Before passing sentence, the Judge asked if there was anything that anyone wished to say. Meagher, speaking for all, said:

"My lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and perhaps it may seal my fate, but I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may cost - I am here to regret nothing I have ever done, to retract nothing I have ever said - I am here to crave with no lying lip the life I consecrate to the liberty of my country."

Thereupon the indignant judge sentenced them all to be hanged, drawn and quartered. An appeal to the British House of Lords influenced Queen Victoria to commute the sentence to transportation for life to the far wild of Australia, Van Diemen's Land (now known as Tasmania). In 1871, word reached the astounded Queen Victoria that the Charles Duffy who had just been elected Premier of the Australian colony of Victoria was the same Charles Duffy who had been transported 23 years before. On the Queen's demand, the records of the rest of the transported men were revealed, and this is what was uncovered:

• Thomas Francis Meagher, Governor of Montana Territory and Brigadier General, United States Army.
• Terence MacManus, shipping agent in San Francisco, California.
• Patrick O'Donoghue, editor of The Irish Exile newspaper.
• Richard O'Gorman, prosperous New York lawyer, later appointed to the Superior Court of New York.
• John Dillon, member of Parliament for Tipperary, Ireland.
• Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Member of Canadian Parliament, Montreal; one of the Fathers of the Canadian Confederation. 
• William O'Brien, pardoned by the British government; later became an icon of Irish nationalism. 
• John Mitchel, Prominent New York activist and Confederate politician; father of John Purroy Mitchel, who was later Mayor of New York at the outbreak of World War I.

"O, Ireland must we leave you,
Driven by a tyrant hand,
Must we speak a mother's blessing,
In a strange and distant land?"