414 



GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



seats in the House of Commons, to about twenty 

 for the Conservatives and eight for the Lib- 

 erals. 



Political Crimes in Ireland. The crimes act 

 placed more arbitrary powers in the hands of 

 the Irish Executive than any of the repressive 

 acts which had preceded it. Before Lord Spen- 

 cer and Mr. Trevelyan, juries rarely convicted 

 a person accused of agrarian crime. The Gov- 

 ernment declared that this was because they 

 were intimidated, while the Irish party asserted 

 that the evidence was never sufficient to war- 

 rant a conviction. Under the new act, special 

 juries were selected from a class who were 

 more likely to convict than not. In Dublin, 

 verdicts were brought in against the persons 

 accused of three shocking assassinations. The 

 Irish press denounced the proceedings as judi- 

 cial murder, declaring that the judge's charge 

 was partial, and that some of the jurors were 

 intoxicated. Judge Lawson and juror Field 

 were pursued by conspirators, and an attempt 

 made to assassinate them on the street. Ma- 

 rines were brought over from England to assist 

 the police in protecting judges and jurymen. 

 For speeches made at this time, Messrs. Big- 

 gar, Davitt, and Healy, were summoned into 

 court, and the two latter were required to find 

 securities for their good behavior. This they 

 refused to do, and they were sent to jail. Dis- 

 tricts in Tipperary, Limerick, and Cork coun- 

 ties were proclaimed in January on account of 

 agrarian outrages, and a Land-League meeting 

 was interdicted in County Sligo. Further de- 

 tachments of marines were assigned to police 

 duty in different parts of Ireland. Mr. W. 

 O'Brien, editor of " United Ireland," was com- 

 mitted for trial on account of his accusations 

 against the judges and juries, and two days 

 afterward was elected to Parliament for Mal- 

 low by a considerable majority over the Solici- 

 tor-General, Mr. Naish. He was discharged 

 February 10th, owing to disagreement of the 

 jury. In January the long list of executions 

 began, with Patrick and Thomas Higgins, and 

 Michael Flynn, at Gal way, hanged for the mur- 

 der of Lord Ardilaun's bailiff at Lough Mask, 

 and Poff and Barrett at Tralee for Thomas 

 Brown's murder. On March 2d twelve men 

 were sentenced to imprisonment for conspiracy 

 to murder and rebel, the specific charge being 

 a plot to murder landlords as a class. 

 The Government wsfe able to assert in 1883, 

 for the first time in years, that order prevailed, 

 and that the Queen's writs could again run in 

 Ireland. This was sometimes attributed to the 

 operation of the crimes act, and the energy of 

 the Irish Executive, at other times to the be- 

 neficent workings of th.e land act. The sup- 

 pression of lawlessness, and the breaking-up 

 of secret bands of assassins, were a preventive, 

 but, on the other hand, the exercise of despotic 

 power and the suspension of ancient liberties 

 were provocative of violence. The general 

 cessation of the revolt against rent and of boy- 

 cotting limited the occasions which were likely 



to produce breaches of the peace. The Chief- 

 Secretary took credit for the fact that the 

 number of outrages, exclusive of threatening 

 letters, was reduced to 365 for the last six 

 months of 1882, from 1,010 in the first half of 

 the year, and 1,257 in the last half of the pre- 

 ceding year. The peasantry ceased their op- 

 position, which was the latest piece of tactics 

 generally employed against the landlord class. 

 On May 1st the Lord Lieutenant published a 

 list of awards of indemnities assessed on locali- 

 ties for agrarian crimes, some of them several 

 thousand pounds in amount. In July a gang 

 of conspirators in Sligo was detected, after an 

 attempt to blow up a house with dynamite. 



The Phcenix-Park Assassins. The police was 

 placed under the direction of Mr. Jenkinson, 

 an official whose experience had been gained 

 in Indian administration. A crafty detective 

 service was organized. Their clews and pur- 

 poses were concealed, while, with the help of 

 information, betrayed in the inquisitorial judi- 

 cial examinations which are allowed under the 

 crimes act, they ferreted out an organized band 

 of political assassins in Dublin, an offshoot of 

 the Fenian Brotherhood. On January 14th 

 seventeen persons were taken into custody, 

 charged with conspiring to murder officials. 

 They were mostly men under thirty, belonging 

 to the artisan class. The most prominent was 

 James Carey, a contractor and builder, who 

 was a member of the Dublin Town Council. 

 In the judicial inquiry one of them, named Far- 

 rel, turned state's evidence. Other evidence 

 was collected from Kavanagh, another confed- 

 erate. Subsequently Carey, who was one of 

 the chief conspirators, induced by promises ot 

 immunity, turned informer, and revealed the 

 history and character of the conspiracy. In 

 November, 1881, Carey, who had been a di- 

 rector in the Fenian organization, was intro- 

 duced by McCaffrey, one of the- prisoners, to 

 a man who passed by the name of Walsh. The 

 latter said that he had come from England to 

 establish a branch of a secret society which 

 was to " make history." It was called the 

 Irish Invincibles. The object of the organiza- 

 tion was "to remove all tyrants from the 

 country." It, would number not over 250 

 members in the three kingdoms, picked men 

 from the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Mc- 

 Caffrey, Carey, James Mullet, and Daniel Cur- 

 ley, a Fenian center, were sworn as the first 

 members and chiefs of the Dublin branch, 

 which was not to exceed fifty members. They 

 inducted about twenty-five others. The oath 

 was to obey the orders of the Irish Invincibles 

 without inquiring more than was necessary 

 to understand them, on pain of death. P. J. 

 Sheridan, known previously as an influential 

 agent of the Land League, who went disguised 

 as a priest ; a man called McCafferty ; a woman, 

 supposed to be a Mrs. Byrne, whose husband 

 was secretary to a land confederation in Eng- 

 land ; and later a man supposed to be the chief 

 of the organization, who was known only as 



