countrymen to the rank of citizens. I have laboured to
abolish the infernal spirit of religious persecution, by uniting the
Catholics and Dissenters. To the former I owe more than ever can be
repaid. The services I was so fortunate as to render them they
rewarded munificently; but they did more: when the public cry was
raised against me--when the friends of my youth swarmed off and left
me alone--the Catholics did not desert me; they had the virtue even
to sacrifice their own interests to a rigid principle of honour; they
refused, though strongly urged, to disgrace a man who, whatever his
conduct towards the government might have been, had faithfully and
conscientiously discharged his duty towards them; and in so doing,
though it was in my own case, I will say they showed an instance of
public, virtue of which I know not whether there exists another
example."

The sad sequel of those proceedings is soon told. The request of the
prisoner to receive a military execution was refused by the Viceroy,
Lord Cornwallis, and Tone was sentenced to die "the death of a traitor"
within forty-eight hours from the time of his conviction. But
he--influenced, it must be confessed, by a totally mistaken feeling of
pride, and yielding to a weakness which every Christian heart should be
able to conquer--resolved that, rather than allow his enemies to have
the satisfaction of dangling his body from a gibbet, he would become his
own executioner. On the night of the 11th of November he contrived,
while lying unobserved in his cell, to open a vein in his neck with a
penknife. No intelligence of this fact had reached the public when, on
the morning of the 12th, the intrepid and eloquent advocate, John
Philpot Curran, made a motion in the Court of King's Bench for a writ of
_Habeas Corpus_, to withdraw the prisoner from the custody of the
military authorities, and transfer him to the charge of the civil power.
The motion was granted immediately, Mr. Curran pleading that, if delay
were made, the prisoner might be executed before the order of the Court
could be presented. A messenger was at once despatched from the court to
the barrack with the writ. He returned to say that the officers in
charge of the prisoner would obey only their military superiors. The
Chief Justice issued his commands peremptorily:--"Mr. Sheriff, take the
body of Tone into custody--take the Provost Marshal and Major Sandys
into custody,