They were each conveyed to Kilmainham Jail, in the first instance, where they remained until within a few days of the opening of the special commission at Clonmel.  This took place on Thursday, the 21st of Sept., when the bills were found, but six days were allowed to Mr. O’Brien and the rest of the prisoners to peruse the indictment, with copies of which they were respectively furnished.  On Thursday, the 28th, the trial of Mr. O’Brien commenced; that of Mr. MacManus on the 9th of October; that of Mr. O’Donohoe on the 13th, and that of Mr. Meagher on the 16th.

Juries were empanelled in each case, from whose prejudice and bad faith verdicts for high treason were expected, even though the evidence only sustained a charge of common assault.  Roman Catholics were, in the first instance, scrupulously excluded; but after the first two verdicts one or two were admitted, upon whose weakness of character, or genteel aspirations, the Government might safely rely.  It is but justice to say that, according to the law expounded by the Bench, and the evidence given on the table, any other verdict was not to be expected.  But a jury differently composed, a jury of Englishmen, with their country, their liberties and their lives perilled to the last extremity by misgovernment and maladministration of law, would have spurned the law and the evidence, and relied on the great fundamental rights of humanity so flagrantly outraged by the Government that then appeared as prosecutors.

The scene presented by Clonmel excited much public surprise.  Newspaper correspondents magnified the sullen gloom that prevailed into popular apathy or national cowardice, as suited the bent or purpose of their employers.  The truth was, the people exhibited during the trial a decent and respectful forbearance.  Empty parade or vociferous sorrow would only mock the lofty purpose of the sufferers; and besides, the mortification which rankled in the public heart was too deep for utterance.  The hopes of the people had been dashed, and they were stunned and stupefied by their fall.  But so far from being apathetic, nightly assemblages were held to consider if, even in that extremity, something was not yet possible to be done.

But, if there were a show of popular indifference on the streets, the courthouse presented a very different spectacle.  There everything manifested an intense bitterness of purpose; the court, composed of the two most unscrupulous partisans, Chief Justices Blackbourne and Doherty, and the weakest or falsest political convert, Mr. Justice Moore, simulated the uncontrollable emotions which an overweening loyalty awoke in the bosom of the Catholic Attorney-General.  So far were their lordships swayed by the spirit of imitativeness, that the most polished speakers, mistaking the incoherent jargon of the official for the broken utterance of overwrought zeal and shocked loyalty, mimicked his distempered language as the only befitting medium of