unsullied, I can only say that these parties, actuated by a desire either of their own aggrandisement, or to save their paltry miserable lives, have pandered to the appetite, if I may so speak, of justice, and my life shall pay the forfeit.  Fully convinced and satisfied of the righteousness of my every act in connection with the late revolutionary movement in Ireland, I have nothing to recall—­nothing that I would not do again, nothing for which I should feel the blush of shame mantling my brow; my conduct and career, both here as a private citizen, and in America—­if you like—­as a soldier, are before you; and even in this, my hour of trial, I feel the consciousness of having lived an honest man, and I will die proudly, believing that if I have given my life to give freedom and liberty to the land of my birth, I have done only that which every Irishman and every man whose soul throbs with a feeling of liberty should do.  I, my lords, shall scarcely—­I feel I should not at all—­mention the name of Massey.  I feel I should not pollute my lips with the name of that traitor, whose illegitimacy has been proved here—­a man whose name even is not known, and who, I deny point blank, ever wore the star of a colonel in the Confederate army.  Him I shall let rest.  I shall pass him, wishing him, in the words of the poet:—­

   “’May the grass wither from his feet;
   The woods deny him shelter; earth a home;
   The dust a grave; the sun his light: 
   And heaven its God!’

“Let Massey remember from this day forth that he carries with him, as my able and eloquent counsel (Mr. Dowse) has stated, a serpent that will gnaw his conscience, will carry about him in his breast a living hell from which he can never be separated.  I, my lords, have no desire for the name of a martyr; I seek not the death of a martyr; but if it is the will of the Almighty and Omnipotent God that my devotion for the land of my birth shall be tested on the scaffold, I am willing there to die in defence of the right of men to free government—­the right of an oppressed people to throw off the yoke of thraldom.  I am an Irishman by birth, an American by adoption; by nature a lover of freedom—­an enemy to the power that holds my native land in the bonds of tyranny.  It has so often been admitted that the oppressed have a right to throw off the yoke of oppression, even by English statesmen, that I do not deem it necessary to advert to the fact in a British court of justice.  Ireland’s children are not, never were, and never will be, willing or submissive slaves; and so long as England’s flag covers one inch of Irish soil, just so long will they believe it to be a divine right to conspire, imagine, and devise means to hurl it from power, and to erect in its stead the God-like structure of self-government.  I shall now, my lords, before I go any further, perform one important duty to my learned, talented, and eloquent counsel.  I offer them that which is poor enough, the thanks,