They
would come to us as strangers, and leave us as friends, after sharing
in our perils and elevating our destiny. These were my objects; not
to receive new taskmasters, but to expel old tyrants. 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 he was interrupted by the court.]
"I have been charged with that importance in the emancipation of my
country, as to be consided the key-stone of the combination of
Irishmen; or, as your lordship expressed it, 'the life and blood of
the conspiracy.' You do me honour over much; 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 splendour of whose
genius and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who
would think themselves disgraced by shaking your blood-stained hand."
[Here he was interrupted.]
"What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to the scaffold,
which that tyranny (of which you are only the intermediary
executioner) has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for all
the blood that has 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 do not fear to approach the Omnipotent
Judge to answer for the conduct of my whole life; and am I to be
appalled and falsified by a mere remnant of mortality here? By you,
too, although if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood
that you have shed in your unhallowed ministry in one great reservoir
your lordship might swim in it.
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