The Sun.
London, England, 1867-11-09 00:00:00

IRELAND.

Duntsi, Nov. 8.
It is satisfactory to find that there is no real
ground for supposing that the resolution of the Go-
vernment with respect to the Fenian prosecutions
has been in the least shaken by the claim to Ameri-
can protection set up by some of the prisoners. One
of the circumstances which occasioned some misgiv-
ings in the minds of loyal people who are sensitively
vigilant was the postponement of Nagle's trial.
This, however, is now fully explained. The Daily
Express, noticing the misconception which existed,
says :--" We have authority to state that the case
of the prisoner Nagle has been postponed from the
Dublin Commission until the Sligo Assizes in con-
sequence of information received by the Crown Soli-
citor that Nagle is an alien by birth, and of the
advice of the law officers that, by reason of this fact,
there were technical objections to the inadmissibi-
lity on a trial in Dublin of some evidence essential
to the prosecution in Dublin, but quite immaterial
in reference to his trial in the county of Sligo. The
impediment to Nagle's trial was what lawyers call a
question of venue. There is no doubt that Nagle will
be tried at the spring assizes for the county of Sligo.
This assurance will remove the impression which
the mere fact of the postponement, without an ex-
planation, was calculated to produce. At the sit-
ting of the Court yesterday morning Mr. Heron,
Q.C., proceeded to address the jury on behalf of the
prisoner Costello. He said that in ordinary times he
would have no doubt about the prisoner's acquittal,
but these were times of panic. In proof of this asser-
tion he pointed to the gallery, in which there ap-
peared only six policemen, a few soldiers, and some
people " whom he would not insult by saying that
they were detectives." The learned gentleman did
not add that the populace outside evince little or no
desire to be spectators of the present trials. There
are no assemblages about the court-house such as
were to be seen on former occasions. He thought
this panic was not unlikely to be attended with
disastrous effects, because in striking down the
guilty the innocent were frequently iuvolved.
He bore testimony, however, to the " dignified
and considerate" manner in which the case for the
Crown had been opened by the Attorney-General
and asked the jury to discharge their duty calmly and
dispassionately. He was not called upon to deny
that a Fenian conspiracy existed, or that the vessel
in question was a Fenian vessel, but the case against
the prisoner rested entirely on the tainted evidence
of informers. So pressed were the Crown with the
flimsy character of the evidence that, for the first
time in the annals of justice, the conversation of a
wretched prisoner with his gaoler was deposed to.
The sole issue raised was whether Costello was on
board the Fenian vessel. He admitted that if the
prisoner was on board, under the circumstances
stated, he would be guilty. He contended that the
evidence of the informers had not been corroborated
and was wholly unreliable. With respect to the
letter found in Aylward's boot, it had not been
clearly proved to be in Costello's handwriting.
In the course of the learned gentleman's address
Judge Keogh suggested that a nolle prosequi should
be entered upon certain counts in the indict-
ment, and that the Crown should rest the case
upon the other counts. If the jury could not find
against the prisoner upon those counts, he would be
disposed to tell them to acquit him upon all. The
Solicitor-General adopted the suggestion. Mr.
Heron then resumed, and argued that there was no
reliable evidence to connect the prisoner with the
conspiracy for nearly a year before last March. He
asked the jury to disbelieve the evidence of
the informers, and lamented that the lives
and liberties of men should be in the hand of
such wretches. The Solicitor-General, in reply,
vindicated the administration of the law in this
country from the imputations cast upon it by the
prisoner's counsel, and denied that the doors of the
court-house were closed even against a Fenian. The
proper explanation of the absence of the public was
that they had got sick of hearing the details of a
conspiracy which had been repeated over and over
again. He commented upon the evidence, and pointed
out portions which could not be called tinted, and
which, he said, corroborated the informers. Mr.
Justice Keogh charged the jury. After paying a
compliment to the prisoner's counsel for the ability
which he had shown, his lordship referred to the
claim which had been set up at the outset of the
trial for a jury composed in part of aliens, and ex-
plained that the law of England repudiated the
right of any person leaving the country to throw
off his allegiance to the Crown of England. He cited
Kent's " Commentaries" to show that the principle
of the American law was the same, and that no
citizen of the United States could renounce his alle-
giance to that country without the consent of its
Government. With respect to the observations of
the prisoner's counsel upon the appearance of the
Court, his lordship observed that neither the Chief
Baron nor himself believed that there was any im-
proper interference with the administration of jus-
tice, nor would they permit it. Reviewing the evi-
dence, he said he thought the case for the Crown
would be very meagre indeed if it were not for two
facts—namely, the arrest of Costello so near the
place where the 30 men landed, and the finding of
the letter in Aylward's boot. If the jury enter-
tained a rational doubt they should acquit the
prisoner. In the language of Chief Justice
Burke, he said " Acquit the prisoner if you
can ; convict him only if you must." The jury re-
tired at a few minutes before 6 .o'clock. At half-
past seven they returned into court and asked
whether the fact of the prisoner's having come to
this country on the Jacknell expedition was corro-
borative proof of the informers that he was a Fenian
on the sth of March last. Judge Keogh replied in
the affirmative, and called attention to the fact that
his having borne the rank of captain in April was
corroborative of the fact that he was a Fenian before
that time. The jury again retired and-returned into
court at 5 minutes to 8 o'clock, when the foreman
announced that there was not the slightest proba-
bility of their agreeing. The disagreement among
them was as to certain matters of fact upon which
they would require further evidence. They were
directed to return to their room, where they re-
mained for three hours in deliberation, and at 11
o'clock they came back to court, and, repeating the
intimation that there was no chance of their being
able to agree, they were discharged, and the prisoner
was re-committed to gaol under an escort of police
and military.
The police exercise a very proper amount of
caution as to the admission of persons to the court-
house during the trials, and have excluded some
suspicious-looking characters who have been lurk-
ing about. No other persons experience any diffi-
culty in getting in, but the lower classes manifest
no interest in the proceedings. Other precautions
have been thought expedient for the security of
the Crown witnesses. An extra picket, consisting
of a non-commissioned officer and 24 men, has been
placed at Ship-street Barracks, and were under
arms last night in consequence of a rumour that an
attack would be attempted on the depot of in-
formers located in a court which is opposite the

barrack.

Constable Kenna, one of the constables who was
shot on Wellington-quay, died at 3 o'clock yester-
day in Mercer's Hospital. He did not appear to
suffer much at the last. Sergeant Kelly, his com-
panion, is still alive.
A man named William Supple, who had been em-
ployed as a keeper in the Zoological-gardens,
plicenix-park, NV,EI bitten ou Tuesday afternoon by
a python while he was engaged in repairing the
reptile house. Violent vomiting ensued, which was
supposed to be caused by fear, and he was removed
to Stevens's Hospital, where he died on the same
evening. The resident surgeon of the hospital was
examined at the inquest yesterday, and deposed to
his belief that the deceased died of congestion of
the lungs, from which he had been suffering for
some time, and the jury adopted his opinion.
The Daily Express advocates the election of Lord
Cairns as Chancellor of the University of Dublin,
in the place of the late Lord Rosso. A meeting of
the Senate has been convened to consider the sub-

ject.
John Heyburne, a Fenian prisoner, who was re-
cently liberated, after undergoing two years' im-
prisonment, has been re-arrested and committed to

gaol on the Lord-Lieutenant's warrant. It was
stated that documents of a treasonable character
were found in his possession, which will be used in
evidence at the Commission.
Mr. Walter Boyd has been appointed to the
office of assistant-Crown prosecutor at Dundalk,
vacant by the death of Shegog.

The Story of a Joint Stock Company.

The Money Market Review last Saturday gave
circulation to a strange story connected with the
Accidental and Marine Insurance Corporation, the
particulars of which are according to this authority
as follows :—The corporation was composed of
different companies, who amalgamated with the
Accidental Death Insurance Company. That com-
pany was founded in 1819 under a Special Act of
Parliament, and till 1862 carried on what appeared to
be a prosperous and increasing business. In that
year it commenced underwriting, but it found its
marine insurance business was retarded by its in-
appropriate name. It was therefore in 1865 re-
organised ; its name changed to its present desig-
nation, its constitution remodelled, and its capital
enlarged. The prospectus proposed to raise a
capital of £2,000,000 in 80,000 shares of £25 each ;
of which there was to be an immediate issue of
40,000. "At the head of the directors appeared
the name of a Mr. STEPHEN CAVE, of the firm of
PRESCOTT, GROTE, CAVE and CAVE, the bankers,
of Threadneedle-street; then follow the names of
Mr. ALFRED SMEE, F.R.S 7 Mr. EDWARD SOLLT,
F.R.S., and two others, as the chairman and direc-
tors of the Accidental Death Insurance Company.
Then follow Mr. WILLIAM TABOR and two others
as the. chairman and directors of the Gresham Life
Assurance Society. Mr. TABOR is also described as
a director of the Imperial Bank, and one of his
colleagues is also another F.R.S. The next is Mr.
FREDERICK DoULTON, M.P., and a member of the
Metropolitan Board of Works, and he is followed
by Mr. GEORGE S3IITII, of Tower-street, and Mr.
J. G. TOLLEMACHE SINCLAIR, of Thurso Castle,
' the most intimate and particular friend' of the
Right Honourable BENJAMIN DISRAELI, according
to the recent testimony of that right honourable
gentleman at Edinburgh." Ten thousand shares
were tobe allotted to the proprietors of the Accidental
Death Insurance Company, the new corporation
taking all the assets and assuming all the liabilities
of the old undertaking. The public only subscribed
for 4,752 shares, which, with the 10,300 allotted
to the shareholders of the Accidental Death
Company, might well have been considered in-
sufficient, though the directors judged otherwise,
and the company proceeded till, on the 16th
October, 1867, the failure became apparent, and
it passed into the Winding-up Court, where it
now remains. The creditors at Liverpool ap-
pointed a committee, placing Mr. ARTHUR FOR-
WOOD at its head, to investigate its affairs, and
from their report the extraordinary transactions
of the directors came to light. About the 16th
March, 1866, six members of the board of directors
transferred 2,712 shares standing in their respective
names, principally to a clerk of the company, leav-
ing each of those directors the holder of 250
shares, the lowest holding, we presume, allowed
by the articles of association to qualify a direc-
tor. On the 21st, five days after, the company
made a call of £5 per share. On the 3d October
following at a board meeting, when four out of
those six directors were present, 5,014 shares were
forfeited fur the benefit of the company, including
the shares above referred to as having been trans-
ferred by the six directors. Of the forfeited shares
3,213 stood in the name of the clerk. On the 16th
of the same month of October the company passed
into liquidation. The committee allege that, apart
from the shares so forfeited, 3,353 other shares had
been transferred from time to time within twelve
months prior to the winding up of the company, the
larger proportion being transfers from the directors
and officials of the company, and upon the greater
portion of which the calls still remain unpaid. The
committee estimate at over £lOO,OOO the liability
of which the holders thus attempted to rid them-
selves. This report comes from the cre litors,
who would naturally feel sore at being involved
in considerable loss, and may be susceptible of ex-
planation. But the transactions thus recorded are
simple facts, the truth of which cannot, we pre-
sume, be disputed. At this moment England is
suffering from a financial collapse without prece-
dent in her annals. So complete has been the loss
of credit that men begin to despair of ever reviving
that confidence which is the very essence of com-
mercial dealings. More especially have the pro-
ceedings of those entrusted with the management
of Joint-Stock concerns annihilated the belief
of man in the honesty of his fellow-man. Those
connected with a company seldom realise the full
results of a breach of the confidence placed in them
by the body for wiona they are employed. The suf-
fering that men see they can easily understand and
appreciate, but many have not the reflection nor
the imagination to realise in its force the unseen
misery they may spread over the land when they fail
in their duties to a corporation. The trusted ser-
vant who deliberately ruins his master may repent
when he sees the agony he has caused, in the wreck
of the family who reposed confidence in him ; and
many are restrained by conscience in a course of
dishonesty, the result of which their minds may
readily depict. But the case is different when acting
for a body. It is only the " Company" that suffers
says the shepherd in the wastes of New South Wales
when he helps himself to a sheep of the Australian
Agricultural Compaq, to him a mere English myth.
" It is only the Company," says an overseer of an
Assam tea plantation when he plunders in a way
his conscience would not allow were he dealing for
an individual. This feeling may be understood
in those whose honesty is less a fixed principle
than the result of an innate sense of that right
and wrong which forbids them to injure their em-
ployers whom they see and know. But when
the directors are chosen for the confidence inspired
by their social position and the antecedents which
have marked them as men of honour, it is not easy to
comprehend how they can reconcile themselves to
such acts as those described by the committee of
which Mr. FORWOOD is chairman. On their
belief in the just dealings of an undertaking
directed by such the shareholders assume the legal
responsibility attached to their holdings. In the same
belief others are induced to trust the concern, fully
assured that their contracts will be faithfully per-
formed. If this Report be true both hare been
betrayed. The directors, knowing the state of
the affairs transacted by themselves, first proceed
to get rid of the liability they had incurred in
hopes of gain, by transferring their shares to a
dummy, then make a call, when no other share-
holder can follow their example without first paying
the amount. On their fellow shareholders the
further liability is then cast of a responsibility for
the debts contracted by their directors to the
extent of the shares thus got rid off. The
law decrees that holders who have transferred
shares shall be liable for all debts to the date of the
transfer and for a year after the transfer, if the
holders at the time of liquidation are unable to
discharge the liabilities of the company, or that
debts remain after they had paid up to the sum
they had subscribed. This clause would have
made the directors of the Accidental and Marine
Insurance Corporation still liable for the amount
unpaid on the shares transferred to the clerk, if
the remaining proprietors had paid up their full
liability, or, failing from want of means, had left the
creditors unsatisfied. It was necessary therefore to
take a further step to guard themselves, and that
was taken on the 3d October, a fortnight before the
company passed into liquidation. By a resolution
of the board the shares which the members of the
board had transferred were forfeited in the words
of the resolution, " for the benefit of the company."
Thus they were extinguished, and the terms of the
law having been complied with which freed them
from liability, they threw the failed concern into
the Winding-up Court. It is said that six only out
of the eleven directors were implicated in these
transactions, and the Money Market Review calls
upon the remaining five to clear themselves from
the imputations which must otherwise attach to
their names. The worst effect of the story is the
feeling of insecurity it conveys. The late crisis is said
to have proved that none, whatever the standing and

character, can. safely be trusted with the unchecked
disposal of ir age sums of money. It is a painful
and humiliating conviction to be forced on the
minds of an. Everywhere we see men announcing
that their honour is dearer to them than life, ready
to jeop: trdise that life rather than any should dare
to hint that they were capable even of implying a
falsehood. We see religious principles so loudly
proclai med that it appears impossible for us to
associ: tte such professions with dishonesty. Yet
it is by the acts of such men— trusted so im-
plicity and wholly—that a ruin has been spread over
this kingdom more disastrous than that caused by
any -war in which the nation has been engaged
since the time when the forces of Parliament met
those of the monarch, and deluged the green fields
of England with blood. Let those who have been
instrumental in wrecking the hopes of so many
thousand families picture the results to which their
acts have led. All over the realm are families who
but two short years ago (lived in comfort, even in
affluence, who now know not where to turn for
bread. Those carefully and delicately nurtured
have been hurled from their positions to seek the
means of existence in walks of life for which their
training has wholly unfitted them, or to starve
miserably in garrets or cellars almost uncon-
scious to whom they owe the horrible reverse

that has overtaken them. Hundreds have died un-
able to endure the agony of the change. The in-
tellects of scores have become deranged under the
pressure. Many—far more than we can ever know
have sought relief in suicide ; and hosts may yet
beg for coppers from the hands of men who have
been thus wickedly instrumental in their ruin. And
many who have piled up these unholy gains will flaunt
their finery and wealth in the fashionable drives and
drawing-rooms of this metropolis. Some will spout
of patriotism and honour on the floor of England's
Parliament, and there are men who will carry on
their breasts the decorations conferred by foreign

potentates with smiles and thanks of approval, for
services in renewing Italian cities, building French
docks, draining Belgian towns, or constructing
Turkish railoads, achieved by extracting the very
life blood from their deluded countrymen. It is
indeed an ill wind that blows nobody good, and
doubtless some have benefited by the hideous
ruin they have spread abroad. Even the mur-
derers of MAXIMILIAN obtained a profit by rend-
ing his garments and selling clippings of his
beard. Not long ago a New 'Zealand chief sold
well-tatooed heads while carried erect on the
shoulders of those to whom they belonged, and
BURKE was ready to supply from among the living
any style of subject for a dissecting-room. The
mass of mankind may not deem such gains worth
the cost. But there are a few who think differently,
and until the advent of the millenium we may be
well assured BURNS'S couplet will remain true, that
" Man's inhumanity to man,
Makes countless thousands mourn."
—Anglo-American Times.

THE CONDEMNED MANCHESTER

FENIAN&

None can suspect good Catholics, who repu•

diate the principles of the Revolution everywhere,
in Ireland as well as in Italy, of any sympathy
with Fenianism ; but all must feel pity for the un-
happy men now under sentence of death, misled
by revolutionary principles to engage in lawless

designs which have resulted in the shedding (r
_ _

blood. Fenianism in Manchester is guilty of the

death of a man who was simply doing his duty in
obedience to the law of the land and to his own
conscience. It is the bounden duty of Govern-

ment to uphold the law and to punish crime. It
is the will of God plainly expressed in the constitu-
tion of society. Blood has been shed in the streets
of Manchester ; a crime has been committed con-
jointly by the unhappy Fenians, now under sen-

tence of death, in their lawless attempt to set two
political prisoners free from the hands of justice.
They are all of them legally guilty of murder, as
having been engaged in an illegal enterprise

from which death resulted. None can dispute
the fairness of their trial nor the strict justtice of
their sentence. We only hope that justice may
be tempered with mercy. To those who urge that
it is necessary to strike terror into the hearts of
the Fenians in our English cities, may we not
say that mercy is often a remedy more efficacious
than terror ?

How far also Allen and his accomplices are

morally guilty of murder is a question not so easily
answered. It was not proved on the trial that
Allen intentionally killed the poor man Brett who
was inside the prison van. Allen fired his pistol

into the lock for the purpose of forcing open the
door of the van and Brett was killed. His death
was not a deliberate killing, though it was an inci-
dental result of the criminal enterprise in which
Allen and his accomplices were wickedly engaged.
None of the others had any hand in his killing,
nor any intention to commit murder. There was
no evidence that any but Allen had pistols. It
is evident from this fact that the object and in-
tention of the conspiracy was to liberate the pri-
soners, not to commit murder. Death, however,
resulted from the lawless assault on the police
van, and the penalty for this attack and its
consequences is death by the hands of the law.
Fenianism in its secret conspiracy as well as in its
violent manifestations, in its principles as well as
in its acts, has been condemned and denounced
in the most explicit terms, by the bishops of Ire-
land and of England, as immoral, as contrary to
the laws of God and of man, and as being in con-
travention to the persistent teaching in every age
and country of the Catholic Church. Catholics,
therefore, as a body, are guiltless of having given
any encouragement whatsoever to Fenianism or
to the Revolution in any of its aspects either at
home or abroad.

Is the Government, is the nation, is English
public opinion guiltless of having set an example
to the Fenians of Ireland ? Are we not, as a
nation, open to the terrible reproach of having
preached sedition, nationalism, revolution, in al-
most every country on the continent? What with
no niggard hand we have planted in foreign coun-
tries has sprung up, to our surprise and scandal,
on our own soil. In Fenianism we are beginning
to recognise, to our horror, though as yet in a
mitigated form, something of the freemasonry of
Revolution which has more than once convulsed
France to its centre, which has Sled to sanguinary
civil wars, which has overthrown altars and
set aside dynasties in so many countries, and which
is now, not as a spent wave but in full vigour,
overrunning Italy from end to end. Against this
destructive and impious Jacobinism, there was once
no more determined and successful antagonist than
England. But those times are long past ; for
many a day, wherever our influence extended and
our tongue reached, we have preached and propa-
gated Revolution. In this one term are comprised,
we must remember to our shame, all the impious
movements and conspiracies against social order
and religion, from the sanguinary Jacobinism of
1792 to the Fenianism which has just shed blood
in Manchester.
England, to-day, has to answer to her own con-
science this serious question—How far has her
public conduct encouraged Fenianism in Ireland ?
Have not the speeches of her foremost statesmen,
more especially those of the Liberal school—have
not the newspapers of either party applauded, in
Italy and Spain, deeds of revolutionary violence ;
and have they not everywhere maintained, except
indeed at home, the theory of nationalities, and
the right of insurrection ? And did not all classes
of the people of England combine to do supreme
homage to Garibaldi, the sanguinary head-centre
of Italian revolution? And what have the Fenians
in Manchester done which*Garibaldi has not done ?
In his lawless invasion of the Roman States—in
his reign of terror at Rome in 1849—he shed the
blood, not of one, but of hundreds of men standing
up in defence of their Sovereign and their country ;
he is a public blasphemer ; he is a man who sets
himself above the laws ; he is a mutinous soldier
thrice imprisoned by his own Sovereign, and yet
no words of praise which the English language
affords but have been lavished on this public
misdemeanant. Who then shall say that the praise
and the public honour bestowed by England upon
a, man who has proclaimed the right of oppressed