MR. PARKES AND THE O'FARRELL MYSTERY.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 13, Issue 1015, 19 January 1869, Page 3

MR. PARKES AND THE O'FARRELL MYSTERY.

I (From the " Sydney Herald," Dec. 17.) I We shall give to the O'Farrell papers the most; careful consideration. We shall view them in their various aspects ; if possiiblo without prejudice or passion. We I wish to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Our readers, we believe, largely belong to the class who will share in this feeling. Those who treat every question in its party relations will take the course proper to their situation. With such we have no sympathy nor concern. We first discharge the case from any pretence at imputing to Mr. Parkes complicity with fraud. We have no doubfc that when he made his statement at Eiama it representee! the conviction of his own mind, and the conclusion he drew from the facts before him. He believed what, indeed, many have supposed who had less reason for the opinion — that the crime of O'Farrell was an " execution" dictated .by a conspiracy — directed from a distance, and one of a series of crimes, designed to accomplish the overthrow of a great empire. Having at once cast off all responsibility for imputations whioh we think to be unfounded, we shall treaty the papers before us on I their own merits, supposing them to be genuine, which there is no reason to question, and that they contain the whole case so far as it can be presented to the public. We shall first give a narrative of the I case as it may be drawn from these docui ments, so far as is relevant to the conspiracy. The document found in the handwriting of O'Farrell clearly expresses some such purpose as assassination. We have, however, gone through it sentence by sentence, and we find no distinct suggestion of any conspiracy in the colony, or of any murder of an accomplice, or traces of any dii rect individual in co-operation with the | assassin in his crime. There is, indeed, implied some such purpose in the language employed, but its rambling and incoherent character foils all attempts to weave it into a regular statement of fact. " There was a Judas in the twelve — in our band there was a No. 3 as bad, but his horrible death will, I trust, be a warning to traitors," is of slender foundation for assuming — not that the death of Judas should be a warning to traitors, but the death of No. 3, to whom there is no clue, and whose fate is wrapped in utter darkness. We have found no allusion to this supposed murder in the " conversations," and the author of the diary is not now present to explain. " Another Judas, I am confident is nofc among the nine." What nine P The assumption is that they were nine persons in Sydney bound by a common obligation to secure the assassination of the Duke. But then, upon that hypothesis, how are wo to understand the words " If I had my will every English ship in these Australian ports should have been destroyed. Shall I write once more to the dear nine ? No, I have written once and that is once too often, for the P. 0. officials are not over scrupulous in opening letters. Be wary, be loyal to them and to yourself." From this we must infer that the nine, whoever they were, were persons whom it was necessary to address through the Post Office. He says " The whole nine have gone on this expedition." But what expedition is nofc in any way shown. The point, however, of some importance is that the nine appear not to have been in the colony at the date when these fragments were written. These leaves were among the personal effects of the prisoner found on tho 12th March, that is to say, on the day of tho attempted assassination ; and, according to the document itself, it was written a few days or a few weeks before the deed was to be dono —at most, therefore, only a fortnight before the arrival of the Duke in the colony. There are one or two expressions in the paper which seem to imply tbe existence of a plot: "Alas that I should be left behind for such a purpose ! Oh for a gallant cavalry charge : nofc such a thing as this ! Oh destiny, ifc musfc be done ! Fate, fate ! A life in irons, in torture, would I rather have had than that the lot should have fallen on me !" Ifc is not an unfair construction to assume that this language relates to a common purpose, and to a common action. Thafc, however, which weakens its effect is the incoherent nature of the whole paper — the mixing up of subjects altogether absurd and irrelevant with these compromising expressions, and, above all, the writing of such a paper at all, and its only partial obliteration. It records no sequence of events. Ifc is no memorandum by which the memory is to be refreshed, and it suggests to the mind either the ideas of the rhapsodies of a madman, or an artful contrivance to mystify parties into whose hands it might fall, in the event of the crime which O'Farrell certainly did contemplate, ending in his capture or death. This paper fell into the hands of the Government on the day of the attempt, and naturally suggested to the Colonial Secretary the conclusion at which ho arrived. It will be seen, by the examination taken down in shorthand, that the answers of O'Farrell wore, to a large extent, affirmations. It musfc, however, not be forgotten thafc on his arrest O'Farrell announced that he was a Feniau, declared himself a conspirator, and affirmed thafc he had acted under a warrant from England to assassinate the Prince. The questioning was of the nature of a cross-ex-amination upon this unreported information, and the inquiries were intended to obtain a repetition of these statements. The following is the result of repeated conversations with the Colonial Secretary and the principal warder. The object of the organisation was to establish a republic in the United Kingdom. There is a central council, with others, in every town and capital city. This central council directed that tho Prince should be killed. O'Farrell then states, " I argued it should have been done at home ; bufc some of the central council wished it to be done out here." A warrant was sent out on parchment for the execution. " The whole lot of us," he further states, " got it." These persons, he alleges, mot together to consider this order. o'Farroll stafcos thafc lie opposed it, but was overruled ; that lots were taken, nnd tho lot fell upon himself— a boy acting at the drawing. He further asserts that immense relief was felt by tho parties who escaped this task. Principal Warder : You could toll by thoii* countenance, I suppose, and the breatlilesa silence:' I'risonor: There was a terrible jealousy lest one should get more favour than another : the boy was delighted at seeing all the monoy on the tabic. He also asserts that ono of the parties was appointed to watch tho execution of this sentence by O'Farrell, and to take his life should he fail. The other conspirators, ho declares, havo left the colony. There is an agreement, without any great discrepancy, betweon the statements of O'Farrell. The story was, indeed, not very complex — no fact as given was capable of being tested. ITlo clue is given to the other parties. There is no trace of tho place of their meeting — of their time of disappearance — of the reason for so many being involved in tho danger of discovery. Nothing is given that throws the least light on the selection of New, South j Wales as the theatre of revenge. But

these papers require a fuller examination in the interest of justice aud truth.

[From the " Syduey Mail," Dec. 19.] If the murder is not out, the evidence is. On Tuesday night Mr. Macleay moved for a select committee to inquire into the statements made by Mr. Parkes. Thafc gentleman approved of the committee, and promised to givo all the information in his power. Meanwhile the premier had set his law officers to work for the purpose of extorting the documentary evidence from the possession of Mr. Parkes. Bufc Mr. Parkes refused to surrender it on the application of the Solicitor-General; and Sir William Manning, while giving it as his opinion thafc tho documents were official papers, saw no way of recovering them but by means of a civil suit. Meanwhile, Mr. Parkes has. saved the Government any further trouble in the matter by laying the papers on the table of the House, and moving that they^be printed. They will be found in another part of our paper, and will doubtless attract the curiosity of our | readers. It will be seen thafc the evidence is exclusively that of O'Farrell himself, and that the evidence as to the murder is derived exclusively from one solitary expression in his diary :—" There was a Judas in the twelve—in our band there was a No. 3 as bad, but his horrible death will I trust be a warning to traitors. Such another I am confident is not among the nine." The diary itself does not explain the meaning of the nine. This is furnished by the reported conversations of the prisoner after the event, where he gives the account of the swearing in of the ten, and of the casting lots. In fact he mentions eleven, one however being only partly in the secret. The tone of the diary is incoherent, rambling, and in the style of a highly sensational Erench novel. It inevitably suggests doubts as to O'Farrell's sanity. The conversations in gaol, although kindred in purport with' the diary, are in a calmer tone. There is nothing in the manner of them to excite suspicion as to his state of mind, — only the matter. Bufc then the statements in these conversations are totally and irreconcileably at variance with his last dying confession given to the world through the instrumentality of the priest ; and if the former statement was valueless as coming from a person of unsound mind, the latter statement w r as equally so. One thing, however, is quite clear, either that O'Farrell was of unsound mind or that he was untruthful. If he was sane, one of the two accounts he gave must have been deliberately false. But in all the conversation there is no reference whatever to the murdered Judas. O'Farrell represents himself as having been balloted. He never speaks of himself as in danger by traitors, and speaks of all his co-conspirators as having left the colony. His conversations, therefore, are as inconsistent with tho diary in this respect as they are with the last confession. On the whole, then, the evidence as to this murder rests exclusively on a phrase in a diary written in an excited strain, ancl a phrase unexplained by any subsequent communication. It is the uncorroborated testimony of a man who was demonstrably either a lunatic or a liar, and a man of highly excitable and imaginative temporaneut. This does not prove that it 'was false. The whole story may be true. There is nothing in it impossible, nothing in it intrinsically improbable, bufc ifc certainly is not proved on evidence that will carry conviction to every candid mind, and this is what Mr. Parkes has led us all to believe. As to the affidavits in support, they are simply nothing. The assertion of the Inspector-General, apart from evidence to justify it, is only an opinion, and the three men of bad repute have contributed nothing whatever towards the conviction or suspicion of anybody. No jury would take away the life, or liberty, or character of any man on the contradictory testimony of a single witness like O'Farrell. And we cannot therefore on such testimony condemn the unknown and supposed Fenian conspirators. The confusion about the 500 spocial constables has been cleared up. It appears that thore was an intention to employ them on the clay of the Prince's landing, ancl that Captain M'Lerie applied for ss. apiece as pay for them for the day. Bufc he afterwards found that the members of the Friendly Societies, on whom he had relied, objected to serve, and that there was no occasion for them, as the Orange Societies did not intend to make their projected display. Only a few Corporation laborers were sworn in. Mr. Parkes, therefore, confounded what was intended with what happened. At the same time the precaution was not proposed with a view to the protection of the Prince, but for the preservation of the public peace. The fear was that the Orangemen and the Roman Catholics woulcl excite and insult each other with their respective banners, and so come to blows. But no one dreamt of the need of any special protection to the Prince on that day. Mr. Parkes had ample opportunity before ho spoke to have found out the exact facts, ancl ample opportunity afterwards to have obtained a correction of his first assertion. He has, therefore, clearly been careless, and made it evident that he docs nofc always speak by the book. This will tempt people to place less reliance for the future on 'the exactitude of his statements.