On Wednesday, December 16th, the trial of O'Donovan (Rossa) was brought
to a conclusion in Dublin. Next morning, away went judges, crown
lawyers, spies, detectives, and informers for the good city of Cork,
where another batch of men accused of conspiring against British rule in
Ireland--"the old crime of their race"--were awaiting the pronouncement
of British law upon their several cases. Cork city in these days was
known to be one of the _foci_ of disaffection; perhaps it was its chief
stronghold. The Metropolis may have given an absolutely larger number of
members to the Fenian organization, but in proportion to the number of
its population the Southern city was far more deeply involved in the
movement. In Dublin, the seat of British rule in Ireland, many
influences which are but faintly represented in other parts of the
country, are present and active to repress the national ardour of the
people. Those influences are scarcely felt in the city of Saint Finbar.
Not in Ireland is there a town in which the national sentiment is
stronger or more widely diffused than in Cork. The citizens are a
warm-hearted, quick-witted and high-spirited race, gifted with fine
moral qualities, and profoundly attached to the national faith in
religion and politics. Merchants, traders, professional men,
shopkeepers, artizans, and all, are comparatively free from the spells
of Dublin Castle, and the result is visible in their conduct. The crown
looks dubiously and anxiously upon a Cork jury; the patriot, when any
work for Ireland is in hand, looks hopefully to the Cork people. The
leaders of the Fenian movement thoroughly understood these facts, and
devoted much of their time and attention to the propagation of their
society among men so well inclined to welcome it. Their labours, if
labours they could be called, were rewarded with a great measure of
success. The young men of Cork turned into the organization by hundreds.
There was no denying the fact; every one knew it; evidences of it were
to be seen on all sides. The hope that was filling their hearts revealed
itself in a thousand ways: in their marchings, their meetings, their
songs, their music. The loyal party in the neighbourhood grew alarmed,
and the government shared their apprehensions. At the time of which we
write, the opinion of the local magistracy and that of the authorities
at Dublin Castle was that Cork was a full-charged mine of "treason."
Thither was the Commission now sped, to carry terror, if the "strong arm
of the law" could do it, into the hearts of those conspirators "against
the royal name, style, and dignity" of her Majesty Queen Victoria. As no
one in the Castle could say to what desperate expedients those people
might have recourse, it was thought advisable to take extraordinary
precautions to ensure the safety of the train which carried those
important personages, her Majesty's judges, lawyers, witnesses and
informers, through the Munster counties and on to the city by the Lee.
"Never before" writes the special correspondent of the _Nation_, "had
such a sight been witnessed on an Irish railway as that presented on
Thursday along the line between Dublin and Cork. Armed sentries paced
each mile of the railway; the platforms of the various stations through
which the trains passed were lined with bodies of constabulary, and the
bridges and viaducts on the way were guarded by a force of military,
whose crimson coats and bright accoutrements stood out in bold relief
from the dark ground on which they were stationed, against the grey
December sky. As a further measure of precaution a pilot engine steamed
in advance of the train in which their lordships sat, one carriage of
which was filled with armed police. And so, in some such manner as Grant
or Sheridan might have journeyed along the Petersburgh and Lynchburg
railway while the flag of the Confederacy floated in Richmond, the two
judges travelled down in safety to the head-quarters of Fenianism in
Munster."
Immediately on their arrival in Cork, the judges proceeded to the
court-house and formally opened the business of the Commission. Next day
Charles Underwood O'Connell and John M'Afferty were placed in the dock.
These two men belonged to a class which formed the hope of the Fenian
organization, and which the government regarded as one of the most
dangerous elements of the conspiracy. They were Irish-American soldiers,
trained to war, and inured to the hardships of campaigning in the great
struggle which had but recently closed in America. They were a sample of
the thousands of Irishmen who had acquired in that practical school the
military knowledge which they knew was needed for the efficient
direction of an insurrectionary movement in Ireland, and, who were now
burning for the time and opportunity to turn that knowledge to account.
It was known that many of these men were, as quietly and secretly as
might be, dropping into Queenstown as steamer after steamer arrived from
the Land of the West, and were moving about through the Southern
counties, inspiriting the hearts of the Brotherhood by their presence
and their promises, and imparting to them as much military instruction
as was possible under the circumstances. To hunt down these "foreign
emissaries" as the crown lawyers and the loyal prints were pleased to
call them, and to deter others from following in their footsteps, was
naturally a great object with the government, and when they placed
Charles Underwood O'Connell and John M'Afferty in the dock they felt
they had made a good beginning. And these were representative men in
their way. "It was a strange fate," says the writer from whom we have
already quoted, "which had brought these men together in a felon's dock.
They had been born in different lands--they had been reared thousands of
miles apart--and they had fought and won distinction under different
flags, and on opposing sides in the American war. M'Afferty, born of
Irish parents in Ohio, won his spurs in the Confederate army. O'Connell,
who emigrated from Cork little more than two years ago, after the ruin
of his family by a cruel act of confiscation and eviction, fought under
the Stars and Stripes, and, like M'Afferty, obtained a captain's
commission as the reward of his services. Had they crossed each others
path two years ago they would probably have fought _a la mort_, but the
old traditions which linger in spite of every circumstance in the hearts
of Irishmen were strong in both, and the cause of Ireland united them,
only alas, that they might each of them pay the cost of their honest, if
imprudent enthusiasm, by sharing the same prison in Ireland, and falling
within the grasp of the government which they looked on as the oppressor
of their fatherland."
M'Afferty however was not fated to suffer on that occasion. Proof of his
foreign birth having been adduced, the court held that his arrest on
board the steamer in Queenstown harbour, when he had committed no overt
act evidencing a treasonable intent, was illegal, and his trial was
abandoned. The trial of Underwood O'Connell was then postponed for a few
days, and two men reputed to be "centres" of the organization in Cork,
were brought to the bar.
They were Bryan Dillon and John Lynch. Physically, they presented a
contrast to the firm-built and wiry soldiers who had just quitted the
dock. Dillon was afflicted with curvature of the spine, the result of
an accident in early life, and his companion was far gone in that
blighting and fatal disease, consumption. But though they were not men
for the toils of campaigning, for the mountain march, and the bivouac,
and the thundering charge of battle, they had hearts full of enthusiasm
for the cause in which they were engaged, and heads that could think,
and plot, and plan, for its advancement.
We need not here go through the sad details of their trials. Our purpose
is to bring before our readers the courage and the constancy of the
martyrs to the cause of Irish nationality, and to record the words in
which they gave expression to the patriotic sentiments that inspired
them. It is, however, to be recollected that many of the accused at
these commissions--men as earnest, as honest, and as devoted to the
cause of their country as any that ever lived--made no such addresses
from the dock as we can include in this volume. All men are not orators,
and it will often occur that one who has been tried for life and liberty
in a British court of law, on the evidence of spies and informers, will
have much to press upon his mind, and many things more directly relevant
to the trial than any profession of political faith would be, to say
when called upon to show reason why sentence should not be passed upon
him. The evidence adduced in these cases is usually a compound of truth
and falsehood. Some of the untruths sworn to are simply blunders,
resulting from the confused impressions and the defective memory of the
witnesses, others are deliberate inventions, made, sworn to, backed up,
and persevered in for the purpose of insuring a successful result for
the prosecution. Naturally the first impulse of the accused, when he is
allowed to speak for himself, is to refer to these murderous falsehoods;
and in the excitement and trouble of those critical moments, it is all
that some men can venture to do. Such criticisms of the prosecution are
often valuable to the prisoner from a moral point of view, but rarely
have they any influence upon the result of the trial. All things
considered, it must be allowed that they act best who do not forget to
speak the words of patriotism, according to the measure of their
abilities, before the judge's fiat has sealed their lips, and the hand
of British law has swept them away to the dungeon or the scaffold.
"Guilty" was the verdict returned by the jury against Bryan Dillon and
John Lynch. The evidence against them indeed was strong, but its chief
strength lay in the swearing of an approver named Warner, a callous and
unscrupulous wretch, from whose mind the idea of conscience seemed to
have perished utterly. If there was any check upon the testimony of this
depraved creature, it existed only in some prudential instinct,
suggesting to him that even in such cases as these a witness might
possibly overdo his work, and perhaps in a caution or two given him in a
private and confidential manner by some of the managers of the
prosecution. Warner's evidence in this case was conclusive to the minds
of all who chose to believe it; and therefore it was that those
prisoners had not long been occupants of the dock when the question was
put to them what they had to say why sentence should not be passed on
them. In reply Bryan Dillon said:--
"My lords, I never was for one minute in Warner's company. What
Warner swore about me was totally untrue. I never was at a meeting at
Geary's house. The existence of the Fenian organization has been
proved sufficiently to your lordships. I was a centre in that
organization; but it does not follow that I had to take the chair at
any meeting, as it was a military organization. I do not want to
conceal anything. Warner had no connexion with me whatever. With
respect to the observation of the Attorney-General, which pained me
very much, that it was intended to seize property, it does not follow
because of my social station that I intended to seize the property of
others. My belief in the ultimate independence of Ireland is as fixed
as my religious belief--"
At this point he was interrupted by Judge Keogh, who declared he could
not listen to words that were, in fact, a repetition of the prisoner's
offence. But it was only words of this kind that Bryan Dillon cared to
say at the time; and as the privilege of offering some remarks in
defence of his political opinions--a privilege accorded to all prisoners
in trials for treason and treason-felony up to that time--had been
denied to him, he chose to say no more. And then the judge pronounced
the penalty of his offending, which was, penal servitude for a term of
ten years.
John Lynch's turn to speak came next. Interrogated in the usual form, he
stood forward, raised his feeble frame to its full height, and with a
proud, grave smile upon his pallid features, he thus addressed the
court:--
"I will say a very few words, my lords. I know it would be only a
waste of public time if I entered into any explanations of my
political opinions--opinions which I know are shared by the vast
majority of my fellow-countrymen. Standing here as I do will be to
them the surest proof of my sincerity and honesty. With reference to
the statement of Warner, all I have to say is, and I say it honestly
and solemnly, that I never attended a meeting at Geary's, that I
never exercised with a rifle there, that I never learned the use of
the rifle, nor did any of the other things he swore to. With respect
to my opinions on British rule in this country--"