Blandford Weekly News. — 1889-03-30 (Blandford, Dorset, England)

POINTS ABOUT PIGOTT.  The Paris correspondent Orth-e-Ze.sid; Mercury has been interviewing Mr. Patrick Casey, whose name has been made familiar in the course of the Parnell Commission, concerning Pigott and his part in the prAucsion of the forged letters. "Pigott," said Casey, "was a scoundrel; you could not believe a word he said. You know be 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 had the bum 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 Pigott had the amount acknowledged in the number of copies required, which he then had withdrawn from the forms so that no mention of the subscription appeared in the paper as published for its Irish readers.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 transaction,but only to the extent of £25, which I made the man disburden for the moper 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 should be of a sufficiently damaging character against the leader of the Nationalist party. There has been a so-called red paniphlet 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 about me manufacturing dynamite in 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 dozen detectives 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 books on the Quid 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 her diary April 22, 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 soy 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 countenance,quite legibly to my prophetic eye,' Go and get thyself beheaded, but not before having lent a hand towards the great work of immortal smash.'"  An Order of Council has been passed prohibiting the landing of animals from Germany, on account of foot and mouth disease.  A duel has been fought near Paris, between M. Hardouin—who WM lately convicted of fplagiarism in the book which he wrote on the Franco-German campaign, under his literary pseudonym of Dick de Lonlay—and M. Richard, who had made some 'uncomplimentary remarks about him in the newspaper La Bats ille. The encounter was fierce, and there were three attacks, in each of which M. Hardouin was wounded, his opponent having pinked him in the wrist, arm, and right rib. M. Paul DeroulDde was one of M. Hardouin's seconds. At the Leeds Assizes, George Waterton Prest, hoe. secretary of the " Education Act Amendment Union," sued the proprietor of the Scarborough Mercury for libel, clauning £2,000 as damages. The defendant had criticised adversely' an appeal for subscriptions issued by the plaintiff, and, referring to • claim it set up that the Union would win Scarborough for the Tory party, had imputed that this was 'obtaining money by false pretences." In crou.szamination the plaintiff admitted a conviction for forgery. The case ended in the vritbdmwal of a iurer.