“The Lord Lieutenant particularly requests that Miss Curran’s name may not be mentioned. It is difficult that it should be long concealed, but it is desirable that it should not be first mentioned by any member of Government in either country. “The Attorney-General, who has had the kindness to go himself to Mr. Curran’s house at Rathfarnham, gives the most melancholy and affecting account of the state in which he left the whole family.” * * * * * Curran had been engaged by Emmet as his Counsel, but he immediately threw up his brief. He had never liked the Emmets; but now when Robert’s action had brought danger to his own family, and obstacles to his own advancement, his feeling towards him—and towards his own daughter—became a hatred, with elements of madness in it. Of his treatment of the latter we shall speak later. To the curt letter in which Curran announced to the prisoner his refusal to act as his Counsel, Robert replied as follows:— “I did not expect you to be my counsel: I nominated you because not to have done so might have appeared remarkable. Had Mr. ——[100] been in town I did not even wish to have seen you, but as he was not I wrote to you to come to me at once. I know that I have done you very severe injury, much greater than I can atone for with my life. That atonement I did offer to make before the Privy Council, by pleading guilty if those documents were suppressed. I offered more. I offered if I was permitted to consult some persons, and if they would consent to an accommodation for saving the lives of others, that I would only require for my part of it the suppression of those documents, and that I would abide the event of my own trial. This was also rejected, and nothing but individual information (with the exception of names) would be taken. My intention was not to leave the suppression of these documents to possibility, but to render it unnecessary for anyone to plead for me, by pleading guilty to the charge myself. Footnote 100: Madden believes that the name indicated by the blank was that of his brother-in-law, Robert Holmes. But it seems from other references more likely to have been Councillor Burton—Curran’s clerk.