of Dublin of all parties, with many of the foremost names in commerce, literature, and the professions at their head, demanded that the prosecution should be utterly dropped. The jurors who had been willing to convict me united with them. Several of the principal towns in the north and south followed their example. The Irish electors in certain English and Scotch boroughs called on their representatives to interpose. It was plainly the opinion of large masses of men that the ordinary course of justice had been departed from, and that public opinion might, and ought to, penetrate into the court of law itself and stand between the prosecutor and the prisoner.
The Last Trial.
The last Commission opened on the 10th of April, 1849, nine months and two days after my arrest. The public impatience to know the constitution of the jury panel was immense; and Judge Jackson, who was no lip Liberal, but a Tory and a bigot, acted with commendable fairness. He ordered it to be read aloud the day before my trial. Lo! the prolific Government had conceived a new device. Felony cases are invariably tried by a common jury. So they have been tried for centuries. So Mitchel, Martin, Williams, and O'Doherty had been tried. But you summoned for this Commission, not only special jurors, but special jurors alone. Every name was taken from a list composed, according to statute, of "the sons of peers, baronets, and knights, magistrates, ex-sheriffs, grand jurors, squires, bankers, merchants, and traders worth £5,000!" You estimated me highly, my Lord, when you insisted upon these personages, and none others, as my "neighbours and equals." Titus Gates swore that the "Papists plotted to shoot the King with a silver bullet"; and this was plotting to hang me with a silken halter. There were Catholics on this list, of course—Castle Catholics, employes in public offices, the brothers and brothers-in-law of official people, the "sons of baronets" made by Whigs; magistrates raised to the Bench by the same faction, and proud of their dignities—in short, your sworn servants. And I have before me at this moment the letter of a trustworthy witness, assuring me that to his own positive
