COSTELLO--I am afraid I am occupying the time of the court too much, but really a man placed in such a position as I now occupy, finds it necessary to make a few observations. I know it savours of a great deal that is bad and foul to be mixed up with Fenian rebels, assassins, and cut-throats. It is very bad; it is not a very good recommendation for a young man. Even were that fact proved home to me--that I were a Fenian--no act of mine has ever thrown dishonour on the name. I know not what Fenian means. I am an Irishman, and that is all-sufficient. The prisoner then proceeded to criticise the evidence against him at considerable length. He declared emphatically that one of the documents sworn to be in his handwriting was not written by him. He thus continued:-- Your lordships are well aware that there are many contradictions in the informers' testimony, and now here is a matter which I am going to mention for the first time. Corydon. in his first information at Kilmainham, swears that he never knew me until he saw me at a Fenian pic-nic, and this he modifies afterwards by the remark, that any man would be allowed into these pic-nics on the payment of a certain sum. I did not pay much attention to what the fellow was saying about me, as I thought it did not affect me in the least; but this I can distinctly remember, that Mr. Anderson, jun.--and he is there to say if I am saying anything false--said that the evidence of Corydon did not affect any one of the six prisoners put in this dock but another and myself. It _is_ very strange if that was said by Mr. Anderson. He knew that there was nothing more to be got out of Corydon, the informer--that he had told everything he knew in his information, but on pressure there was found to be a little left in the sponge. They refreshed his memory a little, and he comes to think that he saw Costello at a meeting in 814 Broadway I think he gives it. And here is a singular occurrence--that Devany, who never swore an information against me, comes on the table and swears that he also saw me at 814 Broadway Here is one informer striving to corroborate the other. It is a well-known fact that these informers speak to each other, go over the evidence, and what is more likely thin that they should make their evidence to agree--say, "I will corroborate your story, you corroborate mine." By this means was it that the overt acts of the 5th of March, which took place at Stepaside, Glencullen, and Tallaght, were brought home to Costello--a man who was 4,000 miles away, and living--and I say it on the word of a man, a Christian man--peaceably, not belonging to that confederation. I did not belong to the Fenian Brotherhood for twelve months before I left America, if I did belong to it at any other time, so