The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1884-10-09
The Maamtrasna Case.

ST. Louis Post-Dispatch: Timothy
Harrington, NJ. P. for Westmeath, has
been personally investigating the
Maamtrasna murders, for which Miles
Joyce and two other persons were
hanged in Galway in December, 1882.
Mr.. Harrington says he has evidence
enough to put Lord Spencer in the
dock for conspiracy to murder, and he
promises a report and an array of evi
dence at the opening of Parliament
that will make Castle Government
and the systematic wrongs committed
in the name of public justice in Ireland
the leading question of the ensuing
session.
English rule has always made Irish
outbreaks a pretext for converting the
criminal courts of Ireland into engines
of bloody terrorism and coercion, and
with their gangs of perjured informers
and conspiring officials they have rare
ly failed in troublous times to make a
record of judicial murders as atrocious
as Jeffrey's "Bloody Assizes' But
nothing in the old yellow PACED records
of similar horrors in the past can be
more shocking than the facts of this
Joyce case as revealed by the later con-
fessions of two of the informers, An
thony Philbin and Thomas Casey, fully
confirmed as they have been by Mr..
Harrington's Investigations.
1t will be proved that the murder of
John Joyce and his wife and children
was the result of a family feud wholly
unconnccted with agrarian or political
Outrages, and that neither Philbin nor
Miles Joyce knew anything about it.
But they were among the ten persons
arrested for the crime, and by brides
make a pretended confession impli-
eating himself and other prisoners, in
GLIDING Miles Joyce and Thomas
Casey. TO save himself, the latter
then turned informer, and made a true
confession, duplicating himself and the
other real murderers, but cxculpating
Philbin and Miles Joyce. The prosecu-
ton, however, refused to accept Casey
as witness unless he would make his
confession agree with Philbin's, and
the two were accordingly put together
in the prison yard to arrange their
story, which let some of the guilty ones
escape while it doomed four innocent
men to long terms of imprisonment.
Miles Joyce, "a poor old peasant from
a wild mountain side in Conncmara, as
ignorant of the English language as
any Soudan savage" was hanged pro-
testing his innocence to the last, and
with him were hanged two men who,
on oath at foot of the gallows, confess
ed their own guilt and proclaimed him
innocent.
Mr.. Harrington promises to prove
that all these facts about the murder
and the manipulation of the perjured
testimony were known to Lord Spcn-
Ger before the execution, and that this
horrible travesty of justice was part of
a scheme of judicial murder and ter
rorism adopted by the Castle officials
to repress agrarian outrages and over
awe the Irish people. 1t will be inter-
esting to note how Mr.. Gladstone will
deal with this new and startling ar
raignment of his subordinatcs on the
other side of St. Georges channel.
Charles H. Waterman, of New York,
the nominee for Vice-President of the
United States by the American Political
Alliance, has accepted the nomination
and will make an extended personal
canvass,