Various explanations have been given as to the aim of
the plot, but nothing is certain, the police rightly refusing to make any disclosures. We have discussed elsewhere the theory that the object was to blow up the Czar while in Scotland, and will only say here that the theory is per se unlikely, but that there are, nevertheless, one or two facts to support it. Tynan's berth on the steamer was booked for him by a notorious Russian Nihilist in exile in New York, and Tynan, Kearney, and Haines are said while in Belgium to have consorted with Anarchists. Practically all that is yet known about the plot is (1) that the organisers were Irish Fenians, (2) that they had an agent (Bell) at work in Glasgow among the Extremists there, (3) that Kearney was well known in Glasgow in former days, (4) that a large quantity of dynamite was being got ready in Belgium by the conspirators. These facts undoubtedly point to the contempla- tion of a dynamite outrage somewhere in Scotland, but more than that cannot be conclusively asserted in regard to them.
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