" An open trial, indeed, was not denied
him; but with hasty rites he was branded a base and false traitor and
doomed to be hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. That desperate
felon, after prolonged investigation by the Holy See, has lately been
declared a martyr worthy of universal veneration.
The fathers of the American Revolution were likewise pursued in turn by
the venom of Governments. Could they have been snatched from their homes
and haled to London, what fate would have befallen them? There your
noblest patriots might also have perished amidst scenes of shame, and
their effigies would now bedeck a British chamber of horrors. Nor would
death itself have shielded their reputations from hatchments of
dishonour. For the greatest of Englishmen reviled even the sacred name
of Joan of Arc, the stainless Maid of France, to belittle a fallen foe
and spice a ribald stage-play.
It is hardly thirty years since every Irish leader was made the victim
of a special Statute of Proscription, and was cited to answer vague
charges before London judges.
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