ects according to the law. The
Queen, certainly, has the right by the constitution to pardon any
offenders against the law. She has the prerogative of mercy. But
there can be no pardon, no mercy, till after an offence be proved in
due course of law by accusation of the alleged offenders before the
proper tribunals, followed by the plea of guilty or the jurors'
verdict of guilty. And to select one man or six men for trial,
condemnation, and punishment, out of, say, four millions who have
really participated in the same alleged wicked, malicious, seditious,
evil-disposed, and unlawful proceeding, is unfair to the six men, and
unfair to the other 3,999,994 men--is a dereliction of duty on the
part of the officers of the law, and is calculated to bring the
administration of justice into disrepute. Equal justice is what the
constitution demands. Under military authority an army may be
decimated, and a few men may properly be punished, while the rest are
left unpunished. But under a free constitution it is not so. Whoever
breaks the law must be made amenable to punishment, or equal justice
is not rendered to the subjects of the Queen. Is it not pertinent,
therefore, gentlemen, for me to say to you this is an unwise
proceeding which my prosecutors bid you to sanction by a verdict? I
have heard it asked by a lawyer addressing this court as a question
that must be answered in the negative--can you indict a whole nation?
If such a proceeding as this prosecution against the peaceable
procession of the 8th December receives the sanction of your verdict,
that question must be answered in the affirmative. It will need only
a crown prosecutor, an attorney-general, and a solicitor-general, two
judges, and twelve jurors, all of the one mind, while all the other
subjects of the Queen in Ireland are of a different mind, and the
five millions and a half of the Queen's subjects of Ireland outside
that circle of seventeen of her Majesty's subjects, may be indicted,
convicted, and consigned to penal imprisonment in due form of law--a
law as understood in political trials in Ireland. Gentlemen, I have
thus far endeavoured to argue from the common sense of mankind, with
which the principles of law must be in accord, that the peaceable
procession of the 8th of December--that peaceable demonstration of
the sentiment of millions of the Queen's su