“I hereby empower Thomas Clarke Luby, John O’Leary and Charles J. Kickham a committee of organization, or executive, with the same supreme control over the home organization, England, Ireland, and Scotland, as that exercised by myself.  I further empower them to appoint a committee of military inspection, and a committee of appeal and judgment, the functions of which committee will be made known to every member of them.  Trusting to the patriotism and abilities of the executive, I fully endorse their actions beforehand.  I call on every man in our ranks to support and be guided by them in all that concerns the military brotherhood.

   “J.  STEPHENS.”

Not all the legal ingenuity and forensic eloquence of their talented counsel, Mr. Butt, could avail to save the men who, by the preservation of such documents as the foregoing, had fastened the fetters on their own limbs.  The trial of Mr. Luby concluded on the fourth day of the proceedings—­Friday, December 1st 1865—­with a verdict of guilty.  The prisoner heard the announcement with composure, and then, in response to the question usual in such cases, addressed the court as follows:—­

“Well, my lords and gentlemen, I don’t think any person present here is surprised at the verdict found against me.  I have been prepared for this verdict ever since I was arrested, although I thought it my duty to fight the British government inch by inch.  I felt I was sure to be found guilty, since the advisers of the Crown took what the Attorney-General was pleased the other day to call the ’merciful course.’  I thought I might have a fair chance of escaping, so long as the capital charge was impending over me; but when they resolved on trying me under the Treason-Felony Act, I felt that I had not the smallest chance.  I am somewhat embarrassed at the present moment as to what I should say under the circumstances.  There are a great many things that I would wish to say; but knowing that there are other persons in the same situation with myself, and that I might allow myself to say something injudicious, which would peril their cases, I feel that my tongue is to a great degree tied.  Nothwithstanding, there are two or three points upon which I would say a few words.  I have nothing to say to Judge Keogh’s charge to the jury.  He did not take up any of the topics that had been introduced to prejudice the case against me; for instance, he did not take this accusation of an intention to assassinate, attributed to my fellow-prisoners and myself.  The Solicitor-General in his reply to Mr. Butt, referred to those topics.  Mr. Barry was the first person who advanced those charges.  I thought they were partially given up by the Attorney-General in his opening statement, at least they were put forward to you in a very modified form; but the learned Solicitor-General, in his very virulent speech, put forward those charges in a most aggravated manner.  He sought even to