persuasions in the most orderly and least sanguinary means of procuring redress—­if those be felonies, I am a felon, but not otherwise.  Had my counsel (for whose honorable exertions I am indebted) prevailed in their motions to have me tried for high treason, rather than under the insurrection law, I should have been, entitled to a full defence, and my actions have been better vindicated; but that was refused, and I must now submit to what has passed.

“To the generous protection of my country I leave a beloved wife, who has been constant and true to me, and whose grief for my fate has already nearly occasioned her death.  I have five living children, who have been my delight.  May they love their country as I have done, and die for it if needful.

“Lastly, a false and ungenerous publication having appeared in a newspaper, stating certain alleged confessions of guilt on my part, and thus striking at my reputation, which is clearer to me than life.  I take this solemn method of contradicting the calumny.  I was applied to by the high-sheriff, and the Rev. William Bristow, sovereign of Belfast, to make a confession of guilt, who used entreaties to that effect; this I peremptorily refused.  If I thought myself guilty, I would freely confess it, but, on the contrary, I glory in my innocence.

“I trust that all my virtuous countrymen will bear me in their kind remembrance, and continue true and faithful to each other as I have been to all of them.  With this last wish of my heart—­nothing doubting of the success of that cause for which I suffer, and hoping for God’s merciful forgiveness of such offences as my frail nature may have at any time betrayed me into—­I die in peace and charity with all mankind.”

Hardly had sentence of death been passed on William Orr, when compunction seemed to seize on those who had aided in securing that result.  The witness Wheatly, who subsequently became insane, and is believed to have died by his own hand, made an affidavit before a magistrate acknowledging that he had sworn falsely against Orr.  Two of the jury made depositions setting forth that they had been induced to join in the verdict of guilty while under the influence of drink; two others swore that they had been terrified into the same course by threats of violence.

These depositions were laid before the viceroy, but Lord Camden, the then Lord Lieutenant, was deaf to all appeals.  Well might Orr exclaim within his dungeon that the government “had laid down a system having for its object murder and devastation.”  The prey was in the toils of the hunters, on whom all appeals of justice and humanity were wasted.

Orr was hung, as we have said, in the town of Carrickfergus on the 14th of October, 1797.  It is related that the inhabitants of the town, to express their sympathy with the patriot about being murdered by law, and to mark their abhorrence of the conduct of the government towards him, quitted the town en masse on the day of his execution.