rrion, they
were flung into those unconsecrated pits, and strewed with quicklime.
For this was British law. The wolf and the tiger leave some vestiges
of their victims; but a special ordinance of English law required even
the corpses of those martyred Irishmen to be calcined.

They had purposed addressing the crowd from the scaffold, but were
prevented from so doing by order of the government! They had each one,
however, committed to writing, as already mentioned, a last solemn
message to the world. These declarations of the dying men were
entrusted to the care of their confessor, who eventually gave them up
for publication. They created the most intense and painful sensation
in Ireland. They made more and more clear the, dreadful fact that
the hapless men had been cruelly sacrificed. Standing, as it might
be said, in the presence of their God and Judge, they one and all
protested their innocence, and declared the falseness of the evidence
on which they had been convicted. But not in querulous repining or
denunciation were these truths proclaimed, but in language and with
sentiments worthy of men who professed the faith preached by the
Crucified on Calvary. Every line breathed the purest humility, the
most perfect resignation, and the most intense devotion to God,
mingled with the most fervent love of country. Those men were all of
humble circumstances in life, and, with the exception of O'Brien, had
but slight literary advantages; yet the simple pathos, beauty, and
eloquence of their dying messages moved every heart. Poor Larkin was,
of all three, the least endowed with education, yet his letter has
been aptly described as "a perfect _poem_ in prose." here append those
memorable documents:--

DECLARATION OF WILLIAM PHILIP ALLEN.

I wish to say a few words relative to the charge for which I am to
die. In a few hours more I will be going before my God. I state in
the presence of that great God that I am not the man who shot Sergeant
Brett. If that man's wife is alive, never let her think that I am the
person who deprived her of her husband; and if his family is alive,
let them never think I am the man who deprived them of their father.

I confess I have committed other sins against my God, and I hope He
will accept of my death as a homage and adoration which I owe his
Divine Majesty, and in atonement for my past transgressions against
him.

There is not much use in dwelling on this subject much longer; for by
this