resolutions in favuor of Emancipation and Reform, and named a permanent committee.

This, doubtless, assisted the carrying of the Relief Bill; but it made the ministry resolve to crush the Protestants, while it conciliated the Catholics. The reply of the United Irishmen to its proclamation was prosecuted; another proclamation, forbidding military societies, drilling, and the whole machinery of the Volunteers, without naming them, was issued on the 11th March, and the same Parliament which passed the Relief Bill, passed the Alien Act,-the Militia, Foreign Correspondence, Gunpowder and Convention Acts-in fact, a full code of coercion.

Now the struggle became serious. Many, perhaps a majority of the United Irishmen turned their thoughts to force; and as Keogh and the leading Catholics were United, such a tendency was more formidable than even the anger of the Volunteers had been.

We have probably said enough to enable the reader, though otherwise ignorant of the history of the time, to understand the state of affairs when Curran's speeches for the United Irishmen commenced. The first of these speeches was delivered at the bar of the King's Bench, on the 29th January, 1794, for Archibald Hamilton Rowan.

We have stated that the United Irish Society had answered the government proclamation against seditious meetings. That answer was written by Dr. Drennan, and was a most brilliant and frantic document. Had the people been ready for it, nothing could have been better, otherwise it was most mischievous. It will be found at page 161. Rowan, the chairman when the address was voted, was prosecuted for this as a libel, as also was Drennan. Drennan was acquitted on a point of form. We possess only one fragment of Curran's defence of him; but the speech for Rowan was amply and well reported. It bears every mark of labour; and yet if we were to trust the back of Curran's brief on the occasion, never was a speech more completely improvised. "Liberty of the Press," Universal Emancipation," and half a dozen sentences besides are written carelessly along it. They may, however, have been only marks to recal a prepared oration. The opening of the speech is too exactly like Cicero's exordium in Milo's case not to have been an imitation; and the ever memorable passage on Universal Emancipation connot claim originality of thought, though it is certainly unrivalled in rhetorical finish. But his vindication of the Volunteers (beginning at p. 171), and the liberty of the press (from p. 190), are all his own, and unapproached by any thing in Cicero or Erskine.

Rowan was convicted, and heavily sentenced, but he escaped to France.* The agitation continued. The United Irish Society was changed into a secret and secretly organized body, and it made much progress. The Catholics still laboured; France had conquered; and her government aroused by the Sans-Cullottes resolutions of Belfast, and by the suggestions of some Irish

• Drummond's Life of Rowan is not a useless nor disagreeable book; but that is all to be said of it.

patriots, bethought herself of assisting the discontented Irish to effect a separation. Accordingly the Rev. William Jackson was sent there as an agent, and put himself in communication with Tone. But he was betrayed by one Cockayne, arrested and arraigned for treason. Curran was his leading counsel, but he needed none. He died in the dock of arsenic he had taken the night before.

Another glimmer of conciliation broke in. Lord Fitzwilliam came here early in 1795, with, 'twas said, a carte-blanche to carry Emancipation and Reform, and expel the undertakers and ascendancy party from office. Curran was to have been Solicitor-General. Had this policy been carried out, we would have been saved the horrors of 1798, and the conquest of 1800. Perchance the United Irish party would have continued their labours, and a war would have followed; but it would have been a national, not a civil war, and its result would have been separation, not provincialism. Lord Fitzwilliam was not rapid enough; he allowed the Beresfords to rally their friends, and when he came to dismiss one of them, whom he could not retain consistently with his policy, he was met by a Court opposition, having the bigot and lunatic King at its head. Beresford was kept in Fitzwilliam recalled-Emancipation and Reform spurned, and coercion resumed.

This was a triumph for the separation party. An Irish Republic now became the only object of the United Irish; and such being the case, the bulk of the Presbyterians of Down, Antrim, and Tyrone joined, as did multitudes of Protestants and Catholics in Leinster. At this time the Catholics of the North were Defenders or Ribbonmen. Both sides made ready for the worst. "The Union" was turned into a military confederation. An Insurrection Act passed, making it death for any one to take an oath of association; another allowing the Lord Lieutenant to proclaim counties, in which case no one could go out at night; and magistrates obtained the power of breaking into houses, and transporting to the navy all persons whom they suspected. Other acts, granting indemnity for magistrates guilty of any illegailty-giving the Lord Lieutenant the power of arrest without bail-licensing the introduction of foreign troops, and establishing the Yeomanry Corps,-followed in quick succession.

Government were in possession of information from 1786 out; but they thought it more politic to wait until they could ruin every one likely to join. But they were near over-leaping. Tone had gone to America after Jackson's arrest, and thence he went to France. With only a few guineas, a few introductions, and but little French, so transcendent were his abilities and zeal, that he brought a noble French fleet, and sixteen thousand veterans, with Hoche at their head, out of Brest, in 1796. Had Hoche's frigate Christmassed, as Tone's ship did, in Bantry Bay, in 1796, the United Directory would have been the Irish Ministry in a month after. Again, in 1797, the Militia offered to seize Dublin, and were forbidden, Long delay and long coercion disarmed and disunited the people, and the insurrection of the 23rd of May, 1798, was partial and ineffective.

During all this time, Curran was engaged for the United Irish prisoners in every great case. The first regularly reported speech is that made in defence of Finnerty, on the 22nd of December, 1797.

To enable the reader to understand this consummate oration, we must premise some facts.

In September, 1796, William Orr, a Presbyterian farmer, was arrested, with many others, as a United Irishman, but was not tried till the 16th September, 1797. One of the witnesses against him was afterwards proved to have perjured himself; and some of the jurymen, wearied by long disagreement, had got drunk in their room, and in this state brought in the verdict of "Guilty." Affidavits of the fact of drunkenness were made by three jurors next day, upon which Curran vainly moved an arrest of judgment. All the facts were laid before Government; yet, after two or three cruel respites, Orr was hanged at Carrickfergus, on the 14th October. He was a fine, handsome, gallant man— died true to his character and his country; and over his grave William Drennan uttered a lament of the most fiery beauty. No wonder he was looked on as a martyr. His name appeared on medals and flags, and in every patriot song; and, even in 1798, John Sheares could find no more forcible way of ending his stern proclamation than the words, "Remember Orr." A letter was published in the Press, the noble organ of the Union, addressed to Lord Camden, and narrating Orr's fate with much pathos and invective. The letter was signed "MARCUS," and was written by a Mr. Deane Swift.

Finnerty, the printer of the Press, was indicted for this as a libel.

Curran defended him in a speech, which he himself preferred to any of his other speeches. He only got his brief a "few minutes before the cause commenced;" yet he never made an abler, nor did any other advocate ever make so able, a speech.

His account of the duties of the public writer deserves to be the very Bible of the press, it so heroically directs and so wisely justifies them; and his narrative of Orr's fate goes on so tenderly, so gently, so grandly, that one hardly knows whether to admire its sagacity, pause upon its lavish beauties, or weep over its sorrows. It is the lament of an angel.

"1798" came that type of terror; and yet Curran's first effort in that year was crowned with success, and smiles, and pleasant greetings, and the thunders of the people followed the advocate home. Finney, and fifteen others, were indicted for High Treason. The chief witness was James O'Brien, a man, how, by his own confession, had taken the United Oath, and had been guilty of many less equivocal crimes. Curran's cross-examination of him was equalled by his after address to the jury:-He tore O'Brien to pieces on the table; he put him together again, an image of the foulest treachery, of the fiercest love of blood, and of the most loathsome perjury. The jury refused to convict on the oath of this coiner and stabber, who came there to assassinate men with the word of God, and they acquitted the prisoners. O'Brien was still dear to the Castle, and continued in its pay; but about two years after, he committed a murder so

It appears in the indictment, page 333.

d

indiscreetly, that he could not be any longer shielded. He was tried; and though Curran, who prosecuted, made a very temperate speech, he was found guilty, and hanged.

Alas! Curran prevailed no more. The Government would not go back, nor the people either. The Yeomanry consisted of the Tory gentry and their dependants. They were undisciplined and unprincipled; and not being checked by the people, who waited for command, they soon became a legal banditti, who brought local knowledge and old feelings to aid their crimes. No villany but was perpetrated by them. The house of whomsoever any of them disliked or suspected was surrounded at night :-If he were not at home it was burned; if found, he might consider himself lucky in being sent to serve in the navy, after being whipped or pitch-capped, instead of being half-hanged or whole-hanged, as the leisure or facilities of the officer allowed.

Still, still, still the Directory waited for foreign aid!—and waited in vain. One victory would have brought them more arms and officers from abroad or at home than any negotiation.

The Directory consisted of Thomas Emmet, Arthur O'Connor, Oliver Bond, Doctor Mac Nevin, and Richard M'Cormick. Lord Edward was named Commander-in-Chief; and at length in March, in 1798, a rising was determined on, chiefly at the wish of Lord Edward, for Thomas Emmet wished to wait till the arrival of French troops, or, at least, of French officers.*

We must refer the reader to Doctor Madden's comprehensive work for the minutiæ of the events that followed. Suffice it here, that, on the 12th of March, fourteen United Delegates met at Oliver Bond's house, 13, Bridge-street, Dublin, and were arrested there on the information of Reynolds, the accursed. Many other arrests, chiefly of Northerns, had taken place previously. Emmet, Mac Nevin, and other chiefs, were taken on the same day as those who attended the meeting at Bond's, and on the information of the same man, "whose name," says Doctor Madden, "sounds like a calamity." Other arrests followed :-On the 18th May, Lord Edward was arrested; on the 21st, the Sheareses were taken; and on the 23rd was the rising.

We would not willingly follow the crash and waste of that explosion; we would rather follow the armed man striking in the open field for liberty, whether he won or lost. But this is not for us. Let us come to the dungeon, and survey the court; the public scaffold needs no painter.

An insurrection, which had not at its head one able tactician, and few men acquainted with the elements of war, or even the topography and statistics of the country, could hardly succeed. And yet it had almost conquered. Within twelve days from the first rising, the people of Wexford had cleared their county, with the exception of Ross and Duncannon, two places unfit to resist a skilful attack. Similar successes attended the Kildare insurrection. This was all that mere valour could do.

The leaders were brave, especially the few priests who fought. But all were ignorant to the last degree. No organization-no commissariat-no unity of

*Madden's Memoir of Emmet.

action-no foreign aid—were attempted. To such men, victory brought drunkenness, waste, disputes, and want. Defeat could hardly bring worse.

Antrim and Down did not rise for a fortnight; and there, after similar blunders, and a shorter struggle, the Presbyterians were crushed.

The Wexford men protracted the war, partly from a vague hope of foreign assistance, but still more from despair, for they could not trust the faith of their persecutors; and not a few of these heroic men died on the plains of Meath, in an effort to force their way into Ulster.

It is said that fifty thousand insurgents and twenty thousand of the English party were slain. The amount seems exaggerated, as the details certainly

were.

The soldier having done his own work, and that of the assassin and brigand, too, the civilian began to labour. The General's sword yielded to the bowstring of the Attorney-General. Courts-martial hanged those taken in battle; and now courts civil slaughtered the prisoners. Most unaccountably, the insurgents did not retaliate; if they had a right to rise, they were entitled to the rights of war, and were weak, wicked, and impolitic in neglecting to enforce them. An insurgent chief should have shot the peasants who lifted their hands against property or person without order; but he was equally bound to guard them against any but a soldier's hazards, by retaliating every execution, coolly, judicially, and uniformly.

But none of the older leaders of the United Irish were touched till after the insurrection was defeated. Then, in July, 1798, might you have seen the prison hovered round by anxious and mourning relatives, whom the guards of power repelled. Then might you have seen the crimson-clad judge-and the packed jury and the ferocious prosecutor-and the military gangs from the Castle crush around the dock wherein were the fearless and the true, and threaten, with voice and gesture, that little dark man who defended the prisoners. He scowled back upon their threats. "You may assassinate me," said he, when their bayonets were levelled at his breast, "but you shall not intimidate me!"* They could better have hoped to drive the stars from heaven by their violence, than force John Curran by threats to surrender one hair of his client's head.

They were not mere clients for whom he pleaded, to win fees and reputation. They were dear friends, for whose safety he would have coined his blood; they were brother patriots who had striven, by means which he thought desperate, or unsuited to him, to free their country. He was no hireling or adventurer. He came inspired by love, mercy, justice, and genius, and commissioned by heaven to walk on the waters with these patriots, and lend them his hand when they were sinking. He pleaded for some who, nevertheless, were slaughtered; but was his pleading vain, therefore? Did he not convert many a shaken conscience-sustain many a frightened soul? Did he not keep the life of genius, if not of hope, in the country? Did he not help to terrify the Government into that compromise they so ill kept? Surely, he did all this at the time; and his

See page 424.