track, but he was ultimately arrested and tried by court-martial in Belfast, on the 17th July, 1798.  On the evening of the same day he was executed.  We have it on the best authority that he bore his fate with calmness, resolution, and resignation.  It is not his fault that a “Speech from the Dock” under his name is not amongst our present collection.  He had actually prepared one, but his brutal judges would not listen to the patriot’s exculpation.  He was hung, amidst the sobs and tears of the populace, in front of the Old Market place of Belfast, and his remains were interred in the graveyard now covered by St. George’s Protestant church.

Later still in the same year two gallant young officers of Irish blood, shared the fate of Russell and M’Cracken.  They sailed with Humbert from Rochelle; they fought at Castlebar and Ballinamuck; and when the swords of their French allies were sheathed, they passed into the power of their foes.  Matthew Tone was one of them; the other was Bartholomew Teeling.  The latter filled the rank of Etat-major in the French army; and a letter from his commanding officer, General Humbert, was read at his trial, in which the highest praise was given to the young officer for the humane exertions which he made throughout his last brief campaign in the interest of mercy.  “His hand,” he said, “was ever raised to stay the useless effusion of blood, and his protection was afforded to the prostrate and defenceless.”  But his military judges paid little heed to those extenuating circumstances, and Teeling was condemned to die on the day of his trial.  He perished on the 24th September, 1798, being then in his twenty-fourth year.  He marched with a proud step to the place of execution on Arbour Hill, Dublin, and he died, as a soldier might, with unshaken firmness and unquailing mien.  No lettered slab marks the place of his interment; and his bones remain in unhallowed and unconsecrated ground.  Hardly had his headless body ceased to palpitate, when it was flung into a hole at the rere of the Royal Barracks.  A few days later the same unhonoured spot received the mortal remains of Matthew Tone.  “He had a more enthusiastic nature than any of us,” writes his brother, Theobald Wolfe Tone, “and was a sincere Republican, capable of sacrificing everything for his principles.”  His execution was conducted with infamous cruelty and brutality, and the life-blood was still gushing from his body when it was flung into “the Croppy’s Hole.”  “The day will come,” says Dr. Madden, “when that desecrated spot will be hallowed ground—­consecrated by religion—­trod lightly by pensive patriotism—­and decorated by funeral trophies in honour of the dead whose bones lie there in graves that are now neglected and unhonoured.”