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an hour only, and unseated Captain Nolan on the ground that his election was procured by undue influence and clerical intimidation. The judgment was conceived in a very one-sided spirit, and couched in very passionate and undignified language, and while it condemned with great force and just severity the high sacerdotal influence used in favour of Captain Nolan, and invalidated his election, on account both of the physical and the spiritual terrorism exercised on his behalf, it justified the counter-combination of the landlords for Captain Trench, and had nothing but panegyric for their conduct in the election. After reviewing the state of things in the county, and the circumstances preceding the recent election, the learned judge deals with the question of treating and the question of the undue influence of the Roman Catholic clergy. Briefly disposing of the first of those questions, he goes on to the second, some fortyfive pages of the judgment as printed being devoted to the analysis of the conduct of a number of individual priests in the matter of the election, and as witnesses in the court before him. His comments on this conduct are strong and severe, and he sums up his determination thus:-"I shall state to the House of Commons the result of all the evidence that I have now investigated as regards the organized system of intimidation which has pervaded this county in every quarter, in every direction, in every barony, in every town, in every place. I shall report to the House of Commons that the Archbishop of Tuam, the Bishop of Galway, the Bishop of Clonfert, all the clergymen whose cases I have gone through, and who have not appeared (with one exception, which I tore out of my paper lest I should make any mistake about it), and all the clergy who have appeared, with, I think, a few exceptions, which I will look most carefully into (I observe that the English judges have frequently reserved that power as to particular cases), have been guilt of an organized attempt to defeat the free franchise and the free votes of the electors of this county, and that Captain Nolan by himself, and Mr. Sebastian Nolan, his brother, as his agent, in company with all those episcopal and clerical persons whom I shall set out by name, have been guilty of these practices; and I will guard the franchises of the people of this county for seven years, at least, for the statute will not allow any one of those persons to be again engaged in conducting or managing an election, or canvassing for a candidate aspiring to be the representative of Galway."

In the course of this judgment Judge Keogh said that the Galway election presented "the most astonishing attempt at ecclesiastical tyranny which the whole history of priestly intolerance afforded." He also defended Oliver Cromwell from the abuse to which his name had been exposed " by the vile tongue of that audacious and mendacious priest, Father Conway." He said the gentry had been hunted through the fields by "the fellows who followed that obscene monster, Pat Barrett." He spoke of an agent of Father Loftus as a "called upon to vamp up the debauched evidence of that priest," and altogether used language apparently intended to convey

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the passion of a partisan rather than the reprobation of a judge. He expressed his intention of reporting that Archbishop M'Hale and two of his bishops had been guilty of using undue influence in the election, and spoke of Captain Nolan's great crowd of 2800 supporters as "mindless cowards, instruments in the hands of ecclesiastical despots."

The excitement aroused in Ireland by the delivery of this judgment was unbounded, and furnished a rare theme to the journalists. Never was a public man, not to say one of the judges of the land, an object of such unmeasured abuse as Mr. Justice Keogh. It poured upon him in torrents from all the Roman Catholic journals, whether professing Liberal, National, or Fenian politics. Their differences were for the time forgotten, and they all joined with hearty zeal in a chorus of execrations. All the old stores of vituperation which they had kept in reserve for special occasions were searched for epithets to express their rage and fury. The Freeman complained that neither prelate nor priest escaped the " torrent of vituperation which foamed in increasing volumes from the judgmentseat," and contrasted the "courtly phrases applied to the aristocratic prosecutor of the prelates and priests of Galway and the insolence of judicial insult indulged in against the prelates of the people." It even asserted, as a matter of fact, that "the organized attempt of the bishops and priests to put down freedom of election, which the most learned Judge asserts to have been proved before him, and on which he bases his judgment, existed only in the extravagant harangues of the lawyers and the excited fancy of the Judge." The cry of the Freeman was caught up in the provinces, and repeated with all the vehemence of the weekly press. Some of the journals engaged in this exercise every day, and devoted not one but several articles to the subject. The Nation was especially profuse in its invective. It said the "scandalous speech" of the learned Judge "has excited throughout the length and breadth of Ireland feelings of the most profound disgust and indignation;" that "the blood boils in the veins of honest men as they read his villanous diatribe against the clergy of Ireland, and some of the most illustrious and venerated members of their sacred order." There is "no good Irishman living," it said, "who does not feel, like a personal wound and insult, the outrage offered by that swaggering upstart, the pledge-breaker of Athlone, the whilom friend, companion, and political conspirator of John Sadleir, to the great and good Archbishop of Tuam." It described the whole proceeding as "the Galway plot," got up by the Galway landlords to have revenge of the bishops and priests, and to ruin Captain Nolan by piling up the costs of a deliberately protracted inquiry.

The Irishman described the rhetoric of the Judge as "plainly modelled after that of Jeffreys," and the Weekly News assailed it as "like the man himself, coarse, vulgar, insolent, impudent, and outrageously truculent." A subscription was started for Captain Nolan, the results of which were not quite adequate to the general

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[1872. enthusiasm. Justice Keogh was burned in effigy in many parts of the country. The Catholic Clergy, under the presidency of Cardinal Cullen, published a long protest in the form of an Address to the Catholics of the Archdiocese of Dublin. The meeting of clergy at which it was adopted was held with closed doors. Its tone may be judged from the keynote which is struck in the opening passage:"Dear Brethren,-A great scandal has come upon us. A judge -a professing Catholic, clothed in the ermine of calm reason and matured wisdom-is reported to have uttered from the judgmentseat words of fiercest insult-words which have roused up the sleeping monster of bigotry throughout the Empire, which have been echoed back to us from England in menaces of renewed persecution, which have brought disgrace on the cause of justice, and filled the friends of discord and disloyalty with unutterable joy."

It alludes to the wise policy of English modern statesmen, which had "done much to rear up a throne for justice in the affections of the people of Ireland," and states that the events of the past few days have well-nigh shattered that throne by "rousing into almost unprecedented indignation the feelings of a whole nation." For centuries the Bench was regarded by the people as the stronghold of their oppressors, until better times came round, and they began to look at it as the seat of impartial justice; but the words of passion which have lately come from it have done much to awaken the memories of wrongs which they were willing to forget. Only those who are conversant with their inner feelings can sound the depths of their indignation. They feel that "the laws of decency have been violated in order that their reverence for religion might be wounded," that "by the unjustifiable language of a public officer, paid by their industry to administer justice, their religion has been blasphemed throughout the Empire." The Address goes on to say that the clergy do not feel called on to canvass the merits of the decision at which the Judge arrived, and leave to others the task of criticizing it, if criticism be called for; but they enter their "solemn protest against the outrage on all propriety implied in the most unbecoming language, which the reports of the public journals put into his mouth." They "with unfeigned indignation repudiate the calumnious misrepresentation by which it is attempted to be established that the priesthood of Ireland was prepared to prostitute the most sacred institution of religion to the unworthy purposes of low political intrigue." In the strongest terms which the sanctity of the place in which they stood would allow, they resented the tone of the "harangue," which was full of "insults to the religion and honour of the people." There was nothing so sacred that it could hope to escape the "sacrilegious invasion of this wild effusion." The Holy Father was sneered at, the national priesthood maligned, the discipline of the Church distorted, the unhappy cleric who was dragged before the tribunal "mimicked to cause amusement for his enemies." The following passage is suggestive :

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"It is not our business to defend the political actions imputed to some of our clerical brethren, neither is it our right to sit in judgment on their conduct. Indiscreet zeal may have carried a few of them beyond the line of decorum. But surely it is a question. open for discussion which of the two is most unpardonable-the priest, in the heat of an angry contested election, in which he believed that the independence of his flock was assailed, yielding to an impulse, unbecoming, if you will; or the ermined Judge, in the delivery of a solemn judgment, surrendering himself to almost a paroxysm of vituperation? If the cassock is judged to be defiled, surely the ermine is not quite unstained. If the priest is to be relegated to obscurity and political silence for his indiscretion, is the Judge to go unquestioned? If altar denunciations are censurable-as most unquestionably they are is the temple of justice exactly the place to hear the foulest epithets hurled from the very seat of justice on the heads of men to whom the people look with respect, and in whom they repose their entire confidence?"

The end of the Address contains some balm for the wound received, and a sting for the giver:→→

"Although this Judgment has, for the moment, wrought mischief, good, great good, will come forth from it. It has aroused already the indignation of the whole kingdom against the insult offered to the national pride and to the religious convictions of the people; and when the great battle of Irish Education is to be fought, our Countrymen will then remember that one of their own flesh and blood and religion, through the withering curse of a hostile University, was prepared to act a part from which we firmly believe the honest instincts of a Protestant-born man would make him shrink. We must not conclude without putting on record our firm conviction that the Courts of Justice in Ireland will not retain the respect or command the confidence of our people if men capable of thus insulting all they hold venerable and holy are allowed to preside on their benches."

Meanwhile the learned Judge, with unruffled composure, lodged a ease submitting questions for the consideration of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, which, by a majority of three to one, upheld the judgment by which Captain Trench obtained the seat; and the Chief Justice, in stating the grounds of his dissent, took occasion to say he had no doubt as to the truth of the allegations of undue influence and intimidation by Captain Nolan and his agents. Consequently, he could not question the propriety of unseating him. Mr. Justice Keogh, who spoke last, gave judgment as follows:

"It now becomes my duty to express my opinion on this case. I gave no opinion on the matter in court at Galway; there the questions were most ably argued by the counsel on both sides, especially so by the junior counsel for the respondent, Mr. M'Dermott. I have not given any opinion upon those questions

I regret that there should be any division in the Court, but I cannot see this great case by the lights of authorities which my

Lord Chief Justice has brought to bear upon it, and I am happy to be fortified in the conclusions at which this Court has arrived by the authority of that great jurist and magistrate Lord Denman, Chief Justice of England, who, when he believed the liberties of his country were in danger, knew how to use words fit for the occasion, and calculated to rouse the attention of the people of England. I stated, in the case submitted to this Court, and for the purpose of the questions I reserved, that the electors of the county of Galway had been intimidated by threats and denunciations of temporal injury and spiritual punishment. I now, sitting on this bench, which I am warned that I occupy at the will of and in subordination to Powers other than my Sovereign, here declare that I have been obliged to consider this case and to deliver this judgment -namely, that Captain William Le Poer Trench is entitled to be declared the member for the county of Galway-under many terrible denunciations, public and private."

Meanwhile the excitement continued, though with many signs that seemed to stamp it as to a great extent factitious. Many of the leading Catholics openly avowed their assent to the principles of the judgment. The Kilkenny Town Council, however, adopted a memorial calling for the removal of Mr. Justice Keogh from the Bench.

Emboldened by the impunity which they enjoyed, the mob, represented by a few desperadoes, continued to make him the object of scandalous outrage. An effigy of him was burnt, with circumstances of aggravated insult, on Harold's Cross Green, situate within view of Richmond Bridewell, outside the city at the southern side. The figure was brought out on the back of a donkey, and a "death warrant" having been read, it was dismounted and set on fire amid the cheers of the populace. No attempt was made by the police to put a stop to the exhibition. At the same time a rude effigy of the Judge was burnt in the main street of Kingstown in presence of a large crowd. In Bray an attempt was made to burn an effigy, but the constabulary prevented it. A tar-barrel, supposed to represent the Judge, was lighted in Pill Lane, close to the Four Courts, Dublin, as a manifestation of popular feeling. The police arrested one of the persons most active in getting up the demonstration, and were assaulted by the mob with stones.

Shortly afterwards Judge Keogh went on circuit, and strong precautions were adopted against personal violence. The Grand Juries adopted strong addresses in his favour. "We desire," said the Jurors of the North Riding of Tipperary, "to express at this, the earliest opportunity afforded us, and in language that cannot be mistaken, the indignation we feel at the accumulated insults that have been heaped upon one of Her Majesty's Judges for the upright and fearless manner in which he has discharged a most arduous and difficult duty imposed upon him by Her Majesty's Government. From town to town in this country, throughout the length and breadth of the land, the judgment of Mr. Justice Keogh

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