'Justice,' he said, 'which demanded some penalty of those who had wrapped the whole nation in fear and in mourning, could not perhaps have selected a fitter victim, He came to the field with the fullest light upon the nature of his attempt.

He had studied and understood the subject.

His father's fate could not intimidate him; the lenity of the laws which had restored to him his father's property and rights could not melt him.

That he was brave, generous, and possessed many good qualities, only rendered him the more dangerous; that he was enlightened and accomplished, made his crime the less excusable; that he was an enthusiast in a wrong cause, only made him the more fit to be its martyr.

Above all, he had been the means of bringing many hundreds of men into the field, who, without him, would never have broken the peace of the country.
'I repeat it,' said the Colonel, 'though Heaven knows with a heart distressed for him as an individual, that this young gentleman has studied and fully understood the desperate game which he has played.
He threw for life or death, a coronet or a coffin; and he cannot now be permitted, with justice to the country, to draw stakes because the dice have gone against him.' Such was the reasoning of those times, held even by brave and humane men towards a vanquished enemy.