SENTENCE OF DEATH.
The following morning, Friday April 28th, at a quarter after nine, Lord Chief-Justice Abbot, Chief Justice Dallas, the Chief Baron, Mr. Justice Richards, Mr. Justice Best, and the Common Sergeant, took their seats.
Mr. Brown, the gaoler, was immediately requested to bring the prisoners to the bar. In a few minutes the clank of chains was heard, and the eleven prisoners entered the court. They were all double ironed, with the exception of Ings, who had been much indisposed since his conviction. Thistlewood came first, and advanced to the bar. There was a melancholy resignation in his countenance, and his appearance was considerably altered since the last time of his being in Court.
All being in readiness,
Mr. Shelton (the clerk of the arraigns), addressing himself to Thistlewood, said,
“Arthur Thistlewood, you stand convicted of High Treason;—what have you say why you should not receive judgment to die, according to law?”
Thistlewood immediately drew forth a manuscript address, which he proceeded to read in a mournful tone, as follows:—
“My Lords,—I am asked, my Lord, what I have to say that judgment of death should not be passed upon me according to law. This to me is mockery—for were the reasons I could offer incontrovertible, and were they enforced even by the eloquence of a Cicero, still would the vengeance of my Lords Castlereagh and Sidmouth be satiated only in the purple stream which circulates through a heart more enthusiastically vibrating to every impulse of patriotism and honour, than that of any of those privileged traitors to their country, who lord it over the lives and property of the sovereign people with barefaced impunity.
“The reasons which I have, however, I will now state—not that I entertain the slightest hope from your sense of justice or from your pity. The former is swallowed up in your ambition, or rather by the servility you descend to, to obtain the object of that ambition—the latter I despise. Justice I demand. If I am denied it, your pity is no equivalent. In the first place,