early next morning the prison was in uproar. James Stephens' cell was open-and empty! There were two tables, one on top of the other, against the yard-wall of the prison—and everything else was mystery absolute and complete! Locks had been opened, gates unbarred, walls surmounted-by a poor prisoner who had no instrument or implement left to him in his barred and bolted double-locked cell. The bird had flown. His jailers were dazed. The Government was frenzied. England was infuriated. The world was sensated. The extraordinary and mysterious escape of Stephens was the sensation of the decade. After remaining quiet for several weeks in a Dublin home, while almost every nook and cranny in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales was being searched for him, every railway train and every ship and boat, Stephens one day entered a magnificent coach drawn by four spanking horses, a liveried driver on the seat and liveried foot-men behind (each "flunkey" being an armed Fenian), and drove through the streets of Dublin to the sea-coast near Balbriggan, where he entered a boat that took him to a lugger in the offing, which in turn bore him safely to France. From thence the Chief made his way easily to America. The other Fenian leaders were tried in December on a charge of high treason-by the usual bitterly biased judges and packed juries-found guilty, of course, and sentenced-O'Donovan Rossa for life, Kickham, Luby, O'Leary, and the others, to twenty years' penal servitude.10 Like many mysteries, that of Stephens' escape was, after all, one of the simplest. Fenianism had permeated not only every part of the country but also every class and every calling-including Government cohorts. The Government without knowing it, was placing Fenian prisoners in the hands of Fenian jailers. In Richmond jail, a hospitable superintendent, Jno. J. Breslin, and a night watchman, Joseph Byrne, two trusty Fenians, procured duplicate keys and made the other arrangements to convey their distinguished prisoner and Chief outside the walls. A decade later, Breslin, abroad in America, was a chief man in freeing from their Australian penal servitude the Fenian prisoners there. The army in Ireland was honey-combed with Fenianism-and the police force likewise. The army was so Fenian that many regiments were entirely unreliable from the British point of view. Thousands of the men had taken the Fenian oath. The work was begun by O'Donovan Rossa who swore in a soldier named Sullivan, a native of his own Roscarbery-and this soldier swore in another, and so on. But it was the remarkable character, Pagan O'Leary, who, tackling the_work some months after Rossa had begun it, made the big success of it. John Devoy and William Rowantree stepped into the gap and continued the work, when O'Leary, betrayed by a soldier at Athlone, was sent into penal servitude. 10 O'Donovan Rossa got a life sentence because it was his second conviction. In '58 he was convicted of treasonable conspiracy in his native Skibbereen. But, anyhow, probably his judges would have considered him deserving of a double dose, by reason that, having insisted upon conducting his own defence, he gave judges, jury, and prosecutors many weary hours. As extracts from The Irish The movement had received a staggering blow-from which, however, it would have recovered were not further and greater misfortunes to follow. The country, eager for action, was disappointed that Stephens did not give the word in this year. They were infinitely more disappointed, discouraged, and embittered when, having solemnly pledged himself to give the word next year, he failed them again. Among their brethren in America-upon whose help great reliance had been placed-impatience gave way to criticism, and criticism to dissension. The great majority there People were put in evidence against the prisoners, O'Donovan Rossa insisted that if any portion of the papers was placed before the Court, every word in every paper, for every week of the paper's existence, must be read. When the judges and prosecutors gasped at the fearful prospect, he sought to comfort them by a generous leniency—he would not insist upon reading the advertisements. Before he lifted from their hearts the load of dread he had placed there, he gave them upwards of eight hours' straight reading beginning with the first word at the top of the left-hand corner of the first number and continuing straight forward, conscientiously, without the omission of article or particle! Fearful indeed was the life-the living death, rather-that Irish political prisoners had to face in English jails. O'Donovan Rossa, with hands chained behind his back for weeks together, had to feed himself as a dog would, by lapping it up. Michael Davitt tells how, when the keeper was not looking, prisoners would snatch a candle end out of the garbage, and save it to feast upon—also, how, to get a mouthful of air for which in their vile dungeons they were perishing, they would lie down upon the floor and through the crack at the bottom of the door, greedily suck in the already vitiated air of the corridor. In '77 O'Connor Power, in the House of Commons, demanding inquiry into the horrors to which Irish political prisoners were subjected, read a letter from Michael Davitt in Dartmoor prison, describing the sufferings of some of his fellow-prisoners therefrom which is extracted a portion, about one of them: "In June or July 1868, Chambers received 'no grounds' as an answer to a petition that he had sent to the Secretary of State, begging to be allowed to attend his religious obligations, a privilege of which he was deprived, by a 'moral and religious' director for six months. At present he is daily driven in and out of chapel by officers brandishing bludgeons and shouting like cattle drovers. Even in chapel he is not free from their rudeness. Dozens of times those officers have stripped him naked in presence of thieves and subjected him to insults too disgusting to describe. He is made to open his clothes five times a day while an officer feels over his body. He has been several times separated from other political prisoners-although our being together was within the rules-and forced to associate with picked ruffians. He has been for six months in constant contact with lunatics. He has been forced to mop up filthy dens of dirt with a small piece of rag, to carry a portable water-closet on the public road and across the fields for the use of common malefactors. He has often been sick, but, except on a few occasions, was not taken to hospital. On one occasion he was sent to the dungeons for applying for relief after he had met with a severe hurt by falling from the gangway of a building. Last year while laid up with rheumatism, they kept him sixteen days on ten ounces of food daily, two months on half diet, and then put him out of hospital far worse than when he was taken in. He is weekly forced to act as charwoman to a lot of dirty creatures. He has had punishment diet (16 ounces of bread and water), penal class diet, and dungeons-dark, wet, cold and dirty in abundance. A smile, a movement of the lips-ay, even a glance of the eye-is often deemed a crime in Dartmoor. We have been frequently insulted by thieves and even struck by them. Chambers has been held by one jailer while another jailer was ill-using him. Worthy sons of worthy sires who once shot down the poor prisoners of war here!" set aside O'Mahony and Stephens, and their too long delayed (impossible) plan of invading Ireland, and chose Colonel Roberts for their leader, and an invasion of Canada for their plan. The invasion of Canada, which would undoubtedly have been a successful move, and a severe blow to England, was stopped by the unexpected action of the American Government, which, having tacitly encouraged the scheme, and permitted the plans to be ripened, stepped in at the last moment to prevent it. The American Government sold to the Fenians vast quantities of ammunition and other military supplies, winked at the gathering of the Fenian hosts from all corners of the country, and even permitted the crossing of the border (near Buffalo) by General John O'Neill at the head of the first body of Fenian soldiers. From over the British Fort Erie O'Neill hauled down the English colours and ran up the Irish, on the 31st May, '66. And next morning, at Ridgeway, he encountered the enemy in numbers far superior to his own force, disastrously routed them, capturing standards and large supplies to the frantic joy of the Irish race throughout the world. It was then that America stepped in, forbidding the passage of any more Fenian forces over the border, and completely cutting off O'Neill's supplies-thus stopping his victorious career, and compelling him to fall back upon American soil-where he and his forces were placed under technical arrest-and the ambitious scheme ended. In Ireland, where Stephens had been superseded by Colonel John Kelly, the Rising, arranged for March 5th, '67, was frustrated by a combination of circumstances. The informer, Corydon, betrayed the plans; and, strangely, a great snow storm, one of the wildest and most protracted, with which the country was ever visited, beginning on the night of March 6th and abating not for twelve days and twelve nights, made absolutely impossible not only all communications, but all movements of men. One of the greatest Irish movements of the century ended apparently in complete failure. Apparently only, for though there was not success of arms, other kinds of success began to show immediately. Within two years after, that terrible incubus upon Ireland, the Established (English) Church was disestablished, and within three years the first Land Act of the century, the Act of '70, was made law. And Prime Minister Gladstone afterwards confessed that it was the healthy fear instilled in him by the astonishing spirit of the Fenian movement, which forced him to these actions. Moreover, the spirit begotten by Fenianism went forward, for future triumph. John O'Leary, Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism. Joseph Deneiffe, Personal Narrative. A. M. Sullivan's New Ireland. CHAPTER LXXII CHARLES STEWART PARNELL FROM 1865-1870 the English Courts in Ireland were kept busy with the trial of the Fenian Prisoners. Courts-martial were also working at high pressure dealing with alleged sedition on the part of Irish soldiers. The barrack yards of Dublin ran red with the blood, and re-echoed the shrieks, of soldiers condemned to the lash. In many cases with all the breath left in their mangled bodies, these soldiers, after their inhuman torture raised a cheer for Ireland. The leading counsel for the defence of the prisoners was Isaac Butt, Q. C., one of the most able and eloquent lawyers at the Bar. In this capacity Butt had exceptional opportunities of learning a great deal about the ideals of the Fenians. He saw that they were men who had taken risks, and who were prepared to take punishment, be it the scaffold or the cell. He found none of them prepared for compromise, cowardice or surrender. The result was that the Tory M. P. for Trinity College, honest man that he was, became an advocate of the cause of Irish Independence. True, Butt's definition of independence was not that of the Fenians. He invented a new term "Home Rule." The first meeting of the "Home Government Association," afterwards re-named the "Home Rule League," was held in a Dublin hotel in 1870. A resolution was passed "that the true remedy for the evils of Ireland is the establishment of an Irish Parliament with full control over our domestic affairs." Vague enough, in sooth, but probably as strong as Butt dared to make it in an assemblage comprised of landlords, Tories, "moderate" Nationalists, and some Feniansthe latter being present chiefly to take notes. The old demand for Repeal of the Union was dropped, and the demand for "Home Rule" which might mean anything-took its place. Probably Butt could not have done better in the circumstances, and his action must be judged by his circumstances. It was not then as clear as it now is that one of the chief devices for the consolidation of British power in Ireland is the exploitation of what is known as "moderate opinion." |