HALPIN (laughing)—­Well, my lord, I will say no more about the old gorilla.  The Crown officers have laid much stress upon the fact that I have travelled under different names, and therefore I was guilty of a great crime.  I have precedent for it when I read in the papers that some continental monarchs travel under an assumed name, and I hear that the Prince of Wales does so also when he thinks proper to go the London brothels.

At this point the Court cut short his address, and Chief Baron Pigot proceeded to pass sentence on the three prisoners.

* * * * *

THE SENTENCES.

After some share of preliminary remarks, the Chief Baron announced the sentence of the court.  It was for

    John Warren, 15 years’ penal servitude.

    William Halpin, 15 years’ penal servitude.

    Augustine E. Costello, 12 years’ penal servitude.

The prisoners heard the announcement without manifesting any emotion.  General Halpin remarked that he would take fifteen years more any day for Ireland.  Colonel Warren informed the Court that he did not think a lease of the British Empire worth thirty-seven-and-a-half cents; and then all three, followed by a posse of warders, disappeared from the dock.

And thus were three men of education and ability added to the hundreds who are now rotting their lives away in British dungeons, because of the love they bore to their country, and their hatred of the misrule which makes her the most afflicted and miserable land on earth.  It is hard for Ireland to see such men stricken down and torn from her upon such an accusation; yet, looking at the noble bearing of that long list of devoted men when confronted with the worst terrors to which their enemies could subject them, she has something which may well cause the light of pride to glisten in her eyes, even while the tears of love and pity are falling from them.  And we would say to her in the noble words of a French writer, one of the many generous-hearted foreigners, whose affectionate admiration has been won by her sufferings and her constancy, the Rev. Adolphe Perraud, Priest of the Oratory, Paris:—­

“Take heart! your trials will not last for ever; the works of iniquity are passing and perishable:  ’Vidi impium super exaltamum et elevatum sicut cedros Libani, et ecce non erat!’ (Ps. xvxvi.) Patience, then, even still!  Do not imagine that you are forsaken:  God forsakes not those that believe in Him.  The day of retribution will come—­to teach men that no struggle against right is rightful, that probation is not abandonment; that God and conscience have unimagined resources against brutal spoliation and the triumphs of injustice; and that if men are often immoral in their designs and actions, there is still in the general course of history a sovereign morality, and judgments the forerunners of the infallible judgment of God.”