merchant, member of a secret committee of Romanists, which had subsisted some years in Dublin, issued a sort of writs to the parish priests of that communion throughout the kingdom, for the election of deputies to compose an assembly representative of the whole body of Irish Romanists. Two deputies were chosen in each parish by the majority of all the adult males of the congregation assembled at the Romish chapel the parochial deputies chose in each county two representatives; all of whom, together with the representatives of cities and towns corporate, similarly chosen, composed the catholic convention, public as to its assembly, in the Taylor's-hall in Dublin. * Having prepared a petition to the King, and elected nine of its number to remain a permanent committee for the management of the projected schemes, the convention closed its session. By the authority of this assembly and its permanent representative, the committee, great sums were assessed and regularly levied on the Romanists, the greater part of whom submitted implicitly to the orders of this their supreme council, as of the most firmly established government. But the application of this money

*Since the publication of the first edition of this work, Mr. Edward Hay furnished me with the documents in No. 8, in the appendix. From their internal evidence, and subsequent enquiries, I am enabled to correct some mistakes into which I had been led.

is as yet a secret, except a very small part avowedly given to some agents of this coalition, particularly fifteen hundred pounds to Theobald Wolfe Tone, the most active of these. *

A deputation, at the head of which was the above mentioned Mr. Byrne, carried the petition of the Irish Romanists to London†. Introduction to the royal presence, by one of the secretaries of state, was procured by the influence of Edmund Burke, a most determined champion of the Roman catholic church, though a protestant in external profession. Some have pretended that great sums of money were, on this occasion, bestowed to such persons about the court as were supposed able to influence the royal ear in favour of the petitioners. The deputation was graci ously received by his Majesty; but the protestants of Ireland were invited to meet in their several counties, and to declare their opinions concerning the emancipation requested by their catholic brethren, in order, as was supposed, that the legislature might regulate its determination, at least in some degree, according to these opinions. Notwithstanding that great

* I have heard that Mr. Tone received only five hundred pounds, though three times the sum had been ostensibly voted.

In my first edition I pronounced this, a petition surprisingly fraught with misrepresentation. Though penal statutes against Catholics had lain dormant, yet I think that expres sion unjust, and I therefore expunge it, See Mr. Hay's letter in Appendix, No. 8.

pains were taken by pamphlets and speeches to convince them of the contrary, the protestants mostly feared, from the unparalleled spirit of intolerance assiduously nourished in the Romish religion, that the Romanists, if once admitted into a participation of political power, would, with the peculiar zeal of their sect, avail themselves of their superiority of number, and every other possible advantage, to possess themselves of that power exclusively, and ultimately to persecute and even exterminate the heretics. After the protestants had in general, at their county meetings, declared their disapprobation of indulgences beyond those which had already been given to their countrymen of the Romish faith, the King was graciously pleased to recommend the relief of his Roman catholic subjects in Ireland to his two houses of parliament in that kingdom. This mode of proceeding, whether accidental, or designed by the ministry, augmented mightily the jealousies of the two parties, the Irish of the established and of the Romish church, as the latter were left to conclude that their protestant countrymen were their foes, while the ministers were their friends*.

* The policy of at least conniving at the distractions of the Irish was adopted by some English politicians in the reign of Elizabeth, in order to retain Ireland in a state of weakness and dependence. "We find Sir Henry Sidney and Sir John Perrot, who perfectly understood the affairs of Ireland, and the disposi

The influence of the monarch, as is usual, prevailed in both houses: the servants of the crown, who were the most hostile to the measure, and even expressed their disapprobation in parliament, voted in its favour. By acts made in the parliamentary session of 1793, the Romanists were placed nearly in the same political situation with the protestants, being excluded only, by their own refusal to take the test oaths, from sitting as members of parliament, and from acting as officers of government in about thirty of the great offices of the state. But an effectual obstruction was made against all conventions of this public sort, such as the Catholic convention, for the future, by an act of parliament, styled the convention bill, proposed by the Lord Chancellor Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, professing "to prevent the election, or other appointment, of conventions, or other unlawful assemblies, under pretence of preparing or presenting public petitions, or other addresses, as to his Majesty, or the parliament." This prevented the meeting of an intended national assembly, which was proposed to be convoked in the month of September, the consequences of tions of its inhabitants, both expressing their indignation at this horrid policy, which yet had found its way into the English parliament." Leland's Hist. of Ireland, B. 4. chap. 3. The removal of the national distinctness of Ireland, by its legislative union with Britain, must remove all motives for such mistaken policy.

which might have been incalculably destructive at that time to Ireland.

If the protestant conductors of the United Irish had, at the close of the year 1792, succeeded in their attempt to overawe the government by muster of the national guards, which appeared to be their immediate object, and thence by bolder steps to compass a revolution, the leaders of the Romanists, who were also members of the United Irish association, would have had opportunity to unfold and put in execu tion their particular scheme. Whatever this was, the lower classes of their communion appeared evidently to conceive no other idea of a revolution than the exclusive establishment of their own church. Their spirits were high in expectation of this change. They could not entirely conceal their sentiments. Treasonable

songs, scurrilously abusive of the protestant religion, were publicly sung by drinkers in tipling houses and ballad-singers in the streets. A ferment prevailed which seemed to announce an approaching insurrection; and in 1793 some local commotions, easily suppressed, took place, particularly about the collieries in the county of Kilkenny, and in the southern part of the county of Wexford. A body of insurgents, about two thousand in number, attacked the town. of Wexford with an ostensible design to liberate some prisoners confined in the gaol of that town; but