Page:Life of John Boyle O'Reilly.djvu/310

270 mere technical knowledge, I may here quote the words on another, but kindred subject, of an eminent Protestant historian of Ireland, Robert R. Madden, F.R.O.S. of England, M.R.I.A., etc., who is still living, describing the tortures inflicted on Annie Devlin, the faithful servant of Robert Emmet, to make her betray the patriot leader. Dr. Madden says: "Annie Devlin, the servant of Robert Emmet, was half hanged from the back band of a car, the shafts being elevated for the purpose of making a temporary gallows—a common contrivance of terrorists of those times. The account of her sufferings I had from her own lips, on the spot where those atrocities were perpetrated. When she was taken down, her shoulders and the upper parts of her arms were pricked with bayonets, the cicatrized marks of which I have seen and felt."

I can give, if necessary, hundreds, yea, thousands, of instances of legal murder, maiming, mutilation, and torture, perpetrated by English officials and their subordinates in Ireland. My object in mentioning the sentence of Edward Kelly was historical and humanitarian. I should expect the sympathy and indorsement of every honest man, and especially of every independent and manly Englishman. In his name, and the name of his race, these abominations have been committed by a government of aristocrats and royal rascals, who have misused and impoverished the people of their own country as well as of Ireland. The Englishman who thinks it his duty to defend or deny these things must choose one of two despicable positions.

Edward Kelly, Gen. T. F. Bourke, and other Irishmen, in 1867, were tried for high treason, and received exactly the same legal sentence as that passed on William Orr, the brothers Sheares, Thomas Russell, and Robert Emmet, in 1798 and 1803—"to be hanged, drawn, and quartered."

In the year 1798, the following Irishmen, all of the class of gentlemen, were "hanged, drawn, and quartered" for what England called high treason.

I separate them according to their religious beliefs: