institutions. We are willing to pay our tribute of applause to the memory of Leonidas, who fell nobly for his country in the face of his foe.

4. But when we trace him to his home, we are confounded at the reflection, that the same Spartan heroism, to which he sacrificed himself at Thermopylæ, would have led him to tear his own child, if it had happened to be a sickly babe,he very object for which all that is kind and good in man rises up to plead,-from the bosom of its mother, and carry it out to be eaten by the wolves of Taygetus.

5. We feel a glow of admiration at the heroism displayed at Marathon, by the ten thousand champions of invaded Greece; but we cannot forget that the tenth part of the number were slaves, unchained from the workshops and door-posts of their masters, to go and fight the battles of freedom.

6. I do not mean that these examples are to destroy the interest with which we read the history of ancient times; they possibly increase that interest by the very contrast they exhibit. But they do warn us, if we need the warning, to seek our great practical lessons of patriotism at home; out of the exploits and sacrifices of which our own country is the theatre; out of the characters of our own fathers.

7. Them we know,-the high-souled, natural, unaffected, the citizen heroes. We know what happy firesides they left for the cheerless camp. We know with what pacific habits they dared the perils of the field. There is no mystery, no romance, no madness, under the name of chivalry, about them. It is all resolute, manly resistance for conscience and liberty's sake, not merely of an overwhelming power, but of all the force of long-rooted habits and native love of order and peace.

8. Above all, their blood calls to us from the soil which we tread; it beats in our veins; it cries to us not merely in the thrilling words of one of the first victims in this cause-" My sons, scorn to be slaves!"-but it cries with a still more moving eloquence-"My sons, forget not your fathers!"

EVERETT.

PART IV.

MISCELLANEOUS.

1. ON BEING FOUND GUILTY OF HIGH TREASON.

[On the 23d of June, 1803, a rebellion against the Government broke out in Dublin, in which Robert Emmet, at the time only twenty-three years of age, was a principal actor. It proved a failure. Emmet was arrested, having missed the opportunity of escape, it is said, by lingering to take leave of a daughter of Curran, the gifted orator. He was tried for high treason at the Sessions House, Dublin, before Lord Norbury, one of the Chief Judges of the King's Bench, and others; was found guilty, and executed the next day. Through his counsel, he had asked, at the trial, that the judgment of the Court might be postponed until the next morning. This request was not granted. The Clerk of the Crown read the indictment, and announced the verdict found, in the usual form. He then concluded thus: "What have you, therefore, now to say, why judgment of death and execution should not be awarded against you, according to law?" Standing forward in the dock, in front of the Bench, Emmet made the following impromptu address, execution, Emmet displayed fortitude worthy of him and his cause. As he was passing out of his cell, on his way to the gallows, he met the turnkey, who had become much attached to him. Being fettered, Emmet could not give his hand; so he kissed the poor fellow on the check, who, overcome by the mingled condescension and tenderness of the act, fell senseless at the feet of the youthful victim, and did not recover till the latter was no longer among the living.]

W

At his

HAT have I to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me, according to law? I have nothing to say which can alter your predetermination, or that it would become me to say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and which I must abide. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, and which you have labored-as was necessarily your

office in the present circumstances of this oppressed countryto destroy.

2. 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. I do not imagine that, seated where you are, your minds can be so free from impurity as to receive the least impression from what I am going to utter. I have no hope that I can anchor my character in the breast of a court constituted and trammelled as this is.

3. I only wish, and it is the utmost I expect, that your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories, untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more hospitable harbor, to shelter it from the rude storm by which it is at pres ent buffeted.

4. 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 the 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.

5. A man in my situation, my lords, has not only to encounter the difficulties of fortune, and the force of power over minds which it has corrupted or subjugated, but the difficulties of established prejudice :-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.

6. 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 defence of their country and of 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

dominion 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 a little 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 it has made *

II.

7. I appeal to the immaculate God,-to the throne of Heaven, before which I must shortly appear,-to the blood of the murdered patriots who have gone before, that my conduct has been, through all this peril, and through all my purposes, governed only by the convictions which I have uttered, and by 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 that, wild and chimerical as it may appear, there is still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this noblest enterprise.

8. Of this I speak with the confidence of intimate knowledge, and with the consolation that appertains to that confidence. Think not, my lords, I say this for the petty gratification of giving you a transitory uneasiness; a man who never yet raised his voice to assert a lie will not hazard his character with posterity by asserting a falsehood on a subject so important to his country, and on an occasion like this. Yes, my lords; a man who does not wish to have his epitaph written until his country is liberated, will not leave a weapon in the power of envy, nor a pretence to impeach the probity which he means to preserve even in the grave to which tyranny consigns him.t

Here Lord Norbury said: The weak and wicked enthusiasts who feel as you feel are unequal to the accomplishment of their wild designs.” He was here interrupted by Lord Norbury, who said: “You proceed to unwarrantable lengths, in order to exasperate and delude the unwary, and circulate opinions of the most dangerous tendency, for the purposes of mischief."

9. Again I say, that what I have spoken was not intended for your lordships, whose situation I commiserate rather than envy ;-my expressions were for my countrymen; if there is a true Irishman present, let my last words cheer him in the hour of his affliction-*

10. I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge, when a prisoner has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of the law; I have also understood that judges sometimes think it their duty to hear with patience, and to speak with humanity; to exhort the victim of the laws, and to offer, with tender benignity, opinions of the motives by which he was actuated in the crime of which he had been adjudged guilty.

11. That a judge has thought it his duty so to have done, I have no doubt; but where is the boasted freedom of your institutions, where is the vaunted impartiality, clemency, and mildness of your courts of justice,-if an unfortunate prisoner whom your policy, and not justice, is about to deliver into the hands of the executioner, is not suffered to explain his motives sincerely and truly, and to vindicate the principles by which he was actuated?

12. My lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to bow a man's mind, by humiliation, to the purposed ignominy of the scaffold; but worse to me than the scaffold's shame, or the scaffold's terrors, would be the shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have been laid against me in this court. You, my lord, are a judge. I am the supposed culprit. I am a man, you are a man also. By a revolution of power, we might change places, though we never could change char acters.

13. If I stand at the bar of this court, and dare not vindi cate my character, what a farce is your justice! If I stand at this bar, and dare not vindicate my character, how dare you calumniate it? Does the sentence of death, which your unhallowed policy inflicts on my body, also condemn my tongue

* Lord Norbury here interrupted the speaker with,—" What you have hitherto said confirms and justifies the verdict of the jury."