Tone—­“Oh, I know they will.  I have already admitted the facts, and
   I now admit the papers as full proof of conviction.”

[The papers were then examined; they consisted of a brevet of Chef de Brigade from the Directory, signed by the Minister of War, of a letter of service granting to him the rank of Adjutant-General, and of a passport.]

   General Loftus—­“In these papers you are designated as serving in the
   army of England.”

   Tone—­“I did serve in that army, when it was commanded by Buonaparte,
   by Dessaix, and by Kilmaine, who is, as I am, an Irishman; but I have
   also served elsewhere.”

   The Court requested if he had anything further to observe.

   He said that nothing more occurred to him, except that the sooner his
   Excellency’s approbation of the sentence was obtained the better.

This is Tone’s speech, as reported in the public prints at that time, but the recently-published “Correspondence” of Lord Cornwallis—­Lord Lieutenant in those days—­supplies a portion of the address which was never before published, the Court having forbade the reading of it at the trial.  The passage contains a noble outburst of gratitude towards the Catholics of Ireland.  Tone himself, as every reader is aware, was a Protestant, and there can have been no reason for its suppression except the consideration that it was calculated to still more endear the prisoner to the hearts of his countrymen.  We now reprint it, and thus place it for the first time before the people for whom it was written:—­

“I have laboured to create a people in Ireland by raising three millions of my countrymen to the rank of citizens.  I have laboured to abolish the infernal spirit of religious persecution, by uniting the Catholics and Dissenters.  To the former I owe more than ever can be repaid.  The services I was so fortunate as to render them they rewarded munificently; but they did more:  when the public cry was raised against me—­when the friends of my youth swarmed off and left me alone—­the Catholics did not desert me; they had the virtue even to sacrifice their own interests to a rigid principle of honour; they refused, though strongly urged, to disgrace a man who, whatever his conduct towards the government might have been, had faithfully and conscientiously discharged his duty towards them; and in so doing, though it was in my own case, I will say they showed an instance of public, virtue of which I know not whether there exists another example.”

The sad sequel of those proceedings is soon told.  The request of the prisoner to receive a military execution was refused by the Viceroy, Lord Cornwallis, and Tone was sentenced to die “the death of a traitor” within forty-eight hours from the time of his conviction.  But he—­influenced, it must be confessed, by a totally mistaken feeling of pride, and yielding to a weakness which every Christian