Here he pointed to his friends, Reilly, Martin, and Meagher.  A burst of wild enthusiasm followed.

“Officer! officer! remove Mr. Mitchel,” was heard from Lefroy.  A rush was made on the dock, and the foremost ranks sprung from the galleries, with out-stretched arms to vow with him too.  The judges rushed in terror from the benches—­the turnkeys seized the hero, and in a scene of wild confusion he half walked, and was half forced through the low, dark door-way in the rear, waving his hand in a quiet farewell.  The bolts grated, the gate slammed, and he was seen no more.

Men stood in affright, and looked in each others’ faces wonderingly.  They had seen a Roman sacrifice in this modern world, and they were mute.

An hour elapsed—­the excited crowd had passed away; and the partisan judges, nervous and ill at ease, ventured upon the bench again.

They were seated, and seemed to be settling down to get through “business” as well as they could, when Mr. Holmes, whose defence of Mr. Mitchel had been so offensive to them, rose.  “My lords,” he said, “I think I had a perfect right to use the language I did yesterday.  I wish now to state that what I said yesterday as an advocate, I adopt to-day, as my own opinion.  I here avow all I have said; and, perhaps, under this late Act of Parliament, her Majesty’s Attorney-General, if I have violated the law, may think it his duty to proceed against me in that way.  But if I have violated the law in anything I said, I must, with great respect to the court, assert that I had a perfect right to state what I stated; and now I say in deliberation, that the sentiments I expressed with respect to England, and her treatment of this country, are my sentiments, and I here openly avow them.  The Attorney-General is present—­I retract nothing—­these are my well-judged sentiments—­these are my opinions, as to the relative position of England and Ireland, and if I have, as you seem to insinuate, violated the law by stating those opinions, I now deliberately do so again.  Let her Majesty’s Attorney-General do his duty to his government, I have done mine to my country.”

Such was the conclusion of the trial of John Mitchel.  The brother-in-law and friend of Robert Emmet, the republican of our fathers’ days, came to attest the justice of the republican of our own, and to vie with him in defying and scorning the infamous laws of England.

It is needless to say that the English officials did not dare accept the challenge so nobly and defiantly flung down before the very dock whence one victim had just been borne.