an obstacle to his execution; and eventually, on the 21st of November,
it was announced that his conviction had been cancelled, by the only
means existing under the perfect laws of Great Britain--namely, a
"free _pardon_" for a crime never committed. The prison doors were
opened for Maguire; the sworn jurors were plainly told in effect
that their blunder or perjury had well-nigh done the murder of at
least one innocent man. The judges were in like manner told that
shorthand-writers had been more clear-headed or dispassionate to weigh
evidence and judge guilt than they. The indivisible verdict had been
openly proclaimed worthless.

The news was received with a sense of relief in Ireland, where the
wholesale recklessness of the swearing, and the transparent falseness
of the verdict had, from the first, created intense indignation and
resentment. Everyone knew and saw that, whatever might have been the
participation of those men in the rescue of Colonel Kelly, they had
not had a fair trial; nay, that their so-called trial was an outrage
on all law and justice; that witnesses, jurors and judges, were in the
full fierce heat of excitement, panic, and passion--much more ready
to swear evidence, to find verdicts, and to pass sentences against
innocent men than they themselves were, perhaps, conscious of while
labouring under such influences. The public and official recognition
of the falseness and injustice of the Manchester verdict was therefore
hailed with intense satisfaction.

Maguire was at once liberated; Allen, Larkin, Shore, and O'Brien
were still detained in custody. It was universally concluded that,
notwithstanding the abandonment by the Crown of the verdict on which
they had been sentenced, they, because of their admitted complicity
in the rescue, would be held to imprisonment--probably penal