e of Miss Curran. Her story was also told,
without a mention of her name, by Washington Irving, in "The
Broken Heart," which may be found in "The Sketch Book."

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 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.

Were 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, or in the catastrophe,
posterity must determine. 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 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 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 its cruelty has made.

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 no other view than