his purpose, and anticipate their sen- great Criminal Court of the land. In tence. The sentence upon Tone, pronounced by a court-martial, was obviously illegal; and so every lawyer knew it to be. But the people looked on as if in stupor. The son of Tone has truly described the condition of Dublin at that moment: "No man dared to trust his next neighbour, nor one of the pale citizens to betray by look or word his feelings or sympathy. The terror which prevailed in Paris under the rule of the Jacobins, or in Rome during the proscriptions of Marius, Sylla, and the Triumviri, and under the reigns of Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, and Domitian, was never deeper or more universal than that of Ireland at this fatal and shameful period. It was, in short, the feeling which made the people, soon after, passively acquiesce in the Union, and in the extinction of their name as a nation. Of the numerous friends of my father, and of those who had shared in his political principles and career, some had perished on the scaffold, others rotted in dungeons, and the re mainder dreaded, by the slightest mark of recognition, to be involved in his fate." But there was one friend of the gallant prisoner who was determined that the law of the land should at least be invoked, and one effort made to rescue this noble Irishman from the jaws of death. The friend was John Philpot Curran. He believed that by moving the Court of King's Bench to assert its jurisdiction some delay might be interposed-the French Government might threaten to retaliate upon some important prisoner of war; the case might thus become a political and not a criminal one, and in the end, either Shrough threats of retaliation, or by an arrangement with the British Government, Tone might be saved. times when war was raging, when man was opposed to man in the field, courtsmartial might be endured; but every law authority is with me whilst I stand upon this sacred and immutable principle of the Constitution-that martial law and civil law are incompatible, and that the former must cease with the existence of the latter. This is not, however, the time for arguing this momentous question. My client must appear in this Court. He is cast for death this very day. He may be ordered for execution whilst I address you. I call on the Court to support the law, and move for a habeas corpus, to be directed to the Provost-Marshal of the barracks of Dublin and Major Sandys, to bring up the body of Tone." Chief Justice.-"Have a writ instantly prepared." Curran.-"My client may die whilst the writ is preparing." Chief Justice.-"Mr. Sheriff, proceed to the barracks and acquaint the ProvostMarshal that a writ is preparing to suspend Mr. Tone's execution, and see that he be not executed.' The Court awaited, in a state of the utmost agitation and suspense, the return of the Sheriff. He speedily appeared, and said: "My lord, I have been to the barracks, in pursuance of your order The Provost-Marshal says he must obey Major Sandys. Major Sandys says he must obey Lord Cornwallis." Mr. Curran announced at the same time that Mr. Tone (the father) was just returned, after serving the habeas corpus, and that General Craig would not obey it. The Chief Justice exclaimed: "Mr. Sheriff, take the body of Tone into custody; take the ProvostMarshal and Major Sandys into custody, and show the order of the Court to General Craig." On the next day, November 12th (the) The general impression was now that day fixed for his execution), the scene in the prisoner would be led out to execnthe Court of King's Bench was awful and tion, in defiance of the Court. This apimpressive to the highest degree. As prehension was legible in the countenance soon as it opened, Curran advanced, lead- of Lord Kilwarden, a man who, in the ing the aged father of Tone, who produced worst of times, preserved a religious rehis affidavit that his son had been brought spect for the laws, and who, besides, I before a bench of officers, calling itself a may add, felt every personal feeling of court-martial, and sentenced to death. pity and respect for the prisoner, whom "I do not pretend," said Curran, "that he had formerly contributed to shield Mr. Tone is not guilty of the charges of which he is accused. I presume the officers were honourable men. But it is stated in this affidavit, as a solemn fact, that Mr. Tone had no commission under His Majesty; and, therefore, no courtmartial could have cognizance of any erime imputed to him whilst the Court of King's Bench sat in the capacity of the from the vengeance of Government on an occasion almost as perilous. His agitation, according to the expression of an eye-witness, was magnificent. The Sheriff returned at length with the fatal news. He had been refused admittance in the barracks; but was informed that Mr. Tone, who had wounded himself dangerously in the neck the night before, was not in a condition to be removed. In The whole of which was, the next year, short, on the night before, after writing a in the arrangement of the terms of letter to the French Directory, and a touch-"Union," carried to the account of Ireing adieu to his wife, while the soldiers land, and made part of her national debt were erecting a gibbet for him in the yard -as if it were Ireland that profited by before his window, he cut his throat with these transactions. a knife. But it was not effectually done, and he lingered in that dungeon, stretched on his bloody pallet, in the extremity of agony, seven days and nights. No friend was allowed access to him; and nobody saw him but the prison surgeon, a French emigrant, and therefore his natural enemy. At length he died. * The Government allowed the body to be carried away by a relative named Dunbavin, and it was buried in the little churchyard of Bodenstown, County Kil- would have raised him to the first honours The expenses incurred in first exciting the insurrection, next in suppressing it, and afterwards in carrying out its real object-a Legislative Union, are estimated moderately by Dr. Madden, as follows: From 1797 to 1802, the cost of the large military force that was kept up in Ireland, estimated at £4,000,000 per annum, Purchase of the Irish Parliament, Secret Service money, previous to Probable amount of pensions paid for Increased expense of legal proceed- duties in 1798, and alterations in Total £16,000,000 1,500,000 53,547 20,000 1,200,000 The military force in Ireland, during and immediately after the insurrection, was:— FROM PARLIAMENTARY RETURNS. The Militia, The Yeomanry, Commissariat, Total, 32.281 26,634 51,274 24,201 1,500 1,700 137,590 the Parliamentary proceedings of the 18th These figures are taken from a report of of February, 1799. They are introduced in a speech of Lord Castlereagh, prefacing think that one man could be then spared a motion on military estimates. He did not of the 137,590,-though the rebellion to deal with a population only one-half of was completely over, and though he had the present. We have not at hand the but there is ground for concluding that it means of ascertaining the force of 1800, the rebellion was still further off by a was over that of 1799, though the time of Examination of O'Connor, Emmet, and MacNeven PARLIAMENT continued sitting. In August and September, 1798, the examination of 800,000 Thomas Addis Emmet, Arthur O'Connor, £21,573,547 and Dr. MacNeven, proceeded before the secret committees. While the report of these examinations was still secret, the Dublin newspapers under the control of the Government published some very garbled and falsified accounts of them, calculated not only to criminate and de Madden states that one friend of Tone, a Mr. Fitzpatrick, of Capel Street, was admitted to see him once. This is a matter on which Tone's son, who was then far away, might easily have been misinformed. Madden further testifies that the surgeon, a Dr. Lentaigne, was a very good and humane man. paper war would be carried on without end between us and the Government. Finding that we would not suffer the memoir to be garbled, and that the literary contest between us and these hirelings was not likely to turn out to your credit, it was determined to examine us before the secret committees, whereby a more complete selection might be made out of the memoir, and all the objectionable truths-with which it was observed it abounded-might be suppressed. For the present I shall only remark that, of one hundred pages, to which the whole of the information I gave to the Government and to the secret committees amounts, only one page has been published." grade those gentlemen theniselves, but to supposed we would reply, by which a hold them forth as betraying their comrades and associates. The object of this was very plain. They thought it necessary to protest against it by a published card. Thereupon they were examined again; were asked whether they meant to retract anything; were shown the minutes of their evidence as taken down, and interrogated as to its correctness and fidelity. They answered that they found it correct, so far as it went; but Emmet declared that very much of their evidence was omitted. On the whole, they admitted that the report shown to them was substantially correct (except the omissions), and that they had only meant to protest against the false newspaper accounts. Their new examination was triumphantly paraded as a complete exculpation of the committees from all charge of garbling; but, in fact, the newspapers could not have come by even their partial and carefully distorted accounts of this evidence, except through some one connected with the Government or secret committees; and so the intended effect was in part produced without the Government seeming to be a party to it. This affair is obscure; but, în justice to the unfortunate gentlemen then in the hands of most unscrupulous enemies, it is right to throw all the light possible upon it. Arthur O'Connor, in a letter to Lord Castlereagh, gives this account of the misunderstanding: "At the instance of Government, Emmet, MacNeven, and I, drew up a memoir containing thirty-six pages, giving an account of the origin, principles, conduct, and views of the Union, which we signed and delivered to you on the 4th of August last. On the 6th, Mr. Cook came to our prison, and after acknowledging that the memoir was a perfect performance of our agreement, he told us that Lord Cornwallis had read it; but, as it was a vindication of the Union, and a condemnation of the Ministers, the Government, and Legislature of Ireland, he could not receive it; and, therefore, he wished we would alter it. We declared we would not change one letter-it was all true, and it was the truth we stood pledged to deliver. He then asked us, if Government should publish such parts only as might suit them, whether we would refrain from publishing the memoir entire. We answered that, having stipulated for the liberty of publication, we would use that right when and as we should feel ourselves called on. To which he added that, if we published, he would have to hire persons to answer us; that then he On the 6th of October, Parliament was prorogued with a highly congratulatory speech from the Throne, on the suppression of the " dangerous and wicked rebellion," and on the glorious victory obtained by "Sir Horatio Nelson over the French fleet in the Mediterranean.” About the same time occurred a certain sham court-martial, under the presidency of the Earl of Enniskillen, a Colonel in the army-a great favourite with the Orangemen, and probably an Orangeman himself. A man named Wollaghan, a yeoman, had brutally shot a poor peaceable man in his own house. The affair is not otherwise deserving of notice than that the evidence on this trial shows the horrid state of the country. A corporal of the corps deposed that a certain Captain Armstrong, who commanded at Mount Kennedy before and after the murder, had given orders "that any body of yeomanry going out (he would not wish them less than nine or ten for their own safety), and if they should meet with any rebels, whom they knew or suspected to be such, they need not be at the trouble of bringing them in, but were to shoot them on the spot; that he (the witness) communicated this to the corps, and is very certain in the hearing of the pri soner Wollaghan, who was a sober, faithful, and loyal yeoman, and not degrading the rest of the corps-one of the best in it; that it was the practice of the corps to go out upon scouring parties without orders," &c. The affair, however, made a noise-became notorious; and Lord Cornwallis thought himself obliged to disapprove the judgment of the court-martial (which acquitted Wollaghan), and to rebuke Lord Enniskillen. The murderer, however, was only dismissed the service. The Orangemen were highly disgusted with Lord Cornwallis, and called him Croppy 66 Corny." But the cases of local tyranny Prime-Sergeant. The most interesting and brutality exercised upon the people public meeting upon the subject of the were very seldom indeed brought into Union was that of the gentlemen of the any court. Seldomer still were they Irish bar. It has before been observed, punished. The juryman who should have that in Ireland the bar was the great ventured to hesitate about acquitting an road that led to preferment, and few were Orangeman would have been himself the families in the nation which looked hunted down as a "croppy." The mo- up to it that did not furnish one member ment was come to propose the Union, as or more to that profession. The bar, the only way of putting a stop to these consequently, commanded a very powerhorrors and to all the other woes of Ireland. ful influence over the public mind, even independently of the weight of respectability attending the opinions of that learned body. In pursuance of a requisition signed by twenty-seven lawyers of the first respectability and character in the profession, a meeting of the Irish bar took place on the 9th of December, at the Exhibition House in William Street, to deliberate on the question of Legislative Union. The meeting was very numerous. Even before the fury of rebellion had subsided, had the British Ministry recommended preparatory steps to enable the Irish Government to introduce the proposal of a Legislative Union with plausibility and effect upon the first favourable opening. In pursuance of this recommendation a pamphlet was written, or procured to be written, by Mr. Edward Cooke, the Under-Secretary of the Civil It must be observed that the bar of Department. It was published anony- Ireland was the only great body in the mously, but was well understood to speak state or in society that Lords Clare and the sentiments of the British Adminis- Castlereagh feared, as a serious obstructration, and the Chief Governor, and tion to their plans. In its ranks were those of the Irish Administration who the most accomplished statesmen and went with his Excellency upon the ques- most formidable debaters of the country; tion of union. It was circulated with incredible industry and profusion throughout every part of the nation, and certainly was productive of many conversations on the question under the then existing circumstances of that nation; the most prominent of which were,-the still unallayed horrors of blood and carnage, the excessive cruelty and vindictive ferocity of the Irish yeomanry towards their countrymen, compared with the pacific, orderly, and humane conduct of the English militia, of which about eighteen regiments were still in the country, and, above all, the confidence which the conciliatory conduct of the Chief Governor inspired. This pamphlet was considered as a kind of official proclamation of the sentiments of Government upon the question, and had no sooner appeared than it produced a general warfare of the press, and threw the whole nation into a new division of parties. and the most earnest opponents of Union to the last were barristers. Lord Clare, therefore, had taken measures to corrupt the bar by creating a great many new legal offices, which they were expected to solicit, and for which they would sell themselves to the Castle. He doubled the number of the Bankrupt Commissioners; he revived some offices, created others; and, under pretence of furnishing each county with a local judge, in two months he established thirty-two new offices of about six or seven hundred pounds per annum each. His arrogance in court intimidated many whom his patronage could not corrupt; and he had no doubt of overpowering the whole profession. There was much interest, therefore, felt in the result of this preliminary meeting of the bar. Among those who had called the meeting were fourteen of the King's counsel: E. Mayne, W. Saurin, W. C. Plunket, C. Bushe, W. Sankey, No sooner was the intention of Govern- B. Burton, J. Barrington, A. M'Cartney, ment unequivocally known, than most of G. O'Farrell, J. O'Driscoll, J. Lloyd, P. the leading characters took their ranks Burrowes, R. Jebb, and H. Joy, Esquires according to their respective views and -a very distinguished list of names; sentiments, the Earl of Clare at the head some of which will be met with again and of the Unionists, and the Right Honour- again, before the final catastrophe of the able Mr. Foster, his late zealous colleague nation. Saurin spoke against the Union in the extorted system of coercion and project. "He was a moderate Huguenot," terror, put himself at the head of the says Sir Jonah Barrington, "and grandAnti-Unionists. Amongst the first dis- son of the great preacher at the Haguemissals for opposing the Union were those an excellent lawyer and a steadfast and of Sir John Parnell, the Chancellor of pious Christian." Sir Jonah goes on to the Exchequer, and Mr. Fitzgerald, the describe this important meeting: "Mr. Saint George Daly, a briefless given our beloved country the gigantie barrister, was the first supporter of the outlines of a kingdom. The God of Union. Of all men he was the least nature never intended that Ireland should thought of for preferment; but it was be a province, and, by G, she never wittily observed, that the Union was shall!" the first brief Mr. Daly had spoken from.' | "The assembly burst into a tumult of He moved an adjournment. applause. A repetition of the words came from many mouths, and many an able lawyer swore hard upon the subject. The division was— "Mr. Thomas Grady was the Fitzgibbon spokesman--a gentleman of independent property, a tolerable lawyer, an amatory poet, a severe satirist, and an indefatigable quality-hunter. He had written the Flesh Brush, for Lady Clare; the West Briton, for the Union; the Barrister, for the bar; and the Nosegay, for a banker at Limerick-who sued him successfully for a libel. "The Irish,' said Mr. Grady, are only the rump of an aristocracy. Shall I visit posterity with a system of war, pestilence, and famine?* No, no! give me a Union. Unite me to that country where all is peace, and order, and pros perity. Without a Union we shall see embryo chief judges, attorney-generals in perspective, and animalcula sergeants. All the cities of the south and west are on the Atlantic Ocean, between the rest of the world and Great Britain; they are all for it-they must all become warehouses; the people are Catholics, and they are all for it,' &c., &c., &c. Such an oration as Mr. Grady's had never before been heard at a meeting of lawyers in Europe. "Mr. John Beresford, Lord Clare's nephew and purse-bearer, followed, as if for the charitable purpose of taking the laugh from Mr. Grady, in which he perfectly succeeded, by turning it on himself. Mr. Beresford afterwards became a parson, and is now Lord Decies. William Johnson, appointed Judge of 3,300 3,300 3,300 the 7. Mr. Torrens, appointed Judge of the 8. Mr. Vandeleur, appointed a Judge of 9. Thomas Maunsell, a County Judge," 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 "Mr. Goold said: "There are forty thousand British troops in Ireland, and with forty thousand bayonets at my breast the Minister shall not plant another Sicily in the bosom of the Atlantic. I want not the assistance of divine inspiration to foretell, for I am enabled by the visible and unerring demonstrations of nature to assert, that Ireland was destined to be a free and independent nation. Our patent to be a state, not a 27. P. W. Fortescue, M.P., a secret pension, 26. J. Keller, Officer in the Court of Chancery, 500 shire, comes direct from heaven. The 28. W. Longfield, an officer in the Custom Almighty has, in majestic characters, signed the great charter of our independence. The great Creator of the world has Nothing could be more unfortunate than this crude observation of Mr. Grady, as the very three evils-war, pestilence, and famine-which he declared a union would avert, have since visited, and are still visiting, the unioned country; which has, since the connection with England, been depopulated by the famine which that Union caused; and, inoculated with the late plague from Great Britain, they are now declared in a state of war by the British Legislature. House, 1,200 400 400 500 Edmund Stanley, Commission of In29. Arthur Brown, Commission of Inspector, 800 30. 32. Charles Ormsby, Counsel to Commis spector, 800 31. sioners, Value, William Knott, M.P., Commission of 5,000 Appeals, . 800 Henry Deane Grady, Counsel to Com missioners, Value, 5,000 33. 34. John Beresford, his father a title."" It was already so notorious, during this winter, that a Union was to be imme |