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BALTIMORE:... J. MURPli , MM I .1. V. FOWLER, PRINTER, CROW STREET, DAME STREET, DUBLIN. 205322 CONTENTS. M E M 1 B S IX SECOND SERIES. MEMOIR OF THEOBALD WOLFE TONE. CHAPTER L Origin, education, and early career. — His marriage — Contributions to Lon- don mngazine* — first Literary production. — Embarrassment*: Connection with Catholic Committee; with the Whig Club; with the Society of United Irishmen. — Mr. Arthur Wellesley's first speech in the Irish Par- liament in favour of Catholic Emancipation in 171)3 ; members of Catho- lic Committee. — Tone's soubriquets for his political associates.— Catholic Convention. — Belfast Politics. — Declaration of first Society of United Irishmen drawn up by Tone. — His organization of the society, in con- junction with Russell and Neilson. — Formation of Ulster and Lein- ster Directories. — Thurot's descent on the coast of Antrim. — Early rela- tions of political parties in Ireland with the French government. — Idem in 1794, 179G, and 1797. — Jackson's mission to Ireland. — Tone, Reynolds, and Rowan implicated in it. — Notice of the Abbe Barthelemy. — Tone's Memoir of the State of Ireland for the French government. — His communications with Jackson. — Lord Fitzwilliam's recall. — Tone ex- iled. — Departure for America. — His previous engagements with Jolm Keogh, Thomas A. Emmet, and Richard M'Cormick, to proceed to France to solicit French aid. — The garden scene in Rathfarnham ; similar one on the Cave Hill, Belfast. — Dr. M'Donnell of Belfast ; bis account of Tone's views as to separation, etc. . . 1-30 CHAPTER II. i one s arrival in America ; his departure; his mission in France. — Early betrayal of secrets of United Irishmen. — The informer Maguan. — Tone's communications in France with the French government ; with the Ame- rican tanbammdm Monro; with Madgett, General Clarke, Colonel Shee, General Hoche, Carnot, Charles La Croix. — His suspicions of Duckett. — His diaries; account of his negociations with the Directory for an expe- dition to Ireland ; his efforts during seven months for the accomplish- ment of that object; his success. — Appointed chef de brigade, and sub- sequently adjutant-general. — Proceeds with Iloche to Brest. . 3U-5-'» JV CONTENTS. CHAPTER HI. Preparations for Bantry Bay expedition at Brest. — Attempt to assassinate Hoche. — Hoche's complaints against Admiral Villaret Joyeuse. — Of his procrastination and the impediments he caused in the preparations for the expedition. — Notice of Admiral Joyeuse. — Departure of the expe- i lit ion the 16th December, 1796. — Tone embarks on Board the Indomi- table frigate. — The expedition consists of seventeen sail of the^line; ten frigates and seven or eight transports ; number of men embarked, fif- teen thousand one hundred, with forty-five thousand stand of arms, am- munition, artillery, etc. — Separation of the fleet. — Tone with about half the vessels that composed the expedition reach Bantry Bay. — General Grouchy, chief in command, declines to land his force of about six thou- sand men. — "French ships remain six days in the bay, within five hun- dred yards of the shore, without having seen a single English vessel of war. — The expedition of thirty-five sail reduced to fourteen after a suc- cession of violent gales of wind. — On the 29th of December, 1796, the signal given to put to sea and return to Brest. — End of the famous Ban- try Bay expedition. . 56-74 CHAPTER IV. Tone's affairs in France and Holland, from January to July, 1797. — Arrival of his family from America in Holland. — Marriage of his sister Mary. — His letters to Mrs. Tone and his children. — His journals during the time he was attached to the Batavian army, from June to October, 1797. — His account of the preparations for the Dutch expedition at the Texel. — His conferences at Paris with Lewins the " Minister from Ireland", from the Leinster Directory of United Irishmen. — Failure- of the Dutch expedition, and destruction of the fleet commanded by De Winter by the English fleet under Admiral Duncan, 11th October, 1797 Formation of the army called L'Armee d'Angleterre, and appointment of Bonaparte to command it. Tone writes to Bonaparte offering his services, which are accepted. — His introduction to Bonaparte by General Desaix. — The Irish refugees in Paris Tone's complaints of Tandy and Quigley. — Letters from William Tone in India. — References to young Arthur Tone's ad- ventures. — End of Tone's journals. — His opinions of Russell, Emmet, Keogh, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, O'Connor, and others. — The Duke of Wellington's opinions of Tone's journals to Rogers. — Bonaparte's views respecting Ireland. — Tone sent for by the Directory in May, 1798, to assist in the organization of a new expedition against Ireland under Ge- neral Humbert. — Another expedition against Ireland under General Hardy sailed in September, 1798, with a force of three thousand men. — ■ Of this small squadron four vessels arrived. — In one of these, the Hoche, 74, Tone had embarked. .... 74-109 CHAPTER V. Bonaparte's mistaken views respecting Ireland. — Hardy's and Humbert's expeditions and then results.— Notice of Matthew Tone, his trial and t CONTENTS. execution. — T. W. Tone's opinion of the hopelessness of Hardy's expedi- tion previous to liis embarkation on board the Heche. — His design to an- ticipate Ids fate in the event of failure. — His conduct on board the Hoche during the engagement with the English fleet. His capture on board the Hocke. — Recognised and denounced by a gentleman said to have been a fellow-student of his at College. — Notice of Sir George F. Hill. — Secret service money references. — Tone put in irons and impri- soned in Deny. — His protest against Lord Ca van's conduct. — Sent to Dublin in irons. — Tried by Court Martial.— His address to the Court. — His conviction.— His execution ordered.— Found the following morning mortally wounded by his own hand. — Proceedings in the King's Bench to arrest his execution. — Conduct of Major Sandys. — Notice of Sandys' career subsequent to 1 70S — His prosecution at the suit of Ilevey. 110 CHAPTER VI. Curran's relations with the United Irishmen. — Tone's letters to his friends after his conviction. — Unfounded suspicions in regard to Tone's death. — Attendance on him of Dr. Lentaigne.— Notice of Dr. Lentaignc. — Tone's death and burial. — Monument over his remain! at Bodenstown. — Inscrip- tion on his tomb, written by Davis. — Lines on Tone's grave by Davis. — Bushe's testimony to Tone's talents. — Tone's literary and political pro- ductions. — His lines, u "When Borne by dividing had conquered the world". — Notice of Mrs. Tone. — Her letters. — Notice of the career of young Tone. — Letters of Mrs. Tone to the author. — Notice of the father of T. W. Tone, and of his son William Tone. — Surviving relatives of T. W. Tone. — Letters of William Tone to his father. — Account of Mary Tone and of her brother Arthur. — Reference to an informer in the pay of Mr. Pitt, who. under the signature of O, kept Ins master duly in- formed of the movements of Tone and his associates in Paris in 1797 andl79S. — Close of the career and notice of the character of the widow of T. W. Tone. . . . . . 13G MEMOIR OF HAMILTON ROWAN. CHAPTER L Origin and early career of Archibald Hamilton Rowan. — His marriage and return to Ireland.— The case of Mary Neil and Lord Carhampton. — Affair of honour with Lord Carhampton. — Origin of Rowan's connection with United Irishmen.— Duel of Dowiing with Peter Burrowes — Expla- nation demanded of Lord Clare. — Threatened prosecution in 1792. — Arrest of Rowan in 1792. — Proceedings against Rowan.— Debut in public life of Mr. John Giflard.— Giffard's first services in packing juries.— Rowan's trial and Curran's defence.— The Jury Packing system.— Rowsn implicated in Rev. W. Jackson's treason. — Rowan's escape from New- gate.— Reward for Rowan's apprehension.— Mrs. Sweetman's narrative vi CONTENTS. of his escape. — Complaints of Boatmen.— Proposed subscription.— State- ment to R. R. M. of the son of James Murray, one of the boatmen who accompanied Kowan to Prance. — Horrors of the French Revolution. — Rowan proceeds to America. — Renewed acquaintance with Tone — Lord Clare's efforts in behalf of Rowan.— Refusal of the latter to retract his Opinions. — Permission to proceed to Hamburgh. — His memorial to the King.— His opinions on the Union. — Terms of pardon of A. H. Rowan. — His return to Ireland. — His connection with the Roman Catholic Asso- ciation. — Attack on Rowan in Parliament. — C. II. Hutchinson's and Brougham's defence of Rowan. — An explanation demanded by Rowan of G. R. Dawson. — Dawson's apology to Rowan. — Letter of an American Quaker friend to Rowan in regard to his unsubdued fighting propensities. — Captain Hamilton's remonstrance to Peel. — Death of Mrs. Rowan. — Notice of Captain Hamilton, R.N.— Death of Captain Hamilton— Death of A. H.Rowan. ..... 174-227 MEMOIR OP ARTHUR O'CONNOR. CHAPTER I. Origin, early career, and connection with the Society of United Irishmen Claimed descent of the Conners of Bandon from the O'Connor sept. — Family of Roger Conner, of Connerville. — O'Connor's account of his career and associates. — Refusal of the offer of place as Commissioner in the Revenue, with a promise of the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. — Letter of A. O'Connor to the author.— His jealousy of Ms associates and all competitors with him for popularity. — His animosity to O'Connell. — His injustice to T. A. Emmet. — References to Thomas A. Emmet of W. M — The Press and its contributors. . . . 228-241 CHAPTER II. Organs and pensmen of the Society of United Irishmen of Dublin.— The Press and its writers : Notices of Deane Swift and Dr. Drennan.— The Union Star and Walter Cox.— The origin of The Press.— -The printer of The Press pilloried. — Escape of Sirr from assassination. — Stockdale's connection with The Press.— Serjeant Downes arrested, tried by court- martial, and shot.— Letter of O'Connor in The Press.— O'Connor's views in establishing The Press — Denunciations of torture in The Press.— Notice of William Orr.— Letter of Miss M'Cracken to her brother in regard to Orr's trial.— The letter signed Marcus in The Press ascribed to Mr. Deane Swift. Notice of Theophilus Swift and his sons. His war- fare with the Fellows of Trinity College.— Notice of Dr. Drennan.— Notice of Walter Cox and the Union Star, an Irish Magazine.— Notice of Dr. John Brenan in the Milesian Magazine.— Notice of John Giffard and the Dublin Journal— Impunity accorded to Orange outrages by the government in 1798.— Murder of Mr. Ryan, of Watling Street, by yeo- manry cavalry.— Trial and acquittal of the murderers. . 241-296 CONTENTS. Vll CHAPTER III. O'Connor's flight from Ireland in February, 1798 His arrest at Maid- stone. — Trial and acquittal. — Condemnation of the priest Coigly. — O'Con- nor's re-arrest — Transmission to Ireland Compact of the state prisoners with the government. .... 297-310 CHAPTER IV. Examinations and evidence of Arthur O'Connor before the Secret Commit- tees of the House of Lords and House of Commons in 1796. . 310-327 CHAPTER V. O'Connor's protest against the broach of the compact entered into with the state prisoners by the government. — Removal to Port George. — Im- prisonment there for three years and three months. — Liberation on the eoast of Holland. — His relations in France with William Putnam MCabe. — Liberation of the other state prisoners. — O'Connor's career in France. — His political prlueiples and intellectual character. . 323-337 CHAPTER VI. Notice of the latest work of General O'Connor— Monopoly the Cause of all Evil — published in 1818; extraordinary opinions and extravagant ideas therein propounded.— O'Connor's polemics. — His defence^of United Irish- men O'Connor's ideas on British ride in India. — His jealousy of his associates.— End of the career of General O'Connor. . 337-358 MEMOIR OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD. CHAPTER L Origin and early career of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. — Notice of his family. — Lord Edward enters the army. — Military career in America. — " The faitlif ul Tony". — Lord Edward's application to military science. — His first acquaintance with Major Sirr. — His Canadian life Lord Edward's views of life in the woods of Canada. — His early engagements. — Return to Ireland. — His abode at Sweet Frescati". . . 359-370 CHAPTER II. Lord Edward's parliamentary career. — Relations with the Duke of Rich- mond — Lord Edward's part in the debate on the Insurrection Act. — His address to electors of Kildare. — His secession from parliament. — Squab- bles of factions. — G rattan's denunciation of the government and the par- liament of jobbers in 1790 " as the ringleaders of sedition placed in au- thority" How bad rulers "cut up governments by the roots" — The Whig leaders in England on the verge of sedition in 179G-7. 370-380 viii CONTENTS. chapter hi. Lord E. Fitzgerald's visit to Paris in October, 1702.— Connection with Tom Paine.— Practical acquaintance with the horrors of the Revolution. — Part taken by him in the celebration of the victories of the Re- public.— Renounces his title. — Toasts given by Lord Edward at a banquet given by the English in Paris — His dismissal from the army. — Eis marriage with Pamela, the reputed daughter of Madame de Genlis and Philip Joseph (Egalite), Due d'Orleans.— Leaders who are serene when the sea of politics is calm, disordered and disturbed when the tem- pest of unbridled passions sets in.— Epidemic madness prevalent in revo- lutions. ...... 380-385 CHAPTER IV. ( onncction of Lord Edward Fitzgerald with the Society of United Irish- men. — Rev. Mr. Connolly and W. Murphy at Frescati. — Rencontre with military swashbucklers of O'Connor and Lord Edward on the Curragh. 386-387 chapter v. ( onncction of Lord Edward 'with the Society of United Irishmen.— John Keogh and Richard M'Cormick, United Irishmen. — O'Connor and Lord Edward's mission to France in 1796. — Military organization of United Irishmen. — Armed strength of the United Irishmen. — Projected invasion of England.— Return of armed United Irishmen in 1798. — Conference between W. M. and Lord Edward in 1798. — Men who might have effected a revolution. ..... 388-399 CHAPTER VI. Various measures taken by Lord Edward to elude the vigilance of govern- ment, from the 12th of March to the 19th of May, 1798.— His draft of plan of military operations. — His places of concealment. — Conflict of Lord Edward's body-guard with Sirr's party.— Notices of Rattigan, Gal- lagher, and Palmer. — Reward for discovery of Lord Edward. 400-411 CHAPTER VII. Capture of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. — Narrative of Nicholas Murphy. — Suf- ferings and ruin brought on him by his services to Lord Edward — His appeal to the Duke of Leinster. — The end of his career.— His sister's indi- gence in her old age. — Her unsuccessful memorial to the Duke of Leinster. — Major Sirr, in 1833, leaves his card on the nephew of the man he shot in 1798.— The Duke thinks the Major " a good sort of man", as we are told by Moore. — Captain Ryan's death at the hands of Lord Edward His son's account of the capture of Lord Edward. . . 412-137 CHAPTER VIII. The betrayal of Lord Edward Fitzgerald.— Reference to the Secret Ser- vice money item : " June 20, 1798. F. H., Discovery of L. E. F., £1,000". CONTENTS. — Vindication of Samuel Neilson from tlie imputation of being the betrayer of his friend. — Mr. John Hughes's account of his commu- nications with Lord Edward while in concealment about a month before his arrest. — Notice of Hughes. — Ilis initials do not correspond with those of the person rewarded for the discovery of Lord Edward Notice of Reynolds, the informer, and his relations with Lord Edward. — Reasons for believing he was not the betrayer of that friend, though his son acknowledges liis father had " a sincere regard for his lordship*'. 437-447 CHAPTER IX. The imprisonment and death of Lord Edward Eitzgerald. — The Surgeon- General Stewart : his humanity. — Treatment of Lord Edward after his capture. — Last moments and death of Lord Edward. — Letter of Major- General Win. Napier to the author respecting the conduct of Lord Clare in relation to Lady Louisa Connolly and her visits to Lord Edward. — References to Walter Cox and his unaccountable proceedings after Lord Edward's arrest. . . .... 447-4GO CHAPTER X. Attainder of Lord Edward. — Ilis burial. — Notice of his character and tri- bute to his memory. — Lines written on his capture. — Portraits of Lord Edward. — Herbert's picture of Lord Edward's capture. — His seal. 460-475 CHAPTER XI. Notice of the origin and career of Pamela. — Early history of Madame la Comtessc de Genlis — Her relations with the family of the Due et Duehesse d'Orlcans. — Her position in the Palais Royal and the Convent of Belle-Chasse as gouverneur of the young Princes of Orleans, and gou- vernante of the Princess Adelaide. — Her usurpation of the place and pri- vileges of the Duchesse d'Orlcans, and the unfortunate results of her false position in the Orleans family. — Origin of M. de Genlis.— Her mar- riage. — Her introduction at court. — M. de Genlis and Marie Antoinette. Her entrance into the Palais Royal. — Astuteness of M. de Genlis. — Modest estimate of her own merits.— End of career of M. de Genlis. 475-488 CHAPTER XII. Madame de Genlis's account of the origin of Pamela. — Inventive faculties of the authoress of the " Memoires". — The romantic history and myste- ries of her adoption of young children in England and Prussia. —Alleged relations of a nearer and dearer kind of the young Pamela and Casimir with Madame de Genlis than those of eleves and gouvernante. — A new child by adoption of M. de Genlis. — Age of Pamela. — Her early education. — Pamela witnesses revolutionary scenes. . . . 488-490 CHAPTER XIII. Marriage of Pamela with Lord Edward Eitzgerald. — Her previous acquain- tance with, and prior engagement to Rici.ard Brinsley Sheridan. — Con- X CONTENTS. duct of Madame de Genlis in relation to that marriage. — The Due d'Orleans (EgaHtfy — His relations with M. de Genlis. — Madanie's ac- count of the marriage and early history of Pamela. — Marriage contract certificate discovered recently at Tournay. — Louis Philippe's statement respecting Pamela. ..... 499-514 CHAPTER XIV. Career of Lady Edward Fitzgerald after the death of her husband. — Pame- la's alleged visit to Lord Edward in prison. — Lord Clare's interview with Lord Edward in prison. — His children — Lady Edward's banishment from Ireland. — Pamela's forlorn situation after her husband's death. — Pamela and M. de Genlis. — Their relations after Lord Edward's death. — Madame Ducrest's account of Pamela. — Barere, the guardian of Pamela. 514-529 CHAPTER XV. Close of the career of Lady Edward Fitzgerald.— M. Ducrest's account of the last illness and death of Pamela. — M. la Baronne d'E. — Her account of Pamela. — Early portrait of Pamela, — Madame Larochejaquelin and Pamela. — Eoche's references to Pamela. — Tomb of Pamela. — Inscription and initials of the person by whom that tomb was inscribed — L. L. — Notice of Louis Laval Due de la Force. — Close of the career of Pa- mela. . .... i 529-551 MEMOIR OF THE REV. WILLIAM JACKSON. CHAPTER I. Origin of Mr. Jackson. — His relations with the Duchess of Kingston, the French government, the United Irishmen.— His trial, condemnation, and death — His acquaintance with Leonard MacNally and Mr. Pitt's agent, Cockayne.— Writings of Jackson. . . .552-568 MEMOIR OF LEONARD MACNALLY, ESQ. CHAPTER I. His origin and early career. — Connection with the United Irishmen. — Re- lations with the Irish government. — His services and their reward. — His literary and professional productions. — His death. — Fiant Book of Pen- sions, ...... 569-589 MEMOIR OF ROGER O'CONNOR. CHAPTER I. Anomalies in his character.— His early career.— Efforts of his brother, Mr. Robert Longfield O'Connor, to get him hanged in 1797. —Roger O'Con- CONTENTS. XI nor in 1798. — His imprisonment and trial.— Captivity in Fort George and release. — Anomalies in his character — socialist principles, philosophi- cal teaching. — Mode of instructing his children and enlightening his servants and labourers.— Dangan Castle and its vicissitudes. — Robbery of the mail-coach near Dangan. — Robbery of Colonel Burrowes' agent in the demesne. — Burning of the Castle. — His trial for the robbery of the mail-coach. — His grandiloquent political productions and literary for- geries. — His last illness. — Alleged adoption of the Roman Catholic religion. —Refutation of that statement. . . . 590-012 A P P i; X D I C E s I. The buying-up of Patriots : an Illustration of the Practice, and some Ob- servations on h< Policy. — The buying-off of Dr. Francis Jebb from the popular cause. ..... 613-017 II. Joel F. Hulbert. — Further particulars of the career of this informer. CI 7 III. Testimony to the abilities and excellent qualities of Theobald Wolfe Tone, borne by Charles Kendal Bushe in the Irish House of Commons. 618 IV. Experience of Sir Ralph Abercrombie and Sir John Moore of the Orange Regime and the Ascendency of Faction in Ireland. . 618-019 THE UNITED IRISHMEN, THEIR LIVES AND TIMES. MEMOIR OF THEOBALD WOLFE TONE. CHAPTER I. The subject of this memoir was the son of Peter Tone, a coach- maker, who carried on an extensive business in that line for some years at No. 44 Stafford Street, Dublin. His grandfather was a farmer in the county Kildare. The land, which he held on free- hold leases, was part of the estate of Mr. Wolfe, of Blackball, and lies between Sallins and Clane, within a few minutes' walk of the remains of the ruined church and the ancient burying-ground of Bodenstown. A part of the old dwelling-house of the Tones is yet standing, in sight of the mansion of the Wolfcs of Blackhall. Peter Tone's father was killed in 1766, by a fall from a corn stack : his eldest son, Peter, who had established himself in his business in Dublin, the same year came into possession of the farm, said to be worth about £300 a year, which he rented to a younger brother of his, Jonathan, a retired lieutenant of the 22nd regiment of foot. Another brother, Matthew, was brought up to the same business as Peter, and in 1784 had a coach making establishment at No. 126 Great Britain Street. It is stated in the Annual Re- gister, that Theobald, the eldest son of Peter Tone, was born in Stafford Street in 1763. But in the Dublin Directory the address of " Peter Tone, coachmaker, 44 Stafford Street", appears only from 1770 to 1781, and in the intermediate period, for a short time, in 1773, his family resided at 27 Bride Street, or lodged there. Peter Tone married, about 1761, a Miss Lamport, or Lambert, of Drogheda, the daughter of a captain of a merchant vessel in the West India trade. The farm near Clane, which he rented to his younger brother, became a source of contention and litigation between the brothers, which ended in a chancery suit, and, as a ii. 2 EARLY CAREER OF matter of course, in the ruin of the litigants. Peter Tone became insolvent, quitted Dublin, and in 1786 was living near Clane on the property that was about to pass away from him and his family. Of sixteen children of Peter Tone, five were then living —Theobald Wolfe, called after Mr. Theobald Wolfe, the lord of the manor (a near relation of Lord Kilwarden), born in Dublin, June 20, 1763 ; William, born in 1764 ; Matthew, in 1771 ; Mary, probably three or four years later; and Arthur, in 1782. While Peter Tone carried on the business of a coachrnaker in Stafford Street, an anecdote is related of a visit to his establish- ment of Lord Mornington, the father of our Great Captain, in which that nobleman is made to figure with the eldest son of the coachmaker, in a way anything but propitious to the casual ac- quaintance of the eccentric lord with the stripling, who had already begun to evince his very vivacious tendencies. There were extensive workshops attached to Tone's establishment. In one of these the celebrated lord, of musical celebrity, was standing one day with his back to the fire, dressed out in all the extrava- gant foppery of the day, with muff and ruffles, when little Theo- bald, then but three or four years old, who had been brought to the theatre by his mother the preceding evening, to see Wilks play the part of Jessamy, in the piece of Lionel and Clarissa, happened to come into the shop, and on seeing his lordship, the little imp cried out, in the hearing of Lord Mornington: " Oh ! mamma, mamma, come and look— here's Jessamy !" Theobald, William, and Matthew were sent to an excellent English school in Dublin, kept by Sisson Darling. The former, after continuing at this school for three years, was removed to another, kept in Henry Street, by the Rev. William Craig. In 1781 he entered Trinity College, under the Rev. Matthew Young. A rage for the military profession, nurtured and fo- mented by attendance at reviews, parades, and field exercises, had taken possession of Tone previously even to his having entered college. Before he was nineteen, he had gone out as second, with a college lad of the name of Foster, who shot a fellow pupil through the head, of the name of Anderson. There is a passage in Tone's diary, relative to his early life, which has been omitted in the Memoirs of his Life by his son (and properly so by him), which, however, before the publication of Tones memoirs in America, had found its way into a portion of the autobiography of Tone, that had been transmitted from America, and was published in the New Monthly Magazine, vol. ii., p. 3, 1824. I refer to the passage which alludes to Tone's early passion for theatricals, as throwing much light on the style of his journals, and the extraordinary exuberance of memory and THEOBALD WOLFE TONE 3 liveliness of imagination exhibited in the ready application of apposite citations from the popular dramatic writers of the day, to passing occurrences. It appears that, in 1783 and 1784, T. W. Tone had formed an acquaintance with a lady of rank and great personal attractions, Lady B., and, in his opinion, " of extra- ordinary talents for the stage", which she displayed in a private theatre fitted up in her own house. Tone being, in his own words, " somewhat of an actor", took a part in the representa- tions, became a constant visitor at the house, and at length, un- fortunately, an enamoured guest. The private theatricals were brought to a close, which had nearly proved of a tragic character, and Tone never beheld the lady more. But "no human passion", he said, "is proof against time and absence", and so it proved to be in his case. In 1785 he married a young creature, not sixteen years of age, " as beau- tiful as an angel", Matilda Witherington, whose sister, at a later period, wed the Tliomas Reynolds of secret service money celebrity. Tone, having taken out his degree of bachelor of arts, resigned his scholarship in the university, and began the study of law. He had obtained three premiums at college, and as many medals from the Historical Society, of which he was auditor, and one of its most distinguished ornaments. His intimacy with his wife's family having been interrupted, he quitted Dublin with his wile, and went to reside with his father in Kildare. In 1787 he pro- ceeded to London to enter his name as a student of law in the Temple. He took chambers in the Temple, at No. 4 Hare Court, and contrived to maintain himself partly bv contributing to the magazines. Several reviews of new publications, in the European Magazine of 1787-8, were written by him. He likewise wrote a satirical novel, burlesquing the style of writers of romance, in conjunction with two of his friends, Jebb and Ratcliffe, called Belmont Castle. At the Temple he made the acquaintance of the Honourable George Knox, son of Lord Northland, one of his future most attached friends. Instead of studying Coke and Blackstone, poor Tone's head was still running on military matters. The scheme occurred to him of establishing, on a military plan, a colony in one of the South Sea Islands, newly discovered. He drew up a memorial recommending the adoption of his proposal, and ad- dressed it to Mr. Pitt, with the intention, if adopted, of embarking in this project. Mr. Pitt took no notice of the project or the projector. _ Tone's circumstances became so embarrassed in London, and his wife's friends had so deceived him with regard to her pro- mised fortune, that he embraced the desperate resolution of enlisting as a common soldier in the East India Company's ser- I TONE AND THE WHIGS. vice. He proceeded to the India House with that resolution, and was informed that the season for sending out troops was past, and no more ships would be despatched until the beginning of the year following. He had now been two years at the Temple, and had kept eight terms, but as to law, " knowing exactly as much about it as he did of necromancy". An arrangement with his wifes family enabled him to return to Dublin. He purchased a law library, and took lodgings in Clarendon Street, in January, 1789, and in the Trinity term of that year was called to the bar. In the same year a decree in Chancery, instituted by his uncle Jonathan, gave the " coup-de-grace to his father's affairs"; all his property was sold, including two houses in Stafford Street and one on Summer Hill. Soon after this event Peter Tone obtained a situation in the Paving Board, which he retained to the period of his death. Theobald no sooner entered on his profession than he embarked in politics: his first pamphlet, in defence of the opposition and the Whig Club, A Review of the Last Sessions of Parliament, had some success. Overtures were now made to him by the friends of Mr. Ponsonby, and by some leading members of the Whig party, to attach himself to them, and to promote the interest of the latter. But no cordial union took place between Tone and the Whigs ; indeed it was impossible there could be any identity of operations, for there was no identity of principles, of views, or feelings between them. Tone set out in politics with the axiom of Swift and Molyneux, that " the influence of England was the radical vice of Irish government". The Whigs acted on the principle that the influence was salutary, but the mode of exerting it was pernicious to a certain extent, which could be remedied by diminishing pensions, abolishing some places, limiting the prerogative, rescinding penal statutes, and demolishing the outworks of corruption in the representative system. Tone " looked on the little politics of the Whig Club with great contempt". His next pamphlet, on the appearance of a war with Spain, was intended to prove that Ireland was not bound by the declaration of war made by England, but might and ought to stipulate for a neutrality. The publisher, Byrne, suppressed the pamphlet as one of a dangerous tendency, "for which his own gods damn him", says the writer of it. In the summer of 1790 Tone took a little cottage, in consequence of his wife's delicate state of health, at Irishtown, where, in a small circle of friends, the opinions were discussed, extended, and forti- fied, which had so important an influence on the state of Ireland a few years later. The parties to those discussions were his friend Thomas Russell, whose acquaintance he had made a short time previously in the gallery of the House of Commons ; the venerable TONE A>*D THE CATHOLICS. 5 lather of the latter, Captain Russell, occasionally his own brother William, from the county Kildare, who resided with his father at Clane, and Matthew, who had lately set up a cotton manufactory at Prosperous. In this year, with Russell's assistance, Tone drew up, and addressed to Lord Granville, an enlarged plan of his former scheme for the establishment of a military settlement in one of the Sandwich Islands, which " he still thought might be attended with the most beneficial consequences to England". Louis Phillippe, half a century later, has shown he entertained a similar opinion of the utility of such a settlement to France. The winter of 1790 Tone instituted a political club, composed of some re- markable men, including Messrs. Drennan, Stack, Pollock, Bur- rowes, John Whitley Stokes, and T. A. Emmet, u the first of his (Tone's) friends". The club did not go on prosperously : it died a natural death in a few months. In 1791, August 1, Tone pub- lished a pamphlet, called An Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland, by a Northern Wliig. Ten thousand copies were struck off in Belfast, and another edition in Dublin. This was one of the ablest productions in favour of the claims of Catholics that had yet appeared, and it has not been equalled by any subse- quent vindication of them. This pamphlet made Tone known advantageously in the north ; and in October of that year, he was invited to Belfast by the Volunteers of that town, whither he proceeded, in company with Russell, and, in conjunction with Neilson and others, founded the first club which took the name of the Society of United Irishmen. He then returned to Dublin, and in conjunction with James Napper Tandy and the Honourable Simon Butler, formed a similar society in the capital. In the spring of 1792, the Catholic Committee appointed Tone to the office of agent to their body, with the title of assistant secretary, then vacant by the resignation of Richard Burke, with a salary of £200 per annum. Tone's exertions in his new office were incessant and invaluable to the Catholics. His_ pejijg as never idle inw'riting_ a ddresses, manifestos^ a nd resolutions, irt favour of th eir causeT On the UTirbf July7~1792, Tone assisted at Belfast, in his Volunteer uniform, in the celebration of the success of the French Revolu- tion, and commemoration of the anniversary of the taking of the Bastile, when about six thousand Volunteers and inhabitants voted an address of congratulation to the French people. — In December, 1792, the Catholic Convention, under the name of the General Committee, assembled in Dublin. The scheme of this convention, which produced such extraordinary results, had been devised by Myles Keon, of Keon Brook, in the county of Leitrim ; but the energy, activity, talent, and intrepidity which 6 tone's NORTHERN associates. carried it into practical effect, through innumerable difficulties, party opposition, paltry fears, and base acts of perfidy, on the part of soi disant friends and advocates of the cause, were exhi- bited by T. W. Tone. With respect to his political views, when he formed the Northern and Leinster Societies of United Irish- men, he says, " he thinks it right to mention that at this time the establishment of a republic was not the immediate object of his speculations; his object was to secure the independence of his country under any form of government",* etc. But in the course of eighteen months, he gave practical proof of his opinions being in favour of republicanism, and indeed, from the commencement of his career, they seem to have been in that direction. In 1792, when Tone was the leading advocate of the Catholic cause, the sub-committee consisted of the following persons, all of whom are now dead: — John Keogh, Thomas Fitzgerald, Thomas Braughall, Edward Byrne, Randall M'Donnell, Thomas Ryan, M.D., Martin F. Lynch, Hugh Hamill, Denis Thomas O'Brien, Thomas Warren, John Sweetman, Secretary. The other foremost advocates of the Catholic cause in 1792, were: — The Honourable Simon Butler (subsequently proscribed, had to fly the country, and died in Wales) ; Major Edward Sweet- man (killed in a duel) ; Sir Thomas French (committed suicide) ; Edward Devereux; Christopher Bellew; William Coppinger; J. J. M'Donnell; Dr. M'Donnell; Dr. M'Dermott; Harvey Hay (hanged in 1798); Owen O'Connor; Luke Teeling (pro- scribed in 1798); O'Gorman; James Plunkett (proscribed in 1798, had to % the country) ; Richard M'Cormick (proscribed and a fugitive in 1798); Dr. William James M'Neven; and T. A.^ Emmet (banished); James Nangle; Sir Thomas Esmonde; William Todd Jones (proscribed and imprisoned in 1798). Tone, and the political friends with whom he was most inti- mately connected in public affairs, and also in social intercourse, were in the habit of designating each other by sobriquets which have been recorded by young Tone, in his father's Memoirs, vol. i., p. 136. In Tone's diary, from 1791 to 1795, they are of con- stant recurrence : — Mr. Hutton, or John Hutton P.P., Clerk of the Parish, The Draper, The Jacobin, . Theobald Wolfe Tone. Thomas Russell. William Sinclaire. Samuel Neilson. * " Tone's Life", vol. i., p. 55. TONE AND THE CATHOLIC QUESTION IN 1792. 7 The Tanner, The Hypocrite, The Irish Slave, The Keeper, The Tribune, The Vintner, Gog, Magog, The Pismire, The Czar, Robert Sirnms. Dr. M'Donnell. Thomas M'Cabe. Whitley Stokes. James Napper Tandy. Edward Byrne. John Keogh. Richard M'Cormick. Thomas Addis Emmet. Peter Burrowes. Of the preceding notabilities of the first society of United Irish- men, not one is now living. Tone committed suicide. Russell was executed. Neilson, Tandy, and Thomas A. Emmet died in exile. Dr. M'Donnell, Robert Simms, Thomas M'Cabe, William Sinclairc, Whitley Stokes, Edward Byrne, John Keogh, and Peter Burrowes died natural deaths in their own land.* — The first important movement of the Catholic leaders, the most important ever made by them, was the carrying into execu- tion the plan of taking the sense of all the Catholics of Ireland through the means of a convention. The project of appointing delegates for this purpose had been adopted at a meeting of the general committee, the 17th of March, 1792. The plan devised by Keon, and proposed by Theobald Wolfe Tone, according to Mr. Wyse, was in some respects analogous to one devised by his father in 1760.* Wyse's Catholic convention was to be a secret convocation of delegates ; they were to hold their hole-and-corner meetings wherever it was possible to escape detection. Tone's Catholic convention was to hold its sittings in face of day, in the metropolis, with all possible publicity ; and when tlie delegates were appointed to carry overt he petition to the king, Tone's in- fluence, and his sense of the important part he had played in bringing this project into execution, had the effect of parading the delegates through the north of Ireland, on their way to London from Dublin. At Belfast, the five delegates, Messrs. Keogh, Byrne, Devereux, Bellew, and French, were received with public honours ; the horses were taken from their carriage, and entertainments given them by the leading members of the United Irish Society. The earliest meeting of the delegates was in Taylor's Hall, Back Lane, Dublin, on the 2nd of December, 1792, on which occasion Dr. M'Neven first distinguished himself as an advocate of the claims of the great majority of his country- men. The Catholic convention of December, 1792, was, then, * W. Stokes died in April, 1845. t " Wyse's History of the Catholic Association", p. 104. 8 THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND virtually the work of Theobald Wolfe Tone * The power on which its leaders relied for resisting the opposition of the ascen- dency party, and daring to take so formidable a step, was the spreading influence of the northern societies, based on the prin- ciple of uniting Irishmen of all religious persuasions. This con- vention was to Catholic claims in 1792, precisely what the Clare election was to them in 1829 ; and it is singular enough to find the same man, whose clear perception distinguished the portentous signs of the times at the latter period, and who saw no alternative but Catholic emancipation or civil war, so far back as sixty-five years ago, coming forward in his place in the Irish parliament in favour of a similar measure, with the view of averting the evils with which the successful proceedings of the Catholic convention were evidently fraught. The Honourable Lieutenant Arthur Wellesley was returned for the borough of Trim in the latter part of 1790. During the two following years his name is not found in the reports of the debates, as having taken any part in them on any question. The first speech we find reported of his, was on the 10th of January, 1793, at the opening of the session.f The address to the throne was moved by the Earl of Tyrone. The Honourable Mr. Wellesley seconded the motion. He said: " That at a time when opinions were spreading throughout Europe inimical to kingly government, it behoved us in a particular manner, to lay before our gracious sovereign our determination to support and maintain the constitution ; he took notice that under the present reign this country had risen to a state of unexampled prosperity". He said that 44 the augmentation of the forces, as mentioned in the speech, had, from the circumstances of the times, become ne- cessary. He reprobated in very severe terms the conduct of the French toward their king, and their invasion of the territories of sovereign princes, and their irruption into the Austrian Nether- lands. He applauded the conduct of the administration of this country for issuing the proclamation of the 8th of November ; and he condemned the attempt of a set of men styling themselves national guards, appearing in military array — a set of men un- known in the country, except by their attempts to overthrow the government ; the conduct of the administration on that occasion entitled them to the confidence of the people. In regard to what had been recommended in the speech from the throne, respecting our Catholic fellow-subjects, he could not suppress expressing his approbation on that head ; he had no doubt of the loyalty of the * In the list of delegates, the name of Edward Madden (the author's father) figures as a delegate for the town of Enniskillen. t " Irish Parliamentary Debates", vol. xiii., p. 5. THE CATHOLIC QUESTION IN 1793. 9 Catholics of this country, and he trusted that when the question would be brought forward respecting that description of men, that we would lay aside all animosities, and act with moderation and dignity, and not with the fury and violence of partizans".* The bill for the relief of Roman Catholics was brought into the house in the following month. On the 25th of February a motion was made by a Mr. Graydon with reference to that bill, before it went into committee, " to limit the number of freeholders capable of voting at elections, to those possessing freeholds of £10 yearly value". Mr. Wellesley said, " He had no objection to giving the Roman Catholics the benefits of the constitution, and, in his opinion, the bill conferred them in an ample degree ; but the motion of the honourable gentleman seemed calculated to promote dis- union. With the bill as it stands, the Protestants are satisfied, and the Roman Catholics contented; why, then, agitate a question which may disturb both? It has been said that admitting the forty shilling freeholders of the Roman Catholic persuasion to vote at elections, will annihilate the Protestant establishment in Ire- land ; and he has founded this assertion upon a supposition that the Roman Catholics will, in voting, be directed by their priests ; but have not Roman Catholics, like Protestants, various interests and various passions by which they are swayed? The influence of their landlords, their good or bad opinion of the candidates, their own interests, and a thousand other motives? It appeared to him that they would not vote in a body, or as had been sup- posecl^if the bill should pass in the present form ; but if the motion of the honourable gentleman should be adopted, then, indeed, they would undoubtedly unite in support of Roman Ciitkoiiaiian- didates".f In the preceding year, on the presentation of the petition of the Roman Catholics of Ireland to the House, which was rejected by an overwhelming majority of 208 to 23, the solicitor-general, Mr. Toler, plainly expressed his opinion, that " the petition, though under a very modest guise, considering where it came from, he was inclined to suspect as a piece of the same principles" as those, he went on to state, " which were taught by political quacks who tell us that radical reformation was necessary in parliament. He had seen papers signed by Theobald M'Kenna, with Simon Butler in the chair, and Napper Tandy lending his countenance". " Such fellows" (to use the language of Lord Headfort) " were too despicable to notice, and therefore he should not drag them from their obscurity". In a subsequent part of the debate, in disclaiming supposed personal allusions to an honourable member, * " Debates of the Irish Parliament'", vol. xi., 1 793. t " Parliamentary Debates", vol. xiii. , p. 313. 10 TONE AND HIS CONNECTION WITH he said, " lie did not allude to him, but to that blasted society called United Irishmen".* The influence attributed to the reviled society in the accom- plishment of the Catholic Relief Bill was pretty obvious in the language of the members of the Irish parliament; and the introduction of the Convention Bill in the month of July, 1793, was indicative enough of the vindictive feelings entertained with respect to the means by which that measure of relief was effected. When his Majesty, in 1793, was pleased to recommend the case of his Roman Catholic subjects to the Irish parliament, Lord Chancellor Clare evinced his disposition towards the swinish multitude, as he termed the people on a previous occasion, in these words: " I did not expect", said he, " that any set of men would have dared to approach the throne with a gross and malig- nant deception upon the father of his people. I therefore seized this first opportunity to reprobate and detect it". In the progress of the debate, Mr. Forster, in the Commons, attributed to the fact of rousing and supporting this claim, all kinds of plots and conspi- racies; and in the Lords, the Archbishop of Cashel, who had previously declared in the House that " the Roman Catholic reli- gion was a religion of knaves and fools", strenuously opposed the motion. Tone, at the time the establishment of a political society in Bel- fast had been determined on, had never been in that town ; he was only known there as a writer whose pen had been employed in the service of the Whig Club and in behalf of the Catholics. In the spring of 1791, his friend Russell having been appointed to an ensigncy on full pay in the 64th regiment of foot, then quartered in Belfast, visited that town, and became acquainted with many of the popular members of the Volunteer Association. At their instance he wrote to Tone to draw up a declaration, in which the Catholic question was to be noticed in favourable terms. Tone complied with this request, but when the declaration came to be read by the Belfast Volunteers, the passage alluding to the settlement of the Catholic claims, "for the sake of unanimity, was withdrawn for the present".t This was the first connection of Tone with the politics of Bel- fast, and it probably recommended him to Neilson, and those who thought with him on the subject of Catholic emancipation. In the beginning of October, 1791, Tone states that " he was invited to spend a few days in Belfast, in order to assist in framing rules and declarations of the first club of United Irishmen, and to culti- * " Irish Parliamentary Debates", vol. xii , p. 202. * See " Tone's Life", by his Son, American edition, vol. i., p. 51. THE TOLITICS OF BELFAST. 11 vate a personal acquaintance with those men whom, though he highly esteemed, he knew as yet but by reputation".* In consequence of this invitation, he went down with his friend Russell (who at this time, having quitted the army, had returned to Dublin), and on arrival at Belfast, the persons whom he names as " having some reasons to esteem himself particularly fortunate in forming connections with", were Samuel Neilson, Robert and William Sims, William Sinclair, and Thomas M'Cabe, " the men most distinguished for their virtue, talent, and patriotism". He proceeds to say: " We formed our club, of which I wrote the declaration, and certainly the formation of that club commenced a new epoch in the politics of Ireland".t After remaining about three weeks in Belfast, Tone and Rus- sell returned with instructions to cultivate the leaders in the popu- lar interest, being Protestants, and, if possible, to form in the capital a club of United Irishmen. It is evident that the idea of forming the society of United Irishmen originated with Samuel Neilson, met with the concurrence of Henry Joy M'Cracken and Thomas Russell, was adopted by the Simses, M'Ticr, M'Cabe, Hazlitt, and Sinclaire; that Tone reduced that plan into form, and acted at the onset, in the organization of it, in accordance with the views previously taken up of those already named, and in connec- tion, a little later, with other members of considerable influence from their wealth and station in the town. In fact, strictly speaking, Samuel Neilson was the originator, and Tone the organizer, of the society, the framer of its declara- tion, the pensman to whom the details of its formation were in- trusted. The object of Tone in assisting in the formation of the Belfast and Dublin societies is not to be mistaken — he clearly announces it in his diary. In concluding the account of the part he took in the formation of the foimer, he plainly states, " to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assist the independence of my country — these are my objects"4 That Russell was acquainted with his views, we have a proof in the letter addressed to him by Tone in the early part of 1791, which fell into the hands of the government^ Whatever the re- publican tendencies of Neilson and his associates may have been, the probability is, that although, if they had the power of choosing a form of government, they would have given the preference to a republic over any other, they had at the beginning no definite object beyond parliamentary independence, reform, and emanci- pation. Tone's influence in the Belfast societies suffered no dimi- * " See Tone's Life*', vol. i., p. 53. t Ibid, vol. i., p. 54. } Ibid., vol. i., p. 51. § " Commons' Report from Secret Committee", Appendix, p. 11. 12 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY OF UNITED IRISHMEN. nution during his stay in Ireland ; but in Dublin, bis republican opinions had a very different effect. With few exceptions, the principal leaders of the society which Tone had just formed, were apprehensive of being committed by his opinions. He says: " The club was scarcely formed before I lost all pretensions to anything like influence in their measures".* We find by Tone's account of his first visit to Belfast, in Octo- ber, 1791, that before the United Irish Society was yet organized, there was a secret committee of the leading political men of the popular party in the town. " Their mode of doing business was by a secret committee, who are not known or suspected of coopera- ting, but who in fact direct the secret movements of Belfast".t The members of this secret committee were William Sinclaire, Samuel Neilson, William M'Cleery, Thomas M'Cabe, William Sims, Robert Sims, Henry Hazlitt, William Tennent, — Campbell, Gilbert M'llveen. On the 14th of October, 1791, Thomas Russell and T. W. Tone were admitted members of it. It was at the meeting on this occasion the arrangements for the first public meeting of the Bel- fast Club of United Irishmen were entered into. M'Tier to be in the chair, — Sinclair to move the resolutions, Sims to second them, Neilson to move the printing, and Tone and Russell to state the sentiments of the people of Dublin.J On the 18th of October, the meeting took place, and Tone having dined with Neilson, attended it. The club consisted of thirty-six members originally, and six new members were pro- posed on this occasion. The counterfoil of a certificate of mem- bership in the society of United Irishmen of Theobald Wolfe Tone in my possession of a mnch later date (given me by Miss M'Cracken of Belfast) is thus filled up : "First Society of United Irishmen, No. 20, granted to Theobald Wolfe Tone, 10th of June, 1795. " H. I. M'C " Thod. Wolfe Tone". The latter signature is in the handwriting of T. W. Tone. As Tone was a member of the Belfast society from the date of its for- mation, it must be concluded that it was after the society changed its organization that this certificate of the 4th of June, 1795, was of the newly organized society which was given to him. A committee of correspondence was formed, the latter part of * " Tone's Life 1 ', vol. i., p. 55. t Ibid., vol. i., p. 143. X Ibid., Wasliington edition. ORIGIN OF SOCIETY OF UNITED IRISHMEN. 1791, which consisted of Neilson, M'Tier, Hazlitt, and Sims. The chief business done was entering into communication with the Ca- tholic Committee, and soliciting the cooperation of the Dublin popu- lar leaders. An erroneous impression generally prevails with respect to the direction of the affairs of the United Irish societies through- out the country. The directory of the Leinster societies, the prin- cipal members of which, subsequently to 1796, were O'Connor, M'Neven, Emmet, Bond, and others of the Dublin leaders at diffe- rent periods, it is commonly supposed was the only one in existence ; such however is not the fact. Ultimately there were four nominal directories, one for each of the provinces ; but two only were re- gularly organized. The Ulster directory was the first established. The principal members of the Ulster directory were Samuel Neil- son, two merchants of the name of Sims, and Dr. White, now re- siding in America. The Minister directory was only in existence a short time before the suppression of the rebellion. The Con- naught directory was likewise of short duration, and its action was more limited than any of the others. The Ulster directory was formed the beginning of 1795. In 179G, Oliver Bond was asso- ciated with its other members, and at a later period, Arthur O'Connor, and Lord E. Fitzgerald. In O'Connors examination, he states that " he acted with that association in conducting the afiairs of the union, and when the Leinster organization was com- pleted, early in 1797, he was regularly elected a member of that executive, though he declined to act officially. He, however, con- tinued in the confidence of the union, and was consulted by them on all affairs of moment".* The circumstances of the early existence of the Ulster directory, and the emanation from it of the most important measures, subse- quently taken up, and attempted to be carried into effect by the Leinster directory, is worthy of notice. These measures, it is generally imagined, originated with the latter. Arthur O'Connor became a member of the Leinster directory in November, 1796; Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and the late Lord Cloncurry (I state on the authority of the latter), were nominated at the same time ; T. A. Emmet was not appointed till January, 1797 ; and Dr. J. W. M'Neven about the same period. " None of them were members of the united system previously to September or October, 1796 M . In November, 1796, Arthur O'Connor, accompanied by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, visited Belfast on the occasion of the former offering himself as a candidate for the representation of the county of Antrim. They took a house in the immediate vicinity of Belfast, and resided there for some months. During their stay, * '-Lords' Report, 1798". Examination of state prisoners. L4 FOREIGN AID tKeir intercourse with the Belfast leaders prepared the way for the combined action of the Dublin and northern societies. But long previously to their arrival, foreign aid for the accomplishment of their designs was contemplated by both directories. The nature of the negociations between parties in Ireland and the French government at various times, is well deserving of attention, and a rapid sketch of former applications of a similar kind may not be uninteresting or uninstructive. From the period of the armament afforded by Louis XIV. to James II., when 6,000 French troops landed at Kinsale, under the command of Count Lauzun, the 14th March, 1689, no hos- tile attempt had been made on the coast of Ireland until the 21st February, 1760, when Commodore Thurot arrived in the Bay of Carrickfergus on a marauding expedition, with three vessels of war, the Belleisle, of 44, the Blonde, of 32, and Terpsichore, of 24 guns, and landed between 700 and 800 men at Kilroot Point, about two miles east of Carrickfergus. The Castle ^ of Carrick- fergus was taken by the enemy after a slight resistance ; the total amount of its force consisting only of 138 persons under arms. On the 22nd of February, Thurot despatched an officer with a flag of truce to Belfast, demanding a supply of provisions to the amount of £1,500 sterling for his troops, and menacing both Belfast and Carrickfergus with destruction if his application was refused. An answer was returned that the application would be complied with. On the 23rd a part of the provisions were sent; and on the 25th, news having reached the French general that the troops were marching against him from Belfast, he reem- barked with his men, and immediately set sail. On the 28th the French squadron was attacked and captured off the Isle of Man by the Eolus, Pallas, and Brilliant frigates, under the com- mand of Captain Elliot, and Thurot was killed in the action. Thurot was a grandson of an Irish officer of the name of Farrell, who had served in the army of James II., and had fled to France with his master, where he died. He left an only son, who was brought up at Boulogne by his mother's family under their name. He married at Boulogne, and his son, Mons. Thurot, at an early age went to England, and forming some connection with a smuggler at Anglesea, he occasionally went in command of his vessels. From Anglesea he proceeded to Carlingford, and transacted the business of his employer there for about a year. He then went to Ireland, lived for two years in the service of Lord B , subsequently in the service of Lord Antrim, and once more, after a short time, took .to the old smuggling business. From 1748 till 1752 he traded between London and Boulogne, SOUGHT AT VARIOUS TIMES. 15 and was at length arrested at the latter place on a charge of smuggling. Alter suffering imprisonment at Boulogne and Dun- kirk, he was sent to Paris, underwent an examination as to the best means of stopping contraband trade, was liberated, got the command of a sloop of war and of the small squadron which was captured by Captain Elliot.* The news of the landing of the French caused the gentry of the counties Antrim, Down, and Armagh to enrol their tenants and dependents in volunteer corps, and these, to the number of 5,352, were provided with arms, and marched to Carrickfergus, within four da) r s of the capture of that place by the enemy. On that occasion, the tenants of Lord Charlemont, armed and clothed at their own expense, took the field, and the appearance of these armed peasants, on their march to Carrickfergus, his lordship says, " was singular and formidable". This was not the first enrolment of the northerns in volunteer companies. In 1745, when the news of the rebellion in Scotland reached Belfast, se- veral independent companies were formed. In the preceding occurrences may be traced the events which made the possibility of obtaining foreign aid familiar to the nor- thern malcontents, and likewise the necessity of banding together the people in military associations, obvious to those whose loyalty was animated by a detestation of " Popery and arbitrary power". It had long been the custom to attribute every popular movement in Ireland to the influence of French politics. The author from whose excellent history of Carrickfergus the preceding account of Thurot's attempt is chiefly taken (Samuel M'Skimmin), labours under the old delusion. He maintains that the Defenders were in open communication with the French, and had made overtures to the government of that country for the invasion of Ireland. There can be no doubt that it was the object of France to keep alive the fear of invasion both in England and in Ireland, to ex- haust, by all possible means, the resources of the country, and to waste its energies in preparations for resisting invasions, which, with the exception of Conflans' meditated descent, for nearly 200 years prior to 1796, had no existence but in the minds of the ene- mies of the king's peace, and of his people in Ireland.! M'Skimmin asserts that an early treasonable intercourse was kept up between Ireland and France, and that the Defenders had sought French aid. He likewise refers to a passage in the Gen- * Vide "Annual Register", 1760. t In 1536 foreign assistance was sought by Thomas Fitzgerald, then in rebel- lion, whose father, the Earl of Kildare, was at that time a prisoner in the Tower of London. The messenger employed was Dominick Power, of Waterford : his mission was to the Emperor Charles V., u to crave his aid to conquer Ireland. FOREIGN AID SOUGHT AT VARIOUS TIMES. tlemcms Magazine of 1792, page 1211, as affording proof that in November, 1792, a treasonable correspondence was opened with France by the political leaders of Belfast. On referring to the passage in question, it will be found that some of the Belfast societies had followed the example of the London Corresponding Society in sending congratulatory addresses to the National As- sembly of France ; but no communication with France of the kind mentioned by M'Skimmin, is there any evidence of ever having taken place. The address referred to, and the reply of the President of the National Assembly, will be found at page 191 of the former series of this work. Another authority on which he rests is that of Sir R. Musgrave, who states that "in 1791 and 1792 Rabaud de St. Etienne, the bosom friend of Brissot, the famous leader of the Girondist party in the French National Assembly, passed some time between Dublin and Belfast, sowing the seeds of future com- bustion". In the autobiography of A. H. Rowan, it is certainly stated that about December, 1792, an offer was sent from the French Conven- tion, directed " to the popular leaders in Ireland", stating that they would deposit in any bank in Europe the pay of 40,000 men for six months, on the condition that the Irish would declare an absolute independence of England; but the agent appears to have met with no encouragement. In M'Neven's Pieces of Irish History, the same circumstance is also repeated, and its occurrence is dated " the summer of 1793". In the Report of the Commons' Secret Committee it is stated, " that previous to the summer of 1796 no formal and authorized communication appears to have taken place between the Irish executive and the French government, though Jackson had been sent by the latter to Ireland in 1794".* In the summer of 1796 Lord Edward Fitzgerald, accom- panied by O'Connor, proceeded by Hamburgh to Switzerland, and O'Connor, who entered France without his companion, had an interview with General Hoche, the object of his mission being to apply for assistance in men and arms from the French Directory. ^ In the March of 1797, Lewins was sent to France as the accredited agent of the Irish union. In June, 1797, a second He presented him with twelve great hawks, and fourteen fair hobbies ; but the emperor informed him that he came too late, for that his father, the Lord Thomas, and five of his uncles, had been executed at London, the 3rd of February". The emperor subsequently sued Henry VIII. to permit Power to return to his country. His pardon was granted, but Mr. Power prudently declined to return. The tender mercies of Henry VIII. in regard to the father and five uncles of his friend Fitz- gerald seem to have made some impression on his mind. He remained on the Continent, and died at Lisbon.— Smith's Hist, of Waterford, p. 129. * "Report of the Secret Committee", 1798. SECRETS BETRAYED OF THE FRENCH DIRECTORY. 17 asrent, Dr. M'Neven, was despatclied with the necessary creden- tials to the French minister at Hamburgh, with increased earnest- ness, urging their application on the French government, and in- structed to negociate, if possible, a loan of half a million, or at least £300.000. The force solicited was one not exceeding 10,000, nor less than 5,000, with 40,000 stand of arms, and the assistance of such Irish officers as were then in the French service. The identical memorial presented by M'Neven to the French minister, and a copy of which exists in the French foreign de- partment, was shown by Lord Clare to M'Xeven, on his exami- nation before the Committee. It becomes a matter of curiosity to know something of the members of the Directory at that period, namely, in June, 1797. The inquiries, however, might, perhaps, be limited to the career and character of only one of them.* In April, 1794, the Rev. William Jackson, an emissary of the French, arrived in Dublin, accompanied by Mr. John Cockayne, a London solicitor of Lyons Inn, on a treasonable mission. He had received his instructions from an Irishman, named Madgett, long settled in France, and employed in the office of minister for foreign affairs. Jackson had been residing in Paris, — a man verg- ing on 5(5 or 58 years of age, of ruined fortune, unfitted for his pro- fession, and hopeless of any preferment in it. His treasonable mis- sion extended to England, and commenced in that country. He was furnished in Paris with letters of introduction to John Home Tooke and a Dr. Crawford; these, however, for some unexplained reason, had not been delivered by him. His mission, as far as England was * The Marquis Barthelemy was born in 1750. He was appointed secretary of legation at the court of Stockholm, subsequently at the court of St. James, and for a short time charge d'affaires. He was again sent to London to announce the acceptation of the constitution by Louis the Sixteenth. He negociated the peace with Prussia in 1795, and subsequently with Spain, and also with the Elector of Hesse. In April, 1796, he was appointed to negociate for peace with Mr. Wick- ham, and was unsuccessful. In June, 1797, he was elected a member of the Di- rectory, was arrested the same year, and was transported to Cayenne, escaped six months afterwards to the United States, ana" from that country proceeded to Eng- land. The Directory placed him on the proscribed list of emigrants. After the revolution of the 18th Brumaire he returned to France, and was named vice-presi- dent of the senate, " conservateur"', and count of the empire; in 181-1, president of the senate, and filled this office when the " decheance" of Napoleon and his fa- mily was proclaimed in the senate : on the restoration of Louis the Eighteenth, promoted to the rank of grand officer of the legion of honour, 4th January, 1815. During the Hundred Days he«was left in retirement. On the return of Louis the Eighteenth he was created marquis. In 1819 he proposed a memorial to the king to restrict the franchise, on account of the too great extension of it by the article of the charter, which gave that privilege to every citizen paying 300 francs of di- rect taxes. His proposal was rejected as an anti-national one, and the year fol- lowing it was carried by the ministry. In 1S25 he was still living. — Biographie des Contemporaini, tome i. p. 257 II. • 3 18 JACKSON, COCKAYNE, AND M'NALLY. concerned, was unfavourable to the objects lie had in view, and he wrote to that effect letters, addressed to Mr. John Stone and Mr. Benjamin Berrcsford, both engaged in commercial affairs in Paris, cognizant of his mission, and in communication, it would appear, with the French government. Mr. Berresford was married to a sister of Archibald Hamilton Rowan. Cockayne had been an old friend and legal adviser of Jackson, and possessed the entire con- fidence of the latter, and thus had the secret of Jackson's treason- able mission communicated to him. Cockayne, from motives of loyalty, as he alleged, lost no time in turning his old friend and client to some account, communi- cated Jackson's secret mission to Mr. Pitt, and stipulated to be guaranteed against losses he might incur, to the extent of £300. Cockayne was a prudent as well as a loyal attorney. Jackson owed him, as he subsequently stated, from £250 to £300; and as he must lose the amount of this debt if his old friend and client the debtor was hanged, he discreetly secured himself, and had Mr. Pitt pledged to the indemnity. By Mr. Pitt's instructions, Cockayne accompanied Jackson to Ireland on his mission of treason, with a free pardon in his pocket, as far as he (Cockayne) was concerned, for all acts of treason that might be done by him while engaged on that mission — attending Jackson, watching all his movements, and allowing him full scope for communication with all parties in Ireland, he chose to com- municate with. Jackson brought with him a letter of introduction to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, of which fact the government appear to have had no knowledge, and Tone in his journals makes no allusion to it. That Jackson was wholly unexpected by the po- pular leaders in Dublin may be inferred from the circumstance that Tone and others of his party at first were disposed to believe that J ackson was an agent of the British government. In a copy of Emmet's and M'Neven's Pieces of Irish History, purchased at the sale of Hamilton Rowan's library, the following manuscript note, in the handwriting of Rowan, occurs at the bottom of the page where mention is made of Jackson's mission — " Lord Edward Fitzgerald declined to have any conversation with Jackson". Arthur O'Connor stated to me that he had no communication with him. But Cockayne and his dupe were not dependent on Lord Ed- ward Fitzgerald or O'Connor for access to the leaders of the United Irishmen. Cockayne had the advantage* of acquaintance and re- lations, in the way of business too, with a very popular, pleasant, patriotic barrister of the name of Leonard M'Nally. " The counsellor" hung loosely on the skirts of the society of United Irishmen and the Catholic Committee. He was a social jackson's relations with cockayne. 10 gentleman, greatly given to punning and saying smart things of equivocal meaning, an excellent companion, a good fellow, in Ireland ; in France, diseur de bons mots, mouvais hcmme. M'Nally dallied gaily with sedition, yet always with discretion and impu- nity. But it was otherwise with his associates — few pleasant gen- tlemen had ever to lament the untimely fate and premature loss of a greater number of hanged friends than Counsellor Leonard M'Nally. M'Nally and Cockayne had been old acquaintances ; their inti- macy had commenced at the Inns of Court in England, when the former was keeping his terms there. M'Nally had been employed as an electioneering agent in Lord Hood's celebrated contest for Westminster, and in that capacity Cockayne and he had come in contact on several occasions ; and it is well deserving of notice, that Cockayne, in his evidence on Jackson's trial, admitted incautiously that Jackson, as well as himself, had formerly known Mr. M'Nally in London. The attorney-general, in his opening speech on the trial of Jackson, said: " Mr. Cockayne, at the desire of Mr. Pitt, consented to accompany Jackson, in order to render abortive his wicked purposes. Towards the end of March Mr. Jackson set out for Dublin, accompanied by Mr. Cockayne ; they arrived the 1st of April, 1794; they lodged at a house called Hyde's Coffee-house, at the corner of Palace Row (Palace Street, Dame Street), and it appears that Jackson in a day or two after his arrival made an acquaintance, or renewed an old one, with a gentleman of the name of Leonard M'Nally. Mr. M'Nally, merely, no doubt, from the hospitality in which Irishmen are never deficient, invited the two strangers to dine with him, and as a man of manners always does, he selected an agreeable company to meet them. Mr. Simon Butler and a Mr. Lewins were among others present at this entertainment. The conversation was naturally turned by the gentleman who had come on this kind mission to the state of the country. Much talk there was about the discontented state of this kingdom; anxiously did he inquire how far the people would be willing to rise if there should be an invasion by the French. I only mean to say that such was the turn of the conversation introduced by Mr. Jackson. I mean not to charge any man who has not an opportunity of defending himself. Opinions on the subject were delivered by the host and his guests. Mr. Butler held that, though there were some discon- tents in various parts of the country, yet that the generality of the people having property and education were loyal, and had a con- siderable influence over their tenantry, and that the invaders would be foiled in the attempt. Other gentlemen entertained 20 M'NALLY'S RELATIONS WITH COCKAYNE. different opinions. During this conversation something was said of a Mr. A. II. Rowan, then in prison in Newgate for publishing a seditious libel. Mr. Jackson, imagining that Mr. Rowan could give him full information on the subject he had so much at heart, expressed a desire to be introduced to his acquaintance. Some diiliculty there was, both with the friends of Mr. Rowan and others, as to the authority of Mr. Jackson to treat at all on the part of the French government. Mr. Lewins, however, undertook to introduce the prisoner to Mr. Rowan".* Thus, within a few days of their arrival in Dublin, we find Jackson, Cockayne, the Hon. Simon Butler, and Mr. Lewins, an incipient attorney, nephew of one of the most eminent of the Catholic leaders, and most obnoxious to government, Thomas Braughall (that Lewins the future accredited agent of the United Irishmen at Paris), dining with " the counsellor" at his abode, No. 57 Dominick Street. Cockayne in his evidence on the trial of Jackson, in reference to this dinner at M'Nally's, deposed: — " The conversation turned on the general politics of the day, an$ also the politics relative to the Irish nation. I cannot swear what Mr. M'Nally said, or what Mr. Lewins said, or what Mr. Butler said; they were all engaged in conversation". Lewins sub- sequently introduced Jackson to Rowan. After that meeting Jackson and Cockayne went to breakfast with Rowan ; Jackson said Tone was to be there. At the meeting none present but Tone, Rowan, Jackson, and Cockayne. The conversation was of a plan to send somebody to France. Mr. Tone was asked to go. " At one time Tone said he would go, at another he receded. He gave his reasons for agreeing to go and for receding". At another meeting at Rowan's, saw Dr. Reynolds ; thinks he saw Tone twice. t At one meeting it was proposed that Reynolds should go to France to carry some instruction to the French. This was when Tone left Dublin abruptly, without saying whether he would or would not go. Jackson said to him (Cockayne) he did not so much approve of Reynolds as Mr. Tone. Reynolds's proposed errand to France was the same as Tone's — " to carry a paper there to the French Convention. The paper was drawn up in Newgate. The paper was in the hands of Tone, and it was read by him and Rowan". The treasonable paper referred to by Cockayne was delivered by Tone to Jackson, but no sooner delivered than it was demanded by Tone, when he reflected on the imprudence of his act. He, however, gave it on the spot to Rowan and authorized him to * Trial of the Rev. Wm, Jackson, from reports of William Ridgeway, William Lapp, and John Schoales, Esqrs., barristers-at-law, p. 33. f Tone says he had three interviews with Jackson. TONE S MEMOIR OF THE STATE OF IRELAND. 21 take a copy of it. At his next interview he says he discovered that Rowan had taken two or three copies of the paper and given them to Jackson, and was informed by Rowan that he had burned the original. Rowan, however, states he gave back the original to Tone. On the 24th of April, 1794, Jackson wrote a letter, signed Thomas Popkins, to Mr. Berresford, and procured Cockayne to copy it, wherein he says: — "You are requested to see Madgett directly, and inform him that this evening the opinion of two eminent council are sent to him". The opinion referred to was Tone's Memoir of Ireland, revised by Rowan. Four days later, the 28th of April, 1794, Jackson was arrested on a charge oftreason, and in due course was tried and convicted ; he anticipated his doom in twelve months from the date of his arrest, on the 30th of April, 1795. EXTRACTS FROM A MEMOIR ON THE STATE OF IRELAND, PREPARED FOR THE PURPOSE OF BEING SENT TO FRANCE BY DR. JACKSON, AND PROVED ON HIS TRIAL. WRITTEN BY T. W. TONE. " The situation of Ireland and England is fundamentally different in this — the government of England is national, that of Ireland provincial. The interest of the first is the same with that of the people — of the last, directly opposite. The people of Ireland are divided into three sects ; the Established Church, the Dissenters, and the Catholics ; the first, infinitely the smallest portion, have engrossed, besides the whole church patronage, all the profits and honours of the country exclusively, and a very great share of the landed property. They are, of course, aristocrats, adverse to any change, and decided enemies of the French Revolution. The Dissenters, which are much more numerous, are the most enligh- tened body of the nation, they are steady republicans, devoted to liberty, and through all the stages of the French Revolution, have been enthusiastically attached to it. The Catholics, the g reat bod y of the peo ple, are in the lowest degree^Fignbrance, and are reaJ y lor any cKaliffe, becausen o change can make them w orse. Tne wfeofe [Kitw&nify of Ireland — the most oppressed anoTwretched in Europe — may be said to be Catholic. They have, within these two years, received a certain degree of information and manifested a proportionate degree of discontent, by various insurrections, etc. They are a bold, hardy race, and make excellent soldiers. There is n^vdleTTTTliigher splrTTof aristocracy than in" nil lfte"privileged orders, the clergy and gentry of Ireland, down to the very lowest, 22 TONE'S MEMOIR OF THE STATE OF IRELAND. to countervail which, there appears now a spirit rising in the people which never existed before, but which is spreading most rapidly, as appears by the Defenders, as they are called, and other insurgents. If the people of Ireland be 4,500,000, as it seems probable they are, the Established Church may be reckoned at 450,000, the Dissenters at 900,000, the Catholics at 3,150,000. The prejudices in England are adverse to the French nation, under whatever form of govern- ment. It seems idle to suppose the present rancour against the French is owing merely to their being republicans ; it has been cherished by the manners of four centuries, and aggravated by continual wars. It is morally certain that any invasion of England would unite all ranks in opposition to the invaders. In Ireland, a conquered, oppressed, and insulted country, the name of England and her power is universally odious, save with those who have an interest in maintaining it — a body, however, only formidable from situation and property, but which the first convulsion would level in the dust ; on the contrary, the_ great Jnilk of the people_oj^Ire-_ land would be ready to throw off the yoke in this country, if they saw any force sufficiently strong to resort to for defence until arrangements could be made ; the Dissenters are enemies to the English power from reason and from reflection, the Catholics from a hatred of the English name — in a word, the prejudices of one country are directly averse, of the other directly favourable, to an invasion. The government of Ireland is only to be looked upon as a government of force ; the moment a superior force appears, it would tumble at once, as being founded neither in the interests nor in the affections of the people. It may be said, the people of Ireland show no political exertion. In the first place, public Spirit is completely depressed by the recent persecutions of several kinds : the convention act, the gunpowder act, etc. Declarations of go- vernment, parliamentary unanimity, or declarations of grand juries — all proceeding from aristocrats whose interest is adverse to that of the people, and who think such conduct necessary for their security — are no obstacles ; the weight of such men falls in the general welfare, and their own tenantry and dependents would desert and turn against them ; the people have no way of expressing their discontent civiliter, which is at the same time greatly aggra- vated by those measures ; and they are, on the other hand, in that semi-barbarous state which is, of all others, the best adapted for making war. The spirit of Ireland cannot, therefore, be calculated from newspaper publications, county meetings, etc., at which the gentry only meet and speak for themselves. They are so situated that they have but one way left to make their sentiments known, and that is by war. The church establishment and tithes are very severe grievances, and have been the cause of numberless local TONE'S RELATIONS WITH JACKSON. 23 insurrections. In a word, from reason, reflection, interest, prejudice, the spirit of change, the misery of the great bulk of the nation, and above all, the hatred of the English name resulting from the tyranny of near seven centuries, there seems little doubt but an invasion in sufficient force would be supported by the people. There is scarce any army in the country; and the militia, the bulk of whom are Catholics, would, to a moral certainty, refuse to act if they saw such a force as they could look to for support".* The following account of Tone's acquaintance and communi- cation with Jackson is taken from the statement, which he deli- vered to his friends Knox and Marcus Berresford : — " Some days previous to the Drogheda assizes, I was informed by A. that there was a gentleman in town who was very recently arrived from France, and who, he suspected, was in the confidence of the Comitc de Salut Public. I was very desirous to see him, in order to hear some account of the state of France which might be depended on. A. accordingly wrote a note, which he gave me to deliver, stating that he could not have the pleasure of seeing the gentleman next day, being Sunday, but would be glad he would call any other time, and I believe added that the bearer was his particular friend. I did not then 7ior since ask A. how he became acquainted with the gentle- man, nor do I yet know who introduced him. I went with this note, and saw the gentleman and another person at the hotel where they lodged. I stayed about half an hour, and the con- versation was either on mere general politics, or the want of ac- commodation for travellers in Ireland, the superiority of England in that respect, etc. On my rising to depart, the gentlemau asked me to dine with him on Wednesday subsequent, which I accordingly agreed to. On the Monday after, as I recollect, I paid a visit to A. , which I was in the habit of doing daily for some time back ; and while I was there, the gentleman above mentioned and his friend came in together ; and after some time he and A. entered into close conversation, and his friend and I retired to a distant part of the room, where we talked of the mode of travelling in Ireland, and amused ourselves looking over Taylor's map, for about half an hour. Neither of us heard, nor could hear, the conversation between A. and the gentle- man. A. at length beckoned me over, and I went. He then said that they had been talking of the state of the country ; that I knew what that state was as well as any body; and that it was that gentleman's opinion that if it were made fully known to people in France, they would, to a certainty, afford every assist- * The above extracts are taken from the Report of the Trial of Dr. Jackson' by Messrs. Ridgeway, Schoales, and Lapp. Published by J. Exsliaw, Dublin. 24 LEONARD M'NALLY AND JACKSON. ancc to enable the Irish to assert their independence. I said that it would be a most severe and grievous remedy for our abuses, but that I saw no other ; for that liberty was shackled in Ireland by such a variety of ways, that the people had no way left to make known their sentiments but by open • resistance ; that, in the alternative between that and unconditional submission, many would differ ; but that I was one of those who, seeing all the danger and horror of a contest, still thought the independence of the country an object worth risking all to obtain; satisfied as I was that, until that were secured, Ireland would never attain to her natural state of power, and opulence, and glory. In these sentiments A. concurred, and the gentleman, as I recollect, again said, ' if this were known in France, assistance might certainly be obtained'. The conversation at that time went no farther. I had a latent suspicion he might possibly be an emis- sary of the British minister, and therefore to mortify him, if that were the case, I spoke with the greatest asperity of the English nation, and of their unjust influence on the government of Ireland. His friend sat a distance during this conversation, and I am sure could have heard no part of it; neither did I inquire, nor do I know, what conversation A. and the gentleman had pre- vious to their beckoning me over; and the reason I did not inquire was, that not knowing how the affair might terminate, and especially not knowing but this person might be an English spy, I determined I would know as little of other people's secrets as I could, consistent with my taking any part in the business". Tone goes on to state that A. ceased not to importune him on behalf of Jackson, till he drew up a memorial or repre- sentation of the state of this country for the use of the French government, which he placed in the hands of A. * But it is to be observed, this statement of Tone's is not a full account of his relations with Jackson and the persons whom he had known in communication with him. He drew up this state- ment for two persons connected with the government, through whose mediation, after the discovery of Jackson's mission, he had escaped prosecution. His son observes :— " The only fact, for obvious and generous reasons, he passes over in silence, is, that any others were privy to these communications with Jackson". Thus, Hamilton Rowan, who was then a prisoner in Newgate suffering the penalty of a seditious libel, through the good offices of M'Nally and the instrumentality of Mr. Lewins, was made acquainted with Jackson and Cockayne, and a party to Jackson's mission. A Dr. Reynolds shared the same fate. Opportunities * " Tone's Life", vol. i., p, 276. HOX. G. KNOX — HIS GENEROUS CONDUCT TO TONE. 25 were afforded Mr. Cockayne for entrapping men very obnoxious to the government. Reynolds, however, was of a character very different from that of Rowan.* The first intimation which Tone received of the discovery of his connection with Jackson was communicated to him by a friend opposed to his political principles, but strongly attached to him ; for no man appears ever to have had personal qualities more cal- culated to attach people to him. Tone was spending the evening at the house of the father of a young friend of his in Merrion Square : he and his companion were playing duets. Tone was passionately fond of music, though a very indifferent performer on his favourite instrument — the flute. A servant brought a letter for Tone, with orders to deliver it into his own hand. Tone read the letter, and said to his companion, "Phil., we must finish this duet; I must go when it is done". He went away, and the following day the Hon. George Knox, the son of Lord Northland, called on their mutual friend at Mer- rion Square. Knox inquired if Tone had received a note he had forwarded to him, and which the servant, not finding him at home, had taken to his (C.'s) house. On hearing it had reached Tone, Knox said, "Well, I suppose you will blame me: I have had a struggle between friendship to that man and the duty I owed to those I am connected with. (Knox then held some * Dr. Reynolds, in 1703, was summoned to the bar of the House of Lords for refusing to give evidence before the secret committee, respecting the alleged dis- turbances in the northern provinces. He was committed to Newgate the 28th March, 1793. Reynolds was the president of a convention of members of all the Freemason lodges in the County of Tyrone, which began its sittings in Dungannon, the 7th January, that year. The lodges, whose members were delegated to this convention, were supposed to be connected with the Society of United Irishmen, as those lodges, over which Dr. Reynolds had presided so early as 1782 and 1783, were chiefly occupied with the politieal questions on which the armed Volunteers of that period were debating. A printed document, in the form of a handbill, fell into my hands, which throws some light on the religious principles of Dr. Rey- nolds — principles which it is to be feared were too prevalent at that period with many of his northern associates. " ROBBERY. " Taken yesterday out of the room in Kilmainham Jail, in which the Grand Jury holds its meetings, a likeness of Tho3ias Paine in a gilt frame. The above being the property of Doctor Reynolds, and he having every reason to believe it was taken by some member of the present Grand Jury, will consider himself much obliged to any man of honour belonging to that body, that will inform him of the persons who committed the above mean and nefarious act. . " Kilmainham Jail, July 19, 1793". Reynolds fled to America, and died in 1807, in Philadelphia. Young Tone charges him with having made away Avith many valuable documents of his father s, and other property, which had been unfortunately committed to his charge when T. W*. Tone was on the point of setting out from America for France. 26 TONE'S RELATIONS WITH official situation.) I learned at the Castle that he was implicated in Jackson's treason, and that his life was in jeopardy, and I de- termined on apprising him of his danger, and giving him timely notice to escape. I felt", said Knox, " that politics were things of a day, but friendship was a matter that was for ever". Powerful influence was exercised by Tone's friends with the government on his behalf, and with such success that no criminal proceedings against him were instituted. He was required, how- ever, to quit the country, but ample time was allowed him to make the necessary arrangements for his depaxture. During Lord Fitzwilliam's administration of the government in Ireland, Tone was not troubled by government ; Mr. Grattan, indeed, remonstrated with the Catholic Committee on their " re- taining in the service a man so obnoxious and so deeply compro- mised". Tone, it is to be remembered, had mortally offended the Whig leaders by refusing his services as a pamphleteer to them. In February, 1795, the Catholics addressed the king on the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and forwarded their petition by dele- gates, of which delegation Tone was secretary, notwithstanding the notoriety of his connection with Jackson. The government of Lord Fitzwilliam's successor, however, lost no time in notifying to Tone the urgent necessity of his fulfilment of the engagement he had entered into to quit the kingdom. He accordingly prepared for expatriation, and set out for Belfast with his family, but not before engagements were entered into by him with Thomas Addis Emmet, Richard M'Cormick, and JohnKeogh, which afforded a prospect of his speedy return to Ireland, more largely accompanied than he was about to leave it. His last inter- view with Thomas Addis Emmit was soon after the conviction and death of the unfortunate Jackson. Russell and he walked out to- gether to Rathfarnham to see Emmet, who had a charming villa there. "Emmet showed his two friends a little study of an elliptical form, which he was building at the bottom of the lawn, and which he said he would consecrate to their meetings, if ever they lived to see their country emancipated". Poor Tone, who felt not a little depressed on that occasion, could not, however, resist the oppor- tunity of indulging in a joke at the expense of his staid-looking, solemn-faced, but by no means unsocial or abstemious friend P.P., " the parish clerk" of Tone's diaries, Tom Russell. He begged of Emmet, if he intended Russell should be of the party, in addition to the books and maps the study would naturally contain, to fit up a small cellaret, which should contain a few dozen of his best claret". Tone on this occasion states he said to his friends Emmet and Russell, as they walked together into town, that, " I consi- dered my compromise with government to extend no further than EMMET, KEOGH, AND M'COHMICK. 27 the banks of the Delaware, and the moment I landed I was free to follow any plan which might suggest itself to me for the emancipation of my country. . . . They both agreed with me on those principles, and I then proceeded to tell them that my intention was, immediately on my arrival in Philadelphia, to wait on the French minister, to detail to him fully the situation of affairs in Ireland, to endeavour to obtain a recommendation to the French government, and if I succeeded so far, to leave my family in America and set off instantly for Paris, and apply, in the name of my country, for the assistance of France to enable us to assert our independence. It is unnecessary, I believe, to say that this plan met the warmest approbation and support from both Russell and Emmet. We shook hands, and having repeated our professions of unaltered regard and esteem for each other, we parted, and this was the last interview which I was so happy as to have with those two invaluable friends together. I remember it was in a little triangular field that this conversation took place, and Emmet remarked to us that it was exactly in one like it, in Switzerland, that William Tell and his associates planned the downfall of the tyranny of Austria. The next day, returned to Belfast".* The garden scene and conference of Tone, Emmet, and Russell, have left vivid impressions on many minds of their countrymen. For the late Thomas Davis, the actors in this scene, and the inci- dents recorded of it, had an ideal life and energizing reality in them, which he had the power of picturing in words singularly graphic and impressive. To the Catholic leaders, M'Cormick and John Kcogh, who had particularly interested themselves for him, and been instrumental in obtaining the vote for granting him a sum of £300 in addition to the arrears due him by the Catholic Committee as their former secretary, Tone likewise opened his projects with respect to com- municating with the French government; and he tells us: "It was hardly necessary to men of their foresight to mention my plans; however, for greater certainty, I consulted them both, and I received, as I expected, their most cordial approbation; and they both laid the most positive injunctions upon me to leave nothing unattempted on my part to force my way to France and lay our situation before the government, then observing at the same time, that if I succeeded there was nothing in the power of mv country to bestow to which I might not fairly pretend." f Tone set off from Dublin for Belfast on the 20th of May, 1795, . * " Life of T. W. Tone", by his son. Washington, 1826. Vol. i. p. 125. f " Tone's Life ', ib., p. 127. 28 TONE AND DR. M'dONNELL's RELATIONS. with his wife, sister, and three children. His worldly goods and property consisted of a well-selected library of 600 volumes, and about £700 in money and bills on Philadelphia. Tone's intimacy at this period with the late Dr. M'Donnell of Belfast, induced me to apply to that excellent man for any infor- mation he could afford me respecting the former ; and in reply to my communication, I received the following particulars, which I extract from a letter of his, dated June 4, 1843. Some of the opinions expressed I do not participate in: Tone might have been perfectly sincere in his professed desire for emancipation, and very reasonably desirous to prevent separate intercourse between Mr. Pitt and some of the delegates. " I promised to furnish you with what I could recollect of Tone, but, indeed, I never saw him very often ; and, although I regarded him and his wife, I never became quite familiar, and in what is considered as actual and warm friendship with him. I observed one trait of character which I did not approve of, and which, perhaps, I could not properly understand ; although the accredited secretary or agent of the Roman Catholic Committee, and going to London in that capacity with the delegates Keogh and M'Cor- mick (I think), I found him quite averse and afraid of the Roman Catholic leaders having any intercourse with Pitt and his friends ; and he was only so far set upon emancipation as it fell in with his ideas of reform upon the French principles; so that, had the government, as I wished, detached the Roman Catholics from the French system of general or democratic reform, by giving them the most practical toleration, I saw that Tone would have impeded that concession while he was paid as their clerk. " I never would reconcile myself fully to this, and became hurt when I found that I had been so long acting in complete concert (as an emancipator) with people who wished for emanci- pation only as forming a part and parcel of a greater design, which design, although they always professed, they never avowed as the great and predominating object. Had the Catholics been then emancipated completely, Tone saw, as I did, that it would retard or frustrate the great reform he had in view, and that the surest method of bringing that about was to keep all causes of complaint in one cluster unsatisfied. On the other hand, had the pure and most rational and moderate reformers been accommo- dated by Pitt, he might have postponed the emancipation for a long time, and the French theorists, or high republican parties, would have been defeated, and the rebellion prevented by either of these concessions ; but the government would do nothing to conciliate ; so that the whole three parties were left to adhere together and to fraternize, although many of the Catholics and TONE'S PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE FOR AMERICA. 29 reformers were very much disposed to secede from the republican party, had they seen much prospect of attaining their own wishes. " I was exceedingly (from first to last) averse to the French connection and to democracy, and this ultimately produced a reserve on their part with respect to me, and the flame was about to burst out, because I became sure of their having negociatcd with France. At the last interview I ever had with Tone, at Samuel Neilsons, in Belfast, Frank M'Cracken being present. said, x that the Irish could free themselves without any assistance from France. ' If you act upon that principle', said Tone, 1 you may pursue your ropewalks and your sail manufactures long and prosperously enough, for there never will be an effectual struggle in Ireland without invasion'. He then exemplified his system. He sailed next day from Island-Magee, promising to become a great farmer. " I had a great intimacy and friendship with Archdeacon Sturrock, who was principal preceptor of Lord Castlercagh, but at that period had no acquaintance with his lordship, who resided then in Belfast. " Sturrock told me that he asked, at the desire of his lordship, whether I thought any moderate reform would satisfy the people. " I told him, most distinctly and conscientiously, that I was sure a very moderate and rational reform, with suitable regulation of the Popery laws, would instantly detach the most useful and efficient part of the United Irishmen from the wild republicans, and would prove an infallible cure for all discontent, and that without something of this kind there would soon be rebellion. He left me, much struck with the strong manner I expressed this notion, and the firm hold the opinion had of my mind. But on returning the same evening, he then asked me — ' What of the Church ?' ' Oh', said I, ' it is impossible to quiet the Dissenterj, who are undoubtedly the main spring of the association, without some modification of the tithes. This must be a sine qua nori. After this he did not return, and never recurred again to that subject. This happened, I think, in 1796, perhaps about the end of the year". So much for Dr. M'Donnell's reminiscences of Tone. But the diaries of Tone, I must observe, are not in accordance with the statement that the acquaintance between the doctor and Tone was not one of close intimacy. Tone met with a reception from the principal people of Belfast that had more in it of an ovation than a simple manifestation of private affection and regard for an acquaintance or an associate about to depart — an exile compelled to leave home and friends for a distant land. On one occasion a party was made for him on the 30 ENGAGEMENT ENTERED INTO ON THE CAVE HILL, BELFAST. Cave I Till, near the town of Belfast, when, as he informs us in his diary, " Russell, Neilson (Robert), Simms, M'Cracken, and one or two more of us, on the summit of M' Art's Fort, took a solemn obligation, which I think I may say I have on my part endea- voured to fulfil, never to desist in our efforts until we had sub- verted the authority of England over our country, and asserted her independence".* The reader need hardly be reminded of the interview with Emmet in his garden at Rathfarnham, at which it was determined that Tone, on his arrival in America, should obtain, if possible, a recommendation from the French minister to his government in France, and should immediately set off for Paris, leaving his family in America. I visited the spot on the Cave Hill where the same engagement was entered into, accompanied by the daughter of Henry Joy M'Cracken, who died in the unfortunate attempt to fulfil that obligation, as his friend Russell perished in it at a later period. The consequences of that compact brought the heavy hand of power on Neilson, led to the destruction of his property, and drove him into exile. Its results proved too much for the fortitude of Simms. They were connected with the perils and difficulties of the desperate mission on which Tone went to France in February, 1796 — with the events of Hoche's expedi- tion in the latter end of the same year ; those of Hardy's unsuc- cessful one in the autumn of 1798, and the melancholy fate of Tone a little later ; with the ruin, exile, or death of nearly all his associates ; with terrible sufferings and calamities to his native land. In the consideration of these results of Tone's engagement with the leading men of the United Irish Society, there is abundant food for reflection. The boldness of the bravest spirit may be abashed in the presence of the spectres brought before the eye. The fer- vour and enthusiasm of the most ardent patriotism may feel a chill shudder at the recall of those results, reflecting on which seems to the pained mind walking as it were over the graves and treading on the scattered bones and broken coffins of one's own dearest dead. CHAPTER II. TONE'S MISSION IN FRANCE. On the 7th or 8th of August, 1795, Tone arrived at Wilmington, on the Delaware, and thence proceeded to Philadelphia, where he found his old friends and associates in Jackson's affair, Hamil- * " Tone's Life", vol. L, p. 128. TONE'S MISSION IN FRANCE. 31 ton Rowan and Dr. Reynolds. His designs were then opened to them. He stated to them " his intention of waiting the next day on the French minister with such credentials as he had brought with him, which were the two votes of thanks of the Catholics, and his certificate of admission into the Belfast Volunteers, engrossed on vellum, and signed by the chairman and secretaries, and he added, that he would refer to them both for his credibility, in case the minister had any doubts". With a letter of introduction from Rowan for Citizen Adet, the French minister resident at Philadelphia, Tone waited on his excellency in the high official character he had taken on him of representative of the Irish nation, and was received "very politely". The result of this first interview with the French minister was an intimation that a memorial embodying all that was to be commu- nicated on the subject of Ireland should be prepared and sent in by Tone, which was accordingly done in a few days. Several weeks, however, passed over and nothing was heard of the me- morial, except that it had been duly forwarded to the Frencli government, and Tone at last began to think " there was an end of all his hopes". His first intention was to purchase a farm, and with that view he proceeded to Westchester, about thirty miles from Philadel- phia, and thence to Princeton in New Jersey, where he was in treaty for the purchase of a farm, hired a small house for the winter, and settled his family comfortably, " beginning to think his lot was cast to be an American farmer". But he was soon recalled from his agricultural speculations by letters of unmistakable import from Ireland, calling on him to redeem the pledge he had given in Emmet's garden at Rathfarn- ham, and on the summit of the Cave Hill, near Belfast. The mental powers, the originality of mind, the strong volition, self-reliance, and resources at command for all emergencies, of Theobald Wolfe Tone were very conspicuously manifested on all occasions of his standing forth as the representative of the interests of his society. To treat of him as an ordinary person of an imagi- native turn, of levity and versatility of mind, possessing merely the superficial glitter of some showy talent, is an absurdity. He surely teas no common man who counted for Ms friends, and found them in either fortune fast and faithful to him, Thomas Addis Emmet, William Conyngham Plunkett, Peter Burrowes, John Keogh, George Knox, and Whitley Stokes. Tone did not remain long in the United States. After com- municating with Hamilton Rowan, and obtaining letters from him, and others through his influence to persons of importance in Paris, some of them in high official situations, the object of which 32 TONE'S MISSION IN FRANCE. introduction was to accredit liim as a recognized agent of the leaders of the United Irishmen, he took his departure from New- York, arrived at Havre the 1st of February, 1796, and proceeded immediately to Paris. When Tone, on his arrival in Paris, waited on Madgett, an old Irish emigrant, employed in the department of the minister for Foreign Affairs, he was informed by Madgett that an Irish- man of the name of Duckett had delivered in several memorials on the state of Ireland.* Some inquiries were made of him by the secretary about one Fitzsimons, a priest, whom it was in contemplation to send to Ireland, but who had been in France for twenty or thirty years. Another inquiry made of Tone is deserving of notice. Hoche asked him " whether Defenders had ever sent any one to France to make representations?" He answered, "he could not posi- tively say, but he believed not, they being for the most part the peasantry of Ireland, and of course not having the means nor proper persons to send".t Teeling denies that there was ever any communication between the Defenders and the French. In M'Neven's and Emmet's Essay towards the History of Ireland, we find it stated, " The Defenders likewise, in 1794, began to entertain an idea that possibly the French might visit Ireland, and that from thence benefits would result to them and their country ; for in some places it was made a part of the oath, anid., p. 107. X " Pieces of Irish History", p. 71. DUCKETT S MACHINATIONS EH PARIS. 33 mind, that, where Maguan speaks of the executive and national committee, the Leinster directory of Dublin is referred to. That some of the northern fugitives, who were in Paris in 1797, had communications with members of the French government, there is reason to believe ; but such persons acted in their individual ca- pacity and on their own views. Amongst such persons we find Tone. Maguan, in his informations, states, that it was announced at a provincial meeting at Randalstown, 14th August, 1797 : — " A few spirited men in Belfast now seeing the business frustrated (by the dissensions of the executive and national committee), subscribed five hundred guineas to send a person to France ; but not knowing what road to take to send him, or how to get him introduced to the Directory, they applied to a member of the old executive, and found the very person they had elected was sent ten days before by the executive*'.* At another meeting on the 14th September, the return was announced from France of one of their delegates, and the news of the other delegates in France being appointed to accompany the expedition. On the 14th October it was announced that one of their dele- gates in France had drawn a bill on the executive for £160. February 1st, 179S, the Priest Quiglev, then in Belfast, formerly of the county of Louth, was announced as " one of the delegates who had lately returned from France". February 27. 1798, at a provincial meeting at Armagh, the return of a delegate from France announced, that they had then fourteen delegates in France, and that the executive had answered a draft of £500 of theirs to be raised off the four provinces equally. With respect to Mr. Duckett, referred to by Madgett, and who figures so frequently in Tone's journals, dodging the agent of the United Irishmen from bureau to bureau, from Paris to Brest, and from Brest to Rennes, a few words remain to be said. February 26th, 1796, we find the Foreign Minister of France informing Tone that there was " an Irish patriot exiled on account of his political writings under the signature of 1 Junius Redivivus', then residing in Paris, who had delivered in several memoirs on the state of Ireland"'. September 23, 1796, Colonel Shee, a relative of General Clarke's, spoke to Tone of Duckett, who represented himself as having been sent to France by " The Catholic Committee of Nine ", to act as their plenipotentiary. We find throughout Tone's communications with the French *Vide "Report of the Lords* Secret Committee". Appendix xiv. p. 103. II. 4 34 duckett's machinations in PARIS. government, that this man was continually crossing his path ; on one occasion, in the ante-room of the minister, presenting Tone, who was then passing for a Frenchman, with an English news- paper, and endeavouring to get into conversation with him ; on several other occasions succeeding in getting information from the secretaries and other functionaries, which ought not to have been communicated to such a person. Tone evidently distrusted him, and knew that he had no connection with the Catholic Committee, or any other body in Ireland; and yet we find this man, in the fulfilment of some duties imposed on him, putting forward an ap- plication very similar to that which had been made by Tone, evidently with the view of ascertaining the reception such an ap- plication was likely to meet with. When Tone and Hoche arrived at Brest, at the time of the completion of the preparations for the departure of the expedition, Mr. Duckett was there before them. Tone insisted on his being sent back to Paris. Hoche thought it sufficient to determine on preventing him from taking part in the expedition. A circumstance glanced at in Tone's diary deserves fuller notice than is given to it in the diary. Hoche had prudently deferred getting the proclamations intended for distribution in Ireland printed, till he arrived at Brest. Some days before the expe- dition sailed, he put the manuscript proclamation into the hands of a respectable printer. In the course of the day the printer called on Colonel Shee, and said that a gentleman with a foreign accent had called on him, and requested to see a copy of the proclamation which the French officer had left with him ; that, on declining to produce it, the stranger had offered him a large sum of money, increased his offer, and finally raised it to the sum of fifty louis; that it occurred to him, the best course he could pursue was to tell the stranger the manuscript had been cut up into slips, and given to the compositors, but that if he re- turned at a time appointed, he should have a printed copy. In the mean time Shee, on the part of Hoche by Tone's advice, had another proclamation printed, from the original draught, but wherever the word " Ireland" occurred and the word " Irish", he had these words changed, and for them substituted those of " Portugal" and the "Portuguese". "The proclamation, thus amended, was given to the strange gentleman", and in a few days Sir JohnColpoys' fleet, then stationed off Brest, watching the movements of the ex- pedition, sailed up the Channel, and subsequently touching at Spithead, received intelligence which induced Colpoys to return to his former station. A movement that has hitherto appeared un- accountable — that of Colpoys in quitting his station at such a junc- ture, and thus allowing the Brest expedition to proceed to the DUCKETT 5 MACHINATIONS IN PARI? 35 coast of Ireland without molestation — is thus rendered intelli- gible. A British officer whose signature, M H. C", is appended to the notes from which the following extracts from a remarkable statement of his are taken), who was closely connected with the Irish government, and had been officially cognizant of the proceed- ings at Bantry Bay, on the first intelligence of the arrival of the French, thus refers to the subject of Colpoys' departure from his cruising station, and, in ignorance of the real facts, attempts to account for it: — " Sir John Colpoys had been stationed for several weeks off Brest to watch the French fleet, which had been long ready to sail, lull of troops, for either Lisbon or Ireland. A gale of wind blew our fleet off its station. On returning to it the French fleet had sailed. The great fault of our ministry was, that under this circumstance, which surely might have been ex- pected, our admiral had no orders what to do, though common sense might have pointed out Ireland as the most important object, and ought to have been first attended to; Colpoys, there- fore, continued watching the empty harbour, in strict obedience to his orders, till the gale of the 25th drove him to Portsmouth, and one of his fleet, the Powerful, into Cove". Thus we see Sir John Colpoys quitting the Brest station ascribed to the elements, while, in point of fact, there is reason to believe his departure was occasioned by the proclamation of Hoche. " In the meantime", continues the officer just quoted, u circumstances equally unlucky attended the French fleet. The admiral and general, who were on board a swift-sailing frigate, with a proper attention to their own security in the event of falling in with the British squadron, bore away, on leaving Brest, in the direction of Lisbon. At ten at night they called all the captains on board their own vessel, made them set their watches to the admiral's, and ordered them at night to change their course without signal, and sail for Bantry Bay. They did so, and all seem to have met, except the frigate with the two commanders on board, who, for some reason never yet known, were certainly never in the Bay at all, and the troops having no orders how to act in this emergency, did, like Colpoys, nothing at all, and got back better than they deserved". It is needless to say, that if the writer had been aware of the ruse practised on the spy employed to get the proclamation of Hoche, he would have attached no blame to Colpoys' departure. From the period of the departure from Brest, no more mention is made of Mr. Duckett. The United Irishmen in Paris knew nothing more of his movements. The committee of the Catholics had no knowledge of him at any time. Tone asks, " Who the devil ever heard of Junius Redivivus? 1 ' DUCKET T S EARLY CAREER IN IRELAND. The letters were thus signed on which Mr. Duckett relied as his credentials, when he applied to the French Directory. It was not without some trouble the author was able to discover the letters signed "Junius Redivivus". They were published in the Northern Star, in 1794. From one of these letters a few passages are quoted, to show the pal- pable imposition practised by the writer on the party whose prin- ciples he pretended to espouse. It is a well ascertained fact, one that admits not of the slightest doubt, that government employed writers to assume the advocacy of the views of the United Irishmen, to exaggerate opinions favourable to liberty, and by this means to bring the principles of their opponents into contempt. With this view the atrocious assassination journal, the Union Star, was suffered to proceed in its career with full impunity, and at a later period its editor was rewarded with a pension. With a similar view the letter from which the following extracts are taken, there is great reason to believe, was written. The writer begins by informing the people, " Their situation is new, and to new measures they must have recourse. Antiquity left them without line or rule whereby to guide or square their conduct. . . " Now the question is, whether the nation is to be sacrificed to the minister, or the minister to the nation ? . . . . " The charter of nations has wisely provided that examples should be made of delinquents in every rank and station, accor- ding to the nature of their crimes. Where this primary law is neglected, there liberty cannot exist. A nation is free when the minister is amenable to justice, and enslaved when punishment cannot reach him. Let public delinquents, then, be brought to public justice ! . . . " Pointless are the slings of hirelings when aimed at him whose design is to heal the national wounds, to save the sinking wreck of a neglected, ill-managed state, and to drag to public justice the ignorant and wicked pilot. I defend no other cause ; I shall claim no other merit. I court no man's favour ; I fear no mans resentment". ["Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much".] " I shall conclude this letter with the imprecation pronounced in an ancient assembly : ' May the gods pursue that man to destruc- tion, with all his race, who shall act, speak, or contrive anything against this state'. — Junius .Redivivus' 1 . It is only astonishing that a shrewd man like Neilson, the pro- prietor of the paper in which this communication was published, should not have seen through the shallow assumption of enthu- siasm, and the overdoing of the violent character attempted by the writer of this wicked letter. TONES MISSION IN FRANCE. 37 In 1798 we find the widimtnt agent of the United Irishmen in Paris, whom there is good reason to believe was not employed by the Irish Directory, but by the British minister, Mr. Pitt. He was denounced by another informer at the same period, to the English government, as an emissary of the Society of United Irishmen.* This was about the same period that the Rev. William Jack- son, an emissary of France, the secret of whose treasonable mission, on his arrival in London, was disclosed to Mr. Pitt by his companion, Cockayne, was permitted to go over to Ireland accompanied by the informer, for the express purpose of allowing him to proceed in his evil designs, and to involve the popular leaders in them. The name of Duckett is to be found in the list of names speci- fied in the Fugitive Bill, and mention is made of it very adroitly in the evidence given by Mr. Secretary Cooke before the Com- mittee of the House of Lords on the Fugitive Bill, the 25th of August, 1798. Mr. Cooke sworn : " Said he had information for many years respecting Duckett; that he was employed by the French, ministry to give them information of the state of this country ; that he is now attached to the French, and receives their pay ; that he was recently employed to collect intelligence of the state of the country for the French government". The particulars of Tone's mission are given in his own journal with all the life and spirit for which even his most careless writings are remarkable. They are mixed up, however, with a mass of irrelevant matter, that renders it difficult to keep impor- tant subjects referred to therein, before the mind in a clear and connected manner. I therefore extract the particular passages in the diary bearing on the important subject of his mission, with- out any alteration whatsoever from those journals, from the date of his arrival in Paris — the beginning of February, 1796, to that of the failure of the expedition which he accompanied to Bantry Bav — the latter end of December, the same year. M Februarv 4. — A swindler in the hotel; wishes to take me in; wants to travel with me to Paris ; says he is an American, and calls me Captain; is sure he has seen me somewhere. Tell him perhaps it was in Spain.t " February 9. — My lover, the swindler, has been too cunning for us ; he has engaged the fourth place in the coach, so we shall * See '• Life and Correspondence of Lord Castlereagh". vol. i.. p. 233. 290. 303 326. t It is very evident, from the time of Tone's arrival in France he was beset by spies. 38 TONE'S MISSION IN FRANCE. have the pleasure of his company on to Paris. He certainly has some designs on our pockets, but I hope he will find himself de- feated. Wrote to my family and to Dr. Reynolds of Phila- delphia, and gave the letters to Capt. Baron. Tired of Havre, which is dreadfully monotonous, and D'Aucourt's peevishness, proceeding partly from ill health, makes him not the pleasantest company in the world. Got our passports ; engaged post horses, etc. I do not bear the separation from my family well, yet 1 cer- tainly do not wish them at present in France. If I can make out my brother Matthew, I shall be better off. Poor P. P.,* I shall never meet with such another agreeable companion in a post-chaise. "February 15. — Went to Monroe's, the ambassador, and deli- vered in my passport and letters. Received very politely by Monroe, who inquired a great deal into the state of the public mind in America, which I answered as well as I could, and in a manner to satisfy him pretty well as to my own sentiments. I inquired of him where I was to deliver my despatches. He informed me, at the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and gave me his address. I then rose and told him that when he had read B 's letter (which was in cypher), he would, I hoped, find me excused in taking the liberty to call again. He answered, he would be happy at all times to see me, and, after he had inquired about Hamilton Rowan, how he liked America, etc., I took my leave, and returned to his office for my passport. The secretary smoked me for an Irishman directly. A la bonne heure. Went at three o'clock to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Rue du Bacq, 471. Delivered my passport, and inquired for some one who spoke English. Introduced immediately to the Chef de Bureau, Lamare, a man of an exceedingly plain appearance. I showed my letter, and told him I wished for an opportunity to deliver it into the minister's hands. He asked me, 4 would it not do if he took charge of it?' I answered, he undoubt- edly knew the official form best, but if it was not irregular, I should consider myself much obliged by being allowed to deli- ver it in person. He then brought me into a magnificent ante- chamber, where a general officer and another person were writing, and, after a few minutes' delay, I was introduced to the minister, Charles de la Croix, and delivered my letter, which he opened, and seeing it in cypher, he told me, in French, he was much obliged to me for the trouble I had taken, and that the secretary would give me a receipt, acknowledging the delivery. I then made my bow and retired with the secretary, the minister seeing us to the door. * Thomas Russell.— K. R. M. tone's relations with madgett. 39 "February 1G, 1796. — There are about six persons in the world who will read these detached memorandums with plea- sure; to every one else they would appear sad stuff. But they are only for the women of my family, for the boys, if ever we meet again, and for my friend P. P. Would to God he *were here just now ! Set oft' for Madgett's and delivered my letter. Madgett delighted to see me, tells me lie has the greatest expec- tation our business will be taken up in the most serious manner; that the attention of the French government is now turned to Ireland, and that the stability and form it had assumed, gave him the strongest hopes of success ; that he had written to Hamilton Rowan about a month since, to request I might come over in- stantlv, in order to confer with the French government and determine on the necessary arrangements, and that he had done this by order of the French executive. He then asked me had I brought any papers or credentials ; I answered that 1 only brought the letter of Adet to the executive, and one to the American ambassador; that I had destroyed a few others on the passage, in- cluding one from Mr. Rowan to himself, as we were chased by a Bermudian ; that, as to credentials, the only ones I had, or that the nature of the case would permit, I had shown to Adet on my first arrival in Philadelphia in August last Madgett then said, that was enough, especially as he had the newspapers, containing the resolutions I mentioned, and that the French executive were already fully apprised who I was. He then added, that we should have ten sail of the line, any quantity of arms that were wanted, and such money as was indispensable, but that this last was to be used discreetly, as the demands for it on all quarters were so numerous and urgent; and that he thought a beginning might be made through America, so as to serve both Ireland and France. That is to say, that military stores might be sent through this channel from France to Ireland, purchased there by proper persons, and provisions, leather, etc., returned in neutral bottoms. I answered, this last measure was impracticable, on account of the vigilance of the Irish government, and the operation of the gunpowder act, which I explained to him. I then gave him a very short sketch of what I considered the state of Ireland, laying it down as a positum that nothing effec- tual could be done there unless by a landing; that a French army was indispensably necessary as a point de ralliement; and I explained to him the grounds of my opinion. u February 22. — Finished my memorial, and delivered a fair copy, signed, to Madgett for the Minister of Foreign Relations. Madgett in the horrors. He tells me he has had a discourse yes- terday fur two hours with the minister, and that the succours he 40 TONES VIEWS OF FOREIGN AID. expected will fall very short of what he thought. That the marine of France is in such a state that government will not hazard a large fleet; and, consequently, that we must be content to steal a march. That they will give 2,000 of their best troops, and arms for 20,000; that they cannot spare Pichegru nor Jourdan; that they will give any quantity of artillery, and, I think he added, what money might be necessary. He also said they would first send proper persons among the Irish prisoners of war, to sound them, and exchange them on the first opportunity. To all this, at which I am not disappointed, I answered, that as to 2,000 men, they might as well send 20. That with regard to myself, I would go if they would send but a corporal's guard ; but that my opinion was, that 5,000 was as little as could be landed with any prospect of success, and that that number would leave the matter doubtful ; that if there could be an imposing force sent in the first instance, it would overbear all opposition, the nation would be unanimous, and an immense effusion of blood and treasure would be spared. .... " Suppose we get 5,000 men, and 30,000 or even 20,000 stand of arms and a train of artillery, I conceive, in the first place, the embarkation must be from Holland, but in all events the landing must be in the north, as near Belfast as possible. Had we 20,000, or eveii 15,000 men, in the first instance, we should begin by the capital, the seizing of which would secure everything; but, as it is, if we cannot go large we must go close-hauled, as the saying is. With 5,000 we must proceed entirely on a revolutionary plan, I fear (that is to say, reckon only on the sans-culottes), and, if necessary, put every man, horse, guinea, and potato in Ireland in requisition. I should also conceive that it would be our policy at first to avoid an action, supposing the Irish army stuck to the government. Every day would strengthen and dis- cipline us, and give us opportunities to work upon them. I doubt whether we could, until we had obtained some advantage in the field, frame any body that would venture to call itself the Irish Government, but if we could, it would be of the last importance. Hang those ivho talk of fear/ With 5,000 men, and very strong measures, we should ultimately succeed. The only difference between that number and 20,000 is, that, with the latter, there would be no fighting, and with this, we may have some hard knocks. " February 23. — Quit Madgett, whom I believe honest, and whom I feel weak; go to Monroe ; received very favourably. He has had my letter decyphered, and dropped all reserve. I told him I felt his situation was one of considerable delicacy, and therefore I did not wish to press upon him any information, relative either to tone's first interview with cabnot. 41 myself or to my business, farther than he might desire, lie answered that the letters had satisfied him, particularly that from H. R., of whom he spoke in terms of great respect, and that, as not respon- sible for what he might hear, but for what he might do, I might speak freely. I then opened myself to him without the least re- serve, and gave him such details as I was able of the actual state of things, and of the grounds of my knowledge from my situation. I also informed of what I had done thus far. He then addressed me in substance thus : ' You must change your plan ; I have no doubt whatever of the integrity and sincerity of the minister De la Croix,* nor even of Madgett, whom I believe to be honest. But, in the first place, it is a subaltern way of doing business, and, in the next, the vanity of Madgett will be very likely to lead him, in order to raise his importance in the eyes of some of his countrymen, who are here as patriots, and of whom I have by no means the same good opinion as to integrity that I have of him, to drop some hint of what is going forward. Go at once to the Directoire Executif, and demand an audience ; explain yourself to them ; and, as to me, you may go so far as to refer to me for the authenticity of what you may advance, and you may add that you have reason to think that I am in a degree ap- prised of the outline of your business'. I mentioned Carnot, of whose reputation we had been long apprised, and who, I under- stood, spoke English. He said, 1 Nobody fitter, and that La Reveilliere Lepaux also spoke English ; that either would do'. I then expressed a doubt whether, as I was already in the hands of Charles de la Croix, there might not be some indelicacy in my going directly to the Directoire Executif, and, if so, whether it might not be of disservice. He answered, ' By no means ; that in his own functions the proper person for him to communicate with was De la Croix ; but that, nevertheless, when he had any business of consequence, he went at once to the fountain head'. " February 24. — Went at 12 o'clock in a fright to the Luxem- bourg, conning speeches in execrable French all the way. What shall I say to Carnot? Well, 1 whatever the Lord putteth in my mouth, that surely will I utter. . . . Arriving at the palace, mounted the stairs like a lion, went into the first bureau I found open, and demanded at once to see Carnot. The clerks stared a little, but I repeated my demand with a courage truly heroic ; on which they instantly submitted, and sent a person to conduct me. This happened to be his day for giving audience, which each member of the Executive Directory gave in his turn. Introduced by my * All the communications to La Croix from Reinhard, the French minister at Hamburgh, relating to Ireland, found their way into the hands of Mr. Pitt. See the Castlereagh Correspondence, vol. i., p. 270, etc. 42 tone's first interview with carnot. guide into the ante-chamber, which was filled with people — the officers of state all in their new costume. Wrote a line in English, and delivered it to one of the huissiers, stating that a stranger, just arrived from America, wished to speak to Citizen Camot on an affair of consequence. He brought me an answer in two minutes, that I should have an audience. The folding doors were now thrown open, a bell being previously rung to give notice to the people, that all who had business might present themselves, and Citizen Carnot appeared in the petit costume of white satin with crimson robe richly embroidered. It is very elegant, and re- sembles almost exactly the draperies of Van Dyke. He went round the room, receiving papers and answering those who ad- dressed him. I told my friend the huissier, in marvellous French, that my business was too important to be transacted there, and that I would return on another day, when it would not be Car- not's turn to give audience, and when I should hope to find him at leisure. He mentioned this to Carnot, who ordered me instantly to be shown into an inner apartment, and that he would see me as soon as the audience was over. That, I thought, looked well, and began accordingly to con my speech again. In the apart- ment were five or six persons, who being, like myself, of great distinction, were admitted to a private audience. I allowed them all precedence, as I wished to have my will of Carnot, and while they were in their turns speaking with him, I could not help re- flecting how often I had wished for the opportunity I then enjoyed ; what schemes I had laid, what hazards I had run ; when I looked round, and saw myself actually in the cabinet of the Executive Directory, vis-a-vis with Citizen Carnot, the organizer of victory, I could hardly believe my own senses, and felt as if it were all a dream. However, I was not in the least degree disconcerted, and when I presented myself, after the rest were dismissed, I had all my faculties, such as they were, as well at my command as on any occasion in my life. . . . " I began my discourse by saying, in horrible French, that I had been informed he spoke English. 'A little, sir; but I perceive you speak French, and, if you please, we will converse in that lan- guage'. I answered, still in my jargon, that if he could have the patience to endure me, I would endeavour, and only prayed him to stop me, whenever I did not make myself understood. I then told him I was an Irishman ; that I had been secretary and agent to the Catholics of that country, who were about 3,000,000 of people; that I was also in perfect possession of the sentiments of the Dissenters, who were at least 900,000; and that I wished to communicate with him on the actual state of Ireland. He stopped me here to express a doubt as to the numbers being so great as I TONES FIRST INTERVIEW WITH CARNOT. represented. I answered, a calculation had been made within these few years, grounded on the number of houses, which was ascertained for purposes of revenue; that, by that calculation, the people of Ireland amounted to 4,100,000, and it was acknow- ledged to be considerably under the truth. He seemed a little surprised at this, and I proceeded to state that the sentiments of all those people were unanimous in favour of France, and eager to throw off the yoke of England. He asked me then what they wanted. I said : * An armed force in the commencement, for a point tTappuif until they could organize themselves, and un- doubtedly a supply of arms and some money'. I added that I had already delivered in a memorial on the subject to the Minister of Foreign Relations, and that I was preparing another, which would explain to him in detail all that I knew on the subject, better than I could in conversation. He then said : k We shall see those memorials'. The organizer of victory proceeded to ask me were there not some strong places in Ireland. I answered, I knew of none but some works to defend the harbour of Cork. He stopped me here, saying : 1 Av, Cork ; but may it not be neces- sary to land there?' By which I perceived he had been or- ganizing a little already in his own mind. I answered, I thought not; that if a landing in fore* were attempted, it would be better near the capital, for obvious reasons: if with a small army, it should be in the north, rather than the south of Ire- land, for reasons which he would find in my memorials. He then asked me : 4 Might there not be some danger or delay in a longer navigation?' I answered, it would make a difference of two days, which was nothing in comparison of the advantages. I then told him that I came to France by the direction and concur- rence of the men who (and here I was at a loss for a French word, with which, seeing my embarrassment, he supplied me) guiled the two great parties I had mentioned; that I should not think I had discharged my duty either to France or Ireland, if I left any measure unattempted which might draw the attention of the Directory to the situation of the latter country ; and that, in consequence, I had presumed to present myself to him, and to implore his attention to the facts contained in the two memorials. I then rose, and after the usual apologies, took my leave, but I had not cleared the ante-chamber, when I recollected a very ma- terial circumstance, which was, that I had not told him, in fact, tr ho, but merely ichat I was ; I was, therefore, returning on my steps, when I was stopped by the sentry, demanding my card ; but trom this dilemma I was extricated by my lover, the huissier, and again admitted. I then told Carnot that, as to my situation, credit, and the station I had filled in Ireland, I begged leave to 44 TONE'S INTERVIEW WITH CLARKE. refer him to James Monroe, trie American ambassador. He seemed struck with this, and then, for the first time, asked my name. I told him, in fact, I had two names, my real one, and that under which I travelled and was described in my passport. I then took a slip of paper, and wrote the name ' James Smith, citoyen Americain', and under it, ' Theobald Wolfe Tone', which I handed him, adding that my real name was the undermost. He took the paper, and, looking over it, said ' Ha ! Theobald Wolfe Tone', with the expression of one who has just recollected a circumstance, from which little movement I augur good things. I then told him I would finish my memorial as soon as possible, and hoped he would permit me in the course of a few days after, to present myself again to him ; to which he answered, ' By all means' ; and so I again took my leave. Here is a full and true account of my first audience of the Executive Directory of France, in the person of Citizen Carnot, the organizer of victory. I think I came off very clear. What am I to think of all this ? As yet I have met no difficulty nor check, nothing to discourage me ; but I wish with such extravagant passion for the emancipa- tion of my country, and I do so abhor and detest the very name of England, that I doubt my own judgment, lest I see things in too favourable a light. I hope I am doing my duty. It is a bold measure ; after all if it should succeed, and my visions be realized — Huzza ! Vive la Republique! I am a pretty fellow, to negociate with the Directory of France, pull down a monarchy, and establish a republic — to break a connection of six hundred years' standing, and contract a fresh alliance with another country. " March 7, 1770. — If we have a republic in Ireland, we must build a pantheon, but we must not, like the French, be in too great a hurry to people it. We have already a few to begin with : Roger O'Moore, Molyneux, Swift, and Dr. Lucas, all good Irishmen. " March 14. — Went this day to the Luxembourg. I have the luck of going on the days that Carnot gives audience, and of course is most occupied ; waited, however, to the last, when only one person remained besides myself. Carnot then called me over, and said: 'You are an Irishman'. I answered I was. 'Then', said he, ' here is almost a countryman of yours, who speaks English perfectly. He has the confidence of government: go with him, and explain yourself without reserve'. I did not much like this referring me over : however, there was no remedy ; so I made my bow, and followed my new lover to his hotel. He told me on the way that he was General Clarke ; that his father was an Irishman ; that he had himself been in Ireland, and had many TONES SECOND INTERVIEW WITH CLARKE. 45 relations in that country ; he added (God forgive him if he ex- aggerated) that all the military arrangements of the republic passed through his hands, and, in short, gave me to understand that he was at the head of the war department. By this time we arrived at the hotel where he kept his bureau, and I observed in passing through the office to his cabinet an immense number of boxes labelled, 1 Armee du Nord, Armee des Pyrenees, Armee du Rhin', etc., etc., so that I was pretty well satisfied that I was in the right track. When we entered the cabinet, I told him in three words who and what I was, and then proceeded to detail at considerable length all I knew on the state of Ireland, which, as it is substantially contained in ray two memorials, to which I referred him, I need not here recapitulate. This took up a con- siderable time : I suppose an hour and a half. He then began to interrogate me on some of the heads, in a manner which showed me that he was utterly unacquainted with the present state of affairs in Ireland, and particularly with the great internal changes which have taken place there within the last three or four years, which, however, is no impeachment of his judgment or talents. There were, however, other points on which he was radically wrong. For example, he asked me would not the aristocracy of Ireland, some of whom he mentioned, as the Earl of Ormond, concur in the attempt to establish the independence of their country ? I answered, most certainly not; and begged him to remember that if the attempt were made, it would be by the people, and the people only ; that he should calculate on all the opposition that the Irish aristocracy could give; that the French Revolutionj which had given courage to the people, had, in the same propor- tion, alarmed the aristocracy, who trembled for their titles and estates; that this alarm was diligently fomented by the British minister, who had been able to persuade every man of property that their only security was in supporting him implicitly in every measure calculated to oppose the progress of what were called French principles ; that, consequently, in any system he might frame in his mind, he should lay down the utmost opposi- tion of the aristocracy as an essential point. At the same time, I added, that, in case of a landing being effected in Ireland, their opposition would be of very little significance, as their conduct had been such as to give them no claim on the affections or' the people; that their own tenants and dependents would, I was satisfied, desert them, and they would become just so many helpless individuals, devoid of power and influence. He then mentioned that the Volunteer Convention in 1783 seemed to be an example against what I now advanced ; the people then had acted through their leaders. 1 answered, they certainly had, 46 TONE'S SECOND INTERVIEW WITH CLARKE. and as their leaders had betrayed them, that very convention was one reason why the people had for ever lost all confidence in what were called leaders. He then mentioned the confusion and bloodshed likely to result from a people such as I described, and he knew, the Irish to be," breaking loose without proper heads to control and moderate their fury. I answered, it was but too true ; that I saw as well as he that, in the first explosion, it was likely that many events would take place in their nature very shocking; that revolutions were not made without much individual suffering; that, however, in the present instance, supposing the worst, there would be a kind of retributive justice, as no body of men on Earth were more tyrannical and oppressive in their nature than those who would be most likely to suffer in the event alluded to; that I had often in my own mind (and God knows the fact to be so) lamented the necessity of our situa- tion; but that Ireland was so circumstanced that she had no alternative but unconditional submission to England, or a re- volution, with a chance of all the concomitant sufferings; and that I was one of those w T ho preferred difficulty and danger and distress to slavery, especially where I saw clearly there was no other means. ' It is very true', replied he, ' there is no ma- king an omelette without breaking of eggs'. He still seemed, however, to have a leaning towards the cooperation of our aristocracy, which is flat nonsense. He asked me was there no one man of that body that we could make use of, and again mentioned, ' for example, the Earl of Ormond'. I an- swered 'not'; that as to Lord Ormond, he was a , "without a character of any kind but that of a blockhead ; that I did believe, speaking my own private opinion as an individual, that perhaps the Duke of Leinster might join the people, if the revolution was once begun, because I thought him a good Irish- man; but that for this opinion I had merely my own conjectures; and that, at any rate, if the beginning was once made, it would be of very little consequence what part any individual might take. I do not know how Fitzgibbon's name happened to come in here, but he asked me would it not be possible to make something of him. Any one who knows Ireland will readily believe that I did not find it easy to make a serious answer to this question. Yes ; Fitzgibbon would be very likely, from his situation, his principles, his hopes and his fears, his property, and the general tenour of his conduct, to begin a revolution in Ireland ! At last, I believe I satisfied Clarke on the subject of the support to be expected from our aristocracy. He then asked me what I thought the revolution, if begun, would terminate in. I answered, undoubtedly, as I thought, in a republic allied to France. He tone's second INTERVIEW WITII CLARKE. 47 then asked what security could I give, that in twenty years after our independence, we might not be found engaged as an ally of England against France? I thought the observation a very foolish one, and only answered that I could not venture to foretell what the combination of events for twenty years might produce ; but that, in the present posture of affairs, there were few things which presented themselves to my view under a more improbable shape. He then came to the influence of the Catholic clergy over the minds of the people, and the apprehension that they might warp them against France. I assured him, as the fact is, that it was much more likely that France would turn the people against the clergy ; that within these last few years, that is to say, since the French Revolution, an astonishing change, with regard to the influence of the priests, had taken place in Ireland. I mentioned to him the conduct of that body, pending the Catholic business, and how much and how justly they had lost character on that account. 1 told him the anecdote of the Pope's legate, who is also Archbishop of Dublin, being superseded in the actual management of his own chapel, of his endeavouring to prevent a political meeting therein, and of his being forced to submit and attend the meeting himself; but, particularly, I mentioned the circumstance of the clergy excommunicating all Defenders, and even refusing the sacraments to some of the poor fellows in articulo mortis, which to a Catholic is a very serious affair, and all to no purpose. This last circumstance seemed to strike him a good deal. He then said that I was not to augur any- thing either way from anything that had passed on that day ; that he would consider my memorials very attentively ; but that I must see that a business of such magnitude could not be dis- cussed in one conversation at the first ; that I was not, however, to be discouraged because he did not at present communicate with me more openly. "March 21, 1796. — In the course of conversation, when I desired Clarke to count upon all the opposition which the Irish aristocracy, whether Protestant or Catholic, could give, he said he believed I was in the right ; for that, since he saw me last, he had read over a variety of memorials on the subject of Irish affairs, which had been given in to the French Government for forty years back, and they all supported my opinion as to that point. I answered, I was glad of it, but begged him not to build much on any papers above a very recent date ; that the changes, even in France, were not much greater than in Ireland since 1789; that what was true of her ten or seven years ago, was not true now ; of which there could not be a stronger instance than this, that if the French had landed during the last war, the Dis- 48 TONE'S SECOND INTERVIEW WITH CLARKE. senters, to a man, and even the Catholics, would have opposed them ; but then France was under the yoke, which she had since broken ; that all the changes in the sentiments of the Irish people flowed from the Revolution in France, which they had watched very diligently ; and that being the case, he would, I hope, find reason soon to believe that my opinion on the influence of the nobles and clergy was founded in fact. I then went on to observe, that, about one hundred years ago, Louis XIV. had an opportu- nity of separating Ireland from England, during the war between James II. and William III. ; that, partly by his own miserable policy, and partly by the interested views of his minister, Lou- vois, he contented himself with feeding the war by little and little, until the opportunity was lost, and that France had reason to regret it ever since ; for, if Ireland had been made independent then, the navy of England would never have grown to what it is at this day. He said that was very true ; and added, 1 that even in the last war, when the Volunteers were in force, and a rupture between England and Ireland seemed likely, it was proposed in the French Council to offer assistance to Ireland, and overruled by the interest of Count de Vergennes, then prime minister, who received for that service a considerable bribe from England, and that he was informed of this by a principal agent in paying the money'. So, it seems, we had a narrow escape of obtaining our independence fifteen years ago. It is better as it is, for then we were not united amongst ourselves, and I am not clear that the first use we should have made of our liberty, would not have been to have begun cutting each others throats : so out of evil comes good. I do not like this story of Vergennes, of the truth of which I do not doubt. How, if the Devil should put into any one's head here to serve us so this time ! Pitt is as cunning as Hell, and he has money enough, and we have nothing here but assignats : I do not like it at all. However, it is idle speculating on what I cannot pre- vent. I can answer for myself, at least, I will do my duty. But, to return: Clarke asked me had I thought of subsisting the French troops after the landing, in case the executive de- cided in favour of the measure. I answered, I had not thought in detail on the subject, but there was one infallible mode which presented itself, which was, requisition in kind of all things ne- cessary, adding, that he might be sure, whoever wanted, the army should not want, and especially our allies, if we were so fortunate as to obtain their assistance. He asked me, 4 Might not that disgust the people of property in Ireland?' I answered, the revolution was not to be made for the people of pro- perty, etc. . . . TONE'S REFERENCE TO JOHN KEOGH. 49 " March 2G. — I have protested again and again, in these me- morandums, that I am acting to the best of my judgment, seeing that I have no advisers, which is a great loss, and on the very fairest principles. Have I no selfish motives? Yes, I have. If I succeed here, I feel I shall have strong claims on the gratitude of my country ; and as I love her, and as I think I shall be able to serve her, I shall certainly hope for some honourable station, as a reward for the sacrifices I have already made, and the dangers I have incurred, and those which I am ready, and shall have, to make and incur in the course of the business.* I hope (but I am not sure) my country is my first object, at least she is my second. If there be one before her, as I rather believe there is, it is my dearest life and love, the light of my eyes and spirit of my existence. I wish more than for any thing on Earth to place her in a splendid situation. There is none so elevated that she would not adorn and that she does not deserve, and I believe that not I only, but every one who knows her, will agree as to that. Truth is truth ! she is my first object. But would I sacri- fice the interests of Ireland to her elevation? No ! that I would not, and if I would, she would despise me, and if she were to despise me, I would go hang myself like Judas." "April 9. — Sullivan called on me this morning with an English paper of the 31st March (ten days ago), in which is an article on Ireland, wherein mention is made of Sir Edward Bellew, of Bellewstown, being arrested, as connected with the Defenders. This surprises me, for he is a confirmed aristocrat, and he and all his family have been so devoted to the government as even to have the meanness of opposing the Catholics. Such is the grati- tude of the Irish government ! But this piece of news is accom- panied by another, which gives me the most sincere anxiety on every possible account, public or private: it is the arrest of John Keogh. Poor fellow ! this is no place to write his panegyric. I have not got such a shock this long time. If we lose him, I know not where to look for a man to supply his place. I have differed from him at one time, but his services to Ireland have been eminent indeed, more especially to the Catholics; and, in all probability, they will prove his ruin ; for, from the state of his health, confinement in the unwholesome air of a prison will be to him death as certain as the guillotine. I am expressly con- cerned on his account. That infernal government of Ireland ! It is of a long time they have been on the watch for his destruc- tion, and I am sure they will stick at no means, however atrocious, to accomplish their ends. I can scarcely promise myself ever to * It was with difficulty, two years and a half later, means could be procured, and persons could be found, to bury his remains at Bodenstown. — R. R. M. 50 INTERVIEW WITH CLARKE. see him again, and I can sincerely say that one of the greatest pleasures which I anticipated in case of our success, was the society of Mount Jerome, where I have spent many happy days, and some of them serviceable to the country. It was there that he and I used to frame our papers and manifestoes. It was there we drew up the petition and vindication of the Catholics, which produced such powerful effects both in England and Ireland. I very much fear we shall never labour together again for the good of our native country. I am sure he has been too wise and too cautious to put himself in their power; but what wisdom or caution is proof against forged and suborned testimony, which I know they will never stick at procuring ; and in the state affairs are now in Ireland, any evidence will be received. Well, a day will come for all this. " April 10. — Aherne called on me this morning, and I gave him a list of the persons he is to see (in Ireland), viz., Gog, Magog, P. P., C. Teeling, R. S. — , and S. Neilson, Oliver Bond, J. J. M'Nevin, with a quere as to J. P. and T. A. Emmet.* I also gave him some trifling anecdotes, known only to ourselves, which will satisfy them that he has seen and conversed with me. When we had done I went to Clarke, who was for the first time denied to me ; however, I caught him coming out of his bureau. He said he had shown the newspapers to Carnot, who was very sorry the gentleman was arrested ; but what could he do ? I looked at him very earnestly, and repeated, ' What could he do ?' I then shrugged up my shoulders, and repeated twice in French, ' Mau- vaise augure'. ' No 1 , replied Clarke, 4 you must not look on it in that light — you must not infer anything from thence'. We then walked on towards the Directory, where he was going ; and I pressed him, if the business were at all attempted, on the necessity of not losing a moment. He interrupted me, by asking me, 4 How do you know that we are losing a moment?' I replied, that was enough ; and so we parted. I am to see him again in a few days. "June 26. — The Whig Club, I see, are taking up the condition of the labouring poor. They are getting frightened, and their guilty consciences will not let them sleep. I suppose they will act like the gentry of Meath, who, for fear of the Defenders, raised their workmen's wages from eight pence to a shilling per day, but took care at the same time to raise the rent of their * Aherne was a native of Cork, a physician. He had been employed in Scot- land by the French government on some secret mission. The persons he was to see in Ireland, on his similar treasonable mission, who are indicated by nicknames and initials, were John Keogh, who figures in the diaries as Gog; Richard M'Cormick, as Magog ; Thomas Russell, as P. P. ; R. T., Robert Simms ; and the gentleman with a query as to J. P., in all probability, John Philpot Curran. — R. R. M. FIRST INTERVIEW WITH HOCIIE. .31 hovels, and the grass for their cows, in the same proportion, so that at the end of the year the wretched peasant was not a penny the richer. Such is the honesty of the squirearchy of Ireland. No ! no ! it is we who will better the condition of the labouring poor, if ever we get into that country ; it is we that will humble the pride of that execrable and contemptible corps, the country gentlemen of Ireland M June 28. — Called on Clarke by appointment. I told him I had two things to mention : first, that as we had the Pope now in our grasp, I wished him to consider whether we might not artfully seduce him into writing to his legate, Dr. Troy, in order to secure, at least the neutrality, if not the support, of the Irish Catholic clergy. He objected, that this would be recognizing the authority of the Pope, and said he was sure the Directory would make no public application of this sort, besides, that it would be making the matter known in Italy. I replied, that un- doubtedly it was not a matter for an official application, but for private address; and, as to making it known, it need not be applied for until the last stage of the business ; nevertheless, I merely threw it out as a hint for his consideration, without press- ing it, as I expected no formidable opposition from the priests in Ireland. . . . "July 9. — If I have not passed almost six tedious months in France, I wonder at it. I am sure my country is much my debtor, if not for what I have done, at least for what I have suffered on account of her liberty. Well, I do not grudge it to her, and if ever she is able she will reward me, and I think by that time I will have deserved it at her hands. To-morrow I will go see Clarke, and hear what he has to say for himself. He assures me, for I asked him a second time for greater certainty, that my friends in Ireland know I am here. I am heartily glad of it. I was dreaming all last night of Plunkett and Peter Burrowes and George Knox, and I believe it is that which has thrown me into the blue devils all this day. . . . "July 12. — Battle of Aughrim. As I was sitting in my cabinet, studying my tactics, a person knocked at the door, who, on opening it, proved to be a dragoon of the third regiment. He brought me a note from Clarke, informing me that the person he mentioned was arrived, and desired to see me at one o'clock. I ran off directly to the Luxembourg, and was showed into Fleury's cabinet, where I remained till three, when the door opened, and a very handsome well made young fellow, in a brown coat and nankeen plantoons, entered, and said, * Vous vous etes le Citoyen Smith?' I thought he was a chef de bureau, and replied, ' Oui, citoyen, je m'appelle Smith'. He said, ' Vous appelez, aussi, jc 52 hoche's views RESPECTING IRELAND. crois Wolfe Tone'; I replied, ' Oui, citoyen, c'est mon veritable noin'. 'Eh bien', replied he, 1 je suis le General Hoche'. At these words I mentioned that I had for a long time been desirous of the honour I then enjoyed, to find myself in his company; ' Into his arms I soon did fly, and there embraced him tenderly'. He then said he presumed I was the author of the memorandums which had been transmitted to him. I said I was. Well, said he, there are one or two points I want to consult you on. He then proceeded to ask me, in case of the landing being effectuated, might he rely on finding provisions, and particularly bread. I said it would be impossible to make any arrangements in Ireland previous to the landing, because of the surveillance of the govern- ment, but if that were once accomplished, there would be no want of provisions ; that Ireland abounded in cattle, and, as for bread, I saw by the Gazette that there was not only no deficiency of corn, but that she was able to supply England, in a great degree, during the late alarming scarcity in that country ; and I assured him, that if the French were once in Ireland, he might rely that, whoever wanted bread, they should not want it. He seemed satisfed with this, and proceeded to ask me, might we count upon being able to form a provisional government, either of the Catholic Committee, mentioned in my memorials, or of the chiefs of the Defenders. I thought I saw an open here to come at the number of troops intended for us, and replied, that that would depend on the force which might be landed ; if that force were but trifling, I could not pretend to say how they might act, but if it was con- siderable, I had no doubt of their cooperation. ' Undoubtedly', replied he, * men will not sacrifice themselves when they do not see a reasonable prospect of support ; but, if I go, you may be sure I will go in sufficient force'. He then asked, did I think 10,000 men would decide them? I answered, undoubtedly, but early in the business the minister had spoken to me of 2,000, and that I had replied that such a number could effect nothing. No, replied he, they would be overwhelmed before any could join them. I replied I was glad to hear him give that opinion, as it was pre- cisely what I had stated to the minister, and I repeated that, with the force he mentioned, I could have no doubt of support and co- operation sufficient to form a provisional government. He then asked me what I thought of the priests, or was it likely they would give us any trouble. I replied, I certainly did not calcu- late on their assistance, but neither did I think they would be able to give us any effectual opposition ; that their influence over the minds of the common people was exceedingly diminished of late, and I instanced the case of the Defenders, so often men- tioned in my memorials and in these memorandums. I explained INTERVIEW WITH CARNOT AND HOCHE. 53 aU this at some length to him, and concluded by saving, that, in prudence, we should avoid as much as possible shocking their prejudices unnecessarily, and that, with common discretion, I thought we might secure their neutrality at least; if not their sup- port. I mentioned this merely as my opinion, but added that, in the contrary event, I was satisfied it would be absolutely impos- sible for them to take the people out of our hands. We then came to the army. He asked me how I thought they would act. I replied, for the regulars I could not pretend to say, but that they were wretched bad troops; for the militia, I hoped and be- lieved that when we were once organized, they would not only not oppose us, but come over to the cause of their country en inasse; nevertheless, I desired him to calculate on their oppo- sition, and make his arrangements accordingly ; that it was the safe policy, and if it became unnecessary, it was so much gained. He said he would undoubtedly make his arrangements so as to leave nothing to chance that could be guarded against ; that he would come in force, and bring great quantities of arms, ammu- nition, stores, and artillery, and, for his own reputation, see that all the arrangements were made on a proper scale. I was very glad to hear him speak thus; it sets my mind at ease on divers points. He then said there was one important point remaining, on which he desired to be satisfied, and that was what form of government we would adopt on the event of our success. I was going to answer him with great earnestness, when General Clarke entered, to request we would come to dinner with citizen Carnot. We accordingly adjourned the conversation to the apartment of the president, where we found Carnot and one or two more. Hoche, after some time, took me aside and repeated his question. I replied, ' Most undoubtedly, a republic'. He asked again, ' Was I sure T I said as sure as I could be of anything ; that I knew nobody in Ireland who thought of any other system, nor did I believe there was anybody who dreamt of monarchy. He asked me, was there no danger of the Catholics setting up one of their chiefs for king. I replied, ' Not the smallest', and that there were no chiefs amongst them of that kind of eminence Hoche related to Carnot the substance of what had passed be- tween him and me. When he mentioned his anxiety as to bread, Carnot laughed, and said, ' There is plenty of beef in Ireland; if you cannot get bread, you must eat beef. I told him I hoped they would find enough of both; adding, that within the last twenty years Ireland had become a great corn country, so that, at present, it made a considerable article in her exports "July 23. — I asked Hoche was he apprised of the Directory 54 HOCHE'S INQUIRIES RESPECTING LORD CLARE, ETC. having honoured me with the rank of chef de brigade. He replied he was, and made me his compliments. I then observed to him, I presumed I should be of most service in some situation near his person; that I spoke French, as he might observe, very imperfectly; nevertheless, I could make myself understood, and as he did not speak English, I might be useful in his communications with the people of Ireland. He replied, ' Leave all that to me ; as soon as you join, and that your regiment is formed, I will apply for the rank of adjutant-general for you; that will place you at once in the etat major; and besides, you must be in a situation where you may have a command if necessary'. I returned him a thousand thanks ; and he proceeded to ask me, ' did I think it was likely that the men of property, or any of them, wished for a revolution in Ireland'. I replied, ' most certainly not ', and that he should reckon on all the opposition that class could give him ; that, however, it was possible that when the business was once commenced, some of them might join us on speculation, but that it would be sorely against their real sentiments. He then asked me ' did I know Arthur O'Connor '. I replied, I did ; and that I entertained the highest opinion of his talents, principles, and patriotism. He asked me, ' did he not some time ago make an explosion in the Irish Parliament?' I replied, he made the ablest and honestest speech, to my mind, that ever was made in that house. Well, said he, will he join us? I answered, I hoped, as he was ' fonder 'ement Irlandais\ that he undoubtedly would. So it seems O'Connor's speech is well known here. If ever I meet him, as I hope I may, I will tell him what Hoche said, and the character that he bears in France. It must be highly gratifying to his feelings. Hoche then went on to say, ' There is a lord in your country (I was a little surprised at this beginning, knowing as I do, what stuff our Irish peers are made of) ; he is son to a duke ; is he not a patriot?' I immediately smoked my lover, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and gave Hoche a very good account of him. He asked me then about the duke. I replied that I hoped for his assistance, or at least neutrality, if the business were once com- menced. He then mentioned Fitzgibbon. Of all men in the world, I endeavoured to do him justice, as I had to the others he spoke of ; and I believe I satisfied Hoche that he will not meet with prodigious asssistance from his Majesty's Lord High Chancellor of Ireland. He then asked me ' what quantity of arms would be necessary'. I replied, the more the better, as we would find soldiers for as many firelocks as France would send us. He then told me he had demanded 80,000, but was sure of 50,000. That is a piece of good news. I answered, with 50,000 stand to begin with, we should soon have all the arms in the nation in FIOCHE's VIEWS OF THE IMPOLICY OF SANGUINARY ACTS. 55 our hands, adding that I had the strongest hopes that the militia, who composed the only real force In Ireland, would give us no opposition. Oh, said he, pour Vopposition, je men f ; which the reader will not expect me to translate literally ; but it was as much as to say that he disregarded it. He then asked me very seriously did I apprehend any royalism or aristocra- cism in Ireland? I assured him I did not; that in case of a change, we should most undoubtedly establish a republic; and I mentioned my reasons, which seemed to satisfy him. He observed, however, as Clarke had done before, that even if mo- narchy in Ireland were to be the result, it would not alter the system on which France was proceeding, as the main object was to establish the independence of Ireland, under any form of government, though undoubtedly she would prefer a republic. We then spoke of the aristocracy of Ireland, and I assured him, as I had done Clarke, that what I apprehended was, not the aggrandizement, but the massacre of that body, from the just indignation of the people, whom they have so long and so cruelly oppressed, adding that it was what I sincerely deprecated, but what I feared was too likely to happen. He said, certainly the spilling of blood was at all times to be avoided as much as possible ; that he did conceive, in such explosions as that which was likely to take place in Ireland, it was not to be supposed but that some individvals would be sacrificed, but the less the better; and it was much wiser to secure the persons of those I mentioned, or to suffer them to emigrate to England, as they would no doubt be ready to do, than to put them to death ; in which I most sincerely agreed, for I am like Parson Adams, 1 / do not desire to have the blood even of the wicked upon me. Hoche mentioned also, that great mischief had been done to the principles of liberty, and additional difficulties thrown in the way of the French Revolution, by the quantity of blood spilled. l For, added he, ' when you guillotine a man, you get rid of an individual, it is true, but then you make all his friends and connections enemies for ever to the Government'. A sentence well worth considering. I am heartily glad to find Hoche of this humane temperament, because I hope I am humane myself, and trust we shall be able to prevent unnecessary bloodshed in Ireland, which I shall most sincerely exert my best endeavours to do. I should have men- tioned, that Hoche asked me whether the Defenders had ever sent any one to France to make representations. I answered, I could not positively say, but I believed not, they being, for the most part, the peasantry of Ireland, and, of course, not having the means nor proper persons to send. At twelve I went and saw Clarke. 56 PREPARATIONS FOR BANTRY BAY EXPEDITION. " July 27. — I am surprised myself at the sang f void with which I regard the progress of my business here, so infinitely beyond my expectations. I had very little expectation of success the day I left Sandy Hook, and in fact I came merely to discharge a duty. Things have turned out miraculously to be sure. Think of my being at a council of war with Carnot, and Hoche, and Clarke, of my rank of chef de brigade, of my travelling now with Hoche, besides what yet may follow! It is absolutely like a romance. There is one thing I can say for myself. On reviewing my con- duct in France, I do not see an indiscretion with which I have to charge myself. I think in my conscience I have conducted my- self very well".* CHAPTER III. PREPARATIONS FOR BANTRY BAY EXPEDITION. "August 1, 1 796. — (Sings) ' Oh, merry be the first, and merry be the last, and merry be the first of August'. This is a sprightly beginning however. I am plaguy musical this morning, but God knows the heart. Called on Clarke from mere idleness: did not see him : but, coming out, met General Hoche, who took me in his carriage to General Cherin, with whom I am to travel. On the way, I told Hoche that I hoped the glory was reserved for him to amputate the right hand of England for ever ; and I men- tioned the immense resources in all respects, especially in men and provisions, which Ireland furnished to that country, and of which I trusted we were now on the eve of depriving her. Hoche observed, that his only anxiety was about finding subsistence for the troops. I replied, that, as to that, I hoped there would be no difficulty; that it was Ireland which victualled the navy, the West Indies, and the foreign garrisons of England; and I re- minded him of what I had before told him, that, in the late scarcity, so far from difficulties at home, she exported vast quan- tities of corn to that country. I might have added, but it did not occur to me, that we are now on the eve of harvest, so I* am sure we will find abundance of everything. I went on to say, * The military rank of adjutant-commandant was instituted by Napoleon to have active officers placed at his commands, or those of his marshals commanding corps-d'armee, and to be about his person, to take his orders on the field of battle, and put the same in execution, according as circumstances would require them to act ; for which reason they ranked above the colonels, although inferior in com- mand to major-general. At the peace, Louis XVIII. suppressed the rank of ad- jutant-commandant, and issued a royal ordonnance to have them rank with colo- nels of the etat-major. — R. R. M. PREPARATIONS FOR BAKTRY BAY EXPEDITION. 57 that my difficulty was not how to subsist, but how to get there, for that I dreaded that eternal fleet. Hoche laid his hand on my arm and said, ' Ne craignez rien, nous y irons; vous pouvez y compter; ne craignez rien.' I answered, that being so, I had not a doubt of our success. Hoche then asked me, ' Who were those Orange-boys?' I explained it to him, adding, that* as J to them, it was an affair of no consequence, which we would settle in three days after our arrival. 1 Oh', said he, 1 ce n'est rien \ I then told him I hoped he would take care to have a sufficiency of cannoniers and artillery, with which we were quite unprovided. 4 You may depend upon it', said he, * that I will bring enough, and of the best, particularly the artillerie legere " September 13, 14, 15. — At last I have brought Cherin to the point; he has received a courier last night from General Hoche, and tells me now I may set off with the first courier, or wait a few days for him, but I am tired waiting. I wrote, there- fore, by his direction, a note to the Minister at War, praying an order to depart with the first courier for Rennes, and he has promised to get it for me by to-morrow. Huzza ! " September 16, 1796. — At three o'clock in the afternoon left Paris. It is now exactly seven months and five days since I arrived there — a very important era in my life: whether it was for good or evil to my country and to myself, the event must determine; but I can safely say I have acted, all through, to the very best of my conscience and judgment, and I think 1 have not conducted myself ill. I certainly did not expect, on my arrival, to have succeeded as well as I have done ; and I have been under some difficulties at times, having not a soul to advise or commu- nicate with. I have now done with Paris, at least for some time, and God knows whether I shall ever revisit it ; but, at all events, I shall ever look back on the time I spent there with the greatest satisfaction. I believe there is no part of my conduct that I need wish to recal, at least with regard to business. As to pleasure or amusement, I had very little. I formed, and endeavoured to form, no connections. I visited and was visited by nobody, French or foreigner, and left Paris, after seven months' residence, without being acquainted with a single family. That is singular enough. The theatres formed my grand resource against the monotony of my situation ; but, on the whole, I passed my time dull enough. Well, if ever I return, I will make myself amends. I am now like the Turkish spy, ' ivho passed forty-Jive years at Paris, without being known or suspected'. I dare say Mr. Pitt knew I was there, as close as I kept ; if he did, it was by no fault or indiscretion of mine " September 26. — The general (Hoche) set off this morning i 58 PREPARATIONS FOR BANTRY BAY EXPEDITION. for Brest. I hope in God he may hurry those fellows. I dread the equinoctial gales passing over and finding us unprepared. By Shee's discourse I fancy it is intended that we shall make a race for it. Happy go lucky in that case. I was in hopes the Spanish fleet would have joined us at Brest; but he tells me they are returned to Cadiz, after escorting Richery to some unknown latitude. Damn their foolish souls, they will be beaten, and the French also in detail; whereas, if they were instantly to join their united fleets in the Channel, they would be stronger than anything England could for some time oppose to them, and a week would be sufficient for our business. If they let this occasion escape them, as I fear they will, they need never expect to meet such another. I am in the horrors to-day. Well, let us see what Hoche's expedition will produce. He will be absent five or six days. Brest is one hundred and eighty miles from this. Time ! time ! At all events, for me the die is cast, and I am utterly desperate as to the event. Come what, come may ; I have done, and am doing my duty ; and if I fall, I fall. I have not, on that score, the smallest burthen on my mind. A short time now must, I think, put me at least out of uncertainty ; and I am sure that the worst that can befal cannot be much more painful than the state of suspense and anxiety in which I have long lan- guished. Once again, courage. Let us see what Hoche will say on his return. . . . " October 4-5. — I collect that it is resolved, if possible, to turn in a gang of six or seven thousand desperadoes into England, who will live at free quarters, and commit all manner of devasta- tion. If this takes effect, it will embarrass her extremely. She has never yet seen the smoke of an enemy's fire ; and I always re- member, that 5,000 ragged, half starved Highlanders forced their way to within 100 miles' distance of London, and might, perhaps, have achieved what remained, if the Pretender had not been a pol- troon. It is, to be sure, a horrible mode of making war; but England showed the way, by disgorging so many hordes of emi- grants into France ; and the enormities which have been committed in consequence, in this country, are such as to justify France in adopting any means of revenge ; it is, in a word, but strict retalia- tion. I am curious to see how England will relish a war of Chouans in her own bowels. Colonel Shee and I were employed yesterday in digesting and arranging different routes from the several harbours where we might land, to Dublin. I find him very reasonable. We agreed that our first object was to get ashore any where, and, of course, the nearest port to Brest was the best, as we could make any shift when we were once landed, our army being composed of veterans who have been in service ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF HOCHE. 59 in La Vendee for years, and are steeled against every hardship, having been well used to dispense with clothes, shoes, or eveu bread, at times. Supposing, however, we had a port to choose, we agreed it should be Belfast, or at least as near Belfast as pos- sible; if not, Waterford or that neighbourhood. The distance from Dublin is pretty nearly equal. We calculated, however, for, I believe, a dozen different landing places round the coast. " October 6-7. — A letter from Hoche. He says that he is moving Heaven and Earth to get things in readiness at Brest, and that he hopes in three weeks we may be getting aboard. The marine agents are scoundrels, and there is a scarcity of sea- men, but orders have been this day expedited to all the military commanders along the coast, to make diligent search, secure, and send on to Brest all seafaring persons, and there is a reward of six livres a-head to the soldiers for all they can find, which will sharpen them up to the business. It will be November before we arrive, if we are so fortunate as to arrive at all ; of course we shall have, in that case, a winter campaign of it. No matter, we are better able to stand it than those who will be opposed to us. The country gentlemen of Ireland, with their warm feather beds, their beef and claret, will make, I think, no great figure before our grenadiers, who have been seasoned these four years to all manner of hardships and privations in this execrable war of La Vendee, which Hoche has had the glory of terminating. " October 17 (at Brest). — Our expedition, as well as the life of the general, has had a most providential escape. Last night, between nine and ten, as he was returning from the comedie, with General Debelle, and Hedouville a ruffian, who was posted at a corner, fired a pistol at him, within five or six yards, which fortunately missed, and the villain instantly ran off, but was stopped by two of the aides-de-camp, who happened to come that way, before he had run one hundred yards. The pistol was like- wise found where he had dropt it. On his being seized and examined, he confessed that he was hired by a person whom he described, to assassinate General Hoche, and was to have fifty louis for his reward. He threw himself on his knees before Hoche, who behaved incomparably well, and desired him to rise, as no man should kneel to him, and tell the whole truth, assuring him that he had not himself the least resentment against him. The fellow then repeated his story exactly, and the two aides-de- camp set out with a guard in quest of the other villain, whom they found in bed, and brought to head-quarters. A magistrate being sent for, the two were confronted, and the latter denying everything, they were both, after a long examination, committed to prison. It seems the fellow who fired the shot is a workman 60 END OF LORD MALMESBURY's NEGOCIATIONS. employed in the arsenal; the other is lately from Paris, and says he is a horse-dealer. In order to induce the former to commit the murder, he told him that he was a royalist, and that it was for the king's service to assassinate Hoche, which, together with the promise of the fifty louis, determined him. The name of the former is Moreau, and of the latter Teyssierd. Nothing could be better than the generals behaviour through all this affair. For my part, I do not see what the royalists could promise themselves from his death ; at the same time, it is beyond all doubt that this villain, Teyssierd, has come down from Paris expressly to have him assassinated. I do not at all suspect the English of assassina- tion, but certainly, at this moment, they are much more interested in Hoche's death than that miserable Louis XVIII. In short, I know not what to think of the motives of this abominable affair ; a few days may probably explain it further. The general told Colonel Shee he had appointed me to the rank of adjutant-general, which will give me, as a military man, very great advantages ; and he added, that one reason which kept him under restraint as to me, was the presence of that rascal Duckett, who had written him an impertinent letter, and whom he intended to cashier next morning. He added many other civilities, to which Colonel Shee made the proper acknowledgments on my part. Certainly nothing can be handsomer than this conduct of the general. I am heartily glad, for divers reasons, that he is re- solved to send Mr. Duckett to wander. Colonel Shee then told me that he expects we will set off in four or five days, and that he had requested of the general that we might travel together, and that the general had given orders to his aid-de-camp, Poiton, to that effect. The general has likewise read my address to the peasantry of Ireland, which he entirely approves, so all, as to me at least, is going on as well as I could desire. Huzza ! I am an adjutant-general ! . . . . " October 20. — This day received my orders to set out for Brest the day after to-morrow. Huzza ! huzza ! "November 1-2. — I have just read in the Moniteur, the memo- rial given in by Lord Malmesbury, the English plenipotentiary in Paris, the memoir of Charles de la Croix, and the reply of the Directory, which is admirable. I have not time to abstract them, but the negociation is at an end for the present. I never thought any ting would come of it, for I did not believe Pitt serious ; and, apparently, the Directory are of the same opinion, for it is on that principle they have framed their answer. My Lord Malmesbury may now go back if he pleases November 4, Head Quarters. — Found Hoche pressing Joyeuse extremely to be ready for the expedition, and Joyeuse starting ADMIRAL VILLARET JOYEUSE's IMPEDIMENTS. 61 every possible difficulty, particularly on the score of the transports. Hoche then said he would go with the men-of-war only, crowding as many men aboard as they could carry. Joyeuse then came down to five sail of the line and five frigates, the best sailors who might, by dint of seamanship and quick sailing, escape from the English, who were, he said, in waiting for them off Cape Clear, and who had also eclair eurs off Ushant, as every morning the report was that two large ships and three frigates were seen there. Colonel Shee asked him how many men, for a short passage, could he stow on the ships he mentioned ; he said GOO on each of the line of battle ships, and 300 on each of the frigates. That makes in all but 4,500 men. The general then said that his word was pledged to the government and to his friends in Ireland; that the time was even elapsed for which he had engaged himself; that he would go in a single frigate, if the admiral could give him no more, and he pressed him again and again in the strongest man- ner. Joyeuse still hung back, and I believe he was sorry, to judge by his manner, that he had spoken of even five ships of the line ; at length he proposed, merely, as I think, to gain time, to send out a vessel to reconnoitre, and bring positive intelligence of the state of the country, and another to learn the actual posi- tion of the English fleet ; and, upon this proposal, the meeting broke up. I augur the worst possible event from any business in which the marine of France is concerned.* .... " November 24-25. — The 1st of January I left Sandy Hook. The 1st of February I arrived at Havre, and if we arrive safe at our destination, it is possible that on the 1st of January next I * In 1792, when Villaret Joyeuse was promoted to the rank of captain, he was known to be inimical to the new order of things, but continued to serve under the republican government. He commanded under the Admiral Morard de Galles, who was superseded the year following, and Joyeuse was then made vice-admiral, on which occasion St. Andre, a member of the Committee of Public Safety, said, " I know that Villaret is nothing but an aristocrat, but he is brave, and will do his duty". The miserable policy of conciliating public enemies by conferring official favours on them, was amply demonstrated in France. Villaret did not do his duty ; he sacrificed it to his own political predilections. After Hoche's serious complaints against him, Villaret tendered his resignation, he being charged with the marine preparations for the expedition. In his communications to his govern- ment, he predicted the failure of the expedition ; he appears to have been one of Sir Jonah Barrington's order of prophets, who leave no means unattempted to fulfil their own predictions. In September, 1797, his name was placed by the Directory on the list of banished persons, but he was allowed to go into voluntary exile. In 1801, he was recalled by Buonaparte, and placed in command of a new expedition destined against St. Domingo. He was subsequently appointed gover- nor-general of Martinique, and in 1809, when that island was attacked by an English force, he capitulated on easy terms. His bravery was not called in ques- tion, but his conduct was blamed by a court of inquiry. He remained unemployed till 1811, when he was named governor-general of Venice, and died there the year following. Biographie Cotem. Tom. 4, p. 1521. — R. R M. 62 BANTRY BAY EXPEDITION EMBARKATION. may be once more in Dublin. Quanquam, oh! General Clarke set off nine days ago, at a minute's warning, for Vienna, by way of Italy. That looks like peace with the emperor; but, thank God, I see no signs as yet of peace with England; on the con- trary, Lord Malmesbury and my old lover, Charles de la Croix, are keeping up a very snappish correspondence, which the Direc- tory publishes regularly. I have been hard at work half this day translating orders and instructions for a Colonel Tate, an Ameri- can officer, who offered his services, and to whom the general has given the rank of chef de brigade, and 1,050 of the Legion Noire, in order to go on a buccaneering party into England. Excepting some little errors in the locality, which, after all, may seem errors to me from my own ignorance, the instructions are incomparably well drawn ; they are done, or at least corrected by the general himself, and if Tate be a dashing fellow, with military talents, he may play the devil in England before he is caught. His object is Liverpool, and I have some reason to think the scheme has re- sulted from a conversation which I had a few days since with Colonel Shee, wherein I told him that if we were once settled in Ireland, I thought we might make a piratical visit in that quarter, and, in fact, I wish it was we should have the credit and profit of it. 1 should like, for example, to pay a visit to Liverpool myself, with some of the gentlemen from Ormond Quay, though I must say the citizens of the Legion Noire are very little behind my countrymen, either in appearance or morality, which last has been prodigiously cultivated by three or four campaigns in Bretagne and La Vendee. A thousand of these desparadoes, in their black jackets, will edify John Bull exceedingly, if they get safe into Lancashire. Every day I walk for an hour alone on the ramparts, and look down on the fleet which rides below. There are about fifty sail of ships of war, of all sizes, of which, perhaps twenty are of the line". " BANTRY BAY EXPEDITION ON BOARD. "December, 1796. " December 1-2. — Received my order to embark on board the Indomitable, of 80 guns, Captain Bedout. Packed up directly, and wrote a long letter of directions to my wife, in which I de- tailed everything I thought necessary, and advised her, in case of anything happening to me, to return to America, and settle in Georgia or Carolina. " December 3-4. — As it is now pretty certain that the English BANTRY BAY EXPEDITION — EMBARKATION. 63 are in force off Uskant to the number of sixteen ships of the line and ten frigates, it seems hardly possible that we can make our way to Ireland without falling in with them ; and, as even the most successful action must be attended with damages in our masts and rigging, so that, even if victorious, which I do not expect, we may yet be prevented from proceeding on the expe- dition, considering the stormy season of the year, I have been devising a scheme, which, I think, in the present state of things in Ireland, can hardly fail of success. It is this: — That three, or, at most, four sail of the fastest going ships should take advantage of the first favourable moment, as a dark night and a strong gale from the north-east, and slip out with as many troops as they can carry, including at least a company of the artillerie legere, and steering such a course as, though somewhat longer, should be most out of the way of the English fleet ; that they should proceed round the coast of Ireland, keeping a good offing for fear of acci- dents, and land the men in the north, as near Belfast as possible, etc. " If we were able to go in force, a la bonne Jieure, but as we are not, and as I have no expectation but that we shall be well beaten, and the whole expedition miscarry, I look upon my pro- posal as the best means to save so much out of the fire, and per- haps, with the force Tspeak of, we might succeed, even though the main body might miscarry. I say perhaps, though in fact I do not doubt it. As to the general's objection on the score of the hazard, undoubtedly there is great hazard ; but, in the first place, I look upon the actual hazard to be much greater on his plan, inasmuch as four ships have an infinitely better chance of escaping the vigilance of Admiral Gardner, who is watching us without with eighteen sail of the line, than fifteen, of which our squadron consists, not including frigates on either side; and as to fighting, they will beat us as surely with our fifteen sail as with four, and the consequence will be, of course, the failure of our expedition. In the next place, as to the hazard, there is no possibility of exe- cuting so great a measure as that which we have in hand, without infinite hazard; and as we are undoubtedly the weaker at sea, we are to choose that party which offers us the least risk, and in that respect I have no doubt of the superiority of my plan. However, it is decided otherwise, and I must submit. Our force is of fifteen sail of the line, ten frigates, and seven or eight trans- ports ; that makes upwards of thirty sail, a force which can never escape the vigilance of the English, unless there should come a furious storm for two or three days, without remission, which would blow them up the Channel. 11 December 12. — The etat-major came aboard last night: we 64 BANTRY BAY EXPEDITION — DEPARTURE. are seven in the great cabin, including a lady in boys clothes, the wife of a commissaire — one Ragoneau. By what I see, we have a little army of commissaires, who are going to Ireland to make their fortunes. If we arrive safe, I think I will keep my eyes a little upon those gentlemen. " In consequence of the arrival of Richery, our squadron will be augmented with two if not three ships, and the army with 1,700 men, which, with 13,400 already on board, will make 15,100 — a force more than sufficient for our purpose — if, as I am always obliged to add, we have the good fortune to reach our destination in safety. Shee tells me the general thinks the ma- rine are trifling with him, on purpose to gain time until the bad weather sets in ; when, if it holds any time, as is highly probable, our stores of all sorts will be exhausted, and the business must be given up from pure necessity. This I apprehend myself. He also says that Bruix, a rear-admiral, who is charged with the execution of the naval department, and in whose zeal the general had great confidence, has cooled exceedingly within these few days, so much that to-day, when the general called on him and was pressing him on our affair, Bruix, instead of answering him, was dandling one of his little children. The excuse now is, that we are waiting for some charts or plans, which must be washed in water-colours, and will take two days; a worthy subject for delay in the present stage of the business ! " December 15. — At eleven o'clock this morning the signal was made to heave short, and I believe we are now about to sail in downright earnest. There is a signal also at the point for four sail of enemies in the offing ; it is most delicious weather, and the sun is as warm and as bright as in the month of May ; ' / hope\ as Lord George Brilliant says, ' he may not shine through somebody presently '. We are all in high spirits, and the troops are as gay as if they were going to a ball. With our fifteen thousand, or, more correctly, thirteen thousand nine hundred and seventy-five men, I would not have the least doubt of our beating thirty thousand of such as will be opposed to us ; that is to say, if we reach our destination. The signal is now flying to get under way ; so one way or other, the affair will be at last brought to a decision, and God knows how sincerely I rejoice at it. The wind is right aft. Huzza ! At one we got under way, and stood out of the Goulet until three, when we cast anchor by signal in the Bay de Camaret, having made about three leagues. Our ship, I think, would beat the whole fleet; we passed, with easy sail, a frigate, La Surveillante, under her top- gallant sails, and nothing was able to come near us. We are now riding at single anchor, and I hope we shall set off to-morrow. FRENCH FLEET IN B AX TRY BAY. 56 This morning, to my infinite mortification and anxiety, we are but eighteen sail in company, instead of forty-three, which is our number. We conjecture, however, that the remaining twenty- five have made their way through the Yroise, and that we shall see them to-morrow morning; at the same time, we much fear that some of our companions have perished in that infernal Raz. We have nothing for it now but to wait till to-morrow. (At night.) This day has passed without any event; the weather moderate, the wind favourable, and our eighteen sail pretty well together. " December 18. — How, after all, if we were not to join our companions ? What will Grouchy and Bouvet determine ? We are enough to make the attempt, but we must then steer for the north of Ireland. If it rested with me, I would not hesitate a moment, and as it is, I will certainly propose it, if I can find an opening. If we are doomed to die, we are enough To do our country loss ; and if to rise, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. This damned fog continues without interruption. (At night.) Foggy all day, and no appearance of our comrades. I asked General Cherin what we should do, in case they did not rejoin us. He said that he supposed General Grouchy would take the command with the troops we had with us, which, on examination, we found to amount to about G,500 men. I need not say that I supported this idea with all my might. M December 19. — This morning, at eight, signal of a fleet in the offing. I see about a dozen sail, but whether they are friends or enemies God knows. It is a stark calm, so that we do not move an inch, even with our studding-sails, but here we lie rolling like so many logs on the water. It is most inconceivably provoking ; two frigates that were ordered to reconnoitre, have not advanced one hundred yards in an hour with all their canvas out. It is now nine o'clock; damn it to for a calm, and in the middle of December ! Well, it cannot last long. If this fleet prove to be our comrades, it will be famous news ; if we had a fair wind, we should be in Bantry Bay to-morrow morning. How if these damned English should catch us at last, after having gone on successfully thus far? Our force, leaving Brest water, was as follows : — Indomitable, 80 guns ; Nestor, Cassard, Droits lePIomme, Tourville, Ecole, Fougueux, Mucius, Redoubtable, Patriote, Pluton, Constitution, Trajan, Watigny, Pegaze, Revo- lution, and the unfortunate Seduisant, of 74 guns (seventeen sail of the line) ; La Cocarde, Bravoure, Immortalite, Bellone, Coquille, ii. 6 66 FRENCH FLEET IN BANTRY BAY. Romaine, Sirene, Impatiente, Surveillante, Charente, Resolue, Tartare, and FraternitS, frigates of 36 guns (thirteen frigates) ; Scevola and Fidele, armes en fiute; Mutine, Menard, Atalante, Voltigeur, and Affronteur, corvettes; and Nicodeme, Justine, Ville d 1 Orient, Stiff r en, Experiment, and Alegre, transports, ma- king, in all, forty-three sail. Of these, there are missing this day, at three o'clock, the Nestor and Seduisant, of 74 guns ; the Fraternite, Cocarde, and Romaine, frigates ; the Mutine and Vol- tigeur, corvettes, and three other transports. " December 20. — Last night, in moderate weather, we con- trived to separate again, and this morning, at eight o'clock, we are but fifteen sail in company, with a foul wind and hazy. I am in horrible ill-humour, and it is no wonder. We shall lie beating about here, within thirty leagues of Cape Clear, until the English come and catch us, which will be truly agreeable. "December 21. — Stark calm all the forepart of the night; at length a breeze sprung up, and this morning, at daybreak, we are under Cape Clear, distant about four leagues ; so I have, at all events, once more seen my country ; but the pleasure I should otherwise feel a,t this is totally destroyed by the absence of the general, who has not joined us, and of whom we know nothing. At the moment I write this, we are under easy sail, within three leagues, at most, of the coast, so that I can discover here and there patches of snow on the mountains. What if the general should not join us? If we cruise here five days, according to our instructions, the English will be upon us, and then all is over. We are thirty sail in company, and seven or eight absent. Is that such a separation of our force, as, under all the circum- stances, will warrant our following the letter of our orders, to the certain failure of the expedition ? If Grouchy and Bouvet be men of spirit and decision, they will land immediately, and trust to their success for justification. If they be not, and if this day passes without our seeing the general, I much fear the game is up. I am in indescribable anxiety, and Cherin, who commands aboard, is a poor creature to whom it is vain to speak ; not but I believe he is brave enough, but he has a little mind. There cannot be imagined a situation more provokingly tantalizing than mine at this moment, within view, almost within reach, of my native land, and uncertain whether I shall ever set my foot on it. We are now (nine o'clock) at the rendezvous appointed ; stood in for the coast till twelve, when we were near enough to toss a biscuit ashore ; at twelve tacked, and stood out again : so now we have begun our cruise of five days in all its forms, and shall, in obedience to the letter of our instructions, ruin the expe- dition, and destroy the remnant of the French navy, with a pre- FRENCH FLEET EN BANTRY BAY. 67 cision and punctuality which will be truly edifying. We opened Bantry Bay, and in all my life rage never entered so deeply into my heart as when we turned our backs on the coast. I sounded Cherin as to what Grouchy might do, but he turned the discourse; he is Taata Enos* Simon is entirely of my opinion, and so is Captain Bedout : but what docs that signify ? " December 22. — This morning, at eight, we have nearcd Bantry Bay considerably, but the fleet is terribly scattered; no news of the Fraternite. I believe it is the first instance of an admiral in a clean frigate, with moderate weather and nioon-liffht nights, parting company with his fleet. Captain Grammont, our first lieutenant, told me his opinion is, that she is either taken or lost, and, in either event, it is a terrible blow to us. All rests now upon Grouchy, and I hope he may turn out well; he has a glorious game in his hands, if he has spirit and talent to play it. If he succeeds, it will immortalize him. I do not at all like the countenance of the etat major in this crisis. When they speak of the expedition, it is in a style of despondency, and, when they are not speaking of it, they are playing cards and laughing ; they are every one of them brave of their persons, but I see nothing of that spirit of enterprise, combined with a steady resolution, which our present situation demands. They stared at me this morning when I said that Grouchy was the man in the whole army who had least reason to regret the absence of the general, and began to talk of responsibility and difficulties, as if any great enterprise was without responsibility and difficulties. I was burning with rage: however, I said nothing, and will say nothing, until I get ashore, if ever I am so happy as to arrive there. We are gaining the bay by slow degrees, with a head wind at east, where it has hung these five weeks. To-night we hope, if nothing extraor- dinary happens, to cast anchor in the mouth of the bay, and work up to-morrow morning: these delays are dreadful to my impatience. I am now so near the shore, that I can see distinctly two old castles, yet I am utterly uncertain whether I shall ever set foot on it. According to appearances, Bouvet and Grouchy are resolved to proceed; that is a great point gained, however. Two o'clock : we have been tacking ever since eight this morning, and I am sure we have not gained one hundred yards ; the wind is right ahead, and the fleet dispersed, several being far to leeward. I have been looking over the schedule of our arms, artillery, and ammunition; we are well provided; wo. have 41,160 stand of arms, twenty pieces of field artillery, and nine of siege, m- * See "Cook's Voyages", 68 FRENCH FLEET IN BANTRY BAY. eluding mortars and howitzers; 61,200 barrels of powder, 7,000,000 musket cartridges, and 700,000 flints, besides an in- finite variety of articles belonging to the train, but we have neither sabres nor pistols for the cavalry; however, we have nearly three regiments of hussars embarked, so that we can dis- pense with them. " The day has passed without the appearance of one vessel, friend or enemy, the wind rather more moderate, but still ahead. To-night, on examining the returns with Waudre, chef cVetat- major of the artillery, I find our means so reduced by the absence of the missing, that I think it hardly possible to make an attempt here with any prospect of success ; in consequence I took Cherin into the captain's room, and told him frankly my opinion of our actual state, and that I thought it our duty, since we must look upon the main object as now unattainable, unless the whole of our friends returned to-morrow, and the English gave us our own time, which was hardly to be expected, to see what could be best done for the honour and interest of the republic, with the force which remained in our hands, and I proposed to him to give me the Legion des Francs, a company of the artillerie legere, and as many officers as desired to come volunteers in the expedition, with what arms and stores remained, which are now reduced by our separation to four field pieces, 20,000 firelocks at most, one thousand pounds of powder, and 3,000,000 cartridges, and to land us in Sligo Bay, and let us make the best of our way. If we succeeded, the republic would gain infinitely in reputation and interest ; and, if we failed, the loss would be trifling, as the ex- pense was already incurred ; and as for the legion, he knew what kind of desperadoes it was composed of, and for what purpose. Consequently, in the worst event, the republic would be well rid of them. Finally, I added that though I asked the command, it was on the supposition that none of the generals would risk their reputation on such a desperate enterprise, and that if another was found, I would be content to go as a simple volun- teer. This was the outline of my proposal, which I pressed on him with such arguments as occurred to me, concluding by observ- ing that, as a foreigner in the French service, my situation was a delicate one, and if 1 were simply an officer, I would obey in silence the orders of my superiors ; but, from my connections in Ireland, having obtained the confidence of the directory so far as to induce them to appoint me to the rank of chef de brigade, and of General Hoche, who had nominated me adjutant-general, I thought it my duty, both to France and Ireland, to speak on this occasion, and that I only offered my plan as a pis alter, in case nothing better suggested itself. Cherin answered, that J did very FRENCH FLEET IN BAN TRY BAY. 69 right to give my opinion, and that as he expected a council of war would be called to-morrow, he would bring me with him, and I should have an opportunity to press it. The discourse rested there, and to-morrow we shall see more, if we are not agreeably surprised, early in the morning, by a visit from the English, which is highly probable. I am now so near the shore, that I can in a manner touch the sides of Bantry Bay with my right and left hand, yet God knows whether I shall ever tread again on Irish ground " It was agreed in full council that General Chcrin, Colonel Waudre, chef d'etat major of the artillery, and myself should go aboard the Immortality and press General Grouchy in the strongest manner to proceed on the expedition with the ruins of our scattered army. Accordingly, we made a signal with the admiral, and in about an hour we were aboard. I must do Grouchy the justice to say that the moment we gave our opinion in favour of proceeding, he took his part decidedly, and like a man of spirit, he instantly set about preparing the or aire de bataille, and we finished it without delay. We are not more than 6,500 strong, but they are tried soldiers, who have seen fire, and I have the strongest hopes that, after all, we shall bring our enter- prise to a glorious termination. It is a bold attempt, and truly original. All the time we were preparing the ordre de bataille, we were laughing most immoderately at the poverty of our means, and I believe, under the circumstances, it was the merriest council of war that was ever held ; but 1 De Clievaliers francais tel est le caractere. . . . It is altogether an enterprise truly unique; we have not one guinea; we have not a tent; we have not a horse to draw our four pieces of artillery ; the general-in- chief marches on foot ; we leave all our baggage behind us ; we have nothing but the arms in our hands, the clothes on our backs, and a good courage, but that is sufficient. With all these original circumstances, such as I believe never were found united in an expedition of such magnitude as that we are about to attempt, we are all gay as larks. I never saw the French character better exemplified than in this mornings business. Well, at last I be- lieve we are about to disembark ; God knows how I long for it. But this infernal easterly wind continues without remorse, and though we have been under weigh three or four hours, and made I believe three hundred tacks, we do not seem to my eyes to have gained one hundred yards in a straight line I appre- hend we are to-night 6,000 of the most careless fellows in Europe, for everybody is in the most extravagant spirits on the eve of an enterprise, which, considering our means, would make many people serious My enemy, the wind, seems just now, 70 FRENCH FLEET IN BANTRY BAY. at eight o'clock, to relent a little, so we may reach Bantry by to- morrow. The enemy has now had four days to recover from his panic and prepare to receive us ; so much the worse, but I do not mind it. We purpose to make a race for Cork as if the devil were in our bodies, and when we are fairly there, we will stop for a day or two to take breath and look about us. From Bantry to Cork is about forty-five miles, which, with all our efforts, will take us three days, and I suppose we may have a brush by the way, but I think we are able to deal with any force that can at a week's notice be brought against us " December 25. — Last night I had the strongest expectations that to-day we should debark, but at two this morning I was awakened by the wind. I rose immediately, and wrapping my- self in my great coat, walked for an hour in the gallery, devoured by the most gloomy reflections. The wind continues right ahead, so that it is absolutely impossible to work up to the landing-place, and God knows when it will change. The same wind is exactly favourable to bring the English upon us, and these cruel delays give the enemy time to assemble his entire force in this neigh- bourhood, and perhaps (it is, unfortunately, more than perhaps) by his superiority in numbers, in cavalry, in artillery, in money, in provisions, in short in everything we want, to crush us, sup- posing we are even able to effectuate a landing at last, at the same time that the fleet will be caught as in a trap. Had we been able to land the first day and march directly to Cork, we should have infallibly carried it by a coup de main, and then we should have a footing in the country ; but as it is, if we are taken, my fate will not be a mild one ; the best I can expect is to be shot as an emigre ventre, unless I have the good fortune to be killed in the action ; for, most assuredly, if the enemy will have us, he must fight for us. Perhaps I may be reserved for a trial, for the sake of striking terror into others, in which case I shall be hanged as a traitor, and embowelled, etc. As to the embowelling, je men fiche: if ever they hang me, they are welcome to embowel me if they please. These are pleasant prospects ! Nothing on Earth could sustain me now, but the consciousness that I am engaged in a just and righteous cause. For my family, I have, by a des- perate effort, surmounted my natural feelings so far that I do not think of them at this moment. This day, at twelve, the wind blows a gale still from the east, and our situation is now as critical .as possible, for it is morally certain that this day, or to- morrow in the morning, the English fleet will be in the harbour's mouth, and then adieu to everything. In this desperate state of affairs, I proposed to Cherin to sally out with all our forces, to mount the Shannon, and, disembarking the troops, make a forced FRENCH FLEET IN BANTRY BAY. 71 march to Limerick, which is probably unguarded, the garrison being, I am pretty certain, on its march to oppose us here ; to pass the river at Limerick, and, by forced marches, push to the north. I detailed all this on a paper which I will keep, and showed it to Captain Bedout and all the generals on board, Cherin, Simon, and Chasseloup. They all agreed as to the ad- vantages of the plan, but after settling it, we find it impossible to communicate with the general and admiral, who are in the Immortality nearly two leagues ahead, and the wind is now so high and foul, and the sea so rough, that no boat can live, so all communication is impracticable, and to-morrow morning, it will, most probably, be too late; and on this circumstance, perhaps, the fate of the expedition and the liberty of Ireland depend. I cannot conceive for what reason the two commanders-in-chief are shut up together in a frigate. Surely they should be on board the flag-ship. " My prospects at this hour are as gloomy as possible. I see nothing before, unless a miracle be wrought in our favour, but the ruin of the expedition, the slavery of my country, and my own destruction. Well, it' I am to fall, at least I will sell my life as dear as individual resistance can make it. So now I have made up my mind. I have a merry Christmas of it to-day. "December 26.— Last night, at half after six o'clock, in a heavy gale of wind, still from the east, we were surprised by the admiral's frigate running under our quarter, and hailing the In- domjytable, with orders to cut our cable and put to sea instantly ; the frigate then pursued her course, leaving us all in the utmost astonishment. Our first idea was that it might be an English frigate, lurking in the bottom of the bay, which took advantage of the storm and darkness of the night to make her escape, and wished to separate our squadron by this stratagem ; for it seems utterly incredible that an admiral should cut and run in this manner, without any previous signal of any kind to warn the fleet, and that the first notice we should have of his intention should be his hailing us in this extraordinary manner with such unexpected and peremptory orders. After a short consultation with his officers (considering the storm, the darkness of the night, that we have two anchors out, and only one spare one in the hold), Captain Bedout resolved to wait, at all events, till to- morrow morning, in order to ascertain whether it was really the admiral who hailed us. The morning is now come, the gale continues, and the fog is so thick that we cannot see a ship's length ahead; so here we lie in the utmost uncertainty and anxiety. In all probability, we are now left without admiral or general: if so, Cherin will command the troops, and Bedout the 72 FRENCH FLEET IN BANTRY BAY. fleet ; but, at all events, there is an end of the expedition. Cer- tainly, we have been persecuted by a strange fatality from the very night of our departure to this hour. We have lost two com- manders-in-chief; of four admirals not one remains ; we have lost one ship of the line that we know of, and probably many others of which we know nothing ; we have been now six days in Bantry Bay, within five hundred yards of the shore, without being able to effectuate a landing ; we have been dispersed four times in four days ; and at this moment, of forty-three sail, of which the expe- dition consisted, we can muster of all sizes but fourteen. There only wants our falling in with the English to complete our destruction; and, to judge of the future by the past, there is every probability that that will not be wanting. All our hopes are now reduced to get back in safety to Brest, and I believe we will set sail for that port the instant the weather will permit. It is hard, after having forced my way thus far, to be obliged to turn back ; but it is my fate, and I must submit. Notwithstanding all our blunders, it is the dreadful stormy weather and easterly winds, which have been blowing furiously, and without intermission since we made Bantry Bay, that have ruined us. Well, England has not had such an escape since the Spanish Armada, and that expedition, like ours, was defeated by the weather ; the elements fight against us, and courage is here no avail. "December 27. — Yesterday several vessels, including the In- domptable, dragged their anchors several times, and it was with great difficulty they rode out the gale. At two o'clock, the lie- volution, a 74, made signal that she could hold no longer, and, in consequence of the commodore's permission, who now com- mands our little squadron, cut her only cable and put to sea. In the night, the Patriots and Pluton, were forced to put to sea, with the Nicomede, flute, so that this morning we are reduced to seven sail of the line and one frigate. Any attempt here is now despe- rate, but I still think, if we were debarked at the mouth of the Shannon, we might yet recover all. At ten o'clock, the commo- dore made signal to get under way, which was delayed by one of the ships, which required an hour to get ready. This hour we availed ourselves of to hold a council of war, at which were pre- sent Generals Cherin and Harty and Humbert, who came from their ships for that purpose ; Adjutant-Generals Simon, Chaseloup, and myself; Lieut.-Col. Waudre, commanding the artillery, and Favory, captain of engineers, together with Commodore Bedout, who was invited to assist ; General Harty, as senior officer, being president. It was agreed that, our force being now reduced to 4,168 men, our artillery to two four-pounders, our ammunition to 1,500,000 cartridges and 500 rounds for the artillery, with 500 FAILURE OF THE EXPEDITON — RETURN TO FRANCE. 73 pounds of powder ; this part of the country being utterly wild and savage, furnishing neither provisions nor horses, and especially as the enemy, having seven days notice, together with three more which it would require to reach Cork, supposing we even met with no obstacle, had time more than sufficient to assemble his forces in numbers sufficient to crush our little army ; considering, moreover, that this province is the only one of the four which tes- tifies no disposition to revolt; that it is the most remote from the party which is ready for insurrection ; and, finally, Captain Be- dout having communicated His instructions, which are, to mount as high as the Shannon, and cruise there live days; it was unani- mously agreed to quit Bantry Bay directly, and proceed for the mouth of the Shannon, in hopes to rejoin some of our scattered companions ; and when we are there, we will determine, according to the means in our hands, what part we shall take "December 2S. — Last night it blew a dreadful hurricane. At one this morning, a dreadful sea took the ship in the quarter, stove in the quarter gallery, and one of the dead lights in the great cabin, which was instantly filled with water to the depth of three feet. The cots of our officers were almost all torn down, and themselves and their trunks floated about the cabin. For my part, I had just fallen asleep when wakened by the shock, of which I at first did not comprehend the meaning ; but hearing the water distinctly rolling in the cabin beneath me, and two or three of the officers mounting in their shirts, as wet as if they had risen from the bottom of the sea, I concluded instantly that the ship had struck and was filling with water, and that she would sink directly The frigate Coquille joined us in the course of the day, which we spent standing off and on the shore, without being joined hy any of our missing companions. " December 29. — At four this morning, the commodore made the signal to steer for France : so there is an end of our expedition for the present — perhaps for ever. I spent all yesterday in my hammock, partly through sea-sickness, and much more through vexation. At ten we made prize of an unfortunate brig, bound from Lisbon to Cork, laden with salt, which we sunk. "December 30-31. — On our way to Brest. It will be supposed I am in no great humour to make memorandums. This is the last day of the year 1796, which has been a very remarkable one in my history. " January 1, 1797. — At eight this morning, made the island of Ushante, and at twelve opened the Goulet. We arrive seven sail: the Indomptable, of 80 ; Watigny, Cassard, and Ecole, 74; Coquille, 36; the Atalante, 20; and the Vautour, lugger, of 14. We left Brest forty-three sail, of which seventeen were of the line. 74 TONE'S RETURN TO FRANCE. I am utterly astonished that we did not see a single English ship of war, going nor coming back. They must have taken their measures very ill not to intercept us, but perhaps they have picked up some of our missing ships. Well, this evening will explain all, and we shall see now what is become of our four ad- mirals and of our two generals-in -chief CHAPTER IV. TONE'S AFFAIRS IN FRANCE AND HOLLAND, FROM JANUARY TO JULY, 1797. The 2nd of January, 1796, arrived at Brest with the remnant of the expedition from Bantry Bay. In the preceding month of May Tone had written to his wife, desiring her to remove with all the family to France by the first opportunity. It was not, however, till the end of December, 1796, he had the happiness of hearing of their arrival at Hamburgh, and being then settled there, " his wife, sister, and children, his brother having decided to settle in America". The brother unnamed in the journal was Matthew. The following letters of Tone to his wife will show how he was occupied from the time of the Bantry Bay failure to that of the preparation for the second expedition that was intended to have proceeded to Ireland from Holland : — "Paris, January 13, 1797. " Thank God, you are safe thus far, with our darling babies ! I will not hear, I will not believe, that your health is not in the ' best possible state ; at the same time, I entreat you, as you value my life, that you may take all possible care of yourselves. I am only this morning arrived at Paris from Brest, whence I was despatched by the general commanding the army intended for Ireland, in the absence of General Hoche, in order to communi- cate with the Executive Directory. I am at present adjutant- general, and I can live on my appointments ; and when the peace comes, we will rent a cabin and a garden, and be as happy as emperors on my half-pay ; at the same time, I am not without hopes that the government here may be doing something better for me ; but for all this, it is indispensable that you be in rude health. Who will milk the cows or make the butter if you are not stout? . . The sixteenth of last month we sailed from Brest, with seventeen sail of the line, besides frigates, etc., to the number in all of forty-three sail, having on board 15,000 troops and 45,000 stand of arms, with artillery, etc. We were intended . * "The Life of T. W, Tone", by his Son. Washington, 8vo, 1826, vol. ii., p. 15, et seq. MARRIAGE OF MARY TONE. 75 for Ireland, but no unfortunate fleet was ever so tossed by storm and tempest ; at length the division in which I embarked was forced to return to Brest, the second of this month, after lying eight days in Bantry Bay, near Cork, without being able to put a man ashore. We brought back about 5,000 men, and as the general has not yet returned, we are in great hopes that he has effected a landing with the other 10,000, in which case we shall retrieve everything. In the meantime I am here waiting the orders of the government. If the expedition be renewed, I shall, of course, return to Brest; if not, I will await your arrival at Paris. This is a hasty sketch of my affairs, but I have a journal for you in eleven little volumes. I have only to add that I am in the highest health, and should be in good spirits, if it were not for those two cruel lines where you speak of yourself. Let me now come to your affair, or rather Mary's. I will give my opinion in one word, by saying that I leave everything to her own decision ; I have no right, and if I had, I have no wish, to put the smallest constraint upon her inclination ; I certainly feel a satisfaction at the prospect of her being settled, and I entreat her to receive my most earnest and anxious wishes for her future happiness. As far, therefore, as my consent may be necessary, I give it in the fullest and freest manner. I write to M. Giauque, accordingly, by the same post which brings you this.* . I shall soon know now whether our affair will be prosecuted or not; if it is, I am of course compelled to take my share, and must return to my post ; if it is not, 1 will go for you myself to Hamburgh. " I return to my own affairs. You desire me to write something comfortable, and, in consequence, I tell you, in the first place, that I doat upon you and the babies; and, in the next place, that my pay and appointments amount to near eight thousand livres a year, of which one-fourth is paid in cash, and the remainder in paper ; so that I receive now about eighty-four pounds sterling a year, and when we come to be paid all in cash, as we shall be some time or other, my pay will be about three hundred and fifty- four pounds sterling a year. I will rent a cottage and a few acres of land within a lew miles of Paris, in order to be on the spot, and with our eighty-four pounds a year, a couple of cows, a hog, and some poultry, you will see whether we will not be happy. That is the worst that can happen us ; but if our expedition suc- ceeds, of which as yet I know nothing, but which a very few days must now decide, only think what a change that will make in our affairs; and even if anything should happen me in that event, you and the babies will be the care of the na- * Giauque was a young Swiss merchant, who had come over from America in the same vessel in which the Tones embarked for Holland. — K. R. M. 76 TONE'S MONEY AFFAIRS WITH REYNOLDS. tion ; so let me entreat of you not to give way to any gloomy ideas. " Direct your answer to Le Citoyen Smith, Petite Rue St. Roche, Poissoniere, No. 7, a Paris. " My sincere love to Mary and the little ones. God Almighty for ever bless you, because I doat on you. " Yours, ever, "J. Smith". LETTER TO MRS. TONE. " Paris, 17, 1797. " With regard to your finances, all I have to say is, that When both house and land is spent, Then learning is most excellent. I desired Reynolds, in my letter, to get you specie for your stock, and not to meddle with bills of exchange, and I see he did not pay the least attention to my request, ' for which his oivn gods damn him\ I do not well understand that part of your letter, where you speak of your having a bill on London, for 500 dollars, which is not received. However, as Mons. Giaque is, or is about to be, one of our family, and as he is a man used to commercial affairs, of which I know nothing, I presume he will do his best to recover the money for you ; but, if it should be lost, let it go ! we shall be rich enough to make ourselves peasants, and I will buy you a handsome pair of sabots (in English, ivooden shoes), and another for myself: and you will see, with my half-pay, which is the worst that can happen us, we shall be as happy as the day is long. I will, the moment I am clear of the business in which I am engaged, devote the remainder of my life to making you happy and educating our little ones ; and I know you well enough to be convinced that, when we are once together, all stations in life are indifferent to you. " I am surprised you did not receive my last letter addressed to you at Princeton, because I enclosed it in one to Reynolds and Rowan jointly, which it seems they received, which is a little ex- traordinary ; however, as it happens, it is no great matter, for it is little more than a duplicate of the one you got by way ol Havre.* "I am heartily glad that Matt is safe and well. If I had him here now, I could make him a captain and my aide-de-camp for * These letters contained directions to my mother to carry the papers and everything from America. Can it be that Keynolds already meditated to keep them ? — Editor of Tone's Journals, etc. tone's account of failure of expedition. 77 a word's speaking to the general ; so that, if he has any wish for a military life, it is unlucky that he did not come with you, as I desired in my letter to you which miscarried. I will reserve for Matt the very first company of grenadiers in the army ; so Mary will have two brothers, in that case, of the etat militaire, instead of one ; and perhaps she may have three, for Arthur (of ivhom I have not heard one icord since he left Pliiladelphia) is now old enough to carry a pair of colours.* " February 11, 1797. — I gave you, in my last, a short sketch of our unlucky expedition, for the failure of which we are, ultimately, to accuse the winds alone, for, as to any enemy, we saw none. In the event, the British took but one frigate and two or three transports ; so you see the rhodomontades which you read in the English papers were utterly false. I mentioned to you that I had been sent by General Grouchy, with his despatches, to the Directoire Executif which you are not to wonder at, for I am highly esteemed by the said general ; inasmuch as, ' the first (l'es, in blue, with a tri-colour sash, and his hat a la Henry IV., with a band and panache, also aux trois couleiws. Yesterday the Swedish ambassador dined with us, with his anchat, etc. He is a damned dog, and a dunce, and an English partisan, as I soon found out, and, I understand, a spy. The rascal ! To-day, in- deed at this present writing, I can see from the cabin windows ten sail of English ships of war, little and big, that have pre- sented themselves off the mouth of the Texel. It put me in mind of the Goulet of Brest, where I have been often regaled in the same manner. Nobody here seems to mind them, and so, 1 Je rnen jich, allons!' "July 16. — The general tells me just now that a spy, sent out by the admiral, returned last night with the news that the English fleet is strong — twenty-four sail of the line. A few days ago he said nineteen ; but he explains that by saying that five sail had been detached to assist at the execution of Parker the mutineer. The admiral's opinion is, that the fellow is a double spy, and that the story of twenty-four sail is a lie, in which I join him. "July 17. — The wind is as foul as the Devil. At Brest we had, against all probability, a fair wind for five days successively, during all which time we were not ready, and at last, when we did arrive at our destination, the wind changed and we missed our blow. Here all is ready, and nothing is wanting but a fair wind. We are riding at single anchor. I hope the wind may not play us a trick. It is terribly foul this evening. Hang it and damn it ! For me, I am in a rage which is truly astonishing, and can do nothing to help myself. Well, well ! "July 18. — The wind is a foul as possible this morning; it cannot be worse. An officer sent out in disguise to reconnoitre is just returned; his report is favourable; he saw the English fleet strong — twelve sail of the line and seven or eight frigates ; one of the frigates bore down on the admiral, and spoke him, on which he instantly made signal, and the whole squadron stood to the S. W. I do not conceive what could be the reason of that manoeuvre, for it leaves us clear if the wind w 7 ould let us stir out. 68; Beschermer, 56. Frigates— Embuscade, 44; Waakzenheid, 24; Ajax. Five sail of the line, and three frigates and sloops, with twenty-seven sail of transports, rom one hundred and fifty to four hundred and fifty tons burthen. 88 DUTCH EXPEDITION FOR IRELAND. "July 19. — Wind foul still. Horrible! Horrible! Admiral De Winter and I endeavour to pass away trie time playing the flute, which he does very well ; we' have some good duets, and that is some relief. It is, however, impossible to conceive any- thing more irksome than waiting, as we now are, on the wind ; what is still worse, the same wind which locks us up here is exactly favourable for the arrival of reinforcements to Duncan, if Lord Spencer means to send him any. Naval expeditions are terrrble for their uncertainty. I see in the Dutch papers, for I am beginning, with the help of a dictionary, to decypher a little, ' that the Toulon fleet is at sea since the 20th of June, strong, six sail of the line, two of eighty, and four of seventy-four guns, and six frigates. I wish them safe and well in Brest Harbour. There never was, and never will be, such an expedition as ours if it succeeds ; it is not merely to determine which of two despots shall sit upon a throne, or whether an island shall belong to this or that state ; it is to change the destiny of Europe, to emancipate one, perhaps three, nations, to open the sea to the commerce of the world, to found a new empire, to demolish an ancient one, to subvert a tyranny of six hundred years. And all this hangs to-day upon the wind. I cannot express the anxiety I feeL Well, no matter ! I can do nothing to help myself, and that aggravates my rage. "July 20. — This evening I had the pleasure to count nineteen sail of British vessels, which passed the mouth of the Texel under an easy sail. The general assures me, however, that there are not above twelve sail of the line among them, according to the comparison of the best accounts which have been received. Wind foul, as usual. The following is the state of our army : infantry, eighteen battalions, of 352 men, 8,136; chasseurs, four battalions, at 540 men, 2,160; cavalry, eight squadrons, 1,650; artillery, nine companies, 1,049; light artillery, two companies, 389; etat major, 160; total, 13,544. It is more than sufficient. Would to God we were all arrived safe and well at our des- tination ! . . . " July 24-25-26 To-day I saw in the Dutch papers that great changes have taken place in the French ministry. Talley- rand Perigord, ci devant Bishop of Autun, whom I saw in Phila- delphia, is appointed to the Foreign Affairs, in place of Charles de la Croix ; Pleville Pelet to the Marine, in place of Truguet ; Lenoir Laroche to the Police, in place of Cochon ; Francois de Neufchateu to the Interior, in place of Benezech ; and Hoche to the War Department, in place of Petiet. Of all these new men I only know Hoche. Sat down immediately and wrote him a letter of congratulation, in which I took occasion to mention the STRENGTH OF ENGLISH FLEET OFF THE TEXEL. 89 negociation now going on at Lisle with the English pleni- potentiary, Lord Malmesbury, and prayed him, in case that peace was inevitable, to exert his interest to get an article inserted to restore to their country or liberty all the Irish patriots who are in exile or in prison, and assuring him, at the same time, that I should never profit of such an article, as I never would return to Ireland while she remained in slavery. "July 27-28. — Yesterday we had a sort of fair wind, but which came so late, and was so feeble, that we could not weigh anchor ; at eight in the evening it came round to the west, as bad as ever, and to-day it is not much better. I am weary of my life. The French are fitting out a squadron at Brest, which, it now appears, is to be only twelve sail of the line. Lord Bridports ileet is twenty-two sail; ergo, he may detach, with perfect secu- rity, seven sail to reinforce Duncan, who will then have at least nineteen sail against our fifteen ; ergo, he will beat us, etc. Damn it to all eternity ! For me, I am in a transport of rage, which I cannot describe. Everything now depends upon the wind, and we are totally helpless. Man is a poor being 'in that respect. Fifty millions of money cannot purchase us an hour of fair wind. " I am now alone in the great cabin, and I see from the window twenty-two sail of English vessels anchored within a league of our fleet. It is impossible to express the variety of innumerable ideas which shoot across my mind at this moment. I think I should suffer less in the middle of a sea-fight ; and the wind is still foul. Suspense is more terrible than danger. Little as I am of a Quixote, loving as I do, to distraction, my wife and dearest babies, I wish to Heaven we were this moment under way to meet the enemy, with whom we should be up in an hour. It is terrible to see the two fleets so near, and to find ourselves so helpless. The sea is just now as smooth as a mill-pond. Ten times, since I began this note, I have lifted my eyes to look at the enemy. Well, it cannot be that this inaction will continue long. I am now aboard twenty days, and we have not had twenty minutes of a fair wind to carry us out. Well ! well ! " July 29. — This morning the wind is fair, but so little of it that we cannot stir. About mid-day it sprung up fresh, but the tide was spent, and it was too late. To sail out of the Texel, there must be a concurrence of wind and tide. The admiral went ashore to-day, and mounted the downs with his perspective glass, like Robinson Crusoe ; he counted twenty-five sail of three- masted vessels, and six luggers, or cutters, of the English, at anchor ; he concludes they are about fifteen or sixteen of the line, the rest frigates. 90 DUTCH EXPEDITION FOR IRELAND. "August, 1797. " August 1-2. — Everything goes on here from bad to worse, and I am tormented and unhappy more than I can express, so that I hate even to make these memorandums. Well, it cannot be helped. On the 30th, in the morning early, the wind was fair, the signal given to prepare to get under way, and everything ready, when, at the very instant we were about to weigh the anchor and put to sea, the wind chopped about and left us. Nothing can be imagined more tormenting. The admiral, hav- ing some distrust of his pilots (for it seems the pilots, here are all Orangeists), made signal to all the chiefs of the fleet to know if they thought it possible to get out with the wind, which then blew E. S. E., but their answer was unanimous in the negative, so there was an end of the business. In an hour after, the wind hauled round more to the S., and blew a gale, with thunder and lightning ; so it was well we were not caught in the shoals which environ the entry of this abominable road. At last it fixed in the S. W., almost the very worst quarter possible, where it has remained steadily ever since. Not to lose time, the admiral sent out an officer with a letter addressed to Admiral Duncan, but, in fact, to reconnoitre the enemy's force. He returned yesterday with a report that Duncan's fleet is of seventeen sail of the line, including two or three three-deckers, which is pleasant. It is decided that we all remain on board the Vryheid and take our chance, which is very brave and foolish : for there is no manner of proportion between the good to be obtained, and the hazard to be run — a rule by which I am fond to examine questions. . . . I am, to-day, twenty-five days aboard, and at a time when twenty- five hours are of importance. There seems to be a fate in this business. Five weeks, I believe six weeks, the English fleet was paralyzed by the mutinies at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and the Nore. The sea was open, and nothing to prevent both the Dutch and French fleets to put to sea. Well, nothing was ready ; that precious opportunity, which we can never expect to return, was lost ; and now that, at last, we are ready here, the wind is against us, the mutiny is quelled, and we are sure to be attacked by a superior force. " August 5. — This morning arrived aboard the Vryheid, Lowry, of county Down, member of the executive committee, and John Tennant, of Belfast. I am in no degree delighted with the intel- ligence which they bring. The persecution in Ireland is at its height, and the people there, seeing no prospect of succour, which has been so long promised to them, are beginning to lose DUTCH EXPEDITION FOR IRELAND. 91 confidence in themselves and their chiefs,- whom they almost suspect of deceiving them. They ground their suspicions on the great crisis of the mutiny being suffered to pass by, without the French government making the smallest attempt to profit of it, and I can hardly blame them. They held out till the 24th of June, the last day allowed by the British government, in the pro- clamation offering a general pardon, and, that day being arrived, they have almost entirely submitted and taken the oath of alle- giance ; most of them have likewise given up their arms, but it appears that the number of firelocks was much less than was imagined. In consequence of all this, the P^xecutive Committee lias doubled its efforts. M'Neven was despatched from Dublin to France, and sailed from Yarmouth on the 5th July; of course he is, I reckon, long before this, in Paris. Lowry, Tennant, and Bartholomew Teeling came together to Hamburg, where they arrived about a fortnight a^o, and finding the letter I wrote to my sister, acquainting her with my being here, Teeling imme- diately sailed for England, and I am in hopes he will get back safe, in which case his arrival will give courage to the people ; the other two came here. But, as I said already, it is hard to judge at a distance. Keogh, I know, is not fit for a coup de main; he has got, as Lewines tells me, M'Cormick latterly into his hands, and, besides, Dick is now past the age of adventure. I am surprised that Emmet did not show more energy, because I know he is as brave as Csesar of his person. It seems to me to have been such an occasion missed as we can hardly expect to see return. Lowiy and Tennant say there are now at least 80,000 men in Ireland of British troops, including the militia and yeo- manry corps, who, together, may make 35,000 ; but in this account I am sure there is great exaggeration ; for they spoke very much by guess, and a number that is guessed, as Johnson remarks, is always exaggerated. . . . " August 10-11. — Passed two days very agreeably with Lowry and Tennant, and then returned on board. They are a couple of fine lads, especially Lowry, wdiom I like extremely. I think he will make a figure, if ever we have the good fortune to reach our own country. " August 12 — The w T ind is as foul as ever, and I begin fairly to despair of our enterprise. To-night Admiral De Winter took me into secret and told me he had prepared a memorial to his government, stating that the design originally was to be ready for the beginning of July, and that everything w r as, in consequence, embarked by the 9th ; that the English fleet at that time con- sisted, at the very most, of thirteen sail of the line, which could not make any effectual opposition ; that contrary winds having 92 DUTCH EXPEDITION FOR IRELAND. prevailed ever since, without an hours intermission, the enemy had had time to reinforce himself to the number of seventeen sail of the line, so that he had now a superiority in force over the Dutch fleet, which, of course, rendered the issue of an engage- ment, to a certain degree, doubtful ; that, by this unforeseen delay, which might, and probably would, continue still longer, a great additional consumption of provisions had taken place, so that, in a very few days, there would be barely sufficient for the voyage north about He proposed that a report should be published industriously that the expedition had been abandoned; but that from 2,500 to 3,000 of the troops, with twenty or thirty pieces of artillery, and all the arms and ammu- nition, should be despatched in a small flotilla for the original destination, where they should land the men, arms, and artillery, and he would charge himself with the execution of the plan. . . . These are, most certainly, very strong reasons, and, unfortunately, the wind gives them every hour fresh weight. I answered, that I did not see at present any solid objection to propose to his sys- tem ; and that all I had to say was, that, if the Batavian Republic sent but a corporal's guard to Ireland, I was ready to make one. So here is our expedition in a hopeful way. It is most terrible. Twice, within nine months, has England been saved by the wind. It seems as if the very elements had conspired to perpetuate our slavery and protect the insolence and oppression of our tyrants " August 13. — The wind is as foul as ever, viz., S.W. . . . General Dumonceau, our second in command, and I have been poring over the map of England, and he has been mooting a plan, which, in my mind, is flat nonsense, viz., to land at or near Lynn, in Lincolnshire, with his 14,000 men, where he thinks he could maintain himself until the fleet could return and bring him a reinforcement of as many more, and then march upon London and stand a battle. It is hardly worth while combating a scheme which will certainly never be adopted ; it is sufficient to observe, that his plan necessarily includes that he must be absolute master of the sea during the whole time necessary for its execution, which, without going further, is saying enough. Besides, I pre- sume, it is hardly to be expected that, with even 28,000 men, supposing lie had horses to mount his cavalry and draw his artil- lery, which he would not have, that he would be able to force his way through an enemy's country for above one hundred miles, who would have time more than sufficient to collect his forces, and make the necessary dispositions to give him a warm reception. . . " August 14.— I set off for the Texel to see Lowry and DUTCH EXPEDITION FOR IRELAND. 93 Tcnnant, and talk over the admiral's new plan (for Ireland) in order to have their opinion thereupon. After dinner we walked out to a pretty little farm, about half a mile from the town, where they are lodged, and sat down on a hillock, where we had a view of the fleet riding at anchor below. I then told them that I looked upon our expedition, on the present scale, as given up, and I stated the reasons assigned by De Winter, and which are unanswerable. I then communicated his plan, and desired their advice and opinion on the whole, and especially as to the material fact, whether they thought the people would join us, if they saw no more than 3,000 men. After a long consultation, their opinion finally was, that the scheme was practicable, but difficult, and that, by great exertions and hazards on the part of their chiefs, the people might be brought forward ; but that for that, it was indispensable that the landing should be effected in the counties of Down or Antrim, but especially the former, where there were, in June last, twenty-four regiments of a thousand men each, ready organized, with all their officers and sub- officers. . . . " August 15. — As it will require from three weeks to a month to arrange matters for the expedition on the present plan, Lowry and Tennant have determined to go on to the Hague, and, if they have time, to Paris, in order to see MacNeven and Le wines, and to join with them in endeavouring to procure assistance from France, and especially, if possible, to obtain a small armament to cooperate with that from the Texel, and which, by spreading the alarm, and distracting the attention of the enemy, must produce the most beneficial effects. . . ''August 21. — Breakfasted with the general. He told me, in the first place, that the government had rejected a plan proposed by the admiral, viz., to transport 2,500 men, and the arms, stores, and ammunition, and had determined to persist in their original design; that, however, in consideration of the lateness of the season, he had prepared a memorial, which he showed me, for a new arrangement, which is shortly this — to sail out and fight Admiral Duncan. If the issue of the battle be favourable, to pass over immediately 15,000 men, or as many more as we can send, in everything that will swim, to Scotland ; to seize, in the first instance, on Edinburgh, and march right on to Glasgow, taking every possible means to alarm the enemy with the idea that we meant to penetrate by the north of England, which is to be done by detaching flying parties, making requisitions, etc., on that side; to maintain ourselves, meantime, behind the canal which joins the Frith of Forth to the Clyde, having our right at Dumbarton and our left at Falkirk, as well as I can remember, 94 DUTCH EXPEDITION FOR IRELAND. for I have not at present either the map or the memorial before me ; to collect all the vessels in the Clyde, and pass over the army to the north of Ireland ; to send round, whilst these mili- tary operations were going on by land, the frigates, and such transports, as few as possible, as might be necessary, to carry over the artillery, stores, etc. Finally, that the English would pro- bably be alarmed by all this for their own country, and perhaps recall a part of their troops from Ireland " August 25-26. — The general has submitted his plan to General Dejean, who approves of it entirely in a military point of view, provided the frigates can get round to meet us. " September, 1797. " September 1. — Admiral Duncan's fleet has been reinforced to twenty -one sail of the line, so that, even if the wind come round in our favour, it would be madness in us to venture an action with such a terrible inferiority of force ; in addition to which, we have now, in consequence of the delays occasioned by the wind, not above ten days' provisions remaining for the troops on board. The plan proposed is, in fact, but an improvement on the last one, viz., to land the troops, and quarter them in the neighbour- hood, so as to be able to collect them in forty-eight hours ; to ap- pear to have renounced the idea of the expedition, but in the meantime to revictual the fleet with all diligence and secrecy, which may occupy probably a month ; to endeavour even to re- inforce it by one or two vessels, which might, in that time, be got ready for sea. All this will bring us to the time of the equinox, when it will be impossible for the enemy, who will, besides, it is probable, have relaxed in his vigilance, in consequence of these manoeuvres, to keep the sea. When all is ready, the troops are to be reembarked with the greatest expedition, and a push to be made instantly for Scotland, as already detailed. " September 2-3. — This day the general gave me my instruc- tions to set off to join General Hoche at Wetzlar, and give him a copy of the memorial containing the plan already mentioned. In addition, he gave me verbal instructions to the following im- port: that, in addition to the written plan, it might be expedient to follow up the first debarkation by a second of 15,000 of the French troops now in the pay of Holland, with which reinforce- ment, the army being brought up to 30,000 men, could maintain itself in Scotland in spite of any force that could be brought against them ; that they might even penetrate into England, and by that means force the enemy to a peace; that 25,000 might be ILLNESS AND DEATH OF HOCHE. 95 employed on this service, and the remaining 5,000 detached into Ireland, from whence it was morally certain that a great portion of the troops would he withdrawn to defend England itself; that, if General Hoche would in that case take the command of the united armies, he (Daendels) desired nothing better than to serve under hirn ; if not, he was ready to serve under any French gene- ral, being a senior officer ; in which case each army was, as to all matters of discipline, administration, etc., to remain under their respective chiefs " September 13 — This day I saw General Hoche in Paris, who is just returned from Frankfort. He has been very ill with a violent cold, and has still a cough, which makes me seriously uneasy about him ; he does not seem to apprehend anything him- self, but I should not be surprised, for my part, if, in three months, he were in a rapid consumption. He is dreadfully al- tered, and has a dry, hollow cough, that it is distressing to the last degree to hear. I should be most sincerely and truly sorry if anything were to happen him, but I very much fear he will scarcely throw off his present illness. I immediately explained to him the cause of my arrival, gave him Daendel's plan, and the map of Scotland, and such further elucidation as I was able in conversation. He shook his head at the idea of a second debar- kation at the mouth of the Clyde, and observed, that if we got safe into Scotland, the British would immediately detach a squad- ron of frigates into the Irish Channel, which would arrive, to a moral certainty, before the Dutch frigates, which were, according to the plan proposed, to go north about, and that they would thus be cut off from all communication with Ireland. " September 15-16-17. — The general's health is in a most alarming state, and nobody here seems to suspect it, at least to the extent that I do. I look on it as a moral impossibility that he should hold out long, if he persists to remain at the army, as he seems determined to do. As for his physician, I have no great faith in his skill, and, in short, I have the most serious alarms for his life. I should be sincerely sorry, for every reason, public and private, that we should lose him. Urgent as the affair is on which I am here, I have found it impossible to speak to him about it, and God knows when, or whether I may ever find an opportunity, which, in addition to my personal regard and love for him, is a circumstance which very much aggravates my uneasiness. To-day he has been removed by four grenadiers from one chamber to another : for he is unable to walk. It is terrible to see a fine handsome fellow, in the very flower of his youth and strength, so reduced. My heart bleeds for him. I am told that the late attacks made on him by the royalists in the DO DESTRUCTION OF THE DUTCH FLEET. Convention, and the journalists in their pay, preyed exceedingly on his spirits, and are the probable cause of his present illness. Is it not strange that a man who has faced death a thousand times with intrepidity in the field, should sink under the calumny of a rabble of miscreants ? . . " September 18-19. — My fears with regard to General Hoche are too well founded. He died this morning at four o'clock. His lungs seemed to me quite gone. This most unfortunate event has so confounded and distressed me that I know not what to think, nor what will be the consequence. . . . " October 15. — The day after the proclamation of the peace of France with Austria, I saw an arrele of the Directory, ordain- ing the formation of an army, to be called Varmee (VAngleterre, and appointing Buonaparte to command it. Bravo ! This looks as if they were in earnest. General Desaix, of the army of the Rhine, who distinguished himself so much by his defence of Kehl against Prince Charles in the last campaign, is ordered to superintend the organization of the army until the arrival of Buonaparte. All this is famous news. " It is singular enough that I should have forgotten to mention in its place the famous battle fought on the 11th of October, be- tween the English fleet, under Admiral Duncan, and the Dutch, commanded by De Winter. It shows the necessity of making memorandums on the moment. There never was a more com- plete victory than that gained by the English. The fleets were equal in number, but they had the advantage in number of guns and weight of metal. De Winter fought like a lion, and de- fended himself to the last extremity ; but was at length forced to strike, as were nine of his fleet, out of sixteen whereof it con- sisted. With him were taken Admiral Reyntzies, who is since dead ; and Meurer Bloys lost his right arm, and Story is the only one who came off clear ; the two last were not taken. I cannot conceive why the Dutch government sent out their fleet at that season, without motive or object, as far as I can learn. My opinion is, that it is direct treason, and that the fleet was sold to Pitt; and so think Barras, Pleville le Pelley, and even Meyer, the Dutch ambassador, whom I have seen once or twice. "NOVEMBER, 1797. " November 1-2-3. — My brother Matthew joined me from Hamburgh, where he arrived about a month ago. It is a great satisfaction to me, and I hope he arrives just in time to take a part in the expedition. TONE'S INTERVIEW WITH DESAIX, DECEMBER, 1797. 97 11 November 4-5-6-7-8-9. — This day General Hedouville brought me to General Berthier, and presented me to him, re- commending me in the warmest manner. We had very little conversation, but he promised to speak of me to General Buona- parte, whom he sets off to join in three or four days. Two days after, I called, and left for him a memorial of about five lines, addressed to Buonaparte, offering my services, etc. It is droll enough I should be writing to Buonaparte. " November 20 Yesterday General Hedouville presented me to Desaix, who is arrived within these few days. I could not possibly desire to meet a more favourable reception ; he examined me a good deal as to the localities of Ireland, the face of the coun- try, the facility of finding provisions ; on which I informed him as well as I could. He told me that he had not directly the power himself to name the officers who were to be employed in the army of England, but that I need not be uneasy, for I might rely I should be of the number. His expression at parting was, ' Laissez mot /aire, nous arrangerons tout cela. So I may hap- pen to have another offer at John Bull before I die. I desire it " November 21-22-23-24-25. — This day we, viz., Lewines, Lowry, Tennant, Orr, Teeling, and myself, gave a grand dinner at Meots, to General Desaix, Hedouville, Watrin, Mermet, Duialga, and one or two of their aides-de-camp. . . . " December, 1797. " December 11-12. — Called this day, with Lewines, on General Desaix, and gave him Taylors map of Ireland. Pie tells us to be under no anxiety ; that the French government will never quit the grip which they have got of England, till they humble her to the dust; that it is their wish and their interest (that of all France, as well as of Ireland) ; that the government now had means, and powerful ones, particularly money, and they would devote them all to this great object; it might be a little sooner or a little later, but that the success of the measure was inevitable. Barras has lately, in one or two different conversations, gone as far with Lewines as Desaix with me. " December 13. — Talleyrand Perigord sent for Lewines this morning, to tell him that the Directory were positively deter- mined on our business; that the arrangements were all concluded upon, and that everything would be ready for April next, about four months from this. All this is very good. . . . " December 18-19-20-21 General Desaix brought Lewines ii. 8 98 TONE'S FIRST INTERVIEW WITH BUONAPARTE. and me this morning and introduced us to Buonaparte, at his house in the Rue Chantereine. He lives in the greatest simpli- city ; his house is small, but neat, and all the furniture and orna- ments in the most classical taste. He is about five feet six inches high, slender, and well made, but stoops considerably ; he looks at least ten years older than he is, owing to the great fatigues he underwent in his immortal campaign of Italy. His face is that of a profound thinker, but bears no marks of that great enthusi- asm and unceasing activity by which he has been so much dis- tinguished. It is rather, to my mind, the countenance of a mathematician than of a general. He has a line eye, and a great firmness about his mouth ; he speaks low and hollow. So much for his manner and figure. We had not much discourse with him, and what little there was, was between him and Le wines, to whom, as our ambassador, I gave the pas. We told him that Tennant was about to depart for Ireland, and was ready to charge himself with his orders, if he had any to give. He desired us to bring him the same evening, and so we took our leave. In the evening we returned with Tennant, and Lewines had a good deal of conversation with him ; that is to say, Lewines insensed him a good deal on Irish affairs, of which he appears a good deal unin- formed : for example, he seems convinced that our population is not more than two millions, which is nonsense. Buonaparte lis- tened, but said very little. When all this was finished, he desired that Tennant might put off his departure for a few days, and then, turning to me, asked whether I was not an adjutant-general. To which I answered, that I had the honour to be attached to General Hoche in that capacity. He then asked me where I had learned to speak French. To which I replied, that I had learned the little that I knew since my arrival in France, about twenty months ago. He then desired us to return the next evening but one, at the same hour, and so we parted. " December 23. — Called this evening on Buonaparte, by ap- pointment, with Tennant and Lewines, and saw him for about five minutes. Lewines gave him a copy of the memorials I deli- vered to the government in February, 1796 (nearly two years ago), and which, fortunately, have been well verified in every material fact, by everything that has taken place in Ireland since. He also gave him Taylor's map, and showed him half a dozen of Hoche's letters, which Buonaparte read over. He then desired us to return in two or three days, with such documents relating to Ireland as we were possessed of, and, in the meantime, that Tennant should postpone his departure. We then left him. His manner is cold, and he speaks very little ; it is not, however, so dry as that of Hoche, but seems rather to proceed from languor TONES SECOND INTERVIEW WITH BUONAPARTE. 99 than anything else. lie is perfectly civil, however, to us; but, from anything we have yet seen or heard from him, it is impos- sible to augur anything good or bad. We have now seen the greatest man in Europe three times, and I am astonished to think how little I have to record about him. I am sure I wrote ten times as much about my first interview witli Charles de la Croix, but then I was a greenhorn ; I am now a little used to see great men, and great statesmen, and great generals, and that has, in some degree, broke down my admiration. Yet, after all, it is a droll thing that I should become acquainted with Buona- parte. This time twelve months I arrived in Brest from my expedition to Bantry Bay. Well, the third time, they say, is the charm. .... " JANUARY, 1798. "January 1. — I wish myself the compliments of the season; a merry Christinas and a happy new year. Received a letter from my sister, wherein she informs me that my father has at length received a letter from my brother William, of whom I have not heard since 1794; he is alive and well, in the service of the Mahrattas, with a liberal appointment of £750 per annum, and this is the whole of what she tells me, and, I suppose, of what she knows. " One or two things have happened lately, which gave me personally some pleasure. The Minister of Foreign Affairs has written to the Minister of Police, that, whereas Pitt may probably endeavour to slide in some of his emissaries under the character of refugee United Irishmen, none be permitted to remain but such as I may vouch for, which shows they have some confidence in me. The first use I made of it was to apply for the liberty of two lads, named Burgess and Macan, who are detained at Liege, and I hope they are enlarged before this. Another thing is a young man, whom I do not know, named M'Kenna, who was recommended, as he says, by Tallien, applied to Buonaparte to be employed as his secretary and interpreter. Buonaparte, after some discourse, gave him, for answer, to address himself to me, and that I should report thereupon to him, Buonaparte. All this is very good ; I have not seen the general since, but expect I shall in a few days. . . " January 7. — I saw Buonaparte again. After Lewines had had a good deal of discourse with him, I mentioned the affair of M'Kenna, who desires to be employed as secretary. Buonaparte 100 TONE'S COMPLAINTS OF NAPPER TANDY. observed that lie believed the world thought he had fifty secre- taries, whereas he had but one ; of course there was an end of that business ; however, he bid me see what the man was fit for, and let him know. I took this opportunity to mention the desire all the refugee United Irishmen now in Paris had to bear a part in the expedition, and the utility they would be of in case of a landing in Ireland. He answered that they would all be un- doubtedly employed, and desired me to give him in, for that purpose, a list of their names. Finally, I spoke of myself, telling him him that General Desaix had informed me that I was carried on the tableau of the Armee Angleterre ; he said, ' I was'. I then observed that I did not pretend to be of the smallest use to him whilst we were in France, but that I hoped to be serviceable to him on the other side of the water ; that I did not give myself to him at all for a military man, having neither the knowledge nor the experience that would justify me in charging myself with any function. ' Mais vous etes brave\ said he, interrupting me. I replied that, when the occasion presented itself, that would appear. ' Eh bien\ said he, ' cela sujfjit\ We then took our leave. . . . " February 1. — The number of Irish refugees is considerably increased. Independent of Lewines, Tennant, and Lowry, of whom I have spoken, there are Teeling, of Lisburn; Orr, of Deny; M'Mahon, of county Down; Macan and Burgess, of county Louth ; Napper Tandy, and my brother. There is also one Maguire, who was sent by Reynolds from Philadelphia, in consequence of my letter to him by Monroe, and one Ashley, an Englishman, formerly secretary to the Corresponding Society, and one of those who were tried with Thomas Hardy, in London, for high treason. We all do very well except Napper Tandy, who is not behaving correctly. He began some months ago by ca- balling against me with a priest of the name of Quigley, who is since gone off, no one knows whither; the circumstances of this, petty intrigue are not worth my recording. It is sufficient to say that Tandy took on him to summon a meeting of the Irish refu- gees, at which Lewines and I were to be arraigned, on I know not what charges, by himself and Quigley. Lewines refused to attend, but I went, and when I appeared, there was no one found to bring forward a charge against me, though I called three times to know ' whether any person had anything to offer'. In conse- quence of this manoeuvre, I have had no communication since with Tandy, who has also lost ground, by this mean behaviour, with all the rest of his countrymen ; he is, I fancy, pestering the government here with applications and memorials, and gives him- self out for an old officer and a man of great property in Ireland, TONES COMMENDATIONS OF LEWISES. 101 as I judge from what General Murat said to me, in speaking of him the other night at Buonaparte's. He asked me did I know one Tandy, * un ancien militaire, nest ce pas?' I said I did know him, but could not say that he was exactly ' un ancien m'ditaire\ as he had never served but in the Volunteer corps of Ireland, a body which resembled pretty much the Garde Nationale of France at the beginning of the Revolution. ' Mais cest un tres riehs proprietaire*. I told him I believed he was always in easy circumstances; and there the discourse ended. V>y this, I see how he is showing himself off here. He has got lately a coadjutor in the famous Thomas Muir, who has arrived at Paris, and has in- serted two or three very foolish articles, relating to the United Irishmen now in Paris, with the exception of Tandy. It was settled that Lowry, Orr, Le wines, and myself should wait upon Muir, and, after thanking him for his good intentions, entreat him not to introduce our business into any publications which he might hereafter think proper to make. . . " APRIL — may, 1798. "April 1-2. — Lewines waited yesterday on Merlin, who is president of the Directory for this krimestre, and presented him a letter of introduction from Talleyrand. Merlin received him with great civility and attention. Lewines pressed him, as far as he could with propriety, on the necessity of sending succours to Ire- land at the earliest possible moment, especially on account of the late arrestations ; and he took that occasion to impress him with a sense of the merit and services of the men for whom he inte- rested himself so much on every account, public and personal. Merlin replied that, as to the time or place of succour, he could tell him nothing, it being the secret of the state; that, as to the danger of his friends, he was sincerely sorry for the situation of so many brave and virtuous patriots; that, however, though he could not enter into the details of the intended expedition, he would tell him thus much to comfort him : 1 That France never would grant peace to England on any terms short of the indepen- dence of Ireland'. This is grand news. It is far more direct and explicit thau any assurance we have yet got. Lewines made the proper acknowledgments, and then ran off to me to communicate the news. The fact is, whatever the rest of our countrymen here may think, Lewines is doing his business here fair and well, and like a man of honour. I wish others of them whom I could name, had half as good principles. 102 Buonaparte's views of irish affairs. " Apropos of Le wines' private affairs. He has been now on trie continent for the public business above fifteen months, at his own expense, to the amount of at least £500; during which time his colleagues at home have not thought proper to remit him one farthing; and it is now in order to raise money that he is going to Holland. . . Lewines called, a day or two before we left town, on Buonaparte, to endeavour to interest him in behalf of our unfortunate friends now in arrestation, and try whether it would be feasible to obtain a declaration from the Directory similar to that which they issued in the case of the patriots of the Pays de Vaud, for whose safety they made the aristocracy of Berne personally responsible. Buonaparte replied that the case was totally different: with regard to the Swiss, France was in a situation to follow up the menace by striking instantly: with England it was not so. She was a power of the first rank, and the Republic must never threaten in vain. Under these circum- stances, he thought any interposition on the part of the French government in favour of the Irish patriots, might injure them materially, by inflaming still more the English government against them, and could, at the same time, do them no possible service. In this reasoning Lewines was obliged to acquiesce, and, in fact, the answer is unanswerable. . . . " April 21 to 24. — The last Paris papers mention, that Buona- parte is decidedly set off to take the command of the expedition which is preparing in the Mediterranean. It is, I learn, to con- sist of three divisions, one to embark at Toulon, commanded by Buonaparte in person; another at Genoa, by Kleber; and the third, at Civita Vecchia, by Desaix. The object declared is Egypt and Syria. . . . " April 25 William Hamilton, who married J. Russell's daughter, arrived a few days since in Paris. He was obliged to fly from London, in consequence of the arrestation of O'Connor and his party. On his way he met Lewines at Brussels, and also saw in an English paper of the 3rd, that the revolution in Ire- land was commenced, having broken out in the south, and that General Abercrombie and the army were in full march to suppress it. Both he and Lewines believe it. For my part, I do not- — it is, at most, some partial insurrection — and so much the worse. I wrote, however, to General Kilmaine, to request an order to join him at Paris, in case the news was true, which, however, I am sure it was not. My brother writes me word that there is a person waiting for Lewines at the Hague, who has made his escape with plans, charts, etc. . . " From April 27 to May 17. — We received a letter from my brother William, dated from Poonah, the 7th of January, 1797, WILLIAM TONE S CARKER IX INDIA. 103 sixteen months ago, at which time he was in health and spirits, being second in command of the infantry of the Peschwar, or chief of the Mahratta state, with appointments of five hundred rupees a month, which is about £750 sterling a year. I cannot express the pleasure which this account of his success gave us all; great as has been his good fortune, it is not superior to his merit. Six years ago he went to India a private soldier, unknown, unfriended, and unprotected ; he has forced his way to a station of rank and eminence, and I have no doubt that his views and talents are extended with his elevation. The first war in India, we shall hear more of him. His letter was enclosed in one from my mother to Mary, by which I see she and my father are in health and spirits. Two or three days after the receipt of Will's letter, we were agreeably surprised by one from poor Arthur, of whom we had no news for a long time, viz., since Mat. parted from him at Philadelphia, some time in July last, at which period he spoke of making a voyage to the West Indies, where he had been once already. His letter is dated from Hamburgh, where Meyer had shown him all possible kindness and friendship. We answered it immediately, desiring him to come directly to Paris, where I judge he may arrive in about a month. Poor fellow! he is but sixteen years of age, and what a variety of adventures has he gone through ! It is now two years and a-half since he and I parted at Philadelphia, when I sent him home in the Susannah, Captain Baird, to notify to my friends my immediate departure for France. It was a delicate commission for a boy of his age, and he seems to have acquitted himself well of it; at least, I have heard no complaint of his indiscretion. When the first arres- tations took place in Ireland, in September, 17 ( J(i — when my dear friend Tom Russell, Neilson, and so many others, were arrested in Belfast, those of my friends in Dublin who were in the secret, dreading the possibility of the government seizing on Arthur, and either by art or menaces, wringing it from him, fitted him out, and sent him again to America, with the consent of my father and mother, who were with reason afraid for his personal safety. In America, where he arrived after my wife and family had sailed for Europe, he met with Mat., and after some little time, embarked on board a sloop bound for the West Indies ; on his return from this voyage, he again met with Mat., who was on the point of sailing ibr Hamburgh in consequence of my instructions. At Philadelphia they parted, and what poor Arthur's adventures have been since, I know not. He is, however, safe and sound, having supported himself these two years without assistance from any body. When I saw him last, he was a fine manly boy, with a beautiful countenance. I hope and trust he will do well ; if we 104 TONE'S REFERENCE TO WHITLEY STOKES. ever come to have a navy in Ireland, lie is the very stuff of which to make a Jean Bart. " I am not superstitious, yet cannot but remark the singularity of the circumstance, that Mary, Mat., Arthur, and myself, with my family, should, after such a diversity of strange events, be all re-assembled in France on the eve of this great expedition, and that, precisely at the same time, we should have the happiness of hearing from my father and mother, and especially from Will, after a silence of above four years. It is one of the singular traits in the history of our family, and increases the confidence I feel that we shall all meet together yet, well and happy. " May 20. — Whitley Stokes again reprehended by the Chan- cellor. Whitley, it seems, communicated to Sampson, who com- municated to Lord Moira, a paper which he had previously trans- mitted to the Lord Lieutenant, and which contained the account of some atrocious enormities committed by the British troops in the south of Ireland. Far less than that would suffice to destroy him in the Chancellor's opinion, who, by-the-bye, has had an eye upon him this long time ; for I remember he summoned Stokes before the Secret Committee long before I left Ireland. I do not know whether to be vexed or pleased at this event as it regards Whitley. I only wish he had taken his part more decidedly ; for, as it is, he is destroyed with one party, and I am by no means clear that he is saved with the other. He, like Parsons and Moira, have either their consciences too scrupulous, or their minds too little enlarged, to embrace the only line of conduct in times like ours. They must be with the people or against them, and that for the whole, or they must be content to go down without the satisfaction of serving or pleasing any party. With regard to Stokes, I know he is acting rigidly on principle ; for I know he is incapable of acting otherwise ; but I fear very much that his very metaphysical unbending purity, which can accommodate itself neither to men, times, nor circumstances, will always pre- vent his being of any service to his country, which is a thousand pities, for I know no man whose virtues and whose talents I more sincerely reverence. I see only one place fit for him, and, after all, if Ireland were independent, I believe few enlightened Irishmen would oppose his being placed there — I mean at the head of a system of national education. I hope this last specimen of Fitzgibbon's moderation may give him a little of that political energy which he wants ; for I have often heard him observe him- self, that nothing sharpened men's patriotism more than a reason- able quantity of insult and ill usage. He may now be a living instance, and justify his doctrine by his practice. . . . " May 26. — I have changed my mind, and written this day a TONE'S REFERENCES TO HIS IMPRISONED FRIENDS IN IRELAND. 105 letter to General Kilrnaine, acquainting him "with Will's present situation in India, and ottering to go thither, if the government thinks that my services can be useful, requesting secrecy and a speedy answer. 1 know not how this may turn out ; it is a bold measure. My only difficulty is about my family; but if the Directory accepts my offer, 1 hardly think they will refuse to pay my wife one half of my appointments during my absence : if they do that, I will go cheerfully, notwithstanding that the age for enterprise is almost over with me. My blood is cooling fast — 4 my May of life 19 falling to the sear, the yellow leaf. " June, 1798.— Havre. "June 1. — Read this morning an article in a Paris journal, which astonishes me more than I can express. It states that General Daendels has fled from the Hague, and has been pro- claimed a deserter by the Dutch government. It secmi orders were given to arrest him, which he avoided by flying into France, and it is supposed he is now at Paris. The true reason is said to be, his having given his opinion too unguardedly on the measures of his government. This is the whole of the article, and I con- fess it astonishes me most completely. Judging from my own experience, I would say that Daendels is an honest man and a good citizen, if there is one existing; and I learn by a letter from Lewines, dated May the 4th, and which is obscure in some parts, from a prudent caution, that parties run exceedingly high in Hol- land ; so that I must conclude he is a victim to his principles. Go now and make revolutions ! Daendels was obliged to fly to France ten years ago from the fury of the Orange faction ; in his absence he was beheaded in effigy. In 1794, he returned tri- umphant with Picbegru, another memorable instance of the caprices of fortune, and was appointed to the chief command of the Batavian army. Now, in 1798, he is again obliged to fly to France, with the disgraceful epithet of deserter attached to his name, to avoid, as I conclude from circumstances, the fury of the democratic party " June 11. — I have been running over in my mind the list of my friends, and of the men whom, without being so intimately connected with them, I most esteem. Scarcely do I find one who is not or has not been in exile or prison, and in jeopardy of his life. To begin with Russell and Emmet, the two dearest of my friends, at this moment in prison on a capital charge. M'Neven, J. Sweetman, my old fellow-labourers in the Catholic cause; Edward Fitzgerald, Arthur and Roger O'Connor, whom, though 106 TONE, IN RE TANDY, TEELING, LOWRY, ETC. I know less personally, I do not less esteem ; Sampson, Bond, Jackson, and his son, still in prison ; Robert and William Simms, the men in the world to whose friendship I am most obliged, but just discharged; Neilson, Hazlitt, M'Cracken, the same; M'Cor- mick, absconded ; Rowan and Dr. Reynolds in America ; Le wines, Tennant, Lowry, Hamilton, Teeling, Tandy, etc., and others, with whom I have little or no acquaintance, but whom I must presume to be victims of their patriotism, not to speak of my own family, in France, Germany, and elsewhere. Stokes dis- graced on suspicion of virtue. It is a gloomy catalogue for a man to cast his eyes over. Of all my political connections, I see but John Keogh who has escaped, and how he has had that incon- ceivable good fortune, is to me a miracle. " June 14-16. — I mentioned to General Kilmaine that the situ- tion of the young Irishmen now in Paris was very painful, and that I was afraid, if something were not done in their behalf, they would be reduced to great difficulties. He said he felt all that ; at the same time, the conduct of many of the Irish in Paris was such as to reflect credit neither on themselves nor their country. That there was nothing to be heard of amongst them but denunciations, and if every one of them, separately, spoke truth, all the rest were rascals. At the same time, there was one thing in their favour ; hitherto they had asked nothing for themselves, which, in some degree, saved their credit — except one, named O'Finn, who appeared in the light of a mere adventurer ; that Tandy had also applied for assistance, and that he (Kilmaine) believing the poor old man to be in distress, had signed a paper to the Minister at War, requesting he might be employed. I answered, that I was heartily sorry for the account he gave me of the conduct of our countrymen, which I had some reason to believe he had not exaggerated, having been denounced myself more than once, for no other offence, as I believe in my conscience, than the rank I held in the French army, which caused heart-burnings amongst them ; that the misfortune was, that they came into France with their ideas mounted too high; from having had a certain degree of influence among the people at home, and finding themselves absolutely without any in France, their tempers were soured, and their ill-humour vented itself in accusations of each other " June 20. — To-day is my birth-day. I am thirty-five years of age ; more than half the career of my life is finished, and how little have I yet been able to do ! Well, it has not been, at least, for want of inclination, and, I may add, of efforts. I had hopes, two years ago, that, at the period I write this, my debt to my country would have been discharged, and the fate of Ireland TOXE S RELATIONS WITH GROUCHY. 107 settled for good or evil. To-day it is more uncertain than ever. 1 think, however, I may safely say, I have neglected no step to which my dutv called me, and in that conduct I will persist to the last. Called this morning on General Grouchy. I find him full of ardour for our business ; he has read all the details, and talks of going to Paris in two or three days, to press the Direc- tory upon that subject. His idea is to try an embarkation aboard the corvettes and privateers of Nantes; on which, he thinks, at least, 3,000 men with 20,000 muskets can be stowed, and he speaks as if hfc meant to apply for the command of this little armament. We talked over the last expedition. He said he had shed tears of rage and vexation fifty times since, at the recollection of the opportunity of which he had been deprived; and there was one thing which he would never pardon in him- self — that he did not seize Bouvet by the collar, and throw him overboard, the moment he attempted to raise a difficulty as to the landing. He also mentioned his intention to apply for me to be his adjutant-general, of which I am very glad, and added, that as he believed he would have the command of the fourth division of the army of England, besides his command of the cavalry, in which Nantes was included, in case the government relished his ofTcr, he would be at hand to execute our plan, making, at the same time, a great parade at Brest and elsewhere, to divert the attention of the enemy. In short, he shows the same zeal and ardour in our cause that I had occasion to remark in him during the late expedition ; and I look on it as a fortunate cir- cumstance for me to be attached to him. From General Grouchy 1 went to visit the general-in- chief, Kilmaine, and mentioned to him, that, under the circumstances, especially as there was no appearance of any event at Havre, I had thought it my duty to return near him to receive his orders. He said I did very right, but he was sorry at the same time to tell me, that he was much afraid the government would do nothing ; and he read me a letter from the Minister of Marine, which he had received this very morning, mentioning that, in consequence of the great superiority of the naval force of the enemy, and difficulty of escaping from any of the ports during the fine season, the Directory were determined to adjourn the measure until a more favourable occasion. "I see by the papers that Daendels is returned in triumph to the Hague, where he has smashed the Dutch directory like a pipe- stalk, dissolved the government, and framed a new one, at the /head of which he is himself. All this, certainly, with the appro- bation of the French government, and, as it appears, with that of the Dutch people also. Charles De la Croix, who was the sup- 108 DIGGEs' OPINION OF SOUTHERNS AND NORTHERNS. port of tlie late Dutch directory, is recalled, and General Joubert, who was of the opposite party, continued in the command of the French troops in Holland. " If the Irish can hold out till winter, I have every hope that the French will assist them effectually. All I dread is, that they may be overpowered before that time. What a state my mind is in at this moment ! In all this business I do not see one syllable about the north, which astonishes me more than I can express. Are they afraid? Have they changed their opinions? What can be the cause of their passive submission at this moment, so little suited to their former zeal and energy ? I remember what Digges said to Russell and me, five or six years ago : — ' If ever the south is roused, I would rather have one southern than twenty northerns'. Digges was a man of great sense and obser- vation. He was an American, and had no local or provincial prejudices. Was he right in his opinion? A very little time will let us see. If it should prove so, what a mortification to me, who have so long looked up with admiration to the north, and especially to Belfast ! It cannot be that they have changed their principles ; it must be, that circumstances render all exertions on their part, as yet, impossible". Cotter a desunt. The Duke of Wellington's opinion of Theobald Wolfe Tone's journals is thus referred to in Moore's diary, 15th March, 1833, in an account of a dinner at Rogers's :—" In talking of Wolfe Tone's journal, which Labouchere compared with Swift's journal to Stella (and pronounced it affected, insincere, etc.), Rogers men- tioned what I was glad to hear, that the Duke of Wellington had spoken highly of it to him, and said that but few books had ever interested him so much".* This journal shows that from December, 1797, to September, 1798, Tone and Le wines had made many and unsuccessful attempts to procure assistance from the French government. But with the expulsion of Carnot from the directory, the death of Hoche (in September, 1797, at the age of twenty-nine, some said of con- sumption, others of poison), and the ascendency of Buonaparte's star, every chance of effectual assistance was lost. Grouchy and Villaret,in their different capacities, contributed to the frustration of the objects of the Brest expedition. The elements conspired against the armament fitted out at the Texel, and the same allies, the only unsubsidized allies of Great Britain, were again faithful to her inte- * " Moore's Memoirs", vol. vi. p. 317. EUONArARTES VIEWS RESPECTING IRELAND. 109 rests in the last attempt of this kind in September, 1798. On the death of Hoche, the 18th of September, 1797, Buonaparte suc- ceeded to the chief command, and the preparations for the new expedition that Hoche had left in a state of forwardness, received little encouragement from his successor. He attributed at St. Helena to his own ignorance of the resources and population of Ireland, not only the failure of that expedition, but his own downfall. Buonaparte, moreover, was jealous of Hoche, and dis- posed to thwart any measure of his calculated to enhance his reputation. "But Hoche was an ardent and sincere republican; he could sacrifice his own hopes and prospects to the cause of liberty, as he nobly proved when he resigned to Daendcls the command of the Texel expedition". The fact is, Buonaparte was a hater of republicanism, and the liberation of Ireland would have given strength to its principles in France. His policy was to foment commotion in Ireland, for the purpose of creating " a diversion" ; and on his proceeding to Egypt, Tone states that it was said he had asked the Directory, " What more did they desire from the Irish ? " Buonaparte set out for Egypt on the 20th of May, 1798; and in the beginning of July, when the rebellion in Ireland was crushed, the Directory sent to Tone to assist in the organization of a new expedition. The middle of August, the general in com- mand, Humbert, impatient of the delays he had experienced, levied a contribution on the merchants of Kochelle, " and em- barked on board a few frigates with 1,000 men, 1,000 spare mus- kets, 1,000 guineas, and a few pieces of artillery, and compelled the captains to set sail on the most desperate enterprise which is, perhaps, recorded in history. Three Irishmen accompanied him — Matthew Tone, Bartholomew Teeling, and Sullivan, nephew to Madgett ". September 20, 1798. — Another small expedition under General Hardy was got ready for sea, consisting of one sail of the line, eight frigates, and two smaller vessels, and a force of 3,000 men. In Hardy's squadron there were four Irishmen — T. Wolfe Tone, Thomas Corbett, John M'Guire, and W. Henry Hamilton, the brother-in-law of Thomas Russell. A number of Irish refugees, with Napper Tandy at their head, had previously embarked on board a fast-sailing boat, and landed at Rathlin Island, on the north-east coast of Ireland, where they spread some proclamations, and hearing of Humbert's defeat, escaped to Norway. Hardy's expedition met with contrary winds, and after twenty days' cruise, four of the vessels arrived on the 12th of October off Lough S willy. In one of these, the Hoche, 74, Tone was embarked. no buonapartk's views respecting Ireland. CHAPTER IV. Buonaparte's mistaken views and information respecting Ireland, hardy's and Humbert's expeditions, and their results. With the loss of Carnot in the Directory, the death of Hoche, the failure of the Dutch expedition, the* departure of Buonaparte for Egypt, the increasing difficulties and embarrassments of the French Republic, died away all Tone's expectations of any effective aid from France for Ireland. Of Buonaparte's views with respect to Ireland, we read in young Tone's narrative of the events prece- ding Hardy's expedition, that "to the enterprise against Ireland, the favourite object of Hoche, and to prosecute which he was osten- sibly recalled, he, Buonaparte, felt a secret but strong repugnance. Though the liberation of that country might prostrate for ever the power of England, and raise the republic to the pinnacle of fortune (a circumstance for which he did not yet wish, as it would render his services needless), it offered no prospects of aggrandize- ment to him; it strengthened the republican cause, which he disliked ; and the principles of the Irish leaders, when he investi- gated the business, appeared too closely allied to those of the Jacobins. Neither did he ever sufficiently appreciate the means and importance of that country; his knowledge of it, as may be seen in my father's memoirs, was slight and inaccurate. The Directory, who began to fear him, and wished to get rid of him, entered willingly into his views when he proposed to use this expedition only as a cover, and direct their real efforts to the invasion of Egypt. It is asserted that he said, on the occasion, ' What more do you desire from the Irish ? You see that their movements already operate a powerful diversion '. Like- every selfish view, I think this was a narrow one. The two most miserable and oppressed countries in Europe always looked up to Napoleon for their liberation. He never gratified their hopes; yet, by raising Ireland, he might have crushed for ever the power of England, and by assisting Poland, placed a curb on Russia. He missed both objects, and, finally, fell under the efforts of Russia and of England. And it may be observed, as a singular retribution, that an Irishman commanded the army that gave the last blow to his destinies. " When my father was presented to him, and attached to his army as adjutant-general, he received him with cold civility, but entered into no communications. His plans were already formed. Ostensibly a great force was organized on the western HARDY AXD HUMBERT S EXPEDITIONS. Ill coasts of France, under the name of the Army of England ; but the flower of the troops were successively withdrawn and marched, to the Mediterranean ".* . . . "On the 20th of May, 1798, Buonaparte had embarked from Toulon. On the 23rd, the Irish insurrection broke out. As the news of each arrest, and of each action, successively reached. France, he (Tone) urged the generals and government to assist the gallant and desperate struggle of his countrymen, and pressed on them the necessity of availing themselves of the favourable oppor- tunity which new so rapidly by. They began their preparations without delay ; but money, arms, ammunition, and ships, all were wanting. By the close of June, the insurrection was nearly crushed, and it was not till the beginning of July that my father was called up to Paris, to consult with the Ministers of the War and Navy Departments, on the organization of a new expedition. At this period his journal closes, and the public papers, my mo- thers recollections, and a few private letters, are my sole docu- ments for the remaining events. " The plan of the new expedition was to despatch small detach- ments from several ports, in the hope of keeping up the insur- rection and distracting the attention of the enemy until some favourable opportunity should occur for landing the main body, under General Kilmaine. General Humbert, with about 1,000 men, was quartered for this purpose at Rochelle; General Hardy, with 3,000 at Brest; and Kilmaine with 9,000 remained in re- serve. This plan was judicious enough, if it had been taken up in time. But, long before the first of these expeditions was ready to sail, the insurrection was subdued in every quarter. . " The indignation of the unfortunate Irish was just and extreme against that French government, which had so repeatedly pro- mised them aid, and now appeared to desert them in their utmost need"'. A miserable expedition, at the instance of Napper Tandy, was at length fitted out, of which Tone's son thus speaks : — 11 The final ruin of the expedition was hurried by the precipi- tancy and indiscretion of a brave but ignorant and imprudent officer. This anecdote, which is not generally known, is a striking instance of the disorder, indiscipline, and disorganization which began to prevail in the French army. Humbert, a gallant soldier of fortune, but whose heart was better than his head, im- patient of the delays of his government, and fired by the recitals of the Irish refugees, determined to begin the enterprise on his own responsibility, and thus oblige the Directory to second or to * "Tone's Memoirs", vol. ii. p. 514. 112 FAILURE OF HUMBERT S EXPEDITION. desert him. Towards the middle of August, calling together the merchants and magistrates of Rochelle, he forced them to advance a small sum of money and all that he wanted, on military requisi- tion, and embarking on board a few frigates and transports, with 1,000 men, 1,000 spare muskets, 1,000 guineas, and a few pieces of artillery, he compelled the captains to set sail, for the most desperate attempt which is perhaps recorded in history. Three Irishmen accompanied him, my uncle, Matthew Tone, Bartholo- mew Teeling, of Lisburn, and Sullivan, nephew to Madgett, whose name is often mentioned in these memoirs. On the 22nd of August they made the coast of Connaught, and landing in the bay of Killala, immediately stormed and occupied that little town. " Strange and desperate as was this enterprise, had it been pro- secuted with the same spirit and vivacity with which it was begun, it might have succeeded, and Humbert, an obscure and uneducated soldier, have effected a revolution, and crowned his name with immortal glory. But encircled, on the 8th of Sep- tember, at Ballinamuck, by an entire army, his small band, after a gallant resistance, were compelled to lay down their arms. The French were received to composition and shortly exchanged, but the Irish were slaughtered without mercy; and the cruelties afterwards exercised on the unresisting peasantry, will render the name of General Lake remembered for ages in those remote dis- tricts of Connaught. Of the Irish who had accompanied Hum- bert, Sullivan escaped under the disguise of a Frenchman, and Matthew Tone and Teeling were brought in irons to Dublin, tried, and executed? * Matthew Tone came over to Ireland in the unfortunate ex- pedition of Humbert. Theobald, in his diary, speaks of him as a young man of a more solid judgment than his brother William. He was of a reserved and retiring disposition, of a silent turn, and frequently absent in company ;f yet, says his brother, " he had a more enthusiastic spirit than any of us". He was " a sin- cere republican, and capable of sacrificing everything for his principles". Before he was twenty-five he had visited England twice or thrice, had spent twelve months in America, and as much in the West Indies. He attempted to establish himself in the business of a cotton manufacturer in Prosperous, in 1790, but was not successful, though totally free from an attachment to pleasures and amusements. In August, 1794, he crossed over to * " Tone's Life", vol. ii., p. 520. f The portrait of Matthew, taken when a child of seven or eight years of age, in the group of the picture prefixed to the first volume of the second series of this work, is said to have been a strong resemblance. He had a defect in one eye — a pearl, as it was termed. I refer to the portrait of the child with a sash. MATTHEW TONE'S CAPTURE. 113 France, with the intention of entering the French service, but was thrown into prison at Dunkirk, on the suspicion of being an English spy. There he remained till May, 171)5, when he was liberated by order of the Committee of Public Safety, and soon after embarked at Havre de Grace for America. When he ar- rived, his brother was about to quit the United States for France, and did leave that country without knowing of his arrival. Mat- thew remained in America till October, 1797. He had deter- mined to settle in America, but unfortunately changed his pur- pose, in consequence of a letter from his brother, urging him to return to France, and holding out the prospect to him of a cap- taincy in a regiment of grenadiers. Theobald, in his diary for November, expresses his satisfaction at his arrival, "just in time to take a part in the expedition". He now entered the French service, and soon obtained the rank his brother had led him to expect. The failure of the Dutch expedition left him without active employment till preparations for that of Humbert began to be made. He accompanied Humbert to Killala, and was taken prisoner immediately after the battle of Ballinamuck. He was conveyed to Dublin, and lodged in the Provost prison in the Royal Barracks. On the 24th of September, he was brought to trial before a court-martial, on a charge of high treason. The first witness examined, Michael Bourke, deposed to having seen the prisoner at Castlebar. He had told witness he had quitted Ireland five years before, and on his arrival in France was taken up as an English spy, committed to prison, and con- fined between six and nine months ; had escaped from prison, pro- ceeded to America, and having met there Hamilton Rowan, learned from him his brother's having arrived in France ; and on that information he had quitted America, and returned to France, where he remained till the expedition he embarked in sailed for Ire- land. He said they had been three weeks at sea before they landed. Witness saw prisoner marshalling the French troops in Lord Lucan's lawn, and inarch with the French troops from Castlebar. Thomas Armstrong, of the Yeomanry Cavalry, deposed to his having met the prisoner on the road on the 8th of September (the day of the battle of Ballinamuck), as he (witness) and two other yeomen were returning home. Prisoner said, on being ques- tioned by them, that he was coming from Killala; upon which they took him into custody. He acknowledged that he had been among the rebels, and held a captains commission in the French service. The prisoner was disguised like a peasant, and acknow- ledged that he had thrown away his French uniform, together with his sword and pistols. ii. 9 114 MATTHEW TONE'S TRIAL AND DEFENCE. The prosecution being closed, and the prisoner called for his defence, prayed for the indulgence of the court until the Wednes- day following, to prepare his defence, which was granted. At the commencement of the proceedings he had read a paper to the court, calling in question the competency of the general court- martial to try him. His objections were overruled by the court. He admitted that he was a natural born subject of this realm. Wednesday, September 29. — The court sat at half-past eleven, shortly after which, Matthew Tone was brought forward. He requested the court would examine one witness whom he had to produce, and to have the questions asked him which were written on a paper he handed to the president. The court agreed, when the prisoner's aged father, Mr. Peter Tone, was sworn, and interrogated according to the purport of the queries contained in the paper. The substance of the old man's evidence was, that he had reared the prisoner from his childhood to the age of manhood, and always found him to act as became a dutiful, sober, and affec- tionate son. He was now about twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age, but having six years ago failed in his business, he was compelled to go abroad in hopes of bettering his fortune; he never knew him to belong to any political society, and solemnly averred that he did not think it possible he could belong to any society without his knowledge. " The prisoner now proceeded to read his defence. After returning thanks to the court for their impartiality and candour during his trial, he observed that necessity, not choice, obliged him to quit his native country and go to France, at a period when no declaration of war had taken place ; that he was there arrested as an English spy, and thrown into a loathsome prison, where he remained for several months, when, having found means to effect his escape, he embarked for America, where he continued for some time ; but being unable to go into business there for want of assistance, or procure an employment, and having a sister married to a merchant in Hamburgh, he set off for that city. After several fruitless efforts to obtain independence, he began to feel his situation extremely irksome, inasmuch as he was a burden on those whom it was his wish and duty to assist ; he therefore em- braced an offer which was made to him of entering into the French service ; and no circumstance, he most solemnly declared, induced him to do so but absolute necessity. After which, being ordered to the expedition to Ireland, he was obliged, consistent with the commission he held, consistent with subordination, and that amenability which was due to his superior officers, to em- bark. ' And here permit me to ask', said Mr. Tone, ' was the MATTHEW TONE'S CONDEMNATION. 115 conduct of France to me, on my landing, consistent with that which she usually bestows on persons who come on errands to her of a treasonable nature ? No ! My severe confinement is a demonstrative proof that I did not arrive there as an exile for sedition or treason from my own country. France has hitherto treated all such persons with cordiality, received them with open arms, and rapidly promoted them ; but I was an humble indi- vidual, unknown in the country, with no recommendation from any man or society of men whose views were inimical to the con- stitution of this country, because I was unconnected with such men. I was not even consulted in any extraordinary manner on the expedition, though from my knowledge of the two languages such might have been expected. I therefore had no alternative between embarking, and death and dishonour. " * As to the circumstance of my having been found in the garb of a peasant, I will explain it. From the moment of my landing in this country till I was taken, my every endeavour was used to restrain the rebels from acts of revenge and plunder, which they were prone to, and which I have frequently execrated. This conduct made me inimical to them; I therefore embraced the first opportunity after the battle of Ballinamuck to change my clothes in order to avoid them, determined on giving myself up to the next magistrate. Being met, however, by a party of the yeomanry, I instantly made them acquainted with my name, si- tuation, intention, etc' 14 Mr. Tone concluded his defence with expressions of reliance on the impartiality of the court, and requested they would be pleased to forward his defence to his Excellency, with the minutes of the proceedings. This the president informed him should be done as a matter of course".* The following letter was written by him to the agent who con- ducted his defence, the 28th of September, the day previous to his execution : — ,k Dear Sir, 11 As I know from experience that suspense is the worst of all states, I hasten to relieve my friends from it. The business is determined on, and to-morrow is the day fixed. I request that no friend may come near me. Sorrow is contagious; and I would not willingly betray any weakness on the occasion. " Accept a thousand thanks for the interest you have taken in my affairs. Farewell. " M. Tone". His friends, however, did come to him. His poor old father, "Dublin Magazine", October, 1798. 116 MATTHEW TONE'S EXECUTION. accompanied by William Dunbavin, came to the Provost, and was permitted to see him. The old man seemed stupefied with grief: it was some time before he could articulate a sound or collect his thoughts. Matthew was pacing his cell, apparently unmoved and unconcerned, except on his fathers account. The father said at length to him : " There is no hope, Matthew. I have been to the Castle, and they would not listen to me". The son's reply was made in a firm tone, and with perfect calmness and composure: " I supposed, father, that nothing could be done. I have but a short time to live", he added, " and I wish to be left alone". He then embraced his father, shook hands with Dunbavin, and he was left alone to prepare for death. On the 29th of September lie was executed on Arbour Hill, and on his way to the place of execution he was treated with unnecessary harshness and unfeeling conduct on the part of the " ministers of justice" who officiated on that occasion. The object failed, for their brutality did not in the slightest degree discon- cert him. He met his fate with the decent solemnity and the fortitude, devoid of all affectation of indifference, of a brave and a good man. His body was given up to his friends, conveyed to the house of William Dunbavin, and was interred in Bodenstown. Young Tone, in reference to the failure of Humbert's expe- dition, observes: — " The news of Humbert's attempt, as may well be imagined, threw the Directory into the greatest perplexity. They instantly determined, however, to hurry all their preparations, and send off at least the division of General Hardy to second his efforts as soon as possible. The report of his first advantages, which shortly reached them, augmented their ardour and accelerated their movements. But such was the state of the French navy and arsenals, that it was not until the 20th of September, 1798, that this small expedition, consisting of one sail of the line and eight frigates, under Commodore Bompart, and 3,000 men, under General Hardy, was ready for sailing. The news of Humbert's defeat had not yet reached France. " Paris was then crowded with Irish emigrants eager for action. The mass of the United Irishmen embarked in a small and fast sailing boat, with Napper Tandy at their head. They reached, on the 16th of September, the Isle of Raghlin, on the north-west coast of Ireland, where they heard of Humbert's dis- aster. They merely spread some proclamations, and escaped to Norway. Three Irishmen only accompanied my father in Hardy's flotilla; he alone was embarked in the admiral's vessel, the Hoche; the others were on board the frigates. These were Mr. T. Cor- t. w. tone's design to anticipate his fate if taken. 117 bctt and MacGuire, two brave officers, who have since died in the French service, and a third gentleman, connected by marriage with his friend Russell, who is yet living, and whose name it would, therefore, be improper in me to mention". [Hamilton.] 11 In (' a rr>in's Life, by his son, I find an anecdote mentioned, which must have been derived lrom the authority of this gentle- man. It is stated that, on the night previous to the sailing of the expedition, a question rose amongst the United Irishmen engaged in it, whether, in case of their falling into the enemy's hands, they should suffer themselves to be put to death, according to the sentence of the law, or anticipate their fate by their own hands; that T. W. Tone maintained, with his usual eloquence and anima- tion, that in no point of view in which he had ever considered suicide, he could hold it to be justifiable; that one of the com- pany suggested that, from political considerations, it would be better not to relieve, by any act of self-murder, the Irish govern- ment from the discredit in which numerous executions would involve it — an idea which Mr. Tone highly approved. This anecdote is substantially correct, but the gentleman did not un- derstand my father. " At the period of this expedition he was hopeless of its suc- cess, and in the deepest despondency at the prospect of Irish affairs. Such was the wretched indiscretion of the government, that before his departure he read himself in the Bien lu/orme, a Paris newspaper, a detailed account of the whole armament, where his own name was mentioned in full letters, with the cir- cumstance of his being embarked on board the Hoche. There was, therefore, no hope of secrecy. He had all along deprecated the idea of those attempts on a small scale. But he had also declared repeatedly that, if the government sent only a corporal's guard, he felt it his duty to go along with them. He saw no chance of Kilmaine's large expedition being ready in any space of time, and therefore determined to accompany Hardy. His reso- lution was, however, deliberately and inflexibly taken, in case he fell into the hands of the enemy, never to suffer the indignity of a public execution. It was at dinner, in our own house, and in my mother's presence, a little before leaving Paris, that the gentle- man above mentioned proposed that the Irish should leave to the government all the shame and odium of their execution. The idea struck him as ludicrous, and he applauded it highly. 1 My dear friend', he said, ' say nothing more ; you never spoke better in your life'. And after the gentleman's departure he laughed very heartily at his idea of shaming the Irish government by allowing himself to be hanged ; adding, that he did not at all understand people mooting the point, whether they should or 118 T. W. TONE CAPTURED IN THE "HOCHE". should not choose their own deaths, or consulting on such an occasion ; that he would never advise others, but that, ' please God, they should never have his poor bones to pick'. — Vide Win- Jenkins. "At length, about the 20th of September, 1798, that fatal ex- pedition set sail from the Baye de Camaret. It consisted of the Hoche, 74 ; Loire, Resolue, Bellone, Coquille, Embuscade, Immortalite, Romaine, and Semillante, frigates; and Biche, schooner and aviso. To avoid the British fleets, Bompart, an excellent seaman, took a large sweep to the westward, and then to the north-east, in order to bear down on the northern coast of Ireland from the quarter whence a French force would be least expected. He met, however, with contrary winds, and it ap- pears that his flotilla was scattered ; for, on the 10th of October, after twenty days' cruise, he arrived off the entry of Loch S willy, with the Hoche, the Loire, the Resolue, and the Biche. He was instantly signalled; and, on the break of day next morning, 11th October, before he could enter the bay or land his troops, he perceived the squadron of Sir John Borlase Warren, consisting of six sail of the line, one razee of sixty guns, and two frigates, bear- ing down upon him. There was no chance of escape for the large and heavy men of war. Bompart gave instant signals to the fri- gates and schooner to retreat through shallow water, and prepared alone to honour the flag of his country and liberty by a des- perate but hopeless defence. At that moment, a boat came from the Biehe for his last orders. That ship had the best chance to get off. The French officers all supplicated my father to embark on board of her. ' Our contest is hopeless', they observed ; 4 we will be prisoners of war, but what will become of you?' " Shall it be said', replied he, ' that I fled, whilst the French were fighting the battles of my country?' He refused their offers, and determined to stand or fall with the ship. The Biche accom- plished her escape, and I see it mentioned in late publications, that other Irishmen availed themselves of that occasion. This fact is incorrect, not one of them would have done so, and besides, my father was the only Irishman on board the Hoche. " The British admiral despatched two men of war, the razhe, and a frigate, after the Loire and Resolue, and the Hoche was soon surrounded by four sail of the line and a frigate, and began one of the most obstinate and desperate engagements which have ever been fought on the ocean. During six hours she sustained the whole fire of the fleet, till her masts and rigging were swept away, her scuppers flowed with blood, her wounded filled the cock-pit, her shattered ribs yawned at each new stroke and let in five feet of water in the hold, her rudder was carried off, and she tone's conduct in the action on board the "hoche". 119 floated a dismantled wreck on the waters ; her sails and cordage hung in shreds, nor could she reply with a single gun from her dismounted batteries, to the unabating cannonade of the enemy. At length she struck. The Besolue and Loire were soon reached by the English fleet ; the former was in a sinking condition ; she made, however, an honourable defence ; the Loire sustained three attacks, drove off the English frigates, and had almost effected her escape; at length, engaged by the A ?t son, razee of sixty guns, she struck after an action of three hours, entirely dismasted. Of the other frigates, pursued in all directions, the Bellone, Immor- talite, Cotfiiillc and Emhnscmle were taken, and the Romaine and SemiUante^ through a thousand dangers, reached separate ports in France. "During the action, my father commanded one of the batteries, and, according to the report of the officers who returned to France, fought with the utmost desperation, and as if he was courting death. When the ship struck, confounded with the other officers, he was not recognized for some time ; for he had com- pletely acquired the language and appearance of a Frenchman. The two fleets were dispersed in every direction, nor was it till some days later that the Hoche was brought into Loch Swilly, and the prisoners landed and marched to Letterkenny. Yet rumours of his being on board must have been circulated, for the fact was public at Paris. But it was thought he had been killed in the action, and I am willing to believe that the British officers, respecting the valour of a fallen enemy, were not earnest in in- vestigating the point. It was at length a gentleman, well-known in the county Deny as a leader of the Orange party, and one of the chief magistrates in that neighbourhood, Sir George Hill, who had been his fellow-student in Trinity College, and knew his person, who undertook the task of discovering him. It is known that in Spain, grandees and noblemen of the first rank pride themselves in the functions of familiars, spies, and in- formers of the Holy Inquisition : it remained for Ireland to offer a similar example. The French officers were invited to break- fast with the Earl of Cavan, who commanded in that district; my father sat undistinguished amongst them, when Sir George Hill entered the room, followed by police constables. Looking narrowly at the company, he singled out the object of his search, and stepping up to him, said, ' Mr. Tone, I am very hai^py to see you. Instantly rising with the utmost composure, and disdain- ing all useless attempts at concealment, my father replied, ' Sir George, I am happy to see you ; how are Lady Hill and your family T Beckoned into the next room by the police officers, an unexpected indignity awaited him. It was filled with military, 120 SIR GEOUGE HILLS and one General Lavau, who commanded them, ordered him to be ironed, declaring that, as on leaving Ireland to enter the French service, he had not renounced his oath of allegiance, he remained a subject of Britain, and should be punished as a traitor. Seized with a momentary burst of indignation at such unworthy treat- ment and cowardly cruelty to a prisoner of war, he flung off his uniform, and cried, ' These letters shall never degrade the revered insignia of the free nation which I have served'. Re- suming then his usual calm, he offered his limbs to the irons, and when they were fixed, he exclaimed, ' For the cause which I have embraced, I feel prouder to wear these chains, than if I were decorated with the star and garter of England'. The friends of Lord Cavan have asserted that this extreme, and I will add, unmanly and ungenerous severity, was provoked by his outrageous behaviour, when he found that he was not to have the privileges of a prisoner of war. This supposition is not only contradicted by the whole tenor of his character, and his subse- quent deportment, but no other instances of it have ever been specified, than those noble replies to the taunts of General Lavau. Of the latter, I know nothing but these anecdotes, recorded in the papers of the day. If, as his name seems to indicate, he was a French emigrant, the coincidence was curious, and his conduct the less excusable. " Another version of this story, which I have seen for the first time in the London New Monthly Magazine, states that Mr. Tone was recognized by, or, according to another account, had the imprudence to make himself known to, an old acquaintance at Lord Cavan's table, who speedily informed his lordship of the guest who sat at his board. The first circumstantial account is the one which reached us in France ; but, in my opinion, the difference between the two stories is very trifling. It regards only the fashion in which Sir George Hill gave his information".* Sir George Fitzgerald Hill, Bart., of Brooke Hall, county Lon- donderry, in 1839, died in the office of Lieutenant-Governor of Trinidad. He was the eldest son of Sir Hugh Hill, Bart., who represented the city of Londonderry from 1768 to his death in 1775. Sir George F. Hill was born in 1763. He entered Trinity College, and took his degree of M.A. there, and was called to the bar. In 1791 he was returned to Parliament for the borough of Coleraine, which he represented till 1795, when he was returned for Londonderry city. Sir George, from the outset of his career, had an eye to office. Before the meeting of parliament he managed to obtain the lucrative office of Clerk of * "Life of T. W. Tone", by his son, vol. ii., p. 525, Washington edition, 1826. COLLEGE ACQUAINTANCE WITn TONE. 121 tlie Irish House of Commons, and vacated his seat accordingly. In 1801 he again stood for Londonderry, and was returned to the English Parliament. He represented that city for thirty years. In 1806 he was appointed a Lord of the Treasury during the Duke of Richmond's administration. In 1817 he was made Vice-Treasurer of Ireland and a British Privy Councillor. In November, 1830, he was appointed Governor of St. Vincent's in the West Indies, and afterwards removed to Trinidad in 1833, where he filled the office of Lieutenant-Governor, and died the 8th of March, 1839, aged seventy-five years. Sir George, in conjunction with his brother, Romley Hill, on the downfall of the Volunteer institution, organized a yeomanry battalion of cavalry and infantry of about 500 men, for active service against the United Irishmen, long before the rebellion, when the sustainment of the supremacy of the law became a pass- word with the Orangemen of the North. Sir George was made a colonel of the Londonderry militia, captain commandant of the Londonderry yeomanry, and eventually recorder of Derry. The services of the man who is said to have discovered his friend and fellow-student, the unfortunate Theobald Wolfe Tone, among the French prisoners, and had that friend and fellow-student captured, could not be too highly rewarded. Sir George married in October, 1788, Jane, third daughter of the Right Honourable George Beresford, brother to George, first Marquess of Waterford, but had no issue. He was succeeded by Sir Marcus Hill. Perhaps the following items on account of disbursements of moneys of the state for secret services, which will be found in another portion of this work, may throw a little light on the pro- ceedings connected with the alleged discovery of Tone by an old college friend and intimate acquaintance, bearing in mind that the date of Tones discovery and arrest was the beginning of Novem- ber, 1798, and that of some of the secret services of Sir George Hill, so far back as the 11th of September, 1797 : — From Mr. Secretary Cooke's account. September 11, 1797 — Sir G. F. Hill, £100. April 11, 1798 — Sir George Hill, for a man going to England, £11 7s. 6d. October 22, 1799— Sir G. F. Hill, for M'Fillan, Murphy, Honiton, and Birch,* £460. The following is the English official account of the defeat of the French squadron on the 12th of October, and the capture of four of the vessels: — * Birch was an inn keeper of Derry, of some notoriety in his day. 122 TONE PUT IN IRONS AND IMPRISONED IN DERRY. " EXTRACT OF A LETTER RECEIVED THIS MORNING FROM SIR J. BORLASE WARREN TO LORD VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGH, DATED FROM HIS MAJESTY'S SHIP THE CANADA, IN LOUGH SWILLY, THE 16TH INSTANT. "Dublin Castle, Oct. 18, 1798. "My Lord, " 1 take the liberty of communicating to you, for the infor- mation of his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant, that I fell in with the enemy's squadron on the 12th instant, the Rosses bearing S.S.W., five leagues, and after an action which continued most part of the day, four of their ships struck their colours. " I believe a brig, with Napper Tandy on board, was in com- pany, as she left the French at the commencement of the busi- ness. The enemy's ships had numbers of troops, arms, stores, and ammunition; and large quantities of papers were torn and thrown overboard after they had struck. " I am of opinion that few of the frigates which escaped will arrive in France, as they had received much damage in their masts and rigging ; and from the violent gales that followed the next day, they must be in a crippled state, and may, in all pro- bability, be picked up by some of the squadrons on the coast of France, or by Admiral Kingsmill's cruisers. They had thrown everything overboard — boats, spars, arm-chests, etc. " I left the prizes with the .Robuste, Magnanime, Ethalion, and Amelia. The Hoche, of eighty-four guns, was one of the ships taken. " I am, etc." It is right, however, to mention, that the base act, of which Sir George Hill is accused, has been attributed by others to a Roman Catholic gentleman, whose relative had been a short time before executed at Killala. Tone was no sooner recognized than he was taken into an adjoining room and fettered, as he states, by the orders of Lord Cavan ; and thus fettered, he was conveyed on horseback from Letterkenny to Derry under an escort of dragoons. The following particulars of Tone's capture are taken from the Irish Monthly Register of the Dublin Magazine of November, 1798:— " The Hoche was brought into Derry, the 2nd of November, 1798, on board of which was that unfortunate gentleman, Theo- bald Wolfe Tone, Esq. He was conducted to the jail of Derry, and by order of Lord Cavan put in irons. The following is a letter written by him to his lordship on the occasion, with Lord Cavan's answer : — tone's protest against lord cayan's conduct. 123 " 'Derry Prison, 12 Brumaire, an. 6, (3rd Nov. 1798), N.S. " 1 My Lord, 11 ' On my arrival here, Major Chester informed me that his orders from your lordship — in consequence, as I presume, of the directions of government — were, that I should be put in irons. I take it for granted, those orders were issued in ignorance of the rank I have the honour to hold in the armies of the French republic. I am, in consequence, to apprise your lordship, that I am breveted as chef de brigade in the infantry since the 1st Messidor, an. 4; that I have been promoted to the rank of adjutant-general the 2nd Nivosc, an. 6 ; and finally, that I have served as such, attached to General Hardy, since the 3rd Ther- midor, an. 0, by virtue of the orders of the Minister at War. Major Chester, to whom I have showed my commission, can satisfy your lordship as to the fact, and General Hardy will ascer- tain the authenticity of the documents. " 4 Under these circumstances, I address myself to your lord- ship as a man of honour and a soldier ; and 1 do protest, in the most precise and strongest manner, against the indignity intended against the honour of the French army in my person; and I claim the rights and privileges of a prisoner of war, agreeably to my rank and situation in an army, not less to be respected in all points than any other which exists in Europe. " ' From the situation your lordship holds under your govern- ment, I must presume you have discretionary power to act accord- ing to circumstances ; and I cannot for a moment doubt, but what I have now explained to your lordship will induce you to give immediate orders that the honour of the French nation and the French army be respected in my person, and, of course, I shall suffer no coercion other than in common with the rest of my brave comrades, whom the fortune of war has for the moment deprived of liberty. '"I am, my Lord, with great respect, your lordship's most obedient servant, " 1 T. W. Tone, " 1 dit Smith, Adjutant-General' ". "-ANSWER. " ' Buncrana, November 8, 1798. "'Sir, " * I have received your letter of this date from Derry jail, in which you inform me, that you consider your being ordered into irons as an insult and degradation to the rank you hold in the army 124 TONE SENT TO DUBLIN IN IRONS. of the French republic ; and that you protest in the most precise and strongest manner against such indignity. Had you been a native of France, or of any other country not belonging to the British empire, indisputably it would be so ; but the motive that directed me to give the order I did this morning for your being put in irons, was, that I looked upon you (and you have proved yourself) a traitor and rebel to your sovereign and native country, and as such you shall be treated by me. " ' I shall enforce the order I gave this morning, and I lament, as a man, the fate that awaits you. Every indulgence shall be granted you by me individually that is not inconsistent with my public duty. " * I am, Sir, your humble servant, " ' Cavan, Major-Gen.' " On Tone's arrival in Dublin he was imprisoned in the Provost in the Royal Barrack, one of the bastiles of the capital, then under the charge of the notorious Major Sandys. Tone was found by the few friends who were permitted to visit him previous to trial, in the same dungeon in which his brother had been con- fined a few days previously, and from which he had been led to execution. The most accurate account of the proceedings before the court-martial, though not the most extended, is to be found in The Dublin Magazine for November, 1798. The editor of that periodical was a covert friend of many of the parties involved in the troubles of that period, and was evidently furnished by their relatives and associates with details which could only be obtained from them. The version of the speech delivered by Tone on his trial, which is given in the Dublin Monthly, is not so polished as that which we find in the life of Tone by his son, and in some particulars differs from that which is given in the life of Sir John Moore. But altogether it bears the appearance of a correct report of such portions of Tone's prepared address as he was permitted to speak. " TRIAL OF THEOBALD WOLFE TONE, ESQ. " Dublin Barrack, " Saturday, November 10, 1798. " Major-General Loftus, 'president. Colonel Vandeleur, Lieu- tenant-Colonel Daly, Major Armstrong, Colonel Wolfe, Colonel Tyler, Captain Corry. " Mr. Tone was brought into court under a guard, from the TONE TRIED BY COURT-MARTIAL. 125 Provost prison, where he had been confined. He was dressed in the French uniform — a large cocked hat, with broad gold lace and the tri-coloured cockade; a blue uniform coat, with gold embroidered collar, and two large gold epaulets ; blue pantaloons, with gold-laced garters at the knees ; and short boots, bound at the tops with gold lace. 11 At first he seemed agitated, and called for a glass of water: he was afterwards composed and collected. " The charges having been read by the judge-advocate, impli- cating him as a natural born subject of our lord the king, having traitorously entered into the service of the Freneh republic, etc., etc., the prisoner was called to plead whether guilty or not guilty. M Mr. Tone, bowing to the court, said, he presumed this was the time in which he might read to the court the statements of a few points, which he had committed to paper for his delence on the occasion of his trial. u He was asked in the first instance, if he would plead to the charge against him, guilty or not guilty. He answered, that it was not his wish to avail himself of any subterfuge, or to give the court any unnecessary trouble ; he was ready to admit the whole of the charge exhibited against him. " He was then asked, what was his object in his reading the paper in his hand ? was it anything he wished to offer in his de- fence? was it anything which his own good sense must tell him might be improper for the court to hear? Mr. Tone answered, the paper was certainly drawn up with a view to vindication, though possibly it could not be considered as a defence against the accu- sation on which he was now called to trial. He could not say whether it was a kind of defence which the court might choose to hear. He had endeavoured, in the formation of it, to be as collected and moderate as his feelings could possibly admit ; and if the court would do him the honour of permitting him to read the paper, its contents would best suggest how far it was admissible. " Court — ' Sir, before you read that paper, you will do well to consider whether it contains any matter irrelevant to the question now at issue, or anything which your own good sense may suggest the court ought not to hear. " Prisoner — ' In what I am about to read 1 trust there is nothing irrelevant to my situation, nor anything but what I should hope the court will not think improper to hear. I have endeavoured to be as collected and moderate as possible, and I should not wish to offer any language offensive to the court'. " Judge Advocate — ' Is there anything in the paper which you wish should go before his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant?' " Prisoner — ' I have no objection that it should'. 126 tone's address to the court. " A member — ' You have already pleaded guilty to the charge of having acted traitorously. Do you mean by anything con- tained in that paper to retract that plea?' " Prisoner — * Certainly I have admitted the charge, and con- sequently the appellation by which I am technically described'. " President — ' It is not the wish of the court, Sir, to deny you any indulgence which, consistently with their duty, they can grant, but they must reserve to themselves the power of stopping you, if you shall utter anything irrelevant to the case before them, or unfitting for them to listen to'. " Prisoner — ' The court, no doubt, will reserve to itself that discretionary power, but I repeat that I have endeavoured to be as moderate as possible, and if any of my expressions should happen to appear objectionable, I shall be willing to substitute others less so'. " Here the president having given permission, the prisoner read the paper, which was as follows: — " 1 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court, " 4 It is not my intention to give this court any trouble re- specting the purport of aught that has been alleged against me. My admission of the charge prevents a prolongation of those forms, which could not be more irksome to you, than they would be to me. What I have done has been purely from principle and the fullest conviction of its rectitude. I wish not for mercy ; I hope I am not an object of pity. I anticipate the consequence of my caption, and am prepared for the event. The favourite object of my life has been the independence of my country, and to that object have I made every sacrifice. " ' Placed in honourable poverty, the love of liberty was im- planted by nature, and confirmed by education, in my heart. No seduction, no terror could banish it from thence ; and seduction and terror have not been spared against me. To impart the in- estimable blessings of liberty to the land of my birth, I have braved difficulties, bondage, and death. " 4 For it, I became an exile — I submitted to poverty — I left the bosom of my family, my wife, my children, and all that rendered life desirable. " ' After an honourable combat, in which I strove to emulate the bravery of my gallant comrades, I was forced to submit, and was dragged in irons through the country, not so much to my disgrace, as that of the person by whom such ungenerous and unmanly orders were issued. " i Whatever I have written and said on the fate of Ireland, I here reiterate. tone's address to the court. 127 11 1 The connection with England I have ever considered as the bane of the prosperity and happiness of Ireland, and I have done everything in ray power to break it, and to raise three millions of my countrymen to the rank of citizens'. "Here he was stopped by the court, and Mr. President said: 1 Mr. Tone, it is impossible we can listen to this'. " Judge Advocate — * If what follows be of such a nature as you described to me yesterday, I really am of opinion, Mr. Tone, it must operate to your prejudice; you will therefore do well to consider before you read it'. " On the further advice which the court and the Judge- Advo- cate urged, the prisoner consented to cancel the most excep- tionable part of what he read, and also some subsequent matter, which he said was only the expression of his thanks to the Roman Catholics, a body whom he had once, he said, the honour of serving. He then desired to know if he might proceed. "President — ' It is a principle by which we shall be scrupu- lously ruled, to avoid most carefully everything not immediately relative to your case and the ends of justice; and it is but fitting that we expect you to confine yourself simply to the charge made against you ; a reverse conduct can tend to no good purpose'. " Prisoner — ' I have said nothing, nor do I mean to say any- thing, that has not been already uttered with respect to me in houses of parliament, where my name has been so often quoted'. " He was then suffered to proceed. " 1 Having considered the resources of the country, and being convinced they were too weak to effect her independence without assistance, I sought that assistance in Fiance; and without any intrigue, but asking in the open honesty of my principles, and that love of freedom which has ever distinguished me, I have been adopted by the French republic, and in the active discharge of my duty as a soldier, acquired what is to me invaluable, and what I will never relinquish but with my existence — the friendship of some of the best characters in France, and the attachment and esteem of my brave companions in arms. " ' It is not the sentence of any court that can weaken the force or alter the nature of those principles on which I have acted, and the truth of which will outlive those ephemeral prejudices that may rule for the day. To her I leave the vindication of my fame, and I trust posterity will not listen to her advocacy without being instructed. " 1 It is now more than four years since persecution drove me from this country, and I need hardly say that personally I cannot be involved in anything that has happened during my absence. In my efforts to accomplish the freedom of my country, I never 128 tone's address to the court. have had recourse to any other than open and manly war. There have been atrocities committed on both sides, which I lament ; and if the generous spirit which I had assisted to raise in the breasts of Irishmen, has degenerated into a system of assassination, I believe all who have had any knowledge of me, from my infancy to the present hour, will be ready to admit that no man in existence could more heartily regret that any tyranny of circumstances or policy should so pervert the natural dispositions of my countrymen. " ' I have little more to say. Success is all in this life ; and, unfavoured of her, virtue becomes vicious in the ephemeral esti- mation of those who attach every merit to prosperity. " 'In the glorious race of patriotism, I have pursued the path chalked out by Washington in America, and Kosciusko in Poland. Like the latter, I have failed to emancipate my country ; and unlike both, I have forfeited my life. I have done my duty, and I have no doubt the court will do theirs ; and I have only to add, that a man who has thought and acted as I have done, should be armed against the fear of death '. ■'■ A member — 4 This paper, then, which you have read, contains nothing in denial of the charge made against you '. " Prisoner — ' What I have once done, I would be ashamed to deny'. " Here the prisoner, having been asked by the Judge Advocate if there was anything else which he wished to offer to the court, he replied, that if he was not to be brought up again before the decision of the court, he would wish to say a few words more, which being permitted, the prisoner proceeded : — " ' I conceive that I stand here in the same light with our Emigres; and if the indulgence lay within the power of the court, I would only request — what French magnanimity allowed to Charette and to the Count de Sombreuil — the death of a soldier, and to be shot by files of grenadiers. This is the only favour I have to ask, and I trust that men susceptible of the nice feelings of a soldier's honour, will not refuse the request. It is not from any personal feeling that I make this request, but from a respect to the uniform which I wear and to the brave army in which I have fought. From papers which I yesterday delivered to the Brigade Major, it will be seen that I am as regularly breveted an officer in the French service, as any here is in the British army, and it will be seen that I have not my commission as a protection'. " Judge Advocate — ' I wish you to be aware, that your accept- ance of a commission in the French service amounts to positive proof of the charge advanced against you ; but, from your admis- sions already, I suppose that by the production of those papers, CONVICTION OF T. W. TONE. 129 you merely want to show that you were an officer in the French army'. " Prisoner — ' Nothing more'. " The papers were then produced, and were a brevet for the rank of chef de brigade, and a letter of service, both having the signatures of the President of the French Directory and the Minister of War. By one of those, it appeared that his last appointment was to proceed to Brest, to join the army of Eng- land; and to some questions asked of him, he answered, that he had been appointed to three several armies destined to three several expeditions, under Buonaparte, Hoche, and Kilmaine, an Irishman. Having been asked why he was designated in the brevet and letter of service by the name of Smith, together with that of Tone, he explained by saying, that in proceeding from America to France, it was necessary that he should have a pass- port, and accordingly took the first that fell in his way, which happened to be made out in the name of Smith ; on entering France, he was accordingly registered by that, and his real name, which he had added thereto ; ' indeed, almost every soldier in France had what they call a nom de guerre. He repeated his desire to be indulged with death in the most honour- able manner, and as he had no doubt of the decision of the court, he expressed a wish that the confirmation of it by the Lord Lieu- tenant might be had as soon as possible, and execution of the sentence immediately follow, — within an hour, if it were prac- ticable. 11 The President replied, that the court would forthwith pro- ceed to a consideration and judgment of his case, after which no delay would take place in transmitting the proceedings to his Excellency ; and that it was probable whoever went with them, would bear back the Lord Lieutenant's determination on the subject. " The prisoner then thanked the court for the indulgence which had been extended to him. He was brought back to the Provost Marshalsea. "The whole of Saturday and Sunday, Mr. Tone expressed much anxiety to learn the decision of his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant, concerning the request he had made as to the mode of his execution ; having no doubt at all as to the sentence of the court, and its confirmation by his Excellency. " On Sunday evening he was informed that his conviction and sentence was confirmed by his Excellency; but that his request, as to the mode of execution, could not be complied with ; that he must suffer the same fate as others who were taken in war against their king and country ; and that the peculiar circum- ii. 10 130 ANTICIPATION OF ORDER FOR HIS EXECUTION. stances of his case rendered it necessary his execution should be in the most public manner, for the sake of a striking example ; that he must be executed in front of the New Prison. " This, however, was an arrangement for which all his forti- tude and philosophy could not string the nerves of Mr. Tone. Such a torrent of public ignominy was too much for reflection, and he took the resolution of anticipating the executioner by his own hand, and relieving his mind from the intolerable load of horror, which the manner of his approaching fate impressed, for when the sentinel who watched in his room, went to rouse him on Monday morning — he found him exhausted, weltering in blood, with his throat cut across, and apparently expiring. The sentinel immediately alarmed the provost marshal ; a military sur- geon of the 5th Regiment of Dragoons immediately attended, and on examining the wound, pronounced it not mortal, though ex- tremely dangerous ; to which Mr. Tone faintly answered, ' I find then 1 am but a bad anatomist'. " The wound, which was inflicted with a penknive, intersected the wind pipe between two of the cartilaginous rings which form that organ, and amount to what surgeons style the operation of bronchotomy : it was dressed, but only with a view to prolong life till the fatal hour of one o'clock, appointed for execution, to which end the cart was prepared, and an escort of cavalry and infantry under orders to attend it. But in the meantime a mo- tion was made in his Majesty's Court of King's Bench, then sit- ting, to arrest execution, grounded on an affidavit sworn by the father of the prisoner, that he had been tried, convicted, and sen- tenced to death, on a charge of high treason, before a military court of seven members, sitting in the barrack of Dublin, though he did not belong to his Majesty's army; while his Majesty's Court of King's Bench was sitting, before which the prisoner might have been tried in the ordinary way. Mr. Curran, who ably argued the point, moved that an Habeas Corpus do issue forthwith to bring up the prisoner instanter. " The court immediately complied, and the officer who served the order on the provost martial, returned with answer, that Bri- gade-Major Sandys said he would comply with no orders but those of the commander-in-chief of the garrison. The court imme- diately directed the sheriff to repair to the barrack, take Mr. Sandys into custody, and bring him before the court. The sheriff, on his return, reported that Major Sandys was not to be found ; that he had seen General Craig, at whose instance he accompanied the surgeon to Mr. Tone, and that the surgeon reported the prisoner could not be removed to court, without danger of instant death. PROCEEDINGS IN THE KINGS BENCH. 131 " The surgeon attended and made affidavit to the same effect, and the return of the writ of Habeas Corpus was postponed for four days, and the court ordered the sheriff in the meantime to take the body of Theobald Wolfe Tone into his protection. In this situation he continued until Monday, the 19th of November, when he died, having suffered most excruciating pain for eight days. His body was delivered to his parents for interment. Thus ended the life of this unhappy gentleman, whose talents might have been an ornament to his country".* The particulars of Curran's application to the court are given more at large in TJie Life of Tone, and they are so honourable to the character of that excellent man, Lord Kilwarden, that it would be an injustice to omit them, as they are given by young Tone : — " ' I do not pretend', said Curran, 1 that Mr. Tone is not guilty of the charges of which he is accused. I presume the officers were honourable men. But it is stated in this affidavit as a solemn fact, that Mr. Tone had no commission under his majesty, and therefore no court martial could have cognizance of any crime imputed to him whilst the Court of King's Bench sat in the capacity of the great criminal court of the land. In times when war was raging, when man was opposed to man in the iicld, courts-martial might be endured ; but every law authority is with me whilst I stand upon this sacred principle of the consti- tution — that martial law and civil law are incompatible, and that the former must cease with the existence of the latter. This is not, however, the time for arguing this momentous question. My client must appear in this court. He is cast for death this very day : he may be ordered for execution whilst I address you. I call on the court to support the law, and move for an Habeas Corpus to be directed to the Provost Marshal of the Barracks of Dublin and Major Sandys, to bring up the body of Tone'. " Chief Justice — ' Have a writ instantly prepared'. " Curran — 4 My client may die whilst the writ is preparing'. " Chief Justice — ' Mr. Sheriff, proceed to the barracks and acquaint the provost marshal that a writ is preparing to suspend Mr. Tone's execution, and see that he be not executed'. " The court awaited in a state of the utmost agitation and sus- pense the return of the Sheriff. He speedily appeared, and said : 1 My Lord, I have been to the barracks in pursuance of your order. The provost marshal says he must obey Major Sandys. Major Sandys says he must obey Lord Cornwallis'. Mr. Curran announced at the same time that Mr. Tone, the father, was just * "Dublin Magazine", November, 1798. 132 PROCEEDINGS IN THE KING'S BENCH. returned after serving the Habeas Corpus, and that General Craig would not obey it. The Chief Justice exclaimed: 'Mr. Sheriff, take the body of Tone into custody, take the provost marshal and Major Sandys into custody, and show the order of the court to General Craig',* * Sandys' Career subsequent to 1798. Major Sandys must have felt all the magnitude of his official greatness, and no doubt was proud of his position, when he spurned the Sheriff of Dublin and the order of the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and in the height of his I>ower as brigade-major, from his place of terror and uncontrolled authority in the Provost, he, the supreme arbiter of the issues of life and death in that com- mand, set at utter defiance the laws of the land, and proclaimed his determination to yield no obedience to the orders of the Lord Chief Justice in the legitimate exercise of his high functions. This, no doubt, was the proudest moment of Major Sandys' life. There cer- tainly never was a period when his power was more terrible to his fellow- citizens ; he might have said of it, like Wolsey : " I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, and from the fall meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting ". Let us see how long the power and prestige and prosperity of this bold, reckless, and unscrupulous man endured. Let us ascertain, if we can, from a brief notice of his subsequent career, what evidence is furnished in favour of the opinion, that great crimes against humanity generally meet great punishments and signal judg- ments of various kinds in this life. Of the triumvirate of majors— Sirr, Swan, and Sandys, — to whose "tender mercies '' the citizens of Dublin, who were not Orangemen , were delivered over in the " reign of terror ", by Lords Camden, Clare, and Castlereagh, the most tru- culent and remorseless was Major Sandys, the brother-in-law of Mr. Secretary Cooke. Of his services in the post of brigadier-major of the garrison of Dublin, and in virtue of that office, having the entire control of the Provost in the Royal Barracks in his hands, an account has been given at page 482 of the former volume. Of the horrors of the Provost, and the iniquitous acts of Major Sandys, it is unnecessary to say more ; but of the termination of the career of that unfor- tunate man, and of the signal retribution with which his great crimes against humanity were visited in his latter days, a few words remain to be said, on the authority of a gentleman of great eminence in literature, to whom he was known subsequently to the " reign of terror ", and whose father had been the prisoner of Sandys in 1798. That gentleman, Mr. P., an artist of well known talent, like many other citizens of respectability wholly unconnected with the conspiracy of the United Irishmen, but having the misfortune to be unconnected with the other conspiracy of the Orangemen of Ireland against the people of the country and their religion, was suspected on that account, arrested, and consigned to the Pro- vost. He had not been long there when his attention one day was directed to two prisoners in yeomanry-cavalry uniform, who were just brought in charged with the commission of a wanton and deliberate murder in a public street at noon day. The brutal expression of the features of one of these men, of the name of Hicks, particularly attracted the attention of the artist. Mr. P., while standing at the opposite side of the court, where this man was seated, took out his pencil and commenced taking his likeness on a slip of paper, held in such a way in his hand as to be unperceived by those in front of him. He had scarcely finished his sketch, however, when a person behind him snatched the paper out of his hand, and demanded in a loud voice and with a forcible imprecation, what he was secretly writing. Mr. P. answered that he was an artist, and for mere amusement was making a sketch of one of the prisoners. Major Sandys — for he was that formidable person who had just entered the prison unperceived by Mr. P. — then looked at the scrap of paper, and exclaimed with an oath, "What an extraor- dinary likeness of Hicks ! " He then asked Mr. P. his name, and when he heard it, he expressed some surprise, and said, " What the D 1, P., has brought you PROCEEDINGS IN THE KING'S BENCH. 133 The general impression was now, that the prisoner would be led out to execution in defiance of the couit. This apprehension was legible in the countenance of Lord Kilwarden ; a man who in the worst of times preserved a religious respect for the laws, and who besides, I may add, felt every personal feeling of pity and respect for the prisoner, whom he had lormerly contributed here ? ■ Mr. P. stated the truth, that he had not the slightest idea, unless it might be on account of former social intercourse with some of the persons who were then in prison charged with treason. Sandys then told Mr. P. to make himself as comfortable as he could, as he supposed that he would be liberated in the course of a few weeks, and in the meantime he would afford him some better employ- ment for his pencil than sketching prisoners: and finally he intimated a wish to have his own portrait painted by Mr. P. at his (the major's) own abode, stating that Mr. P. might send home for his colours and brushes, and come to his house from the Provost as often as was necessary for that purpose. It is hardly neces- sary to say this nattering offer was gladly accepted by Mr. P. An excellent likeness was taken of Major Sandys, and in the interim between the sittings, the artist spent several weeks in "durance vile ': but during tins period, habits of intimacy had sprung up between the prisoner and his custodian, and many oppor- tunities were afforded to the former of doing signal services to fellow-citizens of his who were then in the Provost, and not a few who were then at large, but would have been inmates of that prison had it not been for his timely intimation of impending danger. At the period above referred to, the well known John Hevey. the brewer, was a prisoner in the Provost. The major on one occasion accosted Hevey in a friendly manner, and spoke to him about a favourite mare of his which he (Hevey) had been formerly in the habit of riding about Dublin. The major said the animal was no use to him then j he had better write an order to his friends to let him (the major) have the mare. Hevey evidently did not relish the proposal, but felt it would be imprudent to give a plump refusal. He said he was quite sure his friends would refuse to act on any such written order. They would say, it was extorted from him by some undue means, so long as he continued a prisoner there. The major turned towards Mr. P., and said : "Here is a man who will be liberated in a few days, and as I am aware there is no charge against him, I will allow him in the interim to go to your house, and deliver a verbal order to your friends to give up the mare. P. is well known to them, and they won't refuse to act on your instructions thus commmiicated". Poor Hevey was no match for the major s ingenuity : he had no alternative but to consent to the proposal. Mr. P. went on his mission : the brewer's valuable mare was duly transferred to Major Sandys' stable, and in that subsequent memorable action in a court of law, which Curran has immortalised, that transfer is described, but not in all respects correctly. A few days later Mr. P. was liberated. Poor Hevey was less fortunate. Prudence required that his imprisonment should be prolonged till his truculent psycholo- gist, speculating on the effect of M that sickness of the heart which arises from hope deferred", could count on having sufficiently broken down the spirit of his prisoner, and thus obviated all danger of an assertion of his rights in any criminal proceedings for their vindication in a court of law. Hevey's spirit did not break down fast enough for the security of his persecutors. The majors held a council of war, and it was determined that Hevey should be judicially mur iered in Kilkenny A charge of treason was trumped up against him ; a Kilkenny witness was provided by the majors : the prisoner was packed otf, to his utter consternation, to the County Kilkenny, to be tried for his life by court-martial. He was duly convicted on suborned evidence, and sentenced to be hanged. All was then right j the property of the convicted brewer's mare was legally secured for Major Sandys. But. alas*! the major's stable "was condemned to the grief of restitution"'. Camden was gone: his successor Cornwallis would be no party to the infamous transfer of the prisoner's property, or the sacrifice of 134 PROCEEDINGS IN THE KINGS BENCH. to shield from the vengeance of government on an occasion almost as perilous. His agitation, according to the expression of an eye-witness, was manifest to every one in his court. The sheriff returned at length with the news from the Provost. The Chief Justice instantly ordered a rule for suspending the ex- ecution. life that was to secure it. He dashed his pen across the finding of the complacent court, and in a little time Hevey walked abroad, a free man in his native city, where Major Sandys was then riding about in the discharge of his high functions on the valuable mare of his late prisoner. Would that the hmits of this work admitted the numerous authentic official proofs in my possession of the hu- manity of Lord Cornwallis ! of presenting to the public the original minutes, in my hands, of the numerous courts-martial of this time, wherein the word "Death" is indignantly dashed out by Lord Cornwallis, and the words " To be liberated " substituted for the former emphatic monosyllable ! The happy influence of freedom on Hevey's mind was manifested a few weeks after his liberation, in an action at law against Major Sandys for the recovery of his mare. Sandys, naturally surprised and disgusted at such an instance of audacity on the part of one whose life and liberty were so lately in his hands, at first ima- gined that Hevey must have been mad ; but that impression was removed as the legal proceedings against him progressed. Painful forebodings of innumerable other actions of a similar kind troubled his repose; and either his prudence, or the sagacity of his attorney, suggested a step that must have been a most reluctant one : he sent back the mare which he had feloniously appropriated during the imprisonment of a man under his charge, and he paid that man's attorney all the costs of the proceedings which had been instituted against himself. But the other major, the confederate of Sandys in his worst crimes against humanity and justice, up to that time in " the reign of terror", — Sirr took upon him the task of punishing the daring crime of a man liberated from the clutches of a brother major, appealing to the laws of his country for redress of wrongs suffered at the hands of a high functionary of police. He insulted Hevey in a public place of resort, publicly declared, " that fellow Hevey ought to have been hanged" ; and when Hevey remonstrated with him and characterized his conduct in the only terms that could be applied to it, Sirr committed the man he so grossly insulted to jail, on a warrant falsely attributed to General Craig : and there Hevey lay till his friends extorted from him an apology to his redoubtable persecutor, suggested by brother Major Sandys, whereupon unfortunate Hevey was once more liberated from prison. For the false imprisonment an action was brought against Sirr. The major was cast in damages to the amount of £150, and condemned to pay all cost of suit. Sandys in his latter days found himself cast off by all his former fellow officials, who had prospered in " the reign of terror", or risen to official eminence in it, and retained the emoluments of office, or had kept together their ill-gotten gains of 1798, — the swagoi many a wrecked homestead in the city of Dublin at that disastrous period. He was repudiated even by his old friend Major Sirr, and in the public thoroughfare where they had formerly swaggered side by side, the latter passed him by with scorn. That was the " crudest cut of all", and if poor Sandys had a mantle in those days of his adversity, he might have wrapped him- self up in it, and with any little dignity at his command, and apostrophizing his old comrade, well might have exclaimed : "Et tu Brute". The son of Mr. P., to whom I have previously referred, some years subsequently to the rebellion, frequently met Major Sandys at the house of a medical gentleman on Arran Quay. Sandys was then far from an aged man, but he was a care-worn, mind-harassed person ; no longer prosperous or formidable ; all traces of the bold swaggering terrorist were gone. His old patrons in authority had disappeared, and their successors had cast him off as a worthless, used-up agent of a discredited re- gime, whose services they did not want nor wish to have the obloquy of recogniz- PROCEEDINGS IX THE KING'S BENCH. 135 An account of Tone's condemnation and death is detailed in ing. Sandys felt this contumely keenly, and the wounded pride of the unfortu- nate tool of wicked men in high places ; and the great teachings of adversity had eventually a happy influence on his feelings, so far at least as to bring him to loathe his former career of iniquity, and to reflect on it with remorse, and at times with something like repentance. My informant tells me he often has seen him apparently deeply dejected and unhappy, and heard him as he suddenly started from a revery. in the presence even of persons engaged in conversation, exclaim : -'Would that i had my career to run over again! How differently would I act to what I have done !" Poor man ! even then, it is to be feared, his own powers of reason and feeble purposes, or rather desires, were the results of disappointed hopes and futile expec- tations of long continued favour and protection at the hands of men in power, afforded the only glimpse of light that broke in upon him. If the light of religion had beamed on his mind in youth, if its teachings had reached his heart in early life, even though it might have been lost sight of for a season, how different, in the long run of his career, might that man's conduct have been in manhood, cast even as it was tm the worst of times, and brought into contact with the worst of men ! Who can read this brief account of Sandys' feelings in his latter days, and not be awakened to a conviction of the tremendous responsibility of those who have the power of guiding and shaping the whole after-life direction of youthful minds, and who fail to exert it by bringing the all-potent influences of religion to bear on the education of the young? Sandys sunk into downright indigence and destitution. He lived in the vicinity of Leixlip, separated from his family, occasionally relieved by some of his former acquaintance, but so abandoned to irregularities of all kinds, that no effort to serve him was of any lasting benefit. He died in abject misery, squalor, and most grie- vous suffering, about 1811, for several weeks- previously to his decease hardly with the necessaries of life, deserted by all his friends, and in so loathsome a condition, labouring under one of the most revolting cutaneous diseases to which humanity is liable (morbus pedicularis), that he wanted at times the common care of an attendant on the bed of death. The career of this unfortunate man, from the end of 179S to the close of his wretched life, affords an example and a warning instance of the unerring aim and condign terrors of the Divine retribution, which those who enter on violent courses and inhuman procedures, however countenanced by authority, would do well to I have seen the sister of this unfortunate man — a lady who had figured in society, who had been admired and courted on account of her own personal attractions, and the power and influence of her brother in the hour of his pros- perity — miserably clad in the threadbare remnants of an old black dress (not of the coarse materials of the attire of a common beggar), sitting on the steps of a hall door in Great Charles Street, Mountjoy Square, waiting there with a forlorn look, the result of an application to the owner of that house for charity — a gentleman who had known her brother in liis latter years. As I passed that wretched looking woman on the steps of that door, to enter the house of the gentleman above referred to, and whom I have already had so often occasion to allude to as my informant, Mr. P., I could not help being struck with the espe- cial expression of forlornness of that woman's features, those apparently of one who had seen better days, and had nothing to expect but want and wretchedness in this world. After being some time with my friend Mr. P., he asked me if I had noticed a woman at the door as I entered. That woman, he said, who had just sent in an application to him for charity, was the the sister of Major Sandys. Hers were not the only nor the worst calamities which are connected with the name and career of Major Sandys. ponder on. 136 curran's position in respect to united irishmen. engaged in suppressing the rebellion of 1798; and speaking of its leaders, he says: " The day before I left Dublin, Mr. Theobald Wolfe Tone was brought in prisoner, taken on board the Hoche, in the action of the 12th of October. I endeavoured to see him, but he was conveyed to the Provost prison before I reached the Castle. He is said to have been one of the principal and first framers of the United Irish. He is the son of a coachmaker in Dublin, but was educated at the College for a lawyer; and, by some writings which are said to be his, he appears to be a man of considerable talent. He was tried by a court-martial at the barracks the day after his arrival, where I understand he con- ducted himself with great firmness and manliness. He had pre- pared a speech, part of which only he was permitted to deliver, the rest being conceived inflammatory. By that part which he delivered he discovers a superiority of mind which must gain to him a degree of sympathy beyond what is given, to ordinary criminals". CHAPTER V. curran's relations with the united irishmen. — tone's letters to his friends after conviction. — his death and burial.— his works. Previously to the trial, Tones relative, William Dunbavin, had an interview with him in the Provost. His law agent was likewise permitted to visit him on two or three occasions after his conviction. His father would have gone to see him after the trial, but Tone had wisely determined to spare himself and the poor heart-broken old man the pangs of such a parting, and had sent an intimation to his friends to that effect. The trial took place on Saturday the 10th of November, and the following Monday had been appointed for the execution at New- gate. In this interval there were two gentlemen busily employed in attempting to procure the means of forming a bar, for the pur- pose of bringing the case before the Court of King's Bench. The two persons referred to were John Philpot Curran and Peter Burro wes, his early, constant, and faithful friends — faithful in those times which try men's souls, and put all their feelings and affections to the test. Their efforts are thus spoken of by Tone's son : — "The next day after condemnation was passed in a kind of stupor. A cloud of portentous awe seemed to hang over the city of Dublin. The apparatus of military and despotic autho- rity was everywhere displayed ; no man dared to trust his next curran's efforts in relation to t. w. tone. 137 neighbour, nor one of the pale citizens to betray, by look or word, his feelings or sympathy. The terror which prevailed in Paris under the rule of the Jacobins, or in Rome during the pro- scriptions of Marius, Sylla, and the Triumviri, and under the reigns of Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, and Domitian, was never deeper or more universal than that of Ireland at this fatal and shameful period. It was, in short, the feeling which made the people soon after passively acquiesce in the union and in the ex- tinction of their name as a nation. Of the numerous friends of my father, and of those who had shared in his political principles and career, some had perished on the scaffold, others rotted in dungeons, and the remainder dreaded, by the slightest mark of recognition, to be involved in his fate. One noble exception deserves to be recorded. "John Philpot Curran, the celebrated orator and patriot, had attached himself in his political career to the Whig party, but his theoretical principles went much farther. And when the march of the administration to despotism was pronounced — when the persecution began — I know that in the years 1794 and 1795, and particularly at the Drogheda assizes in the former year, and on occasion of the trial of Bird and Hamill, where they were both em- ployed as counsel, he (Curran) opened his mind to my father, and that on the main point — on the necessity of breaking the connection with England — they agreed. Curran prudently and properly confined himself to those legal exertions at the bar, where his talents were so eminently useful, and where he left an imperish- able monument to his own and to his country's fame. It was well that there remained one place and one man through which the truth might sometimes be heard. He avoided committing himself in the councils of the United Irishmen; but, had the project of liberating Ireland succeeded, he would have been amongst the foremost to hail and join her independence. On this occasion, joining his efforts to those of M. Peter Burrowes, he nobly exerted himself to save his friend. " The sentence of my father was evidently illegal. Curran knew, however, very well that, by bringing the case before the proper tribunal, the result would ultimately be the same — that he could not be acquitted. But then, the delays of the law might be brought in play, and the all -important point of gaining time would be obtained. The French Government could not in honour but interfere, and the case, from a mere legal, would be- come a political one. In politics my father had many adversaries, but few personal enemies; in private and public life, he was generally beloved and respected ; his moderation, too, was known and appreciated by those who feared a revolution, and trusted to 138 tone's letters to his family. him as a mediator, if such an event was to take place. In short, it did not appear a matter of impossibility to have finally saved him by some agreement with the Government. Determined to form a bar for his defence, and bring the case before the Court of King's Bench, then sitting, and presided over by Lord Kilwarden, a man of the purest and most benevolent virtue, and who always tempered justice with mercy, Curran endeavoured the whole day of the 11th to raise a subscription for this purpose. But terror had closed every door ; and, I have it from his own lips, that even among the Catholic leaders, many of them wealthy, no one dared to subscribe. Curran then determined to proceed alone. On this circumstance no comment can be expected from the son of Theobald Wolfe Tone. Those men had behaved nobly towards him in former times almost as perilous. The universal dread must be their excuse".* John Keogh is referred to particularly in the preceding observations. On Saturday night Tone wrote two letters, one addressed to the French Directory, wherein he called to the attention of its members his services in the Republic, his sacrifices, and the for- lorn state of a beloved wife and three infant children, about to be deprived, by his death, of protection and support. The letter was written in such terms as became the writer and his situation. The other was addressed to his wife — that noble woman, who was worthy of being the wife of Tone. One or two passages from it, will suffice to show the terms on which their union was founded and maintained. " Dearest Love — The hour is at last come when we must part. As no words can express what I feel for you and our children, I shall not attempt it. Complaint of any kind would be beneath your courage and mine" " Adieu, dearest love. I find it impossible to finish this letter. Give my love to Mary (his sister), and above all things, remember that you are the only parent of our dearest children, and that the best proof you can give of your affection for me, will be to preserve yourself for their education. God Almighty bless you all. " Yours ever, "T. W. Tone. " P.S. — I think you have a friend in Wilson, who will not desert you". His dying wishes were fulfilled to the letter. The only parent of his dearest children remembered her duty to them and * "Life of T. W. Tone", by his Son, vol. ii.. p. 532. MEMORIAL OF TONE SENT TO SWEET MAN. 139 to the memory of their father, and, through great difficulties, in many trials and tribulations, with scauty means, and with little sympathy on the part of former friends, that duty was per- formed by her with heroic constancy and courage. On Sunday, the 11th of November, Tone addressed another letter to his wife — the last he wrote, in which he tells her, " his mind was as tranquil as at any period of his life". His dying re- quest was, that " she should keep her courage as he had kept his cherish his memory, and preserve her health and spirits for the sake of their dearest children". Among the effects delivered to his father after his decease, was a pocket-book (which was placed in my hands by the son of John Sweetman about fifteen years ago), and was sent, by Tone's directions, to his old friend, Mr. John Sweetman, with a note from his father, which is still preserved in the original, in these words : — " Dear Sir, — The enclosed has been ordered by my son to be delivered to you in remembrance of him, " And am your obedient servant, " (Signed) Peter Tone. " The night that ". The pocket-book must have been either on Tone's bed or person when the fatal act was committed on the night of the 11th. The green silk lining of the book is stained with blood, and on the lining the words are written in Tone's handwriting : — " T. W. Tone, "Nov. 11, 1798. " Te nunc habet ista secundam". These last words ever written by poor Tone, the reader will find in Virgil's second eclogue. The poet, as an inducement to Alexis to come to him, tells him that he has a seven-jointed flute, which Damaatas, dying, gave him, saying: " Now, for its second master, it has thee". "Fistula, Damaetas, dono mihi quam dedit olira, Et dixit moriens : — te nunc habet ista secundam". On Sunday night, after Tone had apparently settled himself to rest, it is supposed that, with a penknife which he is said to have secreted, he inflicted the wound on his neck which caused his death on the 19th instant. During the eight days that he languished in a state of great bodily suffering, none of his friends, 140 UNFOUNDED SUSPICIONS IN REGARD TO TONE'S DEATH. with one exception, Mr. Hugh Fitzpatrick, of Capel Street, were permitted to visit him. This unnecessary and barbarous rigour has led to the entertainment of suspicions that some foul play had been practised, and that to prevent a discovery of it, the agents of the infamous Sandys, the Telles Jordao of Ireland, were alone suf- fered to be about the dying man. The circumstance of the me- dical man who had been called in to his assistance being a French emigrant, and therefore supposed to be hostile to Tone's princi- ples, has been likewise referred to as a matter tending to confirm the suspicion alluded to. My firm persuasion is, that there are no grounds for it. That French medical man, then an assistant surgeon in the 5th Dragoons, at a much later period I have a recollection of, as the medical attendant of my family, one of the most eminent physicians of his day in Dublin, and one of the most amiable and benevolent of human beings — Dr. Lentaigne, of Dominick Street. The circumstances connected with his atten- dance on Tone, he detailed to a relative of mine, in terms very similar to those which are given in the account which I have taken from the Dublin Magazine. Lentaigne's account to my relative was as follows : — " There were several people in the cell when he entered. When Tone discovered by Lentaigne's accent that he was a foreigner, he ad- dressed the latter in French, and said in that language : 4 They say that I know everything' (in reference to the late projected descent on Ireland) ; ' but you see, doctor, there are things I do not know : I find I am but a bad anatomist'. He further said to Lentaigne : 4 Your skill had been better spared' ". Lentaigne was a man as little likely as any person I ever knew, to lend himself to any act of the kind imputed to Sandys, by con- cealing a knowledge of its guilt. He was a most humane and honourable man. Tone's last words, as recorded by his son, show what his feelings were towards Lentaigne, when the latter was impressing on him the necessity of being still and silent, or death would ensue, and that his danger was imminent. Tone, it was said, replied: 44 1 can yet find words to thank you, sir: it is the most welcome news you could give me. What should I wish to live for? Falling back with these expressions on his lips, he expired without further effort", in the thirty-fifth year of his age.* * Dr. Benjamin Lentaigne, born in 1773, was the son of a lieutenant of dra- goons, of Caen, in Normandy. He had two brothers grown up to manhood at the outbreak of the French Eevolution, who were both guillotined. He, belonged to a royalist family. One of his brothers, of the Gardes du Corps, had distinguished himself at Versailles on the 6th of October, 1789, in defence of the Queen. All the brothers, on this account, were early marked out as vic- tims by the revolutionary party, and Benjamin only escaped from prison, where his two brothers, John and Joseph, were confined previous to their execution, NOTICE OF DR. B. LENTAIGNE. 141 His son thus speaks of his last moments: — " Stretched on his bloody pallet in a dungeon, the first apostle of Irish union, and most illustrious martyr of Irish independence, counted each lingering hour during the last seven days and nights of his slow and silent agony. No one was allowed to approach him. Far from his adored family, and from all those friends whom he loved so dearly, the only forms which flitted before his eyes were those of the grim jailer and rough attendants of the prison ; the only sounds which fell on his dying ear, the heavy tread of the sentry. He retained, however, the calmness of his soul and the possession of his faculties to the last. And the con- 6ciousness of dying for his country, and in the cause of justice and liberty, illumined, like a bright halo, his latest moments, and kept up his fortitude to the end. There is no situation under which those feelings will not support the soul of a patriot 1 '.* Thus passed away one of the master spirits of his time. The curse of Swift was upon this man — he was an Irishman. Had he been a native of any other European country, his noble qualities, Ins brilliant talents, would have raised him to the first honours in the state, and to the highest place in the esteem of his fellow- citizens. His name lives, however, and his memory is probably destined to survive as long as his country has a history. Peace be to his ashes ! through the compassion of the jailer's wife, who took pity on his youth (lie was then under seventeen years of age"), and set him at large from a window of the prison. He escaped to Flanders in 1789, where he served in the army of the emigrant princes. He accompanied these princes subsequently to England in 1792, when he commenced the study of surgery. I have seen a certificate given him, dated London, the 4th of June, 1790, by the surgeon-in-chief of the French army of the emigrtts princes, stating, that after strict examination, his fitness had been ascertained for employment as a military surgeon. He had applied himself to the study of surgery in England from the year 1792 to 1797. He applied to the English government, in 1793, for employment in the army, soon after his arrival, and he ultimately obtained from Mr. Pitt the commission of assistant-surgeon, the 1st of May, 1797, in the 5th Dragoon Guards. He resigned that com- mission, by the advice of Mr. H. Fitzpatrick, of Capel Street, in August, 1799, while serving in Ireland, being then recently married, and set up in private practice in Dublin, where his success was equal to his merits. In 1800 he gra- duated in a Scotch University. In 1807 he obtained a diploma as licentiate of the College of Physicians in Ireland, after undergoing examination, and the same year graduated in medicine in Trinity College, Dublin. In 1813 he obtained the honorary degree of doctor in medicine from Trinity College, Dublin. The only published work of Dr. Lentaigne, is a Latin poem of great merit, entitled De Causis Morborum. His great claim to consideration is the noble use he made of his professional knowledge, and of the large emoluments it brought him. His life and labours were spent in the service of humanity, and preeminently in the service of the poor. Two hours daily his doors were thrown open to the sick poor of Dublin, and from them no gratuity was ever received by him. He died of typhus fever, caught in attendance on a poor family, on the 13th of October, 1813, aged forty-one years. * ''Memoirs", vol. ii., p. 539. 142 tone's remains — DISPOSAL of. William Dunbavin was totally opposed to his kinsman's politi- cal opinions. He was a member of a corps of yeomanry, and possessed some influence with the terrorists of the day. By means of that influence, probably assisted in high quarters by the inter- ference of the Hon. George Knox, the body of Tone and his effects — clothes, uniform, and sword — were given up to his friends. The two Dunbavins, provided with a written order, went with four men to the Provost for the body, and it was given up to them by Major Sandys. It was taken to William Dunbavin's house, No. 65 High Street (where his father and mother were then living), and laid out in a room on the second floor. The surviving relatives state that the mother bore up astonishingly against the trials which befell her in such quick succession ; but the poor father seemed to have been overwhelmed by this last calamity. Matthew was the favourite child of the mother. " She was proud of Theo- bald, but she loved Mat". " The father was proud of his eldest son, and thought there was none like him" — he doated on him. He seemed to feel the last loss more than the mother, and was so broken down with grief that he was unable to attend the funeral. The mother was a person of strong mind ; the father was a simple, well-disposed, kind-hearted man, mild in his manners, and of or- dinary understanding. The body was kept two nights at Dunbavin's. A great number of persons came and sat in the room where the corpse was laid out. At length an order came from government that the inter- ment should immediately take place, and as privately as possible. Dunnan, a near relative of Tone's (my informant), was present when a person, whose name he does not know, was brought to the room where the corpse lay, to take a cast of the face. What became of that cast he does not know.* The funeral, in conformity with the orders of the authorities, was attended * The cast was taken by Petrie, and fortunately came into my hands since the publication of the former edition of this work. From the original mask I have had a cast taken, daguerreotyped, and the admirable portrait prefixed to this me- moir is taken from it. A lady who has a perfect remembrance of Tone, makes the following observations on the subject of an inquiry respecting the portrait prefixed to the memoir by Tone's son: — "I have been looking at a picture in profile of Theobald Wolfe Tone (prefixed to his life by his son). It does not resemble, according to my recollection of him. He was a very slender, angular, rapid moving man; a thin face, sallow and pock-marked; eyes small, lively, bright; forehead very low, the hair cut close, and growing up from it; nose rather long, I forget the shape, nothing remarkable. He laughed and talked fast, with enthusiasm, about music and other innocent things, so that one could not possibly suspect him of plots and treason. Wise he could not be ; but he had not a foolish look— it was too lively and animated for that". " Success is all in this life", said poor Tone, " and unfavoured of her, virtue becomes vicious"; and wisdom, he might have added (with all respect for the opi- nion expressed by the amiable lady referred to), ever finds a failure such as his leaves the unsuccessful rebel no claims to its possession. TONE'S REMAINS — DISPOSAL OF. 143 only by two persons, William Dunbavin and James Ebbs, a brazier, who resided in Bride Street: both were members of a corps of yeomanry. The remains of Theobald Wolfe Tone were interred in the ancient cemetery of Bodenstown, close to the wall, on the south side of the ruined abbey that stands in the centre of the graveyard, in the same grave where his brother's remains were recently buried, and those of his grandfather and his uncles reposed. A slab, with the following inscription, is laid over the grave : — " This burial-place belongs to William Tone and his family. Here lieth the body of the above, who departed this life the 24th of April, 1766, aged sixty years; and also three children". That slab, in the absence of any other memorial, served to point out to me and the nearest surviving relative of T. W. Tone, in 1842, the spot where the ashes of Theobald Wolle Tone were deposited. There was then no monument to his memory in stone or marble ; but there was one in the heart's core of Ireland, and his name is written there in large and lasting characters. Some remarkable lines on M Tone's Grave", were written by Thomas Davis, one of Ireland's most gifted sons, in this age of mediocrity, of whom it might be truly said — " His promises were like Adonis' gardens, That one day bloomed, and fruitful were the next"; and now, alas ! of whom we have to say, the cypress waves over the early grave of all those great hopes. A pilgrimage to Bodens- town churchyard, made by Davis in 1843, accompanied by a person whose pursuits were akin to those of Old Mortality, resulted in the successful efforts of Davis a little later to mark the spot where the remains of Theobald Wolfe Tone were deposited. A monumental slab was placed there, with the following words inscribed on it : — Sacred To the Memory of THEOBALD WOLFE TONE, Who Died for Ireland, On the 19th of November, 1798. Claverhouse and Castlereagh have left graves enough for mournful strains and pious pilgrimages in the land of the Gael and in that of the Celt: — LINES OF DAVIS ON THE GRAVE IN BODENSTOWN. "TONE'S GRAVE. i. " In Bodenstown churchyard there is a green grave, And wildly along it the winter winds rave ; Small shelter, I ween, are the ruin'd walls there, When the tempest sweeps down on the plains of Kildare. ii. " Once I lay on that sod, it lies over Wolfe Tone, And I thought how he perish'd in prison alone, His friends unavenged, and his country unfreed — ' Oh ! bitter', I said, ' is the patriot's meed !' in. " ' For in him the heart of a woman combined With a heroic life and a governing mind : A martyr for Ireland, his grave has no stone ; His name seldom named, and his virtues unknown'. IV. " I was woke from my dream by the voices and tread Of a band who came into the home of the dead : They carried no corpse, and they carried no stone, And they stopp'd when they came to the grave of Wolfe Tone. v. " There were students and peasants, the wise and the brave, And an old man who knew him from cradle to grave ; And children, who thought me hard-hearted, for they On that sanctified sod were forbidden to play. VI. u But the old man, who saw I was mourning there, said : ' We come, sir, to weep where young Wolfe Tone is laid ; And we're going to raise him a monument too — A plain one, yet fit for the simple and true'. VII. " My heart overflow'd, and I clasp'd his old hand, And I bless'd him, and bless'd every one of his band : ' Sweet, sweet 'tis to find that such faith can remain To the cause and the man so long vanquish'd and slain'. VIII. " In Bodenstown churchyard there is a green grave, And freely around it the winter winds rave, Fit thoughts to awaken of ruin and gloom, 'Till Ireland, a nation, can build him a tomb". PLUNKETT S TESTIMONY TO TONE S TALENTS. 145 Shortly after Tone's departure for America, his name was in- troduced into a discussion in the Irish House of Commons, in a viru- lent and violently abusive manner, by one of the miserable crea- tures of that house, who dealt in " words full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". One of the brightest ornaments of that as- sembly, however, William Conyngham Plunkett (Lord Plunkett), had the manliness to stand up in his place, and to pronounce those words : " He (Tone) now wastes, on the desert air of an American plantation, the brightest talents that I ever knew a man to be gifted with. I am sorry for his fate ; for I never shall speak or think of the unhappy gentleman to whom I allude, with acrimony or severity. I knew him from early infancy, as the friend of my youth and companion of my studies : and while I bear testimony to the greatness of his abilities, I shall say of him, that he had a heart which nothing but the accursed spirit of per- verted politics could mislead or deprave 1 '. The celebrated Todd Jones, in reference to some virulent stric- tures of Musgrave, thus spoke of his former friend, Tone: "I seek not to disclose his merits, or draw his frailties from the tomb. Remote from all political considerations, he was genius, taste, and talent personified ; almost unrivalled in the qualities which convince the reason and lay strong hold of the feelings of the heart". Respecting Tones religious sentiments, having heard conflicting opinions expressed regarding them, I made some inquiries on the subject of Miss M'Cracken, who had been intimately acquainted with him. Miss M'Cracken, in reply to my inquiries, stated that " Tone was not sceptical. There was a society in Belfast, of a political kind, all of whose members were sceptics. They would not admit Tone, because he believed in the truths of religion, and he had given them some proofs of the fact, for they presented him with one of Paine's works, which he refused to read", and I think Miss M'Cracken added, " to accept". With regard to the authorship of certain songs and poetical pieces, published in the Northern Star, and a collection of the same in a little volume called the Harp of Erin, or Paddys lie- source, Miss M'Cracken says: "The only song in Paddys Re- source I know to be Tone's is, 1 When Rome by dividing had conquered the world'. I heard Maria Tone, his daughter, sing it in Belfast to the tune of 1 The little Cruiskeen Lawn', in 1795. She was then a beautiful girl of nine years old, and remarkably intelligent. She died in Paris, when about fifteen". The following is a copy of the song to which Miss M'Cracken alludes : — 146 tone's literary productions. When Rome by dividing had conquer 'd the world, And land after land into slavery hurl'd, Hibernia escap'd ; for 'twas Heaven's decree, That Ierne, united, should ever be free. Chorus. The harp then delighted the nations around ; By its music entranc'd, their own suff'rings were drown'd ; In arts and in learning the foremost was she, And Ireland, united, was happy and free. Chorus. But soon, ah! too soon, did fell discord begin; Our domestic dissensions let foreigners in ; Too well they improv'd the advantage we gave ; Whom they came to protect, they remain'd to enslave. Chorus. From that fatal hour, our freedom was lost, Peace, virtue, and learning were banish'd our coast, And the " Island of Saints" might fitly be call'd The land of tormentors, by discord enthrall'd. Chorus. Then let us remember our madness no more ; What we lost by dissension, let union restore ; Let us firmly unite and our covenant be, Together to fall, or together be free. Chorus. LITERARY PRODUCTIONS OF T. W. TONE. In January, 1787, Tone arrived in London, and had chambers in the Temple, No. 4 Hare Court, on the first floor ; and while residing there he found a pecuniary resource in writing for the European Magazine, for which, he says in his diary, he wrote several articles, "mostly critical reviews of new publications", for which he received about £50 in two years. These two years must have been 1787 and 1788, for he returned to Ireland on the 23rd of December, 1788; and during that period he also wrote, in conjunction with two friends named Jebb and Radcliffe, a bur- lesque novel, which was called Belmont Castle, a production, as he states, " intended to ridicule the execrable trash of the circula- ting libraries. It was tolerably well done, particularly RadclifFe's part, which was by far the best, yet we could not find a pub- lisher who would risk the printing of it, though we offered the copyright gratis to several. It was afterwards printed in Dublin, and had some success, though I believe, after all, it was most relished by the authors and their immediate connections". Tone tone's literary productions. 147 has not stated that in this production several of the most distin- guished characters of the day were represented under feigned names, such as Lady Clairville, James Dashton, Colonel Neville, etc * Tone wrote, also, an article entitled, The Wonderful, which attracted some attention ; and another, The History of Prince Fanfaridin, in ridicule of the sentimental romance litera- ture of the day. PAMPHLETS AND ESSAYS WRITTEN BY T. W. TONE, BEFORE HE ENTERED ON THE CAREER OF POLITICS. " Proposals and Memorials Relative to the Establishment of a Military Colony in the Sandwich Islands, and the Liberation of Spanish America", addressed to Mr. Pitt, and "delivered with his own hands to the porter in Downing Street", 1789. The same proposals and memorials he addressed to the Duke of Richmond, on the 20th of September, 1790. ESSAYS OF T. W. TONE, WRITTEN FOR " THE POLITICAL CLUb", FORMED IN DUBLIN IN 1791, WHICH PRECEDED THE SOCIETY OF UNITED IRISHMEN. 1. "On the English Connection". 2. " On the State of Ireland in 1720". 3. " On the State of Ireland in 1790". 4. " On Sail Cloth". 5. "On the State of the Army". 6. " On the Necessity of a Domestic Union". Of these essays, the first, second, third, and fourth only exist, published in Tones Life, by his son, from the original manu- scripts. The key-note argument of these four essays is to the effect that all the evils of Irish misrule are attributable to the undue influence of the English government in the Irish parlia- ment. SUBSEQUENT POLITICAL WRITINGS OF THEOBALD WOLFE TONE. 1. "A Review of the Conduct of the Administration during the Seventh Session of Parliament, by an Independent Irish Whig". Published by order of the Northern Whig Club, 1790. 2. " Considerations on the Approaching War with Spain; an * "Life of T. W. Tone", by his Son, vol. i., p. 24. 148 tone's literary productions. Inquiry how far Ireland is bound, of right, to embark in the Impending Contest on the side of Great Britain", 1790. 3. "An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland, in which the Present State of that Country, and the Necessity of a Parliamentary Reform are Considered", 1791. 4. " Declarations and Resolutions of the Society of United Irishmen", October, 1791. 5. "A Short Answer to ' A Brief Caution to the Catholics of Ireland' ", by a Liberty Boy; January, 1792. 6. " Letter to the Grand Jury of the City and County of Londonderr}^ for the Summer Assizes", signed Vindex, 1792. 7. " Reply to a Pamphlet entitled 4 The Protestant Interest in Ireland' ". First published by Tone's son, in the life of his father, written about 1792. 8. " Letter of a Liberty Boy to the Manufacturers of Ireland", March, 1793. 9. "A Vindication of the Conduct and Principles of the Catholics of Ireland from the Charges made against them by certain late Grand Juries, etc. ; with a Copy of the Petition pre- sented to the King, January 2, 1793; and Notes reciting Penal Statutes", 1793. 10. " Defence of the Sub-Committee of the Catholics of Ire- land, and particularly from the charge of Supporting the De- fenders", 1793. 11. "Reasons why the Question of Parliamentary Reform has always Failed in the Irish Legislature" (a fragment left un- published), 1793. 12. " A Letter to the Editor of Falkiners Journal, in Reply to certain Assertions contained in his paper of July 11, 1793". 13. " Statement of the Light in which the late Act for the Partial Repeal of the Penal Laws is considered by the Catholics of Ireland", August 21, 1793. 14. " Plan for Conducting the Election of Delegates, for the Purpose of Taking the Sense of the whole Catholic Population of Ireland on the Petition emanating from the Catholic Convention, the most Important Movement hitherto made by the Catholic Body, and to which it is indebted for the first Relaxation of the Penal Code", 1793. ' 15. " Memorial on the Present State of Ireland, drawn up for the Rev. W. Jackson, to be presented to the French govern- ment", 1794. 15. " An Address to the People of Ireland", 1796. 16. "An Address to the Peasantry of Ireland", signed a Tra- veller, 1796. 17. " An Address to the Militia", signed Sarsfield, 1796. lucien Buonaparte's efforts for tone's family. 149 Mrs. Tone, soon after the loss of her husband, had received from the French Directory a sum of 1 ,200 francs as an imme- diate aid, and three months' pay from the war office was assigned to her. The ordinary pension, rated according to the rank and time of service of her husband, amounted only to 300 francs, which she properly declined to accept. Various applications were made to the government by Tone's friends: amongst the applicants, Lucien Buonaparte was foremost in his efforts, but even his were unsuccessful.* In 1803, when Thomas Addis * " Motion submitted by the President, Lucien Buonaparte, for the relief of the Widow and Children of Theobald W olfe Tone. " Representatives of the People, — I rise to call your attention towards the widow and children of a man whose memory is dear and venerable to Ireland and to France — the Adjutant-General Theobald Wolfe Tone, founder of the United Irish Society, who, betrayed and taken in the expedition to Ireland, perished in Dublin, assassinated by the illegal sentence of a court-martial. 11 Wolfe Tone only breathed for the liberty of his country. After attempting every means to break the chains of British oppression at home, he was invited by our Government to France, where, from the beginning of the fifth year of the Republic, he bore arms under our colours. His talents and his courage announced 1dm as the future Washington of Ireland; Ms arm, whilst assisting in our battles, was preparing to fight for his own country. He served under the Pacificator of La Vendee (Hoche), that hero whom a fatal and unexpected stroke has plunged in a premature tomb. The certificates which I now submit to you, contain the unalysis of his campaigns and of his misfortunes. [Here the orator read the certificate of General Simon.] " It is precisely one year since, on the same day and on the same month, a court-martial was assembled in Dublin, to try a general officer in the service of our Republic. Let us examine the papers of that day. [Here the orator read the account of the trial and defence of General Tone. He then resumed] : — " You have heard the last words of this illustrious martyr of liberty. What could I add to them ? You see lnm, under your own uniform, in the midst of this assassinating tribunal, in the midst of this awe-struck and affected assembly. You hear him exclaim : 1 After such sacrifices in the cause of liberty, it is no great effort, at this day, to add the sacrifice of my life. I have courted poverty ; I have left a beloved wife unprotected, and children, whom I adored, fatherless'. Pardon him, if he forgot, in these last moments, that you were to be the fathers and t lie protectors of his Matilda and his children. " Sentenced, amidst the tears and groans of his country, Wolfe Tone would not leave to her tyrants the satisfaction of seeing liim expire by a death which the prejudices of the world call ignominious. He died by his own hand in his dungeon. The day will yet, doubtless, come, when, in that same city of Dublin, and on the spot where the satellites of Britain were rearing that scaffold where they expected to wreak their vengeance on Theobald, the independent people of Ireland will erect a trophy to Ins memory, and celebrate, yearly, on the anni- versary of his trial, the festival of their union, around his funeral monument. For the first time, this anniversary is now celebrated within these walls. Shade of a hero ! I offer to thee, in our names, the homage of our deep, of our universal emotion ! u A few words more— on the widow of Theobald, on his children. Calamity would have overwhelmed a weaker soul. The death of her husband was not the only one she had to deplore His brother was condemned to the same fate, and, with less good fortune or less firmness, perished on the scaffold. " If the services of Tone were not sufficient of themselves to rouse your feelings, 150 LETTERS OF MATILDA TONE. Emmet was in Paris, and some reference was made to trie employ- ment of the Irish refugees in the French army, Emmet said 7 " How could they trust to that government when they saw the widow of Tone unprovided for ?" The pension was almost in- stantly afterwards granted; it amounted to 1,200 livres to the widow, and 400 to each of her three children. At a later period a subscription amounting to £787 was raised in Ireland for the assistance of Tones widow and children. Some of his early associates, some of those who urged him on in his early political career, one of them, whose wealth and influence as a Catholic leader were then better known than his garden conferences with Tone, it was said, declined to contribute. About 1804 Mrs. Tone lost one of her children, a beautiful and accomplished girl under sixteen, and in 1806, another, her youngest son, a boy of four- teen years of age. The following letter from Mrs. Tone to the mother of her husband, which gives some account of her position and her son's progress about that period, will be read with interest. It is characteristic of the writer. "May 11, 1810.. " My dearest Mother, — I have got an opportunity of writing to you by a gentleman who promises to deliver my letter into your own hands, and yesterday evening I had just finished a long letter to you, and another to Kitty, complaining wofully of not hearing from you, when I had the happiness of receiving both your letters of the 10th of April, which rendered all I had written useless. My ever dear mother, it is a blessing to my heart to hear from you, and hear that you are tolerably well, that you have peace and security, and are not exposed to inconvenience. These negative comforts are all that we can aspire to, or that it would be- come us to wish for ; and for me, I am still hardy in mind and body, and able to dispense even with them if they were taken from me ; but indeed if you wanted them in the town where our Theobald was born and died, I think I should in my despair take counsel from Job's wife, and . You cannot afford to keep Mat's little girl by you to support and to comfort your age. As for me ; no ! I will never see Ireland whilst I can find a grave in any other part of the globe, by land or by water. But let me I might mention the independent spirit and firmness of that noble woman, who, on the tomb of her husband and of her brother, mingles with her sighs aspirations for the deliverance of Ireland. I would attempt to give you an idea of that Irish spirit which is blended in her countenance with the expression of her grief. Such were those women of Sparta, who, on the return of their countrymen from battle, when, with anxious looks, they ran over the ranks, and missed amongst them their sons, their husbands, and their brothers, exclaimed : ' He died fojr his country ; he died for the republic 1 ". Wkil&ujlm Tmm ©is ail j© w ©h, if ii T©sr: from a drawing" by 2vP". s Tone. TJiCbtias.J'tvnes Duffy 7 Wdhn,/n >// ^u,t u. w. t. tone's career. 151 say something that will comfort you. My William, the plea- sure and joy of my heart, is coming on in every respect as well as heart can wish ; he is not strong in health, but he is safe ; he completed his nineteenth year some days ago. His growth is nearly finished, and his conduct is so correct that I have no fear for him; he has gone through his studies with great honour; he will finish them this summer, and thinks of taking a course of law ; perhaps it is time to turn his education to some account, but in tli is country there is but one line, and if he must take that it will be always time enough. The powerfully ! when you see him present him with the grateful homage of my respect and my admiration.* 11 1 cannot say more than this. "Adieu, my beloved mother. May God almighty bless and preserve you. William joins in every tender wish. Whenever it is possible, I will send him to get your blessing, and return to me with it. I write to my beloved Kitty. What an admirable heart she has ! I have not heard from G since my last. " Ever your own child, "M. Tone. " To Mrs. Tone, Dublin". Mrs. Tones only surviving child, William Theobald Wolfe Tone, who was born in Dublin, the 29th of April, 1791, was then prosecuting his studies in the Imperial Lyceum (previously, and at present, the College of Louis le Grand). He passed through his studies with great credit, obtained several premiums and certi- ficates highly honourable to his talents and conduct. After hav- ing spent eleven years in the Prytaneum and Lyceum, he took his leave of the latter in 1810, in which year he contended for the prize of the Institute, which was obtained by a Mr. Sartorius. The essay, however, of young Tone was favourably received by the Institute: the subject of it was, the legislation of the Goths in Italy. The work is in my possession, and it is one which exhibits considerable ability and research. It exhibits, moreover, in its dedication to his mother, feelings of the tenderest affection and of filial respect, and remembrance of the obligations which his father's memory imposed on him. The beautiful appropriateness of the motto, " In me ipso sola spes", is not more striking than the un- affected simplicity and kindness of the boy's nature, in the first and concluding passages of that inscription. ■ The grateful homage of Matilda Tone's respect and admiration, I believe, was for her husband's friend of former days. Mr. John Keogh, of Mount Jerome. — a r. m. 152 w. t. tone's career. " A ma Mere. " Si de l'enfance ; le besoin de connaitre, la curiosite* avide ; si des lors j'eus la ferme volonte de ne point languir dans l'ignorance, de ne point suivre les sentiers battus de la vie, c'est a vous, c'est a votre ame noble et courageuse dans 1'adversite ; au desir de vous consoler un jour de vos pertes, que je le dois. Ce leger Essai, la premiere epreuve de mes forces, est done a vous. . . . " Si j'en fais tirer quelques exemplaires ce n'est point dans un pareille intention, ce n'est point pour le public : ce n'est que pour rendre un leger hommage a la meilleure, a la plus noble et la plus cherie des meres". He was in bis eighteenth year when this essay was published. He was placed for the following two years at the Imperial Cavalry School of St. Germains, a military establishment of great repute. His mother, as usual, took up her abode near his school, and after a short time she determined on seeking an interview with the Emperor, with the view of securing his protection for her son in the military career on which he was soon to enter. She took occasion of the Emperor's passing through St. Germains from the palace, while they were changing horses, to approach the carriage and present the book written by her son, and a memorial setting forth his merits and the claims of Theobald Wolfe Tone. Napo- leon opened the paper, and when he saw the name of Tone at the commencement, he said, " Je m'en souviens bien". After he had read and re-read it, he said to Mrs. Tone, " Maintenant parlez moi de vous". After inquiring about her pension, and in reply to an observation about young Tone's destination, he said, " Soyez done tranquille, sur son compte, soyez parfaitement tranquille sur lui". After a word or two more, the imperial carriage drove on, and young Tone's military career under the imperial regime was de- cided. The pension of his mother, which had been reduced 800 francs a year, in consequence of the deaths of her two children, was restored to its original amount. Young Tone received the rank of cadet in the Imperial School of Cavalry at St. Germains in November, 1810 ; he was promoted to a sub-lieutenancy in the 8th regiment of Chasseurs in January, 1813; he joined the grand army in April, 1813; in that year he was in the battles of Lowenberg, Goldberg, Dresden, Lusatia, Bautzen, Muhlberg, Acken, and Leipzig. He served in 1814 and 1815 on the Rhine, in the Pyrenees, at Erfurt, Sandan, and Bayonne. He made three campaigns, served four years and nine months, and received ten wounds. He was promoted in 1813 to the rank of lieutant on the staff, aide-de-camp to General Bagneris, and made a member of the Legion of Honour. W. T. TONE 6 CAREER. 153 A gentleman from Dublin, Mr. P. V. Fitzpatrick, whose father was intimately acquainted with T. W. Tone, visited Paris in 1814, and for the first time saw William Tone at his mother's re- sidence. He describes the young soldier as a person of a thought- ful and somewhat dejected, but highly pleasing expression of countenance. He was still suffering from his wounds and the effects of his late arduous service, and bore the marks of suffering in his pale, but manly and ingenuous countenance. When he spoke of his campaigns, his features lighted up, and it was evident from his animation that he was proud of his profession, and con- scious that he was worthy of it. He had been either on duty, or in attendance on his general that morning, and was in his full dress military uniform. Some allusion was made to the difficulties through which his mother had been left to struggle, and the conduct of some individuals who had been, as poor Tone thought in his early days, when his noble talents were devoted to their cause, his bosom friends. Young Tone listened in silence for a moment, and, as if suddenly roused, put Ins hand to his sword, and said : " While I have this mother, it is no matter". The news of the fall of Napoleon, in 1815, reached Tone at Bayonne ; the day before the white flag was hoisted in that town he determined wisely and honourably to resign his commission ; and, after some months passed at the baths of Bagneres and Bar- reges, he returned to Paris, where he remained with his mother till the month of September, 1816. He had been prevailed on by Mr. Wilson, the invaluable friend of his mother and himself since the death of his father, to make an application to the British ambassador, through his mother, for permission to visit England. In November, 1815, a polite answer to that applica- tion was received from Sir Charles Stuart, stating that he had transmitted Mrs. Tone's representation to England, u in favour of her son", but " the question appeared to have been referred to Ireland", and the disturbances of that country " had prevented that favourable decision which he had reason to hope for on the part of the government, at the time Mrs. Tone did him the honour to call". A writer in the 2\ew JlontJtlu Magazine, under the signature C. E., communicating some interesting particulars of the widow and son of T. W. Tone, from Paris, in 1825, referring to the marriage of Mrs. Tone with Wilson, and the ruin of her sons prospects after Napoleon's second fall in 1815, observes: — " Young Tone now determined to return to his native country. Having served in the French army, he thought it advisable to obtain the leave of the British government. Sir Charles Stuart 154 CASTLEREAGH AND TONE'S FAMILY. was applied to, and declared, with tlie liberality that has always distinguished his character, that he had no doubt leave would be readily granted. In some little time, however, difficulties were raised by Lord Castlereagh, who was then at Paris. Mrs. Tone was advised to solicit an audience of his lordship, and did so ; but after frequent inquiries at the embassy where he resided, no answer was given. At length means were taken to remind ' his excellency' of the application; and upon the next inquiry a French clerk in the office said the answer was, ' Point de reponse a faire\ _ Mrs. Tone was deeply stung by the laconic rudeness of this reply, chiefly from an apprehension that it might be supposed she meant to solicit from Lord Castlereagh any favour, her object being to offer an undertaking, if deemed necessary, that her son should reside in Great Britain, and never set foot in Ireland. The letter which she addressed to Lord Castlereagh on his refusal was full of indignant eloquence. I verily believe the minister quailed under it, for his secretary replied to it in a style of shuffling civility. Mr. W pressed young Tone to draw upon his fortune as his son. But Tone would be dependent on no man ; and soon after, the mother and son parted. He sought his fortune in America". This act was worthy of Lord Castlereagh. On the 19th of August following, Mr. Wilson, who had come over to Paris with the intention of offering his hand and fortune to the woman to whom he had been as a father, a friend, and a generous bene- factor for seventeen years, was married to Mrs. Tone in the chapel of the British ambassador at Paris. Young Tone's career in France was now at an end — he had relinquished his pro- fession — his prospects of fame and honour in it were at an end — his hopes of preferment, his young day-dream of military glory had vanished — his ambition, his enthusiasm in his pursuit had died away ; " with a heavy heart 1 ' he parted with his mother and Mr. Wilson in the month of September, and embarked at Havre for the United States. His mother accompanied Mr. Wilson to Scotland, the native country of the latter, and before another year had gone round they joined the son of Theobald Wolfe Tone in the new land of his adoption at New York. A few months after Mrs. Tone's arrival in America, a meeting of the Hibernian Society of New York, of which Emmet aud M'Neven were members, was called in October, 1817, and a resolution was carried, of which the following minute was transmitted to me by Mrs. Tone: — "In pursuance of a resolution of the Hibernian Society of New York, a committee waited on Mrs. Tone on Saturday last, and in MEMORIAL TO MATILDA TONE. 155 the most respectful manner presented to her a medallion with an appropriate device and inscription,* and to her son a sword, ac- companied with the following address: — 4 Madam, — We are appointed by the Hibernian Provident Society of New York, to embrace the opportunity of your pre- sence in this city, to express to you their very profound respect for the character and memory of your late illustrious husband, General Wolfe Tone, and of their affectionate attachment to his widow and son. To many of our society he was intimately known ; by all of us he was ardently beloved ; and while we look back with anguish on the frightful calamities of our time and country, we delight to dwell on his talents, his patriotism, his perseverance, and his dignity in misfortune. Accept, Madam, a testimonial of their esteem, which can pretend to no value but what it may derive from the sincerity with which it is offered, In some other country, perhaps, it may awaken a reflection, that wherever Irishmen dare to express the sentiments of their hearts, they celebrate the name and sufferings of Tone, with that melan- choly enthusiasm which is characteristic of their national feelings for the struggles and misfortunes of their heroes. 1 We are likewise directed to present a sword to his youthful son and successor. . . 1 We are, Madam, with the utmost respect, 4 Your most obedient humble servants, 1 David Bryson, ' Geo. White, 1 Wm. Js. M'Neven, 4 Thomas Addis Emmet, 4 George Canning. 'October 6, 1817'". To which Mrs. Tone returned the following answer : — 44 Gentlemen, — The sweetest consolation my heart can feel, I received in the proof you now give me, that my husband still lives in your affections and esteem, though, in the course of nineteen disastrous years, the numerous victims who have magnanimously suffered for the liberty of Ireland, might well confuse memory, and make selection difficult. I am proud of belonging to a nation whose sons preserve, under every vicissitude of fortune, a faithful attachment to their principles, and from whose firm and generous minds neither persecution, exile, nor time can obliterate the remembrance of those who have fallen, though ineffectually, in the cause of our country. For your gift to my son take his * Yictrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni. 156 LETTEES OF THE TONES. mother's thanks with his, while his mother tremblingly hopes that fate may spare him to prove himself not unworthy of his father or his friends. " I have the honour to remain, with grateful respect, gentle- men, your most obedient servant, " Matilda Tone". At the departure of the Tones from Belfast, a valedictory letter was written by T. W. Tone to Capt. Russell, the uncle of his friend, P. P., who was then with him at Belfast. Tone's farewell lines fill the first side of the page. Then follow a few characteristic ones, in the handwriting of Thomas Russell. On the next side a few kind words at parting with a loved friend, are found in the handwriting of Matilda and of Mary Tone, the wife and sister of Theobald Wolfe Tone. The following is an exact copy of this letter, which is in my possession, addressed to Capt. Russell, at Mr. H. Bell's, merchant, St. Nicholas' Lane, Lombard Street, London: — "June 13, 1795. " Dear Jack, " I write this from Belfast, on my way to America. I have been fighting my way here a long time, and, at last, finding all further contest on my part unprofitable, and indeed impossible, I yield to what I cannot any longer oppose. Under this emigra- tion, I find complete support in the testimony of my own con- science, the spirit of my family, and the kindness and affection of my friends ; especially those of this town, who, you who know them will well believe, have acted in a manner the most spirited and honourable ; indeed I am overpowered with their kindness. I cannot leave Ireland without bidding you farewell. Be assured, dear John, I have the sincerest regard for you. As the women write, I shall make my part the shorter. Remember me most affectionately to H. Bell, whose kindness to me I feel sensibly. Give my love to James Nicholson and to Harman Jones :* they are right good lads, and I hope they will not forget me. Write to me under cover to Tom. We go on board this evening. " Adieu, dear John, God bless you. " T. W. Tone". " Dear John, " Tone's having been here these three weeks, and there * A gentleman of good family, and first cousin to John Russell. W. T. TONE S CAREER. 157 being no lack of whiskey, claret, burgundy, etc., must be the excuse for not hearing from, " Dear John, yours, " Cambden" * " My dear, dear John, " I have not time to say more than God Almighty bless you. This is my last post in Ireland. Farewell for ever; while I have life I shall remember you with sincere affection. Adieu. " Remember your friend, " Matilda Tone". " My dear John, 11 I am this moment going on board, but I could not think of a letter going to you without sending to you a last adieu. Be assured I will remember you for ever, and I expect you will not forget me. God bless you ; and may every one feel as warmly towards you as I do. " Your sincerely affectionate, " Mary Tone". In 1819, young Tone published an essay " on armed forces", of which General L'Allemand wrote — that " it is a work of which good generals might be proud". This work was the cause of his being invited to Washington by Mr. Calhoun. In 1824, he pub- lished Hie School of Cavalry, on which performance General Bernard has left a nattering comment: — the author "was the only officer who, bein^ competent to compare the schools of the different European nations, and gifted with the requisite faculties for doing so with ability, had been able to bring to the compari- son the impartiality, without which one cannot discover truth. The United States is thus possessed of the best work that exists for the instruction of cavalry". William Tone, in the account of his own career, makes no mention of his having commenced the study of the law soon after his arrival in America. He entered Mr. Sampson's office as a student, and " was received in his house as a dear friend". He continued his new pursuit till he received an invitation from per- sons high in authority to proceed to Washington. He accepted that invitation, and the result of it was, his being appointed to a captaincy in the United States' army. In 1825, he married the daughter, and then only child, of his father's early friend, William * i. e. Thomas Russell. 158 w. t. tone's career. Sampson. In 1827, he resigned his commission in the United States' army. " The Union", which was intended to bind heart to heart and hand to hand in their native country, was not alto- gether a baseless fabric or an impossible attainment. It was realized in this instance, as in many others, by the children of the exiled men of '98, in another hemisphere. Young Tone and his wife, shortly after his marriage, went to reside at Georgetown. Mr. and Mrs. Sampson gave up their house in New York, and fixed their residence in the former place. " Our house", says Mrs. Tone, " was pleasantly situated in the midst of a garden shaded with locust trees. Our neighbours were amiable and enlightened, and the society of Washington within our reach". It was during their happy retirement in Georgetown that young Tone completed the work which bears his name, and does honour to it. The conclusion of his labours has a mournful interest for his countrymen, in the reference to his own position, which he speaks of in terms of such contentment, so shortly before his untimely death: — " Here", to use his own words, " enjoying an honourable rank in the American army, and the proud title of a free American citizen; united to the object of my early and constant affections [the only daughter of his father's friend and countryman, Counsellor William Sampson, of New York, whose fate, it is well known, led him, like them, to that country, a victim to the cause of liberty and of his native land], I feel at length like the sailor, who, after a stormy passage, returns to his home, and finds himself clasped by all the ties, and surrounded by all the charities that are dearest and most valuable to the human heart".* Poor Tone's enjoyment of the peace and happiness of his haven in the new world was of short continuance. America, with her peaceful institutions, afforded no field for fame or distinction for one who had served in the armies of a military empire, under the soldier-sovereign who swayed a large portion of the world with a sceptre-sword. Tone's occupation was gone when he abandoned the French service. Literature seems to have been his favourite pursuit, and his last employment was an investigation into the origin of nations ; but he did not live to finish his work. The seeds of consumption were sown in his constitution. He died, Oct. 10th, 1828, at the early age of thirty-seven, having just lived long enough to com- plete the publication of his father's life, which appeared in 1826. Whether with respect to those portions of the work of which he was the editor or the author, the praise must be accorded to him * " Tone's Life", vol. h\, p. 674. POEM OF W. T. TONE. 159 of having performed his task with signal ability and judgment, and of having left the most valuable work that exists, in connec- tion with the subject of the rise, progress, and downfall of the Society of United Irishmen. This young man's memory, I feel, has claims upon Ireland. His ashes, which now repose in Long Island, ought to be in the graveyard of Bodenstown. He has left one child, a daughter; and his widow (devoted to his memory and to his child) resides in New York with her mother, Mrs. Sampson. From the daughter of Sampson I received the portraits, admirably executed by her, and copied from pictures in the possession of her family, which I have had engraved for this work, of her father and her husband. I close this brief notice of the short career of William Theobald Wolfe Tone with some lines of his, written about a month or six weeks before his death, for which I am indebted to his widow : — AN ODE TO LOVE. In the first state of the created earth, Stagnant was lite in all existing things Which had received it at their birth; Dead were all feelings, all emotion's springs. All drooped in listless gloom ; e'en nature's powers Suspended seemed — no breath awaked the air, And closed and motionless were leaves and flowers ; In short, of waking life the signs appeared no where. 'Twas then, all-revivifying Love ! That, pre-ordained by nature's will, Thou didst on purple pinions soar above, Thy Heavenly functions to fulfil. ■ Tossing aloft thy torch's flaming brand, At once arose to life the world ; Through woods and valleys, breezes, soft and bland, Murmured with music sweet, and all its waters curled. Then rose, inspired by thy resistless power, The choral concert of the shady grove, Cheering the morning and the evening hour With thousand songs, all of connubial love. Two sweetest — the shrill lark in loftiest skies, Poised and unseen, waking the blushing dawn ; The nightingale, pouring melodious sighs, WTiich from her panting breast were in the still night drawn. But if brute nature thus thy laws obeys, To our own souls now let us turn ; What higher, nobler bliss in them they raise, And with what purer flame they burn. Paternal, filial, and connubial love, How they confirm each virtue's sway, The human soul, the heart and mind improve, And all their kindest, best, and highest powers move. 160 T. w. tone's family. T. W. Tone's father continued, during the remainder of his life, to hold a situation in the Paving Board ; but the salary was small and inadequate to the maintenance of his wife and himself, even with an addition of some ten or twelve pounds a year arising from the head-rents of one or two small cottages in Phibsborough ; but from the time of the death of T. W. Tone to that of Mrs. Tone, which took place at the house of W. Dunbavin, 65 High Street, about 1818, I am informed by a confidential friend of the latter,* that Peter Burro wes allowed the poor lone and forlorn old woman a pension of £40 a year. Mrs. Tone's family were Catholic. She professed to be a mem- ber of that church for some time after her marriage, but she ceased to attend its place of worship and to frequent its sacraments, without formally renouncing its communion. " She passed, how- ever, for a Protestant ; but a year and a half before her death she informed her friend, Mrs. Walsh, that she had sent for a priest of her old persuasion, and from that time she became a strict observer of the rites of the Roman Catholic religion. Her husband, Peter Tone, died about twelve years previously, in 1805-6, and both were interred in Bodenstown". The details of the parentage of Tone, and of the interment of his remains, were obtained from his only surviving relatives in Ireland, the daughters of Mr. William Dunbavin, Mrs. Moore, residing at 147 Abbey Street, Dublin, and Mrs. Bull at Sim- mon's Court, Donnybrook; from the son of William Dunbavin, Nicholas Dunbavin, residing at 20 Mount Pleasant Avenue, Rath- mines ; and William Dunnan, a nephew of the former, living at Mr. Robert Vickers' in Francis Street. William Dunbavin lived at No. 65 High Street, and died there in 1830. There are some matters connected with the early history and late events in the career of Tone, left unnoticed or but slightly glanced at by his son. The clue to any information of the kind I allude to, was a single passage in one of the publications of Walter Cox, wherein Cox states that he sat, in 1798, in an upper room in High Street, with the father and mother of Theobald Wolfe Tone, watching over the remains of their gifted son, when his former companions and political associates of rank and distinction in the city, kept away from the tradesman's house where the corpse of poor Tone lay " waking ". On this slender clue I endeavoured to ascertain who the parties were who had the charity to receive the remains of the " convicted traitor " into their house. On inquiry I ascer- tained that the house referred to belonged to a Mr. William Dun- bavin, and that a son of his and two daughters were still living. * Statement of Mrs. Walsh, 27 Stafford Street. WILLIAM H. TONE. 1G1 Most of the family details now given, and the portraits of Theo- bald and Matthew Tone when children, and their mother, are the results of my communications with those members of the Dunbavin family. From Mr. Thomas Dunbavin, residing in the same house in which T. W. Tone's remains were "waked", No. 65 High Street, I received, in 1847, the following account of the rela- tives of Tone, who were then surviving: "Nicholas Dun- bavin, the father of my informant (Thomas Dunbavin), is the nearest living relative of T. W. Tone. Mrs. Margaret Tone, the mother of the latter, whose maiden name was Lambert (in young Tone's memoirs of his father, named Lamport), was married to Peter Tone in 1761. She had no relative living at the time of her decease. Her husband, Peter Tone, had two brothers and two sisters. The two brothers died without legitimate issue.* One sister married a Mr. Clarendon, of the county Meath, and had two sons : both are dead. The other sister of Peter Tone married William Dunbavin, of Bodenstown, county Kildare (father of Nicholas Dunbavin), and had several children. All the sons were dead in 1847, with the exception of Nicholas Dunbavin, who was consequently a first-cousin of T. \V. Tone. A sister of Nicholas Dunbavin married a person of the name of Dunnan, a son of whom was living in 1847, in Francis Street, in great in- digence (and subsequently, to the author's knowledge, was an in- mate of a poorhouse in Dublin). Some extraordinary fatality seems to have pursued the family of the Tones. The grandfather was killed, as we have seen, by a fall from a corn stack. Theobald died by his own hand. Matthew perished on the scaffold. William Henry Tone, a soldier of fortune, a brave and enterprising man, made his way in India to the command of a regiment in the service of the Mahratta So- vereign, and was slain in battle. He had been brought up to the business of a bookseller in Dublin, had quitted his occupation, enlisted at the age of sixteen in the East India Company's ser- vice, and was detained six years in garrison in St. Helena. He was a remarkably handsome, soldier-like looking person, "the best-looking of all his family". He had " a natural turn for poetry", a warm and enthusiastic imagination : " he was as brave as Ca3sar, and loved the army". In 1788 he returned to England, * The youngest of these brothers is spoken of by Theobald Wolfe Tone as being engagecfin 17S9 in a lawsuit with his father, Peter Tone, which involved the property of the latter in total ruin. This litigious uncle of his, T. W. Tone states, was then a lieutenant of grenadiers in the 22nd regiment. A person of the name of Tone, whose history was unhappily connected with the early career of Arthur O'Connor, was probably the daughter of one of the above-mentioned brothers of Peter Tone. 162 LETTERS OF WILLIAM H. TONE. remained in Europe for about four years, and reentered the Com- pany's service (in the ranks) in 1792. On his arrival in India, he distinguished himself so much as to obtain his discharge and a recommendation which insured him employment in the service of the Nizam. After many vicissitudes, he quit the service of the latter, proceeded to Poonah, and entered that of the ruler of the Mahrattas, where he soon raised himself to the rank of com- mandant of a regiment. Some of his letters between 1798 and 1800 are in my possession, most honourable to his character and his principles, and creditable to the qualities of the head as well as of the heart. The letters from William H. Tone, of which the following are copies, were kindly communicated to me by Mrs. Moore, one of his surviving relatives : — LETTERS FROM WILLIAM II. TONE TO HIS FATHER, PETER TONE. "Bombay, January 25, 1797. " Dear Father, — I wrote to you by the overland despatch which left this settlement the 1st inst., which I hope will reach you long before this can. By the same conveyance I send a bill of exchange for one hundred pounds on the house of Law and Bruce, Laurence Lane, London. Should the first bill miscarry, you will immediately write to Messrs. Bruce and Law, where you will hear of the money, which I am sure must be convenient to you; and I only hope it may do you all the good that I wish. It is with very great regret that I have to complain of the total neglect I have been treated with by the whole family — an inattention which I cannot forbear calling unkind. I will not, however, commence this letter (which is, I believe, the twentieth which I have written to you) with any reproaches ; but I trust that this will produce an answer; and I can only assure you, if you will communicate with me, and apprise me of your real situ- ation, that my purse, person, and credit, shall be strained for your convenience. My present situation I shall describe as concisely as possible. I have for some time commanded a small corps in the service of Paisheva, the head of the Mahratta Empire. My pay has been tolerably liberal, but my expenses have nearly kept pace with it ; I have it, therefore, in contemplation to go into the service of the Somba of the Dekan, where I have an offer of a brigade. I have not as yet determined, but shall inform you more fully in my next. In other respects I am very well in health, not very rich, but far above want, and have the peculiar happiness of enjoying the countenance and attention of the first characters in this country ; a circumstance the more flattering, as I may say with- LETTERS OF WILLIAM H. TONE. 163 out vanity, that it is the consequence of my own behaviour. One circumstance has contributed very much to make me known here. I have now in the press a little book, a treatise on Mahratta Insti- tutions, which will be published in the course of a month. It is tolerably well written, and contains a good deal of local informa- tion. I sold the copyright a few days ago for a thousand rupees, which is the sum I sent for your use, which you will consider the first-fruits of my literary labours. This incident has procured me great reputation, and a general correspondence with our Asiatic literati, many of whom I know only by letter. The work itself I shall send you when I hear from you, and also another to Theo- bald to America, where I understand he is. I have a very dear friend of mine returning to Boston, who has promised to find him out, if he be on the continent. As I am not certain whether this will reach you or not, I shall say but very little more. I have only to entreat you to write to me at large; let me candidly know your situation, which I am certain is not a splendid one. Profes- sions are, I trust, not necessary between you and me; but, be assured, the last rupee I possess or can raise, shall be cheerfully contributed to your wants and that of the family. " Write to me whenever this reaches you, and I will see what can be done ; but I will positively give myself no further concern unless I receive an answer to this letter. I write constantly to our old friend, Harry Douglass, and I am happy to be able to inform you, that I have had it in my power lately to do him a small ser- vice in return for the very great one he conferred on me. He met lately with a young man, a natural son of his fathers, in the ranks in Bengal, and not knowing exactly how to provide for him, I desired him to send him round to me. I very fortunately hap- pened to be in Bombay when he arrived, and shall take him up the country with me, where I am pretty certain of being able to pro- cure him an appointment that will be worth from two to three hun- dred pounds a-year. This circumstance may possibly put you upon thinking upon something for Arthur. I wish to God I had him here; I could without any difficulty get him a commission in his Majesty's service, or perhaps something better; but of this more when I hear from you. " Tell my mother, my dear Mary, and in short all the family, that I love them sincerely ; nor is it possible for any length of time or separation to alter me. I wish, however, to give other proofs than profession ; but that totally depends on the answer to this. Give my love to my poor mother, and every one whom I care for, " And believe me, my dear Sir, your ever affectionate son, " W. H. Tone. 164 LETTERS OF WILLIAM H. TONE. " Direct to me to ' Henry Fawcitt, Esq., Bombay, care of Messrs. Law and Bruce, London'. " Peter Tone, Esq., Monk Place". "Bombay, 1st January (blank year). " Dear Sir, — I have written to you so often without ever being favoured with a reply, that I am in the last degree of uneasiness to account for your silence. I send this by an overland despatch, and also transmit a draft on the house of Law and Bruce, London, which I hope will meet you — the sum of one hundred pounds. " If I hear from you, and succeed as I have hitherto done in this country, I trust I shall be enabled to send you the same sum or so yearly. I am, from the regulation of postages, restricted very much in room, so shall be as explicit as possible. I have, therefore, only to inform you, that I am in good health and toler- able circumstances. I, at this time, command a brigade in the service of Nizam Ali, the Somba of the Dekan, and in high fa- vour at court and very much patronized by the British residents, and, in one word, have a universal acquaintance, and am very much respected. I have had offers of commissions in the King and Company's service, but prefer my present situation. In God's name where is — ? I have heard from the public papers of his having gone to America. I write to him by a gentleman, a friend of mine, returning there, and send him a copy of a work of mine, which is printing here, and procured me great reputation. I must leave off here. My most affectionate love to my mother, Mary, and family, and believe me to be " Your faithful and affectionate son, " William H. Tone. "To Mr. Peter Tone". An extract from a letter of William H. Tone to the widow of his brother, very shortly before his own decease, transmitting a draft to her for £233 sterling, will give some idea of the worth of this truly generous man. " Camp on the Gour Eiver, 2nd January, 1800. " My Dear Matty, — Your several letters of the following dates have all come to my hand; the first, dated Paris, 1st May, being a miscellaneous epistle from the whole family, I received, in September, 1798; your other two letters of the dates of 16th December, 1798, and 20th January, 1799, I received in October LETTERS OF WILLIAM II. TONE. 165 last. Some circumstances prevented me from replying to them sooner; however, I hope I have answered them in essentials, having transmitted by the last month's packet a bill on the house of David Scott, junr. and Co., London, for the sum of £233 sterling, which I hope you will have received before this reaches you. Mr. Scott was directed to send a bill for the amount, ac- cording to your directions, to Mr. Meyer, Hamburgh ; and I trust that this sum will relieve your present embarrassments, until I can send a further supply. The dreadful information respecting my dearest Theobald had reached this country long before your letter. It is impossible and unnecessary to describe what I suffer for this irreparable calamity. However, I feel that unavailing- grief or unmanly lamentation is not the part which is now left for me to act. Whether I loved my brother and esteemed him as I ought, must now be proved by my actions, and not by my pro- fessions. This most unfortunate of all circumstances has, in its event, imposed new and weighty duties upon me, which I pre- pare to discharge with the fullest sense of their importance, and I hope the manner in which I shall act in this new and delicate situation, will convince you and the world, that my love and gra- titude to the best of brothers and friends, has borne some propor- tion to his unparalleled goodness to me on every occasion. Many words are not necessary: in short, I live but for you and the chil- dren ; and I hope Almighty God will grant me life and means to fulfil the duties of a father to them and a friend to you. And, rely on it, whilst I exist, my purse, person and credit, shall be strained for your convenience. M The important duties of the children's education must be en- tirely left to you, and I have the consolation to feel that they can be nowhere under so proper an instructor. My part in this business, will be to furnish the money, and this shall not be wanting. " Your truly affectionate brother and fiiend, " William Henry Tone' 1 . There is one passage in a letter of William H. Tone, dated "Gour River, January, 2nd, 1800", to Mrs. Tone, which will suffice to illustrate his character — " Tell my beloved Maria" (his niece) "that I have not forgotten 'her. In the course of this year I shall send you fifty guineas, to be laid out by her, under your direction, in finery. We must not suffer her mind to be affected; and I know from experience that nothing depresses the spirits of a young person so much as a want of little elegancies in life". The 166 THE BROTHERS AND SISTER OF T. W. TONE. next news that Mrs. Tone received of him was, that he had been killed in an attack on a fort, in one of the Mahratta wars — that he had been shot in the temple ; but no particulars of time or place were ever obtained. I presume that his death took place between 1801 and 1804. Mary, whom Theobald speaks of in 1796 as " a fine young woman, with all the peculiarity of her brother's disposition, with all the delicacy of her own sex", accompanied her brother to America, and in December, 1796, came to France with his wife and children. There she married a young Swiss merchant in the winter of 1797, followed her husband to St. Domingo, and died of the yellow fever (according to the account given of the family in the life of Theobald) during the siege of Cape Francois, attending a sick friend, who had been deserted by her family and servants. But other accounts state that she was killed, and her husband likewise, by the negroes, in the insurrection of that island, about the year 1799. The French Minister at Hamburgh, in one of his communications to his government, refers to the husband of Tone's sister as " Giaugue" (Geoghegan).* Arthur, the youngest of the brothers, a fine high-spirited lad, was brought up to no profession or business. He took an early fancy to a sea-farmg life, and when only twelve years of age, sailed to Portugal with a Captain Meyler. He made a second voyage to Portugal; and in June, 1795, the vessel he was in arrived at Belfast, where his brother Theobald then was, on the point of embarking for America. He abandoned his ship, and accompanied his brother to the United States, where he remained till the 10th of December, 1795, when he was sent by his brother to Ireland on a perilous political mission, which he discharged * An informer, residing in Paris from the year 1790, a native of Ireland, who figures in the number of Mr. Pitt's correspondents from the Continent, for some years prior to 1798, under the initial O, kept the English government accurately informed of all the movements of the emissaries of the United Irishmen in France, of Tone and Lewines especially, as will, be seen by the Memoirs of Lord Viscount Castlereagh, edited by his brother the Marquess of Londonderry, 8vo, 1849, vol. i. This person accompanied Napper Tandy to Ireland in the Anacreon privateer, in the autumn of 1798, and appears to have subsequently separated from Tandy. This informer is not to be confounded with the O'Keon who had been at the same period at Killala, when the French were there, and eventually was taken prisoner, tried, and set at liberty immediately after his trial. Henry O'Keon had been an Irish priest in Paris previous to the revolution, became a soldier, and fixed himself on Humbert as an interpreter. In one of the many letters of M. Eeinhard, the French Minister at Hamburgh, to the French Secretary of State, M. Charles de la Croix, dated July 23, 1797, duly intercepted by Mr. Pitt's agent, and copied and transmitted to the English Minister (vide " Castlereagh's Memoirs", vol. i., from page 218 to page 306), the French Minister at Hamburgh, M. Eeinhard, makes mention of the husband of the sister of Tone, Mons. Giaugue (Geoghegan), having given him intelligence of the arrival of Dr. M'Neven and another emissary of the United Irishmen at the Hague (page 290, vol. i.). ARTHUR TONE. 167 with ability and discretion. Mr. James Hornidge of Dublin, who had known him in America, states, that about 1797 he was serv- ing his time in the north to a manufacturer in the linen business, and was implicated, though a mere boy at the time, in the affairs of the United Irishmen, and had to leave the north on that ac- count. He came up to Dublin with his father's friend, Thomas Russell. The fact is, the great men of the 11 Union' 1 in the north were alarmed at the secret of their connection with the society being in the keeping of a boy, and they determined to send him out of the kingdom. He was sent back to America ; but finding his brother had left that country, he went to sea, and made a voyage to the West In- dies. On his return to America he met his brother Matthew ; but the latter was on the point of leaving America, and the poor lad was asrain obliged to go to sea to earn a subsistence. At length lie returned to Europe, and in the summer of 1798 made his way to Holland, where he entered the Dutch navy as mid- shipman, under the patronage of Admiral De Winter. He be- came " a universal favourite, though very wild, and distinguished himself in several actions by a rare intrepidity. Taken by the English not long after his brothers capture and decease, he was recognized by an Irish officer weeping over the account of his brothers death. His kind-hearted countryman favoured his es- cape, and he was promoted, at the age of sixteen, to a lieutenancy. He sailed soon after to the East Indies, and since that period, never had been heard of".* And now it only remains for me to say a few words of the widow of Theobald Wolie Tone. Her name assuredly, and the remembrance of her virtues and her sufferings, will not be for- gotten in Ireland. When I icas a young man, at least I thought so; but now in the sear and yellow leaf of life, it seems to me, it might sujjice to say, they ought not to be forgotten there. She was a faithful, noble-minded, true-hearted, and generous woman, utterly divested of selfishness, ready to make any sacri- fice and to endure any suffering for her husband, her children, and her country. Always cheerful, trustful, and hopeful in her husband's destiny, and strongly impressed with the goodness of his heart, and the brilliancy of his talents, and his devotedness to his cause, she was the solace of his life, the never-failing com- fort of it, the courageous partner and partaker of his trials in adversity, and the support of his weariness of mind in all his struggles, labours, and embarrassments. The writer in the New Monthly Magazine, I have already cited, * ''Life of Tone", vol. ii., p. oiG. 168 MRS. TONE IN PARIS IN 1815 HER SECOND MARRIAGE. of a notice of Tone's widow and son when living in Paris, in 1815, thus speaks of Mrs. Tone's personal appearance and mental qualities : — " It was, I think, in February, 1815, that I first saw and be- came acquainted with them. From particular circumstances, I was received by them, from the first moment, with confidence and kindness. Mrs. Tone, I was aware, had been admired for personal charms in her youth. She was living retired, but with the comforts and many of the elegances of life, in the Faubourg St. Germain. Her circle of acquaintance was of the best class, almost wholly French — that is, with little mixture, or alloy, of English, Irish, or American. Portraits, of herself when a girl, eminently beautiful — of her husband in the uniform of a French field-officer — and of a son and daughter whom she had lost a very few years before, were hung in the room in which she received her visitors and friends. "Her conversation, for which her husband's adventures, and the scenes which she had herself witnessed during her residence in France, under the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire, afforded interesting matter, was instructive, lively, and engaging. The Gallicisms in her English gave a certain charm of originality and point to her observations on French manners and character, of which she had as quick a sense as if arrived but yesterday. She yet made herself highly agreeable in French society, and was allowed by French women to have seized its ton — all allow- ance for a foreigner. " Shortly after the downfall of Napoleon I was introduced by them to a Scottish gentleman just arrived, as to an estimable man and their best friend. The purpose of his visit soon proved tome that he was both the one and the other. He had met Mrs. Tone, many years before, I think on board ship, on her way to France from the United States, after the death of her husband. He felt interested at first sight for a beautiful woman with an infant family, enduring the hardships of a voyage ; became still more so upon learning who she was; and at last offered her his hand. This excellent woman, helpless and unprotected as she was, still thought it due to the memory of Tone that she should bear no other name, and continued to resist solicitation and advice from the period of her first meeting Mr. W to that of which I speak. At the instance of all her own and her husband's friends, and of her son, she now consented. I called on her the day be- fore that fixed for her marriage. She happened to be alone, was unusually sad, and for the first time that I had seen her, dressed in white. I felt slightly shocked at the instant by the transition, LETTERS OF MATILDA TONE — HER DECEASE. 169 and my eye passed involuntarily to the portrait of Tone, which hung immediately before her. She rose and retired, in silence and in tears. Next day the marriage took place in the chapel of the British Embassy". In 1847, the relict of Theobald Wolfe Tone still survived in the neighbourhood of Washington, in Georgetown, in the district of Colombia, then for upwards of twenty years the widow of that good man, Mr. Wilson of Dullatur, in Scotland. She was bom the 17th of June, 1769; she died the 18th March, 18*9, in Georgetown, in her eighty-first year. Her remains should be in Bodenstown churchyard, mingled with those of her beloved hus- band, Theobald Wolfe Tone. LETTER OF TIIE WIDOW OF T. W. TONE, IN VINDICATION OF HER HUSBAND'S MEMORY, IN 1842. On the appearance of the first series of the first edition of this work, in 1842, the widow of Theobald Wolfe Tone, then in her seventy-third year, addressed a letter to the editor of the New York Truth-Teller i characteristic of that fidelity and devotion to the memory of her husband, which were so constantly displayed by her in all circumstances, with the spirit of one truly, who had instructed her sorrows to be proud : — " To the Editor of the Truth-Teller. 11 Georgetown, D. C, Oct. 19, 1842. " Sir, — Since the first establishment of your paper I have been a constant subscriber to it, and have at present before me that of last Saturday, the loth instant, in which you pass so beautiful and so just an eulogium on my ever-lamented friend, Dr. William James M'Xeven. But all I have suffered in the cause of Ireland gives me some right to appeal, and to complain that in that article you have not done justice to the memory of my husband, Theobald Wolfe Tone. You say, ' it was only after Theobald Wolfe Tone had been in France for some time, and had obtained a promise of aid from Napoleon and the French Directory, that these societies, being repulsed by government, etc., etc., resolved on a revolution and a total separation from England'. This is all a mistake. In the year 1791 Tone wrote the pamphlet entitled, 'An argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland, in which the present politi- cal state of that country and the necessity of a parliamentary reform are considered'. At the time of writing it he was not acquainted with a single Catholic, but wrote on the general 170 LETTER OF MATILDA TONE merits of the case and unnatural state of the country, and printed anonymously. But the Catholic leaders called on the writer to make himself known, republished and circulated the work, and by a resolution of the general committee, John Keogh, of Mount Jerome, and John Sweetman, were ordered to wait on him, offer- ing him the situation of agent and assistant secretary to the general committee of the Catholics of Ireland. I may say he was both trusted and beloved by them, and he loved and honoured them. His whole time and talents were devoted to them and to their cause. He was consulted by them, and advised them — he wrote all their publications — he was the only Protestant admitted at the Catholic Convention — he wrote their petition to the King, and accompanied the delegation that carried it to the King, and accom- panied the delegation that carried it to England, and on the dis- solution of the committee he was publicly thanked by them: I have the vote engrossed on vellum and framed. But his labours did not end here: he travelled with Keogh, or others, wherever they could hope to make converts to the cause and to form societies of United Irishmen, which name was invented by him, when he proposed to drop the invidious distinctions of Catholic, Dissenter, and Protestant, and adopt that national denomination. I have perceived lately that it is a sort of fashion to throw the idea of separation from England solely and entirely on Tone. This is not fair. It was his belief that if a liberal emancipation of the Catholics — a full and fair representation of all the people of Ire- land in an Irish parliament — when the immense resources of the country could be developed and honestly applied to the benefit of the country, a separation would in a short time be the certain consequence ; but he did not think of separation till every hope had failed, nor did he then think of it alone. " Doctor Madden, in his United Irishmen, quotes from Tone's life a letter addressed to him in this country, dated September, 1795, concluding with the words: — 'Once more, dear Tone, re- member and execute your garden conversation', which he concludes to be from Emmet and Russell. He is mistaken ; it was from John Keogh, of Mount Jerome, and I have the original — a man whom Tone knew to be cautious even to timidity, and yet he wished for French aid, and promised in the letter that his son Cornelius should join them on landing. In another place, Dr. Madden quotes, and I think at least carelessly, from the work, that the United Irish Club, which Tone was so instrumental in establishing in Dublin, was scarcely formed before he lost all influence in it, which the doctor attributes to the violence of his measures. If he had read or quoted a little further, the following lines are, 1 a circumstance which mortified me not a little at first, IN VINDICATION OF HER HUSBANDS MEMORY. 171 and, perhaps, had I retained more weight in their councils, I might have prevented, as on some occasions I laboured unsuccess- fully to prevent, their running into indiscretions, which gave their enemies too great advantages over them'. There is nothing which the heart so much revolts at as to point out even the errors of those who acted nobly, and sealed their principles with their blood; but it is the truth, that Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the Sheares, who had just arrived from France, in the heyday of the Revolution,* were acting revolution before it was made, and, joined by all young and ardent spirits, spoke and acted with ruinous in- discretion; even Dr. Drennan was caught, and published that frantic address of 1 Citizen Soldiers, to arms ! Citizens, your coun- try is in danger'. Tone laboured in vain to check this folly, but there was no deceit in it ; it was honest, generous enthusiasm and young excitement. About this period, the summer of '95, we left Ireland. Before our departure, Tone consulted with the leaders of each party ; for the Catholics, Keogh and M'Cormack. The conversation was held in Keogh's garden at Mount Jerome. He adds, ' they both laid the most positive injunctions upon me to leave nothing unattempted on my part to force my way to France, and lay our situation before the government there'. We went by Belfast, and there again consultations were held with the leading men of the Dissenters and Defenders; all were of the same mind, and he adds, ' I now look upon myself as competent to speak fully and with confidence, for the Catholics, for the Dis- senters, and for the Defenders of Ireland'. We sailed in June, '95 — he received letters from them all, urgently praying him to lose no time. I am told that Doctor Madden was twice to New York in search of documents for his history. I wonder he did not apply to me. I never heard of him till I saw his book adver- tised ; perhaps he was ignorant of my existence, for I live in com- plete retirement, and to use Carolan's words — ' Lonely and desolate I mourn the dead'. "I am ashamed of this rambling and diffuse letter; but, under the weight of seventy-three years and a broken heart, I cannot make it better, else I would write it over again ; but the subject makes my heart beat and my hand tremble, and I am sure I should not mend it. I only hope you will find it legible, and take the trouble to read it. Remember, I do not write for pub- lication, but simply for your own information, if you again refer to the subject. 1 should have mentioned that, on leaving Ireland, Tone again received the farewell thanks of the Catholics of Dublin, for services rendered to the Catholic body, which no 172 LETTER OF T1IE AUTHOR TO MR8. TONE. gratitude can overrate — no remuneration overpay ; it was moved by Dr. M'Neven. " I beg once more to apologise for the trouble I give you, and remain, your admirer and constant reader, " Matilda Tone Wilson". I addressed a letter to Mrs. Tone, in reply to her communica- tion in the American paper, believing it was in my power to remove some misconceptions of hers in regard to the passages she refers to in my work. From that letter the following extracts are taken : — "48 Sloane Square, London, "December 21, 1842. " In addressing you on the subject of your recent letter, let me assure you no one can feel more strongly than I do the claim which your sorrows, and your noble conduct in every relation, to your husband and to your children, have to unfeigned respect. I visited the United States in 1834, in 1836, and the latter part of 1839. The circumstance of my not being fortunate enough to make your acquaintance did not, I assure you, arise from any indifference of mine, either as regards the latter, or the value I set on the information you could have afforded me. On this point, Dr. M'Neven, had he been living, could have spoken to your entire satisfaction, and the papers of your daughter-in-law, Mrs. Sampson, may be found to bear out that assertion. On each occasion of my visiting the Northern States, I was informed you were residing in a remote district ; but the mere circumstance of distance would not have prevented me from communicating directly with you, had I not felt the various afflictions you had met with, and the one which had crowned calamity — the recent and untimely death of your highly gifted son, — were of a character that forbade one who was a stranger to you, to touch upon sub- jects that must have renewed very mournful recollections. " I beg to assure you it is a misconception which I did not fall into, that the letter referred to in the journals of your husband ' from one of the chief Catholic leaders ' was written either by Emmet or Russell, or conjointly by them. Such an idea never came into my mind, nor have I stated anything of the kind. The letter, it was perfectly evident to me, was written by John Keogh. Neither Russell nor Emmet could be called Catholic leaders, though both were advocates of emancipation ; and, moreover, the reference in that letter to the infirmities of age, and also to ' Cor- nelius ', could neither apply to one or the other of the latter men- tioned persons. They were in the prime of life ; one was unmarried, LETTER OF THE AUTHOR TO MRS. TOSE. 173 and the other had no child of the name of ' Cornelius \ But it was perfectly evident to me, that John Keogh, the chief Catholic leader of that time, then even in advanced years, and father of Mr. Cornelius Keogh, was the writer of that letter. I take it, that the supposed misconception is to be attributed to my refer- ence to that letter of John Keogh being followed in the next page by a citation from your son's work, of a conversation between his father, and Emmet, and Russell, which I introduced expressly after my allusion to the letter, to show that the idea of national independence, formed in youth and relinquished only in death, which was the alpha and omega of the political views of Theobald Wolfe Tone, was entertained likewise by the great Catholic leaders of his day, as well as by the Reformers, who were consi- dered at that period moderate men compared with others, namely, Emmet and Russell. "As to my opinion of the early loss of influence of the founder of the United Irish Society in Dublin, over its councils, being carelessly taken up, with all the respect and courtesy that are due to you, permit me to say, I am not sensible that I have fallen into any error on that point. The loss of influence, in the plainest terms, is expressed in Tone's journals, and seems to have been very poignantly lelt by their author. He freely admits the cause of it, in the various allusions he makes to the milk-and-water speeches and addresses of the members of the society, the necessity of shaping his own views to theirs, and of diluting his opinions with their element. The chief leaders of the first United Irish Society were not prepared to reject Reform, Catholic Emancipation, and the security of Parliamentary independence, had they been offered ; and it was well known that objects ulterior to these measures had not only been avowed in conversation, but more than glanced at in published papers, by T. W. Tone. On the other hand, it is quite true that your husband did complain of the violence in words on the part of some members of the society, which could have no other effect than to disconcert the plans of those who were bent on more extreme proceedings. "Thus, Madam, I have endeavoured to set myself right in your opinion on these points which you have referred to. Perhaps in regard to them I have expressed myself in terms that either fall short of my sentiments, or give you an erroneous conception of them. In any case, I beg you to believe that if there be one ex- pression in my book that is calculated to give you pain, or do any injury to the memory of your husband, I have wronged myself, and most unconsciously given offence to you. " I have the honour to be, Madam, " Your very obedient servant, " R. R. Madden". MEMOIR OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, ESQ. CHAPTER I. A. H. Rowan was descended of a Scotch family, whose earliest representative of any note was Hans Hamilton, Vicar of Dunlop, in Cunningham. From this person the Hamiltons of Killyleagh have their descent. The first settler of this family in Ireland, in Lord Bacons poetical phraseology, had his " honours most plen- tifully watered" with extensive grants of territory in Ireland, which had been forfeited to the crown in former reigns, a great part of which was in the county Down, and amongst these, the castle and lands of Killyleagh, which had formerly belonged to the Irish sept of the O'Nial. Strange to say, the old Anglican colonists in Ireland, whose honours were watered most plentifully with grants of forfeited estates, furnished descendents amongst whom are to be traced at least two-thirds of the principal leaders of the United Irishmen. The father of Archibald Hamilton Rowan was Gawen Hamilton of Killyleagh. His mother was the only daughter of William Rowan, and widow of Tichborne Aston, Esq., of Beaulieu, near Drogheda, in the county of Louth — a lady also of Scotch descent, whose family had settled in Ireland in the reign of James I. Gawen Hamilton and his lady having removed to London, their eldest child, A. H. Rowan, was born there the 12th of May, 1757. He spent some time at a preparatory school in London, and was then sent to Westminster School, and in due time to Cam- bridge, where he became intimately acquainted with the Rev. John Jebb, a fellow of Peterhouse College, whose religious and political sentiments interfering with his profession in the church and position in the university, he resigned his living and aban- doned his college, rather than " act a lie weekly in the presence of the God of truth". In the winter succeeding his matriculation, A. H. Rowan made a tour into Holland, accompanied by his fellow-students, Sir John Borlase Warren and Mr. Newcomb. ROWANS EARLY CAREER. 175 On his return he was prevailed on to accompany to America, Lord Charles Montague, who had been appointed Governor of South Carolina, invested with the character of his Lordships pri- vate secretary. He arrived there during the bickerings that were going on between England and her colonies. After three months sojourn in Charleston, he returned to England, being then twenty- four years of age. A fellow-student, Mr. Topham, who at this time edited a paper called the World, gave a series of characters of young men about town who had figured at Westminster or Eton, and amongst them is to be found a very graphic portrai- ture of the subject of this memoir. " About this time (says Rowan in his autobiography), Mr. Topham, who had been my contemporary at Cambridge, and who was then the editor of the World, a new and fashionable paper, gave a series of characters of the young men who then figured about London, and who had been educated at Westminster or Eton schools. The following appeared under the head of " 1 WESTMINSTER. " 4 Hamilton Everything is the creature of accident. As that works upon time and place, so are the vicissitudes which follow : vicissitudes that reach through the whole allotment of men — even to the charm of character, and the qualities which produce it. " ' Physically speaking, human nature can redress itself of cli- mate, can generate warmth in high latitudes, and cold at the equator ; but in respect to mind and manners, from the law of latitude there is no appeal. Man, like the plants that grow for him, has a proper sky and soil: with them to flourish; without them to fade. Through either kingdom, vegetable and moral, in situations that are aquatic, the Alpine nature cannot live ! "'All this applies to Hamilton — wasting himself at West- minster ! ' Wild Nature's vigour -working at his root'. His situation should have been, accordingly, where he might have spread wide and struck deep. " 1 With more than boyish aptitudes and abilities, he should not thus have been lost among boys. His incessant intrepidity, his restless curiosity, his undertaking spirit, all indicated early maturity — all should have led to pursuits, if not better, at least of more spirit and moment, than the mere mechanism of dead language ! 44 4 This, by Hamilton disdaining as a business what as an amuse- ment perhaps might have delighted him, was deemed a dead 176 rowan's early career. letter ! and as such neglected, while lie bestowed himself on other mechanism presenting more material objects to the mind. " ' Exercises out of school took place of exercises within. Not that, like Sackville or Hawkins, he had a ball at every leisure in his hand ; but preferably to fives or cricket, he would amuse himself in mechanical pursuits, little in themselves, but great as to what they might have been convertible. " 'In the fourth form he produced a red shoe of his own making ; and though he never made a pocket watch, and probably might mar many, yet all the interior machinery he knew and could name : the whole movement he took to pieces and replaced. " ' The man who is to find out the longitude, cannot have begin- nings better than these. Count Bruhl, since Mudge's death, the best watch-maker of his time, did not raise more early wonder. " ' Besides this, Hamilton was to be found in every daring oddity. Lords Burlington and Kent, in all their rage for pediments, were nothing to him in a rage for pediments. For often has the morning caught him scaling the high pediments of the school door, and at peril of his life, clambering down, opening the door within, before the boy who kept the gate could come with the key. His evenings set upon no less perils : in pranks with gun- powder, in leaping from unusual heights into the Thames ! As a practical geographer of London, and Heaven only knows how many miles round, omniscient Jackson himself could not know more. " £ All this surely was intrinsically right — wrong only in its direction. Had he been sent to Woolwich, he might have come out, if not a rival of the Duke of Richmond, at least a first-rate engineer. In economic arts and improvements nothing less than national, he might have been the Duke of Bridgewater of Ireland. Had the sea been his profession, Lord Mulgrave might have been less alone in the rare union of science and enterprise. " ' But all this capability of usefulness and fair fame was brought to nought by the obstinate absurdity of the people about him. Nothing could wean them from Westminster. His grandfather, Rowan or Rohan, fellow of Trinity College, and afterwards king's counsel in Ireland, having quitted that kingdom, resided in Rath- bone Place, possessed of great wealth, tenacious of his opinions, and absolute nonsense was his conduct to his grandson. He per- severed in the school, where, if a boy disaffects book-knowledge, his books are only bought and sold. And after Westminster, when the old man died, as if solicitous that everything about his grave but poppy and mandragora should grow downwards, his will declared his grandson the heir, but not to inherit till he gra- duated at Cambridge. ROWANS MARRIAGE AND RETURN TO IRELAND. 177 " ' To Cambridge, therefore, he went ; where, having pursued his studies, as it is called, in a ratio inverse and descending, he might have gone on from bad to worse, and so, as many do, putting a grave face upon it, he might have had his degree. But his animal spirits and love of bustle could not go off thus undis- tinguished; and so, after coolly attempting to throw a tutor into the Cam — after shaking all Cambridge from its propriety by a night's frolic, in which he climbed the sign-posts and changed the principal signs, he was rusticated, till the good humour of the university returning, he was readmitted, and enabled to satisfy his grandfathers will. " 4 Through the intercourse of private life he is very amiable. The same suavity of speech, courteous attention, and general good nature he had when a boy, are continued and improved. Good qualities the more to be prized, as the less probable, from his bold and eager temper, from the turbulence of his wishes, and the hurry of his pursuits' ! " In the winter succeeding his matriculation in Cambridge, during vacation, accompanied by his fellow-students, Sir John Borlase Warren and Mr. Xewcombe, he made a tour in Holland ; and on his return he accompanied Lord Charles Montague, Governor of South Carolina, then on leave of absence in England, to America, and in the nominal office of private secretary of his lordship, was taken on board the vessel of war appointed to con- vey the governor to his destination. The commencements of revolutions are stirring subjects of meditation tor a young man of any temperament; but for one of Rowan's ardent feebings, chivalrous sentiments, and enthu- siastic nature, the spectacle of those vast interests and opinions of opposed classes, coming into collision in the old and the new world, in France and America, could not fail to leave very deep and lasting impressions. However, after having spent nearly three months at Charleston, he returned to England, and was soon figuring in a martial character, " quartered at Gosport, at captain of grenadiers in the Huntingdon militia". After some months of campaigning in country towns, ball-rooms, public-pro- menades, race-courses, etc., he again visited France, and made a lengthened sojourn in Paris, and, subsequently, made a tour in Portugal and some parts of Spain and Italy. In 1781, Rowan, then residing, with his mother in France, married a young Irish lady of the name of Dawson, daughter of Walter Dawson of Lisanisk, near Carrickmacross. The marriage was celebrated in the Dutch Ambassador's chapel in Paris. In 1784 Rowan left France for Ireland, and henceforward made that country his settled place of abode. He first established 13 178 THE CASE OF MARY NEIL AND LORD CARHAMPTON. himself in a small cottage near Naas, in the county Kildare, but after a short residence there, purchased Rathcoffy in the same county. Mr. Rowan is truly described by Topham as an able man, of great energies and heroic courage, chivalrous to an extent hardly credible in those times— a bold and original thinker, of strong convictions, resolute in upholding his views of what he conceived to be the right, and needing only to have his noble energies pro- perly directed, to become a great public character, an ornament to his country, and a man most useful to the state. This promising young man returned to his native land at a critical period of its history. Ireland was a bad field^ for the energies and principles of a man like Rowan. To manifest any feelings hostile to oppression of any kind was to become a marked man, dangerous to the faction that ruled the Irish state — a man to be closely watched, to be ensnared if possible, and inveigled into some course of action which the law could reach, and to be made away with in due time. A young girl, of the name of Mary Neil, aged fourteen years, was kidnapped by a woman of bad character, named Mary Lle- wellyn, and placed in the power of a person of high rank. The gentleman contrived to keep himself safe from a prosecution, by persuading the unfortunate agent of his crimes that she had nothing to fear from a trial. Mary Llewellyn was tried and sentenced to death, but by the interest of her influential friend she obtained a reprief on the day she was to be executed. Though no prosecution could reach the cautious and powerful gentleman, the public knew the man, and common fame, which is sometimes correct in its surmises, laid the crime to the account of a noble and gallant loyalist of the day. Mr. Hamilton Rowan took an active part in the conviction of the procuress, and Dr. Boyton, who attended the injured child, wrote a pamphlet and a narrative of the case, which was so plainly worded, as to amount to a demonstration to Lord Carhampton, that he was the person alluded to as the accomplice of Llewellyn. His lordship sent a Mr. Toomey to Dr. Boyton, to demand an apology for the injury offered to his lordship's reputation. Dr. Boyton received the messenger with becoming spirit and polite- ness, and, perhaps, would have condescended to meet the chief of the Luttrells; but, fortunately, at the moment, Mr. Hamilton Rowan rapped at Boyton's door, and as he was interested in the business, the doctor explained the nature of Mr. Toomey 's visit. Mr. Rowan, with the presence of mind which distinguished him, expressed his surprise that Lord Carhampton could expect that AFFAIR OF HONOUR WITH LORD CARHAMPTON. 179 Dr. Boyton should be called on by his lordship to apologize for an offence which did not exist, only by the application of his lordship of certain words which he chose to consider as directed to himself. The pamphlet was silent as to Lord Carhampton, and must be supposed as not bearing any allusion to his lordship. "Therefore", said Mr. Rowan, " it would be indecorous and ab- surd in Dr. Boyton to account for an offence not committed, nor warranted by any expressed allusion to Lord Carhampton. But", said Mr. Rowan, " if Lord Carhampton admits that he is the culprit, it is my opinion that Dr. Boyton should entertain the message, and in this view of the business, we shall wait until Mr. Toomey consults his lordship on the propriety or prudence of claiming a reparation of his honour from Dr. Boyton, by acknow- ledging his guilt and pleading to his infamy". Mr. Toomey re- tired with this answer, but never returned. However, the affair did not end here. Mr. Rowan waited on his lordship next day with a message from Dr. Boyton, demand- ing an explanation for the intrusion made on the doctor, and the demand made for an apology for an offence which his lordship appeared to admit, by retracting his accusation, and retiring from the investigation which he provoked, when he was not able or willing to meet it. Mr. Rowan received a satisfactory explana- tion ; his lordship made a written apology, and the affair thus terminated. Rowan set out on his political career in Ireland as a reformer, a Catholic emancipationist, and a whig, though of democratic principles. In 1790 we find his name, and that of the Honourable Robert Stewart (the future Lord Castlereagh), in the list of the members of the Whig Club. They were fellow-members, like- wise, of the Volunteer Association. But Castlereagh abandoned his early principles, and became prime minister of England. Ro- wan retained his, and very narrowly escaped being hanged for the maintenance of them. In 1792, we find Mr. Rowan a member of the Club of United Irishmen — a society which then sought only a reform of parliament. " I must do the society", says the unfortunate Theobald Wolfe Tone, " the justice to say, that I believe there never existed a political body which included among its members a greater portion of sincere uncorrupted patriotism, as well as a very respectable por- tion of talent. Their publications, most of them written by Dr. Dren- nan, and many of them admirably well done, began to draw the pub- lic attention, especially as they were evidently the production of a society utterly disclaiming all party views or motives, and acting on a broad original scale, not sparing those who called themselves patriots, more than those who were the habitual slaves of the 180 ORIGIN OF ROWAN'S CONNECTION WITH UNITED IRISHMEN. government, a system in which I heartily concurred, having long entertained a more sincere contempt for what is called the opposi- tion, than for the common prostitutes of the treasury bench, who want at least the vice of hypocrisy. At length the solicitor- general, in speaking of the society, having made use of expres- sions in the House of Commons extremely offensive, an explana- tion was demanded of him by Simon Butler, chairman, and Tandy, secretary. Butler was satisfied; Tandy was not; and after several messages, which it is not my affair to detail, the solicitor-general at length complained to the house of a breach of privilege, and Tandy was ordered in the first instance into cus- tody. He was, in consequence, arrested by a messenger, from whom he found means to escape, and immediately a proclamation was issued, offering a reward for retaking him. The society now was in a difficult situation, and I thought myself called upon to make an effort, at all hazards to myself, to prevent its falling, by improper timidity, in the public opinion. We were, in fact, com- mitted with the House of Commons on the question of privilege ; and, having fairly engaged in the contest, it was impossible to recede without a total forfeiture of character. Under these cir- cumstances, I cast my eyes on Archibald Hamilton Rowan, a dis- tinguished member of the society, whose many virtues, public and private, had set his name above the reach of even the malevolence of party ; whose situation in life was of the most respectable rank (if rank be indeed respectable) ; and, above all, whose personal courage was not to be shaken — a circumstance, in the actual situation of affairs, of the last importance. To Rowan, therefore, I applied. I showed him that the current of public opinion was rather setting against us in the business, and that it was necessary that some of us should step forward and expose themselves at all risks, to show the House of Commons, and the nation at large, that we were not to be intimidated or put down so easily ; and I offered, if he would take the chair, that I would, with the society's permission, act as secretary, and that we would give our signa- tures to such publications as circumstances might render necessary. Rowan instantly agreed ; and, accordingly, on the next night of meeting, he was chosen chairman, and I secretary, in the absence of Tandy ; and the society having agreed to the resolutions pro- posed, which were worded in a manner very offensive to the dig- nity of the House of Commons, and, in fact, amounted to a chal- lenge of their authority, we inserted them in all the newspapers, and printed 5,000 copies with our names affixed. The least that Rowan and I expected in consequence of this step (which under the circumstances was, I must say, rather a bold one), was to be committed to Newgate for a breach of privilege, and, perhaps, DUEL OF DOWLING WITH PETER BURROWES. 181 exposed to personal discussion with some of the members of the House of Commons; for he proposed, and I agreed, that if any disrespectful language was applied to either of us in any debate which might arise on the business, we would attack the person, whoever he might be, immediately, and oblige him either to recall his words or give battle. All our determinations, however, came to nothing. The House of Commons, either content with their victory over Tandy, who was obliged to conceal himself for some time, or not thinking Rowan and myself objects sufficiently im- portant to attract their notice ; or, perhaps (which I rather believe), not wishing just then to embroil themselves with a man of Rowan's firmness and courage, not to speak of his great and justly merited popularity, took no notice whatsoever of our reso- lutions ; and in this manner he and I had the good fortune, or, if I may say, the merit, to rescue the society from a situation of con- siderable difficulty, without any actual suffering, though certainly with some personal hazard on our parts. We had, likewise, the satisfaction to see the society, instead of losing ground, rise rapidly in the public opinion by their firmness on the occasion. Shortly after, on the last day of the session, Tandy appeared in public, and was taken into custody, the whole society attending him in a body to the House of Commons. He was ordered by the Speaker to be committed to Newgate, whither he was conveyed, the society attending him as before ; and the Parliament being pro- rogued in half an hour after, he was liberated immediately, and escorted in triumph to his own house. On this occasion Rowan and I attended of course, and were in the gallery of the House of Commons. As we were not sure but we might be attacked ourselves, we took pains to place ourselves in a conspicuous situa- tion, and to wear our Whig-club uniforms, which were rather gaudy, in order to signify to all whom it might concern, that there we were. A good many of the members, we observed, re- marked us, but no farther notice was taken; our names were never mentioned ; the whole business passed over quietly, and I resigned my pro-secretaryship, being the only office I ever held in the society, into the hands of Tandy, who resumed his func- tions ". Rowan was engaged in a duelling affair in the early part of 1792, between Peter Burrowes and Mr. Matthew Dowling, on which occasion he acted as second to Dowling. This duel of Peter Burrowes and Dowling was followed, m the month of October, 1792, by an interview which Mr. Rowan had with the Earl of Clare, then Lord Fitzgibbon, on behalf of the Honourable Simon Butler, of which the memoir of Rowan contains the following account: — " He and Oliver Bond, an emi- 182 EXPLANATION DEMANDED OF LOUD CLARE. nent merchant, as chairman and secretary to the United Irish society, had signed a paper, for which they were called before the House of Lords, were voted to have been guilty of a breach of privilege of that House, and were ordered to pay a fine of £500, and to be imprisoned six months in Newgate. " In delivering the sentence of the Lords, Lord Fitzgibbon, addressing Mr. Butler, said, ' That he could not plead ignorance that his noble birth, and professional rank at the bar, to both of which he was a disgrace, had aggravated his crime 1 . Mr. Butler was not of a temper to bear insult ; he determined to call on Lord Fitzgibbon for an apology as soon as he should be liberated. Mr. Sheares was to be his friend on the occasion ; but he was in the country at that time. The business was such as could not be delayed, and Mr. Butler applied to me to act in Mr. Sheares' place. In consequence I wrote to his lordship, requesting an appointment to wait on him on behalf of my friend Mr. Butler, and his lordship appointed the next day. When I waited on him, I called to his recollection the expressions he had made use of in passing the sentence of the House of Lords on my friends Messrs. Butler and Bond, and those which he had particularly directed to Mr. Butler, which 1 hoped to be permitted to say it was not his lordships intention should be taken personally, and had been made use of unreflectingly. Lord Fitzgibbon said, that he thought the circumstances of the case called for the expressions he had used, that he never spoke unreflectingly in that situation, and under similar circumstances he would again use similar words. I then said, that in mine and Mr. Butler's opinion the sentence of the Lords did not authorise the words he had made use of, and that if it had occurred between two private gentlemen, my con- duct would be plain and easy, but his lordship's situation of chancellor embarrassed me. Here I paused. After some fur- ther conversation his lordship said I knew his situation, and he wished me to recollect it. I then took my leave, saying his lord- ship's situation prevented my acting as I must have done with a private gentleman. Immediately I wrote a note of this conversa- tion, which I gave to Mr. Butler, who thought it necessary for his character to publish it. I requested him to delay the publi- cation until I should have submitted to Lord Fitzgibbon a copy of the report of the conversation with him, and had given him to understand it was Mr. Butler's intention to publish it in the news- papers. Lord Fitzgibbon returned the copy to me the same day, thanking me for the communication, adding, that ' it was not for him to advise Mr. Butler'. The next morning I received a visit from a very old friend, Colonel Murray, who accosted me with, ' So a pretty piece of work you have made, Hamilton, taking a THREATENED PROSECUTION IN 1792. 183 challenge to the Chancellor. * How the deuce do you know that ?' 4 Why, to cut the matter short, I breakfasted this morn- ing with Fitzgibbon, and he told me the whole affair'. To this old friend I had said, that I regretted my having come to Ireland when I found party ran so high, and I intended, as soon as the present prosecution was over, to return to England ; my friend told me that he had repeated this to Lord Fitzgibbon, who, he said, had commissioned him to tell me, that if I would promise to go to England and remain there for a few years, he would issue a nol. pros, on the present prosecution. To this I readily assented, on condition that it should be issued immediately. My reason for making this stipulation was, that it had been reported some short time previous (when on my mothers death I had been obliged to go to England to arrange her property in that country), that I as well as Napper Tandy had fled from the prosecution com- menced against us. This compromise was, however, finally put an end to, by its being required that 1 should strike my name out of the United Irishmen's society — a measure to which I could not consent. " A correspondence", says Mr. Rowan, " had taken place in 1792, between me and Mr. Muir, a Scotch advocate, who had taken a very leading part on the subject of reform in that country, and who had been prosecuted by the Lord Advocate under the Scottish Leasing Act. He had been in France, and on his return home, had called on me in Dublin. The National Convention was to assemble shortly in Edinburgh, and our correspondence became more frequent. Though the government seized his papers and person, in their seizure only one letter from me was found and produced on his trial. The Lord Advocate described it as having been written by a most ferocious person, and said it was sealed with the emblem of a human heart transfixed by a spear, and that the United Irishmen's address was composed by one of those wretches who had fled from the justice of their country. The seal was the cap of liberty on a pole, supported by two hands, that of the Protestant and Catholic united in the grasp of friend- ship. Two letters were written to the Lord Advocate by me in remonstrance, and no answer having been received to either, on the evening of the 31st of October, 1793, Mr. Rowan, accom- panied by the Hon. Simon Butler, set out for Edinburgh, via Donaghadee and Portpatrick, and, after a most tempestuous pas- sage in a small sloop, arrived there on November the 4th. On the bth of November, 1793 [most appropriate day for a gunpowder affair of this kind], Mr. Butler waited on the Lord Advocate, put his hand in his pocket for the letter which he was commissioned to deliver ; but while he was in that act, his lordship said, that 184 ARREST OF ROWAN IN 1792. before any letter was delivered, he would inform him that he had some days before written a letter to Mr. H. Rowan, which he presumed had not been received, and then gave Mr. Butler the following answer to his letter : — " 'Edinburgh, November 5, 1793. " * Sir, — I wrote some days ago to you in Dublin a letter which I presume you have not received, and of which the following is an exact copy : — " ' I have received your first and second letters, and I have only to inform you that I do not hold myself accountable to you or to any person for any observations which in the course of my official duty I felt it proper for me to make with respect to the publication alluded to by you. I have only to add, that my opinion on this subject remains perfectly the same. " ' I am, Sir, etc., " ' R. DlJNDAS' ". In the evening of the 8th November, Mr. Butler and Mr. H. Rowan left Edinburgh on their return to Dublin. Rowan on his arrival in Ireland had the following notice published in the Lon- don and Edinburgh newspapers:— "The Lord Advocate of Scotland (R. Dundas) having asserted on the trial of Thomas Muir, that an address from the United Irishmen of Dublin to the Delegates for Reform in Scotland, to which my name was affixed as secretary, ' was penned by infa- mous wretches, who, like himself, had fled from the punishment that awaited them'; and all explanation having been avoided under the pretext of official duty, I find it now necessary to declare that such assertion of the Lord Advocate is a falsehood. " A. H. Rowan. " Dublin, Dominick Street, Dec. 16, 1793". " In 1792 (says Rowan in his autobiographical memoir), I was arrested by a warrant from Judge Downes, on a charge of distributing a seditious paper; and crediting his lordship's assu- rance that the examinations upon which the warrant was granted should be returned to the clerk of the crown, to be laid by him before the next term grand jury, I followed the advice of my law friends, and instead of going to jail, in pursuance of my own opinion, I gave bail for my appearance in the King's Bench, to answer such charges as should be there made against me. I had at first declared my wish to employ no other counsel to defend me than those who belonged to the society of United Irishmen ; PROCEEDINGS AGAINST ROWAN. 185 but Messrs. Emmet and Butler both declined the task, as they said it might look like arrogance in junior counsellors to conduct so great a cause as that which would probably ensue. The known unbending patriotism of Mr. Fletcher, who (though after- wards raised to the bench) always declared the necessity of par- liamentary reform, pointed him out to me as one under whose guidance I should wish to place myself ; but this suggestion was again overruled by the entreaty of Mrs. Hamilton Rowan, and of almost all my friends, that I should employ Mr. Curran. His high character, which never deserted him as a friend to the peo- ple, occasioned my asking him whether he would employ his talent rather in defence of the paper for the distribution of which 1 was prosecuted, than on any minor object. Having answered in the affirmative, he became my leading counsel. " During the succeeding Hilary term I daily attended in the Queen's Bench. On the last day of that term, finding that no examinations had been laid before the grand jury against me, counsel on my behalf moved that the examinations should be returned forthwith, particularly as Mr. Attorney-General had in the course of the term filed two informations ex officio against me, the one for the same alleged offence of distributing a seditious paper, and the other for a seditious conspiracy. Mr. Justice Downes, who was then on the bench, asserted that he had on the first day of term returned the examinations to the clerk of the crown, who said, that from the multiplicity of the examinations returned to him on the first day of term, he had not time to look at them, and requested the court would make no order. My hopes of a speedy trial were therefore at an end. " My mother shortly afterwards died, and I was obliged to go to England on private business, which required me to stay there some time. During my absence from Ireland, every runner in office, supported by the newspapers in the pay of government, connected the name of Hamilton Rowan with that of Napper Tandy, and proclaimed both as dishonoured fugitives from justice. " A few days before the Easter term I returned to Ireland, and daily attended the King's Bench, until the term was nearly spent ; and finding that no bills were sent up by the grand jury against me, coimsel on my behalf moved the court that the recognizance entered into by me, and by my bail, should be vacated ; at the same time publicly declaring that if the motion was not agreed to, I was then in court for the purpose of surrendering myself in discharge of my bail. The recognizance was vacated accordingly. The abovementioned examinations having also charged Mr. Tandy with a similar offence, his recognizance was estreated, and a green wax process ordered against his bail. Had I been absent, 186 DEBUT IN PUBLIC LIFE OF MR. JOHN GIFFARD. my recognizance also would have been estreated ; but on my having appeared and declared my readiness to meet the charge, the government filed fresh informations, ex officio, and refused to proceed upon the former examinations, and denied to me all knowledge of the person by whom they were sworn. A motion on my behalf was then made to fix certain days for the trial of the information ex officio against me ; the Attorney-General agreed to the appointment of two days in the ensuing Trinity term, viz., the 3rd and 7th days of May. In the Easter vacation the Attor- ney-General served on me a notice that he would not proceed to trial on the days appointed, and would apply to the court to appoint other days, grounded on an affidavit to be filed, of which notice would be given. Nothing further was done upon this notice; no affidavit was filed, or motion made thereon; and the process necessary for the empanelling of juries on the days ap- pointed having been (after being issued) kept by Mr. Kemmis, the crown solicitor, instead of being delivered to the sheriff, a notice was made on my behalf that the necessary process should be forthwith delivered to the proper officer, in order that the trials might be had on the days appointed. My motion was opposed by a phalanx of crown lawyers, headed by the Attorney -General, who declared that there was an error' in the information for dis- tributing a seditious paper. I now offered to agree to an imme- diate amendment of the information, or that a fresh one should be filed and pleaded to instanter, or that I would release all errors. All these offers were severally refused, as the object of Govern- ment seemed to be to gain time ; and my friends strongly sus- pected that the motive for postponing the trial was the expectation of packed juries, through the means of the sheriffs for the ensuing year, Jenkins and Giffard, both notoriously under the influence, and even in the pay of the government. " I must further take notice of some underhand transactions against me. When the idea of renewing the Volunteer system was embraced by several of its zealous friends, certain persons calling themselves soldiers, came to my house with offers of their assistance ; but appearing to be sent as spies upon my conduct and expressions, I declined to see them, or have any concern with them. One of the name of Corbally came to my house, and pro- posed to teach my men-servants how to make up artillery ammu- nition. This offer having been declined, there was an attempt made to bribe this man to lodge examinations of some sort against me ; and he having resisted, it was thought that something might be forced from him by fear. Accordingly he was apprehended on a warrant of high treason, and was told by the person who took him, that he had but one way to save his life, which was to giffard's first services in packing juries. 187 swear against me. He was kept in jail for five months under this charge ; and while in confinement, they attempted to cajole him into the king's service. When by law he became entitled to be discharged, or have proceedings preferred against him, the charge of nigh treason was withdrawn, and an indictment found against him for a misdemeanour, to which he gave bail, and there- upon obtained his liberty. One Maguire, a Defender, was con- fined with Corbally, to whom I understood similar proposals were made, and the following circumstance warrants the belief. Cor- bally lodged examinations against Mr. Justice Graham for an attempt to make him perjure himself. Mr. Justice Graham im- mediately went to the jail, saw Maguire, and accepted his bail, which he had refused the day but one before, and neither he nor his bail has since been heard of. Graham stood his trial, and was acquitted ; and prosecuted Corbally, who was tried and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. At the time the attempt was made to bribe Corbally, the Speaker of the House of Commons asserted in company that Mr. Hamilton Rowan did not know the risk he ran, for they had evidence against him which would touch his life. And a noted partizan of administration said in the Four Courts, that a discovery was made that a gentleman and a man of some property had distributed money among the Defenders. This was also the charge against Napper Tandy. " At length", continues the Memoir, " I was brought to trial (January, 1794), Mr. Giffard being the acting sheriff for the cur- rent six months. On striking the jury, I objected to two of them, and offered to brincr proof that they had declared ' Ireland would never be quiet until Hamilton Rowan and Napper Tandy were hanged'. But this challenge was not allowed by the bench". On this trial Mr. Curran pronounced a speech which will for ever associate his name with that of Rowan. So splendid an exhibition of eloquence had never been witnessed in an Irish, nor perhaps in any other court of law. When Curran came to that part of the publication under trial, which proposed complete emancipation for persons of every religious persuasion, he ex- pressed himself as follows : — " Do you think it wise or humane, at this moment, to insult them (the Catholics) by sticking up in the pillory the man who dared to stand forth as their advocate? I put it to your oaths: do you think that a blessing of that kind, that a victory obtained by justice over bigotry and oppression, should have a stigma cast upon it by an ignominious sentence upon men bold and honest enough to propose that measure? to propose the redeeming of 188 rowan's trial, and curran's defence. religion from the abuses of the church, the reclaiming of three millions of men from bondage, and giving liberty to all who had a right to demand it ? Giving, I say, in the so much censured word of this paper, giving ' universal emancipation !' I speak in the spirit of British law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from British soil — which proclaims even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced — no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down — no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery— the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation". The concluding passage of this speech contains one of those fine scriptural allusions, of which Mr. Curran made such frequent and successful use : — " I will not relinquish the confidence that this day will be the period of his sufferings; and, however mercilessly he has been hitherto pursued, that your verdict will send him home to the arms of his family and the wishes of his country. But if (which Heaven forbid) it hath still been unfortunately determined, that, because he has not bent to power and authority, because he would not bow down before the golden calf and worship it, he is to be bound and cast into the furnace, — I do trust in God, that there is a redeeming spirit in the constitution which will be seen to walk with the sufferer through the flame, and to preserve him unhurt by the conflagration". Curran's graphic description of his client's character and conduct in private life was in keeping with the other portions of this unri- valled speech : — " Gentlemen, let me suggest another observation or two, if you still have any doubt as to the guilt or innocence of the defendant. Give me leave to suggest to you what circumstances you ought to consider, in order to found your verdict : you should consider the character of the person accused ; and in this your task is easy. I will venture to say there is not a man in this nation more known ROWANS TRIAL, AND CURRANS DEFENCE. 189 than the gentleman who is the subject of this prosecution, not only by the part he has taken in public concerns, and which he has taken in common with many, but still more so by that extra- ordinary sympathy for human affliction, which, I am sorry to think, he shares with so small a number. There is not a day that you hear the cries of your starving manufacturers in your streets, that you do not also see the advocate of their sufferings — that you do not see his honest and manly figure, with uncovered head, solicit- ing for their relief, searching the frozen heart of charity for every string that can be touched by compassion, and urging the force of every argument and every motive, save that which his modesty suppresses — the authority of his own generous example. Or if you see him not there, you may trace his steps to the abode of disease and famine and despair, the messenger of Heaven, bearing with him food, and medicine, and consolation. Are these the materials of which we suppose anarchy and public rapine to be formed? Is this the man on whom to fasten the abominable charge of goading on a frantic populace to mutiny and blood- shed? Is this the man likely to apostatize from every principle that can bind him to the state — his birth, his property, his educa- tion, his character, and his children ? Let me tell you, gentle- men of the jury, if you agree with his prosecutors in thinking there ought to be a sacrifice of such a man on such an occasion, and upon the credit of such evidence you are to convict him, — never did you, never can you, give a sentence consigning any man to public punishment with less danger to his person or to his fame: for where could the hireling be found to fling contumely or ingratitude at his head, whose private distresses he had not laboured to alleviate, or whose public condition he had not laboured to improve?" Giffard's skill in the packing of the jury was more potent in its influences and results than any power of eloquence of the Irish Demosthenes could possibly be over the minds of such men as GifTard had put in the jury box. The jury, in the course of ten minutes, brought in a verdict of guilhj. Lord Clonmel, after con- ferring with the other judges, said, " AVe will not pronounce judg- ment till four days". Mr. Rowan was then ordered into custody of the sheriff, " and was conveyed to the New Prison, attended by both the sheriffs and a formidable array of horse and foot guards "'. At the expiration of four days the prisoner was brought up for judgment. Before sentence was pronounced, Rowan, at his own request, was permitted to speak; and accordingly he addressed the court in language at once courteous and dignified. He ob- served that in some parts of the evidence, the court and the pro- secutor seemed to be mistaken, and that, had some of his friends, 190 THE JURY PACKING SYSTEM. Volunteers, who were present at the meeting, been summoned to give their testimony, the charge exhibited against him by Lyster would have fallen to the ground. As to the jury, he admitted that some of them were very honourable men, yet much pre- judiced, and his avowed enemies. He acknowledged his wish, and his attempt, to revive the Volunteers, for they had done honour to the nation. As to the sheriff, in the capacity of editor to a newspaper he had been his constant calumniator ; and now in the office of sheriff, he had empanelled a jury, by some of whom he (Rowan) had been prejudged. He avowed himself to be a United Irishman, and gloried in the name. He justified the terms universal emancipation and representative legisla- ture, in opposition to a meaning imputed to them by the counsel for the prosecution. " I did imagine", says he, " that the British constitution was a representative legislature ; that the people were represented by the House of Commons; that the Lords repre- sented the territory, the property ; and that the King represented the power of the state, the united force, the power of the whole placed in his hands for the benefit of the whole. As a person, as a man, I know nothing of the king ; I can know nothing of him except wielding the force of the nation ; and if that force should be misapplied and abused, it then remains for the people to decide in what hands it ought to be placed ".* In conclusion he says: — " I really feel myself in an awkward situation, thus declaring my sentiments, seeing intentions different from those both of the author and myself are fixed upon that paper, for the distribution of which I am persecuted. From my situation, however, having an independent fortune, easy in my circumstances, and with a large family, insurrection of any sort would surely be the last thing I could wish for. I ask no favour, but I submit myself to the clemency and justice of the court, and trust that, whatever may be their sentence, I shall bear it with becoming fortitude". The jury-packing system commenced as a regularly organized judicial proceeding on the occasion of this trial, as a justifiable stra- tagem in the circumstances of the country, when men, obnoxious to Orangeism, or the ascendency of a faction, making loyalty a pre- text for rapacity, were to be got rid of without any apparent out- rage to justice or humanity. The holy Bible began to be made an instrument of state vengeance, a weapon in the hands of men who would assassinate opponents under the forms of law and with * These sentiments are corroborated in the report of the trial, by quotations from "Locke on Government", sects. 151, 158, 226, and from "Blackstone's Public Wrongs", b. 4, c. 33, s. 5. THE JURY PACKING SYSTEM. 191 the appearance of the sacred sanction of oaths sworn on the Gos- pels of the Lord of Truth. The packing of Rowan's jury was performed by one Jenkins and the notable John Giffard,* who had been appointed sheriffs — the latter a few months only before the trial, the 1st of October, 1793, and apparently with a special view to the management of the jury-box. The packing of the jury was only one feature in the judicial arrangements made for the conviction of Rowan. The principal witness produced against him, George W. T. Lyster, alias Captain, alias Ensign Lyster, was a person whose evidence was unreliable in any case; but in this particular one it was utterly at variance with truth. The address to the Volunteers, which he swore had been distributed by Rowan, had been presented to the people at the meeting, and to Lyster, by a person of the name of Willis, a skinner, formerly a member of the Volunteer Association. In December, 1794, Mr. Lyster had an action taken against him in the King's Bench, by his father-in-law, Mr. H. Hatchell, for the recovery of moneys expended lor the support of his wife, whom he had deserted, and there was a verdict found for the plaintiff. And a little later we read of an Ensign Lyster, for con- duct unbecoming a gentleman and an officer, being disgraced and dismissed the army. This gentleman was too bad for the army, but he was good enough for the jury packers, and the Giffards and Jenkins and Fitzgibbons of that period. It would be now useless to refer to the foul means resorted to in Rowan's case to obtain a conviction, but that it shows the influence which the recourse to packed juries, and the employment of per- jured witnesses, had on the minds of the people, and especially of their leaders, at that period. So long as the fountains of justice were believed to be even moderately pure — so long as it was un- known that they were poisoned at their very source, there were some bounds to the popular discontent, The language of the liberals of that day might be bold, violent, and intemperate — not more so, nay, not so much so, as the language used with impunity * Giffard was a perfect specimen of the genus firebrand, which never fails to make an appearance on the stage of politics in all bad times of civil strife : truculent and ferocious, there was no invention of slander, however egregiously wicked and men- dacious, he was not capable of adopting as a public journalist, when an opponent of the Orange faction was to be disparaged : nor was there an act of baseness he would have shrunk from committing, in the exercise of those official functions with which he was invested in the reign of terror. His services were repaid with a post in the revenue, that refugium peccatorum of the subordinate state sinners of our reign of terror. He was dismissed, however, by Lord Hardwicke, from his place in the Custom House, but his merits were not allowed to remain unrewarded by the Duke of Richmond ; he was restored to his post, and his salary increased. 192 ROWAN IMPLICATED IN REV. W. JACKSON'S TREASONS. at political societies in the present day ; but they still had pri- vileges and advantages to lose by sedition, and the most valuable of all was the trial by jury, which from the time of Rowan's trial, in public opinion, had ceased to be a safeguard or a security to the people. The Society of United Irishmen, on the 7th February, 1794, presented an address to Mr. Rowan, then undergoing the sentence of imprisonment in Newgate, in which, after expressing the obli- gations the country was under to him for his bold assertion of its rights, and its sympathy with his sufferings in its cause, the so- ciety observed: "Although corruption has been leagued with falsehood to vilify this society, we have reposed in honest con- fidence on the consoling reflection, that we should at all times find an impregnable barrier in 'the trial by jury', wherein cha- racter and intention should be regarded as unerring guides to justice. But while we have been earnestly endeavouring to estab- lish the constitutional rights of our country, we suddenly find ourselves at a loss for this first and last stake of a free people; for the trial by jury loses its whole value when the sheriff or panel is under the influence of interest, prejudice, or delusion, and that battery which liberty and wisdom united to construct for the security of the people, is turned against them. However, in defiance of that system of proscription, which is no longer con- fined to a particular persuasion, but which visits with vengeance every effort in the cause of freedom, we trust you are assured of our inflexible determination to pursue the great object of our Association — an equal and impartial representation of the people in Parliament — an object fromwhich.no chance or change, no persecution, no oppression shall deter us". Rowan had been nearly two months in Newgate when an emissary of the French Government, the Rev. William Jackson, arrived in Ireland, accompanied by his friend Cockayne, a London solicitor, in the beginning of April, 1 794. Mr. Leonard M'Nally, the barrister, the "friend" of Cockayne, through another friend, Mr. Lewines, had got the French emissary and his companion, the spy and informer of Mr. Pitt, introduced to Rowan, Tone, and Dr. Reynolds. Rowan fell at once and without any apparent misgiving into the snare. Evidence was obtained against him of complicity with Jackson " sufficient to hang him". Jackson, all- unconscious as he was of the part he was performing, having been allowed to do the work of Cockayne and his employer, Mr. Pitt, was arrested the latter end of April, 1794. " The same evening", says Rowan in his Memoirs, " Cockayne came to me in Newgate, lamenting his friend's indiscretion, which he said was the sole cause of the discovery, and begged of me, if ROWANS ESCAPE FROM NEWGATE. 193 possible, to procure his admission to speak to Jackson. At this time nothing had transpired of my being concerned in the business, and being on good terms with the under-jailer, I procured a pro- mise, that as soon as the sentry should be withdrawn from Jack- son's room, he would admit Cockayne and me into it. At this interview Cockayne gave us a long account of his examination before the privy council; he said that he had acknowledged having written the direction of the letter by the order of Jackson, but knew nothing of the contents ; that he had been interrogated whether the papers were not in my handwriting ; but he denied ever having seen me write ; that the council seemed very invete- rate against me ; and he added that, having refused to sign his examination, he was threatened with Newgate, but had been given three days to consider ; that his solitary evidence would not be legal, as two witnesses were necessary to prove high treason, and he assured us, if we were true to each other, we were per- fectly safe. I said I thought it possible I might make my escape. I asked him whether it would injure Jackson's defence, should I succeed. He said it could not. I said no more on that head. " Messrs. Emmet, Tone, and Dowling had called on me the day I expected to have been brought before the privy council, and it was determined I should tell the whole of the transaction without concealment, except of names of individuals. I men- tioned to them my plan of escape, which I had commenced, after Jackson's arrest, in the Fives Court, with Mr. Do well, jun., the under-jailer". In the meantime Dr. Reynolds, being duly apprised of his danger, fled the country and escaped to America. Rowan also, being duly apprised of the evidences of treason that existed in the hands of government against him, was afforded an opportunity of effecting his escape from prison and from Ireland. It is stated, and I believe with truth, that more than one member of the Privy Council was in the habit of communicating secrets of great importance to the members of the Directory of the United Irish- men. The fact of the secrets of government, on many important occasions, having been communicated to the Directory, has been distinctly stated to me by Arthur O'Connor and Dr. M'Neven. On the 1st of May, Rowan prevailed on two subordinate officials of the jailer of Newgate, to allow him to go to his house in Dominick Street for the avowed purpose of srgning certain legal documents, accompanied by one of the above mentioned prison officials, the younger M'Dowell undertaking to return when this legal business had been transacted. An offer of £100 for this service was made by Rowan. The jailer had no knowledge at this time of Rowan being implicated in the charges of high trea- ii. 14 194 ROWAN'S ESCAPE FROM NEWGATE. son that had been brought against J ackson, but conceived, as Mr. Rowan's confinement was only on a charge for libel, that there was no danger of his meditating an escape. On reaching his house, Rowan, while apparently waiting the arrival of his man of business, proffered the £100 he had promised ; and to use his own words — " Young M'Dowell at first refused the money ; he thrust back the purse, saying he did not do it for gain ; but on his (Rowan) remonstrating, he relented, and consented to put the money in his pocket". Then on pretence of having a few words to say in private to Mrs. Rowan, he obtained permission to retire into the back drawing-room. At the jailer's request the folding- door was left open, and Mr. Rowan lost no time in availing him- self of the advantage so opportunely afforded. His excellent lady had contrived the means of escape : by a rope he descended from the window into the back yard, and in the stable found a horse ready saddled. Disguising himself in a peasant's great coat, he proceeded to the residence of his attorney, Mr. Dowling, who was in the secret of his design. Unfortunately, that gentleman's house was filled with guests, and by his advice Mr. Rowan pro- ceeded to the top of Sackville Street, opposite the Rotundo, where he continued to walk up and down, in the most anxious state of suspense, for an hour and a half. At length his friend appeared, and after a short conference, Mr. Rowan proceeded to the house of Mr. Sweetman, near Baldoyle, where he continued for a few days. The two M'Dowells, father and son, subordi- nates of Mr. Gregg, the head-jailer of Newgate, who had been privy to the escape of Rowan on the evening of the 1st of May, 1794, were arraigned the 10th of July following on this serious charge. Gregg, the head-jailer, deposed that it was only at eight o'clock on the morning of the 2nd of May, when he went round the prison, that he discovered Mr. Rowan had escaped. That he questioned the M'Dowells, the turnkeys of that part of the prison, and was informed that Mr. R. had accompanied Mrs. Rowan to the door of the prison, who had been there to visit him, " and in handing Mrs. Rowan to her carriage, rushed through the crowd and made his escape". Sheriff Jenkin deposed, that the elder M'Dowell had admitted to him his wife had let out Mr. Rowan, and that on passing the door he rushed down the steps and made his escape. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty against both traversers. Immediately after Mr. Rowan's escape, the following proclama- tion was published by government. REWARD FOR ROWAN S APPREHENSION. 195 "BY THE LORD LIEUTENANT AND COUNCIL OF IRELAND. a proclamation. " Westmoreland. " Whereas Archibald Hamilton Rowan, late of RathcofFey, in the county of Kildare, Esq., was, in the last Hilary Term, com- mitted to the jail of Newgate, in the city of Dublin, under a sen- tence of the Court of Queen's Bench of imprisonment for two years, for publishing a seditious libel. " And whereas the said Archibald Hamilton Rowan has lately been charged with high treason : and whereas we have received information on oath, that the said Archibald Hamilton Rowan did, on the night of Thursday, the 1st day of May instant, make his escape from said jail. " Now we, the Lord Lieutenant and Council, being determined to bring the said Archibald Hamilton Rowan to condign punish- ment, do hereby offer a reward of One Thousand Pounds to any person or persons, who shall discover and apprehend the said Archibald Hamilton Rowan, wherever he may be found, or to so discover the said Archibald Hamilton Rowan as that he may be apprehended and committed to prison. " And we do hereby strictly charge and command all justices of the peace, mayors, sheriffs, bailiffs, constables, and all other his Majesty's loving subjects, to use their utmost diligence in apprehending the said Archibald Hamilton Rowan. M Given at the Council Chamber in Dublin, the 2nd May, 1794. R. Dublin, Chas. Cashel, Clanricarde, Shannon, Bective, Glandore, Carhampton, Mount-Norris, Clonmell, Ely, Dillon, G. S. Kildare, Muskerry, Carleton, B. Yelverton, H. Cavendish, H. Langrishe, Theo. Jones. W. Cunninghame, J. Cuff, J. M. Mason, A. Wolfe, J. Fitzgerald. " God save the King". A very important document in MS., having the autograph sig- nature of the widow of Mr. Sweetman, by whose cooperation the escape of Rowan to France was effected, has been placed in my hands by Mr. Jackson ; and to that authentic narrative of Mrs. Sweetman I refer for all the particulars of that occurrence. 196 MRS. SWEETMAK'S NARRATIVE " PARTICULARS OF THE ESCAPE OF A. H. ROWAN, ESQ., FROM THE HOUSE OF ROBERT SWEETMAN, OF SUTTON, COUNTY DUBLIN. " On the 1st of May, 1794, my late husband, Robert Sweetman, retired to rest at an early hour. About one o'clock, the maid- servant was awoke by loud rapping at the hall-door ; she inquired who was there, and was answered by a person who said he wanted to see Mr. Sweetman. She said he was in bed, and could not be disturbed ; after several applications, she was prevailed upon to tell her master that a person wished to see him. He was much displeased at being annoyed at such an hour, and told her to tell the person that he would not see any one at such an hour, and to call in the morning. " The maid was prevailed upon a third time to tell her master that the business of the applicant was of great importance, and that he had a letter that should be delivered to Mr. S. in person. He consented, and put on a part of his clothes ; opening the hall-door, he was greatly surprised at the appearance of his visitor ; he was disguised in a fisherman's dress, and Mr. S. often told me that he looked like a robber. Mr. Rowan told him who he was, as also his escape from prison, and that he threw himself on his mercy. Mr. S. brought him up stairs. Mr. Rowan was greatly excited; after a while, he told Mr. S. of his desire to quit the country, and that he would give the half of what he was possessed of for a boat. Mr. S., the following morning, set off for Rush, Skerries, and Balbriggan, to procure, if possible, a boat ; he offered £500 for any one to con- vey a gentleman who was embarrassed to any part of France. No one could be found to run the risk for double the amount. " When Mr. S. returned unsuccessful, Mr. R. was much de- jected, not knowing what to do; he occupied a small room called the end room, with a case of pistols and razors on the dressing table, fully determined, in case he was discovered, to destroy himself. Mr. S. told him he had a pleasure boat, if he would risk his life in so small a boat. ' Put me in a cockle- shell', he said, ' if it would be the means of my escape'. " There was a difficulty in procuring trusty men ; after a deal of anxiety, he procured three staunch fellows, two Sheridans, brothers, and a third, of the name of Murray. The men were promised great remuneration for their arduous undertaking. Mr. S. went to Dublin to purchase maps, sea store, etc. At the time he was purchasing the maps at M'Auley and Hughes's, on George's Quay, the captain of one of his Majesty's revenue cruisers came to the same shop to renew his maps, and told Mr. OF THE ESCAPE OF ROWAN. 197 S. he had orders from government to have a look out for Ha- milton Rowan, not at all suspecting that Mr. S. was providing for the escape of the fugitive. M It took four days to provide everything requisite for the voyage. From this period Mr. S. was a marked man. He was taken prisoner, and accused of keeping fire-arms ; his house was much annoyed at the time Lord Edward Fitzgerald was hiding. When Mr. Rowan was leaving Sutton, he gave Mr. S. a letter for Mrs. R., begging of her to provide for the families of the men employed to navigate the boat; she never complied with his request. All matters being ready, Mr. Rowan left Sutton on the 4th of May, 1794, at four o'clock in the morning. Pre- vious to his departure, he went on his knees in the drawing-room to beg that Almighty God would preserve his deliverer from all harm, and that a blessing might descend upon him and his pos- terity ; and that if he ever returned to his native land, he should have the half of what he was worth. This scene, Mr. S. told me, was very affecting. " The boat got under weigh with a fair wind, until off the Saltees it came on to blow hard, when she was obliged to bear up from w T hence she started. The following morning under weigh again, and crossing the Bay of Dublin, a revenue cutter ran alongside, throwing handbills into the boat, offering a reward of £1,000 lor Hamilton Rowan. The wind continued fair, and when off Wexford, the men found a leisure moment to read the handbills. Mr. Rowan, perceiving with w T hat attention they read them, evidently saw that he was discovered. He left the cabin, and told the men that he was the person described in the handbills, and that he depended on their generosity as Irishmen not to molest him. They threw the handbills overboard, and told him to make himself perfectly easy, as they would not de- ceive him.* " The next memorable event was their having passed through the British fleet in a fog, in the Bay of Biscay. Mr. Rowan was safely landed in the night. The crew, having escaped unnoticed, were half way home, when taken by a French privateer, and * The late Mr. Sheil, referring to this occurrence, observes: — "They had reached the mid channel, when a situation occurred, equalling in dramatic interest the celebrated Coesarem velds of antiquity. It would certainly make a fine subject for a picture". Rowan states, in his Autobiography, the affair took place on shore, not at sea, as many imagined. While staying at Sweetman's, he met his host one day returning from Dublin, and shortly after they were joined by the two Sheri- dans, one of whom, taking out of his pocket one of the proclamations, showed it to Mr. Sweetman, and said: "Is it Mr. Hamilton Rowan we are to take to France?" "Yes", replied Mr. Sweetman, "and here he is". Immediately the elder brother said : " Never mind it, by , we will land him safe". t 198 MRS. sweetman's narrative, etc. the boat was burnt. The men were put into prison, where they remained for twelve months ; they made their escape to America, and arrived once more in their native land. During their ab- sence, Mr. S. had to support their families, for which he never received compensation. " The men made application to Mrs. Rowan, but she declined all intercourse with them. Mr. Rowan received his pardon, and returned to Ireland one year after the death of Mr. S. I called on him, and he received me very kindly; he said he was sorry that he could not at the present time do anything for my family. I mentioned that my visit was not for anything gratui- tous, but for compensation for the loss of the boat. He seemed much astonished at my application, and said that it was an act of kindness on the part of Mr. S., and that he had no idea of paying the demand (although previous to his departure he pro- mised that Mr. S. should have the half of what he was worth). At last he desired me to furnish a bill, which I did for £100 only: the boat was worth three hundred. He said £50 was quite sufficient. I consulted several eminent men of the day, who advised me not to take less than £100. He still refused, and did not pay until I had very reluctantly proceeded against him. " Many years after, Mr. Rowan paid me a visit at Sutton, on his way to Mr. Evans of Portrane. He remained several minutes at the hall-door offering up pious ejaculations for the preserver of his life. " I was at first determined to be cool to him ; after a little I changed my mind, and asked him to walk in. He eat something, and took a glass of grog. I never saw him afterwards. " Anne Sweetman". The biographer of Mr. Rowan, in reference to the remunera- tion of the boatmen, observes: — " Mr. Rowan's generosity, even to those men who were instru- mental in effecting his escape to France, could not, with justice to his family, and a thousand demands besides, be without a limit. He did not possess the purse of Fortunatus, which could never be exhausted. It appears from a preceding part of this memoir, that he felt a deep interest in the welfare of his little crew ; that while in France he exerted all his influence in their behalf, and suc- ceeded in procuring for them a profitable employment in Brest. On their return to Ireland, they received sums of money repeat- edly, to what amount is not divulged; but it would be inconsis- tent with the whole of Rowans character and conduct to suppose I COMPLAINTS OF BOATMEN — PROPOSED SUBSCRIPTION. 199 that it was not considerable.* Notwithstanding, it was affirmed by some who knew nothing of the matter, but who could not forego the pleasure of inventing and propagating an evil report, that they had received no requital. In a letter from Dublin to Mrs. Rowan, at Rathcoffey, dated October 15, 1822, Mr. Rowan gives a striking instance of such reports, accompanied with their refutation. He writes: — " Between ten and eleven last night, Captain Fottrell called on me. After apologizing for the intrusion, he said he had risen from a supper table where it was proposed to advertise for a sub- scription for the family of Murray, who, you might have seen, lost his life the other night in assisting some vessel, as captain of the life boat at Clontarf. He said that I was spoken of very harshly, as having never given him or the sailors who had saved me any compensation, and that it was proposed to allude strongly to that circumstance in the advertisement. He added that he could not conceive the fact to be so, and begged them to desist, for that he would go immediately to me, though he did not know me, to inform himself. I, of course, told him all I knew of Mur- ray; and, as far as I could recollect, enumerated the different sums he had received, and that I had entries in my agent's account of sums given to the men. He seemed rejoiced that he could contradict the report, and retired. Now, as to the subscription, when it is set on foot, I think I shall send £5, without any other signature than from a person who has been falsely calumniated, or something to that purpose ". With respect to the preceding statements, I am sorry to have to say, that the brave and faithful poor men who saved the life of Mr. Rowan, were, for a considerable time after their return to Ireland, left very inadequately recompensed for their services to Mr. Rowan and their sufferings on his account ; and it was only after Rowan's return that any adequate sense of the magnitude of the services they had rendered to that gentleman was mani- fested. Rowan mentions a third person, whose name was Murphy, who was one of the party who manned the boat ; but Rowan was mis- taken about the name, which was Murray, and not Murphy. From the son of this poor fisherman, who risked his life and liberty for Rowan in 1794, and who lost all he possessed in conse- quence of the part he took in effecting the escape, I had a com- * "Edward Clibborn, Esq., has assured the author that he has assisted Rowan, with whom he was intimate, in a search that proved successful, to discover either a daughter or grand-daughter of one of his sailors, and that he not only relieved her from a present embarassment, but put her in the way to earn a respectable livelihood". — Note to above paper in the Memoir of Rowan. 200 STATEMENT OF ONE OF THE BOATMEN munication in 1853, stating the result of an application he had then recently made through his son to a member of Mr. Rowan's family for some small assistance ; and he states that his written application was returned to him with a brief reply to this effect — that the person applied to knew nothing of the transaction referred to by him, and was not born at the time, nor for nearly twenty years posterior to it. He might have replied to that statement, that in all human probability the person applied to would never have been born, had it not been for the part his father had taken in the preservation of Mr. Rowan. STATEMENT TO R. R. M. OF THE SON OF JAMES MURRAY, ONE OF THE BOATMEN WHO ACCOMPANIED MR. ROWAN TO FRANCE. My father, James Murray, was one of the three boatmen who brought Mr. Hamilton Rowan to France in a boat or smack be- longing to Mr. Sweetman of Sutton, near Howth, in the month of May, 1794. My father belonged to Clontarf ; the other two men were bro- thers, named Denis and Christopher Sherwin or Shewan [com- monly known as Sheridan.] They belonged to Donabate or Portrane, near Rush. I recollect my father telling me that when they left Mr. Rowan at Brest, in France, they put the little smack about, to return home, but were chased by a French cutter and taken. They were brought ashore and put in prison, until Mr. Rowan procured a change of their condition. They were removed to comfortable quarters, and the authorities offered them their liberty if they would go under French pay. This, I believe, they declined. They were allowed great privileges, and were not put under very strict surveillance. I do not recollect my father telling me how long they were in this state ; but that there was an American vessel in the harbour, bound for Elsinore in Denmark. They found an opportunity, and got on board this vessel, and landed safe in Elsinore, from whence, in the course of some short time, they got home. My father had command of the Clontarf life-boat, and went with his crew on the 13th October, 1822, to save a vessel in dis- tress, near the north Dublin bar, on which day he lost his life, as the life-boat was split, and foundered. I went the next day or two to acquaint Mr. Rowan, who kindly assisted me with money to bury him. Thomas Murray, November, 1853. 8 Upper Bridge Street. WHO AIDED ROWAN 6 ESCAPE. 201 In reference to this subject, I have to observe that in a pub- lished controversy between Mr. Rowan and an agent of his of the name of Hamilton, I find in a pamphlet written by the latter gen- tleman, an account of a sum of money to the boatmen who con- veyed Mr. Rowan to France in 1794, amounting to £25, paid in the year 1800. In reply to inquiries of mine recently addressed to Thomas Murray, the son of the fisherman above referred to, respecting a statement made in Dr. Drummond's biography, on the authority of Mr. Clibborn, that search had been made successfully, by Rowan's orders, for a daughter or a grand-daughter of James Murray, soon after his decease, with the view of rendering his family some assistance, the following statement was addressed to me by Thomas Murray, the son of the deceased fisherman, the loth July, 1857:— My father was superannuated by the board for preserving and improving the port of Dublin, after many years' service as a sea pilot. They also gave hirn command of the Contarf life boat. He went, on the 13th October, 1822, with his life boat's crew, to aid a bri^ which sot stranded at the back of the North Bull. He there lost his life, being old and infirm, and not being able to exert himself; the life boat was split from the heavy surge of the sea, the crew of which saved themselves, being young and ac- tive, by getting into the vessel in distress. My father's body was not found until the Tuesday following (the 13th was on Sunday), that was the 15th. I went to Mr. Rowan on the 16th (the next day) ; I had a note written for him ; as soon as he saw me, he told me that he had seen an account of my father's death in the news- paper, — he gave me £1 as a help for his interment. I never heard any mention of a subscription being raised, and am quite sure that such was not the case, neither did any relative of my father's ever receive any remuneration from Mr. Rowan, or any other gentleman acting for hirn, after my father's decease. Shortly after my father's death, a gentleman of the commis- sariat department (Captain Molassy), then living in Clontarf, sent for me, and told me to go and see if either of the Sheridans were still Hying) and if so, to get an accurate account from him of the manner in which they were remunerated by Mr. Rowan. I ac- cordingly went to Swords on the following Sunday, and there met with the surviving brother, I forget now whether it was Denis or Christopher. I got a sheet of paper and put down as he told me. He stated that they (the three boatmen) got about £100 each 202 STATEMENT OF ONE OF THE BOATMEN, ETC. from Mr. Rowan in different sums at different periods, — that they got three letters from Mr. Rowan, written by him during their passage from Sutton (Howth) to the beach of Brest (France). One of those letters was for the three men conjointly, stating that he would give them £20 a year each while they lived ; the other two letters were for Mrs. Rowan : the three letters were taken along with themselves by the French cutter, and they never heard of them afterwards. It was Captain Molassy's intention to sue for the money ; but he could do nothing for want of the captured letter. Thomas Murray, 17th July, 1857. 140 Francis Street. Rowan no sooner landed in France, at the mouth of a small bay called Roscoff, under the Port of St. Paul de Leon, than he was seized and placed in durance vile, having escaped a prison in his own country to become a prisoner of state of the Comite de Salut Publique at Roscoff. The next day he was ordered to be sent to Brest, in the safe-keeping of a garde d'honneur. At Brest he was imprisoned in the military hospital, where he was looked on as an English spy ; but after a short detention he was liberated, and directed to proceed to Paris and report himself to the Comite de Salut Public of the capital. On his arrival he proceeded to the Committee, and was introduced to Robespierre, who received him with civility, and ordered him to be furnished with every- thing he required at the expense of the nation. Rowan had ample opportunities of witnessing the horrors of the Reign of Terror. These, however, ceased to a great extent with the downfall and death of Robespierre, " though in two days after the execution of Robespierre", says Rowan, " the whole commune of Paris, consisting of about sixty persons, were guillotined in less than one hour and a half in the Place de la Revolution ; and though I was standing a hundred paces from the place of execu- tion, the blood of the victims streamed under my feet. " Being much discontented", he says, " with the distracted state of Paris, where they were too busy with their own intestine divisions to think of assisting Ireland, or of any thing beneficial to others, after spending almost a year there, I solicited, and with some difficulty obtained, through the assistance of an Irish Roman Catholic of the name of Madget, who was employed in some of the offices of the Republic, passports to Havre, in order to embark for the United States of North America, under the assumed name of Thompson". He accordingly determined to proceed to Rouen, embarked in a small boat on the 17th of April, 1795, and got down the HORRORS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 203 river as far as the Port Royal Bridge, when a sans culotte gentle- man noticed him, and denounced him to the people as "a deputy who was escaping with the money of the nation 1 '. This man pro- cured a musket, and repeatedly threatened to shoot the supposed deputy whenever the boat came within range of him on that side of the quay along which he followed the fugitive. "At length", says Rowan, " 1 came to the landing-place at the gate of Chaillot, when this man, who was evidently intoxicated, in his haste to seize me, stepped upon the gunwale of the little boat, and at the same time swamped it and threw himself into the water. I leaped out, and desired to be conducted to the guard at the barrier of Passy. By this time some hundred persons were collected, and the back ranks not knowing exactly what was going on in the front, began the usual cry of l A la lanterne!' The officer on guard came up from the gate ; I showed him my pass- ports, and particularly my certificates of having mounted all my guards in my section. He said my papers were all ' en regie, and that I might proceed ; but the mob still insisted that I was carry- ing off lor de la nation, and I requested the officer, who was drawing off his guard, to allow me to take my small baggage to the guard-room, and open it there for the satisfaction of the people ; but he peremptorily refused, and marched ofF, saying, * ce rietoit pas soji affaire . At length one from among them pro- posed to take me before the mayor of Passy, whither I proceeded, conducted by my first friend, who still held me, and followed by the crowd. "We found the mayor at home. My conductor pushed into his . room. I was somewhat assured as to his character, by his saying to this fellow, ' Ote ton bonnet; ne vois tu pas qui je suis de- couvertV The man obeyed, and then stated his suspicions of my story, one of which was, the improbability of intending to row to Havre, and yet wearing gloves at setting out for so long a distance. I again produced my papers to the mayor ; they were reexamined, and it was declared that every thing was en regie, and that they should permit me to continue my voyage. At the same time the mayor complimented my conductors for their zeal and attention to the safety of the republic. My persecutors, in some little dudgeon, now left me, while the crowd returned with me to the water side. Here, to my inexpressible surprise, I found everything in my boat exactly as I had left it — some bottles of wine, a little silver cup, my necessaire, and a gold-headed cane, all safe, though at the mercy of hundreds, who, w T hile they would, without ceremony, have tucked me up to the lamp-post, w T ould not touch an article of my property".* * "Autobiography of A. II. Rowan", p. 243. 204 ROWAN PROCEEDS TO AMERICA. Rowan arrived in safety in Rouen, where he had previously passed nearly two years, 1772 and 1773 ; and after spending a few days, proceeded by land to Havre, where he embarked for America the beginning of June, 1795. The 16 th of July, Rowan was estab- lished at a boarding-house in Philadelphia, where several members of Congress boarded and lodged, among them the elder Adams and Jackson, subsequently President of the United States. Having determined on retiring into some country situation, he fixed on Wilmington, in the state of Delaware, about thirty miles from Philadelphia. From the latter city he addressed his wife, August 1, 1795, and refers to his old friend Tone as then residing at Princetown. " Mr. Tone has bought an hundred acres of ground. The situ- ation is pleasant, and within two or three miles of Princetown, where there is a college and some good society. Tandy arrived here about a fortnight or three weeks since ; he has got a lodging in the same house with me, and of course we mess together ; but I need not tell you that his society does not make up for what I have lost, never perhaps to regain". " September 11. — Tone seems determined to return, and Rey- nolds wishes it sincerely, but amuses himself with the politics of America, and is as busy, as sincere, and as zealous as he was in Kilmainham". September 19, 1795, in a letter to her husband, Mrs. Rowan thus refers to one of the persons above mentioned: — " The arch- deceiver, T , has quit the country, and it is to be feared he may go where you are. I think it my duty to say that, if this should be the case, you ought to avoid all connection with him ; and it is as well to say at once what is the fact — his friend cannot be mine; his wicked principles and artful manners have destroyed us. There let a subject which I detest end". . . . This discreet and good woman again recurred to the same sub- ject, but in terms somewhat more subdued, and evidently in igno- rance of the fact, that in the interval between her former and pre- sent letter, Tone's communications with the French government had been opened through the good offices of Hamilton Rowan. '* October 27. — I trust in Heaven we shall yet be happy with each other. As to the confiscation of our property, it cannot take place before next month at the very soonest, and on that subject my hopes are very good ; and I do declare that, at this very mo- ment, the greatest uneasiness and dread I feel are, lest you should come to Europe, or endanger yourself in some other way ; so if you stay quietly where you are, and do not meddle with politics, which I am sure you will not, all will be well, and the moment anything is determined on you shall know it. In my idea, you RENEWED ACQUAINTANCE WITH TONE. 205 would be happier with Priestly than where you are ; Reynolds and Tone are not exactly the people you ought to make your constant companions, though there is no reason for absolutely shunning even Tone; however, you ought to be aware of him, and I hope he will not again fall in your way" Rowan was obliged, in deference to his friends in Ireland, who were interfering for him, and in compliment to Mrs. Rowan's opinions, to write home letters which could be shown to persons in authority. Thus we find him in February, 1796, apologizing in a letter to Mrs. Rowan for his political sentiments: — " As to my sentiments", says he, " they have been always nearly the same, as far as I can remember. The fact is, that lrom education and principle, I was led to assert and attempt to support a reform of parliament, and equal liberty to all religious sects. Association may have, and certainly did lead me more into an active life than I wished, was fit for, or will ever, in any case on this side of eternity, fall into again". But we find him in another letter of his from Wilmington, of the same period (February 20, 179(5), giving expression to sentiments which w r ere entertained by him, and were part and parcel of his noble, generous, and chivalrous nature ; and they might be com- mended especially to the consideration and attentive perusal of another exile of a later period — John Mitchell. " Mr. Millar, who was introduced to me by Muir, in Scotland, as a man of principle, is concerned with a Scottish company, who have made a large purchase of lands here, and would be glad to induce some persons who are known' to be among the first settlers. Mr. Russell also has lands in another part of America; but with neither have 1 made any agreement. Now, let me assure you « that 1 am acting quite by myself, and contrary to advice, for one wants me to remain in Philadelphia, and another, to buy a small farm in a settled country ; but I will do neither : I will go to the woods; but I will not kill Indians nor keep slaves. Good God! if you heard some of the Georgians, or the Kentucky people, talk- ing of killing the natives ! Cortes, and all that followed him, were not more sanguinary in the South, than they would be in North America" In one of his letters Rowan refers to the generous conduct of two celebrated lords, for the protection which his family expe- rienced after his escape: 11 As to the ex officio prosecution under which I had been previously sentenced to two years' impri- sonment in Newgate, the being in custody eventually saved my life, and my wife's 4 prudent conduct not only enabled her to pay the fine of £500 which had been laid on me, but also facilitated my return to Ireland. I am convinced that no modification in the cir- 206 lord clare's efforts in behalf of rowan. cumstances of my civil existence would have taken place if Lord Castlereagh had opposed it. But I am bound in gratitude to the memory of Lord Clare to say, that I am equally certain that my family retained my property after my outlawry, and that I owe my pardon after his decease, to his previous interference in my behalf. However, although he did not afford me any previous assistance, Lord Castlereagh was very attentive to my different applications to him during two years nearly that I remained in London, while the scruples of the Lord Chancellor delayed the ratification of my pardon. In this interval he offered to place one of my sons in the college of Mario w, and gave him a commission in the Company's service, which though not accepted, ought not to be forgotten". " The year after my arrival in America", says Rowan, " but before I had made any essay towards independence, I received a letter (of which the following is an extract) from a most valued and sincere friend in Ireland, Richard Griffith, Esq., though of very different political sentiments, advising me to petition govern- ment for a pardon ; and he sent me a sketch of such a petition as he thought would restore me with honour to my friends and country, but which I could not subscribe". mr. Griffith's sketch of a petition for mr. r. " To the King's Most Excellent Majesty, the Humble Petition of Archibald Hamilton Rowan. " May it please your Majesty, "Misguided by false lights, and hurried away by pre- sumptuous self-sufficiency, your petitioner dared for a moment to entertain the wild idea of endeavouring, by aid of your Majesty's enemies, to reform what he deemed the grievances of his native country; but by the intervention of Divine Providence the scheme of destruction was frustrated, and your petitioner, abashed and confounded, fled from the justice of that country. Fortu- nately for your petitioner, he took refuge with a nation whose maxims of liberty, and whose boldness in overturning every order in society, he had been taught to admire and revere. Your peti- tioner remained a year in Paris during the reign of Robespierre, and was in much less than half that time fully convinced by the most incontrovertible evidence, produced by each succeeding day's experience, that no evils in government can equal in severity and duration the calamities necessarily attendant on call- ing into action the power of the mob ; a truth which, until it rowan's refusal to retract his opinions. 207 was proved by the concurring testimony of facts passing before his eyes, your petitioner was as far from believing as he is now from doubting. Disgusted by the scenes of carnage which hourly occupied the public attention during his stay at Paris, your petitioner at length obtained permission (after repeated en- treaty) to leave a country doomed to misery by the same pre- sumptuous confidence in false philosophy which had misguided your petitioner. Your petitioner having proceeded to America, and having had full time to reflect on the folly and turpitude of his conduct, is strongly impressed with the desire of making the only atonement in his power to his injured country, by a public confession of his guilt. " He therefore humbly implores your Majesty graciously to accept the deep contrition of a heart truly penitent for past errors, and fraught with the warmest attachment to the British constitu- tion and to your Majesty's person and government. " And your petitioner, as in duty bound, will pray". MR. ROWAN'S ANSWER RESPECTING THE FOREGOING PETITION, THROUGH MRS. ROWAN. " December, 1796. 11 One of the enclosures which I have received by Mr. Reilly makes it necessary lor me to trouble you with this letter. Expecting that I should comply with the advice of Mr. Griffith, you may neglect interesting your friends in your behalf. I must, therefore, be explicit ; and as all the late news tend to peace, I cannot be suspected of secret hopes. I never will sign any. peti- tion or declaration in favour of the British constitution in Ireland, which embraces such flagrant abuses as I have witnessed, and of which I have been in some measure the victim ; yet this seems requisite to be an integral part of any application to be made in my favour. I would have promised a perfect quiescence under the present government, and should have been sincerely grateful to those who had it in their power to crush my family through me, yet forbore. But my opinions were not hastily adopted ; they were neither the result of pride, of ambition, nor of vanity ; they were the result of the most mature reflection of which I was capable ; they cannot alter ; and though I might desist from act- ing on them, I never will disown" them. If such conduct be ex- pected from me, that I may be enabled to make over my fortune to you and to the children, you should consult your friends upon what mode would be the best for you to pursue, for I am deter- mined". 208 PERMISSION TO PROCEED TO HAMBURGH. Mrs. Rowan, finding that the hope of a free pardon at that time must be abandoned, she used all the interest in her power to procure permission for her husband to quit America, and to go to any country not at war with Great Britain. Mr. Griffith warmly seconded her efforts, by writing to the Lord Chancellor, and calling on him repeatedly to urge her suit. To the Chancel- lor's honour be it recorded, that he always evinced a cordial sym- pathy in the sufferings of Mrs. Rowan and her family. At length, in September, 1799, she received the following letter from Lord Castlereagh, with whom Mr. Rowan's father was well ac- quainted : — LETTER FROM LORD CASTLEREAGH TO MRS. H. ROWAN. "Dublin Castle, 9th September, 1799. " Madam, " My Lord Lieutenant having, by desire of the Lord Chan- cellor, stated to his Grace the Duke of Portland, that Mr. Hamil- ton Rowan was anxious to proceed to Denmark from America, but that he was afraid he might be apprehended in his passage by one of his Majesty's cruisers, I am directed to acquaint you that, in consequence of the favourable report made by the Lord Chan- cellor of Mr. Rowan's conduct since he resided in America, he will be secured (as far as his Majesty's government is concerned) in the refuge which may be granted to him in Denmark or else- where, as long as he continues to demean himself in such a man- ner as not to give offence. " I have the honour to be, Madam, " Your most obedient servant, " Castlereagh". At last it was determined that Rowan should go to Hamburgh ; and accordingly he lost no time in making preparation for his departure; and sailed for Europe in July, 1800. After a short stay in Hamburgh, where he found himself incommoded a good deal with "fools and knaves", he proceeded to Alcona, where there were many English and Irish residents and French emi- grants of high rank. There he rented and furnished a hand- some house. Having letters of introduction to many opulent merchants, both German and English, he soon found himself with his family in the midst of a pleasant society. From Sir G. Rombald, who succeeded Sir James Crawford at Hamburgh, he received every mark of kind and polite attention. Here he re- mained till the year 1803; and in the interval various exertions were made by his friends to procure his pardon. rowan's memorial to the king. 209 Referring to this subject in his memoir he says: — " As I rejected the petition which I could not sign, I will now insert a copy of one which I transmitted to his Majesty in July, 1802:— " ' May it please your Majesty, " 4 The humane protection afforded under your Majesty's government to your petitioners wife and family, while crimes were imputed to him which might have rendered him liable to the severest penalties of the law, when he had taken refuge among your Majesty's enemies, has made an indelible impression on his mind. He could not avoid comparing, with the strongest feelings of gratitude, the situation of his dearest connections with the for- lorn state which the families of emigrants experienced in the country to which he had fled. Under these impressions, in the year 1795, your petitioner withdrew himself from France, and retired to America, being determined to avoid even the imputation of being instrumental in disturbing the tranquillity of his own country During above five years' residence in the United States, your pe- titioner resisted all inducements to a contrary conduct, and re- mained there quiet and retired, until your Majesty, extending your royal benevolence, was graciously pleased to permit his return to Europe to join his wile and children. Impressed with the most unfeigned attachment to your Majesty's government, in gratitude for these favours, conscious of the excellence of the Bri- tish constitution, in which your petitioner sees, with heartfelt satisfaction, his native country participating under the late happy union, effected by your Majesty's paternal wisdom and affection, and assured that his conduct will not belie these sentiments, your petitioner approaches your Majesty's throne at this auspicious moment, praying that your Majesty will condescend to extend your royal clemency to your petitioner, in such manner as your Majesty in your wisdom may think proper '. "My friend Mr. Griffith now wrote to Lord Clare concerning my petition, who returned him the following answer: — " ' My dear Sir, — The weight of business which presses on me in the Court of Chancery at this time renders it impracticable for me to attend to any other subject. I can readily conjecture the object of the petition which you wish to show me, and do not hesitate to say that patience under his most unpleasant situation, for a few months, will be the best policy on the part of Mr. H. Rowan, and whenever a definite treaty of peace is settled will be ii. 15 210 rowan's opinions of the union. the time to petition the crown; and when that takes place, I should hope that his friends will be enabled to support his peti- tion with effect. " ' I am, dear Sir, etc., etc., "'Clare'". Rowan, from various passages in his correspondence in 1799, would seem to have been a strenuous supporter of the union. The inconsistency of his conduct in this matter was more appa- rent than real. In 1794, we find him acting in concert, in Ireland, with an emissary of the French government, whose treasonable mission was directed towards the separation of Ireland from Eng- land. In 1795, we find him in America furnishing Tone with means of access to the French government, with the same views as in the preceding year. But in 1799 all chance of reasonable expectation of a revolution in Ireland was gone. In these altered circumstances of the country, he saw nothing for Ireland but a union, and believed a real bona fide union, beneficial to both countries, was intended. In 1799, he writes to a member of his family on this subject: — " I congratulate you upon the report which spreads here that a union is intended. In that measure I see the downfall of one of the most corrupt assemblies, I believe, ever existed, and instead of an empty title, a source of industrious enterprise for the people, and the wreck of feudal aristocracy". March the 15th, 1799, he writes to Mrs. Rowan: — " I begin to think that the only question a poor man should ask himself is, ' Under what government shall I work least, get most, and keep what I get?' In this view, to use an American term, I would advocate an union in Ireland, which will throw work into the cabin, and take triple taxes and tenth of income, etc., etc., out of the rich man's house. In future times, however, I have no doubt but a mode will be adopted better than any now known, and I am fortified in this opinion from the great probabi- lity of a convulsion in this country, which has certainly, theore- tically, the most free government existing". . . . " Philadelphia, June 30, 1800. " Mr. Dickinson asserts that the accomplishment of the union will bring further indulgence to the political sinners of your country. I have no such idea, notwithstanding the favours which I have received in your person from the Chancellor, its professed advocate. By the bye, I have read his speech on this subject, which proves one thing evidently, that the present, or TERMS OF PARDON OF A. H. ROWAN. 211 rather the late government of Ireland, was disgraced by a shame- less, corrupt, oligarchic aristocracy, whose power ought to be done away, as Robespierre said about Paine, for the good of both countries". In the beginning of June, 1800, Rowan took his departure from the United States of America for Hamburgh, where he ar- rived after a tedious and perilous passage; and alter a short sojourn there, proceeded to Alcona, where he established himself, and remained till the month of June, 1803. In the latter part of the preceding month he received a communication from Lord Castlereagh, informing him of the intention of the cabinet to re- commend to the king to grant him a pardon, but prohibiting his going to Ireland without his Majesty's permission, and en- tering into recognizance, which it was usual to require in similar cases. 11 Having arrived in London on the 16th of June, I went the next day to the Secretary of State's office. He introduced me to Mr. Pollock, who showed me the kings warrant for pardon, which contained all the beneficial clauses of re-grant, etc., and was as full in every respect as it could be, excepting the condition of requiring two sureties for £10,000 not to go to Ireland. Mr. Pollock said one week would be sufficient to puss the different offices, and Mr. Steele requested him to attend to it, and as soon as the document was returned to his office, to inform him, and he, with my friend Mr. Griffith, offered to become my sureties. 11 My agent arrived from Ireland, bringing with him the opi- nions of eminent counsel, which all agreed that a pardon under the great seal of Britain alone would avail me no otherwise than as to my personal liberty in England". While these efforts were being made in England, the opinion of counsel was taken as to the mode of accomplishing the desired object. Two of the most eminent men at the Irish bar gave an opinion that a pardon under the great seal of England alone would only avail Rowan for his personal liberty in England. The Under Secretary of the Lord Lieutenant furnished Mr. Rowan's friends with a copy of the opinion of the crown lawyers : — " Dublin Castle, " 27th October, 1802. " We are of opinion that the pardon to Mr. Hamilton Rowan ought to be passed under the great seal of Ireland ; and we appre- hend it is irregular in Mr. Rowan to solicit such pardon and the 212 TERMS OF PARDON OF A. H. ROWAN. restitution of his lands in Ireland in the first instance, and that such application ought to be made to his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant. " (Signed), " Standish O'Grady. " W. C. Plunkett". Acting on this opinion, when Hamilton Rowan was eventually pardoned in 1806, and obtained permission to reside in Ireland, he attended at the Court of King's Bench, and publicly pleaded the King's pardon. The following is the report of that proceed- ing:— " Mr. Archibald Hamilton Rowan was brought up by habeas corpus, to assign error upon the record of outlawry against him for high treason. His counsel then moved that the outlawry should be reversed, for errors which were then delivered in to the proper officer. The Attorney-General then, by virtue of his Majesty's warrant, confessed the errors; and the proceedings in outlawry were reversed accordingly. Mr. Rowan was then put to plead to the original indictment for high treason ; upon which he pleaded his Majesty's most gracious pardon, which being read and allowed, he was told he was discharged. " Mr Rowan then addressed the court. He begged to be per- mitted in a few words to express his heartfelt gratitude for the clemency of his sovereign. " ' When I last', said he, ' had the honour to stand in this court before your lordships, I said that I did not know the King other- wise than as the head of the state — as a magistrate wielding the force of the executive power. I now know him by his clemency — -by that clemency which has enabled me once more to meet my wife and children; to find them not only unmolested, but cherished and protected during my absence in a foreign country, and my legal incapacity of rendering to them the assistance of a husband and a father. Were I to be insensible of that clemency, I should be indeed an unworthy man ! All are liable to error. The consequences have taught me deeply to regret some of the violent measures which 1 then pursued. Under the circumstances in which I stand, were I to express all I feel upon this subject, it might be attributed to base and unworthy motives; but your lordships are aware how deeply I must be affected by my present situation, and will give me credit for what I cannot myself ex- press'. " Lord Chief Justice Downes — ' Mr. Rowan, from the senti- ments which you have expressed, I have reason to hope that your future conduct will prove that his Majesty's pardon has not been unworthily granted' ". ROWAN*S RETURN TO IRELAND. 213 Among the numerous persons who congratulated him on his pardon were many of his political opponents, who expressed their satisfaction publicly and privately at seeing him restored to his family and his country. " Lords Carysfort, Castlereagh, and Carhampton were foremost in expressions of kindness". Lord Clare was not then living, or his congratulations, in Rowans opinion, would have been joined with those of the noblemen just named. He returned to Ireland in 1806, on the death of his father, and fixed his residence in the old ca>tle of Killileagh, on his own estate in the county Down. Rowan now figured in the character of a good citizen, a good landlord, a good father of a family. The great business of his life was to be useful to those who were connected with him as tenants, labourers, and servants; to pro- mote the internal peace and concord of the country. He became the poor mans friend of the locality — the generous encourager of the manufacturers of Dublin, especially of the poor weavers of the liberties of the city. " Mr. Rowan's benevolent exertions' 1 , says his biographer, " to meliorate the circumstances of all around him who were in distress, did not so completely engross his time and reflections as to preclude him from indulging his favourite propensity to poli- tics. It was not possible for him to be a dull unconcerned spec- tator in the midst of great and stirring events. Though he felt the full weight of his obligation to the lenity of government, he did not feel himself precluded from an open and honest expression of opinions which he thought loyal and constitutional, though not always in exact accordance with those of the ruling powers. His acceptance of pardon involved no dereliction of principle ; it did not oblige him to connive at glaring abuses, nor give an ostensible sanction to measures which he conscientiously condemned; it restored him to the full enjoyment of all his rights as a subject of the British constitution. It had been generously granted, and in the same generous spirit it was received — in the spirit of a gentle- man and a man of honour, not of a mendicant or a slave. He therefore clung to such opinions and measures as he thought most consonant to the spirit of the British constitution, and which would best promote its permanence and stability. In a letter addressed to the Editor of the Pa triot newspaper, in 1811, speak- ing of the sentiments adopted in his youth, he says — ' Of these his Majesty in his pardon had not required, nor my petitions promised, a renunciation' . Being always regarded as a distinguished friend of civil and religious liberty, he became a member of the Catholic Association, 214 ROWAN IN CONNECTION WITH THE R. C. ASSOCIATION. and took, as he was wont, a warm interest in its proceedings. A meeting of the Catholic Board, which was held in Fishamble Street, being dispersed, and having reassembled as an aggregate meeting, he addressed a letter to Lord Fingal, from which the following passages are taken : — " The Catholics of Ireland were prepared this day to read a petition to parliament, in Fishamble Street, when they were pre- vented by a police magistrate, who chose to consider that meeting as an illegal one, and forced your lordship out of the chair. I was a spectator of that disgraceful scene, where legal quibble was tortured to entrap the feelings of a man of honour, unaccustomed to disguise, because his pursuits were honourable, and legal, and constitutional. That meeting, however, being dispersed, the general sentiment of an injured and insulted population led to an assembly of individuals at Darcy's, at which I assisted. That meeting was also disturbed by the same magistrate ; and I am not surprised; but I am concerned that those circumstances should have altered the ultimate object of the former meeting, from a petition to parliament into an address to the Prince Regent. " Appeals to persons are not equal to appeals to principles. One law ought to bind Catholic and Protestant, Jew or Maho- metan, if Irishmen. This has ever been my creed, and will ever be the rule of action for, " My Lord, " Your respectful and obedient servant, " A. H. Rowan. " December 23, 1811". Of the cause of " Catholic emancipation" he had always been a strenuous advocate. He thought the success of that great question absolutely necessary to the tranquillity of Ireland; and in 1824, when he sent his subscription to the " Rent", he accompanied it with a letter expressive of his hopes and wishes. A resolution that both should be entered on the minutes was " adopted with a zeal and enthusiasm that had never been exceeded in that body". In a debate in the House of Commons on the Catholic Asso- ciation, February 14th, 1825, the proceedings of that body were severely censured by Mr. Dawson, who, referring to the part taken in them by Rowan, said — " Upon a recent occasion, a Mr. Devereux and a Mr. Hamilton Rowan had been admitted mem- bers of the Association, when the name of the latter was received with thunders of applause. Mr. Hamilton Rowan, it would be remembered, was one of the body called United Irishmen. He had been implicated in seditious practices in the year 1793, for ATTACK ON ROWAN IN PARLIAMENT. 215 which he was imprisoned. Previous to his trial he contrived to escape, and remained for many years in exile. He was attainted of high treason, but being afterwards, by the lenity of the govern- ment, allowed to return to Ireland, the best return he could make for the mercy which had been shown him, was by enlisting him- self as a member of an association quite as dangerous as that of his own United Irishmen. The name of this convicted traitor was received with thunders of applause — and why? In order that this recollection of the disastrous period with which that name was connected might be revived in the minds of the deluded peasantry, and help the designs of this abominable association". In a subsequent debate (February 18th), Mr. Peel followed the same line of argument as Mr. Dawson, and censured the Catholic Association for passing a vote of thanks to Archibald Hamilton Rowan — M an act which", he affirmed, u was sufficient to excite suspicion and alarm". He referred to the report of the Secret Com- mittee of the Irish parliament in 1794, quoted part of the cele- brated address, u Citizen soldiers, to arms", and entered into a minute statement of the trial and pardon of Rowan, whom he designated as an 11 attainted traitor". This expression excited the indignation of Mr. C. Hely Hutchinson and of Mr. Brougham. "Mr.C. H. Hutchinson said he had more than once lamented and opposed the practice of introducing the names of individuals who were not here, and had not the means of defending themselves. The right honourable gentleman who had just sat down had carried this practice to a most unjustifiable length. He had men- tioned the name of Hamilton Rowan, lie (Mr. Hutchinson) was in Dublin when that gentleman fled the country, and no man ever left Ireland more respected and more regretted. He would tell the right honourable pentleman that the most enlightened and best men in Ireland, in 1793, had been among the United Irish- men, with the most constitutional views. The cause in which they were engaged was to benefit their country, and to produce that state of tilings which the colleagues of the right honourable gentleman professed themselves most anxious to establish. Never were men engaged in a more righteous undertaking. Had they been successful, they had prevented the rebellion of 1798. Sydney, Hampden, Russell, the greatest names, the most hallowed patriots in English history, would now have been stigmatized as traitors, had not the cause of liberty, for which we all are thankful, flourished here, and if that despotism had triumphed in England which had been continued in Ireland up to this hour. Had these men succeeded in Ireland in 1793, they would have been regarded as benefactors of that country, and they were even now receiving 216 c. h. Hutchinson's defence of rowan. approbation; for the system pursued by the right honourable gentleman and his colleagues was that which they then wished to enforce". Mr. Hutchinson was followed in a similar strain by Mr. Brougham, in the debate, on the 18th of February, 1825. " The charge against the Catholic Association was this, that they spoke of Mr. Hamilton Rowan as a man entitled to the re- spect and love of his country ; and yet, said the right honourable gentleman, Mr. Hamilton Rowan was not more nor less than a convicted traitor. [Mr. Secretary Peel — Attainted.] Well — an attainted traitor. The charge, then, against the Catholic Associa- tion was, that they spoke with respect of an attainted traitor. The Catholics state, that he is a man of the highest respectability. There was not a man more dearly beloved in Ireland. If to hold Mr. Rowan as an object of respect and affection be a crime, they were all guilty. This was not misstatement, this was not exag- geration; they themselves join in the description, and admit it to be a fact. Of the two charges brought against the Association, this was the gravest. And he was instructed to assert, that it would be proved by witnesses at the bar of that house, that there was not in this country a man to whom all were more zealously attached, more respected, and more beloved, than Mr. Rowan. ... This much-loved individual was a gentleman of large and princely fortune, respected by all around him, endeared to his friends by all the ties of domestic life, attached to this country by a spirit of the most ardent and irrepressible patriotism. He was one of those men who, in the agitated times of 1793, 1797, and 1798, when the wisest were often misled, and when the honestest, from the very excess of patriotic feeling, were roused to frenzy by the injuries which they conceived their country was enduring, under- went every species of vituperation, and in that wretched period were swept away in one general act of attainder, although many of them could never have been brought to trial with any hope of conviction. "Fuerint cupidi" — (for the character is applicable not only to Mr. Hamilton Rowan, but to the Fitzgeralds and others, who went too far in the times of which I have been speaking ; and God forbid that I should deny that they went too far, al- though God also forbid that I should charge them with crimes of which they were guiltless) — 1 Fuerint cupidi, fuerint irati, fuerint pertinaces, sceleris vero crimine, furoris, parricidii, liceat. Cn. Pompeio mortuo, liceat, multis aliis carere'. Such, Sir, are not my sentiments alone with respect to many of those unfortunate individuals. Pardoned by his prince, Mr. Hamilton Rowan re- turned to the bosom of his family. Again he became the dis- penser of blessings to his attached tenants ; again he drew around BROUGHAMS DEFENCE OF ROWAN. 217 hiin all the tender and endearing connections of life ; lie exercised all the functions of a country gentleman ; he attended all the charitable meetings which are so frequent in Ireland. By the manner in which he expended his liberal income, and by the whole tenor of his conduct, he became the darling of his neigh- bourhood. Nay more, he attends the courts of the representa- tives of his sovereign, and is received with favour, with kind- ness, with courtesy by one viceroy after another — not only by Lord Wellesley, but by Lord Whitworth. And this, Sir, is the man, whom the Catholic Association are to be attacked, vitu- perated, and denounced, unheard and without the means of de- fence, for declaring to be entitled to, and to be enjoying, the re- spect and affection of his countrymen ! Sir, I declare, that if I could not repel that charge against the Catholic Association, if I could not convince the house, from that unexpected quarter, if I could not commend the chalice to the right honourable gentle- man's own lips, which he had prepared lor his opponents, if I could not elicit new arguments from his assertion on this part of the subject, to show the necessity for inquiry, to prove the incal- culable dangers which we are incurring in this course of hasty legislation, I would at once abandon the cause". Mr. Brougham had spoken of Rowan as performing the duties of a magistrate and M holding the commission of the peace under the superintendence and protection of Lord Manners, the pink of loyalty! the idol of the Orangemen's adoration — acting under the concurrence of their late tutelar saint, Mr. Saurin". Mr. Peel having ascertained, by application to the Ilanaper Office, that no such person as A. H. Rowan had been admitted to the com- mission of the peace for the last twenty years, in a subsequent debate stated this fact as a triumphant confutation of the ignorance with which he had been charged of Mr. Rowan's situation in Ire- land. Mr. Brougham in reference to the words " attainted traitor", used by Mr. Feel, said : — " He appealed to the impartial, the calm-judging men of that house, who mingled neither with one side nor the other, whether such were not the right honourable gentleman's words ; the words uttered by him in the face of the country, without respect to the feelings of the individual, of his country, or his son. But he (Mr. B.) appealed to the better feelings of the house, to the country, to the memory of the right honourable gentleman, after one week's recollection of what he had said; appealed to the right honourable gentlemen, as placing himself in the situation of one of those gallant officers whose distinguished bravery adorned a service, of which to be even amongst its lowest members w r as, 218 BROUGHAM S DEFENCE OF A. H. ROWAN. in itself, a very high honour — he meant no other than Captain Hamilton — whether to hear it publicly, not privately, but in the face of parliament and the country, represented that his own father was an attainted traitor, was just or proper. As to him- self, he would repeat his opinion of Mr. Rowan, from which he did not shrink. He would repeat his defence of the Catholic Association. He would not enter into the details of this gentle- man's case, with which he was not much acquainted. The charge of the right hon. gentleman was, that Mr. Jackson and another individual were tried, and Mr. Rowan was said to be implicated. But it seems he was tried for another offence, namely, the publi- cation of a seditious libel. They were troublesome times when these occurrences took place, and the best and wisest of the chil- dren of Ireland were liable to the same fate ; and the charge against the Association upon this head is, that they respect an in- dividual thus convicted.... He would not hesitate to say, that as an Irishman, a lover of his country, and a patriot, he would put his hand to the paper published by Mr. Rowan. It called upon the people to arm, but at the same time to maintain the public peace. It was published at a period when all was at stake from abroad, and much was at stake from within. It was published at a period when Ireland was erecting statues to the illustrious Grattan, when the Volunteers were proclaimed the saviours of the country. It was at this period Mr. Rowan called upon the people to arm, for the country was proclaimed by the government to be in danger ; and if he called upon them not to stop here, but to go further, and when they had beaten back the enemy, to procure civil liberty, he would be only doing what the parliament allowed the Volunteers to do. If these men had not armed in 1782, Ireland would have been enslaved and degraded. She would be an unworthy part of the empire, or, perhaps, after a civil war, she would be separated entirely. In those troublous times, all the Irish patriots were subject to the same hazard ; even that person whose name was never mentioned at the opposite side of the house without feelings of reverence and affection — Mr. Grattan — was not safe. The privy council had repeated sittings concerning him, and it was his departure alone from the country saved him from trouble. He left Dublin upon the first burst of that rage which filled the land with desolation. As to the com- ments made by the right honourable gentleman upon the conduct of Mr. Rowan upon receiving his pardon, they amounted to nothing ; they merely referred to his grateful effusions upon that event. But, good God ! are we to be told that a man receiving a free pardon, treated by his sovereign as Mr. Rowan was, is to be branded as an attainted traitor, when a sarcasm is to be pointed, brougham's defence of a. h. rowan. 219 when a period is to be rounded, or a cheer excited in that house ? As to the circumstance of his not being in the commission, he (Mr. Brougham) had only the same opportunity of knowing such matters as others had; but whether Mr. Hamilton Rowan were a magistrate or not, I consider my defence to be impregnable. The King himself restored Mr. Rowan to a free pardon ; Mr. Rowan was restored to all the privileges of a free subject; Mr. Rowan was summoned and sat upon grand juries; and I ask, is that no function? Felonies, misdemeanours, cases even of high treason, came before him; he sat, and heard, and determined in all these cases. Is not that, I ask, enough ? He is received at the Kings levees by the representative of the sovereign ; is that, I ask, no- thing? He was received by one Lord Lieutenant after another; and the letter of his Grace the Duke of Bedford said nothing of an 1 attainted traitor, although the honourable gentlemen at the other side, who so called Mr. Rowan, set themselves up the ex- clusive defenders of the King, the altar, and the constitution. It has been my practice and my habit to believe that the Duke of Bedford had and has as good a right to be looked upon as a loyal subject, as holding as deep a stake in the peace and tran- quillity of the country, as offering in his conduct, talent, and property, as good a test of loyalty, as any honourable gentleman in this house. Then let the house hear what was the observation of the Duke of Bedford. 4 The first act of the administration was to offer a pardon to Mr. Hamilton Rowan, for no man better de- served it, and no act could be more satisfactory, because a more honourable, a more respectable, or a more liberal man existed not in Ireland'. Well, then, for repeating this, the Catholic Association was blamed and branded. But I ask, who has a right to complain of this? who has a right to fling in the teeth of Mr. Rowan that he was, or is, an ' attainted traitor', when he was received by several representatives of his sovereign, and when his sovereign so smiled upon him? The sovereign of these realms so treated Mr. Rowan, and what more did the Catholic Association? I repeat and re-assert all I have said as to Mr. Rowan ; and I envy not the feelings of those who, in despite of their sovereign's pleasure, humanity, and good feeling, can wan- tonly and unnecessarily, not privately, but in their places in par- liament, brand that honourable, honest, though unfortunate gen- tleman with the name of ' attainted traitor; and I still less envy the judgment of those who deem the Catholic Association cul- pable, because they hailed and treated Mr. Rowan as the King's representative had set them the example so to do". " Mr. Rowan at this period", says Dr. Drummond, "had reached the age of seventy-four; but though his spirit slumbered under 220 ROWAN DEMANDS AN EXPLANATION OF G. R. DAWSON. the weight of years, it had not died ; ' still in their ashes lived their wonted fires' ; the lion had grown old, but not so feeble as to be kicked with impunity. The old gentleman determined to act on the principles of that code of honour to which he had been attached from his youth ; and as Mr. Dawson had been the first to use the offensive epithets, to demand of him an explanation or apology". On Rowan's arrival in the metropolis he wrote to Mr. Dawson in terms of more strength than suavity, and thus for a time precluded such an amicable explanation as Mr. Dawson's subsequent con- duct justifies the belief that he would instantly have given. Mr. Dawson's friend, Lord Hotham, whom Rowan describes as " a polite young man in the Guards, cool, clear, and temperate, who acted in a most gentlemanlike manner", informed Mr. Rowan, both by writing and conversation, that before he could expect any explanation from Mr. Dawson, his own offensive letter should be withdrawn. Rowan, being as far from wishing to give as to receive offence, acceded to the justice of this observation, and addressed the following note to his lordship : — " My Lord, — After thanking your lordship for your clear and temperate comment on my appeal to Mr. Dawson, and after apolo- gizing for any warmth of expression on my part in our conversation of this morning, I have, as you desired, read your letter to a friend, whose opinion, in concurrence with your lordship's, has convinced me that ' an appeal for explanation should be perfectly free from all language in any degree offensive to the party to whom that appeal is made' ; and I regret that mine was in any respect other- wise. Under this impression, I have no hesitation in withdrawing my letter of the 23rd of May, containing the offensive passages noticed by you. As I am now persuaded that those passages were the only impediment to my receiving such an explanation as it was the object of that letter to request, I trust Mr. Dawson will be prompt to relieve me from the impressions under the influence of which I have been led to address him. " I have the honour to be, etc. " A. H. Rowan". This was succeeded by the following note from Mr. Dawson : — "16 Upper Grosvenor Street, " June 30, 1825. " Sir, — The letter which you have addressed to Lord Hotham, bearing date the 28th of June, enables me to assure you, that in introducing your name into the debate in the House of Commons, DAWSON S APOLOGY TO ROWAN. 221 I was influenced solely by considerations of public duty, and that nothing was further from my wish than any intention to wound your feelings, or offer you any premeditated insult. u I have the honour to be, etc., 4k G. R. Dawson". An American friend of Rowans, William Poole, a Quaker, a wise and a good man, addressed a letter to M the fine old" Irish " gentleman all of the olden time", wherein he refers to the recent display of his still unsubdued fighting propensities : — " The account relating to thy (foolish shall I call it?) excursion to England is not sent me, as my friends think that I had better not see it. However, I have heard enough of it to be surprised that at thy age thou shouldst suffer anything to put at risk thy own peace and the peace of thy family. But I cannot enter into thy feelings or views, perhaps, nor the warmth of the Irish character". Subsequently he says: — " I rejoice that my friend has escaped that distress which might have followed to himself and family from victory or defeat. To old men, such as we are, it appears to me to be of much more importance to preserve the quietude and innocence of our minds, than to take a very deep interest of any kind in the affairs of a world from which we are so soon to pass away". Dr. Drummond states that Captain Hamilton wrote a strong letter, though couched in polite terms, to Mr. Peel, expressing his indignant sense of the wrong done by him in his reference to his father, in his place in parliament in June, 1825. In that letter he stated that if any imprudence had been committed by his father in 1794, it had received the King's pardon, and was no fitting theme for parliamentary animadversion. If that indis- cretion, he said, had left any stain, "that stain had been blotted out by the blood of his children, shed in their country's service: one had died of sickness and hardships; another fell in action on the coast of Spain ; he had himself been severely wounded. He concluded by saying that he indulged a belief that if these cir- cumstances had been taken into consideration, he and his family would have been spared the pain of an attack so unprovoked and so unwarranted". Peel, in 1825, not having cast off the Orange- men or rescued his character from the degradation of a close connexion with them, could only writhe in secret under such a remonstrance. He made no amends in public for an act most unworthy of a man in his position. On Tuesday, January 20, 1829, a great meeting of the friends of civil and religious liberty was held in the Rotundo of Dublin, 222 captain Hamilton's remonstrance to peel. attended " by numbers of the first rank, wealth, influence, talent, public and private worth, and of all sects of Christians ; the Duke of Leinster in the chair". Mr. Rowan attended this meeting ; and a resolution of thanks being moved by Mr. Challoner to the Protestant gentlemen and noblemen who promoted the dinner to Lord Morpeth, Mr. Rowan seconded the resolution in a speech, of which the substance was thus noticed in the daily papers : — " He said, that he remembered, in early life, when the people of this country were armed and determined to preserve themselves against foreign invaders — then he became one of a body, now called the Old Volunteers. He remembered a period when the object was to remove domestic dissension — then he became a United Irishman ; and he now came forward at a period when, if Irishmen were really united, they must be free. (Loud cheers)". It is also stated in the same document, that " When the venerable Hamilton Rowan was leaving the Rotundo, after the meeting of yesterday, he was supported on each side by O'Gorman Mahon and Mr. Steele ; and in going down Sackville Street, they were surrounded by an immense crowd of the people, cheering and huzzaing. They got into a hackney coach to escape, but the people would not permit it, and the horses were taken from the carriage, and they were drawn in triumph by the concourse to the house of the venerable patriot in Leinster Street, amidst enthusiastic cheering, shouting, and huzzaing". With respect to the subject of Parliamentary Reform, the poli- tical sentiments which he had entertained in youth he continued to cherish in his old age. He avowed them in a communication addressed to his friend, the able and upright editor of the Northern Whig: — " Castle of Killyleagh, " October 13, 1831. " My dear Finlay, — As I have ever adhered to the principle which dictated the original engagement of the United Irishmen, I take the liberty of proposing the test of that society, with some slight alterations, for the adoption of the friends of reform : — " ' In the presence of God, I do pledge myself to my country, that I will use all my abilities and influence in the attainment of an impartial representation of British subjects in parliament, under our most gracious monarch William the Fourth, in the spirit proposed by his highly esteemed and respected ministers, Lord Grey, etc.' DEATH OF MRS. ROWAN. 223 " Entering my eighty-second year, and frail in body as in mind, such as I am, I am yours sincerely, " A. H. Rowan. " F. D. Finlay, Esq." Domestic trials and afflictions fell fast and heavily on this venerable man in 1834. Mrs. Rowan died after a protracted illness, the 26th of February in that year. A clergyman of the Unitarian body, of which Mrs. Rowan was a member, the Rev. Dr. Armstrong, her intimate friend, published a notice of her character and career in a reli- gious periodical in 1834, from which the following passages are taken : — " This excellent lady was a character of no ordinary descrip- tion. Endowed by nature with singular energy of mind and firmness of resolution, she blended with these qualities the kindest disposition and warmest benevolence. These traits were fully manifested in the various trials and duties of her long and useful life. As a wife, her heroic fortitude, courage, and presence of mind, on a memorable occasion in the history of Ireland, have given her a conspicuous place among those matrons who, in dif- ferent ages and countries, have been distinguished for their noble contempt of personal hazard, and their generous self-devotion to conjugal duty in times of difficulty and danger. Entrusted for many years with the sole guidance of a numerous family of sons and daughters, her conduct as a parent was truly exemplary. Strict without severity, and indulgent without weakness, her precepts combined with her example to train them up in such high-minded and honourable principles, as might not only sustain the character of the race from which they sprang, but, what she valued infinitely more, might evince the genuineness of their Christian hopes and profession. And her maternal cares were not without their reward. Few mothers have been more loved and honoured by a grateful progeny. Few have had their decline of life more dutifully tended, or its pains more assiduously soothed by filial tenderness and affection. In friendship she was faithful, steady, and sincere; to the poor and afflicted, compassionate, open-handed, and humane". In less than six months from the time of this excellent lady's decease, Rowan had to deplore the loss of his only surviving and eldest son, the gallant Captain Hamilton. Gawin William Hamil- ton Rowan was born at Paris, in March, 1783. He entered the navy in 1801 as midshipman, and made a voyage to China in his Majesty's ship Lion. In 1803, he served in the West Indies, and was at the capture of St. Lucia and Tobago. In 1804, he served 224 NOTICE OF CAPTAIN HAMILTON ROWAN, R.N. in the Mediterranean in Lord Nelson and Collingwood's fleets. In 1807, he served in Egypt, having volunteered to land with the seamen at Alexandria, engaged in the attack on the lines, and capture of that place. In 1809 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, and was engaged in several actions with the French, where his enter- prising spirit and bravery were signally displayed. In 1811 he was appointed commander of the Onyx, and was employed on the coast of Spain ; and the year following was raised to the rank of post-captain, and obtained the command of the Termagant. While employed on the Spanish coast, he destroyed twelve bat- teries and towers, one French privateer, and captured another, and was at the taking of several towns on the coast. In 1813 he was employed in the Rainbow, on the coast of Italy, during which service he took and destroyed twenty-four of the enemy's vessels, at Viareggio, and shortly after was wounded at Leghorn. In the latter part of that year he was appointed to the Ha- vannah, and served in Chesapeake Bay, at the attack on Baltimore, and in the expedition of boats up the Rappahannoc. In 1815 he was again employed in the Mediterranean, and in 1816 brought home Governor Wilks from St. Helena, when, his vessel being out of commission, he returned to Ireland. In 1817 he married a daughter of Lieutenant-General Sir George Cockburn. In 1820 he was appointed to the command of the Cambrian, and took out Lord Strangford as ambassador to Constantinople. From that period until the return of the Cambrian to England, he was constantly employed in the Levant, in the protection of the Greeks, in which service Captain Hamilton was first known, and on numerous occasions and in various places in the Archipelago the author had opportunities of knowing the devotion of this brave officer to the Greek cause, and the signal services he ren- dered to it. The Greek commanders had an absurd idea that his name, Hamilton, consisted of two distinct names. Some were in the habit of addressing him as Captain Hamel ; others, and by far the most, as Captain Tony ; a circumstance which he seldom failed to notice, and would often affect to be very indignant at. The Greeks looked up to him as the only hope of their cause. He certainly deserved well their love and gratitude. He fought for them ; he ransomed their wives and children ; he expended in so doing vast sums out of his private means ; he treated them with the greatest kindness ; in fact, they looked up to Captain Tony as if he were their father and natural protector. Some of his officers used to say he was as good as a grandmother to them. But when they behaved badly, or did not do what he expected of them, or desired to have done, he would rail at them in. good round DEATH OF CAPTAIN HAMILTON. English seafaring terms, and mingle the national malediction with a great many strangely pronounced Greek terms of reproach, by no means complimentary to the fathers, mothers, saints, cap- tains, brigands, and rulers of his astounded Hellenist auditors. Soon after the Cambrian's arrival in England, she was again com- missioned, and placed under his command. He was ordered to his former station, where, down to the battle of Navarino, his services to the Greeks can only be estimated by those who had a personal knowledge of them, and by them certainly cannot be exaggerated. Not long after the battle of Navarino, the Cambrian was unfortunately lost, by running foul of the ins, and striking on the rocks, off the Carabousa. On Captain Hamilton's return to England, as a matter of course, he was tried by court-martial for the loss of his vessel, and was honourably acquitted, and was shortly after appointed to the Druid, on the South American station, from which he returned to Ireland in February, 1832, greatly broken down in health. He took up his abode in the Castle of Killyleagh, intending it to be his permanent place of residence. After a sojourn there of a few months, he went on a visit to his venerable father, then residing at Rathcoffey, in the county of Kildare, and there he was suddenly taken ill, and expired of water on the chest, on the 17th of August, 1834, leaving three or four children. Such was the man whose feelings Mr. Peel, in his bad days, so wantonly outraged in the House of Commons, on the occasion I have pre- viously referred to. The bad days of Peel's early political career were the subject of some comments in the House of Peers in a debate on the state of Ireland, 14th February, 1844. Lord Lyndhurst, in answer to some observations on Sir Robert's ignorance of Irish affairs, said, " Was not Sir Robert Peel in Ireland ?" The Marquess of Normanby replied, 14 The knowledge which Sir Robert Peel gained in Ireland is not applicable to the present time". When was the knowledge gained above referred to? In the interval between the 4th of August, 1812, and the 3rd of August, 1818, the six years of rampant Orangeism in Ireland, during which Sir Robert Peel was secretary. Peel, in 1825, was still in the chrysalis form of statesmanship. He had not then emerged from the low grub condition of Orangeism through which he had entered into official life while secretary in Ireland. From the time of the death of his only son, the gallant Captain Hamilton, his fathers health rapidly declined. The constant care and attention of his two daughters, Miss Rowan and Mis. 22G DEATH OF A. H. ROWAN. Fletcher, occasional recreation in his laboratory and library, sustained him for a short time ; but the loneliness of his life, and the setting of its sun, in the death of «that great hope which was centred in his eldest -born, and the dreariness of the house which his amiable wife had made for so many years a happy home, day by day seemed to weigh more heavily on his en- feebled strength. He died on the 1st of November, 1834, at the age of eighty-four years, having survived his beloved wife nine months, and his gallant son only as many weeks, and a daughter, Mrs. Beresford, rather more than a year. Rowan died in communion with the Unitarian church, by whose members, in common indeed with the members of ail churches in his native city, he was held in the highest honour. His remains were interred in a vault in St. Mary's church. Of his exterior, physical powers and accomplishments, his amiable friend and biographer, Dr. Drummond, says : — " Mr. Rowan had a tall and commanding person, in which agility, strength, and grace were combined. His features were expressive and strongly marked. In his younger days he was universally regarded as handsome, and so attractive of admiration that the eyes of all were turned upon him whenever he came into public — a circumstance which must have greatly tended to foster his love of popularity, and stimulate him to the achievement of those feats for which he became so distinguished in his younger days. On one occasion he appeared in Paris as a Highland chieftain in proper costume, the very beau ideal of a Celtic hero. He was a good marksman, excelled in the sword exercise, and could send an arrow from a bow half as far again as any other man in France. Such accomplishments caused him to be respected by the men, while his noble Herculean figure and perfect politeness made him a favourite with the ladies. He was fond of driving a phaeton, and paddling an Indian canoe : few could match his dexterity in rowing, or the gracefulness or variety of his rapid movements in skating: whether on the Thames, the Liffey, the Delaware, or the Elbe, he, ' With balance nice, Hung o'er the glittering steel and skimm'd along the ice' ". He was remarkable for his fondness for animals, and especially for dogs. " The citizens of Dublin", observes Dr. Drummond, " who can carry back their reminiscences of remarkable cotemporaries a quar- ter of a century, will not fail to remember the venerable old man of gigantic stature, passing along the streets, accompanied by two 1 DEATH OF A. II. ROWAN. 227 dogs of enormous size, gaunt and formidable Danish hounds (not of the Irish wolf dog species, as commonly supposed). He was well versed in mathematics, and had a great turn fur mechanics. He had a printing-press and a lithographic apparatus, a chemical laboratory, a turning machine, and a model steam-engine, in his house or on his premises. His manners were in the highest degree polished, cour- teous, and engaging. In his habits he was temperate, simple, and orderly. He indulged neither in the pleasures of the table nor the pursuits of gaming, the turf, or the stock market. But with all his blandness of manner and simplicity of character, Rowan was of a fiery and irascible temperament, prompt to feel and to resent an injury. He was over sensitive to the breath of public favour and applause, loved popularity, and courted it assiduously. These, perhaps, were the most striking defects in his character, but they were certainly overbalanced by some great and noble quali- ties, which belong only to superior and heroic natures. " He was a man of a generous, manly, chivalrous disposition, of high principles and a strong sense of the obligations of truth, justice, and humanity. He loved liberty and hated oppression. He was steadfast, intrepid, and incorruptible in his public career, a brave and a good Irishman in the fullest sense of the term, per- severing and consistent in his patriotism, the same in youth and age, in the worst of times, as in the better days of his country". MEMOIR OF ARTHUR O'CONNOR. CHAPTER 1. ORIGIN, EARLY CAREER, AND CONNECTION WITH THE SOCIETY OF UNITED IRISHMEN. A memoir of Arthur O'Connor deserves a prominent place in a work of this description, on account of the position in which he stood in the Leinster Directory of the United Irishmen, as the earliest and foremost member of the southern executive, and a member also of the Ulster executive. He is entitled to consi- deration, moreover, as a man of independent fortune, of consi- derable influence, no less from his connections than his brilliant talents, who had distinguished himself in parliament, in the press, at public meetings, and who moved in the first society both in England and in Ireland. Arthur O'Connor claimed, moreover, to be the descendent of an ancient race, and I feel it my duty to lay before my readers the best evidence that can be adduced in favour of that claim, though I am not able, or perhaps not sufficiently skilled in genealogical antiquarianism, to recognize the validity of that claim. O'CONNOR KERRY — ARTHUR O'CONNOR. The sept of O'Connor Kerry, we are told by Dr. O' Donovan, were of very ancient and noble origin, being descended from the illustrious line of Ir, son of Milidh, or Milesius, which sept is said to have reigned in Uladh, or Ulster, from the Milesian conquest to the subjection of that kingdom, and the destruction of the famous royal seat of Emania, a.d. 332, by the royal race of Heremon. Of this line of Ir, while it flourished at Emania, were the champions of the Red Branch, as celebrated in our old Celtic story and song, as the feats of the heroes of the Trojan war have been in Hellas or Greece, and the exploits of the Paladins of Charlemagne in the romances of the middle ages and the strains of Ariosto. From King Fergus, that reigned at Emania about the ironi an Original I/ra-wine; "by a French Aru; ZhJrtm,. Juries Ihtfrv 7 WeUznaevn. Quay. CLAIMED DESCENT OF THE COXXERS FROM THE OCOXXOR SEPT. 229 commencement of the Christian era, and the heroine Meave, Queen of Connacht, the old genealogists deduce Ciar, the pro- genitor of the line of O'Connor Kerry, whose chiefs were kings of Kerry for centuries previous to the Anglo-Norman invasion in the twelfth century. Soon after that invasion, says Dr. O'Donovan, the dominions of this family were narrowed to the territory of Iraght-l-Conor. At the close of the reign of Eliza- beth, they were deprived of the greater part of this little princi- pality, and the lands which they had peopled for at least 1600 years, were conferred upon the then recently erected University of Dublin. Finally, in the confiscations under the Cromwellian usurpation, they shared the common ruin of most of our Milesian houses. Of this O'Connor Kerry sept is " the celebrated Arthur Condorcet O'Connor, General of Division in France", writes Dr. O'Donovan, who, he adds, " is the son of Roger Conner, Esq., of Connerville, son of William Conner, Esq., Connerville, son of Mr. Daniel Conner, of Swithen's Alley, Temple Bar, Lon- don, merchant, and afterwards of Bandon, in the county of Cork, son of Mr. Cornelius Conner of Cork, whose will is dated 1719, son of Daniel Conner, who was the relative of O'Connor Kerry. This Cork branch descends 1'rom Philip Conner, merchant, of London, to whom his relative, John O'Connor Kerry, conveyed Asdee by deed, dated August, 1598".* It is deserving of notice that the ancestors of Arthur O'Connor designated themselves simply Conner. Arthur and Roger were the first of their race who assumed the O of the ancient family of Ballengare, of an undoubted regal line, with which family the Con- ner* of Connerville, I believe, were not legitimately connected. The father of Arthur, old Roger Conner, inherited considerable property from one of his ancestors, who had certainly lived long and made a large fortune in England (if he was not a native of that country), and had been engaged in the business of a chandler in London. This old opulent tradesman came over or returned to Ireland, and fixed himself eventually in Bandon.t Whatever *" O'Donovan's Book of Rights", p. 48; "Battle of Moyrath", pp. 172, 202, 215, 328, 329, 248; "Four Masters", vol. II., pp. 774, 775, 801, 803, 1100, 111L To the eminent and accurate Irish historical antiquarian, John Cornelius O'Callaghan, Esq., the author is indebted for the preceding notice. t The first Conner of any note in the county Cork was a Mr. Daniel Conner, of Bandon, styled "merchant" — (See Sir Bernard Burke's "Landed Gentry", part i., page 232). This Daniel Conner is, no doubt, the person above mentioned, who had been, at one period of his life, engaged in business in London. He married, and had issue, besides daughters : 1. Daniel, who carried on mercantile business in Bandon, and died there in 1737. 2. William, who was a representative of the county Cork in 1765. He married a daughter of Roger Bernard, Esq., of Palace Anne, county Cork, in 1721, and had issue: Roger, who built the house called Connerville, and married Anne Longfield, sister of Lord Longueville, by whom he had issue, among others, the subject of this memoir. 230 FAMILY OF ROGER CONKER, OF COKKERVILLE. means came into tlie possession of old Roger, the father of Arthur (and they were ample), were derived from this person. Old Roger married an Irish lady of high rank, the sister of Lord Longueville, a person of stronger intellectual powers than her husband. The parents of Arthur O'Connor were not very remarkable for their exalted virtues or strong religious principles, or particularly commendable for the moral or religious example they set their children. Old Roger Conner, of Connerville, by this marriage with Anne Longfield, sister of Lord Longueville, had issue : 1. Daniel, born in 1753, who came into possession of Conner- ville during the father's lifetime, " to his fathers great misfor- tune". A crim con affair with the wife of a Mr. Gibbons, a prosecution and heavy damages, obliged Daniel to quit Ireland and to sell Connerville to his brother Roger. This Daniel went to Bristol, where he fixed his abode. He removed subsequently to Orme Square, Bayswater, near London, and died there June 4th, 1846, aged ninety-three years. He married the lady he ran away with, and had one child, a daughter, by the marriage. He married, secondly, the sister of his deceased wife, a Miss Hyde, sister of the Rev. A. Hyde, and had issue Daniel Conner, of Manch, near Connerville, born in 1798, who now resides there in. the commission of the peace, and who had the misfortune, many years ago, to shoot, in a duel, the father of the present Mr. O'Neil Daunt. 2. William Conner had been a major of the Cork Militia, and held the lucrative office of Collector of Cork, the emoluments of which were about £5,000 a } 7 ear. He sunk into abject poverty, and died about 1822 or 1823 in misery in Dublin, and, it is said, in confinement for debt. An acquaintance of this gentleman thus speaks of him: — " There was another of the O'Connors, who was a major in the army, and subsequently a collector in the Cus- toms at Cork. Through mistake in his accounts he lost this situation; and when first I knew him he was in Dublin, prose- cuting some claims he had upon the commissioners".* 3. Robert Longfield Conner, who inherited from his father about £1,500 a year, was captain of a corps of yeomanry, a violent partizan of the Orangemen of his locality. He endeavoured un- successfully to get his brother Roger hanged. He died at his place, Fort Robert, about nine miles from Bandon, leaving three daughters.t * "London and Dublin Mag.", Feb., 1828, p. 30. 1 Under date, August 23, 1815, in Secret Correspondence, book I., page 217 (Lord Whitvvorth, viceroy), a record is found of a " pension to Edward O'Connor, and Mrs. Margaret O'Connor, of £200 a year for life". OCOXXOR's ACCOUNT OF HIS CAREER AXD ASSOCIATES. 231 4. Roger O'Connor, the fourth son of Roger Conner of Conner- ville, who claimed " by the law and usage of tanistry to be the chief of his race", and who styled himself Kiev-Beige ; born in 1762, died near Cork, in the parish of Ovens, in 1834, and by his express desire his remains were interred in the old family vault of the McCarthys at Kilcrea, though wholly unconnected with the latter. 5. Arthur O'Connor, a leader of the society of United Irishmen, a general of division in the French service; born in 1763, died at Bignon in France in his ninetieth year in 1852. There was one daughter, Anne, who had been in love with a Mr. McCarthy, was opposed in her desire to marry that gentleman, and drowned herself in a well at Connerville, which is still known in the locality, to the country people, as Anne's well. There were two other daughters, who died in early life without issue. The following outline of a biographical sketch is made from a document furnishing specific replies to a number of queries which had been addressed by the author in 1842, to General O'Connor; and the substance of the answers to these queries is given here in a consecutive form, without any comment or intermixture of other matter. It is hardly necessary to add, that the form in which the information appears in this communication is very different from that in which an unbroken narrative might be expected from a man whose abilities, in the way of composition as well as in conversation, are acknowledged to be of the very highest order. " Arthur O'Connor was born at Mitchels, near Bandon, on the 4th of July, 1763. His father lived at Connerville, in the county of Cork. He was a man of very large landed property ; he passed his life and expended his income in the country. A. O'Connor's mother was the only sister of Lord Longueville, and a woman of considerable talents and acquirements. She died at Conner- ville in 1780, aged forty-eight. His father died at the same place at the age of seventy, and both were buried at Kinsale. Arthur O'Connor, at an early age, was placed at a public school at Lis- more, and subsequently at one in Castle Lyons. He had a great taste for poetry when very young, but his parents and preceptors discouraged it. He entered Dublin College, as fellow-commoner, in 1779, under Mr. Day. He had four brothers and three sisters; the three sisters died unmarried. Arthur O'Connor was the youngest son; he was called to the Irish bar in 1788, but did not practise. He was educated in the Protestant religion— in rigid Protestantism. In 1807 he married the only child of Condorcet; he had three sons, one of whom only is living.'* He inherited £1,500 a year, paternal property. * This was written in 1842. The son above mentioned is no longer living. 232 o'conkor's account of his career and associates. u He was devoted, from the period of his college life, to serious studies, but political economy was the favourite study of his life. His literary tastes were formed on the classical education he received. His habits were always temperate, and were so even while he lived in Ireland. He lived there, and in England also, in the first circles. It was his good fortune to make many friends, and never to lose any of them, even when differing from them in principle. He became a member of the society of United Irish- men in 1796, and he and Lord Edward Fitzgerald constituted the first Leinster Directory. He never took any oath. He had great confidence in the whole of the Northern Directory, though less in the steadiness of one still living than in that of some others. Dr. White was a light man. Of the Leinster Directory, he had im- plicit confidence in Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Bond, and Jackson. He never was in a directory with Emmet". [" The fact is, the Catholic members convinced the Protestant members that they held separate meetings unknown to the Pro- testants, and always voted together on every question, while the Protestant members never met separately, and always voted as men that were of no party. For the above reason, General O'Connor had much greater reliance on Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Jackson, and Bond, and on the Northern Directory, than on the Catholic members, who all wanted resolution to act. General O'Connor will be forced to give in his memoirs several melan- choly examples of this fact; but it was in the upper Catholics (this was the case), not in the rank of the people, who were all brave.*] " The first directory of the United Irishmen was the Northern, there being no organization of the United Irish in the three pro- vinces of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught. until two years later. When the Northern Directory was organized, it consisted of the two Simmses, Neilson, Tennant, and two others, whose names he does not remember. During the time the affairs of the United Irish were governed by the Northern Directory and Lord Edward Fitzgerald and himself, all hope of obtaining Catholic emancipa- tion and reform was utterly abandoned, and they then looked to separation. " It is true, Emmet insisted on inserting in the remonstrance * The above passages in brackets, in reference to the Catholic leaders, from mo- tives of consideration for General O'Connor, and a feeling of reluctance to injure his reputation, I used, as I then believed, a sound discretion in omitting in the statement of O'Connor, in reply to my queries, published in the first edition of this work. But the unfortunate publication of O'Connor, entitled " Monopoly", which appeared six years later, imposes on me the necessity of laying before the public the passages above mentioned, and some others equally objectionable and reprehensible. — li K. M. o'cohsor's account of his career and ASSOCIATES. 233 which he, M'Neven, and A. O'Connor addressed to government, that if Catholic emancipation and reform had been conceded, we should have broken off the French alliance. But Emmet knew nothing of this; for he was not even a United Irishman when the French alliance was formed.* " When O'Connor first applied to Emmet to be of the directory with Jackson and Bond, he declined it. It was not until O'Con- nor was confined in the Tower of Dublin that Emmet became one of the directory. " The first Southern Directory consisted only of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and O'Connor; the second, of Jackson, Bond, M'Neven, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and O'Connor. " It is an error to put Emmet in the directory with Bond and Jackson ; he was not in it until long after. He objected to the views of the other leaders, and menaced the directory to denounce them to government if they carried into executiou the resolution that was taken to begin the revolution. He (O'Connor) was, from early life, of republican principles, imbibed at the time of the American revolution. At no time of his life, neither before he spoke in the Irish House of Commons nor subsequently, has he varied from those principles. His uncle, Lord Longueville, knew perfectly well, when he gave him a seat in parliament in 1791 for the borough of Philipstown, what were his principles, and he (O'Connor) only accepted the seat on the condition of beinsr entirelv free. " It may be easily conceived that the debates of the Irish House of Commons could seldom interest an unflinching repub- lican. Before the great Catholic question in 1795, he seldom spoke. However, in February, 1792, lie made a speech on the Indian question, grounded on the principles of political economy. That speech caused Pitt to offer his uncle, Lord Longueville, an immediate place of commissioner in the revenue, with a promise of the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer [for A. O'Connor.] This offer was refused by O'Connor. " He does not believe there was an efficient, or any directory, after the month of March, 1798. "When General O'Connor negociated, in 1796, the treaty for the United Irish with the agent of the French Directory, of which General Hoche's expedition was the result, there never had been any other treaty before that with France. In 1796, he and Lord Edward had an interview with Hoche on the French frontiers, and subsequently negociations were entered into with Buonaparte. Buonaparte had a true intention to invade England, * One of the many misstatements of O'Connor in relation to T. A. Emmet. 234 o'connor's account of his career and associates. and had an army of 20,000 men in readiness for it, when the intelligence of the new designs of Austria and Russia caused that intention to be given up. "He did not visit France in 1797 or 1798; he was then in prison. He was arrested in the beginning of 1797, and impri- soned in the Tower of Dublin six months,* and in the beginning of 1798 he was arrested at Margate, and was tried at Maidstone in May the same year. The only witness against him was one Lane, who had been his sub-sheriff for the county Cork. " Though there was not legal evidence to prove that the paper found in Quigley's coat pocket was Quigley's, yet, the fact is, it was his, and was found in his riding coat; for when the five prisoners were brought to Bow Street, a report was spread that the papers taken on the prisoners were lost ; for the first time, Quigley said it was fortunate the papers were lost, for that there was one in his pocket that would hang them all. He never made a secret to his fellow-prisoners that he got that paper from a London society. In my memoirs I will clear up this point. " Cox appeared at Maidstone, and came there from the interest he took in an event which involved the life of O'Connor. He remained always faithful to him, and also to Lord Edward Fitz- gerald. Whatever changes may have taken place in his conduct, it was not until after Lord Edwards death and O'Connor's exile. While there was a chance of success, he was one of the staunchest men in Ireland to their cause. " It is a great error to confound the conduct of Cox during the time the Union lasted, with his conduct since it ceased. There was not a single man in the Union, south or north, be he who he may, that was more staunch or zealous than Cox, and he (O'Connor) had the strongest proof of it. It was when General O'Connor was in the Tower of Dublin that Cox set up the Union Star - and the first thing General O'Connor did, on coming out of the Tower of Dublin, was to convince Cox of the evil his paper was capable of producing, and instantly he discontinued it. It would be absurd to suppose the government could support a journal that made them all tremble for their lives. " As far as he could learn, no one betrayed Lord Edward Fitzgerald. He believes the imprudent visits Neilson paid him were, the cause of his being discovered. Certainly Neilson never betrayed him. " The paper called the Harp of Erin, published in Cork, was established chiefly by Roger O'Connor, and was almost exclu- sively filled by him.| * A. O'Connor was liberated on bail, the 5th of August, 1797. f The "Harp of Erin" was suppressed the 24th of March, 17 ( J8. o'connor's account of his career and associates. 235 " The Press was the paper of Arthur O'Connor. Pie believes the letters signed 1 Marcus' were written by Swift. He does not now recollect who wrote under the signature 4 Montanus'. At this day it is utterly impossible to discover the authors of what was written in the Press. The box for the articles was generally so full that the editor had but to select, and that without occu- pying himself with the names of the authors, a thing so studiously avoided ; for instance, we had reason to think that Dr. Drennan wrote lor the Press, but as he was cautious, we denied it. 11 A great many of the apparent supporters of government made offers of their services to him (O'Connor) under the seal of se- crecy, but their object was to have two strings to their bow. 4 * He was kept in solitary imprisonment in the Birmingham Tower, in Dublin, six months; in the Tow r er of London, two months; in the Maidstone prison, three months; in the Mar- shalsca prison in Dublin, three months ; in Kilmainham prison, three months; in Newgate, about two months; and four years and three months at Fort George, in Scotland. [" Thomas Addis Emmet and M'Neven set themselves at the head of a faction from jealousy against him (General O'Connor), at Fort George; this faction was reorganized in Paris in 1803, so that the whole of the plans connected with Robert Emmet's plot, were directed by the faction, but were not communicated to him by them.*] M Robert Emmet's plans were divulged to him by the French government, who continued to treat with him as the accredited Irish ambassador, recognized as such by it, and known only as such by the Irish directory. The person in Paris, who in this party had the most influence, was Russell, and the project devised by him and Emmet gave the finishing blow to the United Irish confede- racy. Dowdall was engaged in this plot, but he knows not what became of him. Buonaparte, in conversing with General O'Connor, expressed himself unfavourably of the attempt and of those en- gaged in it [" He (O'Connor) was apprised of the insurrection in 1803, but had no part in it ; he looked on it as an act of madness. He had no connection with the Emmets, disapproved of them both ; one for his cowardice, the other for his folly and rashness, that ruined the union. As to Robert Emmet's attempt, how call that a plan which vanished in smoke the moment it saw the light, and that instantly ended in the ruin of all those that were engaged in it? If those in France, who excited Robert Emmet, were in Ireland when the attempt was made, they w r ould have been the * This passage was omitted in the first edition. 236 o'connok's account of his career and associates. first to condemn it as the height of madness — his brother Thomas the first; but they were so unhappy in their exile in France, that they hazarded everything in Ireland that offered them a chance of their return.]* " Despard's attempt in England was wholly foreign to the af- fairs of Ireland. He (General O'Connor) knows not that Robert Emmet came to Paris previously to the insurrection in 1803. Allen, who was constantly with Robert Emmet, and who gave General O'Connor a most minute account of their mad project, never hinted that he (Robert Emmet) had quitted Dublin at all. As to Thomas Addis Emmet's knowledge of his brother Robert's intended attempt in 1803, there is no doubt he did know it. Thomas Addis Emmet communicated their plans to the French government, from whom he (General O'Connor) ^had them. [" When General O'Connor first applied to Thomas Emmet to be of the directory, with Jackson and Bond, he declined it, saying he did not feel firm enough to take part in an insurrection. It was not until General O'Connor was confined in the Tower that Emmet ventured to be of the directory. It was then his timidity paralyzed the directory, by threatening to go to the Castle if they persisted in commencing the insurrection. This was not the only occasion when Lord Edward Fitzgerald and General O'Connor were prevented from acting by the cowardice of some men they confided in.]| " It was in 1803 that Buonaparte gave his opinion to O'Connor, that Ireland contained but two millions. He read it in some old geography. " The place of the intended debarkment of Hoche's expedition has never transpired ; the knowledge of it was confined to Hoche and himself. Despard's attempt was wholly foreign to the affairs of Ireland. " The Sheareses had very little to do in the Union; they acted without the Union, and of themselves, and for a short time only before they were cut off ; the fact is, they did not make themselves known to the directory. As to M'Cabe, the French government acquired the proof that he was a double spy. General O'Connor saved his life with the Minister of War, the Duke of Feltre, after it had been discovered that in London he had intercourse with persons in some of the public offices in Downing Street. * This passage, likewise, was omitted in the first edition. f The preceding passages in brackets, respecting the Emmets, from the same feelings of reluctance to hurt the reputation of General O'Connor, which I ex- plained in a previous note, I omitted in the first edition of this work ; and for the same reasons which I stated in regard to General O'Connor's injurious strictures on the Catholic leaders, I now publish the preceding most unjust observations of General O'Connor in relation to Thomas Addis Emmet; but to this subject I will have to refer elsewhere. — K. R. M. LETTER OF A. O CONNOR TO R. R. MADDEN". 23 7 M The Biographie des Contemporains gives a most erroneous and incorrect list of what O'Connor has published. The following is a correct list of his published writings: — a Pamphlet, in 1794, signed, ' A Stoic 1 , entitled, The Measures of the Ministry to pre- vent a Revolution, are the certain Means of bringing it on ; pub- lished by Sweeney. Cork, and Eaton, 74, Newgate Street; his Speech on the Catholic Question, May 4, 1795; his State of Ireland, in 1 798, addressed to the Irish nation ; two addresses to the free electors of the county of Antrim, one of October 22, 1796, the other January 20, 1797; his Letter to Lord Castle- reogh from his Prison, January, 1797; in 1803, The State of Great Britain: a Letter to General Lafayette, published at Paris in French, and in London in English, in 1831. He has kept no note of the numerous articles he has written in the newspapers'.* Thus far, the summary account of O'Connor's career, his con- nection with the society and relations with the leaders of United Irishmen, embodies the precise statements of O'Connor's written answers to the author's inquiries, which it seemed for obvious reasons desirable to present in O'Connor's own words, and in a continuous unbroken form, notwithstanding the unconnected nature of the information given, and the necessity of adverting in those replies to many important matters without reference to chronological order or arrangement. The following letter accompanied the replies of General O'Connor : — " FROM GENERAL ARTHUR O'CONNOR TO R. R. MADDEN. "Bignon, Sept. 24, 1842. " My dear Madden, — I have just received your letter of the 20th of this month with your questions. Though I am but just recovered from a severe illness, I hasten to furnish you with answers to your questions. By the nature of these I find you have drawn your information from erroneous sources. You seem to imagine Cox was a false United Irishman while the Union lasted, whereas I have the most singularly honourable positive proof that he was firm against the greatest temptations offered by government; whatever failure was in him (of which I know nothing) was after the Union was dissolved. You seem to think the Sheares were leading men in the Union, whereas I may say they never entered it, so as to be known to us. The fact is, they were just entering it when they were cut off. It was the younger * Replies of Arthur O'Connor to queries addressed to him by R R. M. in 1S42. 238 oconnor's animosity to o'connell. Sheares' proclamation, which was an act purely personal, without the knowledge or concurrence of the Union, that has misled some to think he and his brother were deeply engaged in the Union. They had the misfortune to communicate with Armstrong, who betrayed them. The elder Sheares was an aristocrat, the younger an ardent democrat, and led his brother with him. " The Dictionary Biographique des Contemporains is a work si full of errors, that it has no species of credit; it now sells, the fii | volumes, on the quays of Paris for ten francs. All it says of me, ' Condorcet, and of Madame Condorcet, is nearly all false. It makes me the author of works I never wrote, and does not give those I wrote. I am occupied with my memoirs, but what you may write will not interfere with them. My memoirs will take in all I have to say of the Union, from the beginning to the end. There is a wide field, and room enough for all that wish to write on the subject. " I had never heard of your work until I got your letter, not having seen it advertised in any paper, French or English. You will oblige me by depositing a copy of your work at your lodgings at Paris, and if you will have left it, my friend Isambert will call for it, and pay for it ; he will send it to me ; I will take great interest in reading it. There is not a greater example of national ingratitude than that which the after generation have shown to the United Irish, to whose noble sacrifices they owe their freedom. This has been greatly owing to the vile calumnies O'Connell has been constantly propagating against the United Irish, all from that jealousy that devours him of every one that serves Ireland disinterestedly. What would be this man but for the efforts of the United Irish, of whom 30,000 have given their lives for their enslaved country ? He could not be a priest but at the risk of his life, nor a hedge-schoolmaster. He accuses us of drawing the sword. Ireland had lain for a century and more under the imputation of low cowardly slaves, who had not the spirit to vindicate her rights. It was imperatively essential we should show our oppressors we had the spirit to reclaim our rights; this we did, and by so doing we have convinced England it was impossible to longer withhold Catholic emancipation and reform. The United Irish will live in history as the fathers of Irish liberty, when O'Connell will appear as their calumniator. " There was a time when a little faction that grew up in the Union, that was devoured by envy of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and me, set up the calumny that I had received sums from the Catholics. Never in my life did I ever accept one penny from the Catholics, but I expended in my negociations and other ways of promoting the Union, a considerable part of my personal fortune; o'connor's injustice to t. a. emmet. 239 a marked difference between me and my great calumniator. My memoirs will clear up these things and a great many others that seem to be whollv misunderstood by the present generation. It is a sacred duty for me to vindicate the generous generation of United Irishmen from the calumnies of their ungrateful detractors. I will do it without passion or partiality, but with such proofs as shall convince the most unwilling, of the noble and just efforts of my United countrymen, and of the infamy of their calumniators. "I have been told that O'Connell, pushed by his jealousy of the United Irish, has permitted himself the most unwarrantable and sacrilegious epithets against some United Irish in exile in America. It is not only a great and black ingratitude, but a great want of common sense, for it must all fall back on himself. 44 Yours most sincerely, " A. O'Connor. " Au Chateau da Bicrnon, par Fontcnay, "Dept. tlu Loiivt. "September 24th, 1842". For some years previous to O'Connor's death he had boon engaged in writing his own memoirs. But many important circum- stances in connection with that undertaking, and, after his death, the difficulties of the task imposed on the editor of his memoirs, which have come to my knowledge, make it very desirable, in my opinion, to present the public in these countries with a more de- tailed account of O'Connor's career than has been given in the first edition of this work, or is now likely to be given elsewhere. Justice alone to the memory of one of O'Connor's most eminent, most honourable and virtuous associates, Thomas Addis Emmet, would render it necessary to do so. Justice likewise to the me- mory of O'Connell makes it necessary to adopt this course ; for without reference to the lately-published opinions of O'Connor on religious subjects, no just estimate could be formed of that rabid hostility against the great Catholic leader, which he has indulged in the expression of so unscrupulously and so unsparingly. O'Connor set out in life an aristocrat, connected with aristo- cracy, and associated with the proprietary and oligarchy of the country — with university men of high-church principles, and country gentlemen of a superior grade to the shoneens of the Irish magisterial bench — with grand jurymen, and 44 Life and Fortune pledgers" at county meetings of rampant ascendency Tories — the Irish provincial bashaws of 44 three tails'' and 44 two buttons". His manners, external appearance, bearing in public, and demeanour in society, his notions of all things in general, with one exception, were aristocratic. In his political principles, Arthur 240 O'CONNOR, T, A. EMMET, AND W. M. O'Connor was a democrat. He was so from the beginning of his public career, and he continued to the close not only of it, but of his life, the same, without any change, or any apparent power of comprehending how any rational human being could possibly be anything but a democrat. His democratic sentiments, however, were kept in abeyance so long as it was possible for a man of O'Connors impulsive nature to restrain them. In 1795 he came out for the first time in his true political cha- racter in his place in parliament, on the Catholic question, in a speech which electrified the house, horrified his uncle, Lord Lon- gueville, destroyed his interests and expectations in that quarter, and which seized fast hold of the hearts of the people of Ireland. From that day, the progress of O'Connor's political life was one of steady advancement — an obvious onward movement from the starting-post of reform to an inevitable result — a rebellion engaged in for republican institutions and national independence. Political economy was his favourite study ; and it w 7 as his own opinion (expressed on many occasions to the author) that the natural bent of his genius and peculiar turn of mind was to that pursuit. He gave evidence of that opinion in his great work, The revised edition of all the works of Condorcet, which he pub- lished in conjunction with Mons. M. F. Arago, in twenty vols. 8vo ; and in his latest work in English, entitled Monopoly the Cause of all Evil, published in Paris in 1848, in three vols. 8vo. O'Connor became a United Irishman in 1796 ; but previously to his formal connection with the society, he was on divers occasions consulted by their leaders. Of each of the directories O'Connor was a member ; but it was in the Leinster Directory where he exercised most influence and took a foremost part in the affairs of the society. The councils of that body were by no means remarkable for their unanimity. It is well known that one party in it was en- tirely opposed to any outbreak or rebellion without adequate assistance from France, in the way of men, arms, ammunition, and money. From the time T. A. Emmet became a member of the directory, he was the organ of that party and the exponent of that opinion ; and outside of the directory he had that opinion advocated in the committees of the United Irishmen and the cir- cles of a social kind, comprising the upper classes of the mercan- tile and professional communities, in which the objects of the society were carried out and promoted largely by the late W. M. of Dublin — a man of powerful intellect, singularly sagacious and far-seeing, of inflexible purpose and great solidity of judgment, wanting no great quality to constitute a man of first-rate power in revolutionary times, except promptitude in council, when a deci- THE "PRESS" AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS. 241 sion was to be come to, when the time for action came. The period of deliberation with him was never over; the process of mental ex- amination was a peculiar one with him. When a subject for inquiry was presented to his mind, his first step was to isolate it, and fix its place in some sphere of thought where no surrounding influences could affect it. He never approached it in a straight line from the circumference, but always walked round it in circles, diminishing the distance so slowly as he went on, that the progress he made was hardly perceptible to those who anxiously awaited the result of his circuitous deliberation. This process, it must be confessed, would have done better in the antediluvian days of Noah, when men ordi- narily lived half a thousand years, more or less, than in those de- generate times of ours, when, the Deluge having so seriously abbre- viated the duration of human life, seventy years is a good round age for any temperate gentleman, who is not an author, to attain to. But Emmet's confidential friend, W. M., was a wise and a sober- minded man ; and Emmet, though he was a drag in the directory on the movement party, who would risk an outbreak without French aid of any kind, it is manifest enough on the face of Tone's journals, had not been tardy in coming to the conclusion that French aid was essential to the success of the cause of the United Irishmen, nor remiss in seeking to obtain it so early even as 1794. O'Connor was at the head of the party who, though desirous to obtain French aid, were ultimately ready to risk a rising of the people without it. There certainly were times when any unaided attempt would have been more propitious than the latter part of 1797 or beginning of 1798, or any period after the arrests of the principal members of the Directory, and of the members of the Committee at Bond's, in the March of the latter year. But on the question at issue between those leaders of the United Irishmen who can now call in question the wisdom of those councils of Thomas Addis Emmet, which suggested that the country should not be committed in a formidable struggle, of tre- mendous importance to its people's lives and liberty, without such aid from another country as might afford a fair chance of success? CHAPTER II. ORGANS AND PENSMEN OF THE SOCIETY OF UNITED IRISHMEN OF DUBLIN. "THE PRESS" AND ITS WRITERS: NOTICES OF DEANE SWIFT AND DR. DRENNAN. "THE UNION STAR" AND WALTER COX. The United Irishmen were certainly well served by their pens- men and the Press which represented their opinions and advocated their cause. ii. 17 242 Flanagan's account of origin of the " press'. The newspaper and pamphlet literature of later times in Ire- land will not suffer by a comparison in regard to ability with that of the Press, the Northern Star, the pamphlets of Tone, Drennan, Stokes, Sampson, and O'Connor. The violence of Lord Clare in the House of Lords, was imi- tated, as far as invective went, in the years 1797 and 1798, in the columns of the Press newspaper, the organ of the United Irish- men. There are, however, few newspapers of the present day which display more literary talent, than that ably written, yet intemperately conducted paper exhibited. The Press made its first appearance the 28th of September, 1797. The sixty-eighth number was seized the morning of its intended publication, and the paper was finally put down by the strong hand of military power, the 6th of March, 1798. It was pub- lished from the beginning of November at Mr. Stockdale's printing establishment, No. 62 Abbey Street, now No. 72; the virtual pro- prietor of the paper was Mr. Arthur O'Connor: the sworn, but it must be added the nominal proprietor, was Mr. Peter Finnerty. In each number of the paper, up to the 30th of December, 1797, printed, we find the words, "P. Finnerty, printer, at No. 4, Church Lane" ; but from that date A. O'Connor's name is substi- tuted for that of Finnerty as printer. A venerable man, now verging on his eightieth year, well known to the author, and respected by all who know him, Mr. Flanagan, who was a printer and was engaged in the office of the Press newspaper in 1797 and the early part of 1798, has given an account of the origin and management of that paper, such as no other person now living (perhaps with one exception) could supply. " In the latter end of 1797 the leaders of the United cause esta- blished a newspaper entitled the Press, to forward the movement for the liberation of Ireland. The first seventeen numbers were printed by Mr. Whit worth, an Englishman, in Upper Exchange Street, Dublin. The subsequently celebrated Peter Finnerty, who was to have been a compositor on it, was introduced to Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Connor, who found him to be a man of great talent, tact, and patriotism. They at once deci- ded that he should be employed at the publishing office in Church Lane, College Green, where he had to conduct some very important correspondence for the United Irishmen. His name appeared at the bottom of the paper as the printer to the Press, and Lord Edward Fitzgerald on several occasions ex- pressed his entire approval of Peter Finnerty's conduct. " The first editor was Mr. Brennan, a very able writer, but a man of questionable integrity, as subsequent events proved. Brennan having been committed to jail for debt, he wrote to the « THE PRINTER OF THE " PRESS" PILLORIED. 243 proprietors to the effect that if they did not pa) T his debts imme- diately, he would place all the MSS. which he had in his posses- sion in the hands of the Castle authorities. Brennans threat was treated with contempt, and Arthur O'Connor wrote to him in these words: 'If you wish to act a base, dishonourable part towards us and the righteous cause you have engaged to sustain, we must regret it, we must likewise regret having been associated with a man capable of such baseness. Do your utmost. Pos- terity shall decide upon the rectitude of the cause you have ex- pressed your intention of betraying. u In a few days after Brennan was liberated from prison by the government, who, no doubt, perceived that he was worth purchas- ing ; but I am not aware of his having appeared before the public again in connection with politics. " The aspect of Irish affairs looking very perilous, and prosecu- tion following prosecution, Mr. Whit worth declined printing the Press any longer. Mr. Stockdale of Abbey Street brought out the eighteenth number, and continued to print it as long as it was permitted by the government. " When Finnerty was found guilty of a libel, another name was obliged to be entered at the stamp office. Arthur O'Connor's name was then attached to it. Although there were upwards of 3,000 copies struck off each publication (Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday evenings), the day that Arthur O'Connor's name was announced as printer, it got a rise of 1,500, and increased to 6,000, which was the utmost that could be printed in time by the presses in use at that period. The name of Arthur O'Connor was every- where received with enthusiasm by the people, particularly in the counties of Kildare and Meath. In truth, almost all Protestants who espoused the United cause, were generous, disinterested, noble-minded men, who truly loved fatherland. What a contrast with the 1 Soupers', of these days ! "At the time Finnerty was sentenced to be pilloried at the front of Newgate, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Con- nor went to Green Street to encourage him while in the pillory. There were several thousands present, and the people seemed much excited. When they reached the guard of soldiers, Lord Edward endeavoured to pass one of them. The soldier raised his gun, and was about to strike him, when the high sheriff (Mr. Pemberton) immediately advanced, and ordered him not to act without orders. He then gave directions to the officer in command of the guard to allow Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Mr. O'Connor to pass. They both continued near Finnerty during the time he was suffering the penalty. The high sheriff seemed puzzled how to act ; but owing to his mild and conciliatory conduct to the people, all passed off quietly. 244 ESCAPE OF SIRR FROM ASSASSINATION. " Immediately after leaving Green Street, Lord Edward and O'Connor went to Stockdale's office. Having entered into con- versation about what had taken place with the soldier, his lordship took two small pistols from his waistcoat pockets, and said that if the soldier had struck him, he would have shot him dead. If that had taken place, I am confident the entire guard would have been disarmed in a few minutes, for the crowd was so close to them at that moment, that they would not be able to use their muskets. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was the most determined man I have ever seen. " So hostile were the low Orangemen to the Press newspaper, that the messengers who carried the papers from the printer to the publishing office in Church Lane, were, on several occasions, way- laid, in consequence of which the printers formed themselves into a guard to protect the newspapers the men were conveying. One night a printer named Hardy* (a brave-hearted young man) and myself went for that purpose. Hardy was armed with a large pis- tol, and I had a piece of metal from the printing office, about two feet long and an inch thick. We left the messengers safe in Church Lane, and subsequently went through College Green, Trinity Street, and St. Andrew Street. As we passed into William Street, Hardy, by the light of the old oil lamps, observed Major Sirr advancing at a distance, and immediately determined on shooting him as he came up, by discharging his pistol in the major's face, as he was supposed to have worn armour about his body. Having an extreme objection to assassination, I strongly urged my friend Hardy to abandon all idea of committing a crime so revolting to every Christian sentiment. He yielded to my en- treaties; and in another moment Major Sirr passed us, little knowing what a narrow escape he had for his life. The major surveyed us from head to foot, and my anxiety was intense, for I still feared some act of desperation on the part of my friend Hardy, on meeting a man so universally detested. " Counsellor Sampson was the last conductor of the Press. The paper continued to be printed until the sixty-eighth number, when a guard of the Cavan militia, under the command of a rampant Orangeman, Maxwell, came and seized the office, carried away all the newspapers that had been printed, and destroyed the type, presses, etc., in a wanton manner.| " While the Press continued to be printed at Stockdale's, * Hardy was a Dublin man : he was about twenty-five years of age ; his father lived in Greek Street. He was a United Irishman. He became a sailor, and died on the coast of Africa. f Alderman Alexander accompanied the military party, and represented the civil authority in a magisterial capacity on this occasion. stockdale's connection with the "press". 245 one of the apprentices, William Powell, was passing through Back Lane, and hearing some noise proceeding from a public-house, he stopped to ask a man at the door what was the matter. The fellow immediately collared him, and he was dragged in. Powell then discovered that he was in the custody of no less a personage than Jemmy O'Brien, who had been placed at the door by Major Sirr. The major had got information that Serjeant Downes, of the Kings County militia (who had been appointed to a post in the rebel army) was in the house, and had gone with his party to arrest him. Downes had his regimentals on, and as soon as he saw the Major enter the room, he attempted to draw his sword, but his arm was seized by the powerful grasp of an assistant, and he was immediately surrounded by the whole gang. Jemmy O'Brien all the time was stationed at the door. Powell and Downes were then handcuffed, and marched to the Castle guard-house. Ser- jeant Downes asked Powell his name, and as he thought his young companion was alarmed by his confinement, desired him to keep up his spirits, as they had no charge against him, and had only seized him to prevent his giving any alarm ; but (said he) as to me, before the next day's sun will set I will be in eternity ! After conversing for a while with Powell, he lay down on the guard-bed and slept for three hours. When he awoke, he rallied Powell again, as he appeared to be much fretted, and said he would give him a song; he accordingly gave, in very good style, Paddies Evermore. At six o'clock in the morning a guard arrived at the door, and commanded Serjeant Downes to be led forth. Downes then bid Powell farewell, and was conveyed to the camp at the Naul : he was tried that day by a court martial, and immediately shot! Poor Downes! I knew him well. His fate was deeply regretted by all who were connected with the move- ment. Serjeant Downes was a remarkably line young man, brave and zealous. " About the same time, Mr. Astley, who kept the Amphitheatre in Peter Street (now Molyneaux Asylum), made himself extremely obnoxious to the citizens of Dublin. He ordered his musicians to strike up Croppies lie doicn, and other insulting airs, twice every night, for the amusement of the low Orangemen who fre- quented the house ; but my friend Hardy, who was so anxious to despatch the major, repaired, with about thirty Liberty boys, to Astley s, and having taken their position near the musicians, all was quiet until the orchestra commenced playing Croppies lie down* when Hardy started up and exclaimed, ' Come, boys, now * Everyone in Ireland at least is familiar with Croppies lie down. Here is the authorship, as given by Thomas Moore : — M Set off for Devizes at one o'clock, with Watson Taylor and Salmon, in W. S.'s carriage. Our conversation on the way 246 LETTER OF O'CONNOR IN THE 44 PRESS ". is the time. Forward!' In a few minutes all was confusion. The upper gallery men descended into the pit, broke into the orchestra, and smashed all the instruments. Astley's theatre never recovered the shock of this melee. The Kilkenny militia were on duty, but did not interfere ; no doubt the Ballyragget boys felt no sympathy for the Orangemen. 44 J ohn Stockdale, the publisher of the Press newspaper, was com- mitted to Kilmainham jail in 1797, for refusing to answer certain queries put to him by the House of Lords. He remained in prison six months, and during that period his property in types, presses, etc., was destroyed by the military and civil authorities. 44 In 1803, he was implicated in the insurrection of Robert Em- met, and was again imprisoned on the charge of printing the pro- clamation of Emmet, and remained in confinement nearly two years. He came out of jail a ruined man ; he met with no assistance from those whose battles he had fought in his paper ; neither from the 'patriots' nor the 4 Catholics'. He died in Abbey Street, Dublin, the 11th January, 1813". So much for the recollections of a surviving compositor on the Press newspaper. There is a letter of O'Connors, comparatively speaking, little known, on his becoming connected with the Press, chiefly, as he states, for the exposure of the frequent use of torture, nearly five months before the outbreak of the rebellion, which is de- serving of the attention of every man who feels, or professes to feel, any concern in matters that affect the interests of humanity. The 2nd of January, 1798, O'Connor published the following letter in the Press: — 44 TO THE IRISH NATION. 44 Countrymen, — Since the conviction and sentence passed on the printer of the Press, a clause has been pointed out by the Commissioners of Stamps, which lay lurking in one of the late parliament's acts, unknown to the lawyers, whereby a printer con- victed of a libel shall be deprived of his property in the paper in which it had been inserted. By this law, in such perfect con- interesting, as being about the events of '98 in Ireland, when W. Taylor was secretary to Lord Camden, and I was a young sucking rebel at college ; his com- panions being the Cookes, Castlereaghs, etc., of that period ; and mine, Emmet, Lawless, and hoc genus omne. Compared notes as to our respective recollections, and felt, both of us, how strange it was that he and I, who thirty years ago were placed in a position where either might have been called upon to hang or shoot the other, were now chatting over the whole matter amicably in his barouche, William Salmon not a little edified by our conversation. Found now, for the first time, that Watson Taylor was the author of the words of the celebrated Croppies lie down, a song to the tune of which more blood has been shed than often falls to the lot of lyrical productions". oconnor's views eh establishing the "press". 247 fonnity with all the other acts of a parliament which, in the words of a great and good man, ' has taken more from the liberties, and added more to the burdens of the people', and, I may say, stained the statute book with more penal laws, than any parliament that ever yet existed, it has become necessary that on the spur of the instant, from this unforeseen clause, another proprietor should come forward to save the Irish press from being put down. To perform that sacred office to this best benefactor of mankind has devolved upon me; and rest assured I will discharge it with fidelity to you and our country, until some one more versed in the business can be procured. Every engine of force and corrup- tion lias been employed by those ministers, in whose hands, unfortunately for the present peace and the future repose of the nation, unlimited power has been invested, to discover whether I was the proprietor of the Press. Had they sent to me, instead of lavishing your money amongst perjurers, spies, and informers, I would have told them what now I tell you. I did set up the Pi'ess, though, in a legal sense, I was not the proprietor, nor did I look to any remuneration ; and I did so because, from the time that, in violation of property, in subversion of even the appear- ance of respect for the laws, and to destroy not only the freedom of the press, but the press itself, the present ministers demolished the Northern Star, no paper in Ireland, either from being bought up, or from the dread and horror of being destroyed, would publish an account of the enormities which these very ministers had been committing: where they not only suffered a lawless banditti of sworn extirpators to destroy the property, to raze the habitations, and to drive thousands of ruined families to the most distant parts of the country, for want of protection, but where the strongest suspicions rested that they had given encouragement to such diabolical acts, under the name of loyalty and the mask of religion : where they let loose an excited soldiery to commit acts of outrage which no invading army of any country in Europe would have practised without violating those laws established amongst civilized nations : where the torch had consumed their houses and property in entire districts, and summary murders had been wantonly perpetrated: where thousands have been hurried into those multiplied dungeons, and thousands sent to the gallows, on 'suspicion of being suspected' of re for m and anion: and, above all, where torture has been applied in numerous instances to extort confession of what, by the Insurrection Act, has been judged worthy of death, but, as I read it, by the strictest rules and in- junctions of Christian morality, has been enforced as a paramount duty; ' that torture ', which our ancestors held in such inveterate abhorrence that its utter exclusion was esteemed so fundamental 248 g'connor's views in establishing the "press". a part of our constitutional code, that neither that Stuart, nor his ministers, whose heads paid the forfeit of the crimes they committed, nor the ministers of that Stuart who was expelled, durst introduce it. I could cite myriads of facts to substantiate the suppression of the publication of these enormous atrocities, but I will confine myself to the mention of one which has come within my own knowledge. " Whilst I was confined in the Tower, the soldiers who were stationed all around it, fired up at the prison, and on being asked why they had fired without having challenged, or any pretext for so doing, they answered, ' that they had acted according to the orders they had got\ As I was the only person confined in the prison, no doubt could remain that these orders were issued for the purpose of assassination. A gentleman who had been an eye-witness of the attempt, took a statement of facts to the Evening Post, which was at that time esteemed the least cor- rupted paper in Dublin ; but the editor told him that, fearing that his house and his press might experience the fate of the Northern Star, he would not insert it, although, the next day, not only that print, but every other paper in town, contained an account of the transaction, in which there was not one word of truth, except the admission that the shots had been fired ! From the moment I was enlarged from the Tower, I determined to free the press from this dastardly thraldom, that the conduct of those ministers might be fairly published ; and whilst a beloved brother is confined in a cell nine feet square, against every form of law and the plighted faith of this administration, I take this oppor- tunity to call on Lord Camden to tell you and the world, what inquiry has been made, or what punishment has been inflicted on the perpetrators of an act, which, if brought home to his admin- istration, must affix a greater stain on his name than the ever- memorable days of September have indelibly left on Robespierre and the gang of his assassins, whose government was supported by burning of houses, destruction of property, massacreing the people, and crowding the galleys and dungeons, but for which he, even Robespierre, disdained to employ torture to extort confessions of patriotism, which this sanguinary usurper punished as treason. Whenever it shall happen that one or a few base usurpers shall have seized on a nation's civil and political rights, and that they shall have sold them to a neighbouring country in the rankest and foulest corruption and treason — whenever it shall happen that, to heal religious dissension, to promote universal philanthropy, true Christian charity, and national union, and to establish the imprescriptible right of being represented, which no people can forfeit, shall be punished by lawless or legalized murder, trust me, DENUNCIATIONS OF TORTURE IN THE " PRESS 249 the most drowsy conscience, stung by public exposure, will make every effort by bribery, by violence, by persecution, and even by bludgeon and robbery, to put down the press. But, regarding it as the great luminary which has dispelled the darkness in which mankind lay brutalized in ignorance, superstition, and slavery — regarding it as that bright constellation which, by its diffusion of light, is at this moment restoring the nations amongst whom it has made its appearance, to knowledge and freedom, — whilst I can find one single plank of the scattered rights of my country to stand on, I will fix my eyes on the press, as the polar star which is to direct us to the haven of freedom. With these sentiments engraved on my heart ; alive to the honest ambition of serving my country ; regardless whether I am doomed to fill by the lin- gering torture of a solitary dungeon, or the blow of the assassin ; it' the freedom of the press is to be destroyed, I shall esteem it a proud, destiny to be buried under its ruins. But if there be any men so base or so stupid as to imagine that they can usurp or withhold your civil and political rights — that they can convert truth into sedition, or patriotism into treason — if they imagine that this is a period favourable for abridging the freedom of mankind, or establishing despotic power on the ruins of liberty — let them look around them, and they will find that amongst the old. and inveterate despotisms in Europe, some have been destroyed, and that the rest are on the brink of destruction. They may make martyrs, and Liberty's roots will be fertilized by the blood of the murdered ; but if their deeds and their blunders have not made re- flection a horror, let them look back on the five years that are past, and they will see that they have been the most destructively rapid revolutions that ever existed; they will see that Great Britain and Ireland, which, from the portion of rights they enjoyed, were the nations of Europe where revolution was least necessary, and where it might have been most easily saved, are now nearest the danger. But let them reflect ere it is too late — and it is never too late to abandon a ruinous course — that if they could establish, without opposition, lettres de cachette in place of habeas corpus and trial by jury; if the galleys and bastilles of despotism could be erected in place of the prisons of law ; if they could abolish every idea of representation, and establish chambers for registering their requi- sitions and edicts ; if, instead of the Press of the Nation, they could set up the Gazette of the Court ; if they could abolish that great constitutional principle, that no man could be forced to his own crimination, and establish the torture to extort confession, they should recollect that, like France, instead of preventing a revolu- tion, they would but create so many powerful causes to excite the people to make one; and whilst tyrannic despots talk so much of 250 DENUNCIATIONS OF TORTURE IN THE "PRESS". supporting the constitution they have done so much to destroy, let them remember that, if it owes much to obedience, it owes more to resistance; and that the feelings of a people must determine where crimes and sufferings shall end the one, and begin the other. " Arthur O'Connor". The letters in the Press signed Forte sque were evidently written by a lawyer ; the subject of them is generally the illegality of the proceedings which had superseded the trial by jury, the excesses committed by the military, or the tortures inflicted on the people. Sampson states, in his Memoirs, that many of the accounts of these enormities published in the Press were written by him, but he does not state under what signature: that of Fortesque however, may probably be regarded as having been suggested by the quality with which the name of Sampson is as- sociated. He was certainly supposed to be " the manager of the Press", and was called so by LordMoira in one of his letters to him. In reply to Lord Moiras assertion he says: " The paper was set up when I was in the country, and was continued some time, before I ever saw it". * * * " The use made of the Press was to publish those facts, of which you were desirous also to be the pub- lisher — the suppression and subsequent impunity of which (facts) you seemed to foresee, as well as I did, would lead to rebellion".* The facts he alludes to, were the statements, verified on oath, of numerous atrocities, such as half-hangings, scourgings and picketings, which he had drawn up and presented to Lord Moira, and which his lordship, on two occasions, laid many of the details of before parliament, and which he undertook to prove at the bar of the house, if a committee of inquiry would be granted for this investigation. But such an inquiry was not compatible with the reputation of Lords Clare and Castlereagh, or the interests of the faction which then constituted the "imperium in imperio" in Ireland. Sampson, in the latter part of 1797, had formed " a Society for obtaining Authentic Information of Outrages committed on the People"; the object of which society, he says, was, " by the disclosure of these enormities, to restrain the perpetrators of them, and to render it impossible for the government, which had hitherto connived at these proceedings, to plead ignorance of them". " The members of it", he says, " were men undoubtedly the most distinguished in Ireland, such as Grattan, the Ponsonbys, Curran, Fletcher, the brave Montgomery", etc. " We had pro- ceeded", he adds, " some time with effect, in despite of the reign- * Sampson's Memoirs; Introduction, p. G6. THE " PRESS"' AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS. 251 ing horror; — and never were more tragical stories wrested from oblivion"'.* So long as there was an organ in Ireland for the publication of these statements, there was a sort of control over the violence of Orangeism ; but when the " Press was put down by military force, there were no bounds to the excesses. The members of parliament themselves, of the opposition party, were insulted by insinuations prejudicial to their loyalty, — nay, some of them were openly taunted, as persons who were aiders and abettors of traitors. The loth of May, 1797, Mr. Grattan announced the determi- nation of himself and his friends to the ministers, to secede lrom parliament: — " Having no hopes left to persuade or dissuade, and having discharged our duties, we shall trouble you no more ; and after this day shall not attend the House of Commons".f Much blame has been thrown on Messrs. Grattan, Fonsonby, and Curran, for abandoning their posts at this fearful crisis. But the fact is, they knew their own lives and liberty, and (what was dearer than either) their reputation, was in peril ; and there was no secu- rity for any man of their party from the malevolence of that Orange faction which then swayed the council, the viceroy, and even Castlereagh himself. In a recent work, entitled Lights and Shadows of Whigs and Tories, ascribed to the pen of the son of an incorruptible judge, it is plainly stated "that the loyalty of a Hastings had been even called in question ; — that an informer had been got to couple the name of Grattan with treason ; — that the arrest of Curran had even been debated in the council; — nay, that a certain knight, of the name of Ormsby, renowned, in those times of terror, for his chival- rous exploits in the riding-house, had proceeded to the country- house of Mr. Ponsonby, with the avowed purpose of inflicting corporal punishment on that gentleman, and duly prepared for that operation; which punishment, in the fortunate absence of Mr. Ponsonby, was relinquished for a temporary military occupation of his house". The suppression of the Press had been determined on, to prevent the intended publication of an attack on Lord Clare, particularly and person ally offensive to his lordship, information of it having been given to the Government by some one in the office. The article was already in print, when the house where the paper was printed in Mountrath Street, and the office where it was pub- lished in Abbey Street, were taken possession of by a military force under the direction of the high sheriff. This letter, addressed to * Sampson's Memoirs, p. 57. t Grattan's Speeches, vol. iii. p. 342. 252 THE "PRESS" AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS. " the Author of Coercion", and signed Dion, probably written by John Sheares, is to be found in a volume called The Beauties of the Press, published in London in 1800. Sampson, who lived within a few doors of the office, had been sent for by the wife of the printer, then in jail, when the seizure was made by the high-sheriff, assisted by a large military force.* Pie says: — " I learned afterwards, that the investment and occu- pation of Mr. Stockdale's house was to prevent an intended pub- lication from circulating in the Press against Lord Clare". Among the contributors to the Press, there were men of the first eminence in literature, and one (Thomas Moore) whose fame was yet unwon, and whose dawning talents were then hardly known beyond the precincts of the college. His first production in prose, he informs us, in his life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, appeared in the columns of the Press before he had attained his seventeenth year. He does not say under what signature he wrote for that paper ; but some of the pieces, he states, which were inserted in the secret report of the committee of the House of Commons, and given to the public as specimens of the " alarming writings" of the Press, were his. There are some lines on Mr. Pitt, signed Tommy Truant, in one of the January numbers of the year 1798, the author of which probably contributed other pieces of poetry to that paper. There is one piece displaying a great deal of talent, called " The London Pride and Shamrock", in No. 11 of the Press, signed Trebor, which I believe to be the production of that most highly gifted and ill fated of our countrymen — the unfortunate Robert Emmet. The letters of the signature reversed, will be found to be those which compose the name " Robert". Before I noticed this circumstance, I was struck with the simplicity, the sombre cast of thought, the ardent enthusiasm which is displayed in these verses. John Sheares was one of the latest writers in this paper. Another contributor to the Press, on the authority of Dr. M'Neven, it may be stated, was Mr. William Preston, one of the most distinguished scholars of Trinity College in his time, by the acknowledgment even of one not very favourable to his politics, Dr. Patrick Duigenan. (See Lacrimce Academicce .) Preston was a member of the well-known society established by Yelverton and Curran, " The Monks of St. Patrick". Lie was the author of the Argonautics of Appollonius Rhodius, translated into English verse, of several poems and dramatic pieces, and a contributor to the production called Pranceriana, a satiri- cal piece, written against Dr. Hutchinson, Provost of Trinity * It has been stated in several publications that Lord Edward Fitzgerald was present on this occasion ; but Sampson positively states that he was not there. THE CASE OF "WILLIAM ORR. 253 College, in 1774. The Numbers 16, 24, 25, 29, 31, and 33, were written by Preston. Dr. Duigenan was one of the principal con- tributors. As one of the founders of the Royal Irish Academy and of the Dublin Library, the name of Preston is associated with those of Charlemont and others of the foremost men of his day. Preston was a man of great literary attainments, " his mind was stored with Roman and Grecian literature''. For several years before his death, he filled the office of commissioner of appeals, and died in Dublin, in January 1807, in his fifty-sixth year. The writings in the Press most distinguished for their ability, were those which bear the names of Marcus, Wit Caxtox, Sarsfield, Fortesque, Sceyola, A Miiitia Officer, and Dion. Those under the signature of M ON T anus, eleven in number, are written with great power, and bear evident marks of a mind deeply imbued with political and legal know- ledge, and an intimate acquaintance with the character and con- dition of the people. The spirit which breathes in these letters, is that of a calm determination, an imperturbable disposition, a nature softened by philosophy, insensible to fear, and influenced by no sordid or selfish motive. The author of these letters, on the authority of the late Dr. M'Xeven in a statement to the author (who ought to have known the person he believes to have been the writer of them better than any body else), was Thomas Addis Emmet. It may be observed, that a statement in the latter part of 171)7 (though not in itself entitled to much respect as an authority) appeared in the Dublin Journal, in which the writer declared that he had seen one of the manuscript letters signed Montanus, in the handwriting of Thomas Addis Emmet. A prosecution was instituted against the Press in 1798, for seditious libel on Lord Camden's government, contained in certain letters which appeared in that paper in the latter part of 1797. The subject matter of the libel in the Press, signed Marcus (for the publication of which the printer was prosecuted by the government), was the refusal of Lord Camden to extend mercy to a person of the name of William Orr, of respecta- bility, and remarkable for his popularity, who had been capi- tally convicted at Carricktergus of administering the oath of the United Irishmen's Society, and was the first person who had been so convicted. Poems were written, sermons were preached ; after- dinner speeches, and after supper still stronger speeches, were made, of no ordinary vehemence, about the fate of Orr and the conduct of Lord Camden, which certainly, in the peculiar circumstances of this case, was bad, or rather stupidly base and iniquitously unjust. The scribes of the United Irishmen wrote up the memory of the man whom Camden had allowed to be executed with a full 254 THE CASE OF WILLIAM ORR. knowledge of the foul means taken to obtain a conviction, officially conveyed to him by persons every way worthy of credit and of undoubted loyalty. The evident object of the efforts to make this cry, " Remember Orr", stir up the people to rebellion, cannot be mistaken — that object was to single out an individual case of suffering for the cause of the Union, for the sympathy of the nation, and to turn that sympathy to the account of the cause. Orr's case pre- sented to the people of Ireland, at that period, a few extraordinary features of iniquity and of injustice. He was a noted, active, and popular country member of the society of United Irishmen. He was executed on account of the notoriety of that circumstance, but not on account of the sufficiency of the evidence or the justice of the conviction that was obtained against him ; for the crown witness, Wheatly, immediately after the trial, acknowledged that he had per- jured himself; and some of the jury came forward likewise, and admitted that they were drunk when they gave their verdict ; and these facts, duly deposed to and attested, were laid before the viceroy, Lord Camden, by Sir John Macartney, the magistrate who had caused Orr to be arrested, and who, to his honour be it told, when he found the practices that had been resorted to, used every effort, though fruitlessly, to move Lord Camden to save the prisoner.* Orr was executed, I repeat it, on account of the notoriety of his connection with the United Irish system, but not on account of the crime legally laid to his charge. William Orr, of Ferranshane, in the county of Antrim, was charged with administering the United Irishman's oath, in his own house, to a soldier of the name of Wheatly. He was the first person indicted under the act which made that offence a capital felony (36 Geo. III.). His father was a small farmer in com- fortable circumstances, and the proprietor of a bleach-green. James Hope, who was intimately acquainted with all the circum- stances of the case, informs me, " that William Orr was not actually the person who administered the oath to the soldier. The person who administered the oath was William M'Keever, a delegate from the city of Derry to the Provincial Committee, who afterwards made his escape to America". In a letter of Miss M'Cracken, dated 27th of September, 1797, addressed to her brother, then in Kilmainham Jail, I find the fol- * These facts were admitted to me to be correctly stated, as they are given in the publications of the day, by the son of Sir John Macartney, the Rev. A. Ma- cartney, the vicar of Belfast, in a conversation which I had with him ; on which occasion he informed me of the particulars of the arrest of Orr, which had been effected by him in September, 1797. This gentleman would have served the party to which he unfortunately belonged at the expense of his life, but, to the best of my opinion, not at the expense of truth. THE CASE OF WILLIAM ORR. 255 lowing reference to the recent trial of Orr: — " Orr's trial has clearly proved, that there is neither justice nor mercy to be expected. Even the greatest aristocrats here join in lamenting his fate; but his greatness of mind renders him rather an object of envy and of admiration than of compassion. I am told that his wife is gone with a letter from Lady Londonderry to her brother on his behalf. .... You will be surprised when I tell you that old Alexander Thompson, of Cushendall, was foreman of the jury, and is thought will lose his senses if Mr. Orrs sentence is carried into execution, as he appears already quite distracted at the idea of a person being condemned to die through his ignorance, as it seems he did not at all understand the business of a juryman. However, he held out from the forenoon till si.r o'clock in the morn- ing of the day following, though, it is said, he was beaten, and threatened with being wrecked, and not left a six-pence in the world, on his refusing to bring in a verdict of guilty. Neither would they let him taste of the supper and the drink which was sent to the rest, and of which they partook to such a beastly degree. It was not, therefore, much to be wondered at, that an infirm old man should not have sufficient resolution to hold out against such treatment, (Signed) " Mary M'Cracken". The report given in the Press of the 29th of October, 1797, is said to have been furnished by an eminent short-hand writer. Orr was defended by Curran and Sampson. The judges before whom he was tried were, Lord Yelverton and Judge Chamber- laine. The jury retired at six in the evening to consider their verdict. They sat up, deliberathig, all night, and returned into court at six the following morning. The jury inquired if they might find a qualified verdict as to the prisoner's guilt. The judge directed them to give a special verdict on the general issue. They retired again, and returned shortly with a verdict of guilty, and a strong recommendation of the prisoner to mercy. Next day Orr was brought up for judgment, when, after an unsuccessful motion in arrest of judgment, chiefly on the grounds of the drunkenness of the jury, which Judge Chamberlaine would not admit of being made " the foundation of any motion to the court", Lord Yelver- ton pronounced sentence of death "in a voice scarcely articulate, and at the conclusion of his address burst into tears". Orr said, pointing to the jury, " That jury has convicted me of being a felon. My own heart tells me that their conviction is a falsehood, and that I am not a felon. If they have found me guilty impro- perly, it is worse for them than for me. /can forgive them. I wish to say only one word more, and that is, to declare on this 256 THE CASE OF WILLIAM ORR. awful occasion, and in the presence of God, that the evidence against me was grossly perjured — grossly and wickedly perjured !" The witness, Wheatly, made an affidavit before a magistrate, acknowledging his having sworn falsely against Orr. Two of the jury made depositions, setting forth that they had been induced to give a verdict contrary to their opinion, when under the influence of liquor. Two others made statements that they had beeni menaced by the other jurors with denunciations and the wrecking of their properties, if they did not comply with their wishes. The following persons composed Mr. Orr's jury : — Archibald Thompson, George Crooks, James M'Naghten, George Pentland, J. Bell, George Dickson, Samuel Semphill, William Laughlin, George Casement, Arthur Johnston, John Hall, and George Patterson. James Orr, in the Press newspaper of the 28th of October, 1797, published a statement respecting his interference, with a view of saving his brothers life, to the following effect: — " He, James Orr, had been applied to by many gentlemen to get his brother William to make a confession of his guilt, as a condi- tion on which they would use their interest to have his life spared. The high sheriff, Mr. Skeffington, and the sovereign of Belfast, the Rev. Mr. Bristowe, were among the number — the former un- dertaking to get the grand jury to sign a memorial in his favour. James Orr immediately went to his brother, and the latter indig- nantly refused to make any such confession, for ' he had not been guilty of the crime he was charged with'. James Orr not being able to induce him to sign it, returned to Belfast and wrote out a confession, similar in terms to that required by Skeffington and Bristowe, and forged his brother's name. The forged docu- ment was then turned to the account it was required for. A re- spite had been granted ; but the weakness of the brother was made instrumental to the death of the prisoner. The shaken verdict of the drunken jury, of the perjured witness, was not suffered to pre- serve the prisoner. The forged testimony of his guilt was brought against him. The promises under which that document was ob- tained were forgotten, and thus ' a surreptitious declaration', swin- dled from the fears of an afflicted family, was made the instrument to intercept the stream of mercy, and counteract the report of the judge (one of the judges, namely. Lord Yelverton) who tried him". Orr was executed outside of Carrickfergus, on the 14th of October, 1797, in his thirty-first year, solemnly protesting his innocence of the crime laid to his charge. The act of James Orr might have led the executive into error ; but William Orr wrote a letter to Lord Camden, dated the 10th of October, plainly informing his lordship of the forgery committed lord camden's cause to " remember orr". 257 by his brother, and that the confession imputed to him " was base and false"; but stating, if mercy was extended to him, " he should not fail to entertain the most dutiful sense of gratitude for such an act of justice as well as mercy".* On the day of the execution, the great body of the inhabitants of Carrickfergus quitted the town to avoid witnessing the fate of Orr. A person who visited Orr previously to his trial, speaks of his personal appearance and address as highly prepossessing.t His apparel was new and fashionable — there was a remarkable neatness in his attire. The only thing approaching the foppery of patriot- ism, was a narrow piece of green ribbon round his neck. He was six feet two inches in height, particularly well made — in fact, his person was a model of symmetry, strength, and gracefulness. He wore his hair short and well powdered. The expression of his countenance was frank and manly. He possessed a sound understanding, strong affections, and a kindly disposition. In speaking to his visitor of the state of the country, who remarked that the government was disposed to act in a conciliatory spirit towards the country, he said — "No, no; you may depend upon it that there is some system laid down, which has for its object murder and devastation". He added, respecting the treatment of the Dissenters as well as the Catholics, " Irish- men of every denomination must now stand or fall together". Thus a variety of depositions establishing the drunkenness of the jury and the perjury of Wheatly were laid before the Lord Lieutenant. One deposition was of the Rev. George Macartney, a magistrate of the county Antrim, respecting Wheatly's being brought forward by Mr. Kemmis, and on his (Wheatly's) coming into court, relating to Mr. Macartney his having seen a Dissenting clergyman, of the name of Eder, whom he had known elsewhere, and was sure he was brought there to invalidate his testimony. Another deposition was that of the clergyman referred to, stating that he had accompanied a brother clergyman, the Rev. A. Mont- gomery, to visit a sick soldier, apparently deranged, named Wheatly, a Scotchman, who had attempted to commit suicide; that he confessed to Mrs. Hueys, in whose house he then was, that he was in Col. Durham's regiment, and had committed a murder, which weighed heavily upon his mind, and that he had been instigated to give false evidence against William Orr, of which crime he sincerely repented. A similar deposition, before Lord O'Neil, was made by the Rev. Mr. Montgomery. Two of the jury made depositions respecting their drunkenness. Two others made statements of the menaces that had been used by the other * "Press", Nov. 21, 1797. II. f Ibid., Dec. 21, 1797. 18 258 "marcus" and the "press". jurors. But all were of no avail. Lord Camden was deaf to all the representations made to him. All the waters of the ocean will not wash away the stain his obduracy on this occasion has left on his character. Better fifty thousand times for his fame it were, if he had never seen Ireland. The fate of Orr lies heavy on the memory of Lord Camden. The friends of Earl Camden in vain seek to cast the responsi- bility of this act on his subordinates in the Irish government. They say he was a passive instrument in the hands of others. The prerogative of mercy, however, was given to him, and not to them. On the 26th of October (1797), a letter addressed to Earl Camden appeared in the Pms, signed Marcus, ably and eloquently written, but unquestionably libellous, commenting on the conduct of his Lordship in this case. Marcus used those words in reference to it. — " The death of Mr. Orr, the nation has pronounced one of the most sanguinary and savage acts that has disgraced the laws. Let not the nation be told that you are a passive instru- ment in the hands of others. If passive you be, then is your office a shadow indeed. If an active instrument as you ought to be, you did not perform the duty which the laws required of you. You did not exercise the prerogative of mercy — that mercy which the law entrusted to you for the safety of the subject. Innocent it appears he was. His blood has been shed, and the precedent is awful. . . Feasting in your Castle in the midst of your myrmidons and bishops, you have little concerned yourself about the expelled and miserable cottager, whose dwelling at the moment of your mirth was in flames, his wife or his daughter suffering violence at the hands of some commissioned ravager, his son agonizing on the bayonet, and his helpless infants crying in vain for mercy. These are lamentations that disturb not the hour of carousal or intoxica- ted counsels. The constitution has reeled to its centre — Justice herself is not only blind, but drunk, and deaf like Festus to the words of soberness and truth. " Let the awful execution of Mr. Orr be a lesson to all un- thinking jurors, and let them cease to flatter themselves, that any interest, recommendation of theirs and of the presiding judge, can stop the course of carnage which sanguinary, and I do not fear to say, unconstitutional laws have ordered to be loosed. Let them remember that, like Macbeth, the servants of the crown have waded so far in blood, that they find it easier to go on than to go back".* Finnerty was found guilty, and sentenced to be impri- soned for two years, to pay a fine of £20, and to give security for * Ridgeways Report of Trial of P. Einnerty, Dublin, 1798. " marcus", deane swift, theophilus swift. 259 future good behaviour for seven years, himself for the sum of i!500. and two sureties in £250 each. Other letters bearing the signature of Marcus, are remarkable for the impetuosity, energy, and boldness of their language. Traces are to be observed throughout those compositions, . of a temperament whose ardour was under no control — of wild and luxuriant talents, subject to no restraint — of feelings, whose fer- vour in political matters was more indicative of a new-bom zeal in a cause suddenly embraced, than of matured reflection on the political circumstances of the times, or the probable result and adequacy of the means proposed for effecting a removal of existing evils. In 1842, the late General Arthur O'Connor informed me that the author of the stirring treasonable letters against Lord Camden's government, published in the Press newspaper, the Dublin organ of the United Irishmen, under the signature Marcus, was a Mr. Deane Swift. He and Dr. Drennan were the chief pens- men of the Dublin leaders; some of the strongest and most stirring leading articles in that paper were written by Swift, whom O'Connor believed had been long dead. Deane Swift was the eldest son of a very eccentric gentleman, Theophilus Swift, a descendent of the Godwin Swift, uncle of the man to whom the name is indebted for its celebrity. " Godwin Swift", we are told in a recent remarkable work, " who came to Ireland du- ring Ormond's power, and acted as attorney-general for the Palatinate of Ormond, was descended from a Yorkshire family, originally from Belgium (Swyft or Suylt), settled at Rotherham. The attorney-general of Ormond, Godwin Swift, married, first, Miss Deane, of the Muskerry family, by whom he had issue : Godwin, the ancestor of the Swifts of Lion's Den, and three other children. He married, secondly, a Miss Delgarno, daughter of a rector of Moylisker.* The celebrated dean, according to Sheridan (Life of Dr. J. Swift), was a member of a younger branch of an ancient York- shire family. His grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Swift, was dis- tinguished for his general exertions in favour of Charles the First, and his subsequent sufferings and ruin. Five of his sons went to seek their fortunes in Ireland, one of whom, Jonathan, was the father of the famous dean. He had married a Leicestershire lady, of little fortune, a Miss Abigail Errick, a relative of the wife of Sir William Temple, and had died in distressed circumstances, about two years after marriage, seven months before the birth of * Lyons' Grand Jury Lists of 'Westnieath, p. 303. 260 THEOPHILUS SWIFT'S CAREER. his only son, Jonathan. After his death, his widow came to Ire- land, and was received into the family of her husband's eldest brother, Godwin Swift. Theophilus Swift, who was a descendent of this Godwin, passed his days in waging pamphleteering wars with all sorts of opponents. He waged war, at one time, with the newspaper press of England, in defence of a person commonly known as the Monster Renwick Williams. He waged war at another period with the fellows of Trinity College, for marrying, against the statutes of the University. He declared " all married fellows were literary centaurs", and was quite of Pope's opinion, that " Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow 1 '. He Waged war of another kind, too, with an exalted personage — he fought a duel with the Duke of Richmond. He fell despe- rately in love, in his declining years, with the daughter of a venerable and most amiable clergyman, Dr. Dobbin, and pes- tered the family of the young lady with letters duly published in pamphlet form, describing his transports, and the pangs of unre- quited, or, as he deemed them, ill-requited love.* The number of pamphlets written by the great " Dust of Drum- condra", as Theophilus was styled, is considerable. One that I have referred to appeared in 1794. In Animadversions on the Fellows of Trinity College, 192 pages, the crime of the fellows, in marrying against an express statute of the University, was generally attacked in this pamphlet, and the sin of Dr. Burrowes in particular. But the virtuous indignation of Theophilus was ex- cited mainly against the Doctor, because his son, Deane, bad been hardly used by him at an examination, and he had dared " to dub his son a blockhead" (which, certainly, he was not), " to stab both the fame and the fortune of an ingenious, but modest, youth". It seems, Dr. Burrowes had found fault with his logic, did not approve the responses he made in Locke, and Dr. Bur- rowes, moreover, was " the low instrument of the spleen of Dr. Wall", who had disparaged in conversation within the walls of College, his son's talents for composition in Latin verse, by saying publicly " that Latin verse was nothing but a knack". It was a very happy knack, however, which the young man possessed, as some of his caustic epigrams very clearly show. Burrowes, how- ever, had an opportunity of punishing the eldest son of Theo- philus, and he accordingly rebuked him at examination, " with a caution". This led to the lad's removal from Trinity College * " Correspondence of Theophilus Swift with the Rev. Dr. Dobbin, and others of his family, including Letters to the Rev. Thomas P. Lefanu, a gentleman who was then on the point of marrying Miss Dobbin". Dublin, 1811. 14 MARCUS DEAXE SWIFT. 261 to Oxford ; to the pamphleteering vengeance of his father on the doctor; to an action and a cross-action at law for defamation; to the durance vile in Newgate of Theophilus ; and the conviction, likewise, of Burrowes, for a libel on Theophilus. Theophilus Swift took a deep interest in the politics and the affairs of the Press. Mr. Flanagan, a printer sixty years ago on that paper, and a printer to the present time on another, has a lively recollection of " the nice-looking little old gentleman", Theophilus Swift, who constantly visited at Mr. Stoekdale's, and had been there on the occasion of the destruction of the printing materials at the hands of the authorities and their military agents. Theophilus was seen, at the departure of the Vandals, perambu- lating the printing offices, treading on a great mass of type strewn over the floor, with his hands clasped, surveying the ruins of the Press establishment. One of his latest, and not the worst of his political pamphlets, — Hear Him! Hear Him! A Letter to the Right Hon. Jolin Foster, — appeared in 1811. The eldest son of Theophilus Swift, his father states, was born, and received his early education at Eton. He entered Trinity College in July, 1792. The youngest was born and educated in Ire- land. His classical acquirements were received at a school of much note in its day, that of Mr. Dowling, of Blackrock, near Dublin. Mr. O'Connor was mistaken in supposing that the writer of the letters signed Marcus, in the Press, had been long dead, as I subsequently learned from the keeper of the regalia in the Tower, that Mr. Deane Swift was still in being, and then residing at Gravesend, in comfortable circumstances, and highly respected by all classes. My informant, who was then charged with the custody of her Majesty's crown, Edmond Lenthal Swift, Esq., was the brother of the formidable penman of the United Irishman, Mr. Deane Swift, the Marcus of the Press, whose writings had so seriously troubled the repose of Lords Camden, Clare, and Castlereagh. Having stated to Mr. E. L. Swift the account given me by General O'Connor as to the authorship of the Marcus Letters, the impression was left on my mind that Mr. E. L. Swift con- curred with me in that account. But I may be mistaken in that supposition. E. L. Swift, Esq., was keeper of the regalia in the Tower so far back as July 1817 ; and in 1847, when 1 last saw him, still held that office. He was an occasional contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine* In the number of that periodical for 1817, he pub- lished some verses on the death of the Princess Charlotte, entitled * Gent. Mag., July, 1817, part xi p. 3. 262 NOTICE OF DR. DRENNAN. " The Heart", strangely contrasting with the effusions of his brother in the Press newspaper of 1797 and 1798, under the signature of Marcus. Deane Swift was a young man of considerable ability, an excel- lent scholar, a good Latin versifier, and an able writer. From the time of the war with the Fellows, and the composition of divers sarcastic epigrams on them, no more was heard of young Deane Swift till the memorable year of 1798, when his name occurs in certain governmental documents, under the list of proscribed persons specified in the Fugitive Bill of 1798, representing him as a person not particularly loyal in his opinions; and then he disappears from the stage of Irish politics and the page of Irish history, and is only known to have quitted Ireland at the period above referred to, and not to have returned to it for many years. He is still existing, however, in his native city, an old man of a philosophical mind, retired in his habits, not of sanguine expec- tations nor of strong faith in the public virtue of modern patriots and political parties, Whig or Tory, prized and respected by those who know him, for his intellectual powers, extensive acquirements, simple tastes, the moderation and tolerance of his opinions, and that sort of consistency which Robert Holmes has made so conducive to the honour and renown of a long career, that has been main- tained with honesty nearly sixty years, aloof from all factions and ambitions, small and large. DR. WILLIAM DRENNAN. The classical pen of that excellent writer, Dr. William Drennan, the friend of Dugald Stewart, was likewise employed in the Press. He was, in fact, the chief penman of the United Irish Society. The first declaration of the Dublin society, and many of the addresses and resolutions of the society (of which, in the years 1792 and 1793, he was frequently the chairman), were written by him, as were also many of the songs and other poetical compositions which appeared in the Press, and subsequently in The Harp of Erin. In the former he published, 14th January, 1791, anony- mously, amongst other pieces, the well known ode, " To the Memory of William Orr", beginning with the words, " Oh ! wake him not with women's cries", a piece written with great power, and which, probably, had more effect on the public mind than any production of the day in prose or verse. This piece alone, with his song, " When Erin first rose", and that admirable paraphrase of the classical story, called " The Jewels of Cornelia", published the 4th of January, 1798, in the Press, arc to be found in a small NOTICE OF DR. DRENNAN. 263 volume of his, entitled, Fugitive Pieces, in verse and prose, published in Belfast in 1815. In this volume, we find a poem called " Glendalough", and a number of hymns, which in any other country, where English poetry was prized, would have gained a high reputation for the writer ; but Ireland, as to litera- ture, is still in the condition described by Spencer: And in so fair a land as may be redd, Not one Parnassus, nor one Helicon Left for sweet Muses to be harbored. Dr. Drennan was a member of a political and literary club, formed in 1790, by T. W. Tone; the other members were T. A. Emmet, Pollock, William Johnson, subsequently a judge, Whitley Stokes, Peter Burrowes, and Thomas Russell. These spirit-stirring songs of Drennan, beautiful in their ima- gery, though certainly not calculated to allay the excitement of the public mind at that period, circulated with the utmost rapidity over the country, and became the standard songs of every convi- vial society where United Irishmen, or those who were friendly to their views, assembled. One of these songs of Drennan, to which I have alluded, was very remarkable for its highly poetical diction, it was called " Erin to her own tune", beginning with the words, " When Erin first rose". Mr. Moore has paid the compliment to the merit of its composition, of adopting one of its beautiful images in those exquisite lines of his, at the close of the fiftieth number of his Melodies: — Dear harp of my country, in darkness I found thee, The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long. In a note to that piece, whose numbers, " most musical, most melancholy", would alone be sufficient to make the name of - Moore remembered in after times, the author says — " In that rebel- lious, but beautiful song, ' When Erin first rose', etc., there is, if I recollect right, the following line : — The dark chain of silence was thrown o'er the deep '. In this song, Drennan first designated his country as the "Emerald Isle"; and I was assured by his widow, now residing in Belfast, that he prided himself not a little on the paternity of this title. This amiable lady, deservedly respected by all classes in Belfast, informs me that Dr. Drennan, at one period, had some idea of writing a history of the United Irish Society, but his other literary avocations prevented him carrying 264 NOTICE OF DR. DRENNAN: his purpose into effect. It is greatly to be regretted that he did not undertake this task, for no person could have done so with equal advantage. His admirable letters, bearing the signature — Orellana, the Irish Helot, which appeared in 1784, and those of Joseph Pollock, signed Owen Roe O'Neill, published about 1790, and those of Jebb, under the signature of Guatimozin, are the ablest compositions of all the political literature of those times. From the notes of two sons of Dr. Drennan, not unworthy of their name and origin, nor unmindful of their obligations to their fathers memory, the following account of this remarkable man are given : — William Drennan, born in Belfast, 23rd May, 1754, was the youngest of nine children, three only of whom survived the age of childhood. His father was the Rev. Thomas Drennan, minister of the First Presbyterian Congregation in Belfast. He married in 1741, Anne Lennox, daughter of Martha Hamilton and Robert Lennox. Martha Hamilton was daughter of John Hamilton, who, in 1672, purchased the townland of Ballymenen- tragh, in the county of Down, from the then Earl of Clanbrassil. This property Martha Hamilton, afterwards Lennox, inherited, and left two daughters, Martha Lennox, married to Alexander Young, and Anne Lennox, married to the Rev. Thomas Drennan. Martha Lennox on her marriage obtained her half; but on her mothers death, claimed and obtained half of her sister's ; thus acquiring three-fourths. She and her husband left two sons and five daugh- ters ; but the sons and four daughters having died without lawful issue, their last surviving sister, who also died unmarried, left the whole of her share to Dr. Drennan, who thus became (his mother having also died) entitled to the whole. This property, purchased in 1672 for £50, was sold in 1824 for £22,500, or 450 times the original value in about 150 years. Dr. Drennan's ancestry by his father's side was of an humble class, but on that account so little - was known of it, that his eldest sister, bom in 1742, declared that she had never known any of her father's family, and she was a woman of remarkable independence of character. Some of Dr. D.'s own tenants in after life, at least one female, bore his name and was perhaps a relative, though she modestly disclaimed any title to be considered one. His grandfather was probably a small farmer, whose ambition it was to bring up a son to the ministry, as is still common in the north of Ireland and Scotland, as is the case also among our Catholic brethren. William Drennan, the subject of this notice, went to school to Matthew Garnet, and entered Glasgow College, 1769; obtained the A.M. degree 1771, studied medicine in Edinburgh College, 1773-1778, where, Sept. 8th, he obtained XOTICE OF DR. DREXNAX. 265 his M.D. degree. He practised two or three years in Belfast ; but not succeeding as he expected, removed to Newry at the end of 1782, where for seven years he exercised his profession with very con- siderable success, and laid by some hundreds. But, desirous of more extended reputation, he removed to Dublin at the end of 1789, where, as he expresses it, he exercised the duties of an upright man and a strenuous citizen, conceiving them identified. He beheld the people divided both in and out of parliament into fac- tions, and under the domination of an oligarchy which monopolised all honour, place, and profit. He saw the rural population ejected from their farms, left without resource to indolence and want, with no sure homes, with indifferent morals, and without any bond of union. Thinking that something should be dared by individual effort for the common good, and hoping to abolish factious contests by an in- terest for the common weal, he conceived in his mind an intimate union of his fellow citizens in the bonds of virtue and concord. He founded therefore in idea the first society of United Irishmen, and published a prospectus in June 1791. Arrested subsequently lor sedition, he spent a night in prison, with the Bible for his pillow, and narrowly escaped on his trial from the infamy of the informer, who had mingled truth with falsehood, on the 26th June 1794, but was acquitted. Those who despaired of amendment in the state, a little later rushed headlong to their ruin, appealed to arms, and sought assistance from abroad. The union of the people was broken by the snares of haughtier slaves, the upper classes. Betrayed by those who had figured as flaming patriots, in the grade of generals and colonels of Volunteers, or in lawyers' corps and conventions wherein members of both houses of parliament represented the citizen soldiers of various national associations, the country was lost, and the surrender of her independence as a nation was accom- plished in her parliament. Drennan's mind and spirits, though depressed, were not subdued by the calamities which had fallen on his country. His opinions and principles remained unchanged ; he relinquished practice, and removed from Dublin to his native place, having previously married, the 3rd February, 1800. After Dr. Drennan's return to Belfast, in 1801, he seems to have had no particular object in view, except to conduct the Belfast Magazine, and to make it instrumental to an object which had taken possession of his mind, namely, that of extending the benefits of education to his townsmen and the province of Ulster. He had felt in his youth the want of a college in his native land, having spent a great part of nine years in pursuing the necessary studies for his profession, and obtaining his degrees in Scotland, and this at an expense which must have pressed heavily on his family's 266 NOTICE OF DR. DRENNAN. resources. He therefore joined, head, pen, and purse, with the founders of the Belfast Academical Institution, with which his feelings were so much bound up, as to have left a request that his corpse might be staid on its way to the grave for a few moments before its gates. On that spot there now stands a statue, to the memory of an amiable young scion of a noble house. When Belfast is worthy of some memorial of William Drennan, it will have it also ; no friend of his fame should wish for it sooner. For his latest years he amused himself with versifying, and translated several shorter poems from the Greek anthology as well as the Electra of Sophocles. But though passages of this translation are highly poetical, as a faithful version it can scarcely be compared with Potter's, or those of later date, Dr. Drennan's acquaintance with Greek being rather that of a gentleman, and somewhat rusted, than of a minute grammarian or profound scholar. With Cicero he was more at home, yet even there his style is somewhat unnecessarily diffusive, especially as Cicero says too little. His own style may perhaps occasionally seem somewhat florid, antithetical, and lapsing into alliteration, a fault in the English language not easily avoided. Among the papers of Dr. Drennan a fragment was found of a paraphrase in Latin verse of Hannibal's vow, which his eldest son has endeavoured to convey the style and spirit of, in the following English lines : — My boy, lay thine hand on the blood of the altar ; For the oath I propose, let thy "tongue never falter. Here stand on the helmet you shortly shall try on, And show your descent from Hamilcar the Lion : For our wrongs from proud Rome, and, far worse, our dishonour, The warrior's curse in old age is upon her. Now swear that you'll never forget nor forgive her. His gloomy brow gleamed, as his son answered— never. How truly he kept the dread vow, let the story Of Cannae and Thrasymene tell for his glory. In an American reprint of the Proceedings of the Society of United Irishmen, Dublin, published in Philadelphia, 1795, which belonged to Dr. William Drennan, and for which I am indebted to his son, all the resolutions, addresses, and declarations, which were written by Dr. Drennan, he has pointed out as his com- positions, by affixing to each his initials — W.D. The fact of his having done so was not known to me when the preceding series was published, where many of these documents will be found described in the account given of his works from page 216 to page 257. The following are the documents which Dr. Drennan claims as his compositions: — NOTICE OF DR. DRENNAN. 267 1. The Test of the Society of United Irishmen of Dublin, November, 1791. 2. Circular of Society of United Irishmen, specifying objects of the Institution, 30th December, 1791. 3. Address to the Society of United Irishmen, on legal pro- ceedings being taken against their secretary, J. N. Tandy, 28th February, 1791. 4. Address of Society of United Irishmen to the Friends of the People in London, setting forth the state of the representation in Ire- land, and operation of the penal code on Catholics, 26th October, 1791. 5. Address of the Society of United Irishmen to the Delegates for promoting a Reform in Scotland, 23rd November, 1792. 6. Address of the Society of United Irishmen to the Volunteers of Ireland, A. H. Rowan, chairman, December 2nd, 1792. [This was the address beginning with the words " Citizen soldiers", for the publication and distribution of which, at a public meeting, Rowan was prosecuted and convicted.] 7. Address of the Society of United Irishmen to the Irish Nation, William Drennan, chairman, 25th January, 1793. [This was the address for the publication of which Dr. Drennan was prosecuted, though not convicted — one of the ablest of the political compositions of Dr. Drennan.] 8. Resolutions adopted at a full meeting of the Society of United Irishmen in relation to the imprisonment of Oliver Bond and the Honourable Simon Butler ; B. B. Harvey in the chair — Thomas Russell, secretary. March 1st, 1793. [It is worthy of observation, that five years later the chairman and secretary were hanged ; Oliver Bond was condemned to be hanged ; and Butler had to go into exile.] 9. Address of the Society of United Irishmen to their Catholic countrymen. No date, but written in June, 1793. 10. Address of the Society of United Irishmen to Dr. James Reynolds, on refusing to be examined on oath before a Committee of the House of Lords; Henry Jackson, chairman. 14th August, 1793. 11. Address of the Society of United Irishmen to Oliver Bond and the Honourable Simon Butler; John Sheares, chairman. 16th August, 1793. 12. Address of the Society of United Irishmen to Thomas Muir: B. B. Harvey, chairman. 22nd November, 1793. 13. Address of the Society of United Irishmen to the people of Ireland ; James Reynolds, chairman. [At the end of this re- markable address, Dr. Drennan has written — " In part by W. D. v He lias marked the portions of it which were his composi- 268 NOTICE OF DR. DRENNAN. tion — about a page, beginning, " If, however, it be a principle that a man who does not contribute to the support of government should be mediately or immediately concerned in legislation, such principle should be no exclusion to the poor, for they contribute in proportion to their means" ; and ending with the words, " Sad experience has manifested, that giving political power exclusively to the property collected, not to the mass of living labour, has been in all ages, and particularly in modern times, the true cause of feudality, of vassalage, and of aristocratic despotism". And again, about two pages, commencing with the words, " Con- templating this grateful prospect" ; and onwards to the end of the address.] At the conclusion of the last page of the volume, the following citation from D'Aguesseau is in the handwriting of Dr. Dren- nan: — " Apres la gloire de faire le bien, le plus grand honneur est de souffrir pour l'avoir fait". Having removed from Dublin to Belfast, his native place, in conjunction with Mr. John Templeton, the well-known botanist, and Mr. John Handcock, of Lisburn, Dr. Drennan established, in 1801, the Belfast Magazine, which ceased to exist in 1814; the most ably-conducted periodical of its day, or indeed of any other day, in Ireland. The papers called " Retrospective Politics" were written by Dr. Drennan and Mr. Handcock. Dr. Drennan died in Belfast in 1820, in his sixty-sixth year, leaving four children, the eldest son a barrister, the youngest a physician, practising in Belfast — the inheritors of much of their father's eminent abilities. The remains of Dr. Drennan are buried in the same church-yard, at the rere of the poorhouse, where those of his friend Dr. Hali- day repose. A small slab over his grave bears the following in- scription : — " Gulielmo Drennan, ob. 5 Feb. 1820, set. 66 an." There are persons still surviving of 1798, who remember the time when Drennan's songs, and Lysaght's lyrical productions, and Curran's sallies of brilliant wit and humour, and all the unpre- meditated jests, and black letter drollery, and erudite recreative scholastic humour of Bernard Clinch and Connolly of Booters- town, were in vogue in Dublin, and made to promote, if not the feast of reason, the flow of soul, at all convivial meetings ; and they speak of them still as reminiscences of enjoyment of by-gone days, in which (pregnant with political strife as they were) the plea- sures of social life were blended with literary tastes, and shared by persons of higher talents, of all politics, without distinction of creed or party, than are found to mingle in any social inter- course of the present day in Ireland. The period between 1791 and the close of 1797, was marked by the development of those qualities which seldom fail to be dis- NOTICE OF DR. DRENNAN. 2G9 covered among those of the liberal professions, whose youth has been thrown on the troubled waters of an eventful period. Stir- ring times beget bold thinkers, daring projectors, and ardent votaries ; they are calculated to call forth the noblest spirits, and to tolerate also the existence of men among them of the most reckless characters and the least steadfast in their principles, and even to conceal the defects of the latter, and to confound them with the im- pulsive activity of a generous enthusiasm. Thus men of dissimilar natures are brought into political intercourse, and eventually into social communion. The reunion of such heterogeneous materials, cemented for a season by a common excitement, which disposes all parties to the enjoyment of society, favours convivial inter- course ; and it is only when the final conflict comes, that tries mens souls, that the great distinctive traits of their characters are fully exhibited. It would be difficult, without thus considering the circumstances of the time, to comprehend those terms of pri- vate intimacy which existed between persons of such incongruous public sentiments, as those fraternizing members of the Volunteer Corps (on the verge of dissolution), Whig Clubs, Bar Clubs, the first Reform and United Irishmen Societies, the Historical Society, and various other associations, convivial and political, of a later date. In one of these societies, formed at an earlier period (1779) — "The Monks of St. Patrick", — we find among the names of its members those of Curran and Lord Carhampton, George Ogle and Lord Avonmore, Temple Emmet and Robert Day (sub- sequently Judge Day), G rattan and Lord Kingsborough, Lord Charlemont and the Earl of Momington, the Rev. Arthur O'Leary, a Roman Catholic priest, and the Rev. Dr. Palliser, a Protestant divine. A few years later we find the same state of things exist- ing in Belfast. That town was then spoken of as " the Athens of Ireland, the focus of liberality of sentiment" (Eheu ! Eheu ! how has the Northern Athens, the centre of enlightenment and libe- rality, sunk into the slough of stupid bigotry !), — that Belfast which, from 1782 to 1792, in its social circles, embraced the talent, the high intellectual and social qualities of all parties and all creeds. Men of the most dissimilar politics seemed to have adopted the non-contagion theory with respect to all forms of opinion on public matters ; there then was no pestilence in a man's creed to make the " fomes" of his faith dangerous to his dis- senting neighbour's soul in society. That apprehension was re- served for later times. In Dublin, at this period, we find the loyalty of Lord Moira suffered no contamination from the fervour of Theobald Wolfe Tone's political sentiments in their intercourse at Moira House. The patriotism of Mr. Grattan came into con- 270 NOTICE OF WALTER COX. tact, at Tinnehinch, with not a few of the leading democratic people of his time, without detriment to his principles. In our reminiscences of the convivial pleasures of those times, the reunions at the house of Egan must not be left unnoticed ; where the aristocracy of talent, comprising no small portion of the wit and humour of the forum, forgetful of politics, mingled in the wit-combat, at the supper table of the hospitable "Bully" of the Bar. Before taking leave of the subject of the political periodicals of this time, another remarkable paper remains to be noticed — the Union Star, published in Dublin, to which Arthur O'Connor has largely referred in his communications to me. WALTER COX. The Union Star was set up in Dublin in the summer of 1797, professedly the advocate of the principles and objects of the United Irishmen. Its advocacy, however, was repudiated by the directory of that society, and its atrocious sentiments disclaimed by all its leaders, and especially, as we are informed in Sampson's Me- moirs, by Thomas Addis Emmet. It will be necessary to say a few words respecting Mr. Walter Cox, in reference to the character of this journal, which has brought a very serious imputation on the character of the society of United Irishmen in general, as being the abettors and accomplices of the atrocious crime of assassination. The following information respecting Walter Cox, I received from his step-daughter, Miss Isabella Powell, who was living in Dublin in 1842. " He was the son of a master-blacksmith in Westmeath, in decent circumstances. His mother belonged to a respectable family of the name of Dease, of Summer Hill in that county. His father held some land, of which he lost possession at the period of Lord Carhampton's wholesale transportation of suspected persons. The old man was one of those arrested by his lordship, and was sent to jail. He was fortunate enough to get liberated after some weeks' imprisonment. He settled in Dublin, and died there in the neigh- bourhood of the North Strand. " His son, Walter Cox, was bound apprentice to a gunsmith, of the name of Muley, of Suffolk Street, and after remaining three years with him, he served the remainder of his time to another gunsmith, Mr. Benjamin Powell, of 159 Abbey Street, a gun- contractor with the Ordnance department. " On leaving Powell, he set up in business in a small shop in Bedford Row; he had previously married a woman of the Methodist connection, and, being a man of violent and ungoverna- THE UNION STAR". 271 ble passions, he is said to have rendered the life of this poor creature miserable. She died in childbed ; and, about the year 1797, he married the widow of his former master, Powell, and for some time carried on the business as gun-contractor with Government. This marriage proved no less unhappy than the former. On one occasion, he was brought before the magistrates for ill-using his wife, at the instance of Mr. Laurence Tighe, of 156 Thomas Street, who was an intimate friend of Mrs. Cox. M Cox got a good deal of property, both in money and in houses, by his second marriage. He had no acquaintance with Laurence Tighe, and no intercourse with Major Sirr; but Mrs. Cox was intimate with the former. He had been deeply engaged in the rebellion of 1798, but not in that of 1803: if he said that he had been in the latter, he must have stated what was not true. 11 He was separated from his wife upwards of twenty-live years previously to her death. He squandered her means, kept posses- sion of her houses, and allowed her occasionally a small weekly pittance for her support, in a miserable lodging in Clarence Street, North Strand, while in the same street he continued to lead a disreputable life in the house which belonged to her, and in which he resided till the period of his death. The cause of his quarrel with his wife, was by some attributed to an opinion he entertained that his wife, shortly after Emmets business, had given certain information to Mr. Tighe (who was said to be a Castle spy), respecting some papers of his, which had got him into trouble, and occasioned his house to be searched by Major Sirr. At the time the Union Star was printed, he had a small place of business of some kind in Little Ship Street 1 '. The preceding information of Isabella Powell I believe may be relied on. I visited the house in Clarence Street in 1840, where Cox died. The woman who had lived with him and attended him in his last illness, told me that she frequently heard him speak on the subject of the information which had been given against him in violent and angry terms. This person likewise denies that Cox had any intimacy with Major Sirr, or had taken any part in Emmet's conspiracy. It is right to observe, his enemies state the former as a proof of treachery to his associates of the United Irish- men ; and Dr. Brenan alleges that he was in the habit of talking in his customary loose manner of having had the command of 1,500 Wexford men at the Broadstone, the night of Emmet's unsuccess- ful effort. With whatever views his infamous paper the Union Star was established, it is certain that it was repudiated by the leaders of the United Irishmen, and equally certain that Mr. Cox was the sole editor, proprietor, and publisher of it. Garbled extracts having been 272 THE " UNION STAR". given from this paper in trie parliamentary reports, an entire num- ber will be found in the Appendix. The Union Star was printed on one side only, to allow of its being pasted on the walls ; the name of its printer and place of publication were not given ; its uniform theme was the necessity and justifiability of the removal of public delinquents. Obnoxious persons were pointed out for assassination, and their names regu- larly published in its columns. The ultra-violence of its revo- lutionary tendencies was prominently displayed ; but its tendency, if not its design, was certainly to bring odium upon the cause it professed to espouse. Cox went on for some months with perfect impunity, advocating assassination, suggesting the existence of an assassination com- mittee, which never had a being ; and all this time he contrived either to elude the vigilance of Government, or to secure its favour. The fact, however, admits of no doubt, that his paper was connived at by the authorities, who were daily denounced in his journal. The probability is, that when Cox established this paper, he was animated solely by infuriated feelings of resentment for the treatment his father had received at the hands of Lord Carhamp- ton ; that finding the chief confidence of the leaders of the United Irishmen placed in other organs of their opinions, namely, those of the Press and the Northern Star, he became jealous of the patronage bestowed on them, and had suffered himself to be tampered with by some of those official persons with whom his former avocations when in the employment of Powell, the gun- contractor with the Government, had brought him in contact; and that he had become, at first, the confidant of designing men, and perhaps eventually was not unwilling to be accounted their instrument. The fact which I have alluded to of his being found closeted with one of the agents of the Government, at the very period his paper was denouncing and proscribing its members, coupled with the circumstance (which he himself admits), that while the Press and the Northern Star editors were prosecuted and imprisoned, and their establishments ravaged by the military, the editor of the Union Star — the advocate of assassination — was fortunate enough to make' terms with the Government, and to save his property from the slightest injury, is inexplica- ble. It is certain, however, that some years subsequently to the putting down of the rebellion, Cox, on his return from France, considered himself neglected by the Government; and for the purpose of annoying it, in the month of November, 1807, he set up the Irish Magazine. But, lest any injustice should be done to one no longer living, and one, with all his faults, the THE UNION STAR" 273 Cobbett, on a small scale, of his day in Ireland — his own explana- tion of his conduct in the management of the Union Star is given here, taken from an article of his in the Irish Magazine for October, 1810, addressed to one of his opponents. " You accuse me of being an assassin, because I was the author of the Union Star. Admitting the charge of proscription to have been fairly brought home to the character of that publication, where will the odium rest, if a fair comparison is made of the Union Star and the horrid circumstances that provoked its ex- istence? Perhaps some will insist that emptying our villages into prison ships, a practice very common in the year 1797, was not assassination; putting the people out of the protection of the law, or half hanging them, were not acts of assassination : to me they appear as such; and in the ardent and impatient character of a young mind, roused by a sense of exquisite feeling, at seeing, not only strangers agonizing under the most beastly cruelties, but my aged father swept off with his neighbours, by the hand of Carhampton, into a dungeon, I arrayed myself with those gene- rous sufferers who were taught by the principles of the constitution to resist oppression, and among other acts of my industry to stem the authorized desolation, I produced the Union Star. One murder makes a villain, millions, a hero: Lords are privileged to kill, and numbers consecrate the crime. u It was intended only to guard the Union against the intrusion of such men as Reynolds or O'Brien. M Laying aside the right of authorship, which I very early as- sumed in preference to the vice and the anvil, to soothe the ago- nies of my country, and to avenge the atrocious indignities heaped by a Luttrell on my parent, I defy any man existing, in any rank of lite, to fix any act of cowardice, meanness, or dishonesty, on Walter Cox, either as a politician, an author, or a tradesman. I had the honour of enjoying the confidence and intimacy of the greatest and most virtuous men that ever adorned this ill-fated country ; and, after a lapse of thirteen years, I possess the esteem of such of them as have escaped the whirlwind of civil desolation. I was tampered with by the terrors of the triangle and the fasci- nations of the treasury; and I owe nothing either to my friends or my enemies. I escaped being involved in the ruin which overtook the other leaders of the rebellion, by surrendering myself as the author of the Union Star, with the express advice and direction of my friends, as the proclamation exposed me to a discovery by the extraordinary reward offered for my detection; and I the more readily made terms, as there was not on record a single in- stance of the Union Star having brought the slightest injury on any individual. ii. 19 274 WALTER COX. " I not only enjoyed the confidence of A. O'Connor, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, T. A. Emmet, and Dr. M'Neven, for the character I ever preserved amongst honest men, but was a mem- ber of that body whose ambassadors were accredited in the greatest empire upon Earth. Like your friend Mr. Beresford, I represented the City of Dublin in the greatest council of the nation, where I was placed by fifty times as many electors as all his influence could procure". So much for Mr. Cox's explanation of his conduct: we now turn to the pages of the Milesian Gazette (the rival of Mr. Cox's publication), the editor of which, the well-known Dr. Brenan, charges Cox with having been at a former period in the pay of the government, and a hireling pamphleteer in the service of Major Sirr. He charges Cox with writing a defence of Sirr'a conduct on the occasion of his squabble with Emerson for the blood -money earned by the capture of Russell. Brenan, at this time, was denounced monthly in Cox's Magazine, and was not forgetful how he might turn his injuries to account, or scrupulous as to the means by which he was to be appeased, or the party by whose sacrifice he might be revenged. In ] 804 a pamphlet was published in Dublin, signed " Timothy Tell-truth", in vindication of Major Sirr, whom Mr. John Swift Emerson, an honourable member of the attorneys' corps, had accused of defrauding him of his due proportion of the blood- money, in the case of the apprehension of the unfortunate Thomas Russell, the friend of Tone and the sharer in the despe- rate enterprise of Robert Emmet. It appears by a pamphlet published in 1804, in defence of Major Sirr, that he derived his information respecting the place of concealment from Emerson, and Emerson from a third party, who, to use his own words, " did not choose to appear in the business". Russell was apprehended in the house of a gun-smith, of the name of Muley, in Parliament Street. Mr. Cox was of the same trade, and was employed, subsequently to the rebellion, in the Ordnance department in the Castle, as an operative gunsmith. Brenan states, that the third party alluded to by Emerson was Walter Cox ; and he also charges him with being the author of the pamphlet in question, and the person who acted as "setter" to Major Sirr on Lord Edward Fitzgerald's removal from Moira House, in Dirty Lane, when Sirr failed of success, in consequence of the resistance made by Lord Edward's party. It is remarkable that Mr. John Swift Emerson was one of the major's party on this occasion, as well as Major Ryan and Mr. Justice Bell. In Brenan's Magazine, for June 1812, in reference to an inti- " THE UNION STAR 275 mation in Cox's publication, that the betrayer of Lord Edward was Mr. Laurence Tighe, of Thomas Street (who lived within two doors of Murphy's house, where Major Ryan, on being wounded by Lord Edward, it is to be observed, had been imme- diately taken), the following statement is made: — " Who betrayed Lord Edward, is, as yet, a matter of doubt : the party came upon him in full set : but who was the ' setter dog'? is the question. . In the desk of Lord Edward, on the table where he was, was found a paper containing a plan for taking the city of Dublin — a plan upon which Lord Edward was supposed about to act that very night. * This paper was in the hand- writing of Walter Cox, and he owned it at the Castle, and pleaded having made his peace two years before J[ on the Union Star, affairs, as a justification of following up murder with treason; and the Castle folks admitted his plea — and Watty was still let loose. If Lord Edward received a plan of military operations so important from any man, is it not to be supposed he expected and respected his cooperation? — and in that case, is it not almost morally certain he concealed nothing from him, particularly his residence? The commentary is easy. Does not Watty's impunity carry with it the conviction of Castle service? If Watty was false, then, is it to be supposed he did not betray on so great an occasion? That he knew where he (Lord Edward) was, is proved. Russell knew Cox through Lord Edward ; and that Watty and the major were close friends at the. time, is proved by Watty's own words in the defence of the major, where he says the major told him (the author of the pamphlet signed 'Timothy Tell- truth') the whole story the rooming after Russell's capture. But Watty then did not imagine that 'Timothy Tell- truth' would one day be proved to be no other than the notorious Watty Cox". Now, in confirmation of that part of the statement, respecting the plan for the taking of Dublin, found in Lord Edward's pos- session, we find the following remarks on this paper, in the journal of Lady Sarah Napier, in Moore's Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, published many years subsequently to the appearance of Brenan's Magazine : — " The plan referred to was not found at Lord Edward's place of concealment, but in his desk, in the charge of Lady Fitzgerald, immediately after the arrest at Bond's, on the 12th of March. " Lady Sarah Napier, speaking of a visit he received from * This is not correct : the resolution taken by the Directory in the beginning of May, was that the rising should take place on the 23rd. + This cannot have been the case; the "Union Star" did not exist two years before. 276 WALTER COX. Captain Armstrong (this gentleman is not to be confounded with the Captain John Warneford Armstrong), says: 'From him I heard that the prisoners would come off well, that there was no committee, only some of them assembled about the Press; that the report about a dreadful map in Lady Edward's care, was one of Dublin, with notes written by a clever gun-maker, who had marked the weak parts, and who had sent it to Lord Edward. That, no sooner had this man heard of the noise it made, than he went to government and said it was his, which he had shown to Lord Edward. They asked him for what purpose he had drawn it, ' For my own amusement', said he". * At a subsequent period, in a letter from the Duchess of Leinster to the Duke of York, her Grace, in reference to this plan of Dublin, says: " That paper was found on the 12th of March, and a few days after an armourer, who worked in the Ordnance-yard in the Castle of Dublin, on hearing it talked of, went to the under secretary of state, and desired to see the plan, which, when shown to him, he acknowledged it to be his, and that he had sent it anonymously to Lord Edward Fitzgerald; and being asked his reason for so doing, said, because he understood Lord Edward was a good engineer and curious in those matters. The plan is not mentioned in the Report of the House of Commons, drawn up by Lord Castlereagh, who knew the circumstance", f There are no comments in the work from which I have quoted these passages, on the extraordinary conduct of this " clever gunsmith", this armourer said to be employed in the Castle, at the period he communicated his plan for attacking the capital, in which he had so industriously marked the weak points. The fact seems to have escaped the notice of all those who have written on the affairs of 1798, that the clever gunsmith, the editor of the assassination journal, the Union Star and Mr. Walter Cox, the subsequent editor of the Irish Magazine, were one and the same person. The impunity with which the Union Star was allowed to proceed in its atrocious career, and with which Mr. Cox was eventually permitted to acknowledge himself to government its editor and proprietor ; the singular step of de- claring himself to the under secretary of state to be the framer of that treasonable paper he had given to Lord Edward ; the fact of his being enabled, immediately after the rebellion, without any resources of his own, to leave the country and remain abroad for nearly a year on that occasion ; these circumstances, coupled with the evident tendency of his journal — namely, to bring discredit on the cause he professed to advocate, — render it a very difficult * Vide Moore's " Life of Lord E. Fitzgerald." American edition, vol. ii., p. 23. t Ibid., vol. ii., p. 197. ACCUSATION OF TREACHERY. 277 matter to understand the views and conduct of this man : one, in fact, whose mental conformation was the exemplification of all kinds of contradictory qualities, which utterly confound inquiry, and make it well-nigh impossible to form any estimate of the character of so eccentric and singular a person. It is very difficult to believe that Cox was not in the service of the Castle, and yet there are unquestionable proofs that at the very time he was a frequenter of the public offices at the Castle, and was considered in its service by the authorities, he was even then so far faithful to those of the United Irish leaders he was at- tached to, as to keep secrets from the government that would implicate them in high treason, and to give timely and very ser- viceable notice to those persons, when steps against them were meditated by government. On the authority of Arthur O'Connor, it was during the period of his imprisonment, in the latter part of the year 1797, the Union Star got into circulation. The first thing he did on being set at liberty, was to send for Cox, and to remonstrate with him on the madness of his proceedings. Cox protested that his only object was to frighten the people at the Castle and the Orangemen, and showed, as a proot of his success, that a large re- ward had been offered for the discovery of the printer and pub- lisher of the Union Star. Cox states that O'Connor told him lie was sure to be discovered, and that his best plan was to go to the Castle, propose to give up the author and proprietor of this pro- hibited paper, and on making terms, to declare himself to have been the individual. Cox says he saw the advantage of following this advice. He acted on it, and to the utter astonishment of Mr. Cooke, announced him- self as the editor and publisher of the Union Star. He had the modesty even to claim the reward for his own discovery; how- ever, he was content to have it stipulated that no proceedings should be taken against him, and he should be allowed to remain in Dublin unmolested. The subordinate agents of government now looked upon Cox as a rebel, who had made a clean breast of one kind of treason, and was prepared for the entertainment of another. He was closely questioned about his intimacy with O'Connor, and given to understand, that evidence which would go to his conviction, would be very serviceable at that period. He was examined by Mr. Cooke with respect to his know- ledge of O'Connor, and what sentiments he heard expressed by him. Cox replied, that he had never seen Mr. O'Connor but on two occasions, about a pair of pistols which he had sold to that gentleman. He was asked if he knew anything of his political 278 WALTER COX opinions; Cox answered, he only knew them on the subject of pistols, which, he said (much to. his surprise), he preferred of English manufacture to that of his own country. Cox was con- sidered unfit for the task intended for him. He discovered that similar inquiries were made of other persons, and he feared the result would be fatal to O'Connor. He visited O'Connor that night, and the information he gave him was such as to induce him to lose no time in making an application to the law officers of the crown to be permitted to go over to London for a few days on some legal business. At this time O'Connor was under heavy recognizances to take his trial for a seditious publication, when- ever he should be called upon. Having obtained permission, he immediately started for Eng- land. That he was attended at a respectful distance by some familiar of the Castle, and dogged wherever he went, from the day he quitted Dublin till his arrest at Margate, there can be little doubt. It is due to the memory of Cox, which certainly stands in need of all the justice and charity that can be done to it, to say that Arthur O'Connor is convinced of the fidelity of this man to his associates. We are informed, by Sampson, of Emmet having taken some steps to restrain the violence of Cox's writings ; but neither he nor Sampson appear to have had any idea that Cox had ac- knowledged himself to government to be the publisher of the Union Star, and to have made terms for his security. Sampson says, speaking of this paper, "I believe the author never was dis- covered ; some thought it was a stratagem of the government to throw odium on the opposite cause. To me the arguments seemed too strong, and too terribly applicable, to warrant that suppo- sition. I had, upon the subject of these papers, several conver- sations with Mr. Emmet, who was very zealous in his efforts to restrain them, and, I believe, successful. And what is more, there was found amongst his papers, at his arrest, one drawn up by him and me, and intended to have been subscribed by all whose names could be supposed most influential amongst the people, which the government, with its usual candour, took care entirely to suppress". And in a note appended to the above remarks, written long subsequently to the letters which form the greater portion of his Memoirs, he adds: — "It has been lately discovered, by the disclosure of the civil list, that he was pensioned to the amount of £100 a year; and, moreover, it is said that he received a considerable sum on going to the United States".* * Of the latter fact the autograph statements of Cox, in my possession, leave no doubt. Sampson's Memoirs, p. 71. REWARDED BY THE GOVERNMENT. 279 The pension alluded to by Sampson was"~conferred on him during the Duke of Richmond's administration, when all other means of silencing his magazine had been found ineffectual, including those of the pillory, and three and a half years' con- finement in Newgate. The Union Star was printed in a cellar in Little Ship Street. The whole business of composing and printing was there performed by Cox himself, according to his own account, without any assistance, within a few steps of the Castle. Whether Cox, subse- quently to his delivering himself up, was considered as entitled to pecuniary assistance, it is hard to say; he was certainly employed in some way in the ordnance department at the Castle. There is a person of his name whose services were occasionally recompensed between 1803 and 1804:— "April 7, 1803, Major Sirr for Mr. Cox £11 7 6 Dec. 25, 1803, Mr. Flint, per Mr. Wickham's note — Cox 68 5 6 Feb. 16, 1804, Mr. Griffith for Serjeant Cox's wife 11 7 6 Jan. 26, 1804, Chaise from Naas, with Fleming, Cox, Keogh, Finnerty, and Condon 3 1 9". From one of the persons who had long been most intimately acquainted and connected with him, and who attended him in his last moments, I received a number of documents, which throw some light on his strange career. About 1804, he went to America, took with him nearly £500, and returned to England in about eleven months, without a sous. In 1807, he established his Irish Magazine, a very singular medley of truth and falsehood, blended at random, and tinctured not slightly with the spirit of the Union Star. It is a performance, however, in which one who is sufficiently acquainted with the subject to discriminate between the reality of his representations of the horrors of 1798, and his exaggerations of them, will find valuable details of the doings, of the O'Briens, Sirrs, Sandys, Swans, Hepenstals, and others of their class, such as he will only observe glanced at elsewhere, or touched upon with an obvious and natural repugnance. The pertinacity with which this man stuck to his subject, and bore the brunt of the legal warfare which he had to encounter in the various prosecutions carried on against him, is without a parallel, I believe, in this country. No sooner was he con- victed of one libel on the government, and sentenced to a lengthened term of imprisonment and the punishment of the 280 WALTER COX pillory, than we find him brought up from Newgate, tried over again for a new libel, sentenced to twelve months' addi- tional imprisonment, fined £300, and called on to give se- curities, himself in £1000, and two new sureties in £500 each. And all this time his magazine pursued the rough and. most uneven tenor of its way, through good report and bad report — bat- tling with " the majors", " the gun beggars", the cabin burners, the riding-house heroes, etc., as if nothing had happened to Mr. Cox. The article which drew down on him the heaviest weight of legal vengeance, was one called " The Painter Cut", written by Mr. Thomas Finn of Carlow, the eldest brother of Counsellor William Finn. The orignal correspondence of Thomas Finn with Cox has lately come into my hands. When proceedings were instituted against Cox, Finn offered either to give himself up as the writer of the prosecuted article, or to give Cox a sum of £300 in the event of the latter consenting to bear the brunt of a prosecution. The offer of the £300 was accepted. The consequences of the prosecution that ensued, however, eventually brought ruin on Cox. He still went on conducting his magazine in prison, and seeing no probability of ever leaving it. Under the plea of recovering a sum of eighteen shillings, due to the stamp- office by Cox, a considerable quantity of the magazine ready for publication was levied on and carried away ; the persons who sold his magazines in the streets were brought before the major, and menaced with punishment ; his shopmen were threatened, on various occasions, with legal steps and personal chastisement. In short, the whole legal and executive power of the country was brought to bear on the devoted head of the scribbling gunsmith, and without effect. He found it necessary to procure a shopman of some celebrity in the fighting way, and accordingly he obtained the services of Mr. Bryan Maguire — a later and more improved edition of George Robert Fitzgerald ; and this gentleman's organ of combativeness being universally known to be very largely de- veloped, Mr. Walter Cox's representative was troubled with no applications for explanation or retractation. At length, an in- fluential gentleman was sent on an amicable mission from the Castle to the cell of the intractable printer in Newgate. Cox was asked if it was his desire to die in jail, or to live at large with a comfortable independence ; and if he preferred the latter, he was called on to name the sum on which he could contrive to live, and to relinquish the troublesome task of editing periodicals. This tempting proposal was too much for flesh and blood to with- stand — macerated and calmed down a little by upwards of three years of life in Newgate. Poor Cox, to the utter astonishment of the mediator on this occasion, said he thought £100 or £150 REWARDED BY THE GOVERNMENT. 281 a-year would not be too much for him to ask. An arrangement was immediately concluded (a sum of £400 in hand and an annuity of £100); had Cox asked twice the amount, it would have been readily granted to him. In 1816, having placed in the hands of the authorities all the unsold copies of his work, which amounted to 600, he was enabled by govern- ment to quit the country, and proceeded to America. In 1817 he established a newspaper at New York, which he called the Exile, of the same nature as the Irish Magazine, but more violent in its tone. It commenced the beginning of January, 1817, and died in the spring of 1818. This man's career in America very much re- sembled that of Cobbett — he began by praising the country — he ended bv reviling it, its climate, and its people, in the strongest terms. The pamphlet in which he attacked America, and every- thing that was American, was published by him in New York, in 1820, under the title of The Snuff Box ; in point of ability it ex- celled anything he had written ; but with respect to the ferocity of his abuse, it was an out-Coxing even of Cox himself. By a passport of his in my possession, I find he arrived in Bourdeaux from America in 1821. There he received an intimation from his friends in Ireland, that the discontinuance of his annuity had been a subject of discussion at the Castle. He addressed a characteristic letter on this occasion to a person con- nected with the government, in which he declared his intention, and prefaced it with an oath, that "if they stopped his pension he would invade Ireland". The threatened invasion amounted to a menace of his coming back ; and in the month of November, his passport was put in order for his return to England by way of Hull. How long it was before he " invaded Ireland" 1 know not; but he had been quietly domiciled in Dublin for several years, when he received a notification from the Castle, in Dec. 1835, that his annuity would be discontinued from that time. Among his papers, I find the following draft of a memorial he addressed to his Excellency the Earl of Mulgrave, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. M TO HIS EXCELLENCY EARL MULGRAVE, LORD LIEUTENANT GENERAL AND GENERAL GOVERNOR OF IRELAND. " The Petition of Walter Cox. " May it please your Excellency, your petitioner, in his early days, was reared a gunsmith, and for many years a contractor with the Irish Board of Ordnance, for supplying his Majesty's army in Ireland with muskets and other small fire-arms; but, at the period of the legislative union, the Ordnance Board being 282 WALTER COX: abolished, the making of arms was removed to England, by which alteration petitioner was deprived of subsistence from the trade he was bred to, and reduced to great necessity and destitu- tion. He was compelled to adopt several expedients to obtain a livelihood, without any success. At length he commenced a periodical publication (the Irish Monthly Magazine), a work which was continued for more than eight years with an extensive circu- lation ; but, by incautiously giving insertion to a very reprehen- sible article, was brought to trial by the Attorney-General, was convicted, pilloried, fined, and imprisoned during three years and four months. " However, the Irish Government, at the head of which was the Right Honourable Mr. Peel, in its mercy to an individual overwhelmed in ruin and poverty, granted him an allowance of a hundred pounds a year during life, on the express condition that he would give up the publication for ever. The offer of mercy was gratefully accepted ; he closed his shop for ever, and, as the agreement further required, surrendered at the Castle of Dublin near six hundred volumes of his Magazine, which at the present day would bring him four hundred pounds. " Mr. Peel mentioned this fact of the extinction of the publica- tion at the time in the House of Commons. " Petitioner has been now more than nineteen years living in harmless obscurity on this allowance, which the good faith of Government, as he believed, intended should continue to his death, but now learns that it is your Excellency's gracious plea- sure to order it to be discontinued, and to end with the year 1835. " The situation of petitioner is in a most perilous state, as the , quarterly payment has been anticipated by contracting many small debts, including rent to be paid, leaving nothing in hand ; and only that your Excellency's mercy has ordered him one hundred pounds, he must go to prison. " This short story of woe is substantially true, and is humbly submitted to your Excellency's consideration, hoping your Excel- lency will continue the allowance, or appoint petitioner to some trifling employment. He has learned to live on a little; and, whatever may be your Excellency's gracious will, he will accept of it with gratitude and resignation. " And petitioner will ever pray. " Walter Cox. "December 26th, 1835". When he received the notice of the discontinuance of his annual allowance, the sum of £100 was granted to him, to enable HIS DECEASE AND CHARACTER. 283 him to meet his existing exigencies. He survived this event little better than a year. He died at No. 12 Clarence Street, in very poof circumstances, the 17th January, 1837, in his sixty- seventh year. He had a small house at Finglass, and three or four acres of land, which he bequeathed to a Mr. Crosbie. The house in which he lived, and its effects, he willed to his housekeeper. This person informed me, that on the day of his death, " there was not so much money in the house as would buy candles to wake him". He was attended in his last moments by the Rev Mr. Kelly of Lucan. One circumstance which shows the strange, mischievous, and daring disposition of this man, is worth mentioning. On his second return to Ireland, he informed a gentleman whom he had long known, that it had occurred to him some short time pre- viously, that " he would annoy the major and his people" by cutting the head off King William's statue. He said that from his trade as a gunsmith he had greater facilities than any other man for effecting his object: he concluded the statue was made of bronze. He had gone there by night, accompanied by a young man in his employment: he kept watch, and his eleve ascended the Statue. After more than sufficient time to accomplish his purpose, he asked the young man, who was hard at work filing away at the neck, what progress he had been making. The reply was, little or none. In fact, the figure proved to be of lead. The tools em- ployed were not the right ones, and the attempt had failed. Many years afterwards, when another attempt had been made on it in 183G, by some other person, and the statue was thrown down, on examining it, it was found that the back part of the neck bore the deep marks of the files which had been used on the occasion of Cox's attempt on King William's head. The turbulence and restlessness of this man's mind never suf- fered him to be quiet, or to persist in any pursuit. While he was in America, he had tried all sorts of trades and callings; he had been a newspaper editor, a pawnbroker, a chandler, a dairy- keeper, and a dealer in Irish whisky — and in all w T as unsuccessful. Had he received a liberal education, and been early taught to feel the restraints of religion, in all probability he would have been a vigorous, fearless, and faithful advocate of justice, a useful and influential member of society, a person of strong intellectual powers, and one who might have loved his country with the tempered ardour of a Christian patriot. Trained as he was, and uncompensated by religious impressions for the want of mental culture, few men of his time, and of his rank and station, rendered themselves more feared and less loved than Walter Cox. He seems to have been aware of the defects in his character, 284 LETTERS OF WALTER COX. which arose from the kind of education he had received. In a burlesque statement of his qualification for the office of librarian to the Dublin Library, for which he was a candidate in 1826, having been received with hisses, he issued an address to the members, in which he reminded them that particular reptiles, and red-hot horse-shoes, could hiss as well as human beings ; and then, by way of explaining the causes which deprived him of those advantages which other candidates might possess, he subjoined a testimonial (evidently of his own manufacture), as having been obtained from one of the hedge-schoolmasters, who were accus- tomed to teach the young Popish ideas how to shoot in his early days : — " Gentlemen, — When I was a boy, it was the custom of the artificial darkness of the period to study in thick bushes; but having a high conceit, a cabin kind of elevation of mind, I was taught in a large elm tree, near Longwood, county of Meath. It may be called the Tree of Knowledge ; and I may now say with safety, as a compliment to our own happy times, it sometimes was not the Tree of Life ; as we were not unfrequently disturbed in Reading-Made-Easy, by the growl of the bull -dog and the menace of the priest-hunter. This short prefatory apology will go to explain the purport of the annexed Certificate — an exact translation from the original Irish, — written in a fair hand by our Provost, Bryan Mac Garry, Philomath. " ' This bit of parchment, written by me and nobody else, cer- tifies that the bearer, Walter Cox, is a fine sommaghaun, and a rattling hand at writing, a ready mouth in reading and spelling, and arguifying in all matters of contraband learning ; that he sat with great respect to himself for two years and two hours within Ballyfadden big tree, and rose betwuxt terror and talents to the very highest branches under heaven, of which all the world is bound to take notice. " 'Given under my hand this 17th day of March, and God bless all that hear it, the 91st year since the invention of potatoes. " ' Bryan MacGarry' From the papers in my possession, of Mr. Thomas Finn, among which are several original letters of Walter Cox, addressed to that gentleman, the following are selected as illustrative of the writer's character, and, one of them in particular, as affording very re- markable evidence of the profligacy of the Irish government of that day, and its regime of Orangeism, in the dealings of the Duke of Richmond with Mr. Walter Cox : — WALTER COX " BOUGHT UP " BY GOVERNMENT. 285 FROM WALTER COX TO THOMAS FINN, ESQ. Dublin, January 9, 1816. u My dear Friend, — I received your letter to-day, and have to acquaint you that I was obliged to submit to the Government, to avoid another dreary imprisonment, and, as the Attorney-General threatened, in a remote jail. They insist, as one of the terms, that I must leave the country, but have agreed to pay my passage to America, and, when landed, to pay me £400. " I am much gratified that my Magazine did not owe its disso- lution to dulness, as you may see it required the overwhelming power of the British Government to suppress it. " I shall not go before May ; in the interim I hope to see you. " My best wishes shall ever be, during my remote situation, for you and your good family. " I have a book or two which are at your service, such of the Magazines as I have, and left as you dictated. " Yours most truly, " Walter Cox". " Brig Adams, Dublin Bay. " My dear Friend, — On the moment of sailing for New York, I take the opportunity of letting you know of my departure from my country, and of assuring you how much I esteem yourself and your family, and of my wishes to hear from you in my adopted country. " Farewell, and believe me, " Yours sincerely, " Walter Cox. " September 17". " New York, Dec. 14, 181G. 44 My dear Friend, — I arrived in Boston, after a passage of 39 days, on the 28th of October. This country would astonish you — its climate is delightful this moment. Its trade is more exten- sive than that of any other nation; it abounds with all the com- forts of life, collected from every quarter of the globe. The poorest labourer can live here as well as the President. Cider, which is the finest in the world, is cheaper here than buttermilk is in Dublin. Brandy is but 7s. 6d. a gallon; St. Croix rum . . . . . per gallon ; the best of green tea, gunpowder or hyson, from 8s. to lis. a pound; Madeira wine, 7s. 8d. a gallon; claret, from 2s. 6d. to 3s. a bottle. Perfect equality of rights — the sons 286 LETTERS OF COX FROM AMERICA. of a tailor or farmer have as much, chance of being President of the United States, as the sons of any other man ; for no man is considered inferior, in point of rank, to any other individual. " I must conclude with recommending the Exile to your pa- tronage, and giving my most affectionate wishes to Mrs. Finn and children. " Yours sincerely, " Walter Cox". FROM WALTER COX TO THOMAS FINN, ESQ., WITH ENCLOSED PROSPECTUS OF THE EXILE. "New York, September 28, 1816. " My dear Friend, — I take the opportunity of the ship Onis, which sails to-day, of acquainting you of my existence, and to assure you and your family of the affection I must have for you in this remote situation. My prospects are no way flattering, as the new ideas on Bibling and Governments I had the honour of first introducing into this nation of swaddlers and hypocrites, have set every one against me ; and my crimes, though very great, are much aggravated by being an Irishman, — a character severely re- probated by the English factions here, which includes all the fanatics. " You may guess my situation is not very enviable : if you were to know how it is made worse by a bad climate, as variable and fatal to human existence as any country inhabited by white people ! In fact, the Southern States are not suited to any con- stitution but Negroes : this moment the yellow fever is sweeping Carolina and New Orleans — a merciless and almost an unnecessary visitation, as the climate itself is an enemy to human life, so much so, that an unacclimated man, conscious of the few days al- lowed, lives as much in ten years, dies before he is thirty-two years of age. " Every tiling contributes to make me abhor this people, and make me alarmed at the climate ; and, between you and I, Ire- land I am determined to see again, let what maybe the conse- quence. The state of business js very low, as they have lost the carrying trade they had during the protracted contests in Europe — the aspect of affairs quite as dull as in Dublin, as there is no employment for labourers or mechanics, on the sea-board particu- larly. Employment may be had in the back countries, among the kind of farmers in the wilderness; but privation and hard labour must be expected, if a man has not some capital and some practical knowledge of hewing trees and tillage. Land is cheap. I could have purchased, the day before yesterday, by auction, for PI10SFKCTUS OF il THE EXILE " 287 seventeen pence of this currency an acre ; equal to eight pence three-farthings Irish the lee-simple ; so I might have an estate for ever of 337 acres for about eleven guineas. It is covered with timber, and lying in the State about three hundred miles to the westward. " I have been recruiting for MacGregor, and have sent him many brave Irishmen who could not do better. " Reports are had to-day that he has given up the command, but they are not credited. " I sent some papers a few days ago for you to the care of Jas. Maher, WaterforcL I sent some directed to O'Reilly. 11 I remain, my dear friend, yours, etc., M Walter Cox". PROSPECTUS OF " THE EXILE". Mr. Walter Cox, late proprietor of the Irish Magazine, a pe- riodical work, which attracted more of the public attention in Ireland than ever before honoured any print since the introduction of printing into that country, apprises his countrymen of his ar- rival in the city of New York, where he expects, under the patro- nage of the public, to commence a weekly newspaper, to be called The Exile. M The editor presumes that his labours and the character of his works are known to his countrymen in America, assures them that the humour, wit, and liveliness, which won the approbation of a numerous class of readers, even in defiance of the provoked and jealous vigilance of the British Government, shall not dege- nerate for want of industry or the aid of valuable correspondents throughout Ireland. " The first and leading duty which shall direct The Exile is a due and devout reverence for the institutions of the American Republic. "The Irishman in America, who wishes to learn how the ad- ministration of English justice disposes of his relations and friends in Ireland, shall be regularly supplied with official details of the massacres and deportations weekly perpetrated under the provi- sions of the Curfew, or Hmhoe Law, in the condemned districts; the minutest occurrence which takes place in the unsparing tri- bunals, — the agonies of the victims, and the jokes of the judges, — will occupy a considerable portion of The Exile. " He who admires rural economy will find in the new publica- tion a faithful report of the transactions of that celebrated farming society, which improves the condition of brutes, and refuses food 288 DR. BRENAN AND THE " MILESIAN MAGAZINE ". to man — an institution which protects dog-kennels, and prostrates altars. " The literary man will find a new character in the lettered world peculiar to British government, by learning, through the medium of The Exile, that the witchcraft of writing or reading in Ireland has been treated as capital offences by the same candid policy which punishes and defames the people for attributed ig- norance. " The religious inquirer will hear with astonishment that the Bible is a state instrument, offered hourly to the people on the point of the bayonet; and that the four Evangelists are made the accomplices of the informer, to hang and govern by the aid of the perjurer. " The politician will learn an anomaly in legislation, which de- clares a superabundant population inconvenient, and reduces the novel theory into practice by the fusee. " In short, every important information relative to the current transactions in the Cabin War which now desolates Ireland, will be accurately given from the most respectable sources, of which the limited brevity of a prospectus can give but an imperfect idea. The terms of The Exile — Three dollars a year ; half in ad- vance. " It will be published on Saturdays, to begin on the - of January, 1817. DR. JOHN BRENAN AND THE " MILESIAN MAGAZINE". Having referred to Dr. Brenan's accusations against Cox, with regard to Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Thomas Russell, it would be an act of injustice to Cox's memory, whose fidelity to his associates Brenan impugns, to conceal the circumstances which render his own statements somewhat doubtful. Brenan had been an early con- tributor to Cox's Magazine : he quarrelled with him, and set up a rival periodical. Brenan, like his competitor, was nominally a Roman Catholic : he struck out a new line in satire and censorious- ness — a warfare of ridicule on the Roman Catholic leaders of the day, and of ludicrous scurrility against the members of his own profession. It was the interest, and manifestly the object of Brenan, to bring Cox into disrepute, and to establish his own claims on the gratitude of the administration, without incurring the suspicions of his own party. It would be a folly, indeed, to refer to such matters, if circum- stances of far higher public interest were not connected with them. Literature of merit in other countries derives rewards and honours from government; in Ireland, a scurrilous lampoon has been found DR. BRENAN AND THE " MILESIAN MAGAZINE". 289 sufficient to procure a pension from government. Some doggrel verses, smartly written, turning the most prominent of the Ca- tholic leaders into ridicule, beginning with the words, " Barney, Barney, buck or doe", recommended the writer, Dr. Brenan, to the especial favour of the Duke of Richmond's government. This poor man, of whom it is not only charitable but true to say his wits were partially disordered, on his death-bed, in his wanderings, often repeated incoherent rhymes (for the ruling passion strong in death, prevailed with him), and one couplet not unfrequently was repeated, which there is good reason to believe denoted a foregone conclusion : Barney, Barney, buck or doe, Has kept me out of Channel Row. Many pensions, no better earned, have kept men of little worth out of Channel Row poor-house. Dr. Brenan's Milesian Magazine, or Irish Monthly Gleaner, is the most perfect specimen that exists in eccentric ephemeral literature of a periodical professing to be a monthly one, setting at defiance all obligations in respect to punctuality, as well as pro- priety and decorum. Intervals of six, twelve, and eighteen months, — nay, even of years, — occasionally occurred between the appearance of consecutive numbers of this meteoric magazine. The first number appeared in April, 1812; the last — No. 16 — in July, 1825. There can be no doubt the mission of the Milesian Maga* zine was a governmental one. The objects to be effected were, to bring Cox and his Irish Magazine into disrepute, and the Ca- tholic leaders and the Committee into ridicule. The first article in the first number is an attack on Cox and his former assassination journal, the Union Star; the second is illus- trated by an emblematic engraving, representing Cox in the act of killing his wife. The poetry in the first number consists of the elaborate lampoon, above referred to, on the principal Catholic leaders, Lords Fingal, Gormanstown, Southwell, French, Killeen, Kenmare, Netterville, Major Bryan, John Keogh, William Murphy, Silvester Costigan, John Lawless, Owen O'Connor, William Finn, Dr. Drumgoole, and Barney Coile — with the absurd refrain : — Barney, Barney, buck or doe, Who shall with the petition go ? The labours of Dr. Brenan were duly requited by the repre- sentative of the British Government in Ireland. More fortunate than a modern lampooner similarly employed, Brenan was re- warded with a pension of £200 a year — the evidence of ii. 20 290 GIFFARD AND THE " DUBLIN JOURNAL ". which fact, in the handwriting of Dr. Brenan, is in my pos- session. Brenan died in July 1830, in Britain Street, Dublin, aged about sixty -two years. He left two children, a son and a daughter, the latter a lady of a very amiable character, respectably married in Kilkenny. He was born at Ballahide, Carlow ; his father was a gentleman of ancient family and once of considerable fortune. He died intestate, leaving six small children, the eldest of whom was John, the subject of this notice. After his father's death, he went to law with his family, and carried on a protracted suit in Chancery against his mother, which brought ruin on the property.* His son, however, contrived to get from the wreck of it, between five and six thousand pounds, which he carried with him to England, and having squandered away whatever he possessed, he died there a few years ago. Dr. Brenan was a man of classical attainments of a high order, and very considerable talents, which were most sadly misused by him; he devoted his fine talents to sarcasm and scur- rility ; the little use he made of his abilities in his profession, was still sufficient to make his name known to medical men, not only in England, but over the continent, as the person who first brought into practice the use of turpentine in puerperal disorders. Besides the Press, the other newspapers published in Dublin were, the Dublin Journal, the Freeman's Journal, Saunders's News-letter, the Dublin Evening Post, and the Hibernian Journal. The Dublin Journal, edited by GifTard, was the organ of the government and the faction that swayed its councils. Saun- ders's News-letter professed neutrality in politics, and was chiefly devoted to commercial communications. The Post and Hibernian Journal were moderate supporters of liberal principles. The amount of literary talent employed in all was extremely small; but in this respect, with the exception of the Press, the Dublin Evening Post excelled all its cotemporaries, and in the fidelity and accuracy of its reports of the debates in parliament, it had no equal. * The property of Dr. Brenan's father, in Carlow alone and its immediate vi- cinity, called the Castle Hill, at the time of his decease, was worth £200 a year. This and other landed property, Dr. Brenan states, he and his family were swindled out of professionally by his attorneys. The injury he suffered at the hands of these legal gentlemen may account for the incessant warfare he waged on their profession. Brenan's free translations of remarkable passages in classical works of celebrity are deserving of notice : — " Nemo repente fuit turpissimus". " It takes seven years and some hard swearing to make an attorney". " De mortuis nihil nisi bonum". " When scoundrels die, all knaves bemoan them". " Irivitum qui servat idem facit occidente''. " Cure a man against his willing ; The cure will vex him worse than killing". GIFFARD AND THE DUBLIN JOURNAL". 291 MR. JOHN GIFFARD AND THE " DUBLIN JOURNAL*'. Of the Dublin Journal, which claimed to be the Government newspaper of that day, a few words may not be found unnecessary. This paper was originally established by Mr. George Faulkner, one of the aldermen of the city of Dublin, and was ably conducted by him for upwards of fifty years. His house was the rendezvous of the leading parliamentary, literary, and political men of his day. He associated with persons of the highest rank, and was in the habit of entertaining them, it is said, in a style of splendour Faulkner died in 1775. From the period of his death, this paper gradually declined in spirit and integrity, till its doom was fixed, when its fanatical career commenced, on its coining into the hands of one of the most illiterate and illiberal men who ever became ambitious of conducting a public journal. This person, Mr. John Giffard, better known by the complimentary soubriquet of the "dog in office", was an alumnus, it is said, of the Blue Coat Hospital, lie was taken by the hand by a person of the name of Thwaites, a brewer, and was brought up to the business of an apothecary. He married a young woman in humble life, in the county of Wexford, and set up as an apothecary in the town of "Wexford, but got maltreated in a brawl with a man of the name of Miller in that town, and removed to Dublin, where he set up in the business of an apothecary, in Fishamble Street, in 1771.* In that year, a Mr. John GifTard, a cooper, of Price's Lane, Fleet Street, died in Dublin, but whether a relation or not of the former I cannot say. The following year the name of the Giffard of subsequent notoriety is found in the list of common council- men. As his prospects brightened, he changed his residence from Fishamble Street to College Street, then to Grafton Street, and finally to Suffolk Street, in 1790. He distinguished himself early for the violence of his democratic principles, became a member of the Volunteer Association, and declaimed in un- measured terms against parliamentary corruption, tyranny, and English influence. Patriotism, however, and the glory acquired in the Volunteer service, brought no money into the pocket of Mr. John GifTard ; and in a little time, to the amazement of his friends, he suddenly changed his politics, reviled his former associates, and was duly encouraged and advanced by his new confederates. The first * John Giffard's first appearance in print we find in the Hibernian Journal, from 23rd to 25th October, 1771 :— u Being election day for the Corporation of Apothecaries, Mr. John Pentland, Mary's Abbey, was elected master ; and John Giflard, Fishamble Street, and Mr. Thomas Powell, were elected wardens for the year ensuing". 292 GIFFARD AND THE " DUBLIN JOURNAL". notoriety he acquired, was in the discharge of the humble duties of director of the city watch. In this office he had given some offence to the collegians, and this powerful and lawless body decreed the honours of a public pumping to Mr. John Giffard. As they were in the habit of beating the watch with impunity, and even breaking open houses for the purpose of seizing persons who had offended them, they proceeded to Giffard's house in a tumultuous manner, and commenced the demolition of his doors and windows. Giffard manfully defended his house, repulsed his assailants, and shot one of the young rioters in the wrist. From this time, though Giffard did not throw physic to the dogs, the fortunate dog was himself thrown into office. He filled no particular post or definable situation in the Castle, but was a man of all work of a dirty kind for Government — a hanger-on of Clare and the Beresfords. In the spring of 1790, Giffard's privileged insolence had already reached the acme of its audacity. He attacked Mr. Curran in the streets at noon- day, for alluding in his place in parliament to the large sums of money squandered on the subordinate agents and partizans of administration. The circumstances of this insult are detailed in a letter of Mr. Curran to the Right Honourable Major Hobart, the secretary, demanding the dismissal of this menial of the Government from a post he then held in the revenue. " A man of the name of Giffard", writes Curran, " a conductor of your press, a writer for your Government, your notorious agent in the city, your note-taker in the House of Commons, in conse- quence of some observation that fell from me in that house on your prodigality in rewarding such a man with the public money for such services, had the audacity to come within a few paces of me in the most frequented part of the city, and shake his cane at me in a manner that, notwithstanding his silence, was not to be misunderstood". Curran, despising the menial, held the master responsible for the insolence of the servant, and a duel between him and Major Hobart was the consequence. Just previously to the trial of Hamilton Rowan in 1794 for a seditious libel, it was found necessary to have a jury which could be relied on for a conviction, and a sheriff that could be trusted in such an emergency. Mr. Giffard was therefore made sheriff some months before the trial, " a jury of the right sort" was em- pannelled, and Hamilton Rowan was sent to Newgate. Mr. Giffard was at this time, by Lord Clare's patronage and protection, on the high road to preferment under Government, and its countenance had already enabled him to become the chief pro- GIFFARD AND THE " DUBLIN JOURNAL 293 prietor of the Dublin Journal. From the time it came into his hands, its violence, virulence, vulgarity, and mendacity, were of so extreme a character, that in the present day its advocacy would be held detrimental and disgraceful to any party. Yet its editor was patronized and preferred to places of honour and emolument by the administration, and especially favoured with the countenance and confidence of Lord Clare. Indeed, none but the most worth- less and unscrupulous men were selected for his lordship's favour. One of the most signal instances of this man's effrontery was on the occasion of Mr. Grattan's appearance at the hustings in Dublin in 1803, to vote for the then liberal candidate, Sir Jonah Barrington. Mr. Giffard objected to Mr. Grattan's vote, on the alleged ground of his name having been expunged from the corporation, in conse- quence of the report of the Secret Committee of the House of Commons, especially got up and revised by Lord Clare, containing the evidence of a man of the name of Hughes (a notorious in- former), involving Mr. Grattan in the designs of the United Irishmen. Grattan on this occasion poured forth a volume of invective on the astonished Mr. Giffard ; such, perhaps, as never fell on the devoted head of so humble a minion of administration. This memorable bur^t of disdain and indignation was addressed to his victim in these words: — " Mr. Sheriff, when I observe the quarter from whence the objection comes, I am not surprised at its being made. It proceeds from the hired traducer of his country, the excommunicated of his fellow-citizens, the regal rebel, the un- punished rullian, the bigoted agitator. In the city a firebrand ; in the court a liar ; in the streets a bully ; in the field a coward And so obnoxious is he to the very party lie wishes to espouse, that he is only supportable by doing these dirty acts the less vile refuse to execute". Giffards reply, as recorded by Sir Jonah Barrington, " I would spit upon him in a desert'', is indicative enough of the mind and manners of the discomfited zealot. In 1798, the " dog in office 1 ' discharged the functions of an officer in the Corporation of Apothecaries, a proprietor and editor of the Dublin Journol, a surveyor and guager of the Custom House Quay, a Sheriff s Peer, an Orangeman, an officer of the Grand Lodge, a captain of the City of Dublin Regiment of Militia.* * In 1817, the old terrorist of 1798 was still a "dog in office", but only in the Corporation of Apothecaries, as one of the examiners of that body. His military glory had departed. His connection with the excise had terminated in an unplea- sant manner. The Dublin Journal was defunct ■ nothing of it remained ; but the savage instincts of its Orangeism, its traditions and animosities to the people of Ireland and their faith, found a shrine in a London newspaper — the Standard — and a priest for their homage, and a revival of veneration for their intolerance, in the person of a son of Captain John Gitlard. 294 GIFFARD AND THE " DUBLIN JOURNAL". In July, 1799, the gallant Captain John Giffard was tried by court-martial, held in the barracks of Dublin, upon charges brought against the said Captain John Giffard by Major Sankey, of the same regiment. (Vide Milliken's Edition of Trial, 1800.) — Four charges were brought against the prisoner: — The first, for disrespectful conduct to his commanding officer. 2nd — For neglect of duty and inattention to his company. 3rd — For disobedience of orders. 4th — For scandalous and infamous conduct, unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman, in having made a false return of the necessaries wanting to complete his company, and in having directed a serjeant of said regiment to make a false return of the necessaries wanting to complete his said company, particu- larly under the head of shot, by returning a smaller deficiency than there actually existed, in order thereby to impose on his commanding officer, and to prevent him from knowing that the regimental standing orders, or his own, had not been complied with. The prisoner pleaded not guilty. He was defended by his son Counsellor Harding Giffard. In reply to the second charge, of absenting himself from duty when the regiment was actively engaged against the rebels in the month of May, 1798, Captain Giffard, in his defence, said: — " On the 22nd of May, by leave of General Duff, I came from Lime- rick to Dublin to see Captain Ryan, my nephew. He was mortally wounded by the dagger of the accursed rebel, Fitzgerald. The day immediately following, my son, Lieutenant Giffard, coming also from Limerick, was savagely murdered at Kildare, because he scorned his life when to be purchased with disgrace. Of this dread- ful event I soon heard. I left poor Ryan dying in Dublin, and went to Kildare to cover the mangled remains of my hero. I went singly through that wicked country, and was, of course, fired at through the hedges. I arrived time enough to meet Sir James Duff, and was under him for some time at the Collieries, Monastereven, etc., etc. The army then marched to Baltinglass, on its way to the county Wexford. From Baltinglass I was despatched, with 220 infantry under my command, to steal a march, in the night, through the mountains and through the armies of rebels that oc- cupied them. This is the proudest event of my life. General Dundas and General Duff know that, through good providence, I succeeded, threw myself into Rathdrum, which I fortified in a manner much approved of by every officer who saw it, and thus covered Dublin, and prevented the enemy from turning the left of our wing".* — " Magnificabo apostolatum meum". * Report of proceedings of court-martial, p. 52. GIFFARD AND THE " DUBLIN JOURNAL". 295 This glorification of the captainship of the Dublin apothecary, when he stole a march in the ni^ht through the mountains of D O Wicklow, occupied by armies of rebels, when he threw himself into Rathdrum, and fortified that important place and covered Dublin, and saved our left wing from being turned by the enemy, is worthy of one of the heroes of Homer. But how superior to Homers description of similar heroic exploits is Captain John Giffards M plain, unvarnished tale" of his achievement, let the reader judge. Thus Homer sings : — EtcXay^av 6 ap oiaroi cnr' UfUtv \io/.it]voio, Avts KiinjQtv-og uc jfis 'Svkti toiKiog. E£tr' airtir' airavivBt veiov, [it-a $' iov iijxe, Ativij ce KXayytj ywtr apyvptoio €1010. Ovpijag \iiv —poj-ov (TcioOtTO, teat Kuvag aoyng, AvTap t-Kf.iT Avtokji €tXog txerrtvictg jQiuc BaXX' out $t Trvpat vtKVwv kciiovto Oaptiai. u The arrows rattled in his quiver as he moved along in all the fierceness of his wrath. His march was like the night. He took his station at a distance from the foe, and sent forth a shaft ; and the sounding of the silver bow was terrible. His first attack was on the animals, the mules and dogs; but after that, he smote the army itself with many a deadly arrow, and the funeral piles of the slain blazed frequent through the camp". Horn. II., i. The court-martial found the gallant captain guilty of the first charge, not guilty of the other charges, " and adjudged him to be reprimanded for said olfence at such time and place as his Excel- lency might be pleased to direct". The majesty of Orangedom was not to be offended in the person of the warlike apothecary, Captain John Giffard. The idea of a court-martial, in 1799, bringing in a verdict of guilty against the proprietor of an Orange journal, on a charge of "scandalous and infamous conduct, unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman', was preposterous. " The lucky dog" was accordingly not only acquitted of that charge and two others, imputing ne- glect of duty and disobedience of orders to the valiant Giffard, but the daring prosecutor, not having the fear of the Dublin Journal and Giffard's Orange patrons before his eyes, was severely censured by the honourable court-martial, as having " originated the three last charges more from pique than from zeal for his Ma- • jesty's service". Nevertheless the court was compelled to find the prisoner guilty of the first charge, and adjudged him to be reprimanded for that offence. 296 GIFFARD AND THE " DUBLIN JOURNAL '. But the power and influence of an Orange partizan of Captain Giffard's pretensions to importance in the state, were not to be dis- regarded by the Government ; and consequently, immediately after the publication of the sentence of the court-martial, Captain GifTard received a letter from the secretary of Lord Cornwallis, addressed to General Craig, with instructions to present it to the General, to the following effect :-— " Dublin Castle, 20th August, 1799. " Sir, — I have it in command from the Lord Lieutenant to de- sire that you will be pleased to reprimand Captain Giffard, of the Dublin Militia, in a slight manner, instead of the mode ex- pressed in his Excellency's warrant to you of the 13th instant. " Signed, E. B. LlTTLEHALES. " Lieut.-General Craig, Dublin Barracks". Thus Orangedom was propitiated by the representative of the sovereign in Ireland, and all superior officers were made to feel that henceforth all disrespectful conduct on the part of officers under them, who had the advantage of being Orangemen, was only subject to a slight reprimand, by the express command of the Governor-General of Ireland. The impunity accorded to Orange delinquencies by the Govern- ment was exemplified in the preceding year in a still more re- markable manner, by a court-martial sitting in Dublin Barracks, in the case of two soldiers tried for murdering an inoffensive citizen, Mr. Ryan, a skinner, of Watling Street, who was dragged from his own door for daring to look at a party of yeomanry cavalry returning from an execution at Rathcoole, as they passed by his door; and as this military rabble of organized Orangemen, armed by the Government and wearing the king's uniform, were conveying unfortunate Ryan to the Provost, one of the ruffians, of the name of Tibby, deliberately shot him, and another of this mili- tary gang, of the name of Hicks, assisted in despatching the unof- fending citizen. I have given elsewhere, at page 132 of this volume, an account of these murderers as they were seen by Mr. P , an eminent artist then confined in the Provost, where they were brought in as prisoners. But the fact was not told, that the two military murderers of the unoffending Dublin citizen, having been tried by court-martial, were acquitted of the murder, but condemned of unsoldierlike conduct in the discharge of their duty, and sen- tenced to imprisonment for some weeks. Lord Camden was then viceroy, and Lord Castlereagh the fac- totum of his administration ! ! ! O CONNOR AND COIGLYS TRIAL. 297 CHAPTER DI. O'CONNOR'S FLIGHT FROM IRELAND IN FEBRUARY 1798. HIS ARREST AT MAIDSTONE. TRIAL AND ACQUITTAL. CONDEMNATION OF MR. COIGLY. O'CONNOR'S RE-ARREST, TRANSMISSION TO IRELAND. COMPACT OF THE STATE PRISONERS WITH THE GOVERNMENT. From the time O'Connor became a member of the Leinster Direc- tory of the society of the United Irishmen, he was the foremost leader in their affairs. When the United Irishmen solicited the interven- tion of France in 1796, O'Connor negociated the treaty with the agent of the French Directory. He and Lord Edward had an interview subsequently with Hoche at Frankfort, and arranged the place of landing and consequent military operations. In the early part of 1797 O'Connor was arrested and committed to the Tow r er, " vehemently suspected of sundry treasons", rather than charged with any specific crime against the state. After an imprisonment of six months he w^as liberated. In February, 1798, Arthur O'Connor was in London, about to proceed to France on a mission to the French government from the Leinster Directory of the United Irishmen, the object of which was to press on the French authorities the urgent necessity of hastening the despatch of the promised expedition to Ireland. While O'Connor remained in London he was constantly in the company of Fox and the leaders of the Whig party, frequently a guest of Fox, and in close and confidential communication with him on the state of Ireland, the organization, there is good reason to believe, and the views of the society of United Irishmen. That Fox was acquainted with the nature of O'Connor's intended mission to France in 1798, the statements of O'Connor and Lord Cloncurry can leave no doubt. O'Connor's high position in society, his talents, his fortune, and expected large accession to it at the death of his uncle Lord Longueville, together with his uncle's coronet, made him of suffi- cient consequence to be not only well received, but courted, even in the best circles of London. Fie was at the height of his popu- larity there when he took his departure from London on his expedition to France. On the 27th of February, 1798, the Reverend James Coigly, John Allen, Rinns, and Leary, came to Margate. Coigly had adopted the nom de guerre of Captain Jones ; Allen assumed the character of Coigly 's servant; Leary w r ent by his own name, and was the servant of O'Connor. The latter under the name of Colonel Morriss, had arrived at Margate with Binns, who was called Mr. Williams by another route, the same day. Binns 298 O'CONNOR AND COIGLY's TRIAL. had been previously living with his brother, in London, at the house of the Secretary of the Corresponding Society, No. 14, Plough Court. Coigly and Allen had been staying in the same house, and O'Connor had lodgings in Strattan Street ; but on the night previously to his setting out for France, he slept at the house of Mr. Bell, a merchant, in Charter-house Square. John Binns had been traced to Canterbury and Whitstable, on the 22nd of February, where he was endeavouring to make arrangements for the hire of a vessel, to convey some friends of his, who were said to be in the smuggling line, to Flushing, or to the coast of France, for which three hundred guineas were asked, and refused by Binns. He then proceeded to Deal, and partly entered into terms for a vessel for sixty or seventy guineas, and then returned to London. This arrangement, however, not having been completed, the parties proceeded to Margate, and, the morning after their arrival there, they were arrested at the King's Head Inn, by Revett and Fugion, two Bow Street officers. Coigly was at breakfast in a room in which a great-coat was found, with a pocket-book containing several papers, one of which purported to be " An Address of the Secret Committee of England to the Executive Directory of France", stating that " the citizen who now presents their sentiments, was the bearer of them on a former occasion", and concluding with a declaration, that " their only wish was to see the hero of Italy and his invin- cible legions landed on their coast". Several Latin papers, certifi- cates of Coigly 's studies at foreign universities, were found on him. A passport of Coigly 's was found at Binns' lodgings, bearing the signature of the French authorities, in April, 1797. In O'Con- nor's baggage, a quantity of money, to the amount of £900, was found, a military uniform, and some papers, among them a key to a correspondence with Lord Edward Fitzgerald, found at the resi- dence of the latter, which plainly indicated the purpose of com- municating with the French government. The letter found at Lord Edward's contained the following paragraph : — " It is said that Lord Fitzwilliam is going over to Ireland, and great hopes are entertained that he will be able to separate the Catholics from the Union. This you and every good man must endeavour to pre- vent". The prisoners were conveyed to London, examined before the magistrates at Bow Street and the Privy Council, and finally trans- mitted to Maidstone jail, to abide their trial at the next assizes. Monday, May 21st, 1798, James Coigly, Arthur O'Connor, John Binns, John Allen, and Jeremiah Leary, were put upon their trial at Maidstone, before Mr. Justice Buller, Mr. Justice Heath, and Mr. Justice Laurence.* An application was made * Lord Eldon, then Attorney-Generai, assisted by Mitford, afterwards Lord O'COHVOB AND COIGLYS TllIAL. 299 to the court by Mr. Plumer, counsel for Messrs. Coigly and O'Connor, founded on an affidavit, setting forth that J a magis- trate of the county, the Rev. Arthur Young of Dover, had tam- pered with three of the persons who were called as jurymen ; and his own letter to a Mr. Lloyd of Bury (acknowledged to have been written by him), was read to the court, wherein, in referring to three farmers summoned on the jury, he says: " They are much in my interest, to be sure. I exerted all my influence to convince them how absolutely necessary it is, at the present moment, for the security of the realm, that the felons should swing. I represented to them that the acquittal of Hardy and Co. laid the foundation of the present conspiracy. I urged them, by all possible means in my power, to hang them, through mercy, as a memento to others ; that, had the others suffered, the deep-laid conspiracy which is coming to light, would have been ne- cessarily crushed in its infancy. These, with many other arguments I pressed, with a view that they should go into court avowedly de- termined in their verdict, no matter what the evidence".* The Judges and the Attorney-General, Mr. John Scott (subse- quently Lord Eldon), reprobated the act of the reverend gentle- man, and the latter said he concurred in the challenge to the three jurymen referred to. Revett's evidence on the trial was to the following effect: — He arrested Coigly ; there was a dagger found on his person. He was at breakfast ; he refused to give his name, or to acknowledge his luggage. There was a great-coat in the room lying on a chair ; he would not acknowledge it to be his. The great-coat was taken to another room, and, on searching the pocket of it, the officers found a pocket-book, which Fugion examined, and said it was of great consequence. All the papers were marked, and never out of his possession till they were marked, some in Bow Street, some at the Secretary of State's office. On his cross-examination, he said, after he seized the papers (at the hotel), he did not mark them there; he believed lie was desired by the prisoners to take the papers before a magistrate, to have them marked and sealed up. No body was in the room when he found them ; he had no recollection of the papers being missing after they were brought to Bow Street. Fugion gave similar evidence, but stated that the person who read the paper, when the pocket-book was found, was a Mr. Twopenny. He had heard at Bow Street, the handkerchief which contained the papers was missing. Two- penny swore that he saw the pocket-book taken out of the pocket Redesdale, and Garrow, prosecuted in this case ; the prisoners were defeuded by Sir J. Plumer, Dallas, Gurney, Scott, and Cutlar Ferguson. * Report of the Trial of O'Connor, Coigly, etc., p. 35. 300 O'CONNOR AND COIGLY's TRIAL. of the coat while the prisoners were present, but it was then tied up in a handkerchief. Mr. Frederick Dutton swore that two letters addressed to a per- son in Holland were in Coigly's hand- writing. He had seen him write his name and the names of others, for the purpose of getting a watch raffled, which belonged to a poor man under sentence of death at Dundalk, where he (Dutton) once resided. The letters in question were dated the 24th and 26th of February. One stated — "Notwithstanding the severe prohibition carried on against our merchandize in France, I am resolved to carry on the trade at all events"; — addressed to Mynheer G. F. Vandeleur, Flushing. The other stated — "Being here, and hearing that there is a great seizure of ail our merchandize, I write this to in- quire about it. If anything may be sent by sea, tell me. As I am under the necessity of attending here as a military man, write to my partner. Direct to Parkinson and Co., Manchester. We are very uneasy about the safety of the last parcel addressed to Mynheer Vanderslang, Amsterdam". Another letter, addressed to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Mr. Dutton swore was in the hand- writing of Coigly. Dutton said he had been a servant, and was a quarter-master in the army since March, 1798. He had been dismissed from the service of a Mr. Carlile ; had kept a public house at Newry for some time without a license ; never applied to government for any reward, but had applied by letter to Lord Carhampton, soliciting to be made a quarter-master in the army. He had sworn in Ireland against one Lowry, and had previously sworn secrecy to the Society of United Irishmen, which Lowry belonged to, but he had only been sworn on a " Reading made Easy". Mr. Lane, formerly under-sheriff of the county of Cork, when Mr. O'Connor filled the office of sheriff, identified a letter addressed to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, as being in the hand- writing of Mr. O'Connor. Mr. Ford, one of the Under Secretaries of State for the home department, deposed that he was present when the prisoners were examined before the council. O'Connor objected to his examina- tion being taken down, on the grounds of its incorrectness. Mr. O'Connor's examination before the Privy Council, however, was produced and read. In that examination O'Connor had denied any knowledge of Coigly, or of an intention of going to France. Revett, the Bow Street officer, produced a book, purporting to be the constitution and test of the Society of United Irishmen. The whole, at the instance of Mr. O'Connor, was read, for the purpose, as he stated, of showing the jury " that it was not possi- ble he could have belonged to a society of such a description a O'CONNOR AND COIGLY's TRIAL. 301 that of the United Irishmen appeared to be, without its being publicly and notoriously known".* The examination of Coigly, signed by him, before the council, was then read by the Attorney-General, said — " He was no parti- cular profession ; declined to answer whether he was in orders ; had no particular acquaintance with O'Connor; the examinant was in bad health ; was going to Margate ; the great-coat, and the paper found in the pocket of it, he knew nothing about; the dagger found on his person he had bought in Capel Street, Dublin. He knew Evans, of Plough Court, but was not aware of his belonging to the Corresponding Society". Mr. Plumer, as leading counsel for Messrs. O'Connor and Coigly, made a speech, which occupied four hours and a half in the delivery, in the defence (the report says) of both prisoners ; but truth obliges me to say, that the defence of the unfortunate priest forms no part of that speech ; and the few words that are devoted to the mention of his name, in conjunction with O'Con- nor's, nominally in his defence, were virtually in the defence of O'Connor, and to the downright prejudice of Coigly. The fault lay with the lawyer, and not with his client, O'Connor. The Lord Advocate of Scotland might truly say, many years after the event, " that man (Coigly) was not properly defended". Binns was ably defended by Mr. Gurney ; Allen, by Mr. Fer- guson ; and Leary, with considerable earnestness and efficiency, by Mr. Scott (the gentleman who published, about two years ago, a letter in one of the London newspapers, signed — " A Disciple of John Home Tooke", in which he asserted the inno- cence of Coigly, stating that the paper found in his pocket had been put there for a hoax by Dr. Crosslield, a member of the Corresponding Society). Jeremiah Hasset, a witness for the defence, deposed, he was keeper of the Round Tower in the Castle of Dublin. Mr. O'Con- nor had been kept in close confinement there ; suffered to see two friends, and no other persons. In the month of June, 1797, two shots had been fired by some of the Highland Fencibles at the window of the room where O'Connor was confined. From that time O'Connor went no more to the window. Mr. Stuart, a magistrate in the county Tyrone, knew Coigly in Dundalk ; was aware of his father's house having been wrecked by the Orangemen or Peep-of-Day Boys. Coigly 's moral character was good ; he (Mr. Stuart) had assisted Coigly lately with money in London. The Earl of Moira deposed to his having a slight knowledge of * Report of the trial of Messrs. O'Connor, Coigly, etc., p. C2. 302 O'CONNOR AND COIGLY's TRIAL. Mr. O'Connor; did not feel competent to speak of O'Connor's general character ; had only one political conversation with him. The evidence of knowledge, grounded on a single conversation, was objected to by Mr. Garrow. The Hon. Thomas Erskine deposed to his having known O'Connor three years ; his acquaintances in England were people of high rank, with whom he (Mr. E.) acted in parliament. Mr. O'Connor's character was the best any man could possess ; he was a man of the strictest honour and integrity, and had made great sacrifices in maintaining the opinions he thought right ; he was incapable of treachery to any man, and Mr. E. knew him to possess the highest admiration and regard for the persons he asso- ciated with. He (Mr. E.) was not aware of his having any other connections, or holding any other political principles. The Hon. Charles James Fox had known O'Connor for three or four years, and frequently conversed with him on political subjects; he lived on intimate terms of esteem and confidence w T ith him, and with the friends of Mr. Fox, who are called the opposition. He (Mr. Fox) always considered him a person well affected to his country, a man highly enlightened and firmly attached to the principles which seated the present family on the throne, to which principles they owed their liberty. He (Mr. Fox) was acquainted with Lord Edward Fitzgerald ; he was a near relative of his (Mr. Fox's), and he believed Lord Edward was anxious to go to France, relative to some private affairs concern- ing his wife, who had property there. The Earl of Suffolk had known Mr. O'Connor eleven years, and so much admired his political character, that two years ago he introduced him to the Duke of Norfolk, the Bishop of Llan- daff, and Serjeant Adair. The Right Hon. R. B. Sheridan said, he had known Mr. O'Connor for three years ; he took a deep interest in the affairs of his country, and concerned himself so much about the grievances of Ireland, he seemed to think the people of England had none to complain- of He (Mr. Sheridan) had advised O'Connor not to remain in this country. O'Connor had said to him, " he would have to form some connections he would not wish to form for the purpose of getting away". He never met any man in his life who more reprobated the idea of any party in this country desiring French assistance. The Right Hon. Henry Grattan said he had known Mr. O'Connor since 1792; he was formerly a member of the Irish House of Commons. Mr. Grattan never imagined that Mr. O'Connor would favour an invasion of his country. Lords John Russell, Thanet, and Oxford, and Mr. Whitbread, O'CONNOR AND COIGLY's TRIAL. 303 gave testimony pretty nearly similar to the former, as to O'Con- nor's honourable character and constitutional principles. Mr. Coigly, at the conclusion of the speech of the Attorney- General, said: " Gentlemen of the jury, it is impossible for me to prove a negative ; but it is a duty I owe to you and to myself, solemnly to declare, that I never was the bearer of any message or paper of this kind to France in the course of my life. That paper is not mine : it never belonged to me. It states that it was to be carried by the bearer of the last. This is something which might be proved ; but it is impossible for me to prove the negative. There is also an allusion in this paper to secret committees and political societies. I declare that I never attended any political society whatever in England. With these considerations, I con- sign my life to your justice, not doubting but that you will con- duct yourselves as English jurymen ever do, and that your ver- dict will be such as shall receive the approbation of your God". Mr O'Connor said, 44 he was not desirous of adding a word to what had been so ably said in his defence by his counsel". Mr. Allen said, 44 he did not think himself called upon to ad- dress the jury. He had not seen anything in the evidence tending to criminate him". Mr. Binna spoke in similar terms; and Leary said : 44 My lord, they may do what they like with me". Mr. Justice Buller, in his charge to the jury, leaned heavily against Coigly, throwing out many doubts of a favourable kind to the other prisoners. The jury having retired for about half an hour, returned a verdict of guilty against Coigly, and not guilty against all the other prisouers. The sentence of death was no sooner pronounced on Coigly, than an unprecedented scene took place in the court. Two Bow Street officers, stationed close to the dock, attempted to seize O'Connor while he was yet standing at the bar. This was pre- vented by the court, and in a few minutes was again attempted. O'Connor then rushed from the bar into the body of the court ; on which a considerable number of police officers appeared, and the court was thrown into complete confusion. Two swords, which were lying on the table (produced on the trial as part of the pro- perty of the prisoners), were drawn by some persons, and people were struck with these weapons. Several persons were knocked down, and the tumult seemed to forebode dangerous con- sequences. By this time, O'Connor was seized and dragged back again to the bar; when, silence being restored, he applied to the court for protection, and. desired to know by what authority he was seized, being then cleared from all charge by the verdict of the jury. 304 O'CONNOR AND COIGLY's TRIAL. Whereupon the officers produced a warrant, signed by the Duke of Portland, dated so far back as the 22nd of March, for O'Connors arrest on a charge of high treason. O'Connor, appealing to the court, said: " May I be permitted to say a few words?" Mr. Justice Buller inquired what he had to say. O'Connor proceeded — " Will the officers take their hands off? If I am again to be confined, may I not beg the indulgence of being sent to the same place as my brother? I have seen swords drawn upon me after my acquittal in this court. I am not afraid of death. If I am to die, let me die here ! Life is not worth preserving on the terms on which I now hold it — to waste it out in loathsome dungeons. Another confinement will soon be fatal to me " * * Lord Thanet, Robert Cutlar Ferguson, O'Connor's counsel on the trial at Maidstone, and several others, were tried subsequently, upon an ex-officio infor- mation, for a riot, in having attempted to rescue O'Connor. Lord Thanet and Ferguson were convicted, fined, and imprisoned. The well-known Walter Cox had gone over to England, with what precise object does not appear, when it was known in Ireland that O'Connor and Coigly were arrested, and were to be tried on a charge of high treason. He was present at Maidstone during the trial, and there is reason to believe, from some mysterious allusions of his, in an account of the trial published in his Irish Magazine, that he was not only privy to the attempt made in court to rescue O'Connor at the conclusion of the trial and acquittal of that gentleman, when the latter was arrested on another charge of treason, but that the attempt in question was made, and the arrangements for its execution were organized by him. Cox always spoke of O'Connor as a friend to whom he was devoted ; and O'Connor declared to the author that he had entire reliance on his fidelity. Poor Coigly was less fortunately circumstanced than O'Connor. He had only one friend to aid or assist him, or to enable him to make any preparations for his defence That friend in the time of need and extremity, was the late Lord Cloncurry. He furnished the means liberally for Coigly's defence, and put his friends' generosity in requisition for that humane object. These particulars the author had from Lord Cloncurry's own lips. But O'Connor had not only credit and influence at his command to enable him to make due preparations for his approaching trial, but it was in his power to summon Lord John Russell, the Earl of Moira, Lord Thanet, the Earl of Suffolk, Lord Oxford, Charles Fox, and Messrs. Grattan, Sheridan, and Whitbread, to bear testimony to their knowledge of his character and principles. Some of the other prisoners' witnesses from Ireland were deterred by threats of prosecution, as parties implicated in the affairs of the Society of United Irishmen, from ap- pearing for them on the trial, or punished for appearing for them. The following document, copied from an original and authentic memorial, subsequently addressed to Major-General Drummond, in the author's possession, will sufficiently demon- strate the fact of government inteference with witnesses for the accused priest — "TO MAJOR-GENERAL DRUMMOND, COMMANDING THE NORTHERN DISTRICT. " THE HUMBLE PETITION OF JAMES O'NEILL „ Showeth — ' That, in the month of April last, your petitioner was subpoenaed to Maidstone, in England, in order to give evidence on behalf of James O'Quigley, who was tried for high treason. Your petitioner thought himself legally obliged, did attend, but gave no evidence, nor was called to give evidence. Your petitioner, at his return home, found his house and property burned, and also the house of his OCONXOR's TRIAL AT MAIDSTONE. 305 He was then remanded back into the custody of the jailor. Binns and Allen were liberated the following morning; and Coigly, who, during this extraordinary scene, had stood perfectly calm, and apparently the only unconcerned spectator of it in the court, was removed from the dock to one of the condemned cells in Maidstone jail. The late Lord Holland, in his Memoirs of the Whig Party, orives the following account of the trial, and the embarrassing connection with it of his great Whig friends: — " What passed at Maidstone exposed the opposition to much calumny, Arthur O'Connor had summoned all his acquaintances in that party to speak to his character. From motives of huma- nity and friendship, they endeavoured to oive the most favourable colour they could to his views and opinions about England, and they thereby exposed themselves to the imputation of being con- cerned in the plot, or at least accessory to the designs, which he soon afterwards confessed. As to the speciHc charge, there was certainly not sufficient proof against him. Coigly, with whom he had fallen in by accident, furnished the only evidence, in a paper which he imprudently carried about him, and which was to the full as remarkable for its uselessness and nonsense as for its treason. The poor man, feeling that he had thus endangered the companions of his journey, generously en- sisters adjoining thereto, by the yeomanry of Magherafelt ; and, by the threats of said yeomanry, your petitioner was obliged to conceal himself in woods and ditches, lest he should Buffer death or torture, and, by cold, hunger, and anxiety of mind, your petitioner contracted a scirrhus and symptoms of a dropsy, and still re- mains without health. Your petitioner was taken by said yeomanry, and kept prisoner for forty-eight hours, and was obliged to give in bail to leave his Ma- jesty's dominions in a short time, or as soon after as opportunity would admit. Wherefore your petitioner has, since the month of October last, been travelling from one seaport to another, and had no opportunity since to leave the kingdom, nor dare your petitioner go home, for fear of said yeomanry. Petitioner was never tried by court-martial, and thinks it hard that he has to leave the kingdom for at- tending the subpoena, as he thought the law obliged him to attend. Petitioner acknowledges he was a deluded United Irishman, but had taken the benefit of the proclamation issued by the Lord Lieutenant and Council of Ireland, and never was since concerned with rebels, but abhors the thought of them. Petitioner has five small children, and has nothing to support him or to carry him or them out of the kingdom. Petitioner hopes that your honour will take it into consideration, and reprieve him from leaving the kingdom. Your honour taking petitioner's distressed situation into consideration, he kk As in duty bound, shall ever pray. " James O'Neill". " I do hereby certify that James O'Neill, of the townland of Ballyriff, parish of Ardtrea, and county of Londonderry, came before me, and performed the requi- sites pointed out by the proclamation issued by the Lord Lieutenant and Council, bearing date 17th May, 1707, for suppression of insurrection in this kingdom. " Given under my hand, this 20th day of July, 1797 "George L. Conyxgham". II. 21 306 O'CONNOR^ TRIAL AT MAIDSTONE. treated them to sacrifice him without scruple, if in any way it could contribute to their defence. Coigly was condemned on false and contradictory evidence. I do not mean to aver, as Lord Chancellor Thurlow assured me he did to Judge Buller, who tried him, that * if ever a poor man was murdered, it was Coigly\ but simply to allude to a circumstance which, in the case of a common felon, would probably have saved his life. The Bow Street officer who swore to finding the fatal paper in his pocket-book, and remarked in court the folding of the paper as fitting that pocket-book, had sworn before the Privy Council that the same paper was found loose in Coigly s great coat, and, I think, had added that he himself had put it into the pocket-book. An attorney of the name of Foulkes gave me this information, and I went with it to Mr. Wickham, then, I think, Under Secre- tary, who assured me that the circumstance should be carefully and anxiously investigated before the execution. But the order had gone down, and while we were conversing, the sentence was probably executed. Mr. Wickham's general good character, and the good opinion which subsequent acquaintance has given me of his humanity, make it just to add, that I acquit him of the hypo- crisy of expressing interest about the fate of a man who was no more; and I suppose that he thought there was plenty of time for a respite and investigation. Coigly, who was a priest, showed great unconcern about his own life, but was not indifferent about the cause in which he suffered. When Judge Buller, in passing judgment, enlarged in common-place eloquence on the mercy and virtues of George III., the poor man, with great composure, but with a smile of contempt, took a pinch of snuff, and cried ' hem'". The following remarks on the trial and condemnation of Coigly are extracted from a letter addressed to Dr. Thomas Attwood by a person styling himself " A Disciple of John Horne Tooke". This letter appeared in the Sun newspaper, in December, 1839, and the writer of it states that he was the counsel for Coigly 's fellow-prisoner, Leary ; and, on referring to the trial, I find the council for Leary was Mr. Scott: — " HIGH TREASON. " To Thomas Attwood, Esq. " Before many of you were born, I was counsel at the state trials at Maidstone, in 1798, for a young man Charged with high treason. There are many things in those trials known to the public, and some not known to the public, though well worthy of your attention, and of the attention of every jury engaged in the awful question, whether in such a case there has been any treason O'CONNORS TRIAL AT MAIDSTONE. 307 in the mind or not. The overt act laid against O'Connor was his setting off to go to France, then the enemy of England ; but this, though an illegal act, was not an overt act of treason, and there- fore the Attorney-General of that day, one of the greatest lawyers that any country ever produced — I mean the late Lord Eldon — tried hard to connect O'Connor with an undoubtedly treasonable paper that was found in the pocket of one of his companions and fellow-prisoners, the Rev. Mr. Coigly, a Roman Catholic priest. In this the Attorney-Genernl completely failed, and the overt acts charged, not being in themselves treason, O'Connor was acquitted. Now, mark well what I am going to tell, and behold what time brings to light; for you will rind that, upon this occasion, a guilty man was saved, and an innocent man was convicted. " In less than two years, O'Connor, to get out of an Irish prison and save his life,* confessed his treasons in the face of many of the Whig nobility and gentlemen of England, who had come forward and declared upon their oaths their confident belief that O'Connor was incapable of entertaining a treasonable intent. " The poor priest, Coigly, had no Whig party, or any other party, at his back, to swear in his favour. He sat unmoved du- ring the whole trial, and, after the disgraceful scene that took place in the court at midnight, the moment after Mr. Justice Buller had finished passing the then horrible sentence of high treason, Coigly sat like a stock through all the confusion, while O'Connor was trying to run out of court, till he was knocked down at the door by Judge Buller's coachman. Now, the whole conduct of this reverend gentleman had so occupied my attention, that, though he was not my client, I was beginning, in my address to the jury, to defend him, when I was stopped by his own counsel and by the court. But, not many years ago, my old friend, the late Lord Commissioner of the Jury Court of Scotland, better known by the name of Willy Adam, who was one of the counsel for the crown in these trials, declared to me that he thought Coigly had not been properly defended, and that if I had been allowed to go on, and had defended him as well as I did my own client, O'Leary, I should have got him off. I could not agree in this high compli- ment of my good friend, for though the treasonable paper was not in Coigly's handwriting, and there was no evidence how he came by it, yet it was found in his pocket amongst his most sacred papers — such as his letters of ordination; and I despaired of in- ducing the jury to believe that it had been put there by anybody but himself. " Now, time proved what was unknown to anybody but him- * The above statement as to the motive for O'Connor's revelations is not true. — R. R M. 308 OCONNOR's TRIAL AT MAIDSTONE. self, and which this noble-minded man kept secret till after his conviction. This paper was all a hoax of a Dr. Crossfield, who had himself been tried for high treason. He was the author of the song, ' Plant, plant', etc. He and Coigly had met at a tavern the night before he set off for France, and there Crossfield wrote this invitation to the French to invade England, and desired Coigly to get it put into the Moniteur, and said, ' it would make William Pitt '. " Thus time has shown that a treasonably guilty man was saved, and an innocent man hanged ; for, except this hoax, there has been no evidence, that I ever heard of, of the treasonably guilty mind of Coigly up to this hour. (Signed) " A Disciple of John Horne Tooke". It is possible there may be some truth in this statement ; but if the paper was written by Crossfield, it certainly was put into Coigly 's pocket without his knowledge, if the dying declaration of the man is entitled to any credit: — "I declare most solemnly in the face of my country and my God, it (the statement of the papers being found in the pocket of his great-coat) was false, unless one of them, or some other person unknown to me, put it there".* And yet how is this declaration to be reconciled with a state- ment made to the author by O'Connor, of a very opposite nature, which will be found in the memoir of Coigly ? In the first series of this work, it was said to have been stated by A. O'Connor, that the address of an English society, found in the great-coat pocket of Coigly at Margate must have been placed there by the police agents. In a written statement, how- ever, on that subject, in the handwriting of A. O'Connor, now before me, the following account of that affair is given: — ■ " Though there was no legal evidence to prove that the paper was Coigly's, yet the fact is, it was his, and was found in his riding- coat (pocket) ; for when the five prisoners were brought to Bow Street, a report was spread that the papers taken on the prisoners were lost. Coigly, for the first time, said it was fortunate the papers were lost, for that there was one in his pocket which would hang them all. He never made a secret to us, his fellow- prisoners, that he had got that paper from a London society. In my memoirs I will clear up this point". This account corresponds with a statement made to the author by B. P. Binns, the brother of O'Connor's fellow-prisoner, J. Binns, in the material point of the paper having been in the possession of Coigly, and of its having been given to him to convey to France. * Coigly's (or Quigley's) observations on his trial. Printed in London in 171)8. Page 83. O'COXSORS TRIAL AT MAIDSTONE. 309 O'Connor states it was given by a society; Binns says, by Dr. Crossfield, and leaves it to be inferred that Coigly took charge of it, as an ordinary communication, merely to oblige a friend. It is, however, impossible to put this construction upon it. Binns plainly states that Coigly had been the bearer of a previous com- munication from England to France, of great political importance, in 179<). The fact of his being the bearer of a former communi- cation, is referred to in the paper found in the pocket of his coat. Binns states the former communications emanated from the Se- cret Committee of England, composed of delegates from England, Ireland, and Scotland, as a directory. It is, therefore, very diffi- cult to believe that Coigly could be ignorant of the nature of a paper of this description, given him by Crossfield, a gentleman well known to be one of the leading members of a revolutionary society of this period. It is, however, still more dilhcult to dis- believe the solemn declaration, ascribed to Coigly, of his total ignorance of the existence of this paper, or of his firm persuasion of its having been introduced into his pocket by the police officers. Coigly was convicted on the specific charge of proceeding to France on a treasonable mission from a secret English society, bearing a treasonable document of which he had a guilty know- ledge. This charge was not sustained by any legal proof. There can be no question but that the evidence did not warrant his conviction. One of the counsel for the crown, Mr. Adam, subsequently Lord Commissioner of the Jury Court of Scotland, declared to Mr. Scott, the counsel for one of the prisoners, that Coigly had not been properly defended. It would have been too much to have expected irom the Lord Commissioner an ac- knowledgment that a prisoner had been wrongfully convicted.* From the period of O'Connors acquittal at Maidstone, the 22nd of May, 1798, when he was again arrested in the court on a warrant of the Secretary of State, issued the previous 22nd of March, in virtue of a bill which suspended the Habeas Corpus, he was kept in durance. After a few days' detention in London, he was trans- mitted to Ireland, and on his arrival in Ireland, was committed to Newgate, where several of his former associates were then im- mured. Nearly all the leaders of the Society of United Irishmen were then in the hands of government, several of them under prosecution or already convicted ; and within a few weeks after his committal to Newgate, some were executed. At length a compact was entered into between the state prisoners confined in Newgate and Kilmainham, and the government, which originated with a member of the Irish House of Commons, Mr. Francis Vide Letter of Mr. Scott. 310 o'connor's examination Dobbs, and, chiefly through the instrumentality of Samuel Neilson, eventually met with the concurrence of all his imprisoned asso- ciates, with the exception of Mr. Roger O'Connor and two or three others of minor note. All the particulars of this com- pact will be found in the memoir of Samuel Neilson. To stop the further effusion of blood, to save the life especially of one of the members of the Directory, Oliver Bond, who was then under sentence of death, were the chief objects of the parties to the compact, who were members of the Society of United Irishmen. Their own liberation was guaranteed to them ; but when liberated they were to quit their country for ever, and to embark for any land they pleased to go to that was not at war with England, on the fulfilment of the conditions imposed on them by the government — namely, to reveal the plans and organization of their society, without disclosing, however, the names of parties implicated in the conspiracy. The compact was observed by the state prisoners, but some of its most important obligations were not fulfilled by the government. CHAPTER IV. EXAMINATIONS AND EVIDENCE OF ARTHUR O'CONNOR BEFORE THE SECRET COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS AND HOUSE OF COMMONS IN 1798. O'Connor's evidence before the Secret Committees abounds with important information, and throws the fullest light on his political views and those of the society he was connected with. In the par- liamentary report, the examinations of O'Connor occupy a single page. In his own report of them, published in London, along with those of Emmet and M'Neven, they occupy twenty-six pages. This authentic report of his is therefore inserted in this memoir : — EXAMINATION OF A. O'CONNOR BEFORE THE SECRET COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS, AUGUST 9, 1798. Committee — Were you of the executive of the Irish Union ? O'Connor. — I was a member of the executive from the time I became a member of the Union. Com. — When did the communication between the Union and France begin? O Connor. — You, I suppose, have the report I signed and de- livered to the Irish Government, in conjunction with Mr. Emmet and Mr. M'Neven. [The Chancellor nodded assent ; but none of the other mem- bers of the committee.] BEFORE SECRET COMMITTEE IN 1798. 311 O Co n n or.— In that report you will find the whole of that im- portant transaction detailed. You w T ill there find that the first alliance that was formed between the Union and France was in the middle of 1796. You will see that before the executive entered into any alliance with France, or that it resolved on re- sistance to the tyranny of the Irish government, a solemn meeting was held, when, after considering the uniform system of coercion and opposition which had been pursued from 1793 by the Irish government against the Irish people, and finding that 1796 had opened with the sanguinary laws, called the Insurrection and In- demnity Acts, whereby the most sacred rights of the constitu- tion were destroyed, the most gross violations of the laws by the magistrates were indemnified — that the expulsion of 4,000 unof- fending inhabitants of the county of Armagh from their homes and properties, left no doubt that all protection was at an end, the executive were decidedly of opinion that, by the principles of the constitution, as established by the Revolution of 1688, they were justified in calling in foreign aid, and in resisting a government which had forfeited all claims to obedience. Com. — You are under a mistake: the Insurrection and In- demnity Acts were not passed until the end of 1796. O'Connor. — I am confident I cannot be mistaken, for I know that these acts were w T hat filled up the measure of that oppression which decided the executive to seek foreign aid ; and 1 am con- fident it did not come to that determination until May, 1796 ; and I also recollect that I left this country in February, 1796; and before I left it, the attorney-general had moved these two bills ; but if you can have any doubts, your journals will clear them up. Com. — When did the military organization begin? s Connor. — Shortly after the executive had resolved on resist- ance to the Irish government and on an alliance with France, in May, 1796. Com. — Were there no communications with France before the middle of 1796? O'Connor. — None: lean confidently affirm that, until the con- duct of the Irish government forced the executive to resist, which was, as I have stated, in the middle of 1796, no alliance whatso- ever was formed between the Union and France. Com.— Did the executive imagine the North would rise if the French landed? O'Connor. — We had no doubt but the North was sensible of the tyranny of the government, and that they would take the first opportunity to free their country. Com. — When was the first communication with France after the Bantry Bay expedition? 312 o'connor's examination O'Connor. — I was a close prisoner in trie Tower from February, 1797, to August following it. In August I heard of the first communication after the Bantry Bay expedition. Com. — What did the despatch contain? O'Connor. — It stated that a considerable force of 15,000 or 20,000 men were embarked at the Texel, and that they would sail in a week. Com. — What prevented their sailing ? O'Connor The wind continued directly contrary for several weeks after, and the changes which took place on the 4th of Sep- tember probably had some effect on the expedition. Com.— Was it mentioned in the despatch where the landing should take place ? O'Connor. — It was not; the directory do not communicate such important intelligence, except to those to whom it may be abso- lutely necessary. Com.— Had you any intelligence of the invasion at Bantry Bay? O'Connor.— There was a messenger who arrived in November, 1796; he said the French would arrive shortly, but did not say where. Com. — Had you any other intelligence? O'Connor. — We received a letter about the time of this mes- senger's arrival (a French agent), which stated that the expedition was postponed : this has never been accounted for. Com. — Was there a person sent in spring, 1797, to France? O Connor. — During the time these messengers were sent off, I was a close prisoner. Com. — Did you see Dr. M'Neven on his return from France ? O'Connor. — I shall not answer anything about Dr. M'Neven or any other person. Com. — Oh ! he has been here. O'Connor. — If so, there is the less occasion for you to ask me about him ; I shall not answer any questions about any one. Com. — Did you see any person who returned from France to- wards the end of 1797? O'Connor. — I did. Com. — What intelligence did he bring? O'Connor. — When he left France, he was assured that assistance would be sent, though no time was mentioned; but so considera- ble a change had taken place in France on the 4th of September, 1797, and our messenger having left Paris before that period, and not arriving here till after, we did not know what measures the new arrangement might give rise to. Com. — Have you heard that some conversation on Irish affairs BEFORE SECRET COMMITTEE IN 1798. 313 had passed between General Vallence and some persons of this country ?* O'Connor I cannot conceive that General Vallence could have anything to do with the business; he was an emigrant. Com. — Was there any connection between the Union and the British and Scotch societies? O'Connor. — The executive carefully avoided any. Com. — Was there not some connection between individuals? O'Connor. — I cannot say what individuals may have done ; the executive was careful to contine itself to the affairs of Ireland. As one of the executive, I can say I never had the most distant connection with any British society, nor did I ever interfere with the politics of England. Com. — Do you know anything of a loan being negotiated with France or Spain? O'Connor. — Some of our agents were ordered to negotiate for £500,000 with either of these powers. Com. — Was your place in the executive filled up when you left this in January, 1798? O'Connor. — My place in the executive of Leinster was filled up. Com. — Were you not proprietor of the Press? O'Connor — I was until it was destroyed by the Irish government. Com. — Was it not lor the purpose of promoting the Union that you set it up ? O'Connor. — The inculcating union amongst my countrymen was a principal object. I had also in view to expose the outrages and tyranny of the Irish government; but it was not set up by the Union; it was my own individual undertaking; it was under my sole control; and it was set up by me on the broadest basis lor the support of the liberties of my country. A. O'CONNOR'S EXAMINATION BEFOPwE the secret committee of the HOUSE OF COMMONS, AUGUST 16, 1798. Com. — Explain the first formation of the alliance between the Irish Union and the French. O'Connor. — If you have seen the report I signed and delivered, in conjunction with Emmet and M'Neven, it will not be necessary I should go very fully into that important transaction ; but if you have not seen it, I will explain it more fully. Com. — We have not seen the report you allude to. O'Connor. — Some time in 1795, or the beginning of 1796, a letter was received by the executive of the Union from France, * General Valence was the son-in-law of Madame de Genlis, was privy to, or implicated in, Dumouriez's treasonable correspondence with the Austrians, and fled from France at the same time Dumouriez went over to the enemy — R R. M. 314 o'connor's examination from some individuals of the Union who had fled from persecu- tion, in which they mentioned that they had made such a repre- sentation of the state of Ireland, that they believed the French would be induced to treat with the Union to free us from the tyranny under which we groaned. This letter was not acted upon by the executive at the time it was received, from their unwillingness to have recourse to foreign aid except in the last resort, and in the hope that the effects on the popular mind from the tyrannical measures which government had pursued, would induce them to abandon their measures of coercion, and to adopt measures congenial to the wishes of the people. But the exe- cutive saw that the year 1796 opened with the Insurrection Bill, — that four thousand unoffending inhabitants of the county Ar- magh had been driven from their homes on account of their reli- gious opinions, by a lawless banditti, who were not only not restrained by government, but aided and instigated by its magis- tracy, and that an act was passed to indemnify the most gross violation of the most sacred laws by the agents and magistrates of government. Roused by these fresh instances of tyranny, the executive of the Union held a most important meeting, to consider the state of the country — to determine on what measures these sanguinary, tyrannical proceedings of government made it neces- sary for us to adopt. The views and conduct of those who exer- cised the powers of government, were coolly and dispassionately discussed. The executive were convinced, and the same con- viction was in every mind, that a system of monopoly and usur- pation had absorbed every part of the constitution which belonged to the people; that those who exercised the assumed right of representing the people of Ireland, were self-constituted; that they acted with the sole view of advancing their individual in- terests; and that what was called the emancipation of the Irish legislature in 1782, was nothing more than freeing a set of self- constituted individuals from the absolute control of the British legislature, that they might be at liberty to sell themselves to the corrupt control of the British ministry. The executive considered which (party) had the constitution on their side, they who con- tended that the House of Commons should be filled with the real representatives of the people of Ireland, or those individuals who contended that it should be filled with themselves. This was the great point at issue, by which the past, the present, and future conduct of the Irish government was to be judged, without even appealing to the imprescriptible right of the people to put down oppression. Standing on the ground of the constitution, the executive looked back upon the sanguinary, tyrannical measures which had been invariably pursued by the Irish government and BEFORE SECRET COMMITTEE IN 1798. 315 legislature, under the control of the British ministry from 1793; they were convinced that if the most faint connection existed between those who rilled the places of the people's representatives and the people, no government or legislature durst commit such unexampled outrages as those which had been perpetrated and indemnitied in Ireland; that no lawful or just government could by any possibility be driven to burn houses, or to torture the persons of the people to extort obedience. The executive looked back to the melancholy history of Ireland : they saw how dread- fully it had been torn and wasted by religious dissensions. The first object of the executive was to destroy religious discord, and promote brotherly love and affection among all the people of Ireland, be their religious belief what it may. The next object of the Union was to promote a reform of the government, and to regain those rights which were the people's birthright by the constitution ; yet the oath which bound the people to these first duties of Christianity, morality, and the constitution, was punished with death by the Insurrection Act, which, by some other of its clauses, broke down every barrier of liberty ; that not only every effort was made to oppose us in these our exertions to destroy religious discord, but that no means were left untried to organize a sect, founded upon the diabolical oath of extermination, whose institution was avowedly for the purpose of perpetuating religious discord and rancour. This was not all; the expulsion of four thousand Irish citizens, with every aggravation of cruelty and horror, which was followed by the Indemnity Act, left no doubt on the mind of the executive, that all the excesses and outrages were either openly or secretly the acts of the government and legislature of Ireland. Struck with the enormity of these acts and outrages, the executive looked back to the history of James II., and after comparing his conduct with the conduct of the Irish government, which had been beyond comparison more tyrannical and cruel, they were of opinion that if the people were justified in calling in foreign aid to rescue their liberties and constitution from James's government, it was infinitely more justifiable in us to call in foreign aid. The executive were of opinion that the Irish government had not only forfeited all title to obedience from the people, but that we were called on to resist its most unparalleled usurpation and tyranny; that, as the people of Ireland had been disarmed, contrary to the right of every free people, and as the tyranny under which the government was upheld, was supported by the men and the money of one foreign nation, we stood pecu- liarly necessitated to seek the aid of some other foreign power. Actuated by this reasoning, the executive sent to seek an alliance with France in May, 1796, which was actually formed in the 316 o'connor's examination August following, the first which was formed between the Irish Union and France. Com. —Did you not go to Hamburg, and afterwards to Swit- zerland, in the summer of 1796, in company with another person? O'Connor. — This question points at Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and as it is notorious he did accompany me to Switzerland in 1796, and although my friend is no more, I will not answer any- thing which could in the most distant manner lead to the disclo- sure of any act of his. Besides, I am not bound by the stipulation I have entered into for saving the lives of those you have in your power, to disclose any act of my life prior to my becoming a member of the Union ; but so little am I inclined to withhold the account of any part of our conduct, and so fully am I con- vinced of the rectitude of what we have done, that if you will be satisfied with the substance of the transactions of the Union, without leading to names or persons, I will give it. Com. — Well, we will be content with the substance, without any allusion to names or persons. O'Connor. — In May, 1796, after the important meeting of the executive I have just mentioned was held, they sent to France to adjust the terms of the alliance, to plan the manner the succours should be seconded, so as to insure success. The most important part of the terms was, that France was to assist Ireland in freeing herself from the tyranny of those who exercised the government of Ireland, and that Ireland should be free to frame whatever con- stitution she might think fit to adopt. The same expedition which was afterwards equipped and sent to Ireland under Hoche, was agreed on, and everything was settled which could insure success on its landing. At the same time it was proposed to the person who formed this first alliance between France and the Union, that a body should be sent against England to cause a diversion, to re- taliate for the Quiberon expedition. To dissuade the French from the invasion of England, this Irish negotiator used every argument in his power. He said, from his knowledge of England, the best men of that country would be most hostile to any interference of the French in the government of their country, on the same just principle that they condemned the interference of England in the government of France; that the situation of Ireland and of Eng- land were very different; that in Ireland the people were most solicitous for the aid of France, to rescue them from foreign and domestic tyranny; but that the majority of the people, of England would be averse to their interference ; that many of the people of England were beginning to see and feel the ruin the ministers had brought on the nation by engaging in the war ; but that if they invaded their country, it would bury all consideration of the in- BEFORE SECRET COMMITTEE IN 1798. 317 justice of the war under the immediate consideration of self- defence ; that it would prove the greatest support to an unpopular ministry, by giving them an unlimited power over the remaining wealth of England in any way they might wish to take it, while a guinea could be extorted. These, together with other argu- ments, were thought conclusive by those to whom they were ad- dressed, and the invasion of England in 1796 was abandoned. Com. — Was not M. Barthelemy privy to these transactions? O'Connor. — I will not answer any question where the name of any person is mentioned. Com. — But he is a foreigner. O'Connor. — I care not; the name of a foreigner or a country- man shall be equally inviolable with me. Com. — Was it not at Paris this first alliance was formed ? O'Connor. — It was not; if it was, you would have no need to ask me the question. Com. — Was it at Lisle ? O'Connor. — It was not. Com. — Were you of the executive ? O'Connor. — I was of the executive from the time I became a member of the Union in 1796 until I was obliged to fly my country abruptly in January, 1798, to avoid being taken off' by a foul plot which was laid by some of the under- agents of the Irish government, but which my respect for the safety of those who gave me the intimation of it, obliges me to keep secret. Com. — Inform us of the progress and extent of the organization. O'Connor — When I was imprisoned in February, 1797, the organization had made considerable progress in Ulster, and things were in train to extend it to the other three provinces. On my liberation in the August following, I found the means we em- ployed before my imprisonment had been successful in extending the organization, particularly in Leinster; but that it had been thrown into confusion by the burnings, hangings, and torturings, which had been extended from Ulster to the other parts of the country. But to such a degree had the minds of the people been exasperated by the cruelties of the government, the disposition towards the Union was so strong in the three provinces, that in four months after my liberation I was enabled, as one of the nor- thern executive (there being no executive for Leinster during this period), to organize 70,000 men in Leinster only, while the number of those who took the test of the Union was nearly equal to the population of the three provinces. To such a degree did the Irish government raise the resentment of the people against it by the cruelties it practised to support its powers, and to keep down the national spirit for liberty. 318 o'connor's examination Com. — Was not your object in forming the organization i effect a revolution? O'Connor. — If our mere object had been to effect a revolution, the British ministry and the Irish government were effecting one more violently and rapidly than we wished for. We clearly per- ceived that the measures they adopted to prevent revolution were the most effectual that could be devised to insure it. When we viewed the state of the British empire, we were convinced we need not take much pains merely to make a revolution. If that was our sole object, we knew that the Irish government of itself could not exist one month; we saw that it was the men and the money of England which upheld the Irish government ; we there- fore looked to the state of Great Britain, and considered the state of its actual government, and we were of opinion that the mea- sures which the present ministry had pursued were the most rapidly ruinous which could be adopted. We examined her state before the war ; we thought that as, before the enormous expendi- ture which the war occasioned, the minister could not extort more than sixteen millions annual revenue, it would be impossible, after hundreds of millions of the national capital had been squan- dered, that thirty millions annual revenue could by any physical possibility, be extorted, which was the least her peace establish- ment could amount to. But that, even supposing thirty millions annual revenue could be raised in Great Britain, experience con- vinced us that liberty must be destroyed by such additional means of corruption being thrown into the hands of the executive ; and we were convinced that a nation which had lost her liberty could not long support such monstrous burdens, on the principle that capital, like fluid, would find its level. We were of opinion that as the profits of capital would be higher in France than in Eng- land, the vast exhaustion of capital which had taken place in France would be replenished on a peace, by the flowing in of a considerable portion of British capital, and that this disposition on the part of the British capitalist to transport his wealth, would be farther increased by a desire to avoid the enormous taxes to which his industry and his profits would be exposed. These considera- tions, amongst many others, left no doubt on our minds that the power of England, by which alone the tyranny and usurpation of the Irish government and legislature were supported, must be very shortly destroyed. Com. — If yOu did not organize for the purpose of effecting a revolution, what other object had you in view? O'Connor. — We saw with sorrow the cruelties practised by the Irish government had raised a dreadful spirit of revenge in the hearts of the people ; we saw with horror that, to answer their nn- BEFORE SECRET COMMITTEE IN 1798. 319 mediate views, the Irish government had renewed the old religious feuds ; we were most anxious to have such authority as the organ- ization afforded, constituted to prevent the dreadiul transports of popular fury. We hoped that by having committees for each barony, county committees, and provincial committees, by hold- ing out the benefits of the revolution to those who supported it, and by withholding its benefits from those who should disgrace it by popular excesses, we should have been able to restrain the people. But those who had monopolized the whole political power of the constitution, finding that they stood in need of some part of the population, and that, their monopoly being so directly opposite to the interest of all classes of the Irish nation, they could not hope for the support of any (be their religion what it may) on the score of politics, except those in the pay of government; finding how necessary it was to have some part of the population on their side, they had recourse to the old religious feuds, and set on foot an organization of Protestants, whose fanaticism would not permit them to see they were enlisted under the banners of religion to fight for political usurpation they abhorred. No doubt, by these means you have gained a temporary aid, but by destroy- ing the organization of the Union, and exasperating the great body of the people, you will one day pay dearly lor the aid you have derived lrom this temporary shift. Com. — Government had nothing to do with the Orange system, nor their oath of extermination. O'Connor. — You, my lord (Castlereagh), from the station you fill, must be sensible that the executive of any country has it in its power to collect a vast mass of inlbrmation, and you must know lrom the secret nature, and the zeal of the Union, that its executive must have the most minute information of every act of the Irish government. As one of the executive, it came to my knowledge that considerable sums of money were expended throughout the nation in endeavouring to extend the Orange system, and that the Orange oath of extermination was adminis- tered; when these facts are coupled not only with general im- punity, which has been uniformly extended towards all the acts of this infernal association, but the marked encouragement its members have received from government, I find it impossible to exculpate the government from being the parent and protector of these sworn extirpators. Com. — Were not some of the Union very monarchical? O'Connor. — My first political acquaintance with the body of my Catholic countrymen, to whom I suppose you allude, was in 1791, whilst I was high sheriff of the county of Cork, when I de- fended the Catholics from an attack which was made upon them 320 o'connor's examination by the monopolists of our representation in that part of Ireland. At that time the Catholics of Ireland were just beginning to feel the influence of the French Revolution, and to be sensible of the degraded state to which centuries of oppression had reduced them ; they were, however, strongly addicted to monarchy, and made their first advances in pursuit of freedom in a very humble manner ; but the contempt and insult with which their first peti- tion was scouted from the House of Commons roused them to a sense of their rights as men. In 1792, they again petitioned, but in terms of boldness proportioned to the insult with which their former petition had been treated. They were joined by the Pres- byterians; and the contemptuous manner with which both peti- tions were refused, created a union of sentiment, whereby the Catholics were led to examine what title to power those had who thus insultingly denied the joint desires of the great mass of the Irish nation. They kept aloof from any explanation with the Irish parliament, and negotiated with the British ministry, who they found controlled every act of the government and legislature of Ireland. While the Catholics were succeeding with the British ministry in England, the borough-mongers of Ireland were most active amongst the grand juries in the summer of 1792, in pledg- ing lives and fortunes, never to grant the claims of their Catholic countrymen. When the parliament met in 1793, the mandate came from the British ministry to accede to a partial emancipation of the Catholics. This was not all: in the session the House of Commons resolved that the national representation stood in need of reform ; they raised the hopes of the Irish but to blast them afterwards. This most impolitic conduct brought the Irish go- vernment into the utmost disrepute, and was followed by a decla- ration on the part of the Catholics in 1793, to stand or fall with their countrymen on the great question of obtaining a national representation. From this time the Irish government seemed to abandon all idea of conciliating the Catholics, and to think only of punishing them for what they thought ingratitude. In pursu- ance of this plan, all idea of Catholic emancipation and parlia- mentary reform was scouted; British troops were poured into Ireland, and prosecutions commenced against some of the Catholic and Presbyterian leaders in 1794, on such evidence as clearly de- monstrated they were undertaken from vindictive motives of resentment. These measures were calculated to eradicate the inveterate predilection for monarchy from the hearts of the Irish Catholics. In 1795, the British ministry appeared sensible of the consequences which had resulted from the measures which had been pursued hitherto in Ireland; and an attempt was entered on to regain the Catholics, by sending Lord Fitzwilliam, with powers OCONNORS EXAMINATION BEFORE SECRET COMMITTEE. 321 to choose his own councils. The hopes of the national mind were raised, particularly of the Catholics ; but the recall of Lord Fitz- william, the abandonment of the projected political changes, the renewal of the reign of terror and coercion, totally alienated the minds of the Catholics from their confirmed propensity to monar- chy. No doubt, the French Revolution had a great and powerful effect in exciting the Catholics of Ireland to attain their long lost liberty ; but it was the measures of the British ministry and the Irish government, which hurried them into their present violent detestation of monarchy and their present ardent love of repre- sentative democracy, which was confirmed in the minds of the very lowest orders, by being familiarized with the organization of the Union, and by observing its good effects. Com. — Why, what opinion have the lower classes of the people of political subjects? O'Connor. — The lowest societies of the Union conversed freely of the corruption, and usurpation, and venality of parliament. While I was a member of the House of Commons, you know the frequent conversation among the members was — How much has such a one given for his seat? — From whom did he purchase? — Has not such a one sold his borough? — Has not such a lord bought? — Has not such a peer so many members in this house? — Was not such a member with the Lord Lieutenant's secretary to insist on some greater place or pension? — Did not the secretary refuse- it? — Has he not gone into the opposition? These, and such like facts, are as well known to the lowest classes of the Union as to yourselves. A member of the Com. — Mr. O'Connor is perfectly right; I have heard the lowest classes of the people talk in that style. O'Connor. — The people are conscious you are self-constituted, and not their delegates ; men who have no other object in view but to advance their own individual interests. A member of the Com. — That we are a parcel of placemen and pensioners ? O'Connor. — Exactly so. Com. — What is the object the people have in view at present? O'Connor. — I believe they have laid by for the instant all idea of speculative politics. Com.— Was there not a disunion in the executive? O'Connor. — From the time I was elected one of the executive, I never experienced any disagreement. Com. — Were there not men who could influence the people to disobey the orders of the executive ? O'Connor. — On the contrary, they were always obeyed with the most zealous alacrity. No doubt, the secret manner in which ii. 22 322 O'CONNORS EXAMINATION BEFORE SECRET COMMITTEE. we were obliged to conduct the business of the Union, gave great scope to intrigue; yet I found that wherever religious prejudices were placed in the way of political liberty, the people invariably disregarded the former, and adhered to the latter. Com. — Did not the executive form a plan of a constitution for Ireland's future government ? O Connor. — The executive never thought itself invested with power to .meddle with the future constitution of Ireland: that could have been the work only of those whom the people of Ire- land might elect for that express purpose. We were elected solely to devise means of wresting power out of the hands of men who had violated every part of the constitution and liberties of Ireland, and outraged every feeling and right of man, by the means they employed to retain their usurpation. Com. — What do you think would tranquillize the people of Ireland, and induce them to give up their arms? O Connor. — That is a question which would require the best heart to execute. I am not so ignorant of human nature as to suppose that those men who have so long engrossed the enormous emoluments of ill and unjustly acquired power, will ever restore them to the people, however manifest it must appear to an unpre- judiced mind, that the most dreadful ruin awaits the present fruitless effort which is made to retain them. Com. — But what, in your opinion, would tranquillize Ireland, and induce the people to give up their arms? O'Connor. — Under the present system of usurpation and corrup- tion, every source by which the Irish nation could acquire wealth is betrayed to Great Britain, and even the wretched pittance her industry gathers is thrown a prey to monopolists of her political power, who have sold her dearest rights. By this double plunder the people of Ireland are destitute, not only of every convenience and comfort of life, but of the bare necessaries to support their existence. If you would tranquillize a people, you must cease to oppress them — you must cease to betray them: make them tranquil. The great and main source from which the wants of a people are supplied, is agriculture; yet near two millions' worth of the rude produce of the agriculture of Ireland is annually ex- ported to pay non-resident landlords; for this there is no return; it is all loss to the Irish nation, and is, of itself, a sufficient drain to impoverish a greater nation for extent than Ireland. The commerce of Ireland has to cope with the most commercial nation on Earth in its very vicinage, under the disadvantage of a general admission of every species of manufactured and foreign produce on one side, and of an unlimited rejection on the other, with scarcely one exception. When the agricultural produce of a O'CONNORS EXAMINATION BEFORE SECRET COMMITTEE. 323 people — when their home and foreign markets are sold, the con- sequence must be, that they must experience a great dearth of national capital: hence, the best machinery and the most exten- sive division of labour, by both which labour is so wonderfully abridged, the low profits which result from abundant capital, and the beincj able to £ive lon^ credits, are all lost to a nation bereft of every means to acquire wealth. By this cruel injustice, Eng- land can supply the people of Ireland with their manufactures (the other great source for acquiring national capital), the same late is shared by our agriculture, and the abused laws by which the fisheries of Ireland have been destroyed, complete the catastrophe of the ruin of Irish industry, in the several ways of acquiring wealth with which God and nature have endowed her. But this is not all ; the small portion of wealth which the Irish nation ac- quires under these mutilated means, is subject to a thousand of the most gross extortions. A most monstrous establishment (and that for one-tenth of the nation only), under the name of sup- porting the ministers of religion, but really for the purpose of the most flagrant corruption ; a vast military establishment, which those who exercise the powers of government are obliged to keep up, as the sole means by which they can maintain the actual usurpation of all popular and constitutional rights ; sinecure places ; pensions; and the various ways which are hourly devised for draining the people. These, if you would tranquillize the people, you must abolish ; you must restore to them those means for ac- quiring wealth which God and nature gave them ; you must not subject the wealth they do acquire to any exaction which is not absolutely necessary for the support of a government capable of aifording them protection. The result of the pillage which the Irish nation at present undergoes, is, that it diminishes national capital, that wages are low, and employment doubtful — the greatest causes of national misery. The next great evil which results from this great dearth of national capital is, that land has become the only material the people have to work on, which cannot be exported; every one is forced to hire it, as his only means of employment, and the competition has made the rents of lands much higher than they otherwise would be, whilst the tithes (the most impolitic of imposts) are an endless source of vexation and litigation between the people and the ministers of religion. If you would correct all these evils, restore to the Irish nation its just rights ; then wealth must flow in from every quarter ; thousands of means of exercising industry will present themselves ; wages will be liberal ; rents will be moderate ; and it will be as impossible to disturb the public mind when the reign of justice shall be established, as it will be to tranquillize it, so long as the 324 o'connor's examination before secret committee. actual system of usurpation, plunder, and tyranny, shall be con- tinued. It is oppression which has armed the people of Ireland : by justice only you can disarm them. A just government, which emanates from the people, and which exists but for the people's protection and happiness, need never dread their arms or desire to see them disarmed. As long as you are anxious to disarm the people, so long you have no reason to expect they should be tranquil. Com. — You have made politics and political economy your study : what political changes do you think would tranquillize Ireland ? O'Connor.— Restore the vital principle of the constitution, which you have destroyed, by restoring to the people the choice of representatives, who shall control the executive by frugal grants of the public money, and by exacting a rigid account of its expenditure. Let the people have representatives they can call friends — men in whom they can place confidence — men they have really chosen — men chosen for such a time, that if they should attempt to betray them, they may speedily have an opportunity of discarding. Give us such a House of Commons, and I will answer for the tranquillity of the country. Place but the public purse in the hands of such representatives, and I will answer for it, the people of Ireland will not have to complain of the pro- fligacy, the tyranny, or usurpation of government or legislators. How such a House of Commons could be chosen (if it was not the interest of those who monopolize the national representation to oppose it), would not be a difficult task to devise. Com. — Was not the Union to destroy the constitution? Connor We could not have an intention of destroying a constitution of which we did not believe there was one particle in existence. A House of Commons, so far chosen by the people, and so far independent of the Crown as to control it by its sole exercise of power over the public purse, was the vital princi- ple of the constitution ; it was by restraining from time to time this power over the public purse, that those rights, one after another, have been gained, which rights constitute the constitu- tion. The instant such a House of Commons ceased to exist, and that it was supplanted by a House of Commons which represents itself, from that instant the vital principle which created the con- stitution, and which alone could preserve it from bankruptcy and ruin, was at an end. It was not to destroy this vital principle of the constitution, it was to put down a parliament of self-constituted men, who first destroyed every vestige of the constitution, and then committed every outrage and cruelty to support their usurpation. Com Why, did you not intend to set up a republic ? O'CONNORS EXAMINATION BEFORE SECRET COMMITTEE. 325 O'Connor. — I have already told you we did not conceive that any power was vested in us to set up any constitution. We were chosen solely for the purpose of putting down your usurpation of the constitution and liberty of the Irish nation. I know not whe- ther those who would have been chosen by the people of Ireland for the purpose of forming a constitution, would have adopted the constitution you have destroyed. I know not whether it is possi- ble to build up such a constitution, once it has been destroyed. I know not whether they would have formed a constitution purely representative, from a conviction that in an elective government the people, whether by their delegates or in their proper persons, exercise a control over the government, which I hold to be a re- public. As such, the constitution (as long as a House of Com- mons made any part of it) was a republic ; but whether the future government of Ireland may be less, equally, or more democratical than the constitution, those who shall be chosen to frame it can alone determine. Com. — Was there anything more implied in the oath of the Union than what was set forth in the test? O'Connor. — Certainly not; for all we wanted was to create a House of Commons which should represent the whole people of Ireland; aiid for that purpose we strove to dispel all religious dis- tinctions from our political union, and after we had destroyed your usurpation of our national representation, and that we had set up a real representation of the whole people of Ireland, we were convinced there was no evil which such a House of Com- mons could not reach ; we were satisfied that, to set up such a House of Commons was our right, and that whether the other parts of the constitution could stand or not after the House of Commons was restored to the constitution, yet we were assured that our liberties would exist ; but that without a constitutional House of Commons, the government must of its own nature speedily end in bankruptcy and ruin, from the vast expense of the corruption and force which it required to uphold it. Cow. — How was the late rising occasioned? O'Connor. — I have already told you how. From the beginning of the French Revolution, the measures pursued by the British ministry and the Irish government have worked up the minds of the people of Ireland to their present highly irritated state — at one time raising their hopes, at another time blasting them; at one time promising emancipation and reform, and at another time resisting both with fire and sword, burning houses, hanging, lashing, and torturing; means unjustifiable to support any system, and which a just government could not for one instant stand in need of. These no human patience could endure ; and yet (from 326 oconnor's examination before secret committee. a conviction that they were practised to goad the people to a pre- mature attempt to put down their oppressors), as long as I could remain, I used every means in my power to endure a little longer ; but when, to avoid being despatched, I was forced to fly, those in whose hands the executive power of the Union was vested, yielded to the pressing solicitations of the people of the most op- pressed parts, who were desirous to risk their lives in order to rid themselves of the cruelties they hourly experienced. Com. — Are there not committees forming at the present moment? O'Connor. — I know not what committees are forming ; but I am well assured the people of Ireland will never abandon the Union, and that its principles will never be eradicated from their hearts until we obtain our object. Com. — How can deputations be sent to France ? O'Connor By as many ways as there are human devices. Com. — Could you get one to go to France now ? O Connor. — Thousands, if necessary. Com. — How is that possible? O'Connor. — Unless you destroy every vestige of commerce, we can find no difficulty in sending to France. Not a ship that sails, that contains a United Irishman, that does not contain a faithful messenger. Com Do you know anything of the future plans of the French ? O'Connor. — I do not; but I firmly believe they will never abandon their engagements with us. Com. — Were there many men of property in the Union ? OConnor. — Men of property usually consult their own personal interests, which is a great check to any generous or disinterested exertion of patriotism ; such men seldom run great hazards in the public cause. If we had been content with a hollow support, we might have had abundance of them ; however, there were many of considerable property, who upon principle were of the Union. Com. — Would you not have destroyed the Protestant religion, and the Protestant establishment? OConnor The destruction of religion is one thing, the de- struction of establishments another: the great and just principle upon which the Union is formed is the most perfect freedom for all religions alike. We are of opinion that the monstrous Protestant establishment in Ireland is a grievous burden on Presbyterians, Catholics, Quakers, Protestants, — in short, on all the people of Ireland; highly unjust to those who are not of the Protestant religion, and highly injurious to the Protestant religion itself ; for we are convinced it would work a very desirable change in the Protestant clergy of Ireland, if they were made to owe their o'connor's examination before secret committee. 327 maintenance to a faithful discharge of their functions, instead of obtaining it by a base and disgraceful cringing to patrons ; and that if there was no other objection to tithes than their being an endless source of discord between a Christian ministry and the people, they ought to be abolished. Com. — How did you mean to pay the half million you wished to borrow from France or Spain ? O'Connor. — When the present government can borrow millions on millions, we could have had no difficulty in paying half a million. If millions can be had out of Irish industry by a go- vernment which has sacrificed every means of acquiring wealth, we have no doubt a government that restores those rights could easily find means to discharge any debts we should contract in the contest. Com. —Do you imagine that Ireland could exist as an indepen- dent nation? O Connor. — I have not a doubt of it. We have five millions of a brave hardy people, and if we had the government in our hands but for a short time to organize and to arm them, we could defy the whole world. Once possessed of a country, they would fight for it ; and it is one of the strongest countries in Europe by nature. It must have a tactic peculiar to itself, and the people of Ireland must execute that tactic. Com. — Could not Great Britain destroy your trade with her navy? O'Connor. — I doubt if the rest of the world would allow her to shut them out from so good a market. If we were once free, I doubt she could effect it. I doubt she could have power, after the separation of Ireland, to act so injurious a part; but as Ireland has no foreign dominion, and, I trust, never will, if her whole foreign trade was carried on by foreign ships, it is of little matter. The old notion, that a carrying trade is the most beneficial, is nonsense; the home trade should be the great national object, and that would be most flourishing. There is no convenience nor a comfort of life that we could not find in our island ; and the tem- porary inconvenience and loss we should feel by being obliged for a long time to supply ourselves, would be compensated in a great measure by the hidden resources we should discover. Arthur O'Connor. * '• Memoir, or Detailed Statement of Origin and Progress of the Irish Union, delivered to the Government by Messrs. Emmet, O'Connor, and M'JSeven; toge- ther with examinations of these gentlemen", etc., etc. [No printer's name, place, or date. The original authentic edition, printed privately for Emmet, M-Xeven, and O'Connor.] 328 BREACH OF COMPACT WITH STATE PRISONERS. CHAPTER V. o'connor's protest against the breach of the compact entered into WITH THE STATE PRISONERS BY THE GOVERNMENT. REMOVAL TO FORT GEORGE. IMPRISONMENT THERE FOR THREE YEARS AND THREE MONTHS. LIBERATION ON THE COAST OF HOLLAND. HIS RELATIONS IN FRANCE WITH WILLIAM PUTNAM M £ CABE. On the 4th of January, 1799, O'Connor addressed a very remarkable letter to Lord Castlereagh from his prison in New- gate, boldly and eloquently, but passionately and imprudently, it must be added, considering his position, remonstrating with the " young lord" on the breach of faith which he alleged had been committed by the government, indignantly repelling certain state- ments of Lord Castlereagh in the House of Commons affecting the state prisoners who had been examined before the secret com- mittee, and denying the correctness of the report of those examina- tions which the government had published. The result of this explosion was the transmission of twenty of the state prisoners, who were parties to the compact, to Fort George in Scotland; and there O'Connor and his associates remained immured for three years and three months. The Rev. Dr. Steele Dickson, in his narrative, mentions his dis- abusing the minds of the king's messengers, who conducted the state prisoners to Fort George, of the idea that the rebellion of 1798 was a Popish insurrection. " Their introduction", says Dr. Dickson, " led to the knowledge that, on the representations in government papers, the Irish in- surrection was firmly believed in Scotland to be a real Popish rebellion. One of the gentlemen, who knew that Messrs. Tennent and Simms were Presbyterians, and having learned that I was a minister of that persuasion, in a low voice expressed his surprise that we would be concerned in a Popish rebellion. Overhearing that we would connect ourselves with Papists, and much more this, I interfered, and asked the gentleman, in a voice equally low, why he called the insurrection in Ireland ' a Popish rebel- lion' ? He answered pertly, that ' he did so on the authority of government, and that it was known to be a fact'. I replied that ' such an assertion was one of the many falsehoods by which the people of Britain were deceived and misled in respect to Ireland'. As this seemed to offend him, I then asked him what opinion he supposed the Irish government to entertain of us twenty, then present. To this he answered rather peevishly, but without re- serve, that ' they must consider us as the most guilty or the LIBERATION OF STATE PRISONERS. 329 most dangerous, or they would not have distinguished us as they had done'. On this, with a view to remove an idea equally unfounded and pernicious, I withdrew to a side-table, and wrote our names, classed by our religious professions, as under- neath: — Catholics. John Sweetman, John Swiney, Dr. M'Neven, Joseph Cormick. Presbyterians. William Tennent, Robert Simms, Samuel Neilson, George Cuming, Joseph Cuthbert, Dr. Dickson. Protestants of the Established Church of Ireland. T. A. Emmet, R. O'Connor, A. O'Connor, John Chambers, Mat. Dowling, Thomas Russell, Edward Hudson, Hugh Wilson, William Dowdall, Robert Hunter. " This done, I returned, and put my little scroll into his hand, whispering, ' Please, sir, to look at that ; and then tell me what becomes of your Popish rebellion, on your own supposition that government consider us as the most guilty or most dangerous of its enemies?' " While his eyes were intent on the paper, he seemed surprised and perplexed, and on returning it, hinted a suspicion that I was jesting with him. On this I passed it round my lellow-prisoners, asking them, as it circulated, whether I had truly stated their religious professions. This question all answered in the affirma- tive". With respect to Arthur O'Connor, Dr. Dickson, in another part of his work, states that O'Connor was not only a Protestant lay- man, but had been educated for the church, and had been or- dained. This statement rests solely, I believe, on the authority of Dr. Dickson ; but that it was not made without good grounds, I infer from the upright character of the man, who was known to me in early life, and left a strong impression on my mind of his honesty and sternness of principle. O'Connor and the other state prisoners embarked on board a vessel of war, sailed from Fort George the 30th day of June, 1802, and were landed the 4th day of July at Cuxhaven, on the coast of Holland. O'Connor went to Paris in September, and was re- ceived by the best society of Auteuil, where he sojourned for 330 O'CONNORS CAREER IN FRANCE. some time, at the houses of Mme. Helvetius, Cabanis, Tracy, Boufflers, Ginguene, Dannou, Benjamin Constant, Mme. de Stael, and Mme. de Condorcet. He there also made the acquaintance of the first consul, Buonaparte. On the 4th Ventose, an. XII. (February, 1804), Napoleon ap- pointed him general of division in the French service. His letters of service, which were signed by General Berthier, Minister of War, directed that he was to join the army on the western coast of Brest, where he was to assume the rank of an Irish General Officer, and to command the division of Irishmen. He, in fact, proceeded thither ; but dissensions, and conflicting views and in- terests, and altered designs on the part of the ruling powers in France, led to the abandonment of the projected expedition from Brest. O'Connor only wished for the independence of his country, and insuperable difficulties having arisen as to the means of realising it, he quitted the army and retired from the service. He then married the only daughter of Condorcet, and turned farmer on the estate of Bignon, which had been that of Mirabeau, and was purchased in 1808. He rendered great services to the country by introducing new methods of cultivation. When O'Connor was exiled in 1802, his brother Roger was entrusted with the management of his affairs in Ireland. His Irish property was then worth from £1,200 to £1,500 a year. Roger's ideas of property were theoretically those of a communist. He acted practically on those ideas in the discharge of the duties of the trust with which his brother had charged him. He sold portions of his brother's property, and applied the produce of the sales he effected to his own uses, to the extent of about £10,000. Arthur went to law with his brother, and got a decree against the property of Roger, which eventually brought it to the hammer. When Arthur visited Ireland in 1834, with the permission of the British Government, he made arrangements for the sale of all his Irish properties, and subsequently they were sold. Nineteen years previously, Madame Condorcet O'Connor was permitted to visit Ireland on the affairs of her husband.* After Roger's abuse of trust, the general placed his affairs in * In the " Secret Correspondence" of the Duke of Kichmond, during Sir Eo- bert Peel's connection with the Irish government, a letter exists, bearing the sig- nature of R. Peel, addressed to J. Beckett, Esq., dated February 1, 1815, in reply to an application of the wife of Arthur O'Connor, to visit London and to proceed to Ireland on affairs of her husband, stating that such leave would be granted. In another letter to the Lord Lieutenant, from the Home Office, London, Lord Sid- mouth's views are stated in regard to this permission — namely, that Madame Condorcet O'Connor should be carefully watched while she remained in Ireland. a. oconnor's relations with w. p. m'cabe. 331 the hands of his eldest brother, Daniel Conner (who retained the ancient surname of the family, and was ten years older than Ar- thur). Daniel was residing in Bristol in 1817, and was said to be then worth about £5,000 a year. His eldest son Daniel came over to Ireland, and built a house on that part of the paternal estate which was called Manch. This estate was sold a few years ago in the Incumbered Estates Couit, and purchased by Daniel Conner, junior. The general, in 1807, despatched a confidential agent of his, who had been established at Rouen in a cotton manufactory, to Ireland, to bring his brother to an account, and to rescue the residue of his property. This agent was William Putnam M'Cabe, the active member of the United Irishmen of Belfast, one of the body guard of Lord Edward Fitzgerald in the capital. On several occasions M'Cabe was sent over from Paris to Ire- land by O'Connor, under the name of William Lee. M'Cabe perilled his life each time he came over, for his name was included in the list of fugitives from justice who fled from Ireland in 1798, and by a special act of parliament his return to Ireland was de- clared a capital ollence. * Roger O'Connors abuse of the confidence placed in him by his brother occasioned the general great embarrassment. In 1807 he was obliged to borrow a sum of £4,750 from William Putnam M'Cabe, which debt was not discharged during the lifetime of the lender; and it was only twenty years after that debt had been contracted that a final settlement was effected with the representa- tive of W. P. M'Cabe, six years after the death of the latter, and after protracted legal proceedings of a great many years' duration, first instituted for the recovery of that debt in the beginning of 1809. The original sum lent by M'Cabe, was £4.750 sterling, and a further sum of £42 for money expended for General O'Connor, with interest at five per cent., bearing date from the 7th of January, 1807. By a decree of the Cour Moyale oV Orleans, the 9th of April, O'Connor was condemned to pay the sum of 143,623 francs, in- cluding interest to that date. By another decree of the Orleans Cour Royale, dated 6th May, 1819, the sum was definitely fixed at 135,000 francs, including interest and expenses. Eventually * An act to prevent persons returning to his Majesty's dominions who have been, or shall be, transported, banished, or exiled, on account of the present re- bellion, and to prohibit them from passing into any country at war with his Ma- jesty.— 38 Geo. III. ch. 78. An act to compel certain persons who have been engaged in the late rebellion which hath broken out in this kingdom, to surrender themselves and abide their trials respectively, within a limited time, on pain of being attainted of high treason —38 Geo. III. ch. 80. 332 o'connor's relations with w. p. m'cabe. O'Connor undertook to make eight equal annual payments of 4,375 francs, in discharge of this debt, with interest, having paid down to Mr. Ely, for Mr. M'Cabe, 50,000 francs, and given already an undertaking to pay the balance in September, 1819. By the original agreement the money was to be paid by certain instalments out of the rents of O'Connor's estate in the county Cork, the management of which was in the hands of his brother. These instalments were not paid. Proceedings were taken against General O'Connor in France, and resisted for some years on the ground, as O'Connor states, that the debt contracted was in the currency of France, and the claim set up was for the payment of it in Irish currency, which made a very considerable difference. Eventually the matter was amicably settled. A portion of the debt was paid during M'Cabe's life; and finally, his daughter, Mrs. Nesbitt, received what remained due of it, after her father's death, in 1821. Among the documents referred to, there is an attested copy of a receipt in full, in liquidation of all claims on O'Connor, signed by Nesbitt, as executor, and acting for his wife, dated the 6th of April, 1827. Singular circumstances enable me to explain the nature of the pecuniary relations which subsisted between Arthur O'Connor and M'Cabe, namely, the possession of M'Cabe's papers respect- ing this transaction, including numerous letters addressed to him by O'Connor, and the brother of the latter, Mr. Daniel Conner, of Connerville, in the county Cork, for which I s am indebted to a gentleman whose father was intimately connected with M'Cabe's family — M'Cabe, the eminent watchmaker, of Cornhill, London; and also the papers of the other party mainly interested in the affair, contained in the attested copies of all the legal documents appertaining to the cause, furnished to me by Arthur O'Connor. Injustice to the latter, I feel bound to declare that those papers lead to the conviction that there was no disposition evinced by O'Connor to wrong M'Cabe. The whole of the difficulties arose from the embarrassments in which his Irish properties were in- volved, the consequence of his exile and of unnatural family dis- sensions, promoted at the expense of the absent proprietor. In proof of this assertion, I will give a few extracts from these letters, practising not a little restraint in the mode of dealing with them, but desiring to abstain from all unnecessary reference to matters of a private nature. LETTER OF ARTHUR O'CONNOR TO WILLIAM PUTNAM M'CABE. " Paris, February, 1807. " My Dear Friend, — I have written to Daniel to secure you the £4,000, and to pay you in cash the £750, though, from the o'conxor's relations with w. p. m'cabe. 333 numberless things you have left unpaid, and were unsettled, this latter sum will fall far short of being due to you. Indeed, was this an opportunity to scold you roundly for the confused state you left your affairs in, I would not spare you ; but 111 reserve that until I see you ; and if you wish to appease me, you will see Daniel and arrange with him, so as that he shall pay £200 interest into the hands of Bell for you regularly, or any one you think fit in London, so as that you may not have to call on me here for one sous of it. As it is my intention to sell all my property in Ireland as soon as possible, it would be advantageous to me that you should content yourself for the moment until the sale is made, with an acknowledgment that I owe you the £4,000 ; as, if he passes you a bond for me, the judgment will clog the sale, and be attended with costs to me. " Since I saw you, I have found the most advantageous and eligible estate that I could have wished, and if it slips through my hands for the want of £4,000, it will be a most grievous disap- pointment. If I had to wish, it is precisely the thing I could have asked, and in six years it will be more than double in value. For God's sake, press Daniel to procure me this sum. As yet, he has done nothing for me, and if it had not been for the money you lent me, I should have been in a sad taking. Assuredly, with Daniel's fortune, and all mine in his hands, he cannot find the smallest dilliculty to procure me this sum, and he is now more than six months advertised of how much I stand in need of it. If you do not find him inclined to sell all my property, assure him that if I had it, I could place it to the greatest advantage at this moment. This I leave to your zeal to enforce with all your might, " Since I saw you, I have also received a letter from Evans, by which I learn that Roger's account with me is likely to be settled by arbitration, and, though most inconvenient, I have agreed to take the payment in five years. If you go to Dublin, I beg of you to see Evans, and bring me a letter from him about all my affairs ; tell him how entirely I rely on his friendship to draw me out of the cruel situation I am in. If this estate that offers slips through my hands for want of £4,000, it will be a constant source of regret to me all my life, for it is the place, of all others, where I could be happy. There is a rapid stream that tumbles down through the whole property, with every other advantage we could wish; do not let me lose it if you can. The person who sells wants ready money. Let me hear, as soon as you can, what you have been able to do on this head for us, for I cannot tell you how much I have it at heart. " Your dear, sweet baby is charmingly ; she calls me her papa 334 o'connor's relations with w. p. m'cabe. of Paris, and you her papa of Amelica* She never fails to ask me when I heard from you, when you'll be back from Amelica, and how you are. She comes often to Rue Matignon, but, as she has a most excellent appetite, I would not consent that she should go to Whitlock's, lest they, from Irish kindness, should let her eat too much, and make her sick. She will make a fine and charm- ing woman. She is beloved by every one — Venfant gate de la maison. I have taken Alick and his wife into my service. I have given money to B. to pay the rent of the shop and of the lodging, and I have made the upholsterer take the third part of what he wanted for the hire of the furniture. " From the letters I received, if my uncle was not infatuated, his affairs might be settled to his satisfaction, and that of all the family ; but I fear he is too much his own enemy to act as he ought. It is his children who will have to weep over his folly. " O'C." 44 April 7. " I take up my pen to finish this letter. Let me first reiterate my request, that you will so arrange with Daniel as that your in- terest shall be paid in London ; for, if you do not, it will distress us both beyond measure; indeed it will be wholly out of my power to pay it here ; therefore, your regard for yourself, and your love for me, will make you steady in pursuing this point : that is, don't venture to see me unless it is done. "As to the commissions I gave you, I am not sure you will ex- ecute them to my liking ; for, if they were for yourself, you could not have patience to have them well done: yet, I know, if you can do them for any one, you will for your friend. The shawl I lay most stress on ; and I do assure you, Eliza takes the same care of your little baby as if she were her sister ; indeed, she doats on her. " As the person who is to take this does not set off for some days, I'll not conclude as yet. " O'C." * The child of Mr. M'Cabe, mentioned above as the "dear, sweet baby' ; , I subse- quently knew as Mrs. Nesbitt, in indigence, in the French capital, where her " Papa of Paris" was then residing in affluence, as I shall have occasion to ob- serve in the memoir of that poor lady's father, W. P. M'Cabe. It is only necessary here to remark, that in the Third Series of this work, published in 1846, being determined the former friends of Mr. M'Cabe should not be left in ignorance of the unfortunate condition of his daughter, I appended the following notice to the memoir of her father, I fear with little advantage to the poor lady : — " The daughter of William Putnam M'Cabe (Mrs. Nesbitt) is now residing in Paris, in a state of poverty, with several children. The author is privileged to make this statement, and put it in the power of the friends of her father, and of his countrymen, to assist his daughter in her distress. This unfortunate lady is to be heard of at Mr. M'Henry's, Rue de la Paix, Paris ". — Life and Times of the United Irishmen, Third Series, p. 359. o'cosxor's relations with w. p. m'cabe. 335 "April 10. " Your child is in the best possible health : take good care of yours. Neglect nothing of our private affairs now ; you are on the spot, and confine yourself to them. See Daniel, above all things, and bring me a satisfactory account of all my affairs. I didn't neglect any of yours. " Ever your sincere and faithful friend, " O'C." It is very painful to contrast the terms of tender and affectionate solicitude for the health of the party written to, and the health of his infant child, in the preceding letters, with the altered tone of the same writer in 1842, in a communication to me, wherein reference is made to that man, formerly so prized and trusted, and greatly commended for his fidelity, but now only not forgotten in his grave, to be recalled in such terms as the following: — M As to M'Cabe, the French Government acquired the proof that he was a double spy. General O'Connor saved his life with the Minister of War, the Due de Feltre ". Truly, the revelations of parties who have engaged in revolu- tions or rebellions, are of a nature to make all thoughtful men feel thankful that their lot has not been cast on those times, which are so terribly out of joint, in all civil strife, that no man knows how long he may count on the fidelity of his fellow, or the gra- titude of one who has been his friend and beholden to him. EXTRACT OF A LETTER TO DANIEL CONNER, ESQ., FROM A. O'CONNOR. " Paris, February 7, 1807. " This will be delivered to you by a real, true friend, who, seeing the cruel situation I was reduced to, has lent me £4,750. As I am ignorant of what sums you may have been able to col- lect for me, I leave it to you to do all you can to satisfy my friend in the manner most agreeable to his wishes. Nor need I tell you how anxious I am that you may be able to satisfy him, as well for the four thousand pounds he does not want immediately, as for the seven hundred and fifty he has immediate occasion for. The £4,000 is to pay an interest of five per cent, until you can pay it ; the rest you will pay him with my rents. As he will not meet with any one that can give him better advice for the plan that he should adopt, I request you will be of all the use you can, not only on the subject of his money matters, but on any other, all which his kindness to me merits. He will explain my sentiments fully on all subjects (Signed) "A. O'Connor". 336 o'connor's relations with w. p. m'cabe. FROM A. O'CONNOR TO D. CONNER, ESQ. " Paris, March 17, 1807. " My dearest Daniel, — Since your letter of the 1st of Sep- tember last, I have never heard from you. I have just received a letter from my good friend Evans, by which I find he has written to you, acquainting you with the state of affairs with that wretched being, Roger. I hope the arbitration may be agreed on ; but, in case he is mad enough to expose the matchless depra- vity of his conduct, I request you will inform Evans of the at- torney you wish to have employed, should he force me into a lawsuit. In order to leave all to arbitration, I have pointed out an easy way for him, to discharge the debt he owes me (Signed) "00". EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM DANIEL CONNER TO W. P. M'CABE. " Bristol, July 5, 1808. " I find, by the letters of my brother to me, that you lent him £4,750 in January or February, 1807: he is not exact as to date. I have ordered an estate of his, of the yearly value of £1,000, to be sold. My second brother, William, has a mortgage on it for £5,000, with interest due. The moment it is sold, and the mortgage paid, I shall order your debt to be paid, with interest, to whomsoever you shall appoint to receive it. " I am, Sir, your faithful, obedient servant, " Daniel Conner. "To William P. M'Cabe, Esq., 145 Portland Street, London. {Under cover addressed) " To William Putnam, care of Thomas A. Emmet, New York". EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM D. CONNER, ESQ., TO W. PUTNAM (m'CABe). " October 31, 1808. " In answer to your last, I request you to consider if it was possible for me to do more than I have done In June last, his estates were advertised for sale. I cannot compel persons to offer for them : they may be on the eve of sale, for anything I know. Reeves and Ormsby have been entrusted to sell them. My bro- ther William has a mortgage of £5,000. As soon as that in- cumbrance shall be paid off, I shall direct your debt to be dis- charged ; and, though I have had repeated letters from William, requesting the rents to be paid to him in discharge of arrears of interest, I have refused. (Signed) " William Conner. " To William Putnam, Esq., Dr. Murray's, Nicholson Street, Edinburgh. " Mr. William Putnam, care of Dr. White, Baltimore". o'connor's polemics. 337 EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM WILLIAM CONNOR, JUN., ESQ., TO D. CONNER, ESQ. 41 Mardyke, Cork, November 22, 1808. " Dbar Uncle, — I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, and cannot help saying that its tenor and contents amazed me much. M I had hopes, and I thought well founded, that when you had taken charge of my uncle Arthur's affairs, I should have met with punctuality ; and you even said, in your letter antecedent to the last, that, at the time of your writing, you had not any money of his at your disposal, but that your wish was, to pay as fast as effects came in. This must surely have been satisfactory to me at that time, as I really understood it as a promise of my being paid whenever any sum might be received. I have my family looking up to me for help and protection. Their claims on me are of a nature not to be trifled with or resisted, and the property too small to allow of such a deduction from its annual amount. Besides, I cannot conceive by what colouring of justice my pro- perty (for certainly it cannot be called Arthur's) should be car- ried from this country to pay any person in London or Edinburgh. I represent these matters to you, in order to again request your orders to the agent of the property, to pay me some part of the very large arrear due. If it is not done, I must, though reluc- tantly, apply to the Lord Chancellor for the proper means of re- dress, at whose hands I have no doubt of receiving it, and that speedily, by getting a custodium on the whole issue of the estate until the whole arrears be discharged. " I beg your pardon for thus trespassing on your time, and beg you to accept the assurance of respect and esteem of " William Connor, Jun. " To Daniel Conner Esq., Bristol". CHAPTER VI. NOTICE OF THE LATEST WORK OF GENERAL O'CONNOR, M MONOPOLY THE CAUSE OP ALL EVIL", PUBLISHED IN 1848; EXTRAORDINARY OPINIONS AND EXTRAVAGANT IDEAS THEREIN PROPOUNDED. O'Connors last and most extensive work is entitled, "Monopoly the Cause of all Evil", by Arthur Condorcet O'Connor, General of Division (in three vols., 8vo, Paris, 1848). The first and second volumes are devoted to questions of poll- ii. 23 338 o'cojjnor's polemics. tical economy, and legislative power, and principles of government, in theory and practice. The third volume extends to 605 pages ; of these 525 are de- voted to polemics, the main object of the author being to prove that all ecclesiastical bodies — " corporate priests", as he designates them throughout his pages — " are arch-enemies of the Christian religion, hypocritical and heathenish". I would be exceedingly sorry to misrepresent the opinion of General O'Connor on a subject of such great moment as that of religion, in the slightest degree, or to allow it to be supposed that I may have been mistaken in interpreting his opinions on it. It is not necessary, however, to avoid this danger of misrepresentation, to cite many passages of the text of the volume I refer to. The reader will assuredly lose nothing valu- able or original by being spared the perusal of any extensive portions of those lucubrations of the general. The headings alone of a few of the chapters might render the general's dominant idea of corporate priests, ministers of religion of all churches, being the cause of all evil, sufficiently manifest. Chap 1. Heading — "That the religion professed and practised during the three first centuries was a secret, mental, spiritual reli- gion, such as Christ Himself taught ; that nothing was more abhor- rent to the first Christians than the frequenting churches or the performing ceremonies, in the firm conviction such practices were hypocritical and heathenish" — page 7. Chap. 2. Heading — "That Christ has excluded corporate priests from having hand or part in His religion" — page 24. Chap. 3. Heading — " That so far has Christ been, from main- taining every jot and tittle of the Jewish law, there is not a jot or tittle of it He has not positively and unequivocally abolished as not coming from God". Chap. 4. — The same subject continued. Chap. 5. Heading — " That the utter subversion of Christ's religion must inevitably follow if we admit the authenticity of the words attributed to Him by the 17th, 18th, and 19th verses in Matthew's fifth chapter, and all those parts where He is made to say He came but for the Jews, and in nowise for the rest of the world". Chap. 6. Heading — " That if Christ had not founded His reli- gion on a fixed principle, which carries its proofs within itself and is totally independent of all exterior proofs whatsoever, and if it was to depend on the truth or falsehood of the historical, bio- graphical events which have been mixed up with the principles and precepts of Christ, they are too devoid of proof, too contra- dictory, and too opposite to God's attributes, to His immutable laws, and to man's progressive state, to stand the test of scientific O CONNORS POLEMICS 339 examination, or to satisfy the minds of men, who found their reli- gious belief on the convictions of their reason" — page 98. Chapters 7 and 8. — The same subject continued. Chapters 9, 10, and 11, are devoted to corruptions and falsi- fications of "corporate priests". Chap. 12. Heading — "The detection of the frauds and inter- polations in the gospels, which have put Jesus in flat contradis- tinction with Himself, by representing Him as claiming the office of judging all mankind, while He positively disclaims it by declar- ing He is not their Judge, but that He is their Saviour, and the fraud by which He is said to give to Peter God's infallible attri- bute of judging all mankind" — page 214. Chap. 13. Heading — " Explanation of the pretended miracu- lous gift of the infallible Spirit of God to the apostles, and from them to corporate priests" — page 235. The headings of the remaining ten chapters of the general's Voltairian theological disquisitions, my readers, who are Christians of any church, will dispense with, willingly no doubt. The poor old gentleman, when he published this farrago of po- lemical twaddle, was in his eighty-sixth year. I cannot say he was in his dotage, for I saw him within a year of that period, and he was then preparing his work for the press, and he was in the pos- session of his faculties, in the ordinary sense of these words ; but his ideas on religious subjects, which had always been known to his friends, and to those who were his intimate associates even so early as 1797 and 1798, to be identical with those of the philoso- pher of Ferney and the disciples of that school, had become less general as far as principles were concerned ; they had become in- dividualized ; that is to say, the repugnance which he felt formerly to the doctrines of the Christian religion, or the derision of them which he habitually indulged in, had merged into a fierce spirit of animosity to men who were ministers of religion. The " cor- porate priests" of Europe, and those of France especially, he main- tained vehemently, and on all occasions and in all circles, were engaged in a grand Jesuit conspiracy against the liberties of every European people. This was the poor old general's cJieval de bataille, which he mounted ever and anon, or rather from which it was impossible to find him dismounted at any hour of the day, at the period I refer to. He rode his hobby, corporate priests, conspiracy of churchmen, and European Jesuit plot, daily almost to death. It was a pitiable spectacle to see a man of such intellectual powers as Arthur O'Con- nor had been, running a muck in the same ring as that in which Sir Harcourt Lees had allowed his garron of bigotry to ride away with him, galloping over fields of polemics where he showed to 340 o'connor's polemics. no advantage, and floundering in quagmires and morasses of sec- tarian strife and bitterness, whence he emerged without credit to his character as a man of deep research, of sober mind, and sound judgment. O'Connor has devoted the last chapter of his third volume to his connection with the Society of United Irishmen, and a defence, on religious grounds, of that connection, and of his own principles especially, against certain attacks of O'Connell. O'Connor, in explaining the motives which induced him to be- come a United Irishman in 1795, and replying to the invectives of O'Connell against him and the leaders in general of the society he belonged to, observes, that when he entered parliament in 1790, the savage penal law was in existence — " a code so tyrannically oppressive that O'Connell could not then have legally exercised the profession of hedge schoolmaster". The extracts given from the third volume of this last work of O'Connor, Monopoly the Cause of all Evil, convey his reminiscences of the stormy period of his political career. His defence of his conduct and of the United Irishmen, requires to be read, however, by the light of those preceding notices of his peculiar opinions and of his resentments. As it is incumbent on me to state the main arguments he has adduced, and to give them in his own words (for otherwise it would be utterly impossible to give credence to the fact of their authorship), I must so far depart from the course I prescribed to myself of abstaining to quote any portion of the text of the polemical chapters of the work, as to cite a few passages illustrative 9 of the religious opinions of the author. The necessity of doing so arises from the obvious drift of O'Con- nor's reiterated denunciations of ministers of religion under the apparently limited designation of " corporate priests". The "wary old soldier and skilful tactician generally introduces into those de- nunciations, whenever he aims a deadly blow at a fundamental truth of Christianity, such as the Trinity or the Atonement, a furious tirade against Popish frauds and Romish miracles. The innocent reader, of very strong anti- Catholic opinions, might therefore ima- gine the general was only manifesting his zeal against " the errors of Popery", and not seriously impugning the vital tenets of Christianity. I quote a passage in which the candour of his im- piety makes itself discernible through the red-hot passion of his polemics: "It is true (he says), England has no inquisitorial court; but since the battle of Waterloo the corporate priesthood and feudal faction have established such an inquisition under their espionage and that of their bigots, that no man, even in female society, can dare to profess he does not believe in the Trinity of three Gods in one God; that Christ is not, at the same time, an immaterial im- o connor's polemics. 341 mortal God, and a corporal mortal man; that the impassible God of infinite goodness, justice, and merer/, has not been guilty of the most monstrous injustice in condemning the innocent — even the unborn — and acting under the influence of the most execrable pas- sions. Add to this the protection given to the immoral Jesuit conspirators against every virtue, supporters of the system of excusing and recommending the crimes most destructive of every moral duty. If this odious system of cant and hypocrisy has not the same destructive result it has had in all the other countries where it was practised, England must be privileged and invulnera- ble to evils which have proved mortal to other nations * " Once man can be persuaded of this blasphemous notion, that he can serve God, it is not in nature to invent a stronger argu- ment to convert men to a religion, than the making them believe they serve God by Buffering persecution for His sake and in serving Him. It is owing to this belief that at this day there is not a people on Earth (and I will not except Rome itself) where Popery is more firmly rooted, with all that Jesuitism can do to confirm it, than in the actual Papists in Ireland.f " Give a priest, and above all a Jesuit, the use of a blasphemous dogma, and with the terrors of Hell flames he annihilates every spark of human reason. You render him irresistible. J M More than twenty years ago I warned the British ambassador, Lord Granville, at Paris, that the Jesuits of Stoneyhurst and Castlebrown were inundating Ireland with their poison, and that if they were not driven out of England, they would render Ireland ungovernable".§ Volney and Voltaire are the great authorities on which O'Connor mainly rests his theological system. Of Volney 's phi- losophy he speaks in divers passages in terms of profound re- verence. Of Voltaire's piety, philanthropy, and benevolence, he is so enamoured, that his praises become more monotonous through- out the volume than the patience of any philosophy, Christian or pagan, can endure. At page 115, the general tells us : — " Nothing can be better merited than the praises which the King (of Prussia) gives Voltaire". "It is from his actions (says O'Connor) we should convince ourselves that Voltaire's heart was filled with the milk of human kindness, which is the grand characteristic of a Chris- tian". || Protestants must not suppose that O'Connor's denunciations of " corporate priests" extended only to Roman Catholic ecclesiastics. At page 335, vol. iii., he gives an example of the sort of zeal for. * O'Connor's " Monopoly the Cause of all Evil", p. 536. t Ibid., vol. iii. p. 587. % Ibid., vol. iii., p. 588. § Ibid., %ol. iii., p. 588. il Ibid., vol. iii. p. 115. 342 o'connor's defence of united irishmen. religion that corporate priests are inspired with, and he cites a list of enormous sums, "which some of those usurious bloodsuckers of the poorest people in the world have bequeathed their descendents". The list of O'Connor includes the names of eleven Protestant pre- lates, who had left their children the sum of £1,375,000. It will be said, O'Connor was in his dotage when he assailed Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular ; but if we refer to the earlier writings of the general, — Present State of Great Britain, Paris, 1803; On the Causes which have deprived France of the Benefits of the Revolution of 1830, Paris, 1831, — we will find ample evidence of the same spirit of fanatical infidelity and hatred of religion. On the subject of his connection with the Society of United Irishmen, and the state of Ireland previous to the Union and at the period of it, we find the following observations in his latest work, indicative enough of talent of the highest order, and of pre- judices that disgraced them. We perceive, moreover, ever and anon, the cloven foot of polemics worthy of Tom Paine, creeping on the heels of the politics of O'Connor : — " Bred up in the traditions of my family, I was descended from our ancient chiefs, from my infancy I have been a mere Irishman, without any mixture or alloy. My earliest passion was the history of my country : the more I studied it, the more strongly every energy of my soul was excited to rescue her from the oppression and misery under which she had been suffering during six hundred years. What struck my youthful mind most forcibly, and has afforded me a certain object to fix my aim on, was a passage in Leland's history, where he gives the extract of a letter from Elizabeth's minister to the viceroy in Ireland. Its words are : — ' Should we exert ourselves in reducing this country to order and civility, it must soon acquire power, consequence, and riches. The inhabitants will be thus alienated from England; they will cast themselves into the arms of some foreign power, or perhaps erect themselves into an independent and separate state. Let us rather connive at their disorders; for a weak and disordered people never can detach themselves from the Crown of Eng- land' ... * " From 1790 to 1796, that I was a member of the Irish Parlia- ment, all my efforts were directed, by my speechings and writings in and out of Parliament, towards the destruction of the religious disunion which made the force of English power and Irish weak- ness in Ireland. " In 1793, discontent was so general that the English Govern- * Leland's "History of Ireland", 1773, vol. ii., p. 291, Ap. O'Connor's "Mono- poly", vol. iii., p. 543. O'CONNORS DEFENCE OF UNITED IRISHMEN. 343 ment was forced to introduce a law to grant the elective franchise and fair trial by jury to the Catholics. "It was in 1795 Pitt detached the Duke of Portland from the Whigs, by giving him the wdiole of the patronage of the govern- ment of Ireland. In consequence, he named Lord Fitzwilliam to the viceroyship. It is not my intention to enter into the history of this disastrous transaction, by which the per- fidy of Pitt has destroyed English domination in Ireland, by ren- dering government on the English system an impossibility. Acting on this treaty, Lord Fitzwilliam made his conditions before he left England, which were, the power to dismiss some of the most obnoxious men in place, and to grant complete emanci- pation to the Catholics. " On his arrival in Ireland, he found the carrying those stipu- lated measures was so pressing that it admitted of no delay. He dismissed Beresford, however, with the load upon the nation of a pension of £3,000 for him, and leaving every soul of his family with places largely paid. Lord Fitzwilliam announced his reso- lution to support with all the influence of government the total emancipation of the Catholics. " If Pitt had sought, in all the immense powers he exercised at this time, the most efficacious means for impressing on the hearts of the Irish nation the most indelible repugnance to English rule in their country, the means he employed on this occasion were the most effectual. " After having assented to Lord Fitzwilliam's dismissing Be- resford, Wolf, and Toler, and his granting Catholic emancipation — after having let hope arrive at the moment of realization, and the cup was raised to the parched and burning lips of long- suffering Ireland, Pitt dashed it to the ground with the insolence that formed the essence of his character. The moment was cri- tical ; I made a last effort to live with England. 44 Setting aside all consideration of self x of family, of friends, I then threw myself soul and body on the side of my oppressed, insulted, enslaved countrymen, and on the 4th of May, 1795, in the House of Commons of Ireland, after hearing twenty-one speakers, I rose to answer them, when the benches were strewed with snoring members, who soon started up to hear the truths I told them. I warned them that the unexampled insult of the British minister rendered the nights vote decisive for good or for evil. My words were : ' If you shall have convinced the people of this country that you are traitors to them and hirelings to the minister of an avaricious, domineering nation, under the outward appearance of a sister country ; that the free national constitution for which they were committed, and for which they risked everything dear to 344 o'connor's defence of united irishmen. them in 1782, has been destroyed by the bribery of the British minister and the unexampled venality of an Irish parliament ; if you shall have convinced them that, instead of rising or falling with England, they are never to rise but when she has been hum- bled by adversity, and that they must fall when she becomes elated by prosperity ; if you shall have convinced the people of this country that, instead of reciprocal advantages, nothing is to be reaped from the connection with England but supremacy and ag- grandizement on one side, and a costly venality, injury, insult, degradation, and poverty, on the other, it is human nature that you shall have driven the people of this country to court the alliance of any nation able and willing to break the chains of a bondage not less galling to their feelings than restrictive of their prosperity'. " At the same time, I told the men I was addressing, i that if they rejected the emancipation of the Catholics, they would ap- pear to the Irish nation not only as men voting in obedience to the British minister against the voice of the people, but as men voting for an union with England, by which Ireland would be everlastingly reduced to the state of an abject province'. " The rotten borough interest carried the question in favour of the British minister against the nation by a majority of seventy- one voices. This blow, dealt with such wanton insult, is the grand epoch in the connection of the two islands ; it is the pivot on which the door turns which has shut out English domination from Ireland. " By this act Pitt proved to the Irish nation she should never expect from England other rule than the horrid policy of Queen Elizabeth. " Legislative union was to be the panacea for all the evils ; but in this England has helped herself to the lions part ; and the in- famous means by which it was effected damned it in the minds of the Irish.* . . . "It was in 1795, after this blow of Pitt's, the union of all Irishmen, which had been a theory, became an existing fact. In Ulster, from this time, the generous spirit of union was propa- gated with the most active energy by the Protestants, who formed a population which, with the Lowlands of Scotland, was the best informed in all Europe. Each parish had its library, and the ex- cellent journal, the Northern Star, instructed them and regaled them in their evening's recreation. The Directory, composed of Tennent, the two brothers Simms, Neilson, etc., conducted the Union. I joined them in 1796. * " Monopoly", vol. iii., p. 54G. o'coxxok's defence of united irishmen. 345 " The organization and propagation of union in the other three provinces devolved on my beloved Edward Fitzgerald and me.* In those parts of Ireland the grossest ignorance and superstition pervaded the people, except in the towns, marking how unflinch- ingly the system of Elizabeth for weakening and barbarizing Ire- land, had been followed. " I lost not an instant to push the work I had undertaken to its perfection. The mountain barrier I had to remove was the infernal dogma of the Popish religion, which exacts from all its members the belief that every human being who is not a Papist is irrevocably and eternally damned. t " The next greatest evil was the profound ignorance which per- vaded the three Popish provinces. I published a state of Ireland in 1796, in which I set forth the causes of her wretchedness and debasement. At the moment I quitted the Irish parliament I had the plan of a law for education prepared. It is thus described in my State of Ireland: ' The establishment would have been ample to pay lor schools in every parish in the nation, where the poor might be instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, paying the master for the number of scholars he really taught; also for baronial schools for teaching mathematics, geometry, and such practical sciences as are essential to national industry; county schools for those who had shown genius in the graduate schools ; and provincial universities lor the highest instruction' — page 19. 11 I was resolved that the national expense for education should have the preference over every other, and that the glorious monu- ment of the seventh century, when Armagh contained 7,000 students, at a time when all Europe was buried in barba- rism, should be recrected in Ireland. It was by teaching my countrymen the laws of nature, I would have brought them to the sublime ideas of the true God, with all His attributes, and of the true religion of Christ, which is the republication of these laws of God. " The next cause I assigned for Ireland's misery was the impossi- bility she was placed in of making the sacred fund that should * If I do not speak of Lord E. Fitzgerald, it is that he had entire confidence in me, and left me to the executive part. It will appear in my memoirs how noble apart this generous associate took in the union. — " Monopoly", vol. iii., p. 547. t Startled, as I have been over and over, when perusing the work of O'Connor from which these extracts are taken, at the recurrence in every page, of the foul- est slanders, most violent abuse, and reckless outrages on the religion of the great mass of the people of Ireland, I have constantly felt myself impelled to refute or reprobate some odious imputation or monstrous calumny of the writer. But to have done so, I found, would be to append a note to almost every paragraph. The wickedness, however, of the attempt to falsify the faith of Roman Catholics, and to fasten his " infernal dogma - ' on their religion as one of its tenets, has induced me in this instance to notice and to reprobate the rabid malevolence of a fanatical infidel and a reckless calumniator. 346 o'connor's defence of united irishmen. pay the wages of her productive labourers keep pace with her growing population. What creates in a great measure this impos- sibility, and entails such a misery on Ireland, is the immense por- tion of the produce of her labour, which is transported into England to pay the rents of her English absentee proprietors. Much pains have been taken to persuade the Irish that this drain is no loss ; nay, I have heard it argued as an advantage ; yet, when we come to the fact, it cannot be denied it has the same effect for Ireland as if all the produce she sends to England to pay the rents of English proprietors, who expend every shilling of it in their own country, and not one farthing of it in Ireland, was thrown into the sea; for she would have just as much return in the one case as in the other. Not a shilling of those rents can be converted to the augmenting the capital of Ireland ; every shilling of it goes to the augmenting the capital of England. . . . " The last cause of misery to Ireland I would have destroyed, is the enormous load religious establishments lay on the shoulders of the people. I found that this was so generally felt at that time by men of all religions, that all were agreed to put aside all alli- ance between the priests and the state, and restore the people to the liberty Christ has brought them, by making God alone the object of their adoration ; and instead of employing a seventh day in worshipping priests and saints, parishioners would flock round the professors who had taught them the laws of nature, to hear them explain that all Christ's religion consists in loving our neigh- bour as we love ourselves, and that showing this love to God and man, was doing to others as we would they should do by us ; that by the practice of this divine law no one could be guilty of an offence to God or man.* . . . " The last point on which I have to render an account is the part I took in attempting a separation from England " From 1795, when Pitt had struck the mortal blow to English domination, and the Parliament of Ireland seconded him, I be- came convinced nothing remained for the real benefit of the two countries but separation. In this determination I prepared Ireland for carrying it into execution, by uniting all my countrymen into one mind and one resolution ; and that it might be effected with- out bloodshed, I formed an alliance with the executive Directory of France, who deputed the noble-minded General Hoche to make the treaty with me".t . . . " It is not in my character to palliate any action of my life by shifting off the responsibility with subterfuges, sophistries, or eva- sions. I will begin by avowing my acts. If I had erred, I * " Monopoly", iii. p. 552. | Ibid., p. 55L O CONNOR S DEFENCE OF UNITED IRISHMEN. 347 would confess them frankly ; but if my conscience tells me I was right, I will support them with their reasons. 11 This conscience told me the policy of England from 1171 to the hour I resolved on separation, was as ruinous and debasing for my country as it was hurtful and destructive to the real interest of England. I should have spared Ireland half a century of un- exampled wretchedness and demoralization, and England the heavy expense of restraining an anarchical, murderous spirit she has connived at, and of feeding the famished misery her system has produced. With a system of common sense, of common honesty, of enlightened policy, that lives and lets live, England might have drawn immense benefits from an island situated and fertile as Ireland ; but since she has set foot on Ireland, she has governed it so ill and made her such a thorn in her own side, that, not knowing how to do with her or without her, she has never ceased to wish her sunk in the ocean, instead of treating her in every particular as if she was a Yorkshire or a Middlesex".* " When this calumniator of his best benefactors, the United Irishmen (O'Connell), accuses me of being a man of blood, the confounding him and justifying myself lies in all Europe being the witness of my alibi. "I was a prisoner in strict secrecy in the Tower be- fore the rising began, nor did I regain my liberty until years alter all was over; and it was known to all the Union that when it was notified to me in the prison of Maidstone, that if I was condemned all Ireland would rise to revenge my death, I sent the most positive commands to forbid it, knowing that such a step could have no other consequence than the shedding of civil blood uselessly. The fact is, Lord Moira came to the British House of Lords on the 2Gth of March, 1798, demanding to be suf- fered to produce authentic proofs that ministers had inflicted tor- ture generallv on the Irish people, by picketing them until they fainted several times, by cruel floggings and wide-spread burning houses: this was refused by the Lords. As this was two months before the breaking out of the insurrection, and as these tortures had been exercised during a year and a half before, it is evident the real authors of the insurrection were the ministers who ordered those atrocities. What I did, and what I am responsible for, is the attempt at separation by the joint force of the Erench expedi- tion and the United Irishmen ; and this, if even the troops who entered Bantry Bay had landed, by the declaration of the Chan- cellor, Lord Clare, in the House of Lords, would have effected separation without a possibility of resistance or a drop of blood being shed. I would never have to begin an attack at a time * u Monopoly'', iii. p. 556. 348 OCONNOIt's DEFENCE OF UNITED IRISHMEN. when all the chiefs were in prison, and that there was not a man capable to command a platoon to direct them.* " I know there is scarcely a man in England who will not condemn me for seeking separation; but how many were there in all England sixty years ago who would not condemn the Ameri- can who should have said, American separation would be a great advantage to the two nations ? Yet now who does not know that free trade with twenty millions of an independent nation is more profitable than a trade of stunted monopoly with three millions that existed before the American Revolution ?f " I have not waited until now to vindicate my united country- men. I did it forty-five years ago, but in a work which was pub- lished in France at a time when all intercourse with England was cut off. I now republish a few pages, that they may serve to show how basely and ungratefully O'Connell has calumniated his bene- factors, but for whose generous sacrifices he could not have exer- cised the office of a hedge schoolmaster. " I have not had recourse to the testimony of friends for our vindication: it is to our bitterest oppressors, the men who have immolated 30,000 Irishmen to support a government they them- selves admit was the extreme of oppression on one side and misery on the other. I entreat the reader to observe what has been the justice of men which has condemned us to secret prisons, to pro- secution for our lives, to the loss of country, parents, friends, to horrible tortures, to exile and to death, for having attempted to give their country a better government than that I am going to give the description of, after the words and confessions of the ministers who have insulted, oppressed, and made destructive war upon us. I will begin with the description Pitt himself gives of this English system he supported by such horrible means :% — * When', says he, ' the connection with Ireland was something more than a name, when that connection was ascertained, and the Imperial Parliament of this country exercised a supremacy over Ireland, it did happen that during that period the narrow policy of Great Britain, influenced with the views of trade and commer- cial advantages tainted and perverted with selfish motives, treated Ireland with partiality and neglect, and never looked upon her growth and prosperity as the growth and prosperity of the empire at large. I reprobated as much as the honourable gentleman [Sheridan] that narrow-minded policy, as mischievous and pregnant with the most fatal consequences to both kingdoms. But the imperfection of the Irish constitution is ad- * " Monopoly", vol. ill., p. 584. t Ibid., p. 585. X Debret's Parliamentary Register, 3rd Ses. Pari., vol. vii p. 014. o'connor's defence of united irishmen. 349 mitted, and to that must be added the complicated grievances and defects of the state of the country at large, with respect to the want of a diffusion of property, to the extraordinary disparity of rank, and to the scanty means of social improvement, all pro- ducing, in a proportionate degree, misery in one extreme and oppression in the other. " ' If any institution be inadequate to provide an effectual remedy for these evils, it is, / do not hesitate to say, the Irish legislature — not from any defect of intention, not from any want of talent, but from its own nature ; and it is, and must be, incapa- ble of restoring the internal happiness of the country, and fixing the prosperity of the people on a firm and permanent basis, as long as the present state of that kingdom, with respect to its rela- tions with Great Britain, continues. M 1 That legislature, formed as it is, must continue radically de- fective. I have spoken an honest and a fair opinion'. " Mr. Dundas said :* ' It is a melancholy truth that there does not exist in the great body of the people of Ireland, that con- fidence in the Parliament of Ireland which is essential to its utility. I need not go far to search for the reasons of this essential defect. It grew out of the frame and constitution of the Parlia- ment of Ireland It is generally acknowledged that the poor of Ireland experience all the miseries concomitant to a state of want and -wretchedness'. M Lord Huwkesbury :f — 1 The course of events, which had, for some years past, taken place in Ireland, have firmly rivetted me in the opinion that there must be something radically wrong in the internal situation of Ireland 1 . " Mr. Windham :i — ' I maintain that the disorders of Ireland grew chiefly out of the constitution of Ireland, established for near a century and a half ; and it was impossible that a government agitated as that of the sister kingdom — a government distorted in every limb — could enjoy health, or long survive those diseases — some slow, some acute — which had made her sickly of aspect and feeble of heart. But the seeds of the evil were in the constitution itself. "Lord Granville § — 'Does there, or does there not, exist a necessity for a change in the system of the Irish government? I declare I never conversed with any well-informed man from Ire- land, who did not say, that the present state of things, as they now exist in that country, could not continue, consistent with the general. safety of the empire'. * Pebret, vol vii. p. 708, 724. § lb., vol. viii, p. 262 t 3b., p. G73. X lb., p. 73G. 350 O'CONNORS DEFENCE OF UNITED IRISHMEN. " Mr. Addington,* the Speaker: — ' It is a melancholy but, 1 fear, an incontrovertible truth, that the state of Ireland had, at no period of its history with which we are acquainted, been such as to afford satisfaction to any mind that could justly appreciate the happy ' conditions of civil society. The bounty of Providence had indeed been displayed in that country by a fertile soil and by abundant means of internal improvement and prosperity ; its inhabitants had not been less distinguished than those of Great Britain in corresponding stations of life, for eloquence, for literary and scientific acquirements, and for those talents and exertions which have established the naval and military renown of the British empire. Their form of government was the same as ours, but it wanted its true characteristic ; it did not, like ours, bestow and receive general confidence and protection, for it was not, like ours, connected by indissoluble ties with the obvious interests, the feelings, and the sentiments of the great body of the people'. " Lord Auckland:! — ' Is it not true that, whilst Great Britain has gradually advanced in civilization of manners, and in every art, science, and improvement which can give happiness, honour, and security to nations and to individuals, Ireland, possessing the same climate, a fruitful soil, excellent ports, and a numerous people, to whom the Common Parent of all gave great acuteness and ingenuity, has, nevertheless, been at all times involved in comparative disorder, poverty, turbulence, and wretchedness? I might add, without exaggeration, that in the six hundred years since the reign of Henry II., there had been more unhappiness in Ireland than in any other civilized nation not actually under the visitation of pestilence or of internal war. Neither prosperity, nor tranquillity, nor safety, were to be expected, founded on the pretensions of a small part of the community to monopolize the representation, the patronage, and resources of the whole. The insufficiency of such a system has been felt and lamented for a century .... and it becomes more than ever unsatisfactory to the bulk of the Irish nation, and utterly incompetent and unsafe with respect to the general interest of the British empire'. "To these statements", says A. O'Connor, " I replied in my pub- lication on The State of Ireland : 'If these great au thorites, no less than his Majesty's late and present ministers, can stand in need of confirmation when they paint the oppressive and vicious state of the Irish constitution, it is to be found in the fact that in 1799, when the Irish legislature was annihilated, 200 seats of the 300 of which the representation was composed, were claimed by a few indivi- duals as their private property, who received a million and a half * Debret, vol. viii. p. 48. t lb., pp. 331, 332. CONNOR S DEFENCE OF UNITED IRISHMEN. 351 for the price, which million and a half, to fill up the measure of insult, injury, and oppression, was levied on the people of Ireland, to pay for the usurpation of their representation, which merited such exemplary punishment. 11 ' Is it in language to furnish words more expressive than those of these ministers of the radically vicious and oppressive state of the Irish constitution, which the people of Ireland has made so manv peaceable attempts to reform since 178-4? I ask these ministers, why did you resist those just claims of the Irish nation, or why have you supported that constitution which you now describe in such odious colours, by means at which humanity shudders, when you now tell all Europe that this Irish consti- tution was incapable of affording happiness or prosperity to the people; that it was deformed and distorted in every limb, sickly of aspect, full of diseases, some slow, some acute, incapable of giving protection, and unworthy of receiving confidence; formed in opposition to the interests, the feelings, and the sentiments of the great body of the people ; that with all possible advantages of climate, soil, ports, and genius of its people, it was involved in disorder, poverty, turbulence, and wretchedness, suffering more in the 600 years that British government existed in Ireland, than any other nation on Earth ; that neither prosperity, nor tranquillity, nor safety, could be expected from a government founded on the pretensions of a small part to monopolize the representation, pa- tronage, and resources of the whole ; that all the mischiefs grew out of the constitution itself, producing misery in orm extreme and oppression in the other? M ' I ask these ministers, why have you supported this icorst of governments, against the wishes of the gTeat body of the Irish peo- ple, at the expense of 30,000 lives by banishment, by fire, by torture, and by all the rigours of martial law? Convicted on these, your own confessions, made in 1799, after all these horrors had been committed, I call on you, in the name of all those thou- sands executed and massacred, for your defence. You are arraigned at the bar of the public opinion of every nation. Why, from 1784 to 1798, have you reared, strengthened, and supported this worst of constitutions, producing oppression on one side and misery on the other? All this blood, all these cruel- ties, all these agonizing sufferings, have you brought home to yourselves by your confessions — confessions so full that the mind of man cannot conceive a defence which shall wash away the blood with which you are covered. " ' If every other trace of these dark and bloody scenes was lost, and that these ministerial con fessions of the nature, the vices, and the evil of the constitution and government they wished to reform, 352 o'connor's defence of united irishmen. is it in language to furnish a more unanswerable refutation of all those virulent invectives these ministeis and their adherents have poured out against the people of Ireland, than these ministerial confessions ? " 4 If the thousands who now traverse the different regions of the Earth, exiled for having attempted to give their country a better government than one which produced the extremes of mi- sery and oppression, were questioned by the different governments where they sought an asylum, — if they were required to prove that they were not those turbulent, ungovernable men these ministers have represented them all over Europe and America, — what docu- ment more satisfactory could they produce than those confessions of these ministers? What document more exculpatory of them and their country, and more condemnatory of their oppressors? Nay, if the names of the 30,000 heroic souls who have fallen in the field or on the scaffold, without one single example of fear or weakness, had bequeathed to me the guardianship of their honour, and the office of rescuing their fair fame from the detraction and calumnies of these ministers (and I may now say of O'Connell and his Jesuits), what inscription could I place on the column that in the effusion of my heart I would raise on their tombs, which could discharge the holy and sacred duty consigned to my care more gloriously for them or more ingloriously for their op- pressors, than these confessions of his Britannic Majesty's late and present ministers ? " ' Had this Irish parliament, which annihilated the Irish legis- lature, been composed of 300 real representatives of the people of Ireland, it would have been an act of outrageous treason in depu- ties chosen for eight years, to pretend to transfer that sacred right to the legislature of another country ; but when a parliament, of which the vast majority is composed of self-convicted traitors, finishes its career by publicly selling for ever itself and its country for a million and a half, what part of the nation that has not been betrayed and outraged by this impudent treason ? What part of the nation so vile as to think itself bound by the act of such des- picable, unauthorized instruments ? " 4 What act more perfidious towards those deluded men, who supported this government, so justly described by his Majesty's late and present ministers, or more abhorrent to those who opposed it ? What proof more convincing of the contemptible policy of the ministers who planned this transaction, than the hope that any part of the people of Ireland could be conciliated by a corrupt and scandalous juggle?* If we know the tree by its fruit; if Europe * Has there passed an hour in Ireland since the forty- five years, this has been written, that has not confirmed it ?— O'C. O'CONNORS IDEAS OX BRITISH RULE IX ESDI A. 353 should seek to be informed of the effects of this perfidious act of British ministerial fraternity, she will find it in insurrection, in martial law, and in executions, without one single instance of acquittal'". — O Connors State of Ireland. 11 ' With all the consummate ability displayed in this masterly pro- In the work of A. O'Connor on Monopoly, there are some remarkable obser- vations on British role in India, which, the author says, were written so far back as nearly forty years ago. " Let not England flatter herself", says O'Connor, " that, with Europe free and America to back her, she will be permitted to monopolize under her absolute do- mination such immense portions of the globe, excluding them from half the in- heritance God and nature have given to all 5 such a pretension would be in Eng- land most preposterous. In advising her to disincumber her commerce of the monstrous expenses her foreign dominions cost her, I know I shall have scarcely an Englishman who will not think my proposition the height of extravagance. It is only in some years hence, when I shall be no more, the wisdom or the folly of it can be fully judged. I maintain that by retaining only some emporiums at Calcutta, at Madras, at Bombay, at Ceylon, England would make a more lucrative commerce, than by burdening herself with all the danger and expense of keeping one hundred and twenty millions in India in slavery and wretchedness ; that by abandoning the Canadas and all her American dominions, retaining emporiums and reducing her commerce all over the world to a general competition, she would have to the full as profitable a trade as she has at present, without the enormous costs, and without the certainty of being forced to relinquish those dominions, and that after a war winch may bring her own liberty to ruin".| And perhaps it may be allowable for me to subjoin a few passages from a work of my own on the same subject, written twelve years ago. EXTRACT FROM TI1E INTRODUCTION TO THE TUIRD SERIES OF THE " LIVES AND TIMES OF THE UNITED IRISHMEN ', PUBLISHED IN 184G, PAGE 13. " All experience tends to show that the day of reckoning for a people's wrongs, come it slow or come it fast, is sure eventually to arrive ; and we have only to turn our eyes to the events that are passing in countries that once vied in prosperity and colonial greatness with our own, to see that, the measure of the iniquity of their governments having been filled up, the hand of Divine retribution has been laid heavily upon them. " Who can reflect on the calamities that have fallen on Spain and Portugal — on the loss of the immense possessions of those kingdoms, the succession of revolu- tions that has followed the ordinary course of government, as it were in the natural order of cause and effect, for the last five-and-twenty years — on religion trampled under foot, its temples pillaged, its ministers despised and spoiled — party after party succeeding each other — one military despotism treading on the heels of another/proscription and decimation the rule of each, the people plundered by all — without teeling that the heavy hand of Divine retribution has been laid on these lands? "England would do well to profit by the examples of Divine retribution which those countries afford, to pause in her career of rapacity in the East Indies, and of injustice elsewhere. The laws of humanity and justice are not outraged with impunity ; the wrongs of nations are never suffered to pass unpunished, and the cry of the wronged people will be heard, whether of the poor, borne down by exaction or grasping tyranny in the ill-ruled land, or of the multitude, driven to madness by oppression. The due time of retribution, and the fitting instruments of it, are knoivn only to Him to whom the vindication of those laws belongs". f Monopoly the Cause of all Evil", vol. Hi., p. -337. II. 24 354 o'connor's jealousy of his associates. duction of O'Connor, who can read the preceding violent, revolting, virulent, and unscrupulous invectives of General Arthur O'Connor against Christianity, against the religion of his countrymen, whose cause he vindicated in parliament in 1795, and in the Press in 1797 and 1798, against his former political associates of that Church, against his Protestant associates too, with few exceptions, and sig- nally against the best, the most virtuous and single-minded of them all—Thomas Addis Emmet, without lamenting the fatuity of this ill-advised publication of O'Connor's in 1848 ? I reserve to a more fitting opportunity the vindication of the character of T. A. Emmet from A. O'Connor's malignant and unfounded statements, impugn- ing his courage and his conduct in the directory. In the memoir of T. A. Emmet in the following third volume, I will publish a statement of T. A. Emmet, which never yet has been in print, and has remained in my hands eighteen years, in reference to a private quarrel of a very serious nature between him and Mr. O'Connor, which, I have no hesitation in saying, effects the object I have in view — namely, the vindication of Emmet's character from the wicked calumnies of a man of very strong resentments and unscrupulous conduct in acting on them. In withholding from publication portions of written communi- cations made to me by O'Connor in 1842, I have already stated the motives of consideration for the writer of them, by which I was actuated. My object, when the former edition of this work was published, was to defend Arthur O'Connor in his decrepitude from himself. My duty now is to defend his old associates against his egregious self-conceit, jealousy, and dominating headlong pas- sion of animosity to all persons whom he considered competitors for distinction or notoriety in the same cause he was embarked in. I have known in various countries men who had been eminent theoretical demagogues in early life, or while engaged in maturer age in opposition to unpopular or oppressive governments, who had become in advanced age, or in the enjoyment of power or opulence or preeminence* in public or professional position, exceedingly arbitrary, tyrannical men, intolerant of all opinions not in accordance with their own; ungenerous and unjust in their dealings with the claims of former associates, and where they could not crush them, apt and eager to depreciate and to discredit their competitors or antagonists : but Arthur O'Connor's equal in these respects I never met. In 1815 General O'Connor offered his services to Napoleon to defend the independence of France, his new country, against foreign invasion. On the return of the Bourbons, this patriotic offer was the occasion of a letter full of reproaches, addressed to him by the Duke de Feltre, Minister of War, and an Irishman EXD OF THE CAREER OF GENERAL OCONNOR. 355 like himself. He was placed on the retired list in 1816, and on the 11th April, 1818, he became a naturalized Frenchman. By his marriage with the daughter of Condorcet,he had three children, two of whom, young men of great promise, died without issue ; the third died on the 26th May, 1851, leaving issue two sons very young. O'Connor had no desire to return to Ireland to remain there permanently, but he frequently applied for permission to Tory Secretaries of State to obtain a brief sojourn to arrange his affairs in the county of Cork ; and it was only under the government of Earl Grey that the required leave was granted, and Arthur O'Connor revisited the altered scene of his early toils and perils. But he had not been long there, when the old faction of Orangeism manifested its ancient malignant instincts. Repre- sentations were made respecting O'Connor's presence in Ireland, to the new minister, who had succeeded Earl Grey, of an alarming nature, of the peril occasioned by O'Connor's prolonged sojourn in Ireland ; and the Duke of Wellington was weak enough to act on those representations, and to order General O'Connor to quit the country immediately. The late Mons. Isambert, one of the judges of the Court of Cassation, informed me in a letter on the subject of O'Connor's short sojourn in Ireland in 1834, that when permission was accorded him to visit that country, and to sojourn there for a term of two months, reference was made to the act 38 George III. chap. 78, which declares, persons who return from transportation, banishment, or exile, on account of the present rebellion, without permission, are subject to the punishment of death, and prohibits them from passing into any country at war with Great Britain. Mons. Isambert remarked, he did not see how that law could be considered applicable to the case of O'Connor and the other state prisoners, and he wondered how an Irish act, that had relation wholly to temporary circumstances, could be held to be in force ten years after the general peace. He observed further (and unfortunately for the character of the magnanimity of our government, with too much truth), 11 Your go- vernment keeps up its political resentments longer than ours does". General O'Connor died at the Chateau de Bignon, on the 25th of April, 1852, in his ninetieth year. The body of the General, after being embalmed, was buried in the family vault in the park of Bignon. Among the mourners was the late M. Isambert, the eminent legal functionary and judge of the Court of Cassation, one of the oldest and dearest friends of the deceased. Before the tomb was closed, M. Isambert pro- nounced a brief funeral oration, in which he warmly eulogized 356 END OF THE CAREER OF A. O'CONNOR. the virtues of the departed general, and enumerated some of his numerous acts of beneficence. The discourse of Monsieur Isambert deserves a place in this biography. Of the defects in the character of Arthur O'Connor, I have spoken freely. If I have not sought to extenuate them, I am quite sure I have not set down aught in malice. Those who knew him well and were most closely associated with him, enter- tained the same opinions I have expressed in regard to those de- fects. If they have erred, I have been led into error by them. But there can be no mistake on their part or on mine as to the opinion that must be formed by all who are conversant with the history of the leaders of the Society of United Irishmen — namely, that among them no man was more sincere in his patriotism, more capable of making great sacrifices for his country, or who brought greater abilities to its cause, than Arthur O'Connor. PAROLES PRONONCEES SUR LA TOMBE DE M. LE GENERAL ARTHUR CONDORCET O'CONNOR. 26 April, 1852. Le corps embaume du general fut porte a la sepulture de la famille, au milieu du pare du Bignon, par ses ouvriers et ses ser- viteurs, et place dans le caveau qu'il s'etait reserve, a cote de ses enfants. Avant que le tombeau fut ferme, M. Isambert, adressa aux per- sonnes qui avaient accompagne le convoi, l'allocution suivante : — " Messieurs, " L'homme de bien, grand et genereux, qui nous voit reunis autour de sa tombe en si petit nombre, vous ignorez peut-etre qu'un peuple cntier de sept a huit millions d'ames viendrait lui rendre le dernier hommage, s'il n'avait pas prefere abandonner le foyer de ses peres, pour obtenir la liberte civile et religieuse de ses concitoyens. " Non, vous ne savez pas qu'il a sacrifie une fortune conside- rable, bien des annees de sa jeunesse, et qu'il fut longtemps pour eux prive de sa liberte. " Vous ne voyez aupres de ce tombeau aucun ministre de la re- ligion ; et cependant e'est pour la liberte religieuse de ce peuple, e'est pour les Catholiques d'Irlande, autant que pour la liberte ci- vile, qu'il a fait tous ces sacrifices ; et si j'en crois les temoignages de reconnaissance que j'ai entendu prononcer avec emotion par quelques-uns des rares contemporains de ces temps deja eloignes, e'est a lui qu'ils reportent le bienfait de l'emancipation des Catho- END OF THE CAREER OF A. CONNOR. 357 liques d'Irlande, qu'ils ont arrachee il y a vingt-cinq ans aux Auglais, et qu' Arthur O'Connor sollicitait au peril de sa vie, par le plus beau discours qui a ete prononce au milieu de leur par- lernent national, il } r a plus de soixante ans. 44 II n'a pas du reclarner, et nous, fideles a sa pensee, nous n'avons pas du demander l'assistance des rninistres de cette religion, puisqu'elle n'etait pas la sienne. " Mais gardez-vous de croire qu'il fut irreligieux. Non, ses ecrits l'ont prouve ; et moi, qui fus le confident de ses pensees pendant plus de vingt-cinq ans, j'en atteste Dieu qui m'entend, il croyait fermement a la Providence, a ses bienfaits, et aux grands desseins qu'elle accomplit envers rhumanite tout entiere. 44 II meurt environne en apparence de peud'aniis; mais, dans cette campagne, pouvaient-ils etre prevenus a temps ? Et combien d'ailleurs l'ont devance dans la tombe ? Sacliez-le bien, il a eu pour amis les hommes les plus distingues et les plus genereux de deux grands pays, et il etait digne d'eux ! " Ab ! pourquoi faut-il que ses trois fils, dont ce monument renferme les restes si regrettes, aient ete ravis a sa tendresse et aux projets qu'il fbrrcait pour leur avenir ! 44 Pourquoi faut-il qu'il n'en reste plus que deux faibles rejetons, si jeunes d'age ! Faisons des voeux pour qu'ils aient une vie plus longue que celle de leur pere, et pour qu'ils portent glorieusement le nom doublement celebre qu'il leur a transmis. " Prions surtout pour cette noble iille de Condorcet, qui, a luge de dix-sept ans, a consacre sa vie au bonheur de cet illustre viellard, et qui reste aujourd'hui dans l'isolcment, veuve de celui qui fut si longtemps son appui et l'object de toutes ses affections. — Prions pour cette pauvre mere, qui les avait nourris, tous les trois de son lait, et que leur mort successive et premature avait plongee dans la plus arfreuse douleur, avant qu'ils aient pu la recompenses par leur succes, de tous les sacrifices que sa tendresse cclairue avait f'uits pour leur donner une brillante education. 44 Devait-elle s'attendre a leur survivre, et a consoler leur pere de la perte de tant d'esperances ! 44 Vous, messieurs ses fermiers, vous savez si ce noble vieillard a etc' un maitre equitable et di'sinteresse. Sa presence en ce pays, vos peres pourront vous le dire, et les terres qui nous environnent en font foi, a donne une grande impulsion a l'agriculture, et en a presque decuple la valeur. 44 Vous, ouvriers, vous savez combien il aimait li occuper la population laborieuse qui m'entoure, et qu'il a toujours consacre la meilleure partie de son revenu a aider vos families par l'cncou- ragement du travail. 4 Vous, ses fideles serviteurs, il ne voulait se separer d'aucun de 358 END OF THE CAREER OF A. o'cONNOB. vous, et voila pourquoi vous etes depuis si longtemps a son service ; les soins que vous lui prodiguiez prouvent combien il etait digne de votre respect et de votre amour. " II a toujours ete secourable aux pauvres, et il les a constam- ment assistes, non par des paroles steriles, mais par des bienfaits de tout genre. " II a fonde l'ecole de cette commune ; ,il croyait que Instruc- tion, pour les enfants du peuple com me pour ceux des classes superieures, etait un gage de probite et de bonne conduite. " II etait le meilleur des hommes ! " Adieu ! loyal, genereux, et bon O'Connor, toi qui nous permis, quoique si distant par notre age, de te nommer, et qui daignais nous appeler ton ami/ " Adieu, bon citoyen ! Jamais tu n'as donne de dementi a tes principes; jamais tu ne flattas la puissance. Tu as ete fidele, a la fois, a la cause de ta patrie primitive, et a la France, ta patrie adoptive. " Adieu, modele rare des vertus publiques et privees. " Tu as, dans le cours d'une longue vie, bien amplement paye ta dette ; et cependant ta mort vient encore nous surprendre, et nous ne pouvons croire a cette cruelle separation !" In the Appendix of this work will be found an extensive notice of the eccentric brother of Arthur O'Connor — Roger, a man of a most singularly-constituted mind, and of a character the most paradoxical it is possible to imagine. I from a Miniature lay Horace Hone Copied from a portrait painted by him in 1796. MEMOIR OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN AND EARLY CAREER OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD. The labours of Moore have left very little to be done or desired in the way of justice to the memory of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, as a man singularly amiable, estimable, and loveable, to an extent which it is difficult to find words to describe, or adequately to express a sense of, in any measured terms of admiration. But in regard to Lord Edward's connection w T ith the Society of United Irishmen, his views of the circumstances which led to that connec- tion, the qualities of mind, professional abilities, natural gifts, acquired knowledge, and resources attributable to experience, habits and powers of reflection calculated to form a military leader equal to the emergencies of such a situation as presented itself in 1798 — or rather, such a condition as Ireland was reduced to at that disastrous period of governmental abandonment, — much remains to be said and outspoken distinctly and intelligibly, and may be stated within even narrower limits than are assigned to the preceding memoir. The Norman adventurers who overran England in the eleventh century maintained the original characteristic qualities of their vigorous, daring, marauding race, in their new country for upwards of four centuries; but the off-shoots of this stock in the adjacent land, which they began to ravage in 1171, degenerated quickly in the stockade settlements, which they called " the English Pale" in Ireland. Among those, however, who became founders of fami- lies, there were some who long retained the old traits of the Norman character, and kept alive the old traditions of the bravery and chivalrous spirit of their rude ancestors. Individual adventurers from the French provinces adjacent to Normandy and the northern parts of Italy had made common cause with the Norman bands, and were to be found among the marauders of their name who passed over from England to Ireland. 360 ORIGIN OF LORD EDWARD, The Giraldi of Florence and Ferrara carried over with them the qualities for which they were renowned in Italy, as formidable leaders, partisans, or condottieri ; but gradually the Giraldi became hardly recognizable in the Irish Geraldines, and in the last century there were few traces of the manly character, vigorous minds, and active energies of the first settlers in Ireland discover- able in their descendents the earls of Kildare. In 1798, the last indication of the stirring energies of the old race, attracted notice for a brief space, and then suddenly, the meteor of a moment, disappeared. The young patriot soldier of the house of Leinster, fifth son of James, the twentieth Earl of Kildare, who stepped into the arena of a great struggle for the independence of his country in 1798, revived the recollection of the old Geraldines in their best days ; and when he perished, nothing of them was left but a name and another mournful episode in Irish history. The following account of J ames, twentieth Earl of Kildare and first Duke of Leinster, is taken from the very rare work entitled, The Earls of Kildare and their Ancestors, from 1057 to 1773 (1 vol., Svo., p. 304. Dublin, 1857), thus described in the fly- leaf: — " The following notices of the Fitzgeralds of Kildare have been collected from the historical works in the libraries of Carton and Kilkea.* (Signed) " Kildare. "July, 1857". James, the twentieth Earl of Kildare and first Duke of Leinster, was born the 29th May, 1722. In 1747, he married Lady Emily Mary Lennox, second daughter of the second Duke of Richmond, and sister of Lady Holland, Lady Louisa Connolly, and Lady Sarah Napier. He died the 19th November, 1773, in Leinster House,t and was buried in Christ Church (in the immediate vicinity, be it remembered, of Werburgh's Church, where the remains of his fifth son were deposited in 1798, temporarily, as it was then designed they should be). The Duchess of Leinster survived the Duke many years, and remarried William Oliver, Esq., by whom she had two daughters — Cecilia Margaret, married to Charles Locke, Esq. ; and Emily Charlotte, married to Charles Beauclerc, Esq. The duchess died the 27th March, 1814. * The impression of the above-named unpublished work by the Marquis of Kildare, was limited to twenty-five copies. f In 1744, the family residence of the Kildare branch of the Geraldines was in Suffolk Street. The Earl soon after his accession set about providing a new and more suitable mansion for his family and his successors. " Molesworth Fields", then unoccupied, was selected for a site for "Kildare House", afterwards called " Leinster House", the foundation of which was laid in 1745. AND NOTICE OF HIS FAMILY. 361 Issue of James, Duke of Leinster, by his marriage with Lady Emily Mary Lennox, nine sons and ten daughters: — 1. George, Earl of Orkney, born in 1748; died in 1765. 2. William Robert (second duke), born in Arlington Row, London, 1749 ; married the only daughter and heiress of Lord St. George in 1775 ; died the 20th October, 1804, the duchess having pre-deceased him on the 23rd June, 1798. 3. Caroline Elizabeth Mabel, Lady, born 1750; died 1754. 4. Emily Maria Margaret, Lady, born in 1752 ; married Lord Bellamont; died in 1818. 5. Henrietta Catherine, Lady, born 1753; died 1763. 6. Caroline, Lady, born in 1755 ; died the same year. 7. Charles James, Lord, born 1756 ; entered the navy, attained the rank of rear-admiral; created Baron Lecale; died in 1810. 8. Charlotte Mary Gertrude, Lady, born 1758; married J. H. Strutt, Esq., M.P. ; created Baroness Rayleigh; died in 1836. 9. Louisa Bridget, Lady, bom in 1760; died 1765. 10. Henry, Lord, born 1761; married, in 1791, Charlotte Baroness de Ross; died in 1829. 11. Sophia Mary, Lady, born 1762; died 1845. 12. Edward, Lord, born 15th October, 1763 (of whom more hereafter). 13. Robert Stephen, Lord, born in 1765; married Charlotte, daughter of C. Eielding, R.N. ; entered the diplomatic service ; was minister in Switzerland, Denmark, and Portugal. " In 1798, being at Copenhagen, he offered an asylum in the English embassy to his brother, Lord Edward Eitzgerald, but at the same time sent in his resignation, which, however, George III., on hearing of the circumstance, refused to accept, saying that 1 a crood brother could not be a bad minister".* He was elected M.P. for Kildare in 1804; died in 1833. 14. Gerald, Lord, born in 1766, entered the Royal Navy, and was lost at sea in the Gulf of Florida in 1788. 15. Augustus Joseph, Lord, born in 1767 ; died in 1771. 16. Fanny Charlotte Elizabeth, Lady, born in 1770; died in 1775. 17. Lucy Anne, Lady, born in 1771; married in 1802 Admiral Sir Thomas Foley; died in 1851. 18. Louisa, Lady, born and died in 1772. 19. George Lennox, Lord, born in 1773; died in 1783. Of Lord Edward, of whom mention is made above, the Marquis of Kildare says: — " He succeeded to the estate of Kilrush, in the * " The Earls of Kildare and their Ancestors", by the Marquis of Kildare, p. 230 " ' * 362 LORD EDWARD ENTERS THE ARMY. county of Kildare. He entered the army in 1780, and served with distinction in America. In 1783 he was elected M.P. for Athy, and in 1790, for the county of Kildare. In that year, refusing to support the government measures, he was informed he would not be permitted to have the rank of lieutenant-colonel. On this he took the cockade from his hat, and dashing it to the ground, trampled upon it. In 1792, he went to France, where in December he married Pamela Sims, said to be the daughter of Madame de Genlis. Whilst there he was dismissed from the army. In 1796, he joined the United Irishmen, and having been arrested on the 19th May, 1798, he died of his wounds in New- gate prison on the 4th of June. He had one son and two daugh- ters. After his death, he was attainted by act of parliament, and his estate forfeited and sold. This act was repealed by a private act in 1819" * This notice is sufficiently compendious for a " peerage", and almost succinct enough for a tombstone; but some millions of people, more or less, on either side of the Atlantic, will think something more remains to be said of " the Geraldine" who died for his country in 1798. Lord Edward lost his father at the age of ten years, and it would seem as if that loss had contributed to concentrate all his love on his mother; for, certainly, few instances in the biography of any country are to be found of stronger attachment and more devoted filial fondness than he displayed from boyhood, undiminished by advancing years, and to the end of his career. The Duchess of Leinster, soon after her marriage with Mr. Ogilvie, went with her husband and several of her children to France. The young Lord Edward, when he accompanied his mother to France, was under sixteen years of age. He was intended for the military profession ; and from the period of his arrival in France, his education, which Mr. Ogilvie took charge of, was chiefly directed to the acquisition of knowledge that would qualify him for his future pursuit. In 1779, the family returned to England, and soon after Lord Edward commenced his military career in a militia regiment, of which his uncle, the Duke of Richmond, was colonel. In 1780, he was appointed to a lieutenancy in the 26th regiment of foot, then stationed in the south of Ireland. Soon after he had joined his regiment at Youghal, an exchange was effected for him into the 19th, which was under orders for America; and in the month of June, 1781, he sailed for Charles- ton, where Lord Rawdon was then in command. * " The Earls of Kildare and their Ancestors, from 1057 to 1773". 1 vol. 8vo. Dublin. 1857. Page 280. MILITARY CAREER IN AMERICA. 363 From the time Lord Edward commenced his military career in America, the love of his profession, and the necessity of making himself master of it, are themes of frequent recurrence in his letters. Not long after his arrival in America, in 1781, when serving with his regiment (the 19th), he distinguished himself in an engagement with the forces of one of the ablest American commanders, Colonel Lee, not only by his bravery but his mili- tary skill, in a manner to attract the special notice of Major Doyle (subsequently General Sir John Doyle), and to obtain for him the appointment of aid- de-camp on Lord Rawdon's staff, in which position he soon had an opportunity of displaying his chivalrous valour, and of gaining the entire confidence of his superior officers. A little later we find the acting adjutant-general record- ing an act of undisciplined valour of " the brave young creature", whom he had to "rate soundly" at the moment, and to represent to the general in chief command, in terms anything but unfavour- able to the gallant young officer : — In approaching one of the English positions, the enemy's light troops in advance became more numerous, and rendered more frequent patrols necessary. Major Doyle was setting out upon a patrol, and went to apprise Lord Edward, who, however, was sought for in vain, and the major proceeded without him, and at the end of two miles, when emerging from the forest, the latter found Lord Edward engaged w r ith two of the enemy's irregular horse. He had wounded one of his opponents when his sword broke in the middle, and he must have soon fallen in the unequal struggle, had not his enemies lied on perceiving the head of Sir John Doyle's column. The higher Lord Edward advanced in his profession, the more he thought it incumbent on him to apply himself to the study of it. In March, 1783, he writes from St. Lucia: — " My profession is that of a military man ; and I would reproach myself hereafter if I thought I lost any opportunity of improving myself in it, did 1 not at all times do as much as lay in my power to merit the promotion I am entitled to expect", etc. In the beginning of 1783, he visited the islands of Martinique and St. Lucia ; and Lord Rawdon having previously returned to England in consequence of ill health, Lord Edward a few months later, finding his only hope for promotion was in Europe, and that if he were at home he might obtain a company in the Guards, or a lieutenant-colonelcy by going to the East Indies, determined on returning to Ireland, which purpose he carried into execution in the summer of 1783. It was Lord Edward's destiny to visit America during the war of independence, to witness some of the stormy scenes of the struggle, 364 " THE FAITHFUL TONY*. and to find ample food for reflection in the successful resistance of a people asserting their liberty, and the many difficulties and signal discomfiture of the royal forces under renowned generals, which had been experienced even during the short period of his sojourn in America. Soon after his arrival in Ireland, in the autumn of 1783, he was brought into parliament by his brother the Duke of Leinster, for the borough of Athy. When Lord Edward returned to Europe from America in 1783, he brought over a Negro servant, who is frequently men- tioned in the letters of his kind master as " the faithful Tony". This Negro was, probably, first met with at St. Lucia by Lord Edward, which island he had visited on service in the month of February of that year. During the remaining fifteen years of his life, Tony continued in his service, accompanying his master wherever he went, devotedly attached to him, and Lord Edward's regard for " the faithful Tony" appears to have been no less sincere. When Lord Edward resided in Ireland, chiefly at Frescati,* in 1784 and 1785; in Woolwich, 1786; Spain and Portugal in 1787; Halifax and New Brunswick in 1788; Quebec and Mon- treal in 1789; and was again in Ireland, either in Leinster House, Kildare Street, or at Frescati, in 1790 and 1791; in Paris and Dublin in 1792; again at Frescati in 1793; at Mr. Connolly's lodge, in the town of Kildare,! to which Lord Edward re- moved from Frescati in June, 1794; and had his abode at Leinster House, or Castletown, or Carton, in 1795, 1796, and 1797, "the * " Sweet Frescati" is referred to in one of his letters from Canada, in 1788. " Poor Frescati ! I shall be sorry to leave it. I look at all the trees and places with regret . . . My dear little wife is very well — goes on delightfully. I never saw her look so well ; she grows both broad and long. Indeed, she has quite taken a fit of growing".— April 27th, 1793. " I live here constantly ... I left off gardening ; for I hated that all my trouble should go to that vile Lord W , and my flowers be for aides-de- camp, chaplains, and followers of a lord lieutenant". — 19th February, 1794. "Parting with poor Frescati did make me melancholy", etc 23rd June, 1794. f Lord Edward describes this lodge in Kildare as a little paradise, though he says — " It don't describe well. One must see and feel it ; it has, however, all the little things that make beauty to me. My dear wife dotes on it and becomes it". But all the little things that made beauty for poor Lord Edward in that little paradise, which he does describe most admirably, have disappeared ; the small white house with the little grove before it ; the court surrounded with elms, and the avenue lined with shrubs ; the grass-plot ground laid out for a flower garden ; the flight of steps and the wicker cages at the entrance to the lodge, with the thrushes singing there ; and the neat parlour with a bow window (covered with honeysuckles intermingled with roses) looking into the garden, surrounded by trees old and large, affording shade from the sun all day long, all have vanished. The Avhole place, pleasant to look on and delightful to live in, is now a desolate spot ; the site even of the little paradise is barely recognizable. lord edward's application to military science. 365 faithful Tony" was never separated from his master. He accom- panied him to Canada;* and in the fatal year of 1798, we hear of Lady Fitzgerald, on the disappearance of Lord Edward from Leinster House,t after the arrests at Bonds, in March, removing to a house in Denzille Street, and taking with her " her husband's favourite Tony"; and then no more mention is made of this faithful creature during the life of Lord Edward ; and we find one brief reference to him at the conclusion of Moore's Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald: — " Poor Tony, of whose fate the reader must be desirous to know something, never held up his head after his noble master's death, and very soon after followed him". In the spring of 1786, Lord Edward (at that time a member of the Irish House of Commons) determined on entering himself at Woolwich, with the view of making himself thoroughly acquainted with military science by a regular course of study. This resolu- tion of a young nobleman in his position, surrounded by all the allurements of fashionable society, courted by political parties as a member of parliament, on account of his brother's influence and his own popular manners and address, reflects no small credit on his character, and indicates plainly his strong attachment to his profession, and sense of the obligations imposed on him to deserve preferment in it. Of this dominant idea we lind ample proofs in his letters from the age of seventeen on France, when we find the occupation of his boyhood was almost exclusively, " in all things that related to science in military construction, the laying out of camps, fortifications, etc., in which he was early a student and proficient". In 1786, we find Lord Edward accompanying his uncle, the Duke of Richmond, on a tour of inspection of the islands of Guern- sey and Jersey, and making a good use of the opportunities for improvement afforded him. In 1787, Lord Edward visited Gibraltar, and under the pretext of a tour of pleasure, carried into effect his real purpose of extend- ing his military knowledge. While Lord Edward was at Gibraltar, by a strange coincidence, the man by whose hand he was destined eleven years later to lose his life, Henry Charles Sirr, was in that garrison, where he states * " His black face is the only thing that I yet feel attached to". t Leinster House was not much in favour with Lord Edward as a place of resi- dence. In October, 1794, he apologizes for not answering a letter: — "I have • not answered it yet, and am almost afraid, mine must be so stupid ; for I confess Leinster House does not inspire the brightest ideas. By-the-bye, what a melan- choly house it is ! You can't conceive how much it appeared so when first we came from Kildare, but it is going off a little. A poor country housemaid I brought with me cried for two days, and said she thought she was in a prison". 366 lord edward's first acquaintance with major sirr. lie knew Lord Edward. The fact is thus referred to by Sirr in a letter dated 29th December, 1829, to the son of Captain Ryan, who met his death at the hands of Lord Edward in 1798: " I agree with yon relative to Lord Edward. He was considered a highly honourable man at Gibraltar, where I knew him when he was on a visit to the governor of that garrison". This fact, which had been so long kept in the background by the major, is a new feather in the cap of his celebrity. That for- mer acquaintance with a man whom he knew to be so highly- honourable, and subsequently shot so coolly and with such deli- berate aim, enhances, of course, the merit of that act of stern duty and stoic loyalty, the capture and death of Lord Edward Fitz- gerald. From Gibraltar Lord Edward proceeded to Lisbon, where his popular manners, and that valuable accompaniment of such advantages, his sterling merits, gained for him a warm reception and the friendship of the principal people of that capital and its court during a long sojourn there. From Portugal he proceeded to Spain, visited Madrid, Cadiz, Grenada, and other places of in- terest, but hastened back to England, weary of inactivity, and longing for the occupations of that military life to which he was so strongly attached. Towards the latter end of May, 1788, he sailed for America, for the purpose of joining his then regiment, the 54th, which was then in Nova Scotia, and from the latter end of June to May 1789 he remained on service, stationed at inter- vals in New Brunswick, Halifax, Quebec, and Montreal. In August, 1789, he writes from New Brunswick: " I grow fonder of my profession the more I see of it, and like being major much better than being lieutenant-colonel, for I only execute the commands of others". A little later: " I have got a garden for the soldiers, which em- ploys me a great deal. I flatter myself next year that it will fur- nish the men with great quantities of vegetables, which will be of great service to them". In Cobbett's Advice to the Young, we find a passage to the following effect: " I got my discharge from the army by the great kindness of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who was then major of my regiment". Cobbett was a serjeant -major of the 54th at the time of this oc- currence, in October, 1788. He states elsewhere that in the year 1800 he told Mr. Pitt what he thought of that meritorious officer: "Lord Edward was a most humane and excellent man, and the only really honest officer he ever knew in the army" . In April, 1789, he set out on an arduous expedition with his servant Tony and a brother officer from Frederickstown, in New lord edward's Canadian life. 367 Brunswick, to Quebec — an expedition of considerable difficulty — through an unexplored country, through forests and morasses, but one calculated to be of great advantage to the colony. They accomplished the journey in twenty-six days, lying out, of course, at night in the woods, without any covering except their blanket- coats. They steered by compass, and entered the River St. Laurence within a league of Quebec. The journey was accom- plished in 175 miles, the route before travelled being at least 375 miles. So much for the energy and enterprise of the young Irish offi- cer in his twenty-sixth year. In June, 1789, Lord Edward's in- tercourse with the native Indians led to a singular adventure at Detroit, and an unprecedented honour to an English officer at the hands of an Indian chief, one of the Six Nations, by whom he was made a chief of the Bear Tribe. Early in December he arrived at New Orleans, and finding it impracticable to pursue an intended journey into Spanish America, he embarked for Europe, and in due time reached England. In the wilds of America and in the forests of Canada we find Lord Edward, after the fashion of Jacques, descanting on the ad- vantages of "this life, more sweet than that of painted pomp", — " more free from peril than the envious court", which in the woods Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everytliing. He wanders in the woods of Canada, and exults in their solitudes, and travels through great tracts of country peopled only at wide intervals by Indian tribes, the simplicity of whose mode of life fills him with delight, or settlers widely scattered, in whose humble dwellings he finds peace and happiness, and is thankfully reminded by everything around him, " There are no devilish politics here' 1 . Poor Lord Edward remembered that he had left these in Ire- land, and it would seem, now that he was about to return to his native land, that coming events were casting their shadows before him, and that he was destined once more, and more deeply than ever, to be engaged in those 11 devilish politics", which were so uncongenial to his pure and noble nature. He sends home a des- cription to his mother of a scene he had witnessed in his latest journey in the woods of Canada, which would furnish an admi- rable subject for a painter. After travelling for many miles through a tract of country unpeopled, he came to a little settlement along one of the rivers, which was all the work of one family 368 lord Edward's views of life in the woods of Canada. The old man was seventy-two; the woman was seventy. They lived in a little cabin on the side of the river, the banks all covered with woods; the old man was weeding salad, and his wife, a clean, tidy woman, was engaged in spinning. Lord Ed- ward and his servant, the faithful Tony, were soon on easy and familiar terms with the old couple, who, in their anxiety to re- ceive the strangers with due hospitality, became as active as if they were only five- and- twenty ; the old man bringing wood and water, and the wife busily engaged frying bacon and eggs, and talking a great deal, telling the story of the family, how she and her husband had been in the little cabin thirty years, and how their children were settled, and, when the back of either was turned, each remarking how old the other had grown; at the same time all kindness, cheerfulness, and love to each other. And then Lord Edward contrasts the quietness of the evening he spent with the old couple, when the bustle and fatigue of the day's preparation for the repast was over, when the spirits of the old people had a little subdued and began to wear off with the day, sitting quietly at their door, on the same spot where they had lived thirty years together, the contented thoughtfulness of their coun- tenances, increased by their age and the solitary life they had led, by the wild quietness of the place, not a living creature or habi- tation to be seen, and himself, Tony, and the guide sitting with them, " all on one log", need we wonder that scenes like these made a deep impression on Lord Edward's mind, or make many apo- logies for his unsophisticated tastes, or have any cause for ap- prehension of republican tendencies in the latter, when we find him on similar occasions contrasting such modes of life with the cares and anxieties and many wants, struggles, and competitions of a different state of society ? More than once, when referring to the former, he speaks of the happiness of people living by their own industry, of an equality of condition arising from a depend- ence on industry alone, and not on the influence or patronage of others ; where there was no separation of families, one part living in London and another part in Dublin ; no gentlemen who will do nothing, and who expect to want nothing. "Every man here", he says, " is exactly what he can make himself and has made himself by his own industry". Of that state of things Lord Edward spoke in strong terms of commendation ; and those who differ with him in opinion on that subject, will find it easier to shrug their shoulders and to elevate their eyebrows, than to dispute the justice of those observations of his lordship. There are several references in Lord Edward's letters to an attachment of a very ardent nature formed in 1785 or 1786, to lord edward's early engagements . 369 Lady Catherine Mead, second daughter of the Earl of Clan William , who, a few years subsequently (in 1789), married Richard, fourth Viscount Powerscourt. But long beibre that occurrence, we find Lord Edwards passion for this lady had subsided, and another and a stronger one had «ot possession of his heart. Its new idol was a Miss G ; but the young lady's father decidedly opposed the union, and eventually even forbid Lord Edward his house, and in the month of April, 1789, the young lady had become the wife of another. The disappointment of Lord Edward's hopes appeals to have made a deep impression on his mind and heart, and probably had no small influence over his future career and the new direction given to his thoughts and pursuits. When Lord Edward received the intelligence of the last-men- tioned marriage, he was in Canada, on his second visit to the New- World. He returned to England early in 1790. Moore states, on his arrival in London, he proceeded immediately to the house of his mother, who was then residing there, and by the merest accident was spared a meeting that could not fail to be distressing. He arrived at the house the moment that a large party had seated themselves at dinner, " among whom were the young bride of the preceding April and her lord'', and was only prevented from entering the room by one of the guests, who recognized Lord Edward's voice and hastened to stop him. May there not be some confusion here, and the young bride referred to have been the Lady Catherine Mead, who married Lord Powerscourt, the 20th of June, 1789?* The supposition would be the more probable, as the bride's family and her hus- band were both on terms of intimate acquaintance with the Duchess of Leinster ; and the treatment which her son had re- ceived at the hands of the father of the other young lady was likely to have put an end to any intercourse with her or her fa- mily, from the time of the rejection of Lord Edward's suit. Relations of a mysterious nature between members of the Lein- ster and Powerscourt families previously to the birth of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, had a kind of shadowy existence in the minds of some old collectors and dispensers of folk-lore at the close of the last century, which renders the occurrence of the name of a mem- ber of the Wingfield family in connection with tire marriage of a lady who had engaged the affections of Lord Edward Fitzgerald noticeable. The young nobleman of the "Wingfield family, the fourth Viscount Powerscourt, who married Lady Catherine Mead, was nearly of the same age as Lord Edward : the latter was born in 1762; Richard, third Viscount Powerscourt, to whom Lord * See "Lodge's Peerage". ii. 25 370 LORD EDWARD S PARLIAMENTARY CAREER. Edward is said to have borne a strong resemblance, died in 1788. In his will, it is confidently stated that he bequeathed to Lord Edward Fitzgerald the sum of £10,000. I have examined this will of Richard, third Viscount Powers- court, in the Prerogative Court, Dublin, which is dated July, 1788, and a codicil to it the month following, and not one word is to be found in either testamentary document respecting Lord Edward Fitzgerald from beginning to end. So much for the value of gossiping genealogical relations. CHAPTER II. LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD'S PARLIAMENTARY CAREER — 1 > -1797. When Lord Edward was brought into parliament by his brother, the Duke of Leinster, in 1783, for the borough of Athy, he was then in his twenty-first year, one of the purest minded of human beings, young, ardent, generous, of a lofty spirit, single-minded, and brave-hearted, incapable of harbouring a sentiment that was mean, sordid, or selfish, or giving expression to a thought that did not emanate from a strong, earnest, unalterable conviction of the truth, right, and justice of the opinion he asserted, the side he espoused, or any principle on which he acted. We learn without surprise that Lord Edward felt no pleasure in his parliamentary life. What atmosphere in this world could be more uncongenial to the nature of a being of such purity, than that tainted one of the Irish House of Commons, that reeked with corruption, whose vitiated condition seemed to be essential to the existence of the boroughmongers' power, and the vile purposes for which that parliament was constituted? By the Irish parliamentary debates I find that Lord ' Edward Fitzgerald made his debut in the Irish House of Commons for the borough of Athy after the general election in July, 1783. The first time that he spoke in the house, or at least that any observa- tions of his are reported in the Parliamentary Register, was in January, 1785, on a motion of the Hon. Thomas Pakenham to present an address to the king of thanks for the appointment of the new Lord Lieutenant, when Lord Edward is reported to have said — " he would not object to the address if it had proceeded in the usual mode, as a mere complimentary matter of form ; but when it declared an approbation of the firm and moderate measures of his Grace's government — measures in which he could not coin- cide — he felt himself under the necessity of opposing that part of the address. He therefore moved that the words ' experienced lord edward's parliamentary career. 371 virtue and firmness', should be expunged, and the words ' and whose private virtues entitle him to the esteem and regard of this house', should be inserted in their room".* Lord Edward, in one of his letters, previously to his second expedition to America, thus speaks of his party in the Irish House of Commons : — M When one has any great object to carry, one must expect disappointments, and not be diverted from one's object by them, or even appear to mind them. I therefore say to everybody, that I think we are going on well. The truth is, the people one has to do with are a bad set. I mean the whole; for really I be- lieve those ice act with are the best". Bad, indeed, were the best of that Whig party " as a whole", with whom poor Lord Edward had to do in 1787, and for ten years later. But, like a good, brave man, devoted as he was to a cause he thought good, and well knowing how its interests alone can be upheld, he tells his mother that, even to one of his best and most intimate friends (Mr. Ogilvie), " even to him I put on a good face, and try to appear not disappointed or dispirited". In the latter part of 1786 and beginning of 1787, Lord Ed- ward's name is found in all divisions in the House of Commons, invariably on the side of his country, in favour of all measures that were tolerant, just, and liberal; that is to say, on the side that was always worsted in the Irish parliament in those times. There is an expression of Lord Edward's, in a letter of his in 1787, which deserves attention as one of the earliest evidences of the impression made on his mind of the hopelessness of effecting any good in that parliament for his country, or for that liberal cause in England, which he considered identified with the interests of the Whig party in Ireland. In February, 1787, he writes: — " I have been greatly disappointed about politics, though not dispirited. We came over so sanguine from England, that one feels the disappointment the more". The 13th of March, 1787, Mr. Grattan's motion on tithes being under discussion, Lord Edward Fitzgerald said, " that tithes having for thirty years been considered as a hardship and matter of grievance, it became the wisdom of the house to inquire into them. While the people were quiet, no inquiry was made ; w T hile they were outrageous, no inquiry, perhaps, ought to be made ; but certainly it was not beneath the dignity of the house to say that an inquiry should be made when the people returned to peace and obedience again'.t In 1788, the Duke of Leinster having promised to give his " Parliamentary Register", vol. ir. p. 5. t Ibid., vol. vii. p. 345. 372 lord Edward's parliamentary career. support to the new viceroy, Lord Buckinghamshire, voted with the government; and as a matter of course in the Irish parlia- ment, when the patron of a borough changed sides, his member was expected to walk over to whatever side he supported. Lord Edward disapproved of his brother's change, and resolved to remain in opposition. His uncle, the Duke of Richmond, how- ever, prevailed on him, reluctantly to give up his intention of voting with the opposition, without reference to the Duke of Leinster's wishes. Family considerations, in November, 1788, were sufficient so far to influence Lord Edward in the course taken by him ; but interested motives had no share in the result of the interference of the powerful Duke of Richmond. Though hitherto desirous of promotion in his service, he determined from that time forth to seek no promotion at the hands of the Duke of Richmond, and to abstain from accepting a lieutenant-colonelcy or any other step, lest his actions as a member of parliament might be biassed by any such motives as a desire for promotion. " I am contented with my rank and station. I have no ambi- tion for rank; and however I might be flattered by getting on, it will never pay me for a blush for my actions. The feeling of shame is what I never could bear". He takes care to have a friend informed, who was then taking steps to obtain a lieutenant-colonelcy for him, that he will .accept of no preferment. " Pray represent it strongly to him, and make him remember how obstinate I am lohen 1 once take a resolution'. But Lord Edward's embarrassment was soon removed by the return of the Duke of Leinster to the opposition, when the famous question of the regency was first mooted. In the spring of 1790, when Lord Edward returned from America to England, on his arrival in London he visited his uncle, the Duke of Richmond, who was then master-general of the ordnance, and was invited by the duke to meet Mr. Pitt and Dundas at dinner, to talk over matters connected with the mili- tary information he had gained in America, in relation to the Spanish colonies, and during his journey in Spain, previous to his departure for Canada, respecting the fortresses he had visited in that country. The result of that interview was so favourable an impression of Lord Edward's military talents on Pitt and his colleague, that they offered immediately to promote him by brevet, and give him the command of the expedition that had been determined on against Cadiz. The flattering offer was promptly accepted. The duke, on the following day, was to report the proposed arrangement to the king, and to be enabled to state that Lord Edward was no longer in opposition to the ministry. lord edward's relations with the duke of Richmond. 373 The Irish parliament, which terminated on the 5th of April, 1700, had then either recently expired, or was about to expire. Lord Edward had declared his intention henceforward to devote himself solely to his profession. The day following this arrange- ment, Lord Edward found that the Duke of Leinster had returned him for the county of Kildare. His position being thus altered, the difficulties of his recent engagement were communicated to the Duke of Richmond, but not before the latter hacf made known to the king the proposed arrangement, and the condition which accompanied it. The result of this contretemps was an altercation between the duke and his nephew, and a decided refusal on the part of the latter to desert the opposition, and the relinquishment, as a matter of course, of the command which had been offered to him. This proceeding of Lord Edward, which led to an estrange- ment with the Duke of Richmond, enhanced his merits in the estimation of Fox and the leaders of the Whig party in England; and it had the effect also, unfortunately, of turning all his thoughts to politics. Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond, was born in 1735. lie passed through the several inferior grades in the army, to the rank of general, in 1782. He iillcd several of the highest offices in the state. He was one of the principal secretaries of state in 1766; master-general of the ordnance in 1782. He married, in 1757, a daughter of the Earl of Aylesbury. He had two sisters by his father's first marriage, 1. Lady Gcorgina Caroline, mar- ried to the Right Honourable Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Hol- land. 2. Lady Amelia, first married to James Earl of Kildare, afterwards Duke of Leinster; and secondly, to William Ogilvie, Esq. By his father's second marriage with a daughter of the Murquess of Lothian, he had four sisters, of whom two are con- nected with the subject of this memoir. 1. Lady Louisa Augusta, born the 24th of November, 1743, married, in 1758, to the Right Honourable Thomas Connolly, of Castletown, county Kildare, in Ireland. 2. Lady Sarah, born on the 14th of February, 1745; married, in 17b'2, to Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, Bart.; and secondly, in 1781, to the Hon. George Napier. In the seventh session of the parliament which met the 21st January, and terminated the 5th of May, 1790, Lord Edward Fitzgerald having ceased to be the representative of the borough of Athy, was returned for the county of Kildare, and continued to represent that county for six years.* * In the new parliament, which assembled the 2nd of July, 1790, the members for the county of Kildare were Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Maurice B. St. Legor Keatinge; for the borough of Athy, Lieutenant-Colonel A. Orinsby and Frederic 374 lord edward's parliamentary career. In December, 1792, a body of the old Volunteers, associated under the name of the First National Battalion, publicly announced their intention of assembling in Dublin, and parading publicly on an appointed day. The device of this corps was an Irish harp without a crown, surmounted by the Cap of Liberty. The go- vernment issued a proclamation forbidding the assemblage the day preceding the appointed meeting. The parliament was called on to ratify this proclamation. On this occasion Mr. Grattan sup- ported the government in issuing their proclamation ; Lord Edward Fitzgerald, with more consistency, but less discretion perhaps, indignantly opposed that measure. He said with much vehe- mence: "I give my most hearty disapprobation to this address; for I do think that the Lord Lieutenant and the majority of this house are the worst subjects the king has". A storm of no ordinary violence was the result. The virtuous ministerial party, the constitutional Beresfords, Tolers, Trenches, and Tottenhams, indignantly exclaimed : " To the bar ! take down his words 1" Every one in the house shouted more or less, and became vehement and agitated, with one exception, and that was Lord Edward Fitz- gerald. The house was cleared, and the storm raged in the cleared house for some hours after the clearance, and divers unsuccessful attempts were made to get a satisfactory explanation from the contumelious lord ; but all that could be effected was une excuse pire que le delit. The Parliamentary Register does not report it; but the questionable apology is said to have amounted simply to an admission that " he had spoken what had been taken down; t'was true, and he was sorry for it". "The house", says the Parliamentary Register, "resolved nem. con. that the excuse offered by the Right Honourable Edward Fitzgerald, commonly called Lord Edward, for the words so spoken, is unsatisfactory and insufficient. "Ordered — That Lord Edward do attend at the bar to-morrow". The following day his lordship attended at the bar of the house, made some kind of an apology, which evidently was no apology at all, for it is not reported in the Parliamentary Register, when a division taking place, " the apology was accepted by 135 votes in favour of it, 55 votes being only against its acceptance".* On the 6th of February, 1793, the Arms and Gunpowder Bill John Falkener, Esq. ; for the borough of Kildare, "Vernon Digby, Esq., and Robert Graydon, Esq. ; for the borough of Naas, Lord Naas and James Bond, Esq. ; for the borough of Harristown, Sir Fitzgerald Aylraer and Arthur Burdett, Esq. The Honourable Charles Fitzgerald, who had represented the county of Kildare in the previous parliament, was returned for the borough of Cavan ; and Lord Henry Fitzgerald, who had represented the borough of Kildare in the former parliament, sat in the new one for the city of Dublin, his colleague being Henry Grattan, Esq. * " Farliamentary Register", vol. xiii. p. 82. t LORD EDWARD'S PART IN DEBATE ON INSURRECTION ACT. 375 being gone into in committee, Lord Edward said, " that the clause imposing penalties on the removal of arms from one place to another, was an infringement on the liberty of the subject. He was informed by gentlemen of administration that the Defenders were now in arms. In case of an attack upon his house, would he not be allowed arms without license, for its defence ? Must Volunteers apply for a license to the Lord Lieutenant, his secretary, or the Commissioners of the Revenue, as the bill requires, as often as they wish to go through their evolutions ? He therefore voted against this clause particularly, and considered the entire bill a penal one".* In the debate on the Insurrection Act, productive of such cala- mitous results, in reference to the resolution of the house connected with that measure, Lord Edward said: u I shall oppose this reso- lution, because I think that this resolution will not prevent the crimes of which the right honourable gentleman complains. The disturbances of the country, sir, are not to be remedied by any coercive measures, however strong; such measures will tend rather to exasperate than to remove the evil. Nothing, sir, can effect this, and restore tranquillity to the country, but a serious, a candid endeavour of government and of this house to redress the grievances of the people. Redress these, and the people will return to their allegiance and their duty ; suffer them to continue, and neither your resolutions nor your bills will have any effect. I shall therefore, sir, oppose not only this resolution, but all the resolutions which the right honourable gentleman has read to you, except perhaps one — that which goes to constitute the written testimony of a dving witness good evidence. This, I think, is fair, and likely to facilitate the course of justice, without violently infringing, as all the other resolutions seem to do, the liberty of the subject". Lord Edward was not at the time of this debate, nor for a long time after, a United Irishman. July 19, 1794, speaking of Irish parliamentary affairs, Lord Edward says: " I know if he (the Duke of Leinster) goes over to the ministry, I shall not go with him ; for my obstinacy or perse- verance grows stronger every day, and all the events that have passed, and are passing, but convince me more and more, that these two countries must see very strong changes, and cannot come to good unless they do". Lord Edward Fitzgerald, on the occasion of the election in 1797, addressed the electors of the county of Kildare, declaring his intention of not offering himself as a candidate, and assigning his reasons for that step. * "Parliamentary Register' - , vol. xiii., p. 153. 376 lord edwarjd's secession from parliament. [From Falkener's Journal, July 27, 1797.] LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD'S ADDRESS TO THE ELECTORS OF THE COUNTY KILDARE. " I take this opportunity of thanking my fellow-citizens for the favour they conferred on me at the last general election. I hope the conduct I pursued since met their approbation ; it was dictated by the purest motives and most fervent wish for the welfare and happiness of Ireland. I shall not offer myself at present a candi- date, feeling that, under the present circumstances, there can be no free election in Ireland ; any return made will be only by sufferance of the nearest military commanding officer. What is to be expected from a parliament returned under martial law? Looking to the true spirit of the British constitution, I doubt if a body elected under such circumstances, can be called a parliament, or its acts reckoned binding. " I hope my fellow-citizens of the county of Kildare will not look on my declining to stand a candidate now as abandoning their interests. I trust to see the day when I shall offer myself to represent them in a parliament that will be freely and fairly elected, and can be venerated by all honest men. " Though not your representative, believe me always your faithful servant, " Edward Fitzgerald. "Kildare, July 14th, 1797". The parliament which met the 16th of October, 1796, and ended the 27th of July, 1797, was the last in which Lord Edward sat. He had been a member of the House of Commons fourteen years, when, despairing of effecting any beneficial object for his country in it, he determined to retire from parliamentary life. Grattan, O'Connor, and Lord Edward, in 1797, appear to have been actuated by the same motives, which led Fox in the previous year, the leader of the opposition in England, to secede from par- liament, wearied, and dispirited, and worn out with fruitless efforts to stem the torrent of rampant despotism and antagonism to reform of every kind. Grattan, Duquerry, Ponsonby, and Sir Laurence Parsons eschewed all overt acts of sedition and high treason. They con- sidered it was unparliamentary for members to " unthread the rude eye of rebellion". It was only permissible for them to rouse the slumbering people, and stimulate their leaders by their eloquent invectives against government; to speak of swords and daggers, and of the headsman's axe for bad rulers, but in a parliamentary, SQUABBLES OF FACTIONS— MASQUERADING S OF JOBBERS. 377 metaphorical sense only ; to make the people believe they were really in earnest with regard to the use of the formidable weapons of which they spoke, and were ready to do and die in defence of their country, when the fitting occasion came. The government people denounced the opposition in 1797 as covert traitors; and the opposition, dealing with the government party's outrages upon them, retaliated in equally violent language on the Tories. If either faction could have possibly so decried and discredited the other party as to make it safe and facile to hang their opponents, they would apparently have done so with the greatest alacrity. But there was more of downright earnestness in the violent vindictive language of the Clares, Beresfords, and Castlereaidis, than in the flowers of patriotic eloquence and flights of indignant oratory in support of the cause of reform, and in the denunciations of the boroughmongeis. However, the language of the Whig leaders was sufficiently explicit. At an earlier period, between 1784 and 1790, the spirit of the Volunteers still animated the breasts of the leading members of the opposition. There are some traces of the soldier-statesman ele- ments in the following passage from a speech of Grattan : — M You have no adequate responsibility in Ireland, and politi- cians laugh at the sword of justice, which falls short of their heads, and only precipitates on their reputation And yet in this country we have had victims. The aristocracy has at diffe- rent times been a victim ; but ministers in all their criminal suc- cession here is a chasm, a blank, in your history. Sir, you have in Ireland no axe ; therefore no good minister". In 1790, we find Mr. Grattan denouncing the members of the government and their parliamentary supporters as " the ringleaders of sedition . . The present administration is an enemy to the law, first, because it has broken the law ; secondly, because it has attempted to poison the true sources both of legislation and justice. And however the friends of that administration may talk plausibly on the subject of public tranquillity, they are, in fact, the ring- leaders of sedition placed in authority. Rank majorities may give a nation law; but rank majorities cannot give law authority". Long previously to the period of Grattan's secession from par- liament, in the celebrated memorial of the Whig Club, he de- scribes the Irish government, most truthfully indeed, as having abandoned all the functions of a government instituted for the public weal. " They have proceeded", he says, "to a system of coercion to support their corruption, and to dragoon the people, as they had bought the parliament. They began that system which tended in a qualified manner to disarm his Majesty's sub- 378 HOW BAD RULERS " CUT UP GOVERNMENTS BY THE ROOTS". jects under certain regulations called a Gunpowder Bill, and which had principally in view to put down the Irish Volunteers ; and to check the discontent which grew from this measure, further measures of violence and causes of discontent were resorted to". And at a later period, in 1798, in a letter published in an English newspaper, summing up the iniquities of the Irish go- vernment, he observes: — " Having, by such proceedings, lost the affection of the people of, Ireland, they resorted to a system of coercion to support a system of corruption, which they closed by a system of torture, attendant on a conspiracy of which their crimes were the cause". If these statements be true, as every man who is conversant with the history of those disastrous times must feel in his heart they are, in what condition was the compact between the rulers and the ruled ? Had not the rulers reduced it to that state which Locke describes as one of corruption which tends to " cut up go- vernments by the roots, and to poison the very fountains of public security"? " Thus to regulate candidates and electors, and new model the ways of election, what is it but to cut up the government by the roots, and poison the very fountain of public security? But if a long train of abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going, it is not to be wondered at that they should put the rule into such hands as may secure to them the ends for wdiich government was at first erected".* Fox had evidently very nearly arrived at the conclusion which O'Connor and Fitzgerald had come to in 1796, that the government was intolerably bad, and that all efforts in parliament to remedy the evils of its potent despotism were hopeless. And we are told by Moore that " had there existed at that time in England anything like the same prevalent sympathy with the new doctrines of democracy, as responded throughout Ireland, there is no saying how far short of the daring aims of Lord Edward even this great constitutional Whig leader might, in the warmth of his generous zeal, have ventured". When Lord Edward and O'Connor proceeded on their perilous and momentous mission to the continent, in May, 1796, they passed through London, and Lord Edward is known to have enjoyed the society of his Whig friends, " Charles Fox, Sheridan, and se- veral other distinguished public men". O'Connor was then inti- mately acquainted with Fox, and it may be reasonably presumed * "Locke on Government". THE WHIG LEADERS ON THE VERGE OF REVOLUTION IN 1796-7. 3 he did not pass through London without visiting Fox, though w e have no account of his having done so. We know that he was on terms of social intercourse with Fox on the occasion of his second intended similar mission to the continent, in the early part of 1798, when he passed through London, for that fact was given in evidence on O'Connor's trial at Maidstone by Fox him- self; and if O'Connor kept the object of his mission concealed from his friend, Fox must have been greatly deceived in the opinion he had formed of his character, for he swore on that trial that he considered Mr. O'Connor one of the most candid men he had ever known. Lord Edward's candour, surely, was not less remarkable than O'Connors. His intimacy with Fox was closer, and his relations with him of a kind more near and dear than those which subsisted between O'Connor and Fox. We may reasonably conclude, then, that Lord Edward's candour was not less manifest in 1796, in his relations with one of his nearest and dearest fiiends, thau it was obvious in his relations with all men in whom he placed implicit trust. Fox and Grattan were of one opinion as to the intolerable nature of the despotism of Pitt, and of all constitutional govern- * ment having been made a mere sophism, by the able, unscrupu- lous, and most unprincipled minister. Fox might have gone to any length for his cause and his country, if he saw his way clearly, and a reasonable prospect of success was in the vista. Grattan was preeminently an orator, the first and best of modern times, — a man of words and not of action. The forum, and not the field, was the proper and appropriate theatre for the grand efforts of his genius in behalf of his country; he might die for it on the floor of the house, more than metaphorically; but as nature husbands her great gilts, and to one man, favoured by her with strength of mind and will, sternness of purpose, uu- changcability of resolution, signal intrepidity and prowess, fit for any great attempt, are given ; and to another of her favoured few she grants the glorious privilege of persuading men ; of effecting marvellous triumphs over the* hearts of people who are not corrupt, depraved, or venal; of swaying the judgments and the imaginations of multitudes of hearers by the powders of that God- like gilt of eloquence. But those to whom she gives the toga, and assigns the forum for their sphere of exertion, she incumbers not with sword or shield. She arms them with the weapon of the tongue, and she sends forth her chosen ones to talk for heroes who seem to be ordained and constituted specially to fight. Lord Edward was certainly not of the first-named category; he be- longed to the other. He was a man of the class who do not talk much in public. And if an honest man was put on his oath, 380 lord edward's acquaintance with tom paine in paris. told to place his hand on his heart, and declare truly his opinion whether this land of Ireland has been most deeply injured in its morals and its mind, by its proneness to be led, governed, and thought for by the talking chiefs and celebrities of the first- mentioned category, or by its disposition to run rashly into schemes and projects devised by the latter, he would have to answer, it is to be feared, " the people of Ireland have been more debauched by the former". When Grattan returned to the Irish House of Commons, at the close of the reign of terror, he pronounced a memorable judg- ment on the crimes against the people of Ireland of the chief state culprit of that disastrous period, the prime minister, William Pitt, which, if just, and if Christianity be true, it were better for that man if he never had been born. " I think now", said Grattan, deliberately and solemnly, addressing the House of Commons, " as I thought then (1798), that the treason of the minister against the liberties of the people, was infinitely worse than the rebellion of the people against the minister". CHAPTER III. lord e. Fitzgerald's visit to paris in October, 1792. connection with tom paine. practical acquaintance with the horrors of the revo- lution, part taken by him in the celebration of the victories of the republic. renounces his title. toasts given by lord edward AT A BANQUET GIVEN BY THE ENGLISH IN PARIS. HIS DISMISSAL FROM THE ARMY. HIS MARRIAGE WITH PAMELA, THE REPUTED DAUGHTER OF MADAME DE GENLIS AND PHILIP JOSEPH (eGALITe), DUC d'oRLEANS. The latter end of October, 1792, Lord Edward visited Paris; his first letter to his mother from that city is dated 30th of October, and therein he gives an account of an intimate acquaintance with a man of unenviable notoriety, Thomas Paine. Perhaps the only passage in any letter ever written by Lord Edward, that has met the public eye, which one might desire had not been penned by him, is the following: — " I lodge with my friend Paine; we breakfast, dine, and sup together. The more I see of his interior, the more I like and res- pect him. I cannot express how kind he is to me ; there is a simplicity of manner, a goodness of heart, and a strength of mind in him, that I never knew a man before possess". This acquaintance of Lord Edward with Paine was a most dis- astrous one, there is reason to believe ; for in the course of less than three weeks from the date of the above intimation, the Lon- LORD EDWARD S CELEBRATION OE VICTORIES OF THE REPUBLIC. 381 don papers copied from the Frencli journals, dated the 10th of November, an announcement which led to Lord Edward's being cashiered. Paris, November 19th. M Yesterday the English arrived in Paris, assembled at White's hotel, to celebrate the triumph of victories gained over their late invaders by the armies of France. Though the festival was in- tended to be purely British, the meeting was attended by citizens of various countries, by deputies of the convention, by generals, and other officers of the armies then stationed or visiting Paris — o J. H. Stone in the chair. " Among the toasts were ' The armies of France : may the ex- ample of its citizen soldiers be followed by all enslaved countries, till tyrants and tyranny be extinct'. u An address proposed to the National Convention. Among several toasts proposed by the citizens Sir R. Smith and Lord E. Fitzgerald, was the following: * May the patriotic airs of the German Legion (Ca Ira, the Carmagnole, the Marseillaise March, etc.) soon become the favourite music of every army, and may the soldier and citizen join in the chorus'. " General Dillon proposed 1 The people of Ireland ; and may government profit by the example of France, and reform pre- vent revolution'. " Sir Robert Smith and Lord E. Fitzgerald renounced their titles ; and a toast proposed by the former was drank : ' The speedy abolition of hereditary titles and feudal distinctions'". We know for certain that Lord Edward Fitzgerald was. in Paris the beginning of October, 17 '9 1. In the two previous months of August and September, the most terrible of all the atrocities that stained the French Revolution were committed. In the latter month of September, Paris was the scene of that most frightful of all the episodes in the history of popular excesses, when the rage of unbridled passions went stark mad with excite- ment and the fanaticism of fear and impiety ; when the inmates of the several prisons in the metropolis w r ere butchered in cold blood; when 1$0 priests were massacred in a single place of de- tention — the convent of the Carmes; when the Duchess of Lam- balle was savagely cut down at the door of her prison, and her dead body was mutilated by a horde of frantic wretches shouting over her mangled remains, vive la republiquef I cannot conceive it possible that Lord Edward Fitzgerald witnessed these horrible outrages against humanity ; but it cannot be denied that he was in the city where they were committed within a month of the time of their perpetration, and he could not have been in ignor- ance of them. In the month of October he was in the society of 382 LEADERS WHO ARE SERENE WHEN THE SEA OF POLITICS IS CALM, men in Paris who sympathised not with the victims of September, but with the actors in those scenes of terror. Lord Edward's sym- pathies were not with the latter, we may rest assured ; but how are we to reconcile his knowledge of those atrocities with the expressions we find in his letters of that period, of interest in no degree abated or diminished in the cause which was promoted by such crimes? When a man enters into politics, he says to himself, thus far will I go, and no further; but when he engages in the discussion of them at public meetings, he finds himself gradually stirred, warmed, excited by the animating scenes before him. Eventually he is carried far beyond the limits he assigned to his journey. In all large assemblies of human beings engaged in controversies of any kind, the advocacy of any cause, or warfare with any form of oppression or injustice, there is an inebriating influence at work on men's minds, independent of the excitation of the passions and the exaltation of the mental faculties by the powers of oratory, and the enthusiasm engendered by its appeals to patriotism, to genero- sity, to ruling principles, or dominant prejudices ; there is another potent influence, too, at work, which is never taken into account, in that atmosphere of aggregated life and intellectual activity, which surrounds people in political clubs and societies, and seems to impart an individual consciousness of contiguity with new ele- ments of power and energies of mind combined in masses. More- over, the man who takes an active part in the business of a public meeting, or the agitation of a question of great pith and moment to the state, or a party or an interest of his own which he endea- vours to identify with a public one, and becomes a frequent speaker on the side and subject he espouses, creates an atmosphere around him out of words, in which he lives, moves, and has a being; and through that medium, which exaggerates the propor- tions and dimensions of every object he regards with favour, he sees everything that is presented to him, and he sees nothing as it really is in size and shape, at the centre and at every point of the circumference. If this be so with men who become members and leaders of clubs, and figure in public meetings, how much more must these observations apply to men who engage in revolutions. I find some observations on this subject, by the author of the life of Louis Philip Joseph, Due d'Orleans, worthy of a better cause the than that which he embarked in, namely, the vindication of memory of a man on whose tomb two words would suffice for an epitaph : " Imploro silentiam". " In general", says Tournois, " it is ignored to what an extent revolutions change the dispositions of men, denaturalize their DISORDERED AND DISTURBED WHEN THE TEMPEST SETS IN. 383 characters, and disfigure their best qualities. What, then, is that liberty which exacts such sacrifices, and effects such changes in men's souls? It is the forbidden fruit, which is not to be tasted with impunity; it is the narcotic plant, which intoxicates the chamois on the summits of the Alps; it is the fire from Heaven, which Prometheus stole, and which, glancing from the clouds, falls on its inhabitants, and is only revealed to them in its lightning Hashes. What numerous examples of results, alike brilliant and destructive, does not the French Revolution present to us in the careers of its celebrities P* In all revolutions, no doubt, we see men, possessed of the esteem and confidence of their fellow-citizens, and no doubt those moral qualities and social affections which justify that esteem and confidence, pushed out of their ordinary course in that frightful drama of violence and terror, men arrive at the last act of concurrence or cooperation in deeds of horror es- sentially opposed to all the former instincts of humanity in their natures and the tendencies connected with their organization. And how does that arrive? By the irresistible force of the cur- rent of circumstances in whose vortex they have been plunged; the ground, as it were, slipping from under their feet, when they were only on the borders of the stream of politics, and by their prudence and sagacity imagined they could keep themselves in safety, or follow their own course with honour and advantage. When the sea was culm, and all was mild and temperate in the atmosphere around them, they pursued the even tenour of their way of action with serenity and composure; and the consciousness of security for themselves and their party enabled them to do so, and to gain even admiration and applause for successful leadership, occasionally, perhaps, bold and daring in its aspect, but never reck- less and inconsiderate, and of headlong impetuosity in its advance. But, once plunged in the storm of political strife, going deeper and deeper into those " devilish polities as poor Lord Edward once spoke of those of his native land, the men who find them- selves in the tempest are no longer the same beings that they were before: they are in a new element, and are surrounded by iniluences which disturb their faculties, which agitate their feel- ings, and have an exaggerating, inebriating, and strangely stirring effect on their ideas and their sentiments ; they begin to feel more than they reason, and they are in a fit state to become fanatics in any cause they are embarked in, from the mere force and viru- lence alone of contagious terror or enthusiasm. However we call that state of the mind, of sudden vertigo, or temporary delirium, an epidemic madness at one and the same time prevailing in many * Tournois, " Histoire de L. P. J. Due d'Orleans, torn, ii., p. 331. 384 EPIDEMIC MADNESS PREVALENT IN REVOLUTIONS. places, is in existence, and it everywhere impels the passions in the same direction, and hurries on men into violent courses and the shedding of blood; their acts then resemble the oracles of old, which derived their inspirations from diabolical sources, and they recall wdiat we have read of the words of the sybil, of terrific sound and fury, sent forth from the cavern, spreading terror all around, blending truth with obscurity, and profaning the names of divine things by application to crimes and maddening im- pulses. " Talibus ex adyto dictis Cumsea Sybyllo Horrendas canit ambages, antroque remugit Obscuris vera involvens". Virg., JEn. vi. " You (says a French writer), whoever you may be, who can be calm when everything is calm around you ; incapable of doing evil, because there is no object to be attained by doing it, or no temptation to its commission — you know not (oh, no), you know not what you yourselves would do if you were thrown into the midst of a revolution, and placed within the volcanic circle of the ebullition of all the popular passions, loosened from all restraints. Alas ! the greater part of the men who have been actors in revolu- tions, had once been as good men as you now may be ; and, never- theless, see what they have done, and what wrecks remain of their humanity !" They have been carried away by an extraor- dinary debordemeni of the flood of new or too long repressed opinions. The waters at length have returned into their bed ; but they who ventured on them, or were swept away by them, where are they to be found ? You must look for their remains on the borders of that stream, and for their memories amidst the mournful recollections of the past, the censure without charity of its history, and the anticipated injustice or deserved maledictions of its future judgments. The dismissal of Lord Edward from the army preceded his marriage on the 21st of December, 1792. Mr. Fox called atten- tion in the House of Commons " to certain dismissals which had taken place in the army — those of Lord Semple, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and also Captain Gawler". Of his near relative, Lord Edward, Fox observed — " He would say from his personal know- ledge, that the service did not possess a more zealous, meritorious, or promising member. He had served his country in actual ser- vice, and had bled for it". The first intimation of an acquaintance being made with Madame De Genlis on the part of Lord Edward, is in a letter from Paris, without name of month (but which must have been lord edward's marriage. 385 written in the latter end of October or early in November, 1792), wherein he states that he is to dine that day with Madame Sillery. The Countess de Genlis, in her work, Precis de conduite de Madame de Genlis depais la Revolution, refers to the marriage of Pamela with Lord Edward in the following terms : — " We arrived at Tournay in the beginning of December of the year 1792. Three weeks after I had the happiness to marry my adopted daughter (f ile d' adoption), the angelic Pamela, to Lord Edward Fitzgerald". This event she designates as a recompense of " the best action of her life", namely, the adoption of an " incomparable child", which " Providence had cast into her arms", and the development of that child's reason and intelligence, and those virtues of hers which then rendered her " the model of the wives and mothers of her age". Mademoiselle d'Orleans (Madame Adelaide), in 1794, in a letter to the Princesse de Conti, thus speaks of the marriage of Pamela : "A month after our arrival at Tournay, Madame de Genlis married to Lord Edward Fitzgerald Pamela, a young person whom she (Madame de Genlis) had brought up, and who had set out immediatelv after her marriage for England".* — Mem. Madame J o o de Genlis, vol. iv., p. 187. Ample details and original communications of no ordinary in- terest, the result of recent researches in France respecting the marriage of Lord Edward Fitzgerald with Pamela, will be found in the notice of the latter, which follows this memoir. In that notice all the information will be found that is ever likely to be given, or possible to be obtained, respecting the rela- tionship in which Pamela stood to Madame de Genlis, her early history, the mysteriousness in which it is involved, the great trials and vicissitudes of her career, and its mournful termination, — the story of a life that has all the interest of romance, and some- thing even stranger than fiction in its truth. * Amongst the fashionable arrivals from the continent, announced in a London paper in the month of January, 1793, I rind the following: — "3rd January, 1793, Lord Edward Fitzgerald arrived with his bride at Dover from France, immediately after his lordship's marriage". II. 2C> 386 ORIGIN OF LORD EDWARD'S CONNECTION WITH UNITED IRISHMEN. CHAPTER IV. CONNECTION OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD WITH THE SOCIETY OF UNITED IRISHMEN. O'Connor's close intimacy with Lord Edward Fitzgerald led to the introduction of the latter into the Society of the United Irish- men. We find Lord Edward accompanying O'Connor to the North, and residing for some weeks in the vicinity of Belfast, on the occasion of the latter offering himself to the electors of An- trim as a candidate for that county. In 1796, O'Connor was daily in social intercourse with Lord Edward at Frescati. A friend of mine, to whom I have had to refer elsewhere as one of the most prized and trusted of Lord Edward's friends, Mr. W. M., informed me he used frequently to meet O'Connor at Fres- cati at that period, and on one occasion he witnessed a scene there which throws some light on a recent publication of General O'Connor's peculiar sentiments on religious subjects. Mr. M. met at dinner at Frescati a party of five or six persons, amongst whom were Arthur O'Connor and the Rev. Mr. Connolly, parish priest of Booterstown, a preacher of great celebrity at that time. At dinner, and while Lady Fitzgerald was present, Arthur O'Connor was eloquent and vehement in his tirades against hypocrisy and super- stition, and anon against certain Christian doctrines, and pre- sently against Christianity itself altogether. These escapades of O'Connor were not at all in unison with Lord Edward's senti- ments ; but in his quality of host he thought himself obliged to bear with what was distasteful to him. Father Connolly's annoy- ance during dinner was very great, but it was only at the retire- ment of the lady of the party that he gave vent to his indigna- tion, when O'Connor indulged in some new sallies of raillery and ridicule while descanting on the imbecility of persons who be- lieved that the Bible was the word of God. Father Connolly, addressing Lord Edward Fitzgerald, said: " My lord, I have sat in silence as long as I could remain silent, listening to the abuse of this gentleman on the clergy of every church, and witnessing the war he has waged on all the funda- mental truths of Christianity. My lord, you have a faith to main- tain, the character of a Christian man to support for integrity and honour ; you have a country to serve, a young and beautiful wife to protect, and innocent children to guard and to watch over. But, my lord, what security is there for your principles as a man of honour, except in religion ? what guarantee have you for the integrity of those men in public life in whom you trust, except in REV. 3IR. COXXOLLY AXD W. M. AT FRESCATI. 387 religion ? what protection have you in your family against profli- gacy and licentiousness, except in religion ? My lord, the country would not be safe in your charge, if Mr. O'Connor's opinions pre- vailed over you. Your wife, my lord, would not be safe in the society of a man who outraged all religious tenets, expected no- thing from Gods goodness in another life, and had nothing to fear from His judgments, here or elsewhere. Neither, my lord, would your children's innocence remain uncorrupted for any length of time in the hearing of the opinions of this gentleman". This brief, emphatic sermon, ex cathedra, pronounced with great solemnity, produced a marvellous effect.' If a small bomb- shell had been thrower amongst the party, the effect could not have been much greater. O'Connor was a man not easily abashed, nor rebuked with impunity, but he bore the chastisement he drew on himself on this occasion with meekness ; and it was the opinion of W. M. that it was fortunate for him he did so, for Connolly was a man of great intellectual power, and when roused was a most formidable antagonist. More, in my opinion, was meant by Connolly than met the ear on the occasion above referred to ; and in all probability an opportunity long deliberately sought, was at length seized on, for directing Lord Edwards attention to some- thing more important to him than the mere speculative opinions of O'Connor. In 1797, an occurrence took place on the Curragh of Kildare, which placed a party of military gentlemen, some ten or twelve dragoon officers, in a ridiculous position, and displayed the charac- ter of Lord Edward, and that peculiar quality of high courage, cool self possession, calm collectedness, self command, and con- sciousness of power to resist aggression, which distinguished him in all emergencies of danger or difficulties of any kind. Lord Edward and his friend Arthur O'Connor were riding home at the conclusion of the Curragh races, and had not proceeded very far from the stand when the party above mentioned of dragoon officers galloped after them, whirled round, and intercepted them. One of the party, desperately ambitious of signalizing his valour and his loyalty, commanded Lord Edward to take off his necker- chief, which being of a green colour, was evidently a seditious neck- tie. The poor would-be-hero little knew the stuff of which the man was made whom he had unfortunately singled out for his experi- mental exploit. Lord Edward looked at the gentleman fully in the face, calmly and coolly, and he said to him in a deliberate manner, and in that peculiarly quiet tone in which he was wont to speak whenever his mind was made up that a thing of moment was to be done: " Your cloth would speak you to be gentlemen, but this conduct conveys a very different impression. As to this 388 RENCONTRE OF O'CONNOR AND LORD EDWARD ON THE CURRAGH. neckcloth that so offends you, all I can say is, here I stand ; let any man among you, who dares, come forward and take it off". " To make a hazard of new fortunes here" was clearly too des- perate a venture for Lord Edward's military assailants. " Big Mars seems bankrupt in the braggart host". The bold dragoons, sadly disconcerted, puzzled, look at each other, doubtful how to proceed, or, to express it more poetically, The horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks, With torch staves in their hands : and their poor jades Lob down their heads, drooping their hides and hips.* In this unpleasant state of things, Mr. O'Connor kindly inter- posed, and with that remarkable amenity *of manner, which he could assume better than most men when he had " something dan- gerous" in his thoughts, that to a wary adversary was a kind of notice, " which let thy wisdom fear", in the most bland and gen- tlemanly way observed, if the officers chose to appoint two of their number, his friend Lord Edward and himself would be found in Kildare in readiness to receive any communication from them. This polite intimation had the cooling-down effect that might be expected. The ten or twelve Drawcansir dragoons began to reflect on their folly. The parties separated. The ex- pected challenge was awaited two days, but it did not come. Thus on many similar occasions was a noble profession disgraced and its service hurt by the relaxation of all discipline in that reign of terror, which the gallant Abercrombie denounced and refused to sanction with his sword. CHAPTER V. CONNECTION OF LORD EDWARD WITH THE SOCIETY OF UNITED IRISHMEN. The military organization of the United Irishmen, which origi- nated in Ulster, was adopted in Leinster towards the end of 1796. By the new organization, the civil officers received military titles ; the secretary of each society of twelve, was called the petty officer ; each delegate of five societies a captain, having sixty men under his command; and the delegate of ten lower baronial societies was usually the colonel, each battalion being composed of six hundred men. The colonels of each county sent in the names of three persons to the directory, one of whom was appointed by it * Henry V., iv. 2. JOHN KEOGH AND RICHARD MCORMICK, UNITED IRISHMEN. 389 adjutant-general of the county, who communicated directly with the executive.* We would be led into great error by Arthur O'Connor, if we imagined that an alliance with France had not been, long pre- viously to 1796, sought by the northern leaders of the Society of United Irishmen, and steps taken to effect that object no less strongly desired by Thomas Addis Emmet, John Keogh, and Richard M'Cormick. The three last-named persons were men of no common order ; they were eminently sober-minded, deep-thinking, able, and up- right men. Richard M'Cormick, the least known of them, was a man of sound judgment and plain sterling common sense, in whose discretion and integrity the leaders had entire confidence. The readers of Tone's journals will remember the strong terms of regard and esteem in which he is there spoken of under the sobriquet of Magog. An extract or two from the journals will suffice to show the nature of his views, and Tone's estimate of him, as early as 1792 : — 11 4th October, 1792. — Dined with Magog, a good fellow ; much better than Gog (John Keogh), a Papist; ' wine does wonders. Propose to revive Volunteers in the city ; Magog thinks we may have 1,000 Catholics before 17th of March next; agreed that he shall begin to canvass for recruits immediately, and continue through the winter. If he succeed, he will resign his office of secretary to the Catholic Committee, and commence a mere Vo- lunteer. Bravo ! all this looks well ; satisfied that volunteering will be once more the salvation of Ireland. A good thing to have 1,500 men in Dublin. Green uniforms, etc."t In May, 1795, before Tone took his departure for America with the resolution of opening communications with the French government through the channel of the French minister at Phila- delphia, on the part of the principal leaders of the Society of United Irishmen, to demand the aid of men and arms for Ireland, he had interviews with Keogh, Emmet, Russell, and M'Corrnick. " It is unnecessary", says Tone, " I believe, to say that this, my plan, met with the warmest approbation and support both from Russell and Emmet-J . . All my friends made it, I believe, a point to call on me. . . My friends M'Cormick and Keogh, who had both interested themselves exceedingly all along in my behalf, * See examination of Arthur O'Connor before the Secret Committee of the House of Lords : — Com. — When did the mlitary organization begin? O'Connor. — Shortly after the executive had resolved on resistance to the Irish government, and on an alliance with France, in May, 1796. t M Tone s Life", voL i., p. 195. % Ibid., vol. i., p. 125. 390 O'CONNOR AND LORD EDWARD'S MISSION TO FRANCE IN 1796. were, of course, among the foremost. It was hardly necessary to men of their foresight, and who knew me perfectly, to mention my plans ; however, for greater certainty, I consulted them both, and I received, as I expected, their most cordial approbation, and they both laid the most positive injunctions upon me to leave nothing unattempted to force my way to France, and lay our situation before the government there, observing, at the same time, that if I succeeded, there was nothing in the power of my country to bestow, to which I might not fairly pretend".* In May, 1796, Lord Edward proceeded on his first treasonable mission to the continent, to be joined there or in London by Arthur O'Connor. Lord Edward, with the view of keeping up appearances of private objects for his continental journey, was accompanied by Lady Edward Fitzgerald. From London he went to Hamburg, and soon was in treaty with Reinhart, the French minister at that place, having been joined there by Arthur O'Connor. The negociations were broken off, no one appeared to know why or wherefore. Reinhart was suspected of being a traitor to his government, and not without good reason, as that gentleman's letters to his government, addressed to Charles De La- croix, of which copies were duly furnished to the English govern- ment through their consular agent at Hamburg, would seem to prove.f O'Connor and Fitzgerald discontinued their negociations with that minister, quitted Hamburg, and proceeded to Basle. In opening these negociations with the French Directory through the medium of M. Barthelemi, and in tumbling into the hands of this slippery ecclesiastic, of whose integrity they had no suspicion, they at once placed the secret of their mission in the sympathi- zing bosom of Mr. William Pitt, and revealed their negociations with the French Directory. An arrangement was entered into at Basle for effecting a communication with General Hoche (duly sanctioned by the Directory), who was then preparing for the command of the expedition to Ireland, which Tone's exer- tions had been the means of setting on foot. It ivas represented to Lord Edward at Basle, that Hoche would only communi- cate with one negociator, and that O'Connor alone would be per- * " Tone's Life", vol. i., p. 127. f See "Memoirs of Lord Castlereagh", vol. i., p. 272. In justice to M. Rein- hart, I feel bound to state that I have received a communication from the cele- brated French historian, Mons. Mignet, who formerly occupied the post of Chef des Archives au Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, a situation which afforded him ample official means of knowing the character and the acts of the men above referred to, and especially of Reinhart and De Lacroix, s both in the highest offices of the Ministere des Affaires des Etrangeres — Reinhart as Diplomatic Minister at Ham- burg, and De Lacroix as Foreign Minister of State; and that M. Mignet's belief of the incorruptibility of both these persons is expressed in the strongest terms. — See Appendix. MILITARY ORGANIZATION OF UNITED IRISHMEN. 391 mitted to see the general; eventually, however, that objection was overruled. Accordingly, O'Connor and Lord Edward en- tered the French territory, and after a conference with Hoche, Lord Edward returned to Hamburg. Lord Edward, on his journey from Basle to Hamburg, had for a compagnon de voyage a spy of the British government, a foreign lady, a former mistress of a colleague of Mr. Pitt, but still in the habit of corresponding with her old entreteneur, an intimate friend of the prime minister. Those who desire to know more of the numerous secret corres- pondents of Mr. Pitt in Paris, all the French ports of importance, m Hamburg and Brussels, not foreign courtezans, but, I lament to say, gentlemen of high standing, several of them United Irishmen, some unquestionably who had figured in the north as leaders, will only have to turn to the Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh, published in 1848, vol. i., pages 165, 218, 231, 237, 263, 265, 269, 272, 366, 397, 405, 409. In the spring of 1797, Mr. Edward J. Le wines was sent to France by the Leinster directory, and he proceeded to Paris, and took up his abode there as the resident representative of the Irish nation, duly accredited to the French Republic. In the month of May, 1797, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was sent by the directory to London to meet an emissary of the French govern- ment, who had been sent over to procure information as to the exact state of preparation throughout the country for a general rising; and only a month later, the Leinster directory were so importimed with urgent demands for the sanction of the execu- tive for taking the field, that Dr. M'Neven was despatched on a special mission, for the purpose of urging on the French govern- ment the necessity of immediate cooperation. A military committee was appointed in February, 1798; its duty was to prepare a plan of cooperation with the French when they should land, or of insurrection, in case they should be forced to it before the arrival of the French, a step which the directory was determined if possible to avoid. In the memoir delivered to the Irish government by Messrs. Emmet, O'Connor, and M'Neven, it is stated that none of them " were members of the united system until September or October of the year 1796". Emmet became a member of the directory in the month of January, 1797, and in the month of May he seceded from it, and kept aloof from its affairs for about six months. He was again appointed to the executive in the month of December, and continued to belong to it till the 12th of March, 1798, when the arrests took place. Dr. M'Neven became a member of the new organization in September or October, 1796; having previously been secretary to the exe- cutive directory, he became a member of it about November, 392 ARMED STRENGTH OF THE UNITED IRISHMEN. 1797, and continued to be one until March, 1798. Arthur O'Connor became a member of the directory in November, 1796, and continued to belong to it till January, 1798, when he left Ireland.* Lord Edward was brought into the Union by Arthur O'Connor in 1796. Moore, on this subject, says: — " It would appear to have been about the beginning of 1796 that Lord Edward first entered into the Society of the United Irishmen. That he went through the usual form of initiation by an oath is not, I think, probable ; for, as in the case of Mr. Arthur O'Connor they dispensed with this condition, it is to be con- cluded that the high honour and trustworthiness of their initiate would be accorded also towards Lord Edward". Oliver Bond, a member of the northern executive in 1797, was elected a member of the Leinster directory-general, but declined to act officially, continuing, however, to be in its confidence, and to be consulted with on all affairs of moment. Richard M'Cor- mick, a stuff manufacturer of Mark's Alley, formerly secretary of the Catholic Committee, was the other member of the direc- tory, though not ostensibly or by specific appointment belonging to it. In reply to my inquiries concerning the negociations between the leaders of the Society of United Irishmen and the French go- vernment, O'Connor said : — "Before General O'Connor negociated, in 1796, the treaty for the United Irish with the agent of the French Directory, of which General Hoche's expedition was the result, there never had been any other treaty before that with France. In 1796, he and Lord Edward had an interview with Hoche on the French frontiers, and subsequently negociations were entered into with Buonaparte. Buonaparte had a true intention to invade England, and had an army of 20,000 men in readiness for it, when the in- telligence of the new designs of Austria and Russia caused that intention to be given up". The above statement of O'Connor is calculated to make an im- pression utterly at variance with facts respecting the earnestness of the meditated design of the French government of invading * Arthur O'Connor, in his replies to queries which I addressed to him, says : — "He became a member of the Society of United Irishmen in 1796, and he and Lord Edward Fitzgerald constituted the first Leinster directory. He never took any oath. He had great confidence in the whole northern directory, though less in the steadiness of one living than in that of some others. Of the southern di- rectory, he had implicit confidence in Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Bond, and Jack- son. He never was in a directory with Emmet. . . When O'Connor first applied to Emmet to be of the directory with Jackson and Bond, he declined it. It was not until O'Connor was confined in the Tower of Dublin that Emmet became one of the directory. The first southern directory consisted only of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and O'Connor. The second, of Jackson, Bond, M'Neven, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and O'Connor". PROJECTED INVASION OF ENGLAND. 393 England in 1798 — an impression, however, which O'Connor had no idea of making. He speaks, be it, observed, of an army of 20,000 men in readiness for the invasion, under the command of Buonaparte. But Buonaparte was only one of eleven generals who were to have commanded corps d'armee in that expedition — the first on the list and chief in command. The enormous arma- ment ordered for that expedition far exceeded 200,000 men. One of the most remarkable documents ever published in rela- tion to the projected invasion, is to be found in the Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh, that work of vast histo- rical value and importance for its official revelations (which here- after will be more duly appreciated than it now is), in a paper headed, " Secret Information respecting Hostile Preparations in French Ports in February and March, 1798", vol. i., p. 165. This secret information, communicated to the British minister by a spy, specially employed, it would appear, to visit all the French ports where preparations were carrying on for the in- tended invasion, and the French capital of course, where those preparations were organized, it will be seen, was on intimate terms with the United Irishman, Captain Black well, and, it may be inferred, in the confidence of the United Irishmen who were to take part in that expedition. The noble editor of the Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh truly observes of this remarkable document : " This paper shows with what earnest- ness and determination Napoleon had undertaken the invasion of England in 1798". A few extracts from this document will show the important nature of its information : — " SECRET INFORMATION RESPECTING HOSTILE PREPARATIONS IN FRENCH PORTS IN FEBRUARY AND MARCH, 1798. " 5th February. Sailed from Gravesend, on board the Rebecca sloop, of and for Emden and Flushing, John Thompson, master. "8th. Arrived at Flushing: nothing particular: one 74-gun ship building, one-third finished; one 40-gun ship, and one 16 -gun brig. In Flushing road, guardships, some military stores getting ready to ship for France. " 11th. Arrived at Bruges. 700 troops to guard the town; no preparations of any kind there. " 12th. Ostend. Nothing whatever doing 1 there, and but few troops ; expect 4,000 every day. " 13th. On the road from Ostend to Dunkirque, passed through Newport; nothing doing there whatever; met General Buona- parte between Furnes and Dunkirque, going to Ostend to inspect 394 PROJECTED INVASION OF ENGLAND. the port and make contracts for building flat-bottom boats for the descent. " 14tli and 15th. At Dunkirque. In the Park, forty flat-bot- tomed boats complete ; three gunboats, three guns each, eighteen or twenty-four pounders ; two of the same force in the harbour ; one in the road; two frigates in the basin, one complete, the other not ; several other vessels, but not fitting out. General Buonaparte contracted for the building of twenty-five gunboats, from fifty to seventy feet long, twenty to twenty-five feet broad, to carry two and three guns each ; one hundred pinnaces, to carry fifty men each ; all under bond to be complete in forty days from the 15th of February, and made himself responsible for the payment of the whole. The large boats building on the quays of Dunkirque, the pinnaces in the different boat-builders' yards, and in the Park. " 16th. Set out for Paris. At Bergh, a small town on the side of the canal from Dunkirque to St. Omer, twenty-one large, flat-bottomed boats building, to be sent to Dunkirque ; are made to row a number of oars, and a mast to strike or lay down when needful. " 17th. At Lisle. 4,000 troops arrived from Holland, under marching orders for the coast, with ammunition and arms — all young and able men. " 18th. Left Lisle, passed through Douay, Cambray, and Peronne, for Paris ; all full of troops, horse and foot. " 19th. Arrived at Paris. Full of troops, horse and foot; a guard at every corner of the street, but all quiet. Of the army list troops ordered for the expedition, 275,000 mounted and dis- mounted, cavalry battalion men, and infantry, all to be within twenty-four hours' forced march of the coast. OFFICERS NAMED FOR THE EXPEDITION. General Buonaparte . Desaix . Baraguay D'Hilliers . Chateauneuf Randon Kleber Sousac Latour Stengel, junior Kellerman, junior Kilmaine Dumas Le Grand Chief in command. General of cavalry. All generals of division, except Kel- lerman, jun., who is adjutant-ge- neral-in-chief of the brigade. General of brigade. General of brigade. " 22nd. Set out for Evreux to see Captain Thomas Blackwell, PROJECTED INVASION OF ENGLAND. 395 captain of chasseurs. In this town 5,000 troops, all ready for marching; went with him to Rouen, where head-quarters are ordered, and now 25,000 troops are ready to march at an hour's notice, mounted and dismounted cavalry, 3,000, the rest are foot, but indifferent men, and badly clothed. " 23rd. At Rouen, building on the quay, eleven large gun- boats, to carry three guns, twenty-four pounders, each, and 250 men, or troops. " 24th and 25th. Went down the river with a Danish brig to Havre-de- Grace ; on both sides of the river, thirty-nine flat-bot- tomed boats building, of different dimensions, half-finished, and draw about five or six feet water when complete. " 26th. At Havre. In the dock are seven frigates of different dimensions; three are fitted out, but not manned. Flat-bottom gunboats without number, of different dimensions, not complete — boats; eleven carry two or three guns each, eighteen and twenty- four-pounders. In Havre, and the small towns near it, are 21,000 troops ready to embark at short notice. At Honfleur are sixty flat-bottomed boats and gunboats, but could not know to a cer- tainty what number of the latter. All llat-bottomed boats, as soon as complete, are sent from there to Honfleur. " 2nd March. Returned to Paris. Met a great many sailors going to Havre, and a number of troops, horse and foot. 11 4th. 4,000 troops ordered by government to march from Cambray, Douay, and Lisle, for Dunkirque and Calais ; same time contract made for two hundred Dutch schoots, for sixty to one hundred tons burden, for carrying stores from different parts of Holland along the coast of France; those schoots are flat-bot- tomed vessels, drawing from five to seven feet water, loaded. " 8th. Left Paris for Calais : on the road, troops and wagons with arms, without number, moving in all directions. " 9th. Arrived at Douay. Ninety-one pieces of artillery in the church-yard, getting ready to set out next day for the coast, with a great number of troops ; in the road between Douay and Lisle, seventy wagons, with arms and ammunition for Boulogne, Ca- lais, and Dunkirque. Arrived at Lisle at night; the grand place full of artillery and troops, to march next day for Dunkirque and Calais. " 10th. At Calais, fifteen flat-bottom boats building on the same plan as at Dunkirque. Timber and planks on the road everywhere cutting and transporting. " 11th. At Gravelines nothing doing, particularly at Dun- kirque. On the 12th arrived a great number of troops, with one hundred copper-bottom pontoons, for making floating bridges, about twenty-five feet long, with hooks and chains to link them 396 RETURN OF ARMED UNITED IRISHMEN IN FEBRUARY, 1798. together. Great preparations making ; the gunboats half-finished. Great many of the pinnaces finished, but nothing further parti- cular", ete. Though a national committee was a part of the plan of the ori- ginal organization, the election of national delegates did not take place till the beginning of December, 1797, and then only par- tially. The National Committee, the 26th of February, 1798, passed several resolutions, two of which are worthy of attention.* With respect to the total number of armed men in the Union throughout the country, as estimated by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, when a rising was eventually determined on in the month of March, 1798, the particulars are specified in a document pre- sented by Lord Edward to Mr. Thomas Reynolds, the informer. The document referred to emanated from the National Committee, and is thus described in the report of the Secret Committee of the Irish Parliament, 1798: — PAPER COPIED BY MR. T. REYNOLDS FROM ONE IN THE HANDWRITING OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD, AND GIVEN BY LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD TO MR. REYNOLDS. NATIONAL COMMITTEE, 26TH FEBRUARY, 1798. Armed men. Finances in hand. Ulster . . 110,990 £436 2 4 Munster, . 100,634 147 17 2 Kildare, . 10,863 110 17 7 Wicklow, . ■ . 12,895 93 6 4 Dublin, 3,010 37 2 6 Dublin City, 2,177 321 17 11 Queen's County . 11,689 91 2 1 King's County, 3,600 21 11 3 Carlow, 9,414 49 2 10 Kilkenny, 624 10 2 3 Meath, 1,400 171 2 1 Total, . 279,896 £1,485 4 9 * " Resolved, That we pay no attention whatever to any attempts that may be made by either House of Parliament to divert the public mind from the grand object which we have in view, as nothing short of the complete emancipation of our country will satisfy us. " Resolved, That the counties of Carlow, Meath, Wicklow, Deny, Down, and Antrim deserve well of their country, for their manly offer of emancipating her directly; but that they be requested to bear the shackles of tyranny a little longer, until the whole kingdom shall be in such a state of organization as will, by then' joint cooperation, effect without loss their desirable point, which is hourly being accomplished, and will tend most expeditiously to bring about a union of the four provinces, three only having as yet come forward". CONFERENCE BETWEEN W. M. AND LORD EDWARD IN 1798. 397 By this document it would appear that the total number of armed men throughout the country was estimated by Lord Edward at 279,896. It will be found, however, there is an error of 12,600 in the tot of the returns of the armed men of the several counties ; it should be 267,296, instead of 279,896. There is an error also in the tot of the finances in hand; it should be £1,490 4s. 4d., instead of £1,485 4s. 9d. But from another source, and one whose authenticity is un- questionable, the writer has reason to know that Lord Edward imagined that when once he had raised the standard of revolt, 100,000 effective men might be immediately expected to rally round it. I have elsewhere referred to a very remarkable meeting which took place at the Shakspeare Gallery, Exchequer Street, about a month before the arrests in March, when Lord Edward specially requested his confidential friend, W. M., my informant, to attend a conference with the delegates from the different counties res- pecting the projected rising. The account of the discussion which ensued on that occasion was taken down by me in writing, I may say from the lips of W. M., the same night on which it was related to me. That gentleman no longer exists, but he saw that account as it was published by me in the first edition of this work ; and he stated that it was in every respect an exact report of his rela- lation of the facts referred to. W. M. was a man of strict veracity, no less remarkable for the singular perspicuity and comprehen- siveness of his views, than for the solidity and soundness of his judgment. He was a self-educated, vigorous-minded man, of "strong, sound, round-about common sense"; of great powers of understanding, the natural strength of which I have never seen surpassed. Those great qualities of his were well known and ap- preciated, subsequently to the period of which I treat, by the chief governors of Ireland, under every liberal administration, for a period of some twenty years before his death, which event occurred in 1850. To that portion of his statement which has reference to Lord Edward's views and his own on the subject of the contemplated general rising in April, 1798, I shall only recur in this memoir of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Lord Edward having expressed his opinion that in the existing circumstances of the country the time for action had come, that no foreign aid was then to be expected, and that even without it the chances of success were greatly in favour of the attempt, and hav- ing produced returns of the force to be relied on, he said: "Here are returns that show that 100,000 armed men may be counted on to take the field". " My lord", replied his friend, " it is one 398 CONFERENCE BETWEEN W.M. AND LOUD EDWARD IN 1798. thing to have 100,000 men on paper, and another in the field, A hundred thousand men on paper will not furnish 50,000 in array. I, for one, am enrolled amongst the number ; but I can- didly tell you, you will not find me in your ranks. You know for what objects we joined this Union, and what means we reck- oned on for carrying them into effect. Fifteen thousand French- men were considered essential to our undertaking. If they were so at that time, still more so are they now, when our warlike as- pect has caused the government to pour troops into the country". " What !" said Lord Edward, " would you attempt nothing with- out these 15,000 men — would you not be satisfied with 10,000?" " I would, my lord", replied his friend, " if the aid of the fifteen could not be procured". " But", continued Lord Edward, " if even the ten could not be got, what would you do then?" " I would then accept of five, my lord", was the reply. " But", said Lord Edward, fixing his eyes with great earnest- ness on him, " we cannot get 5,000, and with respect to the larger force we originally wished for, had we succeeded with so large a body of French troops, we might have found it difficult enough to get rid of our allies". To this it was replied, " My lord, if we found it possible to get rid of our enemies, who are more than ten times as numerous as our allies, we could have little difficulty in getting rid of the latter when necessity required it". " But, I tell you we cannot", said Lord Edward, " get even the 5,000 you speak of, and when you know that we cannot, will you desert our cause ?" " My lord", said W. M., "if five thousand men could not be ob- tained, I would seek the assistance of a sufficient number of French officers to head our people ; and with three hundred of these, per- haps we might be justified in making an effort for independence, but not without them. What military men have we of our own to lead our unfortunate people into action against a disciplined army r Lord Edward ridiculed the idea of there being anything like dis- cipline at that time in the English army. " Besides, the numbers", he said, " of the United Irishmen would more than counterbalance any superiority in the discipline of their enemies". " My lord", said his friend, " we must not be deceived. They are disciplined, and our people are not. If the latter are repulsed and broken, who is to reform their lines? Once thrown into dis- order, the greater their numbers, the greater will be the havoc made amongst them". Lord Edward said, " without risking a general engagement, he would be able to get possession of Dublin". MEN WHO MIGHT HAVE EFFECTED A REVOLUTION. 390 " Suppose you did, my lord", was the reply," the possession of the capital would not insure success . . You, my lord, are the only military man amongst us ; but you cannot be everywhere you are required ; and the misfortune is, you delegate your authority to those whom you think are like yourself. But they are not like you; we have no such persons amongst us". The delegates assented to the justice of these remarks, declaring that the proposal for the aid of the French officers was a reason- able one, when Lord Edward impatiently reminded them that they had no assistance to expect from France, and that consequently the determination had been come to to prepare the country for an immediate rising. The conference terminated in divided opinions. Lord Edward and his friend, nevertheless, parted with the same cordiality and confidence in each other that had always subsisted between them. " Lord Edward", says that friend, — no bad judge of men — one who weighed well the terms in which he gave utterance to his opinions— who knew his lordship, perhaps better than any other o? his associates, " was the noblest minded of human beings. He had no deceit, no selfishness, no meanness, no duplicity in his nature. He was all frankness, openness, and generosity; but he was not the man to conduct a revolution to a successful issue — that man was Thomas Addis Emmet". Perhaps if he, Mr.M., had said, the men in council to organize a conspiracy calculated to conduct an insurrection to a successful issue in an accomplished revolution, were Theobald Wolfe Tone, Arthur O'Connor, and Thomas Addis Emmet, provided they could have acted through such a struggle, and to its end, in concert, and with equal single- ness of purpose and forgetfulness of self on either part ; and the man of action was Lord Edward Fitzgerald, to assume the chief military command, — a leader capable of inspiring confidence, ex- acting obedience, providing against contingent dangers, supply- ing all deficiencies incidental to the condition of insurgent forces, of being prepared for reverses, and rising up from temporary defeat or unavoidable discomfiture with renewed ardour, more active ingenuity, and a firmer resolution to repair any injury sus- tained, by having recourse to new strategy, devising on the spur of the occasion new plans and operations, and substituting for regular military tactics all available agencies and instruments fit for modes of warfare learned by experience in the analogous cir- cumstances of a revolted people in another land, — the opinion above stated, thus extended, might be better founded. 400 lord Edward's draft of plan of military operations. CHAPTER VI. VARIOUS MEASURES TAKEN BY LORD EDWARD TO ELUDE THE VIGILANCE OF GOVERNMENT, FROM THE 12TH OF MARCH TO THE 19TH OF MAY, 1798. A very snort time subsequently to the arrests at Bond's, it was known in England to one of the Leinster family, who appears to have had access to the Duke of Portland and a confidential knowledge of his views, that Lord Edward's escape would pro- bably be connived at; and even previous to the arrests of the 12th of March, when Mr. Ogilvie had an interview with Lord Clare in reference to the reported connection of Lord Edward with the Society of United Irishmen, of which government was then informed, Lord Clare, with manifest earnestness and warmth of feeling, said : — " For God's sake, get this young man out of the country: the ports shall be thrown open to you, and no hin- drance whatever offered". All Mr. Ogilvie's subsequent efforts to move Lord Edward to avail himself of this generous and indul- gent disposition of the government— (0 si sic omnesl) — were in vain. Lord Edward's last reply to his friend's pressing solicitation to abandon his connection with the cause he had embarked in, and to retire from the country for some time, was conclusive as to the fixed- ness of his resolution : — " It is now out of the question : I am too deeply pledged to these men to be able to withdraw with honour". Immediately previous to the arrests at Bond's, Lord Edward and his lady were sojourning at Leinster House in Kildare Street. Search was made for him there in vain. Timely notice had been given to Lady Edward on the arrival of the officers at Leinster House, and of the object of their visit, if she had desired to de- stroy any papers of Lord Edward's of a dangerous nature ; but either her presence of mind forsook her, or she had no knowledge of one document in particular being in the writing-case of Lord Edward, of a seditious character, which alone was sufficient to place his life in extreme jeopardy. This paper is not stated in the report of the Secret Committee, whence I take it to be in the handwriting of Lord Edward ; but no doubt is entertained by those most competent to form an opinion on the subject, that it was composed and written by Lord Edward : — "COPY OF A PAFER FOUND IN THE WRITING- BOX OF LORD EDWARD FITZ- GERALD, ON THE 12TH OF MARCH, BY THE OFFICER WHO WENT ON THAT DAY TO ARREST HIM UNDER A CHARGE OF TREASON. " If ever any unfortunate cause should put our city, with the other parts of the country, into the possession of a cruel and tyrannical enemy, whose government, by repeated oppressions, lord edward's draft of plan of military operations. 401 might drive us into the last stage of desperate resistance, our con- duct then should be regulated in a manner best calculated for obtaining victory. The following thoughts are humbly offered for the inspection of every real Irishman: — " It is supposed that the enemy have a well-appointed and dis- ciplined standing army. kl In such a case every man ought to consider how that army could be attacked or repelled, and what advantage their discip- line and numbers might give them in a populous city, acting in concert with the adjoining counties. " It is well known that an officer of any skill in his profession would be very cautious of bringing the best disciplined troops into a large city in a state of insurrection, for the following reasons : — " His troops, by the breadth of the streets, are obliged to have a very narrow front, and however numerous, only three men deep can be brought into action, which, in the widest of our streets, cannot be more than sixty men, as a space must be left on each side or flank, for the men who discharge to retreat to the rere, that their places may be occupied by the next in succession, who are loaded ; so, though there are a thousand men in a street, not more than sixty can act at one time ; and should they be at- tacked by an irregular body armed with pikes or such bold wea- pons, if the sixty men in front were defeated, the whole body, however numerous, are unable to assist, and immediately become a small mob in uniform, from the inferiority of number in com- parison to the people, and easily disposed of. " Another inconvenience might destroy the order of this army. Perhaps at the same moment they may be dreadfullv galled from the house-tops by showers of bricks, coping-stones, etc., which may be at hand, without imitating the women of Paris, who car- ried the stones of the unpaved streets to the windows and tops of the houses in their aprons. 11 Another disadvantage on the part of the soldiers would be, as they are regulated by the word of command, or stroke of the drum, they must be left to their individual discretion, as such communications must be drowned in the noise and clamour of a popular tumult. " In the next place, that part of the populace who could not get into the engagement, would be employed in unpaving the streets, so as to impede the movements of horse or artillery; and in the avenues where the army was likely to pass, numbers would be engaged forming barriers of hogsheads, carts, cars, counters, doors, etc., the forcing of which barriers by the army would be disputed, while like ones were forming at every twenty or thirty ii. , 27 402 lord edward's draft of plan of military operations. yards, or any convenient distances situation might require. Should such precautions be well observed, the progress of an army through one street, or over one bridge, would be very tedious, and at- tended with great loss, if it would not be destroyed. At the same time, the neighbouring counties might rise in a mass, and dispose of the troops scattered in their vicinity, and prevent a junction or a passage of any army intended for the city ; they would tear up the roads, and barricade every convenient distance with trees, timber, implements of husbandry, etc., at the same time lining the hedges, walls, ditches, and houses with men armed with mus- kets, who would keep up a well-directed fire. " However well exercised standing armies are supposed to be by frequent reviews and sham battles, they are never prepared for broken roads or enclosed fields, in a country like ours, covered with innumerable and continued intersections of ditches and hedges, every one of which are an advantage to an irregular body, and may with advantage be disputed against an army, as so many fortifications and entrenchments. " The people in the city would have an advantage by being armed with pikes or such weapons. The first attack, if possible, should be made by men whose pikes were nine or ten feet long : by that means they could act in ranks deeper than the soldiery, whose arms are much shorter; then the deep files of the pike- men, by being weightier, must easily break the thin order of the army. " The charge of the pikemen should be made in a smart trot, On the flank or extremity of every rank, there should be intrepid men placed to keep the fronts even, that at closing every point should tell together; they should have, at the same time, two or three like bodies at convenient distances in the rere, who would be brought up, if wanting, to support the front, which would give confidence to their brothers in action, as it would tend to dis- courage the enemy; at the same time, there should be in the rere of each division, some men of spirit to keep the ranks as close as possible. " The apparent strength of the army should not intimidate, as closing on it makes its powder and ball useless ; all its superiority is in fighting at a distance ; all its skill ceases, and all its action must be suspended, when once it is within reach of the pike. " The reason of printing and writing this, is to remind the people of discussing military subjects". From the time of the arrests in Bond's, namely, the 12th of March, 1798, Lord Edward was " on his keeping", as the term is, avoiding arrest by frequent changes of domicile. The earliest lord Edward's places of concealment. 403 place of concealment of his was in a small house at Harold's Cross, near John Keogh's residence at Mount Jerome (now the Protestant cemetery), and on the same side of the way, but a little north- ward of Mount Jerome. There, I am informed by the venerable Mr. Patten, the brother in-law of T. A. Emmet, he called on Lord Edward some time in the spring of 1798, after the arrests at Bond's. It is rather a singular coincidence that the vicinity of John Keogh's seat at Mount J erome should be selected by the two leading men of different insurrections for places of refuge and concealment, in 1798 and 1803. Lord Edward next appears to have taken up his abode at Dr. Kennedy's in Aungier Street, and while there he was constantly visited by Mr. William Lawless, surgeon, professor of anatomy and physiology* in the College of Surgeons. He was visited there also by Mr. Thomas Reynolds, who, previously to the arrests at Bond's, had been known to Lord Edward and trusted by him; and there appears no reason to doubt that the same ill-placed confi- dence which at that time was reposed in this arch-traitor, was still placed in him during the whole term of the concealment of Lord Edward, and in his various removals from house to house. There was a sort of casuistry in all the reasoning of Reynolds in regard to his conduct as an informer, which was had recourse to, no doubt, originally to impose on others, but which merged into a systematic cajolery that eventually deluded himself. I do not believe that Reynolds gave the information to the government which procured for the informer £1,000 for the dis- covery of Lord Edward. Reynolds had a kind of regard and i * It is deserving of notice that, in 179S, the following gentlemen were members of the Irish Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons. J See Watson's Almanack for that year, p. 122]:— 4 COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS. Robert Emmet, M.D., Licentiate, 109 Stephen's Green. Henry Kennedy, M.D., do., Aungier Street. William Drennan, M.D., do., 1 1 Dame Street. Whitly Stokes, M.D., do., F.T.C.D., Suffolk Street. COLLEGE OP SURGEON'S. Paul Houston, Court of Assistants, "William Lawless, do., Robert Magan, do., John Adrien, Member, William Dease, do., John Esmonde, do., Sir Henry Jebb, do., Thomas Wright, M.D., Licentiate, William John Crump, do., Jervis Street. French Street. Skinner's Row. Eustace Street. Sackville Street. Naas. Marlborough Street. Great Ship Street. Tralee. 404 lord Edward's places of concealment. respect for Lord Edward ; for we find even the greatest villains frequently manifest an involuntary appreciation of very exalted heroism or virtue. They feel as if they were compelled, in spite of themselves, to reverence great and generous qualities like those which Lord Edward possessed. But though Reynolds, probably, would not denounce him himself, nor think it decent to sell a mans blood, from whom it was known he had received great and substantial acts of kindness, Reynolds could have reconciled it to his very peculiarly consti- tuted mind and perverted moral sense, to put an acquaintance in whose welfare he felt an interest, in the way of doing a stroke of business in his own line, and to enable his protege to pocket £1,000 for a little bit of information concerning Lord Edwards hiding- place on a particular occasion. Lord Edward was removed, dis- guised, from Harold's Cross on the Thursday after the arrests at Bond's, to the house of a widow lady of the name of Dillon, an acquaintance of Surgeon Lawless, residing -close to the canal at Portobello Bridge, but a little to the westward of the hotel. The principal entrance to the house, which still exists, is by a street at the rere of the Portobello Hotel. Lord Edward, while he re- mained in this place of concealment, visited Lady Fitzgerald, who was then residing in Denzille Street with her children, attended by a female servant of hers and her husband's valet, the " faithful Ton y"- When Irish painters are in want of a subject for a picture, let them take the scene described by the maid servant of Lady Edward : — " On going into her lady's room late in the evening, she saw his lordship (whom all the servants had been told had fled to France several days previously) and Lady Edward sitting together by the light o^the fire. The ^youngest child had been brought down out of its bed for him to see it, and both he and Lady Edward were, as she thought, in tears". We hear nothing of Tony seeing his master during this night's visit to Denzille Street ; but we may take it for granted the faith- ful servant and the kind and loving master, whose knowledge of one another was now nearly of fifteen years' standing, met on that occasion, and that well-known black face, which his master, in one of his letters from Canada, said was the only one he cared to look on, was once more beheld by him. Poor Tony was unable to visit his master at any of his subse- quent places of concealment. When Mrs. Dillon called one day at Denzille Street to report Lord Edward's safety and well-being, Tony lamented to Mrs. Dillon, " that his unfortunate face pre- vented him from going to see his dear master". Lord Edward returned the same night to Mrs. Dillon's. He lord edward's places of concealment. 405 remained about three weeks in that asylum. One of his amuse- ments while there was concocting a juvenile conspiracy with a child he had taken a fancy to, who used to accompany him in his night walks along the banks of the canal, laying out plans to take advantage of the first favourable opportunity of Mrs. Dillon's ab- sence to root up and extirpate a large bed of orange lilies at the bottom of the garden. It was one of the peculiarities of Lord Ed- ward, that in all the trying circumstances of this part of his career, to all those around him, or who came in contact with him, he appeared in his usual spirits, apparently light-hearted and easily amused. Lord Edward was next removed to the house of Murphy, the feather merchant, in Thomas Street. His conductor on this occa- sion was the same Mr. Lawless by whom he had been brought to Mrs. Dillons at Portobello. He was disguised on the last occa- sion as a countryman in a long frieze coat, rather incongruously associated, for the purpose of disguise, with a pig-tailed wig. He was kindly received on this his first visit to Murphy's, and remained there on that occasion about a fortnight, during which time he held several consultations on the subject of the intended ensuing insurrection, with Lawless, a Mr. Plunket, styled Major Plunket, and a Colonel Lumm. Of Plunket and Lumm I will have occa- sion to make mention in another memoir. Here I will only ob- serve, with regard to Plunket, who had been appointed to the post of chief in command of the Connaught forces of the United Irishmen, and for some time was one of the executive Directory of that province, that my information with regard to that gentle- man is by no means so conclusive either as to his courage or his constancy, in any of the significations of that term, as that of my old friend, Charles Teeling, who thus alludes in his personal nar- rative to the subject of these observations: "Plunket, that in- trepid soldier of fortune, whose fame will be recorded while Buda or the Danube are remembered". During Lord Edward's first sojourn at Murphy's, he again visited Denzille Street, disguised as a woman. That visit was unexpected by Lady Edward, and a few days subsequently to it, the excitement and anxiety it occasioned led to her premature confinement. Her youngest and second daughter, Emily, was born in Denzille Street in the latter part of April. The beginning of May, the long looked-for aid from France being at length despaired of, a general rising was determined on, and the time fixed for it was the 23rd of May, when Lord Edward was to put himself at the head of the forces of the United Irish- men of Leinster. The vigilance of the authorities from that time necessitated frequent changes of Lord Edward's place of conceal- ment. From Murphy's he was taken to the house of Mr. John 406 LORD EWDARD'S PLACES OF CONCEALMENT. Cormick, a feather merchant in the same street, No. 22. There he was visited by the well known John Hughes. He passed a week subsequently at the house of Mr. James Moore, also residing in Thomas Street, No. 119, whose daughter, then unmarried, a person of great intelligence and enthusiasm in Lord Edward's cause, was constantly employed during the time he remained in her father's house, conveying communications to and from Lord Edward's friends.* Lord Edward was likewise in concealment for some days at the house of Mr. Bartholomew Gannon, a linen draper, No. 22 Corn Market, subsequently of Bridge Street, I have been informed by Mr. James Davock, a silk merchant of Bridge Street, a member of the Society of United Irishmen, well known to Lord Edward, and by him attended on the occasion of some of his removals. About the middle of May Lord Edward proceeded with Neilson on horseback to examine the country in the vicinity of Dublin on the borders of Kildare, and on his return he was arrested by a patrol at Palmerstown, and closely examined by them. His com- panion Neilson pretended to be drunk and unconscious of the questions put to him. Lord Edward described himself as a doctor, and his account of himself and the business he was on satisfied the party. They lost an opportunity of making £1,000 ; Lord Edward and Neilson were set at liberty. On the 17th of May, five days only before the period fixed for the general rising, in an unlucky hour for Lord Edward, he was conducted for the second time to Murphy's house, where it was intended he should remain till the outbreak. The result of that pro- ceeding will be found in the valuable and authentic narrative of Murphy. The night of his arrival there, attended by several per- sons, he proceeded from Murphy's house in the direction of Usher's Island. The persons who occasionally formed his guard, who visited him, or who accompanied him when he went abroad, were the following: — Surgeon Lawless, Major Plunket, Colonel Lumm, Samuel Neilson, John Hughes, James Davock, William Cole, Richard Keane, C. Gallagher, Palmer, Rattigan, William P. M'Cabe, and Walter Cox. The night of his rencontre with Major Sirr, on the 17th of May, he was attended by W. P. M'Cabe, Patrick Gallagher, Palmer, and Rattigan. Sirr had received information that Lord Edward's body guard, a party selected from their known courage and trustworthiness, * This lady, -whom I knew in 1842, then the widow of a Mr. JVPCready, was still residing in the same house Lord Edward had been concealed in. To her vivid recollections of Lord Edward and many of his associates, I am indebted for much of the information contained in this memoir. CONFLICT OF LORD EDWARD S BODY GUARD WITH SIRR's PARTY. 407 for attendance on him when he went abroad, would be on their way from Thomas Street to Usher's Island at a certain hour that night. Accompanied by several of his men, O'Brien, and Mr. Emerson, an attorney, Sirr proceeded to the place where he expected to meet Lord Edward, and divided his party, directing some of them to approach Usher's Island by Watting Street, and others by Dirty Lane. Lord Edward's party had adopted the same course, and the result was a conflict in both streets between Sirrs people and Lord Edward's party. In one of these ren- contres the major was knocked down, and was very nearly losing his life. He defended himself bravely and successfully. The major, however, was only too happy to save himself on this occa- sion and to allow his assailants to escape. The major has given a brief account of this rencontre. One of Lord Edward's band has given another, and from the latter account the following particu- lars are taken. When Lord Edward went abroad during the time of his con- cealment, he was usually preceded by one of his guard thirty or forty yards in advance, and two men on the opposite side of the way at some distance from one another. On the present occasion when he was recognized by Sirr, the persons attending him were not seen, and Lord Edward was on the point of being seized, when Sirr found himself in the grasp of two powerful young men. One of them snapped a pistol at Sirr, and the other, Gallagher, struck at his neck with a dagger, and pierced his stock without inflicting any wound. M'Cabe was not present when this scuffle took place. He was at the bottom of Bridgefoot Street, close to Usher's Island, at that moment, watching the movements of the othc*r party, by whom he was at length arrested. Sirr's struggle with Gallagher was one of life and death. Lord Edward, during this struggle, having got clear of Sirr and his myrmidons, Palmer and Gallagher thought it prudent to decamp, leaving the major little inclined to pursue them. On the following day it was determined by Lord Edward and his friends, that he should remove on the next evening from Murphy's to the house of a Mrs. Risk, at Sandy mount. The appearance of the soldiers in the morning in Thomas Street, caused him to give up the idea of then removing. His arrest the same evening, however, put an end to all his plans; but his faithful friends even at this trying moment did not desert him. The sedan chair in which he was placed no sooner moved from Murphy's door, than Major Sirr and his party were assailed by a number of persons, and a desperate, but unsuccessful attempt was made to rescue their prisoner. This effort was directed by Edward Rattigan, assisted by Gal- lagher. Rattigan was a director of the watchhouse of St. Cathe- 408 CONFLICT OF LORD EDWARD'S BODY GUARD WITH SIRR's PARTY. line's ; and the moment he received an intimation of Lord Edward's danger, he called on the first people he met to accompany him to the watchhouse; he seized on all the arms that were deposited there, and proceeded with all despatch to Murphy's. Major Sirr acknowledged they must have succeeded, had not the Rainsford Street guard and the picquet-guard of the Castle, chiefly cavalry, for the assistance of which he had previously sent from Murphy's, opportunely arrived.* When M'Cabe was arrested that night of the rencontre with Sirr's party, he first said his name was Jameson (a name which Lord Edward went by when he was at the house of the Widow Dillon at the canal) ; subsequently he said his name was Brand. M'Cabe was taken to the Provost and examined by Major Sandys. M'Cabe answered in broad Scotch, that he was a poor Scotch peddler who dealt in muslins, and was going home peaceably to his lodgings when he was arrested. A weapon, however, was found upon him, not very corroborative of his peaceful pursuits. He was asked what peddlers had to do with pistols? He said the pistol found on him belonged to a friend of his who had sent it to be repaired, and had asked him to call for it that evening. He was kept in confinement, and the following day walked out of his prison without the permission of Major Sandys, but with the knowledge and connivance of a serjeant of the Dumbarton fencibles, to whom M'Cabe had managed to introduce himself as a townsman whom he had some recollection of when a boy. Palmer contrived to make his escape from Dublin, joined M'Cabe in a few days in the County Wicklow, and both were in the neighbourhood of Ballinamuck in the month of August, when the French landed. They then thought it was time to give up * In the valuable collection of Major Sirr's manuscript papers and correspondence, existing in nine quarto volumes in the library of Trinity College, presented to that institution by the Rev. Joseph D'Arcy Sirr, there is a memorandum in the hand- writing of the major of much interest, which I have copied from the original : — "The attack on the 18th May in Watling Street was reported to Neilson next day. He was informed I was stabbed, and that I wounded two — one desperately with cuts and stabs, whose life is despaired of. One very nearly connected with him was in the affray. One of the party was certainly taken, who he says is a Scotchman. He dined with Lord Edward Fitzgerald the day his lordship was taken, and had only left him about an hour before. He and Lord Edward were taken about five weeks ago at the hill above Palmerstown by a patrol of the ar- tillery commanded by a young officer. Lord Edward was in the disguise of a labouring man, and both were on common car horses, but good trotters. Neilson pretended to be dead drunk, and after being in custody for some time, they were again liberated. Lord Edwad did lodge at Murphy's about five weeks, and Neilson took him from it and removed him frequently. Lord Edward was certainly removed the lath. May, and went through Watling Street the time of the attack. Neilson declares that he collected fourteen men to rescue Lord Edward on the night he was taken, which he would certainly have" — [Here the memorandum of Major Sirr breaks off}. lord Edward's body guard. 409 their cause and quit the country, which they contrived to do with- out detection. Palmer settled in Holland, and was drowned by the upsetting of a boat. M'Cabe died in France possessed of con- siderable means. The history of this man is so singular, that I pro- pose giving some more detailed account of his extraordinary career. Rattigan and Gallagher, after their ineffectual attempt to rescue Lord Edward on the 19th of May, perceived that they had been particularly observed by a person who happened to be passing by when they attacked Sirr's party. This person, a Mr. Cusack of the revenue corps, they approached, detained him for some time, and threatened him with death if he did not promise to be silent on the subject of the struggle he had witnessed, and those who were engaged in it. Cusack the following day gave information to Sirr, but Rattigan in the mean time had absconded; and on the 21st the major pro- ceeded to the house of his mother, a widow lady, who kept a timber-yard in Bridgefoot Street, to avenge the injured majesty of his offended person ; for Sirr often said M he would teach people to meddle with him or his men"; and accordingly all unfortunate persons so offending were charged with treason, and their disaf- fected plate and pictures were confiscated to the sideboard or the walls which represented the state. A party of the majors men, duly attended by a military force, rushed into the house of the widow Rattigan, searched for pikes, and found the necessary quantity to justify a summary visitation on the premises. The inmates were thrust forth ; all that was valuable in the house was pillaged. The furniture was then thrown into the street, the timber in the yard set on fire, and the house and premises utterly destroyed. This was to teach people how to meddle with the major.* Gallagher, who was shopman to Mrs. Moore of Thomas Street, in whose house Lord Edward had at one time been concealed, was particularly obnoxious to the major. A plundering expedition, on the plea of searching for concealed arms, had a short time before been undertaken, and Messrs. Sirr, Hanlon, and O'Brien were baffled on this occasion by Gallagher and his friend Palmer, who happened to be present. They managed to keep the party at bay till there had been time to remove what- ever was in most danger of disappearing, and Palmer concealed himself in a loft in an out-building, where he contemplated taking Sirr's life. He had a loaded pistol in his hand, presented in the direction he momentarily expected to see Sirr approach, when * Edward Rattigan, Cox states, subsequently took a part with the Carlow insur- gents, and was wounded at the battle of Hacketstown. Eventually he succeeded in quitting the country, made his way to France, became a soldier, and was killed at the battle of Marengo. He was born in 1769. 410 lord Edward's body guard, another person accompanying Sirr at that moment to the entrance, threw Palmer off his guard. Major Sirr was told of this circum- stance, as related by Palmer a few years before his death, by a gentleman now living in Dublin, and he acknowledged he had subsequently heard his life was in some danger on that occasion. Palmer was a remarkably fine young man, of great energy of mind, and strength and activity of body. He was the son of a hosier in Cutpurse Row. Gallagher, whose dagger had been so near the major's neck on the 19th of May, was arrested, tried by court-martial, and sen- tenced to be hanged. A young woman of some accomplishments and personal attractions, the following day went with two small children to a gentleman in whose family she had formerly lived as a governess. This gentleman was a master in chancery, and pos- sessed much influence at the Castle. This poor girl passed herself off as the wife of the prisoner, whose life she besought this gentle- man to interfere in behalf of, thinking an application of that kind coming from a wife would have more effect. This humane gentleman, whose political opinions were directly opposite to those of Gallagher, went off immediately to the Castle, and succeeded in obtaining the prisoner's pardon, Gallagher was now removed from the Provost to a transport that was then lying in the bay, to be sent out of the country. Some days elapsed beforee the vessel was prepared for her long voyage. During that time Gallagher was permitted to see his friends on board, and even to have a parting dance on deck the evening before their intended departure. During the bustle of the party Gallagher escaped out of the cabin window. The tide was then ebbing, and after swimming some short distance, he was picked up by a boat that was in readiness to receive him, and was taken to Howth. In this boat he was seen by Major Sirr when pulling towards the vessel with some prisoners who were going on board. He suspected all was not right, but was not sufficiently sure of having any grounds for suspicion, and did not chase the boat. Gallagher got to Dublin, and there, disguised as a groom, succeeded in leaving the country. He went to Bourdeaux, entered into business, married respectably, returned some years ago to Ireland, then went back to France, where he died in excellent circumstances and in good repute. When the government determined on the arrests of the princi- pal leaders of the Society of United Irishmen at Bond's, on the 12th of March, 1798, and of the members of the Directory, be- sides the orders for the arrests at Bond's, there were separate war- rants for the apprehension of the members of the Directory, and all were arrested with the exception of Lord Edward, who was REWARD FOR DISCOVERY OF LORD EDWARD, 411 witli M'Neven at the moment the officers entered the domicile of the latter ; but as his name was not included in the warrant for M'Neven's arrest, Lord Edward was allowed to depart. The warrant for his arrest was placed in the hands of a messenger, attended by the sheriff and a party of soldiers, commanded by O'Reilly. Leinster House, where Lady Fitzgerald was then stay- ing, was searched in vain for Lord Edward. Frescati was searched also in vain for him ; but in both places his papers were seized. In the Dublin Gazette (May 10th to 12th, 1798), a proclama- tion appeared, dated 11th of May, 1798, offering a reward of £1,000 for the discovery of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, " so as that he may be apprehended and committed to prison. This proclamation was signed by the Lord Lieutenant and council, by the Arch- bishop of Cashel, Lord Clare, the Archbishop of Tuam, Lords Westmeath, Shannon, Roden, Portarlington, Ely, Dillon, Pery, O'Neil, Castlereagh, Glentworth, Rossmore, Henry Bishop of Meath, George Lewis Bishop of Kildare, John Beresford, Sir John Blaquiere, Theobald Jones, Arthur Wolfe, Robert Ross, Isaac Corry, George Morris. The members of the Privy Council (the list of which council for the year 1798 comprises a hundred names) who virtually ad- ministered the government of Ireland during the period of the viceroy alty of the Earl Camden, " the Reign of Terror', whose names are found affixed to all measures of coercion (to each pro- clamation, varying from ten to twenty, on one occasion proclaim- ing martial law, the 24th of May, to forty-one), are the following : Lords Clare, Castlereagh, Carhampton, Clonmel, Drogheda, Bella- mont, Dillon, Ely, Carleton, Waterford, Portarlington, Ormond and Ossory, Muskerry, Tyrawly,Perv, O'Ncil, Shannon, Altamont, Glentworth, Gosford, Rossmore, Westmeath, Meath, Roden, Farnham, William (Dr. Newcome) Archbishop of Armagh, Charles (Dr. Agar) Archbishop of Cashel, William (Hon. Dr. Beresford) Archbishop of Tuam, George Lewis, Bishop of Kil- dare, Henry Bishop of Meath, Right Hon. Thomas Pelham, John Beresford, John Monck Mason, Theophilus Jones, John Foster, Lodge Morris, Robert Ross, David Latouche, Isaac Corry, Sir Henry Cavendish, Sir John Blaquiere, Joseph Cooper, Sir Her- cules Langrishe, Sir John Parnell, Sackville Hamilton, James Fitzgerald, Arthur Wolfe. In the above list, it must be observed, names will be found of privy councillors whose position and official connection with the government rendered it necessary for them, in many instances I have reason to believe, to crive their signatures to ordinances for the enforcement of measures which they had no power to oppose and had no share in advising the adoption of. 412 murphy's narrative of lord Edward's capture. CHAPTER VII. CAPTURE OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD NARRATIVE OF NICHOLAS MURPHY. The following narrative of the arrest of Lord Edward Fitzge- rald at trie house of Mr. Nicholas Murphy, No. 153 Thomas Street, was drawn up by the latter, partly during the period of his long confinement in Newgate, and that portion of it relating to events of a later date, written subsequently to his liberation, at different and evidently at distant intervals. From the time of his death it remained in the hands of his sister, who is still living in the city of Dublin. Having come to the knowledge of the existence of this docu- ment, and having reason to believe the information it contained might tend to throw much light on a transaction which has hi- therto been involved in mystery, I applied to the sister of Mr. Murphy for it, through a mutual friend, the late Mr. William Powell, a man of great worth and integrity, and with some diffi- culty was permitted to take a copy of it. The narrative of Murphy is a plain, unvarnished tale, told by an honest man in simple language — by one not much indebted to education for any literary attainments, but indebted to nature at least for one noble quality, — a sense of honour, which no earthly inducement to swerve from could pervert. I have given Murphy's narrative in his own language, without any other correction than that of the orthography, which the do- cument certainly stood very much in need of. AN ACCOUNT OF THE ARREST OF THE LATE LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD. WRITTEN BY NICHOLAS MURPHY, IN WHOSE HOUSE THE ARREST TOOK PLACE. <* On the night of Friday, the 18th May, 1798, Lord Edward Fitzgerald came to my house (No. 153 Thomas Street), in com- pany with a lady,* about the hour of ten or eleven o'clock at night. I did expect him the previous evening ; and the reason I mention this is, that a friend of his came to me and requested that I would receive him, as he wished to move from where he was at present.f I was getting the house cleaned down and scoured, * That lady was Mrs. Moore, in whose husband's house Lord Edward had been previously concealed, t The person alluded to was Surgeon Lawless. — E. R. M. murphy's narrative of lord edward's capture. 413 and I brought his friend in, and he saw the persons employed as I told him ; he mentioned that it was not intended to remove him immediately, but said, ; I think a week or ten days would answer'. I assented, and indeed with reluctance: however, I made no mention of that. In a few days previous to Lord Edwards coming, the government had offered one thousand pounds reward for his apprehension. I certainly felt very uneasy at this circum- stance, and I wished very much to see Lord Edward's friend; but where to see him I did not know. As a man of honour, I wished to keep my word, and I could not think of refusing him admittance when he came. Unfortunately for him and myself, I did keep my word. I expected him on Thursday, but he did not come till Friday, the 18th of May, 1798.* I perceived that he looked very bad, and altered from what he appeared when I saw him before. The lady who came with him did not stay long; and I made a tender of my services to go home with her, as she lived in the neighbourhood : there was a person that we met on our way, who I belive was waiting for her ; I had some knowledge of him myself, t I returned to the house with a troubled mind. Lord Edward told me he was very ill with a cold, and it was easy to perceive it. 1 had procured for him whey, and put some sherry wine in it. At this time he appeared quite tranquil, and went up to the room intended for him — the back room in the attic story. In the morning he came down to breakfast, and ap- peared better than the night before. The friend that spoke to me respecting his coming, came, I believe, about eleven o'clock. Then came out, for the first time, an account of the rencontre that took place the night before between Lord Edward's party and Major Sirr's.* It is perfectly clear, in my humble judgment, that Major Sirr had known of his removal, and the direction he in- tended to take, for his party and Lord Edward's came in contact in a place called Island Street, at the lower end of Watling Street. * Lord Edward had been previously concealed in his house for a fortnight, on his leaving the residence of the Widow Dillon, " a retired house on the banks of the canal", between Portobello and the Basin. When Murphy wrote this part of the narrative he was in prison, and evidently did not wish to run the risk of its being discovered that he had previously sheltered Lord Edward. Mr. James Davock, a respectable silk merchant of the city of Dublin, informed me, a short time previously to his death in 1836, that he and two other persons conducted Lord Edward to Murphy's house the first time he was in concealment there ; that about a fortnight before, he met Murphy at the Globe CotFee-house, and told him there was a friend of his who wished to be out of the way for a few days ; that he did not mention Lord Edward's name, for Murphy was not an United Irishman ; but as a personal favour to him, Davock, Murphy agreed to receive his friend ; but, subsequently, he told Murphy who the person was. t This person was probably Surgeon Lawless. — R* R. M. % Sirr was accompanied by several persons, amongst whom were Major Ryan and Mr. John Swift Emerson, an attorney. 414 MURPHY 1 S NARRATIVE OF LORD EDWARD'S CAPTURE. They there met, and a skirmish took place, and in the confusion Lord Edward got off: howeyer, one of the party was taken, but could not be identified.* I found my situation now very painful, but nothing to what it was afterwards. In the course of the day (Saturday, 19th) there was a guard of soldiers, and, I believe, Major Swan, Major Sirr, a Mr. Medlicot, and another, making a search at Mr. Moore's house, the Yellow Lion, in Thomas Street.t A friend came and mentioned the circumstance to me. I imme- diately mentioned it to Lord Edward, and had him conveyed out of the house, and concealed in a valley on the roof of one of the warehouses. While I was doing this, Sam. Neilson came and in- quired of the girl if I was at home. I believe she said, not. ■ Bid him be cautious', I think was what she told me he said. I considered that conduct of his very ill-timed: however, I am led to believe it was well intended. On Saturday morning, the day of the arrest, there came a single rap at the door ; I opened it my- self, and a woman with a bundle appeared, and inquired if that was Mr. Murphy's. 1 said it was. She informed me that she came from Mrs. Moore, and was directed to leave that bundle there. I knew not what it contained, but to my surprise, when I opened it, I found it to be an uniform, of a very beautiful green colour, gimpt or braided down the front, with crimson or rose-colour cuffs and cape :{ there were two dresses — one a long-skirted coat, vest, and pantaloons; the other, a short jacket, that came round quite close, and was braided in front ; there was also a pair of overalls, that buttoned from the hip to the ankle, with, I think, black Spa- nish leather on the sides. I suppose they were intended for riding. The bundle contained a cap of a very fanciful description, ex- tremely attractive, formed exactly like a sugar-loaf — that part that went round the forehead green, the upper part crimson, with a large tassel, which inclined on one side or other occasionally when on the head. " After placing Lord Edward in the valley on the roof of the warehouse, I came down in a little time and stood at the gate, the soldiers still at Mr. Moore's. I perceived four persons walking in the middle of the street, some of them in uniform ; I believe yeo- men. I think Major Swan and Captain Medlicot§ was of the party. Towards four o'clock Lord Edward came down to dinner ; everything was supposed to be still. Now, at this time Sam. Neilson came in to see us. Dinner was nearly ready ; I asked * William Putnam M'Cabe. — R. R. M. t Moore had two houses in Thomas Street. The one in which Lord Edward was concealed was No. 119 ; the other was - No. 124. t The'; uniform eventually came into the possession of the Duke of York. § Lieut. Thomas Medlicot of the City of Dublin Militia ? — R. R. M. murphy's narrative of lord edward's capture. 415 him to stay and dine, which he accepted. Nothing particular occurred, except speaking on a variety of subjects, when Mr. Neilson, as if something struck him, immediately went away, leaving us together. There was very little wine taken ; Lord Ed- ward was very abstemious. In a short time I went out ; and now the tragedy commenced. I wished to leave Lord Edward to him- self. I was absent I suppose about an hour. I came into the room where we dined, being the back drawing-room ; he was not there; I went to the sleeping- room, he was in bed. It was at this time about seven o'clock. I asked him to come down to tea. I was not in the room three minutes, when in came Major Swan and a person following him in a soldier's jacket and a sword in his hand; he wore a round hat. When I saw Major Swan I was thunderstruck. I put myself before him, and asked his business. He looked over me, and saw Lord Edward in the bed. He pushed by me quickly, and Lord Edward seeing him, sprung up instantly like a tiger, and drew a dagger which he carried about him,* and wounded Major Swan slightly, I believe. Major Swan had a pistol in his waistcoat pocket, which he fired without effect; he immediately turned to me and gave me a severe thrust of the pistol under the eye, at the same time desiring the person that came in with him to take me into custody. I was immediately taken away to the yard; there I saw Major Sirr and about six soldiers of the Dumbarton Fencibles. " Major Swan had thought proper to run as fast as he could to the street, and I think he never looked behind him till he got out of danger, and he was then parading up and down the flags, ex- hibiting his linen, which was stained with blood. | Mr. Ryan supplied Major Swan's place; he came in contact with Lord Ed- ward and was wounded seriously. Major Sirr at that time came * The dagger with which Lord Edward defended himself in the last mortal struggle with his assailants, was not destined to remain one of the objects of virtu that collector of a refined taste for the arts, and of a strong passion for objects of curiosity (especially of articles in either of the precious metals), which, in latter years, ornamented the museum of the old man-hunter of the reign of terror in Ire- land. It was given by the major to Lord Clare, and by the latter to a Mr. Brown, the owner of the house Murphy lived in in Thomas Street, and shortly afterwards was stolen from that gentleman. In 1798 a cutler of Bridge Street, named Byrne, a Roman Catholic, and the only one of his creed belonging to that trade in Dublin, manufactured a species of stiletto, with a zigzag blade and a horn handle, for the leaders of the Dublin United Irishmen. There were few without them, and it was with one of these that Lord Edward Fitzgerald stabbed Major Ryan. — R. R. M. t This part of the account of the struggle differs from Moore's. There is no mention there of Swan having quitted the room. Murphy, it will be observed, enters into no particular details of the struggle from the time he was removed in custody by Swan's orders. Further particulars on this subject will be found at at the end of Murphy's narrative. 416 murphy's narrative of lord edward's capture. up stairs, and keeping at -a respectful distance, fired a pistol at Lord Edward in a very deliberate manner, and wounded him in the upper part of the shoulder. Reinforcements coming in, Lord Edward surrendered after a very hard struggle. Now the work of destruction commenced. The house was taken possession of by soldiers. An old invalid volunteered to guard me along with the man who first held me in charge. The old soldier would not let me put my handkerchief to my face to wipe away the blood. A neighbour came to offer me a glass of wine and water, but the valiant Major Sirr would not allow it. He was going to break the glass, saying wine was not fit for rebels. There were invalids at that time in James's Street, and they were soon brought down, and took possession of the house. I never had such a stock of wine before or since : I little thought who I bought it for. In some time a carriage came and I was placed in it, in company with two soldiers of the Dumbarton regiment, then stationed in Dublin, and brought off to the Castle, and there placed in the Castle guard-house. A sad change for me ! I was there perhaps an hour or more, when my friend Major Sirr came to me to bring me into the presence of Mr. Cooke, taking me very friendly under the arm, and telling me to state everything I knew about the business. I felt no inclination to take his advice on that occa- sion. "Well! I had the honour of an introduction to Mr. Cooke. There was a gentleman lolling on the sofa, who I afterwards learned was Lord Castlereagh. My friend Cooke looked at me very sharply, and now for question and answer. 4 How long was Lord Edward in your house ?' 4 He came there last night'. ' Who came with him ?' ' He came with a lady'. 4 What was her name ?' 4 1 cannot state the lady's name'. I declined to answer that in toto. I mentioned that I was led into the business very innocently, and that would appear on an investigation taking place, and I could procure sufficient bail. Mr. Cooke laughed at that, and no wonder he might, for he immediately wrote out a Castlereagh warrant for me. I was vralked back to the guard- house, and a large guard was ordered to prime and load, which was soon complied with. Then I was placed in the centre, and marched off to Newgate, This was about nine o'clock at night. On arriving there, I was left to ruminate on the situation I was unfortunately placed in. The only consolation I had was that there were very respectable men at the time in the same place with me. One friend offered me a part of his bed, which I ac- cepted. I had a heavy heart, and slept but little. In the morning a messenger came to me to let me know I was wanting down stairs. One of the state prisoners in the room bid me to feign MURPHl's NARRATIVE OF LORD EDWARDS CAPTURE. 417 illness. I did not take his advice. I went down, and was brought ' between hatches', as they called it, and for what purpose ? Why, to be ironed ! The mild Mr. Gregg was waiting for me. I spoke to him to allow me to send home for a pair of boots, as I wore shoes at this time. When I sent home I had neither boots nor shoes to get ; however, there was a pound note sent to me. I must state that I was put in the felon side of the prison at that time. The note put Locket and Peachum in good humour, and I was then moved back to my old first lodging. " I have now to state the treatment I experienced from the soldiers and others that took possession of the house. Alderman Archer, who was one of the sheriffs at that time, but since dead, broke open my secretary and book-case, expecting, I suppose, to get as many papers of a treasonable nature as would convict a hundred, but was disappointed. Next he examined the clothes- press, and then a general search commenced through the rooms ; the office desk was broken open, but no papers to be found that could attach criminality. Plundering the place then commenced. Unfortunately, there was a company of invalids stationed in James Street; they were ordered down; they were known gene- rally by the name of 1 Old fogies'. Their wives came in great numbers, and immediately commenced robbing the place. A large silver gravy -spoon, a plated tea-pot, and plated goblet were taken — everything they could lay their hands on ! They were quarrelling, I was informed, about the plunder; nothing in the house could escape their Argus eyes. An officer asked the men * if they found out the wine cellar ?' It was soon forced. I never had such a stock before or since. They destroyed six dozen of as fine wine as could be found — claret, port, and sherry — I pur- chased it in the wood. The late Alderman Manders fortunately came in as a magistrate, and I believe did all he could, but it had no avail. I had a respected sister, a married lady, who came to the house and conducted herself nobly in the cause of her unfor^ tunate brother, by doing all that was possible under such circum- stances. The soldiers and ' Old fogies' fell to at the wine. I had some pickled beef and chickens in a coop ; they were soon in requisition, and my new visitors regaling themselves, calling aloud to the servant, ' You old — this and that— get us some porter' : they wanted it with the beef and chickens. Fine times with them while it lasted ! They never took the trouble of using a screw, but struck off the heads of the bottles with the next thing that came to hand. I have grounds for stating that when they got tired drinking the wine, they were selling it in the morning at six pence per bottle, and buying whiskey with the monev. ii. 28 418 murphy's narrative of lord edward's capture. " My losses in this unfortunate business amounted to upwards of two thousand pounds, and I never yet received one shilling of compensation from any quarter, and was confined fifty-five weeks a state prisoner, and my house and concerns made a barrack of for ten months and upwards, having ten soldiers — some with wives — besides invalids, and some of the Ilea Fencibles, and the baggage of the regiment in the warehouses. Mr. Brown, the landlord, ap- plied to Mr. Cooke at the Castle, to know if he would pay the rent, as he held the place, and he could not apply to Mr. Murphy for it? Mr. Cooke answered that he would pay no rent, so that when the government thought proper to liberate me, I was obliged to pay the rent and taxes while it remained a barrack — a severe case. " There is a circumstance I feel I wish to mention. There was an officer, an English gentleman, and he was ordered to my house with his party. He was a very short time in the city, and he mentioned to my next-door neighbour, on Sunday morning, the 20th of May, that a large party of men ' of the lowest description, came on Saturday night to destroy the concerns, which he would not assent to', saying, 1 he heard the owner of the place was a man of good character', and ' that it would make a very good barrack for himself and his men'. " I have made an estimate of my losses, but not to the full extent. " I have to mention that Alderman Archer, then sheriff, came ■to me the day after my arrest, 20th of May, for my keys, to examine my papers, as he said, after breaking open my drawers the night before — a fine ruse de guerre. "Monday, 21st. — Two state prisoners brought in: Mr. Pat. Byrne, Grafton Street, a bookseller; and Mr. J. G. Kennedy, a brewer. " Lord Edward Fitzgerald was confined in the most convenient room in the prison. No one was allowed to see him except the medical attendants. There was appointed to take care of him a Mr. Stone, I believe a lieutenant in the Londonderry regiment of militia, as he wore the uniform of that regiment, and great care he took of his charge. I could never get to see him myself, ' though I often wished it. " On the 23rd of May, Samuel Neilson was seen hovering in front of the prison. Simpson, the deputy jailor, I am told, beckoned to him with his hand to leave the place; however, Gregg arrested him, and brought him in * between the hatches', and ironed him, and then had him placed in the attic story of the felon side of the prison. Nothing could exceed the horror ex- cited in the minds of the prisoners at the appearance of persons murphy's narrative of lord edward's capture. 419 connected with the prison, as no person considered himself safe, from the line of conduct that appeared to be in contemplation. I shall give you a description of the discipline of this unfortunate place. " We should be in our rooms before nine o'clock, and were then locked up till eight o'clock in the morning. None were allowed to see us, only by order of the government. I endea- voured to reconcile myself to this state of things, and the only consolation I had was that I was in company with gentlemen of respectability and honour. The jailor furnished us with a table d'hote, for which we paid twenty shillings English per week. In about two or three months, the state prisoners sent a memorial to the government to be put on state allowance, which was complied with, and we were allowed five shillings per day, which the jailor received, and gave us breakfast and dinner lor it. " Two surgeons attended daily on Lord Edward Fitzgerald. It was supposed, the evening of the day before he died, he was delirious, as we could hear him, with a very strong voice, crying out: 'Come on ! come on! d n you! come on! 1 He spoke so loud, that the people in the street gathered to listen to it. He died the next day, early in the morning, on the 4th of June. The surgeons attended and opened the body ; then he was seen for the first time by the prisoners. The bowels were opened, and whatever was found there was thrown under the grate, and then the part opened was sewn up. He had about his neck a gold chain, suspending a locket with hair in it. M Thus died one of the bravest of men, from a conviction, I be- lieve, that his projects would ameliorate the condition of his country. I shall endeavour to describe his person. He was, I I believe, about five feet seven inches in height, and a very inte- resting countenance, beautiful arched eyebrows, fine gray eyes, handsome nose, and high forehead, thick, dark-coloured hair, brown, or inclining to black. I think he was very like the late Lady Louisa Conolly about the nose and eyes. Any person he addressed must have admired his manner, it was so candid, so goodnatured, and so impregnated with good feeling ; as playful and humble as a child, as mild and timid as a lady, and, when necessary, as brave as a lion. He was altogether a very fine, ele- gantly-formed man. Peace to his name ! The lady that came with him to my house lived very near me. Her husband, Mr. Moore, was in some way implicated, and, I heard, a prisoner for some short time. His house was made a barrack as well as my own. I regret to state that, when he was liberated, he made in- terest to have the soldiers and luggage that were in his house re- moved to mine, and accompanied them himself. My revered 420 murphy's narrative. father, since dead, was insulted by some of the party for attempt- ing to remonstrate with them. I felt indignant at Moore's conduct when I heard it.* "I procured a copy of my committal, which I have by me as a memento, signed ' CastlereagJi ; also, a notice of trial served on me, in consequence of a special commission being issued, bearing date the 11th June, 1798, to be held at the Sessions House, Green Street. The notice is dated 25th day of May, signed ' Thomas Kernmis, crown solicitor'. I have the notice by me: there are upwards of sixty state prisoners embodied in it — the late Lord Edward Fitzgerald's name the first. The most serious part of the business was approaching to a crisis of the most deplorable de- scription. The court was opened on Monday, the 11th June, 1798, and the first on trial were the Messrs. Henry and John Sheares. That great luminary, Counsellor Curran, was their leading advocate; and we could hear him addressing the jury at five o'clock in the morning, in our beds at Newgate. They were found guilty, and, after conviction, were brought into the prison, A dismal sight it was. They were ordered out at three o'clock the same day to receive sentence, and when that awful ceremony was performed, and they came in (they were ironed at this time), dreadful ideas entered every man's mind in this unfortunate place, to see these gentlemen in such a situation — the execution to take place next day ! I cannot describe the feelings of the state prisoners. " The fatal day arrived. The Rev. Dr. Dobbin, a Protestant clergyman, attended them. A great number of yeomen and gentlemen came in of course. The prisoners were locked up. I am very sorry I did not procure the trials of these gentlemen and of the remainder; but it was not that I was thinking of at the time. Next ordered for his trial was Mr. John M'Cann — disposed of as the former ! and never was a man more resigned ; he met death as a brave man, and was quite disposed to meet his fate with firmness. Next trial, Mr. William Michael Byrne's, a very fine young man. I suppose his age about twenty-five years, and mar- ried only one year. Mrs. Byrne came to see him — a heart-rending meeting. Then followed Mr. Bond — and his conviction of course. " Words cannot now describe the feelings of the state prisoners: no chance of acquittal ! an organized system ! and the miscreant Reynolds the i avant-garde of it ! I will not speak of the juries of 1798: I leave that for others to do. " At this time there was a Mr. Dobbs, a lawyer, and a Mr. Craw- * Murphy's impressions on this subject were probably erroneous : he then had no means of ascertaining the truth of the stories he heard. — E. R. M. murphy's narrative. 421 ford, an attorney — two very good men. There was a proposition, I believe, came to the state prisoners through these gentlemen, I suppose sanctioned by the government, and that was — 4 That the state prisoners would give the government such information as they required, and for the state trials to terminate; the informa- tion not to criminate any person, and the prisoners to emigrate to a country not at war with his majesty'. There was a document to be signed conformable to this agreement. There was not a mo- ment to be lost, as Mr. William M. Byrne was to be executed this day, and Mr. O. Bond on the day following. All the state pri- soners in our prison signed the contract, and myself among the rest. The privy council, early on that day, deliberated on the business, and the proposal was unfortunately rejected. In the course of the day, while it was pending, my revered and attached sister, hearing what I had done, came to the prison in tears, and asked me if I had done such a thing. I answered I had, and that I would go to any place to leave that abode of misery. 4 The business is now', I said, 1 before the privy council, and if Mr- Byrne is respited, which I hope he will, I will be satisfied to expatriate myself; but I will promise you, if it is to be done again, I will decline it'. Well, the awful news came, that the council rejected the proposition ; and Mr. Byrne was executed. He was an elegant young man, and w r ent to death with as much compo- sure as if he was going to dinner. Well, the next day, the same business came on for Mr. Bond. I was now placed in a most un- pleasant situation ; but 1 was determined to keep my word. Mr. Dobbs, a good-hearted man, was most anxious for the prisoners; and the same business was again commenced. When it came to my turn to sign, I requested to say a few words: I said, that I was under great obligations to my family ; that one of them came to me yesterday, in great trouble, in consequence of my signing the paper ; and that I then promised that 1 would not sign it if it was to do again. However, I went to Mr. Bond myself, and stated to him how unhappy my family was at my signing, and the promise I made ; but that if I was at my liberty and walking the street, I would sign for him if it served him. He very honourably left me to myself, and requested I would do nothing on his account, say- ing at the same time, ' You know how you are situated'. The document went a second time before the privy council. The greatest excitement that could be conceived existed at this time in the prison, to see Mr. Bond, an athletic, fine-formed man, who oc- cupied the first class of respectability in Dublin, now heavily ironed ! and what made it more lamentable was, to see Mrs. Bond with him, linked arm to arm. The coffin in the yard ! — the dreadful apparatus ready ! The sensation it excited could not be 422 murphy's narrative. conceived. I cannot attempt to describe my own feelings at the time. Three o'clock came — no news from the Castle. Alternate hopes and fears crowded on the mind. At half-after three the news came — 'A respite during pleasure /' The shout in the street was the first thing to announce it. There was some person brought into the prison for shouting in the street. Joy was now visible in every countenance. A great change took place in the prison — the place was now comfortable to what it had been. The state trials now terminated, and the gentlemen who signed the agree- ment expected to go to America ; but government decreed other- wise, for reasons best known to themselves. On the 6th of Sep- tember, Mr. Bond died suddenly in Newgate : he was as well as ever he was on the evening before, and was playing rackets in the yard, to my knowledge. His apartment was quite detached from the rooms of the other prisoners, being convenient to the yard below stairs. Simpson, the under-jailor, Samuel Neilson, and himself, spent the evening in Mr. Bond's room. It was under- stood Samuel Neilson went to bed top-heavy, and left Simpson and Mr. Bond together. About eleven or twelve o'clock, Simp- son came into the room I was in. Mr. Pat. Byrne, Mr. J. Gr. Kennedy, and myself were in this room. Simpson, I think, brought with him two bottles of wine (I was in bed at this time) ; they commenced drinking the wine. Mr. G. Kennedy got pow- erless, and went to bed as well as he could. Mr. Bro^ being a strong man, kept drinking with Simpson some time after. I was awake all this time, and perceived that Simpson wished to pro- voke a quarrel with Mr. Byrne : Mr B. acted with great command of temper in the business, and with much ado Simpson went away. I then spoke to Mr. Byrne, and told him I heard all that passed, and that if he had in future any intercourse with Simpson, I would renounce his friendship, I was so enraged at what I heard. He agreed with me in what I said. The next morning, about five o'clock, it went through the prison that Mr. Bond was dead. I immediately arose and went down stairs, and there to my asto- nishment saw Mr. Bond, lying on his back lifeless, with exactly the same dress he wore the day before. I came and informed Mr. Byrne and Mr. Kennedy of the fact. Samuel Neilson slept in the room that night, and could give no account whatever of what hap- pened or how it happened. S. Neilson appeared very much af- fected, and cried like a child. There was a serious alarm in the prison, and great uneasiness among the prisoners, fearing there was ibul play. Mr. Byrne arose in the bed, and mentioned with great emphasis : ' Our lives are not worth an hour's purchase !' However, nothing came out that could establish that. As I was the only person who did not sign the ' Banishment Bill', the go- murphy's narrative. 423 vernment was endeavouring to have me brought to trial; and, for that purpose, the trusty Major Swan went to my house, that was a barrack for three months at that time, with a person (I suppose one of the ' Battalion of Testimony') to look for pikes, desiring the person to go through the dormant window of the house, and if he lound one, he would get half a guinea for it. A person who was in the house came to my brother with that word : it was well the fellow did not think of bringing one. However, nothing was found. When my brother heard of this, he went to the Castle and mentioned the circumstance, I believe to Mr. Cooke, and the answer he got was, ' that there would be no more searching'. Some of my family, endeavouring to procure my liberation, went once, or twice, or thrice, to Lady Louisa Connolly, a very amiable character, to interest herself with Lady Castlereagh, and at one time she gave my sister a letter to that personage. My sister went to Lady Castlereagh's residence, expecting a favourable answer; and after waiting a considerable time — 'Indeed', Lady Castlereagh said, ' she could not interfere with Lord Castlereagh's alfairs !' No hope in that quarter ! Weil, patience is a virtue, if we could but submit to it. "On the 18th March, 1799, the state prisoners were ordered to be in readiness to leave. Mr. Arthur O'Connor, while confined in Newgate, was not allowed out of his room; while there, he ap- peared dressed in a green coat, vest, and pantaloons, and half-boots. Mr. Dowling, Mr. Thomas Russell, Mr. Samuel Neilson, Mr. Dowdall, and Dr. M'Neven, I heard, came from the Castle. Our friend Major Swan, and his attendants, brought these gentlemen down to the quay, and they were put on board the Anson Smith, government transport, and there joined the gentlemen sent from Kilmainham and Smithfield prisons. I understand that they were sixteen in number. On the 25th of March, they arrived in Bel- last Lough, and took in five state prisoners there ; on the 26th they sailed, and on the 30th they landed at Greenock. On the 9th April, they arrived at Fort George, the place of their destination ; and in the year 1801 (in the spring of this year), peace being proclaimed, they were shortly after liberated. " N.B. — I take this from a newspaper, and I believe it to be perfectly correct. " I shall now state something respecting myself: — I was arrested early in the unfortunate business, and kept prisoner in the yard of my house. First, I never saw Mr. Ryan, till I saw him coming down wounded: he was brought on something like a door. Se- condly, my arrest took place before martial law took place. Thirdly, there were no papers of a treasonable nature found in the house ; it was impossible there could be any, except they were put there by 424 murphy's narrative. themselves. I will mention a circumstance here, and it is this : — the rooms were searched with great care ; one of these feather-bed soldiers brought to Alderman Manders a dagger, which he said he found in one of the rooms. My sister appealed to Alderman Manders, and he honourably said there was no dagger there when he searched the room. Another of those plunderers wanted to know why my sister was not put out of the place. She replied boldly, 4 that she would not go' ; that * it was her brothers house'. I wish I could come in contact with the ruffian, for he must have a bad mind and a depraved heart. Fourth, the death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald taking place, of course there could be no bill of indictment framed against me, as there was no overt act to ground it on : I was indebted thus to Providence for my life, and I give God thanks for it 1 Still, there was no prospect of my liberation. There was a motion made in court by counsel, to admit me to bail, but it would not be allowed ; so there I was, incarcerated in- side the gloomy walls of a prison. However, I submitted with patience, though I found great difficulty in doing so. When I was first brought to this ' chateau' (the jail), there was a Catholic clergyman attended and said Mass regularly on every Sunday, and all the prisoners in the jail, who were Catholics, and others, might attend if they wished it. I understood the gentleman said Mass the first Sunday I was there. From that Sunday to the time of my liberation, which was upwards of a year, there was no Catholic clergyman allowed to officiate, but, in fact, was interdicted from coming to this abode of misery. The Rev. Mr. Gamble, a Pro- testant clergyman, a very good man, came sometimes on Sundays, and I feel pleasure in saying he conducted himself as a gentleman. I had a very high opinion of him from his conduct to my fellow- prisoners. " Mr. Pat. Byrne, bookseller, lent me books to read, and by that means I passed many a gloomy hour. There was a circum- stance which I would wish to mention, and which I heard when I was liberated, and it is this : — The day before the arrest (of Lord Edward) it rained very hard, and I was told Major Sirr was seen reconnoitering the rere of the house in the gateway. The office had two doors, one of which was never used, and was fastened only by a string, and it opened outwards to a small office that was for- merly attached to the house, but was taken down as having no occasion for it. The entrance was always by the side-door in the gateway, and that was locked generally. I am satisfied in my mind that the place was reconnoitred before Lord Edward came. I also heard, in prison, that one of Lord Edward's body-guard gave some information — and his name was mentioned to me, and I saw him when I was liberated ; — but he shall be nameless by me, as murphy's narrative. 425 this is only a hearsay account given one by a neighbour. I can state with truth, that though the intended rising was to take place on the 23rd of May, I did not know one word about it until I heard it in Newgate. It is really surprising to me, the system go- vernment pursued on this as well as in the other part of this un- fortunate business ; but, on second thoughts, it is easily accounted for: in general, man can be made available in any business, with very few exceptions. " Some time after, the state prisoners were very much coerced by those who had the care of the prison, and it so happened, when any bulletin gave an account of the success of the rebels (which was very seldom), the deputy -jailor was apparently civil; when the king's troops gained any success, incivility was the order of the day. There was a rumour at one time that the rebels were coming in great force, and it was a false alarm. The jailor told us in the morning that the officer on guard wanted him (Simpson) to give him the keys of the prison, which he refused. The gentlemen confined were indignant at this, as they felt inclined to suppose that the place would be invested by the soldiers on guard, and the prisoners disposed of in a very summary way ; they felt inclined, if such a thing should take place, to sell their lives dear, and in- tended to prepare for it by every means in their power. There was another thing occurred during my stay here: it was said, go- vernment received information that there was something going on in the three prisons inimical to them. The consequence was, that in the dead of night, our rooms were all opened, and in walked Mr. Gregg, Mr. Carleton (who held a place under government, and who I often saw in town), and a witness, with pen and ink to mark the papers. We were all in the arms of Morpheus, but were desired to get up and open our trunks. We found no difficulty in doing that, as we had no fear on that head. There were two or three letters from Miss Byrne to her father, in French, and our midnight visitors not having got so high in the alphabet, could make nothing of them. 1 think they took them afterwards to the Castle. We heard that government had received informa- tion from some person in Kilmainham prison, which was the cause of the search. I heard that the other two prisons were examined at the same time we were. We spent our time in this place very unpleasantly, but lived in hopes. My family were doing all in their power to have me liberated, which was their anxious wish. There was a person spoken of, who it was supposed had interest in a certain quarter. There was an interview with this person, and he promised everything, and was to receive a stipulated sum for his trouble, which he got; and I believe he did nothing for it but fair promises, which I think he never realized. At length, 426 murphy's narrative. after a severe confinement of fifty-five weeks, I was liberated and never brought to trial. The bail required was two sureties in £500 each, and myself in £1,000 — the term seven years: all very moderate ! Well, I was allowed to leave my (prison) mansion on the 10th June, 1799. When it was known I was at liberty, I had many friends coming to see me, of course, and I felt grateful for the kindness they expressed towards me. I went to my house, and found it in a deplorable condition : — the kitchen made a dirt-hole of by the soldiers ; the parlour their kitchen ; the rooms to answer any purpose they wished. I got the house and concerns a mere shell—a house that I gave £250 fine for, subject to £70 yearly rent, and on which I expended £1,000 in useful improvements. I have now by me an estimate of my losses and the amount of what I paid for repairing the concerns, and it amounted to a very serious sum. " I was determined on an early day to have the pleasure of an introduction to the late Lady Louisa Connolly, and I went to Castletown for that purpose with my revered brother, now no more. I was announced by letter, and ordered to her presence. She had a very elegant and commanding figure, with a very expressive countenance, and with such good feeling and consideration as ex- hibited nobility itself. " Lady Louisa Connolly seemed to feel very much my situation ; but stated very pathetically, ' she could do nothing for me'. Lady Sarah Napier being in the place, and hearing of rne, sent the Hon. Miss Napier to me, requesting I would go to see her. I felt no hesitation in doing so, and complied. Lady S. Napier was a very nice personage, and we had some conversation on the unfortunate business, and she appeared to console me on the privations I was obliged to submit to. However, I took my leave, and it was easy to perceive what might be expected from my reception. I was then advised to address a letter to his Grace the Duke of Leinster, which I did, and waited on his grace at Leinster House. His grace allowed me the honour of an interview, and on seeing me he seemed to feel very much, and I thought I saw a troubled melan- choly in his countenance ; however, in our conversation, I clearly understood that his grace Was not inclined in any way to offer me the smallest pecuniary assistance, although I was spoken to by friends and recommended to apply. I then acted agreeably to their advice, and found it amounted to nothing. My friends were disappointed as well as myself. " I endeavoured to raise my trade with very limited means, and found it very difficult to do so. I felt now that great men were very easy about the misfortunes of others ; and I am sorry I am obliged to make the remark. My case was one that was to be de- plored in every point of view. MURPHY S NARRATIVE. 427 M There was a large reward offered for the apprehension of Lord Edward, and I fearlessly state that, if it was ten times times the sum, it would be no inducement to me, as I felt myself bound by every sentiment of honourable feeling, when he came to my house, to admit him and protect him as far as the means were in my reach ; and what man could do less for an ill-fated gentleman en- deavouring to evade the vigilance of his pursuers ? I think I would act on the same principle to my greatest enemy, under similar cir- cumstances. However, my prospects in business were in a great measure destroyed by the long confinement I was obliged to sub- mit to, and the coercive treatment I experienced from my oppres- sors. My trade totally disappeared — some of my friends were afraid to speak to me, from the appearance of the times. Well, I breathed the clear air of my beloved country and was at liberty, and I felt some satisfaction at the circumstance. I commenced business, and I felt a great want of what is called the 1 sinews of war', and went on as well as the circumstances would admit. " There took place in the year 1803, unfortunately, an insur- rection, encouraged, it was said, by Robert Emmet and others. M When I left the strong house in 1799, I was determined to preserve a strict neutrality in all cases of a political description, unless such as were allowed by the laws of our glorious constitu- tion in church and state, — the envy of surrounding nations. I can state with truth, that 1 knew nothing of that unfortunate business. The morning of the day it took place, I believe, was on the 23rd July, 1803. There appeared to be a great commotion on the eve- ning of this day, and it was marked with peculiarly unfortunate circumstances: Lord Kilwarden and some of his family were made victims, as well as others, by an infuriated mob, led astray by po- pular commotion: however, it was of short duration. I have heard that the government were not prepared, and did not expect such a thing could take place. The officers of justice were very aetive on the following days, and made several arrests. Alderman Darley came to my house, I believe on the Sunday following, with an officer of the 32nd regiment and two privates, and examined the rooms. No arms of any description were found. The worthy al- derman did not forget to let the officer know, 4 that was the house the late Lord Edward Fitzgerald was arrested in*. — [I must observe the alderman behaved with great civility.] " In a few days after the transaction, the government, I under- stood, issued orders in a very private way for a general search in all directions; and this post of honour was placed in the hands of the yeomen — and I believe with great safety, for their loyalty was not to be doubted. On the morning of the general search, 1 was of course visited by these military heroes I had not taken breakfast 428 murphy's narrative. at the time, when three or four of the party made their appearance 1 and mentioned that they oame for the purpose of searching for arms. I answered I had no arms, and that they might examine the place, which they did with great care. I had a case of pistols, and a very good musket and bayonet, and a small sword, and what is called a ' cut-and-thrust' sword? which were all taken from me in 1798, and never returned to me. In their going through the rooms, I opened a clothes-press, in which were a full-dress and an undress uniform of the ' Irish Brigade' — a corps highly respected for the respectability of its members, and to which I had the honour to belong — -being then very young. What would you think, gentle reader ? these sages in military costume had it immediately, that ' it was the uniform of a rebel general', and proclaimed it such. There was no use in speaking on the subject ; they were judge and jury. The sensations excited by this business in these gentlemen were truly astounding ; they seemed to be as well pleased as if they had stormed a fort and took the city by surprise, without firing a shot or losing a man. I was desired to come down and explain the business to their officer. I felt no hesitation in doing so ; the uniform was brought also for inspection. Their captain, or officer, appeared highly delighted with their conduct in the matter, and, in a sarcastic and insulting manner requested that ' I would oblige him by putting it on !' This gentleman was quite a Joe Miller in his conduct at this time, and was quite elated with the difficulty I had to put on the undress uniform, for it happened that I outgrew it. These yeomen belonged, I believe, to the ' Attorneys' Corps', with a few others with them. They had a car and a horse in the street, and two or three prisoners they took in their way ; there was also some rod-iron on the car, such as smiths make nails of. There were packs of wool in the warehouses, and these assailants cut se- veral of them, expecting, I suppose, to find arms in them. I was taken in this manner a prisoner, and marched off in great triumph. The uniform was exhibited on the horse. I could not help taking a view of these military gentry — many of them quite boys scarcely able to handle a musket, and their affected knowledge of military tactics drew from me a smile of contempt. On our way to the Castle the crowd increased immensely, every one inquiring, ' Who is that ?' Dublin appeared to be in a state of siege. In Skinners' Row, I saw Sir John White coming up against us on the other side. I knew his person, but never spoke to him. He came over to me, and said to me — ' Murphy ^ you will be hanged to-morrow'. I told him ' I hoped not so soon'. He was fully appointed in military array. I was told he commanded a corps known by the name of the ' Sepulchres', and was going to meet them at the time. What a melancholy circumstance it is to be obliged to remark the con- murphy's narrative. 429 duct of respectable characters, wound up to a pitch of frenzied loyalty, and making use of language degrading to the human species ! However, I met this military hero in some time after- wards, and he thought proper to apologize for it, and did appear sorrv for his mistaken zeal. " It is impossible to give a picture of the scene. The crowd was immense, and still increasing. I cannot do justice to these ' sons of Mars — I mean my body-guard — for they looked tremendous, only that some of them seemed not to be able to carry the musket ; it appeared to be rather heavy for them ; but they were 1 weak and willing' ! However, on we marched to the Castle. It would not do to go in at the grand gate; my guard of honour took me round to the lower gate, and brought me to a temporary guard- house, where now stands the Castle chapel: there I was introduced, I suppose, to the general of the staff, who appeared quite pleased, and seemed to enjoy the scene with the greatest pleasure. In a little time I was removed from this to the Castle guard-house, and there placed in a crib, with several others, a place I could hardly breathe in, and there exhibited lor public curiosity. A soldier of the 38th said he wished to have a crack at me. In the course of the day I was ordered, with others, to the Provost prison, situated in Harbour Hill. I was brought there under escort This place appeared to be a new building, and is situated on a rising ground. I was placed in a room with five or six other prisoners ; it was intended, I heard, as an hospital for invalided soldiers: there was not in it either table or chair, or anything whatever except the walls, and they were thick enough. I sent for a bed, and I ac- commodated two of my fellow-prisoners with part of it. It' I had not, they would be obliged to lie on the floor. The window- stools supplied the place of a table. The wet was running down the walls in the most copious way. There were in this place two hundred prisoners, and, from appearances, the principal part of them were of the humblest class of society. It was a horrible place for any man to be placed in that was accustomed to a re- spectable place in society. It required great fortitude to submit with calmness to this state of things: however, ' we must bear those ills we cannot cure'. My house was deserted, my trade de- stroyed, my credit injured! I would prefer being three months in Newgate to three weeks in this place. Sometimes there would come informers, and then the prisoners would be ordered out for inspection, two deep, and the informers would view us all round with the eye of an Argus, trying to recognize any unfortunate prisoner in the crowd to whom to attach criminality. I have seen Majors Sirr and Swan amusing themselves here laughing at the misfortunes of others, but at the same time taking care of 430 END OF MURPHY'S NARRATIVE AND CAREER. themselves. I felt I gave great uneasiness and* trouble to my fa- mily, and it caused very unpleasant sensations to myself. I con- sidered this circumstance as a very coercive measure ; but I was well aware it was to please a certain party at that time in power. A friend of mine went to Alderman Manders, a highly respectable character, and, with the greatest kindness, he went to the Castle, to Mr. Marsden, I think, to inquire what grounds there were for my detention. The answer was, there was no charge exhibited against me. I was well aware of that, for I was satisfied there could be no charge against me, but that, in a few days, I might expect to be liberated. I understood I had enemies behind the curtain : one gentleman said to Mr. Marsden : ' If ye let out per- sons that way, there was no occasion to take them up'. Very sublime reasoning ! If they happened to be there themselves, they would reason in a very different way, I think ; and they de- served it as much as I did. My friends were very desirous for my liberation, and the worthy alderman went several times for an answer, and it was still, 4 wait a while 1 . At length my highly respectable friend, with all that candour and goodness which dig- nified the man, wrote a letter to Mr. Marsden, expressive of his readiness of being answerable for my person and conduct at any time the government thought it necessary for me to be called on, to answer any alleged charge made against me ; and that has not taken place yet. I was obliged to give bail of two sureties of £500 each, and myself for £1,000 for seven years; very mo- derate ! and besides bail to the same amount was given in the 1798 business, and for the same term. " I feel an eternal debt of gratitude to the late Alderman Man- ders for his disinterested conduct on this business ; for I am con- fident there could not be a more impartial magistrate or high- minded character to be found in society. He exhibited a kindness of feeling, and felt a pleasure in administering even-handed justice to all. What a melancholy picture presented itself to me when I came from the Provost prison to my house, after three weeks' in- carceration in that dismal place — and for what ? To please a junto that was lording it over the people ; these exclusive loyalists that are living like the bishops — ' on Divine Providence'. "This business, like the last, injured me very much in my trade. I was recommended at this time to address a letter to his grace the Duke of Leinster. I did myself that honour when his grace re- sided in that spacious mansion formerly occupied by his grace's ancestors, and himself at this time. In accordance with the wishes of my friends, I went to this mansion, and inquired of the person m care of the front gate if his grace was at home. I was answered in the affirmative. There were two approaches to the house : I END OF MURPHY'S NARRATIVE AND CAREER. 431 went the private way, and found in the hall a servant in waiting. I inquired if his grace was disengaged. I was told he was. I then gave this person a letter addressed to his grace, and said that I respectfully requested an answer ; and the messenger shortly re- turned, and said there was no answer ! I immediately withdrew, and came out the same way I went in. On my way back, I was met by a gentleman, who asked, ' if I was much disappointed at this interview with his grace, as I had said I was strongly recommended by mv friends to make the application T I saw too late I acted a verv imprudent part, and paid very well for it. If attachment to my beautiful but ill-fated country be a crime, I submit to that charge, and I have been taught ' to bear those ills we cannot cure'. (Signed) •" N. Murphy". There is a note at the end of this statement, written by Murphy at a later period, and dated the 29th of November, 1831, repeating the circumstance of Bond s sudden death, the 16th of September, J. 798, and the embarkation of the state prisoners the 18th of March, 1799; their arrival at Fort George the 9th of April fol- lowing, and their detention there till the spring of the year 1801, when they were liberated on peace being proclaimed. As the note is a mere repetition of what is stated in the pre- ceding narrative, it is unnecessary to insert it here. In the latter years of his life the afTairs of Nicholas Murphy were a good deal embarrassed. He was obliged to mortgage his house, and to borrow money from his sisters and brother. He died the latter end of April, 1833, in his 77th year, poor in circum- stances, but with the character of an honest man, whose fidelity to Lord Edward Fitzgerald was the cause of his rum. He was buried in the cemetery at Glasnevin. If he had played the villain with his friend, perhaps a monument might have been erected to his memory ; as it is, there is not even a common headstone over his grave. The sister of Nicholas Murphy died in poverty the latter end of 1843, in a miserable lodging at No. 47 Watling Street, in her 75th year. Shortly before her death, I drew up a memorial for her, addressed to the Duke of Leinster, appealing to his grace's charity, for some little assistance for the poor old lady, whose brother had been so cruelly used in purse and person for affording the shelter of his house and faithful services to his grace's uncle. That memorial was duly transmitted to the Duke of Leinster, but it produced no effect. Murphy's sister ought to have remembered that Lord Edward Fitzgerald's memory, in the opinion of some of his race, ought to be buried in oblivion, and of some, even in obloquy. I cannot bring myself, however, to believe that the utmost modera- 432 THE DUKE OF LEINSTEK AND THE MAJOR. tionin politics, the tenderest consideration for the feelings of Major Sirr, the highest veneration for the names and virtues of the illus- trious Camdens, Clares, and Castlereaghs, render it imperative on us to forget the memory of that man whose name and the story of whose life and death are written deep in the heart's core of the people of this country. Those who think otherwise may not, perhaps, find it difficult to account for such matters as the following : — Moore, in his Diary, January 17, 1831, referring to his work, then in progress towards completion, thus refers to "a letter from the Duke of Leinster on the subject of my Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, written, as he says, at the request of Lady Campbell (the daughter of Lord Edward), to beg I would postpone the publication, and adding that he agrees with her as to the expediency of doing so". And a little later we find the following entry : — " January 19, 1831. — Answered the Duke of Leinster, saying that I felt myself committed to the publication, nor could I agree with Lady Campbell nor his grace in their views of its postpone- ment".* Moore, in his Diary, August, 1830, referring to his visit to Dublin, says he had some conversation with the Duke of Leinster about the intended Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. " While he was with me, Major Sirr left a card — such changes does time produce ! Showed his card to the duke, who, I find, knows him, and thinks him, in his ivay, a good sort of man\\ Moore subsequently saw the good sort of man who slew Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and he told Moore " he got the information as to the place where he (Lord Edward) was concealed but the moment before he acted on it. Ryan and Swan happened to be with him at the time; took five or six soldiers with him in plain clothes ; when arrived in Thomas Street, sent for the pickets of cavalry and infantry in the neighbourhood ; he had altogether be- tween two and three hundred". Moore states that the previous escape from arrest, when Lady Fitzgerald's papers were examined by Major Swan, was from Leinster House by the stables ; and that it was after this Lady Fitzgerald took lodgings in Denzille Street. Lord Edward, on being told by Surgeon Adrien that his wound in the shoulder was not dangerous, replied, " I am sorry for it". Being duly secured, searched, and deprived of some treasonable papers, % he was then removed in a sedan chair from Murphy's house to the Castle. * " Moore's Memoirs", vol. vi. p. 1G4. f Ibid., vol. vi. p. 132. \ One of the papers found on Lord Edward's person was a plan of attack on the city of Dublin, which had been drawn up and sent to him by that strange and in - comprehensible man, Walter Cox. CAPTURE OF LORD EDWARD. 433 The number of wounds inflicted by Lord Edward on Swan and Rvan is said by Moore to have been almost incredible. Those inflicted on Swan, however, were not of a serious nature ; but those which Ryan received were found to leave no hope of recovery.* The accounts given of the struggle of Lord Edward with his captors are exceedingly contradictory, and the official ones are not more exact than those which we find in the letters of members of Lord Edwards family. Murphy's account of the affair, so far as relates to what he witnessed, may be relied on as a true and au- thentic statement. The Duke of Portland, in a letter to a member of the Leinster family, communicating the capture of Lord Edward, states that, " Lord Edward, who was armed with a case of pistols and a dagger, stood on his defence, shot Mr. Ryan in the stomach, and wounded Mr. Swan with the dagger in two places. Major Sirr, on entering the room, and observing Lord Edward with the dagger uplifted in his hands, fired at him and wounded him in the arm of the hand that held the weapon, upon which he was secured". Lord Edward was armed solely with a dagger ; he had not time or opportunity to get at his pistols when he was assailed by Swan in the first instance, and Ryan immediately after. Ryan was not shot ; he was stabbed in the stomach, and received various wounds inflicted by the same weapon, in all fourteen. Swan received two slight wounds in the hand — finger-cuts, which alarmed him exceedingly. Moore states the number of wounds inflicted by Lord Edward appears incredible. It will be seen in the following statements of Mr. D. F. Ryan, son of the Captain Ryan mortally woimded by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, which, I have no doubt, are quite correct, so far as respects the parts taken by Swan, Ryan, and Sirr, and the defence made by Lord Edward. The account of Mr. D. F. Ryan's narrative I will give in his own words: the opinions of the gentleman it is not necessary to trouble my readers with, though, " for the benefit of the present gene- ration, lie begs" to premise a few observations on the state of society in Ireland at the time of that rebellion. " For the benefit of the present generation", and in the fulness of my regard for its patience, and in consideration of its unlimited powers of * Ryan was a nephew of the notorious Jack Giffard, alias "the dog in office", the proprietor of the Dublin Journal. Kyan is described in some of the newspaper reports of Lord Edward's capture, as a printer. His son styles him editor of that paper. He appears to have been a kind of newspaper man of all work, of no regular appointed position on the press, but one of the nondescript class of em- ployees of that old ascendency press of Ireland, all of whose people were expected, not only to do the work of getting out the paper, but to be imbued with its politics, and to promote them in private and in public by any means and in any capacity, per fas aut nefas. Mr. Ryan, like Polonius, had the absurdity to thrust himself into a most dangerous position, and he suffered the sad consequences of his fully, in being taken for his betters. ii. 29 434 ryan's narrative of the capture of lord edward. endurance whenever it has to deal with such strictures as those of Mr. Ryan on Thomas Moore, I leave his observations on the author of Lord Edward Fitzgerald in the dreary wilderness of the four great volumes of the Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh, where I found them. But " for the be- nefit of the present generation", I cannot resist the temptation of citing one of Mr. Ryan's opinions with respect to the veracity of the son and historian of the Mr. Thomas Reynolds, of happy memory, who, to use a pious phrase applied by Major Sirr, in his latter days, when he was spiritual, on a similar occasion, I venture to hope, may reign "in a Heavenly mansion not made with hands". Mr. D. F. Ryan, in reference to a letter published in the Times and Standard of the 9th January, 1839, states, " that it was in re- futation of a very false account that was contained in the life of the too notorious Thomas Reynolds". I am sure the public will duly appreciate the opinion of the grand-nephew of Mr. John Giffard, that Mr. Thomas Reynolds, senior, was "too notorious"; and if Mr. Ryan had added "to be trusted, even on his oath", I believe " the present generation" would have entirely concurred in that opinion of old Reynolds's morality. I have had a great deal of trouble imposed on me by the necessity occasioned by his bio- graphy to convict his historian of falsifying duly authenticated facts, of displaying audacious recklessness in a sanctimonious, plau- sible, equivocating letter, addressed to me, in an attempted refuta- tion of statements of mine in relation to his "too notorious" father. I therefore thankfully accept a testimony to my labours so cor- roborative of my sentiments in regard to the younger Reynolds's misstatements as that of Mr. D. F.. Ryan, wherein he asserts that the writer of the life of the too notorious Thomas Reynolds was capable of making very false statements. Mr. D. F. Ryan states, his father had been an officer in the 103rd regiment, commanded by Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and on the reduction of that regiment, had settled in Dublin, and became edi- tor of Faulkner s Dublin Journal, of which his uncle, Captain Gif- fard, was proprietor ; and being thus situated, he became a zealous loyalist : he raised the St. Sepulchre's corps, which he commanded. His death took place on the 30th of May, and his remains were interred on the 2nd of June, 1798, attended to St. Mary's Church, Dublin, by 1,500 gentlemen in uniform. There can be no question that the unfortunate gentleman, who abandoned his functions as an editor of an Orange newspaper, or one of the staff of scribes and firebrands connected with it, for those of an amateur man-hunter, a rebel-catcher, on many occasions during the Irish Reign of Terror — on that last and most lamentable occasion displayed far more courage than either of his associates, ryan's narrative of thk capture of lord edward. 435 Town Major Sirr or Mr. Justice Swan, who were professionals in the man-hunting and rebel-catching line. I think few instances of fierce, persevering, desperate, tenacious, and determined courage in similar circumstances can be found, more remarkable than that instance of Ryan's prolonged struggle with such an adversary as Lord Edward Fitzgerald, mortally wounded as he was, and when felled to the ground by a deadly blow, still clinging fast to the legs of his powerful assailant. Swans conduct in leaving for a moment his associate in such a position and such dreadful circum- stances, faithfully related, as I believe the account of that struggle to be by Mr. D. F. Ryan, and confirmed, as I find it, in the most material points by Murphy's narrative, contrasts very unfavourably with the conduct of Ryan. M On the 19th of May", says Mr. D. F. Ryan, "just four days before the intended insurrection, a Secretary of State's letter was directed to Town Majors Sirr and Swan and Captain Ryan, re- quiring them, with eight soldiers, to proceed to Thomas Street to arrest Lord Edward Fitzgerald. On reaching the house, Major Sirr and the soldiers remained below to defend the house against the mob, while Captain Ryan and Major Swan ascended the stair- case. Major Swan first entered Lord Edwards apartment, and, on finding his lordship, cried out, ' You are my prisoner 1 ; upon which the latter aimed a blow with his dagger at Swan, who parried it with his hand. The blade, after passing the fingers, glanced along the side, inflicting a superficial wound, of which he (Swan) recovered in about a fortnight. Swan, thus wounded, exclaimed, 1 Ryan, Ryan, I am basely murdered !' Captain Ryan, who had been searching another part of the house, on hearing this excla- mation, immediately ran in, and seizing Lord Edward, threw him back on the bed, where a violent struggle ensued, in which Cap- tain Ryan received an awful wound in the stomach. He instantly started up, and attempted to use a sword-cane. A most unequal contest followed, and lasted for about ten minutes, in the course of which Captain Ryan, unarmed, resolutely maintained his grasp of his prisoner, who, with desperate ferocity, inflicted wound after wound, to the number of fourteen. Captain Ryan's hands being disabled, he clung round Lord Edward with Iris legs, and, though dragged through the room towards the door, effectually prevented Lord Edward's escape to the staircase. All this time Lord Edward was unhurt, his opponent defenceless ; nevertheless, he recklessly wounded, and brandished his awfully-constructed double-edged dagger, worn for the express purpose of carrying death to any as- sailant. This horrifying scene lasted until the arrival of the sol- diers, and was terminated by Major Sirr discharging a pistol at Lord Edward: the ball entered his shoulder: but even then, so 436 ryan's narrative of the capture of lord edward outrageous was he, that the military had to cross their muskets and force him down to the floor, before he could be overpowered and secured".* The following letter, addressed to Mr. D. F. Ryan by Major Sirr, and by him published in the Times and Standard newspa- pers of the 9th January, 1839, and which was very generally copied by the press, will no doubt be read with interest : — " Dublin, December 29, 1838. » My Dear Ryan, — I received your letter referring to the ac- count given in the Times newspaper of the taking of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and requesting to know whether I authorized that ac- count as given. " I know not any thing how the occurrence took place in the room Lord Edward was discovered in ; but on my arrival in view of Lord Edward, Ryan, and Swan, I beheld his lordship standing with a dagger in his hand, as if ready to plunge it into my friends, while dear Ryan, seated on the bottom step of the flight of the upper stairs, had Lord Edward grasped with both his arms by the legs or thighs, and Swan in a somewhat similar situation, both la- bouring under the torment of their wounds, when, without hesita- tion, I fired at Lord Edward's dagger arm, and the instrument of death fell to the ground. Having secured my titled prisoner, my first concern was for your dear father's safety. I viewed his intes- tines with grief and sorrow. I found a peaceful and hospitable habitation for him in a neighbouring house, Mr. Tighe's, and placed a guard over him for his protection. Swan was able to assist him- self with the aid I afforded him, and I had him conveyed in a sedan-chair, which went in the procession with the prisoner, etc., to the Castle, and thence conveyed him to his residence. " Your dear father was a man of honour, and courageous, and often was a partner with me on dangerous and momentous occa- sions at that eventful period ; and I trust he reigns in a Heavenly mansion not made with hands. " I have by me your father's sword-cane unsheathed, as I found it, which shall be yours, should you wish it. " I agree with you relative to Lord Edward: he was considered a highly honourable man at Gibraltar, where I knew him when he Was on a visit to the governor of that garrison. " Remember me to your family in the kindest manner, and be- lieve me, with sincerity and sincere regard, yours most truly, " Henry Charles Sirr. "D. F. Byan, Esq., excise officer, London". f * " Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh, edited by his Brother". Vol. i., p. 461. f Ibid., vol. i., p. 463. OF THE BETRAYAL OF LORD EDWARD. 437 The amateur rebel-catching services of Captain Ryan had been sufficiently rewarded, in the opinion of the Irish government, twenty years after the date of them ; but it would appear that opinion was not shared by some members of the Ryan family. On the 28th of August, 1819, Mr. Charles Grant, secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, writes to Mr. Secretary Hobhouse in respect to an application of Lieutenant Ryan, of 5th veteran battalion, made to Lord Sidmouth, representing the services of his family, and his present unhappy condition, and states, for Lord Sidmouth's information, that Mrs. Ryan, widow of Daniel Frederick Ryan, who died of his wounds in 1798, had a pension from government, and her two daughters, for their lives, of £200 a year, "paid out of a private fund", and that his son, moreover, was first clerk of comptroller of taxes". " His Excellency therefore thinks that the family of the late Mr. Ryan have been fully remunerated for the services they rendered. " Signed, M C. Grant" * CHAPTER VIII. THE BETRAYAL OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD. There can be little doubt but that the person who disclosed the secret of Lord Edwards place of concealment, was one then in his confidence, or in that of the persons about him who were in the habit of visiting him at Moores, Cormick's, or Murphy's, or forming what was called his "body guard" when he went abroad. From some persons in the confidence of Lord Edward or his friends, Sirr's information was certainly derived, which led to the knowledge of Lord Edwards intended visit to Moira House on Ushers Island, and the fact with regard to Murphy's house, that there was a valley between the two sloping sides of the roof of the adjoining store of that house, which required to be particularly looked after. The very moment of Sirrs arrival there, on the evening of the 19th of May, the identical valley where Lord Edward had been concealed only some hours before by his host Murphy, was pointed out by the major to his assistants as a place by which escape was likely to be effected. The circumstance of the rencontre in Bridgefoot Street, the pre- * Private official correspondence, 1819. 438 OF THE BETRAYAL OF LORD EDWARD. vious evening — of Sirr and his party being there on the watch for Lord Edward, knowing he was to pass through the street on the evening in question, is a sufficient proof that treachery was nearer his person while in concealment, than he or his friends had any idea of The narrative of Mr. Murphy is a sufficient evidence of his fidelity to render any vindication of it unnecessary. The son of Mr. Reynolds has very industriously endeavoured to impress the readers of his book with the opinion that there were a variety of circumstances, so suspicious in their nature, in the con- duct of Murphy on the occasion of the arrest of Lord Edward, as to be totally inexplicable. In short, he plainly insinuates, though he does not say it in express terms, that Murphy was privy to the door being left open, by which Sirr and his party gained admission, and as he was standing at the window when they entered, that he must have seen the party in the street on their arrival at the house. If Mr. Reynolds's father had been living, he could probably have informed him that there was not the slightest ground for these insinuations; though the disclosure of Lord Edward's place of con- cealment was not made by him, from his subsequent intimacy with the agents of government, he could hardly have been mistaken as to the quarter from which it did come. The person who gave that information was amply rewarded for it — he received £1,000, and the initials of his name were not those of Nicholas Murphy. Nor was Murphy at large when the payment was made. The following date, letters, service, and sum paid for it, show the groundlessness of the suspicions entertained by Mr. Reynolds : — " June 20th, 1798. F. H. Discovery of L. E. F. £1,000". These initials may spare the friends of Samuel Neilson the trouble of vindicating his memory, if the third edition of the Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald has left any necessity for so doing. The impu- tation on Neilson of being the betrayer of his friend, had no foun- dation whatsoever. It is only to be regretted that a doubt ever existed for a moment of the conduct of a man who suffered so much in purse and person as Neilson had done, for that cause in which his dearest friend perished, and for whom he risked his own life in the prosecution of a daring, though ineffectual, plan for his liberation. In the third edition of Mr. Moore's Life of Lord Edward Fitz- gerald, he has inserted an introductory notice respecting the mis- interpretation of the passage which had given uneasiness to the friends of Neilson, and its omission in that edition. Lord Edward was arrested at Murphy's on the 19th of May. Neilson had dined there in company with him that day, and after OF THE BETRAYAL OF LORD EDWARD. 439 dinner somewhat abruptly left the house. Shortly afterwards, Major Sirrs party entered the house, finding the door open. Whether Neilson shut the door on going out or not, is unknown. He had been at the house in the morning, warning the servant to keep "a sharp look out", as the military were in the neighbourhood searching Moore's house, as he believed, for Lord Edward. The probability is, that when he suddenly left Murphy and Lord Edward in the evening, Ins fears of the military being still on the alert, induced him to go out to see if all was safe in the vicinity, and most likely with the intention of returning. Whether he had time to return before Sirrs arrival, or met with some acquaintance, who drew off his attention from the object of his going forth, we have no information. In any case, his imprudence cannot be denied ; but I can safely say, that none of those who were best acquainted with him suspected the sincerity of his attachment to Lord Edward, however imprudent his conduct may then have been. At that period his health was shattered : both mind and body were broken down by the effects of long suffering during his protracted confinement, and, finally, by an indulgence in those baneful habits which are so easily acquired — at first, embraced for the sake of the forgetfulness of care and trouble, and which at last, confirmed by long indulgence, enslave the mind. Neilson was first arrested in Belfast, the 15th of November, 1796 ; sent up to Dublin, and kept in close confinement till the month of February, 1798; he was then liberated on account of severe illness, from which he was hardly expected to recover. The 20th of April, in company with Mr. John Hughes, he visited Lord Edward at Cormick s in Thomas Street, where he was then in concealment. In the report from the Committee of Secrecy of the House of Lords, 1798, on the examination of John Hughes of Belfast, it is stated by the latter, that he went to Dublin on the 20th of April, and remained there about nine days. He called on Samuel Neilson, and went to Cormick's, where he found Lord Edward playing at billiards with Lawless, and dined there with them. About the 28th of April, he breakfasted with Neilson at the house of Mr. Sweetman, who was then in prison. Neilson then lived at his house. Neilson and he (the same day) went in Mr. Sweetman's carriage to Mr Grattans, at Tinnahinch. He states that Neilson and Grattan had some private conversation, and after some general conversation about the strength of the United Irish- men in the north, they left Mr. Grattan's, and on their way back, Neilson informed him that he had sworn Mr. Grattan. On the 14th or 15th of May, Neilson and Lord Edward rode out to reconnoitre the approaches to Dublin on the Kildare side : they 440 OF THE BETRAYAL OF LORD EDWARD. were stopped and questioned by the patrol at Palmerstown, and finally allowed to proceed. Four days after Lord Edward's arrest, Neilson was arrested by Gregg, the jailor, in front of Newgate, where he had been recon- noitering the prison, with a view to the liberation of Lord Edward and the other state prisoners ; a large number of men being in readiness to attack the jail, and waiting for Neilson's return at a place called the Barley Fields. It is then evident, that Hughes was in the full confidence of Neilson, the 28th of April; there is no reason to believe that he ceased to be so previously to the 19th of May; and yet, during this period, and long before it, there is very little doubt that Hughes was an informer. Neilson's frank, open, unsuspecting nature, was well known to the agents of government, and even to Lord Castlereagh, who was personally acquainted with Neilson, and on one occasion had visited him in prison. Hughes, it is probable, was set upon him with a view to ascer- tain his haunts, and to enter into communication with his friends, for the special purpose of implicating Grattan and of discovering Lord Edward. That his perfidy never was suspected by Neilson during their intimacy, there are many proofs ; and still more, that Neilson's fidelity to the cause he had embarked in, and the friends he was associated with, was never called in question by his com- panions and fellow-prisoners, by Emmet, M'Neven, O'Connor, etc. ; or, if a doubt unfavourable to his honesty was expressed by John Sheares in his letter to Neilson, wherein he endeavours to dissuade him from attacking the jail, it must be considered rather in the light of an angry expostulation, than of an opinion seriously enter- tained and deliberately expressed. This man, John Hughes, previously to the rebellion, was in comfortable circumstances, and bore a good character in Bel- fast. He kept a large bookseller's and stationer's shop in that town. In his evidence before the Lords' Committee of 1798, he gives an extensive account of his career as a United Irishman. That portion of Hughes's evidence which has reference to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, is of such a nature as requires that it should be given without abridgment, as it appears in the report : — "He went to Dublin on the 20th of April, and remained there about nine days. He called on Samuel Neilson ; walked with him to Mr. Cormick's, a feather merchant, in Thomas Street. He was introduced by Neilson to Cormick in the office. Cormick asked them to go up stairs ; he and Neilson went up stairs, and found OF THE BETRAYAL OF LORD EDWARD. 441 Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Mr. Lawless, the surgeon, playing billiards. He had been introduced to Lord Edward about a year before by Teeling; he was a stranger to Lawless; so he staid about an hour ; no particular conversations ; w T as invited to dine there that day, and did so; the company were Lord Edward, Lawless, Neilson, Cormick, and his wife. The conversation turned upon the state of the country, and the violent measures of govern- ment in letting the army loose. The company were all of opinion that there was then no chance of the people resisting by force with any success. He was also introduced by Gordon, who had been in Newgate, and Robert Orr, of Belfast, chandler, to Mr Rattican, the timber merchant at the corner of Thomas Street Rattican talked to him on the state of the country and of the city of Dublin, and told him that they would begin the insurrection in Dublin by liberating the prisoners in Kilmainham. Rattican showed him a plan of the intended attack upon Kilmainham. Whilst he was in Dublin in April, he dined with Neilson at the Brazen Head*'. Hughes had his interview with Lord Edward, while the latter was "on his keeping" in Dublin, about a month before his arrest. Notwithstanding the importance of the information Hughes pos- PMOcd and gave before the committee, he never appeared as a ivit- ness at the trials of any of those persons he implicated by his dis- closures. This circumstance, on more than one occasion, surprised me a good deal; but the cause of Mr. Hughes being kept back at a crisis when evidence like his would have insured the conviction of the Belfast leaders, with few, if indeed with any exceptions, became at once intelligible enough to leave little doubt that he was reserved for higher functions than the Reynoldses and O'Briens, and more important objects were to be effected by him than he could achieve in the witness-box. This man has carefully suppressed the fact in his evidence, that in the year 171)7 he was arrested on a charge of high treason at Newry, and immediately after his being brought into Belfast, the same evening, was liberated on bail. Vide History of Belfast, p. 478. The use which was made of Hughes after Lord Edwards arrest, and at the period too at which he had Ins head-quarters at the Castle of Dublin, is very clearly shown in the narrative of the con- finement and exile of the Rev. William Steele Dickson, Presby- terian minister of Portaferry, in the county Down. Dr. Dickson was arrested on the 4th of June, 1798, in conse- quence of the disclosures made by Magin and Hughes. 442 OF THE BETRAYAL OF LORD EDWARD. During his confinement in the house called the Donegal Arms, then the Provost prison of Belfast, the plan was carried into effect, which had been very generally adopted at this frightful period in other parts of the country, of apprehending some of the least sus- pected informers, and having it rumoured abroad that such persons had been arrested as ringleaders of the rebels, who were sure to be convicted, and then placing these persons among the unfortunate prisoners, for the purpose of making the latter furnish evidence against themselves and their companions. This proceeding, which would hardly be had recourse to in any other civilized country, is described by Dr. Dickson, from his own sad expe- rience of it. With respect to Hughes, the circumstances which require con- sideration are the following. In October, 1797, he is arrested and charged with high treason, brought into Belfast, and liberated the same day on bail. He becomes a bankrupt the same year, and in March, 1798, he sur- renders himself under the commission in Dublin. In April, between the 20th and 29th of that month, he visited Lord Edward with Neilson ; about the 28th of the same month, accompanied by Neilson, he also visited Mr. Grattan. On the 19th of May, Lord Edward was arrested. Hughes's services are found employed in the north in the beginning of the next month, worming himself into the confidence of Dr. Steele Dickson, sup- posed to be the adjutant-general of the county Down ; a man, of all others of the Ulster United Irishmen, against whom evidence was most desired. For this purpose, we find Hughes apprehended on the 7th of June at Belfast,* and the immediate object of this colourable arrest was, by placing him in confinement with the prisoners recently taken up in Belfast, to obtain evidence of guilt of those who were suspected. Of this arrest, as well as of the former, Mr. Hughes thought it desirable to make no mention in his evidence. Quarters in the Castle were assigned to Mr. Hughes shortly after Lord Edward's arrest. The secret service money document affords some clue to the period of his residence there. From June, 1798, to the latter end of March, 1802, we find the head-quarters of Mr. Hughes were at the Castle. The reward for the discovery of Lord Edward Fitzgerald was offered on the 11th of May ; earned on the 19th; and paid on the 20th of the month following, to F. H. The Christian name of Hughes does not correspond with this first initial. The reader has been furnished with sufficient data to enable him to determine * «' Belfast History," p. 484, OF THE BETRAYAL OF LORD EDWARD. 443 whether those initials were intended to designate Hughes or some other individual ; whether the similarity of the capital letters J and F, in the handwriting in question, may admit, or not, of one letter being mistaken for another, the F for a J ; or whether a corres- pondent of Major Sirrs, who sometimes signed himself J. H., and whose name was Joel Hulbert, an informer, residing in 1798 in Monastereven, may have been indicated by them. In the spring of 1797, the man of unparallelled infamy, Mr. Thomas Reynolds, made an application to the Duke of Leinster for a lease of the lands of Kilkea. Through the interference in his behalf of Lord Edward Fitzgerald with his brother (though this fact is denied in Mr. Reynolds's biography), he was put in possession of Kilkea Castle and about 350 acres of land — "of the first land in the county" — on paying down a fine of £1,000, "the reserved rent amounting to no more than £48 2s. a-year !" — terms so advan- tageous as could only have been obtained by friendly interference Willi the owner of the property. The interference of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, with regard to the lease of Kilkea Castle, in favour of Reynolds, is called, with the usual modesty of his biographer, "a piece of pure invention from beginning to end' 1 . "Early in 1797 (this gentleman states), his lather took from the Duke of Leinster the valuable lease of the castle and lands of Kilkea"; that " he became a United Irishman in February, 1797"; that, " in November, 1797, Lord Edward called on his father, and asked him to take his place as colonel of a regiment of United Irishmen, enrolled in the county of Kildare, for a short tune". These dates are rather unfortunate for the arduous task of whitewashing the character of Mr. Reynolds's friendship, considering the very advantageous terms on which the lease was granted to him, and the confidential communications between Lord Edward and Mr. Reynolds, admitted by the latter, in November, 1797, the very month of his obtaining the lease from the Duke of Leinster. In the second volume of his work, Mr. Reynolds's biographer states, that Kilkea Castle, of which he had a lease for three lives renewable for ever — estimating the 360 acres of land at twenty- six shillings per acre, at only twenty years' purchase, was worth £8,100. In the information given upon oath by Thomas Reynolds, and afterwards confirmed before the Secret Committee in 1799, his in- timacy with Lord Edward is thus alluded to : " Deponent further saith, that in November, 1797, Lord Edward Fitzgendd, accom- panied by Hugh Wilson, met deponent upon the steps of the Four Courts, and told him that he wished to speak to him upon very particular business ; that deponent informed Lord Edward 444 OF THE BETRAYAL OF LORD EDWARD. Fitzgerald lie would be found in Park Street, if he called on him there; that deponent and Lord Edward knew each other only personally, and that only from a purchase deponent had been about in the county of Kildare from the Duke of Leinster".* Here Reynolds himself acknowledges what is positively denied by his son, that in the business relating to the purchase from the Duke of Leinster, Mr. Reynolds had a personal knowledge of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. It would appear from young Mr. Reynolds's work, that his father had a sincere regard for Lord Edward Fitzgerald. It is very probable that he had as much regard for his lordship as it was in his nature to feel for any man — that is to say, he had no personal animosity to this young nobleman ; and after the arrests at Bond's, perhaps, had nothing to gain (when he knew the secret of the place of concealment) by betraying him ; for the reward of £1,00(5 for his apprehension was not published till the 11th of May, and Reynolds was not then in town. But when it was part of the duty required of him by his employers, to deprive the widow and children of his dead friend of the means of subsistence, he was restrained by no compunctious visitings of nature from swearing away the property of his friend, as he had done the lives of his associates. There are three proofs given by Mr. Reynolds, junior, of the friendship of his father for Lord Edward. Two days after the arrests at Bond's on his information — (Lord Edward having so far fortunately escaped that peril by the accidental circumstance of seeing Major Sirr's party enter the house when he, Lord Edward, was on his way there, at the corner of Bridge Street) — Reynolds visited Lord Edward at his place of concealment, at Dr. Kennedy's in Aungier Street, and discussed with his lordship his future plans as to his concealment, etc. Mr. Reynolds discovered " he had no arms of any sort except a small dagger, and he was quite unpro- provided with cash, which was then scarce, as the banks had stopped all issue of gold. My father called on him again, on the evening of the 15th, and brought him fifty guineas in gold, and a case of good-sized pistols, with ammunition and a mould for casting bullets".! " He took the pistols, threw a cloak over his shoulders, and left the house accompanied by Mr. Lawless. My father never saw him more". Poor Lord Edward little imagined from what source that money had been derived, or that he and his companions had been betrayed by the very man who had been so recently in his company, and who had already drawn on the agent * Vide Eeport of Secret Committee, 1798 ; Appendix xvi., p 132. f " Life of Thomas Reynolds", vol. ii. p. 219. OF THE BETRAYAL OF LORD EDWARD. 445 of the government for the first portion of that stipulated sum which was the reward, of his disclosures, and placed a part of the price of his friend's blood in his hands under the semblance of an act of kindness. The present of the pistols, with the powder and bullet mould, for the protection of a man whose peril he well knew was the con- sequence of his own treachery to him and his associates, was worthy of Reynolds : villainy less accomplished would hardly have devised so refined an act of specious perfidy. It was a particular feature of Reynolds's infamy, that he seems to have felt a gratifica- tion in witnessing the effects of his perfidious proceedings on the unfortunate families of his victims. A few days after the arrests at Bond's, he paid a visit of condolence to Mrs. Bond, and even caressed the child she was holding in her arms. He paid a similar visit of si- mulated friendship to the wife of Lord Edward- Fitzgerald on the 16th of March. Mr. Reynolds's son must tell the particulars of this interview: " She (Lady Fitzgerald) also complained of a want of gold. My father told her he had given Lord Edward fifty guineas the preceding night, and would send her fifty more in the course of that day, which promise he performed. Neither of these sums were ever repaid. In the course of their conversation, my father mentioned his intention of leaving Ireland for a time ; on which she took a ring from her finger and gave it to him, saying she hoped to hear from him if he should have anything of importance to communicate, and that she would not attend to any letter pur- porting to come from him, unless it were sealed with that ring, which was a small red cornelian, engraved with the figure of a dancing satyr".* Mr. Reynolds having deprived himself of his pistols on the 15th of March, the act was considered by him, and at a later period, it would seem, was recognized by government, as one done for the jnihlic service; for these pistols were replaced by Major Sirr, and the bill for the case purchased on this occasion by the major for his friend was duly presented to Mr. Cooke, and the subsequent payment of it was not forgottn. " 1798, July 26, Major Sirr for pistols for Mr. Reynolds, £9 2 0". So much for the friendship's offerings of Mr. Thomas Reynolds. On the trial of Bond, Reynolds deposed he had been sworn a United Irishman in 1797 by Bond. About the 22nd of February, 1798, he returned from a visit at Sir Duke Gifford's, where he met Mr. Cope, Lord Wycombe, Mr. Fitzgerald, and Mr. Madox, * Vide "Life of Reynolds by his Son", vol. ii. p. 119. 446 OF THE BETRAYAL OF LORD EDWARD. where the conversation ran upon Irish politics and the United Irish business. From the date above mentioned, the lives of the principal leaders of the Society of United Irishmen were in the hands of the government. On the 12th of March, 1798, the arrests took place at Bond's, on the secret information of Thomas Reynolds. Four days later, on the 18th of March, Reynolds attended a meeting of the United Irishmen at the house of one Reilly, a publican, on the Curragh, at which he produced a letter he had obtained from Lord Edward, recommending the vacancies occasioned by the late arrests to be filled up ; but a discussion of a very different kind was immediately introduced, on a proposition " to change all the officers of the county meetings' committees", as it was supposed that none others could have furnished this intelligence on which the government had acted. Reynolds seconded this proposition, he being at the time one of the officers proposed to be changed. These arrests at Bond's were immediately followed up by those of Thomas Addis Emmet and Dr. William James M'Neven, and, on the 19th of May following, of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Mr. Reynolds, however, had not the merit of having brought his noble friend and benefactor to the scaffold : it was reserved for him, after the death of that friend, in his evidence before parliament, to lay the foundation for an attainder, which was " to visit the cradle of his unprotected offspring with want and misery". And now, at the conclusion of my researches on this subject of the betrayal of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, I have to confess they have not been successful. The betrayer still preserves his incognito: his infamy, up to the present time (January, 1858), remains to be connected with his name, and, once discovered, to make it odious for evermore. My efforts, however, have not been altogether in vain. I have put future inquiry on the right track. The publication by me of the secret service money account, duly authenticated by the government official, Mr. Edward Cooke, has thrown some faint light on this dark, mysterious subject. " F. L., for the Discovery of L. E. F., £1,000", is the first gleam on it that has been shed. Most assuredly it will not be the last. Nine-and- flfty years the secret of the sly, skulking villain has been kept by his employers with no common care for his character or his me- mory. But, dead or alive, his infamy will be reached in the long run, and the gibbeting of that name of his will be accomplished in due time. To those who may be disposed to follow up these efforts of mine to bring the villain's memory to justice, I would suggest, let them not seek for the betrayer of Lord Edward Fitzgerald in the lower or middle classes of the Society of United Irishmen ; and IMPRISONMENT AND DEATH OF LORD EDWARD. 447 perhaps if they are to find the traitor a member of any of the learned professions, it is not the medical one that has been dis- graced by his connection with it. CHAPTER IX. THE IMPRISONMENT AND DEATH OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was captured, and wounded severely in the right arm, near the shoulder, on the evening of the 19th of May, 1798. That pistol-ball wound was the result of the deliberate aim taken by Major Sirr from his secure position on the landing at the top of the stairs in Murphy's house, at his victim, already engaged in a deadly struggle with the two subordinate rebel- hunters, whom Sirr had prudently sent before him to make the perilous capture of a man of known valour — Major Swan, Mr. Ryan (in yeomanry parlance Captain Ryan). At the call of the major, the soldiers had then rushed up the stairs, overpowered Lord Ed- ward, and secured their prey. But the struggles of the wounded man, weltering in his blood, were still so formidable in the opinion of the gallant major, that he was not satisfied with seeing the fire- locks of the soldiers flung down across the bodv of the prostrate captive ; he had the wounded prisoner bound, and while that opera- tion of cross-muskcting and binding of the disabled Geraldine was going on, he witnessed and permitted a superfluous exhibition of dastardly humanity or over-valorous loyalty, as he might deem it, on the part of a dnunmer, by the infliction of another wound on the back of the neck of the beaten down, bleeding prisoner, which was only " slight", being " not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door', but it sufficed, we are told, to contribute to the sufferings of poor Lord Edward in his last moments, or, as medical men might perhaps more justly think (from the position of that wound), to the production of those tetanic symptoms, which ushered in his death. Lord Edward, moreover, had been bruised and cut in three places on his left hand. A surgeon of great eminence, Mr. Adrien, being in the neighbourhood (at the house of Mr. Laurence Tighe, a chandler in Thomas Street, living within three or four doors of Murphy's house, though the fact is not stated, I believe, in any published reports), was sent for by the major, to examine the wounds of Ryan, Swan, and Lord Edward. The question naturally arises, how did Major Sirr know that Surgeon Adrien was at the house of Laurence Tighe ? For what special services was this Laurence Tighe, a Roman Catholic of no 448 THE SURGEON- GENERAL STEWART — HIS HUMANITY. political influence, shortly afterwards rewarded with a lucrative official situation, which was sufficiently advantageous to induce him to abandon his business? When did the acquaintance with Major Sirr commence, which privileged him to correspond with that offi- cer, and to seek his good offices with a view to the disposal of his premises to the government for barracks ? (See the major's papers, Library of Trinity College, Dublin). Lord Camden, whose lamentable weakness of purpose in all emergencies of importance to the public or the state, want of moral courage, of resolution, and manliness of spirit, approached the cha- racter of actual imbecility of mind, and who never did acts of great wrong, of signal injustice of an extremely flagitious kind, except, as we are told in his defence, upon compulsion, or in compliance with the wishes, or in accordance with the counsel of my Lords Clare, Castlereagh, or the Beresfords, felt some emotion when the wounded prisoner of the House of Leinster was brought to the Castle. He sent his private secretary, Mr. Watson, to Lord Ed- ward, after he had been taken from Murphy's to the office of the secretary of war, to assure the latter that orders had been given that every possible attention that was compatible with the security of his person would be shown to him, and to acquaint him likewise that the secretary was commissioned to acquaint Lady Edward, with all due care and consideration, with the intelligence of the painful occurrences of that evening. That secretary discharged his duties in a way that might be expected from an English gen- tleman, not long enough in an Irish office closely connected with government to have his feelings perverted and turned from their natural direction towards tenderness and kindliness, to active sym- pathies with the sordid interests and the vile party purposes of the faction dominant in Ireland. He bent over Lord Edward, who was leaning back on two chairs with his arm extended, sup- ported by the surgeon-general, Stewart,* then in the act of dressing his wound, and took an opportunity of whispering in Lord Ed- ward's ear (unheard by those in the chamber) his readiness to execute any wish of his faithfully and secretly, or communicate * Mr. Stewart, the surgeon- general, was a man of great worth and goodness of heart. I am /ible to state, on the authority of one of the ablest surgeons of his time, and to state publicly now for the first time, that Surgeon Lawless, subse- quently General Lawless, owed his life to the timely information of his intended arrest, sent to him by the surgeon-general the day before the arrest of the two Sheares, through the late eminent Surgeon Peile. That timely intelligence enabled him to effect his escape to the continent. Similar intelligence, at the same period, was sent to another medical gentleman of the highest standing in his profession, then lecturing in the College of Surgeons — Surgeon Dean — by Stewart, and through the same medium of communication. Dean, unfortunately, made no attempt to escape. He went home from the college where the intelligence was given to hini, opened the femoral artery, and died of hoemorrhage. TREATMENT OF LORD EDWARD AFTER HIS CAPTURE. 449 any confidential message of his to Lady Edward. The answer given to that kind offer was spoken calmly — " No, no, thank you; nothing, nothing ; only break it to her tenderly". Lady Edward, while the deadly struggle in Murphy's house was going on on the evening of the 19th, was at a party at Lord Moira's, on Usher's Island ; but Mr. Watson, who had proceeded there after he left Lord Edward, was not suffered by Lady Moira to communicate the intelligence to Lady Edward; and it was only the following day she was made acquainted with it. She was then in delicate health, and only a few weeks had elapsed since her premature confinement had taken place in Denzille Street,* the result of surprise and anxiety, occasioned by the unexpected ▼kit of her husband at her then place of residence in that street. Lady Louisa Connolly, in one of her letters on the subject of Lord Edwards capture, states that a Captain Armstrong £not the captain best known, for the worst reasons, as Sheares Armstrong) had visited her, and she had heard from him " that the reported dreadful map found in Lady Edwards care, was one of Dublin, with notes written by a clever gunmaker, who had marked the weak parts, and who had sent it to Lord Edward. That no sooner had this man heard of the noise it made, than he went to govern- ment, and said it was his, which he had shown to Lord Edward. They asked him for what purpose he had drawn, it. ' For my amusement', said he", The clever gunmaker was Mr. Walter Cox. Cox's ideas of " amusement" were of a peculiar nature. On another occasion, if not for his " amusement", certainly for no other com- prehensible reason that can be imagined, with one exception, he avows that he went to the Castle, " de proprio motu\ and pro- claimed himself the editor, printer, and publisher of the assassina- tion journal called The Union Star. And these strange amuse- ments subjected " Watty Cox" to no inconvenience whatsoever. It was Lord Camden's wish, it is stated in Moore's work, that Lord Edward should not be removed from the Castle, but should be allowed to remain there in safe custody. But the civic autho- rities, as represented by Sirr, would not consent to give up their prisoner, by whom two of their officers had been wounded ; and the civil authorities, represented by Castlcreagh and Clare, con- curring with the former, poor Lord Camden, of course, submitted to the will of his masters, having no will of his own ; so Lord Edward was conveyed to Newgate, and placed in a cell which had been occupied by Lord Aldborough. From the commencement of his imprisonment to within a few hours of his death, all access to him, except on two occasions, on the part of his relatives and Lucy Louisa, the second daughter of Lord Edward, was born in April, 1798. ii. 30 450 TREATMENT OF LORD EDWARD AFTER HIS CAPTURE. friends, was savagely denied and peremptorily refused by Earl Camden. Not even the old confidential servant of the Leinster family, Shiel, nor the trusty Negro servant of Lord Edward, "the faithful Tony", whose honest black face was the only thing Lord Edward loved to look on, as he says in one of his letters from Canada, were allowed to attend on him throughout his sufferings. His favourite brother, Henry, worried the Lord Lieutenant and Lord Chancellor* and the Chief Secretary with entreaties to be permitted to see his dying brother. But it was only when in the agonies of death, and within a few hours of his end, that Lords Camden and Castlereagh could be got to relax in the harshness of their barbarous rigour. Lady Louisa Connolly and Lord Henry Fitzgerald were per- mitted to visit their dying relative on Sunday evening, 3rd of June, 1798 ; and the following Monday morning, at two o'clock, on the 4th instant, the corpse of the gallant, pure-minded, brave-hearted Lord Edward Fitzgerald lay stiff and cold in a cell of Newgate. And there members of Beresford's corps of yeomanry (two of whom, while the breath was in that body, had been seen with drawn swords standing by the bedside of the suffering prisoner) tramped up and down, and chatted with jail officials, and felt that kind of satisfaction which men of brutal instincts feel in being rid of the presence of a superior intelligence and a noble nature, and thus escaping from the consciousness of their own depravity and per- versity being observed and comprehended, and rebuked by such observation. The}^ felt, moreover, a sense of security, which they could not say they possessed while there was one spark of life in their prisoner's breast or the slightest movement in his limbs, when they glanced at the still, pallid features of that corpse of the brave, high-spirited man, who lay dead before them. Ryan survived his wounds twelve days ; Lord Edward survived his, fifteen days. On the 26th, the latter made his will ; but even in the execution of that instrument, no person in any way connected with his lordship's family was suffered to go near him. Even Mr. Leeson, a professional gentleman, who was brought to Newgate to see that will executed, and to advise the dying man as to the manner of carrying his last wishes into effect, was not suffered to enter the prison ; he remained seated in a carriage at the door, while the surgeon-general went backwards and forwards from the cell of the prisoner to the carriage outside the jail, communicating between Lord Edward and his legal adviser on matters of such importance * To the first application of Lord Henry Fitzgerald, begging to be permitted to see his brother, Lord Clare replied, that he was sorry that it was impossible to comply with his wishes, and he adds — " If I could explain to you the grounds of this restriction, even you would hardly be induced to condemn it as unnecessarily harsh". TREATMENT OF LORD EDWARD AFTER HIS CAPTURE. 451 to the interests of the wife and children of the testator. That instrument, by which he left all he died possessed of to his wife, Lady Fitzgerald, during her life, and at her death to descend, share and share alike, to his children, " she maintaining and edu- cating those children according to her discretion", was signed by two of his medical attendants, Alexander Lindsay, a surgeon, and George Stewart, surgeon-general, and also by Samuel Stone, a lieutenant of the Deny militia. At the commencement of Lord Edwards imprisonment in New- gate, Lieutenant Stone had been appointed by the authorities to remain with Lord Edward, and see that he was duly attended to. This gentleman executed the duties assigned to him with humanity and kindness ; and Lord Edward's sufferings were in some degree soothed by the affectionate interest which he seemed to feel in him ; and Lord Edward, we are told, was pleased with him : but, without any assignable cause or motive that could be imagined, except that by his humanity lie had rendered himself pleasing to the dying prisoner, he was reznoved from his charge upon the 2nd of June; but at the request of Lady Louisa Connolly, he was permitted to accompany the remains of Lord Edward to their final resting place in Werburgh's church, on Wednesday, the 6th of June, accompanied by an old, faithful servant of the Leinster family, of the name of ShieL One of the state prisoners then confined in Newgate, an eminent solicitor of Dublin, who had been an agent of Mr. Grattan, Mat- thew Dowling, found means to write and despatch a letter to Lord Henry Fitzgerald, on Sunday, the 3rd of J unc, wherein he states : " Your brother, Lord Edward, is dangerously ill, in fact, dying — he was delirious some time last night"; and he adds — "Surely, my lord, some attention ought to be paid to him". And then fol- low these words, written some time later on the same day — "He is now better, and has called for a chicken for dinner". And then, in a still later postscript, written after two o'clock (in the afternoon), the writer, a humane and a good man, who had known Lord Edward as well as Lord Henry Fitzgerald " in happier days", observes — " Seeing you or any friend he has confidence in, would, I think, be more conducive to his recovery than fifty surgeons. I saw him a few moments last night, but he did not know me. We will watch him as well as is in our power". The letter of Dowling to Lord Henry Fitzgerald, written on Sunday, the 3rd of June, could leave no doubt of Lord Edward's being in the last extremity. Another member of the Leinster family, Lady Louisa Connolly, who was kept daily informed of his state of health, received an express from Dublin, communicating such alarming intelligence as induced her immediately to come to 452 TREATMENT OF LORD EDWARD AFTER HIS CAPTURE. town, and make one more effort to obtain permission to see her dying relative. She succeeded that time, and the clemency of Camden and Castlereagh was extended even to the favourite brother of Lord Edward. But that clemency was extended when the prisoner was within a few hours of his death, when he had been two days in paroxysms of occasional delirium, and had been fre- quently attacked with spasms — the sure forerunner of approaching death in a case like that of Lord Edward. The particulars of this closing scene may be given in a few words. Between eleven and twelve o'clock on Sunday night, the 3rd of June, 1798, Lady Louisa Connolly and Lord Henry Fitzgerald were ushered into the cell where Lord Edward lay, evidently dying. On the preceding Friday night he had un- dergone a great change for the worse: those about him consi- dered his life was in imminent danger. He was delirious at repeated intervals throughout that night, the day following, and Saturday night. Several of the state prisoners heard him speak- ing very loudly, sometimes even shouting, at these periods ; and on Saturday night one of the leaders of the Society of United Irishmen, more fortunate than most of his associates in being at large (who probably had means of receiving written communica- tions from some prisoner of his acquaintance, whose cell, like that of Lord Edward, was in the front part of the prison, with its windows facing Green Street), as he passed at the opposite side of the street, and repassed at intervals, could distinctly hear the voice of Lord Edward loudly exerted. The occasional shouts heard were like those of a delirious person, and they proceeded from a front cell, the grated window of which was known to be that of the room in which Lord Edward was confined. Nicholas Murphy, in whose house Lord Edward was captured, and who was then a pri- soner in Newgate, states in his narrative, that, during the night before his death, he heard Lord Edward frequently crying out, as if he was leading on a body of armed men reluctant to advance : " Come on ! — D n you I come on I" It would appear, from Moore's Life and Death of Lord Ed- ward Fitzgerald, that Lady Louisa Connolly had but one inter- view with Lord Edward in Newgate. Lady Louisa Connolly, in relating that interview, makes no allusion to any former one of her's with Lord Edward during his confinement. Mr. Moore makes no allusion to it ; yet he was not ignorant of its occur- rence ; but the fact is, that interview did take place, after Lady Louisa Connolly, the high-minded, proud woman, of a noble character, had humbled herself to the dust, had knelt down to that miserable creature and most contemptible of men, the most unworthy representative of the English sovereign in Ireland who TREATMENT OF LORD EDWARD AFTER HIS CAPTURE. 453 ever disgraced that office — Earl Camden — and had in vain be- sought him for permission to visit her beloved relative. It was alter that base refusal of her prayer that she had recourse, and not in vain, to Lord Clare, and moved that man to a sudden and impulsive act of generosity, obdurate as he was on all occasions when his passions were roused, but who had still some feelings of the heart which could be touched, when a sense of personal slight or wrong, or motives for vindictiveness, were not concerned in the matter on winch he was appealed to. But Moore had a theory to support, and an acquaintance with a live lord to link to it ; and the advantages of that acquaintance, in this instance, I think, blinded his judgment, and seemed to make it more incumbent on Mm to defend Lord Camden at the expense of Clare, than to record an act of the latter which re- dounded to his honour, and contrasted most unfavourably with the stupid and pig-headed obstinacy of the imbecile Camden. The particulars of that first interview of Lady Louisa Connolly will be lbund graphically detailed in a letter which the son of Lady Sarah Napier, the illustrious historian of the Peninsular War, Major-General William Napier, was good enough to address to me some years ago. In two other letters of General Napier will be found some references, likewise bearing on this subject. FROM MAJOR-GENERAL NAPIER TO R. R. MADDEN. "Guernsey, July 31st, 1842. " Sir, — I have just read, witli great interest, your work upon the United Irishmen, and I hasten to correct an error into which you have naturally enough fallen. " The Captain Armstrong mentioned in my mother's journal, which you have quoted from Moore's Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, was a totally different person from the betrayer of the Sheares. " He was a captain of the Londonderry regiment of the line, and, having served under my father, visited our house as a friend. He was in no way connected with the other, and is now, if alive, a general officer. He will be ill pleased at the mistake. " I remain, Sir, your obedient servant, "William Napier, M R. R. Madden, Esq." " Major-General. FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. " Guernsey, August 14th, 1842. " Sir, — I am glad that you feel pleased with the correction of an error into which it was very natural for you to have fallen ; 454 TREATMENT OF LORD EDWARD AFTER HIS CAPTURE. but I do not think you need reproach yourself for any injustice towards the S A , the blackness of whose infamy is of too deep a darkness to show any additional stain. I have also a vague notion that he did at a later period call upon my aunt, Lady Louisa Connolly, either with a view to deceive her or to obtain some favour, and that she treated him with that freezing dignity which her innate abhorrence of vice enabled her to as- sume with more effect than can well be believed by those who never saw her. "Iam indeed sure that something of the kind happened, but when, I cannot recollect. . . . The Dublin Evening Packet has just been put into my hands, and I find an article full of foul abuse of your work. This you, of course, must expect, The writer accuses you of exaggeration; but, as far as my knowledge extends, and it is not a confined knowledge of the part you have treated, you might be more reasonably accused of softening the horrid features of cruelty displayed by the government party ; and I do not wonder that the organs of that party should now wince and tremble at the just retribution of history. The bad deeds of those unhappy times should be held up to the execration of mankind, as a warning to deter men from repeating them ; and the way in which you are doing so is honourable to you, and will be, I hope, useful to the world. " I see you have quoted from a review written by me, upon Sir John Moore's life. The facts I have related there are all taken from that great and good man's papers, and are strictly correct. "It is difficult for me to add to your information, but it would be well to notice one matter in reference to Lord Edward Fitzgerald. " Credit is given to Lord Camden for feelings of kindness and commiseration towards Lady Louisa Connolly, when she applied to him in vain for leave to see her dying nephew, Lord Edward ; and Lord Clare is accused of harsh and stern indifference to her prayers. Now it was just the reverse. Lord Camden displayed the most callous indifference to her misery, and Lord Clare showed great feeling and warmth and delicacy of character. " I have no liking for either, and as a politician I abhor Lord Clare the most, because of his actions and energy in evil ; whereas Lord Camden was a mere fool, with the fibres of feeling as insen- sible as the fibres of intellect to external objects; but truth is truth, and Lord Clare behaved like a man of feeling and generosity on that occasion. " Lady Louisa Connolly, having her niece, Miss Emily Napier, with her, went to Lord Camden, and prayed him long and earnestly, in vain, to let her visit Lord Edward Fitzgerald in his prison. When she came back to her carriage she said, with a vio- TREATMENT OF LORD EDWARD AFTER HIS CAPTURE. 455 lence of feeling the more remarkable from its contrast with the sedate and tranquil dignity which belonged to her character : — ' I, who never before kneeled to aught but my God, grovelled at that man's feet in vain'. M From the Castle she drove to Lord Clare's house. He was at dinner. It was a sort of cabinet dinner ; but he came out instantly to her carriage, having his napkin in his hand. She asked him for an order to see Lord Edward. He said ' he could not give her one, it had been so settled'. But seeing the strong emotion excited by the answer, he added, abruptly, ' but I can go with you, and let you into the jail'. Then jumping into the carriage, having his napkin still in his hand, he drove to the jail, introduced her, and after some time came out to Miss Xapicr, and said, ' Lady Louisa will be here a long time ; it is not fitting you should remain here. I will remain with her'. And then placing a police-officer behind the carriage to protect it, he sent Miss Napier home, returned to the outer room of Lord Edward's prison, and remained for three or four hours, waiting Lady Louisa's time of departure. " I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant, " W. Napier. " R. R. Madden, Esq." FROM MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM NAPIER TO R. R. MADDEN. " Guernsey, 1st September, 1842. M Dear Sir, — Your motives in writing your work cannot be mistaken by any honest man who reads it, and I would cast to the winds all thoughts about the attacks which have been made upon you by those double-dealing and double-talking knaves, for they are no better, who, with professions of freedom on their lips, have nothing but self-interest and treachery in their hearts. " Mr. Reynolds's attack upon you is curious, in its logic at least. You must go to Heaven or Hell. If to Heaven, your calumnies cannot have been very black ; if to Hell, he must have some secret misgivings as to the place his father lies in. 44 Yours sincerely, " Wm. Napier. M R. R. Madden, Esq." There is a remarkable confirmation of the fact referred to by Major-General Napier, of Lady Louisa Connolly's visit to Lord Edward, accompanied by Lord Clare, previously to her visit along with Lord Henry Fitzgerald on the 3rd of June, which alone is recorded by Moore, in one of the debates in the House of Peers on the subject of the attainder, in which Lord Clare, speaking in a becoming manner of the circumstances connected with Lord Ed- ward's death, said, M he well remembered them, for, a short time 456 TREATMENT OF LORD EDWARD AFTER HIS CAPTURE. before the death took place, lie was witness to one of the most painful and melancholy scenes he had ever experienced". This, I think, is conclusive as to the visit of Lady Louisa Con- nolly accompanied by Lord Clare; and if anything more were needed to be said on the subject, the reader might be referred to the recent memoirs of the Whig party, and of his own times, of Lord Holland, where, speaking in terms of commendation of Lord Edward's amiable and generous disposition, he notices the remark- able proof given by him of forgetfulness of great injuries shortly before his death, when his old adversary and former enemy visited him in Newgate, and on taking his departure would have shaken hands with him, but poor Lord Edward, smiling, and pointing at the same time to his maimed hands and disabled arm, said, " As I cannot shake hands with you, I must only shake a toe". I return to Lady Louisa Connolly's and Lord Henry Fitz- gerald's interviews with Lord Edward on the Sunday night pre- ceding his death. Lord Edward's mind, Lady Louisa says, had been agitated two days previously to that interview on the Sunday night, but he was then calm, and the agitation was sufficiently gone to enable him to bear this interview with composure. Lady Louisa first approached the bed. The poor sufferer looked at her, knew her, kissed her, and said: " It is Heaven to me to see you"; and then, as if his mind began to wander again a little, turning to the other side of the bed, he said: "I can't see you". Lady Louisa went round ; he took hold of her hand, and he kissed it, and, fixing on her well-known face those dimmed eyes of his, in which the look of death was obvious enough, he smiled at her. Lady Louisa said what she thought, of all things in this world, would be most pleasing, — that " Henry was come" ; and poor Lord Edward, brightening up momentarily, but yet manifesting no sur-* prise at hearing of his arrival in Ireland, said: "Where is he, dear fellow ?" Lord Henry stepped forward to the bed side, and " the two dear brothers frequently embraced each other, and the scene was one which might have melted the hardest heart in the world" — perhaps even that of Lord Camden. The jail officials were touched at the sad spectacle; a sort of in- stinctive delicacy of feeling seemed to operate on them, for every one of them left the room, and then Lady Louisa told Lord Edward that she and his brother Henry were alone with him, and the reply of the latter was, " That is very pleasant". Camden could have conferred that pleasure on the wounded prisoner when it might have tended towards his restoration. After thus briefly expressing the pleasure he experienced in being alone even for a few moments with those he so tenderly loved, Lady Louisa men- tioned the name of Lady Edward, and said she had embarked for TREATMENT OF LORD EDWARD AFTER HIS CAPTURE. 457 England ; and the reference to his dear wife seemed again to push back for an instant the mist that was gathering over his memory, and that momentary brightening of the mind at the close of Hie was exhibited in his case in the inquiry, " And the children too?" That subject was next his heart ; and after those words, the latest in a coherent form from his Hps, the angel of death and the dark shadow of his wings seemed to be fast gathering over poor Lord Edwards mind; but his wandering thoughts were still towards home and heaithward. He uttered some words in a raving manner- that appeared to have reference to his wife, " She is a charming woman" ; and then he became silent again. But though the power of collecting his thoughts and of connecting them on any subject continuously, or of giving expression to them even in their inco- herence, was rapidly growing weaker and weaker, it still appeared by his looks (pale and wan as they were, and greatly altered by his siifferings), that he derived pleasure from the sight of his relatives, and on his "dear Henry", in particular, he looked continually with an expression of pleasure. After remaining with him rather less than an hour, Lady Louisa said to him, as he was inclined to sleep, they would leave him then, and return in the morning. M Do, do", was the only reply he made. But he spoke rambling words from time to time, while they yet lingered at Iris bedside. He said at one time, " I knew it must come to this" — M We must all go". And he in his ravings sometimes talked fast, and even loud for a dying man, about the militia, and about numbers of men, as if he was thinking of them arrayed for battle ; and when Lady Louisa tried to soothe and calm him, and said to him, " It agitates you to talk upon these subjects", that voice of kindness found its way to his loving heart, and he answered: "Well, I won't". Lady Louisa and Lord Henry at length tore themselves away from his bedside; the last "good night" was wished by them to poor Lord Edward) but apparently not heard by him. At half-past eleven on that Sunday night they took their departure, and looked on that dear relative no more. Mr. Garnett, a surgeon, who attended him, as Lady Louisa states, for the two days succeed- ing the removal of Lieutenant Stone, the officer who had been in constant attendance on him, early the next morning, Monday, the 4th of June, communicated to her the intelligence of Lord Edward's death. The struggle, he stated, commenced soon after his friends left him the night previously, and his last breath was drawn at half past two that morning. " Within two hours and a half of the close of a life they prized so dearly", Lady Louisa Connolly and Lord Henry Fitzgerald were at the bedside of Lord Edward. It is customary to believe, or to affect to believe, that all persons who rebel against any rule, whether good or bad, and are unsuc- 458 DEATH OF LORD EDWARD. cessful rebels, are Deists, perhaps Atheists — impious men, at all events, who are either unbelievers in Christianity, or utterly in- different to its interests, or heedless in all respects of its obli- gations. This is an erroneous opinion or a wilful calumny, as the case may be. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was a Christian man, strongly imbued with the principles and sentiments of a sincere and ardent believer in the Christian religion. He was a tolerant man, but he was true to his own faith — a simple-minded, single- hearted, worthy member of the Church of England. On Saturday evening, the last but one of his brief career, when he had become composed for a short time, and more collected than he had been during the day, he called to Mr. Garnett, the surgeon, to bring the Bible, and pointing out himself the part he wished to have read, he begged Mr. Garnett to read there of the death of Christ to him. Mr. Garnett immediately read aloud the history of our Lord's sufferings and death, " and Lord Edward eeemed much composed by it". In the way of medical attendance, during the whole term of Lord Edward's imprisonment, there was no ground for complaint against the government. Three surgeons were employed by govern- ment. Two of them were men of eminence in their profession — the Surgeon-general, Stewart, and Surgeon Lindsay ; a third, Mr. Gar- nett, of less note as a practitioner, but all men of honour and high character. Of the medical care bestowed on Lord Edward, and the charges defrayed by the government for it, some evidence will be found in the secret service expenditure in the Appendix to the first volume. On the day previous to the interment, an inquest was held on the remains, which necessitated the opening of the body and the examination of the wound in the shoulder ; and it was ascertained, or rather the rinding of the jury was to the effect, that Lord Edward Fitzgerald had died from the effects of fever, aggravated by very great anxiety. The rinding of the coroner's inquest was to the following effect : " We are of opinion that deceased came by his death by an effu- sion of water on the left side of the thorax, and inflammation of the lungs of that side, as appeared to us upon the testimony of four eminent surgeons, by fever, brought on by great anxiety of mind, aided by two wounds inflicted on the right arm by two pistol balls found lodged near the scapula of the side". Now, if there be any meaning in this verdict, it is this: the deceased died from fever, caused by great anxiety of mind, aggra- vated by a wound in the shoulder, which fever was productive of effusion of water on the chest. The principal cause, then, of Lord Edward's death is ascribed by the verdict to great anxiety of mind ; DEATH OF LORD EDWARD. 459 the secondary cause was the wound in the shoulder ; the effect of both was fever and effusion on the chest. The logical inference of this verdict is, that if the great anxiety of the mind of Lord Edward had been soothed, the fever and the fatal result might not have occurred. And if the preceding pages clearly show that Lord Camden obstinately and obdurately refused all solicitations to afford the deceased the solace and assistance of his friends, nay, the very gratification of seeing them till he was actually dying, we must come to the conclusion that the only probable means of soothing the great anxiety of the suffering prisoner were debarred him by the orders of Lord Camden, and that the death of that prisoner lies at the door of that noble lord. But I am not disposed to push the argument to that extreme extent, though such was the view taken by Lord Henry Fitzgerald, as we find by the fol- lowing passage of his letter to Lord Camden, immediately after Lord Edwards death : — " Nor, my lord, shall I scruple to declare to the world — I wish I could to the four quarters of it ! — that, amongst you, your ill- treatment has murdered my brother, as much as if you had put a pistol to his head. In this situation no charitable message arrives to his relations ; no offer to allow attached servants to attend upon him, who could have been depended upon in keeping dreadful news of all sorts from him. No, no ; to his grave, in madness, you would pursue him ; to his grave you persecuted him On Saturday, my poor, forsaken brother, who had but that night and the next day to live, was disturbed ; he heard the noise of the execution of Clinch at the prison door.* He asked eagerly, * What * On Saturday, the 2nd of June, 1798, Mr. John Clinch, a young gentleman of respectable family, an officer in Captain Ormsby's Kathcool yeomanry corps, was executed in front of Newgate prison, pursuant to a sentence of a court-martial, having been tried the day before, and condemned on the evidence of a mere boy. I have recently (1857) visited the cell, or rather room, in Newgate, in which Lord Edward died ; and if I had not visited it some forty years ago, I would have been in danger of having a wrong room passed off on me for the one I was in search of; I found, however, one of the jail officials acquainted with the place I sought. I was conducted to it by him ; and on entering the room, I recognized the locality I had first visited when I was a boy. I may observe, I was accompanied, on my last visit, by my friend John Lentaigne, Esq., one of the Directors of Convict Prisons for Ireland. The cell, previously to Lord Edward's time called Lord Aldborough's room, and since June, 1708, best known as Lord Edward's room, is on the right-hand side of the prison as you enter from Green Street. There are two windows in this room looking into Green Street, on the second stage ; the sill of the windows is just twenty feet from the flagway of the street on the outside. The gallows, under which the visitor to Newgate passes, is immediately over the principal entrance, and on the right-hand side, the next window to it, of the cell on the second stage, is one of the windows of Lord Edward's room ; and it is important to bear in mind, when an execution took place, the suspended man was within sixteen or eighteen feet of the window nearest the gallows of Lord Edward's cell. There is a third window in this room looking backwards into the yards of the 4')0 DEATH AND BURIAL OF LORD EDWARD. noise is that?' And certainly, in some manner or other he knew it ; for — O God ! what am I to write ? — from that time he lost his senses : most part of the night he was raving mad ; a keeper from a madhouse was necessary". .... All the waters in the sea will not suffice to wash away the stain which the cruel conduct of Lord Camden in this case has left upon his character. By that conduct he aggravated the sufferings and he shortened the life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. The Peachums and Lockets of Pitt's Irish administration, after the Reign of Terror had come to a close, wrangled and jangled in private, and left no effort untried to blacken one another's characters, with the view of exculpating themselves. Thus we find Camden's friends acting in regard to Lords Clare and Castlereagh ; Clare's friend James Roche, the octogenarian essayist, in regard to the former ; and the noble Marquis of Londonderry, in his biography of his brother, in regard to Lord Castlereagh and some others of his Irish colleagues. " On talking", says Moore, " to Watson Taylor about Lord Edward Fitzgerald, he took occasion to assure me that Lord Camden was, in Ireland, constantly outvoted in his wish for a more moderate system of government by Clare and Castlereagh".* Mr. Watson Taylor was the private secretary of Lord Camden in Ireland in 1797 and 1798. CHAPTER X. ATTAINDER OF LORD EDWARD. HIS BURIAL. NOTICE OF HIS CHARACTER, AND TRIBUTE TO HIS MEMORY. A bill of attainder of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Cornelius Grogan, and Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey, was introduced into the House of Commons the 27th of July, 1798, by Mr. Toler, then attorney- general, a man in every way worthy of the part assigned him by the Irish government in that iniquitous proceeding. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, though alleged to have committed various acts of high treason since the 1st of November, 1797, had not been tried for any crime, was unconvicted and uncondemned. Grogan, a poor prison. There is a fire-place in the room ; and formerly (in 1798) the 'access to it was by a short flight of steps from one of the yards at the rere. These have been done away with, and the entrance is now by a passage from the vestibule of the prison. The length of this room is 15£ feet ; the breadth is 13 feet ; the height is 9i feet. For a prison, a room of these dimensions must be accounted commo- dious, if not comfortable. * " Moore's Life", by Lord John Kussell, vol. vi., p. 152. ATTAINDER OF LORD EDWARD. 4G1 old goutv gentleman, whose only crime was liberality of senti- ment and an income of six thousand a-year, was most wickedly murdered according to law by the terrorists of his county, to whom he was obnoxious because he was not an Orangeman. The posthumous malevolence of that powerful faction of the Orange ascendency in the Irish government, or rather in the privy council which governed Ireland, could go no farther. It went beyond the graves of its victims ; and what is most lamentable is this, although that baneful Orange faction, in later times alternately petted and repudiated, dallied with in private and publicly dis- owned, successively armed and discountenanced by the authorities, has lost the prestige of a recognized auxiliary governmental insti- tution, it has lost none of its malignity ; not one iota of its san- guinary creed has been changed ; and those who think it is powerless for evil in Ireland and in England — that no future danger is to be apprehended to the Crown from its ferocity simulating fanaticism, from its republican tendencies and turbulent passions, always aim- ing at domination for its faction and its sect, are labouring under a very great delusion. The bill of attainder was carried triumphantly through both Houses of Parliament. The farce was performed, and the for- mality gone through of examining credible witnesses, and among the latter, the friend of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Mr. Thomas Reynolds, was duly examined, and on his evidence chiefly the widow and children of Lord Edward were deprived of the little property left by him, which at any period never exceeded six hundred a year. But, however small the amount, it was their sole dependence, and it was taken from them. The bill received the royal assent in the month of October, 1798. Lord Clare, however, to his honour, eventually allowed the estate to be sold in chancery, with the sanction of the attorney-general, to Mr. Ogilvie, for the sum of £10,500, and subsequently it was settled by Mr. Ogilvie on Lord Edwards son and his heirs for ever. From the date of the attainder to the year 1819, various applications were made by mem- bers of Lord Edwards family for the reversal of that measure. To the various memorials and letters praying for the reversal of the attainder, addressed to the King, the Prince Regent, and the Duke of York, we find the names attached of the Duke of Richmond, Lord Holland, Charles James Fox, General Fox, Lord Henry Fitzgerald, Mr. Ogilvie, the Duchess of Leinster, and Lady Louisa Connolly. For the period of twenty-one years these efforts were persevered in, and notwithstanding the Prince Regent and the Duke of York had generously expressed their desire on several occasions that the attainder should be reversed — notwithstanding the power- ful influence exerted by the Duke of Richmond in favour of that 462 DEATH AND BURIAL OF LORD EDWARD. object, such was the power of the Orange ascendency faction in the Irish government, that all those efforts proved of no avail for the lengthened period above referred to. It remained for the Earl of Liverpool, in 1819, to perform a great act of tardy justice, and to gain for the Prince Regent the highest eulogy that a prince could receive, on a reversal of that attainder. The conduct of the Prince Regent in this instance certainly deserved the noble tribute paid to it by one of the first of English poets. The remains of the son of the Duke of Leinster, the most ho- noured and beloved of all his race, whom a mercenary man-hunter, in the Reign of Terror, of the name of Sirr, shot from behind a door, skulking like a wary bully from the danger he induced his associates to encounter at the peril of their lives, were stealthily conveyed in the dead of night from the jail where he died, with all the privacy and paucity of care and consideration for the dead, that one might expect to encounter at the interment of a malefactor. At two o'clock in the morning of the 4th of June, 1798, Lord Edward Fitzgerald breathed his last in Newgate. Two persons escorted the remains to their destination — one of the name of Shiel, a servant of the Leinster family, and a Lieutenant Stone, an English officer, who had been appointed to watch over the wounded prisoner, and had been removed, there is reason to believe, for exhibiting some evidences of humanity in the discharge of the duty assigned to him. The solitary coach which constituted the funeral cortege on that occasion, was stopped no less than four times by the military yeomanry rabble or armed Orangemen who then guarded, or rather governed, the city of Dublin, and eventu- ally the whole cortege was captured and detained by the gallant captors, till a message was despatched to the Castle, and Mr. Ed- ward Cooke sent back the orders that he neglected to have pre- viously issued, for the interment of the remains of Lord Edward without molestation at the hands of the military. So the valiant terrorists released the dead body of the chief of the United Irish- men, whose name when living inspired them with very uncomfor- table feelings.* The conduct of every member of the noble family of Lord Ed- * On the back of a letter of Lady Louisa Connolly, cited by Moore, is the fol- lowing memorandum, in the hand- writing of Lord Henry : — " From Lady Louisa Connolly — in consequence of a complaint made to her of the indecent neglect in Mr. Cooke's office, by Mr. Leeson. A guard was to have attended at Newgate, the night of my poor brothers burial, in order to provide against all interruption from the different guards and patrols in the streets : — it never arrived, which caused the funeral to be several times stopped in its way, so that the burial did not take place till near two in the morning, and the people attending were obliged to stay in the church until a pass could be procured to enlarge them". DEATH AND BURIAL OF LORD EDWARD. 463 ward Fitzgerald, from the time of his capture to that of the inter- ment of Ins remains, and down to the period of the reversal of the attainder and the restoration of his property to his children, was an exemplification of that ardent attachment and strong affection, which bound all the members of the Fitzgerald family, and in an especial manner two members of it, alike estimable for their vir- tues and remarkable for their intellectual qualities, — Lady Louisa Connolly and Lady Sarah Napier — to their beloved and illustrious relative, Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Nothing was left undone by those truly noble Englishwomen that could be thought of or attempted in his behalf' while living, or for his memory when dead. I have often had occasion to remark, in these mournful records of the lives and struggles of the principal leaders of the United men, that in the hour of their adverse fortune, at the time of the failure of their cause, and the catastrophes which marked the close of the career of so many of them, the only fidelity of affection which seemed to remain unshaken by surrounding circumstances of terror, or desperation, or the tyranny of dominant opinions con- formed to the views of a faction in temporary ascendency, was dis- played by women, connected by blood or other bonds of affection and friendship with those men who perished in a cause which they believed to be that of their country. And those who may be desirous to find this remark illustrated in a very striking matter, have onlv to turn to the letters of Lady Louisa Connolly and Lady Sarah Napier, in Moores biography, on the subject of the capture, imprisonment, death, and burial of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. It is only necessary for me to cite a single passage in a letter of Lady Connolly in relation to the arrangements made by her for the in- terment of the remains of Lord Edward, to give some idea of that lady's devoted attachment to Lord Edward. The mournful interest which that passage excites, combines well with the calm dignity of its tone. We may venture thus to interpret the thought that pervades it: — M I will instruct my sorrows to be proud' 1 . "I ordered every- thing upon that occasion that appeared to me to be right, consider- ing all the heart-breaking circumstances belonging to that event ; and I was guided by the feelings which I am persuaded our beloved angel would have had upon the same occasion, had he been to direct for me, as it fell to my lot to do for him. I well knew, that to run the smallest risk of shedding one drop of blood on that mournful occasion, would be the thing of all others that would vex him most ; and knowing also how much he despised all outward show, I submitted to what I thought prudence required". It remained for another noble-minded woman, at a later period, to furnish an example of the same ruling passion of strong love for the beloved dead, and lively sense of obligation to the memory of a long departed friend. Nearly forty-five years had elapsed since • 464 DEATH AND BURIAL OF LORD EDWARD. the death, of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, when his daughter, Lady Guy Campbell, had the remains of her father, and the shrouding- sheet in which they lay, placed in another coffin, deeming, in all probability, the time would come when others might think those honoured remains should be removed to a more proper resting place, namely, in the family vault of Kildare, or that in Christ's church, where the remains of Lord Edward's father are deposited. The preceding notice in the first edition of this work, was not without a result that was desired, and that might naturally be ex- pected at the hands of a lady who has claims in her own excel- lence to the regard and esteem of all who know her, and one great claim to general respect, as the daughter of Lord Edward Fitz- gerald, in her filial love and reverence for her father's memory. Shortly after I visited the place of interment of Lord Edward's remains, fifteen years ago (which it cost me no small amount of trouble to ascertain with certainty), the following account was given of that visit in the first series of this work, published in 1842. In one of the vaults of Werburgh's church the remains of Lord Edward Fitzgerald are deposited, immediately under the chancel. There are two leaden coffins here, laid side by side ; the shorter of the two is that which contains the remains of Lord Edward Fitz- gerald. The upper part of the leaden coffin of the latter, in many places, has become decayed and encrusted with a white powder ; and in such places the woollen cloth that lines the inner part of the coffin is visible, and still remains in a perfect state. The entrance to the vault where the remains of Lord Edward Fitzgerald are interred, is within a few paces of the grave of Henry Charles Sirr, by whose hand the former perished. The desperate struggle that took place between them, the one survived fifteen days, the other, forty-three years. Few who visit the place where they are interred, will recall the history of both, without la- menting the fate of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and deploring the evils of the calamitous times which called the services of such a man as Sirr into action. The coffin in which Lady Guy Campbell had the remains of her noble father placed, bears the following inscription on a brass plate : — " Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Fifth son of the Duke of Leinster. Bom, October 15, 1763. Died June 4, 1798. Buried June 6, 1798. To preserve the leaden coffin containing his remains, it was enclosed in this additional protection by his children, February 8, 1844". CHARACTER OF LORD EDWARD 465 In a letter from Lady Louisa Connolly to Mr. Ogilvie, dated July 10th, 1798, the following passage occurs: "You must also have heard that the deal' remains were de- posited bv Mr. Bourne in St. Werburgh's Church, imtil the times would permit of their being removed to the family vault at Kildare". Sixty years have elapsed since the words above cited were written. The Irish people think the time is come for that act of justice and of duty, when those honoured remains of the noblest man of his race may be removed, without inconvenience to the living or disparagement to the dead, elsewhere from their tempo- rary place of deposit to the family vault at Kildare. There they would lain see a fitting monument to his memory, and, gazing on it, be reminded of all that was noble and generous in his nature. The character and capabilities of the military chief of the Society of United Irishmen suffer, perhaps, from the abundance of details illustrative of the amiability of his disposition. In their ad- miration of the latter, people lose sight of the great qualities of the efficient, well-instructed officer, of the resolute, clear-sighted, ener- getic, self-possessed man, the practical soldier and commander, with remarkable quickness of perception, capable of glancing over a countrv, and duly estimating the advantages and disad- vantages of each locality of importance as a military position to be defended or assailed. The study of his profession, and the prac- tical knowledge he had gained of it in America, enabled him to form opinions on military subjects, several of which were greatly in advance of those which prevailed in the service three-quarters of a century ago. No ordinary man, surely, was qualified to play the part of commander-in-chief of masses of undisciplined men in revolt, in the face of such an array of power as confronted the Society of L'nited Irishmen. But Lord Edward was no ordinary man. Though his abilities were not showy, nor his talents brilliant, nor his powers of conversation remarkable, nor his acquaintance with literature extensive, nor his knowledge of science and of philo- sophy large, nor his familiarity with ancient lore comparable to that of thousands of mere smatterers of our time, he was a brave and a skilful soldier, well versed in his profession, capable of attaining the highest eminence in it. — a right-minded man, always true to himself and others. Those who have no test but that of success, whereby merit is to be tried and appreciated, will smile at this estimate of the character and qualities of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. VOL. II. 31 466 CHARACTER OF LORD EDWARD. The maxim " Les absens ont toujours tort", is a twin adage of another morsel of condensed mundane wisdom — an old saw which might be thus rhymed : Rebels who fail are never right ; When they succeed who stoutly fight, We call them patriots ; and then There's hero worship for these men.* But Fortune sways both sword and scales Of Justice, when the Rebel fails. Defeated chiefs are always wrong ! Such is the burden of her song. The loss of Lord Edward to the cause of the United Irishmen- was irretrievable. It might be possible to replace all the other members of the directory after the arrests in March ; but there was no substitute to be found in Ireland for Lord Edward. He was the only military man in connection with the Union capable of taking command of any considerable number of men, competent for the important office assigned him, and qualified for it by a know- ledge of his profession, practical as well as theoretical. When he was lost to the cause, it was madness to think there was any hope left of a successful issue for resistance. Lord Edward possessed all the qualities which were requisite for his position, and essential for the kind of warfare that was to be engaged in. Of his chivalrous courage he had given sufficient E roofs in America. He had shown military talents at the onset of is career, of a high order : on several occasions he had exhibited remarkable quickness of perception, and aptitude for taking ad- vantage of favourable circumstances, and of turning unforeseen opportunities suddenly presenting themselves to a profitable ac- count. He signally distinguished himself in his first engagement with the American forces under one of their most skilful generals. For the sort of warfare that was expected to ensue in Ireland of a people in revolt, naturally brave, impetuous and turbulent, un- accustomed to military movements, undisciplined, impatient of protracted control; for a warfare against a power in possession of all the strongholds of the country, with a large army con- stantly being augmented, money and credit without limit for all present wants, and, what is the most formidable of all advantages on its side, a never-failing power of providing fresh resources, of recruiting impaired strength, and supplying exhausted means, men, t ammunition, and all the materiel of war. In Lord Holland's posthumous work, Memoirs of the Whig Party During my Time, we have a notice of the character and * " Those Whigs and freemen of America, whom you, my lords, call rebels", — Speech of Lord Chatham in 1777. CHARACTER OF LORD EDWARD. 467 career of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, with whom Lord Holland had been intimately acquainted, of the highest value. This notice was written by Lord Holland in 1824. His lordship does not deem it necessary to make any apology for the acts of Lord Edward Fitz- gerald. The privy councillor, a cabinet minister, the lord keeper of the privy seal, saw no reason to make any excuses for his noble friends efTorts for his country. He said nothing about errors. He spoke out generously and justly of his actions, as an English nobleman, a high-minded, right-thinking, honest-hearted man, should do. " More than twenty years", savs Lord Holland, " have now passed away. Many of my political opinions are softened — my predilections for some men weakened, my prejudices against others removed; but my approbation of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's actions remain* unaltered and unshaken. His country was bleeding under one of the hardest tyrannies that our times have witnessed. He who thinks a man can be even excused in such circumstances by any other consideration than that of despair, from opposing a pretended government by force, seems to me to sanction a principle which would insure impunity to the greatest of all human delin- quents, or, at least, to those who produce the greatest misery among mankind. To have rejected French assistance, and yet raised the standard of revolt in Ireland, would have been to produce a civil war without the possibility of success. If, therefore, the succours from France manifestly exposed the people of Ireland, in case of success, to a tyranny as oppressive as that under which they were then groaning, the insurrection was not to be justified; but if, upon a lair and dispassionate comparison of the different dangers to which they were exposed, it appeared that the interests of France, the distance of that country, and the difficulty of the communica- tion, afforded to the people of Ireland a reasonable prospect of escaping subjection to France after they had thrown off all dependence on England by means of French troops, the chance of so prosperous an issue might fully justify the perilous experiment which the United Irishmen then determined to make. " Such was unquestionably the view taken of the subject by Lord Edward. His actions showed that he was not blind to the danger which might be apprehended from a French force successful in his country. Perhaps on the score of prudence (and prudence is the most indispensable virtue on such occasions) he was more open to reproach from his friends, for weakening the prospect of success against his chief enemv, the English government, by pre- cautions against his auxiliaries, than for exposing his country wan- tonly to the danger of being ultimately subjugated by those whom he called to h r s assistance. . . , . 468 CHARACTER OF LORD EDWARD. " The Irish Catholics were goaded into premature hostility^ before their northern countrymen were ready to cooperate or their foreign succours had arrived ; and thus a dread of being over- whelmed by too large a force from their allies, having produced delay and disunion among them, led to a detection of their designs^ and to the loss of their best opportunity. The Union was the chief source of disaffection in Scotland, and one of the great causes of the rebellions of 1715 and 1744. On the other hand, the insur- rection in Ireland was the chief cause of the Union, by furnishing the English government with both the means and the pretext for accomplishing a measure which in no other circumstances could have been attempted. These consequences of his undertaking and its discomfiture, Lord Edward Fitzgerald never lived to witness. His early arrest was a fatal blow to the whole design of the insur- rection. For, though his abilities were not of the first order, nor even equal to those of Thomas Addis Emmet, yet he combined advantages of birth, education, and personal character, which would have enabled him to reconcile, better than any other man, the jarring materials of which the conspiracy was composed " Lord Edward was a good officer. The plans found among his papers showed much combination and considerable knowledge of the principles of defence. His apprehension was so quick, and his courage so constitutional, that he would have applied, without disturbance, all the faculties he possessed to any emergency, how- ever sudden, and in the moment of the greatest danger or confusion. He was, among the United Irish, scarcely less considerable for his political than his military qualifications. His temper was peculiarly formed to engage the affections of a warm-hearted people. A cheerful and intelligent countenance, an artless gaiety of manner, without reserve, but without intrusion, and a careless yet inoffen- sive intrepidity, both in conversation and in action, fascinated his slightest acquaintance, and disarmed the rancour of even his bitter opponents. These, indeed, were only the indications of more solid qualities — an open and fearless heart, warm affections, and a tender, compassionate disposition. Where his own safety was con- cerned, he Avas bold even to rashness ; he neither disguised his thoughts nor controlled his actions : where the interests or reputa- tion of others were at stake, he was cautious, discreet, and consi- derate. When in England in 1797, he studiously avoided the society he loved best, from a fear that a knowledge of the dan- gerous transactions in which he was then engaged, might be inferred against his friends from any particular intercourse with him. Indignant as he was at the oppression of his country, and intemperate in his language of abhorrence at the cruelties exercised in Ireland, I never could find that there was a single man against CHARACTER OF LORD EDWARD. 469 whom he felt the slightest personal animosity. He made allowance for the motives, and even temptations, of those whose actions he detested. With the most unaffected simplicity and good nature, he would palliate, from the force of circumstances or the accident of situation, the perpetrators of the very enormities which had raised his high spirit and compassionate nature to conspire and resist. It was this kindness of heart that led him, on his death-bed, to acquit the officer who inflicted his wounds of all malice, and even to commend him for an honest discharge of his duty".* One of the wisest and the best of the leaders of the Society of United Irishmen, Thomas Addis Emmet, chose a telling locality for bearing testimony to the worth and magnanimity of his departed friend in the midst of his enemies. On his examination before the Secret Committee, when Sir John Parnell addressed these words to him: "Jdr< Emmet, while you and the executive were philosophising, Lord Edward was arming and disciplining the people" : Emmet replied: " Lord Ed- ward was a military man ; and if he was doing so, he probably thought that was the way in which he could be most useful to his country; but I am sure that if those with whom he acted, were convinced that the grievances of the people were redressed, and that force was become unnecessary, he would have been persuaded to drop all arming and disciplining". Mr. J. C. Beresford, true in all circumstances to the instinct of his vile nature, could not allow the opportunity to escape of having a dastardly fling at the remains of the dead lion ; he said, " I knew Lord Edward Fitzgerald well, and always found him very obstinate". Emmet : " I knew Lord Edward right well, and have done a great deal of business with him, and have always found, when he had a reliance on the integrity and talents of the person he acted w T ith, he was one of the most persuadable men alive ; but if he thought a man meant dishonestly or unfairly by him, he was as obstinate as a mule". — Report of Evidence before the Secret Com- mittee of the House of Commons. Dr. W. J. M'Xeven, whose estimate of men was based on no slight knowledge of the human heart, — a stern thinker and a calm observer, of a philosophical mind, clear in his views, and sober in his judgments, — a man whom I think it a great honour and a high privilege to have known intimately, — thus calmly and deliberately pronounced an opinion on the military talents of Lord Edward, which the good old mans republican tendencies, however much at * " Memoirs of the Whig Party during My Time", by Henry Richard Lord Holland; edited by his son, Henry Edward Lord Holland. London: Longman Brown, Green, and Longman. 470 CHARACTER OF LORD EDWARD. variance with the sentiments of people living under other institu- tions, should not be allowed to detract from or to deprive of its just value : — " The Irish nation could not sustain a greater misfortune in the person of any one individual, than befell it in the loss of Fitzgerald at that critical moment. Even his enemies, and he had none but those of his country, allowed him to possess distinguished military talents. With these, with unquestioned intrepidity, republicanism, and devotion to Ireland, with popularity that gave him unbounded influence, and integrity that made him worthy of the highest trust, had he been present in the Irish camp to organize, discipline, and give to the valour of his country a scientific direction, we should have seen the slaves of monarchy fly before the republicans of Ireland, as they did before the patriots of America. And if at last the tears of his countrymen had been constrained to lament his fate, they would have been received on the laurels of his tomb". * " If Lord Edward had been actuated in political life by disho- nourable ambition, he had only to cling to his great family con- nections and parliamentary influence. They unquestionably would have advanced his fortunes and gratified his desires. The voluntary sacrifices he made, and the magnanimous manner in which he directed himself to the independence of Ireland, are incontestable proofs of the purity of his soul", f The founder of the Society of United Irishmen has left, in his journals, a record of his opinion of Lord Edward's character: — " I knew Fitzgerald but very little, but I honour and venerate his character, which he has uniformly sustained, and in this last instance illustrated. What miserable wretches by his side are the gentry of Ireland ! I would rather be Fitzgerald, as he is now, wounded in his dungeon, than Pitt at the head of the British empire. What a noble fellow ! Of the first family in Ireland, with an easy fortune, a beautiful wife, and a family of lovely children, — the certainty of a splendid appointment under government if he would condescend to support their measures, — he has devoted him- self wholly to the emancipation of his country, and sacrificed everything to it, even to his blood". — T. W. Tones Memoirs. " He is since dead in prison ; his career is finished gloriously for himself, and whatever be the event, his memory will live for ever in the heart of every honest Irishman". — Ibid. Arthur O'Connor elsewhere echoed the sentiments of Emmet. On this one subject of Lord Edward's purity of mind and disinte- restedness of character, there was no difference of opinion. * " M'Neven's Pieces of Irieh History". t Ibid. CHARACTER OF LORD EDWARD. 471 O'Connor, like Emmet, "knew Lord Edward right well", and though not much given to eulogizing of associates, said: "I never saw in him, I will not say a vice, but a defect". . . . 44 He was the most tolerant of men : he had no enmity to persons". Even his most strenuous opponents felt the influence and power of his virtues. They were compelled to render homage to them. fc * Lord Edward had served with reputation, in the 19th regi- ment, during a great part of the American war, and on many occa- sions had displayed great valour and considerable abilities as an officer. When in the army, he was considered as a man of honour and humanity, and was much esteemed by his brother officers for frankness, courage, and good nature — qualities which he was sup- posed to possess in a very high degree". — Sir Ricliard Musg raves History of the Irish Rebellion. Toler, for once in his life, manifested something like emotion in speaking of him : '•Lord Edward Fitzgerald, whose name I never mention without anxietv and grief, and of whom I wish to speak with as much tenderness as possible". — Speech of the Attorney- General (Toler) on Bond's Trial. *• What a noble fellow", said Lord Byron, " was Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and what a romantic and singular history his was ! If it were not too near our times, it would make the finest subject in the world for an historical novel". — Medivins Conversations, ete., p. 270. I am indebted to my venerable friend, Miss Mary M'Cracken, of Belfast, for some verv remarkable lines, in which the highest gifts of poetry are exhibited, entitled 44 Stanzas, supposed to have been written by Lord Edward Fitzgerald the night before he was arrested", but which might, perhaps, be more correctly designated, 44 Lines written after the capture of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, attri- buted to Dr. William Drennan". Ireland ! my country, the hour Of thy pride and thy splendour hath passed; And the chain which was spurned in thy moment of power, Hangs heavy around thee at Last. There are marks in the fate of each clime ; There are turns in the fortune of men ; But the changes of realms and the chances of time Shall never restore thee again. Thou art chained to the foot of thy foe By links that the world cannot sever : With thy tyrants thro' storm and thro' calm thou shaft go ; And thy sentence is — Bondage for ever ! Thou art doomed for the thankless to toil ; Thou art left for the proud to disdain ; And the blood of thy sons, and the wealth of thy soil, Shall be lavished and wasted in vain. 472 PORTRAITS OF LORD EDWARD. Thy riches with taunts shall be taken ; Thy valour, with coldness repaid ; And of millions who see thee thus sunk and forsaken, Not one shall stand forth in thine aid. Among nations thy place is left void; Thou art last in the lists of the free ; Even plague- stricken lands, or by earthquake destroyed, May arise— but no hope is for thee ! There were two portraits of Lord Edward painted by a celebra- ted Irish, artist of the name of Hamilton, which were not finished at the time of Lord Edward's decease. One of these was destined for his mother, and is now, I believe, at Carton ; the other for his brother, Lord Henry Fitzgerald. PICTURE OF THE ARREST OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD, PAINTED BY HERBERT. This picture was painted a few years after the event of which it is a faithful representation, by an artist of some merit, of the name of Dowling, who deemed it prudent in 1798, or subsequent to the rebellion, to change his name to Herbert. He was an eccentric man of some genius. He published a volume of his reminiscences, now rarely to be met with, and died, I believe, in poverty. He devoted his pen and pencil to the wrong cause for patronage. This highly interesting picture of Herbert's is now in the possession of Mr. O'Connor, a chandler, of Thomas Street. A few years ago I had the pleasure of accompanying to O'Connor's to see this picture the sister of Lord Edward's biographer, to whose memory I beg to pay this poor tribute of my respect for her unaffected, unob- trusive worth and goodness, and that warm interest in her coun- try's honour and attachment to it, which seem to be hereditary in her family. The picture was painted for engraving. John Hevey, Nicholas Murphy, and a few others subscribed five guineas each for this object. Hevey paid the artist for it. It was in his possession for some time, then passed into the hands of one Thomas Hurst, a master bricklayer, and finally into O'Connor's. It is to be noted that all these persons were in the middle rank of life. Not one " gentleman" of the United Irish leaders subscribed for it, or seems to have taken the slightest interest in it, and yet it is a picture that is of the highest value for the fidelity of the likenesses of the dif- ferent actors in the scene which is represented. The subject is the capture of Lord Edward, who has just risen from his bed, and is represented grappling with Major Swan and attempting to stab him ; the amateur assistant of the latter, Ryan, is lying on Herbert's picture of lord Edward's capture. 473 tlie floor, mortally wounded by his lordship ; while Major Sin- is seen cautiously taking aim at Lord Edward, and in the act of firing at him. A soldier is represented seizing Nicholas Murphy by the collar, and some other military men in the act of rushing up the stairs. The picture wants cleaning; it has evidently been " hidden away" in some damp place for a long time, and is now hung up in a dark room in a very bad light. The likenesses, as I before observed, are admirable. Is there no public body in Ireland that has sufficient patriotism to secure this representation of the mortal conflict wherein the noblest being that Ireland ever produced received his death wound ? Walter Cox, -with all his faults (and I fear I may have dealt too severely with them), had some feelings of a generous nature. He established his Irish Jfar/acine with the avowed purpose of rescuing the memories of the men of 1798 of the stamp of Fitz- gerald from oblivion and more than oblivion — from obloquy and injustice. The intended engraving of Herberts picture of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's capture, which the original subscribers for the latter had in view, was never made. Cox, however, had a very spi- rited woodcut representation of the capture made for his magazine from the picture, in which the four principal figures only were in- troduced. It is an excellent illustration of that memorable scene. I visited with Miss Moore, in 1842, the house formerly of Nicholas Murphy, in which Lord Edward was last sheltered, and the small room in which he was captured on the third floor. There was then the stain of a spurt of blood on the wall. It will be remembered that Lord Edward was shot in the shoulder, and that a violent struggle ensued, during which he may have kept his assailants at bay for some time with his back to the wall. LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD'S SEAL. The^late Lord Cloncurry was good enough to send me, a few years ago, an impression of the seal commonly called " Lord Ed- ward Fitzgerald's Seal' 1 , and to give me some particulars about another seal, the device of which was frequently referred to in the songs and other seditious lyrics of the United Irishmen. A verbal statement respecting the origin of the seal that had belonged to Lord Edward, had been previously given to me by his lordship, precisely to the same effect as the account which was given by his lordship in his subsequently published Memoirs ; 9th May, 1852, Maretimo. " Dear Madden, — The seal which I return was that of the early French Republic The one found on Lord Edward and 474 lord edward's seal. printed in the report of the Secret Committee of the Irish Lorcta and Commons, was given to him by me. I enclose an impres- sion of it. " Yours very truly, " Cloncurry". " At the time of Lord Edwards arrest 1 ', says Lord Clone urry, !" his wife, the well-known Pamela, had taken refuge with my sisters, and was at the time in my father's house in Merrion Street, though without his knowledge. She was pursued there by the police in search of papers, and some which she had concealed in her bed-room were discovered and seized. Among other prizes taken, I believe upon the occasion, was a seal, pronounced by the quid-nuncs of the Castle to be the intended great seal of the Irish Republic. In Appendix No. 23 of the Report of the Secret Com- mittee of the Irish House of Commons, printed in 1799, there is an engraving of the impression of this seal ' found in the custody of Lord Edward Fitzgerald when he was apprehended', together with the following description : ' In a circle, Hibernia holding in her right hand an imperial crown over a shield ; on her left is an Irish harp, over it a dagger, and at its foot lie two hogs'. " It was but lately that this engraving and its description fell under my notice, when, in the former, much to my surprise, I recognized an old acquaintance, the little history of which may be amusing now, when the treason-mongering mistake it discloses is no longer likely to open a path to the scaffold. " The seal which the Committee of Secrecy looked upon with so much horror, was a cast from an original cut for me by Strongi- tharm, the celebrated gem engraver, during one of my earliest visits to London. The device is a harp, from which Britannia (not Hi- bernia) has removed with the right hand, not an imperial, but an Irish crown, and planted a dagger in its stead. Her left hand is re- presented as breaking the strings of the harp, at the foot of which lie, not two hogs, but two Irish wolf dogs sleeping at their post. All this is very plain to be seen even in the vignette of the Secret Commit- tee. Britannia is arrayed in her ordinary helmet, and her shield, bearing the cross of St. George, lies beside her ; the crown in her hand is as unlike the imperial crown as can well be imagined ; it is manifestly the old Irish pointed diadem. The seal itself was not designed for the broad seal of the Irish, or of any other re- public, but was simply a fancy emblem which I chose to illustrate my patriotic enthusiasm, just as the oak tree with its motto of 1 Quiet good sense', which I have already described, was selected for the device of his seal, by my friend John Reeves, in typifica- tion of his ultra-toryism. From the original, which is a fine cor- NOTICE OF PAMELA. 475 nelian, and is still in my possession, I had a few casts made in glass by Tassie of Leicester Square — a well known artist of the da v. One of these casts, given by me to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, became renowned in story under the imprimatur of the Committee of Secrecy \ " The device of this seal", his lordship adds, " serves to express, not inaptly even now, my own views of the dealings of Britannia with her sister'.* CHAPTER XL NOTICE OF THE ORIGIN AND CAREER OF PAMELA. EARLY HISTORY OF MADAME LA COMTESSE DE GENUS : HER RELATIONS WITH THE FAMILY OF THE DUC ET DUCHESSE d' ORLEANS : HER POSITION IN THE PALAIS ROYAL AND THE CONVENT OF BELLE-CHASSE AS GOUVERNEUR OF THE YOUNG PRINCES OF ORLEANS, AND GOUVERNANTE OF THE PRINCESS ADELAIDE : HER USURPATION OF THE PLACE AND PRIVILEGES OF THE DUCHESSE D'ORLEANS, AND THE UNFORTUNATE RESULTS OF HER FALSE POSITION IN THE ORLEANS FAMILY. The question of the relation in which Madame de Genlis stood to Lady Edward Fitzgerald is a mystery which time has not wholly solved, but which it is possible to form a tolerably clear idea of, after a close acquaintance with the vague and conflicting state- ments of Madame de Genlis in regard to it, and with the views of those who were the impugners of those statements, and of some who had an intimate knowledge of the person whom Madame de Genlis thought proper to represent as her eleve. But before the question of that relation is considered, it is necessary to glance at the early history of Madame de Genlis and her subsequent career in the household of the Due d' Orleans; for these data cannot be ignored by any one who desires to be enabled to form a just or reasonable opinion on the subject of that relation. Madame de Genliss character and position in the household of the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe Joseph, who adopted the name of Philippe Egalite in 1792, may be best learned from her own writings — Memoires pour Servir a St. Ilistoire de ISieme et ISieme siecle (en 8 tomes 8ro, 1825). Other ladies of her time and country have likewise written Memoires pour Servir, but Madame de Genlis transcends all of her cotemporaries in the intensity of her egotism, her personal * ;t Personal Recollections of the Life and Times of Lord Cloncurry", second dition, p. 131. 476 ORIGIN OF M. DE GENUS. vanity, and self-conceit. She possessed, however, considerable shrewdness and sagacity, a great deal of talent, no small amount of a capricious kindliness of heart, but strangely associated with a vindictive disposition, strong propensities to slander and to most unscrupulous resentments ; and we arrive at phases in her history, when her early love of mystery takes a form of eccentricity that borders on the domain of monomaniacal disorder. Madame de Genlis tells us she was born in 1746, in Burgundy, near Autun, of parents in a respectable position, possessing landed property and a chateau, and by purchase a title to nobility. She was conducted to Lyons when she was about the age of six years, and placed in the convent of ladies of noble origin in Alex, in due time to be received there. In this order of canonesses those who were received were at liberty to make their profession at any sub- sequent period they pleased, but in the interim they were at liberty to live out of the convent. The young lady recently re- ceived departed very soon after her arrival in the convent. Her father, Monsieur Ducrest, superintended her education. His sole idea was to make her une femme forte. The idea of her governess, Mademoiselle Mars, was to make her a heroine — an actress, — and her success in the latter aim was remarkable. The young eleve played V amour admirably in a little opera comique got up by her mother, and also in the part of Agathe in Les Folies A moreuses with great effect. The bizarre education she received, and the recreations she was indulged in, " had a great influence on all her future life", she tells us. " There was a melange of religious im- pressions and romantic ideas", she says, " in her early years, in her imagination", which was but too apparent in the greater number of the works subsequently written by her. " She was then easily led and naturally complaisant". But she had " a precious in- stinct" of knowing people at a glance who were naturally in a state of antipathy with her disposition and feelings. Hence she entertained strong dislikes to people who were not in harmony with her disposition. A little later she learned to sing, to dance, to play the harpischord, and was taught the use of fire-arms. But religious exercises in the evening were never forgotten. At the age of fourteen or fifteen she accompanied her mother to Paris, and after a short residence there, mother and daughter took up their fixed abode at Passy, where they lived en grand train, and in a round of gaieties, while the father of the happy family at Passy was trying to retrieve his embarrassed affairs in Burgundy, and at length was obliged to go to St. Domingo to seek to repair his fortune. After a few years' sojourn in that island he returned to Europe. The vessel he embarked in was taken by the En- ** glish ; he was conveyed to Launceston as a prisoner of war, and MARRIAGE OF M. DE GEXLIS. 477 With him the lieutenant of the vessel in which he was captured, Monsieur de Genlis, subsequently Count de Genlis and Marquess de Sillery, an officer of distinguished bravery. M. de Genlis had frequent opportunities of seeing his fellow-prisoner's letters from his daughter, and likewise a portrait of her, which he admired exceedingly. Having obtained his liberty before his companion and fellow- prisoner, lie returned to France, and soon having an opportunity of seeing the original of that portrait, there was nothing left for him but to fall desperately in love with the young lady, and to marry her in due time, her family being then in the most straitened, circumstances. Her father (on his liberation from an English prison and return to his own country) had become an inmate of a prison in Paris for debt, from which he only came out to die with his family. It was after his death in 17b'4 that the Count de Genlis paid his addresses to his daughter and was accepted by her, the count being then under an engagement of marriage contracted for him by a minister of the crown with his full consent. The marriage was a secret one, and was performed at midnight. The friends of the count were so much displeased at this alliance, they refused for a long time to visit him or to recognize his lady. The issue of that marriage was a daughter, Caroline, born in 1705, of whom Madame de Genlis speaks as an angelic creature who, during twenty-two years, constituted the happiness and glory of her life. She married the Marquess of Lawoestine about 1 7 7 y , and died the following year. A second daughter, Pulcherie, born in 1766, married General Valence about 1784, who was subsequently involved in General Dumouriez's treason ; and, lastly, a son, who died in childhood in 1775. Madame de Genlis was presented at the court of Louis the Fifteenth, and was graciously received by the king, and several members of the royal family; and with this presentation com- menced the relations with the Orleans family which had so great an influence on her future life. In the midst of her grandeur and her gaieties, the countess says she preserved a penchant for instructing children, which was always a dominant passion with her. She took into her service a little girl named Rose, the daughter of one of her domestics, whom she instructed in music and taught to play the harp. The manners of the court of Louis the Fifteenth appear to have exerted anything but a favourable influence on the mind of the countess. She relates with apparent enjoyment the pleasure she experienced in providing herself and her sister-in-law a milk bath with rose leaves strewn over the surface, " ce charmant bain — ce 478 M. DE GENLIS INTRODUCED AT COURT. bain de lait qui est la plus agreable chose du monde". The baignoire which had to be provided with milk, was the largest, she states^ she had ever seen; it was large enough to contain three persons ; and yet this woman had seen her father thrown into prison for debt, and her mother reduced at one time to the necessity of soli- citing a loan of a small sum of money from her sister for the com- mon necessaries of life ; and in the latter part of her own career she was sometimes almost in want of them. From the time of her marriage to the period of her presentation at court, we read in the memoirs of nothing but balls and festivi- ties, and preparations for private theatricals, and performances of comedies and operas, in which the countess always took a lead- ing part. She performed frequently before the royal family. In an account of one of these performances, the name of a new actor, that of the Due d' Orleans, father of Egalite, is for the first time mise en scene in the memoirs. " Monsieur le Due d'Orleans ? jouoit fort rondement les roles des paysans". At this period, the countess states, the duke was in love with her aunt, Madame de Montesson, platoniquement, and her aunt was in love, ambi- tiously, with the poor duke.* About 1768 the Due d' Orleans had offered to espouse her aunt secretly, but the lady had refused the offer without the consent of his son, the Due de Chartres. The young duke refused, and re- sisted for a long time all solicitations for that consent, till at length a kind of approval was drawn from him, the lady having pro- mised to defer the nuptials for two years. In 1770, the countess, after many solicitations on the part of the duke to accept a situation in the household of the Duke de Chartres, then recently married and established in the Palais Royal, at length consented, and the day of taking up her abode in the Palais Roy ale she calls, " le jour fatale\ wherein Louis Philippe, Due d' Orleans, having died in 1773, he was succeeded by his son, then Due de Chartres, Louis Philippe Joseph d' Orleans, of infamous notoriety as Philippe Egalite, who was born in 1747. In 1769 he married Adelaide de Bourbon, only daughter of the Due de Penthievre, whose virtues formed a strong contrast with the vices of her husband. In 17$9 his machinations against the court caused his temporary exile in England. Restored to his country, he repaid the generosity of * Louis Philippe, Due d' Orleans, grandson of the regent (and father of Egalite), was born 1725, bore the title of Due de Chartres till his father's death. In 1759 he became a widower, and assuaged his grief for the loss of his wife by con- structing a theatre on one of his properties, Bagnolet, where he distinguished himself in the performance of the parts of peasants and adventurers. His inor- ganic iiiarriage with Madame de Montesson, the aunt of Madame de Genlis, took place in 1773. He died in 1785. M. DE GEXLIS AXD MARIE ANTOINETTE. 479 Louis the Sixteenth by voting for his death a little later; and Louis the Sixteenth having been put to death the 21st of January, 1793, Robespierre repaid Egalite for his services to the revolution by sending him to the Abbaye, then to prison at Marseilles, and on the 6th of November 1793, he was guillotined at Paris. By his marriage with the excellent Madame Adelaide de Bourbon, he had several children — Louis Philippe, subsequently King of the French, the Due de Montpensier, the Comte de Beaujolais, and Madame Adelaide. These were the children of whose education Madame de Genlis treats so largely in her memoirs, as likewise of that of Pamela, of whose mysterious origin she has given a detailed account.* The rancorous feelings that Madame de Genlis entertained for the unfortunate Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, are attributed to the repugnance which the latter manifested very openly at court on various occasions for the " gouvernante de Monsieur le Due d' Orleans". We find the following reference to this subject in the Memoires de Madame Campan, 'premiere femmede chambre de Marie Antoinette: — M In an abode in which ambition keeps alive all the passions, a word, a single reilection may lead to prejudice, cause hatred to spring up ; and I cannot help believing that the known enmity which seemed to exist between the Queen and Madame de Genlis, had for its foundation a reply of Marie Antoinette to the Duchess d' Orleans, in regard to that lady. On the day appointed for con- gratulations on the birth of the dauphin, the Duchess d 1 Orleans approached the reclining chair of the queen, and made some ex- cuses for Madame de Genlis not appearing on an occasion when the whole court hastened to felicitate her Majesty on the birth of an heir: her being indisposed havingprevented her from going. The queen replied that the Duchess of Chartres would, of course, make her excuses in similar circumstances; but that the celebrity of Madame de Genlis was such, that her absence in fact would never have been remarked, and that she was not in a rank to make any ex- * The issue of Louis Philippe Joseph Due d'Orleans (Egalite), by his marriage with Louise Marie Adelaide de Bourbou, only daughter of the Due de Penthievre (1769), was five children : — 1 . — Louis Philippe d' Orleans, Due de Valois and de Chartres, born in 1773, King of the French, 7th August, 1830, died 26th August, 1850. 2. — Antoine Philippe d'Orleans, Due de Montpensier, born in 1775, died in 1807. 3. -Louis Charles d' Orleans, Comte de Beaujolais, born in 1779, died in 1808. 4 and 5.— Eugenie Adelaide Louise d' Orleans, born in 17/7, died 31st De- cember, 1847 ; and a twin sister, who died in 1782. Louis Philippe, Joseph d' Orleans (Egalite), born in 1747, died on the scaffold. 6th November, 1793. The consort of the preceding— the Duchesse Douaire d' Orleans, born in 1753 — died in 1821. 480 M. DE GENLIS ENTERS THE PALAIS ROYAL. cuses necessary. This step of the Duchesse d' Orleans, who was acting under the influence of the clever governess of her children, proves at least that at this period the latter was courting the favour and good-will of the queen, and from that moment reflections anything but indulgent, on the habits and the tastes of the sove- reign, and severe critiques upon the productions and the conduct of the lady authoress, were exchanged without interruption between Marie Antoinette and Madame de Genlis. At least I am certain they did not fail to bring to the Queen the epigrams and songs which appeared against the governess of the children of the Duke d' Orleans ; and it is most probable that the malice of the courtiers carried to the Palais Royal, with the same rapidity, all that could have been said in the queen's apartment against Madame de Genlis"* When Madame de Genlis entered the Palais Royal as dame dlionneur to the Duchesse de Chartres, in 1770, she was in her twenty-fourth year. The Due de Chartres, the future Egalite, was in his twenty-third year, and had been married in 1769, only the year before Madame de Genlis's entree into the Palais Royal, and all at once seems to have risen to the highest favour and most influential position there. If suspicions were not silenced, ap- pearances were saved to some extent by giving her husband a nominal appointment in the household — that of captain of the guards of the Due d' Orleans. " The time", says Madame de Genlis, " which I passed in the Palais Royal was the most brilliant and the most unfortunate of my life. I was in all the eclat of my talents, and at that age when one writes with the freshness and the graces of youth, all the agrhnents which a knowledge of the usages of society can give. I was admired, flattered, pampered". Yet madame — la veritable Deesse de la Vanite, if that divinity ever was on earth, was not happy. She was living in a state of splendid misery in the palace of a prince, in apartments gorgeously furnished. She controlled the family of the possessor of it. She monopolised the care of the children, the entire confidence of the father, the posi- tion and privileges of the mother. She kept up a little court in her suite of apartments in the Palais Royal. She gave audiences, little levees, balls, parties, concerts : she had her petits cercles tres airnable once a week, her private theatricals occasionally. Madame la Comtesse was " generally loved in the great world". It is need- less to make comments on this general love of the great world. Madame obviates the necessity for any ; for all this time, she in- * " Memoires sur la Vie Privee de Marie Antoinette, par Madame de Campan", tome ii., p. 392. M. DE GKNLIS IN THE PALAIS ROYAL. 481 forms us, she was the victim of envy, spite, and calumny, of innu- merable intrigues, of all sorts of tracasseries on the part of the ladies of the court. And the poor woman who had found at that time, in her bril- liant position in the Palais Royal wherewith to boast of, tells us in her memoirs, that on the occasion of a grand assemblage in the palace, she rose up from the table de jeu at which she was seated with the accomplished Prince de Ligne, who was, in the words of the countess, " the most amiable of men, and particularly so for me, because he saw how much his conversation pleased me", and while he was yet amusing her and himself, and was proceeding, " de me dire mille folies", she, Madame de Genlis, retired to a corner of the saloon, gazed on the scene before her, fell into a profound reverie, and gave expression to " a veritable access of misanthropy", of infelicity, and deep dejection of spirit, in some very remarkable lines, of which I shall quote the first and the concluding ones, as conveying in the strongest and most express terrri9 the feelings of profound ennui, of consummate discontent, of one still in the flower of her age, in all the splendid misery of a false position, whose elevation was her curse, and the punish- ment of her ambition : Secret ennui, sombre langueur, Degout du rnonde, et de la vie, Poison qu une main ennemie Semble repandre sur mon cceur, Vous avez de trait mon bonheur ! Qu'il est dangereux, temeraire De vouloir tout approfibndir, Et d'aneantir la chiinere, Qui donne ou promet le plaisir! Telle est la source rnalheureuse, De cette inquietude affreuse, Qui me devore, et me poursuit. Un froid mortel, mi noir renin, Glacent mon esprit incertain ; Le dernier des biens, l esperance, N'est pour moi qu'un fantome vain, Et je supporte avec chagrin Ma triste et penible existence. (Mem. Madame de Genlis, vol. iii., p. 5). The fact of the utter ruin and embarrassment of the pecuniary circumstances and financial affairs of the Duke of Orleans at the period of the outbreak of the French Revolution, throws much light on his conduct in regard to the crown and government of Louis XVI. The historian and panegyrist of the Duke of Orleans, Monsieur Tournois, says, " The Duke of Orleans had always se- vol. ii. 32 482 FALSE POSITION OF M. DE GENLIS cretly suffered financial embarrassments: these embarrassments were much talked of in 1790, and becoming more serious and alarming in 1791, they terminated in inextricable disorder, and reached the brink of an inevitable catastrophe in 1792".* And it is to be observed that this ruin of the financial affairs of the duke is attributed in a great degree by Monsieur Tournois to the brother of Madame de Genlis, Monsieur Ducrest, whom she had contrived to get appointed Chancellier de Maison d' Orleans. The position of the Comtesse de Genlis in the household of the Duchess d' Orleans was anomalous in the ektreme. She was suspected by the whole court of the Palais Royal to be the mis- tress of the duke. She was placed near the person of the duchess, she was the secretary of the duchess, wrote all her letters, and eventually obtained the office of gouverneur of the male children of the Duke and Duchess d' Orleans, and of gouvemante of the young princess Adelaide, which offices she filled for nearly fifteen years. The amiable and religious duchess saw her children taken from her, removed to another establishment, where the Countess of Genlis was supreme director and mistress, found the affection of her children estranged from her, and, as she thought, the affections of her husband scandalously inveigled by an artful, intriguing, ambitious woman ; and it was only when her peace of mind was utterly destroyed, that she summoned suffi- cient courage to assert her rights. The conduct of Madame de Genlis on this occasion was insolent and indiscreet, in- delicate and unwomanly. She kept her ground for a short time, set the duchess at defiance, but wrote her long treatises on morality and the education of princes and princesses, and the duties of mothers and the prerogatives of governesses, in the form of letters. However, when further resistance was in vain, she indignantly abandoned her office, quitted the establishment where she had virtually reigned over the Duke of Orleans and his family for so many years, but not before she addressed letters to the children who were lately her pupils, calculated to poison their minds against their mother, and to make herself appear in- dispensable to their happiness. But of the result of this triumph of Madame de Genlis, it will be in vain to look for any account in the memoirs of that lady ; we must seek for it in the biography of her patron and protector, the Duke of Orleans, by M. Tournois (tomeii. p. 235), and there we find that the Duchess of Orleans, on the 5th of April, 1791, took the grave resolution of a final separation from her husband, * " Histoire de Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orleans", par Monsieur Tournois, torn© ii., p. 74. IS THE PALACE CF THE DUC d' ORLEANS. 483 abandoned the Palais Royal, and retired to her fathers abode, le Chateau d'Eu, in Normandy. The family of her father, the Duke de Penthievre, took immediate proceedings to effect a formal se- paration de corps et de biens, and eventually on the 8th of October, 1 793, by a decree of the Tribunal of Cassation, the separation was definitively established, and the claim of the duchess on the pro- perty of her husband was confirmed to a settlement of an enor- 2 nous amount, in virtue of the marriage contract, by which a dowry of six millions of livres had been secured by her father. When the Court of Cassation pronounced its judgment, the Duke of Orleans was then a prisoner in Marseilles, destined in a few weeks to be conveyed to Paris to appear personally before another tribunal, from which he was conducted to the scaffold, where, some months previously, his relative the King of France had made his exit, and for whose death he, Louis Philippe Joseph d' Orleans, had given his vote. And at the same period, when that judgment of the Court of Cassation was pronounced, the Duchess of Orleans was a prisoner in Normandy, separated effec- tually from her husband by a distance of three hundred leagues. Madame de Genlis had taken good care in the mean time of all that was precious to her in this world — herself. She was then secure from the storms of the Revolution in Flanders, and there, a little later, she had leisure to devote a few paragraphs in her me- moirs to many ruins she had very largely contributed to accom- plish. The duchess, however, had for a long period, it will be borne in mind, previous to the separation, stifled her feelings of just resentment, and consented to be dragged about on tours of pleasure and promenades for health, to fashionable watering places, by her unfeeling and unprincipled consort, rather in the charge and under the direction of madame la £ou- vernante, than attended by a woman who had been in her household in the capacity of a lady-in-waiting. In 1784 she was thus humiliated by her unworthy husband, taken to Spa, and paraded before the public side by side with a woman generally believed to be the paramour of her husband. Upwards of eight years previously, Madame de Genlis had also visited Spa, but on that occasion she was unaccompanied by the Duke or Duchess d' Orleans or her husband ; and then and there Pamela believed she was born, and that her mother was Madame la Comtesse de Genlis. It was in the spring of 1791 that the poor Duchess d' Orleans made the desperate effort, previously referred to, to separate her children from Madame de Genlis, and to induce the latter to resign her office of governess. The conduct of Madame de 484 FALSE POSITION OF M. DE GENLIS Genlis on this occasion was infamous: she refused to resign her office or to restore the children of the duchess. She wrote letters of complaint to the husband against the wife; she had the audacity even to demand of the husband his inter- ference with the wife, and to call for an apology from the in- jured lady. But the duchess, at length assuming the authority of her position, demanded of Madame de Genlis her immediate departure and resignation of her office, on pain of a public expo- sure of her conduct; and then only, and not till then, Madame de Genlis reluctantly abandoned her office of governess, and re- moved from Paris. But the triumph of the virtuous and excel- lent woman, the Duchess of Orleans, was of short duration. The artful, intriguing, ever-plotting, never-tiring concocter of schemes and stratagems, was recalled to Paris by the duke not long before his arrest, brought back to Belle-chasse, reinstated in her office, and sent to England in charge of the eldest daughter of the Duke of Orleans, her former eleve, Madame Adelaide. The biographer and panegyrist of the Due d' Orleans (Egalite), speaking of his marriage in 1769, says: " The Duke and the Du- chess d' Orleans had been in tolerable harmony, assez unis, till the year 1784. At this epoch some clouds gathered over their union : the family seasonably interfered ; everything was arranged. But these reconciliations do not always last, because the women never forget, at least entirely, certain things",* les femmes rioublient jamais, du moins entierement certaines choses. The biographer leaves us in no doubt of the nature of these certaines choses. We are plainly informed the duchess believed (unreasonably, of course, we are told by the panegyrist of Egalite) that Madame de Genlis had supplanted her in the affections of her husband, and had usurped her position in her own family and household. The biographers of Louis Philippe are of accord in regard to Madame de Genlis; they eulogize her, and they either omit all mention of her eleve, Pamela, or make same slight references to her adoption by Madame de Genlis. Monsieur Amedee Boudin, in his Histoire de Louis Philippe (in two tomes, 8vo, 1847), appa- rently written by the order of the Orleanists, and in entire confor- mity with their views aud interests, enters largely into the history of the education of the young Orleanist princes and princesses, but has not one word respecting the companion of their studies, the young and beautiful Pamela. Monsieur Boudin cites a remarkable letter of Louis Philippe (the future king of the French), addressed to his mother in Au- gust, 1796, three years after his father's death, wherein he says, * Tournois " Histoire de L. P. I. Due d' Orleans", tome ii. p. 235. EN THE PALACE OF THE DUC D ORLEANS. 485 "It is impossible, in writing to my dear mother, not to avail myself of the opportunity to tell her that for a length of time I have had no relations with Madame de Genlis. She has just published a letter at Hamburg, addressed to me, accompanied with a state- ment very inexact of her conduct since the Revolution, and in which she does not respect even the character of my unfortunate father".* The letter alluded to of Madame de Genlis is very characteristic. After the rupture of Louis Philippe with his institutrice, the latter living at Silk in Holstein, used all her efforts a se faire rayer de la liste des emigres, and to be allowed by the Directory to enter France. Madame de Genlis was labouring under feelings of irri- tation which embittered her existence. The Princesse Adelaide her favourite eleve, was withdrawn from her. It was then with the double view of propitiating the Directory, and gratifying her personal resentment, on account of the estrangement of the Prince Louis Philippe, that she published the Precis de la Conduite de Ma- dame de Genlis pendant la Revolution, and the accompanying letter to the prince, then Due d' Orleans, written with consummatejartifice and all the cunning and astuteness which characterized this very worldly, wily woman. In this letter to Louis Philippe, dated 8th of March, 1796, she tells him that all correspondence having ceased between them for eighteen months, since October, 1794, and not knowing his address, she is obliged to publish her letter. She says : "It appears to me impossible you do not know that it has been stated in several French journals, that you have a party in France who desire to place you on the throne. If you ignore this fact, it will be rendering you a great service to inform you of it. During the ten years of care I have devoted to you, I had ample time to study and to know your character, and I never discovered in it the smallest germ of ambition. . . . " What ! you to aspire to royalty ; to become an usurper ; to abolish a republic which has been recognized and cherished by you, and for which you have fought valiantly, and at what a time ! When France begins to organize herself; when her government establishes itself and appears to have placed itself on a solid base — morality and justice ! What degree of confidence could France accord to a constitutional king of twenty-three years of age, whom she had seen two years previously an ardent republican and the most en- thusiastic partizan of liberty ! Could not such a king, as well as any other person, insensibly undermine and abolish the constitu- tion and become a despot ? According to generally received ideas, there is a smaller intervening space between royalty, of whatever * " Histoire de Louis Philippe, Roi des Francis", tome i. p. 255. 486 ASTUTENESS OF M. DE GENLIS. kind it may be, and despotism, than between democratic govern- ment and royalty the farthest removed from despotism. Could you, in ascending this throne bloody and overthrown, flatter your- self that you could give peace to France ? . . . " In the event of France returning to royalty, the pretensions of the brother of Louis XVI. will become legitimatized. If the throne is restored, it is to him it belongs. In placing yourself on it, you would only secure for yourself the most odious of all titles. New factions would drive you away from it, and you would then find in exile and proscription the only misfor- tunes you have not yet experienced — those of dishonour and remorse. Besides, even if you could legitimately and rea- sonably pretend to the throne, I would be sorry to see you ascend it, because you have not, with the exception of cou- rage and probity, either the talents or the qualities neces- sary for that dignity. You have instruction, intelligence, and a thousand virtues; but each state requires particular qualities, and you have not those which are necessary for great kings. You are fitted by your tastes and your character for a retired and a private station — to present the touching example of all the do- mestic virtues, and not to represent with eclat, and to rule with constant energy, and to govern with firmness, a great empire^ . . . In publishing this letter I believe I render you a ser- vice, because it may serve to dissuade those who, against all rea- sonable views, desire to make of you the head of a party. One might naturally believe that your institutrice ought to know better than any other person your character ; and I dare reply to those above referred to that you hold in horror the projects attri- buted to you".* The candid, tender-hearted, single-minded, and affectionate institutrice ends her letter of advice to her former eleve with these words: " Adieu, Monsieur / consacrez vous a llieureuse et douce obscurite qui convient d vos malheurs et a votre situation". In February, 1800, the young Prince Louis Philippe obtained an interview in London with Monsieur, the brother of Louis XVI., when a reconciliation was effected between the rival bran- ches of the House of Bourbon, on which occasion Louis Philippe solicited Monsieur " to forget the errors he may have committed at the beginning of the Revolution, and to be pleased to consider that such errors were less acts of his personal will than the results of his inexperience, and the influence which had been exercised over him by the bad example and the evil principles of persons with whom he had lived in his childhood and in his youth 1 ' — " les * Boudin " Histoire de Louis Philippe", tome i., p. 240. MODEST ESTIMATE OF HER OWN MERITS. 487 mauvaises examples et les mauvaises principles des personnes avec lesquelles il avait vecu dans son enfance et pendant sa jeunesse\* Of all the celebrated women of France of the time of Louis XVI. and the Revolution, renowned for their wit, intellectuality, brilliant talents for society, for literature, or for proficiency of any kind in letters, several were more immoral than the Countess de Genlis, but none were more hypocritical, intensely egotistic, unscrupulous, and malignant in their resentment than this lady. There are two passages in the memoirs which speak volumes for the intensity of the feeling of self-love and the fanaticism of self-worship of Madame de Genlis. She commences the volume of memoirs with a relation of the greatest event of modern times in the following terms: — " The Revolution broke out the 9th of July (1789) : it was the eve of my fgte, which they w r ere celebrating at St. Leu with charming entertainments (spectacles). The eternal mot predominated then, as it did to the close of the career of this poor, ambitious, artful woman. The countess terminates her memoirs (published in 1825), vol. v., p. 91, in these terms of astounding presumption and im- piety: — 14 Now, I have terminated my memoirs, I can say, if not with the merits at least with the truth, these words of the apostle — * I have fought well. I have kept the faith. I have finished my course'". Proscribed as an emigrant in 1793, Madame de Genlis wan- dered from asylum to asylum, in Flanders, Switzerland, Germany, and Prussia, to the period of the Consulate, when permission was given to her by Buonaparte to return to France. Paris then be- came her fixed place of abode, and there the remainder of her life was spent. Madame de Genlis terminated her eventful career in Paris the 31st of December, 1830, at the age of eighty-five years.f She had the gratification of seeing her eVeve Louis Philippe elevated to the throne of France. Her remains were followed to their resting * Boudin, "Hist, de Louis Philippe", tome i., p. 272. See also "Annual Register, 1800. f Prefecture du Departemext de la Seine. Extrait du llegistre des actes de Deces de l'annee 1831. ler Arrondissement. Du trois Janvier mil huit cent trente, a midi et demi: Acte de Deces de Madame Etiennette Felieite Ducrest, rentiere, agee de quatre vingt cinq ans, veuve de Monsieur Charles Alexis Comte de Genlis, la dite definite nee a St. Aubin, et decede a Paris, rue du Faubourg du Roule, No. 24, le trente et un Decembre dernier a onze hcurcs du soir . . . Pour copie conforme. — Paris, le 10 Novembre, 1857. Le Maire, Gronville. 488 END OF CAREER OF M. DE GENUS. place, the cemetery of Mont Valerien, by the royal carriages of her august pupil. Early in the month of November, 1831, the beloved eleve, if not the daughter, of Madame de Genlis, the once beautiful Pamela, ended also her most strange and eventful history in Paris. The interval that separated the deaths of Madame de Genlis and Pamela was ten months and eight days. I endeavoured to obtain a copy of the will of Madame de Genlis, but found that no registry of wills exists in France ; and no person except those beneficially interested in the property of the deceased, are legally entitled to see the will of a deceased person (with the custody of which the notary who makes the will is always charged). No mention of Pamela, I am informed, is made in the will of Madame de Genlis. The persons who inherit any property left by her are the repre- sentatives of her grandchildren : La Comtesse Gerard, the daughter of Madame Valence, and widow of the late Marshal Gerard; and the General de Lawoestine, the present commandant en chef of the National Guard of Paris, son of the Marquis de Lawoestine who married the other daughter of Madame de Genlis. Madame de Genlis died in Paris in a boarding-house kept by Madame d'Afforty, No. 24 Rue Faubourg du Roule, now Fau- bourg St. Honore, the hotel of the Swedish Legation. CHAPTER, XII. MADAME DE GENLIs's ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF PAMELA. INVENTIVE FACULTIES OF THE AUTHORESS OF THE "MEMOIRES". THE ROMANTIC HIS- TORIES AND MYSTERIES OF HER ADOPTIONS OF YOUNG CHILDREN IN ENGLAND AND PRUSSIA. ALLEGED RELATIONS OF A NEARER AND DEARER KIND OF THE YOUNG PAMELA AND CASIMIR WITH MADAME DE GENLIS THAN THOSE OF ELEVES AND GOUVERNANTE. The peculiar turn of mind, and the ruling passion of Madame de Genliss life, was an intense love of fabrication, and imposing on the world the fictions of her lively imagination, and the mysti- fication of all surrounding circumstances, for facts and realities. With a degree of candour very seldom exhibited by Madame de Genlis in her Memoirs, referring to the period of her marriage, 1764, she acknowledges that "from her earliest youth, under the dominion of her imagination, she always loved better to occupy her- self with that ivhich she created (in her own imagination) than with that which existed". She continues — " I never considered the future except as a dream, in which every object can be intro- M. DE GEXLIs's ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF PAMELA. '489 duced that is desired. It appeared to me very insipid to put there only things likely to occur, which can be discovered by all the world. / had no pretensions to the power of foreseeing, but I had to that of inventing" * But this outburst of candour was preceded by one of intellectual vanity ; she extols her reasoning powers and the soundness of her judgment very highly. Madame de Genlis says — " A praise that I can bestow upon myself, as I feel certain of meriting it, is that I have always had a mind perfectly just, and consequently a great fund of reason; notwithstanding which 1 have done a thousand foolish things, a thousand unreasonable acts, and no one in the world ever reflected less than I have done upon their conduct, their interest, and the future ; at the same time, no one has ever reflected more upon everything that was not personal — upon all I read, upon men in general, upon the world, and, in fine, upon chimeras". Madame de Genlis entered the Palais Royal as lady in waiting to the Duchesse de Chartres (a little later Duchesse d' Orleans) in 1770. The Due d 1 Orleans appears from the first to have patronized the young lady in waiting. She soon became in her own estima- tion an important person in the court and family of the young duke and duchess. She accompanied them in their tours ; she controlled their ser- vants. She governed the family, while ostensibly only appearing to guide the education of the children of it. In 1777 she was installed, as we have already seen, by her patron the Due d' Orleans, of infamous notoriety, in the establish- ment connected with the convent of Belle-chasse in Paris, charged with the education of his children.! Referring to this period of her career, the name of Pamela is thus first introduced in the Memoires of Madame de Genlis — " It is true that to perfect my eleves in the habit of speaking foreign languages, I conceived the idea of placing along with them a little English girl nearly their own age. A little girl who * Dominee par mon imagination et des mon enfance, j'ai toujours mieux aime m'occuper de ce que je creais que de ce qui etait. Je n'ai jamais considere l'avenir que comme un rcve ou Ton peut placer tout ce qu'on veut. H me parai.-sait fort insipide de n'y mettre que le vraiscmblable. que tout le monde pouvait y voir. Je n'avais la pretension de la prevoyance mais j'avais celle de l'invention. — Memoires de M. de Genlis, Ed. Barba, ch. viii., p. 19. t Although the references to the Memoires of M. de Genlis, in this volume, are for the most part to the first edition, which appeared in 1825, yet on account of the omission of dates to a great extent in that edition, the later one, published by Barba and edited by the niece of Madame de Genlis, in which that omission is supplied in the notes and headings of chapters, has been made use of accordingly. — R. R. M. 490 M. DE GENLIS'S ACCOUNT OF ORIGIN was then residing in Paris, wa3 first brought to me ; but I found her so disagreeable that I did not wish to keep her. Then Monsieur le Due de Chartres wrote to London, and charged a per- son he was acquainted with, Mons. Forth, to send him a pretty little English girl of five or six years of age, after having her inoculated. This commission was a little long in executing, as Mr. Forth had at first selected one, but on examination by doctors it was found that she had a tendency to scrofula. A month afterwards he found another, whom he had inoculated, whom he confided to a horse dealer named St. Denis, who had been charged by the Due de Chartres to purchase for him a fine English horse. He announced to Monsieur le Due the execution of the commis- sion in these terms: " I have the honour to send to your most serene highness the handsomest mare and the prettiest girl in England". The next* reference to Pamela in the Memoirs is in connection with occurrences which took place in December, 1792. Pamela was the daughter of a gentleman of good family (qui avait de la naissance) named Seymour, who had married against the consent of his family, a person of the lowest condition, named Mary Syms, and took her to Newfoundland, to a place called Fogo. There Pamela was born, and was named Nancy. " Her father died, and the mother returned to England with her child, then eighteen months old. As her husband was disinherited, she was reduced to great misery, and forced to work for her bread. She had settled at Christ Church, which place Mr. Forth passed through four years after, and being commissioned by the Duke of Orleans to send us a young English girl, he saw this girl, and ob- tained her from her mother. When I began to be really attached to Pamela, I was very uneasy lest her mother might be desirous of claiming her by legal process; that is, lest she might threaten me with doing so, to obtain grants of money it would have been out of my power to give. I consulted several English lawyers on the sub- ject, and they told me that the only means of protecting myself from this species of persecution, was to get the mother to give me her daughter as an apprentice for the sum of twenty-five guineas. She agreed, and, according to the usual forms, appeared in the Court of King's Bench before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield. She there signed an agreement, by which she gave me her daughter as an apprentice till she became of age, and could not claim her from me till she paid all the expenses I had been at for her main- tenance and education ; and to this paper Lord Mansfield put his name and seal, as Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench".! * " Memoires de Mad. de Genlis", ch. xxiii., p. 82, f " Memoires de Madame de Genlis" — Edition de Madame Georgette Ducrest, Barba, Paris, ch. xx., p. 104. AND PARENTAGE OF PAMELA. 491 In 1788, Madame de Genlis determined to make an petit voy- age en Angleterre, for which petit voyage no reasons are as- signed in the memoirs, except that " she had always a passion- ate desire for a little journey to England". And this was the only occasion, she states, in which she had ever separated herself from her elives during their education, and it was only for six weeks".* She received the most flattering attentions, she states, from the persons the most celebrated of England; among others, from Messrs. Fox, Sheridan, Burke, Lord Mansfield, etc., etc., etc. ; with all of whom she had never any previous acquain- tance. On her birth-day, Lord Mansfield, grand juge d" Angle- terre, sent her a present of moss roses, ce respectable veillard, whom she had only seen a few days before for the first time, was particularly obliging to her. But not one word is said in this account of the journey, and her intimacy with the chief justice, of the legal proceeding before Lord Mansfield, in virtue of which Pamela became an apprentice of Madame de Genlis. All the details given by Madame de Genlis of the origin of Pamela, I believe to be mere fictions, and such they were con- sidered by Pamela and those most intimately acquainted with her. Pamela was not the only "child by adoption" of Madame de Genlis. A new ellve and "child by adoption™ of Madame la Gouver- nante makes a first appearance on the stage of that mystifying lady's Jfemoires, about the latter part of 1799, when reference is made to a second visit of hers to Berlin. The scene of this new mysterious episode in the life and adventures of Madame de Genlis, of the "adoption" kind, is, however, laid in Prussia, on the occasion of Madame's first visit to Berlin, which was in the spring of 1795. The recollection of dates is very important in this matter. Madame and her ellve, the Princesse d' Orleans, had been living in a secluded manner in Switzerland, in the convent of Bre^- marten, for upwards of a year previously to the second journey of Madame to Berlin. She manifested, however, a strong desire, and one that was quite new also, and inconsistent with former pro- cedures, to be debarassee of Mademoiselle d' Orleans in the early part ot 1794. She accordingly caused the young princess to address her illustrious relations in various countries soliciting an asylum. One of these applications was successful; an asylum * In October, 17S9, the Duke of Orleans, who the year preceding had been exiled from Paris, and compelled to reside at one of Ms estates, was permitted to go to England. Madame de Genlis visited England in October, 17S8. In all pro- bability her visit was connected with the duke's to that country a little later. 492 A NEW CHILD BY ADOPTION OF M. DE GENLIS. was offered to her by her aunt the Princesse de Conti, then re- siding in another canton of Switzerland. Madame and her eleve separated finally the 11th of May, 1794. The former immediately after this separation set out for Germany, and at the close of July, 1794, was sojourning at Altona. The 1st of April, 1795, she set out from Altona for Hamburgh, where she remained four months, and then proceeded to Berlin, where she sojourned for a much longer period, and eventually was expelled from the Prussion dominons by the government, but for what cause no satisfactory account is given in the memoirs. Some five years later, towards the latter part of 1801, notwithstanding the indignity which Madame de Genlis had suffered at Berlin, we find that lady, having obtained permission to return to Prussia, again residing in Berlin, and after a short sojourn there, coming away accompanied with a little boy of about six years of age. The new " child by adoption", to whom Madame de Genlis had given the name of Casimir, plays the same role Pamela had done in the memoirs some years previously. The following is the account of this new adoption given by Madame, who so candidly informs us that " she was always under the dominion of her imagination even from childhood, and always loved better to occupy herself with that which she created than with that which really existed". Madame thus proceeds : — " There lived in a house a tailor who had been twice married, and had the second time espoused a young woman who had two children by her first marriage. The eldest, who was very badly treated by his unjust step-father, came often to take refuge at my house, when the violence of his conduct became unbearable. His good looks, his misfortunes, and superior intelligence inte- rested me greatly. I gave him lessons in reading, writing, and French. At the end of four months he was master of all I had taught him, learning by heart both verse and prose. He recited them without any fault of pronunciation. I went to his mother to beg her to give me up the care of this child, promising her that I would bring him up in the Catholic religion. To this proposal she consented, and gave me a written engagement to make over to me all her rights to the boy. She appeared even delighted to give him up to me. 1 took him with me, and gave him the name of Casimir, after my son, whom I had lost ; . . . I then took my leave of those people who had been so very kind to me ". * Of Casimir's subsequent career, we find numerous accounts * " Chroniques Populaire Memoires de Madame de Genlis". Par Georgette Ducrest, Paris, p. 117. A NEW CHILD BY ADOPTION OF M. DE GEN LIS. 493 in the memoirs of his mother M by adoption". He was the youngest of that kind of children of Madame, and all her affection in her latter years seems to have centred in him. At the time of the revolution of July, 1830, he was residing in Paris, a young man of considerable merit as an artist, a musician of great talent, and, what was of far higher importance, a person of great worth and moral excellence. When Madame de Genlis was on her death- bed in December, 1830, she addressed a communication to the new King of the French, her former pupil, soliciting his bounty and protection for her young eleve Casimir, for whom she was unable to make any provision. The result of this application was a pension which Mons. Casimir ceased only to receive at the downfall of Louis Philippe, and which for Louis Napoleon to restore would be an act of generosity well applied. But to return to the first child by adoption of Madame de Gen- lis. In April, 1776, we are told by that lady in her memoirs, that she was ordered by her physician, after a serious illness La Ricjeole, to try the mineral waters of Spa ; and as her hus- band could not accompany her, she proceeded to Spa attended by an elderly officer, a friend of her husband, i% un homme en qui il avait toute conjiance\ There, after a sojourn of nearly four months, she applied for a renewal of her leave of absence, to make a tour in Switzerland. She returned to Paris in the autumn of 1776, after an absence of five months and a half.* If a statement of Pamela to a friend of hers, Madame la Baronne d'E., be correct, that she was four years younger than Madame de Genlis made her out, she must have been born in 1777. The in- ference, then, about Madame de Genlis's motive for the journey to Spa would fall to the ground : if she had stated three years instead of four, we would then have the date of her birth and that of the journey of Madame de Genlis to Spa the same year, namely, 1776, and consequently Pamela would have been sixteen years of age, and not nineteen, when she was married. The time of Madame de Genlis's journey to Spa in 1776, and the date of the birth of Pamela, if separated at all, I believe can only be so by an interval of some months. Pamela was born, according to Madame de Genlis's account, in 1773, being about nineteen in October, 1792, as she is described in the marriage contract.! 9 Barbas' edition of the " Memoires". edited by If. Georgette Ducrest. p. 65. fin Madame de Genlis*s " Memoires"' (en 10 tomes. Paris. 1825), we rind an ac- count of her first entrance into the service of the Duchess de Chartres, afterwards d' Orleans, the date of which event it is important to bear in mind, the year 1770, when she was twenty-four years of age. 494 AGE OF PAMELA. But on authority which is entitled to the fullest reliance, that of the intimate and confidential friend of Pamela for many years, and who continued so to be up to the period of her death — Ma- dame la Baronne d'E., I am enabled to state that Pamela on many occasions referred to Madame de Genlis's account of her age as a misstatement, the design of which was to have her (Pamela) believed to be some years older than she really was, for reasons connected with Madame de Genlis's position at that period in the Due d' Orleans' household. I have no doubt of the truth of that statement. But it will be seen by a written communication of my informant, that Pamela claimed to be four years younger than Madame de Genlis had been pleased to admit. Pamela's statement, most probably, ap- proached nearest to the truth. It is necessary, however, to reduce the four years, of which she speaks, to three years, to make her account consistent with many concurrent circumstances which suffice to fix the date of her birth with tolerable certainty at 1776, instead of 1773, as Madame de Genlis would have it, and to es- tablish the fact that, at the period of her marriage, in the latter part of 1792, she was only sixteen years of age, and not nineteen, as Madame de Genlis made her out. The kind of education given to Pamela by Madame de Genlis was better calculated to qualify her for the stage than for the posi- tion in society that might be desired for her. Madame de Genlis makes mention of a performance of her eleve, Pamela, then about twelve years of age, in a pantomime got up by the countess at St. Leu, for the entertainment of David, the celebrated painter, on which occasion Love was personated by the beautiful little Pamela. " In the course of the education of my eleves, we played succes- sively in our salle de comedie, all the dramatic pieces of my 4 The- tre ' ; the children also played pantomimes there. There was one so remarkable that I cannot pass it over in silence : it was that of 4 Psyche persecuted by Venus ' ; Madame de Lawoestine, then fifteen years old, represented Venus, her sister Psyche, and Pamela that of Love. There never were three persons together who united so much beauty and grace". — {Mem. Madame de Genlis, vol. iii., p. 127.) About the year 1785, Madame de Genlis gives a portrait of the young Pamela, who previously avail toute son esprit en Vintelli- gence: et qui Va montres depuis dans la conversation et dans ses lettres : " Pamela was extremely handsome ; candour and sensibility were the chief traits in her character ; she never told a falsehood, or employed the slightest deceit, during the whole course of her Pamela's early education'. 405 education ; she was spiritual from sentiment ; her conversation was most agreeable,. and always emanated from the heart. I was pas- sionately fond of her, and that fondness has in some respects proved unfortunate. This charming child was the most idle 1 ever knew ; she had no memory — she was very wild, which even added to the grace of her figure, as it gave Jier an air of vivacity, which, joined with her natural indolence and to a great deal of wit, made her very engaging. Her figure was tine and light ; she flew like Atalante; and her mind was idle to the greatest degree; thus was she in after life a person the least capable of reflection. Her lot brought her afterwards into the most extraordinary situations ; she was without a guide or a counsellor on a thousand dangerous oc- casions, but, nevertheless, conducted herself extremely well as long as her husband was living, and even, in many difficult circum- stances, in a manner truly heroic". — {Mem. Madame de Genlis, vol. iii., p. 139.) In July, 1789, the French Revolution broke out, and an occur- rence took place a little later, we are told in the Memoirs, which caused Madame de Genlis to desire to make a second petit voyage en Angleterre; but this desire was not gratified until the 11th of Oc- tober, 1791, when la Duchesse d' Orleans had insisted on Madame de Genliss expulsion from Belle-chasse. The occurrence to which Madame de Genlis refers is remarkable. At the age of little more than fourteen years, we find Pamela already made practically acquainted with the terrors of a revo- lution, menaced with death, imprisoned during a whole night by a furious rabble yelling a la lanteme. The following is the account given in Madame de Genlis's Memoirs of this early experience of the horrors of a revolution in 1790. " The Count de Beaujolais, my niece, Henriette de Sercey, Pamela, and I, went to visit a country house, six leagues from Paris. We passed by the Colombe. Unfortunately it was a market-day. There were assembled in the village a multitude of people from the neighbouring parts. As we traversed the village the people crowded round our carriage, imagining that I was the queen, ac- companied by Madame (her daughter) and the Dauphin, who had fled from Paris. They arrested us, obliged us to descend from the carriage, on which they seized, as well as on the coachman and our attendants. In this state of the tumult, the commandant of the national guard, a young man of very good family, Monsieur Baudry, came to our succour, harangued the people, whom he could not dissuade however; but he managed to gain their per- mission to conduct us into his house which was quite close, undertaking to keep us prisoners till full satisfaction wns given by us. Through an immense multitude we were led into his house, 496 PAMELA WITNESSES REVOLUTIONARY SCENES. and during this short passage we heard a great number of voices and of furious cries that we must be brought to the lamp-posts — a la lanterne. Finally we were taken into the house ; but a quar- ter of an hour had not elapsed before a multitude of 4,000 people besieged the doors, burst them open, and rushed into the house with a terrible tumult. M. Baudry acted with much courage and humanity, and made all the efforts in his power to calm the populace. We were in the garden, and when I heard the people approaching, I told my eleves to commence playing imme- diately the game of four corners with me. Instantly a frightful crowd of men and women rushed into the garden; they were much surprised to find us playing at this game; we ceased play- ing on the spot, however, and I approached towards them with the greatest calm. I told them I was the wife of one of their deputies ; that I was about to write a letter to Paris to clear up all things, which letter I prayed them to despatch by a courier. They listened to me ; but after some time they cried out that it was all lies I told ; that I wanted to write to Paris in order to have an armed force sent for our release". — Mem. Madame de Genlis, vol. iv., p. 4.) The conclusion may be told in fewer words than Madame de Genlis has employed to relate it. After a long debate the propo- sition was accepted. A man was despatched to Paris to make the necessary inquiry of the authorities. A guard was set over the house, the populace continued to besiege it during the night, and during that frightful night until five o'clock the following morn- ing the tumult continued, and drunkenness lent additional horrors to it. At that hour of the morning, the messenger returned with an order from the municipality to allow the party to proceed without molestation, and that order was obeyed. But, however calm and composed Madame de Genlis may have been, we may easily conceive what the terror must have been of her young eleves, of M. le Comte de Beaujolais, Mademoiselle d' Orleans, Henriette de Sercy, the niece of Madame de Genlis, and the young Pamela. This incident in the French reign of terror was an introduction for her to another reign of terror, the events of which it was her unfortunate destiny to be familiarized with in Ireland. A small work in 12mo, published in Paris, by Madame de Genlis, in 1797, entitled Herbier Moral ou Recueil des Fables Nouvelles et d'autres Poesies Fugitives, throws some light on the nature of the relations of Madame de Genlis and Pamela. This little volume, not much known even to the admirers of that lady's writings, is addressed " a Lady Edward Fitzgerald". It begins with the endearing expression — Ma chere enfant. Three of the most touching pieces in the volume are addressed to her — see pages 87, RELATIONS OF Bf. DE GENLIS WITH PAMELA. 497 68, 89. Two others (see pages 125 and 162) contain references to Pamela, all more or less indicative, I think, of an expression given to the instincts of maternal love, which the writer, it seems, would fain conceal if it were possible to do so. She assigns as a reason for the inscription to Pamela, " that it was only right the work should be dedicated to that eleve who had taken lor her device the motto, ' un azyle et des fleurs'; and who, from her earliest youth, depuis sa plus tendre enfance, had so strong a passion for flowers". " Sweet Freseati", at the time this dedication was written, afforded all the enjoyments looked for by her whose device was, u un azyle et des jieurs". The dedi- cation ends with these words, like all others herein cited, faithfully and literally translated from the French: — "You will find, my dear child, with pleasure, in these little fables, the principles and the sentiments which have so successfully directed your childhood and the first years of your youth — les premieres annees de voire jeu- nesse. It is sweet to me to recur to these lessons which under many new and varied forms have been so successfully imparted by me. This kind of occupation recalls to my memory the happiest time of my life ! May such souvenirs afford you some interest in my work. The satisfaction that may be given by it to my pupils jdhxt) and my friends will be always the sweetest recompense my labours can meet with " We find among the " Poesies Fugitives" (at page 87), a short poem on " Friendship ", thus headed, " Vers a Lady Edward Fitzgerald", a "Romance", written in 1794 in the Convent of Bregmarten, envoy8. Dated the 15th May, 1819. In re Mrs. Mary Lloyd. — In trust for her three daughters, a pension of £300 a year to Thomas O'Neil of Turnham Green, proposed to be granted the 23rd February, 1815. Signed, Whitworth. In re Edward Connor and Mrs. Margaret Connor. — A pension for lite of £200 a year, proposed to be granted 23rd August, 1815. Signed, Wn it worth. In ?^Myles John O'Reilly. — For the life of Miss Helena White, daughter of Thomas Jervis White, Esq., of Dublin. — A pension to Myles John O'Reilly, Esq., of £250 a year. Signed, Whit- worth. I have not been unmindful of Mr. MacNally's name or that of Captain John Warneford Armstrong, in the inquiries which have led to the rescue of the preceding notices from the oblivion in which the books of Fiants and the government correspondence are now buried. In those that I have examined, there is no trace of the name of Mr. Leonard MacNally, nor of that of Captain John Warneford Armstrong. The books that I examined were not of consecutive years; nor were those of the intermediate years existing in the archives. They had been either stolen or taken especial care of, and kept separately from the other records and state papers. I may also observe, in the books which exist, no trace is to be found of the name of that mysterious gentleman, the betrayer of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, whose initials, F. H., stand before the price of his lordship's blood, the £1,000 sterling, in the secret service money list of payments. In the last edition of the best book yet written of the best of r 586 macnally's productions. Irishmen — Curran and his cotemporaries — by Charles Phillipps, Esq., 1851, there is a very remarkable note appended to the account of the proceedings in parliament on the bill of attainder of Lord Edward Fitzgerald : — " I have had the name of Lord Edward's betrayer disclosed to me. It has never yet been published, nor shall it be by me. The innocent living ought not to suffer for the guilt of the dead. It was, however, the act of a Judas. He was, to the very last, appa- rently the attached friend of his victim" — page 88. I would respectfully suggest to Mr. Phillipps, that " the inno- cent living" have suffered terribly for the guilt of the dead, in this particular instance, by the veil which has been thrown over the guilt of the real criminal in this case. Permit me to remind him, that the feelings of the children and the grandchildren of Samuel Neilson, who was so long and so unjustly suspected of being the betrayer of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, are quite as worthy of consideration as the children of the actual traitor, whose name is known to Mr. Phillipps, and is so mistakenly, as I presume to think, withheld by him from publicity. I call upon Mr. Phillipps, in the name of justice both to the living and the dead, to those who are best entitled to it at his hands, to pub- lish the name of the betrayer of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, which he tells us has been disclosed to him, and whatever Mr. Phillips states, I am well aware, is entitled to all reliance. In his early career, MacNally gave a good deal of his time and attention to dramatic literature. His productions, dramatic and professional, are the following: 1. The Apotheosis of Punch — a satirical masque, 8vo, 1779. 2. The Claims of Ireland and the Resolutions of the Volunteers Vindicated — a pamphlet, 8vo, 1782. 3. Retaliation — a farce, 8vo. 4. Tristram Shandy — a farce, 1782. 5. Robin Hood — a comic opera, 1784. 6. Fashionable Levities — a comedy, 1785. 7. Richard Ca3ur de Lion — a comic opera, 1786. 8. Abstract of Acts Passed in Parliament, 1786. 9. Critic upon Critic — a dra- matic medley, 1792. 10. Cottage Festival — an opera, 1796. 11. • The Rules of Evidence on Pleas of the Crown, 1803. 12. The Justice of the Peace, 2 vols., large 8vo, 1809. For two editions of the last-mentioned work MacNally received from Mr. Fitzpatrick, the bookseller, the large sum of £2,400. MacNally wrote also four dramatic pieces, which were per- formed but not published: Ruling Passion — a comic opera, 1779; Prelude for Covent Garden, 1782; Coalition — a musical farce, 1783; April Fool— -a farce, 1786. The Biographia Dramatica, compiled by Baker, Keid, and Jones, ed. 1812, in its notices of the several dramas by Mac- MACK ALLY S PRODUCTIONS. 587 Xally, affords little commendation to the author as a dramatic writer. 14 Robin Hood", he said, " was acted at Covent Garden; but, notwithstanding the excellence of the music, there was little originality or spirit in the piece. Robin Hood is dwindled down to a mere sententious pedant". Tristram Shandy was acted several times at Covent Garden, and 11 kindly received' 1 , though very indifferently executed. 44 When acted in Dublin, it was condemned the first night". Richard Camr de Lion was acted at Covent Garden, but very soon was condemned to oblivion. Retaliation, acted at Covent Garden. 44 This farce possesses considerable merit, and was favourably received. The character of Praecipe, the attorney, is highly drawn, and the dialogue is well seasoned with wit". The Apotheosis of Punch, acted at the Patagonian Theatre, Exeter Change. 44 This is an attempt to ridicule Mr. Sheridan's monody on the death of Garrick. Malignant without merit. Its author, we believe, was Mr. MacNally". April Fool, acted at Covent Garden, 44 tolerably well received". Coalition, acted at Covent Garden for a benefit. 44 The au- dience gave it a favourable reception". The Cottage Festival was performed in Dublin in 1796. Critic upon Critic was performed at Covent Garden. Fashionable Le cities was acted at Covent Garden 44 with good success". So much for the estimate of MacNally s dramatic pieces of the Biociraphia Dramatica. Of his pamphlet, The Claims of Ireland and the Resolutions of the Volu7iteers indicated, the Biograpliia Dramatica speaks as 44 a very sensible pamphlet". I have never met with a copy of it, and have some reason to say it is rare. Of his Justice of the Peace, his principal work, an ample ac- count will be found in Phillipps 1 Curran and his Cotemporaries. He was more qualified, we are told, for dramatic than for legal literature. This is certainly faint praise ; for his dramatic talents were of a very humble order, though his faculty of invention was largely developed, and exercised rather freely, we are told, in conversation. His Justice of the Peace was the cause of vast num- bers of actions against country magistrates ; but it brought great business to country attorneys. The magistrates were constantly led by it into the commission of illegal acts, and when they com- plained to the author of his numerous legal errors, he was wont to assure them he would correct them in a second edition. Phillipps' picture of his personal appearance, and the many pe- 588 END OF CAREER OF MACNALLY. culiarities of his osseous structure, is graphic and amusing: " His very appearance fixed attention. Not naturally deformed, he seemed so. He seemed, at one time or other, to have had every bone in his body broken, and lost, I believe both, but certainly one, of his thumbs — but how, he either could not or would not tell: the latter probably, as he always accounted for it, — but never was there an era richer in variations. . . . Both his legs and his arms totally differed from each other ; he limped like a witch ; his eye and voice pierced you through like arrows, and served him well in cross-examination".* If we add to the foregoing sketch a few words of his physiog- nomy, of which I have a very vivid recollection, Mr. Leonard MacNally will be sufficiently described: MacNally's complexion did not contribute much to improve his peculiar cast of countenance ; it was extremely sallow ; it was the complexion of a man who had no red globules in his blood, but a great deal of bile commingled with it — that muddy complexion of a dirty brown hue, unctuous and unwholesome withal, which gives an appearance to the face of being always soiled, and an idea that its owner is either sickly in the flesh, uncomfortable in the spirit, or labours under that complicated form of hydrophobia mani- fested in a horror of soap as well as water. There was something marked in his features : they were naturally sombre and heavy, but could become suddenly vivacious, and as suddenly moody and saturnine again. The predominant expression of his cold, unimpassioned countenance and dead-setting look, was that of quiet laying in wait tendencies, indicative of adroitness, sharp- ness, an instinctive wariness and habitual watchfulness; one was reminded by it of the hawk's beak, and the cold, gray, twinkling eye of another bird of prey, of an ominous and evil-boding character. These outlines and similitudes are certainly not flattering ; and yet there were traits in this man's character which it is very diffi- cult to reconcile with the impression which their tout ensemble was calculated to leave on the mind of the observer. MacNally could be moved even tears by a distressing spectacle ; he could speak humane words, and he could do kind acts to the unfortunate. In social intercourse he could be genial, jovial, and amusing; in his family circle, and in all his relations to it, nothing could be said to his disparagement. The once popular ballad of The Lass of Richmond Hilt was composed by MacNally ; and the lady (Miss Janson) whose attrac- tions are celebrated in the song, became, at the commencement * " Curran and his Cotemporaries", p. 434. END OF CAREER OF MACXALLY. 589 of his career, the wife of the author of it. This lady must have died prior to 1800.* Mr. MacNally terminated, in 1820, a career which it had been better for his memory to have closed in the hardest struggle in his arduous but honourable profession, for a bare subsistence even, than to have died in the possession of any advantages he might have derived from services stealthily performed and secretly re- warded by the government. In one of the best of MacNally 's dramatic pieces — Robin Hood, or Sherwood Forest — a passage occurs in the scene where sentence is about to be pronounced on Friar Tuck, which may be very aptly applied to the author of the drama: "Your profession, sir, should have taught you principles of honour'. * In the Dublin Magazine for April, 1800, we find a notice of the marriage of Mr. Leonard MacXally to Miss Louisa Edgeworth, daughu-r of the Kev. Robert Edgeworth, of Issaid, in the county of Longford. MEMOIR OF ROGER O'CONNOR, ESQ. CHAPTER I. The biography of Roger O'Connor offers a study to the psycho- logist of no common interest. His character will be found as curious a subject for investigation as can be desired by any inquirer into mental anomalies. The constitution of Roger O'Connor's mind, like the composition of the myth in marble, the Egyptian Sphinx, is a riddle, an enigma, and a puzzle. The apparently fortuitous concourse of dissimilar elements and of con- flicting molecules of an energizing kind, all moving in opposite directions, that, in the aggregate, constituted his intelligence, might have served as a model mind for the Frankenstein crea- tion of Mrs. Shelley's powerful imagination. Roger O'Connor's character had this singular peculiarity in it, that all its points diverged from the centre-self at such unequal distances, that there was no harmony in its composition — no keeping in the parts, or relation to any principle but — self. This strange man's character, in short, could only be judged of by the application to it of Dr. Wigans theory of the duality of the mind. He was at once two distinct intellectual beings ; he was gene- rous, and liberal, and charitable, on grand occasions or on sudden impulse; he was mean and narrow-minded on small ones; and often harsh, and unfeeling, and morose, in dealing with appeals to his benevolence deliberately made to him; he was capable in public of very chivalrous, and in private of disinterested acts in fa- vour of the oppressed and injured — of rash, reckless, and daring exploits in their behalf; and yet he was not a courageous man — either physically or morally courageous — in the true sense of the term. He was naturally morose — a man of self-concentrated thoughts — given to brood over old recollections and traditions, and to ruminate on past glories of ancient families he desired to find evidence of having once been in alliance with his own ; — and yet he assumed, in his manners, air, and look, the frankness, ease, opcn-heartedness, blandness, and amenity and dignified bearing of ANOMALIES IN ROGER O'CONNORS CHARACTER. 591 a high-born gentleman : such as became one lineally descended from Irish kings. He professed the most ardent patriotism, and proclaimed his readiness "to do or die" for his country ; but he was incapable of an act of high daring for any great object that could be turned to a national account. He professed to love truth more than life — and yet he spent a large portion of that life forging lies, concocting deliberate schemes of imposture, and pro- mulgating literary forgeries with a view of hurting the principles of Christianity. Roger O'Connor, an elder brother of the late General Arthur O'Connor, was born in 1762. He came into possession of the Connerville property of his eldest brother Daniel Connor, by purchase, at the period of the departure of the latter from Ireland on account of a prosecution carried on against him at the suit of a Mr. Gibbons. Unanimity and brotherly affection were not among the virtues which distinguished the sons of old Roger Conner of Connerville. Roger O'Connor possessed considerable talents, a lively imagination, great powers of eloquence in conversation, and a gift of persuasiveness that seemed natural to him. He received a liberal education, entered Trinity College in 1777,* and passed through his studies there with 'credit. He was called to the English bar in 1784. Roger O'Connor's sympathies were not always on the side of the people, nor his services given to their cause. In early life he shared in all the old Tory principles of his family. He was a Delzo, an ultra-loyalist, a terrorist, a peasant-hunter. He contri- buted his quota of victims of justice to the gallows. He be- longed to the " Muskerry Light Horse", and was very often en- gaged in pursuit of " Whiteboys". On one occasion he was en- gaged in the pursuit and capture of seven men of some notoriety in those times of agrarian disturbances, who were hanged at Ma- croora, and whose skulls were spiked on the top of the guard-house at Macroom, where they were allowed to remain until taken down about a dozen years ago. These were the skulls of men who were prosecuted by the celebrated betrayer of his associates, " Malachi Duggan", who was himself a leader among the insurgents of the south; but the government of that day got hold of him, and for certain well-known reasons induced him to become an informer. In the early part of 1797 Roger O'Connor deemed it prudent to fly from Ireland and seek refuge in England. A warrant for his arrest was sent down to Cork by Lord Camden in the month * In the college books where the entrance of the two brothers, Roger and Ar- thur, is recorded, the sirname in both entries is Conner. Eoger entered in 1777, Arthur in 1779. At those dates it follows the 0' had not been adopted by either of them. 592 HIS IMPRISONMENTS IN 1798. of April, and at the same time his steward, one Cullinane, was ar- rested. On the 18th of June he returned to Ireland and surren- dered himself to government, in compliance with the terms of a proclamation of Lord Camden of the 17th of May preceding. He was allowed to proceed to Cork, but was not long in that county when he was arrested (the 14th of July) and conveyed to Dublin, and after an examination by Mr. Secretary Pelham, was set at liberty ; with the intimation, however, of his being still out on the bail which he had entered into at Mallow at the period of his former arrest. He was no sooner liberated than he proceeded to his native county, and attended at the Cork assizes for the purpose, as he states, " of exposing as dark a conspiracy as ever was formed against the lives of twelve innocent men" ; the charges against whom he had previously investigated, and had clearly ascertained that these charges were wholly unfounded. Having a full con- viction of their innocence on his mind, he determined, he says, to baffle the foul conspiracy, " by giving every aid which his labour, purse, and talents could bestow (in their defence), in a fair, open, and favourable manner". He thus acted without any solicitation from any quarter, regardless of threats of informations hanging over his own head ; and the result of his efforts was the triumphant acquittal of the twelve innocent men. This proceeding of Roger O'Connor was quite in keeping with his character. He rushed into the performance of a generous action from motives in themselves praiseworthy for their disin- terestedness, but at the same time in his peculiar circumstances one cannot help being struck with the rashness and indiscretion of a proceeding which was certain to bring down the vengeance of the discomfited on himself: and such was the immediate conse- quence of his interference on that occasion. In the course of a few days Roger O'Connor was arrested and lodged in jail, on an information sworn to against him at the in- stance of his own brother, Mr. Robert Longfield O'Connor. The fact would hardly be credible if the statement of it rested only on the assertion of Roger O'Connor, but an affidavit sworn before the Mayor of Cork, the 28th of September, 1797, by an English officer, Lieutenant Samuel Speare, in his Majesty's 8th Regiment of Foot, can leave no reasonable doubt in the mind of any person who reads that information, that Mr. Robert Longfield O'Connor, of Fort Robert in the county of Cork, took very active steps and very undue means to get his brother Roger O'Connor hanged. Lieutenant Speare deposes that he was present in the house of Robert O'Connor when a man of the name of Cullinane was brought in by the orders of the said Robert to swear an infor- ROGER O'CONNOB IX 1798. 503 mation against Roger O'Connor ; that threats, expostulations, and promises of advantages were had recourse to, to bring forward charges " so as to criminate the said Roger O'Connor' ; that Culli- nane declined to act on these suggestions at first, but at length made the statements that were required of him " with great eagerness and anxiety by the said Robert, to criminate the said Roger O'Connor ; and from the conduct of said Cullinane, he, the deponent, is well convinced and satisfied in his mind that the said Cullinane was influenced and intimidated by the said Robert Longfield to swear said information ; and that said informations were not the result of a mind free and unbiassed and disposed to tell the genuine truth". From the 27th of September, 1797, to the 12th of April, 1798, Roger O'Connor was the inmate of a dungeon in Cork, when at last he was put on his trial, acquitted, and discharged. The day after his acquittal he set out for London, with the in- tention, he says in one letter, " of residing there and of avoiding any interference in politics' 1 , and in another of " visiting his bro- ther Arthur, then in prison". Roger O'Connor arrived in London the 19th of April, 1798, and the following day wrote to the Duke of Portland, notifying his arrival and expressing a desire to be permitted to see his brother Arthur, then in confinement and about to be tried at Maidstone on a charge of high treason. The following day the Duke of Portlands correspondent was on his way to Dublin in the safe keeping of a king's messenger, Mr. Sylvester, and on the 24th he reached his destination. Within five hours of his arrival Mr. Sylvester informed him he had received another warrant by a king's messenger, who had been despatched after him by the duke to take his person back to London forthwith. In the meantime, before the sailing of the packet that evening, O'Connor was permitted to have an interview with Mr. Secretary Cooke, who acknowledged to him (O'Connor), " that though the government did not pretend to have any charge against him, yet, from their knowledge of his power, and their opi- nion of an inclination (on his part) to give them opposition, they thought themselves justified in the measures now adopted".* It would require a state telescope in our time, capable of mag- nifying objects to an enormous extent, equal to Lord Rosses wonderful instrument, to discover that nebulous " power" of Roger O'Connor, that so intimidated the government of the British empire in 1798; that necessitated the sending forth of warrants * Rosrer O'Connor's M Letters to the People of Great Britain and Ireland", Dub. 1799, p. 37. II. 39 594 ANOMALIES IN THE CHARACTER of secretaries of state in such quick succession ; that caused king's messengers to fly like feathered Mercuries from place to place ; that occasioned a poor vain man, partially deranged, eternally dreaming of a fabulous descent from imaginary Scytho-Iberian Irish kings, to be whisked from place to place, from jail to jail, to be confronted with viceregal secretaries, examined and reex- amined by our Pelhams, Castlereaghs, and Cookes; and that enabled that self-conceited, notoriety -loving person, to worry the noble Lords Camden and Cornwallis, and the Duke of Portland, with garrulous letters and querulous memorials of terrible magni- loquence, to play the part of a persecuted patriot, to solace the fool- ishness of his exquisite vanity, to set up un boutique de verbiage, and to pester the public with hyperbolical pamphlets, the rabid, pretentious, incongruous productions of a disordered brain. Lunatics and monomaniacs are only shut up in mad-houses when they are dangerous to themselves or others. Eoger O'Con- nor's hallucinations were by no means dangerons to the state or the sovereign in 1798: ergo he should not have been dignified by a suspicion of any lofty ambition animating his conduct, and dealt with as a man capable of high treason. In 1812, the perversion of his mental faculties may have extended to his moral feelings, and the power of perception of distinction between right and wrong, between certain pronouns, and the ideas of property con- nected with them ; and even then it might have been better to have dealt with his primary disorder, than, after a consultation of lawyers on his case of five years' duration, have placed this poor erratic gentleman on trial for a felony on the supposition of his being a sane malefactor. A very able writer in the Dublin and London Magazine for February, 1828 (p. 30), who states that he is an Englishman and had been formerly employed in the revenue department in Dublin, and had known Roger O'Connor for upwards of thirty years, speaks of him in the following terms : " Roger is altogether made up of pretensions. I have lived on habits of intimacy with him for thirty years ; and as he is rather a singular man, I took a delight in studying his character. That character has as yet never been accurately estimated. Putting forth claims to re- spect in a bold and confident manner, he found the world ready to take too much for granted; and, believing that men were made only to be gulled, he became a political quack, and ulti- mately fell a victim to that imposition which he practised upon others. Time and place were favourable to his pretensions : the confusion of Irish history , the national prejudices of the people, and their eagerness to grasp at delusions, were so many inducements to a cunning mind to seek the gratification of low ambition ; and OF RCGER O'COSXOR. 595 accordingly Roger O'Connor assumed a place in society to which he had no claim. He did this, however, with mean timidity, with a spirit which showed that he was not a daring soul, and with a littleness which would have rendered results harmless, had not a silly, stupid government forced dignity and notoriety upon him, greatly to his own mortification and their disgrace. All he did, all he would ever have done, would be harmless in a political point of view, had not the enmity of the administration been pre- posterously collected upon him*'. The evening of the day Roger O'Connor was brought to Dub- lin from London by the king's messenger, he was whisked back to London by the same custodian, where he arrived on the 29th of April. He was detained a prisoner in the house of Mr. Syl- vester by the Duke of Portland's orders, and after ten or twelve days' sojourn there he was removed to Maidstone, to give evidence on the trial of his brother Arthur, and was present at it on the 21st of May, 1798, but was not examined on that trial, as his brother's counsel deemed it unnecessary to produce him as a wit- ness. He was conveyed back to London after the trial, and on the 26th of May he was sent back to Ireland in close custody, and on his arrival in Dublin was committed to Newgate on the 2nd of June. On the 29th of July (1798) Emmet, M'Neven, and Arthur O'Connor were conducted to the Castle from their dun- geons, and they returned to them in the afternoon, says Roger O'Connor, " with an account of their mission, and a written agree- ment entered into between Lords Clare and Castlereagh on the part of the government, and the delegates on the part of themselves and such prisoners as should sign it". That agreement, binding the subscribers of the Society of the United Irishmen to give detailed information of all transactions between them and foreign states, but not names of parties or de- scriptions of them that might implicate them, and engaging the government to allow the subscribers to emigrate to any country agreed on between themselves and the government, on condition of undertaking not to return to this country without the permis- sion of government, nor to pass into an enemy's country, Roger O'Connor refused to sign. Roger O'Connor shared the fate, however, of the other state prisoners in the different Dublin prisons, and the captivity of some of them in Fort George in Scotland ; thus expiating by an imprisonment of several years the indiscretion of his interference at the Cork assizes in July, 1797, in behalf of twelve men under prosecution by the authorities, whom he believed to be innocent, and defended successfully. During this imprisonment his affairs were brought to ruin, and 596 ROGER o'cONNOlt's SOCIALIST PRINCIPLES. though he was not hanged, the object of his amiable brother in procuring his confinement was partly accomplished. Shortly after his committal to jail his house and property at Connerville were delivered over to the tender mercies of a band of military caretakers of the 30th Regiment of Foot and 2nd Fencible Dragoons, and for five months the free-quarters system of military operations was in full force at Connerville, and with such signal efTect that the ruined imprisoned proprietor had the satisfaction of furnishing Lord Castlereagh, December the 1st, 1798, with a bill of particulars of depredations, and damages, and wanton destruction of property of various kinds, estimated at £631 18s. Sd. Eventually, when Roger O'Connor was restored to liberty, he came out of his captivity greatly injured, if not ruined, in his circumstances. How marvellously the British government suffered itself to be made the cat's-paw of the local interests and the small selfish ob- jects either of vengeance or cupidity of Irish Orangeism in 1798 ! Because Mr. Robert Longfield O'Connor had particular reasons for desiring to hang his brother in that year, and that brother had rendered himself obnoxious to the ascendency faction of his locality by his proclamation of clap- trap sentiments of high flown patriotism, his absurd assumption of descent from Irish kings, the precious time of the administrators of the affairs of the British empire for upwards of five years was wasted on a man so power- less for mischief to any government as Mr. Roger O'Connor. He was a more perilous man to his friends, his family, and the circle in which he moved, than to the state. When Arthur O'Connor was last in Ireland, he made arrange- ments for the disposal of all his Irish properties ; and subsequently to his visit they were all sold. Those properties, when Arthur was banished, were worth about £1,200 a year. They were left in the charge of Roger, and Roger had abused his trust; he sold a large portion of those properties to the then recorder of Cork, for about £10,000, which amount he had put in his pocket. Arthur went to law with his brother, and got a decree against Roger's property, under which decree the property was eventually sold. Daniel Connor, the eldest of the brothers, became Arthur's agent on the removal of Roger from that trust. Daniel was then residing, with his eleven daughters and one son, in Bristol, in affluent circumstances, having an income of about £5,000 a year.* Roger O'Connor was a propagandist free thinker. It was a * The eldest son of the above-mentioned gentleman, Mr. Daniel Connor, when the property of his uncle Roger, that had originally been his father's, was sold under a decree in chancery, purchased a portion of the estate called the Manch property, and built a house on it, where he now resides. HIS PHILOSOPHICAL TEACHING. 597 habit with him to reason, after the manner of Voltaire, sneeringly and jeeringly on religious subjects. There was no time inoppor- tune with him — no intellect too young or unenlightened in his presence, for the exercise of his ridicule on religion and the ap- plication of his philosophy to all subjects bearing on it. He would talk whole pages of Voltaire's Philosophical Dic- tionary, as if he was improvising a new theology, before children — nay, he would argue with his workmen, and try to make the most sacred subjects appear ridiculous and unworthy of respect. But it is not the aged of any class who are most injured or endan- gered in their faith and morals by the ridicule that is thrown on religion by the frequent recurrence to this disguised but deliberate and advised mode of undermining faith. It is the young who are mortally injured by it. Infinitely less dangerous to them would be the most rabid diatribes of infidel fanaticism, delivered in the style of Paine, than the pleasant villainy in social circles of a scoffer at religious rites and tenets, and a jiber of the ministrations or ministers of religion ; that kind of ridicule takes a strong hold of the minds of young people, and works infinite mischief on them. O'Connor entertained singular opinions in regard to the rights of property, as he did on the subject of religion, and he expressed them alike undisguisedly in all companies — before young and old, rich and poor. " His conversational powers were of a high order; his manner was fascinating; his tone of voice sweet and persua- sive; his style impressive, full of energy and apparent candour; his language eloquent, and always appropriate". He was indulgent to his children to an extent that would seem hardly credible, if the accounts that I have received of that indul- gence were not given me by one who was an eye-witness of it for many years, and on whose veracity all reliance could be placed. My informant has seen Roger O'Connor over and over come into the drawing room where the children would be assembled from his study, to which he generally retired for some time after dinner, with his hands filled with silver, " full as ever they could be with silver coin", which money he would throw down on a table, then fetch a pack of cards, and say to the children — " There is the money — there are the cards — play for it as long as it lasts". One who spent many of his early days at Dangan and in the family of Roger O'Connor — a trust-worthy man, and most accu- rate in all his statements, informs me that Roger would frequently reason with his children on philosophical subjects — more suo. For example: on one occasion he remembered Roger discoursing largely and eloquently on the fallibility of human testimony and the impossibility of reliance on the evidence even of our own senses. He put a finger to his lower eye-lid, pressed against the 598 DANGAN CASTLE AND ITS VICISSITUDES. eye-ball, and fixed his look on a candle that was on the table ; then bid the children do the same, and said to them: " Do you not distinctly see two candles?" and being answered in the affir- mative, he added — " And yet there is in reality but one candle. The fact is, there is no reliance on human testimony of any kind". Dangan Castle, the seat of the ancestors of the Duke of Wel- lington, subsequently the property of Colonel Burrowes, came into the possession of Roger O'Connor in 1803. A portion only of the purchase money originally agreed on was paid by O'Connor. The demesne and lands of Dangan consisted of several hundred acres. The unpaid part of the purchase money, by a subsequent agreement, was compounded for by a large addition to the annual rent-charge. In 1809 the castle, which had then been six years in his posses- sion, was destroyed by fire The castle had been heavily insured by Roger O'Connor not long previously to the burning. He ob- tained £5,000 from the insurance company. The castle was very splendidly furnished ; very little of it was saved. The very day that Roger O'Connor got the money from the unfortunate insurance company, he met a Dublin merchant of the name of Orr, who was in some temporary difficulty. Roger, without bill or bond, lent the whole of the proceeds of the burn- ing of the castle to Mr. Orr. Roger O'Connor's extremely liberal opinions in regard to the rights of man in territorial property extended to other possessions. He had exercised the privileges of the Phalangerian system of morals and philosophy in England at the expense of a professional gentleman — a barrister. Roger O'Connor ran away with Mrs. B., about 1805* or 1806, brought the lady to Ireland, had an establishment for her near Dublin, subsequently near Dangan, and after a few years was estranged altogether from, this unhappy lady. Roger O'Connor's imagination was of such marvellous activity and vivacity that ideas were perpetually starting up and passing through his mind of new discoveries of vast importance to the world — in political philosophy, or religion, or antiquarian lore: eventually all his energies were devoted to the elucidation of the darkest portions of early Irish history, and the vindication of the ancient glories of the royal lines and lineage of the kings and princes of Ireland. Those who knew him well and lived with him in familiar intercourse in his early and the better days of his career (previously to 1817), describe the powers of his ima- gination as unequalled, and those of a conversational kind espe- * It will be seen by the evidence of a witness named Doyle, on a trial which took place in Trim in 1814, that Mrs. S. was then residing at Dangan Castle. ROGER OCONXOR's PRINCESS OF KERRY. 599 cially, in the strongest terms of admiration. He was not only eminently dramatic in conversation and felicitous in representing remarkable scenes or striking effects, of which he improvised as having an ideal presence and a real existence, but he seems to have had the faculty of protracting dreams beyond the time of sleep, and of engendering at will waking visions and illusions, and of practising imposition on the minds of others as well as on his own, not for any sordid purpose, but with a view to temporary no- toriety or to some prominent position from which he could command attention to his intellectual ability and his demonstrations of it. With such aims and objects, he claimed to have discovered a new divine revelation, a new history of Ireland, and a new science of antiquarianism in the chronicles of Eri, a new chief of Phoenician-Iberno origin in himself — " O'Connor Cier, Rige head of his race, and chief of the prostrated people of his nation, — sousmis pas vaincus". One of the latest exhibitions of the marvellously active, crea- tive, and inventive energies of Roger O'Connors imagination, was the discovery of a female descendent of a royal personage of re- mote antiquity, in Kerry, in a young girl of humble origin, who became an inmate of his home and a companion of his declining years, and to whom he bequeathed a considerable sum of money. — M Per verita, e un gran capriccio; ma in cio segue il suo stile". The enthusiasm with which he is said to have been wont to speak of the exalted claims of this princess of Kerry to an ancient Irish regal origin, left no doubt on the minds of many who heard him expatiate on this subject, that he had worked himself up into a firm belief in his fondly-imagined discovery. The species of insanity under which this man laboured, with its predominant tendencies to deceive and to astound, and with this view to practise falsification, literary forgery, or fabrication of events or incidents, is compatible with a large share of cleverness, cunning, astuteness, and plausibility ; and it will be found that Roger O'Connor was by no means deficient in the latter qualities. But among the many remarkable anomalies in his character and mental constitution, one of the most striking, perhaps, was the extraordinary difference between his powers of conversation and those of composition. Roger O'Connor could not, like Gold- smith, " write like an angel". He could talk, however, like one, when he was not blasphemous, and not "like poor Poll''. But he wrote in the genuine Boanerges Bombastes-Furioso style, wherein the swaggering Pistol talked in the true Ercles vein. His various political pamphlets are couched in terms of extravagant hyperbole. They are all fire and tow, and flowers of rhetoric and brimstone, and a good deal of flummery, jumbled together. GOO ROBBERY OF THE AGENT OF COLONEL BURROWES. Red-hot patriotism — phrase-mongering efforts to make French philosophy and .Voltairianism acceptable to an Irish Christian people, solemn oaths of devotion to Ireland, vehement protesta- tions to die on the floor of his dungeon for his principles, terrible denunciations on the foes of Erin, and innumerable vows of tender affection to his beloved countrymen — these are the trumpery clap-trap themes which make up the staple commodity and stock in trade of the political writings of Roger O'Connor. Roger, in matters appertaining to nationality, talked as he wrote, like a man in " the superior condition" of spiritualism — in very exalted terms — extravagantly and rather incomprehensibly. Whenever you see a frothy man stand up to make a speech, and hear him speak of Hampden and Sydney, and Brutus and Sca> vola, and Hannibal and his children, of William Tell and Brian Boroimhe, and when he talks vehemently of perishing for his country, it is full time, if you live in a country badly ruled, to think of your neck, or your purse, or your cause, and the dangers that may equally arise from folly or perfidy. It behoves a discreet man, then, to look out for squalls in the midst of all this fine- weather sailing, and to take care that his bark is not gliding over sunken rocks, or along a track that is marked at the bottom by traces of many former shipwrecks. A singular trial at Trim is on record, for the recovery of a very large amount of money, lost by a robbery in the demesne of Dan- gan, then tenanted by Mr. O'Connor, committed only one year before the famous mail-coach robbery in the neighbourhood of Dangan, when money to a large amount that had been transmitted from Dublin bankers by that mail, had been robbed, and the rifled mail bags and letters had been found in the demesne of Dangan, the seat of Mr. O'Connor. At the Meath assizes, August, 1814, the remarkable action above referred to was tried, in which Colonel Thomas Burro wes was the plaintiff, and the inhabitants of the barony of Moyfenragh, in which Dangan is situated, were defendants. The plaintiff's counsel stated that Colonel Burrowes had demised the lands of Dangan to Roger O'Connor, Esq., the present proprietor. The rent was payable half-yearly, but Mr. O'Connor having fallen into arrears, Colonel Burrowes had to resort to legal proceedings. In October, 1813, the last May rent being in arrears, the colonel's agent, Mr. Gre- gory, received a letter from Mr. O'Connor, " informing him that if he went to Dangan the rent would be paid" ; but, as Mr. Gre- gory could not leave Dublin, he wrote to Humphrey Doyle of Trim (a coroner in Meath and postmaster of Trim), to proceed to Dangan, and receive the rent from Mr. O'Connor, amounting to £750. Doyle went to Dangan on the day appointed for the pay- IN THE DEMESNE OF DANG AN. 601 ment, which payment -was duly made; and he, Doyle, having left Mr. O'Connor in the house where the money was paid, he pro- ceeded homeward, but had not left the demesne before he was attacked and robbed of the amount just received, by two- men having their faces disguised ; and for the loss sustained by Colonel Burrowes the present proceedings were instituted against the barony. Humphrey Doyle (who in the plaintiff's declaration is styled the servant of the plaintiff), being examined, deposed to the facts above mentioned in the statement of the plaintiffs case. He said he went to Dangan about noon, between eleven and twelve o'clock; a man met him at the gate and directed him by his master's orders, as he said, to the place where Mr. O'Connor was waiting for him — a place in the demesne at a distance from the high road — the garden-house, where he met Mr. O'Connor They sat down, and Mr. O'Connor desired his son Roderick, 11 to go for the stocking in which the bank-notes were". Roderick went, came back with the stocking with the money, and having given it to his father, the latter desired Roderick to go about his busi- ness. Mr. O'Connor then paid him the £750 in bank notes, and witness gave him the agent's receipt for the same. Deponent asked for pen and ink to mark the notes, but Mr. O'Connor said, " he had no such thing". He, deponent, put the money into his hand- kerchief and placed it in his coat pocket, lie had gone only a few perches from the house where he had been paid the rent, when a person ran from behind a bush and knocked him down. This person had his face masked with a piece of cloth. Another man then rushed forward and assailed him. They tied him to a tree with cords, hands and feet. He fainted while they were tying him, and continued in a faint for fifteen minutes. When he recovered, he managed to get one of his hands in a pocket and take out a knife with which he contrived to cut the cords and to extricate himself, and when he had done so, on feeling his pocket for the money Mr. O'Connor had paid, he ascertained that it was gone, "handkerchief in which it was contained and all". His wrists were still black with the cords he was tied by. When he returned to the garden-house, he met Mrs. Smith, who gave him some water, and presently Mr. O'Connor came up, to whom he told his story, as he, deponent, then related it. Mr. O'Connor seemed much surprised at the relation, and said he be- lieved there were robbers in the demesne ; there had been two strange fellows lurking there since Monday. He offered to bring his workmen from the barn and search the neighbourhood. Wit- ness said it was useless. Mr. O'Connor said, that on a search the money might be found hid in the thatch of some cabin perhaps. 604 ROBBERY OF THE MAIL-COACH 1st January, 1812, swore him by a Carder's oath, " Not to mind the moans and groans of Orangemen, but to wade knee-deep in their blood", and to rob arms for the object of robbery, plunder- ing mail-coaches, etc., etc. Roger O'Connor, referring to the proceedings against him at Trim, in his narrative of the seventh conspiracy of the oligarchy of England against the life of O'Connor, makes some observa- tions particularly illustrative of the highly ornate, flowery style of his composition, one peculiarly suited to the climate and the aca- demic groves and bowers and gardens of the literati of the Celestial Empire. " The bills of indictment being found under the foregoing cir- cumstances", says the head of his race and chief of his prostrated nation, " I was conducted to the court of assize of Trim on such a charge. " The sun had peered out early with uncommon lustre, smiling upon all, save the wan captive,* long denied the glory of his pre- sence — what time my foot had reached a felon's step — rolling him- self within his densest folds, covering his head in sable mantling, he retired from mortal view, indignant; troubled Tara would have broken from his old foundation to hide himself in ocean's deepest cave ; but Tara had no fears for his own son — the glory of the race of Ir encircled his aged crown — the favourite race of Eri, that would have saved unhappy Ireland, if to be saved — a race on whose brow shame has ever been ashamed to sit. 'Tis true, Tara bides in grief and sadness, lamenting her good and joyful days ; — all may be well again !f " Arraigned for an act that blisters the tongue to name— that makes the blood of every true Irishman overflow its continent at the bare thought, I repelled the blasphemous charge with indig- nation — the people received my voice full upon their overcharged hearts — whence echoed back the sound, till lost in murmurs deep and low — meaning much more than met the ear. * " The wan captive", as he appeared to me on his trial at Trim, the 4th of August, 1817 (forty years ago), was a hale, hearty, joyous, good-humoured, kindly-looking, broad-faced, honest-minded seeming person — a man in the full vigour of life, about fifty years of age apparently. t "The favourite race of Eri", the poor peasantry, for instance, of the district that included the Connerville estate, when it was the property of old Koger Conner, " the prudent, cunning tithe -proctor", who scraped together so much money in the way of business, when young Master Koger used to go out with the Mus- kerry Light Horse to scour the country in search of Whiteboys, it is to be feared would feel rather bewildered at this apostrophe, and no doubt would greatly de- sire to know what it was all about, but would go away, of course, perfectly satis- fied when Koger would put on one of his sublime looks, square his chest after heav- ing a deep sigh, and would say to the multitude "of frhe race of Eri", in solemn accents : " Hoc illis dico, qui me non intelligunt". — " I address my discourse to those who have no understanding of it". NEAR DANG AN CASTLE. 605 " This ceremony being over, I was reconducted to my prison. Tuesday, the 5th of August, now arrived. I walked to the court, attended by my children, accompanied by Sir Francis Burdett and a host of friends, followed by the prayers of the people, who well knew the meaning of the passing pageant. I smiled at the impotent malignity of tyrants, their agents, and instruments; I laughed to scorn all those leagued against my honour. The judge indulged me with permission to sit outside the common dock, as well for the accommodation of Sir Francis Burdett, who signified his wish to sit by me, as to facilitate my communication with my solicitors and counsel. I felt obliged to the judge, but would not have accepted any favour, had not Sir Francis Burdett insisted on it". So far for Mr. Roger O'Connor's statement. I have a lively recollection of Mr. Roger O'Connor's appearance walking into court to be tried for his life on a charge of highway robbery and murder, leaning on the arm of Sir Francis Burdett.* I have also a very lively recollection of the English baronet, on being sworn to give true and faithful evidence on that trial, saying with great solemnity and with marked emphasis: "When I heard of the charge brought against my friend Mr. O'Connor, I was ready to sink into the earth". From the time these words were spoken it was quite evident an impression was made on the minds of the jury that left nothing to be feared for the life of Mr. O'Connor. There was a verdict of acquittal; great cheering in court; clasping of hands on the part of the prisoner and his friend and deliverer, Sir Francis Burdett. Now let us hear Mr. Roger O'Connor on the subject of his ac- quittal : — " People of England, receive from me this sincere tribute of respect and gratitude. When I was heretofore most wantonly assailed by corrupt hirelings of power, I laid before you a true state of the case, which slanderous workers of types had ivilfully misrepresented, and unassumingly, I hope, requested of you to be judges between your rulers and me — me, who had been subjected to a seven years' dreadful persecution, contrary to law; and them, tvho fled for refuge to their own creatures for a bill of indemnity, * At the period of the trial O'Connor owed Sir Francis Burdett the sum of £ 1 ,000, borrowed from the latter in various sums on several occasions. I have been informed by a barrister, whose father had been the agent of O'Connor at the time of this trial, that the mail coach was not robbed near Dangan in 1813 tor money, but for letters which compromised the patron of Mr. O'Connor, and might have been produced against him in evidence had certain legal proceedings been continued which had been originated by a certain lord whose domestic relations were not felicitous. I know not what degree of credit is to be given to this sate- ment, but if the coach that was robbed had been proceeding from Galway to Dub- lin instead of from Dublin to Galway, there might be some more feasibility on the face of it. 608 r. o'connor's magniloquent letters. for having transgressed those very laws by which they most hypo- critically affected to rule. You weighed the merits, you dispas- sionately considered the charges preferred against me, and my answer ; I had the happiness of receiving the assurance of your approbation of my conduct, of your having fixed the seal of your reprobation upon your guilty yet indemnified oligarchy. In this testimonial of your favourable opinion^ I received much more than an equivalent for my sufferings and privation. Since that period, now seven years, I have felt many a lash of the scorpion whip of power, in consequence of the sentence you then passed ; so galling was it to the many-handed tyrants — till, to fill up the measure of their iniquity, our persevering enemies have just now gone the desperate length of attempting to destroy my character, in which they have been defeated, to their everlasting shame and confusion — to the joy and triumph of the people. 16 People of Scotland, for the most part of my own tribe, I pray you to accept the tender of my thanks for the kind and flattering sentiments you express for me ; I acknowledge with pride your claim of kindred — assuredly we are brothers. " People of Eri, my heart and soul are full of you ! " Hold ! — more thanks are yet due. Conspirators, I thank you. I owe you the same obligation as the man owed to him who, aiming at his life, pierced an abscess, which made him whole and sound again; but ' I will trust you, as I would adders fanged'. " Mr. Justice Daly and gentlemen of the jury, I hope con- spiracy has now received from your hands a mortal wound, and that the hideous monster for ever is disabled from carrying even a momentary victory over personal liberty, from putting life in jeo- pardy, or filching away a man's reputation — that jewel above all price. People, adieu ! Whilst I live, I will be your servant, " O'Connor. " Dangan Castle, September 5, 1817". The ill-judging friends, or the ill-disposed friends, of Roger O'Connor, forced on him a prosecution for perjury against Daniel Waring, one of the approvers brought forward at Trim against him. The prosecution broke down, and the prisoner was acquitted on grounds which were very differently treated in Wales by one of the English puisne judges, in the year 1857. Mr. O'Connor's testimony was impeached, and successfully so, after having been sworn and examined touching his belief in the Scriptures and the divine character of the Founder of Christianity, when he declared he believed only in the Old Scriptures as histo- rical records, and in the New Testament as having relation espe- cially to a great and good man, a reformer of abuses, a messenger HIS ALLEGED CONFORMITY TO R. C. RELIGION. GOT of the Most High, whose great zeal had caused him to become the dupe of his own enthusiasm. Such were the religious opinions of Roger O'Connor — one of the men who, if the United Irishmen had prevailed, would have had to take a leading part in the government of a Christian people of various churches, believing firmly in the divinity of Christ and the inspiration of the Gospel. Roger O'Connor, I was informed by his brother Arthur, was the proprietor of a paper called The Harp of Erin, published in Cork, of a seditious character, " and that paper was almost exclu- sively filled by him, Roger''. Windele, in his Historical Descriptive Xotices of the City of Cork and its Vicinity — article, Kilcrea, p. 264 — referring to Roger O'Connor's opinions on religious subjects and writings, says: 11 In religion he disbelieved the Christian revelation. He had been educated as a Protestant, lived an unbeliever, and died a Roman Catholic. He published several works : the principal was his Chronicles of Eri, an historical fiction, which he would fain palm upon us as authentic and of authority. Compared with this, he assures us that all other histories are bardic compilations — the contemptible poetry of history. Another publication of his was Captain RoeJss Letter to the King — a work intended to decry the modern nobility of Ireland, and containing some curious notices and anecdotes. For the last two or three years of his life he lived in retirement near the Ovens, and previously to his death, made it a request to be buried in the tomb of the M'Carthys at Kilcrea". A gentleman, however, connected with Roger O'Connor, re- siding in Cork, in reply to inquiries of mine, says : " O'Connor died professing the same natural religion which he believed in during his life. A near neighbour of his, Mr. Gib- bons, a justice of the peace, states that he was so far from con- forming to the Roman Catholic religion, that he never heard it even reported ; and observes, that, such as his belief was, he was conscientious in the maintenance of it; and moreover, that the late James Roach (the eminent literary man and historical anti- quarian) stated he knew O'Connor at the time of his death, and, though not present at his decease, was convinced that the state- ment of O'Connor's conforming to the Catholic religion was incorrect. O'Connor's infidel opinions (continues my informant) are fully displayed in The Chronicles of Eri. " But there is no foundation whatever for the charge made against him of attempting a literary fraud. I have looked over Tlie Chronicles of Eri, and I do not find that they differ (in plan) from The Persian Letters and numerous other productions of that 608 CHRONICLES OF ERI. stamp, the feigned historical form being intended to attract the attention of the reader ; and perhaps the object of the writer was to depict an imaginary religious and social state or government, and to demonstrate or develop his own peculiar views on the origin of the Celtic race. There is none of the circumstantiality in this production which a literary fraud required ; no account of the original is given, or of the author ; no date, no place recorded (in relation to the discovery of ancient documents) ; there is not the slightest attempt at historic truth, or antiquarian research, or consistency (in the narration of recorded facts)". I felt bound to lay the preceding statement before my readers, but I feel bound also to state, the result of my examination of The Chronicles of Eri, is a conviction that this work deserves, beyond all doubt, the designation of a literary fraud. The first volume of the extraordinary work referred to by Windele, I find, contains 494, the second volume 509, pages of matter densely printed in royal 8vo. The work is entitled Chronicles of JEri, being the History of the Irish People, translated from the Original Manuscripts in the Phoenician Dialect of the Scythian Language. By O'Connor. In 2 vols. London, 1822. A portrait of the author is prefixed to the first volume, represent- ing him holding a crown in his right hand, and a roll, with cha- racters purporting to be in the Phoenician dialect of the Scythian language, in his left. The work is dedicated to Sir Francis Burdett. In the preface the author informs his reader: " This is the fourth effort I have made to present to the world a faithful history of my country". The first effort was made, he states, while immured in a prison in Dublin in 1798 and 1799, " charged by the oligarchy of England with the foul crime of treason, be- cause he would not disgrace his name by the acceptance of an earldom and a pension to be paid by the people. He was courted to desert ; and because he resisted their every art to become a traitor to his beloved Eri, he employed his time in writing a history of that ill-fated land, which he had brought down to a very late period, when an armed force of Buckinghamshire militia- men entered his prison, and all the result of his labours, with such ancient manuscripts as he then had with him, were outrageously taken away, and had never since been recovered". The second effort was made during his captivity in Fort George, after his removal from his prison in Dublin, in March, 1803, be- cause he would not consent to become a party to a compromise with government. During that captivity he occupied himself in writing the history of his country, which he had brought down to the commencement of 1801, when he was removed from Fort George, in Scotland, to London, in custody of a king's messenger, HIS CHRONICLES OF ERI. 609 and on his journey to England, at the consent of his wife, from pru- dential motives, consented to her request to have the fruits of his labour in Fort George committed to the flames. The third effort was made shortly after his liberation, on his re- turn to Ireland in 1803, when, to quote his words, " having availed myself of the earliest opportunity of reclaiming from the bowels of the earth the most secret manuscripts of the history of Eri, I recommenced my pursuit, and brought down my work to the memorable era of 1315, when it and almost all my most valu- able effects, to a great amount, perished in the flames which con- sumed all but the bare walls of the castle of Dansjan, in the year 1809". The fourth effort, final and successful, " to write an authentic history of Innisfail, the Isle of Destiny*', when, he states, Sir Francis Burdett having arrived in Ireland in 1817 (on the occa- sion of the alleged mail-coach robbery trial at Trim), he pro- mised him (Sir Francis) to present to him, at as early a day as possible, a history of Ireland, on the truth of which he could rely, which promise he now fulfilled. "This history," he adds, " is a literal translation from the Phoenician dialect of the Scythian lan- guage of the most ancient manuscripts, which have, fortunately for the world, been preserved through so many ages, chances, and vicissitudes".* Then commence the long-lost Chronicles of Eri with the writings of Eolus, chief of Gael-ag from the year 1368 to 1365 before Christ, giving the traditionary history of the Scy- thians, the ancestors of the people of Eri or Ireland, from the earliest point of time to his own days, in language, style, division of the text into verses, and allusions to great events recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, evidently intended to paraphrase and imi- tate the sacred writings of the Old Testament. And throughout the work the same unmistakable attempt to deceive and to impose on the understanding of his readers pervades the entire produc- tion; and to me in that attempt there exists evidence of that species of insanity which I have above referred to. With respect to the controverted statement of Roger O'Connor having conformed to the Roman Catholic religion a short time previously to his decease, I have taken a good deal of trouble to ascertain the real facts of the case from the only living person who could speak on that subject from his own knowledge, having lived on terms of close intimacy with O'Connor during the latter years of his life, and having been in attendance on him in his last mo- ments. The person I allude to is the Rev. Daniel Crowley, for- merly parish priest of the Ovens, but no longer in the exercise of IT. * - Chronicles of Eri", vol. i., pref. p. 8. 40 610 HIS LAST ILLNESS — STATEMENT OF REV. D, CROWLEY. his clerical functions, having been removed from his clerical office and placed under ecclesiastical censures for the publication of a pamphlet entitled Ecclesiastical Finance, etc. After a good deal of inquiry, I learned that Mr. Crowley, now in his seventy-eighth year, was residing in Dublin. I called on that gentleman, and requested him to inform me of the particulars of Mr. Roger O'Connor's alleged change of religious sentiments at the period above referred to. Father Crowley said — " He was with Roger O'Connor when he died, and administered the sacrament of ex- treme unction to him. He was sent for by Miss , Roger O'Connor's protegee and housekeeper, whom he called the Princess of Kerry, and spoke of as descendent of the most ancient Irish kings. Roger O'Connor did not send for him (Father Crowley), nor was he capable during his last illness of doing so. He entertained, unfortunately, infidel opinions. He had no belief in Christian revelation. His last years were spent in his (Father Crowley's) parish. He knew Roger O'Connor well ; and at his death, he (Father Crowley) took and still held on lease, the house and about eleven acres of land, which had been in the pos- session of Roger. None of the children of Roger O'Connor were with the latter at the time of his death or during his illness ; they were all living away from him. His last illness was a sudden apoplectic seizure, from which he never rallied from the time he was struck down by it. He was attended to the grave by the Catholic clergy of the parish". This statement of Father Crowley I believe to be true in every particular ; it needs no comment. Roger O'Connor terminated the strange and eventful history of his career near Kilcrea in the county of Cork, in the parish of the Ovens, the 27th January, 1834. His remains were interred by his express desire in the ancient vault of the M'Carthys (a family with which the O'Connors were unconnected), in the old abbey of Kilcrea, about ten miles from Cork. Rogers children by his first marriage with Miss Louisa Strachan, daughter of Colonel Strachan, were Louise and Roderick. Louise died without issue ; Roderick, who went to Van Diemen's Land about 1823, purchased land extensively there, and is still living. By the second marriage of Roger with Miss Wilhelmina Bo wen, he had issue: 1. Wilhelmina, who married a Mr. Smith wick, of the county of Limerick, still living, and now residing near Bandon ; 2. William, subsequently called Francis Burdett O'Connor, who went to South America with William Aylmer, of Painstown, and distinguished himself very greatly in the service of the South Ame- rican patriots, became a general in Bolivia, married advantageously, and settled in that country; 3. a son named Arthur, who was HIS DEATH AJSD BURIAL — HIS CHILDREN. ; . 611 taken up in 1817 on the same charge of mail-coach robbery as his father, but was liberated after a short imprisonment; he gave himself up to fox-hunting, and died in the enjoyment of that favourite pursuit many years ago ; -i. a daughter named Mary, who never married, and is still living in London: 5. Harriet, who never married, and is still living in London ; 6. a son. Edward Bowen O'Connor, whose name his father changed for Fergus in early life: Fergus's political career as a radical reformer and socialist in England, is too well known to need observation; he was returned to parliament for Cork in 1832, and for Nottingham in 1847: he died insane without issue, in 1^5';' : 7. a s:n named George, who died about 1830, without issue.* Roger O'Connor's second marriage must have taken place some years before 1798. His wife by this marriage was a most amiable and excellent woman — too good for the strange, capri- cious, and unprincipled man she was allied with; she died at Dangan in the latter end of 1808 or beginning of 1809. Her death was hastened by the terror she experienced on the occasion of the burning of the castle of Dangan at that period.t * For the following outline of a Genealogical Table showing the origin of the fa- mily of Conner, of Connerville, county of Cork, I am mrtehtod to Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster King-at-Arms :— Daniel Conner, of T^irafrTii, Merchant. I L Daniel, of II. William Con- III. George, Four Bandon, ner, Esq., of Con- of Bally- Daugh- d. 1737. nerrille, county of bricken. tcrs. Cork, M. P. for Bandon. married. — — ' 1751, Anne, dau. , c of Roger Bernard. A ^ Maryanne, Esq..~ of Palace * Anne, countv of S2 Cork ' of Bally- Lord i * bricken. Lisle. r i i i ^ of Connerville. r Roger and Arthur, L::cr aliis. t The following two letters of Sir Francis Burden to Mr. Bennett, one of the leading counsel of Mr. Roger O'Connor on the occa»ion of his trial a; Trim, in 612 LETTERS OF SIR F. BURDETT. 1817, throw some light on the writer's opinions respecting the prosecution and the prosecuted person: for these letters I am indebted to the son of Counsellor Bennett. From Sir Francis Burdett, Baronet, to JR. N. Bennett, Esq., Barrister -at- Law, 23 Harcourt Street, Dublin. Dangan, August 8, 1817. Ms dear Sir, There is no man's house in Ireland I shall enter with more satisfaction than your's. I will send you a line the day before I set out, and I think it will be about the middle of next week, Wednesday possibly — I mean probably. Many thanks for the horse, for I shall only keep one, and I have a servant who will look after him. As to the meeting about reform, it would be very mischievous unless it was very respectably attended — I do not mean by that only numerously. O'Connor is far from well, although much better than he was, and begs me to remember him to you and to excuse his not writing. Every day since my arrival one gentleman or another has pressed me so hard to pay him a visit, that I have not yet had any time to speak to O'Connor. I am just now got to Dangan from Mr. O'Byley's, and going out again with Eoderick, for O'Connor is not well enough, to Mr. Winter, to meet Mr. Tighe, who told me yesterday that the jury were unanimous in opinion that there never ought to have been any trial at all, and that if all the evidence produced on the trial had been laid before the lawyers on the part of the prosecution as it ought, they never would have sanctioned it. I met him on his way with Mr. Winter's son to call on O'Connor at Dangan. This appears to me important : that O'Con- nor's whole jury, and one so respectable, should be ready to give such testimony in case of any action being brought, etc. I shall be much delighted to see the Allan Bog and everything in Ireland except the Jesuits' Coll — . Yours, Sir, very sincerely and much obliged, Signed, F. Burdett. From Sir Francis Burdett, Baronet, to R. N. Bennett, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. Kilfain, November 16, 1817. Dear Sir, I have been so long detained by the hospitality and agreeable society of Kil- kenny that I began to despair of being able to force myself away. I have however determined upon leaving Mr. Power's this night when the party shall break up to retire to bed. I shall therefore sleep at Kilkenny town this night, and at 'Mr. Johnstone's, the late Judge's, to-morrow, Monday ; the next day I shall call at Newbury to leave your horse, and then go to O'Connor, who will be undoing as fast as anything can be done for him. It was always against my opinion, as you will remember, at all prosecuting those ruffians ; my opinion was, higher game should have been flown at or none. However, in consequence of your letter, he having sworn the information too, I wrote in the spirit of what you wrote to me, but then nobody could have foreseen such want of common preparation. I must pay another visit to the Duke of Leinster and Lord Cloncurry, but any letter directed to Dangan will be forwarded. Adieu, in haste. Yours, Signed, F. Burdett. 613 APPENDIX I. TI1E MODE OF GOVERNING A COUNTRY CONSTITUTIONALLY, BY BUYING UP PATRIOTS AND BUYING OFF POLITICAL OPPONENTS, ILLUSTRATED. The Fiaut Books abound with that kind of evidence which we find em- bodied in the lesson of a sagacious father in old pagan times to his inno- cent son, enjoining on him to bear in mind with how little wisdom this great world is governed, — and how little virtue, he would have added ; but he evidently made small account of the latter. With how much money a little comer of this great world might be governed, by buying off patriots, in the times of which we treat, a few magic words in one of those books of what is called Fiants, will suffice to show, if a single purchase may enable us to judge of the outlay required for the buying up of a great many lovers of their country, who were only too happy, in due time and season, to have a country to sell. No illustrations are required of the " haute politique" of the constitutional regime which had to do with corrupting its representatives. Enough has been said on this subject in the first series of this work in reference to the period of 1700 and 1800; and as to buying up of barristers, enough has been exhibited of that successful practice in the names and items of the se- cret service money list presented in the preceding series, and in the memoir of the life of Mr. Leonard MacNally in the present volume. " Pnemia digna ferant". If their names do not live in honour, and their praises have not come down to our days, at least it can be said, " fraudesque manebunt" ; and of the record of each pension for a secret service, " Sunt hie etiam sua . pnomia fraudis". But to return to our illustration of the constitutional practice of buying up patriots. Let us refer to those few magic words in those solemn records of the state mysteries w hich are denominated " Fia?its", which inform us that at the very time the writings of a great assertor of his nation's rights and liberties, those of Dr. Frederick Jebb, were thrilling in the ears and the hearts of his countrymen, he was bought up by the Irish government, pen- sioned by it for the abandonment of his principles and his cause. Dr. Frederick Jebb was the author of the celebrated letters on the right of binding Ireland by British Acts of Parliament, under the signature of Guatimozin, which were published in 1770. Let us see what kind of opinions were thought worth buying up and paying £300 a year for. Extracts from the Letters of Guatimozin: " The rapacity of England over Ireland hath received its limits in the poverty of this country : there is not left wherewithal to gratify the avarice 616 APPENDIX I. rewarded for his services in 1799 and 1800 to his new masters, with a pen- sion of £300 a year, date of grant 25th March, 1805. The delicate inuendo of the advantage and feasibility of securing the young barrister, elsewhere we find conveyed by Mr. Secretary Cooke to Lord Castlereagh, in a letter, 9th November, 1798, from Dublin: "As to union I think the cry seems generally against it. The lawyers are at present quiet, thinking it abandoned. The Catholics seem inclined to it, I suppose because the Protestants are averse. I think could write a good pam- phlet in favour of it".* Parliamentary government then, we find, could not be carried on without corruption. The representative constitutional system in Ireland was then a fallacy. " It would not work" till it became a sophism by means of some species of undue influence exercised over its several component parts. Modes of corruption must be rendered conformable to the political morals, preten- sions, susceptibilities of parties, and several phases of hypocrisy, of the times in which the practice of buying up patriots or buying off opponents in par- liament, or the press, is had recourse to. Pensions and peerages have had their day ; places and preferments are found to accomplish the same objects. But eventually it becomes a question to be mooted not in the quiet closets of meditative and deeply thinking men, but to be thought of by the masses, and to become a question of familiar inquiry for the intelligent and speculative minds of all classes in these countries, whether con- stitutional government may not be thus rendered an imposture. The constitutional regime of parliamentary government, when perverted on any pretext, pretence, or for any purpose- — when its representatives are corrupted by any pecuniary or other sordid influences, or when its public writers are paid for the prostitution of their opinions, and the rising men of the bar are bought up to be made political partizans, is rendered a swindle on a grand scale, — a solemn mockery and a delusion, — in fact, a mere burla and a sheer sophism of statecraft. The people of Ireland could not fail to see in its true light the system of venality, which their rulers dignified with the name of constitutional government, and defended on the grounds of the necessity they lay under " to secure questions upon iv/iich the English government were very particularly anxious"* 9 and to have recourse " to any possible means of securing a majority in the House of Commons**. A government that adopts and avows this policy must carry the principle of perverting constitutional doctrine into practice far beyond the original openly proclaimed design. In due time and long after that policy explodes and has been discredited, the expediency of packing juries will supervene on that of packing parliaments. And long after the necessity may have ceased " by any possible means to secure a majority in the House of Commons", the necessity will be thought to exist by any possible means to secure a conviction on a trial, by packing a jury in any case in which a dominant faction in the state may consider that its interests demand a verdict in its favour, or a victim to its power. And when the jury-packing system too falls into discredit, and must * " Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Castlereagh". By the Marquess of Londonderry. 1 vols. 8vo, 1818. Vol. i. p. 433. JOEL F. HULBERT. 617 not often or on slight occasions be had recourse to, all the vigilance of a government that means -well and wishes to be just, is called for to coun- teract the efforts of factiou, to accomplish, by the management of crown prosecutions (in their preparatory stages especially through the interven- tion of the police), by the close custody of witnesses, by the tutoring, or intimidation, or rewarding of them, — what can no longer be conveniently effected by the ministration of a partizan sheriff and the management of the jury panel. Good government in our times has heavy penalties to pay for the bad regime of former evil rule, and great responsibilities im- posed on it by the trangressions of its predecessors. The remnants of old oppressions that have subsisted not for years but, alas ! for ages, remain in conflict with new opinions and partially recovered rights, long after the power of a faction, once dominant, and still formidable, truculent, and of sanguinary instincts, has been checked and curbed by its former patrons. APPENDIX II. JOEL F . HULBERT. An omission of an important circumstance occurs in the notice to the appendix to the preceding series of Spies and Informers, in the reference to the correspondence of a Mr. Joel F. Hulbert with Major Sirr. In Major Sirr's original correspondence with spies and informers, a letter of Joel F. Hulbert, dated from Mouastereven, August, 1803, informs the major of a meeting of disaffected people at Barnwell's, at Kilmainham. A person named Joel Hulbert, a carver aud gilder, in 1800 obtained the situation of collector of the tolls on the Grand Canal at Mouastereven, and died there about 181b*. He left two sons, George and William, both of whom got situations as toll collectors on the same canal. The name of Joel Hulbert, a carver and gilder residing at No. 12 Camden Street, Dublin, first appears in the Dublin directory for the year 1798, and disappears from it in the directory for 1800. In the directory for 1798 we find also the following names aud address : — George and William Hulbert, carvers and gilders, No. 36 Dawson Street. But in the directory for 1799, Messrs. George and William Hulbert make their exit and are no more to be heard of in the list of merchants and traders of the city of Dublin. Mr. Hulbert the informer, residing in Mouastereven in 1803, who cor- responded with Major Sirr, it will be borne in mind, in one of his letters signs M Joel Hulbert", and another " J. F. H." This person was no ordi- nary member of the battalion of testimony, who was enabled to abandon his business in Dublin in 1799, whose sons were also enabled to do the game, and who were placed in comfortable situations in Mountmellick and Philipstown, of the same nature as he was placed in Monastereven, offering great facilities in very important localities for the purposes which were served bv this informer. 41 618 APPENDIX III. THEOBALD WOLFE TONE. At page 145 of the memoir of T. W. Tone, the testimony to Tone's talents which is attributed to W. C. Plunket was borne by Charles Kendal Bushe, in his speech on the repeal of the Insurrection Act in the Irish House of Commons, 24th March, 1797. The remarkable words spoken on that occasion by Mr. Bushe were the following : — " The unhappy gentleman (T. W. Tone) now wastes on an American plantation the brightest talents that I ever knew a man to be gifted with. ... I never shall speak or think of the unhappy gentleman to whom I allude, with acrimony or severity. I knew him from early infancy as the friend of my youth and companion of my studies ; and while I bear testimony to the greatness of his abilities, I shall also say of him, that he had a heart which nothing but the accursed spirit of perverted politics could mislead or deprave; and I shall ever lament his fate with compassion for his errors, admiration for his talents, and abhorrence for his political opinions".* APPENDIX IV. EXPERIENCE OF SIR RALPH ABERCROMBIE AND SIR JOHN MOORE OF THE ORANGE REGIME AND THE ASCENDENCY FACTION IN IRELAND. The Edinburgh Reviewer, (Major-General William Napier,) com- menting on Mr. James Moore's life of Sir John Moore, in reference to that portion of it which treats of Sir John's services in Ireland in 1798, observes : — " What manner of soldiers were thus let loose upon the wretched districts which the ascendency- men were pleased to call dis- affected ? They were men, to use the venerable Abercrombie's words, who were ' formidable to every body but the enemy'. We ourselves were young at the time; yet, being connected with the army, we were continually * Parliamentary Register, vol. xvi., p. 196. EXPERIENCE OF GEN. ABERCROMBIE AND SIR JOHN MOORE. G1 ( J amongst the soldiers, listening with boyish eagerness to their conversation, — and we well remember, and with horror, to this day, the tales of lust, and blood, and pillage, the record of their own actions against the miserable peasantry, which they used to relate. But even the venerable Abercrombie, that soul of honour, that star of England's glory, cannot escape the sneer of the author before us. ' He had no political circumspection, and so re* signed his office' — which, rightly interpreted, means, that he disdained to lend himself to pillage, cruelty, and devastation". [At page 10 of preface to the first series of this work, I must observe a remarkable expression of opinion attributed to Lord Coniwallis, should have been ascribed to Sir Ralph Abercrombie.] Sir John Moore too appears to have had none of that kind of " political circumspection", which could reconcile him to the scenes he witnessed. He saw nothing worthy of admiration in them. On the march from Fermoy other feelings were excited when he entered the town of Clogheen, where in the street he saw a man tied up and under the lash, while the street itself was lined with country people on their knees, with their hats off ; nor was his disgust repressed, when he was informed that the high sheriff, Mr. Fitzgerald, was making great discoveries, and that he had already flogged the truth out of many respectable persons. His rule was " to flog each person till he told the truth". The brave and good man Sir John Moore has borne ample testimony to the barbarity of the policy he had witnessed in Ireland pursued by the authorities, and the revenge the Orange gentry and yeomen indulged in upon the poor. In speaking of Wicklow, where Sir John had been chiefly employed, he states his opinion, " that moderate treatment by the generals, and the preventing of the troops from pillaging and molesting the people, would soon restore tranquillity, and the latter would certainly be quiet, if the gentry and yeomen would only behave with tolerable decency, and not seek to gratify their ill humour and revenge upon the poor". In fact, this brave and excellent man plainly states, that harshness and violence had originally driven the farmers and peasants to revolt, and that their oppressors were as ready as at first to renew their former ill usage of them. END OF SECOND SERIES. J. F. FowLKn, Printer, 3 Crow Street, Dame Street, Dublin. 621 APPENDIX V. IN RE DEATH-BED OF ROGER O'CONNOR, AND MINISTRATION OF THE REVEREND DAVID CROWLEY, P.P. OF THE OVENS, COUNTY OF CORK. In reference to the close of the career of Roger O'Connor, in the memoir of that strange personage, I gave an account of the Rev. Mr. Crowley's atten- dance on him in his last moments, and his funeral, which I received from him (a verbal relation) about one year ago. On the 11th of October, 1858, 1 received a letter from Mrs. Crowley, the legal representative of the Rev. David Crowley, stating that the latter had died on the 26th of July last, and that a document had been found among his papers (all of which, together with his books, he had bequeathed to the trustees of the Unitarian Congregational Church of Strand Street, Dublin), which he had searched for previously to his decease, with the intention of furnishing it to me. This document was an original memorandum made by the Rev. Mr. Crowley, detailing the circumstances connected with his last attendance on, and ministrations to, Roger O'Connor. That remarkable document I append to this volume, in which the memoir of O'Connor is inserted. The circumstance of the papers of the Rev. Mr. Crowley (the former parish priest of the Ovens) being left to the principal Unitarian congrega- tion of this city, is deserving of a brief notice. The Rev. Mr. Crowley had published works calling in question certain matters of discipline in his Church, particularly in connection with eccle- siastical finance. He ceased to be a parish priest, or be in connection with the authorities of his Church, but he never abjured its doctrines, nor em- braced those of the Protestant religion, as his brother, the late rector of Newbridge, the Rev. Mathias Crowley, a former professor of theology, had done. He married, November, 1837, a Scotch woman, a member of the Presbyterian Church, and the marriage was celebrated by the Rev. Mathias Crowley. The Right Rev. Dr. Whately constantly visited the Rev. David Crowley while residing in Dublin, where he lately died, and professed a great regard for him. But all hope of the Rev. D. Crowley becoming a convert to the Established Church was brought to an end by an avowal of his having embraced the opinions and principles of the Unitarians, and receiving the sacrament at the hands of one of its ministers in Dublin, the Rev. Mr. Armstrong, about a year ago. I have read, in the handwriting of the Rev. David Crowley, on the 11th of the present month, a memorandum to the following effect: — u That he had embraced the religious opinions of the Unitarian congregation of Strand Street, in this city, as containing all of the Christian revelation that wa3 conformable to reason, and being divested of the absurdities, and pageantry, and state incumbrances of other churches". Poor Mr. David Crowley, had he lived in the days of Tertullian, would have been a great heresiarch. His pride of intellect was beyond anything I ever witnessed, except in the case of my poor friend, the Abbe* Lamen- 622 nais. The Rev. Mathias Crowley was hardly inferior to the latter in abilities ; but in acquirements he was far inferior to the Abbe\ R. R. Madden. Frescati, Blackrock, October 12, 1858. MEMORANDUM OF THE REVEREND DAVID CROWLEY, CONCERNING THE DEATH OF R. O'CONNOR. " 1834, January 26. On Friday I visited Roger O'Connor, whom I found nearly in a dying state. He spoke so indistinctly, that it was very hard to understand a word from him. I considered him in his senses. I spoke to him on the subject of religion, and warned him of his critical situation. I exhorted him to call on God : he said he was doing so. I then asked him would he wish I should pray for him, and I requested of him to say yes or no to the question. He answered yes. I then began to read the prayers of the Church, in which he joined in the best manner he could, to the best of my opinion. I exhorted him to repent of his sins, and implore pardon of the Almighty. I considered that he showed every hope of contrition. The result of all this was, I pronounced the sentence of absolution over him, and administered extreme unction to him according to the Roman Catholic ritual. He died yesterday morning. Thus has ended the celebrated Roger O'Connor. He was always a professed infidel; and it would appear from expressions which often fell from him that he was an atheist. It must be allowed that his dying sentiments re- specting religion could not be clearly ascertained, for he was unable to express himself ; but there is no doubt that he assented to what I said and what I performed on the occasion. He distinctly responded Amen to the several prayers and petitions I put up in his behalf. Roger O'Connor had a great deal of general knowledge. He wrote a good deal oil Irish subjects. Ireland, indeed, was his constant theme. Bat his writings are of no value. He was by no means a great scholar, nor a man of extraor- dinary talents, as some persons imagined, and as he himself most firmly believed. But the worst of it was that he was utterly devoid of prudence and foresight. He possessed at one time an estate of £3,000 per annum, and yet ye died a beggar : the consequence of ill management and ex- travagance. O'Connor's dead, the foe of church and state — A chieftain too in his own wild conceit : He spurn'd all precepts — ever kept , And liv'd through life a thorough epicure. But in death's hour the priest stood by his side, # And pray'd : O'Connor said Amen, and died". The preceding memorandum and lines are in the handwriting of the Rev. David Crowley. A very extensive commentary on the Thirty- nine Articles of the Church of England, on which the last years of his life were employed, I have seen among his papers. — R. R. M. I OP 10OKS KEPT OK SALE, AND FOE THE MOST PART PUBLISHED BY, THE ff#Mmg € juntprig LIMITED. AT 61, NEW BOND STREET, W. 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The Directors respectfully invite the attention of the Public to their New Catalogue of Books, which has beeni entirely remodelled, and in which it will be seen that the Prices of many very valuable Works have been greatly reduced, in order to render such Books more easily accessible to the Community. NEW WORKS AND EDITIONS AT PRESS. The History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church. By the Rev. Dr. Lingard. In 2 vols, crown 8vo. The Life of Cardinal Ximenes. Translated from the^ German of Hefele, bythe Rev. John Dalton. The Life of the Lady Warner. With Portrait. Nearly ready. The Catholic Soldiers' and Sailors' Prayer Book ; containing^ Prayers and Instructions recommended to the use of Catholics serving in the^ Fleets and Armies of the United Kingdom. By the late Bishop Poynter, withi considerable additions. Printed in clear, bold type. At Press. A New English Grammar, calculated to perfect Students^ in the knowledge of Grammar and Parsing. By M. D. Kavanagh, of University* College, London. A New Latin Grammar. By the same. IN PREPARATION. Certamen Seraphicum Provinciae Angliee, in which iss concisely set forth how the Fathers of the Franciscan Order in England strove for the Faith of Christ and for the Holy Church by their writings and their martyrdom. By Father Angelus of St. Francis, Guardian of the Convent of English Franciscans at Douay. Published at Douay in 1649, and now first Translated from the Original Latin by James Burke, Esq., A.B., Barrister. A Translation of Abbe de Feller's Historical and Biogra- phical Dictionary. A Work, several editions of which have been published in France, and which contains the Lives of the most remarkable Characters of all' Ages and Nations, brought down to the present time. Library of the Ascetic Writers of the Church. To be Edited! by the Very Rev. J. N. Sweeney, Prior of Downside. A Series of Elementary and Educational Works. A Series of Instructive and Amusing Books for the Young. A Series of Scientific and Mechanical Works for the People. And many others. HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL WORKS. IJJorfc* lij> tfjr &eb. Dn iUngarlr* he History of England. By John Lingard, D.D. The People's Edition. Handsomely printed in small octavo, uniform in size and type with the popular edition of "Alison's History of Europe." Completed in Sixty Parts, Price Gd. each. Embellished with many Illustrations, from designs by Harvey, J. Doyle, Howard Dudley, and other artists, including a PORTRAIT and BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR of the HISTORIAN. Forming Ten Volumes, crown 8vo. 3s. Gd. each, cloth lettered. This edition is reprinted from the fifth and last one, diligently revised by the Author two years before his death, which was published in 1840, in ten octavo volumes. That edition embodies the substance of all the recent discoveries con- nected with English History, and contains a large quantity of new and important matter. N.B. — For the convenience of persons who were prevented from subscribing to this edition during publication, it will continue to be supplied in weekly numbers, or single volumes, and may be obtained through the medium of any bookseller, or by order direct from the Publishers, who will supply it, post free, on receipt of the price of the volume or number. n Abridgment of the History of England, with Continua- tion from 1G88 to the Reign of Queen Victoria, adapted for the Use of Schools. By James Bukke, Esq., B.A., Barrister-at-Law. G48 pages, 12mo. bound, 5s. M Mr. Burke's Abridgment is completely successful. We do not hesitate to pronounce the work, as a whole, one of the most valuable additions to our scanty school literature which we have met with for many years." — Dublin Review. 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The same, Cape morocco, extra, 3s. 6d. Prayers before and after Mass, for Country Congregations. 18mo. sewed, 6d. St. Vincent's Manual, containing a Selection of Prayers and Devotional Exercises, originally prepared for the use of the Sisters of Charity in the United States. New edition* revised, enlarged, and adapted to general use. 787 pp. 18mo. with Engravings, illuminated title, ccc. roan, gilt edges, os.; Cape morocco, extra, (>s. Gd.; best Turkey morocco, elegant, 10s. 6d. A Standard Catholic Prayer Boole, recommended for General Use by the Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore and the Right Rev. Bishops who composed the Seventh Provincial Council, held in Baltimore in May, 1849, as being the most complete, comprehensive, and accurate Catholic Prayer Book published in the United States. Vespers Book for the Use of the Laity, according to the Roman Breviary. Newly arranged by the Very Rev. 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Archbishop of Baltimore, which they feel will be a sufficient guarantee for its contents : — 44 The New Prayer-book called the 4 Visitation Manual,' compiled by some ladies of the Convent of the Visitation in this city, and revised by two clergymen, Examiners of Books of this Diocese, and now published by Messrs. John Murphy and Co., is approved of by me, and recommended to the faithful of my charge. — Given under my hand at Baltimore, this 14th day of November, 1857. 4 *>|« Francis Patrick, Abp. of Baltimore." Young Catholic's Guide in the Preparation for Confes- sion, for the use of Children of both Sexes, from the age of Seven to Fourteen years. Altered from the French, by W. I). Kenny, Esq., Principal of St Mary's Collegiate School, Richmond, Surrey, and written expressly for the use of his junior pupils. Royal 32mo. sewed, stiff covers, 3d. The Catholic Soldiers' and Sailors' Prayer Book ; containing Prayers and Instructions recommended to the use of Catholics serving in the Fleets and Armies of the United Kingdom. By the late Bishop Poyntkr, with considerable additions. Printed in clear bold type. At Press. 28 WORKS PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC The Life and Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Illustrated in Twelve Plates, engraved on steel from the designs of Frederick Overbecki; Proofs on India paper, 10s. the set ; single plates, Is. each. Plain prints, 5s. th set ; single plates, 6d. each. LIST OF THE PLATES. J esus stripped of his Garments. The Crucifixion. The Entombment. The Resurrection. The Ascension. The Descent of the Holy Spirit. The Nativity. The Saviour seated, bearing the Cross. The Death of St. Joseph. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Last Supper. The Mount of Olives. Also, a beautiful Engraving from the design of Frederick Overbeck, of the Dead Christ and the Blessed Virgin. Engraved by Lewiss Gruner. Proofs on India paper, 4s. ; plain prints, Is. 6d. Three finely-engraved small Prints of the Blessed Virgin, 4d. each, entitled : — The Madonna del San Sisto ; The Salve Regina ; The Ave Regina. Twelve Prints, drawn and illuminated in gold and colours,, in the early Missal style, suitable for Prayer Books, with Miniatures and Prayers,, printed in black letter, consisting of the following : — St. Augustine, Apostle of England; St. Catherine; St. Philip Neri ; St.. Margaret of Scotland. Size, 4 inches by 2| inches. 6d. each. St. Elizabeth of Hungary; St. George; St. Joseph; The Memorare, by/ St. Bernard, in English. Size, 4t\ inches by 2f inches. 6d. each. The Our Father ; The Hail Mary ; We fly to thy Patronage ; In the Name off Jesus. Size, 3| inches by 2 \. 4d. each. Also a beautiful Drawing of the Madonna and the Infant Jesus, seated under a Canopy, with attendant angels, encircled by a floriated border, in which the figures off St. Ann and St. John the Baptist are introduced, with the following inscription beneath the Drawing : — " Regina sine Lobe Originali concepta, . The History of England. By John Lingard, D.D. The People's Edition. Handsomely printed in small octavo, uni- form in size and type with the popular edition of " Alison's History of Europe." Completed in Sixty Parts, price 6d. each. Embel- lished with many Illustrations, from designs by Harvey, J. Doyle, Howard Dudley, and other artists, including a PORTRAIT and BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR of the HISTORIAN. Forming Ten Volumes, crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. each, cloth lettered. This edition is reprinted from the fifth and last one, diligently revised by the author two years before his death, which was pub- lished in 1849, in ten octavo volumes. That edition embodies the substance of all the recent discoveries connected with English his- tory, and contains a large quantity of new and important matter. N.B. — For the convenience of persons who were prevented from subscribing to this edition during publication, it will continue to be supplied in weekly numbers, or single volumes, and may be obtained through the medium of any bookseller, or by order direct from the Publishers, who will supply it, post free, on receipt of the price of the volume or number. An Abridgment of the History of England, with Continuation from 1688 to the Reign of Queen Victoria; adapted for the Use of Schools. By Jambs Burke, Esq., B.A., Barrister-at- Law. 648 pages, 12mo. bound, 5s. " Mr. Burke's 1 Abridgment* is completely successful. We do not hesitate to pronounce the work, as a whole, one of the most valuable additions to our scanty school literature which we have met with for many years." — Liuf/lin Itcrifitv. "Mr. Burke has done his work well, and the result is very satisfactory." — Rambler. The History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, containing an Account of its Origin, Government, Doc- trines, Worship, Revenues, and Clerical and Monastic Institutions. New edition, in 2 vols, crown 8vo. cloth, 10s. Observations on the Laws and Ordinances which exist in Foreign States relative to the Religious Concerns of their Roman Catholic Subjects. 8vo. Is. A New Version of the Four Gospels ; with Notes Critical and Explanatory. 8vo. boards, 5s. Catechetical Instructions on the Doctrines and Worship of the Catholic Church. New edition, 18mo. ; 9d. cloth, 6d. wrapper. This work contains a short exposition of Catholic doctrine and Catholic practice, with the chief authorities on which that doctrine and practice are founded. "A beautiful little volume, written with all that sobriety of style, power of laneuage, and force of logic, for winch the venerable author is remarkable."— Toilet. Date Due May 23 c /i i i 1 I 3 i 1 d S g d F a f e a 1 — — e r I 3 a e $ jives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and other principal Saints ; compiled from Original Monuments and other Authentic Records; illustrated with the Remarks of judicious modern Critics and Historians. By the Rev. Alban Butler. Including the account of the Lite and Writings of the Rev. Alban Butler, by Charles Butler, Esq. ; and an Appendix containing General Indexes, Chronological Tables, &c. The original stereotype edition, well printed, in large type, in 12 vols, demy 8vo. cloth lettered, only £2. 2s. The same, illustrated with above 40 plates, fine early impressions, only £2. 12s. 6(1. *** This edition will be re-issued in weekly and monthly parts at equally low prices, to render this esteemed edition of more easy access to the Catholic public. - BOSTON COLLEGE 3 9031 01275187 1 205322 Catholic Publishing and Bookselling Company, Limited. The Holy Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate, diligently compared with the HeDrew, Greek, and other Editions, in divers languages : the Old Testament, first published by the English College at Douay, A.D. 1609 ; and the New Testament, first pub- lished by the English College at Rheims, A.D. 15S2. With Anno- tations, References, and an Historical and Chronological Index. Published with the approbation of the Right Rev. Dr. Denvir, Bishop of Down and Connor. Beautifully printed in super royal 32mo. embossed roan, sprinkled edges, 2s. 6d. ; or 3s. gilt edges. The same edition, illustrated with Twelve beautiful Engravings from the best Masters, bound in French morocco, 4s. 6d. ; or extra gilt, 5s. 6d. The same in Turkey morocco, 6s. ; or extra gilt, 7s. ; also kept in various styles of elegant binding, suitable for presents. The Holy Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate, with Annotations, References, and an Historical and Chronological Index. Stereotype edition, with Episcopal Approbation. On fiue paper, royal Svo. morocco, 15s. Boston College Libr< Chestnut Hill 67, Mass. Books make kept for two weeks unless a shorter time is specified. Two cents a day is charged for each 2-week book kept overtime; 25 cents a day for each overnight book. If you cannot find what you want, inquire at the delivery desk for assistance. ^) 11-46