THE RELEASED DYNAMITARDS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 2894, 9 February 1893, Page 2

THE RELEASED DYNAMITARDS.

, . -^- r Tub release by the Gladstone Government of ligan and Daly took most people in the Colonies by surprise, and numbers of Howe Conservative journals Tiave made it the text,for very ! sweeping condemnation, it being roundly asserted that the liberation of these offenders was the " blackmail " j paid as a quid pro quo for political ' support. Bat the action in question was defended by Mr Gladstone so successfully as to scatter to the winds such an allegation, and it now appear* that not only the present but the previous Administration also was convinced that the step just taken was one that ought to be taken, inasmuch as the Salisbury Government had it in contemplation shortly before they resigned office. According to an article in the "Fortnightly" by Mr J. E. Redmond, it appears that Egan and Daly were not dynainitards nottried as dynatnitards, being prosecuted under the Treason Felony Act—in a word were political criminals only. It is true (to quote a summary of Mr Redmond's article given by the " New Zealand Times") that "there was a dynamite count in the indictment, which affected Daly directly and Egan indirectly, but the evidence was unsupported by probabilities before the conviction, and that evidence has since been declared on the authority of a respectable head constable to have been manufactured by the police. Against Egan there was nothing in i the matter of dynamite except his association with Daly—Daly having lived in his house for some time —and I there was sufficient doubt in the mind ' of the Judge, Mr Justice Hawkins, to make him reduce the term of imprisonment to twenty years in his case from the life term imposed on Daly and McDonnell, tried and convicted with him. That is the case as stated in Mr Redmond's plea. The leading features of the dynamite part of it are very succinctly summed up by him. On the 11th of October, 1883, Daly went to live at Birmingham with Egan, under an assumed name. Up till the 9th of April the police, as two inspectors swore at the trial, never lost sight of him; and during that time never saw him do anything to arouse suspicion. On the 9th of April he went to Liverpool after receiving a telegram to meet a friend ; and for two days the police, who had never lost sight of him for seven months, were off his track. On the 11th they suddenly found him at ! Birkenhead buying a railway ticket ; j twenty of them found htm at once, surrounded him, searched him, found on him a parcel of dynamite, placed the dynamite in a bag, which one of them conveniently happened to have, and arrested him at once as a dyuamitard. It is a story on the face of it suspicious, and it was nsver in any way tested in court, Daly not being represented by counsel. Why was this man who for seven months had never done a suspicious thing searched at Birkenhead ? Because his pocket appeared to be bulging, said the Irish head constable who had ordered the search Why had the police lost sight of the man between the 9th and lith of April, tho'igh they never had any difficulty in keeping him in-sight for the whole seven months? How was it that when they did find him they were in such force at Birkenhead, all in good order of ambuscade, with plans cut and dried for his search and arrest ? These questions we«-e neither asked nor answered at the trial. But an answer of a remarkably startling character came three years later, as most newspaper readers will remember. In 1887, Mr Farndale, the head constable of Birmingham, solemnly stated that Daly was, as he had declared on his conviction, the victim of a police plot, and that the explosives found upon his person at Birkenhead had bsen purchased by the police, and handed to Daly by an informer kept in their pay, without any knowledges on his part as to tha contents of the package, just before the final' discovery scene' < so dramatically arranged at the railway station, Mr Farndale told the story, with many expressions of regret for his share in it, to Alderman Manton, of Birmingham. The Alderman wrote a long, scathing, moving letter on the subject to Mr Matthews, then Home Secretary ; Parliament got hold j of the subject and debated it fiercely j j the Home Secretary declared that he had made enquiry privately, and found that Mr Farndale had been mistaken, and, the Government majority being obstinate, the matter ended there.' But the head constable of Birmingham has never withdrawn one word of his story, and he is head constable of Birmingham yet." Now, if all this is true—and it appears .that both the Salisbury, and the Gladstone governments must have held it to be so, or at least that the conviction had been obtained on insufficient grounds, then it follows that in so far as the charge of carrying about explosives for improper purposes is concerned the prisoners vyere unjustly sentenced, an,d as they have already served ten years ! in prison their political offences may ; well be regarded as having been adequately punished. In view of the facts disclosed the conclusion is therefore inevitable that their release is an act of iustice rather than of mercy. [