Judge, to answer for the conduct of my whole
life; and am I to be appalled and falsified by a
mere remnant of mortality? 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.

[Here the judge interfered.]

"If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate
in the concerns and cares of those who are
dear to them in this transitory life—O ever
dear and venerable 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 instil into my youthful mind, and for which
I am now about 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 that surround your victim,
it circulates warmly and unruffled through the
channels which God created for nobler
purposes, but which you are bent to destroy, for
purposes so grievous that they cry to heaven.
Be ye 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 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
prejudices 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!"

The judge was remorseless and the government
was stern. Emmet suffered the penalty
for high treason in Thomas-street, the very day
after the trial. He ascended the scaffold with
a calm resignation and an unswerving courage.
He avowed himself a sceptic. To Dr. Dobbin,
who importuned him as they rode together in a
hackney-coach to the place of execution, he said:

"Sir, I appreciate your motives, and thank
you for your kindness, but you merely disturb
the last moments of a dying man unnecessarily.
I am an infidel from conviction, and no reasoning
can shake my unbelief."

Curran, when he defended Owen Kirwan, the
tailor of Plunket-street, derided the rebellion
of Emmet as a mere riot, but there can be
no doubt that if the first hundred pikemen
had made a rush at the Castle they might have
seized that stronghold, and drawn on themselves
a later but an equally certain destruction,
after much bloodshed and murder. The
Fenians now talk of Emmet as "rash and
soft," but Englishmen can only pity a young
and enthusiastic genius, whose dirge Moore
sung with such pathos:

She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
and lament that such a gallant spirit should
have squandered itself on such mischievous
chimeras.

WILL THE PUBLIC STRIKE?

ONE can hardly take up a newspaper in these
days, without reading that the members of some
trade, or the followers of some particular branch
of industry, have set up a strike. A strike,
though doubtless at times necessary, is always
inconvenient; inconvenient to the public,
inconvenient to the employers, who are losing
money during every hour of its continuance—
losing by non-execution of orders, by rent and
taxes, by machinery getting out of order, and
the like; inconvenient to the wives of the
strikers, who, with a reduced weekly income,
have to provide for family wants, and for those
juvenile appetites which never strike;
inconvenient in respect of the aggravation—for such
it is, even to wives not destitute of conjugal
affection—of having the goodman about the
house all day, " hanging about." That the
strikers themselves are sufferers must be
admitted, though in a minor degree compared with
the persons against whom the strikers combine.
These last are often so grievously put to it that
they will concede much to bring the infliction to
an end, and will sometimes even give in before
the mere threat of a strike.

Seeing how great is the efficacy of some
strikes, and what prodigious results are brought
about by such organisations, I am induced, with
a sense of the wrongs which are being inflicted
on a large section of my fellow-creatures strong
upon me, to propose a strike to the Public.
If I am able to prove that we, the component
members of that noun of multitude, are, in relation
to a certain matter, injured and hopeless
of redress, perhaps I may induce the Public to
turn out.

I assert that we are injured in a degree which
justifies the adoption of an extreme course, by
all those persons, be they members of companies,
agencies, or whatever else, who profess to
provide omnibus accommodation—that I should
call it accommodation!—for the inhabitants of
London. To find a London omnibus an
"accommodation," a man must have been brought
very low. Chill penury must have " repressed
his noble rage" till there has come to be less
spirit left in him than in the proverbial worm.
The frequenter of omnibuses is trodden upon,
but does not turn.

This is the man who may be seen on a very
wet day working his way down a long street at
right angles to that by which his own peculiar
omnibus travels, and who, just when he is
still out of hailing distance, sees his vehicle,
with plenty of room in it, rattle by at a
smart pace, the conductor not even looking his
way. The next omnibus is full, or it may be
that there is just room for one: in which
case the gentleman who conducts, and who
is in a hurry, will accelerate the introduction
of the new comer into the vehicle by a