MEANY

S

TEPHEN JOSEPH MEANY, an Irish journalist and patriot, was born about 1830. He early became interested in national politics and was imprisoned in Carrickfergus Castle in 1848, having been a reporter for a Dublin daily newspaper and a writer for a national journal. He came to America, and, having joined the Fenian movement, was one of the "Senators" in O'Mahony's organization. In December, 1866, he was in England, where he was arrested and taken in custody to Ireland. His trial took place in February, 1867; but as the legality of the mode of his arrest was denied by his counsel it was brought before a court of appeal, which conArmed his conviction.

LEGALITY OF ARREST }

SPEECH DELIVERED FROM THE DOCK IN DUBLIN, JUNE 21, 1867

M

Y LORDS,-There are many reasons I could offer why sentence should not could not be pronounced upon me according to law, if seven months of absolute solitary imprisonment, and the almost total disuse of speech during that period, had left me energy enough, or even language sufficient to address the court. But yielding obedience to a suggestion coming from a quarter which I am bound to respect, as well, indeed, as in accordance with my own feelings, I avoid everything like speechmaking for outside effect. Besides, the learned counsel who so ably represented me in the court of appeal, and the eminent judges who in that court gave judgment for me, have exhausted all that could be said on the law of the case. Of their arguments and opinions your lordships have judicial knowledge. I need not say that both in interest as in conviction I am in agreement with the constitutional principles laid down by

the minority of the judges in that court, and I have sufficient respect for the dignity of the court, sufficient regard to what is due to myself, to concede fully and frankly to the majority a conscientious view of a novel, and, it may be, a difficult question.

But I do not ask too much in asking that before your lordships proceed to pass any sentence you will consider the manner in which the court was divided on that questionto bear in mind that the minority declaring against the legality and validity of the conviction was composed of some of the ablest and most experienced judges of the Irish bench or any bench-to bear in mind that one of these learned judges who had presided at the Commission Court was one of the most emphatic in the Court of Criminal Appeal in declaring against my liability to be tried; and moreoverand he ought to know-that there was not a particle of evidence to sustain the cause set up at the last moment, and relied upon by the Crown, that I was an accessory before the fact to that famous Dublin overt act for which, as an afterthought of the Crown, I was, in fact, tried.

And I ask you further to bear in mind that the affirmance of the conviction was not had on fixed principles of lawfor the question was unprecedented-but on a speculative view of the supposititious case, and I may say a strained application of an already overstrained and dangerous doctrine -the doctrine of constructive criminality-the doctrine of making a man, at a distance of three thousand miles or more, legally responsible for the words and acts of others whom he had never seen, and of whom he had never heard, under the fiction or the "supposition," that he was a co-conspirator. The word "supposition" is not mine, my lords; it is the word put forward descriptive of the point by the learned

judges presiding at my trial; for I find in the case prepared by these judges for the Court of Criminal Appeal the following paragraph:

"Sufficient evidence was given on the part of the Crown, of acts of members of the said association in Ireland not named in the indictment, in promotion of the several objects aforesaid, and done within the county of the city of Dublin, to sustain some of the overt acts charged in the indictment, supposing them to be the acts of the defendant himself."

Fortified by such facts-with a court so divided and with opinions so expressed-I submit that neither according to act of Parliament, nor in conformity with the practice at common law, nor in any way in pursuance of the principles of that apocryphal abstraction, that magnificent myth, the British constitution, am I amenable to the sentence of this court or any court in this country.

True, I am in the toils, and it may be vain to discuss how I was brought into them. True, my long and dreary imprisonment shut away from all converse or association with humanity, in a cell twelve feet by six-the humiliations of prison discipline-the hardships of prison fare-the handcuffs, and the heart-burnings-this court and its surroundings of power and authority-all these are "hard practical facts " which no amount of indignant protests can negative-no denunciation of the wrong refine away; and it may be, as I have said, worse than useless-vain and absurd-to question the right where might is predominant. But the invitation just extended to me by the officer of the court means, if it means anything—if it be not like the rest, a solemn mockerythat there still is left to me the poor privilege of complaint.

And I do complain. I complain that law and justice have been alike violated in my regard-I complain that the much

belauded attribute "British fair play" has been for me a nullity-I complain that the pleasant fiction described in the books as "personal freedom" has had a most unpleasant illustration in my person-and I furthermore and particularly complain that by the design and contrivance of what are called "the authorities" I have been brought to this country, not for trial, but for condemnation-not for justice, but for judgment.

I will not tire the patience of the court or exhaust my own strength by going over the history of this painful casethe kidnapping in London on the mere belief of a policeconstable that I was a Fenian in New York-the illegal transportation to Ireland-the committal for trial on a specific charge while a special messenger was despatched to New York to hunt up informers to justify the illegality and the outrage, and to get a foundation for any charge.

I will not dwell on the "conspicuous absence" of fair play in the Crown, at the trial, having closed its cases without any reference to the Dublin transaction, but, as an afterthought, suggested by their discovered failure, giving in evidence the facts and circumstances of that case, and thus succeeding in making the jury convict me for an offence for which, up to that moment, the Crown did not intend to charge

me.

I will not say what I think of the mockery of putting me on trial in the Commission Court in Dublin for alleged words and acts in New York, and though the evidence was without notice, and the alleged overt acts without date, taunting me with not proving an alibi, and sending that important ingredient to a jury already ripe for a conviction.

Prove an alibi to-day in respect of meetings held in Clinton

Hall, New York, the allegations relating to which only came to my knowledge yesterday! I will not refer with any bitter feeling to the fact that while the validity of the conviction so obtained was still pending in the Court of Criminal Appeal, the right honorable and noble the Chief Secretary for Ireland declared in the House of Commons that that conviction was the most important one at the Commission-thus prejudicing my case, I will not say willingly, but the observation was at least inopportune and for me unfortunate.

I will not speak my feeling on the fact that in the arguments in the case in the Court for Reserved Cases, the right honorable the Attorney-General appealed to the passionsif such can exist in judges-and not to the judgment of the court, for I gather from the judgment of Mr. Justice O'Hagan that the right honorable gentleman made an earnest appeal "that such crimes" as mine "should not be allowed to go unpunished "-forgetful, I will not say designedly forgetful, that he was addressing the judges of the land, in the highest court of the land, on matters of law, and not speaking to a pliant Dublin jury on a treason trial in the courthouse of Green street.

Before I proceed further, my lords, there is a matter which, as simply personal to myself, I should not mind, but which, as involving high interests to the community, and serious consequences to individuals, demand a special notice. I allude to the system of manufacturing informers. I want to know, if the court can inform me, by what right a responsible officer of the Crown entered my solitary cell at Kilmainham prison on Monday last-unbidden and unexpected-uninvited and undesired. I want to know what justification there was for his coming to insult me in my solitude and in my sorrowostensibly informing me that I was to be brought up for sen