Then the jurors themselves objected. They unblushingly declared
themselves unfit;--asserted that they could not depend upon
themselves to give a true verdict, and assured the judge that their
minds would be improperly biassed by circumstances on one side or the
other. What atrocious characters!--what self-condemned miscreants!
Why does not the judge instantly, with that stern look he knows
so well how to assume, turn them out of court, bid them make way
for honest men, and send them home, disgraced for ever, to their
sorrowing families? Does he do so? No indeed! he picks his teeth
while Mr. Allewinde assures this recusant or the other that he has no
doubt but that he will make a most eligible juror; and at last, with
considerable delay, a little trial takes place in each case, and two
other jurymen have to decide on their oaths, whether Terence Murphy
stands indifferent between our Lord and Sovereign the King and the
prisoner at the bar; and to enable them to decide, they have to hear
all the evidence in the case.

The twelve are at last sworn--the proper officer repeating in each
case those awful words, "Juror, look upon the prisoner. Prisoner,
look upon the juror. You shall well and truly try, and true
deliverance make, between our Lord and Sovereign the King and the
prisoner at the bar--so help you God!"

As this injunction in each case reached Thady's ear, he moved his
eyes upon the man who was then being sworn, as if demanding from him
that true deliverance to which he felt himself entitled. And now the
prisoner having pleaded, the indictments read, and the jury armed
with pen, ink, and paper, Mr. Allewinde, full of legal dignity
and intellectual warmth, rises to his subject. We will not follow
him through the whole of the long narrative which he, with great
practised perspicuity, and in the clearest language, laid before the
jury, for we already know the facts which he had to detail. He first
of all described the death of Ussher; then stated that he could
prove that the prisoner had killed him, and having informed the jury
that doubtless the prisoner's sister was in the act of eloping with
the deceased when he met his death, launched out into a powerful
description of the present dreadful state of the country. He told the
jury that it was in his power to prove to them that the prisoner was
one of an illegal society who had often threatened Ussher, and that
he had but a day or two previous to the affray met a sw