THE LIFE AND CONVERSATIONS OF ROBERT EMMET, ESQ. (continued 2)

At the instance of the attorney-general, Mr. O’Grady, Mr. Curran accompanied him to the privy council. Upon his first entrance, there was some indication of the hostile spirit which he had originally apprehended. A noble lord, who at that time held the highest judicial situation in Ireland, undertook to examine him upon the transaction which occasioned his attendance. To do this was undoubtedly his duty. He fixed his eye upon Mr. Curran, and was proceeding to cross-examine his countenance, when (as it is well remembered by the spectators of the scene) the swell of indignation, and the glance of stern dignity and contempt which he encountered there, gave his own nerves the shock which he had meditated for another’s, and compelled him to shrink back in his chair, silent and disconcerted at the failure of his rash experiment. With this single exception, Mr. Curran was treated with the utmost delicacy.

A special commission was opened to try Emmet and nineteen other prisoners in Dublin, on the thirty-first of August, 1803, under Lord Norbury, Mr. Finucane, and Barons George and Daly. Mr. Standish O’Grady was the attorney general.

Of these nineteen, one was acquitted, and another reprieved; the rest were convicted and executed on the evidence of various witnesses.

Amongst the unfortunate men convicted were some of the principle associates of Emmet 70in the insurrection. Mr. Russel was the son of an officer of reputation in his majesty’s service, and who, having retired, enjoyed an honourable retreat in the situation of master of the royal hospital for veterans at Kilmainham, near Dublin. He was placed early in the army, and served at Bunker’s Hill, and the subsequent campaigns in North America. After the peace, he either retired on half pay, or his corps was reduced. He was affectionate and tender-hearted, and possessed every feeling and sentiment of the gentleman. After the arrest of Emmet, Russel introduced himself clandestinely into Dublin, with a view to rescue his friend, if possible, under favour of some commotion. About two days after his arrival, it became known that some person was mysteriously secreted in the immediate vicinity of the castle. Information to this effect having been conveyed to Major Sirr, that officer proceeded to the examination of a house in Parliament-street, where he was found, and to whom Mr. Russel, though well armed, surrendered without resistance. It was supposed that he was, in this act, influenced by a religious scruple. He was immediately transmitted to Down Patrick, in the north of Ireland, where he was shortly after brought to trial, and upon the clearest evidence of his treason, convicted.—After his trial, he manifested all that wildness of religious enthusiasm, which had for some time formed the prominent feature of his character. On conviction, he addressed the court at great length, and with remarkable firmness. He declared 71his adherence to the political opinions for which he was about to suffer, and touched, in a tender point, the gentlemen of the county of Down, by whom he was surrounded. These gentlemen, although latterly become more anxious to secure their property than to preserve the circle of their liberties, had been foremost in the outcry for parliamentary reform and political independence. Russel reminded them of this circumstance, and declared that he was doomed to suffer for endeavoring to put into execution the lessons imbibed amongst them.

A man of a different stamp was Dwyer. This man, at the head of a gang of deserters and banditti, had remained in arms from the period of the rebellion of 1798, obstinately rejecting repeatedly proffered mercy, and who dexterously eluding all pursuit, had sustained himself under the protection of the almost inaccessible fastnesses of the Wicklow Mountains. His party did not ostensibly exceed twenty, but he was supposed to possess unbounded influence over the peasants of the district, so that a large body, on any notable undertaking, was within his means of command. Dwyer and his band of outlaws afterwards submitted, on the stipulation that their lives should be spared.

On Mr. Emmet’s trial, the several facts and circumstances already narrated, were fully proved. He called no witnesses, and was found guilty. Previous to the judge’s charge to the jury, Lord Conyngham Plunket, who was then king’s counsel, and conducted the 72prosecution against Mr. Emmet, made a speech of considerable length, and in the severest tone of legal and political asperity, detailed the consequences that would affect all social order, were such opinions as Emmet entertained allowed to have any countenance from the mildness of the laws, or the mistaken lenity, which is often exercised by the authority vested in the sacred person of majesty.

When Mr. Emmet was put to the bar, and called upon by Lord Norbury to offer what he had to say why sentence of death and execution should not be awarded against him according to law, he rose with great firmness and composure, and delivered a speech of remarkable force and ability. His appeal to the memory of his parent was most affecting:—“If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the cares of those who are dear to them in this transitory life, oh! 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 about to offer up my life.”

In remarking on the language of the counsel for the crown, Mr. Emmet said, that “In their early intimacy, he had actually inculcated into his mind those principles for which he was now about to suffer.”

The following is the copy of a letter from Mr. Emmet to Mr. Richard Curran:—

73“My dearest Richard:—I find I have but a few hours to live, but if it was the last moment, and that the power of utterance was leaving me, I would thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generous expressions of affection and forgiveness to me. If there was any one in the world in whose breast my death may be supposed not to stifle every spark of resentment, it might be you. I have deeply injured you—I have injured the happiness of a sister that you love, and who was formed to give happiness to every one about her, instead of having her own mind a prey to affliction. Oh! Richard, I have no excuse to offer, but that I meant the reverse: I intended as much happiness for Sarah as the most ardent love could have given her. I never did tell you how much I idolized her: it was not with a wild or unfounded passion, but it was an attachment increasing every hour, from an admiration of the purity of her mind, and respect for her talents. I did dwell in secret upon the prospect of our union. I did hope that success, while it afforded the opportunity of our union, might be the means of confirming an attachment, which misfortune had called forth. I did not look to honours for myself; praise I would have asked from the lips of no man; but I would have wished to read in the glow of Sarah’s countenance, that her husband was respected.

“My love, Sarah! it was not thus that I thought to have requited your affections. I did hope to be a prop round which your affections might have clung, and which would never 74have been shaken, but a rude blast has snapped it, and they have fallen over a grave.

“This is no time for affliction. I have had public motives to sustain my mind, and I have not suffered it to sink; but there have been moments in my imprisonment when my mind was so sunk by grief on her account, that death would have been a refuge.

“God bless you, my dearest Richard. I am obliged to leave off immediately.

Robert Emmet.”

This letter was written at twelve o’clock on the day of Mr. Emmet’s execution, and the firmness and regularity of the original hand-writing contains a striking and affecting proof of the little influence which the approaching event exerted over his frame. The same enthusiasm which allured him to his destiny, enabled him to support its utmost rigour. He met his fate with unostentatious fortitude; and although few will be found bold enough to justify his projects since they were unsuccessful, yet his youth, his talents, the great respectability of his connections, and the evident delusion of which he was the victim, have excited more general sympathy for his unfortunate end, and more forbearance towards his memory, than is usually extended to the errors or sufferings of political offenders.

What brought forth this wonderful effort of a young gentleman, unaided and unsupported by any rational system of organization, uncountenanced but by the humblest men in society, 75relying on his own great energies, and the thousand circumstances which chance might throw up on the surface of the political ocean? What animated the mind and spirit of Emmet, night after night, and day after day? What? His enemies will say it was ambition, a hope of personal aggrandizement, and a speculation of personal exaltation, a sanguinary purpose to raise himself on the ruins of all that was respected and cherished in society. To such enemies we will reply that, if ever an enthusiast was animated with a pure and unadulterated sentiment of the most disinterested anxiety for the freedom of his native country—if ever there was a human being who was ready to lay down his life for the comfort and happiness of his fellow-creatures—if ever there was a heart that sincerely sympathised with the sufferings of mankind, or that would cheerfully devote itself at the altar, if such a sacrifice could procure the liberty of Ireland—Robert Emmet was that man.

With an intellect of the highest order, eloquence powerful, commanding, and inexhaustible; an integrity which no force could bend; a spirit which no danger or suffering could intimidate; born of parents who were the pride and boast of their country; the brother of those men who in the birth-day of Ireland’s freedom, illuminated the political firmament, and gave their country a hope that her freedom would be immortal; the witness of her fall, and the spectator of her degradation, he gave himself up to the dreams of his own imagination, 76and thought he saw the liberties of his country achieved before he had formed his plan to secure them. With all the customary characteristics of an enthusiast, he seemed to disdain those humble calculations by which all human objects are to be obtained. But Emmet achieved what no other man but himself would have dared to attempt. With his single mind, and single arm, he organized thousands of his countrymen, and besieged the government of the country in their strongest position.

Mr. Emmet was executed on the day following that of his sentence, in Thomas-street, at the head of Bridgefoot Street, opposite Catherine’s church.

Robert Emmet, the lofty-minded patriot—the amiable enthusiast—the warm-hearted friend, and ardent lover is no more! The hand of the executioner extinguished the fire and energy of that soul, which burned for his country’s good; and that tongue, of the purest and sublimest eloquence, is now for ever mute.

He died as he lived, with heroic fearlessness, and decent fortitude. The amiable, though enthusiastic Emmet, however, we hope has not died in vain; our rulers must learn from his history that a people without confidence is a moral Hydra, never to be deprived of the means of doing mischief. The head of one rebellion is no sooner lopped off than another is generated. The Hercules, who is to annihilate the monster, can only be found in those acts of wisdom and justice, which are to reconcile the people to their rulers, by making them freemen.

77The fate of Robert Emmet demanded something more than tears, and unprofitable as these may have been, we have continued to offer them still to his memory. But let our private sorrows pass; history one day will do him justice; we have thrown our mite in the scale in which his reputation yet trembles; and, inadequate as that may be, it is sincere and impartial. All ye who knew him in “his hour of pride,” go and do likewise.

The following is extracted from a letter addressed to Mr. Rufus King from T. A. Emmet, brother to Robert Emmet, on the subject of Mr. King’s interference with the British government, as ambassador from the United States, to prevent the Irish state prisoners of 1798 from emigrating to America:—

“Sir,—In the commencement of our negociation, Lord Castlereagh declared, as a reason for acceding to government’s possessing a negative on our choice, that it had no worse place in view for our emigration than the United States of America. We had made our election to go there, and called upon him to have our agreement carried into execution. In that difficulty, you, sir, afforded very effectual assistance to the faithlessness of the British cabinet. On the 16th of September, Mr. Marsden, then Under Secretary, came to inform us that Mr. King had remonstrated against our being permitted to emigrate to America. This astonished us all, and Dr. M Neven very plainly said that he considered this as a mere trick between Mr. King and the British Government. 78This Mr. Marsden denied, and on being pressed to know what reason Mr. King could have for preventing us, who were avowed republicans, from emigrating to America, he significantly answered, ‘Perhaps Mr. King does not desire to have republicans in America.’ Your interference was then, sir, made the pretext of detaining us for four years in custody, by which very extensive and useful plans of settlement within these states were broken up. The misfortunes which you brought upon the objects of your persecution were incalculable. Almost all of us wasted four of the best years of our lives in prison. As to me, I should have brought along with me my father and his family, including a brother, whose name perhaps even you will not read without emotions of sympathy and respect. Others nearly connected with me would have come partners in my emigration. But all of them have been torn from me. I have been prevented from saving a brother, from receiving the dying blessings of a father, mother, and sister, and from soothing their last agonies by my cares; and this, sir, by your unwarrantable, unprecedented, and unfeeling interference. Your friends, when they accuse me of want of moderation towards you, are wonderfully mistaken. They do not reflect, or know, that I have never spoken of you without suppressing, as I do now, personal feelings that rise up within me, and swell my heart with indignation and resentment. The step you took was unauthorised by your own government. Whether our conduct in Ireland was right or 79wrong, you have no justification for yours. The constitution and laws of this country gave you no power to require of the British government that it should violate its faith, and withdraw from us its consent to the place we had fixed upon for our voluntary emigration; neither the president nor you were warranted to prevent our touching these shores.—These remarks I address, with all becoming respect, to ‘the first man in the country.’ Yet in fact, sir, I do not clearly see in what consists your superiority over myself. It is true you have been a resident minister at the court of St. James’; and, if what I have read in the public prints be true, and if you be apprised of my near relationship and family connexion with the late Sir John Temple, you must acknowledge that your interference as resident minister at the court of St. James’s, against my being permitted to emigrate to America, is a very curious instance of the caprice of fortune—but let that pass. To what extent I ought to yield to you for talents and information, is not for me to decide.—In no respect, however, do I feel your excessive superiority.—My private conduct and character are, I hope, as fair as yours—and even in those matters which I consider as trivial, but upon which aristocratic pride is accustomed to stamp a value, I should not be inclined to shrink from competition. My birth certainly will not humble me by the comparison; my paternal fortune was, probably, much greater than yours; the consideration in which the name I bear in my native country was held, was as great as 80yours is ever likely to be before I had an opportunity of contributing to its celebrity.

“As to the amount of what private fortune I have been able to save from the wreck of calamity it is unknown to you or to your friends; but two thingy I will tell you:—I never was indebted, either in the country from which I came, nor in any other in which I have lived, to any man, further than the necessary credit for the current expenses of a family; and am not so circumstanced that I should tremble “for my subsistence” at the threatened displeasure of your friends. So much for the past and present—now for the future. Circumstances which cannot be controlled, have decided that my name must be embodied into history. From the manner in which even my political adversaries, and some of my contemporary historians, unequivocally hostile to my principles, already speak of me, I have the consolation of reflecting, that when the falsehoods of the day are withered and rotten, I shall be respected and esteemed.—You, sir, will probably be forgotten, when I shall be remembered with honour, or if, peradventure, your name should descend to posterity, perhaps you will be known only as the recorded instrument of part of my persecutions, sufferings, and misfortunes.

Thomas Addis Emmet.”

New-York, April 9, 1807.

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MISS CURRAN.

She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,

And lovers are round her sighing;

But coldly she turns from their gaze and weeps,

For her heart in his grave is lying.

She sings the wild song of her dear native plains,

Every note which he loved awaking;

Ah! little they think who delight in her strains,

How the heart of the minstrel is breaking.

He had liv’d for his love, for his country he died,

They were all that to life had entwined him;

Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,

Nor long will his love stay behind him.

Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest,

When they make her a glorious morrow;

They’ll shine o’er her sleep, like a smile from the west,

From her own loved island of sorrow.

The evening before his death, Miss Curran was admitted into his dungeon to bid him her eternal farewell. He was leaning in a melancholy mood against the window of the prison, and the heavy clanking of his chains smote dismally on her heart. The interview was bitterly affecting, and melted even the callous soul of the jailor. As for Emmet himself, he wept, and spoke little; but as he pressed his beloved in silence to his heart, his countenance betrayed his emotions. In a low voice, half choked by anguish, he besought her not to forget him; he reminded her of their former happiness, of the long past days of their childhood, and concluded by requesting her sometimes to visit the scenes where their infancy was spent, and though the world might repeat 82his name with scorn, to cling to his memory with affection. In parting, she turned round, as if to gaze once more on her widowed love. He caught her eye as she retired—it was but for a moment—and as the door closed on him, it informed her too surely that they had met for the last time on earth, but that they should meet in a better world, where man could not separate them.

She loved him with the disinterested fervour of a woman’s first and early love. When every worldly maxim arrayed itself against him—when blasted in fortune, and disgrace and danger darkened around his name, she loved him the more ardently for his very sufferings. If, then, his fate could awaken the sympathy even of his foes, what must have been the agony of her whose whole soul was occupied by his image? Let those tell who have had the portal of the tomb suddenly closed between them and the being they most loved on earth—who have sat at its threshold, as one shut out in a cold and lonely world from whence all that was most lovely and loving had departed.

To render her widowed situation more desolate, she had incurred her father’s displeasure by her unfortunate attachment, and was an exile from her paternal roof. But could the sympathy and offices of friends reached a spirit so shocked and driven in by horror, she would have experienced no want of consolation, for the Irish are proverbially a people of quick and generous sensibilities.

The most delicate and cherishing attentions 83were paid her by families of wealth and distinction. She was led into society, and they tried by all kinds of occupation and amusement to dissipate her grief, and wean her from the tragical story of her love. But it was all in vain.

There are some strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul—that penetrate to the vital seat of happiness—and blast it, never again to put forth bud or blossom. She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure, but she was as much alone there as in the depths of solitude. She walked about in a sad reverie, apparently unconscious of the world around her. She carried with her an inward woe that mocked at all the blandishments of friendship, and “heeded not the song of the charmer, charm he never so wisely.”

On the occasion of a masquerade at the Rotunda, her friends brought her to it. There can be no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking and painful than to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a spectre, lonely and joyless, where all around is gay—to see it dressed out in the trappings of mirth, and looking so wan and wo-begone, as if it had tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into a momentary forgetfulness of sorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an orchestra, and looking about for some time with a vacant air, that shewed insensibility to the garish scene, she began, with the capriciousness of a sickly 84heart, to warble a little plaintive air. She had an exquisite voice but on this occasion it was so simple, so touching, it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness, that she drew a crowd, mute and silent around her, and melted every one into tears.

The story of one so true and tender could not but excite great interest in a country remark for enthusiasm. It completely won the heart of a brave officer who paid his addresses to her, and thought that one so true to the dead could not but prove affectionate to the living. She declined his attentions, for her thoughts were irrevocably engrossed by the memory of her former lover.—He, however, persisted in his suit. He solicited not her tenderness, but her esteem. He was assisted by her conviction of his worth, and her sense of her own destitute and dependant situation, for she was existing on the kindness of friends. In a word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with the solemn assurance that her heart was unalterably another’s.

He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change of scene might wear out the remembrance of early woes. She was an amiable and exemplary wife, and made an effort to be a happy one; but nothing could cure the silent and devouring melancholy that had entered into her very soul. She wasted away in a slow but hopeless decline, and at length sunk into the grave, the victim of a broken heart.

85Her sorrows are numbered—no longer she weeps,

Every pang she endured is requited;

With endless delight, and in silence she sleeps,

For in death with her love she’s united.

Like Sidney he died, but his mem’ry shall live

In the bosoms of those who deplored him;

And Pity her purest of dew-drops shall give

To the sorrows of those who adored him.

For he loved—was beloved—but alas! in his bloom,

The ordeal of fate here sore tried him;

And his spirit took flight from this world of gloom,

To that glory which here was denied him.

From regions of bliss—the high Heavens above,

Where sorrows can never invade him;

He saw her distress, and he beckoned his love

To ascend, and with joy she obeyed him.

And she who is joined to the spirit she mourned,

Now in bliss, ’tis in vain to deplore her;

For her memory shall live in their bosoms inurned,

Who vowed even in death to adore her.

Whether hero, or lover, or else matters not,

“Other times—other men shall divine him;”

Let him rest with his love, by the world forgot,

We have hearts large enough to enshrine him.

86

MY EMMET’S NO MORE.

Despair in her wild eye, a daughter of Erin,

Appeared on the cliff of a bleak rocky shore,

Loose in the winds flowed her dark streaming ringlets

And heedless she gazed on the dread surge’s roar.

Loud rang her harp in wild tones of despairing,

The time passed away with the present compairing,

And in soul-thrilling strains deeper sorrow declaring,

She sang Erin’s woes, and her Emmet’s no more!

“Oh, Erin! my country, your glory’s departed,

For tyrants and traitors have stabbed thy heart’s core,

Thy daughters have laved in the streams of affliction,

Thy patriots have fled, or are stretched in their gore.

Ruthless ruffians now prowl through thy hamlets forsaken

From pale hungry orphans their last morsels have taken;

The screams of thy females no pity awaken;

Alas! my poor country, your Emmet’s no more!

“Brave was his spirit, yet mild as the Brahmin,

His heart bled in anguish at the wrongs of the poor;

To relieve their hard sufferings he braved every danger,

The vengeance of tyrants undauntedly bore.

E’en before him the proud titled villains in power,

Were seen, though in ermine, in terror to cower,

But, alas! he is gone—he has fallen a young flower,

They have murdered my Emmet—my Emmet’s no more!”

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