ts or my opinion as illegal, seditious, heretical, idolatrous, or
treasonable, I must, like every other subject, be content to take my
chance of their being able to find a jury sufficiently facile or
sufficiently stupid to carry out their behests against me. But they
did not choose that course at first. They did not summon me as a
principal, but they subpoenaed me as a witness--as a crown
witness--against some of my dearest, personal, and public friends.
The attorney-general, whose word I most fully and frankly accept in
the matter--for I would not charge him with being wanting in personal
truthfulness--denied having had any complicity in the course of
conduct pursued towards me; but where does he lay the responsibility?
On "the police." What is the meaning of that phrase, "the police?" He
surely does not mean that the members of the force, who parade our
streets, exercise viceregal functions (laughter). Who was this person
thus called the "police?" How many degrees above or below the
attorney-general are we to look for this functionary described as
"the police," who has the authority to have a "seditious" man--that
is the allegation--a seditious man--exempted from prosecution? The
police cannot do that. Who, then? Who was he that could draw the
line between John Martin and his friend A.M. Sullivan--exempt the
one, prosecute the other--summon the former as a defendant and
subpoena the latter as a crown witness? What was the object? It is
plain. There are at this moment, I am convinced--who doubts
it?--throughout Ireland, as yet unfound out, Talbots and Corridons in
the pay of the crown acting as Fenian centres, who, next day, would
receive from their employers directions to spread amongst my
countrymen the intelligence that I had been here to betray my
associate, John Martin (applause). But their plot recoiled--their
device was exposed; public opinion expressed its reprobation of the
unsuccessful trick; and now they come to mend their hand. The men who
were exempted before are prosecuted to-day. Now, your worships, on
this whole case--on this entire procedure--I deliberately charge that
not we, but the government, have violated the law. I charge that the
government are well aware that the law is against them--that they are
irresistibly driven upon this attempt to strain and break the law
against the constitutional righ