which you, my lords, are about to pronounce,
will be remembered only as the severe and solemn attestation of my
rectitude and truth. Whatever be the language in which that sentence
be spoken, I know that my fate will meet with sympathy, and that my
memory will be honoured. In speaking thus, accuse me not, my lords,
of an indecorus presumption in the efforts I have made in a just and
noble cause. I ascribe no main importance, nor do I claim for those
efforts any high reward. But it so happens, and it will ever happen
so, that they who have lived to serve their country--no matter how
weak their efforts may have been--are sure to receive the thanks and
blessings of its people. With my countrymen I leave my memory, my
sentiments, my acts, proudly feeling that they require no vindication
from me this day. A jury of my countrymen, it is true, have found me
guilty of the crime of which I stood indicted. For this I entertain
not the slightest feeling of resentment towards them. Influenced as
they must have been by the charge of the Lord Chief Justice, they
could perhaps have found no other verdict. What of that charge? Any
strong observations on it I feel sincerely would ill-befit the
solemnity of this scene; but I would earnestly beseech of you, my
lord--you who preside on that bench--when the passions and the
prejudices of this hour have passed away, to appeal to your own
conscience, and ask of it, was your charge what it ought to have
been, impartial and indifferent between the subject and the crown? My
lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and perhaps it
may seal my fate; but I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may
cost--I am here to regret nothing I have ever done, to regret nothing
I have ever said--I am here to crave with no lying lip the life I
consecrate to the liberty of my country. Far from it. Even
here--here, where the thief, the libertine, the murderer, have left
their foot-prints in the dust--here, on this spot, where the shadows
of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an
unanointed soil open to receive me--even here, encircled by these
terrors, that hope which first beckoned me to the perilous sea on
which I have been wrecked, still consoles, animates, and enraptures
me. No; I do not despair of my poor old country--her peace, her
liberty, her glory. For that country I c