Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/311

 from the witnesses. This was duly done, and the grey-haired official who had managed State trials in Ireland for a life-time, superseded judge and jury, and disposed of the prisoner's fate at his proper discretion.

A Commission was appointed to sit at Clonmel for the trial of the prisoners charged with high treason. I received no notice of trial, and it was only after a bewildering delay my counsel discovered the reason. When high treason is charged, an overt act must have been committed in the place where the case is tried. Had the number of the Nation containing the "Tocsin of Ireland" arrived at Clonmel, that would have amounted to an overt act. But a single copy was not permitted to reach the post-office, and by this successful razzia the police made the trial for high treason impossible. After the Commission had opened, however, a slander was published which, if it could only succeed in getting believed, would damage Nationality worse than my conviction. The Daily News, a Whig organ in London, bound to be well informed in such a case, made the following announcement:—

", September 26. "A most startling and significant conclusion arrived at by one of the parties accused of high treason, and not on the trial at the Commission, has come to my knowledge to-day. It is of so extraordinary a nature that I should not alone hesitate to state it, but should meet it with positive disbelief, if my authority was not such as to leave no room for doubt. My information is this—Formal notice has been this fore-noon given to the Government that the great literary leader of the Confederate movement—the great concoctor of its plans, the great architect of its organisation, he who was the life and soul of the party, the organiser of the clubs, the suggestor of ambassadorships and solicitations of foreign aid—in fact, the head and front of the Nation has this day caused it to be announced to the Government, through his solicitor, that he does not intend to put the Government to the labour of a prosecution in this case, but that he is prepared to plead guilty to whatever indictment the Crown may prefer against him, throwing himself on the mercy of the