Many other prisoners were also convicted in the course of the week, and on Thursday a most heart-rending scene was presented. The capital convicts were then brought up to receive sentence of death. Their names were Christopher Davis, William Clarke, Thomas Gregory, Richard Vines, and Joseph Keys, and each prayed with earnest cries for mercy.
The Lord Chief Justice, in a most impressive, though tremulous, manner, addressed the prisoners:—
“Prisoners at the bar:—You have been convicted, five of you in number, upon evidence, in each particular case, which can leave no doubt of your guilt, upon any reasonable mind, of crimes so deeply affecting the interests, and even the very existence, of human society, that your lives have become justly forfeited to the laws of your country. Assembled together with multitudes of other evil-doers like yourselves, you have, by threats and acts of violence, thrown the peaceable and industrious inhabitants of this city into a state of panic and alarm—you have deprived many of their only means of livelihood—you have carried fire to public buildings and to private dwellings, and have exposed the property of all to pillage, and the lives of many to destruction. Human society cannot be held together, if crimes like these are not put down by the strong hand of the law. Unless others are deterred from the commission of similar enormities by the just severity of your punishment, all that makes life valuable to man—the free enjoyment of the fruits of his honest industry, and protection from personal violence, must be altogether given up. The innocent and weak will become a prey to the wicked and strong; and mere brutal force will take the place of order and of law. What motive could lead you to the commission of these crimes it is impossible, from the evidence brought before us, to judge with any reasonable certainty. It was not the pressure of want or misery—it was no grievance, imaginary or real, under which you laboured. I fear no other purpose can be assigned that will apply to the greater number of those who shared in these wicked transactions, than that of giving up this city to flames, that it might become the object of universal pillage. You stand, each of you, a striking and awful example to others, of the wickedness which men commit, and the misery which inevitably follows it, when they throw off the restraint of the laws of God and man, and give themselves up to their own unbridled passions. I can only pray that your unhappy example may be the means of preventing all others from treading in your steps.”
Having then separately referred to the circumstances of the cases of the various prisoners, he said in conclusion—
“Let me most earnestly exhort you all to prepare yourselves, by every means in your power, for that great and awful change which doth most assuredly await you within a very short time; apply yourselves earnestly and fervently to the Throne of Grace, that you may endeavour to obtain from him, who knows how to reconcile mercy with justice, that forgiveness which the laws of man cannot extend to you. And now, nothing more remains than the duty, to me a most painful one, of pronouncing the last sentence of the law—That you, and every of you, be taken to the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, where you will be severally hanged by the neck until you are dead; and may the Lord, in his infinite goodness, have mercy on your guilty souls.”
This awful ceremony having been gone through, the prisoners were removed in a most pitiable condition.
The following prisoners were then brought up:—
Patrick Kearney, Daniel Higgs, James Courtney, John Mackay, T. E. Bendall, James Sims, John Powel, Matthew Warry, Cornelius Hickey, James Snook, William Reynolds, George Andrews, Patrick Barney, Benjamin Broad, Stephen Gaisford, Michael Sullivan, Timothy Collins, Henry Green, and Charles Williams.
The Lord Chief Justice addressed them in the following terms:—
“Prisoners at the bar,—After patient trials, before impartial and intelligent juries, each of you has been found guilty of an offence against which the laws of your country have, for the security of all, denounced the sentence of Death. You have, with many others, who for the present have escaped the hands of justice, devoted to plunder and destruction the city in which you live, and the place which had afforded to all of you subsistence and protection. You have reduced parts of it to a state of ruin and desolation, more complete than any foreign enemy, unless the most merciless, would have inflicted upon it. You have deprived many industrious families of their only means of support and subsistence; and the blood which it was necessary to shed in order to repress your acts of wanton outrage may be justly considered to lie at your door. But the hope we entertain that the fate of those upon whom the sentence of the law hath been passed, will operate as a sufficient warning to all others, induces us to join in an humble recommendation to his majesty that your lives may be spared. I would not, however, have you expect, that by escaping the bitterness of death, you have avoided all punishment for your offence. You will pass the remainder of your lives in a foreign and a distant land, separated for ever from parents, relations, and friends, and in a state of severe labour and privation.”