"This man carried his life in his hands, and did it for years," resumed the speaker. "The talk of his being a spy is sheer nonsense; it matters not who makes the statement, whether directly or by insinuation, he lies in his throat. A spy could not have arrayed himself for years in hostility to all the sources of disaster that has fallen upon the Irish cause. But that is simply the Irish phase of the question, and as Americans every citizen must rise high enough to declare that in view of American law, spy or no spy, no man had a right to decree or to do his murder. A peculiar feature of this conspiracy is that it had for its purpose not only the destruction of Dr. Cronin's life, but the destruction of his character--that it was for a twofold purpose, malice and cowardice; hatred of him because of what he was, and cowardice so as to cover up the evidences of crime. "Here," went on the speaker, after he had alluded at length to the stories that had emanated from Toronto, Montreal, and other places, as demonstrating the underspread motive of the conspiracy. "Here, where Dr. Cronin spent so many years of his life, we can safely affirm, as this meeting does affirm, that, tested by his career and by every fact and circumstance brought to light, Dr. Cronin was an unselfish, a public-spirited, an honorable and an honest man, and those who hated him and lured him to his death did so because of that character of his, which could neither be bent nor broken, severed nor turned aside by threats against his life, by attacks against his life, by plots against his life that he had discovered, or by the easier methods of bribery that must have been within the power of those who organized those plots. In the presence of a society whose object is the maintenance of the right of the individual to think, to speak and to act as his conscience directs, regardless of any adverse powers. Impressed by the spirit of such a meeting, I can not refrain from giving expression to the sentiments I feel. I do so for another purpose, and it is this: