GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



377 



case of certain officials of the Irish administra- 

 tion that were indicted for immorality, were 

 the leading subjects of animadversion. The 

 aged Myles Joyce and others were convicted 

 and hanged for the murder of the Joyce family 

 in Maamtrasna, committed Aug. 17, 1882. Two 

 of the convicted murderers made dying declara- 

 tions, admitting their own guilt and exculpat- 

 ing Myles Joyce. Two informers subsequently 

 confessed to priests that their testimony was 

 false, and that six of the accused men were 

 innocent. The Catholic Archbishop of Tuam 

 interviewed these men and other witnesses, 

 and, having convinced himself that there was 

 foul play, petitioned Earl Spencer to investigate 

 the affair. There was great excitement over 

 the matter in Ireland before it was brought up 

 in Parliament by Mr. Harrington at the begin- 

 ning of the autumn session. The Irish Home- 

 Rulers accused the prosecuting attorneys of 

 suppressing evidence in favor of the convicted 

 men, and of taking no steps to bring the 

 guilty ones to justice, though they had evi- 

 dence against them sufficient to warrant pro- 

 ceedings. Under the direction of George Bol- 

 ton, the Crown solicitor, the informers were 

 allowed to listen to the testimony of the other 

 witnesses, and were in a measure coached by the 

 law officers to make their stories agree. The 

 testimony of the boy, Patrick Joyce, the only 

 survivor of the murdered family, was suppressed 

 in as far as it conflicted with the other accounts. 

 The murder was actually committed by hired 

 assassins at the instigation of a money-lender 

 named Casey, who was actuated by ordinary 

 criminal motives. He was arrested the morn- 

 ing after the murder, but immediately released. 

 The Irish party charged that the Crown officers, 

 in their desire to make out a case of agrarian 

 murder, chose to proceed against the men 

 accused by suborned witnesses, and when ex- 

 culpatory and contradictory evidence came out 

 in the preliminary examinations it was sup- 

 pressed, as well as evidence telling against the 

 actual criminals. Mr. Harrington also pos- 

 sessed documentary evidence, showing that the 

 jury was packed by the counsel for the Crown, 

 who kept a memorandum of the religious and 

 political convictions of all the jurors on the 

 panel from which the petit jury was drawn, 

 and the likelihood of their voting for convic- 

 tion. Accusations of practices like these were 

 made against the prosecuting officers of the 

 Crown, and especially George Bolton, their 

 chief, about the time of the renewal of the 

 crimes act, and afterward on the reopening of 

 Parliament. Reports of Bolton's lack of prin- 

 ciple in his relations with his wife and with 

 his creditors were repeated in Parliament to 

 show his unfitness for public office. In the trial 

 of Secretary Cornwall, of the Irish post-office, 

 and other Dublin officials for unnatural crime, 

 Cornwall was discharged on the ground that 

 he had softening of the brain when the crimes 

 were committed, although he was reported as 

 restored after the conclusion of the trials. The 



case was not pressed against any of the prison- 

 ers, for the sake of saving the Castle govern- 

 ment from odium, as it seemed to the Home- 

 Rulers. Their attacks drove Mr. Trevelyan to 

 resign, a result that was no satisfaction to the 

 Irish leaders, who respected the personal char- 

 acter of the Irish Secretary, and only assailed 

 the system with which he, and in a higher 

 degree the Viceroy, was identified. 



Dynamite Conspiracies. The Irish conspira- 

 tors that carry on a dynamite " war " against 

 England were not all suppressed when White- 

 head and his accomplices were brought to jus- 

 tice in 1883. There were signs of fresh plots 

 hatched in Dublin, New York, Paris, and Brus- 

 sels, and of the activity of agents in London, 

 Liverpool, and Birmingham. In Dublin, be- 

 sides the " Invincibles," the existence of a band 

 called the "Avengers" was reported, whose 

 task was the " removal " of obnoxious witness- 

 es, judges, and jurors. A quantity of infernal 

 machines and dynamite flasks and grenades 

 was discovered at Birmingham, placed there by 

 one Daly, who was arrested at Liverpool with 

 dynamite bombs on his person. Daly, an old 

 Fenian, was convicted and sentenced for life, 

 and his fellow-conspirator Egan for twenty 

 years. On Feb. 25, 1884, a violent explosion 

 occurred at the Victoria station in London, 

 with which these conspirators were probably 

 connected, though no direct evidence was 

 adduced. The possession of the bombs was 

 construed by the court as an act of treason- 

 felony, as proving an intention to levy war 

 against the Queen. The explosion at the Vic- 

 toria station was followed by attempts at three 

 or four other stations. Shortly before, occurred 

 explosions at Edgware Road and Westminster, 

 on the Underground Railroad. Later explosions 

 took place in St. James's Square and in Scot- 

 land Yard, under the very eyes of the police. 

 In none of these cases was any trace found of 

 the perpetrators. These occurred on the night 

 of May 80, just before the explosion in Scot- 

 land Yard, and a simultaneous attack was 

 made on the building of the Junior Carlton 

 Club. The stone and iron work at the rear 

 entrance of the club-house in St. James's Square 

 was shattered and the kitchen destroyed. In 

 Scotland Yard the destruction was greater, al- 

 though the quantity of dynamite used was 

 probably the same, and uniform with that found 

 in black bags in the attempt to wreck several 

 railway-stations on February 26. A portion of 

 the building of the Criminal Investigation De- 

 partment, consisting of heavy brick and stone 

 work, was brought down by the force of the 

 explosion. Yet the chief damage was done to 

 a public-house opposite. At the same time a 

 quantity of dynamite was found at the foot of 

 the Nelson monument. This was of the kind 

 known as " American." On the same night a 

 third explosion occurred near a Government 

 building in St. James's Square. The explosions 

 followed one another in quick succession at 

 about nine o'clock in the evening. On Decem- 



