The Dock and the Scaffold eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 52 pages of information about The Dock and the Scaffold.

The Dock and the Scaffold eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 52 pages of information about The Dock and the Scaffold.
evidence, and that it was a calamity for any government, to have to resort to the evidence of such a man.  I do not wish to say anything disrespectful to this eourt, but I think I may say that if I stand here as a convicted felon, the privilege should be accorded to me that has been accorded to every other person who stood here before me in a similar position.  There is a portion of the trial to which I particularly wish to refer.  That is, in reference to the oath which it was stated the pilot was forced to take on board the vessel.  Much importance was attached to this matter, and therefore I wish to ask you and others in this court to look and to inquire if there is any man here who could suppose that I am scoundrel enough and ignorant enough to take an ignorant man, put a pistol to his face, and force him to take an oath I ask you, in the first place, not to believe that I am such a scoundrel, and in the second that I am not such an idiot.  If I were at this moment going to my grave, I could say that I never saw that man Gallagher till I saw him in Kilmainham prison.  These men, although they have been, day after day, studying lessons under able masters, contradicted each other on the trial, and have been perjuring themselves.  Gallagher, in his evidence, swore that his first and second informations were false, and that he knew them to be false.  It is contrary to all precedent to convict a man on the evidence of a witness who admits that he swore what was false.  In America I have seen judges, hundreds of times, sentencing men who were taken off the table, put into the dock, and sent to prison.  In this case, this poor, ignorant man was brought into Kilmainham gaol on the 1st of July.  He knew my name, heard it called several times, knew of the act of which I was suspected, and, on the 2nd of August he was taken away.  On the 12th of October he is brought back, and out of a party of forty or fifty he identifies only three.  If that man came on board the vessel, he did so in his ordinary capacity as a pilot.  He did his duty, got his pay, and left.  His subsequent evidence was additions.  With respect to the vessel, I submit that there was not a shadow of evidence to prove that there was any intention of a hostile landing, and that the evidence as to the identity of the vessel would not stand for a moment where either law or justice would be regarded.  Now, as to the Flying Dutchman which it is said appeared on the coast of Sligo and on the coast of Dungarvan, in Gallagher’s information nothing is said about the dimensions of the vessel.  Neither length, breadth, or tonnage is given, but in making his second information he revised the first.

The prisoner then proceeded to argue that there was nothing to show that the vessel which had appeared in Sligo harbour was the same with that which had appeared off Dungarvan, except the testimony of the informer, Buckley, of which there was no corroboration.  He also denied the truth of Corydon’s evidence, in several particulars, and then went on to say—­

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The Dock and the Scaffold from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.