"The second item was scarcely less disgusting. The Freeman's Journal was a patriotic print, and advocated the popular cause, and its proprietor earned blood-money by hunting down the unfortunate Lord Edward Fitzgerald !" "Truth is stranger than fiction", however; and the Freeman's Journal, when owned by Higgins, was not only the open and notorious organ of the then corrupt government, but the most violent assailant of the popular party in Ireland. The Times, noticing the United Irishmen, said: "They believed themselves to be embarked in a noble cause, and were cheered on the path that led to martyrdom by the spirit-stirring effusions of a press which felt their wrongs, shared their sentiments, and deplored their misfortunes. Alas! the press that encouraged was no more free from the influence of government than the advocate who defended them. Francis Higgins, proprietor of the Freeman's Journal, was the person who procured all the intelligence about Lord. Edward Fitzgerald. When we reflect that the Freeman's Journal was a favourite organ of the United Irishmen,* that in that capacity it must have received 66 * The organ of the United Irishmen was the Press; and Higgins, who then published a tri-weekly paper, came out every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, with his "thundering" denunciations of the "disaffected" prints of the "turbulent traitors" and "malign incendiaries", who conspired with "French agents" to seduce Higgins's countrymen" into treasonable plots against the "able, wise, and clement" government of the day. Here is the opening of a Higgins leader :"It is with the most heartfelt regret that we find the lenity which has been extended to the abettors of treason and rebellion has had no permanent effect, and that the temporary obedience to the laws which it produced has proceeded more from fear and inability to do mischief than from a sense of gratitude. The Those wretched remains of United Irishmen, worked on by the arts of incendiaries and French agents. violence and outrages of these deluded wretches can have but a much secret and dangerous information, and that all this information was already bargained for and sold to the Irish government before it was given, we can appreciate at once the refinement of its policy, and the snares and pitfalls among which the path of an Irish conspirator is laid". The misapprehension under which the paragraphs of the Times and Athenæum were written, found a prompt echo in the Mail, Nation, Post, and other influential Irish journals. The Nation gave it to be understood that Higgins, having become a secret traitor to his party, published "next morning thundering articles against the scoundrels who betrayed the illustrious Patriot"; and in a subsequent article added: "What fouler treachery was ever practised than the subornation of the journals and the writers in whom the people placed a mistaken confidence, whereby the unsuspecting victims were made to cram a mine for their own destruction !" These statements excited a considerable sensation. The Irish provincial press reiterated them, and locally fanned the flame. The Meath People, in an article headed, "Who does the government work?" after alluding to Higgins, said: "Shame, shame for ever on the recreant who had patriotism on his pen point, and treason to the country in his heart!" I felt that this statement, if unrefuted, would soon find its way into the permanent page of Irish and European history. Having ascertained, on inquiry, the groundlessness very short-lived existence, as, fortunately, we have in this country troops sufficient to crush any renewed effort at rebellion. Major Sirr discovered a brace of loaded pistols, some powder, and a pike of the revolutionary description, such as were used by the rebels in their atrocities. By this day's search another treasonable conspiracy has been happily developed". of the charge of duplicity imputed to the Freeman's Journal in 1798; and believing that those more legitimately concerned were cognizant to the same extent, I looked forward, for many days, to some editorial statement which would have the effect of dispelling the erroneous impression. But I found, that so confidently had this charge of duplicity against the Freeman been rung, that its present editors had themselves begun to regard it as not wholly unfounded. A short letter from me, explanatory of the real facts, was therefore gladly accepted by the conductor of the Freeman's Journal, who introduced it in the following words, less by an observation too complimentary to me: "We publish to-day a most interesting letter from William John Fitz-Patrick. The sad fate of the gallant Lord Edward excited peculiar and permanent interest in the minds of all who prized chivalry and patriotism; and when the Cornwallis papers disclosed the name of the government agent who had tracked the noble chief to his doom, a host of reviewers, ignorant of the history of the time, and anxious only to cast a slur on the patriots of a by-gone century, wrote beautiful romances about the betrayer of Lord Edward. The reviewers, without exception, have represented Higgins as the confidant of the United Irishmen-as a 'patriotic' journalist, who sustained the popular party with his pen, and sold them for Castle gold. Mr. Fitzpatrick dissipates the romance by showing who and what Higgins was—that he was the public and undisguised agent of the English government-that his journal, instead of being 'patriotic', or even friendly to the United Irishmen, was the constant vehicle of the most virulent assaults upon their character and motives-that he was the ally and friend of the notorious John Scott-that, as a journalist, he was the panegyrist of the notorious Sirr. and his colleague, Swan-and that he never mentioned the name of an Irish patriot-of Lord Edward, O'Connor, Teeling, or their friends-without some such insulting prefix as 'traitor', 'wretch', 'conspirator', 'incendiary', while the government that stimulated the revolt, in order to carry the Union, is lauded as 'able', 'wise', 'humane', and 'lenient'! These events are now more than half a century old; but, though nearly two generations have passed away since Higgins received his blood-money, it is, as justly remarked by Mr. Fitzpatrick, gratifying to have direct evidence that the many high-minded and honourable men who were, from time to time, suspected for treachery to their chief, were innocent of his blood". Having, in the letter thus referred to by the Freeman, glanced rapidly at a few of the more startling incidents in the life of the once famous, but long forgotten "Sham Squire", which elicited expressions of surprise, and even of incredulity, I conceived that I was called upon to give his history more in detail, and with a larger array of authorities than I had previously leisure or space to bring forward. From the original object of this book I have in the present edition wandered, by pressing into the mosaic many curious morceaux illustrative of the history of the time, while in the appendix will be found some interesting memorabilia, which could not, without injury to artistic effect, appear in the text. Kilmacud Manor, Stillorgan, THE SHAM SQUIRE. CHAPTER I. Early Struggles and Stratagems of the Sham Squire.-How to catch an Heiress.-Judge Robinson.-John Philpot Curran.The Black Dog Prison. Honesty not always the best policy!-Uprise of the Sham Squire.-Lord Chief Justice Clonmel.-Irish Administrations of Lord Temple and the Duke of Rutland. IN the year of our Lord 1756, a bare-legged boy with cunning eyes might be seen carrying pewter quarts in Fishamble Street,* Dublin, then a popular locality, owing to the continual ridottos, concerts, and feats of magic, which made the old Music Hall an object of attraction. This barelegged boy became the subsequently notorious Justice Higgins, or as he was more frequently styled, the Sham Squire. Fishamble Street, as the scene of his debut, is mentioned in a file of the Dublin Evening Post for 1789; and this account we find corroborated by a traditional anecdote which Mr. R- of Dublin has communicated, on the authority of his late grandmother, who often told him how she remembered her father, a provision merchant in Fishamble Street, employing Higgins, then a bare-footed lad, to sweep the flags in front of his door. * Dublin Evening Post, No. 1789. |