They did not deprecate the right or the duty of taking up arms against the English Government; but they said: While we approve of the end in view, we condemn the means, and precisely because we think them the most surely calculated of any that could be devised, to frustrate the object.

This was the distinct ground, specifically, clearly and unmistakably stated, on which the amendment of Mr.Mitchel was opposed and it was the only ground on which it could be opposed; with sincerity or success.

The use, therefore, which was made of the resolutions on Mr.Duffy's trial was false and unsustainable in every point of view.
There is no disposition and no desire to quarrel with the line of defence adopted by Mr.Duffy.It is conceded freely that any defence which his counsel, some of the ablest and most honourable men at the bar in Ireland, or elsewhere recommended was justifiable.

But coupling that part of the defence with the evidence given on the same trial, by pensioners and parasites[8] of the British Government, and with the commentaries that afterwards appeared from the pens of some of Mr.
Duffy's friends, the whole was calculated to leave on the public mind an impression, not only utterly inconsistent with the truth, but pernicious and fatal in its influence on the future of the country, if indeed she is ever to have a future.
This impression inevitably would be that Mr.Duffy modelled and moulded the proceedings of the Confederation at his mere pleasure; that Mr.
Duffy was not alone averse to revolution, but actually conservatively loyal; and that, in the spirit of that loyalty, he controlled the whole body, and kept an insensate "Jacquerie," which existed within it, in check--that it was only when he was sent to prison this Jacquerie obtained the ascendant, and that Mr.Duffy was the victim of their intemperate folly.

However agreeable all this may be to personal vanity, Mr.Duffy must feel compelled to reject it as audacious and unmeaning flattery.