claim to death at your hands, and I expect it.
When innocence walks to the scaffold at the command of error and
perversity, every step she takes is an advance toward glory. May
I be the last victim sacrificed to the furious spirit of party. I
shall leave with joy this unfortunate earth, which swallows up
the friends of virtue and drinks the blood of the just.

"Truth! friendship! my country! sacred objects, sentiments dear
to my heart, accept my last sacrifice. My life was devoted to
you, and you will render my death easy and glorious.

"Just Heaven! enlighten this unfortunate people for whom I
desired liberty. Liberty! it is for noble minds, who despise
death, and who know how, upon occasion, to give it to themselves.
It is not for weak beings, who enter into a composition with
guilt, and cover selfishness and cowardice with the name of
prudence. It is not for corrupt wretches, who rise from the bed
of debauchery, or from the mire of indigence, to feast their eyes
upon the blood that streams from the scaffold. It is the portion
of a people who delight in humanity, practice justice, despise
their flatterers, and respect the truth. While you are not such a
people, O my fellow-citizens! you will talk in vain of liberty.
Instead of liberty you will have licentiousness, to which you
will all fall victims in your turn. You will ask for bread; dead
bodies will be given you, and you at last will bow down your own
necks to the yoke.

"I have neither concealed my sentiments nor my opinions. I know
that a Roman lady was sent to the scaffold for lamenting the
death of her son. I know that, in times of delusion and party
rage, he who dares avow himself the friend of the condemned or
of the proscribed exposes himself to their fate. But I have no
fear of death. I never feared any thing but guilt, and I will not
purchase life at the expense of a base subterfuge. Woe to the
times! woe to the people among whom doing homage to disregarded
truth can be attended with danger; and happy is he who, in such
circumstances, is bold enough to brave it.

"It is now your part to see whether it answer your purpose to
condemn me without proof upon mere matter of opinion, and without
the support or justification of any law."

Having concluded this magnanimous defense,