Speeches from the Dock; Or, Protests of Irish Patriotism. Part I: Speeches delivered after conviction by Theobald Wolfe Tone, William Orr, the brothers Sheares, Robert Emmet, John Martin, William Smith O'Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, Terence Bellew McManus, John Mitchel, Thomas C. Luby, John O'Leary, Charles J. Kickham, Colonel Thomas F. Burke, and Captain Mackay
History
Speeches from the Dock; Or, Protests of Irish Patriotism. Part I: Speeches delivered after conviction by Theobald Wolfe Tone, William Orr, the brothers Sheares, Robert Emmet, John Martin, William Smith O'Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, Terence Bellew McManus, John Mitchel, Thomas C. Luby, John O'Leary, Charles J. Kickham, Colonel Thomas F. Burke, and Captain Mackay
Ireland -- Biography; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 19th century; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 20th century
There are others of the patriot leaders who died in exile, far away from
the land for which they suffered, and whose graves were dug on alien
shores by the heedless hands of the stranger. This was the fate of Addis
Emmet, of Neilson, and of M'Nevin. In Ireland they were foremost and
most trusted amongst the gifted and brilliant throng that directed the
labours and shaped the purposes of the United Irishmen. They survived
the reign of terror that swallowed up the majority of their compatriots,
and, when milder councils began to prevail, they were permitted to go
forth from the dungeon which confined them into banishment. The vision
of Irish freedom was not permitted to dawn upon them in life; from
beyond the sandy slopes washed by the Western Atlantic they watched the
fortunes of the old land with hopeless but enduring love. Their talents,
their virtues, and their patriotism were not unappreciated by the people
amongst whom they spent their closing years of life. In the busiest
thoroughfare of the greatest city of America there towers over the heads
of the by-passers the monument of marble which grateful hands have
raised to the memory of Addis Emmet. In the centre of Western
civilization, the home of republican liberty, the stranger reads in
glowing words, of the virtues and the fame of the brother of Robert
Emmet, sculptured on the noble pillar erected in Broadway, New York, to
his memory. Nor was he the only one of his party to whom such an honour
was accorded. A stone-throw from the spot where the Emmet monument
stands, a memorial not less commanding in its proportions and
appearance, was erected to William James M'Nevin; and the American
citizen, as he passes through the spacious streets of that city which
the genius of liberty has rendered prosperous and great, gazes proudly
on those stately monuments, which tell him that the devotion to freedom
which England punished and proscribed found in his own land the
recognition which it merited from the gallant and the free.
[Footnote: The inscriptions on the Emmet monument are in three
languages--Irish, Latin, and English. The Irish inscription consists of
the following lines:--
Do mhiannaich se ardmath
Cum tir a breith
Do thug se clu a's fuair se moladh
An deig a bais.
The following is the English inscription:
_In Memory of_
THOMAS ADDIS EMMET,
Who exemplified in his conduct,
And adorned by his integrity.
The policy and principles of the
UNITED IRISHMEN--
"To forward a brotherhood of affection,
A community of rights, an identity of interests, and a union of power
Among Irishmen of every religious persuasion,
As the only means of Ireland's chief good,
An impartial and adequate representation
IN AN IRISH PARLIAMENT."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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