r to George the Third. He defended himself in a speech of
remarkable eloquence--that is, if he can be said to have defended
himself when his whole speech was a frank avowal of his purpose to
fight for the independence of Ireland. He declared that he thoroughly
understood the consequences of his failure, and was prepared to abide
by them. "Washington," he said, "succeeded, and Kosciusko failed;" and
he only insisted that in his case, as in that of Kosciusko, failure
brought with it no dishonor. The one sole appeal which he made was
that he might be allowed to die a soldier's death--that he might be
shot and not hanged. Tone was found guilty, of course; there was no
choice left to the court-martial on that question, and his appeal as to
the mode of his death was refused by the Lord-Lieutenant. John Philpot
Curran, the great advocate, made a motion in the King's Bench to the
effect that Tone should be removed from the custody of the
Provost-Marshal and tried before a civil tribunal, on the ground that
Tone was not in the English army, and that, as the civil courts were
sitting, there was no warrant for the interference of martial law. The
Lord Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden, a man whose public spirit and whose
devotion to law and justice would have done honor to any bench, ruled
in favor of Curran's appeal, and ordered that Tone be removed from the
custody of the Provost-Marshal. When the Provost-Marshal declined to
obey the order the Chief Justice directed that the Provost-Marshal be
taken into custody, and that he, along with Tone, be brought before the
Court. The decision came too late so far as Tone was concerned.
Bather than endure the ignominy of a public execution by the gallows,
which he believed to be awaiting him, he had found means to open a vein
in his throat. {327} "You see I am but a poor anatomist," he said with
a quiet smile to the surgeon who was brought to his bedside. He
lingered in a half-unconscious state for a few days and then died. His
death was the closing event of the Irish insurrection of 1798.

[Sidenote: 1778-1803--Robert Emmet]

There was, however, a sort of afterbirth of the struggle of
"Ninety-Eight" in the attempt hazarded by Robert Emmet, to which we
have already made anticipatory allusion. Robert Emmet, the brother of
Thomas Addis Emmet, was a young Irishman of great abilities and of
generous, unselfish, imprudent enthusiasm. He could not bring himself
to believe that the ho