[Illustration: The Widow McCormack's House, near Ballingarry] I can add nothing to the testimony that established the fortitude, manliness and dignity of the prisoners, as beyond precedent or example. That their bearing, one and all, was truly noble, friends and foes took pride in attesting.[11] It was a solemn and a glorious sight; and men, through all time, will turn to that Clonmel dock to learn the inestimable and imperishable value of sincere and lofty convictions and a truly heroic soul. Of the speeches that follow, it will be observed that Mr. O'Brien's was delivered before the fate of his comrades was known. No man had ever greater need of vindicating others if not himself. No man ever possessed in a higher degree the capacity and strength to do so. He was satisfied it was the last opportunity he would ever have on earth for explanation. Yet, lest any sentiment of his might injuriously affect those that were then, or might thereafter be on their trial, he forebore to assert the principles of which he was there the martyr, and of which he was more than ever proud. It was to the same unselfish sentiment he yielded, when consenting to say, "Not guilty," to a charge he would have felt the greatest glory in avowing. I despair of conveying to my readers an adequate idea of the gloom and horror of the scene in which those immortal words were spoken. Death, near and terrible, was in the future. The recollection of ten days' infamy peopled the present with ghastly images of evil. Vindictiveness inexorable glared from the bench. The dust around the feet of the speakers was laden with guilt. It would not rise to the briskest breeze, beneath the clearest sky, in light summer air, so heavy had the tread of murder been upon it. And oh, to think when they closed their eyes upon this world, what deeper death they left their country ... Will no day of vengeance come, O God! . . . One of those benefits of the British constitution, which excites the mortal envy of benighted "surrounding nations," is this, that the law lies to the face of death, in the usual question addressed to the condemned: "Whether he had anything to say why sentence of death and execution should not be passed upon him?" when the most conclusive reasons that ever innocence had to offer would be worse than vain. On the morning of the 9th of October, 1848, this barbarous mockery was addressed to William Smith O'Brien, and he answered thus:--