and the purity of their own lives! By that law I am stamped a felon,
but my heart disdains the imputation.

"My comfortable lot, and industrious course of life, best refute the
charge of being an adventurer for plunder; but if to have loved my
country--to have known its wrongs--to have felt the injuries of the
persecuted Catholics, and to have united with them and all other
religious persuasions in the most orderly and least sanguinary means
of procuring redress--if those be felonies, I am a felon, but not
otherwise. Had my counsel (for whose honorable exertions I am
indebted) prevailed in their motions to have me tried for high
treason, rather than under the insurrection law, I should have been,
entitled to a full defence, and my actions have been better
vindicated; but that was refused, and I must now submit to what has
passed.

"To the generous protection of my country I leave a beloved wife, who
has been constant and true to me, and whose grief for my fate has
already nearly occasioned her death. I have five living children, who
have been my delight. May they love their country as I have done, and
die for it if needful.

"Lastly, a false and ungenerous publication having appeared in a
newspaper, stating certain alleged confessions of guilt on my part,
and thus striking at my reputation, which is clearer to me than life.
I take this solemn method of contradicting the calumny. I was applied
to by the high-sheriff, and the Rev. William Bristow, sovereign of
Belfast, to make a confession of guilt, who used entreaties to that
effect; this I peremptorily refused. If I thought myself guilty, I
would freely confess it, but, on the contrary, I glory in my