1799. FLOGGING OF MR. WRIGHT. 157 hair, kicked him, and, finally, slashed him with a sword, drawing blood. Wright was then fastened to the ladder. Fifty lashes had been inflicted, when a Major Riall came up, and asked what Wright had done? The Sheriff answered by flinging Riall a note taken from the person of Wright, as a justification of the punishment to which he was subjected. The note was in French, a language of which Fitzgerald was wholly ignorant, and contained two lines excusing the writer for having failed in a visiting engagement. Riall assured Fitzgerald that the note was perfectly harmless; nevertheless the lash continued to descend, until the quivering entrails were visible through the flayed flesh. The hangman was then ordered to apply his thongs to a part of the body which had not yet been torn, while the Sheriff himself went to the General in command of the district for an order to put his prisoner to death. This order, however, was not granted, and Wright was ultimately set at liberty. These facts were proved on the trial of Wright's action. The defendant attempted to jus- Trial of tify himself by calling one of his followers Fitzgerald. to swear that the plaintiff had acknowledged his guilt in a written paper which he gave to the witness, and which the witness had given to the defendant. The judge called for the production of this paper. The defendant refused to produce it, on the impudent pretence that it contained secrets of State. The trial would not have been complete, had not an Orange parson been called on the part of the defendant to swear that this notorious bloodshedder, who throughout Ireland was called 'flogging Fitzgerald,' was a mild and humane man. Fitzgerald conducted his own defence with matchless effrontery. He avowed and gloried in the system of terror which he had pursued; maintaining that he was justified in taking any measures he thought fit to extort confessions 158 VERDICT AGAINST FITZGERALD. сп. xxxvii, from persons whom he suspected, and that if every other method failed, he had a right to cut off their heads. The grotesque atrocity of this avowal is said to have disturbed the gravity of the court. Such an exhibition, in an English court of justice, would, probably, have led to an inquiry into the state of the defendant's mind. The judge told the jury that the character of the plaintiff was unimpeached; that he had been grossly and wantonly abused, and that he was entitled to the whole amount of damages laid in the declaration. Lord Yelverton, the Chief Baron, who was also in the Commission, and sat upon the bench during the trial, expressed, in emphatic language, his concurrence with the summing up of Mr. Justice Chamberlain. The jury gave four hundred pounds, the damages being laid at a thousand. The success of this appeal to a superior court of justice revived the spirit of the people, Arrest of and notices of other actions were served upon the late High Sheriff. Among the suitors who came forward to obtain legal redress for the outrages which this man had perpetrated, was a gentleman of family and fortune named Scott, who had been arrested at his country house by Fitzgerald, on a ridiculous charge of having sold timber from his woods, which had been afterwards manufactured into pikes. Scott positively denied the imputation-such as it was-and bail was offered to the amount of a hundred thousand pounds to meet any charge which might be brought against him. Fitzgerald, however, dragged Mr. Scott to jail; but after some days, was forced, by the interposition of the General in command of the district, to liberate him on bail for twenty thousand pounds. No charge was preferred against Scott, and his repeated demand of a charge having been treated with contempt, Scott brought his action of false imprisonment against Fitzgerald. To such an action there could be no answer, and as the 1799. HIS PETITION TO PARLIAMENT. 159 superior courts had shown that they meant to dispense impartial justice, it was difficult to estimate the measure of damages which might be awarded for an outrage so flagrant. Fitzgerald and his abettors became alarmed. It was represented to the Government that the man who had rendered such signal services to the cause of order was in danger of being ruined, because the judges would not give an interpretation to the Indemnity Act sufficiently liberal to cover the indiscretion of a too zealous loyalty.* The Government readily listened to this appeal; but Fitzgerald, not content with leaving his interests in the hands of his friends at the Castle, petitioned Parliament for redress against the severity of the law. Cooke, the Under-Secretary, put himself forward, or was probably put forward by Castlereagh, who did not care to appear prominently in such a business, to support the petition; in doing which, he expressed his regret that the activity manifested by Mr. Fitzgerald had not been imitated more extensively.† Mr. Yelverton, the son of the Chief Baron, who followed Cooke in the debate, took occasion to describe the services which the Under-Secretary had stamped with official approbation. Mr. Hutchinson told the story of Scott, and added an anecdote of a man, who, when nearly flogged to death by Fitzgerald, made a false accusation against another person to save his own life. It was alleged on behalf of Fitzgerald that funds were being raised by subscription for the purpose of harassing him by legal proceedings. 160 TOLER'S DEFENCE OF FITZGERALD. CH. XXXVIII. The answer was, that Fitzgerald had maligned a regiment of yeomanry, by accusing them of disaffection; and that the men had subscribed a guinea a piece, to vindicate the character of their body in a court of justice. The Attorney-General, Toler, had the effrontery to say, that the regiment, by raising a fund in this manner to defend their professional honour against a slanderous ruffian, had been guilty of a conspiracy, for which they ought to be prosecuted. The debate grew warm; but no attempt was made to deny any one of the charges alleged against Fitzgerald, or even to hint that they had been too highly coloured; but only one voice was found to point to the conclusion, which ought to have been unanimously adopted. Dr. Browne, member for the University, said, if such conduct as Fitzgerald's was to be justified, the sooner the Irish Parliament was extinguished the better. Still, it must be recorded, that this assembly, vile as it was, fixed a limit to its career of shame. Fitzgerald had asked for a secret committee; but the House of Commons, though prepared at the bidding of the Government to indemnify all the misdeeds of all their agents, hesitated to license one homicidal slanderer secretly to attack the character and life of any person he chose. The motion for a secret committee was, therefore, suffered to drop; but leave was given to bring in a bill to amend the Act of Indemnity. As the use of torture was not sanctioned by the law of Ireland, any more than by the law of Use of torture. England, it was difficult to understand how the ingenuity of the Irish crown lawyers could frame an act which should cover such practices as tearing the scalp off the head with pitched caps, penetrating the soles of the feet with pointed stakes, cutting with swords, and flogging to the peril of life. An act had been passed early in the session to extend the indemnity to magistrates who had been 1799. ACT OF INDEMNITY TO SCREEN FITZGERALD. 161 obliged to punish such offenders [i.e. 'criminals' and 'suspected persons'] even with death.'* But this did not meet the case of torture. And as there was no Jeffries or Scroggs on the Irish bench willing to stretch the law, it was necessary that the new statute should speak in plain terms. A bill was therefore framed exactly according to the pattern required by the exigencies of Mr. Sheriff Fitzgerald. It was provided in a few simple words, which could not be misunderstood, that when the jury in an action against a magistrate, or other officer found for the plaintiff, the verdict should be set aside, and a nonsuit entered, unless the jury also found that the act was done maliciously, and not with intent of suppressing rebellion; so that in order to give the plaintiff the benefit of his verdict, it was not sufficient for the jury to find express malice; they must also find that such malicious act had no connection with the suppression of the rebellion. Even an honest jury-such a jury as convicted Oates, or acquitted Hardy, could not say that Fitzgerald's crimes, malignant as they were, and prompted as they also were by base and sordid motives, had nothing to do with the rebellion.† But the Orange juries who were to try the issues between the Fitzgeralds and their victims, would feel no scruples in ascribing any act of irregular zeal to the loyal vigilance against papist traitors. Mr. Scott, the gentleman who had been sent to prison without a charge, and held to excessive bail to answer nothing, was heard at the bar by his counsel against this flagitious enactment, but without any other result than to affect the House of Commons with full knowledge of the wanton, and all but incredible outrage, to which they were about to extend a special immunity. After the act was passed, the Sheriff conducted himself with an inso * Thirty-ninth Geo. III. c. 3.-Irish Statutes. † Ibid. c. 50. |