The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1899-01-14
THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNAL ACT
Is KEPT CONCEALED.
THE ARCHIVES OF BRITISH lnFAMY
ACCESS TO THEM Is DENIED by THE
CHIEF SECRETARY
TO AN IRISH MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
STORY OF BRIBERY, CORRUPTION
PERJURY AND FRAUD.

STORY OF bribery, CORRUPTION,
PERJURY AND FRAUD.
}. G. Swift MacNeill, M. p, was de-
MED the privilege of inspecting the
archives relating to the legislative union
between Great Britain and Ireland and
the insurrection of 1898. He has writ
ten letter to the Freeman's Journal, in
which he says:
l feel quite certain, moreover, that
the chief secretary's disinclination to
! allow ME to see documents bearing on
the history of the union, which Fox in
1906 described as "atrocious in it's prin-
ciple and abominable in its MEANS" as
"a measure the most disgraceful to the
government of the country that was
| ever carried or proposed" will be con-
strued by Gerald Balfour's friends and
suppress from the public knowledge of
the history of the union, of which Mr..
| Gladstone once said that he knew mo
blacker or fouler transaction in the his
tory of man." Mr. Balfours action will
also lead to the surmise, on which at
| present l make no comment, that the
British officials who are now for filthy
lucre's sake running the Irish govern
| ment" to the calculated impoverishment
and ruin of the Irish people, are con-
scious that the union is maintained by
| means as foul as those by which it was
| carried. Mr.. Balfour's refusal to show
| the documents in the castle connected
with the insurrection and union to me,
harmonizes with the desire of the mach
| inators of the union to conceal and to
destroy all the documents relating to
that epoch. They felt certain that, in
| the words Of Mr.. Bushe in the Irish
house of commons, "a day of reckoning
would come, that history would over
| haul this transaction Mr. Ross. Il
editor of the CORVALLIS Correspondence,
says: "The Irish chancellor Q.ord Clare)
Mr.. Wickham, Mr.. King, Sir Herbert
| Taylor, Sir Edward Littlehales, the
| knight of Kerry, and, indeed, all per-
sons officially concerned in carrying the
union, appeared to have destroyed the
whom many other arrangements were
concluded, left a MS. book containing in
| valuable details, which was burned only
few years ago by it's then possessor.
nf o1,,o In
documents respecting important trans
actions cannot but be regarded as a seri-,
GUS loss to the political history of the
times" Why does Gerald Balfour pre-
clude me from the inspection of the cor
respondence relating to the bribes paid
| to members of the house of commons to
vote for the union; the promise of peer
ages for the like service; the briefs still
extant In that tower given by Mac
Nally, the castle spy, who was engaged
as counsel to defend political prisoners,
whose secrets he was betraying with the
knowledge even of the judges who tried
the cases to the crown; the evidences
innumerable of baseness and perfidy;
the confessions that the union was pro-
NOTED against the will of the Irish peo-
pie; the admissions of it's contrivers in
their most secret communications that
the great object of their work was to be
the stoppage of the growing prosperity
of Ireland; above all, the correspond
ence relating to the dispersal of public
meetings; the avowed encouragement
of traitors and of spies, and the wanton
exercise of military force, with all of
its attendant horrors, burnings, pitch
cappings, 1oggings, violation of women?
Is it not because Mr.. Balfour feels in his
| heart that this record of the iniquity
under which the present system of Eng
lish government in Ireland was promoted
appeals powerfully to the passionate de-
sire of the 1rishmen at home and abroad
for the restoration of their own parlia-
ment, and freedom from the intolerable
| burden Of ignorant, insolent and rapac-
ious English strangers quartered upon
| this country for the purpose of fraudu-
| lent taxation and public plunder?
The Record Tower, which contains
documents which would help me in my
endeavor to give to the public a sketch
of the union transactions, has thus been
described by my old friend, Mr.. ]. p
Prendergast, in his preface to his great
work, "The Cromwellian Settlement"
He states that some of the documents he
consulted were preserved in the heav-
ily-embattled tower, which forms the
most striking feature OF the Castle of
Dublin"
The chief secretary in Mr. Prender-
CASTS time. September, 1s48, Sir Will
liam Somerville, afterwards Lord Ath-
lumney, was, with many imperfections,
! at least an Irish gentleman and averse
to making himself publicly ridiculous
"The documents" writes Mr.. Prender-
CAST, were only accessible at that day
| through the order of the lord lieutenant
or chief secretary for Ireland. l OBJ