The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-08 00:00:00

SPECIAL COMMISSION,

COUNTY OF LIMERICK.

(ntom OUR SPECIAL REPORTER.)

LIMERICK, TUVIU+DLY.

The judges took their seats on the bench this morning at
half-past nine o'clock. The Court was crowded to inconve-
nience for a long time previonaly, it being known that the
convict William It3au (l'uck) would be brought up for
sentence.. . .

[Patrick Bourke, who was given in charge at a late hour
on Wednesday evening, for appearing in arms and attacking
the dwelling-house of Christopher Millar, was found guilty
and sentenced to transportation fur life. The defence was an
alibi.]
SENTENCE ON TIIE CONVICT RYAN.

Wallets Ryan, convicted of the murder of John Belly,
was brought up for sentence.
The derk of the court haring read the record o f
conviction, and put the usual question, if the prisoner had
anything to say why sentence of death should not be pro-
nounced upon him according to law, the prisoner, in a clear
voicelend firm tone, replied—l have, my lord. lam a person of
this age, and I waste ver arrested for a gun or pistol in my life,
and, though I am here now, I always laboured and " indus-
teed" honestly for my bread, what my prosecutors did not ;
but they arc 'dwelt, stealing geese and sheep through the
country. I hope the judge and jury will look to an honest
person found guilty for nothing at all. I have that cha-
racter to get, i never was arrested for anything
since I was born, until I was taken on this charge,
and I never did anything out of the way. If lam to die I
expect that your lordship and the gentlemen of the jury will
get me buried with my parents. Thank God, I am Innocent
of the charge. I hope your lordship will give me that one
request—l only want to be buried with my parents; that's all
I have got to say.—My prosecutor, did not tell a word of
truth ; they didn't look at me straight in the face; I saw
their hearts beating behind their hacks with the dint of per-
jury. I was always honest and industrious, and now it has
come to this that I must die for this charge. My only re-
quest is, that the judge will be so kind as to let me be buried
with my parents. I expect that from them—that's all I
have to say.
The judges then put on their black ceps, and
The Lord Chief Baron proceeded to pass sentence. Ile said,
if anything could increase the horror of the dreadful scene
which now, as far as you are concerned is coming towards a
close, it is the hearing of those words which you have suf-
fered to fall from your lips. After an investigation as full,
as patient, and as complete as was ever presented to the
consideration of a court of justice—you have, upon evidence
of the clearest character, by a jury impressed with no convic-
tion and clouded by no doubt, been found guilty of the dread-
ful crime with which you stood charged. That you are guilty of
thaterime not a human being who heard the trial can entertain
a particle of doubt—one moment of hesitation as to the pro-
priety and truth of that verdict. And now, when you stand
convicted of that crime—that crime that, from the period
when the son of our fleet parents had set upon him the mark
of a brother', blood to the hour at which I am now address-
big Ton—that crime from which the human heart has ever
recoiled with horror—it is lamentable to think that, after a
night's reflection, you should think in an open court of jut
lice of denying your guilt. Proved it has been, clearly. and
beyond the possibility of doubt. And what is that crime ?
Dreadful it is in the abstract; but in your case, sur-
rounded with circumstances such as seldom have been
presented to the horror and execration of mankind.
A man of your own elate of life— a farmer, resting from the
labours of the day—sits in his cottage; surrounded by his
family, and at his own board—his nephew, a boy, seated at
one side of him—his niece, a girl of early age, at the other—
his children in the room—his wife, their mother, oecupied
in a little act of motherly attention, washing the feet of
one of those infante, preparatory to putting the children to
bed. That man is sitting in his chair, in that scene of blips,
when you enter the dw lling-house with a blunderbuss,
charged with eleven balls—you approach him—you
place it within a few inches of his back, and in the
presence of hi. wife and children you shoot him dead. You
saw before you—for he saw you—the boy who looks up taw
you, and identified you. That boy was in the direction
where you were firing, and you incurred the risk of a double
murder, and nearly perpetrated the two, for some of the ball,
that penetrated the body of your victim reached the boy, and
inflicted wounds upon him. Is it possible to conceive an
assemblage of circumstances uniting in themselves so much
the character of that horror which belongs to the crime of
murder as those proved in detail in the tragedy exhibited in
yesterday's trial. That is the character of your crime es
it affects society—es it is to be regarded in reference to the
laws intended for its protection. But, good Clod ! what is
the character of the crime which you have committed, when
measured in reference to your duties, and to that unhappy
man's liabiltties in the sight of his Maker. Without prepara-
tion—without warning—with all his sins—if he had any,
unthoughtof upon him—you send him, without the means of
one moment's reflection or repentance, before the judg-
ment-seat of God. Such is the crime of which you
have been proved guilty. Thero are circumstances con-
nected with that crime upon which it is impossible that
I should forbear to remark. It was characterised by
circumstances of daring and ',audacity such as hare sel-
dom been exhibited is the perpetration of even such a
crime as this. It was committed on the 22nd September.
Upon the 17th S, ptember—five days before, you had at-
tempted the commission of a similar crime—you had attempted
the life of the brother of the man whom you afterwards
succeeded in slaying. You were upon your attempted escape
from justice. You knew, and must have known, that the
officers of justice were in pursuit of you—in the neighbour-
hood of your residence, and in the neighbourhood of the
scene of the former outrage, in which you wounded, but
fortunately did not kill, your intended victim—at an early
hour in the evening, with the officen of justice in pursuit of
you. Yon enter a dwelling in which resided a number of
persons to whom you knew you were known, and there
perpetrated the deed in the manner I have der-celled.
What could have encouraged you so to commit that
deed i Murder is often committed under circumstances
in which the party may hope to escape detection
in the silence and d trknea of the night—in the soli-
tude of a lonely road—away from the presence of wit-
nesses, or in the presence of witnesses to whom the perpe-
trator may not be known. But what could have prompted
you to enter a dwelling, to several in which you were perso-
nally known ; what dreadful—l must characterise it by that
name—what dreadful sense of impunity, arising from a hope
that those who saw and knew you would be afraid to come
forward in a court of justice and prove your guilt; and in
part you were near succeeding. It transpired upon the trial
that one at least of the persons who knew you, and who was
able to prove you as the criminal, did, upon the first occa-
sion, under the influence of terror, not only refuse to e
' pee
the truth, but actually denied it. Another, one of the &
female witnesses who was examined, hesitatosd, but only
for a moment, to fasten the charge upon you. When I refer
to these circumstances appearing in the outrage of which
you have been found guilty, I need hardly say, that
they alone would have justified—they alone would have
demanded, that unusual interposition of the law which by
the commission under which we are sitting bas visited this
country. I will not go at large into observations en the con-
dition of the country, as it is affected by outrages of this