The "Wearing of the Green," or The Prosecuted Funeral Procession

by A. M. Sullivan

I admit I attended the procession. I admit also that I spoke words which I consider very grave and serious words upon that occasion. For my acts on that occasion, for the sense and intention of the words I spoke on that occasion, I am perfectly willing to be put upon my country. Not only for all my acts on that occasion—not only for the words which I spoke on that occasion; but for all my acts or all the words I either spoke or wrote, publicly or privately, upon Irish politics, I am perfectly willing to be put upon my country. In any free country that has real constitutional institutions to guarantee the liberty of the subject—to guarantee the free trial of the subject charged with an offence against either the state or his neighbour, it would be quite absurd to expect a man could be put upon his country and convicted of a crime for doing that and using such words as the vast majority of his fellow-countrymen approve. In this case I believe that a vast majority of my fellow-countrymen do not disapprove of the acts I acknowledge on that occasion, and that they sympathise in the sentiment of the words I then spoke. Therefore the mere fact that a prosecution is preferred against me for that act, and for those words, is the expression of an opinion on my part that this country does not at present enjoy real constitutional institutions, guaranteeing a free trial—guaranteeing that the man accused shall be really put upon his country. Therefore it is absurd to think that any twelve honest men, my neighbours, put upon their oaths, would declare that to be a crime which it is probable that, at least, four-fifths of them believe to be right—right both constitutionally and morally. I am aware—we are all aware—that the gentlemen who represent the crown in this country, have very powerful means at their disposal for obtaining convictions in the form of law and in the form of justice, of any person they think proper to accuse; and without meaning either to sneer or to joke in this matter, I acknowledge the moderation of the gentlemen who represent the government, since they chose to trouble themselves with me at all. I acknowledge their moderation in proposing to indict me now for sedition, for the language which they say I used, because it is possible for them, with the means at their disposal, to have me convicted for murder, or burglary, or bigamy (laughter). I am sorry to say what seems like a sneer, but I use the words in deep and solemn seriousness, and I say no more than I am perfectly ready to be tried fairly or foully (applause in court).

The magistrates reserved their decision till next day; so that there might be decent and seemly pause for the purpose of looking up and pondering the legal precedents, as the legal fiction would have it; and on next day, they announced that they would send all the accused for trial to the next Commission at Green-street, to open on the 10th February, 1868. The several traversers, however, were required to enter merely into their own recognizances in £500 each to appear for trial.

In this police court proceeding the government, confessedly, were morally worsted—utterly humiliated, in fact. So far from creating awe or striking terror, the prosecution had evoked general contempt, scorn, and indignation. To such an extent was this fact recognised, that the government journals themselves, as we have seen, were amongst the loudest in censuring the whole proceeding, and in supporting the general expectation that there was an end of the prosecution.

Not so however was it to be. The very bitterness of the mortification inflicted upon them by their "roll in the dust" on their first legal encounter with the processionists, seemed to render the crown officials more and more vindictive. It was too galling to lie under the public challenge hurled at them by Mr. Bracken, Mr. O'Reilly, and Mr. Sullivan. After twelve days' cogitation, government made up its mind to strike.

On Saturday, 28th December, 1867—just as everyone in Ireland seemed to have concluded that, as the Conservative journals said, there was "an end of" the foolish and ill-advised funeral prosecutions—Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Bracken (one of the funeral stewards), Mr. Jennings, of Kingstown (one of the best known and most trusted of the nationalists of "Dunleary" district). Mr. O'Reilly, (one of the mounted marshals at the procession), and some others, were served with citations to appear on Monday the 30th, at the Head Police Office, to answer charges identical with those preferred on the 16th against Mr. Martin, Dr. Waters, and Mr. Lalor.

Preliminary prosecution No. 2 very much resembled No. 1. Mr. Murphy, Q.C. stated the crown case with fairness and moderation; and the police, as before, gave their evidence like men who felt "duty" and "conscience" in sore disagreement on such an occasion. Mr. Jennings and Mr. O'Reilly were defended, respectively, by Mr. Molloy and Mr. Crean; two advocates whose selection from the junior bar for these critical and important public cases was triumphantly vindicated by their conduct from the first to the last scene of the drama. Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Bracken, and the other accused, were not represented by counsel. On the first-named gentleman (Mr. Sullivan) being formally called on, he addressed the court at some length. He said:—

Please your worship, had the officials of the crown adopted towards me, in the first instance, the course which they have taken upon the present occasion, and had they not adopted the singular course which they pursued in my regard when I last appeared in this court, I should trouble you with no observations. For, as one of the 50,000 persons who, on the 8th of December, in this city, publicly, lawfully, and peacefully demonstrated their protest against what they believed to have been a denial of law and an outrage on justice, I should certainly waste no public time in this preliminary investigation, but rather admit the facts as you perceive I have done to-day, and hasten the final decision on the issues really knit between us and the crown. What was the course adopted by the crown in the first instance against me? They had before them, on the 9th, just as well as on the 29th—it is in evidence that they had—the fact that I, openly and publicly, took part in that demonstration—that sorrowful and sad protest against injustice (applause). They had before them then as much as they had before them to-day, or as much as they will ever have affecting me. For, whatever course I take in public affairs in this country, I conceal nothing, I take it publicly, openly, and deliberately. If I err, I am satisfied to abide the consequences; and, whenever it may suit the weathercock judgment of Lord Mayo, and his vacillating law advisers, to characterise my acts or my opinion as illegal, seditious, heretical, idolatrous, or treasonable, I must, like every other subject, be content to take my chance of their being able to find a jury sufficiently facile or sufficiently stupid to carry out their behests against me. But they did not choose that course at first. They did not summon me as a principal, but they subpoenaed me as a witness—as a crown witness—against some of my dearest, personal, and public friends. The attorney-general, whose word I most fully and frankly accept in the matter—for I would not charge him with being wanting in personal truthfulness—denied having had any complicity in the course of conduct pursued towards me; but where does he lay the responsibility? On "the police." What is the meaning of that phrase, "the police?" He surely does not mean that the members of the force, who parade our streets, exercise viceregal functions (laughter). Who was this person thus called the "police?" How many degrees above or below the attorney-general are we to look for this functionary described as "the police," who has the authority to have a "seditious" man—that is the allegation—a seditious man—exempted from prosecution? The police cannot do that. Who, then? Who was he that could draw the line between John Martin and his friend A.M. Sullivan—exempt the one, prosecute the other—summon the former as a defendant and subpoena the latter as a crown witness? What was the object? It is plain. There are at this moment, I am convinced—who doubts it?—throughout Ireland, as yet unfound out, Talbots and Corridons in the pay of the crown acting as Fenian centres, who, next day, would receive from their employers directions to spread amongst my countrymen the intelligence that I had been here to betray my associate, John Martin (applause). But their plot recoiled—their device was exposed; public opinion expressed its reprobation of the unsuccessful trick; and now they come to mend their hand. The men who were exempted before are prosecuted to-day. Now, your worships, on this whole case—on this entire procedure—I deliberately charge that not we, but the government, have violated the law. I charge that the government are well aware that the law is against them—that they are irresistibly driven upon this attempt to strain and break the law against the constitutional right and liberty of the subject by their mere party exigencies and necessities.

He then reviewed at length the bearing of the Party Processions Act upon the present case; and next proceeded to deal with the subject of the Manchester executions; maintaining that the men were hanged, as were others before them, in like moments of national passion and frenzy, on a false evidence and a rotten verdict. Mr. Sullivan proceeded:—

It is because the people love justice and abhor injustice—because the real crime of those three victims is believed to have been devotion to native land—that the Catholic churches of Ireland resound with prayers and requiem hymns, and the public highways were lined with sympathising thousands, until the guilty fears of the executioners proclaimed it illegal to mourn. Think you, sir, if the crown view of this matter were the true one, would the Catholic clergy of Ireland—they who braved fierce and bitter unpopularity in reprehending the Fenian conspiracy at a time when Lord Mayo's organ was patting it on the back for its 'fine Sardinian spirit'—would these ministers of religion drape their churches for three common murderers? I repel as a calumnious and slanderous accusation against the Catholic clergy of Ireland this charge, that by their mourning for those three martyred Irishmen, they expressed sympathy, directly or indirectly, with murder or life-taking. If an act be seditious, it is not the less illegal in the church than in the graveyard, or on the road to the cemetery. Are we, then, to understand that our churches are to be invaded by bands of soldiery, and our priests dragged from the altars, for the seditious crime of proclaiming aloud their belief in the innocence of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien? This, sir, is what depends on the decision in this case, here or elsewhere. All this and more. It is to be decided whether, in their capacity of Privy Councillors, the judges of the land shall put forth a proclamation the legality or binding force of which they will afterwards sit as judges to try. It is whether, there being no constitution now allowed to exist in the country, there is to be no law save what a Castle proclamation will construct, permit, or decree; no mourning save what the police will license; no demonstration of opinion save whatever accords with the government views. We hear much of the liberties enjoyed in this country. No doubt, we have fine constitutional rights and securities, until the very time they are most required. When we have no need to invoke them, they are permitted to us; but at the only time when they might be of substantial value, they are, as the phrase goes, "suspended." Who, unless in times of governmental panic, need apprehend unwarranted arrest? When else is the Habeas Corpus Act of such considerable protection to the subject? When, unless when the crown seeks to invade public liberty, is the purity and integrity of trial by jury of such value and importance in political cases? Yet all the world knows that the British government, whenever such a conflict arises, juggles and packs the jury—

Mr. Dix—I really cannot allow that language to be used in this court, Mr. Sullivan, with every disposition to accord you, as an accused person, the amplest limits in your observations. Such language goes beyond what I can permit—