Speeches from the Dock, Part I by Various
page 70 of 276 (25%)
page 70 of 276 (25%)
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"Perhaps, as my voice may now be considered as a voice crying from the grave, what I now say may have some weight. I see around me many, who during the last years of my life have disseminated principles for which I am now to die. Those gentlemen, who have all the wealth and the power of the country in their hands, I strongly advise, and earnestly exhort, to pay attention to the poor--by the poor I mean the labouring class of the community, their tenantry and dependents. I advise them for their good to look into their grievances, to sympathize in their distress, and to spread comfort and happiness around their dwellings. It might be that they may not hold their power long, but at all events to attend to the wants and distresses of the poor is their truest interest. If they hold their power, they will thus have friends around them; if they lose it, their fall will be gentle, and I am sure unless they act thus they can never be happy. I shall now appeal to the right honourable gentleman in whose hands the lives of the other prisoners are, and entreat that he will rest satisfied with my death, and let that atone for those errors into which I may have been supposed to have deluded others. I trust the gentleman will restore them to their families and friends. If he shall do so, I can assure him that the breeze which conveys to him the prayers and blessings of their wives and children will be more grateful than that which may be tainted with the stench of putrid corpses, or carrying with it the cries of the widow and the orphan. Standing as I do in the presence of God and of man, I entreat him to let my life atone for the faults of all, and that my blood alone may flow. "If I am then to die, I have therefore two requests to make. The first is, that as I have been engaged in a work possibly of some |
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