The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1899-01-14

temDer, lS4S, an order. 1t may be easily
imagined with what interest followed
the porter up the winding stone stair
case of this gloomy tower, once the
prison of the castle, and was ushered
into small central space that seemed
dark even after the dark stairs we had
just left. AS the eye became accustomed
to the spot, 1t appeared that the doors
Of five cells, made in the prodigious
thickness of the tower walls, opened on
the central space. From one of them
Hugh Roe O'Donnel is said to have
escaped by getting down to the Poodle
river that was round the base of the
tower. The place was covered with the
dust of 20 years, but opening couple
of volumes of the statistics-one as a
clean spot to place my coat upon, the
other to sit OIL took up my seat ex-
actly opposite to the one just mentioned,
as it looked to the south over the castle
garden, and had better light" Mr. Prem
dergast then states that he perused the
documents of which he was in search,
and proceeds:
II felt that had at last reached the
haven l had been so long seeking. There
I began to know the voices of many of
the corporals that came with the guard
to relieve the sentry in the castle yard
below, and every drum and bugle call of
| tho rapiment nuartara1 In, CHI, utroo}
| barracks. At length, between the labor
of copying and excitement of the aston
ishing drama performed as it were be-
fore my eyes, my heart by some strange
| movements warned me it was necessary
| to retire for a while. But l again and
again returned at intervals, sometimes
| of months, sometimes of years.
Mr.. Fitzpatrick thus refers to the doc
uments in the Record Tower of the un-
ion and rebellion periods: "a mine Oof
information) was found in the papers
ranging from 1895 to 1905 which filled
two iron-clamped chests in Dublin Cas-
tie, guarded with the government seal,
| and bearing the words: Secret and con-
fidential; not to be opened These chests
| were for long time familiar objects
exteriorly, and when 1t was at last per-
mitted to disturb the rust of locks and
hinge peculiar interest attended the ex-
ploration." Now these archives to which
Mr.. FITZPATRICK refers, and which he and
i Mr.. Lecky have seen, and carefully ar
! ranged according to time, date, indexed
| and preserved in neat wicker baskets,
under cover of thick brown paper The
| two documents which l desired and
was permitted to inspect were instantly
| available. If Mr. Balfour was justified
! in allowing me to see these two papers,
as he undoubtedly was, he has absolute
| ly stultifed himself in refusing me a
/! liberty accorded to Messrs. Fitzpatrick,
Froude, Lecky and Mr.. Land Commits
| sioner Falkiner.
Mr.. Lecky alone has. with these docu-
| ments before him, dealt in detail with
the period to which they relate, in the
seventh and eighth volumes of his his
tory, which were published in the au-
tumn of 1890. When the fifth and sixth
volumes Of that great work appeared,
Mr.. Gladstone, in an article in the Nine
teenth Century for June 1887, thus
| called attention to the contrast between
Mr.. Lecky's early and later historical
manner:
"ln TRUTH" wrote Mr.. Gladstone,
bT1T11i 1n Mr. 7 1y,,r T.,
! spicuous in these pages as his ability,
the volumes have, in my mind the i'm
preston that his view of Irish affairs
has, since he began to write, been COL
| of his hostility to the modern proposal
of home rule 1t might even seem that
he was obliged to tamper little with
his own manuscript, that since the bulk
of the text was written, there have been
set upon it panni, and these not pur-
purei. that countervail and qualify it's
effect"
This tendency to "countervail' and
qualify" is conspicuously apparent in
Mr.. Lecky's last volumes, on which l
must now, owing to the conduct of the
Irish secretary, solely rely for informa-
tion as to the state papers in the Record
| Tower Let me give two instances.
There are" Mr.. Lecky writes, 'two
singularly hcartless letters on the sub
| ject (of Wolfe Tones cxccution) in the
Irish state paper office-one from Lord
Caven to Cooke Nov. y, and the other
from Sir G. Hill to Cooke (Nov. IS,
| 1885," These letters, and these alone, J.
have been permitted to inspect, and
they have been published for the first
time in the columns OF the Freeman's
Journal. Mr.. Lecky describes euphemis-
tically as 'singularly heartless" the let
ters, when every line is characterized by
| devilish malignity Then, to take an
| other illustration. There is throughout
Mr.. Leckys history of the insurrection
and the union tone Of palliation and
| even of eulogy Of Leonard McNally,
| who, he says, "as confidential lawyer Of
the United Irishmen had opportunities
| of information Of the rarest kind. 1t is
| certain that he sometimes communicated
to the government the line of defense
contemplated by his clients and other
information which he can only have re-