The Cronin murder trial ended yesterday, after prolonged deliberation on the part of the jury, in the conviction of four of the five prisoners arraigned. By the laws of the State of Illinois the jury not only decide the issues of guilty or not guilty, but also award the punishment of the convicts. To this fact is probably due the long delay in the present case in the announcement of the verdict. The jury have acquitted John F. Beggs. They have awarded imprisonment for life to Daniel Coughlin, Martin Burke, and Patrick O’Sullivan, whom they convict of murder; and imprisonment for three years to John Kunze, whose offence is reduced to manslaughter, and whose part in the crime was shown to be of a very minor kind.[7] Now that the case is over, it seems desirable to state in a connected form the theory upon which this remarkable trial was instituted by the State of Illinois.
The prisoners, Daniel Coughlin, Martin Burke, John F. Beggs, Patrick O’Sullivan, and John Kunze, were indicted for the murder of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin, on May 4, 1889. The case naturally created intense excitement throughout the State, affecting as it did many and complex interests of party, race, and creed. Committees were formed and funds were raised for the prosecution and for the defence, and the prisoners were convicted and acquitted on the platform and in the Press, with that reckless disregard of common decency which disgraces the partisan warfare of America. American judicial proceedings are, however, framed to work in a society which habitually indulges itself in debauches of partisan fury, even while prisoners stand at trial for their lives, and accordingly the most elaborate safeguards are employed to secure the impartiality of the jury. The State and the prisoners exercise the right of challenge both peremptorily and for cause, in a degree undreamt of in this country. Each juror, before he is sworn to try the issues, is subjected to the most merciless examination and cross-examination by counsel for the State and for the prisoners, and challenges “for cause” are allowed on grounds which in English eyes appear ludicrously trivial. The prisoners in the Cronin case were, by law, entitled to twenty peremptory challenges apiece, or, as they combined their challenges, to one hundred peremptory challenges in all, and the State was also entitled to one hundred peremptory challenges. The work of impanelling the jury began on August 30, and ended on October 22. Seven full working weeks were spent in this preliminary labour. No fewer than 1115 unfortunate citizens of Cook County were exposed to the rigid scrutiny of counsel for the State and counsel for the defence. Of these, 927 were “excused,” to use the American euphemism, for cause, while 78 were peremptorily challenged by the State, and 97 were similarly challenged by the defence. Thus the State had 22 challenges unexhausted, and the defence only three when the tale was completed. At last, on October 24, the State’s Attorney “got down to trial” and made his opening speech. The case relied upon and proved by the State depended on the following assertions and inferences.
Dr. Cronin was summoned from his home at half-past seven on the evening of May 4, and never returned. On May 22 his naked body, bearing marks of violence, was found in the catch-basin of a sewer. The theory of the prosecution was that he was murdered in pursuance of a conspiracy, and that the accused, together with other persons not in custody, were members of that conspiracy. The jury by their verdict have declared that Dr. Cronin was so murdered, and that all the prisoners save Beggs did conspire to murder him. This conspiracy arose from a bitter quarrel within the ranks of the United Brotherhood, or Clan-na-Gael. The history of that organisation was sketched by State’s Attorney Longenecker in his opening speech. It was founded in 1869, to “free” Ireland by open warfare. Irishmen joined it from “patriotism,” Irishmen joined it for the purposes of American political warfare, and others “for the sake of the money that was in it.” The organisation grew “until now it stretches from ocean to ocean in our land.” It was organised by districts, each with its District Member and District “Camps.” Each “Camp” had a public name, by which alone it was known to the general public. Thus, “Camp 20,” to which several of the prisoners belonged, was called the “Columbia Club,” and other “Camps” were known as “Literary Clubs,” and so on. Prior to 1881 the organisation was governed by an Executive Body, which was composed of the District Members. In 1879 this Board consisted of fifteen members.
In 1881 a National Convention of the United Brotherhood was held in Chicago. At that Convention the Executive Body was reduced to five members, and Alexander Sullivan, Feeley, and Boland were appointed thereon. These three men constituted a majority of the new Board, and, in the State’s Attorney’s phrase, “took charge” of it. “They then adopted,” he says, “what is called the dynamite policy. They called it ‘active work.’ They adopted a policy to blow up property and individuals, and that policy was adopted immediately after they got possession of the Executive Board of the organisation.” Moreover, this new Executive Body inserted a provision in the oath of the organisation binding all members to obey the Executive Body without question. “If they directed a man to go and kill another man in England it had to be done, and they had no right to question the order.” In 1884 this controlling Board adopted the symbol of the Triangle, and issued orders under that designation. The whole object of this Junta was to steal the funds of the organisation, and the State’s Attorney roundly accuses them of endeavouring to effect this object by acts of well-nigh incredible infamy. They pretended to their organisation that great sums were being expended upon “active work.” To lend colour to this fiction they procured a certain amount of such work to be done. They sent emissaries to this country. But they failed to provide them with the funds indispensable for their personal safety. The men were referred to an agent of the organisation in England, and when they had reached this side of the Atlantic precautions were taken that they should not too speedily return. When the dynamite emissary landed in the United Kingdom, “I say to you,” says the State’s Attorney, “that somebody there made known who the man was, and what he was detailed to do, and he was immediately arrested and thrown into prison. To-day the prison doors in England are locked against twenty or more men who were sent there by that Board.”
The next trick of the Triangle, to hide their embezzlement of the funds, was to circulate a rumour that English detectives were watching the Order, and to get the biennial Convention postponed upon that plea. A meeting was held of the friends of the Triangle, “and they destroyed every vestige of work they had done. They destroyed their books, and then sent out a circular showing that the Order was indebted to them $13,000, notwithstanding when they took hold of it they had a fund of $250,000 in the treasury.” Naturally these proceedings led to great dissension in the Order, and finally to a split in its ranks. To the quarrel that thus arose, Dr. Cronin, on the theory advanced by the prosecution, and accepted by the jury, owed his death. Cronin from the first protested against the action of the Triangle. In 1885 he was tried for treason to the Order. Alexander Sullivan prosecuted, and the convict Daniel Coughlin sat on the Trial Committee. Cronin was convicted and expelled. Thereupon Cronin joined a new organisation formed by the seceding members of the Order, and no further steps were taken until June 1888. In that month a joint convention of the two factions was held in Chicago with a view to reunion. At that convention Cronin charged the old Triangle, which had then ceased to exist, with misappropriation of the funds of the Order, and with misconduct towards their emissaries to Europe. It was resolved that the charges should be investigated, and a Trial Committee of six, three from each faction, was appointed to try Sullivan, Feeley, and Boland. Of that Trial Committee, Cronin was a member. A memorandum in Cronin’s handwriting, containing the joint findings of Cronin himself, and one P. M‘Cahey, as members of the Trial Committee, and also minutes of the evidence adduced at such trial, were found amongst Cronin’s papers, and proved at the coroner’s inquest. These documents were, of course, inadmissible at the actual trial, according to a well-known technical rule of evidence, but, as they undoubtedly guided the State’s Attorney and his associates in framing the case against the prisoners, and as, moreover, they possess a very special and personal interest for Englishmen, we do not feel constrained to ignore their contents here.
The Trial Committee, it appears, met at Genesee House, Buffalo, on August 20, 1888. Alexander Sullivan objected that “one of the committee was a malignant enemy of his,” and he named Cronin as that enemy. Feeley and Boland joined in Sullivan’s objection, but Cronin denied that he had any personal enmity to Sullivan and the objection was overruled. Boland then charged the notorious John Devoy, who was a friend of Cronin’s, and attended the Trial Committee, presumably in his interest, with being a British spy. Cronin defended Devoy, the committee settled down to work, and the trial proceeded. The minutes of the evidence taken by this committee, and found in Cronin’s own handwriting, form one of the most startling documents ever produced in any Court. Four principal witnesses were examined in support of the charges made against the Triangle of neglecting to supply the emissaries actually engaged in dynamiting with funds, and of neglecting the families of those emissaries who had perished by explosions, or had been sent to penal servitude in this country. The first witness was himself one of the London dynamiters. The last was the widow of Mackey Lomasney, who was blown up while attempting to destroy London Bridge. The names of the male witnesses are not given. The first witness swore that after the Boston Convention of 1884, one Donovan, “who acted as agent for the body,” and “was then in the employ of General Kerwin,” asked him if “he could furnish enough men to accomplish a certain amount of active work.” The witness procured one recruit. Donovan and John J. Moroney paid their steerage passage, and gave them $100 each “to carry on work.” For further funds they were referred to “the agent on the other side.” The two dynamiters crossed to this country, but the funds were not forthcoming. The agent, it is satisfactory to learn, “was sure he had been betrayed by some one,” and it is yet more gratifying to know that he “is now in prison.” The witness then gives the following account of his exploits in this country, and of the base ingratitude of his employers:—
“At the agent’s request, work was delayed six weeks. I at last told him I would do the work. There were four of us.... I finally induced him to give orders to do the work. This was on Thursday. On Saturday we did it. After the work was done I met him the same evening. He remained in capital city seven days afterward. I was so reduced for funds that I prevailed upon him to give me four pounds of the sixteen he had left. On landing in this country had three-and-one-half pounds.... I at once complained to Donovan and Moroney, and through them to the executive, or General Kerwin, of the treatment I had received, and the culpable neglect of the F. C. About the last of February 1885, Donovan furnished me with $10 with which to reach my home.
“Q. How many operations did you perform?—A. Three. We always bade each other good-bye after each meeting, thinking it might be our last meeting on earth. I have learned that, in order to get back, the other man who went over with me had to sell his clothes to get passage-money. He came with a sprained ankle. In July or August 1885, he received $7 from Moroney.”
Subsequently the witness found that the mother of Cunningham, the dynamiter, was in want. He complained to Moroney and General Kerwin, whereupon Kerwin told him he ought to be expelled. The munificent sum of $100 was finally sent by the “F. C.” (Executive Body) to the mother of their dupe Cunningham, now undergoing in this country the just but awful punishment of penal servitude for life. The witness further ascertained that Mrs. Mackey Lomasney, the widow of Captain Mackey Lomasney, who “was killed in London, and was assured, witness was told, that his family would never want,” was in great distress. The relatives of Dr. Gallagher, another dynamite convict under a life-long sentence, were also in want. A hundred dollars was raised for Mrs. Gallagher. Then comes this terrible statement, a statement which should warn the miserable tools of the Clan-na-Gael what kind of succour they may look for from their chiefs when their “heroism” lands them in the dock. “I requested,” says this same witness, “that the men on trial on the other side should be defended. General Kerwin said that friendless men were better off in such cases.” To the men who have risked their lives at its bidding, the Order, with its ample revenues, grudges the few pounds needed for their legal defence, and coldly abandons them “friendless” to their fate.
The next witness confirms the above statements as to the conduct of the organisation towards Mrs. Cunningham. In July 1885, he succeeded John Moroney as D. M. (District Member), and in October of that year he “went out as an organiser of the National League in the West.” “I saw General Kerwin and told him that he should send money to Mrs. Cunningham, that the lady was hurt on the subject of being neglected by us. He said he would send it.”
The cross-examination of this witness was directed to show that he entertained animus against Kerwin and Boland for endeavouring to defeat his candidature for the presidency of the National League, which candidature, he alleges, had been officially adopted by the Clan-na-Gael. “The slate,” he says, “was Baldwin, Minton, and Carroll for F. C. (Executive Body), and myself as President of the League.” Boland asked him why he would not take the secretaryship.
The third witness, “a member since the beginning of the old organisation,” knew Mackey Lomasney, and remembers his departure for Europe in August 1884, with his brother Jim, and a third conspirator. The witness describes his efforts to obtain relief from the organisation for Mackey Lomasney’s widow. In 1885 he went to Newhaven and saw Dr. Wallace (who was then “D.”), Condon, and Boland. Boland “denied all responsibility,” and alleged that Mrs. Mackey Lomasney had been supplied with plenty of money. The witness called on Carroll. “He professed utter ignorance of the whole affair. I said, ‘By God, you must see her.’ Carroll offered the witness $100, which he refused. I said, ‘You know how to send this, as you have the others; if you respect the memory of the dead, and the widow and the orphan made so by your act, do your duty by all.’” The witness further states that Mrs. Mackey Lomasney continued to be in a poverty-stricken state, without coal or clothing, until August 1886.
The last witness was Mrs. Susan Mackey Lomasney herself. Upon Alexander Sullivan’s request, made presumably to show his reliance on the bare word of a dynamiter’s wife, she was not sworn. Mrs. Mackey Lomasney stated that her husband went away in August 1884, and that since that date she had received $1000 from the organisation. She called on Alexander Sullivan in 1885, but did not ask for help. In August 1886, she again visited Sullivan, explained to him the state of her affairs, and asked for help. “He asked me for a schedule of my liabilities—$200. He would attend to the matter. He gave me no money, nor offered me any.” Sullivan told the witness not to mention his name to any one. She then called on “James Q.,” who “talked to her about Father Dorney,” but gave her no help. The witness was so poor at this time that she borrowed a dress to visit Sullivan. Several weeks after the witness again called on Sullivan and applied for a loan of $100, which she obtained. That was all she ever got from Sullivan. In cross-examination Mrs. Mackey Lomasney admitted that her husband wrote to her from Europe, saying he had received money from Mr. Sullivan. The witness did not know the amount.
“Here,” say the minutes, “Mr. S. admitted that (Mackey) Lomasney was sent by the organisation.”
The Trial Committee was divided in opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused. Four members were for an acquittal. Two, Cronin and M‘Cahey, were for a conviction on the principal charges, and, in particular, on the charges of “scandalous and shameful neglect” of “the family of one who lost his life in the service of this Order,” and on that of issuing a fraudulent financial report and squandering the funds.
Dr. Cronin’s documents illustrate many interesting points. Amongst other things they prove that he, his friends Devoy and M‘Cahey and their faction, are to the full as wicked scoundrels as Sullivan, Feeley, Boland, and the party of the Triangle. The minority report does not condemn the Triangle for dynamiting, but for dishonest dynamiting. It does not reprobate the despatch of miscreants like Mackey Lomasney to work slaughter and destruction in the heart of a great city, but the subsequent neglect of the Order to keep faith with their emissary, by providing for his widow. It acquits the Triangle of wilfully omitting to supply the actual authors of the dynamite explosion with funds to fly from the law, but it severely censures their “agent” for the omission. Both wings of the Clan-na-Gael were engaged in the same devilish plots, and while every one must rejoice that the assassins even of a dynamiter should meet their lawful doom, Cronin merits no more sympathy as an individual than “Captain Mackey” himself. He was brutally murdered, while himself engaged in plotting the wholesale murder of others.
On the theory of the State’s Attorney, now endorsed by the verdict of the American jury, it was Cronin’s persistent efforts to have the evidence taken by the Trial Committee published with the report, that sealed his doom. That committee, as has been seen, sat in August 1888. The report did not appear while Cronin lived. But on the day of his murder the Executive Body of the Clan-na-Gael met, and on the next day, or the next day but one, the report was published to the Order. The evidence was not then issued with the report, but a protest from Alexander Sullivan was annexed thereto, in which he charged Cronin as a perjurer, and a traitor to the Irish cause. All the prisoners except Kunze were members of the Clan-na-Gael. All those members belonged to the same “Camp” of the Order, known in the ranks of the Order as “Camp 20,” and in public as the “Columbia Club.” The prisoner, John F. Beggs, was “Senior Guardian” of the “Camp,” and an intimate friend of Alexander Sullivan’s. On February 8, 1889, the “Camp” met, with Beggs in the chair, and from that meeting the prosecution dates the conspiracy to murder Cronin. A member got up and said that they should investigate the affairs of the Triangle, these men who had robbed them of their funds. The prisoner Coughlin and others demanded the speaker’s authority for this statement. He replied that he had heard part of the report of the Trial Committee appointed to try the Triangle read in another “Camp.” That other “Camp” was Dr. Cronin’s. The State alleged that Beggs made a violent speech and declared that he would not have these attacks made upon the Triangle, and that it had to be stopped if it took blood. Coughlin at once moved that a secret committee of three be appointed to investigate. The motion was carried, and the prisoner Beggs, as Senior Guardian, was directed to nominate the committee. All the accused except O’Sullivan and Kunze attended this meeting of “Camp 20.” Two days later Beggs wrote to his superior officer, a man named Spellman, and informed him that “it was charged that the S. G. of the Columbia Club at a recent meeting read to the assembled members the proceedings of the Trial Committee.” On February 17, Spellman disclaimed any jurisdiction “to inflict the penalty” in the case. On February 18, Beggs replied that the matter had to be investigated or there would be trouble. The State’s Attorney argued that this secret committee of three was in fact appointed to try, and did try, the murdered man, and that Spellman’s disclaimer of jurisdiction to inflict “the penalty” proves that Cronin had been convicted and already stood for sentence at the bar of the Order.
On February 19, a man giving the name of Simonds, who is not in custody, took rooms at 117 Clark Street, Chicago, immediately opposite to Dr. Cronin’s office. On the same day he bought some furniture and a carpet. He asked for goods of the cheapest quality, and stated that he required them only for temporary use. He also bought from the same dealers the largest packing trunk they had, a valise, and a trunk strap. He told the shopman that the first strap supplied to him was not large enough, and a larger one was procured. All these articles were put into the rooms at 117 Clark Street.
On March 20, a man, proved to be the convict Martin Burke, hired Carlson cottage, under the name of “Frank Williams,” for one month from Mr. Carlson, who himself lives next door. Burke then went to the prisoner P. O’Sullivan, whose premises immediately adjoin the Carlson cottage, and told O’Sullivan that he had taken it. Burke and another man not in custody next removed all the furniture, the trunk, the valise, and the carpet from 117 Clark Street into the Carlson cottage. This removal took place on the evening of March 20, the day Burke took the cottage.
O’Sullivan is an ice man by trade. On March 29, nine days after the taking of the cottage, O’Sullivan tried to find one Justice Mahoney, to come and make a contract between him and Dr. Cronin. O’Sullivan did not find the justice on March 29, but some time in April they went together to Cronin’s office, and a contract was made between O’Sullivan and Cronin, whereby Cronin agreed to attend to O’Sullivan’s workmen. O’Sullivan then gave Cronin some cards and said, “I may be out of town and my card be presented.” O’Sullivan’s business was not dangerous. No accident had ever occurred amongst his men. Numbers of doctors lived between O’Sullivan’s place of business and Dr. Cronin’s office, which is nearly an hour’s drive from O’Sullivan’s yard. “What,” the State asked, “was the object of this contract, made after the discussion in ‘Camp 20,’ and after Beggs had been directed to appoint the secret committee?”
On April 20, Martin Burke, under the alias of “Frank Williams,” returned to the Carlson cottage and paid a second month’s rent in advance. He had never occupied the cottage. He said his sister was in hospital and could not come to housekeeping. The Carlsons grew uneasy about their tenants. They inquired of their neighbour O’Sullivan about these men, who had taken their house but never moved into it. O’Sullivan said, “You will get your rent; it is all right,” and told them he knew one of their tenants. Shortly before May 4 the convict Coughlin was heard to declare in a “saloon” or public bar that a certain north-side man, a leading Catholic, or a leading Irishman, would soon bite the ground, or to use words of the like effect.
On the evening of May 3 there was a meeting of “Camp 20.” A member asked if the secret committee appointed in February to inquire into the alleged publication of the report of the Triangle Trial Committee in Cronin’s “Camp” had itself reported. The State alleged that Beggs, the Senior Guardian, answered, “That committee is to report to me. The ‘Camp’ has nothing to do with that.”
Between eleven and one o’clock on May 4, the convict Coughlin went to Dinan’s livery stable and ordered a horse and buggy to be ready about seven that evening “for a friend.” Later he telephoned to the convict O’Sullivan to go out. About 7.15 in the evening Coughlin’s friend came and asked for the buggy. The ostler harnessed a white horse. The stranger objected to the colour, but the ostler said it was the only horse he could have. The stranger then drove to Dr. Cronin’s. He reached Cronin’s home about 7.20, gave him one of O’Sullivan’s cards, saying, “O’Sullivan is out of town, and here is his card”—the very words used by O’Sullivan himself when he made his contract with Cronin—and told Cronin that one of O’Sullivan’s men had his leg crushed, and that the doctor was wanted immediately. The doctor took his instruments and some cotton with him and drove hastily off in the buggy. He was never seen alive again.
The State allege that the convict Burke was at the Carlson cottage on the night of May 3, together with another man, after the meeting of “Camp 20.” On the night of May 4 Burke was also there, and he bade good-night to his landlord and neighbour, old Mr. Carlson, at a late hour that evening. A casual passer-by saw a man whose description answers to that of Cronin get out of a buggy and hastily enter Carlson cottage, and she afterwards heard blows and cries. Between eight and nine that night, two men, whose descriptions answer to those of Coughlin and Kunze, were also seen to drive up to Carlson cottage, and Coughlin was seen to enter it.
On the night of May 4-5 a waggon was seen at three different points by policemen and night-watchmen in the neighbourhood of Lake Michigan. There were three men in the waggon, a driver and two others, who, when the waggon was first observed, sat on a large chest which the policemen took to be a tool-chest. At one in the morning of May 5, the watchman at Edgewater challenged these men in the waggon, and asked them what they were doing. They said they were trying to find the lake shore drive. The drive is not continued up to this point, and the watchman gave them some directions, after which they drove away. They were seen later on in the same waggon, but without the chest. The catch-basin in which Dr. Cronin’s body was subsequently found is half a mile from Edgewater. On the morning of May 5, a trunk identical in all respects with that purchased by the tenant of 117 Clark Street, in February, and afterwards removed by Burke to the Carlson cottage, was found between this catch-basin and the city, about three-quarters of a mile from the catch-basin. During the trial Dr. Cronin’s clothes were found in a valise in the sewer about a quarter of a mile further on from the point where the trunk was found. This valise corresponded in all respects with that bought by Simonds and delivered to him at 117 Clark Street, and afterwards removed by Burke from Clark Street to Carlson cottage. It will be remembered that Cronin took cotton with him to dress the wounds of his expected patient on the evening of May 4. Cotton was found in the trunk on May 5. It was smeared with blood, as also were the sides of trunk.
On May 6 the convict Martin Burke called at a tinsmith’s shop, and asked the smith to solder up a box for him. The smith wanted to raise the lid to do his work. Martin Burke told him not to do so, and made him secure the box by passing a metal band round it and soldering the band. The smith had read some report as to the disappearance of Dr. Cronin two days before. While he was soldering the box he asked Burke what he thought of the matter. Burke replied with coarse abuse of Cronin, denounced him as a spy, and declared he would turn up all right.
On May 13, two men called on old Mrs. Carlson, the wife of the owner of Carlson cottage, and tendered her another month’s rent. She refused the offer, as she said she wished the cottage to be occupied, and she added that no rent was due until May 20. Shortly afterwards the Carlsons received a letter from their tenants saying that they were sorry to give up the building, and sorry that they had had to paint the floor, but that that was done for their sister.
On May 20, the date of the expiry of “Williams’” lease of the cottage, the Carlsons entered the building by the window. They found the whole of the house in confusion and signs that a severe struggle had taken place therein. All the Clark Street furniture was there, but the trunk was gone, the valise was gone, and the carpet was gone. The walls and the floor were stained with blood. Paint had been hastily daubed over the floor. The arm of the rocking-chair was wrenched off and a key, which afterwards proved to fit the lock of the bloodstained trunk discovered on May 5 near Edgewater, was found under a bureau, stained with some of the paint which had been applied to the floor.
On May 21, the Carlsons reported the state of their cottage to the police, and on May 22 some men engaged in cleaning the sewers found the naked body of Cronin in the catch-basin. Some cotton similar to that taken away by the doctor on the evening of May 4, and similar to that found in the bloody trunk on May 5, was also found with the body in the catch-basin. The head of the corpse was cut in a dozen different places on the back and temples.
As soon as the body was identified, Martin Burke fled from Chicago. He crossed the Canadian frontier, and was finally traced to Winnipeg, where he was arrested under an assumed name. He had taken a ticket from Winnipeg to Liverpool.
Kunze has rightly escaped with a much less severe sentence than his co-conspirators. The more material of the allegations against him, in addition to the fact mentioned above of his having driven Coughlin to the cottage on the night of the murder, are that he was seen in the rooms hired by Simonds at 117 Clark Street, and that he told a fellow-workman after the murder, but before the discovery of the body, that he knew Cronin was murdered, and that the body would never be found.
The substantive defence appears to have consisted chiefly of a series of alibis. They were of the familiar Irish type—a type which in the graphic American tongue is described as “lop-sided.”
Full reports of the speeches for the defence and of the concluding arguments for the State have not yet reached this country, and can hardly be expected for some days. But whatever the line taken by counsel for the prisoners may have been, it has failed to prevent a purely American jury of citizens of Cook County from convicting and sentencing to severe punishment four members of as foul and wicked a conspiracy as ever was hatched by Irish brains. That conspiracy, as the evidence shows, was itself the outcome of those intestine quarrels that by a just retribution ever corrode the heart of the Irish-American plots against this country. It was the State’s Attorney’s cue to paint Dr. Cronin as an innocent and patriotic Irishman, murdered by the hands of villainous rivals. But the true nature of the patriotic society to which Dr. Cronin belonged, and to the hands of whose members he owes his dreadful end, can hardly escape the American public when they come to study the records of the Cronin trial and the verdict of the Chicago jury. Whether that study will nerve the honest citizens of the Republic to rise against the tyranny of Irish machine-men, and purge their name and nation of the stain of harbouring and tolerating such associations, remains to be seen. At any rate, the people of Illinois are to be congratulated on their victory—a victory which, in spite of endless “exceptions” taken on behalf of the prisoners throughout the case, and the endless series of appeals allowed by American law, will hardly be affected in the long run by any fresh proceedings. On the other hand, the convictions may not improbably result in some of the convicts turning informers more patrio, and thus bringing the real prime movers in the murder, whose existence is widely believed in in America, in turn to their doom.—The Times, 17th December 1889.