[32]. O’Connor, a fat, comely, cheerful-looking schoolmaster of County Kildare, was the first rebel executed for high treason. His trial gave rise to one of the most curious dialogues (between him and Judge Finucane) that ever took place in a court of justice. It ended, however, by the judge (who was a humane man) passing the usual sentence on him—“That he should be hanged by the neck, but not till he was dead: that while still alive his bowels should be taken out, his body quartered,” &c. &c. The culprit bore all this with firm though mild complacency; and on conclusion of the sentence bowed low, blessed the judge for his impartiality, and turning about, said, “God’s will be done! ’tis well it’s no worse!” I was surprised. I pitied the poor fellow, who had committed no atrocity, and asked him what he meant. “Why, Counsellor,” said he, “I was afraid his lordship would order me to be flogged!” Every rebel preferred death to the cat-o’-nine-tails! O’Connor’s head remained some years on the top of Naas gaol.
It is not in the nature, or within the comprehension, of the sober English people to form any judgment of what a true-born Irishman is capable of saying or doing in his deepest extremities: and I am sure they will give me little credit for veracity when I mention some instances which, I own, in any other country might be reasonably considered incredible. In no other place existing could the cruel and ludicrous be so mingled, as they were in the transactions of the sanguinary period in question; nor do I think there can be a better way to inform and amuse the reader, than by giving alternate anecdotes of the royalists and the rebels, leaving it to his own judgment to draw conclusions.—This one observation, however, it is necessary, in justice, to premise;—that the royalists were, generally speaking, of a higher class than the rebels—and had received the advantages of education, while the rebels were in a state of total ignorance and beggary. The wanton barbarities, therefore, of the more enlightened classes have less ground of palliation than those of a demi-savage peasantry, urged by fanaticism, and blinded by ignorance. This observation was strongly impressed on my mind throughout the whole of that contest; and it would be acting unfairly toward the officer who so judiciously commanded the military corps I was then attached to, not to say, that, though an unqualified Protestant—an hereditary Huguenot, filled with that spirit of sectionary zeal which drove his eloquent ancestor from his native country; yet, during the whole of the rebellion, Captain Saurin never suffered the corps he led to indulge any religious distinctions;—scarcely, indeed, could his own sect be discovered by any particular of his acts, orders, or conduct; nor did that corps ever participate in, or even countenance, the violent proceedings so liberally practised by other military yeomen.[[33]]
[33]. I knew at least but of one exception to this remark respecting the lawyers’ corps. Very early in the rebellion an officer took down a detachment of that corps to Rathcool, about seven miles from Dublin, without the knowledge of the commandant. They were not aware of his object, which turned out to be, to set fire to part of the town. He captured one gentleman, Lieutenant Byrne, who was hanged;—and returned to Dublin, in my mind not triumphant.
He got several severe lectures, but none so strong as one from the late Sir John Parnell, then chancellor of the exchequer, whose heir, the present Sir Henry Parnell, was among those unwittingly taken down.
This line of conduct was most exemplary; and from a thorough knowledge of the constitutional attributes of the man, I am convinced that neither his philanthropy, toleration, humility, or other good qualities have been much increased by his schooling, for the last twenty years, in the Irish Four Courts.
Among the extraordinary characters that turned up in the fatal “ninety-eight,” there were few more extraordinary than Lieutenant H——, then denominated the “walking gallows;”—and such he certainly was, literally and practically.[[34]]