The incidents of the sedition trials in Dublin continue to
heap up illustrations of Irish feeling and manners, as if to pall obser- vation by the abundance and piquancy of the instances. Mr. John Martin, upon whom sentence of ten years' transportation has been passed for a seditious publication, we take to be a very favourable sample of the Irish patriot. It is impossible to deny that he seems honest and conscientious, as well as brave and devoted: he bears his fate with a calm magnanimity that extorts respect, and vindicates his intentions with an earnest simplicity that wins be- lief. He was moved, he says, to come from his retired life by horror at the state of things which degraded his countrymen to the levels of paupers and brutes and made them hate each ether ; he preached the independence of his country as a benefit to all classes ; and be earnestly challenges an examination of his writ- ings. The motives are respectable; but what can we think of the reasoning faculties of that man who to rescue his countrymen from pauperism incites them to insurrection, the most thriftless occupation under the sun—who to wean them from hatred invites them to war! In three months, Mr. Martin was converted from a loyal, peaceable country gentleman, into a speculator in news- paper sedition, a rebel, a convicted felon. Originally his motive was patriotism ; but it is impossible not to perceive that when once he became engaged as an adherent of Mitchel, his " mon- key " was up—the reckless and emulous spirit of the steeple-chace seized him—he would hazard anything to get ahead. It is the same spirit that made the rider in a Galway race, celebrated by Lever, risk a hundred deaths ; the same spirit that converted half the gentry of Ireland into landless debtors. Irish patriots enter into politics on the "neck or nothing" principle,—that is, risking your neck and gaining nothinss John Martin is a mar- tyr to the emulation of uttering spicy sedition. Mr. O'Doherty has again been favoured by the convenient in- disposition of a juryman. The Jury could not agree : one was pronounced, on medical authority, to be getting into a fever ; another had a palpitation of the heart,—natural consequences, both, of being on an Irish jury : so the twelve were discharged, and Mr. O'Doherty is unconvicted.
