by it, they could not see
their people treated unjustly without a protest. The priest was
independent of the landlord; for, if he suffered from his vengeance, he
suffered alone, and his own sufferings weighed lightly in the balance
compared with the general good. The priest was a gentleman by education,
and often by birth; and this gave him a social status which his
uneducated people could not possess.[557] Such, was the position of
Father Nicholas Sheehy, the parish priest of Clogheen. He had interfered
in the vain hope of protecting his unfortunate parishioners from
injustice; and, in return, he was himself made the victim of injustice.
He was accused of encouraging a French invasion--a fear which was always
present to the minds of the rulers, as they could not but know that the
Irish had every reason to seek for foreign aid to free them from
domestic wrongs. He was accused of encouraging the Whiteboys, because,
while he denounced their crimes, he accused those who had driven them to
these crimes as the real culprits. He was accused of treason, and a
reward of L300 was offered for his apprehension. Conscious of his
innocence, he gave himself up at once to justice, though he might easily
have fled the country. He was tried in Dublin and acquitted. But his
persecutors were not satisfied. A charge of murder was got up against
him; and although the body of the man could never be found, although it
was sworn that he had left the country, although an _alibi_ was proved
for the priest, he was condemned and executed. A gentleman of property
and position came forward at the trial to prove that Father Sheehy had
slept in his house the very night on which he was accused of having
committed the murder; but the moment he appeared in court, a clergyman
who sat on the bench had him taken into custody, on pretence of having
killed a corporal and a sergeant in a riot. The pretence answered the
purpose. After Father Sheehy's execution Mr. Keating was tried; and, as
there was not even a shadow of proof, he was acquitted. But it was too
late to save the victim.

At the place of execution, Father Sheehy most solemnly declared, on the
word of a dying man, that he was not guilty either of murder or of
treason; that he never had any intercourse, either directly or
indirectly, with the French; and that he had never known of any such
intercourse being practised by others. Notwithstanding this solemn
declaration of a dying man, a recent writer