HELL UPON EARTH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 3, 17 October 1890, Page 11

HELL UPON EARTH.

(United Ireland, August 23.) To one whose duty is to appeal to the sympathy of the people, there are times when the want of power to make that appeal effectual is felt like physical agony. To suffer a very pasuon of pity aad fiad it evap >rate in cold, passionless platitudes on paper, is hard to bear. Whbt an in tense longing is then for the power of those great ones who spokj straight home to the hearts of the people, who can make others feel as passionately as they feel themselves, whose ardent words scorch injustice and cruelty like fire. It is with a sickening of the heart, with a painful feeling of utter incapacity, to put our thoughts in words, that we essay to bring home o our readers some idea of the horrible sufferings to which Irish political prisoners in Chatham aie subjected. From that task we are not to be deterred by that vile cry of which the main credit is due to the •• Forger,' 1 that sympathy with those most unfortunate men involves approval of dynamite as a method of political warfare. Over and over again, in common with the whole Irish Party, we have condemned the dynamite propaganda as the resort of fanatics whom wrathful enthusiasm has made deaf md blind to the claims of humanity. The condemnation has bad its effect. The dynamite propaganda has disappeared. But we will not be hurried into the opposite extreme of declaring that the dynamitard — the political dynamitard — is the lowest of created beings. This is the cant of the Ooereionists— a cant solely applied to Ireland. It needs not the example of Russia to convince us that culture, personal honour, sublime self-devotion are not incompatible with the mad fanaticism wbich impels to those desperate expedients. Dublin was last week delighted, as London was just before delighted, with a drama of Russian Nihilism, in which the interests aad sympathy of the audience centres in the character of a Russian prince, young, poetic, chivalrous, who is prime mover in a plot to destroy a whole street of St: Fetersbnrgh with dynamite, to effect the destruction of the Czar. Only the other day, in the pages of a first-class London periodical, the hysterical poet, Swinburne (a truculent Coercionist where Ireland is concerned), makes a frenzied appeal to the Russian Nihilists to assassinate the Emperor of Russia, as his father was assassinated, by a dynamite explosion. Neither rebuke or disapproval ot the Swinburne ode to dynamite could be extorted from the Treasury Benches. So far, we have spoken of the desperate expedients of the dynanitard where human life is directly aimed at or deliberately imperil ed, But the Irishmen who are being tortured to madness or death in Chatham Prison are open to no such cbarge. There was no attempt, for there could be none, to gaiosay the eloquent vindication of Mr. Sexton in the House of Commons :—": — " Itcould not be suggested," he said, " that the acts with which they were charged were devoid of a political complexion. These acts did not lead to loss of life or destruction of property, and he thought the presumption was not a very wild one that they were never intended to lead to that. He spoke with the utmost frankness when he said that these acts were intended to produce apprehension, which might lead to certain political results." Tne men were convicted and sentenced to terrible puaishment in a paroxysm of panic. The strong impression prevails that several of them are innocent. One at least of the prisoners (Egaa) is indisputably innocent. At the trial, and again on what he had good reason to believe to be his death-bed, John Daly, whose accomplice he was alleged to be, earnestly proclaimed his innocence. The conviction of innocent Irishmen by English juries under the influence either of prejudice or panic is unfortunately not by any means without precedent. An innocent Irishman was made the scapegoat of one of the murders of the notorious Peace. An Irishman who was miles away from the scene of the Manchester rescue at the time, against whom practically no evidence was offered, was included in the deathsentence passed on Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien. But granting, if we can grant, that the verdicts were justified by the evidence, the punishment to which these men are subjected is inhuman. It makes one's blood run cold to read the details of their treatment as disclosed by the sworn testimony submitted to the House of Commons in the recent debate, inaugurated by Mr. John O'Connor, MP. For them truly Chatham Frison is hell upon eartu. and the warders there are devils incarnate. We make earnest appeal to each reader whom our wonts reach, and whose sympathies we would fain move, to attempt to realise for himself, the life ot one of those wretched men. In common but forcible language, " Put yonrself in his place." Your lot need not be a happy one to enable you to realise keenly the difference between yours and his. Force yourself to think for a moment of a man like you, of human flesh and blood, a man with human thoughts and feelings and affections in his heart, living his life out in that narrow cell with no hope under heaven outside those grey walls. The long lingering day still follows the lonely night in accursed monotony ot suffering. Yesterday like to-day ; to- Jay like to-morrow, while life lasts. No chaßge. No hope. Surely, surely, this is hard enougu for man to bear. Think then of the infernal malignity that can add torture to a lot like this. To every impartial man the conclusion is forced home that those prisoners are subjected to daily petty torture at the hands of the brutal warders — torture inspired by their nationality and the character of the charge against them. It waa not attempted to be denied that they are assailed on all occasions by those warders with the unspeakable language of the brothel. With ordinary offenders, the burglar and the wife-beater, these brutal warders have a kind of natural sympathy. But for " bloody Irish rebels " no persecution can be too atrocious. The most fiendish devices are resorted to betray the unwary Irish prisoners t« further punishment. We need but instance one, A piece of newspaper is found by the warder on the steps where the prisoner, Wilson, and others are entering the chapel. Wilson is forthwith seized and searched. Nothing is found upon him, but, nevertheless, he i 9 sentenced "on sußpicioD," to the heaviest punishment the prison, rules allow — twenty-three days' solitary confinement on bread and water. How tame these words look written here. Will the leader try to realise for himself what they mean / Will he foncv himself alone in a stone cell, with no food but bread and water, while twenty-three long days, from minute to minute, and hour to houn

drag slowly on T To John Daly a scrap of newspaper is deliberately conveyed, that finding: it upon him may be an excuse for flogging. No wonder the wretched man's mind reels at the thought of such hellish malignity. These are but a couple of instances from many thousands of daily, petty, intolerable torture. Such inhumanity seems almost incredible. But it is idle <o deny that there are men, and amongst them the Chatham Prison warders must be included, to whom torturing their fellow-men is the keenest delight. By a precious refinement of cruelty when the Irish prisoners' turn for a visitor comes round some petty charge is invariably trumped up against them, and as a punishment this one ray of light from the outer world — this one bright break in the killing monotony of prison life is withheld. Their friends are denied all access to them. But tha agents of the " Forger " were accorded free admission, when the Forgery Commission was in progress, to madden these unhappy men with terrible temptations. A premium was put upon pei jury. la no vague words John Daly was promised his liberty and Government protection if he would only consent to give incriminatory evidence against Mr. Parnell and his colleagues. Fancy the 6treogth of the temptation to a man whose whole life was hemmed in by grey prison walls. Vivid'.y has Mr. William O'Brien depicted the insinuating form in which such temptation presents itself to sordid souls— " A few hours of hot shame in the witness-chair, some scathing denunciations from a counsel feed to abuse him, one scorching smart of public execration across his cbeek, and with a new name in a new land be would be lolling in wealth, which would enade him to think of it all simply as an abominable nightmare." Surely the most ferocious dynamitard-denouncer muat fesl a touch of involuntary admiration for the heroic indignation with which " the convict " Daly rejected the tempting bribe and declared he would " rot in prison " before be would consent to such shame. After his refusal John Daly was confessedly brought to death's door by belladonna poisoning, and though a private committee found that the poising was accidental, and, by a strange coincidence, nobody was to blame, their decision was but cold comfort to the wretched man for the torments he had to endure. Now we are gravely informed that Daly is feigniig sickness and Gallagher feigning madness. There is good reason for believing it is not feigning, but deadly earnest. But if the authorities will have their own Btory true, they must surely realise how dreadful the tortures from which the prisoners are driven to take refuge in such feigning. The Home Secretary, in language far more sympathetic than is used by Mr. Balfour, has promised, in response to the earnest appeal of Mr. John O'Connor, Mr. Sexton, and Mr. Healy, to consider the entire circumstances during the recess with a view to advise a mitigation of their punishment. The sufferings of those men give them a direct claim on the mercy of the Crown. The poisoning of Paly, assuming even that it was accidental, gives him especially an irresistible claim to a compensatory lightening of the load of punishment to which he was condemned. All fear of th 9 repetition of the off jnce has pissed away. Let us hope that honest British indigaatioa at the suff jnn^s to which Russian Nihilists are subjected will find effective scope nearer home in the jealous guirdianship of British honour from the infamy they denounce abroad. We have little reison to hope that our earnest appeal will reach the ears of those in power. But we may, at least, earnestly pray that, in the consideration of the subject to which Mr. Matthews is pledged to devote himself during the recess, the gentle pleadings of mercy may prevail. By the Irish race, at home and abroad, the release of those men would be received as a gracious exercise of the clemency of the Crown.