an do no more than bid her
hope. To lift this island up--to make her a benefactor to humanity,
instead of being, as she is now, the meanest beggar in the world--to
restore to her her native powers and her ancient constitution--this
has been my ambition, and this ambition has been my crime. Judged by
the law of England, I know this crime entails upon me the penalty of
death; but the history of Ireland explains that crime and justifies
it. Judged by that history, I am no criminal, you (addressing Mr.
M'Manus) are no criminal, you (addressing Mr. O'Donoghue) are no
criminal, and we deserve no punishment; judged by that history, the
treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt, has been
sanctified as a duty, and will be enobled as a sacrifice. With these
sentiments I await the sentence of the court. I have done what I felt
to be my duty. I have spoken now, as I did on every other occasion
during my short life, what I felt to be the truth. I now bid farewell
to the country of my birth--of my passions--of my death; a country
whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies--whose factions I sought
to quell--whose intelligence I prompted to a lofty aim--whose freedom
has been my fatal dream. To that country I now offer as a pledge of
the love I bore her, and of the sincerity with which I thought and
spoke, and struggled for her freedom, the life of a young heart; and
with that life, the hopes, the honours, the endearments of a happy, a
prosperous, and honourable home. Proceed, then, my lords, with that
sentence which the law directs--I am prepared to hear it--I trust I
am prepared to meet its execution. I shall go, I think, with a light
heart before a higher tribunal--a tribunal where a Judge of infinite
goodness, as well as of infinite justice, will preside, and where, my
lords, many many of the judgments of this, world will be reversed."

There is little more for us to add. Meagher arrived with O'Brien,
O'Donoghue, and M'Manus in Van Dieman's Land in October, 1849, and
escaped to America in 1852. He started the _Irish News_ in New York,
which he enriched by personal recollections of the stirring scenes in
which he participated; but his career as a journalist closed abruptly
with the outbreak of the war of Secession, when he raised a Zouave
Company to join Corcoran's 69th Regiment, with which he fought gallantly
at Bull's Run. Every one reme