It was three months after, before Dan O’Sullivan-agreem was released, and not until I had written a strong letter to McCarthy Downing, telling him I would write a letter to the newspapers charging the government with another “breach of treaty” in keeping the man in prison for whose release we had stipulated.
Looking over some books and papers connected with the terms of release made by the ’98 men, I see there was a breach of treaty in their case also. They stipulated for the release of many men who were arrested in March and April, 1798—before the “Rising.” And, after signing the papers, some of those men were hanged, and more of them were kept in prison until the year 1802.
Looking over the books and papers concerning the ’98 times, and the books and papers concerning our own times, I do not see much change in the spirit of England and Englishmen regarding Ireland and Irishmen. Those who are reading what I am writing will not, I hope, consider I am doing much amiss in embodying in “Rossa’s Recollections,” some of the experiences of Irishmen who were fighting against English rule in Ireland a hundred years ago, and comparing England’s treachery and duplicity a hundred years ago, with her tyranny, treachery and duplicity to-day. I find myself much in feeling with William Sampson, one of the ’98 men, when he says, “If a man be injured, you add to his injuries by extorting false protestations from him, which must aggravate his feeling or wound his honor.”
Those words from the grave strike the chords that hold me in life. England’s holding me in prison from assizes to assizes, and not releasing me until I would acknowledge as true the perjuries that were sworn against me, has planted in my nature an ineradicable desire for personal satisfaction, and “If I could grasp the fires of hell to-day, I would seize them and hurl them into the face of my country’s enemy.” These words are the words of John Mitchel.
William Sampson of Antrim, arrested on the 12th of February, ’98, in his “Memoirs” says:
“After several months of cruel and secret imprisonment, a Mr. Crawford, an attorney, was first permitted to break the spell of solitude, and enter my prison door. This gentleman had been employed in defence of Mr. Bond, Mr. Byrne, and others, for whose fate I was much interested.”
At the time of that visit the rising had taken place and the fight was going on. From all the information the prisoners were allowed to get, they were led to believe that their people were getting the worst of it; that aid which they expected had not come; that to continue the fight was useless. The paper presented to them to sign, amounted to an advice to the insurgents to submit and give up their arms, on stipulation of general amnesty and the release of some seventy men who were in prison on charges of high treason.
Sampson says, “Upwards of seventy prisoners, against whom no evidence appeared, had signed an act of self-devotion, and peace was likely to be the result.… One day, as we were all together in the yard of the bridewell, it was announced that the scaffold was erected for the execution of William Byrne, the preservation of whose life had been a principal motive for the signature of many of the prisoners to the agreement.”
That was the famed Billy Byrne, of Ballymanus.
Sampson, after making some bitter remarks on the tyranny that will imprison an innocent man, and keep him in prison until he will sign a paper saying his jailers were justified in doing all they did, says: