archy and infidelity; and organized war upon social order and upon the Christian religion. It instantly arrayed all Europe in two fiercely hostile camps. Each side spoke and acted with a passionate energy. Old parties and schools of political thought were broken up; old friendships and alliances were sundered forever, on the question whether the French revolution was an emanation from hell or an inspiration from heaven.

Ireland so peculiarly circumstanced, could not fail to be powerfully moved by the great drama unfolded before the world in Paris. Side by side with the march of events there, from 1789 to 1795, was the revelation of England's treason against the "final adjustment" of Irish national rights, and the exasperating demeanor, language, and action of the government in its now avowed determination to conquor right. by might.

Towards the close of 1791, Theobald Wolfe Tone-a young Protestant barrister of great ability, who had devoted himself to the service of the Catholics in their efforts for emancipation-visiting Belfast (then the centre and citadel of democratic and liberal, if not indeed of republican opinions),* met there some of the popular leaders. They had marked the treacherous conduct of the government, and they saw no hope for averting the ruin designed for Ireland, save in a union of all Irishmen, irrespective of creed or class, in an open, legal, and constitutional organization for the accomplishment of parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation. Such an or

Oh! never shall earth see a moment so splendid;
Then-then-had one Hymn of Deliverance blended
The tongues of all nations, how sweet had ascended
The first note of liberty, Erin, from thee!

But shame on those tyrants who envied the blessing,
And shame on the light race unworthy its good,
Who at Death's reeking altar, like furies caressing
The young hope of Freedom, baptized it in blood,
Then vanished for ever that fair sunny vision
Which, spite of the slavish, the cold heart's derision,
Shall long be remembered-pure, bright, and elysian
As first it arose, my lost Erin on thee!

* In July of that year (1791), the French revolution was celebrated with military

pomp in Belfast by the armed volunteers and townspeople.

ganization they forthwith established. Tone, on his return to Dublin, pushed its operations there, and it soon embraced every man of note on the people's side in politics. The association thus established was called the Society of United Irishmen. For some time it pursued its labors zealously, and, as its first principles exacted, openly, legally, and constitutionally, towards the attainment of its most legitimate objects. But the government was winning against the United Irish leaders by strides-pandering to the grossest passions and vices of the oligarchical party, now sedulously inflamed against all popular opinions by the mad-dog cry of "French principles." One by one the popular leaders tired in the hopeless struggle-were overpowered by despair of resisting the gross and naked tyranny of the government, which was absolutely and designedly pushing them out of constitutional action. Some of them retired from public life. Others of them yielded to the conviction that outside the constitution, if not within it, the struggle might be fought, and the United Irishmen gradually became an oath-bound secret society.

From the first hour when an armed struggle came to be contemplated by the United Irish leaders, they very naturally fixed their hopes on France: and envoys passed and repassed between them and the French Directory. The government had early knowledge of the fact. It was to them news the most welcome. Indeed they so clearly saw their advantage -their certain success-in arraying on their side all who feared a Jacobin revolution, and in identifying in the minds of the property classes anti-Englishism with revolution and infidelity, that their greatest anxiety was to make sure that the United Irishmen would go far enough and deep enough into the scheme. And the government left nothing undone to secure that result.

Meanwhile, the society in its new character extended itself with marvellous success. Its organization was ingenious, and of course its leaders believed it to be "spy-proof." Nearly half a million of earnest and determined men were enrolled, and a considerable portion of them were armed either with. pikes or muskets. Indeed for a moment it seemed not un

likely that the government conspirators might find they had over-shot their own purpose, and had allowed the organization to develop too far. Up to 1796 they never took into calculation as a serious probability that France would really cast her powerful aid into the scale with Ireland. In the instant when England, startled beyond conception, was awakened to her error on this point by the appearance in Bantry Bay, in December, 1796, of a formidable expedition under Hoche *— a sense of danger and alarm possessed her, and it was decided to burst up the insurrectionary design-to force it into conflict at once; the peril now being that the armed and organized Irish might "bide their time."

To drive the Irish into the field-to goad them into action in the hour of England's choice, not their own-was the problem. Its accomplishment was arrived at by proceedings over which the historical writer or student shudders in horror. Early in 1796, an Insurrection Act was passed, making the administration of an oath identical with or similar to that of the United Irishmen punishable with death! An army of fifty thousand men, subsequently increased to eighty thousand, was let loose upon the country on the atrocious system of "free quarters." Irresponsible power was conferred on the military officers and local magistracy. The yeomanry, mainly composed of Orangemen, were quartered. on the most Catholic districts, while the Irish militia regiments suspected of any sympathy with the population were shipped off to England in exchange for foreign troops. "The military tribunals did not wait for the idle formalities of the civil courts. Soldiers and civilians, yeomen and townsmen, against whom the informer pointed his finger, were taken out and summarily executed. Ghastly forms hung upon the thickest gibbets, not only in the market places of the country towns and before the public prisons, but on all the bridges of the metropolis. The horrid torture of picketing, and the

*This expedition had been obtained from the French Directory by the energy and perseverance of Wolfe Tone, who had been obliged to fly from Ireland. It was dis. persed by a storm—a hurricane—as it lay in Bantry Bay waiting the arrival of the commander's ship. This storm saved the English power in Ireland.

blood-stained lash, were constantly resorted to, to extort accusations or confessions." * Lord Holland gives us a like picture of "burning cottages, tortured backs, and frequent executions." "The fact is incontrovertible," he says, "that the people of Ireland were driven to resistance (which, possibly, they meditated before) by the free quarters and excesses of the soldiery, which were such as are not permitted in civilized warfare even in an enemy's country. Dr. Dickson, Lord Bishop of Down, assured me that he had seen families returning peaceably from Mass, assailed without provocation by drunken troops and yeomanry, and their wives and daughters exposed to every species of indignity, brutality, and outrage, from which neither his (the Bishop's) remonstrances, nor those of other Protestant gentlemen, could rescue them." †

No wonder the gallant and humane Sir John Mooreappalled at the infamies of that lustful and brutal soldiery, and unable to repress his sympathy with the helpless Irish peasantry-should have exclaimed, "If I were an Irishman I would be a rebel !”

* M'Gee.

+ Lord Holland, Memoirs of the Whig Party.

LXXX. HOW THE BRITISH MINISTER FORCED ON THE RISING.

-THE FATE OF THE BRAVE LORD EDWARD.—HOW THE BRO

THERS

SHEARES DIED

'NINETY-EIGHT.

HAND-IN-HAND.-THE

RISING OF

HILE the government, by such frightful agencies, was trying to force an insurrection, the United Irish leaders were straining every energy to keep the people in restraint until such time as they could strike and not strike in vain. But in this dreadful game the government was sure to win eventually. By a decisive blow at the Society, on the 12th March, 1798, it compelled the United Irishmen to take the field forthwith or perish. This was the seizure, on that day, in one swoop, of the Supreme Council or Directory, with all its returns, lists, and musterrolls, while sitting in deliberation, at the house of Mr. Oliver Bond (one of the council) in Bridge Street, Dublin.

This terrible stroke was almost irreparable. One man, however, escaped by the accident of not having attended, as he intended, that day's council meeting; and him of all others the government desired to capture. This was Lord Edward Fitzgerald, son of the Duke of Leinster, commander-in-chief of the United Irish military organization.

Of all the men who have given their lives in the fatal struggle against the English yoke, not one is more endeared. to Irish popular affection than "Lord Edward." While he lived he was idolized; and with truth it may be said his memory is embalmed in a nation's tears. He had every quality calculated to win the hearts of a people like the Irish. His birth, his rank, his noble lineage, his princely bearing, his handsome person, his frank and chivalrous manner, his generous, warm-hearted nature, his undaunted courage, and, above all, his ardent patriotism, combined to render Lord