“In the interim, I transmit to you by this night’s post some additional leaves, which, in the anxiety of despatch, as well, indeed, as from fear that they would not be inserted because they overwhelm for ever the antiquarian pretensions of the Dublin Penny Journal,[37] have omitted to copy. However, I will now forward them, and claim that they may be printed along with those already sent in the original Essay.
“... I have exhausted all the forms of blandness and conciliation, in the vain hope of inducing the Council to redeem themselves from disgrace, by doing me common justice. I have strove in the mildest terms of conscious rectitude, invigorated by a phalanx of overwhelming proofs, to make them reconsider their course, and spare me the unpleasant task of exposing a deed which I am loth to characterise by its proper designation. But the ‘heart of Pharaoh’ was hardened; the ‘voice of the charmer’ not listened to; and to my soft importunities nothing was returned but the coldness of obduracy and disregard.
“The Rubicon, therefore, is crossed; my patience feels insulted; and the only consideration I value, in the resolve to which I have at last been driven, is, that you had nothing to do with the ‘job’ of the Round Towers.
“Little did the Academy know what arguments I could adduce in elucidation of certain mysteries. As little do they now dream what proofs I can summon, though you cannot have forgotten one of them, while I promise I shall make Dr. M‘Donnell recollect another; and would not the Rev. Cæsar Otway, with whom I have never so much as exchanged a look, be surprised at my quoting him as a reluctant third witness, to show that the gold medal and premium were predetermined to Mr. Petrie before ever I became a candidate; and that, consequently, the advertisement under which I was invited to contend, but from which the Council never expected an intruder, was but a specious delusion.
“In this determination I violate no act of private regard, nor set light by the claims of individual acquaintance. You know yourself how earnestly I struggled, before the consummation of this nefarious proceeding, to stem the agency of that despicable under-current which I had just detected. I knew that fraud of some kind was at work; and though unable at the moment to fix upon the person in whose favour it was set agoing,—nay, though mentally fastening the blame thereof upon another, whose name, however, I never let slip, and to whom, I rejoice to say I have since made more than recompense for this ideal injury,—yet could I not be persuaded but that something sinister was designated; and to frustrate the influence of such prominent deceit, you know how vehement was my address. I implored you, I besought you, and all but upon my knees, and with tears, I invoked you, by your regard to justice and your fear of a Creator, to check this trickery, and allow merit alone and anonymous to decide the issue.
“I now, in the same spirit of solemn self-composure, adjure the ‘Council’ through you, in the name of that God before whom they and I shall one day appear, that they will have my cause redressed, and make me reparation, not only for the substantial injury, but for the mental disquietude and agony which this ‘business’ has occasioned. If they do not, rest satisfied that my path is already chalked. All the evolutions of the Council, as displayed upon the Towers, and with which I am but too familiar, shall be immortalised in letterpress; and I do not yet despair of the hereditary fairness of my country but that it shall register its dissent from the decision of that tribunal, which could have had at once the obtuseness of intellect and the perverseness of conduct to stultify their own verdict by a contradictory award; and, after inveigling me into a competition which they never meant to remunerate, deprive me of the fruits of my indubitable triumph, in the pursuit of which I had almost lost my life, and cut short my existence in the very spring of my manhood.
“I mean no offence, individually or collectively, to the Academy or its members; but as they have been deaf to the justice of my private ‘appeals,’ I shall try the effect of a public ‘remonstrance’; and as to ulterior consequences I greatly err, else the upshot will show that the motto[38] adopted as my fictitious signature in the ‘Essay’ was not the random assumption of inconsiderateness or accident, but the true index to the author’s resources.
“My proposal is this—my unshaken position from which I will not swerve or retract—a gold medal and premium equivalent to those originally advertised.—I am, dear sir, yours sincerely,
“Henry O’Brien.
“To the Rev. Dr. J. H. Singer,
“Secretary to the Academy.”