My Lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to bow a man’s mind by humiliation to the proposed ignominy of the scaffold—but worse to me than the proposed shame, or the scaffold’s terrors, would be the shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have been laid against me in this court. You, my Lord, 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, how dare you calumniate it? Does the sentence of death, which your unhallowed policy inflicts upon my body, also condemn my tongue to silence, and my reputation to reproach? Your executioner may abridge the period of my existence, but whilst I exist I shall not forbear to vindicate my character and my 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 honour and love, and for whom I am proud to perish. “As men, my Lords, we must appear on 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 motive—my country’s oppressors, or—— [_Here he was again interrupted, and told to listen to the sentence of the law._] “My Lords, 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 the trial, by charging him with ambition, and attempting to cast away, for a paltry consideration, the liberties of his country? Why did your Lordships insult me? or rather, why insult justice, in demanding of me why sentence of death should not be pronounced against me? I know, my Lord, that form prescribes that you should ask the question—the form also implies the right of answering. This, no doubt, may be dispensed with, and so might the whole ceremony of the trial, since sentence was already pronounced at the Castle, before your jury was empanelled. Your Lordships are but the priests of the Oracle, and I submit—but I insist on the whole of the forms. [_Here Mr. Emmet paused, and the Court desired him to proceed._]