A Typical Trial
Joseph O’Graball, ex-Indian police inspector, and previously major in the Boomerang Blazers, has for the past two years looked after the peace and well-being of a southern district in Ireland, which, to avoid offending the sensitive susceptibilities of its loyal squireocracy, I shall designate as Kilslippery, which is about as unlike its real cognomen as any word I am capable of coining. Joseph is unquestionably one of the most energetic of the many remarkably energetic divisional magistrates whose lively imaginations and diseased livers have found temporary fields for exercise in Ireland since the coercion act passed into law.
Major O’Graball is a terror not merely to all evil-doers in the locality decorated by his rubicund nose and enlivened by his oriental profanity, but he has managed to establish himself as an unmitigated nuisance to nine-tenths of the entire population. He possesses the disturbing faculty of becoming “reasonably suspicious” of anybody on the slightest provocation and at the shortest notice. He firmly believes that he can tell an Invincible or a Moonlighter half a mile away by the manner of his stride or the cut of his pants. He perambulates the country-side with a mounted escort daily, and scrutinizes the features of every individual he meets, irrespective of age, sex, garb, or occupation. He is prepared to detect treason in the shape of a nose, read murder and arson in the twinkle of an eye, and discover dynamite in the curl of a mustache.
Christy Connell was a small farmer whose evil fate made his path of life lie in the scope of the major’s inquisitorial vision. Christy was a simple, hard-working man, with such a numerous progeny that there is little fear of the name of Connell ever dying out in those parts unless there’s an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. His task of supporting this battalion of Connells was such a difficult one that he had no leisure to attend to politics or concern himself with the agitation. But the very fact of his constant attention to his farm only served to arouse O’Graball’s suspicion. Why, he argued, should a man keep sober, unless he was afraid to get drunk? and why should he stick so closely to his business, unless he wanted to conceal his treasonable sympathies? Then he wore an American goatee. Suspicious, decidedly suspicious. A goatee is military. Except the goatee, there was nothing military about Christy, for he was bow-legged and squinted. But then his bow-legs might have been induced by cavalry exercise, and his squint would be useful in enabling him to spot an objectionable landlord round the corner.
With O’Graball, to suspect was to act. So one dark April night a sergeant and half-a-dozen of the R. I. C. broke suddenly into Connell’s, and, after one of those clever searches for which that corps is famed, they succeeded in discovering a hatchet, a sledge-hammer, several rusty nails, a rude drawing which appeared utterly incomprehensible to the indefatigable sergeant, and a letter bearing the New York post-mark, which, to the official mind, seemed an invaluable piece of documentary evidence.
“Make haste, Connell,” said the sergeant. “You must come along with us.”
“Musha, phwat for?” queried the bewildered Connell.
“To answer a charge of having unlawfully and illegally planned, devised, and conspired, with seditious, felonious, and treasonable intent, to destroy, deprive, rob, upset, and otherwise confuse Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria of her title and right as sovereign lady of England, Scotland, Ireland, and also Kilslippery, so help me God!” and the sergeant wound up as if he were on oath in the witness-box.
“Arrah, thin,” said the overwhelmed Christy, “how could I rob or upset or confuse the Queen at all, at all. Sure, I niver cast my eyes on the ould heifer, good, bad, or indifferent.”
“Silence! Every word you say will be taken in evidence. That’s the law.”
“Wirra, thin, bad luck to that same law.”
“Silence, I say again. I cannot tolerate treasonable expressions before my men. Come along.”
Amid the sobbing of his wife and little ones, and utterly amazed and confounded, Christy was handcuffed and dragged to the police barracks, where he passed a miserable night. In the morning he was brought into the awful presence of O’Graball, who at once commenced in grave tones what he intended for a solemn interrogatory, but which proved in reality a rich burlesque:—
“Prisoner, what is your name?”
“Christy Connell, plaze your worship.”
“It does not please me. It is a notoriously disloyal name. There have been several Connells hanged at various times. Your very possession of such a name is in itself a suspicious circumstance. Sergeant, make a note of it. He confesses his name is Connell. So far our information is correct. Now, prisoner, tell me, had you a mother?”
“Arrah, to be sure I had. What do you think I am, at all, at all?”
“No prevarication, sir. You had also, I suppose, a father of the male gender?”
“He wore breeches, anyhow.”
“Prisoner, I must caution you against this unseeming levity. Sergeant, make another note. We have established the fact of his birth. He had the customary pair of parents, and he admits his name is Connell. The case is proved already. But we have further and overpowering testimony. Now, prisoner, does this axe belong to you?”
“Yes, your honor.”
“And this hammer?”
“Yes, your lordship.”
“And these nails?”
“Yes, your worship’s reverence.”
“Now, Christopher Connell, farmer, aged forty-two, were not that axe and this hammer and those nails designed to be used for nefarious and revolutionary purposes? You see we are thoroughly posted on your diabolical plots. Make an open breast of the matter, and I’ll try how far my influence will go with the Crown in procuring a mitigation of your penalty. Conceal anything, and you will find me adamant. What do you say?”
“Well, thin, your grace, I had the axe for nothin’ but cuttin’ firewood with; the hammer was my father’s; sure, he was a blacksmith, the heavens be his bed; and the nails—the nails—the troth, I don’t know what I wanted the nails for at all. You can make a present of them to the sarjent.”
“Miserable man! Your ill-timed wit will injure instead of serving you. The axe and hammer were to be used in breaking open the doors of police barracks, and the nails, no doubt, were to be employed in hand grenades.”
“Well, by the blessid St. Patrick!” ejaculated the amazed Connell, but he was speedily checked with a peremptory “Silence!” while the sapient magistrate proceeded:—
“We have even stronger proofs. Sergeant, did you find these documents?”
“Yes, your washup.”
“The first is a drawing, sketch, or plan. Where did you find that?”
“Under one of the children’s heads, your washup.”
“Evidently placed there for concealment. The second is a letter—a very important letter—from New York. Where did you discover that?”
“On the chimney-piece, your washup.”
“Ha! It was left there, no doubt, in the hope that you would not dream of looking for dangerous documents in such an exposed position. Now, prisoner, what is this drawing?”
“Well, plaze your majesty, its a pictur’ that Terry, the child, was thryin’ to mek av the goat, the craytur, and the poor gossoon was so proud av it he tuk it to bed with him.”
“A goat! Gracious heavens! Christopher Connell, you are trifling with the court. That sketch, sir, I take to be a military map of Ireland, with the rivers and boundaries left out to mislead us. But learn that the eye of the law can discern everything, and it can penetrate through that goat’s mask and see the grim secret behind!”
“Troth, your iminence, if that’s a map of Ireland, it’s proud the goat should be av his resemblance to the ould country. But sure it’s joking you are.”
“You’ll find it a serious joke, my man. But let us proceed. This letter is dated New York—the most treasonable locality on the face of the earth. It begins: ‘Dear brother—(of course you’re all brothers. Sergeant, make a note of that)—I write these few lines hoping they will find you in good health, as they lave me at present, thanks be to God. (There’s some deep, hidden, occult meaning in that sentence, but I cannot discern it just now.) I met the ould man—(Rossa, I suppose. Make a note, sergeant)—on landing. He would advise you not to kill the ould pig just yet. (Old pig? old—oh! horrible! I see it all. They have actually contemplated the assassination of her Majesty. Terrible!) You might, however, get rid of the litter of young sucklings (the miscreant, to apply such language to the royal family.) I hope the praties and the rye are going on well. (Pikes and rifles he means—they begin with the same letter.) How’s ould coffin-head these times?’ Sergeant, who can he mean by that?”
“Um—um—yourself, I think, your washup.”
“Sergeant, you forget yourself. I am not coffin-headed. Not even a rebel would dare apply such a term to me. Prisoner, in the face of the overwhelming evidence adduced, I do not think it necessary to proceed further; besides, there are other allusions which a thoughtless world might associate with me. Society must be preserved against such desperadoes. If I could trust the honesty of a jury of your countrymen, I would commit you for trial; but, alas! they would not see the evidence with the clear gaze which I bend upon it. Therefore I give you the highest sentence in my power—three months’ imprisonment—and, sergeant, just look over the act and see under what clause we shall record it.”
Christy Connell served the three months, but to this day neither himself, the magistrate, the jailer, nor the county member who brought his case before Parliament have been able to find out for what he was convicted. And that’s one specimen out of a hundred of the working of the coercion act.