the scaffold, or were exiled, are said to have amounted to 50,000 ;the losses upon the side of the crown have been computed at 20,000 lives.' II. pp. 39-44.

We turn gladly, and at once, from this dreadful catastrophe. Never certainly was short-lived tranquillity-or rather perma nent danger so dearly bought. The vengeance of the law followed the havoc of the sword-and here again we meet Mr C. in his strength and his glory. The first trial excited peculiar commiseration. It was that of two brothers of the name of Sheares both members of the Irish bar-both very respectably connected, and in private life of most amiable characters.The Judge, before whom they were tried, had been the intimate friend of their family.-Their counsel and several of their Jury had often met them in the intercourse of private society, The trial lasted till late in the morning.-When the verdict of guilty was at length returned, the unfortunate young men clasped each other in their arms,-there was a dead silence, and the Court was filled with tears.-One brother was married, and when brought up the same day for judgment, attempted to say something, but was choked by his emotions. The other rose, with greater firmness-and, after stating that he was re signed and ready to die, spoke as follows.

But, my lords, I have a favour to request of the court that does not relate to myself. I have a brother, whom I have ever loved dearer than myself; but it is not from any affection for him alone that I am induced to make the request;-he is a man, and therefore, I hope, prepared to die, if he stood as I do though I do not stand unconnected;-but he stands more dearly connected. In short, my lords, to spare your feelings and my own, I do not pray that I should not die; but that the husband, the father, the brother, and the son, all comprised in one person, holding these relations, dearer in life to him than any man I know; for such a man I do not pray a pardon, for that is not in the power of the court; but I pray a respite for such time as the court, in its humanity and discretion, shall think proper. You have heard, my lords, that his private affairs require arrangement. I have a further reason for asking it. If immediately both of us be taken off, an aged and revered mother, a dear sister, and the most affectionate wife that ever lived, and six children, will be left without protection or provision of any kind. When I address myself to your Lordships, it is with the knowledge you will have of all the sons of our aged mother being gone: two perished in the service of the king, one very recently. I only request, that, disposing of me with what swiftness either the public mind or justice requires, a respite may be given to my brother, that the family may acquire strength to bear it all. That is all I wish. I shall remember it to my last breath; and I will offer up my prayers for you to that Being who has endued us all with sensibility to feel. This is I ask.'. 1. pp. 115, 116.

We scarcely know anything more affecting than these simple and disordered sentences. It was not thought possible, however, to accede to the prayer they contained; and both brothers were executed the succeeding day! There seems to have been no doubt of their guilt; yet the whole parole proof against them, for there was some written evidence, was the testimony of one witness, who was proved to have derided the obligation of an oath, and to have dealt largely in treasonable language. An objection was taken to their indictment, on the ground that one of the Grand Jury was a naturalized alien--and that this was - an 'office of trust,' of which such persons are incapable: but the objection was overruled. Mr C.'s speech on this occasion, of which the only report is to be found in the work before us, seems to have been chiefly remarkable for its melancholy pathos, and the religious solemnity of his appeals to the consciences of the Jury. We pass over the rest of these melancholy trials; in which we are far from insinuating, that there was any reprehensible severity on the part of the Governnient. When matters had come that length, they had but one duty before them-and they seem to have discharged it (if we except one or two posthumous attainders) with mercy as well as fairness; for after a certain number of victims had been selected, an arrangement was made with the rest of the state prisoners, under which they were allowed to expatriate themselves for life. It would be improper, however, to leave the subject, without offering our tribute of respect and admiration to the singular courage, fidelity and humanity, with which Mr C. persisted, throughout these agonizing scenes, in doing his duty to the unfortunate prisoners, and watching over the administration of that law, from the spectacle of whose vengeance there were so many temptations to withdraw. This painful and heroic task he undertook-and never blenched from its execution, in spite of the toil and disgust, and the obloquy and personal hazard to which it continually exposed him. In that inflamed state of the public mind, it is easy to understand that the advocate was frequently confounded with the client; and that, besides the murderous vengeance of the profligate informers he had so often to denounce, he had to encounter the passions and prejudices of all those who chose to look on the defender of traitors as their associate. Instead of being cheered therefore, as formerly, by the applauses of his auditors, he was often obliged to submit to their angry interruptions, and was actually menaced more than once, in the open court, by the clashing arms and indignant menaces of the military spectators. He had excessive numbers of soldiers, too, billeted on him, and was in many other ways exposed to loss and vexation; but he

bore it all with the courage of his country, and the dignity due to his profession-and consoled himself for the vulgar calumnies of an infuriated faction, in the friendship and society of such men as Lords Moira, Charlemont and Kilwarden-Grattan, Ponsonby, and Flood.

We

The incorporating union of 1800 is said to have filled Mr C. with incurable despondency as to the fate of his country. have great indulgence for this feeling-but we cannot sympathize in it. The Irish parliament was a nuisance that deserved to be abated-and the British legislature, with all its partialities, and its still more blameable neglects, may be presumed, we think, to be more accessible to reason, to justice, and to shame, than the body which it superseded. Mr C. was not in Parlia ment when that great measure was adopted. But, in the course of that year, he delivered a very able argument in the case of Napper Tandy, of which the only published report is to be found in the volumes before us. In 1802, he made his famous speech in Hevey's case, against Mr Sirr, the town-major of Dublin, which affords a strong picture of the revolting and atrocious barbarities which are necessarily perpetrated when the solemn tribunals are silenced, and inferior agents entrusted with arbitrary power. The speech, in this view of it, is one of the most striking and instructive in the published volume, which we noticed in our 13th volume. During the peace of Amiens, Mr C. made a short excursion to France, and was by no means delighted with what he saw there. In a letter to his son from Paris, in October 1802, he says, "I am glad I have come here. I entertained many ideas of it, which I have entirely given up, or very much indeed altered. Never was there a scene that could furnish more to the weeping or the grinning philosopher; they well might agree that human affairs were a sad joke. I see it every where, and in every thing. The wheel has run a complete round; only changed some spokes and a few "fellows," very little for the better, but the axle certainly has not rusted; nor do I see any likelihood of its rusting. At present all is quiet, except the tongue,-thanks to those in' valuable protectors of peace, the army!!' (II. 206, 207.)

In the year following, the rooted discontent of Ireland broke out in a second insurrection. From want of concert and patience, it assumed the form but of a brief and unpremeditated tumult; but it appeared, on investigation, and is proved by the original plan in Emmet's handwriting, appended to these volumes, that a simultaneous rising had been organized in the counties of Wicklow, Wexford, and Kildare, as well as in remoter districts-and that it was prevented only by the neglect or misun

derstanding of the signals and instructions. As it was, comparatively few lives were lost; but among these was the lamented Lord Kilwarden, the most venerated of all the Judges of his country-the wisest, because the gentlest in her councils. His death formed no part of the plan of the insurgents, and was either an unpremeditated act of savage fury, or of private malignity and revenge.

This wild, wicked, and desperate project, was the work of an individual of distinguished abilities, gentle dispositions, and kindly affections; and nothing can show more strongly the effect that had been produced on the feelings of the nation at large, by the wrongs she had suffered, and the means that had been used to stifle their expression, than that they should have seduced a person of such a character into such a proceeding. This part of the public story is unfortunately but too closely connected with Mr C.'s private history, and forms the most striking and romantic portion of it. The individual to whom we have alluded, was Mr Robert Emmet; a young man of good family and high prospects, who had been a frequent visitor in Mr C.'s family, and had, without his knowledge, formed an attachment to his youngest daughter. He never gave, even to her, the remotest hint of the projects in which he was engaged; and it was only a short time before its failure that he ventured to speak to her of his passion. It was to this attachment, however, that his fate was owing; for he escaped after the miscarriage of the insurrection, and might have got out of the kingdom, had he not lingered near her abode, where he was at last discovered and apprehended. It was then that Mr C. first discovered the correspondence that had passed between him and his daughter; and thought it necessary to wait on the Attorney General with all the papers that he had recovered. His own innocence never was brought into question; but the fate of Emmet was instantly decided-and he suffered the last rigour of the law. There are two very striking letters introduced, both written in the short interval between his condemnation and execution-one to Mr Curran himself, the other to his son. The editor says very feelingly- There was a time when the publication of them would have excited pain; but that time is past. The only persons to whom such a proceeding could have given a pang, the father and the child, are now beyond its reach; and their survivor, who from a sense of duty permits them to 6 see the light, does so under a full persuasion, that all those who, from personal knowledge, or from report, may sometimes recal their memories with sentiments of tenderness or esteem, ' will find nothing in the contents of those documents which VOL. XXXIII. NO. 66.

U

can provoke the intrusion of a harsher feeling.' (II. pp. 230231.) The first is chiefly apologetical; and we can only afford to give a part of it. After confessing that he did wrong in writing to his daughter subsequent to the insurrection, he says,

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Looking upon her as one, whom, if I had lived, I hoped to have had my partner for life, I did hold the removing her anxiety above every other consideration. I would rather have had the affections of your daughter in the back settlements of America, than the first situation this country could afford without them. I know not whether this will be any extenuation of my offence-I know not whether it will be any extenuation of it to know, that if I had that situation in my power at this moment, I would relinquish it to devote my life to her happiness-I know not whether success would have blotted out the recollection of what I have done but I know that a man, with the coldness of death on him, need not be made to feel any other coldness, and that he may be spared any addition to the misery he feels, not for himself, but for those to whom he has left nothing but sorrow. II. pp. 235, 236.

The other was finished just before he was summoned to the scaffold. We shall give the concluding part of it, and the short comment of the editor.

"If there was any one in the world in whose breast my death might 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 affection. I had hoped to be a prop round which your affections might have clung, and which would never have 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 sus. tain 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.'