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least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre; not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured; bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly: Liberty first, and union afterwards; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea, and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart: Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable!

EMMETT'S REPLY.

On the 23d of June, 1803, a rebellion against the government broke out in Dublin, in which Robert Emmett, at the time only twenty-three years of age, was a principal actor. It proved a failure. Emmett was arrested, having missed the opportunity of escape, it is said, by lingering to take leave of a daughter of Curran, the gifted orator, to whom he bore an attachment, which was reciprocated. On the 19th of September, 1803, Emmett was tried for high treason at the Sessions House, Dublin, before Lord Norbury, one of the Chief Judges of the King's Bench, and others; was found guilty, and executed the next day. Through his counsel, he had asked, at the trial, that the judgment of the Court might be postponed until the next morning. This request was not granted. The Clerk of the Crown read the indictment, and announced the verdict found, in the usual form. He then concluded thus: "What have you, therefore, now to say, why judgment of death and execution should not be awarded against you, according to law? Standing forward in the dock, in front of the Bench, Emmett made the following impromptu address. At his execution, Emmett displayed great fortitude. As he was passing out of his cell, on his way to the gallows, he met the turnkey, who had become much attached to him. Being fettered, Emmett could not give his hand; so he kissed the poor fellow on the cheek, who, overcome by the mingled condescension and tenderness of the act, fell senseless at the feet of the youthful victim, and did not recover till the latter was no longer among the living.

WH

HAT have I to say, why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me according to law? I have nothing to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that will become me to say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and which I must abide by. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, and which

you have labored (as was necessarily your office to do, in the present circumstances of this oppressed country,) to destroy. I have much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it.

I do not imagine, seated where you are, your minds can be so free from impurity as to receive the least impression from what I am going to utter. I have no hopes that I can anchor my character in the breast of a court constituted and trammelled as this is. I only wish, and it is the utmost I expect, that your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories, untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more hospitable harbor to shelter it from the storms by which it is at present buffeted. Were I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of the law, which delivers my body to the executioner, will, through the ministry of that law, labor, in its own vindication, to consign my character to obloquy - for there must be guilt somewhere; whether in the sentence of the court, or in the catastrophe, posterity must determine.

My lord, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to bow a man's mind by humiliation to the purposed ignominy of the scaffold; but worse to me than the purposed shame, or the scaffold's terrors, would be the shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have been laid against me in this court. You, my lord, are a judge; I am the supposed culprit - I am a man; you are a man also. By a revolution of power, we might change places, though we never could change characters. If I stand at the bar of this court, and dare not vindicate my character, what a farce is your justice! If I stand at this bar, and dare not vindicate my character, how dare you calumniate it? Does the sentence of death, which your unhallowed policy inflicts upon my body, also condemn my tongue to silence, and my reputation to reproach? Your executioner may abridge the period of my existence; but, while I exist, I shall not forbear to vindicate my character and motives from your aspersions; and, as a man to whom fame is dearer than life, I will make the last use of that life in doing justice to that reputation which is to live after me, and which is the only legacy I can leave to those I honor and

love, and for whom I am proud to perish. As men, we must appear, on the great day, at one common tribunal; and it will then remain for the Searcher of all hearts to show a collective universe who was engaged in the most virtuous actions, or actuated by the purest motives-my country's oppressors, or myself. I am charged with being an emissary of France. An emissary of France! And for what end? It is alleged that I wished to sell the independence of my country! And for what end? Was this the object of my ambition! And is this the mode by which a tribunal of justice reconciles contradictions? No; I am no emissary. My ambition was to hold a place among the deliverers of my country-not in power, not in profit, but in the glory of the achievement. Sell my country's independence to France! and for what? A change of masters? No; but for ambition.

Oh, my country! had it been personal ambition that influenced me- had it been the soul of my actions, could I not, by my education and fortune, by the rank and consideration of my family, have placed myself amongst the proudest of your oppressors? My country was my idol. To it I sacrificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment; and for it I now offer up my life. No, my lord, I acted as an Irishman, determined on delivering my country from the yoke of a foreign and unrelenting tyranny, and from the more galling yoke of a domestic faction, its joint partner and perpetrator in parricide, whose rewards are the ignominy of existing with an exterior of splendor, and a consciousness of depravity.

It was the wish of my heart to extricate my country from this doubly riveted despotism. I wished to place her independence beyond the reach of any power on earth. I wished to exalt her to that proud station of the world which Providence has destined her to fill.

I have been charged with so great importance, in the efforts to emancipate my country, as to be considered the keystone of the combination of Irishmen, or, as your lordship expressed it, "the life and blood of the conspiracy." You do me honor overmuch -you have given to the subaltern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this conspiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to your own conceptions of yourself, my lord men before the splendor of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would think themselves dishonored to be called your friends who would not dis

grace themselves by shaking your blood-stained hand- [Here he was interrupted by the judge.]

What, my lord, shall you tell me on the passage to that scaffold which that tyranny, of which you are only the intermediary executioner, has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for all the blood that has been, and will be, shed in this struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor -shall you tell me this, and must I be so very a slave as not to repel it? — I, who fear not to approach the omnipotent Judge, to answer for the conduct of my whole life— am I to be appalled and falsified by a mere remnant of mortality here? — by you, too, who, if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have shed, in your unhallowed ministry, in one great reservoir, your lordship might swim in it?[Here the judge again interfered.]

Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor: let no man attaint my memory, by believing that I could engage in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence; or that I could become the pliant minion of power in the oppression or the miseries of my countrymen. The proclamation of the provisional government speaks my views; from which no inference can be tortured to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, or humiliation, or treachery from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign invader, for the same reason that I would resist the domestic oppressor. In the dignity of freedom, I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and its enemy should enter only by passing over my lifeless corpse. And am I, who lived but for my country, who have subjected myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor, and now to the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and my country her independence, to be loaded with calumny, and not suffered to resent and repel it? No; God forbid!

My lords, you seem impatient for the sacrifice. The blood for which you thirst is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim: it circulates warmly and unruffled through the channels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are bent to destroy for purposes so grievous that they cry to Heaven.

Be yet patient. I have but a few words more to say. I am going to my cold and silent grave; my lamp of life is nearly extinguished;

my race is run; the grave opens to receive me; and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world: it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for, as no man who knows my motives, dares now vindicate them, let not prejudice nor ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done.

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