The Dock and the Scaffold | Page 8

against them (a
difficulty which never seems to have arisen in these cases) but that the
number of witnesses who could swear to their innocence was so great,
that an attempt to press for convictions in their cases would be pertain
to jeopardize the whole proceedings. The following is a list of the
prisoners put forward, the names being, as afterwards appeared, in
many cases fictitious:--
William O'Mara Allen, Edward Shore, Henry Wilson, William Gould,
Michael Larkin, Patrick Kelly, Charles Moorhouse, John Brennan, John
Bacon, William Martin, John F. Nugent, James Sherry, Robert
McWilliams, Michael Maguire, Thomas Maguire, Michael Morris,
Michael Bryan, Michael Corcoran, Thomas Ryan, John Carroll, John
Cleeson, Michael Kennedy, John Morris, Patrick Kelly, Hugh Foley,
Patrick Coffey, Thomas Kelly, and Thomas Scally.

It forms no part of our purpose to follow out the history of the
proceedings in the Manchester court on the 25th of September and the
following days: but there are some circumstances in connection with
that investigation which it would be impossible to pass over without
comment. It was on this occasion that the extraordinary sight of men
being tried in chains was witnessed, and that the representatives of the
English Crown came to sit in judgment on men still innocent in the
eyes of the law, yet manacled like convicted felons. With the blistering
irons clasped tight round their wrists the Irish prisoners stood forward,
that justice--such justice as tortures men first and tries them
afterwards--might be administered to them. "The police considered the
precaution necessary," urged the magistrate, in reply to the scathing
denunciations of the unprecedented outrage which fell from the lips of
Mr. Ernest Jones, one of the prisoners' counsel. The police considered it
necessary, though within the courthouse no friend of the accused could
dare to show his face--though the whole building bristled with military
and with policemen, with their revolvers ostentatiously
displayed;--necessary, though every approach to the courthouse was
held by an armed guard, and though every soldier in the whole city was
standing to arms;--necessary there, in the heart of an English city, with
a dense population thirsting for the blood of the accused, and when the
danger seemed to be, not that they might escape from custody--a flight
to the moon would be equally practicable--but that they might be
butchered in cold blood by the angry English mob that scowled on
them from the galleries of the court house, and howled round the
building in which they stood. In vain did Mr. Jones protest, in scornful
words, against the brutal indignity--in vain did he appeal to the spirit of
British justice, to ancient precedent and modern practice--in vain did he
inveigh against a proceeding which forbad the intercourse necessary
between him and his clients--and in vain did he point out that the
prisoners in the dock were guiltless and innocent men according to the
theory of the law. No arguments, no expostulations would change the
magistrate's decision. Amidst the applause of the cowardly set that
represented the British public within the courthouse, he insisted that the
handcuffs should remain on; and then Mr. Jones, taking the only course
left to a man of spirit under the circumstances, threw down his brief
and indignantly quitted the desecrated justice hall. Fearing the

consequences of leaving the prisoners utterly undefended, Mr.
Cottingham, the junior counsel for the defence, refrained from
following Mr. Jones's example, but he, too, protested loudly, boldly,
and indignantly against the cowardly outrage, worthy of the worst days
of the French monarchy, which his clients were being subjected to. The
whole investigation was in keeping with the spirit evinced by the bench.
The witnesses seemed to come for the special purpose of swearing
point-blank against the hapless men in the dock, no matter at what cost
to truth, and to take a fiendish pleasure in assisting in securing their
condemnation. One of the witnesses was sure "the whole lot of them
wanted to murder everyone who had any property;" another assured his
interrogator in the dock that "he would go to see him hanged;" and a
third had no hesitation in acknowledging the attractions which the
reward offered by the government possessed for his mind. Men and
women, young and old, all seemed to be possessed of but the one
idea--to secure as much of the blood-money as possible, and to do their
best to bring the hated Irish to the gallows. Of course, an investigation,
under these circumstances, could have but one ending, and no one was
surprised to learn, at its conclusion, that the whole of the resolute body
of stern-faced men, who, manacled and suffering, confronted their
malignant accusers, had been committed to stand their trial in hot haste,
for the crime of "wilful murder."
Of the men thus dealt with there are four with