The events of our own generation--the acts of contemporary patriots--now
claim our attention; but we are reluctant as yet to turn over the page,
and drop the curtain on the scenes with which we have hitherto been
dealing, and which we feel we have inadequately described. We have
spoken of the men whose speeches from the dock are on record, but we
still linger over the history of the events in which they shared, and of
the men who were associated with them in their endeavours. The patriots
whose careers we have glanced at are but a few out of the number of
Irishmen who suffered during the same period, and in the same cause, and
whose actions recommend them to the admiration and esteem of posterity.
Confining ourselves strictly to those whose speeches after conviction
have reached us, the list could not well be extended; but there are many
who acted as brave a part, and whose memories are inseparable from the
history of the period. We should have desired to speak, were the scope
of our labours more extended, of the brave Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the
gallant and the true, who sacrificed his position, his prospects, and
his life, for the good old cause, and whose arrest and death contributed
more largely, perhaps, than any other cause that could be assigned to
the failure of the insurrection of 1798.
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