Robert Holmes

Image of Robert Holmes from Michael Doheny's The Felon's Track

Robert Holmes (1765 – October 7 1859) was an Irish lawyer and nationalist. He was the brother-in-law of both Thomas Addis Emmet and Robert Emmet, Irish revolutionaries.

Quotes

• I can understand deposing the Queen from the throne perfectly well. I can understand an attempt made on the life of the Queen perfectly well, or expelling her from her dominions but I do not, for the life of me, know what it is to depose her ‘from the style, honour, or royal name of the Imperial Crown of the United Kingdom.
  • Speech (1848-05-20) in the case of John Mitchel, Young Irelander and one of the Irish Confederation Leaders. Mitchel was later sentenced to fourteen years transportation. P. A. Sillard, Life of John Mitchel, James Duffy and Co. Ltd, 1908

• I tell you, in the first instance, that Ireland is an enslaved country. A great mistake is entertained by many persons to the effect that there cannot be slavery—that no man can be a slave unless he be in chains, or subject to the lash of the planter like the negroes; but the slavery of which I speak is the slavery of the people, which consists in this, that they do not make their own laws themselves—that they do not make the laws by which they are governed, but that those laws are made by others, and I say it boldly, that a people so circumstanced are in a state of slavery.
  • Speech (1848-05-20) in the case of John Mitchel, Young Irelander and one of the Irish Confederation Leaders. Mitchel was later sentenced to fourteen years transportation. P. A. Sillard, Life of John Mitchel, James Duffy and Co. Ltd, 1908