Mr. McNally offered himself to the consideration of the Catholic body. He was anxious that his name should be coupled to the glorious cause for which, as Irishmen, they were contending—a cause that, from his earliest youth, although a Protestant, he felt as his own. He insisted that the conduct of the Lord Lieutenant was illegal—that he had not the power of arresting an individual by his own mere authority; that, not having the authority, he could not, of course, delegate it to a Magistrate.—[Here he animadverted upon the conduct of Mr. Hare, the police magistrate, who made the arrests.] The King himself, he said, possessed not the power which the Lord Lieutenant assumed in the arrest of Lords Fingal and Netterville. He instanced the case of Chief Justice Hussey and Edward IV.—The King asked the Judge whether his own warrant would not be deemed sufficient to arrest a subject?—The Chief Justice answered in the negative. And the reason was obvious. The King can do no wrong.—But the subject could have no legal redress against such an impeccable magistrate. He referred to the State trials for an exemplification and authority on this point; and he showed that a power which could not be exercised by Majesty itself, could not pass through the opaque body of his Lieutenant—a moonshine and intermitting ray.
O'Connell followed, and the clear head of that great lawyer saved the Catholic body from the deeper pitfall in which the bad law of a false adviser would have placed them. In the course of his speech he declared:—
With regard to what had been said by Mr. McNally he could not assent. The action of Mr. Hare was merely his own, as a magistrate, and the Lord Lieutenant had no concern in being responsible for it; and he [Mr. O'Connell] would not allow in that assembly anything to be laid to the charge of the Duke of Richmond for which His Grace was not in every respect accountable.
On October 19, 1811, Wellesley Pole writes from Dublin Castle to the Home Secretary regarding the proceedings of the Catholic Committee, and enclosing 'a report from,' as he says, 'one of our spies.' This document, signed 'J. W.' is still preserved with Pole's letter in the Record Office, London. About the same time Pole announces to the Home Office that 'Young Mr. Curran, son of the Master of the Rolls, has been very active in soliciting from the Catholics subscriptions for Mr. Finnerty, and letters from persons associated in London for promoting that object have been addressed to the Catholics here.'[503] These regular reportings of Curran's domestic circle involve a degree of treachery painful to contemplate.[504]
The reports of 'J. W.' did not tend to make Curran a favourite with 'the powers.' The patriot's son, describing a prior year, records:—
A party of seventeen soldiers, accompanied by their wives, or their profligate companions, and by many children, and evidently selected for the purpose of annoyance, were, without any previous notice, quartered on Mr. Curran's house.[505]
The late Mr. Byrne, an old Petty Sessions clerk, informed me that when walking at this time with his cousin Mr. Phelan, an attorney of Liberal politics, McNally, with a significant wink, accosted him, saying: 'The people are at last beginning to read; those who cannot yet read have books and papers read to them; after they read they will think, and they won't be long thinking until they act.'
On the trial of Sheridan and Kirwan, two Catholic delegates, he spoke warmly against the sheriff and others tampering with the jury, and was checked by the bench. He excused himself by saying 'that where the heart and the understanding went together it was difficult to keep bounds,' etc. Great excitement prevailed by the effort made to crush the freedom of speech, in the midst of which Percy Bysshe Shelley came to Dublin, and largely helped by voice and pen to make the crisis historic. Mr. Pole declared in Parliament, that 'if gentlemen would read the debates of the Catholic Committee they would find separation openly and distinctly recommended.' O'Connell, on February 29, 1812, replied: 'Why, my lord, this is a direct accusation of high treason, and he who would assert it of me, I would brand with the foulest epithets. I defy the slightest proof to be given of its veracity.' The Duke of Richmond, then Viceroy, writes at great length to the Home Secretary, speaks of his 'secret information,' and flutters the Cabinet.[506]
It was during the same year that Roger O'Connor, of Dangan Castle—father of Feargus, member for Nottingham—headed a band of rude retainers and robbed the Galway mail coach on Cappagh Hill. Though somewhat daft, he had method in his system, and when, five years later, he found himself a prisoner in Newgate, pending the long averted prosecution, he directed his attorney, named Maguire, to draw up a fictitious case, including a false line of defence, and lay it before McNally, taking for granted that he would betray to the Crown the person he supposed to be his client. The prosecution strangely broke down, and O'Connor, although notoriously guilty, was acquitted.[507] This trial took place in 1817: the death of Curran followed soon. A man named Waring having been indicted for perjury, McNally is found saying: 'Oppressed by the loss of my earliest friend, I have not strength for the task. But I wish to repel the stigma thrown out against my client, though I should die in the trammels.'[508]
The letters of McNally to Curran would be curious to read; 'but,' writes his daughter-in-law, 'they were destroyed by my late husband when he became so disgusted by the knowledge of the double face McNally must have worn for so many years as the friend of his father.'[509]