e learned counsel who so ably defended me,
through the Governor of Kilmainham Prison--by all three--that if I
pleaded guilty to the indictment, I should get off with six months'
imprisonment. Knowing the pliancy of Dublin juries in political
cases, the offer was, doubtless, a tempting one. Valuing liberty, it
was almost resistless--in view of a possible penal servitude--but
having regard to principle, I spurned the compromise. I then gave
unhesitatingly, as I would now give, the answer, that not for a
reduction of the punishment to six hours would I surrender
faith--that I need never look, and could never look, wife or
children, friends or family, in the face if capable of such a selfish
cowardice. I could not to save myself imperil the safety of others--I
could not plead guilty to an indictment in which six others were
distinctly charged by name as co-conspirators with me--one of those
six since tried, convicted, and sentenced to death--I could not
consent to obtain my own pardon at their expense--furnish the crown
with a case in point for future convictions, and become, even though
indirectly, worthy to rank with that brazen battalion of venal
vagabonds, who have made the Holy Gospel of God the medium of barter
for their unholy gain, and obtained access to the inmost heart of
their selected victim only to coin its throbbing into the traitor's
gold and traffic on its very life-blood.

"Had I been charged simply with my own words and deeds I would have
no hesitation in making acknowledgement. I have nothing to repent
and nothing to conceal--nothing to retract and nothing to
countermand; but in the language of the learned Lord Chief Baron in
this case, I could not admit 'the preposterous idea of thinking by
deputy' any more than I could plead guilty to an indictment which
charge others with crime. Further, my lords, I could not acknowledge
culpability for the acts and words of others at a distance of three
thousand miles--others whom I had never seen, of whom I had never
heard, and with whom I never had had communication. I could not admit
that the demoniac atrocities, described as Fenian principles by the
constabulary-spy Talbot, ever had my sanction or approval or the
sanction or approval of any man in America.

"If, my lords, six months' imprisonment was the admeasurement of the
law officers of the crown as an