[Here he was interrupted.]
"What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to the 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 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 do not fear to approach the Omnipotent Judge to answer for the conduct of my whole life; and am I to be appalled and falsified by a mere remnant of mortality here? By you, too, although 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 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 have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence; or that I could have become the pliant minion of power, in the oppression and misery of my country. The proclamation of the Provisional Government speaks for our views; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation, or treachery from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I would resist the foreign and 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, and who have subjected myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor, and the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and my country her independence, am I to be loaded with calumny, and not suffered to resent it? No; God forbid!"
Here Lord Norbury told Mr. Emmet that his sentiments and language disgraced his family and his education, but more particularly his father, Dr. Emmet, who was a man, if alive, that would not countenance such opinions. To which Mr. Emmet replied:—
"If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and cares of those who were dear to them in this transitory life, oh! ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny upon the conduct of your suffering son, and see if I have, even for a moment, deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism which it was your care to instil into my youthful mind, and for which I am now about to offer up my life. My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice. The blood which you seek 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 now bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous that they cry to heaven. Be yet patient! I have but a few more words 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 dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me rest in obscurity and peace; and my tomb remain uninscribed, and my memory in oblivion, 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."
This affecting address was spoken—as we learn from the painstaking and generous biographer of the United Irishmen, Dr, Madden—"in so loud a voice as to be distinctly heard at the outer doors of the court-house; and yet, though he spoke in a loud tone, there was nothing boisterous in his manner; his accents and cadence of voice, on the contrary, were exquisitely modulated. His action was very remarkable, its greater or lesser vehemence corresponded with the rise and fall of his voice. He is described as moving about the dock, as he warmed in his address, with rapid, but not ungraceful motions—now in front of the railing before the bench, then retiring, as if his body, as well as his mind, were spelling beyond the measure of its chains. His action was not confined to his hands; he seemed to have acquired a swaying motion of the body when he spoke in public, which was peculiar to him, but there was no affectation in it."
At ten o'clock, p.m., on the day of his trial, the barbarous sentence of the law—the same that we have so recently heard passed on prisoners standing in that same dock, accused of the same offence against the rulers of this country—was passed on Robert Emmet. Only a few hours were given him in which to withdraw his thoughts from the things of this world and fix them on the next. He was hurried away, at midnight, from Newgate to Kilmainham jail, passing through Thomas-street, the scene of his attempted insurrection. Hardly had the prison van driven through, when workmen arrived and commenced the erection of the gibbet from which his body was to be suspended. About the hour of noon, on the 20th of September, he mounted the scaffold with a firm and composed demeanour; a minute or two more and the lifeless remains of one of the most gifted of God's creatures hung from the cross beams—strangled by the enemies of his country—cut off in the bloom of youth, in the prime of his physical and intellectual powers, because he had loved his own land, hated her oppressors, and striven to give freedom to his people. But not yet was English vengeance satisfied. While the body was yet warm it was cut down from the gibbet, the neck placed across a block on the scaffold, and the head severed from the body. Then the executioner held it up before the horrified and sorrowing crowd that stood outside the lines of soldiery, proclaiming to them—"This is the head of a traitor!" A traitor! It was a false proclamation. No traitor was he, but a true and noble gentleman. No traitor, but a most faithful heart to all that was worthy of love and honour. No traitor, but a martyr for Ireland. The people who stood agonized before his scaffold, tears streaming from their eyes, and their hearts bursting with suppressed emotion, knew that for them and for Ireland he had offered up his young life. And when the deed was finished, and the mutilated body had been taken away, and the armed guards had marched from the fatal spot, old people and young moved up to it to dip their handkerchiefs in the blood of the martyr, that they might then treasure up the relics for ever. Well has his memory been cherished in the Irish heart from that day to the present time. Six years ago a procession of Irishmen, fifteen thousand strong, hearing another rebel to his grave, passed by the scene of that execution, every man of whom reverently uncovered his head as he reached the hallowed spot. A few months ago, a banner borne in another Irish insurrection displayed the inscription—
"REMEMBER EMMET."
Far away "beyond the Atlantic foam," and "by the long wash of Australasian seas," societies are in existence bearing his name, and having for their object to cherish his memory and perpetuate his principles. And wherever on the habitable globe a few members of the scattered Irish race are to be found, there are hearts that are thrilled by even the faintest allusion to the uninscribed grave-stone and the unwritten epitaph.