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HISTORIC
IRISH SPEECHES
Padráig
Pearse's Oration
Given at the Funeral of Jeremiah
O'Donovan Rossa
on 1 August 1915,
"It has seemed right, before we
turn away from this place in which we have laid the mortal
remains of O'Donovan Rossa, that one among us should, in the
name of all, speak the praise of that valiant man, and endeavor
to formulate the thought and the hope that are in us as we stand
around his grave. And if there is anything that makes it fitting
that I, rather than some other, I rather than one of the
grey-haired men who were young with him and shared in his labour
and in his suffering, should speak here, it is perhaps that I
may be taken as speaking on behalf of a new generation that has
been re-baptised in the Fenian faith, and that has accepted the
responsibility of carrying out the Fenian programme. I propose
to you then that, here by the grave of this unrepentant Fenian,
we renew our baptismal vows; that, here by the grave of this
unconquered and unconquerable man, we ask of God, each one for
himself, such unshakable purpose, such high and gallant courage,
such unbreakable strength of soul as belonged to O'Dovonan Rossa
"Deliberately here we avow
ourselves, as he avowed himself in the dock, Irishmen of one
allegiance only. We of the Irish Volunteers, and you others who
are associated with us in to-day's task and duty, are bound
together and must stand together henceforth in brotherly union
for the achievement of the freedom of Ireland. And we know only
one definition of freedom: it is Wolfe Tone's definition, it is
John Mitchel's definition, it is Rossa's definition. Let no man
blaspheme the cause that the dead generations of Ireland served
by giving it any other name and definition than their name and
their definition."
"We stand at Rossa's grave not in sadness but rather in
exaltation of spirit that it has been given to us to come thus
into so close a communion with that brave and splendid Gael.
Splendid and holy causes are served by men who are themselves
splendid and holy. O'Donovan Rossa was splendid in the proud
manhood of him, splendid in the heroic grace of him, splendid in
the Gaelic strength and clarity and truth of him. And all that
splendour and pride and strength was compatible with a humility
and a simplicity of devotion to Ireland, to all that was olden
and beautiful and Gaelic in Ireland, the holiness and simplicity
of patriotism of a Michael O'Clery or of an Eoghan O'Growney.
The clear true eyes of this man almost alone in his day visioned
Ireland as we of to-day would surely have her: not free merely,
but Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely, but free as well."
"In a closer spiritual communion
with him now than ever before or perhaps ever again, in a
spiritual communion with those of his day, living and dead, who
suffered with him in English prisons, in communion of spirit too
with our own dear comrades who suffer in English prisons to-day,
and speaking on their behalf as well as our own, we pledge to
Ireland our love, and we pledge to English rule in Ireland our
hate. This is a place of peace, sacred to the dead, where men
should speak with all charity and with all restraint; but I hold
it a Christian thing, as O'Donovan Rossa held it, to hate evil,
to hate untruth, to hate oppression, and, hating them, to strive
to overthrow them. Our foes are strong and wise and wary; but,
strong and wise and wary as they are, they cannot undo the
miracles of God who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds
sown by the young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown
by the young men of '65 and '67 are coming to their miraculous
ripening to-day. Rulers and Defenders of Realms had need to be
wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs
from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring
living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in
secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified
Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and
intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen
everything, think that they have provided against everything;
but the fools, the fools, the fools! - they have left us our
Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland
unfree shall never be at peace."
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ROBERT
EMMET SPEECH FROM THE DOCK
September 19, 1803
My
Lords:
What have I to say why sentence of death should not be
pronounced on me according to law? I have nothing to say that
can alter your predetermination, nor that it will become me to
say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you
are here to pronounce, and I must abide by. But I have that to
say which interests me more than life, and which you have
labored (as was necessarily your office in the present
circumstances of this oppressed country) to destroy. I have
much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of
false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it. I
do not imagine that, seated where you are, your minds can be so
free from impurity as to receive the least impression from what
I am going to utter--I have no hopes that I can anchor my
character in the breast of a court constituted and trammeled as
this is--I only wish, and it is the utmost I expect, that your
lordships may suffer it to float down your memories untainted by
the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more
hospitable harbor to shelter it from the storm by which it is at
present buffeted.
Was I only to suffer death after being adjudged guilty by your
tribunal, I should bow in silence and meet the fate that awaits
me without a murmur; but the sentence of law which delivers my
body to the executioner will, through the ministry of that law,
labor in its own vindication to consign my character to
obloquy--for there must be guilt somewhere: whether in the
sentence of the court in the catastrophe, posterity must
determine. A man in my situation, my lords, has not only to
encounter the difficulties of fortune. and the force of power
over minds which it has corrupted or subjugated. but the
difficulties of established prejudice: the man dies, but his
memory lives. That mine may not perish, that it may live in the
respect of my countrymen, I seize upon this opportunity to
vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against me.
When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port; when my
shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who
have shed their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in
defense of their country and of virtue. this is my hope: I wish
that my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while
I look down with complacency on the destruction of that
perfidious government which upholds its domination by blasphemy
of the Most High-which displays its power over man as over the
beasts of the forest-which sets man upon his brother, and lifts
his hand in the name of God against the throat of his fellow who
believes or doubts a little more or a little less than the
government standard--a government which is steeled to barbarity
by the cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which it
has made.
I
appeal to the immaculate God--I swear by the throne of heaven,
before which I must shortly appear--by the blood of the murdered
patriots who have gone before me that my conduct has been
through all this peril and all my purposes governed only by the
convictions which I have uttered, and by no other view than that
of their cure, and the emancipation of my country from the
superinhuman oppression under which she has so long and too
patiently travailed; and that I confidently and assuredly hope
that, wild and chimerical as it may appear, there is still union
and strength in Ireland to accomplish this noble enterprise. of
this I speak with the confidence of intimate knowledge, and with
the consolation that appertains to that confidence. Think not,
my lords, I say this for the petty gratification of giving you a
transitory uneasiness; a man who never yet raised his voice to
assert a lie will not hazard his character with posterity by
asserting a falsehood on a subject so important to his country,
and on an occasion like this. Yes. my lords. a man who does not
wish to have his epitaph written until his country is liberated
will not leave a weapon in the power of envy, nor a pretense to
impeach the probity which he means to preserve even in the grave
to which tyranny consigns him.
Again I say, that what I have spoken was not intended for your
lordship, whose situation I commiserate rather than envy-my
expressions were for my countrymen; if there is a true Irishman
present. let my last words cheer him in the hour of his
affliction.
I
have always understood it to be the duty of a judge. when a
prisoner has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of the
law; I have also understood that judges sometimes think it their
duty to hear with patience and to speak with humanity. to exhort
the victim of the laws. and to offer with tender benignity his
opinions of the motives by which he was actuated in the crime,
of which he had been adjudged guilty: that a judge has thought
it his duty so to have done. I have no doubt--but where is the
boasted freedom of your institutions. where is the vaunted
impartiality, clemency. and mildness of your courts of justice,
if an unfortunate prisoner, whom your policy, and not pure
justice. is about to deliver into the hands of the executioner.
is not suffered to explain his motives sincerely and truly. and
to vindicate the principles by which he was actuated?
My
lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice, to bow a
man's mind by humiliation to the purposed ignominy of the
scaffold; but worse to me than the purposed shame, or the
scaffold's terrors, would be the shame of such unfounded
imputations as have been laid against me in this court: you, my
lord [Lord Norbury], are a judge. I am the supposed culprit; I
am a man, you are a man also; by a revolution of power, we might
change places, though we never could change characters; if I
stand at the bar of this court and dare not vindicate my
character, what a farce is your justice? If I stand at this bar
and dare not vindicate my character. flow dare you calumniate
it? Does the sentence of death which your unhallowed policy
inflicts on my body also condemn my tongue to silence and my
reputation to reproach? Your executioner may abridge the period
of my existence. but while I exist I shall not forbear to
vindicate my character and motives from your aspersions: and as
a man to whom fame is dearer than life, I will make the last use
of that life in doing justice to that reputation which is to
live after me, and which is the only legacy I can leave to those
I honor and love, and for whom I am proud to perish. As men, my
lord, we must appear at the great day at one common tribunal.
and it will then remain for the searcher of all hearts to show a
collective universe who was engaged in the most virtuous
actions. or actuated by the purest motives-my country's
oppressors or--
My
lord, will a dying man be denied the legal privilege of
exculpating himself, in the eyes of the community, of an
undeserved reproach thrown upon him during his trial, by
charging him with ambition and attempting to cast away, for a
paltry consideration. the liberties of his country? Why did your
lordship insult me? or rather why insult justice. in demanding
of me why sentence of death should not be pronounced? I know, my
lord, that form prescribes that you should ask the question; the
form also presumes a right of answering. This no doubt may be
dispensed with--and so might the whole ceremony of trial, since
sentence was already pronounced at the castle, before your jury
was impaneled; your lordships are but the priests of the oracle,
and I submit; but I insist on the whole of the forms.
I
am charged with being an emissary of France An emissary of
France? And for what end? It is alleged that I wished to sell
the independence of my country? And for what end? Was this the
object of my ambition? And is this the mode by which a tribunal
of justice reconciles contradictions? No, I am no emissary; and
my ambition was to hold a place among the deliverers of my
country--not in power, nor in profit, but in the glory of the
achievement!...
Connection with Prance was indeed intended, but only as far as
mutual interest would sanction or require. Were they to assume
any authority inconsistent with the purest independence. it
would be the signal for their destruction: we sought aid, and we
sought it, as we had assurances we should obtain it--as
auxiliaries in war and allies in peace...
I
wished to procure for my country the guarantee which Washington
procured for America. To procure an aid, which, by its example,
would be as important as its valor, disciplined. gallant,
pregnant with science and experience; which would perceive the
good and polish the rough points of our character. They would
come to us as strangers and leave us as friends, after sharing
in our perils and elevating our destiny. These were my
objects--not to receive new taskmasters hilt to expel old
tyrants: these were my views. and these only became Irishmen. It
was for these ends I sought aid from France; because France,
even as an enemy. could not he more implacable than the enemy
already in the bosom of my country.
I
have been charged with that importance in the efforts to
emancipate my country. as to be considered the keystone of the
combination of Irishmen; or, as Your Lordship expressed it, "the
life and blood of conspiracy." You do me honor overmuch. You
have given to the subaltern all the credit of a superior. There
are men engaged in this conspiracy, who are not only superior to
me but even to your own conceptions of yourself, my lord; men,
before the splendor of whose genius and virtues, I should bow
with respectful deference, and who would think themselves
dishonored to be called your friend--who would not disgrace
themselves by shaking your bloodstained hand--
What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to that
scaffold. Which that tyranny. of which you are only the
intermediary executioner. Has erected for my murder. that I am
accountable for all the blood that has and will be shed in this
struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor?--shall you tell
me this--and must I be so very a slave as not to repel it?
I
do not fear to approach the omnipotent Judge, to answer for the
conduct of my whole life; and am I to be appalled and falsified
by a mere remnant of mortality here? By you. too. who, if it
were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have
shed in your unhallowed ministry, in one great reservoir. Your
Lordship might swim in it.
Let no man dare, when I am dead. to charge me with dishonor; let
no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged
in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence,
or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the
oppression or the miseries of my countrymen. The proclamation of
the provisional government speaks for our views; no inference
can he tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement
at home, or subjection. humiliation. or treachery from abroad; I
would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor for the same
reason that I would resist the foreign and domestic oppressor:
in the dignity of freedom I would have fought upon the threshold
of my country, and its enemy should enter only by passing over
my lifeless corpse. Am I, who lived but for my country, and who
have subjected myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful
oppressor, and the bondage of the grave, only to give my
countrymen their rights, and my country her independence, and am
I to be loaded with calumny and not suffered to resent or repel
it--no, God forbid!
If
the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns
and cares of those who are dear to them in this transitory
life--oh, ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father.
look down with scrutiny upon the conduct of your suffering son;
and see if I have even for a moment deviated from those
principles of morality and patriotism which it was your care to
instill into my youthful mind, and for which I am now to offer
up my life!
My
lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice-the blood which you
seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround
your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled, through the
channels which God created for noble purposes. but which you are
bent to destroy. for purposes so grievous. that they cry to
heaven. Be yet patient! I have but a few words more to say. I am
going to my cold and silent grave: my lamp of life is nearly
e4inguished: 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 repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb
remain uninscribed, 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.
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Wolfe Tone ON BEING
FOUND GUILTY
November 12, 1798
I mean not to give you the trouble
of bringing judicial proof to convict me legally of having acted
in hostility to the government of his Britannic majesty in
Ireland. I admit the fact. From my earliest youth I have
regarded the connection between Great Britain and Ireland as the
curse of the Irish nation, and felt convinced that, while it
lasted, this country could never be free nor happy. My mind has
been confirmed in this opinion by the experience of every
succeeding year, and the conclusions which I have drawn from
every fact before my eyes. In consequence, I was determined to
employ all the powers which my individual efforts could move, in
order to separate the two countries. That Ireland was not able
of herself to throw off the yoke, I knew; I therefore sought for
aid wherever it was to be found. In honorable poverty I rejected
offers which, to a man in my circumstances, might be considered
highly advantageous. I remained faithful to what I thought the
cause of my country, and sought in the French Republic an ally
to rescue three millions of my countrymen.
Attached to no party in the French
Republic—without interest, without money, without intrigue—the
openness and integrity of my views raised me to a high and
confidential rank in its armies. I obtained the confidence of
the executive directory, the approbation of my generals, and I
will venture to add, the esteem and affection of my brave
comrades. When I review these circumstances, I feel a secret and
internal consolation, which no reverse of fortune, no sentence
in the power of this court to inflict, can deprive me of, or
weaken in any degree. Under the flag of the French Republic I
originally engaged with a view to save and liberate my own
country. For that purpose I have encountered the chances of war
among strangers; for that purpose I repeatedly braved the
terrors of the ocean, covered, as I knew it to be, with the
triumphant fleets of that power which it was my glory and my
duty to oppose. I have sacrificed all my views in life; I have
courted poverty; I have left a beloved wife unprotected, and
children whom I adored fatherless.
After such a sacrifice, in a cause
which I have always considered—conscientiously considered—as the
cause of justice and freedom, it is no great effort, at this
day, to add the sacrifice of my life.
But I hear it is said that this
unfortunate country has been a prey to all sorts of horrors. I
sincerely lament it. I beg, however, that it may be remembered
that I have been absent four years from Ireland. To me those
sufferings can never be attributed. I designed by fair and open
war to procure a separation of two countries. For open war I was
prepared, but instead of that a system of private assassination
has taken place. I repeat, while I deplore it, that it is not
chargeable on me. Atrocities, it seems, have been committed on
both sides. I do not less deplore them. I detest them from my
heart; and to those who know my character and sentiments, I may
safely appeal for the truth of this assertion: with them I need
no justification. In a case like this success is everything.
Success, in the eyes of the vulgar, fixes its merits. Washington
succeeded, and Kosciusko failed.
After a combat nobly sustained—a
combat which would have excited the respect and sympathy of a
generous enemy—my fate has been to become a prisoner, to the
eternal disgrace of those who gave the orders. I was brought
here in irons like a felon. I mention this for the sake of
others; for me, I am indifferent to it. I am aware of the fate
which awaits me, and scorn equally the tone of complaint, and
that of supplication. As to the connection between this country
and Great Britain, I repeat it—all that has been imputed to me
(words, writings, and actions), I here deliberately avow. I have
spoken and acted with reflection, and on principle, and am ready
to meet the consequences. Whatever be the sentence of the court,
I am prepared for it. Its members will surely discharge their
duty—I shall take care not to be wanting in mine.
I wish to offer a few words
relative to one single point—the mode of punishment. In France
our emigrees, who stand nearly in the same situation in
which I now stand before you, are condemned to be shot. I ask
that the court adjudge me the death of a soldier, and let me be
shot by a platoon of grenadiers. I request this indulgence
rather in consideration of the uniform I wear—the uniform of a
chef de bridage in the French army—than from any personal
regard to myself. In order to evince my claim to this favor, I
beg that the court may take the trouble to peruse my commission
and letters of service in the French army. It will appear from
these papers that I have not received them as a mask to cover
me, but that I have been long and bona fide an officer in
the French service.
I have labored to create a people
in Ireland by raising three millions of my countrymen to the
rank of citizens. I have labored 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 let me
alone—the Catholics did not desert me; they had the virtue even
to sacrifice their own interests to a rigid principle of honor;
they refused, tho strongly urged, to disgrace a man who,
whatever his conduct toward the government might have been, had
faithfully and conscientiously discharged his duty toward them;
and in so doing, tho 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
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