The Speech from the Dock
Robert
Emmet's speech on the eve of his execution
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.
[Interruption
by the court.]
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 superhuman 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.
[Interruption
by the court.]
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.
[Interruption
by the court.]
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,
how 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--
[Interruption
by the court.]
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 task
masters but
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.
[Interruption
by the court.]
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--
[Interruption
by the court]
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.
[Interruption
by the court.]
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 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.
