on here. I trust the Irish people will
answer it to their satisfaction soon. I am not astonished at
my conviction. The government of this country have the power
of convicting any person. They appoint the judge; they choose
the jury; and by means of what they call patronage (which is
the means of corruption) they have the power of making the
laws to suit their purposes. I am confident that my blood
will rise a hundredfold against the tyrants who think proper
to commit such an outrage. In the first place, I say I was
identified improperly, by having chains on my hands and feet
at the time of identification, and thus the witnesses who have
sworn to my throwing stones and firing a pistol have sworn to
what is false, for I was, as those ladies said, at the jail
gates. I thank my counsel for their able defence, and also Mr.
Roberts, for his attention to my case."

Edward Maguire spoke next. He might well have felt bewildered at
the situation in which he found himself, but he spoke earnestly and
collectedly, nevertheless. He had had an experience of British law
which, if not without precedent, was still extraordinary enough to
create amazement. He knew that he had never been a Fenian; he knew
that he never saw Colonel Kelly--never heard of him until arrested
for assisting in his liberation; he knew that while the van was being
attacked at Bellevue, he was sitting in his own home, miles away; and
he knew that he had never in his life placed his foot in the scene of
the rescue; yet there he found himself convicted by regular process
of law, of the murder of Constable Brett. He had seen witness after
witness enter the box, and deliberately swear they saw him take a
prominent part in the rescue. He saw policemen and civilians coolly
identify him as a ringleader in the affair; he had heard the Crown
lawyers weave round him the subtle meshes of their logic; and now
he found himself pronounced guilty by the jury, in the teeth of the
overwhelming array of unimpeachable evidence brought forward in his
defence. What "the safeguards of the Constitution" mean--what "the
bulwark of English freedom," and "the Palladium of British freedom"
are worth, when Englishmen fill the jury-box and an Irishman stands in
the dock, Maguire had had a fair opportunity of judging. Had he been
reflectively inclined, he might, too, have found himself compelled to
adopt a rather low estimate of the credi