and resources of the law at defiance. They had rescued a co-conspirator from the grasp of the government, and slain an officer of the law in the pursuit of their object. Within a few minutes' walk of barracks and military depôts,—in sight of the royal ensign that waved over hundreds of her Majesty's defenders, a prison van had been stopped and broken open, and its defenders shot at and put to flight. Never had the English people heard of so audacious a proceeding—never did they feel more insulted. From every corner of the land the cry swelled, up for vengeance fierce and prompt. Victims there should be; blood—Irish blood—the people would have; nor were they willing to wait long for it. It might be that, falling in hot haste, the sword of Justice might strike the innocent, and not the guilty; it might be that, in the thirst for vengeance, the restraints of humanity would be forgotten; but the English nature, now thoroughly aroused, cared little for such considerations. It was Irishmen who had defied and trampled on their power; the whole Irish people approved of the act; and it mattered little who the objects of their fury might be, provided they belonged to the detested race. The prisoners, huddled together in the Manchester prisons, with chains round their limbs, might not be the liberators of Colonel Kelly—the slayers of Brett might not be amongst them; but they were Irishmen, at any rate, and so they would answer the purpose. Short shrift was the cry. The ordinary forms of law, the maxims of the Constitution, the rules of judicial procedure, the proprieties of social order and civilization, might be outraged and discarded, but speedy vengeance should, at all hazards, be obtained: the hangman could not wait for his fee, nor the people for their carnival of blood; and so it was settled that, instead of being tried at the ordinary Commission, in December, a Special Commission should be issued on the spot for the trial of the accused.

On Thursday, the 25th of October, the prisoners were brought up for committal, before Mr. Fowler, R.M., and a bench of brother magistrates. Some of the Irishmen arrested in the first instance had been discharged—not that no one could be found to swear against them (a difficulty which never seems to have arisen in these cases) but that the number of witnesses who could swear to their innocence was so great, that an attempt to press for convictions in their cases would be pertain to jeopardize the whole proceedings. The following is a list of the prisoners put forward, the names being, as afterwards appeared, in many cases fictitious:—

William O'Mara Allen, Edward Shore, Henry Wilson, William Gould, Michael Larkin, Patrick Kelly, Charles Moorhouse, John Brennan, John Bacon, William Martin, John F. Nugent, James Sherry, Robert McWilliams, Michael Maguire, Thomas Maguire, Michael Morris, Michael Bryan, Michael Corcoran, Thomas Ryan, John Carroll, John Cleeson, Michael Kennedy, John Morris, Patrick Kelly, Hugh Foley, Patrick Coffey, Thomas Kelly, and Thomas Scally.

It forms no part of our purpose to follow out the history of the proceedings in the Manchester court on the 25th of September and the following days: but there are some circumstances in connection with that investigation which it would be impossible to pass over without comment. It was on this occasion that the extraordinary sight of men being tried in chains was witnessed, and that the representatives of the English Crown came to sit in judgment on men still innocent in the eyes of the law, yet manacled like convicted felons. With the blistering irons clasped tight round their wrists the Irish prisoners stood forward, that justice—such justice as tortures men first and tries them afterwards—might be administered to them. "The police considered the precaution necessary," urged the magistrate, in reply to the scathing denunciations of the unprecedented outrage which fell from the lips of Mr. Ernest Jones, one of the prisoners' counsel. The police considered it necessary, though within the courthouse no friend of the accused could dare to show his face—though the whole building bristled with military and with policemen, with their revolvers ostentatiously displayed;—necessary, though every approach to the courthouse was held by an armed guard, and though every soldier in the whole city was standing to arms;—necessary there, in the heart of an English city, with a dense population thirsting for the blood of the accused, and when the danger seemed to be, not that they might escape from custody—a flight to the moon would be equally practicable—but that they might be butchered in cold blood by the angry English mob that scowled on them from the galleries of the court house, and howled round the building in which they stood. In vain did Mr. Jones protest, in scornful words, against the brutal indignity—in vain did he appeal to the spirit of British justice, to ancient precedent and modern practice—in vain did he inveigh against a proceeding which forbad the intercourse necessary between him and his clients—and in vain did he point out that the prisoners in the dock were guiltless and innocent men according to the theory of the law. No arguments, no expostulations would change the magistrate's decision. Amidst the applause of the cowardly set that represented the British public within the courthouse, he insisted that the handcuffs should remain on; and then Mr. Jones, taking the only course left to a man of spirit under the circumstances, threw down his brief and indignantly quitted the desecrated justice hall. Fearing the consequences of leaving the prisoners utterly undefended, Mr. Cottingham, the junior counsel for the defence, refrained from following Mr. Jones's example, but he, too, protested loudly, boldly, and indignantly against the cowardly outrage, worthy of the worst days of the French monarchy, which his clients were being subjected to. The whole investigation was in keeping with the spirit evinced by the bench. The witnesses seemed to come for the special purpose of swearing point-blank against the hapless men in the dock, no matter at what cost to truth, and to take a fiendish pleasure in assisting in securing their condemnation. One of the witnesses was sure "the whole lot of them wanted to murder everyone who had any property;" another assured his interrogator in the dock that "he would go to see him hanged;" and a third had no hesitation in acknowledging the attractions which the reward offered by the government possessed for his mind. Men and women, young and old, all seemed to be possessed of but the one idea—to secure as much of the blood-money as possible, and to do their best to bring the hated Irish to the gallows. Of course, an investigation, under these circumstances, could have but one ending, and no one was surprised to learn, at its conclusion, that the whole of the resolute body of stern-faced men, who, manacled and suffering, confronted their malignant accusers, had been committed to stand their trial in hot haste, for the crime of "wilful murder."

Of the men thus dealt with there are four with whose fate this narrative is closely connected, and whose names are destined to be long remembered in Ireland. They have won for themselves, by their courage, constancy, and patriotism, a fame that will never die; and through all future time they will rank beside the dauntless spirits that in days of darkness and disaster perished for the sacred cause of Ireland. Great men, learned men, prominent men they were not—they were poor, they were humble, they were unknown; they had no claim to the reputation of the warrior, the scholar, or the statesman; but they laboured, as they believed, for the redemption of their country from bondage; they risked their lives in a chivalrous attempt to rescue from captivity two men whom they regarded as innocent