My lord, shall a dying man be denied the legal privilege of exculpating himself, in the eyes of the community, of an undeserved reproach thrown upon him during his trial, by charging him with ambition, and attempting to cast away, for a paltry consideration, the liberties of his country? Why, then, insult me? or, rather, why insult justice, in demanding of me why sentence of death should not be pronounced? I know, my lord, that form prescribes that you should ask the question; the form also presumes the right of answering! This, no doubt, may be dispensed with; and so might the whole ceremony of the trial, since sentence was already pronounced at the Castle before your jury was impaneled. Your lordships are but the priests of the oracle, and I submit to the sacrifice; but I insist on the whole of the forms.t

I am charged with being an emissary of France. An emissary of France! - and for what end? It is alleged that I wished to sell the independence of my country! And for what end? Was this the object of my ambition? and is this the mode by which a tribunal of justice reconciles contradictions? No! I am no emissary. My ambition was to hold a place among the deliverers of my country,-not in power, nor in profit, but in the glory of the achievement. Sell my country's independence to France! And for what? For a change of masters? No; but for ambition! O, my country! was it personal ambition that could influence me? Had it been the soul of my actions, could I not, by my education and fortune, by the rank and consideration of my family, have placed myself among the proudest of your oppressors? My country was my idol.

Connection with France was, indeed, intended; but only as far as mutual interest would sanction or require. Were the French to assume any authority inconsistent with the purest independence, it would be the signal for their destruction. We sought aid of them; and we sought it, as we had assurance we should obtain it, as auxiliaries in war, and allies in peace. Were the French to come as invaders or enemies, uninvited by the wishes of the people, I should oppose them to the utmost of my strength. Yes, my countrymen, I would meet them on the beach, with a sword in one hand and a torch in the other. I would meet them with all the destructive fury of war; and I would animate you to immolate them in their boats, before they had contaminated the soil. If they succeeded in landing, and if we were forced to retire before superior discipline, I would dispute every inch of ground, raze every house, burn every blade of grass before them, and the last intrenchment of liberty should be my grave. What I could not do myself, if I should fall, I would leave in charge to my countrymen to accomplish; because I should feel conscious that life, more than death, is unprofitable, when a foreign nation holds my country in subjection.

But it was not as an enemy that the succors of France were to land. I looked, indeed, for the assistance of France; but I wished to prove to France, and to the world, that Irishmen deserved to be assisted, that they were indignant at slavery, and ready to assert the independence and liberty of their country! I wished to procure for my country the guarantee which Washington procured for America,- to procure an aid which, by its example, would be as important as by its valor,- allies disciplined, gallant, pregnant with science and experience; who would preserve the good and polish the rough points of our character; who would come to us as strangers, and leave us as friends, after sharing our perils and elevating our destiny. These were my objects; not to receive new task-masters, but to expel old tyrants. These were my views, and these only become Irish

It was for these ends I sought aid from France, because France, even as an enemy, could not be more implacable than the enemy already in the bosom of my country.

* Here Lord Norbury exclaimed: "Listen, sir, to the sentence of the law."

Here Mr. Emmet paused, and the court desired him to proceed.

I have been charged with that importance, in the efforts to emancipate my country, as to be considered the keystone of the combination of Irishmen, or, as your lordship expressed it, "the life and blood of the conspiracy." You do me honor overmuch. You have given to the subaltern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this conspiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to your own conceptions of yourself, my lord;- -men, before the splendor of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would think themselves dishonored to be called your friends, who would not disgrace themselves by shaking your blood-stained hand! §

Here he was interrupted by the court.
Here he was interrupted by Lord Norbury.

Emmet, Robert - Continued

What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to the scaffold, which that tyranny, of which you are only the intermediate minister, has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for all the blood that has been and will be shed, in this struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor? Shall you tell me this, and must I be so very a slave as not to repel it? I, who fear not to approach the Omnipotent Judge, to answer for the conduct of my short life, am I to be appalled here, before a mere remnant of mortality?-by you, too, who, if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have caused to be shed, in your unhallowed ministry, in one great reservoir, your lordship might swim in it!*

The

Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor. Let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence, or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression and the miseries of my countrymen. proclamation of the provisional government speaks for my views. No inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation, or treachery, from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I would resist the domestic tyrant. In the dignity of freedom I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and its enemy should enter only by passing over my lifeless corpse. And am I, who lived but for my country, who have subjected myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor, and now to the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and my country her independence, am I to be loaded with calumny, and not suffered to resent it? No! God forbid !+

If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and cares of those who were dear to them in this transitory life, O, ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny upon the conduct of your suffering son, and see if I have, even for a moment, deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism which it was your care to instil into my youthful mind, and for which I am now to offer up my life!

My lords, you seem impatient for the sacrifice. The blood for which you thirst is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim;-it circulates, warmly and unruffled, through the channels which God created for nobler purposes, but which you are bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous that

*Here the judge interfered.

Here Lord Norbury told the prisoner that his principles were treasonable and subversive of government, and his language unbecoming a person in his situation; and that his father, the late Dr. Emmet, was a man who would not have countenanced such sentiments.

they cry to Heaven. Be ye patient! I have but a few words more to say. I am going to my cold and silent grave. My lamp of life is nearly extinguished. My race is run. The grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom! I have but one request to ask, at my departure from this world; it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for, as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth,- then, and not till then,- let my epitaph be written! I have done. (Complete.)

Erskine, Thomas, Baron (England, 17501823.)

Degradation of Religion by Politics - The universal God of nature, the Savior of mankind, the fountain of all light, who came to pluck the world from eternal darkness, expired upon a cross, the scoff of infidel scorn; and his blessed Apostles followed him in the train of martyrs. When he came in the flesh, he might have come like the Mohammedan prophet, as a powerful sovereign, and propagated his religion with an unconquerable sword which even now, after the lapse of ages, is but slowly advancing under the influence of reason, over the face of the earth; but such a process would have been inconsistent with his mission, which was to confound the pride and to establish the universal rights of men; he came, therefore, in that lowly state which is represented in the Gospel, and preached his consolations to the poor.

When the foundation of this religion was discovered to be invulnerable and immortal, we find political power taking the church into partnership; thus began the corruptions both of religious and civil power, and, hand in hand together, what havoc have they not made in the world? Ruling by ignorance and the persecution of truth, this very persecution only hastened the revival of letters and liberty. Nay, you will find that in the exact proportion that knowledge and learning have been beat down and fettered, they have destroyed the governments which bound them. The Court of Star Chamber, the first restriction of the press of England, was erected, previous to all the great changes in the constitution. From that moment no man could legally write without an imprimatur from the state; but truth and freedom found their way with greater force through secret channels, and the unhappy Charles, unwarned by a free press, was brought to an ignominious death. When men can freely communicate their thoughts and their sufferings, real or imaginary, their passions spend themselves in air, like gunpowder scattered upon the surface; but pent up by terrors, they work unseen, burst forth in a moment, and destroy everything in their course. Let reason be op posed to reason, and argument to argument,

Precedents of Madness-Gentlemen, if precedents in bad times are to be followed, why should the lords and commons have investigated these charges, and the crown have put them into this course of judicial trial? since, without such a trial, and even after an acquittal upon one, they might have attainted all the prisoners by act of Parliament; they did so in the case of Lord Strafford. There are precedents, therefore, for all such things; but such precedents as could not, for a moment, survive the times of madness and distraction which gave them birth; and which, as soon as the spurs of the occasion were blunted, were repealed and execrated even by parliaments, which, little as I think of the present, ought not to be compared with it ;-parliaments sitting in the darkness of former times-in the night of freedom-before the principles of government were developed, and before the constitution became fixed. The last of these precedents, and all the proceedings upon it, were ordered to be taken off the file and burned, to the intent that the same might no longer be visible in after ages; an order dictated, no doubt, by a pious tenderness for national honor, and meant as a charitable covering for the crimes of our fathers. But it was a sin against posterity, it was a treason against society; for, instead of commanding them to be burned, they should rather have directed them to be blazoned, in large letters, upon the walls of our courts of justice; that, like the characters deciphered by the Prophet to the Eastern tyrant, they might enlarge and blacken in your sights,—to terrify you from acts of injustice!

"The Age of Reason»-Gentlemen, I have no objection to the most extended and free discussion upon doctrinal points of the Christian religion; and, though the law of England does not permit it, I do not dread the reasonings of deists against the existence of Christianity itself, because, as it was said by its divine author, if it be of God, it will stand. An intellectual book, however erroneous, addressed to the intellectual world upon so profound and complicated a subject, can never work the mischief it is calculated to repress. Such works will only incite the minds of men, enlightened by study, to a closer investigation of a subject well worthy of their deepest and continued contemplation. The powers of the mind are given for human improvement in the progress of human existence. The changes produced by such reciprocations of lights and intelligences are certain in their progression, and make their way imperceptibly by the final and irresistible power of truth.

If Christianity be founded in falsehood, let us become deists in this manner, and I am contented. But this book has no such object and no such capacity; it presents no arguments to the wise and enlightened; on the contrary, it

treats the faith and opinions of the wisest with the most shocking contempt, and stirs up men, without the advantages of learning or sober thinking, to a total disbelief of everything hitherto held sacred; and, consequently, to a rejection of all the laws and ordinances of the state, which stand only upon the assumption of their truth.

Gentlemen, I can not conclude without expressing the deepest regret at all the attacks upon the Christian religion by authors who profess to promote the civil liberties of the world. For under what other auspices than Christianity have the lost and subverted liberties of mankind in former ages been reasserted? By what zeal, but the warm zeal of devout Christians, have English liberties been redeemed and consecrated? Under what other sanctions, even in our own days, have liberty and happiness been spreading to the uttermost corners of the earth? What work of civilization, what commonwealth of greatness, has this bald religion of nature ever established?

We see, on the contrary, those nations that have no other light than that of nature to direct them, sunk in barbarism, or slaves to arbitrary governments; while under the Christian dispensation the great career of the world has been slowly but clearly advancing, lighter at every step, from the encouraging prophecies of the Gospel, and leading, I trust, in the end, to universal and eternal happiness. Each generation of mankind can see but a few revolving links of this mighty and mysterious chain; but by doing our several duties in our allotted stations, we are sure that we are fulfilling the purposes of our existence.

Evarts, William Maxwell (American, 1818-.)

The Wisdom of Second Thought-Idem sentire de republica, to agree in opinion concerning the public interest, is the bond of one party, and diversity from those opinions the bond of the other; and where passions and struggles of force in any form of violence or of impeachment as an engine of power come into play, then freedom has become license, and then party has become faction, and those who do not withhold their hands until the ruin is accomplished will be subject to that judgment that temperance and fortitude and patience were not the adequate qualities for their conduct in the situation in which they were placed. Oh, why not be wise enough to stay the pressure till adverse circumstances shall not weigh down the state? Why not in time remember the political wisdom, — "Beware of desperate steps. The darkest day, Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.

Everett, Edward - Continued

passed their hour of visitation,-how worthily, let the growth and prosperity of our happy land and the security of our firesides attest. Or, if this appeal be too weak to move us, let the eloquent silence of yonder famous heights- let the column which is there rising in simple majesty - recall their venerable forms, as they toiled in the hasty trenches through the dreary watches of that night of expectation, heaving up the sods, where many of them lay in peace and honor before the following sun had set. The turn has come to us. The trial of adversity was theirs; the trial of prosperity is ours. Let us meet it as men who know their duty and prize their blessings. Our position is the most enviable, the most responsible, which men can fill. If this generation does its duty, the cause of constitutional freedom is safe. If we fail — if we fail, not only do we defraud our children of the inheritance which we received from our fathers, but we blast the hopes of the friends of liberty throughout our continent, throughout Europe, throughout the world, to the end of time. (1828.)

The Cloud of Witnesses-One might almost think, without extravagance, that the departed wise and good, of all places and times, are looking down from their happy seats to witness what shall now be done by us that they who lavished their treasures and their blood, of old,-who spake and wrote, who labored, fought, and perished, in the one great cause of Freedom and Truth, are now hanging from their orbs on high, over the last solemn experiment of humanity. As I have wandered over the spots once the scene of their labors, and mused among the prostrate columns of their senate houses and forums, I have seemed almost to hear a voice from the tombs of departed ages, from the sepulchres of the nations which died before the sight. They exhort us, they adjure us, to be faithful to our trust. They implore us, by the long trials of struggling humanity; by the blessed memory of the departed; by the dear faith which has been plighted by pure hands to the holy cause of truth and man; by the awful secrets of the prison house, where the sons of freedom have been immured; by the noble heads which have been brought to the block; by the wrecks of time; by the eloquent ruins of nations, they conjure us not to quench the light which is rising on the world. Greece cries to us by the convulsed lips of her poisoned, dying Demosthenes; and Rome pleads with us in the mute persuasion of her mangled Tully.

Liberty Protected by Law-Ye winds that wafted the Pilgrims to the land of promise, fan, in their children's hearts, the love of freedom! Blood which our fathers shed cry from the ground; echoing arches of this renowned hall, whisper back the voices of other days;

glorious Washington! beloved Lafayette! teach, oh teach us the love of liberty protected by law!

Efficiency the End of Existence-Man is, by nature, an active being. He is made to labor. His whole organization, mental and physical, is that of a hard-working being. Of his mental powers we have no conception but as certain capacities of intellectual action. His corporeal faculties are contrived for the same end, with astonishing variety of adaptation. Who can look only at the muscles of the hand, and doubt that man was made to work? who can be conscious of judgment, memory, and reflection, and doubt that man was made to act? He requires rest, but it is in order to invigorate him for new efforts; to recruit his exhausted powers, and, as if to show him, by the very nature of rest, that it is means, not end, that form of rest which is most essential and most grateful, sleep, is attended with the temporary suspension of the conscious and active powers, an image of death.

The Village School - From the humblest village school, there may go forth a teacher who, like Newton, shall bind his temples with the stars of Orion's belt; with Herschel, light up his cell with the beams of before undiscovered planets; with Franklin, grasp the lightning. Columbus, fortified with a few sound geographical principles, was, on the deck of his crazy caravel, more truly the monarch of Castile and Aragon, than Ferdinand and Isabella, enthroned beneath the golden vaults of the conquered Alhambra. And Robinson, with the simple training of a rural pastor in England, when he knelt on the shore of Delft Haven, and sent his little flock upon their Gospel errantry beyond the world of waters, exercised an influence over the destinies of the civilized world, which will last to the end of time.

Sir, it is a solemn, a tender, and sacred duty, that of education. What, sir, feed a child's body, and let his soul hunger! pamper his limbs, and starve his faculties! Plant the earth, cover a thousand hills with your droves of cattle, pursue the fish to their hiding places in the sea, and spread out your wheat fields across the plain, in order to supply the wants of that body which will soon be as cold and as senseless as the poorest clod, and let the pure spiritual essence within you, with all its glorious capacities for improvement, languish and pine! What! build factories, turn in rivers upon the water wheels, unchain the imprisoned spirits of steam, to weave a garment for the body, and let the soul remain unadorned and naked! What! send out your vessels to the farthest ocean, and make battle with the monsters of the deep, in order to obtain the means of lighting up your dwellings and work shops, and prolonging the hours of labor for the meat that perisheth, and permit that vital spark, which God has kindled, which he has intrusted to our care, to be fanned into a bright and heavenly flame,-permit it, I say, to languish and go out!

Everett, Edward - Continued

What considerate man can enter a school, and not reflect with awe, that it is a seminary where immortal minds are training for eternity? What parent but is, at times, weighed down with the thought, that there must be laid the foundations of a building which will stand, when not merely temple and palace, but the perpetual hills and adamantine rocks on which they rest, have melted away!-that a light may there be kindled, which will shine, not merely when every artificial beam is extinguished, but when the affrighted sun has filed away from the heavens! I can add nothing, sir, to this consideration. I will only say, in conclusion, education,- when we feed that lamp, we perform the highest social duty! If we quench it, I know not where (humanly speaking), for time or for eternity,

"I know not where is that Prome'thean heat, That can its light relume!"

The People Always Conquer-They always must conquer. Armies may be defeated, kings may be overthrown, and new dynasties imposed, by foreign arms, on an ignorant and slavish race, that care not in what language the covenant of their subjections runs, nor in whose name the deed of their barter and sale is made out. But the people never invade; and, when they rise against the invader, are never subdued. If they are driven from the plains, they fly to the mountains. Steep rocks and everlasting hills are their castles; the tangled, pathless hicket their palisado; and nature, God, is their ally! Now he overwhelms the hosts of their enemies beneath his drifting mountains of sand; now he buries them beneath a falling atmosphere of polar snows; he lets loose his tempests on their fleets; he puts a folly into their counsels, a madness into the hearts of their leaders; he never gave, and never will give, a final triumph over a virtuous and gallant people, resolved to be free.

For Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, Though baffled oft, is ever won." Imperishability of Great Examples-To be cold and breathless,-to feel not and speak not, this is not the end of existence to the men who have breathed their spirits into the institutions of their country, who have stamped their characters on the pillars of the age, who have poured their hearts' blood into the channels of the public prosperity. Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred height, is Warren dead? Can you not still see him, not pale and prostrate, the blood of his gallant heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplendent over the field of honor, with the rose of heaven upon his cheek, and the fire of liberty in his eye? Tell me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the shades of Vernon, is Washington, indeed, shut up in that cold and narrow house? That which made these men, and men like these, cannot die. The hand that traced the charter of Independence is, indeed, motionless; the eloquent

lips that sustained it are hushed; but the lofty spirits that conceived, resolved, and maintained it, and which alone, to such men, "make it life to live," these cannot expire:

"These shall resist the empire of decay,

When time is o'er, and worlds have passed away;
Cold in the dust the perished heart may lie,
But that which warmed it once can never die."
Farrar, Frederick William (England, 1831-.)

"The Same Old Tears, Old Crimes, and Oldest Ill»-«Let us auspicate all our proceedings in America," said Edmund Burke, "with the old church cry, Sursum corda!» But it is for America to live up to the spirit of such words, not merely to quote them with proud enthusiasm. We have heard of

New times, new climes, new lands, new men, but still

The same old tears, old crimes, and oldest ill.

It is for America to falsify the cynical foreboding. Let her take her place side by side with England in the very van of freedom and of progress, united by a common language, by common blood, by common measures, by common interests, by a common history, by common hopes; united by the common glory of great men, of which this great temple of silence and reconciliation is the richest shrine. Be it the steadfast purpose of the two peoples who are one people to show all the world not only the magnificent spectacle of human happiness, but the still more magnificent spectacle of two peoples which are one people, loving righteousness and hating iniquity, inflexibly faithful to the principles of eternal justice which are the unchanging laws of God.- (From the funeral oration on the death of General Grant. Preached in Westminster Abbey, 1885.)

Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe (France, 1651-1715.)

The Power of Self-Forgetfulness-Simplicity is an uprightness of soul that has no reference to self; it is different from sincerity, and it is a still higher virtue. We see many people who are sincere, without being simple; they only wish to pass for what they are, and they are unwilling to appear what they are not; they are always thinking of themselves, measuring their words, and recalling their thoughts, and reviewing their actions, from the fear that they have done too much or too little. These persons are sincere, but they are not simple; they are not at ease with others, and others are not at ease with them; they are not free, ingenuous, natural; we prefer people who are less correct, less perfect, and who are less artificial. This is the decision of man, and it is the judgment of God, who would not have us so occupied with ourselves, and thus, as it were, always arranging our features in a mirror.

Field, David Dudley (American, 1805-1894.)

Civil Liberty vs. Martial Usurpation-I could not look into the pages of English law — I could not turn over the leaves of English