquenchable thirst,” a. friend and neighbour told him that the skin of the goat would fetch a tidy sum-when the animal died.

Fitz ruminated on this remark, and in a rash moment sacrificed the poor goat, sold his sleek and silvery skin, and thus gratified the inner man at the expense of those finer feelings which it may be supposed he possibly possessed. Since that occasion he was known as Skin the Goat.”

At his first trial, the jury acquitted him of the capital charge, but on the second he was convicted of aiding and abetting.” It was pointed out that notwithstanding the enormous reward of £10,000** **offered by the Government, Fitzharris had remained silent. He was sentenced to penal servitude for life, but was released after some years, and led a most exemplary life.

The executions of Joseph Brady, Tim Kelly, Michael Fagan, Daniel Curley and Thomas Caffrey took place at Kilmainham Prison, which was quite surrounded by Grenadier Guards and infantry and police. Marwood was the executioner.

There was a certain feeling of commiseration in the case of the boy, Tim Kelly, on account of his extreme youth and the influences under which he was led into crime, as well as the substantial doubt in the case, and up to the last there were hopes entertained; of a reprieve.

I was informed that the unhappy youth received religious ministrations from a Sister of Mercy-a cousin of Mr. Burke for whose murder he was hanged.

---

I was privileged to read a letter written to the late A. M. Sullivan, in reply to his note of condolence, on behalf of the bereaved widow of Lord Frederick Cavendish - a letter written in a truly noble and Christian spirit:-

21 Carlton House Terrace, May 7th.

Dear Sir,

I am a brother of Lady Frederick Cavendish and was with her when she saw your card. She was deeply touched. She knows that no one who knew her husband, either in public or private life, bore any feeling of enmity to him, and she believes that those who murdered him did not know who he was. She clings to the hope that even this catastrophe, by awakening men’s consciences to the guilt and horror of such dreadful crimes, may tend in some measure to the opening of brighter days for your country.

A. G. LYTTLETON.

There is yet a sequel to this sad story. After the Invincibles had been disposed of, the Government had James Carey on their hands, and the question was what to do with him. They decided to ship him off secretly to their Colony at Natal in South-East Africa.

On July 4th, 1883, at Dartmouth, he embarked on the “Kilfauns Castle” under the name of James Power. A fellow-passenger was one Patrick O’Donnell. They had no previous knowledge of each other, but on the voyage became acquainted and occasionally had refreshments at the bar.

At Cape Town, O’Donnell was shown a portrait of James Carey the informer he recognised it at once as that of his acquaintance” Mr. Power.” Carey sailed in the Melrose “for Port Elizabeth. So did O’Donnell, and while the two men were in the refreshment saloon together, O’Donnell drew a revolver and fired three shots into Carey’s body killing him almost instantly.

O’Donnell was taken into custody and brought back to London where he was put on trial for murder. I was present at the trial. For counsel he had Sir Charles Russell, Q.C., and A. M. Sullivan. On the next day he was convicted and sentenced to death, and was executed in Newgate in December, 1883.

A couple of years after the execution a handsome marble monument was sent from New York to Dublin and set up in Glasnevin Cemetery to his memory. **

‘Parnellism and Crime.’**

Excerpt from “A History of Our Own Times from 1880 to the Diamond Jubilee” by Justin McCarthy. Published in 1897 by Chatto and Windus, London.

On April 18, 1887, the world was startled by an extraordinary publication in the *Times *newspaper. The *Times *printed in facsimile a letter professing to be signed by Mr. Parnell, and dated May 15, 1882, a few days after the murders in the Phoenix Park - a letter which, had it been genuine, would undoubtedly have proved that Mr. Parnell, if not actually an accomplice in the murder plot, was certainly not sorry that the murders had been committed.

It will be remembered that at the first meeting of the House [of Commons. KF] after the murders Mr. Parnell had professed the uttermost horror of the crimes, and had declared his belief that the murders were committed by men who absolutely detested the course of constitutional policy with which he had been identified, and who had perpetrated that crime as the deadliest blow in their power against his hopes, and against the new policy which the Government of that day had resolved to adopt.

The letter is enough of a historical document to be worth reproducing:-

Dear Sir, - I am not surprised at your friend’s anger, but he and you should know that to denounce the, murders was the only course open to us. To do that promptly was plainly our best policy. But you can tell him, and all others concerned, that, though I regret the accident of Lord Frederick Cavendish’s death, I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got no more than his deserts. You are at liberty to show him this, and others whom you can trust also, but let not my address be known. He can write to House of Commons.

‘Yours very truly,

‘CHARLES S. PARNELL.’

The *Times *explained that the body of the manuscript was apparently not in Mr. Parnell’s handwriting, but that the signature and the words ‘Yours very truly’ were unquestionably written by him; and it added, that ‘if any member of Parliament doubts the fact, he can easily satisfy himself on the matter by comparing the handwriting with that of Mr. Parnell in the book containing the signatures of members when they first take their seats in the House of Commons.’

The letter, as we have said, created an immense sensation. The House of Commons was at the time engaged in a debate on the second reading of the new Coercion Bill for Ireland introduced by the Conservative Government. Mr. Sexton, one of the most distinguished of the Irish Nationalist members, opened the debate, and, without waiting for any opportunity of communication with Mr. Parnell, denounced the letter as ‘a base, manifest, clumsy, and malignant forgery.’

Mr. Sexton took his course on the simple ground that, from his personal knowledge of Mr. Parnell, he well knew that Mr. Parnell never could have written, or signed, or authorised such a letter. To all political and personal associates of Mr. Parnell the letter was as obviously a forgery as if it had been signed with the name of ‘William Ewart Gladstone,’ or ‘Hartington,’ or ‘Arthur J. Balfour.’

Mr. Parnell’s friends and colleagues knew him to be a man of perfect honour, and one who utterly detested crime and outrage in any form, not alone upon his own account, but also because he was convinced that, where Ireland’s affairs were concerned, ‘the man who commits a crime,’ to adopt O’Connell’s words, ‘gives strength to the enemy.’

Therefore Mr. Sexton naturally had no more hesitation in branding the letter as a forgery than he would have had in denying, without any previous consultation with Mr. Parnell, the allegation that Mr. Parnell had forged a cheque or picked a pocket.

Mr. Parnell came into the House while Mr. Sexton was speaking, and when he got a chance of making a statement he denounced the letter in the *Times *as ‘a villainous and barefaced forgery.’ In order, he said, that his denial might be full and complete, he declared that he had never written such a letter, never authorised such a letter to be written, never signed such a letter, and never saw the letter itself until it appeared in the *Times *of that morning.

He declared that no man was ever more surprised and thunderstruck than he was when he heard of the Phoenix Park murders. ‘It is no exaggeration to say,’ he added, ‘that if I had been in the Phoenix Park that day I would have stood between Lord Frederick Cavendish and the daggers of the assassins, and between the daggers and Mr. Burke as well.’

He declared and all those who knew him believed in the truth of his words-that no other man had suffered more than he had suffered from the terrible deed in the Phoenix Park, and that no nation had suffered so much from it as the Irish nation.

It is not, perhaps, saying too much to add that the sympathy of the great majority of the House of Commons went with Mr. Parnell. One Conservative member, a man of ability and high character, declared at once that he felt no doubt upon the subject, and was convinced that the letter published in the *Times *was a gross and monstrous forgery.

The *Times *published other letters purporting to be signed by Mr. Parnell, and all written in the same spirit. Some of them were set down at once by everyone who knew Mr. Parnell as very stupid forgeries, for the mere reason, if nothing more, that they contained absurd errors in spelling.

Now, all Mr. Parnell’s friends knew very well that one of his strongest peculiarities was a passion for accuracy in spelling. Of course the *Times *had not said that Mr. Parnell wrote the letters with his own hand, but, to those who knew Mr. Parnell, the idea of his putting his name to any ill-spelt document was impossible to entertain for a moment.

The Times had for long before been conducting a series of systematic attacks on Mr. Parnell. It had evidently wound itself up into the mood that Mr. Parnell was another Catiline, or worse than that - a common enemy of mankind.

It would be impossible to believe that the conductors of a journal like the *Times *could have been influenced by any purely malignant hatred of Mr. Parnell as a public man. But they had undoubtedly wrought themselves up into that temper which can believe anything, how ever bad, of an extreme political opponent.

The conductors of the *Times, *many years before, had got into the same way of thinking about Daniel O’Connell, and had denounced him and vilified him as if he were guilty of the basest crimes that could defame humanity.

No one can doubt that the conductors of the *Times *believed that the documents they published were genuine. But there was apparently no trouble whatever taken to ascertain whether the letters were authentic or not. The letters were given or sold to the *Times *by a man named Pigott, a person who had once conducted a Dublin National newspaper enterprise, and who afterwards lived, or tried to live, by begging-letters and by blackmail.

Again and again this man had written to some of Mr. Parnell’s political associates, urging, beseeching, and praying them to get him some help from Mr. Parnell out of the National funds; and again and again Mr. Parnell had advised his friends not even to answer the letters of such a man.

As it was well said afterwards, if the correspondent of the *Times *in Ireland had asked the sentry on guard at Dublin Castle what sort of a man was Pigott, the sentinel would have warned the correspondent to have nothing to do with such a creature.

It is not necessary to say too much about Pigott. He was a man of a class which is always appearing and reappearing in history -a man of the order of Oates. There is nothing surprising in the appearance of such a man at the time of a great political crisis; but the very surprising, thing is that the conductors of a great paper like the *Times *should be taken in for a moment by so pitiful a scoundrel.

We believe it is quite certain that the letters had been shown in the first instance to the private secretary of Lord Hartington, and that the secretary did not think it worth his while even to submit such rubbish to his chief.

The *Times *had, however, committed itself to a series of articles on ‘Parnellism and Crime,’ and seemed as though it were bound in honour to keep up to the level of its own assertions. We shall see afterwards that these statements became the occasion for a special judicial commission.

The articles on ‘Parnellism and Crime’ contained the most astonishing statements, some of which might be considered as absolutely ludicrous, if the whole subject were not rather too solemn and grim for laughter. One of these allegations - afterwards, to be sure, withdrawn - was that the Phoenix Park murders had been arranged by Mr. Parnell and a number of his friends at that lonely spot, convenient for conspiracy, the Willesden Junction Station.

Among the alleged conspirators with Mr. Parnell in this Willesden Junction gathering was the writer of the present history.

Of course, all these ‘charges and allegations,’ as they afterwards came to be formally called, could not be allowed to pass without some form of inquiry. The question was brought up again and again in the House of Commons. Mr. Parnell himself challenged the fullest investigation, and the only question with him and with his friends was as to the form which the inquiry ought to take.

Mr. Parnell was quite willing to submit the whole matter to the judgment of a committee of the House of Commons, and one of Mr. Parnell’s colleagues offered on his behalf to accept the judgment of a Parliamentary committee to be composed exclusively of members belonging to the Conservative party.

Mr. Parnell and his colleagues were perfectly satisfied to submit the charges of the *Times *to the judgment of any committee of gentlemen in the House of Commons, no matter what their political opinions might be.

In the end the Government proposed the appointment of a special commission of three judges to inquire into the ‘charges and allegations’ made in the Times against Mr. Parnell and certain of his colleagues.

An Act of Parliament passed on August 13, 1888 appointed the Commission. Sir James Hannen was made president of the court. Mr. Justice Day and Mr. Justice A. L. Smith were the other members The passing of this measure was strongly opposed by the Liberal party in the House of Commons.

It was argued that it established a new and very dangerous precedent in the way of dealing with political controversy. A Government, it was urged, might a any time consign a certain number of its political opponents to be tried before a court of judges, each of whom might be a Government partisan, and might thus obtain a judgment amounting to a condemnation of a whole political party.

It was not suggested that Sir James Hannen, or Mr. Justice Day, or Mr. Justice Smith, was a man in the least degree likely to be guided by his political opinions in the decision of such a question; but then, it was well known that the political opinions of these judges were opposed to those of Mr. Parnell; and, in any case, it could not be denied that the introduction of such a precedent would sanction in troublous times the setting-up of a tribunal which might be simply a court to find opponents of the Government guilty of some offence not created by statute law.

The functions of the Special Commission were not in any sense judicial. Mr. Parnell was not charged with any direct offence committed against the law of the land. Nobody in his senses supposed, and the suggestion was never made by the stoutest Conservative in the House of Commons, that the *Times *could be in possession of evidence to prove that Mr. Parnell was an accomplice in the Phoenix Bark murders.

As a matter of historical interest, it may be noticed that nobody in the House of Commons itself believed Mr. Parnell to be guilty of having given any sanction, either before or after, to such a crime.

The Commission, however, was appointed to consider a vast number of historical and controversial questions, on which no humanly constituted court of law could possibly give a decision that would be binding upon anybody. Did the speech of Mr. Parnell delivered in Dublin tend to stimulate hatred of the Government in the county of Cork? Did the speeches of Mr. Parnell and two or three of his friends made in New York, and Washington, and Chicago, tend to rouse the Irish people at home into hostility to the Queen’s Government?

All these are purely historical questions, with which no strict judicial court can possibly deal. There are laws which limit the freedom of speech. There are laws against sedition-that is to say, direct incentive to rebellion, even where no overt act has been committed. If a man by his speech offends against any of these statutes, he can be arraigned for the offence and tried before a court of law.

But to this Special Commission court was assigned the task of giving the legal decision of three judges on the whole struggle of Irish history. Suppose the three agreed that the Irish people ought to have been content with the Government under which Providence had been pleased to set them, and ought not to have carried on any agitation against it, who on earth would have cared anything for such a judgment? We might as well have had a special commission of three judges to decide whether the American people were right in making their declaration of independence.

If the Special Commission had been limited to the task of deciding whether the letters alleged to be dictated and signed by Mr. Parnell were genuine or were forgeries, that would have been a question on which the decision of three English judges would have been accepted as authoritative by most people.

Or if the question submitted to the judges had been, whether Mr. Parnell had or had not any complicity in the Phoenix Park murders, on that subject, too, the decision of the judges would have teen felt by most of the public to be a declaration of the highest importance.

But as the Commission was framed it authorised these three judges to pronounce a decision on every subject belonging to the whole political agitation in Ireland. Such a scheme could only tend to lower the authority of the judges, because assuredly no rational being in Great Britain or Ireland could have been affected one way or the other by any decision which the judges might pronounce as to the reasonableness of the Home Rule movement, or the propriety of the Plan of Campaign.

Therefore the leading members of the Opposition fought strongly against the appointment of any commission with so limitless a field of inquiry. The Government, however, being in a majority, carried their point and set up their Commission.

On the whole, there seems to us no reason now to regret that the Commission was set up. On the main questions, which had a distinct and pressing interest - on the personal questions, if we may put it so, the decision of the judges was entirely satisfactory to most of the men against whom the ‘charges and allegations ’ were made. Perhaps also it is just as well for the purposes of history that we should have an authenticated account of all the wild things that were spoken or written or done during a period of** **national convulsion.

Otherwise, there was a good deal about the whole inquiry, however grave and, important its purpose may have been, which partook of the character of opera-bouffe. The tribunal was like one of which Carlyle spoke many years before, and which seemed to him to have been summoned for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not a certain man had a nose on his face.

If there was anybody who really did not know that a terrible land struggle, a life or death struggle, was going on in Ireland, such a man ought to have been deeply interested in the proceedings of the Special Commission. But he might have got all the information he wanted out of the London daily papers.

If he were anxious to know how much the teachings of Mr. Parnell, or of Mr. Davitt, or of Mr. Dillon, had to do with the creating of a disturbed condition of things in Ireland, that was a question on which everybody could form his own opinion just as well as any of the three judges in the Commission court.

If there was any human being alive who really fancied that an impassioned political and agrarian agitation ever was carried on in any country in the world without some rough speaking and some wild deeds, then, indeed, such person might have found a student’s interest in the reading of the evidence brought before the court.

What people did really want to know was, whether Mr. Parnell had dictated and signed the letters published by the *Times, *and whether Mr. Parnell and any of his colleagues were accessories before or after the fact to the murders in the Phoenix Park. As to the general character of the agitation in Ireland, there was nothing to be added to what the public already had ample means of knowing.

The court met for the first time for actual business on October 22, 18S8. The Attorney-General of the Conservative Government conducted the case on behalf of the *Times, *and the leading counsel on Mr. Parnell’s side was Sir Charles Russell, now Lord Russell of Killowen, Chief Justice of England.

The charges made by the *Times *amounted in substance to an indictment against the whole Irish people at home and abroad. The counsel for the *Times *were more ingenious than Edmund Burke. Burke said he knew of no means for the framing of an indictment against a nation. The counsel for the *Times *were able to manage the work. The defendants in the proceedings were, speaking generally, the whole, body of the Irish Nationalist members of Parliament, and the members of all the various Irish organisations ‘known as the Irish Land League, the Irish National Land League and Labour and Industrial Union, the Ladies’ Land League, the Ladies’ Irish Land League and Labour and Industrial Union, the National League, and the affiliated societies in Great Britain and America, all forming one connected and continuous organisation.’

Then the indictment went on to say that ‘the ultimate object of the organisation was to establish the absolute independence of Ireland as a separate nation. With a view to effect this, one of the immediate objects of the said conspiracy or organisation was to promote an agrarian agitation against the payment of agricultural rents, thereby securing the co-operation of the tenant farmers of Ireland, and at the same time the impoverishment and ultimate expulsion from the country of the Irish landlords, who were styled the English garrison.’

Here, then, was a cheerful little indictment brought against several millions of Irish persons, men and women, abroad and at home. The first application, made to the court on the opening day, was in itself a curious illustration of the futility of the general proceedings. Sir Charles Russell applied for the release of two Irish members who were imprisoned after having been convicted of delivering speeches which were found to be contrary to law, and who were believed to be material witnesses in the proceedings before the court.

Here, then, was the fact made clear that the civil courts of law were sitting in Ireland, that the Queen’s writ still ran in Ireland, and that if men were convicted of a breach of any statute they could be sent to prison. One of the prisoners whose names were mentioned by Sir Charles Russell was Mr. John Dillon, son of a most respected Irish patriot and gentleman, and himself a man of the highest and most honourable position.

It did not need the setting up of any new tribunal to show that the condition of things in Ireland must be serious indeed when a man of Mr. Dillon’s character was imprisoned for a breach of the law. Everybody knew that the moment Mr. Dillon was released from prison he would be welcomed cordially back to his place in Parliament by nine out of every ten of the members of Commons, no matter to what party they belonged.

The agitation going on in Ireland could only be judged according to one’s convictions as to its necessity or its inexpediency. Mr. Dillon, as a matter of fact, had friends amongst the highest order of her Majesty’s judges in England, who, although they might not have approved of every hasty word spoken by him at a public meeting, were well convinced that, on the whole, the agitation in Ireland had an honourable and a patriotic purpose, and that those who mainly conducted it were not adventurers or criminals, or the promoters or the paymasters of crime.

The Commission went on with its work week after week, and even month after month. Witnesses were called from all parts of Ireland - landlords, land-agents, magistrates, police-officers, parish priests, curates, women of all ranks and classes - all to prove that somebody said something here and somebody else said something there; that there were riots at evictions, that resistance was offered to the police, and that outrage and murder were committed in too many instances.

It needed no ghost come from the grave, it did not even need three learned judges come from their grave pursuits, to obtain such information as that. One of the defendants, as the winter was setting in and the proceedings seemed likely to be the same sort of thing for months to come, obtained the permission of both parties in the case to spend the worst of the winter-time in Algiers.

Nobody had the faintest doubt that he would return whenever his presence was required. There was, of course, the usual evidence of the paid spy, the professional informer. There were, no doubt, some secret societies amongst the American-Irish, and the only question of any real importance was, how to establish some direct connection between these societies and Mr. Parnell and his friends. It was not supposed to be probable that the decision of the three judges in the Commission court would have the effect of disbanding the secret societies in America.

The evidence of the professional informers went as far as it could in the desired way, but the truth was that the public in general did not take much account of the professional informer. Nor was it news to anybody that there were Irish associations in America which repudiated Mr. Parnell and his constitutional movement, and would be contented with nothing less than the independence of Ireland obtained on some undefined battle-field.

The professional informers were wholly unsuccessful in connecting Mr. Parnell with the encouragement of any such scheme. But until the evidence of Pigott came on the informer and his testimony made the only really interesting or dramatic part of the proceedings before the court.

By the time Pigott’s turn had come the question before the public mind narrowed itself down to two particular points. The first was - Did Mr. Parnell dictate or sign the letters? The next point was - Did Mr. Parnell pay over to a man named Frank Byrne a sum of money in order to enable him to escape from these islands after the murders in the Phoenix Park? Apart from these nobody any longer cared much about the progress of the evidence.

When Pigott’s turn arrived, then indeed a keen interest was aroused, and the interest in the course of events soon turned into horror. Under the merciless cross-examination of Sir Charles Russell the wretched man utterly broke down.

He was invited to write on paper a miscellaneous list of words which Sir Charles Russell dictated to him. This list contained all the words misspelt in the letters which professed to be signed by Mr. Parnell, and in every instance Pigott’s misspelling was identical with that of the documents published in the *Times. *This, with the revelation of Pigott’s previous life and character, settled the whole question so far as his evidence was concerned.

Pigott did not present himself for any further cross- examination. He fled from the country. He took refuge in Madrid, and there, being visited by the police, he killed himself. A warrant had, in fact, been issued for his arrest under the extradition treaty with Spain, and it was only when the officers of the Madrid police knocked at his door that he saw the game was up and committed suicide.

It was not his suicide, however, which settled the question of the forged letters. That question had been settled in advance of his death. He had made in private an unsolicited confession to an English member of Parliament - Mr. Labouchere - that the letters were all of them forgeries.

He had made about the same time a qualified confession to another person, to the effect that some of the letters were forgeries and some genuine. He had written to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin a long series of letters, warning the Archbishop that a great danger was threatening the Irish party by the publication of forged letters tending to incriminate Mr. Parnell and some of his colleagues with the fomenting of outrage and murder in Ireland.

He had written to a prominent Irish Nationalist, undertaking to countermine and explode the forgery plot if he were paid a sum of 500l. to relieve him from his money troubles. He had been writing all sorts of letters to various public men, threatening them with criminal exposure or offering to defend them against it.

But everything had to do with a certain amount of money contribution. He had applied for pecuniary relief on the ground of the death of some near relative who was actually then alive, or who had died years before. He declared in the court that he had had a long and private interview at a hotel in Covent Garden with a member of the Irish Parliamentary party well known in London, and that they had come to a friendly understanding on all sorts of subjects.

That member of the Irish Parliamentary party was able to go into the witness-box and to swear that, although he had received many begging-letters and some threatening letters from Pigott, he had never seen the man in all his life.

There did not seem any particular motive for this statement on Pigott’s part. Apparently he had a taste for perjury, a sort of passion for perjury, and possibly regarded perjury and forgery as branches of the fine arts. Mr. Frederick Bayham, in Thackeray’s novel, ‘The Newcomes,’ says to somebody, ‘It is my firm belief that, on the whole, you would rather lie than not.’ Unfortunately, Pigott apparently would much rather lie than not.

It is only fair to observe that, before the suicide of Pigott was known in England, the Attorney-General, acting for the *Times, *withdrew the forged letters altogether from the case, and expressed his deep regret that they had ever been published. Mr. Parnell afterwards recovered damages from the *Times *for the publication of the letters, with the object of completely re-establishing his character, and the *Times *offered no real opposition to the action.

There had been a sad, a strange, and an unaccountable mistake on the part of the conductors of a great journal. Nothing of the kind had ever occurred before. Nothing of the kind probably will ever occur again in the history of the English newspaper.

The interest in the proceedings of the Commission was somewhat stimulated by the appearance of Mr. Parnell himself in the witness-box, and by the speech of Mr. Davitt in his own defence. But the substance of the inquiry was practically done with. The powerful reasoning and noble eloquence of Sir Charles Russell in his opening speech for the defence, which, of course, preceded the evidence of the defendants, will pass into history and be remembered for its own sake.

It was not until February 13, 1890, that the report of the Special Commission was issued and laid upon the table of the House of Commons. There was a scene of wondrous excitement when the first bundles of the report reacted the House. Members were too impatient to wait for their distribution in the office where Parliamentary documents are to be had. The bundles were simply flung upon the floor in the inner lobby, and were scrambled for by the members.

No report presented to Parliament in our time has ever created such a scene of excitement. The report, as we have already said, must have been satisfactory to every reasonable man. If the great bulk of its contents had but a purely historical interest, and only contained such information as everybody might have obtained from other Sources, that was in no sense the fault of the three judges. They had been appointed to make a vast, comprehensive, and wholly unnecessary inquiry into the condition of Ireland, and they had to do their duty.

But on the only questions concerning which rational persons cared anything whatever for the opinions of any commission of inquiry the judges were clear, explicit, and impartial. They found that the members of Parliament who were defendants in the case were not collectively engaged in any conspiracy to establish the separate independence of Ireland, but that certain Nationalists inside and outside of Parliament were anxious for separation, and that some of these were anxious to use the Land League as an indirect means of accomplishing Ireland’s independence.

All this, of course, everybody knew before. Many Irish members had proclaimed over and over again that they asked for nothing but the right of Ireland to manage her own domestic affairs as a partner in the British Empire. Other Irish Nationalists had openly proclaimed that they had no hope in anything but the absolute independence of Ireland. These, however, were the few, and most of them were men of no real authority and influence.

The judges found that the charge of insincerity in denouncing crime was not established against the defendants, and they found, of course, that the facsimile letters were forgeries. They found that neither Mr. Parnell nor any of his colleagues had supplied Frank Byrne with any money in order to enable him to escape from justice.

These were the two questions in which alone any real public interest was felt. Nobody could have been greatly excited over the finding that Mr. Davitt had been a member of the Fenian organisation. Mr. Davitt had been convicted and had suffered many years’ imprisonment for his share in the Fenian movement of 1867, and he would have been greatly surprised indeed to hear that anyone supposed he had not been a Fenian.

Neither did it add very much to the common public opinion of Mr. Davitt that the judges found him to have been quite sincere in his public denunciations of criminal outrage. Mr. Davitt was well known to all the leading men of the English democracy, and to many who were not democrats in any sense of the word, and he was recognised by everyone as a man of stainless character, to whom the bare idea of crime was naturally hateful.

The judges found that the defendants had not paid anyone to commit crime, but that some of them did incite to intimidation, although not to the commission of more serious offences. The report was very long, and very interesting in its way, and, as has been said before, it may prove a valuable historical study for generations to come. But the setting up of such a tribunal is a task which we fancy no English Government will ever attempt again.

By the public in general, even by those who least sympathised with the political action of Mr. Parnell and his colleagues, the report was accepted simply as a verdict of acquittal. The first time Mr. Parnell appeared in the House of Commons after the issue of the report he was greeted by an extraordinary demonstration.

It was late when he came in, and the House was crowded. The moment he appeared the whole Liberal party, including the occupants of the front Opposition bench, rose to their feet, and, standing, cheered him again and again. Some even among the Tory ranks joined in the demonstration.

It was felt to be an honourable testimonial of sympathy offered to a man who had been cruelly calumniated, and who had obtained a verdict of acquittal from a tribunal created by his political opponents to inquire into the conditions and character of his whole career. Not often has such a scene been witnessed in the House of Commons, and, whatever different persons may think of Mr. Parnell’s politics, there are very few indeed who will not say that it was a generous and a manly tribute, which did honour to the House of Commons.

Parnell himself seemed embarrassed and confused by this totally unexpected exhibition of feeling. He was by nature a shy and retiring man, and as he settled into his seat he said to a friend who was next him, ‘Why did you fellows all stand up? You almost frightened me.

That scene was the zenith of Mr. Parnell’s Parliamentary career.

General Contents. .