the county grand jury, so that they might be tried by a jury picked and packed from the anti-Irish oligarchy of the Pale.  It was an act of gross illegality, hardship, and oppression.  The illegality of such a course had been ruled and decided in the case of Mr. Gavan Duffy in 1848.  But the point was raised vainly now.  When Mr. Pigott, of the Irishman, was called to plead, his counsel (Mr. Heron, Q.C.) insisted that he, the traverser, was now in custody of the city sheriff in accordance with his recognizances, and could not without legal process be removed to the county venue.  An exciting encounter ensued between Mr. Heron and the crown counsel, and the court took till next day to decide the point.  Next morning it was decided in favour of the crown, and Mr. Pigott was about being arraigned, when, in order that he might not be prejudiced by having attended pending the decision, the attorney-general said, “he would shut his eyes to the fact that that gentleman was now in court,” and would have him called immediately—­an intimation that Mr. Pigott might, if advised, try the course of refusing to appear.  He did so refuse.  When next called, Mr. Pigott was not forthcoming, and on the police proceeding to his office and residence that gentleman was not to be found—­having, as the attorney-general spitefully expressed it, “fled from justice.”  Mr. Sullivan’s case, had, of necessity, then to be called; and this was exactly what the crown had desired to avoid, and what Mr. Heron had aimed to secure.  It was the secret of all the skirmishing.  A very general impression prevailed that the crown would fail in getting a jury to convict Mr. Sullivan on any indictment tinctured even ever so faintly with “Fenianism;” and it was deemed of great importance to Mr. Pigott’s case to force the crown to begin with the one in which failure was expected—­Mr. Sullivan having intimated his perfect willingness to be either pushed to the front or kept to the last, according as might best promise to secure the discomfiture of the government.  Mr. Heron had therefore so far out-manoeuvered the crown.  Mr. Sullivan appeared in court and announced himself ready for trial, and the next morning was fixed for his arraignment.  Up to this moment, that gentleman had expressed his determination not only to discard legal points, but to decline ordinary professional defence, and to address the jury in his own behalf.  Now, however, deferring to considerations strongly pressed on him (set forth in his speech to the jury in the funeral procession case), he relinquished this resolution; and, late on the night preceding his trial, entrusted to Mr. Heron, Q.C., Mr. Crean, and Mr. Molloy, his defence on this first prosecution.

Next morning, Saturday, 15th February, 1868, the trial commenced; a jury was duly packed by the “stand-by” process, and notwithstanding a charge by Justice Fitzgerald, which was, on the whole one of the fairest heard in Ireland in a political case for many years, Mr. Sullivan was duly convicted of having, by pictures and writings in his journal the Weekly News, seditiously brought the crown and government into hatred and contempt.