M'Afferty however was not fated to suffer on that occasion. Proof of his foreign birth having been adduced, the court held that his arrest on board the steamer in Queenstown harbour, when he had committed no overt act evidencing a treasonable intent, was illegal, and his trial was abandoned. The trial of Underwood O'Connell was then postponed for a few days, and two men reputed to be "centres" of the organization in Cork, were brought to the bar. They were Bryan Dillon and John Lynch. Physically, they presented a contrast to the firm-built and wiry soldiers who had just quitted the dock. Dillon was afflicted with curvature of the spine, the result of an accident in early life, and his companion was far gone in that blighting and fatal disease, consumption. But though they were not men for the toils of campaigning, for the mountain march, and the bivouac, and the thundering charge of battle, they had hearts full of enthusiasm for the cause in which they were engaged, and heads that could think, and plot, and plan, for its advancement. We need not here go through the sad details of their trials. Our purpose is to bring before our readers the courage and the constancy of the martyrs to the cause of Irish nationality, and to record the words in which they gave expression to the patriotic sentiments that inspired them. It is, however, to be recollected that many of the accused at these commissions--men as earnest, as honest, and as devoted to the cause of their country as any that ever lived--made no such addresses from the dock as we can include in this volume. All men are not orators, and it will often occur that one who has been tried for life and liberty in a British court of law, on the evidence of spies and informers, will have much to press upon his mind, and many things more directly relevant to the trial than any profession of political faith would be, to say when called upon to show reason why sentence should not be passed upon him. The evidence adduced in these cases is usually a compound of truth and falsehood. Some of the untruths sworn to are simply blunders, resulting from the confused impressions and the defective memory of the witnesses, others are deliberate inventions, made, sworn to, backed up, and persevered in for the purpose of insuring a successful result for the prosecution. Naturally the first impulse of the accused, when he is allowed to speak for himself, is to refer to these murderous falsehoods; and in the excitement and trouble of those critical moments, it is all that some men can venture to do. Such criticisms of the prosecution are often valuable to the prisoner from a moral point of view, but rarely have they any influence upon the result of the trial. All things considered, it must be allowed that they act best who do not forget to speak the words of patriotism, according to the measure of their abilities, before the judge's fiat has sealed their lips, and the hand