James Dickson of Kilmainham has been more than once mentioned in these pages. As soon as he had been discharged from gaol, in the absence of evidence to convict him in a court of law, he opened his house for the entertainment and solace of the families of the State prisoners. But his guests were not confined wholly to the United Brotherhood. My informant, the late Mathias O'Kelly, often met there William Todd Jones, of whose arrest in 1803, on suspicion of complicity in Emmet's treason, volumes were published; Lord Kingsland, famous for a career of marvellous vicissitude; Mrs. Neilson, wife of the rebel leader, then imprisoned at Fort George; and Plowden, the popular historian, who gathered at Dickson's table much valuable information. The house was quite a centre of liberal opinion in Dublin, and no man shared Dickson's confidence more fully than Magan. Mathias O'Kelly greatly respected Magan, and thirty years ago, when I first started my suspicion, he laboured hard to convince me that I was entirely wrong. Magan told O'Kelly that he had been a member of the Society of United Irishmen, but withdrew from it when he saw it drifting into dangerous courses. The reverse is the fact. He played his part so well that at the time of his betrayals he was promoted to a high post in the rebel executive.[347]
In 1832 a brochure was 'printed for the author by William Shaw, Dublin,' which must have quickened the sluggish pulse of Mr. and Miss Magan. It was 'An Impartial Enquiry respecting the Betrayal of Lord Edward Fitzgerald,' by Joseph Hamilton. No charge was preferred against the Magans in this pamphlet. But conscience makes cowards; the probing given to a sore spot, and Hamilton's mention of 'Mr. Magan and his sister,' with others who knew of Lord Edward's movements previous to the arrest, proved distasteful at 20 Usher's Island.
Hamilton's labour was undertaken with the avowed object of clearing Neilson from a suspicion which Moore, in his Memoir of Lord Edward, ventured to start. Whether Moore, in gathering facts for his book, had been referred to the Magans, I know not, but he certainly returned to England strongly prejudiced against the incorruptible Neilson, and straightway framed an indictment bristling with innuendos.[348] Hamilton prints, with other vindicatory papers, letters from Hamilton Rowan and Dr. McNevin, also a touching protest from the daughter of Neilson. Hamilton knew Lord Edward well.
Dearer to me was Edward's life than Neilson's memory [he writes]. Dearer to me is Ireland than are Neilson's children and his friends. If I thought he was the man who could betray his generous friend and noble chieftain, I would leave his memory and his bones to rot together. I took up his vindication, not as a partial advocate; and in thus conducting his defence I will not endeavour to suppress a single fact which might go to justify the accusing passage in Lord Edward's 'Life.'
Mr. Hamilton proved Neilson guiltless, but he fell into the error, which a man blindfolded at play commits, in very often making a grasp in the wrong quarter. He suspects Reynolds; Captain Armstrong, who betrayed Sheares; 'a Mr. Hatton, one of the rebel Executive, who unaccountably escaped.'[349] Even Sir Jonah Barrington; nay, the estimable philanthropist, Mathias O'Kelly, who lived with his father at Galway's Walk, near the scene of Lord Edward's tussle with Sirr, was also mentioned in a suggestive way. 'On the 17th May,' writes Hamilton, 'Armstrong met both the Sheares, and on that evening Major Sirr was seen looking towards the rear of Miss Magan's house from Mr. O'Kelly's stable door in Galway's Walk. I know five different places where Lord Edward was concealed,' he adds. The secret which, like the sword of Damocles, had long hung over the heads of Francis Magan and his sister, now seemed on the point of falling; but their names were not used in this pamphlet more freely than those of Miss Moore, Murphy, and a few other persons amongst whose haunts the Geraldine flitted during his last days in this world. Hamilton thus closes the first stage of his inquiry:—
My documents and anecdotes are every hour increasing. I have received communications from the wife and son of him with whom the Major had the struggle near the house of Miss Magan. I call on Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Dixon,[350] Mrs. Rowe, and Miss Magan; I call on Mr. Magan, Mr. Murphy, their families, and all those individuals who either visited or served them or their noble guest, to tell all Ireland all they are acquainted with respecting the last week Lord Edward had his freedom. I know what some of them can say; I know what more of them might say; and I pause for their full and faithful declarations.
A promised second part never appeared; but it were almost better for the feelings of Magan and his sister had the dreaded charge been boldly fulminated, than the agony of suspense to which they were doomed. I had not seen this scarce pamphlet when I first expressed my suspicions of Magan.
When the present century was in its teens, the aristocratic section of Irish Catholics sought to give the Crown a 'veto' in the appointment of their bishops, and started in opposition to O'Connell, who had been demanding unfettered emancipation. In the ranks of this troublesome schism, the records of which would fill a library, I find Francis Magan, Lords Fingall,[351] Trimleston, Kenmare, Gormanstown, and Southwell, Wolfe,[352] Shiel,[353] Bellew, Lynch, Donellan,[354] Wyse,[355] Ball[356] and others anxious to reach by a short cut the good things of the State.
The gentleman into whose hands Magan's papers passed tells me that he found a letter addressed to him in 1834 by Sir W. Gossett, Assistant Secretary of State at Dublin Castle, asking under what circumstances he claimed a pension from the Crown, and requesting information as to a small office he held. A copy of Magan's reply was appended, saying that the Viceroy of the day had promised him a county chairmanship—or, as it would now be called, a county court judgeship; but, owing to the disabilities then affecting Catholics, he was found to be not eligible for appointment, and the emoluments in question were given as compensation.[357] Gossett had succeeded Gregory in 1831, and having come in with the Whigs sought to administer a more liberal form of government. Cornwallis, Castlereagh, Cooke and Marsden had been long gone to their account, and dead men tell no tales. Whether Gossett viewed Magan's reply as quite satisfactory does not appear. In 1835 Earl Mulgrave deprived Watty Cox of his pension, but I cannot say whether the same high-handed course was extended to Magan.