d
nearly in the same situation in which I now stand before you, are
condemned to be shot. I ask that the court shall adjudge me the death
of a soldier, and let me be shot by a platoon of grenadiers. I
request this indulgence rather in consideration of the uniform I
wear--the uniform of a Chef de Brigade in the French army--than from
any personal regard to myself. In order to evince my claim to this
favour, I beg that the court may take the trouble to peruse my
commission and letters of service in the French army. It will appear
from these papers that I have not received them as a mask to cover
me, but that I have been long and _bona fide_ an officer in the
French service."

JUDGE ADVOCATE--"You must feel that the papers you allude to will
serve as undeniable proof against you."

TONE--"Oh, I know they will. I have already admitted the facts, and
I now admit the papers as full proof of conviction."

[The papers were then examined; they consisted of a brevet of Chef de
Brigade from the Directory, signed by the Minister of War, of a
letter of service granting to him the rank of Adjutant-General, and
of a passport.]

General LOFTUS--"In these papers you are designated as serving in the
army of England."

TONE--"I did serve in that army, when it was commanded by Buonaparte,
by Dessaix, and by Kilmaine, who is, as I am, an Irishman; but I have
also served elsewhere."

The Court requested if he had anything further to observe.

He said that nothing more occurred to him, except that the sooner his
Excellency's approbation of the sentence was obtained the better.

This is Tone's speech, as reported in the public prints at that time,
but the recently-published "Correspondence" of Lord Cornwallis--Lord
Lieutenant in those days--supplies a portion of the address which was
never before published, the Court having forbade the reading of it at
the trial. The passage contains a noble outburst of gratitude towards
the Catholics of Ireland. Tone himself, as every reader is aware, was a
Protestant, and there can have been no reason for its suppression except
the consideration that it was calculated to still more endear the
prisoner to the hearts of his countrymen. We now reprint it, and thus
place it for the first time before the people for whom it was written:--

"I have laboured to create a people in Ireland by raising three
millions of my