comprised within the years 1798 and 1803, and as far as concerns the men
who suffered for Ireland in those disastrous days our "Speeches from the
Dock" are concluded. We leave behind us the struggle of 1798 and the men
who organized it; we turn from the records of a period reeking with the
gore of Ireland's truest sons, and echoing with the cries and curses of
the innocent and oppressed; we pass without notice the butcheries and
outrages that filled the land, while our countrymen were being sabred
into submission; and we leave behind us, too, the short-lived
insurrection of 1803, and the chivalrous young patriot who perished with
it. We turn to more recent events, less appalling in their general
aspect, but not less important in their consequences, or less
interesting to the present generation, and take up the next link in the
unbroken chain of protests against British rule in Ireland with the
lives and the fortunes of the patriots of 1848. How faithfully the
principles of freedom have been handed down--how nobly the men of our
own times have imitated the patriots of the past--how thoroughly the
sentiments expressed from the Green-street dock nineteen years ago
coincide with the declarations of Tone, of Emmet, and of Russell--our
readers will shortly have an opportunity of judging. They will see how
all the sufferings and all the calamities that darkened the path of the
martyrs of '98 were insufficient to deter others, as gifted, as earnest,
and as chivalrous as they, from following in their footsteps; and how
unquenchable and unending, as the altar light of the fire-worshipper,
the generous glow of patriotic enthusiasm was transmitted through
generations, unaffected by the torrents of blood in which it was sought
to extinguish it.

The events of our own generation--the acts of contemporary patriots--now
claim our attention; but we are reluctant as yet to turn over the page,
and drop the curtain on the scenes with which we have hitherto been