confiscation of estates. Full accounts had been drawn of the lands and their owners, and lists made of those who were to be sacrificed. "The most dangerous man in Ireland was Emmet, from his zeal, his manners, his address, his eloquence, his ability, and his bloodthirstiness." 1 These accounts tallied too exactly with what was known already for any doubts to be entertained of the truth of them. The Viceroy and Council were sitting over a loaded mine, and for all that they could tell the match might be already smouldering which would explode it. Abercrombie had done irreparable mischief. The Viceroy believed himself entitled to hope that he was now exerting himself in earnest, and might not even yet be too late. Some influence was unhappily at work on Abercrombie behind the scenes, which had enchanted him once more in the same fatal irresolution. He went South, but instead of disarming the people he contented himself with issuing orders that the arms were to be brought in and delivered up within ten days. After wasting a fortnight in inactivity, when time was of all things most precious, he returned to Dublin, to tell the Viceroy that although no pikes or muskets had yet been surrendered, he was convinced that they would be surrendered. His unwillingness had returned to employ the soldiers at all. "His report to me," Camden said, in sending an account to Portland of his extraordinary conduct," was intermixed with observations on the impolicy of allowing the military to act without waiting for the civil magistrate, and of his opinion of the advantage of resorting to the 1 Informations, April 2. civil power, with which political remarks it is unnecessary that I should trouble you.” 1 Camden could no longer have desired to retain a Commander-in-Chief on whom he could rely so little as General Abercrombie. He did, however, once more, though to no purpose, invite him to remain. When he refused he was pressed no further; and after having enormously aggravated every element of danger in the country, he left Ireland, and the command devolved on General Lake. "Sir Ralph's delay and long notice has done nothing but mischief," Camden wrote as soon as he was gone. "It has cooled the ardor of the well-affected country gentlemen. No arms have been brought in, and now the general officers in command are themselves hesitating. At the assizes in Kildare the juries in general did their duty, but there appeared no good disposition among the Catholics, and the juries which did not act with propriety were of that persuasion. The appearance is of the contest becoming a religious one. All means shall be used to avert this danger, but the alarms of the Protestants are so great, and the hopes of the Catholics are so strong, that it is difficult to repress the violence of the first or make any impression on the latter." 2 1 "Camden to Portland, April 20." — S. P. O. SECTION V. STUDENTS of later Irish history are familiar with the ferocious cruelties inflicted by General Lake's army on the Irish peasantry in the spring of 1798, the free quarters, the burnt villages, the pitch-caps, the triangle, and the lash. To these outrages it has pleased the Irish to attribute the insurrection. England, ever stern in extremities, ever penitent when the danger is over, and inclined to shift the blame upon her instruments, has allowed this legend, like so many others, to pass unrefuted, and has permitted one more illusion to swell the volume of Ireland's imaginary wrongs. An attention to dates would have sufficed to reduce the charge to modest dimensions. Lake did not take the command-in-chief till the 23d of April. On the 24th of May the rebellion burst. The atrocities which are supposed to have caused it were therefore limited to a single month. The preceding history has been written in vain if it be now necessary to insist that the disarming of the South was no measure of gratuitous severity. For seven years the whole of Ireland had been deliberately preparing for revolt. An invisible authority ruled over the four provinces, with a code of laws enforced. by dagger, pike, pistol, and houghing-knife. had formed an army, negotiated an alliance, and conspired to bring to its assistance the deadliest enemies of England. Its regiments were dispersed over It the whole country, ready at any moment for action, yet imperceptible to the outward eye. The officers were younger brothers, professional men, adventurers, more or less educated, claiming the status of gentlemen, some of them men of fortune, and even of noble family. The rank-and-file were persons pursuing externally their quiet callings as tradesmen, artisans, clerks, farmers, or laborers. They had concealed depôts of arms ready to be snatched at a moment's notice, whether the object was to murder a magistrate or to take the field against the army of the Sovereign. The long forbearance of the Government had shaken the confidence of the troops and of the respectable inhabitants, who believed themselves deserted. Subtle influences were at work poisoning the loyalty of the soldiers. Things had come to such a point that there was scarce a country-house in any corner of Ireland where a Protestant family could go to rest without a sense that before morning they might be awakened by the yells of assassins. The servants who waited on them at table, the laborers who worked in their fields or gardens, might, for all they could tell, be in secret league for their destruction. Well-disposed at heart they might be, but their wills were under the spell of the general terror; and any magistrate whose loyalty was conspicuous knew that he was doing his duty to his country at the risk of his own and children's lives. The Irish gentry were looking upon themselves as doomed. The English press was ringing with execrations against them. They saw peers and statesmen going into the witness-box, to claim identity of opinion with the avowed advocate of assassination. The responsible governor of Ireland would have shown a Of craven shrinking from the first elements of his obligations if at such a moment he had allowed an impression to go abroad that he dared not grapple with the deally organization which was thus openly setting law at defiance. The ten days weakly granted by Abercrombie were allowed to expire, and then, as not a pike had been surrendered, General Lake set about his work. He had to deal with a temper of which the natural stubbornness was encouraged by the impression that the Castle Government would not be supported by the power of England. British troops he had but a handful. The force on which he had to rely to carry out his orders consisted mainly of the loyal Irish Yeomanry, men whose friends had been murdered, who had themselves been marked for murder, whose hands had for years been tied by a law which gave them no protection, while to their enemies it was a convenient shield. There was little cause of surprise if now at last, when they were permitted to show a people who had laughed at courts of justice that there were other modes by which they could be compelled into obedience, the poison-fangs were not drawn with the gentlest hand. It is true that during three weeks regiments were sent to live at free quarters in districts where the inhabitants combined to resist the disarmament. It is true that when other means failed the lash was freely used to compel disclosures, though only where sure and certain information had led the officers to know that there was something to be disclosed. It is true, also, that the lash proved the most efficacious of persuasives, that under its pressure the labors of the Revolutionary Committee were rendered futile, that the army of insurrection was deprived of half its |