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Number 328.
NEW YORK—FOR THE WELK ENDING MARCH 10, 1883,
™
Price Five Cents,
LIFE OF ROBERT EMMET.
' BY THOMAS SHERLOCK,
[Dublin Correspondent of Redpath’s Weekly.)
‘OSTS of Irishmen have given up their hves
in the cause of their country’s freedom,
be Many of these were men whom circumstances
marked out for national remembrance—men who
like the lion-hearted Lord Ed
manding talents and vast energy like the indomita-
ble Tone; men about whose: deaths there were
‘ special surroundings, like the once undistinguished
three who died on the Manchester scaffold, For
each of them there is a place in the hearts of Ire-
land’s patriotic sons and daughters. The grateful
national recollection is a Walhalla vast enough for
But one martyr’s memory is specially enshrined
in the Irish heart; one martyr’s name has a spell to
awaken feelings peculiar to itself, The name and
the memory are those of Robert Emmet, whose
birth took place the 4th March, 1778, whose light of
life was rudely extinguished by the executioner after
. burning for only five-and-twenty years, and whose
name and fame have grown dearer and dearer to
Ireland with almost every year of the three quarters
of a century which have passed away since the Sep-
tember afternoon when his head was severed from
his body in front of St. Catherine's Church,
Several causes combine to give Robert Emmet
his special hold on the Irish heart. His youth, his
genius, his unswerving devotion, his intrepidity,
the circumstances of his triaJ, his wonderful speech
\ in the dock, with its pathetic request for the ‘* char-
ity of silence” from those who were sure not to
/ speak of him save to defame him, its sanguine an-
“, ticipation of “other times and other men” that
should do him justice, and its injunction that his
tomb should remain uninscribed and his epitaph
* unwritten, until his country took her place among
the nations; these things, added td his sad fate,
make up a whole that appeals with irresistible
strength to the Irish imagination, and fastens on
Irish remembrance with a clasp that can never be
relaxed.
But there is, besides, an episode in Robert Em-
met’s brief career which sheds a tender light over
his memory, and surrounds it, as it were, with the
glamour of romance. Mixed up with his ardent
dreanis of a great and free future for his land, to be
bought at the bloody price the oppressed have
eftenest had to pay for liberty, there were softer
dreams of his own; dreams of a time when—the
dread day of conflict over, the glad hour of his
country’s new birth arrived—he could turn into the
quiet paths of domestic life, there to be blessed by
a union with one whom he loved with all the high,
pure ardour of his soul, one who returned his love
as such love ought to be returned, one in every way
. fitted to be the mate and other self of such a man
ashe. The time never came; the romance is at
once touching and sad, Perhaps the same two ad-
jectives might fitly characterise the whole story of
Emmet’s life, to which we shall address ourselves
without further preface.
“> Like many another whose memory Ireland cher-
ishes, Robert Emmet was neither of the old Irish
stock nor of the Catholic religion, The penal laws
had done their work too well to allew of leaders
who were either, until the great achievement of
O'Connell's life was in course of realization; be-
‘ cause the heads of most of the old Irish families
who retained social station were despised by the
- mass of the people as renegades from the ancient
creed; and those who were not apostates or de-
scendants of apostates were forever trembling lest
the iron hand of the law should fall on them with
its crushing weight. The Emmet family were only
a few generations in the land with whose fortunes
and liberties they so deeply concerned themselves.
Robert was the youngest son of Dr. Emmet, a
medical man of eminence and of lucrative practice.
For many years he held in Dublin the post of State
physician, The doctor had three sons, all remark-
able for ability, and one daughter, who was worthy
to be the sister of such brothers. The eldest,
Temple Emmet, died at the age of twenty-nine,
after attaining, in seven years’ practice at the bar,
a reputation which some of his contemporaries con-
sidered -unequalled,'! The *second’ son, Thomas
Addis Emmet, first studied medicine, but after the
death of his brother he also went to the bar, and
subsequently, both ia Dublia and New York, left
behind him a great legal name. In Ireland, how-
ever, he is chiefly remembered for his connection
with the United Irishmen, of the Directory of which
h member ‘in the most perilous time.
Through that connection he became a State pri-
soner, suffered durance for several years, and finally
became a life-long exile. From the earliest period
of his public career he had been a strenuous advo~
cate of Catholic Emancipation; and till the last day
of his life, which came to an end in his sixty-third
year, he retained a warm and persistent love of the
dear native isle for which he and his had suffered so
nuch. The sister of the Emmets married the in~
corruptible and sternly consistent barrister, Robert
Holmes—the same who defended Jobn Mitchel in
1848, and on that occasion publicly avowed for
himself as an Irish citizen the principles he had
stated previously as an advocate defending his
lient,
oT ( i
i Hh
‘
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i
Hy
y
It was in an atmosphere breathing of true free-
dom, such as produced men of the stamp of Thomas
Addis Emmet and Robert Holmes, that Robert
Emmet grew up. The Irish Parliament, too, by
the time he had come to the years when its debates
could have interest for him, numbered amongst its
members such brilliant champions of Irish rights as
Grattan, Plunket, and Curran; and young Emmet
had merely to cross the street from Trinity College
which he entered at the age of fifteen—to the
Senate House, to drink in their flashing thoughts
and liberty-loving ideas. At the university he
pursued his studies with great industry, won not a
little college renown, and carried off several prizes
at examinations, He found time also to take a
leading part in the debates of the College Historical
Society, where he received the oratorical glories
.which had been first gathered around the name of
Emmet by his brother Temple.’ He was, besides,
at this period, and indeed ever aiter, greatly attach-
ed to scientific study. It will thus be seen that
Robert Emmet's mind was of a high and serious
cast—one that instinctively avoided whatever was
petty, narrow, or base, and that turned as instinct-
ively to all that was lofty, broad, and ennobling.
As to his moral character, Tom Moore, at one pe-
riod Emmet’s intimate companion, has told us that
he was ‘wholly free from the follies and frailties
of youth, thiugh how capable he was of the most
devoted passion events afterwards proved.” With
such a sterling character, such great gifts of mind
cultivated assiduously, and such warm love of lib-
erty as he had been drawing in since his first breath,
as one may say, the year ’98 found him,
It was natural that Emmet should be mixed up
in the designs and doings of the United Irishmen,
his brother being a leading member of its executive,
and himself consuming with the desire of shaking
off the English yoke, In the fateful year just
amed he was a young man of twenty, ardent,
{sanguine daring, and resolute. The subject that
5
003
had been engrossing his thoughts for a consider-
able period is fully discovered in the brief soliloquy
which burst from him when Moore one day played
in his hearing the noble bardic melody to which the
poet afterwards set the words of “Let Erin re-
member the days of old.” Profoundly affected by
the old martial strain, with its vigorous measures
dying away in melancholy cadences, Emmet's eye
lighted, his form dilated, and he exclaimed abrupt-
ly, ‘Oh, that I were at the head of twenty thou-
sand men marching to that air.”. Anyone can guess
whither he would have marched, But though we
have here an illustration of the exalted enthusiasm
of the young revolutionist's mind, it must not be
concluded that he was altogether wanting in judg-
ment and discretion, On the contrary; for when
Moore, who was Emmet’s junior by a couple of
years, wrote to the Press newspaper—the organ of
the United Irishmen—a' letter calculated to attract
the notice of the Government to the revolutionary
spirit then abroad among the students of Trinity
College, Emmet, on being shown the production
of his jubilant friend, at once pointed out the harm
such ill-advised scribbling might do to the cause he
had at heart, Whether or not Moore's letter had
any share in bringing about the result Emmet indi-
cated, certain it is that the attention of the authori
ties was turned very earnestly towards the Eliza-
bethan university, and in the February of ’98 what
is technically called a visitation”. took place.
The Lord Chancellor (the notorious John Fitzgib-
bon, Earl of Clare), took Patrick Guigenan, Judge
of the Prerogative Court—(in his day even more
notorious than the other, especially as a ferocious
bigot)—held a court in Trinity for the purpose of
examining suspected students, on oath, as to their
knowledge of the United Irish Society, its members,
and designs. Robert Emmet, of course, received a
summons to attend. He met it by a firm refusal
to appear. | In his letter to the board he denounced
the plan of turning students into informers by com-
pulsion, and required the erasure of his name from
the books of a college in which so nefarious a
scheme could be carried on, , The authorities of the
university, however, had his name as well as the
names of several other students who pursued a
course similar to his, called regularly every mora-
ing while the “visitation” lasted; and at the end
pronounced them contumacious, and went through
the solemn farce of decreeing their expulsion from
college. _We should add that Robert Emmet
showed to his father his letter, and that the high-
spirited old physician entirely approved of it.
A month passed; and then it became clear that
the Government meant active war on the United
Irishmen. © A swoop was made on the directory and
on the delegates assembled at Oliver Bond's on the
x2th of March, Thomas Addis Emmet was among
those victims of the treachery of Reynolds the
informer; and before the close of the day
named he and his associates were safely lodged
within the walls of Newgate. It was, perhaps,
owing to this fact that Robert took no part in the
rising which followed some months later on, The
Government was negotiating with the State prison-
ers, entering into compacts with them—which, as a
matter of course, it broke through” at will—and
young Emmet was employed by the prisoners from
time to time as a messenger in secret affairs of mo-
ment, Thomas Addis and his companions in mis-
fortune were eventually removed to Fort George,
in Scotland, for safe keeping; and there Robert
visited him in 1800, Immediately after the inter
view which then took place, the younger brother
set out forthe Continent. . He spent over three years
in wandering about Europe, passing into Switzer
land, Holland, France, Spain and Belgium, He
devoted close attention the while to military studies,
and especially to such as might prove useful in a
country with the physical features of his own, “He
interviewed Napoleon Bonaparte—then First Con-
sul of the French Republic—regarding the affairs
of Ireland, with a view to securing that ‘foreign
aid” so long and so vainly relied on by the patriots
of the past, It redounds to the credit of his pene-
tration that he formed a very unfavorable estimate
of Bonaparte’s uprightness and good faith, Inter
views with Talleyrand, which were had for the
same purpose, left no better impression of that
wiliest of wily statesmen on young Emmet's mind.
But he had also acumen enough to perceive tbat
the peace of Amiens, signed in March, 1802, was
in reality a hollow truce between France and Eng-
land, and scarcely likely to last a twelvemonth.
History has sufficiently justified his opinion. He
was likewise in communication with all the leading
Irish exiles on the Continent, including his brother,
Thomas Addis, who had been liberated in June,
1802, on the personal responsibility of the governor
of Fort George. “A’renewal of the effort of '98
was the hope of them all, To prepare for it, im
view of the rupture which he foresaw must soon
occur between Napoleon and the English king,
Rotert Emmet left Holland in the beginning of
October, 1802, and before the end of the month he
was in Dublin. Being thoroughly in earnest, and
far from insensible to the difficulties of the task
before him, he did not go swaggering about the
city in conspicuous attire, but bore himself in such
a way as to attract as little notice to himself as pos-
sible. He entered intocommunication with as many
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