spirit, with respect, silence and solemnity, to the end (cheers, and cries of ’we will’).  I say the death of these men was a legal murder, and that legal murder was an act of English policy (cheers)—­of the policy of that nation which through jealousy and hatred of our nation, destroyed by fraud and force our just government sixty-seven years ago (cheers).  They have been sixty-seven sad years of insult and robbery—­of impoverishment—­of extermination—­of suffering beyond what any other subject people but ours have ever endured from the malignity of foreign masters (cheers).  Nearly through all these years the Irish people continued to pray for the restoration of their Irish national rule.  They offered their forgiveness to England.  They offered even their friendship to England if she would only give up her usurped power to tyrannise over us, and leave us to live in peace, and as honourable neighbours.  But in vain.  England felt herself strong enough to continue to insult and rob us, and she was too greedy and too insolent to cease from robbing and insulting us (cheers).  Now it has come to pass as a consequence of that malignant policy pursued for so many long years—­it has come to pass that the great body of the Irish people despair of obtaining peaceful restitution of our national rights (cheers).  And it has also come to pass that vast numbers of Irishmen, whom the oppression of English rule forbade to live by honest industry in their own country, have in America learned to become soldiers (cheers).  And those Irish soldiers seem resolved to make war against England (cheers).  And England is in a panic of rage and fear in consequence of this (loud cheers).  And being in a panic about Fenianism, she hopes to strike terror into her Irish malcontents by a legal murder (loud cheers).  England wanted to show that she was not afraid of Fenianism—­[A Voice—­’She will be.’] And she has only shown that she is not afraid to do injustice in the face of Heaven and of man.  Many a wicked statute she has framed—­many a jury she has packed, in order to dispose of her Irish political offenders—­but in the case of Allen, O’Brien, and Larkin, she has committed such an outrage on justice and decency as to make even many Englishmen stand aghast.  I shall not detain you with entering into details with which you are all well acquainted as to the shameful scenes of the handcuffing of the untried prisoners—­as to the shameful scenes of the trial up to the last moment, when the three men—­our dearly beloved Irish brethren, were forced to give up their innocent lives as a sacrifice for the cause of Ireland (loud cheers); and, fellow-countrymen, these three humble Irishmen who represented Ireland on that sad occasion demeaned themselves as Christians, as patriots, modestly, courageously, piously, nobly (loud cheers).  We need not blush for them.  They bore themselves all through with a courage worthy of the greatest heroes that ever obtained glory upon earth.  They behaved through all the trying scenes I referred