XLVI.
The next matter of public importance in which I was interested was the Boston Convention of the Irish National League of America, which took place in the Fanieul Hall, Boston, on the 13th and following days of August. Of course I went in my dual capacity as League delegate and Revolutionary official. The same plan of campaign was practised with the same successful results. The Rev. Dr. Betts was again to the front as president of the secret caucuses, while Egan, grown more bold by this, was a regular attendant. When the nomination of officials of the League came up, Sullivan was named for re-election as president. He, however, declined, and made way for Patrick Egan. Egan, after some refusal on the ground that the British Government probably knew of his connection with the secret movement, and that his taking office might compromise Mr. Parnell, eventually agreed, and so he took the chair vacated by Sullivan. This Convention was attended by Mr. Thomas Sexton, M.P., and Mr. William Redmond, M.P., on the part of the Parnellite party, and by P. J. Tynan, the famous “No. 1” of the Phœnix Park murders—shall I say on behalf of the Invincibles? Sullivan undoubtedly was the pet boy of the period, for he was the object of the most adulatory references on the part of Mr. Sexton. He was, we were told, a man who did honour to the race from which he had sprung; a man of whom any race might well be proud—and so on. Egan, however, came in for his fair share of attention too. He was, according to another speaker, “that clean handed, that patriotic, that heroic exile,” although, of course, no reference was made to the reasons for his exile as supplied by the Phœnix Park crimes.
If, however, no reason was given in public for his exile, Egan was not slow to refer to the matter in private. I had journeyed in his company to Boston, and had had a very exciting chat with him, in which the question of his flight had largely figured. His description of how he was enabled to get away from Dublin was most graphic. He started off by boasting how he had got information from the Castle; and to show how readily it could be obtained he said that, within twenty minutes of the order being issued for the warrant for his arrest, he knew of the fact. He was at his office at the time, and at once proceeded to his house and packed his satchel. He had two children sick then, and Dr. Kenny was attending them. He destroyed a number of documents which he had in the house, some of them pertaining to his connection with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and also some letters of James Carey. In fact he destroyed all papers tending to incriminate him in case he was arrested. Fortunately for him there happened to be in Dublin at the time a Scotch friend in the Belfast flour trade, who assisted him in getting away. He gave this friend his rug and valise, and instructed him to purchase a ticket for Belfast at the Northern Terminus. He himself arrived at the railway station one moment before the train started, took his valise and rug from his Scotch friend, slipped into the train, and that night was in Belfast. On his arrival at Belfast he found that he could not get out by boat, and he went to an hotel, where he slept. In the morning he purchased a return ticket to Leeds, travelled with that as far as Manchester, and then got off the train. There he purchased another ticket from Manchester to Hull, took the steamer from Hull to Rotterdam, and thus got out of the country.
From the account of his own escape, he passed on to tell me how his fellow-official Brennan, the Secretary of the Irish Land League, had got away. Brennan, it appeared, gained the first hint of his being implicated by reading the announcement of Carey’s evidence on a news sheet displayed on the pavement in the Strand. He was accompanied by Mr. Thomas Sexton, M.P., at the time, and on reading the announcement they at once turned down a side street where arrangements were made for Brennan’s flight. Brennan started off for his lodgings in order to pack a valise, while Mr. Sexton, going to Charing Cross, purchased a ticket for Paris. On this ticket he travelled to London Bridge, and there by arrangement he met Brennan, who immediately proceeded on the train to the French capital. Egan was very generous in his confidences on this occasion, and amongst other things he told me that he was satisfied the new Executive Body would continue the “active work,” and it would be done by men who would not go further than their orders, as Dr. Gallaher had done. This was news to me, and I inquired how. “Why,” replied Egan, “he (Dr. G.) got in with some of Rossa’s men, and MacDermott (a reputed informer) got it from them, and gave him away.” Previously to this I had met Egan in camp gatherings, and knew that he was now an actual member of the American Revolutionary organisation. It was, by-the-bye, at a camp meeting in Philadelphia in this year that Egan, addressing some sixty members, said, “I have been reading up the records of the Italian banditti, and from them I have come to believe in this rule: Let us meet our enemies with smiling faces, and with a warm grasp of the hand, having daggers up our sleeves ready to stab them to the heart.” Strange words these, and yet I thought when I heard of their being uttered of the smiling face and warm hand clasp which had puzzled me not a little on that first night when I met the speaker on the staircase of a Parisian hotel.
The Convention of the secret organisation followed immediately after that of the National League, but as I was not a delegate I had no intimate connection with it. It was at this Convention, as I learnt subsequently from Sullivan, that arrangements were made—few, if any, Anti-Sullivanites were present—for the destruction of the records of which I have already spoken, and which gave rise to so much bitterness on the part of the Cronin faction.
The principal fact worthy of notice in connection with the secret Convention of 1884 was the acknowledgment by the “Triangle” of 118,000 dollars as the sum received and expended for dynamite purposes from the date of the holding of the Convention of 1881. No vouchers or detailed statements were forthcoming, and their absence was sought to be explained on the ground that it was inexpedient to supply information in view of the risk and exposure of brave men engaged in the enterprises. No detailed statement of the expenditure of this vast sum has ever been made to this day.
As one result of this unsatisfactory condition of things, a circular was drawn up by Cronin and his friends, making definite and formal charges against the “Triangle” of stealing the funds of the organisation. Cronin was very aggressive in giving currency to these charges in the most offensive language, and the feeling against him on the part of Sullivan’s adherents became extremely embittered. As it grew in intensity it spread to more than Cronin, and soon the followers of both men were ranged in hostile camps, fighting a wordy war of the deadliest type. All attempts to heal the breach proved fruitless, although much outside influence of an important character was brought to bear upon the different parties concerned.