This is Tone's speech, as reported in the public prints at that time,
but the recently-published "Correspondence" of Lord Cornwallis--Lord
Lieutenant in those days--supplies a portion of the address which was
never before published, the Court having forbade the reading of it at
the trial. The passage contains a noble outburst of gratitude towards
the Catholics of Ireland. Tone himself, as every reader is aware, was a
Protestant, and there can have been no reason for its suppression except
the consideration that it was calculated to still more endear the
prisoner to the hearts of his countrymen. We now reprint it, and thus
place it for the first time before the people for whom it was written:--

"I have laboured to create a people in Ireland by raising three
millions of my countrymen to the rank of citizens. I have laboured 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 left
me alone--the Catholics did not desert me; they had the virtue even
to sacrifice their own interests to a rigid principle of honour; they
refused, though strongly urged, to disgrace a man who, whatever his
conduct towards the government might have been, had faithfully and
conscientiously discharged his duty towards them; and in so doing,
though 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."

The sad sequel of those proceedings is soon told. The request of the
prisoner to receive a military execution was refused by the Viceroy,