Robert Emmet, the Irish patriot, was born in Dublin in 1778, and was executed for treason in Dublin, September 20, 1803. A prize-winner at Trinity College, Dublin, and an eloquent speaker before the Historical Society, he lent his young energies to the cause of Ireland with a devotion that was as pure and unselfish as it was rash. Traveling on the Continent, he received from Napoleon I a promise to help Ireland. He then returned secretly to Ireland and made plans for a revolution. An abortive uprising occurred. Emmet, with a mob of followers, attempted to seize Dublin Castle, but one volley dispersed his rabble.
He fled to the Wicklow mountains, intending to escape from the country, but he made a last visit to his sweetheart, Miss Curran, and was captured. His speeches before the tribunal which sentenced him to be hanged are models of noble and eloquent dignity. Thomas Moore, Emmet's schoolfellow and friend, inscribed to his memory a touching poem:
Oh, breathe not his name—let it sleep in the shade,
Where cold and unhonored his relics are laid;
Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed,
As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head.
But the night-dew that falls, though in silence it weeps,
Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps;
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,
Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.
In another lyric, which begins with the line "She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps," Moore alluded to the sad after-life of Miss Curran. Her story was also told, without a mention of her name, by Washington Irving, in "The Broken Heart," which may be found in "The Sketch Book."
My Lords: What have I to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me, according to law? I have nothing to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will become me to say, with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and I must abide by. But I have that to say, which interests me more than life, and which you have labored to destroy. I have much to say, why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it.
Were I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of law which delivers my body to the executioner will, through the ministry of that law, labor, in its own vindication, to consign my character to obloquy: for there must be guilt somewhere—whether in the sentence of the court, or in the catastrophe, posterity must determine. The man dies, but his memory lives. That mine may not perish—that it may live in the respect of my countrymen—I seize upon this opportunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against me. When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port; when my shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed their blood, on the scaffold and in the field, in defense of their country and virtue, this is my hope—I wish that my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its domination by blasphemy of the Most High, which displays its power over man as over the beasts of the forest, which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand, in the name of God, against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a little more or less than the government standard—a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which its cruelty has made.
I swear by the throne of heaven, before which I must shortly appear—by the blood of the murdered patriots who have gone before me—that my conduct has been, through all this peril, and all my purposes, governed only by the convictions which I have uttered, and no other view than that of the emancipation of my country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long, and too patiently, travailed; and that I confidently and assuredly hope (wild and chimerical as it may appear) that there are still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this noble enterprise.
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 or the miseries of my countrymen. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I would resist the domestic tyrant; in the dignity of freedom, I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and her enemies should enter only by passing over my lifeless corpse. Am I, who lived but for my country, and who have subjected myself to the vengeance of the jealous and wrathful oppressor, and to the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights—am I to be loaded with calumny, and not to be suffered to resent or repel it? No!—God forbid!
If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and cares of those who are dear to them in this transitory life—O ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny on 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 an adherence to which I am now to offer up my life!