Loud applause followed. "Are there no policemen in court?" shouted Baron Lefroy. The High Sheriff "had given strict orders," he said, "to have all removed who would interrupt." "Make prisoners of them," said the judge. "I wish you to understand," he continued, still excited, and addressing Mr. Mitchel, who during these episodes, stood unmoved, "that we have with the utmost anxiety and with a view to come to a decision upon the measure of punishment which it would be our duty to impose, postponed the passing of sentence on you until this morning." Then, having stated the various considerations which induced him to believe that the punishment should be lenient, and the equally various considerations which induced him to believe the contrary, Lefroy concluded as follows: "We had to consider all this--to look at the magnitude of the crime, and to look also at the consideration, that if this were not the first case brought under the Act, our duty might have obliged us to carry out the penalty it awards to the utmost extent; but, taking into consideration, that this is the first conviction under the Act--though the offence has been as clearly proved as any offence under the Act could be--the sentence of the court is, that you be transported beyond the seas for the term of fourteen years." The listeners to the hypocritical sentence which concluded Lefroy's speech, heard the sentence with astonishment and indignation. Mr. Mitchel merely asked, apparently without any astonishment, if he might now address some remarks to the court. The leave asked was granted, and a silence still as death awaited the prisoner. "The law," he said, in his usual manly tone, and unexcited manner, "the law has now done its part, and the Queen of England, her crown and government in Ireland are now secure--'pursuant to Act of Parliament.' I have done my part, also. Three months ago I promised Lord Clarendon and his government in this country, that I would provoke him into his 'courts of justice,' as places of this kind are called, and that I would force him publicly and notoriously to pack a jury against me to convict me, or else that I would walk out a free man from this dock to meet him in another field. "My lord, I knew I was setting my life on that cast; but I warned him that, in either case, the victory would be with me; and the victory is with me. Neither the jury, nor the judges, nor any other man in this court, presumes to imagine that it is a criminal who stands in this dock." He was interrupted with the plaudits of the auditory; and again continued:-- "I have kept my word. I have shown what the law is made of in Ireland. I have shown that her majesty's government sustains itself in Ireland by packed juries, by partisan judges, by perjured sheriffs--"