IRISH CONSPIRACIES.*

THE reminiscences in this book do not cover so spacious a

subject as the title suggests. When Mr. Bussy says "con- spiracy," he does not mean " rebellion " ; there is nothing about the great rebellion, nothing about Emmet, nothing about Smith O'Brien's rising which ended with its renowned anticlimax in Widow McCormack's garden, nothing about the trial of O'Connell. Mr. Bussy reproduces the statements made to him by John Mallon, the famous Irish detective, and these refer almost entirely to the Fenian movement. Mr.

Bussy has some very interesting things to say ; but he has an unfortunate habit—a journalistic habit perhaps—of present-

ing the reader with irrelevances and trifles as though they were major facts. He is not clever enough for the game he

plays, and some of his verbal ineptitudes are trying. It would baffle the most industrious reader to arrive at his point of view. Sometimes it seems that an extreme sentimentalist

could go no further than he in sympathising with imaginary Irish grievances ; at other times one might Suppose that he remembered that Ireland is, after all, the one part of the kingdom which is greatly over-represented and lightly taxed. He writes now like an ardent Nationalist—as though every one inhabiting Dublin Castle were really a sort of vampire—

and now like a High Tory who can extenuate no conceivable infraction of the law. He repeats himself several times.

Perhaps the chapters of this book appeared originally as separate articles in newspapers. If they did, there would be an explanation of the overlapping, and the obvious straining here and there to make much of little. But with all these glaring defects, there is a real human interest in the character of the detective who was greatly and justly feared by a long line of Fenian conspirators. Describing Mallon's character, Mr. Bussy says :-

" From personal experience he was well acquainted with the methods of the secret services of Russia and France, and he abhorred the agent provocateur system, while he cordially hated the mouchard plan. In fact, he even disapproved of disguises, holding that a police officer with ordinary intelligence and good character ought to be a match for any ordinary conspirator ; it was simply a conflict of intellects in which all the advantages were with the police, for the wrong-doer was countenanced by no one, while the officer had the support of the law and the sympathy of every right-minded man. In his opinion the best armaments for a detective were to prove himself truthful, sober, and zealous."

Mallon, the practitioner of these straightforward methods, a

good Roman Catholic, a sympathiser by instinct and birth with Irishmen, spent his life in the piquant pursuit of out- witting those of his countrymen who turned to violence. Some of the situations in which he found himself were not only thrilling but subtle. Poe, a supreme analyst of mental operations and human motive, might have wrought unfor- gettable passages out of some of the material in this book. For example, what could be more striking in itself than Mallon's action when he had unearthed a plot against his own life P He sent for the ringleader of the conspiracy. The man came in answer to the invitation, as Mallon foresaw that he would, led by fearful curiosity. Then Mallon described to him the circumstances in which he himself would leave his office on a certain day—the day appointed for the assassination—would walk to his home by a certain route, and would arrive at a certain spot—the spot appointed for the assassination—at a certain. Mine. At the and of 'this narrative he kicked the dumbfounded wretch out of his office. When the day

Irish Conspiracies: Recollecticps of.jolut Mallon (the Great Iriih Detective), and other Benunisceacee. By Frederick Moir Biissy. Lohdoxi: Everett An gO. [7s. 61 ;let] ,

arrived Mallon did walk home by the route he had described and at the time he had stated, but the assassins did not put in an appearance. Unhappily, as Mr. Bussy tells the story, it is marred by such clumsiness that one is never sure exactly where imagination is filling in the interstices of definite information.

A similar criticism applies to the episode in which the same criminal (Delaney) was allowed to slip out of the hands of a policeman at a moment when his temporary absence was con- venient to the policeman. We were not aware that a police- man had ever preferred the risk of losing sight altogether of a prisoner committed to his charge to being plied with embarrassing questions by an inquisitive reporter. It appears, however, that this did happen. But the interesting psycho- logical point is that the policeman reckoned quite justly that Delaney, having turned informer, would fear to return to his friends, and, feeling himself much safer in the hands of the law, would not attempt to escape. Thus the policeman kept Delaney out of sight of the reporter, and found him half-an- hour later waiting anxiously at an appointed place to come once again under protection. Conspiracy among the Irish is often disowned as easily as it is undertaken. It is a case of "light come, light go." The ringleader of one day may be the informer of the next. Mr. Bussy says :—

" There is a large section of Irishmen to whom `conspiracy' is the breath of their nostrils, and yet, as I have said, there is no accurate appreciation of the true inwardness of the word. In the present state of society in Ireland it is actually impossible for any number of young fellows of a particular class to gather together with any frequency, and irrespective of the original purpose of their meeting, without their drifting into conspiracy of sonic sort or other and of greater or lesser degree. If the meetings take place immediately after chapel on Sunday mornings and start with general criticism of the religious instruction that has just been delivered, thirty minutes is more than the average length of time that elapses before politics are introduced with the inevitable pronouncement by someone of something that might be done.' The third social ' of a literary association will not have passed away before the germ of conspiracy has been quietened, and even if the occasion is the assembly of some religious sodality the effect is the same. All that is requisite is one adventurous spirit—and it is next to impossible to find more than two Irish- men, of the class I have in mind, gathered together without such an one. More often than not that one spirit possessed of initiation becomes the first and best friend of the police so soon as his vapourings begin to bear fruit and carry him beyond anything he had ever contemplated in his first efforts of mere braggadocio. If the young men of Ireland knew as much about Irish conspiracies as John Mallon knows, or even as much as I know, they would leave conspiring with their fellow-countrymen very severely alone. The essence of conspiracy is loyalty to one's fellow-conspirators, and this is never to be found in the Hibernian variety."

By an unfortunate mischance, Mallon was not near by when Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke were murdered. It

was only an accident that he did not pass along the road, as he had originally intended to do, where some of the con- spirators were waiting. If he had done so, he would certainly have recognised the men, who were under his surveillance.

When the news of the assassination ran through Dublin Mallon was one of the first to reach the spot of the murder. Mr. Bussy characteristically writes :—

" As he stood gazing upon the bloody work of the desperadoes the heart of the great policeman was torn to tatters with the anguish of the thought that he had allowed himself to be persuaded against continuing his walk through the Park. True, he could have proved but a poor match for those cruel transfixion knives, unarmed as he would have been. More than probable, it would have been his life's blood that lay there glistening in the rays of the setting sun. Likely enough the positions would have been reversed. Mr. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish might have been contemplating the lacerated corpse of John Mallon, and wondering what could be born of womankind so fiendish and so wanton as to conceive such wickedness."

The account of the third trial of the wretch Timothy Kelly, only seventeen years old, who was one of the assassins and was executed for 'the crime, is strange reading. Kelly during the trial betrayed extraordinary anxiety to put himself into communication with a well-known journalist, Mr. Gallaher.

He succeeded in getting a note conveyed to Mr. Gallaher. Mr. Gallaher nodded to Kelly to show that he bad received

it; thereupon Kelly settled down to listen to the evidence " with the utmost show of contentment." Mr. Missy, who was present, sought out Mr. Gallaher and begged for an

explanation :— ' said the scribe, ' it's a shame the poor fellow cannot get oft to do a little bit of business for himself—so he's asked me

to do it for him,' and he handed me Kelly's paper. It contained a request that Gallaher would put a shilling for him on some horse that was running in a race taking place that day."

Some people may find Mr. Hussy's contradictions of Sir Robert Anderson, whose Fenian reminiscences have been dis- cussed lately, the most diverting things in the book. Sir Robert Anderson may have something to say about this presentation of him as a discoverer of mare's-nests, and if so, broad avenues open up for recriminations which we may be sure will also happen to be "good copy."