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 the