The Warwickshire Herald. — 1889-03-28 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

POINTS ABOUT PIGOTT.  The Paris correspondent of the Leeds Mercury has been interviewing Mr. Patrick Casey, whose name has been made familiar in the course of the Parnell Commission, mancerning Pigott and his part in the production of the forged lettere. "Pigott," said Casey, "was a scoundrel; you could not believe a word hesaid. You know he pretended that I helped him to forge some of the letters. Now, it happens that I only saw the man twice in my life. To give you an idea of the 'character of the man, he once bad the gum of £6OO sent him from America for distribution among the political prisoners in Ireland. Well, at that time he 'was proprietor of the journal United Ireland. In order to put himself right with the subscribers to this fund Mr. Pigott had the amount acknowledged in the number of copies required, ' which he then had withdrawn from the forms so that no mention of the subscription appeared in the paper as published for its Irish readers. There was a similar transactiombet only to the extent I of £25, which I made the man disburden for the proper person. But even then he presented a dishonoured cheque by way of settlement. There was a deal of foul play in the conspiracy against Parnell. I know a man who was offered £lOO to write anything which illiquid be of a sufficiently damaging character against the leader of the Nationalist party. There has been a so-called red pamphlet issued, professing to expose the misdeeds of the Nationalists, which is made up of imaginary outrages. lam going to answer this in a black pamphlet, shewing up the tricks and calumnies resorted to by the Government. A few years ago a dozen men were over here employed in getting up cases of conspiracy, which were wholly imaginary. There was a British officer who had been dismissed the service and had turned informer. He got up a story m i about me manufacturing dynamite n my cellar. although Ido not possess such a commodity, and told Inspector Moser that I *hewed him how to cause an explosion. The inspector was kind enough to ask why this Irish gentleman had not taken the opportunity to blow out my brains. To return to Pigott. we just missed him when he passed through Paris. I had a dozendetectives on his track, but he contrived to elude them. If he had been caught he would have got 10 years for forgery from the Paris courts. He owed 13,000 f. to a dealer in obscene bcoks on the Qini Voltaire. I knew of this, and warned the man that his customer was about to fly, so that he might try to secure something. His answer was, "Mr. Peegut is such a nice intelligent gentleman; it will be all right." But there are three or four others engaged in this business worse than Pigott, whose share in the design of ruining Mr. Parnell will be brought to light shortly." Apropos of the Parnell inquiry, and the testimony, confession, and reported suicide of Pigott, is the following prophetic conjecture of Mrs. Carlyle, wife of Thomas Carlyle. It can be found on page 230 of Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle," and was written in hoe diary April 27, 1845. After describing some other Irish visitors to her husband, among whom was the lamented patriot-poet Thomas Davis, she thus alludes to Pigott : "As for young Mr. Pigott, I will here' in the spirit of prophecy inherited from my great ancestor, John Welsh, the Covenanter, make a small prediction. If there be, in his time, an insurrection in Ireland, as these gentlemen "—referring to her husband's Irish visitors —" confidently anticipate, Mr. Pigott will rise to be a Robespierre of some sort; will cause many heads to be removed from the shoulders they belong to, and will eventually have his own head removed from his own shoulders. Nature has written on that handsome but fatal-looking imuntenance,quite legibly to my prophetic eye,' Go and get thyself beheaded, but not before having lent a hand towards thereat work of immortal smash.'"