whole conviction was thus acknowledged to be wrong
and invalid, three of the five men were hanged
upon that conviction. My friend, Mr. Sullivan,
in his eloquent and unanswerable speech of yesterday,
has so clearly demonstrated the facts of that unhappy
and disgraceful affair of Manchester, that I shall
merely say of it that I adopt every word he spoke
upon the subject for mine, and to justify the sentiment
and purpose with which I engaged in the procession
of the 8th December. I say the persons responsible
for that transanction are fairly liable to the
charge of acting so as to bring the administration
of justice into contempt, unless, gentlemen, you hold
those persons to be infallible and hold that thay
can do no wrong. But, gentlemen, the constitution
does not say that the servants of the crown can
do no wrong. According to the constitution the
sovereign can do no wrong, but her servants may.
In this case they have done wrong. And, gentlemen,
you cannot right that wrong, nor save the administration
of justice from the disreputation into which such
proceedings are calculated to bring it, by giving a
verdict to put my comrades and myself into jail
for saying openly and peaceably that we believe
the administration of justice in that unhappy affair
did do wrong. But further, gentlemen, let us
suppose that you twelve jurors, as well as the
servants of the crown who are prosecuting me, and
the two judges, consider me to be mistaken in my opinion
upon that judicial proceeding, yet you have no
right under the constitution to convict me of a
misdemeanour for openly and peaceably expressing
my opinion. You have no such right; and as to
the wisdom of treating my differences of opinion
and the peaceable expression of it as a penal offence—and
the wisdom of a political act ought to be a serious
question with all good and loyal citizens—consider
that the opinion you are invited by the crown prosecutors
to pronounce to be a penal offence is not mine
alone, nor that of the five men herein indicted,
but is the opinion of all the 30,000 persons estimated
by the crown evidence to have taken part in the
assembly of the 8th of December; is the opinion
besides of the 90,000 or 100,000 others who, standing
in the streets of this city, or at the open windows
overlooking the streets traversed by the procession
that day, manifested their sympathy with the objects
of the procession; is the opinion, as you are morally
certain, of some millions of your Irish fellow-subjects.
By indicting me for the expression of that opinion
the public prosecutors virtually indict some millions
of the Queen’s peaceable Irish subjects.
It is only the convenience of this court—which
could not hold the millions in one batch of traversers,
and which would require daily sittings for several
successive years to go through the proper formalities
for duly trying all those millions; it is only
the convenience of this court that can be pretended
to relieve the crown prosecutors from the duty of trying