"That the miscreants who planned and effected this foul murder will know, or rather they will understand, how the public knows how I regard them. They have known it for years. This is a time when no man who ever had anything to do with the Irish movements especially, can afford to be silent and do justice to himself. I do so with the distinct consciousness that the man who attacks this conspiracy invites its hatred. I believe I have had its hatred for some time. If speaking as I have done does not invite its hatred, I invite it now. No man who shakes hands with a criminal, or his allies or sympathizers, can be relied upon as a faithful conservator of justice. Let no man having political ambition be deluded with the thought that subserviency will aid him. Treason to American institutions and to the cause of justice, at this time, will damn forever the man that the public believes guilty, and he does not have to be tried by a jury or any other bar than enlightened public opinion." But no more graphic a tribute to the characteristics and memory of the murdered man could have come from tongue or pen than came from Colonel Rend, and his auditors hung breathless upon his words: "He was a man endowed with many of the choicest gifts and graces of nature. In person he was a perfect model of physical manhood. In intellect he possessed talents of a high order. His natural abilities enabled him to overcome the stern circumstances of an early life of poverty and discouragement. By his own unaided efforts, and from the savings of intelligent and careful economy, he gained a collegiate education. He then studied for the medical profession. Afterward he filled the chair of a professor in the college where he received his diploma. He became an accomplished linguist in several modern languages, and could speak German and French as fluently as his native tongue. To these attainments he added the charming accomplishment of a fine musical education. But above all, he trained and educated to an admirable degree the higher moral sentiments of his spiritual being. His soul shone out with all the brightness of the noonday sun. He loved right and justice. He hated wrong and injustice. He despised cunning, deception and falsehood in every form. He unmasked and denounced hypocrisy, especially where he saw hypocrisy used as a cloak to cover schemes of spurious patriotism. He was fearless in facing and defying danger where honor or principle was involved. He was an honest man, and a true man in every fiber of his nature. He cherished with fond remembrance, and loved with all the ardor of his warm Irish nature, the land of his fathers and of his birth. He pleaded and labored in the sacred cause of the promotion of Ireland's rights and liberties.