they were repulsed with considerable slaughter. In this futile attempt major Vallotton, a brave and worthy soldier, was slain on the part of the king's troops. Several other trifling insurrections, particularly about the collieries in the counties of Kilkenny and Wexford, were suppressed with ease.

Many of the heads of the Romanists are said to have regretted the loss of this opportunity of striking home by a general insurrection, when government was not prepared for the blow. In the year seventeen hundred and ninety-five, however, an ample field was opened to their hopes of success. By order of their permanent committee, petitions, on a model by them prescribed, were addressed by the whole body to parliament, demanding the complete emancipation of the catholics. Earl Fitzwilliam, the lord lieutenant, an associate of Edmund Burke, was a bitter enemy to the French republicans; and though the Romanists of Ireland chiefly depended on them for assistance in a revolution for the establishment of their church; yet by a strange infatuation (unless we suppose he himself to have been tinctured with papacy) was he stre nuously attached to the latter. Before, however, he could gratify their wishes, he was superseded by the earl of Camden as lord lieutenant. The discontents were consequently rapidly augmented; many seditious speeches and resolutions, by authority of the committee, were published; the Romanists were invited to assemble at a chapel in Dublin, and disturbances every where increased.

Such was the disappointment of the Romanists, and such the implacable resentment with which the lower classes among them were inspired againt their protestant fellow-subjects, and the government by which they conceived themselves so grievously oppressed, that they proceeded immediately to plunge into the greatest excesses. The destructive rage of a party calling themselves defenders, in particular, manifested itself by the desolation of many parts of the kingdom, especially in the counties of Dublin, Meath, Westmeath, Kildare, King's and Queen's Counties, Louth, Armagh, Monaghan, Cavan, Derry, Donegal, Roscommon, Leitrim, Longford, Sligo, and part of that of Down. The houses of protestants were plundered for the purpose of procuring arms, often burned; and not unfrequently such of their inmates as made any resistance were slain. Such of their aggrieved countrymen as dared to prosecute, or to assist the civil magistracy in the execution of the laws, were barbarously massacred. The cattle were most imprudently and inhumanly houghed or destroyed, and letters, threatening these and other most direful effects of their resentment, were wrote to compel persons to comply with their requisitions. The peaceable inhabitants were compelled to abandon their houses, in many of the disturbed districts, and to fly, in all the wildness, trembling, and agony, of affright and consternation, to their respective county towns, or to the metropolis for refuge.

On the arrival of lord Camden as governor [April

1795] he was immediately waited on by the officers of state, and by many of the nobility and gentry. But on the return of the lord chancellor, his carriage was tumultuously attacked by the mob. The machine was nearly battered to pieces by repeated vollies of stones, and it was with the utmost difficulty his lordship escaped, after receiving a severe contusion on the forehead. After assaulting the primate in the same outrageous manner, the same party proceeded with alacrity to the house of Mr John Claudius Beresford, nephew to the marquis of Waterford, which they vigo rously attacked. One of them, however, being killed by a shot, the remainder fled with precipitation.

66

During this universal agitation, the United Irishmen were assiduously employed in bringing over to their views persons of activity and literary talents throughout the kingdom; in disseminating the popular work of Tomas Payne intitled The Rights of Man, and other similar publications, and even began to assume without disguise, a decided revolutionary character. The declaration presented to each member for signature on his being admitted into this society was “I ** "in the presence of God, do pledge myself to my "country, that I will use all my abilities and influ"ence in the attainment of an impartial and adequate "representation of the Irish nation in parliament; and, "as a means of absolute and immediate necessity in "the establishment of this chief good of Ireland, I "will endeavour as much as lies in my ability to for"ward a brotherhood of affection, an identity of inter

power,

"ests, a communion of rights, and a union of "among Irishmen of all religious persuasions, with"out which every reform of parliament must be partial " not national; inadequate to the wants, delusive to "the wishes, and insufficient for the freedom and "happiness of this country." In the new test, or oath of admission, which they now adopted, however, their ultimate intentions were more openly avowed. "In "the awful presence of Amighty God, I **** do "voluntarily declare that I will persevere in endea"vouring to form a brotherhood of affection among "Irishmen of every religious persuasion; and I will " also persevere in my endeavours to obtain an equal, "full, and adequate representation" (the mention of a parliament is here carefully omitted) "of all the people

of Ireland. I do further declare that neither hopes, "fears, rewards, or punishments, shall ever induce "me directly or indirectly, to inform on or give evi"dence against any member or members of this or "similar societies; for any act or expression of theirs "done or made collectively or individually, in or out * of this society, in pursuance of the spirit of this ob

ligation." In their original declaration are the following words: "In the present great æra of reform, **when unjust governments are falling in every quar"ter of Europe; when religious persecution is com

pelled to abjure her tyranny over conscience; when "the rights of men are ascertained in theory, and that "theory substantiated by practice; when antiquity can no longer defend absurd and oppressive forms against the common sense and common interests of

"mankind; when all government is acknowledged to "originate from the people, and to be so far only ob❤ "ligatory, as it protects their rights and promotes "their welfare, we think it our duty as Irishmen to "come forward and state what we feel to be our heavy grievance, and what we know to be its effectual re"medy.

"We have no national government. We are ruled " by Englishmen and the servants of Englishmen, "whose object is the interest of another country; "whose instrument is corruption; whose strength is "the weakness of Ireland; and these men have the "whole of the power and patronage of the country, 66 as means to seduce and subdue the honesty and the "spirit of her representatives in the legislature. Such 66 an extrinsic power, acting with uniform force in a "direction too frequently opposite to the true line of 66 our obvious interests, can be resisted with effect

solely by unanimity, decision, and spirit in the peo"ple; qualities which may be exerted most legally, "constitutionally, and efficaciously, by that great

measure essential to the prosperity and freedom of "Ireland-an equal representation of all the people in "parliament."

The following extract of a letter, addressed by Theobald Wolfe Tone, a lawyer of uncommon talents and energy, and one of the original framers of the institution, to his associates in Belfast, will evidently show, that the reform here professed was merely an