required to be all in their own hand-writing, while those of the landlords or agents might be written by any person, the gratuitous labour consigned to the parish ministers was great, in some cases enormous. Sometimes a clergyman, in the absence of others, was obliged to act for more parishes than one, while business was multiplied by various causes. Frequently different sons and daughters of the same man, though unmarried, and constituting part of his houshold, made separate claims, beside that of the father. Frequently four affidavits were demanded for one claimant, for subsistence, his house, his instruments of agriculture, and his general losses.

If any informality was found in the estimates, (which from the hurry of the persons paid to draw them, often happened) the three latter affidavits must be made again a second, or perhaps a third time; so that ten affidavits were sometimes made by a clergyman for one person.

The number of claimants whose affidavits were sent to the commissioners before the 10th of April, 1799, from the counties of Kildare, Wicklow, Wexford, and Kilkenny, was three thousand, seven hundred and ninety-seven; and the estimates which they made of their losses amounted in all to the sum of five hundred and зixty one thousand two hundred and thirteen pounds. Of these claimants the county of Wexford furnished two thousand one hundred

and thirty-seven; the estimates of whose losses amounted to almost three hundred and seven thousand pounds. The claims of some, I believe, greatly exceeded their losses; and, some who acquired by plunder perhaps more than they had lost, made large demands of compensation. To the latter circumstance the commissioners seem not to have sufficiently attended at first, though they have afterwards considered it.* On the other hand, a few were so modest as not to claim half the compensation which they might have claimed with truth; and in general the estimates were so moderate, that the sum total of them, in my opinion, bore to that of the losses no greater proportion, than that of two to three. Many claims were sent from other counties; and, since the 10th of April, 1799, a number also from the four counties above mentioned. The sum total amounted to a million and twenty-three thousand pounds; of which more than the half, or five hundred and fifteen thousand pounds, was claimed by the county of Wexford: but who will pretend to compute the damages of the

* In my opinion also a great distinction ought to have been made between those who had fought and bled in the defence of government, and those who (declining to give any other kind of assistance than to denominate all persons jocobins, except the unqualified flatterers of administration) fled to England before the rebellion, and left those jacobins the task of fighting for their properties, and the support of government,

croppies, whose houses were burned, or effects pillaged or destroyed, and who, barred from compensation, sent no estimates to the commissioners? Perhaps if the whole amount of the detriment sustained by this unfortunate island, in consequence of the united conspiracy, were conjectured at two millions, a sum of such magnitude might not exceed, or even equal the reality.

But the destruction of property was not the only species of damage resulting to the community from this illfated combination. To this may be added the loss of lives, the neglect of industry by an idle turn acquired by the minds of men from warfare or the preparations for it, the obstruction of commerce, the interruption of credit in pecuniary transactions, and the depravation of morals in those places which were the seats of civil violence. Perhaps to take a short retrospective glance of the political transactions of Ireland in the period concerning which I have written, with a few observations and reflections, may not beimproper in this place.

From the forgoing part of this work it may be understood, that of those who formed plans in opposition to ministry, for what they either actually believed or pretended to believe, a melioration of the body politic of Ireland, some were merely reformists, others revolutionists. To reform the mode of election, and consequéntly the consti

tution, of the house of commons was the aim of the former;-to annihilate the existing government, and erect an entirely new one in its place, unconnected with the state of Britain, that of the latter; who generally endeavoured to conceal their designs from others. In my opinion the sort of reform which they should have recommended would be, to allow none to vote in elections except men possessed of about a hundred pounds a-year at least, of clear income from land, or some equivalent; for the votes of the multitudes of poor freeholders are virtually the votes of only a few individualstwo or three persons of great estates commonly disposing of the places in parliament for a county; while the sufferages of gentlemen of small property are lost in the ocean of nominal voters, whose attendance on elections is commonly a disagreeable piece of service, from which they would be very glad to be excused. The mode proposed by the society of United Irish, mentioned in the beginning of this book, to admit all adult males, without regard to property, to vote in the elections for members of parliament, was evidently. a revolutionary plan, which, if adopted, would in all probability have involved, as an immediate consequence, commotions more bloody than those of France; or if it could have been established, must have thrown the government of the nation

virtually into the hands of a few ambitious men, some perhaps of its worst members.

Catholic emancipation was an immediate object with both reformers and revolutionists, as a necessary step; since without the united support of the people collectively, they could have no reasonable hopes of success in their schemes in opposition to the ministry. As to unite with the Romanists, and thereby to bring a vast accession to the weight of the people in the political scale, was a primary part in the plan of oppositionists, who hoped to have the management of the popular influence; so, on the other hand, to create disunion in the national system, and thereby to break its force, is believed to have been an object with ministry; and some steps of that tendency. appear to have been taken. These I believe to have been superfluous. The discordance of the parties was too great ever to admit any solid or permanent coalition. Whatever specious junction might be formed of the religious sects, deep distrust would lie beneath, and explode on the first grand commotion. Nor was the conduct of the Romanists, by their separate and secret consultations, the publications of some of their clergy, and the spirit of religious hostility betrayed by many of the lower classes, adapted to gain the confidence of the protestants, or induce them to expect a cordial or sincere coalition. Of this inveterate discordance the chiefs