On Monday, October 28th, the three Irishmen whose lives we have glanced at were placed at the bar of the Manchester Assize Court, and formally placed on their trial for wilful murder. With them were arraigned Thomas Maguire, a private belonging to the Royal Marines, who was on furlough in Liverpool at the time of Kelly's liberation, and who was arrested merely because he happened to be an Irishman, and who, though perfectly innocent of the whole transaction, had been sworn against by numerous witnesses as a ringleader in the attack; and Edward O'Meagher Condon (_alias_ Shore), a fine-looking Irish-American, a citizen of the State of Ohio, against whom, like his four companions, true bills had been found by the Grand Jury. It would take long to describe the paroxysms of excitement, panic, and agitation that raged in the English mind within the period that intervened between the committal of the prisoners and the date at which we are now arrived. Nothing was heard of but the Fenians; nothing was talked of but the diabolical plots and murderous designs they were said to be preparing. The Queen was to be shot at; Balmoral was to be burned down; the armouries had been attacked; the barracks were undermined; the gas works were to be exploded, the Bank blown up, the water poisoned. Nothing was too infernal or too wicked for the Fenians, and every hour brought some addition to the monstrous stock of canards. North and south, east and west, the English people were in a ferment of anxious alarm; and everywhere Fenianism was cursed as an unholy thing to be cut from society as an ulcerous sore--to be banned and loathed as a pestilence--a foul creation with murder in its glare, and the torch of the incendiary burning in its gory hand. Under these circumstances, there was little chance that an unprejudiced jury could be empanelled for the trial of the Irish prisoners; and their counsel, seeing the danger, sought to avent it by a motion for the postponement of the trials. The Home Secretary was memorialed on the subject, and the application was renewed before the judges in court, but the efforts to obtain justice were fruitless. The blood of the British lion was up; with bloodshot eyes and bristling mane he stood awaiting his prey, and there was danger in trifling with his rage. Even Special commissicns were voted slow, and a cry arose for martial law, Lynch law, or any law that would give the blood of the victims without hindrance or delay. So the appeal for time was spurned; the government was deaf to all remonstrance; British bloodthirstiness carried the day, and the trials proceeded without interruption.