er 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 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 which surround your victim--it
circulates warmly and unruffled through the channels which God
created for noble purposes, but which you are now bent to destroy,
for purposes so grievous that they cry to heaven. Be yet patient! I
have but a few more words 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 rest in obscurity and peace; and my
tomb remain uninscribed, and my memory in oblivion, 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."

This affecting address was spoken--as we learn from the painstaking and
generous biographer of the United Irishmen, Dr, Madden--"in so loud a
voice as to be distinctly heard at the outer doors of the court-house;
and yet, though he spoke in a loud tone, there was nothing boisterous in
his manner; his accents and cadence of voice, on the contrary, were
exquisitely modulated. His action was very remarkable, its greater or
lesser vehemence corresponded with the rise and fall of his voice. He is
described as moving about the dock, as he warmed in his address, with
rapid, but not ungraceful motions--now in front of the railing before
the bench, then retiring, as if his body, as well as his mind, were
spelling beyond the measure of its chains. His action was not confined
to his hands; he seemed to have acquired a swaying motion of the body
when he spoke in public, which was peculiar to him, but there was no
affectation in it."

At ten o'clock, p.m., on the day of his trial, the barbarous sentence of
the law--t