THE UNITED IRISHMEN.

149

THE UNITED IRISHMEN.

DOCTOR MADDEN, in a table made to exhibit the religion professed by the leading members of the United Irish Society, or persons suspected of so being, gives the following list of names :*

*See Appendix No. IV., vol. ii., Madden's "Lives and Times of the United Irishmen." The indefatigable energy exhibited by Dr. Madden is beyond all praise, in hunting up and publishing such an amount of materials for a history of the men and times indicated by the title. There is a great accumulation of facts, documents, and coeval narratives compiled; but the labor of reading them is only less than that expended in collecting the same. But for the intrinsic interest of the bare facts, the manner of the compilation would confound and deter even an industrious historical student from their perusal. All must be, as we decidedly are, thankful, however, for the great industry and vigilance of the Doctor, so far as his compilation goes. As to his political opinions, we must take exception; also, to the ambiguity which characterizes too many of his reflective paragraphs

In Madden's list, those marked thus (†) were state prisoners in Fort George, Scotland. Those marked with an asterisk (*) were hanged.

The clergy who were implicated, or accused of being concerned in the Rebellion, were the following:

In addition to this very full list,* I must add the following names, which have been overlooked.

"The preceding list," says Dr. Madden, "of the names of the leaders of the United Irishmen, includes those of the actors in the rebellion, as well as those of the originators and organizers of it; but if we separate the one from the other, and enumerate the organizing leaders, we shall find that the Protestant and Presbyterian members, when compared with the Roman Catholic members, are in the proportion of four to one. There never was a greater mistake than to call this struggle a Popish rebellion; the movement was pre-eminently a Protestant one." Whilst the disabilities of the Catholics gave an early and fundamental basis of operations for the reform and revolutionary leaders, as I have indicated in my view of Tone, the junction of the Presbyterians of the North, and the spreading faith of the United Irish Society, linked all on national grounds. It was only in Wexford, where the society did not, until they had been sometime in arms, thrive, that the Catholics, as such, rose to defend them. selves and their priests. Yet here, full one half of the chiefs were Protestants-as, Harvey, Keugh, Perry, Boxwell, Colclough, etc.