ry swelled, up
for vengeance fierce and prompt. Victims there should be; blood--Irish
blood--the people _would_ have; nor were they willing to wait long for
it. It might be that, falling in hot haste, the sword of Justice might
strike the innocent, and not the guilty; it might be that, in the
thirst for vengeance, the restraints of humanity would be forgotten;
but the English nature, now thoroughly aroused, cared little for such
considerations. It was Irishmen who had defied and trampled on their
power; the whole Irish people approved of the act; and it mattered
little who the objects of their fury might be, provided they
belonged to the detested race. The prisoners, huddled together in the
Manchester prisons, with chains round their limbs, might not be the
liberators of Colonel Kelly--the slayers of Brett might not be amongst
them; but they were Irishmen, at any rate, and so they would answer
the purpose. Short shrift was the cry. The ordinary forms of law,
the maxims of the Constitution, the rules of judicial procedure, the
proprieties of social order and civilization, might be outraged and
discarded, but speedy vengeance should, at all hazards, be obtained:
the hangman could not wait for his fee, nor the people for their
carnival of blood; and so it was settled that, instead of being tried
at the ordinary Commission, in December, a Special Commission should
be issued on the spot for the trial of the accused.

On Thursday, the 25th of October, the prisoners were brought up
for committal, before Mr. Fowler, R.M., and a bench of brother
magistrates. Some of the Irishmen arrested in the first instance had
been discharged--not that no one could be found to swear against them
(a difficulty which never seems to have arisen in these cases) but
that the number of witnesses who could swear to their innocence was so
great, that an attempt to press for convictions in their cases would
be pertain to jeopardize the whole proceedings. The following is a
list of the prisoners put forward, the names being, as afterwards
appeared, in many cases fictitious:--

William O'Mara Allen, Edward Shore, Henry Wilson, William
Gould, Michael Larkin, Patrick Kelly, Charles Moorhouse, John
Brennan, John Bacon, William Martin, John F. Nugent, James
Sherry, Robert McWilliams, Michael Maguire, Thomas Maguire,
Michael Morris, Michael Bryan, Michael Corcoran, Thomas Ryan,
John Carroll, John Cleeson, Michael Kennedy, John Morri