earliest years, and which I still entertain with a strong love, whose fervour and intensity are second only to the sacred homage which we owe to God. If, having lost that freedom, I am to be deprived of all those blessings--those glad and joyous years I should have spent amongst loving friends--I shall not complain, I shall not murmur, but with calm resignation and cheerful expectation, I shall joyfully submit to God's blessed will, feeling confident that He will open the strongly locked and barred doors of British prisons. Till that glad time arrives, it is consolation and reward enough for me to know that I have the fervent prayers, the sympathy and loving blessings of Ireland's truly noble and generous people, and far easier, more soothing and more comforting to me will it be to go back to my cheerless cell, than it would be to live in slavish ease and luxury--a witness to the cruel sufferings and terrible miseries of this down-trodden people. Condemn me, then, my lord--condemn me to a felon's doom. To-night I will sleep in a prison cell; to-morrow I will wear a convict's dress; but to me it will be a far nobler garb than the richest dress of slavery. Coward slaves they lie who think the countless sufferings and degradation of prison life disgraces a man. I feel otherwise. It is as impossible to subdue the soul animated with freedom as it will be for England to crush the resolute will of this nation, determined as it is to be free, or perish in the attempt. According to British law, those acts proved against me--fairly proved against me I acknowledge--maybe crimes, but morally, in the eyes of freemen and the sight of God, they are more ennobling than disgraceful. Shame is only a connexion with guilt. It is surely not a crime to obey God's law, or to assist our fellow-men to acquire those God-given rights which no men--no nation--can justly deprive them of. If love of freedom and a desire to extend its unspeakable blessings to all God's creatures, irrespective of race, creed, or colour, be a crime--if devotion to Ireland, and love of its faithful, its honest, its kindly people be a crime, then I say I proudly and gladly acknowledge my guilt. If it is a disgrace, all I can say is I glory in such shame and dishonour; and, with all respect for the court, I hold in thorough and utmost contempt the worst punishment that can be inflicted upon me, so far as it is intended to deprive me of this feeling, and degrade me in the eyes of my fellow-men. Oh, no, it is impossible, my lord; the freeman's soul can never be dismayed. England will most miserably fail if she expects by force and oppression to crush out--to stamp out, as the _Times_ exclaimed--this glorious longing for national life and independence which now fills the breasts of millions of Irishmen, and which only