Understanding the Attorney-General is just with you, I take the liberty of sending in a letter of Mr. Ball, but wish to speak on other matters. Sergeant Ball's letter is dated Temple St., October 3, 1803. I have looked into the Act of Parliament and considered in what manner you should proceed in order to do away the effect of the attainder thereby passed against you. Nothing short of an Act of Parliament, reversing the former as far as it affects you, will be sufficient to enable you to sue for your property in our courts of justice. I think you mentioned that some other plan had been suggested as sufficient. If you will let me know what it is, I will give it the most attentive consideration. How Marsden and the Attorney-General settled the difficulty, no correspondence exists to show; but the London 'Courier' of December 5, 1803, most lucidly reveals the facts:-- On Friday last, Samuel Turner, Esq., barrister-at-law, was brought to the bar of the Court of King's Bench, in custody of the keeper of Kilmainham Prison, under a charge of attainder, passed in the Irish Parliament, as one concerned in the Rebellion of the year 1798; but having shown that he was no way concerned therein, that he had not been in the country for a year and seven months prior to passing that Act--_i.e._ for thirteen months prior to the rebellion--and therefore could not be the person alluded to, his Majesty's Attorney-General confessed the same, and Mr. Turner was discharged accordingly.[250] The 'Dublin Evening Post' of the day states that Turner's arrest was due simply to his indiscretion in visiting Ireland on business arising from the death of his father.[251] But as the 'Post' in 1803 had been subsidised by the Crown, this account was probably meant to mislead. The Castle archives bulge with the brimful letters of its editor, H. B. Code. Turner's committal to Kilmainham was only another act in the great drama, one scene of which Mr. Froude has so powerfully put before us. 'Samuel Turner, Esquire,' of imposing presence and indomitable mien, a veteran in 'the cause,' the man who had challenged the Commander-in-Chief, the envoy to France, the exile of Erin, the friend of Lord Edward and Pamela, the disinherited by his father, the victim of State persecution, now stood before his fellow-prisoners the 'Ecce Homo' of martyrdom, commanding irresistibly their confidence.