|
ROBERT EMMET SPEECH FROM THE DOCK
September 19,
1803
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 (as was necessarily your office in the present
circumstances of this oppressed country) 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. 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 hopes that I
can anchor my character in the breast of a court constituted and
trammeled as this is--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 storm
by which it is at present buffeted.
Was 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 in the catastrophe, posterity must
determine. 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.
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 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 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 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.
I appeal
to the immaculate God--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 by no other view than that
of their cure, and 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 noble enterprise. 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 pretense to
impeach the probity which he means to preserve even in the grave
to which tyranny consigns him.
Again I say, that what I have spoken was not intended for your
lordship, 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.
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 his
opinions of the motives by which he was actuated in the crime,
of which he had been adjudged guilty: 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 pure
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?
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 purposed shame, or the scaffold's
terrors, would be the shame of such unfounded imputations as
have been laid against me in this court: you, my lord [Lord
Norbury], 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 characters; if I stand at
the bar of this court and dare not vindicate my character, what
a farce is your justice? If I stand at this bar and dare not
vindicate my character. flow dare you calumniate it? Does the
sentence of death which your unhallowed policy inflicts on my
body also condemn my tongue to silence and my reputation to
reproach? Your executioner may abridge the period of my
existence. but while I exist I shall not forbear to vindicate my
character and motives from your aspersions: and as a man to whom
fame is dearer than life, I will make the last use of that life
in doing justice to that reputation which is to live after me,
and which is the only legacy I can leave to those I honor and
love, and for whom I am proud to perish. As men, my lord, we
must appear at the great day at one common tribunal. and it will
then remain for the searcher of all hearts to show a collective
universe who was engaged in the most virtuous actions. or
actuated by the purest motives-my country's oppressors or--
My lord,
will a dying man be denied the legal privilege of exculpating
himself, in the eyes of the community, of an undeserved reproach
thrown upon him during his trial, by charging him with ambition
and attempting to cast away, for a paltry consideration. the
liberties of his country? Why did your lordship insult me? or
rather why insult justice. in demanding of me why sentence of
death should not be pronounced? I know, my lord, that form
prescribes that you should ask the question; the form also
presumes a right of answering. This no doubt may be dispensed
with--and so might the whole ceremony of trial, since sentence
was already pronounced at the castle, before your jury was
impaneled; your lordships are but the priests of the oracle, and
I submit; but I insist on the whole of the forms.
I am
charged with being an emissary of France An emissary of France?
And for what end? It is alleged that I wished to sell the
independence of my country? And for what end? Was this the
object of my ambition? And is this the mode by which a tribunal
of justice reconciles contradictions? No, I am no emissary; and
my ambition was to hold a place among the deliverers of my
country--not in power, nor in profit, but in the glory of the
achievement!...
Connection with Prance was indeed intended, but only as far as
mutual interest would sanction or require. Were they to assume
any authority inconsistent with the purest independence. it
would be the signal for their destruction: we sought aid, and we
sought it, as we had assurances we should obtain it--as
auxiliaries in war and allies in peace...
I wished
to procure for my country the guarantee which Washington
procured for America. To procure an aid, which, by its example,
would be as important as its valor, disciplined. gallant,
pregnant with science and experience; which would perceive the
good and polish the rough points of our character. They would
come to us as strangers and leave us as friends, after sharing
in our perils and elevating our destiny. These were my
objects--not to receive new taskmasters hilt to expel old
tyrants: these were my views. and these only became Irishmen. It
was for these ends I sought aid from France; because France,
even as an enemy. could not he more implacable than the enemy
already in the bosom of my country.
I have
been charged with that importance in the efforts to emancipate
my country. as to be considered the keystone of the combination
of Irishmen; or, as Your Lordship expressed it, "the life and
blood of conspiracy." You do me honor overmuch. You have given
to the 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 own conceptions of yourself, my lord; men, before
the splendor of whose genius and virtues, I should bow with
respectful deference, and who would think themselves dishonored
to be called your friend--who would not disgrace themselves by
shaking your bloodstained hand--
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 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. who, 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.
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. The proclamation of
the provisional government speaks for our views; no inference
can he 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. 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, and am
I to be loaded with calumny and not 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--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 instill into
my youthful mind, and for which I am now 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 bent to
destroy. for purposes so grievous. that they cry to heaven. Be
yet 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 e4inguished:
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.
Back to index page
|