IRISH PRISON TREATMENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 219, 13 July 1877, Page 5

IRISH PRISON TREATMENT.

i-f— (From the Dublin Nation.)

We can scarcely believe that the present laws regulating the treat* ment of political offenders, tried and untried, in Irish prisons will be allowed to remain unaltered. They have been used to cover and sanction horrors almost unparalleled in the prisons of Europe. We have no doubt there are Englishmen who regard as almost surpassing belief the statement contained in the speech of Mr. W. H. O'Sullivan and the letter of Dr. Robert McDonnell. But these testimonies are beyond disproof. What can be more repugnant to every idea of justice than the savage and vindictive punishment of a man arrested on mere suspicion in a time of panic and against whom there existed not a shadow of evidence to go to a jury ? We have it on the unimpeachable testimony of Dr. McDonnell that the treatment of political suspects in Mountjoy prison was in several important particulars more severe than that of the convicted criminals. In his official reports as chief medical officer of the prison, he informed the Government that the dreadful rigour of treatment to which the men were subjected was undermining the mental and physical condition of many of them. The honest physician hoped that his warnings would induce the authorities to order some mitigation of those unjust and inhuman severities. But they produced no such effect. Their only result was to cause the Government to dismiss him from his office, and to appoint in his place a doctor who should reside altogether within the prison walls, and so escape the softening influences which contact with the outer world might be expected to produce. As for Mr. W. H. O'Sullivan, the manner of his treatment was such as would almost indicate a design to destroy his life. His splendid physique and naturally vigorous constitution enabled him to pass through the ordeal almost unscathed, but with many of his fellowsufferers the case has been far different. It is a fact well known in Dublin that of the suspects released from Mountjoy prison after a long endurance of its worst horrors, several went mad and many died untimely deaths. Few, if any, have been able to fully recover the health which was impaired and broken within the vaults of that bastile. And such things will occur again if the law be left unchanged, or if the power of making prison rule 3 and regulations be left in the hancU of the officials of Dublin Castle. In quiet times and with regard to exceptional cases some exceptional official may feel disposed to grant to political offenders some relaxation of the rules ; but the time when a kind heart and a cool head would be most wanted is just the time when there will be no trace of such things at the Castle. When timid loyalists becom« affrighted, when the Orange journals begin to clamor for blood, when spies and informers are pouring their sensational fictions into the ears of Cromwellian magistrates, when policemen ambitious for promotion, are inventing " outrages " in various parts of the country, when a storm of anti-Irish hate and passion sweeps through ever department of the English Government* in Ireland — then will be no time to look for reforms in Irish prison laws. Now, in the midst of a calmer period, is the time for striving to effect this work of justice, if it can be done at all.