Major Sirr, the defendant, soon arrived, went into his office, and returned with an order which he had written, and by virtue of which Mr. Hevey was conveyed to his old friend and gaoler, Major Sandys. Here he was flung into a room of about thirteen feet by twelve—it was called the hospital of the provost—it was occupied by six beds, in which were to lie fourteen or fifteen miserable wretches, some of them sinking under contagious disorders. Here he passed the first night without bed or food. The next morning his humane keeper, the major, appeared. Mr. Hevey demanded why he was so imprisoned, complained of hunger and asked for the gaol allowance. Major Sandys replied with a torrent of abuse, which he concluded by saying,—your crime is your insolence to Major Sirr; however, he disdains to trample on you,—you may appease him by proper and contrite submission; but unless you do, you shall rot where you are. I tell you this, that if government will not protect us, by G—d, we will not them. You will probably (for I know your insolent and ungrateful hardiness) attempt to get out by an habeas corpus, but in that you will find yourself mistaken as much as a rascal deserves.’ Hevey was insolent enough to issue an habeas corpus, and a return was made on it, ‘That Hevey was in custody under a warrant from General Graig, on a charge of high treason.’ That the return was a gross falsehood, fabricated by Sirr, I am instructed to assert. The judge, before whom this return was brought, felt that he had no authority to liberate the unhappy prisoner; and thus, by a most inhuman and malicious lie, my client was again remanded to the horrid mansion of pestilence and famine. Upon this, Mr. Hevey, finding that nothing else remained, signed a submission dictated by Sandys, was enlarged from confinement, and brought the present action.
The jury awarded Mr. Hevey 150l. damages.
The unfortunate Emmet betrayed no tokens of fear or perturbation, but evinced the same calm and dignified aspect which ever distinguished this extraordinary young man.
A few days after, he wrote Mr. Curran the following letter.
From Mr. Robert Emmet to John Philpot Curran, Esq.
“I did not expect you to be my counsel. I nominated you, because not to have done so might have appeared remarkable. Had Mr. —— been in town, I did not even wish to have seen you, but as he was not, I wrote to you to come to me at once. I know that I have done you a very severe injury, much greater than I can atone for with my life; that atonement I did offer to make before the privy council, by pleading guilty, if these documents were suppressed. I offered, if I were permitted to consult some persons, and if they would consent to an accommodation for saving the lives of others, that I would only require for my part of it the suppression of those documents, and that I would abide the event of my own trial. This also was rejected, and nothing but individual information, (with the exception of names) would be taken. My intention was, not to leave the suppression of those documents to possibility, but to render it unnecessary for any one to plead for me, by pleading guilty to the charge myself.
“The circumstances that I am now going to mention, I do not state in my own justification. When I first addressed your daughter, I expected that in another week my own fate would be decided. I knew that in case of success, many others might look on me differently from what they did at that moment; but I speak with sincerity, when I say that I never was anxious for situation or distinction myself, and I do not wish to be united to one who was. I spoke to your daughter, neither expecting, nor, in fact, under such circumstances, wishing that there should be a return of attachment; but wishing to judge of her dispositions, to know how far they might not be unfavourable or disengaged, and to know what foundation I might afterwards have to count on. I received no encouragement whatever. She told me she had no attachment for any person, nor did she seem likely to have any that could make her wish to quit you. I staid away till the time had elapsed when I found that the event to which I allude was to be postponed indefinitely. I returned by a kind of infatuation, thinking that to myself only was I giving pleasure or pain. I perceived no progress of attachment on her part, nor anything in her conduct to distinguish me from a common acquaintance. Afterwards I had reason to suppose that discoveries were made, and that I should be obliged to quit the kingdom immediately: and I came to make a renunciation of any approach to friendship that might have been formed. On that very day she herself spoke to me to discontinue my visits; I told her it was my intention, and I mentioned the reason. I then, for the first time, found I was unfortunate, by the manner in which she was affected, that there was a return of affection, and that it was too late to retreat. My own apprehensions, also, I afterwards found, were without cause, and I remained. There has been much culpability on my part in all this, but there has also been a great deal of that misfortune which seems uniformly to accompany me. That I have written to your daughter since an unfortunate event has taken place, was an additional breach of propriety, for which I have suffered well; but I will candidly confess, that I not only do not feel it to have been of the same extent, but that I consider it to have been unavoidable, after what had passed; for though I will not attempt to justify, in the smallest degree, my former conduct, yet when an attachment was once formed between us—and a sincerer one never did exist—I feel that, peculiarly circumstanced as I then was, to have left her uncertain of my situation would neither have weaned her affections, nor lessened her anxiety; and looking upon her as one whom, if I had lived, I hoped to have had my partner for life, I did hold the removing her anxiety above every other consideration. I would rather have had the affections of your daughter in the back settlements of America, than the first situation this country could afford without them. I know not whether this would be any extenuation of my offence—I know not whether it will be any extenuation of it to know, that if I had that situation in my power at this moment, I would relinquish it to devote my life to her happiness—I know not whether success would have blotted out the recollection of what I have done—but I know that a man, with the coldness of death in him, need not be made to feel any other coldness, and that he may be spared any addition to the misery he feels not for himself, but for those to whom he has left nothing but sorrow.”
The original, from which the above has been copied, is not signed or dated. It was written in the interval between Mr. Emmet’s conviction and execution.
Upon the arrest of Mr. Emmet, some papers were found upon his person, which shewed that subsequent to the insurrection, he had corresponded with one of Mr. Curran’s family: a warrant accordingly followed, as a matter of course, to examine Mr. Curran’s house, where some of Mr. Emmet’s letters were found, which, together with the documents taken upon his person, placed beyond a doubt, his connection with the late conspiracy, and were afterwards used as evidence upon his trial.
At the instance of the attorney-general, Mr. O’Grady, Mr. Curran accompanied him to the privy council. Upon his first entrance, there was some indication of the hostile spirit which he had originally apprehended. A noble lord, who at that time held the highest judicial situation in Ireland, undertook to examine him upon the transaction which occasioned his attendance. To do this was undoubtedly his duty. He fixed his eye upon Mr. Curran, and was proceeding to cross-examine his countenance, when (as it is well remembered by the spectators of the scene) the swell of indignation, and the glance of stern dignity and contempt which he encountered there, gave his own nerves the shock which he had meditated for another’s, and compelled him to shrink back in his chair, silent and disconcerted at the failure of his rash experiment. With this single exception, Mr. Curran was treated with the utmost delicacy.