It was Irishmen who had defied and trampled on their
power; the whole Irish people approved of the act; and it mattered
little who the objects of their fury might be, provided they
belonged to the detested race. The prisoners, huddled together in the
Manchester prisons, with chains round their limbs, might not be the
liberators of Colonel Kelly--the slayers of Brett might not be amongst
them; but they were Irishmen, at any rate, and so they would answer
the purpose. Short shrift was the cry. The ordinary forms of law,
the maxims of the Constitution, the rules of judicial procedure, the
proprieties of social order and civilization, might be outraged and
discarded, but speedy vengeance should, at all hazards, be obtained:
the hangman could not wait for his fee, nor the people for their
carnival of blood; and so it was settled that, instead of being tried
at the ordinary Commission, in December, a Special Commission should
be issued on the spot for the trial of the accused.
On Thursday, the 25th of October, the prisoners were brought up
for committal, before Mr. Fowler, R.M., and a bench of brother
magistrates. Some of the Irishmen arrested in the first instance had
been discharged--not that no one could be found to swear against them
(a difficulty which never seems to have arisen in these cases) but
that the number of witnesses who could swear to their innocence was so
great, that an attempt to press for convictions in their cases would
be pertain to jeopardize the whole proceedings.
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