“SIR: Had I been permitted to proceed with my vindication, it was my intention not only to have acknowledged the delicacy with which (I feel with gratitude) I have been personally treated, but also to have done the most public justice to the mildness of the present Administration in this country; and at the same time to have acquitted them, as far as rested with me, of any charge of remissness in not having previously detected a conspiracy, which, from its closeness, I know it was impossible to have done. I confess that I should have preferred this mode if it had been permitted, as it would thereby have enabled me to clear myself from an imputation under which I might in consequence lie, and to have stated why such an Administration did not prevent, but (under the peculiar situation of this country) perhaps rather accelerated my determination to make some effort for the overthrow of a Government of which I do not think equally highly. However, as I have been deprived of that opportunity, I think it right now to make an acknowledgment which justice requires from me as a man, and which I do not feel to be in the least derogatory from my decided principles as an Irishman.—I have the honour to be, sir, with the greatest respect, your most obedient humble servant, “ROBT. EMMET.” (Hard. MS. 35,742, f. 196.) The Lord Lieutenant makes a comment on this, in that letter to his brother, the Home Secretary, from which much has already been cited:— “I enclose copies of two letters which he wrote this morning [September 20, 1803]. One of the acts of kindness to which he particularly refers, in his letter to Mr. Wickham, was his being removed from the cell at Newgate, in which he had been placed after the sentence, to his former apartment at Kilmainham, as had been originally intended. He had alluded to this in his conversation with the clergymen, and admitted that the general conduct of those who administered the Government was likely to conciliate the people, though he did not approve the form of the Government and the British connection, both of which he had been desirous to overthrow.” In regard to this forwarded letter, the Home Secretary utters his congratulatory mind, and gives his opinion of our hero:—