The Wearing of the Green eBook

A M Sullivan
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 146 pages of information about The Wearing of the Green.

The Wearing of the Green eBook

A M Sullivan
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 146 pages of information about The Wearing of the Green.
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
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The Wearing of the Green from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.