Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1903-09-12 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

NORTHERN WEEKLY GAZETTE.  in consequence been expelled from college, initiated another attempt to "deliver" Ireland. He was but a novice, yet until the insurrection broke out no one dreamed that any plot was in existence to plant again the flag of revolution. He took but few into his entire confidence. He had hoped to lead a thousand men, armed at his expense, and to appear before Dublin Castle, dreaming that at the sound of the trumpet Ireland would flock to his banner, and her deliverance would follow as a matter of course. When the fateful day arrived, those upon whom he had depended laughed at the raw youth who was to lead them, and he could only muster 300, mostly ruffians bent on pillage and murder. He was the first to desert, horrified at the savage behaviour of his troops. This was on July 23rd, 1803. On August 23rd he was captured by the police and lodged in prison to await his trial.  The ablest advocate of the day, John Philpot Curran, was retained fox his defence. Curran knew the Emmet family well, but he was unacquainted with the fact that his own daughter, Sarah, and Robert Emmett were secret lovers. The Government were the first to make the discovery, and Emmet pleaded to be allowed to walk to the gallows without a word, if his association with Sarah Curran might remain undisclosed. But his prayers were of no avail, and the appearance of a party of yeomanry at his lover's home, to arrest her, was the first intimation the great lawyer received of his daughter's complicity with the schemes and aspirations of Emmet. What a situation! Fiction has not its equal. Curran threw up his brief and denounced his daughter. Emmet was then defended by the man who, it was afterwards discovered, was in the pay of the Government as a secret spy, and who had, it is believed, betrayed Dmrnet's hidingplace and led to his capture. The trial lasted ten hours, though no defence was offered, except that brilliant and memorable oration Emmet gave, of which the closing words may here be quoted:—  "I have but a few more words to say. lam going to my cold and silent grave—my lamp of life is nearly extinguished—my race is run—the grave opens to receive me and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world; it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, -let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me rest in obscurity arid peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, and my memory in oblivion, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and, not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done."  Of-the scene at the scaffold, as of the working out of the plot, and the story of Curran's contemptible actions, .Mr Michael MacDonagh has provided the most graphic details. Emmet received the news of his mother's death —killed by the announcement of her son's doom--on the morn following the. trial, the morn that was to see his own dep.arture from this world. Sarah Curran, banished by her father, married, two years later, Captain Sturgeon, but lived only a few years longer, dying of a rapid decline at the age of 26, when her father had attained the dignity of the Right Hon. the Master of the Rolls in Ireland. Curran's contemptible conduct towards his own child detracts from the memory of his marvellous gifts as an orator and wit; and his meanness of character affords a strong contrast, with that of Robert Emmet, who, had be lived longer, might have proved the greater orator, and one of .the  greatest Ireland has ever produced. Emmet, however, had been attracted by the insurrectionary spirit of hiß time, and he had entered into the movement with all the self-confidence of youth and the grim earnestness of the fanatic. He was too pure a patriot to succeed in the role of an insurrectionary leader, and it is not as such his memory is reverred. The tragic sequence of events in his career Ser only to keep green the memory of a stainless life sacrificed to a faith in his fellows which was not, and could not be, justified.