ulation of the infant? They have not been exercised; they have been neglected; they have never been put into the hands of the artist, that he might apply them to their proper use; they have been laid aside, spoiled, abused; and, ten to one, they will never be good for any thing!

J. SHERIDAN KNOWLES

4. THE VALUE OF ORATORY.

THE principal means of communicating our ideas are twospeech and writing. The former is the parent of the latter; it is the more important, and its highest efforts are called oratory. If we consider the very early period at which we begin to exercise the faculty of speech, and the frequency with which we exercise it, it must be a subject of surprise that so few excel in oratory. In any enlightened community you will find numbers who are highly skilled in some particular art or science, to the study of which they did not apply themselves till they had almost arrived at the stage of manhood. Yet, with regard to the powers of speech, those powers which the very second year of our existence generally calls into action, the exercise of which goes on at our sports, our studies, our walks, our very meals; and which is never long suspended, except at the hour of refreshing sleep,—with regard to those powers, how few surpass their fellow-creatures of common information and moderate attainments! how very few deserve distinction! how rarely does one attain to eminence!

In common conversation, observe the advantage which the fluent speaker enjoys over the man that hesitates and stumbles in discourse. With half his information, he has twice his importance; he commands the respect of his auditors; he instructs and gratifies them. In the general transactions of business the same superiority attends him. He communicates his views with clearness, precision, and effect; he carries his point by his mere readiness; he concludes his treaty before another man would have well set about it. Does he plead the cause of friendship? -how happy is his friend! Of charity ?-how fortunate is the distressed! Should he enter the legislature of his country, he approves himself the people's bulwark!

J. SHERIDAN KNOWLES.

5. VINDICATION FROM CALUMNY.

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 trammelled 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 the 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, or 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 defence 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.

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 noblest enterprise. Of this I speak with the confidence of intimate knowledge, and with the consolation that appertains to that confidence. Think not, my lord, 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 pretence to impeach the probity which he means to preserve, even in the grave to which tyranny consigns him.

ROBERT EMMET.

6. THE SAME.-PART SECOND.

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! Sell my country's independence to France! And for what? Was it 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 my oppressors? My country was my idol; to it I sacrificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment; and for it I now offer up my life. O God! No, my lord; I acted as an Irishman, determined on delivering my country from the yoke of a foreign and unrelenting tyranny, and from the more galling yoke of a domestic faction, which is its joint partner and perpetrator in the parricide, for the ignominy of existing with an exterior of splendor and of conscious depravity. It was the wish of my heart to extricate my country from this doubly riveted despotism.

I wished to place her independence beyond the reach of any power on earth; I wished to exalt her to that proud station in the world. 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; who 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 task-masters, but 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 be more implacable than the enemy already in the bosom of my country.

ROBERT EMMET.

7. THE SAME.-PART THIRD.

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 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 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, am I to be loaded with calumny, and not suffered to resent or repel it? No-God forbid !

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If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and cares of those who are 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 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.

ROBERT EMMET.

8. DEFENCE OF SMITH O'BRIEN.

(Delivered during the recent rebellion in Ireland.)

MR. SMITH O'BRIEN, my client, now stands at the bar of his country to answer for having meant to subvert the constitution which in heart he adores. His true offence is, that he courted for you what is England's glory, and blessing, and pride. Deeply he may have erred in pursuit of this daring object; will you avenge his misdirected patriotism by a dreadful death?

You may do so; and no earthly inducement will tempt me