accidental; the police boarded the vessel in chase of an absconding defaulter, but while prosecuting the search one of the constables who had seen M’Manus occasionally in Liverpool recognised him.  At first he gave his name as O’Donnell, said he was an Irish-American returning westward, after visiting his friends in the old land.  His answers, however, were not sufficiently consistent to dissipate the constable’s suspicion.  He was brought ashore and taken handcuffed before a magistrate, whereupon he avowed his name, and boldly added that, he did not regret any act he had done, and would cheerfully go through it again.

On the 10th of October, 1848, he was brought to trial for high treason in Clonmel.  He viewed the whole proceedings with calm indifference, and when the verdict of guilty was brought in he heard the announcement with unaltered mien.  A fortnight later he was brought up to receive sentence; Meagher and O’Donoghue had been convicted in the interim, and the three confederates stood side by side in the dock to hear the doom of the traitor pronounced against them.  M’Manus was the first to speak in reply to the usual formality, and his address was as follows:—­

“My lords—­I trust I am enough of a Christian and enough of a man to understand the awful responsibility of the question which has been put to me.  Standing upon my native soil—­standing in an Irish court of justice, and before the Irish nation—­I have much to say why the sentence of death, or the sentence of the law, should not be passed upon me.  But upon entering into this court I placed my life—­and what is of more importance to me, my honour—­in the hands of two advocates, and if I had ten thousand lives and ten thousand honours, I should be content to place them all in the watchful and glorious genius of the one, and the patient zeal and talent of the other.  I am, therefore, content, and with regard to that I have nothing to say.  But I have a word to say, which no advocate, however anxious and devoted he may be, can utter for me.  I say, whatever part I may have taken in the straggle for my country’s independence, whatever part I may have acted in my short career, I stand before you, my lords, with a free heart and a light conscience, to abide the issue of your sentence.  And now, my lords, this is, perhaps, the fittest time to put a sentence upon record, which is this—­that standing in this dock, and called to ascend the scaffold—­it may be to-morrow—­it may be now—­it may be never—­whatever the result may be, I wish to put this on record, that in the part I have taken I was not actuated by enmity towards Englishmen—­for among them I have passed some of the happiest days of my life, and the most prosperous; and in no part which I have taken was I actuated by enmity towards Englishmen individually, whatever I may have felt of the injustice of English rule in this island; I therefore say, that it is not because I loved England less, but because I loved Ireland more, that I now stand before