Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/343



The Third Commission opened on the 15th of December, more than five months after my arrest. A new bill of indictment—the third—was sent up to the grand jury, with a new count, charging me with inciting Smith O'Brien to make war on the Queen. In the forty volumes of the State Trials there is not a single case in which three indictments were launched against the same man on the same charge. But you and I, my Lord, had the honour to make a set of precedents for the gentlemen of the Bar, which will long keep our memory green in their souls. Mr. Justice Perrin signalised this Commission by one of those brilliant coups which would have immortalised your Proconsulship if each of them had not unhappily rebounded like a boomerang on the hand which projected it. The grim Justice, glancing from his son and his son's father-in-law (who were there engaged in prosecuting me) to the dock, growled out an order forbidding publication in the newspapers till the trial was over. How he persisted in this besotted blunder for more than a week, and was frightened out of it at last by a leonine roar from the Times, is of no consequence now except to illustrate the providential course of these proceedings. When Mr. Justice Perrin shut up his court in darkness, trust me he opened the eyes of more jurors than I could have couched in a twelvemonth.

And now, my Lord, at this new Commission, with a third indictment, a new change of the venue, eager prosecutors, and complaisant judges, and the Dragon in Kingstown Harbour with its steam up to carry me into exile, why did you not convict me at last? Again " the mercy of God and the malice of the Government " were my safety. In this new bill of indictment the penetrating eyes of my counsel discovered serious loopholes. Your unscrupulous manoeuvres had determined them to fight every inch of the ground, and here was fruit of their vigilance. They demurred to the indictment; and, after a fortnight spent in debates and adjournments, the Court were forced to declare four out of the six counts substantially bad in law. Two-thirds of the bill swept away at a brush!