William J. Fitz-Patrick

“ Tablets and tombs sufficient to represent the life of a city are rudely removed and ranged far from the graves they ought to mark. 'Old Mortality' will find them piled—close as cards in a pack—beneath a dark archway, over which locomotives rush, their shrill scream suggesting a cruel travesty of the last trumpet. A few massive mausoleums are certainly spared, and amongst them that to the memory of O'Leary. ”

“ Turner's treachery was of enormous magnitude, and most momentous in its results. Once a man of indomitable courage, conscience made him an arrant coward in the end.
'I feared,' writes the betrayer to Lord Downshire, 'lest Government might not choose to ratify our contract, and, being in their power, would give me my choice either to come forward as evidence or suffer martyrdom myself. ”

“ I have freely used the Registry of Deeds Office, Dublin—a department peculiar to Ireland. Originating in penal times, its object was to trace any property acquired by Papists—such being liable to 'discovery and forfeiture.' This office served as a valuable curb in the hands of the oppressor, and ought to prove a not less useful aid to historic inquirers; but, hitherto, it has been unconsulted for such purposes. Few unless legal men can pursue the complicated references and searches, and—unlike the Record Office—fees attend almost every stage of the inquiry. ”

“ I told the Chancellor of your Exchequer here, that I would prefer a Union with the Beys and Mamelukes of Egypt to that of being under the iron rod of the Mamelukes of Ireland; but, alas! I fear that a Union will not remedy the ills of poor Erin. The remnants of old oppression and new opinions that lead to anarchy (to use the words of a foolish milk-and-water letter) still keep the field of battle, and until one side be defeated, the country is not safe. Another project upon which I have been consulted is, to grant salaries or pension to the Catholic clergy of the higher and lower order. ”

“ Among O'Leary's admirers there was none more ardent than the late Lord Chancellor O'Hagan, in whose now deserted study still hangs a fine portrait of the friar, inscribed with soul-stirring sentiments on which O'Hagan had long sought to shape his own course. This gentleman could not bring himself to believe Mr. Froude's charge branding O'Leary as a spy, and was unable to rest until he read with his own eyes at the State Paper Office the original correspondence. He returned to Dublin declaring that the imputation was but too well founded. ”

“ Ireland, 'attained popularity for having, with his own arm, killed the largest boar seen in India, an animal which had often ripped open horses and oxen. One night, at Dublin, the Viceroy sent for Flemyng and surprised him by saying that all that had passed between him and the Sheares was known to the Privy Council. The Lord Lieutenant, then placing his arm on Flemyng's shoulder, said: "Let not another day elapse, or not all my influence can save you from the gallows. Start for India at once; those fellows at Ghazapore must be put down; you are just the man to do it. ”

“ Sir,—I received this day a letter from a friend of mine who sits in Parliament, who heard you defend the meaning of some sentiments in a pastoral letter, supposed to be addressed to the Roman Catholic clergy of this diocese by the Right Reverend Dr. Hussey, against the admixture of fulsome flattery and captious malevolence of a placeman, and though the intimacy that once subsisted between us has ceased, I will not be inferior in generosity to any man, and accordingly I embrace this occasion to thank you for the justice you do me. ”

“ O'Leary himself had long been recognised as the most prominent exponent and mouthpiece of the Catholic demand; and, from his intimacy with Lord Kenmare, he could hardly fail to have known his sentiments on a question in which both were naturally most interested; the forged letter, however, claiming authority to speak for the Catholics of Ireland, was allowed to pass unchallenged, to the ruin of the Convention and the exultant triumph of a faction.
O'Leary and Sir Boyle Roche are not persons likely to have been intimate; and yet it can be shown that an intimacy did exist. ”

“ The risk he ran was not confined to Ireland. The life of an English spy abroad was deemed equally unsafe, and there is much reason to fear that more than one met with short shrift. Even a successful diplomat, if his subtlety touched French interests, could not regard his life as safe. The disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst, a kinsman of Earl Bathurst, has never been explained. Bathurst was sent on a secret mission to Vienna, at the time that England before opening the Peninsular campaign sought to persuade Austria to declare, by way of a distraction, war against France. ”

“ If the spy, as an envoy of the United Irishmen, could only extort from Talleyrand an explicit reply in writing avowing the intention to invade, and telling the exact time on which the descent on Ireland was to be made, England would thus be well prepared, and her fleet able to destroy the French armament as she had already destroyed that of De Winter. Why Bonaparte, at first so anxious for invasion, should have changed his mind, is explained, in the recently published Memoirs of Gouverneur Morris, as due to the conflicting reports of Irish envoys. ”

“ I then promised as much as I could collect in general, with a particular and accurate one of Ireland. I then asked if I might venture to assert that the French Government would be content with being paid the expense of their former expedition, and of that which will be sent; that they will leave the Irish to choose a constitution for themselves as soon as English influence is destroyed; guaranteeing to every individual their property, without respect to old Catholic claims and to their political conduct prior to the time of actual invasion. ”

“ Brune bitterly complained of it in the Council of Five Hundred; and then it was that Buonaparte branded, as an attack upon the rights of nations and a crime against humanity, the surrender, by Hamburg to England, of Tandy, Blackwell, Morres, and Corbet.
The painful details already given as regards the severity of their imprisonment it is pleasant to relieve by some notice of the conduct of one official who, superior in gentlemanly instinct to others of higher rank, treated Tandy and his companions with a courteous consideration most acceptable to men whose hearts ached from recent persecution. ”

“ Every man desiring to become a barrister is obliged to lodge a memorial describing himself and his parentage. Anxious to ascertain whether the description of Lord Downshire's friend would apply to Turner, as the son of a gentleman of property in Ulster, I applied at the King's Inns, Dublin, to be allowed to see how Turner described himself—but was refused, although the object was explained to be one purely historical. ”

“ Alas! alas! that the city which laid the first stone of 'a national Congress' should now give a shock to the precious building! How are the mighty aggregate Committee fallen! ah, how are they despised! Resolutions, address, circular letters—all, all are scattered to the [Pg 242] winds; and commotion, revolution, and scramble, sunk in an abyss of despair beyond all hopes of resurrection. [583]
If O'Leary attended the meeting at the Tholsel, it is easy to know what tone he took. ”

“ Burke, writing to a brother priest of O'Leary's, said, 'Do everything in your power to check the growth of Jacobinism on the one hand, and oppression, which is its best friend, on the other.' No wonder that the Irish Government blenched at the outlook. ”

“ Is it then to gentlemen of this description, the children of the first families in the kingdom, the instructors of the most powerful part of the community, the most moral and edifying amongst them, the most charitable and humane, that a handful of poor men are to prescribe laws tending to diminish the support of their offspring, destined to fill one day the most important offices in the State? ”

“ Perrin, a native of France, honorary member of their corps. I have seen publications inviting Catholics, contrary to the laws of the land, to arm themselves to reform the constitution in Church and State. I have seen encomiums on Louis XVI., the friend of mankind and the assertor of American liberty.... They may invite the French to invade our country. I have seen invitations to the dregs of the people to go to drills and form into corps; we should therefore distinguish between the gentlemen—the original Volunteers—and those sons of sedition. ”

“ During their height most of the Roman Catholic chapels of London, especially those of the foreign embassies, were gutted and burnt. Papists' houses were attacked, as well as the houses of all persons known to favour them. For days and nights the mob gained an almost complete mastery of London, which is described as like a city taken by storm. The venerable Bishop Challoner was roused from his sleep and urged to fly; he died soon after of palsy, the effects of the shock. No man's life was safe who did not mount the badge of riot, a blue cockade ”

“ Froude has so powerfully put before us. 'Samuel Turner, Esquire,' of imposing presence and indomitable mien, a veteran in 'the cause,' the man who had challenged the Commander-in-Chief, the envoy to France, the exile of Erin, the friend of Lord Edward and Pamela, the disinherited by his father, the victim of State persecution, now stood before his fellow-prisoners the 'Ecce Homo' of martyrdom, commanding irresistibly their confidence. ”

“ For centuries it had been the custom for England to charge her Pension List on the Irish Establishment. Irish spies and informers are generally of a low type. Reynolds—perhaps the most important of them—could not spell, as his letters, placed in our hands by Sir W. Cope, show. The same remark applies to the correspondence of other informers printed by Dr. Madden. The letters of Mr. Froude's spy are those of an educated man, and show that he corresponded and conversed in French. Samuel Turner was well qualified for all this and more, having graduated in the University of Dublin. ”

“ Curran's son speaks of the wonderful intrepidity of McNally's language in his addresses to the Court; but it is easy to be defiant when one knows he is safe. Contemporary critics record his marvellous power of penetration in cross-examining witnesses on the State trials. A shrewd man, deep in the secrets of both sides, would not find it hard to create this impression.
Lord Cloncurry complains, in his Memoirs, that after his liberation from gaol in 1801, and for many subsequent years, no man suffered more from petty worries at the hands of the Irish Government. ”

“ The 'Sham Squire' was not the man to leave money, in 1791, 'to his long and faithful friend,' O'Leary, unless he had made more than the amount by the use of him. Higgins claims O'Leary as a dear friend; the habits of the time warrant the assumption that he was his boon companion too. In the unguarded intimacy of social intercourse, that frank and affable nature is likely to have enriched the Squire's stock of gossip. ”

“ The borough-ridden Government, disappointed in its impotent attempts to prevent the laudable exertion of the people in prosecuting a Parliamentary Reform, and finding that even the venal knaves of the Castle nauseate the fulsome charges so long run on Binns and Tandy, has directed the venal writers, as the last effort of an [Pg 243] expiring and despairing cause, to endeavour to sow those seeds of dissension which so long desolated this divided Kingdom, and set father against son, and brother against brother, that all might become the easy slaves of foreign tyranny. ”

“ King William was the first who scattered the seeds of liberty in this kingdom. There is nothing in the frame of a Catholic that is averse to its growth. He never violated his engagements with the Catholics of Ireland, though often solicited to a breach of promise. There was not a Stuart, from the first to the last, but betrayed them, either from cowardice or treachery. ”

“ Dr. Thomas Wright, M.R.I.A., secretary to the United Irishmen, was a long-headed man, still well remembered in Dublin; but I do not think that James Tandy—beyond being indiscreetly open-mouthed—can be called an informer, much less a spy.
James Tandy is found a state prisoner with others after the rebellion, but this fact in itself is not enough to exculpate him; for Turner is also found a state prisoner. During his detention he addressed a letter to the Secretary of State, solemnly declaring that while he loved Napper Tandy as his father, he abhorred his politics ”

“ O'Connell, while inculcating moral force in his struggle for civil and religious liberty, was fond of enlisting in his bodyguard men who in more troubled times had staked their lives and fortunes for Ireland. He had himself been a 'United Irishman,' as will be shown. The rebel General Clony presided as chairman at the Catholic Association. Rowan, Teeling and 'Con' McLoughlin sat at the Council board, or stood on the National platform. What confidence must not O'Connell have reposed in the man who, as will appear, avowed himself ready to die for his chief! ”

“ Collins had the same liking for dramatic mystery as Turner; many of the letters to 'G.' ask him to call at night to hear things that could not be put on paper, to tap at a certain door in a dark passage, and 'no one would be the wiser.' In the graphic sketch he daily furnished, special attention is paid to the chief 'sitter,' Hamilton Rowan, who presided as chairman until his arrest; while Tone, Tandy, Emmet, Drennan, Bond, Lewins, the Sheares, and B. B. Harvey (the last three afterwards hanged) stand forth in bold outline from a crowd of minor faces grouped in the background. ”

“ To promote this design, an American agent was instructed to foster the interests of the allies amongst the Presbyterians of Ulster; while the task of winning over the Irish Catholics was to be entrusted to Spanish agents.
America was all but lost at this time, and England found herself in a position of great difficulty. Ireland was drained of its garrison; the people much discontented; the Catholic middle classes, grown rich by commercial success, had established branches of their houses in France and Spain. ”

“ Sometimes McNally travelled as a spy, probably in disguise, through remote rural districts. On August 28, 1805, he announces Tipperary as 'ready to rise.' In September he goes up the Dublin mountains, 'Emmet's line,' and the result of his inquiries was that no rising need be apprehended. [496] I do not find that McNally's secret letters exist at Dublin Castle beyond the year 1805; I must, therefore, seek to trace from other sources the close of his career. Pecuniary need drew its toils tighter round him every day, making him, no doubt, more energetic in his effort to cast them off. ”

“ The question in debate [he said, when Elliot assailed him] was for laying a tax on Great Britain, in which I, as a French citizen, could not possibly be implicated, and, therefore, it is evident that I was wantonly dragged in for the sole purpose of calumny and abuse. Such conduct was unmanly, as no brave man would attack a defenceless person, much less an absent one.
Ignorant of the source to which his betrayal was due, it did not occur to Tandy that the speeches of Elliot and others may have aimed at diverting suspicion from their real informant. ”

“ Father Arthur O'Leary died in London on January 8, 1802. The remains lay in state; a grand dirge was sung; an imposing funeral cortège followed them to Old St. Pancras, where a fine monument to his memory, inscribed with words of praise, soon marked the spot. Tradition states that Old St. Pancras was the last church in London where Mass was said after the Reformation: hence the wish felt by Catholics in penal days to sleep within its precincts. A visit to this historic graveyard in its present desecrated state awakens emotion. No ground, however, is sacred to the engineer. ”

“ It is not a little singular that General Lord Moira, who, later on, was offered the Viceroyalties of Ireland and of India, and who in 1812, on the death of Percival, sought to form an administration, should have performed the perilous task of harbouring men who loved Ireland 'not wisely, but too well.' Portland, in a letter to Camden, dated 11 March, 1798, classes with 'the disaffected,' 'Lord Moira and his adherents.' This impression was partly due to his indignant protest in Parliament against that policy of torture by which the people had been daily goaded to rebel. ”