 Chapter 16. Part II. The Insurrection of 1798. The Wexford Insurrection. Part II. The summer of 1798 was, for an Irish summer, remarkably dry and warm. The heavy Atlantic rains which, at all seasons, are poured out upon that soil, seemed suspended in favour of the insurgent multitudes, amounting to thirty thousand or forty thousand at the highest, who on the different hill summits, posted their night sentinels, and threw themselves down on turf and heather to snatch a short repose. The kindling of a beacon, the lowing of cattle, or the hurried arrival of scout or messenger, hardly interfered with slumbers which the fatigues of the day, and, unhappily also, the potations of the night rendered doubly deep. An early morning mass mustered all Catholics, unless the very depraved, to the chaplain's tent. For several of the officers and the chaplains were always supplied with tents, and then a hasty meal was snatched before the sun was fairly above the horizon, and the day's work commenced. The endurance exhibited by the rebels, their personal strength, swiftness and agility, their tenacity of life, and the ease with which their worst wounds were healed, excited the astonishment of the surgeons and officers of the regular army. The truth is that the virtuous lives led by that peaceful peasantry before the outbreak, enabled them to withstand privations and hardships under which the better-fed and better-clad Irish yeoman and English guardsmen would have sunk prostrate in a week. Several signs now marked the turning of the tide against the men of Wexford. Waterford did not rise after the Battle of Ross, while Munster, generally, was left to undecided councils, or held back in hopes of another French expedition. The first week of June had passed over, and neither northward nor westward was there any movement formidable enough to draw off from the devoted county that combined armies which were now directed against its camps. A gunboat fleet lined the coast from Bannell Ronde to Wicklow, which soon after appeared off Wexford Bar, and forced an entrance into the harbor. A few days earlier General Needham marched from Dublin, and took up his position at Arklow, at the head of a force variously stated at fifteen hundred to two thousand men, composed of one hundred and twenty cavalry under Sir Watt can win, two brigades of militia under Colonel's Cope and Maxwell, and a brigade of English and Scotch Fencebles under Colonel Scarrett. There were also at Arklow about three hundred of the Wexford and Wicklow mounted yeomanry, raised by Lord Wicklow, Lord Mount Norris, and other gentlemen of the neighborhood. Early on the morning of the ninth of June the northern divisions of the rebels left gory in two columns, in order, if possible, to drive this force from Arklow. One body proceeding by the coast road, hoped to turn the English position by way of the strand, the other taking the inner line of the Dublin Road, was to assail the town at its upper or inland suburb. But General Needham had made the most of his two days' possession. Barricades were erected across the road, and at the entrance to the main street the graveyard and bridge commanding the approach by the shore road were mounted with ordnance. The cavalry were posted where they could best operate near the strand. The barric wall was lined with a banquette or stage, from which the musketeers could pour their fire with the greatest advantage, and every other precaution taken to give the rebels a warm reception. The action commenced early in the afternoon, and lasted till eight in the evening, five or six hours. The inland column suffered most severely from the marksmen on the banquette, and the gallant Father Michael Murphy, whom his followers believed to be invulnerable, fell, leading them on to the charge for the third time. On the side of the sea Esmond Keon was badly wounded in the arm, which he was subsequently obliged to have amputated, and though the fearless Chimaliers drove the cavalry into and over the Avacoa, discipline and ordnance prevailed once again over numbers and courage. As night fell, the assailants retired slowly towards Kool-Granny, carrying off nine carloads of their wounded, and leaving perhaps as many more on the field. Their loss was variously reported from seven hundred to one thousand, and even fifteen hundred. The opposite force returned less than one hundred killed, including Captain Knox, and about as many wounded. The repulse was even more than at Ross, dispiriting to the rebels, who, as a last resort, now decided to concentrate all their strength on the favorite position at Vinegar Hill. Against this encampment, therefore, the entire available force of regulars and militia within fifty miles of the spot were concentrated by orders of Lord Lake, the commander-in-chief. General Dundas from Wicklow was to join General Loftus at Carnu on the 18th. General Needham was to advance simultaneously to Goree. General Sir Henry Johnson to unite at Old Ross with Sir James Stuff from Carlow. Sir Charles Asgill was to occupy Gorris Bridge and Boris. Sir John Moore was to land at Valleyhawk Ferry, march to Folk's Mill, and unite with Johnson and Duff to assail the rebel camp on Carrickburn. These various movements ordered on the 16th were to be completed by the 20th, on which day, from their various new positions, the entire force, led by these six general officers, was to surround Vinegar Hill and make a simultaneous action upon the last stronghold of the Wexford Rebellion. This elaborate plan failed of complete execution in two points. First, the camp on Carrickburn, instead of waiting the attack, sent down its fighting men to Folk's Mill, where in the afternoon of the 20th they beat up Sir John Moore's quarters, and maintained from three o'clock till dark what that officer calls a pretty sharp action. Several times they were repulsed and again formed behind the ditches and renewed the conflict, but the arrival of two fresh regiments under Lord Dalhousie taught them that there was no further chance of victory. By this affair, however, though at a heavy cost, they had prevented the junction of all the troops, and not without satisfaction, they now followed the two roaches, the priest and the layman, to the original position of the mountain of fourth, Sir John Moore on his part taking the same direction until he halted within side of the walls of Wexford. The other departure from Lord Lake's plan was on the side of General Needham, who was ordered to approach on the point of attack by the circuitous route of Ulart, but who did not come up in time to complete the investment of the hill. On the morning of the appointed day about thirteen thousand royal troops were in movement against the twenty thousand rebels whom they intended to dislodge. Sir James Stuff obtained possession of an eminence which commanded the lower line of the rebel encampment, and from this point a brisk cannonade was opened against the opposite force. At the same time the columns of Lake, Wilford, Dundas, and Johnson pushed up the southeastern, northern and western sides of the eminence, partially covered by the fire of these guns, so advantageously placed. After an hour and a half desperate fighting, the rebels broke and fled by the unguarded side of the hill. Their route was complete, and many were cut down by the cavalry as they pressed in dense masses on each other over the level fields and out on the open highways. Still this action was far from being one of the most fatal as to loss of life, fought in that county. The rebel dead were numbered at only four hundred, and the royalists killed and wounded at less than half that number. It was the last considerable action of the Wexford Rising, and all the consequences which followed being attributed arbitrarily to this cause helped to invest it with a disproportionate importance. The only leader lost on the rebel side was Father Clinch of Eniskorthy, who encountered Lord Rodin hand-to-hand in the retreat, but who, while engaged with his lordship whom he wounded, was shot down by a trooper. The disorganization, however, which followed on the dispersion, was irreparable. One column had taken the road by gory to the mountains of Wicklow. Another to Wexford, where they split into two parts, a portion crossing the slainy into the sea-coast parishes and facing northward by the shore-road, the other falling back on the three rocks encampment where the Messers Roche held together a fragment of their former command. Wexford town on the twenty second was abandoned to Lord Lake, who established himself in the house of Governor Keough, the owner being lodged in the common jail. Within the week, Baganelle Harvey, Father Philip Roche, and Kelly of Collaine had surrendered in despair, while Messers Grogan and Colclaw, who had secreted themselves in a cave in the great Salty Island, were discovered and conducted to the same prison. Notwithstanding the capitulation agreed to by Lord Kingsborough, the execution and decapitation of all these gentlemen speedily followed, and their ghastly faces looked down for many a day from the iron spikes above the entrance of Wexford Courthouse. Mr. Esmond Keyen, the popular hero of the district, as merciful as brave, was discovered sometime subsequently paying a stealthy visit to his family. He was put to death on the spot, and his body waded with heavy stones thrown into the harbor. A few mornings afterward the incoming tide deposited it close by the dwelling of his father-in-law, and the rites of Christian burial, so dear to all his race, were hurriedly rendered to the beloved remains. The insurrection in this county, while it abounded in instances of individual and general heroism, was stained also on both sides by many acts of diabolical cruelty. The aggressors, both in time and in crime, were the yeomanry in military, but the popular movement dragged wretches to the surface who delighted in repaying torture with torture and death with death. The butcheries of Dunlavin and Carnu were repaid by the massacres at Scullabogue and Wexford Bridge, in the former of which one hundred and ten, and the latter thirty-five or forty persons were put to death in cold blood, by the monsters who absented themselves from the battles of Ross and Vinegar Hill. The executions at Wexford Bridge would probably have been swelled to double the number had not Father Corrin, one of the priests of the town, rushing in between his Protestant neighbors and the ferocious Captain Dixon, and summoning all present to pray, invoked the Almighty to show them the same mercy they showed their prisoners. This awful supplication calmed even that savage rebel, and no further execution took place. Nearly forty years afterward, Captain Kellett of Clonard, ancestor of the arctic discoverer, and others whom he had rescued from the very grasp of the executioner, followed to the grave that revered and devoted minister of mercy. It would be a profitless task to dry out a parallel of the crimes committed on both sides. Two facts only need be recorded, that although from seventeen ninety-eight to eighteen hundred, not less than sixty-five places of Catholic worship were demolished or burned in Lentster, twenty-two of which were in Wexford County, only one Protestant church, that of old Ross, was destroyed in retaliation, and that although towards men, especially men in arms, the rebels acted on the fierce mosaic maxim of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, no outrage upon women is laid to their charge, even by their most exasperated enemies. CHAPTER XVII. PART ONE OF POPULARY HISTORY OF IRELAND. BOOK XI. BY TOMAS D. STARSY-MIGUE. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. THE INSURRECTION ELSEWHERE. FATE OF THE LEADING UNITED IRISHMAN. On the twenty-first of June, the Marquis Cornwallis, whose name is so familiar in American and East Indian history, arrived in Dublin to assume the supreme power both civil and military. As his chief secretary he recommended Lord Castle Ray, who had acted in that capacity during the latter part of Lord Camden's administration in consequence of Mr. Pelham's illness, and the Pitt-Poorland administration appointed his lordship accordingly because among other good and sufficient reasons he was so unlike an Irishman. While the new viceroy came to Ireland still more resolute than his predecessor to bring about the long desired legislative union, it is but justice to his memory to say that he as resolutely resisted the policy of torture and provocation pursued under Lord Camden. That policy had indeed served its pernicious purpose, and it was now possible for a new ruler to turn a new leaf. This Lord Cornwallis did from the hour of his arrival, not without incurring the ill-concealed displeasures of the Castle Cabal. But his position gave him means of protection which Chiralf Abercrombie had not. He was known to enjoy the personal confidence of the king, and those who did not hesitate three months before, to assail by every abusive epithet the humane Scottish baronette, hesitated long before criticising with equal freedom the all-powerful viceroy. The next sequel of the insurrection may be briefly related. Next to Wexford, the adjoining county of Wicklow, famous throughout the world for its lakes and glens, maintained the chief brunt of the Lentster battle. The brother's burn of Balamanus, with Holt, Hackett, and other leaders, were for months from the difficult nature of the country, enabled to divide those combined movements by which, as in a huge net, Lord Lake had swept up the camps of Wexford. At Hackettstown on the twenty-fifth of June, the burns were repulsed with considerable loss, but at Baliellus, on the thirtieth, fortune and skill gave them and their Wexford comrades a victory, resembling in many respects that of Clough. General Needham, who had again established his headquarters at Gory, detached Colonel Preston with some troops of ancient Britons, the fourth and fifth Dragoons, and three Yeomanry corps, to attack the insurgents who were observed in force in the neighborhood of Monocede. Aware of this movement, the burns prepared in the ravine of Baliellus a well-laid ambush guide, barricading with carts and trees the farther end of the pass. Attacked by the royalists, they retreated towards this pass, were hotly pursued, then turned on their pursuers. Two officers and sixty men were killed in the trap, while the terrified rear flank fled for their lives to the shelter of their headquarters. At Balraheen, on the second of July, the king's troops sustained another check in which they lost two officers and ten men, but at Baligullan, on the fourth, the insurgents were surrounded between the forces of General Needham, Sir James Stuff and the Marquis of Huntley. This was the last considerable action in which the Wicklow and Wexford men were unitedly engaged. In the dispersion which followed, Billy Byrne of Baliemanus, the hero of his county, paid the forfeit of his life, while his brother Garrett subsequently surrendered, and was included in the Banishment Act. Anthony Perry of Inch and Father Kearns, leading a much diminished band into Kildare, formed a junction with Elmer and Reynolds of that county, and marched into Mieh, with a view of reaching and surprising Athelone. The plan was boldly and well conceived, but their means of execution were deplorably deficient. At Clonard they were repulsed by a handful of troops well armed and posted. A combined movement always possible in Mieh drove them from side to side during the midweek of July, until at length, hunted down as they were, they broke up in twos and threes to seek any means of escape. Father Kearns and Mr. Perry were, however, arrested, and executed by martial law at Edendary. Both died bravely, the priest sustaining and extorting his companion to the last. Still another band of the Wexford men, under Father John Murphy and Walter Devereaux, crossed the barrow at Gore's Bridge and marched upon Kilkenny. At Low Grange they surprised an outpost. At Castle Cumber, after a sharp action, they took the town, which Sir Charles Asgill endeavored, but without success to relieve. Thence they continued their march towards Athelone in Kildare, but being caught between two or rather three fires, that of Major Matthews, from Maryborough, General Dunn from Athelone, and Sir Charles Asgill, they retreated on Old Leglin, as if seeking the shelter of the Carlow Mountains. At Kilkenny Hill, however, they were forced into action under most unfavorable circumstances, and utterly routed. One, Father Murphy, fell in the engagement. The other, the precursor of the insurrection, was captured three days afterward, and conveyed a prisoner to General Duff's headquarters at Tullo. Here he was put on his trial before a military commission composed of Sir James Duff, Lord Rodin, Colonel's Eden and Foster, and Major Hall. Hall had the meanness to put to him, prisoner as he was, several insulting questions, which at length the high-spirited rebel answered with a blow. The commission thought him highly dangerous, and instantly ordered him to execution. His body was burned, his head spiked on the market-house of Tullo, and his memory gibbeted in all the loyal publications of the period. On his person, before execution, were found a crucifix, a picks, and letters from many Protestants, asking his protection. As to his reputation, the priest who girded on the sword only when he found his altar overthrown and his flock devoured by wolves, need not fear to look posterity in the face. Of the other Lester leaders, Walter Devereaux, the last colleague of Father Murphy, was arrested at Cork, on the eve of sailing for America, tried and executed. Fitzgerald and Alma were spared on condition of expatriation. Months afterward Holt surrendered, was transported, and returned after several years, to end his days where he began his career. Dwyer alone maintained the life of a wraparie for five long years among the hills of Wicklow, where his adventures were often of such a nature as to throw all fictitious conceptions of an outlaw's life into common place by comparison. Except in the fastnesses frequented by this extraordinary man, and in the woods of Kilogram in Wexford, where the outlaws, with the last stroke of national humor, assumed the name of the babes in the wood, the Lester insurrection was utterly trotting out within two months from its first beginning, on the twenty-third of May. So weak against discipline, arms, munitions and money, are all that mere naked valor and devotion can accomplish. Ulster, on the organization of which so much time and labor had been expended for four or five years preceding, the rising was not more general than in Lester, and the actual struggle lasted only a week. The two counties which moved Ammas were down in Antrim, the original chiefs of which, such as Thomas Russell and Samuel Nielsen, were unfortunately in prison. The next leader on whom the men of Antrim relied, resigned his command on the very eve of the appointed day. This disappointment and the arrest of the Reverend Steele Dixon in Downe compelled a full fortnight's delay. On the seventh of June, however, the more determined spirits resolved on action, and the first movement was to seize the town of Antrim, which, if they could have held it, would have given them command of the communications with Donagall and Downe, from both of which they might have expected important additions to their ranks. The leader of this enterprise was Henry John McCracken, a cotton manufacturer of Belfast, thirty-two years of age, well educated, accomplished and resolute, with whom was associated a brother of William Orr, the proto-martyr of the Ulster Union. The town of Antrim was occupied by the twenty-second light dragoons, Colonel Lumley, and the local Yeomanry under Lord O'Neill. In the first assault the insurgents were successful, Lord O'Neill, five officers, forty-seven rank and file having fallen, and two guns being captured. But Lumley's dragoons had hardly vanished out of sight when a strong reinforcement from Blair's camp arrived and renewed the action, changing premature exultation into panic and confusion. Between two and three hundred of the rebels fell, and McCracken and his staff, deserted by their hasty levies, were arrested, wearied and hopeless, about a month later, wandering among the Antrim Hills. The leaders were tried at Belfast and executed. In down two actions were fought, one at St. Field on the seventh of June, under Dr. Jackson, where Colonel Stapleton was severely handled, and another and more important one at Ballina Hinge, under Henry Monroe on the thirteenth, where Nugent, the District General, commanded in person. Here, after a gallant defense, the men of down were utterly routed. Their leader, alone and on foot, was captured some five or six miles from the field, and executed two days afterwards before his own door at Lisburne. He died with the utmost composure, his wife and mother looking down on the awful scene from the windows of his own house. In Munster, with the exception of a trifling skirmish between the West Meeth Yeomanry under Sir Hugh O'Reilly, with whom were the Cathness Legion, under Major Innis, and a body of three hundred or four hundred ill-armed peasants, who attacked them on the ninth of June, on the road from Clonicilty to Brandon, there was no notable attempt at insurrection. But in Cannot, very unexpectedly, as late as the end of August, the flame extinguished in blood in Lenster and Ulster, again blazed up for some days with portentious brightness. The counties of Mayo, Sligo, Roscommon, and Galway had been partially organized by those fugitives from Orange Oppression in the North, who, in the years ninety-five, ninety-six and ninety-seven, had been compelled to flee for their lives into Cannot, to the number of several thousands. They brought with them the tale of their sufferings, the secret of Defenderism. They brought with the tale of their sufferings the secret of Defenderism. They first taught the peasantry of the West, who, safe in their isolated situation and their overwhelming numbers, were more familiar with poverty than with persecution, what manner of men then held sway over all the rest of the country, and how easily it would be for Irishmen once united and backed by France to establish under their own green flag both religious and civil liberty. When, therefore, three French frigates cast anchor in Kilala Bay on the twenty-second of August, they did not find the country wholly unprepared, though far from being as ripe for revolt as they expected. These ships had on board one thousand men, with arms for one thousand more, under command of General Humbert, who had taken on himself, in the state of Anarchy which then prevailed in France, to sail from La Rochelle with his handful of men, in aid of the insurrection. With Humbert wore Matthew Tone and Bartholomew Tealing, and immediately on his arrival he was joined by Messers Macdonnell, Moore, Bellew, Barrett, O'Dowd, and O'Donnell of Mayo, Blake of Galway, Plunket of Roscommon, and a few other influential gentlemen of that province, almost all Catholics. Three days were spent at Kilala, which was easily taken in landing stores, enrolling recruits, and sending out the parties of observation. On the fourth, Sunday, Humbert entered Bellina without resistance, and on the same night set out for Castle Bar, the county town. By this time intelligence of his landing was spreading over the whole country, and both Lord Lake and General Hutchinson had advanced to Castle Bar, where they had from two thousand to three thousand men under their command. The place could be reached only by two routes from the northwest, by the Foxford Road, or a long deserted mountain road which led over the Pass of Barnagy, with inside of the town. Humbert, accustomed to the long marches in difficult country of Lavendee, chose the unfrequented and therefore unguarded route, and to the consternation of the British generals descended through the Pass of Barnagy, soon after sunrise, on the morning of Monday, August 27th. His force consisted of nine hundred French bayonets, and between two thousand and three thousand new recruits. The action, which commenced at seven o'clock, was short, sharp, and decisive. The yeomanry and regulars broke and fled, some of them never drawing rain till they reached Tum, while others carried their fears and their falsehoods as far inland as Athalon, more than sixty miles from the scene of action. In this engagement still remembered as the races, the royalists confessed to the lost, killed, wounded, or prisoners of eighteen officers and about three hundred and fifty men, while the French commander estimated the killed alone at six hundred. Fourteen British guns and five stand of colors were also taken. A hot pursuit was continued for some distance by the native troops under Matthew Tone, Teeling, and the Mayo officers, but Lord Rodin's famous corps of fox hunters covered the retreat and checked the pursuers at French Hill. Immediately after the battle, a provisional government was established at Castle Bar, with Mr. Moore of Moore Hall as president. Proclamations addressed to the inhabitants at large, commissions to raised men, and assignments payable by the future Irish public, were issued in its name. Meanwhile, the whole of the royalist forces were now in movement toward the capital of Mayo, as they had been toward Vinegar Hill two months before. Sir John Moore and General Hunter marched from Wexford toward the Shannon. General Taylor, with twenty-five hundred men, advanced from Sligo towards Castle Bar. Colonel Maxwell was ordered from Ennis Cullen to assume command at Sligo. General Nugent from Lisburn occupied Ennis Cullen, and the viceroy, leaving Dublin in person, advanced rapidly through the Midland Counties to kill Began, and ordered Lord Lake and General Hutchinson, with such of their command as could be depended on, to assume the aggressive from the direction of Tome. Thus Humbert and his allies found themselves surrounded on all sides, their retreat cut off by sea, for their frigates had returned to France immediately on their landing, three thousand men against not less than thirty thousand, with at least as many more in reserve, ready to be called into action at a day's notice. The French General determined if possible to reach the mountains of Letrum, and to open communications with Ulster, and the northern coast, upon which he hoped soon to see Sucker arrive from France. With this object he marched from Castle Bar to Coluny, thirty-five miles in one day. Here he sustained a check from Colonel Brecker's Militia, which necessitated a change of route. Turning aside, he passed rapidly through Dromahane, Manor Hamilton, and Balintra, making for Grenard, from which accounts of a formidable popular outbreak had just reached him. In three days and a half he had marched one hundred and ten miles, flinging half his guns into the rivers that he crossed, lest they should fall into the hands of his pursuers. At Balinamuck, County Longford, on the borders of Letrum, he found himself fairly surrounded, on the morning of the eighth of September, and here he prepared to make a last, desperate stand. The end could not be doubtful, the numbers against him being ten to one. After an action of half an hour's duration, two hundred of the French having thrown down their arms, the remainder surrendered as prisoners of war. For the rebels no terms were thought of, and the full vengeance of the victors was reserved for them. Mr. Blake, who had formerly been a British officer, was executed on the field. Matthew Tone and Tealing were executed within the week at Dublin. Mr. Moore, president of the provisional government, was sentenced to banishment by the clemency of Lord Cornwallis, but died on Shipward. Ninety of the Longford and Kilkenny militia who had joined the French were hanged, and the country generally given up to pillage and massacre. As an evidence of the excessive thirst for blood, it may be mentioned that at the recapture of Kilala a few days later, four hundred persons were killed, of whom fully one half were non-combatants. The disorganization of all government in France in the latter half of ninety-eight was illustrated not only by Humbert's unauthorized adventure, but by a still weaker demonstration under General Way and Napper Tandy about the same time. With a single armed brig, these daring allies made a descent on the seventeenth of September on Rafflin Island, well equipped with eloquent proclamations, bearing the date first year of Irish liberty. From the postmaster of the island they ascertained Humbert's fate, and immediately turned the prow of their solitary ship in the opposite direction. Ray, to rise in aftertimes to honor and power, Tandy, to continue in old age the dashing career of his manhood, and to expiate in exile the crime of preferring the country of his birth to the general centralizing policy of the empire with which he was united. Twelve days after the combat at Bellinimac, while Humbert and his men were on their way through England to France, a new French fleet, under Admiral Bombart, consisting of one seventy-four gunship, the Hoche, eight frigates, and two smaller vessels sailed from Brest. On board this fleet were embarked three thousand men under General Hardy, the remnant of the army once menacing England. In this fleet sailed Theobald Wolf Tone, true to his motto, Neil Disperandom, with two or three other refugees of less celebrity. The troops of General Hardy, however, were destined never to land. On the twelfth of October, after tossing about for nearly a month in the German Ocean and the North Atlantic, they appeared off the coast of Donneville, and stood in for L'Oxsouilly. But another fleet also was on the horizon. Admiral Sir John Borlaise Warren, with an equal number of ships, but a much heavier armament, had been cruising on the track of the French during the whole time they were at sea. After many disappointments, the flagship and three of the frigates were at last within range and the action began. Six hours fighting laid the hoche, a helpless log upon the water. Nothing was left but her surrender. Two of the frigates shared the same fate on the same day. Another was captured on the fourteenth, and yet another on the seventeenth. The remainder of the fleet escaped back to France. The French officers landed in Donneville were received with courtesy by the neighboring gentry, among whom was the Earl of Coven, who entertained them at dinner. Here it was that Sir George Hill, son-in-law to Commissioner Beresford, an old college friend of Tones, identified the founder of the United Irishmen under the uniform of a French adjunct general. Stepping up to his old schoolmate he addressed him by name, which Tone instantly acknowledged, inquiring politely for Lady Hill and other members of Sir George's family. He was instantly arrested, ironed, and conveyed to Dublin under a strong guard. On the tenth of November he was tried by court-martial and sentenced to be hanged. He begged only for a soldier's death to be shot by a platoon of grenadiers. This favour was denied him, and the next morning he attempted to commit suicide. The attempt did not immediately succeed, but one week later, on the nineteenth of November, he died from the results of his self-inflicted wound, with a compliment to the attending physician upon his lips. Truth compels us to say he died the death of a pagan, but it was a pagan of the noblest and freest type of Grecian and Roman times. Had it occurred in ancient days, beyond the Christian era, it would have been a death every way admirable. As it was, that fatal, final act must always stand between Wolf Tone and the Christian people for whom he suffered, sternly forbidding them to invoke him in their prayers, or to uphold him as an example to the young men of their country. So closed the memorable year, seventeen ninety-eight, on the baffled and dispersed United Irishmen. Of the chiefs imprisoned in March and May, Lord Edward had died of his wounds and vexation, Oliver Bond of Apoplexy, the brothers Shears, Father Quigley, and William Michael Byrne on the gibbet. In July, on Samuel Nelson's motion, the remaining prisoners in Newgate, Bridewell, and Kilmanum agreed, in order to stop the effusion of blood, to expatriate themselves to any country not at war with England, and to reveal the general secrets of their system without inculpating individuals. These terms were accepted, as the castle party needed their evidence to enable them to promote their cherished scheme of legislative union. But that evidence delivered before the committees of parliament by Emmett, McNevan, and O'Connor did not altogether serve the purposes of government. The patriotic prisoners made it at once a protest against, and an exposition of the despotic policy under which their country had been goaded into rebellion. For their firmness they were punished by three years confinement in Fort George in the Scottish Highlands, where, however, a gallant old soldier, Colonel Stewart, endeavored to soften the hard realities of a prison by all the kind attentions his instructions permitted him to show these unfortunate gentlemen. At the peace of Amiens, 1802, they were at last allowed the melancholy privilege of expatriation. Russell and Dowdle were permitted to return to Ireland, where they shared the fate of Robert Emmett in 1803. O'Connor, Corbett, Allen, Ware, and others cast their lot in France, where they all rose to distinction. Emmett, McNevan, Samson, and the family of Tone were reunited in New York, where the many changes and distractions of a great metropolitan community have not even yet obliterated the memories of their virtues, their talents, and their accomplishments. It is impossible to dismiss the celebrated group of men whose principles and conducts so greatly influenced their country's destiny without bearing explicit testimony to their heroic qualities as a class. If ever a body of public men deserved the character of a brotherhood of heroes, so far as disinterestedness, courage, self-denial, truthfulness, and glowing love of country constitute heroism, these men deserve that character. The wisdom of their conduct and the intrinsic merit of their plans are other questions. As between their political system and that of Burke, Grotten, and O'Connor, there always will be, probably, among their countrymen, very decided differences of opinion. That is but natural, but as to the personal and political virtues of the United Irishmen, there can be no difference. The world has never seen a more sincere or a more self-sacrificing generation. The partial uprising of the Irish people in 1798 was a rebellion of this class, and the use of such a failure to enable an unscrupulous administration was illustrated in the extinction of the ancient legislature of the kingdom before the recurrence of the third anniversary of the insurrection. This project, the favorite and long-cherished design of Mr. Pitt, was cordially approved by his principal colleagues, the Duke of Portland, Lord Greenville, and Mr. Dundas. Indeed, it may be questioned whether it was not as much Lord Greenville's design as Pitt's, and as much George III's personal object as that of any of his ministers. The Old King's Irish policy was always of the most narrow and illiberal description. In his memorandum on the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, he explains his views with the business-like brevity which characterized all his communications with his ministers, while he retained possession of his faculties. He was totally opposed to Lord Fitzwilliam's emancipation policy, which he thought adopted in implicit obedience to the heated imagination of Mr. Burke. To Lord Camden his instructions were, to support the old English interest as well as the Protestant religion, and to Lord Cornwallis, that no further indulgence should be granted to Catholics, but that he should steadily pursue the object of effecting the Union of Ireland in England. The new viceroy entered heartily into the views of his sovereign. Though unwilling to exchange his English position as a cabinet minister and master general of ordnance for the troubled life of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he at length allowed himself to be persuaded into the acceptance of that office, with a view mainly to carrying the Union. He was ambitious to connect his name with that great imperial measure, so often projected but never formally proposed. If he could only succeed in incorporating the Irish with the British legislature, he declared he would feel satisfied to retire from all other public employments, that he would look on his days as finished, and his evening of ease and dignity fully earned. He was not wholly unacquainted with the kingdom against which he cherished these ulterior views, for he had been, nearly thirty years before, when he fell under the lash of Junius, one of the vice treasurers of Ireland. For the rest he was a man of great information, tact and firmness, indefatagable in business, tolerant by temperament and conviction, but both as a general and a politician it was his lot to be identified in India and in Ireland with successes which might better have been failures, and in America with failures which were much more beneficial to mankind than his successes. In his new sphere of action his two principal agents were Lord Clare and Lord Casselray, both Irishmen, the Chancellor, the son of what in that country is called a spoiled priest, and the Secretary, the son of an ex-volunteer and member of Flood's Reformed Convention. It is not possible to regard the conduct of these high officials in undermining and destroying the ancient national legislature of their own country in the same light as that of Lord Cornwallis or Mr. Pitt or Lord Grenville. It was but natural that as Englishmen these ministers should consider the Empire in the first place, that they should desire to centralize all the resources and all the authority of both islands in London, that to them the existence of an independent parliament at Dublin, with its ample control over the courts, the revenues, the defences, and the trade of that kingdom, should appear an obstacle and a hindrance to the unity of the imperial system. From their point of view they were quite right, and had they pursued their end, complete centralization, by honourable means, no stigma could attach to them even in the eyes of Irishmen, but with Lords Clare and Casselray the case was wholly different. Born in the land, deriving income as well as existence from the soil, elected to its parliament by the confidence of their countrymen, attaining to posts of honour and consequence of such election, that they should voluntarily offer their services to establish an alien and a hostile policy on the ruins of their own national constitution, which with all its defects was national and was courageable, this betrayal of their own at the dictate of another state will always place the names of Clare and Casselray on the detested list of public traders. Yet though in such treason, united and identified, no two men could be more unlike in all other respects. Lord Clare was fiery, dogmatic and uncompromising to the last degree, while Lord Casselray was stealthy, impotervable, insidious, bland and adroit. The Chancellor endeavored to carry everything with a high hand, with a bold, defiant, confident swagger. The Secretary, on the contrary, trusted to management, expediency, and silent tenacity of purpose. The one had faith in violence, the other in corruption. They were no inept personifications of the two chief agencies by which the union was affected, force, and fraud. The Irish Parliament, which had been of necessity adjourned during the greater part of the time the insurrection lasted, assembled within a week of Lord Cornwallis' arrival. Both houses voted highly loyal addresses to the King and Lord Lieutenant, the latter seconded in the Commons by Charles Kendall Bush, the college companion of Wolf Tone. A vote of one hundred thousand pounds to indemnify those who had suffered from the rebels subsequently increased to above one million pounds was passed Univoche. Another, placing on the Irish establishment certain English militia regiments, passed with equal promptitude. In July five consecutive acts, a complete Code of Penalties and Prescription, were introduced, and after various debates and delays, received the Royal Sanction on the 6th of October, the last day of the session of 1798. These acts were, one, the Amnesty Act, the exceptions to which were so numerous that few of those who took any active part in the rebellion were, according to the Cornwallis' correspondence, benefited by it. Two, an act of indemnity, by which all magistrates who had exercised a vigor beyond the law against the rebels, were protected from the legal consequences of such acts. Three, an act for attaining Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Mr. Harvey, and Mr. Grogan, against which Curran, taking his instructions from the grave, pleaded at the Bar of the House of Lords, but pleaded in vain. This act was finally reversed by the Imperial Parliament in 1819. Four, an act forbidding communication between persons in Ireland and those enumerated in the Banishment Act, and making the return to Ireland after a sentence of banishment by court-martial, a transportable felony. Five, an act to compel fifty-one persons there in name to surrender before 1st of December 1798, under pain of high treason. Among the fifty-one were the principal refugees at Paris and Hamburg, Tone, Lou Ennis, Tandy, Dean Swift, Major Plunkett, Anthony McCann, Harvey Morris, etc. On the same day in which the session terminated and the royal sanction was given to these acts, the name of Henry Gratton was a significant coincidence, formally struck by the king's commands from the role of the Irish Privy Council. This legislation of the session of 1798 was fatal to the Irish Parliament. The partisans of the Union, who had used the rebellion to discredit the Constitution, now used the Parliament to discredit itself. Under the influence of a fierce reactionary spirit, when all merciful and moderate councils were denounced as treasonable, it was not difficult to procure the passage of sweeping measures of prescription. But with their passage banished the former popularity of the domestic legislature, and what followed, the Constitution of 82 could only be upheld in the hearts of the people, and, with all its defects, it had been popular before the sudden spread of French revolutionary notions distracted and dissipated the public opinion which had grown up within the era of independence. To make the once cherished authority, which liberated trade in 79, and half emancipated the Catholics in 93, the last executioner of the vengeance of the castle against the people, was to place a gulf between it and the affections of that people in the day of trial. To make the anti-unionists in Parliament, such as the Speaker, Sir Lawrence Parsons, Plunkett, Pausenby and Bush, personally responsible for this vindictive code, was to disarm them of the power, and almost of the right to call on the people whom they turned over, bound hand and foot to the mercy of the Minister in 98, to aid them against the machinations of that same minister in 99. The last months of the year were marked besides events already referred to and by negotiations incessantly carried on, both in England and Ireland in favour of the Union. Members of both houses were personally courted and canvassed by the Prime Minister, the Secretaries of State, the Vice Roy and the Irish Secretary. Titles, pensions and offices were freely promised. Vast sums of secret service money afterwards added as a charge to the public debt of Ireland were remitted from Whitehall. An army of pamphleteers, marshalled by Under Secretary Cook, and confidentially directed by the able but anti-national Bishop of Mieth, Dr. O'Burn, and by Lord Castle Ray personally, plied their pens in favour of the consolidation of the Empire. The Lord Chancellor, the Chief Secretary and Mr. Beresford made journeys to England to assist the Prime Minister with their local information and to receive his Imperial confidence in return. The Orangemen were neutralized by securing a majority of their leaders, the Catholics by the establishment of familiar communication with the bishops. The Vice Roy complimented Dr. Troy at Dublin, the Duke of Portland lavished personal attentions on Dr. Moylan in England. The Protestant clergy were satisfied with the assurance that the maintenance of their establishment would be made a fundamental article of the Union, while the Catholic bishops were given to understand that complete emancipation would be one of the first measures submitted to the Imperial Parliament. The oligarchy were to be indemnified for their boroughs, while the advocates of reform were shown how hopeless it was to expect a house constituted of their nominees ever to enlarge or amend its own exclusive constitution. Thus, for every description of a people, a particular set of appeals and arguments was found, and for those who discarded the effectation of reasoning on the surrender of their national existence there were the more convincing arguments of titles, employments, and direct pecuniary purchase. At the close of the year of the rebellion Lord Cornwallis was able to report to Mr. Pitt that the prospects of carrying the measure were better than could have been expected, and on this report he was authorized to open the matter formally to Parliament in his speech at the opening of the following session. On the 22nd of January 1799 the Irish Legislature met under circumstances of great interest and excitement. The city of Dublin, always keenly alive to its metropolitan interests, sent its eager thousands by every avenue towards College Green. The viceroy went down to the houses with a more than ordinary guard, and being seated on the throne in the House of Lords, the commons were summoned to the bar. The house was considered a full one, two hundred and seventeen members being present. The viceregal speech congratulated both houses on the suppression of the late rebellion, on the defeat of Bonpart Squadron, and the recent French victories of Lord Nelson. Then came amid profound expectation this concluding sentence. The unremitting industry, said the viceroy, with which our enemies persevere in their avowed design of endeavouring to effect a separation of this kingdom from Great Britain, must have engaged your attention, and His Majesty commands me to express his anxious hope that this consideration, joined to the sentiment of mutual affection and common interest, may dispose the parliaments in both kingdoms to provide the most effectual means of maintaining and improving a connection essential to their common security, and of consolidating, as far as possible, into one firm and lasting fabric, the strength, the power, and the resources of the British Empire. On the autograph of the address, re-echoing this sentiment, which was carried by a large majority in the Lords, a debate ensued in the Commons, which lasted till one o'clock of the following day, above twenty consecutive hours. Against the suggestion of a union, spoke Pozambi, Parsons, Fitzgerald, Barrington, Plunkett, Lee, O'Donnell, and Bush. In its favour, Lord Castleray, the Night of Kerry, Corey, Fox, Osborne, Dugganon, and some other members little known. The galleries and lobbies were crowded all night by the first people of the city, of both sexes, and when the division was being taken, the most intense anxiety was manifested, with indoors and without. At length the tellers made their report to the speaker, himself an ardent anti-unionist, and it was announced that the members were, for the address, 105, for the amendment, 106, so the paragraph in favour of consolidating the empire was lost by one vote. The remainder of the address, tainted with the association of the expunged paragraph, was barely carried by 107 to 105. Mr. Pozambi had attempted to follow his victory by a solemn pledge binding the majority never again to entertain the question, but to this several members objected, and the motion was withdrawn. The ministry found some consolation in this withdrawal, which they characterised as a retreat after a victory, but to the public at large, unused to place much stress on the minor tactics of debate, nothing appeared but the broad general fact that the first overture for a union had been rejected. It was a day of immense rejoicing in Dublin, the leading anti-unionists were escorted and triumphed to their homes, while the unionists were protected by strong military escorts from the popular indignation. At night the city was illuminated, and the patrols were doubled as a protection to the obnoxious minority. End of Chapter 18 Part 1 read by Cibella Denton. For more free audio books or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 18 Part 2 of Popular History of Ireland, Book 11 by Thomas Starce McGee. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Administration of Lord Cornwallis. Before the Union. Mr. Pozambi's amendment, affirming by the House of Commons, was in these words, that the House would be ready to enter into any measure short of surrendering their free, resident and independent legislature as established in 1782. 1799, to the defence of the established constitution of their country. The arguments with which they sustained their provision were few, bold, and intelligible to every capacity. There was the argument from Ireland's geographical situation, and the policy incident to it, the historical argument, the argument for a resident gentry occupied and retained in the country by their public duties, the commercial argument, the revenue argument, but above all, the argument of the incompetency of Parliament to put an end to its own existence. Yourselves, exclaimed the eloquent plunket, you may extinguish, but Parliament you cannot extinguish. It is enthroned in the hearts of the people. It is enshrined in the sanctuary of its constitution. It is as immortal as the island that protects it. As well might the frantic suicide imagine that the act which destroys his miserable body should also extinguish his eternal soul. Again therefore I warn you. Do not dare to lay your hands on the constitution. It is above your powers. These arguments were combated on the grounds that the islands were already united under one crown, that the species of union was uncertain and precarious, that the Irish Parliament was never in reality a national legislature, that it existed only as an instrument of class legislation, that the union would benefit Ireland materially as it had benefited Scotland, that she would come in for a full share of imperial honors, expenditure and trade, that such a union would discourage all future hostile attempts by France or any other foreign power against the connection and other similar arguments. But the division which followed the first introduction of the subject showed clearly to the unionists that they could not hope to succeed with the House of Commons as then constituted, that more time and more preparation were necessary. Accordingly, Lord Castleroy was authorized in March to state formally in his place that it was not the intention of the government to bring up the question again during that session, an announcement which was hailed with the new outburst of rejoicing in the city. But those who imagined the measure was abandoned were sadly deceived. Steps were immediately taken by the castle to deplete the House of its majority and to supply their places before another session with forty or fifty new members who would be entirely at the back of the chief secretary. With this view, thirty-two new county judgeships were created, a great number of additional inspectorships and commissioners were also placed at the minister's disposal, thirteen members had peerages for themselves or for their wives, with remainder to their children, and nineteen others were presented to various lucrative offices. The escheter ship of Munster, a short of children-hundreds office, was accepted by those who agreed to withdraw from opposition for such considerations, but who could not be got to reverse their votes. By these means, and a lavish expenditure of secret service money, it was hoped that Mr. Pitt's stipulated majority of not less than fifty could be secured during the year. The other events of the session of ninety-nine, though interesting in themselves, are of little importance compared to the union debates. In the English parliament, which met on the same day as the Irish, a paragraph identical with that employed by Lord Cornwallis introducing the subject of the union was inserted in the king's speech. To this paragraph, repeated in the address, an amendment was moved by the celebrated Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and resisted with an eloquence scarcely inferior to his own by his former protege and countryman George Canning. Canning, like Sheridan, had sprung from a line of Irish literatures and actors. He had much of the wit and genius of his illustrious friend, with more worldly wisdom, and a higher sentiment of personal pride. In very early life, distinguished by great oratorical talents, he had deliberately attached himself to Mr. Pitt, while Sheridan remained steadfast to the last in the ranks of the Whig or Liberal Party. For the land of their ancestors both had, at bottom, very warm good wishes, but Canning looked down upon her politics from the heights of empire, while Sheridan felt for her honour and her interests with the affection of an expatriated son. We can well credit his statement to Gratton, years afterwards, when referring to his persistent opposition to the union, he said he would have waded in blood to his knees to preserve the Constitution of Ireland. In taking this course he had with him a few eminent friends, General Fitzpatrick, the former Irish Secretary, Mr. Turnie, Mr. Hobhouse, Dr. Lawrence, the executor of Edmund Burke, and, Mr., afterwards, Earl Gray. Throughout the entire discussion these just-minded Englishmen stood boldly forward for the rights of Ireland, and this highly honourable conduct was long remembered as one of Ireland's real obligations to the Whig party. The resolutions intended to serve as the basis of union were introduced by Mr. Pitt, on the 21st of January, and after another powerful speech in opposition, from Mr. Gray, who was ably sustained by Mr. Sheridan, Dr. Lawrence, and some twenty others, were put and carried. The following are the resolutions. First. In order to promote and secure the essential interests of Great Britain and Ireland, and to consolidate the strength, power, and resources of the British Empire, it will be advisable to concur in such measures as may tend to unite the two kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland into one kingdom, in such manner and in such terms and conditions as may be established by acts of the respective parliaments of His Majesty's said kingdoms. Second. It would be fit to propose as the first article, to serve as the basis of the said union, that the said kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland shall, on a day to be agreed upon, be united into one kingdom by the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Third. For the same purpose it would be fit to propose that the secession to the monarchy and the imperial crown of the said United Kingdom shall continue limited and settled, in the same manner as the imperial crown of the said Great Britain and Ireland now stands limited and settled, according to the existing law, and to the terms of the union between England and Scotland. Fourth. For the same purpose it would be fit to propose that the said United Kingdom be represented in one and the same parliament, to be styled the parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and that such a number of lords, spiritual and temporal, and such a number of members of the House of Commons, as shall be hereafter agreed upon by the acts of the respective parliaments as aforesaid, shall sit and vote in the said parliament on the part of Ireland, and shall be summoned, chosen, and returned in such a manner as shall be fixed by an act of the parliament of Ireland previous to the said union, and that every member hereafter to sit and vote in the said parliament of the United Kingdom shall, until the said parliament shall otherwise provide, take and subscribe the said oaths, and make the same declarations as are required by law to be taken, subscribed, and made by the members of the parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland. Fifth. For the same purpose it would be fit to propose that the churches of England and Ireland and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof shall be preserved as now by law established. Sixth. For the same purpose it would be fit to propose that his Majesty's subjects in Ireland shall at all times be entitled to the same privileges, and be on the same footing in respect of trade and navigation in all ports and places belonging to Great Britain, and in all cases with respect to which treaties shall be made by his Majesty, his heirs or successors, with any foreign power, as his Majesty's subjects in Great Britain, that no duty shall be imposed on the importer export between Great Britain and Ireland of any article now duty-free, and that on the other articles there shall be established for a time to be limited such a moderate rate of equal duties as shall, previous to the Union, be agreed upon and approved by the respective parliaments, subject, after the expiration of such a limited time, to be diminished equally with respect to both kingdoms, but in no case to be increased, that all articles which may at any time hereafter be imported into Great Britain from foreign parts shall be importable through either kingdom into the other, subject to the like duties and regulations, as if the same were imported directly from foreign parts, that where any articles, the growth, produce, or manufacture of either kingdom, are subject to an internal duty in one kingdom, such countervailing duties over and above any duties on import to be fixed as aforesaid, shall be imposed as shall be necessary to prevent any inequality in that respect, and that all matters of trade and commerce, other than the foregoing, and that in such others as may be before the Union be specially agreed upon for the due encouragement of the agriculture and manufacturers of the respective kingdoms, shall remain to be regulated from time to time by the United Parliament. Seventh, for the like purpose it would be fit to propose that the charge arising from the payment of the interests or sinking fund for the reduction of the principle of the debt incurred in either kingdom before the Union, shall continue to be separately defrayed by Great Britain and Ireland respectively, that for a number of years to be limited, the future ordinary expenses of the United Kingdom in peace or war shall be defrayed by Great Britain and Ireland jointly, according to such proportions as shall be established by the respective Parliament's previous to the Union, and that after the expiration of the time to be so limited, the proportion shall not be liable to be varied, except according to such rates and principles as shall be in like manner agreed upon previous to the Union. For the purpose that all laws enforce at the time of the Union, and all the courts of civil or ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the respective kingdoms, shall remain as now by law established within the same, subject only to such alterations or regulations as may, from time to time, as circumstances may appear to the Parliament of the United Kingdom to require. Mr. Pitt, on the passage of these resolutions, proposed and addressed stating that the Commons had proceeded with the utmost attention to the consideration of the important objects recommended in the Royal Message, that they entertained a firm persuasion of the probable benefits of a complete and entire Union between Great Britain and Ireland, founded on equal and liberal principles, that they were therefore induced to lay before His Majesty such propositions as appeared to them to be best calculated to form the basis of such a settlement, leaving it to His wisdom in due time, and in proper manner, to communicate them to the Lords and Commons of Ireland, with whom they would be at all times ready to concur in all such measures as might be found most conducive to the accomplishment of that great and salutary work. On the nineteenth of March, Lord Grenville announced the same resolutions in the Lords, where they were passed after a spirited opposition speech from Lord Holland, and the basis, so far as the King, Lords and Commons of England were concerned, was late. In proroguing the Irish houses on the first of June, Lord Cornwallis alluded to these resolutions, and the anxiety of the King, as the common father of his people, to see both kingdoms united in the enjoyment of the blessings of a free constitution. This prorogation was originally till August, but in August it was extended till January 1800. In this long interval of eight months, the two great parties, the Unionists and the anti-Unionists, were incessantly employed, through the press, in social intercourse, in the grand jury room, in county and city meetings, by correspondence, petitions, addresses, each pushing forward its own views with all the zeal and warmth of men who felt that on one side they were laboring for the country, on the other for the empire. Two incidents of this interval were deeply felt in the Patriot ranks. The death at an advanced age of the venerable Charlemont, the best member of his order Ireland had ever known, and the return to the kingdom and to public life of Lord Charlemont's early friend and protégé, Henry Gratton. He had spent above a year in England, chiefly in Wales and the Isle of Wight. His health all this time had been wretched, his spirits low and despondent, and serious fears were at some moments entertained for his life. He had been forbidden to read or write, or to hear the exciting news of the day. Soothed and cheered by that admirable woman whom Providence had given him, he passed the crisis, but he returned to breathe his native air, greatly enfeebled in body and sorely afflicted in mind. The charge of theatrical affectation of illness has been brought against Gratton by the Unionists, against Gratton who, as to his personal habits, was simplicity itself. It is a charge undeserving of serious contradiction. CHAPTER XIX The last session of the Irish Parliament, the Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland. When the Irish Parliament met for the last time, on the fifteenth of January, eighteen-hundred, the position of the Union questions stood thus. Twenty-seven new peers had been added to the House of Lords, where the castle might therefore reckon with safety on a majority of three to one. Of the Lord's spiritual, only Dr. Marley of Waterford and Dr. Dixon of Down and Conner had the courage to side with their country against their order. In the commons there was an infusion of some fifty new borough members, many of them general officers, such as Needham and Pakenham, all of them nominees of the castle, except Mr. Soren, returned for Blessington, and Mr. Gratton at the last moment for Wicklow. The great constitutional body of the bar had, at a general meeting the previous December, declared against the measure by one-hundred and sixty-two to thirty-three. Another powerful body, the bankers, had petitioned against it, in the interest of the public credit. The Catholic bishops in their annual meeting had taken up a position of neutrality as a body, but under the artful management of Lord Castle Ray, the archbishops of Dublin and Tum, with the Bishop of Cork, and some others, were actively employed in counteracting anti-union movements among the people. Although the vast majority of that people had too much reason to be disgusted and discontented with the legislation of the previous three years, above seven-hundred thousand of them petitioned against the measure, while all the signatures which could be obtained in its favour, by the use of every means at the command of the castle, did not much exceed seven-thousand. The houses were opened on the fifteenth of January. The viceroy, not going down, his message was read in the lords by the Chancellor, and in the commons by the Chief Secretary. It did not directly refer to the basis laid down in England, nor to the subject matter itself, but the leaders of the castle party in both houses took care to supply the deficiency. In the lords, proxies included, Lord Clare had seventy-five to twenty-six for his union address. In the commons, Lord Castle Ray congratulated the country on the improvement which had taken place in public opinion since the former session. He briefly sketched his plan of union, which, while embracing the main propositions of Mr. Pitt, secured the church establishment, bid high for the commercial interests, hinted darkly of emancipation to the Catholics, and gave the proprietors of boroughs to understand that their interest in those convenient constituencies would be capitalized, and a good round sum given to buy out their perpetual patronage. In amendment to the address, Sir Lawrence Parsons moved, seconded by Mr. Savage of Down, that the house would maintain intact the Constitution of eighty-two, and the debate proceeded on this motion. Posenby replied to Castle Ray, Plunkett and Bush were answering for the future judges, Sir George Daley and Luke Fox, Tolar contributed his farce, and Dr. Dugganon his fanaticism. Through the long hours of the winter's night the eloquent war was vigorously maintained. One who was himself a distinguished actor in the struggle, Sir Jonah Barrington, has thus described it. Every mind, he says, was at its stretch, every talent was in its vigor, it was a momentous trial, and never was so general and so deep a sensation felt in any country. Numerous British noblemen and commoners were present at that and the succeeding debate, and they expressed opinions of Irish eloquence which they had never before conceived, nor ever after had the opportunity of appreciating. Every man on that night seemed to be inspired by the subject. Speeches more replete with talent and energy on both sides never were heard in the Irish Senate. It was a vital subject. The sublime, the eloquent, the figurative orator, the plain, the connected, the metaphysical reasoner, the classical, the learned, and the solemn disclaimer, in a secession of speeches so full of energy and enthusiasm, so interesting in their nature, so important in their consequence, created a variety of sensations even in the bosom of a stranger, and could scarcely fail of exciting some sympathy with a nation which was doomed to close forever that school of eloquence which had so long given character and celebrity to Irish talent. At the early dawn a special messenger from Wicklow, just arrived in town, roused Henry Gratton from his bed. He had been elected the previous night for the borough of Wicklow, which cost him twenty four hundred pounds sterling, and this was the bearer of the returning officer's certificate. His friends, weak and feeble as he was, wished him to go down to the house, and his heroic wife seconded their appeals. It was seven o'clock in the morning of the sixteenth when he reached College Green, the scene of his first triumphs twenty years before. Mr. Egan, one of the staunchest anti-unionists, was at the moment, on some rumor probably of his approach, apostrophizing warmly the father of the Constitution of 82, when that striking apparition appeared at the bar. Worn and emaciated beyond description, he appeared leaning on two of his friends, Arthur Moore and W. B. Posenby. He wore his volunteer uniform, blue with red facings, and advanced to the table where he removed his cock-tat, bowed to the speaker, and took the oaths. After Mr. Egan had concluded, he begged permission from his seat beside Plunkett to address the house sitting, which was granted, and then in a discourse of two hours duration, full of his ancient fire and vigor, he asserted once again, by the divine right of intellect, his title to be considered the first commoner of given. Gifted men were not rare in that assembly, but the inspiration of the heart, the uncontrollable utterance of a supreme spirit, not less than the extraordinary faculty of condensation, in which, perhaps, he has never had a superior in our language, gave the gratin of 1800 the same preeminence among his co-temporaries that was conceded to the gratin of 1782. After eighteen hours discussion the division was taken, when the result of the long recess was clearly seen, for the amendment there appeared ninety-six, for the address one hundred and thirty-eight members. The union majority, therefore, was forty-two. It was apparent from that moment that the representation of the people in Parliament had been effectually corrupted, that that assembly was no longer the safeguard of the liberties of the people. Other ministerial majorities confirmed this impression. A measure enabled ten thousand of the Irish militia to enter the regular army, and to substitute English militia in their stead, followed, an inquiry into outrages committed by the sheriff and military in King's County was voted down. A similar motion, somewhat later, in relation to officials in Tipperary met the same fate. On the fifth of February a formal message proposing a basis of union was received from his Excellency, and debated for twenty consecutive hours, from four o'clock of one day till twelve of the next. Gratton, Plunkett, Parnell, Posenby, Soren were, as always, eloquent and able, but again the division told for the minister one hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventeen, majority forty-three. On the seventeenth of February the House went into committee on the proposed Articles of Union, and the speaker, John Foster, being now on the floor, addressed the House with great ability in review of Mr. Pitt's recent union speech, which he designated a paltry production. But again a majority mustard at the nod of the minister one hundred and sixty one to one hundred and forty, a few not fully committed showing some last faint spark of independence. It was on this occasion that Mr. Corey, Chancellor of the Exchequer, member for Neury, made for the third or fourth time that session an attack on Gratton, which brought out on the instant that famous Philippic against Corey, unequaled in our language, for its well-suppressed passion and finally condensed denunciation. A duel followed as soon as there was sufficient light. The Chancellor was wounded, after which the castle-ray tactics of fighting down the opposition received an immediate and lasting check. End of Chapter 19 Part 1 Read by Cibella Denton For more free audiobooks or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Chapter 19 Part 2 of Popular History of Ireland Book 11 by Thomas Darcy McGee Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain Last session of the Irish Parliament The Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland Throughout the months of February and March, with an occasional adjournment, the constitutional battle was fought on every point permitted by the forms of the House. On the twenty-fifth of March, the committee, after another powerful speech from the speaker, finally reported the resolutions which were passed by 154 to 107, a majority of 47. The Houses then adjourned for six weeks to allow time for corresponding action to be taken in England. There was little difficulty in carrying the measure. In the upper house, Lords Darby, Holland and King only opposed it. In the lower, Sheridan, Tierney, Gray and Lawrence mustered on a division thirty votes against Pitts 206. On the twenty-first of May, in the Irish Commons, Lord Casselray obtained leave to bring in the Union Bill by 160 to 100. On the seventh of June, the final passage of the measure was affected. That closing scene has been often described, but never so graphically, as by the diamond pen of Jonah Barrington. The galleries were full, but the change was lamentable. They were no longer crowded with those who had been accustomed to witness the eloquence and to animate the debates of that devoted assembly. A monotonous and melancholy murmur ran through the benches, scarcely a word was exchanged amongst the members, nobody seemed at ease, no cheerfulness was apparent, and the ordinary business for a short time proceeded in the usual manner. At length the expected moment arrived. The order of the day for the third reading of the Bill for a Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland was moved by Lord Casselray. Unvaried, tame, cold-blooded, the words seemed frozen as they issued from his lips, and as if a simple citizen of the world he seemed to have no sensation on the subject. At that moment he had no country, no God but his ambition. He made his motion and resumed his seat with the utmost composure and indifference. Confused murmurs again ran through the house. It was visibly affected. Every character in a moment seemed involuntarily rushing to its index. Some pale, some flushed, some agitated. There were few countenances to which the heart did not dispatch some messenger. Several members withdrew before the question could be repeated, and an awful, momentary silence succeeded their departure. The speaker rose slowly from that chair which had been the proud source of his honors and of his high character. For a moment he resumed his seat, but the strength of his mind sustained him in his duty, though his struggle was apparent. With that dignity which never failed to signalize his official actions, he held up the bill for a moment in silence. He looked steadily around him on the last agony of the expiring Parliament. He at length repeated in an emphatic tone, as many as are of opinion that this bill do past say, I. The affirmative was languid but indisputable. Another momentary pause ensued. Again his lips seemed to decline their office. At length, with an eye averted from the object he hated, he proclaimed, with a subdued voice, the eyes have it. The fatal sentence was now pronounced. For an instant he stood statue-like, then indignantly and with disgust, flung the bill upon the table, and sank into his chair with an exhausted spirit. An independent country was thus degraded into a province. Ireland, as a nation, was extinguished. The final division in the commons was one hundred and fifty-three to eighty-eight, nearly sixty members absenting themselves, and in the lords seventy-six to seventeen. In England all the stages were passed in July, and on the second of August, the anniversary of the king's accession, the royal assent was given to the twofold legislation, which declared the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland one and inseparable. By the provisions of this statute, compact or treaty, the sovereignty of the United Kingdom was to follow the order of the act of secession. The Irish peerage was to be reduced by the filling of one vacancy for every three deaths, to the number of one hundred. From among these twenty-eight representative peers were to be elected for life, and four spiritual lords to sit in secession. The number of Irish representatives in the Imperial Parliament was fixed at one hundred, increasing to one hundred and five. The churches of England and Ireland were united like the kingdoms, and declared to be one in doctrine and discipline. The dead of Ireland, which was less than four million pounds in seventeen ninety-seven, increased to fourteen million pounds in ninety-nine, and had risen to nearly seventeen million pounds in eighteen-o-one, was to be alone chargeable to Ireland, whose proportionate share of general taxation was then estimated at two-seventh-tenths of that of the United Kingdom. The courts of law, the Privy Council, and the Vice Royalty were to remain at Dublin, the Cenotaph, and the shadows of departed nationality. On the first day of January, eighteen-o-one, in accordance with this great constitutional change, a new imperial standard was run up on the London Tower, Edinburgh Castle, and Dublin Castle. It was formed of the three crosses of St. Patrick, St. Andrew, and St. George, and is that popularly known to us as the Union Jack. The fleur-de-lis and the word France were struck from the royal title, which was settled by proclamation to consist henceforth of the words Degratia, Britannarium Rex, Fidei Defensor. The foul means by which this counter-revolution was accomplished have perhaps been already sufficiently indicated. It may be necessary, however, in order to account for the continued hostility of the Irish people to the measure, after more than sixty years' experience of its results, to recapitulate them very briefly. Of all who voted for the Union in both houses, it was said that only six or seven were known to have done so on conviction. Great borough proprietors, like Lord Elie and Lord Shannon, received as much as forty-five thousand pounds sterling in compensation for their loss of patronage, while proprietors of single seats received fifteen thousand pounds. That the majority was avowedly purchased in both houses is no longer matter of inference, nay, that some of them were purchased twice over is now well known. Lord Carasford, an active partisan of the measure writing in February eighteen-hundred to his friend the Marquis of Buckingham, frankly says, the majority, which has been bought at an enormous price, must be bought over again, perhaps more than once, before all the details can be gone through. His lordship himself, and the order to which he belonged, and those who aspired to enter it, were it must be added among the most insatiable of these purchased supporters. The Dublin Gazette for July eighteen-hundred announced not less than sixteen new parishes, and the same publication for the last week of the year contained a fresh list of twenty-six others. Forty-two creations in six months was a stretch of prerogative far beyond the most arbitrary of the stewards or tutors, and forms one not of the least unanswerable evidences of the utterly corrupt considerations which secured the support of the Irish majority in both houses. It was impossible that a people like the Irish, disinterested and unselfish to a fault, should ever come to respect a compact brought about by such means and influences as these. Had, however, the Union, vile as were the means by which it was accomplished, proved to the real benefit of the country, had equal civil and religious rights been freely and at once extended to the people of the lesser kingdom, there is no reason to doubt that the measure would have become popular in time, and the vices of the old system be better remembered than its benefits, real or imaginary. But the Union was never utilized for Ireland. It proved in reality what Samuel Johnson had predicted when spoken of in his day, Do not unite with us, sir, said the gruff old moralist to an Irish acquaintance. It would be the Union of the shark with his prey. We should unite with you only to destroy you. In glancing backward over the long political connection of Ireland and England, we mark four great epics. The Anglo-Norman invasion in 1169, the Statute of Kilkenny, decreeing eternal separation between the races, the English Pale and the Irish enemy, 1367, the Union of the Crowns in 1541, and the Legislative Union in 1801. One more cardinal event remains to be recorded, the Emancipation of the Catholics in 1829. End of Chapter 19, Part 2. End of a Popular History of Ireland, Book 11 by Thomas Darcy McGee, read by Cibella Denton in March 2009 in Carrollton, Georgia. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org.