Speeches from the Dock; Or, Protests of Irish Patriotism. Part I: Speeches delivered after conviction by Theobald Wolfe Tone, William Orr, the brothers Sheares, Robert Emmet, John Martin, William Smith O'Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, Terence Bellew McManus, John Mitchel, Thomas C. Luby, John O'Leary, Charles J. Kickham, Colonel Thomas F. Burke, and Captain Mackay
History
Speeches from the Dock; Or, Protests of Irish Patriotism. Part I: Speeches delivered after conviction by Theobald Wolfe Tone, William Orr, the brothers Sheares, Robert Emmet, John Martin, William Smith O'Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, Terence Bellew McManus, John Mitchel, Thomas C. Luby, John O'Leary, Charles J. Kickham, Colonel Thomas F. Burke, and Captain Mackay
Ireland -- Biography; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 19th century; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 20th century
On the conclusion of this address, Judge Keogh proceeded to pass
sentence on the prisoner. The prisoner's speech, he said, was in every
way creditable to him; but the bench could not avoid coming to the
conclusion that, with the exception of James Stephens, he was the person
most deeply implicated in the conspiracy. The sentence of the court was
that he be kept in penal servitude for a term of twenty years. Mr. Luby
heard the words without any apparent emotion--gave one sad farewell
glance to his wife and friends, and stepping down the little stairs from
the dock, made way for the next prisoner.
* * * * *
JOHN O'LEARY.
While the jury in the case of Thomas Clarke Luby were absent from the
court deliberating on and framing their verdict, John O'Leary was put
forward to the bar.
He stepped boldly to the front, with a flash of fire in his dark eyes,
and a scowl on his features, looking hatred and defiance on judges,
lawyers, jurymen, and all the rest of them. All eyes were fixed on him,
for he was one of those persons whose exterior attracts attention and
indicates a character above the common. He was tall, slightly built, and
of gentlemanly deportment; every feature of his thin angular face gave
token of great intellectual energy and determination, and its pallid hue
was rendered almost death-like by contrast with his long black hair and
flowing moustache and beard. Easy it was to see that when the government
placed John O'Leary in the dock they had caged a proud spirit, and an
able and resolute enemy. He had come of a patriot stock, and from a part
of Ireland where rebels to English rule were never either few or
faint-hearted. He was born in the town of Tipperary, of parents whose
circumstances were comfortable, and who, at the time of their decease,
left him in possession of property worth a couple of hundred pounds per
annum. He was educated for the medical profession in the Queen's
College, Cork, spent some time in France, and subsequently visited
America, where he made the acquaintance of the chief organisers of the
Fenian movement, by whom he was regarded as a most valuable acquisition
to the ranks of the brotherhood. After his return to Ireland he
continued to render the Fenian cause such services as lay in his power,
and when James Stephens, who knew his courage and ability, invited him
to take the post of chief editor of the Fenian organ which he was about
to establish in Dublin, O'Leary readily obeyed the call, and accepted
the dangerous position. In the columns of the _Irish People_ he laboured
hard to defend and extend the principles of the Fenian organization
until the date of his arrest and the suppression of the paper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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