a policy is naturally very effective in not really reconciling, but in keeping Ireland quietly subject to the Union.  It is a hard trial of men’s patriotism to be debarred from all career of profitable and honourable distinction in the public service of their own country.  I do not wonder that few Irish lawyers, in presence of the mighty power of England, dare to sacrifice personal ambition and interest to what may seem a vain protest against accomplished facts.  I do not wish to attack or offend them—­as this court expresses it, to impute improper motives to them—­by thus simply stating the sad facts which are relevant to my own case in this prosecution, and explaining that I decline professional assistance, because few lawyers would be so rash as to adopt my political convictions, and vindicate my political conduct as their own, and because if any lawyer were so bold as to offer me his aid on my own terms, I am too generous to permit him to ruin his professional career for my sake.  Such are the reasons, gentlemen of the jury and my lords, why I am now going through this trial, not secundum artum, but like an eccentric patient who won’t be treated by the doctors but will quack himself.  Perhaps I would be safer if I did not say a word about the legal character of the charge made against me in this indictment.  There are legal matters as dangerous to handle as any drugs in the pharmacopoeia.  Yet I shall trouble you for a short time longer, while I endeavour to show that I have not acted in a way unbecoming a good citizen.  The charge against me in this indictment is that I took part in an illegal procession by the provisions of the statute entitled in the Party Processions’ Act.  His lordship enumerated seven conditions, the violation of some one of which is necessary to render an assembly illegal at common law.  Those seven conditions are—­1.  That the persons forming the assembly met to carry out an unlawful purpose. 2.  That the numbers in which the persons met endangered the public peace. 3.  That the assembly caused alarm to the peaceful subjects of the Queen. 4.  That the assembly created disaffection. 5.  That the assembly incited her Majesty’s Irish subjects to hate her Majesty’s English subjects—­his lordship did not say anything of the case of an assembly inciting the Queen’s English subjects to hate the Queen’s Irish subjects, but no such case is likely to be tried here. 6.  That the assembly intended to asperse the right and constitutional administration of justice; and 7.  That the assembly intended to impair the functions of justice and to bring the administration of justice into disrepute.  I say that the procession of the 8th December did not violate any one of these conditions—­1.  In the first place the persons forming that procession did not meet to carry out any unlawful purpose—­their purpose was peaceably to express their opinion upon a public act of the public servants of the crown. 2.  In the second place the numbers in which