Informers in history

Informers not confined to Ireland

Conspirators and informers will co-exist until the crack of doom, and the wider the conspiracy the greater is the certainty of detection. Some of the seemingly staunchest hearts in Smith O’Brien’s movement of ‘48 were false to their chief and colleagues; and when the crisis came, suggested to the police magistrates, that in order to preserve consistency and keep up the delusion, they ought to be arrested and imprisoned. [Communicated by F. T. P., Esq, ex-police magistrate.] Even while we write, the ranks of the Fenian brotherhood, although knotted as it seemed by the most binding oaths of secrecy, are broken and betrayed by internal spies.

Nor are the informers confined to Ireland. One of the American correspondents of the *Times, *in a letter dated Philadelphia, October 24, 1865, writes: “The Fenian Congress continues its sessions, and has so much business to attend to that they are protracted far into the night. The green-uniformed sentinels still guard its doors closely, and hope to keep the secret of the deliberations within. They have changed their weapons to loaded muskets, in order to terrify attempting intruders, but their watchfulness is of little avail, for not only are there informers inside in the interest of your Government, but I learn that others assist in the deliberations who are in the interest of our own, who send daily reports of the proceedings to Washington, that the Government may know in time the adoption of any measures tending to violate the peace between England and America.”

In concluding a book which deals largely with Irish informers, we have no desire to convey the inference that treachery or duplicity, for what Shakespeare calls “saint-seducing gold,” is a speciality of the Celtic character. The records of every age and nation furnish ample illustrations of both, even in the most aggravated form. Philip of Macedon said that he would “never despair of taking any fortress to which an ass might enter laden with gold.”

Pausanias, king of Sparta, and commander or the Greeks at the battle of Plataea, was put to death by his own countrymen for intriguing to betray Greece to Persia. The physician of Pyrrhus informed the Roman general Fabricius, that he was ready to poison his royal master for pay. Wallace was doubly betrayed, first by his servant, and finally by his false friend Sir J. Monteith, who received a grant of land in acknowledgement from the English Privy Council. The published letters of Lord Orrery, son of Boyle, the famous English adventurer, confess that he was set as a regular spy over the Catholic plantations in Clare.

King Charles the Second received large douceurs from the French monarch, and shaped his foreign policy accordingly. Sidney was secretly subsidised by France, and Dalrymple’s memoirs disclose many similar cases. The publication of the French official records shows to what a great extent the members of the English legislature were in the pay of Louis XIV. The history of Cockaigne, the vile betrayer of the Rev. William Jackson, reveals that the informers of that time were not confined to Irishmen; and Captain Armstrong, who fattened his substance on the blood of the Sheares, did not belong to an Irish family.

We learn from Napier’s narrative of the Peninsular war, that Wellington had paid informers on Soult’s staff, and Soult had similar channels of information through officers on Wellington’s staff. [The duke, in one of his conversations with Rogers, describes an informer, called Don Uran de la Rosa, and sometimes Ozeile, who, during the progress of the Peninsular war, was wont to dine with the English and the French alternately. “When I was ambassador at Paris,” added Wellington, “he came and begged me to make interest with Soult for the settlement of his accounts, ‘How can I?’ I said, laughing, ‘when we made such use of you as we did?’ They were settled, however, if we could believe him.

After his death, a Frenchman came to me in London, and when he had vapoured away for some time, declaring that Ozelle had won every battle and saved Europe, he said, ‘Here are his memoirs; shall we publish them or not?.’ I saw his drift, and said, ‘Do as you please; he was neither more nor less than a spy.’ I heard no more of them or of him.” For full details, see “Recollections” by Samuel Rogers, pp. l98-201.]

Nor does Scotland seem to have been specially fastidious. In a letter from the subsequent Duke of Wellington to James Trait Esq., dated London, 18th March 1808, he expresses a wish that a Scotch clergyman should immediately wait upon him, preparatory to proceeding, on a mission of espionage, to France and Holland; and Dr Madden, in his book on the Penal Laws, informs us that he “was a very remarkable man, of the name of Robertson, employed by the Duke of Wellington on several secret missions of a very questionable kind for a minister to have been engaged on.”

Barry O’Meara, the Boswell of Napoleon at St Helena, was assured by that personage that of the many English spies which his executive had in pay, including a number of ladies, of whom some were of high rank, one lady especially, of very high rank, sometimes got so much as £3,000 a month, But, doubtless, still more startling details of the doings of spies and informers in foreign countries would have come to light had the sale of a series of secret-service letters and receipts been suffered, on February 17, 1866, to take its course at Mr Sotheby’s. The papers, which extended from 1790 to 1827, and seem to have been sold as waste by an ignorant official at the Foreign Office, disclosed some curious instances of secret expenditure on the part of English ambassadors abroad; but, by command of Lord Clarendon, the lot was withdrawn!

THE END

Sham Index Home.