treat for the signal of charge, and shrinking, as they conceived, from the advance of fresh numbers, fled with precipitation in a southerly direction from the town, while the British were as rapidly evacuating it on the north. This unfortunate circumstance led to the total defeat of the United army. A British regiment of cavalry, the 22d light dragoons, who had borne no active part in the operations of the day, charged the flying troops of Munroe, while the infantry, recovering from their panic, joined in the pursuit. Munroe halted on the hill of Ednevady, but being nearly surrounded by the enemy, he retreated with his last division, scarcely mustering 150 men. The attack of Prosperous, a town in the county of Kildare, was made an hour after midnight on the 23d of May, 1798, by a large body of United men, supposed to be conducted by Dr. John Esmond. The garrison was assailed by surprise-the barrack was fired-and the greater number of the city of Cork militia, with their commander, perished in the flames, and by the pikes of the United men; 28 also of a Welsh regiment of cavalry, styled Ancient Britons, were slaughtered on this occasion, and a few were made prisoners. The attack of Naas an hour and a half after that of Prosperous, was made by nearly 1000 men, under the conduct of a chief named Reynolds. Possessing themselves of all the avenues, they made a general assault in almost every direction. Being repulsed in their attack on the jail, and being unable to make an impression on the troops, they fled on all sides, after two hours and a half of irregular firing, and were pursued with slaughter by the cavalry of the king's forces. Several officers and privates were slain. Of the United men, about 200 were killed in the streets, and a greater number were slaughtered on the roads and

fields in the pursuit. The boldness of the United men in Leinster and Munster, yielding so little on the whole amount, that many acts of hostility were committed against the royalists, by men assembled in large numbers; an instance of which has been thought worthy of notice in the report of the secret committee of the House of Lords: That a body of men amounting to about 800, on horseback, had entered the town of Cahir, in the county of Tipperary, openly in the day, and held possession of it until they collected all the arms and ammunition which they could find, after a regular search through all the houses.

Thomas Fitzgerald, high sheriff of Tipperary, seized at Clonmel a gentleman of the name of Wright, caused 500 lashes to be inflicted on him, and confined him several days without permitting his wounds to be dressed, so that his recovery from such a state of torture and laceration could hardly be expected. In an action of damages, brought by Mr. Wright against this magistrate, the innocence of the plaintiff appeared so manifest, that the defendant was condemned to pay 500 pounds to his prosecutor. On the 26th of May, a large body of United men. assembled on the hill of Tara, in the county Meath, situated 18 miles northward of Dublin, was completely routed, with the slaughter, it is said, of 1150 of their men, found dead on the field of battle, together with two of their generals, and many inferior officers. The loss of the victorious party was acknowledged to be very great. The position of this hill, insulated by a widely surrounding plain, is well adapted for defence against an attacking foe, but ill for escape from victorious cavalry, from whose pursuit they could be protected only by the enclosures of the fields, so that many doubt

less were killed or wounded in their retreat. On the 29th, a little after 11 o'clock in the morning, a body of the United army posted themselves in the village of Rathangan, county of Kildare, 29 miles west of Dublin, fortified their post with chains across the streets, was dislodged, and about 60 of them killed, by a party under the command of Lieutenant-colonel Longfield, of the Cork militia, who advanced against the town with his artillery, infantry, and cavalry. The loss on the British side was inconsiderable, as the United men gave way on the fifth or sixth discharge of their cannon. In the action at Kilcullen, at 7 in the morning, about 600 men attacked General Dundas, who lost his colonel, a number of subaltern officers, and privates, besides many mortally wounded. About 2000 on Knockawin Hill, surrendered their arms to General Dundas, on condition of retiring to their homes, and liberating Colonel Perkins. Major-general Sir James Duff, hearing of this body of men being at Gibbetrath, on the Curragh of Kildare, ready to surrender their arms; when the troops advanced near the United men to receive their arms, one of them incautiously fired his gun in the air; the soldiers, pretending this an act of hostility, fired on them, when the people fled, and were pursued with unrelenting slaughter by the fencible cavalry, denominated Lord Jocelyn's Fox-hunters. Above 700 of the people fell upon this occasion, and a far greater number would have shared their fate, if a retreat had not been sounded with all possible dispatch, agreeably to the instructions of General Dundas, who sent an express from his quarters at Kilcullen, to prevent such an accident. In the populous town of Drogheda, the unfortunate Bergen was tortured to death. He was an honest, upright citizen, and a man of unimpeachable moral character. He was seized on by those vampires, and in the most public street, stripped of his clothes, placed in a horizontal position on a cart, and torn with the cat-o'-nine-tails, long after the vital spark was extinct. The alleged pretence for the perpetration of this horrid outrage was, that a small gold ring had been discovered on his finger, bearing a national device, the shamrock of his unfortunate country.

APPENDIX.

No. I.

The speech of Edward Sweetman, captain of a late independent company, at a meeting of the freeholders of the county of Wexford, convened by the sheriff, on September 22, 1792, to take into consideration" Mr. Edward Byrne's letter, recommending a plan of delegation to the Catholics of Ireland, in order to prepare an humble petition to the legislature.”

MR. SHERIFF-I rise with a diffidence proceeding from the magnitude and awfulness of the subject, not from respect to the resolutions I have heard, which I deem exceptionable in every part; a circunstance which the silence of those who bring them forward would seem to acknowledge. I implore your attention while I deliver some thoughts, which are the fruit of my best researches, my honester feelings, and the unextinguishable love I bear this ill-fated country. I shall not consider the language or grammar of Mr. Byrne's letter-it is beneath the dignity of this meeting, and this great question, to descend to an altercation with inquisitors of words and dissectors of syllables: I shall enter into the subject at large, and speak to the scope and object of the letter, as it affects Ireland, and as it is the expression of Catholic hopes and desires. You will not expect brilliant remarks and exquisite deductions of reasoning from a man born a victim to the popery laws, and driven at an early period into foreign climes, for prohibited, imperfect education, and scanty bread. I shall speak like a soldier, with candor and with frankness, yet

with respect and fear of offending, unmoved by slander, uninfluenced by any thing but truth. Truth is libel, faction, sedition, and treason, in the eyes of those who live by its opposite; but it is the only criterion of honesty, the only basis of lasting settlement to your country, and every lover of it should utter it with courage, and hear it with patience. I belong to no party; I am an Irishman; I care as little for those who are in as for those who are out: I am the humble but the sincere and unbought advocate of a wo-worn people. I therefore conjure you to hear me, and forgive my inaccuracies and inexperience in speaking. I know that honored names, illustrious patriots, characters which Ireland must ever revere and love, men who led her to freedom and to fame— one of whom (Mr. Ogle) I behold in this assembly, with many mixed sensations-and who won the principle of prosperity from our common tyrants, a principle which remains a dead letter without the union of your people; I know, I say, that some of these differ in opinion with the persons whom I take to be the best and most enlightened friends of Ireland: I know this, and I lament it; and in it I lament the deplorable inconsistency of human nature, with the same poignancy that I lament the unaccountable but most certain fact, that the wise, the virtuous, the philosophic, the magnanimous Julian was a persecutor. In the face of those men whom I revere, as I hope I should in the face of death, I venture to stand forward the advocate of this woworn people, because I think it is for the honor of the Irish crown, for the credit and consistency of Protestantism, for the prosperity and fame of your country, that British privileges should be restored to all who are the supporters of British and Irish freedom. I wish for equal fate and equal freedom to