327

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went about denouncing the Romish priesthood and the confessional in the coarsest terms, and in a manner that seemed to be expressly designed to rouse the indignation of the lower classes of the Irish Roman Catholics. But whatever may have been the motives of the lecturer, his lectures certainly had the effect which they were calculated to produce. This effect was aggravated by a work entitled The Confessional Unmasked, and which contained the substance of the lectures. In this work Murphy endeavoured to show that the tendency of the system of confession as practised by the Roman Catholic priesthood was highly immoral; and in support of these views he published and distributed by thousands and tens of thousands certain extracts from works intended for the guidance of the Roman Catholic priests in dealing with persons who came to make their confessions to them. It was evident that if the tendency of these works was as mischievous as he represented them to be if whispered in the closets of the confessional, they must be much more widely pernicious if proclaimed from the house-tops; and that if these documents were calculated to suggest evil thoughts when used for the guidance of men of education, they must do far more mischief when they were thrown broadcast, as they were by Mr. Murphy, to women and young children. The pamphlet was ultimately seized under Lord Campbell's act for suppressing indecent publications, and many thousand copies of it were destroyed. But this did not prevent Mr. Murphy from labouring in his mischievous vocation; and, unfortunately for the public tranquillity, the lower orders of the Roman Catholics fell into the snare, intentionally or unintentionally, laid for them; and instead of resolutely treating the lecturer with contempt, and leaving him to harangue empty benches, they made him notorious by breaking out into violence and tumult, and thus drew large audiences to listen to his trashy lectures. In this way disturbances were caused at Wolverhampton, Wednesbury, and other places which he visited. At Birmingham the mayor, finding that disturbances had arisen wherever he appeared, refused to allow him the use of the townhall. Murphy and his friends, however, were not to be thus baffled. They erected a large wooden building, in which the Protestant lecturer,

1867.]

MURPHY.

327 as he termed himself, delivered his tirades. The low Irish, after their manner, violently resented the foul abuse poured forth by the lecturer on a religion and a priesthood to which they were warmly attached. The Orange partisans of Murphy rallied round him in still larger numbers than their opponents. A fight ensued, many persons on both sides were seriously injured, and for two or three days Birmingham was kept in a state which could only be paralleled by the Lord George Gordon disturbances in London during the last century. The military was called out, the riot-act read, and very serious mischief was done. The only gainer by these disturbances was Murphy himself, whom they made more notorious than ever, and who received from all quarters invitations to repeat his lectures, and encouragement to persevere in his mischievous career. He went on his way, reviving the old no-popery feeling which had so long lain dormant, and creating riots in almost every town where large numbers of Irishmen resided, till at last he became a victim, and, as his friends regarded him, a martyr, to the fury which he had succeeded in exciting.

The wonderful effect which his lectures produced was not wholly due to the fanaticism either of his supporters or his opponents. There was another and a more disgraceful motive at the bottom of his success. The attempts he made to stir the dying embers of Orange fanaticism would have been utterly ineffectual, but for the strong tradesunion feeling that existed against the Irish because they were ready to work for less than the English, and their presence in our manufacturing towns kept down the rate of wages. Another cause of the extraordinary sensation that Murphy succeeded in creating is to be found in the indignation which was awakened among all classes of Englishmen by disturbances of a very different character which had been raised by the Fenian organisation to which we have already referred, the members of which, incapable indeed of encountering a single regiment in the open field, but capable of inflicting very serious in jury on persons and properties, were still pursuing their course of mischievous agitation with a reckless disregard of the wrong they inflicted. Some of the members of this secret confederacy had formed the design of seizing

Chester Castle, and obtaining possession of the arms stored in it and they were only prevented from making this audacious attempt by finding that their designs had been communicated to the authorities of the town, and that measures had been taken to defend it. At Manchester two men named Kelly and Deasy, after a severe struggle were apprehended by the police, and found to be armed with loaded revolvers. They were recognised by the chief constable of Liverpool as being two officers of the so-called Fenian army. On the 18th of September they were brought before the stipendiary magistrate at Manchester, by whom the case was remanded for farther examination. They were then ironed and placed in the prison-van to be conducted to the borough gaol on the Hyde-road. Just as the van had passed under the bridge of the London and North-Western Railway a considerable number of men fired on the cortége and killed one of the horses. They then rushed out, and one of the assailants shot Sergeant Brett, a policeman, who was in the van and refused to deliver the keys of it to the attacking party. They then broke open the door and liberated the prisoners it contained. Kelly and Deasy at once made their way off, and found a place of concealment. A man named Allen, said to be the person who fired the shot by which Brett was killed, was pursued and apprehended, as were also about twenty other men who were supposed to have taken part in the rescue of the prisoners. This attack, made in the open day, in the neighbourhood of one of the largest cities of the empire, produced a profound sensation throughout the country. Rewards were offered for the recapture of Kelly and Deasy; the soldiers stationed at Manchester had orders to keep within their barracks and to be ready to act at a moment's notice; the city police were armed; the prisoners were escorted to the gaol by a large body of cavalry and an omnibus filled with infantry prepared to act at a moment's notice; the mayor of the city and several other magistrates followed in carriages, to be ready to give orders in case any attempt at rescue should be made; and a strong detachment of infantry guarded the gaol. Other persons who were suspected of having taken part in the rescue were subsequently arrested. A special commission was issued for the trial of the prisoners, and

1867.] EXECUTION OF BRETT'S MURDERERS.

329

Justices Blackburn and Mellor, the judges appointed under it, at once set out for Manchester. After some delay the trials of the persons accused of being more immediately concerned in the murder of Brett were proceeded with; and the jury, after deliberating for two hours, pronounced them guilty. Judge Mellor, in passing sentence, said that no one who had been present during the trial could doubt the justice of the verdict, and added that he should be deceiving the prisoners if he were to hold out to them any expectation that mercy would be shown to them. Three of them, Allen, Larkin, and Gould, were executed. Great efforts had been made by their fellow-conspirators to save them; the ministers had been threatened with assassination; and such was the alarm which the audacity of the Fenians had inspired, that up to the last moment there was a strong and prevalent expectation that some great blow would be struck and some great effort made to save Allen and his two companions from their impending fate. The inhabitants of Manchester felt as if they were sitting on the crater of a volcano from which an eruption might burst forth at any moment. On the other hand, the authorities had taken effectual precautions against any attempt that might be made to rescue or avenge the murderers. The sentence of the court was carried out in the most orderly and tranquil manner on Saturday the 23rd of November, in the presence of about 12,000 persons, who behaved with a propriety seldom displayed at public executions.

On Friday the 10th of December another reckless and desperate attempt, attended by the usual disregard of the injury or loss of life to innocent persons which it might cause, was made in London. Some Fenians were confined in the house of detention at Clerkenwell. Information had been conveyed to their keepers that an attempt would be made to release them by blowing-up a portion of the wall of the building in which they were confined. The police were therefore instructed to be on the alert, and the prisoners were prevented from taking exercise in the yard at the usual time. However, on the above-mentioned day a man was observed wheeling a large barrel towards the prison, and with the assistance of a companion placing it in contact with the wall. After an ineffectual attempt the two men lighted a' fusee projecting from the barrel, and