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CHAP. be continued for ever without legal obstruction or punish

XLIII.

1848.

June 17.

Aug. 13.

ment. At length the patience of Ministers was worn out, and deeming the public mind sufficiently prepared to render convictions probable, several arrests took place, particularly of Ernest John Jones, Fusseli, J. Williams, A. Sharpe, and T. Vernon. They were found guilty of sedition, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. At the same time, the meetings, whenever attempted, were dispersed by the police. The final blow, however, was struck in London when Cuffey and twenty-five of the most desperate Chartist leaders were captured by 300 armed police in the Angel Tavern, Blackfriars, in whose possession large quantities of daggers, spears, swords, pistols, and ball-cartridges were found. Their trials came on soon after, and then the magnitude and extent of the conspiracy were fully revealed. It appeared that they had established a "war committee," and intended to barricade the streets, plunder the shops, set fire to St Paul's, and rouse the whole population of the metropolis, whom they expected to join them in overturning the Government. They were all convicted, and the leaders transported for life; the inferior culprits to various penalties, varying from fourteen years' transportation to 1848, 85, six months' imprisonment, while many were allowed to escape on entering into their own recognisances to keep the peace.1

1 Ann. Reg.

121, 122; Chron.

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It is a curious circumstance, and fortunate for Great Britain, that although the Irish, for above half a century, have been always disposed to, and sometimes actually engaged in, revolt, they have never thought of combining their movements with those of the discontented on this side of the Channel. It would seem that the antipathy of the Celt to the Saxon is so strong that they will not combine with him even for objects of common interest. So it proved on the present occasion. Hardly were the Chartist disturbances put down in Great Britain than it was rumoured that a rebellion, however desperate its

They

XLIII. 1848.

hopes, was in preparation in Ireland. The Nation and CHAP. Irish Felon, the chief organs of the revolutionists in that country, early in July, upon the conviction of John Mitchell, a noted leader in Dublin, threw off the mask, and openly counselled immediate insurrection. In these circumstances, the measures of Government were prompt and decided, and such as, when supported by a people generally loyal, seldom fail of success. The Duke of Wellington, with his usual foresight, had been long making preparations for a serious conflict. With this view he had withdrawn the garrison from a number of the weak or distant police and military stations, and thereby strengthened the garrisons of those more important points. which it had been deemed advisable to defend. had been loopholed in every direction, and strongly barricaded in the entrances, so as to be capable of resisting any attack by rebels without artillery. Large bodies of troops were marched into the counties in the south and west, where the rising was expected, and several warsteamers, under Sir Charles Napier, cruised round the south coast, ready to carry succour to any point which might be menaced. Limerick was overawed by the "Rhadamanthus" with her guns enfilading the principal streets, and Cork by a flotilla of armed steamers. On the 26th July 26. July the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, to be hereafter noticed, arrived in Dublin, and warrants were immediately despatched for the arrest of Mr Smith O'Brien, Mr Meagher, and a dozen other club leaders. At the same time a proclamation was issued, declaring the clubs illegal, and requiring them forthwith to dissolve; the most rigid scrutiny took place of the persons licensed to bear arms; and the counties of Kerry, Galway, Wexford, Carlow, Queen's, Kildare, Lowth, Westmeath, Cavan, and great numbers of baronies in other counties, were proclaimed 1 Ann. Reg. by the Lord-Lieutenant, under the Crime and Outrage 1848, 93, Act, with a view to a general disarmament of the inha-95 Hist. bitants. At the same time a proclamation was issued,

94, Chron.

XLIII.

CHAP. offering £500 for the apprehension of Smith O'Brien, and £300 for that of either Meagher, Dillon, or Dohony. 1848. Those decisive measures brought matters to a crisis. Total defeat The editor of the Nation fled from Dublin, numerous lion. arrests took place, and the insurgents in the south openly

139.

of the rebel

July 28.

assembled in arms, and were reviewed near Ballingarry
by Mr S. O'Brien. It was the intention of Government
to have allowed the rebels to assemble in considerable
numbers without molestation, and meanwhile collect the
military on all sides, who, by a converging movement,
might surround them, and terminate the contest in a
day, it was hoped, with little bloodshed.
with little bloodshed. The troops,
fifteen hundred in number, were already in motion, under
the experienced guidance of General Macdonald, to effect
this object, when an accidental circumstance caused the
whole designs of the conspirators to fail, and turned them
into ridicule. Having collected some thousand insurgents,
O'Brien, after vain attempts to get some of the police
who bravely refused to surrender their arms to join.
his party, advanced on the 28th towards Ballingarry.
On their way they met a body of police fifty strong,
under Inspector Trant, who had marched out to meet
them. Finding himself surrounded by a body of two
thousand insurgents, Trant retreated to a slated house
occupied by one Widow Cormack, where he resolved, with
his brave followers, to defend himself to the last extre-
mity. The house was soon surrounded by the rebels-
above two thousand strong-and O'Brien in vain tried
to induce the commander to surrender and join his force
to those of the insurgents. Finding him proof alike
against promises and threats, he had recourse to force of
arms; but here the superiority of the police-as fine and
steady a body of men as any in the world-was at once
apparent. Before the firing had lasted many minutes,
two of the insurgents were shot dead, and three wounded
in the cabbage-garden round the house, while none of the
garrison were injured. Disconcerted by this untoward

XLIII. 1848.

result, and still more by the proved fidelity of the armed CHAP. police, upon whose defection he mainly relied, O'Brien drew off his forces, and fell back in deep dejection. He himself soon after fled, and Inspector Cox having come 1 Ann. Reg. up next day to the support of Trant with a larger police 1848, 95, force, the insurgents dispersed. The misguided leader O'Brien, was arrested some days after at Thurles in disguise when 1848; Ibid. at the railway station, setting out for Limerick, and Trials. committed for trial.1

96; Trial of

Sept. 28,

389-State

O'Brien,

ing of the

rators.

His trial, along with M'Manus, Orchard, Tighe, and 140. O'Donnell, took place in the end of September, and Trial of was conducted with the greatest temper and ability, both and revealat the bar and on the bench. Chief-Justice Doherty designs of presided; the Attorney-General led the prosecution; the conspiand Mr Whiteside lent the aid of his great talents and Sept. 28. eloquence to the accused. Never was a judicial proceeding conducted with more impartiality and decorum, and never was guilt more clearly brought home to the accused. A letter from his associate Duffy to O'Brien, found on the latter's person, clearly revealed the extent and dangerous nature of the conspiracy, and the influence which the revolution in France and the example of Lafayette had had in producing it, to which the flattery of the writer compared his present position.* The attack on

* "MY DEAR SIR,—I am glad to learn that you are about to commence a series of meetings in Munster. There is no half-way house for you. You will be the head of the movement, loyally obeyed, and the revolution will be conducted with order and clemency; or the mere anarchists will prevail with the people, and our revolution will be a bloody chaos. You have at present Lafayette's place, so graphically painted by Lamartine, and, I believe, have fallen into Lafayette's error-that of not using it to all its extent, and in all its resources. I am perfectly well aware that you don't desire to lead or influence others; but I believe with Lamartine, that that feeling, which is a high personal and civic virtue, is a vice in revolutions. One might as well, I think, not want to influence a man who was going to walk on thawing ice, or to cross a fordless river, as not to desire to keep men right in a political struggle, and to do it with might and main. If I were Smith O'Brien, I would strike out in my own mind, or with such counsel as I valued, a definite course for the revolution, and labour incessantly to develop it in that way. For example, your project of obtaining signatures to the roll of the National Guard, and when a sufficient number were produced, and not sooner, calling the Council of Three Hundred, was one I entirely relied upon; but it has been permitted to fall into disuse,

1848.

CHAP. Widow Cormack's house, under the immediate direction XLIII. of O'Brien, was proved beyond dispute, as well as the unsuccessful attempts made to seduce the police from their allegiance. After a long trial, in which everything that legal ability and eloquence could suggest was exhausted in his defence, he was found guilty, along with all his fellow-prisoners, though they were all recommended to mercy, and they all, along with Meagher, who was tried at Dublin by Chief-Justice Blackmore, received sentence of death. Their conduct on receiving sentence was at once courageous and dignified, and only awakened the most poignant regret that men capable, at such a moment, of uttering such sentiments, should have been so far misled by patriotic and generous feelings as to have engaged in an enterprise which, if successful, could have led only to an aggravation of the misery of their country, and which could the less be forgiven, that at the very moment when they were uttered, five hundred thousand Irishmen, with their families, were daily fed by British bounty. The sentence of death was wisely and humanely

and would scarcely be revived now. The clubs, however, might take the place
of the National Guard, and the proposal in your letter on
of a definite
number of clubs being formed, would just suit as well if it were vigorously
and systematically carried out, each day adding an item to it, and all the men
we could influence employed upon it.

-Ann. Reg. 1848, 396, 397-State Trials.

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(Signed)

"C. G. DUFFY."

O'Brien, on being asked whether he had any reason to state why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, said with a loud and firm voice: "My lords, it was not my intention to have entered into any vindication of my conduct, however much I might have desired to have availed myself of this opportunity of doing so. I am perfectly satisfied with the consciousness that I have performed my duty to my country-that I have only done that which, in my opinion, it was the duty of every Irishman to have done. And I am now prepared to abide the consequence of having performed my duty to my native land. Proceed with your sentence."

Meagher said: "This sentence, my lords, which you are about to pronounce, will be remembered by my countrymen as the severe and solemn attestation of my rectitude and truth. With my country I leave my memory, my sentiments, my acts, proudly feeling that they require no vindication from me this day. On this spot, where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an unconsecrated soil is ready to receive me— even here the hope which beckoned me on to embark upon the perilous sca

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