its people. With my countrymen I leave my memory, my sentiments, my acts-proudly feeling that they require no vindication from me this day. A jury of my countrymen, it is true, have found me guilty of the crime of which I stood indicted. For this I bear not the slightest animosity or resentment towards them; influenced as they must have been by the charge of the Lord Chief Justice, perhaps they could have found no other verdict. But what of that charge? Any strong observations on it I feel sincerely would ill befit the solemnity of this scene; but I would earnestly beseech of you, my lord-you, who preside on that bench -when the passions and prejudices of this hour shall have passed away, that you will appeal to your own conscience, and ask if it were a charge as it ought to have been, impartial and indifferent between the subject and the Crown. My lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and perhaps it may seal my fate. But I am here to speak the truth whatever it may cost. I am here to regret nothing I have ever done to retract nothing I have ever spoken-I am here to crave with no lying lips the life I consecrate to the liberty of my country. Far from it. Even here-here where the thief, the libertine, and the murderer have left their footprints in the dust-here, on this spot, where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in unconsecrated soil open to receive me--even here, encircled by those terrors, that hope which beckoned me on to embark upon that perilous sea on which I have been wrecked, still consoles, animates, enraptures me. No, I do not despair of my poor old country, I do not despair of her peace, her liberty, her glory. For that country I can do no more than bid her hope. To lift up this isle, to make her a benefactor to humanity, instead of being, as she now is, the meanest beggar in the world to restore her ancient constitution and her native powers-this has been my ambition, and this ambition has been my crime. Judged by the law of England, I know that this crime entails on me the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains this crime and justifies it. Judged by that history, I am no criminal; you (turning and addressing Mr. M'Manus) are no criminal; you (turning again to Mr. O'Donohue) are no criminal; and we deserve no punishment. Judged by that his tory, the treason of which I stand convicted loses all guilt, has been sanctified as a duty, and will be ennobled as a sacrifice. With these sentiments I await the sentence of the Court. Having done what I conceive to be my dutyhaving spoken now, as I did on every occasion during my short career, what I felt to be the truth--I bid farewell to the country of my birth, of my passion, and of my death-the country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies, whose factions I have sought to quell, whose intellect I have prompted to lofty aims, whose freedom has been my fatal dream. To that country I now offer as a pledge of the love I bore her, and as a proof of the sincerity with which I thought, and spoke, and struggled for her freedom, the life of a young heart; and with that life all the hopes, the honours, the endearments of a happy and an honourable home. Pronounce, then, my lords, the sentence the law directs, and I shall be prepared to hear it-I trust I shall be prepared to meet its execution. I hope I shall be able, with a light heart and a clear conscience, to appear before a higher tribunal-a tribunal where a Judge of infinite goodness as well as of infinite justice will preside, and where, my lords, many, many of the judgments of this world will be reversed. DOHERTY, C.J., proceeded to pass sentence. Prisoners at the bar Terence Bellew M Manus, Patrick O'Donohue, and Thomas Francis Meagher, after deep consideration before entering into this Court, it was my intention, in the performance of the very painful duty which devolves upon me, not to have prolonged your stay at that bar by any length of observation. You, and each of you, appear there, having been convicted by the verdict of three successive juries of the crime of high treason-the crime of the greatest enormity known to our laws. I feel bound to say this, that it is the deliberate, dispassionate, and calm opinion of the Court that the verdicts which were found by those juries, and the verdict which was found by a former jury, could not have been other than they were-that no honest, fair, impartial, and conscientious jurors, attending strictly to their oaths, and listening to the evidence that was produced in this Court in the course of these unusually protracted trials, could have come to any other conclusion than that which they have done. They have pronounced you, one and all, guilty of the crime of high treason. That crime consists in having levied war in this county within and during the last week of the month of July-of having levied war for treasonable purposes-and that you, and each of you, more or less participated in, excited to, and prepared for, and were yourselves, some of you more, some less, actively engaged in the furtherance of that project. In order to constitute the crime of high treason by the levying of war, it is no ingredient that the means should be proportioned to the end sought to be accomplished, or that there should be a rational prospect of success. The parties who engage in such transactions become responsible if they have arrayed, assembled, collected, drilled, and prepared those who, by force, endeavoured to accomplish that object-the common object that was in view. It is not, I am sorry to say, to any forbearance on your part, that that rebellion-for such I may term it-which broke out in that week was brought to a speedy conclusion. It is not due to you; it is, under God, attributable to the fidelity and to the bravery of the police force. When I reflect on what might have been the consequences if that police force, either seduced by promises, or intimidated by threats which were made use of, had yielded to the advances that were made to them, if they had been overwhelmed by the congregated numbers that assembled and attempted their destruction, or if they had failed in dispersing those bands of rebels who assembled around them on the hills I think there is no fair man who, looking at and contemplating what the state of this coun try might have been, will not see how rapidly a But it is-but who can avoid seeing, in the perusal of that speech, delivered by you, Mr. Meagher, on the 6th of June, a terrible picture of what was at that time the state of this country, and the calamities which were impending and meditated, and from which, by God's assistance, we have escaped? I have told you that it was my wish to abstain from enlarging or giving any details, and I shall do so. I shall merely add this observation, that from the commencement to the conclusion of this commission, which has now extended to the fifth week, there has been a perfect coincidence in the views of every member of this bench as to the law; and if the observations of the distinguished judge who presides here did seem to you (and I can make every allowance for their doing so) to press and bear severely upon you, perhaps, in a calmer moment, when you come to reflect upon it, you will see that it was from the very nature of the transactions themselves that those comments legitimately arose which appeared to you to press with undue severity upon you. Perhaps, when you come to reflect dispassionately, you will see this in the same light, and I trust that you may be more reconciled than you appear at present to the justice of the unhappy fate which awaits you, and which there is not an individual with a heart to feel who must not deeply deplore. I shall now not detain you longer. I have merely to exhort each of you to reflect on the awful situation in which each of you at this moment stands, and to prepare for the dreadful fate that impends over you. We have not failed to send, as was our duty, to the Lord Lieutenant, the recommendations with which the juries in your respective cases have accompanied the verdicts that have been found against you. But you must be well aware that it is with the Executive Government, and the Executive Government alone, that the fate of those recommendations rests. And we, in the discharge of our most anxious and painful duty, have now only to proceed to pass upon you, and upon each of you, the awful sentence of the law, which is, that you Terence Bellew McManus, you Patrick O'Donohue, and you Thomas Francis Meagher, be taken hence to the place whence you came, and be thence drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, and that each of you be there hanged by the neck until you be dead, and that afterwards the head of each of you shall be severed from his body, and the body of each divided into four quarters, to be disposed of as Her Majesty shall think fit-and may the Almighty God have mercy upon your souls. (a) Reg. v. Mullins, Oct. 26, 27, 28, 1848. 3 Cox C.C. 526. The prisoner was tried before MAULE and WIGHTMAN, JJ., on the same indictment as in Dowling's case(b) and Cuffey's case, (c) and the evidence was of a similar character. Parry, for the prisoner, in his address to the jury, argued that, though there was evidence of a conspiracy, there was no evidence to connect the prisoner with it but that of persons who were either spies or accomplices, or both; and submitted that their evidence must be corroborated by untainted testimony, not merely as to the existence of the conspiracy, but as to the participation of the prisoner. He referred to dicta of Alderson, B., Lord Abinger, C.B., and Littledale, J., in Reg. v. Farler, (d) Reg. v. Wilkes, (e) Rex v. Noakes.(f) The Attorney-General (Sir John Jervis), in his reply, contended there was no rule of law requiring accomplices to be corroborated; besides, the fact that these witnesses, independently of one another, had given the police from day to day the same account of the transactions as they occurred, was the strongest corroboration. MAULE, J., in summing up: It has been urged against some of the witnesses, Powell and Davis, that they urged and goaded people on to do this wicked thing, for no doubt it is a most wicked thing to conspire and devise to burn down public buildings and warehouses and assassinate the police, throw vitriol in their faces, and so on. It is said that Powell and Davis goaded the people on. If they did it was most wicked and shameful. But though we might feel some compassion for the people that were goaded on, they would be responsible too. he was about, of a tender age, were seduced If a child, not knowing what into doing something contrary to religion or contrary to law, he might plead that he was not rewhat he allows people to urge him to, though sponsible, but a grown-up man is responsible for they may be themselves very much to blame. It is to be exempted from responsibility because an is his duty to resist those suggestions. If a man offence has been suggested to him, there would be very little responsibility for crime in the world. The person so suggesting is an infamous and wicked person, but the person who listens to the suggestion is a criminal, if what he commits is a crime. If a man robs your house or burns it, it is no excuse that somebody desired him to do it. Therefore we have to consider simply and nakedly the question of whether the prisoner concurred in this matter. The guilt of the (a) For proceedings on writ of error, see above, p. 331. McManus, Donohue, and Meagher, after being reprieved (see above, p. 379n.), were transported to Van Dieman's Land on H.M.S. "Swift" in July, 1849. McManus escaped early in 1851, Donohue in March, 1853, and Meagher 3rd January 1852. (b) Above, p. 381. prisoner has been spoken to very largely by the two witnesses whom I mentioned, Thomas Powell and George Davis. A great many remarks have been made, and a good deal has been said upon both sides as to their character, and the character of two or three other witnesses who were called for the prosecution. They were persons who, understanding, as they say, that there were dangerous designs, dangerous to the public, themselves among the rest, entertained by certain Chartist societies and meetings, joined those meetings and pretended to sympathise with their views and objects, in order that they might find out and communicate those designs to their supe riors, or to the authorities entrusted with the peace of the country. That is the description which Powell and Davis give of themselves. They do not say they concurred or intended to concur really with the objects of the Chartists, but that they joined them and pretended to concur because that was the only means by which they could discover, and by discovering defeat, their designs. That is what they describe themselves to be, and, adopting that description, they are called spies, and it is said that they are not worthy of credit unless they have a particular kind of corroboration. With respect to the other class of witnesses, of whom Barrett is one, Barrett and Baldwinson, what they say is this: "We were real Chartists, we concurred in their objects, we concurred, to a certain extent, in the criminal purposes which they entertained, but we now give evidence against our former associates." And they probably mean you to understand that, when they found the thing was to go so far as it ultimately was carried, they got alarmed and retired, either for their own safety, or thinking the crime was of so atrocious a character that they would not participate in it. Those persons are said, and said truly to a certain extent, to be accomplices, and it is said that accomplices are not to be believed unless they are confirmed, and confirmed in a particular way which I will refer to by and by. It appears to me there is a great difference between those two classes of persons. The latter persons who did concur in the objects of the Chartists may be called accomplices, but the others cannot be called accomplices, because, upon their own showing-which we must take as far as this question is concerned-they never were so. An accomplice is a person who concurs in the commission of a crime and helps to commit it. These were persons who, though they appeared outwardly to be concurring, were doing just the reverse, their object and the effect indeed of it being to defeat the perpetration of the crime So that they were by no means accomplices. Then it is said that they are spies, and therefore they ought to have confirmation in the same way as accomplices. I do not find any rule of that kind, either of law or any practice directing juries not to believe parties who stand in that situation—but the truth is, the weight of the testimony of all witnesses is for the sense and consciences of juries to decide on. With respect to the rule as to accomplices requiring confirmation, though nobody can apply that to spies, and it is said with great emphasis to be a rule of law that all lawyers have laid down-and Baron Alderson and Chief Baron Abinger were cited upon the subject. The truth of the matter is, there is no rule of law at all that an accomplice cannot be believed unless he is confirmed. An accomplice is a person who has concurred in the commission of an offence. The most common cases probably of accomplices giving evidence are cases of burglary, where a house is broken into by three or four people who are disguised and not known by the inhabitants. Some one person is admitted as a witness against the others, and he says, "I committed the robbery," and gives a detail of it, and says certain persons who were charged committed it too. He goes through and gives a long statement about those people. It may be very properly said, There is a person who confesses himself to be a housebreakersuch a person as that is not one likely to feel much respect for the obligation of veracity, either in court or out of court; he is not a man whose word ought to convince you of the truth of anything he says. And that is a very sound observation as to the weight to be given to such testimony. It often happens, too, in a case of burglary that an accomplice is open to this-he is an associate of thieveshe associated on the occasion in question with those who committed the crime. They were probably friends of his-and he would much rather get them out of the scrape and get some innocent man in than fix the real associates. That is a strong observation upon the evidence of an accomplice when not at all confirmed that it may be difficult to get over. That is the general nature of the evidence of an accomplice and the observation arising out of it. But it is an observation addressed, not to the Court to exclude the evidence, but addressed to the jury who have to weigh the evidence, and it is for them to say whether the confirmation will satisfy them or whether they will be satisfied without any. If they are satisfied without any confirmation they may be, and their verdict may be an honest and just and true one. It depends upon the story that the man tells. It may be that he tells a story which, though not confirmed by anyone else, has some intrinsic confirmation, or it may be confirmed by the want of contradiction. I suppose the story is one which, if it were not true, the prisoner could prove to be false; his not attempting to do that would naturally lead juries to yield to the evidence of an accomplice, though not confirmed. I have myself sometimes, in this place and elsewhere, made the observation which always is made by judges to juries, that the evidence of an accomplice ordinarily is considered by juries as requiring confirmation-and I rather intimated on one or two occasions, I remember, that the jury had better not act upon that evidence-but, though they might entertain some suspicion, acquit the prisoner. I have taken a different view of the case afterwards, and I thought the sounder view (my mind perhaps being a little technically biassed by what is found in the books) to be that the jury should act upon the impression produced by the general character of the evidence and their own knowledge of human affairs. The directions of judges given to juries in that respect are not directions in point of law which juries are bound to adopt, but observations respecting facts, which judges are very properly in the habit of giving, because, with respect to matters of fact, the judge as well as the counsel upon both sides endeavour to assist the jury. Probably the counsel, and always the judge, have had long experience in courts of justice, and it is their duty to assist the jury in their endeavour to judge of facts, and it is in the performance of that part of their judicial duty, and not as laying down the law, that judges have made this observation with respect to confirmation. And in those two cases of Mr. Baron Alderson and Lord Abinger, the judges left it entirely to the jury. Lord Abinger says: "I think you will not consider the confirmation sufficient unless it applies to the identity of the party"; that is to say, "I think, as a matter of fact, you will not be satisfied with it." That is one observation which he made applying to the jurisdiction of the jury, not assuming a jurisdiction of his own to decide that as a matter of law. be satisfied of without confirmation. If they are, that is enough. That, however, is an observation founded, I think, upon good sense. That confirmation ought to apply to the person of the prisoner, because, though an accomplice may be telling a true story in every other respect, it may be that it was some other person and not the prisoner who was present upon the occasion when the crime took place. If you should not be satisfied that that was the case upon the present occasion, or entertain any doubt whether that is the case, you ought to give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. Those observations, however, apply to accomplices who are, as I tell you, when the crime committed is a serious one, infamous persons. It is assumed on the part of the defence that any person who would concur in objects such as those persons had in hand is an infamous person, a person from whom you cannot expect truth, though he is upon his oath. You cannot rely upon him with certainty. If he was person who helped to do such a thing as this, it is like a robbery or burglary or murder which a man who would do might perjure himself. But the practice, I have told you, has never been extended to that other class to whom Powell and Davis belong, who are called in one word a But the observation arises, and it is a very sensible observation, and you must apply it to-spies—that is, persons who take measures to the case I have been putting of a burglar. If a man comes and says "I robbed a house," and gives an account of their breaking a window and opening the fastening and forcing the shutter and getting into the room and rummaging a cupboard in that room, and opening drawers and so on, and an entire detail of the robbery, that may be confirmed entirely by persons in the house who give a detail quite in terms corroborating him as respects circumstances which he could not have known unless he had been there. He then says, "The prisoner at the bar was one of the persons with me." With respect to that the people of the house can say nothing at all-and inasmuch as he may possibly be tempted to shift from a guilty confederate to an innocent person, who may be his enemy-and as he, being a burglar, is not likely to be scrupulous about perjury, the jury may say, "We are satisfied that you robbed the house, but we are not satisfied that that person was one of the persons who did it, unless you are confirmed." Suppose in that case somebody should show that the prisoner was with the witness and two or three other bad characters in the neighbourhood of the house a little before or after the robbery-that he had been seen very soon after the robbery with some of the property in his possession, that would be confirmation as to the particular prisoner. And that is a sort of thing that a jury would probably think sufficient. They would not think it sufficient to have it shown that the man was telling the truth as to all the details of the robbery if the confirmation did not touch the personality of the prisoner at the bar. That is really the object and meaning of that observation, which is one entirely for juries, as to how they will draw an inference of a fact. But then it may perfectly well be that there may be circumstances in the statement which the jury may be able to give to the authorities information so as to prevent those who are disposed to break out from effecting their purpose. Now, certainly it may happen that a spy may combine two characters. A person by being a spy does not become an immaculate person, he does not become incapable of doing anything wrong, and he may do many other wrong things. He may actively and zealously instigate people to commit an offence, and having so done may inform against them. That is very wrong and very abominable, and would be seriously punishable. And if it should be made out that this Chartist movement, this Chartist war apparently, which appears to have extended all over London (I do not of course mean that everybody in London, or anything like it, concurred in it), and also extended to Manchester-if it could be proved that Powell and Davis were the persons who set it a-going and then informed of them, they would be extraordinarily wicked. But the simple fact which they acknowledge is this. In the case of an accomplice, he acknowledges himself to be a criminal. In the case of these men, they do not acknowledge anything of the kind. They say they understood and suspected, and you can well understand that from what we have all heard talked about, they supposed there were some designs of violence entertained by the Chartists. Supposing you should be convinced that the case is as no one can doubt upon this occasion-that there was an intention to burn houses and warehouses and attack the police and everybody that was disposed to protect public buildings or warehouses, or join the police in the protection of public order-supposing a person had reason to think that there was a conspiracy of that kind going on, what is he to do? Is he to wait quietly and see whether the conspiracy would ripen, and then try whether he would escape in the conflagration and massacre or not? Or is it not more reasonable to try and prevent the conspiracy coming to a head? It appears to me he may rightly do so, if he does nothing more than that. The Attorney-General justifies the Government for employing spies-not that these persons were originally employed by the Government-but he rather doubts the honesty or propriety of the person who is the spy himself. It certainly appears to me that the Government is justified in causing persons to become spies for the purpose of gaining information; and I believe that a person so employed, if he does not go beyond his commission, is also a person who is not to be blamed. If he instigates offences any further than by a mere colourable concurrence with them, he is guilty of substantial crime by so doing, but by simply taking measures with respect to a design which is likely to be most dangerous to the state, and one for the plunder and massacre too of private individuals, he does not appear to do anything which is at all wrong. If he does, I do not see why those who employ him to do so would not be wrong too. If what he did was wrong, the Government desiring him to do it would be accessory before and after the fact. It may well enough be, however, that spies employed to do what I think is no more than right may go beyond their commission, and then those who employ them would not be responsible for them. And it is, I suppose, because they have in some instances gone beyond what they ought to do, or have been said to do so, that they are spoken of commonly in a contemptuous manner. There is no doubt, generally speaking, that any kind of deceit which is for the purpose of injuring another or for the purpose of gain, though it is not always prohibited by law, is a moral wrong. But that is subject to exceptions. It is very wrong for a person generally to listen to the conversation of others, but if a person believes there are some other persons in a room laying a scheme to rob his his house and murder his family, I do not think he is doing anything wrong in putting his ear to the key-hole and listening to their conversation. And it is somewhat analogous to that, when a person, believing there is a conspiracy to destroy his life and property, or those of other people, takes measures to become acquainted with the proceedings of the body in order that he may defeat the designs of the party he was so suspecting. That is the kind of character which Powell and Davis represent themselves to be. It is quite a different thing from the case of an accomplice or from the case of a person who instigates what he afterwards informs against. I do not find any suggestion made that Powell or Davis, or either of them, instigated this prisoner, George Bridge Mullins. You can hardly think that very likely. He is said, upon one side, to be a surgeon, and from the other side it is doubtful to know what his position is. The Attorney-General says he is a surgeon who took his degree himself. The counsel for the prisoner says he is a surgeon's apprentice who has not passed his examination. There is a good deal said about his moving in this or that sphere of society-there is not much evidence about that. But with regard even to a surgeon's apprentice at 22, that is an age at which persons are much more likely to be misled by their own overweening vanity than that a person in that class of life should allow Powell and Davis to induce him to become leader, as they say he was, vice-chairman of this society. However, that is the sort of person which he is said to be. As to those people, I have told you what position they stand in. They stand in the posi tion of persons who are informers, who have joined these meetings for the purpose of concurring apparently in their object, only that they might have their object communicated to them. But certainly, assuming, which we must do, that this offence existed, and was by them prevented from being carried into its ultimate consequences of fire and plunder and massacre, good service has been rendered to the country by Powell and Davis, if it were Powell and Davis who gave the information which enabled the peace authorities of the country to prevent the outbreak and devastation which would have taken place. If anyone is disposed to blame them, just suppose nobody had done what they did; then, instead of 30 or 40 people being apprehended, you would have had all the public buildings in London and many private ones burnt, and multitudes of people killed, for no doubt many lives must have been lost and an immense amount of property destroyed. Then shall it be said that nobody ought to do that? It appears to me that that cannot very well be said. I do not say so. I think a man may lawfully go in disguise into a hostile camp and obtain knowledge of the measures of the enemy. If he may do that in ordinary war, he may do it, à fortiori, in case of a traitorous war sought to be waged against society. Those are the observations which appear to me to arise as to the character of these witnesses. It is urged, however, on behalf of the prosecution, that there is confirmation, and even supposing Powell and Davis to stand in the situation of persons whose evidence required confirmation, and could not be believed without confirmation, they are confirmed. It is not denied or disputed that their story is mainly true, except so far as it applies to Mullins the prisoner. On the other side it was said that there is confirmation even as to the person of Mullins. You may consider that. The prisoner was found guilty, and sentenced to penal servitude for life.(a) Reg. v. George Joseph Mantle. This was an indictment for uttering seditious words, and for unlawful assembly and seditious conspiracy, tried before ALDERSON, B., at the Chester Winter Assizes, Wednesday, December 6th. A shorthand note of the proceedings is preserved at the Treasury. Evidence was given that the prisoner, an itinerant Chartist speaker, and a wool carder at Birmingham, visited Hyde on August 8th, 1848, and delivered a speech, which was shortly followed by disturbances, to an audience of 1,800 persons at the Chartist Assembly Rooms. Police-constable Brown (a) Free pardon granted 19th May 1856, |