“Rule Britannia,” and “God save the Queen,” by way of taunt and defiance of the men whose death agonies they had come to see!  Their shouts and brutal cries disturbed the doomed victims inside the prison as in their cells they prepared in prayer and meditation to meet their Creator and their God.  Twice the police had to remove the crowd from around that wing of the prison; so that our poor brothers might in peace go through their last preparations for eternity, undisturbed by the yells of the multitude outside.  Oh, gentlemen, gentlemen—­that scene!  That scene in the grey cold morning when those innocent men were led out to die—­to die an ignominious death before that wolfish mob!  With blood on fire—­with bursting hearts—­we read the dreadful story here in Ireland.  We knew that these men would never have been thus sacrificed had not their offence been political, and had it not been that in their own way they represented the old struggle of the Irish race.  We felt that if time had but been permitted for English passion to cool down, English good feeling and right justice would have prevailed; and they never would have been put to death on such a verdict.  All this we felt, yet we were silent till we heard the press that had hounded those men to death falsely declaring that our silence was acquiescence in the deed that consigned them to murderers’ graves.  Of this I have personal knowledge, that, here in Dublin at least, nothing was done or intended, until the Evening Mail declared that popular feeling which had had ample time to declare itself, if it felt otherwise, quite recognised the justice of the execution.  Then we resolved to make answer.  Then Ireland made answer.  For what monarch, the loftiest in the world, would such demonstrations be made, the voluntary offerings of a people’s grief!  Think you it was “sympathy for murder” called us forth, or caused the priests of the Catholic Church to drape their churches?  It is a libel to utter the base charge.  No, no.  With the acts of those men at that rescue we had nought to say.  Of their innocence of murder we were convinced.  Their patriotic feelings, their religious devotion, we saw proved in the noble, the edifying manner of their death.  We believed them to have been unjustly sacrificed in a moment of national passion; and we resolved to rescue their memory from the foul stains of their maligners, and make it a proud one for ever with Irishmen.  Sympathy with murder, indeed!  What I am about to say will be believed; for I think I have shown no fear of consequences in standing by my acts and principles—­I say for myself, and for the priests and people of Ireland, who are affected by this case, that sooner would we burn our right hands to cinders than express, directly or indirectly, sympathy with murder; and that our sympathy for Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien is based upon the conviction that they were innocent of any such crime.  Gentlemen, having regard to all the circumstances of this sad business,