there had been opposition within the government, which he had been unable to overcome.27
It is clear that Hearne’s credentials as a Home Rule activist were militating against him; he had made an enemy or enemies in high places.28 O’Higgins expressed the hope that Davitt would find a place for him on his staff and the latter readily agreed.29 Thus Hearne became a command legal staff officer.
He was appointed to the army’s Western Command. The circumstances of this have been described by Calton Younger in an account which captures the drama and hazardous nature of serving the young state:
Seán Mac Eoin had recently been promoted to major-general and appointed G.O.C. of the Western Command, an appointment he accepted reluctantly. He was a man of action and didn’t want to be tied down by administrative work. He would accept the command, he told Michael Collins, only if he were given a legal officer and a quartermaster. Collins quickly produced John Hearne, who afterwards reached ambassadorial rank. Hearne was rushed down to O’Callaghan’s, the military outfitters, where he exchanged his natty lawyer’s dress for an army uniform. He emerged with a Sam Browne belt that creaked its newness and a small holster. Having been issued with a large revolver, he took his place in McEoin’s car to travel to Athlone. As they set off, Hearne suddenly realised that McEoin had no escort and asked rather anxiously where it was. McEoin laughed. ‘Haven’t I got you?’ he said and, pointing to the revolver added, ‘and that’.30
Hearne was commissioned at the rank of commandant, effective from 12 October 1922.31
The duties of a command legal staff officer were to advise the general officer commanding on all matters relating to military law and courts martial; to direct and generally supervise the administration of military law in the command area; and to provide for the attendance of a legal officer at every court martial held in that area.32 The position was an important one in a country experiencing major civil disturbance, where military courts took the place of civilian ones. The courts had jurisdiction to try persons for offences such as attacks upon the national army; unauthorised possession of arms, ammunition or explosives; and the seizure and destruction of property.33 These same courts had powers to inflict punishments which included fines, penal servitude, imprisonment, deportation, internment and death.34 As legal officer of the Western Command, Hearne was responsible for the conduct of military courts in an area which included the western seaboard counties, as well as Longford, Roscommon, Sligo and Leitrim.35
His son, Maurice, has recorded that his father’s military promotion and attendant duties ‘placed Dad in somewhat of a dilemma’. He did not believe that capital punishment acted as a deterrent to criminality, especially in times of armed conflict, and that it left no margin for human error. The matter became a subject of discourse between them when they lived in Washington during Hearne’s tenure as Ambassador to the United States. In 1951, both of them went to hear the unsuccessful appeal of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg against the death sentences imposed on them for espionage. According to Maurice, it was to his father’s great relief that he was never appointed to conduct any case before a military court involving capital punishment.36
In considering Hearne’s attitude to his role and to the prevailing disorder, recourse must be had to surmise in the absence of personal papers. Cahir Davitt offers us an insight. Referring to those to whom he offered positions as legal staff officers, he commented that ‘once they had been given the opportunity of serving the state when it appeared to be in some danger, they felt it to be their duty, as citizens, not to refuse it [the position]’.37 Furthermore, reflecting on the position in the country, he observed:
Like the majority of the people, I regarded the provisional government as being the de jure as well as the de facto government of the state. I believed that it was not only its right but its plain and manifest duty to assert its authority and to protect the citizens in the exercise of their fundamental rights, to the undisturbed possession and enjoyment of their property and the lawful expression of their opinions. I believed that in order to do this it was essential to suppress the opposition of the Four Courts executive [anti-Treaty IRA leaders] and to prevent the use and abuse of the power they had unlawfully usurped. I believed that for the purposes of doing so the government had every right to use military force as well as other legitimate means, including the taking of human life, if necessary … Many attacks, in a sense all attacks, upon members of the government forces were made by men whom those attacked had every right and reason to regard as civilians. The Catholic hierarchy in a statement made from Maynooth in April [1922] had condemned the usurpation of power by the Four Courts executive; and in a joint pastoral letter of October 10 had stigmatised such attacks as being ‘morally only a system of murder and assassination’.38
It is reasonable to suggest that Hearne would have shared many, if not most of the sentiments recorded by Davitt relating to the circumstances facing the government and the response of Cosgrave and his ministers to them. Like their author, Hearne was loyal to the Free State and would likely have agreed with the view of the Civil War articulated by O’Higgins at Oxford University in 1924: ‘The right of the people to found a state on the basis of the Treaty which had been signed by their plenipotentiaries and endorsed by their parliament had to be vindicated beyond question.’39
As the Civil War petered out in 1923, the command legal staff officers became increasingly concerned about their future prospects. In May, they expressed these concerns in a letter sent to Cahir Davitt and signed by six officers, including Hearne.40 In response, Davitt met with them but could not offer any reassurances.
As for Hearne, his career in the army ended when he tendered a letter of resignation, dated 19 November 1923, to Davitt, who recommended its acceptance, adding ‘I do so with great regret, as this officer has been in every way satisfactory.’41 His commission was terminated on 20 December.42 He took up new employment in the Office of the Attorney General, as assistant parliamentary draftsman, in 1924.
Assistant parliamentary draftsman, 1924–9
In 1956, John Hearne reflected on his joining the civil service, recalling:
It happened that when I was of three years standing at the Bar an event took place which changed the course of the lives of many Irish lawyers and gave the legal profession a new place, and a new responsibility and a new influence in the country – I mean the establishment of the Irish Free State in the year 1922. For my own part, I was invited to work with the first Attorney General and spent five years in that department of the new government.43
The civil service John Hearne joined was a British type in miniature.44 On the establishment of the Irish Free State, 21,000 of 28,000 civil servants transferred to the service of the new government.45 The effect of this was administrative continuity both in terms of personnel and practice, a fact acknowledged in an official report in 1934:
The passing of the state into the control of a native government, however revolutionary it may have been as a step in the political development of the nation, entailed, broadly speaking, no immediate disturbance of any fundamental kind in the daily work of the average civil servant. Under changed masters the same main tasks of administration continued to be performed by the same staffs on the same general lines of organisation and procedure.46
This was a formidable inheritance for the new state, given the tradition of the British civil service and the quality of professionalism it displayed.47 The newly formed Irish civil service contributed to the establishment and consolidation of parliamentary democracy in the Free State.48 That post-independence generation of civil servants was imbued with profound loyalty and commitment to public service,49 being determined to ensure the survival and vitality of the new state.
As assistant parliamentary draftsman, John Hearne worked under Arthur Matheson, described by Maurice Hearne as ‘legendary’, and who was ‘reputed to be the most skilful legal draftsman not only in Ireland but throughout these islands’.50 According to the same source, Hearne
