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New Zealand Mail, Issue 658, 3 October 1884, Page 20

Our London correspondent, writing on the 13th of August, alludes to a strange story which comes from the diocese of Tuam. The Archbishop has received a confession from an informer that the evidence he gave in the Maamtrasna murder case was false, and that in consequence one man was unjustly hung, and. four others condemned to penal servitude. This witness’s name is Thomas Casey. The account he now gives may or may not be true, but his evidence at the trial did not stand alone, and it is clear that his recent confession ought not to be accepted until it has been thoroughly sifted by competent persons. The Archbishop of Tuam appears to have believed every word of it without hesitation, and to have gone the length of making pointed reference to it when addressing a congregation at the close of a confirmation service. A Home exchange says.: “ After denouncing all secret societies, and warning the people against informers, the Archbishop referred to the fate of Mules Joyce [the man Casey says wa3 unjustly condemned]. While admitting the right and duty *of . the officers of the law to protect society, he. denounced the system which permitted poor ignorant peasants to be guilty of perjury (particularly when several lives were concerned) as an alternative to having themselves executed. He concluded by hoping that the authorities, who, he said, could scarcely be exempted from a share of the guilt of sending Joyce to an untimely grave and four others to penal servitude, would now at once do all they could to make reparation by releasing these much injured men, and by liberally compensating both them and the helpless family of Myles Joyce.” On the assumption that what we have quoted represents fairly the tenor of the Archbishop’s remarks, it is evident that he was guilty of precipitancy in believing a man, who, according to his own showing, was a liar of the deepest dye. But still worse, the Archbishop was guilty of the grossest unfairness towards those who were employed on behalf of the Crown in the Maamtrasna prosecutions. In a matter of the very gravest importance he condemned the officials unheard, and said in effect, and without adducing a shadow of proof, that they had placed before Casey the alternative of perjury or death at the hands of the hangman. Truly a remarkable statement to be made by an archbishop standing on the steps of the altar.