provided, when two turf-carts, belonging to tenants of the prisoner, appeared moving into the town. The horses were taken from under the carts, and harnessed to the carriage. To this the owners made no resistance; but no threats or entreaties could induce either of them to undertake the office of driver. After a further delay occasioned by this difficulty, a needy wretch among the bystanders was tempted by the offer of a guinea to take the reins and brave the ridicule of the mob. The prisoner, accompanied by the jailer and clergyman, was put into the carriage, and the procession began to advance. At the distance of a few hundred yards from the jail, a bridge was to be passed. The horses, which had shown no signs of restiffness before, no sooner reached the foot of the bridge than they came to a full stop. Beating, coaxing, cursing—all were unavailing; not an inch beyond that spot could they be made to advance. The contest between them and the driver terminated in one of the horses deliberately lying down amid the cheers of the mob. To their excited apprehensions, this act of the animal had a superstitious import. It evinced a preternatural abhorrence of the crime of murder. a miraculous instinct in detecting guilt, which a jury of Irish gentlemen had taken hours to pronounce upon.

Every effort to get the carriage forward having failed, the prisoner was removed from it, and conducted on foot to the place of execution. It was a solemn and melancholy sight as he slowly moved along the main street of a crowded city, environed by military, unpitied by the populace, and gazed at with shuddering curiosity from every window. For a while the operation of the laudanum he had drunk was manifest. There was a drowsy stupor in his eye as he cast it insensibly around him. Instead of moving continuously forward, every step he made in advance seemed a distinct and laborious effort. Without the assistance of the jailer and clergyman who supported him between them, he must, to all appearance, have dropped on the pavement. These effects, however, gradually subsided, and before he arrived at the place of execution his frame had resumed its wonted firmness. The conduct of the prisoner in his last moments had nothing remarkable; yet it

VALUE OF DYING DECLARATIONS.

55

suggests a few remarks, and furnishes a striking illustration upon a subject of some interest as connected with the administration of justice in Ireland.

In that country an extraordinary importance is attached to dying declarations. In cases exciting any unusual interest, no sooner is a convicted person handed over to the executioner, than he is beset on all sides with entreaties to make what is called a last satisfaction to justice and to the public mind, by an open confession of his guilt. As between the convict and the law, such a proceeding is utterly nugatory. If he denies his guilt, he is not believed; if he admits it, he only admits a fact so conclusively established, as to every practical purpose, that any supplemental corroboration is superfluous. If the verdict of a jury required the sanction of a confession, no sentence could be justifiably executed in any case where that sanction was withheld. But this could not be. In submitting the question of guilt or innocence to the process of a public trial, we apply the most efficacious method that our laws have been able to devise for the discovery of the truth. The result, like that of all other questions depending upon human testimony, may be erroneous. The condemned may be a martyr; for juries are fallible: but, for the purposes of society, their verdict must be final, except upon those rare occasions where its propriety is subsequently brought into doubt by new evidence, emanating from a less questionable source than that of the party most interested in arraigning it.

Then, as far as regards the satisfaction of the public mind with the justice of the conviction (for upon this great stress is also laid), the public should never be encouraged to require a higher degree of certainty than the law requires. But the practice of harassing convicts for a confession before the crowds assembled to witness their execution, produces this effect. It teaches them to divert their attention from the best and only practical test of a question that should no longer be at issue, and to set a value upon a test the most deceptive that can be imagined. A voluntary admission of guilt may, to be sure, be depended on; but, after conviction, no kind of reliance can be placed upon the most solemn asseverations to

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the contrary. Death and eternity are dreadful things; and it is dreadful to think of wretches determined to brave them with a deliberate falsehood their lips; yet there are men upon many that have the nerve to do this. In Ireland it is of frequent occurrence; particularly in cases of conviction for political offences, and, more or less, in all others. A regard for posthumous reputation—the false glory of being remembered as a martyr – a stubborn determination to make no concession to a system of laws that he never respected — concern for the feelings and character of relatives, by whom a dying protestation of innocence is cherished, and appealed to as a bequest to the honor of a family-name: these and similar motives attend the departing culprit to the final scene, and prevail to the last over every suggestion of truth and religion. It was so in the case I am now narrating. At the place of execution, the prisoner was solemnly adjured by the clergyman in attendance to admit the justice of his sentence: he as solemnly re-asserted his innocence. The cap was drawn over his eyes, and he was about to be thrown off. An accidental interruption occurred. The clergyman raised the cap, and once more appealed to him as to a person upon whom the world had already closed. The answer was: "I am suffering for a crime in which I never participated. If Sullivan is ever found, my innocence will appear."

Sullivan was found before the next assizes, when he was tried and convicted upon the same evidence adduced against his master. Sullivan was a catholic; and after his conviction made a voluntary and full confession. It put the master's guilt beyond all question. The wretched girl, according to his statement, had insisted upon retaining in her own hands one half of the sum of which she had robbed her uncle. To obtain this, and also to disembarrass himself of an incumbrance, her seducer planned her death. Sullivan undertook to be the executioner. After setting Ellen Walsh on shore, they returned to an unfrequented point near Carrickafoyle, where the instrument of murder, a musket, and a rope, lay concealed. With these and the unsuspecting victim, Sullivan put out in the boat. The master remained upon the strand.

A POPULAR BELIEF.

57

After the interval of an hour, the boat returned, bearing back Ellen Hanlon unharmed. "I thought I had made up my mind," said the ruffian in his penitential declaration; "I was just lifting the musket to dash her brains out- -but when I looked in her innocent face, I had not the heart to do it." This excuse made no impression upon the merciless master. Sullivan was plied with liquor, and again despatched upon the murderous mission; the musket was once more raised, and the rest has been told.*

* It may be mentioned as a striking instance of the belief in the declaration (made by no less a person than Lord Redesdale, who had been Irish lordchancellor), "in Ireland there is one law for the rich, and another for the poor," that there are yet hundreds in the county of Limerick, who were present at this execution, and seriously believed that it was not Mr. Scanlan who was hanged, but some other prisoner who was rendered unconscious by means of strong narcotics. It was currently reported that, because he was a gentleman, Scanlan was allowed to escape to the United States, where he eventually came to a violent death! It is notorious that after the public execution of Fauntleroy, the London banker, for forgery, a motion for delay, in some case where a large amount of property was involved, was actually made in one of the lawcourts at Westminster, grounded in an affidavit that Fauntleroy was alive in America, and that a commission should be sent over to take his examination as a witness. The motion was refused, as the fact of his continued existence was not positively sworn to, but it is surprising that the lawyer who made, and the judge who heard the motion, should have forgotten the plain and undoubted fact, that having been capitally condemned, Fauntleroy was dead in law, and his evidence, therefore, quite valueless.-M.

3*

HALL OF THE FOUR COURTS, DUBLIN.

THE law, and the practice of the courts, in Ireland, are, with some trivial exceptions, precisely the same as in England;* but the system of professional life in Ireland is in some respects different. I allude to the custom, which the Irish bar have long since adopted, of assembling daily for the transaction of business, or in search of it, if they have it not, in the "Hall of the Four Courts," Dublin. The building itself is a splendid Like the other public edifices of Dublin (and I might add, the private ones), it is an effort of Irish pride, exceeding far in magnificence the substantial wealth and civilization of the country. In the centre of the interior, and overcanopied by a lofty dome, is a spacious circular hall, into which the several courts of justice open.

one.

I was fond of lounging in this place. From the hours of twelve to three it is a busy and a motley scene. When I speak of it as the place of daily resort for the members of the legal profession and their clients, I may be understood to mean that it is the general rendezvous of the whole community; for in Ireland almost every man of any pretensions that you meet, is either a plaintiff or defendant, or on the point of becoming so, and, when in Dublin, seldom fails to repair at least once a day to "the Hall," in order to look after his cause, and, by conferences with his lawyers, to keep up his mind to the true

*There are no regular reports of the Irish cases. All the new authorities are imported from England; so that the accident of a fair or foul wind may sometimes affect the decision of a cause. "Are you sure, Mr. Plunket," said Lord Manners, one day, " that what you have stated is the law?"—" It unques tionably was the law half an hour ago," replied Mr. P. pulling out his watch, "but by this time the packet has probably arrived, and I shall not be positive."