Chapter 1

lords, with a free heart and a light conscience, to abide the issue of your sentence. And now, my lords, this is, perhaps, the fittest time to put a sentence upon record, which is this--that standing in this dock, and called to ascend the scaffold--it may be to-morrow--it may be now--it may be never--whatever the result may be, I wish to put this on record, that in the part I have taken I was not actuated by enmity towards Englishmen--for among them I have passed some of the happiest days of my life, and the most prosperous; and in no part which I have taken was I actuated by enmity towards Englishmen individually, whatever I may have felt of the injustice of English rule in this island; I therefore say, that it is not because I loved England less, but because I loved Ireland more, that I now stand before you."

In 1851, M'Manus escaped from captivity in Van Dieman's Land, and he soon after settled in California where he died. His funeral was the greatest ever witnessed upon earth. From the shores of the Pacific thousands of miles away, across continents and oceans they brought him, and laid his ashes to rest in the land of his birth. On the 10th day of November, 1861, that wonderful funeral passed through the streets of Dublin to Glasnevin, and those who saw the gathering that followed his coffin to the grave, the thousands of stalwart men that marched in solemn order behind his bier will never forget the sight. A silent slab unlettered and unmarked shows the spot where his remains were interred; no storied urn or animated bust, no marble column or commemorative tablet has been consecrated to his memory, but the history of his life is graven in the hearts of his countrymen, and he enjoys in their affectionate remembrance, a monument more enduring than human hands could build him.

* * * * *

THOMAS CLARKE LUBY.

Looking along the course of Irish history, it is easy to point out certain periods in which England could have found an opportunity for making terms with the Irish nation, healing some of the old wounds and mitigating in some degree the burning sense of wrong and the desire of vengeance that rankled in the hearts of the Irish race. There were lulls in the struggle, intervals of gloomy calm, occasions when the heart of Ireland might have been touched by generous deeds, and when the offer of the olive branch, or even a few of its leaves, would have had a blessed effect. But England never availed of them--never for an instant sought to turn them to good account. She preferred when Ireland was defeated, prostrate, and forlorn, to taunt her with her failure, scoff at her sufferings, and add to her afflictions. Such was her conduct during the mournful time that followed on the attempted insurrection of 1848.

It was an appaling time, in whose death-laden atmosphere political action was impossible. The famine had made of the country one huge graveyard. A silence fell upon the land, lately so clamorous for her rights, so hopeful, and so defiant. The Repeal organization spoke no more; the tramp of the Confederate Clubs was no longer heard in the streets; O'Connell was dead; the Young Ireland leaders were fugitives or prisoners; and the people were almost bewildered by a sense of their great calamity. Then, if England had stooped to raise her fallen foe, offered her some kindly treatment, and spoken some gracious words, the bitterness of the old quarrel might have been in some degree assuaged, even though its cause should not be entirely obliterated. But England did not choose to take that politic and Christian course. She found it much pleasanter to chuckle over the discomfiture of the Irish patriots, to ridicule the failure of their peaceable agitation, to sneer at their poor effort in arms, to nickname, and misrepresent, and libel the brave-hearted gentleman who led that unlucky endeavour; and above all to felicitate herself on the reduction that had taken place in the Irish population. That--from her point of view--was the glorious part of the whole affair. The Irish were "gone with a vengeance!"--not all of them, but a goodly proportion, and others were going off every day. Emigrant ships clustered in the chief ports, and many sought their living freights in those capacious harbours along the Atlantic coast which nature seemed to have shaped for the accommodation of a great commerce, but where the visit of any craft larger than a fishing smack was a rare event. The flaming placards of the various shipping-lines were posted in every town in Ireland,--on the chapel-gates, and the shutters of closed shops, and the doors of tenantless houses; and there appeared to be in progress a regular breaking up of the Irish nation. This, to the English mind, was positively delightful. For here was the Irish question being settled at last, by the simple process of the transference of the Irish people to the bottom of the deep sea, or else to the continent of America--nearly the same thing as far as England was concerned, for in neither place--as it seemed to her--could they ever more trouble her peace, or have any claim on those fruits of the Irish soil which were needed for the stomachs of Englishmen. There they could no longer pester her with petitions for Tenant Right, or demands for a Repeal of the Union. English farmers, and drovers, and labourers, loyal to the English government, and yielding no sort of allegiance to the Pope, would cross the Channel and take possession of the deserted island, which would thenceforth be England's in such a sense as it never was before. O magnificent consummation! O most brilliant prospect, in the eyes of English statesmen! They saw their way clear, they understood their game; it was to lighten in no degree the pressure which they maintained upon the lives of the Irish people, to do nothing that could tend to render existence tolerable to them in Ireland, or check the rush of emigration. Acting in conformity with this shallow and false estimate of the situation, they allowed to drift away unused the time which wise statesmen would have employed in the effectuation of conciliatory and tranquilising measures, and applied themselves simply to the crushing out from the Irish mind of every hope of improved legislation, and the defeat of every effort to obtain it. Thus when the people--waking up from the stupefaction that followed on the most tragic period of the famine--began to breathe the breath of political life again, and, perceiving the danger that menaced the existence of the peasant classes, set on foot an agitation to procure a reform of the land-laws, the government resolutely opposed the project; defeated the bills which the friends of the tenantry brought into parliament; and took steps, which proved only too successful, for the break up of the organization by which the movement was conducted. And then, when Frederick Lucas was dead, and Mr. Duffy had gone into exile, and the patriot priests were debarred from taking part in politics, and Messrs. John Sadlier and William Keogh were bought over by bribes of place and pay, the government appeared to think that Irish patriotism had fought in its last ditch, and received its final defeat.

But they were mistaken. The old cause that had survived so many disasters was not dead yet. While the efforts of the Tenant Righters in Ireland were being foiled, and their party was being scattered, a couple of Irishmen, temporarily resident in Paris, fugitive because of their connexion with the events of '48, were laying the foundations of a movement more profoundly dangerous to England, than any of those with which she had grappled since the days of Wolfe Tone and Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Those men were John O'Mahony and James Stephens.

Since then their names have been much heard of, and the organization of which they were the originators has played an important part in Irish history. But at the period of which we are now writing, the general public knew nothing of O'Mahony or of Stephens beyond the fact that they were alleged to have taken some part in the recent insurrectionary demonstrations. Stephens, who was then a very young lad, had been present at the Ballingarry attack, and had been severely wounded by the fire of the police. He managed to crawl away from the spot to a ditch side, where he was lost sight of. A report of his death was put into circulation, and a loyal journal published in Kilkenny--the native town of the young rebel, who in this instance played his first trick on the government--referred to his supposed decease in terms which showed that the rule _de mortuis nil nisi bonum_ found acceptance with the editor. The following are the words of the obituary notice which appeared in the _Kilkenny Moderator_ on or about the 19th of August, 1848:--

"Poor James Stephens, who followed Smith O'Brien to the field, has died of the wound which he received at Ballingarry whilst acting as aide-de-camp to the insurgent leader. Mr. Stephens was a very amiable, and apart from politics, most inoffensive young man, possessed of a great deal of talent, and we believe he was a most excellent son and brother. His untimely and melancholy fate will be much regretted by a numerous circle of friends."

It is said that his family very prudently fostered this delusion by going into mourning for the loss of young James--the suggestion of which clever ruse probably came from the dear boy himself. A short time afterwards he managed to escape, disguised as a lady's maid, to France. As one may gather from the paragraph above quoted, the family were much respected in the locality. Mr. Stephens, father of the future C.O.I.R., was clerk in the establishment of a respectable auctioneer and bookseller in Kilkenny. He gave his children a good education, and sent young James to a Catholic seminary with a view to his being taught and trained for the priesthood. But circumstances prevented the realization of this design, and before any line of business could be marked out for young Stephens, the political events above referred to took place and shaped his future career.

John O'Mahony was a different stamp of man. He belonged to the class known as gentlemen-farmers, and of that class he was one of the most respected. His family owned a considerable tract of land in the southern part of the County of Tipperary, of which they had been occupants for many generations. He was well educated, of studious habits, and thoroughly imbued with patriotic feeling, which came to him as a hereditary possession. When the Young Ireland leaders were electrifying the country by their spirited appeals to the patriotism and bravery of the Irish race, and the population in all the chief centres of intelligence were crystalizing into semi-military organizations, O'Mahony was not apathetic or inactive. One of the strongest of the Confederate clubs--which were thick sown in the contiguous districts of the Counties of Cork, Waterford, and Tipperary--was under his presidency; and when in July, 1848, the leaders of the movement scattered themselves over the country for the purpose of ascertaining the degree of support they would receive if they should decide on unfurling the green banner, his report of the state of affairs in his district was one of their most cheering encouragements.

A few days afterwards the outbreak under O'Brien occurred at Ballingarry. The failure of that attempt, and the irresolute manner in which it was conducted, had disheartened the country, but the idea of allowing the struggle to rest at that point was not universally entertained by the leaders of the clubs; and John O'Mahony was one of those who resolved that another attempt should be made to rally the people to the insurrectionary standard. He acted up to his resolution. On the night of the 12th of September there were signal-fires on the slopes of Slievenamon and the Comeragh mountains, and the district between Carrick-on-Suir and Callan was in a state of perturbation. Next day the alarm was spread in all directions. The gentry of the disturbed districts rushed into the nearest towns for protection; police from the outlying barracks were called in to reinforce the threatened stations, and troops were hastily summoned from Dublin and the neighbouring garrisons. Meanwhile parties of the insurgents began to move about. One proceeded to the police station at the Slate-quarries, and finding it deserted--the policemen having retired on Piltown--burned it to the ground. Another attempted the destruction of Grany bridge, to delay the advance of the soldiery. A third proceeded to attack the Glenbower station. The defenders of the barracks were in a rather critical position when another party of police, on their way from the Nine-Mile-House station to Carrick, came upon the spot, and the combined force speedily put their half-armed assailants to flight, with a loss to the latter of one man severely wounded and one killed. An attack was made on the barrack at Portlaw, but with a like result; two men were stricken dead by the bullets of the police. The people soon afterwards scattered to their homes, and the soldiery and police had nothing to do but hunt up for the leaders and other parties implicated in the movement. John O'Mahony narrowly escaped capture on three or four occasions. He lingered in the country, however, until after the conviction of the state prisoners at Clonmel, when it became clear to him that the cause was lost for a time; and he then took his way to Paris, whither several of his fellow outlaws, for whose arrest the government had offered large rewards, had gone before him.

In that famous centre of intellect and of intrigue, the focus of political thought, the fountain-head of great ideas, John O'Mahony and James Stephens pondered long over the defeat that had come upon the Irish cause, and in their ponderings bethought them that the reason of the failure which they deplored was to be found in the want of that quiet, earnest, secret preparation, by means of which the Continental revolutionists were able to produce from time to time such volcanic effects in European politics, and cause the most firmly-rooted dynasties to tremble for their positions. The system of secret conspiracy--that ancient system, "old as the universe, yet not outworn"--a system not unknown in Ireland from the days of the Attacots to those of the Whiteboys--the system of Sir Phelim O'Neill and of Theobald Wolfe Tone--that system, as developed, refined, and elaborated by the most subtle intellects of modern times, those two men proposed to propagate among the Irish race at home and abroad. They divided the labour between them. O'Mahony took the United States of America for his field of action, and Stephens took the Old Country.

It was in the year 1858 that the first symptoms indicative of the work to which James Stephens had set himself made their appearance in the extreme south-west of Ireland. Whispers went about that some of the young men of Kenmare, Bantry, and Skibbereen were enrolled in a secret sworn organization, and were in the habit of meeting for the purpose of training and drilling. Indeed the members of the new society took little pains to conceal its existence; they seemed rather to find a pride in the knowledge which their neighbours had of the fact, and relied for their legal safety on certain precautions adopted in the manner of their initiation as members. When informed firstly by well known nationalists in a private manner, and subsequently by public remonstrances addressed to them by Catholic clergymen and the national journals, that the government were on their track, they refused to believe it; but ere long they suffered grievously for their incredulity and want of prudence. In the early days of December, 1858, the swoop of the government was made on the members of the "Phoenix Society" in Cork and Kerry, and arrests followed shortly after in other parts of the country. The trials in the south commenced at Tralee in March, 1859, when a conviction was obtained against a man named Daniel O'Sullivan, and he was sentenced to penal servitude for ten years. The remaining cases were adjourned to the next assizes, and when they came on in July, 1859, the prisoners put in a plea of guilty, and were set at liberty on the understanding that if their future conduct should not be satisfactory to the authorities, they would be called up for sentence. Amongst the Cork prisoners who took this course was Jeremiah O'Donovan (Rossa), whose name has since then been made familiar to the public.

Those events were generally supposed to have extinguished the Phoenix conspiracy. And many of Ireland's most sincere friends hoped that such was the case. Recognising fully the peculiar powers which a secret society can bring to bear against the government, they still felt a profound conviction that the risks, or rather the certain cost of liberty and life involved in such a mode of procedure, formed more than a counterpoise for the advantages which it presented. They were consequently earnest and emphatic in their endeavours to dissuade their countrymen from treading in the dangerous paths in which their steps were dogged by the spy and the informer. The Catholic clergy were especially zealous in their condemnation of secret revolutionary societies, urged thereto by a sense of their duty as priests and patriots. But there were men connected with the movement both in America and Ireland, who were resolved to persevere in their design of extending the organization among the Irish people, despite of any amount of opposition from any quarter whatsoever. In pursuit of that object they were not over scrupulous as to the means they employed; they did not hesitate to violate many an honourable principle, and to wrong many an honest man; nor did they exhibit a fair share of common prudence in dealing with the difficulties of their position; but unexpected circumstances arose to favour their propagandism, and it went ahead despite of all their mistakes and of every obstacle. One of those circumstances was the outbreak of the civil war in America, which took place in April, 1861. That event seemed to the leaders of the Irish revolutionary organization, now known as the Fenian Brotherhood, to be one of the most fortunate for their purposes that could have happened. It inspired the whole population of America with military ardour, it opened up a splendid school in which the Irish section of the people could acquire a knowledge of the art of war, which was exactly what was needed to give real efficacy to their endeavours for the overthrow of British dominion in Ireland. Besides, there appeared to be a strong probability that the line of action in favour of the Southern States which England, notwithstanding her proclamation of neutrality, had adopted from an early stage of the conflict, would speedily involve her in a war with the Federal government. These things constituted a prospect dazzling to the eyes of the Irishmen who had "gone with a vengeance." Their hearts bounded with joy at the opportunities that appeared to be opening on them. At last the time was near, they believed, when the accumulated hate of seven centuries would burst upon the power of England, not in the shape of an undisciplined peasantry armed with pikes, and scythes, and pitchforks, as in 1798--not in the shape of a half famished and empty-handed crowd, led to battle by orators and poets, as in 1848, but in the shape of an army, bristling with sharp steel, and flanked with thunderous cannon--an army skilled in the modern science of war, directed by true military genius, and inspired by that burning valour which in all times was one of the qualities of the Irish race. Influenced by such hopes and feelings, the Irish of the Northern States poured by thousands into the Federal ranks, and formed themselves into regiments that were at the same time so many Fenian circles. In the Southern army, too, there were many Irishmen who were not less determined to give to their native land the benefit of their military experience, as soon as the troubles of their adopted country should be brought to an end. Fenianism, with that glow of light upon it, spread like a prairie-fire through the States. The ranks of the organization swelled rapidly, and money contributions poured like a tide into its treasury. The impulse was felt also by the society in Ireland. It received a rapid development, and soon began to put on a bold front towards the government, and a still more belligerent one towards all Irishmen who, while claiming the character of patriots, declined to take part in the Fenian movement or recommend it to their countrymen. In November, 1863, the brotherhood started the _Irish People_ newspaper in Dublin, for the double purpose of propagating their doctrines and increasing the revenues of the society. James Stephens was the author of this most unfortunate project. The men whom he selected for working it out were Thomas Clarke Luby, John O'Leary, and Charles Joseph Kickham.

From the date of its establishment up to the mouth of September, 1865--a period of nearly two years--the _Irish People_ occupied itself in preaching what its editors regarded as the cardinal doctrines of the society, which were:--That constitutional agitation for the redress of Ireland's grievances was worse than useless; that every man taking part in such agitation was either a fool or a knave; that in political affairs clergymen should be held of no more account than laymen; and that the only hope for Ireland lay in an armed uprising of the people. These doctrines were not quite new; not one of them was absolutely true; but they were undoubtedly held by many thousands of Irishmen, and the Fenian society took care to secure for the journal in which they were advocated, a large circulation. The office of the _Irish People_ soon came to be regarded as, what it really was, the head quarters of the Fenian organization in Ireland. To it the choice spirits of the party resorted for counsel and direction; thither the provincial organisers directed their steps whenever they visited Dublin; into it poured weekly from all parts of the country an immense mass of correspondence, which the editors, instead of destroying after it had passed through their hands, foolishly allowed to accumulate upon their shelves, though every word of it was fraught with peril to the lives and liberties of their friends. In their private residences also they were incautious enough to keep numerous documents of a most compromising character. There is but one way of accounting for their conduct in this matter. They may have supposed that the legal proceedings against them, which they knew were certain to take place at one time or another, would be conducted in the semi-constitutional fashion which was adopted towards the national journals in 1848. If the staff of the _Irish People_ had received a single day's notice that they were about to be made amenable to the law, it is possible that they would have their houses and their office immediately cleared of those documents which afterwards consigned so many of their countrymen to the horrors of penal servitude. But they saw no reason to suppose that the swoop was about to be made on them. On the fifteenth day of September, 1865, there were no perceptible indications that the authorities were any more on the alert in reference to Fenian affairs then they had been during the past twelve months. It was Friday; the _Irish People_ had been printed for the next day's sale, large batches of the paper had been sent off to the agents in town and country, the editors and publishing clerks had gone home to rest after their week's labours--when suddenly, at about half-past nine o'clock in the evening, a strong force of police broke into the office, seized the books, manuscripts, papers, and forms of type, and bore them off to the Castle yard. At the same time arrests of the chief Fenian leaders were being made in various parts of the city. The news created intense excitement in all circles of society, and more especially amongst the Fenians themselves, who had never dreamed of a government _coup_ so sudden, so lawless, and so effective. The government had now thrown off the mask of apathy and impassiveness which it had worn so long, and it commenced to lay its strong hand upon its foes. Amongst the men who filled the prison cells on that miserable autumn evening were John O'Leary, Thomas Clarke Luby, and Jeremiah O'Donovan (Rossa). Before the crown was ready to proceed with their trial, the third editor of the paper, Charles J. Kickham, was added to their company, having been arrested with James Stephens, Edward Duffy, and Hugh Brophy, on the 11th November, at Fairfield House, near Dublin.

On Monday, November 27th, 1865, the state trials commenced before a Special Commission in the Courthouse, Green-street--the scene of so many a previous grapple between British law and the spirit of Irish patriotism. Mr. Justice Keogh and Mr. Justice Fitzgerald were the presiding judges. There was a long list of prisoners to be tried. James Stephens might have been honoured with the first place amongst them, were it not that two days previously, to the unspeakable horror and surprise of the government and all its friends, he had effected his escape, or rather, we might say, obtained, by the aid of friendly hands, his release from Richmond prison. In his regretted absence, the crown commenced their proceedings by placing Thomas Clarke Luby in the dock to answer to a charge of treason-felony.

He stood up to the bar, between the jailors that clustered about him, a quiet-faced, pale, and somewhat sad-looking man, apparently of about forty years of age. A glance around the court-house showed him but few friendly faces--for, owing to the terrors felt by the judges, the crown prosecutors and other officials of the law, who dreaded the desperate resolves of armed conspirators, few were admitted into the building except policemen, detectives, and servants of the crown in one capacity or another. In one of the galleries, however, he recognised his wife--daughter of J. De Jean Fraser, one of the sweetest poets of the '48 period--with the wife of his fellow-prisoner, O'Donovan Rossa, and the sister of John O'Leary. A brief smile of greeting passed between the party, and then all thoughts were concentrated on the stern business of the day.

There was no chance of escape for Thomas Clarke Luby or for his associates. The crown had a plethora of evidence against them, acquired during the months and years when they appeared to be all but totally ignorant of the existence of the conspiracy. They had the evidence of the approver, Nagle, who had been an employè of the _Irish People_ office and a confidential agent of James Stephens up to the night of the arrests, but who during the previous eighteen months had been betraying every secret of theirs to the government. They had the evidence of a whole army of detectives; but more crushing and fatal than all, they had that which was supplied by the immense store of documents captured at the _Irish People_ office and the houses of some of the chief members of the conspiracy. Of all those papers the most important was one found at the residence of Mr. Luby, in which James Stephens, being at the time about to visit America delegated his powers over the organization in Ireland, England, and Scotland to Thomas Clarke Luby, John O'Leary, and Charles J. Kickham. This, which was referred to during the trials as the "executive document," was worded as follows:--

"I hereby empower Thomas Clarke Luby, John O'Leary and Charles J. Kickham a committee of organization, or executive, with the same supreme control over the home organization, England, Ireland, and Scotland, as that exercised by myself. I further empower them to appoint a committee of military inspection, and a committee of appeal and judgment, the functions of which committee will be made known to every member of them. Trusting to the patriotism and abilities of the executive, I fully endorse their actions beforehand. I call on every man in our ranks to support and be guided by them in all that concerns the military brotherhood.

"J. STEPHENS."

Not all the legal ingenuity and forensic eloquence of their talented counsel, Mr. Butt, could avail to save the men who, by the preservation of such documents as the foregoing, had fastened the fetters on their own limbs. The trial of Mr. Luby concluded on the fourth day of the proceedings--Friday, December 1st 1865--with a verdict of guilty. The prisoner heard the announcement with composure, and then, in response to the question usual in such cases, addressed the court as follows:--

"Well, my lords and gentlemen, I don't think any person present here is surprised at the verdict found against me. I have been prepared for this verdict ever since I was arrested, although I thought it my duty to fight the British government inch by inch. I felt I was sure to be found guilty, since the advisers of the Crown took what the Attorney-General was pleased the other day to call the 'merciful course.' I thought I might have a fair chance of escaping, so long as the capital charge was impending over me; but when they resolved on trying me under the Treason-Felony Act, I felt that I had not the smallest chance. I am somewhat embarrassed at the present moment as to what I should say under the circumstances. There are a great many things that I would wish to say; but knowing that there are other persons in the same situation with myself, and that I might allow myself to say something injudicious, which would peril their cases, I feel that my tongue is to a great degree tied. Nothwithstanding, there are two or three points upon which I would say a few words. I have nothing to say to Judge Keogh's charge to the jury. He did not take up any of the topics that had been introduced to prejudice the case against me; for instance, he did not take this accusation of an intention to assassinate, attributed to my fellow-prisoners and myself. The Solicitor-General in his reply to Mr. Butt, referred to those topics. Mr. Barry was the first person who advanced those charges. I thought they were partially given up by the Attorney-General in his opening statement, at least they were put forward to you in a very modified form; but the learned Solicitor-General, in his very virulent speech, put forward those charges in a most aggravated manner. He sought even to exaggerate upon Mr. Barry's original statement. Now, with respect to those charges--in justice to my character--I must say that in this court, there is not a man more incapable of anything like massacre or assassination than I am. I really believe that the gentlemen who have shown so much ability in persecuting me, in the bottom of their hearts believe me incapable of an act of assassination or massacre. I don't see that there is the smallest amount of evidence to show that I ever entertained the notion of a massacre of landlords and priests. I forget whether the advisers of the crown said I intended the massacre of the Protestant clergymen. Some of the writers of our enlightened press said that I did. Now, with respect to the charge of assassinating the landlords, the only thing that gives even the shadow of a colour to that charge is the letter signed--alleged to be signed--by Mr. O'Keefe. Now, assuming--but by no means admitting, of course--that the letter was written by Mr. O'Keefe, let me make a statement about it. I know the facts that I am about to state are of no practical utility to me now, at least with respect to the judges. I know it is of no practical utility to me, because I cannot give evidence on my own behalf, but it may be of practical utility to others with whom I wish to stand well. I believe my words will carry conviction--and carry much more conviction than any words of the legal advisers of the crown can--to more than 300,000 of the Irish race in Ireland, England, and America. Well, I deny absolutely, that I ever entertained any idea of assassinating the landlords, and the letter of Mr. O'Keefe--assuming it to be his letter--is the only evidence on the subject. My acquaintance with Mr. O'Keefe was of the slightest nature. I did not even know of his existence when the _Irish People_ was started. He came, after that paper was established a few months, to the office, and offered some articles--some were rejected, some we inserted, and I call the attention of the legal advisers of the Crown to this fact, that amongst the papers which they got, those that were Mr. O'Keefe's articles had many paragraphs scored out; in fact we put in no article of his without a great deal of what is technically called 'cutting down.' Now, that letter of his to me was simply a private document. It contained the mere private views of the writer; and I pledge this to the court as a man of honour--and I believe in spite of the position in which I stand, amongst my countrymen I am believed to be a man of honour, and that if my life depended on it, I would not speak falsely about the thing--when I read that letter, and the first to whom I gave it was my wife, I remember we read it with fits of laughter at its ridiculous ideas. My wife at the moment said--'Had I not better burn the letter?' 'Oh no,' I said, looking upon it as a most ridiculous thing, and never dreaming for a moment that such a document would ever turn up against me, and produce the unpleasant consequences it has produced--mean the imputation of assassination and massacre, which has given me a great deal more trouble than anything else in this case. That disposes--as far as I can at present dispose of it--of the charge of wishing to assassinate the landlords. As to the charge of desiring to assassinate the priests, I deny it as being the most monstrous thing in the world. Why, surely, every one who read the articles in the paper would see that the plain doctrine laid down there was--to reverence the priests so long as they confined themselves to their sacerdotal functions; but when the priest descended to the arena of politics he became no more than any other man, and would just be regarded as any other man. If he was a man of ability and honesty, of course he would get the respect that such men get in politics--if he was not a man of ability there would be no more thought of him than of a shoemaker or any one else. This is the teaching of the _Irish People_ with regard to the priests. I believe the _Irish People_ has done a great deal of good, even amongst those who do not believe in its revolutionary doctrines. I believe the revolutionary doctrines of the _Irish People_ are good. I believe nothing can ever save Ireland except independence; and I believe that all other attempts to ameliorate the condition of Ireland are mere temporary expedients and make shifts----"

Mr. Justice Keogh--"I am very reluctant to interrupt you, Mr. Luby."

Mr. Luby--"Very well, my lord, I will leave that. I believe in this way the _Irish People_ has done an immensity of good. It taught the people not to give up their right of private judgment in temporal matters to the clergy; that while they reverenced the clergy upon the altar, they should not give up their consciences in secular matters to the clergy. I believe that is good. Others may differ from me. No set of men I believe ever set themselves earnestly to any work, but they did good in some shape or form."

Judge Keogh--"I am most reluctant, Mr. Luby, to interrupt you, but do you think you should pursue this!"

Mr. Luby--"Very well, I will not. I think that disposes of those things. I don't care to say much about myself. It would be rather beneath me. Perhaps some persons who know me would say I should not have touched upon the assassination charge at all--that in fact I have rather shown weakness in attaching so much importance to it. But, with regard to the entire course of my life, and whether it be a mistaken course or not will be for every man's individual judgment to decide--this I know, that no man ever loved Ireland more than I have done--no man has ever given up his whole being to Ireland to the extent I have done. From the time I came to what has been called the years of discretion, my entire thought has been devoted to Ireland. I believed the course I pursued was right; others may take a different view. I believe the majority of my countrymen this minute, if, instead of my being tried before a petty jury, who, I suppose, are bound to find according to British law--if my guilt or innocence was to be tried by the higher standard of eternal right, and the case was put to all my countrymen--I believe this moment the majority of my countrymen would pronounce that I am not a criminal, but that I have deserved well of my country. When the proceedings of this trial go forth into the world, people will say the cause of Ireland is not to be despaired of, that Ireland is not yet a lost country--that as long as there are men in any country prepared to expose themselves to every difficulty and danger in its service, prepared to brave captivity, even death itself if need be, that country cannot be lost. With these words I conclude."

On the conclusion of this address, Judge Keogh proceeded to pass sentence on the prisoner. The prisoner's speech, he said, was in every way creditable to him; but the bench could not avoid coming to the conclusion that, with the exception of James Stephens, he was the person most deeply implicated in the conspiracy. The sentence of the court was that he be kept in penal servitude for a term of twenty years. Mr. Luby heard the words without any apparent emotion--gave one sad farewell glance to his wife and friends, and stepping down the little stairs from the dock, made way for the next prisoner.

* * * * *

JOHN O'LEARY.

While the jury in the case of Thomas Clarke Luby were absent from the court deliberating on and framing their verdict, John O'Leary was put forward to the bar.

He stepped boldly to the front, with a flash of fire in his dark eyes, and a scowl on his features, looking hatred and defiance on judges, lawyers, jurymen, and all the rest of them. All eyes were fixed on him, for he was one of those persons whose exterior attracts attention and indicates a character above the common. He was tall, slightly built, and of gentlemanly deportment; every feature of his thin angular face gave token of great intellectual energy and determination, and its pallid hue was rendered almost death-like by contrast with his long black hair and flowing moustache and beard. Easy it was to see that when the government placed John O'Leary in the dock they had caged a proud spirit, and an able and resolute enemy. He had come of a patriot stock, and from a part of Ireland where rebels to English rule were never either few or faint-hearted. He was born in the town of Tipperary, of parents whose circumstances were comfortable, and who, at the time of their decease, left him in possession of property worth a couple of hundred pounds per annum. He was educated for the medical profession in the Queen's College, Cork, spent some time in France, and subsequently visited America, where he made the acquaintance of the chief organisers of the Fenian movement, by whom he was regarded as a most valuable acquisition to the ranks of the brotherhood. After his return to Ireland he continued to render the Fenian cause such services as lay in his power, and when James Stephens, who knew his courage and ability, invited him to take the post of chief editor of the Fenian organ which he was about to establish in Dublin, O'Leary readily obeyed the call, and accepted the dangerous position. In the columns of the _Irish People_ he laboured hard to defend and extend the principles of the Fenian organization until the date of his arrest and the suppression of the paper.

The trial lasted from Friday, the 1st, up to Wednesday, the 6th of December, when it was closed with a verdict of guilty and a sentence of twenty years' penal servitude--Mr. Justice Fitzgerald remarking that no distinction in the degree of criminality could be discovered between the case of the prisoner and that of the previous convict. The following is the address delivered by O'Leary, who appeared to labour under much excitement, when asked in the usual terms if he had any reason to show why sentence should not be passed upon him:--

"I was not wholly unprepared for this verdict, because I felt that the government which could so safely pack the bench could not fail to make sure of its verdict."

Mr. Justice Fitzgerald--"We are willing to hear anything in reason from you, but we cannot allow language of that kind to be used."

Mr. O'Leary--"My friend Mr. Luby did not wish to touch on this matter from a natural fear lest he should do any harm to the other political prisoners; but there can be but little fear of that now, for a jury has been found to convict me of this conspiracy upon the evidence. Mr. Luby admitted that he was technically guilty according to British law; but I say that it is only by the most torturing interpretation that these men could make out their case against me. With reference to this conspiracy there has been much misapprehension in Ireland, and serious misapprehension. Mr. Justice Keogh said in his charge against Mr. Luby that men would be always found ready for money, or for some other motive, to place themselves at the disposal of the government; but I think the men who have been generally bought in this way, and who certainly made the best of the bargain, were agitators and not rebels. I have to say one word in reference to the foul charge upon which that miserable man, Barry, has made me responsible."

Mr. Justice Fitzgerald--"We cannot allow that tone of observation."

Mr. O'Leary continued--"That man has charged me--I need not defend myself or my friends from the charge. I shall merely denounce the moral assassin. Mr. Justice Keogh the other day spoke of revolutions, and administered a lecture to Mr. Luby. He spoke of cattle being driven away, and of houses being burned down, that men would be killed, and so on. I would like to know if all that does not apply to war as well as to revolution? One word more, and I shall have done. I have been found guilty of treason or treason-felony. Treason is a foul crime. The poet Dante consigned traitors to, I believe, the ninth circle of hell; but what kind of traitors? Traitors against king, against country, against friends and benefactors. England is not my country; I have betrayed no friend, no benefactor. Sidney and Emmet were legal traitors, Jeffreys was a loyal man, and so was Norbury. I leave the matter there."

One hour after the utterance of these words John O'Leary, dressed in convict garb, his hair clipped, and his beard shaved off, was the occupant of a cell in Mountjoy prison, commencing his long term of suffering in expiation of the crime of having sought to obtain self-government for his native land.

* * * * *

JEREMIAH O'DONOVAN (ROSSA).

In one of the preceding pages we have mentioned the fact that at the Cork Summer Assizes of 1859, a conviction was recorded against Jeremiah O'Donovan (Rossa) for his complicity in the Phoenix conspiracy, and he was then released on the understanding that if he should be found engaging in similar practices, the crown would bring him up for judgment. It is characteristic of the man that with this conviction hanging like a mill-stone about his neck, he did not hesitate to take an active and an open part with the promoters of the Fenian movement. He travelled through various parts of Ireland in furtherance of the objects of the society; he visited America on the same mission, and when the _Irish People_ was started he took the position of business manager in that foredoomed establishment.

He was brought into the dock immediately after John O'Leary had been taken from it; but on representing that certain documents which he had not then at hand were necessary for his defence, he obtained a postponement of his trial for a few days. When he was again brought up for trial he intimated to the court that he meant to conduct his own defence. And he entered upon it immediately. He cross-examined the informers in fierce fashion, he badgered the detectives, he questioned the police, he debated with the crown lawyers, he argued with the judges, he fought with the crown side all round. But it was when the last of the witnesses had gone off the table that he set to the work in good earnest. He took up the various publications that had been put in evidence against him, and claimed his legal right to read them all through. One of them was the file of the _Irish People_ for the whole term of its existence! Horror sat upon the faces of judges, jurymen, sheriffs, lawyers, turnkeys, and all, when the prisoner gravely informed them that as a compromise he would not insist upon reading the advertisements! The bench were unable to deny that the prisoner was entitled to read, if not the entire, at any rate a great portion of the volume, and O'Donovan then applied himself to the task, selecting his readings more especially from those articles in which the political career of Mr. Justice Keogh was made the subject of animadversion. Right on he read, his lordship striving to look as composed and indifferent as possible, while every word of the bitter satire and fierce invective written against him by Luby and O'Leary was being launched at his heart. When articles of that class were exhausted, the prisoner turned to the most treasonable and seditious documents he could find, and commenced the reading of them, but the judges interposed; he claimed to be allowed to read a certain article--Judge Keogh objected--he proposed to read another--that was objected to also--he commenced to read another--he was stopped--he tried another--again Judge Keogh was down on him--then another--and he fared no better. So the fight went on throughout the live-long day, till the usual hour of adjournment had come and gone, and the prisoner himself was feeling parched, and weary, and exhausted. Observing that the lights were being now renewed, and that their lordships appeared satisfied to sit out the night, he anxiously inquired if the proceedings were not to be adjourned till morning. "Proceed, sir," was the stern reply of the judge, who knew that the physical powers of the prisoner could not hold out much longer. "A regular Norbury," gasped O'Donovan. "It's like a '98 trial." "You had better proceed, sir, with propriety," exclaimed the judge. "When do you propose stopping, my lord?" again inquired the prisoner. "Proceed, sir," was the reiterated reply. O'Donovan could stand it no longer. He had been reading and speaking for eight hours and a half. With one final protest against the arrangement by which Judge Keogh was sent to try the cases of men who had written and published such articles against him, he sat down, exclaiming that, "English law might now take its course."

Next day the jury handed down their verdict of guilty. The Attorney-General then addressed the court, and referred to the previous conviction against the prisoner. O'Donovan was asked, what he had to say in reference to that part of the case? and his reply was that "the government might add as much as they pleased to the term of his sentence on that account, if it was any satisfaction to them." And when the like question was put to him regarding the present charge, he said:--

"With the fact that the government seized papers connected with my defence and examined them--with the fact that they packed the jury--with the fact that the government stated they would convict--with the fact that they sent Judge Keogh, a second Morbury, to try me--with these facts before me, it would be useless to say anything."

Judge Keogh proceeded to pass sentence. "The prisoner," he said, "had entertained those criminal designs since the year 1859;" whereupon O'Donovan broke in with the remark that he was "an Irishman since he was born." The judge said, "he would not waste words by trying to bring him to a sense of his guilt;" O'Donovan's reply was--"It would be useless for you to try it." The judge told him his sentence was, that he be kept in penal servitude for the term of his natural life. "All right, my lord," exclaimed the unconquerable rebel, and with a smile to the sympathising group around him, he walked with a light step from the dock.

The court was then adjourned to the 5th of January. 1866; and next day the judges set off for Cork city, to dispose of the Fenian prisoners there awaiting trial.

* * * * *

BRYAN DILLON, JOHN LYNCH, AND OTHERS.

On Wednesday, December 16th, the trial of O'Donovan (Rossa) was brought to a conclusion in Dublin. Next morning, away went judges, crown lawyers, spies, detectives, and informers for the good city of Cork, where another batch of men accused of conspiring against British rule in Ireland--"the old crime of their race"--were awaiting the pronouncement of British law upon their several cases. Cork city in these days was known to be one of the _foci_ of disaffection; perhaps it was its chief stronghold. The Metropolis may have given an absolutely larger number of members to the Fenian organization, but in proportion to the number of its population the Southern city was far more deeply involved in the movement. In Dublin, the seat of British rule in Ireland, many influences which are but faintly represented in other parts of the country, are present and active to repress the national ardour of the people. Those influences are scarcely felt in the city of Saint Finbar. Not in Ireland is there a town in which the national sentiment is stronger or more widely diffused than in Cork. The citizens are a warm-hearted, quick-witted and high-spirited race, gifted with fine moral qualities, and profoundly attached to the national faith in religion and politics. Merchants, traders, professional men, shopkeepers, artizans, and all, are comparatively free from the spells of Dublin Castle, and the result is visible in their conduct. The crown looks dubiously and anxiously upon a Cork jury; the patriot, when any work for Ireland is in hand, looks hopefully to the Cork people. The leaders of the Fenian movement thoroughly understood these facts, and devoted much of their time and attention to the propagation of their society among men so well inclined to welcome it. Their labours, if labours they could be called, were rewarded with a great measure of success. The young men of Cork turned into the organization by hundreds. There was no denying the fact; every one knew it; evidences of it were to be seen on all sides. The hope that was filling their hearts revealed itself in a thousand ways: in their marchings, their meetings, their songs, their music. The loyal party in the neighbourhood grew alarmed, and the government shared their apprehensions. At the time of which we write, the opinion of the local magistracy and that of the authorities at Dublin Castle was that Cork was a full-charged mine of "treason."

Thither was the Commission now sped, to carry terror, if the "strong arm of the law" could do it, into the hearts of those conspirators "against the royal name, style, and dignity" of her Majesty Queen Victoria. As no one in the Castle could say to what desperate expedients those people might have recourse, it was thought advisable to take extraordinary precautions to ensure the safety of the train which carried those important personages, her Majesty's judges, lawyers, witnesses and informers, through the Munster counties and on to the city by the Lee. "Never before" writes the special correspondent of the _Nation_, "had such a sight been witnessed on an Irish railway as that presented on Thursday along the line between Dublin and Cork. Armed sentries paced each mile of the railway; the platforms of the various stations through which the trains passed were lined with bodies of constabulary, and the bridges and viaducts on the way were guarded by a force of military, whose crimson coats and bright accoutrements stood out in bold relief from the dark ground on which they were stationed, against the grey December sky. As a further measure of precaution a pilot engine steamed in advance of the train in which their lordships sat, one carriage of which was filled with armed police. And so, in some such manner as Grant or Sheridan might have journeyed along the Petersburgh and Lynchburg railway while the flag of the Confederacy floated in Richmond, the two judges travelled down in safety to the head-quarters of Fenianism in Munster."

Immediately on their arrival in Cork, the judges proceeded to the court-house and formally opened the business of the Commission. Next day Charles Underwood O'Connell and John M'Afferty were placed in the dock. These two men belonged to a class which formed the hope of the Fenian organization, and which the government regarded as one of the most dangerous elements of the conspiracy. They were Irish-American soldiers, trained to war, and inured to the hardships of campaigning in the great struggle which had but recently closed in America. They were a sample of the thousands of Irishmen who had acquired in that practical school the military knowledge which they knew was needed for the efficient direction of an insurrectionary movement in Ireland, and, who were now burning for the time and opportunity to turn that knowledge to account. It was known that many of these men were, as quietly and secretly as might be, dropping into Queenstown as steamer after steamer arrived from the Land of the West, and were moving about through the Southern counties, inspiriting the hearts of the Brotherhood by their presence and their promises, and imparting to them as much military instruction as was possible under the circumstances. To hunt down these "foreign emissaries" as the crown lawyers and the loyal prints were pleased to call them, and to deter others from following in their footsteps, was naturally a great object with the government, and when they placed Charles Underwood O'Connell and John M'Afferty in the dock they felt they had made a good beginning. And these were representative men in their way. "It was a strange fate," says the writer from whom we have already quoted, "which had brought these men together in a felon's dock. They had been born in different lands--they had been reared thousands of miles apart--and they had fought and won distinction under different flags, and on opposing sides in the American war. M'Afferty, born of Irish parents in Ohio, won his spurs in the Confederate army. O'Connell, who emigrated from Cork little more than two years ago, after the ruin of his family by a cruel act of confiscation and eviction, fought under the Stars and Stripes, and, like M'Afferty, obtained a captain's commission as the reward of his services. Had they crossed each others path two years ago they would probably have fought _a la mort_, but the old traditions which linger in spite of every circumstance in the hearts of Irishmen were strong in both, and the cause of Ireland united them, only alas, that they might each of them pay the cost of their honest, if imprudent enthusiasm, by sharing the same prison in Ireland, and falling within the grasp of the government which they looked on as the oppressor of their fatherland."

M'Afferty however was not fated to suffer on that occasion. Proof of his foreign birth having been adduced, the court held that his arrest on board the steamer in Queenstown harbour, when he had committed no overt act evidencing a treasonable intent, was illegal, and his trial was abandoned. The trial of Underwood O'Connell was then postponed for a few days, and two men reputed to be "centres" of the organization in Cork, were brought to the bar.

They were Bryan Dillon and John Lynch. Physically, they presented a contrast to the firm-built and wiry soldiers who had just quitted the dock. Dillon was afflicted with curvature of the spine, the result of an accident in early life, and his companion was far gone in that blighting and fatal disease, consumption. But though they were not men for the toils of campaigning, for the mountain march, and the bivouac, and the thundering charge of battle, they had hearts full of enthusiasm for the cause in which they were engaged, and heads that could think, and plot, and plan, for its advancement.

We need not here go through the sad details of their trials. Our purpose is to bring before our readers the courage and the constancy of the martyrs to the cause of Irish nationality, and to record the words in which they gave expression to the patriotic sentiments that inspired them. It is, however, to be recollected that many of the accused at these commissions--men as earnest, as honest, and as devoted to the cause of their country as any that ever lived--made no such addresses from the dock as we can include in this volume. All men are not orators, and it will often occur that one who has been tried for life and liberty in a British court of law, on the evidence of spies and informers, will have much to press upon his mind, and many things more directly relevant to the trial than any profession of political faith would be, to say when called upon to show reason why sentence should not be passed upon him. The evidence adduced in these cases is usually a compound of truth and falsehood. Some of the untruths sworn to are simply blunders, resulting from the confused impressions and the defective memory of the witnesses, others are deliberate inventions, made, sworn to, backed up, and persevered in for the purpose of insuring a successful result for the prosecution. Naturally the first impulse of the accused, when he is allowed to speak for himself, is to refer to these murderous falsehoods; and in the excitement and trouble of those critical moments, it is all that some men can venture to do. Such criticisms of the prosecution are often valuable to the prisoner from a moral point of view, but rarely have they any influence upon the result of the trial. All things considered, it must be allowed that they act best who do not forget to speak the words of patriotism, according to the measure of their abilities, before the judge's fiat has sealed their lips, and the hand of British law has swept them away to the dungeon or the scaffold.

"Guilty" was the verdict returned by the jury against Bryan Dillon and John Lynch. The evidence against them indeed was strong, but its chief strength lay in the swearing of an approver named Warner, a callous and unscrupulous wretch, from whose mind the idea of conscience seemed to have perished utterly. If there was any check upon the testimony of this depraved creature, it existed only in some prudential instinct, suggesting to him that even in such cases as these a witness might possibly overdo his work, and perhaps in a caution or two given him in a private and confidential manner by some of the managers of the prosecution. Warner's evidence in this case was conclusive to the minds of all who chose to believe it; and therefore it was that those prisoners had not long been occupants of the dock when the question was put to them what they had to say why sentence should not be passed on them. In reply Bryan Dillon said:--

"My lords, I never was for one minute in Warner's company. What Warner swore about me was totally untrue. I never was at a meeting at Geary's house. The existence of the Fenian organization has been proved sufficiently to your lordships. I was a centre in that organization; but it does not follow that I had to take the chair at any meeting, as it was a military organization. I do not want to conceal anything. Warner had no connexion with me whatever. With respect to the observation of the Attorney-General, which pained me very much, that it was intended to seize property, it does not follow because of my social station that I intended to seize the property of others. My belief in the ultimate independence of Ireland is as fixed as my religious belief--"

At this point he was interrupted by Judge Keogh, who declared he could not listen to words that were, in fact, a repetition of the prisoner's offence. But it was only words of this kind that Bryan Dillon cared to say at the time; and as the privilege of offering some remarks in defence of his political opinions--a privilege accorded to all prisoners in trials for treason and treason-felony up to that time--had been denied to him, he chose to say no more. And then the judge pronounced the penalty of his offending, which was, penal servitude for a term of ten years.

John Lynch's turn to speak came next. Interrogated in the usual form, he stood forward, raised his feeble frame to its full height, and with a proud, grave smile upon his pallid features, he thus addressed the court:--

"I will say a very few words, my lords. I know it would be only a waste of public time if I entered into any explanations of my political opinions--opinions which I know are shared by the vast majority of my fellow-countrymen. Standing here as I do will be to them the surest proof of my sincerity and honesty. With reference to the statement of Warner, all I have to say is, and I say it honestly and solemnly, that I never attended a meeting at Geary's, that I never exercised with a rifle there, that I never learned the use of the rifle, nor did any of the other things he swore to. With respect to my opinions on British rule in this country--"

Mr. Justice Keogh--"We can't hear that."

The Prisoner--"All I have to say is, that I was not at Geary's house for four or five months before my arrest, so that Warner's statement is untrue. If, having served my country honestly and sincerely be treason, I am not ashamed of it. I am now prepared to receive any punishment British law can inflict on me."

The punishment decreed to this pure-minded and brave-spirited patriot was ten years of penal servitude. But to him it was practically a sentence of death. The rigours and horrors of prison life were more than his failing constitution could long endure; and but a few months from the date of his conviction elapsed when his countrymen were pained by the intelligence that the faithful-hearted John Lynch filled a nameless grave in an English prison-yard. He died in the hospital of Woking prison on the 2nd day of June, 1866.

When Bryan Dillon and John Lynch were removed from the dock (Tuesday, December 19th), two men named Jeremiah Donovan and John Duggan were put forward, the former charged with having been a centre in the Fenian organization, and the latter with having sworn some soldiers into the society. Both were found guilty. Donovan made no remarks when called upon for what he had to say. Duggan contradicted the evidence of the witnesses on several points, and said:--

"I do not state those things in order to change the sentence I am about to receive. I know your lordships' minds are made up on that. I state this merely to show what kind of tools the British government employ to procure those convictions. I have only to say, and I appeal to any intelligent man for his opinion, that the manner in which the jury list was made out for these trials clearly shows that in this country political trials are a mere mockery."

At this point the judge cut short the prisoner's address, and the two men were sentenced, Donovan to five years and Duggan to ten years of penal servitude.

The trial of Underwood O'Connell was then proceeded with. It concluded on December 21st, with a verdict of guilty. In response to the question which was then addressed to him he spoke at considerable length, detailing the manner of his arrest, complaining of the horrible indignities to which he had been subjected in prison, and asserting that he had not received a fair and impartial trial. He spoke amidst a running fire of interruptions from the court, and when he came to refer to his political opinions his discourse was peremptorily suppressed. "The sentiments and hopes that animate me," he said, "are well known." "Really we will not hear those observations," interposed Mr. Justice Keogh. "It has been brought forward here," said the prisoner, "that I held a commission in the 99th regiment--in Colonel O'Mahony's regiment. Proud as I am of having held a commission in the United States service, I am equally proud of holding command under a man--." Here his speech was stopped by the judges, and Mr. Justice Keogh proceeded to pass sentence. In the course of his address his lordship made the following observations:--

"You, it appears, went to America; you entered yourself in the American army, thus violating, to a certain extent, your allegiance as a British subject. But that is not the offence you are charged with here to-day. You say you swore allegiance to the American Republic, but no man by so doing can relieve himself from his allegiance to the British Crown. From the moment a man is born in this country he owes allegiance, he is a subject."

Hearing these words, and remembering the great outcry that was being made by the friends of the government against the Irish-American Fenians on the ground that they were "foreigners," the prisoner interposed the apt remark on his lordship's legal theory:--

"If that is so, why am I charged with bringing over foreigners--John O'Mahony is no foreigner?"

To that remark Judge Keogh did not choose to make any reply. It overturned him completely. Nothing could better exhibit the absurdity of railing against those Irishmen as "foreigners" in one breath, and in the next declaring their allegiance to the British Crown perpetual and inalienable. His lordship may have winced as the point was so quickly and neatly brought home to him; but at all events he went on with his address and informed the prisoner that his punishment was to be ten years of penal servitude. Upon which, the comment of the prisoner as he quitted the dock, was that he hoped there would be an exchange of prisoners before that time.

In quick succession four men named Casey, Began, Hayes, and Barry, were tried, convicted, and sentenced. Each in turn impugned the evidence of the informer Warner, protested against the constitution of the juries, and attempted to say a few words declaratory of their devotion to the cause of Ireland. But the judges were quick to suppress every attempt of this kind, and only a few fragments of sentences are on record to indicate the thoughts to which these soldiers of liberty would have given expression if the opportunity had not been denied to them.

John Kennealy was the next occupant of the dock. He was a young man of high personal character, and of great intelligence, and was a most useful member of the organization, his calling--that of commercial traveller--enabling him to act as agent and missionary of the Society without attracting to himself the suspicion which would be aroused by the movements of other men. In his case also the verdict was given in the one fatal word. And when asked what he had to say for himself, his reply was in these few forcible and dignified sentences:--

"My lord, it is scarcely necessary for me to say anything. I am sure from the charge of your lordship, the jury could find no other verdict than has been found. The verdict against me has been found by the means by which political convictions have always been found in this country. As to the informer, Warner, I have only to say that directly or indirectly I never was in the same room with him, nor had he any means of knowing my political opinions. As to my connexion with Mr. Luby, I am proud of that connexion. I neither regret it, nor anything else I have done, politically or otherwise."

On the conclusion of this trial, on Saturday, January 2nd, 1866, two other cases were postponed without option of bail; some other persons were allowed to stand out on sureties, and we read that "John McAfferty and William Mackay, being aliens, were admitted to bail on their own recognizance, and Judge Keogh said that if they left the country they would not be required up for trial when called." We read also, in the newspapers of that time, that "The prisoners McAfferty and Mackay when leaving the courts were followed by large crowds who cheered them loudly through the streets."

The Cork Commission was then formally closed, and next day the judges set off to resume in Dublin the work of trying Irish conspirators against the rule of England over their native land.

* * * * *

CHARLES JOSEPH KICKHAM.

In the year 1825, in the village of Mullinahone, County. Tipperary, Charles J. Kickham first saw the light. His father, John Kickham, was proprietor of the chief drapery establishment in that place, and was held in high esteem by the whole country round about for his integrity, intelligence, and patriotic spirit. During the boyhood of young Kickham the Repeal agitation was at its height, and he soon became thoroughly versed in its arguments, and inspired by its principles, which he often heard discussed in his father's shop and by his hearth, and amongst all his friends and acquaintances. Like all the young people of the time, and a great many of the old ones, his sympathies went with the Young Ireland party at the time of their withdrawal from the Repeal ranks. In 1848 he was the leading spirit of the Confederation Club at Mullinahone, which he was mainly instrumental in founding; and after the _fiasco_ at Ballingarry he was obliged to conceal himself for some time, in consequence of the part he had taken in rousing the people of his native village to action. When the excitement of that period had subsided, he again appeared in his father's house, resumed his accustomed sports of fishing and fowling, and devoted much of his time to literary pursuits, for which he had great natural capacity, and towards which he was all the more inclined because of the blight put upon his social powers by an unfortunate accident which occurred to him when about the age of thirteen years. He had brought a flask of powder near the fire, and was engaged either in the operation of drying it or casting some grains into the coals for amusement, when the whole quantity exploded. The shock and the injuries he sustained nearly proved fatal to him; when he recovered, it was with his hearing nearly quite destroyed, and his sight permanently impaired. But Kickham had the poet's soul within him, and it was his compensation for the losses he had sustained. He could still hold communion with nature and with his own mind, and could give to the national cause the service of a bold heart and a finely-cultivated intellect. Subsequent to the decadence of the '48 movement he wrote a good deal in prose and verse, and contributed gratuitously to various national publications. His intimate acquaintance with the character and habits of the peasantry gave a great charm to his stories and sketches of rural life; and his poems were always marked by grace, simplicity, and tenderness. Many of them have attained a large degree of popularity amongst his countrymen in Ireland and elsewhere, and taken a permanent place in the poetic literature of the Irish race. Amongst these, his ballads entitled "Patrick Sheehan," "Rory of the Hill," and "The Irish Peasant Girl" are deserving of special mention. To these remarks it remains to be added that as regards personal character, Charles J. Kickham was one of the most amiable of men. He was generous and kindly by nature, and was a pious member of the Catholic Church, to which his family had given priests and nuns.

Such was the man whom the myrmidons of the law placed in the dock of Green-street court-house, when on January 5th, 1866, after the return of the judges from Cork, the Commission was re-opened in Dublin. His appearance was somewhat peculiar. He was a tall, strong, rough-bearded man, with that strained expression of face which is often worn by people of dim sight. Around his neck he wore an india-rubber tube, or ear trumpet, through which any words that were necessary to be addressed to him were shouted into his ear by some of his friends, or by his solicitor. His trial did not occupy much time, for on the refusal of the crown lawyers and judges to produce the convict Thomas Clarke Luby, whom he conceived to be a material witness for his defence, he directed his lawyers to abandon the case, and contented himself with reading to the court some remarks on the evidence which had been offered against him. The chief feature in this address was his denial of all knowledge of the "executive document." He had never seen or heard of it until it turned up in connexion with those trials. Referring to one of the articles with the authorship of which he was charged, he said he wondered how any Irishman, taking into consideration what had occurred in Ireland during the last eighty-four years, could hesitate to say to the enemy--"Give us our country to ourselves and let us see what we can do with it." Alluding to a report that the government contemplated making some concession to the claims of the Catholic bishops, he remarked that concessions to Ireland had always been a result of Fenianism in one shape or another, and that he believed the present manifestation of the national spirit would have weight, as former ones had, with the rulers of the country. As regards the landed class in Ireland, the _Irish People_, he contended, had said nothing more than was said by Thomas Davis, whose works every one admired. That eminent Irishman, afflicted and stung to the heart by witnessing the system of depopulation which was going on throughout the country, had written these words:--

"God of Justice, I sighed, send your Spirit down On those lords so cruel and proud, And soften their hearts, and relax their frown, Or else, I cried aloud, Vouchsafe Thy strength to the peasant's hand To drive them at length from out the land."

He had not gone farther than the writer of these lines, and now, he said, they might send him to a felon's doom if they liked.

And they did send him to it. Judge Keogh, before passing sentence, asked him if he had any further remarks to make in reference to his case. Mr. Kickham briefly replied:--

"I believe, my lords, I have said enough already. I will only add that I am convicted for doing nothing but my duty. I have endeavoured to serve Ireland, and now I am prepared to suffer for Ireland."

Then the judge, with many expressions of sympathy for the prisoner, and many compliments in reference to his intellectual attainments, sentenced him to kept in penal servitude for fourteen years. His solicitor, Mr. John Lawless, announced the fact to him through his ear trumpet. Charles J. Kickham bowed to the judges, and with an expression of perfect tranquility on his features, went into captivity.

* * * * *

GENERAL THOMAS F. BURKE.

The year of grace, 1867, dawned upon a cloudy and troublous period in Irish politics. There was danger brewing throughout the land; under the crust of society the long confined lava of Fenianism effervesced and glowed. There were strange rumours in the air; strange sounds were heard at the death of night on the hill-sides and in the meadows; and through the dim moonlight masses of men were seen in secluded spots moving in regular bodies and practising military evolutions. From castle and mansion and country seat the spectre of alarm glided to and fro, whispering with bloodless lips of coming convulsions and slaughter, of the opening of the crater of revolution, and of a war against property and class. Symptoms of danger were everywhere seen and felt; the spirit of disaffection had not been crushed; it rode on the night wind and glistened against the rising sun; it filled rath and fort and crumbling ruin with mysterious sounds; it was seen in the brightening eyes and the bold demeanour of the peasantry; in the signals passing amongst the people; in their secret gatherings and closely guarded conclaves. For years and years Fenianism had been threatening, boasting, and promising, and now the fury of the storm, long pent-up, was about to burst forth over the land--the hour for action was at hand.

Between the conviction of Luby, O'Leary, and Kickham, and the period at which we are now arrived, many changes of importance had taken place in the Fenian organization. In America, the society had been revolutionized--it had found new leaders, new principles, new plans of action; it had passed through the ordeal of war, and held its ground amidst flashing swords and the smoke of battle; it had survived the shocks of division, disappointment, and failure; treachery, incapacity and open hostility had failed to shatter it; and it grew apace in strength, influence, and resources. At home Fenianism, while losing little in numerical strength, had declined in effectiveness, in prestige, in discipline, and in organization. Its leaders had been swept into the prisons, and though men perhaps as resolute stepped forward to fill the vacant places, there was a loss in point of capacity and intelligence, and to the keen observer it became apparent that the Fenian Society in Ireland had attained to the zenith of its power on the day that the _Irish People_ office was sacked by the police. Never again did the prospects of Fenianism, whatever they might then have been, look equally bright; and when the brotherhood at length sprang to action, they fought with a sword already broken to the hilt, and under circumstances the most ominous and inauspicious.

The recent history of the Fenian movement is so thoroughly understood that anything like a detailed account of its changes and progress is, in these pages, unnecessary. We shall only say that when James Stephens arrived in America in May, 1866, after escaping from Richmond Prison, he found the society in the States split up into two opposing parties between whom a violent quarrel was raging. John O'Mahony had been deposed from his position of "Head Centre" by an all but unanimous vote of the Senate, or governing body of the association, who charged him and his officials with a reckless and corrupt expenditure of the society's funds, and these in turn charged the Senate party with the crime of breaking up the organization for mere personal and party purposes. A large section of the society still adhered to O'Mahony, in consideration of his past services in their cause; but the greater portion of it, and nearly all its oldest, best-known and most trusted leaders gave their allegiance to the Senate and to its elected President, William R. Roberts, an Irish merchant of large means, of talent and energy, of high character and unquestionable devotion to the cause of his country. Many friends of the brotherhood hoped that James Stephens would seek to heal the breach between these parties, but the course he took was not calculated to effect that purpose. He denounced the "senators" in the most extravagant terms, and invited both branches of the organization to unite under himself as supreme and irresponsible leader and governor of the entire movement. The O'Mahony section did not answer very heartily to this invitation; the Senate party indignantly rejected it, and commenced to occupy themselves with preparations for an immediate grapple with British power in Canada. Those men were thoroughly in earnest, and the fact became plain to every intelligence, when in the latter part of May, 1866, the Fenian contingents from the various States of the Union began to concentrate on the Canadian border. On the morning of the 1st of June some hundreds of them crossed the Niagara river, and took possession of the village of Fort Erie on the Canadian side. They were soon confronted with detachments of the volunteer force which had been collected to resist the invasion, and at Limestone Ridge they were met by the "Queen's Own" regiment of volunteers from Toronto, under the command of Colonel Booker. A smart battle ensued, the result of which was that the "Queen's Own" were utterly routed by the Irish under Colonel John O'Neill, and forced to run in wild confusion for a town some miles distant, Colonel Booker on his charger leading the way and distancing all competitors. Had the Irish been allowed to follow up this victory it is not unlikely that they would have swept Canada clear of the British forces, and then, according to their programme, made that country their base of operations against British power in Ireland. But the American government interfered and put an effectual stopper on their progress; they seized the arms of the Irish soldiers on the frontier, they sent up large parties of the States soldiery to prevent the crossing of hostile parties into British territory, and stationed war-vessels in the river for the same purpose. Reinforcements being thus cut off from them, the victors of Limestone Ridge found themselves under the necessity of re-crossing the river to the American shore, which they did on the night of the 2nd of June, bringing with them the flags and other trophies which they had captured from the royal troops.

The first brush between the Fenian forces and the Queen's troops inspired the former with high hopes, and with great confidence in their capacity to humble "the English red below the Irish green," if only they could start on any thing like fair terms. But now that the American government had forbidden the fight in Canada, what was to be done? James Stephens answered that question. He would have a fight in Ireland--the right place, he contended, in which to fight _for_ Ireland. The home organization was subject to his control and would spring to arms at his bidding. He would not only bid them fight, but would lead them to battle, and that at no distant day. The few remaining months of 1866 would not pass away without witnessing the commencement of the struggle. So he said, and so he swore in the most solemn manner at various public meetings which he had called for the purpose of obtaining funds wherewith to carry on the conflict. The prudence of thus publishing the date which he had fixed for the outbreak of the insurrection was very generally questioned, but however great might be his error in this respect, many believed that he would endeavour to make good his words. The British government believed it, and prepared for the threatened rising by hurrying troops and munitions of war across to Ireland, and putting the various forts and barracks in a state of thorough defence. As the last days and nights of 1866 wore away, both the government and the people expected every moment to hear the first crash of the struggle. But it came not. The year 3867 came in and still all was quiet. What had become of James Stephens? The astonished and irate Fenians of New York investigated the matter, and found that he was peacefully and very privately living at lodgings in some part of that city, afraid to face the wrath of the men whom he had so egregiously deceived. We need not describe the outburst of rage and indignation which followed on the discovery; suffice it to say that the once popular and powerful Fenian leader soon found it prudent to quit the United States and take up his abode in a part of the world where there were no Fenian circles and no settlements of the swarming Irish race.

Amongst the men who had rallied round James Stephens in America there were many whose honesty was untainted, and who had responded to his call with the full intention of committing themselves, without regard to consequences, to the struggle which he promised to initiate. They believed his representations respecting the prospects of an insurrection in Ireland, and they pledged themselves to fight by his side and perish, if necessary, in the good old cause, in defence of which their fathers had bled. They scorned to violate their engagements; they spurned the idea of shrinking from the difficulty they had pledged themselves to face, and resolved that come what may the reproach of cowardice and bad faith should never be uttered against them. Accordingly, in January, '67, they began to fend in scattered parties at Queenstown, and spread themselves through the country, taking every precaution to escape the suspicion of the police. They set to work diligently and energetically to organize an insurrectionary outbreak; they found innumerable difficulties in their path; they found the people almost wholly unarmed; they found the wisest of the Fenian leaders opposed to an immediate outbreak, but still they persevered. How ably they performed their work there is plenty of evidence to show, and if the Irish outbreak of '67 was short-lived and easily suppressed, it was far from contemptible in the pre-concert and organization which it evidenced.

One hitch did occur in the accomplishment of their designs. On Wednesday, February 13th, the exciting news was flashed throughout the land that the Fenians had broken into insurrection at Kerry. The news was true. The night of the 12th of February had been fixed for a simultaneous rising of the Fenians in Ireland; but the outbreak had been subsequently postponed, and emissaries were despatched to all parts of the country with the intelligence of the change of date. The change of date was everywhere learned in time to prevent premature action except at Cahirciveen, in the west of Kerry, where the members of the Brotherhood, acting upon the orders received, unearthed their arms, and gaily proceeded towards Killarney to form a junction with the insurgents whom they imagined had converged from various parts of the county in that town. Before many hours had elapsed they discovered their mistake--they heard before arriving at Killarney that they were the only representatives of the Irish Republic that had appeared in the field, and turning to the mountains they broke up and disappeared.

Short-lived as was their escapade, it filled the heart of England with alarm. In hot haste the _Habeas Corpus_ Suspension Act, which had been permitted to lapse a month before, was re-enacted; the arrests and police raids was renewed, and from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear the gaols were filled with political prisoners. Still the Irish-Americans worked on; some of them were swept off to prison, but the greater number of them managed to escape detection, and spite of the vigilance of the authorities, and the extraordinary power possessed by the government and its officials, they managed to carry on the business of the organization, to mature their plans, and to perfect their arrangements for the fray.

We do not propose to write here a detailed account of the last of the outbreaks which, since the Anglo-Norman invasion, have periodically convulsed our country. The time is not yet come when the whole history of that extraordinary movement can be revealed, and such of its facts, as are now available for publication, are fresh in the minds of our readers. On the night of the 5th of March, the Fenian bands took the field in Dublin, Louth, Tipperary, Cork, Waterford, Limerick, and Clare. They were, in all cases, wretchedly armed, their plans had been betrayed by unprincipled associates, and ruin tracked their venture from the outset. They were everywhere confronted by well-armed, disciplined men, and their reckless courage could not pluck success for the maze of adverse circumstances that surrounded them. The elements, too, befriended England as they had often done before. Hardly had the insurgents left their homes when the clear March weather gave place to the hail and snow of mid-winter. The howling storm, edged by the frost and hail, swept over mountain and valley, rendering life in the open air all but impossible to man. The weather in itself would have been sufficient to dispose of the Fenian insurgents. Jaded and exhausted they returned to their homes, and twenty-four hours after the flag of revolt had been unfurled the Fenian insurrection was at an end.

Amongst the Irish officers who left America to share in the expected battle for Irish rights, a conspicuous place must be assigned Thomas F. Burke. He was born at Fethard, county Tipperary, on the 10th of December, 1840, and twelve years later sailed away towards the setting sun, his parents having resolved on seeking a home in the far West. In New York, young Burke attended the seminary established by the late Archbishop Hughes, where he received an excellent education, after which he was brought up to his father's trade--that of house painter. For many years he worked steadily at his trade, contributing largely to the support of his family. The outbreak of the war, however, acted in the same manner on Burke's temperament as on thousands of his fellow-countrymen. He threw aside his peaceful avocation and joined the Confederate army. He served under General Patrick Cleburne, who died in his arms, and he fought side by side with the son of another distinguished exile, John Mitchel. When the war had closed, he returned a Brevet-General, northwards, with a shattered limb and an impaired constitution. In June, 1865, he joined the Wolfe Tone Circle of the Fenian Brotherhood in New York, and was appointed soon afterwards to act as organizer in the Brotherhood for the district of Manhattan. He filled this post with great satisfaction to his associates, and continued to labour energetically in this capacity until his departure for Ireland, at the close of 1866.

Tipperary was assigned to Burke as the scene of his revolutionary labours in Ireland. He arrived in Clonmel early in February, where he was arrested on suspicion, but was immediately discharged--his worn appearance and physical infirmity giving strong corroboration of his assertion, that he had come to Ireland for the benefit of his health. On the night of the insurrection he placed himself at the head of the Fenian party that assembled in the neighbourhood of Tipperary, but he quickly saw the folly of attempting a revolution with the scanty band of unarmed men that rallied round him. On the evening of the 6th his followers were attacked by a detachment of soldiers at Ballyhurst Fort, about three miles from Tipperary; Burke saw the uselessness of resistance, and advised his followers to disperse--an injunction which they appear to have obeyed. Burke himself was thrown from his horse and captured. He was conveyed to the jail of Tipperary, and was brought to trial in the Greenstreet court-house, in Dublin, on the 24th of April following. He was convicted of high treason, and sentenced to death in the usual form. The following speech delivered by him after conviction is well worthy of a place in the Irish heart:--

"My lords--It is not my intention to occupy much of your time in answering the question--what I have to say why sentence should not be passed upon me? But I may, with your permission, review a little of the evidence that has been brought against me. The first evidence that I would speak of is that of Sub-Inspector Kelly, who had a conversation with me in Clonmel. He states that he asked me either how was my friend, or what about my friend, Mr. Stephens, and that I made answer and said, that he was the most idolised man that ever had been, or that ever would be in America. Here, standing on the brink of my grave, and in the presence of the Almighty and ever-living God, I brand that as being the foulest perjury that ever man gave utterance to. In any conversation that occurred the name of Stephens was not mentioned. I shall pass from that, and then touch on the evidence of Brett. He states that I assisted in distributing the bread to the parties in the fort, and that I stood with him in the waggon or cart. This is also false. I was not in the fort at the time; I was not there when the bread was distributed. I came in afterwards. Both of these assertions have been made and submitted to the men in whose hands my life rested, as evidence made on oath by these men--made solely and purely for the purpose of giving my body to an untimely grave. There are many points, my lords, that have been sworn to here to prove my complicity in a great many acts it has been alleged I took part in. It is not my desire now, my lords, to give utterance to one word against the verdict which has been pronounced upon me. But fully conscious of my honour as a man, which has never been impugned, fully conscious that I can go into my grave with a name and character unsullied, I can only say that these parties, actuated by a desire either of their own aggrandisement, or to save their paltry miserable lives, have pandered to the appetite, if I may so speak, of justice, and my life shall pay the forfeit. Fully convinced and satisfied of the righteousness of my every act in connection with the late revolutionary movement in Ireland, I have nothing to recall--nothing that I would not do again, nothing for which I should feel the blush of shame mantling my brow; my conduct and career, both here as a private citizen, and in America--if you like--as a soldier, are before you; and even in this, my hour of trial, I feel the consciousness of having lived an honest man, and I will die proudly, believing that if I have given my life to give freedom and liberty to the land of my birth, I have done only that which every Irishman and every man whose soul throbs with a feeling of liberty should do. I, my lords, shall scarcely--I feel I should not at all--mention the name of Massey. I feel I should not pollute my lips with the name of that traitor, whose illegitimacy has been proved here--a man whose name even is not known, and who, I deny point blank, ever wore the star of a colonel in the Confederate army. Him I shall let rest. I shall pass him, wishing him, in the words of the poet:--

"'May the grass wither from his feet; The woods deny him shelter; earth a home; The dust a grave; the sun his light: And heaven its God!'

"Let Massey remember from this day forth that he carries with him, as my able and eloquent counsel (Mr. Dowse) has stated, a serpent that will gnaw his conscience, will carry about him in his breast a living hell from which he can never be separated. I, my lords, have no desire for the name of a martyr; I seek not the death of a martyr; but if it is the will of the Almighty and Omnipotent God that my devotion for the land of my birth shall be tested on the scaffold, I am willing there to die in defence of the right of men to free government--the right of an oppressed people to throw off the yoke of thraldom. I am an Irishman by birth, an American by adoption; by nature a lover of freedom--an enemy to the power that holds my native land in the bonds of tyranny. It has so often been admitted that the oppressed have a right to throw off the yoke of oppression, even by English statesmen, that I do not deem it necessary to advert to the fact in a British court of justice. Ireland's children are not, never were, and never will be, willing or submissive slaves; and so long as England's flag covers one inch of Irish soil, just so long will they believe it to be a divine right to conspire, imagine, and devise means to hurl it from power, and to erect in its stead the God-like structure of self-government. I shall now, my lords, before I go any further, perform one important duty to my learned, talented, and eloquent counsel. I offer them that which is poor enough, the thanks, the sincere and heartfelt thanks of an honest man. I offer them, too, in the name of America, the thanks of the Irish people. I know that I am here without a relative--without a friend--in fact, 3,000 miles away from my family. But I know that I am not forgotten there. The great and generous Irish heart of America to-day feels for me--to-day sympathises with and does not forget the man who is willing to tread the scaffold--aye, defiantly--proudly, conscious of no wrong--in defence of American principles--in defence of liberty. To Messrs. Butt, Dowse, O'Loghlen, and all the counsel for the prisoners, for some of whom I believe Mr. Curran will appear, and my very able solicitor, Mr. Lawless, I return individually and collectively, my sincere and heartfelt thanks.

"I shall now, my lords, as no doubt you will suggest to me, think of the propriety of turning my attention to the world beyond the grave. I shall now look only to that home where sorrows are at an end, where joy is eternal. I shall hope and pray that freedom may vet dawn on this poor down-trodden country. It is my hope, it is my prayer, and the last words that I shall utter will be a prayer to God for forgiveness, and a prayer for poor old Ireland. Now, my lords; in relation to the other man, Corridon, I will make a few remarks. Perhaps before I go to Corridon, I should say much has been spoken on that table of Colonel Kelly, and of the meetings held at his lodgings in London. I desire to state, I never knew where Colonel Kelly's lodgings were. I never knew where he lived in London, till I heard the informer, Massey, announce it on the table. I never attended a meeting at Colonel Kelly's; and the hundred other statements that have been made about him. I now solemnly declare on my honour as a man--as a dying man--these statements have been totally unfounded and false from beginning to end. In relation to the small paper that was introduced here, and brought against me as evidence, as having been found on my person in connexion with that oath, I desire to say that that paper was not found on my person. I knew no person whose name was on that paper. O'Beirne, of Dublin, or those other delegates you heard of, I never saw or met. That paper has been put in there for some purpose. I can swear positively it is not in my handwriting. I can also swear I never saw it; yet it is used as evidence against me. Is this justice? Is this right? Is this manly? I am willing if I have transgressed the laws to suffer the penalty, but I object to this system of trumping up a case to take away the life of a human being. True, I ask for no mercy. I feel that, with my present emaciated frame and somewhat shattered constitution, it is bettor that my life should be brought to an end than that I should drag out a miserable existence in the prison dens of Portland. Thus it is, my lords, I accept the verdict. Of course my acceptance of it is unnecessary, but I am satisfied with it. And now I shall close. True it is there are many feelings that actuate me at this moment. In fact, these few disconnected remarks can give no idea of what I desire to state to the court. I have ties to bind me to life and society as strong as any man in this court can have. I have a family I love as much as any man in this court loves his family. But I can remember the blessing I received from an aged mother's lips as I left her the last time. She, speaking as the Spartan mother did, said--'Go, my boy, return either with your shield or upon it.' This reconciles me--this gives me heart. I submit to my doom; and I hope that God will forgive me my past sins. I hope also, that inasmuch as He has for seven hundred years preserved Ireland, notwithstanding all the tyranny to which she has been subjected, as a separate and distinct nationality, He will also assist her to retrieve her fallen fortunes--to rise in her beauty and majesty, the Sister of Columbia, the peer of any nation in the world."

General Burke, as our readers are well aware, was not executed. The government shrank from carrying out the barbarous sentence of the law, and his punishment was changed to the still more painful, if less appalling fate, of penal servitude for life. Of General Burke's private character we have said little; but our readers will be able to understand it from the subjoined brief extracts from two of his letters. On the very night previous to his trial he wrote to his mother from Kilmainham Prison:--

... "On last Easter Sunday I partook of Holy Communion at a late mass, I calculated the difference of time between this longitude and yours, for I knew that you and my dear sisters were partaking of the sacrament at early mass on that day, as was your wont, and I felt that our souls were in communion together."

We conclude with the following letter from General Burke, which has never before been published, and which we are sure will be of deep interest to our readers. It is addressed to the reverend gentleman who had been his father confessor in Clonmel:--

"KILMAINHAM GOAL,

"_4th, Month of Mary._

"DEAR REV. FATHER,

" ... I am perfectly calm and resigned, with my thoughts firmly centered with hope in the goodness and mercy of that kind Redeemer, whose precious blood was shed for my salvation; as also in the mediation and intercession of His Blessed Mother, who is my Star of Hope and Consolation. I know, dear father, I need not ask you to be remembered in your prayers, for I feel that in your supplication to the Throne of Mercy I have not been forgotten.... I have only one thought which causes me much sorrow, and that is that my good and loving mother will break down under the weight of her affliction, and, oh, God, I who loved her more than the life which animates the hand that writes to be the cause of it! This thought unmans and prostrates me. I wrote to her at the commencement of my trial, and told her how I thought it would terminate, and spoke a long and last farewell. I have not written since; it would break my heart to attempt it; but I would ask you as an especial favour that you would write to her and tell her I am happy and reconciled to the will of God who has given me this opportunity of saving my immortal soul. I hope to hear from you before I leave this world."

"Good-bye, father, and that God may bless you in your ministry is the prayer of an obedient child of the church."

"THOMAS F. BURKE."

* * * * *

CAPTAIN JOHN M'AFFERTY.

It is not Irish-born men alone whose souls are filled with a chivalrous love for Ireland, and a stern hatred of her oppressor. There are amongst the ranks of her patriots none more generous, more resolute, or more active in her cause than the children born of Irish parents in various parts of the world. In London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and all the large towns of Great Britain, throughout the United States, and in the British colonies, many of the best known and most thorough-going "Irishmen" are men whose place of birth was not beneath the Irish skies, and amongst them are some who never saw the shores of the Green Isle. One of these men was Captain John M'Afferty. He was born of Irish parents in the State of Ohio, in the year 1838, and at their knees he heard of the rights and wrongs of Ireland, learned to sympathise with the sufferings of that country, and to regard the achievement of its freedom as a task in which he was bound to bear a part. He grew up to be a man of adventurous and daring habits, better fitted for the camp than for the ordinary ways of peaceful life; and when the civil war broke out he soon found his place in one of those regiments of the Confederacy whose special duty lay in the accomplishment of the most hazardous enterprises. He belonged to the celebrated troop of Morgan's guerillas, whose dashing feats of valour so often filled the Federal forces with astonishment and alarm. In the latter part of 1865 he crossed over to this country to assist in leading the insurrection which was then being prepared by the Fenian organization. He was arrested, as already stated in these pages, on board the steamer at Queenstown before he had set foot on Irish soil; when brought to trial at Cork, in the month of December, the lawyers discovered that being an alien, and having committed no overt act of treason within the Queen's dominions, there was no case against him, and he was consequently discharged. He then went back to America, took an active part in some Fenian meetings, made a speech at one of them which was held at Jones's Wood, and when the report of the proceedings appeared in print, he, with a sense of grim humour, posted a copy containing his oration to the governor of Mountjoy Prison, Dublin. In the latter part of 1866, when James Stephens was promising to bring off immediately the long-threatened insurrection, M'Afferty again crossed the ocean, and landed in England. There he was mainly instrumental in planning and organizing that extraordinary movement, the raid on Chester, which took place on Monday, 11th of February, 1867. It is now confessed, even by the British authorities themselves, that but for the timely intimation of the design given by the informer Corridon, M'Afferty and his party would probably have succeeded in capturing the old Castle, and seizing the large store of arms therein contained. Finding their movements anticipated, the Fenian party left Chester as quietly as they had come, and the next that was heard of M'Afferty was his arrest, and that of his friend and companion John Flood, on the 23rd of February, in the harbour of Dublin, after they had got into a small boat from out of the collier "New Draper," which had just arrived from Whitehaven. M'Afferty was placed in the dock of Green-street court-house for trial on Wednesday, May 1st, while the jury were absent considering their verdict in the case of Burke and Doran. On Monday, May the 6th, he was declared guilty by the jury. On that day week a Court of Appeal, consisting of ten of the Irish judges, sat to consider some legal points raised by Mr. Butt in the course of the trial, the most important of which was the question whether the prisoner, who had been in custody since February 23rd, could be held legally responsible for the events of the Fenian rising which occurred on the night of the 5th of March. Their lordships gave an almost unanimous judgment against the prisoner on Saturday, May 18th, and on the Monday following he was brought up for sentence, on which occasion, in response to the usual question, he spoke as follows:--

"My lords--I have nothing to say that can, at this advanced stage of the trial, ward off that sentence of death, for I might as well hurl my complaint (if I had one) at the orange trees of the sunny south, or the tall pine trees of the bleak north, as now to speak to the question why sentence of death should not be passed upon me according to the law of the land; but I do protest loudly against the injustice of that sentence. I have been brought to trial upon a charge of high treason against the government of Great Britain, and guilt has been brought home to me upon the evidence of one witness, and that witness a perjured informer. I deny distinctly that there have been two witnesses to prove the overt act of treason against me. I deny distinctly that you have brought two independent witnesses to two overt acts. There is but one witness to prove the overt act of treason against me. I grant that there has been a cloud of circumstantial evidence to show my connection (if I may please to use that word) with the Irish people in their attempt for Irish independence, and I claim that as an American and as an alien, I have a reason and a right to sympathise with the Irish people or any other people who may please to revolt against that form of government by which they believe they are governed tyrannically. England sympathised with America. She not only sympathised, but she gave her support to both parties; but who ever heard of an Englishman having been arrested by the United States government for having given his support to the Confederate States of America and placed on his trial for high treason against the government? No such case ever has been. I do not deny that I have sympathised with the Irish people--I love Ireland--I love the Irish people. And, if I were free to-morrow, and the Irish people were to take the field for independence, my sympathy would be with them; I would join them if they had any prospect whatever of independence, but I would not give my sanction to the useless effusion of blood, however done; and I state distinctly that I had nothing whatever to do, directly or indirectly, with the movement that took place in the county of Dublin. I make that statement on the brink of my grave. Again, I claim that I have a right to be discharged of the charge against me by the language of the law by which I have been tried. That law states that you must have two independent witnesses to prove the overt act against the prisoner. That is the only complaint I have to make, and I make that aloud. I find no fault with the jury, no complaint against the judges. I have been tried and found guilty. I am perfectly satisfied that I will go to my grave. I will go to my grave like a gentleman and a Christian, although I regret that I should be cut off at this stage of my life--still many an noble Irishman fell in defence of the rights of my southern clime. I do not wish to make any flowery speech to win sympathy in the court of justice. Without any further remarks I will now accept the sentence of the court."

Mr. Justice Fitzgerald then in the "solemn tone of voice" adopted on such occasions proceeded to pass sentence in the usual form, fixing the 12th day of June as the date on which the execution should take place.

The prisoner heard the sentence without giving the slightest symptoms of emotion, and then spoke as follows:--

"I will accept my sentence as becomes a gentleman and a Christian. I have but one request to ask of the tribunal, and that is that after the execution of the sentence my remains shall be turned over to Mr. Lawless to be by him interred in consecrated ground as quietly as he possibly can. I have now, previous to leaving the dock, once more to return my grateful and sincere thanks to Mr. Butt, the star of the Irish bar, for his able and devoted defence on behalf of me and my friends. Mr. Butt, I thank you. I also return the same token of esteem to Mr. Dowse, for the kind and feeling manner in which he alluded to the scenes in my former life. Those kind allusions recall to my mind many moments--some bright, beautiful, and glorious--and yet some sad recollections arise of generous hopes that floated o'er me, and now sink beyond the grave. Mr. Butt, please convey to Mr. Dowse my grateful and sincere thanks. Mr. Lawless, I also return you my thanks for your many acts of kindness--I can do no more."

He was not executed however. The commutation of Burke's sentence necessitated the like course in all the other capital cases, and M'Afferty's doom was changed to penal servitude for life.

* * * * *

EDWARD DUFFY.

On the day following that on which M'Afferty's sentence was pronounced, the trial of three men, named John Flood, Edward Duffy, and John Cody was brought to a conclusion. When they were asked what they had to say why sentence should not be passed on them, Cody denied with all possible earnestness the charge of being president of an assassination committee, which had been brought against him. Flood--a young man of remarkably handsome exterior--declared that the evidence adduced against himself was untrue in many particulars. He alluded to the Attorney-General's having spoken of him as "that wretched man, Flood." "My lords," said he, "if to love my country more than my life makes me a wretched man, then I am a very wretched man indeed." Edward Duffy, it might be supposed by anyone looking at his emaciated frame, wasted by consumption, and with the seal of death plainly set on his brow, would not be able to offer any remarks to the court; but he roused himself to the effort. The noble-hearted young fellow had been previously in the clutches of the government for the same offence. He was arrested with James Stephens and others at Fairfield House, in November, 1865, but after a brief imprisonment was released in consideration of the state of his health, which seemed such as would not leave him many days to live. But, few or many, Duffy could not do otherwise than devote them to the cause he had at heart. He was re-arrested at Boyle on the 11th of March, and this time the government took care they would not quit their hold of him. The following is the speech which, by a great physical effort, he delivered from the dock, his dark eyes brightening, and his pallid features lighting up with the glow of an earnest and lofty enthusiasm while he spoke:--

"The Attorney-General has made a wanton attack on me, but I leave my countrymen to judge between us. There is no political act of mine that I in the least regret. I have laboured earnestly and sincerely in my country's cause, and I have been actuated throughout by a strong sense of duty. I believe that a man's duty to his country is part of his duty to God, for it is He who implants the feeling of patriotism in the human breast. He, the great searcher of hearts, knows that I have been actuated by no mean or paltry ambition--that I have never worked for any selfish end. For the late outbreak I am not responsible; I did all in my power to prevent it, for I knew that, circumstanced as we then were, it would be a failure. It has been stated in the course of those trials that Stephens was for peace. This is a mistake. It may be well that it should not go uncontradicted. It is but too well known in Ireland that he sent numbers of men over here to fight, promising to be with them when the time would come. The time did come, but not Mr. Stephens. He remained in France to visit the Paris Exhibition. It may be a very pleasant sight, but I would not be in his place now. He is a lost man--lost to honour, lost to country. There are a few things I would wish to say relative to the evidence given against me at my trial, but I would ask your lordships to give me permission to say them after sentence. I have a reason for asking to be allowed to say them after sentence has been passed."

The Chief Justice--"That is not the usual practice. Not being tried for life, it is doubtful to me whether you have a right to speak at all. What you are asked to say is why sentence should not be passed upon you, and whatever you have to say you must say now."

"Then, if I must say it now I declare it before my God that what Kelly swore against me on the table is not true. I saw him in Ennisgroven, but that I ever spoke to him on any political subject I declare to heaven I never did. I knew him from a child in that little town, herding with the lowest and vilest. Is it to be supposed I'd put my liberty into the hands of such a character? I never did it. The next witness is Corridon. He swore that at the meeting he referred to I gave him directions to go to Kerry to find O'Connor, and put himself in communication with him. I declare to my God every word of that is false. Whether O'Connor was in the country or whether he had made his escape, I know just as little as your lordships; and I never heard of the Kerry rising until I saw it in the public papers. As to my giving the American officers money that night, before my God, on the verge of my grave, where my sentence will send me, I say that also is false. As to the writing that the policeman swore to in that book, and which is not a prayer-book, but the 'Imitation of Christ,' given to me by a lady to whom I served my time, what was written in that book was written by another young man in her employment. That is his writing not mine. It is the writing of a young man in the house, and I never wrote a line of it."

The Lord Chief Justice--"It was not sworn to be in your handwriting."

"Yes, my lord, it was. The policeman swore it was in my hand-writing."

The Lord Chief Justice--"That is a mistake. It was said to be like yours."

"The dream of my life has been that I might be fighting for Ireland. The jury have doomed me to a more painful, but not less glorious death. I now bid farewell to my friends and all who are dear to me.

"'There is a world where souls are free, Where tyrants taint not nature's bliss; If death that bright world's opening be, Oh, who would live a slave in this.'

"I am proud to be thought worthy of suffering for my country; when I am lying in my lonely cell I will not forget Ireland, and my last prayer will be that the God of liberty may give her strength to shake off her chains."

John Flood and Edward Duffy were then sentenced each to fifteen years of penal servitude, and Cody to penal servitude for life.

Edward Duffy's term of suffering did not last long. A merciful Providence gave his noble spirit release from its earthly tenement before one year from the date of his sentence had passed away. On the 21st of May, 1867, his trial concluded; on the 17th of January, 1868, the patriot lay dead in his cell in Millbank Prison, London. The government permitted his friends to remove his remains to Ireland for interment; and they now rest in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, where friendly hands oft renew the flowers on his grave, and many a heartfelt prayer is uttered that God would give the patriot's soul eternal rest, and "let perpetual light shine unto him."

* * * * *

STEPHEN JOSEPH MEANY.

The connexion of Stephen Joseph Meany with Irish politics dates back to 1848, when he underwent an imprisonment of some months in Carrickfergus Castle, under the provisions of the _Habeas Corpus_ Suspension Act. He had been a writer on one of the national newspapers of that period, and was previously a reporter for a Dublin daily paper. He joined the Fenian movement in America, and was one of the "Senators" in O'Mahony's organization. In December, 1866, he crossed over to England, and in the following month he was arrested in London, and was brought in custody across to Ireland. His trial took place in Dublin on the 16th of February, 1867, when the legality of the mode of his arrest was denied by his counsel, and as it was a very doubtful question, the point was reserved to be considered by a Court of Appeal. This tribunal sat on May the 13th, 1867, and on May the 18th, their decision confirming the conviction was pronounced. It was not until the 21st of the following month, at the Commission of Oyer and Terminer that he was brought up for sentence. He then delivered the following able address to show "why sentence should not be passed on him":--

"My lords--There are many reasons I could offer why sentence should not--could not--be pronounced upon me according to law, if seven months of absolute solitary imprisonment, and the almost total disuse of speech during that period, had left me energy enough, or even language sufficient to address the court. But yielding obedience to a suggestion coming from a quarter which I am bound to respect, as well indeed as in accordance with my own feelings, I avoid everything like speech-making for outside effect. Besides, the learned counsel who so ably represented me in the Court of Appeal, and the eminent judges who in that court gave judgment for me, have exhausted all that could be said on the law of the case. Of their arguments and opinions your lordships have judicial knowledge. I need not say that both in interest as in conviction I am in agreement with the constitutional principles laid down by the minority of the judges in that court, and I have sufficient respect for the dignity of the court--sufficient regard to what is due to myself--to concede fully and frankly to the majority a conscientious view of a novel and, it may be, a difficult question.

"But I do not ask too much in asking that before your lordships proceed to pass any sentence you will consider the manner in which the court was divided on that question--to bear in mind that the minority declaring against the legality and the validity of the conviction was composed of some of the ablest and most experienced judges of the Irish bench or any bench--to bear in mind that one of these learned judges who had presided at the Commission Court was one of the most emphatic in the Court of Criminal Appeal in declaring against my liability to be tried; and moreover--and he ought to know--that there was not a particle of evidence to sustain the cause set up at the last moment, and relied upon by the crown, that I was an 'accessory before the fact' to that famous Dublin overt act, for which, as an afterthought of the crown, I was in fact tried. And I ask you further to bear in mind that the affirmance of the conviction was not had on fixed principles of law--for the question was unprecedented--but on a speculative view of a suppositious case, and I must say a strained application of an already over-strained and dangerous doctrine--the doctrine of constructive criminality--the doctrine of making a man at a distance of three thousand miles or more, legally responsible for the words and acts of others whom he had never seen, and of whom he had never heard, under the fiction, or the 'supposition,' that he was a co-conspirator. The word 'supposition' is not mine, my lords; it is the word put forward descriptive of the point by the learned judges presiding at my trial; for I find in the case prepared by these judges for the Court of Criminal Appeal the following paragraph:--

"'Sufficient evidence was given on the part of the crown of acts of members of the said association in Ireland not named in the indictment in promotion of the several objects aforesaid, and done within the county of the city of Dublin, to sustain some of the overt acts charged in the indictment supposing them to be the acts of the defendant himself.'

"Fortified by such facts--with a court so divided, and with opinions so expressed--I submit that, neither according to act of parliament, nor in conformity with the practice at common law, nor in any way in pursuance of the principles of that apocryphal abstraction, that magnificent myth--the British constitution--am I amenable to the sentence of this court--or any court in this country. True, I am in the toils, and it may be vain to discuss how I was brought into them. True, my long and dreary imprisonment--shut away from all converse or association with humanity, in a cell twelve feet by six--the humiliations of prison discipline--the hardships of prison fare--the handcuffs, and the heartburnings--this court and its surroundings of power and authority--all these are 'hard practical facts,' which no amount of indignant protests can negative--no denunciation of the wrong refine away; and it may be, as I have said, worse than useless--vain and absurd--to question the right where might is predominant. But the invitation just extended to me by the officer of the court means, if it means anything--if it be not like the rest, a solemn mockery--that there still is left to me the poor privilege of complaint. And I do complain. I complain that law and justice have been alike violated in my regard--I complain that the much belauded attribute 'British fair play' has been for me a nullity--I complain that the pleasant fiction described in the books as 'personal freedom' has had a most unpleasant illustration in my person--and I furthermore and particularly complain that by the design and contrivance of what are called 'the authorities,' I have been brought to this country, not for trial but for condemnation--not for justice but for judgment.

"I will not tire the patience of the court, or exhaust my own strength, by going over the history of this painful case--the kidnapping in London on the mere belief of a police-constable that I was a Fenian in New York--the illegal transportation to Ireland--the committal for trial on a specific charge, whilst a special messenger was despatched to New York to hunt up informers to justify the illegality and the outrage, and to get a foundation for any charge. I will not dwell on the 'conspicuous absence' of fair play, in the crown at the trial having closed their cases without any reference to the Dublin transaction, but, as an afterthought, suggested by their discovered failure, giving in evidence the facts and circumstances of that case, and thus succeeding in making the jury convict me for an offence with which up to that moment the crown did not intend to charge me. I will not say what I think of the mockery of putting me on trial in the Commission Court in Dublin for alleged words and acts in New York, and though the evidence was without notice, and the alleged overt acts without date, taunting me with not proving an _alibi_, and sending that important ingredient to a jury already ripe for a conviction. Prove an _alibi_ to-day in respect of meetings held in Clinton Hall, New York, the allegations relating to which only came to my knowledge yesterday! I will not refer with any bitter feeling to the fact that whilst the validity of the conviction so obtained was still pending in the Court of Criminal Appeal, the Right Hon. and Noble the Chief Secretary for Ireland declared in the House of Commons that 'that conviction was the most important one at the Commission'--thus prejudicing my case, I will not say willingly; but the observation was, at least, inopportune, and for me unfortunate.

"I will not speak my feeling on the fact that in the arguments in the case in the Court for Reserved Cases, the Right Hon. the Attorney-General appealed to the passions--if such can exist in judges--and not to the judgment of the court, for I gather from the judgment of Mr. Justice O'Hagan, that the right hon. gentleman made an earnest appeal 'that such crimes' as mine 'should not be allowed to go unpunished'.--forgetful, I will not say designedly forgetful, that he was addressing the judges of the land, in the highest court of the land, on matters of law, and not speaking to a pliant Dublin jury on a treason trial in the court-house of Green-street.

"Before I proceed further, my lords, there is a matter which, as simply personal to myself I should not mind, but which as involving high interests to the community, and serious consequences to individuals, demand a special notice. I allude to the system of manufacturing informers. I want to know, if the court can inform me, by what right a responsible officer of the crown entered my solitary cell at Kilmainham prison on Monday last--unbidden and unexpected--uninvited and undesired. I want to know what justification there was for his coming to insult me in my solitude and in my sorrow--ostensibly informing me that I was to be brought up for sentence on Thursday, but in the same breath adroitly putting to me the question if I knew any of the men recently arrested near Dungarvan, and now in the prison of Kilmainham. Coming thus, with a detective dexterity, carrying in one hand a threat of sentence and punishment--in the other as a counterpoise and, I suppose an alternative, a temptation to treachery. Did he suppose that seven months of imprisonment had so broken my spirit, as well as my health, that I would be an easy prey to his blandishments? Did he dream that the prospect of liberty which newspaper rumour and semi-official information held out to me was too dear to be forfeited for a trilling forfeiture of honour? Did he believe that by an act of secret turpitude I would open my prison doors only to close them the faster on others who may or may not have been my friends--or did he imagine he had found in me a Massey to be moulded and manipulated into the service of the crown, or a Corridon to have cowardice and cupidity made the incentives to his baseness. I only wonder how the interview ended as it did; but I knew I was a prisoner, and self-respect preserved my patience and secured his safety. Great, my lords, as have been my humiliation in prison, hard and heart-breaking as have been the ordeals through which I have passed since the 1st of December last, there was no incident or event of that period fraught with more pain on the one hand, or more suggestiveness on the other, than this sly and secret attempt at improvising an informer. I can forget the pain in view of the suggestiveness; and unpleasant as is my position here to-day, I am almost glad of the opportunity which may end in putting some check to the spy system in prisons. How many men have been won from honour and honesty by the stealthy visit to the cell is more of course than I can say--how many have had their weakness acted upon, or their wickness fanned into flame by which means I have no opportunity of knowing--in how many frailty and folly may have blossomed into falsehood it is for those concerned to estimate. There is one thing, however, certain--operating in this way is more degrading to the tempter than to the tempted; and the government owes it to itself to put an end to a course of tactics pursued in its name, which in the results can only bring its humiliation--the public are bound in self-protection to protect the prisoner from the prowling visits of a too zealous official.

"I pass over all these things, my lords, and I ask your attention to the character of the evidence on which alone my conviction was obtained. The evidence of a special, subsidized spy, and of an infamous and ingrate informer.

"In all ages, and amongst all peoples, the spy has been held in marked abhorrence. In the amnesties of war there is for him alone no quarter; in the estimate of social life no toleration; his self-abasement excites contempt, not compassion; his patrons despise while they encourage; and they who stoop to enlist the services shrink with disgust from the moral leprosy covering the servitor. Of such was the witness put forward to corroborate the informer, and still not corroborating him. Of such was that phenomenon, a police spy, who declared himself an unwilling witness for the crown! There was no reason why in my regard he should be unwilling--he knew me not previously. I have no desire to speak harshly of Inspector Doyle; he said in presence of the Crown Solicitor, and was not contradicted, that he was compelled by threats to ascend the witness table; he may have had cogent reasons for his reluctance in his own conscience. God will judge him.

"But how shall I speak of the informer, Mr. John Devany? What language should be employed in describing the character of one who adds to the guilt of perfidy to his associates the crime of perjury to his God?--the man who eating of your bread, sharing your confidence, and holding, as it were, your very purse-strings, all the time meditates your overthrow and pursues it to its accomplishment? How paint the wretch who, under pretence of agreement in your opinions, worms himself into your secrets only to betray them; and who, upon the same altar with you, pledges his faith and fealty to the same principles, and then sells faith, and fealty, and principles, and you alike, for the unhallowed Judas guerdon? Of such, on his own confession was that distinguished upholder of the British crown and government, Mr. Devany. With an affrontery that did not falter, and knew not how to blush, he detailed his own participation in the acts for which he was prosecuting me as a participator. And is the evidence of a man like that--a conviction obtained upon such evidence--any warrant for a sentence depriving me of all that make life desirable or enjoyable?

"He was first spy for the crown--in the pay of the crown, under the control of the crown, and think you he had any other object than to do the behests of the crown?

"He was next the traitor spy, who had taken that one fatal step, from which in this life there is no retrogression--that one plunge in infamy from which there is no receding--that one treachery for which there is no earthly forgiveness; and, think you, he hesitated about a prejury more or less to secure present pay and future patronage? Here was one to whom existence offers now no prospect save in making his perfidy a profession, and think you he was deterred by conscience from recommending himself to his patrons? Think you that when at a distance of three thousand miles from the scenes he professed to describe, he could lie with impunity and invent without detection, he was particular to a shade in doing his part of a most filthy bargain? It is needless to describe a wretch of that kind--his own actions speak his character. It were superfluous to curse him, his whole existence will be a living, a continuing curse. No necessity to use the burning words of the poet and say:--

"'May life's unblessed cup for him Be drugged with treacheries to the brim.'

"Every sentiment in his regard of the country he has dishonoured, and the people he has humbled, will be one of horror and hate. Every sigh sent up from the hearts he has crushed and the homes he has made desolate, will be mingled with execrations on the name of the informer. Every heart-throb in the prison cells of this land where his victims count time by corroding his thought--every grief that finds utterance from these victims in the quarries of Portland will go up to heaven freighted with curses on the Nagles, the Devanys, the Masseys, the Gillespies, the Corridons, and the whole host of mercenary miscreants, who, faithless to their friends and recreant to their professions, have, paraphrasing the words of Moore, taken their perfidy to heaven seeking to make accomplice of their God--wretches who have embalmed their memories in imperishable infamy, and given their accursed names to an inglorious immortality. Nor will I speculate on their career in the future. We have it on the best existing authority that a distinguished informer of antiquity seized with remorse, threw away his blood-money, 'went forth and hanged himself.' We know that in times within the memory of living men a government actually set the edifying and praiseworthy example of hanging an informer when they had no further use of his valuable services--thus _dropping_ his acquaintance with effect. I have no wish for such a fate to any of the informers who have cropped out so luxuriantly in these latter days--a long life and a troubled conscience would, perhaps, be their correct punishment--though certainly there would be a consistent compensation--a poetic justice--in a termination so exalted to a career so brilliant.

"I leave these fellows and turn for a moment to their victims. And, I would here, without any reference to my own case, earnestly implore that sympathy with political sufferers should not be merely telescopic in its character, 'distance lending enchantment to the view;' and that when your statesmen sentimentalize upon, and your journalists denounce far-away tyrannies--the horrors of Neapolitan dungeons--the abridgement of personal freedom in Continental countries--the exercise of arbitrary power by irresponsible authority in other lands--they would turn their eyes homeward, and examine the treatment and the sufferings of their own political prisoners. I would, in all sincerity, suggest that humane and well-meaning men, who exert themselves for the remission of the death-penalty as a mercy, would rather implore that the doors of solitary and silent captivity should be remitted to the more merciful doom of an immediate relief from suffering by immediate execution--the opportunity of an immediate appeal from man's cruelty to God's justice. I speak strongly on this point because I feel it deeply. I speak not without example. At the Commission at which I was tried there was tried also and sentenced a young man named Stowell. I well remember that raw and dreary morning, the 12th March, when handcuffed to Stowell I was sent from Kilmainham Prison to the County Gaol of Kildare. I well remember our traversing, so handcuffed, from the town of Sailing to the town of Naas, ancle deep in snow and mud, and I recall now with pain our sad foreboding of that morning. These in part have been fulfilled. Sunday after Sunday I saw poor Stowell at chapel in Naas Gaol drooping and dying. One such Sunday--the 12th May--passed and I saw him no more. On Wednesday, the 15th, he was, as they say, _mercifully_ released from prison, but the fiat of mercy had previously gone forth from a higher power--the political convict simply reached his own home to die, with loving eyes watching by his death-bed. On Sunday, the 19th May, he was consigned to another prison home in Glasnevin Cemetery. May God have mercy on his soul--may God forgive his persecutors--may God give peace and patience to those who are doomed to follow.

"Pardon this digression, my lords, I could not avoid it. Returning to the question, why sentence should not be pronounced upon me, I would ask your lordships' attention to the fact showing, even in the estimate of the crown, the case is not one for sentence.

"On the morning of my trial, and before the trial, terms were offered to me by the crown. The direct proposition was made through my solicitor, through the learned counsel who so ably defended me, through the Governor of Kilmainham Prison--by all three--that if I pleaded guilty to the indictment, I should get off with six months' imprisonment. Knowing the pliancy of Dublin juries in political cases, the offer was, doubtless, a tempting one. Valuing liberty, it was almost resistless--in view of a possible penal servitude--but having regard to principle, I spurned the compromise. I then gave unhesitatingly, as I would now give, the answer, that not for a reduction of the punishment to six hours would I surrender faith--that I need never look, and could never look, wife or children, friends or family, in the face if capable of such a selfish cowardice. I could not to save myself imperil the safety of others--I could not plead guilty to an indictment in which six others were distinctly charged by name as co-conspirators with me--one of those six since tried, convicted, and sentenced to death--I could not consent to obtain my own pardon at their expense--furnish the crown with a case in point for future convictions, and become, even though indirectly, worthy to rank with that brazen battalion of venal vagabonds, who have made the Holy Gospel of God the medium of barter for their unholy gain, and obtained access to the inmost heart of their selected victim only to coin its throbbing into the traitor's gold and traffic on its very life-blood.

"Had I been charged simply with my own words and deeds I would have no hesitation in making acknowledgement. I have nothing to repent and nothing to conceal--nothing to retract and nothing to countermand; but in the language of the learned Lord Chief Baron in this case, I could not admit 'the preposterous idea of thinking by deputy' any more than I could plead guilty to an indictment which charge others with crime. Further, my lords, I could not acknowledge culpability for the acts and words of others at a distance of three thousand miles--others whom I had never seen, of whom I had never heard, and with whom I never had had communication. I could not admit that the demoniac atrocities, described as Fenian principles by the constabulary-spy Talbot, ever had my sanction or approval or the sanction or approval of any man in America.

"If, my lords, six months' imprisonment was the admeasurement of the law officers of the crown as an adequate punishment for my alleged offence--assuming that the court had jurisdiction to try and punish--then, am I now entitled to my discharge independent of all other grounds of discharge, for I have gone through seven months of an imprisonment which could not be excelled by demon ingenuity in horror and in hardship--in solitude, in silence and in suspense. Your lordships will not only render further litigation necessary by passing sentence for the perhaps high crime--but still the untried crime--of refusing to yield obedience to the crown's proposition for my self-abasement. You will not, I am sure, visit upon my rejection of Mr. Anderson's delicate overture--you will not surely permit the events occurring, unhappily occurring, since my trial to influence your judgments. And do not, I implore you, accept as a truth, influencing that judgement, Talbot's definition of the objects of Feminism. Hear what Devany, the American informer, describes them to be. 'The members,' he says, 'were _pledged by word of honour_ to promote love and harmony amongst all classes of Irishmen and to labour for the independence of Ireland.' Talbot says that in Ireland 'the members are _bound by oath_ to seize the property of the country and murder all opposed to them.' Can any two principles be more distinct from each other? Could there be a conspiracy for a common object by such antagonistic means? To murder all opposed to your principles may be an effectual way of producing unanimity, but the quality of love and harmony engendered by such a patent process, would be extremely equivocal. Mr. Talbot, for the purposes of his evidence, must have borrowed a leaf from the History of the French Revolution, and adopted as singularly telling and appropriate for effect the saying attributed to Robespiere: 'Let us cut everybody's throat but our own, and then we are sure to be masters.'

"No one in America, I venture to affirm, ever heard of such designs in connexion with the Fenian Brotherhood. No one in America would countenance such designs. Revolutionists are not ruffians or rapparees. A judge from the bench at Cork, and a noble lord in his place in parliament, bore testimony to that fact, in reference to the late movement; and I ask you, my lords--I would ask the country from this court--for the sake of the character of your countrymen--to believe Devany's interpretation of Fenianism--tainted traitor though he be--rather than believe that the kindly instincts of Irishmen, at home and abroad--their generous impulses--their tender sensibilities--all their human affections, in a word--could degenerate into the attributes of the assassin, as stated by that hog-in-armour, that crime-creating Constable Talbot.

"Taking other ground, my lords, I object to any sentence upon me. I stand at this bar a declared citizen of the United States of America, entitled to the protection of such citizenship; and I protest against the right to pass any sentence in any British court for acts done, or words spoken, or alleged to be done or spoken, on American soil, within the shades of the American flag, and under the sanction of American institutions. I protest against the assumption that would in this country limit the right of thought, or control the liberty of speech in an assemblage of American citizens in an American city. The United States will, doubtless, respect and protect her neutrality laws and observe the comity of nations, whatever they may mean in practice, but I protest against the monstrous fiction--the transparent fraud--that would seek in ninety years after the evacuation of New York by the British to bring the people of New York within the vision and venue of a British jury--that in ninety years after the last British bayonet had glistened in an American sunlight, after the last keel of the last of the English fleet ploughed its last furrow in the Hudson or the Delaware--after ninety years of republican independence--would seek to restore that city of New York and its institutions to the dominion of the crown and government of Great Britain. This is the meaning of it, and disguise it as you may, so will it be interpreted beyond the Atlantic. Not that the people of America care one jot whether S.J. Meany were hanged, drawn, and quartered to-morrow, but that there is a great principle involved. Personally, I am of no consequence; politically, I represent in this court the adopted citizen of America--for, as the _New York Herald_, referring to this case, observed, if the acts done in my regard are justifiable, there is nothing to prevent the extension of the same justice to any other adopted citizen of the States visiting Great Britain. It is, therefore, in the injustice of the case the influence lies, and not in the importance of the individual.

"Law is called 'the perfection of reason.' Is there not danger of its being regarded as the very climax of absurdity if fictions of this kind can be turned into realities on the mere caprice of power. As a distinguished English journalist has suggested in reference to the case, 'though the law may doubtless be satisfied by the majority in the Court of Appeal, yet common sense and common law would be widely antagonistic if sentence were to follow a judgment so obtained.'

"On all grounds then I submit, in conclusion, this is not a case for sentence. Waving for the purpose the international objection, and appealing to British practice itself, I say it is not a fair case for sentence. The professed policy of that practice has ever been to give the benefit of doubt to the prisoner. Judges in their charges to juries have ever theorized on this principle, and surely judges themselves will not refuse to give practical effect to the theory. If ever there was a case which more than another was suggestive of doubt, it is surely one in which so many judges have pronounced against the legality of the trial and the validity of the conviction on which you are about to pass sentence. Each of these judges, be it remembered, held competent in his individuality to administer the criminal law of the country--each of whom, in fact, in his individuality does so administer it unchallenged and unquestioned.

"A sentence under such circumstances, be it for a long period or a short would be wanting in the element of moral effect--the effect of example--which could alone give it value, and which is professedly the aim of all legal punishment. A sentence under such circumstances would be far from reassuring to the public mind as to the 'certainties' of the law, and would fail to commend the approval or win the respect of any man 'within the realm or without.' While to the prisoner, to the sufferer in chief, it would only bring the bitter, and certainly not the repentant feeling that he suffered in the wrong--that he was the victim of an injustice based on an inference which not even the tyrant's plea of necessity can sustain--namely, that at a particular time he was at a distance of three thousand miles from the place where he then actually stood in bodily presence, and that at that distance he actually thought the thoughts and acted the acts of men unknown to him even by name. It will bring to the prisoner, I repeat, the feeling--the bitter feeling--that he was condemned on an unindicted charge pressed suddenly into the service, and for a constructive crime which some of the best authorities in the law have declared not to be a crime cognizable in any of your courts.

"Let the crown put forward any supposition they please--indulge in what special pleadings they will--sugar over the bitter pill of constructive conspiracy as they can--to this complexion must come the triangular injustice of this case--the illegal and unconstitutional kidnapping in England--the unfair and invalid trial and conviction in Ireland for the alleged offence in another hemisphere and under mother sovereignty. My lords, I have done."

* * * * *

CAPTAIN JOHN M'CLURE.

Captain John M'Clure, like Captain M'Afferty, was an American born, but of Irish parentage. He was born at Dobb's Ferry, twenty-two miles from New York, on July 17th, 1846, and he was therefore a mere youth when, serving with distinguished gallantry in the Federal ranks, he attained the rank of captain. He took part in the Fenian rising of the 5th March, and was prominently concerned in the attack and capture of Knockadoon coast-guard station. He and his companion, Edward Kelly, were captured by a military party at Kilclooney Wood, on March 31st, after a smart skirmish, in which their compatriot the heroic and saintly Peter Crowley lost his life. His trial took place before the Special Commission at Cork, on May 22nd and 23rd, 1807. The following are the spirited and eloquent terms in which he addressed the court previous to sentence being pronounced on him:--

"My lords--In answer to the question as to why the sentence of the court should not now be passed upon me, I would desire to make a few remarks in relation to my late exertions in behalf of the suffering people of this country, in aiding them in their earnest endeavours to attain the independence of their native land. Although not born upon the soil of Ireland, my parents were, and from history, and tradition, and fireside relations, I became conversant with the country's history from my earliest childhood, and as the human race will ever possess these God-like qualities which inspire mankind with sympathy for the suffering, a desire to aid poor Ireland to rise from her moral degradation took possession of me. I do not now wish to say to what I assign the failure of that enterprise with which are associated my well-meant acts for this persecuted land. I feel fully satisfied of the righteousness of my every act in connexion with the late revolutionary movement in this country, being actuated by a holy desire to assist in the emancipation of an enslaved and generous people. I derive more pleasure from having done the act than from any other event that has occurred to me during my eventful but youthful life. I wish it to be distinctly understood here, standing as I do perhaps on the brink of an early grave, that I am no fillibuster or freebooter, and that I had no personal object or inclination to gain anything in coming to this country. I came solely through love of Ireland and sympathy for her people. If I have forfeited my life. I am ready to abide the issue. If my exertions on behalf of a distressed people be a crime, I am willing to pay the penalty, knowing, as I do, that what I have done was in behalf of a people whose cause is just--a people who will appreciate and honour a man, although he may not be a countryman of their own--still a man who is willing to suffer in defence of that divine, that American principle--the right of self-government. I would wish to tender to my learned and eloquent counsel, Mr. Heron and Mr. Waters, and to my solicitor, Mr. Collins, my sincere and heartfelt thanks for the able manner in which they have conducted my defence. And now, my lords, I trust I will meet in a becoming manner the penalty which it is now the duty of your lordship to pronounce upon me. I have nothing more to say."

* * * * *

EDWARD KELLY.

On the same occasion the prisoner Edward Kelly delivered the following soul-stirring address:--

"My lords--The novelty of my situation will plead for any want of fluency on my part; and I beg your lordships' indulgence if I am unnecessarily tedious. I have to thank the gentlemen of the jury for their recommendation, which I know was well meant; but knowing, as I do, what that mercy will be, I heartily wish that recommendation will not be received. Why should I feel regret? What is death? The act of passing from this life into the next. I trust that God will pardon me my sins, and that I will have no cause to fear entering into the presence of the ever-living and Most Merciful Father. I don't recollect in my life ever having done anything with a deliberately bad intention. In my late conduct I do not see anything for regret. Why then, I say, should I feel regret? I leave the dread of death to such wretches as Corridon and Massey--Corridon, a name once so suggestive of sweetness and peace, now the representative of a loathsome monster. If there be anything that can sink that man, Corridon, lower in the scales of degradation, it is--"

The Chief Justice--"We cannot listen to any imputation on persons who were examined as witnesses. Strictly speaking, you are only to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon you; at the same time we are very unwilling to hold a very strict hand, but we cannot allow imputations to be made on third persons, witnesses or others, who have come forward in this trial."

Prisoner--"Well, my lord, I will answer as well as I can the question put to me. The Irish people through every generation ever since England has obtained a footing in Ireland, have protested against the occupation of our native soil by the English. Surely that is answer enough why sentence of death should not be passed upon me. In the