Excerpt from The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald In order to guard against suspicion of having been influenced in my choice of the subject of this work by any view to its apt accordance with the political feeling of the day, I think it right to state that the design of writing a Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald had been taken up by me some months before any of those events occurred which have again given to the whole face of Europe so revolutionary an aspect. I question, indeed, whether this fear, lest the public should mistake my object, and consider as meant for the occasion what is intended as historical, would not have prevented me, were I now to choose, from undertaking such a work at such a juncture: - but, . having undertaken and written it, I see no sufficient reason why I should shrink from publishing it. With respect to Ireland, her situation at present is, in most respects, essentially different from that in which the crisis commemorated in these pages found her. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.