X - The Ballina and Phoenix Park Murders

Hitherto I have not dwelt on the murders and maimings of men and women both old and young, and children, perpetrated by the military and Constabulary, which punctuated the course of the Land League. To attempt an account of them would be outside the scope of this work. The soldiery did not, as far as I can recollect, take part in the slaughter of women and children, but the Constabulary seemed, for some reason, rather to prefer attacking women and children to men. In none of these cases was there any possibility that these young girls, aged women or children were killed or wounded involuntarily, through being mixed up with a riotous crowd, which is the general excuse for such things when they occur elsewhere. In Ireland no excuse is necessary, They were always deliberately shot at close quarters, bayonetted while lying on the ground, having fallen while running away, felled and killed with the butt end of a rifle, or in some other way slaughtered or wounded under circumstances which were incompatible with any theory of accident or confusion. I will relate one instance as an example. 

At Ballina, when the three members of parliament were released, the town illuminated, and there were popular rejoicings. These rejoicings extended themselves to breaking the windows of some householders who failed to illuminate. This did not hurt the owners of the windows, because they could easily get more than the cost of repairing the broken windows from the grand jury; it was a money-making transaction for them, and an injury only in a sentimental sense. On the fifth of May, news came to Ballina of Mr Davitt’s release from Portland. This was also felt to be an occasion for rejoicing. But the Constabulary did not share this feeling; they were in a savage mood, and apparently, like Mr Forster, regarded these liberations as personal slights on themselves. Most people would imagine that the most sensitive government could bear approval of its own acts, but probably the Royal Irish Constabulary did not realise that they were supposed to be servants of the Irish government and not its heads. So they perhaps naturally regarded the beginning of a general jail delivery as an act of mutiny against their authority. The actual mutineers even they could not reach, but they could reach a good many of those who were guilty of complicity with this mutinous spirit by overt acts of approval. 

They forbade the Ballina town band to play on this occasion, on the grounds that the band had caused the aforesaid breakage of glass. They did not suggest that the music itself had shattered the windows, as Joshua’s trumpet shattered the walls of Jericho, but that it had operated in a contrary way to David's harp; by creating an evil spirit instead of banishing it. instead of ‘music having charms to soothe the savage breast’, they held that id possessed a spell to make the breast savage, which otherwise would have been peaceful. To forbid illumination would have seemed the most direct way to save the windows of Ballina; for if nobody had illuminated, no windows would have acquired an unpopular distinction. Therefore the people who illuminated appear, on the face of it, more guilty in the matter of the broken glass than the band. 

Mr Ball, who was in command of the Constabulary, could have forbidden illuminations as easily as he could forbid music. He was Caesar, and had to be obeyed. So the town band was afraid to come out foreseeing death for themselves and destruction for their instruments if they did. But a children’s band, from Ardnaree, still counting on a remnant of manliness amongst these fiends in whose power they were placed, came into town to play and soon found out their mistake. On this occasion the proceedings were of unexceptional orderliness: no stones were being thrown; the life of even a diamond pane was unthreatened. Constabulary fell on the band and wrested the drum away from the small drummer. In his evidence at the subsequent inquest he stated that he cried when his drum was taken from him, and then went home — presumably to seek comfort from his mother. He probably saved his life by taking this course. 

It is only possible for those who can realise the extreme poverty of the Irish and the effort and sacrifice required from most parents to give their children even a few little musical instruments, to understand the cruelty of taking this child’s drum from him; besides spoiling all the evening's pleasure he was looking forward to. It is a common practice with the Constabulary to break up the instruments of these local bands, and therefore the children, and everybody present, had every reason to believe the drum, once seized, was gone forever. It was not unnatural, that the men in the crowd grew angry, and demanded the return of the drum; when it was not returned, they began to throw stones, not at windows, but at the Constabulary. One man even had his lip cut. Thus, having created ‘disorder’ by their illegal action, the Constabulary had secured the pretext they wanted, and soon sent a volley of buckshot, not at the men, but into the boys’ band. There were a great many more boys in the band than there were instruments; only a favoured few of the former could possess the latter, though I suppose they took it in turns to play on them. Nearly all of them were wounded, and two so badly that the doctors pronounced one to have no hope of recovery, and the other very little. The last of these died. Whether the first recovered, in spite of the medical verdict, I do not know. With two exceptions, all the wounded were under fifteen, which is an additional proof that the children were deliberately aimed at, because buckshot scatters so much. It must be borne in mind that the Riot Act is not read in Ireland before firing on a crowd, except on rare occasions. It would, of course, be ridiculous to read the Riot Act to a band of children; to shoot them like mad dogs is the only course that appeals to English common sense. No murder or murderous assault, whether by the soldiery or the Constabulary, was ever punished. Nevertheless, some retribution did afterwards overtake one of the Constabulary officers who had conducted one of these butcheries. He got into trouble for ‘irreligious habits’; that is to say, he did not attend church regularly! A detachment of these hell-hounds was selected to ‘represent’ Ireland in the procession at Queen Victoria’s last jubilee, as a worthy guard of honour for the patron of the English Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The murder of children was not confined to shooting them. About this time two children were killed in a worse way. A tenant who had just been evicted made an application to us. He did not want anything for himself, but a labourer who had a hovel on his farm was evicted also, and he asked for a hut for this man, which we granted. Plainly this labourer was in no way responsible for the Land League or anything it did. Yet he and his two sick children were selected as victims of the insatiable lust of cruelty that rages forever in the English breast. The workmen who attempted to put up the hut were ordered to stop, and told that they would be arrested if they disobeyed the order. One of the children died of exposure, and then the father, though he was not a carpenter, tried to put up the hut himself. But his other child was also dead before he could do anything. To give the devil his due, however, Mr Forster was not responsible for this, but Lord Spencer, a crueller man than Forster. Spencer, moreover, was responsible as well as Forster, for the Ballina tragedy, as he took over the government of Ireland immediately afterwards, and did not punish the criminals, thereby signifying his approval of the crime. And if there is any difference between the criminality of the doer and the endorser of a crime, the endorser is the worst. On the sixth of May we read an account of the latest sample of ‘conciliation’ at our breakfasts. On the evening of the same day we received the news that Lord Frederick Cavendish, the new secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, and Burke, the under secretary, who was the permanent head of the Irish government, had been killed in broad daylight in the Phoenix Park, just opposite the Vice-Regal Lodge. 

Burke had been in office about 20 years, and was the real ruler of Ireland, only second in responsibility to the English people. The nature of these assassinations was indicated by the circumstances. They had evidently been carried out by men well acquainted with Dublin and its neighbourhood, and so could not have been the result of private enmity to Cavendish, whose coming had been quite unexpected till just before he did come. Thus Burke must have been the person aimed at, and though he might have had plenty of private enemies, the likelihood of so many men combining to kill him in broad daylight for private motives was too small to be taken into consideration. 

A theory was advanced that the murders might have been committed by ‘Orangemen’, who were exasperated by the ‘conciliatory’ policy of the government, either in order to check the further pursuit of that policy, or out of revenge. But the class of persons indicated by the term ‘Orangemen’,’ are not the sort who care for exposing themselves to risk; they are used rather to display their valour by taking up arms against those who have none, a practice that always breeds cowardice in those who adopt it. Even if they had the courage, they would not have the intelligence to carry out an operation like the Phoenix Park murders with the skill shown by whoever did carry it out. Moreover, I do not think ‘Orangemen’ do object to the kind of conciliation I have described. The ‘Castle’ would have been quite capable of planning and executing the murders, but would not have begun with its own head. 

Thus, by a process of exclusion, the only theory left was that Burke had fallen a prey to the hatred prevailing against him all over Ireland, and in many other parts of the world as well, while Cavendish had been sacrificed to the accident of his being in Burke’s company. The reason, as stated afterwards at the trial of Brady, one of the alleged murderers, by the informer Carey, who said that Brady explained his attack on Cavendish by saying his blood was ‘up’, was not an improbable one. Blood is a dangerous drink for individuals as well as for countries. This explanation is supported by the fact that Cavendish was not dead a little while afterwards, whereas every care had been taken that Burke should have no spark of life left in him. 

The hatred of Burke could not be laid at the door of Home Rule, Obstruction, Land Leaguing, boycotting, or the No Rent manifesto, for it existed long before any of these things were heard of. He was, in fact a man who would almost certainly have been killed much earlier in his career in any country except Ireland, if he could possibly have wielded the same power anywhere else, and one whose assassination anywhere else would have been greeted with very thinly veiled applause by the English press, which, even while I am writing these words, is so treating the murder of Monsieur de Plehve. This being the first case of political assassination known in Ireland, it created a great sensation. The Fenians had strictly limited themselves to shooting informers, and the tenant farmers had not gone beyond landlords, landagents, and occasionally a bailiff or landgrabber; the total number from all these classes being very small. 

The English pretended to be the most shocked people ever known, though there was another reason, besides their approval of similar crimes in other countries, why they were the very last who had any business with airs of virtuous indignation. For there were circumstances connected with the affair that pointed to their own administration as likely to have had a fair share in promoting the commission of these murders.  Here is the evidence of a witness Lieutenant Greatorex, who tried to get help when he discovered the bodies: ‘I walked straight on to the bodies.’ 

‘And found them dead?’ 

‘No. The one on the ruad (Lord Frederick Cavendish) had the eves a little bit open, and appeared to be alive... 

‘The man behind me (a labouring man who was following) said, “This looks like murder”, and I said, “Yes”. I said that we had better give information to the police, and he said, “I suppose so,” and I saw an engineer some distance away, and I walked up to him and told him what I saw, and to go and report it to the police. Inever saw the man I spoke to afterwards. . .’ 

The man he meant was the labouring man, who had probably gone off in the meantime to get help himself, and to undergo the same experience as the witness subsequently went hrough. 

‘Myself and the engineer walked towards the Park gate, and we met two constables. I told them, and they said that it was no business of theirs. I did not blame them because two brother officers of mine have since told me that my story looked like a hoax. A little further on we met a mounted policemen, and we told him. . .’ 

I think most people will not agree with Mr Greatorex in his opinion that a policeman is justified in disregarding the information that two murders have been committed close at hand because he ‘thinks it is a hoax’. What would be said about firemen if they refused to answer a call because they thought it a hoax? And firemen are rather liable to be hoaxed. Greatorex had no reason to fear giving his evidence, but if the labouring man men© tioned attempted to interest the Dublin police and failed, he knew it would not do for him to offer his testimony. I heard, however, at the time, from sources I had no reason to doubt, that other attempts to get help were repulsed by the police in the same way. When we remember how constantly Ireland has been described as being in a ‘dreadful state of crime’,.and I don’t know how many other fearful things besides, at precisely this time, it is a little suprising to find the police there incapable even of imagining the report of a murder to be true, or as having any foundation in fact. There seems to be some discrepancy somewhere. 

The Phoenix Park murders were certainly planned by men who knew their Ireland and its ‘government’ well, and it is therefore very unlikely that they omitted to take into their calculations the strong chances of impunity in executing them which England's methods of enforcing law and order, and protecting life and property were adapted to secure for them. Greatorex was pressed to explain why he did not try to stop the car on which the murderers drove away.’ It is significant that this question was only put to him, and not to others who might have been expected, with more reason, to answer it. With the Viceregal Lodge, the chief secretary’s lodge, the under secretary’s lodge, all close by, there must have been plenty of mounted messengers available, and as the car could only leave the Park by one of the gates, it seems extraordinary, or would seem extraordinary, to anyone who did not know the way Ireland is run, that no attempt was made to stop all cars leaving the Park, or near it, seeing how much faster a mounted man can go than a car with five men on it. The size and position of the Phoenix Park made it unlikely that more than a few cars would be leaving it at that time. The unfortunate Greatorex was also asked why he did not think of assisting the murdered men by ‘staunching a wound, and perhaps saving a life?’ The actual cause of Cavendish’s death was considered to be the severing of the right axillary artery, the right axillary vein being severed also. 

At that time first aid either did not exist, or was in its infancy. But even at the present day, I think there are few of the most accomplished pupils of ambulance classes who would care for a chance of testing their proficiency by discovering and stopping the bleeding of an axillary artery in the case of an unconscious man all covered with wounds, blood, and dirt. Yet this was the remark the coroner, Dr Whyte, made on the subject: ‘As regards this gentleman, (Greatorex) who some may think ought to have stopped, it is right to say presence of mind is not given to everybody. Some men will act promptly and energetically when others will not. I don’t think there is any great blame to be attached seeing the extraordinary nature of the thing.’ 

In fact, he was not greatly to blame for not attempting the impossible. One of the jurors, however, who seemed to consider the witness was getting rather hard measure, interposed a remark on his behalf: ‘The only thing the witness could do, as he could not do anything himself at the moment, was to go where help could be got.’ This encouraged the victim to offer some defence on his own behalf. ‘I was so horrified’, he said, ‘I assure you I did the best I could.’ A cyclist, Mr Maguire, had already gone, at the top of his speed, which involved great personal risk to himself, as he had to take a steep hill on his way, and cycles were very different in those days from what they are now, to get police assistance. The real object of enlisting police aid was, of course, to get the services of a doctor through them, as they knew where the nearest doctors were. When Maguire arrived at the police station, a doctor should have been sent for at once. But the utmost the police would do, was to go and look, at their leisure. 

Had they acted as they should have done, the life of Lord Frederick Cavendish might have been saved; for Greatorex, while he was interviewing the mounted policeman, was passed by Maguire coming back from the station, and Greatorex had actually seen the murders done, thinking that he was only looking at a drunken squabble, and had gone straight to the spot, when he saw the two men who had been knocked down were not getting up again. The distance he had to traverse was only 200 or 300 yards, according to his own estimate. When Mr Maguire reached the scene of the murders again, the guards from the Viceregal Lodge were putting the bodies on stretchers. How came it that the authority which had dispatched the guards had not sent for a doctor first? Why did they not take steps to capture the assassins? There is no person so ignorant as not to know that wounded men should be attended to, if possible, before removal. Here were these two men, one of whose lives might have been saved, with plenty of doctors close by, with the dwelling places of the most exalted people in the country also close by, who got not a scrap of medical attention till past eight, the attack on them having been made at a quarter past seven! Why was all this? Why did the coroner, the Attorney General, who was the representative of public justice, the jury, and the next of kin, ask no questions about it? To the first question, the answer is only too easy, for those who know what England in Ireland means. The government officials did not know that the murdered men were Mr Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish; Lord Spencer and the other inhabitants of the Vice-Regal Lodge did not know it; nobody who had any power knew it either. They all thought the men murdered were only two Irishmen, did not signify in an imperial concern. Even if Greatorex had thought of dispatching the engineer for a surgeon from the nearest barracks, further away than the hospital the police knew of, it is not probable that he would have effected anything; the surgeons of the English army would most likely have refused, just as the police did, to disturb themselves over two common Irishmen. After the identity of Burke had been discovered (someone seems to have recognised his clothes), a great change came over the spirit of the officials’ dream, as the following extract of the evidence at the inquest will show. Dr Thomas Myles, Resident Surgeon at Steevens Hospital, deposed: ‘At about ten minute past eight a policeman ran in and announced that the under-secretary had been wounded near the Phoenix statue, and asked me to try to come out and be of some assistance to him. I told him to get a car. I went with him. Near the Park gate I met the police with the body of Mr Burke, which I examined. ‘I thought I felt a flickering of the pulse, but I think, since, that owing to my excitement I was not in a fit state to judge. Half a mile further on I met some guardsmen with the body of Lord Frederick Cavendish. I examined it and found it dead. The bodiés were brought into hospital. Both were dead.’ When we consider that the Phoenix Park is within the Dublin Metropolitan Police district, and that the English are obliged to keep up some appearance of order and decency in and about the capital, as many foreigners come there, and the only thing on earth that acts as a check on the English in Ireland is their reluctance to let other foreigners see too much of their doing there, we are helped to a comprehension of how much those parts of the country which are not Dublin, are likely to owe to their so-called government for the most ordinary protection in the common affairs of life, without mentioning the uncommon. 

In this case, the murderers could not be captured, and the wounded man who survived the attack for a short space, was not saved, because the cold hand of the man lying dead in the Park with his heart pierced, and his throat cut, was still ruling in freland, and still had power to prevent either being done, supposing the doing of either was possible. As neither was attempted, we can never know that now. For the same reason we can never know who the murderers were. Had the car been stopped, before the men on it had time to get rid of their knives and the bloodstains they must have been covered with, we might have known. 

As to the second question, why no one, except Greatorex, was asked why nothing was done to stop the car or to save the lives of either victim, it is easy to see why the Attorney General abstained from such inquiries. This aspect of the business was not one the government cared to have discussed. For the same reason the jurors acted wisely in following the Attorney General’s example. A juryman who asked inconvenient questions would have stood a good chance of being hanged for the murders himself; he would have been certain to sustain some injury. The attack on Greatorex, who seemed to be a little different from his kind, as he tried to get help, was entirely motivated by his revealing the fact that the police refused to help. The English papers raved at him almost as if he had committed the murders himsel . But he was comparatively safe. He was an English officer in the Royal Dragoons. The coroner, also, was evidently bent on doing nothing unpleasing to the government, and it would not have been to his interest to act otherwise. 

It is only strange that the next of kin, in both cases, had nothing to ask about the callous neglect shown by the Dublin police and apparently some other person or persons, to their dead relatives. The questions that were so conspicuous by their absence at this inquest, would have been put, and pretty strongly too, in similar cases, by the relations of 99 people out of a 100. Even when people don’t care about a relation during his life, some natural instinct drives them to resent, after his death, such treatment as was meted out to Cavendish and Burke by Dublin officialdom. Such resentment cannot help the dead, but it is likely to be of service to others afterwards. Why the Burke and Cavendish families acted so differently from most people ina similar situation, I will not attempt to explain. 

Short as Lord Frederick Cavendish’s tenure of his office was, he yet left behind him a declaration of his intentions towards Ireland, and some of his opinions about matters there. He had to resign his seat in parliament on taking office, and seek re-election by his constituents afterwards, and the declaration mentioned was contained in his address to the electors of the northern district of the west riding. The part referring to Ireland was as follows: ‘As regards the grave crisis in Ireland, I agree with the recent decision of the government. The main provisions of the Land Act are now accepted by all parties. The information received by the government satisfies them that they could not entertain as to the future those reasonable suspicions which made it their duty in October last to imprison several members of parliament. They would therefore have no justification in continuing that exceptional measure. It will be the duty of the government so to amend the law as to secure the firm administration of justice, and thus maintain peace and order throughout the country, and.by a well-considered and effective measure dealing with arrears to accelerate the settlement of the land question, the evils connected with which were at the root of the Irish disorder.’ Three of the Land League leaders’ wrote an address to the Irish people, otherwise called a manifesto, for publication and circulation in Ireland, Mr Alfred Webb being chosen for a medium. 

TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND 

On the eve of what seemed a bright future for our country that evil destiny which has apparently pursued us for centuries has struck another blow at our hopes which cannot be exaggerated in its disastrous consequences. In this hour of sorrowful gloom we venture to give an expression of our profoundest sympathy with the people of Ireland, in the calamity which has befallen our cause through a horrible deed, and with those who had determined at the last hour that a policy of conciliation should supplant that of terrorism and national distrust. We earnestly hope that the attitude and action of the whole Irish people will assure the world that assassination such as that which has startled us almost to the abandonment of hope for our country’s cause is deeply and religiously abhorrent to their every feeling and instinct. We appeal to you to show by every manner of expression possible, that amidst the universal feeling of horror which the assassination has excited, no people are so intense in their detestation of this atrocity, or entertain so deep a sympathy for those whose hearts must be seared by it, as the nation upon whose prospects and reviving hopes it may entail more ruinous effects than have yet fallen on the lot of unhappy Ireland, during the present generation. 

We feel that no act has ever been perpetrated in our country during the struggles for social and political rights of the past 50 years that has so stained the name of hospitable Ireland, as this cowardly and unprovoked assassination of a friendly stranger, and that until the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr Burke are brought to justice, that stain will sully the country’s name. 

From the opening to the closing sentences, the authors of this epistle seem to have exhausted their ingenuity in trying to compress as much wrongly chosen and unsuitable language into it as they could. Seeing what the sign actually was that prevailed on our horizon on the ‘eve’ in question, the first dozen words sounded especially queer. That none of these men, twelve months earlier, would have considered the things now being done in Ireland by the government as indicative of a bright future, did not make the phrase sound any better. To make sense, it ought to have been written this way: ‘On the eve of what seemed, according to the standard we have now adopted, a bright future for our country.’ The same interpolation, indeed, was required in more than one place. The description of Lord Frederick Cavenedish as a ‘friendly’ stranger, was both unfortunate and inaccurate.

Unfortunate because Forster had arrived only two years before in precisely that character, a character which his successor did not even claim for himself, though perhaps the new standard claimed it for him. His election address approved of releasing the members of parliament who were being kept in prison without trial, and promised a new Persecution Act, and an Arrears Act, which, even if it had been much more beneficial than it was, could have made only a shade of difference for the better. In no case would it have been a set-off to the fresh persecution promised.  The introduction of the words, ‘hospitable Ireland’ in connection with the matter, was another example of something that had better been expressed otherwise. For what can the hospitality of a country have to do with a conqueror, or the delegates of a conqueror, coming to that country by force — above all — coming to govern it by force? A country can only extend its hospitality to those who enter it by accident, by its permission, or by its invitation. But this persistent stumbling on wrong ways of saying things was not the serious fault of this manifesto. 

The worst of it was contained in the way it contrived to suggest that, in the first place, resentment on the part of the Englis towards the Irish people on account of these murders was natural and in the second place, justifiable. Natural it certainly was, but only in the sense that it is always natural for human beings to blame others for the consequences of their own doings. The implied justifiability rested on the implied basis that the wish people were responsible for the murders, or might reasonably be considered responsible for them. The commandment issued to us all, metaphorically to throw ourselves on our knees and mourn for Mr Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish, was a part of the general language whereby the suggestion of culpability on our part was conveyed.

To accept responsibility on behalf of a people for the crime in their country, when that people does not govern that country, is in itself inconsistent with the claim of that country to nationality. It is quite natural that the English should want to go shares with the Irish in governing Ireland on the principle of their having the power and the Irish the responsibility. But why should the Irish want to sanction the arrangement? While England holds Ireland, any responsibility there may be on a people as a whole for anything wrong in the country rests on the English people and not on the Irish, and as far as we can prevent it, they should not be allowed to forget the fact for a second. 

That we have no way of telling how much of the crime they want us to acknowledge our responsibility for, has been actually done by their agents, only throws a stronger light on the absurdity of our position if we do anything to indulge their desires in this respect. The general falseness of principle subscribed to in the manifesto was aggravated by the absence of a vestige of ground for attributing responsibility to the Irish people for these murders. Both the murdered men themselves and the authors of the manifesto were more to blame for it than the Irish people. The first because the murders had been facilitated by the criminal character of the government in which one of them had long taken a leading part, and the other had come prepared to take a leading part. 

As for the authors of the manifesto, if they had acted on the principles laid down in their own speeches, and tried to do the things they talked about, it is very likely the Phoenix Park murders would never have been attempted. Before they occurred, it must have been plain to all who were not wilfully blind, that the Land League was not going to accomplish anything worth thinking about. Such a perception naturally awakes an idea in many minds generally expressed by some phrase like, ‘It is high time for somebody to do something’. The creation of such a state of feeling and the possibility that the ‘something’ done in consequence might be both ill-chosen and disagreeable to themselves should have been taken into the calculations of the Land League leaders as amongst the likely results of failure. Their evident 

astonishment, however, at the event of the sixth of May, showed that they had omitted to do anything of the sort. This being so, perhaps they also overlooked the possibility that their own determination to make the failure of the Land League certain, so far as man can make anything certain, might have contributed to that event. 

The manifesto fittingly concluded with a general exhortation to us not to be satisfied until the murderers were ‘brought to justice’ What this meant passes all comprehension. None knew better than the writers that there is no justice In ireland, and they did not explain how anybody can be brought to what does not exist. The attempt to convey the slightest idea of what English administration of criminal law in Ireland is really like, to anyone not already to some extent acquainted with it, is generally quite useless. Nothing that the imagination of writers for the comic stage have been able to invent seems exaggerated, strained, or ridiculous in comparison with it. The civil law, of course, is not much, if any better, administered, but the civil law is not so tragic a business as the criminal law. Nearly a year afterwards, when the government professed to have discovered the Phoenix Park murderers, their trials were amongst the most atrocious and cynically open burlesques of judicial proceedings that take place in Ireland — which is saying a great deal. 

The Crown, in Ireland, does not content itself with the mere procuring of false evidence, but seems to delight in presenting as much evidence that is impossible — that, on the face of it, cannot be true — as they can. Their object is to rub the fact of their helplessness well into the Irish people. The case against the men who were hanged for the Phoenix Park murders rested on the testimony of men who professed themselves accomplices, and who had already been arrested and charged with the crimes: they were thus obliged to say anything the Crown told them to, if they wished to save themselves. By law the testimony of accomplices required corroboration by independent witnesses; nearly the whole of the ‘independent’ evidence here was palpably impossible, and the very little genuine evidence that had any bearing on the identity of the assassins, which had been given at the inquest, did not go to support the case for the prosecutions,  but was rather incompatible with it. 

One man, Frank Byrne, an Irishman living in London, received warning that he was to be charged with the murders in time to allow of his escape to France. He was arrested there, at the instance of the English government, but they could not even make out a prima-facie case against him to the satisfaction of the French officials. Yet it is quite certain that Frank Byrne would have been hanged if the English could have got hold of him. Since the seventh of May 1882, I have, however, seen that some excuse, though there can be no justification for them, may be made for the English people imposing such infamies on us. What effect can the official protests have that Irish members of parliament sometimes make against this sort of ‘law and order’, when they are so ready to call it ‘justice’ at another time? The only other point necessary to notice about these murders, manifesto, and ‘trials’, is that if the informers’ evidence relied on by the Crown, was true, then Burke himself must have been responsible for the murders only in a degree less directly than the men who actually cut his throat. 

For these informers swore that they were part of a society spread all over Ireland for the purpose of assassination. If this widespread conspiracy existed in fact, it was impossible that Burke did not know something about it; the inevitable percentage of informers in such cases made it so. Then Burke must have been fostering the conspiracy for the sake of political capital afterwards, thinking to keep himself and his own circle safe, because he underrated the daring of the ‘invincibles’, and not caring what might happen to a few landlords or other persons aimed at. By this light the ‘miraculous’ escapes the informers represented Mr Forster are so frequently being favoured with, through his always ‘happening’ to go some other way, or at some other time than he had originally intended, on those occasions which had been selected for this assassination, do not seem so very miraculous, after all, 

It may be asked, why should Burke have wished to protect Forster? He could hardly have cared more about him than about the landlords, and the assassination of Forster would seem to be the kind of thing that would create the political capital that Burke wanted. But Burke may have found Forster's stupidity a convenience to himself, and also may have considered he required more time for his plans, whatever they may have been. Speculations like these, however, based on the hypothesis of Carey’s evidence being true, though interesting, can be of little value. We have no reason to suppose any of the informers’ evidence at the Phoenix Park murder trial was true. 

Many attempts have been made to excuse or justify the Phoenix Park manifesto. The most important of these was that it was necessary to prevent a massacre of the Irish in England. I doubt the reality of the grounds for such an apprehension, as the Irish in England are on more equal terms, physically, with their enemies than they are in Ireland. In England they are not disarmed and opposed to men who are armed, as in Ireland. Man for man, an Irishman is better able to take care of himself than an Englishman, so that an English mob attacking an Irish mob in England would stand a good chance of getting hurt, and the English do not like being hurt. Their motto is: “We do not want to fight, but by jingo if we do, we like the foe to have his hands tied and his elbows too.’ 

Besides this, the Irish are only in England because they are a convenience to the dominating classes there. The existence of this protective factor makes a general attack on them very improbable. But for it, the Irish could never have settled in England in such quantities as to acquire safety in mere numbers; they would have been all murdered first. But if the excuse was a good one, and the taking part in Irish politics involves the perpetration of such things as the Phoenix Park manifesto, then all Irish Nationalists had better leave Irish politics alone. They cannot forward Irish nationality, while they are compelled to take up attitudes which are incompatible with any claim to it as a right. So they may as well spare themselves the degradation involved by such attitudes. 

The Phoenix Park manifesto did not share the fate of the No Rent manifesto. The exhibition it called forth in Ireland should have been extremely gratifying to all who like a display of stage-managed grief (with the stage-manager’s direction given in public). It is to be feared, however, that even the dramatis personae themselves did not all belong to this class. In the country towns, when one or more of the inhabitants were pounced on and dragged off to prison, their fellow—townsmen used sometimes to put up their shutters, as a sign of sympathy with them and their families, but were forcibly made to take them down again by the Constabulary, though there is no law against anybody putting up his shutters whenever he likes, even in Ireland. Knowing this, it is not strange that some of the Dublin shopkeepers who found themselves expected to put up their shutters on the day when Lord Frederick Cavendish’s body was carried through Dublin on its way to England, should feel troubled by some doubts. I heard a story, which if not true, ought to be, that one perplexed merchant in Dublin city sought counsel on the subject from another citizen, whereupon the following dialogue ensued: ‘Did you put up your shutters when Ellen McDonough was buried?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘Did you put up your shutters when Mrs Dean was buried?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘Then why should you put them up for Lord Frederick Cavendish?’ 

‘I don’t know.’ 

Ellen McDonough was a young girl and Mrs Deane an aged woman who had been recently murdered by the Constabulary with attendant circumstances of great atrocity. 

The chief political effects of the Phoenix Park murders were two. They stopped the impending alliance between the English Liberal party and the Irish parliamentary party. The English would no longer have the Irish. But this union was only deferred; when it did come, it was only the more virulent for the years it had been delayed. The other was purely harmful; for it was the pretext afforded to the Land League for attributing the persecution that ensued to a cause other than the real one, which was the failure of the Land League itself. Some correspondence, published later on, showed that Lord Frederick Cavendish had the new Persecution Act in his pocket, metaphorically, if not literally, when he came over, besides having it, as we know from his own words, in his mind. Doubtless the murders aggravated the persecution, and I am sure that the cringing attitudes of the Irish leaders had the same effect.

XI - The End of the Ladies’ Land League