NO INQUIRY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 27, 24 October 1884, Page 29

NO INQUIRY.

(Dublin Freeman, August 30.)

We publish this week the Lord Lieatenant'3 reply to the letter of his Grace the Archbishop of Tuam, with respect to the confessions of Thomas Casey, the informer in the Maamtrasna murder cases.' His Excellency has arrived at the conclusion that the verdict and the sentence in the case of Myles Joyce were right and just. What effect this decision will have throughout the country it is needless for us to express. The disappointment, the disgust, will be as deep as was the indignation occasioned by the terrible Btory of the informers. His Excellency states that he has made the fullest inquiry which the circumstances of the case admit of. It is the first official announcement we have of an inquiry at all. We have no desire to cast any doubt upon the earnestness and sincerity with which Earl Spencer devoted himself to satisfying the public mind ; but who believes that a full, exhaustive, and searching iiiquiry was held ? Were both sides heard, and if so, who represented the relatives of 'Myles Joyce ? His Excellency, we are sure, will not regard it as throwing any suspicion upon the bona fides of what is termed the fullest inquiry, if we assert that five -sixths of the people of the country will fail to see the genuineness of an investigation held in Dublin Castle in camera, although the object was to ascertain the truth of a confession made by an informer in respect of what has been termed a judicial murder. It will be viewed in this light, .Casey's revelations accused the Government, through its officials, of foul and barbarous practices in. the trial of prisoners, and with regard to Myles Joyce in particular, of procuring, under revolting circumstances, his execution foe a murder of which he was alleged to be innocent. In such a plight the Executive should feel the overwhelming urgency of clearing itself. Joyce's life was sacrificed. If could not be recalled. How best to remove the charge from the Executive than to hold an " inquiry " in a chamber of the Castle, where the circumstances of the trial could be probed and the strongest case for the Crown established ? This will be the popular reading of his Excellency's most disappointing reply. It will be further held, that when Myles Joyce stood in the dock, and when his conviction was the object of the Counsel for the Crown, Thomas Casey's muttered, half-audible deposition w»s a precious and sacred thing. • His oath now, when it is turned against the Crown, is discarded. Casey's oath is as reliable at present as it was when he swore against Joyce. He was an infamous witness on the table, and many, no doubt, stiU consider him to be infamous. But his depositions were in the former instance eagerly accepted by the Crown, acted upon, and submitted to a jury. Why shouli not his equally reliable testimony to-day be freely and publicly investigated ? It is mere trifling with the serious issues involved in this gravest of charges to state, as in the reply of his Excellency, that " thftre was ample evidence atjthe trial of Myles Joyce, given by three unimpeached and independent witnesses, to convict all the prisoners without the evidence of Thomas Casey and Anthony Philbin." If this be so, why were Thomas Casey and Anthony Philbin, murderers upon their own showing, examined ? The Crown knew of the three unimpeached and independent witnesses', and they knew too the value of an informer's oath. According to his Excellency's letter, Casey and Philbin were not required at all, yet their evidence was deemed of sufficient importance to warrant the Crown in condoning their self-confessed guilt in consideration of the testimony they could bear against Joyce and the others. These are the reflections suggested by the Lord Lieutenants letter, and it will be for the reason here indicated that the public will refuse to believe that the inquiry alluded to was either real or searching or can command any confidence.