Next day the jury handed down their verdict of guilty. The Attorney-General then addressed the court, and referred to the previous conviction against the prisoner. O'Donovan was asked, what he had to say in reference to that part of the case? and his reply was that "the government might add as much as they pleased to the term of his sentence on that account, if it was any satisfaction to them." And when the like question was put to him regarding the present charge, he said:—
"With the fact that the government seized papers connected with my defence and examined them—with the fact that they packed the jury—with the fact that the government stated they would convict—with the fact that they sent Judge Keogh, a second Morbury, to try me—with these facts before me, it would be useless to say anything."
Judge Keogh proceeded to pass sentence. "The prisoner," he said, "had entertained those criminal designs since the year 1859;" whereupon O'Donovan broke in with the remark that he was "an Irishman since he was born." The judge said, "he would not waste words by trying to bring him to a sense of his guilt;" O'Donovan's reply was—"It would be useless for you to try it." The judge told him his sentence was, that he be kept in penal servitude for the term of his natural life. "All right, my lord," exclaimed the unconquerable rebel, and with a smile to the sympathising group around him, he walked with a light step from the dock.
The court was then adjourned to the 5th of January. 1866; and next day the judges set off for Cork city, to dispose of the Fenian prisoners there awaiting trial.
BRYAN DILLON, JOHN LYNCH, AND OTHERS.
On Wednesday, December 16th, the trial of O'Donovan (Rossa) was brought to a conclusion in Dublin. Next morning, away went judges, crown lawyers, spies, detectives, and informers for the good city of Cork, where another batch of men accused of conspiring against British rule in Ireland—"the old crime of their race"—were awaiting the pronouncement of British law upon their several cases. Cork city in these days was known to be one of the foci of disaffection; perhaps it was its chief stronghold. The Metropolis may have given an absolutely larger number of members to the Fenian organization, but in proportion to the number of its population the Southern city was far more deeply involved in the movement. In Dublin, the seat of British rule in Ireland, many influences which are but faintly represented in other parts of the country, are present and active to repress the national ardour of the people. Those influences are scarcely felt in the city of Saint Finbar. Not in Ireland is there a town in which the national sentiment is stronger or more widely diffused than in Cork. The citizens are a warm-hearted, quick-witted and high-spirited race, gifted with fine moral qualities, and profoundly attached to the national faith in religion and politics. Merchants, traders, professional men, shopkeepers, artizans, and all, are comparatively free from the spells of Dublin Castle, and the result is visible in their conduct. The crown looks dubiously and anxiously upon a Cork jury; the patriot, when any work for Ireland is in hand, looks hopefully to the Cork people. The leaders of the Fenian movement thoroughly understood these facts, and devoted much of their time and attention to the propagation of their society among men so well inclined to welcome it. Their labours, if labours they could be called, were rewarded with a great measure of success. The young men of Cork turned into the organization by hundreds. There was no denying the fact; every one knew it; evidences of it were to be seen on all sides. The hope that was filling their hearts revealed itself in a thousand ways: in their marchings, their meetings, their songs, their music. The loyal party in the neighbourhood grew alarmed, and the government shared their apprehensions. At the time of which we write, the opinion of the local magistracy and that of the authorities at Dublin Castle was that Cork was a full-charged mine of "treason."
Thither was the Commission now sped, to carry terror, if the "strong arm of the law" could do it, into the hearts of those conspirators "against the royal name, style, and dignity" of her Majesty Queen Victoria. As no one in the Castle could say to what desperate expedients those people might have recourse, it was thought advisable to take extraordinary precautions to ensure the safety of the train which carried those important personages, her Majesty's judges, lawyers, witnesses and informers, through the Munster counties and on to the city by the Lee. "Never before" writes the special correspondent of the Nation, "had such a sight been witnessed on an Irish railway as that presented on Thursday along the line between Dublin and Cork. Armed sentries paced each mile of the railway; the platforms of the various stations through which the trains passed were lined with bodies of constabulary, and the bridges and viaducts on the way were guarded by a force of military, whose crimson coats and bright accoutrements stood out in bold relief from the dark ground on which they were stationed, against the grey December sky. As a further measure of precaution a pilot engine steamed in advance of the train in which their lordships sat, one carriage of which was filled with armed police. And so, in some such manner as Grant or Sheridan might have journeyed along the Petersburgh and Lynchburg railway while the flag of the Confederacy floated in Richmond, the two judges travelled down in safety to the head-quarters of Fenianism in Munster."
Immediately on their arrival in Cork, the judges proceeded to the court-house and formally opened the business of the Commission. Next day Charles Underwood O'Connell and John M'Afferty were placed in the dock. These two men belonged to a class which formed the hope of the Fenian organization, and which the government regarded as one of the most dangerous elements of the conspiracy. They were Irish-American soldiers, trained to war, and inured to the hardships of campaigning in the great struggle which had but recently closed in America. They were a sample of the thousands of Irishmen who had acquired in that practical school the military knowledge which they knew was needed for the efficient direction of an insurrectionary movement in Ireland, and, who were now burning for the time and opportunity to turn that knowledge to account. It was known that many of these men were, as quietly and secretly as might be, dropping into Queenstown as steamer after steamer arrived from the Land of the West, and were moving about through the Southern counties, inspiriting the hearts of the Brotherhood by their presence and their promises, and imparting to them as much military instruction as was possible under the circumstances. To hunt down these "foreign emissaries" as the crown lawyers and the loyal prints were pleased to call them, and to deter others from following in their footsteps, was naturally a great object with the government, and when they placed Charles Underwood O'Connell and John M'Afferty in the dock they felt they had made a good beginning. And these were representative men in their way. "It was a strange fate," says the writer from whom we have already quoted, "which had brought these men together in a felon's dock. They had been born in different lands—they had been reared thousands of miles apart—and they had fought and won distinction under different flags, and on opposing sides in the American war. M'Afferty, born of Irish parents in Ohio, won his spurs in the Confederate army. O'Connell, who emigrated from Cork little more than two years ago, after the ruin of his family by a cruel act of confiscation and eviction, fought under the Stars and Stripes, and, like M'Afferty, obtained a captain's commission as the reward of his services. Had they crossed each others path two years ago they would probably have fought a la mort, but the old traditions which linger in spite of every circumstance in the hearts of Irishmen were strong in both, and the cause of Ireland united them, only alas, that they might each of them pay the cost of their honest, if imprudent enthusiasm, by sharing the same prison in Ireland, and falling within the grasp of the government which they looked on as the oppressor of their fatherland."
M'Afferty however was not fated to suffer on that occasion. Proof of his foreign birth having been adduced, the court held that his arrest on board the steamer in Queenstown harbour, when he had committed no overt act evidencing a treasonable intent, was illegal, and his trial was abandoned. The trial of Underwood O'Connell was then postponed for a few days, and two men reputed to be "centres" of the organization in Cork, were brought to the bar.