were sentenced, thirty newspaper reporters sent up to the Home Secretary a petition protesting that—­the evidence of the witnesses and the verdict of the jury notwithstanding—­there was at least one innocent man thus marked for execution.  The government felt that the reporters were right and the jurors wrong.  They pardoned Maguire as an innocent man—­that same Maguire whose legal conviction is here put in as evidence that he and four others were truly murderers, to sympathise with whom is to commit sedition—­nay, “to glorify the cause of murder.”  Well, after that, our minds were easy.  We considered it out of the question any man would be hanged on a verdict thus ruined, blasted, and abandoned; and believing those men innocent of murder, though guilty of another most serious legal crime—­rescue with violence, and incidental, though not intentional loss of life—­we rejoiced that a terrible mistake was, as we thought, averted.  But now arose in redoubled fury the savage cry for blood.  In vain good men, noble and humane men, in England tried to save the national honour by breasting this horrible outburst of passion.  They were overborne.  Petitioners for mercy were mobbed and hooted in the streets.  We saw all this—­we saw all this; and think you it did not sink into our hearts?  Fancy if you can our feelings when we heard that yet another man out of five was respited—­ah, he was an American, gentlemen—­an American, not an Irishman—­but that the three Irishmen, Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien, were to die—­were to be put to death on a verdict and on evidence that would not hang a dog in England!  We refused to the last to credit it; and thus incredulous, deemed it idle to make any effort to save their lives.  But it was true; it was deadly true.  And then, gentlemen, the doomed three appeared in a new character.  Then they rose into the dignity and heroism of martyrs.  The manner in which they bore themselves through the dreadful ordeal ennobled them for ever It was then we all learned to love and revere them as patriots and Christians.  Oh, gentlemen, it is only at this point I feel my difficulty in addressing you whose religious faith is not that which is mine.  For it is only Catholics who can understand the emotions aroused in Catholic hearts by conduct such as theirs in that dreadful hour.  Catholics alone can understand how the last solemn declarations of such men, after receiving the last sacraments of the Church, and about to meet their Great Judge face to face, can outweigh the reckless evidence of Manchester thieves and pickpockets.  Yes; in that hour they told us they were innocent, but were ready to die; and we believed them.  We believe them still.  Aye, do we!  They did not go to meet their God with a falsehood on their lips.  On that night before their execution, oh, what a scene!  What a picture did England present at the foot of the Manchester scaffold!  The brutal populace thronged thither in tens of thousands.  They danced; they sang; they blasphemed; they chorused