(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 rea