sworn to my throwing stones and firing a pistol have sworn to what is false, for I was, as those ladies said, at the jail gates. I thank my counsel for their able defence, and also Mr. Roberts, for his attention to my case." Edward Maguire spoke next. He might well have felt bewildered at the situation in which he found himself, but he spoke earnestly and collectedly, nevertheless. He had had an experience of British law which, if not without precedent, was still extraordinary enough to create amazement. He knew that he had never been a Fenian; he knew that he never saw Colonel Kelly--never heard of him until arrested for assisting in his liberation; he knew that while the van was being attacked at Bellevue, he was sitting in his own home, miles away; and he knew that he had never in his life placed his foot in the scene of the rescue; yet there he found himself convicted by regular process of law, of the murder of Constable Brett. He had seen witness after witness enter the box, and deliberately swear they saw him take a prominent part in the rescue. He saw policemen and civilians coolly identify him as a ringleader in the affair; he had heard the Crown lawyers weave round him the subtle meshes of their logic; and now he found himself pronounced guilty by the jury, in the teeth of the overwhelming array of unimpeachable evidence brought forward in his defence. What "the safeguards of the Constitution" mean--what "the bulwark of English freedom," and "the Palladium of British freedom" are worth, when Englishmen fill the jury-box and an Irishman stands in the dock, Maguire had had a fair opportunity of judging. Had he been reflectively inclined, he might, too, have found himself compelled to adopt a rather low estimate of the credibility of English witnesses, when they get an opportunity of swearing away an Irishman's life. An impetuous man might have been goaded by the circumstances into cursing the atrocious system under which "justice" had been administered to him, and calling down the vengeance of Heaven on the whole nation from which the perjured wretches who swore away his life had been drawn. But Maguire acted more discreetly; he began, indeed, by declaring that all the witnesses who swore against him were perjurers--by vehemently protesting that the case, as regarded him, was one of mistaken identity; but he shortly took surer ground, by referring to his services in the navy, and talking of his unfailing loyalty to "his Queen and his country." He went through the record of his services as a marine; appealed to the character he had obtained from his commanding officers, in confirmation of his words: and concluded by solemnly protesting his perfect innocence of the charge on which he had been convicted.