Tim Harrington has asked me to assemble a dossier of the correspondence between Bishop Kane and the Lord Lieutenant. It is a classic example of English arrogance and blindness in the administration of Ireland. I copy the exchange into this journal so in the future I will have it at hand as evidence of the strange mix of blindness and immorality that marks English rule in this country.After Tom Casey’s confession in Letterfrack, the Bishop wrote to Earl Spencer:
13 May, 1883.
To His Excellency, Earl Spencer, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,
May it please Your Excellency,
Having fully and maturely considered the statement publicly made to me on the occasion of my visitation in the parish of Letterfrack on Sunday 12th inst relative to the horrid occurrence that took place at Maamtrasna, I feel it is my duty, in the interests of justice and civil society even for promoting
due respect for and confidence in the administration of the law, to lay the whole case before Your Excellency as it came before me.
On the occasion referred to, a man named Thomas Casey came forward on his own accord and publicly stated that he had been induced under pain of capital punishment to swear away the life of Myles Joyce, who had been executed in Galway. He declared that Myles Joyce was perfectly innocent, that he (Casey) offered to give information against the guilty parties and was told by the official that unless he swore against Myles Joyce, though innocent, he himself would surely be hanged, that he got thirty minutes for deliberation and then, from terror of death, swore as had been suggested to him.
Being asked why he confessed now and not before, he declared that he was waiting the visitation in his parish when he hoped to receive forgiveness and be restored by the Bishop to the Church. After having made a public confession of his guilt and as evidence of his sincerity, he declared he was ready in the interests of justice to suffer any pain, even death itself if necessary, on account of having been instrumental in taking away the life of an innocent man.
Furthermore, he declared that he was also induced to swear falsely against four men now suffering penal servitude. Taking all the circumstances into account, my own conviction is that this later statement of the wretched man is truthful and sincere and, I may add, that since then has been fully corroborated by another man, named Philbin, one of the leading approvers in the case, and who is, I am informed, prepared to make similar public declaration.
In conclusion, I would ask Your Excellency, in
order to allay public feeling so much excited in this neighborhood, to direct a sworn inquiry into the case.
I have the honor to remain, Your Excellency’s faithful servant,
John Joseph Kane, Bishop of Galway and Killmacduff
The Castle, Dublin, May 24, 1883.
My Lord Bishop,
I am directed by the Lord Lieutenant to inform Your Grace that your letter of the 13th inst, the receipt of which was acknowledged by His Excellency the following day, has received his most careful consideration.
Before the receipt of Your Grace’s letter, attention had been drawn in the House of Commons to the allegation that Thomas Casey, one of the murderers of the Joyce family at Maamstrasna on the 17th August, 1882, who had been accepted as an informer and had given evidence on the trial, had made a statement to the effect that the evidence he had given on that occasion was false. Immediately thereupon, His Excellency gave instructions that the truth of this statement should be tested in connection with the whole circumstances of the trial and the subsequent history of the witness himself.
It is not usual for His Excellency to enter into details in communicating his decisions on criminal cases, but the present instance is one of such gravity and the statements alleged to have been made attracted so much attention from Your Grace’s letter that he was determined to depart from his usual custom and to put the circumstances of the case fully before you.
He has, as Your Grace has requested, inquired
fully into the allegations now made by the informers. He forwards to Your Grace a memorandum prepared under his immediate directions and which has his entire approval, setting forth the results of that inquiry. From this memorandum, Your Grace will perceive that there was ample evidence at this trial given by three unimpeached and independent witnesses to convict all the prisoners without the evidence of Thomas Casey or Anthony Philbin and that their recent statements do not shake that testimony that plainly established that Myles Joyce, and the prisoners now undergoing penal servitude, were themselves members of the party who participated in or actually committed the murders of the Joyce family.
With regard to the actual commission of the murders, His Excellency would observe that an idea seems to prevail in the minds of some persons that the guilt of murder is only attached to those who actually fire the shot or strike the blow that causes death. Such an erroneous idea on the part of some of the participators in this horrible tragedy may account for their assertion of the innocence of those members of the party who, although they aided and countenanced the murders by their presence and were, therefore, morally and legally guilty of the crime, may not, with their own hands, have inflicted the wounds that caused the death of their victims.
I now come to the other point in Your Grace’s letter. A court of law can only act on the evidence placed before it and, deplorable as it would have been had it been shown that it had in this case been misled by the false swearing of perjured witnesses, the matter becomes far more serious when it is alleged that the course of justice was perverted by the action of officers of the Crown. The statement that
Your Grace says Thomas Casey made amounts to this, that he was told by the official that unless he swore against Myles Joyce, though innocent, he himself would surely be hanged, that he got thirty minutes for deliberation and then from terror of death swore as had been suggested to him.
This is so serious a charge, striking at the root of all confidence in the administration of the law, that the Lord Lieutenant has strictly inquired into the matter to see if the allegation has any color or foundation—an allegation that no man should lightly entertain on the unsupported assertion of witnesses who aver themselves to have been perjured.
The communications that took place with Thomas Casey when he volunteered to give evidence and was accepted as an informer, are fully detailed in the memorandum that accompanies this letter. His Excellency has no doubt after the careful examination that has been made of the three officials with whom the communications took place that none of them used any improper means of approaching the prisoners and that the statement above reported by Your Grace by Thomas Casey is absolutely false.
His Excellency feels as strongly as Your Grace, the calamity which would be involved if innocent men were punished for an offense they had not committed, but after the fullest inquiry of which the case admits, he has arrived at a clear conclusion that the verdict and the sentence were right and just. I have the honor to be, My Lord Bishop, Your Grace’s obedient servant, R. G. C. Hamilton
The Irish Members of Parliament were infuriated by this exchange both because Spencer himself did not reply to the Bishop but delegated the task to an underling and
because the testimony of Thomas Casey was simply dismissed.
They screamed that Spencer had deliberately insulted the Bishop (which he had) and that his memorandum was simply a rehash of a trial that was patently a violation of the elementary rules of justice.
Does Spencer believe the memorandum and the letter? Probably he does, but he is guilty of what the Jesuits at St. Ignatius College would have called “vincible ignorance.” His attitude is that English prosecutors simply don’t do that sort of thing and those who claim that they do are by definition wrong. There are people in Dublin Castle who knew what happened, as do most of the reporters, even the Protestant reporters. Most of the Catholics in Dublin know the truth too. Spencer could not admit even to himself that such a miscarriage of justice could have occurred because the legitimacy of his role in Ireland would collapse from under him. So I will say in my dispatch summarizing the exchange.
Bishop Kane did not give up easily.
May 25, 1883
May it please Your Excellency,
I have the honor to acknowledge Your Excellency’s letter with accompanying memorandum of the 24th inst. Notwithstanding the statements and arguments so ably and so powerfully put forward in the memorandum, I still feel that nothing short of a public inquiry can satisfy a discerning and expectant public. For they feel that the circumstances of the case are very much altered since the trial, and they, therefore, naturally expect that the Government would take advantage of these circumstances to arrive at an exact knowledge of the actual conditions of things.
These circumstances are the declarations of
Casey that, in proof of his sincerity after having been repeatedly reminded of his risk and responsibility, he was prepared to undergo any punishment, even death itself if necessary, in atonement for the guilt of having sworn away the life of an honest man, whom he declares to have been altogether absent from the scene of the horrid massacre at Maamtrasna.
The absence of any conceivable adequate motive on the latter occasion while he had obviously the most powerful motive on the former—the saving of his own neck from the halter—deeply impressed all who were present as to the truthful sincerity of his statement. Add to this, apart from the strong universal feeling then, as well as now, prevailing throughout Joyce country respecting Myles Joyce’s innocence, the dying declaration of the two other men executed with him as to his innocence as reported in the public press at the time.
It is hardly conceivable how, in the very jaws of death, they would allow themselves to be launched into eternity with a lie on their lips or an equivocation amounting to a lie. There are far fewer than seems to be supposed, who are ignorant of the obvious point of Christian morality that the abettor of and participator in murder are morally just as guilty as the man who strikes the blow or fires the fatal bullet. I assume that this important point was repeatedly and clearly impressed on the witnesses and party accused by the learned counsel on both sides at the trial. In addition, they must have received all necessary instruction and enlightenment on this and cognate subjects from the zealous chaplain of the prison in preparing them for death.
At this moment, the whole case seems involved in mystery arising from the evidence of independent or
so-called unimpeached witnesses, respecting whom be it observed, a sifting public inquiry might elicit facts and motives of great importance for the elucidation of truth, and on the other, from the dying declarations referred to.
The exceptional nature of the case, as it now stands, with all its circumstances, would seem to call for exceptional consideration on the part of the Government by instituting a public inquiry.
As regards the official incriminated, towards whom I have no feeling in one way or the other, one could not help thinking that, at the inquiry referred to in the memorandum, he was witness in his own case and it might seem more satisfactory—if not necessary—in order to satisfy reasonable public expectation at a public inquiry where there would be an opportunity afforded of questioning all parties concerned with the prison, if it was fully proved that he had not seen Casey on any other occasions than those referred to in the memorandum.
I have the honor to remain, Your Excellency’s faith-ful servant,
John Joseph Kane, Bishop of Galway and Killmacduff
Dublin Castle, June 23
My Lord Archbishop,
In the temporary absence of Sir Robert Hamilton, I am desired by the Lord Lieutenant to acknowledge the receipt of Your Grace’s letter of the 25th of May, which His Excellency has read with attention.
I am directed to inform you that His Excellency is unable to alter his decision that Sir Robert communicated to you in his letter of 24th May and His Excellency must decline to reopen the question.
W. S. B. Kay
Undersecretary
That was that. We tolerate you leaders of popish superstition in Ireland because you are able to restrain your people and thus make our administration of this perverse people somewhat easier. However, we concede courtesy to you only as a matter of convenience. We really don’t take you seriously, and we don’t believe any “confessions” made in one of your popish religious services. The matter is closed.
Except it wasn’t closed and would never be closed. The Catholics of Ireland were convinced that the Crown had bungled badly, hung an innocent man, and sent four innocent men to jail. Even some of the Protestants, including their reporters, were uneasy at the allegations. The Earl Spencer was a monster to the former and a bungler to the latter and so he will be remembered.
“You’re a real fire-eater, Edward,” Tim Harrington said to me. “It wouldn’t take much to send you into the streets.”
“I don’t think so, Tim. Like you I fight with words, not weapons.”
He raised his thick black eyebrows.
“Why is that, Edward?”
“My father fought in our civil war. He went in as an eighteen-year-old Second Lieutenant and came out four years later as a twice wounded Brevet Lieutenant Colonel. He was the only man of his original company to survive. He taught me that war never solves anything.”
Tim sighed, as the Irish do, and said, “He’s surely right, yet sometimes you have to fight for your own freedom. If the English don’t learn, someday they’ll have a mass revolution here that they will not be able to win. It won’t be like ‘98 or ’48 or ’67. The whole people of Ireland will rise.”
“Is that what you’re fighting for in Parliament and what Bishop Kane is fighting for in his letters?”
“We’re fighting to tell the truth. We know we’ll lose, though we always hope that this time it will be different. We’re trying to tell the world how immoral and stupid the English rule here is. What else can we do?”
Indeed, what else can they do?