peace, her liberty, her glory.  For that country I can do no more than bid her hope.  To lift this island up—­to make her a benefactor to humanity, instead of being, as she is now, the meanest beggar in the world—­to restore to her her native powers and her ancient constitution—­this has been my ambition, and this ambition has been my crime.  Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails upon me the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains that crime and justifies it.  Judged by that history, I am no criminal, you (addressing Mr. M’Manus) are no criminal, you (addressing Mr. O’Donoghue) are no criminal, and we deserve no punishment; judged by that history, the treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt, has been sanctified as a duty, and will be enobled as a sacrifice.  With these sentiments I await the sentence of the court.  I have done what I felt to be my duty.  I have spoken now, as I did on every other occasion during my short life, what I felt to be the truth.  I now bid farewell to the country of my birth—­of my passions—­of my death; a country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies—­whose factions I sought to quell—­whose intelligence I prompted to a lofty aim—­whose freedom has been my fatal dream.  To that country I now offer as a pledge of the love I bore her, and of the sincerity with which I thought and spoke, and struggled for her freedom, the life of a young heart; and with that life, the hopes, the honours, the endearments of a happy, a prosperous, and honourable home.  Proceed, then, my lords, with that sentence which the law directs—­I am prepared to hear it—­I trust I am prepared to meet its execution.  I shall go, I think, with a light heart before a higher tribunal—­a tribunal where a Judge of infinite goodness, as well as of infinite justice, will preside, and where, my lords, many many of the judgments of this, world will be reversed.”

There is little more for us to add.  Meagher arrived with O’Brien, O’Donoghue, and M’Manus in Van Dieman’s Land in October, 1849, and escaped to America in 1852.  He started the Irish News in New York, which he enriched by personal recollections of the stirring scenes in which he participated; but his career as a journalist closed abruptly with the outbreak of the war of Secession, when he raised a Zouave Company to join Corcoran’s 69th Regiment, with which he fought gallantly at Bull’s Run.  Every one remembers how the gallantry of the Irish regiment in which Meagher served, saved the Federal forces from annihilation on that field of disaster.  Subsequently he raised and commanded the Irish Brigade, which won imperishable laurels throughout the hard-fought campaigns that ended with the capture of Richmond.  When Mr. Johnson became President of the United States, he appointed Meagher to the position of Governor of Montana Territory, in the far West, a post which he held until his death.