EMMET, THOMAS ADDIS (1764-1827), Irish lawyer and politician, elder brother of Robert Emmet (q.v.), the rebel, was born at Cork on April 24, 1764, and was educated at Trinity col lege, Dublin, and at Edinburgh University where he studied medi cine. After visiting the chief medical schools on the continent, he returned to Ireland in 1788 ; but the sudden death of his older brother, Christopher Temple Emmet, a barrister of some distinc tion, induced him to follow the advice of Sir James Mackintosh to forsake medicine for the law as a profession. He was called to the Irish bar in 1790 and quickly obtained a practice, principally as counsel for prisoners charged with political offenses, and he became the legal adviser of the leading United Irishmen. When the Dublin corporation issued a declaration of Protestant ascendancy in 1792, the counter-manifesto of the United Irish men was drawn up by Emmet; and in 1795 he took the oath of the society in open court, becoming secretary in the same year and a member of the executive in 1797. Emmet was among the more prudent of the United Irishmen on the eve of the rebellion; he engaged in conspiracy with reluctance, and in apposition to bolder spirits like Lord Edward Fitzgerald, he dis countenanced the taking up of arms until help should be obtained from France. After the rebellion he was imprisoned with the other leaders at Fort George till 1802. On his release, he went to Brussels, and was involved in the attempt to raise a fresh insurrec tion with Napoleon's assistance. On the failure of Robert Emmet's rising in 1803, he emigrated to the United States. Joining the New York bar he obtained a lucrative practice and in 1812-13 was attorney-general of New York; his abilities and success being such that Judge Story declared him to be "by universal consent in the first rank of American advocates." He died while conduct ing a case in court on Nov. 14, 1 82 7. Thomas Emmet married, in 1791, Jane, daughter of the Rev. John Patten, of Clonmel.
See authorities under EMMET, ROBERT; also Alfred Webb, Com pendium of Irish Biography (Dublin, 1878) ; C. S. Haynes, Memoirs of Thomas Addis Emmet (1829) ; Theobald Wolfe Tone, Memoirs, ed. W. T. W. Tone (2 vols., 1827) ; W. E. H. Lecky, Hist. of Ireland in the r8th Century, vol. iv., 5 vols. (1892).