STEPHEN JOSEPH MEANY.
The connexion of Stephen Joseph Meany with Irish politics dates back to 1848, when he underwent an imprisonment of some months in Carrickfergus Castle, under the provisions of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act. He had been a writer on one of the national newspapers of that period, and was previously a reporter for a Dublin daily paper. He joined the Fenian movement in America, and was one of the "Senators" in O'Mahony's organization. In December, 1866, he crossed over to England, and in the following month he was arrested in London, and was brought in custody across to Ireland. His trial took place in Dublin on the 16th of February, 1867, when the legality of the mode of his arrest was denied by his counsel, and as it was a very doubtful question, the point was reserved to be considered by a Court of Appeal. This tribunal sat on May the 13th, 1867, and on May the 18th, their decision confirming the conviction was pronounced. It was not until the 21st of the following month, at the Commission of Oyer and Terminer that he was brought up for sentence. He then delivered the following able address to show "why sentence should not be passed on him":—
"My lords—There are many reasons I could offer why sentence should not—could not—be pronounced upon me according to law, if seven months of absolute solitary imprisonment, and the almost total disuse of speech during that period, had left me energy enough, or even language sufficient to address the court. But yielding obedience to a suggestion coming from a quarter which I am bound to respect, as well indeed as in accordance with my own feelings, I avoid everything like speech-making for outside effect. Besides, the learned counsel who so ably represented me in the Court of Appeal, and the eminent judges who in that court gave judgment for me, have exhausted all that could be said on the law of the case. Of their arguments and opinions your lordships have judicial knowledge. I need not say that both in interest as in conviction I am in agreement with the constitutional principles laid down by the minority of the judges in that court, and I have sufficient respect for the dignity of the court—sufficient regard to what is due to myself—to concede fully and frankly to the majority a conscientious view of a novel and, it may be, a difficult question.
"But I do not ask too much in asking that before your lordships proceed to pass any sentence you will consider the manner in which the court was divided on that question—to bear in mind that the minority declaring against the legality and the validity of the conviction was composed of some of the ablest and most experienced judges of the Irish bench or any bench—to bear in mind that one of these learned judges who had presided at the Commission Court was one of the most emphatic in the Court of Criminal Appeal in declaring against my liability to be tried; and moreover—and he ought to know—that there was not a particle of evidence to sustain the cause set up at the last moment, and relied upon by the crown, that I was an 'accessory before the fact' to that famous Dublin overt act, for which, as an afterthought of the crown, I was in fact tried. And I ask you further to bear in mind that the affirmance of the conviction was not had on fixed principles of law—for the question was unprecedented—but on a speculative view of a suppositious case, and I must say a strained application of an already over-strained and dangerous doctrine—the doctrine of constructive criminality—the doctrine of making a man at a distance of three thousand miles or more, legally responsible for the words and acts of others whom he had never seen, and of whom he had never heard, under the fiction, or the 'supposition,' that he was a co-conspirator. The word 'supposition' is not mine, my lords; it is the word put forward descriptive of the point by the learned judges presiding at my trial; for I find in the case prepared by these judges for the Court of Criminal Appeal the following paragraph:—
"'Sufficient evidence was given on the part of the crown of acts of members of the said association in Ireland not named in the indictment in promotion of the several objects aforesaid, and done within the county of the city of Dublin, to sustain some of the overt acts charged in the indictment supposing them to be the acts of the defendant himself.'
"Fortified by such facts—with a court so divided, and with opinions so expressed—I submit that, neither according to act of parliament, nor in conformity with the practice at common law, nor in any way in pursuance of the principles of that apocryphal abstraction, that magnificent myth—the British constitution—am I amenable to the sentence of this court—or any court in this country. True, I am in the toils, and it may be vain to discuss how I was brought into them. True, my long and dreary imprisonment—shut away from all converse or association with humanity, in a cell twelve feet by six—the humiliations of prison discipline—the hardships of prison fare—the handcuffs, and the heartburnings—this court and its surroundings of power and authority—all these are 'hard practical facts,' which no amount of indignant protests can negative—no denunciation of the wrong refine away; and it may be, as I have said, worse than useless—vain and absurd—to question the right where might is predominant. But the invitation just extended to me by the officer of the court means, if it means anything—if it be not like the rest, a solemn mockery—that there still is left to me the poor privilege of complaint. And I do complain. I complain that law and justice have been alike violated in my regard—I complain that the much belauded attribute 'British fair play' has been for me a nullity—I complain that the pleasant fiction described in the books as 'personal freedom' has had a most unpleasant illustration in my person—and I furthermore and particularly complain that by the design and contrivance of what are called 'the authorities,' I have been brought to this country, not for trial but for condemnation—not for justice but for judgment.
"I will not tire the patience of the court, or exhaust my own strength, by going over the history of this painful case—the kidnapping in London on the mere belief of a police-constable that I was a Fenian in New York—the illegal transportation to Ireland—the committal for trial on a specific charge, whilst a special messenger was despatched to New York to hunt up informers to justify the illegality and the outrage, and to get a foundation for any charge. I will not dwell on the 'conspicuous absence' of fair play, in the crown at the trial having closed their cases without any reference to the Dublin transaction, but, as an afterthought, suggested by their discovered failure, giving in evidence the facts and circumstances of that case, and thus succeeding in making the jury convict me for an offence with which up to that moment the crown did not intend to charge me. I will not say what I think of the mockery of putting me on trial in the Commission Court in Dublin for alleged words and acts in New York, and though the evidence was without notice, and the alleged overt acts without date, taunting me with not proving an alibi, and sending that important ingredient to a jury already ripe for a conviction. Prove an alibi to-day in respect of meetings held in Clinton Hall, New York, the allegations relating to which only came to my knowledge yesterday! I will not refer with any bitter feeling to the fact that whilst the validity of the conviction so obtained was still pending in the Court of Criminal Appeal, the Right Hon. and Noble the Chief Secretary for Ireland declared in the House of Commons that 'that conviction was the most important one at the Commission'—thus prejudicing my case, I will not say willingly; but the observation was, at least, inopportune, and for me unfortunate.
"I will not speak my feeling on the fact that in the arguments in the case in the Court for Reserved Cases, the Right Hon. the Attorney-General appealed to the passions—if such can exist in judges—and not to the judgment of the court, for I gather from the judgment of Mr. Justice O'Hagan, that the right hon. gentleman made an earnest appeal 'that such crimes' as mine 'should not be allowed to go unpunished'.—forgetful, I will not say designedly forgetful, that he was addressing the judges of the land, in the highest court of the land, on matters of law, and not speaking to a pliant Dublin jury on a treason trial in the court-house of Green-street.
"Before I proceed further, my lords, there is a matter which, as simply personal to myself I should not mind, but which as involving high interests to the community, and serious consequences to individuals, demand a special notice. I allude to the system of manufacturing informers. I want to know, if the court can inform me, by what right a responsible officer of the crown entered my solitary cell at Kilmainham prison on Monday last—unbidden and unexpected—uninvited and undesired. I want to know what justification there was for his coming to insult me in my solitude and in my sorrow—ostensibly informing me that I was to be brought up for sentence on Thursday, but in the same breath adroitly putting to me the question if I knew any of the men recently arrested near Dungarvan, and now in the prison of Kilmainham. Coming thus, with a detective dexterity, carrying in one hand a threat of sentence and punishment—in the other as a counterpoise and, I suppose an alternative, a temptation to treachery. Did he suppose that seven months of imprisonment had so broken my spirit, as well as my health, that I would be an easy prey to his blandishments? Did he dream that the prospect of liberty which newspaper rumour and semi-official information held out to me was too dear to be forfeited for a trilling forfeiture of honour? Did he believe that by an act of secret turpitude I would open my prison doors only to close them the faster on others who may or may not have been my friends—or did he imagine he had found in me a Massey to be moulded and manipulated into the service of the crown, or a Corridon to have cowardice and cupidity made the incentives to his baseness. I only wonder how the interview ended as it did; but I knew I was a prisoner, and self-respect preserved my patience and secured his safety. Great, my lords, as have been my humiliation in prison, hard and heart-breaking as have been the ordeals through which I have passed since the 1st of December last, there was no incident or event of that period fraught with more pain on the one hand, or more suggestiveness on the other, than this sly and secret attempt at improvising an informer. I can forget the pain in view of the suggestiveness; and unpleasant as is my position here to-day, I am almost glad of the opportunity which may end in putting some check to the spy system in prisons. How many men have been won from honour and honesty by the stealthy visit to the cell is more of course than I can say—how many have had their weakness acted upon, or their wickness fanned into flame by which means I have no opportunity of knowing—in how many frailty and folly may have blossomed into falsehood it is for those concerned to estimate. There is one thing, however, certain—operating in this way is more degrading to the tempter than to the tempted; and the government owes it to itself to put an end to a course of tactics pursued in its name, which in the results can only bring its humiliation—the public are bound in self-protection to protect the prisoner from the prowling visits of a too zealous official.