ch you have laboured to destroy.
I have much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load
of false accusation and calumny which has been cast upon it, I do not
imagine that, seated where you are, your mind can be so free from
prejudice 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 trammelled as this is. I only wish, and
that is the utmost that 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 harbour to shelter it
from the storms by which it is buffetted. 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 the law which delivers my body to the executioner will,
through the ministry of the law, labour in its own vindication, to
consign my character to obloquy; for there must be guilt somewhere,
whether in the sentence of the court, or in the catastrophe, time
must determine. A man in my situation 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
the defence 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 it has made."