KELLY'S LAST STATEMENT.

West Coast Times, Issue 328, 11 October 1866, Page 2

KELLY'S LAST STATEMENT.

Nelson, Oct. 5, 4.30 p.m. Kelly's statement to-day was a string of adjectives in many places. It began thus :' — ." Good morning! But an unpleasant j morning to you all, gentlemen, countrymen, brothers, and spectators of one, of the most awful, terrible, dreadful, fearful, shameful, painful, mournful, reverential, hateful, wrongful, unjustifiable, ignominious, inglorious deaths and murders that ever took place in the ( wide world, since the creation of Adam; and a sad morning to my poor self. And may God be> merciful to me, a sinner, not a murderer, since I have been born.'' After referring to the atonement of Christ, he went on — " Besides, I trust Almighty God has searched me and tried me to gee if there has been any such wickedness in me as ever to know for a certainty pf the Mauugatapu murders, until Sullivan made a confession. May I never be forgiven my sins upon earth, nor after I shuffle off this mortal coil, and appear before my Almighty God, if I am not innocent of killing, or of being with any person that did kill them when they were killed on the Maungatapu, or any other murdered men in the world. If ray assertions, declarations, and dying words be not the truth about these wen, and, nathjj^ b,u,t th* truth, I hoj?o

that after I ascend the fatal and welcome scaffold, and the bolt is drawn that will launch me out of this world, and that whilst my frail and worthless body of clay is dangling in the air, the Devil will be waiting for the moment my soul departs from this body to be borne upon his wings to the bottomless pit of Hell, .at a speed more rapid than lightning, or than the light of the sun in reaching the earth, — yes at a speed as quick as thought, which I believe to be the fastest thing that travels, for I can think to Heaven in an instant."

He next termed Sullivan the demon of the West Coast, and Maungatapu mountain assassin. He prayed for a blessing on the heads of the people of Nelson for^their efforts to discover the bodies of the murdered men, and praised all that the people had done " in the town named after the gallant hero of the sea and ocean, and conqueror of the enemies of Old, England, my country; Nelson, the inimitable wonder of the sea, fighting, and war ; and I hope he is happy. God bless him, for I like a patriot." ■

He then repeated the hymn referring to the hour of parting .with all earthly things, and concluded his dying speech thus : — *

" And thisjhour has been fully before me the great part of my life, never as it should have been, until after my arrest ; but may I find life and heaven with God. , So, farewell to everybody From Tommy Noon, called Kelly."