The Great Shame: And the Triumph of the Irish in the English-Speaking World

by Thomas Keneally

  The United Irishman was a grand success, though it would run for only a few issues. ‘The man in Dublin,’ said the Tipperary lawyer Michael Doheny, ‘who did not read the first number, might indeed be pronounced a bigot or a fool.’ Mitchel’s ‘Letters to Ulster Protestants,’ published over four issues, created a sensation, arguing that great landlords benefited by dividing poor Catholic from poor Orangemen. ‘Lord Enniskillen, the Irish nobleman, for his part cautions you earnestly against Popery and Papists…. My Lord Enniskillen does not say a word to you about what is, after all, the main concern—the tenure of your farms.’ Protestants invoked in song and prayer their rights. But, ‘Outdoor relief is our main institution at present—our Magna Carta—our Bill of Rights.’

  In pursuit of the plan to provoke the government into action oppressive enough to ensure a revolutionary reaction from the Irish people, he addressed defiant editorials to ‘Butcher Clarendon,’ that is, to the Lord-Lieutenant in Dublin Castle. If Clarendon resorted to courts-martial, said Mitchel, flogging triangles, and torture, all the better—‘… that, at last, will be the end of “constitutional agitation.” ’ In dedicating each issue to Lord Clarendon not only as ‘Butcher’ but as ‘high commissioner of spies,’ Mitchel begged a reaction.

  Thomas Francis Meagher, the Young Tribune, had in late winter failed to win a Waterford by-election in which his own father felt he must stick by the Old Ireland candidate. For now he was consoled and teased by the fact that a spontaneous and nearly bloodless revolution occurred in France! The overthrow of King Louis Philippe’s government had been partly achieved by methods borrowed from the Liberator. Bourgeois reformers, the French equivalent of Mitchel or Meagher, had arranged a series of banquets to demand a responsible ministry. The government had banned the culminating banquet, just as Peel had banned the Liberator’s final monster meeting at Clontarf. Troops then fired on a peaceful demonstration outside the Foreign Ministry, and young intellectuals and working-class men and women began side by side to build barricades in the centre of the city. The French National Guard joined the revolutionaries. Seeing the democratic ferment outside the Tuileries, King Louis Philippe, in his mid-seventies, abdicated in favour of his grandson and left for London.

  Most of the members of the new republican Cabinet had quoted passages from the Nation in their own journals. Alphonse de Lamartine, in effect president, was the author of a book on the Gironde faction in the original French Revolution, a work devoured by Meagher and other Young Irelanders. Above all, this new French revolution, as well as involving little violence, promised justice, admitted members of the working class to the Cabinet, yet left the entire social order intact—an impulsive, stainless, responsible, ideal revolution. Under the influence of the French phenomenon, even Duffy was now writing like Mitchel. ‘Ireland will be free before the coming summer fades into winter. All over the world—from the frozen swamps of Canada, to the rich cornfields of Sicily—in Italy, in Denmark, in Prussia, and in glorious France, men are up for their rights.’

  Tom Meagher spoke of French and Irish events before a huge and excited crowd at Dublin’s North Wall on 21 March 1848. But it was O’Brien’s speech that alarmed the Castle. ‘The Confederation would invite all classes … to inscribe their names on a roll of persons willing to serve in a National Guard.’ A Council of Three Hundred would be elected to represent all sections ‘of the National party authentically….’ They should liaise with members of Repeal in England, ‘and, above all, with the people of France.’ Secretly, the Council had elected a committee of twenty-one as a sort of revolutionary directory. Meagher and Father Kenyon had been the two most popular men elected to this council, with thirty-one votes each, Smith O’Brien polling thirty, along with Duffy, Dillon and O’Gorman. Pat Smyth, one day to volunteer to descend into the nether world to rescue Smith O’Brien and Mitchel, was also elected.

  Lord Lieutenant Clarendon had now stationed 12,000 British troops in the city of Dublin in strategic positions: not only in such places as the Royal Barracks and at the Royal Military Hospital at Kilmainham, but also in Trinity College, at the post office and the Old Parliament. He called on ‘the striplings of Trinity College, the elderly antiquaries of the Royal Dublin Society, and the clerks in the Bank of Ireland to arm themselves.’ On the evening of the event at the North Wall, he ordered that Mitchel, O’Brien and Meagher be arrested. The constables who presented their warrant to Meagher were respectful, and as a first experience of arrest and imprisonment it was less a punishment than an intoxicant, with the police at College Green police station ready to supply anything the gentlemen needed. The next morning the prisoners’ wagons were followed by crowds of supporters. The three were charged at Green Street with seditious libel by court officers who could hardly hear themselves for the hubbub from the gallery. O’Brien and Meagher were charged for the speeches they had made at the North Wall, and Mitchel was indicted for the Butcher Clarendon letters he had written in the United Irishman. He was also charged with three articles written by others, including one by his assistant Devin Reilly suggesting that vitriol could be thrown from windows on government troops.

  O’Brien was outraged that the government was attempting to identify him with extremism by trying him along with Mitchel. He regretted the heedless and fiery metaphors of the hour. ‘It became conventional,’ O’Brien later complained, ‘to assert that the time for words had passed before launching into yet another four column diatribe.’ All three prisoners were released on bail subscribed by members of Young Ireland, and the freed Mitchel announced that ‘Sedition was a small matter, but he intended to commit high treason.’

  At the end of March, Confederate delegates, including the bailed Smith O’Brien and Meagher, O’Gorman and John Blake Dillon, sailed for France and travelled to Paris to visit Lamartine. The delegates entered the glittering rooms of the Tuileries in elation and hope. Lamartine, former diplomat and deputy, was in his late fifties, at the height of his powers, and elegance of language and person were in him so combined with populism that two million voters had given him their approval. But he was already steeled for the realpolitik of this situation. His government needed British recognition, and the British minister, Lord Normanby, had already told Lamartine that if he encouraged armed resistance in Ireland, the British would withdraw their embassy. After effusive praise of the Irish people, and polite inquiry about the progress of Famine, Lamartine depressed the delegation on the far side of his desk by saying that nothing could be done by France: Ireland was an internal British question. O’Brien, Meagher and others went home disconsolate, leaving the lawyer O’Gorman to study the operations of the French National Guard. Meagher returned to Dublin with a gift, however—a committee of Frenchwomen presented him with a tricolour in Ireland’s colours: orange, green and white. When Meagher brought it to a Confederation meeting, Mitchel—in favour with everyone again now—was reported to have said, ‘I hope to see that flag one day waving as our national banner.’ It would prove to be the future flag of the Irish Republic.

  In the House of Commons, O’Brien attempted to offer a personal explanation for having visited republican France, but was subjected to ten minutes’ abusive yelling. Parliament was feeling rather threatened at the time, having just been shaken by a great Chartist march in London, Englishmen carrying a monster petition for parliamentary reform and male suffrage. The procession had been surrounded and muted by the police and dragoons, who intimidated the marchers and caused them to melt away in the spring rain between Kennington Common and Westminster. Westminster was ready now to crush the other anti-authoritarian wing, the Young Irelanders.

  But the sedition trials of O’Brien and Meagher before a Dublin Commission of chosen judges in Green Street were both unsuccessful for the Crown. It was very hard to prove the case from their reported speeches. O’Brien was acquitted on a Tuesday in mid-May, Meagher the following day. Mitchel’s trial still pended. To ensure Mitchel did not avoid the fairly narrow trap of seditious libel, the Whig g
overnment in Westminster rushed through a scandalous piece of legislation, the Treason-Felony Act. It made prosecution easier; any mere statement that the Crown of Great Britain might one day lose sovereignty over Ireland was an offence punishable with a gaol term. Two days before he was to come to court, Mitchel was respectfully seized at home and charged afresh under the new legislation. He was detained in Dublin’s antiquated Newgate prison, near Green Street courthouse. At night in his cell he could probably hear the howling and grief of Irish women convicts slated for a destination similar to the one that lay ahead of him.

  On 26 May, he was led by tunnel to the notorious court, where a crowd of Confederates, including Meagher, Dillon and O’Gorman, gathered to await his entry into the dock. Jenny was present too in John Martin’s company as Mitchel entered, a gentleman-martyr, ‘lifting, as he advanced, the glazed dark cap he wore during his imprisonment, as gracefully as if he entered a drawing-room.’ The Sheriff, he complained, ‘skilled in the arts which corrupt justice at its source, and enraged by two defeats, had taken the panel in hand and packed it.’ Mitchel was defended by the octogenarian Robert Holmes, who was willing to risk being indicted himself. He mounted a powerful defence but was defeated by the breadth of the Treason-Felony legislation and the hostility of the jury. The railways articles were Mitchel’s, and were all that was needed to convict.

  Mitchel, asked the next day for his comments before sentencing, got up and swept the gallery with his Old Testament eyes, crying out in a voice in which the effects of Newgate’s damp were audible: ‘The Roman who saw his hand burning to ashes before the tyrant, promised that three hundred should follow out his enterprise. Can I not promise for one, for two, for three, aye for hundreds?’

  To the young medical assistant in the gallery, Kevin O’Doherty, how close the revolution must have seemed as Mitchel cried for supporters, and received in answer a torrent of shouts of approval! How close when the exquisite young Galway poet, Eva, should respond from Killeen:

  For one—for two—for three—

  Aye! Hundreds, thousands, see!

  For vengeance and for thee

  To the last!

  The sentence pronounced on Mitchel was fourteen years’ transportation.

  Jenny, Mitchel’s mother Mary, and Martin rushed above ground to Newgate as John himself returned to his cell through the tunnel. They suspected correctly that the authorities wanted to get him quickly out of Dublin. It was rumoured that the ship assigned to move him was already in Dublin Bay. In his rooms at Newgate he said goodbye to his womenfolk, and then to his baffled children. John the eldest son was barely ten, and the youngest, Willie, was an infant. Little Henrietta knew just enough to weep. Mitchel consigned them all to the faithful care of John Martin.

  Some Dublin Confederate clubs had proposed that on the way to his ship in harbour, he should be rescued. Indeed, at the Castle’s urging, the governor of Newgate brought Mitchel a document to sign, denouncing all attempts at rescue, but Mitchel refused to put pen to it. Meagher, though uneasy, favoured a rescue effort. Mitchel could be transported only in a sea of blood, he is reported to have told others. Duffy urged a calmer look at the state of readiness of the Dublin clubs and the size of the Dublin garrison. And it was Duffy whom Mitchel blamed: ‘if the city of Dublin permitted any Irishman to be put on board a convict-ship under such circumstances, the British government could have little to fear from their resentment or their patriotism afterwards.’

  Mitchel’s Jail Journal opens with an intractable sentence: ‘May 27th, 1848.—On this day, about four o’clock in the afternoon, I, John Mitchel, was kidnapped, and carried off from Dublin, in chains, as a convicted Felon.’ In departing Newgate for the ship, he was aware of the tension of his guards. They lacked time to put both fetters around his ankles. ‘Here, take the other in your hand, and come along.’ Outside, in the street, he stood on the steps a moment, pleased to be causing the government all this fuss: ‘the black police omnibus—a strong force of the city constabulary occupying the openings of the streets hard by. I walked down the steps; and amidst all that multitude the clanking of my chain was the loudest sound.’ The crowd who had gathered around Newgate rushed off to the North Wall, to watch the arrival of the police vehicle there. Escorted by dragoons with drawn sabres, the covered police carriage careered around the North Circular Road, a detective sitting on either side of Mitchel, one displaying a capped pistol ready for firing. On arrival at Dublin Bay, he was marched to the quay wall between two ranks of infantrymen. The government steamer Shearwater awaited him, and he descended into the ship’s boat and sat in the stern.

  As soon as Mitchel was on board the Shearwater, the naval officer beside him conducted him to the cabin, ordered that his chains be taken off and provided him with a sherry and water. The officer, Captain Hall, was the captain of the Dragon steam-frigate, a man-of-war which would guard the Shearwater on its way out of Dublin. He was amused to tell Mitchel that by an irony he was due to have dinner with Lord Lieutenant Clarendon that very evening. Until dinner at the Castle was over and both ships could weigh anchor, Mitchel sat in the cabin of Shearwater chatting with detectives.

  The day after, Shearwater moored in the Cobh of Cork, within 500 yards of Spike Island with its white-limed barracks pressing down to the shore. Landed, Mitchel was greeted by a prison official and taken past several sentries and through gratings to a large vaulted room comfortably furnished. Nonetheless, at locking-up time, ‘I flung myself on the bed, and broke into a raging passion of tears … tears of wrath, pity, regret, remorse.’ Waking, he was presented with brown prison clothes.

  Edward Walsh, song writer and balladist, had a job teaching child convicts on Spike Island, and managed to meet Mitchel on his second day there while he was sitting in the sun in the yard. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘… You are now the man in all Ireland most to be envied.’ The Inspector of Prisons came up to inform him that he would be leaving almost at once for Bermuda on a man-of-war, ominously named Scourge, arrived that day in Cobh. In the meantime, the inspector said, he had orders from the Castle directing him to treat Mitchel differently from ‘a common convict,’ to let him wear his own clothing and not to put him in irons. Though relieved to be excused the brown canvas of Spike, Mitchel did not possess adequate clothes for the journey—only an old brown summer coat, old shoes and the glazed cap he had worn at his trial. One prison official bought him a few changes of linen from a store in Cobh.

  On his last evening he was asked to sign some autographs which the surgeon of Spike Island had promised a certain young woman in the town. It was an old pattern: Ireland emasculating its heroes, then passing autograph books to them through the bars. Next morning, 1 June, a mere four days after sentencing, he and his small bundle of clothes were collected by the first lieutenant of the Scourge and taken out to the ship. Once up its side and on board, he was introduced to Captain Wingrove, a cheerful soul, Mitchel thought. The prisoner, Scourge’s only convict, looked at that long, unbroken but crowded deck—there were 180 men and boys aboard—and at the large field-piece in the stern, four small cannon or carronades. Scourge’s sole present purpose was to part Mitchel from Ireland.

  Esther and her sons were still eating soup the spring of Mitchel’s arrest, advancing in line to a counter to use the same bowl and spoon as the person before. Even in those lines of what Mitchel called ‘pauper appetite,’ it was known as an evil omen that Mitchel had been transported like an ordinary Ribbonman. It was almost as if his expulsion made it less likely that ordinary people could in the autumn claw their way back from the present crisis to that plateau of accustomed, manageable want they had occupied in the years before the Famine. It also released in younger men sundry vows to seize the coming harvest by force. So there was confusion and fever in heads and homes.

  In Dublin, Mitchel’s United Irishman was succeeded by two briefly flaring, briskly suppressed papers. One was the Irish Felon, named in honour of Mitchel and edited by his friend and the mentor of his fatherles
s children, John Martin. It would manage to produce four copies. The other was the Irish Tribune, written and edited by two eminently civilised young men—Kevin O’Doherty, aged twenty-four, the surgical assistant from the fever hospitals, and the poet Richard D’Alton Williams.

  An auction of Mitchel’s goods had been reported in the first issue of the short-lived Irish Felon. A sword and two pikes belonging to the hero sold for a guinea each. Martin wrote, ‘The transportation of a man, as a felon, for uttering sentiments held and professed by at least five-sixths of his countrymen, seems to me so violent and so insulting a national wrong, that submission to it must be taken to signify incurable slavishness.’ And in case the main game were forgotten, the Felon reproduced information from around the country, such as an account from the Castlebar Telegraph in Mayo, whose correspondent went to the workhouse there.

  We were induced to take this step from having previously seen hundreds of persons marching in (or crawling) from the direction of Balla, with asses carrying in baskets starved children and crippled old women and men. Some of the quadrupeds bore burdens of four to six children, crammed into turf baskets, with long hair growing on their shrivelled features from actual want of food! … We afterwards, at the dead hour of night, saw hundreds of these victims of landlordism and Gregoryism [the results of Gregory’s quarter-acre clause] sinking on our flagways! We saw the inhabitants with lighted candles in their hands administering stimulants to the wretches, as they lay on the streets, emitting green froth.’