and convicting all those millions if it is their duty to try and convict me.  The right principles of law do not allow the servants of the crown to evade or neglect their duty of bringing to justice all offenders against the law.  I suppose these gentlemen may allege that it is at their discretion what offenders against the law they will prosecute.  I deny that the principles of the law allow them, or allow the Queen such discretion.  The Queen, at her coronation services, swears to do justice to all her subjects according to the law.  The Queen, certainly, has the right by the constitution to pardon any offenders against the law.  She has the prerogative of mercy.  But there can be no pardon, no mercy, till after an offence be proved in due course of law by accusation of the alleged offenders before the proper tribunals, followed by the plea of guilty or the jurors’ verdict of guilty.  And to select one man or six men for trial, condemnation, and punishment, out of, say, four millions who have really participated in the same alleged wicked, malicious, seditious, evil-disposed, and unlawful proceeding, is unfair to the six men, and unfair to the other 3,999,994 men—­is a dereliction of duty on the part of the officers of the law, and is calculated to bring the administration of justice into disrepute.  Equal justice is what the constitution demands.  Under military authority an army may be decimated, and a few men may properly be punished, while the rest are left unpunished.  But under a free constitution it is not so.  Whoever breaks the law must be made amenable to punishment, or equal justice is not rendered to the subjects of the Queen.  Is it not pertinent, therefore, gentlemen, for me to say to you this is an unwise proceeding which my prosecutors bid you to sanction by a verdict?  I have heard it asked by a lawyer addressing this court as a question that must be answered in the negative—­can you indict a whole nation?  If such a proceeding as this prosecution against the peaceable procession of the 8th December receives the sanction of your verdict, that question must be answered in the affirmative.  It will need only a crown prosecutor, an attorney-general, and a solicitor-general, two judges, and twelve jurors, all of the one mind, while all the other subjects of the Queen in Ireland are of a different mind, and the five millions and a half of the Queen’s subjects of Ireland outside that circle of seventeen of her Majesty’s subjects, may be indicted, convicted, and consigned to penal imprisonment in due form of law—­a law as understood in political trials in Ireland.  Gentlemen, I have thus far endeavoured to argue from the common sense of mankind, with which the principles of law must be in accord, that the peaceable procession of the 8th of December—­that peaceable demonstration of the sentiment of millions of the Queen’s subjects in Ireland—­did not violate any of the seven conditions of the learned judge to the grand jury in defining what constitutes an