that on many grounds, in such a prosecution as this, such a course would be the most fair and most consistent for a man like me. That resolution I was, for the sake of others, induced to depart from on Saturday last, in the first prosecution against me. When it came to be seen that I was the first to be tried out of two journalists prosecuted, it was strongly urged on me that my course and the result of my trial might largely affect the case of the other journalists to be tried after me; and that I ought to waive my individual views and feelings, and have the utmost legal ability brought to bear in behalf of the case of the national press at the first point of conflict. I did so. I was defended by a bar not to be surpassed in the kingdom for ability and earnest zeal; yet the result was what I anticipated. For I knew, as I had held all along, that in a case like this, where law and fact are left to the jury, legal ability is of no avail if the Crown comes in with its arbitrary power of moulding the jury. In that case, as in this one, I openly, publicly, and distinctly announced that I for my part would challenge no one, whether with cause or without cause. Yet the Crown, in the face of this fact, and in a case where they knew that, at least, the accused had no like power of peremptory challenge, did not venture to meet me on equal footing; did not venture to abstain from their practice of absolute challenge; in fine, did not dare to trust their case to twelve men "indifferently chosen," as the constitution supposes a jury to be. Now, gentlemen, before I enter further upon this jury question, let me say that with me this is no complaint merely against "the Tories." On this, as well as on numerous other subjects, it is well known that it has been my unfortunate lot to arraign both Whigs and Tories. I say further, that I care not a jot whether the twelve men selected or permitted by the Crown to try me, or rather to convict me, be twelve of my own coreligionists and political compatriots, or twelve Protestants, Conservatives, Tories or "Orangemen." Understand me clearly on this. My objection is not to the individuals comprising the jury. You may be all Catholics, or you may be all Protestants, for aught that affects my protest, which is against the mode by which you are selectedselected by the Crown-their choice for their own ends-and not "indifferently chosen " between the Crown and the accused. You may disappoint or you may justify the calculations of the Crown official who has picked you out from the panel, by negative or posi tive choice (I being silent and powerless) --you may or may not be all he supposes; the outrage on the spirit of the constitution is the same. I say, by such a system of picking a jury by the Crown, I am not put upon my country. Gentlemen, from the first moment these proceedings were commenced against me, I think it will be admitted that I endeavored to meet them fairly and squarely, promptly and directly. I have never once turned to the right or to the left, but gone straight to the issue. I have from the outset declared my perfect readiness to meet the charges of the Crown. I did not care when or where they tried me. I said I would avail of no technicality that I would object to no juror - Catholic, Protestant, or Dissenter. All I asked all I demanded was to be "put upon my country" in the real, fair, and full sense and spirit of the constitution. All I asked was that the Crown would keep its hand off the panel, as I would keep off mine. I had lived fifteen years in this city; and I should have lived in vain if, amongst the men that knew me in that time, whatever might be their political or religious creed, I feared to have my acts, my conduct, or principles tried. It is the first and most original condition of society that a man shall subordinate his public acts to the welfare of the community, or, at least, acknowledge the right of those amongst whom his lot is cast, to judge him on such an issue as this. Freely I acknowledged that right. Readily have I responded to the call to submit to the judgment of my country the question whether, in demonstrating my sorrow and sympathy for misfortune, my admiration for fortitude, my vehement indignation against what I considered to be injustice, I had gone too far and invaded the rights of the community. Gentlemen, I desire, in all that I have to say, to keep or to be kept within what is regular and seemly, and above all to utter nothing wanting in respect for the court; but I do say, and I do protest, that I have nor got trial by jury according to the spirit and meaning of the constitution. It is as representatives of the general community, not as representatives of the crown officials, the constitution supposes you to sit in that box. If you do not fairly represent the community, and if you are not empanelled indifferently in that sense, you are no jury in the spirit of the constitution. I care not how the crown practice may be within the technical letter of the law, it violates the intent and meaning of the constitution, and it is not "trial by jury." Let us suppose the scene removed, say, to France. A hundred names are returned on what is called a panel by a state functionary for the trial of a journalist charged with sedition. The accused is powerless to remove any name from the list unless for over-age or non-residence. But the Imperial prosecutor has the arbitrary power of ordering as many as he pleases to "stand aside.” By this means he puts or allows on the jury only whomsoever he pleases. He can, beforehand, select the twelve, and, by wiping out, if it suits him, the eighty-eight other names, put the twelve of his own choosing into the box. Can this be called trial by jury? Would not it be the same thing, in a more straightforward way, to let the Crown Solicitor send out a policeman and collect twelve well-accredited persons of his own mind and opinion? For my own part, I would prefer this plain dealing, and consider far preferable the more rude but honest hostility of a drumhead court-martial. [Applause in the court.] Again I say, understand me well, I am objecting to the principle, the system, the practice, and not to the twelve gentlemen now before me as individuals. Personally, I am confident that, being citizens of Dublin, whatever your views or opinions, you are honorable and conscientious men. You may have strong prejudices against me or my principles in public life very likely you have; but I doubt not that, though these may unconsciously tinge your judgment and influence your verdict, you will not consciously violate the obligations of your oath. And I care not whether the Crown, in permitting you to be the twelve, ordered three, or thirteen, or thirty others to "stand by "- or whether those thus arbitrarily put aside were Catholics or Protestants, Liberals, Conservatives, or Nationalists - the moment the Crown puts its finger at all on the panel, in a case where the accused has no equal right, the essential character of the jury was changed, and the spirit of the constitution was outraged. And now, what is the charge against my fellow-traversers, and myself? The Solicitor-General put it very pithily awhile ago when he said our crime was, "glorifying the cause of murder." The story of the Crown is a very terrible, a very startling one. It alleges a state of things which could hardly be supposed to exist amongst the Thugs of India. It depicts a population so hideously depraved that thirty thousand of them in one place, and tens of thousands of them in various other places, arrayed themselves publicly in procession to honor and glorify murder to sympathize with murderers as murderers. Yes, gentlemen, that is the Crown case, or they have no case at all - that the funeral procession in Dublin, on the 8th December last, was a demonstration of sympathy with murder as murder. For you will have noted that never once, in his smart narration of the Crown story, did Mr. Harrison allow even the faintest glimmer to appear of any other possible complexion or construction of our conduct. Why, I could have imagined it easy for him not merely to state his own case, but to state ours too, and show where we failed, and where his own side prevailed. I could easily imagine Mr. Harrison stating our view of the matter and combating it. But he never once dared to even mention our case. His whole aim was to hide it from you, and to fasten, as best such efforts of his could fasten, in your minds this one miserable refrain - "They glorified the cause of murder and assassination." But this is no new trick. It is the old story of the maligners of our people. They call the Irish a turbulent, riotous, crime-loving, law-hating race. They are forever pointing to the unhappy fact - for, gentlemen, it is a fact that, between the Irish people and the laws under which they now live, there is little or no sympathy, but bitter estrangement and hostility of feeling or of action. Bear with me if I examine this charge, since an understanding of it is necessary in order to judge our conduct on the 8th December last. I am driven upon this extent of defence by the singular conduct of the Solicitor-General, who, with a temerity which he will repent, actually opened the page of Irish history, going back upon it just so far as it served his own purpose, and no farther. Ah! fatal hour for my prosecutors when they appealed to history! For, assuredly, that is the tribunal that will vindicate the Irish people, and confound those who malign them as sympathizers with assassination and glorifiers of murder - Solicitor-General — My lord, I must really call upon you - I deny that I ever Mr. Justice Fitzgerald - Proceed, Mr. Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan - My lord, I took down the Solicitor-General's words. I quote them accurately as he spoke them, and he cannot get rid of them now. "Glorifiers of the cause of murder" was his designation of my fellow-traversers and myself, and our fifty thousand fellow-mourners in the funeral procession; and before I sit down I will make him rue the utterance. Gentlemen of the jury, if British law be held in " disesteem"-as the crown prosecutors phrase it here in Ireland, there is an explanation for that fact other than that supplied by the Solicitor-General, namely, the wickedness of seditious persons like myself, and the criminal sympathies of a people ever ready to "glorify the cause of murder." Mournful, most mournful, is the lot of that land where the laws are not respected— nay, revered by the people. No greater curse could befall a country than to have the laws estranged from popular esteem, or in antagonism with the national sentiment. Everything goes wrong under such a state of things. The ivy will cling to the oak, and the tendrils of the vine reach forth towards strong support. But more anxiously and naturally still does the human heart instinctively seek an object of reverence and love, as well as of protection and support, in law, authority, sovereignty. At least, among a virtuous people like ours, there is ever a yearning for those relations which are, and ought to be, as natural between a people and their government as between the children and the parent. I say for myself, and I firmly believe I speak the sentiments of most Irishmen when I say, that, so far from experiencing satisfaction, we experience pain in our present relations with the law and governing power; and we long for the day when happier relations may be restored between the laws and the national sentiment in Ireland. We Irish are no race of assassins or "glorifiers of murder." From the most remote ages, in all centuries, it has been told of our people that they were pre-eminently a justice-loving people. Two hundred and fifty years ago the predecessor of the Solicitor-General-an English Attorney-General — it may be necessary to tell the learned gentleman that his name was Sir John Davis (for historical as well as geographical knowledge seems to be rather scarce amongst the present law-officers of the Crown) [laughter] - held a very different opinion of them from that * On Mr. Sullivan's first trial, the Solicitor-General, until stopped and corrected by the court, was suggesting to the jury that there was no such place as Knockrochery, and that a Fenian proclamation which had been published in the "Weekly News" as having been posted at that place, was, in fact, composed in Mr. Sullivan's office. Mr. Justice Deasy, however, pointedly corrected and reproved this blunder on the part of Mr. Harrison, |