ANNO VICESIMO QUARTO ET VICESIMO QUINTO.-VICTORIÆ REGINÆ.

CAP. XCIV.-AN ACT to consolidate and amend the statute law of England and Ireland relating to accessories to and abettors of indictable offenses.-[August 6, 1861.]

[Extract.]

Whereas it is expedient to consolidate and amend the statute law of England and Ireland relating to accessories to and abettors of indictable offenses:

Be it enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal and commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

As to accessories before the fact

I. Whosoever shall become an accessory before the fact to any felony, whether the same be a felony at common law or by virtue of any act passed or to be passed, may be indicted, tried, convicted, and punished in all respects as if he were a principal felon. II. Whosoever shall counsel, procure, or command any other person to commit any felony, whether the same be a felony at common law or by virtue of any act passed or to be passed, shall be guilty of felony, and may be indicted and convicted either as an accessory before the fact to the principal felony, together with the principal felon, or after the conviction of the principal felon, or may be indicted and convicted of a substantive felony, whether the principal felon shall or shall not have been previously convicted, or shall or shall not be amenable to justice, and may thereupon be punished in the same manner as any accessory before the fact to the same felony, if convicted as an accessory, may be punished.

As to accessories after the fact

III. Whosoever shall become an accessory after the fact to any felony, whether the same be a felony at common law or by virtue of any act passed or to be passed, may be indicted and convicted either as an accessory after the fact to the principal felony, together with the principal felon, or after the conviction of the principal felon, or may be indicted and convicted of a substantive felony, whether the principal felon shall or shall not have been previously convicted, or shall or shall not be amenable to justice, and may thereupon be punished in like manner as any accessory after the fact to the same felony, if convicted as an accessory, may be punished.

*

Mr. Nagle to Mr. Adams.

KILMAINHAM JAIL, Dublin, Ireland, November 22, 1867. SIR: I respectfully call your attention to the following statement, and request that it may be forwarded to the Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State:

After five months' imprisonment without any charge or evidence of crime being brought .against me, notwithstanding my continued protest and repeated demands for liberty, I was on the 25th of October indicted by the grand jury of the county of Dublin for treason-felony. The commission of oyer and terminer, before whom the indictment was brought, adjourned on the 16th of November, after a session of three weeks, without bringing me to trial. The attorney general had promised to bring up my case in On the last day of its session I the first week of the commission, but failed to do so. .asked through my counsel for an immediate trial, or that I might be released on bail. This was denied me, and I stand committed for trial at the Sligo assizes, which will be held in March next.

It appears the court acknowledges my claim as an American citizen, of which fact the Crown officials were informed before my indictment, although the same court denied the rights of other American citizens, and tried and condemned them as British subjects upon the same indictment which was found against me, and under the very law of England which, as announced by the lord chief baron, holds them perpetually bound to their natural allegiance, and further declares that "all children born out of the realm, whose fathers are natural-born subjects of England, shall themselves be natural-born subjects to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatever." If one portion of the law can be enforced, as it has been against Warren and Costello, denying the rights of naturalized citizens, then we may expect, as a legal and logical consequence, that the balance of it, claiming the children of those citizens as British subjects, will be enforced in my case. I call attention to this now, that our government may not be surprised at the position likely to be assumed by the Crown, should I be brought to trial. The reason assigned for the postponement of my trial to Sligo is, that my status as

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an American citizen being recognized, I cannot be held accountable as a co-conspirator for the overt acts committed on the 5th March last, for which Warren and Costello were tried and convicted. It would appear, therefore, that I am to be held and tried on the statement of the witness Gallagher, who swears that I administered an oath to him on board of a vessel in Sligo bay, with a pistol at his head, if he refused to take the oath. I suppose Mr. West will forward an official report of the trial, as he had a special counsel watching the case, aside from those engaged for the defense; so I will not enter upon the details of it. As this story of Gallagher is the only foundation for a prosecution, the only pretense of an overt act, and the plausible excuse for keeping me a prisoner, I deem it necessary to call particular attention to the character of this man's testimony, and the circumstances connected with it. It appears Gallagher was first examined in Sligo in the latter part of May, when he swore that the vessel he boarded in the bay was to the best of his knowledge a Spaniard, and bound to Glasgow. He told a plain, simple story, and said that was all he knew about her. On the trial the coast guard swears he told him the same.

Gallagher was brought to Kilmainham jail early in July, and remained in prison about one month, seeing me every day, exercising in the same yard, becoming well acquainted with my name and appearance, but never recognized me, or made any pretense of having ever before seen me. He left the jail in August. On the 12th of October I was brought before a magistrate, and Gallagher was produced and told the strange story he swore to on that day. During the trials of Warren and Costello he was placed upon the witness-stand and repeated his story, with many variations and contradictions, sticking, however, to the main point. I will not here attempt to analyze his evidence, trusting that the counsel employed for that purpose by Mr. West will not fail to point out the contradictions, inconsistencies, and improbabilities of his conflicting statements-his probable and undoubted perjury. Colonel Warren solemnly declared, before sentence was pronounced upon him, that he never saw the man until he came to Kilmainham jail. I declare, before God and the world, upon my honor as a man and a soldier, that his whole statement about me is an infamous lie. Yet, upon the unsupported and uncorroborated story of this miserable perjurer, this governinent has the effrontery to hold me subject for an indefinite period to the torture of this lingering death, to which I have been already so long subjected upon mere suspicion. I am now under the treatment of the medical director, who can certify to the debilitated condition to which I am reduced, after being shut up in this bastile all summer. My health is now seriously affected; a continuance of this confinement will cost me my life. Is this the penalty I must suffer at the hands of a merciless, tyrannical government for having dared to express in my native land my abhorrence of a rule which seeks to expatriate a race, and would exterminate every vestige of a nation? I again appeal to my country and her representatives for justice, for freedom-aye, for life. I again repeat and declare that I have done no act, offended no law within British territory, which should subject me to the wrong and injury I have already suffered, much less to a continuance of it. The Crown officials have attempted to show cause for my arrest and imprisonment. They have made up a case, and a Dublin grand jury have indicted me for acts committed on the 5th of March. (proposing to deal with me as a British subject,) but there they stop. After five months of search and labor, they produce three perjured informers to swear away my liberty. How they were procured may be inferred from the persistent efforts made to procure others to do likewise, which will be made public, notwithstanding the attempt made to suppress the facts. The attorney general finds it is not safe to proceed, and at the last moment sets aside my trial for four months, trusting that in the intervening time, by proper manipulation, some wretch may be found willing to barter soul and honor and tell a tale to support Gallagher.

To sum up the whole matter in a few words, I, a citizen of the United States, a stranger in Ireland, having committed no offense, am arrested in mid-day upon a publie highway by the first policeman I meet; put in irons; placed in close and solitary confinement: subject to all the humiliations and privations of the worst class of criminals; and thus deprived of my liberty for several months, to the serious injury of my health: from the commencement protesting against the outrage, and constantly demanding my freedom. Compelled at last by my persistent demands and the action of my government, a charge is preferred against me, for acts committed in Ireland, by some parties to me unknown; and to sustain it, the evidence of Corydon, Buckley, and Gallagher is produced, and an attempt is made to try and pass judgment upon me as a British subject, by finding a true bill of indictment against me upon the bribed and perjured testimony of these men. The Crown lawyers, finding there is not corroborative evidence to insure my conviction, suspend proceedings and return me to the gloom and misery of my prison, there to linger on for months to the great danger of my life. I now most respectfully appeal to you, honored sir, earnestly and firmly demanding my immediate release. This government has had ample time to justify its action against me, and has failed to do so. I have already received the punishment due estabished crime, by six months' confinement. I have suffered irreparable injury, and a continuance of my imprisonment would, in all probability, be fatal to my life. My life

may be of small consequence to a power whose whole career and existence is marked by cruelty and the sacrifice of human life, but I am of some value to my family, and I trust my rights and liberty are worthy the protection of the American government. I have the honor to remain, sir, your obedient servant,

Hon. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS,

WM. J. NAGLE.

United States Minister.

To the honorable members of the United States Congress in session assembled:

The humble petition of John Warren, now a "convict" in Kilmainham jail, county Dublin, Ireland:

GENTLEMEN: I, a citizen of the United States by adoption, respectfully submit the following: I am an Irishman by birth; by adoption an American citizen. Partly in pursuit of my avocation as a member of the American press, and on private business, to see old friends and relations, I arrived in Ireland in the latter end of May, 1867. Immediately after landing, on the 1st of June, I was arrested, cast into a dungeon, and kept closely confined in silence and solitude for nearly five months, without any charge having been preferred against me and without obtaining a hearing of any kind. On the 10th of October I was summarily ordered before a magistrate, and evidence sworn against me by a witness classed and known as an informer. I was committed on his evidence, indicted on the 25th of October, tried, and I stand now a convicted and sentenced felon for fifteen years' penal servitude on the uncorroborated testimony of the notorious and infamous perjurer and informer Corydon, who swore he knew me to belong to the Fenian confederacy in America in the year 1863. The indictment charged me with the overt act of the 5th of March in the county of Dublin, Ireland, although the Crown lawyers admit I was not bodily present, but was then in the city of New York. The British law claims ine to be a British subject, ignores my United States citizenship, and consequently your right to confer it. The Crown lawyers further hold all members of the so-called Fenian confederation guilty of the overt act of the 5th of March in the county of Dublin, Ireland. Corydon swears I was a member of the above-named confederation in America in 1863. England, claiming me as her subject, consequently indicts, arraigns, tries, convicts, and sentences me for an act committed in Ireland when I was in the city of New York, United States of America, and I am this moment a first-class convict in a British bastile, clothed in a suit of convict gray.

Gentlemen, my case is very plain. The English law under which I am claimed, as quoted by the judges who sat in my case, reads: "A British subject who removes to France or America owes the same allegiance to the Queen there as at home, twenty years hence as well as now. For it is a principle of universal law that the natural-born subject of one prince cannot by any act of his own, no, not by swearing allegiance to another, put off or discharge his natural allegiance to the former, for his natural allegiance was intrinsic and primitive and antecedent to the other, and cannot be divested without the concurrent act of that prince to whom it was due." Gentlemen, this law existed when the United States, on my forswearing all allegiance to all "foreign princes and potentates, more especially the Queen of England,” conferred on me the rights of citizenship. If America acknowledged that law, she has perpetrated on me the most unjust, the most fraudulent injury. If she did not acknowledge it then, why does she now? England has, by indicting, arraigning, trying, convicting, and sentencing me on the uncorroborated evidence of a perjured informer for an act claimed to have been committed in America, which act as represented was being a member of an Irish national organization in the United States of America in 1863, ignored my previous citizenship, the right of the United States to confer it, and consequently has defiantly enforced this law, and the government of the United States, as represented by Mr. Jolinson, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Adams, apparently coincide in this enforcement. If not, why were not some steps taken to defer action till your honorable body had an opportunity of adjudicating on so important a question? I ask you, gentlemen, as I lie to-night in my lonely dungeon, cut away from mother, wife, sisters, children, and friends, immured in a living tomb now for the last six months, what feeling must I have towards my government as represented in this matter? Why should it permit for an hour a citizen to stand convicted of treason-felony in Ireland on the ground of his being a member of an Irish national organization in America, and that, too, on the evidence of a perjured spy and informer? Which of the two governments up to the present is to me the more treacherous: the government which invites me to renounce all former allegiance whatsoever, confers upon me the full rights (on paper) of American citizenship, affixes its official seal to the act, and extracts a fee for so doing, and, when this citizenship is contemptuously and defiantly repudiated by the government whose allegiance I renounced, tolerates and abandons me to my fate, or the government from which I expect nothing, my natural enemy, the enemy of every aspirant for freedom, the enemy of my very existence, of the existence of my race, and of my adopted country?

Observe to what an extent run the claims of the British government. England claims, in the enforcement of what she calls a right, that several millions of the citizens of the United States are her subjects, and defiantly in proof of this has convicted me, with others, to the doom of penal servitude, after coquetting with Mr. Johnson, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Adams for five months about my release, for an occurrence which took place in Ireland when I was in America; thereby enforcing her claim on my allegiance to the letter. I cannot but admire England's independence. Has the chivalry of America departed? And yet, gentlemen, England goes still further in her claims. I find there is yet another of her laws which even claims the children and grandchildren of British subjects born in America as subjects. An eminent commentator on this law says: "But by several more modern statutes these restrictions are still further taken off, so that all children born out of the King's ligeance, whose fathers or grandfathers by the father's side were natural-born subjects, are now deemed to be natural subjects themselves to all intents and purposes, unless their said ancestors were attainted beyond the seas for high treason."

I admit that England does not presume to enforce this last-quoted statute at present, but should she be permitted to enforce the first with impunity, the assertion or nonassertion of the other will be with her a question of policy, not of principle, and she may at any time claim half the population of the United States as her subjects. Now, gentlemen, as I have before mentioned, my case is plain. I have quoted the law under which as a British subject I stand convicted for "treason-felony" on the evidence of a spy and perjured informer, and for being a member of an Irish national organization in America, as sworn, in 1863. You know also, gentlemen, the rights guaranteed to me by the Constitution of the United States and the naturalization laws. Am I under those laws a citizen of the United States and entitled to her full protection, or am I under the English statutes a British subject and amenable to English laws in America? I will state, gentlemen, in conclusion, that even as a British subject I have violated no British law. My name is connected with an alleged expedition, but there is not one iota of corroborative evidence to identify me in connection with it, as your honorable body may have learned from the published evidence long before you received this communication; and even if it did exist, the very evidence produced, purchased and perjured as it was, proved that if a hostile design ever existed it was abandoned, and that the parties were thrown on the shore by stress of weather and starvation. The only case they have established against me was that I landed in Ireland from a fishing boat, which fishing boat took me off a vessel out at sea. No documents, no arms; I attempted no disguise; had no connection with any person or persons in Ireland.

I again, gentlemen, repeat that I am suffering in an English bastile the most excruciating, degrading, and servile tortures, for no other proven offense, before my God, than that the paid informer Corydon swore that he knew ine in America to belong to an Irish national organization in America.

Gentlemen, in the name of our common country, in the name of freedom, in the name of God, I ask of you to take hold of this matter vigorously, and compel England to expunge from her law-books every presumption bearing on the rights of the American citizen. If she does not do it, wipe her from the face of the earth, and God will bless you.

KILMAINHAM JAIL, November 28, 1867.

JOHN WARREN.

Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward.

No. 1488.]

LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES,
London, December 4, 1867.

SIR: I have the honor to transmit a document published for the use of Parliament, containing the latest portion of the correspondence relative to the questions in dispute between the two countries.

From the tone of the reply of Lord Stanley, in connection with your dispatch, just received, No. 2093, of the 16th of November, it seems plain that nothing more can be expected from this negotiation. I shall, therefore, in accordance with your desire, give it out hereafter as so understood.

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.

Hon. WILLIAM H. SEWARD,

Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.

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NORTH AMERICA, NO. 2, (1867.)

FURTHER CORRESPONDENCE RESPECTING BRITISH AND AMERICAN CLAIMS ARISING OUT
OF THE LATE CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES.

No. 1.

Lord Stanley to Sir F. Wright Bruce.

FOREIGN OFFICE, September 10, 1867.

SIR: The minister of the United States called upon me to-day and communicated to me a dispatch, of which, however, he was not authorized to give me a copy, from Mr. Seward, dated the 12th of August, in reply to my dispatch to you of the 24th of May, respecting the mutual claims of the two countries on each other arising out of the late civil war.

By this dispatch Mr. Adams is authorized to assure me that Mr. Seward did not understand my previous offer of arbitration to apply only to claims arising out of the depredations of the Alabama, to the exclusion of those arising out of the depredations of vessels of the like character, but, on the contrary, understood the offer to apply equally to all such claims.

The President, Mr. Seward says, considers the terms of the offer of the British government to go to arbitration upon the question whether, in the matters connected with all those vessels out of whose depredations the claims of American citizens have arisen, the course pursued by the British government and those who acted upon its authority was such as would involve a moral responsibility to make good, either in whole or in part, the losses of American citizens, to be at once comprehensive and sufficiently precise to include all the claims of American citizens for depredations on their commerce during the late rebellion, which have been the subject of complaint on the part of the government of the United States.

But Mr. Seward goes on to say that the government of the United States would deem itself at liberty to insist before the arbiter that the actual proceedings and relations of the British government, its officers, agents, and subjects, towards the United States in regard to the rebellion and the rebels, as they occurred during that rebellion, are among the matters which are connected with the vessels whose depredations are complained of; just as in the case of general claims, alluded to in my dispatch, the actual proceedings and relations of her Majesty's government, its officers, agents, and subjects, in regard to the United States in regard to the rebellion and the rebels, are necessarily connected with the transactions out of which those general claims arose. Mr. Seward further observes that my plan seems to be to constitute two descriptions of tribunals: one an arbiter to determine the question of the moral responsibility of the British government in regard to the vessels of the Alabama class; and the other a mixed commission, to adjudicate the so-called general claims of both sides; and a contingent reference to the same or other mixed commissions, to ascertain and determine the amount of damages for indemnity to be awarded in the cases examined by the first tribunal in the event of a decision of moral responsibility in favor of the United States. But Mr. Seward says that the government of the United States do not consider any distinction as to principle between the two tribunals to be necessary, and that in every case they agree only to unrestricted arbitration. It may be convenient, indeed, that the claims should be distributed between the two tribunals, both of which, however, the government of the United States consider should proceed upon the same principle and be clothed with the same powers.

Mr. Seward concludes his dispatch by saying that the President will be gratified if the explanations contained in it should conduce to the removal of the difficulties which have heretofore prevented the two governments from coming to an amicable and friendly understanding and arrangement.

I reserve for a future occasion any observations that I may have to offer on Mr.
Seward's dispatch.
I am, &c.,

STANLEY.

No. 2..

Lord Stanley to Mr. Ford.

FOREIGN OFFICE, November 16, 1867. SIR: In my dispatch to Sir F. Bruce of the 10th September, I confined myself to a mere statement of the substance of a dispatch from Mr. Seward which Mr. Adams had communicated to me in reply to my dispatch of the 24th of May respecting the claims arising on either side out of the events of the late civil war in the United States.