evidence against their fellows, was not only a most injudicious, but a futile expedient, and naturally has caused very great dissatisfaction and annoyance.  The circumstance, however, proves that the prosecutions was instituted without that exact care and minute attention to all particulars which are necessary in a case of this kind.

Even the Daily Express, the, all-but subsidised, if not the secretly subsidised, organ of the ultra-orange section of the Irish administration, had to own the discomfiture of its patrons:—­

Are our police offices to become a kind of national journals court?  Is the “national press of Ireland” then and there to bid for the support immediately of the gallery, and more remotely of that portion of the population which is humourously called the Irish Nation?  These speculations are suggested by a curious scene which took place at the inquiry at the police office yesterday, and which will be found detailed in another column.  Mr. Sullivan, the editor of the Nation, seized the opportunity of being summoned as a witness, to denounce the government for not including him in the prosecution.  He complained “of endeavouring to place the editor of a national journal on the list of crown witnesses in this court as a public and personal indignity,” and as an endeavour to destroy the influence of the national press.  It is certainly an open avowal to declare that the mere placing of the name of the editor of a “national” journal upon the list of crown witnesses is an unparalleled wrong.  But Sir John Gray was still more instructive.  From him we learn that a witness summoned to assist the crown in the prosecution of sedition is placed in an “odious position.”  Odious it may be, but in the eyes of whom?  Surely not of any loyal subject?  A paid informer, or professional spy, may be personally odious in the eyes of those who make use of his services.  But we have yet to learn how a subject who is summoned to come forward to assist the government fills an odious position in the opinion of his loyal fellow-subjects.  We should rather have supposed him to be entitled to their gratitude.  However that may be, Sir John Gray came gallantly to the rescue of several “gentlemen connected with his establishment,” whom, he was informed, the government intended to summon as witnesses.  This, he knew, they would all refuse.  “I suggested, if any unpleasant consequences should follow, that they should fall on the head of the establishment alone.”  He called upon the authorities to summon him.  We do complain of our police-courts being made the scenes of open avowals of determination to thwart, or, at least, not to assist the government in their endeavours to prosecute treason and sedition.  We can imagine no principle on which a subject could object to assisting the crown as a witness, which, if followed to its logical consequences, would not justify open rebellion.  It is certainly a dangerous doctrine to preach that it is allowable,