Twenty-five years in the Secret Service: The recollections of a spy

by Henri Le Caron

XLI.

At last we turn to business again. Luckily the topic is an exciting one—nothing less indeed than the Skirmishing Fund discussion—and so matters will be interesting. O’Meagher Condon is on his feet, and he is launching forth in vehement style against the whole of the governing powers. Condon is one of those men who were mixed up in the Manchester Martyr affair, and since his arrival here a couple of years since, on being amnestied, he has been quite a hero. He has now a position in a Government department at Washington, and is much esteemed in the ranks of the Gaels. How his face works with excitement and passion as he attacks Devoy and his fellows on the Revolutionary Directory for their want of practical work. He finishes at last, and up jumps Devoy, more sour-looking than ever, with the perpetual scowl growing heavier and heavier. As he proceeds, the author of the New Departure has recourse to the usual method of controversy. He asserts that Condon is a coward, and was guilty of the grossest neglect at Manchester. If Condon had but distributed the twenty odd pounds which were found on him on his arrest, many of the men would have escaped, instead of being captured with empty pockets. Gruffer and gruffer becomes Devoy’s voice, as losing partial control of himself he trembles with excitement and flings charge after charge across the floor.

We are in for another personal quarrel, and so have to wait patiently while Condon, for the hundredth time, recites the threadbare narrative of his glorious deeds in Manchester. Matters are very electrical when the Rev. George C. Betts of St. Louis craves a hearing, and with his well-known smile seeks the suffrages of his fellow-patriots for the moment. Truly, a strange figure in a strange place. Tall, erect, in the black garb of the Church, with priest-like face and priest-like form, he woos the assembly to a strange quietness as his clerical style of utterance falls upon the audience. He is as hot a dynamitard as any, but he wants no personalities. If they are to accomplish anything, they really must be more practical. And so he proceeds, winning applause and spreading enthusiasm, till Devoy and Condon, and their personalities, are swept into forgetfulness, and all are engaged in applauding revolutionary sentiment spiced with religious quotation, and served up in the most orthodox of fashions.

The reverend dynamitard concludes, and resumes his seat amidst most enthusiastic evidences of his popularity. He gives way to an equally inharmonious figure in this motley gathering. The man who now rises is one of medium height, whose every movement bespeaks the professional man, as awhile back the picture presented by the Rev. Dr. Betts bespoke the cleric. A young man too is this, with his neat attire, trim beard, and gold-headed cane. No less a person is he than Dr. Gallaher, who, in this year of 1892, in the convict suit of grey with its regulation arrows, works out his weary life in Portland prison. As you watch, and as he speaks in that quiet gentlemanly fashion of his, you can well believe that he is a man of whom it might be afterwards boasted that he was introduced to Mr. Gladstone himself. Save in his sentiments there is nothing of the dynamitard about him, but in the matter of his speech there is no room for doubt. Quiet and self-controlled though he be, his talk is the talk of war, and the enthusiasm which lights up his countenance is that strong steady flame which will steadily burn till England’s dungeon doors close upon him and cut short his career of recklessness.

Following him on the floor is the familiar form of Denis Feeley, the fellow “Triangler” of Sullivan in later days, and with him the object of attack on the part of Cronin’s friends. Cool, calm, and deliberate, he carries his audience with him as he advocates “a secret blow at the enemy”; while his big form shakes with indignation as he works himself up to an excited pitch over “the wrongs of their beloved country.” At last Feeley concludes, and there rises another well-known figure, that of T. V. Powderly, for years the chief of the largest working-men’s organisation in America, known as “The Knights of Labour.” Little doubt can there be as to his views. Listen to what he says:—

“The killing of English robbers and tyrants in Ireland, and the destruction by any and all means of their capital and resources, which, enables them to carry on their robberies and tyrannies, is not a needless act. Hence I am in favour of the torch for their cities and the knife for their tyrants till they agree to let Ireland severely alone. London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Bristol in ashes may bring them to view it in another light.”

And so the talk goes on, and seven hundred years of grievances find expression from the lips of excited patriots, while quarrelsome delegates destroy all decorum. There is little purpose in our waiting further. One hour will be but the repetition of the other. As we rise to leave, however, one figure catches the eye and impresses itself upon us. It is that of the arch-plotter Sullivan, who, through all this din and turmoil, sits and makes no sign. He knows that later on he will be the candidate for the highest place amongst them, and so he takes no side. There is no possibility of your missing him as you pass him by. There he sits, quiet, watchful, and alert. You cannot mistake the man. There is a sense of power and intelligence in that clean cut, clean shaven face of his, lit up by its bright daring eyes. Had you but heard him speak, the lesson of his presence would have been complete. His clear trumpet voice, rising and falling with the play of a practised orator, his choice finished diction, his well-reasoned, well-arranged argument, and the graceful gesture and movement of his whole body would prove to you that there at least was a man gifted to command and competent to control.

And so we terminate our flying visit to the Eighty-one Convention of the Clan-na-Gael, wherein there were assembled forty lawyers, eight doctors, two judges, clergymen of both leading religions, merchants, manufacturers, and working men, all mixed up in glorious confusion, almost all reduced to the level of the whisky bottle, and none removed from the struggles of personal avarice and ambition.