“One day, previous to his trial, as the governor was going his rounds, he entered Emmet’s room rather abruptly, and observing a remarkable expression in his countenance, he apologised for the interruption. He had a fork affixed to his little deal table, and appended to it there was a tress of hair. ‘You see,’ said he to his keeper, ‘how innocently I have been occupied: this little tress has been long dear to me, and I am plaiting it to wear in my bosom on the day of my execution.’ On the day of that fatal event, there was found, sketched by his own hand with a pen and ink, upon that very table, an admirable likeness of himself, the head severed from the body which lay near it, surrounded by the scaffold, the axe and all the paraphernalia of a high treason execution. What a strange union of tenderness, enthusiasm and fortitude, do not the above traits of character exhibit! His fortitude indeed, never forsook him; on the night previous to his death, he slept as soundly as ever, and when the fatal morning dawned, he arose, knelt down and prayed, ordered some milk, which he drank, wrote two letters, (one to his brother in America, and the other to the secretary of state, inclosing it,) and then desired the sheriffs to be informed that he was ready. When they came to his room, he said he had two requests to make: one, that his arms might be left as loose as possible, which was humanely acceded to. “I make the other,” said he, “not under any idea that it can be granted, but that it may be held in remembrance that I have made it, it is, that I may be permitted to die in my green uniform.” This, of course, was not allowed him—and the request seemed to have no other object than to show that he gloried in the cause for which he was to suffer. A remarkable example of his power, both over himself and others, occurred at this melancholy moment. He was passing out, attended by the sheriffs and preceded by the executioner; in one of the passages stood the turnkey who had been personally assigned to him during his imprisonment: this poor fellow loved him in his heart, and the tears were streaming from his eyes in torrents. Emmet paused for a moment; his hands were not at liberty—he kissed his cheek—and the man who had been for years the attendant of a dungeon, habituated to scenes of horror, and hardened against their operation, fell senseless at his feet. Before his eyes had opened again upon this world, those of the youthful sufferer had closed forever!”
THE END.
[1]. Agriculture.—‘The mother and nurse of a military population, Ireland has been forced into this. It was thought that she had sunk under the arbitrary tyranny of British monopoly. Let the proud Briton regale himself in the wholesome air of mines and workshops, and become ossified in the strengthening attitudes of monotonous labour; while the degraded Irishman draws health and number, and fierceness and force, and becomes too nimble to be caught by his crippled owner, who hobbles after and threatens with his crutch.’
[2]. A contemptuous name for Yeomen.
[3]. It is said that the North Cork Regiment were the inventors—but they certainly were the intruders of pitchcap torture into the county of Wexford. Any person having their hair cut short, (and therefore called a Croppy, by which appellation the soldiery designated a United Irishman) on being pointed out by some loyal neighbour, was immediately seized and brought into a guard-house, where caps either of coarse linen, or strong brown paper, besmeared inside with pitch, were kept always ready for service. The unfortunate victim had one of these, well heated, compressed on his head: and when judged of a proper degree of coolness, so that it could not easily be pulled off, the sufferer was turned out amidst the horrid acclamations of the merciless torturers, and to the view of vast numbers of people, who generally crowded to the guard-house door, attracted by the afflicting cries of the tormented.
[4]. Hay’s History of the Insurrection in Wexford.
[5]. The rebel outlaws, who took up their abodes in the mountains and fastnesses of Wexford and Wicklow, after 1798, ludicrously called themselves “The Babes of the Wood.”
[6]. That paper was as follows:
“It may appear strange, that a person avowing himself to be an enemy of the present Government, and engaged in a conspiracy for its overthrow, should presume to suggest an opinion to that Government on any part of its conduct, or could hope that advice coming from such authority, might be received with attention. The writer of this, however, does not mean to offer an opinion on any point, on which he must of necessity, feel differently from any of those whom he addresses, and on which therefore his conduct might be doubted. His intention is to confine himself entirely to those points on which, however widely he may differ from them in others, he has no hesitation in declaring, that, as a man, he feels the same interest with the merciful part, and as an Irishman, with at least the English part of the present administration: and at the same time to communicate to them in the most precise terms, that line of conduct which he may hereafter be compelled to adopt, and which, however painful it must, under any circumstances be, would become doubly so if he was not conscious of having tried to avoid it by the most distinct notification. On the two first of these points, it is not the intention of the undersigned, for the reason he has already mentioned, to do more than state, what government itself must acknowledge—that of the present conspiracy it knows (comparatively speaking) nothing. That instead of creating terror in its enemies, or confidence in its friends, it will only serve by the scantiness of its information, to furnish additional grounds of invective to those who are but too ready to censure it for a want of intelligence, which no sagacity could have enabled them to obtain. That if it is not able to terrify by a display of its discoveries, it cannot hope to crush by the weight of its punishments. Is it only now we are to learn, that entering into conspiracy exposes us to be hanged?—Are the scattered instances which will now be brought forward necessary to exemplify the statute? If the numerous and striking examples which have already preceded, were insufficient,—if government can neither by novelty of punishment, nor the multitude of its victims, impress us with terror, can it hope to injure the body of a conspiracy so impenetrably woven as the present, by cutting off a few threads from the end of it.