erected in what was then Sackville Street, when the outdoor display
broke up, explained why the Amnesty Committee and their friends
considered that a protest was necessary and justifiable--hence the
second procession. The chief objections to the action of the official
committee were that, while all honour was to be paid to the memory of
O'Connell as the Liberator of his Catholic fellow-countrymen, his
services as the champion of the political freedom of the Irish people
were being kept in the background. Also--and that was why the Amnesty
Association for the release of political prisoners took the initiative
in the protest against the action of the Centenary Committee--because,
on a great national occasion like this, the very existence of the
martyrs for freedom, who were suffering in English prisons, appeared to
be forgotten. Such forgetfulness was considered at the least highly
inappropriate.

There was much indignation, too, that Lord O'Hagan should have been
chosen to speak the panegyric on O'Connell, seeing that he had actually
sentenced some of those very prisoners.

The Irish organisation in Great Britain sympathised with these views,
and the various branches sending contingents showed their feelings by
throwing in their part with the Amnesty Association.

The contingent from Great Britain was, on the proposition of Mr. Patrick
Egan, given the place of honour in front of the amnesty procession
which, on the morning of the Centenary celebration, the 6th of August,
1875, started from Beresford Place, near the Custom House. The banners
of the three Liverpool branches were a picturesque feature in the
procession, as also was the Sarsfield Band, a body of fine young
Liverpool Irishmen who headed our contingent.