The Irish Court of Common Pleas, Justices Lawson, Morris, and
Keogh, have decided that the late John Mitchel was dis- qualified to sit in Parliament as an alien under the Naturalisation Act, which provides that "any British subject who voluntarily be-
comes naturalised in a foreign State shall be deemed to have ceased to be a British subject, and be regarded as an alien." This Act was passed, we believe, to prevent the necessity of our hanging naturalised emigrants who took service in the fleets of their new country, and consequent diplomatic complications. They decided, moreover, that a conviction for felony cannot be purged except by the Queen's pardon or the endurance of the sentence, which, in the case of a sentence of transportation, means not merely exile, but its endurance in the place to which the law remits the felon. That seems reasonable, more especially in a country where a political prisoner who has murdered no one, and means to live quietly for the future, has only to ask for the Queen's pardon, and he is sure to obtain it. There are always Members enough to plead for him.
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