TRIAL, CONVICTION, AND EXECUTION OF ROBERT EMMETT
The madly infatuated leaders of this desperate and futile attempt contrived to evade their deluded followers before the crisis of the outbreak, in spite of their conspicuous uniforms and trappings. Favoured by the darkness, Emmett and his lieutenants, decked in their warlike panoply, contrived to escape from the city which their rash enterprise had stirred into wild excitement, and headed to that haunt of outlawed and desperate malefactors, the mountain range of Wicklow, where they foiled to raise the late rebels. Under this rebuff, for better security, the party separated, each adopting the best means within his power to evade the now uplifted hand of outraged justice. Emmett, it is said, might possibly have quitted the country in a fishing boat, but his wild and ardent attachment to a daughter of the celebrated Curran induced him to return to the metropolis and seek a parting interview with his mistress. None but a madman would have risked the dangerous experiment; but Emmett appears to have been influenced in all his actions by the wildest impulse, and, accordingly, he regained the city safely, and again took up his quarters in his old concealment, Harold’s Cross. Here he was tracked by the bloodhound who had successfully trapped Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the many misguided enthusiasts who had similarly played with treason under mistaken ambition.
Arrested by Town-Major Sirr on the 25th of August, a special commission was immediately issued, Lord Norbury presiding. The evidence was clear, decisive, and direct, and went over and unmistakably proved the facts as already described.
The story of Emmett’s arrest, as related by Major Henry Charles Sirr, appropriately closes the history: ‘I went, in the evening of the 25th of August, to the house of one Palmer. I had heard there was a stranger in the back-parlour. I rode, accompanied by a man on foot; I desired the man to knock at the door. He did, and it was opened by a girl. I alighted, and ran directly into the back-parlour. I saw the prisoner sitting at dinner; the woman of the house was there, and the girl who opened the door was the daughter of the woman of the house. I desired them to withdraw. I asked the prisoner his name; he told me his name was Cunningham. I gave him in charge to the man who accompanied me, and went into the next room to ask the woman and daughter about him; they told me his name was Hewitt. I went back and asked how long he had been there? He said he came that morning. He had attempted to escape before I returned, for he was bloody, and the man said he knocked him down with a pistol. I then went to Mrs. Palmer, who said he had lodged there for a month. I then judged he was a person of some importance. When I first went in there was a paper on the chair, which I put into my pocket (Emmett’s fervid proclamation). I then went to the canal bridge for a guard, having desired him to be in readiness as I passed by. I planted a sentry over him, and desired the non-commissioned officer to surround the house with sentries while I searched it. I then examined Mrs. Palmer, and took down her account of the prisoner, during which time I heard a noise, as if an escape was attempted. I instantly ran to the back part of the house, as the most likely part for him to get out at; I saw him going off, and ordered a sentinel to fire, and then pursued him myself, regardless of the order. The sentry snapped, but the musket did not go off. I overtook the prisoner, and he said, “I surrender!” I searched him, and found some papers upon him.’
On the witness expressing concern at the necessity of the prisoner’s being treated so roughly, the prisoner observed, ‘that all was fair in war.’ The prisoner, when brought to the castle, acknowledged that his name was Emmett.
In his address to the jury Mr. Conyngham Plunket, as counsel for the Crown, laid stress upon the revolutionary proclamation drawn up by Emmett, and pointed out the condemnatory nature of this incendiary document:—
‘Under what circumstances is he taken? In the room in which he was, upon a chair near the door, is found an address to the government of the country, and in the very first paragraph of that address the composer of it acknowledges himself to be the head of a conspiracy for the overthrow of the government which he addresses, telling them, in diplomatic language, what conduct the undersigned will be compelled to adopt if they shall presume to execute the law. He is the leader, whose nod is a Fiat, and he warns them of the consequences!
‘And how was this revolution to be effected? The proclamation conveys an insinuation that it was to be effected by their own force, entirely independent of foreign assistance. Why? Because it was well known that there remained in this country few so depraved, so lost to the welfare of their native land, that would not shudder at forming an alliance with France, and therefore the people of Ireland are told, “the effort is to be entirely your own, independent of foreign aid.” But how does this tally with the time when the scheme was first hatched—the very period of the commencement of the war with France? How does this tally with the fact of consulting in the depot about co-operating with the French, which has been proved in evidence? But, gentlemen, out of the proclamation I convict him of duplicity. He tells the government of the country not to resist their mandate, or think they can effectually suppress rebellion by putting down the present attempt, but that “they will have to crush a greater exertion, rendered still greater by foreign assistance”; so that upon the face of the proclamation they avowed, in its naked deformity, the abominable plan of an alliance with the usurper of the French throne to overturn the ancient constitution of the land, and to substitute a new republic in its place.’
CONCLUSION OF EMMETT’S EXALTED DEFENCE
After the verdict of guilty was pronounced, the clerk of the Crown asked the condemned ‘what he had to say why judgment of death and execution should not be awarded against him according to law?’ Emmett, without precisely defending himself, calmly proceeded to pour forth an eloquent impassioned attack upon the executive. The concluding passages convey the general tendency of his exalted oratory:—