‘I have been charged with that importance in the efforts to emancipate my countrymen as to be considered the keystone of the combination of Irishmen, or, as your lordship expressed it, “the life and blood of the conspiracy.” You do me honour overmuch—you have given to a subaltern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this conspiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to your computation of yourself, my lord; before the splendour of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would think themselves disgraced to be called your friend, and who would not disgrace themselves by shaking your blood-stained hand. [Again the judge, as frequently in the course of this bitter harangue of Emmett’s, felt called upon to interrupt him.]
‘What, my lord, shall you tell me on the passage to that 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 shall 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! By you, too, who, if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have shed in your unhallowed ministry in one reservoir, your lordship might swim in it. [Here the judge interfered.]
‘Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonour; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but of my country’s liberty and independence, or that I became the pliant minion of power in the oppression or the miseries of my countrymen. 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 present domestic oppressor. In the dignity of freedom I would have fought on the threshold of my country, and its enemies should only enter 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 or repel it?
‘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 venerable 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 that surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled through the channels which God created for nobler purposes, but which you are bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous that they cry to heaven. Be ye patient! I have but a few words more 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 repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, 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!’
Execution followed fast upon conviction, and Emmett suffered the penalty of high treason on the following day. The scene of his crime was chosen as the place of his punishment, and in Thomas Street the unfortunate gentleman met his fate with a calm and manly resignation, which elicited the sympathy of all who witnessed the painful occurrence.
If any sparks of disaffection lingered in the country, the mad outbreak of this deluded man finally extinguished them. The democratic feeling ten years before rife in the north of Ireland, and prevalent among the Presbyterians, had, long before Emmett’s emeute, been generally repudiated; a political change had been wrought rapidly in Ulster, and the educated and intelligent portion of the kingdom, whom American connection and French example influenced for a time, had detected the unsound principles of theoretic liberty, and disowned the rotten foundations upon which mob-governments are superstructed. When Russell, an early example of the republican school, attempted to operate coincidently with Emmett’s deluded attempt in the north, not half a dozen fools could be found to listen to delusory principles which had been tested and found wanting; and when he later suffered the extreme penalty of the law at Downpatrick, the utmost charity to which his quondam admirers reached was to declare that he was insane—a conclusion no doubt correct.
THE END