at on May
the 13th, 1867, and on May the 18th, their decision confirming the
conviction was pronounced. It was not until the 21st of the following
month, at the Commission of Oyer and Terminer that he was brought up for
sentence. He then delivered the following able address to show "why
sentence should not be passed on him":--

"My lords--There are many reasons I could offer why sentence should
not--could not--be pronounced upon me according to law, if seven
months of absolute solitary imprisonment, and the almost total disuse
of speech during that period, had left me energy enough, or even
language sufficient to address the court. But yielding obedience to a
suggestion coming from a quarter which I am bound to respect, as well
indeed as in accordance with my own feelings, I avoid everything like
speech-making for outside effect. Besides, the learned counsel who so
ably represented me in the Court of Appeal, and the eminent judges
who in that court gave judgment for me, have exhausted all that could
be said on the law of the case. Of their arguments and opinions your
lordships have judicial knowledge. I need not say that both in
interest as in conviction I am in agreement with the constitutional
principles laid down by the minority of the judges in that court, and
I have sufficient respect for the dignity of the court--sufficient
regard to what is due to myself--to concede fully and frankly to the
majority a conscientious view of a novel and, it may be, a difficult
question.

"But I do not ask too much in asking that before your lordships
proceed to pass any sentence you will consider the manner in which
the court was divided on that question--to bear in mind that the
minority declaring against the legality and the validity of the
conviction was composed of some of the ablest and most experienced
judges of the Irish bench or any bench--to bear in mind that one of
these learned judges who had presided at the Commission Court was one
of the most emphatic in the Court of Criminal Appeal in declaring
against my liability to be tried; and moreover--and he ought to
know--that there was not a particle of evidence to sustain the cause
set up at the last moment, and relied upon by the crown, that I was
an 'accessory before the fact' to that famous Dublin overt act, for
which, as an afterthought of the crown, I was in fact tried. And I