“But it was not as an enemy that the succours of France were to land. I looked, indeed, for the assistance of France; but I wished to prove to France and to the world, that Irishmen deserved to be assisted; that they were indignant at slavery, and ready to assert the independence and liberty of their country. “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 valour—disciplined, gallant, pregnant with science and experience; who would preserve the good, and polish the rough points of our character; they would come to us as strangers and leave us as friends, after sharing our perils and elevating our destiny. These were my objects—not to receive new taskmakers, 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. [_Here he was interrupted by the Court._] “I have been charged with that importance in the efforts to emancipate my country, as to be considered the keystone of the combination of Irishmen, or as your Lordship expressed it, “the life and blood of the conspiracy.” You do me honour over much; you have given to the subaltern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this conspiracy, who are not only superior to me, but even to your own conceptions of yourself my Lord, before the splendour of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would think themselves dishonoured to be called your friend, and who would not disgrace themselves by shaking your blood-stained hand. [_Here he was again interrupted._] “What, my Lord! shall you tell me, on the passage to that scaffold, which that tyranny (of which you are only the intermediary executioner) has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for all the blood that has and will be shed in this struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor—shall you tell me this, and shall I be so very a slave as not to repel it? “I do not fear to approach the Omnipotent Judge, to answer for the conduct of my whole life, and am I to be appalled and falsified by a mere remnant of mortality here! By you, too, who, if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have caused to be shed, in your unhallowed ministry, into one great reservoir, your Lordship might swim in it. [_Here the Judge interfered._]