Everybody saw this; but everyone in England saw also the awkward
difficulty of the case. For, to let Allen, O'Brien, Larkin, and
Shore go free of death, in the face of their admitted complicity in
the rescue, would baulk the national demand for vengeance. It was
necessary that some one should be executed. Here were men who, though
they almost certainly had had no hand in causing, even accidentally,
the death of Brett, dared to boast of their participation in the
affray in the course of which that lamentable event unhappily
occurred--that rescue which had so painfully wounded and humiliated
English national pride. If these men were saved from execution,
owing to any foolish scruples about hanging a possibly--nay,
probably--innocent man along with them, a shout of rage would
ascend from that virtuous nation amongst whom Charlotte Winsor, the
professional infant-murderess, walks a free woman, notwithstanding a
jury's verdict of wilful murder and a judge's sentence of death.
So, for a time it seemed that, notwithstanding the verdict of the
reporters, the government would act upon the verdict of the jury, and
assume it to be correct. No doubt Maguire might be innocent, but it
was his misfortune to be included in an indivisible verdict with other
men, who, though perhaps as guiltless as he of wilful murder, were
surely guilty of riot and rescue, aggravated by the utterance of the
most bitter reflections on the British Constitution, which all men
know to be the "envy of surrounding nations.
Pages:
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76