The Sun.
London, England, 1868-04-30 00:00:00

ME _VEIN/lAN TRIALS AT THE CENTRAL
CRIMINAL COURT.-THIS DAY.

The proceedings in connection with the trial of Burke,
Casey, and Shaw were resumed this morning at the Cen-
tral Criminal Court.

When Mr. Baron Bramwell and Mr. Justice Keating
tcok their seats upon the bench, the former, addressing
the Attorney-General, said, as the-result of a consultation
with his learned brother, he wished to ask whether the lam
officers of the Crown thought there was sufficient evidence
against the prisoner Casey to press for a conviction. To this
it was answered, that it had been proved that Casey when at
Birmingham was found in close connection with Burke,
then engaged in procuring arms, and had also lived with.
him in London, from which circumstances it must be as
sumed that he was fully acquainted with his designs and
the way in which they were carried out.
After further discussion, in the course of which both the
learned judges expressed a strong opinion as to the faint
ness of the evidence, the Solicitor-General intimated his
determination to withdraw the ca,e against Casey, and the
jury, under the direction of the bench, pronounced a ver-
dict of " not guilty," the foreman remarking that the
course adopted by the law officers of the Crown was one
that he and his colleagues fully approved.
Mr. Lewis, who was counsel for Casey, intimated that
he had witnesses in attendance who were prepared to prove
that his client was engaged at Messrs. Pickford's at the
very time that he was stated to have been associated with
Burke.

Mr. Baron Bramwell remarked that though it might be
hard upon Mr. Lewis's client to be prevented from shew-
ing that he was innocent, all that could be now done was
to act upon the verdict of the jury that he was not guilty.
Casey was at once ordered to be discharged from custody,
there being no other indictments against him, and he left
the dock immediately, without saying a word to, or taking
any notice of, either Burke or Shaw.

Mr. Ernest Jones, wl_o apt e ired for Burke, then pro-
ceeded to address the jury, admitting that Burke had
been engaged in the purchase of arms, but contending
that there was nothing to shew that they had found their
way into the hands of the insurgents, or had been pro-
cured for the purpose of the Fenian conspiracy. With
the exception of that of the informers, there was no evi-
dence proving that the whole transaction was not one of
perfect innocence, nor was there, further, any testimonybut
theirs connecting the prisoner Burke with those who were
known to be actively engaged as Fenians. Having com-
mented upon the cautious manner in which, according to
the ruling of various learned judges, the statements of
approvers must be received, the learned counsel minutely
examined the evidence of Mullany, Massey, Devany, and
Corydon, men whose characters would be rightly esti-
mated by the jury. That evidence was full of contradic-
tions, came from a source so tainted, and was so
unsubAantiated, that he argued the jury could not found
a conviction upon it.
Mr. Pater then addressed the jury for the prisoner
Shaw, pointing out that the only particle of proof that he
had ever been in Liverpool or passed under the name of
Mullady was farnis'aed in the testimony of Corydon. Of
his being in Birmingham the only evidence was that of
the witnesses Kynock, Amelia Tye, and Fisher--a man
of indifferent character—and was of the most insufficient
kind. The fact that Shaw had been arrested
in the neighbourhood of Dublin at the time of
the Irish rising, with a pistol in his possession, could not
he construed into a greater offence than that of carrying
arms in a proscribed district, and the jury would probably
- say that he had been sufficiently punished by being kept
in prison for fifteen months. He fearlessly asked for a
favourable verdict.
Continued in our Late Edition.

THE RUSH CHURCH.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

Sin,—l venture to ask space for a few remarks
upon a subject which affects not myself only, but
all those clergymen and laymen who have personal
interests to serve by maintaining the Irish Estab-
lishment, and who, notwithstanding, are not ashamed
to say that its removal might ba advantageous to
religion and the commonwealth. Very recently
certain persons of high official and social rank have
thought proper to charge me, in a manner designedly
offensive, with " assailing the Church of which I
am, unhappily," so it is said, " a member ;" with
" retaining emoluments which I have denounced as
a usurpation and an injustice ;" and with making
" persistent and bitter attacks upon the Establish-
ment of which I am a member and a minister."
The Dublin newspaper which gives currency and
approval to these injurious personalities denies me
the opportunity of making any defence in its
columns. Those charges are, for the most part,
untrue. No assault was made by me upon the
Church. The injustice of the present monopoly of
Church revenues in Ireland by the Anglican mino-
rity was never denounced by me as a usurpation for
which the present recipients are blameworthy. Nor
was any bitterness, save the unavoidable bitterness
of truth, tue3 by me in refuting the historical and
statistical errors and misstatements by which it was
sought to defend the Establishment.
It is easy, of course, to detect the impudent
fallacy palmed upon the public by those who, when
their misstatements are exposed, complain that the
Church, forsooth, is assailed. For instance, when
a noble lord is charged with announcing that the
Irish Church " became the United Church of Eng-
land and Ireland" in the reign of Elizabeth ; or
when an ecclesiastic gravely relates that a parish
situate to the east of Lough Derg adjoins another
parish which is on the verge of the Atlantic, it is
easy to understand, although not to approve, their
motive in throwing odium on the person who ex-
poses their errors by unfairly representing him as
au enemy of the Church. It is evident, however,
that clerical and lay members of the United Church
are bound to maintain truth, and especially to
oppose the spread of such falsehoods as may be em-
ployed for the temporal advantage of the Church
itself. To argue that beneficed clergymen and lay-
men deriving pecuniary advantages from the Irish
Establishment ought to resign their emoluments
and offices before venturing to express opinions un-
favourable to it is analogous to saying that naval
officers who object to the flogging of sailors should
leave the navy, or that the directors of any com-
pany who may venture to denounce profitable frauds
ought first to resign their appointments. If such
arguments were to prevail no honest man would
remain in office, and reforms would be abandoned
to the discretion of the dishonest and corrupt.
Clergymen, moreover, who cease to act as minis-
ters of the Establishment must at the same time
cease to act, at least in these countries, as ministers
of the Church, for they thenceforth cease to possess
the cure of souls. They cannot enter secular pro-
fessions. Irish clergymen who conscientiously dis-
approve of the Establishment may indeed take office
in the English branch of the Church, but they will
not thereby escape calumny. In fact, the very same
newspaper which now censures me for retaining my
Irish benefice abused me a few years ago for having,
as it was untruly reported, resigned it for au Eng-
lish benefice ! But to retire from the ministry,
because of the unrighteousness of the present
arrangement of Irish temporalities, would be ab-
surd ; inasmuch as such a course would not tend to
remove or lessen, but rather would perpetuate, that
unrighteousuess. It would be somewhat like the
folly of a man with a diseased limb who should kill
himself instead of seeking surgical aid.—l am, &c.,
April, 1868. W. MAZIERE BRADY, D.D.

At a moment when the uppermost thought in the
public mind is the treatment of Ireland and the
Irish there is, says the Times, something worthy of
attention in a little publication which, though slight
in form and jesting in its tone, sets forth in a vivid
manner the evils of the system rigorously pursued
up to a recent period with regard to Roman Catho-
lic prisoners, and by no means even now abandoned
in some of the principal metropolitan houses of de-
tention, and still maintained with unmitigated
stringency in similar ones at Glasgow and a few
other gaols under the government of visiting jus-
tices—an appellation which sounds rattier strangely
when compared with some of the decisions of that
honourable body in the county of Middlesex. The
absurdity of filling our prisons with Roman Catho-
lic convicts, and then den 3 jag or restricting as far
as possible the only means by which their reforma-
tion can be effected, is ably exhibited in the hu-
morous little sketch, " Biddy in the English Gaol,"
a witty dialogue, accompanied by a series of ad-
mirable illustrations due to the clever and always
kindly pencil of Richard Doyle. the facts embodied
in the not imaginary closing scene furnish material
for a keen amount of satire, and in this instance
satire is directed to its legitimate end, the redress
of a wrong and the exposure of folly.