I here avow all I have said; and, perhaps, under this late Act of Parliament, her Majesty's Attorney-General, if I have violated the law, may think it his duty to proceed against me in that way.

But if I have violated the law in anything I said, I must, with great respect to the court, assert that I had a perfect right to state what I stated; and now I say in deliberation, that the sentiments I expressed with respect to England, and her treatment of this country, are my sentiments, and I here openly avow them.

The Attorney-General is present--I retract nothing--these are my well-judged sentiments--these are my opinions, as to the relative position of England and Ireland, and if I have, as you seem to insinuate, violated the law by stating those opinions, I now deliberately do so again.

Let her Majesty's Attorney-General do _his_ duty to his government, I have done _mine_ to my country." Such was the conclusion of the trial of John Mitchel.

The brother-in-law and friend of Robert Emmet, the republican of our fathers' days, came to attest the justice of the republican of our own, and to vie with him in defying and scorning the infamous laws of England.
It is needless to say that the English officials did not dare accept the challenge so nobly and defiantly flung down before the very dock whence one victim had just been borne.
I feel tempted to add a word of a scene that intervened, in which I took a part.