we now comply.

The present issue of "Speeches from the Dock" has been carefully revised
and considerably improved. With it, as Part I. of a series, we have
bound, as its sequels, Parts II. and III.--each Part, however, complete
in itself--bringing the list of convict patriot orators down to the
latest sentenced in 1868. It may be that even here the sad array is not
to close, and that even yet another sequel may have to be issued, ere
the National Protest of which these Voices from the Dock are the
utterances, shall be terminated for ever. Even so, our faith will be all
unshaken in the inevitable triumph of the cause for which so many
martyrs have thus suffered; and we shall still await in Faith and Hope
the first strains of that Hymn of Deliverance which shall yet resound
through the valleys of Emancipated Ireland.

90 MIDDLE ABBEY STREET,

_November_, 1868.

INTRODUCTORY.

To the lovers of Ireland--to those who sympathize with her sufferings
and resent her wrongs, there can be few things more interesting than the
history of the struggles which sprang from devotion to her cause, and
were consecrated by the blood of her patriots. The efforts of the Irish
race to burst the fetters that foreign force and native dissensions
imposed on them, and elevate their country from bondage and degradation
to a place amongst free nations, fill a page in the world's history
which no lover of freedom can read without emotion, and which must
excite wonder, admiration, and regret in the mind of every man with whom
patriotism is not a reproach, and who can sympathize with a cause
ennobled by fidelity and sacrifice, and sanctified by the blood and
tears of a nation. "How hands so vile could conquer hearts so brave," is
the question which our National Poet supposes to arise in the mind of
the stranger, as he looks on the spectacle of Ireland in her decay; but
another question will suggest itself to those who study the history of
our country: it is, how a feeling so deeply rooted as the love of
independence is in the hearts of the Irish people--an aspiration so
warmly and so widely entertained--which has been clung to with so much
persistency--which has survived through centuries of persecution--for
which generations have arisen, and fought, and bled, and dashed
themselves against the power of England with a succession as unbroken as
that of the waves upon our shores--a cause so universally loved, so
deeply reverenced, and so un