While O’Brien, Meagher, and a few others were mustering their poor forces, others of the leaders appear not to have taken very much precaution against arrest. Charles Gavan Duffy was taken early in July, so was Doheny, and several more of the most boisterous of the club chiefs. Mr. Blake, the county inspector of constabulary in Kilkenny, arriving at Harley Park, discovered that O’Brien and his forces were quartered among the colliers of Boulagh, within a mile of Ballingarry. He immediately sent to Callan, where the constabulary of the district had been concentrated for some days, to avoid being attacked in small parties by the populace. Nearly sixty men left Callan, under Inspector Trant. Mr. Blake sent to Kilkenny, and other military positions, for troops, which were dispatched so as to surround the neighbourhood where the confederates had mustered. The country people soon communicated to Smith O’Brien and his followers these facts; and Mr. O’Brien thereupon reviewed his force, consisting of colliers and peasants, variously armed. They all promised faithfully to stand by him. While thus engaged, Inspector Trant and his police detachment were seen approaching from Ballingarry, and the insurgents, numbering twenty to one, dashed forward to meet them. The police perceiving the disparity of force, made for a farm-house known as the widow M’Cormack’s. The mob broke their array, and rushed also to seize the house; but the police were first there, and barricaded it with the furniture and such other materials as were at hand. Mr. O’Brien parleyed with the police, shaking hands with them through the lower windows, and used every persuasion to induce them to deliver up their arms, which of course they refused. The peasants and colliers then directed showers of stones against the doors and windows, and also opened a fire of small arms from an outhouse. This was replied to by the police, who killed several and wounded many others. O’Brien was perfectly incompetent to give any useful direction, and his men began to retire before the sharp practice from the fire-arms of the police, when at last the latter, advancing under cover of some low walls and haystacks, drove the crowd from the neighbourhood, O’Brien escaping on the inspector’s horse. Neither skill nor courage was shown by the assailants. O’Brien’s conduct has been criticised with much severity on this occasion; but it is false to represent him as having acted without spirit; he, of course, in giving directions to his party, placed himself where he might best do so, and avoid the aim of the police; but if he or his followers had been fit for the work they had undertaken, they would either have stormed the house or retired in order; and, possessing so intimate a knowledge of the country, they might have evaded the armed parties in pursuit, until, with increased numbers, they had fallen upon some place of arms which they would have made their point d’appui. As it was, their proceedings were ludicrous, and afforded subject-matter for Punch, which contained a caricature representing an army of Irish rebels scared by the shadow of a policeman. There can be no doubt that O’Brien would have dared anything which a sense of duty and honour dictated, and which opportunity afforded; but to lead an insurrection was a task utterly beyond his capacity. It is difficult to believe that the more crafty of the confederates were sincere in the language they employed in inciting him to the preposterous acts in which he took part. For instance, a letter written by Charles Gavan Duffy was found in Smith O’Brien’s portmanteau after his arrest, which contained the following absurdly eulogistic incitement to place himself in the foreground of the revolt:—
“There is no halfway house for you. You will be the head of the movement, loyally obeyed, and the revolution will be conducted with order and clemency; or the mere anarchists will prevail with the people, and our revolution will be a bloody chaos. You have at present Lafayette’s place, so graphically painted by Lamartine; and I believe have fallen into Lafayette’s error—that of not using it to all its extent, and in all its resources. I am perfectly well aware that you don’t desire to lead or influence others; but I believe, with Lamartine, that that feeling which is a high personal and civic virtue, is a vice in revolutions. If I were Smith O’Brien, I would strike out in my own mind, or with such counsel as I valued, a definite course for the revolution, and labour incessantly to develop it in that way.”
Had Mr. Duffy desired to precipitate a weak man—the leader of other weak men—into certain ruin, these extracts, and the letter from which they are taken, would be perfectly consistent and intelligible. Had Mr. Duffy himself been quite sure of escape, by some means, from the consequences of insurrection, and had he desired to aid the government in bringing the disaffection existing into actual maturity, such a mode of addressing the proud, brave, and honest man to whom he wrote, would be rational; but with the clergy and gentry of all sects in Ireland adverse to any such movement, and with a fourth at least of all the other classes in Ireland, except the mere peasantry, equally hostile,—while many of those favourable to the Confederation were afraid to move hand or foot in its behalf,—such a letter, written by a man who ought from his position to have known Ireland well, is one of the most extraordinary episodes in the history of the eminently foolish transactions of the party.
After the wild affair at Boulagh Common, Smith O’Brien became a fugitive. There was no more preparedness or spirit to rise in his behalf than there had been for Mitchell; and indeed so destitute were leaders and people of any military knowledge or resources, that in any effort against the soldiery, the insurgents would have gone forth as sheep to the slaughter.
On the 5th of August O’Brien was arrested at the Thurles railway station, having taken a ticket at that place for Limerick. He was recognised by Hulme, a guard on the Great Southern and Western Railway, and the police and military were promptly summoned to Hulme’s aid. General M’Donald treated the prisoner with all possible courtesy, and sent him to Dublin. The courtesies of the gallant general were rather disdainfully repelled. Mr. O’Brien requested his portmanteau to be sent for, as it contained various necessaries. This request was granted, but all papers which it contained were abstracted by the Irish secretary, and several documents and letters from the other leaders, of a treasonable nature, were discovered. Nine years after this event, when Mr. O’Brien as a pardoned convict was permitted to return to his country, he had the puerility to complain of this act in a letter to the public. The man who could fail to see the justice and propriety of such a step on the part of the government, was so far beyond reason on political matters, that all astonishment at the impracticability of his insurrectionary attempts during the autumn of 1848 ceases.
On the 28th of September Mr. O’Brien was put upon his trial at Clonmel. The trial lasted until the 9th of October, when a verdict of guilty was returned, and a strong recommendation for mercy, the jury stating that, on many grounds, they were of opinion that Mr. O’Brien’s life should be spared. Probably every impartial person in the kingdom snared their views. The judges, however, recorded sentence of death.
The trials of MacManus, Meagher, and O’Donoghue resulted in verdicts of guilty, and sentence of death was recorded in each case. When they were brought to the court for that purpose, and asked what they had to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon them, Mr. MacManus delivered a manly and sensible speech, in a tone and with a manner so frank and direct, as to produce a strong impression in his favour throughout the court, as it did throughout the country, by all who perused it. The speech of Meagher was an eloquent failure; it appeared as if he had kept the noble and unfortunate Emmet before him as a model. He addressed the judges as if he were about to expiate his error upon the scaffold, whereas he knew, as all Ireland knew, that it was not the intention of government to put the sentence of the law in force. This circumstance gave an air of display and bombast to a speech that, if the realities of the speaker’s position had corresponded with it, would have been thrillingly effective.
Soon after these events, a number of other participants in the revolt were put upon their trial for their connection with it, or for seditious writings. The following notices, under the head of “State Trials,” appeared in the papers of the day, and will sufficiently exemplify the general character of such proceedings and their results:—“The trial of Mr. Williams was closed on Friday se’nnight, by the acquittal of the accused. It appeared that he could not be fixed upon as the author of any of the articles indicted. Those which were most violent had been published during a period when he was confined to his room, and could not, and did not, take part in conducting the Tribune. Mr. O’Doherty, the part-proprietor of the Tribune, less fortunate than Mr. Williams, has been sentenced to ten years’ transportation. In Dublin the sentence on Mr. O’Doherty was not expected to be so severe. He is a young man, not more than twenty-two, and his high character for humanity, and the recommendation of the jury, induced the public to believe that, though the sentence would be severe, the punishment would not so nearly approach that of those who preceded him in his career. With his sentence, and the discharge of Mr. Williams, the commission terminated. Mr. Duffy still remains in the custody of the gaoler of Newgate.”
The sentence of death upon the prisoners at Clonmel was afterwards commuted to transportation, and this was carried into effect. The people of Ireland felt that the crown had acted with justice and clemency; and all regretted the necessity of visiting with so severe a punishment men whose conduct arose from fervent patriotism and honest purpose.
The case of Charles Gavan Duffy was the most remarkable of any which was brought before the Irish law courts in connection with the insurrection. Certainly, the charges brought against him were as clearly proved as were those against any other of the party leaders. Yet the trial was so managed, and juries were found so obstinate, that notwithstanding the appearance of the most pertinacious prosecution on the part of the crown, a conviction could not be obtained. The following extract from a journal published Saturday, the 23rd of December, exhibits the general character of the proceedings against Mr. Duffy, and the questions which were raised to postpone his trial and embarrass the prosecution:—