clair on the fair-day, when the old man, Leary, got the men assembled to sign a promise to murder. That there had been attacks upon Mr Low, and upon Dr Norcott's carriage in mistake for Mr Creagh's, was proved in corroboration, and this was the entire evidence against the prisoners. It was rendered improbable by the obvious falsity of a tale inserted inte their evidence by the informers, that "if Mr Batwell of Charleville was shot, Mr Daniel Clanchy, a highly respectable magistrate and a deputylieutenant of Cork, would give two hundred pounds to the man who shot him." The counsel for the defence, however, were both young men, without experience, and they failed to break through the brazen assurance of the witnesses. The witnesses to character availed nothing, although one of them was the father of Mr Creagh, and Leary's landlord. The disturbed state of the country, the attempts upon life, and the state of alarm and excitement into which the middle and upper classes were thrown, gave rise to a strong desire to offer up victims, and inflict retribution on somebody: so that where it was so difficult to procure any evidence, the worst was credited. The verdict of "Guilty" was returned, and the four prisoners were sentenced to be hanged within a week. This was on a Saturday, and the friends of the remain. ing prisoners were in great alarm; they knew that all depended on breaking down the informer's evidence; there was but one man who could be trusted to do it, and that was the first criminal lawyer of the day, Daniel O'Connell. Both counsel urged that he should be sent for without delay, and Burke, a friend of the prisoners, volunteered to go. Mr O'Connell was at his country seat, Derrynane, ninety miles from Cork, in a remote part of the county Kerry. It was five o'clock when Burke started on horseback. All night long he urged his horse through the defiles of the county Kerry, and the sun had risen over the wild iron-bound coast of Cahirciveen and the cliffs of Lamb's Head, and the promontory separating Bantry Bay from the Kenmare river, and the chapel bells were ringing for first Mass, and the roads were thronged with peasantry in their Sunday garb, before the weary horseman drew rein at the door of Derrynane. O'Connell saw this unusual-looking Sunday morning visitor approaching, and divined that he was a messenger on some important business. He ordered him to be shown in at once.

"What brings you here to-day, my man?" said O'Connell.

"Life or death, Counsellor," replied Burke. "At five o'clock last evening I left Cork, and I rode since ninety long miles to tell you that if you don't come to Cork to defend the next of the poor boys that are to be tried at the Commission, Doherty will hang every one of them."

O'Connell knew that this was very probably true, and that the young men who had charge of the defence were quite incompetent to deal with the class of witnesses who made their livelihood by prepared evidence or treachery. Burke having got the Counsellor's promise to follow, started on his return, and, as Monday morning dawned, was seen approaching Cork, after a journey of 180 miles performed on the same horse in thirty-eight hours. From early dawn his advent was eagerly watched and waited for, and when to the inquiry, "Is he coming?" the joyous answer was returned, "O'Connell will be here in an hour,"

a shout arose that broke the slumbers of judges and counsel. Mr O'Connell was as good as his word; in his light gig he drove all night and early morning through the grandest scenery in Ireland,—a strange contrast in its silence and sublimity to the scene he was hastening to as an actor. As he himself said, "At ten o'clock that morning, after that glorious feast of soul, alas! I found myself settled down amid all the rascalities of an Irish Court of Justice."

When Mr O'Connell entered the Court-house, the Solicitor-General was stating the case against the prisoners then on trial. O'Connell took advantage of the interruption caused by his entrance to apologise to the Judges for not appearing in more professional garb than his green frock coat. He also asked leave to have some refreshment in Court, as he had been travelling all night. This was readily acceded to, and a bowl of milk, some bread, and meat, constituted a repast which his long and rapid journey made most acceptable. It was plain, however, that while Mr O'Connell was eating his breakfast, he was attentively listening to the address to the jury, which the Solicitor-General had commenced before he entered the Court-house. On hearing some statement, Mr O'Connell immediately cried out, "That's not law." The Judges were appealed to, and ruled with Mr O'Connell. Somewhat disconcerted, the Solicitor-General resumed, but had not proceeded much further when Mr O'Connell again interposed. "The Crown," he said, “cannot make such a statement as that; the SolicitorGeneral has no right to offer such evidence to a jury." Again the Solicitor-General contended he was justified in stating the case he intended to prove; but the Bench again coincided with the prisoners' counsel, and the Solicitor-General's second speech was by no means the triumphant and imposing harangue which impressed the jury on the former day. The men then on trial were named Connor, Lynch, Wallis, and Barrett. The principal witness against them was Daly the spy, who detailed that the conspiracy to murder the magistrates near Doneraile had been a long time hatching; that Admiral Evans was to be shot for speaking in Parliament against the Catholics, that Mr Creagh and Mr Low were also marked men. Daly was corroborated in his story by William Nowlan and David Sheehan, and the infamous character of these three witnesses was a fair field for the unrivalled skill and accurate knowledge of his countrymen possessed by O'Connell. Accordingly he set to work to get the history of their lives from their own lips, and it is stated, "The witnesses trembled under him, and Nowlan, the most infamous character of the lot, cried out, "Ah! indeed, sir, it's little I thought I'd have to meet you here to-day, Mr O'Connell.''

Not only did he expose the character of the witnesses for the prosecution, but he bewildered the Solicitor-General himself, and on nearly every point the Court ruled with prisoners' counsel. He also mimicked, with drollery, though without much good taste, the SolicitorGeneral's voice and manner. When the Crown prosecutor, in an Anglicised tone, bade one of the witnesses leave the table, using the usual words, "You may go down," O'Connell exclaimed, in burlesque tones, "Naw daunt go daune, sir," which, sad to say, convulsed the Court with laughter. Again, when the Solicitor-General

somewhat thoughtlessly said, "That allegation is made upon false facts;" "False facts," shouted O'Connell, "Here's a genuine Irish bull! How, in the name of sense, can facts be false ?" The Solicitor-General bitterly replied, "I have known false facts and false men too!" At length, the wordy war grew so bitter that the other counsel for the Crown felt it necessary to come to the aid of their leader, by, stating they shared the responsibility of the course he had taken, and nothing was done without their approval."

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The Judges then complimented the Solicitor-General, who, in thanking their Lordships, said, "that proud as he felt of the eulogium of the bench, and his brethren of the bar, he was yet more proud of the disapprobation of others," with a significant look towards Mr O'Connell.

The jury, on this occasion, failed to agree to a verdict. They were not satisfied with the story detailed by the witnesses for the prosecution, who, they considered, were not to be credited. Mr O'Connell's success in showing the true character of these wretches, and his triumph over the Solicitor-General, was the subject of conversation throughout the whole country.

A greater success was in store for the prisoners' counsel. When the third trial was entered on, and John Burke and John Shine were standing at the bar, tried for the capital offence, O'Connell, while cross-examining Daly the spy, was handed, by one of the presiding Judges, Baron Pennefather, the information made by Daly before the Justices of the Peace. A very great discrepancy appeared between the sworn deposition and the story told to the jury. This was made known, and the matter was no sooner denounced by Mr O'Connell than the jury unhesitatingly acquitted the prisoners.

This was the crowning triumph, for it was upon the same evidence the men had been convicted in his absence, though neither M-Carthy nor Pigot had the opportunity of seeing this discrepancy. The other cases were not proceeded with. O'Connell had acted wisely if he had rested content with the success he had already gained at the trial. He went on to attack the course taken by the Solicitor-General, whom he denounced at several public meetings, and said he would impeach him for his merciless conduct in withholding Daly's information from the Court. The Solicitor-General's answer was, "That he did not withhold the information of Patrick Daly; that it was upon the bench; and that the Crown did not rest the case upon Daly's evidence at all. That no steps were taken without the advice and approval of Mr Serjeant Goold, Mr R. W. Greene, and Mr George Bennett, three men eminent at the bar, and remarkable for their humane and kind dispositions." The Irish Solicitor-General was not the man to be provoked with impunity. O'Connell stated repeatedly he would bring his conduct before the House of Commons, and there Doherty resolved to fight for his reputa tion and maintain the propriety of his conduct. O'Connell had triumphed in the Court-house before the people. Doherty knew that he would have a more impartial auditory, and be listened to with more patience by the British House of Commons; so he waited impatiently until O'Connell fulfilled his threat. But O'Connell showed no desire to do so, and frequently, during the session of 1830, the members of the

House of Commons heard the Irish Solicitor refer to the subject, and dare the hon. member to bring forward any charge against him. "I curiously watch," he said, "every stone of the bridge that my adversary so ingeniously lays down for the purpose of running away.' Goaded by those taunts, O'Connell at last gave notice for the 12th of May 1830. Having detailed to the House the events which had taken place, Mr O'Connell concluded by moving, that there be laid before the House copies of any deposition or information sworn by Patrick Daly, the witness at the Special Commission held in Cork in October last, relative to certain conspiracies to murder, wherewith Edmond Connor and others were charged on that occasion; and also copies of the notes of the Judges who tried those cases.

The Solicitor-General entered into a very elaborate defence of his conduct when replying to O'Connell. He said he stood there to defend the administration of justice in Ireland from a charge most singular in its nature, and to resist a notion for which there was not, and he trusted never would be, a precedent. He did not deny that he felt an indignant, and he hoped a just, sense of an attempt made, for the first time, to establish an appeal from the Judges and Juries of Ireland to that House; calling upon it, without the benefit of hearing witnesses, without the power even of examining witnesses upon oath, to review, and perhaps to reverse, the solemn decision of a Jury and a Judge, deliberately formed after a patient examination, upon oath, of all those who could give evidence upon the matter. Yet to such a motion was he then called upon to speak, though he had thought a charge was to be brought against himself, directly and exclusively, for his conduct in the case, in having gone on with the examination of a witness whom he knew to be perjured, in order to get, at all events, a verdict against the prisoners. The Solicitor-General then detailed the appointment of the Special Commission, and his having been sent to Cork to conduct the trials, as well as the course of the trial, and the verdict of guilty, although the Judge had on the bench before him the important document, for a copy of which the hon. and learned gentleman now called. He maintained that, without that deposition, there was evidence to convict the prisoners, although from that deposition, on a succeeding day, the Judge saw enough to direct the acquittal of another prisoner. He did not object to the hon. and learned gentleman preferring this charge against him in Parliament, but what he did object to was, that the hon. and learned gentleman had cast the most unfounded imputations upon him in his absence elsewhere, and had attempted to excite public prejudice against him in Ireland. In that country, the charge that public justice was not fairly administered never failed to produce fatal conse quences. Nothing could be more unjust than the imputation that he had shown himself callous to the fate of the prisoners at Cork. He then read extracts from O'Connell's denunciations of him at various places, and described his opening speech at Cork as "but the hallooing on of the country gentlemen against the wretched peasantry of the country." Was it proper, he would ask, was it just, thus to describe him? Was he who had passed his whole life amongst the people of Ireland-who had been brought up and lived in the country-was he whose pursuits and avocations brought him into habits of daily inter

course with the population of Ireland, to be thus held forth as a person employed in "hallooing on the country gentlemen against the wretched peasantry." Having denounced in strong language Mr O'Connell's speech at Youghal, the Solicitor-General mercilessly lashed the member for Clare for not having brought before the House the charges he promised to make against him (the Solicitor-General). "He had hastened over from Ireland the first day of the session, expecting to be called, as the hon. member had said, before the bar of the House. He had waited a day or two, allowing something for the modesty of the profession to which the hon. member belonged; he had waited a few days more, allowing something for the hon. member's own modesty; he had waited yet a little longer on account of his peculiar modesty both as an Irishman and a lawyer; but greatly to his surprise, the hon. gentleman' made no accusation against him in that House." He also alluded to O'Connell's intemperate speeches respecting the treatment of Ireland, and how he (the Solicitor-General) had always been the zealous advocate of Catholic emancipation. Alluding to Canning, he said,

"Oft has his voice my captive fancy led,

I loved him living, I adore him dead.'

In reference to the Emancipation Act, he said Mr Canning declared that he should rejoice in disappointing the guilty hopes of those who delight not in tranquillity and concord, but in grievance and remonstrance, as screens for their own ambitious purposes, and who consider a state of turbulence and discontent as best suited to the ends they have in view. "That effect the Bill had produced," added the Solicitor General. It had, by taking away the causes of agitation, falsified the guilty hopes of those who sought distinction amidst trouble, and whose turbulent ambition, which could only be gratified by the violence of party contentions, was disappointed by the general tranquillity and general satisfaction which that healing Act had effected. He concluded by expressing his readiness to give the hon. gentleman the depositions of Patrick Daly, but not the Judge's notes.†

The accession of Earl Grey to office in 1830 occasioned many important changes in Ireland. Sir Anthony Hunt was succeeded as Lord-Chancellor by Lord Plunket. This caused a vacancy on the Common Pleas bench, of which the great Irish orator, Plunket, was Chief-Justice, and to this high place was appointed the Solicitor-General, John Doherty. The appointment created very great surprise. It indicated open war between the Government and O'Connell; for the Solicitor-General had, in his speech on the Doneraile conspiracy, as we have seen, administered the severest castigation O'Connell ever received in or out of Parliament. His having done so naturally made him popular with the Tories and unpopular with the great mass of the Irish people, and for a Whig Government to bestow so very exalted a judgeship upon such a man made many wonder what would be the consequence. Besides, Doherty's reputation at the bar did not entitle him to be placed over the heads of Warren. Blackburne, Edward Pennefather, or other barristers greatly

* Hansard, "Parliamentary Debates," vol. xxiv., second series, p. 616. +Hansard, "Parliamentary Debates," vol. xxiv., second series, p. 625. The motion was negatived by a majority of 58.