peers (Lyndhurst and Brougham dissenting) held that the whole judgment was vitiated, and O'Connell was discharged (5 St. Tr., N. S. i). Animated by the continental revolutions of 1848 a young and enthusiastic Irish element broke away from O'ConneJl's peace policy and openly advocated revolution. The plan was to excite the passions of the people to such a pitch that the government would be forced to arrest the leaders of the movement, when the people would rise to rescue them. In consequence of John Mitchell's fulminations in the United Irishman, the govern ment passed the Treason Felony Act of 1848, making all written inducement to in surrection or resistance to the low felony, punishable with transportation. Mitchell, O'Doherty, Martin and others were tried un der this act and sentenced to various terms of transportation (6 St. Tr., X. S. 599 et. seq.). O'Brien, Meagher, and other leaders, soon came into open conflict with the author ities, and were forthwith tried and convicted of high treason (7 St. Tr., N. S. i). Absorb ingly interesting as these trials are in almost every other respect, they present no con spicuous legal problems. The prisoners had been taken in open rebellion, and although Whiteside made an impassioned argument on the theory that the uprising was for per sonal, rather than fot general publicpurposes, there could be no doubt of their guilt. They were perfectly frank in their statements. When O'Brien was asked if he had anythir.;.. to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, he replied: "My lords, it is not my intention to enter into any vindica tion of my conduct, however much I might have desired to avail myself of this oppor tunity of doing so. I am perfectly satisfied
with the consciousness that I have per formed my duty to my country; that I have done only that which, in my opinion, it was the duty of every Irishman to have done; I am prepared now to abide the consequences of having done my duty to my native land. Proceed with your sentence." "Even here, where the thief, the libertine and the murderer have left their footprints in the dust—here on this spot where the shadows of death surround me, 'and from which I see my early grave in an unconsecrated soil is opened to receive me—even here, encircled by those terrors, the hope which beckoned me on to embark upon the perilous sea upon which I have been wrecked, still consoles, animates, enraptures me. Judged by the law of England, I know that this crime entails upon me the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains this crime, and justifies it. Judged by that history, I am no criminal; you [turning to> McManus] are no criminal; you [turning toO'Donaghue] are no criminal; and we de serve no punishment. Judged by that his tory, the treason of which I stand convicted, loses all its guilt, has been sanctified as a duty, and will be ennobled as a sacrifice." During the next few years following the Irish insurrection of 1848, Chartism and the Young Ireland movement crossed each other, and there were several State prosecu tions for conspiracy and unlawful assembly in which the prisoners were often implicated in both. The principal cases were those of Fussell (6 St. Tr., N. S. 723): Jones (*• 783); Dowling (7 ib. 381); Cuffey (ib. 467); O'Donnell (ib. 637), and Rankin (ib. 711.) The Fenian movement of 1866 was simply a repetition of Irish insurrection of 1848.
