Читать книгу The Crime of the Century; Or, The Assassination of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin - Henry M. Hunt - Страница 22

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For a time Irish fealty proved equal to the situation, and no outcry was raised because the treasure was wasted, the lives of brothers lost, and the sentiment of the whole world turned against the cause of the freedom of Ireland. Presently, however, a demand was made by the Executive Board upon the local Camps for more money, and dissatisfaction began to manifest itself. It seemed incredible that the immense sum which but a few years before had been at the disposal of the Triangle could have been absorbed, and that, as was claimed the order was thousands of dollars in debt. An investigation was demanded, and the Triangle responded with its rod of iron. It declared that opposition should be crushed out. Member after member, and then Camp after Camp was expelled. It was at this time that Dr. Cronin came to the front. He was a collossus. He insisted that the members of the organization had a right to know what was being done with their money, whether the immense amounts levied and wrung from patriotic Irishmen in America, had been well used, or whether it had found its way through other channels into the pockets of financial conspirators. The Triangle did not deign to notice him for a while, but his following increased from scores to hundreds and from hundreds to thousands, and it became evident that the bold, intrepid Irishman who had forged his way from poverty to an honorable position in the metropolis of the West was the man of all men of whom to be feared. The fiat went out that Cronin's expulsion from the order was necessary to the future safety of the organization. An opportunity was soon found. In his own Camp, Dr. Cronin had read a circular from one of the Camps that had been expelled, protesting against the action of the Executive Board. For doing this he was charged with treason. This was in 1885. He was brought to trial in Chicago before a committee consisting of Lawrence Buckley, Frank Murray, John O'Malley, Daniel Coughlin, the detective, who later was to be charged with participation in his murder, and Henry LeCaron, alias Beach, afterward a British spy, and who had been introduced into the order by Alexander Sullivan. The latter acted as prosecutor. With such a trial committee it was little wonder but that the physician should have been pronounced guilty of treason, and that his expulsion from the order should have been decreed.

The "treasonable" letter was as follows: