Release of Fenian Prisoners.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2850, 3 April 1878, Page 3

Release of Fenian Prisoners.

(MOM TUB IT.Z. TABLET, MAJICtt 22ND.)

Wo have heard a ureat deal in our dny of the Piombi of Venice, ol -Neapolitan dungeons, and of thu treatment of prisoners on the Continent of Europe rally. Such accounts had, for the most part, originated in a desire to show tho failure in humanity of Catholic governors and officials, and to inculpate tho Church ; as if the Church wire accountable fur the aclions of such of her members as refuse to act upon her precepts. English prisons, ifc was always implied, were very differently regulated; there everything was directed by humanity, and if tho Gospel were not the ruling principle of the situation, it was at least next thing to it. Of late, howeTer, circumstances have come to light that lead us to suspect matters have not been quite so happily arranged beneath the gentle rule of England as we had been accustomed to believe. The records of no foreign prison can display anything more disgraceful than that the discipline maintained there was such as destroy the intellect of the prisoners, and no man liberated from a foreign prison can have given a belter proof of the rigour of his treatment than that of falling dead almost upon tlic threshold of Ihe door which restored him io freedom. \NevertheleßS, some months ago evidence was adduced which _.made., it clear, that the Fenian prisoners "had been so treated as to endanger " their sanity, and within, the present year, one of those who had, with a tardy and ungracious clemency, been released, died of a disease, caused .by the discipline ho had been subjected to, afew days after ho had been set.at liberty. It is not by any means astonishing that excitement aud indignatiou have been caused throughout Ireland by the death of Sergeant McCarthy. The tenacity with which the Government held to their purpose of continuing his imprisonment, and that of his companions in misfortune, vindictively abiding by their determination long after all necessity for such rigour had passed away* and steadfastly refusing to listen to any plea that might be urged in order to soften their resolution ; this tenacity, we say, was in itself an aggravation, and a mark of hostility to the Irish nation at large, that displayed an error of judgment, if no more. And now the death of McCarthy occurs* accompanied by most afflicting circumstances, to stamp the memory of this course of action deeply upon the minds of the people, and to persuade them that the release, apparently conceded to their desires, was but granted in mockery, when it was discovered that the men's strength to endure suffering had been exhausted, and thAt a few weeks' longer of prison life must have seen their dreary career ended in captivity by death. The sadness of the event is much increased by the circumstances under which it took place. Poor McCarthy, after his twelve long years of imprisonment, was on his way to join his wife in Cork—in all those years he had only been permitted to see her once, and that for a few minutes in the presence of a warder, as quoted by us in a former number. Bat before he had reached home, in passing through Dubtfn, the illness from which he had been suffering came to a fatal termination, and be died suddenly of heart disease, without having had the consolation of meeting bia family. The details that czme out upon the inquest held upon him are extremely painful, and it is impossible to read them with calmness; the man was certainly most barbarously used. It is not indeed too much to say that be was killed by inches, or by a kind of slow torture that it is shocking to contemplate. Charles McCarthy was arrested and committed to prison in 1866; he was then remarkably sound in health, and was in person an athlete. Six years of prison life, however, appear tojiave planted in him the seeds of the disease of which he died. In '72 we find him complaining to a fellow prisoner of "shortness of breath, pain in the side, and palpitation," but while thus com* plaining he was engaged in carrying heavy weights up a steep incline, sometimes the loads carried amounting to two hundredweight. Against this he remonstrated with an officer of the prison, saying he was very unwell—and his fellow prisoner testifies that his heart could at the time be felt beating with great violence—but the reply waa, that the officer could do nothing without an order from the Governor. At night the man who had been thus employed during the day was subjected to continual disturbance from his sleep. He was one of those who were to be specially watched, and in consequence the patrol was under the necessity of visiting bis cell every half-hour. Sometimes they would act considerately, and content themselves with giving the door a push, but sometimes they were careless, and made a noise so aa to awaken the prisoner. His food was inferior; lie was unable to eat the bread supplied to him, and once, on applying for tea, he was answered by a Dr. Baker, whose name deserves to be chronicled, that he might have a pint of water, which was " too good for him." When his wife visited him in '75 she found him " reduced to a skeleton/ complaining of spitting blood, of being able to rest only in a sitting posture, and of heart disease. Nevertheless, subsequently to this, the riftour with which he was treated appears to have been increased. On the escape of the prisoners from Western Australia two years ago, a panic seems to have seined upon the prison officials elsewhere, and the Governor of McCarthy's prison was visitej by an accession of malice, He evidently adopted then, as his motto, the line—

" Misericordia c giustiz?a gli sde^ ia."

Mercy and justice were banished alike from his dealings with his prisoners, and the unfortunate man, now in the last stage of heart disease, was thrust into a cell which, according to the testimony of a fellow prisoner, only differed from a dungeon in being over-ground. It was not ventilated; there was no opening from it into the air, and at night its dying inmate was obliged to lay his mattress on the ground by the door in order to breathe m.oro freely by means of such a draught as might enter through the interstice between the door and .lie flagstone beneath, and here also his rest, such as it was, was inte.rnptedby the patrol every half-hour. "From that moment," said Dr. O'Leary, " commenced a slow death —but sure." We do not understand why the audience in the court, and the people outside, cheered when «he verdict of the jury decided that the treatment McCarthy received in prison had hastened his death. To us it seems p,o matter for cheering to fmd that the spirit of the old penal days has npt yet wholly died away. Me-

Carthy's funeral bore all the aspect of a national demonstration. Two hundred thousand people are computed to hate Biled the streets of Dublin while ifc took place, all of them displaying tho marks ot enrneslness and sorrow. We (ear that England and Ireland are still far apart, and that these events haye powerfuUy contributed to widen and prolong the division. ____^