CHAP. While

many of the instruments, employed to subdue XXXIX. the colonies, were more fitted to procure the hatred

than the submission of the colonists to the British government. Tribes of savages, American Indians, useless in battle, butchered the unarmed in their transitory incursions. The German mercenaries, too slow for American warfare, and regarding spoil as their primary object, marked every where their progress with merciless rapine. Even the British, the only effective troops employed on this lamentable occasion, were not so observant of salutary discipline, but that in places, where they were at first received as friends by the inhabitants, they were afterwards opposed and detested as enemies. Of the acts of devastation and massacre in this war the most atrocious recorded was committed at Wyoming, a new and most delightfully flourishing settlement of about a thousand families on the river Susquehanna, which was reduced completely to a desert by a body of Indians and American royalists, denominated tories, under two leaders named Butler and Brandt, who put to death all the inhabitants of every age and both sexes by various kinds of torture. The resentment of the Americans, fired by such atrocities, was so ably directed by the admirable George Washington, a leader not less cautious of affording advantages to the enemy than alert to seize opportunities in his own favour, that the independence of the revolted states was established by arms, and explicitly acknowledged by the British court in a final treaty of peace in the beginning of the year 1783. Conduct

XXXIX.

ed to its completion with a spirit of order glorious CHAP. to the character of the Americans, this revolution, when we except the expences of the war, was ultimately advantageous even to Great-Britain; since, rapidly augmented in wealth and population by an admirable system of government, these colonies afford a more gainful market than ever to British traders, without expenditure of British revenue for their defence. Their subjugation might have involved the ruin of British liberty, together with their own impoverishment and decay.

ous transac

land.

Of the American revolution the emancipation of Miscellanethe Irish legislature was a consequence, acquired by tions in Irethe exertions of the volunteer associations, exertions 1783. so far glorious, but like all human affairs, liable to be carried beyond the limit which true policy would prescribe. If, after the attainment of their great object, these patriot bands had resigned their arms, when, on the conclusion of a general peace, they were no longer necessary, they would for ever have stamped their past transactions with the seal of honour. But, misled by designing or mistaken men, and influenced by the example of some very eminent persons in England, who afterwards proved recreant, they turned their attention to a new object, a reform of parliament, or a more equal representation of the people in the house of commons, an object indeed desirable, in Britain, but of extremely difficult adjustment, and doubtless in Ireland of problematical utility. After the commencement of a discussion on this subject, two events occurred

of

CHAP of little importance, yet perhaps not omissible with

XXXIX.

St. Patrick.

propriety.

Knights of To gratify the Irish by a mark of national consequence, a new order of knighthood was instituted, the illustrious order of Saint Patrick, of which the king is always to be sovereign, the viceroy officiating grand master, and the archbishop of Dublin chancellor. Among the knights were prince Edward, the duke of Leinster, and the earl of Courtown. On the eleventh of March they were invested at the castle; and on the seventeenth, the festival of the tutelar Saint, the ceremony of installation was magnificently performed.

Genevans.

1783.

From the preponderance of the aristocratic faction in the little republic of Geneva, through the interference of the neighbouring potentates in its favour, many of the popular party emigrated in discontent, and sent commissioners to negociate for a settlement in Ireland. The commissioners of a people suffering in the cause of liberty were treated with the most respectful attention by the volunteers of Leinster ; and the project of a protestant colony of industrious, wealthy, and highly civilized artizans, was eagerly embraced by the government, who ordered fifty thousand pounds from the treasury for the forwarding of the scheme, and a town to be built, called New Geneva, for the reception of the emigrants, in the county of Waterford, near the united stream of the Barrow, Nore, and Suir, where a tract of land was shortly to revert to the possession of the crown, and intended to be appropriated in fee to the new colonists. But as the emigrants in

sisted

XXXIX.

sisted not only on being represented in parliament, CHAP. but also on being governed by their own laws, the, treaty was interrupted, and the projected settlement never took place, except that some few came into Ireland, who liked so little their new situation that most of them in a short time left the kingdom.

of the vo

1783.

To earl Temple, whose too short administration Proceedings had been of singular utility in the making of econo-lunteers. mical reforms in the different offices of the castle, succeeded the earl of Northington on the third of June 1783, when a ferment prevailed in the nation on account of an expected dissolution of parliament, which accordingly took place on the fifteenth of the following month. By an assembly of the delegates of forty-five volunteer companies of Ulster, convened at Lisburne, in the county of Antrim, on the first of July, to deliberate on measures for a parliamentary reform, a committee was appointed for corresponding with other societies, and a general meeting of the delegates of the province was requested at Dungannon on the eighth of the next September. This provincial assembly, convened as thus recommended, consisting of the delegates of two hundred and seventy-two companies, published resolutions concerning the representation of the people in parliament,, and elected five persons to represent each county in a national convention, which they appointed to be held in Dublin on the tenth of the following November, to which they intreated the volunteers of the other provinces to send like

wise

XXXIX.

CHAP. Wise their delegates. The defects of which they complained in the national representation were that of three hundred members, composing the house of commons, only seventy-two were returned by the free election of the people; since fifty-three peers nominated a hundred and twenty-four members, and influenced the choosing of ten; and fifty-two commoners nominated ninety-one, and influenced the choice of three,

Meeting of a

ment.

1738.

When the new parliament met on the fourteenth new parlia- of October, Edmund Sexton Perry was unanimously elected speaker by the commons; and the thanks of both houses were voted to the several volunteer companies for their spirited exertions in the due execution of the laws. Likewise, in a spirit of national freedom, resolutions were passed, "That in the present state of the kingdom, it was expedient that there should be a session of parliament held every year. But a momentous question soon occurred, in which parliament acted with decision in a manner much less popular, yet not unpleasing to many real friends of the country.

National convention.

According to the invitation from Dungannon, the 1783. delegates of the four provinces assembled in a na¬ tional convention, on the tenth of November, in the Rotunda in Dublin; and, electing the earl of Charlemont their president, they appointed a committee to digest a plan of parliamentary reform. Among the articles recommended in the report of this committee were these; that every protestant, possessed of a freehold of forty shillings value, should be en