d abused;
every measure which he used was base enough of itself to hand down his
name to everlasting infamy. Such were the tenets of the Repealers. And
O'Connell and his counsel, their base artifices, falsehoods, delays,
and unprofessional proceedings, were declared by the Saxon party to be
equally abominable.
[FOOTNOTE 4: traversers--Trollope repeatedly refers to the
defendants as "traversers." The term probably comes
from the legal term "to traverse," which is to deny
the charges against one in a common law proceeding.
Thus, the traversers would have been those who pled
innocent.]
The whole Irish bar seemed, for the time, to have laid aside the
habitual _sang froid_ [5] and indifference of lawyers, and to have
employed their hearts as well as their heads on behalf of the different
parties by whom they were engaged. The very jurors themselves for a
time became famous or infamous, according to the opinions of those
by whom their position was discussed. Their names and additions were
published and republished; they were declared to be men who would stand
by their country and do their duty without fear or favour--so said the
Protestants. By the Roman Catholics, they were looked on as perjurors
determined to stick to the Government with blind indifference to their
oaths. Their names are now, for the most part, forgotten, though so
little time has elapsed since they appeared so frequently before the
public.
[FOOTNOTE 5: sang froid--(French) coolness in a trying situation,
lack of excitability]
Every day's proceedings gave rise to new hopes and fears. The evidence
rested chiefly on the reports of certain short-hand writers, who had
been employed to attend Repeal meetings, and their examinations and
cross-examinations were read, re-read, and scanned with the minutest
care. Then, the various and long speeches of the different counsel,
who, day after day, continued to address the jury; the heat of one,
the weary legal technicalities of another, the perspicuity of a third,
and the splendid forensic eloquence of a fourth, were criticised,
depreciated and admired. It seemed as though the chief lawyers of the
day were standing an examination, and were candidates for some high
honour, which each was striving to secure.
The Dublin papers were full of the trial; no other subject, could, at
the time, either
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