“Let no man write my epitaph” – Robert Emmet’s speach on eve of execution 1803
Posted by Jim on September 21, 2013
Robert Emmet, hero of the 1803 rising, was executed 210 years ago today.
The following is the speech he made on the eve of his execution.
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My Lords:
What have I to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me
according to law? I have nothing to say that can alter your
predetermination, nor that it will become me to say with any view to the
mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and I must
abide by. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, and
which you have labored (as was necessarily your office in the present
circumstances of this oppressed country) to destroy. I have much to say
why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation
and calumny which has been heaped upon it. I do not imagine that,
seated where you are, your minds can be so free from impurity as to
receive the least impression from what I am going to utter–I have no
hopes that I can anchor my character in the breast of a court
constituted and trammeled as this is–I only wish, and it is the utmost
I expect, that your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories
untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more
hospitable harbor to shelter it from the storm by which it is at present
buffeted.
Was I only to suffer death after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal,
I should bow in silence and meet the fate that awaits me without a
murmur; but the sentence of law which delivers my body to the
executioner will, through the ministry of that law, labor in its own
vindication to consign my character to obloquy–for there must be guilt
somewhere: whether in the sentence of the court in the catastrophe,
posterity must determine. A man in my situation, my lords, has not only
to encounter the difficulties of fortune. and the force of power over
minds which it has corrupted or subjugated. but the difficulties of
established prejudice: the man dies, but his memory lives. That mine may
not perish, that it may live in the respect of my countrymen, I seize
upon this opportunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges
alleged against me. When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly
port; when my shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes
who have shed their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in defense
of their country and of virtue. this is my hope: I wish that my memory
and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with
complacency on the destruction of that perfidious government which
upholds its domination by blasphemy of the Most High-which displays its
power over man as over the beasts of the forest-which sets man upon his
brother, and lifts his hand in the name of God against the throat of his
fellow who believes or doubts a little more or a little less than the
government standard–a government which is steeled to barbarity by the
cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which it has made.
[Interruption by the court.]
I appeal to the immaculate God–I swear by the throne of heaven, before
which I must shortly appear–by the blood of the murdered patriots who
have gone before me that my conduct has been through all this peril and
all my purposes governed only by the convictions which I have uttered,
and by no other view than that of their cure, and the emancipation of my
country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long and
too patiently travailed; and that I confidently and assuredly hope that,
wild and chimerical as it may appear, there is still union and strength
in Ireland to accomplish this noble enterprise. of this I speak with the
confidence of intimate knowledge, and with the consolation that
appertains to that confidence. Think not, my lords, I say this for the
petty gratification of giving you a transitory uneasiness; a man who
never yet raised his voice to assert a lie will not hazard his character
with posterity by asserting a falsehood on a subject so important to his
country, and on an occasion like this. Yes. my lords. a man who does not
wish to have his epitaph written until his country is liberated will not
leave a weapon in the power of envy, nor a pretense to impeach the
probity which he means to preserve even in the grave to which tyranny
consigns him.
[Interruption by the court.]
Again I say, that what I have spoken was not intended for your lordship,
whose situation I commiserate rather than envy-my expressions were for
my countrymen; if there is a true Irishman present. let my last words
cheer him in the hour of his affliction.
[Interruption by the court.]
I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge. when a prisoner
has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of the law; I have also
understood that judges sometimes think it their duty to hear with
patience and to speak with humanity. to exhort the victim of the laws.
and to offer with tender benignity his opinions of the motives by which
he was actuated in the crime, of which he had been adjudged guilty: that
a judge has thought it his duty so to have done. I have no doubt–but
where is the boasted freedom of your institutions. where is the vaunted
impartiality, clemency. and mildness of your courts of justice, if an
unfortunate prisoner, whom your policy, and not pure justice. is about
to deliver into the hands of the executioner. is not suffered to explain
his motives sincerely and truly. and to vindicate the principles by
which he was actuated?
My lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice, to bow a
man’s mind by humiliation to the purposed ignominy of the scaffold; but
worse to me than the purposed shame, or the scaffold’s terrors, would be
the shame of such unfounded imputations as have been laid against me in
this court: you, my lord [Lord Norbury], are a judge. I am the supposed
culprit; I am a man, you are a man also; by a revolution of power, we
might change places, though we never could change characters; if I stand
at the bar of this court and dare not vindicate my character, what a
farce is your justice? If I stand at this bar and dare not vindicate my
character. flow dare you calumniate it? Does the sentence of death which
your unhallowed policy inflicts on my body also condemn my tongue to
silence and my reputation to reproach? Your executioner may abridge the
period of my existence. but while I exist I shall not forbear to
vindicate my character and motives from your aspersions: and as a man to
whom fame is dearer than life, I will make the last use of that life in
doing justice to that reputation which is to live after me, and which is
the only legacy I can leave to those I honor and love, and for whom I am
proud to perish. As men, my lord, we must appear at the great day at one
common tribunal. and it will then remain for the searcher of all hearts
to show a collective universe who was engaged in the most virtuous
actions. or actuated by the purest motives-my country’s oppressors or–
[Interruption by the court.]
My lord, will 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 did your lordship 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 a right of answering. This no doubt may be dispensed
with–and so might the whole ceremony of 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; but I insist
on the whole of the forms.
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; and 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!…
Connection with Prance was indeed intended, but only as far as mutual
interest would sanction or require. Were they to assume any authority
inconsistent with the purest independence. it would be the signal for
their destruction: we sought aid, and we sought it, as we had assurances
we should obtain it–as auxiliaries in war and allies in peace…
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 its valor, disciplined. gallant, pregnant with science
and experience; which would perceive the good and polish the rough
points of our character. 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 hilt to expel old
tyrants: these were my views. and these only became Irishmen. It was for
these ends I sought aid from France; because France, even as an enemy.
could not he more implacable than the enemy already in the bosom of my
country.
[Interruption by the court.]
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
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 friend–who would not disgrace themselves
by shaking your bloodstained hand–
[Interruption by the court]
What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to that 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. who, 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.
[Interruption by the court.]
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 or the miseries of
my countrymen. The proclamation of the provisional government speaks for
our views; no inference can he 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 foreign and domestic oppressor: 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. Am
I, who lived but for my country, and who have subjected myself to the
dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor, and the bondage of the
grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and my country her
independence, and am I to be loaded with calumny and not suffered to
resent or repel it–no, God forbid!
If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and
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 instill into my youthful mind, and for which I am
now to offer up my life!
My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice-the blood which you seek
is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim;
it circulates warmly and unruffled, through the channels which God
created for noble purposes. but which you are bent to destroy. for
purposes so grievous. that they cry to heaven. Be yet 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.