Justice & Law Quote by Thomas Francis Meagher

Meagher opens by conceding the verdict with a lawyerly chill: "it is true" reads like a forced nod to procedure, not a surrender to legitimacy. The sentence is built to sound compliant while quietly smuggling in doubt. A "jury of my countrymen" should be the ultimate moral tribunal; by stressing their shared nationality, he sharpens the betrayal. If your own people condemn you, the system can claim democratic innocence. Meagher’s phrasing anticipates that propaganda move and preempts it.

Then comes the performance of magnanimity: "not the slightest feeling of resentment". On the surface it’s Christian restraint, a soldier’s discipline under fire. In subtext it’s an indictment delivered without shouting. He refuses to grant the court what it wants most from the accused: rage that can be framed as fanaticism. By withholding resentment, he denies the state a convenient portrait of him as a vengeful agitator. He positions himself as the steadier patriot, implicitly suggesting the jury’s decision was shaped by fear, pressure, or manufactured consensus rather than clear-eyed justice.

The line also functions as recruitment copy. In 19th-century nationalist politics, martyrdom needed a moral gloss; resentment would make him small. Forgiveness makes him usable. It tells sympathizers: don’t hate the ordinary jurors; hate the machinery that placed them there, the atmosphere that made guilt feel safe. Meagher isn’t absolving the verdict so much as separating the people from the power that coached their hand, leaving room for the same "countrymen" to be reclaimed by the cause he’s been condemned for.