disgraced a
priest; he has been ever found sincere in his thoughts, moral in his
conduct, and most unselfish in his actions. Is this the man to join
a set of senseless rioters, furious at the imprisonment of their
relatives, and anxious only to protect their illicit stills? And this
is no empty praise. That what I have said of the prisoner is no more
than is his due, will be proved to you by evidence which I defy you
to doubt. Well, he did not go to Mrs. Mulready's; but he did go to
his friend and priest, Mr. Magrath; and not as a penitent to his
confessor, but as a friend to a friend, told him exactly what had
passed, lamented his indiscretion, and declared his determination
never to put himself in the way of repeating it.

"Up to this time my chief object has been to show to you the enmity
existing between Keegan and the prisoner,--the object which the
former had in view in ruining the prisoner, and that Brady was a paid
spy employed to entrap him.

"I shall now come to the deed itself, and I shall afterwards refer to
what absolutely did take place at the meeting at the wedding. I have
told you that young Macdermot did kill the deceased. He struck him
with the stick which has been shown to you in court, and as he was
rising from the blow he struck him again; and no doubt the medical
witness was right in his opinion that the second blow occasioned
instant death.

"You are, however, aware that circumstances might exist which
would justify any man in taking the life of another. If a man were
violently to attack you, and you were to strike him on the head and
kill him, you would be justified. If you were to kill a man in a
fray, in fair defence of a third party, you would be justified.
If you were to kill a man by a blow in the quarrel of a moment,
you would not be guilty of murder. But I can fancy no case in
which death, however much it may be lamented, can lay less of the
murderer's stain upon the hand that inflicts it, than one in which
a brother interferes to rescue a sister from the violent grasp of a
seducer. Such was precisely the case in the instance now before us.
My learned friend on the other side has truly told you that Miss
Macdermot, the prisoner's sister, had consented to elope with Captain
Ussher on the evening on which that man was killed. You have learnt,
from evidence which you have no reason to doubt, that she had
prepared to do so. In fact, you cannot doubt that she left the house
of Ballycloran