The Dock and the Scaffold | Page 7

in which the rumour was first breathed swelled into a roar of astonishment and rage. Leaving their houses and leaving their work, the people rushed into the streets, and trooped towards the newspaper offices for information. The rescue of Colonel Kelly and death of Sergeant Brett were described in thousands of conflicting narratives, until the facts almost disappeared beneath the mass of inventions and exaggerations, the creations of excitement and panic, with which they were overloaded. Meanwhile, the police, maddened by resentment and agitation, struck out wildly and blindly at the Irish. They might not be able to recapture the escaped Fenian leaders, but they could load the gaols with their countrymen and co-religionists; they might not be able to apprehend the liberators of Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasey, but they could glut their fury on members of the same nationality; and this they did most effectually. The whole night long the raid upon the Irish quarter in Manchester was continued; houses were broken into, and their occupants dragged off to prison, and flung into cells, chained as though they were raging beasts. Mere Irish were set upon in the streets, in the shops, in their homes, and hurried off to prison as if the very existence of the empire depended on their being subjected to every kind of brutal violence and indignity. The yell for vengeance filled the air; the cry for Irish blood arose upon the night-air like a demoniacal chorus; and before morning broke their fury was to some extent appeased by the knowledge that sixty of the proscribed race--sixty of the hated Irish--were lying chained within the prison cells of Manchester.
Fifteen minutes was the time occupied in setting Kelly free--only fifteen minutes--but during that short space of time an act was accomplished which shook the whole British Empire to its foundation. From the conspiracy to which this daring deed was traceable the English people had already received many startling surprises. The liberation of James Stephens and the short-lived insurrection that filled the snow-capped hills with hardy fugitives, six months before, had both occasioned deep excitement in England; but nothing that Fenianism had yet accomplished acted in the same bewildering manner on the English mind. In the heart of one of their largest cities, in the broad daylight, openly and undisguisedly, a band of Irishmen had appeared in arms against the Queen's authority, and set the power and resources of the law at defiance. They had rescued a co-conspirator from the grasp of the government, and slain an officer of the law in the pursuit of their object. Within a few minutes' walk of barracks and military dep?ts,--in sight of the royal ensign that waved over hundreds of her Majesty's defenders, a prison van had been stopped and broken open, and its defenders shot at and put to flight. Never had the English people heard of so audacious a proceeding--never did they feel more insulted. From every corner of the land the cry swelled, up for vengeance fierce and prompt. Victims there should be; blood--Irish blood--the people would have; nor were they willing to wait long for it. It might be that, falling in hot haste, the sword of Justice might strike the innocent, and not the guilty; it might be that, in the thirst for vengeance, the restraints of humanity would be forgotten; but the English nature, now thoroughly aroused, cared little for such considerations. It was Irishmen who had defied and trampled on their power; the whole Irish people approved of the act; and it mattered little who the objects of their fury might be, provided they belonged to the detested race. The prisoners, huddled together in the Manchester prisons, with chains round their limbs, might not be the liberators of Colonel Kelly--the slayers of Brett might not be amongst them; but they were Irishmen, at any rate, and so they would answer the purpose. Short shrift was the cry. The ordinary forms of law, the maxims of the Constitution, the rules of judicial procedure, the proprieties of social order and civilization, might be outraged and discarded, but speedy vengeance should, at all hazards, be obtained: the hangman could not wait for his fee, nor the people for their carnival of blood; and so it was settled that, instead of being tried at the ordinary Commission, in December, a Special Commission should be issued on the spot for the trial of the accused.
On Thursday, the 25th of October, the prisoners were brought up for committal, before Mr. Fowler, R.M., and a bench of brother magistrates. Some of the Irishmen arrested in the first instance had been discharged--not that no one could be found to swear against them (a difficulty which never seems to have arisen in these cases) but that the number of witnesses who