Technically, of course, the two were exactly parallel—by all the laws of sovereignty a rebel deserves instant death; but it became a question of diplomacy as well—a point which seems to have been lost in the clash of battle.
In other words, had time allowed—and of course there was no knowing what effect the resistance of Dublin might have on the country—it may be a moot point whether it might not have been advisable to separate the two questions of the sentence of death and the actual executions, and one can well imagine the conciliatory effect of a Royal Act of Clemency in the event of maturer consideration making it advisable to commute those sentences.
Thus Lord Bryce, who might have been considered not only to know Ireland from past experience, but to speak with his hand on the mental pulse of the American people on this matter, strongly advised clemency in the following letter to the Westminster Gazette, in which he endorsed the advice of Sir West Ridgeway, a former Under-Secretary for Ireland:—
"Permit me to express hearty concurrence with Sir West Ridgeway in the advice which his thoughtful letter of yesterday contains. He knows, as others who have lived in Ireland or have studied her history know, that excessive severities have done far more harm by provoking afresh revengeful disaffection than punishment has ever done to quell it. This was eminently true of the rebellion of 1798, suppressed with a cruelty which shocked the humane minds of the Viceroy (Lord Cornwallis) and Sir Ralph Abercromby. The abortive rising of 1848 (which I am old enough to remember) was treated with a comparative leniency which the public opinion of that day approved, and which was justified by the result. Its chiefs did not become heroes.
"That condign punishment should be meted out to a few of those most responsible for this mad outbreak in Dublin, with its deplorable bloodshed, is inevitable. But this once done, a large and generous clemency is the course recommended by wisdom as well as by pity, and is all the more fitting because it will be a recognition of the fact that the rising was the work of a handful of persons, mostly ignorant, unbalanced visionaries, and is unequivocally condemned by the vast majority of the Irish people.—I am, faithfully yours,
"Bryce.
"Forest Row, Sussex, May 4th."
By this time, however, the matter had almost reached the character of a "pogrom." Not only had the seven signatories of the famous proclamation been executed, but every day brought another victim to the wall and told of another long list of sentences to penal servitude and other penalties, while deportations—the old Cromwellian touch, when the West Indies were peopled with Irish political offenders—reached the colossal figure of over two thousand.
Militarism is of course always a last painful resort, but there were some who seemed to look upon it as an end in itself. A writer in the Spectator said Lord Kitchener must be made Lord-Lieutenant, as the situation called for a soldier, and the hero of Omdurman was the nearest approach to the good old Cromwellian type.
The Irish Times, more English than the English themselves, then came out with the following amazing solution:—