they re-embarked, and abandoned the shores of Ireland. Tandy was afterwards arrested at Hamburgh by some British agents. In this action the dignity of a neutral state was contemptuously violated, and the influence of the emperor of Russia was solicited and obtained to intimidate the Hamburghers into an acquiescence in this violation, which exposed them at the same time to the resentment of the French government. So mighty a fuss about such an object, such a mountain in labour, confirmed many in an opinion of a puerile weakness in the British ministers. Tandy was tried at Lifford, at the Spring assizes for 1801; and pleading guilty, received his Majesty's pardon on condition of emigration; in consequence of which he has emigrated to France. At length, at the end of September, sailed the principal armament from Brest, consisting of one ship of the line and eight frigates, having on board, as was reported, four or five thousand soldiers, and destined for the coast of Donegal. Descried in their approach to that coast, on the 11th of October, by a British squadron, under Sir John Borlase Warren; and overtaken the next morning, a desperate battle commenced, which continued from half an hour after seven in the forenoon till eleven, when the ship of the line, named the Hoche, was captured, and the frigates made sail to escape. In a running fight of about five hours,

three of these became prizes, and three others afterwards; two only of the squadron escaping to France.

A smaller fleet, destined to co-operate with the above, consisting of the three frigates which had before come with Humbert, carrying a landforce of two thousand men, anchored in the bay of Killala on the 27th of October, but on the appearance of some British ships of war, made sail with precipitation for France, without landing the troops, and escaped after a long chace. The commanders of these forces had orders to send the bishop of Killala and his family prisoners to France, and, if they should meet with opposition in landing, to lay the town in ashes. The cause of this unmerited severity was an unfounded opinion entertained by the French administrators, that the bishop had betrayed the town to the King's troops, together with a deposit of two hundred and eighty barrels of gunpowder, partly buried under a hot-bed in his garden, partly in a vault in the haggard under a corn-stand. The powder could not be concealed from the King's officers, even if the bishop had thought it his duty to attempt it; but its removal was anxiously wished, since the town with all its contents had three times been in danger of annihilation by the approach of fire to this terrible mass, the shock of whose explosion must have had the most ruinous effect.

On board the Hoche, in the action with admiral Warren, was found Theobald Wolfe Tone, whose activity and talents had contributed to give life to a formidable conspiracy, which received a deadly wound by the miscarriage of the French armament, and which can hardly be said to have survived his fate. Tried by a courtmartial in the capital, he rested his defence on his being a denizen of France, an officer in the service of that country, and pretended not to deny the charge against him, nor even to excuse his political conduct. Found guilty, he requested the indulgence of being shot as a soldier, instead of being ignominiously hanged as a felon; and, on the refusal of this request, cut his own throat in the prison. The operation being incompletely performed, hopes were entertained of his recovery; and on the next morning John Philpot Curran, Esq. the famous barrister, made a motion in the court of King's Bench for a writ of habeas corpus in his favour, upon the ground that

courts-martial have no jurisdiction over subjects not in military service while the court of King's Bench is sitting.' After a full discussion of the subject the plea was admitted; but, from the condition of Tone, his removal from prison, according to the writ, was deemed unsafe, and he shortly after died from the self-inflicted wound.

With the reduction of the ravaging bands in

the mountains of Wicklow, under Holt and Hacket, already mentioned, the last professed champions in arms of the united conspiracy, and with the death of Tone, its chief original projector, ended a rebellion, of which the deep and artful scheme demonstrated the ability, but the immediate consequences, the ignorance of its authors with respect to the instruments which they were obliged to employ. Since from experience of this event civil wars in any part of Ireland, except some northern counties, must, from whatsoever causes excited, be justly expected to assume a religious complexion of the most bloody hue. Irish protestants ought to be convinced that the political separation of their country from Britain by a popular insurrection must involve their extinction, and that consequently an infrangibly determined adherence to their British connexion is necessary for their safety. Some extraordinary circumstances, we must allow, restrained the insurgents of Connaught from proceeding to religious murder; but doubtless, if they had continued much longer in power, agitators like Dixon of Wexford would have pained an ascendency, and scenes of blood would have succeeded those of devastation.

Unhappily for themselves and their country, so inveterately rooted are the prejudices of religious antipathy in the minds of the lower

any

civil war,

classes of Irish Romanists, that in however originating from causes unconnected with religion, not all the efforts of their gentry, or even priests, to the contrary, could, if I am not exceedingly mistaken, restrain them from converting it into a religious quarrel. This generation at least must pass away before the religious hatred, and notions of exclusive right to divine favour, deeply imbibed from the clergy of older times, could be removed, or in civil commotions be effectually restrained, by the clergy of the present time, supposing their wishes and efforts the most earnest and liberal. I shall quote from the judicious narrator of Killala what he has said concerning the Romish clergy of Ireland, since he has expressed my ideas on the subject better than I myself could.

"What powerful motive could prevail on this "order of men to lend their hearts and hands to

a revolution, which so manifestly threatened to "overwhelm their own credit and consequence, "supposing even that they were indifferent to "the fate of that religion of which they pro"fessed themselves to be the consecrated mi"nisters? I will tell the reader what I conceive "to be the true key to this mystery, if I may "have his pardon for the digression.

"The almost total dependence of the clergy "of Ireland upon their people for the means of subsistence, is the cause, according to my best