the manner in which it occurred to the simple plotters, just in time, that if they carried out this plan they must send the prisoner himself flying into the air. The Clerkenwell conspirators had either not seen the popular drama or had missed the point of its broadest joke."
A barrel of gunpowder was exploded close to the wall. Sixty yards of the prison wall were blown in, and many small dwellings in the vicinity were shattered. A dozen persons were killed, one hundred and twenty were wounded, and there were other serious consequences. Had the prisoners been near the wall, they would have been killed. Five men and a woman were put on trial for the crime, but only one man was convicted. He was found guilty on the evidence of an informer and executed. It was agreed that the persons who were concerned in this plot were "of that irresponsible crew who hang on to the skirts of all secret political associations, and whose adhesion is only one other reason for regarding such associations as deplorable and baneful. Such men are of the class who bring a curse, who bring many curses, on even the best cause that strives to work in secret. They prowl after the heels of organized conspiracy, and what it will not do they are ready in some fatal moment to attempt."
And this brings us back to the last and most important of Irish national rescue projects.
