The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1882-11-18 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

EVENTS OF THE WEEK.  THE IRISH BUTCHERIES.  Mr. Justice Barry and the juries ofl the Dublin Commission Court have been engaged investigating the circumstances surrounding the hideous mas3acre at Maamtrasna. One of the murderers of the unfortunate Joyce family has been condemned to death, and the judge has plainly informed him that he must not look for mercy in this world. In passing sentence His Lordship used the following impressive words :—" Now, Patrick Joyce, after a most patient trial, a jury of your fellow countrymen has convicted you of the crime of murder—a crime committed by you and your confederates under circumstances so horrible that I cannot endure to recapitulate them. In form you have been convicted of the murder of John Joyce—in fact you murdered him, his wife, his mother, his son, his daughter, and it was only the accidental interpositi n of Providence that prevented you adding another victim to the scene of slaughter in the Rerson of that poor child who was produced yesterday. It is not for me now—possibly it would be useless, indeed—to attempt to awaken you to a sense of the position in which your enormous criminality has placed you. Mercy in this world you have none to expect—mercy at the hands of man you have none to expect. But you shall have what you did not permit to your poor vietims—time to endeavour to make your peace with God, whom you have so grievously offended. And we are told that even sinners whose crimes equalled yours will not turn to Him in vain. It only remains for me to pronounce the sentence—the dreadful sentence of the law. [Here the learned juoge, who from the commencement of his address had been deeply moved, burst into tears; and there were many in court who also showed they felt the great solemnity of the occasion.] Though sour crime has likeey so enormous, I am not ashamed to say that I feel the position of a man who has to sentence his fellow-man to death. The sentence and judgment of the court is (assuming the black cap), and I do judge and order that you, Patrick Joyce, be taken from the bar of the court where you now stand to the place from whence you came, and that you be removed to Her Majesty's prison, Galway, and that on Friday, the 15th day of December n( xt, of this year of our Lord 1882, you be taken to the common place of execution within the walls of the prison in wuich you shall be then confined, and that you shall be then and there hanged by the neck until you be dead, and that your body be buried within the precincts of the prison in which yOu shall be last confined after your con, viction ; and may the Lord have mercy on your soul." Language such as this ouglit to have a good effect even on the hardened and misguided men who have taught themselves to hold the • horrible belief that there can be good in murder. While, however, it is satisfactory that a terrible warning has been given to the criminal classes, and while, assuming that the condemned man is guilty, it would have been a melancholy and a paralysing disaster if the prosecution had broken down, the circumstances surrounding the trial are very far from encouraging. In the first place, no immediate and direct motive for the butcheries has been indicated. The only inference to be drawn from the facts adduced is that denizens of Msamtrasna and its vicinity have been the willing slaves of a murder last, and have killed their neighbours on very little provocation because they have falion into the way of killing people, and because they have thought that in their dreary mountain fastnesses they might shed blood with impunity. In the . second Pace, it has been demonstrated that the dwellers in the remote region .which has been rendered notorious by the dark deeds which have been perpetrated there are, in oases, degraded and ignorant to 13alaulost bacon.